SACW #1 | Oct. 5, 2006 | India: wiping the urban poor out; Communalism: Orissa / Vande Mataram / Police ; Militarisation in India and Pakistan

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Pack #1 | October 5, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2299

[1]  India: Lambs at the Law's Guillotine (Nivedita Menon & Aditya Nigam)
[2]  Indian People's Tribunal releases its report on Communalism in Orissa
[3]  India: Vande Mataram - Dangey Mataram:
- The Song and the Novel (Sumit Sarkar)
[4]  India Public TV to Finally to telecast Anand 
Patwardhan's "Father, Son and Holy War" (8 Oct)
[5]  India: Back to their basics: The Politics of 
Gujarat Freedom of religion bill (Ram Puniyani)
[6]  India: Police and Minorities: Will new 
Policies Help ? (Asghar Ali Engineer)
[7]  India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch, No 164
    
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[1] 

Tehelka
Oct 07 , 2006

LAMBS AT THE LAW'S GUILLOTINE

The new elite desire cities cleansed of the 
'mess' that comes with democracy. The judiciary 
and the media have dutifully beheaded Delhi's poor

Nivedita Menon & Aditya Nigam

In a leading English daily, a congratulatory 
report on "the improved quality of air in Delhi" 
after slum demolitions was jubilantly endorsed a 
day later by a letter from a worthy citizen who 
had noticed this too. But, alas, this is scarcely 
enough. All is not well in 
Delhi-en-route-to-Paris. There is bad news on the 
teledensity front. On the very morning of the day 
that was to see police firing on massive protests 
against the sealing of hundreds of small shops in 
Seelampur, concerned newspaper readers learnt 
from a front-page report in another daily that 
even "strife-torn Sri Lanka" has crossed the 17 
percent "mobile teledensity" mark, while in India 
the teledensity in rural areas is "roughly where 
it was at Independence". Shame.

Two days prior to this, a small news report on 
the inside pages stated that a washerman, Satan 
Singh, allegedly threatened to kill an official 
of the Gurgaon administration at her residence. 
He used to come regularly to her house to collect 
laundry, but had reportedly lost his mental 
balance after his house was demolished in a drive 
conducted by her department a few weeks earlier.

Psychiatrists from institutions like vimhans have 
been reporting an increasing incidence of 
depression "that is pushing several towards 
suicide and extreme reactions". For every one 
person who comes to the notice of vimhans, there 
are hundreds of others who cannot, and about whom 
we will only know when something untoward 
happens. They are the Satan Singhs who will 
increasingly haunt Indian cities of the future, 
leaving the elite nervous about stopping their 
cars at traffic lights for fear of being robbed 
or killed, and forcing them to enjoy their fresh 
air within the confines of high-security, gated 
neighbourhoods.

Far-fetched? But this is precisely the scenario 
in many South American cities since the 1980s, 
and in most big cities of that great dreamland of 
the Indian elite, the USA. According to recent 
studies of Brazilian cities, since the 1970s, 
urban inequality and exclusion in places like Sao 
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have been steadily 
increasing. Forced removal of people from the 
countryside in the 80s contributed to the 
swelling of an already crowded urban periphery. 
Fear of crime has become the overwhelming 
national problem. Terrified middle and upper 
classes have sought refuge in high-security 
buildings. As Gianpaolo Baiocchi has pointed out, 
the most recent, must-have item for wealthy 
elites is a helicopter - one of the growing fleet 
of personal helicopters that crowd Sao Paulo's 
skyline at sunset as businesspeople avoid traffic 
and crime below.

The celebratory party of the Indian elite, 
however, continues, unmindful of the explosive 
situation that is developing all around us. 
Propelled by a judiciary with no accountability 
and a media that is deeply implicated in this new 
game, there has emerged a technocratic elite 
which desires hypermodern cities cleansed of all 
the 'mess' and 'irrationality' that comes with 
democracy and the people.

But who are the hundreds of thousands who need to 
be driven out of the cities? Where do they all 
come from? They come from another India, where 
the cataclysmic crisis of agriculture has 
produced farmers' suicides in alarming numbers, 
while those who do not kill themselves drift into 
the margins of cities. These ghosts haunting 
urban slums are not characters in that 
best-selling story, the one in which the heroes 
are mall-builders, or telephone companies and 
mobile-toting shoppers heroically raising the 
nation's teledensity. They are the tragic heroes 
of another story, one punctuated by police 
firings.

