SACW | Dec.10-12, 2007 / Sri Lanka - Human rights / Junoon musician dedicates concert to Pakistan resistance against emergency / India: Routine Violence

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | December 10-12, 2007 | 
Dispatch No. 2475 - Year 10 running

[1] Sri Lanka: Peace sans human rights not worth having (Rohini Hensman)
[2] Pakistan: An equal music (Salman Ahmad)
[3] India: Violence within, politics without (Ajay K. Mehra)
[4] India: The limits of violence (K Balagopal)
[5] India: Erosion of Democratic Norms: A case of Modi (Ram Puniyani)
[6] India: Reading The Tea Leaves (Sanjib Baruah)
[7] India: Book Banning (A G Noorani)
[8] Announcements:
'Live with Talat'  (Karachi, 12 Dec 2007)

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[1]

The Island
10 December 2007

PEACE SANS HUMAN RIGHTS NOT WORTH HAVING

by Rohini Hensman

Text of a talk at the celebration of Human Rights 
Defenders, Organised by the Law and Society 
Trust, Inform Human Rights Documentation Centre 
and Rights now Collective for Democracy at the 
BCIS auditorium on Dec. 06

I have been asked to talk about Rajan Hoole and 
Kopalasingham Sritharan of the University 
Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR(J)), who 
received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights 
Defenders this year. I was absolutely thrilled 
when they got the award, because I had been 
feeling for years that they hadn't received 
sufficient recognition for the amazing work they 
had been doing under extremely difficult 
circumstances, without any institutional support 
or proper funding, and leading a hunted existence 
due to their refusal to give up human rights work 
despite death threats from the Liberation Tigers 
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Rajan is my cousin, I have known him practically 
from the time he was born. We played together as 
children and later had arguments on issues 
ranging from Tamil nationalism to feminism. But 
one thing I never disagreed with was his deep 
commitment to non-violence, justice and human 
dignity, which underpins his human rights work. I 
got to know Sri properly only after Rajani 
Thiranagama's murder and his hair-raising escape 
from Jaffna. Coming from a Marxist background, 
his politics are in some ways closer to mine, and 
his razor-sharp analysis is a notable element in 
the UTHR(J) reports.
UTH(J) was founded in 1988, in the midst of the 
worst period Sri Lanka has been through in its 
entire existence, with tens of thousands being 
killed in the course of fighting between the 
Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) and LTTE in the 
North and East, and between the Janata Vimukthi 
Peramuna (JVP) and government of Sri Lanka in the 
rest of the country. The precursor to the UTHR(J) 
publications was The Broken Palmyra, co-authored 
by Rajan, Sri, Rajani Thiranagama and Daya 
Somasundaram. Rajani, a co-founder of UTHR(J), 
was a doctor and lecturer in anatomy. Her murder 
by the LTTE in 1989 was not only a terrible 
tragedy, but also a serious loss for the group, 
to which her focus on women and strong feminist 
voice made a major contribution. Daya is a 
psychiatrist, who has written very illuminating 
books on the psychological trauma resulting from 
violence, both for its victims and for its 
perpetrators. He stayed on for a while after 
Rajan and Sri left Jaffna, but he, too was 
finally forced to leave.

The Broken Palmyra set a pattern that persists 
till today, and which was mentioned explicitly as 
a reason why UTHR(J) got the Martin Ennals Award, 
namely, the ability to see and report on the 
evils of human rights violations regardless of 
who the victims or who the perpetrators are. 
Thus, the book deals with violations committed by 
the Sri Lankan security forces and the IPKF, but 
it also reveals the ugly record of abuses by the 
LTTE and other Tamil groups. In fact, this is in 
some ways its focus: the palmyra, the symbol of 
Tamil society, can bend before the blast of 
external repression, but it breaks only when 
something is rotten within.  The agony of seeing 
the society they loved torn apart by fratricidal 
violence and of innocence desecrated by the 
induction of children into armed groups comes 
through loud and clear in this and subsequent 
publications.

This means that unlike the phony human rights 
advocates who are silent about atrocities 
committed by members of their own ethnic or 
religious group against members of other groups, 
UTHR(J) has highlighted and condemned massacres 
of Sinhalese and Muslims, and the wholesale 
expulsion of Muslims from the North. Unlike human 
rights defenders who felt that the case for 
defending the human rights of Tamils would be 
weakened if atrocities committed by Tamil groups 
were publicised, they felt that precisely those 
atrocities had the potential to destroy Tamil 
society more completely than anything inflicted 
on them from outside, and therefore should be 
condemned most vehemently.

UTHR(J) got a lot of flak for this, especially 
after the 2002 ceasefire, when the bulk of their 
criticism was directed against the LTTE. Not only 
Tamils but also many Sinhalese accused them of 
LTTE-bashing. I think I understand where this 
criticism comes from: it is based on a 
fundamentally different conception of being 
'even-handed' or 'unbiased', one that I think is 
deeply flawed. I already outlined UTHR(J)'s 
conception: basically the belief that all 
violations of human rights should be recorded, 
reported and condemned, regardless of who is 
committing them and against whom. This other 
conception is that if there are two parties to a 
conflict, then whenever you criticise or condemn 
one party, you must criticise and condemn the 
other equally. But, if the LTTE is conscripting 
children and the government is not involved in 
child conscription, then how can you criticise 
government forces for child conscription? If the 
LTTE is committing ten times more ceasefire 
violations and extra-judicial killings than the 
government, as even the Sri Lanka Monitoring 
Mission admitted, then how can you condemn them 
equally? The answer given by far too many NGOs 
was by downplaying or even remaining silent about 
LTTE abuses. I have listened to speeches about 
human rights in Sri Lanka where LTTE atrocities 
against Muslims were not even mentioned. No 
mention of child conscription. Not a word about 
the killings of Tamil critics. No wonder UTHR (J) 
sounded as if it were Tiger-bashing when it went 
on and on about those issues! It was because of 
the deafening silence coming from the peace 
lobby, which didn't want to rock the peace boat 
by raising them, even though this amounted to a 
decision that the human rights of Muslims, Tamil 
children and Tamil dissidents were not worth 
defending.

I think there were several catastrophic 
consequences of this silence.  Firstly, it meant 
that nothing was done to rein in LTTE. Secondly, 
it led to an enormous build-up of bitterness and 
resentment among Sinhalese, especially in cases 
where Sinhalese were the target of attack: 
resentment that should have been directed against 
the LTTE, but could later be unleashed against 
Tamil civilians because the Sinhala nationalists, 
LTTE and peace lobby all colluded in propagating 
the myth that the LTTE represented all Tamils. 
Thirdly, it discredited human rights advocates in 
general by making it appear that they were biased 
towards the LTTE, because the sad fact was that 
many of them were. Thus, when the war broke out 
again and government forces really did start 
committing horrific violations, the accusations 
of these people could be dismissed with a certain 
amount of credibility by government propagandists.

