SACW | May 23-24, 2007 | Pakistan: MQM lists 'chauvinist' journalists / Islamist challenge to secular Bangladesh / India: Hindu right, Gujarat and beyond
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Wed May 23 21:02:55 CDT 2007
South Asia Citizens Wire | May 23-24, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2410 - Year 9
[1] Pakistan: MQM No Yes and No on - Pakistan
Press Blacklist of 'chauvinist' journalists
[2] The Islamist challenge to secular Bangladesh (Nicholas Schmidle)
[3] Beyond South Asia: Sept. 11, 2001 and
American - British novelists: The end of
innocence (Pankaj Mishra)
[4] Beyond South Asia: Sex Crimes and the Vatican - BBC documentary
[5] India: Gujarat, Hindu Right and the threat to Freedom of Expression
(i) Response to Vice Chancellor Mr. Soni's
Report on the 'True' Facts (Artists, Academics,
Citizens)
(ii) The State Must Act (Tarun J Tejpal)
(iii) Permission for citizens peaceful protest on Freedom of expression Denied
[6] India: Disclose former Presidents
correspondence on Gujarat riots (AG Noorani)
[7] India: Pension to emergency detenus - Do
hindutva activists deserve this bonanza ?
(Subhash Gatade)
[8] New Zealand Prime Minister at Hindutva conference in Auckland
[9] Upcoming events:
(i) Press Invite: Right to Information
application Hashimpura (Lucknow, 24 May)
(ii) A Public Talk "Communal Threats to Secular
Democracy" (Margoa, 24 May 2007)
(iii) Public meeting on Repression in Chhattisgarh (New Delhi, 26 May 2007)
(iv) Seminar: Indian Democracy - Local
Governance & Empowerment (Berkeley, May 24-25,
2007)
(v) Film Screening: Afghan Women: A History of
Struggle (New York, 6 June 2007)
____
[1] MQM No Yes and No on - Pakistan Press Blacklist
MRC ISSUES LIST OF 'CHAUVINIST' JOURNALISTS
KARACHI: The Mohajir Rabita Council (MRC),
described as a group of elders of the Mohajir
community, has declared the names of "the
chauvinist" journalists, writers and analysts,
who according to it are working against the
"offspring of the elders included in the Pakistan
Movement" in the aftermath of the May 12
incidents.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C05%5C23%5Cstory_23-5-2007_pg7_26
o o o
MQM DISSOCIATES FROM MRC
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\24\story_24-5-2007_pg12_6
Staff Report
KARACHI: The Rabita Committee of the Muttahida
Qaumi Movement (MQM) has clarified that the party
has nothing to do with the Mohajir Rabita
Council's (MRC) statement about journalists.
On Tuesday, the MRC, described as an organisation
of Urdu-speaking or Muhajir elders, accused known
journalists and newspaper columnists of
"chauvinism" or prejudice against Muhajirs. The
MRC wanted to list their names so that future
generations of Muhajirs knew who their "enemies"
were. "The Mohajir Rabita Council is a separate
organisation," said a press release issued from
MQM headquarters 'Nine Zero' in Azizabad,
Wednesday.
Interestingly, the Mohajir Rabita Council's press
release listing the names of journalists was
faxed to the press from the MQM's headquarters
even though it carried the address, B-3, Block 14
Gulistan-e-Jauhar.
The Karachi Union of Journalists has taken
serious exception to the Mohajir Rabita Council
statement, considering it tantamount to a serious
threat to the free media and an attempt to gag
the press. The union's press release Wednesday
stated that it had noted with concern that the
statement had been made by an organisation that
is linked to the MQM. It demanded the MQM clarify
its position and withdraw the ethnically biased
and threatening statement.
"The [union] reiterates its resolve to defend the
freedom of the press and make it clear that if
any harm came to the media men [sic], including
those whose names were mentioned in the MRC
statement, the office bearers and members of the
MRC and the benefactors in the umbrella
organisation will then be held responsible," the
KUJ statement said.
The union demanded the government take serious
notice of this attack on the media and take
appropriate action against them. The KUJ also
urged the PFUJ and the international community to
take notice of it.
______
[2]
Boston Review
May/June 2007
<http://bostonreview.net/BR32.3/schmidle.html>
REVOLUTION - THE ISLAMIST CHALLENGE TO SECULAR BANGLADESH
by Nicholas Schmidle
The headquarters of Al-Markazul Islami, an
Islamic organization in Bangladesh, is a single
tower whose frosted green windows rise several
stories above the coconut trees and rooftops of
Muhammadpur, a neighborhood in central Dhaka.
Below, in the streets of this capital city of
seven million, bicycle rickshaws with handlebar
tassels, tin wheel covers, and carriages painted
with faces of Bengali film stars ding-ding-ding
along. Car, dump-truck, and bus horns blast four-
and five-note jingles, and ambulance sirens wail.
But none of the commotion reaches Mufti Shahidul
Islam, the founder and director of Al-Markazul
Islami, through the thick windows of his
fifth-story office.
Al-Markazul Islami provides free healthcare and
ambulance services. Many Bangladeshi journalists,
analysts, and politicians think it is just a
cover, and that Shahidul's real business is
jihad. "Mufti Shahidul is a very dangerous man,"
the owner of my Dhaka guesthouse cautioned the
morning I headed off to meet him. Besides running
Al-Markazul Islami, he is a former member of
parliament. His party, Khelafat Majlish, wants to
transform Bangladesh into an Islamic state. In
1999, Shahidul was charged with involvement in a
bomb blast that killed eight Ahmadiyyas, members
of a sect of Islam that denies that Mohammad was
the final prophet. Islamic fundamentalists
consider Ahmadiyyas heretics. When I asked about
it, Shahidul denied any involvement, rolling his
eyes and letting out a dismissive laugh. He does
openly admit that some of the organization's
funds are used to build mosques and madrasas.
Before I left my home in Islamabad, Pakistan, for
Bangladesh, I had visited a radical yet friendly
cleric there-someone who talks openly about
fighting in Afghanistan, his links to
international jihadi organizations, and his
relationship with Osama bin Laden. When I asked
if he knew anyone I could speak with in Dhaka, he
scribbled down Shahidul's name on a business
card. Clutching the card, I entered the
downstairs reception area of Al-Markazul Islami
one recent morning to find barefoot men
conversing over cups of tea while custom ring
tones and land-lines clattered away in the
background. I took the elevator to the fifth
floor where Shahidul sat behind a large desk,
surrounded by assistants and relatives. His aging
father-in-law looked on proudly.
"Assalaamu alaikum," peace be unto you, he said
as I opened the door. Shahidul is in his 40s. His
face is framed by a scraggly, henna-died beard,
and his forehead boasts a puffy, nickel-sized
mehrab, a bruise that pious Muslims acquire from
intense and regular prayer. He wore a white
dishdasha and a diamond wristwatch. We exchanged
greetings and made small talk in Urdu. Shahidul
wore a wide, comic-book grin the whole time.
