SACW | June 15-16, 2008 / Rebuilding in Bamiyan / Harassment of Ashis Nandy / Scapegoating of Bangladeshis / Hindu supremacist rhetoric
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Mon Jun 16 01:50:32 CDT 2008
South Asia Citizens Wire | June 15-16 , 2008 |
Dispatch No. 2525 - Year 10 running
[1] Afghanistan's misdirected security-led aid -
the troubled rebuilding of Bamiyan
[2] Pakistan: Finding solution to growing obscurantism (Ishrat Hyatt)
[3] India: Statement by Academics and Activists
on the Harassment of Ashis Nandy and a Demand for
Withdrawal of Spurious Charges Levied Against Him
[4] India: Jaipur blasts: Bangladeshis, scapegoat for cops?
[5] India: He beats holy men at their own game (Jeevan Mathew Kurian)
[6] India: Has the BJP disowned this man? (Sitaram Yechury)
[7] India: RSS sees 'security threat' in Grameen [Bank] entry (Sanjay Basak)
[8] India: Peddling Sanskrit infused with Hindu
supremacist rhetoric (Rama Laxmi)
[9] The Chieftain State of Gujarat - Where the Republic Ends (Badri Raina)
[10] India: Another Bakery, another Parzania (Harsh Mander)
[11] India: Declare a moratorium on
statue-building: build schools, hospitals,
bridges and roads instead (Namita Bhandare)
______
[1] AFGHANISTAN: ON THE TROUBLED REBUILDING OF
BAMIYAN AND ITS NEGLECTED HAZARA PEOPLE
a recent video report from Al-Jazeera on aid and
reconstruction efforts in the region of the
Bamiyan Buddhas. It dosent sound too hopeful as
many things Afghanistan get mired in the murky
logic of security and international
developmentalism:
Afghanistan's misdirected security-led aid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhtQlBVF8tU
______
[2]
The News International
9 June 2008
FINDING SOLUTION TO GROWING OBSCURANTISM
by Ishrat Hyatt
Islamabad
A play inspired by a short Urdu story
prophetically written by Ghulam Abbas in the mid
1960's and adopted by Shahid Nadeem, 'Hotel
Mohenjodaro,' was staged at the National Art
Gallery auditorium with a theme dealing with
social issues. We read about what's happening in
our daily papers and view the frightening events
on television but need to be reminded again and
again of these threats, with the hope that a
solution will be found to the growing
obscurantism and divisions in our society before
it is too late.
The story is simple - Pakistan reaches a
scientifically advanced stage, launching a rocket
which lands successfully on the moon and the
event is celebrated in 'Hotel Mohenjodaro,' with
ambassadors of the US, China and Saudi Arabia
lauding the achievement. On hearing the news,
maulvis of different factions condemn the launch
and start a movement, which gathers strength,
spreading from the villages to the cities till it
reaches the capital.
The Khateeb-e-Azam of the grand mosque condemns
the satanic sciences, calls it a blasphemous act
and warns the people of the consequences on the
day of judgment. He urges his followers to
overthrow the 'kafir' government and orders the
promulgation of 'divine law.' The new regime is
successful in enforcing Islamic law but soon
sectarian differences crop up leading to conflict
and internal strife. Pursuing its policy of
self-righteousness the regime totally isolates
itself from the comity of nations and eventually,
a foreign country attacks Pakistan and defeats it.
In the final act, experts and archaeologists go
in search of the location from where the
ill-fated rocket was launched in the once
advanced country, only to find another
Mohenjodaro - a pile of bricks and stones that
was once a city.
The play is dramatised in Ajoka style with a
minimum of props and a video screening of actual
events to highlight the action on stage. The
rhetoric by the religious leaders sounded
familiar, their actions looked chillingly
realistic - though some people laughed at the
wrong time during the performance, thus taking
away from the impact of the scene - but the
response from the 'full house' audience was
positive as they applauded between scenes and
after the play concluded.
The actors, many of whom had dual roles, did a
good job of portraying their characters, while
the music and songs gave a fillip to the
storyline.
Speaking on the occasion, Madiha Gauhar thanked
the sponsors - Sungi, SDPI - and the PNCA for
permission to hold the play in the auditorium.
She appealed to theatre lovers who asked her to
come to Islamabad more often, to sponsor Ajoka as
it was very expensive to move from one city to
another with cast and crew, though they did
manage to travel around the country to send out
the message of their concerns on social issues.
She also thanked her team, both on and off stage,
by naming them individually and the audience for
being responsive.
Shahid Nadeem said when Ghulam Abbas read his
story 'Dhanak' at the Halqa Arbabe Zauq in Lahore
it was greeted with stony silence but when it was
thrown open for discussion it evoked a strong
reaction, severely condemned by some as an attack
on religion or a satire on the various sectarian
divisions within religion. As he wanted to
publish his work he had massive problems
convincing the publishers, who feared some kind
of a reprisal and a backlash.
Unfortunately the intellectuals and analysts of
2008 are in the same state of denial - that
society does not face a threat; the brainwashed
and cold blooded suicide killers have a genuine
grievance to rebel and a justifiable reason to
cause death and destruction. They all claim that
mysterious 'foreign hands' are behind terrorist
attacks but the havoc created in the past few
years in the name of jihad is pushing us over the
precipice and before we know it we will be
hurtling down into the abyss.
Noted poet and writer, Kishwar Naheed said she
was happy that Ajoka had dramatised the story,
which had been neglected for so many years. Even
now when you pick up a collection or a section of
Ghulam Abbas's works, particularly his short
stories, more often than not this story is not
included in the publication - it is more
remembered for its translation done much later by
Khalid Hasan, titled 'Hotel Mohenjodaro'.
______
[3]
[Available on Line at:
earlier version : http://www.hindu.com/nic/gujarathsign.htm
Latest version : http://www.sacw.net/FreeExpAndFundos/defendNandy16June08.html
---
STATEMENT BY ACADEMICS AND ACTIVISTS ON THE
HARASSMENT OF ASHIS NANDY AND A DEMAND FOR
WITHDRAWAL OF SPURIOUS CHARGES LEVIED AGAINST HIM
[Released on 16 June 2008]
We write to protest in the strongest possible
terms against the charges of criminal offence
levied against Ashis Nandy, a political
psychologist, sociologist and an internationally
renowned public intellectual of the highest
caliber. This is the latest case of harassment
of intellectuals, journalists, artists, and
public figures by antidemocratic forces that
claim to speak on behalf of Hindu values
sometimes and patriotism at other times,
especially in Gujarat, but who have little
understanding of either. What is pernicious in
this case is that the charge of criminal offence
against Nandy levied under Section 153 (A) and
(B) for his newspaper article "Blame the Middle
Classes" , was brought by the head of the
Gujarat Branch of the National Council of Civil
Liberties. The State Government of Gujarat by
giving its permission for filing the case has
shown its own complicity in the case.
It seems part of the strategy of the most
intolerant sections of Indian society today to
make a cynical use the language of civil
liberties to achieve ends that are the opposite
of what the aspirations to civil liberties and
the struggles over them represent. The harassment
of well-known intellectuals and artists hides we
fear, the daily intimidation being faced by
members of minorities and especially the Muslims
in Gujarat. We demand that all the charges
against Professor Nandy be immediately dropped.
We understand that there is a great deal of
anxiety in Gujarat today about its lost honour.
It might help to remind ourselves that this
honour or "asmita" will not be gained by acts of
violence and intimidation but by recovering or
discovering the humanity of each other. Gujarat
can and will regain its own destiny by
remembering the politics of nonviolence, as one
of its sons by the name of Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi once taught the nation and the world.
1.Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University, USA.
