SACW | July 17-18, 2008 / Secular Democracy / Human Rights

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | July 17-18 , 2008 | 
Dispatch No. 2541 - Year 10 running

[1] South Asia: Deadlines and Democracy (J. Sri Raman)
[2] Pakistan: This War is Our War (Amir Zia)
[3] Bangladesh: Govt's dalliance with Jamaat (Editorial, New Age)
[4] India: Discontents of Democracy (Asghar Ali Engineer)
[5] European Parliament Human Rights Subcommittee Hearing on Kashmir
[6] India: Deepening divide in Jammu and Kashmir (Praveen Swami)
[7] India: Yesterday Once More (Harbans Mukhia)
[8] India: Deals and debates  (J Sri Raman)
[9] Block The Us-India Nuclear Deal

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[1]

truthout.org, 16 July 2008

DEADLINES AND DEMOCRACY

by J. Sri Raman

photo
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
(Artwork: John Cox)

     Even as China prepares to host the Olympic 
Games, four countries of South Asia are engaged 
in a political race against time that may prove 
more breathtakingly frenetic than any forthcoming 
event in Beijing's state-of-art stadia.

     The government in the biggest of the four, 
India, is making a grimly determined effort to 
beat a deadline on its nuclear deal with the US, 
prescribed by the two parties themselves. Prime 
Minister Manmohan Singh has thought nothing of 
precipitating a major political crisis for 
himself by parting with the Left bloc in the 
parliament on the issue.

     He and his coalition regime have displayed no 
desperate urgency about a furiously rising 
inflation, galloping food prices and suicides of 
scores of farmers in the country's 
drought-stricken parts. They, however, just 
cannot wait for the deal to go through.

     They cite technical reasons, of course, for 
their uncharacteristic speed in this matter. The 
time, they claim, is too short for the steps 
needed for the deal to be finalized and fully 
operational. First, an "India-specific" agreement 
has to be signed with the International Atomic 
Energy Agency (IAEA). Then, the 45-nation Nuclear 
Suppliers Group (NSG) has to approve of the 
exceptional gesture the deal extends to India. 
Finally, the bilateral US-India agreement on the 
deal, initialed in 2006, has to be passed in the 
US Congress.

     The draft agreement with the IAEA was 
circulated among its board of governors on July 
8. Normally, they are given 45 days to study the 
draft. The process is, however, being expedited. 
The IAEA board is scheduled to meet on August 1 
to consider the draft. The US has undertaken to 
sell the deal to the NSG and, judging by the 
confidence in Washington and New Delhi, may 
succeed.

     Doubts were voiced until the other day about 
the time available for the US Congress to seal 
and deliver the deal. The preceding process was 
not expected to be over soon enough, and, a 
lame-duck session of the Congress after November 
4 was not considered likely. The plea of the 
Singh government and its supporters has been that 
"patriots" should do nothing to delay this deal 
beyond the term of President George W. Bush, 
without whose backing it was considered as good 
as doomed.

     There should have been a distinct drop in the 
degree of desperation after Senator Barack 
Obama's latest statement on the subject. The 
presumed presidential nominee of the Democrats, 
seen earlier as suspicious of the deal and its 
proliferation dimension, has diluted his stand. 
In a recent media interview, he said: "The ... 
agreement effectively balanced a range of 
important issues, from our strategic relationship 
with India to our non-proliferation concerns to 
India's energy needs," besides helping "combat 
global warming" in the bargain.

     This, however, has not sufficed to allay New 
Delhi's anxieties. It is rushing ahead on the 
deal, risking a confidence vote in India's 
parliament on July 22 without the support of its 
former Left allies and the main opposition, the 
Bharatiya Janata Party, with its own front of 
smaller parties.

     The government hopes to survive with what 
almost all observers consider opportunist support 
from erstwhile enemies. As the anti-deal camp 
points out, the Singh regime places the nuclear 
pact above the nation's parliamentary democracy 
and the prime minister's promise to Bush above 
the commitment to the people.

     Democracy is more directly involved in the 
other South Asian races against time. In the 
Himalayan state of Nepal, an elected government 
has yet to take charge, three months after the 
polls that ought to have put the Maoists in power 
by now.

     The parties and forces, which have done their 
best or worst to keep at bay a people-mandated 
coalition with the Communist Party of Nepal 
(Maoist) at the head, are now complaining loudly 
about the long delay. They are blaming the 
Maoists for the situation under which, according 
to them, the newly constituted Constituent 
Assembly (CA) won't be able to complete its work 
of giving Nepal a new statute within the two-year 
time frame.

     They argue that the budgetary exercise that 
will befall the new parliament and government 
soon can alone consume no less than six months. 
While fomenting ethnic demands and agitations, 
they are also preparing to oppose any extension 
of the Constituent Assembly's term.

     Whether, and to what extent, all this will 
benefit forces identified with a feudal monarchy, 
biding their time despite its overthrow remains 
to be watched. Clearly, the elections have not 
ended the state of uncertainty in Nepal. Can that 
be one reason why Washington has yet to remove 
the terrorist tag pinned on the Maoists in the 
pre-democracy days that already seems distant?

     Preservation of a reborn democracy is also 
the issue involved in Pakistan's race against 
time. Compulsions of numbers and a common 
reluctance to part with regained power have kept 
the otherwise unlikely partners in the ruling 
coalition - the Pakistan People's Party and the 
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) - in uneasy 
coexistence. The PML(N), however, has posed a 
threat to the coalition's survival by pulling out 
all its ministers from the government to press 
their demand for immediate reinstatement of 
judges sacked by Pervez Musharraf as a military 
ruler.

     After protracted attempts at persuading its 
ally, the PPP has run out of patience. It has now 
given the PML(N) till the end of July to rejoin 
the government and threatened that the 
ministerial chairs kept vacant until now will 
otherwise find new occupants.

     The issue of judges, however, may not be the 
only one to embarrass the PPP and infuriate the 
PML(N). The increasingly fierce controversy over 
the US military role in Pakistan and Afghanistan 
may give rise to far more irreconcilable 
differences in the ruling dispensation. Admiral 
Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs 
of Staff, has not made matters easier for 
Islamabad by making a surprise visit to Pakistan 
last weekend, causing speculation about 
stepped-up US attacks against the Taliban in 
tribal areas.

     "Democratic" elections, promised by December 
2008, themselves set the deadline that Bangladesh 
is striving to meet, according to official 
claims. Many Bangladeshis, however, entertain 
doubts about the democratic character of the 
proposed exercise. They wonder how democratic it 
can be if the emergency imposed on the country by 
the army-backed government of Fakhruddin Ahmad is 
not lifted. They are also puzzled how it can be 
democratic if the leaders of the two largest 
political parties - Awami League (AL) and the 
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - are not 
allowed to contest.

     Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League and 
Begum Khaleda Zia o the BNP have been under 
detention and facing long trials on corruption 
charges, which both of them dub as "trumped-up." 
Hasina was allowed in June to go the US for 
medical treatment, while Khaleda has been offered 
the benefit of a similar break. The AL leader has 
already responded by agreeing to the holding of 
local elections in August, and Khaleda may well 
follow suit.

