SACW | Dec. 26-27, 2006 | Bangladesh: Secular Ideals Betrayed / "Religion makes world poisonous" Salma Sobhan Memorial Lecture; India: Martyrs and Innocents; Containing China; UK: Secularism not Religion

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | December 26-27, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2339 - Year 8

[1]  Bangladesh: Secular Ideals Betrayed
      (i) AL shoots itself in the foot (Mahfuz Anam)
      (ii) An open letter to Awami League General Secretary Abdul 
Jalil (Asif Saleh)
      (iii) Hasina's ulu dhoni moment (Naeem Mohaiemen)
[2]  Salma Sobhan Memorial Lecture: "Religion in politics makes world 
poisonous" (Amartya Sen)
[3]  India: Of Criminals, Martyrs and Innocents (Sumanta Banerjee)
[4]  US / Asia: Containing China (Achin Vanaik)
[5]  UK: Beyond Belief ; The government must promote secularism (The Guardian)


____


[1]   [ BANGLADESH: SECULAR IDEALS BETRAYED ]

The Daily Star
December 27, 2006
  	 
AL SHOOTS ITSELF IN THE FOOT
by Mahfuz Anam

What a tribute the Awami League has paid to the martyrs of the 
Liberation War in the very month of our victory. There was perhaps no 
better way to 'honour' the intellectuals who were brutally killed on 
13th of December, 1971 for a modern, scientific and secular 
Bangladesh than by signing a deal with Islamic extremists and 
pledging to permit fatwa, introduce shariah laws, and basically to 
lay the foundation for a religious state in the future.

We have known for a while that our politics had become unprincipled, 
opportunistic and devoid of all ethical considerations. BNP and its 
allies shocked and surprised us during the last five years. Now AL 
has shown that it is equally capable of a betrayal of values and 
ethics in politics. We knew that 'anything to gain power' was the 
most favourite game of our leaders. We saw with our heads bowed in 
shame the tussle between Khaleda Zia and Shiekh Hasina to get the 
man, who was singularly responsible for taking us down the unbridled 
corruption route, on their side. Earlier, in 2001 we had seen how the 
party formed by our war hero Ziaur Rahman, who had fought side by 
side with freedom fighters to liberate Bangladesh from the clutches 
of Pakistani occupiers and collaborators of Jamaat, embraces those 
very collaborators and take as partners in government. (Imagine if 
the war had gone the other way, wouldn't this very Jamaat have 
rejoiced to see Ziaur Rahman swing from the gallows on charge of 
"treason" against Pakistan?)

As if from a sense of having fallen behind in the game of deceit, 
chicanery and opportunism the party that led us during the Liberation 
War buried the central values of our independence struggle and signed 
a dangerous deal with the most conservative and extremist fringe of 
the so-called Islamic parties, which, in effect, lays the foundation 
for a future religious state. It is as if the Awami League has sold 
its soul for a few votes.

How could the AL agree, if elected to power, to "enact laws allowing 
certified Hakkani Alems to issue fatwas"? Why do we need a law 
declaring Prophet

Mohammad (pbh) as the ultimate and the greatest of prophets? To every 
Muslim he has been and will be the Greatest Prophet, no law can 
glorify him more, and no lack of law reduces an iota of the glory 
that Allah has bestowed upon him. Now that there is no such law, are 
we honouring our Prophet any less?

The real purpose here is not to respect the Prophet but to get a 
cover of legality to oppress people who are termed as different. The 
undeclared message here is that such a law will make it possible to 
declare the Ahmedias (a distinct group within the Muslims) as 
non-Muslims. Then there is a pledge to enact a law that will ban 
criticisms of the Prophet and his disciples. Good Muslims never 
criticise the Prophet. But why should we ban any discussion about the 
activities of his disciples? This is nothing but a camouflaged 
attempt to enact a blasphemy law.

Then there is the pledge to implement the BNP-alliance government's 
decision to recognise the degrees awarded by the Qwami madrasas. To 
her credit Khaleda Zia resisted this pressure for the better part of 
her tenure and conceded to it at the very end much to the dismay of 
academics, educationists and modernists in general. The decision was 
neither well thought out, nor was it the product of any research as 
to its impact on education in general. The AL could have easily 
agreed to examine the proposal without pledging to implement 
something that nobody knows the impact of. This is a good example of 
how policy pledges are made without either any knowledge of their 
substance or assessment of their impact.

On Monday, on behalf of the 14-party alliance its coordinator and AL 
General Secretary Abdul Jalil issued a statement reiterating the 
alliance's commitment to secularism, uprooting anti-liberation 
forces, and upholding democracy. Interestingly, no mention was made 
in it about the deal signed earlier with the Khelafet-e-Majlish. Only 
the day before Mr. Jalil defended his deal, which he called a 'MOU' 
and not an agreement, on national TV saying that he had no objection 
to fatwas from qualified Alems. He even justified that position 
bysaying that it will stop fatwas coming from unqualified and 
uneducated village mullahs.

Who are these 'qualified' Alems? What makes them 'qualified' to rise 
above the law of the land? Will this not bring into effect a parallel 
legal system alongside the existing one? Does our constitution permit 
a dual legal system? Power to enact fatwas gives these Alems power 
over our life, our family relations and our property. Signing the 
deal as it stands (we published the full text in yesterday's paper) 
has basically laid the foundation of destruction of our constitution, 
our legal system and our way of life. In fact, it is a blue print for 
a different Bangladesh, not the one we have now and not the one for 
which millions died. It really amounts to destruction of modern 
Bangladesh created in 1971. (Has Mr Jalil considered the possibility 
that legalising fatwa will empower Mr. Amini to declare that no woman 
can be the prime minister of Bangladesh? What will happen to his 
"Nettri" then?)

