SACW | Feb 23, 2007

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at mnet.fr
Thu Feb 22 17:26:35 CST 2007


South Asia Citizens Wire  | February 23, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2364 - Year 9


[1]  Bangladesh: The counter-reformation (Zafar Sobhan)
[2]  Pakistan: The wages of poverty (I.A. Rehman)
[3]  Oceans of Hatred and jahiliya (Razi Azmi)
[4]  Pakistan:  How not to handle a 'sensitive' issue (Omar R. Quraishi)
[5]  UK - India: Equal Opportunity Fundamentalism (Salil Tripathi)
[6]  India: Punjab's Electoral Competition (Pritam Singh)
[7]  India: Why are the authorities not investigation a Hindutva Bomb Factory ?
[8]  India: Protest as Christian graveyard is dug in Gujarat
[9]  Upcoming events:

- Press Conference by Citizens for Justice and 
Peace (New Delhi, 23 February 2007)
- Press Conference re 6 day event to mark the 5 
years of Gujarat carnage (Ahmedabad, 23 February 
2007)

____


[1]

The Daily Star
February 23, 2007
  	 
Op-Ed.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
by Zafar Sobhan

Sunday, February 11: Joint forces arrest S.M. 
Nuruzzaman, ex-commissioner of the Phulbari town 
municipality and a leader of the Phulbari chapter 
of the national committee resisting the Phulbari 
coal mining project. Nuruzzaman was instrumental 
in organising the anti-mining protests at 
Phulbari last year that led to BDR firing that 
killed six people.

He was arrested by joint forces personnel and 
severely beaten up in the Phulbari market-place 
(in full public view) and then thrown in jail, 
with instructions to the local constabulary to 
hold him on whatever charges they could think of. 
It was only following protests and reporting of 
the incident in the media that he was released 
the next day.

So how should we understand this shocking 
incident? Yet another example of the caretaker 
government over-stepping its brief and taking 
action that is both high-handed and 
unconscionable? This is exactly the problem with 
the current situation of unaccountability, right?

Not so fast. This kind of action is indeed a 
problem, but not for the reason that most think 
it is. It is not simply a case of the caretaker 
government acting in an authoritarian and 
unaccountable manner. The danger, I am afraid, is 
far more fundamental than that.

Consider this: almost two weeks after the 
incident, there is still no information as to who 
gave the order to arrest Nuruzzaman and what the 
intention behind the action was. Right now the 
chain of command is so muddy that it is 
impossible to get to the bottom of the question 
of on what authority and with what objective 
actions are being taken.

The danger is not so much that the caretaker 
government is abusing its authority in an 
unaccountable and non-transparent manner. The 
danger is that there remain those within both the 
army and the administration who are sympathetic 
to the outgoing BNP administration and who are 
using the confusion to try to bring about the 
downfall of the present government.

The current set-up is such that those within the 
government who wish for it to fail and be 
discredited are able to take actions and give 
orders that are actually harming the credibility 
of the government. Unchecked, they will only get 
bolder and more audacious.

This is how best to understand the bostee 
evictions and the anti-hawker drives. It is not a 
question of the caretaker government as a unified 
body being authoritarian and contemptuous of the 
public. Indeed, to this day, the caretaker 
government still cannot state with certainty on 
whose authority these policies were implemented, 
let alone on what grounds.

What is happening is that BNP loyalists are using 
the current confusion and the fact that there is 
no centralised authority and universally 
acknowledged chain of command to take actions 
that they know will bring the current government 
into disrepute.

The idea is to create pockets of resistance 
against the current administration so that when 
the time comes to put 50,000 people out on the 
streets to protest power shortages (or whatever) 
it will have a ready supply of men and women with 
a bona fide grievance against the current 
government.

It is heart-breaking that many of the bostee 
dwellers who had known nothing except extortion 
and marginalisation and repression these many 
years and had cheered the coming of the new order 
on January 11 found themselves its first victims. 
Their euphoria has, of course, turned to 
disillusionment and anger. That's the idea.

Nowhere is the spectre of the BNP machinations 
more apparent than in the attorney general's 
office and the judiciary. The egregious handling 
of the corruption cases is not merely the work of 
an over-matched and over-extended prosecutorial 
team, but reflects the concerted efforts of BNP 
loyalists still in the attorney general's office 
to cast a pall of doubt over the entire process.

The loyalists know that they have a sympathetic 
judiciary that is ever happy to step in and hand 
down judgments that defy both rationality and 
established precedent and procedure, and that if 
there are any holes in the prosecution that these 
will be seized upon gratefully by both defence 
and arbiter.

In other words, the counter-reformation is very 
much alive and well. It would be a mistake to 
think that these people are going to lie down and 
play dead. They will not give up without a fight.

And as long as their bank accounts remain 
untouched and Tareq Rahman remains at large and 
the judiciary and attorney general's office 
remain in their hands and their people in every 
corner of the administration and army continue to 
sabotage the caretaker government, they will 
believe that they are still in with a fighting 
chance. And they would be right. Don't count them 
out just yet.

The stakes for the caretaker are unimaginable, 
the cost of failure unthinkable. If we are really 
to put in place the reforms necessary to make our 
democracy functional and really do something 
about the culture of corruption and criminality, 
and, most importantly, impunity that has 
flourished in the period of the Fourth Republic, 
then we have to be aware of this ferocious 
rearguard action that is being waged by the 
forces of the counter-reformation.

This is the answer to the question as to why so 
many of the most corrupt and criminal remain at 
large and outside the dragnet. It is important 
for the country to understand that there are 
split loyalties in the current administration and 
there remain four-party sympathisers at its core 
who are pulling out all the stops to protect 
their allies, and that their machinations need to 
be recognised for what they are and neutralised 
without delay if the country is to not descend 
into chaos.

It would thus be a mistake to think that these 
machinations are signs that the caretaker 
administration is even worse than what came 
before it or take these actions as evidence that 
we need to return to where we were on January 10. 
In fact, the opposite is true.

