SACW | Sept. 28-29, 2006 | Balochistan; Sri Lanka on the edge; India: Malegaon, Bhopal

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | September 28-29, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2294

[1]  Pakistan: Balochistan geopolitics and Akbar Bugti - Parts I and 
II (Nafisa Shah)
[2]  Sri Lanka: Change Ground Situation to Correspond to Peaceful 
Intentions (NPC)
[3]  India: Malegaon blasts investigation - A Litmus Test of 
Impartiality (Praful Bidwai)
[4]  India: Fumigating Bhopal (Harsh Mander)
[5]  Book announcement: Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms, 
and Genocide in Modern India by Paul R. Brass
[6] Upcoming Events: 
(i) Protest against burning of the works of Dr. B R Ambedkar at 
AIIMS, (New Delhi, 29 September)
(ii) Gallerie launch at frankfurt book fair (October 6, 2006)
(iii) Programme Details - National Youth Convention (New Delhi, 5-8 
October, 2006)
____


[1] 


The News International
September 26, 2006

BALOCHISTAN GEOPOLITICS AND AKBAR BUGTI - Part I

by Nafisa Shah

The killing of Nawab Bugti by Pakistan's 'commando regime' has sent 
shockwaves across the country and has reinforced Baloch nationalism 
like never before. However, nationalism, insurgencies, militancy and 
guerrilla warfare, which has acquired a chronic historic persistence 
in this region, is inextricably linked with the geopolitical history 
of this antique land. Perhaps more than anything else, Bugti 
certainly was not the first victim of the geopolitics that is driven 
by cut-throat capitalist competitions and the world powers' 
alternating interests.

Balochistan, the province, comprises forty-three per cent of 
Pakistan's land mass, and a 770 km coastline, but only makes up five 
per cent of the country's population. These five per cent people are 
perhaps also sitting on the wealthiest land mass in the country.

However, these people are no ordinary people. They are the Baloch. 
The mythological and much romanticised narrative of this region 
reinforces the power of the tribesmen and their legendary armour, 
their horses and their fighting prowess. The Baloch, whose origins 
are considered Semitic, came in a caravan from Aleppo in Syria -- 
pushed out perhaps by invasions and conflicts, or geographic 
necessities. Then a mythico-historical war between two brothers 
Gwaram and Mir Chakar went on for a hundred years, leading to a vast 
diaspora of the Balochi nation across the lands of Sindh, Punjab, and 
north in the Pushtoon belt. Thus the narratives of their very making, 
their diasporas, their tribal structures, their turbans, beards and 
swords sustains and feeds into their everlasting war.

However, Baloch nationalism, more than anything else, is a by-product 
of imperial and neo-imperial capitalist struggles in the context of a 
weak and ineffective state. In the 56 years of Pakistan, four 
insurgencies have been suppressed leading to many executions, 
arrests, disappearances and massacres. A history of the area also 
shows a contested space in the 19th century imperial designs resisted 
frantically by the tribesmen.

The Great Game was a phrase coined by Rudyard Kipling in the empire 
building competition between Tsarist Russia, Victorian England and 
the Ottoman Empire for the control of trade routes in northern India 
in the nineteenth century. To counteract Persian and Russian designs 
the British empire-makers constructed this area as a frontier of 
tribes and landscapes through which they would contain the designs of 
their rivals.

Sovereignty and concentration of power in Balochistan can be traced 
to the seventeenth century Khanate of Kalat, a Brahui speaking 
region. Even though the Kalat chiefs, and the Ahmedzais, maintained 
their dynastic hold for nearly three centuries, very frequently the 
region would break out in rebellion. The contests of power between 
the three empires were often tested on the Khanate of Kalat who 
always depended on external powers to hold them together. The Khanate 
was never a complete state unto its own and its sovereignty was 
always subject to protection either from the kingdoms in Delhi or the 
rulers in Afghanistan or Persia.

The British, in the 19th century, were intensely impressed by what 
they called, the 'freebooter' tribes, who maintained their 
independence, with their incessant skills to attack, raid and 
plunder. The Marri and the Bugti tribes were constructed in the 
British imagination as the fiercest of them all. The perception of 
the exaggerated danger of the Balochi 'freebooter' led the British to 
organise campaigns for decades to suppress their rebellions by 
carrying out physical massacres; breaking their spatial structures by 
capturing their chiefs; shifting the tribes into different 
territories; and replacing their material culture of mares and 
matchlocks with ploughs and hoes.

The Bugtis, for instance, were decreed as enemies of the British, but 
also as offenders and outlaws, and a proclamation was announced in 
1846 where a reward of Rs10 was given to anyone who captured a Bugti. 
Under Colonel Mereweather, in October 1847, about five hundred and 
sixty Bugtis were killed by the British troops, and in this fight 
with the 'dangerous, turbulent hill tribes' only one British soldier 
lost his life. In the aftermath of this campaign, Mereweather is 
praised extensively, his action described as an act of gallantry and 
skill, the "most perfectly successful affair ever witnessed or heard 
of", echoing today's congratulatory posture of the Pakistani army 
after killing Nawab Bugti and his men.

