SACW | April 29-30, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | April 29-30, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2397 - Year 9

[1]  Pakistan: Letter to Pakistan authorities re 
ban on the play Burqavaganza (I.K.Shukla & 
friends)
[2]  Bangladesh: From zero to hero (Naeem Mohaiemen)
[3]  India: Exercises in bigotry (Ramachandra Guha)
[4]  India: Madhya Pradesh - Communal Goons Turn 
Marriages Into Nightmares (Badal Saroj)
[5]  India: When a High Court says, " Working 
Woman is Housewife FirstŠ." (Anita Ratnam)
[6]  Letter to Financial Times: Commodification 
of life is what robs capitalism of a soul (Pritam 
Singh)
[7]  An Appeal for help from the All India Secular Forum (Ram Puniyani)
[8]  India: Mental health care and the 
deficiencies in the Mental Health Act. (V. Kumara 
Swamy)
[9]  Mental health - schizoaffective disorder: My 
Brother's Battle -- and Mine (Asra Q. Nomani)
[10] Book Review: Battle For Peace by Krishna Kumar (Reviewed by Gautam Bhan)

____



[1] LETTER TO PAKISTAN AUTHORITIES RE BAN ON THE PLAY BURQAVAGANZA

Your Excellency President Musharraf
Prime Minister Hon'ble Shaukat Aziz
Minister for Culture, Pakistan
Governor, Punjab

Dear Sirs:

We, a coalition of South Asians in Los Angeles, 
California, USA, have learnt with dismay of the 
ban on Burqavaganza, the play staged by an 
internationally reputed group of thespians 
committed since 1984 to people and their concerns.

Freedom of expression in artistic and creative 
modes, besides others, is the sine qua non of a 
modern society and vibrant polity. Any repression 
of conscientious critique of life and times would 
amount to negation of freedom and foisting of a 
regimen of regimentation. Socially aware artistes
guard against such a pitfall and thus always 
serve universal  humanity of all times.

In light of the above may we request your 
Excellency immediately to lift the ban on 
Burqavaganza, stop the harassment of dramatist 
Shahid Nadeem and director Madeeha Gauhar, and 
make decent amends to them for the regrettable 
and unnecessary persecution suffered by them.

Sincerely,

I K Shukla (writer)
and friends.
Apr.29,2007.


_____


[2]

Daily Star
April 30, 2007

FROM ZERO TO HERO
by Naeem Mohaiemen

Can there be anything more bizarre than the 
emergence of Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia as 
oppressed heroines in our long national 
nightmare? As soon as the story of Hasina's 
barring from a British Airways flight hit the 
airwaves, I knew it was going to be a big story. 
The contours of the Hasina confrontation had the 
perfect masala for round the clock coverage. The 
sight of a British bobby standing next to her as 
news cameras crowded around, well it would stir 
even the coldest heart. And on top of that, it 
was British Airways -- not Emirates or Biman.

On the other side of the aisle -- an angry 
blogger wrote "A Dirty Dirty Trick" about 
Khaleda's potential departure to Saudi Arabia 
(that arid moru desh!). Ma and widower, giving it 
all up for her sons -- heartbreak, Bangla style.

The "minus two" solution attempted to 
short-circuit the laborious, time-consuming court 
process of corruption investigation by expelling 
the two Begums. But Bangladesh is not Pakistan, 
and now these clumsy maneuvers have even brought 
two blood enemies back to talk of an alliance. 
The same two people were ripping each other (and 
desh) to shreds only months ago? Truly, Selucas 
...

Hasina-Khaleda/BNP-AL: two entities that ran the 
country for fifteen years as their own private 
fiefdom. Two politicians who ruthlessly wiped out 
all democratic dissent inside their party and 
surrounded themselves with sycophants. Two groups 
that crippled a country through a fifteen year 
program of death-by-thousand-hartals, 
I-will-make-YOUR-politics-difficult, and plain 
old incompetence, corruption, nepotism, and 
runaway greed.

But now, thanks to the bull-in-china-shop tactic 
of the army-backed CTG, both of them have become 
temporary heroines. We are the ultimate society 
of spectacle.

In another part of the map, jute workers went on 
massive strikes in Khulna, demanding Tk 6 crores 
of wages (can we auction off abandoned SUVs to 
raise that cash?). "I'll commit suicide if the 
government doesn't pay my dues. The government 
should pay or kill us," said jute mill worker 
Delwar Hossain.

The CTG's response was as heavy-handed as BNP-AL 
before it. Instead of listening to the demands, 
the police filed charges against 2,500 striking 
workers. Once again the working class of this 
country is on the short, brutal end of 
neo-liberal policies that have no plan for 
re-training, creating new jobs, or a safety net. 
Where are Khaleda-Hasina on these issues? Busy 
plotting the demise of CTG, after which their 
gladiator wars can resume.

I wrote earlier (in "Why Are They Smiling?") that 
if the courts try to ram through kangaroo court 
cases against BNP/AL without due process, the 
whole thing will fall apart (if not now, later). 
We see signs of that already in the debates about 
bail hearing, due process, and now with the case 
against Khaleda's "house arrest."

Little by little these things could add up, and 
the AL-BNP could regain the upper hand. It seems 
astounding after the endless revelations of 
lootera state, but there is already come clucking 
of sympathy for the begums. With either party 
back on top, and in vengeful mode, deshbashis 
have a lot to fear.

