SACW | Sept. 15-18, 2007 | Sri Lanka: Monk and his mercedes / Pakistan Cyber Crime Bill / India: Ram sethu controversy; MF Hussain's exile; Salwa Judam;

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | September 15-18, 2007 
| Dispatch No. 2449 - Year 10 running

[1] Sri Lanka :
   (i) The Tale of a Monk and His Mercedes in Sri Lanka (Jayadeva Uyangoda)
   (ii) Why the Ethnic Conflict Cannot Be Resolved 
Within The Framework of a Unitary State (Rohini 
Hensman)
[2] Pakistan: Peace movement formations to host 
anti-nuclear conference on Dec 2007
[3] Pakistan: "What the CyberCrime Bill means to 
you" - Citizen Videos at www.kidvai.com
[4] India: The UPA is letting the sangh parivar 
dictate the nation's agenda (Mahesh Rangarajan)
[5] India: Salwa Judum: Unreported India's Hidden War  (Madhu Chandra)
[6] India - MF Hussain: Why is he in exile? (Ram Rahman)
[7] India: Setusamudram flooded by Emotive waves (Ram Puniyani)
[8] India: Don't trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you (Jawed Naqvi)
[9] India - Gujarat : VHP goons attack a women's 
rights film screening in Ahmedabad
[10] India: Gujarat govt on a high spending 
propaganda blitz in the direction of women voters
[11] Announcement:
Call for Papers - Conference 'Indigenous Peoples 
in the "Post"-Colonial World' (New Delhi, 2-5 
January 2007)


______


[1] Sri Lanka

(i)

Economic and Political Weekly
September 8, 2007

THE TALE OF A MONK AND HIS MERCEDES IN SRI LANKA

In recent weeks, the story of a Buddhist monk 
member of  parliament of Sri Lanka importing and 
selling a Mercedes Benz has provided much 
entertainment in a war-weary country. But beyond 
its spectacle value, the episode also tells us a 
lot about how politics and society are changing 
in Sri Lanka.

by Jayadeva Uyangoda

A midst stories of war, violence, state and 
counter-state terror that continue to add to Sri 
Lanka's enduring legacy of despair, there are 
also stories to provide much needed public 
amusement and entertainment. Academic political 
commentators, including myself, often miss the 
nuances and implications of many of such 
entertainment stories, unless they take place in 
the realm of politics. But, politics has the 
character of being a specific form of mass 
entertainment. When we view politics through that 
frame, we might see it as a series ofspectacles, 
the connecting logic of which is the aesthetics 
of amazement, bewilderment and disbelief. The 
appeal of politics in this age of MTV-inspired 
colour television, as NDTV and Zee TV seem to 
demonstrate everyday in a spirit of competition, 
lies in its capacity for bewilderment.

This is an amazing story in Sri Lanka about 
political corruption that stretches the limits of 
disbelief. As a corruption story, it is a saga of 
exceptional rarity because it involves Sri 
Lanka's political party of Buddhist monks, which 
came to prominence a few years ago. To be 
precise, it is about an MP monk and his brand new 
car. It is not a chronicle about Zen and 
motorcycle riding, but a tale of a pious Buddhist 
monk and his Mercedes, almost like the parable in 
a new wave Korean film.

Bizarre Beginning

This episode had a bizarre beginning. A few weeks 
ago, a group of journalists had seen Sri Lanka's 
leader of the opposition, Ranil Wickramasinghe, 
visiting a Buddhist temple in Colombo, in a brand 
new Mercedes Benz. The journalists had asked 
Wickramasinghe, who was the prime minister in 
2002-03, when he had bought this glitzy new car. 
Wickramasinghe said he was not the owner of the 
car; it was given to him by a party supporter for 
his use. Wickramasinghe also revealed that the 
car had actually been initially imported by a 
leading MP monk of the Jathika Hela Urumaya 
(Sinhalese National Heritage Party or JHU) on a 
duty-free permit that the MPs were entitled to. 
The senior monk, according to Wickramasinghe, had 
sold the car to a supporter of his party, the 
United National Party (UNP). That person had in 
turn given the car to Wickramasinghe for his use. 
The next day, the story was front page news in 
most of the newspapers in Colombo. They had also 
published the pictures of the luxury car. 
Wickramasinghe called a press conference that 
afternoon and dis- closed more details about the 
deal. He claimed that the car had been "sold" by 
the monk for a few million rupees to his party 
supporter, who was a businessman, thereby making 
a profit and violating the government regulations 
on duty-free motor vehicles. In a tongue-in-cheek 
spirit, Wickramasinghe asked whether it was 
correct for this monk-cum-politician to use a 
Mercedes Benz instead of the Noble Eight-fold 
Path ('Arya Ashtangika Marga') advocated by the 
Buddha to travel towards the goal of nirvana. 
Wickramasinghe quite sarcastically invited  the 
venerable monk to his office so that he could 
return the car to him.  The story took another 
turn the next day. The UNP, which is the main 
opposition party in parliament, claimed that the 
young businessman, who had bought the car from 
theMP, had been abducted by the security guards 
of a minister who happened to be the lay leader 
of the monk MP's party. The following day, the 
businessman appeared at a police station in the 
outskirts of Colombo to make a statement that he 
was not abducted and that he had merely gone on a 
business tour. But the UNP claimed that the man 
was actually abducted in order to force him to 
hand over to the monk the original documents 
relating to the car transaction. When the 
abductors realised that the businessman did not 
have them in his possession they released him, 
but forced him to make the statement to the 
police denying the abduction story. As it 
transpired later, the original documents were 
with Wickramasinghe.

Role of Buddhist Party

The party of the Buddhist monks, the JHU, is an 
influential partner in the present coalition 
regime of president Mahinda Rajapakse. In the 
parliamentary elections held in April 2004 it 
fielded 130-odd candidates, all of whom were 
Buddhist monks. The JHU came to prominence in 
2003 after the sudden death of Sri Lanka's 
telegenic Buddhist preacher monk, Gangodawila 
Soma, who had like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in south 
India, a consider- able following among the urban 
social strata. The fact that Soma suddenly died 
in Russia on a private visit to accept an 
honorary doctorate from a dubious private 
university in St Petersburg fuelled speculation 
among Buddhist nationalist circles in Colombo 
that the monk was deliberately killed as a part 
of a Christian conspiracy against Sinhalese 
Buddhists. The JHU saw the Christian conspiracy 
theory as an effective vehicle for the party with 
an extreme Sinhalese nation alist agenda to gain 
national prominence. Through its concerted and 
repetitive appeals to the feelings of insecurity 
among the Sinhalese Buddhists and effective 
tactics of mobilisation, the JHU attracted to its 
membership a large number of Buddhist monks as 
well as a following from among urban middle class 
strata. With its all-monk candidate list, the JHU 
ran its 2004 election campaign on two platforms: 
to protect the Sinhalese Buddhist interests and 
aspirations and to restore and safeguard morality 
in politics and public life. The monks who 
contested the elections and those who became JHU 
MPs - there were nine of them inthe 225-member 
Parliament - projected themselves as the guardian 
of the Sinhalese nation and public morality.

It is against this backdrop that the Mercedes 
Benz sale became a contro versial issue. The 
leader of the opposition called the party of the 
Buddhist monks an "association of impious monks" 
- a statement which the ruling party and the JHU 
seized in their counter attack. They described 
Wickramasinghe's statement as an insult to the 
entire institution of the 'Sangha' (Buddhist 
monks) and an act of denigration of Buddhism. The 
JHU monks even organised a one-day satyagraha to 
protest against Wickramasinghe's alleged 
anti-Buddhist statements. The JHU also filed a 
case in the courts against Wickramasinghe for 
criminally defaming their monk MP. Meanwhile, 
being an unusual source of entertainment for the 
war-weary Sri Lankan populace, this "Mercedes 
debate"occupied front pages of the newspapers and 
prime TV time for a few weeks. Its mass 
entertainment value apart, there are some 
significant public issues involved in this Benz 
car controversy. The first is that it exposed how 
many Sri Lankan MPs have been using with impunity 
their duty-free vehicle concession for personal 
aggrandisement. Actually, the JHU leaders 
publicly defended the action of their monk MP by 
saying that quite a few MPs have been doing the 
same thing and there was nothing unusual in the 
JHU monk's trans- action. The JHU threatened to 
come out with a list of MPs who had sold their 
vehicles as well as vehicle permits. Although 
they never produced the list,it may have 
contained some names of both government and 
opposition MPs, including more names of JHU monk 
MPs themselves. If the JHU's claim that many MPs 
have been engaging in this practice for quite 
some time was true, then the Sri Lankan lawmakers 
have not only been making new laws; at least some 
of them have also been showing citizens of how to 
transgress the law without actually breaking it. 
And the JHU monk is one of the few Buddhist monks 
to admit, though reluctantly and in acute 
embarrassment, the principle that moral precepts 
and their violation are not mutually exclusive, 
but mutually constitutive elements of public 
behaviour.

