SACW | July 3-4, 2008 / Sri Lanka's displaced / Nepal: Gay rights / Ban 'Hindu Janjagruti Samiti' and 'Sanatan Sanstha
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Thu Jul 3 21:02:46 CDT 2008
South Asia Citizens Wire | July 3-4 , 2008 |
Dispatch No. 2534 - Year 10 running
[1] Sri Lanka: End Internment of Displaced Persons (Human Rights Watch)
[2] Gay activist in Nepal campaigns against discrimination (Henry Chu)
[3] Afghan pride and German prejudice (Nushin Arbabzadah)
[4] India: Its Time to Ban 'Hindu Janjagruti
Samiti' and 'Sanatan Sanstha' (Subhash Gatade)
[5] India: Worst of times (Bhaskar Ghose)
[6] The Indian approach to climate and energy
policy (Divya Badami Rao and M. V. Ramana)
[7] A pilgrimage in Lahore (Jawed Naqvi)
[8] Gandhi, Dalits and Feminists: Recovering the Convergence (Ajay Gudavarthy)
______
[1]
Human Rights News
SRI LANKA: END INTERNMENT OF DISPLACED PERSONS
Government Illegally Holding Civilians Fleeing Fighting in the North
(New York, July 2, 2008) - The Sri Lankan
government should end the arbitrary detention of
more than 400 civilians displaced by recent
fighting at a newly established camp in northern
Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said today.
Since March 2008, the government of Sri Lanka has
detained civilians fleeing areas controlled by
the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
at a so-called welfare center in Kalimoddai,
Mannar district. The Sri Lankan armed forces have
imposed severe restrictions on freedom of
movement, instituting a daily pass system that
limits to 30 the number of people who can leave
the camp each day, and only if a family member
remains behind to guarantee the detainees return
in the evening. No court has authorized their
detention and no charges have been filed against
any of the camp's occupants, in violation of
international human rights law.
"The Sri Lankan government shouldn't treat
civilians as criminals just because they're
fleeing a conflict area," said Brad Adams, Asia
director at Human Rights Watch. "Valid security
concerns should be addressed on a case-by-case
basis, not with wholesale restrictions on freedom
of movement."
Sri Lankan authorities maintain that detention at
the camp is a security measure to protect
displaced persons from possible LTTE reprisals.
While the government has an obligation to protect
internally displaced persons (IDPs), it cannot do
so at the expense of their lawful rights to
liberty and freedom of movement, Human Rights
Watch said. The security rationale is also
undermined by the government's practice in the
last two months of also detaining at the
Kalimoddai center at least 10 refugees who have
returned from India. The Sri Lankan army has
publicly indicated that Kalimoddai is just the
first of more proposed sites in Vavuniya district
to detain persons fleeing fighting in the
LTTE-held Vanni.
On May 10 and 11, local authorities conducted a
survey in Kalimoddai camp to assess the wishes of
displaced persons on their preferred place of
residence. Out of the then camp population of
257, only five families indicated a wish to
remain in Kalimoddai. The large majority
indicated that they wished to leave and had
alternative places to stay, including with nearby
host families. To date, unconfirmed information
indicates only 28 people have been released.
International human rights law and international
humanitarian law during internal armed conflicts
prohibit arbitrary detention and unnecessary
restrictions on freedom of movement.
In his May 21 report to the UN Human Rights
Council on his December 2007 visit to Sri Lanka,
Walter Kälin, the United Nations
secretary-general's representative on IDPs,
emphasized that IDPs in Sri Lanka remained
"entitled to all guarantees of international
human rights and international humanitarian law
subscribed to by the State." He noted that "while
the need to address security may be a component
of the plan [to receive IDPs], it should be
humanitarian and civilian in nature. In
particular, IDPs' freedom of movement must be
respected, and IDPs may not be confined to a
camp."
The UN Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement, an authoritative framework for the
protection of IDPs, provides that, consistent
with the right to liberty, internally displaced
persons "shall not be interned in or confined to
a camp." The principles recognize that
"exceptional circumstances" may permit
confinement only for so long as it is "absolutely
necessary," but the Sri Lankan government has not
demonstrated that such circumstances exist.
Intensified military operations in 2008 against
LTTE-controlled areas in the north have
significantly increased displacement of the
civilian population. Virtually all those
displaced are of Tamil ethnicity. During the
course of the two-decade-long armed conflict with
the LTTE, Sri Lankan authorities have frequently
restricted the movement of ethnic Tamils,
especially Tamil displaced persons.
In addition to concerns about those who fled to
government-controlled areas, many of the
displaced who remain in LTTE areas are in need of
humanitarian assistance. The Sri Lankan
government has severely restricted humanitarian
access to LTTE-controlled areas, leaving an
estimated 107,000 displaced persons with
inadequate relief, including water and sanitation
facilities. Meanwhile, the LTTE continues to
prevent civilians from leaving areas under its
control, thereby impeding their ability to seek
safety in other parts of the country.