Tribal people displaced by mining interests in 
Kalinga Nagar, Orissa (police firing). Farmers of 
Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, who lost their lands when 
the government acquired them cheaply to be handed 
over to a private company (police firing). 
Fisherfolk thrown out of their livelihood by the 
construction of the Gangavaram port in 
Vishakhapatnam (police firing).

Not to mention the thousands driven off their 
land to destitution by big dams past and future, 
and from lost towns like Harsud, drowned by the 
Indira Sagar dam on the Narmada. All of them 
pouring relentlessly into the cities. Who can 
stop this avalanche of development refugees? The 
judiciary ensures, and sections of the media 
celebrate, the dispossession of Indian citizens 
both from out there (their villages) and right 
here ('our' cities). Principles of justice aside, 
instincts of sheer self-preservation ought to 
tell them this cannot go on forever. (These days, 
when judges condemn the "violation of natural 
justice", they mean that multinational 
corporations, poor things, did not get their say, 
as when the Kerala government cruelly banned 
colas.)

Responding to a plea against slum demolitions 
recently, a Supreme Court judge said sharply - 
humne unko yahan nahin bulaya. We did not invite 
them here. Your Honour, aap hi ne bulaya. Every 
court judgement allowing big dams and other 
mega-development projects, ignoring petitions 
from popular movements, drags thousands to the 
backyard of your air-conditioned homes - which 
you then proceed to clean up mercilessly.

So what about illegal encroachments in Delhi? You 
would have to be particularly stupid (or 
motivated) not to notice where the sealings and 
demolition drives began. Seelampur and Nangla 
Maachhi, not South Extension and Khan Market. Why 
does the court refuse to take cognisance of the 
fact that none of the big land sharks have been 
touched? The choice to start sealings with 
"unauthorised commercial structures" in these 
soft, even "sensitive" (read Muslim-dominated), 
neighbourhoods suggests a deeper nexus operating 
a different levels. The effort is to completely 
obliterate the distinction between actual 
violations by land grabbers and the subsistence 
activity of the poor for whom small-scale 
'commercial activities' from their homes are 
their only means of survival. These are people 
who use one corner of their tiny over-crowded 
houses to do home-based or piece-rated work, or 
to cook different kinds of eatables that they 
then sell on the streets in their rehris and 
khomchas.

Such is the rhetoric of self-righteous anger and 
indignation in sections of the corporate media at 
the violation of thecourt's orders by "commercial 
and business interests" that you might begin to 
wonder whether they have turned Leftist! The 
truth is that they are deliberately whitewashing 
this absolutely crucial difference between land 
sharks on the one hand and the poor on the other, 
clinging precariously to the margins of the city.

The self-delusion of the media and the new 
technocratic elite knows no bounds. They insist 
that these eruptions are the doing of a handful 
of miscreants who are all portrayed as 
encroachers and illegal settlers. One newspaper, 
for instance, discovered only several days after 
the violence and firing that "contrary to popular 
belief, none of the arrested 120 people in 
Seelampur is a trader, they are all daily wage 
labourers". Popular belief? Anyone travelling in 
buses or the metro or autorickshaws in those 
days, or anyone who simply talked to ordinary 
people, would have picked up what everyone was 
saying on the roads of Delhi - garib aur kya 
karenge. From the word go, the popular belief was 
that lakhs of daily wagers, who were losing their 
jobs and habitat, were out on the streets. Boss, 
yeh public sab janti hai. What you self-servingly 
call popular belief is your own delusion.

Here's another "anguished" cry from the heart of 
a high court judge - "They are murdering the 
Delhi Master Plan (DMP)!" So here's a crazy 
suggestion. Just Do It. Murder the thing, and in 
its place let the people live. What is this 
"mixed land use" the courts and the makers of the 
DMP consider the most hideous sin? It simply 
means lively organic neighbourhoods, with local 
markets, local networks, local schools, local 
everything, so that people are not travelling for 
hours every day back and forth, choking the roads 
with ever-increasing traffic. The DMP is out-of- 
date, based on discredited notions of urban 
planning, and promotes unsustainable cityscapes.