Transgression of Rules

The second important issue that emerged in this 
episode is about the alleged transgression by 
this particular MP monk of rules which governed 
the behaviour of Buddhist monks. These 
disciplinary rules are called 'vinaya'. The 
leader of the opposition in his public statements 
often emphasised that the JHU monk's car 
transaction was a gross violation of the vinaya 
rules. Wickramasinghe obviously expected a public 
reaction of outrage. In letters to the editor 
columns in the news-papers, some Buddhists 
expressed their horror and indignation over what 
they saw as the conduct unbecoming of a "disciple 
of the Buddha" ('Buddha puthra'). The true Buddha 
puthras, according to their reasoning, should not 
be buying and selling Mercedes Benz cars, but be 
leading a simple life of world-renouncers and 
following the Noble Eight-fold Path. But this 
point about the authentic behaviour of Buddhist 
monks in a framework of a world-renouncer is 
actually a very problematic one, because the 
Sangha behaviour in general is shaped in a 
tradition of transgressing many key vinaya rules. 
The transgression has been taking place without 
publicly acknowledging that fact of 
transgression. The very fact that some monks 
contest elections and become MPs is itself a 
serious transgression of the Buddhist rules. 
Similarly, the JHU monk MPs have been advocating 
a military solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic 
conflict, actively opposing a negotiated 
political settlement with "terrorists". This 
position is simply beyond the pale of the basic 
tenets of Buddhist ethics, let alone the vinaya 
rules. Many Buddhist monks actually lead a life 
of landlords, professionals, property-owners, 
soothsayers, medical practitioners, school 
teachers and heads of educational institutions 
while many others live the life of pauperism 
dependent on the support of poor peasants. Some 
Buddhists in Sri Lanka consider the pauper monks 
living in seclusion as the true Buddha puthras. 
But at the same time, the lay Buddhists are quite 
aware of the fact the Buddhist monks in general 
defy many vinaya rules.

Ranil Wickramasinghe himself is a patron of many 
Buddhist temples that do not necessarily adhere 
to the Noble Eight-fold Path. In power, he may 
have used the state patronage and material 
resources to compensate for political services 
rendered to his party by some Buddhist monks. 
Thus, the lay politicians also maintain double 
standards when it comes to the political use of 
Buddhism and Buddhist monks. Even then the lay 
Buddhists explain it away by asserting that they 
continue to respect the "yellow robe of the 
Buddha" ('Buddha cheevaraya'). There is a 
Durkheimean point here: in religious piety, sign 
is more important than the substance. This 
constitutes an essential ambivalence that the 
Buddhists maintain towards their monks who 
violate the vinaya rules as a matter of existence.

Precept and Practice

This ambivalence, or the contradiction between 
precept and practice, has attracted the attention 
of some of Sri Lanka's leading cultural 
anthropologists - to name a few, Stanley Tambiah, 
Gananath Obeysekere, H L Seneviratne, and lately 
Ananda Abeyskera. To use Stanley Tambiah's 
formulation in a less rigorous frame, Sri Lankan 
Buddhist monks have been both world renouncers 
and world conquerors at the same time. As novice 
monks, they leave the lay life and the worldly 
commitments associated with it in early 
childhood, but in the growing up process as 
members of an organised community they build up 
another world in which the distinction between 
the priestly life and the lay life is marked more 
by symbols than in substance. Monks, in fact, 
build as monks a new universe of attachments. For 
some of them, the nation and the state are 
cardinal objects of desire, as is clearly the 
case with JHU monks. Thus, the buying and selling 
of a Benz car can be construed as a statement of 
that essential ambivalence that actually 
constitutes contemporary Buddhist monkhood. Even 
then, a question remains for JHU monks. It is a 
question about the contradiction between their 
public precepts and private practices in 
politics. They came to parliamentary politics in 
2004 claiming to "clean up" public life, to 
restore public morality in politics and to 
transform Sri Lanka into a "Buddhist state" 
('Bauddha Rajyaya'). In all these claims, there 
was a very clear right-wing and Sinhala Buddhist 
hegemonic agenda. The present war has given a new 
impetus to this rightwing drift.

Meanwhile, in the present Rajapakse 
administration in Colombo, the JHU and some of 
its lay and priestly leaders have been 
functioning as ideological counsellors and 
strategy advisors. They have been pushing the 
Rajapakse administration towards the outer edge 
of democratic governance. Ranil Wickramasinghe, 
being the leader of the opposition in parliament, 
perhaps took a calculated step to weaken the 
JHU's political credibility in the country as a 
necessary intervention in this larger political 
context.


o o o

(ii)

http://federalidea.com

SRI LANKA AT THE CROSSROADS: WHY THE ETHNIC 
CONFLICT CANNOT BE RESOLVED WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK 
OF A UNITARY STATE

September 13th, 2007

by Rohini Hensman

Today, Sri Lanka stands at a critical juncture. 
It can continue down the path of destruction, as 
it has on all previous occasions when faced with 
a similar choice; or it can strike out on a new 
path which is less familiar, but contains the 
promise of peace and prosperity. With the final 
APRC proposals expected in the near future, 
newspapers report that the APRC has been forced 
to adopt the label of a 'unitary state', which it 
had so strenuously avoided in the past.

If this is true, then it will only prove to the 
world - including India and the UN General 
Assembly, which President Rajapakse will be 
addressing later this month - that the entire 
exercise was nothing but a fraud to bamboozle the 
people of Sri Lanka and the international 
community. And the country will continue hurtling 
down the path of destruction. That is why we must 
sincerely hope that this word will be dropped in 
order to give us the chance of a brighter future.

Why is this issue so important? In some 
countries, a unitary state is compatible with 
democracy, but not in ours. Not with our history, 
not in our present circumstances. A brief look at 
what is happening in the East will make it clear 
why this is so. 'Liberation' of the East? A 
recent report of the award-winning University 
Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), entitled 'Can 
the East be Won through Human Culling?', makes 
disturbing reading.

It argues, 'If one were to point to a single most 
potent reason why the LTTE thrives, it is state 
backed aggression over land that regards the 
minorities as aliens. As conceived by the ruling 
section of the Sinhalese political class in the 
run up to the violence of July 1983, the 
guarantees against separatism were to be imposed 
through strategic areas from which the Muslims 
and Tamils were to be excluded through brute 
force and gazette declarations that found 
euphemisms for these exercises as 'Special Areas' 
for some activity to do with allegedly security, 
economic or Buddhistic projects.

' This very policy, which gave birth to a war 
that still devastates our country today, has 
recently been revived in the East. A Gazette 
Declaration of 30 May 2007 established the Mutur 
East/Sampoor High Security Zone, to which its 
former Tamil inhabitants, who had been driven out 
by indiscriminate government bombing and 
shelling, would not be allowed to return. In 
other areas, Tamils have been excluded on the 
grounds that there are Buddhist monuments. Yet 
these monuments represent the Mahayana Buddhism 
then popular in South India rather than the 
Theravada variety dominant among the Sinhalese, 
and therefore do not constitute evidence of any 
sort that these areas were ever predominantly 
'Sinhalese'.

The minutes of a meeting on 4 June 2007 of 
Defence Secretary Rajapakse with 26 other top 
security officials (all Sinhalese) reported that 
the Defence Secretary advocated 'population 
control measures' as a mean of countering the 
LTTE. The nature of these measures can be guessed 
from the expulsion of Tamils from Colombo on the 
7th. Although this violation of human rights 
masquerading as a security measure was halted by 
the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice refused to 
stop population transfer on a much larger scale 
in the East, claiming that it concerned 'national 
security'.

This is a violation of international law, which 
gives internally displaced persons the right of 
return to their homes, but that, apparently, did 
not concern the Chief Justice, who had earlier 
ruled that Sri Lanka is not bound by 
international treaties it has signed! Muslims too 
have been driven from their land using the same 
arguments. For example, in September 2006, ten 
Muslim labourers who went into the area near the 
Shastriveli STF camp in Pottuvil to repair an 
irrigation tank were massacred, and later, 1,000 
acres around the STF camp were allocated to the 
Shastriveli Buddhist Temple, excluding the local 
Muslim population. As these examples show, the 
dominant mode used to accomplish the displacement 
of Tamils and Muslims of the East is violence by 
the state security forces upheld by the 
powers-that-be in Colombo.