"Both the LTTE and the government have a poor
record of providing aid to populations at risk,"
said Adams. "Ensuring that humanitarian
organizations have access to those affected by
the fighting should be a priority concern, not an
afterthought."
_____
[2]
The Christian Science Monitor
June 30, 2008
ACTIVIST: IN CONSERVATIVE NEPAL, A VOICE FOR EQUAL RIGHTS.
Gay activist in Nepal campaigns against discrimination
Sunil Pant speaks up for disenfranchised groups
in court and petitions the government for new
constitutional rights.
by Henry Chu | Los Angeles Times
Katmandu, Nepal - Sunil Pant has built a
successful gay rights movement - one that has
fought against discrimination and violence in
this conservative Southeast Asian country.
"It's absolutely astonishing," said Scott Long,
who works on issues of sexuality for Human Rights
Watch. "Considering how few resources they have
and the depth of prejudice they have to fight
against, what they've achieved is extraordinary."
The advances are part of a larger social and
political ferment brewing in Nepal, one of the
world's poorest countries. After 10 years of a
Maoist insurgency, a democratic transition is
under way.
There is a clear sense that everything is up for
grabs as Nepal reinvents itself, a rare moment
when groups of whatever stripe - women, ethnic
minorities, members of lower Hindu castes - have
a shot at leaving their imprint on the fabric of
the state.
"We have a golden opportunity to raise our voice
and contribute to this country," Pant said. "This
is a struggle I think this generation has to do,
about being brave and honest."
For years, they were mute. And even now, Nepalese
society remains extremely traditional, bound by
deeply inscribed values and rigid hierarchies.
Conservative mores reign in this majority Hindu
country, where millions of uneducated villagers
eke out meager livings in near-feudal conditions.
At the beginning, Pant's organization, the Blue
Diamond Society, focused solely on health issues.
When an official saw the word "homosexuality" in
the group's application, he told Pant he couldn't
register unless his goal was to turn gay people
straight. Pant removed the reference.
But within a few years, Pant concluded that it
was impossible to wage an effective battle
against HIV/AIDS without also addressing official
attitudes toward homosexuals.
Many Nepalese gays said they were harassed by
police, who would beat them or extort money. They
were sometimes fired or denied housing. Pant
launched a drive to document and publicize such
cases.
An extraordinary week in 2004 catapulted his
cause to the center of public attention. Even
conservative Nepalese who don't approve of
homosexuality were horrified by the actions of a
policeman who slit a transgendered person's
throat. When 39 members of the Blue Diamond
Society were arrested at a protest a few days
later, sympathetic media coverage and
international outrage stung the government.
That "was a turning point," Pant said. "We became
much stronger in responding to violence against
us."
Political recognition was slower in coming. Gay
activists joined other nonprofit groups and
political parties in agitating against the
15-month absolute rule imposed by King Gyanendra.
Yet after popular government was restored in
2006, they found few willing to take up their
cause.
"They continually ignored us," said Pant.
He then set his sights on another vehicle for
securing gay rights: the judicial system.
With three other civil groups, the Blue Diamond
Society filed a petition with the Supreme Court
appealing for equal rights and an end to
discrimination.
"It's the court's responsibility to be the
eye-opener of society a lot of the time and to
lead the government and country," Pant said. In
December, the court ruled in their favor.
______
[3]
guardian.co.uk
July 3, 2008
AFGHAN PRIDE AND GERMAN PREJUDICE
The appeal to 'culture' to explain the murder of
a young Afghan-German woman by her brother
sidesteps the real issue: class
by Nushin Arbabzadah
Morsal Obeidi was born amid civil war in
Afghanistan but it was in Hamburg, a peaceful
German city, that she was murdered. The killer
was her own brother, Ahmad, 23. He stabbed her 20
times to "protect the family's honour". He felt
no regret.
The incident happened in May but Hamburg's Afghan
community is still in shock. Hamburg has the
largest population of Afghans in Europe, but so
far they have lived inconspicuously. Afghans are
among Germany's better-integrated ethnic
minorities. Some 40% are German citizens and the
community values education. So what went wrong?
Why did Ahmad feel compelled to kill his sister
when in Afghanistan men like Perwez Kambakhsh
risk death by challenging traditional perceptions
of Afghan women?
With this question in mind, I followed Afghan
students' debates on studivz.net, Germany's
Facebook. But discussing Morsal with German
Afghans was not helpful, as the majority felt
defensive. I could understand why they felt the
need to protect their reputation. Ahmad had
delivered the perfect excuse for racists in
Germany to indulge in Ausländer-bashing. For
Germany has a problem with xenophobia. A recent
study revealed that xenophobic and
anti-democratic views are terrifyingly widespread
and that many young Germans hope for some kind of
"führer" to come to their rescue.
I gained little insight from the Afghans because
they felt defensive. So I turned to the German
media for an explanation, but to no avail. While
the murder itself was base and brutal, the
discussion around it was abstract and
philosophical. Big words and abstract concepts
like Afghanische Kultur, individualism and
freedom were repeatedly used to explain the case
in terms of a clash of cultures - western
individualism versus outdated eastern tribalism.