2.Homi Bhabha, Harvard University, USA
3.Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Center for Policy Research, Delhi, India
4.Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton University, USA
5.Pratiksha Baxi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India
6. Saurabh Dube, El Colegio de Mexico
7. Diana Eck, Harvard University, USA
8.Sanjay Subrahmaniam, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
9.Lawrence Cohen, University of California Berkeley, USA
10.Sasanka Perera, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
11. Jonathan Spencer, University of Edinburgh, UK
12.Flavia Agnes, Legal Center of Majlis, Mumbai, india
13. Harsh Mandar, Aman Biradari, Delhi, india
14. Uma Chakravarty, Independent Scholar, Delhi, India
15.Hent de Vries, Johns Hopkins University, USA
16. Ravinder Kaur, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
17. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, University of California Berkeley, USA
18. Akhil Gupta, University of California Los Angeles, USA
19.Ishita Bannerjee, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico
20.Nivedita Menon, University of Delhi, India
21.Deepak Mehta, University of Delhi, India
22. Nirja Gopal Jayal, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
23. Srimati Basu, University of Kentucky, USA
24. Pamela Reynolds, Johns Hopkins University, USA
25. Perveez Mody, University of Cambridge UK
26. Janaki Abraham, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India
27. Rajni Palriwala, University of Delhi, India
28. Kalpana Kannabiran, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad
29.Stewart Motha, Kent Law School, UK
30. Anand Pandian, Johns Hopkins University, USA
31.Vikram Vyas, St. Stephens College, University of Delhi
32.Maria Pia de Bella, CNRS-IRSI-EHESS, Paris
33. Gil Anidjar, Columbia University, USA
34. Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
35 Ranendra K Das, Johns Hopkins University, USA
36. Stanley Samarsinghe, Tulane University, USA
37.Kavi Bhalla, Harvard Initiative for Global Health, USA
38.Naveeda Khan, Johns Hopkins University, USA
39 C K Raju, Center for Studies in Civilizations, Delhi, India
40. Asha Singh, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, Delhi.
41 Sanjay Barbora, Panos Institute South Asia, Guwahati, India
42.K. Tudor Silva, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
43. Ashok Xavier, Loyola College, Chennai, India
44. Rada Ivekovic, College international de philosophie, Paris
45. Vasuki Nesiah, Brown University, USA
46. Nermeen Shaikh, Asia Society, New York, USA
47. Mani Shekhar Singh, Independent Scholar, Delhi
48. Kavita Misra, Columbia University, USA
49. Christopher Stone, Hunter College, New York, USA
50.Arjun Appadurai, New School University, USA
51.Fredrique-Appfel Marglin, Smith College, USA
52. Ailli Trip, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
53. Nayanika Mookherjee, Lancaster University, UK
54. Sanjay Reddy, University of Columbia, USA
55.Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA
56. Sanmay Das, Ransellier Polytechnic Institute, USA
57. Mohan Trivedi, University of California, San Diego, USA
58.Kamala Visweswaran, University of Texas at Austin, USA
59.Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
60.Geeta Patel, University of Virginia, USA
61.Ajay Sakaria, University of Minnesota, USA
62.Gloria Goodwin Raheja, University of Minnesota, USA
63.Farah Aziz, Journalist, Mumbai, India
64.Pankj Mishra, Writer, New York, USA
65.Uday Mehta, Amherst College, USA
66.Qadri Ismail, University of Minnesota, USA
67. Rachel Dwyer, University of London, UK
68. Michael Dwyer, Publisher, London, UK
69.Bhaskar Sarkar, UC Santa Barbara, USA
70.Ashok Dhareshwar, Washington, DC, USA
71.Mahdi Almandrja, University Mohammad V Rabat, Morocco
72. Richard Falk, Princeton University, USA
73. Piya Chatterjee, UC Riverside, USA
74 Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University, New York
75. Sunil Bhavsar, San Diego, California, USA
76.Simone Sawhney, University of Minnesota, USA
77.Gyanendra Pandey, Emory University, USA
78.Sabina Sawhney, Hofstra University, New York, USA
79.Vivek Dhareshwar, Center for the Study of
Culture and Society, Bangalore, India
80. Adel Wessell, Southern Cross University, Australia
81. Baden Oxford, Southern Cross University, Australia
82. Indira Chowdhury, ARCH, Bangalore, India.
83. Jerry Pinto, Journalist, Mumbai, India.
84. Andrea Pinto, Librarian, Mumbai, India.
85.Sruti Chaganthi, Center for the Study of
Culture and Society, Bangalore, India
86.David Loy, Xavier University, Ohio, USA
87.Jan Obevg, Transnational Foundation, Sweden
88. Vrinda Grover, Marg, Delhi
89.Mahua Sarkar, Binghamton University, USA
90.Joseph Borocz, Rutgers University, USA
91.Megha Subramanian, University of Southern California, LA, USA
92. Nayanika Mookherjee, Lancaster University, UK
93.Pradeep Jeganathan, International Centre for
Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka
94. Malathi de Alwis, International Centre for
Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka
95.Ein Lal, Independent Film Maker, Delhi, India
96.Shastri Ramachandran, Journalist, the Tribune, Chandigarh, India
97. Rita Brara, University of Delhi, India.
98. V.Venkatesan, Journalist, Frontline, Delhi
99. Debamitra Kar, Pearson Education, Delhi, India
100.Maitreyi Krishnan, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
101.Ponni Arasu, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
102.Manoranjani Thomas, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
103. Mayur Suresh, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
104. Prashant Iyengar, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
105. Namita Malhotra, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
106. Clifton Rosario, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
107. Arvind Narrain, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
108. Jiti Nichani, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
109. Usha R, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
110. Siddhartha Narrian, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
111. Anand Chokhwala, Surat, India
112. Nayana M Trivedi, Scripps Memorial Hospital, San Diego, California, USA
113. Munira A Basnai, NIH, Bathesda, USA
114. Attila Melegh, Corvinus University, Hungary.
115. Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University, USA
116.Bhrigupati Singh, Johns Hopkins University, USA
117. Prerna Singh, Princeton University, USA
118. Saumya Das, Mass. General hospital, Cambridge, USA
119.Ranjini Obesesekera, Independent Scholar, Sri Lanka
120. Sithie Tiruchelvam, Tiruchelvam Associates, Colombo, Sri Lanka
121.Jonathan Parry, London School of Economics, London, UK
122. Manav Ratti, Oxford University, UK
123. Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge, UK
124.Harsh Pant, King's College, London, UK
125. Keya Ganguli, University of Minnesota, USA
126. Joshua Castollino, Middlesex University, UK
127. Sudeshna Guha, Univeristy of Cambridge, UK
128. Debjani Ganguli, Australian National University, Australia
129.Kavita Daiya, George Washington University, USA
130. Jonathan Woolf, University of Liverpool, UK
131. Soumhya Venkatesan, University of Manchester, UK
132.Kriti Kapila, University of Cambridge, UK
133. Shirin Rail, University of Warwick, UK
134. Radmila Nakarada, University of Belgrade, Serbia
135. Gul Khattak, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan
136. Suketu Bhavsar, Cal Poly, Pomona USA
137. Jishnu Das, Center for Policy Research, Delhi, India
138.Swati Chattopadhyay, UC Santa Barbara, USA
139.Dineshwar Tiwari, Deshkal Society, Delhi, India
140. Ranjeet Nirguni, Deshkal Society, Delhi, India
141.Mary JaJehanbegaloo, University of Toronto, Canada
142.. Imtiaz Ahmad, Dhaka University, Bangladesh
143. Shard Chandra Behar, Bhopal, MP, India
144.Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University, USA
145. Aamir Mufti, UC Los Angeles, USA
146.Nauman Naqvi, Brown University, USA
147. Steven Caton, Harvard University, USA
148. Ziauddin Sardar, City University, London, UK
149. Ohashi Masaki, Keisen University, Japan
150. Jessica Marglin Princeton University, USA
151. J. Mohan Rao, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
152. Sylvia Marcos, Center for Psycho-ethnological Research, Cuernavaca, Mexico
153. Jean Robert, Architect, Mexico
154. Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University, USA
155. Rajeev Bhargav, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
156. Baber Johansen, Harvard University, USA
157. Srirupa Roy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
158. Fredrique-Apffel Marglin, Smith College, Northampton, USA
159. Shudana Yusaf, Princeton University, USA
160. Sudhir Kakat, Psychoanalyst and Writer, Goa, India
161.Daho Djerbal, University of Algeria, Algeria
162. Upendra Baxi, Warwick University, UK
163. Harsh Kapoor, South Asia Citizen's Web
164.Govinda Rath, G.B.Pant institute of Social Sciences, Allahabad, India
165.William Connolly, Johns Hopkins University, USA
166.Dipankar Gupta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India
167.Indrani Chatterjee, Rutgers University, Delhi
168. Peter Ronald deSouza, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Simla
169. Triloki Madan, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India
170. Mira Kamdar, World Policy Institute, New York, USA
171.Ashutosh Kumar, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.