Meanwhile, a question for the world's largest 
democracy. Who is sovereign? The will of the 
people? Or the will of the technocratic elite 
accountable to nobody? Governments elected by the 
people are answerable to them alone, and the 
usurpation of this power by a judicial coup 
d'etat is no less troubling than an Army 
takeover. Indeed, every Army coup legitimises 
itself with the same language - order, 
discipline, cleaning up the mess created by 
uncontrolled democracy.

Meanwhile, there was a military coup d'etat in 
Thailand. TV viewers watching the mayhem in 
Seelampur were therefore reassured by the strip 
of text below, continuously reiterating that all 
Indians in Thailand were safe. On the streets of 
Delhi, they certainly were not.

Menon is a Delhi University reader in political 
science, Nigam is a fellow of the Centre for the 
Study of Developing Societies



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[2] 

Communalism Watch
4 Oct 2006
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/10/indian-peoples-tribunal-on-communalism.html

o o o

INDIAN PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL (IPT)
On Environment and Human Rights

4 October 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INDIAN PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL ON COMMUNALISM IN ORISSA 
RELEASES ITS REPORT, REVEALING ALARMING LEVELS OF 
SECTARIAN ORGANISING IN THE STATE.


Bhubaneswar, Orissa, and New Delhi: The Indian 
People's Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa 
[IPTCO] released its report on the role of 
majoritarian communal groups in perpetrating 
communal violence, criminal activity, and human 
rights violations across the state. The Tribunal 
was constituted in response to concerns voiced by 
citizens over the growth of communalism and 
increased aggression throughout Orissa 
particularly since the Gujarat 2002 genocide. In 
June 2005, the IPTCO commissioned its inquiry to 
gage the strength, reach, and impact of 
fundamentalist groups in the state. The report is 
the culmination of nearly twenty months of 
investigative work and research. Lead by Justice 
K.K. Usha (Former Chief Justice of the Kerala 
High Court), the Tribunal was convened by Dr. 
Angana Chatterji (Associate Professor at the 
California Institute of Integral Studies) and 
Advocate Mihir Desai (Mumbai High Court).

The Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and 
Human Rights was constituted by a people's 
mandate in 1993 to investigate into human rights 
violations and cases of environmental 
degradation. The IPT is particularly concerned 
about cases that affect the lives and livelihood 
of a vast majority of urban and rural poor. The 
IPT process endeavours to inquire into the exact 
nature of a problem, and provide a true picture 
by providing a space for all the concerned 
parties to present their views.

Edited by Dr. Chatterji and Advocate Desai, the 
80-page report of the Tribunal on Communalism in 
Orissa is entitled 'Communalism in Orissa'. 
IPTCO's report describes the formidable extent of 
mobilization by the majoritarian communalist 
group of organisations in Orissa. According to 
the report, the Sangh Parivar group of Hindutva, 
Hindu supremacist, organisations has a visible 
presence in twenty-five of thirty districts in 
Orissa. The Sangh Parivar's cadre in Orissa 
currently numbers several million, and 
constitutes the largest voluntary effort in the 
state.

Justice Usha said: "As elsewhere in India, these 
groups legitimise their actions against 
minorities by invoking specific and fabricated 
threats to Hindus from Muslims and Christians".

Dr. Chatterji stated: "In Orissa, the Sangh 
Parivar has successfully established centres at 
every level of civic life, ranging from villages 
to cities. The Sangh Parivar operates through 
thirty-five primary organizations, including 
ideological, service, and charitable 
institutions, militant and educational groups, 
trade unions and student unions, political and 
women's organizations".

Advocate Desai stated: "IPTCO's findings reveal 
that majoritarian communal organizations have 
consolidated their power, using violence to 
target women, religious and sexual minorities, 
along with disenfranchised caste, class, ethnic, 
and other social groups".

The Tribunal's report documents in considerable 
detail how the cadre of majoritarian communal 
organisations is recruited and indoctrinated in 
hatred and violence against other communities 
that it has defined as inherently "inferior". Of 
particular concern, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak 
Sangh (RSS) has set up developmental centres 
across the state, establishing training camps 
where military exercises are performed as public 
display, as well as a network of educational 
institutions promoting right-wing ideologies. 
Prioritizing areas where the government has 
failed to provide functioning public schools, 
these groups have capitalised on the acute desire 
for accessible state institutions and 
accountability among the populace. This cadre, 
according to the IPTCO report, uses coercion and 
force to promote Hindu supremacy and hegemony. 
Dr. Chatterji added: "Forcible conversions to 
dominant Hinduism, social and economic boycotts, 
tonsuring, physical intimidation and violence, 
arson, and even murder are the weapons that Sangh 
Parivar cadre wields to intimidate and target 
disenfranchised groups and religious minorities 
such as Adivasis, Dalits, Christians, and 
Muslims".

