SACW #1 | Nov. 18-19, 2006 | Sri Lanka's war displaced; Bangladesh Elections; India: Communalism, Malegaon, Karnataka; History writing on India

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Pack 1 | November 
18-19, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2317 - Year 8

[1]  Sri Lanka: Amnesty International calls for 
inquiry into attack on displaced civilians
[2]  Bangladesh:
      (i) To the polls, unless your name be Das, 
Tripura, or Roy (Naeem Mohaiemen)
      (ii) Battle in Bangladesh for Ballot and Against Terror (J. Sri Raman)
[3]  India:  The state sucks (Antara Dev Sen)
[4]  India:  Malegaon Bomb Blast Trail - In 
Search of the accused (Subhash Gatade)
[5]  India:  Malegaon Blasts - Partisan approach 
and biased police (Asghar Ali Engineer)
[6]  India:  The Ongoing Communalisation In Karnataka (Nalini Taneja)
[7]  India: Clio In A Cusp - Popular history is 
not always bad history (Rudrangshu Mukherjee)
[8]  India: Indian Historians Are Not Lazy (Irfan Habib)

______


[1] 


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Public Statement

AI Index: ASA 37/033/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 290

8 November 2006

SRI LANKA: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CALLS FOR 
INQUIRY INTO ATTACK ON DISPLACED CIVILIANS

Amnesty International is deeply concerned by 
reports of the killing today of as many as 65 
civilians taking refuge in a school in 
Kathiraveli, a coastal hamlet 15 km north of 
Vaharai in the eastern district of Batticaloa.

The Sri Lankan Army (SLA) reportedly fired 
multi-barrel rockets and artillery shells which 
hit a school where internally displaced people 
(IDPs) were taking shelter. As many as 40 bodies 
are reported to have been recovered from the 
scene and more than 100 have been wounded. It is 
likely that many more may have been injured as 
the area targeted was densely
populated and inhabited by some 5000 IDPs.

Amnesty International is appalled that the 
military should attack a camp for displaced 
people-these were civilians who had already been 
forced from their homes because of the conflict. 
Amnesty International condemns all attacks on 
civilians and is particularly saddened and 
shocked to see such a large-scale attack on 
civilians just days after the government's 
announcement of its Commission of Inquiry into 
human rights abuses.

A Sri Lankan military spokesman has confirmed 
heavy artillery and mortar bomb exchanges in 
Batticaloa district, but has accused the 
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of using 
civilians as human shields. The UN High 
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 
60,646 people remained displaced in Batticaloa 
district alone, as of 23 October 2006, and over 
200,000 have been displaced in the north and east 
of Sri Lanka since 7 April 2006.

Amnesty International condemns the targeting and 
killing of innocent civilians and calls on the 
Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE to take 
immediate and adequate precautions to protect 
civilian lives. All parties to the hostilities 
must comply with international humanitarian law, 
which prohibits murder or other violence to those 
taking no active part in hostilities, requires 
parties to ensure that their forces comply with 
the principle of distinction between civilian and 
military targets and do not target civilians or 
carry out indiscriminate attacks.

Amnesty International calls on the Government of 
Sri Lanka to initiate an immediate inquiry by 
international and independent human rights 
experts into this incident and all serious 
violations of human rights law and international 
humanitarian law. Amnesty International 
reiterates the urgent need for the Government of 
Sri Lanka to establish a strong and effective 
international human rights monitoring operation 
as a matter of urgency to respond to the dramatic 
deterioration of the human rights and 
humanitarian situation. Such a mechanism must 
have the full cooperation of both the government 
of Sri Lanka and the LTTE and the support of the 
United Nations and its member states.

AI Index: ASA 37/033/2006        8 November 2006

______


[2]

(i)

The Daily Star
November 03, 2006

TO THE POLLS, UNLESS YOUR NAME BE DAS, TRIPURA, OR ROY
by Naeem Mohaiemen

"Why can small numbers excite rage? They 
represent a tiny obstacle between majority and 
totality or total purity. The smaller the number 
and the weaker the minority, the deeper the rage 
about its capacity to make a majority feel like a 
mere majority."
[Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers]

"Hey Ghosh, don't do so much Ghosh-Ghoshani!" 
Another day in school, another round of mutual 
teasing. Schoolyard taunts can be casually cruel, 
but nicknames are nothing to be upset about. 
Everyone had one. Even the son of the Police IG 
had been renamed "kaula" (lovely reference to his 
hue).

In that context, teasing Ranjan Ghosh by his last 
name seemed very mild. But something about this 
particular dig stuck, even though my class 6 
brain couldn't navigate the cause of unease. Much 
later, many years on, I realized that it was the 
first time I was forced into awareness of a Hindu 
surname.

Relative to all things we have seen in this 
epoch, St Joseph seems to be a model of communal 
balance. Propelled by an affirmative action 
policy in admission, almost half the students 
were Hindu and Christian. At that age, the only 
difference we saw was that the Hindu students 
studied Geeta in a separate room during Islamiat 
class. Who cares, to each his own.

The mind soaks up many fragments and saves it for 
future processing. Even at that age some part of 
me vaguely registered that the wealthy students 
all had last names like Rahman, Ahmed, and 
Hossain. One day a teacher asked for a collection 
of money to help Gomes, poorest student in the 
class, buy the required geography atlas. A 
strange unease, but nothing I could pin down.

In 1985, we anxiously crowded around a notice 
board to find the SSC results. Star Marks, First 
Division, Letter. Magic symbols of future success 
and prosperity. Two decades on, many in my 
graduating class (sometimes referred to as 
Generation 71) have become industrialists, 
bankers, television directors, ad firm creatives 
-- executives of every stripe. When I sit with my 
old crew, there's a palpable air of "masters of 
the universe."

But when I take a closer look, not a single 
non-Muslim among my classmates has made it into 
this magic circle. 1985 was perhaps the last 
moment of parity between us. The in-between time 
has been rough for those who don't fit the 
national identity project. When I ask my 
classmates about this, they shrug. Not my 
problem. One of these bright souls even said to 
me, during a BUET strike, "Hindu students 
protesting again! They are always making trouble. 
Lai dithe dithe mathai thule rekhechi."

Amena Mohsin talks about the flaws of Bengali 
nationalism -- a structure that sings of Ek 
Shagoro Roktho, yet remains blind to the 
invisible second class of Hindus, Christians, 
Buddhists, Paharis, Adivasis, and all other 
communities that don't fit within a Bengali 
Muslim ethos. The concept of a singular nation, 
needing to be produced or naturalized at any 
cost, is not unique to us.

Hannah Arendt argued in 1968 that the idea of a 
national peoplehood was a fatal flaw in developed 
societies. Philip Gourevitz, surveying the 
brutality of Rwanda, observed that "genocide, 
after all, is an exercise in community-building."