However, parallel to the aggressive military posture was a 
'civilising' one. Other 'plundering and raiding' tribes, such as the 
Jakhranis and Domkis were moved out from the area and settled in 
Sindh and therefore subdued. Sporadically under Robert Sandamen's 
frontier policy the Marri and the Bugti tribesmen were temporarily 
contained by the 'humane' indirect rule, which allowed the Marris and 
Bugtis their independence in lieu of certain concessions or 
cooperation with the British. Hence, for one and a half centuries, 
the British had to constantly use diplomacy and force, but never 
entirely succeeded in containing tribal incursions.

Balochistan is yet a border country and a frontier region for the 
Pakistani metropolis. Frontiers have more often than not porous 
borders and economic and social ties with their alien neighbours. 
It's vast land area, which borders with Iran and Afghanistan, has 
made it a politically and socially scattered area where people are 
among the poorest and the most backward in Pakistan. The sparse and 
often nomadic and pastoral populations traverse borders and have 
defied boundaries earlier in the movement of large herds, and now 
weapons, drugs, and goods.

Frontier tribes are still suspicious of foreigners, and while these 
frontiers are often primary suppliers of raw materials to the rest of 
the country, they still lag behind in services.

The Baloch are intrinsically a herding people. Therefore it is a 
contradiction that the Baloch should be concerned with nationalism or 
identity. However, pastoral people are considered 'natural' fighters. 
Their mobility contributes to their resilience and their contest for 
scarce resources, for protection of their herds, and in fragile lands 
makes them always ready for a competition for turf.

Ironically the state of Pakistan has reinforced the tribal identity 
and structure of Balochistan by refusing to integrate it into the 
metropolis on the terms of the Balochis. The Bugti and Marri tribes, 
like 200 years ago, hold their own. But they are also projected as 
fearsome, war-like, defiant, and dangerous by the military 
establishment rather like their colonial predecessors.

Pakistani Balochistan however is not an ordinary borderland. It is 
simply not marginalised on the basis of its geographical remoteness. 
It is also marginalised because of its wealth. It is estimated that 
the Balochis are sitting on 24 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 
and 6 billion barrels of oil, besides vast reserves of copper, zinc, 
antimony, and chromites in the Chaghai district at Saindak. It is 
ironical that an area subject to seasonal droughts and extreme water 
shortages should be hiding not only treasures in its midst but also 
become a geographic passage for global capitalist interests. The 
competition and control of energy resources and energy routes, will, 
more than any other factor, reshape perhaps both the map of the 
region and its socio-political landscape.

The first claimant to Baloch resources is the state of Pakistan, 
which considers this area, its hinterland for development of the 
metropolitan Pakistan. A predatory centre has been cannibalising 
Balochistan's resources with little or no return in an 
institutionalized way, to the people of the area. Second, it has over 
the years become a centre of free market competitions between China, 
and the US, on the one hand, and to a lesser extent, Iran and India.

The new dimension to the geopolitics is now complicated by the 
Balochi borderlands seated between the new oil and gas wealthy 
central Asian states and the new markets in Asia Pacific with its 
brand new deep seaport, Gwadar. Politically its geographical location 
neighbouring Iran, has enhanced its importance for the US. Its vast 
border with Afghanistan makes Balochistan a key player in terror and 
war-against-terror politics. India extends itself through Afghanistan 
which has strategically come together for their individual interests.

(To be continued)

The writer is a former journalist and district nazim of Khairpur.

o o o

The News International
September 27, 2006

BALOCHISTAN GEOPOLITICS - Part II

by Nafisa Shah

Much of the nineties was spent by global oil companies trying to 
design how to provide accessible markets to the newly exposed Central 
Asian Republics. Gas resources in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, 
Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are estimated to equal 236 trillion cubic 
feet, and oil resources comprise more than 60 billion barrels of oil. 
This oil must reach the markets. The shortest route to the markets in 
the Asia Pacific region, as you would have guessed by now, is first 
through Iran and then Afghanistan and Balochistan.

Several proposals of oil and gas routes are afloat. One of the 
proposed pipelines is to begin from Gharzhou, in northern 
Turkmenistan, and extend southeastern through Afghanistan, to an 
export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast along 
the Arabian Sea. Another gas pipeline linking Turkmenistan's vast 
natural gas reserves in Daulatabad Field with markets in Pakistan and 
later India. Similar routes are drawn across Iran, China, and 
Afghanistan. Historical imaginations of the nineteenth century are 
being re-invoked by these companies. The drooling oil companies are 
terming all of these networks of pipelines the new Silk roads while 
the politics of accessing oil and gas routes from Central Asia to the 
markets is the New Great Game. The 'spheres of influence' terminology 
in vogue then in the Great Game is being re-invoked as well by these 
neo-imperial projects.