If Awami League is serious about implementing the "MOU" after coming 
to power then it will have to effectively bury its ideological 
foundation and whatever little was left of its principles. If, on the 
other hand, the "MOU" is a ploy to hoodwink the so-called " Islamic 
vote bank", then the AL has sunk to the lowest ebb of political 
morality where it can say anything to anybody just to gain support 
prior to elections. This means that the party cannot be trusted. 
Whatever pledge it makes to the people will be like the "MOU" with 
the Khelafat, a time serving device to be discarded once in power. Is 
this Mr. Jalil's message in taking so much pain to distinguish 
between an 'agreement' and an 'MOU'?

The AL must really believe that we, the people, are a bunch of fools 
to be taken for a ride and hoodwinked at will. Well, people may have 
a surprise for such clever people. The deal shows that the party is 
so desperate and hungry to go to power that it can discard its 
founding principles, make pledges against what it proclaimed to stand 
for since its birth and embrace anybody as an ally, even people who 
really would prefer to see them destroyed.

The truth of the matter is that both the BNP and AL have, over the 
years, removed all moral underpinnings of their actions. There is no 
ethical anchor to their politics, and as such, everything is a 'game' 
in their bid for power. This degeneration has not happened overnight 
and it has deteriorated over the last several decades starting from 
Ershad era. The tragedy is that the democratic governments did not 
stem the tide, they in fact added impetus to the process of decline 
of morality in politics.

There is a direct link with the rise of corruption in the country and 
the decline of ethics and moral values in our politics. The last 
regime of Khaleda Zia set newer records of corruption that put to 
shame what we saw during the Ershad era. The creation of "Hawa 
Bhaban" as the alternative source of power opened up the floodgate of 
corruption led by family members of the former prime minister.

We deliberately waited a couple of days before writing this 
commentary, hoping that the AL would realise the blunder of its 
action and retract. It has not yet done so, meaning that it was a 
well thought out action. Instead, it has issued an eyewash statement 
insisting on standing for a secular Bangladesh built, we suppose, on 
the fatwas of the 'certified' Alems. This deal proves how desperate 
the AL leadership is for going to power. If such be the level of 
morality then we, the voters, have very little to expect from them.

Are we condemned to vote only to replace one corrupt, intellectually 
bankrupt and morally depraved group by another? The Awami League 
probably thinks that its vote bank is guaranteed. The secularists 
among them will grumble and protest but will vote for them at the 
end, the logic being they have nowhere else to go. So there is 
nothing to worry about. Well, if the view of a very small group of AL 
die-hards is any indication, they may not have the heart to vote for 
the BNP but they will not vote for the AL. All of them said that they 
would cancel their votes in protest.

This is a reaction that the AL will be well-advised to take note of.

o o o

The Daily Star
December 27, 2006
  	 
AN OPEN LETTER TO AWAMI LEAGUE GENERAL SECRETARY ABDUL JALIL

by Asif Saleh

Dear Mr Abdul Jalil: Ever since this morning, I am feeling very sick 
to my stomach. I feel like vomiting all day.

It is not because of something I ate but it is because something you 
did, which is proving very hard to digest. You left us, who fought 
for some ideals, cheated. You betrayed the policy that you championed 
the last 5 years just for some petty short-term interest of getting 
to power.

Today, we watched with disbelief and horror your 5-point agreement 
with a little known party Khelafat-e-Majlish. You termed it as a 
"tactical electoral ploy." My utter disbelief turned into shame when 
I turned on ATN Bangla to find you defending the "good fatwas" 
against the bad ones.

When pressed on by the journalists, you say with total nonchalance: 
"I know what I signed" without providing any explanation why you did 
it. You couldn't even defend the stand that you took and lied on 
camera that didn't sign anything regarding the Ahmadiyas.

Excuse me, Mr General Secretary! Have you got no shame? Have you ever 
thought there are actually people who follow politics because they 
support a principal? Before throwing this slap at these people who 
has been supporting AL for a return to non-religious politics, did 
you even care to think about them?

Or Mr GS, sitting in that well-cushioned office for the president of 
Mercantile Bank, have you become so tone-deaf that you can't hear the 
pulse on the street? Just when we have to digest your open embrace 
with Ershad, you decide to slap us again with this new deal?

Mr GS, do you know that there was once a time you had a party, which 
actually stood for something? In 1971, it brought upon secularism and 
social justice in the Constitution? As much as it is hard for you to 
believe, there is a sizable population in Bangladesh who still 
believe in these ideals and there are people who believe in religious 
identity and our Bangladeshi Muslim identity. You are making a huge 
mistake by taking them for a ride.

Dear Mr Jalil, you think the people who support secular politics and 
who are scared of by the politics of BNP-Jamat have no choice but to 
vote for you? Think again. If there is so little difference between 
BNP-Jamat and Awami League, then they will just stay home on election 
day.

If this deal is not cancelled, we will know that you care very little 
about the support for progressive force and are not afraid to plank 
down years of earned credibility and principles for the little gain, 
if any, you will make with the Moulana votes.

Dear Mr. Jalil, it is by no accident that Awami League has been in 
power only for 5 years in the last 30 years. It is years of political 
ineptitude, inconsistencies and perception of opportunism by its 
leaders, which caused this. More importantly, it is because of 
monumentally fatal decisions like these in the past 20 years, which 
sealed its fate. But still we were willing to give you guys a second 
chance this time around seeing the long-term danger of Jamat in 
politics. We chose to ignore years of Awami hypocrisy and 
inconsistencies.

You went in election in1986, 24 hours after declaring the 
participants of election under martial law will be known as national 
traitor. You brought Jamaat in the same table with you and gave them 
the first legitimacy. You first resuscitated Ershad in national 
politics to get into national alliance.

All the time, critics said that there was no difference between 
BNP-Jamaat and AL. Your supporters said there was a lot at stake in 
this election and we simply cannot afford another 5 years of 
accountability-less governance and religious infiltration in 
Bangladeshi politics of BNP. But your desperation to go to power at 
the cost any thing makes our head to bow down in collective shame.