I'm exhausted by the endless telenovela of 
Hasina-vs-Khaleda (marked by the jehadi josh with 
which Mujib-Zia photos are exchanged every five 
years), and want something different. Not the 
army, but something new within democracy.

I was intrigued by third force forays like LDP 
and Nagorik Shakti. Maybe they could be better, 
let's see. But with the CTG's ban on political 
organizing, these nascent third forces are unable 
to hold meetings, raise funds, go out and build 
infrastructure, canvass support, or speak to 
issues.

The CTG has to decide what its end game is. If 
there is a genuine intention to punish the 
godfathers (within due process), separate the 
judiciary, and strengthen anti-corruption 
commission, all with an intention to guarantee 
clean elections and make the environment 
conducive to the rise of an alternative third 
force, then that's where the focus needs to be. 
Too much of their (and our) energy is being 
sucked up by these ill-thought out, poorly 
executed, back-door dramas.

Riding the tiger -- when and how do we get off?

_____



[3]

Magazine Section / The Hindu
April 29, 2007

EXERCISES IN BIGOTRY

by Ramachandra Guha

Extremist Hindus seek to intimidate Muslims in 
the present, but they also seek to control the 
past, by rewriting history...

Photo: PTI

Keeping tradition alive: Hindus in Lahore celebrate Holi.

I HAVE long believed that the secret heroes of 
the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh are the bigots on 
the other side. In their philosophy and method, 
and in their fears and aspirations, the votaries 
of Hindutva tend to mimic the Islamic 
fundamentalists. Because Pakistan is an Islamic 
State, say our local bigots, we must become a 
Hindu State. Because politicians in Iran take 
orders from the ayatollahs, our local netas must 
likewise seek guidance from the sants and the 
sankaracharyas.

Two-way street

Sometimes, however, the chain of influence can 
run the other way. That is, the actions of Hindu 
fundamentalists can inspire the actions of 
Islamic fundamentalists. Consider a recent news 
report about the content of school textbooks in 
Pakistan. Apparently, the Muttahida Majlis Amal 
(MMA) has objected to the inclusion of some 
passages on Hinduism in the curriculum for 
Classes VI to VIII. According to the report, the 
"MMA leaders said that the inclusion of the 
history of Hinduism will have a negative effect 
on Muslim students". When their demands were not 
met, they walked out of the National Assembly, 
insisting that "the chapter on Hinduism must be 
scrapped".

To this reader, and perhaps some others, the 
report brought back memories of the school 
textbook row that took place in India during the 
regime of the National Democratic Alliance. Then, 
a fierce attack was mounted on textbooks that 
allegedly diminished the importance of Hinduism 
in Indian history and (again, allegedly) gave too 
much space to Muslim rulers and cultural 
achievements.

However, since the party of the bigots was in 
power, the polemic was soon transformed into 
policy, with textbooks rewritten to glorify 
professedly "Hindu" rulers and politicians and 
diminish rulers and politicians whose attitudes 
and policies did not so easily sit with the 
philosophy - such as it is - of Hindutva. A 
particularly egregious example of these 
distortions was the account of the murder of 
Mahatma Gandhi in the civics textbook, which 
somehow managed to leave out the political 
affiliations and even the name of the murderer.

Pakistan is an "Islamic" State, but it has withal 
a fairly large population of those who follow 
other faiths. There is a sprinkling of Christians 
scattered throughout the country, and isolated 
groups of Parsis and Sikhs. However, the most 
important minority in Pakistan are the Hindus. At 
Partition, the Pakistan Punjab and the North West 
Frontier Provinces were ethnically cleansed, but 
a large number of Hindus remained in Sindh. Few 
Indians know that two districts in Sindh have a 
Hindu majority, and there are of course many 
Hindus living in the city of Karachi. It was one 
of these Sindhi Hindus who was recently appointed 
the acting Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme 
Court.

As in Pakistan, the citizens of India owe 
allegiance to a multiplicity of religious faiths 
(or to no faith at all). A majority of Indians 
are Hindus, but the country is also home - in all 
senses - to communities of Sikhs, Jains, 
Buddhists, Christians and Parsis. However, the 
most important minority are the Muslims, who are 
spread all across the land (with the exception of 
the Northeast). There is not one State in 
peninsular India, not one major town or city, 
that does not have a large population of Muslims.

Erasing the past

Now, that Hindus live today in Pakistan is 
something the bigots there cannot entirely wish 
away. They might seek - as the law of the land in 
fact has done - to make them second-class 
citizens. But they cannot extinguish the fact of 
their existence. They can, however, extinguish 
their past, by removing their history from the 
history books. Thus it is that the leaders of the 
MMA do not want to know Pakistanis to know 
anything about the literary, artistic or 
philosophical traditions of the Hindus who have 
long lived in the lands watered by the Indus and 
the Ravi.

By the same token, that Muslims live today in 
India is something our bigots cannot entirely 
wish away. They can, of course, attempt to make 
them second-class citizens - the former head of 
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Ashok Singhal, going 
so far as to recommend that India follow Pakistan 
by making their minorities vote in separate 
electorates, and by denying them access to high 
Constitutional positions (in Pakistan, no 
non-Muslim can become the country's President). 
Extremist Hindus seek to intimidate and cow down 
Muslims in the present, but they also seek to 
control the past, by rewriting history to present 
the faith of the majority in the brightest 
colours and the faith of the minority in the 
darkest ones.

