SACW | 18 May 2006 | Sri Lanka Internationalised; The Two Bengals; India: Hindutva's lab in Gujarat, RSS's History Weapon, Delhi's monuments

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 18 May, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2247

[1]  Internationalisation of Sri Lanka's Peace 
Process and Governance (Cenan Pirani and Ahilan
Kadirgamar)
[2]  Bangladesh and across the border in West 
Bengal: Politics -- here and over there (Syed 
Badrul Ahsan)
[3]  India - Gujarat: Hindtuva's Lab Going Strong - the Recent Riots in Baroda
        Emboldened in Baroda, Gujarat's Fascists 
Bask in the Sun  (Shabnam Hashmi)
        Hating Muslims is a Natural Thing in Gujarat (GN Devy)
        Vadodara violence an extension of Hindutva politics
[4]  India: For RSS History is a political weapon (Ram Puniyani)
[5]  India: The Fast-Lane Present - Delhi's 
monuments to callousness (Shahid Amin)

____


[1]

'INTERNATIONALISATION OF SRI LANKA'S PEACE PROCESS AND GOVERNANCE: A
REVIEW OF STRATEGIC CONFLICT ASSESMENTS'
by Cenan Pirani and Ahilan Kadirgamar
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=05&filename=10053&filetype=pdf

____


[2]

The Daily Star
May 17, 2006

POLITICS -- HERE AND OVER THERE

by Syed Badrul Ahsan

Maybe it is time to observe, yet once more, the 
separate paths the two Bengals have taken over 
the last many years. With the Left Front scoring 
one more decisive win in the state elections in 
West Bengal, it becomes pertinent to assess the 
ways in which politics has shaped up in a 
geographical region that once formed a political 
whole.
And let no one miss either the point that it was 
precisely a hundred years ago that the All-India 
Muslim League was given shape in Dhaka, a 
political move that was to have pretty negative 
consequences, not only for the whole of India, 
but, and especially, for Bengal as well.
Overall, the impact of Muslim League politics on 
the psyche of Bengali Muslims was terrible, a 
malady which not many who form part of the 
independent People's Republic of Bangladesh are 
yet to turn their backs on. History, it cannot 
but be acknowledged, has been harsh to Bengalis 
on both sides of the border. It is in light of 
that harshness that one must observe the manner 
in which life and society have evolved, or 
regressed, in West Bengal and Bangladesh in these 
last many decades.

But by far the general impression, one that we 
cannot quite ignore or dismiss out of hand, made 
by the process of historical movement in Bengal 
(and we refer to it from the perspective of 
history) is that West Bengal today happens to 
epitomize all, or nearly all, that we in 
Bangladesh once struggled for in the 1960s and 
then fought for in the early 1970s.
No, we do not mean that struggle in the sense of 
a movement for political sovereignty. We mean, 
fundamentally, the sustained movement that East 
Bengal put up more than four decades ago for the 
creation of a secular entity in Bangladesh. This 
new electoral triumph of the Left Front in West 
Bengal somehow puts paid to our own pretensions 
to a secular political framework.
In the twenty-nine years in which the communists 
and their allies have governed West Bengal, 
secularism has increasingly defined the attitude 
of the Bengalis inhabiting the state. That sort 
of reality, unfortunately, has been conspicuous 
by its absence in Bangladesh. But we did begin 
well, surely. The entire course of the movement 
for regional autonomy in the 1960s followed by 
the armed struggle for independence from Pakistan 
was based on the principle that Bengali culture, 
purely Bengali politics, would serve as the 
underpinning of life in this part of the world.
Indeed, the emergence of the free state of 
Bangladesh in December 1971 was clear proof of 
the maturity the Bengali in the eastern half of 
divided Bengal had arrived at. The Muslim 
Bengali, without in any way damaging his 
religiosity or clipping away at it, readily 
accepted the thought that the province he had 
transformed into a country would be a Bengali 
state, meaning a democratic structure with the 
very necessary principle of secularism serving as 
its ethos.