These actions are best understood as the 
desperate struggle of the ancien regime to try 
and sow the seeds of confusion to discredit the 
current administration and return itself to power 
by any means necessary. The danger is very real, 
and it is crucial that we all understand what is 
at stake.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.

_______


[2]

Dawn
February 22, 2007

THE WAGES OF POVERTY

by I.A. Rehman

IF by putting his little children up for sale, 
Shaukat Ali of Mian Channu, a Punjab town known 
for well-off farmers, had tried to shake the 
authority out of its slumber, and remind it of 
its foremost duty to guarantee each citizen's 
right to life, he does not seem to have 
succeeded. The matter has been treated as an 
individual grievance and the protester promised 
some relief, but there is no indication that the 
scale of citizens' plight caused by lack of 
gainful employment has been addressed, or even 
realised.

Amazingly, the government leaders appeared to 
have been surprised by Shaukat Ali's tale. Some 
of his fellow citizens have now realised that his 
audacity in offering his children for sale gave 
the country a bad name. That a good number of 
children are sold in Pakistan every year should 
be common knowledge. Perhaps the prime minister, 
who rushed to the aid of Shaukat Ali, is unaware 
of the auction of girls in the NWFP. Is it 
possible to describe the giving away of girls in 
marriage under the custom of vulvar (or in 
exchange for money under any other pretext) as 
anything other than sale of girls?

Last year a Peshawar court expressed its disgust 
and anger when it noted the sale of women by 
their fathers and brothers under the guise of 
marriage. The authorities are also perhaps aware 
of considerable trafficking of women and their 
sale in Pakistan cities, and not all of them are 
from Bangladesh or Burma. Many a brothel-keeper 
buys and sells women under the nose of custodians 
of law and order and not infrequently in 
connivance with them.

Likewise, bonded labourers, particularly those 
working on farms and brick-kilns, sell not only 
their labour but also their bodies and their 
freedoms. A new evil is the sale of parts of 
human body, mostly kidneys, that have been 
recognised as an important source of earning 
foreign exchange. One has seen hospitals that 
advertise kidney-transplant services on the 
internet and have added floor after floor to 
their establishments. They are making huge gains 
by finding poor Pakistani sellers of their 
kidneys for sick people from India (women as well 
as men) or the Middle East (usually richly-robed 
men only).

The main cause of this large-scale trade in human 
body or its organs is poverty made unmanageable 
by lack of job opportunities. The number of 
Pakistani citizens caught in this vicious trade 
is legion. How many cheques for 100,000 rupees 
each can be signed by the prime minister and how 
many unemployed people can be offered and 
satisfied with low-wage jobs? Extending relief in 
individual cases is not the way to deal with so 
widespread a phenomenon as poverty of the 
unemployed hordes in Pakistan has become. From 
the point of view of the people this is the 
biggest and the most critical challenge Pakistan 
faces today.

Sale of labour, sale of organs, sale of children 
- these are not the only symptoms of the grinding 
poverty in which millions of Pakistanis live as a 
result of their failure to find adequably gainful 
employment or any employment at all. The nexus 
between poverty-unemployment and a rise in 
suicide cases is now fairly widely recognised. 
Many jobless young persons drift into a life of 
crime. Poverty impels a large number of citizens 
to abandon their children to quasi-religious 
seminaries in the hope that they will get 
something to eat and something to wear.

The poverty-stricken areas have also provided the 
militant organisations with their main recruiting 
grounds. Anybody who wishes to fight terror or 
militancy without mounting a meaningful assault 
on poverty does not know what he is talking about.

It will be grossly unfair to say that the 
government has not seen the need to combat 
poverty. Quite a few schemes have been launched 
under the label of poverty alleviation, and the 
government's belief in the trickle-down effect of 
development and the rich becoming richer has 
never been shaken. But all these schemes and 
ideas amount at best to ensuring that some of the 
poor do not become poorer than they are. What 
Pakistan urgently needs, however, is a strategy 
to prevent the people from falling into the trap 
of poverty in the first instance, and that can be 
done only by recognising the right to work and 
the right to social security of all those who are 
permanently or temporarily unable to earn their 
living.

The basic issue then is the state's determination 
not to recognise the right to work. Pakistan came 
into being at a time when social and economic 
rights of the people had begun to be debated and 
a bare 16 months after its birth the United 
Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights, which duly emphasises the right to 
work.

The governments of the day could not ignore their 
people's right to work but they were unsure of 
their capacity to concede it. They therefore 
sought ways to avoid mandatory guarantees in this 
regard. Thus we find the authors of the Indian 
constitution, adopted in 1950, inserting the 
following article in the chapter on the Directive 
Principles of State Policy:

"41. Right to work, to education and to public 
assistance in certain cases: The state shall, 
within the limits of its economic capacity and 
development, make effective provision for 
securing g the right to work, to education and to 
public assistance in cases of unemployment, old 
age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases 
of undeserved want."

The language of this article makes it clear that 
the state does not deny its citizens' right to 
work and to public assistance of old, sick and 
unemployed citizens but makes practical 
realisation of these rights subject to 
availability of resources.

The authors of Pakistan's constitutions also were 
not unaware of the right to work and the 
obligation of the state to provide for the 
unemployed poor. But they have been consistently 
averse to using the expression 'right to work' 
and have avoided making a strong state commitment 
to helping the unemployed. The formula adopted in 
the chapter on the Directive Principles of State 
Policy in the 1956 constitution was:

"29. The State shall endeavour to:

(b) provide for all citizens, within the 
available resources of the country, facilities 
for work and adequate livelihood with reasonable 
rest and leisure;

(c) Provide for all persons in the service of 
Pakistan and private concerns social security by 
means of social insurance or otherwise;

(d) provide basic necessities of life, such as 
food, clothing, housing, education and medical 
relief, for all citizens, irrespective of caste, 
creed or race, as are permanently or temporarily 
unable to earn their livelihood on account of 
infirmity, sickness or unemployment."

After some editing of the foregoing article the 
Ayub government laid down the following articles 
in the chapter under the shortened title ' 
Principles of Policy';

"10. Opportunity to Gain Adequate Livelihood: All 
citizens should have the opportunity to work and 
earn an adequate livelihood, and also to enjoy 
reasonable rest and leisure.