Mr GS, how dare you ridicule and make light of our support for the 
ideals to which this country was founded? Mr GS, you may think that 
this is election time and every thing you do is justified under the 
name of "tactical ploy." Well, I have some news for you. In this 
election, if AL wins, it will be not because of they are a better 
party than BNP. It will be because people are so turned off by BNP, 
they like to vote for anyone but BNP.

It is our misfortune that the ideals that we cherish are hijacked by 
people like you in Bangladeshi politics, who has no sincerity for 
ideals or principle. To you, principles can change with every news 
cycle as long as you can provide your own self-made rationalization 
for your stand and say that the people are with you.

But do know that winter does not go away after one December. Next 
time, you need friends in the progressive circle; please do know that 
will not forget this backstabbing. If they stay passive and do not 
treat you any differently than BNP-Jamaat, please don't be surprised.

Because, after all, parties are judged by their actions and your 
actions, dear sir, are not much different from those of BNP-Jamaat. 
We will rather wait for the party that truly believes these 
progressive ideals rather than support a morally bankrupt party such 
as yours, who just uses these as lip service when it suits them and 
dumps them before election when they think it's a liability.

Mr GS, please don't underestimate the hurt and anguish that has been 
caused by your action. If you don't cancel this deal, you will be 
repaid for your betrayal for a long time to come.

Dear Mr Jalil, you have very little credibility after your April 30 
deadline in 2004. In any other country, you would have been thrown 
into the political dustbin after that monumental political failure. 
Still it's a miracle that you lived through that to cause another 
similar proportion catastrophic failure yesterday by signing this 5 
point agreement with a little known fundamentalist Islamist party and 
effectively stabbed in the back of your party workers and supporters. 
You owe them an explanation.

For a party that regularly tries to milk the liberation war for its 
own advantage and for a party that got a lot of mileage from the 2001 
Hindu oppression and 2005 Ahmadiya discrimination, you owe them an 
explanation for signing a deal that goes completely against your 
previous political stands.

You still have a chance to control the damage by scrapping this deal. 
If you want to have any shred of political credibility for the 
future, you will want to scrap this deal. Otherwise, you will not 
find the friends with you when you need them, and believe me, you 
will need friends a lot sooner than you think. Scrap or no scrap, do 
know this, that from now on we will make it very, very expensive for 
you to take our support for granted.
The author is the founder of Drishtipat.

o o o

The Daily Star
December 26, 2006

HASINA'S ULU DHONI MOMENT

by Naeem Mohaiemen

I hate giving people a chance to say, "I told you so." So imagine the 
chorus after reports of an AL 5-point "understanding" (soon to be 
denied as "misunderstanding") with the Khelafat Andolan gang emerged. 
In one swift move, the party rolled over and handed on a platter 
every major Islamist demand of the last five years. Whether BNP or AL 
wins in the next election, the patient, cunning Islamists are the big 
winners in symbolic and real terms.

A friend wrote: "Don't worry, our politicians do beimani 
(dishonesty). They will do beimani with Khelafat Andolon as well." 
But for those of us who have lost interest in the why, how, or where 
AL (or BNP) does anything, the motive for these electoral chomoks 
(displays) is irrelevant. What really matters is the manner in which 
every Islamist party, demand, and agenda is slowly but surely 
penetrating into every artery of the national body politic and 
infrastructure.

For the last five years, the BNP-Jamaat coalition's ferocious attacks 
on secularism, and aggressive push for an Islamist agenda has had an 
unexpected side effect. As BNP's enemy, AL has automatically received 
the mantle of defender-of-secularism, without doing a single thing to 
protect it.

During the last three years' attacks on the Ahmadiya community, I 
spent a significant time with the Ahmadiya mosques for my film 
Muslims or Heretics. I was struck by the quiet faith many Ahmadiya 
supporters had that AL would never allow these things to happen. In 
all the time that Ahmadiya property was burnt, books were seized, 
mosques attacked, and imams killed, the AL never raised a voice, or 
joined a rally. But because the BNP was actively tolerating Khatme 
Nabuwat, all of us presumed that AL would not do the same!

But just read a few items in the MOU with Khelafot Andolon.

* To not accept Prophet Mohammed as the last Prophet is forbidden.

*Blasphemy will be a punishable offense.

If these items sound familiar, it is because these have been demand 
number one and two on every single flyer given out at Khatme Nabuwat 
rallies. Having spent time at many KN rallies documenting their 
speeches, I am struck (but not surprised) by the manner in which the 
AL has now reproduced in toto the entire text and sentiments of 
anti-Ahmadiya forces.

After the 2001 elections, BNP-affiliated thugs went on a revenge 
spree in Hindu villages, attacking, raping, and looting, all to 
target presumed AL supporters. The tragedy for Hindu Bengalis is that 
they are getting the long pole from both ends. Beaten to a pulp for 
voting AL, and abandoned by AL when they are in power. But AL never 
has to do any work to prove their credentials. Whether minority or 
majority, anyone who wants a secular state is afraid to vote BNP 
because of its clear stance against secularism.

Khaleda Zia once said: "If Hasina gets elected, there will be ulu 
dhoni (ululation) in the mosques of Bangladesh." That is all it took 
to get AL branded secular, even while the party took a half dozen 
steps in the opposite direction. From lok-dekhano (just to show) umra 
and mathae kapor (covering head) to Bismillah in election posters, 
the AL has been playing the Islam card for a while -- confident that 
the secular vote is always theirs.

It was Hasina's infamous meeting with Golam Azam that led Farhad 
Mazhar to write an essay titled: "Sheikh Hasina has insulted Jahanara 
Imam's memory by touching her coffin." But faced with the larger 
embrace of Jamaat by BNP, we who are so desperate for even a minute 
sign of secularism have forgiven AL those past sins. Yes, Hasina sat 
with Jamaat, but she did not bring them into a cabinet. But at the 
rate things are going, can we trust that will never happen?

