SACW | Sep 15, 2006
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Thu Sep 14 21:23:11 CDT 2006
South Asia Citizens Wire | September 15, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2288
[1] Pakistan: Whither Balochistan? (Kaiser Bengali)
[2] Pakistan / India: Discriminatory Citizenship
- Amend Pakistan Citizenship Act of 1951
- India SC Notice On Plea Against Denial of Citizenship To PIO
[3] India: NCERT Textbooks (Editorial, EPW)
[4] Upcoming Events:
(i) Two Nations - Poverty And Hunger - A lecture
by Utsa Patnaik (Hyderabad [India], 16 Sept)
(ii) Moustaches Unlimited, A film by Vasudha Joshi (New Delhi, 16 Sept)
(iii) National Youth Convention (New Delhi, 5 - 8 Oct.)
(iv) Ali Kazimi: A retrospective (Berkeley, 14 - 16 Sept)
___
[1]
Dawn
14 September 2006
WHITHER BALOCHISTAN?
by Kaiser Bengali
THE murder of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti at the hands
of state security forces is both a human and a
national tragedy, with consequences of
unimaginably perilous scale. That such
disproportionate force was used to kill a 79-year
old ailing man and that his bereaved family has
been denied the opportunity to offer their last
respects and accord him a proper burial is
deplorable.
There may be many questions about Akbar Bugti's
conduct as a tribal leader. Today, however, he
stands tall as a man who forsook the comforts of
his home in Dera Bugti and took up abode in
mountain caves to fight for the rights of his
people. The same cannot be said of many of his
detractors living in the comforts of official
residences and in cantonments and defence housing
schemes in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi.
The calamity and the sordid handling of the
aftermath reflects General Musharraf's arrogant
faith in military solutions to the patently
political problems that the country faces,
including those that have been created by the
perpetuation of the current military dictatorship
since October 1999. The generals have certainly
not learnt any lessons from Pakistan's
unfortunate history of a quarter of a century
ago, nor from the current failure of the world's
sole superpower to enforce its writ in Iraq, or
of the mighty Israeli army's failure to write its
agenda in Lebanon.
In 1971, the then generals opted to lay down
their arms before the Indian army rather than
negotiate and arrive at a compromise with the
leaders of the people of the eastern wing of
Pakistan. This attitude appears to be pervasive
even today. And general Musharraf's
chest-thumping speech in Murree, hurling threats
at the people of Balochistan, as well as of
Pakistan, is likely to stoke more defiance rather
than scare anyone.
The policy drift that the country has suffered
under General Musharraf's leadership portends
disaster for the country. Questions about the
general's judgment had arisen immediately after
the inane militarily untenable Kargil
misadventure. He also made a foreign policy
U-turn, hours after the tragedy of 9/11, and
Pakistan shifted from being the most pro-Taliban
country in the world to the most ardent
'terrorist' busting country in the US camp. The
slogan that was then trumpeted as a rationale for
the U-turn was that Pakistan must come first.
The implications of the principle of this
simplistic justification are disturbing. Extended
further, it could imply that, under external
pressure, the Kashmir cause or the nuclear status
could be abandoned on the grounds that 'Pakistan
has to come first'. After all, it could be
perceivably argued that there can be no struggle
for the freedom of the Kashmiri people if there
was no Pakistan or of what use will the nuclear
arsenal be if there was no Pakistan?
Now General Musharraf has proclaimed that the
writ of the government will be enforced 'at all
costs'. One hopes that 'all costs' does not imply
that the writ of his government - of questionable
legitimacy - will be imposed even at the cost of
Pakistan. These questions are not frivolous,
given the increasingly apparent absence of any
degree of political intellect in general
Musharraf's policy decisions. After all, the
legacy of disastrous policy decisions by the
coterie of Generals headed by Yahya Khan did not
provide any assurance of intelligent conduct.
And, given the current military regime's
paramount and almost exclusive objective of
clinging on to power, there can be no confidence
in the quality of decision-making on national,
regional or international issues.
General Musharraf has tried to present the
conflict in Balochistan as one where a mere three
sardars, out of about 75, are attempting to
sabotage development. The argument holds no
water. Several facts need to be taken into
account. Balochistan is a very heterogeneous
province. The sardari system is a Baloch
institution. Out of 26 districts, one-third of
them in the north/north-east are populated by
Pukhtuns and, as such, not subject to the sardari
system. The system also does not prevail in the
Mekran coast and adjoining districts.
