SACW | July 19-20, 2008 / The Euro-Asians / Nuclear Power Elites

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Sun Jul 20 02:39:58 CDT 2008


South Asia Citizens Wire | July 19-20 , 2008 | 
Dispatch No. 2542 - Year 10 running

[1]  Afghanistan: Watching TV in Kabul (Kristin Ohlson)
[2]  Pakistan:
      (i)  Taliban ultimatum (Dawn)
      (ii)  Route to safety (I.A. Rehman)
[3]  Sri Lanka: Needed - A Constituent Assembly 
and a new Constitution (K. Godage)
[4]  India: War among nuclear power elites: 
Manmohan's false nuclear move (Praful Bidwai)
[5]  India: Law and injustice (Upendra Baxi)
[6]  India - Kashmir: A Decade of Devastation (Ashutosh Sapru)
[7]  Book Review: 'Erasure of the Euro-Asian by 
Kumari Jayawardena' (Reviewed by Susan Ram)

______


[1]


New York Times Magazine
July 20, 2008

WATCHING TV IN KABUL

by Kristin Ohlson

Last summer, I was at the end of a really lousy 
month in Kabul. It was my third visit in three 
years. One of the freelance-writing assignments 
that took me to Afghanistan this time had fallen 
through. The person I knew best there had 
unexpectedly left the country, canceling all our 
plans for trips outside the city. And though a 
vacationing couple had offered me use of their 
very nice home, with an attention-lavishing 
houseman, staying in an otherwise empty house was 
much less pleasant than I imagined.

Still, I'd made some new friends during my stay: 
in a place like Kabul, people of like mind and 
temperament form instant bonds. These friends 
included some remarkable Americans who grew up in 
Kabul during the 1960s and '70s and had returned, 
after the Taliban left, to what felt like their 
homeland. This merry little band took me to 
places experienced by few foreigners. To a lake 
where thousands of Kabulis escaped the city's 
heat and dust on weekends. To an Afghan 
restaurant where we danced with celebrating local 
college students.

While other foreigners remained cloistered in 
their compounds - some wistfully so, restricted 
by the rigid precautions of their employers - my 
new friends didn't find Afghanistan intrinsically 
scary. They were dismayed by the increased 
wreckage, poverty and violence, but not afraid of 
the people. One night, when it seemed that every 
man in the city was on the dusty streets to shop 
the brightly lighted stalls, we had a flat tire. 
The tire blew out next to a stand selling 
watermelons, the hacked-open fruit red and 
glistening in the headlights. Crowds of curious 
men stopped to stare. I was certain we'd meet our 
death that night. My friends were just as certain 
that it was no big deal.

Later there were two terrible bombings, including 
one of a bus filled with young police recruits 
that killed at least 24 people. Some of the dead 
were civilians, but many were brave young men 
willing to defend the public order for the 
princely sum of about $70 per month. It was after 
that bombing that I decided to cut my visit short 
and made plans to go home.

On my last day in Kabul, my hosts' houseman and 
his cousin drove me around town so that I could 
take care of some final details. I asked them to 
alert me when we approached the site of the bus 
bombing. I wanted to cover my eyes; I was afraid 
the trees in that area might bear strange fruit, 
body parts or pieces of clothing from the 
murdered policemen. I had offered to buy my 
houseman and his cousin a farewell lunch, but 
when we arrived at a kebab shop, I was in a grim 
mood.

As we entered the crowded restaurant, I tightened 
my head scarf and braced myself for the 
inevitable stare. The faces in the room were the 
kind that always accompany dismal news reports 
about Afghanistan - men with turbans, men with 
prayer caps, men with the biscuit-shaped hat 
known as a pakool famously worn by the 
anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud. I was 
accustomed to all those faces turning my way 
whenever I appeared in places where women rarely 
ventured - especially places like this, in a 
neighborhood far from the restaurants and coffee 
shops and guest houses that catered to foreigners.

But as we settled ourselves at a table, only a 
few men glanced over. From grizzled graybeards to 
gleeful schoolboys, everyone had an eye on the 
one other woman in the room. She filled up a TV 
screen against the wall. She wore lots of makeup 
and no head scarf. Her clothes were modest by the 
standards of my Cleveland neighborhood but not by 
Kabul's.

This woman on TV was crying. Her lover's car had 
plunged to the bottom of a river, where he was 
shown dreamily reliving scenes from his past. 
Then she was laughing and dancing on a 
mountaintop and kissing him, because he was 
miraculously restored. Or something like that. 
The show wasn't in English, the only language I 
understand. I wasn't sure if it was a Bollywood 
movie or one of the Indian soap operas that are 
so popular in Afghanistan - and that are now 
under attack by conservatives who say they're 
anti-Islamic. Actually, I didn't pay that much 
attention at first. I was trying to be polite to 
my two companions, one of whom was telling me 
some story or other in the magnificently gestured 
language he'd developed for foreigners who didn't 
speak Dari.

But after I ate my fill, while my companions 
continued to tear into the remaining mounds of 
rice, I began watching the woman on the 
television. I looked around to see all the men in 
the room watching her too - watching her and her 
sodden, silly, resuscitated beau. Watching, 
smiling, shaking their heads. We were all caught 
up together in this trifling story about romance 
and family squabbles, the drama of ordinary lives 
that rocks households but doesn't blow buildings 
or buses apart.

Kristin Ohlson is the author of a memoir, 
"Stalking the Divine," and author, with Deborah 
Rodriguez, of "Kabul Beauty School."

_____


[2]  PAKISTAN

(i)

Dawn
19 July 2008

Editorial

TALIBAN ULTIMATUM

EVEN though the NWFP government has rejected the 
'five-day ultimatum' issued by Baitullah Mehsud, 
the Taliban chief's tone and tenor show how 
emboldened he and his organisation have become. 
Asking an elected government to quit its own 
territory in five days or face 'consequences' 
highlights one basic tenet of the Taliban's 
philosophy - they do not care a fig for 
democratic values and believe in terrorism to 
achieve their aim of imposing their minority 
version of Islam on the majority. Neither the 
provincial nor the federal government should 
waver in its resolve to confront the enemy 
head-on. The Taliban have killed innocent men, 
women and children and have literally slaughtered 
captured Pakistani soldiers - a sad commentary on 
their sense of values. What they are waging is a 
full-fledged rebellion against the State of 
Pakistan, and the provincial and federal 
governments would be failing in their duty if 
they do not accept the challenge.