Spiegel TV, for example, introduced the story as
follows: "It was an unequal clash of cultures
when German-Afghan Morsal met her brother on the
night of her murder."
In a tribute video, Morsal's friends said: you
died because you wanted to chose for yourself how
to live your life. In my view, to assume that a
teenager would want to risk death for her belief
in an abstract concept like individualism was
quite far fetched. Furthermore, Morsal was
attached to her family, which is why she never
seriously tried to leave them. It was her trust
in her family that eventually killed her.
The view that Morsal died because of her desire
for self-determination was prominent in the
media, reinforcing the impression of a clash of
cultures. But the Afghans I talked to denied that
"honour killing" was part of their culture. They
said: What about the German Familiendramen
(domestic murders) that regularly take place at
Christmas? Are they part of German culture? They
believed Morsal's death was a domestic tragedy.
They pointed out that Ahmad had a criminal past
and had already been sentenced for grievous
bodily harm. Furthermore, it was absurd to think
that Ahmad had committed an honour killing
bearing in mind that he allegedly frequented
brothels, took drugs and was often drunk. But
even though I understood how they felt, the
Afghans' answers left me unsatisfied. The fact
was that Ahmad himself saw his act as "an honour
killing". He felt he was innocent since he had
acted because of a higher power, "culture". But
the problem with "culture" is that it can't be
put on trial. It's too abstract and powerful,
which is probably why the German authorities
failed to protect Morsal even though they were
aware of the danger she was in. Ahmad even hit
his sister in front of policemen and they didn't
interfere.
I had doubts that culture was the cause of
Morsal's death. After all, what exactly is Afghan
culture and who is representing it? There is no
book of rules called "Afghan culture". When it
comes down to it, it's one Afghan's word against
another's. Perwez Kambakhsh, Malalai Joya and
countless others would never accept honour
killings. It's their word against Ahmad's. The
reason is simple. The term culture implies a
fixed set of unchangeable values that all Afghans
adhere to. But, in reality, whatever this thing
is that people call culture, it's something that
is fluid and changing. Suicide attacks used to be
a cultural taboo but now they're common.
Challenging authority figures used to be
culturally unacceptable but now it's widespread
in the media. Even the Taliban are not what they
used to be. So Ahmad's excuse is weak. After all,
he can't call Afghan Culture to court as his
witness to confirm that it had ordered Morsal's
killing.
While culture doesn't help us understand Ahmad's
behaviour, class does. "Honour" is the poor man's
capital. Making Afghan men undergo German
citizenship tests will not protect Afghan women.
The key is in social mobility and tackling racism
to create confident men. A confident man has no
need to prove his manliness by controlling his
sisters.
______
[4]
www.sacw.net - July 3, 2008
Spritual As Criminal ?
TIME TO BAN 'HINDU JANJAGRUTI SAMITI' AND 'SANATAN SANSTHA'
by Subhash Gatade
( It is really difficult to believe how an
organisation which supposedly 'aims to present
religious mysticism in a scientific language for
the curious and to guide seekers' and which
'conducts weekly spiritual meetings, discourses,
child guidance classes, workshops on
spirituality, training in self-defense and
campaigns to create awareness of righteousness'
to further these aims can double up as an
organisation which can invite prosecution under
'laws meant for unlawful and terrorist
organisations'.
But any impartial observer of the activities of
'Sanatan Sanstha' and 'Hindu Janjagruti Samiti'
would concur with the view that these
organisations need not be allowed to spread their
venomous agenda among innocent people any
further. The recent bomb blasts in Maharashtra
where members of these organisations have been
found to be involved is another reminder about
the danger which these organisations present
before the communal harmony situation in our
country.)
It is definitely no Kafkasquean scenario where
one fine morning someone experiences
metamorphosis of a different kind.
It is a real world, world which talks of
'spiritual salvation' and 'awareness of
righteousness', a world which supposedly 'aims to
present religious mysticism in a scientific
language for the curious and to guide seekers',
which 'conducts weekly spiritual meetings,
discourses, child guidance classes, workshops on
spirituality etc.' but this is just one part of
the whole story.
The other part of the story is that here
'destruction of evildoers' is an integral part of
'spiritual practice'. And this 'destruction' is
to be done at 'physical and psychological level'.
Interestingly to facilitate this 'Dharm Kranti'
(religious revolution) the seekers are also
provided with training in arms - rifles,
trishuls, lathis and other weapons.
Enter the world of Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu
Janjagruti Samiti, which recently reached
national headlines for completely non-spiritual
reasons, when its activists/members were arrested
by Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra
state for recent bomb blasts in Maharashtra. It
was sheer coincidence that these terrorists
belonging to these organisations could be nabbed
and for the first time a possibility emerged
about tracing the real culprits behind many
unexplained bomb blasts in this part of Western
India.
