SACW | Jan. 7-8, 2008 / Pervez Hoodbhoy Interview / Bangladesh's Patriarchal ID / India-Pakistan Partition and the Museums ; oridda riots / UK's blasphemy law

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | January 7-8, 2008 | 
Dispatch No. 2485 - Year 10 running

[1] Pakistan After Benazir's Assassination:
   (i) An Interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy (Stefania Maurizi)
   (ii) Democratic and political spaces (S. Akbar Zaidi)
  (iii) Benazir Bhutto died battling the "state 
within the state". Can Pakistan rid itself of the 
cancer? (EPW)
[2] Bangladesh - Patriarchy Zindabad: Gender bias 
in national identity (ID) card (Shamima Nasreen)
[3] India / Pakistan: Joining a civilisation (Nayanjot Lahiri)
[4] India: Riots in Orissa (Angana Chatterji)
[5] India: A case for inquiry  (A.G. Noorani)
[6] India: Ladakh: Constitutional status equal 
than Kashmir and Jammu (Balraj Puri)
[7] India: PC Joshi - a Political Journey (Bipan Chandra)
[8] UK: Misguided and obsolete - repeal of the 
law against blasphemous libel (Lisa Appignanesi)
[9] Announcements:
   (i) Upcoming Protest by Student Action 
Committee  (Lahore, 8th of January 2008)
   (ii) Richard M Stallman Talk (New Delhi, 8 January 2008)

______


[1]  Pakistan:

(i)

AN INTERVIEW WITH PERVEZ HOODBHOY

by Stefania Maurizi , Il Venerdi of La Repubblica [January ?, 2008]

(http://www.repubblica.it), where the interview will be published in Italian.

Q: Let's start with the tragedy of Bhutto 
assassination. Today, international media remind 
us she was the first woman to become the PM of an 
Islamic country, she was a democratic leader, 
etc. Nonetheless, she was the scion of a feudal 
family, which was primarily responsible for 
making Pakistan an atomic power and she was known 
for the authoritarian control of her party. 
Looking back, how do you judge Benazir Bhutto?

A: Having first known Benazir Bhutto from high 
school in Karachi, and then later in Cambridge 
(Massachussetts), I am deeply saddened by her 
assassination. But, although the international 
media paint her as someone who could have led 
Pakistan into the modern age, the truth is very 
different. Her two tenures as prime minister were 
a nightmare of autocratic government and 
mis-governance. Billions disappeared from foreign 
aid. A Swiss court found her guilty of money 
laundering in 2003.  Ms. Bhutto owned mansions 
and palaces across the world. She even tried to 
steal land from my (public) university to feed 
the rapacious appetite of her party members.

Even during school days, Benazir thought she had 
been born to rule. More importantly, she made not 
the slightest effort to change the feudal 
character of Pakistani politics and society. The 
Bhuttos own vast tracts of agricultural land in 
Sindh that is worked upon by serfs.  Although she 
promised to bring democracy to Pakistan, after 
returning to Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto made clear that 
for a few table scraps she would be happy to team 
up with General Musharraf under the hopelessly 
absurd US plan to give our military government a 
civilian face. Her party, the Pakistan Peoples 
Party was her fiefdom. She appointed herself as 
"chairperson for life". Reflecting the mindset of 
a feudal princess, she even named her successors 
to be male members from her family: her 19-year 
son, who is a student at Oxford and knows nothing 
about Pakistani culture, as well as her 
phenomenally corrupt husband, initially known as 
Mr Ten Percent and later as Mr. Thirty Percent.

Q: Was Ms. Bhutto a model for Pakistani women?

A: She was courageous and single-minded. And she 
showed that a woman could be the head of a 
conservative Islamic state. Nevertheless, it is 
hard to see what she wanted beyond personal 
power. Although she said that she was fighting 
for grand causes, I'm still trying to figure out 
what they were.  She certainly did nothing for 
Pakistani women during her two stints in power 
and left untouched the horrific Hudood laws, 
according to which a rape victim needs to produce 
4 witnesses to the act of penetration (else she 
could be punished for fornication). Nor did she 
try to overturn the Pakistani blasphemy law that 
prescribes death as the minimum penalty for those 
convicted of insulting the prophet of Islam or 
his companions. As for democracy: she had been 
desperate to do a deal with Musharraf who dangled 
over her head the many corruption cases that she 
was charged with. But he proved too clever for 
her and she was forced into the opposition.

In foreign policy, she played footsie with the 
army. It could do whatever it liked, including 
making nuclear weapons, sending Islamic militants 
into Kashmir, and organizing the takeover of 
Afghanistan by the Taliban. In 2002 she regretted 
having signed the document authorizing funds for 
the funding Taliban forces for seizing Kandahar. 
Ms. Bhutto makes an excellent martyr. In her 
death she will doubtlessly play a more positive 
role than
when alive.

Q: Al Qaeda was immediately blamed for Bhutto 
assassination. However, many people hated her: 
Musharraf, the Army, and the infamous ISI, which 
in 1990 removed Bhutto from power after she had 
replaced General Hameed Gul, the man who invented 
the Taliban. Do you believe that Al Qaeda was 
really responsible for killing Benazir Bhutto? 
Who is going to gain from Bhutto's death?

A: There are different possibilities and much 
confusion. But some facts are certain. There 
definitely were gunshots, and this was followed 
by a suicide blast. Now, I do not think that 
suicide bombers can be bought with any number of 
rupees. Only a religious fanatic lured by 
heavenly rewards would blow himself up. Therefore 
Al-Qaida, the Taliban, or other Islamic jihadist 
groups are strong possibilities. They always 
hated Bhutto, but even more after she announced 
in Washington that, if elected prime minister, 
she would fight them even more vigorously than 
Musharraf. Of course, rogue elements of 
Pakistan's intelligence agencies, who are also 
strong Islamists, and who lie deeply hidden 
within the establishment, could also have done 
it. They have a stock of suicide bombers 
available to them, as evidenced by the success 
they have had in organizing suicide attacks upon 
army commandos as well as their own colleagues.

So did Islamists of one or the other flavour do 
it? Maybe, but the waters have been muddied by 
the government. First, publicly available 
photographs and videos show a modern-looking 
gunman accompanying the suicide bomber. He fired 
three shots, heard by all present, at least one 
of which hit Bhutto. Some say that there was a 
second sharpshooter in a building too. On the 
other hand, the government initially insisted she 
died from concussion and not a bullet wound - an 
obvious lie immediately refuted by those in the 
same car as Bhutto. Second, in just an hour after 
the assassination, the police washed away all the 
bloody evidence with water hoses. So, it is quite 
possible that non-Islamists in the government 
have somehow used brainwashed suicide bombers, 
trained in mosques and madrassas, to do their 
dirty job. But, as in the JFK murder, the truth 
will never be known.

As for the gainers and losers: Islamist groups 
saw Bhutto as a tool of America that would be 
used against them, and a leader who could 
secularize Pakistan. Plus, she was a woman and 
popular. But Musharraf and his political party, 
the PML(Q), have also gained because a political 
rival has been eliminated. The losers are those 
Pakistanis who wish for a secular, modern 
Pakistan and not one that is run by mullahs. 
Although she never delivered on her promises, her 
followers never lost faith.

Q: There is a lot of concern about the future of 
Pakistan. How real is the threat of an Islamic 
takeover, in your opinion?

A: It has already been taken over! Twenty five 
years ago the Pakistani state began pushing Islam 
on to its people as a matter of policy.  Prayers 
in government departments were deemed compulsory, 
punishments were meted out to those who did not 
fast in Ramadan, selection for academic posts 
required that the candidate demonstrate knowledge 
of Islamic teachings, and jihad was propagated 
through schoolbooks. Today government 
intervention is no longer needed because of a 
spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. But now 
the state is realizing that it shot itself in the 
foot. The fanatical jihadists it created have 
turned against it. It is supreme irony that the 
Pakistan Army - whose men were recruited under 
the banner of jihad and which saw itself as the 
fighting arm of Islam - is now frequently 
targeted by suicide bombers who are fighting a 
jihad to bring even stricter Islam. It has lost a 
thousand or more men fighting Al-Qaida and the 
Taliban.

The pace of radicalization has quickened. There 
are almost daily suicide attacks. This phenomenon 
was almost unknown in Pakistan before the US 
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now it is common in 
major cities as well as tribal areas. The targets 
have been the Pakistan army, police, incumbent 
and retired government leaders, and rival Islamic 
sects. But this is just the tip of the iceberg; 
we'll see much more in years ahead.