"11. Social Security: All persons in the service 
of Pakistan or otherwise employed should be 
provided with social security by means of 
compulsory social insurance or otherwise.

"12. Provision of Basic Necessities: The basic 
necessities of life, such as food, clothing, 
housing, education and medical treatment should 
be provided for citizens who, irrespective of 
caste, creed or race, are permanently or 
temporarily unable to earn their livelihood on 
account of infirmity, disability, sickness or 
unemployment."

The 1973 Constitution incorporated the scheme and 
content of guarantees of the people's social and 
economic well-being contained in the 1956 and 
1962 texts in Article 38 in the chapter on 
Principles of Policy with two changes. Firstly 
the 'should' in the 1962 document and the 'State 
shall endeavour to' in the 1956 text were 
discarded in favour of a firmer commitment by 
declaring that "the State shall secure"/ and 
"provide". And, secondly, the principle of 
rejecting discrimination on the basis of sex was 
added to unacceptability of distinction on the 
basis of caste, creed or race.

Governments of Pakistan, however, have rarely 
paid due respect to the Principles of Policy. 
Since the facilities or opportunities promised to 
citizens and other persons in the Principles of 
Policy are not justiciable, no law or act of 
government can be challenged on the ground of its 
being in conflict with these principles. Further, 
each authority is competent to decide whether its 
actions are in accord with the principles of 
policy.

Thus, the president and the governors have 
consistently ignored their duty to present every 
year in the National Assembly / provincial 
assemblies "a report on the observance and 
implementation of the Principles of Policy." 
Members of the National and provincial assemblies 
also have made no attempt to provide for 
discussion on such reports by the assembly 
concerned.

Government spokespersons often claim that 
everything required to be done under the 
Principles of Policy, and that is subject to 
availability of resources, has been done and is 
being done. Such assertions can easily be 
challenged. The state is spending on its organs 
and its establishment much more than it should 
and is depriving the people of the employment 
opportunities and social security to a greater 
extent than anyone can fairly justify.

Besides, some of the most fundamental rights (to 
work, education, health and social security) have 
been kept out of the chapter on fundamental 
rights for over 50 years. For how many more years 
must the Pakistani people be fopped off with 
principles of policy that are not implemented in 
place of judicially enforceable rights?

A recognition of the right to work and extension 
of social security net to all citizens and 
persons alone will mark the beginning of a 
genuine effort to stop sale of children and 
provide relief to all the miserable Shaukats in 
Pakistan.

Since we are living in a period when 
constitutional provisions and laws no longer 
offer the disadvantaged and the marginalised any 
comfort, the cynics are likely to refer to 
non-implementation of the laws and guarantees 
that are already there. A new constitutional 
guarantee for the people's right to work and 
their right to freedom from poverty and want will 
not immediately solve the problems of the poor 
and the helpless, but it will at least offer them 
a sound plank to fight on and take their fight 
from the closed chambers of authority to the no 
less closed councils of political parties.

______


[3]

Daily Times
February 22, 2007

OCEANS OF HATRED AND JAHILIYA
by Razi Azmi

Extreme conservatism, the preaching of jihad, 
Islamist supremacist chatter and terrorist 
attacks in Europe and America have allowed one 
Israeli academic to advance a theory that life 
can become untenable when the Muslim population 
of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent

Sixty-six mostly elderly people from India and 
Pakistan visiting or returning from a visit to 
their relatives across the border were 
incinerated on a train. Not by accident, but by 
design. The carriage they were travelling in was 
firebombed by people who do not approve of the 
process of reconciliation and normalisation of 
relations between the two neighbours.

No one has yet claimed responsibility and 
probably never will, for the crime is too ghastly 
to claim credit for. But one can easily surmise 
that the perpetrators are religious fanatics or 
religio-nationalist extremists. They could be 
Pakistani jihadists graduated from the many 
madrassahs that dot the land or Indian Hindu 
extremists from the Sangh Parivar.

The perpetrators may choose to hide because of 
shame, but they stand stark naked before the bar 
of public opinion. In the name of religion they 
worship hatred, and are happy to sacrifice 
innocent human beings at its altar. "I haven't 
seen anything like this. Some bodies were burnt 
beyond recognition, and I saw one pair stuck to 
each other at the stomach," said a railway police 
inspector, Shiv Ram.

Zille Huma, the Punjab minister of social 
welfare, has just been shot dead by a stonemason 
for simply daring to be a minister and not 
putting on the veil. Sarwar Mughal, fittingly 
known as Maulvi Sarwar, believed that a woman's 
place in Islam was in the home and behind veils. 
And having arrogated to himself the role of 
lawmaker, judge and executioner, he killed the 
mother of two in Gujranwala, the political and 
cultural heartland of Pakistan.

And why not? Maulvi Sarwar, like many before him, 
had a few years ago murdered six women for being 
'immoral', but the case against him had been 
dismissed for "lack of evidence". When it comes 
to women in Pakistan, especially poor women, it 
seems that men have an open season. Women are 
even less protected than the Hubara bustards.

Brainwashing can do wonders. We have seen 
evidence of it throughout history and all around. 
North Korea is a good current example. Its 
starving and deprived people have successfully 
been led to believe by their despotic and 
totalitarian government that they live in a lucky 
country.

But brainwashing in the name of God and with 
paradise as an incentive can achieve even greater 
results, as is obvious from the jihadists' 
romance with murder, mayhem and suicide. No city, 
no country is safe from their grip: New York, 
London, Madrid, Bali, Nairobi, Casablanca, 
Riyadh, Cairo, Baghdad, Bali, Islamabad and 
Kabul. The list lengthens.

Suicide bombings are now occurring in Pakistan 
almost on a weekly basis. As in Afghanistan, the 
Pakistani Taliban are making short shrift of all 
kinds of 'infidels' -teachers, social workers, 
women activists, shi'as, army recruits, judges 
and lawyers.