The UTHR(J) report concludes that the East is now 
ruled by military or ex-military officials 
controlled by the Defence Ministry and JHU; a 
province with a large Tamil-speaking majority is 
under a Sinhala supremacist military dictatorship 
imposed from outside. However, like all fascist 
rulers, they need local collaborators, and the 
TMVP have undertaken this role. In return for 
concessions from the Sinhala extremists, they 
have taken on the task of keeping the local 
population in bondage.

Reports of child conscription, abductions, 
extortion, enforced disappearances and 
extrajudicial killings by the Karuna group were 
recently supplemented by a communique banning the 
activities of other Tamil political parties, and 
handbills threatening to kill members of the 
public who vote for any party other than the TMVP 
in the planned local elections. This is no 
different from the way that the LTTE treat the 
people subjected to their dictatorship, so let us 
not talk about 'liberation'.

The people of the East have been thrown out of 
the frying pan into the fire, terrorised not just 
by a Tamil force which retains all the marks of 
its LTTE origins, but also by Sinhala extremists 
bent on transfer of population - a crime against 
humanity - to alter the ethnic composition of the 
East. We should all take a good, hard look at the 
hellish situation in the East, because this is 
exactly - EXACTLY - what is meant by 'maximum 
devolution in a unitary state': a central 
Sinhala-supremacist state 'sharing power' with 
despotic local warlords.

The War-Cry of Sinhala Fascism

Where did this 'unitary' formula come from, and 
why is it being forced into the APRC proposals, 
contrary to the consensus that had emerged? We 
may recall that the majority report of the panel 
of experts appointed by the APRC circumvented the 
dilemma posed by the unitary/federal 
contradiction by leaving out both words. Prof. 
Tissa Vitharana, as Chairman of the APRC, 
retained this formula in his own draft. Muslims 
and moderate Tamils, who had never wanted a 
separate state, were willing to go along with 
this compromise, abandoning insistence on the 
word 'federal' in return for the dropping of the 
word 'unitary'.

The UNP had earlier indicated its willingness to 
concede a federal state, and therefore had no 
reason to insist on a unitary one. EVEN THE SLFP 
PROPOSALS, WITH ALL THEIR FAULTS, INITIALLY DID 
NOT INCLUDE THE WORD 'UNITARY'. It was only on 
the insistence of the JVP and JHU that this word 
was added, with President Rajapakse's backing. 
What is their justification for being so obsessed 
with the unitary character of the state, when the 
APRC proposals already emphasised that the state 
would be united, and contained strong safeguards 
against separatism?

It is because 'united' is compatible with respect 
for diversity, whereas their version of 'unitary' 
is derived from the Arya Sinhala concept of Sri 
Lanka, which in turn is related to the genocidal 
Aryan supremacism of the Nazis. Those who 
advocate it are fascists who believe 'Me Rata 
Sinhala Rata,' and are willing to commit any 
crime, up to and including mass murder, in order 
to achieve their goal. The JHU may disguise 
themselves as Buddhist monks, yet by contrast 
with Lord Buddha, who abandoned state power and 
wealth to seek enlightenment, they abandon the 
pursuit of enlightenment in favour of state 
violence and expensive perks.

The pseudo-leftists of the JVP, forgetting the 
elementary lesson that global capitalism can be 
defeated only by solidarity between workers of 
all countries, indulge in rabid xenophobia and 
hysterical denunciations of anyone supporting 
justice for working people in their own country 
who belong to minority communities. The majority 
of the electorate did not vote for these parties; 
not even the majority of Sinhalese people voted 
for them, so why are they being allowed to 
determine the future of Sri Lanka? Isn't this a 
travesty of democracy?

JHU/JVP Support for the LTTE

The only force that stands to gain from the 
activities of the JHU/JVP is the LTTE. They would 
no doubt reject the APRC proposal whether it 
contains the word 'unitary' or not, because their 
own fascism precludes acceptance of a democratic 
political solution. But the reaction of others 
would be very different, depending on the content 
of the proposals. If the proposal is for a 
unitary (i.e. Sinhala 'Buddhist') state, then the 
majority of Tamils, the international community 
and even Sinhalese moderates will see the 
rejection as justified. This will strengthen the 
LTTE, and enable it to survive to fight another 
day. Conversely, if the proposals are not for a 
unitary state but for genuine democratic 
devolution, the LTTE will be isolated, all but 
its hard-line supporters will abandon it, and its 
days will be numbered.

Thus it is the JHU/JVP combine and Sinhala 
nationalists who are conspiring to support the 
LTTE, while Prof. Vitharana has been making a 
commendable effort to defeat them by presenting 
proposals that will win the support of the 
majority of Tamils and isolate the LTTE. The 
Sinhala ultra-nationalists think that simply 
denying human rights violations against Tamils 
will convince the international community that 
Tamils have never been oppressed in Sri Lanka. In 
fact, such denials have exactly the opposite 
effect (and I have seen this with my own eyes): 
foreigners, who are not so ignorant as to believe 
these propagandists, interpret the denial to mean 
that the government is not willing to redress 
violations of the human rights of Tamil-speaking 
people, who therefore have no chance of security 
and dignity in a Sinhala-dominated Sri Lanka.

Thus these idiotic Sinhala nationalists 
unwittingly conduct propaganda for the separatist 
programme of the LTTE! This is likely to be the 
upshot of the upcoming Sri Lankan presence at the 
UN, unless some serious rethinking is done. 
Despite being on opposite sides of the language 
divide, the JHU/JVP and LTTE share the same 
fascist politics, and thus reinforce each other. 
The vision of a unitary state propagated by the 
former gave birth to separatism in Sri Lanka and 
sustains it even today. It follows that 
separatism can never be defeated until this 
vision of a unitary state has been thrown out by 
the people of Sri Lanka.

Averting a Disaster

In an almost uniformly dismal scenario, the only 
bright spot during the past year has been the 
proceedings of the APRC. At its best, it has 
given us hope that a consensus could be reached 
which would end the war by satisfying the 
democratic aspirations of the minorities without 
antagonising the moderate Sinhalese majority. 
Thanks to the efforts of Prof. Vitharana, such a 
consensus was all but thrashed out. It would be a 
tragedy indeed if all this effort and creative 
thinking were jettisoned in favour of the 
bankrupt formula of a unitary state, thus 
depriving the minorities of all hope in the 
possibility of a political settlement and 
strengthening the LTTE.

Almost anything else would be better: for 
example, holding up the proposals until the 
'unitary' state is abandoned, or coming out with 
two alternative proposals. If the worst comes to 
the worst, it would even be preferable for Tissa 
Vitharana to resign from the APRC Chairmanship 
rather than put his seal of approval on such a 
negation of his work. But the best solution would 
be for all the other parties which have been part 
of the APRC process to reject the unitary 
formula. The UNP, which bears much of the 
responsibility for perpetuating the war by 
sabotaging past efforts to bring about a 
political solution, is again playing a dirty role 
by washing its hands of the APRC process. The 
only honourable course of action for it now would 
be to return to the APRC and support the fight 
for a democratic consensus.

The President Must Choose

This is the moment of truth for President 
Rajapakse too. He has been swinging wildly from 
side to side, on the one hand promising maximum 
devolution within a united Sri Lanka, on the 
other insisting on a unitary state, one the one 
hand promising to abide by the majority 
consensus, on the other forcing the position of a 
minority down the throats of the APRC. It is hard 
to tell from his behaviour whether he appeases 
the Sinhala fascists because he is one of them, 
or because he is an opportunist who is willing to 
sell his own mother (Sri Lanka Mata) in order to 
keep himself and his brothers in power. His 
credibility is at stake now. If he goes to the UN 
with a proposal for a unitary state, he will 
stand exposed as a fraud. Moreover, it is clear 
that the majority of people in Sri Lanka are NOT 
insisting on a unitary state, although they do 
oppose separatism. So whom does the president 
represent: the democratic mainstream or the 
extremist fringe?



______



[2]


The News International
17 September 2007

PAKISTAN TO HOST ANTI-NUCLEAR CONFERENCE ON DEC 8-9

by our correspondent

A consultative meeting of civil society, academia 
and trade union representatives has decided to 
hold an international anti-nuclear conference on 
Dec 8-9, 2007, in Pakistan as part of the 
anti-weapons movement.

The venue of the conference will be announced 
later. The conference will have speakers and 
participants mainly from South Asia but a number 
of participants from Europe and other parts of 
the world would also be invited.

The main objective of the conference is to seek 
an understanding on a "nuclear free South Asia".

This decision was taken in a consultative meeting 
held here at PILER Centre on Sunday under the 
aegis of Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC). The 
meeting was attended by PPC president Dr A.H. 
Nayyar, B.M. Kutty, M.B. Naqvi, Dr Jaffar Ahmed, 
Dr Tipu Sultan, Karamat Ali, Rahat Saeed, Ms 
Sheen Farukh, Aftab Nabi, Mohammad Tahseen, Gafar 
Malik, Ramzan Memon and others.