It is true that Islamabad's policy toward the 
militants has been characterised by vacillation 
for nearly half a decade. It trusted the 
militants and tribal elders in a hurry, and the 
results were disastrous. The agreement with the 
militants in September 2005 turned out to be a 
blunder, for it enabled the Taliban to turn parts 
of Fata into sanctuaries where they reorganised 
themselves. However, certain points deserve to be 
noted, for they show that the enemy is not all 
that strong as some people believe. The Taliban 
are quite capable of continuing their mischief - 
remote-controlled bomb blasts, suicide bombings 
and ambushes - for a long time but they are not 
capable of holding a given position for a long 
time. In Swat last year, they were on the run 
when the army launched its operation. In Fata, 
too, militancy has been relatively on the decline.

Islamabad must improve coordination with the 
authorities on the other side of the Durand Line. 
Kabul's attitude has been unfortunate. The Karzai 
government must be told that its periodic 
diatribes against Pakistan help the Taliban and 
make things difficult for the allies in the war 
on terror. While Islamabad must continue to talk 
to those willing to live in peace, it must show 
no hesitation in coming down with a heavy hand on 
those who challenge its writ. The Taliban are a 
threat to Jinnah's Pakistan and the PPP-led 
government, armed with the people's mandate, must 
realise it is its duty to save the country from 
those who want to turn it into the kind of 
barbaric state that Afghanistan was under the 
Taliban.


o o o

(ii)

Dawn
July 17,2008

ROUTE TO SAFETY

by I.A. Rehman

THERE is no doubt that despondency is on the 
rise. All one hears is a lament on the luckless 
Pakistanis.

The popular refrain is: the people created a 
wonderful chance for the restoration of democracy 
and removal of citizens' grievances but those at 
the helm of affairs are blowing this chance away. 
Some even say the opportunity is lost already. 
This bodes ill for Pakistan.

The most ominous aspect of the state of 
despondency is that the chorus of discontent is 
not being orchestrated by the government's 
political rivals alone; equally unhappy are 
neutral observers and even those who wish the 
coalition partners success. A competition is 
going on to determine who can project the most 
terrifying scenario of doom. It may not be easy 
in this situation to entertain optimism and yet 
the risks in being swept away by frustration and 
not doing anything to arrest the downward slide 
are too great to be ignored. The democratic 
experiment can perhaps be saved if those invested 
with the people's trust in February address their 
task with due sincerity and diligence.

The first priority must be the preservation of 
the ruling coalition, whose formation was as 
important an event as the election itself. A 
break-up will be disastrous. The PPP may be able 
to stay in power but whatever arrangements it 
might make will entail negation of the election 
mandate and an end to the transition to 
democracy. It will also jeopardize its prospects 
in the next election which may come sooner than 
expected. Also, the PML-N's victory dreams may 
not materialise. Worse than anything else, the 
state could be pushed back into the dark alley of 
despotism, making the threat to national 
integrity insurmountable.

Secondly, it needs to be realized that a 
government's strength does not lie in its 
parliamentary majority nor in the shining livery 
of ministers and other factotums; it lies in 
retaining the goodwill of the masses. No regime 
has ever survived a poor and friendless people's 
wrath stemming from denial of bread and the small 
needs of modest existence. The French Revolution 
and the Soviet Union's fall apart, hunger, 
joblessness and insecurity played a significant 
part in the rout of the Unionists in Punjab 
(1945-46), in the fall of the first PPP 
government (1976-77), and even in the fall of Gen 
Zia (1984-88).

The people today are suffering beyond their 
endurance. They cannot be satisfied by an 
administration reading charge sheets against the 
past government or taking cover behind global 
phenomena. Something must be done to defuse the 
time bomb of public disaffection.

Thirdly, the government must define its immediate 
tasks and fix priorities. In the present 
situation these cannot but include the 
judiciary's restoration, control of militancy and 
relief to all segments of society. Making 
promises to do this or that is useless. Such 
gestures must be based on proper studies and 
revival strategies. This should have been done 
immediately after the February polls and the 
government saved from wasting many of its first 
100 days on inquiries. A clear statement of 
objectives, organisation and means will help even 
now.

Fourthly, responsible governance demands an 
efficient state apparatus, and finding the right 
person for the right job. No government can 
survive a public perception that instead of 
finding the right people for key jobs it is 
interested only in allotting gainful slots to its 
hangers-on or persons who might have done its 
leaders favours. Nobody has a right to pay for 
personal favours out of state resources. Some of 
the favourite appointees may be experienced 
wheeler-dealers but their baggage will always 
prevent them from gaining public confidence - a 
vital condition for any administration's success. 
It is necessary to drop some outstanding 
undesirables. That may quench some fires of 
discontent.

Fifthly, one of the tests people everywhere apply 
to judge their rulers relates to the style of 
governance. Rulers in a republic cannot afford to 
display the pomp and splendour of a monarch's 
court. The poorer a people the greater is their 
hatred for their rulers' show of opulence. They 
feel at home with rulers they can identify with - 
and this depends on how the rulers live, how they 
travel, and what language and idiom they use for 
discourse. Even in corrupt societies corruption 
in high places, and mere stories of such 
corruption, undermine the people's loyalty to the 
state. Such stories - not confined to a single 
party - have already started fuelling gossip, and 
it seems quite a few people are not interested in 
staying in politics for long. Corruption can 
bring down regimes sooner than any other folly. A 
regime claiming to be democratic is more 
vulnerable to corruption charges than a 
dictatorship because it does not have the means 
to hide facts the way the latter can.

Sixthly, colonial/authoritarian regimes thrive on 
dividing their subjects along religious, 
sectarian, class and ethnic lines. A government 
that claims to be democratic cannot afford to 
indulge in such suicidal games. Pakistan is a 
multinational, multi-faith and multilingual 
state. Repudiation of this reality has cost 
Pakistan dear. The government will do well to 
review its conduct in this regard and intervene 
if any religious, ethnic or linguistic group is 
feeling left out of the scheme of representative 
rule or the state's benevolence.

Seventhly, Pakistani governments have 
traditionally created problems by reading 
external policies wrongly. That a country's 
external policy must be an extension of its 
domestic policy is an axiom that need not be 
dismissed as a worn-out cliché. Pakistan does 
have difficulties in devising an external policy 
that is in harmony with the people's interest and 
aspirations but the task must not be given up as 
hopeless without a struggle.

Eighthly, the government will do the people a 
great good if it helps them grow out of the 
security syndrome created by half-baked 
strategists. The country cannot be defended by 
soldiers and arms alone. Much greater is the need 
for a contented society and the inculcation of a 
belief among the people that the country and its 
resources belong to them. The presentation of the 
defence budget in parliament was good, but only a 
small beginning (nobody among the expert 
commentators is prepared to refer to it) and 
there is a long way to go before sovereignty is 
restored to its rightful claimants - the people.

