SACW | Jan. 11-12, 2008 / Coming elections in Pakistan and US / Hindutva again / Monkey Business

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | January 11-12, 2008 | 
Dispatch No. 2487 - Year 10 running

[1] Pakistan: Close to the edge?  (Abbas Rashid)
[2] What the US Presidential Election Means to India (J. Sri Raman)
[3] CPJ statements on Sri Lanka and Pakistan
[4] India: Hedged in by Hindutva again (Khushwant Singh)
   - What Gujarat thinks today... (Jyotirmaya Sharma)
   - Orissa's turn: an emboldened Sangh is set upon doing a repeat of Gujarat
[5] India - Australia: Racism, Nationalism and Cricket
    (i) The Racial Slur That Wasn't (Mir Ali Husain)
    (ii) Monkey Business (Anand Patwardhan)
[6] India: South Asia Solidarity Group / South 
Asian Alliance on Sangh Parivar's Anti Christian 
violence in Orissa.
[7] Announcements:
(i) storytelling and poetry featuring Sehba 
Sarwar and Asif Farrukhi ( Karachi,15 January 
2008)
(ii) Pakistan In Crisis: Which way forward? (London, 11 Jan 2008)

______


[1]

Daily Times
January 12, 2008

CLOSE TO THE EDGE?

by Abbas Rashid

If elections are indeed held and the popular 
verdict conforms to expectations, the PPP and the 
PMLN would do well to work towards the 
restoration and independence of the judiciary, 
for this itself would be a big step forward in 
the task of restoring confidence among the 
ordinary men and women of this country

Within a fortnight of the assassination of 
Benazir Bhutto, an explosion in front of the 
Lahore High Court on Thursday killed 24 people of 
which 17 were policemen and conveyed yet again a 
chilling message: the battle for Pakistan's 
future is increasingly being fought closer to the 
heartland and neither first-rank political 
leaders nor those working for the agencies of 
state are beyond reach. Whether it is Al Qaeda or 
rogue elements close to the establishment that 
are responsible, the intent is clearly to 
destabilise through terror, to derail democracy 
and dis-empower the majority. By creating chaos 
and an environment of despair, they create 
greater room for manoeuvre and for carrying 
forward their objectives.

At points there may even be an overlap. This has 
been alluded to previously in the case of Lal 
Masjid as well as the attack on the army commando 
camp at Tarbela Ghazi. Now, according to one 
press report the attack on the air force base in 
Sargodha last year in November was carried out by 
a retired major with the help of six others 
belonging to an extremist organisation. We should 
certainly resist fighting anyone else's war but 
at the same time let us make no mistakes about 
the nature of the challenge we face from 
extremism and what is at risk here.

It is illustrative of how the world sees us that 
there is an actual debate over whether external 
intervention in Pakistan to challenge the growing 
power of the extremists is the only option or 
would it make matters worse. And not only has the 
fate of Pakistan's nuclear assets become an 
issue, what should be a matter of great alarm for 
us is that to the other voices has been added 
that of the head of the International Atomic 
Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammad ElBaradei who 
recently had this to say: I fear that chaos or an 
extremist regime could take root in that country 
which has 30 to 40 warheads.

And this is not simply a matter of image that our 
rulers often complain about. Some of it has to do 
with reality. Consider President Musharraf's 
query on his TV programme from the Aiwan-e-Sadr: 
"are we a banana republic and even unable to hold 
free, fair and transparent elections?" That the 
head of state should need to pose that question, 
even rhetorically, points to the gravity of our 
predicament. And yes, many, including Pakistan's 
mainstream parties, have expressed serious 
reservations about how fair the upcoming 
elections are likely to be.

For good reason the caretaker government is 
widely seen as an extension of the PMLQ regime 
that has left office. Even as the PPP, the party 
most seriously affected by Benazir Bhutto's 
assassination, demanded that the elections be 
held on time, the government took the decision to 
postpone these to February 18. The reasons given 
pertaining to the Election commission's offices 
and records having been destroyed in some places 
were not convincing as it should have been 
possible to postpone elections in the selected 
constituencies while going ahead in the rest of 
the country. Now the PPP alleges that cases have 
been instituted against tens of thousands of its 
workers and sympathisers on the pretext that they 
have been involved in looting and destroying 
public property in the aftermath of Bhutto's 
death. Not least the president has refused to 
accept the demand that local bodies effectively 
dominated by the PMLQ be suspended in the run-up 
to the elections.

How we fare over the forty days of Muharram 
remains to be seen but violence, the weapon of 
choice for those who want to rule the majority 
through fear and diktat, should not be made a 
pretext for indefinite postponement. As 
important, the manipulation of political forces 
must stop. Had the 2002 elections been allowed to 
proceed without intervention and minus the grand 
strategy of marginalising the mainstream parties, 
we may not have been in this desperate situation. 
More of such tactics at this stage could easily 
push us over the edge.

President Musharraf has been reported as saying 
in an interview to The Straits Times that he 
would resign if the government that emerges from 
the general elections were to seek his 
impeachment. It is encouraging that the president 
may finally be getting the message and perhaps 
beginning to realise that he is now more a part 
of the problem rather than of any possible 
solution that may emerge. Less so, that after 
eight years in unfettered power he would want to 
cling on unless impeachment is imminent.

In any case, the challenges to Pakistan will 
remain formidable at least in the near-term. The 
political parties, too, will have to adhere to 
some basic rules and eschew the temptation of 
reducing politics to a zero-sum game. Also to 
strengthen themselves they will need better 
organisation, internal democracy and greater room 
for merit. If the situation demands that the 
family continues to play an important political 
role than at the very least other factors 
including merit too must be given as much 
importance.

Now, if elections are indeed held and the popular 
verdict conforms to expectations, the PPP and the 
PMLN would do well to work towards the 
restoration and independence of the judiciary, 
for this itself would be a big step forward in 
the task of restoring confidence among the 
ordinary men and women of this country - a 
necessary condition for fighting back. The 
lawyers continuing to struggle towards this end 
as well as the rest of civil society will 
certainly back them in this endeavour.

The other key area requiring consensus is the 
realm of development. The Musharraf dispensation 
registered a growth rate of near 6 percent for 
the better part of its tenure and yet food 
inflation has been highest in a long time during 
the same period. In order to address both 
regional as well as acute class disparities, no 
government should now aim at following economic 
policies that place an absolute premium on the 
market and privatisation while providing 
absolutely no safety nets for the large numbers 
who now stand marginalised. The threat posed by 
market fundamentalism should also not be 
underestimated.


Postscript: US support for democracy in Pakistan 
has been rather neatly put into perspective by 
figures on US assistance to Pakistan reportedly 
computed by Hussain Haqqani: since 1954, the US 
has provided Pakistan with assistance to the tune 
of $21 billion. Of this $17.7 was provided under 
military rule and $3.4 under civilian rule.

Abbas Rashid is a freelance journalist and 
political analyst whose career has included 
editorial positions in various Pakistani 
newspapers


______


[2]

www.truthout.org
8 January 2008

WHAT THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION MEANS TO INDIA

by J. Sri Raman

     What does the US presidential election mean 
for Pakistan? That is the question quite a few in 
the region started asking after Hillary Clinton 
made a sensational statement days ago about the 
nuclear dimension of the country's dangerous 
instability.

     The prominent Democratic candidate promised a 
drastic solution, just short of the demented idea 
of a forcible takeover of Pakistan's nuclear 
arsenal, if sent to the White House. "So far as 
we know right now, the nuclear technology is 
considered secure, but there isn't any guarantee, 
especially given the political turmoil going on 
inside Pakistan," she said, and added, "[If 
elected President,] I would try to get Musharraf 
to share the security responsibility of the 
nuclear weapons with a delegation from the United 
States and, perhaps, Great Britain."

     What this apparently means is that, if 
Clinton wins, Washington will be prepared not 
only to tilt but actually to turn against 
Pakistan, thus far a valued ally in the "war on 
global terror," and particularly against the 
country's army. The idea of Western control of 
its nuclear weapons is not exactly popular in 
Pakistan, and not even a loyal Pervez Musharraf 
has ever countenanced any loosening of the army's 
hold on the arsenal.

     The proposal, in turn, should mean a prospect 
welcome to official India. But such is the 
lopsidedness of nuclear logic that the proposal 
has New Delhi noticeably cold. This is not just 
because many in India's establishment would vote 
for Musharraf rather than any of his electoral 
contenders.

