SACW | Oct. 10-12, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | October 10-12, 2007 | 
Dispatch No. 2459 - Year 10 running

[1] Sri Lanka: The Price of Truth-Telling, The 
Price of Lying, and The Need For Monitoring 
(Rohini Hensman)
[2] Pakistan - Army , America and Allah:
      (i) Musharraf in the Middle (Najam Sethi)
      (ii) Pakistan's Democracy: America's stark 
choice (Sandy Berger and Bruce Riedel)
     (iii)  NWFP: 'liberation' after MMA? (Editorial, Daily Times)
     (iv) The tragedy of Swat (Editorial, Dawn)
[3] India: 'We suffer from a pathological 
incuriosity': A conversation with Arundhati Roy
[4] India: In defence of assertive secularism (Sharad Bailur)
[5] India: Saffron Terror (Subhash Gatade)
[6] India: In The Midst of Goans (Vidyadhar Gadgil)
[7] On the Indo US Nuclear Deal and on the impact 
of a possible Indo-Pak Nuclear War:
     (i) Report of Public Meeting on Indo-Us Nuclear Deal: Why? What? For whom?
     (ii) Indo-Pak nuclear war could cause one billion starvation deaths
[8] Announcements:
   (i) Robert Eric Frykenberg will lecture on 
"Hindutva as a Political Religion", (Oslo, 15 
October 2007)
   (ii) "The Talibanization of South Asia: Can it 
Be Stopped?" - A talk by Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy 
(Chicago, 31 October 2007)
   (iii) 11th International Conference on Sri 
Lanka Studies (ICSLS) (Portsmouth, 1-3 November 
200)

______


[1]

THE PRICE OF TRUTH-TELLING, THE PRICE OF LYING, AND THE NEED FOR MONITORING

by Rohini Hensman

Last week, Rajan Hoole of University Teachers for 
Human Rights (Jaffna) accepted the Martin Ennals 
Award for human rights defenders on behalf of 
UTHR(J), his colleague K.Sritharan, and himself.

Many of us who had been following their writings 
from 1987 onwards were overjoyed when the Martin 
Ennals Foundation finally gave them the 
recognition they so richly deserve. Like a 
compass, their reports have provided direction to 
seekers of justice and peace in Sri Lanka's 
political wilderness. They have been able to play 
this role because of their single-minded 
dedication to discovering and publicising the 
truth.  They have not been content to report the 
atrocities perpetrated by the Sri Lanka state 
security forces, but have also taken up 
violations by the IPKF and associated groups, the 
LTTE, and other armed Tamil groups. Nor did they 
stop at criticising abuses against Tamils, but 
protested equally strongly against abuses 
directed at Muslims and Sinhalese.

Members of the group have paid a heavy price for 
telling the truth. In September 1989, 
founder-member Rajani Thiranagama was killed by 
the LTTE, which also incarcerated thousands of 
Tamil dissidents in underground prisons, 
torturing and killing many. Other leaders were 
forced to flee Jaffna, leaving their homes and 
jobs, and go underground to escape a similar 
fate. They continue to live like this, without 
permanent homes, their children facing an 
uncertain future, unable to do the one thing they 
would most like to do: return home to Jaffna. And 
yet they continue with their work, providing both 
information and analysis which is critically 
important to anyone seeking a just peace in Sri 
Lanka.

In the period following the signing of the 2002 
CFA, UTHR(J) reports tended to concentrate on 
human rights violations by the LTTE, who, as 
usual, used the ceasefire to hunt and kill their 
critics and opponents, and to continue 
conscripting children. They also criticised those 
who supported this so-called peace process 
uncritically, including the Norwegian mediators. 
In a bulletin entitled 'In the Name of "Peace":

Terror Stalks the North-East,' released on 1 
February 2002, they berated 'the liberal camp, 
the peace lobby, church and civil society groups 
in Colombo. Along with their Tamil colleagues, 
they have largely ceased to question crimes by 
the LTTE, particularly against its own people. In 
the belief that they should do nothing to rock 
the peace boat, they are propelling it towards 
another disaster. They carry on as though it is 
the LTTE's right to indulge at pleasure in 
political killings, conscription and recruitment 
of children. This is reflected in the huge 
silences and distortions in their statements made 
as peace and election monitoring groups. By 
purposefully ignoring the fascist controls that 
are shot through the whole fabric of Tamil 
society, they find no difficulty in detecting 
near hundred percent Tamil support for the LTTE 
as their sole representatives and sole arbiter in 
any peace process. Any active opposition to the 
LTTE within Tamil society that continues at heavy 
cost is regarded by them as a nuisance, rather 
than an essential pre-requisite for a return to 
sanity.'

It is largely thanks to UTHR(J) and other 
dissident Tamils that many international human 
rights organisations and governments stopped 
viewing the LTTE as the sole representative of 
the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and started documenting 
their human rights abuses. Chandrika 
Kumaratunga's public admission of injustices 
against Tamils, signifying a commitment to ending 
those injustices, along with Lakshman 
Kadirgamar's trenchant criticisms of the LTTE, 
helped to secure bans on it in many countries. 
The fortunes of the LTTE were clearly on the wane.

Before the war broke out again, UTHR(J) remained 
critical of the LTTE's 'orgy of killing' 
(bulletin dated 1 November 2005), and after the 
outbreak of war they still documented LTTE 
atrocities, clearly blaming the LTTE for the 
resumption of hostilities. Yet the overall 
balance gradually shifted towards atrocities by 
state security forces: for example, the 
cold-blooded murder of five students in 
Trincomalee on 2 January 2006 and terrorisation 
of their families and witnesses to prevent them 
from testifying; the Allaipiddy massacre of eight 
civilians, including two infants, on 12 May; the 
gruesome sexual assault and murder of a couple 
and their two small children in Vankalai on 9 
June; the execution-style killing of 17 Action 
Contre Faim humanitarian workers on 5 August; and 
the massacre of eight Muslim labourers and two 
others in Pottuvil on 17 September.

This is a small sample of the thousands of 
civilians killed, but it highlights two 
characteristics: (a) the deliberate nature of the 
atrocities: there is no way these killings could 
be accidental; and (b) the fact that the victims 
are unarmed civilians, whose only crime is that 
they - like the Jews and gypsies exterminated by 
the Nazis - happen to belong to minority 
communities. Since terrorism is defined as 'acts 
or threats of violence against unarmed civilians 
in pursuit of a political objective,' these are 
acts of terrorism committed by state-linked 
forces.  UTHR(J) also documented cases where 
child conscription by the Karuna forces was aided 
and abetted by government security forces. It 
supported the Presidential Commission of Enquiry 
into extrajuducial killings and disappearances 
(CoI), yet noted that the Chairman had a conflict 
of interest because he was involved in two of the 
cases under investigation, and concurred with the 
reservations of the International Independent 
Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) observing the 
CoI, reiterating the need for UN monitoring of 
continuing human rights violations.

After the military supposedly 'liberated' the 
East from the LTTE, UTHR(J) reported that 'The 
East is now under a total militarisation of the 
civil administration, by a military enjoying a 
23-year-history of absolute impunity, killing 
thousands of Tamil civilians without anyone being 
punished. There are no democratic structures 
where the civilians have a credible voice, such 
as a political settlement with meaningful 
devolution would have provided. State-affiliated 
killer groups run loose picking out targets among 
Tamils with leadership qualities.' It concluded, 
'Given the history of violence in the East over 
the last two and a half decades, the East more 
than any other region calls for a UN Human Rights 
Field Operation, to ensure independent and 
impartial monitoring, investigation and reporting 
on human rights abuses as well as to contribute 
towards the protection of civilians.  If the 
government is serious about winning the 
confidence of the local populations, particularly 
the minority communities, a deterrent against 
abuses, as what international human rights 
monitoring offers, will also demonstrate the 
government's commitment to protect civilians.'

The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!'

Is the government listening? As a child, I was 
told Aesop's fable about the shepherd-boy who 
amused himself by crying 'Wolf!' when there was 
no wolf. At first the villagers came running to 
help him, but after he had laughed at them three 
or four times, decided not to respond in future. 
So when a wolf actually did come, no one came to 
help the boy when he cried 'Wolf!' and his flock 
was decimated. I also learned a poem about a girl 
called Matilda, who told such dreadful lies, it 
made one gasp and stretch one's eyes. One day she 
called the fire brigade to come when there was no 
fire, and her aunt, with whom she was staying, 
had to pay them to go away after they had doused 
the house in water. The next time she was alone 
in the house, a fire did break out, but every 
time she shouted 'Fire!' the neighbours answered, 
'Little liar!', and consequently, when her aunt 
returned, Matilda and the house were burned.