     The question is whether the interim 
government, with the far-from-invisible presence 
and power of the army behind it, cares at all for 
the health of the country's democracy. So far, it 
has been proceeding on the assumption that it 
knows what is best for the people. While army 
chief Moeen U Ahmed has repeatedly ruled out a 
return to "electoral democracy," the Fakhruddin 
regime has been openly trying to promote factions 
and individuals in the AL and the BNP willing to 
rebel against the most popular leaders of the two 
parties.

     It is hard to share the hope, voiced by some, 
that the US-headed West will ensure "democratic" 
elections. For one thing, it is difficult to see 
Washington's man in Dhaka, James Francis 
Moriarty, the diplomat who tried his utmost to 
defeat democracy in Nepal, on a very different 
mission in Bangladesh. For another, William B. 
Milam, a former US ambassador in Dhaka as well as 
Islamabad, appeared to give the game away in a 
recent newspaper article.

     Writing on the dilemma in Dhaka he said: 
"Western governments have, too often when dealing 
with political transitions in the third world, 
neglected the other important foundations of real 
democracy in their anxiety to ensure a 
'legitimate' election. They often spend more 
effort and resources in the aftermath of a 
'legitimate' election that, instead of resolving 
political difficulties as it was supposed to do, 
actually makes things worse."

     The races against time may make things worse 
indeed over a vast South Asian region, though not 
exactly in the way meant by Milam.


_______


[2]


Newsline
June 2008

THIS WAR IS OUR WAR

The new government needs to realise that Pakistan 
has more to lose than even the US if it does not 
conduct the war on terror effectively.

by Amir Zia

There is no dearth of Pakistani politicians and 
analysts who brand Islamabad's fight against 
religious extremism and militancy purely an 
"American war." Notwithstanding the numerous UN 
resolutions, which have made it mandatory on all 
its member states to cooperate in the global war 
on terror or risk sanctions, a vast number of 
ordinary Pakistanis have been made to believe 
that the country could have avoided all the 
suicide bombings and terror attacks in its major 
cities and violence in the restive tribal areas, 
if the former military-led government had not 
committed itself to the US-led war against 
terrorism.

          Even one of the key partners in the new 
ruling coalition - the PML-N - has been trying to 
whip up popular sentiment against the besieged 
President Pervez Musharraf by playing this 
right-wing card. In fact, its chief whip - former 
premier Nawaz Sharif - has been demanding that 
Musharraf be held accountable for last year's 
operation against the militants in Islamabad's 
Lal Masjid, accusing him of killing 'innocent' 
people. In an attempt to win the support of the 
traditional religious lobby and Islamic radicals, 
and channelise their anger towards Musharraf, 
Sharif seems to have deliberately overlooked the 
fact that the armed militants of Lal Masjid were 
resorting to criminal and terrorist acts - 
including kidnapping and harassment of foreign 
and local nationals, in their zeal to enforce a 
myopic version of Islam. No state can tolerate 
such unlawful acts, especially an open revolt 
against the government's writ in the federal 
capital. Acting out of political expediency, the 
members of the ruling coalition, including the 
PPP, announced compensation for the Lal Masjid 
militants, but this has only served to embolden 
the extremist elements.

           No wonder the lobby opposed to the 
fight against extremists has become louder and 
bolder since the installation of the PPP-led 
government in Islamabad in March 2008. The deaths 
of thousands of Pakistanis in recent years, and 
the damage to the very fabric of our society, are 
being conveniently ignored or forgotten amidst 
the clichéd anti-US rhetoric of the religious and 
right-wing forces.

          As the country remains in the grip of 
political instability and uncertainty because of 
the lawyers' campaign for the restoration of the 
controversial deposed chief justice, and the 
mounting pressure on President Musharraf to 
resign, there has been a marked confusion in the 
government's anti-terror war policy, which 
appears to lack initiative, drive and resolve. 
Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani's 
government - under pressure from its allies and 
right-wing forces - seems to be sending mixed 
signals, both within the country and abroad, 
regarding its commitment on how to conduct this 
war against the backdrop of a rapid deterioration 
in the law and order situation in parts of the 
NWFP. Emboldened militants have increased violent 
attacks not just in the tribal region, but also 
in nearby settled areas of the NWFP.

            The Taliban extremists are executing 
people, burning schools, hitting at government 
installations and the security forces, and 
targeting women. The dark shadow of their 
activities is no longer confined to the remote 
mountainous region; it is fast spreading its 
tentacles in the populated areas as well. How can 
one hold talks with these forces who refuse to 
pay heed to reason? Should the government allow 
the creation of states within the state, in turn, 
allowing a rapid Talibanisation in parts of the 
NWFP?

           The international community was 
becoming increasingly wary of Pakistan's 
intentions and its capacity to reign in 
militants, as the government is desperately 
trying to bank on the faltering talks in an 
attempt to restore peace in the volatile tribal 
region.

           In the past, the pro-Al-Qaeda and 
Taliban militants used peace talks to re-group, 
re-organise and re-entrench themselves in the 
lawless mountainous tribal belt. This led to not 
just increased violence against US-led forces in 
Afghanistan, but also undermined whatever little 
writ the state had in its tribal belt.

           The same mistake of appeasing the 
militants should not be repeated. The government 
should act to establish its writ and not give any 
ground to militants to make parts of the country 
a safe haven for international terrorists and use 
its territory for unleashing terrorism across the 
globe. This country of 160 million people should 
not be allowed to drift into complete anarchy and 
chaos.

            Afghan President Hamid Karzai's 
statement that his country had the right to send 
troops across the border to chase militants 
taking shelter in Pakistan, perhaps reflects the 
sentiment of his powerful NATO allies, who remain 
concerned about Islamabad's efforts to sign peace 
accords with militants. Karzai's statement 
remains in line with the UN Security Council 
resolutions - 1373 (passed in 2001) and 1566 
(passed in 2004) - which make it mandatory for 
all its member states to deny safe havens to 
those who finance, plan, support and commit 
terrorist acts. These resolutions also direct the 
member states to prohibit their nationals and 
entities from making funds, financial assets, 
economic resources, or any other related services 
available to those who commission or participate 
in the terrorist acts.

           This has put the Gillani government in 
a quandary at a time when it is struggling to 
maintain balance between international 
expectations and obligations on the one hand, and 
growing pressure from the religious and 
right-wing forces, including some of its own 
allies, to change the course of the war against 
terror, on the other.

           On June 25, the government announced 
that it was handing over powers to the army 
chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, to take 
action against militants in the NWFP. The PPP-led 
government has to take ownership of this fight 
against extremists and terrorists, rather than 
give an impression that it has been dragged into 
an unwanted and unnecessary conflict. The Gillani 
government should fight this war boldly on the 
ideological front and help build public opinion 
in its favour, providing security forces the 
necessary cushion to weed out terrorism from 
Pakistani soil. The much-neglected Islamic 
seminary reforms also need to be pushed on a 
war-footing to stamp out the tide of terrorism 
and extremism in the long run.

           If Pakistan fails to control militants 
on its own, it will provide foreign powers an 
excuse to intervene.

