SACW | 28 Apr 2006

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 28 April, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2243

[1]  Nepal: Nepal's people phenomenon (Kanak Mani Dixit)
[2]  Nepal: The Americans are leaving, the State 
Department stays on (Tapan Base)
[3]  Nepal: Baburam Bhattarai's "Letter to the 
Editor" of the Kantipur Newspaper
[4]  Sri Lanka: What is wrong with the Geneva 
Talks and the Peace Process? (Coalition of 
Muslims and Tamils for Peace and Coexistence)
[5]  Amartya Sen speaks about his latest book, 
Identity and Violence (Anasuya Basu)

___


[1]

The News International
April 28, 2006

NEPAL'S PEOPLE PHENOMENON
by Kanak Mani Dixit

Hum dekhenge Š
Jab takth giraye jayenge
Sab taaj uchale jayenge


Well, the virtuous people of Nepal saw to it that 
the crown was dashed. Very late in the modern 
era, long after other countries of Southasia had 
experienced their uplifting, cathartic moments, 
Nepalis by their millions stood up against 
feudalism. People power simultaneously pushed 
back a despotically inclined king, made space for 
pluralism, and created the conditions for peace. 
The mission now is to bring the Maoists in from 
the jungle while ensuring that the kingship is 
forever barred from mischief. Faiz Ahmed Faiz 
would have liked it here in Kathmandu this week, 
as would have Iqbal Bano, who sang that immortal 
people's anthem.

A sputtering 'movement' suddenly converted into a 
people's movement of colossal dimensions, fuelled 
by the scorn Gyanendra had continuously heaped 
upon the citizenry. Suddenly, the weakened, the 
unarmed middle ground, represented by the 
political parties and civil society, gained the 
upper hand. Meanwhile, a hopefully chastened 
Maoist leadership saw a non-violent mass movement 
achieve what ten years of their war had failed.

A menacing autocrat who sought to rule on the 
basis of dynastic right, outright 
misrepresentation and military might, Gyanendra 
was incapable of acknowledging the political 
maturity of the people. Taking energy from an 
insular, self-serving Kathmandu Valley upper 
class, equally contemptuous of the political 
parties, he began appointing prime ministers at 
will in October 2002 and finally took over as 
head of government on February 1, 2005.

Gyanendra's excuse for his army-assisted takeover 
was to fight the insurgency, but the intent was 
to maintain himself as a corrupt, all-powerful 
autocrat. His most awful act was to militarise an 
innocent society, already devastated by years of 
insurgency. Fortunately, despite the worst of 
intentions, this man did not have the 
intellectual or organisational skills to run a 
police state.

Another spring

The people of Nepal first achieved democracy 
during another spring, 15 years ago, through a 
more modest people's movement that delivered the 
1990 constitution. For 12 years till 2002, they 
experienced freedom and made the most of it. 
While the legacy of two centuries of oppression 
by Kathmandu's rulers was difficult to undo in a 
dozen years of democracy, what pluralism did for 
Nepal was electric. A voiceless people discovered 
the power of speech; they developed a confidence 
unprecedented in their history.

This empowerment of the masses is what the 
feudocrat in Gyanendra never understood, and he 
would have been overthrown immediately after 
February 1 had a violent insurgency not been 
raging in the countryside. For a decade, that 
misconceived rebellion -- one of Maoist 
chieftains making their own grabs for power, 
through the barrel of the gun -- had sapped the 
energy of the nation. The politicians who were 
engaged in non-violent politics were caught 
between two guns. It was last autumn, when the 
Maoists conceded the failure of their 'people's 
war' and agreed to come into open politics 
through a constituent assembly, that the people's 
movement became possible.

On November 22, 2005, tired of waiting for 
dialogue with a sneering Narayanhiti palace, and 
with the Maoists having already signalled their 
climb-down, the political parties signed a 
12-point understanding with the rebels to fight 
the regime in parallel. The political rallies 
suddenly began to attract the public, now that 
the parties were able to promise a fight for the 
return of both democracy and peace. The 
participation in the rallies climbed to 50,000 
then 100,000 and then 200,000.

Meanwhile, Gyanendra continued to display a 
conduct specifically designed to emphasise his 
scorn for the common masses. Even as he was 
receiving felicitations as a 'Hindu emperor' from 
a dreadfully organised meeting of conservative 
Hindus in the town of Birgunj, the movement 
sparked and took off. The bottled-up anger 
against the aberrant king exploded in the heady 
people's movement of 2006. It was a political 
tsunami of a force few could believe.

People in other parts of the Subcontinent have 
perhaps forgotten how it is to be one nation 
together fighting for a cause. The Nepali 
people's movement was a Southasian, Asian and 
global happening, where a people discovered the 
simple pleasure of fighting together for 
pluralism. And when Gyanendra sought to provide 
measly concessions -- too little and too late -- 
on Friday, April 22, another people's tsunami 
crashed against the Narayanhiti gates. 
Gyanendra's resolve finally crumbled. Close to 
midnight on Monday, April 24, he gave in to the 
popular will and restored the Third Parliament, 
asking the political parties to form a government.