Finally, the government must ensure collective 
decision-making, a regular dialogue with the 
people (not merely Ayub-style broadcasts) and 
transparency.

Few seem to believe the present leadership can 
rise to the occasion, but if they are duly 
trusted and properly motivated the people can 
steer the ship of state to safety. Muneer Niazi 
may have been right but however cruel the 
townsfolk no one is ordained to find escape in 
death.

_____


[3]

The Island
14 July 2008

NEEDED: A CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND A NEW CONSTITUTION

by K. Godage

"Let us all co-operate to give our people 
prosperity and a better future," stated Sri 
Lanka's first Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake. 
Sixty years on, our politicians have yet to agree 
to co-operate to usher in prosperity. They are 
instead selfishly pursuing their own personal 
interest at the expense of the national interest. 
They have collectively ensured the ruin of this 
country, even the image and influence we had 
abroad fifty years ago has been brought down to 
near zero.

The original mistake that was made, to my mind, 
was when the Soulbury Commission did not take off 
from the Donoughmore Constitution but took the 
easy way out and conveniently introduced the 
Westminster model. The Donoughmore Constitution 
may have had its drawbacks or shortcoming but at 
least we had worked it for more than a decade and 
knew of its shortcomings; the necessary 
amendments could have been introduced and the 
system refined. Instead the Soulbury Commission 
threw the baby out with the bathwater. Its 
greatest merit was that cooperation and not 
confrontation was the basis of the constitution. 
The Soulbury Constitution introduced 
confrontation of a form we had never known 
before; after 60 years it has spread hatred and 
left this country divided at every level of 
society as never before.

What passes for Democracy in this country is a 
mere shell of the real thing; the kernel has been 
removed by our politicians over the years. The 
political culture of this country has been built 
on adversarial, confrontational politics without 
regard to the national interest. Our politicians 
have missed the wood for the trees. This is the 
unfortunate tradition which they seem to want to 
perpetuate. The cement that has held this form of 
confrontational politics together has been, the 
vulgar pursuit of political power, for with it 
goes the opportunity to mount the gravy train and 
get rich quickly. In the process have we not 
become a morally degenerate society? Could anyone 
deny that?

Politics in this country is today a blood 
sport-governed by the rules of the slum---where 
the criminal underworld rules and where the scum 
of our society predominate. Politicians were for 
some years the patrons of the scum but the wheel 
appears to have turned and the scum from the 
slums, with their values, have begun to lord it 
over the politicians. Some have even become 
politicians and we citizens are the victims.

The two main parties seek to outbid each other 
for the Sinhala vote. This has been why we have 
not been able to reach a national consensus on 
any major issue including, what we could offer 
the Tamil people. The consequence of this 
competition and the fact that hard-line 
'organised' Sinhala groups were not prepared to 
share power in any effective way with the 
minorities (no proportional representation on an 
ethnic basis at national or cabinet level) has 
resulted in our present predicament. It should be 
mentioned that after the late GG Ponnambalam left 
the Kotelawela Cabinet, there was only Chelliah 
Kumarasuriyar in Mrs Bandaranaike's government 
and Lakshman Kadirgamar in the last 
administration. Tamils have been significant by 
their absence. There was almost a permanent 
exclusion of the Tamil minority from power at all 
levels. This exclusion it was that resulted in 
the struggle for Tamil rights which has ended up 
in the insurgency. To flag another forgotten fact 
-the Tamil Congress stood for sharing power at 
the centre and the Federal Party for sharing 
power on a regional basis. After the Tamil 
Congress faded away, the FP came to the fore and 
after they faded away we have the separatist 
Eelam parties taking up the Tamil cause. These 
separatist groups emerged only because of the 
failure of the Sinhala parties to 'accommodate' 
the Tamil people and address their grievances 
and, more importantly, because of the refusal to 
share power at the centre or with the province or 
at district level with them.

We must reject majoritarianism, it is not 
democracy, and at the same time we must reject 
divisive racial or ethnic politics and ethnic 
political parties forever. Confidence building 
measures must be arrived at through the 
consensual approach. It is within a democratic 
framework, where power is shared and merit the 
deciding factor, that we can find the necessary 
space to rise again.

It is indeed time for a group of our 
constitutional experts to compare the merits and 
demerits of the Executive Committee system with 
that of the system we have at present. After 30 
years of Cabinet government and 30 years of this 
post 1978 mixed system there seems little doubt 
that the two systems have only resulted in 
confrontation, consequent hatred, centralisation 
and concentration of power and has not worked to 
the benefit of our country. It is imperative that 
President Rajapaksa think in terms of 
establishing a Constituent Assembly to consider a 
new constitution based on the Donoughmore 
principle which would restore participatory 
democracy and true self government for the people 
of this country.

For the present the President would need to have 
the 13th Amendment amended to make a reality of 
devolution. There is no doubt that we would 
encounter many difficulties when it comes to the 
matter of sharing power, from sharing budgetary 
allocations and sharing resources, to deliberate 
attempts by vested interests to sabotage any 
peace process or agreement based on power 
sharing. We would need to create new institutions 
that would secure the peace---yes, radical new 
thinking may be needed but the price is worth it. 
For instance, since mono-ethnic regions would 
only exacerbate the ethnic problem, we must 
consider carving out new regions. Perhaps the 
country can be divided into three or four 
regions. That would make sense, instead of the 
present nine provinces, with nine governors and 
nine chief ministers and cabinets--a structure 
which is today an absolute liability.

We may be multi ethnic but we are one nation. In 
the words of a recent song "This land belongs to 
you, this land belongs to me so let us live in 
harmony". Sharing power has become vital to 
manage a society, nay a country, which is 
pluralistic and divided such as ours. The 
majoritarian form of democracy (it does seem 
contradictory for 'majoritarianism' cannot be 
democratic) did not make for decision making by 
consensus and this is where we fell short. If, on 
the other hand, we share power that implies that 
whatever segment with whom power is shared will 
have a significant say in decision making and 
with it a sense of autonomy.

Under the Donoughmore system legislators, 
regardless of their political party, shared in 
the executive function of government and thus 
avoided bitterness. They were all involved in 
administration too; this is important considering 
the nexus between the politician and the people. 
In this country, the people, particularly in the 
rural areas, take all their problems to the MP. 
Government would be brought close to the people 
and the elected representatives of the people 
would be far more sensitive to the needs and 
demands of the people. Under the Donoughmore 
Constitution governance became a collective 
effort and the responsibility of all those who 
had been elected.

