SACW | June 17-18, 2008 / Sri Lanka's Conflict / Pakistan: Frontier Mullah / Nepal: original Hindu Rashtra / India: Godmen and Politics; Insult to Injury (Dilip Simeon); Death Penalty
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Tue Jun 17 22:14:45 CDT 2008
South Asia Citizens Wire | June 17-18 , 2008 |
Dispatch No. 2526 - Year 10 running
[1] The Sri Lankan Conflict: A Multi-Polar Approach (Asoka Bandarage)
[2] Pakistan: The Long Life of the Frontier Mullah (Basharat Peer)
[3] Nepal: The original Hindu Rashtra (Ramachandra Guha)
[4] India: Godmen and God should be kept out of
our politics (Jyotirmaya Sharma)
[5] India: Insult to Injury (Dilip Simeon)
[6] Death Penalty:
(i) Letter to Pakistan's Prime Minister to Abolish the Death Penalty
(ii) India: Deadly gamble (V. Venkatesan)
______
[1]
The Harvard International Review
June 15, 2008
THE SRI LANKAN CONFLICT: A MULTI-POLAR APPROACH
by Asoka Bandarage
Asoka Bandarage is currently a professor at
Georgetown University . She has taught at Yale,
Brandeis and Mount Holyoke, and is the author of
Colonialism in Sri Lanka, Women, Population and
Global Crisis and publications on South Asia,
global political economy, ethnicity, gender and
population. This article is derived from her
forthcoming book, The Separatist Conflict in Sri
Lanka: Broadening the Discourse ( Routledge).
Narrow interpretations of cultural identity and
models of conflict resolution built on ethnic
dualism contribute to ethnic polarization and
inhibit sustainable peace. To improve both the
analysis and processes of conflict resolution, it
is necessary to move beyond the bipolar ethnic
model and explore the multi-polar nature of
conflicts.
The conflict between the Sri Lankan government
and the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) is commonly identified as a
primordial ethnic conflict between the Sinhala
majority and the Tamil minority. But, much of the
long pre-colonial history of Sri Lanka was
characterized by ethno-religious pluralism and
co-existence over antagonism and conflict. There
has been tremendous inter-mixture between Sinhala
and Tamil populations as well as the Muslims who
are considered an ethno-religious group in Sri
Lanka.
The dominant Sinhala vs. Tamil dualism projects
Tamils and Sinhalese as two homogeneous
categories overlooking the intra-ethnic conflicts
and killings within the Tamil and the Sinhalese
communities. It is believed that the Tamil Tigers
have killed more Tamils than the Sri Lankan armed
forces, especially given the fratricidal wars
among Tamil militant groups since 1985. Likewise,
the Sri Lankan security forces had killed more
Sinhalese than Tamils by the end of the 1980s,
particularly when it suppressed the JVP (Jantha
Vimukthi Peramuna- People's Liberation Front)
insurgency that arose against the 1987 Indo-Lanka
Peace Accord, which was introduced to resolve the
Tamil separatist conflict.
On the Tamil side, it is the 'partial and often
partisan view' of the northern, especially Jaffna
peninsula Tamils, that is often identified as the
Sri Lankan Tamil perspective. This is largely due
to the fact that the Tamil Diaspora in the west
is drawn largely from that conflict-ridden region
of the island. The Diaspora influence has
prevented the international community from
understanding 'the diversities and intricacies'
within Tamil communities. Moreover, the Tamil
Tigers who claim to be the 'sole representative
of Tamils' have turned Sri Lankan Tamils, on the
island and in the Diaspora, into a 'silent
majority,' presenting the LTTE position as the
only Tamil perspective.
Electoral politics has contributed to a vibrant
multi-party democracy among the Sinhalese, but
the entrenched party rivalry especially between
the two major political parties, UNP (United
National Party) and the SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom
Party), has undermined a unified approach to
eradicating terrorism and a political solution to
the separatist conflict. The Muslims are
generally left out of the dominant discourse on
the Sri Lankan separatist conflict, yet they are
a distinct island-wide community and the largest
group in the Eastern Province claimed by the
secessionists as part of its fictitious
'traditional Tamil homeland'. Like the Sinhalese
and the Tamils, they too have significant
regional and class differences.
A protest by Tamil children against the Sri
Lankan government. Photo courtesy of
Flickr.com/marcokalmann.
A protest by Tamil children against the Sri
Lankan government. Photo courtesy of
Flickr.com/marcokalmann.
Origins of the Conflict
The dominant ethnically based approaches portray
the Sri Lankan conflict as a purely domestic
conflict when in fact, it has been a regional
South Asian conflict from the very beginning.
After India adopted the draconian
anti-secessionist amendment to its constitution
in 1963, the South Indian Dravidasthan
secessionist movement was halted, but, South
Indian support for a "surrogate" Tamil state in
the north and east of Sri Lanka expanded. All Sri
Lankan moderate and militant separatist groups,
including the LTTE, were nurtured and protected
by Tamil Nadu political parties. The LTTE's
assassination of former Indian Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi in Tamil Nadu in 1991 alone shows
that the 'Sri Lankan' separatist conflict is a
regional one. Even today, the manifesto of the
MDMK (Marumarchi Dravida Munnetra Khazagham) in
Tamil Nadu calls for autonomy for regional states
in India and establishment of Tamil Eelam in Sri
Lanka.
The fault lines between the Sinhala and Tamil
communities that show up in the modern Sri Lankan
conflict were drawn during the period of British
colonialism from1815 to1948. The island's
conflict, like many other 'ethnic' conflicts
around the world, emerged with democratization
and the shift of power from privileged
minorities, such as the Sri Lankan Tamils to the
Sinhala Buddhist majority who had been
marginalized under colonial rule.
Today, the Sri Lankan conflict has become an
international conflict with serious implications
for peace and security across the world. Over the
course of the Sri Lankan secessionist war, the
LTTE-banned in the United States, Canada, United
Kingdom, the EU, India, and Malaysia -has emerged
as -the proto-type of global terrorism. According
to the FBI, LTTE's ruthless tactics have
'inspired terrorist networks worldwide including
Al Qaeda in Iraq'. The LTTE 'perfected the use of
suicide bombers; invented the suicide belt;
pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks'.
It is also the first militant group to acquire
air power.
Notwithstanding its multiplicity of intra-ethnic,
regional, and international dimensions, the Sri
Lankan conflict continues to be characterized as
a primordial Sinhala vs. Tamil conflict and a
domestic phenomenon. The failure to grapple with
the multi-polar reality has in turn contributed
to the failure of peace initiatives, especially
the 2002 ceasefire agreement facilitated by
Norway.
The 2002 Ceasefire Agreement
The 2002 ceasefire agreement (CFA) upheld the
dualistic characterization of the Sri Lankan
conflict by recognizing only the government of
Sri Lanka and the LTTE as the two parties to the
conflict. Bypassing elected members of Parliament
representing non-LTTE Tamil interests and
choosing to negotiate with the unelected LTTE,
the Agreement accepted the LTTE as 'the sole
representative of Tamils' elevating the
internationally banned terrorist organization, to
an equivalent status with the democratically
elected Sri Lankan government. The Agreement did
not require LTTE cadres to be disarmed. Rather,
it dictated terms to weaken the armed forces of
the government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and strengthen
LTTE military capability by requiring the GOSL to
disarm non-LTTE Tamil paramilitary groups and to
offer to integrate those cadres within the GOSL
armed forces 'for service away from the Northern
and Eastern Province'. The CFA did not ban child
soldiering and forcible recruitment and child
recruitment, routine practices of the LTTE, and
it failed to specify mechanisms to monitor and
enforce other serious human rights violations or
to uphold pluralism and democracy.
Other terms of the Agreement further advanced the
separatist ambitions of the LTTE. By accepting
those terms the government of Sri Lanka acceded
to the LTTE's right to control land areas it had
usurped in the Northern and Eastern Provinces and
a formal partition of the country under the
supervision of the Scandinavian-led Sri Lanka
Monitoring Mission (SLMM). Notwithstanding
implications for democracy and peaceful conflict
resolution, there was massive support for the CFA
from the 'international community' and the local
peace lobby, which dubbed it as the 'best chance
to establish peace'.
For those opposed to separatism and the LTTE,
however, the CFA symbolized appeasement, if not
outright capitulation, to terrorism. Norway, the
facilitator of the peace process, and the
Scandinavian countries that provided the members
to the SLMM were the final arbiters and
supervisors of the implementation of the
Agreement. Although this placed Norway in the
dominant position, Norway and the Nordic SLMM
were severely constrained by the CFA's
capitulation to terms laid down by the LTTE. For
example, according to the CFA, the SLMM, which
established its headquarters in Colombo and local
monitoring committees in all other districts of
the north and the east, was excluded from
Killinochi and Mullativu, the LTTE strongholds
where the Tamil Tigers were allowed to do as they
pleased without any kind of monitoring. Given the
LTTE's insistence that the proscription prevented
it from being 'an equal and legitimate party to
engage in peace talks with the government,' the
Sri Lankan government lifted the proscription on
the LTTE, paving the way for negotiations. There
was tremendous local opposition against this move
since the LTTE had neither disavowed separatism
nor were disarmed.