But what is remarkable for Bangladesh is a 
national memory project devoted to the 1971 
genocide that fails to recognize how we are 
replaying that scenario on a smaller level 
against all non-Bengali and/or non-Muslim 
identities. When these small groups assert their 
presence and refuse to be assimilated within a 
"Bengali Muslim" identity, spectacular and 
extreme violence is our tool for producing a 
homogenized national map.

My St Joseph memory trip came while considering 
the crucible of the approaching elections. In 
keeping with the overall pattern of convulsive 
violence, minority communities are already under 
threats to stay away from the polls. Unlike in 
2001, when the orgy of anti-Hindu violence was 
enacted after the elections, this time the idea 
is to block these communities from even daring to 
vote. As documented by The Daily Star, Prothom 
Alo, and others, a significant proportion of 
minority voters have already been taken off the 
controversial voter listi. When even Muslim 
voters find themselves missing in large numbers 
from the list, what chance for Bahadur, Kumar, 
Larma, or Gomes?

The 1991 and 2001 results could have been 
different given the razor-thin margins by which 
many seats were won, and the huge number of 
minority voters that were prevented from voting 
in those very seats. Out of 300 constituencies, 
there are 71 where minority voters are 
significant (ranging from 11% to 61%) and 50 
where they are visible (5-10%). The current 
election sets every incentive for the 4-party 
alliance to aggressively choke off the minority 
vote.

The AL's embrace of secularism has always been 
shaky (is there anybody with the guts to hold 
their feet to the fire and force them to eject 
Nejame Islam from the 14-party coalition?). But 
even this weak commitment has produced many 
potential Pahari candidates for Hill Tracts, as 
compared to the exclusively Bengali Muslim 
candidates from the BNP. For Bengali candidates 
to win in Pahari-majority areas, a massive 
blocking of the Pahari vote is needed. A similar 
pattern is expected in all areas with a 
significant minority population. This is not to 
say that minority voters should vote en masse for 
AL -- but simply that they to be allowed to vote.

I invoke St Joseph because anecdotes sometimes 
carry more emotive power than statistics. When 
the silent majority continually ignores the pain 
of others, we end up at the embryo stages of 
ethnicide. These days it is hard to sit still for 
a song ashor during 1971 commemorations without 
choking on the failure of the nation project. Our 
numerical majority has chosen methods of 
predatory nationalism that include racist tactics 
that echo the Pakistan period, reify Bengali 
Muslims, and render all other identities 
invisible ii.

My uncle used to tell the story of the maulana 
who stood in front of a temple in 1940s Noakhali, 
using his body to defy those who wanted to burn 
alive the Hindus who had been their former 
neighbours. If that village elder found an 
interpretation of religion that taught 
compassion, how are we in this backwards trap 
fifty years on? I shout at all of you with rage, 
because I refuse to accept a haven for me that is 
a nightmare for others. There is still time to 
stop this with our words, our actions and our 
bodies.

i. Daily Star, May 6, 2006: "Religious Minorities 
Under Pressure"; Daily Star, May 10, 2006: 
"Minority Voters Intimidated"; Prothom Alo, 
January 6, 2006: "Voter List Compilers Say They 
Didn't Go to 4 Minority-heavy Villages By 
'Mistake'"; bcdjc.org/mreport-1.html.

ii. This can be seen in the drastic drop in 
minority populations: 1961 (18.5%), 1974 (13.5%), 
1981 (12.2%) and 1991 (10.5%). Analysts expect 
the 2001 census to reveal even further drop, but 
the government has not released those numbers.

Naeem Mohaiemen is author of the chapter on Hill 
Tracts Paharis and Flatland Advisais in the 2004 
Ain Salish Kendro Annual Human Rights Report.

____


(ii)

truthout.org
31 October 2006

BATTLE IN BANGLADESH FOR BALLOT AND AGAINST TERROR
by J. Sri Raman

     It is incredible, the way the world's sole 
superpower can dictate election issues 
everywhere. Post-9/11, "terrorism" has become a 
major if not the most important political issue, 
not only in the US but in several countries, 
including in South Asia. Bangladesh provides an 
immediate instance.

     Terrorism threatens to emerge as the single 
biggest political issue in India, with the 
far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out to 
make it so, following the string of bomb blasts 
in Kashmir, Mumbai and elsewhere. If and when 
General Pervez Musharraf decides at long last on 
a date for the promised general election in 
Pakistan, terrorism will without doubt dominate 
the issues on the agenda. And terrorism will be 
more than a mere talking point in the little over 
two months ahead to the big battle of ballots in 
Bangladesh.

     Terrorism, of course, is not really the main 
issue in any of these countries. The crusading 
"anti-terrorist" doesn't like to be told that the 
root-causes of terrorism are the real issue, but 
that does not make it any less true. In all these 
three cases, poverty is the most palpable of the 
root-causes. It is compounded, in all the three, 
by religious communalism with its vicious message 
and violent methods. The combination pits each of 
the countries against neighbors and thus 
represents a formidable counter to peace in the 
region.

     In the case of Bangladesh, one of the real 
issues found recent illustration in the award of 
the Nobel Prize for Peace to Bangladeshi 
economist Mohammed Yunus for his innovative 
scheme of "Grameen (rural)" banking. The 
micro-credit scheme, which may be debatable on 
points of economic detail, has certainly helped 
and even empowered the impoverished Bangladeshi 
women. The scheme has succeeded, notably, despite 
fierce opposition from Islamic "fundamentalists."

     Still, the self-appointed defenders of 
democracy worldwide have declared "terrorism" as 
the main issue in the coming elections. Even 
while claiming a policy of non-intervention in 
the country's internal affairs, the George Bush 
administration has made its preference clear. 
Said US State Department spokesperson Sean 
McCormack: "We certainly stand with any 
government that is in a fight against terrorism. 
It is a serious issue. I know it is a serious 
issue for the Bangladesh government."

     More serious, immediately, is the prospect of 
political violence increasing from now to the as 
yet unannounced date of the election in January 
2007. The run-up to the election, in fact, began 
with several rounds of violence in the streets of 
Dhaka (formally Dacca) and elsewhere. The cadres 
of the main contending parties, the ruling 
Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the Awami 
League (AL), clashed as the country struggled 
with the very first step toward a constitutional 
election.

     At least 18 lay dead in the streets before a 
compromise solution on a caretaker government 
before the election could be found. Under the 
country's constitution, such a caretaker 
government under an impartial head had to be 
formed and given 90 days to organize the 
election. Former chief justice K.M. Hasan 
formally met the criteria and was the first 
choice of the BNP under outgoing prime minister 
Begum Khaleda Zia. The AL and Hasina Wajed were 
prompt to protest, pointing out that Hasan had 
long ago been a BNP luminary.