     The ironic fact is the nuclear-armed rivals 
of South Asia are also allies as nuclear-weapon 
states waiting to be admitted into the 
Washington-headed "nuclear club." This unstated 
alliance has played a major role in promoting the 
much-vaunted India-Pakistan "peace process," 
originally mooted within months of the nuclear 
weapon tests of both the countries, in 1998, when 
former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee 
visited Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in 
Lahore.

     The "process" has represented a joint effort 
by the two neighbors to project themselves as 
"responsible" nuclear-weapon states. Throughout 
the three-year-old "process," both have 
repeatedly made clear it will not affect their 
strategic nuclear programs. Though they have 
traded nuclear threats during the Kargil conflict 
of 1999 and the confrontation of 2002, they have 
agreed to take up issues of nuclear 
discrimination together with big nuclear powers.

     The situation may appear to have changed with 
the US-India nuclear deal, announced as an 
objective by President George Bush and Prime 
Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005. 
Uncertainty, however, still remains over 
operationalization of the deal, which ran into 
significant opposition in India and the 
international peace movement. The consequence is 
evident in the coolness of the reaction of New 
Delhi and India's nuclear hawks to the Clinton 
proposal vis-a-vis Pakistan.

     The other Democratic hopeful, Barack Obama, 
has not triggered much excitement among India's 
mandarins and militarists, either, by talking of 
launching unilateral strikes or hot pursuit 
across the Afghan border to hit al-Qaeda. Time 
was when New Delhi (under Vajpayee's far-right 
regime) wanted the same right of "preemptive 
strike" against Pakistan as Washington claimed 
against Iraq. Just now, however, India's 
anti-Pakistan warriors reveal the opposite of 
anxiety over the al-Qaeda and other militant 
activities on the Pakistan-Afghan border. As one 
of them put it recently, "India is now sitting 
pretty, with a large section of Pakistani armed 
forces pinned down in Pushtoon territory (and, 
thus, far away from Kashmir and the border with 
India)."

     What the US presidential election means, 
really and immediately, to the 
mandarin-militarist camp is a desperately urgent 
need to hurry up with the nuclear deal. As an 
Indian official, quoted by peace activist and 
journalist Praful Bidwai, puts it, "If the deal 
cannot be sent to the US Congress by, say, the 
end of February or very early March, then it may 
well be lost, at least for some time. Without 
Bush's strong push for the deal, it's unlikely to 
overcome opposition from non-proliferation 
advocates and from the Democrats in Congress."

     As Bidwai recalls, US ambassador to India 
David C. Mulford, too, has repeatedly warned 
"time is of the essence." The pressure has been 
on, but without the Singh government finding a 
political way to hasten the deal.

     According to an earlier report, US officials 
had let it be known India's "back-stepping" and 
inability to advance on the deal "could cost the 
country dearly, on everything from military 
cooperation to American support for its bid for a 
permanent seat on the Security Council."

     Strobe Talbott, original architect of the 
"strategic alliance" along with Vajpayee's 
External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, was 
reported to warn, "chances of getting the deal 
through the Congress will diminish over time and 
make it difficult to negotiate a similar deal 
with a future administration anytime soon, 
whether Democratic or Republican." Talbott added, 
"This has got to happen soon, or it's going to be 
on ice for a very long time."

     A similar warning came also from former 
Defense Secretary William Cohen on a visit to New 
Delhi in November 2007. He was quoted as saying, 
"We are pretty close to now or never." Listing 
the steps yet to be taken, he added, "Unless the 
123 agreement and the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers 
Group) waiver is in place by end-January, the 
deal will die." The 123 agreement was soon 
achieved, but the rest of the process still 
remains.

     Cohen brought in the presidential election. 
Said he, "There is not much time before the 
political dynamics of the US changes. If India 
rejects or ignores the deal, then it will not be 
brought up by another administration, be it 
Democratic or Republican."

     Cohen, too, peddled the deal as part of a 
larger and more lucrative package. If the deal 
did not go through, he said, "India will be seen 
as an unreliable partner ... Commercial contacts 
might go up, but there will be some retardation 
in our strategic relations."

     According to Cohen, the post-election US 
administration will take office in 2009, but 
"will not, in its first four years, bring up the 
deal." He could not have administered a more 
intimidating warning to India's nuclear 
establishment, consisting mainly of militarists.

     What merits special note is the fact all 
these warnings relate to the time factor and not 
to the threat of a change in Washington's stance 
on the deal. This is a fact the peace movement, 
in particular, must keep firmly in mind: Without 
Bush in power, Washington is not about to become 
a dispenser of peace and nuclear disarmament.

     It must be remembered, Democrats have joined 
Republicans in facilitating the deal. Bipartisan 
support, considered unthinkable until the last 
moment, enabled the easy passage of the Henry J. 
Hyde US-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation 
Act of 2006, marking a major step toward 
finalization of the deal.

     As US Under-Secretary of State for South and 
Central Asian Affairs Nicholas R. Burns wrote in 
an essay on "America's Strategic Opportunity With 
India" in the November to December issue of 
Foreign Affairs, "That this new US-India 
partnership is supported by a bipartisan 
consensus in both countries considerably 
strengthens the prospects for its success."

     He elaborated: "In India, both the ruling 
Indian National Congress and the opposition 
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have worked for over 
a decade to elevate India's ties with the United 
States. In the United States, shortly after the 
beginning of India's economic liberalization, 
President Clinton signaled Washington's desire to 
forge a new era of commerce and investment 
between the two countries. And after India's May 
1998 nuclear tests, then Deputy Secretary of 
State Strobe Talbott engaged India's then foreign 
minister Jaswant Singh in 14 rounds of talks over 
two and a half years."

     Cohen had speculated, "Even if the 
Republicans return, the deal will be seen as a 
Bush initiative and any new administration will 
want their own stamp on it. The opposition will 
say it has questions and wants a closer 
examination of the details." That will mean a 
renegotiation of the deal by the new US 
administration. Such a situation will certainly 
suit BJP, which hopes to return to power in New 
Delhi in the general election due in 2009 and to 
"renegotiate" the deal.

______


[3] CPJ statements on Sri Lanka and Pakistan

(i)

Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Avenue, 11th Fl., New York, NY 10001 USA    
Phone: (212) 465-1004     Fax: (212) 465-9568    
Web: www.cpj.org    


January 9, 2008
His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa
President of Sri Lanka and Minister of Defense, Public Security, Law and Order
Presidential Secretariat
Colombo 1
Sri Lanka 
Via facsimile: +94 11 2430 590

Dear President Rajapaksa,

As your government prepares to withdraw from its 
2002 cease-fire agreement with Tamil separatists, 
the Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly 
concerned by reports that members of your 
government have tried to intimidate journalists 
in the Sri Lankan media in recent weeks. In at 
least two instances, an official used the word 
"traitor" against a journalist, which is 
decidedly inflammatory in a country that has seen 
civil war rage since 1983.

We fear that when the end of the cease-fire 
officially goes into effect on January 16 and 
fighting resumes, your government will seek to 
further intimidate Sri Lankan journalists who 
might report critically on activities of the 
government or the Sri Lankan military. These 
fears are not unfounded, given recent incidents 
such as these:

At a press conference on January 7, Minister of 
Social Services and Social Welfare K. N. Douglas 
Devananda called the well-respected senior 
journalist Sri Ranga Jeyarathnam a "traitor" and 
accused him of being in league with the 
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Minister 
Devaada made his remarks because he was angry 
about a documentary Jeyarathnam had aired on his 
program on the private Shakthi TV channel about 
the assassination of Tamil opposition politician 
T. Maheshvaran on New Year's Day, it was widely 
reported in Sri Lanka's media.

On January 2, in an interview published in the 
state-controlled Sinhala daily Dinamina, the 
commander of the Sri Lankan army, Maj. Gen. 
Sarath Fonseka, called unnamed journalists 
"traitors" and referred to the "treachery" of the 
media. According to a translation of Fonseka's 
remarks supplied by the Sri Lankan media rights 
group Free Media Movement, he said: "The biggest 
obstacle [to fighting Tamil separatists] is the 
unpatriotic media. I am not blaming all 
journalists. I know 99 percent of media and 
journalists are patriotic and doing their jobs 
properly. But unfortunately, we have a small 
number of traitors among the journalists. They 
are the biggest obstacle. All other obstacles we 
can surmount."