Further afield, Iraq is in the throes of a civil 
war and a sectarian conflict so gruesome as to 
defy imagination. Multiple suicide bombings of 
markets and buses occur every day and the monthly 
death toll is in the thousands. On Tuesday, in 
one attack, thirteen members of a family from a 
tribe known to oppose the actions of Al Qaeda in 
Iraq were killed on the road to Falluja.

If fantasy and hatred are the end-products of 
indoctrination, then ignorance is their breeding 
ground. The parents of 24,000 children in the 
tribal areas in northern Pakistan have refused to 
allow health workers to administer polio 
vaccinations. Rumours are rife that the vaccine 
is a US plot to sterilise Muslim children, the 
aim of which is to depopulate Muslim countries.

Imams and maulvis in the NWFP used loudspeakers, 
sermons and illegal radio stations to spread this 
message to villagers. The scare-mongering and 
appeals to Islam echoed a similar campaign in the 
Nigerian state of Kano in 2003. The disease then 
spread to 12 polio-free countries over the 
following 18 months.

Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, chief surgeon at the main 
government hospital in Bajaur, was killed when a 
remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded as he 
was returning from a jirga (tribal council) to 
debunk rumours of an 'infidel vaccine' and 
persuade people to immunise their children 
against polio.

Paramedic Hazrat Jamal, who is one of the three 
injured in the explosion, said that the residents 
of Mullah Said Banda were against the polio 
campaign. "As soon as we reached there, an armed 
prayer leader warned us against visiting the 
area. Some locals said: "On one hand, our enemy 
(a reference to the United States) is bombing us 
for no reason while on the other hand you are 
coming here disguised as polio campaigners to 
spread vulgarity," he told Daily Times at the 
hospital.

One recalls that when the US government first 
introduced the Diversity Visa lottery programme 
in the early 1990s, many people in Pakistan, 
Bangladesh and elsewhere refused to believe that 
the US government could mean what it said. It was 
widely suggested that the DV programme was a 
conspiracy and a trap to blacklist applicants for 
visa purposes.

The fact is that the Washington was perfectly 
honest and truthful in this matter. Thousands of 
Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and others have been 
able to migrate to and settle in the US by being 
successful in the draws. In other words, while 
the programme sounded too good to be true, the US 
government acted faithfully and implemented it 
just as it said it would, year after year.

Nobody should be surprised that resistance to the 
polio vaccinations is highest in areas where 
conservative clerics and self-styled 'Pakistani 
Taliban' hold sway. It is worth mentioning that 
everywhere and always, Muslim ulema have 
consistently opposed the spread of science and 
education.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that some women 
have been brave enough to defy their men on the 
issue of polio vaccination. According to a 
report, "up to 200 babies a day are vaccinated at 
the Khyber teaching hospital in Peshawar, where 
burqa-clad women arrive with children in their 
arms. Some arrive in secret, slipping into the 
clinic in defiance of male relatives who oppose 
vaccination."

Extreme conservatism, the preaching of jihad, 
Islamist supremacist chatter and terrorist 
attacks in Europe and America have allowed one 
Israeli academic to advance a theory that life 
can become untenable when the Muslim population 
of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per 
cent. Professor Raphael Israeli, who specialises 
in Islamic history at the Hebrew University in 
Jerusalem, said Muslim immigrants had a 
reputation for manipulating the values of Western 
countries, taking advantage of their hospitality 
and tolerance.

Professor Israeli said that in France, which has 
the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at 
about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There 
were regions even the police were scared to 
enter, and militant Muslims were changing the 
country's political, economic and cultural 
fabric. "French people say they are strangers in 
their own country. This is a point of no return."

The Jewish professor may simply be advancing 
Israeli interests in promoting this theory, but 
the world is listening, for there are a lot of 
worried people out there. Irrespective of what 
the people of the world may think of jihadists 
and extremists, surely the masses of Muslims 
present a picture of backwardness and ignorance, 
best captured by the Arabic word 'jahiliya'.


______


[4]

[February 18, 2007]

HOW NOT TO HANDLE A 'SENSITIVE' ISSUE

by Omar R. Quraishi

One has to say that the government completely 
mishandled the issue of razing mosques built on 
encroached land. When NGO activists and the 
liberal types take to the streets and organize a 
protest rally they are dealt with an iron fist by 
the state. Usually they are arrested as soon as 
they begin to assemble, baton charged or even 
tear-gassed and dragged away (the women sometimes 
held by the hair) into police vans and to the 
lock-up. And then we have the students of the 
Jamia Hifsia in Rawalpindi who occupied a 
children's library for days, in protest against 
what they believe was the government's wrong 
policy to raze mosques built on encroached land. 
Armed with sticks (at least), they refused to 
leave the children's library with the government 
and Islamabad administration seemingly helpless 
to act against them.

The controversy began when the Capital 
Development Authority issued notices to the 
administration of around ten mosques and their 
adjoining seminaries in that there structures 
were built on encroached land or illegally taking 
up green belts in the federal capital. The mosque 
and madressah adminstrations were told to clear 
the encroachments themselves and were given a 
deadline of 15 days to do that. But what did they 
do?

Instead of following the CDA's directive, they 
chose to adopt a very aggressive protest in which 
the khatib of one of the mosques while addressing 
a large demonstration threatened to use suicide 
attacks in response to the CDA's directive. That 
is also when the occupation of the children's 
library occurred - with the police and 
law-enforcement agencies becoming silent 
spectators as the female students of the 
madressah carried out their illegal act.

No matter what one's ideological leanings or 
political worldview may be, it is clear that 
mosques are not supposed to be built on land that 
had been illegally appropriated or encroached. 
Assuming that the CDA must have done its homework 
with regard to the technical details beforehand, 
it would be safe to assume that the mosques were 
built on encroached land and hence there should 
be no objection if they are razed. Besides, the 
Council of Islamic Ideology has already ruled 
that mosques and/or seminaries built on 
encroached land are un-Islamic and can be 
demolished because they are unauthorized 
construction.