A different idea of the nation

An old teacher of mine, the historian Dharma 
Kumar, used to say that the RSS wanted to make 
India "an Islamic State for Hindus". If that 
attempt has not succeeded, it is only because it 
has been resisted by Indians upholding an 
altogether more noble idea of India. This idea is 
the veritable Other of the idea of Pakistan, as 
explained best of all by Jawaharlal Nehru. 
Writing to the Prime Ministers of Provinces three 
months after Partition, Nehru said: "We have a 
Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that 
they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else. 
That is a basic fact about which there can be no 
argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan 
and whatever the indignities and horrors 
inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to 
deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We 
must give them security and the rights of 
citizens in a democratic State".

______


[4]

People's Democracy
April 29, 2007

Madhya Pradesh:
COMMUNAL GOONS TURN MARRIAGES INTO NIGHTMARES

by Badal Saroj

WHILE the Sangh Parivar's hoodlum brigade was 
busy creating in Bhopal, the state's capital, a 
hullabaloo following the marriage of Priyanka 
Wadhwani and Mohd Umar, there was also a new 
element in the whole drama this time --- our 
"national media" was also in the field to make 
the news juicy and exciting, rather provocative. 
Since the formation of a BJP government in Madhya 
Pradesh, marriages are tending to become a big 
occasion for creating communal frenzy and 
conflict in the state. It is another thing that 
Priyanka and Umar have been more fortunate than 
several others --- they are at least up till now 
safe from the saffronite goons.

Luck was not so favourable for a handicapped 
orphaned girl in Jabalpur. The rickshaw-puller 
who married him had to bear the wrath of Hindutva 
champions in full measure; and they beat him as 
many as four times --- --- twice in the police 
station of the area and twice in the district 
collector's office. Despite the mandatory 
provision of solemnisation of a court marriage 
within 30 days of receiving an application, the 
collector of Jabalpur sat tight upon their 
application for three and a half months. The 
Bajrang Dal and RSS goons created a ruckus 
against the intended marriage of an orphan and 
handicapped Hindu girl with a Christian 
rickshaw-puller, dubbing it as a big threat 
against the Hindu religion.

Though Priyanka and Umar escaped the wrath of the 
saffron brigade in large measure, even if not 
fully, it was the common people of Bhopal who had 
to face the heat of arson, traffic jams and 
roadside goondaism for full two weeks.

Nor could the relatives of the couple escape the 
torture after these two young persons thought 
Bhopal was unsafe for their marriage, ran away 
and got married in Mumbai. The police illegally 
lifted Umar's brother, Shakil, from his house and 
kept him in unlawful detention in the Koh-e-Fiza 
police station for seven days. Shakil's wife 
Aparajita, an IAS officer in Delhi, could not do 
anything except taking food to the police station 
for her husband everyday. With the help of the 
Janwadi Mahila Samiti (JMS, state affiliate of 
the All India Democratic Women's Association), 
she kept trying to contact the state's chief 
minister and home minister, but failed. Along 
with JMS leaders, she did meet the state's 
director general of police, Pawar, but it was a 
far more frustrating and far less reassuring 
experience. Not only the police chief distanced 
himself from his constitutional responsibility, 
he even sermonised the delegation about the 
necessity of respecting the feelings of 
Priyanka's parents --- and the feelings of course 
of the communal organisations also. He did not 
pay any heed to the JMS suggestion that, if there 
was any doubt about the legitimacy of the 
Priyanka-Umar marriage, the girl could be 
summoned and her statement recorded by a 
magistrate. He also kept mum on the issue of 
Shakil's illegal detention in a police station. 
This DGP, like the state government, cared more 
for the noise created by the communal 
organisations than for the legal and 
constitutional right of the 22 years old Priyanka 
to have a life partner of her choice.

The bureaucracy and the police in Madhya Pradesh 
have been bowing low before the Sangh Parivar's 
hoodlums during the last three and a half years 
even after they have created such a ruckus on 
more than 3,000 occasions.

On the other hand, the RSS controlled Sindhi 
panchayat virtually kidnapped Priyanka's parents 
and kept them in its custody for days together. 
While there was a whole lot of noise against this 
marriage, no TV channel was able (or did not 
care!?) to contact Priyanka's parents and show 
them live. Nor did they sign any memorandum or 
press statement. It was only a handful of 
Bajrangis who, in presence of TV cameras, jammed 
the roads in the name of the Sindhi community's 
hurt feelings. To rescue them from the 
embarrassment of low mobilisation and meagre 
support, the police always took care to reach the 
spot in full measure and (though unnecessarily) 
divert the traffic, trying to give the impression 
of a huge crowd ahead.

Even though the Mumabi High Court and Jabalpur 
High Court have issued clear instructions to the 
police and administration to provide protection 
to Priyanka and Umar, a team of Madhya Pradesh 
Police did reach Mumbai to interrogate 
(terrorise!?) them.
Several organisations of women organised a 
demonstration against the moves to create 
communal frenzy and the studied inaction of the 
state government. Through a press conference, 
they also warned the state government of an 
intense agitation in case it did not curb such 
fratricidal moves.

The Bhopal unit of the CPI(M) staged a 
demonstration in front of the chief minister's 
house on April 15 and severely condemned the 
state government's protection to the communal 
depredations. The irony was that, only a hundred 
metres away from the demonstration's venue, the 
chief minister was addressing a meeting called by 
the Dhakad Kshatriya Panchayat and advising his 
caste fellows not to have any relations of roti 
(food) and beti (marriage) outside their caste.