Given the dire situation in the state, the IPTCO 
recommends that the Government of India and 
Government of Orissa treat communalism in the 
state as an emergency and accord it immediate 
attention to prevent further violations and 
injustices.

Justice Usha added: "IPTCO understands its 
mandate to investigate communalism as being a 
constitutional one, delineated in Article 51A, 
Clause E which specifies the fundamental 
responsibilities of citizens". Article 51A, 
Clause E states that: "to promote harmony and the 
spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the 
people of India transcending religious, 
linguistic and regional or sectional diversities" 
and "to renounce practices derogatory to the 
dignity of women" (IPTCO, pages 3). This 
obligation, their report notes, is reinforced by 
the Indian Penal Code-specifically provisions in 
Section 152A, 153B, 295-298, and 505-which 
prescribe criminal prosecution for persons 
promoting enmity on sectarian or economic 
grounds, who are, thus, undermining national 
integration. Indeed, the report warns that if the 
communalisation of Orissa is "indicative of the 
future of the nation, then the signs are truly 
ominous for India's democratic future" (IPTCO, 
pages 70).

Advocate Desai stated: "In addition to 
documenting communalism's reach in Orissa, IPTCO 
was launched as an injunctive mechanism to help 
formulate remedial and preventive action for 
human rights abuses in the future". The primary 
investigations consisted of meeting with persons 
and communities, targeted by majoritarian 
communal groups and those who have suffered abuse 
in the context of majoritarian communalism such 
as public lynching, rape, tonsuring, economic 
boycotts, segregation and discrimination. These 
meetings were held across Orissa in the Bhadrak 
District, Jagatsinghpur District, Keonjhar 
District, Phulbani District, and Bhubaneswar, and 
included, in addition to Justice Usha, Dr. 
Chatterji, and Advocate Desai, Dr. Asha Hans 
(former Professor at Utkal University), Ms. 
Lalita Missal (National Alliance of Women, Orissa 
chapter), Dr. Ram Puniyani (Ekta, Committee for 
Communal Amity), and scholar-activists Dr. 
Shaheen Nilofer and Mr. Sudhir Pattnaik. The 
Tribunal also interviewed members of the state 
government and other state agencies, opposition 
leaders, police and political parties, 
individuals associated with educational 
institutions, non-governmental organizations, 
Dalit and Adivasi leaders, rights groups, 
activists, academics, journalists, and local 
religious leaders from Christian, Muslim, Hindu 
groups, as well as communal groups. IPTCO culled 
its evidence from a variety of sources including 
official documents, depositions, affidavits, 
signed statements, visual documentation, sworn 
personal and group testimonies, and expert 
witnesses. Claims by individuals and groups were 
scrutinized by the Tribunal and corroborated 
through other sources such as conducting 
additional interviews and securing further 
documentary evidence.

The Tribunal's report delineates recommendations 
for procedures and mechanisms to determine state 
and collective responsibility and accountability. 
Some of the general recommendations include:
1.     A call for the Central Bureau of 
Investigation to investigate the activities of 
the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and 
RSS under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) 
Act, 1967.
2.     To establish a review panel appointed by 
the Government of Orissa, in consultation with 
the National Human Rights Commission, the 
National Minorities Commission, and other 
independent bodies such as the People's Union for 
Democratic Rights and the People's Union for 
Civil Liberties, to identify and investigate the 
actions and finances of communal groups.
3.     That communal groups be investigated and 
monitored. When appropriate, requisite action 
should be taken to safeguard minorities against 
the actions of these groups, and reparations 
should be made retroactively to communities and 
individuals who have suffered as a consequence of 
the actions of these groups.
4.     The Government of Orissa and the Central 
Government should make a concerted effort to 
investigate and eradicate paramilitary hate camps 
operated by the communal groups.
5.     The charitable status and privileges of 
certain organizations such as the VHP and 
Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, which are registered as 
charities, should be reviewed given the nature of 
their activities.
6.     The disparagement, demonisation, and 
vilification of any religion should be 
statutorily prohibited and punishable under the 
Indian Penal Code.
7.     The repeal of the Orissa Freedom of 
Religion Act, 1967, which has been used by 
communal groups to target and prohibit voluntary 
conversion within minority communities.
8.     That the Government of India and the 
Government of Orissa safeguard the right of 
individuals who convert voluntarily to practice 
their religion.
9.     That the police and courts act immediately 
and authoritatively to stop communalists from 
forcibly converting or reconverting individuals 
to Hinduism. The police should be required to 
submit regular and public reports on their work.
10.     That the police establish a special desk 
for registering minority grievances and filing 
First Information Reports.
11.     That the Government of Orissa appoint 
Special Public Prosecutors to conduct proceedings 
as necessary.
12.     That the trishul (trident) be categorised 
as a weapon and its mass distribution be 
prohibited under the Arms Act of 1959.
13.     That the Orissa Prevention of Cow 
Slaughter Act, 1960 -- which has been used 
against minorities and the economically 
disenfranchised in the cattle trade--should be 
reviewed.