It is by means of stories like these that 
children learn the price to be paid for 
persistent lying: people may believe you once or 
twice, but then you lose their trust and they 
never believe you again, even on those rare 
occasions when you happen to be telling the 
truth. Apparently spokespersons of the government 
were never told these stories, since they lie 
compulsively about human rights violations in Sri 
Lanka, and still expect people, especially 
foreigners, to believe them. Yet most people are 
neither so ignorant nor so stupid. They may 
listen politely while government spokespeople say 
that everything is fine in the East, and the only 
human rights violations are by the LTTE, yet they 
are likely to be thinking that not a word of what 
is being said is true. All this is a bonanza for 
the LTTE. First, the security forces' atrocities 
provide them with endless opportunities for 
propaganda; then the government cover-up allows 
them to dismiss everything said by the government 
- including legitimate charges against the LTTE - 
as untrue!

The government's stock response to accusations of 
human rights violations is to vilify the accusers 
as 'LTTE supporters', or even 'terrorists'. Yet 
nothing could be further from the truth so far as 
UTHR(J) activists are concerned. No one has 
sacrificed as much as they have in order to 
oppose the LTTE; so long as the LTTE remains, 
they can never go home or live in security. The 
record can be checked on their website, at 
www.uthr.org - their consistent and strong 
opposition to the LTTE is undeniable. And 
'terrorists'? That epithet is more applicable to 
those in the government who sponsor death squads 
than to activists of UTHR(J), whose commitment to 
non-violence and humanitarianism shines through 
all their reports. It is not they who support the 
LTTE, but elements in the government who 
constantly present the LTTE with propaganda 
material by committing human rights violations - 
and then discredit the government by lying about 
them.

So if the government wishes to avoid the fate of 
Matilda and the boy who cried 'Wolf!', it needs 
to clean up its act so far as human rights 
violations are concerned and invite UN human 
rights monitors to bear witness to its 
performance. The same monitors will also be able 
to testify to the gross abuses committed by the 
LTTE, thus strengthening the government's 
credibility and discrediting the LTTE. As UTHR(J) 
puts it, 'if the Government accepts an equitable 
political settlement and upholding human rights 
and the rule of law as the way forward, it and 
the country stand to benefit enormously from UN 
involvement, in the form of a Human Rights Field 
Operation that includes human rights monitoring, 
reporting and technical support to strengthen our 
institutions. UN monitoring could also be used to 
make it costly for the LTTE to continue with 
political killings and conscription by taking 
cover behind the State's conduct.' Will the 
government have the wisdom to accept this advice? 
Or will it continue to undermine itself and 
strengthen the Tigers politically?

______


[2]

(i)

Wall Street Journal
October 11, 2007; Page A20

MUSHARRAF IN THE MIDDLE
by Najam Sethi

Lahore, Pakistan

When Gen. Pervez Musharraf won 99% of the votes 
cast in Pakistan's presidential election on 
Saturday -- an election that was boycotted by the 
opposition, no less -- one national newspaper 
headline aptly screamed: "Musharraf steals the 
show." Not quite yet, that is: The Supreme Court 
will decide later this month whether or not to 
validate the election results. If it does, Mr. 
Musharraf has promised to doff his uniform and 
hold elections. If it doesn't, he may impose 
martial law.

This acute uncertainty has created a flurry of 
debate here and, more importantly, in Washington, 
where the Bush administration is belatedly 
working out how to proceed. Is Mr. Musharraf a 
failing military dictator or a burgeoning 
democrat? And more importantly, should the U.S. 
back him or ditch him? The answer isn't as clear 
cut as the White House might like.

The radical view, outlined by Sandy Berger and 
Bruce Riedel in yesterday's International Herald 
Tribune, proposes to ditch Mr. Musharraf 
altogether and push for "free and fair 
elections." In this perfect world, a secular 
civilian government with legitimacy to tackle 
religious extremism would emerge, saving 
America's face.

But this kind of proposal grossly misrepresents 
the on-the-ground reality. Free and fair 
elections would likely produce a deeply divided 
polity, one in which the religious forces would 
likely hold the balance of power between Benazir 
Bhutto's secular People's Power Party (PPP) and 
Mr. Musharraf's conservative ruling Pakistan 
Muslim League (PML). In the absence of Mr. 
Musharraf, the PML would most certainly ally with 
the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), an alliance of 
five bitterly anti-American religious parties.

If that happened, the first casualty of a 
rightwing coalition government would be 
Washington's war on terror. In the political 
paralysis that would inevitably follow, the 
Pakistani army would welcome the opportunity to 
retreat to the barracks rather than fight "its 
own people" in the border provinces. Then America 
wouldn't have Mr. Musharraf to lean on to "do 
more" to fight terror; it would have to go it 
alone.

Other analysts contend that the U.S. should not 
back an emerging alliance between Ms. Bhutto and 
Mr. Musharraf because the former is corrupt and 
the latter is unpopular. That leaves ex-prime 
minister Nawaz Sharif in contention. Ousted by 
Mr. Musharraf in 1999 and exiled to Saudi Arabia, 
Mr. Sharif gained in popularity recently when he 
tried, unsuccessfully, to defy the president and 
return to Pakistan last month.

A Sharif government probably wouldn't be much to 
America's liking, either. Mr. Sharif is a deeply 
conservative politician who has always ruled in 
alliance with the mullahs, going so far as to 
pass various Islamic laws to appease them. 
Recently, he set up the All Parties Democratic 
Movement (APDM) to oppose Mr. Musharraf. This 
grouping comprises all the religious and 
anti-American parties in the country. Like Ms. 
Bhutto, Mr. Sharif has dodged corruption charges. 
When he was in power, he suppressed the free 
press with a vengeance. Under the circumstances, 
he is hardly likely to prove Pakistan's long lost 
democratic savior and champion of the war on 
religious extremism.

That leaves Mr. Musharraf, who is quickly 
consolidating his power base. On Monday, he named 
Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the former head of the 
Interservices Intelligence, vice chief of the 
army. That puts Mr. Kayani, a Musharraf loyalist, 
in line to become the next army chief. Another 
trusted aide, Gen. Tariq Majeed, became chairman 
of the joint chiefs of staff committee. Mr. 
Musharraf is also strengthening his position by 
rupturing the MMA's grip on the volatile North 
West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan and 
his influence is growing in the Taliban-al-Qaeda 
infested tribal badlands of Waziristan.

Mr. Musharraf's alliance with Ms. Bhutto isn't 
perfect, by any means. The twice-sacked former 
prime minister Ms. Bhutto, a pro-West liberal in 
self-exile since 1997, struck a deal to have her 
corruption charges dropped in exchange for 
supporting Mr. Musharraf's bid for the 
presidency. Mr. Musharraf, who's survived three 
assassination attempts, remains deeply unpopular 
with middle-class Pakistanis because he is 
perceived as a U.S. puppet and an anti-Islamic 
secularist. Ms. Bhutto, by contrast, is still 
quite popular. But that may not matter: Baitullah 
Mehsud, the Taliban-al Qaeda commander in 
Waziristan, says he is planning to welcome her 
back home with suicide bombers "because she is an 
American agent."

The Bush administration can't ask Mr. Musharraf 
to "do more" in the war against radical Islam at 
a time when he is so unpopular at home, nor can 
they ask him to hold free and fair elections 
immediately and quit the scene. The best bet for 
Pakistan and its friends abroad would be a 
liberal-secular civil-military alliance that 
leads to a stable and moderate government. 
Sometimes, that takes more patience than 
Washington is willing to extend.

Mr. Sethi is editor of the Friday Times and Daily Times in Lahore, Pakistan.

o o o

(ii)

International Herald Tribune
October 9, 2007

PAKISTAN'S DEMOCRACY: AMERICA'S STARK CHOICE
by Sandy Berger and Bruce Riedel

With the staged re-election on Saturday of 
President Pervez Musharraf, America faces a stark 
choice: Do we support democracy and the rule of 
law in Pakistan, or do we back up a failing 
military dictator?

President George W. Bush seems to have chosen to 
back the dictator. This is a mistake that will 
damage our interests in South Asia and in the 
Muslim world.

Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999. 
When we traveled with President Bill Clinton to 
South Asia in 2000, we made a four-hour stop in 
Islamabad, where Clinton insisted on speaking to 
the Pakistani people. He made a strong appeal for 
a return to democracy, less than half a year 
after Musharraf had deposed Pakistan's elected - 
if not entirely effective - Prime Minister Nawaz 
Sharif. Seven years later, the people of 
Pakistan, which is increasingly on the edge of 
chaos, deserve no less.

The stakes are critical. Pakistan is the 
epicenter of the most dangerous corner of the 
world, where terrorism, nuclear weapons, war, 
narcotics and dictators come together. Since 
9/11, we have looked to Musharraf to be the edge 
of our spear against Al Qaeda and have handsomely 
rewarded him with over $10 billion in aid. But Al 
Qaeda is stronger than ever.

In the last six months Musharraf has alienated 
the majority of Pakistanis by trying to pack the 
Supreme Court and by his temporizing in handling 
Islamic extremism in the capital. Recent polls 
show his approval rate has dropped precipitously. 
Now he has refused to let Sharif return to the 
country, despite a Supreme Court ruling that said 
Nawaz should be allowed home, and he has 
orchestrated his re-election by a Parliament 
chosen in a rigged election five years ago.