It appears, therefore, that the sardari system is
prevalent only in about one-third of the
districts in the eastern/central part of the
province. This is the part over which up to about
75 sardars are said to hold sway. As such, the
area controlled by the three 'anti-development'
sardars is likely to be rather small. The
question that arises, is: why has development not
blossomed in the rest of the province?
An overview of the development scene in
Balochistan is discomforting and the extent of
relative deprivation in the province is
appalling. Eighteen out of the 20 most
infrastructure-deprived districts in Pakistan are
in Balochistan. The percentage of districts that
are classified as high deprivation stands as
follows: 29 per cent in Punjab, 50 per cent in
Sindh, 62 per cent in the NWFP, and 92 per cent
in Balochistan. If Quetta and Ziarat are
excluded, all of Balochistan falls into the high
deprivation category. And Quetta's ranking would
fall if the cantonment is excluded from the
analysis. The percentage of population living in
a high degree of deprivation stands at 25 per
cent in Punjab, 23 per cent in urban Sindh, 49
per cent in rural Sindh, 51 per cent in the NWFP,
and 88 per cent in Balochistan.
Measured in terms of poverty, the percentage of
population living below the poverty line stands
at 26 per cent in Punjab, 38 per cent in rural
Sindh, 27 per cent in urban Sindh, 29 per cent in
the NWFP, and 48 per cent in Balochistan. Yet
another stark measure of Balochistan's relative
deprivation is that while the country boasts of a
50-per cent-plus literacy rate, the same for
rural women in Balochistan is a mere seven per
cent.
Balochistan's relative decline is also indicated
by provincially disaggregated national accounts
data. Estimates for the period 1973-2000 show
that Punjab alone has increased its share of
national GDP by two percentage points from 52.7
per cent to 54.7 per cent. Sindh - on account of
Karachi - and the NWFP have maintained their
share. Balochistan's share has declined by nearly
one percentage point from 4.5 per cent to 3.7 per
cent. Resultantly, the annual rate of growth of
per capita GDP has been 2.4 per cent in Punjab
and 0.2 per cent in Balochistan.
Statistics tell only a part of the story. In
fact, given the conditions in Balochistan,
Pakistan's national statistics do not tell the
full story. This is because no enumerator of the
official statistics collecting department makes
the effort to visit a settlement that is two days
walking distance away. Conditions in such
settlements are so dire that, if half the
children born in a family survive, it is
considered lucky. The absence of such data has
tended to show national statistics in a better
light than it actually is - and has tended to
conceal Balochistan's real plight.
Apart from chronic underdevelopment, the
insurgency is also a product of the exclusion of
the Baloch from the mainstream national political
process. After all, in the period since
independence to date, how many of the corps
commanders or lieutenant-generals or brigadiers
have been Baloch? How many of the ambassadors or
high commissioners in Pakistan missions abroad
have been Baloch? How many of the federal
secretaries or additional secretaries have been
Baloch? How many of the heads of public
organisations - a la Wapda - have been Baloch?
How many of the heads of the Federation of
Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry have
been Baloch? How many of the members of
Pakistan's national cricket or hockey teams have
been Baloch? And so on. Perhaps General Musharraf
or his prime minister or his more garrulous
ministers would venture to answer some of the
above questions, at least with respect to the
current situation.
Admittedly, Balochistan's underdevelopment is a
product of over half a century of exploitation
and neglect. Unfortunately, however, General
Musharraf's seven years in power has merely seen
an extension of the past record. The fact is
that, not unlike any previous governments, the
Musharraf regime has never had any development
agenda for Balochistan. The few mega projects
that have been undertaken, a la Gwadar, are
actually motivated by strategic considerations.
They are more likely to bypass the local
population and, worse still, turn the Baloch into
a minority in their home province.
The Baloch intelligentsia has seen through
Islamabad's colonisation game and the general
insurgency is merely a response. The military's
operation in Balochistan is a counter response,
not to the insurgency per se, but to the
challenge posed to Islamabad's colonisation
agenda.
Resultantly, the situation is extremely
precarious. With the army possibly embroiled in
Balochistan, the defence of the eastern frontier
is likely to be compromised. There are likely to
be serious impacts on the national economy as
well. Without security across the vast province,
Gwadar port's planned position as the third port
of the country and a transshipment point for
central Asia and western China will go up in
smoke. So will the under-discussion
Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. The
rest of the country too will not remain
unaffected. Unlike in the case of East Pakistan,
Balochistan is not a thousand kilometers away.
