SACW | Sept. 11-12, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | September 11-12, 2007 
| Dispatch No. 2447 - Year 10 running

[1] Pakistan:
      (i) Pakistan's political games - The way ahead (M B Naqvi)
      (ii) An Interview with Tariq Ali (Aoun Sahi)
[2] Indo US Nuclear Deal Debate: Sanctifying mass destruction (Praful Bidwai)
[3] Sri Lanka: War and Liberation (Shanie)
[4] India: Taslima Case: Accountability of 
Elected Representatives (K G Kannabiran and 
Kalpana Kannabiran)
[5] India: An Appeal for Unconditional and Immediate Release of Sheila Didi
[6] India - Sethusamudram channel project : 'Ram 
Sethu - Man Made or Natural' (Ram Puniyani)
      + Adam's Bridge was BJP lead NDA govt decision: Govt (Dhananjay Mahapatra)
[7] India's Sinking Secularism: Allahabad judge 
wants Hindu text to be national holy book (Aasim 
Khan)
[8] India: Muslim Right Undeterred: Deoband 
issues fatwa against photography (Pervez Iqbal 
Siddiqui)
[9] UK: Multi Cultural and Faithful
     (i) Ghettoes of superstition - faith schools 
only cause further divisions (AC Grayling)
    (ii) There's no denying it... faith schools divide (Thomas Sutcliffe)
[9] Announcements  -- up coming events:
  (i) Exhibition of photo illustrations by Hasan 
Zaman (Karachi, 12 September 2007)
  (ii) Book Release function - Marathi translation 
of Communal Politics ;facts v/s myths by Ram 
Puniyani (Bombay, 15 September 2007)
  (iii) SAHMAT Celebrates MF Husain at 92 (All over India, 2 October 2007)

______


[1] Pakistan:

(i)

Deccan Herald
11 September 2007

PAKISTAN'S POLITICAL GAMES - THE WAY AHEAD

by M B Naqvi

There is no getting away from the obsessive 
concern with political games being played in 
Pakistan. There are two immediate pegs to hang on 
a quick analysis: The first is the continued, and 
one would say rapid, Talibanisation that is 
taking place in the country.

The other is the presence right now of a fairly 
large number of American officials, led by Mr 
Negroponte, the Deputy Secretary of State and Mr 
Richard Boucher. The formal reason for these 
visits is the periodic consultations on the 
strategic partnership of Pakistan and the US. As 
such it would normally be dismissed as a routine 
affair. For one thing, Pakistan is hopelessly 
caught in the coils of American strategy and has 
no way out because it has burnt all its other 
boats. But another factor has also entered. It is 
the War on Terror that has reached Pakistan. And 
Pakistan is one of the fronts of this war.

Just take two examples: Pakistan Army soldiers 
are being kidnapped for some time. Recently an 
apogee of kinds happened: It is now confirmed 
that a 240 soldiers strong convoy was abducted by 
a certain militant allied to Taliban and 
al-Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud. It was claimed by the 
latter that the abductors were only 20 in number. 
In any case, no shot was fired. More than a week 
later, they have still not been recovered, 
despite the government's arduous efforts to 
negotiate through tribal Jirgas; Mehsud has put 
stiff conditions, some of which have partially 
been implemented. But Baitullah has not yet 
released the lot.

Take the second stance. Two women in Bannu 
district were beheaded and their dead bodies were 
thrown in a ditch with a note that "they were 
engaged in immoral activities, and deserved the 
punishment". In Mingora near Swat some 60 video 
and audio cassette shops were bombed out for 
engaging in a sinful trade.

The fact to note in this is that there have been 
no popular protests. All manner of activities 
have gone on in all parts of the subcontinent, 
including organisations for songs, dances and 
even prostitution, as an organised trade. What is 
new is the acquiescence in an extra austere Islam 
that has never been practiced before in any part 
of the subcontinent. There are other 
manifestations: The Americans are bombarding 
Pakistan areas to take out known al-Qaeda or 
Taliban leaders when they get wind of them. The 
poor Pakistan government has to struggle to own 
up the attacks having been made by its own Army. 
The march of the Taliban throughout NWFP is no 
joke; it has to be taken seriously. It is bound 
to spread to other areas.

The other part of it must be recognised. There is 
absolutely no doubt that the American actions in 
Afghanistan, Iraq and other places are 
influencing Muslim militants. Their brutality and 
intolerance is increasing by leaps and bounds. 
There is a causal link between these two that can 
be ascertained in any part of Pakistan or 
Afghanistan or Iraq. There has to be some 
rethinking in America about their methods of 
confronting what they think to be a 
civilisational matter: spread of an intolerant 
religious creed.

What is happening in Pakistan is portentous. 
American efforts include desperate attempts to 
bolster Musharraf regime. They first recommended 
a Benazir-Musharraf deal. But it has taken over 
two years' effort to arrive at a semblance of an 
agreement without all the details having been 
firmed up. But that has been knocked out by 
Mushrraf's erstwhile allies, known as PML(Q) 
leaders.

Musharraf is now hamstrung; he cannot do without 
more support but his own position would be 
undermined by the additional support that Benazir 
can possibly bring. Everybody knows that both 
Benazir and Musharraf are losing friends. 
Benazir's party is also in a bad shape; a 
reconciliation between Benazir and Musharraf 
means making PPP play the role that PML (Q) has 
been playing. Many of the more popular leaders 
would revolt, more so at a time when Musharraf 
regime is almost visibly being drained of its 
moral authority and power. Both Musharraf and 
Benazir are being hobbled; they may no longer be 
in a position to implement the deal that was all 
but almost done.

What Americans do now in or about Pakistan is 
crucial. The American officials, including 
military officers, gathered in Islamabad are 
going to watch imminent changes in Pakistan 
Army's command. Musharraf's own two terms have 
anyhow to end very soon. The Supreme Court can be 
trusted to force him to step down at least from 
his Presidential post on Nov 15 and seek 
re-elections. But, re-election cannot take place 
because there are no votes at the disposal of 
Musharraf both for amending the Constitution or 
maybe for simple re-election as the President; 
his usual support has begun dissipating. 
Americans are still sold on him; they want his 
regime to stay and it should, with their help, 
expand its base of support. Which is why they 
repeated their 1988 effort to make Benazir Bhutto 
acceptable to Pakistan's military establishment 
as has been disclosed by former Foreign Minister 
Omar Ayub Khan's book.

American options, according to speculation by a 
sedate observer, is that there are two options: 
they would plump for a deal between Musharraf and 
both his political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and 
Nawaz Sharif. This is said to be one of the 
options. The second option would be to ensure a 
"suitable" succession in the Pakistan Army which 
would then take over once again so that it can 
reorganise the political life so as to fight the 
War on Terror better. Which way would the 
Americans move in this iffy game remains to be 
seen.


o o o

(ii)

The News on Sunday
September 9, 2007

Particular viewpoint

Eminent left-wing activist, writer, journalist 
and film-maker, Tariq Ali is in Pakistan these 
days. The News on Sunday had a long discussion 
with him on religious extremism, the status of 
Left, the role of NGO's, judicial crisis, history 
of Islam and fundamentalism, at his residence in 
Lahore last week.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

by Aoun Sahi

The News on Sunday: How do you analyse the 
present political scenario in Pakistan?

Tariq Ali: We are caught into the rut of a 
political cycle, which has dominated the country 
since October 1958. We have had military coups 
followed by civilian governments. This is what 
has been going on in Pakistan for 50 years of our 
history. Now the question is: Why can't we break 
through this. I think the one big chance Pakistan 
had of modernising itself and making a new start 
was at the time of the break-up of the country. 
It was a bloody and brutal trauma, especially for 
the population of the then East Pakistan.

Pakistan had an opportunity to make a new start 
under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. People were filled 
with hope; expectations were high with the regime 
but very little happened. There was a lot of 
rhetoric. Some things did get done but on the 
crucial questions facing the country -- the 
institutionalisation of democratic rule, 
encouraging people to think for themselves, 
destroying once and for all the power of landed 
gentry, setting up and establishing a solid 
educational and health system, cutting down the 
size of the army and reducing the military budget 
-- nothing happened. That was the only time in 
the country's history when it could have and 
should have happened.

When it did not happen you had the military 
coming back in again and General Ziaul Haq, on 
the authorisation of the US, executed the 
country's last elected Prime Minister Zulfikar 
Ali Bhutto. Thus began the worst period in 
Pakistan's history; the entire political culture 
was brutalised.

After Zia, Pakistan had roughly 10 years of 
civilian government, led first by the Pakistan's 
People's Party, later by General Zia's proteges 
-- the Sharif family -- and again nothing 
happened. Their regimes also led to establishment 
of a new political elite whose only interest was 
in making money for themselves and their cronies 
and enjoying the power of patronage.

Then you had the cockpit coup with General 
Musharraf taking power in 1999. His first plan of 
modernisation was welcomed, but then he behaved 
exactly like previous dictators, went the same 
way and set up a new political party. You have a 
Muslim League for every occasion. Then you see 
pictures of these new leaders with the military 
general all over the country. It is now a pattern 
in Pakistani politics. Meanwhile, underneath, the 
country suffers.

TNS: Your views on religious extremism in Pakistan?