Coming of age

This 'people phenomenon' holds larger meanings 
than simply the shunting aside of an active 
monarch. It has united a country that has been 
historically, socially and geographically 
divided. Between eight to ten million citizens 
were engaged in the weeks-long agitation, coming 
in from the fields and terraces, trekking to the 
road heads, demanding loktantra, the new term for 
total democracy.

Perhaps the greatest gift of the people's 
movement of 2006, besides creating conditions for 
an end to the Maoist rebellion, is that it sets 
Nepali nationalism on more inclusive and solid 
foundations. To date, the nationalism of the 
modern era, together with its reliance on 
xenophobia and frivolous symbolism, was based on 
caste/ethnic identity, the Nepali language, a 
'Hindu' monarchy, and a particular brand of hill 
Hinduism. Each of these elements had the 
consequence of excluding a large section of 
citizens, even whole communities.

Having been ushered in by citizens of all 
ethnicities, castes, languages, faiths, gender 
and regional origins, this new democracy is no 
longer a gift from Kathmandu's powerful clique to 
the country at large. The inclusive democracy, to 
be crafted on the basis of the people's movement 
through the promised constituent assembly that 
will write a new constitution, will at long last 
provide all of the people with 'ownership' of 
their country. The Nepal of the future will be a 
raucous, occasionally unruly, democracy. But the 
state will have the stability required for 
nation-building.

Already, the people have gained confidence from 
their ability to fight a despot and to define 
their own future vis-à-vis a nervous 
international community. This assurance adds to 
the country's stature, and will henceforth 
provide it with self-assurance in the conduct of 
foreign relations, particularly in dealing with 
the overwhelming, southern neighbour, India. This 
new confidence will translate into numerous other 
dividends, including more equitable development 
works, where the goals are set indigenously 
rather than by the ubiquitous 'donor' government 
or agency.

The path ahead will be necessarily bumpy, but the 
goal is clear: making inclusive democracy happen, 
righting the historical wrongs against the 
majority population in this country of 
minorities. The task began with the defeat of 
Gyanendra's preposterous agenda. The kingship has 
been brought to its knees, which is where it will 
have to be kept, if at all.

Nepal needs to go back to being a country where 
the people smile; where villagers on the trail 
look at you in the eye and brightly inquire into 
your personal history, rather than fearfully 
looking away.

Already, during the people's movement, the 
twinkle had returned to the Nepali eye.



We shall see Š

When the crowns shall be toppled

When the palaces will be demolished



This article was written in detention, originally 
for Himal Southasian magazine. The writer was 
released at midday, April 25.

The writer is a journalist based in Kathmandu

____


[2] 

NEPAL: THE AMERICANS ARE LEAVING, THE STATE DEPARTMENT STAYS ON.

