SACW | Dec. 21, 2006 | Pakistan: General in his Labyrinth; Sri Lanka: Missing Vice-Chancellor; India: Caste panchayats and communal politics

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | December 21, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2336 - Year 8

[1]  Pakistan: The General in his Labyrinth (Tariq Ali)
[2]  Statement of Concern Regarding Missing 
Vice-Chancellor of Eastern University, Sri Lanka
[3]  India:  Ban them! Caste panchayats are a slur (Edit., The Tribune)
[4]  India:  Communalism or Affirmative Action (Ram Puniyani)
[5]  India - Gujarat: Bajrang Dal serial 
kidnapper on 'mission' to prevent inter-religious 
marriage (Dionne Bunsha)

____


[1]

London Review of Books
Vol. 29 No. 1 dated 4 January 2007


THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH
by Tariq Ali

If there is a single consistent theme in Pervez 
Musharraf's memoir, it is the familiar military 
dogma that Pakistan has fared better under its 
generals than under its politicians. The first 
batch of generals were the offspring of the 
departing colonial power. They had been taught to 
obey orders, respect the command structure of the 
army whatever the cost and uphold the traditions 
of the British Indian Army. The bureaucrats who 
ran Pakistan in its early days were the product 
of imperial selection procedures designed to turn 
out incorruptible civil servants wearing a mask 
of objectivity. The military chain of command is 
still respected, but the civil service now 
consists largely of ruthlessly corrupt 
time-servers. Once its members were loyal to the 
imperial state: today they cater to the needs of 
the army.

Pakistan's first uniformed ruler, General Ayub 
Khan, a Sandhurst-trained colonial officer, 
seized power in October 1958 with strong 
encouragement from both Washington and London. 
They were fearful that the projected first 
general election might produce a coalition that 
would take Pakistan out of security pacts like 
Seato and towards a non-aligned foreign policy. 
Ayub banned all political parties, took over 
opposition newspapers and told the first meeting 
of his cabinet: 'As far as you are concerned 
there is only one embassy that matters in this 
country: the American Embassy.' In a radio 
broadcast to the nation he informed his 
bewildered 'fellow countrymen' that 'we must 
understand that democracy cannot work in a hot 
climate. To have democracy we must have a cold 
climate like Britain.'

Perhaps remarks of this sort account for Ayub's 
popularity in the West. He became a great 
favourite of the press in Britain and the US. His 
bluff exterior certainly charmed Christine Keeler 
(they splashed together in the pool at Cliveden 
during a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' 
Conference) and the saintly Kingsley Martin of 
the New Statesman published a grovelling 
interview. Meanwhile opposition voices were 
silenced and political prisoners tortured; Hasan 
Nasir, a Communist, died as a result. In 1962 - 
by now he had promoted himself to field-marshal - 
Ayub decided that the time had come to widen his 
appeal. He took off his uniform, put on native 
gear and addressed a public meeting (a forced 
gathering of peasants assembled by their 
landlords) at which he announced that there would 
soon be presidential elections and he hoped 
people would support him. The bureaucracy 
organised a political party - the Convention 
Muslim League - and careerists flocked to join 
it. The election took place in 1965 and the polls 
had to be rigged to ensure the field-marshal's 
victory. His opponent, Fatima Jinnah (the sister 
of the country's founder), fought a spirited 
campaign but to no avail. The handful of 
bureaucrats who had refused to help fix the 
election were offered early retirement.

Now that he had been formally elected, it was 
thought that Ayub would be further legitimised by 
the publication of his memoirs. Friends Not 
Masters: A Political Autobiography appeared from 
Oxford in 1967 to great acclaim in the Western 
press and was greeted with sycophantic hysteria 
in the government-controlled media at home. But 
Ayub's information secretary, Altaf Gauhar, a 
crafty, cynical courtier, had ghosted a truly 
awful book: stodgy, crude, verbose and full of 
half-truths. It backfired badly in Pakistan and 
was soon being viciously satirised in clandestine 
pamphlets on university campuses. Ayub had 
suggested that Pakistanis 'should study this 
book, understand and act upon it . . . it 
contains material which is for the good of the 
people.' More than 70 per cent of the population 
was illiterate and of the rest only a tiny elite 
could read English. In October 1968, during 
lavish celebrations to commemorate the ten years 
of dictatorship as a 'decade of development', 
students in Rawalpindi demanded the restoration 
of democracy; soon Student Action Committees had 
spread across the country. The state responded 
with its usual brutality. There were mass arrests 
and orders to 'kill rioters'. Several students 
died during the first few weeks. In the two 
months that followed workers, lawyers, small 
shopkeepers, prostitutes and government clerks 
joined the protests. Stray dogs with 'Ayub' 
painted on their backs became a special target 
for armed cops. In March 1969 Ayub passed control 
of the country to the whisky-soaked General Yahya 
Khan.

Yahya promised a free election within a year and 
kept his word. The 1970 general election (the 
first in Pakistan's history) resulted in a 
sensational victory for the Awami League, Bengali 
nationalists from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). 
The Bengalis were disgruntled, and for good 
reason: East Pakistan, where a majority of the 
population lived, was treated as a colony and the 
Bengalis wanted a federal government. The 
military-political-economic elite came from West 
Pakistan, however, and all it could see in the 
Awami League's victory was a threat to its 
privileges.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan 
People's Party, which had triumphed in the 
western portion of the country, should have 
negotiated a settlement with the victors. Instead 
he sulked, told his party to boycott a meeting of 
the new assembly that had been called in Dhaka, 
the capital of East Pakistan, and thus provided 
the army with breathing space to prepare a 
military assault. Yahya prevented the leader of 
the Awami League, Mujibur Rahman, from forming a 
government and, in March 1971, sent in troops to 
occupy East Pakistan. 'Thank God, Pakistan has 
been saved,' Bhutto declared, aligning himself 
with what followed. Rahman was arrested and 
several hundred nationalist and left-wing 
intellectuals, activists and students were killed 
in a carefully organised massacre. The lists of 
victims had been prepared with the help of local 
Islamist vigilantes, whose party, the 
Jamaat-e-Islami, had lost badly in the elections. 
The killings were followed by a campaign of mass 
rape. Soldiers were told that Bengalis were 
relatively recent converts to Islam and hence not 
'proper Muslims' - their genes needed improving.

The atrocities provoked an armed resistance and 
there were appeals for military aid from New 
Delhi, where the Awami League had established a 
government-in-exile. The Indians, fearful that 
Bengali refugees might destabilise the Indian 
province of West Bengal and no doubt sensing an 
opportunity, sent in their army, which was 
welcomed as a liberating force. Within a 
fortnight, the Pakistan troops were surrounded. 
Their commander, General 'Tiger' Niazi, chose 
surrender rather than martyrdom, for which his 
colleagues, a thousand miles from the 
battlefield, were never to forgive him. In 
December 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh 
and 90,000 West Pakistani soldiers ended up in 
Indian prisoner of war camps. Nixon, Kissinger 
and Mao had all 'tilted towards Pakistan' but to 
little effect. It was a total disaster for the 
Pakistan army: the first phase of military rule 
had led to the division of the country and the 
loss of a majority of its population.