China too is interested in having its share in the new Silk roads. 
Shanghai Five has brought together China, and the Central Asian 
republics, primarily to counter the US influence in Central Asia. 
China has not only initiated the longest gas pipeline in the world to 
take central Asian oil to Xingzian and then Shanghai, it has also 
succeeded in accessing Balochistan's Gwadar.

The first phase of the much coveted billion dollar strategically 
located Port of Gwadar has been completed, with the Chinese 
contributing 200 billion dollars. The gas pipeline from Central Asia 
will pass from here, and this will be the outlet to the land corridor 
between South Asia and Central Asia. The Chinese have been subject to 
attacks by the Baloch insurgents who see their interest in the port 
as a threat to their survival. In May 2003, four Chinese engineers 
were killed in Gwadar area.

Once completed, the Gwadar port will rank among the world's largest 
deep-seaports. To connect western China with Central Asia by land 
routes, Pakistan is working on a network of road links to Afghanistan 
from its border town of Chaman in Balochistan to Qandahar. In the 
northwest, it is building similar road links like the recently 
completed road to Torkham, to Jalalabad, and eventually the Gwadar 
port will be accessible for Chinese imports and exports through 
overland links that will stretch to and from the Karakoram Highway in 
Pakistan's Northern Areas that border China's Muslim-majority 
Autonomous Region of Xingjian. In addition, the port will have a 
modern air defence unit, a garrison, and a first-rate international 
airport capable of handling airbus service.

India's objectives are to impede Pakistan's strategic depth in 
Balochistan, and to impede China from projecting its power in the 
Arabian Sea, which India wants to have as its exclusive domain, and 
also at the same time, to prevent Pakistan from offering safe transit 
routes to the Central Asian Republics, so that they opt for the 
alternative Afghanistan-Iran route in which India is a major 
investor. Afghanistan and India are the only two countries that 
condemned the killing of the Baloch chief. Pakistan sees the hand of 
India in instigating local insurgency through Afghanistan.

It is interesting to note a tit for tat response on each of these 
ventures. When the Chinese began the Gwadar port, the Indians began 
to help Iranians construct the Chabahar port next door. The Chabahar 
port ironically also located in the Baloch part of Iran, will be 
accessible for Indian imports and exports, with road links to 
Afghanistan and Central Asia. India is helping build a 200-kilometre 
road that will connect Chabahar with Afghanistan. And in response to 
the Chinese presence in Pakistan, the Indians are now trying to 
accomplish an air base in Tajikistan making India the fourth power 
after Russia, the US and Germany to have a base in Central Asia. 
Moreover, the Indians have secured diplomatic missions in the South 
of Afghanistan in Kandahar, which is dangerously close to the Baloch 
border.

Meanwhile, the US is the grand surveyor. While it keeps speaking of a 
unified and strong Pakistan it would definitely like to limit Chinese 
activity. It would also like to peep into Iran as a regular exercise. 
Pakistan offered the US exclusive access to two of its critical 
airbases in Jacobabad (Sindh) and Pasni (Balochistan) during the US 
invasion of Afghanistan.

So while the US is making this 'the sphere of influence', India is 
encircling Pakistan, and Pakistan is trying to get its circle back, 
while China is making its own arcs, exploiting the Central Asian and 
Pakistani resources and encircling India, while the Indians are 
responding by counter circling China. All are attempting to make new 
Silk routes and playing new games.

For Pakistan offering Balochistan as the corridor means vast transit 
earnings, besides enormous geopolitical levers to its advantage. More 
than forty thousand ground troops; major intelligence operations; air 
bases in Pasni, Quetta, Ormara and Gwadar; a naval base in Ormara and 
Gwadar; and cantonments all over the place with new ones coming up in 
Sui, Kohlu and Gwadar are just a few examples. This militocracy 
protects and enables the intense colonisation which is a 
multinational project, involving the US and the Chinese whose 
interests are both establishment of economic and military bases vis a 
vis India and Iran respectively, but also to expand their corporate 
empires. Pakistan is courting all and everyone, and is equally 
foreign and alien to the Baloch.

It is in this context that the colonisation and militarisation of 
Balochistan must be seen; and in response to that, a people 
struggling to give meaning to their very histories, their future and 
their survival. The Baloch are swiftly becoming irrelevant in these 
back to back competitions between world powers, the new race for 
bases, for gas and oil routes, for oil and gas explorations, for 
copper mining and gold mining, and are being crushed in Pakistan's 
presentation of Balochistan as a territory up for grabs for 
commercial exploitation.