UTHR(J), on the other hand, has made the sharpest 
denunciations of government policies, and not a 
single government propagandist has dared so much 
as to hint that they are pro-LTTE. That is the 
advantage of a principled commitment to human 
rights which is not swayed one way or the other 
by contingent political considerations, such as 
whether peace talks are in progress or not: no 
one can question your bona fides without sounding 
absurd. And any political considerations are 
immaterial when set against respect for human 
rights, which is the very basis of our humanity. 
'Peace' without human rights is not worth having, 
because it is the 'peace' of humanity crushed and 
killed, the 'peace' of the graveyard in which 
humanity is buried.

A project like UTHR(J) can't be run entirely by 
two individuals, however great they may be. I 
mentioned Rajani, who was killed, and there were 
others who paid with their lives for 
participating. Rajan's wife Kirupa and Sri's wife 
Vasantha have been towers of strength, providing 
financial, logistical and moral support, as well 
as caring for the children. In some ways the 
burden they bear is even heavier than that of 
their partners, since it is worse to fear for the 
life of a loved one than to risk your own, yet 
these two courageous women have never faltered. 
Then there is a network of grassroots 
fact-finders in the North and East whose names I 
don't know, and don't even want to know at the 
moment, because what they are doing is so 
dangerous. The award is shared by all of them.
If we are being sincere in felicitating them, I 
feel we must commit ourselves to promoting their 
work in whatever way we can. That could mean 
quoting them or publishing extracts from their 
work wherever appropriate, but also, more 
generally, taking up their stance and making it 
our own.  This includes a clear and 
uncompromising rejection of both the LTTE's 
ultimate goal - an exclusively Tamil, 
totalitarian state - and the methods by which it 
is sought to be achieved, using innocent 
civilians and even the LTTE's own cadre simply as 
objects to be blown up at will. Here, I appeal 
especially to Sinhalese human rights defenders 
and peace campaigners. Muslims are vulnerable to 
attack from both sides, and most Tamils who have 
taken on the LTTE in a major way have either been 
killed or been forced to flee Sri Lanka. On the 
other hand, to the best of my knowledge, the LTTE 
has not engaged in targeted attacks against 
Sinhalese intellectuals and activists. So, they 
are uniquely placed to be able to criticise the 
Tigers with impunity.

This would enable them to launch a blistering 
attack on government policies without being 
hypocritical or biased, and that is very much 
needed at present. The whole notion that a war 
against terrorists demands that the hands of the 
government and its security forces should not be 
tied by the requirement to respect human rights 
and civil liberties should be torn to shreds. We 
should argue the very opposite: that every 
clamp-down on civil liberties which takes away an 
avenue of non-violent protest forces people into 
violence as the only path left open to them, and 
every violation of human rights pushes more 
recruits into the arms of the terrorists.

Many Tamil nationalists have not hesitated to get 
foreign citizenship and give up the idea of 
living anywhere in Sri Lanka, much less in the 
North-East, whereas Rajan and Sri have not 
settled down elsewhere, despite the fact that 
their formidable academic qualifications would 
easily enable them to do so. The reason is that 
they still long to return to Sri Lanka, and 
preferably to Jaffna. So, the best way to honour 
them is to do whatever we can to make it possible 
for them to realise their dream of coming home 
safely.

_____


[2]

http://emergency2007.blogspot.com/

AN EQUAL MUSIC

Salman Ahmad
December 11, 2007

The Chinese saying goes, 'May you live in 
interesting times' and the past fortnight has 
been nothing if not that. The accusatory e-mail 
exchange between Bilal Musharraf and myself, has 
been following a volatile trajectory in 
cyberspace, sparking off an intense debate about 
whether I was right or not to disassociate myself 
publicly from Bilal's father, Pervez Musharraf. 
When the destiny of millions of people is being 
jeopardised by a flawed regime, personal 
friendships have to take a backseat.

Artistes by nature represent a global civil 
society. In Pakistan, as in much of the 
subcontinent, this role is misunderstood by many 
who think that dissent is reserved only for 
political opposition, media pundits, human rights 
activists and religious extremists. The people 
who think that I'm jumping on the post-Emergency 
Musharraf-bashing bandwagon should know that ever 
since I can remember, Pakistani governments have 
sought to muzzle artists and poets who express 
dissent. The Pakistani poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, 
wrote "Bol kay lab azad hain terey", but 
Pakistani leaders' favourite artistes are those 
who behave like court jesters rather than 
informed citizens who have independent views on 
politics and society. Throughout my career, I 
have focused on entertainment blended with social 
themes, expressed through music, poetry and 
documentary films.

In today's hyper-connected world, where pop 
culture drives politics, music fans and college 
students confess that they no longer rely on 
cable news networks or radio for their 
socio-political news but are turning more toward 
musicians, actors and celebrities to inform them 
through Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Today's 
info-technology has empowered Pakistani civil 
society and the world to participate in political 
debate in ways that counter the State's desire to 
censor independent voices. As a Pakistani, I'm 
affected by the local and global concerns for 
peace, justice and equality on our deeply 
polarised planet.

As Pakistan plunges into an uncertain future, the 
spotlight is focused Musharraf, and the 
media-savvy former Prime Minister, Benazir 
Bhutto. Bhutto's feudal and avaricious regime as 
pm witnessed shocking levels of corruption. She 
has managed to hoodwink Western liberals into 
believing she represents the progressive Muslim, 
while she still treats Pakistan as her fiefdom, 
to be abused and exploited for personal gain and 
power. Her regime was characterised by gangster 
rules rather than the rule of law. Back in the 
late 1990s, I recorded Ehtesaab (Accountability) 
with a video that satirised corrupt Pakistani 
politicians. Bhutto's government banned the video 
and threatened me. That wasn't the first or the 
last threat. Many Pakistanis have given in to 
these terror tactics out of fear.

One of Musharraf's staunch allies is the MQM, 
which took part in a massacre in Karachi on May 
12. Forty people were killed for raising slogans 
against the government and supporting the 
Pakistani lawyers' movement for the restoration 
to position of the twice-removed Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court, I.M. Chaudhry. A few years 
ago, when I refused to perform at their exiled 
leader Altaf Hussain's wedding, they threatened 
me with dire consequences. When I discussed the 
matter with lawyers, I was told that no court 
would be strong enough to stand up to the MQM. 
President Musharraf has turned a blind eye to 
those who practise fascist politics and instead 
has focused his energies on dismantling the 
independence of the judiciary by arresting SC 
judges who threatened to delegitimise his 
presidency.

Like many of my generation, I had faith in 
Musharraf's commitment to promote "enlightened 
moderation" in Pakistan. We supported him because 
he said that he would make politics accountable 
and transparent, fight extremism, remove media 
repression, and bridge the staggering chasm 
between the rich and poor. Surely, it cannot be 
labelled opportunistic if we are disenchanted 
when he arbitrarily imposes emergency, bullies 
the media and arrests opponents? His contempt of 
civil institutions is a devastating betrayal of 
his earlier promises. Right from January, I had 
been telling people close to Musharraf that the 
president should think about his legacy and bow 
out gracefully. In August and September, these 
communications included very candid e-mails to 
Bilal whom I have known for over a decade. All 
these concerns fell on deaf ears.