Finally, while the Tribunal affirms the view that 
the "state is accountable for safeguarding human 
rights", it also urges individual citizens to 
recognize their duty to respond to violations and 
"to challenge the existing culture of impunity 
that generally protects perpetrators of communal 
violence from prosecution" (IPTCO, pages 69-70), 
cautioning that it will take the combined efforts 
of both to dismantle the formidable 
infrastructure of fear and intimidation erected 
by these groups.



Contacts:
Convenors of the Indian People's Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa:
Dr. Angana Chatterji at 00-91-99377 70819 [until 
4 October pm]; 001-415-640 4013 or 415-575 6119; 
or achatterji at ciis.edu
Advocate Mihir Desai at iptindia at vsnl.net

IPT Secretariat:
Ms. Deepika D'Souza at 00-91-22-22677385/22676680 or iptindia at vsnl.net


Links:
Indian Express: 
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEQ20060930005034&Page=Q&Title=ORISSA&Topic=0
The Statesman: 
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=9&theme=&usrsess=1&id=131519
Asian Age: http://www.asianage.com/viewarticle2.asp?newsid=174423
Pioneer: 
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=BHUBANESWAR&file_name=bhub3%2Etxt&counter_img=3


Indian People's Tribunal and Environment and Human Rights
Engineers House, Floor #4, 86, Bombay Samachar 
Marg, Near Stock Exchange, Mumbai - 400023, India

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[3]

Communalism Watch
Sept 9, 2006
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/09/vande-mataram-and-anandamath-song-and.html

THE SONG AND THE NOVEL
by Sumit Sarkar (Mainstream - September 09, 2006)

     There is something mysterious about the 
current furore around the compulsory singing of 
Vande Mataram in schools. No mystery of course 
about why the BJP has enthusiastically taken up 
the issue, and already made it compulsory in 
Chhattisgarh, specifically mentioning that it has 
to be sung in madrasas. It likes nothing better 
than to provoke possible riots, and the issue 
enables it to avoid far more important questions 
that one would expect a normal Opposition party 
to take up, like farmers' suicides or soaring 
prices. But it was the HRD Ministry that had 
started it all, by calling for the observance of 
September 7 as some kind of centenary occasion 
for the song. Vande Mataram was written in 1875, 
and published for the first time as part of 
Bankimchandra's novel Anandamath in 1882.
     The surprising thing is that nothing relevant 
to the song happened on September 7, 1906 (or 
1905). The Congress did not take any decision 
then about its national status for the simple 
reason that it always met in the last week of 
December. The Benaras session of December 1905 
did hear the song sung by Sarala Debi, in what 
had become a common practice since the beginning 
of the anti-Partition movement in Bengal a few 
months back. But there was no discussion or 
decision about a national anthem, there or in the 
session held exactly a year later in Calcutta in 
1906.
     I can make these statements with some 
authority, as I spent 10 years of my life 
researching nationalism in Bengal during 1903-08, 
and wrote a book about the Swadeshi movement in 
1973 that is still widely read. Clearly the HRD 
Ministry had been wrongly advised, and has handed 
over an issue on a platter to the BJP, as part of 
the repeated Congress efforts to steal the Sangh 
Parivar's thunder. One more effort at appeasement 
that every time proves harmful for secularism.
     Vande Mataram was certainly often used as a 
slogan or song in the freedom struggle. But there 
were many other rallying cries. Let me cite two 
memorable instances. Bhagat Singh and his 
comrades threw a bomb in the Central Assembly in 
1929 to protest an anti-labour law, raising the 
slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad', and Subhas Bose made 
Jana Gana Mana the anthem of his Azad Hind Fauj 
and Jai Hind its greeting, not Vande Mataram. The 
slogan and song, Vande Mataram, were quickly 
appropriated also by Hindu communalists, most 
evidently of course by the RSS. It has been often 
used as a war cry during riots, as counterpart to 
a similar misuse of Allah-ho-Akbar.
     Muslims have objections to the deification of 
any entity except Allah, but what has vastly 
enhanced the problem is the way that the song 
ultimately becomes an evocation of a particular 
Hindu divinity. The discussions in the Congress 
in 1937 about the status of the song turned 
around the way what begins in the first two 
stanzas with an unexceptionable evocation of the 
beauty of the motherland then collapses the 
country into Durga. This was point made by Tagore 
when Nehru asked his opinion that year, and the 
Congress then decided to adopt only the first two 
stanzas. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya has recently 
described this debate in his book on Vande 
Mataram.