           However, the PPP - seen as a pro-west 
liberal and secular force - has so far failed to 
grasp the initiative in this fight, although its 
leader, Benazir Bhutto, became one of its victims 
on December 27 in a gun and bomb attack, which 
bears all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda-linked or 
inspired terrorism. This should give the present 
government the impetus to confront this scourge 
with a greater determination.

           Extremism and terrorism are not 
challenges faced by the United States and its 
western allies alone. They pose a far graver 
challenge for Pakistan, which served as a conduit 
for waging the US-sponsored Afghan war against 
the former Soviet Union and its backed communist 
regime in Kabul during the 1980s. It is now 
well-documented history that it was American and 
Saudi Arabian dollars which fuelled the so-called 
holy war in Afghanistan for more than a decade 
during the 1980s with Pakistan's help. This 
dollar-sponsored so-called jihad not only 
resulted in the mushroom growth of Islamic 
seminaries all over the country, particularly in 
the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, but also 
attracted thousands of Islamic militants from 
across the world - especially from the Middle 
East - who learnt the art of terrorism in the 
ISI-operated training centres that were financed 
and armed by American and Saudi intelligence 
agencies. The Pakistani establishment of those 
days helped not only radical Afghan Islamic 
groups, but also the Pakistani militants to 
organise on similar patterns and used them in 
fuelling jihad in Indian-occupied Kashmir. This 
led to the establishment of the vast, 
resource-rich private jihadi empire, which spun 
out of control from the hands of its sponsors and 
started following its own extremist and 
self-styled pan-Islamic agenda.

          The surge in sectarian killings during 
the 1990s, the phenomenal rise in religious 
extremism and intolerance in the country and the 
subsequent building of ties of the local 
militants with international terrorists, are the 
result of the myopic policies of General Mohammed 
Zia-ul-Haq's era and his remnants. And just like 
the United States, in an ironic turn of events, 
Pakistan also faces a backlash from this 
Frankenstein it helped create with Washington.

           By joining hands with Washington in the 
international war against terrorism, following 
the September 11, 2001 attacks on US soil, 
President Musharraf, for the first time in the 
country's history, confronted these extremists 
head-on. Not only did Pakistan stop its support 
to the Afghan Taliban, it also gradually stopped 
militants from using Pakistani territory against 
Indian forces in occupied Kashmir, which led to 
the easing of tensions between the two 
nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours.

           However, the task of defeating the 
extremist forces has so far proved easier said 
than done. The huge, well-financed extremists' 
empire, having tentacles even within the 
establishment, has upped the stakes by waging 
relentless terror and suicide attacks in an 
attempt to undermine Islamabad's efforts in this 
war. It is in Pakistan's national interest to 
defeat these forces, which remain incompatible 
with the modern world and aim to drag the country 
to a barbaric medieval period and enforce the 
outdated tribal system in the name of religion in 
this 21st century world.

           The PPP, being a popular party, remains 
in a far better position to fight this war 
effectively and aggressively, both on the 
ideological and practical fronts, as compared to 
the previous government. Prime Minister Gillani 
should avail the opportunity created by the 
previous military-led government of confronting 
the extremist pro-Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, 
who remain a potent threat to Pakistan. For the 
first time in the country's history, the military 
leadership and the popularly elected government 
can have a convergence of views on this vital 
issue. Will the PPP and its democratic allies act 
now or let go of this historic opportunity and 
live to regret it forever?


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[3]

New Age
17 July 2008

Editorial

NIZAMI'S RELEASE AND GOVT'S DALLIANCE WITH JAMAAT

THE release of Jamaat-e-Islami amir Matiur Rahman 
Nizami on a two-month interim bail in the GATCO 
case Tuesday evening has raised many eyebrows 
and, we must add, for justifiable reasons. The 
offence that Nizami has been accused of having 
committed is indeed bailable and thus, there is 
hardly any scope to misconstrue, in any way, the 
High Court's decision to grant him bail. What is 
curious, however, is the decision of the 
military-controlled government and the 
Anti-Corruption Commission to not move the 
Appellate Division for a stay on the High Court's 
order, as they have done in the case of 
Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda 
Zia and two other accused in the case. Also, 
Nizami is the first among ranking politicians to 
be released on bail since the interim government 
assumed office in January 2007, although he was 
the last to be arrested on corruption charges. 
Overall, his release gives the lie to the interim 
government's public posture on war crime and war 
criminals, and lends credence to the public 
perception that it has all along treated Jamaat 
with kid gloves, so to speak, as opposed to iron 
hand.
    While the chief adviser and the chief of army 
staff have severally, and emphatically, 
enunciated the interim government's commitment to 
bringing the perpetrators of war crimes to 
justice, in reality, it has thus far displayed a 
soft attitude towards Jamaat, which, needless to 
say, had been at the forefront of 
anti-independence activism during the country's 
war of liberation in 1971. Nizami's release could 
be only the latest manifestation of such an 
attitude, and one does not have to go very far 
back to find another precedent. On July 11, a 
freedom fighter was assaulted at the 
representatives' conference of Jatiya Muktijoddha 
Parishad, supposedly an organisation of freedom 
fighters which comprises primarily pro-Jamaat 
elements, in the capital. As reported in the 
media, the elderly man came under attack for 
demanding, in his speech to the conference, 
punishment to the Jamaat men who actively 
cooperated with the brutal occupation forces of 
Pakistan during the war of independence in 1971. 
While there has been a wave of protests against 
the assault of the veteran freedom fighter and 
calls for exemplary punishment for the 
perpetrators since, the government has thus far 
maintained a cryptic silence over the entire 
issue.
    Moreover, Jamaat does not believe in the 
sovereignty of the people in running the affairs 
of the state, which is a core principle of 
democracy, and the interim government's perceived 
dalliance with such an unabashedly 
anti-democratic organisation not only renders its 
self-professed commitment to improving on 
democratic governance hollow but also presents 
the people with a glimpse of its inherently 
anti-democratic attitude. In the final analysis, 
here is a government whose constitutional 
legitimacy in non-existent and democratic 
credentials are questionable. In such 
circumstances, the people should have hardly any 
reason to believe, let alone expect, that the 
incumbents are either willing or able to 
positively contribute to the growth and spread of 
democracy in Bangladesh.


______


[4]

DISCONTENTS OF DEMOCRACY

by Asghar Ali Engineer

(Secular Perspective July 16-31, 2008)

Democracy is supposed to be the best form of 
governance but experience both of western and 
eastern countries show a wide gap between theory 
and practice. Nothing that pertains to human 
beings can approximate, let alone be equal to 
ideals. Philosophers also say real is not ideal 
and ideal is not real. Democracy is no exception. 
Democracy is an ideal but its practice within a 
given society makes it operation extremely 
complex.

Freud had written a book Discontents of 
civilization and pointed out complex problems of 
modern civilization. Democracy too has its 
discontents as human beings who operate it have 
their own interests and clashing interests create 
explosive situation. Our modern democracies are 
more of representative rather than participative. 
Common people who are supposed to benefit from it 
become victims rather than beneficiaries.

More often than not, our modern democracies are 
secular too in which religion will remain private 
affair of citizens and will not interfere with 
the affairs of the state. In USA constitution 
lays down the doctrine of 'wall of separation 
between the church and the state' and Indian 
constitution is also secular in content though 
the word 'secular' was added only in 1975 though 
the constitution was implemented in 1950 itself. 
Undoubtedly it was secular in spirit from the 
beginning.