Given Karachi's geographical proximity to
Balochistan, the presence of large Baloch
settlements in the city, and the sympathetic
Sindhi nationalist element, any civil war-like
situation in Balochistan will inevitably envelope
Karachi in the theatre of conflict. And, given
that Karachi and neighbouring Port Qasim are the
only seaports of the country and handle the
entire shipping of export and import cargo, the
situation will impact the economy in all parts of
the country.
The postponement of the National Assembly
session, scheduled for March 3, 1971, in Dhaka,
finally snapped the tenuous emotional thread that
had bound the eastern province with the rest of
the country. Today, the killing of Akbar Bugti
has severely frayed the emotional thread linking
Balochistan with Pakistan.
The withdrawal of Baloch nationalist legislators
from the parliamentary process is an ominous
signal that cannot and should not be ignored. If
the damage to the federation is to be repaired,
the military establishment will need to withdraw
from the political, economic and commercial
arenas and a genuinely elected government will
need to take effective charge of the country to
assuage the deep wounds that have been inflicted
on Balochistan.
_____
[2]
The News International
August 27, 2006
DISCRIMINATORY AND WHOLLY BIASED
The apparent understanding reached between the
treasury and opposition benches on August 24 for
amending the Pakistan Citizenship Act of 1951 to
free it from existing gender biases is welcome
but it still goes to underline the blatant
discrimination that the women of this country
have to face at all levels, including even under
the law. The act, as it currently stands, allows
citizenship to women of foreign origin married to
Pakistani men but does not confer the same
privilege to foreign men married to Pakistani
women. This raises the obvious question, why are
not Pakistani women who have foreign spouses
entitled to the same treatment under the law as
Pakistani men? The reasons, according to one
report, put forward for this refusal is that this
presents a security risk and that in some cases
it is based on reciprocity, and since other
countries do not allow it, so Pakistan will not
either. One has to say - without losing a sense
of decorum and civility - that both these reasons
border on the nonsensical. How can foreign men
married to Pakistani women be termed security
risks when foreign women married to Pakistani men
aren't? What world are those who framed the law
and those who are now implementing living in? It
really begs commonsense to find any justification
on this score. As for reciprocity, a state need
not base such grant of citizenship on
reciprocity. The issue should be not whether
another country does or doesn't allow its
nationals' spouses similar citizenship rights but
rather to guarantee equal rights under the law to
both Pakistani men and women.
The act, in its current form, is clearly
unconstitutional since the 1973 Constitution
explicitly guarantees equal treatment under the
law to both men and women and it really is
incredible that it (the law) has survived in its
current highly discriminatory form till today.
Apparently, there is a discretionary clause that
permits the government to grant citizenship to
any foreign national. The fact of the matter is
that it is not often exercised. Also, there
should be no need to exercise any such discretion
if the law were equitable, inclusive and unbiased
for all citizens. The federal minister for
parliamentary affairs, Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, has
said that the matter will be referred to the
interior ministry for further consideration.
However, it should be noted that the National
Commission on the Status of Women has already
recommended to the government to amend the act so
one wonders why the matter should be sent to the
interior ministry for "further consideration".
Besides, mere understanding between the
opposition and treasury benches does not
necessarily mean that the law will be amended,
especially since the minister's referring it to
the interior ministry seems more of a delaying
tactic than anything else. It is worth pointing
out that in recent days, the same minister has
made somewhat uncharitable remarks against women
in general in parliament and does not seem the
kind of individual who would be a stout defender
of the rights of women. Nevertheless, the
discrimination exhibited under this law is so
blatant and clear-cut that the government should
be able to pass an amendment to it with ease,
enabling the foreign spouses of Pakistani women
to become eligible for citizenship.
o o o
The Hindu
15 August 2006
SC NOTICE ON PLEA AGAINST DENIAL OF CITIZENSHIP TO PIO
New Delhi, Aug 15. (UNI): The Supreme Court on
Monday issued a notice to the Centre on a
petition challenging the Government order dated
August 19, 2002 denying citizenship rights to a
Person of Indian Origin (PIO) who took the
citizenship of either Pakistan or Bangladesh
after January 26, 1950 when the Constitution of
India came into being.