The Bush administration has been notably quiet 
about all this. It has demurred from demanding 
that the rule of law be respected and has instead 
put its arm around the dictator. It has preferred 
back-room deals to free and fair elections, even 
colluding with the Saudis to again exile Sharif. 
This despite the fact that Pakistan has become a 
haven for the Taliban, which is killing NATO 
soldiers in Afghanistan.

A recent study shows that 80 percent of the 
suicide bombers who attack NATO come from 
training camps in Pakistan. Five years ago there 
were two suicide attacks in the country, this 
year there have been over 100, a 70 percent 
increase from last year. And in those Taliban 
camps lurk Osama bin Laden and his gang.

Thanks to the internal crisis in Pakistan, bin 
Laden's space to operate in South Asia is 
growing. His freedom to operate was underscored 
in his message last month urging a jihad to 
overthrow Musharraf. He is not cowering 
"impotently" in a cave; rather he clearly has 
access to a sophisticated media apparatus that 
has tripled its output of messages in the last 
year.

All too often, America has forsaken its long-term 
interests and, worse, its values in Pakistan and 
chosen the short-term convenience of backing 
military dictators. These dictators have failed 
to develop the country and have undermined its 
democratic institutions. Consequently, today only 
15 percent of Pakistanis have a favorable opinion 
of America and over 70 percent fear an American 
attack.

Some say Musharraf is all that keeps Pakistan 
from an Islamic takeover. Musharraf used that 
line with Clinton in 2000, but Clinton didn't buy 
it then and we should not buy it now. Pakistan's 
democratic institutions and politicians are far 
from perfect. Whose are? But they should be given 
the opportunity to address their country's 
problems. Sharif and Benazir Bhutto should be 
allowed to compete at home, and face trial if 
accused of crimes, not deported. Free and fair 
elections will produce a secular government that 
would have the legitimacy to tackle extremism. 
Every election in Pakistan's history shows the 
Islamists are a small minority and the 
more-secular parties are the majority.

Democracies are always more troublesome partners 
because they listen to their own people. A 
secular government in Pakistan will battle 
extremism and bin Laden for its own 
self-interests, not ours. It is time for the 
Pakistani Army to return to its barracks and for 
us to have confidence in the people of Pakistan.

Sandy Berger was national security adviser to the 
President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. Bruce 
Riedel was special assistant to President Clinton 
for Near East and South Asia Affairs then and is 
now Senior Fellow at the Saban Center in the 
Brookings Institution.

o o o

(iii)

Daily Times
October 11, 2007

EDITORIAL: NWFP: 'LIBERATION' AFTER MMA?

A terrorist strike on Tuesday in Peshawar's CD 
Market in Nishtarabad damaged 20 shops and 
wounded 25 innocent people, five of them 
seriously. The 4-kg bomb was meant to register 
the "pious" man's protest against the 
"un-Islamic" entertainment of music. In a 
parallel development, the city's official 
entertainment centre, the Nishtar Hall, was being 
refurbished to resume the cultural activities 
banned by the now-defunct MMA government. False 
piety could neither stop entertainment nor 
persuade the terrorists to spare the province. 
Will the NWFP now regain its old character, after 
the exit of clerical rule?

After five years' ban on culture, the JUIF and 
Jama'at-e Islami are hardly better placed to win 
at the level of their win in 2002. By the 
alliance's own assessment, it is not going to win 
the 70 seats in a house of 124 that it won last 
time. Now it is estimated that it will win only 
35 seats, the bulk of the rest going to the PPP 
and ANP, both pro-culture in their outlook. The 
clergy has come a cropper. After coming to power 
in the province in 2002, the alliance banned all 
musical and vocal entertainment and successfully 
tore down all hoardings displaying women in ads. 
The Jama'at, which tried unsuccessfully to deface 
ad hoardings in Lahore, was heady with success 
achieved in Peshawar and the rest of the NWFP.

The MMA banned Peshawar's famous theatre at 
Nishtar Hall and ran all the musicians and 
singers out of the city. Pride of Performance 
singer Gulzar Alam and his family faced 
government-backed persecution in 2003 when 27 
police officials forced themselves into their 
home without arrest warrants and took away Alam's 
three sons and a brother. Earlier, the singer was 
arrested from a marriage function because of the 
"ban on music" put in place by the MMA 
government. The police also broke his harmonium 
as a gesture of the inauguration of a clerical 
utopia.

There was an exodus of entertainers from Peshawar 
after that. All musicians and makers of musical 
instruments - for centuries part of Pashtun 
culture - either accepted their pauperised new 
state or ran down to Punjab. The new order was 
clearly a copy of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan 
brought to an end in 2001. The intent of the 
Taliban was clear to the singers of Kabul. Famous 
vocalist Nashnaass - the pride of Kabul's Nauruz 
festivals - whose cassettes in Pashto and Persian 
were sold in all parts of the Pashtun-dominated 
regions of Pakistan, decided to leave his 
homeland and flee to the West.

Strangely, the "revolution" against entertainment 
and foreign franchises was spearheaded by the 
Jama'at and its aggressive Shabab-e Milli youth 
organisation, while the more pragmatic JUIF sat 
back and saw itself being upstaged by the more 
radical Jama'at. This was the forerunner of what 
was going to follow in the shape of the Hasba 
Bill. The bill envisaged the formation of a moral 
police to ensure that all public officials 
offered their prayers regularly, to force traders 
to shut their businesses during prayers, and 
suspend TV channels at prayer times, with no 
appeal against its summary lashings lying in any 
court. In its early form, the bill also contained 
a reference to the duty of looking after the 
"guests" (Al Qaeda) residing in Pakistan.

The real casualty of the new Islamisation in the 
province under the MMA was the economy. It took a 
steep dive when foreign investors ran out of the 
NWFP to save their lives. The Hasba Bill 
obsession of the clergy was mostly responsible 
for the international organisations' misgivings 
about the province's economic health. The JUIF 
leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman did not help much 
when in 2003 he announced at a public meeting 
that Aimal Kasi, a self-proclaimed assassin, 
should be the role model of young Pakistanis. The 
Peshawar Bar Association upped the ante by taking 
out a procession with banners warning the United 
States that Pakistan had "nukes it could use 
against America".

What followed was something that the MMA lived to 
regret: an Al Qaeda-Taliban onslaught that did 
not recognise the MMA government as a friend. The 
government steadily lost territory to the 
vigilante forces it had unleashed. The chief 
minister, Akram Durrani, used the mantra of 
blaming all Al Qaeda terrorism of Baitullah 
Mehsud on the "intelligence agencies" of the 
federal government. All that is gone now. It is 
quite possible that the JUIF is itself relieved 
that it is no longer presiding over a shipwreck 
of governance. It is definitely time for the 
people of the province to go back to normal life. 
*

o o o

(iv)

Dawn
October 9, 2007

Editorial

THE TRAGEDY OF SWAT

ONCE the hotspot of Pakistan's tourism, Swat is 
fast emerging as a stronghold of the 
Talibanisation that has swept most of the 
southern districts of the NWFP and some northern 
districts as well. The war in Waziristan has been 
the focus of national attention, and rightly so 
given the implications of the rise of militancy 
in the tribal areas for the territorial integrity 
of the country. But the happenings in Swat also 
have profound relevance for Pakistan's society. 
Here the issue is not one of a military 
confrontation with the army. It is the Islamists' 
self-acquired right to impose - even by using 
force - their own brand of morality on the 
civilian population. Since the beginning of July, 
there have been 53 incidents of bomb explosions, 
including three suicide bombings, claiming a 
total of 48 lives. That is not all. There has 
been an assassination attempt on an ANP leader 
and officials in the administration and their 
families have come under attack and many of them 
have now reportedly shifted to Islamabad.

A lot of the violence is directed against women, 
girls' schools, NGOs and CD shops. With their 
misguided beliefs of restricting women and 
banning all entertainment, the militants are now 
on the war path. How this is affecting the lives 
of common people is shocking. Media reports 
suggest that worried parents have pulled out 
their children from schools in large numbers. 
Health care is being affected with Maulana 
Fazlullah conducting an anti-polio campaign on 
his illegally operated FM radio. The state's writ 
appears to be weakening in this area. Police have 
withdrawn from checkpoints in some of the 
worst-affected tehsils of Swat, which are now 
being policed by militants. Fazlullah sent 
hundreds of his armed comrades to rescue two 
abducted women from the upscale Kanju Town in 
Swat and 'bring to justice' their alleged 
abductors who were paraded before a multitude of 
people as they await their fate to be decided by 
a self-appointed 'Islamic court'.