However, government policies are far from 
secular. Religion has come to play supposed to 
enjoy not only full security but also equal 
religious, linguistic and cultural rights. 
India's record in this respect is anything but 
ideal. Frequent occurrence of riots, even 
genocide against Muslims, makes India's record a 
matter of shame.

Elections must be fought on the basis of people's 
issues and their religion, caste or language 
should play no role whatsoever. All candidates 
are set up on the basis of their religion, caste 
and language most unabashedly and hardly any 
party (perhaps communists to some extent) is an 
exception to it though all these parties swear by 
secularism. It was Maulana Azad, fired by ideals 
of secularism had refused to except ticket in 
first general elections from Rampur just because 
he was Muslim and Rampur had substantial Muslim 
population. After the first generation of freedom 
fighters secularism was given a goodbye in the 
electoral process.

As such it is a great challenge to maintain 
strict religious neutrality in a multi-religious, 
multi-cultural and multi-linguistic society. 
Democracy becomes rule by religious majority 
rather than by political majority. In a 
democratic set up it should be rule by political 
majority and there should only be political 
majority and political minority. But in our 
'secular' democracy it is religious majority 
plays main role.

Religious majority pushes its own agenda most 
aggressively though minorities too at times get 
quite aggressive. On the Shah Bano agitation it 
was minority, which became most aggressive and 
forced government's hands to overturn Supreme 
Court decision. But when minority becomes 
aggressive and forces government's hands on some 
issue it later pays heave price in terms of 
communal violence.

The majority community showed its aggression 
subsequently on the question of Ramjanambhoomi 
issue and the 'secular government' of India 
allowed Babri Masjid to be demolished in a most 
flagrant manner. And its demolition was followed 
by widespread communal violence in various parts 
of India, particularly in Mumbai, Surat, Bhopal, 
Kanpur etc. This communal massacre then made some 
Muslim criminals to keep bombs in public places 
in Mumbai and kill more than 300 innocent Hindus.

The Central government was either negligent or 
terrified by the Hindu right and did not enforce 
any law of the land. Openly provocative speeches 
were made against Muslims by various 
BJP-VHP-Bajrang Dal leaders and no action was 
taken at all. It was complete failure on the part 
of government. The rightist elements in majority 
community always go on the offensive and require 
minorities to submit to the majority.

The latest instance is of transfer of land in 
Kashmir valley to the Amarnath Temple Trust and 
the agitation that followed in the Kashmir 
valley, which forced the hands of J&K Government 
to annul its decision. The majority Muslim 
community in the valley resorted to aggressive 
and violent agitation in the name of kashmiriyat 
and got the transfer of 100 acres of forestland 
to the Temple trust annulled.

Now the Hindu majority in Jammu indulged in 
similar aggressive violence against annulment of 
transfer of land demanding restoration of land to 
the temple trust again. And the BJP, VHP and 
Bajrang Dal have given call for all India Bandh 
and violence erupted in many parts of India, 
particularly those ruled by the BJP. In Indore, 
in M.P. where BJP Government is ruling 4 Muslims 
were killed for refusing to close shops.

In fact the BJP-VHP are indulging in violence in 
the name of Amarnath Temple with an eye on coming 
Parliamentary elections. Strictly speaking this 
issue pertains to J&K and any bandh observed in 
J&K is quite understandable but to hold whole of 
India to ransom is highly anti-democratic. The 
Supreme Court hearing a PIL also lambasted such 
bandh which results in gross inconvenience to the 
people. Crores of people are made to suffer for 
partisan ends of political party.

The BJP which is supported by hoodlums of Bajrang 
Dal and utter religious fanatics, how can it ever 
aspire to rule over secular India and claim to be 
'disciplined party'. If elected, it will take 
oath in the name of secular constitution. It uses 
utter religious fanaticism be it Ramjanambhoomi 
or Sethusamundaram and Amarnath Temple land issue 
for electoral success.

The Kashmiri people also have weakened their 
cause by resorting to such violent agitation and 
displayed such aggression on the issue of land 
transfer to the Amarnath Temple. They could have 
held dialogue with the Hindu brothers on this 
issue. But in J&K too elections are due and 
politicians launched this aggressive agitation 
with a view to win elections.

The ordinary Kashmiri citizens were helping the 
Hindu yatris who were so much inconvenienced. 
They even opened langar for them and served them 
food in Srinagar. Unfortunately this was not so 
much highlighted by the media. The vernacular 
media does not so much serve people and inform 
them but panders to the majority sentiments to 
maintain or increase its sale.

Democracy also ensures fundamental freedoms but 
our democracy in view of its degradation is not 
even able to ensure these freedoms. The mobs are 
let loose by fanatical parties and organizations 
to disrupt film shows, drama performances and 
other functions if dissenting views are expressed 
in the. Mr. Kumar Ketkar, Editor, Loksatta, wrote 
an editorial against installation of Shivaji's 
statue in the sea and his home was destroyed. The 
Maharashtra Government hardly took any worthwhile 
action.

Before than Maharashtra Nau Nirman Sena (MNS) 
openly attacked Hindi speaking north Indians 
working in Mumbai, beat them up and burnt their 
vehicles and government looked the other way. 
After lot of hue and cry by the public they 
promised action but hardly any action was taken.

Many more instances could be multiplied as to how 
our democracy is being misused. As public opinion 
greatly matters for functioning of democracy the 
media both print as well as electronic is 
controlled by powerful vested interests who 
create desired opinion by manipulating 
information. There is hardly any newspaper or 
T.V. channel, which honestly presents facts as 
they are or disseminates information to help 
create proper opinion.

The education system again is very vital to 
protect democratic values and secular ethos in a 
multi-religious society. But today less we talk 
about our education system better it is. Our 
textbooks still continue to spread sectarian 
rather than secular democratic values. Our 
children grow with anti-democratic and 
anti-minority values. They learn to hate the 
religious other rather than accept him/her.

A Rajasthan textbook of 12th standard writes that 
fascism is the best ideology as it enables the 
supreme leader to take right decision at the 
right time and Gujarat textbook idealizes Hitler, 
the German Nazi leader. This is in the BJP ruled 
states but the textbooks in the Congress ruled 
states too distort history and project minorities 
in a very poor light. That is why educated middle 
classes are much more communal than the 
illiterate masses.

Thus our education system has become a vehicle 
for dispensing prejudices than create rational 
thinking and critical mind. What is more shocking 
is that our education system does not teach 
fundamental human values like human dignity, 
compassion, forgiveness, justice and so on. In 
this age of technology education is becoming 
highly competitive rather than cooperative.