The petitioner K N A Farooqi who was born in
Lucknow in 1934 and took an intermediate degree
from Lucknow college in 1952 and left for
Chittagong in November 1952 after the abolition
of the Zamindari system in India and later
shifted to Karachi in 1971 after the formation of
Bangladesh has contended that the impugned
Government order was discriminatory in nature and
violated Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
The petitioner who came to India on June 20, 2005
on a Pakistani passport has sought Indian
citizenship under the category of Overseas
Citizenship of India (OIC) commonly known as dual
citizenship, which can be granted to any foreign
citizen who is a PIO, except the citizen of
Pakistan and Bangladesh, as per the order dated
December 2,2005 passed by the Government of India.
PIO who was the citizen of India on January
26,1950 or became a citizen of any part, which
became part of India after August 15,1947 are
entitled for Overseas Indian Citizenship.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal
and Justices C K Thakker and Markandey Katju
issued notices after hearing the counsel for the
petitioner who contended that the impugned order
debarring citizens of Pakistan and Bangladesh the
dual citizenship rights, who are PIOs was illegal
and unconstitutional and hence must be quashed.
The petitioner has also pleaded that he married a
girl from Lucknow in 1966 who also shifted to
Chittagong.
_____
[3]
Economic and Political Weekly
August 26, 2006
Editorial
EDUCATION
NCERT Textbooks
The proposed textbook on political science for class XII,
yet to be released by the National Council for Education
Research and Training (NCERT), has predictably set off a storm.
The textbook will cover entirely new ground by including
events that have shaped post-independence Indian history and
will be available for students from the academic year 2007-08.
However, political parties across the spectrum, burdened by
their "past", have already termed the contents "objection-
able", and have now forced the UPA government into prom-
ising an inquiry. Many of the events that will be referred to
- the Emergency, the anti-Sikh riots, the Babri masjid demo-
lition and the Gujarat riots - make up the book's last section
entitled, 'Recent Issues and Challenges'. This, in turn, follows
other sections that seek to give a cogent, theme-based tra-
jectory of how democracy in India has evolved in the post-
independence period. Hence, the course appropriately begins
with the Congress' dominance of national level politics and
the various issues involved with nation-building; it then moves
on to the period of the 1970s, which saw a crisis of the
constitutional order and the rise of regionalism. Events of the
1980s and later are also covered in the sections on social
movements and the dawn of coalition politics.
The NCERT committee drafting the syllabus was guided
by the greater pedagogical issue of "empowering" students,
to foster a sense of inquiry, to enable them to analyse critically,
so as to eventually become informed citizens in their own
right. Political science for high school students has remained
an abstract, moralising course on civics and this was the first
time that contemporary history has found its due place in the
syllabus. It was a necessary, much desired move, for students
of politics appeared more familiar with the events of 1920s
and 1930s than with the latter decades. Moreover, by availing
of a wide variety of sources - court pronouncements, different
inquiry reports, reports by the National Human Rights Com-
mission, etc - the attempt was to give a generalised objective
perspective rather than a personality-based orientation to the
subject. This became all the more critical, for students in a
computer literate age are already exposed to an uncritical,
even chaotic mass of information from diverse sources.
The immediate fear by the opposition is that the orientation
of events will reflect the partisan viewpoint of the party in
power. Education, especially the subject of history, and the
role of the NCERT as the organisation largely responsible for
shaping content and pedagogy, has served either as a political
handmaiden for the party in power or as a "whipping boy"
for the opposition.
The recent disruption in Parliament over the proposed
political science textbook has been made murkier by attempts
to discredit the NCERT's efforts to evolve, for the first time,
a "child-centric" syllabus. Thus, the old controversy over
Bipan Chandra's textbook for class XII, Modern India (a two-
decade old textbook being phased out) has been raked up again,
with the familiar outcry of nationalist leaders being labelled
"terrorists" - a politically and historically contextualised term.
The recently released Hindi textbook for class XI has also
drawn ire for its allegedly derogatory references to dalits. But
the stories by the celebrated Hindi novelists, Premchand and
Om Prakash Valmiki, help familiarise students with aspects
of the caste system itself and the book comments that the
language of the time is no longer acceptable. Of similar nature
is the accusation that the book encourages terrorism, simply
because it includes a poem by the noted Punjabi poet-writer,
Avtaar Singh, 'Paash', which instead decries the fear terror
imposes on the ordinary individual.