Local newspapers describe Shahidul as a former
mujahideen who fought against the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan. When I asked him if he knew the
cleric in Islamabad from Afghanistan, Shahidul
shot back, "No, no, no. I never went to
Afghanistan." He recited his life story, which
included a stint at the infamous Binori Town
madrasa in Karachi and, later, a short
fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia. No stops in
Afghanistan. And since he started Al-Markazul
Islami in 1988, how could he have the time to
wage jihad? "My main business is driving
ambulances and carrying dead bodies," he said
later during lunch, as we sat around a blanket
covered with plates of french fries,
cheeseburgers, and pizza.
Last December, Shahidul sparked a nationwide
furor and reinvigorated a long-standing debate in
Bangladesh. Four weeks before the parliamentary
elections scheduled for January 22 (but later
postponed), his party signed a "memorandum of
understanding" with the Awami League, one of the
nation's two mainstream parties and traditionally
its most secular one. The agreement stipulated
that Shahidul's Khelafat Majlish would team up
with the Awami League for the elections. If they
won, the Awami League promised to enact a
blasphemy law, push legislation to brand the
Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslims, and officially
recognize the fatwas issued by local clerics. The
deal outraged secularists across the country.
"Khelafat Majlish is a radical Islamist militant
group which is against the spirit of the
Liberation War," said the Anti-Fundamentalism and
Anti-Militant Conscious Citizens' Society in a
written statement. "By ascending to power through
a deal with a section of fundamentalist
militants, the Awami League... will never be able
to create a secular Bangladesh."
The Western media had been predicting similar
things for years. In January The New Republic
suggested that, "Left unchecked, Bangladesh could
become another Afghanistan-a base for regional
terrorism."
But the prospects for Bangladesh, a country
roughly the size of Minnesota, with 170 million
inhabitants, are not nearly as certain as such
reports would suggest. Islamist parties have
multiplied over the past decade and public
support for them has grown. Yet Bangladeshi
society remains overwhelmingly secular, even
militantly secular. And while the Islamists have
grabbed headlines, the secularists are holding
their own in an intense power struggle.
Bangladesh has a long history of civil activism,
and people are passionate and eager to voice
their opinions in the streets. The secularists
may not have the finances and weapons that the
Islamist groups have access to. But the same
leaders who fought against the imposition of
Islamic politics in the Liberation War of 1971
are not about to hand the country over to men
like Mufti Shahidul Islam. And he knows it.
For the most part, Islamic militancy or
anti-American sentiment is not what draws support
to politicians like Shahidul. While voters in
Pakistan or Afghanistan might be impressed by a
politician's links to the Taliban or his jihadi
credentials, in Bangladesh such affiliations are
a political liability. This is why Shahidul
hurries to change the subject whenever his are
brought up. While he mentioned to me that he
didn't believe in secularism, he didn't care to
elaborate. He prefers to discuss other things.
Take his constituency of Narail, a city in
western Bangladesh, for example. "There is no
corruption there," he said. "And it is a big
Hindu area." Before the partition of India in
1947, more than half of Narail's population was
Hindu. Shahidul boasted that, because of his
work, "Hindu people now say, 'Islam is a nice
religion.' "
Three days after our meeting, I went to Itna, a
village near Narail, where I met a teacher, Rajib
Asmad, at a local girls' school. "Mufti Shahidul
Islam has helped a lot of poor people-Muslims and
Hindus," Asmad said. "He's not only built
mosques. He also drilled a lot of tube wells and
distributed a lot of money. So everyone will vote
for him again." A local journalist later told me
that Shahidul has funded at least 40 mosques, 13
madrasas, and 350 wells. Of course, this
phenomenon, where Islamist parties gain support
by providing basic services, is not specific to
Bangladesh. Hezbollah has done it in Lebanon.
Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. The Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt. Since the October 2005
earthquake in Pakistan, Jamaat-i-Islami and
numerous other groups, some actively involved in
waging jihad across the border in Indian-held
Kashmir, have provided unflagging relief and
reconstruction aid. The Islamists in Bangladesh
are pursuing a similar strategy. The major
difference in Bangladesh is that the public is
almost completely uninformed about their
political aims.
"Do local people support his vision of an Islamic state?" I asked.
"Most people don't understand what he really
wants," Asmad said. "They think, 'Mufti gave us
so much money.' "
Bangladesh is one of the few post-colonial
countries whose demographics almost make sense.
Whereas Pakistan is a hodgepodge of nations,
where hardly 10 percent of the country speaks the
national language, Urdu, in their homes, 98
percent of people in Bangladesh are ethnically
Bengali and speak Bengali, an Indo-Aryan language
derived from Sanskrit. More than 80 percent are
Muslim; the rest are Hindu (15 percent),
Christian (less than five percent), or Buddhist.
Historically, this religious mix has contributed
to the vibrancy of Bengali culture. Rabindranath
Tagore, a poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1913, was a Bengali-speaking Hindu.
Poems of his later became the national anthems of
both Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority
Bangladesh.
Tagore composed both poems during the first
partition of Bengal, which lasted from 1905 to
1912. In "Amar Shonar Bangla," Bangladesh's
national anthem, he writes: "My Bengal of gold, I
love you / Forever your skies, your air set my
heart in tune, as if it were a flute." After
seven years of unrest and a flurry of nationalist
poetry, the British capitulated and reunited
Bengal. In 1947 it was divided again, this time
for good. As the British were leaving the
Subcontinent that year, they created two new
states: India and Pakistan. West Bengal joined
India; East Bengal became the East Wing of
Pakistan.
From early on, the founders of Pakistan faced
huge challenges trying to reconcile the West Wing
(present-day Pakistan) and the East Wing
(present-day Bangladesh). More than 1000 miles
separated them, with their hostile neighbor,
India, sandwiched in between. Bengalis accounted
for more than half the population, yet the
country was led by those from West Pakistan, a
mix of Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Balochis, and
Mohajirs. Meanwhile, Urdu, a language spoken by
less than five percent of the population, became
the national language. Because the written script
was derived from Arabic, and Bangla was derived
from Sanskrit, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding
father of Pakistan, said Urdu was a more "Muslim"
language. "What nonsense," recalled Kamal
Hossain, Bangladesh's first law minister.
"Identifying language and religion? Bangla was
our language. We were Muslims. What was the
problem?"
Decades of economic and cultural neglect took
their toll on the Bengali masses. Between 1965
and 1970, the West Wing of Pakistan was allotted
a budget of 52 billion rupees (about $865
million), while the East Wing, despite its larger
population, received 21 billion. Then, in the
1970 parliamentary elections, Bengalis voted
almost unanimously in support of the Awami
League, which, because of the Bengalis' numerical
advantage, gained an overall majority in the
national assembly. Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the head
of the party, should have been named prime
minister, but the leaders in the West Wing
delayed the opening session. On March 25, 1971,
Bengali leaders declared their independence and
the Bangladesh Liberation War began. The
Pakistani Army sent soldiers into the streets to
crush the Bengali nationalists, an effort
code-named Operation Searchlight.