     The AL objected to a caretaker regime under 
President Iajuddin Ahmed, criticizing him as "too 
close" to Begum Zia. Hasina Wajed, however, has 
now asked Ahmed to "prove his neutrality" by 
taking steps including "action against corrupt 
BNP ministers." Despite the strong language, this 
is seen as an indication of implicit acceptance 
of the president for the post.

     The street fighting, however, is not going to 
stop. The next three months are likely, by most 
accounts, to witness terrorist activity as much 
as political rallies and campaigns. There is a 
clear danger that the BNP's election campaign 
will have a place for such threatening activities.

     Begum Zia's five-year term in office has been 
possible only with the help of Jamat-e-Islami 
(JeI), which wielded a clout out of all 
proportion to its meager strength in the 
Bangladesh parliament. The JeI's status as a 
ruling party lent a sort of legitimacy to 
non-parliamentary Harkut-ul Al Jehadi.

     What deserves note, however, is that the 
Bangladeshi fundamentalism was a bequest of the 
Bush wars and, before that, of the US involvement 
in Afghanistan, in those days when the Taliban 
were no "terrorists" but "freedom fighters" and 
"crusaders against Communism." The first 
Bangladeshi jehadis were returnees from 
Afghanistan, and their cause received 
considerable fillip with the eruption of the Iraq 
war.

     At the last unofficial count, Bangladesh 
harbored no less than 48 jehadi camps, all of 
them in areas where insurgent movements from 
neighboring countries (including India) found 
refuge.

     The Indian peace movement has particular 
reason for concern over the role of terrorists in 
the run-up. This will, sadly but surely, provide 
fresh ammunition to the Indian far right, which 
has been shrilling away about the allegedly dire 
threat to the country from Bangladesh and the 
danger of a "demographic invasion" designed to 
make the Muslims a more populous community at 
least in some states of India.

     It is the Indian far right's agitprop that is 
making thoughtful Bangladeshis worry about 
terrorism promoted by not only fundamentalists 
but also "foreign agencies." The added concern 
has not been allayed by frequent reports of fire 
exchanged between Indian and Bangladeshi forces 
on the border.

     The run-up to the Bangladesh election and its 
outcome will be of intense interest to all South 
Asians, who recognize their common stakes in 
resisting and routing forces of fundamentalism 
and fascism.


_____


[3] 


The Week,
November 19, 2006

THE STATE SUCKS

by Antara Dev Sen

I WITNESS
(These are happenings in India's western state of Maharashtra..)

In September, in a village near Nagpur , Surekha 
Bhotmange, 44, and her 17-year-old daughter 
Priyanka were gangraped and then lynched with her 
sons Sudhir and Roshan. After thousands of 
outraged citizens demonstrated in Nagpur and 
nearby towns against police inaction over the 
public rape and murder of this Dalit mother and 
her three children, the Maharashtra government 
bestirred itself and ordered an inquiry. 
Apparently, Surekha had been punished for not 
allowing upper caste villagers to build a road 
through her field. And after the mob fury, 
curfews and lathi-charges, the police woke up and 
suggested that the violence in these Dalit 
majority areas was instigated by Naxalites. Now 
we can expect several Dalits and other activists 
to be hounded, arrested and branded as threats to 
national security. The less privileged are easy 
targets for the police, given their limited 
access to lawyers, lack of money for bail and 
unfamiliarity with their rights.

But you don't need to be an activist for the 
police in Maharashtra to accuse you of extremism. 
Last month, they booked Sunita Narayan, an 
independent publisher and distributor, under the 
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for selling 
'anti-national' books in an exhibition 
celebrating 50 years of B.R. Ambedkar's 
conversion to Buddhism. These were not banned 
books, just progressive literature about 
democracy and people's struggles. Among these 
were texts by Bhagat Singh and Che Guevara. The 
police harassed Sunita for three days, threatened 
her with severe consequences and framed her as a 
Naxalite whose husband had been killed in a 
police encounter.

In September, the Nagpur police had stopped Ramu 
Ramanathan's Hindi play Cotton 56, Polyester 84, 
from being staged. The play about the history of 
Mumbai's mills was directed by Sunil Shanbagh and 
had been staged several times with an illustrious 
cast.  Earlier, the poet Shantanu Kamble had been 
arrested and detained for over three months on 
similar grounds.  And of course, there was the 
celebrated 2004 case of the police booking 
American scholar James Laine, author of Shivaji: 
Hindu King in Islamic India, for 'wantonly giving 
provocation with intent to cause a riot'. The 
book was banned and Laine evaded arrest only by 
staying away from India . As far as I recall, the 
right wing goons who vandalised the Bhandarkar 
Oriental Research Institute, where Laine had done 
his research, and destroyed thousands of rare 
manuscripts, books and artifacts were not 
arrested.

Maharashtra is not alone in this obsession to 
protect citizens from 'bad' influences. This 
week, intelligence officers have been lamenting 
about Maoists spreading 'cultural revolution' 
across Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh through 
speeches, plays and songs in local dialects. They 
even have biographies of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and 
Mao! Horror!  And transcripts of speeches by 
vintage Naxalites like Kanu Sanyal and Charu 
Majumdar! Clearly, the time has come to arrest 
everyone with intellectual tendencies.

Which is what various states have been attempting 
for a while. Last year, five writers 'linked' to 
Maoists in Andhra Pradesh were arrested, 
including Kalyan Rao and the cult poet Varavara 
Rao. The latter had been jailed in the 1980s for 
anti-state activities, and was later acquitted by 
the court. In Jharkhand, revolutionary artistes 
have been arrested, including popular balladeer 
Jetan Marandi. In 2003, cops in Orissa arrested 
Dasuram Mallik, a tribal writer, for allegedly 
inciting people through revolutionary songs and 
stories. And in Kerala, the state prosecuted 
Sreeni Pattathanam for making 'objectionable 
references' to Mata Amritanandamayi in his book 
on the spiritual leader, and for 'hurting 
religious sentiments'. ?Curious, how easily our 
sentiments are hurt by cultural ideas and how 
keen our democracy is to protect us from books, 
poems, plays, films, art and songs, while letting 
free political leaders who massacre thousands in 
the name of religion. Roughnecks who vandalise an 
M.F. Hussain show or a Mira Nair shoot are bad 
enough, but an intolerant state that smothers the 
expression of dissent, non-mainstream ideologies 
or unorthodox views is terrifying. By allowing 
the criminalisation of social activism and the 
stifling of independent voices we are eroding our 
civil liberties. If we value our democracy, we 
must protect our freedom of expression not just 
from goons, but also from our government.


