SACW | July 21-24, 2008 / Nucear Politics / Climate Change and Black Burkas / Peace Farce / Partition / Dissent

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | July 21-24 , 2008 | 
Dispatch No. 2543 - Year 10 running

[1] India: Democracy and Nuclear Politics :
(i) A Nonproliferation Disaster (Jayantha Dhanapala, Daryl Kimball)
(ii) Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Is The Left Going To 
Fall On Its Own Sword? (Vinod Mubayi)
(iii) From politics of representation to the politics of numbers (Medha Patkar)
(iv) The Answer  . . . is blowing in the wind (An E-mail from Germany)
[2]  Sri Lanka: Impunity, a debilitating fixture 
in state culture - 25 years after Welikada 
massacre (Rajan Hoole)
[3] India - Pakistan:
   (i) Peace talks in a rut (Aasim Sajjad Akhtar)
   (ii) Partition and friendship (Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan)
[4] Bangladesh: The Gathering Storm (George Black)
   + Gendered embodiments (Nayanika Mookherjee)
[5] India: Chhattisgarh and the danger of dissent (Paramita Ghosh)
[6] India: Law can do little to stop horse trading (Manoj Mitta)
[7] Announcement:
   - Rajni Kothari Annual Lecture 2008 by Sudipta 
Kaviraj (New Delhi, 31 July 2008)

______


[1] India: Nuclear Policy and Democracy . . .

(i)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

A NONPROLIFERATION DISASTER 

by Jayantha Dhanapala, Daryl Kimball
Proliferation Analysis, July 10, 2008

Decision time has arrived on the controversial 
nuclear cooperation proposal that was first 
proposed by President George W. Bush and Prime 
Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005.

After a long delay, the Indian government has 
sidestepped domestic critics of the deal and is 
asking the International Atomic Energy Agency 
(IAEA) Board of Governors to consider a new 
"India-specific" safeguards agreement that would 
cover a limited number of additional "civilian" 
reactors. The IAEA Board could meet on the matter 
by the end of July.

Shortly thereafter, the Bush administration will 
ask the other 44 members of the Nuclear Suppliers 
Group (NSG) to exempt India from longstanding NSG 
guidelines that require full-scope IAEA 
safeguards as a condition of supply. 
Comprehensive safeguards are intended to prevent 
the use of civilian nuclear technology and 
material for weapons purposes.

Because the NSG and IAEA traditionally operate by 
consensus, any one of a number of states can act 
to block or modify the ill-conceived arrangement. 
They have good reason and a responsibility to do 
so.

Contrary to the claims of its advocates, the deal 
fails to bring India further into conformity with 
the nonproliferation behavior expected of the 
member states of the nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty (NPT). Unlike 178 other countries, India 
has not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty 
(CTBT). It continues to produce fissile material 
and expand its arsenal.

Yet, the arrangement would give India the rights 
and privileges of civil nuclear trade that have 
been reserved only for members of the NPT. It 
creates a dangerous distinction between "good" 
proliferators and "bad" proliferators sending out 
misleading signals to the international community 
with regard to NPT norms.

In fact, the current proposal threatens to 
further undermine the nuclear safeguards system 
and efforts to prevent the proliferation of 
technologies that may be used to produce nuclear 
bomb material. It would also indirectly 
contribute to the expansion of India's nuclear 
arsenal with possible consequences for a nuclear 
arms race in Asia.

In particular, India is seeking an 
"India-specific" safeguards agreement that could 
- depending on how it is interpreted -- allow 
India to cease IAEA scrutiny if fuel supplies are 
cut off even it that is because it renews nuclear 
testing. In the preamble of the proposed 
safeguards agreement, which was distributed 
yesterday, India states that it may take 
unspecified "corrective actions" to ensure fuel 
supplies in the event that they are interrupted. 
IAEA Board members should get clarification 
before taking a decision and reject any 
interpretation that is inconsistent with the 
principle of permanent safeguards over all 
nuclear materials and facilities.

As part of the carefully crafted final document 
of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, 
all NPT states-parties endorsed the principle of 
full-scope safeguards as a condition of supply. A 
decision by the NSG to exempt India from this 
requirement for India would contradict this 
important element of the NPT bargain.

India also pledged in July 2005 to conclude an 
additional protocol to its safeguards agreement. 
Given that India maintains a nuclear weapons 
program outside of safeguards, facility-specific 
safeguards on a few additional "civilian" 
reactors provide no serious nonproliferation 
benefits. States should insist that India 
conclude a meaningful Additional Protocol 
safeguards regime before the NSG takes a decision 
on exempting India from its rules.

Incredibly, Indian officials also want exemptions 
from NSG guidelines that would allow supplier 
states to provide India with a strategic fuel 
reserve that could be used to outlast any fuel 
supply cut off or sanctions that may be imposed 
if it resumes nuclear testing.

This flatly contradicts provisions in the 2006 
U.S. implementing legislation that were authored 
by Sen. Barack Obama. If NSG supplier states 
should agree to supply fuel to India, they should 
clarify that if India resumes nuclear testing, 
all nuclear cooperation with India shall be 
terminated and unused fuel supplies from NSG 
states shall be returned.

India is also demanding "full" nuclear 
cooperation, including access to advanced 
plutonium reprocessing, uranium enrichment, and 
heavy water production technology. This is 
extremely unwise given that IAEA safeguards 
cannot prevent such sensitive technology from 
being replicated and used in India's weapons 
program.

Recall that India detonated a nuclear device in 
1974 that used plutonium harvested from a heavy 
water reactor supplied by Canada and the United 
States in violation of earlier peaceful nuclear 
use agreements. U.S. officials have stated that 
they do not intend to sell such technology, but 
other states may. Virtually all NSG states 
support proposals that would bar transfers of 
these sensitive nuclear technologies to non-NPT 
members and should under no circumstances endorse 
an NSG rule that would allow the transfer of such 
technology to India.

Unfortunately, India has refused to join the five 
original nuclear-weapon states in suspending the 
production of fissile material for weapons and 
signing the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. 
Not only would these measures curb nuclear 
competition in Asia, but it would avoid the 
possibility that foreign fuel supplies will 
free-up India's limited uranium supplies for 
weapons use and help India to accelerate the 
buildup of its arsenal. This would contradict the 
goal of Article I of the NPT, which prohibits 
direct or indirect assistance to another state's 
nuclear weapons program.

All UN members states are also obligated to 
support UN Security Council Resolution 1172, 
which calls on India and Pakistan to sign the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) stop 
producing fissile material for weapons, and 
undertake other nuclear risk reduction measures.