Bhutto was left with a defeated army and a 
truncated state. He had been elected on a 
social-democratic programme that pledged food, 
clothing, education and shelter for all, major 
land reform and nationalisation. He was the only 
political leader Pakistan has ever produced who 
had the power, buttressed by mass support, to 
change the country and its institutions, 
including the army, for ever. But he failed on 
every front. The nationalisations merely replaced 
profit-hungry businessmen with corrupt cronies 
and tame bureaucrats. As landlords flocked to 
join his party, the radical reforms he had 
promised in the countryside were shelved. The 
poor felt instinctively that Bhutto was on their 
side (the elite never forgave him) but few 
measures were enacted to justify their 
confidence. His style of government was 
authoritarian; his personal vindictiveness was 
corrosive.

Bhutto attempted to fight the religious 
opposition by stealing their clothes: he banned 
the sale of alcohol, made Friday a public holiday 
and declared the Ahmediyya sect to be non-Muslims 
(a long-standing demand of the Jamaat-e-Islami 
that had, till then, been treated with contempt). 
These measures did not help him, but damaged the 
country by legitimising confessional politics. 
Despite his worries about the Islamist 
opposition, Bhutto would probably have won the 
1977 elections without state interference, though 
with a reduced majority. But the manipulation was 
so blatant that the opposition came out on the 
streets and neither his sarcasm nor his wit was 
any help in the crisis.

Always a bad judge of character, he had made a 
junior general and small-minded zealot, 
Zia-ul-Haq, army chief of staff. As head of the 
Pakistani training mission to Jordan, Brigadier 
Zia had led the Black September assault on the 
Palestinians in 1970. In July 1977, to pre-empt 
an agreement between Bhutto and the opposition 
parties that would have entailed new elections, 
Zia struck. Bhutto was arrested, and held for a 
few weeks, and Zia promised that new elections 
would be held within six months, after which the 
military would return to barracks. A year later 
Bhutto, still popular and greeted by large crowds 
wherever he went, was again arrested, and this 
time charged with murder, tried and hanged in 
April 1979.

Over the next ten years the political culture of 
Pakistan was brutalised. As public floggings (of 
dissident journalists among others) and hangings 
became the norm, Zia himself was turned into a 
Cold War hero - thanks largely to events in 
Afghanistan. Religious affinity did nothing to 
mitigate the hostility of Afghan leaders to their 
neighbour. The main reason was the Durand Line, 
which was imposed on the Afghans in 1893 to mark 
the frontier between British India and 
Afghanistan and which divided the Pashtun 
population of the region. After a hundred years 
(the Hong Kong model) all of what became the 
North-Western Frontier Province of British India 
was supposed to revert to Afghanistan but no 
government in Kabul ever accepted the Durand Line 
any more than they accepted British, or, later, 
Pakistani control, over the territory.

In 1977, when Zia came to power, 90 per cent of 
men and 98 per cent of women in Afghanistan were 
illiterate; 5 per cent of landowners held 45 per 
cent of the cultivable land and the country had 
the lowest per capita income of any in Asia. The 
same year, the Parcham Communists, who had backed 
the 1973 military coup by Prince Daud after which 
a republic was proclaimed, withdrew their support 
from Daud, were reunited with other Communist 
groups to form the People's Democratic Party of 
Afghanistan (PDPA), and began to agitate for a 
new government. The regimes in neighbouring 
countries became involved. The shah of Iran, 
acting as a conduit for Washington, recommended 
firm action - large-scale arrests, executions, 
torture - and put units from his torture agency 
at Daud's disposal. The shah also told Daud that 
if he recognised the Durand Line as a permanent 
frontier the shah would give Afghanistan $3 
billion and Pakistan would cease hostile actions. 
Meanwhile, Pakistani intelligence agencies were 
arming Afghan exiles while encouraging old-style 
tribal uprisings aimed at restoring the monarchy. 
Daud was inclined to accept the shah's offer, but 
the Communists organised a pre-emptive coup and 
took power in April 1978. There was panic in 
Washington, which increased tenfold as it became 
clear that the shah too was about to be deposed. 
General Zia's dictatorship thus became the 
lynchpin of US strategy in the region, which is 
why Washington green-lighted Bhutto's execution 
and turned a blind eye to the country's nuclear 
programme. The US wanted a stable Pakistan 
whatever the cost.

As we now know, plans (a 'bear-trap', in the 
words of the US national security adviser 
Zbigniew Brzezinski) were laid to destabilise the 
PDPA, in the hope that its Soviet protectors 
would be drawn in. Plans of this sort often go 
awry, but they succeeded in Afghanistan, 
primarily because of the weaknesses of the Afghan 
Communists themselves: they had come to power 
through a military coup which hadn't involved any 
mobilisation outside Kabul, yet they pretended 
this was a national revolution; their Stalinist 
political formation made them allergic to any 
form of accountability and ideas such as drafting 
a charter of democratic rights or holding free 
elections to a constituent assembly never entered 
their heads. Ferocious factional struggles led, 
in September 1979, to a Mafia-style shoot-out at 
the Presidential Palace in Kabul, during which 
the prime minister, Hafizullah Amin, shot 
President Taraki dead. Amin, a nutty Stalinist, 
claimed that 98 per cent of the population 
supported his reforms but the 2 per cent who 
opposed them had to be liquidated. There were 
mutinies in the army and risings in a number of 
towns as a result, and this time they had nothing 
to do with the Americans or General Zia.

Finally, after two unanimous Politburo decisions 
against intervention, the Soviet Union changed 
its mind, saying that it had 'new documentation'. 
This is still classified, but it would not 
surprise me in the least if the evidence 
consisted of forgeries suggesting that Amin was a 
CIA agent. Whatever it was, the Politburo, with 
Yuri Andropov voting against, now decided to send 
troops into Afghanistan. Its aim was to get rid 
of a discredited regime and replace it with a 
marginally less repulsive one. Sound familiar?

From 1979 until 1988, Afghanistan was the focal 
point of the Cold War. Millions of refugees 
crossed the Durand Line and settled in camps and 
cities in the NWFP. Weapons and money, as well as 
jihadis from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt, 
flooded into Pakistan. All the main Western 
intelligence agencies (including the Israelis') 
had offices in Peshawar, near the frontier. The 
black-market and market rates for the dollar were 
exactly the same. Weapons, including Stinger 
missiles, were sold to the mujahedin by Pakistani 
officers who wanted to get rich quickly. The 
heroin trade flourished and the number of 
registered addicts in Pakistan grew from a few 
hundred in 1977 to a few million in 1987. (One of 
the banks through which the heroin mafia 
laundered money was the BCCI - whose main PR 
abroad was a retired civil servant called Altaf 
Gauhar.)