TA: There are two concurrent events going on. 
One, the religious extremist groups that were 
sponsored during the period of General Zia's 
military dictatorship. These are the jihadi 
groups, violent, armed, and used by the military 
in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The number of people 
in these groups are debatable but are somewhere 
between 50,000 to 100,000. Then you have the 
moderate religious parties in the form of MMA. 
These, in my opinion, are totally legitimate 
political parties. I may not agree with them. 
They are conservative parties like those in the 
west. The MMA and the party currently in power in 
Turkey are the Islamic equivalents of Christian 
democratic parties in the west.

Then you have a third phenomenon -- the growth of 
religiosity among the middle and upper middle 
class within the elite represented by Tablighi 
Jamaat, organisations like Al-Huda, who take 
advantage of the fact that there is a deep hole, 
a big vacuum, in the life of many people. 
However, in my opinion, it is impossible for 
religious or jihadi groups to come to power in 
Pakistan. Impossible, unless the military puts 
them there.

TNS: How can Pakistan combat extremism?

TA: The answer to religious extremist groups is a 
series of radical social reforms, including an 
excellent educational system that is free for the 
poor. At the present moment, you cannot get 
proper education in Pakistan unless you have 
money. The level of education is abysmal and I am 
not interested in the government giving figures 
of how many students have been enrolled in 
schools. Because they can enroll in schools but 
there are no teachers to teach them and no 
buildings in which they can be taught. So, that 
is the only way to combat religious extremism.

There is no military solution; there is a 
political solution internally and externally. I 
have to be blunt with you that those liberals 
from the elite society who think the only way to 
deal with extremism is to go and kill more 
people, I find this strategy disgusting, because 
killing people never solves problems. The problem 
is deep-rooted in our country's history and it 
has to be solved. So far no group has emerged 
from above which is capable of solving it.

TNS: Where does the left stand in Pakistan? Do 
you think the left is capable enough to act as an 
alternative political force?

TA: The left is very weak at the moment. There 
are small groups of people. Some do good work 
like the Labour Party. They work really hard, 
they are very sincere, but there is no left in 
Pakistan. I am not in favour of political parties 
becoming fiefdoms, whether it's the Awami 
National Party or the PPP. Pakistan is a republic 
but in the way political parties function, we 
have this sort of a strange monarchical idea that 
if your father formed the party, as the son or 
daughter you have a right to lead it. Why? So, I 
think for the health of Pakistani political 
parties it would be better if relatives or 
children of those who set these parties up 
stepped back. That would offer these parties a 
chance to function.

TNS: How do you see the role of NGOs and human 
rights movements in this context?

TA: I used to call them the 'human rights 
industry'. This is an industry largely based in 
United States and Colin Powell former US 
secretary of state and many others have publicly 
said that their new fifth column all over the 
world are NGOs. This is a big problem that also 
partially answers your previous question -- that 
too many people have got money from the West. I 
called these NGOs WGOs, Western Governmental 
Organisations. It's not that some of them do not 
do good work. A few of them do excellent work, 
which I would be the first to praise. But as an 
institutional project of the western world, this 
is designed basically to take people out of 
politics. And it has done so; some of the best 
minds are working in NGOs. They are not trying to 
work politically and the money given to these 
NGOs is given for specific projects and no 
intervention in politics is allowed. They have 
done some good work in some cases but this is not 
the way forward.

TNS: But they played a very active role in the 
struggle of reinstatement of the chief justice?

TA: It was not a human rights struggle but a 
constitutional struggle that insisted on the 
separation of powers between the judiciary and 
the state. Historically, judges have been 
cajoled, bullied, and fired 1958 onwards. I 
remember Justice MR Kiyani took a very brave step 
against the first military dictatorship in this 
country, going around universities, addressing 
students, speaking in a very subtle way but 
encouraging us to think.

By and large, judges in our country after all 
spring from the same milieu as the other rulers 
of the country. So the decision of this chief 
justice to fight back was extremely important. 
You know, the whole world thinks that Pakistan 
consists of just military, corrupt politicians 
and bearded lunatics. This particular struggle to 
reinstate the chief justice gave a completely 
different impression of Pakistan. This was a 
genuine civil society struggle being waged by 
lawyers and by people interested in an 
independent judiciary to fight against increasing 
encroachments by the military-political complex 
of this country, which wants everything under 
their control.

So, it's a victory, the fact that he is 
reinstated. But you know he is a mortal human 
being who has to be replaced by someone else. So 
the whole question is how should judiciary 
function in Pakistan?

TNS: You are known to be a non-believer. But some 
of your best books, especially novels, are about 
Muslim civilisations in Europe. Any particular 
reason to choose this subject?

TA: I wanted to ask myself the question on what 
happened to Islam in Europe. I asked this 
question in 1992: What happened to the culture 
that was very strong in Europe? And to answer 
this question I went to Spain and began studying, 
researching and travelling and that is the way I 
produced my first novel. I am not a believer, but 
culturally I am a Muslim. I have been brought up 
within the Muslim world, I appreciated its 
culture. I think the tragedy is that many Muslims 
do not own the cultural history of their 
religion. I think it is not talked about. That is 
one reason I wrote these books to show that there 
was another side of Islam -- in Spain, Sicily, 
Turkey, even during the crusades which was 
extremely important to understand.

TNS: What was the reaction of the West to these books?

TA: They had an impact. The books are translated 
all over the world. I get emails from every 
where. My last novel 'Sultan in Palermo' is about 
the period when Islam was culturally still very 
strong in Sicily. Recently it was translated in 
Italian and I went to Palermo to launch the 
Italian version of novel. The people thanked me 
and told me that I had recovered a part of their 
history which no one likes to talk about. It is 
to show the Europeans that who knows how Islam 
would have changed if it hadn't been physically 
attacked and driven out of Europe by the 
Christian crusaders. That is the question. A 
political one not a religious one.

TNS: You also have depicted Muslim women in a 
totally different way in your books.

TA: The Muslim women played a very big role. They 
may not have exercised powers directly but they 
exercised power behind the scenes. They were very 
strong women in many cases. After all, the 
Prophet's wife Khadija was a trader in her own 
right. She traded and no one stopped her. Another 
example is of Ayesha who fought in a war.

This intent to completely subjugate women, I 
think, is challenged by Islamic history in many 
parts of the world, especially in Islamic Spain 
where you have Muslim women writing poetry in the 
9th and 10th century which would shock people.

TNS: You have written that "the history of Islam 
is the history of breaking with past traditions." 
Would you like to elaborate?

TA: Islam was founded to try and create a unified 
Arab peninsula and to break with the 'jahiliya', 
the pre-Islamic traditions in that country which 
led to a lot of inter-tribal warfare, which was 
affecting trade in that region.

I always argue that Islam's conquests were 
brilliant; military came too quickly before the 
religion had time to form itself. So the 
religion's growth and the growth of ideas and 
cultures are largely determined by which country 
it conquered. From that point of view, Islam is 
quite an elastic religion.

The tradition of Muslims in Punjab are determined 
by the Sufi tradition which existed here.

Indonesian Islam is very different from Wahabi 
Islam. Wahabi Islam is not even in majority in 
the Arab World. Islam is a diverse religion and 
it can never be anything else. All attempts right 
from the beginning to impose one dominant line, 
if you like, failed completely. Within the few 
hundred years of its formation you have three 
caliphs at a time, one in Baghdad, one in Qurtaba 
and one in Cairo.

TNS: You use the terms 'fundamentalism' and 
'fundamentalists' very frequently against US, 
Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Jews in your 
books, essays and speeches. What do you actually 
mean by this term?

TA: 'Fundamentalism' is an irrational belief in 
order to defend particular views and beliefs in 
the name of something either divine or temporal 
but which is unchallengeable for 
'fundamentalists.'

'Fundamentalists' are people who will not accept 
any other ideas because of their 'superiority'.

Muslim fundamentalists argue that they are the 
only ones who know what Islam is and they can 
interpret it, while other people cannot. They say 
this even to moderate Muslims. Some of their 
worst enemies are the moderate Muslims because 
they offer a different vision of Islam.

Hindu fundamentalists do the same. Christian 
fundamentalists in the United States say exactly 
the same. For instance, when 9/11 happened, some 
people in the US saw it as punishment. When there 
was disaster in New Orleans many American 
Christian fundamentalists said that God had 
punished New Orleans because the people of New 
Orleans had organised a conference of gays in the 
city that September.

The body language and frame of reference of all 
religious fundamentalists is the same. Imperial 
fundamentalism is not necessarily religious but 
it has the similar irrational view by conflating 
its own specific stated interests. So the US 
becomes the international community to make it 
easier. Like Benazir says, I support Musharraf 
because the army and the international community 
want me to. The international community has 
become a synonym for the US.

TNS: What subject are you working on these days?

TA: I am working on a new book on Pakistan for a 
big American publishing house, the one which 
published General Musharraf's book. It has 
commissioned me to write a book on Pakistani 
politics. But I do not want to repeat myself. I 
thought I would write this book about the 
US-Pakistan relationship, just one aspect, but a 
very crucial aspect of Pakistani politics.

To look at Pakistan from that particular 
viewpoint, from the beginning till now. This 
country in the beginning decided to work with the 
west unlike other newly independent countries, 
first with the British and later with the US. I 
am going to be discussing the effect this had on 
our domestic politics. Many people think that 
domestic politics and foreign policy are not 
linked but they are, very closely. Each affects 
the other.