While East Bengalis suffered through the 
inhumanity of the Pakistan army and yet moved on 
to create their secular state, West Bengal 
struggled to free itself of the Naxalite shadows 
that had come across its skies. At the same time, 
the communists waged a sustained, long struggle 
to wrest control of the state from the Congress 
as it was led by Siddhartha Shankar Ray.
And then something terrible happened. The 
Bengalis of Bangladesh simply fell back, or 
faltered, somewhere along the way. What they had 
never imagined would come to pass actually 
happened. Their soldiers killed their own 
founder-president and the very leaders who had 
shaped and led the War of Liberation.
Between 1975 and 1977, the independent state of 
Bangladesh took a swift slide into the past. 
Secular Bengali nationalism was put out to 
pasture by authoritarian decrees and politics 
mutated into the silhouette of a Pakistani past. 
Democracy was placed in the straitjacket of a 
general's uniform. MG Tawab, the air force 
officer brought in from his adopted home in 
Germany, was utilized as a hint of the future. He 
presided over a conference of clerics that 
clearly intended to redefine Bangladesh as a 
Muslim state. And thus was the first disturbing 
move toward supplanting Bengali nationalism with 
"Bangladeshi nationalism" taken.
And even as Bangladesh went through such manifest 
brutality, West Bengal was charting a wholly 
different course altogether. In 1977, its 
leftists, having cohabited with others in 
government for quite a while, finally seized 
control of the state through winning the 
elections.
In Bangladesh, as the Awami League stayed busy 
warding off the blows inflicted on it by a 
military regime and its rightwing, pro-Pakistan 
hangers-on, the Left lay paralysed. The segment 
of it that had its politics tuned in to the 
Beijing antenna, however, quickly linked up with 
the Zia regime and so accelerated the decline of 
the state.
The tragedy for the Bengalis of Bangladesh is 
that while their state has slowly but surely 
retreated into a cocoon, certainly of a communal 
variety, the Bengalis of West Bengal have 
constantly reasserted themselves in the matter of 
building a properly democratic political 
structure. If communal riots have upset political 
wagons in the rest of India, the Left Front in 
West Bengal has made sure that on its watch 
Bengalis did not collapse into religious or 
sectarian disorder.
In Bangladesh, General Zia sent secularism 
packing and then filled the space thus made 
glaringly empty with invocations to Allah. 
General Ershad carried the whole thing a few more 
absurd steps further, through decreeing that the 
religion of the state of Bangladesh would be 
Islam. It was a curious condition. While West 
Bengal gained in health and political wisdom, 
Bangladesh was being systematically pushed into a 
condition of darkness.
Healthy enervation set in. What Bangabandhu 
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had started out doing for 
Bangladesh, through promoting secularism and 
socialism, was actually being done in earnest in 
West Bengal by Jyoti Basu. The people of West 
Bengal were noticeably giving short shrift to 
political leaders and workers outside the Left.
In Bangladesh, it was the enemies of 
independence, the collaborators of the Pakistan 
army, who were taking over nearly every area of 
politics and administration. In these decades 
since 1975, or 1977 (it depends on how you look 
at the whole idea), the Left Front in West Bengal 
has carried out extensive land reforms, has 
expanded the network of statewide education, has 
disciplined Calcutta in the civic sense of the 
meaning.
In Bangladesh, those who have benefited from the 
assassinations of 1975 have persistently divided 
the country right down the middle, have confused 
people with their spurious brands of politics and 
have simply handed over the economy to the robber 
barons.
Of course, West Bengal's leftists have 
restructured their economic programs to inject 
pragmatism in their politics. Jyoti Basu, 
Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, and Asim Dasgupta have 
solicited foreign investment without undermining 
their core socialistic principles.
Contrast that with Bangladesh. The quality of 
political leadership has been embarrassingly low, 
non-government organisations have claimed 
increasingly bigger shares of the cake and 
foreigners have found endless opportunities to 
meddle in the nation's politics.
The World Bank and the IMF have never called up 
the courage to tell the Left Front government 
what it must do as an administration; in 
Bangladesh, these two representatives of Western 
interests are everywhere in the corridors of 
power, have unlimited access to policy making. 
Ask the finance minister of this independent 
country.

It is intriguing how divergent the two Bengals 
have been in the operation of politics. In 
Calcutta, politics has remained, despite the 
structural changes to the economy, in the hands 
of the political classes -- and they extend from 
the grassroots to the highest level of power. In 
Dhaka, with as much as eighty four per cent of 
membership in the Jatiyo Sangsad in the hands of 
businessmen (and the major political parties 
happily throwing around nominations at hefty 
prices), politics has slipped into the clutches 
of a class that knows not the high calling of the 
profession. Parliament, predictably, is no more 
the focus of governance.
In Jyoti Basu, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, and the 
recently expired Anil Biswas, West Bengal has had 
the very enviable good fortune of being led by 
the politically savvy and idealistic. In 
Bangladesh, apart from the government of Sheikh 
Mujibur Rahman, and, twenty-one years after his 
assassination, that of his daughter, politics has 
been in free fall. The mediocrity and 
incompetence all around us say it all.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, Dhaka Courier.