Shahriar Kabir was one of hundreds of thousands
of mukhti bahini, Bengali nationalists who took
up arms. "It was total guerilla warfare," he told
me. Today, Kabir is a squat man in his late
fifties with a comb-over and a hand-broom
mustache. On the night I visited him in his Dhaka
home, Nag Champa, a type of incense from India,
was burning and the room smelled of sandalwood.
Between the incense and the hemp tote bag he held
on his lap, Kabir didn't strike me as a freedom
fighter.
During the Liberation War the mukhti bahini faced
volunteer brigades of Bangladeshi Islamists who
were collaborating with the more than 100,000
Pakistani army troops stationed in the East Wing.
The brigades, known as razakars, came from
Jamaat-i-Islami, a fundamentalist political party
formed in 1941. "They were a killing squad, like
the Gestapo in Nazi Germany," Kabir said. The
razakars lurked in places where uniformed
soldiers could never go. They targeted
intellectuals, whom they considered, according to
Kabir, "the root of all evil for promoting the
ideas of Bengali nationalism and identity." In
December 1971, in the final days of the war, they
murdered hundreds of prominent doctors,
engineers, journalists, and lawyers.
On December 16, 1971, the Pakistani army
surrendered at Dhaka's Ramna Racecourse, and
Bangladesh became an independent state. It
emerged from the war as a fiercely secular
nation. The 1972 constitution declared
"Nationalism, Socialism, Secularism and
Democracy" to be the four pillars of Bangladesh.
The constitution also banned religious-based
politics.
But Bangladesh lasted only five years as an
officially secular state. In November 1975,
General Ziaur Rahman, a hero of the Liberation
War, seized power after a quick succession of
military coups and counter-coups following the
assassination of Mujib, who had become the first
prime minister of Bangladesh, and his family in
August 1975. To solidify his rule, Zia felt it
necessary to appeal to the Islamists. In 1977 he
removed "Secularism" as one of the constitution's
principles and lifted the ban on religious-based
politics. Jamaat-i-Islami bounced back and has
been steadily gaining power ever since. Its
members occupied 17 out of 300 seats in the last
national assembly, including the leadership of
two ministries-Social Welfare and Agriculture.
"With the Ministry of Agriculture, they have
access to grassroots and can reach the farmers.
The Ministry of Social Welfare can reach the
common people by providing funds. From here, they
recruit and build their power," said a journalist
with The Daily Star in Dhaka who reports on the
Islamists and requested anonymity. According to
Shahriar Kabir, Jamaat-i-Islami receives
"enormous amounts of money" from the Middle East
and "enormous amounts of arms" from Pakistan,
part of what he calls their "global jihad
network."
Most of Jamaat-i-Islami's top leaders, says
Kabir, are former razakars and "enemies of
Bangladesh." Fifteen years ago, Kabir formed the
Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, which
had two demands: to try former razakars as war
criminals, and to reinstate the 1972
constitution's ban on religious-based politics.
(The Nirmul Committee is known alternatively as
the Voice of Secularism.) He feels that the rise
of parties like Jamaat-i-Islami and Khelafat
Majlish contradicts everything he fought for in
1971. "We wanted a secular democracy," he said.
"Three million people were killed during the
Liberation War. If we now have to accept Islam as
the basis of politics to run the country, then
what was wrong with Pakistan?"
A few days later, I made an appointment with
Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, the assistant secretary
general of Jamaat-i-Islami, whom the Nirmul
Committee has accused of war crimes. According to
the committee, Kamaruzzaman was "the principal
organizer" of one of the most ruthless razakar
brigades. Their pamphlet alleges that in 1971
Kamaruzzaman dragged a professor naked through
the streets of Sherpur, a city in central
Bangladesh, beating him with leather whips. It
also claims that he ordered numerous killings and
supervised torture cells. When I asked
Kamaruzzaman about these charges one morning in
his Dhaka office, he scowled and replied: "Is
there any evidence? Not a single piece! I was
only a 16-year-old college boy. How can I lead
such a political force?"
Kamaruzzaman wears nice suits and gold-framed
glasses, and his mustache and goatee are so
finely kempt they look stenciled. Critics sneer
at him for being "all suited and booted," which
they say reflects Jamaat-i-Islami's aims to dupe
the masses. We snacked on two plates of potato
chips, which he ate with his pinky askance.
Despite Jamaat-i-Islami's advances in recent
elections, Kamaruzzaman admits that there are
numerous barriers to its growth. Its role in the
1971 war, he told me, "can be an obstacle. But we
are addressing it. We have accepted reality and
are now working for Bangladesh. In 1971, the
leaders of Jamaat-i-Islami didn't want to see our
Muslim state separated. We wanted the country to
be united, but the game is over. The countries
are independent. We made a politically wrong
calculation," he said. Another obstacle is
poverty. Kamaruzzaman added, "People in the
villages don't want to hear you talk on and on
about religion if you can't provide food to them."
But what about the "Hindu factor"? If
Jamaat-i-Islami ever hopes to enact its Islamic
revolution, then it will have to undo centuries
of cross-pollination between Hindu and Muslim
cultures in Bangladesh. Jamaat-i-Islami's puritan
vision of Islam simply has no foundation in
Bangladeshi society. I asked Kamaruzzaman who was
winning the culture war in Bangladesh: the
Islamists or those promoting a secular, pluralist
vision of Bangladesh. "We are neither winning nor
losing at this moment," he said. "But one day
people will realize the effects of this so-called
openness. Pornography and nudity in these types
of Western and Indian films are encouraging
violence and terrorist activities. Children
shouldn't be distraught by such things. Society
cannot be a boundless sky.
"We don't want to impose anything. Of course,
there should be a law that, in public places,
someone should not be ill-dressed or undressed.
But sense should prevail." He paused a moment
before reaching in my direction, palm upturned as
if to present his next idea on a silver platter:
"You know, self-censorship."
Bangladesh has more than 50 Islamic political
parties, militant organizations, and terrorist
groups, according to Abul Barkat, an economics
professor at Dhaka University. Barkat, a
middle-aged man with a penchant for coining
technical terms, contends that each of these
groups comprise "operational research projects,"
ultimately overseen by the most adept of the
bunch, Jamaat-i-Islami. "They know they will
never capture state power through democracy, so
they all work in different ways," he told me.
"Harakat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami is not doing the same
thing as JMB"-Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh-"and
JMB is not doing the same thing as Khelafat
Majlish. They are trying different things to find
the best way to get power."
Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh may not be the
biggest of the Islamist groups, but its
activities provide a terrifying example of how
even the tiniest outfits can shake-or
destabilize-a society. On the morning of August
17, 2005, JMB simultaneously detonated 459 bombs
in 63 of Bangladesh's 64 districts. Near each of
the blast sites they left leaflets claiming
responsibility in Bengali and Arabic. "It is time
to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh," the
leaflets read. "There is no future with man-made
law."