Unfortunately, all this is happening, not in any 
remote corner of the tribal badlands of Pakistan 
but in a settled district of the NWFP. There 
seems to be total paralysis and inaction with the 
state security apparatus going through one of its 
worst patches and the administrative system in a 
state of collapse. The problem has been further 
compounded by a lack of an actionable strategy. 
The government has left it to the local police to 
handle the law and order situation while the 
troops that were sent in have not checked the 
militants who are also operating in other areas 
using Swat as their base. The intelligence 
agencies apparently have sufficient information 
on the militants' operations but have failed to 
take action because the government is still not 
clear about its strategy. Already a section of 
the population shocked by the assassination 
attempt on Afzal Khan Lala has begun to react by 
rejecting the police ban on the carrying of 
weapons since its faith in the government's 
ability to provide security has already been 
eroded. Is Swat heading for a civil war?




______


[3]

Tehelka
Oct 13, 2007

'WE SUFFER FROM A PATHOLOGICAL INCURIOSITY'

Writer Arundhati Roy closely followed the 
Parliament attack trial. A shoddy probe is just 
another tool of repression, she told MIHIR 
SRIVASTAVA


Has India become the pet target of terrorism?
I don't know about "pet", but yes, it certainly 
has become a target, and we must ask ourselves 
why? Not every country in the world suffers from 
terrorist attacks . There is a war being fought 
in Kashmir - the publicity is that India has won 
this war, that "normalcy" has returned. But in 
Kashmir, normalcy flows from the barrel of a gun. 
There are 7,00,000 security personnel there, 
enforcing "normalcy" in Kashmir. In Iraq, in a 
fullfledged war, there are 1,25,000 to 1,50,000 
US troops. What does normalcy in Kashmir look 
like? A little bit of democracy, a little bit of 
tourism, a cinema hall run by the cops, a TV 
channel run by the home ministry - who are they 
trying to fool? Normalcy forced on an angry, 
resentful people at gunpoint. If it was "normal", 
there would be talk of withdrawing troops. The 
only talk is of increasing them. Why? Why do we 
talk of the "will of the people" everywhere 
except in Kashmir? So, coming to your question, 
"terrorism" in India is, for the most part, a 
spillover from the valley of Kashmir. Time was 
when Kashmir wanted azaadi from India. Might we 
be heading for a time when India, or at least 
ordinary Indians, folks who want to go about 
their humble everyday lives, want azaadi from 
Kashmir? I don't knowŠ And of course now there's 
Babri Masjid, the Bombay carnage, the Gujarat 
carnage - all of this complicates things and adds 
fuel to the fire. All of this exposes ordinary 
people to the possibility of an attack, anytime, 
anywhere.

And let me say this - things have become so 
complicated, so twisted, so full of subterfuge, 
so full of lies and planted stories, fabricated 
evidence, that whenever there is an "attack", one 
never knows who has carried it out. Never. It 
could be the "terrorists", it could equally be 
the spooks. There's absolutely no knowing. This 
is not some crazed claim. Intelligence agencies 
have done this through the ages. In country after 
country. It's a hoary tradition. When it comes to 
these things, I can no longer believe what I'm 
asked to believe, I have no faith in what I read 
in the papers, in what I see on TV. It's mostly 
crap. No one ever gets to the bottom of anything. 
It's all left hanging, the air is thick with the 
ghosts of the victims of unsolved crimes. We seem 
to suffer from a pathological lack of curiosity.

The investigations into terror attacks are 
shoddy. Doesn't this actually exacerbate 
terrorism?
A "climate of terrorism" has been created. Many 
players - political parties, intelligence 
agencies, militant outfits - benefit from the 
attacks. Nothing is ever investigated; if an 
enquiry is ever set up, it's usually a 
smokescreen, a way to defuse a crisis. Whether it 
was the Parliament attack case, the burning of 
the coach of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra, 
whether it is the killing of the main witness of 
the Nithari murders or the fake encounter case of 
Sohrabuddin Sheikh, or the killing of the main 
witness in that case too. The establishment 
ensures that no one gets to the bottom of 
anything. It all sinks into the marsh, and then 
everybody puts their own political spin on it.

One gets the feeling that beyond a point 
investigations into such high-profile terror 
cases reveal little, they are more of a cover-up.
It's an unholy nexus. Whatever you touch falls 
like a house of cards. But even when there is an 
exposé - like what happened in the case of the 
Parliament attack, or what we're seeing now in 
the Red Fort attack - when it is shown that 
evidence was fabricated, that we have been lied 
to, when we know what those lies were and who 
told them, still nothing happens. The police get 
medals, the judges get promoted, the journalists 
get salary hikes. In the case of the attack on 
Parliament, we're talking about a case which 
could have resulted in a nuclear war. A case in 
which, on the basis of what has turned out to be 
false and fabricated evidence, the government of 
the day moved half-a-million troops to the border 
where they remained for eight months. Eight 
hundred soldiers died in the mobilisation 
process. Huge tracts of farmland were mined - 
those mines are still there. Thousands of crores 
of public money was spent. Who gave those orders? 
Why? Don't we want to know? Aren't we curious? 
Not a single political party has supported the 
demand for an enquiry, not a single MP has raised 
a question in Parliament, not a single newspaper 
has carried out a serious campaign. Why?

But speaking of cover-ups, look at how it all 
works in Gujarat, it's more than a coverup, it's 
criminal collusion. It's happening now, right 
now, while Tata and Reliance call Gujarat a dream 
destination for corporate capital, while the CII 
sucks up to Modi, while Sunita Williams accepts 
accolades and shares a stage with him. After the 
carnage in which thousands of ordinary Muslims 
were butchered and about 1,50,000 driven from 
their homes, the man who presided over it all, 
Narendra Modi, is still the chief minister. No 
one from the UPA government has so much as 
squeaked about it. Of the 287 cases filed under 
POTA, 286 are against Muslim and one is against a 
Sikh. Offences under POTA, as we know, are 
non-bailable, so they're all still in jail. The 
property of those accused in the Godhra massacre 
was attached. The property of those who were 
released on bail in the post- Godhra carnage was 
not. Different laws for Hindus and Muslims. In 
the case of several massacres, the lawyers that 
the Gujarat government appointed as public 
prosecutors had actually already appeared for the 
accused. Several of them belonged to the RSS or 
the VHP, organisations that proudly owned up to 
the killings. Survivors found that when they went 
to the police to file FIRs, the police would 
record their statements inaccurately, and refuse 
to record the names of the perpetrators. In 
several cases, when survivors had seen members of 
their families being burned alive, so their 
bodies could not be found, the police would 
refuse to register cases of murder. In massacres, 
in order to reduce the magnitude of the charges 
and elide the detailing of individual crimes, 
thepolice clubbed FIRs together to make it all 
very vague and subvert the process of the 
criminal justice system.

The massacre at Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad, in 
which Ehsan Jaffri - who made the mistake of 
campaigning against Modi in the Rajkot elections 
- and 70 other people were killed and 10 women 
wereperiod of ten-and-a-half hours. A mob of 
thousands of armed people began to assemble 
inside the Gulberg Society colony. That day, 
Jaffri made 200 phone calls, including many to 
senior police officers, to Modi and LK Advani. At 
about 10.30am, the then Commissioner of Police, 
PC Pandey, visited Gulberg, which is not far from 
the police headquarters. At about 2.30pm, Ehsan 
Jaffri surrendered himself to the mob, hoping the 
others would be spared. The mob stripped him, 
hacked off his body parts, paraded him half-alive 
around the colony to terrify people and then 
burned him alive. Subsequently, 70 people were 
killed and 10 to 12 women were gangraped before 
being burned alive. KG Erda, the inspector of the 
Meghaninagar police station, stood by and 
watched. PC Pandey was promoted to Director 
General of Police, Gujarat. As public prosecutor, 
the Gujarat government appointed a man called 
Chetan Shah who had already appeared for the 
accused in the same case!

Today, more than five years later, the killers 
remain free. And PC Pandey has continued to be an 
efficient servant of the State. As DGP, he has 
been instrumental in covering the tracks of the 
policemen involved in the macabre murder of 
Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi. 
Newspapers have reported how he transferred 
police officers who were investigating the case 
when he realised they would not play by his 
rules. How he detailed two policemen to be part 
of the investigation when they were themselves 
accused in the same case. All this involves the 
overt and covert support of the full range of 
government machinery, the police, the courts, the 
administration - this is how it all works. Sheer 
terrorism disguised as democracy. And I haven't 
even begun to talk about what's happening in 
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa.

The point is that when people feel they have 
nowhere to turn for justice, and that they can be 
jailed, raped and butchered even when they have 
done nothing at all, then why should they not 
fight back? When the whole elaborate machinery of 
this democracy fails you at every stage, why not 
fight back? Is it surprising that in a quarter of 
India's districts, the State has no control?

To talk specifics, in the investigations into the 
Parliament attack case, there were a lot of 
discrepancies, as the courts have pointed out, 
but no action or inquiry was initiated against 
the investigators.
Intelligence agencies are powerful. They have a 
network of informers. They use journalists to 
plant stories in the press and create a certain 
climate. A climate in which the courts can come 
out and say things like "the collective 
conscience of society will only be satisfied if 
capital punishment is awarded to the offender" 
(as observed by the Supreme Court in its 
judgement against Parliament attack accused 
Mohammad Afzal Guru). This complete impunity is 
getting alarming.