In fact the bomb blasts at theatres in Vashi (
Visnudas Bhave Auditorium, 31 st May) and Thane (
Gadkari Rangayatan Auditorium, 4 th June) which
fortunately did not kill anyone, would have
similarly joined many such blasts where real
culprits could never be identified, if the ATS
had followed the oftbeaten track of stigmatising
particular community and thus restricting the
scope of investigation. One crucial link which
the police already had was that the play which
was to be staged in these two auditoriums named
"Amhi Pachpute" had evoked a strong reaction from
the members of the Hindu Jangagruti Samiti (HJS)
and Sanatan Sanstha (SS) earlier. The HJS and SS
members had even held joint protest to register
their protest about the manner in which 'hindu
mythological figures had been shown in poor
light' in the drama. Interestingly HJS members
had similarly held violent protests earlier when
another play by the same author 'Yada Kadachit'
was staged.
The arrested terrorists namely Ramesh Hanumant
Gadkari ( 50), Mangesh Dinkar Nikam ( 34), Vikram
Bhave (26), Santosh Sitaram Angre (26)and Dr
Hemant Chalke provided many crucial details to
the ATS team. It was the same group which was
involved in bomb explosion at Panvel Cinema Hall
in February when Jodhaa Akbar was screened. They
had also planted a bomb outside a mosque/dargah
on the Pen Highway last Diwali. It was worth
noting that these terrorists who owed their
allegiance with HJS and Sanatan Sanstha did not
regret their act. They reportedly told the
investigators that '' We are proud of what we did
to deter those who were trying to show our gods
and goddesses in poor light."
The aggressive statements by the culprits
emphasised the arrival of Hindutva terrorism in
India - a charge which was already in air but
never conceded by anyone. Not to be left behind,
Bal Thackeray, the Supremo of Shiv Sena praised
these 'brave Hindus' but chided them for using
improvised techniques and exhorted Hindus to form
'suicide squads' to tackle the 'menace of Islamic
terrorism'.
FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/3jul08gatade.html
______
[5]
Frontline
July 05-18, 2008
WORST OF TIMES
by Bhaskar Ghose
We stand close to a state where our liberties may
be overtaken, and it is time we saw the menace
and confronted it with determination.
[Photo] PAUL NORONHA
A silent protest by various citizens' groups in
Mumbai on June 10 expressing solidarity with
"Loksatta" editor Kumar Ketkar after his home in
Thane was attacked by Shiv Sangram activists.
ON June 6 in Thane in Maharashtra, a group of
some 70 or 80 men led by a Nationalist Congress
Party (NCP) leader, Vinayak Mete, attacked the
house of Kumar Ketkar, editor of Loksatta. The
attackers belong to a little-known group of
bigots called the Shiv Sangram. They threw stones
and bricks at Ketkar's house, smashed window
panes, smeared tar across the doors and windows
and tried to break into the flat, in which
attempt they were fortunately unsuccessful.
Inevitably, they also burnt copies of Loksatta on
the road.
All this was because Ketkar had written an
editorial in which he criticised the State
government for deciding to erect a 309-foot-tall
(92.7 metres) statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji in
the Arabian Sea off Marine Drive, spending crores
that could have been spent on developmental work
in the State.
The editorial was critical of the government and
did not say anything about Shivaji, but that was
not what these bigots were interested in. They
apparently resented the fact that Ketkar dared to
refer to the erection of a statue of Shivaji.
They conveniently overlooked what Ketkar himself
pointed out, that "Shivaji Maharaj did not go
around erecting statues, he instead attended to
people's problems".
The attack cannot, however, be written off as the
action of a lunatic fringe. It has more sinister
implications. It is a manifestation of the
growing menace of extremism in different avatars
in civil society. A leading newspaper carried a
story some weeks later of the growth of networks
of extreme Hindu organisations, which are known
to very few but which appear to have a common
agenda: using religion to foment hatred and using
physical force. Three of these groups are the
Sanatan Sanstha, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and
the Dharmashakti Sena. This last organisation
held a rally, it is reported, where its members
wore military fatigues.
The publications of these groups refer to attacks
on Hindus by "anti-Hindus" and laud former
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh leader Golwalkar's
exhortation that weapons should be countered with
weapons. They are scathing about the present
government's weak record in dealing with Islamist
terrorism and repeatedly call on Hindus to unite.
These three groups - there are presumably others
- already have cells across Maharashtra and Goa,
according to the newspaper report, and one of
them, the Sanatan Sanstha, has centres in New
Jersey, Brisbane, Melbourne and Dubai.
The growth of such extremist units needs to be
seen in the context of the enormous power that is
wielded in Gujarat by the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) and its associated groups and by the Chief
Minister himself, who in a recent speech declared
that Gujarat was quite capable of managing its
affairs if the Centre did not raise taxes from
the State - a veiled reference to the fact that
it could well do without the Centre, in other
words, without the rest of the country. It has to
be seen in the context of the fact that the BJP
has been able to form a government in Karnataka
and that in election after election it has
secured the mandate to govern even if, in some
cases, this is with the help of political
partners.