For far too long, education has been ideologically divisive;
with the government, of whatever hue, seeking to position
itself as the shaper and repository of all information. But
information flows are now too diverse, too varied and the
NCERT, to its credit, attempts to merely give direction, its
objectives being to guide the student to arrive at her own
understanding. The new textbooks for political science for
class IX and those for history in class VI now available online,
offer an innovative approach, by moving from the student's
immediate and personal world to wider and more abstract
issues. With an increasingly young population that is
arguably more familiar with immediate historical events, a
new approach towards education has become necessary. The
NCERT's recent moves, by recognising the changing base
of learning and by empowering the student to become an
active participant, are laudable and also timely.
_____
[4]
Upcoming Events:
(i)
<http://www.covanetwork.org>COVA
<http://www.covanetwork.org>Dedicated to Communal
Harmony
Confederation of Voluntary Associations
20-4-10, Charminar, Hyderabad-02 <mailto:cova at sancharnet.in>cova at sancharnet.in
<mailto:covanetwork at gmail.com>covanetwork at gmail.com
<http://www.covanetwork.org>www.covanetwork.org
Alam Khundmiri Foundation
Cordially invites you and your friends
To a Lecture on
TWO NATIONS - POVERTY AND HUNGER
in the AGE OF GLOBAL FINANCE
by Utsa Patnaik
Well known Economist and Political Activist
Professor, Centre for Economic Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Presided by
Professor Mahender Dev
Director, Centre for Economic and Social Studies
16 September 2006, 5.30
Sundarayya Vignan Kendra
Baghlingampalli [Hyderabad, India]
_____
(ii)
MOUSTACHES UNLIMITED, A film by Vasudha Joshi on Moustaches and the
idea of Masculanity is being screened on Saturday, 16 September at
05:45 pm during the forthcoming festival THE OPEN FRAME. The
screenings will be followed by a forum entitled DECONSTRUCTING GENDER
at 06:30 pm, that will also include a discussion on the film.
The panelists will include the filmmakers,Dr Radhika Chopra and Mr
Gautam Bhan as the moderator.
Please do come to the venue - the auditorium at the India Habitat Centre
_____
(iii)
Dear Young Friends,
Anhad is organising a National Youth Convention
from October 5th to 8th in Delhi. The venue for
the Convention is the Indian Social Institute.
We had circulated a letter in June 2006
requesting young people to send suggestions about
the probable topics that they would like to
discuss during the youth convention. After going
through hundreds of suggestions that came from
across India we have worked out a tentative
schedule (attached with this letter), which is
being fined tuned.
The convention would like to arrive at a possible
future course of action for secular interventions
and build a network of communication among
secular youth groups and activists.
The convention will also study the present
National Youth Policy 2003 (NYP) and prepare a
critique of the same. All the participants who
register will be sent a copy of the NYP in
advance so that they can read it and prepare a
response to it before they come to the convention.
All the participants would be divided into groups
for most of the sessions. Each group will have
two youth facilitators and one senior expert from
the field. The participants will get a chance to
share their experiences and interact with other
participants and the experts. There would be a
number of parallel sessions and participants can
choose which session they want to be a part of.
Every such session at the end would have
presentations by representatives from each group
followed by a plenary session with the experts.
Format for the group discussion would be the following:
Expert will introduce the subject
Discussion and sharing of ideas
All groups combine- 5 minutes to change seating arrangement
Each group to make a presentation
Experts – one from each group- form a plenary and
panel discussion follows with a question and
answer session.
There would be some combined sessions where
different experts would come and speak. Every
combined session will be followed by a question
and answer session.
There are no formal sessions after dinner
.Facilities for showing films, space for
interaction and transport to take the delegates
back will be made available till 11.00pm.
All those wanting to participate in the
convention should register (form attached) latest
by September 25, 2006. The registration fee is
Rs.100. Participants will have to bear their own
travel expenses. Anhad will make arrangements for
their stay, food and local transport. We can
register only 200 participants due to the space
constraints.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Sincerely
Shabnam Hashmi
Schedule
5th Oct-Day 1
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:30 Inaugural Session
3:30-4.00 Tea Break
4.00-5.00 All participants divide into
groups- participants are introduced to each other
coordinated by Youth For Peace Facilitators.