Q: Ideally, what do you want to see happen in the next few weeks?

A: I want Musharraf to go - resign or somehow be 
removed, preferably without bloodshed. I want the 
independent judiciary restored, a new neutral 
caretaker government installed for overseeing 
free and fair elections, and then elections that 
would decide upon the new parliament and prime 
minister. This will not immediately solve 
Pakistan's fundamental problems - army dominance, 
maldistribution of wealth, religious fanaticism - 
but it would get Pakistan on the track to 
democracy instead of the self-destruction it is 
racing towards.

Q: People in Washington are increasingly 
frustrated with Musharraf's counterterrorism 
efforts, however they think there are no 
alternatives to Musharraf. What do you think 
about this?

A: The Americans have tunnel vision. They want 
lackeys like Musharraf who do their bidding, 
although here too there is deception at work. 
They know, but choose to forget, that Pakistani 
military leaders, Musharraf included, are the 
makers of the jihadist monster. In 1999, after 
Musharraf launched the secret Kargil operation in 
Kashmir, the United Jihad Council celebrated him 
as a true fighter for Islam. After 911 such 
praises disappeared, but under his leadership the 
army still covertly supported jihadist groups and 
the Taliban in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Musharraf is extremely unpopular now and the 
Americans will have to dump him at some point. It 
is hard to find a pro-Musharraf person anywhere 
in the country except in the top business circles 
and the top army leadership. Until recently he 
ran both the army and the government himself, 
with the connivance of a rubber-stamp Parliament 
put in place through rigged elections. When the 
courts were about to rule that he could not 
legally be president, Musharraf chose to suspend 
the constitution and impose emergency rule. He 
dismissed the Supreme Court and arrested the 
judges, replacing them with judges who obey his 
every command. He blocked all independent 
television channels, and punished the news media 
for disparaging him or the army. His police 
arrested thousands of lawyers and pro-democracy 
activists. He ordered that civilians be tried in 
closed military courts. This was necessary, he 
said, to save Pakistan from a rapidly growing 
Islamist insurgency. But he released 25 Islamic 
extremists on the day that the judges were 
arrested. In spite of all this, George W. Bush 
called Musharraf "a democrat at heart".

The Americans have shot themselves in the foot by 
supporting the army consistently for decades. 
They have lost credibility and respect among 
Pakistanis. Everybody laughs when they hear that 
America wants democracy for Pakistan. In this 
situation, even if Musharraf goes and Gen. Kayani 
(the new army chief) takes over, the best that 
American can hope for is for the status quo. This 
is sad, because America is a great country with 
many virtues. If only they could get over their 
hangup of wanting to run the world! It's an 
impossible task anyway.

Q: In Pakistan what is the man on the street thinking?

A: Almost everyone holds the government 
responsible for the assassination. Tragically, 
suicide bombings are not condemned with any 
particular vigor. There is no strong reaction 
against the mullahs, madrassas, and jihadis. 
Perhaps people are afraid to criticize them 
because this might be seen as a criticism of 
Islam. Interestingly, in all the street 
demonstrations I have gone to after the Bhutto 
assassinations, there was no call for cracking 
down on extremists. Yesterday I met the lone 
taxidriver who thought the Islamists did it.

Q: What could be an effective way to fight Al 
Qaeda and the Taleban in Pakistan?

A: To fight and win this war, Pakistan will need 
to mobilize both its people and the state. The 
notion of a power-sharing agreement between the 
state and Taliban is a non-starter; the 
spectacular failures of earlier agreements should 
be a lesson. Instead the government should help 
create public consensus through open forum 
discussions, proceed faster on infrastructure 
development in the tribal areas, and make 
judicious use of military force - troops only, no 
air power. This should become every Pakistani's 
war, not just the army's, and it will have to be 
fought even if America packs up and goes away. 
But, as long as Musharraf is president, it will 
be impossible to get popular support for the war. 
If presented with a choice between Musharraf and 
the Taliban, the overwhelming majority of 
Pakistanis would want the latter - although I am 
sure they would regret
it later.

Q: Let's talk about Pakistan's nukes. There a lot 
of concern about the possibility that nuclear 
weapons could end up into the hands of Islamic 
fundamentalists. Early in December the Washington 
Post revealed that a small group of U.S. military 
experts and intelligence analysts convened in 
Washington for exploring strategies to secure 
Pakistani nukes if the Pakistani regime falls 
apart. Their conclusions were very scaring, as, - 
there are no palatable ways to forcibly ensure 
the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. What 
do you think about this?

A: The government says there is absolutely no 
danger of loose nukes.  Pakistan has been sending 
serving officers of the Strategic Plans Division, 
which is the agency responsible for handling 
nuclear weapons, to the United States for 
training in safety measures (PAL's locking 
devices, storing procedures, etc). But there's no 
way of telling if this will be effective. 
Extremists have already penetrated deep into the 
army and the intelligence agencies. We now see 
repeated evidence: for example, last month an 
unmarked bus carrying employees of the Inter 
Services Intelligence [Pakistan's secret 
intelligence], was collecting employees early in 
the morning. It was boarded by a suicide bomber 
who blew himself up killing 25. It was an inside 
job.

And now there are many other such examples, such 
as that of an army man killing 16 Special 
Services Group commandos in a suicide attack at 
Ghazi Barotha. A part of the establishment is 
clearly at war with another part. There are also 
scientists, as well as military people, who are 
radical Islamists. Many questions come to mind: 
can there be collusion between different 
field-level commanders, resulting in the 
hijacking of a nuclear weapon? Could outsider 
groups develop links with insiders?  Given the 
absence of accurate records of fissile material 
production, can one be certain that small 
quantities of highly enriched uranium or weapons 
grade plutonoium have already not been diverted? 
I do not know the answers. Nobody does.

[Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of nuclear and 
high-energy physics, and chairman of the 
department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University 
in Islamabad]


o o o

(ii)

Dawn
7 January 2008

DEMOCRATIC AND POLITICAL SPACES

by S. Akbar Zaidi

THOSE of us who were hoping that political 
parties would take a principled stand and boycott 
a sham structure and system which merely 
legitimises and endorses President Musharraf's 
political arrangement were called naïve, or 
worse, once the main political parties decided to 
participate in the 2008 elections.

Questions were raised about issues relating to 
individual and public or political morality, 
where a number of people argued that while it was 
acceptable as individuals to take certain 
principled positions privately, in politics the 
game is not so much about such individual 
dilemmas but about opportunities. The arguments 
stated that political actors are in the game to 
achieve political power, and their morality or 
principles should not be constrained by that 
goal. Hence, when they have the opportunity to 
acquire power, their principles could be set 
aside.In any other language such behaviour would 
be called the crassest form of opportunism, but 
in the language of politics it is known as 
tactics. The argument goes that rather than hold 
on to some principled stand and sit on the 
sidelines and watch the political process unfold, 
political actors are better off if they protest, 
yet accept and play by the rules of the game, for 
they would otherwise be completely marginalised 
in the process which they are hoping to 
influence. If the opportunity to influence the 
larger political process arises, whether through 
collaboration, collusion or compromise, political 
actors are required to be political rather than 
moralists.

This politics of opportunism based on 
collaboration, or these so-called political 
tactics, deserves far greater scrutiny in our 
public discourse than it has received. If 
politics is to be devoid of principles and 
determined merely by the possibility of 
opportunity, then the political stand of some 
actors against military intervention, or in 
defence of a persecuted judiciary or a hounded 
media, must be quickly dismissed as mere 
adventurism. However, even political parties 
sitting on the fence waiting for their 
collaborative opportunity would have a problem in 
dismissing such principled political activism as 
naïve, for perhaps the same political parties are 
the greatest beneficiaries of such principled 
activism.

Let us set aside this complicated problem of the 
relationship between individual morality and 
political praxis for a moment, and proceed with a 
discussion on the difference between the praxis 
of politics and the practice of democratic 
politics. This might sound like a trivial 
difference, but the arguments of morality and the 
real-life politics of much of the last twelve 
months allow us to make a marked distinction 
between the two. Importantly, one must emphasise 
the point that while political actors and 
democratic actors are two different entities, 
which often overlap, they are mutually dependent 
on each other, linked and influencing one 
another.The military in Pakistan is the most 
important political actor in Pakistan, and is 
obviously an undemocratic one. No problem 
distinguishing between politics and democracy 
here. Because of the power of the barrel of many 
guns, it has been the most dominant institution 
in the country for some decades now, and since 
1999 has been judge, jury, arbitrator and 
prosecutor in Pakistan's mainstream political 
process. Individuals from the military have 
determined and set the rules of all the games 
related to politics, and whatever politics that 
has been played in Pakistan has taken place under 
those rules.