So there is no accountability. The intelligence 
agencies know that whatever they do, they will 
get away with it?
Intelligence agencies operate like this all over 
the world, it's in their nature, whether it's the 
Mossad, the CIA, the KGB, the ISI or RAW. They 
are the hit-men of the establishment. They 
operate in the dark. The point is, how much play 
are they going to be given? Are they going to be 
allowed to go nuts? In Kashmir, false encounters 
and even massacres have stopped shocking people - 
they enrage, but they don't shock. Now it's 
spilling into the plains. Andhra, Chhattisgarh, 
Gujarat, BombayŠ Of course, it's happened in West 
Bengal during the first Naxal uprising in the 
late 60s, in Punjab in the 80s, in Manipur since 
1947. In these covert killings, nobody knows who 
is killing whom, no one knows who is on which 
side.

With the judiciary overlooking shoddy 
investigations, doesn't it give intelligence and 
investigative agencies the wrong signal? That 
they can get away with a bad investigation?
We live in times in which no kind of judicial 
rigour is necessary. Not for cases like the 
attack on Parliament or at Red Fort. It was all 
done with flag-waving, tub-thumping
nationalistic fervour. But unless the pressure 
comes from us, from the people, unless we insist 
on asking the hard questions, we can't blame them 
for doing what they do. But when these 
institutions fail, when the government tries to 
control people by force, with guns and policemen 
and soldiers, things will fall apart. Of course 
there's never going to be an ideal situation in 
which there's peace on earth and we celebrate the 
brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of women. 
But we have the right to dream. Do we want things 
to get worse or better? This kind of cleverly 
hidden brutality may work for a while, but some 
day it will explode in our faces. It has begun. 
Blowback is a theme that doesn't only apply to 
the US.


______


[4]


Indian Express
October 09, 2007

IN DEFENCE OF ASSERTIVE SECULARISM
by Sharad Bailur

The Sethusamudram controversy proves that it's 
time to come out in support of liberal values

  The recent controversy over Sethusamudram 
brought to the fore a number of issues. First, 
all religions are intolerant - some more so; some 
less. The book religions (Christianity, Islam and 
Judaism that encourage proselytisation) more than 
others. We had better accept this and deal with 
it in the true spirit of secularism. We have now 
reached a stage where it is possible to 
annihilate mankind itself in defence of our 
beliefs. What is more important? Belief - right 
or wrong - or the survival of mankind? Apparently 
belief. To quote Sam Harris from his book, The 
End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of 
Reason: "Certainty about the next life is simply 
incompatible with tolerance in this one."

As for "equal respect to all religions", 
everybody knows that if you respect one religion, 
you cannot respect any other. What in reality is 
being asked is this: irrespective of your beliefs 
you should, at least in public, pretend to 'show 
respect' for the other person's religion. Or at 
least don't do anything to provoke him. 
Apparently religious people have a divine right 
to get provoked more easily than those who follow 
no faith. Equal respect to all religions 
encourages bad blood between faiths and is 
therefore responsible for causing riots. Besides, 
it can be deliberately misunderstood to mean that 
all religions are encouraged: 'respect' being the 
operative word. This, in effect, is competitive 
obscurantism.

Secularists in India skirt around the problem to 
avoid 'giving offence' to religionists. Everybody 
respects the religionist's right to give offence 
in 'defence' of his faith. Therefore you have a 
right to get angry in defence of unreason. But I 
do not have a corresponding right to defend 
reason. By implication unreason is respectable, 
and should be respected, and reason is not and 
should not be respected.

The word 'secular' in our Constitution is not 
clearly defined. This has led to politically 
correct expressions like 'equal respect to all 
religions'. When a president or PM attends a 
public religious ceremony it is not just the 
person who does so but the office he/she 
occupies. We should enact a law that says that 
once a person occupies a high office he should 
not attend a public religious ceremony so long as 
he is in office. He should, of course, be free, 
as a citizen of this country to pray to his 
various gods in the privacy of his home.

The secular person can only be heard above the 
din of unreason if he maintains a sustained 
campaign in favour of reason and secularism. We 
need a more assertive secularism in India in 
favour of liberal values and against religious 
obscurantism of any colour. It is time secular 
people stood up and told the rest that what they 
are doing goes against their freedom to live in 
peace. And it is time the Constitution openly 
stood by the secularist, and the agnostic in view 
of what its own Preamble states.



______


[5]


Himal
October - November 2007

SAFFRON TERROR

by Subhash Gatade

Nanded, in Maharashtra, is a town with a 
significant population of different faiths - 
Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist. Nanded could 
well have become a new metaphor for secularism as 
practised in the Subcontinent, but this was not 
to be. Instead, Nanded has come to represent the 
emergent danger of a violent new brand of Hindu 
militancy, with due support from a section of the 
state machinery. A place that was once witness to 
the final days of Guru Gobind Singh, Sikhism's 
Tenth Guru, has today metamorphosed into an 
epicentre of violent Hindutva. Indeed, Nanded 
represents the build-up of the violent 
fundamentalist Hinduism of the past half-century. 
The town has been witness to a new spate of acts 
that can be inarguably dubbed 'terrorism'.

The inner workings of this new form of Hindutva 
were on show recently in two, evidently 
accidental, explosions in Nanded within a span of 
nine months, in April 2006 and February 2007. 
These blasts, which killed four people, took 
place at the houses of activists from the 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal 
and Shiv Sena. The arrival of Nanded on India's 
'terror' map was followed by media investigations 
into similar previous incidents, which also 
showed the involvement of Hindu youth in 
terrorist actions.

The new element here is the increasing similarity 
between Hindu militancy and 'terrorism' of other 
hues. While various enquiry commissions have 
looked into riots in post-Independence India and 
corroborated the proactive role played by the RSS 
in instigating riots, the irony of the situation 
is that the organisation is still able to 
maintain its 'missionary' image. Part of this is 
because the group has long maintained a strict 
division of labour within its ranks, delegating 
much of the 'dirty work' to fringe workers. The 
Nanded blasts proved to be an exception to this 
pattern, as the RSS links were obvious. This is 
why, in the immediate aftermath of the 
explosions, the Sangh Parivar leadership went to 
great lengths to suppress the news. Indeed, 
activist friends of this writer in Maharashtra 
were themselves unaware that any such incident 
had taken place.

One set of blasts took place in a house belonging 
to Laxman Rajkondwar, an old RSS activist, and 
killed two youths belonging to the Bajrang Dal 
and RSS, while injuring three others. The 
explosives that were being made were to be used 
during the entry into Maharashtra of Bharatiya 
Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani's Bharat 
Suraksha Yatra, the idea being to warn of the 
grave security situation existing in the country. 
Later investigations found that the plan had been 
to instigate communal riots in Nanded that could 
have spread to adjoining areas. Such a situation, 
it was hoped, would boost the sagging morale of 
both the BJP and its ageing stalwart, Advani (see 
accompanying story, "Befuddled, jingoistic 
party").

The aim was clearly to instigate a communal 
conflict. A police raid on one of the deceased's 
houses found maps of nearby mosques, as well as 
clothes and caps usually worn by Muslims in the 
area, which the activists were going to wear to 
sneak into and attack the mosques and gurudwaras. 
The only thing still needed was explosives. The 
making of bombs in a house owned by an old RSS 
activist - one who supposedly also dealt in 
firecrackers, at that - seemed like the perfect 
plan.

Of course, the story neither begins nor ends in 
Nanded. Since 2003, at least five, and perhaps 
six, Hindutva-related explosions have taken place 
in central Maharashtra alone, in Parbhani, Purna, 
Jalna and Nanded. Malegaon also witnessed a bomb 
blast last year, killing 40 people, with strong 
indications of a Hindutva hand behind it. (The 
final picture will emerge after an ongoing 
investigation by the Central Bureau of 
Investigation finishes.) Beyond the geographical 
similarities, the details of the attacks were 
uncanny: each took place between 1:45 and 2:00 in 
the afternoon, just after Friday prayers, at the 
most prominent mosque in town. (The bomb that 
went off in Nanded in 2006 exploded on 6 April, a 
Thursday, but was apparently meant to be set off 
at an Aurangabad masjid the following day.)

At the same time, this cannot be dubbed a 
Maharashtra-centric phenomenon. Madhya Pradesh's 
former chief minister, Digvijay Singh, has 
publicly admitted to the involvement of various 
groups and individuals affiliated with the RSS in 
similar acts in his state. As for the rest of the 
country, no systematic study of saffron 'terror' 
has yet been undertaken. One reason for this 
could be the thin line that separates the 
different anushangik (affiliated) organisations 
of the RSS, thereby making it possible to move 
from the 'legal' to the 'illegal' without great 
effort. Indeed, there is every possibility that 
funds collected from the Hindu diaspora for 
philanthropic work might also have been 
channelled to further 'terrorist' activities.