172. Partha Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India
173.Amiya Kumar Choudhuri, MAKAIS, Kolkata, India.
174. Rajaram Pande, The Japan Foundation, New Delhi, India
175. Lloyd I Rudolf, University of Chicago
176. Susanne H Rudolf, University of Chicago
177. Rosemary M George, UC San Diego
178.Shylashri Shankar, Center for Policy Research , Delhi
[I certify that emails indicating the consent of
all persons to the statement are available with
me. Veena Das, vdas at jhu.edu or
veena.das at gmail.org]
cnnibnlive
______
[4]
JAIPUR BLASTS: BANGLADESHIS, SCAPEGOAT FOR COPS?
CNN-IBN
June 14, 2008
UNDER THE SCANNER: After the serial blasts, the
police were instructed to deport illegal
immigrants.
Bangladesh has emerged as the new ISI for Indian
intelligence agencies. Attack on train station?
Defused bombs? Bicycle bombs? Bag bombs? - It
must be the ultra-efficient, tentacle spreading,
just in time, always there, 'terrorist
organisations based in Bangladesh'.
Of course there are many Bangladeshi immigrants
inside India. The real question about Jaipur is:
who are these people in the 'Bangali Para'. What
were they doing all this time?
Working for middle class Indian families, as
house help, cleaners, sweepers, cooks, maids,
taxi drivers, tailors, weavers, jewellery makers,
construction workers - yesterday, they were your
convenient and easy source of cheap labour. Today
they are looked at with suspicion and are being
told to go back to their own country.
Arif, who was arrested in connection with the
Jaipur blasts, is one such immigrant. Released
almost a month after the blasts, police say, he
was put in the prison for concealing his presence.
But what he went through in that month is nothing
compared to 30 day of hunger and uncertainty for
his family. His 64-year-old mother ran herself to
exhaustion to get him released, and his wife
unable to forgive herself for letting their son
burn himself.
"There was no milk or rice in the house. My son
felt hungry and came right near the stove. His
chest got burnt. There was no one at home,"
Arif's wife Roma says.
Hundreds of Bangladeshi immigrants live in
Jaipur's Bagrana Bengali Basti where most of them
work as rag pickers.
Local police picked up as many as 400 of them
after the blasts in the city. The immigrants
allege the police and other local prisoners beat
them up while they were in prison.
"Even the other prisoners in the jail would abuse
us and say he's a Bengali, beat him up. They
would just abuse us for no reason at all,"
Mohammad Arif, a resident of Bagrana transit
camp, says.
After the serial blasts, the police were
instructed to identify and deport illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants.
"It's not possible to complete the whole exercise
in 30 days. For several of them it just took us
few hours of questioning to find out that they
were Bangladeshis," ADG Planning and Welfare,
Jaipur, MK Devarajan, says.
Arif's mother, however, says, "All my children
were born here. The cops pick them up and say
they are Bangladeshis. We may be Bangladeshis but
they were born here. They're not Bangladeshis."
So far, a thousand illegal migrants have been
identified and will soon be sent to transit camps
in Sambhar and Alwar, but civil liberties
activities allege Bangladeshis are being targeted
because they are Muslims.
"The blast has become an opportunity for this
government to quickly take on its agenda of
profiling the Muslim as a terrorist, the
Bangladeshi as a terrorist, and thus creating a
divide between communities," Secretary, PUCL,
Jaipur, Kavita Shrivastava, says.
______
[5]
http://www.thaindian.com
June 13th, 2008
HE BEATS HOLY MEN AT THEIR OWN GAME
by Jeevan Mathew Kurian
Kozhikode, June 13 (IANS) He walks barefoot over
glowing embers, conjures up sacred ash with a
wave of his hand or produces gold chains in the
twinkle of an eye. But Narendra Nayak is no holy
man professing magical powers - in fact he is
their nemesis. Nayak is the current president of
the Federation of Indian Rationalist
Associations. Once a professor of biochemistry,
he quit the job to devote his life to exorcising
superstition from society.
"I demonstrate to people that many of the acts by
holy men are just tricks and can be executed by
anyone," says Karnataka-based Nayak who was here
at the invitation of local rationalists. "It is a
sleight of hand," he explains, showing the trick
of producing a chain out of thin air.
Nayak, 58, a native of Mangalore, quit his job at
the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, in 2006.
In the last 18 years, he has conducted around
3,000 demonstrations across the country to expose
witchcraft, black magic and fake godmen - the
term commonly used in India for holy men who woo
followers by doing the seemingly impossible.
His observations on "the relationship between
beliefs and happenings" led Nayak to rationalism.
It was his association with famous rationalist
Abraham T. Kovoor that gave him the first
experience of the rationalist movement in the
mid-1970s. Nayak has since travelled abroad
extensively, giving interviews and taking part in
talk shows.
"Superstition is there everywhere. Abroad it
comes out in more subtle forms like colour
therapy or numerology. You won't see a British
prime minister falling at the feet of a godman.
"But in India, it is blatant. They produce sacred
ash or a gold chain from thin air to fool people.
Some of them even get away with crimes like
murders," Nayak told IANS in an interview .
Nayak has been to villages where those accused of
black magic have been lynched.
"The victims are mostly women. The attackers
usually cut the victim's hair, break their teeth
and smear them with human faeces to weaken their
so-called magical powers. Sometimes the victims
are even killed and burned."
On many occasions, he has gone to villages at the
invitation of the police to enlighten people.
He says one of the reasons for superstition was
wrong education. "We give only literacy but no
education," he says.
"Nowadays, 21st century technology is being
imposed on a 16th century mental set-up. We now
have internet advertisements on 'ek mukhi
rudrakhsa' (sacred bead) or 'vaastu' (Indian
treatise on the construction of buildings)."
He says influential godmen are seemingly above
the law. To stop superstitions and godmen, laws
should be applied equally to all. "The country
also lacks comprehensive laws to control these
practices."
Before the Karnataka assembly elections last
month, Nayak offered Rs.200,000 each to five
people who could predict the results. The
challenge was mainly intended for astrologers.
"I got 200 entries. The contestants were to
answer 25 questions. To win the prize at least 21
of them had to be correct."
He even allowed a 10 percent margin of error on
the number of seats for political parties and
votes polled by important candidates.
"The maximum number of correct answers was nine.
That was done by a woman who is not an
astrologer. She said she used the results of
opinion polls to answer the questions. However,
the maximum scored by an astrologer was only
four," said Nayak.
He is happy that the tide of fortune has turned
against godmen in Kerala who face action from the
government.