The Indian nuclear deal would be a 
nonproliferation disaster, especially now.  The 
NPT is in jeopardy and diplomatic efforts to 
address the nuclear programs of North Korea and 
Iran are at a delicate stage. For those world 
leaders who are serious about ending the arms 
race, holding all states to their international 
commitments, and strengthening the nuclear 
Nonproliferation Treaty, it is time to stand up 
and be counted.

Jayantha Dhanapala is a former UN 
Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs 
(1998-2003) and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka 
who was President of the 1995 NPT Review and 
Extension Conference. Daryl G. Kimball is the 
executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based 
Arms Control Association.

o o o

(ii)

Insaf Bulletin, July 2008

INDO-US NUCLEAR DEAL: IS THE LEFT GOING TO FALL ON ITS OWN SWORD?

by Vinod Mubayi

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPM, has 
threatened to withdraw support for the 
Congress-led government of Manmohan Singh, which 
would precipitate parliamentary elections a year 
earlier than due. The issue is the Indo-US 
nuclear deal, which the Indian government 
supports but CPM thinks will push India into 
strategic alliance with the US. The likely 
beneficiary of this confrontation will be the 
champion of Hindutva, the Bharatiya Janata Party 
(BJP).

The Left parties in India, led by CPM, are 
parliamentary allies of the UPA government, led 
by Congress, and their support is essential to 
the survival of the government at least until the 
elections due next year. However, the left's 
opposition to the proposed Indo-US nuclear deal 
is threatening to bring down the UPA regime well 
before its term ends, which will precipitate a 
fresh election.  Based on current political and 
economic trends, the results of the election may 
not favor the UPA or the left.  Inflation in 
India, despite surging economic growth over the 
last few years, has hit a new high in line with 
worldwide trends in the prices of oil and food 
products.  The government has been forced to 
raise the administered prices of petroleum 
products, hardly a step that will increase its 
popularity with the public.  The state 
governments led by CPM, in particular West 
Bengal, have also lost some of their popular 
support to the opposition in the wake of the 
Singur and Nandigram episodes and it is highly 
unlikely that the CPM could garner as many seats 
in the Lok Sabha as they did in the last general 
election in 2004.

From the standpoint of electoral arithmetic it is 
thus surprising that CPM as well as other 
elements of the left like CPI and RSP are 
choosing this juncture to destabilize a regime 
they have been propping up for the last four 
years, knowing full well that the beneficiary of 
their actions could be the Hindutva-led NDA, 
fresh from its recent first-time ever victory in 
a southern Indian state, viz. Karnataka.

At the time of publication of this issue of the 
Bulletin, various types of maneuvering are taking 
place among the parties both inside the UPA and 
those outside, like the Samajwadi party, to try 
to ensure the government's survival even if the 
left parties formally withdraw their support. 
Whether the UPA survives for another year or 
falls, leading to fresh elections in the near 
future, it is not likely that the left parties 
are going to benefit politically from the stand 
they have taken on this issue.  CPM brought out a 
press release on June 20 asserting that the 
nuclear deal has nothing to do with India's 
energy situation; it is instead a cover for an 
Indo-US strategic alliance.  The opposition and 
apprehension expressed by the left parties on the 
broader issue of India-US relations is 
understandable. Any development that would 
subject India to U.S. hegemony no doubt needs to 
be opposed.  But it is stretching both logic and 
the facts to claim that an agreement, which 
allows India to participate in the international 
nuclear market, buy reactors and technology from, 
say, France and Russia or raw uranium fuel from 
Australia and Africa, reflects an "Indo-US 
strategic alliance."

CPM's press release claims at one place that 
"India's growing shortage of energy has little to 
do with a lack of nuclear energy."  This appears 
to be in line with the position of the 
anti-nuclear environmental advocates who regard 
nuclear generated power in much the same way as a 
religious person looks at Sin. Later in the press 
release they go on to say: "Nuclear energy has an 
important place in India's energy optionŠthis 
should be based on our indigenous technology and 
our indigenous resources." The latter claim seems 
to have been inserted at the behest of some of 
the pro public sector power advocates since all 
of the nuclear facilities in India are government 
owned and operated.  India's current "indigenous" 
technology of pressurized heavy water reactors, 
based on the Canadian CANDU design, uses natural 
uranium, in contrast to the majority of power 
reactors worldwide that use slightly enriched 
uranium.

India has very modest reserves of natural 
uranium, which are currently depleting.  CPM 
berates the government for "closing" an existing 
mine and not opening new mines; it does not 
indicate that attempts to open new mines has met 
with considerable opposition orchestrated by the 
same anti-nuclear advocates whose positions CPM 
echoes in its press release.  The statement also 
ignores the fact of the performance of 
"indigenous" nuclear technology; in almost 40 
years India has erected barely 4000 MW of 
capacity, while South Korea, whose first nuclear 
power plant came up a full 15 years after India's 
first plant began operation, now has about 20,000 
MW of installed capacity.

In an increasingly globalized high-technology 
market, the benefits and costs of indigenization 
have to be carefully evaluated.  There is hardly 
any virtue in cutting off your nose to spite your 
face or foregoing foreign technology based on the 
NIH (not invented here) syndrome.  If India 
cannot participate as a full player in the 
international nuclear technology and resource 
market by joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it 
is very unlikely that there will be any long-term 
nuclear option for India to salvage. No doubt, 
the anti-nuclear activists would be pleased if 
this happened but would CPM also? It is difficult 
to both run with the hare and hunt with the 
hounds as CPM is trying to do by denying that 
nuclear has any relevance in the short term but 
is important in the long term. It is interesting 
that the Russian Ambassador to India stressed 
this fact a few days ago and recommended that 
India sign the deal as a prelude to its 
acceptance by the IAEA and the NSG.  Russia, 
having agreed to grandfather the two Koodankulam 
VVER units due to go into operation next year, is 
naturally anxious to sell more reactors and fuel 
to India.


In the CPM's view, only domestic coal has 
relevance to India's electric sector and the IPI 
gas pipeline to the broader energy sector.  No 
one will quarrel with the latter.  If the Indian 
government delayed the Iran gas pipeline due to 
US pressure, it was a foolish thing to do but 
recent reports suggests that India is attempting 
to get back into the gas project.  As far as 
coal-fired power is concerned it currently 
accounts for almost three-fourths of India's 
total (utility) capacity with the remainder being 
mostly hydropower plus a small fraction of 
natural gas, nuclear and wind generation.