The CPI(M) as well as the JMS has demanded that 
the state government curb the unconstitutional 
activities of various caste panchayats also.

To make the whole issue provocative, it was 
necessary that the propaganda remain one-sided. 
The national as well as local media saw to it 
that rumours remain afloat and the feelings of a 
few are projected as the feelings of the entire 
city. There are also grounds to say that several 
women and young girls were projected as Sindhis 
and their incendiary remarks were well 
propagated. Yet, not one of such gatherings had a 
participation of more than one and a half dozen 
individuals. In contrast, the far bigger 
mobilisations by women's organisations or by the 
CPI(M) deserved not a single line in the press, 
nor a single byte in TV channels. The two 
"fastest growing newspapers of India" had had 
their own mutual competition, and they kept 
cooking up stories to endear themselves to the 
Sangh Parivar.

But the people of Bhopal gave a most fitting 
reply to all such incendiary activities that are 
out to violate the law of the land. Despite all 
the dirty games played by the media, there was no 
tension in the city, nor any untoward incident 
took place. Those knowing about the history of 
Bhopal are aware of the city's tradition of 
communal harmony --- even at the height of 
fratricidal riots accompanying the partition in 
1947, Bhopal not only maintained its calm but 
also gave shelter to the people of both the 
religions. Even more interesting was the fact 
that camps for the immigrant Sindhis from 
Pakistan and for the Muslims uprooted from other 
places were erected at one and the same site --- 
at Bairagarh. Though the state government has, 
under the pressure of the saffron brigade, 
changed its name from Bairagarh to Hirdaram 
Nagar, it has been unable to erase the tradition 
of communal harmony from the people's psyche.

In the latest episode also, it was the Sindhi 
girls who first and most intensely protested 
against the Sindhi panchayat's edict that girls 
must not use mobile phones, must not go out with 
their male friends and must not wear any head 
cover so that they are easily identifiable. The 
number of these girls protesting such a 
nonsensical and dictatorial edict was far more 
than of those whom the TV cameras kept in focus.

This edict of the RSS controlled Sindhi panchayat 
has in reality terrorised the same people whom it 
purported to 'protect.' After the Priyanka-Umar 
episode, there were two more marriages of the 
kind, but these girls' parents have preferred to 
go underground instead of lodging any report with 
the police. Their fear was that the Sindhi 
panchayat could abduct them as well, and the 
saffron goons might play their dirtiest kind of 
politics in their name.

Protesting against and severely lambasting such 
kind of politics, the MP state unit of the 
Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) has 
asked the fundamentalist forces to explain why 
the youth are not getting any job or why a large 
number are unable to complete their studies. 
These, the DYFI said, are more important 
questions to reply than to tell the people what 
they should not wear or whom they should not 
marry.

The DYFI has also made it clear that remaining 
informed about the real nature of communal 
depredations and maintaining utmost caution and 
vigil is the best way to uproot from our midst 
the deadly disease called communalism.

______


[5]

indiainteracts.com
11 April 2007

WHEN A HC SAYS, " WORKING WOMAN IS HOUSEWIFE FIRSTŠ."

by Anita Ratnam

'A working woman is housewife first', says a 
recent judgement from the High Court of 
Karnataka. The HC was approached by a woman 
petitioner after her passport application was 
rejected by the Passport Office on the grounds 
that she had not disclosed her employment with 
SBI in the application form. The Court ruled that 
there is no instance of suppression of facts, as 
a woman is a housewife first, implying that she 
may or not choose to disclose her other 
occupations.

While this ruling might have provided the 
petitioner with much relief and saved her the 
bother of re-applying for her passport, such a 
statement from a HC is fraught with danger for 
the Indian woman. One the one hand, it recognises 
that house work is an occupation in itself and on 
the other, it presumes that married women are 
primarily housewives, rendering her other 
occupations as secondary.

Does this then suggest that men's domestic roles 
are irrelevant? And what of un-married women who 
run households? As housework itself is not really 
valued, a statement like this unwittingly demeans 
women. Such presumption is indeed beyond the 
realm of law and comes from deeply held values 
which permeate the process of adjudication so 
subtly that it leaves us pondering where facts 
end and judicial perceptions and affinities begin.

After all it is the very same argument about 
women's domestic role that has been used to deny 
her education, income, property, dignity and 
freedom of mobility for generations. It is the 
same line of "reasoning" that has been used to 
justify dowry which in turn has led to much 
mental cruelty, domestic violence and female 
foeticide. Therefore, it is not a statement that 
can be taken lightly, in any context.

In an even more disconcerting judgement this 
week, a HC judge has ruled that " advising his 
wife to be more compatible with the family and 
take more interest in domestic chores" cannot be 
considered an act of cruelty. This, in a case 
where the woman committed suicide as she could 
not endure the "chiding". Her suicide itself has 
been referred to by the court as " a careless and 
unmotherly attitude"!

That such perceptions of women emerge in judicial 
decision making is particularly disturbing, 
especially as they recur time and again, 
suggesting an institutionalised pattern. A nation 
wide study by Sakshi conducted a decade ago 
revealed that judges carry leanings, 
sensitivities, as well as prejudice and bias 
about women's identities and roles.