By accepting the political rules of the military, 
one can no longer call the process, nor those who 
collaborate with the military, democratic. 
Political, certainly, but not democratic. Yet, 
importantly, one must also add that the 
circumstances, even of a praetorian system in 
which some representation and participation takes 
place, expand both political and democratic 
spaces.

Political parties and other actors who claim some 
democratic licence, lose that license and their 
credibility when they collaborate with a military 
regime, whatever justification they conjure up, 
even though their collaborationist action 
unintentionally creates democratic spaces. In 
fact, and ironically, while individual decisions 
(morality?) of collaboration lead to the 
compromise of their democratic principles, the 
unintended consequences do create democratic 
spaces.

The support for Chief Executive Musharraf in 1999 
by civil society actors is one example when many 
champions of democracy, for personal and selfish 
reasons, gave up their democratic license to have 
perhaps their only opportunity to participate in 
a political process, although in this case their 
politics did not open the way for democracy.

On the other hand, political decisions, like the 
Nov 3 martial law and the earlier clampdown on 
the judiciary and continued pressure and 
arm-twisting of the media, have created far more 
space for democratic politics than could have 
been expected, despite the absence of political 
actors in this democratic space.

The main argument here is that political parties 
and actors are more concerned with access to, and 
preferably capturing, power than with the 
modalities of getting there. If deals can be 
struck and compromises made, one ought to be 
clear about the undemocratic nature of that 
politics.

One can certainly live with such collaboration, 
for this too pushes the political spaces forward 
and creates new spaces in which others, perhaps 
more inclined towards democratic ideals and hence 
not necessarily focused on acquiring power, can 
manoeuvre. Political spaces do expand democratic 
spaces and do feed off each other, but one needs 
to be able to distinguish between the two.

And it is the question of morality which perhaps 
helps in making that distinction possible. If 
individual morality, such as compromise with the 
military, leads to more democratic spaces for 
everyone, should one condemn the compromise? If, 
on the other hand, holding steadfast to 
principles causes a political party or other 
democratic forces to lose out on the political 
process, by boycotting an election for example, 
does one celebrate the morality and laugh at 
their 'political' naiveté? The answers are 
probably to be found in an understanding of 
recent political processes in the country.

In an unequal relationship, the former COAS 
determined the rules of all the games played in 
the country, as well as who would be allowed to 
play by those rules. Those who were allowed to 
participate in those political games accepted his 
terms. Because the relationship between 
representatives of the military and of political 
parties was so one-sided, the democratic space 
increased only slowly on account of this liaison. 
Political representatives were always subservient 
to the rules of the game. And in fact democratic 
spaces were opened up despite the presence of 
political actors.

The vast democratic space that has been opening 
up - where on earth does a military general 
impose martial law for six weeks, and two weeks 
after imposing it inform his adversaries that he 
will lift it on a specific date? - has been on 
account of those who have been taking individual 
and political moral stands, and who haven't been 
playing by the rules. While political action and 
processes do lead to democratic spaces, they do 
so largely inadvertently. Agency, in expanding 
the broader democratic process, on the other hand 
comes from principled stands.

o o o

(iii)

Economic and Political Weekly
January 5, 2008

BENAZIR'S LAST BATTLE
Benazir Bhutto died battling the "state within 
the state". Can Pakistan rid itself of the cancer?

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's 
former prime minister and opposition leader, on 
December 27 at the conclusion of an election 
rally in Rawalpindi has sent shockwaves across 
the world. Bhutto's party, the Pakistan People's 
Party (PPP), and the public at large held the 
government of president Pervez Musharraf 
responsible for the murder, while the government 
and its allies pointed the finger at Taliban and 
Al Qaida. The first reaction of US president 
George Bush also ap- peared to deflect blame from 
the Pakistan government and in the direction of 
Islamic militants.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on October 18 after 
eight years in self-exile and provided a 
much-needed shot in the arm to popular politics. 
A bomb attack on her homecoming rally in Karachi 
left over 150 people dead, and confirmed the 
widely-expressed fear that forces inimical to 
political revival in the country were pre- pared 
to go to any length to pursue their goals. Then, 
as now, there was a sharp difference of opinion 
between the PPP and spokespersons of the regime 
about the source of the threat.  Bhutto blamed 
elements within the regime with links to the 
"jihad" policy of the Zia-ul-Haq era. She put the 
government on the spot and demanded the sacking 
of several senior military and intelligence 
officials with "jihadist" connections. Musharraf 
baulked at these suspicions and argued that 
Islamist militants based in the country's 
semi-autonomous tribal areas were responsible. In 
the event there was no proper investigation. 
Calls for foreign expert involvement were brushed 
aside, eyewitness accounts were not recorded, and 
powerful fire hoses appeared quickly on the scene 
of the attack and washed away much of the 
forensic evidence.  The government's response to 
the December 27 tragedy was similarly disjointed. 
The fire hoses were out again and had washed the 
street outside Rawalpindi's Liaqat Bagh within 
hours of the crime. The government's account of 
the attack and the cause of death changed on a 
daily basis. Successive versions con- tradicted 
one another, and PPP demands for foreign expert 
in- volvement were vociferously rejected, only to 
be conceded within a matter of days.

While judgment on the identity of the killers and 
the conspira- tors must await the results of an 
impartial investigation and trial, Bhutto left 
behind a convincing account of where the 
political responsibility lies. It is a monumental 
tragedy that a majority of her supporters and 
detractors alike paid such little attention to 
what she repeatedly wrote and said over the last 
one year about her fears and hopes for Pakistan. 
In the updated edition of her autobiography 
Daughter of the East, the final chapter deals 
with her experiences in power and in opposition 
since 1988 when she was first elected prime 
minister. The presence of a "state within the 
state" with its own sources of finance and 
autonomy of action is the recurrent theme of the 
chapter.

This secretive apparatus with its origins in the 
Zia-ul-Haq regime's conduct of the "Afghan jihad" 
against Soviet forces was developed around 
intelligence agencies run by the Pakistani 
military.  According to Bhutto, the Afghan jihad 
had "infected" numerous individuals and 
organisations of the state. While many of the in- 
dividuals involved in the "jihad policy" were 
right-wing Islamist ideologues, others simply saw 
political and financial advantage in running a 
parallel apparatus with seemingly endless 
resources and minimal accountability.

The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan 
coincided, in 1988, with the end of direct 
military rule in Pakistan. Bhutto felt that the 
parallel apparatus then began to covet spheres of 
ac- tivity other than Afghanistan, and became an 
instrument in the hands of the generals to 
exercise behind-the-scenes control over civilian 
governments. She blamed this parallel apparatus 
for in- tervening in Pakistan's policy with 
respect to India, destabilising civilian 
governments, conducting smear campaigns, and 
mani- pulating elections. There was a close 
relationship in Bhutto's mind between Islamic 
extremists and the state's parallel apparatus. 
Bhutto's position was remarkably bold but also 
remarkably misunderstood at home and abroad. Her 
detractors interpreted her vocal criticism of the 
jihadist apparatus as opportunistic pro-US 
sycophancy that was going to scoop her into 
office for a third time. They were distracted by 
her negotiations with the Musharraf regime that 
allowed her to return to Pakistan, and were 
critical of her attempts to gain legal immunity 
from past corruption charges. Many Bhutto 
supporters also failed to dis- tinguish between 
her ideological opposition to radical Islamists, 
and her political opposition to the state's 
jihadist apparatus, thus discounting the threat 
from the latter. Bhutto stood virtually alone 
among Pakistani political leaders in publicly 
identifying the jihadist apparatus as a danger 
not only to democracy but to the state itself. It 
was she who pointed out that the Musharraf regime 
had protected rather than dismantled this 
apparatus.
Bhutto, unfortunately, had earlier lost a good 
part of her stature when allegations of massive 
corruption began stalking her, alle- gations that 
she could never convincingly demonstrate were po- 
litically motivated. The influence and corruption 
of her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, damaged her 
political standing no less. And the negotiations 
in 2007 with Musharraf under US tutelage be- 
smirched her reputation further.