The attack by the Shiv Sangram on Ketkar's house
has been condemned by most parties across the
country and a number of organisations, not the
least of which is the Editors Guild, but some
others have maintained a studious silence. It is
easy to guess which these parties and
organisations are.
The fact is that extremism is not only growing,
but it is being allowed to grow - and not only
among Hindus. The real danger is that it is part
of a larger propensity - the propensity to
counter an expression of views by someone, a
writer or political personality, with violence.
And with this, there is the other worrying
factor, the indecisive nature of the response to
such attempts to suppress a person's right to
express his or her views. "The best lack all
conviction," wrote the poet W.B. Yeats, sadly,
"And the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Why should this happen? Why do we not stand by
our commitments to free speech, to democracy and
to democratic institutions, things for which
earlier generations fought and often paid dearly
for, with their lives or with years in prison? It
is true that a great deal of all this is taught
to our children in schools. They are told about
the Constitution, our fundamental rights and
freedoms, but merely telling them is clearly not
enough.
Somehow, we do not seem to have been able to make
it real enough to matter in a very direct,
personal sense to each member of the younger
generation. The strong impact of television and
the commercial world that it projects through the
vast number of advertisements may well be a
factor in all this, but surely we have had
television around for long enough to know how to
use it for purposes that are not wholly
commercial or designed to make money.
The Central government runs the biggest and most
widely spread network of radio and television
centres. Could these not be used in a meaningful
manner to counter the insidious menace of
extremism in different forms? This is not just a
noble ideal, one that needs to be commended to
the authorities as a worthwhile ideal. It is more
of an emergency plan that needs to be considered.
It would be wrong to look at our growing urban
areas and our villages and conclude that the
aberration of extremism is a problem that can be
tackled locally or with some perfunctory action.
A time will come when there will be no time left,
when good intentions will be overtaken by
stronger and less palatable emotions and
hysteria. It happened in Germany in the 1930s;
let us not forget that the Nazi Party was elected
to power and that Hitler was elected Chancellor
of the Reich.
This is the danger that no one seems to be taking
very seriously, certainly not the Right, the BJP
and its allies, for instance. But of all the
groups and organisations, they need to be the
most worried. This is a menace they will find
difficult to handle. If the United Progressive
Alliance government appears to be indecisive and
hesitant, the National Democratic Alliance could
find that firm action is an option that does not
exist, should it come to power.
"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people
must lift itself up to liberty. It is a blessing
that must be earned before it is enjoyed." These
are the words written above one of the grand,
arched entrances to the North Block of the
Central Secretariat in New Delhi. This message
may have sounded patronising when it was written
but is coming very close to our own darkest
anxieties: We stand close to a state where our
liberties may be overtaken, and it is time we saw
the menace and confronted it with determination.
______
[6]
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
3 July 2008
THE INDIAN APPROACH TO CLIMATE AND ENERGY POLICY
by Divya Badami Rao and M. V. Ramana |
Article Highlights
* India won't commit to reducing its
greenhouse gas emission targets unless developed
nations such as the United States agree to pay
for it.
* While India's emissions are relatively
small when compared to the developed world, it
should still develop much better energy policies.
* In particular, current Indian energy
policies are completely inequitable, as they
often focus on meeting the demands of the urban
rich at the cost of poverty alleviation and rural
development.
* Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has
promised to keep the country's per-capita
emissions below the global average, but he hasn't
considered what that means for future energy
planning.
At the end of the thirteenth meeting of the U.N.
Framework Convention on Climate Change that took
place in Bali last December, the Indian
delegation was relieved, happy even. According to
Kapil Sibal, India's minister for science and
technology and head of the delegation, "India did
not have to give any commitment on reduction of
greenhouse gases to the world. We have achieved
our goals." Such statements may explain the
Economist's recent observation that "India has
acquired an ugly reputation on the global front
against climate change. Among big countries,
perhaps only America and Russia are considered
more obdurate."
Only a little while ago, China was viewed
similarly. Like India, it had traditionally
avoided any kind of emission-reduction
commitments, citing the need to rely on cheap
fossil fuels to meet its development goals. But
this is no longer the case: "In the past couple
of years, Chinese officials have begun sounding
like converts to the climate-change cause," the
same Economist article stated. China's target is
to reduce its energy intensity (energy used per
dollar of gross domestic product generated) to 20
percent below 2005 levels by 2010 and increase
the share of renewable sources in its electricity
generation capacity to 20 percent by 2020. In
June 2007, the Chinese government released a
National Climate Change Program that outlines the
steps Beijing will take to meet these targets, as
well as its plans to support adaptation.
Because of China's policy shift, India is finding
itself somewhat isolated at international
negotiations. More pressure is coming from the
United States, which refuses to commit to any
emission reductions without similar binding
commitments from China and India. Along with
China's newfound stewardship, this international
pressure seems to have finally prompted the
Indian government to establish its own Council on
Climate Change--a high-level group of experts and
senior government officials to advise New Delhi
on measures it can take to mitigate and adapt to
climate change.