To promote secular democracy our education system 
must be thoroughly overhauled and it should be 
made a powerful instrument for creating a new 
citizen of secular democratic India and who will 
provide leadership to usher in new horizons of 
value-based knowledge.
-----------------------------------------------------
Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
Mumbai.
E-mail: csss at mtnl.net.in


______


[5]


RE.: EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT HUMAN RIGHTS SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING ON KASHMIR
Brussels, Wednesday, 16 July 2008

From: International People's Tribunal on Human 
Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir

CONTACT:
Khurram Parvez, Tribunal Liaison
+91-9419013553; +91-194-2482820
khurramparvez at yahoo.com; kparvez at kashmirprocess.org


On 16 July 2008, in a historic, first time 
hearing on Kashmir, the European Parliament (EP) 
Subcommittee on Human Rights (EPHR) convened a 
meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

The agenda was: 'Exchange of views on Kashmir, 
follow-up to EP resolution of 24 May 2007 and to 
reports from massacres in the region'.

The following persons were invited to address the 
EPHR in this order: Dr. Angana Chatterji, 
co-convener of the International People's 
Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir 
(Tribunal), who was present in person; Advocate 
Parvez Imroz, on behalf of Association of Parents 
of Disappeared Persons (APDP), addressed the 
gathering via weblink as he is denied a passport 
by India and cannot travel abroad; as well as Ms. 
Marjan Lucas, their international partner from 
IKV Pax Christi, who was present in person.
The Members of the European Parliament present at 
the hearing were: MEP Phillip Bushill-Mathews, 
MEP R. Evans, MEP Neena Gill, MEP Gene Lambert, 
MEP Sara Ludford, MEP Liz Lynn, MEP Baroness Emma 
Nicholson, MEP Tannock.

At the hearing, Dr. Chatterji described the 
Tribunal's mandate, structure, and work and 
offered detailed testimony of the gravity of the 
human rights situation in Kashmir in the present. 
She described the Tribunal's investigation of 
nearly 800 mass graves in June 2008, and showed 
video clips of mass graves from Baramulla and 
Kupwara district. Dr. Chatterji described the 
continued militarization, and impunity with which 
military and paramilitary forces function in 
Kashmir, of the rule of exception and draconian 
laws, and the history of genocidal violence. She 
also spoke of the Tribunal's investigations into 
enforced disappearances, torture, and sexualized 
violence. She detailed the harassment and 
intimidation Advocate Imroz and she herself have 
faced in undertaking this work, as well as 
Tribunal Liaison Khurram Parvez, and of the 
attempted attack on Advocate Imroz on 30 June. 
She stressed the importance of continuing the 
Tribunal's work.

Advocate Imroz described the earlier work on 
APDP, and their investigation of the mass graves. 
He spoke in depth of the climate of fear and 
threat that human rights defenders experience on 
a regular basis in Kashmir, and of the severe 
breakdown of law and order in Kashmir. He spoke 
to the failure of judicial apparatus and human 
rights institutions in Kashmir. He described the 
attack on him of 30 June, and how Tribunal 
members are being humiliated and surveiled. He 
appealed to the international community to 
carefully track the human rights situation in 
Kashmir and the need for a mechanism that 
addresses these issues seriously.

Ms. Lucas spoke of the greater need for 
international alliance with human rights 
defenders in Kashmir, and stated the importance 
of the work of the International People's 
Tribunal. She appealed that there cannot be 
reconciliation without truth and justice. She 
underlined the importance of ongoing attention of 
the International Community in casu European 
Parliament to Kashmir's ground reality: the 
adoption of the Resolution in Strasbourgh on 10 
July and the EPHR hearing of 16 July are 
essential first steps on a long road forward. She 
underlined the importance of the instalment of an 
impartial and independent investigation of the 
unmarked graves, which, she reiterated, needs a 
strong and visible international component.

The EPHR and MEPs listened with care and concern, 
and engaged the panel for almost 2.5 hours. 
European Commission (EC) representative, Mrs. 
Rensje Teerink, spoke as well and appreciated the 
evidence presented and stated her concern, and 
that of the EC Secretariat in New Delhi, over the 
situation, and attack and targeting. Her presence 
and active participation evidenced the 
seriousness with which EPHR is approaching this 
issue.

As per protocol, the Indian Embassy was invited 
to speak but did not participate. This, according 
to those familiar with diplomatic strategic 
dynamics in Europe, was viewed as a protest by 
the Indian authorities against this subject being 
accorded a prominent place on the European 
Parliament's agenda.

Mr. Geoffrey Harris, Head of Human Rights Unit of 
the European Parliament, and Mrs. Helene Flautre 
(Greens), chair of EPHR, maintained that the 
invited speakers should be independent, relevant, 
and credible. Thus Dr. Chatterji, Advocate Imroz, 
and Ms. Lucas were invited to speak and they 
consolidated their efforts to convince the 
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) of the 
gravity and urgency of the facts & figures 
presented by APDP on mass graves, and those 
currently put forward by the International 
People's Tribunal.

The International People's Tribunal on Human 
Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir 
welcomes the European Parliament resolution of 10 
July and also the 16 July hearing in European 
Parliament Human Rights Subcommittee.

Note: Last week, on 10 July, the EP adopted an 
urgent resolution on Kashmir on being alarmed, 
especially after a letter of Amnesty 
International on the issue, about the APDP report 
'Facts Under Ground'. Today's session of the EPHR 
aimed to give opportunity to the MEPs to discuss 
the issue in greater detail and to hear relevant 
actors speak on the subject. 

For further details see, www.kashmirprocess.org.

______


[6]


The Hindu
July 18, 2008

DEEPENING DIVIDE IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR

by Praveen Swami

The deep communal chasms between Hindus and 
Muslims must be bridged - but it is unclear if 
J&K's politicians have the will or imagination 
needed to do so.

"Sacrilege," screamed the headlines in one 
Jammu-based newspaper. Over a week ago, the 
panchayat of the small mountain hamlet of Kot 
Dhara mediated a feud between the owner of a 
horse and a local hirer. After hearing both 
sides, it ordered that compensation be paid to 
the owner for ill-use of his horse - and that the 
animal be put out of its misery.

Later, Bajrang Dal activists in the 
communally-fraught Rajouri town learned that the 
horse's broken corpse was buried a few hundred 
metres from the hamlet's temple. For most of the 
week, it seemed that killing of human beings 
would follow the killing of the horse, as surely 
as night follows day, until some firm police 
intervention put down the brewing riot.

Kot Dhara is perhaps the most inappropriate stage 
conceivable for an acting-out of the ugly 
communal war that enveloped Jammu and Kashmir in 
the wake of the Amarnath shrine board riots. Its 
residents have long been united by the shared 
pain of communal fascism. In August 2000, a woman 
and two small children were among six Hindu 
civilians butchered by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists 
in one of the waves of communal massacres that 
followed the Kargil war. Less than three years 
later, terrorists entered the village again, 
searching for a Muslim who they alleged was an 
informer. He was away: but the four women and two 
children at home were beheaded.

The Kot Dhara-type incidents show that the 
communal fires set off by the shrine board riots 
are still burning across J&K. Early in July, 
charges of wilful sacrilege provoked violence 
north of the Pir Panjal too. Mobs attacked the 
police in Srinagar after an accidental fire at 
Jenab Sahib in Soura damaged the shrine's 
ceiling. At least one newspaper quoted local 
residents who claimed to have broken the police 
guards' rifles to pieces after finding cards and 
liquor in the guard room - inflammatory claims 
the newspaper made no effort to substantiate.