I wonder what Suranjit Sengupta and other minority members of AL are 
thinking right now. I wonder how they can keep a straight face when 
Sheikh Hasina talks about "secularism" to Bangali Christians on the 
same day that Jalil announces an MOU with Shaikhul Hadis. Like Marie 
Antoinette, AL thinks "let them eat cake," cutting a Christmas cake 
with our beleaguered Christian citizens. That is the dessert to choke 
on, a monument to opportunism.

When Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury was defeated in the OIC election, he 
blamed a global campaign alleging that he was a 1971 war criminal. 
Chief focus of his ire was the AL. In a furious press conference, he 
threatened to "Islamicize" Suranjit Sengupta's nether regions.

I remember being horrified, but now I feel that it is better to face 
SaQa Chowdhury -- at least he lays his cards on the table and you 
know exactly where you are. The problem with the so-called defenders 
of secularism is that they will smile to your face while running the 
knife very deep into your poor, unprotected back. Surely we can do 
better than this?

Some ask why AL gets so much hate for allying with Islamists, but the 
same does not happen for BNP. It's because BNP is being consistent -- 
they have never said they are interested in secularism. Since their 
founding years, BNP has been committed to a project of Bangladeshi 
not Bengali, Allah Hafez not Khoda Hafez, India as permanent enemy, 
and the gun not the carrot for CHT Paharis. If BNP sits with Jamaat, 
it is consistent with that vision -- they have always been the "Islam 
bachao" (save Islam) vote (as if our religion is so weak it needs 
Bangalis to "save" it). It is only the AL who has ever profited from 
the secularism vote (and by the way, not just minorities, but also 
thinking Muslims -- and we are legion -- want religion separate from 
state).

Most young people are bored by the 15-year serialized soap opera of 
BNP vs AL. A retired official says: "Shob chor" (All are thieves) and 
it's hard to argue with his nihilistic mind-set. But what does matter 
is the permanent damage being done to the secularism project (which 
is never anti-religion, but simply asks for separation of religion 
from politics). From Zia to Ershad to Khaleda to Hasina, the players 
change but the Islamist project grows mightier as every party makes 
concessions to religious politics -- whether by an inch or a mile.

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Ten years from now, there 
may be no Hasina, Khaleda, Tarique, Joy, Jalil, Bhuiyan. There may be 
a whole new set of players -- who may be vibrant new jacks, or the 
same liquid in a new bottle. But the one sure thing is that the 
Islamists will be much stronger. Today they are kingmakers, tomorrow 
they will be kings.
Naeem Mohaiemen (naeem at shobak.org) directed "Muslims or Heretics: My 
Camera Can Lie?"


_____


[2]


New Age
27 December 2006

USE OF RELIGION IN POLITICS MAKES WORLD POISONOUS: AMARTYA SEN
Khawaza Main Uddin

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has publicly deplored the worldwide use of 
religion in politics, saying that such a trend has been vitiating the 
political and intellectual domains as well as obstructing citizens in 
general from enjoying human rights.
    'The world has been made poisonous,' he told a function in Dhaka 
on Monday, expressing his despair at 'ferocious religious politics' 
leading to battles, alarming categorisation in British society on the 
basis of religious identity and flawed intellectuals 'joining hands 
with low politics'.
    The economist also told journalists that he was concerned at the 
religious extremism in the form of Hindutva or Muslim fundamentalism 
that has been destroying the secular feelings of many people and 
creating intolerance in society.
    Sen made the observations while delivering the Salma Sobhan 
Memorial Lecture at the National Museum's auditorium as part of the 
20th founding anniversary celebration of Ain O Salish Kendra, a legal 
rights organisation. Salma Sobhan was one of the nine founders of the 
Kendra.
    Another Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, underlined 
the need for making out-of-court arbitration popular through 
campaigns to give hundreds of thousands of people relief from 
lawsuits and harassment by police.
    'The first thing that the police do is to arrest the poor whenever 
there is a crisis somewhere. We have to ensure the human rights of 
the poor,' said the Grameen Bank's founder at the function, which was 
moderated by the Kendra's chairperson, Fazle Hasan Abed, who is the 
chairman of BRAC.
    George Soros, an international financier and philanthropist, 
praised the role of the Bangladeshi civil society in establishing the 
rights of the people. The Kendra's executive director and former 
adviser to the caretaker government, Sultana Kamal, thanked the 
distinguished guests for their participation.
    Amartya Sen paid rich tributes to Salma Sobhan, terming her a 
protagonist of the women's movement, and praised her continuous 
effort to establish human rights.
    He also emphasised the need for women to struggle themselves to 
shape their fate rather than depending on others to give them the 
rights that they deserve. He lauded the role of Bangladeshi 
non-government organisations in the effort to empower women.

______


[3]

Economic and Political Weekly
December 16, 2006

OF CRIMINALS, MARTYRS AND INNOCENTS

Today one comes across legal experts, politicians and human rights 
activists who support the sentencing of one particular accused, but 
oppose a similar sentence on another who is accused of a crime of the 
same nature. Such inconsistencies reflect the basic conflict between 
an anachronistic legal system and newly emerging political interests 
and humanitarian concerns that are at odds with its fixed rules.

by Sumanta Banerjee

There is a grey area in the history of every society, which is 
inhabited by criminals branded by the state, martyrs lauded by 
certain groups, and innocents caught up in the conflict but unable to 
fit into either of the slots. Indian jails and courtrooms are 
seething with such people. Some among them have been recently 
fortunate enough to draw the attention of legal experts, politicians, 
and human rights activists who have entered into a debate. In the 
dissonant chords of the debate, we can make out sounds that hem and 
haw and those that blare their partisanship. Some support the 
sentencing of one particular accused, but oppose a similar sentence 
on another who is accused of a crime of the same nature.  Even those 
who have been consistently pleading for the abolition of capital 
punish-ment, keep mum when such a sentence is passed on certain 
people accused of hei-nous crimes like rape and murder. Such 
inconsistencies reflect the basic conflict between an anachronistic 
legal system and newly emerging political interests and hu-manitarian 
concerns that are at odds with its fixed rules.