______



[2]

Frontline (India)
September 08 - 21, 2007

SANCTIFYING MASS DESTRUCTION

by Praful Bidwai

  The toxic terms of discourse of the nuclear 
debate have insidiously intruded into the 
public's mind and distorted its moral perspective.

WHATEVER the final fate of the India-United 
States nuclear deal, it is undeniable that the 
media-driven debate over it has had a profound 
impact on public consciousness. Thus, not just 
television anchors, but even college students, 
are mouthing phrases like the "historic 
opportunity" (the agreement offers to India to 
become a world power) through a "strategic 
partnership" with the U.S., and promoting India's 
"national interest" (which self-evidently lies in 
superpowerdom and in containing China) and 
"energy security" via nuclear power development 
(as if there were no alternatives).

One notion that is rapidly becoming part of 
middle-class commonsense is that the deal undoes 
the iniquitous technology-denial sanctions 
imposed on India since the 1970s and rewards it 
as a "responsible" nuclear weapons state (NWS), 
or, as the July 2005 agreement put it, "a 
responsible state with advanced nuclear 
technology".

"Responsible" nuclear weapons state? Can this be 
anything but an oxymoron? NWSs not only possess 
the ability to kill millions of non-combatant 
civilians instantly but are prepared and willing 
to use th at capability in cold blood. Indeed, 
they make their security dependent upon keeping 
scores of these weapons of terror ready to be 
fired at short notice.

All NWSs, regardless of intent or the size and 
lethality of their arsenals, and despite their 
professed faith in nuclear deterrence, have 
doctrines for the actual use of nuclear weapons 
to incinerate whole cities ó that is, to commit 
unspeakably repulsive and condemnable acts of 
terrorism against unarmed civilians. The world's 
greatest terrorist act was not the Twin Towers 
attack (which killed 3,600 people), but Hiroshima 
(where 140,000 perished).

Yet, those who erase this terrible, yet 
fundamental, truth from their consciousness still 
justify the idea that India is a "responsible 
nuclear power". They advance six claims in 
support. First, India has an impeccable 
non-proliferation record and has never diverted 
civilian nuclear materials to military use or 
participated in clandestine nuclear commerce. 
Second, India practises exemplary nuclear 
restraint through its "minimum deterrence" 
doctrine and its policy of no-first-use.

Third, India has always responded positively to, 
if not advocated, proposals for 
non-discriminatory and equal treaties for arms 
control and disarmament. Fourth, India's foreign 
policy orientation is strongly multilateralist; 
New Delhi rejects collusive bilateral agreements 
in favour of multilateral, universal treaties 
leading to disarmament. This derives from the 
view that the nuclear threat/danger is global.

A fifth claim is that India abhors any policy or 
action that will start or aggravate a nuclear 
arms race, especially in its neighbourhood. It 
has not triggered such a race and will never do 
so. Finally, India is a peaceful, mature, stable 
and law-abiding democracy, which respects human 
rights and can be trusted to act with restraint 
-- unlike, say, Pakistan.

All these claims are questionable, if not 
altogether specious. True, India has never run an 
A.Q. Khan-style "nuclear Wal-Mart" or willingly 
proliferated nuclear technology. But, India has 
been an active proliferant and has participated 
in clandestine as well as open nuclear commerce 
with a host of countries to develop its military 
and civilian programmes.

Right from its very first nuclear reactor, 
Apsara, to the latest pair under construction (at 
Koodankulam), India has bought, borrowed and both 
overtly and covertly procured nuclear technology, 
equipment or material from states as va ried as 
the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, 
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and later 
Russia, France, China, and even Norway.

The basic design of its mainline power generator 
is Canadian ñ the pressurised heavy water reactor 
named CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium). India's 
very first power reactors, at Tarapur, were 
donations from the U.S. Agency for International 
Development and were executed as a turnkey job by 
General Electric and Bechtel. The much-touted 
Fast Breeder Test Reactor, the only such reactor 
to operate in India, was developed with French 
assistance.

India used spent fuel from CIRUS (Canada-India 
Research Reactor, to which the U.S. supplied 
heavy water, adding to the acronym) for military 
purposes by reprocessing plutonium from it. This 
was used in the 1974 Pokhran blast. CIRUS was 
designed and built by the Canadians.

A condition for Canadian and U.S. assistance was 
that the products of CIRUS would only be used 
"for peaceful purposes". India blatantly violated 
this and, to evade legal liability, declared 
Pokhran-I a "peaceful nuclear explosion".

India also clandestinely imported heavy water 
from Norway and, later, from China. We do not 
know what price was paid for these transactions, 
but it is unlikely to have been purely monetary 
in the Chinese case.

None of this speaks of "responsibility" or strict 
adherence to legality, leave alone of India's 
"clean hands" as far as dubious nuclear trade 
goes. In truth, nuclear materials are among the 
world's well-traded/transferred commodities. Many 
countries have participated in such trade. India 
is no exception and cannot pretend to be 
Simon-pure.

Second, the restraint claim is belied by India's 
official nuclear doctrine, which commits it to a 
large triadic (land, sea and air-based) nuclear 
arsenal with no limits whatsoever on 
technological refinement. This super-ambitious 
plan sits ill with the profession of "minimum 
nuclear deterrent", which is generally understood 
as a few dozen weapons. (How many does it take to 
flatten half-a-dozen Chinese or Pakistani cities?)

India has also diluted its no-first-use 
commitment by excluding from it states that have 
military alliances with NWSs and including 
retaliation against other mass-destruction 
weapons. In practice, given the lack of strategic 
distance from Pakistan, it is doubtful if 
no-first-use has much meaning.

Besides, the nuclear deal will allow India to 
expand its nuclear arsenal substantially by 
stockpiling huge amounts of weapons-grade 
plutonium.

Third, India has refused to sign any multilateral 
nuclear restraint/disarmament agreement since the 
mid-1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, India also 
turned down at least seven Pakistani proposals 
for regional nuclear restraint or renunciation, 
including mutual or third-party verification ó 
without making a single counter-proposal to "call 
Pakistan's bluff".

Fourth, the very fact of India's signature of the 
bilateral nuclear deal with the U.S. puts paid to 
its professed multilateralist commitment. The 
deal marks a major departure from New Delhi's 
earlier insistence on international and universal 
non-discriminatory treaties on arms 
control/disarmament. But this bilateral agreement 
is now meant to be imposed upon the multilateral 
International Atomic Energy Agency and the 
plurilateral Nuclear Suppliers 7; Group for their 
approval -- a procedure that India would have 
strongly objected to in the past.

India has taken a parochial course, which in 
future could mean giving the go-by to 
multilateral approaches in favour of expedient 
bilateral ones.

Fifth, a considerable likely expansion of India's 
nuclear arsenal, which the deal facilitates, will 
inevitably escalate the regional nuclear arms 
race. There is evidence that in response to the 
India-U.S. deal, Pakistan is building at least 
one (and probably two) plutonium reprocessing 
plants, which will help it maximise the 
production of weapons-grade material with its 
limited uranium reserves. That is what a nuclear 
arms race is all about.

More worrisome, as India builds up its arsenal to 
the same level as the lower range of estimates of 
China's nuclear weapons (250 or so), Beijing can 
be expected to make more warheads and missiles. 
This spells a dangerous nuclear arms race. Yet, 
as U.S. strategists see it (see Ashley Tellis's 
quote in Frontline, August 10), a major purpose 
of the deal is precisely to help India amass more 
nuclear weapons to deter China -- via an arms 
race.

Finally, it stretches credulity to contend that 
India's behaviour towards its neighbours has been 
exemplarily benign and peaceful. India's past 
record of belligerence towards Sri Lanka, 
Maldives and Nepal (on which it imposed an 
economic blockade in the late 1980s) negates that 
claim, as does its annexation of Sikkim in 1975.

India is, of course, a democracy, but it is by no 
means a rule-of-law state. India's human rights 
record is deeply flawed -- not just in Kashmir 
and the northeastern region, but also in respect 
of religious minorities, Dalits and Adivasis, and 
more generally, numerous underprivileged groups. 
One only has to recall the 2002 Gujarat carnage, 
the 1992-93 Mumbai communal clashes, the savage 
repression under way against the tribals of 
Chhattisgarh through Salwa Judum, and police 
brutality against mere suspects in countless 
terrorist attacks.

Our history of strategic misperception and 
miscalculation (for instance, during 1987-88, 
1990 and 1999) also bears recalling. At any rate, 
having a democratic government is no guarantee 
that a country will not use mass-destruction 
weapons.

The only state to have ever used nuclear weapons 
was the democratic U.S.. It would be tragic if 
our citizens look for Washington's recognition of 
India as a "responsible" nuclear power while 
deadening their own moral sensibilities against 
weapons of terror.


______


[3]

The Island
8 September 2007

Notebook of A Nobody

WAR AND LIBERATION

by Shanie

Last week, President Bush made a stirring address 
to the US veterans of foreign wars. He claimed 
that the US Government's continuing involvement 
in wars around the world had liberated the people 
of those countries. "I stand before you as a 
wartime President -- We fight for a free way of 
life against a new barbarism -- an ideology whose 
followers have killed thousands on American soil, 
and seek to kill again on an even greater scale". 
Bush's belligerent speech received polite 
applause from the war veterans assembled in the 
Kansas City. But do we notice an echo in our 
country as well? We have liberated the East and 
we are going to liberate the North as well, our 
political panjandrums tell us. In Vietnam, before 
the US withdrawal, they had killed over tens of 
thousands of Vietnamese, most of them civilian 
villagers. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the killings 
continue in the cause of "liberation". As in 
those countries, so in our country, we must ask, 
liberation for whom? The people of the East who 
have been "liberated", do not feel any sense of 
liberation. In truth, their fears and lack of 
security is greater now.