Nonetheless, culturally integrated practices are 
being utilised to arm certain sections of the 
Hindu community. Back in 2001, Rajasthan's 
then-Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot revealed that up 
to four million trishuls - six to eight inches 
long and sharp enough to kill - had been 
distributed by the Bajrang Dal to Hindu 
households across the country. Meanwhile, in 
2002, a group in Orissa, under the district Shiv 
Sena unit, formed the first-ever Hindu suicide 
squad, aimed at countering Muslim 'extremism' in 
Jammu & Kashmir and elsewhere. More than 100 
youths, including some women, are said to have 
joined the group.

Hindutva collusion

Nanded's population is made up of around 500,000 
Hindus, 200,000 Muslims and 100,000 Sikhs. The 
town has seen a significant amount of communal 
tension in the past, which spiked following the 
demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. 
In more recent years, this tension seems to have 
also spilled over into surrounding towns such as 
Parbhani, where, in November 2003, 
motorcycle-borne attackers hurled bombs into the 
midst of a large congregation of Muslims 
assembled for Friday papers. Although the 
identities of the Parbhani bomb-throwers were 
never traced, forensic tests following the Nanded 
blasts revealed that the accused were part of the 
same group of Hindu militants that had executed 
the attack in Parbhani.

Following the April 2006 blasts in Nanded, an odd 
silence ensued - in the local and national media, 
as well as in the local and national governments. 
There was also a disturbing lack of sincerity on 
the part of the investigating agencies in 
pursuing the case, despite appearing to have 
gathered significant evidence of the involvement 
of district and state leaders of the RSS and 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). As investigations by 
the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and 
other rights organisations have made clear, the 
district administration even saw to it that news 
of the blasts did not receive wide coverage. 
After the initial excitement, district officials 
also allegedly pressured the local media not to 
follow the case any further.

The lackadaisical reaction also spread through 
those involved in local and national 
investigations. Local police made contradictory 
statements, and failed to make arrests in the 
initial stages. Despite the sensitive nature of 
the Nanded case, the Central Bureau of 
Investigation (CBI) expressed its "inability" to 
conduct the subsequent investigation. In response 
to a case filed by some social organisations 
against the tardiness of the investigations, the 
CBI filed a suo moto affidavit explaining that it 
was "overburdened" and had "limited hands to deal 
with such cases". The cumulative effect of the 
half-hearted - or wholly obstructionist - 
initiatives, at both the state and central level, 
was to show the kid-glove treatment being meted 
out to India's new breed of Hindutva militants. 
Secular activists questioned whether the reaction 
would have been similar had the explosions taken 
place in a minority-dominated area, and the 
involvement of some 'fanatic' Islamic group been 
detected.

The cavalier manner in which the probes of the 
Nanded blasts were undertaken may have prepared 
the ground for a stepping-up of similar 
activities in the area. On 10 February 2007, at 
little after midnight, biscuit boxes being hauled 
by 28-year-old Pandurang Ameelkanthwar in another 
area in Nanded exploded, killing him instantly. 
His cousin, Dnaneshwar Manikwar, sustained 
massive burns and died six days later. 
Ameelkanthwar had been a former shakha pramukh 
(branch head) of the Shiv Sena, and was also 
associated with the Bajrang Dal. He hailed from 
an area in Nanded called Rangargalli, a known 
hotbed of rightwing Hindu outfits.

A mere 'fire-related accident' was how state 
officials subsequently reported the incident. But 
preliminary findings of a civil-society inquiry 
suggest that Ameelkanthwar and Manikwar died due 
to handled planted explosives. Neighbours near 
the explosion also told the team that there had 
been a third person present at the time, who had 
also been injured but has been unaccounted for in 
subsequent reports.

These eyewitnesses also said that a police 
officer, who went on to be part of the official 
investigation, supervised the seizing and 
spiriting away of critical evidence from the 
spot. In their report, the civil-society 
investigators state that the Maharashtra police, 
particularly the superintendent and 
inspector-general, appeared to be in "undue haste 
to close all possibilities of a possible 
liquid-substance-driven explosion, preferring to 
quote oral findings of forensic experts from 
Aurangabad who are reported to have told them 
that it was a petrol-ignited fire". Among other 
evidence, this conclusion is brought under 
serious suspicion by the fact the explosion threw 
the iron shutter of a nearby godown a distance of 
40 feet - an extremely long way for a fire set 
off by burning gasoline.

The civil society team also refers to a "nexus 
between some police officials and the rightwing 
Hindu outfits". According to the probe's 
findings, Nanded Police Inspector Ramesh 
Bhurewar, who was leading the investigation of 
the 2006 Nanded blast, was also in charge of the 
investigation into the Parbhani blasts in 
November 2003. During the course of the long 
investigation, he had not made a single arrest. A 
First Information Report was only registered 
after a legislator raised a question in the state 
assembly. But following the Nanded blasts in 
April 2006, the accused admitted to having placed 
the bombs at Parbhani. As such, the civil-society 
report concludes: "The Nanded and state police 
are hence guilty of underplaying crimes wherein 
members of the minority community are the 
victims, causing a loss of face for the state 
police."

In their conclusion, the fact-finding team 
demanded that the central government keep a close 
watch over the increasing incidence of Hindutva 
'terror' activities. They also asked for 
independent investigations under a team of 
neutral officers; and impartial, public inquiries 
into the Nanded, Malegaon, Parbhani and Purna 
incidents, in order to ascertain whether state 
intelligence and police agencies are indeed 
professional and neutral enough to investigate 
instances of politically driven Hindutva violence.

History of hate

Post-Independence India is replete with examples 
of the participation of Hindu extremists in 
aggravating communal situations, targeting 
particular communities, and aiding and abetting 
riots. Those who have watched the organisation 
since its inception say that the 'terrorism' 
label may be modern, but the acts themselves, 
fundamentalist to the core, are decades old: 
making communally sensitive speeches that 
culminate in riots; leading religious processions 
in sensitive areas inhabited by Muslims and other 
minorities; and outright provocations leading 
people to engage in violence.

Rajeshwar Dayal, chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh 
at the time of Partition, provides in his 1999 
memoirs A Life of Our Times details of another 
kind: damning evidence of RSS chief Golwalkar's 
plans to conduct a pogrom against Muslims. 
Pyarelal Nayyar, Mohandas Gandhi's secretary 
during those tumultuous times, adds to these 
accusations: "It was common knowledge that the 
RSS Š had been behind the bulk of the killings in 
[Delhi] as also in various other parts of India."

Contrary to the perception that the Sangh Parivar 
has gained momentum only since the 1990s, various 
commissions that have looked into communal riots 
since 1947 have gathered a significant body of 
evidence on the role of the RSS and affiliated 
organisations. The Reddy Commission, which in 
1969 looked into rioting in Gujarat; the Justice 
Madon Commission, which analysed the riots in 
Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, in the early 1970s; the 
Justice Vithayathil Commission, which probed the 
1971 Tellicherry riots - all of these provide 
solid details of the involvement of either the 
RSS or its mass political platform, the Bharatiya 
Jana Sangh, in fomenting the trouble.

Justice Venugopal's report, on the Kanyakumari 
riots of 1982, also severely indicted the RSS for 
its role in instigating riots against Christians. 
According to Justice Venugopal, the RSS 
methodology for provoking communal violence was 
as follows: rousing communal feelings in the 
majority community; deepening fear in the 
majority community; infiltrating into the state 
administration; training young people of the 
majority community in the use of weapons; and 
spreading rumours to widen communal splits. About 
the shakhas that the RSS organises under the 
rubric of physical training, Justice Venugopal 
said that the aim appeared to be "to inculcate an 
attitude of militancy and training for any kind 
of civil strife".

It was only in 2004 that the Terrorism Research 
Centre (TRC), a US-based institute, declared the 
RSS a 'terrorist organisation', lumping it 
together with a host of jihadi and secessionist 
outfits, including the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the 
United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the 
Hizb ul-Mujahideen. This new listing came close 
on the heels of an internationally embarrassing 
incident for the Hindutva-wallahs, wherein 
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was denied a 
visa to travel to the US. The two slaps in the 
face left the Sangh Parivar bosses seething 
(although it took more than eight months for the 
RSS to formally react to the TRC's assessment). 
But this was not the first time that Hindutva 
organisations had earned international 
opprobrium. In 2002, secular activists in the US 
brought out a thoroughly researched report called 
"Funding Hate". For the first time, this document 
exposed how funds collected in the US by the 
India Development and Relief Fund (the IDRF, an 
umbrella organisation floated by the Hindutva 
brigade) were directly sponsoring sectarian 
violence in India.