The military reasserts its political power by giving the US all the 
space to establish its bases, while at the same time, offering the 
land of the Baloch to China to establish their first warm-water 
foothold in the Indian Ocean. The military then must always clear the 
debris of nationalisms and insurgencies through their short-term 
brute force. It is then, no wonder that the targets of the Baloch are 
the intrusive ugly pipelines, the grid stations, the roads, the port, 
the army men, all seen as serving other people and other places. And 
perhaps, the centre can expect everlasting fighting as a mode of the 
area, because of the geographic access to vanishing, consolidating 
and remerging, that this vast hilly territory with labyrinths of 
mountain passes and obstructions allows.

Eventually, for the Baloch, as I see it, the emergence of nationalism 
is trying to put a name to a struggle that is between their sheer 
relevance and their becoming nothing. And in this do or die game, 
scapegoats like Mehrab Khan, Nauroz Khan, and Nawab Akbar will be 
presented by the Baloch, and destroyed by the colonial masters in 
this everlasting and solitary battle for survival of the Baloch, 
against vast multiple empire making projects.

(Concluded)

The writer is a former journalist and district nazim of Khairpur.


_____


[2] 


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

28.09.06

Media Release

CHANGE GROUND SITUATION TO CORRESPOND TO PEACEFUL INTENTIONS

During his visit to New York to take part in the UN General Assembly 
meeting earlier this month, President Mahinda Rajapaksa stated that 
government was willing to resume peace talks with the LTTE providing 
they commit themselves to cease using violence. The President also 
said he was prepared to be flexible on political positions and would 
continue to seek the facilitation of Norway and the international 
community in the conflict resolution process. Now LTTE leader 
Velupillai Pirapaharan has given his commitment to negotiations with 
the government in a message through the Norwegian facilitators. Taken 
together with the UNP-government negotiations on a politically 
bipartisan working together on the ethnic conflict and other national 
issues, these could constitute propitious signs for the future.

However, the reality on the ground continues to be disturbingly 
different. For the past two months there has been a condition of 
armed hostilities between the government and LTTE in different parts 
of the north east. Indeed the ground situation is so abysmal it has 
prompted the head of the international ceasefire monitoring mission 
in Sri Lanka, Major General Lars Johan Solvberg to describe the 
nature of the present violence as being shocking. The fear of people 
in the north east is such that threatening leaflets distributed in 
Muttur, purporting to be from the LTTE, have caused many amongst the 
largely Muslim population to flee. Now it is reported that those same 
people have been compelled to return to Muttur by the security forces 
and are also being denied relief rations unless they return to 
Muttur. These are actions that are in violation of all norms of 
international humanitarian conduct.

It is tragic that large masses of innocent people should become 
victims of ruthless military and political strategies. The National 
Peace Council calls on the government and LTTE to implement 
international human rights and humanitarian standards on the ground 
for their respective statements to become more meaningful. There 
should be credible mechanisms established with an international 
presence to ensure that abuses such as political killings, 
abductions, restriction of essential supplies, child recruitment, and 
so on, do not continue with impunity.  In addition to positive 
statements that obtain international recognition, there also needs to 
be genuine commitment to negotiate so that the non-implementation of 
promises made at the Geneva talks of February 2006 and the withdrawal 
from talks even before they began in Oslo in June 2006, do not repeat 
themselves. 


Executive Director
On behalf of the Governing Council

_____


[3]

Frontline
Sep. 23-Oct. 06, 2006

A LITMUS TEST OF IMPARTIALITY

by Praful Bidwai

Fairness of the investigations into the Malegaon blasts will decide 
whether the Indian state can re-establish its secular credentials and 
win Muslim hearts.

THE Malegaon bomb attacks have triggered a peculiar contest within 
the Indian security establishment, which is centred on how to deny 
the obvious. The obvious in this case is the specific and successful 
targeting of Muslims in significant-scale violence for the first time 
in India, which raises uncomfortable questions about the dominant 
official view or paradigm of terrorism and counter-terrorism. This 
paradigm holds that terrorism in this country is essentially inspired 
by Islamic fundamentalism and usually assisted by Pakistani secret 
agencies.

The dominant view cannot countenance the possibility that Hindutva 
militants belonging to extremist outfits like the Bajrang Dal or 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad might be the culprits in Malegaon. So it 
minimises, as it must, vital clues and pointers - including the 
timing of the explosions after Friday prayers in a crowded mosque, 
during the Shab-e-Barat observances, which draw huge numbers of 
pilgrims and beggars into Malegaon; the discovery of bicycles with 
Hindu names painted on them, on which the bombs were planted; a local 
history of Hindu-Muslim tension and intense communal polarisation; 
and, above all, the involvement of Bajrang Dal extremists in bomb 
fabrication efforts in the Marathwada region, which is adjacent to 
Malegaon and in many ways similar to the North Maharashtra area in 
which the town is itself located.