In recent years we have seen Ministers Professor 
GL Peiris, Karu Jayasuriya and Dinesh Gunawardena 
all advocate the restoration of the Donoughmore 
system and the sharing of executive power not 
only at national level but at the local level, 
from the Provincial Council down to the Municipal 
Council and the Urban Council. I recall that 
Professor Peiris very lucidly spelled out the 
advantages that would accrue from the adoption of 
the Executive Committee system. I do hope that 
these three influential Ministers would, in the 
national interest, revive this initiative, for 
this system is very much in keeping with our 
cultural heritage and is absolute necessary 
considering the conditions that currently exist 
in our country.

We need to deal with the sense of alienation 
which has enveloped the minorities in this 
country; they feel they do not belong here; we 
MUST restore their confidence and sense of 
belonging and with it, the organic character of 
our society. This feeling of being alienated 
could be remedied only by bringing them into the 
mainstream. If for a start the system is 
introduced in the Eastern Province Provincial 
Council it would most immediately help diffuse 
the explosive situation that exists in the 
province, which outside elements could exploit to 
the country's detriment.

I do hope this plea would find support among 
political parties and civil society.


_____


[4] [ Indo-US Nuclear Deal: In this war over 
'national sovereignty' among India's nuclear 
power elites, the message of the peace movement 
is'nt being heard by many - that this deal will 
allow India to build more weapons of mass 
destruction ; While this slinging match is on, 
the poor and ordinary citizens seems to have been 
again taken for a ride by. . . all of India's 
keepers of 'national interest'; the bomb loving 
right wing forces of Hindutva are of course 
waiting in the wings to grab the next opportunity 
to come back to power in Delhi. We now need a an 
internationalist popular movement for peace 
across South Asia against these 'National 
Interest' peddlers and to force them to talk 
focus on people's interest. Listen to the voice 
of the peace movement. Better Be Active Now, Than 
Be Radio Active Tomorrow / Challenge Nationalism, 
Communalism, Nuclearism and Militarism Across the 
Region. . . . ]

o o o

www.esakal.com/
[Published in Marathi on 18 July 2008]

Special to 'Sakaal'

MANMOHAN'S FALSE NUCLEAR MOVE

by Praful Bidwai

Whether or not the Manmohan Singh government 
survives the confidence vote next Tuesday, it 
will be remembered for its deviousness, stealth 
and deception in pushing the India-US nuclear 
deal without a democratic mandate, and by 
betraying the promise it made to its own Left 
supporters. Why, it even falsely claimed that the 
safeguards agreement signed with the 
International Atomic Energy Agency is 
"classified" from the Agency's standpoint-when 
the IAEA itself contradicted this! Finally, the 
government was shamed into making it public 10 
hours after arms-control groups put it on their 
websites.

The agreement has come under attack from three 
sets of people. The Right says it doesn't 
recognise India as a nuclear weapons-state (NWS) 
and compromises India's right to conduct more 
nuclear tests. The Left and Centrist parties say 
its text falls short of the commitments to 
Parliament made by Singh on uninterrupted fuel 
supply and India's right to take "corrective 
measures" if the supply is interrupted.

Third, advocates of arms control and nuclear 
disarmament say it violates international 
non-proliferation norms and will encourage other 
states to cross the nuclear threshold and demand 
approval from the IAEA and the 45-nation Nuclear 
Suppliers' Group-thus increasing the global 
nuclear danger.

Who is right? The short answer is, the Right-wing 
critics are technically right, but politically 
wrong. The Centre-Left is procedurally right, but 
misses the disarmament angle altogether. And the 
arms-controllers and peaceniks are spot-on in 
arguing that the agreement is not in the interest 
of world peace, and eventually, India too. It's 
likely to face significant huddles at the IAEA 
Board of Governors and the NSG, and miss the 
tight timetable of the U.S. Congress.

Singh, then, may end up antagonising much of the 
domestic political spectrum-and yet lose the deal.

Singh promised Parliament that the agreement 
would be "India-specific" and contain fuel supply 
guarantees, and the rights to build a "strategic 
fuel reserve" and take "corrective measures" if 
supplies are suspended.

However, the agreement doesn't contain these 
assurances in the main operative text; only in 
the preamble. And the preamble does not have the 
same significance or legal force as the operative 
text, which imposes restrictions that are 
incompatible with Singh's assurances.

The "corrective measures" are nowhere defined. 
But it's clear that the purpose of the 
safeguards-inspections of civilian nuclear 
facilities-is to prevent diversion of nuclear 
materials to military use, and that once placed 
under safeguards, Indian facilities cannot be 
taken out. In reality, "corrective measures" may 
mean nothing.

The Right is correct in arguing that the 
agreement doesn't bestow NWS status upon India. 
But realistically, that was never on the agenda. 
India is breaking into the global Nuclear Club 
without having signed a single agreement/treaty 
on nuclear arms-control or disarmament. Even the 
most sympathetic world powers won't legally grant 
it NWS status without India conceding something.

India has conceded very, very little. It has only 
agreed to place only 14 of its 22 civilian 
reactors under safeguards. It can do what it 
likes with the remaining eight.

Besides, it's ludicrous to argue that India needs 
to conduct more nuclear tests to develop an 
effective deterrent-even assuming that these 
horrible mass-destruction weapons are essential 
for security, which they aren't.

India already has enough plutonium for 100 to 150 
nuclear bombs-much more than the professed 
"credible minimum deterrent". This "minimum" is 
usually understood as a few dozen weapons. After 
all, how many bombs does it take to flatten five 
Pakistani or Chinese cities? The eight 
unsafeguarded reactors can produce another 40 
bombs a year. India's dedicated military-nuclear 
facilities can add even more. All this makes for 
a huge arsenal, close in magnitude to China's.

What the Right really wants is a hydrogen-bomb 
test and a super-ambitious, no-holds-barred, 
obscenely expensive nuclear arsenal, which makes 
sense only in a lunatic framework.

The Centre-Left parties' procedural objections to 
the safeguards agreement are valid. But they 
don't touch its substance. The Left's real 
objection to the nuclear deal is that it will 
draw India into the US strategic orbit. This is a 
reasonable objection, but it doesn't deal with 
the specifics of the IAEA agreement, the Hyde 
Act, or the bilateral 123 agreement with the US.