5.00-8:00 Secular Politics in India
(Four parallel Sessions)
1. Indian Secularism : Theory and Practice
2. Relevance of Gandhi in Contemporary India
3. Legacy of the Freedom Struggle
4. Scientific Temper & Obscurantism
8:00-9:00 Dinner
9.00-11.00 Screening of Film followed by
discussion
6th Oct-Day 2
8:00-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-1:00 Assault on Secular Democracy
(Four parallal sessions)
1. Ayodhya: What is the
dispute? What is the solution?
2. Kashmir: What is the
dispute? What is the solution?
3. Gujarat: Rebuilding
Justice and Hope
4. War on Terror: Local,
National, International
(with a tea break at 10.30)
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00- 3.30 Myths & Realities (combined
session)
3.30-4.00 Tea
4.00- 5.30 Myths & Realities (combined
session)
6.00 onwards Screening of Film Khamosh Pani
followed by discussion
8.00-9.00 Dinner
9.00-11.00 informal interaction/ screening
of films/ cultural programme by participants
7th Oct-Day 3
8:00-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-1.00 Inequalities in Our Society
(Three parallal sessions)
1. Gender Justice for all communities
2. Understanding Caste, Class and Discrimination
3. Globalisation and Poverty
(with a tea break at 11.00)
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-5.00 Discussion on National Youth
Policy
5.00-5.30 Tea break
5.30-8.00 Screening of Film ( name to be
confirmed) followed by discussion
8:00-9:00 Dinner
9.00-11.00 Informal interaction/ screening
of films/ cultural programme by participants
8th Oct-Day 4
8:00-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-1.00 What does it mean to be an
Indian? (Same session in four parallel groups)
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-4.00 Future Strategies
4.00-7.00 Free time
7.30pm onwards Peace Concert
(For Registration form write to Mansi dev or anhad_delhi at yahoo.co.in)
_____
(iv)
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa
ALI KAZIMI: A COMMITMENT TO JUSTICE
presented in collaboration with EKTA and 3rd I Films.
THU SEP 14 2006 - SAT SEP 16 2006
Filmmaker in person at all screenings!
Still: Narmada: A Valley Rises
For documentary filmmaker Ali Kazimi, our artist in residence this
September, a commitment to justice is essential both on- and
offscreen. "I know that I can't talk about social responsibility in
my films as a theoretical construct and not do anything about it
myself, in my life," he writes. Born and raised in India, Kazimi
worked as a freelance photographer in Delhi, then emigrated to Canada
after winning a scholarship to the film program at Toronto's York
University. Kazimi has consistently trained his camera on those
rarely represented onscreen, be they ostracized indigenous groups in
India or recent immigrants in Canada. Telling of Indian villagers
organizing against a government-sponsored dam, Indo-Canadians
participating in arranged marriages, an Iroquois photographer
creatively redefining his culture, or a horrific anti-immigrant
incident from Canada's past, Kazimi focuses on the relationship
between the individual and society, and the power that people have to
effect change and defy how others have defined them. "All cultures,
including my own," Kazimi notes, "have borrowed, incorporated, and
absorbed influences from all encounters, absorbing, reviving, and at
times reinventing themselves." To redefine and reinvent oneself in
the face of internalized cultural pressure or external political
power is true empowerment for Kazimi's subjects, and, one senses, for
the artist as well.
THU SEP 14 2006
5:30 A Conversation with Ali Kazimi (Admission Free)
Join filmmaker Kazimi for an informal conversation about his artistic
process.
THU SEP 14 2006
7:30 Shooting Indians
Ali Kazimi in Person. A dialogue with Iroquois Canadian photographer
Jeffrey Thomas about Edward S. Curtis, photography, and stereotypes.
With short Passage from India.
FRI SEP 15 2006
7:30 Runaway Grooms
Ali Kazimi in Person. This illuminating documentary investigates
Indo-Canadian men returning to India for arranged marriages, only to
disappear with their brides' dowries. With Some Kind of Arrangement,
another view of Indo-Canadians preparing for arranged marriages.
SAT SEP 16 2006
6:30 Continuous Journey
Ali Kazimi in Person. Kazimi's award-winning film examines one of
North America's first "immigration panics," when a boatload of Indian
immigrants were refused entry to Canada in 1914.
SAT SEP 16 2006
8:45 Narmada: A Valley Rises
Ali Kazimi in Person. Taking sides, not just photographs, this
documentary follows indigenous protests against India's notorious
Narmada Valley dam project. With short Documenting Dissent.
PFA Theater: 2575 Bancroft Way at Bowditch, Berkeley, CA
Info: (510) 642-1124 Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa
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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
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necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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