On June 30, the council released India's National
Action Plan on Climate Change PDF. The 47-page
document primarily offers a list of eight
technological efforts, the pride of place being
given to research and development of solar
energy. But staying true to India's stance at
Bali, the report doesn't set any concrete
numerical goals for emission reductions--or even
for energy intensity.
A major point of contention in Bali was whether,
in the absence of concrete funding by developed
countries, developing countries would agree to
commit themselves to any emissions reductions.
Despite pressure from the United States, the
final text of the Bali road map pledged
developing country parties to the framework
convention to "consider" nationally appropriate
mitigation actions "in the context of sustainable
development, supported and enabled by technology,
financing, and capacity-building, in a
measurable, reportable, and verifiable manner."
Note the use of the word "actions," as opposed to
commitments, and the linkage between actions and
"support" for such actions (implicitly by
developed countries), especially financing.
Indian diplomats played an important role in
placing the clause "measurable, reportable, and
verifiable" at the end--the implication being
that any mitigation actions taken by India that
are "measurable, reportable, and verifiable"
should be supported by international funding.
This position makes it difficult for India to
commit to any such climate-mitigation
actions--and emission targets would certainly fit
that description--unilaterally.
Since the Bali meeting, members of India's
climate council have argued publicly that the
cost estimates of even modest emission reductions
are so high that India would have to cut
expenditures on traditional development
activities such as building schools and hospitals
to afford them--obviously, an unacceptable option
within the country.
The other argument against taking on emission
targets is that India emits just 4 percent of
global emissions, and therefore, its actions
shouldn't be of major concern. Prodipto Ghosh, a
council member, wrote in the Indian Express, "If
India were to eliminate all its [greenhouse gas]
emissions, essentially by going back to the Stone
Age, it would hardly matter for the climate
change impacts on India, or indeed, anywhere
else!"
That may be true today, but India's emissions are
likely to become more significant in the coming
decades. In its 2006 World Energy Outlook, the
International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that
developing countries will overtake member nations
of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, i.e. the wealthier nations, sometime
around 2020 in annual carbon dioxide emissions.
And from 2005 to 2030, the IEA projects PDF that
India and China alone will contribute 56 percent
of the increase in projected worldwide emissions.
The United States believes that such projections
are ample reason for India and other developing
nations to commit to measures that would help
them avoid reaching these emission levels.
But the Indian government's preference, as well
as that of many other developing countries, is to
measure accountability for climate mitigation in
terms of the past. For example, between 1900 and
1999, carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel
combustion in China, India, and other developing
countries in Asia together accounted for only
12.2 percent of total global emissions, while the
United States accounted for 30.3 percent, the
European Union contributed 27.7 percent, and the
former Soviet Union 13.7 percent, according to
the World Resources Institute. Even when
projected to 2030, the emissions ratio doesn't
change much PDF. This difference was explicitly
acknowledged in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which
established "legally binding" reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions for developed countries
such as the United States and Japan but not
developing countries, most notably India and
China.
Delineating responsibility for climate mitigation
by using an analysis of per-capita emissions
makes developing countries less culpable still.
Indian interlocutors also stress that while
India's overall emissions will increase, it will
be because of the combined total emissions of a
far larger national population--not because
Indians have intrinsically energy-intensive
lifestyles. As of 2005, India's annual emissions
work out PDF to less than 1.1 tons of carbon
dioxide per capita; in the United States, it's
more than 20 tons per capita. That's a big gap
that won't be closing any time soon.
While these arguments may make it sound as though
India is ethically justified in refusing to
curtail emissions for the sake of its
development, the problem is that the energy
policies that the government is defending are not
justifiable--neither on the basis of efficiency,
equity, nor environmental sustainability. The
hope amongst those desiring a more sound energy
policy, especially independent analysts, is that
the pressure on India to devise a climate plan of
action will bring the government's historically
poor energy and development policies into sharper
focus.
Energy planning PDF in India has resulted in an
electricity sector that doesn't provide access
for millions of rural inhabitants, proves
unreliable even for those who have access, and
negatively impacts local environments, disrupting
the lives and livelihoods of untold millions. For
evidence of the latter, see this photo essay on
coal and uranium mining in India, this World Bank
report PDF on a power plant run by India's
National Thermal Power Corporation, and Indian
novelist Arundhati Roy's writing on the impact of
dams on villages and indigenous populations.
Unfortunately, the future policies the government
is considering are no better.
Equity has been a prime casualty. Even though
energy projects are often constructed in the name
of poverty alleviation and rural development,
they're largely focused on meeting the demands of
the urban rich. (Note "demands" should be
differentiated from the normative term "needs.")
Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that even
official estimates show that around 56 percent of
rural households PDF in the country didn't have
electricity in 2000. These residents live without
adequate lighting, and many spend hours each week
collecting firewood because they don't have
access to modern cooking fuels. An October 2007
Greenpeace report PDF shows how the rich in India
have much higher carbon emissions compared to the
poor.