The irony of the leaflets was that just a year
earlier the government and its man-made law had
built up Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh in order
to fend off a menace from the left. Bands of
Communist rebels known as Sarbaharas had been
growing stronger near the northwest city of
Rajshahi. The Sarbaharas arose during the
Liberation War, when they fought to expel the
Pakistani army from Bangladesh. They have been
trying to bring an armed, Maoist revolution to
Bangladesh ever since. Some prominent secularist
leaders may have sympathized with the Sarbaharas
in the past. But, as Shahriar Kabir told me, the
Sarbaharas are "no longer political agents."
Kabir, who has interviewed Maoist rebels in India
and remains a leftist revolutionary at heart,
sounded somewhat despondent when he said that
these days the Sarbaharas are "just gangsters.
They are looting and plundering the common
people. Nothing more."
Meanwhile, just across the border in India,
Naxalite rebels were murdering policemen and
raiding government offices in several districts.
In nearby Nepal, Maoists were threatening to
topple King Gyanendra. The government in Dhaka,
led by Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party in
conjunction with Jamaat-i-Islami and Khelafat
Majlish (before it defected to join the Awami
League alliance), formulated a strategy to crush
the Sarbaharas. They assigned the Jamaatul
Mujahideen Bangladesh, a previously unknown
militant group, to the task.
The government initially treated JMB with
respect. At least eight members of the national
assembly bankrolled the group, according to a
report in the January 30, 2007, edition of the
Bengali daily Prothom Alo. In a phone interview,
a member of JMB recalled police officers publicly
saluting the JMB operations chief, Siddiqul
Islam, or "Bangla Bhai"-Bengali Brother. At the
time, Bangla Bhai was torturing and terrorizing
anyone who he thought was even remotely
sympathetic to the Sarbaharas.
Gradually, as the Sarbaharas were defeated, the
government withdrew its support for Jamaatul
Mujahideen Bangladesh and had several of its
members arrested. Bangla Bhai felt betrayed and
used. JMB resolved to send the government a
message. "We wanted to frighten everyone about
our strength," the JMB member told me. The
organization trained in camps alongside remote
riverbanks and in jungle clearings. Maulana Abdur
Rahman, the group's spiritual guide, would stand
in front of the blackboard, sketching out tactics
and strategy. Both Rahman and Bangla Bhai carried
gym bags filled with grenades wherever they went
and clutched field-hockey sticks to use in the
event of an ambush. In a Daily Star interview,
Rahman warned, "We don't believe in the present
political trend," which is to say in democracy
and elections.
The bombings in 2005 stunned the nation. Parents
rushed to pull their kids out of school and
offices closed early. But for Swapan Bhuiyan, it
was a call to action. For years, people like him
and Shahriar Kabir had been warning people about
the threat militant Islamic groups posed to
Bangladesh, though few wanted to listen. The
bombings proved that their concerns were
credible, but did they have any coherent strategy
to respond with?
Bhuiyan, a gentle-seeming middle-aged man with
dark skin and a grey beard, represents a growing
class of militant secularists. Many of them are
former socialists or communists who have
refashioned their ideology to oppose everything
that the Islamists stand for. Bhuiyan told me, "I
know you shouldn't kill other humans, but these
Islamic fundamentalists are like wild dogs. The
Islamists have been destroying our values since
1971. They killed our golden sons in the last
days before liberation." I had met Bhuiyan about
a year earlier in Karachi at the World Social
Forum. On one of my first nights in Dhaka he
brought me to the office of his organization, the
Revolutionary Unity Front. The electricity was
out and a single candle splashed light on a
poster of Chairman Mao hanging on one wall and a
framed photograph of Lenin on another.
Bhuiyan has fought for a secular Bangladesh twice
before. In 1971 he was a freedom fighter. Then,
in 1975, while he was serving as a lieutenant in
the Bangladeshi army, news broke about Prime
Minster Mujib's assassination. Incensed by the
murder of the nation's founding father, Bhuiyan
led a mutiny at the Dhaka airport against those
in the army who sympathized with Mujib's killers.
After a couple days, the mutiny was suppressed.
Bhuiyan's seniors sentenced him to die by firing
squad. That sentence was commuted to four months
of solitary confinement. "No one goes longer than
three months," he said with a slight twitch.
"Four is unheard of. They tried to make me crazy."
When the lights in the Revolutionary Unity
Front's office eventually powered on, I could
make out the faces of the other six people in the
room. Most of them were in their 30s, born after
the 1971 war. "We are all anti-fundamentalists,"
Bhuiyan said, gesturing around the room. The
others nodded. Although their brothers, sisters,
and cousins weren't killed by razakars, their
generation is no less militantly secular. "The
secular culture of the common people is strong
enough to defeat Islamic fundamentalism here,"
Manabendra Dev, the 25-year-old president of the
Bangladesh Students Union at Dhaka University,
told me later.
I asked Bhuiyan how he viewed the contest of
ideologies in modern Bangladesh. "There is only
one -ism," he replied. "That's Marxism. When it
joins with Bengalism-and it will-there will be a
great revolution in Bangladesh." His neck jerked
and he ran his hands through his long, silver
hair. "But first, if I had the money, I would
train a brigade of people in India and return to
kill all the Islamic fundamentalists in
Bangladesh."
Bangladesh has a rich, turbulent legacy of civil,
political, and cultural activism, starting from
1971, immediately after the war. "There was no
government and we had no experience of ruling
ourselves," said Abul Barkat, the economics
professor. "We organized to reconstruct bridges
and rebuild the country. The rise of NGOs"-Barkat
estimates there are more than 70,000
nongovernmental organizations in the country
today, compared to 300 30 years ago-"stems from
local-level initiatives. These were people's
organizations."
The boom of NGOs is indicative of Bangladeshis'
inclination to act in the name of some greater
calling. Perhaps more than in any other country,
protests and strikes are seen as legitimate
avenues of political discourse here. Dhaka
University is a battleground between the student
arms of the two major parties-the Awami League
and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The campus
cafeteria is referred to as "the second
parliament" due to the number of student leaders
who later became members of the national
assembly. "It is a landmark for identity because
of its powerful influence in shaping the ethos,
the values, and the goals that were pursued by
the country's founders," said Kamal Hossain. The
Language Movement, which initiated Bangladesh's
campaign for independence, began at Dhaka
University.
"The history of our country is one of sacrifice
and struggle," Manabendra Dev said to me one
afternoon in the "second parliament." People's
movements have defeated foreign armies,
overthrown a military government, and forced
concessions from a multinational energy giant.
(In August 2006, Asia Energy Corporation
abandoned a lucrative open-pit coal-mining
project in Fulbari, a city in the northwest,
after months of demonstrations against their
shady dealings and environmentally damaging
work.) With this kind of track record, people are
optimistic that society will be able to repel the
forces of fundamentalism.