To take the highly controversial death sentence passed on Afzal Guru 
in the case of the terrorist attack on Parliament, the Sangh parivar 
politicians are baying for his blood, demanding that he should be 
im-mediately hanged since the apex court has sentenced him to death. 
Their insistence on respecting court orders in this particular case 
stands out in sharp contrast with their utter disrespect of the 
judiciary in the past - the most notorious example being their 
reneging on the assurance that they gave to the court, which they 
violated by demolishing the Babri masjid.  If Afzal Guru - for his 
alleged assistance to the terrorists - is made responsible for the 
killing of security forces in Parliament, why should not L K Advani 
be pinned down for aiding and abetting the 'karsevaks' in the 
massacre of Muslims in the trail of his infamous 'rathayatra'?  It is 
these same politicians who oppose the death sentence on Dara Singh, 
the killer of the Christian missionary, Graham Staines. In their 
view, Dara Singh is a hero to the cause of protecting the Hindu 
dharma, while Afzal Guru, being a Kashmiri Muslim, is bound to be an 
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent. But curiously enough, these 
same Sangh parivar leaders choose to remain silent about the Hindu 
spies of the ISI - employees of our union ministries of home and 
external affairs, who are regularly caught for passing on information 
to the Pakistan embassy, or Hindu officers of the armed forces who 
have been found to be acting as agents of US intelligence. If the 
parivar is so con-cerned about national security, why does it not 
demand the death penalty for them?  What is sauce for the goose is 
sauce for the gander too!

We can dismiss saffron doublespeak, but let us come to the more 
serious ques-tions posed by human rights activists and Kashmiri 
politicians. They base their ar-guments mainly on three grounds - (i 
the palpably flawed process of the trial where Afzal Guru was denied 
a fair hearing; (ii) the apprehension that his hanging might turn him 
into a martyr, intensify Kashmiri animosity against the Indian state 
and add fuel to the militancy - a point made by some politicians from 
the Valley; and (iii) the wider issue of the humanitarian need to 
abolish capital punishment.

That Afzal Guru did not receive a fair trial is obvious from the 
court proceedings. What is even worse is that the extreme punishment 
is out of all proportion to the nature of his crime, since he did not 
directly perpetrate the crime. The court acknowledged that there was 
no evidence that at the time of the offence he was a member of a 
terrorist organisation. From this, it does not logi-cally follow that 
"the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if 
capital punishment is awarded to the of-fender" - the sentiments 
expressed by the court while passing the judgment. The conscience of 
our society had all along been divided regarding the behaviour of the 
prosecution in dealing with the attack on Parliament on December 13, 
2001.  While the police, the political executive and the media acted 
in complicity to pro-mote a version of conspiracy that allowed them 
to nail certain individuals as ISI agents, there was also a strong 
section of society that comprised of lawyers and civil rights 
activists who carried out a sustained campaign - both in the streets 
and the courts - that tore to shreds the false case of the 
prosecution. In this battle, they succeeded in saving at least one 
innocent person from the gallows - S A R Geelani, whom the judges 
finally acquitted. Afzal Guru was not fortunate enough to have a 
lawyer of his choice to argue his case. It is strange that the court 
that imposed the extreme penalty on him did not care to take into 
consideration this background and the basic flaw in the legal 
proceedings. Nor did it bother to take into account the other half of 
the "collective conscience" that had been protesting against the 
manner in which the prosecution had been nailing innocents on false 
charges.

Judicial Activism or Judicial Abetment?

The judgment is likely to cast a dark shadow far beyond this 
particular case, raising doubts about the general efficacy, as well 
as the sense of responsibility, of certain sections of the present 
Indian ju-diciary in deciding on cases that are of a serious and 
sensitive nature. To a large extent, it may detract from the image 
that the Indian judiciary had acquired by its proactive interventions 
on public interest litigations in the recent past, which had helped 
citizens to protect their rights. But while a few judgments had 
offered relief to some members of the oppressed, other verdicts had 
aroused tremendous opposi-tion (for example, the Narmada dam case). 
This may have to do as much with the discretion of individual judges 
as with the steel frame of an outmoded legal code.  Some, who are 
sticklers for the strict implementation of the code, may pass 
judgments with the industrial efficiency of a computer. Others could 
be swayed by humanitarian concerns or their personal political views.

Even those judges, who claim to be free of such biases and strictly 
adhere to the legal code, often end up with judgments that target the 
poor and the deprived. Let us recall the role of justice V R Krishna 
Iyer - an ardent champion of the concept of positive discrimination - 
who in 1975 signed the death sentence of Kista Gaud and Bhumaiya, two 
Naxalite peasant leaders of Andhra Pradesh, accused of killing 
landlords during an uprising in Adilabad. The Supreme Court bench, of 
which he was a member, that passed the death sentence, while 
acknowledging that their offence was of a political nature as 
distinct from plain murder, pointed out that "the penal code which, 
by oath of office (we) enforce, makes no such classifica-tion.... 
(and) we cannot rewrite the law, whatever our own views on urgent 
re-forms." Hoping that their verdict would be reversed by the 
president who enjoyed the power of clemency, the judges added: "The 
political nature of the offence and the undoubted decline in capital 
punishment in most countries of the world should be urged before the 
President..." Needlessly to say, the appeal did not evoke any 
positive response from the then president (who was working as a 
rubber-stamp for the Emer-gency regime), and Kista Gaud and Bhumaiya 
were hanged.