As for Pakistan and its people, they languished. 
During Zia's period in power, the 
Jamaat-e-Islami, which had never won more than 5 
per cent of the vote anywhere in the country, was 
patronised by the government; its cadres were 
sent to fight in Afghanistan, its armed student 
wing was encouraged to terrorise campuses in the 
name of Islam, its ideologues were ever present 
on TV. The Inter-Services Intelligence also 
encouraged the formation of other, more extreme 
jihadi groups, which carried out acts of terror 
at home and abroad and set up madrassahs all over 
the frontier provinces. Soon Zia, too, needed his 
own political party and the bureaucracy set one 
up: the Pakistan Muslim League.

With the elevation of Mikhail Gorbachev in March 
1985 it became obvious that the Soviet Union 
would accept defeat in Afghanistan and withdraw 
its troops. It wanted some guarantees for the 
Afghans it was leaving behind and the United 
States - its mission successful - was prepared to 
play ball. General Zia, however, was not. The 
Afghan war had gone to his head (as it did to 
that of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues) and 
he wanted his own people in power there. As the 
Soviet withdrawal got closer, Zia and the ISI 
made plans for the postwar settlement.

And then Zia disappeared. On 17 August 1988, he 
took five generals to the trial of a new US 
Abrams M-1/A-1 tank at a military test range near 
Bahawalpur. Also present were a US general and 
the US ambassador, Arnold Raphael. The 
demonstration did not go well and everybody was 
grumpy. Zia offered the Americans a lift in his 
specially built C-130 aircraft, which had a 
sealed cabin to protect him from assassins. A few 
minutes after the plane took off, the pilots lost 
control and it crashed into the desert. All the 
passengers were killed. All that was left of Zia 
was his jawbone, which was duly buried in 
Islamabad (the chowk - roundabout - nearby became 
known to cabbies as 'Jawbone Chowk'). The cause 
of the crash remains a mystery. The US National 
Archives contain 250 pages of documents, but they 
are still classified. Pakistani intelligence 
experts have told me informally that it was the 
Russians taking their revenge. Most Pakistanis 
blamed the CIA, as they always do. Zia's son and 
widow whispered that it was 'our own people' in 
the army.

With Zia's assassination, the second period of 
military rule in Pakistan came to an end. What 
followed was a longish civilian prologue to 
Musharraf's reign. For ten years members of two 
political dynasties - the Bhutto and Sharif 
families - ran the country in turn. It was 
Benazir Bhutto's minister of the interior, 
General Naseerullah Babar, who, with the ISI, 
devised the plan to set up the Taliban as a 
politico-military force that could penetrate 
Afghanistan, a move half-heartedly approved by 
the US Embassy. Washington had lost interest in 
Afghanistan and Pakistan once the Soviet Union 
had withdrawn its troops. The Taliban 
('students') were children of Afghan refugees and 
poor Pathan families 'educated' in the madrassahs 
in the 1980s: they provided the shock troops, but 
were led by a handful of experienced mujahedin 
including Mullah Omar. Without Pakistan's support 
they could never have taken Kabul, although 
Mullah Omar preferred to forget this. Omar's 
faction was dominant, but the ISI never 
completely lost control of the organisation. 
Islamabad kept its cool even when Omar's zealots 
asserted their independence by attacking the 
Pakistan Embassy in Kabul and his religious 
police interrupted a football match between the 
two countries because the Pakistan players 
sported long hair and shorts, caned the players 
before the stunned crowd and sent them back home.

After Benazir's fall, the Sharif brothers 
returned to power. And once again, Shahbaz, the 
younger but shrewder sibling, accepted family 
discipline and Nawaz became the prime minister. 
In 1998 Sharif decided to make Pervez Musharraf 
army chief of staff in preference to the more 
senior General Ali Kuli Khan (who was at college 
with me in Lahore). Sharif's reasoning may have 
been that Musharraf, from a middle-class, refugee 
background like himself, would be easier to 
manipulate than Ali Kuli, who came from a landed 
Pathan family in the NWFP. Whatever the 
reasoning, it turned out to be a mistake.

On Bill Clinton's urging, Sharif pushed for a 
rapprochement with India. Travel and trade 
agreements were negotiated, land borders were 
opened, flights resumed, but before the next 
stage could be reached, the Pakistan army began 
to assemble in the Himalayan foothills. The ISI 
claimed that the Siachen glacier in Kashmir had 
been illegally occupied by the Indians and the 
Indians claimed the opposite. Neither side could 
claim victory after the fighting that followed, 
but casualties were high, particularly on the 
Indian side (Musharraf exaggerates Pakistan's 
'triumph'). A ceasefire was agreed and each army 
returned to its side of the Line of Control.

Why did the war take place at all? In private the 
Sharif brothers told associates that the army was 
opposed to their policy of friendship with India 
and was determined to sabotage the process: the 
army had acted without receiving clearance from 
the government. In his memoir, Musharraf insists 
that the army had kept the prime minister 
informed in briefings in January and February 
1999. Whatever the truth, Sharif told Washington 
that he had been bounced into a war he didn't 
want, and not long after the war, the Sharif 
family decided to get rid of Musharraf. 
Constitutionally, the prime minister had the 
power to dismiss the chief of staff and appoint a 
new one, as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had done in the 
1970s, when he appointed Zia. But the army then 
was weak, divided and defeated; this was 
certainly not the case in 1999.

Sharif's candidate to succeed Musharraf was 
General Ziauddin Butt, head of the ISI, who was 
widely seen as corrupt and incompetent. He was 
bundled off to Washington for vetting and while 
there is said to have pledged bin Laden's head on 
a platter. If Sharif had just dismissed Musharraf 
he might have had a better chance of success but 
what he lacked in good sense his brother tried to 
make up for in guile. Were the Sharif brothers 
really so foolish as believe that the army was 
unaware of their intrigues or were they misled by 
their belief in US omnipotence? Clinton duly 
warned the army that Washington would not 
tolerate a military coup in Pakistan and I 
remember chuckling at the time that this was a 
first in US-Pakistan relations. Sharif relied too 
heavily on Clinton's warning.

What followed was a tragi-comic episode that is 
well described in Musharraf's book. He and his 
wife were flying back from Sri Lanka on a normal 
passenger flight when the pilot received 
instructions not to land. While the plane was 
still circling over Karachi, Nawaz Sharif 
summoned General Butt and in front of a TV crew 
swore him in as the new chief of staff. Meanwhile 
there was panic on Musharraf's plane, by now low 
on fuel. He managed to establish contact with the 
commander of the Karachi garrison, the army took 
control of the airport and the plane landed 
safely. Simultaneously, military units surrounded 
the prime minister's house in Islamabad and 
arrested Nawaz Sharif. General Zia had been 
assassinated on a military flight; Musharraf took 
power on board a passenger plane.