Equally, the dominant paradigm must resort to increasingly convoluted 
explanations: Islamists executed the Malegaon attacks to provoke a 
violent reaction and widen the communal divide so as to destabilise 
India; their general motive is always to spread randomly "mayhem, 
confusion and fear"; Islamist terrorists have never had any 
compunctions about killing large numbers of other Muslims, however 
devout, especially if they do not follow rigid Wahhabi Islam; jehadi 
terrorists need have no location-specific motive; they are forever 
willing to kill, even commit suicide, to advance their fanatical 
cause; they are profoundly irrational, or downright mad, and blinded 
by hatred; they commit violence, because, well, they are terrorists...

None of this is very convincing. Indeed, the more convoluted the 
explanation, the less plausible it sounds. Evidence from the world 
over suggests that jehadi violence as a rule is not "mad" or random. 
It follows a certain (perverse) rationality. It aims to send a 
"message" about the vulnerability of a powerful adversary (as 
happened on 9/11) or register a protest (against the Spanish 
government's pro-U.S. Iraq policy, as with the 2004 Madrid bombings) 
or avenge an injustice (Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay), etc.

Even suicide bombers do not act mindlessly or randomly. Chicago 
University researcher Robert Pape recently looked for analysed 
patterns in 462 cases of "successful" suicide attacks in his book 
Dying to Win. He found that about 95 per cent of the attacks were 
"demand-driven" and not driven by the "supply" of religious fanatics. 
Most were aimed at foreign occupation forces. Southern Lebanon 
witnessed a spate of suicide attacks during the post-1982 Israeli 
occupation, but these stopped after Israel withdrew. Iraq had no 
suicide attacks until the U.S. invasion of 2003. Since then, fidayeen 
attacks have become routine. There is no organic link between suicide 
bombings and Islam. The non-Islamic LTTE is the undisputed global 
leader in suicide bombings.

The only piece of evidence that favours the dominant view on Malegaon 
is the alleged discovery of RDX high explosive at the site. This too 
is a weak piece of evidence and one contested by the Union Home 
Secretary, no less. Only one of the three forensic laboratories that 
examined the explosives detected in Malegaon says they contain RDX. 
But even assuming that RDX was used, it hardly proves that the 
blasts' executors were jehadis aided by a Pakistani agency. Going by 
several reports quoting Intelligence Bureau sources, RDX is no longer 
all that rare or hard to procure domestically.

Hindutva fanaticism

In any case, we should know better than to rely on purely 
technology-based evidence, when all the material circumstances and 
facts point in the opposite direction. Sound political judgment must 
supplement forensic evidence. And that judgment tells us that 
Hindutva fanatics can be as capable of causing terrorist violence and 
mayhem as jehadis.

Ever since the Ayodhya mobilisation in the mid-1980s, Hindutva 
fanaticism has left a trail of blood through numerous States and 
cities, Mumbai in 1992 and Gujarat in 2002 being the two ghastliest 
episodes. The number of people killed in each of these, roughly 2000, 
greatly exceeds the casualties in any terrorist bombing in this 
country.

Close to Malegaon, both literally and figuratively, lie Nanded, 
Parbhani, Purna and Jalna, all in Marathwada, which have over the 
past three-and-a-half years witnessed bomb attacks (or preparations 
for attacks) targeted at Muslims and specifically at mosques. The 
culprits in each case appear to be Hindutva fanatics. There is 
clinching evidence of this in Nanded, where two Bajrang Dal activists 
Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse were killed on April 6 while 
attempting to fabricate a bomb along with fellow-extremists Rahul 
Pande, Yogesh Deshpande, Maruti Wagh and Gururaj Tupttewar.

The incident occurred in the house of a known RSS activist and 
Bajrang Dal-VHP member. It was investigated by the Secular Citizens' 
Forum and People's Union of Civil Liberties, Nagpur. There is 
convincing photographic evidence to show that the Bajrang Dal was 
indeed running a bomb-fabrication operation. Some of the pictures 
also showed that the local police tried to cover up Bajrang Dal-VHP 
involvement by planting fire-crackers - to suggest that the blast was 
caused by crackers, not bombs - and false beards.

These findings were corroborated by K.P. Raghuvanshi, head of 
Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad. In an interview to Communalism 
Combat (June 2006), he described the Nanded bomb-fabrication as a 
"terrorist act" by "Hindus": "It is clear that these bombs were not 
being manufactured for a puja. They were being manufactured for 
unlawful ends to wreak violence through terror."

Besides their targets - and a similar culture and history of communal 
polarisation - Nanded has something in common with Malegaon: in both 
cases, fake beards and skullcaps of the kind used by Muslims during 
prayers had been planted. None of this conclusively proves that 
Hindutva fanatics were responsible for Malegaon, but it does make a 
powerful case for pursuing that line of investigation. The 
Maharashtra government seems to be dragging its feet on this, 
probably encouraged by a section of the security establishment whose 
Islamophobic prejudices were discussed in this Column (September 8, 
2006).