Why is it that even the fall of the 
Congress-People's Democratic Party government has 
failed to douse the flames?

When the Congress central leadership arm-twisted 
former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad into 
revoking the grant of land to the shrine board, 
few anticipated that the communal backlash in 
Jammu would prove as intense as it did. Few in 
New Delhi had been watching the steady growth of 
Hindu reaction since 2003, mirroring the 
expanding ideological influence of Islamism in 
Kashmir.

In the build-up to the 2002 elections, the BJP 
found itself discredited by its failure to 
contain terrorism. Much of the Hindutva 
movement's cadre turned to a new grouping, the 
Jammu State Morcha. JSM leaders wanted a new, 
Hindu-majority State carved out of J&K. In the 
event, both the JSM and the BJP were annihilated 
in the elections, winning just one seat each.
New generation of Hindutva leaders

A new generation of Hindutva leaders now took 
control of Hindu neoconservative politics in 
Jammu. Sushil Sudan and Anil Kumar were its most 
visible figures. Bajrang Dal chief Sudan, son of 
a politically-active family from Sundarbani, had 
a clear understanding of street-level politics. 
Kumar was a long-standing Rashtriya Swayamsevak 
Sangh pracharak from West Bengal, who had cut his 
organisational teeth in the Kalakote-Sundarbani 
belt. The two men proved perfect partners. If 
Kumar had the ideological vocabulary needed to 
draw Hindus to Hindutva, Sudan understood the 
mechanics of the mob.

Soon after the Congress-PDP government came to 
power, the new Hindutva leadership unleashed its 
first mass mobilisations. The leaders of the 
Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena and the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad claimed that the former PDP Chief 
Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's calls for 
demilitarisation and self-rule were existential 
threats. Pointing to the expulsion of Pandits 
from Kashmir at the outset of the jihad, the 
Hindutva leaders said Mr. Sayeed was preparing 
the ground for the expulsion of Hindus - and 
Hinduism - from Jammu.

From 2003, the Hindutva groups sought to forge 
these anxieties into a concrete political 
mobilisation around the issue of cattle 
slaughter. Their cadre would often interdict 
trucks carrying cattle, and use their capture to 
stage protests. It wasn't as if the anti-cow 
slaughter movement had stumbled on a great 
secret. For decades, cow-owning farmers - in the 
main Hindus themselves - had sold old livestock, 
which no longer earned them an income, to traders 
from Punjab and Rajasthan.

In turn, the traders sold their herds to cattle 
traffickers on India's eastern border, who fed 
the demand for meat among the poor of Bangladesh. 
But the Hindutva groups understood that the cow 
was a potent - and politically profitable - 
metaphor.

Violence followed. In December 2007, for example, 
the VHP and the Bajrang Dal cadre organised 
large-scale protests against the reported 
sacrificial slaughter of cows at Bali Charna 
village in the Satwari area of Jammu, and Chilog, 
near Kathua district's Bani town. Earlier in 
March 2005 also, riots took place in the villages 
around Jammu's Pargwal after Hindutva activists 
made bizarre claims that a cow had been raped.

It is possible that the Farooq Abdullah 
government was not wholly unhappy with this 
sharpening of group boundaries. At that time, the 
State government was working on a report calling 
for creation of new provinces whose boundaries 
were to be drawn along J&K's ethnic-religious 
faultlines - a demand endorsed with some variants 
by both Pakistan and Hindutva groups. National 
Conference politicians believed - correctly - 
that the Hindutva campaign would lead to a 
consolidation of Jammu's Muslims behind the party.

Perhaps the most worrying prospect now is the 
possibility of the success of the shrine board 
protests leading non-Hindutva political groups to 
adopt the Hindu communalism which propelled it - 
a process which, in Kashmir, has led to the 
legitimisation of Islamist claims and causes 
among a far wider audience than the religious 
right-wing.

It has passed almost unnoticed that the shrine 
board protests in Kashmir were driven in good 
measure by mainstream parties - not just 
secessionists.

Baramulla offers an interesting illustration of 
the politics of the protests. Islamists set off 
the conflagration. A 600-strong June 27 peasant 
gathering at Watergam was led by the 
Jamaat-e-Islami activist, Nisar Ahmad Ganai. 
Elsewhere in Baramulla, though, pro-India parties 
drove the protests. A 5,000-strong gathering at 
Sheeri-Baramulla on June 30 was led by the local 
National Conference activist, Abdul Qayoom, and 
PDP dissident Ghulam Mohideen.

In Anantnag, similarly, both the APHC and 
Geelani's Tehreek-i-Hurriyat played an important 
role in organising protests. Tehreek leader 
Hafizullah Mir organised an 800-strong rally at 
Anantnag's Lal Chowk on June 25, while the 
APHC-linked Fayyaz Ahmad Sodagar and Zahid Hakim 
led a similar crowd at the same venue the next 
day. However, the Congress helped the protests 
move beyond the Islamists' urban bases. Local 
Congress leaders burned effigies of Mufti 
Mohammad Sayeed at Wandi-Valgam on June 30, while 
NC activists were the principal leaders of 
protests in Paibugh.

Secessionists were, in fact, often peripheral to 
protests now held out as examples of their 
influence. On June 27, they were reported as 
having led a 2,000-strong protest which hoisted a 
Pakistani flag on the clock tower in Srinagar's 
historic Lal Chowk. Leaving aside the fact that 
the flags bore the crescent-and-star logo of 
Islam and not Pakistan's national insignia, as 
reported by several newspapers - Indian and 
foreign - the police videotape obtained by The 
Hindu shows politicians Javed Mir and Firdaus 
Ahmad Shah arriving late in the course of the 
protests, rather than actually leading them.

Significantly, Kulgam district saw a grand total 
of just seven protest gatherings. While the 
Jamaat-e-Islami organised the 8,000-strong rally 
at Qaimoh on June 30 and an earlier gathering at 
a historic shrine in Kulgam town, there was no 
violence at all. Answers lie in the configuration 
of the district's politics. The main political 
force, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is 
the sole party in the region which had not made 
an alliance of convenience with the Islamists. 
Its principal rival, the PDP, had no interest in 
fuelling the anti-shrine board protests, once it 
itself came under assault on the issue. Local NC 
leaders simply did not have the on-ground muscle 
to influence the course of events.
Political opportunism

Will the political opportunism that underpinned 
the crisis in Jammu and Kashmir pay off in the 
coming elections? Depressingly, the answer, most 
likely, is 'yes.' Most analysts expect the BJP to 
make significant gains in Hindu-majority areas of 
Jammu, while the NC is thought to have improved 
its position in the Muslim-majority areas north 
of the Chenab and the Kashmir Valley. When the 
plot of a classical Greek tragedy reached an 
impossible-to-resolve impasse, its author would 
turn to a device known as deus ex machina: 
literally, "god on a machine." An actor playing 
god would be winched down to the stage to resolve 
the crisis through a miracle, allowing the show 
to go on. Elections scheduled for October are 
being seen as deus ex machina to heal the wounds 
of this summer's violence.

Addressing the deep communal divisions in J&K 
will take a good deal more than just a miracle - 
but it is far from clear whether the State's 
politicians have the will or imagination to write 
the new script that is needed.