So began the third extended period of military 
rule in Pakistan, initially welcomed by all Nawaz 
Sharif's political opponents and many of his 
colleagues. In the Line of Fire gives the 
official version of what has been happening in 
Pakistan over the last six years and is intended 
largely for Western eyes. Where Altaf Gauhar 
injected nonsense of every sort into Ayub's 
memoirs, his son Humayun Gauhar, who edited this 
book, has avoided the more obvious pitfalls. The 
general's raffish lifestyle is underplayed but 
there is enough in the book to suggest that he is 
not too easily swayed by religious or social 
obligations.

The score-settling with enemies at home is crude 
and for that reason the book has caused a 
commotion in Pakistan. A spirited controversy has 
erupted in the media, something that could never 
have happened during previous periods of military 
rule. Scathing criticism has come from 
ex-generals (Ali Kuli Khan's rejoinder was 
published in most newspapers), opposition 
politicians and pundits of every sort. In fact, 
there was more state interference in the media 
during Nawaz Sharif's tenure than there is under 
Musharraf and the level of debate is much higher 
than in India, where the middle-class obsession 
with shopping and celebrity has led to a 
trivialisation of TV and most of the print media.

When Musharraf seized power in 1999, he refused 
to move house, preferring his more homely, 
colonial bungalow in Rawalpindi to the kitsch 
comfort of the President's House in Islamabad, 
with its gilt furniture and tasteless decor that 
owes more to Gulf State opulence than local 
tradition. The cities are close to each other, 
but far from identical. Islamabad, laid out in a 
grid pattern and overlooked by the Himalayan 
foothills, was built in the 1960s by General 
Ayub. He wanted a new capital remote from 
threatening crowds, but close to GHQ in 
Rawalpindi, which had been constructed by the 
British as a garrison town. After Partition, it 
became the obvious place to situate the military 
headquarters of the new Pakistan.

One of the 19th-century British colonial 
expeditions to conquer Afghanistan (they all 
ended in disaster) was planned in Rawalpindi. And 
it was also from there, a century and a half 
later, that the Washington-blessed jihad was 
launched against the hopeless Afghan Communists. 
And it was there too that the US demand to use 
Pakistan as a base for its operations in 
Afghanistan was discussed and agreed in September 
2001. This was a crucial decision for the army 
chiefs because it meant the dismantling of their 
only foreign triumph: the placing of the Taliban 
in Kabul.

Heavy traffic often makes the ten-mile journey 
from Islamabad to Rawalpindi tortuous, unless 
you're the president and the highway has been 
cleared by a security detail. Even then, as this 
book reveals in some detail, assassination 
attempts can play havoc with the schedule. The 
first happened on 14 December 2003. Moments after 
the general's motorcade passed over a bridge, a 
powerful bomb exploded and badly damaged the 
bridge, although no one was hurt. The armoured 
limo, fitted with radar and an anti-bomb device, 
courtesy of the Pentagon, saved Musharraf's life. 
His demeanour at the time surprised observers. He 
was said to have been calm and cheerful, making 
jocular allusions to living in perilous times. 
Unsurprisingly, security had been high - decoys, 
last-minute route changes etc - but this didn't 
prevent another attempt a week later, on 
Christmas Day. This time two men driving cars 
loaded with explosives came close to success. The 
president's car was damaged, guards in cars 
escorting him were killed, but Musharraf was 
unhurt. Since his exact route and the time of his 
departure from Islamabad were heavily guarded 
secrets the terrorists must have had inside 
information. If your security staff includes 
angry Islamists who see you as a traitor and want 
to blow you up, then, as the general states in 
his memoir, Allah alone can protect you. He has 
certainly been kind to Musharraf.

The culprits were discovered, and tortured till 
they revealed details of the plot. Some junior 
military officers were also implicated. The key 
plotters were tried in secret and hanged. The 
supposed mastermind, a jihadi extremist called 
Amjad Farooqi, was shot by security forces.

Two questions haunt both Washington and 
Musharraf's colleagues: how many of those 
involved remain undetected and would the command 
structure of the army survive if a terrorist 
succeeded next time around? Musharraf doesn't 
seem worried and adopts a jaunty, even boastful 
tone. Before 9/11 he was treated like a pariah 
abroad and beset by problems at home. How to 
fortify the will of a high command weakened by 
piety and corruption? How to deal with the 
corruption and embezzlement that had been a 
dominant feature of both the Sharif and Bhutto 
governments? Benazir Bhutto was already in 
self-exile in Dubai; the Sharif brothers had been 
arrested. Before they could be charged, however, 
Washington organised an offer of asylum from 
Saudi Arabia, a state whose ruling family has 
institutionalised the theft of public funds.

Musharraf's unstinting support for the US after 
9/11 prompted local wags to dub him 'Busharraf', 
and was the motive behind the attempts on his 
life. (In March 2005 Condoleezza Rice described 
the US-Pakistan relationship since 9/11 as 'broad 
and deep'.) Had he not, after all, unravelled 
Pakistan's one military victory in order to 
please Washington? General Mahmood Ahmed, who 
headed the ISI, was in Washington as a guest of 
the Pentagon, trying to convince the Defense 
Intelligence Agency that Mullah Omar was a good 
bloke and could be persuaded to disgorge Osama, 
when the attacks of 11 September took place. That 
his listeners were freaked out by this is hardly 
surprising. Musharraf tells us he agreed to 
become Washington's surrogate because the State 
Department honcho, Richard Armitage, threatened 
to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if he 
didn't. What really worried Islamabad, however, 
was a threat Musharraf doesn't mention: if 
Pakistan refused, the US would have used Indian 
bases.

Musharraf was initially popular in Pakistan and 
if he had pushed through reforms aimed at 
providing an education (with English as a 
compulsory second language) for all children, 
instituted land reforms which would have ended 
the stranglehold of the gentry on large swathes 
of the countryside, tackled corruption in the 
armed forces and everywhere else, and ended the 
jihadi escapades in Kashmir and Pakistan as a 
prelude to a long-term deal with India, then he 
might have left a mark on the country. Instead, 
he has mimicked his military predecessors. Like 
them, he took off his uniform, went to a 
landlord-organised gathering in Sind and entered 
politics. His party? The evergreen, ever 
available Muslim League. His supporters? Chips 
off the same old corrupt block that he had 
denounced so vigorously and whose leaders he was 
prosecuting. His prime minister? Shaukat 
'Shortcut' Aziz, formerly a senior executive of 
Citibank with close ties to the eighth richest 
man in the world, the Saudi prince Al-Walid bin 
Talal. As it became clear that nothing much was 
going to change a wave of cynicism engulfed the 
country.