It is of the utmost importance that the police investigate the 
Malegaon incident and the events leading up to it with scrupulous 
objectivity and impartiality and make full public disclosure of all 
relevant facts after completing the investigation. Any slip on their 
part will generate suspicion that they are shielding a particular 
group out of communal prejudice.

The Malegaon police force is a classic embodiment of 
"institutionalised communalism", which has repeatedly clashed with 
and punished Muslims. Three days after the bombings, it gratuitously 
got into a confrontation with a Muslim gathering and opened fire. It 
must be restrained and its criminal investigations must be 
supplemented with the very best expertise available in the country 
from among officers with proven secular credentials.

The mood among Maharashtra's Muslims is one of sullenness, 
despondency and resentment at their harassment by the police. Their 
pervasive alienation is evident through numerous reports (for 
instance, Seema Chishti's series in The Indian Express, September 
3-7). The Pope's offensive remarks about Islam have further inflamed 
passions and increased this alienation. The rolling judgment on the 
Mumbai 1993 bombings, now in progress, has also served as a cruel 
reminder that the perpetrators of incidents that formed their 
immediate backdrop - the pogrom of Muslims in December 1992-January 
1993 in Mumbai - are yet to be prosecuted.

The People's Tribunal on the Bombay Violence, headed by Justices Daud 
and Suresh, estimated that 2,000 were killed during the pogrom. The 
Srikrishna Commission inquired into the violence and recommended the 
prosecution of numerous individuals. This has not happened.

This default, and many other injustices and iniquities reflected in 
the exclusion of Muslims and the discrimination against them, will 
have terrible consequences. Today, Malegaon has become an 
all-important litmus test. The Indian state must begin to 
decommunalise its counter-terrorism strategy and reaffirm secularism 
and pluralism. It must win back the confidence of the Muslim 
community by proving its secular credentials. Malegaon is the place 
to do it.

_____


[4]

Hindustan Times
September 28, 2006

FUMIGATING BHOPAL

by Harsh Mander

Late one evening, a young man of 34 was found hanging from the 
ceiling of his home in Bhopal. His name was Sunil Verma, the date, 
July 26, 2006. More than 21 years earlier, he had lost his parents 
and five siblings in the gas massacre on December 2, 1984.

That December night, from the adjacent Union Carbide Corporation 
pesticide factory in Bhopal, a lethal combination of methyl 
isocyanate, hydrogen cyanide, mono methylamine and carbon monoxide 
was unleashed on this sleeping city of a million unsuspecting 
residents. One of the first localities into which the gas spewed was 
JP Nagar, where Sunil and his family were sleeping. Roused, they 
found themselves gasping for breath, their eyes burning as if they 
were on fire. Coughing and screaming, they ran out of their homes, 
and were swept away by a surging human torrent.

Sunil, then 12 years old, tightly held the hand of his younger 
sister, Mamata, as he ran desperately. Lost in the dense clouds of 
gas, he got separated from the rest of his family. Suddenly, even 
Mamata's hand was wrenched out of his. Screaming people surged from 
all sides, some fell and were crushed, others tore off their clothes, 
yet others were vomiting uncontrollably.

Sunil ran, gasping for his life, his eyes afire, until he could make 
out the phantom form of a matador van. He pushed his way inside, and 
survived. His relatives told him later that his mother had died 
holding her eight-month-old infant son, Sanjay, who miraculously 
survived. Their father had returned to their hut the next morning. On 
the night of the gas leak, he had locked the hut before they ran. 
When he opened the door on his return the next morning, he found the 
dead body of one of his sons, Santosh, who had accidentally been left 
behind in the panic. Shortly after, their father died, perhaps of the 
gas, or may be of a broken heart.

Of his seven brothers and sisters, only the baby, Sanjay, and Mamata, 
whose hand had been wrenched from Sunil's, were saved. Sunil suddenly 
found himself almost completely alone in the world, responsible for 
looking after his eight-month-old brother and his younger sister. The 
boy decided not to go back to school, and instead devote himself 
entirely to his brother and sister, whom he got admitted into an SOS 
village.

In the early years, the survivors lived on relief. The efforts of the 
government to rebuild their livelihoods ended as sad and expensive 
failures. The Madhya Pradesh government spent Rs 700 million for this 
purpose, which succeeded in creating long-term livelihoods for little 
more than 80 women.

Meanwhile, unknown to Sunil and other residents of JP Nagar, as they 
struggled for livelihoods and ways to stem their failing health, a 
curious legal battle was being fought on their behalf in the courts 
of India and the US. The Indian government, through the Bhopal Gas 
Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act of March 1985, arrogated to 
itself exclusive powers to represent the victims in the civil 
litigation against Union Carbide. On behalf of the victims, the 
Indian government filed a suit for compensation of more than $ 3 
billion in the federal court of the southern district of New York.

In the search for a star witness in New York courts, government 
officials settled for Sunil, because he was a child who had lost much 
of his family in the tragedy. He was flown to the US with the Indian 
team. In court, Sunil recounted his story in fluent Hindi, and his 
testimony was translated for the judge.