The other day a friend told me that the US 
Embassy has ordered all American citizens, except 
those providing essential service to the US 
Embassy to leave Nepal immediately. A large 
number of Americans were seen at Kathmandu's 
Tribhuvan International Airport trying to catch 
flights to different destinations, before they 
got contaminated by a disease   called 
"revolution".  This gives me a good feeling.
Why? Because it shows that the Nepali people have 
successfully resisted the USA's attempts to 
hijack, manipulate and subvert the mass movement. 
The USA tried its best and I am sure that they 
are going to try again. Richard Boucher the 
Assistant Secretary of State is due in Kathmandu 
on May 2, 2006. Over the past five years the 
State Department sent "scholars" "security 
advisers" and "counter insurgency experts" to 
train and assist the Nepali academics, 
researchers NGO activists in the "art and 
science" of in conflict resolution and strengthen 
local stake holders for peace. They also trained 
the Royal Nepal Army officials in developing 
modern security strategies and counter insurgency 
- in plain words killing the Maoists more 
effectively.
The Ambassador of the United States never tired 
of comparing the Nepali Maoists with the Khmer 
Rogue.  American experts' put out scholarly 
discourses, which compared Nepal with that of 
Peru and Cambodia.  American agencies funded 
Nepali scholars to study techniques of "conflict 
analysis", "conflict resolution" and conflict 
transformation". Seminars were organised where 
doom's day scenarios were created and discussed. 
The Maoists were shown as a greedy lot, hungry 
for power, using the poor and exploiting the 
emotions of  women and discriminated Indigenous 
peoples and the Dalits. The Royal Nepal Army was 
supplied with 20,000 M-16 rifles from Washington, 
20,000 Insas rifles from Delhi, 100 helicopters 
from London  and 30,000 Minimax guns from 
Belgium. At the end of the day, all the State 
Department experts, all the Generals of Pentagon 
and the other friendly governments could not spot 
the people of Nepal.
The USA has never experienced a revolution of the 
kind that is taking place in Nepal. The great 
American Revolution was not led by the hungry and 
exploited masses. This happened in France, in 
Russia, in China and in Cuba. It is difficult to 
predict when the oppressed masses would overcome 
their fear of the oppressor. As history is 
witness, they do. And, when they do overcome 
their fear, they become a virtually unstoppable 
force. They change history. Remember Spartacus 
and the slaves.
For nearly 200 years, the Shah and Rana rulers of 
Nepal held the people to ransom. The Hindu ruler 
was propped up as the embodiment of god. Ordinary 
Nepalese were not even allowed to look at his 
face. They kept up the most archaic Hindu customs 
to hold the people down.
Through alliance with the British colonial 
masters of India and later with the rulers of 
independent India, Britain and the USA they 
perpetrated their rule. Their main business was 
to supply poor Nepali men as mercenaries to 
foreign governments as cheap canon fodder. On 
each Nepali mercenary the rulers collected 
commission. The agreement between Nepal's King 
and the British allowed the British to pay the 
Nepali Ghurkhas in British army a paltry sum as 
they salary and pensions ranging from five to 
fifteen pounds sterling per month for a life time 
of service in her majesty's government. The Royal 
Nepal Army even today deducts a hefty sum from 
the compensation received by the Nepali 
peacekeepers in the employment of the UNO.
After the USA began its global war on terror and 
President Bush "privatised" security services, 
hundreds of Nepalese were recruited into 
so-called "ancillary" service of security 
companies like group Four, Executive Solutions, 
Ghurkha International and Blackwater Inc. As the 
dead bodies of Nepali workers started returning 
from Iraq, Ache and Afghanistan, it became clear 
what this so-called ancillary service really was. 
Even today, American recruited Ghurkha guards 
protect Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President. The 
King of Brunei does not trust any one but 
Ghurkhas for his personal safety.
In Nepal it is an old fashioned revolution led by 
the poor oppressed masses. The people are united 
in their struggle against the king, the symbol of 
oppression.  It is not an ethnic strife or a 
religious or a sectarian war. Those are the wars 
that the State Department knows and likes. They 
have hordes of experts and advisors who are 
waiting in various "think tanks" and universities 
to be sent to all places where such 
conflicts/wars are raging. But a revolution of 
the kind that is unfolding in Nepal is not 
something that the USA knows how to deal with.
Now the king has revived the House of 
Representatives, which he dissolved on the advice 
of Mr. Sher Bahadur Deuba in October 2002.  Mr. 
Deuba had already lost the support of the 
majority in the house when he advised the king. 
The king was happy to dissolve the house as the 
house was opposed to the extension of the state 
of emergency. The house elected in May 1999 has 
already completed its term of five years under 
the 1990 constitution. Yet the leaders of the 
seven parties were adamant in their demand for 
the revival of this house. Why one might ask. 
What was the need to revive a dead house which 
could only be done by the king, whom the people 
hated? There are no obvious answers.
The Maoists have been insisting that the seven 
party alliance should hold a national convention 
and declare the formation of a national 
government as an interim measure. The seven party 
alliance did not agree. Seems they were afraid 
that neighbouring and other governments might not 
recognize their government. They were also afraid 
that they would be seen as having come under the 
influence Maoists, who were branded as 
"terrorist" by USA and India. The US Ambassador 
has been pushing the leaders of the seven parties 
to renounce the 12 point agreement with the 
Maoist.  But this did not happen.
On the nineteenth day of the mass movement the 
king and the Royal Nepal Army was faced with the 
prospect of a crowd of five million people 
surrounding the capital city of Kathmandu. I am 
told, as the palace rats started to desert the 
sinking royal ship, the king finally lost his 
nerve. He was ready to compromise with the 
leaders of the seven parties.  There are credible 
reports that he sent his emissary to the head of 
the UNDP in Nepal to intervene in the "backdoor" 
negotiations with the leaders of the seven party 
alliance leaders in crafting the proclamation 
that the king read out in his midnight 
proclamation of April 24, 2006. This was 
"accepted" by the leaders of the seven parties.
What Nepalese want is a new political system - an 
inclusive democracy, freedom from exploitation 
and discrimination, respect for human rights and 
a new society. The women of Nepal, who were out 
in large numbers want equal status in society. 
The marginalised communities, the indigenous 
people (janajatis), the Dalits, Muslims and 
Madhesis want an end to discrimination. They want 
a federal system of governance which will 
guarantee their "autonomy" and their "culture, 
language and identity". The people want the new 
government to guarantee their right to work, 
right to housing, right to water, health and 
education.
The leaders of the seven parties will soon return 
to the House of Representatives. They are now 
preparing to form an interim government. They 
have also made it clear that they will not 
deviate from their commitment to holding 
elections for a constituent assembly.  Several 
mass organisations including trade unions, 
teacher's associations, organisations of 
Janajatis and Dalits have announced that they 
would encircle Singha Darbar, where the 
parliamentarian would meet on Friday (April 28).
The State Department has said that the king 
should continue to be the "ceremonial head of 
state". The majority of the people of Nepal want 
an end to monarchy. They want the king and his 
family to leave.  They see the king as the symbol 
of the old system which perpetrated the control 
of the feudal classes and sold the country's 
economic and political independence to foreign 
governments and multinational companies for 
personal gain. Is this the end of monarchy and 
the beginning of a new era?  Will the people of 
Nepal defeat the new imperialists?  We are yet to 
see.