Terrorism is a canker on any society and needs to 
be rooted out. But one set of terrorists cannot 
be rooted out by patronage of another set of 
terrorists. That is the sad reality in the East. 
President Premadasa made the horrendous mistake 
of supplying arms to the LTTE to force the IPKF 
out of the country. While it is true that there 
is no place for a foreign army on our soil, 
patronizing terrorism was certainly not the way 
in dealing with a diplomatic issue.

It is also a moot point whether a heavy toll of 
civilian life, as is happening in Iraq, 
Afghanistan and in our own north-eastern 
backyard, is the price of "liberation". History 
is replete with examples of civil conflicts being 
exacerbated by militarism. Civil conflicts need 
to resolved politically. For far too long, the 
Government has been using the APRC and APC as a 
figleaf to cover a militaristic policy. APRC 
Chairman Tissa Vitarana has been putting on a 
brave front, refusing to give up and struggling 
to keep his end up. As D. B. S. Jeyaraj said in 
his recent column, he is re-living his Ananda 
College cricketing days when he reportedly had a 
reputation for his stout defence as an opening 
batsman, carrying out his bat through the innings 
but without accumulating many runs! (In this 
respect, he is like another illustrious cricketer 
Sunil Gavaskar, who once opened an innings for 
India and carried his bat through the innings 
remaining not out on 37!) But truly, Tissa 
Vitarana seems our country's last hope. All 
indications are that a sustainable peace package 
is far from President Rajapaksa's mind now. The 
art of political survival seems uppermost in his 
mind. If Vitarana can stand his ground, even in 
the face of defeat, then he would have made a 
contribution towards an eventual political 
solution.

Politics of Appeasement

Ranil Wickremesinghe is accused of having adopted 
a policy in 2002 of appeasing the LTTE. Perhaps 
he now accepts that that policy failed. Secret 
deals, whether a CFA or supplying arms to the 
LTTE or engineering a polls boycott, cannot lead 
to any success. Had there been transparency and 
President Kumaratunga and Parliament brought into 
the loop, many of the weaknesses of the CFA could 
have been avoided. But that is now history and we 
must learn from those mistakes.

President Rajapaksa is now making the same 
mistake by trying to appease the Sinhala 
political terrorists. He obviously feels 
politically trapped and feels appeasement of the 
Sinhala hardliners is the only way to shore up 
his shaky coalition. In his recent interview with 
the Indian media he makes the astounding 
statement for a country's President. He says he 
was elected by the Sinhala voters and very few 
Tamils voted for him. He has to go by the mandate 
given to him by the Sinhala constituency. As the 
country's leader, he does not feel the need to do 
what is right by the whole country. He also 
states that the notion of a federal state will 
not be acceptable to the Sinhala constituency. 
Surely, he is aware that the two major Sinhala 
parties, including his own, had already accepted 
substantial devolution, whether it was called 
federalism, a union of regions or by any other 
term. Or, is appeasement being carried to the 
extent of only the JVP/JHU being recognized as 
the sole representatives of Sinhala opinion, just 
as the LTTE claims to be the sole representatives 
of Tamils? Rajapaksa was part of the Government 
when Kumaratunge negotiated with non-LTTE Tamil 
leaders and with Sinhala and Muslim leaders and 
came up with a political package, which, if 
accepted, would have marginalized the LTTE. She 
did what was expected of a country's leader - a 
statesperson-like consensual approach to 
resolving the conflict. It is a pity that petty 
politics prevented that approach to succeed. 
President Rajapaksa must realize that is the only 
approach that can succeed; the country has, no 
doubt, learnt its lessons from that fiasco and a 
package on the lines of the SLFP proposals of 
2000 is now likely to be found acceptable. But 
for that the policy of appeasement of extremists 
on both sides of the ethnic divide must be given 
up – whatever the short term political 
imperatives may be.

Peace Building Strategies

It was recently reported that the British 
Government and Northern Ireland's devolved 
government had jointly proposed a ‘Peace Building 
Strategy"' for Sri Lanka. This followed not only 
the success of power sharing arrangement in 
Northern Ireland, to which all stake holders to 
the conflict have given their consent. It 
followed months of negotiations between two sworn 
adversaries – DUP and Sinn Fein. All indications 
are that the arrangement, which has now been in 
place for six months, is working satisfactorily. 
Besides, people like Martin McGuinness and John 
Hume have been here and have talked to the 
stakeholders in Sri Lanka and have a reasonable 
knowledge of our situation. We should, therefore, 
have welcomed the roadmap that was presented and 
examined it to see how far we could go along with 
it.

But our warmongers would have none of it. The 
hardline Patriotic National Movement held a media 
conference rubbishing the strategy, without even 
sighting the strategy, as a ruse to allow the 
LTTE have a separate state.  By a curious 
coincidence (or was it really curious?), on the 
same day, there was a report that an arrested 
LTTE cadre had confessed to having received 
police training in Northern Ireland. The report 
added that an inquiry had revealed that the LTTE 
"allegedly" received from the British Government 
‘police training' similar to that officially 
given to the Sri Lanka Police in Scotland early 
this year. No details were given of the alleged 
‘police training' (note the use of the word 
alleged and the use of inverted commas) given 
five years earlier in 2002. Only detail that was 
given was the Passport number of the arrested 
cadre, as if that gave legitimacy to the report.

Hidden Agendas?

Similarly, there were reports of the JHU wanting 
to declare areas in the Trincomalee and Ampara as 
sacred areas and evict the Tamil and Muslim 
residents from those areas. Together with these 
reports, there was a talk of an Islamic Jihad in 
the East and that an armed Islamic militant group 
was running wild. People of the East are unaware 
of any incident involving Islamic militants and 
obviously there is a sinister motive in releasing 
such scare stories. The Muslims of Ampara feel 
there is a hidden agenda to deprive them of areas 
which have been home to them for centuries. They 
also feel that the Karuna group is being used by 
those with this agenda to do some of the dirty 
work; the Karuna faction is a willing participant 
because this fits into their agenda as well.

There are hardliners on both sides of the ethnic 
divide who for similar reasons do not want peace. 
The LTTE is afraid that a negotiated peace will 
provide democratic space to the Tamil and Muslim 
people and their military hold on those people 
will be lost. The Sinhala hardliners do not want 
negotiated peace because that would prevent them 
reaching their goal of a dominant Sinhala 
Buddhist Sri Lanka. The SLFP and UNP were both 
founded on a platform of pluralism ensuring 
equality, dignity and justice to all ethnic 
groups and faiths in Sri Lanka. There were 
periods in between when both parties succumbed to 
chauvinism but over the past decade or so they 
have both committed themselves to a political 
solution to the ethnic conflict that ensures 
justice for all. We trust President Rajapaksa 
will not, for whatever reason, take the SLFP away 
from that commitment


______


[4]

Economic and Political Weekly
September 8, 2007

TASLIMA CASE: ACCOUNTABILITY OF ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

Two organisations have filed a petition in the 
Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking the removal of 
four legislators and deregistration of their 
political party for leading an attack on the 
Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad 
recently. The petitioners believe that these men 
have perjured the constitutional oath taken by 
all legislators before entering office.

by K G Kannabiran and Kalpana Kannabiran

The attack on Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen 
on August 9, 2007 in Hyderabad was greeted with 
shock and disbelief and was widely condemned by a 
number of organisations in Hyderabad. Asmita 
Collective and Women's World India organised a 
public meeting on August 11, 2007 at the Potti 
Sriramulu Telugu University where around 25 
speakers - mostly writers, journalists and human 
rights activists - unequivocally condemned the 
attack and resolved to work towards petitioning 
the high court for the removal of the legislators 
guilty of leading the attack.

The Centre for Inquiry, a rationalist 
organisation led by Innaiah, organised a function 
for the release of the Telugu translation of 
Taslima Nasreen's, Shodh on August 9, 2007 at the 
Press Club in  Khairatabad. It was a small 
function only for invitees. Innaiah, chairperson 
of the Citizens for Inquiry, Volga, award winning 
Telugu writer and poet, and Taslima were present 
on the dais. Around noon, after the meeting drew 
to a close, a crowd of about 20-30 persons from 
the All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) 
crowded around the dais and began hurling 
everything they could find at Taslima. This 
assault was aggravated by unrestrained use of the 
worst kind of verbal abuse, all of which was 
captured on camera by the electronic media that 
was present there and telecast several times 
over. Legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi and former 
parliamentarian Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi 
justified the violent attack and her forced 
departure from Hyderabad, on television news 
channels. The electronic and photographic records 
of the incident as well as accounts by 
eyewitnesses point to the fact that the conduct 
of the four legislators and the members of the 
two political parties fall within the meaning of 
offences defined in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 
namely, Sections 147 and 18 (rioting with deadly 
weapons), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 427 
(mischief causing damage to property), 452 
(trespass after preparation for hurt, assault and 
wrongful restraint), and 506 (criminal 
intimidation) read with Section 149 of the 
Criminal Procedure Code. Sections 147, 148 and 
506 of IPC are non-bailable offences. The police 
have also booked cases under these sections and 
the legislators were produced before the XIV 
metropolitan magistrate and then released on the 
same day.