Strangely enough, after three decades, it is the Bharatiya Janata 
Party (BJP) leader L K Advani who has brought up the question of 
"political nature" of offences. When-ever he is accused of his 
complicity in the mass killings in the wake of his notorious 
rathayatra, he claims that the campaign for a Ram temple in Ayodhya 
was a "political" movement, and it should be treated there-fore on a 
different footing. Surely there is a need for differentiating an act 
of law breaking prompted by political motives and that dictated by 
extra-political consid-erations. But then, what makes a move-ment 
political? What was the ideology behind the Ayodhya movement? It was 
essentially based on a religious belief that Advani manipulated to 
rouse popular frenzy among the majority community that was directed 
against Muslims. Can such a mass homicidal mania be sanctified as 
"political"?If his violence-laden religious campaign can be excused 
as "political", the Islamic terrorists who set off the murderous 
Mumbai blasts in 1993 can also demand equal indulgence by claiming 
that their act was a "political" retaliation against the destruction 
of Babri masjid and the killings of Muslims by Advani's karsevaks.
The issue raises tricky questions. Should the Indian judiciary 
continue to accept the term "political" to excuse types of violent 
sectarian demonstrations that are basically of a religious nature - 
whether by the saffron brigade or the Islamic fundamentalists - which 
threaten the secular foundations of our Constitution?  In contrast, 
should it ignore the genuinely political basis of certain other types 
of agitations that violate the law, but are aimed at implementing 
those egalitarian objec-tives spelt out in the directive principles 
of state policy of that Constitution that promise "a social order for 
the promotion of welfare of the people"? How should the judiciary 
view the peaceful agitation of those who are seeking relief for and 
rehabilitation of the oustees from the Narmada dam site, or the 
violent move-ment of the Naxalites who are fighting for the 
legitimate rights of the tribal poor and other underprivileged 
sections which had been suppressed for ages by an oppressive state 
machinery? Our honourable judges can surely make out the difference 
be-tween the objectives of those who, mas-querading as political 
parties, are bent on subverting the Constitution and are intent on 
establishing an obscurantist religious social order (whether Hindu or 
Islamic) on the one hand, and those who are fighting on the other 
hand to protect the basic secular and socialist premises of the 
Constitution.

But, sad to say, in pussyfooting around the Babri masjid demolition 
case involv-ing Advani and other BJP leaders, the judiciary is 
lending itself to the suspicion of discriminatory treatment. It is 
strange that while with breathtaking alacrity the court can sentence 
an Afzal Guru to death (to "satisfy the collective conscience"), and 
pass judgments on the accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts, it drags its 
feet in trying those held guilty by the Srikrishna Commission for the 
equally heinous crime of mass killings of Muslims in Mumbai in 
December 1992-January 1993. How do the judges define "collective 
conscience"?  Does not our society's collective conscience demand the 
punishment of those who massacred Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, those who 
carried out a genocide of Muslims in Gujarat, those who continue to 
lynch dalits in the villages of India? How has the judiciary 
responded to these demands of the collective conscience? One cannot 
but suspect a sneaking bias behind the soph-istry of legal rigmarole 
indulged in by conservative sections of the judiciary, which may be 
too eager to satisfy the vengeful spirit of the majority community.

Remember the judicial approval given to Hindutva by a Supreme Court 
judge in 1995? Remember the behaviour of the Gujarat High Court bench 
in the Best Bakery case? Crimes committed by Muslims are far more 
likely to be prosecuted than those by Hindus, as evident from the 
Rajinder Sachar committee report, which reveals that the Muslim 
percentage of inmates in jails is as high as or even higher than - 
their share in the population. If we contrast this picture of their 
over-representation in jails with that of their under-representation 
in the judiciary (another revelation made by the Sachar Committee), 
it would not be difficult to see why a judicial system dominated by 
such a communal disparity is likely, not only to remain indifferent 
to the specific problems of the minority communities, but also to be 
swayed by traditionally nurtured prejudices against them.

'Our Rascals', 'Their Rascals'
But it is not the prosecution and the judiciary alone that are to be 
blamed. A certain ambiguity in the approach of human rights groups 
and the media towards the interactive relationship of crime and 
punishment also occasionally unhinges their interventionist position. 
While the death sentence on Afzal Guru, for instance, is opposed 
vehemently by civil liberties organisations and lawyers, a similar 
sentence imposed on a rapist-murderer is either ignored by them, or - 
in certain cases even greeted by the media as a triumph of their 
investigative journalism that led to the conviction of the accused 
(as in the recent sentencing of the murderer of Priyadarshini 
Mattoo). This is in fact a recognition of the reality that capital 
punishment of notorious criminals still enjoys support among large 
sections of civil society. To give an example - on August 13, 2004, a 
gangster of Nagpur called Akku Yadav, who used to terrorise and rape 
the women of the slum of Kasturba Nagar, was lynched by a mob of 
around 200 women from the slum. Significantly enough, these women 
chose to hack him to death in the premises of the Nagpur district 
court - to show their defiance of the judiciary that had failed to 
give them justice, and to establish their own alternative penal 
system. Interestingly again, after the incident when some among the 
women were arrested, prominent lawyers issued a statement saying 
these women should not be treated as accused, but as victims.
It is obvious that our civil society is divided over categorising the 
different types of the accused, and the different ways of treating 
them. As Sevanti Ninan put it succinctly in the media matters section 
of The Hindu recently: "Some are lovable, some are martyrs, and some 
are criminals". A cynical western politician was once reported to 
have said, while defending a disreputable supporter, "He may be a 
rascal, but he is our rascal!"

Something of the same sort seems to be happening in our present 
debate on judicial activism. Each group - whether a political party 
or a human rights organisation or a professional lawyer -has adopted 
its/his/her own "rascal" to defend. They support or oppose judicial 
intervention, depending on how far it suits them. The recent 
controversy over the role of the veteran maverick advocate Ram 
Jethmalani, illustrates the point that I am trying to make. He was 
lauded as a hero by one section of human rights activists when he 
defended S A R Geelani in the Parliament attack case, but drew the 
ire of another section when a few days later he decided to become the 
defence lawyer of the high-profile son of a Haryana minister who was 
alleged to have shot dead a model in front of several witnesses in a 
restaurant in Delhi on April 29, 1999.