He learnt later that the case was returned in May 1986 to the Indian 
courts on grounds of 'forum non-convenience', under the condition 
that Union Carbide would submit to their jurisdiction. During the 
proceedings of the Bhopal district court, Union Carbide was directed 
to pay an interim relief of Rs 3,500 million so that the delay in the 
adjudication of the case would not adversely affect the claimants.

However, Union Carbide refused to pay this sum and its appeal against 
this decision reached the Indian Supreme Court. On February 14, 1989, 
in a sudden departure from the matter of interim relief, the Supreme 
Court passed an order approving the settlement that had been reached 
between the Government of India and Union Carbide, without the 
knowledge of the claimants of Bhopal. According to the terms of the 
settlement, in exchange for payment of $ 470 million, the corporation 
was to be absolved of all liabilities. All criminal cases against it 
and its officials were to be dropped, and the Indian government was 
to defend the corporation in the event of future suits.

The settlement sum, nearly one-seventh of the damages initially 
claimed by the government, was not only far below international 
standards but was even lower than the modest standards set by the 
Indian Railways for railway accidents. The Supreme Court revised its 
judgment on October 3, 1991, upholding the settlement amount paid by 
Union Carbide but directing the Indian government to make good any 
shortfall.

Over time, it became increasingly difficult for Sunil to return to 
his empty house. It was too full of memories. His brother and sister 
were growing up in the SOS village. In 1991, he moved in with leading 
activist and long-term friend Sathyanath Sarangi.

A year later, in 1992, the state government built a 'widows' colony'. 
Houses were allotted by lottery to widows and orphans who had 
survived the gas tragedy, and Sunil qualified. He then moved into 
this colony, where he lived until his death.

In 1994, his sister turned 18, beyond the protection offered by the 
SOS village in Bhopal. Sunil decided to get both his sister and 
brother discharged from the SOS village and bring them over to live 
with him. Their presence filled a little bit the accumulated 
loneliness that had festered inside his soul all these years. But 
perhaps they returned too late.

As time passed, Sunil became more and more withdrawn and 
uncommunicative. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he found something 
slowly cracking up within him. He was frequently depressed, and 
became obsessed with thoughts of suicide. He heard voices call out to 
him. He would not stir out of his home, would not wash himself or 
talk to people. There were times when he ran out of the house without 
clothes, feverishly roaming the streets night and day, running miles 
along the railway track, deep into the forest.

For a decade prior to his passing away, Sunil has been on medication 
for his mental illness. He refused to consider marriage for himself, 
firm in his resolve to first ensure a good future for those he had 
taken under his care almost 22 years earlier. In time, he got his 
sister Mamata married to an electrician, and his brother educated in 
an English-medium school. Today he is a graduate. Before Sunil died, 
he was in search of a suitable bride for his brother.

He died wearing a T-shirt declaring 'No More Bhopals'. At the time he 
took his life, no one had been punished for the crimes of the Bhopal 
massacre. With him died, perhaps, even the hope for justice.

Harsh Mander is the convenor of Aman Biradari, a people's campaign 
for secularism, peace and justice.

_____


[5] 

New title from Three Essays Collective:
(available from September 21)

FORMS OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE:
Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide in Modern India
by *Paul R. Brass*

Contents:

1: On the Study of Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide  
2: The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 
1946-47: Means, Methods, and Purposes
3: The Development of an Institutionalized Riot System in Meerut 
City, 1961 to 1982
4: Collective Violence, Human Rights, and the Politics of Curfew
5: Indian Secularism in Practice  

About the book:

These essays focus on the various forms of collective violence that 
have occurred in India during the past six decades, which include 
riots, pogroms, and genocide. It is argued that these various forms 
of violence must be understood not as spontaneous outbreaks of 
passion, but as productions by organized groups. Moreover, it is also 
evident that government and its agents do not always act to control 
violence, but often engage in or permit gratuitous acts of violence 
against particular groups under the cover of the imperative of 
restoring order, peace, and tranquility. This has certainly been the 
case in numerous incidents of collective violence in India where 
curfew  restrictions have been used for just such purposes. In this 
context, secularism constitutes a countervailing practice, and a set 
of values that are essential to maintain balance in a plural society 
where the organization of intergroup violence is endemic, persistent, 
and deadly.