Tapan Kumar Bose
South Asia Forum for Human Rights
Kathmandu
12.30 P.M., April 27, 2006

___



[3]

BABURAM BHATTARAI'S "LETTER TO THE EDITOR" OF THE KANTIPUR NEWSPAPER
(Tuesday, April 25, 2006)
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bhattarai260406.html

[The revolution in Nepal has led to the recall of 
the Parliament dismissed by the King in 2002, 
which shall meet on Friday, April 28th.  The 
leading force of the revolution, the Communist 
Party of Nepal (Maoist), control more than eighty 
percent of the country.
On April 26th, the CPN(M) agreed to call off 
their blockade of the capital pending the meeting 
of the Parliament, in which the CPN(M) is not 
formally represented, on Friday, April 28th, but 
warned that if the first meeting of Parliament 
failed to decide to hold constituent assembly 
elections unconditionally, the blockade would 
resume.
On April 25th, a "Letter to the Editor" appeared 
in the leading Nepali language Kantipur newspaper 
from Baburam Bhattarai, one of the leaders of the 
CPN(M).  The letter sets out a clear 
understanding of the revolutionary moment, and 
warns the parliamentary politicians that were 
they to attempt a new arrangement with the King 
they would be swept aside.  This important letter 
has not previously appeared in English 
translation.-John Mage]

It has been widely felt that the present 
revolution in Nepal has brought a revolutionary 
change in the communications sector.  In this 
context, the  "letters to the editor" seem more 
interesting, lively and factual than the 
editorials, articles, and news in established 
newspapers.  Perhaps this is the sign of 
political consciousness among the masses rising 
higher than that of the established political 
leadership and intelligentsia.  Perhaps this is 
the proof of the saying that revolution makes 
smart people dumb and vice versa.  Accepting this 
new development in Nepali society, I too feel it 
is more appropriate for me to share my views as a 
"letter to the editor" than by articles or 
statements.
Perhaps only the future generation will be able 
to better assess the historic revolutionary 
tsunami going on in Nepal from Chaitra 24 [April 
6, 2006].  The degree of active participation of 
the common people, the nature of that 
participation, the level of their motivation can 
only be compared with that of major revolutions 
in history.  Especially the active and self 
motivated participation in this revolution of the 
extremely poor, the unemployed youth, students, 
women, those discriminated against [because of 
their clan or caste], the indigenous ethnics, the 
higher professionals and the workers has 
surpassed all other revolutions in Nepali history 
since the revolution of 2007 BS [1950-1].  The 
scene of people gallantly resisting the Royal 
Armed Forces with whatever they could get their 
hands on has raised all Nepali heads high, and 
has established our reputation as freedom 
fighters rather than as mercenaries for foreign 
armies.  Since the revolution is still going 
strong, what will be its climax has eluded and 
worried many people.
In the last leg of this revolution, the danger 
has increased of polarization between, on the one 
hand, the international power centers, the palace 
and the leadership of the established 
parliamentary forces, and, on the other, the 
revolutionary masses of common people, civil 
society and other political forces, leading to 
factionalism in the revolution.  Especially the 
current situation in which the conscious 
revolutionary forces demand a Democratic 
Republic, and the established political 
leadership is unable to rise above their demand 
for the reinstatement of the dissolved 
parliament, has posed an immediate danger of 
factionalism in revolution.  Since in the face of 
revolution the consciousness of the common people 
develops with great speed, it is necessary for 
the political leadership to develop their 
consciousness at an even greater speed. 
Similarly the slogans and programs proposed at 
the beginning of the revolution need to be 
revised and developed accordingly.  When the 
whole of Nepal has approved chanting slogans to 
end the monarchy and to establish a Republic, 
there is no reason why the political leadership 
has to hesitate to formally endorse and move 
forward with the republican slogan.  Even the 
international power centers which until yesterday 
were unaware of the Nepali peoples' actual 
consciousness and power shall eventually have to 
understand the ground realities of this 
revolution.  In this context, the failure to move 
forward with the slogan that incorporates the 
people's aspirations and the nation's need in 
order to bow to international pressure will be a 
huge mistake and highly ironic.
If even today the political leadership only 
considers the slogans for a democratic republic 
to be a Maoist slogan, then they would be seen by 
history to have made the millions of people and 
their own political activists chanting this 
slogan in the streets, "Maoists."  The CPN-Maoist 
is flexible and responsible and, keeping in mind 
the international situation, has been proposing 
the elections for Constituent Assembly as a 
meeting point for all.  The path for that which 
will prove correct, scientific and permanent is 
not the Merciful Reinstatement of Parliament by 
the King, but the parallel government declared 
and established by the revolutionary forces. 
That is crystal clear.
Those who argue for the reinstatement of the 
parliament for legitimacy and historical 
continuity should know that the King has already 
torn the constitution in pieces and in this 
situation there is no legitimate way to solve the 
present crisis.  Furthermore this revolution is 
not demanding historical continuity but has 
already demanded historical discontinuity.  There 
has been no revolution in history by following 
the old constitution and laws, and it is not 
going to happen in Nepal.  At the time of 
revolution, the people's will is the most 
legitimate of all, and the Nepali people have 
already provided that legitimacy to the 
revolutionary leadership.  In this context, the 
suggestion coming from even the imprisoned senior 
civil society activists to form a parallel 
government and move on to a Constituent Assembly 
is the most appropriate and correct way.  If the 
political leadership fearlessly makes a decision 
to that effect, then it is almost certain that 
sooner or later, the international community will 
recognize such arrangements.  But by giving this 
and that reason for a compromise to be reached 
with the King again by the Parliament reinstated 
by the King's Mercy, then no one can say who will 
not be swept up and burnt along with the King in 
this great revolutionary conflagration.