The meeting noted that the recent Indo-US nuclear 
deal has renewed the arms race between India and 
Pakistan, two nuclear rivals, which poses a great 
threat to the entire South Asian region.

It was also noted that the two countries are 
spending a huge chunk of their budget on arms 
leaving very little allocation for social 
development. As a result, a large number of the 
population in both India and Pakistan is deprived 
of basic facilities such as clear drinking water, 
education and sanitation.

The meeting was told that India and Pakistan 
spent 20 and four billion US dollars respectively 
on defence expenditures in the year 2005.

The meeting decided that it was high time that 
civil society organisations take serious note of 
this 'madness' and resist attempts of further 
nuclearisation in the region. There is a need to 
mobilise people against nuclear as well as 
conventional arms, the meeting resolved.

Dr A.H. Nayyar, president of the PPC, while 
addressing the conference, gave a briefing about 
a recently-held conference in Delhi and said that 
there is very strong anti-arms movement in India, 
which is opposing the Indo-US nuclear deal. 
"There is a need to have such an initiative in 
Pakistan and to build networks with other peace 
moments in the region," he added.

He said that Pakistan has increased its capacity 
to prepare up to 40 nuclear weapons a year and 
huge resources are being diverted to weapons 
building. "This is nothing but madness," he added.

Karamat Ali, Executive Director PILER and a peace 
activist said that every second day we read a 
small news item that Pakistan has tested a new 
missile which has the capacity to carry nuclear 
weapons. "This is a very dangerous trend and 
poses a great threat to the people of Pakistan 
and the region," he added.

He said both India and Pakistan have gone 'crazy' 
building nuclear and conventional weapons. 
Karamat said that India has already announced 
that it will spent US$10 billion on buying and 
building conventional arms this year and that 
amount will go up to US$50 billion in the next 
five years.

Dr Tipu Sultan, a representative of Pakistan 
Medical Association (PMA) and Doctors for Peace 
and Development, explained the dangers of a 
possible nuclear blast and said that the threat 
is un-imaginable. "We don't have the 
infrastructure to treat victims of smaller 
incidents leave alone a catastrophe such as a 
nuclear blast," he added.

The meeting also decided that before holding the 
conference in December, smaller forums will be 
held on the topic and the first such forum will 
take place on Sept 21 in Hyderabad.

The meeting also noted that that there is a lack 
of awareness among the masses on the subject and 
people have been given false information, such as 
notions that nuclear weapons are a form of 
deterrence. It was decided that an 
anti-nuclearisation awareness campaign would be 
launched.

A majority of the participants also suggested 
consulting political parties on the issue and 
making anti-nuclearisation an agenda item of 
civil society during the elections.

The meeting also endorsed the joint resolution 
passed at the "Indo-US Nuclear Deal Conference" 
held on August 31 and September 1 in New Delhi.

The resolution said that the India-US deal would 
aggravate the nuclear arms race in South Asia and 
in the Asian continent as whole, and would 
further weaken the already feeble momentum 
towards regional and global disarmament.

It further said that there are serious misgivings 
about the deal in other South Asian countries 
including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. As a 
result of the deal, Pakistan is also accelerating 
its fissile material production efforts.

A seven-member committee was formed for the 
preparation of the conference to be held in 
December 2007.

______


[3]  Pakistan:

WHAT THE CYBERCRIME BILL MEANS TO YOU ...

Watch the videos at: 
http://www.kidvai.com/windmills/2007/09/t2f-q-cybercrime-bill-flaws-and-dangers.html

Check out: 
http://www.kidvai.com/windmills/2007/09/another-draconian-law-in-offing.html

______


[4]

The Telegraph
September 18, 2007

A BRIDGE TOO FAR
- The UPA is letting the sangh parivar dictate the nation's agenda

by Mahesh Rangarajan
The author is an independent researcher whose 
most recent work is an edited volume, 
Environmental Issues in India

A week is a long time in politics. Nowhere is 
this as true as in India today. Till a few days 
ago, the rift between the Congress and the Left 
over the character and nature of the ties between 
India and the United States of America was at 
centre stage. The "Ramar Setu" issue, to give it 
its correct and full Tamil name, has displaced 
it, or at least taken some of the public space 
away. Yet, the latter offers a deep insight into 
the way in which the two leading political 
parties operate. Irrespective of one's views on 
the matter, and there are bound to be strong 
views on a case such as this, there is now little 
doubt that the United Progressive Alliance 
government finds itself vulnerable under attack 
from an energetic Bharatiya Janata Party. In the 
process, the latter is setting the former's 
agenda.

It is a different matter that many Congress men 
and women do not see things quite that way. The 
damage control by the prime minister and the 
Congress president was swift. Yet, it leaves more 
questions unanswered than they might be prepared 
to admit. The Sethusamudram project was first 
proposed as long ago as 1841. It was cleared by 
the National Democratic Alliance government 
headed by the leader who said he would always be 
a swayamsevak: Atal Bihari Vajpayee. All parties 
in the state of Tamil Nadu, save only one, have 
not only supported it but actively campaigned for 
it both in and out of the corridors of power.

For the UPA government, to now say that 
realignment will be an option is to ignore that 
the dredging and preparation of the channel 
cannot be left half-finished. To make matters 
more complex, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, 
Kalaignar Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who has just 
completed a half-century as legislator, has a 
record few outside the state take notice of. He 
has been an atheist as a teenage volunteer in the 
rationalist Dravida Kazhagam, the precursor of 
his own party. In Tamil Nadu, unlike in much of 
the Hindi belt, Ram has always been a deity 
worshipped by a small minority of Vaisnava 
Brahmins. In any case, the larger Dravidian logic 
cuts across parties and will appeal to men like 
V. Gopalsamy and A. Ramadoss.

The larger fact is that the issue has given the 
BJP just the opportunity it has been desperate 
for. Ever since it lost the May 2004 general 
elections, the party has been in a state of 
drift. It has been unable to define an issue that 
fits into the larger grammar and idiom of 
Hindutva. The last time such an issue lent itself 
to such mobilization was the Ram temple movement, 
whose success exceeded all expectations. It is no 
coincidence that L.K. Advani was at the forefront 
then, and is so now. In both cases, it was the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad that prepared the ground, 
with the political party following only after the 
public mood had been tested.

In the Eighties, the party was a small shadow of 
what it is today. It did not rule a single state 
and had only two Lok Sabha members of parliament. 
Yet, the ground for its re-emergence from the 
ruins was prepared by none other than the 
Congress. Within the same month, the government 
opened the locks on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya 
and announced its intention to amend the Muslim 
Personal Law. Each act was to balance the other. 
One was aimed at consolidation of Hindus and the 
other at reassuring Muslims. By 1989, some three 
years later, it was evident that the Congress had 
fallen foul of both.

But the key point was that Hindu consolidation 
eventually helps only one political party and 
that is not the Congress. It may be a coincidence 
but the Union law minister in 1986 was the same 
senior Congressman as in 2007, Hans Raj Bhardwaj. 
The statement on the Ramar Sethu he gave last 
week could well have been given by a spokesperson 
of the Hindutva camp. The reality is that the 
Congress is unable to either confront or to 
co-opt the views and attitudes that go with the 
sangh parivar. In fact, in trying to speak in the 
same language and steal the latter's clothes, the 
Congress loses something of itself.

The larger issue is a more serious one. Public 
debate on vexed issues is the lifeblood of 
democracy. There is no reason any two persons 
should agree on what should be done about the 
realignment and dredging of the straits that 
separate India from Sri Lanka. But there can be 
no substitute for the rule of law in a civilized, 
law-governed society.

The same logic ought to apply irrespective of 
which religious or cultural group is an aggrieved 
party. It is ingenious to claim, as some 
columnists have, that faith is above reason. No 
less a person than Mahatma Gandhi, when 
confronted by learned Sanskrit pundits who found 
chapter and verse to uphold the exclusion of 
"untouchables" as an act of faith, found a way 
out. Confronted with the choice between reason 
and the shastra, he chose the former. Reason 
could not bow before faith as it was essential in 
creating a humane society.

Of course, there have been other approaches to 
the issue. Nehru was an agnostic and not a 
believer. Ambedkar went further than either man, 
embracing Buddhism in the twilight of his life 
because the Buddha appealed to reason and not 
blind faith. These are issues of faith, politics 
and rationality that were by no means confined to 
those engaged in the struggle for freedom or for 
social change in the century just past.

The debates and the dogmas are older and a 
roll-call would summon to the bar some of the 
most significant names in India's intellectual 
and political history. But what should concern 
all who believe in a reasoned debate is the 
alacrity with which not only the ruling alliance 
but much of middle-class opinion has swung around 
to the soft Hindutva point of view.