     Vande Mataram, further, is an integral part 
of a novel that has been much translated and 
read. Anandamath is set in a Bengal ravaged by 
the famine of 1770, where the Company had already 
become the ruler, reducing the nawab to a puppet 
after the battle of Plassey in 1757. There were 
anti-British peasant revolts, sometimes led by 
Hindu and Muslim mendicants, sanyasis and fakirs, 
and Bankim was well aware of these facts. His 
novel, however, made the nawab and Muslims real 
tyrants, the British merely their compliant 
agents, and the whole story becomes one of 
aggression, brutality and violence by Muslims.
     The fakir rebels disappear, and the sanyasis 
and peasant mobs mobilised by them call for 
anti-Muslim vengeance in luridly communal 
language:
     We want to exterminate all the Muslims on 
this land as they are enemies of God-kill, kill 
the Muslims wretchesŠBrother, will that day ever 
come when we will demolish their mosques to build 
temples for Radhamadhav?
     It has been suggested that Bankim was merely 
using Muslims as surrogate for the British, to 
evade censorship and trouble as a government 
official. Not perhaps an entirely convincing 
plea, for censorship, except on the public stage, 
was not really very stringent before the Swadeshi 
days. In any case, one needs to separate the 
possible intentions of the author, from the 
likely responses of readers. Is it really 
irrational for Muslims-and by no means Muslims 
alone-to object to the compulsory imposition of a 
song that collapses the country into a specific 
Hindu deity, and forms part of a novel full of 
apparently communal passages?
     (Courtesy : The Times of India)

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[4]

FINALLY DD-1 TO TELECAST ANAND PATWARDHAN'S
"FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR" on Sunday, 10 am, October 8th

At 10 am on Sunday, October 8, 2006 an 11 year 
old battle will finally come to an end. Anand 
Patwardhan's 1995 documentary "Father, Son and 
Holy War" on the connection between communal 
violence and the male psyche had won two National 
and several international awards. But when he 
submitted it for telecast, Doordarshan rejected 
it. Patwardhan took the matter to the Bombay High 
Court and  in 2001 the court ordered DD to 
telecast the film but DD chose to appeal the 
matter in the Supreme Court. The SC asked DD to 
review the film. DD's own preview panel approved 
the telecast but Prasar Bharati, then dominated 
by BJP appointees, stepped in and rejected the 
film. Patwardhan moved the High Court again and 
won a fresh order to telecast in 2004. Prasar 
Bharati once again went to the Supreme Court in 
appeal. Finally, after viewing the film, on 25 
August 2006 Justice Lakshmanan and Justice Panta 
of the Supreme Court upheld the High Court order 
to telecast the film without cuts within 8 weeks 
of the judgement.

Noting that several times in the past DD had 
rejected Patwardhan's documentaries until the 
judiciary forced them to be telecast, the 
Honourable Justices went so far as to pass 
strictures against DD and Prasar Bharati 
reprimanding the broadcaster for finding "flimsy 
excuses" time and again not to telecast 
Patwardhan's films.