We wrote to you on October 2, 2007, about written 
and verbal attacks that appeared on the Ministry 
of Defense's Web site about Iqbal Athas, 
consultant editor and defense correspondent for 
The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka. The accusations 
effectively equated Athas' journalism with 
terrorism, after he reported on setbacks the army 
faced in fighting with Tamil secessionists. The 
lengthy attack on Athas' reporting accused him of 
"insulting our soldiers' sacrifices" and claims 
his reporting "has been assisting in the 
psychological operations of the LTTE terrorists." 
The article claims that "promoting terrorism had 
become a lucrative business" for Athas. Athas was 
awarded CPJ's International Press Freedom Award 
in 1994.

On December 27, Minister of Labor Mervyn de Silva 
accompanied by a large group of men, stormed the 
state-run television station Sri Lanka Rupavahini 
Cooperation and assaulted the station's news 
director, T.M.G. Chandrasekara. The station's 
staff held the minister and his supporters while 
police were summoned, and videotaped the 
minister's apology for his actions on camera. De 
Silva was apparently angry because a speech he 
had delivered the previous day was been fully 
reported by the station. The government has made 
no mention of the ugly incident, nor has it 
apologized to the station's staff for the 
behavior of one of its cabinet ministers. 

As Sri Lanka apparently prepares to resume 
military action against the Tamil separatists, we 
call on you and members of your government to 
respect the vital role journalists play in an 
open democratic society. Verbal, written, and 
physical assaults on journalists are attacks on 
the very fabric of a democratic society. We call 
on you to make to ensure that members of your 
government refrain from such acts of intimidation.

Sincerely,


Joel Simon
Executive Director

CC:
Mogens Schmidt, Deputy Assistant Director-General, Freedom of Expression and
Democracy Unit, UNESCO
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Amnesty International
Article 19 (United Kingdom)
Artikel 19 (The Netherlands)
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Freedom Forum
Freedom House
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Center for Journalists
International Federation of Journalists
International PEN
International Press Institute
Michael G. Kozak, U.S. Assistant Secretary for 
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
The Newspaper Guild
The North American Broadcasters Association
Overseas Press Club

o o o

(ii)
Committee to Protect Journalists
330 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001 USA 
Phone: (212) 465-1004     Fax: (212) 465-9568 
Web: www.cpj.org     E-Mail: media at cpj.org


Pakistan expels reporter for The New York Times

New York, January 11, 2008-The Committee to 
Protect Journalists is disturbed by Pakistan's 
deportation today of Nicholas Schmidle, a 
journalist whose report "Next-Gen Taliban" 
appeared in the New York Times Magazine on 
January 6. The article contained interviews with 
anti-government Taliban leaders and was written 
from the tumultuous Baluchistan province, and its 
capital, Quetta. CPJ was unable to immediately 
reach officials from the Pakistani Embassy in 
Washington or the U.N. mission in New York for 
comment.

According to Scott Malcomson, his editor at the 
magazine, Schmidle was given no explanation for 
his deportation by officials from the Ministry of 
the Interior. Malcomson told CPJ, however, that 
the deportation "clearly was connected to his 
writing rather than anything else he was doing."

"CPJ is unfortunately accustomed to reporting on 
the government's attacks on the local media, but 
now harassment seems to be spreading to foreign 
journalists as well," said Joel Simon, CPJ's 
executive director. "At a time of growing crisis 
in Pakistan, perhaps the worst tactic for 
promoting calm is for the government to silence 
the press."

Security services members visited Schmidle on 
Monday, and the local police gave him a 
deportation order on Tuesday, according to 
Malcomson. While the deportation order was dated 
December 29, 2007, editors at the magazine say 
they believe it was back-dated, and that 
officials issued it after the magazine's article 
ran. The reporter, who is also a fellow at the 
Washington-based Institute of Current World 
Affairs, regularly freelances for The New 
Republic and Slate. He had been in the country 16 
months, Malcomson said.

Schmidle told CPJ from London on Friday that he 
was "extremely disappointed at being asked to 
leave Pakistan," and that his visa had contained 
"no restrictions whatsoever."

"I have yet to hear the Pakistani side in this, 
but if this is a sign that journalists will be 
subject to reprisals for reporting honestly on 
conditions in Pakistan, that is a cause for 
serious concern," Gerald Marzorati, editor of the 
New York Times Magazine, told CPJ.
In addition to visiting journalists reporting 
more difficulty in obtaining visas to enter 
Pakistan and traveling to conflict regions, there 
have been two serious incidents of government 
harassment of foreign journalists in the past 13 
months:

On December 19, 2006, New York Times reporter, 
Carlotta Gall was physically assaulted and her 
belongings, including computers, notebooks, and 
mobile phones, were seized by four men who said 
they were from the Special Branch in Quetta. Her 
photographer, Akhtar Soomro, was detained at the 
same time.

On November 11, 2007, two Daily Telegraph 
reporters, Isambard Wilkinson, Colin Freeman, and 
a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph, Damien 
McElroy, were ordered to leave the country within 
72 hours, after an editorial critical of 
President Pervez Musharraf appeared in the 
British paper.

Musharraf declared a state of emergency on 
November 3, severely curtailing media freedoms in 
the country. Despite the lifting of the state of 
emergency on December 15, many of these freedoms 
have not yet been restored.

CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit 
organization that works to safeguard press 
freedom worldwide. For more information, visit 
www.cpj.org.  

______


[4]

Hindustan Times
January 12, 2007

HEDGED IN BY HINDUTVA AGAIN

by Khushwant Singh
January 11, 2008

The drubbing that the Congress got in Gujarat and 
Himachal Pradesh state elections has changed the 
political map of India: The BJP now rules larger 
territories and people than any other party; 
Communists and regional parties retain their hold 
on states they rule. Mayawati's BSP holds India's 
largest state Uttar Pradesh.

The Congress party's moral authority to govern 
the country has been seriously eroded. However, 
unpalatable this be to people of my way of 
thinking, we have to face the harsh reality and 
consider whether or not the UPA government at the 
centre should hold out for its full term or call 
for general elections earlier to renew its 
mandate. Virtually with only one woman as its 
all-India vote-catcher, its prospects look grim.

One thing is clear: we were wrong in assuming 
that call for Hindutva by the BJP and its allies 
was on deaf ears and that it has little to offer 
in terms of industrial and economic development. 
It has a mixture of both: Hindutva gives it 
electoral sustenance.

We need to examine why appeal to religion remains 
so important to us Indians who otherwise pretend 
to be secular. I believe its roots lie in 
xenophobia-dislike of what we conceive as foreign 
elements.

It started with Muslim invaders of our country. 
It spread to those who converted to Islam. No 
matter how much descendants of Muslim invaders 
Indianised themselves, the feeling of resentment 
against them took deep roots in our minds. Then 
came Europeans-Portuguese, Dutch, French and the 
British. They brought Christianity. Our freedom 
movement first targeted the British, Mahatma 
Gandhi, who led this movement, did his best to 
separate anti-British feeling from reservations 
against Muslims. He succeeded in doing so for 
some years but was defeated by the partition of 
the country, which was supported by the majority 
of Muslims. His martyrdom and the long rule of 
Pandit Nehru, our first PM, kept the Hindu 
resentment against Muslims subdued. Then it burst 
in the open with the RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena and 
Bajrang Dal.

The BJP is the chief beneficiary of this 
anti-Muslim sentiment. Its leaders, mainly 
L.K.Advani, incited Hindu mobs to destroy the 
Babri Masjid. Not one of them has even bothered 
to tender an apology to the Muslims. At least 
three more historic mosques were on their hit 
list. I do not know whether or not they are still 
marked for destruction. Meanwhile, the target has 
shifted to Christians and their churches in 
Orissa. How can any patriotic Indian not feel 
disheartened by this turn of events? I only hope 
my analysis of the saffron upsurge flawed.

[snip].


o o o

Hindustan Times
December 23, 2007

WHAT GUJARAT THINKS TODAY...

by Jyotirmaya Sharma

There are moments when political commentators 
must abandon political correctness and speak 
their mind. Despite Narendra Modi and the BJP 
winning the Gujarat elections, it is a pyrrhic 
victory. It marks the failure of the BJP's 
Hindutva plank in a state that has been 
notoriously labelled as the laboratory of this 
dubious ultra-nationalist plank. Modi's win has 
also been at the expense of the party and is the 
victory of demagoguery, smugness and unbridled 
hubris. Ironically, Modi himself is a loser 
despite the win. A man who claims to lead 5 
million Gujaratis can only take satisfaction in 
the fact that many among these 5 million people 
there are supporters of an unprincipled sociopath.