Cover-up
One potential reason for the inability of the 
powers-that-be to establish a connection between 
Hindu militants and acts of terror in India could 
be the near absence of non-Hindus in the central 
government's various intelligence wings. Whatever 
the reasons, this dearth is shocking. Barring the 
Intelligence Bureau, which has around 12,000 
personnel and only a few Muslim officers, none of 
the other intelligence departments have even a 
single Muslim officer between them. From 1969 
until today, neither the Research and Analysis 
Wing (RAW) nor the National Technical Research 
Organisation (NTRO) has hired even one Muslim 
officer. (Following the Malegaon blasts, S M 
Mushrif, a retired India Police Service officer, 
publicly disparaged the Intelligence Bureau for 
having long been the source of "unsubstantiated 
rumours" due to "deep-seated bias".) The state of 
affairs has inevitably led to what can be dubbed 
the government's rather monochromatic 
presentation of the menace of terrorism in recent 
years, with sole responsibility for attacks 
almost immediately placed on various Islamist 
groups, regardless of evidence.

Despite a 'secular' coalition currently holding 
the reins of power at the Centre and in many of 
India's state administrations, there have been 
depressingly few sincere attempts to move beyond 
post-9/11 mythology and the rhetoric of the 'war 
on terror', which demonises Islam. So complete is 
this perspective that it is difficult to decipher 
any qualitative difference between the 'secular' 
Congress and the 'communal' BJP in their 
responses to any act of 'terror'. Instead, even 
while we have been witness to the dilly-dallying 
of the Congress following the Nanded and Malegaon 
blasts, the same Congress-led government had no 
qualms in targeting Muslims as a community after 
the July 2006 bomb blasts in Bombay. (In the 
immediate aftermath of the Bombay attacks, an 
anti-terrorist squad singled out the Muslim 
community for suspicion, and immediately began 
'combing' operations.) The Maharashtra state 
administration has also shown its anti-Muslim 
bias in times of tragedy. Even while attesting to 
their sadness over the Malegaon blast, state 
officials saw to it that victims, the majority of 
whom were Muslim, received just a fifth of the 
compensation received by the victims of the 
Bombay blasts of 1993 - the majority of whom were 
Hindu.

The fallout of this situation has been the 
administrative failure to address terrorism 
unleashed by Hindutva activists and formations. 
One possible reason for the government's 
ostrich-like position could be that, due to 
electoral considerations, nobody has wanted to 
displease the majority Hindus. While it is true 
that Hindutva groups are not currently in a 
majority at the Centre, the impact of Hindutva 
nonetheless transcends its strength in 
government. Note the inability of 'secular' 
groups to bring criminal cases against the likes 
of communal leaders like Shiv Sena supremo Bal 
Thackeray, and the champions of Hindutva: Praveen 
Togadia, Lal Krishna Advani or Narendra Modi. 
Indeed, the present-day Congress itself is a 
faint shadow of its Nehruvian avatar: after all, 
it 'discovered' the idea of 'soft Hindutva' two 
decades ago, in a bid to further its hold on the 
reins of power.

It is time that the public be made aware of the 
rising trajectory of Hindutva criminality. The 
dangerous understanding that a particular 
community, region or religious ideology is more 
prone towards 'terrorist' activities needs to be 
refuted at all costs. The people of Southasia in 
general, and India in particular, need to be 
convinced that there is no qualitative difference 
between the violent acts committed by LTTE 
suicide bombers, al-Qaeda jihadis, Khalistani 
militants or members of militant Hindutva 
organisations. This realisation could be the 
first step in organising simultaneous social and 
political strategies to expose, challenge and 
dissolve these groups.

______


[6]

Gomantak Times,
October 11, 2007

IN THE MIDST OF GOANS

by Vidyadhar Gadgil

Twenty years ago, when I first lived and worked 
in Goa, I attended a workshop on threats to Goa's 
environment and culture. It was there that I 
first heard the term 'bhaille' (outsiders). It 
was one of the recurring motifs of the workshop 
that the 'bhaille' were the biggest threats to 
Goa's environment. I was taken aback, as this was 
an event attended by liberals and activists, 
where one would not have expected such 
viewpoints. Another term I heard was 'ghati'. 
There was clearly a negative value attached to 
the term, which in Maharashtra is used to 
describe rustics. Intrigued, I devoted a fair bit 
of time to examining the issue. It seemed 
contradictory that I - 'bhaillo' and 'ghati' - 
never felt any particular hostility directed 
towards myself; in fact, I met with an easy 
acceptance. Was this because of my class/caste 
background? Not entirely, I discovered - Goans 
are truly among the most tolerant and easygoing 
of people, not easily given to prejudice.

It was not only me, there was no overt hostility 
towards the people from outside Goa who lived and 
worked in Goa. When talking about 'outsiders', 
what people were protesting was a phenomenon - 
their perceived lack of control over the 
development process - rather than individuals. 
There was also a genuine anger against the 
tourism industry's despoilation of Goa and 
against the anti-people pattern of development 
that people felt, with some justice, was being 
imposed upon them from outside Goa.

Those were heady times - there was a churning in 
Goa as the masses began to assert their identity 
and demand their rights. The Konkani agitation, 
the movement against tourism spearheaded by the 
Jagrut Goenkaranchi Fauz (JGF), the movement for 
statehood - they all redefined the political 
landscape of Goa. At a public meeting on 30 May 
1987, the day Goa attained statehood, the mood 
was one of jubiliation: it was the dawn of hope.

Over the next ten years, my involvement with Goa 
continued, albeit somewhat intermittently, so I 
was aware that these hopes were being largely 
crushed. Yet, in 1997, when my family and I 
shifted to Goa to settle here permanently, it 
came as a bit of shock to see the change in the 
public mood; it was as if the churning of the 
mid-80s had never happened. The movement for 
genuine change had been sidetracked, marginalized 
or co-opted by the political class and corporate 
interests, and it was business as usual. A 
cynicism and tiredness had set in amongst the 
no-longer-so-young activists I knew in the 
mid-80s.

But around 2005 the churning process began once 
again, as globalization and neo-liberalization 
began to be revealed for the chimeras that they 
were. People looked around them and discovered to 
their horror that the development process had 
been hijacked and turned against the people. The 
beaches had become privatized concrete jungles, 
Goa's forests were facing the axe as the 
construction boom reached ridiculous proportions, 
and Goa's politicans fattened themselves at the 
expense of the masses. Once again, the common man 
was feeling marginalized and threatened.

One response to this has been a questioning of 
the very concept of development. The people's 
movement which crystallised around the Goa Bachao 
Abhiyan has redefined the way development is 
perceived. Development which enriches a few at 
the expense of the masses and destroys Goa's 
environment is not true development, this strand 
of thought avers. It is not the mass of people - 
of Goan descent or otherwise - who are the 
problem. It is those who heedlessly plunder Goa's 
resources - politicians, industrialists and 
various kinds of middlemen - and sell them to the 
highest bidder that are the problem. To 
paraphrase the speech of Dr. Oscar Rebello, the 
convenor of the GBA, at the massive public rally 
in Panjim on 19 December 2006: "It is not 
non-Goans who are the problem; it is the 
anti-Goans."

There is however, another response to Goa's 
current crisis. This seeks to externalise the 
problem and, following a xenophobic and 
reactionary line of thought, blames the workers 
who come to Goa from other parts of India to earn 
their living. Ignoring the fact that these 
workers make a vital contribution to Goa's 
economy, they are despised and condemned on the 
basis of the fact that they are poor and come 
from different cultures and traditions. Rather 
than look at their relationship with the 
community and the environment, their ethnic, 
cultural and religious backgrounds are focused 
upon.

The stigmatization of the 'ghatis' and bhaille' 
has now reached frightening proportions. The 
worst example of this was when the 
Sanvordem-Curchorem communal violence of March 
2006 was sought to be justified on the grounds 
that its targets were 'outsiders'. The growing 
communalization of the Goan polity and society 
provides a fertile ground in which such thought 
patterns acquire particular virulence, and find 
expression in terms of active discrimination and 
even violence against minorities, who can easily 
be cast in the role of the 'other'.

But at a subtler level, this trend of thought is 
beginning to pervade everyday social discourse in 
Goa. Workers from Orissa, Karnataka and other 
'backward' states are vilified for defecating in 
the open and described as 'unclean' (that they 
are in this position because their employers do 
not provide them even basic facilities is 
conveniently forgotten). Even in the urbane 
drawing rooms of Goa's educated and well-off 
classes, such a prejudice has begun to take hold, 
and all kinds of derogatory comments about 
'ghatis' are routine, being allowed to pass 
without any criticism of the social attitudes 
that underlie them.

Goa is at a crossroads today: it is obvious that 
we cannot follow the existing pattern of 
development without social and environmental 
disaster. But there are two options. Do we 
question what 'development' means, and insist 
that, rather than merely enriching a few and 
destroying natural resources, it is framed and 
practiced in a manner that benefits all and 
respects the environment? Or do we seek 
convenient scapegoats for our problems, and 
further marginalize and victimize them, thereby 
exacerbating social tensions and furthering 
communal agendas? The choice is ours to make.