Ironically, the opening of the media and 
televised political debate is something that 
Musharraf can take credit for, but when the same 
media started criticising his high-handed 
tactics, he clamped down on it. The political 
crisis in Pakistan represents the birth pangs of 
a newly-empowered civil society yearning for the 
rule of law. The recent struggles of lawyers, 
judges, journalists, students and civil rights 
activists should not be dumped into Pakistan's 
long history of social apathy; instead, they need 
to be nurtured by a return of the rule of law. 
The reward could one day be a democratic Muslim 
country at peace with itself and the world. 
Religious extremists would be no match for a 
united Pakistan.

I have dedicated my performance at the Nobel 
Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo to the Pakistan 
lawyers' movement and civil society's peaceful 
protests against Emergency and the restoration of 
the deposed judges of the Supreme Court. Music so 
often can be more powerful and far-reaching than 
silence - or words.

Salman Ahmad is a member of the Pakistani rock band, Junoon.

_____


[3]

Indian Express
December 12, 2007

VIOLENCE WITHIN, POLITICS WITHOUT
by Ajay K. Mehra

  Mahatma Gandhi once said: "I object to violence 
because when it appears to do good, the good is 
only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." 
Those justifying the increasing social and 
political violence in the country should ponder 
over the 'permanent' damage that is being done to 
Indian society.

Violence and its justification portentously 
spills now into the social arena. Narendra Modi's 
owning up the encounter killing of Sohrabuddin 
Sheikh in response to Sonia Gandhi's description 
of him as the 'maut ka saudagar' and seeking the 
validation of such extra-judicial slaughter from 
the crowd he was addressing, is not the only 
instance of the justification of violence from 
those running the machinery of the Indian state. 
The BJP's damage control squad is defending Modi 
by accusing the Congress and the colluding 
secularists of doing worse.

The defence of Modi and his goons, both in and 
out of the government, by all the NDA partners 
after the 2002 riots has a parallel only in Rajiv 
Gandhi explaining away the brutal 1984 anti-Sikh 
riots as a tremor caused by the fall of a big 
tree. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's 'paid back in 
their own coin' justification of the brutal 
reprisal by the party cadre in Nandigram against 
the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Samiti supporters 
offends civilised ears despite his recent 
apology. Worse, Prakash Karat virtually justified 
Bhattacharjee, by pointing fingers at the 
Congress for the Babri Masjid demolition. This 
'your violence is worse than ours' and 'don't 
blame us, you too have done the same, or worse' 
rhetoric is creating a new raison d'être for 
promoting and perpetuating violence in the social 
arena.

We have lately had several examples of the thin 
line between social and political violence being 
smudged and its spill-over in the social domain. 
An attack by the Guwahatians on a Santhal tribal 
rally witnessed five being lynched, several 
injured and a young girl being dragged, stripped 
and chased. The tribals retaliated a couple of 
days later. The Nandigram episode crossed all 
civilised limits. The social sanction to the 
dragging of a chain snatcher tied to a cop's bike 
in Bhagalpur appeared to have triggered similar 
incidents of vigilantism elsewhere in Bihar. 
Earlier this year, an agitation by the Gurjjar 
community for their inclusion in the ST category 
met with violent reprisals by the Meena 
community, leaving dozens dead. Taken together, 
these various incidents represent an ominous 
portent of an emerging Hobbesian society in India.

Ironically, despite the principal justification 
of the state being to protect citizens and secure 
their lives, the fundamental arm of the state 
apparatus is force: in the language of Frantz 
Fanon, 'the state is violence'. However, 
constitutionalism, the rule of law, political 
activism and civil society interventions minimise 
the state's violent streak to a large degree. But 
when the state machinery is used for competing 
violence by the very actors who are supposed to 
be buffers between state violence and the 
society, the very principles and instruments that 
are protection against violence are used to 
support aggression. As it is, Indian society 
inheres a variety of conflicting contestations 
that could, and do, lead to violent clashes in 
which the state is supposed to mediate. If the 
state turns partisan in the hands of political 
players, using the balance like the monkey 
adjudicating between two cats clashing over a 
piece of bread, we have a ready recipe for social 
and political disaster.

Gandhi believed, 'Victory attained by violence is 
tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.' 
Political leaders and parties using and 
justifying violence for electoral and political 
gains are ignoring the defeat that is facing them 
in the long run. Narendra Modi and his party 
supporters in Delhi and elsewhere should be aware 
of the Frankenstein they are creating by 
inciting, supporting and perpetuating violence in 
society. It may be easier to widen the existing 
cleavages in the society than to bridge them; but 
if this continues to be the trend it will soon be 
impossible to bridge these cleavages, it will 
become impossible to 'rule', let alone 'govern' 
an atomised society at war with itself.

Despite all its limitations, civil society in 
India is waging a heroic battle against such a 
trend. But overcoming the contradictions will not 
be easy. Those justifying their brand of violence 
on one ideological ground or the other should 
remember what Gandhi said on another occasion, 
'What difference does it make to the dead, the 
orphans and the homeless, whether the mad 
destruction is wrought under the name of 
totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or 
democracy?'

The writer is director, Centre for Public Affairs, Noida drmehra at vsnl.com


_____


[4]

Himal South Asian
December 2007

THE LIMITS OF VIOLENCE

The experience from Andhra Pradesh has shown, in 
sharp profile, all that violence is capable of 
achieving and taking away.

by  K Balagopal

India's Maoist movement is today the site of 
multiple paradoxes. On the one hand, many groups 
that would have unequivocally condemned the 
movement a decade ago for its violent methods are 
today increasingly prepared to see whether it has 
anything of value to offer - keeping open the 
question of violence. This change of heart has 
largely been brought around by the extreme 
insensitivity of the state - a change that 
ideological persuasion long failed to achieve. On 
the other hand, by increasingly relying on 
violence, including more arbitrary forms of it, 
the Maoist movement is receding farther and 
farther from any meeting point with such 
open-minded groups. In the era of neo-liberalism, 
many activists are not objecting as vociferously 
to violence in the 'interests' of the people as 
they once did, given that the current global 
socio-economic set-up is widely seen as an 
instrument of visible and invisible violence, the 
victims of which are the most vulnerable 
communities. But nearly all would still insist 
that the use of violent methods is nothing more 
than an exceptional option. Here is where the 
Maoists have yet to come around.

Andhra Pradesh offers a good case study of the 
compulsions that underlie the choice of violent 
methods of struggle, as well as the unpleasant 
consequences of the decision to take up arms. The 
Maoist movement owes its political character to 
the vicissitudes of its unfolding in both Andhra 
Pradesh and Bihar. But today, the movement is at 
its lowest ebb ever in Andhra, pushed to the 
corners of forest hideouts and into neighbouring 
Orissa and Chhattisgarh. At the same time, the 
movement is more prominently in the thoughts of 
politically active people than at almost any time 
in the past. Whether that interest can help the 
movement to truly break the shackles of 
repression, however, is a question that no close 
observer can avoid posing.