Modi's spin-doctors have crowed in the past few 
weeks about Modi the phenomenon, representing 
economic reforms, toughness, entrepreneurial 
modernity, managerial efficiency and the New 
Gujarat. This is indeed true to an extent. But it 
also represents a Gujarat that is intolerant, 
harbours, nourishes and celebrates an inflamed 
sectarian nationalism, makes a virtue of greed 
and uses the democratic principles of 
self-determination and representation to 
consolidate these shortcomings.

This is the dark, subterranean underbelly of 
democracy without strong liberal institutions. 
Gujaratis and Gujarat are a part of the idea of 
India, but an idea that is deeply flawed and one 
that many Indians have a right to be ashamed of 
sharing. It is not simply a case of Modi's India 
triumphant over Bharat, but that of the normative 
being defeated at the hands of narrow pragmatism, 
rabble-rousing and sanctified criminality.

The real loser in these elections is not the 
Congress in Gujarat alone but the UPA government 
at the Centre. In its three-year tenure, it has 
failed to capture the imagination of the people, 
not merely in Gujarat, but across the country. It 
has been woefully soft on the one issue that it 
claimed as the reason for its 2004 victory, 
namely communalism. Its fear of alienating the 
Hindu vote in Gujarat propelled it to making 
subtle, but sordid compromises on the question of 
communalism. Had Modi won after having been 
challenged by the Congress frontally on the 
communal question, the Congress and the UPA could 
have at least claimed a moral victory in these 
elections. Instead, they went soft on the 
communal question, handed the national security 
plan to Modi on a platter, gave tickets of 
tainted BJP rebels and failed to throw up an 
election issue that would compete with Modi's 
development rhetoric.

Compounding the UPA's problems is the Left's 
position on the nuclear deal, pitched often as an 
instance of capitulating to American imperialism 
and as a capitalist conspiracy. While the merits 
and demerits of the deal can endlessly be 
debated, the truth is that urban, middle-class 
Indians - and Gujarat has the most sizeable urban 
middle-class than anywhere else in the country - 
do not identify with the Left's rhetoric. This 
has little to do with the nuclear question, but 
more to do with a growing distaste for the Left's 
increasing sanctimoniousness and posing as the 
unofficial national bureau of moral certification 
on all questions of economic reform, 
liberalisation and subsidies. Moreover, Nandigram 
and the Taslima Nasreen issues have not covered 
the Indian Left in any glory.

In raising the sceptre of mid-term elections, 
painting the UPA government as a hostage to the 
Left's endless carping, it is the Left that has, 
to a large extent, handed over victory to Modi in 
Gujarat. But more than anything else, the 
constant allusion to the UPA having sold India's 
national interests to the US have hurt the 
Congress and UPA image most. For better or worse, 
most Indians seek security in the image of a 
strong central government and its perceived 
ability to stand upto external pressures, despite 
a parallel rhetoric of globalisation being doled 
out endlessly.

If there is a lesson from Modi's victory, it is 
for the UPA. It has not only failed to impress an 
agenda of its own in the people's imagination, 
but has also failed to keep the secular forces 
united. The recent emergence of the UNPA is a 
testimony to this fragmentation of the secular 
space. If it has to survive as a political force, 
it must not take the Gujarat results to heart and 
go in for mid-term elections. It would be a 
mistake to superimpose the Gujarat scenario on 
the rest of the country and baulk from seeking a 
fresh and unfettered mandate. The only constraint 
for the Congress and the UPA is its singular lack 
of a grand idea, and not merely electoral 
arithmetic.

The BJP's clever ploy of naming LK Advani as its 
prime ministerial candidate further complicates 
matters for the Congress. In an election scenario 
that is increasingly getting presidential, the 
combination of the lack of a sparkling idea and 
the inherent decency of Manmohan Singh might not 
be a match for the BJP's ultra-nationalism and 
Advani's rhetorical talents.

In politics, as in ordinary life, individuality 
is a difficult virtue to emulate. The Congress 
and the UPA must cease to wear clothes from 
borrowed wardrobes and learn to fit into their 
own clothes.

The election results in Gujarat must not, 
however, deter liberals from carping. They must 
continue to raise the question of the post-Godhra 
carnage orchestrated by Modi and demand that Modi 
be brought to book. They must hold on to a 
different idea of India, arguing for such 
old-fashioned values as civility and decency in 
public life. They must not be deterred from being 
sore thumbs, oddballs and friendless loners. This 
is what another almost-forgotten son of Gujarat, 
Mahatma Gandhi, had taught this country. Add to 
that Rabindranath Tagore's exhortation of 'walk 
alone' and one has the courage to face the dark 
and diabolical surprises democracy can throw up 
in one's face.

The lesson is clear for all: after all Hitler 
came to power through a democratic election, laid 
the foundation for Germany's modern industrial 
might and built the autobahns. The sword and the 
gun often win in the short-term, but it is the 
liberal pen that rewrites such victories into 
defeats.

Jyotirmaya Sharma is Professor, Department of 
Political Science, University of Hyderabad. He is 
the author of Terrifying Vision: MS Golwalkar, 
the RSS and India

o o o             


From Tehelka Magazine
Vol 5, Issue 2, Dated Jan 19, 2008

NEXT STOP ORISSA

With Modi triumphant, an emboldened Sangh is set 
upon doing a repeat of Gujarat, reports S. Anand

"You are just burning tyres. How many Isai houses 
and churches have you burnt? Without kranti 
(revolution) there can be no shanti (peace). 
Narendra Modi has done kranti in Gujarat, the 
reason why shanti's there."

Lakhanananda Saraswati, 82-year-old Sangh leader 
inciting his followers on his cell phone on 
December 25, from a medical centre in Daringbadi, 
Kandhamal district, in the presence of police and 
journalists

FIRE, AGNI, is the most favoured element in 
Hindutva's next laboratory Orissa. It is the 
acrid smell from the burnt-down churches, 
vehicles and homes that remains with you after a 
three-day visit to Kandhamal district even a week 
after the worst instance of anti- Christian 
violence in independent India.

On December 23, 2007, the day Narendra Modi had 
led the BJP to a massive victory in Gujarat, 
Hindutva activists in a faraway village in 
Kandhamal district pulled out pastor Junas Digal 
from a bus. He was beaten, tonsured and paraded 
naked. On December 24, around 11am, a mob of the 
RSS, Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vanvasi 
Kalyan Ashram and allied Sangh Parivar groups 
descended on Bamunigan village and began to burn 
the Christmas pandal and the crib that had been 
erected on the road with the due permission of 
the police and the sub-collector.

The mob, about 3,000-strong, was armed with 
tridents, axes, crude bombs and kerosene. Some 
even had guns. They opened fire. Two young boys 
Sillu (12) and Avinash Nayak (15) sustained 
bullet injuries. They did not aim too well - they 
were not Maoists or Naxals (funded by Christian 
NGOs) as the police would have us believe - and 
the boys survived. Eyewitnesses say the mob was 
led by local RSS leaders Bikram Raut, Dhanu 
Pradhani and others. Within minutes, the Church 
of Our Lady of Lourdes in Bamunigan was attacked. 
The palm oil in the lamps was used to burn the 
Christmas decorations, furniture, musical 
instruments and the altar. The presbytery was 
looted and then set on fire. Police personnel, 
just three unarmed constables, watched. The 
rioters looted and burnt as the Dalit Christians, 
mostly of the Pana community, fled the village 
into the nearby forests and hills. They remained 
huddled there for three days as night 
temperatures plummeted to 4 degrees.

Within the next 72 hours, across the 
Adivasidominated Kandhamal district, five parish 
churches, 48 village churches, five convents, 
seven hostels and several church-run institutions 
bore the brunt of a Hindutva onslaught. The 
Kandhas, neo-converts to the Hindutva cause, 
zealously felled trees all along the National 
Highway 217 that snakes its way through the hilly 
Kandhamal. The entire district was cut off. More 
than 500 homes, of mostly Pana Christians, were 
targeted. Unofficially the toll is 11 deaths 
(including four in police firing). Hundreds went 
missing, perhaps hiding in forests.