Musharraf is better than Zia and Ayub in many 
ways, but human rights groups have noticed a 
sharp rise in the number of political activists 
who are being 'disappeared': four hundred this 
year alone, including Sindhi nationalists and a 
total of 1200 in the province of Baluchistan, 
where the army has become trigger-happy once 
again. The war on terror has provided many 
leaders with the chance to sort out their 
opponents, but that doesn't make it any better.

In his book he expresses his detestation of 
religious extremists and his regrets over the 
murder of Daniel Pearl. He suggests that one of 
those responsible, the former LSE student Omar 
Saeed Sheikh, was an MI6 recruit who was sent to 
fight the Serbs in Bosnia. Al-Qaida fighters had 
also been sent there (with US approval) and 
Sheikh established contact with them and became a 
double agent. Now Sheikh sits in a death-cell in 
a Pakistani prison, chatting amiably to his 
guards and emailing newspaper editors in Pakistan 
to tell them that if he is executed papers he has 
left behind will be published exposing the 
complicity of others. Perhaps this is bluff, or 
perhaps he was a triple agent and was working for 
the ISI as well.

Next year there will be an election and rumours 
abound that Musharraf is offering Benazir 
Bhutto's People's Party a deal, but one that 
excludes her. A few years ago she could be 
spotted in Foggy Bottom, waiting forlornly to 
plead for US support from a State Department 
junior on the South Asia desk. All she wanted 
then was a cabinet position under Musharraf, so 
that she could remain a presence on the political 
scene. Musharraf is much weaker now and she may 
decide not to play ball with him, but to hang on 
for something better.

And then there is Afghanistan. Despite the fake 
optimism of Blair and his Nato colleagues 
everyone is aware that it is a total mess. A 
revived Taliban is winning popularity by 
resisting the occupation. Nato helicopters and 
soldiers are killing hundreds of civilians and 
describing them as 'Taliban fighters'. Hamid 
Karzai, the man with the nice shawls, is seen as 
a hopeless puppet, totally dependent on Nato 
troops. He has antagonised both the Pashtuns, who 
are turning to the Taliban once again in large 
numbers, and the warlords of the Northern 
Alliance, who openly denounce him and suggest 
it's time he was sent back to the States. In 
western Afghanistan, it is only the Iranian 
influence that has preserved a degree of 
stability. If Ahmedinejad was provoked into 
withdrawing his support, Karzai would not last 
more than a week. Islamabad waits and watches. 
Military strategists are convinced that the US 
has lost interest and Nato will soon leave. If 
that happens Pakistan is unlikely to permit the 
Northern Alliance to take Kabul. Its army will 
move in again. A Pakistan veteran of the Afghan 
wars joked with me: 'Last time we sent in the 
beards, but times have changed. This time, 
inshallah, we'll dress them all in Armani suits 
so it looks good on US television.' The region 
remains fog-bound. Pakistan's first military 
leader was seen off by a popular insurrection. 
The second was assassinated. What will happen to 
Musharraf?

_____


[2]


For Release - 19 December 2006

STATEMENT OF CONCERN REGARDING MISSING 
VICE-CHANCELLOR OF EASTERN UNIVERSITY, SRI LANKA

We wish to express our deep concern about the 
apparent abduction of Professor S.
Ravindranath, Vice-Chancellor of Eastern 
University in Sri Lanka. On Friday 15th
December, he left a meeting of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of
Science in central Colombo, and has not been seen 
since. His family have reported his
disappearance to the police.

In September an unidentified armed group 
kidnapped the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at
Eastern University, demanding Professor 
Ravindranath's resignation in return for the
Dean's release. The Vice-Chancellor has not been 
able to return to the University since
that incident and had been carrying out his duties from Colombo.

Our colleagues in universities across Sri Lanka 
have struggled heroically in the face of
war and natural disaster in recent years. Eastern 
University is located in one of the areas
most devastated by the civil war and by the 
Tsunami of 2004. That it is still capable of
producing world-class researchers is testimony to 
the quality and dedication of its
academic staff. Professor Ravindranath has played 
a central part in the work of the
University from its foundation in 1981, and his 
tenure as Vice-Chancellor has coincided
with major developments like the opening of the 
first medical school in the East of Sri
Lanka.

As colleagues, friends, and, in some cases, 
academic partners of Eastern University we
urgently appeal for the swift and safe release of 
Professor Ravindranath, and for the
protection and safety of all our colleagues in Sri Lanka.

Signed (in our personal capacities)