Too frequently, the discussion of revolutionary 
violence proceeds from the theoretical 
formulation made by the Naxalite movement - the 
stage of development of Indian society within the 
Marxist-Leninist paradigm, under which armed 
struggle is the only path to egalitarian 
revolution. However, neither the Naxalbari 
uprising nor any violent struggle undertaken by 
the Naxalites thereafter arose purely from this 
political belief. Instead, particular situations 
on the ground always made the choice a real 
possibility, and therefore made the theoretical 
belief more persuasive. Dogmatists on either side 
of the debate between violence and non-violence 
rarely understand that the average human being is 
simply not dogmatic in this particular issue. 
Moral pragmatism, coupled with abhorrence of any 
unnecessary or unjust use of violence, would 
about sum up the common person's attitude. When 
the very capacity for large-scale violence leads 
the activist to ignore this attitude, a gap 
develops - one that the activist will perforce 
come to rue someday.

Sangham to dalam
In Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalite movement's 
initial political dogmatism (usually blamed on 
Charu Majumdar, though he was probably not the 
only one to be blamed), which branded all mass 
activity as 'un-revolutionary', gave way to an 
important realisation. Even for the violent 
overthrow of the state, there is still a need to 
organise the people on their immediate social and 
economic demands, while simultaneously educating 
them about the preferred long-term strategy of 
armed struggle.

Soon after the lifting of the State of Emergency 
imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975, there was a 
mass upsurge in Karimnagar District, followed 
quickly in the other Godavari basin districts of 
Telangana. The communities that took part in this 
action were the poorest and socially lowest in 
the area, and they had organised around issues of 
wage, land and social oppression, all intricately 
linked with the larger issues of caste and 
gender. The targets of the movement - landlords 
as well as representatives of the state - knew 
that the Naxalites were behind this process of 
organisation, and also that the Naxalites 
believed in violence. But the struggle itself was 
by the unarmed poor, though of unprecedented 
determination and confidence. A few landlords of 
particularly vicious disposition were killed by 
the Naxalite cadre, but these acts could only be 
seen as 'supplementary' to the struggle of the 
people, not as a substitute for that struggle. 
The organisational centre was the agricultural 
labourers union, or Raythu Coolie Sangham 
(generally just known as the Sangham), and not 
the underground armed squads, known as dalams.

The state came down most heavily during this 
phase of the Naxalite movement, pointing to the 
rebels' violence as justification. At that stage, 
however, the violence was no more than what the 
mainstream political parties themselves were 
indulging in.

The difference here was that this was not 
violence in the interest of the individual or 
faction, but rather in the interest of the most 
downtrodden communities. That should have put the 
movement on a higher moral plane, but morality is 
the last thing that dictates government policy, 
then or now. In reality, the fear was palpable in 
political circles that the rural socio-economic 
structure - the intact preservation of which is 
one of the fundamental compromises on which the 
Indian polity is based - was in danger of being 
irreparably shattered by the Naxalite movement.

The paradox is that this is what in the end did 
happen, in spite of all of the state's 
repression. As a mere idea, upsetting social 
hierarchies is as potent as any actual 
redistribution of property, and if the 
redistribution could be halted by force, the idea 
could not. It was unstoppable, and thus went 
ahead. And it cannot be overstated that if the 
downtrodden no longer feel downtrodden in 
Telangana, the credit goes substantially to the 
Naxalites. While it is sometimes said that the 
commercialisation of the rural economy would have 
had the same effect sooner or later, this is a 
spurious line of argument, for two reasons. 
First, few would suggest that no other force 
would have been able to achieve the results 
achieved by the Naxalite movement. Second, while 
commercialisation may well have been able to put 
an end to some of the more obnoxious forms of 
social thought and relation, it would not have 
engendered social consciousness of the type that 
the Naxalite movement succeeded in sowing within 
India's low social classes.

Escalation and breakdown
Rather than contemplating the might-have-beens of 
history, let us look at what the Naxalite groups 
did in response to state repression. The party, 
known for a long time as People's War, decided on 
retaliation without giving up mass struggle - in 
theory, at any rate. In the meantime, the other 
major party, known as the Chandra Pulla Reddy 
group, decided on resistance based primarily on 
the people, without giving up armed struggle. The 
difference was in the emphasis on armed struggle 
versus mass struggle. In the end, neither really 
succeeded, though it could be said about the 
People's War - now called the CPI (Maoist) - that 
the jury is still out.

The state retaliation that started during 
mid-1985 resulted in a spiral that is yet to 
abate. Correspondingly, the dalam replaced the 
Sangham as the organisational focus of the 
struggle. Such a shift took place, for instance, 
in Adilabad, which witnessed severe food 
shortages. The early strategy of villagers 
raiding shops and granaries and redistributing 
the grain gave way to armed action by dalams, who 
looted not just food, but also money, and 
wantonly demolished households.

Similarly, in the place of struggles by the 
people of the Sangham for higher wages, villages 
started seeing wages go up because of threats by 
the party, made visible through posters demanding 
higher wages. Settlement of disputes by the party 
in the presence of and with the participation of 
the people was replaced by decisions by the dalam 
in the presence of just a few villagers. Those 
who disagreed with this process would stop going 
to these 'people's courts', so eventually the 
only audience at the adjudications would consist 
of the party loyalists.

All of this was taking place amidst heavy state 
repression: in 1992, the number of police 
'encounter' killings crossed 200 for the first 
time; after 1996, it was in a rare year in which 
less than that number were killed. The People's 
War was also killing in equal numbers, mostly 
'informers' whose identification was wholly 
subjective. In 1992, the People's War was banned, 
as were its mass organisations. Police torture 
became routine and increasingly vicious, while 
massive amounts of funding outfitted the security 
forces with sophisticated weaponry. The dalams 
followed suit, acquiring equally sophisticated 
weapons and becoming experts at various types of 
mines and explosives. So many police jeeps were 
blown up during this time - inevitably killing 
untargeted individuals as well - that the police 
eventually stopped using vehicles entirely in 
Naxalite areas, preferring to move on foot.

The radical dimension
Generalised violence draws a shroud of silence 
over events. It has the effect of shutting out 
both critical thought and assertiveness, which is 
fatal for the protection of human rights. 
Initiative rests instead with those who hold the 
guns, on whichever side they may be. Rebels who 
employ violence systematically attribute their 
decisions to 'the people', but the people in 
truth have little say in the matter. Instead, 
they become spectators to the political process, 
a clear denial of an essential democratic right. 
Those who agree with the rebels may well be 
content - and, to the extent that the majority 
agree with them, this contentment may appear 
universal. But contentment is no substitute for 
democracy, a fact that comes alive the day the 
agreement ceases.