As one writes this (a week prior to its 
publication), the occupation of the children's 
library was continuing as was the government's 
dilly-dallying over the matter. The matter was 
raised in parliament by some members but they 
were admonished by some ministers who seemed to 
remind them that the matter was 'sensitive'. The 
matter would not have become so sensitive had the 
government dealt with it promptly and had the 
law-enforcement agencies under its command had 
prevented the female madressah students from 
occupying the children's library. Calling it 
'sensitive' seems to be a pretext to not do 
anything about it and that is a bad thing because 
it gives the impression to the rest of the 
country that it pays to adopt violent methods and 
extremist positions. It has to be said that the 
mishandling of this issue also flies in the face 
of repeated calls given by President Musharraf 
himself asking people to unite against the forces 
of extremism and obscurantism.

Given the way that those occupying the children's 
library have been allowed to violate the law with 
impunity, it seems that the president's view of 
resisting and fighting extremism does not have 
too many enthusiastic supporters in the 
government or the Islamabad administration. For 
instance, several days after the occupation began 
- and with no sign of it ending - the religious 
affairs minister (almost an apologist for the 
madressahs in the past) met those behind the 
protests and assured them that their demands 
would be looked into. Such a soft approach, 
coming on the heels of threats of suicide 
bombings by those behind the occupation is 
difficult to fathom. If anything, it should have 
been clear to the government that such a soft 
approach to dealing with those of the extremist 
bent of mind had not really paid any dividends in 
the past and was unlikely to do so now. The 
extremists and obscurantists usually perceive it 
as a sign weakness on the part of the government 
and end
up taking full advantage of it. The idea should 
have been to not let them be in a position where 
they do that and the government ends up looking 
as if its been held hostage by the extremists - 
the impression given by the whole children's 
library occupation saga.

As for the extremists, they justify their actions 
presumably under the pretext that (a) the 
government of the land is un-Islamic itself since 
it is beholden to and at the beck and call of its 
so-called 'western masters' and (b) that the 
building and location of a house of worship 
cannot be circumscribed by temporal laws.


_______


[5]

Tehelka
Feb 17 , 2007

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FUNDAMENTALISM

The right's only objection to MF Husain's 
depictions of Hindu deities is that they are made 
by a Muslim, says Salil Tripathi

Who's Profane? A Husain interpretation of Lakshmi
As you enter London's netherworld - its 
labyrinthine underground subway system - you will 
notice large images of a Hindu deity, looking 
sinuous and sensual, cavorting cheerfully and 
wearing almost no clothes at all. There are other 
posters nearby, of sexy women advertising 
perfumes or holidays, wearing almost as little as 
the god in the poster, but the god wins hands 
down in attracting your attention.

More unusually, nobody from London's 
neo-hypersensitive Hindu community has expressed 
any criticism or outrage over the nearly-naked 
image of the Hindu god staring at almost 2.5 
million commuters daily. This is surprising. I 
remember last year, when Asia House - a gallery 
near Oxford Street in central London - hosted an 
exhibition of paintings, which included some 
canvases of nude Hindu deities, a self-styled 
Hindu human rights organisation (and the 
so-called Hindu Forum in Britain, claiming to 
speak for the 700,000 Hindus who live in the 
country), protested immediately, and forced the 
gallery to cancel the exhibition.

Why are the Hindu groups quiet this time? And why 
were they so noisy last time? The answer is 
simple, revealing, and banal: for them, the show 
last year had to be opposed because the artist, 
Maqbool Fida Husain, was a Muslim. But the show 
this year was to be revered, for what the Sackler 
Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly 
is showing are the famed Chola bronzes: seductive 
and erotic certainly, but presumably untouched by 
the hands of a Muslim artist.

The Royal Academy has brought together nearly 40 
sculptures, from India, Germany and the United 
States. These sculptures are consistently 
evocative, exuding virility and sensuality. You 
see a divine male caressing a female deity; 
elsewhere, a willowy maiden strikes poses meant 
to guide the viewer towards her attract-ive body.

To be sure, the Chola bronzes are not only about 
sex or erotica. The quintessential Chola image, - 
of the dancing Nataraja performing the celestial 
tandava nritya - personifies not only the defeat 
of evil, but also the destruction of the world as 
we know it, so that a new world can begin.

True, Husain has painted several goddesses in the 
nude, but his works reshape our thinking about 
Hindu myths, they are not lewd drawings meant to 
titillate
But then Husain's art is also hardly meant to 
titillate. That's the deep-rooted hypocrisy among 
people who claim to lead Hindus - in Britain or 
in India. They say they are deeply wounded when a 
Husain depicts Draupadi, Saraswati or Sita 
without clothes, even if the image Husain 
portrays is elegant, bold, linear and sharp. 
Inspired by the expressionists, Husain's figures 
are not always complete, and leave a lot for the 
viewer to imagine. The Chola bronzes, in 
contrast, are curvaceous and vivacious. For much 
of December, they competed for attention, in that 
respect, with the majestic sculptures of Rodin, 
which were also on display at the Royal Academy 
at the time.

Whether coincidental or by design, the 
coexistence of Rodin and Chola at the Royal 
Academy was resonant with meaning. As William 
Dalrymple noted in an article in the Guardian: 
"In Western art, few sculptors - except perhaps 
Donatello or Rodin - have achieved the pure 
essence of sensuality so spectacularly evoked by 
the Chola sculptors; or achieved such a sense of 
celebration of the divine beauty of the human 
body. There is a startling clarity and purity 
about the way the near-naked bodies of the gods 
and the saints are displayed. Yet, by the 
simplest and most modest of devices, their spirit 
and powers, joys and pleasures, and above all 
their enjoyment of each other's beauty and their 
overwhelming sexuality, is highlighted."

And yet, those offended Hindu leaders in Britain 
have remained silent about the bronzes. It is a 
tragedy of our times that Hindu nationalists have 
succeeded in running a nearly decade-long 
campaign against Husain and forced him into 
involuntary exile, shuttling between Dubai and 
London.

True, Husain has painted several goddesses from 
the Hindu pantheon in the nude, but those are 
bold works that reshape our thinking about Hindu 
myths, revealing them in a new light; they are 
not lewd drawings meant to titillate. His nudes 
delineate the body in sharp lines, elevating it 
to an abstract realm, suggesting the formlessness 
of divinity.