However, what mattered in the end in the 
difficult world of Pakistan politics was that 
Bhutto was a self-avowed reformist who believed 
it was possible to restrict the parallel 
apparatus, disinfect it of jihad, and bring it 
under civilian control. Perhaps this was naive 
optimism. But if her assassination does finally 
draw attention inside Pakistan and abroad to the 
dangers posed by the "state within the state" her 
courage would not have been in vain.


______



[2] 


The Daily Star
January 8, 2008  
  	 
GENDER BIAS IN NATIONAL IDENTITY (ID) CARD

by Shamima Nasreen

Why not my father's name? Photo:Tanvir Ahmed/ Drik News
BANGLADESHIS are going to have gender biased 
national identity (ID) cards. The Election 
Commission started voter registration across the 
country in November as part of its full-scale 
preparation of the voters' roll and national 
identity card.

The format of national ID card of Bangladesh 
shows inclusion of the name of her husband for a 
married woman, instead of her father's. A married 
man can use his father's name but a married woman 
cannot!

This format is not at all gender sensitive, 
rather it is gender biased. A married woman may 
want inclusion of her father's name in her 
national ID card, but the format of ID card 
doesn't support this as she is married. In many 
countries of the world, like United States and 
most of the western countries, people don't even 
need to use their parent's name in national ID 
card. They emphasise mainly on biological 
identification (e.g. height, eyes etc.). The 
format of the national ID card of Bangladesh 
shows that social identification is more 
important than biological identification.

People who are ineligible now as voters will have 
to wait for an indefinite time to get the 
national ID card, as the responsibility of 
preparing national ID cards for them does not lie 
with the Election Commission. In this regard, if 
a separated woman delays registering she may have 
to wait for a long time to get her national ID, 
but if she registers during the separation and 
then gets divorced, the ID card which she will be 
given will have the name of her ex-husband, which 
will be invalid by then.

So, when she needs to apply on her own for 
changing her marital status as part of the 
renewal of national ID card, she will have to put 
up with a sheer psychological strain. By 
contrast, a recently divorced man doesn't need to 
make this change as the national ID card shows 
his father's name.

In marriage contracts in Bangladesh, Pakistan, 
India and Sri Lanka, obedience is not codified; 
the law does not state that the husband is head 
of the household. In these countries, the laws do 
not codify any requirement that the wife has to 
take husband's name or have his permission for 
work or travel (Knowing Our Rights: Women, 
Family, Laws and Customs in the Muslim, By 
International Solidarity Network Staff, Zubaan, 
2003, p. 161).

In Pakistan, on marrying, a woman has to have her 
national identity card revised to replace her 
father's/guardian's name with her husband's name. 
If she is applying for a passport and doesn't 
change the names, she can have a passport issued 
for only one year; the passport is extendable for 
a further four years provided she has her 
national identity card revised (Muhammad Tufail v 
Muhammad Hanif 1984 MLD 1489).

Likewise, Bangladesh national ID card shows the 
name of the husband for a married woman, instead 
of her father's name. Moreover, the format of 
voter list shows the name of the father only, but 
not the mother's. These are the gender biased 
government provisions.

In fact, inclusion of the name of the husband is 
not at all important in the national ID card 
because marital status may change. A woman's 
husband may die; she can have divorce in future; 
or she can remarry after divorce or after her 
husband's death. So, this means that if any such 
incident happens, then the women need to apply 
for an immediate change in the ID card, but men 
in similar condition don't need to change 
anything. They can update the information about 
their marital status in the registration form 
later, unlike a widowed or divorced woman.

Other than psychological strain, the woman may be 
deprived of public service until she receives her 
renewed card, because the Election Commission 
(EC) has asked the government to make a law for 
mandatory usage of national identity (NID) cards 
to get access to services and facilities in 22 
fields.

Once the law is made, none will be allowed access 
to the specified facilities or services, of which 
most are related to people's daily lives, unless 
they produce the NID cards or the government 
relaxes the related provisions. So, the mention 
of any temporary social status (martial) should 
not be emphasised and made compulsory in the 
national ID.

It may be important to have the statistics of 
marital status of the population, but partner's 
name is not at all important enough to be 
mentioned in the ID card (the ID card of a 
married man doesn't show his wife's name). Taking 
all these into consideration, father's name 
instead of husband's name should be mentioned in 
the national ID card and in the voter list, 
mother's name need to be incorporated as well.

Moreover, the government of Bangladesh needs to 
give more emphasis on biological identification 
than on the social one in national ID card, as 
part of voter registration process.

______


[3]


Hindustan Times
January 04, 2008

JOINING A CIVILISATION

by Nayanjot Lahiri

New Delhi's National Museum houses an outstanding 
Harappan gallery, one that unfailingly attracts 
visitors. Not many, though, stop to wonder about 
the objects from Mohenjodaro and Harappa 
displayed there. If India - as we have been told 
- had lost her Indus heritage because most Indus 
sites in 1947 fell within the national boundaries 
of Pakistan, how has she retained such a superb 
collection of Indus artefacts from those 'lost' 
cities?

An answer to this can be excavated out of the 
treasure trove of files in the Archaeological 
Survey of India (ASI). This is because the ASI 
was centrally involved in tortuous negotiations 
through which undivided India's past was 
partitioned.

Why, though, were these negotiations so twisted 
and prolonged? The Partition Council itself, in 
October 1947, had resolved that museums would be 
divided on a territorial basis. This Council had 
been set up to deal with the administrative 
consequences of Partition, and decided on a wide 
range of issues, from revenue and domicile to 
records and museums. In addition to its decision 
concerning a territorial division of museums, the 
council also stipulated that when the territory 
of a province was partitioned, the museum 
exhibits of the provincial museums would also be 
physically divided. On this basis, the exhibits 
in the Lahore Museum which belonged to the united 
Province of Punjab before Partition, were to be 
split between East Punjab and West Punjab. This 
was straightforward enough.

More complicated though was the fate of objects 
that had been sent on temporary loan to places 
which, on August 15, 1947, happened to be on the 
wrong side of the border, far away from the 
original museums to which they belonged. On that 
date, we know that there were objects from 
Harappa, Taxila and Mohenjodaro in India, and in 
London as well. These were on loan to the Royal 
Academy of Arts. In its wisdom, therefore, the 
Partition Council ruled that all objects that had 
been removed for temporary display after January 
1, 1947, were to be returned to the original 
museums.

For Pakistan, this did not pose any problems in 
relation to most museums, since nothing had been 
removed from their precincts after January 1. At 
Harappa, some antiquities had been taken out of 
its site museum in July and September 1946, and 
these they were willing to treat as belonging to 
India. The real problem, though, revolved around 
the antiquities of Mohenjodaro.

This is because, on the day of Partition, as many 
as 12,000 objects from Mohenjodaro were in Delhi. 
Since Mohenjodaro fell within the territory of 
Pakistan, the objects should have fallen in their 
share. However, India's negotiators maintained 
that these rightfully belonged to India because 
they had not been removed for after January 1, 
1947 from the original museum (which was at 
Mohenjodaro) but came from Lahore. Similarly, 
they had not been removed for the purposes of 
temporary display but because, as early as 1944, 
the Director General of Archaeology, Mortimer 
Wheeler, had wanted to concentrate all the best 
Indus objects in a Central National Museum. It 
was in the absence of such a museum that it had 
been decided that Lahore Museum would act as a 
substitute, pending the establishment of a 
Central National Museum. Wheeler had continued to 
reiterate that "all objects from Mohenjodaro now 
on exhibition at Lahore are deposited by the 
Central Government on loan, and the Punjab 
Government has no lien upon them."

It was this - the question of intention about the 
future disposal of the objects in a Central 
National Museum - that was central to the 
contentious dispute around how the antiquities 
were to be divided. Several formulae were 
suggested and rejected, pressure tactics were 
used by both parties. In order to make things 
difficult, the West Punjab government postponed 
the actual handing over of East Punjab's share of 
the Lahore Museum holdings till such time that 
India had handed over to Pakistan their share 
from the central museums. And a final decision on 
the central museums remained pending till the 
Mohenjodaro matter was sorted out.