The effects that insurgencies have on children 
have been widely discussed, but the ramifications 
go far beyond the young. It is a paradox that 
radical movements begin in response to pain and 
suffering, but the spiral of violence and 
counter-violence that accompanies such movements 
and the resultant state response generates 
considerable insensitivity, insecurity and fear. 
One way or another, this tangle of emotions 
almost inherently disallows respect for human 
rights. Repressive laws and extralegal measures 
undertaken by the state are promulgated on the 
backs of images of brutal violence, which 
likewise conjure feelings of growing insecurity. 
In such a situation, few deign to look at what 
exactly these repressive laws say or what exactly 
these repressive practices mean for the people - 
all the better for the state to spread a wide 
net, one that catches much more than those images 
of violence would seem to dictate.

Even the judiciary is not immune to the 
temptation to play on these insecurities. A full 
bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court recently 
rendered a judgement on fake encounters, 
essentially warning that those who infringe on 
the lives of others cannot ask for protection 
against state agencies. This essentially means 
that a 'terrorist' or 'extremist' can be shot 
dead by the police due to the fact that he 
himself, purportedly, does not hesitate to take 
lives in pursuit of his aims. In less violent 
times, such an inflammatory proposition would 
have met with immediate public rejection; but in 
the climate of fear created by frequent acts of 
arbitrary violence, there is considerable 
sympathy for such a dangerous, unprincipled 
stance.

Those who follow strategies that include violence 
can never be as careful as they may wish in their 
use of that violence. They begin by targeting 
only the enemies of the 'cause', but frequently 
fall prey to the logic of terror: it is not 
through the elimination of individual 'bad guys', 
but rather through the creation of a climate of 
fear in which enemies dare not function, that 
most effectively establishes the radical's 
dominion. 'Preventive violence', in which you 
claim a right to retaliate even before an enemy 
is fully formed, is not the brainchild of George 
W Bush, but an assumption common to strategies of 
violence of all kinds.

One of the more remarkable facts about Andhra 
Pradesh is that radical politics has become such 
a part of the common social consciousness, that 
it has allowed for the easy proclamation of 
'arbitrariness' as a justifiable form of 
revolution. For a long time, the Maoists used to 
apologise for the arbitrary use of guns. But in 
more recent times, after their spread into 
Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, theirs is a much more 
cavalier and trigger-happy conduct. These days, 
the Maoists no longer apologise for arbitrary 
acts of violence. Indeed, the analyses the rebels 
publish on the Internet these days follow a 
time-tested strategy: publicise instances of 
state brutality; then sign off with the 
suggestion that, under such circumstances, the 
revolutionaries cannot be asked to be principled 
in their use of violence.

The need to safeguard and secure the lives of 
revolutionary fighters puts a premium on 
suspicion as a political strategy, which is in 
stark contrast to democratic mobilisation. 
So-called informers, moles and covert operatives 
are identified and ruthlessly killed, even when 
there is little more than suspicion as 
'evidence'. And since only the poor would have 
information to give about a poor-people's 
movement, it is inevitably the poor who get 
killed in large numbers in the process.

Yet, again, the utter insensitivity of the state 
authorities to popular opinions and aspirations 
is continuing to impel many - who were hitherto 
against violence altogether - to consider the 
possibility that there may be some grain of truth 
in what the Maoists have been saying all this 
time. If this is to be the rope that helps the 
Maoists hoist themselves up, however, the rebels 
need to pay back the compliment by incorporating 
common human scruples into their understanding of 
violence: that it may be useful, at times even 
unavoidable, but that violence should never set 
the terms of political activity. And that the 
invariably, inherently, destructive impact of 
violence on democratic processes and practices 
must set the strictest of limits for its use.

This article is an edited version of the 
original, which is available with the author.

______



[5]

Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007


EROSION OF DEMOCRATIC NORMS: A CASE OF MODI

by Ram Puniyani

Current Gujarat elections, irrespective of their 
results, will remain etched in the memory of the 
nation for wrong reasons. Gujarat witnessed the 
burning of Sabarmati express at Godhra in Feb 
2002. The carnage which followed this train 
accident claimed the lives of thousands of 
innocents and simultaneously polarized Gujarat 
along religious lines. The process of 
ghettotisation of Muslims and the fear of 
minorities constructed in the minds of majority 
community are staring in our face. At the same 
time the threads of democratic nationalism, 
national integration are breaking rapidly. While 
various citizens? inquiry reports did point out 
the pre planned nature of the pogrom and the role 
of RSS combine led by Modi in the carnage, we 
could all see the same for ourselves thanks to 
the Tehelka. The consequent polarization led to 
the victory of the leader of the carnage back to 
power in the elections which took place a bit 
later. In the elections of 2002, the main 
opposition party, Congress did not gather 
strength to take on Modi with full vigor. One of 
the reasons was that Modi deflected the criticism 
directed again him and against RSS combine as the 
insult to 5 crore Gujartis, and his assertion was 
well received in a section of society.

The Tehelka sting showed some of the perpetrators 
boasting about their crimes in front of the 
camera, and this made most of the people realize 
once again the gravity of the crime. Now most of 
the society got a direct feel of what had 
happened, who did it. Society also registered 
that the reports of citizens groups were on the 
dot in pinpointing the malaise of Gujarat 
society. It was in this background that Sonia 
Gandhi in her election campaign called the Modi 
led BJP as the merchants of death. Modi realized 
that the truth is being said after all, and tried 
to raise the communal and criminal sentiments by 
justifying the extra judicial killing of 
Sorabuddin, who was killed in a fake encounter by 
the police.

The ploy was that since a section of society has 
been communized enough, the illegal act of 
killing someone will get him sympathy votes. He 
took ?credit? for this ?bravery? of killing of 
Soharabuddin and his wife. Human rights workers 
raised the issue of Modi communalizing and 
criminalizing the people?s mindset. And as is his 
wont, he presented the criticism against him as 
the insult of people of Gujarat, of Gujarat 
itself!

Usual damage control exercises unrolled, he has 
been quoted out of context, he does not justify 
the extra judicial killings etc. But the damage 
was done and election commission took a serous 
note of it. The frail nature of legal mechanism, 
as to how a democratically elected chief 
minister, takes oath in the name of constitution, 
than openly incites the public and tries to bask 
in the ?glory? of this illegal act done by state 
machinery, is there for all to see.

The larger issue of democratic norms, morality 
and polity are put at the backburner, with the 
leaders doing their electoral arithmetic of what 
will help them more in getting the power. Now the 
issue can be discussed at the level of legalities 
and also at the level of electoral arithmetic. 
All these do have their importance but one also 
needs to be concerned about the deeper and 
broader issues related to our constitution, as to 
what is happening to the values of democracy 
enshrined in our constitution?