On May 13, Santhosh Madhavan alias Swami
Amrithachaithanya was arrested in Kochi for
alleged rape and possession of narcotics and
pornographic films. After the incident,
complaints against godmen started pouring in from
various parts of the state, prompting the
government to initiate a statewide crackdown.
"The momentum of this drive should remain and
cleanse society of godmen as well as
superstitions," says Nayak.
______
[6]
HIndustan Times
June 15, 2008
HAS THE BJP DISOWNED THIS MAN?
by Sitaram Yechury
Once again, a BJP President has called for a
national debate on secularism. This is an ominous
sign. On an earlier occasion, when the then BJP
President, L.K. Advani, called for a similar
debate, what followed was the 'rath yatra' that
led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
At the recent national executive meet of the BJP
that was held in the afterglow of its electoral
victory in Karnataka, Rajnath Singh asked for the
replacement of dharmanirpekshata (the Hindi
translation in the Constitution's preamble for
'secularism', which means equality of all
religions) with panthnirpekshata (equality of all
sects). This is nothing else but the old RSS view
that only Hinduism qualifies as a religion, while
all other religions merit recognition as sects.
It is, therefore, only natural that the RSS has
endorsed this view. The presidential address
continued in the similar vein to restate that the
RSS demands for the abrogation of Article 370 and
the imposition of an Uniform Civil Code. It is,
therefore, clear that in the run-up to the 2009
general elections, the BJP is gearing up to
further sharpen communal polarisation by bringing
the hardcore 'Hindutva' agenda to centrestage.
On the last occasion, when Advani gave the call
for a debate on secularism, he outlined the BJP's
conception in a set of two articles (The Indian
Express, December 27 and 28, 1992). Though these
were painfully laboured attempts to whitewash the
party's brazen violation of law, the capitulation
of the assurances given by it to the Supreme
Court and the National Integration Council, and
to disguise the pre-planned and rehearsed
destruction of the Babri Masjid on the previous
day, three 'covenants' of BJP's definition of
secularism were advanced:
- Rejection of theocracy: This means the
automatic upholding of not only democracy but
also of secularism. However, does the BJP today
repudiate what M.S. Golwalkar had said: "In
Hindustan exists, and must exist, the ancient
Hindu nation, and nought else but the Hindu
nation. All those not belonging to the national,
i.e. Hindu race, religion, culture and language,
naturally fall out of the pale of real national
life."
The BJP has not disowned this till date. This
only means that they are, once again, misleading
the people and attempting to camouflage the real
RSS intention of transforming the modern secular
democratic Indian Republic into a rabidly
intolerant 'fascistic' 'Hindu Rashtra'.
- Equality of all citizens irrespective of faith:
The BJP's commitment to this concept can be
understood only if they, once again, repudiate
what Golwalkar said: non-Hindus "have no place in
national life, unless they abandon their
differences, adopt the religion, culture and
language of the nation, and completely merge
themselves in the national race. So long,
however, as they maintain their racial religious
and cultural differences, they cannot but be only
foreigners." Does the BJP repudiate this today?
- Full freedom of faith and worship: It is ironic
that the BJP's 'PM-in-waiting' had advanced this
precept of the BJP's concept of secularism the
morning after the destruction of the Babri
Masjid. After the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and its
current return to 'RSS basics', it is unlikely
that Rajnath Singh will repeat this. However, if
he does, the BJP's sincerity can be understood,
once again, if only they are willing to repudiate
what Golwalkar said:
"The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt
the Hindu culture and language, must learn to
respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion,
must entertain no idea except the glorification
of the Hindu religion and culture, i.e. of the
Hindu nation, and must lose their separate
existence to merge in the Hindu race, or they may
stay in the country wholly subordinated to the
Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no
privileges, far less any preferential treatment -
not even citizen's rights. There is - or, at
least, should be - no other courses for them to
adopt. We are an old nation, let us deal as old
nations ought to and do deal with the foreign
races who have chosen to live in our country."
The BJP's call for a national debate on
secularism has no meaning unless it clarifies
unequivocally its position on these issues that
Advani had advanced as the BJP's concept of
secularism 16 years ago.
Not too ingeniously, Advani had then deliberately
left out of his definition of secularism, its
scientific foundation, the separation of religion
from politics and the State. As long as this is
not adhered to, secularism, in the sense of equal
rights to all belonging to different faiths,
cannot be ensured. In evading this, Advani is
only echoing Golwalkar: "With us, every action in
life, individual, social or political is a
command of religion... Indeed politics itself
becomes... a small factor to be considered and
followed solely as one of the commands of
religion and in accord with such commands. We in
Hindustan have been living such a religion
(Hinduism)."
Religion is the sacred private relationship of
every individual with his God. Unless equal
rights exist for those believing in different
religions or atheists, secularism cannot be
secured. Remember, Charvaka, the atheist, is as
integral to the Indian tradition as is the
Saraswati Vandana. Thus, the BJP's latest call
for a debate on secularism appears as a ruse to
advance its core communal agenda. The BJP is,
once again, confirming that it is the political
arm of the RSS, a pseudo-Hindu party that misuses
religion for its electoral gains.
Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and MP.
______
[7]
Asian Age
June 16, 2008
RSS SEES 'SECURITY THREAT' IN GRAMEEN ENTRY
by Sanjay Basak
New Delhi
June 15: Bangladeshi Nobel Prize-winning icon
Muhammed Yunus' Grameen Bank, which has
transformed the lives of the poor in that country
with its innovative micro-financing schemes, is
the latest target of the RSS.
The Sangh's mouthpiece Organ-iser has launched a
strong attack on Assam's Congress CM Tarun Gogoi
for facilitating the entry of Grameen Bank into
the state, as it feels the bank's branches will
open "channels for legitimate financial
transactions for subversive and terrorist
activities."
The RSS sees this as a "conspiracy" by the
Congress and the CPI(M) to build a "formidable
votebank" at the cost of the country's "national
security and territorial integrity." Organiser
states: "The Bangladeshi bank officials have
visited a number of times... If providing rural
credit to poor people is the priority, then
Indian banks could be asked to open branches."
But "Tarun Gogoi has other ideas in mind," it
adds.
The article goes on to discuss the danger of
unchecked "Banglades-hi infiltrators" and warns
that they have caused a major demographic change:
that "a large (chunk) of Northeast India has
become Muslim." It goes on to quote external
affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee as saying:
"Illegal migration is a genuine problem, but
Bangladesh refuses to recognise it."
Organiser criticised Mr Gogoi's recent meeting
with Mr Yunus, and alleged that the places
selected by the CM for Grameen branches were
"infiltration-affected areas" like Sonitpur in
northern Assam. Spelling out why the country's
security was threatened, it said: "A bank account
is a proof of residence ... and an automatic
passport (to) citizenship." The Congress and the
CPI(M) had "systematically built up a formidable
votebank in the Northeast and in West Bengal by
encouraging and facilitating illegal migration,"
it added. Mr Gogoi's move, it went on, "should be
seen in this light: yet another sinister move to
destroy the national economy at the altar of
nefarious votebank politics." It added: "These
banks are bound to become legitimate channels of
illegitimate financial transactions, most likely
for subversive and terrorist activities."
______
[8]
Summer Camps Revive India's Ancient Sanskrit
Language Effort Is Part of Bitter Debate
by Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 14, 2008; Page A01
NEW DELHI -- Hemant Singh Yadav, a lean and
sprightly 15-year-old, was sent by his parents to
a summer camp to learn to speak Sanskrit, or what
he calls the language of the gods.
He had studied the 4,000-year-old classical
Indian language at school for six years. He knew
its grammar and could chant the ancient hymns.
But he could not converse in it. During a
two-week course at the camp, Sanskrit Samvad
Shala, he had no choice: He was forbidden to
speak any other language.