That India considered Indus objects to be an 
integral part of its own heritage was equally an 
issue. N.P. Chakravarti, who succeeded Wheeler as 
Director General in 1948, said it in so many 
words when he declared that "The Indus Valley 
Civilisation as such does not merely represent 
the civilisation of Pakistan but has a direct 
bearing on the civilisation of the whole of India 
and Pakistan and certainly the 300 million in 
India have quite a large interest in that 
civilisation, particularly as India has no longer 
any jurisdiction over these sites." As it turned 
out, Chakravarti was prescient - over the past 
five decades hundreds of Indus civilisation sites 
have been discovered and several excavated across 
the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana 
and Uttar Pradesh. When Chakravarti wrote though, 
such sites could be counted on the fingers of one 
hand. Gujarat has more than a hundred Harappan 
sites today;   around 1947, Rangpur was perhaps 
the only site which had been reported and studied.

In any case, eventually, after many rounds of 
negotiations and a massive exchange of 
correspondence, the Indian representatives on the 
Museum Committee in 1949 agreed to a division 
down the middle. As they put it, in order to 
"provide a firm foundation for future good-will 
and collaboration", they were willing to oversee 
the division of antiquities from Mohenjodaro, and 
two other Indus civilisation sites (Jhukar and 
Chanhudaro), between India and Pakistan on a 
50:50 basis. This physical division, as it came 
to be implemented, covered all kinds of Indus 
objects ranging from seals and statuary to 
ordinary artefacts of stone, clay and metal. Even 
potsherds were equally apportioned, although 
Pakistan waived all claims to any share in the 
skeletal material from Mohenjodaro and Harappa. 
Pakistan was also expected to give India as 
comprehensive a duplicate collection as possible 
from Taxila.

Tragic, however, was the fate of four articles 
whose form was fragmented because this formula 
was foisted unthinkingly on everything that could 
be divided in this way. These were two gold 
necklaces from Taxila, a carnelian and copper 
girdle of Mohenjodaro, and a magnificent 
Mohenjodaro necklace made up of jade beads, gold 
discs and semi-precious stones. They were broken 
up and divided down the middle. So, for example, 
India and Pakistan agreed to break up the 
Mohenjodaro girdle, each receiving one terminal, 
42 elongated carnelian beads, 72 small globular 
beads and 6 spacers. Oddly enough, nowhere in the 
correspondence is there a sense that the 
character of these objects was being destroyed 
forever. There is only anxiety about carefully 
adhering to the arithmetic of division.

Some 60 years after those turbulent years, is it 
possible for our nations to be self-reflexive? 
Can these beads and terminals be brought together 
again? Can we create a unified Indus exposition 
and exhibition which will travel to and give the 
younger generation of both nations a fuller sense 
of its shared heritage? While this cannot change 
the principles on which our pasts were 
partitioned, it will certainly restore - if only 
temporarily - some integrity  to those sundered 
objects and collections.

Nayanjot Lahiri teaches archaeology at the University of Delhi

______


[4]

RIOTS IN ORISSA

by Angana Chatterji
Op-ed, Asian Age, New Delhi, January 7, 2008

December 25 2007: Seven churches, Catholic, 
Protestant, Pentacostal, Independent ... burned 
in Barakhama village, Kandhamal district, central 
Orissa. December 23, 2007: Hindutva (Hindu 
supremacist ideology) affiliated Adivasi (tribal) 
organisations organised a march, rallying, "Stop 
Christianity. Kill Christians." A Dalit (formerly 
"untouchable" groups) Christian leader testified, 
"We went to the local police and informed them of 
the situation. They assured us that things would 
be under control. On December 24, in the daytime, 
we heard voices of Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad (VHP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 
(RSS), Shiv Sena people, chanting, 'Hindu, Hindu, 
Bhai, Bhai'; 'RSS Zindabad'; 'Lakshmanananda 
Zindabad.' They shut down shops. That night they 
felled trees to block roads, severed power and 
phone lines. On the 25th, we went to the 
inspector-in-charge of police again. On the 25th, 
at 2.30, about 200 of us sat down to Christmas 
prayer at our church, and around 4 p.m. we heard 
the mob approach."

The mob, about 4,000 persons, many bearing 
symbolic tilaks (religious mark on forehead), 
belonged to various Sangh Parivar (Hindu 
nationalist, militant) groups, named above, 
inciting local Hindus into rioting. Estimates 
state 20 per cent of the mob comprised people 
from Barkahama, 80 per cent from surrounding 
Baliguda, Raikia, Phulbani, as far away as 
Beherampur. "They broke the door to our church. 
We ran. We fell and kept running." Women and men 
were intimidated and assaulted. Cries rent the 
air. "Christians must become Hindu or die. Kill 
them. Kill them. Kill them. Gita not Bible. 
Destroy their faith."

The crowd carried rods, trishuls, swords. They 
used guns, a first in Orissa. Predominantly 
middle class caste Hindus participated in 
looting, destroying and torching property. 
Handmade bombs started the fires. Breakage was 
systematic. Women and men hid for days in 
forests, later seeking shelter in Baliguda town 
relief camp, returning to decimated Barakhama on 
January 2. Engulfed in soot and sorrow, people 
attempted to function amid charred remnants. A 
woman said, "Everything burns down and we are 
left with nothing. How little our lives are made 
(of). How alone we are, so far away from 
everything."

In Baliguda, in one church, furniture was dragged 
out, lit into a grotesque sculpture. The private 
violated in public, made spectacle. A Catholic 
church burnt, opposite the street the fire 
station witnessed the incident, but did not 
intervene. A cow, dragged from a shed, set afire, 
was beaten to death, identified as "Christian."

Targeted: Bammunigaon, Bodagan, Daringbari, 
Goborkutty, Jhinjirguda, Kamapada, Kulpakia, 
Mandipanka, Nuagaon, Phulbani, Pobingia, 
Sindrigaon, Ulipadaro villages. Convents, 
presbytery, hostels, a minor seminary, vocational 
training centre. Organisational offices, as that 
of World Vision. Two churches in Chakapad. 
Christian religious services were not permitted 
in Phulbani. A Hindutva mob surrounded Tikabali 
police station, two jeeps were torched.

Independent investigators charge that the 
violence was planned, that the police had prior 
knowledge of Hindutva groups' intent to riot. The 
pertinent district collector and superintendent 
of police have been transferred, not discharged. 
A Judicial Review Commission (JRC) chaired by a 
former (not sitting) judge has been appointed by 
the government of Orissa to investigate the 
riots. Its power or legitimacy is in question. 
The Central government did not appoint an inquiry 
by the Central Bureau of Investigation, even as 
it is apparent that the very administration that 
failed to contain the riots and delayed deploying 
adequate forces, and whose officials at the 
district level may have been involved in its 
execution, cannot administer justice.

Hindutva activists have lobbied the JRC to 
organise its terms of reference premised on the 
claim that an attack on Lakshmanananda Saraswati, 
a Hindu proselytiser, by Christians in 
Bammunigaon started the riots. This timeline is 
falsified. Sources state Hindutva groups planned 
Christmas day strikes, organised vandalism of 
Christmas symbols, and incited rioting. 
Christians in one area responded with reciprocal, 
not proportionate, violence. Dominant rationale 
reduces this to majority vs minority communalism. 
Rather than focus on systematic targeting of 
Christians, their overwhelmingly peaceful 
submission to Hindutva's violence, and vast 
structural injustices and differences in 
relations of power between majority and minority, 
the scrutiny appears to be focused on the failure 
of all Christian groups to simply submit to 
dominance.

The Kandhamal riots were not unexpected. 
Saraswati has been overseeing Hinduisation there 
since 1969. Adivasis, Dalits, Christians, Muslims 
are targeted through social and economic 
boycotts, forced conversions to Hinduism, and 
other violences. The Orissa Prevention of Cow 
Slaughter Act, 1960, deployed against Muslims; 
Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, against 
Christians. In 1999, Mayurbhanj Catholic priest 
Arul Das was murdered, followed by destruction of 
Kandhamal churches. In 2004, Raikia Catholic 
Church was vandalised, eight Christian homes 
burnt. In 2005, converting 200 Adivasi Christians 
to Hinduism in Malkangiri, Saraswati stated, "How 
will we ... make India a completely Hindu 
country? This is our aim and this is what we want 
to do." In 2006, celebrating RSS architect Madhav 
Sadashiv Golwalkar's centenary, presided by 
Saraswati, seven yagnas (sacrifices) were held, 
culminating at Chakapad in Kandhamal, attended by 
30,000 Adivasis. Between July-December 2007, 
Hindutva rallies across Kandhamal raised 
anti-Christian sentiments.