It is true, as the CPM press release indicates 
that only a "negligible amount" of oil is used in 
(central) power plants.  But it should be obvious 
to anyone that grid power shortages have led to a 
huge increase in diesel generator sets, which are 
mushrooming in the fast-growing industrial, 
residential, and commercial sectors all over the 
country and must constitute a significant 
fraction of the total demand for diesel.  It is 
intriguing that the CPM press release on energy 
policy fails to mention even hydropower, not to 
speak of wind, solar, or other renewable energy 
sources as potential future options.  Putting all 
our eggs in the coal basket may be a short-term 
solution but it is also a very shortsighted one. 
Perhaps those who wrote the press release are 
unaware of climate change or global warming and 
the leading role of coal fired plants in 
exacerbating the greenhouse gas effect.  If so, 
it would be good for them as well as the 
progressive movement in India if they could 
undertake a crash course in the subject.


(iii)

FROM POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION TO THE POLITICS OF NUMBERS

by Medha Patkar

Time for the politics of people's movements to prevail

The game of numbers was never at its vulgar ebb 
as it is today. It is clear by now, more than 
ever before that electoral politics is nothing 
more than valueless and opportunistic arithmetic. 
Votes and candidates, parties and 
parliamentarians are being traded in the 
electoral bazaar of India as if politics is a 
game sans values. It probably is.

This is the irrefutable message that almost all 
the political parties have sent out this past 
week to the millions across India, the millions 
of dalits, adivasis, farmers, labourers, fish 
workers, hawkers, women and others who are 
economically, socially and politically 
marginalized, yet repose trust in their elected 
representatives and continue to vote for them, 
with a trust in their promises, if not their 
perspectives. This trust of the vast majority of 
India in the political establishment, which is 
manifested in their manifestos (though does not 
translate into reality) has been shattered yet 
again and the hidden faces and agendas are in the 
open for all to witness.

What initially began with the support for or 
opposition to the nuclear deal, has now turned 
into a full-fledged political 'tamasha' with 
almost all the parties realigning and 
reformulating political associates. Though it is 
being claimed that the ongoing process of 
political realignments is not just over the 
nuclear power deal, a vicious attempt to push the 
deal, staking all values and democratic norms is 
top on the agenda, which we cannot afford to 
overlook.

Those parties that had a popular image of a 
certain 'ideology' are proving that ideology and 
people's issues are a trifle if they cannot fetch 
the 'numerical victory'. The hoax of nuclear 
energy has already been busted, but the Congress 
is bent on pushing it at any and all costs and 
its newfound 'allies' care a pittance about 
India's sovereignty and national interests, let 
alone the
hazards of nuclear energy. They are more than 
content with grabbing a ministerial berth or two 
and throwing ideology (which some of us thought, 
had existed) to the winds. These erratic and 
valueless somersaults by political parties is 
also a blatant transgression of the internal 
party democracy, as many of the cadres, 
obviously, do not endorse such opportunity- 
driven shifts.

Though the Left has taken a consistent stand on 
the issue of the nuclear deal, they still have 
not taken a clear position against nuclear energy 
and related concerns, which are equally grave 
issues.

The mammoth electoral drama that is on in the 
capital of India will culminate very soon, 
probably even tomorrow and hit the headlines any 
moment. Presuming the Congress would be able to 
tide over this crisis, the Prime Minister has 
already announced his ambition to go a step ahead 
with his pet-agenda, 'Reforms'. This time, more 
reforms in the Insurance, Banking and Pension 
sectors. In the political imbroglio, we, the 
people's movements, cannot afford to ignore these 
vital issues as well.

Amidst all this drama, the real and pressing 
concerns of the people, be they of spiralling 
price-rise, rising communalism, fascism and 
regionalism, corporate loot of land, water and 
other natural resources, or of lop-sided 
'reforms' to name just a few, are not only 
side-tracked but are in a way actively promoted 
by these very same parties at various levels. 
These events, have however, acted as an 
eye-opener once again to people's movements, 
proving the opportunism of
those in electoral politics.

Given these fast-paced and value-sapped moves by 
parties, people's movements are already 
rethinking their strategies to combat this 
pattern of vulgar electoral gambles by forging 
strong alliances among various mass-based groups 
across the country.

We must continue to put forth and assert our 
multi-point transformative and self-reliant 
action agenda as against the single-point agendas 
of electoral parties and dependence on 
multilateral institutions like the World Bank and 
WTO, and must in fact have no engagement with 
these institutions. It is about time the people's 
movements ponder with collective earnestness of 
the future of popular issues and movements, and 
move toward empowering ourselves towards this
end. Asserting our allegiance to non-compromising 
values of peoples' struggles and non-negotiable 
positions on basic rights, we all should accord 
utmost priority to the real issues that country 
is facing and ensure the rights and dues of a 
vast majority of agricultural and unorganized 
labourers, construction workers, fish workers and 
other sections who are affected.

People's right to decentralized and democratic 
development, opposing caste and gender 
oppression, towards managing our resources is at 
the core.

The National Alliance of People's Movements 
expresses its deep anguish and disapproval of 
these happenings and reminds political parties of 
the promises that they have been making to the 
people of this country. Even as we wait and watch 
this game of numbers, we must also feel stronger, 
in the realization of the fact that a vast 
majority of this country's populace is neither 
privy to nor does it approve of such political 
machinations. This is a call to the diverse 
people's struggles and movements across India to 
see political parties for what they are and 
continue to struggle for our economic, social, 
political and cultural spaces and rights by 
concretely furthering the process of 
non-electoral people's politics as a mainstream 
and inevitable alternative.

Medha Patkar

(The author is the recipient of Right Livelihood 
Award for the year 1991. She received the 1999 
M.A.Thomas National Human Rights Award from Vigil 
India Movement. She has also received numerous 
other awards, including the Deena Nath Mangeshkar 
Award, Mahatma Phule Award, Goldman Environment 
Prize, Green Ribbon Award for Best International 
Political Campaigner by BBC, and the Human Rights 
Defender's Award from Amnesty International. She 
is the national convener of National Alliance of 
People's Movements (NAPM) and has led Narmada 
Bachao Andolan (NBA) for more than a decade.)

o o o

(iv)

An E-mail from Germany

Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 3:30 PM
To: cures at ilpostino.jpberlin.de
Subject: [CURES] Wind overtaking nuclear

WIND OVERTAKING NUCLEAR

New figures:

Global: Since January 2006, 45 000 megawatts of 
wind power capacity have been installed 
worldwide. In the same time, only 3347 MW nuclear 
capacity have been installed - and 2236 MW 
nuclear decommissioned.