BRB CPN-M

___


[4]

SRI LANKA:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE GENEVA TALKS AND THE PEACE PROCESS?
   
In this analysis of the situation of war and 
peace following the recent violence in 
Trincomalee,  the Coalition for Muslims and 
Tamils  speaks for and pleads for once again 
placing people at the centre of  peace and the 
need for the peace process to work towards 
justice for all peoples in this country.
The Coalition for Muslims and Tamils was formed 
during an intense period of violence last year 
between Tamils and Muslims in the East, 
culminating in the grenade attack on the Grand 
Mosque in Akkaraipattu in November, which took 
the lives of 6 persons and intensified the 
already strained relations between Muslims and 
Tamils in the region.  Despite repeated pleas by 
the communities concerned, the State and civil 
society took little notice of this incident. 
Today, the killing continues.  Killings that are 
politically and ethnically motivated and steeped 
in the violence that has become an intrinsic part 
of the peace process as we know it.

The peace process and its violences
The current peace process, Geneva Talks I, picks 
up the thread of negotiation from the stalled 
talks between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), 
the LTTE and the donor community that commenced 
with the Ceasefire Agreement of February, 2002. 
It adopted a two pronged approach to the conflict.
1.	The idea of cementing good relations 
between the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka 
through confidence building measures.
2.	Initiating talks on power sharing between these two actors.
   
This strategy was hailed as pragmatic and 
realistic by political scientists, diplomats, 
conflict resolution experts and others. 
Politicians, political analysts, activists and 
the business communities considered it as the way 
to peace. But the success story left out a 
crucial aspect, critical  to any successful 
resolution or transformation of conflict.  The 
realism of the strategy did not bring realistic 
relief to the people in the areas where the war 
and the conflict had been most intense. As a 
result, this approach to peace is flawed in its 
very fundamentals. The failures of the peace 
process can be categorized, not necessarily 
exclusively, as follows:
a.	The singular focus on the LTTE as the 
main actor on behalf of the Tamils and the 
concern with cementing ties between the 
organization and the Government give undue 
legitimacy to the LTTE, riding roughshod over any 
concern over its outrageous track record of human 
rights where people of all communities, 
particularly Tamils and Muslims, have been the 
main target; its blatant and repeated acts of 
ethnic cleansing targetting Muslims and Sinhalese 
in the north and east; and its repeated reneging 
on its promise of desisting from carrying out 
violent acts against the Sri Lankan State, 
particularly the forces.
   
The current wave of attacks on armed personnel by 
the LTTE is strong evidence of the organization's 
inability  to transform itself into a democratic 
movement, concerned about solving the conflict 
and work within a 'peace' setup. Leaflets have 
appeared in Batticaloa announcing that war is 
imminent, while leaflets in Jaffna have called on 
people to vacate the area and go into the Vanni. 
The LTTE is able to function only within a 
language of militarism. This is most apparent in 
the way it conducts negotiations by flexing its 
muscle.
   
b.	The Peace Process is sadly lacking in 
another aspect. It holds the State to no account 
over the lives of large numbers of ordinary 
people from different communities caught within 
the conflict.  With immense pressure brought to 
bear on the government to concede to the demands 
of the LTTE at almost every turn in the name of 
confidence building measures, the substantive 
issue of devolution of power was relegated to the 
background. Most crucially in this regard, the 
important issue of Muslim representation, both 
within the peace process and in any solution to 
come, was deferred too. The Muslim question, 
whether it concerned the north or the east, was 
treated as a secondary and temporary problem of 
managing conflict and not as a fundamental part 
of the solution to the ethnic conflict. The 
State, dominated by diverse Sinhala dominant 
factions including chauvinist elements, has not 
committed itself to a peaceful and just solution, 
in which the interests and concerns of all 
communities in the north and east are addressed.
   