Like the violence in Gujarat 2002, it appears 
that the attack was executed with meticulous 
planning. The simultaneity of the strikes across 
the hilly inaccessible terrain indicates this. 
The Christmas-week campaign was planned to 
coincide with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's 
bash in capital Bhubaneswar to celebrate the 10th 
anniversary of his party Biju Janata Dal's 
existence. By December 24, a majority of the 
state's police force had been moved out of the 
districts - including Kandhamal to oversee the 
farmers' rally and the Mahasamavesh held on 
December 26-27. Added to this, the Kui Samaj, an 
organisation of Adivasi Kandhas, had called for a 
Kandhamal bandh on December 25 and 26. The 
Kui-speaking Kandha Adivasis have been at 
loggerheads for over a decade with the Pana Dalit 
Christians over the latter's demand for Scheduled 
Tribe status. This combination of factors created 
a powder keg to which octogenarian RSS leader 
Swami Lakhanananda Saraswati lit the fuse. He 
announced a yagna on Christmas day in Bamunigan 
right where the Pana-based Ambedkar Banika Sangh 
had erected the Christmas pandal. He had recently 
concluded a Ram Dhanu rath yatra to mobilise 
opinion on the Ram Setu issue among the Adivasis.

On December 25, while moving in his vehicle 
towards Bamunigan, Lakhanananda's supporters and 
security staff got into a scuffle, objecting to 
Christmas songs being played from a church at the 
Christian-dominated Dasingbadi village. 
Outnumbered by the Christians, the self-styled 
godman's supporters beat a retreat. Reaching the 
Daringbadi block, Lakhanananda got himself 
admitted to a medical centre and claimed to have 
been grievously hurt by a Christian mob. The news 
that the "Swami had been brutally attacked" was 
flashed by ETV's Oriya news channel. There were 
no visuals to support Lakhanananda's claims of 
injury. Soon, the Sangh outfits across the 
district attacked churches and Christian homes. 
Having called a bandh, more than 3,000 Kandha 
adivasis had gathered for a rally at Tikabali 
near the police station. They torched the poorly 
staffed Tikabali police station and went on a 
rampage.

STRANGELY, THROUGHOUT Kandhamal, the 
administration has not bothered cleaning up the 
mess of arson. Even the tattered pandal in 
Bamunigan - where it all began - clung to the 
poles when TEHELKA visited on January 5. All that 
the administration has done is hastily repair and 
paint the two police stations that had been 
attacked. A few inspectors have been shunted, the 
SP and collector been changed. Poorly managed 
relief camps are being run where officials are 
more keen to mete out relief to "Hindu victims" 
Hindus who feared reprisals in 
Christian-dominated villages and moved to relief 
camps as a precaution. Again, an "action" - the 
fictitious assault on Lakhanananda - was used to 
justify the "reaction". "Whatever happened was 
because of the spontaneous reaction of the public 
against the attack on Lakhanananda Saraswati," 
says Orissa VHP general secretary GP Rath.

There were stray incidents of violence on Hindu 
streets, such as in Bamunigan, with burnt homes 
bearing testimony. The Sangh blames Christians 
and Naxalites. The strategy of ensuring a 
significant presence of Hindus in relief camps 
has also been orchestrated by the Sangh groups. 
In the "Hindu relief camp" in Karadavadi village 
in the neighbouring Ganjam district, 588 Hindus 
from Daringbadi, Kattingia and Tierigaon villages 
gather around a television as police refuse us 
permission to enter. However, there's 
unrestricted entry into relief camps for 
Christians in Balliguda or Barakhama even as 
curfew is on.

At Balliguda's Mount Carmel Convent, a desecrated 
statue of Mary welcomes us. Sister Sujata, a 
frail woman from Chhattisgarh posted here in June 
2007, would rather not have us photograph Mary 
thus. Sister Christa of the convent told TEHELKA, 
"They showed no mercy. Shouting Jai Shri Ram and 
Jai Bajrang Bali, they raised nasty 
anti-Christians slogans." She had not expected 
that the public institutions run by the convent 
such as the hospital, the vocational training 
centres and the computer centre would be 
attacked. A gas cylinder was used to set the 
ambulance on fire. A Jersey cow in the convent's 
pen was charred to death. Perhaps for the Sangh 
workers the cow did not count as sacred because 
it was not a swadeshi one. The sisters recall 
disbelievingly that several local non-Christians, 
who had been beneficiaries at Mount Carmel's 
vocational courses, had been part of the 
1,000-strong mob that attacked them.

Christians constitute 2.4 percent of Orissa's 
population, less than the all-India population of 
2.6 percent. Of Kandhamal's 6.48 lakh population, 
52 percent are Adivasis and 16 percent 
Christians. Angana Chatterji, associate professor 
of social and cultural anthropology at the 
California Institute of Integral Studies, has 
tracked the communal upsurge in Orissa and says 
the RSS has over a few decades worked towards 
making Orissa a Hindutva laboratory. The RSS's 
Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, 
national network, directs 391 Saraswati Shishu 
Mandir schools with 1,11,000 students in the 
state. In Adivasi areas, the Sangh administers 
730 Ekal Vidyalayas, Vanvasi Kalyan Parishads, 
Vivekananda Kendras, Sewa Bharatis and other 
groups that seek to Hinduise and Sanskritise the 
Adivasis. This has been the real conversion 
agenda here. The RSS operates 6,000 shakhas in 
Orissa with more than 1.5 lakh cadre.

Some of the precedents of violence against 
Christians are well known - the burning alive of 
Australian leprosy mission worker Graham Stuart 
Staines and his sons Philip and Timothy in 
January 1999 and the murder of Mayurbhanj 
Catholic priest Arul Das the same year. On March 
16, 2002 around 500 trident-wielding activists of 
the VHP, Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini, sporting 
saffron headbands, stormed and ransacked the 
Orissa Assembly.

The RSS has been preparing the ground for a major 
strike for several years. The Sangh outfits have 
successfully divided the Adivasis and the Dalits 
with a sizeable Christian proportion. Besides, 
Lakhanananda has been backing the KuiSamaj's 
demand for refusal of ST status to Pana 
Christians - Dalits who have lost the right to 
reservation owing to their conversion. A 
Presidential Order of 2002 identified "Kuis" as 
ST. Whether the state government would interpret 
"Kuis" as Kui speakers and thus include Panas was 
not clear. In September 2007, the Kui Samaj had 
warned that the possibility of granting ST 
certificates to Panas could lead to communal 
tensions. The resignation of Padmanav Behera, a 
prominent Pana Christian and minister of steel 
and mines in the Patnaik government, was one of 
the key Kui Samaj demands.

IN THEWAVE of violence that was unleashed over 
the Christmas week, Behera was targeted. On 
December 26, a mob of 1,500 people comprising Kui 
Samaj Kandhas and Sangh goons burnt his home in 
Phiringa and then the police station 150 metres 
from the minister's home. Behind a layer of soot, 
the graffiti on the wall of Behera's home is 
ironic: "I have taken a promise to save the 
Hindus. If the Hindu prospers, the nation 
prospers. To save Hindu religion is my first and 
foremost duty." On December 28, Patnaik got 
Behera to resign yielding to the Kui Samaj's 
demands.

The Kui Samaj and RSS outfits seem to have 
naturally overlapping agendas. In Daringbadi 
block, the office of the Christian NGOWorld 
Vision was attacked. Their vehicles, computers, 
stationery, furniture were burnt in a bonfire. 
The Hindu Jagaran Shamukhya (HJS) alleges that 
Radhakant Nayak, a former civil servant and 
currently Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha, backs 
World Vision which is perceived to be a 
"proselytising NGO". They also see him as backing 
the demand for ST status by Pana Christians. 
Nayak happens to be the author of several books 
on Adivasi and Dalit issues and is the founder of 
the National Institute of Social Work & Social 
Sciences (NISSWAS) in Bhubaneswar. The NISSWAS 
School of Social Work in Phulbani was targeted 
both by the Hindutva brigade and Kui Samaj 
activists. HJS leader Basudev Barik subsequently 
addressed the media demanding the arrest of Nayak 
for fomenting "communal violence". One of the 
Samaj's demands, as part of the bandh call, was 
the resignation of Nayak, who has been away in 
Delhi all along.

The Hindutva strategy in Kandhamal to polarise 
the Pana Dalits and the Kandha Adivasis has begun 
to pay dividends. Since the formation of Vanvasi 
Kalyan Ashrams in 1987, the Sangh has sought to 
co-opt Adivasis. As RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav 
sees it, "Vanvasis (forest dwellers) are very 
much part of our wide cultural canopy."

The BJD-BJP government seems to have little issue 
with the manner in which Sangh outfits have 
vitiated the public sphere in Orissa. In fact, 
the state has actively colluded with the Sangh 
Parivar. As reported in the local media, the 
state administration supplies Dara Singh - 
Staines' convicted murderer - with special diet 
on festival days. Having appointed a judicial 
commission headed by retired judge Basudev 
Panigrahi, Patnaik claims normality has been 
restored. This is, after all, a government that 
condoned a Sangh attack on the Assembly. The 
Christians in Kandhamal have been given an 
eviction notice and the government has done 
little to reassure them or restore their faith. 
Many of them fear that violence will not be 
limited to burning and looting the next time.