Through interviews of judges, lawyers, litigants 
and witnesses, as well as rigorous analysis of 
the texts of several judgements from five states 
(including Karnataka), the extent of judicial 
gender blindness came to light.

Husbands emerged as protectors and breadwinners 
and wives as homemakers for judges worldviews, 
with 79% of judges attributing this to Indian 
culture. With regard to domestic violence as well 
as sexual assault, 64% of judges felt that women 
must share the blame for violence committed 
against them with 27% of judges attributing 
domestic violence to the wife's provocation 
(husbands never provoke wives!) and 40% of judges 
attributing it to alcohol. Only 27% of judges 
were able to see domestic violence as a result of 
unequal power relations in the family and 51% of 
judges felt that a slap to his wife by a husband 
on one occasion in the course of their marriage, 
does NOT amount to cruelty.

Such patriarchal values are not unique to the 
Indian justice system. Justice systems in Canada, 
Australia, the US, UK and South Africa have made 
(and still make!) tremendous efforts to help 
judges address issues of gender, ethnicity and 
race that are deeply embedded in justice systems.

The contributions of feminist legal theory, 
critical race theory, of social movements, of 
methodological advances in judicial behaviour 
research and training were substantial in all 
these efforts. Today, there is documented 
evidence from various parts of the world to show 
how rigorous training has helped justice systems 
re-look at courtroom language, procedures, 
sentencing, adjudication and judgements.

Back home, the Sakshi study led to a series of 
workshops for judges in collaboration with 
Judicial Academies and Legal Experts from Canada 
and the UK. Judges from these countries shared 
how research and training have helped foreground 
the hidden forms of racism and sexism within 
justice systems itself, uncovering how "victims" 
of social attitudes are doubly penalised while 
accessing the courts.. As a result of these joint 
deliberations, judges from South Asia slowly 
began to concede the need for such interventions 
here as well.

We have come a long way since then. Gender 
training for judicial officers is no longer a 
shocking matter. After the setting up of the 
Judicial Academies in various states, the scope 
and potential for such training in India has 
increased manifold. Social movements working with 
women, with dalits, with the displaced, with 
sexual minorities, with victims of genocide etc, 
have all engaged with the judiciary in diverse 
ways. Judges too have ventured into judicial 
activism, championing causes from environmental 
protection to sexual harassment to the public 
distribution system to "questioning" of the 
legislature on constitutional matters.

Yet, judgements like these about a woman's 
identity or woman's "un-motherly" suicide, are 
grim reminders that there is a long way to go. 
The cruel irony is that judges "know" what women 
endure and 63% of judges have even said that if 
they could imagine one more life, they would 
choose to be born men, not women. Dealing with 
values that operate insidiously is never easy and 
tackling such issues in an institution like the 
judiciary seems a forbidding task. But that can 
hardly be a deterrent, when the lives and dignity 
of half our populace is at stake. 

______


[6] 

Financial Times
April 27 2007

Letters

COMMODIFICATION OF LIFE IS WHAT ROBS CAPITALISM OF A SOUL

by Dr Pritam Singh

Sir, Luke Johnson, whom the FT introduces as "Our 
new columnist asks if business can satisfy the 
soul", has raised a civilisational question and 
has an engaging style ("How to find true 
fulfilment in business", April 25). It was good 
to read an unconventional piece like that in a 
business newspaper, but his line of argument is 
fundamentally flawed. His attempt to attribute 
human creativity and enterprise to business is 
misplaced because creativity and innovation are 
innate characteristics of the human species. Even 
in the most "primitive" and self-sufficient 
economic systems, human beings are known to have 
experimented and innovated.

Polanyi, Schumpeter, Veblen, Marx and others 
praised the early phase of capitalism for its 
contribution to breaking the feudal restrictions 
on enterprise. However, all of them in different 
ways also argued that the same progressive 
capitalist system would eventually generate 
economic, social and cultural tendencies that 
would have destructive implications for human 
society and nature. The all-pervasive character 
of commodification of life in capitalism is what 
leads to capitalism lacking a soul. The 
commodification of nature, society and human life 
generates a culture that views them from an 
instrumentalist perspective of making a gain 
rather than valuing them for their intrinsic 
worth. All the business frauds and scandals are 
rooted in this instrumentalist perspective of 
commodification.

Mr Johnson contends that the anti-business 
"communist" states of Russia and China created 
totalitarian regimes. He needs to be reminded 
that a virulently pro-business regime, for 
example the Pinochet regime in Chile, was equally 
totalitarian and repressive. A more powerful 
critique of Soviet Russia and China would be not 
that they were anti-business but that they tried 
to copy and emulate the economic aspects of 
capitalist business instead of developing an 
alternative vision of human life.

The growing body of academic literature on the 
crying need for business ethics is a 
manifestation of the essentially unethical and 
soul-destroying nature of modern businesses and 
if a businessman like Sir Robin Saxby remarks 
that "I don't think that business ever satisfies 
the soul", he needs to be applauded for plain 
speaking.