____



[3]   On the Recent Riots in Baroda, Gujarat

Times of India,
May 15, 2006

EMBOLDENED IN BARODA, GUJARAT'S FASCISTS BASK IN THE SUN

Shabnam Hashmi

  Three fragile looking women wearing sarees, with 
their colourful bindis shining in the sun, 
tugging their children along, were rushing 
towards Yakutpura. There was a feeling of urgency 
in their whole mannerism, the way they walked, 
the way they conversed with each other, the way 
they carried the flowers, which kept slipping 
down. It was the last week of April, 2006. There 
was enough tension in the atmosphere and any 
sensible person would have avoided going to that 
sensitive area.

They stopped a few yards away from the Chapaner 
Gate, near a small light blue structure, which 
stood on the footpath. They lit candles, offered 
flowers and tied some threads to the beautiful 
carved lattice. They sat there with their 
children for 15-20 minutes, prayed and before 
leaving requested the 81 year old Sultan Mian 
Mallik to bless their children. There was a 
strange melancholy in their expression, their 
eyes were wet, when they bid farewell to Sultan 
Mian. It seemed that they had the premonition 
that they were leaving never to return again. 
They could sense that in a few days time 
bulldozers would ruthlessly turn the beautiful 
little structure into rubble. The symbol of love 
and humanity, which had witnessed the city grow, 
which knew more history than the inhabitants of 
the area themselves.

The notice to demolish the centuries old Hazrat 
Rashiduddin Chishti's dargah was left on the 
mazar about a month ago. Baroda's Mayor Sunil 
Solanki had declared that if he does not get 
enough forces, he would demolish the dargah with 
the help of the bhajpa karyakartas (BJP 
supporters). Representatives of the Muslim 
community were meeting the authorities and 
finding ways to diffuse the tension. Rashiduddin 
Chishti is supposed to have come to Baroda during 
the Babi dynasty, which ruled Baroda till 1732 
before the Geakwads. His dargah was perhaps the 
only space in that area where people from both 
the communities interacted with each other. All 
such spaces were like thorns in the eyes of the 
Sangh Parivar.
Syed Kamaluddin Refai, a soft spoken, learned 
gentleman, inheritor of the famous Refai Sufi 
tradition, whose great grandfather was invited by 
Maharaja Khande Rao Gaekwad (1856-1870) to 
establish a Sufi shrine in Baroda, was leading 
the negotiations. He even offered the authorities 
to move the outer wall by three feet on all the 
sides and remove the canopy. On May 1, the 
meeting was again called at 9 am and it continued 
till about 10.20am.The authorities were adamant. 
Refai  pleaded with them asking for a month's 
time, to convince the community and move the 
dargah to another place. The commissioner got up. 
Negotiations broken for ever.  Almost 
simultaneously as the delegation came out of the 
Baroda Municipal Corporation's building the 
bulldozers reached Yakutpura.
13 BJP municipal counsellors present at the site, 
gave instructions to the Police, while the police 
fired indiscriminately, the VHP, Sangh Parivar 
mobs threw stones at hundreds of people who were 
sitting on a peaceful dharna, as the last attempt 
to save the Dargah.  The police did not find it 
necessary to use safer methods to disperse the 
crowd.

Most of the people who refused to see the larger 
designs during the first few days, fell pray to 
the official version: 'religious places 
encroaching the roads are being removed'. The 
mayor added fuel to the fire by saying that only 
Muslims are objecting to the removal of their 
places of worship. The Baroda City survey map of 
1921 showing the dargah had no significance for 
them.  The difference between removing a few 
years old encroachments and demolishing a 
centuries' old Dargah, which stood at that spot 
even before the road came into existence, became 
blurred.

Emboldened by successfully selling their story to 
the nation, the Sangh planned the next step.

Residential colonies were surrounded, well 
equipped mobs, hurling abuses, shouting slogans, 
brandishing weapons torched shops, handcarts, 
homes and factories situated near the 'borders'. 
A young man Mohd Rafiq Vora while returning home 
in his Tata Siera, was surrounded by a mob and 
burnt alive in his car on Ajwa Road. The first 
round of burning killed Rafiq and destroyed the 
car but the tiers were too stubborn. The crowd 
collected again on the second day and burnt the 
car again, this time the tiers also turned into 
ashes. Rafiq's sister crying inconsolably 
narrated that while her brother was burning, the 
crowd clapped and danced. The police crane 
brought the charred remains of the car and dumped 
it in front of Rafiq's house in front of us.

Rafiq had recently built the Navjeevan Bus Stand 
with his own money so that passengers who wait 
for the bus are saved from the scorching heat. 
Would his killers burn the bus stand too to wipe 
off his memory from the minds of those who might 
use the shade?