A charred ambulance at the Balliguda convent, 
which bears an uncanny resemblance to the jeep in 
which Staines was burnt, carries this message: 
"Go in peace, the journey on which you go is 
under the eye of the Lord." Jude 18: 6. The 
message is lost in Orissa.

---[BOX]---
Divide To Rule

A lower caste swami and an Adivasi leader 
directed the carefully built up anger against the 
Christians

THERE ARE TWO PROTAGONISTS who orchestrated and 
provided the manpower for the communal violence 
that was unleashed in Kandhamal district - the 
RSS-backed leader Swami Lakhanananda Saraswati 
and the general secretary of the Kui Samaj, 
Lambodar Kanhar. In 1965, when the RSS unveiled 
its Goraksha Andolan as a national campaign, they 
deployed a man called Lakhan to oversee the 
implementation of the Orissa Prevention of Cow 
Slaughter Act, 1960. Orissa had also passed the 
Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA) in 1967, 
prohibiting "conversion by the use of force or 
inducement or by fraudulent means."

Born into the dhobi caste, Lakhan transformed 
into Swami Lakhanananda Saraswati after 
establishing the Chakapada ashram in 1969. Guided 
initially by swayamsevak Raghunath Sethi, he 
believed pastors were trying to convert the 
Phulbhani- Kandhamal tract into a "Christ Sthan".

The RSS mouthpiece Organiser reported on April 
23, 2006 that Lakhanananda through his 
"four-decade-long sadhana at Chakapad has 
successfully awakened the spirit of Hindutva 
among the Vanvasis and drawn them away from the 
clutches of missionaries." In April 2006, the 
centenary celebrations of the second RSS 
sarsanghachalak MS Golwalkar had been kicked off 
in Chakapad by Lakhanananda. Thousands of Kandha 
members of the Kui Samaj, led by their leader 
Lambodar Kanhar, had attended the meeting. Though 
Kui Samaj does not directly associate itself with 
the Sangh outfits, its Kandha members have often 
been mobilised by the RSS and its affiliates.

Kanhar, 43, is a lawyer by profession. He claims 
he is keen to protect the Kandhas from both 
Christianity and the Sangh outfits, but says, 
"How can we get along with Christians? It's like 
cat and mouse. We don't like the ways of even 
those who are Christians among the Kandhas. We 
keep them apart from places of worship."

Chief Minister Patnaik acceding to most of the 
Kui Samaj's demands has given him more leverage. 
He told TEHELKA he is likely to contest the 2009 
elections and is not averse to the tacit support 
of the RSS and the BJP.

With inputs from Bibhuti Pati



______


[5]   Racism, Nationalism and Cricket: The 
controversy around and Indo-Australian Cricket 
Match


(i)

Outlook,
January 11, 2008

THE RACIAL SLUR THAT WASN'T

Ten observations on the monkey business of 
racism--notwithstanding the fact that it is far 
from certain that Harbhajan Singh did actually 
call Andrew Symonds a monkey.

by Mir Ali Husain *

1) It is ironic that the first charge of racism 
brought under the ICC code has been slapped on a 
man from a minority community in a brown country. 
And that the complaint was lodged by the white 
captain of an overwhelmingly white team from a 
country with a very troubling record of pervasive 
racism. That the said team practically invented 
what has euphemistically come to be known as 
sledging and that a recent former member of this 
team was involved in an overtly racial incident 
with his Sri Lankan opponents makes the irony 
richer.

2) This is from the "Say What?!!" department. The 
match referee Mike Procter, a white South 
African, proclaimed: "I am South African, and I 
understand the word 'racism'. I have lived with 
it for much of my life." Yes Mike, you have, but 
you were privileged under that system. How can 
that make you "understand" what it is like to be 
on the receiving end of it? Do those living in 
multi-crore mansions understand what it like to 
be poverty-stricken simply because they employ a 
poorly paid servant or live next to a slum?

3) We will probably never know whether Harbhajan 
Singh called Andrew Symonds a monkey (most 
Indians don't find it implausible that the 
Aussies could have cooked it up), but IF he did, 
it is inconceivable that he could have done it 
innocently. Symonds had been treated to monkey 
chants while touring India earlier, and the 
Indian team, including Harbhajan, had been made 
aware that "monkey" was a slur when used against 
a person of colour in Australia.

4) The monkey chants directed by Indian 
spectators at Symonds are surely a learned 
behavior. It is a distasteful page plucked out 
from the playbook of boorish European, especially 
Spanish, fans who greet black football players 
with this form of chanting while waving neo-Nazi 
banners and shouting at them to "Go back to 
Africa." But the association of "monkey" with 
black Africans goes much further back. I can 
recollect hearing people refer to them as 
"langoors" ever since I was a child.

5) I am not buying the wide-eyed innocence of 
many Indian fans who appear puzzled that monkey 
is being seen as a racist slur, particularly of 
the Sydney-based United Indian Association (UIA) 
which has apparently expressed surprise that 
their fellow Australians are taking umbrage at 
the term. Its president, Raj Natarajan, issued a 
statement saying that "Considering that the 
Monkey God is one of the revered idols of Hindu 
mythology and worshipped by millions, it is 
surprising it was considered a racist term." The 
UIA is either being disingenuous or has its head 
firmly stuck in the sand; its members live in 
Australia and pay some attention to the local 
discourse, don't they? Besides, if Harbhajan did 
call Symonds a monkey, I doubt that he was 
deifying him.

6) Let me say it. The term "monkey" when directed 
at a black/brown person is racist. The history of 
colonial racism is filled with the attempts of 
white rulers to depict the denizens of their 
black/brown colonies as savages, animals, 
undeveloped human beings, and unevolvedŠ monkeys. 
The term in its various forms has been used by 
white racists to refer to people of colour. 
Monkey, ghetto monkey, porch monkey, tree 
swingers, simians, and shit slingers are slurs 
that have a long and distressing history. We 
forget it at our own peril.

7) Why exactly are we so outraged that someone 
could possibly level the charge of racism at us? 
After all, we practice our own forms of 
discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, 
occupation, language, region etc. The term 
"racist" may be unfamiliar in our context, but 
the workings of racism aren't.
Bigotry and intolerance against a group of people 
based upon their inherited identities isn't 
exactly something that only happens elsewhere. 
Notions of the intrinsic superiority of one set 
of people over another and a resultant prejudice 
towards the latter aren't alien to our social 
landscape.

8) We are also fairly adept at buying into a 
racist structure when we move abroad. The 
conversations about African Americans in the 
homes of the U.S. NRIs distressingly echo the 
views of racist white Americans. Even before 
entering the U.S., Indian immigrants are armed 
with the 'knowledge' that blacks are lazy, 
untrustworthy, and dangerous. These immigrants 
may have white friends, but seldom interact with 
the black community. They may transgress cultural 
boundaries by marrying whites, but almost never 
by coupling up with an African American. They 
even have their own version of the 'nigger' 
epithet: kallu.

9) In this whole sordid issue, what got the raw 
end of the deal was the issue of racism itself. 
Once again, it has been boiled down to the 
actions or attitudes of one person against 
another. Racism however, not unlike poverty, is a 
structural problem. Structurally racist systems 
are configured to perpetuate inequalities. 
Notwithstanding the 40-odd years since the 
passage of the Civil Rights Act and the end of 
Jim Crow laws in the U.S., the discrepancies 
between whites and blacks on income, wealth, 
health, education, rates of incarceration and 
other economic and social indicators continue to 
be vast. It is the reductive understanding of 
racism as a mere individual act that gives us the 
comical spectacle of white umpire Darrell Hair 
suing the ICC for racial discrimination.

10) Sitting U.S. Senator George Allen of Virginia 
was giving his stump speech in 2006 when he 
noticed a staffer from the opposition camp taping 
him, and paused to ask his audience to "give a 
welcome to macaca here". Macaca, a word for the 
rhesus monkey, is a slur used by Francophone 
whites against the local blacks in Africa and it 
was speculated that Senator Allen had learned it 
from his mother, a Tunisian of French descent. 
The staffer, the only person of colour in the 
gathering, was S.R. Siddarth, an Indian-American. 
The same system of racial discrimination that 
allows us to feel superior to blacks and call 
them monkeys makes monkeys of us too.