Germany: Currently 23 000 MW wind power capacity 
are installed, nuclear only 21500 MW. Wind has 
now overtaken nuclearŠ.

So much about the revival of nuclear power - just a lot of blabla.

Jürgen Maier
Director, German NGO Forum Environment & Development
Marienstr 19-20
10117 Berlin, Germany
www.forumue.de

______



[2]

lakbimanews.lk

IMPUNITY, A DEBILITATING FIXTURE IN STATE CULTURE

25 years after Welikada massacre

by Rajan Hoole

Colombo's Welikada high security prison was the 
scene of two massacres of Tamil political 
prisoners during the communal violence of July 
1983, first after lunch on July 25 claiming 35 
prisoners and second, about 4.00 PM on the July 
27 claiming a further 18. On both occasions 
Secretary of Justice Mervyn Wijesinghe asked 
Colombo Magistrate Keerthi Srilal Wijewardene to 
hold inquests with the assistance of Tilak 
Marapone and C.R. de Silva (the present AG) from 
the Attorney General's Department. No culprits 
were identified and the case was hushed up.
The massacres made life a living hell also for 
those on the spot, who driven by moral aversion 
tried unsuccessfully stop them, but were not even 
allowed to clear their names.

The inquest

One of them, Superintendent of Prisons (SP) 
Alexis Leo de Silva, upon hearing the alarm on 
the 25th, rushed into the mob in the Chapel 
Section with ASPs Amarasinghe and Munaweera, 
followed by Deputy Commissioner (DC) Cutty Jansz, 
but to little avail. Leo felt very angry that the 
army unit at the prison headed by Lt. Mahinda 
Hathurusinghe, 4th Artillery, did nothing to stop 
the murder, and later also blocked emergency 
hospitalization of injured survivors. A 
lieutenant would hardly have dared to override DC 
Jansz and doomed the survivors, without prompting 
from Army HQ. While some prison staff protected 
Tamils, others, including a jailor, attacked the 
survivors in the compound.
At the inquest on the 26th, Leo wanted to place 
the truth on record. Magistrate Wijewardene left 
out chunks of his testimony. Leo's son Lalanath 
de Silva recently told us, "An AG's department 
counsel called my father outside the room where 
the inquest was being held and attempted to 
persuade my father to go along - pleading that 
the truth would place Sri Lanka in a very adverse 
position internationally." At one point the 
Magistrate became so angry that he refused to 
take down Leo's testimony.
The Police under Detective Superintendent Hyde 
Silva questioned the survivors on the 26th 
following the Magistrate's order. To Suriya 
Wickremasinghe of the Civil Rights Movement 
belongs the credit for painstakingly seeking out 
survivors of the massacres, interviewing them and 
keeping the issue alive. She told us that 
survivor Manikkadasan in his statement to the 
Police, blamed two jailors of active complicity. 
A thin jailor warned him that mention of names 
might lead to similar jeopardy from inmates.

Eyewitnesses

Suriya believes that the second massacre owed to 
earlier survivors being also eyewitnesses. On the 
27th Lt. Nuvolari Seneviratne of Army Engineers 
commanded the platoon outside the prison. Hearing 
a commotion where the survivors had been 
re-housed, Nuvolari radioed the Duty Officer (DO) 
at Army HQ. He told the Junior DO who answered 
that he wanted authority to go into prison and 
disperse the mob. The Junior DO gave him a 
telephone number and asked him to phone the DO (a 
colonel). Nuvolari used the coin phone at the 
entrance to ring the number at Army HQ. The DO 
told him to stick to standing orders and stay 
outside prison, or would face court-martial if he 
went in. Nuvolari asked for the Army Commander. 
He was refused, being told the Commander was with 
President Jayewardene, and relief was being sent 
to deal with the problem. (Cutty Jansz had also 
phoned Army HQ.)
The relief, commandos under Major Sunil Peiris, 
promptly went in and saved 19 of the 37 
prisoners. Nuvolari felt the deaths to be sheer 
murder, which his platoon could have prevented if 
not constrained by HQ. At the second inquest, the 
AG's men, Marapone and de Silva, were keenly 
selective. Leo who was in prison the whole day, 
had at the first forebodings asked DC Jansz to 
expedite the removal of the survivors to safety. 
As if by design, the attack began when he went 
for a late snack in lieu of lunch, causing him to 
rush back. Neither he nor his ASPs were called 
upon to testify at the inquest.
The AG's men and Magistrate tried to frame a 
jailbreak attempt that supposedly left inadequate 
resources to prevent the massacre. The AG's men 
and Army's lawyers importuned Lt. Seneviratne to 
tell the inquest that he was outside the prison 
controlling a jailbreak. He refused. The world 
had crashed around the 22-year-old sportsman from 
Trinity College who joined the Army with high 
hopes. Major Sunil Peiris stepped in saying not 
to harass Nuvolari and if he won't, he won't, and 
if their object was having someone from the Army 
testify, he would.
To a leading question, Major Peiris answered with 
professional precision, "I did not notice any 
prisoners attempting to break out. Therefore I 
gathered that the attempted mass jail break had 
been contained before our arrival!" Undeterred by 
Peiris' refusal to perjure, the Magistrate summed 
up, "...prompt and efficient steps taken by the 
special unit of the Army under witness Major 
Peiris had effectively prevented the jail break 
... and helped quell the mob which might 
otherwise have caused [even greater death]."

Taming scandals and condemning posterity

In July 2001, President Kumaratunge appointed the 
Presidential 'Truth' Commission on Ethnic 
Violence headed by former Chief Justice Suppiah 
Sharvananda, with S.S. Sahabandu and M.M. Zuhair. 
Suriya Wickremasinghe had repeatedly been 
thwarted in her efforts to obtain from the 
Police, testimony they received from the 
survivors of the first massacre. The Commission, 
which relied heavily on Suriya's work, could have 
followed this up to further its investigations, 
but did not.
Tamil survivors named to us Jailor Rogers 
Jayasekere, Jailor Samitha Rathgama and Location 
Officer Palitha as the protagonists on the 
ground. Senior prison officials have indirectly 
affirmed Jayasekere's culpability. His family 
were strong UNP supporter from President 
Jayewardene's old Kelaniya electorate, shared in 
1983 by Ranil Wickremasinghe and Cyril Mathew. 
Rumours charged that gangsters under Gonawala 
Sunil of Kelaniya UNP fame were brought into 
prison to assist the second massacre.