Not only do the poor and marginalized in India
not have access to electricity, they also often
face the brunt of the negative consequences of
generating electricity for the rich. In a densely
populated country such as India, a significant
fraction of the population is directly dependent
on land, water, and forests. Practically all
large-scale electricity generation projects in
the country--whether coal plants, nuclear plants,
or large dams--impact these resources, and most
recent large-scale electricity generation
projects have met with stiff resistance from
local inhabitants. (See "Haripur: Land for
Nuclear Plant" PDF and "Campaign Against
Coal-Based Thermal Power Plant Project," an
online petition signed by hundreds of people who
oppose a proposed coal-based thermal power plant
in India's Chamalapura Valley.) This alone makes
it unlikely that massive expansion of large and
centralized energy projects will materialize
anytime soon.
Independent energy analysts have shown that it's
possible to plan for energy and electricity in a
way that caters to India's marginalized poor and
that this makes financial sense. Studies PDF
using the development-focused end-use-oriented
service-directed (DEFENDUS PDF) paradigm for
energy pioneered by the late Amulya Reddy and his
collaborators have shown that in contrast to
conventional energy planning, DEFENDUS could
result in greater achievement of development
objectives at far lower cost in a shorter time.
And because of the emphasis on improved
efficiency--as well as the use of decentralized
and renewable sources of electricity generation
wherever it made economic sense--it also resulted
in enormous environmental gains.
The necessity of such methods of energy planning
that pay attention not just to overall
electricity generation targets but also equity
and environmental sustainability is implicitly
highlighted by the National Action Plan on
Climate Change. While it includes no commitments
to reduce emissions, the plan reiterates a
non-numerical promise by Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, first made at a June 2007 meeting
PDFof the G-8 in Germany that India's per-capita
emissions wouldn't exceed the global average
emissions of the developed countries.
An important international implication of this
statement, which India's special envoy on climate
change recently highlighted DOC, is that
according to Singh's promise, India will limit
its carbon emissions according to the scale of
effort that the developed countries are
themselves prepared to put in. "The more
ambitious they are, the lower the limit that
India would be prepared to accept. Thus, there is
an inbuilt mutuality of incentive," the envoy
stated. If Washington takes Singh's commitment
seriously, it could be a small but significant
step in breaking the impasse of mutual inaction.
Though mentioned again in the national action
plan, the document fails to explore the
implications of the prime minister's promise. If
the promise is taken together with what
scientists posit are the requirements for
avoiding catastrophic climate change, then it
would imply tight constraints on emissions for
India. If the world were to agree on reducing its
emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by
2050, then in one plausible scenario PDF, global
emissions would have to peak by 2015 before
declining to less than 20 billion tons of carbon
dioxide by 2030 (and less than 6 tons by 2050).
The United Nations projects PDF that the world's
population in 2030 will be about eight billion or
more. If the allowed emissions were to be shared
equally, the per-capita threshold will be 2.5
tons of carbon dioxide.
Compare this with what is projected by India's
planners for its emissions. In its "Integrated
Energy Policy" report, the Indian Planning
Commission projects PDF that electricity
generation in India during the next 25 years will
increase seven- to eightfold, involving a four-
to fivefold increase in coal use and a nine- to
tenfold increase in the use of natural gas. This
would increase India's per-capita emissions to
3.6-5.5 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.
Reducing per-capita emissions by 1 ton of carbon
dioxide is hard enough, but it's much harder for
a nation whose population is expected to be 1.5
billion people. This is the challenge that the
national action plan should have identified and
based its targets on. Turning around emission
trends will not be easy, but the task will become
harder the longer planning for it is delayed.
_______
[7]
Dawn
July 03, 2008
A pilgrimage in Lahore
by Jawed Naqvi
THE visa regime between India and Pakistan is
oriented to the spread of religious beliefs.
There are special arrangements for visitors to
Nankana Sahib and Ajmer, among other places of
religious importance.
Intensive discussions have been devoted to
Katasraj, a place off the Lahore-Islamabad
motorway, which is of importance to Vaishnavite
Hindus. Whenever I can, I make my own personal
pilgrimage to Pakistan to meet a deity - not of
religious wisdom but of devout secularism. Neruda
would call her a deity of wheat and revolution.
Between August 1997 when I met her first in her
arborous house in Lahore for a documentary on
South Asia (sponsored by the Indian foreign
ministry), and a few days ago, when I visited her
as a doting pilgrim, Tahira Mazhar Ali had not
changed. Well into her eighties she remains an
indefatigable campaigner for the underdog. She
ushered me to an airy room with old books and
pictures of her family, which includes a few
illustrious journalists. This was the same room
where she had spoken to me on television about
the vital need for India and Pakistan to join
hands to improve the lot of their people.
This was also the room, she revealed this time,
where she had comforted Benazir Bhutto when her
father was going to be hanged. She recalled the
dramatic moments that ensued, allowing the
narrative to be interspersed with an easy smile
or an elaborate pause.
"When she drove up, I saw two other cars
following her. I said to myself, this girl is in
trouble. They were police cars. During lunch I
held her arm and said to her, 'Benazir, they have
come to take you. But you don't get upset. Just
take your time and eat well.' And she ate very
calmly after that," recalled Tahira Mazhar Ali.