Premises of Constitution

Diversity, pluralism and tolerance are the major 
premises of our Constitution and the 
preconditions to national integrity in a plural 
society like ours. The only medium through which 
ideas of diversity and dissent may be expressed 
in a democratic society is through the 
fundamental right to free speech and expression. 
In justice Jeevan Reddy's words: "For ensuring 
the free speech right of the citizens of this 
country, it is necessary that the citizens have 
the benefit of plurality of views and a range 
ofopinions on all public issues. A successful 
democracy posits an 'aware' citizenry. Diversity 
of opinions, views, ideas and ideologies is 
essential to enable the citizens to arrive at 
informed judgment on all issues touching them" 
(Secretary, Ministry of Information and 
Broadcasting vs Cricket Association of Bengal and 
Another; 1995 AIR (SC) 1236). Any attempt to 
abridge this right to expression through recourse 
to collective violence is an assault on national 
integrity.

In recent years we have witnessed a series of 
attacks by private groups - mostly belonging to 
various parties - carrying out assaults on 
academicians, writers, artists, film-makers, 
actors and journalists. A few years ago, a 
historian was faulted for not writing a "correct" 
history of Shivaji, leading to the attack on the 
reputed Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in 
Pune and the destruction of valuable manuscripts. 
Christian representatives went on a 
representation to the late prime minister Rajiv 
Gandhi and put pressure on him to ban Nikos 
Kazantzakis', The Last Temptation of Christ. More 
recently some members of the same community 
protested against the screening of the Da Vinci 
Code. In Gujarat the Vishwa Hindu Parishad went 
on a rampage against the art exhibition at the MS 
University, Baroda,destroying art works of a 
student, Chandramohan. Earlier, paintings by 
noted artist M F Hussain met the same fate. 
Film-maker Deepa Mehta was prevented from 
shooting her film Water, a testimony on the 
condition of widows in Varanasi, and was forced 
to shoot it at a secret location in Sri Lanka. 
Film actors Khushboo and Suhasini were attacked 
in Tamil Nadu, for speaking on the need for sex 
education. In August 2007, Shiv Sainiks attacked 
Outlook, a reputed weekly for including Bal 
Thackeray, among others in the list of "Villains 
of India". In all these incidents political 
parties and political leaders have played a key 
role in fuelling these attacks. Elected 
representatives who resort to use of collective 
violence must be debarred from holding public 
office, mere prosecution for crimes committed 
being an insufficient remedy.

A handful of persons (to whatever community they 
may belong) decide what a writer or a poet should 
write about, what subjects should not be the 
subject matter of painting or writing. The first 
question that should engage our attention in 
these and other such events is the criminal 
intimidation against the artists or writers, 
which must be judged in terms of the liberal 
values the Constitution incorporates. By the 
Constitution we have entrusted to the state 
limited powers, the transgression of which 
enables us to act politically and also legally. 
Without dwelling at length on the effectiveness 
of the existing avenues of redress against the 
state at this point, it is important to 
acknowledge that free speech, freedom of 
association and assembly enable us to act 
politically against arbitrary actions by the 
state, even while seeking legal redress through 
courts, defin- ing rights more precisely in the 
process. What should be done when sitting members 
of the legislature or Parliament direct a mob to 
phyically attack a writer, an artist or any other 
person? What steps are open to citizens to check 
such obnoxious conduct of elected 
representatives? One way of course is to accept 
it as proof that "people get the representatives 
they deserve". The more constructive way of 
looking at these problems is to take measures to 
rebuild institutions. The courts may be persuaded 
to drop their flabby liberal rhetoric and to firm 
up the jurisprudence on free speech and other 
rights related concepts. How shall we deal with 
the political mafia or bandits who get elected to 
representative institutions at various levels in 
the state? The challenge is now before the courts 
to innovatively craft a jurisprudence just as 
they did in the case of the executive in the 
1970s with the doctrine of prospective over 
ruling and the concept of basic structure of the 
Constitution.

Interesting Steps

In this connection the steps taken by Asmita 
Collective and Women's World India to experiment 
in courts are interesting and worth debating.1 
These steps if successful hold the possibility of 
moulding a political culture and disciplining the 
conduct of elected representatives. These two 
groups have filed a petition in the Andhra 
Pradesh High Court under Article 226 to issue a 
writ of quo warranto seeking the removal of the 
four legislators and the cancellation of the 
registration of the AIMIM party by the Election 
Commission.

This incident raises several very serious 
concerns for human dignity, the right of persons 
to life and liberty, freedom of movement and free 
speech, besides raising questions related to the 
conduct of elected representatives arising from 
their unrestrained use of hate speech, physical 
assault and death threats. Assaulting a foreign 
national with a valid visa and forcing her to 
leave the city is against all norms of democratic 
functioning and international relations besides 
being directly in violation of the protections 
available to foreigners under Article 21 of the 
Constitution of India especially as laid down in 
Chandrima Das (2000 AIR(SC) 988). The affirmation 
of the rights to life, personal liberty, freedom 
of movement and freedom of expression have been 
well enunciated in the Indian Constitution and 
protected by courts over several years. The 
primary issue raised in the petition is the 
public conduct of elected representatives: 
members of the AP legislative assembly. Election 
law in India prescribes procedure for 
disqualification of candidates during elections 
in the Representation of People's Act (RPA), 1951 
and of elected members on five specifically 
stated grounds under Article 191 and under 
Schedule X of the Constitution. The RPA under 
Section 8 prescribes grounds for disqualification 
of persons convicted for certain offences from 
membership of Parliament and state legislature. 
Schedule X of the Constitution details the 
procedure for disqualification on grounds of 
defection. Article 191 also sets out the ground 
for disqualification of members, but the court 
has also held that Article 191 does not exhaust 
the grounds of disqualification of members. 
Public misdemeanour, which includes rioting, 
criminal intimidation with deadly weapons and 
death threats do not find mention as explicit 
grounds of disqualification, but can be argued 
into the framework of accountability in wider 
terms.

There is generally no code of conduct prescribed 
for elected representatives during their term of 
office. The only regulation is the oath taken by 
them before entering office. The prescribed oath 
for the legislator is found in the Third Schedule 
and we are of the view that weight should be 
attached to the oath taken.  Legislators solemnly 
affirm true faith and allegiance to the 
Constitution and under- take to work for the 
integrity of the nation. Therefore their conduct, 
while in office, should abide by the oath. The 
only punishment for perjury of the constitutional 
oath in our view is immediate loss of office. 
"The oath of office insisted upon under the 
Constitution is the prescription of a fundamental 
code of conduct in the discharge of the duties of 
these high offices. The oath binds the person 
through-out his tenure in that office, and he 
extricates himself from the bonds of the oath 
only when he frees himself from the office he 
holds. Breach of this fundamental conduct of good 
behaviour may result in the deprivation of the 
very office he holds" (K C Chandy vs Balakrishna 
Pillai, 1986 AIR(KER) 116).

The oath stipulated for the members of the 
legislature shows that they are expected to owe 
total allegiance to the Constitution and abide by 
the laws of the land. In 1963, Parliament brought 
forward the Sixteenth Constitutional Amendment 
Act, through which it introduced amendments to 
the sub-clauses that it would be reasonable 
restriction to legislate on the freedoms if it is 
made "in the interests of the sovereignty and 
integrity of India". A corresponding amendment 
was introduced in Article 84 and Article 173 and 
the Third Schedule to the Constitution and the 
oath as amended read "I solemnly affirm and bear 
true faith and allegiance to the Constitution as 
by law established and that I will uphold the 
sovereignty and integrity of India". The right to 
vote has been recognised as a fundamental right 
under Article 19(1) of the Constitution. The 
Supreme Court in People's Union for Civil 
Liberties (PUCL) and another Petitioners with Lok 
Satta and others and Association for Democratic 
Reforms vs Union of India and another (2003 AIR 
(SC) 2363), delineated this right as follows: 
"The right to vote at the elections to the House 
of People or Legislative Assembly is a 
constitutional right but not merely a statutory 
right; freedom of voting...is a facet of the 
fundamental right enshrined in Article 19(1)(a)". 
Every fundamental right has implicit in it a 
remedy. Implicit in the right to vote, by that 
token, is the remedy of recall of elected 
representatives. The conditions of recall do not 
necessarily have to be confined to the grounds of 
disqualification stated in the Constitution or 
the RPA, 1951. Recall is a remedy that invokes 
not mere disqualification but forfeiture of 
office for not satisfying the grounds for 
continuance.

English law provided a proceeding to forfeit the 
office by a writ of scire facias (which was 
replaced by quo warranto), an established medium 
for the determination that an office held "during 
good behaviour" was terminated by mis-behaviour: 
"When the framers employed 'good behaviour', a 
common law term of ascertainable meaning, with no 
indication that they were employing it in a new 
and different sense, it might be presumed that 
they implicitly adopted the judicial enforcement 
machinery that traditionally went with it" 
[Berger 2002: 131].