_____


[4]

www.sacw.net  | 18 November
http://www.sacw.net/hrights/gatade18nov06.html

MALEGAON BOMB BLAST TRAIL
IN SEARCH OF THE ACCUSED !
by Subhash Gatade

Does anyone remember Md. Afroz now, who was 
arrested after 9/11by the Mumbai police and was 
charged for planning a terrorist attack . It was 
told to the pliant media then that this 'dreaded 
terrorist' wanted to crash a plane piloted by him 
on the British house of Commons and Australia. A 
special team from Mumbai police especially went 
to these countries but could not bring back any 
evidence. Ultimately it took the whole charge as 
a grand fabrication. None from the Mumbai police 
who had claimed earlier that they have arrested 
'India's very own Al Qaeda man' was fired or even 
inconvenienced for their role in this fabrication.
The memory of the poor, hapless Kashmiri fruit 
seller who was paraded as the real kingpin of the 
bomb blasts in Delhi last year, must be still 
fresh in people's minds.Presented as the 'prize 
catch' by senior police officers before the 
media, he was later declared innocent by the same 
police. One can bet that none of the police 
fraternity had to lose even one night's sleep for 
brutalizing an innocent and putting him and his 
near and dear ones to tremendous mental as well 
as physical torture.
The most recent case showing the modus operandi 
of the police in poor light, is related to the 
four year old attack on the Raghunath temple in 
Jammu.Four innocent persons had to languish in 
jail for such a long period for no fault of 
theirs. The courts have finally absolved all the 
accused of any charges and have advised the 
police to properly use its minds in handling 
sensitive cases of such nature.
The list is definitely endless.
It is no surprise that the images of Md. Afroz or 
for that matter the hapless Kashmiri fruit seller 
or the innocents nabbed in the Raghunath Temple 
case readily come before the mind's eye whenever 
'guardians of law and order' reach roof tops to 
make some grandiose announcements. The recent 
claims made by the ATS (Anti Terrorism Squad) of 
Maharashtra state in case of the Malegaon bomb 
blast, ( 8 th September '06) seem to be no 
exception.
0 0
Malegaon, a city of around 7 lakh people, 75 per 
cent of whom are Muslims, saw death descending on 
innocent citizens on the very day of 
Shab-e-Barat. A day when Muslims visit graveyards 
of their loved ones, clean and decorate the 
graves and spend the night there, reading out 
special prayers for the occasion. But who from 
Malegaon and adjoining areas would have imagined 
that the day to remember the departed ones would 
turn out to be the last day of some of their own 
lives and would maim many among them for the rest 
of their lives.The two blasts, which occurred at 
two places in the city killed around 31 people 
and wounded more than 250 of them.
Residents of the city shudder to think the way 
they could save themselves. The only feeling of 
comfort in the otherwise gloomy scenario was that 
there was no repeat of 2001- the year when the 
city witnessed large scale rioting. This time 
despite provocation there was no communal 
flare-up. The 'Communally sensitive' town 
remained calm. Instead one could see new bonds of 
solidarity getting forged between the two 
communities who for various reasons have remained 
in an adversial relationship with each other.
Looking at the nature of crime, where fanatics 
planted bombs in crowded areas in the city to see 
to it that people are killed in large numbers and 
communal flare-ups ensues, it was clear that 
meticulous planning had gone into it. Question 
naturally arose, who could have benefited from 
growing communal divide? A general answer could 
be a fanatic group who believes and propagates a 
religion-based ideology.
Forget the radical media, even a conservative 
newspaper like Times of India, instead of 
unleashing its usual tirade against the 
'omnipresent Jihadi terrorists', carefully 
captioned its writeup 'Bajrang Dal or Lashkar' (9 
th September, Updated at 12.311 jrs. IST) while 
discussing the bomb blasts in Malegaon. In the 
particular write-up it specifically mentioned the 
modus operandi adopted by the Bajrang Dal in 
blasts at Parbhani's Mohammadi Masjid and mosques 
at Purna and Jalna earlier this year. Of course 
it did not rule out the possibity of the 
involvement of Lashkar in this particular case.
The first official confirmation of sorts that the 
Sangh Parivar organizations could have a role in 
the blast came from the Prime Minister himself. 
Emphasising the need to investigate the 
functioning of the Hindu Rightwing formations he 
clearly stated that he could not confirm or rule 
out the possibility of the involvement of Bajrang 
Dal in the bloody act at Malegaon. He made this 
calibrated statement en route to Havana, while 
going for the NAM summit.
" Bajrang Dal continues to be under the scanner. 
"There is no reason to rule them out. We still 
haven't found anything to prove that Bajrang Dal 
is not involved," a senior officer said. The 
Hindu fringe group is under investigation in 
Malegaon because of the role of its activists in 
various bomb blasts. " (PM doesn't rule out 
Bajrang role, Josy Joseph, Wednesday, September 
13, 2006 00:50 IST, DNA India)
It was at this juncture that, when even the Prime 
Minister himself had clearly stated that he could 
not confirm or rule out the possibility of the 
involvement of Hindutva extremist formations in 
the bloody act at Malegaon, a concerted campaign 
was taken up for spreading unsubstantiated 
rumours. Quoting unnamed sources the police 
engaged in investigating the blasts were quick to 
rule out the possibility that the bombs might 
have been the handiwork of Bajrang Dal, which has 
been active in the Marathwada region.
A sample of the news which was carried by a 
leading newspaper showed how slowly and silently 
a process was unleashed to exonerate in the 
Hindutva formations and blaming the 'Jehadi 
Terrorists' for this inhuman act.
'LeT Chief Raheel Planned Blasts with Aides: 
Police' - "According to police, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba 
(LeT) commander Raheel Abdul Sheikh (also the 
alleged mastermind of the 11/7 blasts) could have 
taken the help of associates Abdul Latif Khan and 
Junaid Hussein to plan the Malegaon blasts. The 
duo are said to be members of the banned Students 
Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Khan and 
Hussein, say officers, are absconding since May 
and may have 'taken instructions' from Raheel to 
execute the blasts. Raheel, said a senior 
officer, stayed in Malegaon for a few weeks 
before fleeing to Bangladesh in MayŠ".( Hindustan 
Times)
Stigmatising of Muslim groups and formations had 
already started despite the fact that "Š[I]slamic 
militant groups in India from the days insurgency 
began in Kashmir in the 1990s have not attacked 
mosques or shops where religious books are sold'' 
( Indian Express, 18 th September 2006)
The speech by Mr. S. M. Mushrif, a retired IPS 
officer, in the a public meeting organised at the 
KC College Mumbai on October 10 to discuss 
"Malegaon Blasts: Who Is to be Blame ?" explains 
how this could have been done. (October 13, 2006, 
Malegaon Bomb Blasts: Who Is to Blame?,PRESS 
RELEASE, www.sabrang.com) He shared that the 
"..[I]B was one of the most powerful agencies 
that fed disinformation to the executive and 
according to him was also victim of deep-seated 
bias in recent years. The role of the IB, he 
said, must be to provide specific intelligence on 
events and not be a vehicle of general 
rumour-mongering against sections of the people. 
Instead he stated, the IB was often the source of 
spreading unsubstantiated rumours that led to 
these reports then being quoted in the media. The 
media too must not be an instrument of the police 
or the government disinformation but work to 
investigate and provide different perspectives 
and substantiated theories."
People seating in the media sympathetic to the 
Hindutva cause were also cooking vacuous 
arguments to rationalise 'clean chit' to the 
Hindutva brigade. One of the logic used was the 
crudeness of bombs used by the Hindutva groups 
earlier and the technical expertise supposedly 
needed to make/use a RDX. It did not matter to 
them that "Outlook' did a cover story on the same 
theme making it clear how easy it is to get RDX. 
The famous lyricist Javed Akhtar in a meeting 
held in Bombay under the auspices of CJP rightly 
asked with indignation 'Does RDX have a special 
stamp establishing its link to Muslims?'
[. . .].
FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.sacw.net/hrights/gatade18nov06.html
or
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/11/malegaon-bomb-blast-trail-in-search-of.html