Hindutva leaders rumour, "Phulbani-Kandhamal is a 
most important Christian area in Orissa with 
rampant and forced conversions." The Christian 
population in Kandhamal district is 117,950, 
Hindus number 527,757. Sangh leaders claim, "By 
VHP data there are 927 churches in Phulbani 
district built on illegally taken land." Church 
leaders respond there are 521 churches. Orissa 
Christians number 897,861, 2.4 percent of the 
state's population. Constitutionally authorised, 
the Hindu Right inflates conversions to 
Christianity. This circulates in retaliatory 
capacity even among progressive communities, who 
fixate on conversions as contributing to the 
communalisation of society, debilitating to the 
majority status of Hindus. Muslims are seen as 
"infiltrating" from Bangladesh, looting 
livelihood opportunities, dislocating the 
"Oriya/Indian nation," non-Hinduised Adivasis and 
Dalits as "unruly."

Hindutva legitimates violence as patriotic 
response. The Sangh uses local militarism 
(Kandhamal) as consort to state controlled 
militarization (Kashipur, Kalinganagar). Hindu 
cultural dominance organises Hindu nationalism. 
Orissa amalgamated as a Hindu state between 
1866-1936. The absence of structural reforms and 
assertion of Hindu elites define post-colonial 
governance. The Sangh has proliferated into 
10,000-14,000 villages, operating 35-40 major 
organisations, with a massive base of a few 
million. A Balasore district Shiv Sena unit 
formed the first Hindu "suicide squad." The Hindu 
nationalist BJP-BJD coalition yields power. The 
Hindu Suraksha Samiti organises against Muslims. 
Revolting slogans, "Mussalman ka ek hi sthan, 
Pakistan ya kabristan (For Muslims there is one 
place, Pakistan or the grave)," perforate 
neighbourhoods.

In Kandhamal, Hindu militant groups, neighbours, 
police, chief minister, Central government acted 
with egregious impunity. People remain missing, 
death counts inaccurate. The police refuses 
Christians seeking to file first information 
reports. The Baliguda relief camp is skeletal. 
Despite continuing tensions, police presence has 
abated. Confidence building steps are absent. 
Relief, compensation, reparation are 
incommensurate with the extent of social, 
psychological, and economic losses of 
communities. Political parties, focused on 
politicking the issue, fail to respond to 
immediate and long-term needs of people.


Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social 
and Cultural Anthropology at California Institute 
of Integral Studies.

______


[5]

Frontline
January 05 - 18, 2008

Book reviews

A CASE FOR INQUIRY

by A.G. Noorani

Nandita Haksar critically evaluates the trial 
court's judgment in the December 2001 Parliament 
attack case.


NANDITA HAKSAR, a lawyer committed to the 
protection of human rights and exposure of the 
state's wrongs, has rendered high service by 
writing this book. Two grisly episodes await full 
exposure. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime 
tried to profit by their timely occurrence. The 
Chattisinghpura massacre in Kashmir was 
attributed to the militants. The victims, Sikhs 
mostly, rejected that story. A Jalandhar-based 
human rights body exposed its falsity. It was the 
work of surrendered militants performed, 
significantly, on the eve of President Bill 
Clinton's visit to India. The Americans did not 
buy the story either.

The other episode is the attack on the Parliament 
building on December 13, 2001. In its wake 
followed massive deployment of troops on the Line 
of Control and the border with Pakistan. The 
exercise was called off months later after huge 
amounts had been spent and the armour had 
suffered. A trial followed in which one of the 
accused, S.A.R. Geelani, a respected teacher at 
Delhi University, was acquitted. The author was 
one of his defence counsel. Another accused, 
Mohammed Afzal Guru, was sentenced to death. The 
sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 
judgment couched in language so intemperate as to 
rob it of the quality of a judicial pronouncement.

The book comprises the author's letters to the 
Prime Minister and many others of which the one 
to her former law teacher, Professor Upendra 
Baxi, is the most instructive. She tears the 
trial court's 296-page judgment to pieces. Judge 
S.N. Dhingra's pronouncement was widely 
criticised. The state alleged that the crime was 
inspired by the Lashkar-e-Taiba and 
Jaish-e-Mohammed supported by the Inter-Services 
Intelligence (ISI). However, Dhingra noted: "No 
evidence has come on record that any of these 
three accused persons belonged to or professed to 
belong to terrorist organisations 
Jaish-e-Mohammed or Laskar-e-Toiba. I therefore, 
consider that Section 20 of the POTA [Prevention 
of Terrorist Activities Act] is not made out 
against them."

S. SUBRAMANIUM

S.A.R. Geelani, the Delhi University teacher who 
was acquitted in the Parliament attack case, at a 
dharna in support of Afzal Guru, another accused 
who was sentenced to death, with Narmada Bachao 
Andolan leader and social activist Medha Patkar 
in New Delhi in October 2006.

Obscenely enough, the execution of Afzal Guru now 
figures high on the agenda of the BJP. His 
disclosures could be damning.

But the book is not about the trial as such. It 
is about the mindset of many in our country who 
readily assume guilt once the state proclaims a 
man to be a traitor to the country. The 
electronic media are particularly culpable in 
whipping up such emotions. Mohammad Afzal was 
produced before the national media and forced to 
incriminate himself. However, he made it a point 
to tell the media that Geelani was not involved 
in the conspiracy. Two mediapersons who were 
present at the conference appeared as defence 
witnesses for Geelani, Manoj Pande of The Times 
of India and Shams Tahir Khan of Aaj Tak. Shams 
told the trial court that when Afzal mentioned 
Geelani, the Investigating Officer, ACP Rajbir 
Singh, shouted at him and told him that he had 
been told not to mention Geelani. The police 
officer requested the media not to report or 
broadcast that part of Afzal's statement 
exonerating Geelani. The police officers' hold on 
Afzal in full view of TV cameras reveals a 
relationship of Afzal's submission to the police. 
In an open letter to Law Minister Jana 
Krishnamurthi, Amnesty International, on the eve 
of the trial on July 8, 2002, expressed concern 
"that media coverage of the arrests and 
concerning the person of Abdul Rehman Geelani 
during the pre-trial period has been extremely 
prejudicial to his case and that the Government 
of India has not taken any steps to halt this".

Judges who stray from the record and make 
assertions of a political nature do not help the 
cause of justice. If they are so worked up 
themselves, how detached could their judicial 
assessments be? Sessions Judge S.N. Dhingra said: 
"Lt. Gen. (retd.) Hamid Gul, who was the Director 
General of the ISI in the late 1980s, used to 
claim that keeping the Indian security forces 
bleeding with the help of the jehadis was 
equivalent to the Pakistan Army having an extra 
division at no cost to the Pakistani exchequer. 
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's present 
military director, and other officers of the 
Pakistani military intelligence establishment 
share this belief." How did he know that? He even 
took judicial cognisance of the U.S.' "war on 
terror".

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP

Afzal Guru being escorted to a Delhi court in December 2002.

In a case like this, the people are entitled to 
know the whole truth and that, as two Judges 
pointed out, can emerge only in an inquiry, not 
in a trial. A number of persons were falsely 
charged with grave offences pursuant allegedly to 
a conspiracy to create mayhem in Bhiwandi in May 
1970. They might well have been convicted. But 
Justice D.P. Madon as Commission of Inquiry inter 
alia on the causes of the riots insisted that the 
evidence be led before him. It was exposed before 
him as a police frame-up. The case was withdrawn. 
Justice Y.V. Chandrachud made similar 
observations as Commission of Inquiry after the 
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya case had ended. "A criminal 
trial is not a probe or inquiry into the truth 
about the occurrence." It is about the 
culpability or innocence of persons charged with 
specific offences. A commission of inquiry can 
probe into the whole truth. No such commission 
will be appointed. The time is come for lawyers 
and retired judges of eminence to analyse the 
entire record in the case plus press reports and 
report their findings to the nation.