1. Dr. Michael Woost, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Hartwick College,USA
2. Prof. Thongchai Winichakul, Professor of 
History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
3. Dr. David Washbrook, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK 
4. Dr. Nicholas Van Hear, Senior Researcher, The 
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society,
University of Oxford, UK
5. Dr. Terrance J. Taylor, Research Associate, 
Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice,
University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA
6. Prof. Donald K. Swearer, Director, Center for 
the Study of World Religions, Harvard
University, USA
7. Dr. Alison Strang, Institute for International 
Health and Development, Queen Margaret
University College, Edinburgh, UK
8. Prof. Kristian Stokke, University of Oslo, Norway
9. Associate Prof. Birgitte Refslund Sørensen, 
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
10. Prof. Jonathan Spencer, Professor of the 
Anthropology of South Asia, School of Social and
Political Studies, University of Edinburgh
11. Associate Prof. Hans Skotte, Norwegian 
University of Science and Technology, Norway
12. Dr. Bob Simpson, Deputy Dean, Faculty of 
Social Science and Health, University of
Durham, UK
For Release - 19 December 2006
13. Professor John Sidel, Sir Patrick Gillam 
Professor of International and Comparative 
Politics,
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
14. Prof. N. Shanmugaratnam, Norwegian University 
of Life Sciences (UMB), Norway
15. Prof. Saskia Sassen, University of Chicago, 
USA and Centennial Visiting Professor, London
School of Economics and Political Science, UK
16. Prof. S W R de A Samarasinghe, Tulane 
University, USA  & Executive Director, ICES, Sri
Lanka
17. Dr. John D. Rogers, Bibliography of Asian Studies, USA
18. Dr. Susan A. Reed, Director, Center for the 
Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender and
Assistant Professor, Women's and Gender Studies 
and Anthropology, Bucknell University,
USA
19. Prof. Velcheru Narayana Rao, Krishnadevaraya 
Professor of Languages and Cultures of Asia,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
20. Dr Caroline Paskell, London, UK
21. Prof. Jonathan P. Parry, Professor of 
Anthropology, London School of Economics and
Political Science, UK
22. Dr. Camilla Orjuela, Göteborg University, Sweden
23. Dr. Ranjini Obeyesekere, Lecturer Emerita, 
Department of Anthropology, Princeton
University, USA
24. Prof. Gananath Obeyesekere, Professor 
Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Princeton
University, USA
25. Prof. Hisashi Nakamura, Department of Economy, Ryukoku University, Japan
26. Dr. Martha Mundy, Reader in Anthropology, 
London School of Economics and Political
Science, UK
27. Elizabeth Monson, Department of Languages and 
Cultures of Asia, University  of Wisconsin-
Madison, USA
28. Dr. Jody Miller, Associate Professor, 
Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of
Missouri-St. Louis, USA
29. Prof. Eric Meyer, Vice-President, National 
Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations,
University of Paris, France
30. Prof. Barbara McPake, Director, Institute for 
International Health and Development, Queen
Margaret University College, Edinburgh, UK
31. Prof. Susan McGrath, Director, Centre for 
Refugee Studies, York University, Canada
32. Dr. Caitrin Lynch, Assistant Professor of 
Humanities and Social Sciences, Olin College of
Engineering, USA
33. Prof. Ragnhild Lund, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
34. Dr.Wasantha A. Liyanage, Lecturer in Sinhala 
Language, Department of Asian Studies,
Cornell University, USA
35. Prof. Jonathan Lewis, Institute for the Study 
of Global Issues, Hitotsubashi University, Japan
36. Assistant Prof. Benedikt Korf, Department of 
Geography, University of Zurich, Switzerland
37. Dr. Steven Kemper, Asian Studies, Bates College, USA
38. Dr. Alf Morten Jerve, Assistant Director, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway
39. Dr. Tariq Jazeel, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK
40. Associate Prof. Jennifer Hyndman, Department 
of Geography, Simon Fraser University,
Canada
41. Dr. Kristine Hoglund, Uppsala University, Sweden
42. Prof. Ruth Haug, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), Norway
43. Prof. John Harriss, Professor of 
International Studies, Simon Fraser University, 
Canada
44. Prof. Olivia Harris, Professor of Social 
Anthropology, London School of Economics and
Political Science, UK
For Release - 19 December 2006
45. Associate Prof. Charles Hallisey, Department 
of Languages and Cultures of Asia, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
46. Prof. Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of 
Buddhist Studies, Harvard University, USA
47. Dr. Arjun Guneratne, Associate Professor of 
Anthropology, Macalester College, U.S.A
48. Prof. Anthony Good, Head of School, School of 
Social & Political Studies, University of
Edinburgh, UK
49. Prof. Wenona Giles, Atkinson College, York University, Canada.
50. Prof. James W. Gair, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Cornell University
51. Prof. Øivind Fuglerud, University of Oslo, Norway
52. Amani El-Jack, School of Women's Studies, York University, Canada
53. Shukria Dini, School of Women's Studies, York University, Canada.
54. Prof. C. R. De Silva, Dean, College of Arts 
and Letters, Old Dominion University, USA
55. Assistant Prof. Donald Davis, Department of 
Languages & Cultures of Asia, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, USA
56. Christina P. Davis, Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, USA
57. Dr. Michael Cullinane, Associate Director, 
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, USA
58. Prof. A.P. Cohen, FRSE, Principal & 
Vice-Patron, Queen Margaret University College,
Edinburgh, UK 
59. Assistant Prof. Bambi L. Chapin, Department 
of Anthropology and Sociology, University of
Maryland, USA
60. Prof. Ian Bryceson, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), Norway
61. Associate Prof. Cathrine Brun, Norwegian 
University of Science and Technology, Norway
62. Dr. Robert Boyce, Department of International 
History, London School of Economics &
Political Science, UK
63. Dr. Anne M. Blackburn, Associate Professor of 
South Asia & Buddhist Studies, Cornell
University, USA
64. Dr. Zoltán Biedermann, Postdoctoral Fellow, 
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
65. Assistant Prof. Bernard Bate, Department of 
Anthropology, Yale University, USA
66. Dr. Daniel Bass, Adjunct Professor, Religious 
Studies & Fellow of The Honors College,
Florida International University, USA
67. Prof. Yoshiko Ashiwa, Institute for the Study 
of Global Issues, Hitotsubashi University,
Japan

______


[3]

The Tribune
December 21, 2006

Editorial

BAN THEM!
CASTE PANCHAYATS ARE A SLUR

ALL the claims of progress and modernisation that 
Haryana may make are negated at one go when 
shocking news of caste panchayats punishing those 
who marry out of caste emanate from the state. 
And the unthinkable happens a little too often, 
mainly in the Jatland. Leave alone targeting a 
boy or girl marrying out of caste, these khap 
panchayats can also turn their ire on those who 
marry in a "gotra" which these self-styled 
keepers of public morality consider incompatible. 
Right now, they are targeting a resident of 
Jevali village of Badhra constituency in Bhiwani 
district over one such marriage. Two years ago, a 
couple from Rohtak was asked by a similar khap 
panchayat to remarry, despite having a child. The 
Punjab and Haryana High Court has come down 
heavily on those issuing such "fatwas" but the 
practice continues regardless. The fault lies 
with the district administration because it does 
not enforce the clear-cut orders effectively. The 
result is that the khap panchayats and maha 
panchayats behave like extra-constitutional 
authorities merrily issuing diktats. The relief 
provided by the courts is not sufficient to 
protect the harried couples.

There are two reasons for this unacceptable 
situation. One, the lower constabulary is itself 
steeped in age-old traditions and tends to show 
sympathy towards the aggressors. Two, the khap 
panchayats enjoy considerable political clout and 
leaders are willing to take them head-on. 
Whatever the reasons, the long rope given to them 
has led to ruination of many couples. The farce 
has continued for far too long and it is 
necessary to call a halt to it forthwith. Those 
who do not enforce the court orders suitably 
should be considered as much guilty as those who 
issue irrational orders in an unauthorised manner.