_____


[5] 

Communalism Watch | 17 November 2006

MALEGAON BLASTS - PARTISAN APPROACH AND BIASED POLICE

by Asghar Ali Engineer
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/11/malegaon-blasts-partisan-approach-and.html

_____


[6] 

People's Democracy
November 12, 2006

The Ongoing Communalisation In Karnataka

by Nalini Taneja

THE recent communal violence in Mangalore is part 
of the larger process of communalisation that the 
Sangh Parivar is engaged in throughout the 
country, and more particularly in the states 
where it holds the government, on its own or in 
partnership. Karnataka has seen considerable 
amount of Sangh Parivar activism in the last 
decade. This activism is well thought out and 
well planned, and does not depend on chance 
happenings that can be utilised by the Hindutva 
forces. On the contrary, incidents that appear as 
spontaneous outbursts are a result of systematic 
propaganda on issues related to the larger 
political agenda of the Sangh Parivar, with the 
issues themselves being cleverly and very 
deliberately introduced. To say there is an 
'incident' almost every day is not an 
exaggeration (G Rajashekhar and K Phaniraj, 
Communalism Combat, September 2006), small enough 
not to get reported in the national press or the 
parliament, but significant enough to raise 
temperatures and tensions in the area concerned.

In this context, not just Mangalore but almost 
any city of Karnataka can, given a small 
provocation, erupt in communal violence, provoked 
and organised by the Hindutva forces, which have 
mastered the art of provocation as well as shown 
considerable ingenuity in finding issues which 
are varied in their detail, but retain a unified 
core in purpose.

STEADY GROWTH

The Sangh Parivar has been steadily growing in 
strength in this state, a fact that has gone 
unnoticed in the national media, and which 
continues to be under estimated also by the 
mainstream political leadership of this country. 
It is only the focused citizens groups, which 
have recognised this reality. While the JD (S) 
continues to maintain that it remains secular 
(!), even as it partners the BJP, the Sangh 
Parivar has been carrying on as if it alone 
decides the political agenda in the state.

The Sangh Parivar's ride to political strength 
has paralleled the rise of the Sangh Parivar in 
the rest of the country, with the LK Advani's 
rath yatra and the subsequent campaign for the 
Ayodhya temple culminating in the demolition of 
the Babri masjid and communal killings as 
decisive markers in its growth. The BJP's vote 
share in the state was just 4.7 per cent in 1984, 
and 2.55 per cent in 1989. In 1991 this rose to 
28.78 per cent, and in the 2004 elections the BJP 
became the single largest party in Karnataka, 
winning 79 assembly seats and 18 Lok Sabha seats 
in the state. (G Rajashekhar and K Phaniraj). The 
result is there to see in the form of support 
that Hindutva forces receive from the state of 
course, but also from what is today neutrally 
called as civil society. The Sangh Parivar has 
managed, as elsewhere in the country, to 
infiltrate its people in the media and the 
governing institutions and also to communalise 
popular consciousness. While thousands of people 
may still respond to a call for a rally in 
support of secularism and for taking action 
against the criminal acts of the Sangh Parivar 
organisations, there is a pervasive acceptance of 
the myths constructed and proliferating as a 
consequence of the sustained campaigns of the 
Hindutva organisations.

FEEDING ON COMMUNAL ISSUES

Anything can be an excuse as long as it lends 
itself to the saffron agenda, and feeds into the 
main planks of the Hindutva campaigns: places of 
worship; cow slaughter; conversions; population 
myths; Pakistan and anti-nationalism of 
minorities.

In recent years, a place of common, syncretic 
worship has been transformed into a site for an 
Ayodhya like campaign. Every year since 1992 the 
Sangh Parivar has been invading Chikmagalur, a 
town in central Karnataka, with a view to 
"liberating" the cave shrine on Bababudangiri, 
named after a sufi saint revered across 
religions. They have constructed a new 
'tradition', sectarian, and which claims the 
place only for Hindus. Much like in Ayodhya, the 
media, and the middle class intelligentsia has 
adopted the name given by the Sangh Parivar: just 
as the Babri masjid area is now referred to as 
Ramjanambhoomi, and the dispute as the 
Ramjanambhoomi dispute, so also the Bababudangiri 
site is being called "Dattareya Peeta". Hate 
speeches abound in the region, the district 
administration turns a blind eye, and the 
government provides sanction by providing buses 
for darshan just as it does in the case of 
Ayodhya, and in another parallel, "the illegal 
and unconstitutional ritual called Datta Jayanti 
inside the cave shrine was blessed by none other 
than the then law minister of the Congress 
government who even participated in Brahminical 
rituals such as yagna and Homa." Tension prevails 
every year as the days of the "jayanti" approach. 
In 2003, while secular activists were not allowed 
a peace rally, and were beaten up and arrested, 
the then Congress government allowed the sangh 
parivar activities to proceed unhindered around 
the site. (VS Sreedhara, Communalism Combat).

Conversions are attributed to Christian 
organisations as well. The Hindutva forces have 
used this plank in Udupi and other districts of 
Dakshin Kannada. Udupi has been not just a Hindu 
pilgrimage centre, but is also home to very old 
mosques and churches. Members of the Hindu Yuva 
Sena and the Bajrang Dal have been disrupting 
gatherings and meetings of Protestant sects here 
on grounds of 'forced conversions', and the local 
newspapers have been erroneously reporting in 
support of them. The RSS on its part has been 
trying out its reconversion and 'purification' 
programmes in these areas, and continuously 
intimidating dalit christians.