There is no doubt that such intolerance is not 
the monopoly of any one group or faction. In his 
recent book, Beyond the Age of Innocence, the 
veteran Singapore diplomat, Kishore Mahbubani, 
remarks that it is a measure of the breadth of 
Western public opinion that Bertrand Russell 
could write a book that has been republished many 
times, Why I am not a Christian. Mahbubani 
remarks that the publication of such a book in 
any Muslim majority country other than Turkey 
might trigger more extreme reaction. He may well 
have a point.

He need not have gone so far. When the professor, 
Kancha Ilaiah, wrote his classic on caste 
exclusion entitled Why I am not a Hindu, the 
varsity authorities tried to initiate legal 
proceedings against him. Better sense eventually 
prevailed on the Osmania University.

But the point is an important one. Freedom cannot 
be divisible and yet endure. There can be little 
ground for claims of tolerance and universalism 
if those making such claims refuse to subject 
themselves to a debate. No one can compel anyone 
to believe or disbelieve that a particular spot 
is or is not sacred. It is a truism that such 
beliefs cannot be imposed.

That is effectively what opponents of the 
Sethusamudram are doing. They are making their 
beliefs the touchstone for all. Worse than that, 
the government of the day, ostensibly committed 
to pluralism, has no qualms bending over 
backwards to please this view. This is 
appeasement by any name. It is not archaeology 
but the ideas of a law-governed state and a 
humane and rational society that are at stake. 
Those who stand silent will hasten the demise of 
reason, the life blood of democracy.

______


[5]

madhuchandra.org

SALWA JUDUM: UNREPORTED INDIA'S HIDDEN WAR

by Mr. Madhu Chandra
Human Rights Activist

Have you heard about Salwa Judum - India's hidden 
war in tribal dominated area of central Indian 
state Chhattisgarh? I am sorry! I haven't until I 
attended at a People's Convention at Hindi 
Bhavan, New Delhi organized by Campaign for Peace 
and Justice in Chhattisgarh (CPJC)!

Sociologists, activists and scholars have 
condemned Salwa Judum as State machinery's 
license to its people to kill its own people in 
the name of counterfeit encountering Red 
Corridors.

Can you believe it happens in central part of 
this vast country, known and proud of being 
world's largest democratic nation! Indian Medias 
of both print and electronic are known of their 
capability to unearth but it seems they are naïve 
on India's hidden war against tribal communities 
of Chhattisgarh that makes India's hidden war 
still hidden from nation's eyes and ears.

CNN IBN in 2006 March warned the nation provoking 
the Home Ministry by exposing the Red Corridor of 
Naxals (Maoists) in tribal dominated areas of 
Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhan, Chhattisgarh and 
Andhra Pradesh.

A documentary film "India's Hidden War" produced 
by reporter Sandra Jordan and Director James 
Brabazon was screened and left its images of deep 
wound and violation against the innocent tribal 
communities of Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh 
who used to live peacefully in their own world.

Sandra and James traveled deep into the Indian 
jungle to expose how India's aspirations for a 
superpower economy are resulting in an 
increasingly bloody civil war. Government funded 
militias are battling red guerrillas of Naxal for 
control of India's mineral resources. Hundreds of 
thousands of tribal villagers are caught in the 
crossfire between Red Corridors and Salwa Judum. 
(Picture: Salwa Judum Camp)

Salwa Judum in Gondi term means a peace campaign 
merged by capitalists, traders, land owners and 
elites to fight against Naxalites from mid 2005, 
often supported by state machineries, state 
police forces and politicians. Ever since Salwa 
Judum merged, the lives of people, particularly 
Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, where 90% of 
its habitants are tribal communities, became 
turmoil.

According to CPJC, the leaders of Salwa Judum 
have empowered sections of tribal communities 
with bows and arrows, swords, axes and arms, 
marched from village to villages to ethnic 
cleanse from Naxalites. Villagers who refuse to 
join Salwa Judum have been treated as members or 
pro-Naxalites. Tribal villagers are forced to 
relief camps run by Salwa Judum and those who 
refused were severely beaten even murdered by 
Salwa Judum activist with support state police 
forces and Naga Regiments.[1]

Salwa Judum leadership composes from top 
political leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party and 
Congress. They appoint the Camp leaders, mostly 
from non-tribal communities. Under political 
leaders and non-tribal camp leaders, recruits the 
hot blood youngsters with indoctrinations of hate 
campaign into State Police Officers, who are 
trained and paid by Government machineries to 
join hands with ordinary innocent tribal 
villagers to loot, burn and rape in the name of 
retaliating Naxalites.

Salwa Judum, Naxalites and Security Forces have 
killed over 500 lives ever since the merge of 
Salwa Judum in Dantewada district alone. 
Violation against women includes the gang rap, 
custodial rape, mutilation of private parts, 
murder, continuous sexual abuse in villages, 
police stations and even so called relief camp of 
Salwa Judum. (Picture: Image of unsanitary in 
Salwa Judum Camps)

The lowest 70,000 to maximum 100,000 Villagers 
are forced to internal displacement and migration 
to neighboring states of Orissa, Jharkhan and 
Andhra Pradesh, who there suffer pathetic life 
situations.

Government of Chhattisgarh has setup 20 Salwa 
Judum camps in Dantewada district where it is 
reported to have 47,500 villagers taken shelter. 
The fact-finding team of CPJC reports that most 
of the relief camps face acute shortage of food, 
water and amenities. People are forced to live in 
extremely unsanitary conditions and did not allow 
tribal villagers to return back homes.

In some of the relief camps, Government is trying 
to convert into permanent villages of which many 
villagers are worried that their villages and 
cultivation lands with MSF in Chhattisgarhrich 
mineral resources would be one day turn into the 
clutches of capitalists, traders and elites to 
convert into mineral factories.

Challenging the constitution validity of Salwa 
Judum, the Supreme Court of India issued notice 
to Chhattisgarh government in May 2007 to stop 
Salwa Judum committing atrocities in the pretext 
of countering the Naxalite movement and urged to 
order impartial enquiry into atrocities committed 
by this group.[2]

The state machinery's crime against its own 
people has been desperately kept hidden to the 
nation and world. The victims testified in 
People's Convention that state machineries 
intentionally didn't allow Medias to come and 
report on India's hidden war of Salwa Judum.

Deep in India's central jungle, weaker section of 
India's tribal societies who already suffered 
socio-economic and educational backwardness, 
remains unheard of their man made and state 
sponsored crime on humanity. (Picture: Children 
without acute food and amenities)

The People's Convention demands from Chhattisgarh Government

1.      Disband and disarm Salwa Judum immediately.
2.      Stop appointing Special Police Officers.
3.      Stop Recruiting children and adolescents below 18 years of age.
4.      Allow tribal communities to return to their villages.
5.      Government to rebuild burnt and broken homes.
6.      Stop harassment and allow free access to 
journalists, civil society organization, and 
medical camp and education workers.
7.      Repeal the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005
8.      Create a conductive atmosphere for 
dialogue to find political resolution to 
political issues.
9.      Stop arrest, detention and false 
implication of Human Rights Activists, Social 
Workers etc. and release all such persons.

The People's Convention demands from Government of India

1.      Stop aiding and abetting Salwa Judum in 
the name of promoting "local resistance groups."
2.      Institute a high level independent 
enquiry into all acts of violence-rape, arson, 
loot, murder and disappearances by Salwa Judum 
and paramilitary forces and initiate criminal 
proceedings.
3.      Recognize the right to live and dignities 
of internally displace people living outside 
Chhattisgarh and ensure their safety.
4.      Create a conductive atmosphere for 
dialogue to find political resolution to 
political issues.

People's Convention demands from Naxalite

1.      Stop all forms of violence
2.      Create a conductive atmosphere for 
dialogue to find political resolution to 
political issues.
3.      Stop recruiting children and adolescents below 18 years of age
4.      Allow safe return of villagers to their 
home including Salwa Judum supporters.

[1] Salwa Judum: Civil War in Chhattisgarh, CPJC, New Delhi, 2007, p. 6.

[2] The Hindu, May 20, 2007

Images courtesy: http://cpjc.wordpress.com/tag/photographs/

______


[6]

Indian Express
September 15, 2007

WHY IS HE IN EXILE?

by Ram Rahman *

It's not his art. It's that M.F Husain has become 
a pawn for mobilising communal political forces. 
And so, one of India's greatest artists will 
spend his 92nd birthday, on September 17,away 
from his country

  As a photographer and visual artist who has also 
been a cultural activist, I find the question of 
M.F. Husain and his recent travails both 
astonishing and frightening. Husain turns 92 on 
September 17. He does so away from the soil of 
his birth, exiled by police and court cases filed 
against him across the country by Hindutva 
forces. How has it come to pass that Husain, the 
best-known and publicly beloved artist our 
country has produced in the post-Independence 
era, might never be able to return to India for 
the rest of his life? There is a bitter irony in 
the fact that his first exhibition in Bombay was 
in 1947, and we have effectively exiled him as we 
celebrate the 60th year of our great democracy.