"At first I thought it was impossible. The
teachers and attendants spoke to us only in
Sanskrit, and I did not understand anything,"
said Hemant, one of the 150 students gathered
inside a Hindu temple on the outskirts of New
Delhi. "I knew big, heavy bookish words before,
but not the simple ones. But now Sanskrit feels
like an everyday language."
Such camps, run by volunteers from Hindu
nationalist groups, are designed to promote a
language long dismissed as dead, and to instill
in Hindus religious and cultural pride. Many
Sanskrit speakers, though, believe that the camps
are a steppingstone to a higher goal: turning
back the clock and making Sanskrit modern India's
spoken language.
Their endeavors are viewed with suspicion by many
scholars here as part of an increasingly
acrimonious debate over the role of Sanskrit in
schools and society. The scholars warn against
exploiting Indians' reverence for Sanskrit to
promote the supremacy of Hindu thought in a
country that, while predominantly Hindu, is also
home to a large Muslim population and other
religious minorities.
ad_icon
"It is critical to understand Sanskrit in order
to study ancient Indian civilization and
knowledge. But the language should not be used to
push Hindu political ideology into school
textbooks," said Arjun Dev, a historian and
textbook author. "They want to say that all that
is great about India happened in the Hindu
Sanskrit texts."
One of the oldest members of what is known as the
Indo-European family of languages, Sanskrit is a
beleaguered language in India today, caught in a
web of widespread apathy and questions about its
utility.
Mainstream Indian schools teach the 49-letter
language unimaginatively through tedious grammar
lessons, and children learn by rote. Many parents
see little use in encouraging their children to
pursue a language that is not in any official use.
"Some people are constantly saying that Sanskrit
is a dead language. It cripples our psyche to
hear that, because we are nothing without
Sanskrit," said Vijay Singh, 33, a teacher at
Sanskrit Samvad Shala. "In the name of so-called
secularism, it has become fashionable to attack
any attempt to promote Sanskrit."
In January, government funding for a major
Sanskrit program in schools was abruptly cut,
prompting the program's managers to allege that
officials were biased against the language.
The program, which encouraged immersive methods
and developed computer-aided teaching tools and
games, had been set up in 2003 by a Hindu
nationalist government. One of the
recommendations of the project included
translations of English nursery rhymes such as
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "One, Two,
Buckle My Shoe" into Sanskrit.
When a new government was sworn in two years
later, it ordered a massive review of the
program, as well as other initiatives that were
seen as being infused with Hindu supremacist
rhetoric.
"The Sanskrit project was initiated by the
previous government. They had their own
priorities. The project was so-so. How many
people really speak Sanskrit in India?" said
Ramjanam Sharma, head of languages at the
National Council of Educational Research and
Training, a government body that designs school
curriculums. Defending the decision to cut the
funding, he said it was not appropriate for
schools to teach children how to converse in
Sanskrit. "We cannot replicate the teaching
methods of traditional religious schools in our
mainstream schools."
Although Sanskrit is one of the 22 official
Indian languages, census figures show that only
about 14,100 people speak it fluently, in a
nation of more than a billion people. Still, it
is prevalent in the hymns and chants at Hindu
temple rituals, as well as at birth, marriage and
death ceremonies. Not unlike Latin in the West,
Sanskrit was long the language of intellectual
activity in ancient India.
"Some people oppose anything that promotes
Sanskrit because of its association with
Hinduism. We were just trying to make the
language a fun experience for students," said
Kamla Kant Mishra, a Sanksrit professor and a
member of the government project.
"To talk about Sanskrit is very political in
India today," Mishra added. "That is the plight
of the language."
The Indian government funds many colleges and
universities that teach Sanskrit literature and
scriptures, but it is not uncommon for even PhD
students in the language to be unable to speak
it. State-run schools offer a choice between a
regional Indian language and Sanskrit. Many
private schools offer Sanskrit, French, German
and Spanish.
ad_icon
"I tell my students to opt for French, because it
is useful if they choose to work in the hotel
industry, or fashion or legal field. But there is
no tangible use for Sanskrit except that they
will learn an important part of our culture,"
said Vishakha Sharma, 40, a French teacher who
teaches fifth- through eighth-graders in a
private school. She said her school begins each
morning with a Sanskrit chant. "It feels good to
the ear, but students don't understand the
meaning."
Meanwhile, some scholars are developing computer
programs for Sanskrit and translating its rich
repository of children's stories online. Last
month, an alliance of international scholars from
the United States, France and Germany was formed
for Sanskrit computing.
"Sanskrit is very suitable for computing, because
its grammar is complete with 4,000 rules and has
a regular structure," said Girish Nath Jha,
assistant professor of computational linguistics
at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
His students blog in Sanskrit, and he hopes to do
away with programming languages such as Java and
make Sanskrit a computer language someday.
At Sanskrit camp, a 19-year old undergraduate
said that Sanskrit is in her blood.
"When I learn any language, I learn about its
history and its literature," said Jaya Priyam.
"But when I study Sanskrit, I learn who I am. It
is my identity."
______
[9]
Z Mag
June 14, 2008
The Chieftain State of Gujarat
WHERE THE REPUBLIC ENDS
by Badri Raina
When, after the massacre of Muslims in 2002, the
electorate in Gujarat voted the butcher of
Gandhinagar-the Capital city of Gujarat; but
think of the enormous irony of that oxymoron-back
to power, they effectively declared their
secession from the Republic of India. If the
founding principles of the Republic are
"secularism" and "democracy," Modi's victorious
constituency used the latter to spit at the
former.
Just as the Germans had done in 1933-use democracy to install dictatorship.
Always to remember when we speak of Gujaratis
that nearly a half of the electorate voted
against him as well. Such are the ways in which
franchise makes or unmakes, especially in an
electoral system where all you need to do is to
first pass the post. Much of the time, indeed, in
such a dispensation it is the minority that rules
the majority! Yet it is all we have for now.
Employing a diabolical double-speak, Modi berated
the secularists for feeding off the Muslim
"vote-bank" while simultaneously consolidating
first a Hindutva constituency and then a
regional/Gujarati one.
Effectively, Gujarat has come to be reconstructed
as an alterity to the Indian nation-state. Not
Kashmir, but Modi-led Gujarat.
And not just as a rhetorical flourish.
Operating as the endorsed Chieftan of a
triumphalist tribe, the Modi "government"-for
want of another word-has, since that ineffaceable
butchery in 2002-sought, every single step of the
way to shield the Hindutva satraps (who were
knee-deep in blood at the behest of the Chieftan)
from the operations of the law, and brazenly to
bring back into positions of authority publicly
implicated high-ranking police officers, and
atleast one judge, name of Mehta, who was spoken
of by the ripper- in- chief, Babu Bajrangi, in a
sting tape as the judge that Modi brought back to
secure the self-confessed ripper from the
hangman, after two other judges had honourably
refused to do the dirty work of granting him
bail. Indeed the same "Justice" Mehta has now
been drafted by Modi as part of the Special
Investigation Team (SIT) that the Supreme Court
of India has assigned to look into the merit of
some cases that are asking to be opened and
reinvestigated!
As a result, lawyers working for the victims of
the massacre have taken the only recourse of
opting out of the proceedings in protest against
the inclusion of Mehta and challenging his
inclusion in the Supreme Court.
Among these worthies who have been recalled not
just to life but to brazen authority is the
police officer, Mathur, reinstated as the Police
Commissioner of Ahmedabad.
And what could be a more ringing declaration of
separate nationhood on behalf of the Chieftan
state of Gujarat than that this same Mathur
should now have instituted a charge of "sedition
and treason" against the editor of the local
edition of the Times of India (by any reckoning,
one of the country's most widely read and
puissant corporate English Dailies) for a story
it did on him.