Vehicle check

Nuvolari Seneviratne's testimony bears relevance 
here. His soldiers at the entrance checked the 
vehicles going into the prison to ensure they 
were the government's. Jail guards just inside 
the entrance did the identity checks. The 
soldiers at the entrance told Nuvolari that some 
of the official vehicles entering took underworld 
figures, but exited without them. Asked who the 
underworld figures were, Seneviratne replied, "I 
did not see them myself and there is no way my 
men would have known them. But the jail guards 
knew them as persons in and out of jail. They 
told my men."
During the second massacre, Journalist Aruna 
Kulatunga wrote recently, he saw airline hijacker 
Sepala Ekanayake coming out of the prison gates 
screaming "kohomada ape wede" (How is our job?), 
felled by a thundering blow from Major Sunil 
Peiris. Peiris had told me something more, that 
Sepala was carrying a severed human head.
Senior prison staff dismissed this as fantasy. I 
published it in my book Arrogance of Power, since 
I knew Peiris. I had checked back with Peiris, 
who, a little hurt, explained, 'You know your 
Bible? It was like John the Baptist's head on a 
charger'. It happened before Peiris saw the scene 
of crime. Peiris' action makes sense only if 
Sepala's utterance, reported also by Kulatunga, 
drew his attention to something revolting. 
Peiris' testimony at the inquest speaks for 
truthfulness and accuracy that are hallmarks of a 
good officer. Nuvolari's refusal to perjure again 
stands his testimony in good stead.
About when Peiris' party arrived, Nuvolari's men 
drew his attention to a fresh hole in the prison 
wall near the cricket ground. Upon inspection he 
saw an Air Force truck standing by. No words were 
exchanged. The Army's legal unit also removed 
Nuvolari's standing orders and the logbook with 
records of vehicles entering. On 27th, the Tamil 
detainees fought back, some attackers were mauled 
and soldiers shot some, but there is no account 
of casualties. SP Leo de Silva felt impelled by 
his honour to place the truth on record. His 
later investigations were stalled by an order 
from Commissioner Delgoda. Then Justice Minister 
Nissanka Wijeratne threw Leo out of service at 
the age of 56 by refusing a routine extension. 
The total cover up and a diversity of coherent 
testimony pointing to the nefarious deployment of 
broader resources, gives surely the lie to 
representing the massacres as an outburst of 
subaltern patriotism. No perpetrators were named 
and Sepala walks free. Is it not because they 
have beans to spill?
Whether or not directly intended, what our 
commissions and AG's Dept. achieve is to protect 
the State's inbuilt abuses that have gone over 
tolerable limits. The blame for its repeated 
crimes is invariably shuffled off to subaltern 
sectors. The routine official prevarication also 
leads to Sinhalese seeing the ethnic problem as 
Tamils making mountains of molehills, and the 
solution as being to knock them about, pat them 
on the head and give them sweets to suck.
Regrettably, few Sinhalese would be shocked that 
Attorney General C.R. de Silva guides important 
commission proceedings such as the ACF 
investigation. He, or Marapone, tried to stop Leo 
de Silva 25 years ago, pleading that 'the truth 
would place Sri Lanka in an adverse position 
internationally'. Lanka would have redeemed 
itself had all such crimes been faced squarely 
long ago, rather than make fixers of truth a 
permanent feature of the State. On a further 
point, the prison murders of rising Tamil leaders 
Dr. Rajasundaram, Kuttimani and Thangathurai led 
to the fracture of the original Tamil youth 
leadership and the rise of Prabhakaran. That is 
another intricate story.


______


[3]  Pakistan:

(i)

The Times of India
24 July 2008

PEACE TALKS IN A RUT

by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

LAHORE: Following the 'successful' summit between 
the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India last 
month, another meeting between foreign 
secretaries concluded in New Delhi this week. And 
as in the past, the only tangible output is a 
commitment by both sides to take forward the 
'peace process'. It is not that people on both 
sides of the border are opposed to the peace 
initiative which picked up steam after the 
tensions generated by the suicide attack on the 
Indian Parliament late in 2001 were defused with 
Washington's help. Indeed, the process has 
brought with it all sorts of fringe benefits like 
a relative relaxation in the countries' visa 
regimes. However, more than six years on, it 
doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out 
that very little progress has been made on 
substantive issues.

Many who want change in Pakistan and India were 
of course sceptical about the backdrop under 
which the 'peace process' was initiated; the 
start of America's 'war on terror' meant that 
Washington had renewed interest in the region and 
both the BJP government of the time and the 
military regime in Pakistan were suddenly prodded 
into making peace overtures. There was something 
especially disingenuous about Pervez Musharraf, 
who masterminded the Kargil war in 1999, 
metamorphosing into a dove.

The 'encouragement' of Washington aside, things 
proceeded rosily enough for some time, with 
'people-to-people' contact increasing 
significantly, particularly around the motif of 
'cricket for peace'. There have been major jolts 
along the way, particularly when George Bush 
visited India and proposed the nuclear deal.

Still, as the latest round of talks suggests, the 
process itself has not been derailed. However, 
discerning observers are wondering just how long 
the posturing will continue. To be fair, there is 
a new elected government in power in Islamabad 
and this entails somewhat of a departure from the 
unquestioned monopoly of defence and strategic 
policy by the military.

Having said this, the men in khaki will continue 
to maintain their commitment to the status quo 
and the real question is how bold the new 
coalition will be in challenging the military's 
control over foreign policy matters. Quite 
predictably, many Pakistanis are already 
frustrated about what appears to be the dithering 
of the Pakistan People's Party-led majority.

Indeed the reality of the 'peace process' is that 
it is less about Indo-Pak relations and more 
about the
structure of power within both states. The Indian 
establishment, much to the benefit of Islamabad's 
propaganda machine, refuses to acknowledge the 
legitimate claims of Kashmiris for 
self-determination (not that Kashmiris 
necessarily harbour much affection towards 
Pakistan). Meanwhile, the Pakistani military 
maintains almost total control over state affairs.

Both the countries' core positions reflect the 
basic inflexibility of their respective 
establishments. India says anything is possible 
but a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, whereas 
Pakistan continues to say nothing is possible 
without resolution of Kashmir, continuing to 
preach to the Pakistani public that Kashmir is a 
symbol of the unfinished project of state 
formation. And all the while a monstrous build-up 
of arms continues,
notwithstanding the arguments of the nuclear deterrence camp.

Both countries do not want change because it 
simply does not suit them. Peace posturing can be 
expected to continue because both governments are 
happy to sing to Washington's tune and, for the 
time being, Indo-Pak rivalry is only the second 
most popular game in town. However, very little 
will change beneath the surface.