This explanation, which is faithful to Hindu 
philosophy, is too abstract for the semi-literate 
fundamentalists who have protested against his 
works and, in some cases, ransacked art galleries 
displaying his art in India. There are some 1,200 
cases filed against him.

Even though he does not need to, Husain has 
apologised for hurting sentiments. Explaining his 
motives, the painter has traced his art to 
India's millennia-old heritage in which gods and 
goddesses were "pure and uncovered".

But we live in complicated times. Instead of 
celebrating the openness of Hinduism, which 
should make those who claim to lead the faith 
feel proud of a non-Hindu artist expressing 
homage to their gods, Hindu nationalists are busy 
trying to outdo other faiths, by complaining that 
they, too, have the right to be offended. So if 
Muslims want Danish cartoons banned, Hindus want 
Husain's drawings banned. The attention Muslims 
have commanded with their protests against images 
they consider blasphemous - a concept alien to 
Hinduism - has left Hindus wanting equal 
treatment. Don't mistake them for being liberals.

The sacred and the profane have always coexisted 
in India. As a faith, Hinduism is broad enough to 
include some sects that think sex is the main way 
to enlightenment, and broadminded enough to 
overlook sadhus roaming around naked, their 
bodies smeared with ash, during the Kumbh Mela.

Indeed, in many aspects of Indian literature and 
art, nudity connotes purity and openness, not 
vulgarity. Architects have decorated many temples 
with nude deities. The Chola bronzes, which 
depict scantily-clad Hindu goddesses are no less 
divine. The temples in Khajuraho from the 
Chandela period have hundreds of erotic statues. 
The Gangaikondacholapuram Shiva Temple has an 
almost nude Parvati, and that hasn't diminished 
her holiness. The Parshvanatha Temple of 
Khajuraho has nude sculptures of the holiest of 
the holies in the Hindu pantheon. And many 
sculptures in Bikaner have Hindu divinities clad 
only in exquisite and ornate chains, necklaces 
and bangles.

For the Hindu nationalists, if Husain did any of 
that, it would be sacrilegious. But when 
anonymous sculptors carve such figures, it 
becomes divine, even if not high art. That's the 
hypocrisy that is so fundamentally against the 
Indian ethos, not Husain's art. Husain's art may 
not be sacred, but what the fanatics are doing is 
profane.


______


[6]

Economic and Political Weekly
February 10, 2007

PUNJAB'S ELECTORAL COMPETITION
The assembly election scenario in Punjab is 
reverberating with calls to regional identities. 
All major political parties talk about the fact 
that development issues have overtaken the old 
divisive issue of religion and community. But 
none of them mentions the rapid commodification 
of life taking place in Punjab.

by Pritam Singh

The electoral competition between the two main 
parties in Punjab - the ruling Congress Party and 
the op-position Akali Dal - for the Punjab 
assem-bly elections in February is resulting in 
the reinforcement of regional Punjabi 
identi-ties. The Akali Dal under the leadership 
of Parkash Singh Badal is invading the 
traditional Congress support base by an 
unprecedented encouragement to Punjabi Hindus to 
join the Akali Dal. For the first time in its 
history, the Akali Dal has put up a substantial 
number of Hindus as its party candidates. This 
newly emerging Hindu-Akali relationship is not a 
one way process of Akalis approaching Hindus. In 
town after town, the Punjabi Hindus are 
themselves joining Akali Dal. If on one hand, the 
Punjabi Hindus seem to be realising the need to 
hook their destiny with a Punjab-based regional 
party instead of being tied to "national" parties 
like the BJP and the Congress Party, on the 
other, the Akali Dal seems to have realised that 
the long-term future of Akali politics lies in 
becoming inclusive of all sections of Punjabis. 
The process of the transforma-tion of Akali Dal 
from a Sikh party to a regional Punjabi party 
seems to be at last beginning to take place.

On the other side, the Congress Party in Punjab 
under the leadership of chief min-ister Amarinder 
Singh has made serious inroads into the 
traditional Sikh support base of the Akali Dal. 
Amarinder Singh has endeavoured to rebrand the 
Congress Party from one obsessed with national 
issues to one rooted in the economy, his-tory and 
culture of Punjab. His daring move in passing the 
river water bill in the Punjab assembly 
abrogating the previous river water treaties, 
which were unfavour-able to Punjab, has left a 
deep impact on the consciousness of all sections 
of Punjabi people, especially the Sikh peasantry. 
During my field trip in Punjab in the month of 
December 2006-January 2007, I talked to a large 
number of people in both rural and urban areas 
who invariably picked up this achievement of 
Amarinder Singh to highlight his commitment to 
Punjab andits people. He has also been 
consistently taking a lead in celebrating various 
religiousand cultural festivals relating to the 
history of Punjab and has managed todent the 
Akalis' claim as the sole defenders of Punjab's 
economic and cultural interests.  Irrespective of 
the election results, it is inconceivable that 
this process of the Badal-led Akalis attempting 
to be more inclusive, and the Amarinder Singh 
strategy of making Congress Party more 
Punjab-rooted, would be easily reversible. It 
appears that the democratic process, however 
faulty it may be, is gradually contributing to 
the devolu-tion of political decision-making 
processes away from the centre to the states. It 
does not mean that the centralisation of 
political power in the national parties like the 
Congress and BJP has ended, but it cer-tainly 
means that the state-level leadership of these 
parties is increasingly shaping the political 
agenda at least at the state level. This process 
certainly opens more space for articulation of 
regional politico-economic interests and regional 
identities.  Deepening of Capitalism in Punjab 
The change taking place in the political 
strategies of the two main parties in Punjabis 
partly the result of electoral to the staggering 
economic changes taking place in Punjab. Punjab 
is witnes-sing the deepening of capitalism in its 
economy, society and culture. The first 
large-scale penetration of the logic of 
capitalism took place in Punjab with the launch 
of the Green Revolution in the 1960s. In its 
second phase now, the post-liberalisation phase, 
capitalism is entrench-ing and transforming the 
Punjabi eco-nomy but more so its society and 
culture in an alarming way.1 Capitalism is 
leading to the commodification of everything 
-land, cattle, trees, education, health, 
reli-gion, music, marriage, sex, family, social 
and personal relationships. If on one hand, this 
capitalist transformation of Punjab is eroding 
old religious and sec-tarian divisions and is 
contributing to the making of new political 
alignments as discussed above, it is also leading 
to cultural pauperisation.

