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,
politics". 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, 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
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.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
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