Rather than continuing to put all of our eggs in 
this 'peace' basket, it is necessary to 
acknowledge the grim reality that a lot of 
conflict is likely to take place before a lasting 
and meaningful peace can be established.

This is not to necessarily foreshadow bloodshed 
but only to point out that real peace is not 
possible in the midst of structural violence. As 
talk of nuclear deals and surgical strikes 
abounds, sane voices on both sides of
the border need to take the fight to their establishments.

The writer teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

(ii)

Dawn
15 July 2008
Letters to the Editor

PARTITION AND FRIENDSHIP


FOR many years I had been searching for Suvira 
Mann to condole her husband K. C. Mann's death, I 
just could not find her.

K. C. Mann, member of the Central Committee of 
the Communist Party of India, and Suvira were 
very good friends of Mazhar's, my husband, and 
mine when they lived in Lahore. We worked 
together and she was a great help. She happened 
to know much more than I did and always gently 
corrected me when I went wrong. She sang very 
well and had a melodious voice. Whenever asked to 
sing, the room echoed with her divine voice.

After years I located her brother. Alas it was 
too late. He gave me the sad news of Suvira's 
death last April. It came as a bolt of lightning. 
I was not expecting this news and my heart was 
numb. It felt like our country, our land and our 
hearts were hacked and partitioned.

Though I had found a dear friend for whom I was 
searching for so many years, I am now unable to 
go across. I feel like a prisoner who is in 
self-confinement with no crime to vouch for this 
sentence in a mental penitentiary. Words alone 
cannot simply describe the pain and mental misery 
and physical anguish I am going through.

I now realise with ample pain that our land was 
butchered and aimlessly cut into pieces. We 
cannot easily reach out to those we love in times 
of stress and grief.

I remember another occasion when I felt equally 
helpless when my friends Sonnu and Midow, 
daughters of the first Indian principal of 
Government College, Lahore, lost their father. It 
was not easy to cross the border. Now I mourn 
Suvira, a friend with whom on many occasions I 
walked miles and miles to attend a women's 
meeting. We were friends who were committed to 
the same cause for which we were prepared to 
sacrifice our lives, we believed in a future 
which would bring happiness for all. Such was our 
friendship.

Let us hope that our children and grandchildren 
never have to face such a partition, where hearts 
are torn asunder and minds are helpless.

We must not allow a partition of land to divide 
hearts and souls as 1947 did. It drew us away 
from our dear friends. Longing for friends thus 
lost and recalling the memories of their company 
is the most painful experience one can go through.

TAHIRA MAZHAR ALI KHAN
Lahore


______


[4]

onearth.org Summer 2008  |  May 28, 2008

THE GATHERING STORM

by George Black

What Happens When Global Warming Turns Millions 
of Destitute Muslims Into Environmental Refugees?

By the end of the first day, it's already become 
an ingrained reflex: brace for impact as yet 
another suicidal rickshaw, luridly painted with 
pictures of birds, animals, and Bollywood stars, 
swerves suddenly into our path. Our driver bangs 
on the horn, shimmies to the right, avoids an 
onrushing bus by a matter of inches, then calmly 
resumes his navigation of the demented streets of 
Dhaka, Bangladesh. I relax my death grip on the 
dashboard and exhale. Mostafizur Rahman Jewel, 
our translator, raises an eyebrow in amusement.

"No problem," I say, feigning nonchalance. "Piece of cake."

"Piece of cake?"

"It's slang. Something really easy, no sweat. 
Like not killing that rickshaw-wallah. How do you 
say that in Bangla?"

"Panir moto shohoj," he answers. "Easy like water."

Easy like water. This is ironic, to say the 
least, because water, from the rivers, from the 
ocean, from the ground, is this country's 
existential curse. Bangladesh and its 150 million 
people -- the world's seventh-largest population, 
compressed into an area the size of Iowa -- have 
somehow contrived to have too much water, too 
little water, and more and more water of the 
wrong kind.

The long-range apocalypse facing the country is 
global warming and the accelerating sea-level 
rise that will accompany it. Think of the 
computer-generated image midway through Al Gore's 
movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which shows an 
inexorable blue wave engulfing a great swath of 
coastal Bangladesh. But while the Four Horsemen 
gather their forces, the daily short-term menace 
is the steady northward creep of salt from the 
Bay of Bengal. Today the land is saturated with 
people; little by little it is also becoming 
saturated with salt.

It all begins with topography. In his novel The 
Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh, who grew up in 
Bangladesh, recounts the Hindu legend of how the 
Ganges Delta was formed. The goddess Ganga, from 
whom the river takes its name, descended from the 
heavens with such force that she would have split 
the earth apart had Lord Shiva not tamed her 
torrent by weaving it into the ash-covered 
strands of his hair. But then his braids 
unraveled and the river divided into thousands of 
channels. Now consider the map of Bangladesh, 
where three formidable rivers -- the Brahmaputra, 
the Meghna, and the Ganges (known, once it 
crosses the Indian border, as the Padma) -- 
converge to form a vast, tangled delta that I 
will spend a week exploring with the 
photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, half on 
water and half on land. There is no other 
landscape like it on the planet.

Bangladesh's problem, like Lord Shiva's hair, has 
many strands. All three of its great rivers rise 
in the Himalayas, from which they carry a huge 
load of sediment, made worse in recent years by 
the deforestation of the Himalayan foothills. 
Because Bangladesh is as flat as a pool table, 
most of it no more than a few feet above sea 
level, the flow of its rivers is sluggish. 
Riverbeds clog with silt and water levels rise; 
shorelines erode, swallowing up farmland; islands 
of sand and mud form, disperse, reform elsewhere. 
From May to November, the monsoons blanket the 
country with torrential rain, pushing the rivers 
over their banks, driving people from their 
homes, drowning them. Some years Bangladesh is 
lucky and only a third of its territory is 
flooded. Sometimes it's half; sometimes it's 
two-thirds or more.