In Gujarat the legal norms have been put aside in 
matters of rehabilitation and in the post 
violence justice. In ?regular? life patterns, now 
a section of Muslims are willing to bend on their 
knees to survive, willing to ?forgive? 
unilaterally, while no body is caring to ask for 
their forgiveness. The ?charisma? of Modi is on 
the rise. He was keeping the communal card, under 
wraps till the word Merchants of death was hurled 
upon him. And then he unraveled his communal face 
with full force just before the polling. All this 
sounds so unusual but we are becoming used to the 
prevalence of these things. Does it ring familiar 
to something which happened in history? While 
there are lot of differences from what happened 
in Germany some similarities are too glaring.

The targeting of minorities, the total abolition 
of democratic space, the social common sense 
directed against the minorities and secularists, 
and consensus built around the fascist state are 
very similar. ?Kill them, kill them? is what Modi 
could easily extract from the section of crowd 
for Soharabuddin. What distinguishes Gujarat from 
the Germany?s state of affairs in 30s and 40s of 
last century is that here the process is taking 
place at a slower pace and the same process is on 
with different intensities in different states of 
the country. So can we use the term Chronic 
Fascism in Gujarat in contrast to acute fascism 
of Germany. Whole of Germany was totally gripped 
by this politics, while in India Gujarat is worst 
but all the same in other states also this 
fascism is strangulating democratic space, though 
with different degrees of intensity. The biggest 
similarity is the ?successes? of a fascist party, 
which in Germany took the pretext of race and 
here it is wearing the garb of religion. 
Interestingly earlier and even now the fascist 
parties are using the democratic space to come to 
power, to precisely abolish the same in due 
course.

During last two and a half decades the rise of 
right wing politics has taken place on the 
pretext of Hinduism, while it has nothing to do 
with the humane streams of Hinduism. It claims to 
be for Hindus, while majority of Hindus have 
become victim of this intimidating politics. It 
reflects the state of erosion of our democratic 
norms and gradual strengthening of the forces 
which do talk about democracy but are deeply 
wedded to the RSS, the organization which is 
opposed to democracy and wants to bring Hindu 
nation. That the concept of Hindu nation is for 
Hindus, is just a pretext. It essentially aims to 
abolish the values of liberty equality and 
fraternity and strengthens the hold of section of 
Hindus, the elite, males, on the whole society. 
The trick is the agenda of a small dominant 
section of society has been propagated as being 
for all Hindus.

Coming to Gujarat, one can clearly make out that 
there is a slow but dangerous march towards a 
fascist state. The classical fascism which one 
witnessed in Germany and Italy in the early 
decades of last century was marked by the 
targeting of minorities, of social rights 
groups/parties and at the same time doing away 
with all democratic norms. It created a 
terrorizing atmosphere, where the handful ruled 
the roost with the charisma of leader like 
Hitler, who swayed the people, worked and he got 
the anti democratic things accepted by people in 
the initial part of the rule, till Germany itself 
collapsed under the weight of the fascist boots. 
Such politics does discover and project a single 
charismatic leader, in Germany it was Hitler, in 
Gujarat it is Modi. Incidentally RSS nationalism 
also took lot of inspiration from Hitler?s 
Nationalism, ?German national pride has now 
become the topic of the day. To keep up the 
purity of nation and its culture, Germany shocked 
the world by her purging the country of Semitic 
races-The Jews. National pride at its highest has 
been manifested here. Germany has also shown how 
neigh impossible it is for races and cultures, 
having differences going to the root, to be 
assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson 
for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.? (We 
or Our nationhood Defined,1938)

The politics of RSS combine has cleverly adopted 
itself to the Indian situation and has gone on to 
create a fear of the miniscule minority. It is 
quite similar to Hitler creating a phobia against 
Jews, holding them responsible for the plight of 
Germany, and using that as the center of his 
policies terrorizing the whole nation into 
submission to the agenda of fascism, abolition of 
the concept of rights, something which is the 
life and breath of democracy, something which is 
a shield for the average people to survive. While 
a large section of Gujarat, Minorities, dalits, 
adivasis and women are suffering the middle and 
affluent classes are able to get their way 
through the agenda of vibrant Gujarat!

The analogy does not end here. The terrorizing 
atmosphere created in Gujarat does remind us of 
the status of minorities. Now the large sections 
of minorities feel that they have been relegated 
to the second class citizenship status. Their 
insecurity is the index of our democratic ethos. 
It is correctly pointed out that if you want to 
see the state of health of democracy, have a look 
at the status of its minorities!

--
Issues in Secular Politics
December 2007 II
For Circulation/Publication

______


[6]


The Telegraph, Calcutta.
December 11, 2007

READING THE TEA LEAVES
- The understanding of tribal status must be rid of colonial errors

by Sanjib Baruah

After the mayhem in Guwahati around the adivasi 
rally of November 24, the government of Assam is 
reportedly considering legislation that would 
restrict the public display of bows and arrows 
and other 'traditional' weapons.

That a group that provided the muscle for the 
19th-century capitalist transformation of Assam 
today finds the bow and arrow to be an attractive 
ethnic symbol is rather interesting. So is its 
preferred self-description as adivasis, in sharp 
contrast to the English term 'tribe' preferred by 
most other groups that have legal recognition as 
scheduled tribes in northeast India.

The adivasis of Assam trace their roots to Munda, 
Oraon, Santhal and other people of the Jharkhand 
region. They are descendants of indentured 
labourers brought to the tea plantations of 
Assam. Adivasi activists argue that since their 
ethnic kin in their places of origin are 
recognized as STs, they should have the same 
status in Assam.

According to some estimates, there are as many as 
4 million adivasis in Assam - more than half of 
Assam's tea labour community. They constitute the 
majority of the tea labour community in Lower 
Assam, but other groups outnumber them in Upper 
Assam. If ST status is about whether a group 
deserves reservations in jobs and in educational 
institutions, the case for adivasis being 
recognized as STs is indisputable.

A study on the tea labour community by the North 
Eastern Social Research Centre found that 60 per 
cent of the girls and 35 per cent of the boys in 
the age group of 6 to 14 are out of school, and 
only 4 per cent study beyond class VII. Tea 
plantations are still the major sources of 
employment: half of them live near plantations 
and work as casual labourers.

Many adivasis were displaced during the Bodoland 
agitation because they or their forefathers had 
settled in reserved forest lands after giving 
their working lives to tea plantations. Since 
their villages were not legal settlements, the 
government did not facilitate their return to 
their homes even after the Bodo movement ended.

Political mobilization of a community in support 
of a demand for inclusion on a schedule that 
would entitle them to preferences is not 
surprising. Yet the demand of the tea workers' 
descendants for ST status, and the framework 
within which the debate is being conducted, draw 
attention to our continued reliance on a highly 
questionable stock of colonial knowledge about 
Indian society and culture. This should be a 
source of embarrassment, as well as cause for 
serious introspection.

The tribal affairs minister, P.R. Kyndiah, a 
politician from the Khasi community, recognized 
as a scheduled tribe, says without any sense of 
irony that ST status for adivasis would involve 
examining the case using the criteria of "tribal 
characteristics, including a primitive background 
and distinctive cultures and traditions".