  The Left also has failed to reiterate the most 
fundamental criticism of the deal, and of all the 
agreements and components it contains-namely, 
that it will legitimise nuclear weapons (both 
India's and America's), detract from the UPA's 
stated goal of fighting for global nuclear 
disarmament, and promote nuclear power. Nuclear 
power is an extremely costly, unacceptably unsafe 
and environmentally unsustainable form of energy.

In 1998, the Left rightly opposed the Pokharan-II 
tests and demanded regional and global nuclear 
weapons abolition. But it has not returned to 
that agenda in the last two years, after 
initially opposing the deal in 2005 on 
disarmament grounds.

Only the peaceniks are consistent on the 
disarmament issue. They argue that the deal will 
admit India into the Nuclear Club. The last thing 
a new entrant does is to demand a change in the 
Club's rules, not to speak of its abolition!

At any rate, the safeguards agreement will face 
some resistance in the IAEA Board of Governors, 
some of whom are unhappy with the special 
exceptions its preamble it makes for India. Even 
if it goes through the IAEA, it's likely to 
confront strong objections in the NSG, which must 
grant India clean and unconditional exemption 
from its tough nuclear commerce rules.

At least 10 NSG members are reportedly 
uncomfortable with it and may demand repeated 
meetings.

However, the deal must clear these hurdles in 
record time if it's to be taken up by the U.S. 
Congress before it ends its term on September 26. 
According to many interpretations of the Hyde 
Act, Congress must be in 30 days of continuous 
session to consider it, and less than 40 days are 
left in the session. So the deal appears unlikely 
to win approval in Congress this year.

That only leaves the next couple of weeks for 
both the IAEA and the NSG to clear the deal. It 
is improbable that this will happen.-end--

______


[5] 


Indian Express
July 18, 2008

LAW AND INJUSTICE

by Upendra Baxi

India is heading towards a civil liberties 
crisis, as state 'security' is elevated over 
human rights

  Recent events such as the unjustifiable 
incarceration of Binyak Sen in Jharkhand, the 
Arushi murder case, and denial of bail to 
children and women protesting state callousness 
towards the victims of the Bhopal catastrophe 
show how regimes of police power continue to 
blight and even annul the letter and spirit of 
Indian constitutionalism.

Human rights to liberty are becoming a casualty 
in contemporary India. With distressing 
regularity, government appointed committees - 
from the Malimath to Jeevan Reddy and beyond - 
continue to advocate a politically expedient 
agenda for criminal justice and police reform, 
elevating 'security' considerations over the 
fundamental liberties of Indian citizens. Our 
rights remain at the mercy of a callous and 
corrupt sovereign. A steady emphasis on 
increasing the arbitrary powers of detention, far 
from being a panacea, thrives on a profound 
disregard for human rights in the administration 
of criminal justice.

The crisis stands deepened by the Supreme Court's 
recent decision in the Jessica Lall murder case, 
denying the accused, Manu Sharma, of the right to 
bail pending appeal - what is extraordinary is 
that in doing so, it perniciously suggests that 
conviction in the first instance provides 
sufficient justification for denial of this basic 
human right. Indeed, in plain words, the Court 
rules that because a person has been convicted by 
a competent criminal court, she may no longer 
claim the presumption of innocence, even when the 
conviction has been fully appealed against!

The brutal murder of Jessica Lall and the manner 
of the acquittal of the accused by the trial 
court rightly provoked an unprecedented 
partnership between human rights activists and 
the media. This marked a new and precious form of 
public audit of the miscarriage of justice. 
Understandably, no activist tear has been shed at 
the denial of bail to a prime accused in the 
case. Many of us may still regard the denial of 
right to bail, as an act of justice towards a 
high profile accused/convict. Yet critiquing the 
judicial performance in the instant case remains 
important because at stake remains the 
constitutional integrity of the human right to 
liberty. Far from constituting a question of 
technical law, human rights and social movement 
activists ought to attend more closely to the 
ways in which the Court here proceeds to deny 
bail pending appeal, if only because they 
coequally remain thus exposed to state/law 
repression.

The counsel for the accused argued that because 
Manu Sharma had 'a good chance of his appeal 
being allowed' and this circumstance justified 
his being released on bail on such terms and 
conditions that the Court may prescribe. This was 
an entirely sincere constitutional request, based 
on a long line of judicial decisions, which the 
Supreme Court fully unfortunately declined. At 
stake, indeed, was the cardinal principle of a 
rule of law based society: the presumption of 
innocence till proven guilty beyond reasonable 
doubt.

The Supreme Court itself has remained aware that 
balancing the claims of liberty with public 
security is an onerous responsibility. Yet, it 
has consistently placed the claims of security 
over liberty, and held it erroneous to equate 
denial of bail as constituting a part of 
punishment. It has constantly ruled that granting 
bail 'is the rule and refusal the exception.' It 
reiterates the venerable principle that if 'the 
appeal would not be heard for long' and not 
'disposed of within a measurable distance of 
time,' the power to grant bail ought to be 
exercised in favour of the right of citizen 
liberty. It even endorses an earlier 
authoritative precedent which regards it as 
'travesty of justice' to 'keep a person in jail 
for a period of five or six years for an offence 
which is not found not ultimately committed by 
him.' The Court further says that such denial of 
liberty remain fully 'incompensable' and 
'unjustified' in the event of a later acquittal.

Given this superb record of fidelity with 
precedent, the result in the Manu Sharma case 
represents an extraordinary adjudicative 
somersault. The Court now proceeds to hold that 
'once a person has been convicted, an appellate 
court will proceed on the basis that such person 
is guilty.' Once such determination is made, 
clearly, the usual litany concerning discretion 
to grant or not to grant bail, invoking grounds 
such as 'the nature of accusation,' the 'manner 
in which crime is alleged to have been 
committed,' the 'gravity of the offence', etc., 
stand fully eclipsed.

No more scandalous proposition may be found in 
the annals of contemporary human rights 
jurisprudence. Should this doctrine now 
constitute the rule of law for contemporary 
India, no Indian citizen howsoever convicted by a 
trial court may ever entertain any prospect for 
the realization of a human right to bail pending 
an appeal. Because the Supreme Court now insists 
that when 'a person has been convicted' she 
'cannot be said' to be an 'innocent person until 
a final decision is rendered' in her favour, it 
is now likely that denying bail during the 
pendency of an appeal against conviction may 
become the rule rather than an exception. So 
extraordinary is this judicial articulation as to 
invite a comparison with the shades of the 
notorious Internal Emergency Supreme Court Shiv 
Kant decision, which denied the elemental right 
to habeas corpus to Indian citizens.