However, try asking the millions of people in the 
Ganges Delta if they have too much water -- at 
least of the kind they can use. Over the last few 
centuries, the natural course of the sacred river 
has shifted eastward, redirecting the surge of 
freshwater that used to dilute the salt inflow 
from the Bay of Bengal. Siltation has compounded 
the problem, closing off major rivers such as the 
Mathabangha, the Bhairab, and the Sialmari, which 
once channeled much of the flow of the Ganges to 
the Indian Ocean. Then in 1970, India made things 
worse by building a diversion dam across the 
Ganges at Farraka, a few miles short of the 
border. Indian engineers did this to increase the 
flow of water into the Hooghly River, which runs 
through Calcutta, now renamed Kolkata, the old 
capital of the raj. Their purpose was twofold: to 
provide a reliable supply of drinking water to 
the city and to flush out the silt that 
threatened to block navigation. Each of these 
natural and man-made changes has deepened 
Bangladesh's freshwater crisis, as not only the 
main distributaries but also many of the smaller 
rivers and channels that used to thread through 
the Ganges Delta have dried up and disappeared.

It gets worse. There's also the scourge that 
comes from the other direction, from the Bay of 
Bengal, in the form of catastrophic floods and 
cyclones. (One cyclone in 1970 killed 300,000 
people; in 1991, another 138,000 died.) And 
here's another cruel twist: beginning in the 
1960s, Bangladesh constructed a huge web of dikes 
and embankments to protect against flooding. But 
these have had a perverse effect. A solid wall of 
earth may stop the rivers from inundating 
valuable farmlands, but at the same time it 
blocks drainage on the land side, and that 
increases flooding and waterlogging. The problem 
will only worsen with climate change, with 
heavier monsoon rainfall on the fields and 
fiercer storm surges on the river. It's a classic 
double whammy.

Simply put, no country in the world will face 
greater devastation from global warming, and 
nowhere will the potential political fallout be 
harder to manage. Millions of people will be 
permanently displaced, made into environmental 
refugees. The great majority of them will be 
destitute Muslims, and in that regard it's hard 
not to recall a videotaped message from Osama bin 
Laden in late 2007, in which he added global 
warming to the list of plagues that Western 
countries have inflicted on the Islamic world. 
Put all this together and, without being 
alarmist, you can't help but wonder if all these 
dots may not, over time, begin to join up.

So how bad will it be? How quickly will it 
happen? And what can we do to stop it? On my 
second morning in Dhaka, I put these questions to 
Mozaharul Alam, a senior climate expert at the 
Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies, the 
country's leading think tank on environmental 
issues.

The air-conditioned offices, where rows of 
scholarly heads are bent over computer keyboards, 
offer some relief from the heat and turmoil of 
the Dhaka streets. Alam -- Babu to his friends -- 
is a dapper, good-natured man with a neatly 
trimmed mustache. He chooses his words with care. 
We toss around some of the numbers that are out 
there -- the percentage of territory that will be 
permanently lost, the magnitude of sea-level 
rise, the mounting intensity of monsoons and 
cyclones, the number of people who will be driven 
from their homes.

Alam says he always prefers to err on the side of 
caution. Climate modeling remains an imprecise 
science, and some of the projections may be 
overstated. The government's chief adviser, the 
prime minister in all but name, has talked of 25 
million environmental refugees. That's probably 
an exaggeration, Alam thinks.

As for the disappearing land, "It's hard to say. 
Personally I'm not in favor of the language of 
'permanent loss.' The hydrological dynamics of 
this country are very complex, and it hasn't been 
easy in the past for the models to incorporate 
things like local rainfall patterns and the 
infrastructure that's already in place to protect 
against floods."

We look at a wall map together, tracing a route 
through the vulnerable coastal regions that I'm 
planning to visit.

"But the bottom line?" I insist. "The most 
conservative estimate of how much of Bangladesh 
is going to be permanently submerged?"

He thinks about it. "Well, at the moment the sea 
level is rising at about three millimeters a 
year" -- a little more than one-tenth of an inch 
-- "but that's going to get worse. The current 
projections deal with three grades of sea-level 
rise -- 30 centimeters, 75 centimeters, one 
meter." He pauses. "Under the most benign of 
these three scenarios, there's going to be a 
permanent loss of 12 percent to 15 percent of our 
surface area, with a present population of five 
million to seven million." (The United Nations, 
it's worth noting, projects that by 2015 the 
country's population will grow by almost a 
quarter. So make that upper number closer to nine 
million.)

And that's the most benign scenario.

[. . .]

As I travel through Bangladesh, many of my 
informal encounters reinforce this impression of 
moderation. In the southern town of Bagerhat, for 
instance, I'm buttonholed by Mohammed Helal 
Uddin, the black-bearded imam of the historic 
77-domed Shait Gumbad mosque. He shoos away a 
crowd of Bangladeshi pilgrims and visitors. "No 
talk for you," he chides, "only people from 
America." The combination of his fractured 
English, my nonexistent Bangla, and a translator 
gone temporarily AWOL doesn't make for the 
easiest of exchanges. But the gist of what he 
wants to say is clear enough.

"Islam is very peaceful religion," the imam 
insists. "Holy Koran says all people created 
equal, no difference. Ladies and gentlemen, 
different prayers, but also same, equal. Islam 
always speaking truthful, no bad work."

I ask him about Cyclone Sidr and global warming. 
"Is very difficult for us," he answers. "People 
come here to mosque to be shelter." He waves a 
hand at the huge palm trees lying horizontal 
across a brick wall, still there three months 
after the catastrophe.

"What do you think is responsible for all these changes in the climate?" I ask.

"We see the will of Allah," he replies. "We see 
as da'wa" -- a call to follow Islam.

"Is it just an act of God, then?" I ask. "Because 
some people think the rich countries are also to 
blame. Do you believe that?"

He purses his lips, thinks about it, then looks 
me straight in the eye and says softly, "Yes."

A group of women in burkas stands at a distance, 
curious about our conversation.

Those who work with the poor in southern 
Bangladesh are made apprehensive by all the black 
burkas and new madrassas they are seeing among 
the saline fields and the shrimp farms. Some are 
also fearful that the Islamists benefit from the 
quiet support of the region's secular 
authorities, though they're reluctant to talk 
about this on the record.

"A lot of money is also coming in from Saudi 
Arabia and other Islamic countries to build 
mosques," says one local NGO activist who prefers 
not to be identified. "Jamaat-e-Islami, the 
Islamic political party, is very strong here. 
It's part of an international network. In 1971, 
during the war of liberation, its members took up 
arms in favor of Pakistan."

Khushi Kabir, the director of Nijera Kori, has no 
particular religious affiliations but shares 
these anxieties. She is willing to talk more 
freely about them, perhaps feeling that living in 
Dhaka and having good international connections 
give her some added protection.

"You have to understand," she says, "that this 
isn't so much a Muslim culture as a Bengali 
culture. At the village level, Muslims and Hindus 
live together quite harmoniously. But what's 
being imposed now is an Islamic identity. It's a 
global thing, this move to create a big Muslim 
brotherhood." Her lip curls with disdain. "I just 
hope they don't go for a Muslim sisterhood. I 
want nothing to do with that."