As part of their efforts, Shahriar Kabir's Nirmul
Committee has built 80 private libraries around
the country, targeting places where the Islamist
parties are strongest. Each library doubles as a
museum for the Liberation War; while
Jamaat-i-Islami is trying to put 1971 behind
them, Kabir's libraries are keeping the narrative
alive. In Chittagong, the second-largest city,
there are 13 libraries. At the Double Mooring
library there, 105 members-mostly teenage
boys-pay an annual fee of five taka, or about 14
cents, for borrowing privileges. The shelves
contain some of Kabir's own work (he has written
more than 70 fiction and nonfiction books),
classics by Tagore, Bengali translations of The
Old Man and the Sea and Harry Potter, and a
section about the mukhti bahini. Arif Ahmed, a
boy in his early teens with a spiky haircut, had
just finished reading a Bengali translation of
Hamlet on the day of my visit. His thoughts on
Shakespeare? "Not my favorite. It was too much
all about kings."
Later that night, Kamran Hasan Badal, the
president of Nirmul's Chittagong chapter of
libraries, explained what he hoped to accomplish.
Badal and I sat on a bench in front of a hip
bookstore in downtown Chittagong where poets
regularly gather to sip tea and converse. He wore
a blue plaid shirt and was freshly shaven.
"Secular education is often not available outside
of the cities. There is only madrasa education,"
Badal said. "We want to start a debate through
the libraries about what kind of secularism is
best for Bangladesh." While children are allowed
to check out books for older siblings and
parents, the Nirmul libraries are oriented toward
the minds of the next generation-and their
thoughts about secularism. Badal added that a top
priority of a secular state should be to protect
the rights of religious minorities. "When the
Hindus and the Ahmadiyyas have been attacked by
Islamists in the past, the government doesn't do
anything. It has to ensure the safety of
minorities."
The longer we spoke, the more I sensed Badal's
animosity toward anyone who wore a headscarf or
beard. I asked how he differentiated between
symbols of religious revivalism and so-called
"Talibanization." There seemed little room for
compromise in his mind. "We are against anyone
who capitalizes on religion for political gains,"
he said.
After our conversation I left the quiet alley
where the bookstore was located and stepped into
the frenetic streets of Chittagong. A slight
chill made the February night air refreshing. I
thought about Badal's ideas and compared them to
things I had heard from Swapan Bhuiyan, Abul
Barkat, and Shahriar Kabir. Besides being staunch
secularists, all four men's world views were
rooted in intellectual traditions springing from
the left. They romanticized the downtrodden. But
in trying to protect the rights of tens of
thousands of downtrodden Hindus from the
aggressive Islamists, were they neglecting the
plight of tens of millions of downtrodden Muslims?
On the night of January 11, 2007, after three
months of violent protests, President Iajuddin
Ahmed declared a state of emergency. The move
dashed the hopes of the Bangladesh Nationalist
Party and Jamaat-i-Islami, whose alliance was
heading for a landslide victory in the January 22
elections; in early January, the Awami League-led
opposition bloc had announced its intention to
boycott the polls. The decision to boycott
convinced the international community that
January elections could be neither free nor fair.
By the time I arrived in Dhaka on the morning of
January 13, the army had postponed the election.
In the following weeks, army and police units
launched an aggressive anticorruption drive.
Scheduling an interview in Dhaka became
difficult. Many politicians turned off their
mobile phones and slept at a different place each
night. Dozens of high-ranking politicians from
the Bangladesh Nationalist Party were arrested,
including the son of Khaleda Zia, the former
prime minister. But Jamaat-i-Islami remained
unsullied by corruption charges. In fact, they
emerged sounding like model democrats. "The
constitution has been violated," Muhammad
Kamaruzzaman, the Jamaat-i-Islami leader, said
during our meeting in late January. "The election
should have been held. Whether a party decides to
participate or not, this shouldn't be a
consideration."
Mustafizur Rahman, the research director at the
Center for Policy Dialogue, a think tank in
Dhaka, said, "Jamaat-i-Islami has handled things
very tactfully. They just aren't into the
business of extortion like the other two
parties," he added, referring to the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party and the Awami League. A top
army general, who asked not to be identified,
said, "Every devil has its pluses and minuses.
And at least Jamaat is relatively honest." Their
party workers, the general added, are the only
people in the country who show up for anything on
time, "pencils sharpened and ready to take notes."
Even Harry K. Thomas, the former American
ambassador to Bangladesh, described
Jamaat-i-Islami on several occasions as a
"moderate" and "democratic" party. It is the only
large party in Bangladesh whose internal affairs
and promotions are based on merit and elections.
(The mainstream parties are driven by personality
cults and family connections.) Most of its
members are university educated,
English-speaking, and know how to speak to
Western journalists. "Our idea is to bring change
through a constitutional and democratic process,"
Kamaruzzaman said.
Jamaat-i-Islami's commitment to elections puts
voters in an awkward situation. What constitutes
democracy? Is it elections? Or liberalism? Should
voters back a liberal, one-woman party like the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party or the Awami League?
Or the democratic but illiberal Jamaat-i-Islami?
Who is a liberal, democratic Bangladeshi to
support?
In light of the mainstream parties' autocratic
ways and backroom deals with Islamist parties,
Abul Barkat is relying on civil-society groups to
build and sustain a convincing model of
secularism. Though the Islamists are strong, he
is confident that they aren't going to win.
"Jamaat-i-Islami can only succeed if we, as civil
society, fail," he said. He rehashed his days as
a freedom fighter and nodded slowly, as if
impressed by his own strength of character. "The
burden is on us."
After our first meeting at Al-Markazul Islami,
Mufti Shahidul Islam and I stayed in frequent
contact. I think he liked having an American
friend; perhaps he thought our relationship would
shield him from allegations of being pro-Taliban.
But on the first Friday in February he didn't
show up for a planned meeting at the headquarters
of Al-Markazul Islami. When I inquired into his
whereabouts, a colleague of his told me that he
was in bed. "High blood pressure," he added. Four
days later, Shahidul was arrested for having
links to militant Islamist organizations.
The following morning, I visited Kamal Hossain,
the former law minister, who wrote the 1972
constitution. Hossain has a deep voice and modest
bulges of fat around his cheeks and knuckles. He
heads a political party known as the People's
Forum. I met him at his house, where we sat in a
room with towering ceilings, Turkmen carpets, and
glass coffee tables.
"I see that the army arrested a political ally of yours yesterday."
"Mine? No, no, no," Hossain said. His party
belonged to the Awami League's electoral alliance
that Khelafat Majlish had joined. He glared at
me. "I feel insulted and offended and outraged
that I should be called an ally of this man. The
signing of the deal with Khelafat Majlish was
about rank opportunism and totally unprincipled
politics," he said. Spittle collected on his
lips. "Some of us are still guided by principle."
Hossain describes himself as faithful Muslim, but
he is also a militant secularist. He admires the
way that the U.S. Constitution framed secularism.