c)	The peace process has also betrayed the 
people in the role played by donor community, 
especially the Norwegian facilitators. Heavy on 
conflict resolution theory and weak on their 
preparedness for the task at hand, the Norwegian 
facilitators were mostly concerned about going 
home with a success story for the media; they did 
not hear the bombs going off, the pistol cracking 
even in Colombo, the cry of a mother when her 
child was conscripted. The international 
communities and the Norwegian facilitators should 
look beyond the LTTE at the people; the Tamil, 
Muslim, Sinhala and other people in the north and 
east. The realistic approach of the international 
community should look at the needs of "real" 
people.
d)	Discussions on power sharing have dealt 
largely with issues of rehabilitation of the 
north and east, particularly on dividing 
financial resources between the two parties. This 
is where the donor agencies were crucial to the 
settlement and the process. Whether it be 
discussion on the ISGA, P-TOMS or after the 
arrival of President Mahinda Rajapakse on the 
scene, RADA , power sharing has dealt with 
financial management of aid and other funds. The 
tsunami, which in its initial stages, brought the 
Muslim, Sinhala and Tamil people together, 
compounded ethnic tensions when aid poured in, 
bringing in its wake monies unaccounted for and a 
greater disparity between the haves and the have 
nots.
   
The  peace process has miserably failed the 
people of Sri Lanka in healing old wounds; 
instead it has exacerbated those wounds and 
created new ones.  While the LTTE, GoSL and the 
donor community carried on with their bargaining 
over the spoils of the tsunami, the north and 
east simmered with its own violences, new and 
old. In 2004, the break within the LTTE caught 
many political analysts and activists by deep 
traumatic surprise. Not knowing how to react, 
they pinned the 'blame' for the break up on the 
machinations of Colombo and India.  Political 
wisdom in the country, caught up in the realism 
of aid, was neither able to identify the 
resistance welling up from within the Tamil 
polity nor understand and react to the increasing 
violence in the east in the past year or so. 
Preoccupied with cementing ties between the GoSL 
and the LTTE, they and we could not see LTTE 
implode, taking the east down with it.
The Violence of Trincomalee and the ongoing crisis
on the ground
Over the past few years, Trincomalee has been at 
the centre of Tamil-Sinhala tension, most of 
which is aggravated by the LTTE on the one hand 
and Sinhala chauvinist and anti-Tamil political 
mobilizations on the other.  ON 2nd January, 
2006, personnel of the State forces, in response 
to a grenade thrown at a truck by unidentified 
persons, killed five young men who were mere 
bystanders at the incident. No State agency 
claimed responsibility for this wanton killing at 
that time. Given this scenario, the State should 
have been alert both to the LTTE's tactic of 
provoking armed personnel to retaliate against 
people and the mounting tension within the 
personnel as well.  It should have taken measures 
to avoid further deterioration of relations 
between the Government and the Tamil people.
But when a bomb exploded in the market place on 
the 12th of April, killing a soldier and 
civilians belonging to all communities, 
anti-Tamil and -Muslim riots took place and 
spread to other places. While the rioting 
continued, the LTTE too did not let up.  In 
further provocation, they undertook to kill 
Sinhala civillians, successfully turning such 
incidents into attacks on pockets of Tamil 
habitation in the Trincomalee district.
We watched with sadness the grief of the families 
of bereaved soldiers on the media as the 
President publicly consoled them. And in that 
same spirit, we also waited to hear a word of 
consolation for those families, Muslim, Tamil and 
Sinhala, who had lost their loved ones in the 
destruction, rioting and looting, but heard 
none.. Most of the families were Tamils and 
Muslims. This partiality is unwise politically. 
It serves to alienate minorities, Tamils in 
particular in this instance, from the State 
polity, pushing them heedlessly into the hands of 
the LTTE.
As the attacks on armed personnel in the north 
and east by the LTTE continue, thousands of 
refugees have crowded schools and other places in 
the Trincomalee District.  While the LTTE is on a 
path of schizoid destruction, the State is 
waiting for the next round of peace talks in 
Geneva, hoping for calm. This waiting game brings 
no relief to the soldiers at the front, the LTTE 
cadres, many of whom are young and forcibly 
recruited, political activists, and 'ordinary' 
people. It brings no relief to those who feel 
they cannot expect justice from the State. It 
means nothing to those who are not represented 
either by the State or the LTTE, the majority of 
the people in the north and east. . The State 
must undertake the following measures to bring 
relief to those suffering people and to gain the 
confidence of minority communities.
1.	The State must make provision for 
immediate relief to those who have been forced to 
flee their homes by the recent wave of violence 
in Trincomalee.
2.	It must also develop mechanisms that protect
Tamils at times of raids and checking, to 
safeguard them from Human Rights abuses at the 
hands of the forces.
3.	There must be a check on the growing 
culture of impunity. The state must hold itself 
accountable for the acts of the armed forces. As 
an immediate measure, it needs to carry out an 
independent and thorough investigation of what 
happened in Trincomalee to provide justice for 
the victims of violence and ensure that the 
findings are made public.
   