During the 2002-2003 negotiations, the GOSL and
the LTTE held six highly publicized rounds of
talks, but, the LTTE refused to deal with the
core issue- specifically, the nature of the
administration for the north and the east-at any
of these sessions. The situation on the ground
became more confused, and there was little hope
for long-term peace among those directly affected
by the conflict. Marginalization by the peace
process and fear of living under a terrorist LTTE
regime radicalized many young Muslims, who began
to demand a separate Muslim region in the
southeast. On January 29, 2003, students of the
South Eastern University put forward a separatist
Muslim platform- the Oluvil Declaration. Echoing
the landmark 1976 Tamil separatist declaration,
the Vaddukodai Resolution, it asserted that
Muslims are a separate nation with claims to a
'traditional homeland', self-determination, and
political autonomy apart from both Tamil and
Sinhala domination.
The peace process was not broadened in response
to the concerns of Muslims or different Tamil and
Sinhala groups. Thus, the internationally driven
bipolar conflict resolution model intensified the
specter of a future globalized war between the
LTTE and the Muslims and ethnic balkanization of
the east. Low caste Dalits who constitute a major
portion of the LTTE cadres also felt marginalized
by the peace process. As a Sri Lankan Tamil Dalit
leader wrote, 'A problem that that has been
awaiting a resolution for decades was simply
glossed over as if it did not even exist.' The
limitations of the bipolar model of conflict
analysis and resolution became most apparent when
the LTTE split into two in March 2004. The
Northern/Wanni wing led by Prabhakaran moved
against the renegade LTTE Commander in the East,
Karuna and some 7,500 of his cadres, in violation
of the CFA. Karuna's challenge to Prabhakaran's
authority was more than a personal matter. It was
driven by more deeply rooted historical,
cultural, and regional differences and
political-economic inequities between the Tamils
of the north and the east. In defecting from the
LTTE, Karuna invoked the resentment of eastern
Tamils toward the northern Tamils who had long
dominated over them and spoken for them. The LTTE
split exposed the shortcomings of the bipolar
conflict resolution model, which overlooked
intra-ethnic, regional, and cultural differences
within and across the linguistic divide. The
ground situation in the north and the east,
became rife with internal LTTE feuding and LTTE
intra-ethnic killing.
Notwithstanding its professed role as protector
of Tamils, the LTTE continued to oppress Tamil
people, using the legitimacy given by the CFA as
their 'sole representative'. According to SLMM
statistics, the LTTE has been responsible for a
disproportionately large number of the CFA
violations and human rights abuses. Between
February 2002 and April 2007, for example, the
LTTE was responsible for 3,830 and the GOSL for
351 out of all violations ruled and reported by
the SLMM. Of these, LTTE was responsible
overwhelmingly for human rights violations
including child recruitment, torture, forced
recruitment of adults, and assassinations.
UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, Child Soldiers Global
Report, and the local human rights group
University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna)
UTHR reported that the CFA led to an increase in
one of the worst aspects of the 21-year
separatist conflict-the forcible recruitment of
children, some as young as ten or eleven years of
age.
Just as UNICEF was relatively ineffectual in
stopping LTTE's recruitment of children, the SLMM
was ineffectual in controlling Sinhala-Tamil as
well as Tamil-Muslim clashes which flared up in
the east in the aftermath of the signing of the
CFA. More than 200 politicians from rival Tamil
parties were reportedly killed between the
signing of the CFA in 2002 and mid-January 2006.
A number of Tamil media personnel who did not
completely toe the LTTE line were also believed
to have been eliminated by the LTTE. Providing
long lists of names of Tamil opponents
systematically eliminated by the LTTE, UTHR
blamed civil society activists, the international
community, and the Sri Lankan government for the
'manipulative', 'unprincipled,' and costly
approach to peace which yielded 'Dividends of
Terror' rather than peace.
Norway, the facilitator of the peace process, and
the Scandinavian peace monitors, the SLMM, came
under even more criticism from Tamil dissidents,
Sinhala and Muslim nationalists, and some
international human rights and anti-terrorist
groups. Norway has played and continues to play
multiple and conflicting roles in Sri Lanka as
peace facilitator, leader of the SLMM, and
leading aid and loan provider. As Human Rights
Watch observed in August 2003, 'The SLMM appears
to lack both sufficient political distance from
the negotiating process and a genuine capacity to
investigate these [human rights] incidents. As a
Norwegian-led initiative, the monitoring effort
is too closely tied to the politics of the peace
process.'
Although Norwegian peace 'facilitation' in Sri
Lanka continued to be viewed positively in the
international media and by LTTE supporters, there
was growing frustration and anger in Sri Lanka.
Norway was seen as a new colonial ruler and a
supporter of LTTE separatist terrorism. The
Patriotic National Movement, which emerged in
February 2004 with the objective of protecting
Sri Lanka's sovereignty and territorial
integrity, called for the expulsion of Norwegian
facilitators from Sri Lanka. One rally drew over
50,000 people, considered to be the largest
protest in Sri Lankan history. Frustrated by
Norwegian disregard for LTTE atrocities, Tamil
dissident groups frequently protested outside the
Norwegian embassy in Colombo, bringing coffins of
their politicians said to have been murdered by
the LTTE.
During the course of the ceasefire, the LTTE was
able to strengthen itself financially and
militarily. By 2007, it was raising an estimated
US$ 200 to 300 million a year through its licit
and illicit businesses and fronts globally. The
financial largess allowed the LTTE to purchase
advanced weaponry for its military struggle and
to pursue a sophisticated propaganda campaign on
electronic, print, and other media and try to
portray itself ' as a genuine national
liberation' movement despite its continued
terrorist activities. Indeed, the bipolar
conflict model which identifies Tamil interests
and LTTE interests as one is at least partly to
blame for this situation.
Federalism: The Magic Solution?
According to Sri Lankan government estimates,
Sinhalese were 75 percent, Sri Lankan Tamils were
11.9 percent, Indian or hill country Tamils 4.6
percent, and Muslims (Moors and Malays) were 8.2
percent of the island's total population in 2001.
According to other estimates, the percentage of
Sri Lankan Tamils is less or the same as for the
Muslims, i.e. 8 percent of the total population.
The proportions of the two communities -Sri
Lankan Tamil and Muslim- will keep decreasing and
increasing if present trends continue. The
emigration of people from the north and the east
has steadily increased due to the war and LTTE
terrorism. The majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka
live amidst the Sinhalese and the Muslims in the
multicultural southern areas of the island. In
other words, the Tamil community now is more an
island-wide rather than a regional minority.
These demographic and multicultural realities
undermine the separatist argument that an
exclusive Tamil northeastern region is required
for the Tamils to live in safety apart from the
Sinhalese.
Some 800,000, that is, more than 25 percent, of
Sri Lankan Tamils are now part of the Diaspora.
Toronto is believed to be the largest Sri Lankan
Tamil city in the world. Much of the financial
(about 90 percent) and ideological support for
the LTTE comes from the Tamil Diaspora elite and
the worldwide Tamil community, making the Sri
Lankan separatist struggle a transnational
phenomenon increasingly removed from domestic
realities. The 're-drawing of the ethnic map of
Sri Lanka' calls into question the justice of
granting one-third of the island exclusively to
the small population of Sri Lankan Tamils,
especially when increasing numbers of them are no
longer living in the areas erroneously claimed as
the 'traditional Tamil homelands'.
For most of the long history of the island,
tolerance and mutual coexistence have been the
predominant characteristics of inter-group
relations, not enmity and conflict. During the
course of the war, two broad patterns of ethnic
relations have emerged: a mono-ethnic policy in
the north and ethnic pluralism in the south. Some
100,000 Muslims and a smaller number of Sinhalese
were driven out of the Northern Province by the
LTTE's ethnic-cleansing campaign, making it
imperative that any solution to the separatist
conflict take into account Muslim and Sinhala
rights to the north and the east and their
opposition to Tamil regional autonomy. are .
Despite the most gruesome LTTE massacres of
Sinhala and Muslim civilians in the Eastern
Province, it has maintained its
multiethnic-Muslim, Tamil, and Sinhala-character,
but, given historical settlement patterns that
enhance mutual coexistence, attempts to
artificially carve out exclusive ethnic enclaves
by Tamil or Muslim separatists could lead to
greater upheaval and suffering.
Given the dominant Sinhala vs. Tamil dualism, few
studies have explored the common
political-economic issues facing youth across the
different communities. While 'ethnic tensions'
exist, they have been 'exacerbated by the ongoing
conflict'. As one study noted, Tamil and
Sinhalese youth have 'similar major concerns and
'reducing the potential of violent conflict to
ethnic discrimination belies the complexities of
social discrimination and the very real lack of
adequate employment and livelihoods of youth
both'. Indeed, the broadening of the global
discourse on conflict requires moving beyond
ethnic dualism and cultural identity to
considering socio-economic inequities at the
local, regional and international levels as well
as the patterns of pluralism and coexistence and
the changing ethnic distribution on the island.