In holding further that an appeal is 'likely to 
be heard within a measurable distance of time,' 
the Court organizes an amnesia of the annual Law 
Day rituals, where the chief justices of India, 
and the leaders of the Indian Bar so regularly 
lament the law's delays. Justice C. K. Thakker, 
who delivered this decision, is a celebrated 
author of a leading treatise on Indian 
administrative law and one expected from His 
Lordship a greater concern for the denial of 
natural justice and fundamental human rights. One 
may only hope that a larger Bench may now proceed 
to overrule this egregiously wrong decision, thus 
salvaging its hard-won respect as a bastion of 
human rights protection.

The writer is Professor of law, University of 
Warwick, and former Vice Chancellor of 
Universities of South Gujarat and Delhi


______



[6]

Hindustan Times
July 16, 2008

A DECADE OF DEVASTATION

by Ashutosh Sapru

When I left Srinagar on 22 January 1990, I was in 
my 20s. I was escorting my sister to Delhi. We 
had to leave because three days before, militants 
had given a call for jehad  across the Valley. 
Kashmiri Pandits, soft targets, were reluctantly 
trickling out. There was no doubt in my mind that 
I would returning in a few days for my final-year 
college exams.

It took me 13 years to return. Even God is not 
safe here, I thought and went for a shikara ride 
on Dal Lake.

Day 1- A decade of devastation

As the plane scissored over the Pir Panjal ranges 
pointing me home, a mist as wet as a December 
morning of my birthplace fogged my eyes. Naively, 
I tried to clean the window as we landed at 
Srinagar. Out in the bracing 8-degree wind, I ran 
straight into the warm arms of my friend Fayaz.

Everything went by in slow motion, cushioning me 
from changes wrought by over a decade of 
devastation and creation. From the car; I saw 
greenery had given way to a mushrooming of bright 
new yellow, red and blue houses. We passed the 
majestic bungalow of Jamat-e-Islami leader Syed 
Ali Shah Geelani. Hordes of gun-toting security 
personnel crisscrossed the streets. Bunkers 
punctuated every corner and crossing. I rattled 
off names of roads, to show that for me, nothing 
had changed. Or so I wanted to believe.

"Can we Kashmiri Pandits come back home now?" I 
asked. Fayaz assured me everything was normal.

But was it? Is it?

We stopped at my college. The principal and 
teachers were all there-as if time had stood 
still, only adding grey to hair and wrinkles to 
skin. Masood sahib took me to his room and other 
teachers steamed in. Soon, I was weeping 
shamelessly in the arms of Aftab Ahmed, my 
drawing teacher, and his eyes mirrored mine. I 
collected the addresses of my classmates and 
friends, and left with a dinner invitation from 
Masood sahib.

Leaving my luggage at the hotel, I walked out to 
Lal Chowk for a cup of coffee at my favourite 
Shakti Sweets. College girls and boys, hipper 
than I remembered, chattered in Urdu, rather than 
Kashmiri, over snacks and music. Walking back, I 
saw a security guard push three boys out from an 
autorickshaw with the muzzle of his gun, for a 
thorough frisking. People here have got used to 
it, but to me it seemed they lived in a huge 
prison, moving within walls tightly guarded by 
the police.

That night at Masood sahib's house, a smouldering 
kangri and hot kahwa melted away the dark and 
cold. We began to talk politics--what could we 
blame the misfortune of my generation of Kashmiri 
Pandits on?

It was the reason I had come back. Had we left 
without the dignity of a memory? Had we left 
behind a vacuum irreplaceable by ideology or 
power games? Or had we been routed, like in any 
old battle, stripped of honour and possessions, 
never to return without the use of equal force?

"Do you miss us--the Kashmiri Pandits?"

Replied Masood sahib, "In our heart of hearts we 
feel your absence". He said common people felt 
nothing had been achieved by militancy. But 
undeniably, the chasm between Pandits and Muslims 
has widened irreparably.

Masood sahib and his wife dropped me back--it is 
now safer to go out with one's wife after dark. 
There is no middle ground to stop at here; people 
oscillate like pendulums, between work and home, 
safety and fear.

Day 2-House hunting

You might remember the Shankaracharya Temple from 
Mission Kashmir. As a schoolboy, I would run up 
and down the hill on which it stands. Now the cab 
hiccuped to a stop for three security checks. 
Even God is not safe here, I thought and went for 
a shikara ride on Dal Lake.

I lay in the shikara, watching kids rowing boats. 
A few tourists on a houseboat were having 
pictures taken in traditional Kashmiri dress.

Back at the college, my friends, more long lost 
brothers, waited for me for that special cup of 
camaraderie--drizzled with a hope that youth 
inspires, warm with the belief that the world can 
be changed.

A couple of friends came with me to my house in 
Lal Nagar. We went down the lane once lined with 
Kashmiri Pandit homes. The nameplates had 
changed; houses not sold off looked shrunk and 
dirty, like badly washed clothes.

Three new houses and encroachments encircled 'my' 
house. Our plot had been divided into two and a 
new house stood over 'my' badminton court. We 
knocked for long before a nervous lady opened the 
door. Soon, I was sitting in what was my study, 
the tea suddenly salty with my tears. "Don't lose 
heart." the new lady of my house said. "We are 
like your parents, too. Come and stay with us in 
the summer".

I went to see my Muslim neighbours--once the only 
Muslim family in our lane. The son, Maqbool, 
hugged me. His mother was soon wiping my face 
with her chadar, recalling how my sister used to 
give her medicines when she was ill. She loaded 
me with walnuts and almonds for my parents, 
asking me to bring them back for the summer now 
that things were "normal". Her eyes were dark 
wells, sad like the ruined temple on the river 
bank across the colony.

The day kept rewinding in my head like a nonstop 
reel. That night I could not sleep. We had saved 
our lives, but lost everything else.

Day 3-Temples as fortresses

A big blast split the morning, followed by rounds 
of firing. My friend said everything would be 
fine in 15 minutes. If that's all the time it 
took between war and peace! We got talking to two 
kids in school uniform. One of them smilingly 
wished demonstrators would start pelting the army 
with stones--"what fun!" For kids born in the 
last ten years, the game of Cops and Robbers has 
been replaced by a gorier one- 'Encounter'. I 
don't need to describe it.

The famous Kheer Bhawani temple is a pilgrimage 
for Kashmiri Pandits, definitely worthy of the 
full CRPF battalion I found guarding it. Swami 
Vivekananda had stayed here once. A Muslim was 
selling puja samagri because all the Hindu 
shopkeepers had left. The CRPF pujari performed 
the puja. Over a cup of tea, served free by the 
jawans, I listened to talk of protecting Kashmir 
and safeguarding the nation. On the way back, 
people stared at me--an unusual sight--red tilak 
on my forehead, in kurta and pajami.