Ethnic activists opposed to the adivasi claim 
cite with approval the statement of the home 
minister, Shivraj Patil, that the adivasis have 
"lost their tribal characteristics". They also 
argue that the adivasis are not "aborigines of 
Assam". Since STs of Assam are not treated as STs 
in other parts of the country and even Bodos are 
not recognized as STs in Karbi Anglong, says a 
leader of an indigenous tribal organization, 
migrant communities cannot be recognized as STs 
in Assam.

The argument points to a peculiarity of ST status 
in northeast India that goes back to British 
colonial thinking about race, caste and tribe in 
this region. However, whether migrants should be 
considered ST or not, given the contribution of 
the tea labour community in blood and in sweat to 
the formation of modern Assam, no other group has 
a better claim to full citizenship rights and 
compensatory justice than they do.

Colonial ethnography relied on racist notions of 
tribes having fixed habitats and ethnic traits 
that are almost biological and even inheritable. 
In northeast India, the so-called 'hill tribes' 
were thus all fixed to their supposed natural 
habitats. Therefore, it became necessary to 
distinguish between so-called pure and impure 
types to account for those that stray away from 
the assigned physical spaces, or do not conform 
to particular ethnic stereotypes.

The distinction between plains tribes and hill 
tribes can be traced to this difficulty of 
colonial ethnic classification. As the 
anthropologist, Matthew Rich, has shown, the 
relatively egalitarian mores and habits of many 
of the peoples of northeast India - for instance, 
the absence of caste in the hills - presented a 
'problem' for colonial ethnographers.
Since India for them was a hierarchical and a 
'caste ridden' civilization, the question was: 
were these people outside or inside India? There 
was no easy answer, since many of the ethnic kin 
of the people without caste also performed 
Hindu-like rituals just a short distance away.

The opposition between hills and plains became 
the solution to this conceptual 'problem'. It is 
this history that explains why a number of groups 
that today seek ST or sixth schedule status were 
distinguished sharply from 'hill tribes' in the 
colonial classificatory system. For instance, the 
Koch Rajbongshis were labelled caste Hindus and 
not a 'tribe', and the Bodos were labelled a 
'plains tribe'.

Tea workers posed a classificatory problem for 
the census as early as in 1891. The "aboriginal 
tribes of central India" were explicitly excluded 
from the "forest and hill tribes" in the census 
of Assam, and instead were classified simply as 
labourers.

Colonial knowledge continues to shape categories 
of Indian census. Thus of the 23 STs in Assam, 14 
are hill tribes and 9 are plains tribes. Since 
the census counts tribes only in their supposed 
natural habitats, it produces the absurdity of 
the number of people classified as plains tribals 
being zero in the hills, and those classified as 
hill tribals being zero in the plains. This is 
the source of the complaint of Bodo activists 
that Bodos are not a scheduled tribe in Karbi 
Anglong, which is a hill district. Thus, if one 
goes by the Indian census, the number of hill 
tribals living even in metropolitan Guwahati is 
zero.

The discourse surrounding the adivasi claim to ST 
status underscores a major structural dilemma for 
our practice of citizenship. The effect of making 
indigenousness the test for rights, says the 
African intellectual, Mahmood Mamdani, in another 
context, is that the state penalizes those that 
the commodity economy dynamizes.

Seen through the prism of the global political 
economy, the adivasis of Assam are part of the 
same 19th-century migration that took Indian 
labourers to plantations in various parts of the 
British Empire, such as Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius 
or South Africa.

We now celebrate the Indian diaspora. The Pravasi 
Bharatiya Divas honours descendants of those 
migrants to far-away shores, some of whom rose to 
become presidents and prime ministers of their 
countries. But the descendants of those who 
remained within India's borders are reduced to 
defending their ordinary citizenship rights, and 
making claims to compensatory justice, with a 
borrowed idiom of remembered tribal-ness.

It is time to rethink our image of northeast 
India as remote and exotic, and recognize that 
the region was incorporated into the global 
capitalist economy earlier and more solidly than 
many parts of the Indian heartland. The basis for 
making claims to rights and entitlements in such 
a region must be common residence and a vision of 
a common future, and not only a real or imagined 
shared past.

The genocide in Rwanda was ultimately the product 
of the Hutu and Tutsi being constructed as native 
and outsider, thanks to the legacy of colonial 
knowledge embedded in African political 
institutions. This should serve as a warning 
against trying to manage conflicts in northeast 
India by simply tinkering with institutions such 
as the sixth schedule and ST status that have 
ample traces of colonial knowledge built into 
them.

The author is at the Centre for Policy Research, 
New Delhi and the Indian Institute of Technology, 
Guwahati.

______


[7] BOOK REVIEW

Economic & Political Weekly
December 1, 2007

BOOK BANNING
by A G Noorani

The Constitution guarantees the freedom of 
expression, but on the statutes are provisions 
which empower the central and state governments 
to ban and seize books on unconstitutional 
grounds and to even launch criminal proceedings.  


Diet for Art's Sake: Book on Trial from Madame
Bovary to Lolita by Elizabeth Ladenson; Cornell
University Press; pp 272, $  29.95.


Book banning is a civilised form of the vice of 
book-burning which is a sure symptom of fascism. 
India has a formidable record of book banning. As 
with much else, independent India simply took 
over the habits of the British raj. In 1976, at 
the height of the Emergency, Manohar Publishers 
reprinted in India, to their great credit, N 
Gerald Barrier's formidable book Banned: 
Controversial Literature and Political Control in 
India 1907-47  based on a thorough research in 
the archives in India and Britain. It cove red 
books relating to "religious controversy", 
"nationalist, secular politics" and "patriotic 
poetry and songs", it provided a guide to banned 
literature and indicated to the reader where to 
find the collections of banned literature in 
India and in Britain. Some, like the Report of 
the Kanpur Riots Inquiry (1931), have been 
reprinted after independence. 

The raj did not confer fundamental rights on its 
subjects. The Constitution of India recognises 
that citizens are entitled to such rights. Books 
are banned by recourse to two statutes. One 
method is to prevent their import from outside; 
another is to confiscate books published or sold 
here. Section 11(1) of the Customs Act, 1962 
reads:

If the central government is satisfied that it is 
necessary so to do for any of the purposes 
specified in subsection (2), it may, by 
notification in the official gazette, prohibit 
either absolutely or subject to such conditions 
(to be fulfilled before or after clearance) as 
may be  specified in the notification, the import 
or export of goods of any specified description.

Subsection (2) says:

The purposes referred to in subsection
(1)	are the  following: (a) the maintenance 
of the security of India; (b) the maintenance of 
public order and standards of decency or 
morality; ...(t) the prevention of dissemination 
of documents containing any matter which is 
likely to prejudicially affect  friendly 
relations with any foreign state or is derogatory 
to national prestige; (u) the prevention of the 
contravention of any law for the time being in 
force; and (v) any other purpose conducive to the 
interests of the general public. 