A sustainable solution to the Sri Lankan conflict
'must take into account issues of poverty and
property rather than seek to extend the interests
of international corporations'. Indeed,
decentralization of power needs to be carried in
a way that allows local people-Sinhalese, Tamils
and Muslims-greater control over regional
resources and decisions over governance. The
creation of separate ethno-nationalist regions is
not a panacea. A policy that only breaks up the
unitary, centralized Sri Lankan state through a
form of federalism and grants Tamil regional
autonomy is unlikely to address these fundamental
issues of economic democracy and political
participation that are important to all Sri
Lankans, not just a single ethnic group.
______
[2]
The Nation,
30 June 2008
THE LONG LIFE OF THE FRONTIER MULLAH
by Basharat Peer (11 June 2008)
(Basharat Peer's memoir of the Kashmir conflict,
Curfewed Night, will be published by Scribner in
the United States next year. He is an assistant
editor at Foreign Affairs)
Late one evening in March, I sat in Haandi, a
Pakistani restaurant on Lexington Avenue, and
watched the swearing in of the new Prime Minister
of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani. Gillani is a
loyalist of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP),
which since its founding in 1967 has been led by
the Bhutto clan.
The general election in February was held seven
weeks after the PPP's chair, Benazir Bhutto, was
killed by a bomb blast and a bullet to the head
at an election rally in Rawalpindi, and in an
acrid climate of grief, anger and bewilderment,
the PPP ended up trouncing President Pervez
Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League. A television
suspended from the ceiling at Haandi showed
Pakistan's new prime minister discussing the
restoration of democratic institutions and then
announcing the release of the sixty-two judges,
including Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry, who had been living under house arrest
since President Musharraf imposed martial law on
November 3. Soon after Gillani's announcement,
the television showed Chaudhry on the balcony of
his house in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.
Crowds of supporters danced about and showered
him with rose petals.
The news anchor then claimed a scoop, as one of
the network's reporters thrust a cellphone into
Chaudhry's face. The chief justice spoke into it,
and his words reached me and the dozen or so
Pakistani cabdrivers staring at a television in a
restaurant in New York City. "There is still a
long struggle ahead of us," he said. Three men at
my table broke into a spontaneous discussion. The
newscast's images of reform and hope reminded
them of their country's failures: a feudal social
system, the rule of the landlords, nearly four
decades of military rule, widespread inequality.
These were men who worked twelve-hour shifts in
their rented cabs and had for years lived apart
from their families in Pakistan, to whom they
regularly remitted their meager savings. One man
talked about the tragedy of the partition of
British India into India and Pakistan. Another
compared prepartition India to a neighborhood:
the country had been a cluster of houses owned by
people who were related, often sons of the same
father. They argued and fought, but at the end of
the day they lived together as part of a larger
whole. "We didn't even maintain the house we
got," the man said.
The rooms long thought to be Pakistan's messiest
are the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which
hug 500 miles of the country's mountainous and
dangerous border with Afghanistan. Six years ago,
the mullahs of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA),
an alliance of six Islamist parties, were elected
in the NWFP during the wave of anti-Americanism
that swelled up after the US invasion of
Afghanistan. Yet in the recent elections there,
the MMA was defeated by the Awami National Party
(ANP), a secular Pashtun nationalist party
established in 1986 after the merger of a few
left-leaning parties. The ANP is led by Asfandyar
Wali Khan, the grandson of Abdul Ghaffar Khan,
the foremost twentieth-century leader of the
Pashtuns, who was known as Frontier Gandhi and
had opposed the partition of British India. The
MMA's re-election bid faltered because the party
had failed to provide even the most rudimentary
government services to the impoverished people of
the frontier region, an area scarred by the
brutal insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare
being waged by the Taliban and other Islamist
militants who control the area and Pakistani
soldiers supported by US forces. The MMA's defeat
has been celebrated as one of Pakistan's most
dramatic and positive developments.
The "war on terror" has made the borderlands a
newsworthy topic, yet accounts of the daily
struggles, aspirations and challenges of the
region's population are rare. American coverage
of the recent elections there spotlighted the
ANP's victory as a rejection of Islamist parties
and marginalized the issues that dominated the
campaign: reducing the presence of the Pakistani
military, lowering civilian casualties in the
counterinsurgency operations and pushing a
development agenda in the tribal belt. What's not
in short supply are stories about the mullahs and
warring tribes; their prominence is a testament
to how the frontier region remains an unruly
captive of the narrative that first defined it
for the world beyond the Hindu Kush and the
Khyber Pass: the imperial "Great Game" played by
Britain and Russia in the region in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The
Great Game had its second inning in the early
1980s, when the United States, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan supported the Afghan resistance against
Soviet forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
One of the first printed works to establish the
reputation of the North-West Frontier tribes as
bloodthirsty and acrimonious was written in 1897
by a second lieutenant of a British cavalry
regiment. The young officer was Winston
Churchill, who had ended up commanding a brigade
tasked with subduing tribes in Malakand - in the
frontier territory's northern reaches - after
refining his polo game during a posting with his
regiment in British India. In The Story of the
Malakand Field Force, which is peppered with
racist and Islamophobic remarks, Churchill says
of the frontier tribes, "Except at the times of
sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud
and strife prevails throughout the land.... Every
man's hand is against the other, and all against
the stranger.... To the ferocity of the Zulu are
added the craft of the Redskin and the
marksmanship of the Boer." He goes on to write
that the frontier people were exposed to the
"rapacity and tyranny of a numerous
priesthood...and a host of wandering
Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the
theological students in Turkey, and live free at
the expense of the people. More than this, they
enjoy a sort of 'droit du seigneur,' and no man's
wife or daughter is safe from them."
In Sana Haroon's Frontier of Faith, the history
of the borderlands is not a chapter in the story
of the Great Game. Haroon, a young Pakistani
historian trained at the University of London's
School of Oriental and African Studies, provides
a complex and valuable account of the role and
influence of the mullahs in the frontier region
and the frontier's relationship with external
powers from the late nineteenth century to the
1960s. The position and power that the mullahs
came to possess in the frontier areas, she
explains, was not some sort of a divine right but
rather assiduously built from social networking,
political and spiritual manipulation, and
coercion. The product of meticulous doctoral and
postdoctoral research, Frontier of Faith draws on
a wealth of sources, such as the correspondence
and memoirs of British officials, Indian Muslim
nationalists and Deobandi scholars; the archived
files of the colonial police and administration
in Peshawar; Pakistani Urdu and English
newspapers of the era as well as rarely explored
anticolonial jihadi papers like Al Mujahid; and
interviews of various descendants of the frontier
mullahs in Peshawar. Haroon offers a fascinating
street-level view of frontier life and politics,
but unfortunately she often gets overwhelmed by
details and loses direction. Her book's many
insights suffer from the absence of a coherent
and elegant narrative.
The rise of the frontier mullahs is not solely
religious in origin. While the mullahs' emergence
is inextricably linked to the nineteenth-century
revival of the ideas of a seventeenth-century
north Indian Muslim philosopher, Sheikh Ahmed
Sirhindi, and his disciple Shah Wali Ullah, their
ascendance was boosted by the transformation of
those ideas into weapons of regional warfare and,
later, anticolonialism. Sirhindi mixed Sufi
practice with a return to the fundamentals - the
Koran and the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet
Muhammad. Wali Ullah added the idea of social
practice based on Shariah and called for social
and political reform. In the early nineteenth
century, Wali Ullah's grandson, Shah Ismail, and
his friend Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi interpreted this
call for social and political reform as a call
for jihad and launched campaigns against the
Sikhs who ruled most of Punjab and Peshawar.
During the campaigns, Barelvi struck a strong
alliance with Akhund Ghaffur, a Pashtun Sufi from
the tribal belt, and preached Wali Ullah's
revivalist vision of Islam among the Pashtuns.
(Wali Ullah's faith is akin to Wahhabism, the
ultraconservative brand of Sunni Islam whose
dramatic spread since the 1970s has been fueled
by Saudi petrodollars as well as American cash
funneled to the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets
in Afghanistan.) Although Barelvi was betrayed by
some tribal chiefs and killed during an 1831
battle in a small town in the NWFP called
Balakot, about 125 miles from Islamabad, some of
his men found refuge in the frontier region with
Ghaffur.
Among the descendants of Sirhindi who had settled
in Kabul was the city's head priest, Hafiz Ji,
the mentor of Ghaffur and religious policy
adviser to the Afghan king. In 1835 Dost Muhammad
Khan, the ruler of Afghanistan, went to battle
against Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Punjab.
On Hafiz Ji's recommendation, Dost Muhammad had
appealed to Ghaffur, among others, for military
support. Ghaffur obliged, bringing his supporters
and students to Peshawar to join the Afghan army.