It must be understood that the charge of
"sedition" may be brought against a citizen of
the Republic only by the highest
political/constitutional authority of the land,
and only for actions provenly prejudicial to the
security of the state. In post-independent India,
such charge has been brought, as far as we can
ascertain, only against some officers in the
military for allegedly leaking Intelligence to
the "enemy."
Clearly, therefore, Mathur could not have been
the sanctioning brain/authority behind such a
charge. By no stretch even of the fascist
imagination could a police commissioner be deemed
the equivalent of the State. The defiance and the
daring must belong to the Chiefton whose dirty
work he has been brought back to do. Ergo,
"sedition" not against India, but against "
Modiland." Since Modi alone may say with Louis
xiv of old, "I am the State."
And basis for the charge?
True to the ethics and oath of the Fourth Estate,
the TOI story drew attention to evidence that
this Mathur has had links with the criminal
underworld, and thus cannot be deemed eligible
for the responsibility bestowed upon him by his
obliging Chieftan.
As reported in The Hindu of June 2, '08, the
basis of the TOI story on Mathur's antecedents
was a statement given by an underworld denizen
that the Commissioner was at one time on the
"Don's payroll."
Whereas Mathur may well have instituted a case of
libel/defamation against the TOI, remarkably the
case filed accuses the newspaper editor of
"sedition and treason" against the state.
Not even during the dark days of the state of
Internal Emergency imposed by the then Indira
Gandhi government (1975-76) was, to the best of
our knowledge, any member/organ of the Fourth
Estate charged with "sedition and treason."
Indeed, two infamous instances that come to mind
both pertain to the days of colonial rule.
I refer to the charge of "sedition" brought
against Lokmanya Tilak and then Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, in both cases for writing
articles calculated to cause "disaffection"
against the "legitimate government of the day." A
charge which both those honourable men proudly
acknowledged.
In Gujarat of our day, however, "sedition" has
come to mean any word or act that contradicts the
myth of "good governance" cheekily floated by
Modi and gladly bought by his constituency, or
any attempt to use public institutions to hold
the Modi government to account.
Only two years ago, the editor of Surat Samna,
Manoj Shinde was charged under section 124 A
("sedition") for commenting on the ineptitude of
the authorities in handling the waters of the
Ukai dam, which caused flooding in the city of
Surat. The charge spelt out was that Shinde had
instigated people against a duly elected
government! (The Hindu, 30/08/2006).
Animal Farm? 1984? Take your pick.
And to think that Orwell imagined that
totalitarian habits of mind existed only in
"totalitarian" states. Consider in passing that a
Tory Member of Parliament in Britain, name of
David Davis, has resigned his membership
following the adoption of the new draconian law
that will allow the state there to hold in
custody anyone for 42 days without trial. The
vote may have passed by a majority of just nine,
but many in Britain are alarmed that with a
plethora of draconian laws in place, including
the world's largest data base of citizens's DNA ,
an I-Card dispensation, and CCTV cameras reaching
literally into bedrooms, liberty in that mother
of democracies is losing out to the State. David
Davis now goes into a bye-election of his
choosing to test how Britains feel on these
issues. We, on behalf of those who wish the world
to be free, also wish him luck.
Alas, no such prospects in Gujarat.
II
You can be sure that nothing that has been said
thus far qualifies as hyperbole. The Gujarat
Chiefton has now ventured a bolder leap forward
in announcing that his realm, after all, may
remain autonomous of the Union and the
Constitutional regime of laws that govern its
operations.
He has dared the Indian government at the Centre
to withhold grants to his state, and be prepared
to suffer the loss of tax revenues due to it from
Gujarat. Any student of india's pre-Independence
history will recognize that such indeed used to
be the nature of hostile discourse among the then
autonomous Princely States and Subbas and between
them and any central authority that might exist
for the time being.
As has been rightly pointed out by some political
and constitutional spokespersons, if there be any
smell of "sedition" in the air, this must be it.
So what does anybody do ?
III
The central government of course can always take
recourse to the provisions of article 356 of the
Constitution, declare the Modi government in
violation of Constitutional governance, and
lawfully sack it.
This was something that many well-wishers of the
Republic would have gladly endorsed had such a
recourse been taken to at the time of the
Modi-endorsed Gujarat massacres.
But ofcourse with a friendly NDA regime, led by
Modi's own BJP, then in power in Delhi, nothing
could have been farther from expectation.
Famously, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then prime
minister, went the length of recommending that
Modi in Gujarat follow Raj Dharam, i.e. the
ethics of good rule. It was a good laugh,
streaked in many places with the blood of
innocents.
Since that time the politics of the country has
taken several new twists, but chiefly a lurch to
the right in which Modi's BJP and the Congress
party are equally complicit.
The Congress particularly has been rendered weak
by a string of electoral losses especially to the
BJP, as the country's middle sections, in town
and country, viewing market 'reforms' with a
gluttonous eye, draw away from the Congress for
initiating a string of social programmes directed
at the welfare of the minorities, Muslims in
particular, and other weaker sections of Indians.
The proverbial idealism of the young- especially
those that have any saleable value-directs itself
increasingly and rather exclusively to what
"packages" the corporates have on offer, or what
opportunities are to be exploited in the western
world. Those that can play cricket look to the
IPL (Indian Premier League in which each side
plays just a quick-fire twenty overs each against
enormous sums of money paid) as the possible high
point of a successful life. Conversely, many
young students who fail their examinations or do
not do to "expectations" commit suicide, thinking
that life can have no success to offer.
Cannily, Modi has during the last assembly
elections especially (2007) cast himself as the
messiah of "development", never mind that such
development leaves the bulk of Gujaratis as out
of reckoning as ever. For those that wield social
and economic clout, the admixture of lucre and
Hindu pride-visible everywhere in the shape of a
sock-in-the-eye display of religiosity, is the
winning formula, one that seems to promise
salvation both here and in the hereafter. All
mightily bolstered by the tribe of NRIs abroad
(some 40% of the American ones are Gujaratis) who
see this fusing of money and mantra as the way to
hegemonise all of the Indian middle classes
generally.
No time then would seem more
inappropriate/inauspicious for the Centre than
now to take recourse to dismissing the Modi
government.
IV
If Gujarat is to be reintegrated with the
Republic there is only but one way to go: the
hard way.
Given that the Congress, the main political
opposition in Gujarat, has been effectively
reduced to impotence as the constituency for
secular politics has shrunk, in no small measure
owing to the complicity of the Congress itself,
and to the extent that the Congress has long
forgotten the culture of mass mobilization
through effective organization on the ground and
sweat in the doing, there is little to be looked
for there as of now.
That fact indeed brings into sharp and admirable
focus the toils of those in Gujarat who have
through these six years sought on the basis of
relentless home work and fearless conviction to
bring the Modi dispensation to book-civil society
groups and a configuration of socially sensitive,
journalists, artists and other intellectuals for
the most part. Aided, no doubt, by the highest
court in the land.
Working through the Supreme Court and the
media-some sections of it-their achievements in
unraveling the horrendous excesses and
transgressions of Modi-rule constitute the
high-watermark of the history of human rights
struggles of the last decade or so.
Yet, this is only a resource; the antidote to the
misuse of democratic franchise and legitimacy by
Modi can only lie in mounting a more cognizant
polity in and outside Gujarat.
Unless, beginning now, for a whole year or more,
an integration and consolidation of media power,
social service resources, labour power, and
party- political rethinks happen, such as are
able to produce a questioning centre-left
transformation on the ground on the concrete
issues of livelihood and equity, and so long as
Modi remains at the helm of the BJP in Gujarat,
the secession of the state from the Repubnlic
will only deepen.