Money culture is all pervasive. There 
arewidespread reports of party tickets, 
especially in the Congress Party, having been 
"sold" for "crores of rupees". When political 
parties talk of "development" as an issue which 
has overtaken the old divisive issue of religion 
and community, they are partly speaking the truth 
but partlyglossing over the commodification of 
life. During my field trip, I was told thatthere 
were instances, for the first time, of sex work 
taking place even in the villages and that "call 
girl" rackets were being reported even in small 
towns.  Capitalismis certainlyleading to the 
developmentof markets, products and techniques, 
but it is also leading to cultural and moral 
degradation. None of the politicalparties has 
shown any vision or proposed any programme to 
deal with this two-pronged nature of capitalism. 
This is true even of the Left parties who could 
have been expected to demon-strate a more radical 
and alternative perspective.

It is worth remembering that it is the cultural 
dislocation caused by Green Revolution capitalism 
in the 1960s and 1970s which had contributed to 
the rise of religious revivalism in the 1970s and 
1980s.2 If the deprivation caused by the 
deepening of capitalism now in the 2000s is not 
subjected to critique and challenge from a 
radical perspective, there is the dangerof some 
retrograde ideology emerging as a response to 
this capitalist deprivation.

Another offshoot of deepening capital-ism in 
Punjab is the large-scale environ-mental 
degradation taking place in Punjab.  This vital 
issue remains, by and large, outside the mental 
landscape of all the political parties in Punjab. 
Environmental politics believes in 
decentralisation and itis hoped that the 
regionalisation of Punjabi politics would 
eventually force Punjabi people and politicians 
to deal with the environmental consequences of 
deepening capitalism in Punjab. 

Notes
1 This argument was developed in my paper 
'Deepening Capitalism in Punjab's Rural Society: 
Unleashing Development, Degradation and 
Resistance', Annual Conference of the South Asian 
Anthropologists' Group, Goldsmiths College, 
London, July 3, 2006. 
2 For elaboration of this, see my paper 'Two 
Facets of Revivalism' in Gopal Singh (ed), Punjab 
Today, Intellectual Publications, Delhi,1987.

______


[7]

The Hindu
22 February 2007

NANDED BLAST "A POSSIBLE EXPLOSIVE ACCIDENT"

Staff Reporter

Inquiry calls for stringent action

MUMBAI: The explosion that killed two persons and 
damaged a biscuit factory unit in Nanded on 
February 10 was not a fire accident but a 
possible explosive accident, says preliminary 
findings of Concerned Citizen Inquiry, conducted 
by Teesta Setalvad, Justice B.G. Kolse-Patil and 
Arvind Deshmukh. The final report will be out in 
a month, which will include details on the 
Malegaon blasts, the recovery of RDX and several 
other recent events.

On February 10, 2007, at about 12.15 a.m., 
28-year-old Pandurang Ameelkanthwar died on the 
spot as the biscuit boxes he was carrying 
exploded. His cousin, Dnaneshwar Manikwar, who 
sustained 72 per cent burns, died on February 16 
at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai.

Teesta Setalvad, socio-legal activist, wondered 
why the police hastened to declare it a fire 
accident before getting the forensic result.

She said there were two versions from Dnaneshwar, 
one saying it was a short circuit and another 
saying he did it to claim insurance. Justice B.G. 
Kolse-Patil said they went to the site with a 
forensic expert, who did not want to disclose his 
identity, took pictures, and interviewed people 
around the area. They also spoke to the owner, 
the civil surgeon, fire brigade officials, SP 
Fatehsingh Patil and other police officials.

The expert opinion was that the shutter that took 
the impact of the explosion would not have been 
thrown to a distance of 40 feet had it been a 
normal fire. He also hinted at low intensity 
volatile explosives.

The inquiry recommends: "The Central Government 
should keep a close watch and monitor the 
increasing low intensity terror generating 
activities being conducted by political outfits 
that are misusing Hindu religion."

It also recommends "stringent action so that the 
accused in the earlier Nanded blasts - including 
those never arrested despite evidence - are 
arrested or not released on bail, as the case may 
be. Proceedings of these investigations must be 
conducted in full public glare."

______


[8]

PROTEST AS CHRISTIAN GRAVEYARD IS DUG IN GUJARAT

PRESS RELEASE

[22 February 2007]

Under the leadership of All India Christian 
Council, the minority Christian community 
organizes a big Dharana Programme to voice 
against Gujarat Government as Roman Catholic 
graveyard at Vatva has been dug up, tombs have 
been broken, crosses on tombs have been broken 
and it has been tried to destroy the graveyard.

The Christian Community of Gujarat is demanding 
to suspend Police Inspector of Vatva Police 
Station under jurisdiction of Ahmedabad City 
Police Commissioner and other Government officers 
by registering F.I.R. from immediate effect.

Minority Christian Community organizes a big 
Dharana programe in front of Ahmedabad District 
Collector as attacks are carried out on the 
graveyard of minority Christian community by 
blessings of B.J.P. Government for solution of 
problems for protection graveyard for its 
maintenance and to stop the attacks.

[. . .]
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/02/protest-as-christian-graveyard-is-dug.html

______


[9]    UPCOMING EVENTS:


Citizens for Justice and Peace

February 22, 2007

PRESS INVITE

Citizens and human rights activists including 
local activists from Nanded, under the 
chairpersonship of Shri Kolse Patil (retired 
Judge, Mumbai High Court) have conducted a 
detailed investigation into the second Nanded 
bomb blasts of February 10, 2007. Preliminary 
Findings of the Concerned Citizens Inquiry°©—An 
Independent Scrutiny will be shared with the 
media in Mumbai tomorrow.
A technical assessment from experts on the clues 
and pointers on the site will also be shared.