There was another house in my mind's album-my 
grandfather's house in Habbakdal, once a Pandit 
area with busy, narrow lanes. The lanes looked 
deserted now, crisscrossing around the 
once-popular Ganesh temple, looking like a 
fortress controlled by the army. My ancestral 
house was a pile of debris. The army had done it, 
people said. Shops of Kashmiri Pandits were shut.

Day 4-Bitter truths.

I went to the Jama Masjid; it was Friday. The 
shops were slowly opening, defying a bandh called 
by a militant group. I was told these days shops 
closed only if the Hurriyat called a bandh.

We got talking to two kids in school uniform. One 
of them smilingly wished demonstrators would 
start pelting the army with stones--"what fun!" 
For kids born in the last ten years, the game of 
Cops and Robbers has been replaced by a gorier 
one- 'Encounter'. I don't need to describe it.

It was time to leave. My friends said they 
abhorred the existing situation, but they were 
not to blame. They were fed up; they, too, wanted 
a solution.

"Will I find work here if I come back? Will I be 
safe?" I asked. They had no answers, except that 
things would change. They wished I would return, 
and they sent me away loaded with gifts. Like a 
bride.

I was alone. I wanted to be. "Will I ever be able 
to return"?" This time I asked myself. This is 
the answer I got: When you pour liquid in a cup, 
it adjusts its shape to fit the cup perfectly. 
What might have been the contents last night or 
last week is not relevant today. When my 
community lived in the Valley, we were part of 
the liquid in the cup. Now, we have lost our 
relevance. Others have taken our place. Today, 
there's no trace of us there.

(The story has been reproduced from Sunday HT magazine, 2003)

______


[7] Book Review:

Frontline
July 19 - August 01, 2008

Hidden histories

by Susan Ram

-
ERASURE OF THE EURO-ASIAN: RECOVERING EARLY 
RADICALISM AND FEMINISM IN SOUTH ASIA
by Kumari Jayawardena
(2007,312 pages |  Published by Social Scientists Association, Colombo)
-

The author shares the hopeful vision of the 
future that fuelled so many of the human lives 
recorded in her ambitious and free-ranging study.


BACK in the 1820s, Henry Derozio, a young teacher 
at Kolkata's Hindu College, served his students a 
heady brew of anti-colonial rhetoric, rationalism 
and social criticism, sparking the emergence of 
the short-lived but combative Young Bengal 
movement, capable of drawing the ire of 
colonialists and Hindu traditionalists alike. A 
couple of decades later, there were echoes in Sri 
Lanka, where Charles Lorenz, with a group of 
young friends, launched the journal Young Ceylon 
and threw himself into public protests against 
oppressive taxation.

One of Lorenz's relatives, Alfred Ernst 
Buultjens, would take the radicalism further 
later in the century through his leadership of 
the Ceylon Printers' Union, the island's first 
trade union, and his involvement in its inaugural 
strike in 1893. A year earlier, Evelyn Davidson 
and Henrietta Keyt had been the first women 
students to cross the threshold of the Ceylon 
Medical College in Colombo, spelling doom with 
the swish of their skirts to male monopolisation 
of the medical profession. And in the coming 
battle for voting rights for women in Sri Lanka, 
an energetic role would be played by the feisty 
Agnes de Silva, the lifelong enemy of convention 
who in 1927 founded the Women's Franchise Union.

What links these pioneers, these emphatic voices 
from South Asia's colonial past, is not simply 
their appetite for redressing injustice, exposing 
hypocrisy and smashing obstacles to freedom. All 
six could also lay claim to what Kumari 
Jayawardena, in an ambitious new study, calls "an 
indeterminate social identity": that of mixed 
European and Asian ancestry. However distant the 
origins (Portuguese, Dutch, British) of their 
"hybridity" and irrespective of their class or 
status, such individuals remained the "visible 
by-products of European colonial rule" and as 
such attracted a complex cocktail of responses in 
which the negative prevailed. As a result, Kumari 
Jayawardena argues, their contributions have 
tended to be overlooked not only by colonial 
historiography but also by the South Asian 
nationalist tradition and by post-colonial 
scholars and activists. In her book she seeks to 
reclaim a past that has been (in the historian 
Sheila Rowbottom's phrase) "hidden from history", 
and to probe the factors behind this erasure.

Kumari Jayawardena, a distinguished political 
scientist currently teaching in the Women's 
Studies Programme at the University of Colombo, 
is well placed to undertake this journey. Her own 
origins lie in the coming together, across 
barriers of race, nationality, language and 
culture, of an English-born mother and a Sri 
Lankan father. As the product of an interracial 
union, she is alert to the possibilities opened 
up by what Salman Rushdie has described as 
"hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the 
transformation that comes of new and unexpected 
combinations of human beings, culture, ideas, 
politicsŠ". Through a remarkable body of 
published work, including The Rise of the Labour 
Movement in Ceylon (1972); Feminism and 
Nationalism in the Third World (1986); The White 
Woman's Other Burden: Western Women in South Asia 
during British Rule (1995); and From Nobodies to 
Somebodies: The Rise of the Bourgeoisie in Sri 
Lanka (1998: reviewed in Frontline, January 4, 
2002), she reveals a formidable scholarship and 
readiness to take on big themes. As a Marxist and 
a feminist, she has fused historical research and 
the pursuit of knowledge with radical political 
engagement, defence of the vulnerable and 
persistent questioning of received wisdom. In Sri 
Lanka, she has attracted controversy through her 
interventions in the ethnic crisis, where she has 
spoken out bravely against the rise in chauvinism 
and extreme nationalism on both sides of the 
ethnic divide. As she notes in her new book, some 
political opponents have retaliated by labelling 
her "'sankara' - a derogatory Sinhala word 
connoting a person of mixed ethnic origin".