Dost Muhammad rewarded Ghaffur for his support
with vast tracts of land throughout the frontier
areas. Ghaffur's newfound wealth led him to
establish a langarkhana (free community kitchen),
where 500 people were fed every day; his
reputation grew, and the town he lived in turned
into a "thriving city whose economy revolved
around the langarkhana." His disciples spread out
and set up bases throughout the frontier
promoting Wali Ullah's revivalist vision of Islam.
The Afghan patronage ended in 1878. Ghaffur died,
and his disciple Hadda Mulla Najmuddin succeeded
him. At the same time, a new ruler in Kabul, Amir
Abdur Rahman - after establishing a centralized
bureaucracy and a state army - ignored the
mullahs and spearheaded intrusions into the
tribal regions. The British were also pushing
forward from Peshawar to establish control of the
frontier region. As he strived to further
consolidate his authority and extend the network
of his order throughout the entire frontier area,
Hadda Mulla resisted the unfavorable Afghan ruler
and obsessively fought the British, most famously
in the Battle of Malakand, which Churchill
chronicled. Haroon quotes a letter Hadda Mulla
wrote to persuade tribal elders to join a
campaign against the British: "The kafirs have
taken possession of all Muslim countries, and
owing to the lack of spirit on the part of the
people are conquering every region." These words
have been reverberating in those mountains ever
since.
Hadda Mulla's words didn't repel the British, but
his revivalist religious order continued to
dominate the frontier, and opposition to the
British continued after his death in 1903, thanks
to the work of his disciples. They were led by
Haji Turangzai, a mullah who had ventured into
the larger world - first to the revivalist
Islamic seminary of Deoband near Delhi and then
to Mecca for hajj. Turangzai and other disciples
of Hadda Mulla named their revivalist agenda
amr-bil maruf wa nahi anal munkir (the movement
for "the promotion of virtue and prevention of
vice"), which Haroon describes as "a social
mission that was to give the line [their order]
its greatest cohesion and form its primary agenda
in the twentieth century." Turangzai consolidated
the mission's influence by establishing 150
madrassas throughout the British-administered
North-West Frontier Province, and then settling
full-time in the tribal region of the frontier.
In 1893, after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the
British forced Afghanistan to consent to the
drawing of the Durand Line, which demarcated a
rough boundary between Afghanistan and British
India and was meant to formally limit Afghan
influence in the North-West Tribal Areas. But the
frontier remained porous, and the tribal mullahs
continued to rally their militias in support of
various men fighting for the throne of Kabul. The
mullahs, who were mostly Pashtuns, enmeshed
themselves in the fabric of village life in the
frontier region, "trading, interacting and
inter-marrying within the clan unit," Haroon
writes. The mullahs claimed their place in the
villages by managing the local mosques, which
Haroon aptly describes as "a functional,
inclusive and vibrant arena of male village
life." Despite their poverty, illiteracy and
sparse communication with the greater world, the
villagers in the frontier area were hungry for
news - "about on-going wars, the nationalist
movement in India, colonial governance, and
intrigue at the Afghan darbar, and events across
the Tribal Areas." Rumors such as Turks coming to
liberate India, and Germany embracing Islam
filled the frontier villages. The mullahs
received travelers and the occasional newspaper
someone brought to the mosque, and used the
"traditional Friday sermon to comment on the
content of news and its implications."
Around the time of World War I, political
activism among Indian Muslims grew more common,
invigorated by anticolonialism and questions
about colonial repression shared by Muslim
communities across the world. "Using the Urdu
press to publicise their ideas," Haroon writes,
Indian Muslims criticized the British government
of India fighting the Ottoman caliph. In this
atmosphere, Maulana Mahmudul Hasan, the
chancellor of the revivalist Islamic seminary at
Deoband, conceived of a plan to launch armed
rebellion against the British from the Tribal
Areas. Some Deobandi sought assistance and
financial support from Afghanistan, and others
made plans in 1916 to invite the Ottoman vizier
to attack and liberate India. The Deobandi
initiative in the frontier died when letters from
frontier-based Deobandis to the vizier and Hasan,
"written on pieces of silk to avoid detection,"
were intercepted by the colonial police and most
of the senior Deobandi leaders were arrested.
The tribal mullahs turned toward Kabul and fought
against the British in 1919 during the Third
Anglo-Afghan War, which led to an end of the
British control of Afghan foreign policy.
Beginning in the 1920s, the British made strong
efforts to expand roads, railways and garrisons,
especially in Waziristan. Led by the mullahs, the
tribes resisted. But when the British responded
heavy-handedly, using RAF planes to bomb Muslim
militias, the mullahs showed that maintenance of
their regional authority was closer to their
hearts than anticolonialism. The main mullah
order led by Turangzai "did not see the utility
in opposing the [colonial] scheme once its
monetary benefit accrued to them." (British
allowances to the frontier tribes for projects
like roads and railways had more than doubled
between 1919 and 1925.) And during moments of
relative peace between the British and the
tribes, Haroon shows, Turangzai, backed by a
private militia of mullahs and tribesmen,
positioned himself and other mullahs as the chief
arbitrators of disputes and order in the frontier
- for example, by preventing the extradition of a
Pashtun man who had kidnapped a young British
girl, and negotiating the release of the girl and
the safety of the kidnapper.
Even by the late 1930s, the British had not
succeeded in destroying the mullahs' authority,
although the RAF's "disproportionate response" to
unrest, and the deaths of prominent mullahs like
Turangzai, had reduced militant campaigns against
the colonial government. But throughout the '30s,
opposition to the British rule had grown stronger
throughout India. Haroon traces a web of
relationships among the tribal mullahs, the
Deobandi ideologues and militants, the Khudai
Khidmatgars (the nonviolent anticolonial
followers of the Gandhian Pashtun leader Ghaffar
Khan), Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League and
Mahatma Gandhi's Indian National Congress Party.
These relationships also involve a contest for
allegiances, which the Muslim League won after
Jinnah (who would become the first
governor-general of Pakistan in 1947) traveled
through the NWFP in 1936, criticizing the British
frontier policies and valorizing the independence
of the tribal region.
In the summer of 1947, when the British were
leaving and the partition plan had been
announced, the Tribal Areas joined Pakistan but
retained their autonomy and traditional systems
of power and authority, even though Ghaffar Khan
and his supporters in the NWFP remained committed
to an undivided India and, later, a separate
state of Pashtunistan. In fact, the Tribal Areas'
relationship with the postcolonial Pakistani
state was not very different from the region's
relationship with the Afghan rulers or with the
British. It was a patron-client affair wherein
the state provided the tribes with financial and
other kinds of assistance to earn their
cooperation. The tribal belt was never integrated
into the Pakistani polity, and Pakistan made no
real effort at establishing modern systems of
administration and infrastructure in the region.
Yet from the very beginning the tribes served the
purposes of the state, first and foremost in the
first Indo-Pakistan war over Kashmir in 1947-48,
when Pashtun mullahs led by Turangzai's son,
Badshah Gul II, and supported by the Pakistani
military led a tribal attack to liberate Kashmir.
The invasion, Haroon explains, was not fueled so
much by Pakistani "nationalism" as by
"opportunity, bravado, and possibly hunger,
shored up by massive moral and material support."
The first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir helped
the Pakistani government "to convene jirgas with
almost all tribes and ratify new treaty-based
settlements between them and the Pakistan
government on the colonial model." It took
Islamabad many more years to establish control as
some Pashtun tribal leaders in Waziristan began
an insurgency for a Pashtun state.
Khan, a towering, muscular man with a beaklike
nose and much personal wealth, got involved in
the Indian freedom struggle in 1919 after the
British passed the infamous Rowlatt Act, which
denied the right of trial to dissidents. Under
Gandhi's influence, Khan turned to an austere
life - most photographs show him as a smiling
giant dressed in homespun cotton. Khan founded
the Servants of God, or the Red Shirt Movement,
in 1929, and his roughly 100,000 followers (all
turned out in red shirts) were mostly Pashtun
peasants. They formed a unique, nonviolent
Pashtun army pledged to follow the teachings of
Islam and to pursue social and political reform
among the Pashtuns and nonviolent agitation for
Indian independence. Khan and his Red Shirts
supported the Congress Party's cause of an
undivided India over the Muslim League's demand
for Pakistan. Khan's biographer (and Gandhi's
grandson), Rajmohan Gandhi, writes, "The
naturalness of his Islam, his directness, his
rejection of violence and revenge, and his
readiness to cooperate with non-Muslims add up to
a valuable legacy for our angry times."