When asked what DD found so hard to swallow in his films, Patwardhan said:

"When a government and its bureaucrats become 
averse to the slightest sign of criticism, it 
signals a lack of self-confidence. America today 
is passing through a similar phase and resorting 
to outright censorship to cover up its war crimes 
in Iraq. In India the BJP openly stifled the 
secular voice while the Congress merely gave it 
lip service. Luckily for people like me the 
Indian Constitution has proven to be much more 
robust. It is this that gives us some hope for 
the preservation of our secular democracy."

Patwardhan thanked his lawyers P.A.Sebastian, 
Prashant Bhushan and Nitya Ramakrishnan for 
consistently taking up the cause of civil 
liberties and human rights and expressed the hope 
that Prasar Bharati would no longer force people 
like him to go to court.

"Father, Son and Holy War" is a two hour 
documentary that was shot from the mid 80's to 
the mid 90's and covers a wide spectrum of 
events, from the Sati in Deorala in 1987 to the 
Bombay riots and subsequent bomb blasts in 
1992-1993. It is a critique of the male bias that 
permeates the dominant religions of the world, 
with specific reference to Hinduism and Islam in 
India, and a critique of ruthless politicians who 
use the communal divide to further their own ends.


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[5]


BACK TO THEIR BASICS: THE POLITICS OF GUJARAT FREEDOM OF RELIGION BILL

by Ram Puniyani (Hindustan Times, September 22, 2006)

The attempt to prevent conversions out of the 
Hindu fold is not a new phenomenon. It has, 
however, gained momentum during the last few 
years, more so in the BJP-ruled states.

http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/10/on-gujarat-freedom-of-religion-bill.html



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[6]

Secular Perspective
October 1-15, 2006

POLICE AND MINORITIES: WILL NEW POLICIES HELP ?
by Asghar Ali Engineer

http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/10/police-and-minorities-will-new.html



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[7] 

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (October 4, 2006)
Year Seven, No 164
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/175

Contents:
1  My heroes (Farrukh Saleem)
2  A face-saving retreat : Pak 'pact' with Taliban  (M B Naqvi)
3  Fables of a ruinous tradition (Jawed Naqvi)
4  India-Pakistan Tensions Spill Into Sri Lanka (J. Sri Raman)
5  India should not join race for biological weapons (Sujatha Byravan)
6  US fuels Pakistan bounty market (Tom Burgis)
7  DRDO working on new missile (Rajat Pandit)
8  Kashmir:
  -  Sudden hardening of posture (Editorial, Kashmir Times)
  -  India: Impunity Fuels Conflict in Jammu and Kashmir (Human RIghts Watch)
  -  "With Friends Like These . . ." Human Rights 
Violations in Azad Kashmir (Human RIghts Watch)
  -  On The Death Sentence To Mohammad Afzal:
    (i)  Does Afzal Deserve The Death Penalty? (Humra Quraishi)
    (ii) We Haven't Even Heard Afzal's Story (Nandita Haksar)
    (iii) Save Afzal Guru Campaign (JKCCS)
    (iv)  Petition Against Mohammad Afzal Guru's Death Penalty
  9   Anti-terrorism and Security Laws In India (NYC Bar)
10 Bombay and Malegaon Blasts in India: The social impact
(i) Political Context of Mumbai Bomb Blasts (P A Sebastian)
(ii) Malegaon:
- Reaping The Harvest: Images of Terror (Nalini Taneja)
- A Vicious Cycle (AG Noorani)
11  Arms Sales to the Region:
- Campaigners in treaty support bid
- India links partnership to arms sales by France (Amit Baruah)
- New Delhi May Buy Qatari Mirage Aircraft - From Paris (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
- Indian, French Firms Form Global C4 Effort (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
- Defence brass on 'secret' Israel trips (Rajat Pandit)
12 Militarisation and Civil Society:
   - General Figures: How much is a general worth 
in real estate terms? (Ayesha Siddiqa)
   - AFSPA: Manipur woman's marathon fast (Suvojit Bagchi)
   - Another army man as VC (Dawn)
   - 'AFSPA 1958' continues bagging international awards
   - Pakistan: General in His Labyrinth (Arif Azad)
   - The death of Nawab Akbar Bugti and operations 
by the armed forces in Baluchistan (Declaration 
by Joint Action Committee)
13 Sri Lanka: South Asia's most militarised society (B. Muralidhar Reddy)


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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.