Still more problematic is the contention usually made by certain 
Kashmiri politicians - that Afzal Guru should not be hanged, as it 
would provoke further unrest among Muslims in the Valley and fuel 
militancy. This echoes the specious argument offered by some that 
judicial retribution against those accused of killing Muslims in 
Gujarat could lead to resentment among Hindus and aggravate communal 
tensions. Should human rights activists who had been seeking justice 
for the victims of the Gujarat massacre agree to this plea for going 
soft on its perpetrators? In fact, Afzal's defenders need not invoke 
a Kashmir-centric futur-istic nightmare, but argue his case on 
grounds that have enough solid legal basis.  His crime, by no stretch 
of legalistic manipulation, can be equated with the carnage carried 
out by the goons of the Sangh parivar in Mumbai in 1992-93 and 
Gujarat in 2002. At the same time, those human rights activists 
taking up his case should remember that he is not all that 
lily-white, and has dubious antecedents.  He is reported to be a 
surrendered militant who worked as an agent of the Indian security 
organisation in Jammu and Kashmir known as State Task Force (STF) for 
some time, and then he fell out with his bosses for some reason or 
other. His alleged offence and prosecution are thus mired in a mesh 
of intrigues. Given this background, it would be good if human rights 
lawyers - while surely ar-guing his case - refrain from turning him 
into a martyr.

It is more important to launch a con-certed campaign for redesigning 
the pre-vailing judicial system. It is through its well-greased 
revolving doors that the well-connected criminals enter as accused 
and come out as innocents after being acquitted by the court, while 
obscure petty mercenaries and hirelings can be dragged through those 
doors into the death cell without any exit. It is about time that 
both lawmakers and human rights activists clarify their respective 
stands and agree on certain fundamental criteria, according to which 
the out-moded laws could be rewritten to define acts as crime and 
apportion penalties, not only in conformity with the nature of the 
offence but also keeping in mind the socio-economic background or the 
ideological belief of the accused - the awareness of which is missing 
in our jurisprudence.

______


[4]

The Telegraph
December 26, 2006

CONTAINING CHINA
- Why the new Japan is important for the US

by Achin Vanaik

Shinzo Abe's accession to premiership in Japan accurately expresses 
and symbolizes the new Japan that has been in the making over the 
last few years under the tutelage of his predecessor, Junichiro 
Koizumi. One is referring here not so much to changes in Japan's 
economy or domestic polity and society as in its foreign policy. 
There has been something of a turn to neoliberalism since the 
beginning of the Nineties that ushered in the stagnation years from 
which Japan has only very recently recovered. But this shift should 
not be exaggerated. Japan's economy and polity are still very much 
dominated by the 'great bureaucracies' that were firmly established 
after World War II. However, fairly dramatic changes are taking place 
in its foreign policy.

There is every likelihood that the internal political process that 
had already begun will now eventually result in a revision of its 
Constitution with regard to Article 9. This article, although it has 
not prevented Japan from developing a powerful military under the 
name of "Self-Defence Forces", is important. This is because the 
article effectively rules out Japan's involvement in war, and 
therefore expresses Japan's formal commitment against militarism in 
its external behaviour.

For the first time since 1945, Japan provided a military-logistical 
support structure, albeit of an auxiliary nature, to the United 
States of America conducting a war far away from it in Afghanistan 
and Iraq. This is a Japan which is now going to flex its 
military-political muscles in a way that is quite different from its 
post-war past. It will be done in the name of Japan's 'maturity' in 
accepting its 'responsibilities' as a major power. It is also being 
justified in the name of a Japan becoming more 'independent' by 
shedding the pacifism inherent in the US-imposed Constitution. This 
is ironic because the US very much wants today's Japan to go in this 
direction. It wants and needs a more internationally ambitious and 
somewhat more militaristic Japan that nevertheless remains within its 
overall control. Interestingly, it is also encouraging India to be 
more ambitious internationally and regionally for precisely the same 
reason - to better play the role that the US has assigned for it.

There is a difference in the language that the US uses. Washington 
calls on Tokyo to play a role concomitant with its status as a major 
power. In the case of India, the US talks of helping to make India a 
major power on the global arena. In each case, the purpose is the 
same. Only a more ambitious India and Japan can better fit into the 
overall US imperial project of containing China. It is in the logic 
of this approach that Japan and India must move towards closer 
political and military cooperation of a kind qualitatively different 
from their past. And this is exactly what is happening. At the same 
time, there is no question of the US abandoning its position as the 
'key balancer' in two strategic triangles related to this overarching 
imperial project: US-China-Japan and US-China-India.

In east Asia, the last thing the US wants is that, sometime in the 
future, Japan and China should forge strategic political ties with 
each other. The trajectory of the Chinese and Japanese economies 
becoming ever more intertwined must not be paralleled by a similar 
trajectory at the geopolitical level. Promoting a more belligerent 
and nationalistic Japan, given the historically-rooted tensions 
between these two countries, guarantees the prevention of such an 
outcome. And Koizumi's behaviour, endorsed by his successor Abe, over 
the Yasukuni shrine issue has played right into US hands.

What is more, Washington does not see this greater Japanese 
aggressiveness as necessarily alienating China from the US. On the 
contrary, there is, in Washington's view, all the more reason for 
Beijing to accept more easily the US-Japan security pact as a way for 
the US to control Japan and prevent it from becoming too 
strategically and militarily aggressive and ambitious. The US then 
not only retains Japan as a crucial ally in a 'contain China' policy, 
but also remains (with partial Chinese acquiescence) the 'key 
balancer' in the region. This gives the US maximum strategic 
flexibility and does not exclude the possibility of US-China 
relations becoming friendlier, albeit on largely American terms.