After 1947, as the NWFP became part of Pakistan,
Khan's demands for an autonomous Pashtunistan
earned the wrath of the Pakistani government. He
was jailed for many years and spent most of the
1960s exiled in Afghanistan, where the government
of Mohammed Zahir Shah (the king in exile
rediscovered by the world in Rome after the fall
of the Taliban in late 2001) supported the
Pashtunistan demand, opposed Pakistan's
membership in the United Nations and provided
financial and moral support to secure the loyalty
of the frontier mullahs. The volatile frontier
was stabilized in the 1950s by American pressure
on Afghanistan and Pakistani military action
against dissenting tribal leaders like Mirza Ali
Khan, who led an armed group of tribesmen from
the Mahsud tribe (which counts among its brethren
Baitullah Mahsud, the militant leader accused of
assassinating Benazir Bhutto). Pakistani military
and elected governments believed in the
"intractability of the tribes" and avoided the
expense of infrastructure development,
controlling the frontier through financial
assistance to tribal leaders. Haroon argues that
the tribes would have embraced the social, civic
and institutional amenities available to citizens
elsewhere in Pakistan, since hundreds of young
Pashtuns "were migrating from the Tribal Areas to
Peshawar and Kabul in pursuit of education,
business opportunities or jobs."
Pakistan mostly ignored the Tribal Areas until
the beginning of the US-backed resistance to the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the early 1980s,
when the NWFP and FATA became staging areas for
Afghan fighters. The story of the Afghan war, the
role of Pakistani and American intelligence
agencies and Islamist groups, and the rise of the
Taliban are stories better read in Steve Coll's
fascinating Ghost Wars or Ahmed Rashid's Taliban.
Senior Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussein's
Frontline Pakistan is another valuable addition
to the literature on a post-9/11 Pakistan
dominated by terrorist and counterterrorist
operations in the NWFP and FATA. Al Qaeda,
Afghan, Uzbek and Arab militants and the Taliban
have enmeshed themselves in the region,
especially Waziristan, marrying local women,
living like locals, alternating between working
in the fields and firing rockets on US coalition
forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani military.
Haroon's account of the region is marred by her
failure to acknowledge the stature of Ghaffar
Khan, his movement among the Pashtuns and the
nature of his influence in the tribal region.
Haroon's discussion of Khan is slight, an odd way
to treat a man whose death in 1988 at 98 prompted
the Pashtun guerrillas fighting the Soviet forces
in Afghanistan to declare a cease-fire for a day
in his honor. The Soviets permitted thousands of
guerrillas to cross the border into Pakistan for
his funeral. Still, this oversight doesn't hamper
Haroon's understanding of the origins of the
political tragedy of the frontier areas, where
about 4 million people have no recourse to
Pakistani laws or courts; the literacy rate is
only 17 percent, against the Pakistani national
average of 45 percent; and female literacy is 3
percent, against the national average of 32
percent. As Haroon observed recently in a column
in the Guardian, "As long as the Pakistan state
continues to represent the tribal areas as a
nightmare landscape of roads cut deep through
unknowable mountains swarming with enemies - and
keeps persisting in trying to control or
subjugate them instead of governing - extremists
will continue to find them a haven."
______
[3]
Hindustan Times
June 17, 2008
THE ORIGINAL HINDU RASHTRA
by Ramachandra Guha
Many years ago, I picked up a 31-page pamphlet
with the intriguing title, King Mahendra and the
RSS. I cannot remember now where I found it -
whether on the pavement in Daryaganj, or in
Mumbai's New and Secondhand Bookshop, or at the
superb Prabhu Book Service in Gurgaon, or even in
Bangalore's own Select Bookshop. The last seems
most likely, since the pamphlet was published by
the Karnataka branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh, and was printed in February 1965 in
Bangalore.
Anyhow, years after I discovered this pamphlet,
it has acquired an unexpected topicality. For in
the last week of May 2008, Nepal became a
republic, and its 240-year-old monarchy entered
the ash-heap of history. The last ruler of Nepal,
once God in the Flesh, the Representative of
Vishnu on Earth, now became plain old Mister
Gyanendra.
The pamphlet I found was connected principally
with Gyanendra's father, King Mahendra, also
known as God in the Flesh, the Representative of
VishnuŠ etc. It told the story of an aborted
visit of the Nepali monarch to the neighbouring
Republic of India. Apparently, "a couple of
years" before the pamphlet was printed, that is
to say in 1962 or 1963, the Sarsanghchalak of the
RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, had visited the temple of
Pashupatinath in Kathmandu. Before or after he
paid tribute to the shrine, the RSS chief had
called upon the King of Nepal.
Golwalkar recounted the details of his meeting
with King Mahendra in Organiser, the house
journal of the RSS. He first acquainted the
Nepali monarch with the work of the Sangh. Then,
speaking of "the unbreakable relations of Nepal
and Bharat, owing to their unity of religion and
culture," he invited the king to preside over the
annual Makar Sankranti celebrations held at the
RSS headquarters in Nagpur. Unfortunately,
Mahendra was not free in January 1964. So
Golwalkar invited him again the next year. This
time the king agreed.
On Christmas eve, 1964, Golwalkar released a
press statement confirming that the visit was on.
Two weeks later, on January 8, 1965, the royal
palace in Kathmandu said that the trip to Nagpur
has been cancelled. This was deeply embarrassing
for his hosts, since the visit had been widely
publicised in RSS shakhas across the land. There
were only a few days left for Sankranti. Where,
now, would they find an equally distinguished
chief guest?
Although he could not come, King Mahendra sent a
message to be read out at the RSS meeting held in
Nagpur on Makar Sankranti, January 14, 1965.
Nepal, said the king, "has always acted as a
sentinel of India. Both have almost the same
culture and both are animated by the same ideal
of lifeŠ This is a matter of glory for the entire
Hindu world".
The king continued: "It is our desire to build up
Nepal as an ideal Hindu Kingdom in the eyes of
the world from every point of view... Even in
days when some Hindus were victims of an
artificial atmosphere and were ashamed of calling
themselves Hindus, Nepal securely maintained
herself as a Hindu Kingdom. All Hindus should
take special pride in this fact."
The reading of the king's message was followed by
the speech of the Sarsanghchalak. This was even
more effusive in its praise of the Hindu essence
of the Himalayan State. Nepal, said Golwalkar,
"is the only State that proudly proclaims itself
a Hindu Nation. Nepal, treading the path of her
own genius, has rejected Western and other types
of democracy and has adopted the time-honoured
panchayat system of Hindu Democracy... Surely,
Nepal finds a pride of place in the hearts of
Hindus all over the world".
The RSS chief's rejection of 'Western' style
democracy is noteworthy. So, too, is his praise
of the 'Hindu' system of democracy allegedly in
force in Nepal. In the late 1950s, Nepal briefly
had a proper democracy. Then, the king dismissed
the lawfully elected government and threw the
Prime Minister, the great patriot and democrat
B.P. Koirala, into jail. He further imposed,
manifestly against the will of the people, a
political system where there were no parties and
no elected national government, thus further
consolidating his own (and undeniably autocratic)
rule.
The king's proposed visit to the RSS headquarters
was promoted by a man called Tulsi Giri, who was
then Chairman of Nepal's (unelected) Council of
Ministers and an active proponent of the
partyless Panchayat scheme. The pamphlet quotes
Giri as saying: "Our King is a Hindu King of a
Hindu Kingdom. Why shouldn't Hinduism be a basis
of unity [between Nepal and India]?" Giri also
claimed that "Nepal would never go red as she was
a Hindu kingdom". After the trip was cancelled,
Giri told the Hindustan Times that "it would have
been the fulfilment of one of my dreams if the
King had been able to visit Nagpur for I wanted
to project him as a world leader of Hindus. He
was the only King of the only Hindu Kingdom in
the world who could lead the Hindus of the world".
Now, 43 years down the line, Nepal has in fact
gone 'red' (a change of colour commendably
achieved via the ballot box). Meanwhile, the
monarchy has been abolished, and the former king
made to vacate his palace. Perhaps, in the spirit
of the contents of the pamphlet King Mahendra and
the RSS, the now homeless, jobless, commoner
carrying the name of Gyanendra can be invited to
Nagpur to assume a honoured place among the men
who presume to lead the Hindus of the world.
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and the author of India After Gandhi.
_______
[4]
Mail Today
17 June 2008
GODMEN AND GOD SHOULD BE KEPT OUT OF OUR POLITICS
by Jyotirmaya Sharma
IN March 2001, I wrote a piece in a national
daily I used to then work for arguing that there
was no essential difference between the Taliban's
felling of the Bamiyan Buddha and the destruction
of the Babri Masjid in India. For every Mulla
Muhammad Omar in Afghanistan, there is a
corresponding Giriraj Kishore. Soon after the
piece was published, I received a request from
Sri Sri Ravishankar through a disciple for a
conversation on this very issue. I was told that
the popular New Age guru was upset and perplexed
by my speaking of the Bamiyan Buddha and the
Babri Masjid in the same breath. I met him in
Delhi and we spoke for nearly an hour (all
through which Sri Sri ran his fingers in a large
bowl of dry fruit, neither eating any nor
offering it to me). There was total asymmetry
between our perspectives and we agreed to
disagree. I failed to impress upon him that
slavery to historical memory can lead to aspiral
of recriminations and fuel the desire to settle
scores endlessly. Both acts, contemporary as they
are, are born out of cynical politics and the
desire to divide people and rule on the basis of
such adivision. The Godman kept repeating the
fact that the Mosque in Ayodhya was built after
destroying atemple and so it fell into another
category than the Bamiyan Buddha. For me the
impulse to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha and the
Babri Mosque came from the same seed of
intolerance and fear of diversity and complexity
with little or no difference separating the two.