Mohd Mian Haji Mian Shaikh, Arif Yaseen Khan 
Pathan, Salim Khan Pathan and Sarfraz while 
deposing, from their hospital beds, before the 
Citizen's Fact Finding Team on May 4, 2006 (Fact 
Finding Team- Harsh Mander, Shabnam Hashmi, 
Prasad Chako) narrated similar stories. The 
policemen asked their names and then fired at 
them point blank. The VHP cadre can take a back 
seat now.  We have our police to identify, 
attack, kill and maim minorities.

In the middle of all the mayhem and further plans 
of spreading violence to more areas, there were 
hundred of phone calls, fax messages from across 
the world asking the UPA government to take 
action, activists, national media worked through 
the night. The UPA Government told Modi in no 
uncertain terms to stop the violence or face 
consequences.

After a hectic day of meeting hundreds of 
victims, administration, police, witnessing again 
the broken stories of people's lives, we started 
our journey back to Ahmedabad. Harsh, who has a 
wonderful voice did not sing this time. I wish I 
had the courage and hope to sing:

In kali sadiyon ke sar se, jab raat ka aanchal dhalkega
Jab dukh ke badal pighlenge, jab sukh ka sagar chalkega
Jab ambar jhoom ke nachega, jab dharti nagme gayegi
Woh subah kabhi to ayegi, woh subah kabhi to ayegi

o o o

Tehelka
May 20 , 2006

HATING MUSLIMS IS A NATURAL THING IN GUJARAT

GN Devy

This is probably the only state that has a 
sizeable number of Muslims but no Urdu paper
Gujarat has become an intolerable place; at least 
that is how I find it. Today, there are very few 
people I can talk to in Gujarat because they 
simply do not understand basic things, or don't 
want to. I can make myself a very comfortable 
citizen of Vadodara. But the problem is, I cannot 
talk to the people of this city; it is like 
walking in the desert. I find the popular myth of 
Gujaratis being peace-loving people impossible to 
believe. How could all the riots, so many of them 
since 1969, have happened if this were true? I 
have thought about this deeply and my sense is 
that violence is an attribute of their 
acquisitive nature. Gujaratis are extremely 
acquisitive people. They will do anything to 
acquire. The most decent people here, people I 
would otherwise respect, would do anything to get 
a visa to the United States, even resort to 
cheating and dishonesty. They are hungry to 
acquire. Even Gujarati devotion is about 
acquiring. They have an exchange relationship 
with God - I give you devotion, you give me 
riches.

The Muslim hatred practiced here is not conscious 
or learnt. It is just somehow normal, as nature 
would have meant it to be. There is no bitterness 
of Partition here, as is the case with Punjab. 
There is only the deep, almost genetic, knowledge 
of Somnath and the invasions and an accumulation 
of prejudices. Then there is a huge void in their 
memory until Gandhi arrives.

Gandhi, I have to say, is not a popular man in 
Gujarat; they merely pay him lip service. You do 
not become a bad man in Gujarat if you hate 
Muslims; you are normal. Decent people hate 
Muslims. And it is not a city phenomenon alone; 
this is true of villages as well. If a Muslim is 
traumatised, it is a normal thing. Just to give a 
sense of how Gujarati Hindus relate to Muslims, I 
will come to the Narmada issue. Gujarat is 
extremely pro-dam and, therefore, extremely 
anti-Medha Patkar. Gujaratis will call all 
pro-Medha people Muslims. Intolerance in Gujarat 
is unanimous. If Muslims are hated, entire 
Gujarat will hate them. If Medha is seen as an 
'enemy', all of Gujarat will look at her as an 
enemy. In that sense, Gujarat has treated Medha 
as much an 'enemy' or a 'fundamentalist' as 
Muslims are treated. The minds have got locked 
here. The culture of disagreement and dissent is 
pervasively shunned. This is so even when Gujarat 
is not a feudal state in terms of its economic 
makeup.

Some years ago, Habib Tanvir wanted to come and 
stay and work in Vadodara. He did not find a 
house for six months. Eventually, he went back. 
Some of us tried to find him a place to stay, but 
nobody was willing. My own landlord at the time, 
a perfectly decent man otherwise, refused. Raoof 
Valiullah, an honest and purposeful Congress MP 
was killed by gangsters in the centre of 
Ahmedabad a few years ago. Not even the Congress 
party made a noise about it. I think because 
Raoof was a Muslim. There was no sense of loss or 
outrage when Ehsan Jafri was killed. There is no 
political or ideological divide in Gujarat on the 
Muslim question; even the Congress hates Muslims.