* Mir Ali Husain is the co-author of Anthems of 
Resistance: A Celebration of Progressive Urdu 
Poetry and the lyricist of Dor and Bombay to 
Bangkok


o o o

(ii)

Times of India
January 11, 2007

MONKEY BUSINESS

by Anand Patwardhan

While it is clear to anyone who watched the TV 
coverage of cricket in Sydney that the umpires 
and Aussie players combined to steal the test 
match, I'm not sure that deep rooted, historic, 
and still prevalent Indian racism against people 
who are dark skinned, adivasi/indegenous or 
dalit, should be hidden under a shield of 
national pride and honour.

This is not Bhajji's failing alone. Whether he 
repeated the word 'monkey' in Sydney or not is a 
contentious issue, specially as there is no hard 
evidence for it either way. But there is little 
doubt that racism in India is a nationwide curse, 
a leftover from Arya and Brahminic concepts of 
superiority, aided, abetted and reinforced by 
British colonialism and cashed in on by 
multinational corporations of today that never 
hesitate to sell the virtues of whiteness through 
a variety of powders, creams and innuendo.

The latest and ugliest proof came in Baroda when 
the Caribbean-African blood in Symonds rightly 
went on the boil as spectators went into monkey 
taunt mode, deriding a bewildered Symonds for 
nothing more than his physical appearance. The 
fact that those who taunted him were themselves 
people of colour, albeit those who have 
internalized the aesthetics of whiteness, must 
have made the jibes harder to understand or bear. 
Why did our cricketers not distance themselves 
from the crowd ' Or show immediate solidarity 
with Symonds by loudly condemning the crowd 
behaviour' If they had, perhaps Sydney would 
never have happened. Perhaps even Steve Bucknor 
(himself Caribbean) would not have given 
unconscious vent to his own anti-Indian bias 
because he would have gained respect for 
cricketers who had used their demi-god status to 
speak out in time against racism and thus nipped 
it in the bud.

All of this is not to forgive the on-field 
behaviour of the Aussies or the blatant bias of 
umpires who think that Australians are incapable 
of making false claims. Sadly Bucknor and Benson 
are not the only umpires in world cricket who, 
regardless of the colour of their own skin, seem 
to implicitly believe that cricketers from the 
developed world are more trustworthy than their 
counterparts from the developing world.

What is racism' It need not pertain only to 
issues of race. It is essentially an act of gross 
generalization born out of abject ignorance 
through which an entire community is tarred by a 
process of caricature and reduction. When the 
deeds of some Muslims lead to an assumption that 
all Muslims are terrorists, when all Jews are 
seen as money-minded, or all Hindus are regarded 
as devious, or all Sikhs become the butt of jokes 
that belittle their intelligence, we are surely 
immersed in the quagmire of racism. And if we 
understand that for thousands of years the 
dominant religion in our land has imposed a caste 
system that sanctioned the subjugation of an 
entire people to slavery and kept them from 
acquiring either property or knowledge, we will 
understand what racism really means.

I agree that Bhajji alone should not be in the 
dock for it. It is a sin we have to collectively 
expiate by first recognizing that racism does in 
fact exist and flourish in this country, as 
indeed it does in most parts of the world 
including and specially in Australia, a land that 
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of aborigines 
and stole children from their parents to bring 
them up white.

That a person of colour at last found place in an 
otherwise all-white Australian cricket team may 
be seen as a tribute to the many anti-racist 
campaigns that have been waged in that land once 
populated by aborigines, but it is a commonplace 
even in racist America that the first all-white 
bastions to fall were in the arena of sports and 
entertainment. It is only when people who have 
been subjugated and abused begin to breach the 
glass ceiling of economic and political power 
that change can be hailed as significant.

Meanwhile it is quite possible for the token 
non-white in a team to absorb and internalize the 
boorishness of his teammates, where the naked 
desire to 'win' at any cost overrides any sense 
of decency and justice. But is this just an 
Aussie trait' Is it not what we in India have 
been thirsting for, that ever elusive 'killer 
instinct''

The real problem is that nationalism is the 
mirror image of racism, and those who believe in 
'my country right or wrong' are close cousins of 
those who believe in 'my skin colour right or 
wrong', 'my religion right or wrong' or 'my caste 
right or wrong'.

As for monkeys, we are either all monkeys, or as 
is more accurate, we are all former monkeys who 
have degenerated into homo-sapiens, the only 
species on earth that has taken concrete steps 
(no pun intended) towards destroying the very 
planet it occupies.

A little humility about this may be the best cure for racism.


Anand Patwardhan
Jan. 8, 2008

______


[6]

Dear Friends,

We are attaching two documents which we hope you 
can read and respond to soon.  The first is a 
statement from South Asia Solidarity Group and 
South Asian Alliance  about the atrocities 
against Christians being perpetrated by the Sangh 
Parivar in Orissa.

The second is a letter of demands, please address 
it appropriately and email it to the Indian 
President, the Indian Prime Minister, the 
Minister of Home Affairs, the Chief Minister of 
Orissa State, and the High Commissioner of India 
in the UK at the email addresses below.

Amrit Wilson
South Asia Solidarity Group

---

President:
Her Excellency Smt. Pratibha Patil
Office of the President
New Delhi
India
Email: To=presidentofindia at rb.nic.in
presssecy at alpha.nic.in
Pressecy at Sansad.nic.in

=================

Prime Minister:
His Excellency Dr. Manmohan Singh
Office of the Prime Minister
New Delhi,
India
http://pmindia.nic.in/write.htm

=================

Hon'ble Mr. Navin Patnaik
Chief Minister
State Government of Orissa
Bhubaneswar
cmo at ori.nic.in

==================
Hon'ble Mr. Shivraj V. Patil
websitemhaweb at nic.in

========================
Mr. Kamalesh Sharma           
High Commissioner
High Commission of India
London
hc.london at mea.gov.in


--------

#1.

Stop the violence against Christians in Orissa! 
Bring the guilty to justice! Dismantle the 
structures of fear and intimidation!

South Asia Solidarity Group and South Asian 
Alliance condemn, in the strongest possible 
terms, the violence perpetrated against 
Christians in Orissa

On 23rd December Adivasi organisations affiliated 
to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Parivar 
(the family of organisations of the Hindu right) 
marched through Barakhama village, Kandhamal, a 
district in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, 
screaming "Stop Christianity, Kill Christians"; 
on 24th December despite police promises to 
control the situation, Sangh Parivar 
organisations shut down shops and, at night, cut 
power and telephone lines and felled trees to 
build road blocks; on 25th December, Christmas 
day, a mob of 4000 people, many of them 
middle-class Hindus from outside the immediate 
area, armed with trishuls, swords, rods - and 
also some guns - rampaged through the area, 
breaking down the doors of Churches, attacking 
congregations at prayer, burning down a total of 
seven Churches, looting and torching Christian 
houses, convents, hostels, and other 
institutions, injuring hundreds and killing at 
least eleven people. Sporadic violence by Sangh 
Parivar organisations continues till today.

Hindutva's growing infrastructure of fear and intimidation

These premeditated attacks on Christians were 
planned, orchestrated and perpetrated by the same 
Hindutva organisations, the BJP, RSS, VHP, 
Bajrang Dal and their affiliates, which were 
responsible for the genocidal attacks on Muslims 
in Gujarat in 2002. They are part of an 
established agenda of setting up a Hindu Rashtra 
(Hindu state) - encapsulated in the slogan - 
Hindu Rashtra, Pehle kasai, Phir Isai,(First 
Muslims, then Christians).

They are also a culmination of the violence which 
has been simmering in Orissa since a coalition 
government led by the BJP came to power in 1998. 
1999 saw the gruesome murder by Bajrang Dal 
activists of the Australian missionary Graham 
Staines and his two young sons. This was followed 
by other sporadic attacks and murders. An 
investigation into religious communalism in 
Orissa by the Indian People's Tribunal, led by 
Justice K.K. Usha in 2006 noted the "spread of 
communal organizations in Orissa, which has been 
accompanied by a series of small and large events 
and some riotsŠsuch violations are utilized to 
generate the threat and reality of greater 
violence, and build the infrastructure of fear 
and intimidation." The Sangh Parivar has now 
30-40 major organisations and a massive base of a 
few million in Orissa.

Orissa a Gujarat in the making?

In Gujarat the BJP state government presided over 
the genocidal violence against Muslims; in Orissa 
the state government an alliance of the BJP and 
BJD(Biju Janta Dal) has, according to a 
fact-finding team led by John Dayal of the Indian 
National Integration Council, condoned if not 
actually supported "the activities of criminals 
and political activists spreading bigotry...." 
while the police and administration chose to 
stand by while Christians and their institutions 
were attacked and 'grave violence and heinous 
crime' committed.