The problem is not confined to Haryana alone. 
Similar incidents take place in various other 
states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, 
Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu too. The menace has to 
be fought seriously, and urgently. There is bound 
to be resistance. So be it. Once the perpetrators 
of the illegality know that the government means 
business, they will have no option but to fall in 
line. That is how "sati" custom was weeded out 
under the British. That is how the present 
government has to combat this social evil.
_____


[4] 

Issues in Secular Politics 
Dec 2006  II     

COMMUNALISM OR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
by Ram Puniyani

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement to the 
National Development Council that we need "to 
devise innovative plans to ensure that 
minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are 
empowered to share equitably in the fruits of 
development, these must have first claim on 
resources" was backed up by the statement in 
Parliament by the minister of minorities affairs 
that Government will implement the 
recommendations of Sachar Committee, have on one 
hand acted as the ray of hope for the 
'discriminated against' Muslim minorities, while 
on the other hand RSS combine has started crying 
fowl, BJP asserting that it is rank communalism, 
its ideologues saying that these steps of the 
govt are in the footsteps of Jinnah. BJP has 
raised the serious question mark on the very 
formation of this committee calling it 
unnecessary and it being against the interest of 
the nation.
Just to recapitulate, Sachar Committee submitted 
its report (November 2006). The committee after 
extensive home work found that the Muslim 
minority is way behind the national averages in 
most of the parameters of social development, its 
economic status has been sliding seriously, its 
representation in jobs, bank loans is abysmal, 
and its representation in the political process 
has been very poor and worsening on the top of 
that. In sum and substance, Muslim community is 
under-represented in most of the arenas of 
society barring the jails. One also recalls the 
report of Gopal Singh committee of 1982 which 
also had found the poor status of this minority. 
Gopal Singh committee report kept lying in the 
deep freeze while the issues like Ram Temple kept 
hogging the national attention. To add up one can 
say this community's representation as riot 
victim is way above its percentage in population. 
The committee has recommended that an Equal 
Opportunity Commission should be set up, a 
national data bank should be started, a 
nomination procedure should be started to ensure 
their participation in public bodies, in order to 
promote religious tolerance by a procedure to 
evaluate text books for appropriate social 
values, so on and so forth.
Whatever one could glean from the yet to be 
initiated policies being reflected in the 
statements of the government functionaries, it 
seems to be taking it a seriously. Steps are 
being contemplated, short of reservations to 
improve the lot of the Muslim minorities. It is a 
matter of conjuncture whether this Govt is really 
serious about it or is it a mere replay of the 
earlier broken promises during last several 
decades. During last several decades while 
Governments after Governments have been promising 
to look after the problems of Muslim minorities, 
nothing much came out. This includes not only the 
longest reign of Congress party but also of the 
one's of formations in which BJP was an important 
component or supporter.  Amongst multiple reasons 
of this neglect of this minority one was the 
aggressive propaganda of Hindu right that 
Government is out to 'appease' the Muslims so 
that they can be used as vote banks. One does not 
know whether this aggressive anti minority 
propaganda did contribute to the policies of the 
government, but one can say for sure that this 
'appeasement of minorities' had become a part of 
'social common sense' in the face of the 
worsening situation of Muslims.
It is during last two decades that not only 
Muslim minority was battered through the 
post-Babri demolition violence and Gujarat 
carnage, it was during the same period that 
another big minority the Christians also started 
being attacked, especially in the remote Adivasi 
areas. Where do we go from here?  Was the 
commissioning of Sachar an act of appeasement? 
Will the implementation of measures to alleviate 
their plight be communalism, as claimed by RSS 
combine?
India has inherited a negative legacy of 
partition.  While the major part of the country 
was for democracy and secularism, the 
communalists, Muslim League and Hindu Mahsaba, 
RSS were for Islamic Nation and Hindu nation 
respectively. Their ideologies served the British 
'divide and rule' policy very well. With 
partition tragedy, the communal propaganda here 
went on getting sharper over a period of time, 
saying that Muslims have been responsible for 
partition, the subtle nuances and policies which 
led to partition were deliberately underplayed 
and put under the carpet. The role of elite of 
both communities in partition tragedy was put 
aside and the process to blame the whole Muslim 
community for this tragedy started, and this 
identity of Muslim minorities started becoming a 
negative one. This was in contrast to the dalits, 
who were also underprivileged but their identity 
came in as a positive one and the reservations, 
which came for them came to be accepted to some 
extent.
Even in their case the Hindu right and their 
followers did sabotage the whole reservation 
process in order to keep the status quo of 
Brahminmical system, in newer garb though. That's 
how while the reservations were subtly sabotaged, 
the implementation of Mandal was countered by the 
Babri demolition, Mandal opposed by Kamadal. 
Essentially the RSS combine is against any 
affirmative action which can lead to social 
transformation towards substantive equality. In 
the case of Muslims, to demonize them is no big 
deal for this formation, RSS combine. The 
propaganda is simpler; ‘they' created Pakistan 
now through such measure for their uplift, 
foundation for another Pakistan is being laid 
down.
In democracy, the concept of Liberty, Equality 
and Fraternity (community) remains at a formal 
level unless one does proactive action to undo 
the inherent infirmities of sections of society. 
One notices this in most of the advanced 
democracies including the United States where 
serious proactive steps were initiated for the 
African Americans. The politics of right wing and 
more so right wing in the name of religion is 
against affirmative action. For them, democracy 
itself is not an acceptable concept. Today they 
pay lip service to democracy so that they can use 
it to subvert it, to bring in a Hindu nation 
based on refined values, social relations, from 
Manu Smriti.  Democracy is neither their goal nor 
the cherished value system. They nurture the hope 
to have Hindu Rashttra and inherent hierarchies 
of caste and gender.  And any affirmative action 
cannot be tolerated by them.
What is being called rank communalism is 
essentially a bit of affirmative action. Surely 
even the reservations, which were brought in for 
Dalits have improved their conditions slightly, 
so now a full fledged opposition to those polices 
in different language has been unleashed. While 
in the case of minorities not only the condition 
is bad as of today, the bigger worry is that it 
is sliding towards worse very rapidly. We need to 
distinguish abuse of community identity for 
politics and the bowing to the institution of 
religion from the concrete economic steps, social 
actions to support the weaker sections of 
society. Will the community identity become 
strong due to this? Will the community become 
crippled due to this?
If one notices amongst the dalits who have 
slightly benefited from reservations, their 
community identity has loosened up. It is a 
contradictory process, as such you bring a 
community to economic level the religious or 
caste identity becomes weaker and other 
identities start becoming stronger. When a 
community is so helpless due to political 
reasons, how can this affirmative action cripple 
them? As such a lack of such an action will 
cripple them forcing more of them to go in the 
aberrant way. Already a large section of youth 
from them is being targeted on any small pretext, 
the number of them in jails is appalling.  Surly 
that's what RSS combine wants and any hindrance 
to the measures meant to uplift them will worsen 
their condition.
To revoke Jinnah at this stage is deliberate. The 
idea is to frighten and polarize the upper 
castes/middle sections of society around the 
politics of Hindu right. While Jinnah played the 
card for Muslim elite, the current efforts, if at 
all they come through, are for the poorer 
sections of society, which in no way can be 
labeled as communalism. As such had there not 
been the fear of backlash of RSS combine, 
reservations for Muslims would be the ideal 
solution out of this impasse. In the present 
scenario all steps short of reservations should 
and need to be taken to work towards the 
democratic goal of equality. 

_____


[5] 

Frontline
Dec. 16-29, 2006

A SERIAL KIDNAPPER AND HIS `MISSION'

Dionne Bunsha

  Bajrang Dal activist Babu Bajrangi "rescues", by 
kidnapping, Patel girls who marry outside their 
community.