Trincomalee cannot be looked at in isolation. 
What happened in Trincomalee in April 2006, is 
what happened in Akkaraipattu in November 2005; 
or in Batticaloa and Ampara in April, 2004; in 
Eravur in 1990, in Pesalai in February 2006; in 
the Northern Province on October 23rd 1990; in 
Anuradhapura in 1985; or in July1983 in Sri 
Lanka. Our task then as a community is to raise 
the cry of democracy, accountability on the part 
of the State for all its people, and to demand a 
people-centred approach to peace and not a war 
centred or partisan approach.
Toward Peace: what must the Process do?
The peace process must at this point prioritize
above all the following issues.
a)	De-militarize the north and the east by 
curbing all armed activity in the area,       
Including that of the LTTE.
b)	Safeguard the Human Rights of all communities.
c)	Protect all communities against the 
terror of armed groups, above all that of the
LTTE and chauvinist forces.
d)	Address the concerns of Muslims in the north and east.
e)	Address security concerns of Sinhala 
people in the north and east, particularly in 
the border areas.
f)	Address the fears and insecurities of 
minorities, especially Tamils in this instance, 
with regard to State forces and State patronage.
g)	Immediately set to work on a programme of 
power sharing in the north and east          and 
work toward a pluralist structure that would 
accommodate representation of      all 
communities and political allegiances.
   
   
    Coalition of Muslims and Tamils for Peace and Coexistence
    The coalition of Muslims and Tamils is a Sri Lanka
  based organization comprising Muslim and Tamil
  identified persons who as a general principle are
  committed to pluralism and social justice in all its
  forms. Specifically, we are committed to the
  peaceful coexistence of Muslims and Tamils in the
  country, particularly in the north and east, and to
  a just and equitable solution to the ethnic
  conflict.
    We can be contacted at:
  peaceandcoexistence at yahoo.com

___


[5]


The Telegraph
April 19, 2006

THOROUGHLY ENGAGED
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen speaks to Anasuya Basu 
about his latest book, Identity and Violence, and 
his future projects

Planning for the future

With The Argumentative Indian and Identity and 
Violence, Amartya Sen seems to have ventured into 
a different genre of writing. Was it a conscious 
decision prompted by recent developments?

Sen: These two books deal with rather different 
problems from most of my earlier work. I 
recognized that I was getting into other 
territories. But it was a deliberate decision. It 
is not the case that I wouldn't have done these 
studies - respectively dealing with Indian 
intellectual heritage and the confusion generated 
by identity politics and communitarian theories - 
without there being the Hindutva-oriented 
violence or Islamic terrorism in the world and so 
on. But I had conceived of them as primarily 
intellectual, if not academic, projects. I didn't 
see them as being immediately relevant for policy 
here and now.

I was going to try to explore the long 
intellectual background to contemporary India. 
But because of Hindutva violence, as well as the 
miniaturization of the idea of India that 
happened in that politics, the focus had to be 
not just on historical interpretation in the 
context of understanding contemporary India and 
Indian modernity but also on those sectarian and 
rather divisive issues which Hindutva brought out.

As a matter of fact, it turned out that the 
broader intellectual project I was following had 
a lot to say (or at least so I think), and was a 
response to precisely these subjects of 
divisiveness and sectarianism. So I think if 
politics hadn't intervened, The Argumentative 
Indian would still have come out. But I brought 
it forward in my programme of work and pushed 
back my book on Theory of Justice that Harvard 
University Press has been promising to publish 
over the last ten years. But I had to postpone it 
given the urgency of the politics in India.

The same thing happened with Identity and 
Violence. I pulled that forward into immediacy 
because of 9/11 and the violence that we have 
seen since then. Three years before that, in 
1998, I gave a talk in Oxford called 'Reason 
Before Identity'. This was my Romanes Lecture in 
Oxford, quite an old series, originally given by 
William Gladstone in 1892. That came out as a 
pamphlet. My intention was to pursue the issue of 
identity as a philosophical question at leisure. 
I brought it forward and I think the casualty was 
the Theory of Justice book again because I had to 
postpone it, sadly. Now that the second book has 
been published also, I am back to working on the 
Theory of Justice, which is a rather ambitious 
project in moral and political philosophy.

Q: In Identity and Violence, you say that the 
tendency to classify people according to their 
religion or civilization is wrong. Why are you 
equating religion with civilisation? Is not 
civilization a much broader category to which 
people must belong and identify with?