Artists have been exiled from other countries 
during different periods of history. For the most 
part, these have been writers and filmmakers, 
whose creative power is based on the written 
word. Fewer painters or sculptors have had to 
face such ostracism, and the reason is simple. 
The written word carries a direct power and 
meaning whose distortion or misinterpretation is 
difficult. The visual arts, on the other hand, 
and modern art more so, are much harder for a lay 
person to analyse, interpret and are less prone 
to being labelled in any fixed manner. We can 
understand why people in power, or those seeking 
power, are so frightened of the written word. But 
do we know of any painting or frieze or sculpture 
which has caused an overthrow of a government?

Why is it then, that political forces attack visual artists ?

Perhaps we could look at the history of one 
iconic painting from the last century, Guernica, 
painted in 1937 by the Spaniard Pablo Picasso 
(Husain is commonly called India's Picasso).

Picasso was living in Paris and was not in 
political exile. But the bombing and slaughter of 
civilians of Guernica by the fascist forces in 
support of General Franco shook the world. 
Picasso then made this huge mural for the 
Republican government pavilion for the Paris 
Exposition on at the time. Guernica became the 
most powerful anti-war statement of our times. 
After the Second World War erupted, Picasso 
directed that the painting be kept at the Museum 
of Modern Art in New York, and only to be taken 
to Spain after the fall of the fascist regime and 
the restoration of "public liberties and 
democratic institutions". It thus became the most 
famous 'work of art in exile'. It had a 
triumphant arrival in Spain in 1981. Many writers 
and artists were exiled by Franco - including the 
filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Much of the cultural 
avant-garde in Germany were similarly exiled in 
the late 1930s. Germany lost it's entire cultural 
elite mainly to the US, including painters George 
Grosz, architects Walter Gropius and Mies Van Der 
Rohe, theatre legend Bertolt Brecht, filmmakers 
and writers. Hitler, a failed artist himself, 
decreed that most modern art of the German 
avant-garde was degenerate, Bolshevik or Jewish. 
20,000 works were confiscated and over 200 
artists declared as degenerate.

My purpose here is to bring some perspective to 
the campaign launched against Husain by the 
machinery of the RSS as an anti-Hindu painter. 
The late philosopher Ramu Gandhi lamented to the 
art critic Geeta Kapur just shortly before his 
death, "It pains me deeply that these people are 
attacking Husain... how can they attack him... he 
is like a child! He, like our toy makers, plays 
with line and colour and form, and like those 
toy-makers he will sometimes magically make an 
icon!" I think this is a deep insight into 
Husain. Here is this artist from an extremely 
humble background, connected unlike any other to 
the popular imagination and pulse of the people - 
who has played with paint, film, photography, 
architecture - and has literally exemplified the 
figure of the modern artist in our country.

This campaign against Husain should be seen very 
clearly for what it is. Unfortunately, he is a 
prime target precisely because he is a Muslim. 
The Hindutva attack on him has nothing to do with 
his iconography or the so called 'protection of 
Hinduism'. It has solely to do with mobilising 
the cadres of the communal political forces. The 
tragedy for us is that no other political force 
has the courage to take a stand against these 
people for fear of being branded 'anti-Hindu'.

When over 100 Indian artists, writers, directors, 
musicians petitioned the 'People's President' 
last year to honour Husain with the Bharat Ratna, 
our letter was not even acknowledged. When a 
group of us sought an urgent meeting with the 
home minister last year, after press reports that 
the ministry had directed the police to 
investigate charges of obscenity and 'hurt to 
religious sentiment', we left the meeting 
dejected and disheartened, having understood 
quite clearly that the government was not going 
to be seen to 'be appeasing the minorities'. 
Husain was to be left to the mercy of the courts 
and police investigators. The courts are supposed 
to protect citizens, not used as an instrument of 
intimidation and terror against a 92 year old 
man. The irony is that Husain now has to pay for 
the travel and expenses of his accusers, besides 
the huge legal defence fees, while those who have 
publicly called for his hands to be chopped off 
or his eyes to be gouged out, have had no action 
taken against them by the government.

While he may be enmeshed in the cynical games of 
politicians, we in the artist community know only 
too clearly that his work and his name will live 
on, long after those petty politicians have 
vanished into the dust of history. That is why we 
will celebrate him for ourselves on Gandhi 
Jayanti this year, on the street, in New Delhi, 
in front of his huge mural of Nehru on the CSIR 
building. We for one, still hold on to that dream 
of Tagore, and refuse to believe that we have 
fallen into the sleep of unreason and joined the 
ranks of fascist Spain and Germany.

* The writer is an artist-photographer

______


[7]


Issues in Secular Politics
September 2007 I

SETUSAMUDRAM FLOODED BY EMOTIVE WAVES

by Ram Puniyani

The leadership of Congress has apologized for the 
affidavit filed in the Supreme Court in the case 
pertaining to the Sethusmaudram project.  This 
project which was set off by BJP led NDA regime, 
aims to make a canal from Palk straights to gulf 
of Munnar. It involved dredging of Adams Bridge, 
also called as Ramar Setu. The affidavit 
mentioned that the said bridge is not a man made 
structure and also the Ram is a mythological not 
historical figure. This affidavit set the emotive 
political streams rolling their political 
chariots, and hue and cry that this statement of 
the Government is an act of blasphemy.

Different agitations were already planned at an 
RSS meet to oppose Sethusamudram project. 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, and cleared 
in particular by BJP led NDA, which is at the 
forefront of making a political capital out of 
the issue now. The case of worst abuse of faith 
for political agenda is on display! This project 
when complete, 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 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.
Prof. Victor Raja Mannikam, of Satara University 
points out (Times of India 14th Sept 2007) that 
this epic dates back to 5000 years while Ramar 
Setu is over a lakh years old. Prof. V.S. Sahay 
of Anthropology Department of Allahbad University 
says that the society described in Ramayana 
represents Metal age (5000-6000 BC) and Ram's 
Vanar army has not constructed the structure as 
it belongs to Pleistocene Age which shows 
emergence of stone tools.

Marine experts tell us that the setu itself is a 
marine structure over a lakh years old and not 
man made. It is a natural occurrence of the 
continuity of sandstone sedimentation which 
stretches below Dhanushkoti and isotope dating 
indicates that the deposition is over a lakh 
years old (Prof. R. Mannikam). Thus one can 
conclude that Ramar Sethu is a much older 
structure, called tombol, a sand deposition due 
to natural process, connecting one land with 
another, and that it is from times when human 
habitation is doubtful. The Geological Survey of 
India has also 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.
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.
The one step back of Congress leadership, Sonia 
Gandhi in particular, is to try to prevent giving 
an emotional handle to RSS combine, who are 
desperately looking to build up another emotive 
issue the way they constructed the politics 
around Babri Mosque. The search for an issue is 
desperate as the Ram temple issue is no longer 
en-cashable in the electoral arena, the primary 
concern of BJP. The attitude of Congress 
leadership can be understood only in this light, 
else the affidavit filed by Archeological survey 
is on the dot and scientific to the core. One 
witnessed the similar display of retreat when 
Sonia Gandhi was to become the Prime Minister. 
Faced with the threat of some BJP leaders shaving 
their heads and eating just gram, and the emotive 
hysteria which had the potential of engulfing the 
national politics, Mrs. Gandhi decided to give up 
the post, deflating the whole game, depriving 
them of a issue and depriving the nation of the 
sight of Sanyasin like leaders, with bald head 
etc. One is not sure whether even now such a 
process of deflating the issue in the initial 
stages is possible.

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 people's 
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?

______


[8]

(Dawn
September 17, 2007)

DON'T TROUBLE TROUBLE, TILL TROUBLE TROUBLES YOU

by Jawed Naqvi

NEW DELHI: Religion is a touchy business 
everywhere, evidently more so in South Asia. 
Recently an official of the Archaeological Survey 
of India was required to give an affidavit to the 
Supreme Court to clarify whether in his 
considered view there was an ancient bridge, or 
"sethu", that was built by the "vaanar sena", 
literally an army of monkeys, which was used by 
Lord Rama, to cross the Palk Straits to battle 
Ravana, the villainous king of Lanka.