PICTURES: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Babu Bajrangi: "I don't believe in love marriage. 
We have to marry within our own community."

"If you rescue one girl, it is the same as saving 
100 cows. One daughter equals 100 holy cows."
- A pamphlet distributed by Babu Bajrangi's Navchetan Trust.

"I HAVE some masala for you," Babubhai Patel 
(alias Babu Bajrangi) told me excitedly when I 
called to arrange an interview with him. "There 
are three new girls with me." The "serial 
kidnapper of Gujarat" has never shied away from 
his mission. Every time I meet him, he brags 
about the girls he has "rescued", almost as if 
each one were a new conquest.

A small-time Bajrang Dal leader from Naroda in 
Ahmedabad, Babubhai has grown in notoriety over 
the years. He is a prime accused in the Naroda 
Patiya massacre, one of the goriest communal 
massacres of Gujarat 2002. Never punished for 
this crime, he remains free. As president of his 
Navchetan (New Awakening) Trust, he has made it 
his mission to "rescue" Patel girls who marry 
outside their community.

"In every house there is a live bomb that can 
erupt at any time. Do you know who that is? Our 
daughters," the Navchetan pamphlet proclaims. 
"Daughters are the honour of the family and the 
community, and to protect that is our Hindu duty 
and Hindu culture... . Come, and let's unite to 
save bombs... Jai Shree Ram." Babubhai claims to 
have distributed 10 lakh pamphlets all over 
Gujarat.

"I don't believe in love marriage. We have to 
marry within our own community. These girls go to 
college, make friends with some lafanga [loafer], 
roam with them on their bikes, fall in love, and 
then run off and get married," said Babubhai, 
pointing to the three girls sitting meekly by his 
side. "We bring them back and convince them that 
they are ruining their future. They stay with me 
for a while and then return to their parents."

"But why do they stay with you?" I ask.

"We give them shelter, make them understand, and 
when their mind is fresh, they go back home," he 
says.

HIS `magic mantra'

I remind Babubhai that when we met two years ago 
he had described to me how he and his men 
thrashed the boys and took away the girls. "That 
was some time back. If I say that now, the media 
will be after me," he smiles. "I have a magic 
mantra that makes the girls come back. We do 
whatever it takes and somehow bring them. If it's 
a Musalman, we definitely use force even if the 
girl doesn't want to leave. Musalmans don't have 
a right to live in our country. How dare they 
marry our girls?"

But it is not Muslim boys who have filed a court 
case against Babubhai for abducting their wives, 
it is a group of four Hindu boys living in 
Maharashtra. Babubhai remains unperturbed by 
minor complications like police complaints. 
"Those who file cases against us are crazy. Even 
the Bombay High Court has dismissed their case," 
he laughs.

The High Court ordered a police inquiry, which 
found that the women had been kidnapped and 
forced to ask for divorce in court. Other girls, 
who had managed to escape Babubhai's clutches, 
also testified about how he captured, beat and 
abused girls and forced them to break their 
marriages. Those who were pregnant were forced to 
have abortions.

The police report said that Babu Bajrangi should 
be arrested and that further investigations 
should be made into all cases where girls had 
been kidnapped. However, the High Court ignored 
the investigation. It ruled that since the 
allegedly abducted wives had not substantiated 
their claims the court could not take any action 
and the matter should be settled in matrimonial 
courts.

Now the four boys - Ajay Nikam, Raju Medige, 
Abhijeet Sonawane and Prashant Samudre - are 
appealing for justice before the Supreme Court. 
Meanwhile, Babubhai continues on his kidnapping 
crusade. To date, he claims to have "saved" 706 
girls.

NO HAPPY ENDING

Ajay and Geeta's wedding. It has been two years since Bajrangi "rescued" Geeta.

Ajay Nikam's wife, Geeta, was number 561 on the 
list. She was kidnapped on November 30, 2004. 
Their romance could well be the script of a 
Bollywood film, but there is no happy ending.

The couple had known each other for five years. 
They had been married for one and a half years 
when Geeta was kidnapped.

"For most of that time, we kept our marriage a 
secret. Geeta was staying with her parents until 
she graduated. Then she ran away and came to live 
with me. Two months after that they abducted 
her," says Ajay. Geeta's mother said she was 
taking her to visit a doctor when she was 
abducted. The abductors took her to Gujarat. 
Geeta called Ajay and told him that she was in 
Gujarat and would call after 10 days. Ajay traced 
the call to a telephone booth in Naroda and 
followed her to Gujarat. Naroda is where Babu 
Bajrangi lives and operates from.

While walking on the street, Ajay was accosted by 
armed men who pushed him into a black Scorpio. 
"They told me they were from the crime branch. At 
that time I didn't know it was Babu Bajrangi," 
says Ajay. "They had sten guns, so I believed 
them. They took me to a construction site where 
Geeta was also present. They forced both of us to 
sign some papers. She told me, `If you love me, 
then sign the papers'. I realised the danger, and 
so I listened to her and signed."

When he returned to Mumbai, Ajay filed a case 
with the police. But the police did not do much. 
They did not even inform Ajay when the case came 
up in court. "Later, I found out and appealed for 
another hearing. At every stage, it seemed like 
the authorities were working against me. No 
matter how many complaints I sent, they took no 
action against the culprits," says Ajay.

In court, there was a huge crowd escorting Geeta. 
"She could not speak, so the judge called us to 
speak in his chamber," says Ajay. "There, she 
told me that the lives of both of us are under 
threat. Babu Bajrangi had forced her to sign the 
papers, and she was too scared to speak the truth 
in court."

When Geeta was sent back to Mumbai, she and Ajay 
tried to meet several times but her parents 
foiled all plans. At one point, she even 
attempted suicide.

"Now, I think they have got her married to 
someone in Thane," says Ajay. Raju's wife, Naval, 
is reportedly engaged to Babubhai's nephew.

After exhausting all avenues for justice, Ajay 
got in touch with the human rights activist 
Teesta Setalvad. She suggested he file a case in 
the Bombay High Court. Raju, Abhijeet and 
Prashant contacted Ajay when they read about him 
in the media. All had the same story to tell. The 
pattern of the kidnappings was terrifyingly 
similar. So were the girls' statements in court.

When the High Court ordered a police 
investigation, two girls who had escaped 
Babubhai's clutches told police investigators how 
Babubhai beat, threatened and forced them to sign 
divorce papers. One of them, Reema from Naroda, 
was taken to a small clinic and forced to undergo 
an abortion. The other, Bharati Patole, who was 
locked in Babubhai's home with Geeta and Naval, 
also gave details of the abuse and threats. Even 
today Patole's husband cannot even go to work 
because his life is in danger. Reema and her 
husband, Anthony, are reunited but have to live 
in hiding outside Gujarat.

Babubhai remains a free man, and hundreds of girls remain captive.

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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
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