After what must be the longest luncheon meeting
of its kind it was time to face the inevitable
moment.
As they headed for the door, she held Benazir's
arm again and whispered words of solidarity and
comfort. "As she sat in her car, I looked at the
two cars behind. They remained motionless. After
a hundred excited bye byes, when she finally sped
off and disappeared from sight, the two men from
the police cars walked up to me. They said
politely, 'Bibi we have come to take you.'"
Tahira Mazhar Ali has been to prison a few times
to uphold her idealism and also to motivate her
fellow comrades. This particular outing was going
to be longer. I think she stayed six months or
so. Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote a moving poem on
Bhutto's execution, which he sent her to read.
"By then, I had befriended all the women from the
so-called criminal cell. They were lovely women -
unlettered but emancipated women, and mostly
victims of their circumstances. They openly
admitted to killing a husband or some other
relative or a neighbour and said they would do it
again to defend themselves from their savagery.
One early morning we (the political women
prisoners) woke up to a lot of wailing from the
other cells. Bhutto my son, Bhutto my brother,
Bhutto my father, they were screaming. Shouts in
rustic Punjabi of long live Bhutto rent the
prison walls. They were all acutely political
women in their own way."
But for her sense of humour and an even more
defined sense of the absurd Tahira Mazhar Ali
could be mistaken for a stubborn rabble-rouser.
One day when she decided to read out the poem on
Bhutto to the inmates, they thought it was a
letter from home.
"They all clapped indulgently at every line I
read. When the poem was over and we dispersed, a
woman walked up to me and asked very earnestly if
the person whose lines I had read was my close
relative. She confessed she had not understood a
word of it, but the trouble I took to read it
suggested that somehow this was a letter from
home. So they cheered at every inflection and
pause.
"These women had never heard of Faiz, nor did
they care for his poetry. They merely cheered me
because they thought it was a letter from home
and I was feeling lonely. And yet there was never
a night when we did not hear them sing Bulleh
Shah in their prison cells. They sang him and
wept copiously as they sang for so many days
during my incarceration. When I told Faiz how the
women inmates preferred Bulleh Shah to him, he
had a hearty laugh and asked me to write about
it. Now that was a tall order. I don't like to
write."
That's not entirely true of course. As recently
as in May I found a letter written quite
spontaneously to this newspaper. It was a simple,
old-fashioned communist's admonishment of the way
things had turned out thanks to the betrayal by
those she had expected better from. Punjab that
had fed the rest of India was going hungry, she
protested. Her outrage flowed from six decades of
engagement with the peasants' movements, of
grassroots work for educating women and fighting
for their still largely elusive political and
social rights.
When the world grieved over Benazir Bhutto's
assassination, Tahira Mazhar Ali felt a mixture
of pain and anger at the loss - pain because she
knew Benazir had cared for her people, angry
because she saw her straying from the path that
took her to the people.
"I couldn't believe that her last speech was
entirely addressed to the American patrons. Had
she solved the problem of poverty and hunger of
the people that she had moved to a new agenda?
No. She still needed to fulfil the promises made
by her father. Now, after her there's no one else
who will."
Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan reminds me of a few
valiant women the Indian subcontinent has
produced. There is a glimpse of the late Kalpana
Joshi (nee Dutt) who was accused of terrorism and
imprisoned by the British. I once travelled with
Kalpana Joshi in a DTC bus in Delhi when she was
going to buy fish. With her simple anecdotal
conversation, the octogenarian Marxist could
convince a hardboiled cynic into believing that
meaningful social changes were nigh.
She also reminds me of Arundhati Roy in a way,
because both are sceptical about the efficacy of
NGOs when the need really is for a wider
political mobilisation. But most of all she
reminds me of Fidel Castro of recent days.
Someone asked the Cuban leader amid the rubble of
the Soviet Union in 1991, why he liked to stick
out like a sore thumb with bristling idealism
when everyone else had accepted moderation. His
reply was simply withering: "As the world moves
to the right, I look that much more of a leftist
by simply remaining where I was."
Tahira Mazhar Ali is like a character out of
Brecht who refuses to budge from her belief in
the undulating dialectics of life. She may not be
part of the India-Pakistan radar about visas. But
her house in Lahore is always worth a pilgrimage.
The writer is Dawn's correspondent in Delhi.
_______
[8]
Economic and Political Weekly
June 21 - June 27, 2008
Gandhi, Dalits and Feminists: Recovering the Convergence
by Ajay Gudavarthy
The dalit/feminist critique of Gandhi and his
philosophy derives from the same epistemological
framework of "lived experience" that
characterises Gandhian thinking and praxis as
well. The "exclusive" and top-down nature in turn
suggests problems in the Gandhian outlook. The
emerging new identity politics (just as Gandhi's
politics) is too strongly bound within
experiential confines, and could only entrench
the social practices which it wishes to transcend.
FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.epw.org.in/epw//uploads/articles/12315.pdf
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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://sacw.net/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
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