The Supreme Court's query was preceded by an 
unusual controversy over a natural formation of 
corals straddling the Palk Straits, which 
inhibits shipping. If this barrier were removed, 
it would cut the distance for ships between 
Singapore and Mumbai or Karachi by about 30 
hours. In some ways the project offers benefits 
like the Panama and Suez canals. Some followers 
of Rama believe that the natural structure was in 
fact built by the army of "vaanars" or monkeys, 
which played a major role in the triumph of Rama 
over Ravana. There was a more earthly dimension 
to the controversy. The billion-dollar project 
first became a turf war between Tamil Nadu Chief 
Minister K. Karunanidhi, who last week passed a 
vote in the state assembly to press ahead with 
the demolition, and his arch rival J. 
Jayalalatiha who opposes the move, citing 
religion, but wooing voters. Both leaders 
ironically enough represent the once flourishing 
Dravida movement of Tamils, which had slammed 
religion as a tool of exploitation. Hinduism, 
particularly Brahmanism, was the movement's main 
target. All that has changed. But both leaders 
have played footsie with religious Hindu parties 
such as the BJP.

However, why the Supreme Court asked for the 
clarification about the sethu's antecedents is a 
bit of a mystery. Suppose the bridge was backed 
with historical evidence to show it as part of 
the Rama lore, would it be put up for demolition? 
Or, suppose it was found to be a matter of faith 
for some if not of all of Rama followers, would 
it then qualify for removal? If on both counts 
the court's decision would not influence the 
decision, then why did it ask the potentially 
loaded question? Any way, the official in his 
zeal to present an objective account of history, 
for that is what the archaeological survey is 
mandated to do, apparently breached the sacred 
line of religious sensibilities. He affirmed that 
to the best of his knowledge there was no 
historical record of Rama's existence, much less 
of a bridge which was used to conquer Lanka to 
retrieve Rama's loyal wife Sita, from Ravana's 
lair. The story of Rama and Sita is celebrated in 
the world's most populous Muslim state of 
Indonesia, with reverence. Allama Iqbal had gone 
a step further in his adulation for Rama. He 
wrote: "Hai Raam ke wajood pe Hindostan ko naaz; 
Ahle nazar samajhte hain usko Imaam-e-Hind". (The 
existence of Rama makes Hindostan proud; the 
discerning accept him as the Imaam of this land).

The government's affidavit was manna to the old 
guru of religious revivalism, the BJP, even more 
so to its currently marginalised stalwart, the 
former home minister Lal Kishan Advani. He 
gleaned in the affidavit a potential election 
issue, and also a means to upstage his BJP rival 
and party president Rajnath Singh. So he summoned 
the media, issued dire warnings to the government 
and asked the prime minister and Congress 
president to apologise.

The government, sensing electoral trouble, wasted 
no time in making amends. It moved immediately to 
withdraw the affidavit, but not before two of its 
own senior ministers were caught in a public 
brawl over the matter. He would have resigned if 
it were his ministry's fault, taunted one. She 
was ready to resign if the affidavit was indeed 
mishandled by her ministry, retorted the other. 
Muslim groups watched the denouement with 
apprehension. The BJP tried to canvass support 
from the Sikhs. They declined to oblige. Look 
here, said the head of the Sikh worshippers in 
Delhi. We don't worship Rama. We are a 
monotheistic religion. But we respect founders of 
other religions. So kindly don't drag us into 
your fight with the Congress.

Religion is like a nuclear weapon. We conceive it 
as a means to protect ourselves from mysterious 
forces of evil but eventually end up becoming its 
insecure defenders. In fact we have become so 
touchy about our religions that we are willing to 
plunge headlong into a bloodbath as defenders of 
our faith. Worse, sometimes these defenders of 
faith take themselves more seriously than is 
otherwise healthy for those in their vicinity.

The Bajrang Dal, a plainly fascist offshoot of 
the Hindutva upsurge, claims to be followers of 
Lord Hanuman, Rama's aide de camp during his 
exile in the forest. Now, Hanuman is deified as 
sankat mochak, one who helps overcome a crisis. 
Before the advent of the Bajrang Dal in recent 
years the legend of Hanuman had a much wider 
appeal among the ordinary people across India. 
There was for example, this boisterous but 
adorable bunch of boys and girls who clubbed 
themselves together as vaanar sena in Nehru's own 
home. A very young Indira Gandhi as her 
contribution to the battle against colonialism 
led the sena. Their schedule would involve 
singing patriotic songs and distributing 
subversive pamphlets against India's former 
rulers.

During the Ram Leela, a theatrical enactment of 
the story of Rama during the celebrations of 
Dussehra, marking his victory over Ravana, the 
rural and urban folks alike would jostle for a 
glimpse of Hanuman in the green room after he 
took off his make up and the forbidding mask 
together with the traditionally elongated tail. 
The Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva groups have 
changed that cultural appeal in a major way.

Nowadays these spurious Hanuman fans go about 
handing instant justice against Hindu boys and 
girls who would dare to befriend or marry a 
Muslim or a Christian. These folks usually become 
most active on Valentines Day when young lovers, 
if seen exchanging cards or greetings, are given 
a right royal hiding instantly. The punishment is 
meted out often with the police looking on. The 
vigilantes are not in any way different from the 
Muslim counterparts that we encounter in South 
Asia, or the more vehemently threatening ones in 
Iran or Saudi Arabia. So here is a breed of 
defenders of the Hindu faith who seem to know 
little about Hinduism but claim to be its 
saviours. Many in their flock were active 
participants in the pogroms of Gujarat and the 
demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992.

As I said religion is a touchy issue in our 
region, and I know this from personal experience 
in Mustafabad, a village in Rae Bareli once ruled 
by Shia zamindars. It is commonly seen during the 
observation of Muharram here that the upper crust 
of the community taps their chests gently during 
the "maatam", an act that can be loosely 
translated as self-flagellation in grief. The 
lower caste of Muslims are more committed to 
lacerate themselves with swords and sharply honed 
chains. Their wounds are cured with rose water 
and miracle, but rarely ever are they given 
medical care.

Occasionally, a father would slit the soft skin 
on his small son's head with a knife making the 
young boy bleed profusely. Self-flagellation is 
of course not unique to the Shias of South Asia. 
The Hindu Tamils inflict gashes on themselves 
with iron nails and, like the Shias, they too 
walk on fire to follow the requirements of their 
faith. Go further east, in the Philippines, and 
you would find young men nailed on the cross 
every Easter. Anyway, one day, during a maatam, I 
saw some men handing over their blood-soaked 
chains to their companions who would lash 
themselves severely and pass on the contraption 
to others and so on. I know I should have 
restrained myself but couldn't. I broached the 
issue with an elderly person and said that this 
act could be very risky in view of India's 
difficulties with HIV/Aids. If they want to do 
maatam, they should at least not share the 
chains. The man called me a "kaafir" and nearly 
got me lynched. Therefore, as far as religion is 
concerned, I now believe in the dictum: Don't 
trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

______


[9]

Dyeing India Saffron: Appeasing Hindu Fascism

by I.K.Shukla

Whipping Ram, the religious icon, into a poster 
boy of political manipulation and instrumental 
exigency, repeatedly, is not the only sacrilege 
and vicious violation that Hindutva has committed 
against Hinduism. The list of its desecrations is 
miles long, its heap of humiliations on Hinduism 
pyramidal. It disrespects and falsifies history 
as its manic mission. That it continually keeps 
insulting India -its culture and heritage 
-betrays its congenitally seditious addiction and 
invidious distinction.

Its basic illiteracy in matters, literary, 
cultural and historical is, oddly, its asset. Its 
autism foments and facilitates its street 
politics. A stark exhibition of its obscene 
howling was in evidence on a TV channel last 
night. Murali Manohar Joshi, the RSS man, the 
defunct Physics teacher of Allahabad University 
(where once the illustrious physicist Meghnad 
Saha had taught), could not answer any question 
put to him by Rajendra Yadav, the eminent Hindi 
writer and editor. Joshi went on repeating 
himself, kept talking non-stop, deflecting 
questions in a sophistry that would have been 
spurned even by a school boy. He would not let 
Yadav speak. The TV channel in question, Aj Tak, 
seemed helpless in stopping the torrent of trivia 
cascading from Joshi's mouth. It did not stop him 
nor ask him to abide by the rules and stop 
monopolizing the air time. Thus Joshi's ignorant 
blabber "won", of course, to the delight of the 
saffros and discomfiture of others. This abysmal 
TV show was the mini version of the maxi original 
stomping the streets in various cities which were 
clogged and vandalized by the loutish brigades 
pressed in service by the Hindu fascists.