I have a young Muslim associate who has been 
pursuing post-graduate studies. After the 2002 
violence, I suddenly noticed that he was having a 
problem trying to form his sentences while 
speaking. He used to write clearly but I saw that 
his writing too was breaking up. In fact, he 
wasn't able to write. This was a typical case of 
aphasia, which is a condition of loss of speech 
and articulation caused by external trauma. 
Gujarat is probably the only state that has a 
sizeable Muslim population but no Urdu paper. I 
wonder if there is something to it, a state of 
collective aphasia. I often wonder how it must 
feel to be a Muslim in Gujarat. I shudder to 
think what it must require to live at the wrong 
end of so much hatred, contempt and threat. Do 
they have a strategy of reaction? Is something in 
the process of evolving? I do not know.

A Sahitya Akademi Award winner, Devy is 
founder-director of the Tribal Academy in 
Tejgarh, Gujarat.
(As told to Sankarshan Thakur)

o o o

Ahmedabad Newsline
May 05, 2006

VADODARA VIOLENCE AN EXTENSION OF HINDUTVA 
POLITICS: ACTIVISTS TEAM ON FACT-FINDING VISIT 
HOLDS MAYOR, VMC CHIEF, POLICE RESPONSIBLE FOR 
VIOLENCE; WANT ARTICLE 355 IMPOSED.
Express News Service

Ahmedabad, May 4: A TEAM of human rights 
activists from Delhi and Vadodara said the 
violence in Vadodara shouldn't be seen in 
isolation from the 2001 riots and said there was 
an agenda to raze structures belonging to a 
particular community. Activists, including 
Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad, Harsh Mander and Prasad 
Chacko, who went on a fact-finding mission in the 
city, called for the resignations of those 
responsible and also demanded the imposition of 
Article 355 in Vadodara. They held the city's 
mayor, municipal commissioner and the police 
responsible for the violence following the dargah 
demolition on Monday.

''The demolition was not out of the blue. It was 
a systematic agenda to demolish the cultural 
sites and heritage buildings of a particular 
community. The fact that the dargah was present 
even in the map of 1912 itself shows that it was 
there even before the road was constructed,'' 
alleged Hashmi of Anhad. She added, ''This is an 
extreme example where the administration, 
including police officials, has completely 
surrendered to the Hindutva forces."

The activists also termed the violence, that 
erupted after the 200-year-old dargah in 
Champaner Darwaza was razed, an "extension of 
Hindutva politics''. The politics was being 
played out by the police, Vadodara Municipal 
Corporation (VMC) and the State Government 
against a particular community, the group said. 
They said this incident should not be seen in 
isolation from the 2001 riots as the same modus 
operandi was being followed as for the past 
several years.

Mander said, ''The outcome was subservient to 
Hindutva politics and if this continues we will 
see worse times ahead.'' Referring to Mohammed 
Rafiq Vora who was burnt alive by a mob, Hashmi 
said that though the FIR has been registered 
against 12 people no arrests have been made so 
far.

The group visited the residence of Vora and met 
the family. Asked whether they would meet the 
family of Biren Shah, who was stabbed to death by 
a mob, Hashmi said, ''We will go to his place as 
well and also to people injured during the 
violence.'' Chacko said, ''The policy of hate and 
divide will further aggravate the condition.''


____


[4]

(Issues in Secular Politics: May 2006 I)

BOOK WITHDRAWAL GAME
FOR RSS HISTORY IS A POLITICAL WEAPON

Ram Puniyani

RSS combine has been spreading a version of 
History which has its roots in communal 
historiography first introduced by British. 
According to this the events and phenomenon of 
history are understood according to the religion 
of the Kings. Also it was British again who first 
demonized the Muslim rulers to wean win over 
loyalty of the subjects ruled by them. As per 
this, RSS shakhas, right from the beginning have 
been propagating against Muslims in particular, 
and what they have been propagating by now has 
become a part of the social common sense, 
uncritically accepted by many social sections. 
This social common sense in turn forms the base 
of Hindu Communal politics, anti-minority 
violence. The latter being the most visible part 
of this phenomenon. When BJP led coalition came 
to power the RSS swaymasevak, who lorded over the 
Ministry of Human Resource ministry, Murali 
Manohar Joshi, scrapped the books of NCERT, which 
were based on rational historiography, which 
attempted to understand the historical events and 
phenomenon in a broad manner, as being the 
outcome of multiple factors, religion being one 
of those, and not being the and only factor. With 
Congress led UPA coalition coming back to power 
an attempt is underway to put sanity and reason 
in the understanding of the history and there by 
to defuse the major raison de tre of communal 
politics and violence.