______


[7] 


The Times of India
17 July 2008

YESTERDAY ONCE MORE

by Harbans Mukhia

The story we heard as young students back in the 
early 1950s was that even as CPI's student 
volunteers were marching in a procession against 
the British regime following the Quit India call 
by Mahatma Gandhi, Arun Bose, head of the party's 
youth brigade went running after them asking them 
to stop and turn back, shouting: 'The party line 
has changed, comrades'! The party itself and its 
subsequent fragments, including the bigger one - 
the CPM - have never quite accepted it as a 
blunder, or even as a minor mistake.

Indeed they invariably offer a very laboured 
explanation of the World War having turned into a 
'people's war' with the Soviet Union having 
intervened on the Allies' side. Others, however, 
never let go of an opportunity to remind them of 
their 'betrayal' of the nation at that critical 
hour. Comrades usually fall silent whenever this 
reminder is thrown at their face.

Come independence in 1947, and before the 
celebrations had subsided, the party, then led by 
B T Ranadive, a 1940s version of Prakash Karat, 
very learned in Marxist theory, completely 
unfamiliar with the notion of moderation as well 
as of practical politics, voiced the slogan: "Yeh 
azadi jhoothi hai; janata abhi bhi bhookhi hai". 
He launched an armed uprising from Telengana to 
overthrow the bourgeois regime which, according 
to the party, had been placed in power by the 
colonial regime in a conspiracy against the 
rising tide of communist revolution.

The uprising was suppressed brutally, as the 
state always does when faced with a threatening 
challenge.

The price paid by faithful believers in the call 
of revolution was massive. But they were ordinary 
workers, always dispensable for a worthy cause. 
The leaders were put in jail and released. Even 
this was never formally acknowledged as a 
blunder, although the replacement of Ranadive 
with Ajoy Ghosh and the resolution to participate 
in parliamentary politics "to help complete the 
bourgeois democratic revolution" as a step 
towards achieving "a people's democratic 
revolution" was an implicit admission enough.
Things worked smoothly for a while. So long as 
workers went on strikes and held gheraos and 
dharnas and simultaneously party candidates 
contested elections, the state was not really 
threatened. Indeed, the state welcomed the 
absorption of the challenging agency into its 
fold through election of governments in the 
states. So complete was the absorption that in 
the next bout of a serious challenge from the 
outside, i.e., the Naxalite movement, the CPI and 
CPM became its chief targets. Nor need we forget 
that the only party other than the Congress which 
wholeheartedly welcomed the imposition of the 
Emergency by Indira Gandhi was the CPI.

But by now a radical metamorphosis of the 
communist movement in India had occurred: its 
role would henceforth remain strictly confined to 
the four walls of parliamentary politics. With 
coalition politics becoming the new norm, a great 
opportunity came its way in 1998 when there was 
the possibility of Jyoti Basu heading a coalition 
government. Karat is known to be the one dead set 
against this happening and succeeded in enacting 
what Basu later called a "historic blunder". Basu 
was not lamenting the denial of the PM's chair to 
him; he saw the results of that denial in BJP's 
subsequent rise to power for six long years. It 
was as a corrective to that blunder that he and 
another 'practical' politician in the CPM 
leadership, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, helped forge 
a Left-UPA coalition following the 2004 elections.

That coalition is in a shambles now, because 
Karat, who has learnt his Marxism in a British 
University and JNU, is obviously unmindful of 
minor headaches like paving the way for the BJP's 
return. Ranadive was fortunate in that he did not 
have to choose from among many enemies: there was 
no BJP or its predecessor. The Congress was his 
single enemy. Karat has made his choice. The 
Congress still remains his single enemy and if he 
has to traverse the path in the company of the 
BJP, so be it. He finds the very communal reason 
given by Mayawati for denunciation of the nuclear 
deal as anti-Muslim laudable, even as several 
highly respected Muslim bodies have refused to 
link Islam with the nuclear deal.

Nor has he any problem with all the crores 
Mayawati has made in the past few years. 
Mayawati's declared intention - and the practice 
of it - to capture power and hold on to it 
regardless of whoever is willing to support her, 
including the BJP, is of no concern to Karat 
either. These small details must be ignored for 
the higher cause of bringing to heel a 
government, which spent four years accommodating 
some reasonable and some grossly unreasonable 
demands placed before it with a "Do it or else" 
command.

One can imagine the BJP leaders chuckling under 
their breath about the help the Left is rendering 
them. If the Left under the leadership of Karat 
does go all the way and the BJP does stage a 
return to power at the Centre, there is no doubt 
that one more senior CPI or CPM leader will call 
it one more historic blunder, and wait for the 
next one to happen.

The writer was a professor of history at JNU.


______


[8]


Daily Times
July 18, 2008

DEALS AND DEBATES

by J Sri Raman

It is bad enough that petty issues have dwarfed 
the little political debate that was witnessed on 
the deal. The greater pity, however, is that even 
this political debate, conducted strictly for the 
consumption of sophists, has no place for another 
point of view

To all appearances and at long last, we in India 
are witnessing a wide-ranging, national debate on 
the nuclear deal with the United States. But, are 
we?

Ever since July 8, when the Left bloc announced 
withdrawal of external support for the Manmohan 
Singh government, the media has been treating us 
to many discourses on the deal. Pundits and 
politicians have discussed it with varying 
degrees of scholarship, citing chapters and 
clauses of the agreements and acts concerned, 
making it all sound like a subject strictly for 
sophists. The fireworks have impressed the 
plebeian audiences, without enlightening them on 
the fundamental issue concerned.

The Left has taken a step towards making it a 
popular issue with a rally in New Delhi, but it 
has a long way to go.

The government and India's own Grand Old Party, 
meanwhile, have been trying to sell the deal, not 
through debates, but through other deals - of a 
domestic kind. It is these deals and the debates 
that really claim the attention of the common 
man, content with his conventional wisdom amid 
dazzling displays of verbal and other wizardry by 
dissectors of the deal.

It is not by the alphabetical order alone that we 
begin with Amar Singh. As we have noted in these 
columns ('The importance of being Amar Singh', 
Daily Times, July 4), this flamboyant fundraiser 
of the Samajwadi Party, flaunting celeb friends, 
was the first to throw a lifeline to a Prime 
Minister left in the lurch by the Left. Amar's 
sudden discovery of the Bush-Singh nuclear accord 
as an imperative for national interest 
immediately raised questions of a deal within a 
deal.

Reports were soon rife about Amar's pound of 
flesh for his party's political turnabout. The 
reports led to some debate about political 
opportunism and parliamentary democracy, but our 
archetypal common man, the "aam admi" in Congress 
parlance, dismissed it all as idle discussion of 
an outdated subject, defections being no recent 
political development.

It was a different matter when Amar raised the 
corporate concerns of one of his "famous and 
beautiful" cronies, Anil Ambani of Reliance 
(whose spouse and former film star Tina has just 
now been placed fourth in the global list of 
billionaires' wives). It became another matter 
altogether when Anil's rival sibling Mukesh 
Ambani met the Prime Minister.