Gujarat, after all, has come to represent for the
RSS the possibility that the more the Congress
goes into somnambulant and aristocratic dotage,
the more unable it is to distinguish itself from
the ideological contours of the BJP, the more
reluctant it remains to ally with the Left in
launching mobilization against fascist formations
without thought to party constituencies, the more
Hindutva fascism can forge ahead towards
reconstituting India into an erstwhile Nepal-a
Hindu Rashtra (Theocratic Hindu State). Recall
that it has been in the past the position of the
RSS that the best thing to happen to Bharat would
be for the Hindu Kingdom of Nepal to take the
country into an amalgamated oneness!
V
For now, the charge of "sedition" leveled against
the TOI in Gujarat-and another case under section
153 (A) (B) of the IPC-causing schism among
communities-- against the well-known sociologist,
Ashish Nandy, for an article he wrote, also in
the TOI bemoaning the character of the middle
class with respect to Gujarat, an experience that
might help this particular intellectual to
rethink some of his favourable consideration of
Hindu religious identity and distaste for left
politics-do provide an opportunity for wide
sections of the polity to launch a campaign for
the restoration of secularism and fundamental
freedoms in Modi's Gujarat.
It is a circumstance that could assist media
corporates who have habitually held up Modi as
the ideal future Indian hero (for three
understated reasons, it might be noted: his
friendliness to big business, his rabid hatred of
the Left, and his ability to galvanise
Hindu-communal politics to ward off both labour
consolidation and keep potential "terrorists" in
fear and trembling, leaving the local terrorisers
under his command to do their work unfettered) to
cry off a bit, and suggest to Modi that secession
on his behalf is as unacceptable as anywhere else
in the country, if not more. Having now added
draconian daring to fundamentalist/communalist
politics, the media ought to make it known that
Modi may not after all be such a darling.
After all, for many of them it is still in
fashion to revile the late Indira Gandhi for her
"authoritarianism"; who more so, she or Modi? She
did not cry "sedition" even when the draconian
Emergency regime could have legally allowed her
to do so; he it seems can do it in broad daylight
and with fearless impunity against those whose
job it is to keep democracy and the rule of law
in place.
If Modi can haul up something like the TOI with a
charge of "sedition", pray who is safe?
VI
Note that in Maharashtra one of the most
respected and fair-minded senior journalists,
editor of Loksatta, Kumar Ketkar, was attacked in
the privacy of his home by fascist hordes who did
not like his advice to the local government that,
rather than spend hundreds of crores on erecting
a statue of Shivaji somewhere in the sea, the
moneys could be better spent on relieving misery
among the people.
Subsequently, the Editors' Guild of India took up
the issue and made out a decent statement.
Yet, why the "sedition" charge leveled against
the TOI in Gujarat seems a rather muted item is
tough to understand. It is ofcourse possible that
unbeknown to this writer some strong things are
afoot.
One certainly hopes so; and afoot in many places and conclaves.
______
[10]
The Hindu-Sunday Magazine
June 15, 2008
BAREFOOT
Another Bakery, another Parzania
by Harsh Mander
The carnage of 2002 changed everything for
Abdulbhai and Noorie.... This fortnightly feature
introduces us to people in the margins, and their
unheard voices.
The camp organisers arranged vehicles for
families to search for their lost loved ones.
Hundreds went feverishly from camp to camp.
PHOTO: A. ROY CHOWDHURY
Going up in flames: Even as faith and courage hold no answer....
Today, more than six years after it was charred
in the flaming carnage of 2002 in Ahmedabad,
their small cottage bakery remains shut. The
rebuilt furnace stands forlorn and empty, the
metal trays and moulds piled unused and rusting
in a corner, like the skeletons of the dead. None
of their former clients agrees any more to buy
their flour biscuits, cakes and bread, although
these were popular in the past.
When they had built their bakery a decade
earlier, they had proudly named it Jai Hind.
"Others name their shops after gods and
goddesses. But we wanted to name our bakery in
honour of our country," they would tell their
neighbours proudly. When Abdulbhai and Noorie
Bahen had bought the land for the bakery and
their home in 1992, they had not worried for a
moment that theirs would be the only Muslim home
and establishment in the Hindu settlement Thakkar
Nagar. "There was no discrimination, no hate, no
suspicion at all in the hearts of our neighbours
at that time, and there was none in ours." But
then came 2002, with its tempests and fires of
loathing, and it changed everything.
When the couple had returned from six months in
the relief camp to the ruins of their home, part
of their family missing, and their life's
earnings scorched, they were still not defeated.
They first rebuilt a makeshift earthen furnace,
borrowed money for working capital, and reopened
Jai Hind Bakery. But their goods remained unsold,
as consequence of a still pervasive city-wide
boycott of Muslim products, enforced not just
through a shadowy network of communal
organisations, but also through large mass
consent.
Abdulbhai set out his wares on a wooden cart to
sell in parts of the city where people do not
know his Muslim identity, shamed by the fall in
his economic status, distraught that he needed to
hide who he was. They earned a small fraction of
what they did in the past.
For years after the slaughter, they held firm to
hope and the belief that the trails of hate would
one day end. But Abdul and Noorie are now
defeated and dispensable in Modi's resurgent,
triumphant Gujarat. The state has no place any
longer for people like them, people who worship
an 'alien' God.
Material destruction
They have still not been able to rebuild the roof
over most of their destroyed house. Noorie's
voice quivers as she takes us on a conducted tour
of what their home used to be, but is no longer.
They are now resigned and vanquished, desperate
to find a buyer of their properties, so they can
move to the safety (and penury) of a Muslim
ghetto. But people know their desperation, and
are unwilling to pay more than a small fragment
of the market price.
They have lost a lot in 2002: their business,
their home, the money they had saved and stored
away in crevices of their home to marry off their
children, but even more importantly the
friendship of their neighbours, their faith and
their spirit. However, most tragically of all,
they have lost two children, for whom they still
wait with throbbing longing and with long-frayed,
decayed but stubborn hope.
From the morning of February 28, 2002, relatives
started pouring in from various corners of
Ahmedabad weighed down with terrifying stories of
mass murder, rape, arson and pillage.
Abdul's old friend, Rajendra, a Hindu lawyer,
also dropped by to warn them, but the couple was
convinced that their neighbours would never allow
them to be harmed. Rajendra still insisted on
taking one of their sons Zahid who was at the
bakery at that time to his own home, to protect
him from any danger. This eventually saved this
boy's life.
Evening fell, and Abdul was baking biscuits and
Noorie cooking food for the frightened relatives
who had gathered at their home, seeking haven
after fleeing desperately from the massacres at
Naroda and elsewhere. It was then that mobs
converged from two directions to the lone Muslim
home and commercial establishment in the
neighbourhood, baying for their blood. Some
neighbours dissuaded the leaders of the mob, but
shortly after, police vans gathered, further
inciting the mobs. The relatives and family ran
in different directions in the frenzied confusion
that followed.
The fire
Two sisters Salma and Sanno, both barely in their
teens ran to the inter-state bus terminal. Abdul
screamed to them to wait there, until they
reached them. Noorie grabbed their youngest son
Allah Deen, barely five, and hid trembling in a
ditch behind their home, her palm clasped over
his mouth all the while, petrified that he would
scream and give them away. They watched in secret
the mob loot their home and bakery, and set it on
fire.
They also saw their oldest son, teenaged Wahid
run in another direction with his youngest sister
Saira. This was the last time any of them have
seen the two children alive, or dead.
Late at night, after the laggards in the mob
dispersed and the flames that razed their home
were still smouldering, Abdul and Noorie, with
their little son Allah Deen, escaped in the
shadows to the highway and eventually to the bus
stand, in cold dread of the fires blazing
everywhere, the calls for assault, and the smoke
and the screams that crowded the gathering
darkness. At the bus stand, they found to their
great relief their two girls who sat waiting for
their parents in a corner.
Luckily Noorie was wearing a sari that day, and
people took them to be Hindus. They went first to
the home of a Hindu friend Thakur, pleading that
they take in their two daughters. But the man was
out, and the woman refused to open the door,
frightened that the mobs would avenge this by
torching their home. Noorie does not blame her.