The US is also determined not to allow the two Koreas to be united, 
since this would significantly weaken the rationale for the US to 
maintain as strong a military-political presence as it currently has 
in the region. It also believes that China does not want a strong, 
united and more independent Korea to emerge. This means that the US 
should not press North Korea beyond the point when China gets too 
worried. Short of this, there are good reasons for the US to keep the 
political pot boiling by continuing to make a song and dance about 
North Korea's nuclear posture. This is so even when it is obvious 
that the easiest and best way to eliminate this problem is to do what 
North Korea proposes - give up its nuclear arsenal in return for a 
non-aggression pact between the US and itself, external material help 
on the nuclear energy front, and diplomatic-political normalization 
of relations between itself and the US with, of course, Japan 
following suit.

The one time when Japan showed some degree of independence from the 
US in foreign policy was in the early Nineties. This was when, 
against the wishes of the US, Japan was supporting South Korea's 
"Sunshine Policy" of promoting transformed relations between the two 
Koreas as a prelude to eventual unification. That period is now over, 
to the relief of the US.

India is to be brought into the 'contain China' preparations 
primarily through the encouragement of its naval alignment with the 
US as a junior partner in controlling the Indian Ocean up to the 
Malacca Straits and linking with other stalwarts like the 
Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. Again, the idea is to 
prevent any future strategic collaboration between India and China 
and, at the same time, play the role of balancer between the two by 
holding out carrots to both. The carrots to China are economic - the 
importance of an open US market for this developing 'factory of the 
world'. Those offered to India are partly economic (encouraging the 
belief that India can become the services 'back-office of the world') 
and partly military-strategic. The US is partially funding the 
construction of a Far Eastern naval command to be based in the 
Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This, when completed in 2012, will be 
the most technologically advanced base of its type and eminently 
suited to the US's longer term geo-strategic objectives.

Not only have joint military operations and exercises (naval and 
otherwise) between India and the US reached levels and depths never 
before reached, but the same thing has also happened between India 
and Japan. Both militaries now provide auxiliary support to US 
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. But most significantly, in May 
2004, Japan publicly offered India a 'global partnership' for 
strategic purposes. And in April 2005, when the Indian and Japanese 
prime ministers met, they again reaffirmed this global partnership, 
declaring their joint commitment to opposing proliferation of weapons 
of mass destruction. Both countries will join the US's ballistic 
missile defence, theatre missile defence and its illegal 
proliferation-security-initiative plans. They have also announced 
that they would move towards institutionalizing regular cooperation 
between their navies and coast guards.

(The author is professor of international relations and global 
politics, Delhi University)

_____


[5]

The Guardian
December 23, 2006

Beyond belief

 From Bethlehem to Blackburn - and, sadly, Baghdad more than either - 
religion, identity and the way politicians respond to them are 
shaping the first decade of the new century. Bethlehem, scene of the 
nativity, has been religiously diverse for most of the last 2,000 
years, but now its Christian community is fleeing the economic damage 
wreaked by Israel's wall. Blackburn's MP, Jack Straw, thinks faith 
has become more significant than class. Yet as today's Guardian/ICM 
poll shows, this is not how the great majority of Britons feel. Most 
of us, of whatever faith, do not see religion as the most, or even a 
very, important aspect of our identity. Indeed, there is evidence 
that religion is viewed largely as a negative force, which some will 
see as a cause for anxiety. In some circumstances, distrust of 
religion in general might evolve into unjustified hostility to 
individuals because of their religion.

Our poll shows how far religion has moved from Marx's sigh of an 
oppressed creature to a potentially provocative stimulant to 
division. More than four-fifths of Britons see religion as a cause of 
tension between people, and three-quarters believe it stands in the 
way of an open, global debate. A significant minority believe it 
stands in the way of progress. It remains an aspect of who we are - 
nearly two-thirds of the sample regard themselves as Christian - but 
most of those did not think of themselves as religious. People of 
other faiths were only slightly more likely to do so. As priests and 
vicars will observe again on Monday, Christmas brings less than one 
in ten to a church service. Other religious believers might be 
slightly more observant, but even so, less than a third are regular 
visitors to a place of worship. These are just the headlines of a 
poll that, unavoidably, can only skim across the contradictions and 
complexities of the way Britons understand themselves and the 
religions of their fellow citizens, but they should be an important 
corrective to the impression that religion increasingly colours our 
sense of identity.

For now, at least, it does not. Ensuring that this situation 
continues should weigh heavily with policy makers, and especially 
with enthusiasts for faith schools. For politicians, religion can be 
a flag of convenience, a way of categorising people that avoids more 
difficult issues of race and class. Archbishops, returning from an 
ecumenical visit to highlight the difficulties of Bethlehem's 
Christian community, no doubt recognise this. But it was they who 
mounted the extraordinary lobby that frightened the government into 
dropping the clause intended to protect local communities from 
divisive schooling by insisting that at least a quarter of all pupils 
in the new faith schools were not from the dominant religion. "Who is 
more likely to defeat bad religion?" asks Tom in Mick Gordon and AC 
Grayling's new play, On Religion. "The best you can hope for is to 
turn bad religion into better religion." But, as assertive preachers 
pull in the biggest congregations, religious leaders cannot agree 
even among themselves how to respond to this challenge.

It is politicians, though, who create the climate that elevates 
religion's significance. It is they who assert that it is the "new 
class", a claim that contrasts unfavourably with the other 
fashionable cry, for evidence-based policy making. The evidence, not 
only from our poll but from research done for Downing Street itself, 
is that people regard language, law and institutions, not religion, 
as the defining aspects of their Britishness. The government must 
promote this secularism, not allow policy, even indirectly, that 
encourages rivalry between different religious communities, in which, 
as today's poll shows, committed and practising believers are in the 
minority. A misunderstanding of its significance must be neither 
motivation for a divisive course of action, nor an excuse for 
inaction - what might be called the sigh of the oppressed politician.


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

Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
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