About the author:

Paul R. Brass is Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science and 
International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He 
has published fifteen books and numerous articles on comparative and 
South Asian politics, ethnic politics, and collective violence.  His 
work has been based on extensive field research in India during many 
visits since 1961.  His most recent books are "The Production of 
Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India" (2003), "Theft of an 
Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence" 
(1997); "Riots and Pogroms" (1996); and "The Politics of India Since 
Independence", 2nd ed. (1994).

xx, 188 pages, includes bibliography, Demy 8vo
2006

ISBN 81-88789-39-9 hb  Rs500 (India); elsewhere $16
ISBN 81-88789-41-0 pb  Rs250 (India); elsewhere $10
(Postage free)

Three Essays Collective
P.O. Box 6
B-957 Palam Vihar
GURGAON (Haryana) 122 017
India
www.threeessays.com

_____


[6]  Upcoming Events

(i)

Protest against burning of the works of Dr. B R Ambedkar at AIIMS on
29 September 2006

To protest against the burning of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar's literature by
doctors of the AIIMS, 15 Dalit organisations plan to hold a
demonstration outside the main gate of AIIMS (opposite the Safdarjang
Hospital gate) at 12 noon on Friday September 29, 2006. The act of
burning demonstrates the fact that even educated doctors can be so
much insolent towards the constituional ideals of social inclusion,
social cohesion and protection of human rights through affirmative
action.

Please consider joining the protest and support the cause of inclusion

Rajni Tilak

___

(ii)

Race, war, peace, earth, woman and now a book about books

 From Gallerie - India's international journal of ideas

announcing the launch of an issue celebrating books

come and join a lively discussion on October 6 at 3pm
in front of 5.0 D917/919 in Hall 5 Ground Floor
Frankfurt Book Fair

sharing his views on why we love books, will be our special guest, 
India's renowned poet and filmmaker, Gulzar.

Also speaking will be esteemed writer and poet Dilip Chitre, and 
cultural theorists, Nancy Adajania, Ranjit Hoskote along with editor 
of Gallerie, Bina Sarkar Ellias

___


(iii)


National Youth Convention, New Delhi, 5-8 October 2006

5TH OCT- DAY 1
2:00-3:00 (Inaugural Session) KN Panikkar, Nandita Das, Rahul Bose, 
Harsh Mander

Performance by: Vidya Shah, Gauhar Raza, School Children

3:00-4.00  Tea Break

4.00-5.00               Introduction of Delegates coordinated by 
Youth Facilitators.
5.00-8:00               Secular Politics in India (Four parallel Sessions)
1. Indian Secularism : Theory and Practice - Mihir Desai, Priti Verma
2. Relevance of Gandhi in Contemporary India- Harsh Mander
3. Legacy of the Freedom Struggle- Rizwan Qaiser
4. Scientific Temper & Obscurantism - Gauhar Raza, Amitabh Pandey
8:00-9:00                Dinner
9.00-11.00  Film Screening followed by discussion

6TH OCT- Day  2
9:00-1:00                Assault on Secular Democracy (Four parallal sessions)
  1. Ayodhya: What is the dispute? What is the solution?  VCD-by KM 
Shrimali and S Irfan Habib
2. Kashmir: What is the dispute? What is the solution? - Gautam Navlakha

  3. Gujarat: Rebuilding Justice and Hope - Rohit Prajapati , Hiren 
Gandhi 4.  Redefining Patriotism  -Apoorvanand

(with a tea break at 10.30)

1.00-2.00               Lunch
2.00- 3.30  Myths & Realities (combined session)
Dr. Ram Puniyani
3.30-4.00               Tea
4.00- 5.30  Myths & Realities (combined session)
Dr. Ram Puniyani

6.00 onwards   Screening of Film
8.00-9.00  Dinner
9.00-11.00             informal interaction/ screening of films/ 
cultural programme by participants

7th OCT-Day 3
9:00-1.00 Inequalities in Our Society
(Four Parallel sessions)
1.      Gender Justice for  all communities - Sheba George
2.      Understanding Caste,  Class and Discrimination -Martin 
Macwan, Prasad Chako
3.Globalisation and Poverty - Jaya Mehta/ Vineet Tiwari
4.Security laws & the situation the North East- Colin Gonsalves/ Harsh Dobhal/

(with a tea break at 11.00)
  1:00-2:00  Lunch
2:00-5.00               Discussion on National Youth Policy- Gagan 
Sethi, Swati Sheshadiri
5.00-5.30   Tea break

7.00-8.30               Unsuni- Performance by Mallika Sarabhai and 
Darpana Academy  -

(  Venue for the performance:  Bluebells International School, 
Kailash, Opposite Lady Shriram College, New Delhi-110048)

8th OCT- Day 4
9:00-10.45              What does it mean to be  an Indian? 
Combined Session - Sohail Hashmi
Tea Break
11.00-1.00
War on Terror: Local,  National,  International -Kamal Mitra 
Chenoy/,/  Siddarth Vardarajan, Praful Bidwai
1:00-2:00                Lunch
2:00-4.00 Future Strategies coordinated by Amit Sengupta and youth 
facilitators)
4.00-7.00  Free time

7.00pm onwards          Peace Concert
  Dhruv Sangari/ Cynide and Out of the Blue
(  Venue for the peace concert: Bluebells International School, 
Kailash, Opposite Lady Shriram College, New Delhi-110048)




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

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