Imagining a fictional Saraswati civilization, 
demolishing Babri mosque as celebratory 
consummation of Advani's Bloody Yatras that cost 
thousands of innocent Muslim lives, and now 
inventing Ram Setu - the roster of inhuman 
inanities keeps swelling. This mobsterism frees 
the BJP and its cohorts from engaging with the 
issues of bread and butter that concern and 
impact millions upon millions. This also brings 
uncountable hoards of money to its till, 
ostensibly in the cause of dharma, but 
realistically, rewarding the jet set kind of posh 
life style to the Hindutva hegemons, warlords and 
chieftains.

Ramayana is our first epic poetry, Kavya, a work 
of imagination detailing an ideal hero, patterned 
after an abstract model in literary (Sanskrit) 
aesthetics to whose adorable approximation one 
ought to aspire. It is not history. And because 
it is poetically inspired it takes liberties - 
poetic licence- in exaggerating the virtues and 
flaws of its cast of characters in a simplistic 
binary. Which parent in the world would name his 
progeny at birth - Ravana (literally meaning one 
who makes people weep), Kumbhakarna (one with 
pot-like ears), Shurpanakha (one with winnow-like 
nails), Vibheeshana (singularly terrible), 
Meghanad (one with thunder-like roar), etc.? The 
Lanka in Ramayana, according to the eminent 
historian H. D. Sankalia, was in Madhya Pradesh 
(The Ramayana in Historical Perspective, 
pp.108-9).

Because Rama is an ideal, not a historical 
personage, he is, therefore, an idol of popular 
worship. He therefore can be invested with all 
the attributes of divinity. MM Joshi was caught 
on the wrong foot by Rajendra Yadav when the 
former referred to Gandhi's Ram Rajya. Since when 
had Gandhi become a Hindutva referent, asked 
Yadav. Joshi fumbled. He had no answer. I wish 
Yadav had asked him how much did RSS and its 
league of pseudo Hindus emulated Rama.

Is this something new? Not at all. The submarine 
sedimentation over time, which spanned several 
millennia, is being christened as Ram Setu 
(Bridge). It is in line with Taj Mahal being 
reinvented as Tejo Mahalaya. Like Baba Budangiri 
shrine now being seized by Hindutva terrorists 
and claimed as a Hindu shrine. This political 
game will be endless because the degenerate Hindu 
fascism has no project other than reversion to an 
imaginary past. It can play hooky with the 
present. Congress, bereft of ideology, has 
succumbed to Hindu terrorism which would resist 
any dent in the status quo as sacrilege. 
Appeasement of Hindu terror and treason will not 
only write the finis of Congress but also of the 
entity known to history and cherished in 
collective memory as India.

Let India put an end to the appeasement of Hindu 
fascism forthwith and squash the anti-national 
demolition squad that is hell bent on dyeing it 
saffron. Prevent saffron from being India's 
epitaph.


IKS/13Sep.07

______


[10]

VHP ATTACKS A FILM SCREENING IN AHMEDABAD.

" The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the self appointed 
moral police, has sunk to new levels of 
intolerance. On September 13, about 15-20 
hooligans charged in the college room of L abd C 
Mehta Arts College during the screening of 'Bol', 
a series of short films on women's rights. The 
screening was part of Nazariya, an activity 
promoted by Drishti in about 20 colleges of 
Ahmedabad. As part of this activity students are 
shown documentaries on various social issues 
followed by a discussion. Today's screening, that 
was disrupted, was followed by a discussion with 
Stalin K, a leading human rights activist and 
documentary film maker.

About 25 students and three lecturers had just 
finished seeing the film and Stalin was 
discussing various aspects of patriarchy and 
gender when suddenly 15-20 hooligans, who clearly 
did not look like students or faculty of the 
college, charged into the room and started 
threatening Stalin and demanded to know what was 
being shown and discussed. The lecturers present 
there tried to reason with the hooligans that 
they were not doing anything against any 
particular person or group. The hooligans then 
wanted to see the film to  which Stalin said that 
that would not be possible. He told them that 
they had no right to come in and distrupt a 
lecture or demand to see the film.

One lecturer pacified the hooligans and took them 
out of the classroom. Meanwhile, Stalin continued 
with the discussion with the 
students.Incidentally, the subjecy of discussion 
just before the hooligans barged in was 'fear' 
and fear inhibits us to struggle or attempt any 
change in oppressive customs or traditions. About 
5 minutes later the hooligans barged in again and 
came menacingly towards Stalin and demanded the 
DVD. Stalin refused to give it to them and told 
them that they could buy a copy from the office 
if need be. They threatened him with 'dire 
consequencies' if he did not give them the DVD 
and started pulling at the DVD and pushing him 
around.

Meanwhile, Gaurang, coordinator of Nazariya, had 
called the Police Control room. The hooligans 
then snatched the DVD from Stalin's hands and, as 
they have won a war, shouted 'jai shree ram' and 
charged out of the room and campus.
Police reached the college immediately but by 
that time the hooligans had already left. The 
police asked Stalin and Gaurang to go to 
Navrangpura Police Station if they wanted to file 
an FIR. However, Stalin and Gaurang had to wait 
for nearly 3 hours before the police finally 
registered a complain against two of 20 hooligans 
"

- Rahul Soni and Bharat.


--
In Peace,
Gaurang Bharti Raval
Drishti Media,Arts & Human Rights
103, Anandhari Towers,
Sandeshpress Road,
Bodakdev, Ahmedabad. India.380054
www.drishtimedia.org
Tel : 91-79-26851235


______


[11]

Times of India
12 September 2007

WHAT GOVT SPENT ON PROMOS FOR WOMEN MEETS: RS 4 CRORE

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Vadodara: So much for women empowerment! The Modi 
government has spent over Rs 4 crore just to 
promote the much-touted Mahila Sashaktikaran 
programme ahead of the Assembly elections.

Interestingly, the money has not been used for 
any developmental programme but merely to arrange 
mass women gatherings that were addressed by 
Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

     The state government spent Rs 20 lakh per day 
in 12 districts just for arranging faraskhana, 
food packets, posters and banners for the 
gatherings, costing Rs 4.21 crore. More than 100 
officers were involved in each district to make 
arrangements for gatherings. This information 
came to light when details were sought by a 
womenís rights activist under the Right to 
Information Act. "Were the women really empowered 
or was it only an image building exercise? If the 
state government is so concerned about women, 
then why haven't they implemented two major laws 
concerning women so far?" asks activist Tripti 
Shah, who obtained the information regarding the 
extravagant events.

The two laws in question are Pre-natal Diagnostic 
Techniques Act and Domestic Violence Act.

The state government, which is yet to implement 
these, cites lack of adequate funds as the reason 
behind the delay.

"We have sent letters in the past asking the 
state government to implement these laws. But 
each time we were told that the government does 
not have enough funds to implement these laws," 
says Shah.

To run an office for five years, the government 
just needs to appoint a special protection 
officer in each district as per the Domestic 
Violence Act.

"One just has to appoint a mamlatdar, a social 
worker and bear the cost of running the office in 
each district," adds Shah.


______



[12] ANNOUNCEMENTS:


Call for Papers

CHOTRO Indigenous Peoples in the "Post"-Colonial 
World Language - Literature - Culture - History

Bhasha Resarch and Publications Centre, Vadodara, 
India in association with the Indira Gandhi 
National Centre for Arts, the National Manuscript 
Mission of India, and the European and Indian 
Associations for Commonwealth Literature and 
Language Studies, announces a conference to be 
held January 2nd - January 5th 2008 at the Indira 
Gandhi National Centre for Arts, Delhi, India.

This conference aims to bring together writers 
and scholars interested in the languages and 
literatures, the cultures and histories of the 
indigenous peoples of the "post"-colonial world. 
Bhasha, established by Ganesh Devy to work with 
the Adivasi tribal communiites of India and to 
document their linguistic, literary and artistic 
heritage, now seeks to explore the experience of 
indigenous peoples on a global scale, for there 
are many parallels between the Aborigines of 
Australia, the First Nations of Canada and the 
Adivasi of India. It is hoped that the conference 
will provide new orientation and inspiration for 
post-colonial studies. Contributions are sought 
on the following topics:

orature; stories of origin / creation myths; 
cosmology / knowledge systems; life histories; 
storytelling / folk tales; poetry; drama and 
performance; aesthetics / interculturality; 
threatened languages / language death; language 
development / scripts; subaltern history; 
cultural and human rights; publishing in 
aboriginal / tribal languages; translation from 
aboriginal / tribal languages; marginalization of 
aboriginal / tribal cultural expression

Registration forms can be downloaded from 
http://www.bhasharesearch.org.in or 
http://www.eaclals.org and should be returned by 
email to Sonal Baxi at: sonal.bhasha at gmail.com.
There will be a conference fee of EUR 50 / US $ 
60. Accommodation, food and local transport will 
be provided free of charge.

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

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