Sen: Civilizational partitioning need not be 
identified with religious identification, in 
general. But, unfortunately, that's the way 
civilizational "classifiers" have tended to see 
it. Like Samuel Huntington. His categories are 
Hindu civilization, Muslim civilization, Buddhist 
civilization, Western or Judaeo-Christian 
civilization and so on. These have ended up 
largely as religious categorizations. This, I 
believe, is one of the problems in Huntington's 
thesis.

Second, even if civilization is more broadly 
categorized, we still have a further problem. 
Take Indic or Arabic or Chinese civilization. 
They have a lot of interconnections between them. 
So the idea that they have evolved separately and 
are competing for our attention and indeed will 
undermine each other, given an opportunity - that 
view is not a good way of understanding 
civilization. But it is the view you get from 
theories of 'civilizational clash'.

Third, a person's identity includes many things, 
all of which cannot be put into the basket of 
civilization as such. Like class, gender, 
political belief, profession, literary taste, 
language, interest in sports or games. And all 
these would take a variety of forms in any 
country, culture or civilization or among 
followers of any religion. In some ways, a very 
basic mistake is to see a human being in terms of 
only one identity, the civilizational identity, 
no matter how civilization is defined.

Q: You have devoted a chapter to West and 
anti-West. Is not anti-West a product of 
post-colonialism?

Sen: Anti-West attitude and post-colonialism are 
both products of imperial history. If you look at 
the history of the world over the last few 
centuries, some people have been extraordinarily 
powerful - some white people - and some coloured 
or non-white people have been subjected to 
Empires. This has changed the landscape in which 
we see countries and the people. There is here a 
reality of power difference and there is also a 
perceptual difference that goes with it. Now in 
that context, those who contrast themselves with 
the Western people react to it sometimes in the 
form of great admiration for the powerful West, 
great envy - how can we be more like it. A good 
example is what we call in Bengali 
'Anglicization'. But there can be, also, much 
hostility to the West.

Another more dialectical feature of anti-West 
attitude is found in Asian values. The attitude, 
as I have discussed in my book, of Lee Kuan Yew, 
the architect of east Asian resurgence. He says, 
"You say you people (the West) have a great 
history of liberty and freedom. We in Asia don't. 
All right, we accept that. But we have something 
much better, namely discipline." That is an 
anti-West attitude. We cannot lose the tradition 
of thinking about freedom in Asia so easily. You 
cannot even begin to think about Buddhism without 
bringing Mukti into the story. That is diminution.

Similarly, what Akeel Bilgrami, quoted in my 
book, discusses that the people living in 
colonies tend to think of themselves as 'the 
other', not the sahibs as it were. That again is 
a result of the imperial past.

The sense of great anger and getting even, not 
imitate them but defeat them, which is reflected 
in the terrorism of the anti-Western kind and 
particularly of the Islamic anti-West terrorism, 
also comes out of the general anti-West idea. 
This, too, is much influenced by the real history 
of imperialism and takes a particular form.

These different forms of being 'anti-Western' may 
be easy to understand or at least explain, but 
they all involve diminishing ourselves by a 
self-vision only in the light of our relations 
with the West, parasitic on the West. It is an 
odd way of seeing oneself, not in terms of what 
we stand for, but as people who have been 
maltreated by the West.

Q: Will you tell us about the health programme 
for India that you are involved with, along with 
the support of Manmohan Singh's government?

Sen: It is a programme of a collaborative kind. 
We are very grateful for Manmohan Singh's 
support. It is an interactive programme involving 
an initiative to make a change in the public 
health situation in India. It is a quite dreadful 
situation which many people active in the field 
of public health had been agitated about for a 
long time. And I too got involved, insofar as I 
got into it and partly in terms of my writing 
about Indian society, its people, and its 
economy. But partly also after I set up the 
Pratichi Trust - our studies were concerned with 
the delivery of not only basic education but also 
basic health services. It became clear how 
imperative it was to change the situation. So a 
lot of us became involved. It is going to be a 
combination of certain individuals, foundations, 
the government and some private firms, hopefully 
more than has emerged so far.

The project must involve public health personnel 
in India, who will have a dedicated and informed 
understanding of the nature of public health 
problems and how they can be addressed and dealt 
with. Besides, a lot of organizational changes 
are needed in the delivery of public healthcare. 
For example, to make sure that doctors turn up 
when they are needed, patients, particularly poor 
patients, are not referred to private medication 
which they cannot afford and get thoroughly 
exploited by a combination of quackery and 
crookery. We want to make a change in the way 
public health delivery functions in India, 
especially for the rural poor.

Q: How often will you be coming to this part of the country now?

Sen: I used to come six times a year when my 
mother was alive. She died at the age of 93. I 
visited this part partly due to her and partly 
for other work. The latter has not changed. So I 
expect I will be coming here four to five times a 
year. I don't see that changing radically.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
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