The Supreme Court has observed that "The trite 
saying that 'democracy is for the people, of the 
people and by the people' has to be remembered 
for ever. In a democratic republic, it is the 
will of the people that is paramount and becomes 
the basis of the authority of the government. The 
will is expressed in periodic elections based on 
universal adult suffrage...The moment they put in 
papers for contesting the election, they are 
subjected to public gaze and public scrutiny" 
(Para 15, 2003 AIR (SC) 2363). By this token 
elected representatives become the link between 
the government and the people and are accountable 
to the people. In the event of such 
representatives failing the test of good 
behaviour during their term the fact of public 
scrutiny and accountability must lead to 
forfeiture of office. The law as it stands does 
not specify procedure to enforce accountability 
during the incumbent's tenure in elected office, 
particularly with respect to public misbehaviour. 
Given this lacuna in the law, the petitioners 
felt it was necessary to request the court to lay 
down the law constructively in this particular 
case, which will also serve as an important 
precedent for future recourse to remedy should 
the unfortunate need arise.

Condition of Behaviour

Rioting with deadly weapons, voluntarily causing 
hurt, mischief causing damage to property, 
trespass after preparation for hurt, assault and 
wrongful restraint and criminal intimidation come 
within the meaning of grave misbehaviour and 
constitute failure of the public scrutiny test. 
Since the claim to enjoyment of public office 
with undiminished perquisites and privileges is 
on the implicit condition of good behaviour, the 
petitioners have sought the issue of the writ of 
quo warranto on grounds that the claim to office 
has now been forfeited through the aforementioned 
acts of misdemeanour.

The presumption in the holding of elected office 
is that the tenure is one that is limited by good 
behaviour, meaning thereby that whatever the 
period stipulated in law, it does also imply that 
the office can be forfeited on misbehaviour 
whether the term is over or not, and the 
subsequent criminal processes following such 
forfeiture may follow. That there is no express 
provision for termination should not become an 
insurmountable obstacle because the law has 
recognised time and again that where the end is 
required the means are authorised, even if not 
expressly stated. It is also true that the 
disqualifications specified are not exhaustive. 
To quote the classic expression of Marshall, CJ: 
"Let the end be legiti mate, let it be within the 
scope of the constitution, and all means which 
are appro priate, which are plainly adapted to 
that end, which are not prohibited, but consist 
with the letter and spirit of the constitution, 
are constitutional" (Mc Culloch vs Maryland, 4 
Wheat (17 US) 316, 421(1819)).

It is the petitioners' belief that the 
legislators have morally forfeited their right to 
hold office and the decision of the court in this 
regard is awaited.


Note

1	Asmita Resource Centre for Women is 
committed to the securing of equal rights for 
women under the constitutional scheme and has 
campaigned for the past 16 years on women's right 
to free speech and their right against censorship 
by state and private actors. It has provided 
coun- selling and legal aid to women victims of 
violence; provided training to organisations in 
rural areas in Andhra on designing and imple- 
menting programmes that are gender sensitive; 
supported networks of persons with disabilities 
in the state; organised women writers, published 
anthologies of creative writing by women, dalit 
and Muslim writers, and has initiated campaigns 
on secularism and diversity. Women's World 
(India) is part of a world- wide network of women 
writers that works to counter censorship and 
protects the right to free speech. Formally 
launched in 2003 it has more than 200 members and 
was one of the first to protest against the smear 
campaign against actor Khushboo in Tamil Nadu. It 
also protested against the ban by the West Bengal 
government on Taslima Nasreen's autobiography and 
offered her protection and support after the 
initial fatwa was taken up by Women's World 
(International). Writers like Nabaneeta Dev Sen, 
Jeelani Bano, Mridula Garg, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, 
Abburi Chaya Devi, Bama are members of the 
network.

Reference

Berger, Raoul (2002): Impeachment: The 
Constitutional Problems, Harvard University Press.


______


[5]

http://www.petitiononline.com/didi123/petition.html
To:  Chairperson, The National Commission for Women

AN APPEAL FOR UNCONDITIONAL AND IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF SHEILA DIDI

To
Chairperson
The National Commission for Women

Dear Madam,
Sheila Didi is a popular women's activist among 
the most deprived women of Jharkhand, Orissa, 
Chhattisgarh, and Bihar. She was the former 
President of Nari Mukti Sangh, Bihar.

Sheila Didi was arrested on 7 October 2006 at 
Aamjhor Village under the police limits of 
Lathikata, Sundargarh district of Orissa. The 
police fabricated cases against her in the name 
of waging war against the state. After the arrest 
they immediately shifted her to a nearby CRPF 
camp where she was tortured physically and 
psychologically for two days. Later she was 
produced before a magistrate court which allowed 
four more days of police custody. She was once 
again tortured physically and psychologically. 
She sustained injuries on forehead and stomach 
during the police torture. The police brutally 
tortured her constantly by inflicting severe 
blows on her legs and the soles of her feet. The 
police, after blindfolding her, kept on shifting 
her from one place to the other. She was 
interrogated by the teams of police from West 
Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Since then she has been incarcerated in Rourkela 
prison. Her health has deteriorated as she has 
been denied any medical care. She hasn't been 
given even a pen or a sheet of paper, let alone 
books or periodicals to read. After she was given 
bail in all existing cases on 11th July 2007 she 
was arrested again as soon as she came out of 
prison with more cases being foisted on her.

Sheila Didi belongs to a poor Adivasi family. A 
woman of courage and conviction, she was 
convinced about the need for building up a strong 
women's movement as she realized that women in 
our country had to fight every step for their 
rights and freedom, to do away with the customs 
and traditions that treat her as an inferior 
being, a second class citizen. The founding of 
Nari Mukti Sangh along with a host of other women 
was the result of this realization.

Soon this organization developed into a strong 
women's organization. Thousands of the most 
deprived women today are conscious about their 
rights. This organization has been consistently 
fighting all forms of patriarchy while at the 
same time resisting any kind of exploitation, 
domination or discrimination. Hundreds of women, 
along with Sheila Didi have become literate in 
the due course of empowerment of this real and 
genuine movement.

The condition of women in our country is so 
pathetic and wretched that if they stand on their 
own legs in order to move ahead in their lives, 
patriarchic oppression along with all kinds of 
attacks of the contemporary society will brow 
beat them to submission. It is in this context 
that Sheila Didi has evolved as a valiant and 
uncompromising leader of the oppressed women and 
waged several struggles for the betterment of 
their lives in these regions. It is highly 
deplorable and is a grim reflection of all of our 
sensitivity that this women's activist who has 
emerged from the most oppressed rungs of Adivasi 
life and who worked day in and out to awaken 
thousands of oppressed women, has been 
incarcerated in the jail.

We the undersigned demand that Sheila Didi be 
released immediately and unconditionally. In this 
context we urge you to intervene immediately and 
ensure that she receives proper medical care and 
relief. We also demand that she be treated as a 
Political Prisoner as she has been arrested and 
incarcerated for her convictions to fight for 
women's rights.

In this connection, we also appeal to all 
democratic, civil and human rights organizations, 
women's organizations, youth and students 
organizations, workers' and democratic 
individuals to raise their voice against the 
continued incarceration of this senior women's 
activist while demanding for her unconditional 
release.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

______


[6]

  [September 9, 2007]

RAM SETHU: MAN MADE OR NATURAL

by Ram Puniyani

Different agitations are on to oppose 
Sethusamudram project linking Gulf of Mannar with 
Palk straight. Dharam Sansad (religious 
Parliament, a VHP initiative) has been mobilized 
around 'faith', on the ground that this project 
will destroy Ramar Sethu, the one which was built 
by Vanar Sena (Army of Monkeys) to help Ram cross 
over to Lanka to rescue Sita. The project was 
supported by most of the political parties in the 
past including NDA alliance Government. When 
complete, it will cut short the long journey of 
the ships from east coast to the west coast, and 
vice versa. Like Panama Canal it has been 
conceived to promote the transport, employment 
and to improve trade.  Half way now, it has been 
facing two oppositions. The one is from the 
environmentalists, who are worried about the 
destruction of flora and fauna and the dangers of 
silting in the canal. These are the arguments 
which need to be taken seriously.

The other ground, the one based on faith need to 
be dealt with at another ground. RSS and its 
affiliates are promoting a view that building 
this Sethusamudram will involve be destruction of 
Ramar Sethu which will be detrimental to our 
faith. The story goes that Ravan, the King of 
Lanka had abducted Sita to avenge the insult 
meted out to his sister Shurpnakha, whose 
proposal for marrying her was turned down by the 
Lord Ram. Assisted by his loyal devotee Hanuman, 
the Lord mobilized monkeys and built this bridge. 
It is claimed that this bridge is a marvel of 
engineering achievements of the Indian engineers 
of that time. The assertion is that it shows the 
acme of technological achievements of this land, 
and that there are other noteworthy achievements 
like the advances in aeronautical technologies 
like aero planes, missiles to name the few.