During NDA regime one Makhan Lal of Hindutva 
brigade, was commissioned to write the history 
books for class VI and XI. Same Makhanlal also 
coauthored the tenth volume of a 16 volume series 
on RSS history, this volume being titled RSS Aur 
Bharatiya Jana Sangh Ki Sthapana Ka Itihas (The 
History of Creation of the RSS and Bharatiya Jana 
Sangh). brought out by the BJP during the party's 
silver jubilee celebrations in December last 
year. This volume co authored by the favorite of 
RSS happened to put the history without and 
cosmetic effects and frankly puts forward the 
truth that RSS was formed to 'counter the 
Muslims', and that Gandhi was appeasing Muslims. 
It also has strong anti Muslim references. 
Incidentally Mr. Lal Krishna Advani wrote the 
foreword for this volume. All these are true and 
gospel understanding of RSS, an understanding 
percolated through RSS shakhas, but for electoral 
purposes this sounded too strong to digest for 
RSS and its electoral wing the BJP. Seeing the 
implications of putting forward what it really 
believes, the volume has been withdrawn. Same 
Makhan Lal's books being withdrawn first for 
spreading hate ideology and then for speaking the 
truth about RSS.  Poor Fellow!

RSS claims that contrary to what has been put in 
the volume coauthored by Makhan Lal it is not 
Anti Muslim and it will avoid strong anti Muslim 
references in today's context and will prefer to 
hide its real face, one of the expression of 
which was Godse, the murderer of Mahatma Gandhi. 
Through word of mouth in Shakhas, RSS propagates 
that Gandhi was the real appeaser of Muslims, and 
it is due to Gandhi's appeasement of Muslims that 
partition took place!

On the face of it, one of the reasons cited for 
withdrawal of the book is that RSS was/is not 
against Muslim, it was formed just to oppose the 
partition of the country. Apart from the work of 
RSS historians, many a valuable books have come 
out on RSS, which also delve in depth on the 
causes for the formation of RSS.  Most of the 
scholars, based on the study of the documents 
available and the functioning of RSS through its 
own documents, elaborate that the roots of its 
formation lie in the phenomenon around the non 
cooperation movement launched by Gandhi, the one 
which for the first time brought Hindus and 
Muslims together at a mass level. This mass 
movement, also began to spread the Indian 
identity to the broad layers of Indian people. 
This process and this movement was not looked at 
favorably by the Hindu elite. Hedgewar, the 
founder of RSS felt disturbed by this movement. 
Hedgewar and his cohorts started playing an 
active role in the street violence, many a times 
inciting the same by deliberately playing music 
in front of mosques. The documents, few and far 
in between, which are available from that time 
highlight the as to how Hedgewar led the band of 
Music players in front of a mosque and when the 
music players stopped playing music in front of a 
mosque, he himself started playing the drum and 
asked others to follow suit. His participation in 
the street violence against Muslims is also 
recorded.
It was a time when the Muslim communalism and 
Hindu communalism were in the formative phase and 
the talk of partition of the country was no where 
in sight. The first ideological salvo in this 
direction was fired by Savarkar, when he 
articulated that religion is the basis of nation 
and that Hindus are a nation. The Muslim League 
which was formed already had also assumed that 
Muslims are a nation, Punjab Hindu Sabha and 
Hindu Mahsabha were also formed with the implicit 
understanding of Religious nationalism. The word 
Pakistan was conceived much later by Choudhary 
Rahmat Ali in 1930 and the Pakistan resolution 
was passed in 1940. The back drop of RSS 
formation did not have the threat of partition, 
though the elite of both communities already were 
putting forward Hindu and Muslim identity as the 
main identity, in contrast to the Indian 
identity, which was central to Gandhi and 
National movement. The participation of broad 
layers of Muslims and Hindus in joint struggle 
against British was not to the liking of elite of 
those communities who were harping on the 
communal identity being the main. These political 
streams, which led to the formation of Muslim 
League and Hindu Mahasabha were focusing on the 
threat of the 'other' community, Muslims elite 
thought Hindus will deprive them of their due 
while Hindu elite felt Muslims are out to seize 
the country. Anti 'other' and not anti British 
was the central point for both these political 
streams.