This provision is patently unconstitutional for 
three reasons. First, the grounds go far beyond 
those mentioned in Article 19(2) of the 
Constitution on which alone the fundamental right 
to freedom of speech and expression may validly 
be restricted. Neither "national prestige" nor 
"the interests of the general public" figure 
there. As the Supreme Court pointed out in the 
Sakal Papers Case (1962), this precious right 
"cannot, like the freedom to carry on business, 
be curtailed in the interests of the general 
public". 

Secondly, Article 19(2) says that the 
restrictions must be "reasonable". The court has 
ruled repeatedly that a provision which confers 
unfettered power or which does not provide for 
appeal to an independent body is unreasonable. 
Section 128 of the Act provides for appeal from 
Caesar to Caesar; from the collector to the board 
of revenue and from an official of lower rank to 
the appellate collector of customs. Thirdly, it 
is manifestly unreasonable that even after its 
clearance, the book's circulation should de- pend 
on the will  of the customs. 

The other method is to use Section 95 of the 
Criminal  Procedure Code, 1973 a faithful replica 
of its ancestor S 99-G of 1898. It empowers the 
state government to declare "forefeited to the 
government" any newspaper, document or book 
which, in its opinion, offends against the 
following provisionS of the penal  code; namely, 
S 124-A ("sedition"), S 153-A (promoting ill will 
"between different...groups" based on religion, 
language, caste, etc), S 153-B (imputing 
disloyalty to the country to any such group); S 
292 (obscene literature);
S 293 (sale of obscene literature to the young); 
or S 295-A (insult to religious feelings of any 
group of citizens with "deliberate and malicious 
intention of outraging the religious feelings" of 
that class).

S 153-A and 295-A are commonly abused for political ends. S 153-A comes in only
when ill will is aroused between different 
communities. S 295-A applies when a particular 
group is insulted, (a) by  outraging its 
"religious" feelings, and (b) the insult is 
"deliberate or malicious". It has no application 
if a historical figure is criticised, however, 
unfairly, even if it arouses emotions in the 
region. Besides, it applies only to "insult" to 
religious fee lings and by a "deliberate and 
malicious acts". 

But state governments freely invoke S  295-A to 
ban scholarly works to quell agitations, 
sometimes invoking S 153-A as well for that job. 
On the other hand, S 153-A is  never seriously 
used to silence Bal Thackeray or the hate mongers 
of the RSS and the BJP.

S 95 of the criminal procedure code provides a 
safeguard. In the notification forfeiting the 
book the state govern- ment must state "the 
grounds of its opinion".  Bare assertion will not 
do. S 96 enables "any person having any interest" 
in the forefeited book to apply to the high court 
to quash the order. Such an application must be 
heard by a special bench of at least three 
judges. The word "interest" should cover the 
reader as well.

This proceeding is one form of trial of a book. 
The other is in a criminal prosecution under the 
penal code before a magistrate or sessions judge. 
We abolished juries long ago. In 1965 the Supreme 
Court upheld the conviction of a bookseller for 
being in possession of Lady Chatterly's Lover 
(Ranjit D Udeshi vs State of Maharashtra AIR 1965 
S C 881). The court's ruling in the Bandit Queen 
case (Bobby Art International vs Om Pal Singh 
Hoon (1996) 4 SCC  1), upholding depiction of 
frontal nudity in a movie, gives ground for hope 
that the 1965 ruling will be  reversed. It is 
absurdly illiberal.

The labours of Elizabeth Ladenson, of the 
Columbia University, will be of immense help in 
mounting such a challenge. Her narrative starts 
from Madame Bovary, for which Flaubert was tried 
in France in 1857, and ends with Fanny Hill 
written in the 18th century but put on trial in 
the United States in 1966. Trials concerning 
novels like Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, Lady 
Chatterly's Lover and the works of Marquis'de 
Sade are also covered. They were trials by jury. 
She also discusses movie adaptations of the 
novels. It is much more than a legal problem. Not 
surprisingly, lawyers innocent of anything 
besides the law find them- selves out of their 
depths. It is simply a matter of literacy.

In England, Penguin Books published the novel in 
1960. A prosecution was launched. It failed 
miserably. The defence had waived its claim to an 
all-male jury. 

The author's comments on the proceedings are instructive:

While artistic merit was a major component of the 
defence, it was Lawrence's place in 20th century 
literature in general that provided the main 
justification in aesthetic terms. The novel 
itself was characterised on the basis of its 
moral value. This was, certainly, in strict 
keeping  with all other such arguments over the 
course of at least a century, perfectly 
reasonable and accurate in terms of the author's 
evident intent, and at the same time some- what 
disconcerting when one considers that it had 
originally been not merely banned as immoral but 
described as, for instance, 'the most evil 
outpouring that has ever besmirched the 
literature of our country'. The witnesses all 
testified to the moral seriousness of the book 
and its social and even educational merit, 
insisting on Lawrence's great importance as an 
author, while also observing that Lady Chatterly 
was  not his best effort. It was an impressive 
line-up, including, as mentioned earlier, not 
only E M Forster but Dame Rebecca West, among 
other literary figures. 

The trial proved a trailblazer. Obscenity, 
defined in archaic terms, fell into disrepute in 
the west. It lingered in India. 

The main question this book tries to answer is, 
how does an "obscene" book become a "classic"? 
Its main attempt at an answer is that over the 
course of roughly a century, from the mid-19th 
century to the 1960s, Two ideas which had already 
been circulating for sometime in the form of 
avant-garde heresy, gradually became accepted 
clichés, and then grounds for legal defence. The 
first is most  conveniently encapsulated in the 
formula 'art for art's sake' the notion that a 
work of art functions on its own terms, exists in 
a calm independent of conventional morality, and 
should  therefore be exempt from the strictures 
of moral judgment. The second is that of 
'realism'. The idea that the function of the work 
of art may legitimately include, and perhaps 
should even  obligatorily take on, the 
representation of all aspects of life, including 
the more unpleasant and sordid.  Both these ideas 
now seem obvious, but they were unmentionable for 
a very long time.  The cases analysed in detail 
in the book show how outdated are the notions of 
obscenity in India.

______



[8] Announcements:

'Live with Talat' – Karachi Press Club, Wednesday, Dec 12, 6.00-8.00
pm.

The People's Resistance in collaboration with the 
Karachi Union of  Journalists and the Karachi 
Press Club is organizing 'Live with  Talat', 
featuring the banned Aaj television hosts Talat 
Hussain along
with Nusrat Javeed and Mushtaq Minhas of Bolta Pakistan.
Confirmed guests include: Justice (r) Wajihuddin 
Ahmed, Justice (r) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, 
President Sindh High Court Bar Association 
Justice (r) Rasheed Rizvi and advocate Noor Naz 
Agha, along with
People's Resistance representative Noman Qadir. 
Free and open to the public. Seating arrangement 
- 'farshi' (bring  your own cushion).


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Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
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