"Those were terrible times," she recalls. "People
were too frightened to even offer us a cup of
water."
Chaos rules
But they had more luck when they reached their
other Hindu friend Rambhai. He readily - and
hastily - took them in, but worried that the mobs
would find them before long, as many knew of
their friendship. He went out and found a
para-military contingent, on whom he had more
faith than the local police. The armed men in
uniform escorted the family to a junior school
building in a Muslim area, which the community
had converted into a relief camp.
Their first task was to bring together again
their family, scattered by the catastrophe. Two
girls were with them. They were reassured about
Zahid's safety, as Rambhai spoke on the telephone
to Rajendra, the lawyer who sheltered Zahid at
his home for eight days. He finally dropped the
boy at the camp, to be reunited with his grieving
family. But Wahid and Saira were still nowhere to
be found.
As the days and nights in the camp followed each
other, laden with sorrow and loss for the
thousands sheltered there, the camp organisers
arranged vehicles for families to search for
their lost loved ones. Hundreds went feverishly
from camp to camp. Some like Shah Alam had more
than 12,000 residents, and they had set up a unit
near the large gate of the dargah to assist
separated families to locate lost loved ones. The
desperate Abdul and Noorie scoured the faces of
several thousand children who were gathered
there, but their own children were nowhere to be
found.
The estranged parents finally accepted advice
from the camp organisers to search among the
unclaimed bodies at the mortuaries of government
hospitals. There were rotting bodies piled one on
top of the other, spilling out on to the
corridors, and many frantic family members
searched the faces of the dead, several burned or
badly scarred by knife wounds. "In our
desperation, we started tossing bodies aside,
forgetting that they were bodies of loved ones of
other people like us." But they still could not
find their children anywhere.
Their quest has not ended even after six long
years. And who can say when their search will
end, if ever? They do not have a single
photograph of their children, as these too were
burned down with the fire that the mob lit in
their home, so they cannot advertise on
television or the newspapers. People tell them
that a child was spotted who looked like their
children in some corner of this vast country, and
they rush there, only to be disappointed. They
have journeyed to Mumbai, Delhi, and their
ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh, and always
returned with empty hands and full aching hearts.
But who can ask a father and mother to abandon
their search for their missing children, and by
doing so affirm that they are slaughtered, never
to return to them? They weep still inconsolably:
"We do not know whether to hope any longer, or
not to hope "
Harsh Mander is human rights worker and writer
based in Delhi. He is convenor of Aman Biradari,
a people's campaign for secularism, justice and
caring.
______
[11]
livemint.com
Jun 9 2008
DECLARE A MORATORIUM ON STATUE-BUILDING
Let's build schools, hospitals, bridges and roads
and name these after people whose legacy we wish
to honour and emulate
Looking Glass | Namita Bhandare
How wonderful it is to harbour ambitions to build
edifices taller, bigger, better than the Statue
of Liberty. But has the irony of the fact that
Lady Liberty represents welcoming freedom to
struggling immigrants escaped our elected
representatives in Maharashtra?
The Maharashtra government's grand plans to
construct a 309ft-high statue of the state's most
iconic figure, Chhatrapati Shivaji, in the
Arabian Sea will cost taxpayers Rs100 crore,
probably more. For that price we will have a
statue in the sea that is taller than even the
Statue of Liberty. Imagine that!
It's a colossal plan in hubris. Statues are
symbols that represent a value system. When you
construct a mammoth statue of a man who is
without doubt the state's most iconic figure,
regardless of cost, regardless of ongoing farmer
suicides, regardless of malnutrition deaths and
regardless of pathetic infrastructure, you are
sending out a message: This is a government that
stands for cosmetic change; if it cannot rival
the infrastructure and liberalism of New York, it
can at least have a statue that is taller than
its most enduring symbol.
Maharashtra goes to the polls next year. For
years, Shivaji has been appropriated by the Shiv
Sena party-Maharashtra's principal opposition
party-that makes divisiveness and parochial pride
its chief plank. Now, Bal Thackeray's rebellious
nephew, Raj Thackeray, has taken up that clarion
call, decrying "outsiders", reaffirming that
Maharashtra and Mumbai is for the "Marathi
manoos" and deriding strange north Indian
festivals and customs. For his pains, he has
become a national figure.
For the ruling Congress-National Congress Party
(NCP) combine, a reversal of this sentiment would
be no small achievement. But more, it seems to
have decided that Shivaji is not the personal
domain of the Shiv Sena or Raj Thackeray's
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
Worse, are the NCP's supporters subscribing to
the sort of hooliganism that the Shiv Sena has
been notorious for? On 5 June, a mob led by the
pro-NCP Shivsangram Sanghatana attacked the house
of Loksatta editor Kumar Ketkar. Ketkar's crime?
He had written an editorial criticizing the plans
to install the statue.
Ironically, the home ministry is held by the NCP
and, despite being warned in advance by Ketkar's
assistant, the police arrived at the scene 40
minutes after the mob had begun its rampage.
So, what would the new colossus, the Shivaji
statue, stand for? In Mumbai there is no shortage
of monuments and statues that honour the Maratha
warrior king, from the Chhatrapati Shivaji
Maharaj Terminus (formerly known as the Victoria
Terminus) to the international airport, from the
museum once known as the Prince of Wales Museum
to a magnificent statue adjoining the Gateway of
India.
For years, Mumbai was known as the "Manhattan of
India". Dreams of building a world-class
metropolis were reiterated in 2004 when Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh declared that Mumbai
would be transformed into another Shanghai by
2010 as part of a larger plan for urban renewal.
Nothing of the sort has happened. Nearly 60% of
the city's 16 million people continue to live in
slums. The monsoon has just hit the city,
flooding has begun-and if the pattern of the past
few years is consistent-a significant part of
Mumbai will go under water, stranding commuters
and bringing life to a standstill. In 2005,
nearly 500 people died in floods and landslides
caused by the rain and an unprepared
administration.
So forget about "world-class", for the majority
of its citizens, Mumbai is barely liveable.
But why single out Maharashtra? What Shivaji is
to Maharashtra, B.R. Ambedkar is to Uttar Pradesh
(or Ram Manohar Lohia, when Mulayam Singh Yadav
is in power). Now, after a spree of installing
Ambedkar statues, chief minister Mayawati has
commissioned several statues of herself. She's a
difficult customer to please: less than 45 days
after her statue (and three others, Kanshi Ram,
Ambedkar and Ambedkar's wife, Rama Bai) was
installed in Lucknow's posh Gomti Nagar in April,
our behenji with prime ministerial ambitions
ordered it to be pulled down: apparently she
thought it was too small.
India's statue-building spree is nothing if not
ambitious. In New Delhi, towering statues of
Hanuman and Shiva dot the landscape, testimony to
the power and faith of the Capital's nouveau
riche.
In Bodhgaya, engineers from the UK are helping to
build the world's tallest statue, a 500ft-high
Buddha which is being funded by an international
consortium. But unlike the edifices to political
luminaries, these are built with private money.
The Congress-NCP's joint manifesto presented to
the people four years ago had promised to build
an "international class memorial in honour of
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the Arabian Sea on
the lines of Vivekanand Smarak at Kanyakumari".
But the manifesto also promises to "target 100%
literacy" and come up with a "time-bound plan to
prevent infant and malnutrition deaths, specially
in tribal areas".
Here's my suggestion: let's declare a moratorium
on statue-building for the next 10 years. Let's
instead build schools, hospitals, bridges and
roads and name these after people whose legacy we
wish to honour and emulate.
Statues, big and small, can wait for another day.
(Namita Bhandare will write every other Tuesday on social trends.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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.
More information about the SACW
mailing list