Essence
When Irecently saw images of Sri Sri Ravishankar
engaged in efforts to bring about reconciliation
between the BJP government in Rajasthan and the
Gurjar leadership, Iwas saddened by the level to
which Indian democracy and constitutional
processes have been reduced. Of course, there has
been aproliferation of new age Hindu gurus in
recent years, where the tag of "new age" manages
to camouflage their otherwise apparent sectarian
identities. They manage to hide behind the
indeterminate label of "world religions" and this
label releases them from immediate identification
with any narrow sectarian affiliation. Their
stress on singing, dancing and being happy, and
doctrinal fast food such as "smiling" and "love"
endears them to the burgeoning "I, me, myself"
middle class in India, especially the young. This
escape from any serious doctrinal discussion
helps justify and legitimate hedonism and
mindless consumerism. They help concretise aworld
where guilt is someone else's bad karma and good
karma is the pursuit of unbridled gratification,
including the misplaced greed for spirituality.
Sectarian
These new age gurus offer to Hindus a simplified,
non- threatening and pre- digested doctrine that
is founded on a peculiar kind of interpretation
of advaita Vedanta, made popular in India since
the nineteenth century. This is akin to an
overripe banana that looks solid from the outside
but is essentially gooey from the inside. It
takes the form of endless prattle about the
oneness of the universe and the universality of
the Brahman. Add to this yoga, meditation and
ayurveda and the picture gets completed. The
latter are touted as part of the great eternal
and abiding legacy of their version of the great
Hindu civilisation and their popularity elsewhere
helps integration with Western modernity and
concepts of progress. But more significantly,
almost all of these new age cults and gurus are
recruitment centres for the RSS and the Sangh
Parivar .Put differently, the RSS has outsourced
its putative recruitment to these new age cults.
The RSS and the Sangh Parivar realise that no
amount of sartorial changes will help correct
their regressive image. What the new age cults
manage for them is to keep the Indian middle
class within the Hindu nationalist fold by
echoing the preoccupations of this class.
Therefore, these cults also have a subtle way of
speaking about India's military glory, how true
gentleness lies in strength, the dream of India
as a superpower, the impediments in the way of
economic growth (namely, communists, secularists
and Muslims) and how missionaries, alternate
lifestyles, heterodox ideas, creative literature,
poetry and modern art have worked to tarnish
India (which is Hindu in their scheme of things)
and its glories in the eyes of the world. More
serious are the banalities offered day in and day
out. The more popular among these are "the same
god is in all of us" and the "same essence
permeates us all". In that sense, they reduce all
other faiths and their followers to nothingness
and rob them of any specific cultural identity
they might have cherished, also being extremely
condescending to other faiths. In all of this,
the new age guru manages to impress upon their
followers that this benign doctrine flows from
Hinduism and that its customary tolerance is what
accounts for this seeming generosity. The only
counter to these pernicious doctrines is the
celebration of politics, democracy, liberalism
and plurality in letter and in spirit. Genuine
democracy is the greatest enemy of these
regressive tendencies. The way politicians have
vitiated the public sphere in recent years leads
to the spectacle of a godman entering the public
arena to solve an issue that is primarily
political. Whether this is done in a public
capacity or in a private one is an issue that
ought to be thoroughly debated and any such
future efforts ought to be shunned. Neither the
Shankaracharya nor new age gurus have any
business to meddle in political issues. They
neither have the legitimacy nor the authority.
They are not part of the formal political process
and are to be kept out of the public realm. Of
course, godmen too are citizens of this country
but they no longer are sole representatives of
their faiths. Hence, to ask the Kanchi Acharya to
negotiate a settlement of the Babri Masjid- Ram
Mandir dispute is patently unfair to those Hindus
who do not look up to him as their spiritual
leader. New age gurus represent an even smaller,
though powerful, number of people, who are
ensconced in their pretty enclaves with little to
do with the rest of India. The time and need to
ease out the influence of these cults is more
immediate than ever. Otherwise, there will be a
repeat of Gujarat elsewhere and the stranglehold
of religious cults on governments would become a
reality sooner than later.
Plural
There is much to do in India and godmen can lend
ahelping hand. Most of them do so, but restrict
it largely to indoctrinating future generation of
young men and women to be less Indian and more
Hindu, Muslim or Christian. This is the direction
in which the Gurjars must direct Sri Sri
Ravishankar, never mind what the shallow piety of
the BJP might suggest. There is no one art of
living, but there is a staggering plurality of
ways in which we might live. The most ordinary
Indian instinctively understands this as long as
he doesn't fall prey to divisive ideologies or
restrictive cults. One of these many ways of
living and living well is to revel in the noise
and chaos of democracy, as spiritual and as
sacred for some of us as a holy text, a godman,
or even apilgrimage.
The author teaches politics at the University of
Hyderabad and is the author of Hindutva:
Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism
_______
[5]
Mail Today
June 17 2008
INSULT TO INJURY
On June 13, I was reminded that the past never
leaves us. The newspapers reported an 'HC clean
chit' of the Ramjas ex-Principal in the 26
year-old case of an assault on a college lecturer
named 'Dalip'. Since I was the person assaulted,
I was deeply perturbed by this judgement. I had
no idea that the state had approached the High
Court. Where does this leave me, as a law-abiding
citizen?
The bare facts are as follows. I joined the
Ramjas History Department in 1974. In October
1981 I went on hunger-strike to obtain the salary
of Sita Ram the head mali, who had been
wrongfully denied it without an inquiry. My
actions were part of a campaign that I did not
initiate. The backdrop was an autocratic regime,
allegations of administrative corruption and
divisions amongst teachers. Efforts to secure a
just procedure had been scornfully turned down.
After a nine-day strike joined by teachers from
Ramjas and SRCC, we resolved to pursue the
struggle by other means.
Ramjas remained extremely tense in the new year.
On February 18, my scooter was intercepted near
ISBT by six young men who had followed me in a
car. I was beaten with iron rods, my left leg
broken in two places and my upper jaw permanently
damaged, with five teeth lost. But for my helmet,
I might have suffered severe skull injuries. I
was picked up by a kindly couple in a car and
taken to Bara Hindu Rao Hospital. The Vice
Chancellor, colleagues and friends arrived, and
that evening I was taken to AIIMS. The subsequent
agitation brought about the Principal's
suspension. I was removed to Bombay for surgery,
and needed nine weeks to walk again.
We knew who had instigated and carried out the
deed, but the public prosecutor could prove
nothing in court. When I appeared as witness, the
magistrate treated me as if I were a defendant,
rather than the victim of a crime. In acquitting
the accused, he implied that I was using an
opportunity to implicate certain persons on
account of personal enmity. There was no
curiosity as to how I came to be so grievously
injured, or whether my injuries were compatible
with a traffic accident. There was no effort to
get at the truth.
The High Court judge has observed that my failure
to speak to the police "at the first opportunity"
indicates that my statement was 'tutored', and
hence he upholds the acquittal. How fair is this
reasoning? Medical records will show that I lost
five teeth, my upper jaw was damaged and my left
leg broken in two places. I lay in Hindu Rao the
entire day, during which time stitches were
applied inside my mouth without anaesthesia. I
was unable to speak, and needed pencil and paper
to state my identity. Even the application of
plaster took place after 10 pm. Owing to the
severity of my condition, the police recorded my
statement the following day: this was not my
personal decision. Is this an adequate reason for
the trial court and the honourable judge to
impugn my honesty? Would it not have been
reasonable to conclude that the delay in
recording my statement was due to my medical
condition?
The prosecution did not have the courtesy to
inform me of the appeal in the HC. Surely as the
victim I would have been most interested in
pursuing the matter? Had it done so, I might have
asked for representation, and prayed for the
infirmities of the judgement to be overturned.
The recent news report came as a bolt from the
blue. And it is misleading, for I never accused
the principal and physical training instructor of
assaulting me. I only stated my suspicion of
their being implicated in the assault. I had this
intuition at the moment of the attack and have
not altered it since. Of course, intuition is not
evidence. But the investigation and framing of
charges was the job of the police. Incidentally,
in October 1982 I was introduced to my assailants
in a police station. They said they had been
misled and asked for forgiveness. One of them
visited my house to ask me not to give evidence.
The events of the 1980's had many repercussions.
Teachers launched a campaign for democratic
functioning. A movement against goondaism was
undertaken by students. In 1988 I was elected to
the university's Academic Council and chaired the
DUTA Committee on Accountability. Our college
became the first to set up a staff committee to
maintain academic standards. All that energy was
not expended in vain.
We often come across the term "judicial
conscience". Where exactly does this entity
reside? The CJI has observed that the judiciary
is the ultimate defender of citizens' rights. Who
will defend these rights if the courts fail us?