______


[6]

Kashmir Times 7 January 2008

LADAKH: CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS EQUAL THAN KASHMIR AND JAMMU

by Balraj Puri

Ladakh though smallest in numbers, is 
geographically, ethnically and culturally unique 
part of not only of the state but also of India. 
Situated beyond the Himalayas it has a little 
less than 2 lakh population which inhabits an 
area of 96,000 square kms against 19,000 sq kms 
of Kashmir and 26,000 sq kms of Jammu i.e. more 
than double than that of the rest of the state. 
It has 800 miles of common border with China - 
350 miles with Tibet and 450 miles with Zinkiang. 
Separated from the rest of the country, and the 
world by Zojila Pass, 11,530 feet above sea 
level, the region is further sub-divided by Fatu 
La, 13,400 feet above sea level and was divided 
into two districts of Leh and Kargil in 1978. 
Buddhists are a little more than half of the 
population of the region (52 percent) and mainly 
concentrated in Leh district while the rest are 
Muslims, (48 percent) who mostly belong to Shia 
sect and live in Kargil district. Ladakhi, also 
called Bodhi, Balti, Dardi and Shina are the main 
languages spoken in the region. Speakers of one 
language can understand other languages easily.
Ladakh was on the celebrated Silk route. As an 
entrepot of the trade between India, central 
Asia, and Tibet for centuries, it was confluence 
of diverse cultures. But geographical position 
has helped it to preserve its ancient culture and 
ways of life almost intact. Even now it remains 
land locked between November and June as Srinagar 
- Ladakh and Manali-Ladakh highways, which 
connect Ladakh with other parts of the country, 
remain closed due to heavy snow.
Indus, on the banks of which earliest 
civilisation of the subcontinent began, forms a 
major lifeline of Ladakh region. It springs from 
the holy lakes of Mansarover and Rakas on the 
South Western slopes of Kailash mountains at an 
estimated height of 16,000 feet. After passing 
through Leh, it is joined, 40 km below, by the 
Zanskar river. Dras river joins it near Kargil 
and the confluence of the Shyok river and Nabra 
river (which originates from Karakoram mountains) 
with Indus takes place east of Skardn. At 
Makpouri-Shang Rong, the Indus cuts the Deosai 
chain of mountains by a Sudden Sweep Sourthwards 
where it receives the waters of Gilgit river.
Leh
Leh district has an estimated population of 
92,000 spread over an area of 44,000 sq kms and 
is by far the largest district of the state; 
almost equal to the combined areas of Jammu and 
Kashmir regions. From Leh road leads to Siachin - 
the highest battlefield of the world - by 
crossing the Ladakh range at Khardung La (over 
16,000 ft high). As a Buddhist majority district, 
there are many world famous Gompas (monasteries) 
situated on its high points on the mountains 
which are places of worship, isolated meditation 
and religious instructions.
Mahayan Buddhism, born in Kashmir spread to 
Tibet, China and Japan via Ladakh. The Buddhists 
owe their allegiance to Lamas who have their own 
discipline and hierarchical order. They used to 
go to Tibet for religious training which was 
called their spiritual home. But after the 
communist take over of Tibet and flight of Dalai 
Lama along with his many followers from there, 
Lhasa has lost its status as a source of their 
religiouand spiritual inspiration and a centre of 
their emotional affinity. As the main show piece 
of living Buddhism in India, Leh has acquired 
fresh importance as a centre of Buddhist 
pilgrimage, art and architecture and destination 
of tourists and scholars. There are some 
religious places of Muslims also in Leh who 
constitute 15% of the district's population; 
principal among them are Jama Masjid and Masjid 
Shah-e-Hamdan. Leh is governed by an Autonomous 
Hill Development Council in local matters. But 
unrest is visible due to what its leaders call 
Srinagar based administration on other matters.
Kargil
Kargil district of Ladakh covers an area of 
14,036 sq kms with a population 81,000. Majority 
of its population is Muslims of Shia sect with 
Buddhist pockets in Zanskar tehsil and Shargol 
block. There is a small pocket of Shina speaking 
Sunni Muslims at Drass but linguistically and 
ethnically they are closer to the rest of Kargil 
than to Kashmir. They have linguistic affinity 
with Shina speaking people across LoC.
Kargil lies at an attitude ranging from 8000 ft 
to 14000 ft above the sea level. Drass on 
Kargil-Srinagar highway is the second coldest 
place in the world where the temperature drops to 
minus 60 degrees. Kargilites are descendants of 
Mangol, Dard and Mon races. It, too, remained 
under the cultural domination of Tibet till it 
came under the influence of Islam in 14th 
century. Kargil town, the headquarter of the 
district, is equidistant from Skardoo, Srinagar 
and Leh.
Ulama play an important part in the 
socio-religious life of the Shias of Kargil. 
Though their religion contains a distinct local 
cultural content, some of the Ulama have gone to 
Iran for theological training after they 
experienced an impact of the Khomeini revolution.
On account of the plight of Shias in Pakistan and 
of the people of Gilgit and Baltistan across LoC, 
which are directly ruled by Pakistan with no 
voting rights for the National Assembly and 
without a local legislature, the people in Kargil 
never responded to the appeal of Pakistan. During 
the war of 1999, Pakistan infiltrators did not 
get any support from the local population. The 
war brought Kargil on the tourist map of the 
country as it publicized battle posts like Drass, 
Batalik, Kaksar and Turtok and aroused the 
curiosity of the tourists. However it is not 
enough to compensate Kargil's political and 
economic neglect. The people of Kargil are still 
administered politically and administratively 
from the far off Srinagar in summer and Jammu in 
winter as they do not have even the limited 
powers of even the district council.
The syncrtic and secular identity of Ladakh, 
unfortunately took, a reverse turn after 
independence. Till almost the eve of 
independence, inter-community marriages, between 
Buddhists and Muslims, were not uncommon. 
Gradually they started drifting apart, inter 
alia, as it was exposed to outside influence. 
Though quite distinct from the other two regions 
of the state namely Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh has 
not been recognized as such in the constitution 
of the state. Constitutionally and 
administratively it is a part of the Kashmir 
region, though it is further away from Srinagar 
than Jammu is and remains cut off from it more 
than half of the year due to heavy fall in winter 
months on the passes.
After the division of the Ladakh division in two 
parts and absence of a common regional authority 
the people of the two communities in Leh and 
Kargil started drifting in divergent directions.
Instead of conceding their demand for regional 
autonomy, the people of Ladakh were sought to be 
satisfied with some palliatives. For instance, 
the region was declared a scheduled tribe area, 
which promised more jobs and development. But 
jobs and development are no substitute for the 
urge for identity and a share in political power. 
Eventually, Leh was granted an autonomous status 
under the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development 
Council Act, 1995. I asked the then prime 
minister, Narsimha Rao, his reasons for rejecting 
the demand for autonomy when it was demanded 
whole region while conceding it for Leh when it 
was demanded by the Ladakh Buddhist Association. 
He insisted that the decision was for the whole 
region. When I sought a clarification form the 
secretary for Kashmir affairs, on the prime 
minister's phone, he confirmed that the official 
decision was for Leh only. Obviously, the prime 
minister was under the impression that Leh and 
Ladakh were synonymous.
The coalition government led by Mufti Sayeed 
granted similar autonomy to Kargil in 2002. But, 
in the absence of a common autonomous structure, 
the common regional identity was weakened even 
more. In fact, with powers less than even that of 
the elected district boards in the rest of the 
country under the Panchayat Raj system, the 
Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council did 
little to stem the discontent in Leh district. It 
was manifest in the October 2005 elections to the 
council in which the Ladakh Union Territory Front 
won 25 seats, conceding only one seat to a Muslim 
candidate of the Congress. This development might 
further widen the Buddhist-Muslim divide in the 
Ladakh region and pose a challenge to the 
multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of the 
state.
An ugly trend was already evident in the 
anti-Muslim demonstrations and stoning of Muslim 
shops by Buddhist crowds in Leh that had followed 
reports of two Buddhist girls allegedly eloping 
with Muslim boys of Kargil. These incidents and 
the retaliatory anti-Buddhist demonstrations in 
Kargil happened over 10-12 November 2005. though 
the leaders of the two councils were able to 
pacify the angry people, the underlying causes 
could not be addressed.
Constitutional devolution to Ladakh like the 
other two regions of the state and regional 
autonomy, with adequate devolution of power to 
the two districts at least as much as elected 
boards in other part of India enjoy, whether 
called autonomous councils or by any other name, 
are absolutely necessary to restore its secular 
identity and to empower its people.