The little material which is available shows the 
'anti Muslim core' of the activities of RSS. It 
also presented Gandhi as culprit who is leading 
the struggle for united India, taking Muslims 
along and appeasing them. It is from nowhere that 
Godse, picked up the concept of Hindu rashtra and 
perceived Gandhi as the villain-in-chief, the 
main obstacle in the direction of Hindu Rashtra. 
For Hedgewar, the RSS founder the dislike for non 
cooperation movement and Muslims was very 
intense, "As a result of the non-cooperation 
movement of Mahatma Gandhi the enthusiasm (for 
nationalism) in the country was cooling down and 
the evils in social life which that movement 
generated were menacingly raising their head.  As 
the tide of national struggle came to ebb mutual 
ill will and jealousies came to surfaceŠConflicts 
between various communities had started. 
Brahmin-non Brahmin conflict was nakedly on view. 
No organization was integrated or united. The 
yavan snakes (Muslims, added) reared on the milk 
of non-cooperation were provoking riots in the 
nation with their poisonous hissing."(Bhishikar, 
1979)  Hedgewar ideologised that Hindu Muslim 
unity was a misnomer, Muslims are enemy of Hindu 
and so of Hindu Rashtra which was to be the goal 
of RSS. This was the fodder of the RSS and it 
constructed the past in the same light projecting 
Muslim enmity from the time of invasion of Muslim 
Kings. Just as an aside, National movement 
constructed the idea of India based on the 
plurality and syncretism contributed by different 
religious communities and Muslims communalism 
constructed the nation based on the victory and 
rule of the Muslim kings.

These aspects of RSS cannot be overlooked even if 
one gives a cursory glance at the RSS history. 
Probably Makhan La might not have been briefed in 
advance to suppress this aspect of RSS history, 
as currently RSS being in the electoral arena 
through its electoral child BJP requires wooing 
the Muslim votes as well.  Its founder Hedgewar 
who derived the idea of Hindutva from Savarkar 
went on to conceptualize the Hindu Rashtra. 
Bhishikars', who was another die hard RSS 
follower, biography and the documents available 
at that time are full of strong and blatant anti 
Muslim formulations.

Gandhi was never a favorite of RSS; though it 
went on to declare a mourning period after his 
assassination.  He was accused of appeasing 
Muslims, and Godse just took the same cue to 
blame the 56 crore incident, the Pakistan's share 
from the treasury, and partition too, as acts due 
to Gandhi's appeasement policy. RSS and Gandhi 
were on the opposite poles of the political 
spectrum. Today for other reasons same Gandhi, 
finds his name in the Pratah Smaraniya, (revered 
figures) worth remembering in the early morning, 
list of RSS.

RSS has to do lot of acrobatics Vis a Vis other 
tall giants of freedom movement. These are just 
compulsions of a society where still some 
democratic space is left. It is interesting that 
same RSS which stopped the two volumes on the 
History of India of the period of 1940s, because 
RSS does not find any mention in the freedom 
movement has to withdraw the books coming from 
its own stable, by the followers of Hindutva 
since they


____


[5]

The Telegraph
May 10, 2006

THE FAST-LANE PRESENT
- Delhi's monuments to callousness
Shahid Amin
The author is professor of history, University of Delhi

Flagstaff Battery, Felice A. Beato

The 150th anniversary next year of the 1857 
Uprising and the staging of the Commonwealth 
Games in Delhi have begun a rethink on what we - 
living in a fast-lane present - have done to our 
built heritage. The first will bring us face to 
face with how to relate to monuments that our 
colonial masters erected after the suppression of 
the 'Mutiny'. The 2010 Commonwealth Games will 
focus the attention of the erstwhile British 
Empire on Delhi, an old city, which emerged as 
the colonial capital of the "brightest jewel in 
the crown" in the last century. There is already 
some talk about preserving the past and rescuing 
the heritage of Delhi from a callous and 
oppressive present. A recent poll published in a 
newspaper suggests that while most Delhiites (the 
word, "Dilliwalas", is now an anachronism) are 
unaware of the city's rich cultural and 
architectural past, only one-third of parents 
feel strongly about inculcating a sense of the 
city's heritage in their children.

Faced with the failure of the Archaeological 
Survey of India - an organization headed by a 
bureaucrat for many years and openly susceptible 
to governmental pressure - some have begun 
advocating the setting up of a national heritage 
commission. At the same time, there is no dearth 
of proposals for a consumerist appropriation of 
our past in the interests of the present. A few 
years ago, a Union urban affairs minister had 
advocated a veritable 'Gurgaonization' of 
Lutyens's Delhi, while another votary of 
efficient land-use went on to suggest that the 
Rashtrapati Bhavan be converted into a luxury 
hotel.

The debate on balancing the voracious demands of 
the 'cityjan' with nurturing Delhi's culture, 
habitat and built heritage is bound to get 
sharper: how near the Qutub Minar can the 
elevated metro be allowed to run, or need it go 
underground rather than spoil the view of a world 
heritage site? How much of the natural flood 
plain of the Jamuna (including its floating 
population) need be ceded to a major temple 
complex, or indeed to the Commonwealth Games 
village? How many people and working artisans 
(even butchers) have to be shifted out of the 
Jama Masjid area to beautify it as a place of 
daily worship, and simultaneously as a national 
monument with which all of us (including the 
non-practising Muslims) can identify?