One of the most twisted problems in legal theory
is the assumed neutrality of judges. Not to
mention the distinction between forensic and
narrative versions of truth. What is the
guarantee of this neutrality and how is it
manifested? Truth is surely not a mere technical
or formal detail. The idea of justice is
antecedent to the emergence of constitutional
systems or governments. Otherwise we would not
speak of natural law. But does justice reside
exclusively in the utterances of courts? Law is
the basis of an orderly society. It represents
the need for a fair resolution of conflicts.
Although democratic governments may exist only
upon public approval, judges cannot be subject to
the whims of electorates. What then, can ensure
that those entrusted with the care of justice
will fulfil their charge? Ultimately the social
contract is a historical gamble. It depends upon
the alertness of the citizenry and a public ethos
that respects the ideals that lie behind the
phrase "the rule of law".
Homer's Iliad describes a dispute in a
market-place between two men over the blood-price
for a victim of murder. The crowd asks the elders
to arbitrate whilst they keep the antagonists in
check. "Between them, on the ground lay two
talents of gold, to be given to that judge who in
this case spoke the straightest opinion". The
public stands in judgement over the arbitrators.
Here is a clue to the mystery of the judicial
conscience. It is a circular thread that runs
through all of society's constituents, the ones
that are wise and the ones who accord them the
status of being wise. There is no exclusive judge
and no exclusive witness - all judge and are
judged. When this thread is broken, we are on the
brink of disintegration. The circle of public
conscience points to the true meaning of law and
judgement in a democratic society. The seat of
law is not synonymous with the person occupying
it, nor are judicial decisions always coterminous
with justice. In 1982 I became the victim of a
violent crime. But in the eyes of the justice
system no one is guilty. All that it has done is
to suggest that I made a 'tutored' accusation.
The crime has now become invisible. I expect no
recompense for that murderous assault on me 26
years ago. I still respect the law. I cannot say
the same for those to whom I turned for justice.
Dilip Simeon
______
[6] DEATH PENALTY:
(i)
LETTER TO PAKISTAN'S PRIME MINISTER TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
June 17, 2008
Yusuf Raza Gillani
Prime Minister
Islamabad
Pakistan
Re: Death Penalty
Dear Prime Minister Gillani,
Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental
organization that monitors human rights in more
than 70 countries around the world. We appreciate
the policy goals you have announced to address
many of the human rights problems your government
inherited after more than eight years of military
rule. We welcome the goals related to lifting
media restrictions, freeing detained lawyers and
judges, and releasing political prisoners.
We also appreciate the steps that your government
has taken to embed international human rights
standards into Pakistani law by ratifying the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights and signing the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well
as the Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment.
Another subject requiring your attention is the
death penalty. Human Rights Watch is opposed to
the death penalty in all circumstances because it
is a punishment of an inherently cruel, inhuman
and final nature. Wherever it is in force, the
death penalty is plagued by arbitrariness,
unfairness, and racial, class or other bias,
highlighting the necessity of its abolition.
Charges carrying the death penalty have
significantly increased in recent years in
Pakistan, resulting in a much higher number of
death sentences and executions. Pakistan has over
95,000 people in custody for criminal offenses,
of which approximately 67 percent (about 63,600)
are pre-trial detainees. Out of the more than
31,400 convicts, nearly a quarter-over 7,000
individuals, including almost 40 women-have been
sentenced to death, and are either involved in
lengthy appeals processes or awaiting execution
after all appeals have been exhausted.
The number of persons sentenced to death in
Pakistan and executed every year is among the
highest in the world, with a sharp increase in
executions in recent years:
* In 2004, 394 prisoners were sentenced to death and 15 were hanged.
* In 2005, 477 people were sentenced to death and 52 were hanged.
* In 2006, 446 people were sentenced to death and 82 people were
hanged, including one juvenile offender.
* In 2007, 309 prisoners were sentenced to death and 134 were hanged.
Most of those sentenced to death are poor and
illiterate. Some face discrimination as members
of religious minority communities. Many were held
without due process of law and faced trials that
did not meet international fair trial standards.
As you know, torture is endemic in Pakistan. This
is due in part to the absence of a scientific,
systematic and up-to-date system for
investigation. For example, forensic facilities,
including inadequate training, equipment and
laboratories are poor. In the absence of proper
forensic tools, police more often than not obtain
"evidence" based on confessions and witness
testimonies through various kinds of torture,
mistreatment, and intimidation. Although there
are many cases of detainees being severely
injured and even dying in police custody, the
courts rarely dismiss cases where there are
credible allegations or evidence of torture, and
few police officers are ever prosecuted, let
alone convicted, for torture or illegal
detention. Given the brutality of methods
used-including beatings, sleep-deprivation,
upside-down hangings, rape and electro-shock-it
is not surprising that detainees often confess to
crimes they did not commit.
Torture can lead to wrongful convictions and the
execution of innocent people. Lawyers and human
rights activists believe that there are many
cases where the person executed was innocent.
Human Rights Watch is also concerned by the use
of the death penalty by special courts like the
anti-terrorism, narcotics and military courts,
all of which fail to deliver fair trials, not
least because these courts are not independent of
the executive. Appointments to the special courts
are meant to be made in consultation with the
High Courts, but this requirement is often
ignored.
Due process of law is also violated when the
prisoner is denied an adequate opportunity to
present a defense. Of special concern in death
penalty cases is the right to counsel.
Individuals sentenced to death are
disproportionately poor and unable to afford
competent counsel. Poor people lack access to
competent counsel at both the trial and appellate
stages. According to one study on condemned
prisoners conducted in 2002, 71 percent of
condemned prisoners in the North West Frontier
Province were uneducated and over half (51
percent) had a monthly income below Rs 4,000
(US$50). The average fee for an appeal to the
High Court in murder cases is around Rs 60,000
(about US$900). This creates an unequal system of
justice, in which those with financial or
political resources are able to obtain better
legal services and avoid the death penalty.
State-funded legal counsel in death penalty cases
in Pakistan is wholly inadequate. In cases where
the possible punishment is death or imprisonment
for life and the defendant is unrepresented, or
declares him or herself financially unable to
afford counsel, the court is obliged to engage a
lawyer at state expense. Lawyers who voluntarily
place their names on a list maintained for this
purpose are paid a paltry Rs 200 per hearing
(less than US$5). It is therefore not surprising
that the Pauper Counsel list is mainly composed
of either young and inexperienced lawyers or
those without briefs-lawyers who should not be
representing persons in death penalty cases.
Pakistani law provides no redress or remedy on
the grounds of incompetent or ineffective legal
representation. In many death penalty cases it
appears that the absence of effective counsel is
the difference between whether the death penalty
is confirmed or set aside. Thus, many end up
receiving the death penalty, not for the worst
crime, as international law requires, but for the
worst lawyer.
A recent case that resulted in an execution
highlighted several problems, including lack of
access to counsel, torture in custody, and
possible religious bias. In 2003, an illiterate
army janitor named Zahid Masih was arrested along
with three others for allegedly molesting and
murdering the child of an army officer. Masih's
family was not told of his whereabouts for more
than two years, until after he was convicted
without counsel on March 10, 2006 by a military
court. The court sentenced Masih, a Christian, to
death while acquitting the other three accused
(who were all Muslim). Masih was allegedly
tortured for 28 days and made a series of
confessions. He also maintained that some army
officers and their orderlies had convinced him
that he would be absolved of charges if he
confessed. On March 12, 2008, Masih was hanged in
Peshawar Central Prison.
Pakistan currently has 26 criminal offenses that
allow for the death penalty-as opposed to just
two, for murder and treason, at the time of
independence in 1947. Several of these laws were
enacted as a specific response to specific law
and order situations, for example, when
kidnapping for ransom was on the rise or when
some particularly heinous cases of violence
against women had been reported. Criminal
offenses carrying the death penalty include
murder, armed robbery, treason, mutiny, railway
sabotage, giving false evidence that causes an
innocent person to be executed, kidnapping, gang
rape, stripping a woman of her clothes in public,
child smuggling, hijacking, arms trading, drug
smuggling and trafficking, extortion, terrorism,
blasphemy and illegal sexual intercourse
(including between partners not married to each
other). This list includes many crimes that
cannot be justified as a "most serious crime" as
required for the death penalty under the
International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. Until the death penalty is banned in
Pakistan, there is an urgent need for a review to
remove the death penalty as a sentence for many
of these crimes.
Consistent with international trends, Human
Rights Watch urges Pakistan to abolish the death
penalty in all circumstances. We recognise that
there will be resistance to this move,
particularly in cases of murder and other violent
crimes. Steps will need to be taken to assure
victims and families of victims of such crimes
that they, too, are receiving justice, and that
there are other ways to achieve justice.
We realize abolition of the death penalty will
take time. Until the death penalty is abolished
by an act of Parliament, we urge you to announce
an immediate moratorium while your government
establishes a commission to review the
application of the death penalty, the many
offenses for which it can be applied, and
implement reforms to ensure that international
fair trial standards are met. There is precedent
for this: when Benazir Bhutto was elected prime
minister in 1988, one of her first acts was to
commute all death sentences to life imprisonment.