The rise of groups like Khelafat Majlish and
Jamaat-i-Islami, he believes, is totally anathema
to that style of secularism. "I go into the
Jamaat areas and tell them, 'You have completed
misinterpreted Islam. The Prophet didn't summon
you as guides. We had Islam in Bengal for 700
years and we didn't need you then. You did the
wrong thing in 1971-and it would be just as well
if you stayed out.' " From 1998 to 2003, Hossain
had similar conversations with the Taliban
government of Mullah Omar while he was serving as
the UN Special Rapporteur to Afghanistan. " 'Who
keeps telling you this nonsense that women can't
work?' I'd ask them. 'The Prophet's wife was a
business lady and you don't even let them go to
school.' "
As the author of the 1972 constitution, Hossain
played as pivotal a role as anyone in deciding
the nature of secularism in Bangladesh. I asked
him if he ever imagined that he would see the day
when the Awami League would be signing agreements
with Islamist parties. "Absolutely not," he said.
In fact, he says he often asks himself, "What
have we done to deserve this?"
Hossain struggles to determine a proper course of
action. Immediately after the Awami League signed
the memorandum of understanding with Khelafat
Majlish, many secular-minded people experienced
near paralysis. Hossain cautions that, especially
now, society should be vigilant not to be
"psychologically blackmailed" into inaction.
But inaction is only one possibility. Overreaction is another.
One evening, near his hometown of Dinajpur,
Swapan Bhuiyan and I were sitting on a flat-bed
trolley being pulled by a bicycle when we passed
a one-room madrasa standing in the middle of a
rice patty. Banana and coconut trees leaned over
the ramshackle structure. "They are training
terrorists there," Bhuiyan said.
The madrasa sign was written in Bengali and Urdu,
and I could see that the seminary was for young
women memorizing the Quran. "Swapan, it's a
girl's madrasa," I chuckled. "Not all madrasas
and mosques are training terrorists."
He jerked his head side to side. Then he shared a
short Bengali parable with me. In it, a cow gets
burned by fire. The rest of its life, the cow is
too afraid to even look at the sunset.
Bhuiyan paused. "We are thinking like that," he
said. "When we hear about a new madrasa we get
frightened." <
Nicholas Schmidle is a writer and fellow at the
Institute of Current World Affairs.
_____
[3]
The Guardian
May 19, 2007
THE END OF INNOCENCE
After September 11 2001, wrote Martin Amis, 'all
the writers on earth were reluctantly considering
a change of occupation'. In fact, many leading
American and British novelists felt compelled to
confront the implications of that day. Have they
succeeded in capturing the new world order, asks
Pankaj Mishra
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2082911,00.html
_____
[4]
SEX CRIMES AND THE VATICAN - BBC DOCU
http://video.google.it/videoplay?docid=3237027119714361315&q=Sex+Crimes+and+the+Vatican
______
[4] INDIA: GUJARAT, HINDU RIGHT AND THE THREAT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
(i)
RESPONSE TO VICE CHANCELLOR MR. SONI'S REPORT ON THE 'TRUE' FACTS
A Brief Report on the Recent Incidences at the MSU, Baroda
by Association of Artists, Academics and Citizens
For University Autonomy (ACUA)
09 May 2007 - 11 May 2007
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/artists-and-academics-respond-to-baroda.html
o o o
(ii)
Tehelka
May 26 , 2007
Editorial
THE STATE MUST ACT
by Tarun J Tejpal
The questions about Gujarat multiply. A sinister
sequence that began to unfold in 2002 with the
burning of a train and mob assaults keeps showing
us a new devilish face every few months. In
Vadodara, in one of the finest art schools in
India, a gifted boy from humble origins has been
humiliated and arraigned for artistic expression
that would not raise an antagonistic eyebrow in
most of the world's liberal democracies.
India is full of idle troublemakers; the State
should tell them where to draw the line
This is the thing we need to remember - the thing
that's being forgotten in an age of competing
fundamentalisms. We are not a theocracy, a
dictatorship, or an autocracy. We were born out
of the pyre of colonialism as a liberal
democracy, and we have to bear its pride and
price. Artistic endeavour, free expression, the
pushing of boundaries are all unique attributes
of a free society. The dominance of the West -
science, tech, medicine - has often ensued from
the creative energies that are sparked in a free
environment.
Indians cannot begin to fall into the trap of a
great deal of the retrograde world - including
rich middle-eastern countries - who want the
fruits of modernity but refuse to shoulder its
responsibilities. And the very first of these
responsibilities is a commitment to civilised
conduct, tolerance, equalities of gender,
religion and creed, free expression, and the rule
of a humane law and order policy. As for India,
it is full of idle troublemakers. It's the
State's job to tell them where to draw the line.
The worst artistic excess does not justify lumpen
violence.
But what is it about Gujarat that allows these
intolerances to flourish? Why has a community
long known for its gentle, pacifist ways - with
or without Mohandas - become so violent? Why has
a community known for its mercantile skills
become so rabidly religious? Why has a community
with a matchless diaspora become so narrow and
insular? Reporters who cover Gujarat talk of how
scary it is to be a Muslim in that state today.
There can be no worse indictment of the idea of
India. There is a deep process of soul-searching
and reformation waiting to be kick-started. In
the booming India of Manmohan Singh, there is not
a national leader in sight who can do it.
______
[6]
Why Narayanan's correspodence with Vajpayee on
Gujarat riots needs to be disclosed
(Hindustan Times
May 23, 2007)
Dear Atalji...
by AG Noorani
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-narayanans-correspodence-with.html
______
[7]
Communalism Watch
May 22, 2007
BIHAR : PENSION TO THE EMERGENCY DETENUS
WHETHER THE HINDUTVA ACTIVISTS DESERVE THIS BONANZA ?
by Subhash Gatade
(Nitish Kumar led government of Bihar is in the
news for its latest proposal to honour detenus
during emergency. While it has generated lot of
heat in the state politics, it has inadvertently
or so reopened the chapter pertaining the not so
glorious role of the Sangh Parivar during this
tumultuous period. Concerned citizens have been
rightly raising the issue of secret
correspondence of the Sangh bosses with Ms Indira
Gandhi or their instructions to the detained
cadres to give an undertaking to the emergency
regime. )
Sushil Kumar Modi, a old Sangh activist and the
present incumbent to the deputy Chief Minister’s
post in Bihar, is busy these days with an
altogether different responsibility. He is
heading the committee appointed by Nitish Kumar,
which has been asked to find out modalities to
honour the detenus during emergency. One hopes
that he would be ready with the required
modalities within next few days which would
facilitate the state government to move ahead on
this plan.
Many commentators have rightly analysed Nitish
Kumar’s extra emphasis on the plan despite strong
opposition from his adversaries in the party and
outside. For them this smart move has the
potential of enabling Nitish Kumar to emerge as
the sole carrier of Jai Prakash Narayan’s legacy
and the struggle of the people against the
despotic regime of Congress. And thus despite
criticism of various sorts Nitish Kumar does not
seem to be relenting and in one of his recent
Janata Darbars' he advised his opponents to
change their mindset to see the importance of
this plan.
One very well knows that it was only last year
that the government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav a
similar plan was started and more than five
thousand such people who were detained during
emergency were duly honoured with the title
'Loktantra Senani' (fighters for Democracy).
Question naturally arises what could be a correct
position vis-a-vis this proposal of Nitish led
government in Bihar. Would it be a simple 'Yes'
or 'No' or one can qualify one's position with
few caveats.