The law allowing for transportation of cows is 
being misused to accuse Muslims of large scale 
cow slaughter, and inciting violence against 
them, thus hitting out at the livelihood of 
Muslims, and further marginalising them. In 
Karnataka, beef is consumed not only by Muslims 
and Christians but also by Adivasis and dalits. 
Yet the BJP holds only the Muslims and Christians 
responsible for "offending Hindu religious 
sentiments" (G Rajashekhar and K Phaniraj). It 
also acts unconstitutionally because under 
Karnataka's Prevention of Cow Slaughter and 
Cattle Preservation Act any cow that is twelve 
years or older, does not yield milk or is 
infertile can be slaughtered with due permission 
from the gram panchayat or the city municipality. 
Any transportation of cows becomes an occasion 
for deliberate wild rumours and for taking away 
licences of Muslim butchers, not just with regard 
to cows, but for carrying out their livelihood 
occupation altogether. Communalism Combat, 
September 2006, has reported on how one such 
campaign resulted in communal tensions, some 
violence and denial of right to livelihood to 
Muslims in some villages in the Udupi district. 
Bajrang Dal members also killed a Hindu priest 
whose job was to mediate in a general sale of 
cows, not for slaughter at all.

There are numerous reports of Muslims being 
targeted, publicly stripped of their clothes, 
paraded naked, and assaulted for 'offending the 
Hindu view of life'. The Bajrang Dal and the 
Hindu Yuva Sena function in some districts as a 
law unto themselves, unchallenged by the local 
administrative machinery. Offenders are in some 
cases nominated for local posts by the BJP. Some 
Kannada language newspapers in the state have 
been getting away with publishing false stories, 
baseless theories and imagined facts as scoop 
stories. Vijaya Karnataka, the largest selling 
Kannada daily actually carried a four column 
article on September 8, 2006, alleging links 
between the Mumbai underworld and the Muslims of 
coastal Karnataka, and concocting 'facts' on 
seizure of explosives and AK 47s from the Muslim 
areas. This paper was launched in 1999 by Vijay 
Sankeshwar Rao, who was then a sitting BJP MP. 
Udayavani is another paper known for its 
communalised news 'reports', presentation of 
engineered rumours as facts, editorials, and 
opinion pieces. (Gauri Lankesh, Communalism 
Combat, September 2006). On the Bababudangiri 
issue, the media has made considerable 
contribution in communalising it, and made 
grounds for controversy where there were none, in 
a manner similar to Babri masjid, which became a 
'disputed structure' and finally Ramjanmbhoomi, 
almost entirely due to the media adopting the 
favoured Sangh Parivar nomenclature for the 
masjid.

TARGETING SECULAR STRONGHOLDS

Although Dakshin Karnataka and Udipi district, 
not to speak of the Mangalore where 'riots' were 
recently engineered, are strong bases of the 
Sangh Parivar, their activities are widely spread 
over the entire state. All the areas targeted by 
the Hindutva forces have historically been home 
to syncretic cultures. In terms of religions 
there is a history of interactions between Islam 
and the various cults broadly termed as Hinduism, 
and the influence of Christianity and even 
Buddhism and Jainism. Kannada language and 
literature have imbibed influences from Persian 
and Urdu traditions along with the strong 
component of the entire south Indian literary and 
language heritage. The same can be said of the 
architecture in the state, including that of the 
Vijayanagar Empire, ruled by Hindu kings. The 
Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Islamic architectural 
patterns are found cheek by jowl all over the 
state. The Bible in Kannada is centuries old, the 
Christian missionaries have contributed 
significantly to the spread of literacy in the 
state, and there are old churches that are part 
of the architectural and religious tradition of 
Karnataka. Food flavours are varied and specific 
to regions, with caste and religious variations, 
and cannot be strictly demarcated only along 
religious lines though the Sangh Parivar would 
have us believe that only Muslims eat beef, or 
that Hindus are not naturally meat eaters etc.

The Sangh Parivar is out to deliberately subvert 
this entire composite cultural heritage, through 
the creation of a concocted Kannada tradition, 
which is sectarian, chauvinistic and Hindu in 
character. This it is doing not just through the 
textbooks in the schools run by the Parivar and 
through influencing changes in the books used in 
the state school system, but also through 
utilising all other public channels of 
communication, and taking advantage of the right 
to free speech and dissemination of ideas that a 
democracy entails. It is using democracy to 
subvert all democratic gains, not just in the 
cultural but also the political sphere of life. 
It is doing this through sharing political power 
in the state, and political clout in the 
administration and muscle power on the streets.

There is a need to challenge it on all these 
fronts. Allowing the Sangh Parivar to get away 
with much that is unconstitutional, not only 
gives it greater confidence and contributes to 
its muscle power on the streets, but is also 
gradually transforming the Indian State itself, 
by making much that constitutes 
unconstitutionality a part of our regular 
political life. The UPA government obviously has 
no problems with this.


_____


[7] 

The Telegraph
November 12, 2006

CLIO IN A CUSP
- Popular history is not always bad history
by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Giovanni Volpato, Clio

The publication of William Dalrymple's The Last 
Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 has 
posed two very important and related questions. 
One is the status of popular history in India and 
among Indian historians. The other is the failure 
of Indian historians to write in a manner that 
makes their work accessible to the intelligent 
layman interested in history.

The attitude to popular history is evident from 
some of the sniggers being directed at William 
Dalrymple and his book. Some prominent historians 
have already debunked the book (one suspects 
without even reading it) because its author is 
not a professionally-trained historian and 
because the book is not aimed at only historians 
but emphatically for a wider reading public. 
Writing popular history is considered infra dig 
by most Indian historians. This condescension is 
based on the rather misplaced notion that popular 
history writing, because it is meant for a 
popular readership, ignores/distorts facts and 
analysis and thus does not measure up to the 
standards of professional history writing.

There can be no denying that some history writing 
aimed at a general audience does take liberties 
with facts and analysis. The most recent example 
is the tome by Andrew Roberts (a historian who 
made a name for himself with a fine book called 
Eminent Churchillians) called A History of the 
English Speaking Peoples Since 1900. As the 
review by Stephen Hugh-Jones in The Telegraph on 
Friday (Nov 10) pointed out, the book has 
innumerable egregious errors and is flawed by the 
most unspeakable prejudice.