On December 18, 2007, the UN General Assembly
passed a resolution by a wide margin calling for
a worldwide moratorium on executions. When the
General Assembly reopens discussion on this issue
in September of this year, we hope that Pakistan
will have already either abolished the death
penalty or joined in this moratorium. Until that
time, Human Rights Watch requests that at a
minimum you ensure that the following key issues
are addressed before any death sentence is handed
down or carried out. These include:
* Ensure that defendants in death penalty
cases have prompt access to competent counsel.
* Ensure that torture and other ill-treatment
is not used to obtain confessions or evidence,
and that any confessions or evidence so obtained
are excluded from trial.
* Ensure that all fair trial rights provided
under Pakistan and international law are met.
* Limit the offenses under which the death
penalty can be awarded to only "the most serious
crimes."
* Review the laws and witness requirements
for crimes in which the death penalty is
applicable to ensure compliance with
international due process standards.
* Ensure that Pakistani federal law with a
bearing on death penalty issues, such as the
Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, is applied to
the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas and
the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Thank you in advance for your consideration, and
we look forward to an open discussion with you
and members of your government on this matter and
others of mutual concern.
Yours sincerely,
Brad Adams
o o o
(ii)
Frontline
June 21 - July 04, 2008
DEADLY GAMBLE
V. Venkatesan
A report studies Supreme Court judgments in death
penalty cases in India from 1950 to 2006 and
uncovers many inconsistencies.
THERE is very little officially compiled
information on the award of capital punishment in
India. This makes the task of understanding the
relationship between the punishment and the
incidence of crime for which death could be
awarded as punishment challenging. Add to this
the phenomenon of conflicting judgments coming
from trial and high courts and from the Supreme
Court itself on the nature of the crimes that can
attract this penalty, and the challenge facing
the researcher is likely to be insurmountable.
A recent study, jointly produced by Amnesty
International India and the People's Union for
Civil Liberties Tamil Nadu & Puducherry, fills
the void and exposes the inconsistencies in these
judgments. The report was researched and written
by Bikram Jeet Batra, consultant to Amnesty
International India. Part I, written by Dr. V.
Suresh and D. Nagasaila of the PUCL-TN&P, sets
the tone for the entire report with its focus on
the need to re-examine the death penalty in India.
Part II of the report cites Prison Statistics
India 2005, compiled by the National Crime
Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs,
and states that there are 273 persons sentenced
to death, as on December 31, 2005. But it does
not clarify whether the figure refers to those
whose sentences were passed by a trial court or
those whose sentences were upheld by a High Court
or the Supreme Court or whose mercy petitions
were pending or had been rejected. In November
2006, Minister for Home Affairs Shivraj Patil
told Parliament that there were 44 mercy
petitions before the President, some of which had
been pending from 1998 and 1999.
The NCRB states that there were 25 executions
between 1995 and 2004. Twenty-four of these took
place between 1995 and 1998, pointing to the fact
that executions have decreased in the past
decade. The NCRB has admittedly no data relating
to the death penalty before 1995. The report
cites a newspaper article (which itself refers to
the 1967 Law Commission report) that suggests
that at least 1,422 people were executed between
1954 and 1963 alone. The report notes that the
Supreme Court admitted in judgments upholding the
constitutionality of the death penalty that there
had been no systematic study on whether this
penalty was a greater deterrent to murder than
the penalty of life imprisonment.
The research for this report involved the study
of over 700 judgments reported in law journals
between 1950 and 2006. In the first phase ending
in 1975, the study found that Supreme Court
judgments relied on a rather abstract phrase -
"ends of justice" - to disguise the arbitrariness
in the use of judicial discretion in sentencing.
Thus, judgments regularly concluded with the mere
assertion that the death sentence was being
commuted or confirmed "to meet the ends of
justice". The study found that there were no
clear, systematic principles governing sentencing.
In 1973, Parliament amended the Criminal
Procedure Code (CrPC) to require judges to take
note of "special reasons" when awarding the death
sentence. The amended CrPC also required a
mandatory pre-sentencing hearing in the trial
court. It was, as the Supreme Court noted later,
a "gradual swing against the imposition of such
penalty". The report found support to the thesis,
advanced by a scholar (A. R. Blackshield) in an
earlier study, that a key factor in determining a
question of life or death was which judge heard
the appeal. The report noted that all those
convicts whose appeals were heard by a bench
featuring Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer (who
personally believes in the abolition of the death
penalty) were more likely to receive a
sympathetic hearing and even a suggestion of a
presidential pardon, if not a commuted sentence.
The amended CrPC could do little to limit this
arbitrariness even though it perhaps ensured that
the overall number of persons sentenced to death
was reduced, the report observes.
Rarest of rare cases
The judgment of the Supreme Court's Constitution
Bench in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980),
which limited the death sentence to the rarest of
rare cases, reinforced the exceptional nature of
the death penalty. This is what Parliament had
secured by amending the CrPC. The requirement
that the judge concerned weigh aggravating and
mitigating factors added a new element to the
sentencing process. A major innovation was the
specific reference in the mitigating factors to
the fact that the state had to establish - with
evidence - that the accused was likely to commit
a crime again and could not be reformed, before
the death sentence could be awarded.
But as the report points out, this requirement
was sometimes observed in the breach in cases
where the Supreme Court confirmed the death
penalty. The reason for this was the court's
flawed understanding that the non-fulfilment of
this requirement alone could not undo all the
aggravating factors such as the gravity and
brutality of the crime. According to the report,
the Bachan Singh formulation saved many from the
gallows in the early 1980s, with the Supreme
Court commuting sentences. In the mid-1980s and
thereafter, however, the impact of the judgment
and its guidelines was less impressive, says the
report.
In Machhi Singh and others v. State of Punjab
(1983), the Supreme Court expanded the "rarest of
rare" formulation beyond the aggravating factors
listed in Bachan Singh to cases where the
"collective conscience" of a community may be
shocked. But the bench in this case underlined
that full weightage must be accorded to the
mitigating circumstances in a case and a just
balance had to be struck between aggravating and
mitigating circumstances. In the post-Machhi
Singh period, considerable inconsistency marked
the Supreme Court's judgments in death penalty
cases. Thus, the court considered the age of the
accused as a mitigating factor in some cases but
not in others. Again, it found the gruesome
nature of the crime sufficient to ignore the
mitigating factors in a few cases but not in
every case.
In an unusually candid judgment delivered on
December 12, 2006, in Aloke Nath Dutta and ors.
v. State of West Bengal, Justices S.B. Sinha and
Dalveer Bhandari admitted the court's failure to
evolve a sentencing policy. They suggested that
different criteria had been adopted by different
benches of the Supreme Court for similar
offences. The bench commuted the sentence in this
case, asking the question: "No sentencing policy
in clear-cut terms has been evolved by the
Supreme Court. What should we do?" The report
concludes: "Despite legislative reform and
reform-minded jurisprudence over a number of
years, the death penalty has continued to be a
lethal lottery."
The report, for instance, found that the Supreme
Court had not upheld the death sentence in any
dowry murder case brought before it. Although the
court gave a variety of reasons for each
commutation in such cases, the message is indeed
disturbing even though the report has refrained
as such from drawing any conclusions. Again, it
is striking that the court has not upheld a death
sentence in any case of rape and murder of an
adult woman, while it has done so in a number of
cases where the victim was a child.
However, the report noted that between 1999 and
2006, all rape and murder cases involving minors
that came before the Supreme Court resulted in
commutations. In one case (Akhtar v. State of
Uttar Pradesh, 1999), Justices G.B. Pattanaik and
Rajendra Babu commuted the sentence of death,
finding that the death was unintentional and
without premeditation as the victim died because
she had been gagged while the rape was being
committed. A similar approach was followed in
Amrit Singh v. State of Punjab (2006), wherein
the court held that the death occurred as a
consequence of the rape and commuted the
sentence. The judges reasoned that rape might be
brutal, but it could have been a lapse on the
appellant's part on seeing a lonely girl at a
secluded place, and therefore, it could not be
said to be a rarest of rare case. Such reasoning
not only smacks of gender insensitivity but
strengthens the argument in favour of a clear
sentencing policy.
It is deplorable how the court viewed the
killings committed by a mob as a mitigating
rather than an aggravating factor. In Kishori v.
State of Delhi (1999), the court noted that the
acts attributed to the mob of which the appellant
was a member could not be stated to be the result
of any organised, systematic activity leading to
genocide, and commuted his sentence. In Manohar
Lal alias Manu and anr. v. State (NCT) of Delhi
(2000), the court, ignoring evidence that the
attacks on Sikhs had been orchestrated, held that
while the killings were most gruesome, the
accused were berserk and "on a rampage, unguided
by sense or reason and triggered by a demented
psyche", and commuted the sentence.
In view of these inconsistencies, the report
calls for an immediate moratorium on executions,
pending abolition of the death penalty in India.
The report will have served its purpose if it
leads to introspection within the legislature,
the executive and the judiciary on the relevance
of the death penalty in India.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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