Pritam Singh,
Senior Lecturer in Economics,
Oxford Brookes University Business School

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

______


[7] 

All India Secular Forum

AN APPEAL FOR HELP

Dear Friends,

We have seen the rise of communal politics during 
last few decades. This is eroding the secular 
values in a serious manner. To counter this 
threat posed to secular democracy different human 
rights groups have been responding in various 
ways to preserve the democratic ethos of our 
society.
To disseminate the information about these 
activities we have been trying to bring out two 
newsletters
1.	One page brief one, every fortnight, as a 
part of Secular Perspectives edited by Dr. Asghar 
Ali Engineer.
2.	An e newsletter, Secular Action Network, 
every month distributed through different 
channels, also it is hosted on some web sites, 
including pluralindia.com. (eg 
http://www.pluralindia.com/secularActions.php?id=138)

These both are trying to cover most of the 
activities related to preservation of secular 
values.
In order to broaden the reach of these 
newsletters, now we plan to bring out the monthly 
print edition from August or so. The idea is to 
bring out English and Hindi editions to begin 
with. We plan to raise the funds for one year 
before we are able to launch it from August 2007.
We solicit your help in this
1.	Please send the information about your 
activities on regular basis. The reports in 
English can be sent to ram.puniyani at gmail.com and 
Hindi one should be posted to L.S. Hardenia 45 
Bangle Bhopal.
2.	Please enlist subscribers for the same.
Subscription rate will be Rs 60 per year.
3.	Please be the Donor Member –You will be 
entitled to send the copies to 10 addresses for 
two years, Rs 1000.
4.	Life member Rs 500.

Do request more friends to be the life member.
Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer has kindly agreed to take 
care of the accounts and administrative/posting 
part of the newsletter through CSSS. All the DDs/ 
Cheques should be drawn in favor of Center for 
Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai and 
posted to Centre for Study of Society and 
Secularism

602 & 603, Silver Star, Behind BEST Bus Depo,
Santacruz (E), Mumbai:- 400 055.
E-mail: csss at mtnl.net.in
Website: www.csss -isla.com
Tel. 91-22-26149668, 26102089

--
Please write For SAN in the covering letter and on the
reverse of the DD/Cheque.

    Please do disseminate it as much as possible.

Do look forward to your help.

In Solidarity
Ram Puniyani
(Editor)

_____


[8]

The Telegraph
April 25, 2007

OH, FOR A NEW LAW

In India, mental health care is being neglected 
because of the deficiencies in the Mental Health 
Act. V. Kumara Swamy reports

Scarred soul: Konkona Sen Sharma played the role 
of a schizophrenic in 15 Park Avenue

Shahanara loved embroidering images of sunflowers 
and peacocks. Even after 10 years in a mental 
hospital and another six in a half-way home, she 
never lost hope of being reunited with her family 
in Bangladesh, which she had left as a 
eight-year-old girl. Shahanara was finally united 
with her mother who accepted her happily despite 
her illness.

Rima (name changed) was not as lucky. Married to 
an alcoholic, she suffered mental and physical 
torture. Her mental condition deteriorated slowly 
and ultimately she ended up in a mental hospital. 
Despite recovering fully, her son refused to take 
her back and the law enforcement agencies were of 
little help. A fully-fit Rima, in her old age, 
has been left alone.

In both the cases, the law of the land on mental 
health was of little help. In fact, if the Mental 
Health Act, 1987, had been strictly followed, 
Shahanara would never have been united with her 
family and would have been forced to spend her 
life in a mental hospital. In Rima's case, the 
law is almost silent on the condition of patients 
who have recovered but whose guardians do not 
want them back.

The Mental Health Act (MHA), 1987, came into 
force in 1993. It repealed the much criticised 
Indian Lunacy Act, 1912. The aim of the Act was 
to consolidate the law relating to mentally ill 
persons, but many people involved in the field 
feel that the law has too many lacunae and needs 
urgent attention.

"Take the case of discharging patients from 
mental hospitals. Patients who were admitted by 
their guardians can be discharged only if their 
relatives take them back. Most of the guardians 
don't turn up and such patients are forced to 
languish in mental hospitals despite being fully 
fit," says Joyce Siromoni, the founder of 
Paripurnata, a half-way-home for the mentally ill 
in Calcutta.

"Organisations like ours have to go to a higher 
court and take orders to accommodate the mentally 
ill. This can't go on forever. There should be a 
law that takes into account the ground 
realities," says Siromoni. "The court can appoint 
a voluntary guardian for a patient who is 
abandoned by the family, but the procedures are 
so complicated that it is almost impossible to 
get a guardian appointed," says Debashis 
Bannerjee, a Calcutta-based human rights lawyer 
who has fought for the mentally ill.
archaic view
'The (Mental Health) Act is merely an extension 
of the Indian Lunacy Act. It is a very custodial 
law, denying freedom of choice to the mentally 
disabled'

"We are still in the colonial age, when the 
mentally ill were considered dangerous to 
society. The MHA is a legal document that 
considers protection of others from the mentally 
ill more important than the people affected by 
the disease itself," says Ratnabali Ray, the 
founder of Anjali, an NGO that works with 
government mental hospitals in the city and tries 
to mainstream fully recovered patients.

"I feel the Act is merely an extension of the 
Indian Lunacy Act. It is a very custodial law, 
denying freedom of choice to the mentally 
disabled," says Chaitali Shetty, a social worker 
with the Chennai-based NGO, The Banyan.

The law appoints the state as the guardian of the 
mentally ill and this doesn't go down well with 
the organisations working in the sector. "The 
state itself is breaking the laws. The Supreme 
Court guidelines which were issued soon after the 
Erawadi tragedy in 2001 have not been implemented 
so far," says Ray.

When a fire broke out at a mental health 
institution at Erawadi, Tamil Nadu, around 30 
inmates died as they were chained to poles or 
beds and could not escape. The Supreme Court took 
notice of it and issued various guidelines, but 
not many state governments have taken heed.