It is common to lament how the majority of 
Delhi's monuments - a large number dating back to 
the 13th to the early 16th century - have been 
encroached upon by property developers and 
squatters. This is an important facet of urbanism 
of post-independent Delhi, and it allows the 
concerned citizen to blame those who have 
appropriated its heritage to private ends. What 
is remarkable is how the city's empowered 
citizens and criminal elements have conspired, in 
very different ways, to foreclose access to a lot 
of the city's monuments in the normal course. A 
few examples of the fate of some of the key 
'Mutiny' structures would help illustrate how 
these have become no-go places for the ordinary 
tax-paying public.

Take the Flagstaff, up the ridge from the main 
gate of the University of Delhi. Driven out of 
the city in the summer of 1857, it was here and 
on the adjacent, narrow strip of the ridge that 
the retreating British were confined in that 
tumultuous summer; and it was from the Flagstaff 
and batteries at the Chauburja mosque and beyond 
that the push for the vengeful recapture of Delhi 
was calibrated in the autumn of that eventful 
year. There were ten natives for every European 
in camp. John Kaye, the demi-official historian 
of the 'Sepoy War', paints a sympathetic picture 
of the native cooks and water-carriers, who, 
unmindful of the well-directed artillery fire of 
the rebel topchis and golandazes from nearby Mori 
Gate, had played khidmatgars to the besieged 
sahibs at the Flagstaff and on the northern Ridge.

The demands of humanity, implies Kaye, suggested 
that the English be slightly more considerate 
towards their native camp-followers, without whom 
the project of the reconquest of Delhi would have 
been quite impossible. But it was not just the 
exhaustion caused by war that had made the life 
of natives-in- camp of "less value than that of 
the meanest animals". For if colonial domination 
had to be re-established, then insensitive as it 
may appear to some, that structure could not be 
dismantled during the very campaign for the 
re-establishment of British supremacy in India.

A contemporary satire in a Dilli akhbar had 
lampooned the harassed "English Gathering at the 
Flagstaff", where the "trousers of Angrezi wisdom 
had slipped all the way down to their socks-full 
of worries". Two years ago, Flagstaff Road lost 
its name to B.R. Ambedkar Memorial Marg. True, 
Ambedkar during his Delhi sojourn had lived 
nearby on Alipur Road. But because of the 
construction of the Metro, that street had been 
closed to the previous prime minister when he 
visited north Delhi for inaugurating the 
memorial. The adjacent Flagstaff Road was open, 
and so got divested of its historic name in the 
despotic flurry that precedes such 
prime-ministerial visitations.

Despite a recent renovation, the historic 
Flagstaff is in a state of disrepair. This 
early-19th-century building is now virtually 
taken over by an open air yoga club. Sundays are 
reserved for bhandaras, that is, a philanthropic 
halwa-poori feast, with periodic pulmonary 
check-ups for the senior citizens who throng the 
Ridge for their early-morning constitutional. Its 
circular ground-floor hall is used to house 
mattresses and dhurries in king-size steel 
trunks. Through a private arrangement with the 
city's archaeology department, it is unlocked 
only for the duration of the yoga classes - to 
keep it open at all times would no doubt endanger 
the property of the Yoga club. For the rest of 
the day, the Flagstaff is a closed monument. No 
notice of its past greets the energetic, 
early-morning walkers: it survives in a 
non-historical present.

A much more serious consideration behind the 
locking up of Delhi's many monuments appears to 
be the growing number of rapists that stalk the 
city day and night. The Khuni Darwaza, 
overlooking the stadium where Harbhajan Singh 
spun India to a famous ODI victory the other day, 
was where Bahadurshah Zafar's sons were shot dead 
after their capture from Humayun's tomb in 
September, 1857. And it was here that a college 
girl was raped not very long ago. This historic 
gate on one of Delhi's busiest roads has 
subsequently been fixed with grills and locked. 
The early-19th-century magazine - a simple arched 
structure which the British guards 
self-destructed to deny the 'Mutiny' rebels 
access to a large amount of gun powder - now 
stands similarly barricaded, although it sits in 
the middle of a traffic island, opposite the 
city's General Post Office.

The city that killed Gandhi seems to prosper only 
by barricading itself. The Nineties was the 
decade of private security guards. Policing, the 
message had gone out, had to be private to be 
effective. Now, even medieval city- gates and 
colonial guard-houses - like the one on the 
northern Ridge - have to be locked-up, so as to 
protect the women of this megalopolis from its 
growing number of casual rapists. It has been 
said that the aim of heritage is to make all of 
us proud. It is time we realized the cruel, and 
not just ironic, import of this descriptive 
truism.


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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
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