There is not an iota of doubt that the internal
emergency clamped by the Indira Gandhi regime on
25 th June 1975 to save itself from the impending
crisis brought on by unfavourable decisions of
the highest court and the growing mass discontent
was one of the darkest chapter in the
postindependence trajectory of democracy in
India. Not only thousands and thousands of people
belonging to different political and social
formations were interned but most of the leading
opposition figures were also put behind bars.The
suspension of democratic rights, the clampdown on
the press and the forcible sterilisation
campaigns supposedly to control family size were
few of the gory aspects of the whole episode.It
is also a fact that the declaration of emergency
gave rise to an underground resistance which was
joined in by various shades of opinion.
Looking back it is clear that if people would not
have put up resistance at various levels, the
cause of democracy could have suffered further
damage. And it is in the fitness of things that a
true believer in democracy would make special
attempts to express one's gratitude to all such
people who had to face detention during this
period.
But will it be proper to extend this honour to
even those people who exhibited tremendous
cowardice during the period of detention and even
expressed willingness to serve the 'emergency
regime' if they were released from jail.
Definitely while making any plan to honour the
real fighters one needs to take into
consideration this fact as well.
Any justice loving person would abhor the very
idea of 'honouring' such cowards who 'preferred
to crawl when they were asked to bend'.
Individuals apart, as an organisation the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and activists
of its plethora of affiliated organisations
proved to be 'pioneers' in tendering an apology.
Time and again the not so glorious role of the
Sangh Parivar and its affiliated organisations
during the Emergency comes under scanner.
It can appear incomprehensible to a layperson
that while the activists of the Sangh Parivar
were in jail its leaders in the words of Tapan
Basu et al "revealed a curious duality". Tapan
Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar and others in
their early ninety monograph"Khaki Shorts and
Saffrn Flags " (Orient Longman, 1993) explain
the way the top leaders of the RSS reacted. 'RSS
attitudes under the emergency revealed a curious
duality, reminiscent of the 1948-49 days. " While
the RSS was banned and Sangh Supremo Deoras was
put behind bars , he like Golwalkar in 1948-49,
"..quickly opened channels of communication with
the Emergeny regime, writing fairly ingratiating
letters to Indira Gandhi in August and November
1975 that promised cooperation for lifting a ban
(on RSS). He tried to persuade Vinoba Bhave to
mediate between the RSS and the government, and
sought also the good offices of Sanjay Gandhi.
(p.52)"
Bapurao Moghe, in an article in the Sangh
mouthpiece Panchajanya (July 24, 1977) had also
acknowledged that such letters had been written
by the Sangh supremo. Lawyer and political
commentator A.G.Noorani in his book 'The RSS and
the BJP' (Leftword, 2000,Delhi) tells us that
these letters ".[w]ere placed on the table of the
Maharashtra Assembly on October 18,1977." He adds
," He wrote to the prime minister, first, on
august 22 congratulating her on her speech on
Independence day ( 'balanced and befitting to the
occasion') and begged her to lift the ban on the
RSS. He next congratulated her 'as five judges of
the Supreme Court have upheld the validity of
your election' (November 11,1975).'(P. 31) It may
be added that though Ms Indira Gandhi had won the
case but it was not on the basis of merit but by
a constitutional amendment with retrospective
effect. In these letters he repeated his plea for
the release of RSS detenus and lifting the ban on
the organisation. He also underlined that the RSS
'has no connection with the movements' in Bihar
and Gujarat. Deoras ends these letters by
offering the services of 'lakhs of RSS
volunteers....for the national upliftment
(Government as well as non government).'
A point which may skip attention is that in these
letters is that Sangh Supremo Deoras was
concerned with the RSS alone. And to save his
organisation from the onslaught of an autocratic
regime he was ready to declare that if the ban is
lifted his men would be at the service of the
regime. Neither does he asks for the release of
all detenues nor does he asks her to lift
emergency. It seems the only problem which the
RSS supremo had was that his organisation was
banned otherwise whatever the Indira regime was
doing was good for him.
When Ms Indira Gandhi refused to budge from her
stand, the Sangh supremo shot another letter (
July 16, 1976) in which he congratulated her for
'your efforts to improve relations with Pakistan
and China' and also declared that she has been
given some wrong information about his
organisation.
It needs investigation to see whether some sort
of agreement was reached between Deoras and Ms
Indira Gandhi or not through the mediatory
efforts of the likes of Vinoba Bhave but one
thing is clear that the RSS workers were
instructed from the top that they give an
undertaking for their release from jail. The
undertaking went like this " Shri ..detenu
class.. prison agrees on affidavit that in case
of my release I shall not do anything, which is
detrimental to intenal security and public
peace... I shall not do anything prejudicial to
the present emergency." (Sanghachi Dhongbaji,
Baba Adhav, Pune,1977) According to leading
Socialist activist Baba Adhav, Deoras had himself
acknowledged at a press conference in Delhi that
he had written two letters to Indira Gandhi.
Madhu Limaye, a towering figure of the socialist
movement spent 19 months in three jails which
were in RSS areas and knew of the RSS detenues
letters of apology.
It is understandable that the Hindutva Brigade
which has built its weltanshauung around the twin
concepts of 'bravery and cowardice' would like to
forget this past episode, when instead of
demonstrating uncompromising defiance it had
preferred to cringe.They very well know that if
that is not done the whole edifice of the
Hindutva politics can come crumbling down. But
history as they say does not forgive and forget.
It keeps excavating and bringing out the past,
howsoever inconvenient it may be. The 'holier
than thou' Sangh Parivar too cannot escape
scrutiny.
If Mr Nitish Kumar is really sincere about
honouring the fighters during emergency then
first and foremost he needs to reorganise the
very committee which he has constituted to chalk
out the modalities to give pension to emergency
detenus and ask its present head to put in
papers. The world very well knows that Sushil
Kumar Modi, who heads the committee, is part of
the Sangh Parivar since his school days itself. A
person who owes allegiance to an organisation
which had directed its activists to give an
undertaking to the emergency regime cannot be
expected to do justice to the task given to him.
In fact it would be an insult to the broad
majority of the one lakh fourty five thousand
detenus ( only a few thousands belonged to the
Sangh Parivar) who faced heavy odds inside the
jails to further the cause of democracy.
Coming back to the pension issue for emergency
detenus, Nitish Kumar has to decide whether he
wants to really honour the true fighters or
insult them by adding names of fake warriors in
the list who wear their saffron lineage on their
sleeves.
Today the Sangh Parivar may want us to believe
that it led the democratic upsurge during
"India's Second Freedom Struggle" ( as they call
the anti emergency struggle in the Sangh
Literature), it may wax eloquent about the way
thousands of its activists were interned by the
Indira regime but that will not hide the fact
that its leaders were found to be wanting during
that crucial period.
An irony of the situation is that while this
period is frequently invoked in the political
discourse, scholars of Indian history have not
found it fit to examine it in a thourough manner.