The Court's order of 2002 to have at least one 
mental hospital like the Institute for Mental 
Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in every state 
capital is yet to be implemented. "Take the 
north- east. There is only one hospital in 
Tezpur, Assam, for all the seven states and I 
don't see the situation improving," says Mukul 
Goswami, the founder of Ashadeep, a 
Guwahati-based non-governmental organisation that 
takes care of the mentally ill.

And for those in need of emergency care, the law 
is absolutely silent. "Anybody who is picked up 
from the roadside - even if the person is in need 
of emergency admission to a mental hospital - 
can't be admitted as the law states that a 
reception order is needed from a judicial 
magistrate first, which makes the law absolutely 
redundant," says Bannerjee.

According to the Act, there should be one 
psychiatrist for every 10 mentally ill patients, 
and two nurses. "That is impossible in a country 
like ours. Even the government hospitals are not 
maintaining the standards, and moreover, we just 
have around 4,000 psychiatrists in the whole 
country," says Goswami.

The law is very demanding when it comes to 
private mental hospitals, according to Dr J.R. 
Ram, a clinical psychiatrist at the city's Apollo 
Gleneagles Hospital. "The law states that the 
government shall appoint a committee of five 
people consisting of an expert in the mental 
field and others who will visit a private nursing 
home every month to monitor the care. This is 
simply not possible on the ground and many 
reputed hospitals do not enter this field because 
of the bureaucratic hassles," he says.

According to the National Human Rights Report, 
2000, 20 to 30 million people "appear to need 
some form of mental health care" and according to 
the National Commission for Women (NCW), five 
million of these are women.

Twenty per cent of all patients in mental 
hospitals in Calcutta are fully fit to resume 
their normal life, according to Ray, but because 
of lack of rehabilitation and post-care 
treatment, these people are condemned to languish 
in the hospitals that are no more than jails. 
"Just take a look at our hospitals and the 
patients. Our mental hospitals look more like 
jails with iron grills and locks everywhere. The 
patients are not encouraged to socialise and lead 
lives like normal human beings. In fact, their 
basic rights have been violated," says Ray.

"There is no mention of the word rehabilitation 
in the Act, except for one instance, that too, 
pertaining to nursing homes. All over the world, 
rehabilitation is the buzzword for patients 
affected by mental diseases. In India, the 
government is yet to wake up to the reality of 
mental health," says Dr R.S. Choudhury, former 
medical superintendent of Calcutta's Pavlov 
Mental Hospital.

Human rights are being violated in a brazen 
manner and in many cases, the law itself is 
responsible for these violations, says Siromoni, 
looking at Shahanara's embroidered image of a 
peacock that adorns one of the walls in her 
office. "We have given up on the law completely," 
she says.

_____


[9]

Washington Post

MY BROTHER'S BATTLE -- AND MINE

By Asra Q. Nomani
Sunday, April 29, 2007; Page B02

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.

"I'll take a knife and cut up your uterus," said 
the voice on the other end of the line. I 
shuddered, but got off the phone gently, because 
the speaker was someone I love very much. My 
brother spoke those chilling words to me last 
October, but the recent suicide-massacre at 
Virginia Tech brought back the anguish of that 
day.


Like so many, I mourn for the victims and their 
families and friends. But strange as it may 
sound, I also connect with the killer and his 
immigrant family, and my sadness extends to them. 
Since the early 1980s, my brother has been 
bravely battling an incurable illness called 
schizoaffective disorder that hit him on the 
threshold of adulthood. It's a brain disease 
related to schizophrenia, characterized by mood 
swings, thought disorder, psychosis and bursts of 
violence. When he's being treated, my brother is 
kind, thoughtful, loving, a genius in world 
history and brilliant at soccer, a sport he had 
hoped to play professionally.

The day he threatened me last year, he had 
refused to go to the hospital for a regular dose 
of a new injectable antipsychotic drug his 
physicians were trying. I had urged him to take 
his medicine, prompting the outburst. In the 
preceding months, he had been "decompensating," 
psychiatric jargon for melting down, as the new 
medicine wasn't working well. We'd been there 
before. Over the years, my family had been on the 
firing line because of my brother's illness. 
Once, he punched me in the head. He has kicked, 
scratched, hit and spat on our parents. Earlier 
last year, he had broken down our mother's 
bedroom door and pummeled her. But we always knew 
it was his illness speaking, and we always loved 
him. And we knew that he was suffering.

This wasn't the American dream that our parents 
-- like the parents of the Virginia Tech killer 
-- were chasing. They had immigrated to the 
United States in the 1960s in search of better 
lives than our native India could offer. My 
brother and I joined them in 1969, when I was 4 
and he was 6. Like Seung Hui Cho and his sister, 
who were born in South Korea, my brother and I 
are part of the "1.5 generation," who come to the 
United States as children.

Now psychiatrists are learning something about 
this generation. A study published in the 
Schizophrenia Bulletin last year found 
"compelling evidence" that immigrants have an 
elevated risk of developing schizophrenia and 
other types of psychotic disorders. A 2005 
Journal of Psychiatry article reported that 
"social defeat," or the "chronic stressful 
experience of outsider status," can make 
migration an "important risk factor" for 
schizophrenia. While my brother deteriorated, I 
went out, like Cho's sister, and became the 
supposed immigrant success story, privately in 
anguish all the while.