How do we understand these claims, how do we 
comprehend this peep in to the past? How do we 
distinguish fact from fiction, history from 
mythology? To reconcile history, science and 
mythology are the complex questions in our public 
life. To begin with history of events has some 
definitive characteristics, though their 
interpretations do vary with the political 
ideologies. But what about mythology? Here these 
accounts have been put forward as the fictional 
accounts of the past.  Some of these accounts 
have been associated with faith. Faith to some 
extent is natural and sometimes it is being 
manufactured and asserted for political goals.
As far as Lord Ram's story goes there are several 
versions of Ramayana, (Many Ramayanas, Richman, 
OUP). Some of these are very popular like Valmiki 
Ramayana and Tulasidas Ramcharitmanas. Surely the 
most popular one currently is the one from 
Maharashi Ramanand Sagar's mega serial which 
captivated the nation for couple of years. There 
are other versions, which have been undermined 
and attacked mostly for political reasons. Sahmat 
exhibition on different versions of Lord Ram's 
story was attacked few years ago. Some 
politically motivated people could not bear one 
of the versions presented in this exhibition. It 
showed that according to Jataka version of Ram 
Katha, in post Brahminical Buddhist Dashrath 
Jataka Sita is both as sister and wife of Ram. As 
per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya 
but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and 
brother is part of the tradition of glorious 
Kshtriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste 
and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be 
the follower of Buddha. Similarly in Jain 
versions of Ramayana project Ram as the 
propagator of anti-Brahminical Jain values, 
especially as a follower of non-violence. What do 
both Buddhist and Jain version have in common is 
that in these Ravana is not shown as a villain 
but a great soul dedicated to quest of knowledge 
and is a spiritual soul, with majestic commands 
over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. 
Popular and prevalent 'Women's Ramayan Songs (of 
Telugu Brahmin Women), put together by 
Rangnyakmma, keep the women's concern as the 
central theme and present alternate perspective. 
These songs present Sita as finally victorious 
over Ram and in these Surpanakha succeeds in 
taking revenge over Ram.

Many people dispute that the Lanka mentioned in 
Ramayana is not the current Sri Lanka. Since 
mythology does not require any proof it can be 
modulated and constructed in to a faith for 
political purposes.  Recently in the Shabri Kumbh 
held in Dangs in Gujarat, the mythology was 
modulated in to the service of politics. It was 
said, and that too with great amount of 
precision, that a particular hillock, which was 
earlier called Chamak Dongar, which adivasis used 
to worship as Shivar Deo (protector of crops), 
was the precise place where Shabri had offered 
berries to Lord Ram.  It was rechristened and a 
Shabri temple was built on the spot. Nearby, a 
river six kilometers away, Purna was named as the 
one where Guru Matang rishi use to take bath. On 
the mountain on the stone there were three marks 
which are being presented as the marks where 
Laxman had sharpened his arrows.

This Ramar Sethu has been shown to be the pre 
human structure, called tombol, a sand deposition 
due to natural process. The Geological Survey of 
India ruled out its being the manmade (or monkey 
made), construction. Same way the inference from 
NASA satellite pictures is that it is due to 
sedimentation of clay and lime stone. It is 
tombol in NASA language, connecting one land with 
another, and that it is from times when human 
habitation is doubtful.

It is easy to construct a fly over to the future 
but difficult to prevent the formation of 
mythological bridges of the past. Mythology can 
easily be constructed and planted in the peoples 
psyche as it is driven by political goals and 
rides on horse of emotion. Reason and logic have 
no place in this scheme of things. One knows that 
some Mullahs, having faith in the infinite power 
of djinns advocated their rulers to invest in the 
research for making more djinns so that power 
crisis can be solved. Also with the resurgence of 
fundamentalism one is hearing that Creation 
science is back in the race to compete with the 
theories of evolution. The question is, should we 
misuse faith, faith which can be an assuaging 
balm, for building political agendas? 

(Author is secretary of All India Secular Forum)

o o o

The Times of India
11 Sep 2007

ADAM'S BRIDGE WAS NDA DECISION: GOVT

by Dhananjay Mahapatra,TNN

NEW DELHI: Opposition NDA is shedding crocodile 
tears over the dredging of Adam's Bridge or Ram 
Sethu under the Sethusamudram channel project 
though it was its regime that had cleared it in 
2002, the Centre told the Supreme Court on Monday.

Quoting studies independently carried out by 
scientists from NASA and India, the government 
said there was no rationale for linking Adam's 
Bridge or Ram Sethu to mythology as it was not a 
man-made structure.

Dredging it, without harming the Mannar biosphere 
reserve, to create an economically profitable as 
well as strategic navigation route between India 
and Sri Lanka would not hurt religious 
sentiments, it said in an affidavit responding to 
Subramainam Swamy's petition.

It sought vacation of the apex court's interim 
order restraining dredging of Adam's Bridge and 
quoted a NASA spokesman to state that the bridge 
was nothing more than a 30-kilometre-long 
naturally occurring chain of sand banks.

It also annexed a study using IRS Satellite data 
by Marine and Water Resources Group, Space 
Application Centre, Ahmedabad,which concluded 
that "Adam's Bridge is not man-made in nature". 
It said the government had taken all possible 
clearances, including an environment-impact 
assessment, before implementing the project,which 
first figured in Commander Taylor's proposal in 
1860 contemplating cutting a canal across the 
Tonitorai Peninsula, near Pamban Pass.

The route under the project,which involves 
dredging over a width of 300 metres and depth of 
12 metres on Adam's Bridge, though inaugurated by 
Prime Minister on July 2, 2005, was approved as 
far back as October 2002 during the NDA regime.

"In fact, the project was vetted and endorsed by 
no less than 4 ministers of the previous NDA 
government - Arun Jaitley on March 9, 2001, V P 
Goyal on October 29, 2002, S Thirunavukkarasar on 
October 25, 2002, and Shatrughan Sinha - hence 
objections to the project are completely 
baseless," the Centre said.

It also rejected another contention of the 
petitioner that Adam's Bridge could qualify as an 
ancient monument and said there was no scientific 
basis to this contention. It was only a ruse to 
stop the project that would generate revenue from 
fees obtained from traffic passing through the 
channel. It said Taylor's proposal in 1860 was 
followed by similar proposals from Townsend 
(1861), Parliamentary Committee (1862),William 
Deninson (1863), Stoddart (1871), Robertson 
(1872), Sir John Code (1884), South Indian 
Railway Engineers (1903) and Robert Bristow 
(1922).

The Sethusamudram Project Committee proposal came 
in 1956. The government cited a environment 
viability report of National Environment 
Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), which 
said no dredging would be required in the Gulf of 
Mannar Marine Biosphere. The Centre said this 
developmental project involved dredging of just 
one-hundredth of Adam's Bridge.


______


[6] [Concerned citizens and progressive lawyers 
should write to the Chief Justice of India to 
reprimand Justice S N Srivastava for undermining 
the credentials of secular judicial system. 
Sitting judges should be shown the door if they 
indulge in 'communal talk'. ]

o o o

ALLAHABAD HC JUDGE WANTS GITA TO BE NATIONAL HOLY BOOK
Aasim Khan / CNN-IBN
Tuesday , September 11, 2007

New Delhi: " It is the duty of every citizen of 
India under Article 51-A of the Constitution of 
India, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, 
to follow dharma as propounded by the Bhagvad 
Gita".  This is not a chorus by any Saffron 
brigade, but the pronouncement of a judge of the 
Allahabad High Court . Justice S N Srivastava 
made this observation on August 30, while hearing 
a case filed by Shyamal Ranjan Mukherji, a priest 
at the Gopal Thakur Mandir in Varanasi.  Says 
Allahabad High Court lawyer, Krishna Shukla, "The 
Bhagavad Gita was an inspiration to all who took 
part in the struggle for India's independence and 
the preachings in the holy book are for the 
common man, and not for any particular caste or 
creed." The saffron brigade however insists that 
the judgement has nothing to do with the judge's 
religion. Says member Vishwa Hindu Parishad, B P 
Singhal, "He has justice in his mind, not as a 
Hindu, but as a judge." However if one looks back 
at the track record of S N Srivastava , there are 
other controversies as well. On April 5 this 
year, he had ruled that Muslims were not a 
minority group in Uttar Pradesh. The order was, 
however, stayed the very next day by a division 
bench of the High Court.

His ode to dharma came at the very end of his 
career, just five days before retirement.

Says columnist Saeed Naqvi, "The Bhagvad Gita is 
a part of India's culture but they are trying to 
make it a religious text." In the words of the 
judge, if we can have a national bird, we might 
as well have a national holy book too. But then, 
are such sweeping statements appropriate for a 
custodian of the law, in a secular republic?

(With inputs from Abhishek Patni in Lucknow)

______


[8]

Times of India
7 September 2007

DEOBAND ISSUES FATWA AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY

by Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui, TNN

LUCKNOW: A fatwa issued by Darul-uloom Deoband in 
Saharanpur district banning photography for 
Muslims has created a flutter in the community 
and beyond. The fatwa has called photographs 
unlawful and against Shariat.

Interestingly, the Islamic seminary has made it 
compulsory for students to afix their photographs 
in admission forms. It has also not taken into 
account that photographs are mandatory all over 
the world for those applying for Haj pilgrimage 
and passports.

The fatwa was issued in response to a query on 
photography by an Assam-based NGO by four senior 
clerics of Darul Ifta (fatwa section) of the 
seminary. The clerics are Mufti Habib-ur-Rehman, 
Mufti Zain-Ul-Islam, Mufti Mehmood and Mufti 
Zafiruddin. They stated that photography, which 
includes taking pictures or posing for picture, 
was completely against Shariat.

Mufti Arifuddin, a senior faculty member at the 
Darul-uloom Deoband (Waqf) in Saharanpur, told 
TOI, "Taking photographs is completely proscribed 
under Shariat.''

Asked about the seminary's directive to students 
to affix their photos in admission forms, Mufti 
Arif said photographs were allowed only when 
mandatory. "The ban applies on photography during 
marriages and other social functions or for 
commercial use,'' he said.