The haste with which the state police is 
dismissing the possibility of any occurrence but 
a petrol driven fire for claiming insurance 
money, the on site significant pointers and 
clues, detailed video shootings of the site as 
well as photographs and findings by technical 
forensic experts will be shared.

Shocking documents related to the first Nanded 
bomb blasts of April 2006 have also been 
investigated by Communalism Combat and provided 
to the Concerned Citizens Inquiry that will be 
shared with the media. These documents reveal a 
questionable design on the part of the 
investigating authorities not to explore the root 
of an emerging network of terror groups that are 
linked to hate driven political outfits within 
India.

We request you to send your representative to 
cover the press conference. Members of the CCI 
were Justice Kolse Patil, Teesta Setalvad 
(Convenor) and Shri Arvind Deshmukh (Nagpur). 
Local activists provided core support and 
infrastructure.

Venue:  Sahmat, 8, Vithalbhai Patel House,Rafi Marg,  New Delhi – 110 001
Time:   4 p.m.
Date: February 23, 2007
Teesta Setalvad
__________________________________________________________________________
Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai - 400 049. 
Ph: 2660 2288 email: cjp02in at yahoo.com



o o o

(ii)

  Sach ki Yadein,  Yadon ka Sach

PRESS  INVITATION

Kindly find herewith, a backgrounder to a six-day 
(26th February to 3rd March 2007) event to 
commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Gujarat 
Carnage of 2002, entitled   "Sach ki Yadein, 
Yadon ka Sach"   being organized in Ahmedabad by 
several organizations.

The programmes will include  seminars, a 
convention with survivors, film-shows, drama, 
street plays, painting exhibitions, etc.  The 
whole focus of the programme is to serve as 
platform where all of us stand together for 
preserving the memory against forgetting.

To introduce the weeklong programmes and to 
provide their details, we are inviting you to a 
Press Conference :

On        Friday, 23rd February 2007

At         1600 hrs.

At        "PRASHANT"

              Near Kamdhenu Hall, Drive-in Road
              Ahmedabad   380 052
              Tel:  27455913 / 66522333

We sincerely hope you / your Reporter and 
 Photographer will attend this Press Conference.
We further request you to cover the events of the 
weeklong programmes that are being organized.
Thanking you in anticipation for the same,
For and on behalf of the Organizing Collective


Fr. Cedric Prakash

  ---------------------------------

      SACH KI YADEIN,  YADON KA SACH

 
                  (26 February - 3 March 2007)

Gujarat 2002 witnessed an estimated killing of 
2000 people, rape of approximately 400 women, 
property damage worth Rs 3800 crores, around 1100 
restaurants destroyed, 563 religious places (302 
dargahs, 209 mosques, 30 madrassas, 18 temples 
and 3 churches) destroyed or damaged. About 2.5 
lakh people were directly displaced.

Recent surveys reveal that 5,000-10,000 families 
are still living in around 80 relief camps, not 
recognized by the state govt. and without any 
basic civic amenities! Out of a total 4252 FIRs 
lodged (minuscule, compared to unofficial 
figures), 2208 cases were summarily closed and 
most of the accused were released within one year 
of the carnage. 214 people are still languishing 
in jails under POTA, all Muslims barring five!

The legacy continues! The politicians are still 
reaping benefits; academics are still trying to 
make sense of it for the long-term future of 
Indian democracy; media persons are still divided 
over it; activists are still trying to wrest for 
the victims whatever minuscule doles they can 
from an otherwise hostile state and the victims 
are still struggling to make two ends meet or to 
come to terms with the nightmare they had to 
undergo.

Meanwhile the memory of it all is being 
overwritten! It is being touted instead that all 
is well with the proverbial Gujarati world and 
the state continues to march on its way to glory. 
Those raising doubts are portrayed as conspiring 
to divide the five crore Gujaratis. The pathetic 
condition of the minorities does not raise any 
concern rather becomes a solid example to 
showcase the state as ruthless and hence very 
focused. And what is the state’s track record on 
other fronts? Gujarat's status remains as number 
five in debt. According to NSSO May 2005, each of 
the 48 lakh farmers in the state is reeling under 
a debt of Rs. 15526. Officially, in the three 
years till 30 June 2006, 100 dalits have been 
murdered. Gujarat is also number five in the 
worst sex ratio record. At the same time, 
small-time thugs are not allowing Fanaa and 
Parzania to be screened inside Gujarat; are 
forcibly breaking inter-religious marriages apart 
and working for intense polarization among the 
tribals against the minorities.

The happenings of 2002 form the larger backdrop 
against which the events continue to unfold. How 
do we then pursue, an honest admission of truth 
and moral responsibility through a collective and 
public exercise as well as state's responsibility 
for the acts of its organs or agents and for its 
own failure to prevent or adequately respond to 
the commission of gross human rights violations, 
remains the challenge.

One continues to demand for the right to fair and 
adequate compensation; the right to restoration 
of the situation existing prior to the violation; 
the restoration of dignity and the right to a 
guarantee, by means of appropriate legislative 
and/or institutional intervention and reform, 
that the violation will not be repeated. A 
crucial aspect in all this is the symbolic 
reparation, especially in the backdrop of the 
gravest threat of 'erasure from memory and 
history', encompassing a process of remembering 
and commemorating the pain. It aims to restore 
the dignity of victims and serve as a continuing 
reminder. As we know, post-holocaust Germany is 
an example of that.

It is in this spirit that this six-day event is 
being organised. To serve as a platform where all 
of us stand together for preserving the 'memory' 
against 'forgetting'.


- - - - - - - -     - - - - - - - -    - - - - - - -   - - - - -
PRASHANT  -  A Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace
Street Address : Hill Nagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall, 
Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052, Gujarat, India
Postal Address : P B 4050, Navrangpura PO, Ahmedabad - 380 009, Gujarat, India
Phone : 91  79   27455913,  66522333
Fax : 91  79  27489018
Email: sjprashant at gmail.com
www.humanrightsindia.in
______


[6]


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

Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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