______


[7]  ON THE INDO US NUCLEAR DEAL AND ON THE 
IMPACT OF A POSSIBLE INDO-PAK NUCLEAR WAR:

(i)

From: Focus on India (FOI), Issue Oct 2007, Vol. IV, No. 10
----------------------

REPORT OF PUBLIC MEETING ON INDO-US NUCLEAR DEAL: WHY? WHAT? FOR WHOM?
Held on 11th September 2007 at Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh,
Mumbai

On 18th December 2006 the US President George 
Bush inked the Henry Hyde Act towards actualizing 
the much talked of Indo-US Nuke 'Deal'.  This had 
been earlier outlined in the Bush- Manmohan Singh 
Joint Statement of 18th July 2005 at Washington 
DC. This was further reiterated on 2nd March 2007 
in a Joint Statement issued from Delhi, during 
George Bush's visit to the country. In order to 
understand the pros and cons of the Deal and its 
implications on us and affects on nuclear 
disarmament efforts, Peace Mumbai, a network of 
organizations and individuals committed to the 
goal of a just and peaceful world along with 
Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament (CNDP) a 
national coalition working for Nuclear 
Disarmament and Peace, jointly organized a public 
meeting on Indo-Us Nuclear Deal, What? Why? For 
Whom? on 11th September 2007 at Marathi Patrakar 
Sangh, Mumbai. 150 plus people, representing 
diverse sections of society, participated.

Former Assistant Editor of the English daily 'The 
Hindu', Ms. Kalpana Sharma who chaired the 
meeting blamed media for creating confusion on 
the issue. People got divergent views which 
deserved more clarity, she stated.

Mr. Sukla Sen, an member of CNDP, blamed nuclear 
technology as immoral and profoundly unmitigated 
evil. It surpassed time and space barrier and its 
impact was widespread. It triggered the 
weaponisation programme and it was structurally 
incoherent logic to claim that it created 
ambience of deterrence. He gave example of what 
USA had been getting setbacks both in Afghanistan 
and Iraq. He stated that the latest measures on 
the part of mandarin of the country were to adopt 
Hydrogen bomb which had unfortunately larger 
potential for destruction vis-à-vis nuclear 
weapons. He suggested we should start a campaign 
against this deal because the Deal had not been 
clinched as it has to go through various stages 
like, separate treaty with the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) laying down the 
scopes and terms of inspections of the 'civilian' 
plants, then agreements will be presented to the 
45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for 
ratification. On consensual endorsement by the 
NSG the whole package will again be presented to 
the US Congress for final approval so as to 
enable the President to bring it into force.

If the deal was clinched it had the potential to 
grievously undermine the current global regime of 
nuclear non-proliferation and prospects of global 
nuclear disarmament, further aggravation of 
tensions and accelerate arms race in the region. 
So it's a very serious negative development for 
global and regional peace and security. It would 
undermine the efficacy of NAM and other 
accountable bodies. It would create considerable 
dampener for efforts to develop ecologically 
benign renewable sources of energy – nationally 
and also globally.

Mr. Jayraman a nuclear scientist stated that the 
deal was done with the intention to reach into 
the strategic orbit of USA. It meant that UPA 
became a willing partner of USA strategic and 
assertive foreign policy which was in tune of 
Hyde Act which said clearly one had to be 
congruent of USA foreign policy. It will became 
nothing less than an instrument of USA foreign 
and security policies. It was not viable for 
peace and energy needs. Hence it would provide 
strong fillip to the aggressive ambitions of the 
Bush administration, he averred.

Mr. M.V Ramana, a well-versed nuclear energy 
analyst from Bangalore emphasized that nuclear 
technology was not cheap. It would bring a lot of 
problems when it would be difficult in all three 
dimension of nuclear adoption like availability, 
accessibility and affordability.  More so it was 
not safe but a rather catastrophic technology. 
There was history of failure of the Department of 
Atomic Energy (DAE) to produce large quantities 
of nuclear electricity. In 1962, Homi Bhabha, the 
founder of India's nuclear programme, predicted 
that by 1987 nuclear energy would constitute 
20,000 to 25,000 MW of installed electricity 
generation capacity. His successor as head of 
DAE, Vikram Sarabhai, predicted that by year 2000 
there would be 43,500 MW of nuclear power. 
Neither of these predictions came true. Despite 
over 50 years of generous funding, nuclear power 
currently amounts to only 3,900 MW, just 3.1 per 
cent of installed electricity capacity of 
1,27,056 MW (as of September 2006). Even if the 
DAE meets its current projections of 20,000 MW by 
the year 2020, it will only be 8-10% of projected 
total electrical generation capacity. He warned 
people about the stance taken by the proponent of 
nuclear technology which was propogated as safe 
through hyperbole about climate change, carbon 
and Greenhouse gas emissions.

In the end there was interactive session which 
clarified many queries with regards to the deal 
and related issues and created better 
understanding on that.

o o o

(ii)

The Times of India
4 Oct 2007

INDO-PAK NUCLEAR WAR COULD CAUSE ONE BILLION STARVATION DEATHS

  LONDON: A nuclear war between India and Pakistan 
would not only have catastrophic affects in these 
two countries or their neighbours, but it could 
cause one billion people to starve to death 
across the world.

Hundreds of millions of more would die from 
disease and conflicts over food in the aftermath 
of any such war.

US medical expert Ira Helfand will on Thursday 
present this horrifying scenario in London during 
a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine.

"A limited nuclear war taking place far away 
poses a threat that should concern everyone on 
the planet," the New Scientist magazine quoted 
Helfand as saying.

"It is appropriate, given the data, to be 
frightened," said Helfand, who is an 
emergency-room doctor in Northampton, 
Massachusetts, US, and a co-founder of the US 
anti-nuclear group, Physicians for Social 
Responsibility.

Helfand has tried to map out the global 
consequences of India and Pakistan exploding 100 
Hiroshima-sized nuclear warheads.

Referring to earlier studies that have suggested 
that in such a conflict, the annual growing 
season in the world's most important 
grain-producing areas would shrink by between 10 
and 20 days, he said that the world is 
ill-prepared to cope with such a disaster.

"Global grain stocks stand at 49 days, lower than 
at any point in the past five decades," he said, 
adding: "These stocks would not provide any 
significant reserve in the event of a sharp 
decline in production. We would see hoarding on a 
global scale."

Countries, which import more than half of their 
grain, such as Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan, 
would be particularly vulnerable, along with 150 
million people in north Africa, which imports 45 
percent of its food, Helfand said.

Many of the 800 million around the world who are 
already officially malnourished would also 
suffer, he added.

He went on to say that the global death toll from 
a nuclear war in Asia "could exceed one billion 
from starvation alone."

Food shortages could also trigger epidemics of 
cholera, typhus and other diseases, as well as 
armed conflicts, which together could kill 
"hundreds of millions".

Helfand further told the magazine that the smoke 
would warm the stratosphere by up to 50°C, 
accelerating the natural reactions that attack 
ozone.

"No-one has ever thought about this before...I 
think there is a potential for mass starvation," 
he cautioned.

Endorsing Helfand's views, John Pike, director of 
the US think tank, globalsecurity.org, said the 
fallout from a nuclear war between India and 
Pakistan "would be far more devastating for other 
countries than generally appreciated."


"Local events can have global consequences," he added.

______


[8] ANNOUNCEMENTS:

(i) Professor Emeritus Robert Eric Frykenberg 
from University of Wisconsin, Madison, will 
lecture in Oslo on "Hindutva as a Political 
Religion: An Historical Perspective", on Monday 
15 October 2007, 14.15-16.00. Venue: Georg 
Sverdrups hus, room BL27, Blindern, Oslo.

o o o

(ii)

"THE TALIBANIZATION OF SOUTH ASIA: CAN IT BE STOPPED?"
A talk by Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy

Date: Oct 31, 12:00am - 1:30pm
Where: International House, 1414 E. 59th St, Chicago, IL 60637, United States

o o o

(iii)

The 11th International Conference on Sri Lanka 
Studies (ICSLS) will be held on 1-3 November 2007 
at the University of Portsmouth, UK. The 
Conference theme will be "Social Realities and 
Natural Environment, in Sri Lanka: Insiders' and 
Outsiders Perspectives". This theme is expected 
to focus on diverse perspectives on Sri Lankan 
social realities. The conference will also expand 
its coverage to discuss interface of social and 
natural environments within the framework of 
environmental sustainability.

For inquiries, Please contact:

Dr. Premachandra Wattage,
Co-ordinator of the 11th ICSLS
Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE)
University of Portsmouth
Burnaby Terrace
1-8, Burnaby Road
Portsmouth, PO1 3AE, UK.

Tel:  +44 (0)23 9284 4124
Fax: +44 (0)23 9284 4614
http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/economics/cemare/
E-mail: Premachandra.Wattage at port.ac.uk



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

Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: http://insaf.net/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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