But such examples should not allow for all 
popular history writing to be tarred by the same 
brush. Some highly acclaimed academic historians 
have written books that have been read with a 
great deal of enjoyment by all readers. One has 
to think of everything that A.J.P. Taylor wrote. 
He wrote with flair without deviating from the 
fundamentals of the historian's craft. There are 
many other examples. Eric Hobsbawm's multi-volume 
history of the modern world; Simon Schama's 
narrative of the French Revolution or Orlando 
Figes's great book on the Russian Revolution. All 
these books - many others can be cited - are 
immensely enjoyable because of the style of the 
authors and the manner in which the marshalled 
facts are made to blend with the authors' 
analysis and perspective.

Two other related points need to be made here. 
One is that, it is often said, history writing 
becomes attractive and enjoyable for the general 
reader when the historian tells a story with a 
clear chronological line. This is not necessarily 
true. The book that made Taylor famous, The 
Origins of the Second World War does not have a 
chronological narrative. It is in fact a very 
analytical book that assumes some knowledge of 
British politics and European history. But this 
does not take away from either enjoyment or 
comprehension. Similarly, the approach in 
Hobsbawm's history of the modern world is 
thematic rather than chronological. The story 
element in history is not a necessary condition 
of the attractiveness, rather the telling of it 
is.

The other point is that elementary errors are not 
the monopoly of those who seek to popularize 
history. Robert Darnton, one of the leading 
authorities in the world on the French Revolution 
and a professor at Princeton, in the book that 
made him famous, referred to Bengal as a river. 
Hobsbawm described Pather Panchali as a 19th 
century novel. India's greatest medievalist, 
Irfan Habib, in the book, The Agrarian System of 
Mughal India, which transformed the way 
historians looked at the economy, society and 
politics of Mughal India, thought that a Xavier 
who travelled in India at the beginning of the 
17th century was the same as St Francis Xavier. 
(At least Habib corrected the error, albeit it 
took him more than 30 years to do so, but Darnton 
and Hobsbawm's books remain in print with the 
errors.) The Homers of history writing often nod, 
making mistakes that would make an undergraduate 
blush. So one should be careful before condemning 
those who write for a popular audience.

This discussion allows us to arrive at some kind 
of understanding about what popular history 
writing is. It is history writing that is 
accessible to anyone who is interested in history 
and is not aimed at a specialist audience. What 
makes it accessible is not so much the subject 
matter but the mode of writing. Good, limpid, 
evocative and logical prose is at the heart of 
history writing that is enjoyed by everybody. The 
great historian, Marc Bloch, showed that even an 
obscure and difficult subject such as the 
structure of feudal society could be presented to 
readers in a manner that excited and attracted 
all readers who were interested. It needs to be 
admitted that all historians do not possess the 
gift of stylish and elegant writing. Taylor's 
prose with its succession of chiselled sentences, 
with a hint of mischief and paradox, made his 
books and articles impossible to put down.

Most Indian historians, bar a few, have never 
written with such style. It is easy to shrug this 
off with the excuse that English is not the 
mother tongue of Indian historians. While this is 
factually correct, there are many Indian 
historians who use the English language as if it 
is their first language. The reasons are perhaps 
more complex because they are related to the way 
history writing emerged in India.

In Britain, there was a rich tradition of history 
writing going back to the early 18th century. 
This tradition was manifest not in the works of 
professional historians but of amateur men of 
letters who wrote excellent history. I think here 
of the History of the Rebellion in England by 
Edward Hyde, the first earl of Clarendon, of 
Edward Gibbon and his Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire, the historical essays of Thomas 
Babington Macaulay and so on. The writing of 
history came to be professionalized and became a 
part of the university system only in the late 
19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, 
professional history writing in Britain built on 
this tradition of history writing which was meant 
for the intelligent reader interested in history. 
Till a few years ago, Oxford undergraduates doing 
the History Schools had to study a compulsory 
paper on Gibbon and Macaulay.

In India, historians writing in English did not 
have such a tradition to build upon. Professional 
history writing came out of the universities and 
was thus aimed at the academic peer group. (The 
only exception is perhaps the economic history of 
India by R.C. Dutt, not by any means an easy book 
to write.) The result of this is obvious from a 
book like The Political History of Ancient India 
by H.C.Raychaudhuri which is a superb achievement 
in terms of the historian's craft but utterly 
inaccessible to the ordinary reader and even to 
many students of history. Jadunath Sarkar's 
volumes on Aurangzeb, and on the fall of the 
Mughal empire, all great works of history, are 
not to be recommended for the pleasure they bring 
to the non-specialist reader.

This is not to suggest that there was no 
tradition of popular history writing in India. 
But this tradition was embedded in Indian 
languages. In Bengal, Bankimchandra 
Chattopadhyay, Tagore, R.C. Dutt and many others 
wrote history that was read and enjoyed by 
non-historians. But the emergence of academic 
history writing in English has completely swamped 
this tradition. Only very recently, scholars have 
begun to retrieve these writings as part of 
India's intellectual history and to locate the 
origins of an Indian historiography of India in 
contrast to modes of history writing that were 
derived from Western academies.

Clio's face, one could say after Walter Benjamin, 
is turned wistfully towards the popular. She 
wants to be familiar to more and more people. But 
a storm is blowing from the universities, pushing 
Clio to turn her face to the specialists. We 
catch her always with her face half-turned.


_____


[8] 

Outlook
November 20, 2006

INDIAN HISTORIANS ARE NOT LAZY
THE NOTED HISTORIAN ISN'T WORRYING ABOUT WILLIAM DALRYMPLE'S CHARGES
by Irfan Habib

In responding to William Dalrymple's criticisms 
of Indian historians for their apparent lethargy 
and obscurantism, one needn't feel overly 
indignant. It's always good to have one's 
weaknesses pointed out. The difficulties in 
dealing with documents in Persian and Urdu, 
especially when written in cursive hand, are 
always to be kept in mind. It is generally 
expected that a historian, whether British or 
Indian, or any other, must combine the work of 
decipherment, transcription and comprehension 
with his own work. In serious historiography none 
of these tasks can be farmed out.

There may be found in Persian/Urdu written in the 
cursive hand (Shikasta) four possible variants, 
and one has to know by context what word 
represents the form at a particular place.

If one wants to write a history of the French 
Revolution, one not only needs to know French but 
should also be able to read cursively written 
documents in the French of the time. 
Unfortunately, there are very few people left who 
can read Urdu and Persian, particularly the 
Shikasta script which was once taught in schools 
but is no longer being taught since Independence. 
If Dalrymple is able to do so, he belongs to a 
very small number of people who are competent in 
this; and their number is steadily declining. 
That is one major reason why archival material is 
not being used as widely as it should be, and not 
because historians are lazy. When Urdu was killed 
by a conscious policy, a large part of our past 
was naturally locked up for us.