Away from home in those early years of my 
brother's disease, before cellphones, I thought 
about getting a pager so my mother could reach me 
if my brother beat her up. I have lived in dread 
ever since that I'd get a phone call saying that 
my brother, who lived at home, had killed our 
parents. When he threatened me last fall, my 
family and I made a heart-wrenching decision for 
the sake of everyone's safety: We had him 
committed to a psychiatric hospital.

We were one of the lucky families. We live in a 
state where such an act is possible, because the 
legislature wrote new laws in recent years that 
allow mental health commissioners to examine 
medical histories, among other things, when 
judging whether people are likely to seriously 
harm themselves or others. Too many states do not 
allow the consideration of medical histories.

As someone who has spent 25 years painstakingly 
navigating mental health laws to protect my 
family, my brother and society from violence, I 
believe that future massacres like the one at 
Virginia Tech and others can be avoided. But it 
will take much-needed reform of outdated state 
laws based on the concept, dating to 1972, that 
people must be of "imminent danger" to themselves 
or others before a court can order them into 
treatment.

On the books, in part due to the lobbying of the 
Arlington, Va.-based Treatment Advocacy Center, 
most states have departed from the "imminent 
danger" standard. In recent years, 23 states have 
lowered the bar to include a "need for treatment" 
standard to determine whether someone should get 
court-ordered treatment, either outpatient or 
inpatient. New standards in North Dakota, for 
instance, consider whether there has been a 
"substantial deterioration in mental health."

But an attitude requiring dangerousness prevails, 
not allowing mental illnesses to be treated as 
the medical conditions they are. Pennsylvania 
requires a person to be of "clear and present 
danger," and Virginia has retained the "imminent 
danger" standard. That was what handcuffed 
Virginia Tech police when an English professor 
warned them about Cho's disturbing classroom 
behavior. Tragically, in January, the Virginia 
General Assembly passed up an opportunity to 
broaden the criteria, tabling proposed reforms in 
favor of waiting for a commission report -- due 
in 2009.

Every week, our national mental health crisis 
comes to life for me when I drive a little more 
than an hour on I-79 South to a place called 
Weston, W.Va. Heading through town, I pass a 
sprawling building of native blue sandstone that 
was opened in 1858 as the Trans-Allegheny Asylum 
for the Insane. It's closed now, replaced by a 
state mental hospital up the road from the Mystik 
Mountaineer Mart.

At the new hospital, behind the locked doors of 
the G-1 unit, my brother has been treated for the 
past six months, slowly getting better. It's not 
the institution of expos?s past. Last weekend, a 
nurse gave my 4-year-old son and me a tour of the 
rec room, the indoor swimming pool area, the 
neatly stocked library and the cafeteria.

But it's also not pretty. Not long ago, my 
brother was punched in the jaw by another 
patient. A male nurse dislocated two fingers 
while pulling them apart. As I visited my brother 
last week in a locked room for visitors, the 
assailant waved to me through the glass window, 
his earlier violence apparently forgotten.

My brother is due for a mental health commission 
hearing this week to determine whether he should 
be hospitalized for another six months. "I'm 
scared," he told my mother and me, and I knew he 
was getting better. It's rational to be afraid of 
being committed to a psychiatric unit.

Because of West Virginia's new legislation, he 
probably will be discharged soon for a six-month 
"temporary observation period" that orders him 
back to the hospital if he doesn't take his 
medicine. The bar will not be violence.

As a psychiatric nurse let me out of G-1, we 
stood for a moment at the door beside a sign that 
read, "Caution. Elopement Risk." "We wouldn't 
leave someone bleeding on the streets because 
they didn't want to go into the hospital after a 
hit-and-run," the nurse said to me. "Why abandon 
the mentally ill?"

As the nurse went back into G-1, I caught my 
brother's eye through the sliver-of-glass window 
on the door. My heart ached, but I knew that he 
wouldn't be a threat to others as he received the 
treatment he critically needs. Then the door 
clicked shut


_____


[10]

Outlook
Magazine | May 07, 2007

REVIEW
The Earth Is Split
A lucid, unerringly balanced and engaging short 
work that adds substantially to writings on 
Indo-Pak relations.

Gautam Bhan


BATTLE FOR PEACE
by Krishna Kumar
Penguin
Pages: 168; Rs: 175

	Krishna Kumar's latest offering is a 
lucid, unerringly balanced and engaging short 
work that adds substantially to writings on 
Indo-Pak relations. Kumar's intent is not to 
write another history of Partition, Kashmir or 
analyse the current arms race. Instead, he 
explores the ways in which the two nations were, 
and are now, constructed and consumed by their 
own citizens and by each other.
Any change in relations, he says, cannot emerge 
until both nations understand the many ways in 
which we have been taught to imagine the other 
and ourselves.

Kumar takes all the familiar battlefields in 
Indo-Pak relations-war, Kashmir, religion, 
secularism, education, history, and 
culture-contextualising each against ideas of 
modernity, globalisation, new forms of conflict 
and identity, and the role of elites and 
educational systems in constructing national and 
public memory. In simple and accessible 
arguments, the book helps both the Indian and the 
Pakistani reader to interrogate their own 
country, independent of its relationship with the 
other. An excellent read, especially for the 
younger generation in both countries, who Kumar 
says are often mystified by the stories they are 
told about their own nations.


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

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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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.