In a study that provides further evidence of her 
bold instincts and refusal to confine herself to 
established paths, Kumari Jayawardena pursues a 
three-pronged strategy. She begins by exploring, 
across a broad Asian canvas, the colonial 
framework in which interracial communities 
emerged and took shape. Comparing Portuguese, 
Dutch and British approaches to the question, she 
enters the thicket of terminology that colonial 
administrators and mixed race communities alike 
devised to tackle its intricacies. "East Indian", 
"Indo-European", "Indo- British", "Eurasian", 
"Britasian" and "Firinghee" were among the names 
to surface in India, while Portuguese rule in Sri 
Lanka threw up such terms as tupasses (converts 
to Christianity of European-Asian ancestry), 
mestiça/mestiço (female/male of mixed race) and 
castizo (offspring of a mestiça mother and a 
European father). Following the arrival of the 
Dutch and then the British in Sri Lanka, 
mixed-race descendants of the Dutch came to be 
called "Dutch Burghers" but, to add to the 
confusion, the term "Burgher" was also used to 
designate people of Portuguese descent, while the 
offspring of British-Asian alliances were 
labelled "Eurasian". Kumari Jayawardena deftly 
sidesteps this morass by offering a new term - 
"Euro-Asian" - as a catch-all category designed 
to embrace every conceivable admixture and 
permutation.

RASHEEDA BHAGAT

Kumari Jayawardena, Sri Lankan political scientist.

In this initial phase of the study, Kumari 
Jayawardena also encounters a recurring problem: 
the slipperiness of her subject matter. In 
relation to colonialism the "intermediate 
identity" of the Euro-Asians seemed to generate a 
perpetual wavering within the community, a 
vacillation between pride in European roots and 
resentment at the smarts, racism and 
discrimination directed at them by the colonial 
power. In class terms, diversity prevailed. While 
some Euro-Asians rose to high positions in 
government or the medical, legal and teaching 
professions, others worked on the railways, 
became domestic servants or toiled as day 
labourers. Emphasis on "stock" (a code word for 
class-cum-occupation), together with a 
consciousness of the subtlest gradations in skin 
pigmentation, encouraged Euro-Asians to pursue 
policies of stratification and exclusion very 
much in tune with what Kumari Jayawardena calls 
the "South Asian preoccupation with hierarchical 
formations". If no formal caste system existed 
among the Euro-Asians, "only those few who could 
climb the class ladder could divest themselves of 
the 'stigma' of mixed origin" (page 11).

Nonetheless, the "rootlessness" of a community 
that stood outside the caste system could yield 
dividends. In the right circumstances, the author 
argues, the fact that Euro-Asians were neither 
fully European nor Asian "gave some of them the 
ability to challenge authority and orthodoxy, to 
face unpopularity and to take risks by 
championing democratic rights" (page 85). In the 
second prong of her study, she seeks to document 
this by showcasing the artistry, radicalism and 
exuberance of a sequence of Euro-Asian figures 
united by their anti-colonial instincts and 
precocious socio-political views. In what is in 
many respects the most accessible and absorbing 
part of her book, Kumari Jayawardena retrieves 
these vibrant voices from the musty confines of 
the archives, enabling them to sing again. 
Whether it is the freethinking poet and teacher 
Henry Derozio, empassioned by Byron and the 
European Enlightenment, or Charles Lorenz calling 
his Sri Lankan compatriots to action in the wake 
of the 1848 revolutions, these "vagabond 
firingis", loathed by traditionalists at home as 
much as by the colonial authorities, set about 
attacking every reactionary shibboleth, whether 
colonial in origin or emanating from calcified 
religious and social tradition. Kumari 
Jayawardena characterises them as "utopian 
visionaries of Asia, Š able to 'catch the dawn' 
long before the rise of fully fledged nationalist 
and reform movements" (page 126).

One aspect of this early assault on home-grown 
orthodoxy was its progressive stand on the 
position of women. In India, Derozio was (with 
Rammohun Roy) among the first to denounce 
publicly the practice of Sati, while the 
Lorenzians in Sri Lanka lobbied energetically for 
girls to go to school. In the third part of her 
study, Kumari Jayawardena seeks to explore what 
she terms the "gender, patriarchal and 
chauvinist" dimensions of the Euro-Asian 
experience. What emerges is a complex, 
many-layered picture in which Euro-Asian women, 
objects of what the author calls the "desire and 
denigration" syndrome of both Europeans and 
locals, found themselves pulled in contradictory 
directions. While the better educated or socially 
advantaged could emerge as pioneers, as "new 
women" prepared to trail-blaze into higher 
education and the professions, others fell victim 
to the potent combination of racial and sexual 
stereotyping that surfaced across a broad swathe 
of culture, from the fantasisings of 19th century 
writers such as Baudelaire to the 1931 Noel 
Coward song "Half-caste Woman".

AP

Vivien Leigh, with Marlon Brando, in the 1951 
movie "A Streetcar Named Desire". Like another 
Hollywood actor, Merle Oberon, she found it fit 
to draw a veil over her Euro-Asian origin.

In films, Kumari Jayawardena finds the Euro-Asian 
woman "mostly portrayed as a temptress or victim 
who could never marry the white hero, and whose 
liaison inevitably came to a sad end through 
separation or death" (page 202). Under the 
circumstances, the decision of two Hollywood 
actors - Merle Oberon and Vivien Leigh - to draw 
a veil over their Euro-Asian origins seems 
neither irrational nor inappropriate.

The "erasure of the Euro-Asian" thus reveals 
itself to be a tricky, multifaceted process to 
which politics, racism, mass culture and murky 
psychological and sexual aspects have all 
contributed. In a concluding chapter that perhaps 
could be expanded in subsequent editions, Kumari 
Jayawardena makes a spirited if not yet 
completely convincing attempt to pull her 
disparate threads together. If in the colonial 
past, she argues, the "marginality" of the 
Euro-Asians was upheld by white rulers fearful of 
their insurrectionary instincts and by home-grown 
cultural diehards antipathetic to their radical 
social message, today the suppression can be 
sourced elsewhere. Across a subcontinent beset 
with "religious fundamentalism, communalism, 
ethno-nationalism and exclusivist identity 
politics", assertions of "purity" tend to obscure 
the past and block the appreciation of nuance and 
difference. In such a context, antagonistic 
attitudes to hybridity can be seen as part of a 
more general denial of the pluralist, 
multi-ethnic roots, and reality, of contemporary 
South Asian society. Should an 'upstart' 
individual of Euro-Asian origin lay claim to the 
tradition of Derozio and Lorenz by raising 
questions "concerning the whole of society", they 
can expect ancient epithets to fly in their 
direction.

Despite this, the author shares the hopeful 
vision of the future that fuelled so many of the 
human lives recorded in her wonderfully ambitious 
and free-ranging study. The time is propitious, 
she believes, to push beyond outmoded and 
scientifically discredited notions of "purity" by 
embracing (in Rushdie's memorable 
characterisation) "melange, hotch-potch Š 
change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining". For its 
contribution to this awakening, as well as for 
its freshness of approach and its meticulous 
scholarship, her new study deserves the widest 
possible readership.



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

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