Discussions about it normally gravitate towards
Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian personality and
the damage to democratic institutions at that
time. It is natural that this personification of
the darkest period in Indian democracy leads us
to a blind alley and the socio-economic factors
which led us to this juncture and the real role
of the various organisations remain
uninvestigated. Result is that forces like Sangh
Parivar have been able to construct a mythology
of their alleged bravery during that tumultous
period.
_____
[8]
NEW ZEALAND PRIME MINISTER AT HINDUTVA CONFERENCE IN AUCKLAND
Turmoil over Hindu conference in Auckland
By Michael Field - Fairfax Media | Thursday, 24 May 2007
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-zealand-prime-minister-at-hindutva.html
_____
[9] UPCOMING EVENTS
(i)
PRESS INVITE: RIGHT TO INFORMATION APPLICATION HASHIMPURA LUCKNOW
Press Invite
22nd May 2007 marks the death anniversary of the
Hashimpura Victims and the 20th year of
continuing injustice, impunity of the State and
the gross failure of the legal system to punish
perpetrators of mass crimes. On 22 nd May 1987,
the Provincial Armed Constabulary committed the
worst incident of communal custodial killings in
independent India. Over 40 Muslim men of Mohalla
Hashimpura, Meerut were shot dead and their
bodies thrown into the Upper Ganga canal and
Hindon canal. After a transfer order of the
Supreme Court, it was only last year that a Delhi
Court framed charges of murder, conspiracy,
attempt to murder etc. against all the19 PAC
accused. 3 survivors have since given eyewitness
accounts of the PAC custodial killings. For
twenty years the families of the victims and the
survivors have been battling against all odds to
secure justice for mass crimes.
For the first time in India, 615 Right to
Information applications will be filed by the
victim families, challenging the impunity of the
P.A.C. and seeking accountability from the State.
They are asking the State to tell them why these
PAC accused have not been suspended from service
while being prosecuted for custodial murders?
What departmental proceedings and disciplinary
action, if any, were initiated against them? Why
was there a delay of almost a decade in even
charge sheeting the PAC accused? Why were most of
those indicted by the CB CID Report let off the
hook? They are asking for the CBCID Inquiry
Report into the PAC killings to be made public.
It is this courage and spirit of the people to
unmask the truth that can halt the present regime
of fake encounters, custodial deaths and communal
killings, which pose a grave threat to Indian
democracy and human rights.
24th May, 2007 at 10.30.a.m.
DGP Office, 1 Tilak Marg, Lucknow
Families of victims and survivors of Hashimpura
will file 615 RTI applications supported by a
delegation of the Citizens of Lucknow
Press Conference
Press Club, Lucknow
4:00 p.m.
Panelists: Survivors and families of victims of Mohalla Hashimpura, Meerut
Roop Rekha Verma (Sanjhi Duniya, Ex. Vice Chancellor Lucknow University)
Saleem Kidwai (Historian & Writer Lucknow)
Sharib Rudavli (Retd. Prof. of Urdu, JNU Delhi)
Sandeep Pandey (RTI Activist)
S.R. Darapuri (Retd. I.G.Police)
Vrinda Grover (Advocate, Hashimpura Case)
Nasiruddin (Journalist &Activist)
Contact-
Madhavi Kuckreja
VANANGANA
9415104361-M
3019228-O
_____
(ii)
Citizens' Initiatives for Communal Harmony
in association with
Kare Law College, Margao
CORDIALLY INVITE YOU TO
A PUBLIC TALK ON THE SUBJECT
"COMMUNAL THREATS TO SECULAR DEMOCRACY IN INDIA"
By Prof. Ram Puniyani
Kare Law College Auditorium, 5 pm, 24 May 2007
The talk will be followed by a question-answer session.
Ramesh Gauns/Albertina Almeida
Conveners, CICH, Tel: 2438840
Ranjan Solomon, CICH, Tel: 9881181350
Mr. R.G. Kare
President, Vidya Vikas Mandal
Arun S. Nadkarni
Principal, Kare Law College
The founders of independent India conceived the Indian nation as an
entity standing on the pillars of democracy and secularism, with equal
rights to all, irrespective of caste, religion, gender and community.
Over the years we have been witnessing a concerted assault on democracy
and secularism. Communal forces are systematically trying to dismantle
the vision upon which India is based, and replace it with a fascist,
supremacist structure, in which particular communities are privileged
over others. The right-wing ideology of Hindutva has been growing at a
furious pace, leading to a feeling of insecurity among minorities.
Goa, long considered a bastion of secularism, with different communities
having lived here together in relative peace and harmony, has recently
been struck by communal violence. Communal forces have made deep inroads
into Goan society and succeeded in communalizing the social fabric and
posing threats to peace and social harmony. A peaceful and harmonious
Goa requires an alert and agile civil society that will watch for and
act to counter attempts to create social divisions on religious
grounds.
The speaker, Prof. Ram Puniyani, was Professor in Biomedical Engineering
at the Indian Institute of Technology and has worked for many years on
issues pertaining to the preservation of a democratic and secular ethos.
He is a member of the Committee for Communal Amity, Mumbai. He is a
noted speaker and writer, and has conducted numerous workshops and
trainings all over India, including one in Goa in 2006 where he received
an overwhelming response.
_____
(iii)
Demand Unconditional Release of
Dr. Binayak Sen Gen Sec. PUCL Chhattisgarh
ATTEND PUBLIC MEETING ON REPRESSION IN CHHATTISGARH
Speakers: Rajendra Sail (PUCL, Chhattisgarh)
Justice Sachhar (PUCL, National)
Rakesh Shukla (PUDR, Delhi)
Ilina Sen (PUCL, Chhattisgarh)
Kavita Srivastava (PUCL, Rajasthan)
Dr. Sathyamala (MFC)
On Saturday, 26th May 2007
At Gandhi Peace Foundation, near ITO
From 3 pm onwards
Organised Jointly by:
PUCL, PUDR, Saheli, Medico Friends Circle,
Delhi Solidarity Group, NAPM, Socialist Front
______
(iv)
The Center for South Asia Studies, University of
California, Berkeley and the Foundation for
Democratic Reforms in India invite you to the
first FDRI/Berkeley Seminar on
INDIAN DEMOCRACY: LOCAL GOVERNANCE & EMPOWERMENT
May 24-25, 2007
Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA
Open to the Public
______
(v)
FILM: AFGHAN WOMEN: A HISTORY OF STRUGGLE
Co-sponsored by Queens Museum of Art
Date:
Time: June 6th
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Location: New York
Asia Society and Museum, Auditorium, 725 Park Avenue, New York
Cost: $5 Students w/ ID. $7 Members/NGO. $10 Nonmembers.
Buy Tickets Online
Phone: 212-517-ASIA
Afghan Women: A History of Struggle examines the
drafting of the Afghan Women's Bill of Rights by
women from across Afghanistan. The women look at
their struggle for equality in the context of the
country's tumultuous political history, and
describe the many challenges women continue to
face in post-Taliban Afghanistan. A moderated
panel discussion will follow the film screening.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
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