______


[7]

PC JOSHI A POLITICAL JOURNEY
by Bipan Chandra
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article503.html


______


[8]


The Guardian
January 5, 2008

MISGUIDED AND OBSOLETE

Lisa Appignanesi, new president of PEN, urges the 
repeal of the law against blasphemous libel

Writers are habitually suspicious of established 
authority. Because their working lives are 
solitary - spent far from others or the demands 
of institutions or offices - they are outsiders 
by function, and are ever alert to encroachments 
of power. Then, too, the precariousness of the 
freelance life - even for those momentarily rich 
or famous - can often make them aware of the 
vulnerable in our world.

These were some of my thoughts recently on taking 
up the position of president of the writers 
organisation, English PEN - the 24th president, 
to be exact, of the founding centre of what is 
now a global association with 144 branches. It 
may be a contradiction to think of solitary 
writers of all ages, nationalities and creeds 
banding together. But it was the need to 
counteract writerly solitude that sparked Mrs C A 
Dawson-Scott and Jon Galsworthy, back in 1921, to 
set up what was initially a PEN club. Foreign and 
local writers - poets, playwrights, essayists, 
editors, novelists - could thus engage with one 
another, share ideas and build bridges between 
cultures in the aftermath of a war which had 
divided the world.

PEN clubs soon began to spring up in America and 
Europe. Among the early members in England were 
Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, and HG Wells, 
who was to become president in 1933. On May 10 
that year, on Berlin's Opernplatz, Nazis threw 
some 25,000 books into the flames. The German 
centre of PEN had already been purged of 
communists, Jews and liberal writers, and when 
PEN members gathered for their International 
Congress in Dubrovnik on May 26, the Germans were 
noisily confronted and forced to leave.

The PEN principles of upholding free expression 
and defending persecuted writers emerged from 
that historical moment. Four years later, during 
the Spanish civil war, the second of these 
principles was consolidated when PEN successfully 
appealed for the release of Arthur Koestler, then 
a journalist for the News Chronicle, who had been 
arrested and condemned to death by the Falangists.

As the bombs of the second world war fell, 
English PEN hosted a symposium attended by 
members from 36 countries. Their purpose was to 
discuss the role of the writer in the post-war 
world. Edvard Benes invoked the need for the new 
order to be one in which "writers and artists may 
live and create without anxiety for their 
personal security, without restrictions on their 
creative freedom".

Like so many, I woke to the need to defend 
creative free expression in Britain only with a 
more recent book burning - that of Salman 
Rushdie's The Satanic Verses by protesting 
Muslims in Bradford in 1989. In 1991, a group of 
Muslims sought to prosecute Rushdie and his 
publishers Viking/Penguin for blasphemous and 
seditious libel. This marked an attempt to extend 
the common law offence of blasphemy, then long 
unused, to protect Islam against alleged insult. 
The application was rejected, even on a second 
appeal to the Law Lords. The failed attempt 
certainly played its part in the Muslim Council's 
subsequent lobbying of the Labour Government, in 
the aftermath of 9/11, to introduce its religious 
hatred legislation, which it was thought would 
offer Muslims equal protection.

At English PEN, where I was then deputy to 
Alastair Niven, we campaigned against the 
legislation and helped to curtail its broad 
reach. Though we could see the justice of 
minority groups wanting both recognition and the 
sense of an equal stake in Britain, we felt the 
law was misguided and would damage the 
established freedoms of a plural democracy. We 
pointed out time and again that "Free Expression 
is No Offence". There is a certain irony, though 
one to be welcomed, in the Muslim Council's 
current espousal of free expression, after the 
literature handed out in mosques was attacked for 
provoking hatred against gays and Christians.

Recent years have seen free expression and 
imaginative freedom challenged from many sides. 
The present environment combines a growing fear 
of causing offence with an all-too-frequent 
clamour - usually from self-appointed 
representatives of various groups - that offence 
has been caused: the Christian Union, for 
example, tried to stop the BBC's screening of 
Jerry Springer, the Opera

Institutions have, as a result, engaged in the 
kind of preventive self-censorship which seeps 
into creative work. The Barbican cut "offensive" 
passages from a production of Tamburlaine . Tate 
Britain decided not to exhibit John Latham's God 
is Great, no. 2 , with its encased Talmud, Koran 
and Bible. Many regional theatres withdrew 
planned performances of Jerry Springer

The government's current attempt, using the 
threat of prison, to determine what it is 
permissible to write or say, is misguided. The 
prosecution brought against the Heathrow "lyrical 
terrorist", rightly treated mildly by the courts, 
and the so-called crime of the "glorification of 
terrorism", signal a wish to restrict thought, 
let alone utterance, in a world which defies just 
this by the increasing permeability of borders. 
There should be concern, too, about the recent 
bill preventing homophobic speech.

Given a possible further appeal by the Christian 
Union to the Law Lords, this is the moment for a 
concerted campaign to repeal the antiquated law 
against blasphemous libel. It is time that 
Britain endorsed a fully secular public sphere, 
the only kind that serves a diverse population.

The law is not only obsolete, it contravenes our 
right to free expression under Article 10 of the 
European Convention on Human Rights. It has no 
place in a plural society, where it acts to 
divide people of different faiths and none. As 
Rushdie has said : "If there is a God, he 
certainly doesn't need the protection of the 
British legal system. If there isn't, he doesn't 
need it either. There is therefore no excuse for 
preserving the offence of blasphemous libel and 
it should be abolished."


______



[9] Announcements:

(i)

THE STUDENT ACTION COMMITTEE (LAHORE) HAS CALLED 
FOR A PROTEST ON THE 8TH OF JANUARY 2008 AT 2 PM 
AT MINAR E PAKISTAN. IN COLLABORATION WITH CIVIL 
SOCIETY GROUPS, LAWYERS AND ACTIVISTS.

This protest is to be registered against the 
removal of the pre Nov 3rd judiciary that stood 
for a just rule of law and against the 
inefficiency displayed by the establishment which 
has led to the assassination of thousands of 
citizens, including a powerful leader of 
opposition.

The students demand that the pre Nov 3rd 
judiciary be restored without which elections 
cannot be free and fair. However, we do 
acknowledge that there are compelling reasons for 
to participate in the upcoming elections for 
many, and do not hold it against them, so long as 
they are committed to the restoration of the only 
judiciary that has exercised independance to this 
degree.

Aitzaz Ahsen's baseless dentention keeps getting 
prolonged while the stringent treatment meted out 
to him suggests that our current regime shuns 
standing for principles and only favours partisan 
attitudes.

While Pakistan is on the brink of being 
considered a 'failed state', the SAC (lahore) 
urges the nation to join forces for the onlt path 
that can lead us out of this mess. So join us on 
the 8th and stand loud and strong at Minar e 
Pakistan at 2 pm.

While the country's being exploited by 
opportunistic leaders and political parties, the 
country has a chance to literally stand up and 
decide the future of Pakistan on the basis of 
right and wrong, on previous false promises, 
failed governments and demolished institutions.

So please take time out for your country, stand 
united and show everyone that we care, that we 
will not rest until Pakistan steps on the only 
path that can ensure its survival.

In solidarity for principals,
Student Action Committee


_____

(ii)

RICHARD M STALLMAN, LEADER OF THE FREE SOFTWARE 
MOVEMENT, WILL BE DELIVERING A TALK AT IIT DELHI

Venue: Seminar Hall, IIT Delhi
Date:   Jan 08, 2008 (Tuesday)
Time: 5: 00 PM

All are invited.

Stallman is the founder of the Free Software 
Foundation (FSF) which is dedicated to promoting 
computer users' rights to study, copy, modify and 
redistribute computer programmes. 'Free as in 
freedom' being its credo, FSF promotes the GNU 
operating system widely used today in its 
GNU/Linux variant, based on the kernel Linux 
developed by Linus Torvalds. Worldwide, there are 
more than 20 million users of GNU/Linux systems 
today.
Stallman used what came to be known as 'copyleft' 
to protect the ideal of his movement and 
enshrined the concept in the widely used GNU 
General Public License. His accomplishments as a 
programmer include the text editor Emacs, the 
compiler GCC and the debugger GDB, all of which 
are part of the GNU project.

The maverick crusader, who prefers to be called 
'rms' wrote in the first dictionary of hackers 
that 'Richard Stallman is just my mundane name, 
you can call me rms.'

The need for free software is crucial for a 
developing country like India where there is a 
constant struggle for cost-effective solutions. 
Free software can also help bridge the country's 
digital divide by encouraging collaboration and 
community work among programmers and users.

Anivar Aravind


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

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.