The revolt of 1857 is not my field as a 
specialist, and so I cannot say how far the stack 
of 20,000 documents in Persian and Urdu in the 
National Archives has stood "virtually unused".
The 20,000 papers may or may not have been 
discovered for the first time by Dalrymple and 
his colleagues-it is hard to tell, especially if 
they haven't been catalogued and are therefore 
inaccessible to ordinary historians. While as 
described by Dalrymple, these must be 
extraordinarily useful for the
history of Delhi in 1857, the number of 
collections of Mutiny Papers in Urdu, Persian, 
Hindi and English must be massive. There is an 
enormous amount of documents scattered across 
district headquarters-in the state archives in 
Allahabad, Lucknow and Bhopal and elsewhere. So 
enormous is the mass that all the documents are 
not even completely listed in any one place as 
yet. Every genuine find of documents is to be 
welcomed. But it is also a fact of life that 
documents continue to fall into obscure corners. 
Some years ago, I found a British historian ruing 
the fact that the private papers of one of the 
leading British Free Traders of the 19th century 
could no longer be traced. However, it is 
important that the National Archives should 
arrange for the documents to be catalogued and 
made available on microfilm, so that a historian 
working anywhere can read and use them. This has 
been made possible in France for huge collections 
of documents relating to the French Revolution. I 
understand that the Indian Council of Historical 
Research (ICHR) has recently started a project to 
track all the available collections of documents, 
including the printed papers, relating to the 
1857 Revolt, but that's just the beginning.

Cataloguing all the documents will take years, 
and even then the task is unlikely to be 
complete. I may also mention that it is perhaps 
unfair to say that there have been no pioneers in 
the use of the raw indigenous documentation of 
the mutiny. Syed Athar Abbas Rizvi published from 
1957 onward six volumes of documents (including 
one index volume) devoted to the Rebellion of 
1857 and culled from various archives. Many of 
the documents he used were translated by Rizvi 
himself from the Persian and Urdu. And where 
originals were not available in Persian or Urdu, 
he reprinted the official English translations.

Rizvi tried as far as possible to project the 
rebels' point of view. One must also remember 
that, under British rule, unfettered work on the 
mutiny was not possible. The official archives 
hardly ever encouraged enquiries into them. V.D. 
Savarkar's book on 1857, written in London, was 
banned. But after Independence, there was a spurt 
of books on 1857. Apart from Rizvi's six volumes, 
there were works by S.N. Sen and R.C. Majumdar. 
All three used Indian documents, though both Sen 
and Majumdar had to use translations because they 
themselves could not go to the originals in Urdu 
or Persian. But their books were based on 
material that had not been used in the British 
period.

	Rizvi even wrote a book in Hindi on Delhi 
during the mutiny that is largely based on 
archival material. In 1957, Souren Roy (as 
'Talmiz Khaldun') published a paper on 1857 based 
on documents from the National Archives. In fact, 
the whole emphasis of Indian historians since 
Independence has been on presenting the rebels' 
point of view. While the work may not be as 
brilliant or as profound as one would like it to 
be, the number of research theses on 1857 and 
published monographs is not negligible. Many 
research papers too have appeared. As for the 
study of rebel consciousness as well as ordinary 
people's responses to the upheaval, I would 
particularly like to refer to Rajat K. Ray's The 
Felt Community, which draws on a very extensive 
array of sources.

I am not sure if I would endorse the demand that 
using the British sources is a kind of sin that 
needs to be avoided. Some data-fiscal, financial, 
military and administrative-can come only from 
British sources, since these could be assembled 
only by a government, and the British governed 
India. Ignoring or bypassing such material would 
mean that we will not be able to understand the 
"aggregates", and such phenomena as the regular 
transfer of wealth from India to Britain, the 
maximisation of revenue, the 'free-trade' imports 
of British manufacturers causing the 
industrialisation. All of these would be missed 
if British documentation is not studied and 
analysed.

Percival Spear and 'Talmiz Khaldun' were 
doubtless pioneers in English in trying to look 
at the Mutiny in Delhi from the eyes of the Delhi 
court, citizenry and the sepoys. The fact that 
the sepoys had to live and get the money out of 
the Delhi citizenry always created problems for a 
city under siege by an implacable enemy. This was 
a situation partly specific to Delhi. But even so 
the role of the mutineers in facing these 
difficulties has been well underlined by Prof 
Iqbal Husain, for example, in his essay on Bakht 
Khan.

The reference to Bakht Khan brings me to consider 
Dalrymple's rather unfortunate assumption that 
the Wahabis and Muslim sepoys were somehow the 
precursors of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This 
ignores the vital fact that religion in 1857 was 
the medium through which a growing resentment 
against the multiple inequities of the British 
rule was expressed. Ray brings this out fairly 
well. The Bengal Army sepoys throughout 
maintained a surprising inter-communal unity 
among them, a fact noted by Syed Ahmed Khan in 
his Asbab Baghawat-i Hind. He admitted that the 
Hindu and Muslim sepoys, having shed their blood 
together for their British masters for so long, 
were now so closely linked to each other in a 
common brotherhood that they could not but fight 
till the end once the uprising had begun. Such 
anti-colonial spirit suggests analogies as strong 
with Vietnam as with Iraq or Palestine. It would 
be too narrow to see it in a 'jehad' framework of 
our own creation.

How far do we deal with people in the mass or 
seemingly impersonal factors on the one hand, and 
take up individuals who by chance appear in our 
records, is an important issue of historical 
method.Sir Lewis Namier and his supporters raised 
this question in British historiography with 
their cult of private papers. But the history of 
everyday life would be misleading if the larger 
factors that generally escape notice in material 
on everyday life are ignored. We may remember 
that it was from using British official 
statistics that the early Indian nationalists 
deduced the process of increasing pauperisation 
under British rule, forcing Lord Dufferin, the 
viceroy in the 1880s, to order a wide-ranging 
inquiry into the conditions of the Indian poor. 
The inquiries largely confirmed the nationalist 
case, as William Digby's ironically titled 
Prosperous British India so well showed.

Ideally, history should combine the study of 
individuals with information on the larger 
issues. My grouse against the Subaltern 
historians is not only their use of an 
obscurantist terminology (which Dalrymple 
comments on), but their tendency to stress 
communities and localities and forget the 
'aggregates'. Studying one weaver will not give 
one the story of the distress of Indian weavers 
under the regime of British Free Trade. For that, 
one would need to examine customs statistics, 
censuses, price-reports-mostly from official 
records. The story of 19th century Indian 
'deindustrialisation', a factor behind 1857, 
among others, can be built up largely on the 
basis of records of this kind alone. After all, 
our past (the Mutiny included) is the collective 
legacy of the whole Indian people, and not just 
of certain specific fragments of it.

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

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