In Gujarat, sections of the Adivasi populations 
were mobilised to attack Muslims. In Orissa they 
have been used by the RSS to attack Christians. 
In these areas of Orissa and Gujarat, Adivasi 
communities are extremely poor; although under 
the Tribal Forest Rights Act they have access to 
forest land and water, in reality the law is 
ignored. Hindutva organisations have used these 
injustices to mobilise Adivasis against other 
minority communities. Organisations like the 
Vanavasi (Forest dwellers) Kalyan Samiti which 
was used in Gujarat to siphon money from Britain 
for use by the Hindutva organisations during the 
anti-Muslim attacks in 2002 are now involved in 
the attacks on Christians in Orissa.

The Sangh Parivar's communal mythology on 
Christians is that they are involved in large 
scale conversions of Hindus to Christianity, 
while this would of course be entirely legal and 
within the framework of the Indian Constitution, 
the reality is very different. While the 
Christian population (only 2.3% in Orissa today) 
is declining, it is the Sangh Parivar who are 
involved in aggressive proselytization 
-converting Adivasis to Hinduism. All along the 
tribal belt, from Dangs in Gujarat in the West to 
Orissa in the East, Hindu Samgams, or 
congregations, are being held, and thousands of 
Adivasis threatened and intimidated into 
attending.

In Kandhamal in the first week of 2008, 700 
Christians fled their homes and took refuge in 
government-run camps. According to John Dayal, 
they are those who were able to flee, "children, 
women, old and sick, who could not flee for their 
lives, are [still in their villages] in great 
danger.."

The attacks in Orissa have come immediately after 
the BJP's electoral victory in Gujarat, and the 
RSS is openly proclaiming that after Gujarat 
2002, Orissa is the next laboratory of Hindutva.

The killers and their henchmen must be prosecuted 
and the structures of the Sangh Parivar exposed 
and dismantled.

The state government of Orissa has instituted a 
Judicial Review Commission to investigate the 
riots. Given the state government's failure to 
protect Christians and its implicit collusion 
with Hindutva, such an investigation is not 
likely to bring the guilty to justice.

We demand an investigation by the Central Bureau 
of Investigation into the events in Kandhamal and 
neighbouring districts of Orissa.

We urge the state government to provide 
protection, food and medical supplies to those 
who have fled to refugee camps and also to those 
who have been unable to flee and are still in 
their villages.

We call upon the Indian government to set up an 
independent inquiry into the Sangh Parivar's 
infrastructure of fear, intimidation and violence 
in Orissa.

We call upon the British government to 
investigate the international arms of the Sangh 
Parivar organisations in Britain who support and 
fund the criminal activities of Hindutva groups 
in India

o o o


#2.

To,
ADDRESSEE

In the last week of December 2007 Adivasi 
organisations affiliated to the Rashtriya 
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) marched and rampaged 
through Kandhamal district in Orissa, screaming 
"Stop Christianity, Kill Christians", armed with 
trishuls, swords, rods - and also some guns - 
breaking down the doors of Churches, attacking 
congregations at prayer, burning down a total of 
seven Churches, looting and torching Christian 
houses, convents, hostels, and other 
institutions, injuring hundreds and killing at 
least eleven people.

These premeditated attacks on Christians were 
planned, orchestrated and perpetrated by the same 
Hindutva organisations, the RSS, BJP, VHP, 
Bajrang Dal and their affiliates, which were 
responsible for the genocidal attacks on Muslims 
in Gujarat in 2002.

The attacks in Orissa have come immediately after 
the BJP's electoral victory in Gujarat, and the 
RSS is openly proclaiming that after Gujarat 
2002, Orissa is the next laboratory of Hindutva.

The killers and their henchmen must be prosecuted 
and the structures of the Sangh Parivar exposed 
and dismantled.

The state government of Orissa has instituted a 
Judicial Review Commission to investigate the 
riots. Given the state government's failure to 
protect Christians and its implicit collusion 
with Hindutva, such an investigation is not 
likely to bring the guilty to justice.

We demand an investigation by the Central Bureau 
of Investigation into the events in Kandhamal and 
neighbouring districts of Orissa.

We urge the state government to provide proper 
compensation, protection, food and medical 
supplies to those who have fled to refugee camps 
and also to those who have been unable to flee 
and are still in their villages.

We call upon the Indian government to set up an 
independent inquiry into the Sangh Parivar's 
infrastructure of fear, intimidation and violence 
in Orissa.


sincerely,

______


[7] ANNOUNCEMENTS:

(i)

Join us at t2f on Tuesday for a session of 
storytelling and poetry featuring Sehba Sarwar 
and Asif Farrukhi. The two writers, dramatically 
different from each other in perspective, style, 
and experience, have one thing in common: the 
city of Karachi. Sehba and Asif will read from 
their Karachi texts, in English and Urdu, and the 
readings will be followed by a discussion about 
Karachi and her myriad dimensions.

Sehba Sarwar's essays, poems and stories have 
been published in anthologies, newspapers and 
magazines in Pakistan, India and USA. Her first 
novel, Black Wings, was published in 2004 
(Alhamra Publishing, Islamabad) and some of her 
recent work has appeared in And the World Changed 
(Women Unlimited, New Delhi), Neither Day nor 
Night (Harper Collins, India), Ellipsis 
(Seattle), and in The News (Lahore).

Asif Farrukhi writes fiction in Urdu and has 
published a number of collections of short 
stories. In his recent work, he continues to be 
fascinated and repelled by Karachi

Date: Tuesday, 15th January 2008
Time: 7:00 pm

Minimum Donation: Rs. 100 [Please support the 
PeaceNiche platform for open dialogue and 
creative expression generously]

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


o o o

(ii)

[Late announcement]

City Circle invites you to "PAKISTAN IN CRISIS: 
Which way forward?" A Question-Time-format 
roundtable discussion with distinguished 
panellists and audience participation.

Panellists will include Baroness Kishwer Falkner, 
Prof. Iftikhar Malik (Bath Spa University), Prof. 
Ziauddin Sardar (author and broadcaster) and 
Aamir Ghauri of Geo TV. The session will be 
chaired by Usama Hasan, the new director of the 
City Circle.


The shocking murder of Benazir Bhutto has thrown 
into sharp relief the political and religious 
tensions within the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. 
In the 2001 census, almost a half (43%) of all UK 
Muslims were of Pakistani origin. Therefore, 
events in a great Muslim country (population 160 
million) continue to have a significant impact on 
British Muslims.

What is "enlightened moderation" (as in President 
Musharraf's famous phrase)? How can "consensus 
politics," recently advocated by one of our 
panellists, be achieved in Pakistan? Will the 
forthcoming elections (February 18th) be free and 
fair? How can Pakistan ever resolve the tensions 
arising from the military and civilian sectors, 
the political parties, the Islamists and the 
secularists, the tribal and the feudal systems? 
How does all of this affect British Pakistanis 
and British Muslims, and how can we help?

Join us for a fascinating discussion with a distinguished panel of guests.

KISHWER FALKNER (BARONESS FALKNER OF MARGRAVINE) 
is a Liberal Democrat Peer in the House of Lords 
and Spokesperson for Home Affairs. The first 
Muslim peer for the Lib Dems, she takes an active 
interest in foreign affairs and civil liberties, 
community relations and integration. She speaks 
extensively on public policy issues relating to 
Muslims in the West, multiculturalism and 
integration. She wrote an opinion piece
entitled, "Trouble in Islamabad" for Prospect Magazine in November 2007.

PROF. IFTIKHAR MALIK is a leading historian of 
Pakistan currently-based at Bath Spa University. 
He has published several books about the history 
of his country of origin, and is a Fellow of the 
Royal Historical Society.

PROF. ZIAUDDIN SARDAR is a London-based writer, 
broadcaster and critic who writes regularly for 
The Observer and New Statesman. In 2007, he 
presented a Channel 4 Dispatches programme on 
Pakistan entitled, "Between the Mullahs and the 
Military" as part of the "War on Terror" series.

AAMIR GHAURI is Head of News & Current Affairs, 
UK & Europe, Geo TV, a satellite channel watched 
by millions around the world. Geo TV remains 
banned in Pakistan as part of the government's 
crackdown on media after introduction of the 
state of emergency in November 2007.

Free entrance. All welcome.

For event enquiries please contact us on 07980 
834340 or usama at thecitycircle.com

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

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.