It is not as if this corporate-political nexus 
was startling news to the common man. Mukesh, 
however, was widely seen to have made it more 
open than anyone else. Guessing games started 
about what Mukesh could do to help the Manmohan 
camp allegedly engaged in horse-trading and how 
the Prime Minister's Office could possibly 
protect the businessman in distress from an 
Amar-Anil blitzkrieg. The PMO has been prompt to 
deny the charges, but the debate continues.

An even more politically charged debate emerges 
with the entry of Shiv Sena of Bal Thackeray, who 
has always concentrated on the business of 
communalism. Mukesh Ambani was reported to have 
offered to get Sena's support for the 
government's confidence vote in the Lok Sabha on 
July 22. The report has not been denied.

This cannot but intensify an ongoing debate 
within the Sena and its vast enough constituency 
in Maharashtra. To them, the nuke deal poses a 
choice between an "anti-American" nationalism of 
the kind displayed in attacks on McDonald's 
outlets and a militarism that seeks the most 
destructive weapons for India.

Thackeray and his nephew Raj of the Maharashtra 
Navnirman Sena have also yet to decide whether 
the country can become a nuclear mega-power 
without driving North Indians out of Mumbai and 
Maharashtra.

Amar's move could not but have elicited a strong 
counter from his party's main adversary in Uttar 
Pradesh, Chief Minister Mayawati. Especially 
after India's Central Bureau of Investigation 
(CBI) threatened to reopen corruption cases 
against her which, the common man thought, had 
been closed quite a while ago. She has evinced an 
Amar-like agility in discovering the fatal flaws 
of the deal, in particular, its allegedly 
"anti-Muslim" character.

This, in turn, has revived two debates. The 
first, a very old one, is about the abuse of the 
CBI as a political instrument by successive 
rulers. The second, about the dangerously 
counter-productive attempt of the deal's 
opponents to communalise it and similar issues, 
is at least as old as the Manmohan government's 
dismissal of mass protests during George W Bush's 
India visit as merely Muslim demonstrations.

The main debate over the issue in Punjab has been 
about whether the Akali Dal, ruling the State in 
coalition with the BJP, should dethrone a Sikh 
Prime Minister or not. A secondary debate has 
been whether the India-US deal can be supported 
despite the "injustices" done by the "Congress at 
the Centre" to the Sikhs and to Punjab.

Even more provincial are the political issues 
that the deal and the government's distress have 
raised in the Southern State of Tamil Nadu, from 
where I write. All eyes here are on Dayanidhi 
Maran, the grand nephew of Chief Minister M 
Karunanidhi and a former Union Telecommunications 
Minister in the Manmohan cabinet.

Following a feud in the Karunanidhi clan, Maran 
found himself out of the cabinet - and his 
family, some fear, may find itself nearly out of 
its television and cable network business. While 
Maran, a member of Parliament from Karunanidhi's 
party, has signalled that he may abstain from 
voting on July 22, the common man worries about 
the ethics of the conflicts that affect him as a 
tele-consumer.

An even more elementary question of ethics is 
involved in the quid pro quo that an estranged 
partner of the Karunanidhi-led front in the State 
reportedly seeks for the votes of its six MPs for 
the government. The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), 
the Toiling Peoples' Party, was expelled from the 
front after a party functionary had allegedly 
made a speech threatening violence against 
Karunanidhi's men. The PMK is now reported to 
have approached Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil 
as well as the Prime Minister on the eve of the 
vote for his intervention in the police 
proceedings against the functionary.

It is bad enough that petty issues have dwarfed 
the little political debate that was witnessed on 
the deal. The greater pity, however, is that even 
this political debate, conducted strictly for the 
consumption of sophists, has no place for another 
point of view.

This is the utterly under-articulated view and 
voice of the peace movement, which expects the 
deal to augment India's nuclear arsenal as well 
as to accelerate the nuclear arms race in the 
region - and, therefore, which opposes the deal.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, 
India. A peace activist, he is also the author of 
a sheaf of poems titled 'At Gunpoint'


______


[9]

GIVE GEORGE BUSH A FAREWELL PRESENT

What is it that George Bush craves more than anything else?
         Yes, that's right.          A place in history.
                 Something that he will be remembered for.
                             Something for the record books.

Well, let's give it to him.
Let's give him a PERFECT FOREIGN POLICY RECORD.
Let's write his name in the record books as THE 
ONLY PRESIDENT IN HISTORY WITH NO FOREIGN POLICY 
SUCCESSES.

It's easy. Just BLOCK THE US-INDIA NUCLEAR DEAL.

There couldn't be a more fitting farewell present 
for the WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY.

Fax or post the letter below to the foreign minister of your country.

-------------------------------------------------------

DRAFT LETTER

Dear [INSERT YOUR FOREIGN MINISTER'S NAME (see below)],

I am writing to you to urge you to oppose an 
exemption for India from the rules of the 
45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). As you 
know, the NSG operates by consensus, so by 
blocking such an exemption [INSERT YOUR COUNTRY'S 
NAME] can prevent grave damage being done to the 
international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

India is seeking an exemption so that it can 
conclude a nuclear agreement with the US. 
However, an exemption from NSG rules will enable 
trade in nuclear materials, equipment and 
technology not only between India and the US, but 
also with other nuclear supplier states, 
including France and Russia.

The US-India Nuclear Agreement effectively grants 
India the privileges of nuclear weapons states 
(NWS), despite the fact that India developed 
nuclear weapons outside the NPT regime. The 
Agreement doesn't even require India to accept 
the same responsibilities as other states: 
full-scope IAEA safeguards for non-NWS and a 
commitment from NWS to negotiate in good faith 
for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

India is not offering to take any positive steps 
towards nuclear disarmament. It continues  to 
produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for 
nuclear weapons and retains the option to test 
nuclear weapons again in the future. Under these 
circumstances, an exemption for India offers no 
benefits. It will only serve to set back efforts 
for nuclear disarmament and undermine the 
international non-proliferation regime.

[SIGN YOUR NAME]


CONTACT ADDRESSES FOR FOREIGN MINISTERS

AUSTRALIA
The Hon Stephen Smith MP
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Fax: (02) 6273 4112

CANADA
The Honourable David Emerson
Minister of Foreign Affairs
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6
Fax: (613) 943-0219

IRELAND
Mr. Michael Martin, TD
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Iveagh House
79-80 St. Stephen's Green
Dublin 2
Fax: +353 1 408 2400

NEW ZEALAND
The Right Honorable Winston Peters
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Parliament Office
Parliament Buildings
PO Box 18-888 (post free address)
Wellington
Fax: (04) 471 2042

SOUTH AFRICA
Dr Nkosazana Clarice Dlamini Zuma
Private Bag X152
Pretoria 0001
Fax: (012) 323 1502

UK
The Right Honorable David Miliband, MP
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London, SW1A 2AH
Fax: 020 7008 2144

-------------------------------------------------------

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE THE FOLLOWING WEB SITES
Abolition 2000 US India Deal Working Group
http://cnic.jp/english/topics/plutonium/proliferation/usindia.html

Arms Control Association
http://www.armscontrol.org/projects/india/


THE 45 NSG MEMBER COUNTRIES
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, 
Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, 
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, 
France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, 
Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, 
Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, 
Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, 
South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, 
Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, 
and the United States.


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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/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.