Asked about passports particularly for Haj 
pilgrimage, he said since Islam gives importance 
to intentions, photographs clicked for such 
purposes can be permitted. "But even such 
photographs must not be distributed or kept with 
oneself with the intention of showing it to 
others or for the heck of it,'' said Maulana 
Khalid Rasheed, member of the All-India Muslim 
Personal Law Board and Imam of Aishbagh Eidgah in 
Lucknow.

______



[8] [UK: MULTI CULTURAL AND FAITHFUL]

(i)

The Guardian
September 11, 2007

GHETTOES OF SUPERSTITION

Far from aiding social cohesion, faith schools 
only cause further divisions. Religious worship 
must be relegated to the private sphere and kept 
there.

by AC Grayling

So the schools secretary, Ed Balls, and faith 
group leaders have formed a partnership endorsing 
faith schools as a force to improve social 
cohesion in England. This gasp-inducing statement 
is on a par with "let us build and run more 
nuclear power stations Chernobyl fashion - oh, 
and let's put them in city centres". In the face 
of the failure of multiculturalism, with the 
awful example of faith-divided schooling in 
Northern Ireland over decades, with news of 
Deobandi control of half of British mosques where 
hostility to the host community is preached, the 
government is choosing to continue to fly in the 
face of all reason and experience, and to design 
and pay for - with our tax money - greater future 
divisiveness and trouble. It is staggering.

On the news we hear: "At a conference in London, 
Mr Balls presented a joint policy statement with 
Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish, 
Muslim, Hindu, Greek Orthodox and Sikh 
representatives." That is, representatives of an 
active constituency of weekly worshippers of 8% 
of the British population, all of them votaries 
of ancient superstitions, all of them with grubby 
hands rummaging in the pot of public funds, and 
some of them doing it with the useful background 
threat of violence and civil unrest unless the 
rummaging pays off. The spectacle is appalling.

The question is not solely one of public policy, 
or the fact that the government's otherwise 
admirable desire for social cohesion is going to 
be negated, not enhanced, by paying to keep 
children apart from one another in competing 
ghettoes of superstition. There is the point also 
that if parents wish to bring up their children 
in their own traditional superstitions, they 
should do it on their own time and at their own 
expense. The secular majority in this country 
should bitterly oppose the use of their tax money 
for this misconceived policy. Religion, the bane 
of the modern world in so many respects, has got 
to be relegated to the private sphere and kept 
there. And religious worship (not of course 
historical and sociological comparative study of 
the subject) should be removed from publicly 
funded schooling, as being divisive there too - 
among many other deficits.

This argument has in fact been won, and won 
repeatedly. Those pressing for more faith-based 
schooling use a variety of contradictory claims 
to support their case, from standards (the 
contradiction here is the ever-improving, 
ever-mounting GCSE and A-level results across the 
education sector) to the grail of social 
cohesion. It is this latter where absurdity most 
appears. "We desire all British people to live 
together in peace, harmony and mutual 
understanding, so let us divide our children into 
a multiplicity of schooling apartheids where they 
can be taught that all the other children in 
their separate ghettoes worship false gods." Good 
thinking, Mr Ed Balls. Let us, in your honour, 
officially baptise the policy "A Continuing 
Balls-Up".

o o o

(ii)

The Independent
11 September 2007

THERE'S NO DENYING IT... FAITH SCHOOLS DIVIDE
by Thomas Sutcliffe

I'm not sure I'm in a position to preach about 
faith schools, having sent two of my children to 
one at and even, to my perpetual shame, attended 
church services to rack up the Frequent Flyer 
points needed to guarantee admission to an 
admired Church of England primary. Perhaps, 
though, this confession might count as a kind of 
credential rather than a disqualification.

It indicates firstly that my prejudice against 
faith schools isn't so overwhelming that I can't 
see that some of them are also good schools, and 
secondly that parental choice - that sacrosanct 
justification for the Government's proposed 
expansion of faith schools - can sometimes be a 
very dimwitted mechanism indeed. I don't have a 
great deal of confidence in my own parental 
choice, let alone that of others.

Still, I recognise that no politician could say 
such a thing. And since Hindu, Sikh and Muslim 
parents are at a comparative disadvantage when it 
comes to choosing the religious indoctrination of 
their children, says the Government, it's only 
right that this inequality should be corrected. 
Which begs the question of whether Hindu, Sikh 
and Muslim parents (or Roman Catholic or Plymouth 
Brethren parents for that matter) would be making 
a good choice for their children - or, even more 
importantly perhaps, for society at large.

This latter issue is clearly praying on the mind 
of the Department for Children, Schools and 
Families, because their joint statement on the 
expansion of faith schools, Faith in the System, 
is strangely insistent on the ability of 
religious education to "promote community 
cohesion" . The phrase is used again and again 
throughout this flabby and abject document, as if 
sufficient repetition will induce a hypnotic 
state of acquiescence.

And I don't think you have to be a signed-up 
Freudian to wonder whether the reason it occurs 
so frequently is because the people who drafted 
the statement are uncomfortably aware that it's 
the very last thing that faith schools are likely 
to do. Indeed, if they didn't believe that then, 
why did the Government attempt (unsuccessfully) 
to impose regulations about the admission of 
other or no faith pupils? It's axiomatic: if 
faith schools increase in number and if more 
parents choose them, then the consequence will be 
community dis-integration.

Faith in the System doesn't actually include a 
single piece of hard evidence that faith schools 
will "promote community cohesion". Nor does it 
seriously address any of the important issues 
about conflicts between religious teaching and 
the National Curriculum, or between employment 
rights and doctrinal prejudice. It simply offers 
a number of anecdotal examples of faith schools 
which attempt to redress their own cultural 
homogeneity with exchange visits, comparative 
religion studies and outreach programmes.

Bizarrely, these schools are actually commended 
for adopting corrective measures to deal with a 
problem - ignorance of other cultures and faiths 
- that they have themselves aggravated. Instead 
of studying alongside children of different 
faiths and cultures, experiencing from day to day 
the countless things they have in common, pupils 
will be introduced to other faiths as part of the 
curriculum - effectively as an exercise in 
comparative anthropology. And, as I say, not one 
hard fact that supports the case - just a string 
of bland truisms and pious assurances. I suppose 
we're just meant to take the rest on faith.

______


[9]  Announcements:

(i)

Friends,

You are invited to an exhibition of conceptual 
photo illustrations by Hasan Zaman. Please join 
us and meet the artist-photographer on Wednesday 
12th September at 7:30 pm. The exhibition will 
continue till the end of the month and prints are 
available for sale.

Date: Wednesday, 12th September, 2007 (The 
exhibition will continue till the end of the 
month)
Time: 7:30 pm

Venue: The Second Floor
6-C, Prime Point Building, Phase 7, Khayaban-e-Ittehad, DHA, Karachi
Phone: 538-9273 | 0300-823-0276 | info at t2f.biz
Map: http://www.t2f.biz/location

---

(ii)


Sugawa Publications Pune,

and EKTA, Committee for Communal Amity

BOOK RELEASE FUNCTION

Book Communal Politics ;facts v/s myths by Ram 
Puniyani (Sage Pub.Delhi) has been translated in 
Marathi by Pradeep Deshpande (pub.by Sugava Pune) 
'Zamaatwaadache Rajkaran Mithake ani vastav is 
scheduled to be released by


Mr.Mahesh Bhatt
( Film Producer and Director )
on Saturday ,15th Sept.2007 at 5.30 pm.

Dr.Rajendra Vohra and Ram Puniyani will speak on the eve

The function is presided by Nikhil Wagale.

Venue ; Lok Vangmay Griha, 85, Sayani Road, 
Prabhadevi mumbai -25 ; Near Ravindra Natya 
Mandir signal stop .

You are cordially invited to participate in the programme.

The book being released is in Marathi pp.380 
;priced Rs.300/- will be available @ Rs.250/- 
only on the date.

Usha Wagh, Sugava

PS. One more book ' Dahashatwaad Mhanaje 
?''..containing detailed topics on global 
terrorism and the
one within us is now on sale . Rs.60/- but being sold @ Rs.30/- on this day


---

(iii)

                         
Subject: SAHMAT Celebrates Husain at 92

Artist MF Husain turns 92 on September 17th, 
2007. While he remains in exile from the soil of 
his birth, abandoned by the central government 
and enmeshed in false, cynical and politically 
motivated court cases lodged by the Hindutva 
forces, we, the artist community honor and 
celebrate him with all our heart. We know that 
his name and work will live on in historical 
memory long after the petty politicians are lost 
in the dust of history.

Sahmat is issuing an open call to all galleries 
and museums in India and around the world to 
celebrate a month in honour of Husain. Please 
hang at least one work of his in your spaces for 
the month. We also call on art schools and 
students to mark the month in ways of their own 
choosing and inspiration.

Sahmat will host a street celebration on the 2nd 
of October, Gandhi Jayanti, at Rafi Marg in New 
Delhi, in front of Husain's huge mural of 
Jawaharlal Nehru on the CSIR building, with 
street bands, hoarding painters and artists. We 
will also host a festival of his films including 
Gaja Gamini, Meenakshi - a Tale of Three Cities 
and Through The Eyes of a Painter.

Please join the artists of India in celebrating Husain !

Ram Rahman, Vivan Sundaram, MK Raina, Parthiv Shah for Sahmat


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

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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