There's a further twist to the story, she adds, a 
perverse side effect of the well-intentioned 
involvement of outside agencies. "For example, 
the World Bank and UNDP" -- meaning the United 
Nations Development Program -- "have this model 
that they've developed in other Muslim countries 
like Egypt. In the name of strengthening 
communities, they've insisted on giving a central 
role to the imams. But this is not a society 
that's been dominated by the dictates of the 
imam. In Bangladesh the role of the imam has 
basically been restricted to the rituals of 
birth, marriage, and death. That's changing now. 
The lack of secular space is becoming a big 
threat."

I ask her how this manifests itself in everyday life.

"There always used to be a lot of cultural 
activities in the villages where the lines 
between Muslim and Hindu were very blurred," she 
answers. "The jatra, for example, which was a 
stylized theater performance by traveling troupes 
of actors, based on local history and folklore. 
Or the Gazi-Kalu, where you could debate any 
issue you liked through songs and poetry. But now 
all I see are the waaz -- the Muslim prayer 
gatherings and sermons."

Until recently, the environment and climate 
change have not played a big role in Islamic 
theology. That, too, is beginning to change. 
Fazlun Khalid, director of the Islamic Foundation 
for Ecology and Environmental Sciences in 
Birmingham, England, believes that "conserving 
the environment is simply an expression of 
worship." Far from being alien to Islam, Khalid 
argues, environmentalism is rooted in four core 
principles of shariah, or Islamic law: the unity 
principle (tawhid), the creation principle 
(fitra), the balance principle (mizan), and the 
responsibility, or stewardship, principle 
(khalifa).

The religious scholar Mawil Izzi Dien, who was 
educated in Iraq and now teaches at the 
University of Wales, quotes the Koran in support 
of this view. "Do no mischief on the earth after 
it has been set in order," one verse says. And 
elsewhere, in Izzi Dien's paraphrase: "Those who 
corrupt the earth or its contents will suffer an 
awful doom."

Sentiment on these issues has begun to stir 
internationally, for example in the Organization 
of Islamic Conference (OIC), a group of 57 Muslim 
states. "The OIC has recently started doing more 
work in the area of climate change," Saleemul 
Huq, a Bangladeshi who was one of the lead 
authors of the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report, 
tells me when I call him at his London office. 
"And certainly the inequities of climate change 
are going to feed generally anti-Western feelings 
in the Islamic world."

In Bangladesh the debate is still pretty much 
limited to Dhaka's educated secular elite. Those 
who are most at risk don't yet use the vocabulary 
of climate change, says Shahidul Islam. "But what 
they understand is this: last year the tide was 
here" -- he chops a hand against the wall, then 
raises it a few inches -- "and this year it's 
here." Yet at the local level, too, there are 
signs of a shift. Bangladesh's Imam Training 
Academy, which operates under the auspices of the 
lavishly funded Islamic Foundation, now includes 
the environment in the list of topics its 
trainers use "to inspire the Imams of Mosques in 
order to create consciousness in the society."

"Most people still think the cyclones and 
sea-level rise are an act of God," says Mozaharul 
Alam, the climate expert at the Bangladesh Center 
for Advanced Studies. "But as the topic gets 
incorporated into the educational system, 
awareness grows. When people realize that they're 
not an act of God but the act of someone else, 
well... it's unpredictable how they will react."

In Dhaka's Zia International Airport, waiting for 
the Emirates flight that will take me home, I'm 
startled by the realization that everyone else in 
the waiting area -- every single person -- is a 
young Bangladeshi male, all of them bound, like 
me, for Dubai. I wonder how many of them have 
been driven from their villages by floods, by 
cyclones, by the salinity of the soil; how many 
of them have found the overcrowded, polluted 
chaos of Dhaka too much to endure; what they will 
have learned about other kinds of Islam by the 
time they come back. This time I look at them a 
little differently and even, I have to confess, a 
little nervously.

I'm reminded of something that Haroon ur Rashid, 
the architect, said when we talked about India's 
fear of al Qaeda-inspired terrorism taking root 
in Bangladesh. "That's crap," he snorted. "The 
general mass of people here are God-fearing, but 
they're not fundamentalists."

Then he paused and modified the thought. "But of 
course that could change quickly, because this is 
a worldwide trend. And all you need is a few 
people to disrupt things. As Che Guevara once 
said: give me 11 good people and I can overthrow 
a government." The line may be apocryphal, but it 
kept playing in my head.

It's easy to sink into despair here, but 
Bangladeshis, despite being battered by centuries 
of natural and man-made disasters, seem the least 
despairing, the most resilient, of people.

"We Bengalis are a poetical people," Rashid told 
me. "As we say here, it's hope that keeps us 
alive. If we lose our hope, we might as well not 
live."

But what about the rest of us? Because the 
actions of the outside world are going to be 
critical in determining whether Bangladesh's 
future is survival or an apocalypse that may 
touch us all.

Well, says Alam, "the first thing is to build 
sufficient infrastructure to protect us in the 
future. Better embankments, wider canals, sluice 
gates."

"Which will cost a fortune," I suggest.

He smiles wryly and nods. "Yes, I know. And it 
probably won't be enough anyway. And if it's not 
enough, then the estuaries will move inland and 
the whole area will become one big tidal 
floodplain."

And if India, the United States, the world, begin 
to look at Bangladesh as a geopolitical Rorschach 
test, and see in the inkblot only the shape of 
radical Islam? Just last year, pointing to 
desertification in sub-Saharan Africa and 
sea-level rise in Bangladesh and other coastal 
areas in Asia and the Pacific, a group of 11 
retired U.S. generals and admirals described 
global warming as a "threat multiplier" and 
warned that "the chaos that results can be an 
incubator of civil strife, genocide, and 
terrorism."

"True," Alam says, "that may happen. Although it 
isn't necessarily a bad thing. If there's a 
security response, you can use that to draw 
attention to the severity of the problem and so 
increase the pressure to restrict greenhouse gas 
emissions."

All of which will require concerted international 
action on a scale we've never seen before. The 
current machinery of the United Nations won't 
remotely be enough to deal with the kind of 
complex humanitarian emergencies that will be 
forced on us by global warming, says Sir Crispin 
Tickell, a former British ambassador to the U.N., 
when I meet him for lunch at his office at Oxford 
University. "One answer is to create a World 
Environment Organization," he tells me. "And 
it'll have to have real enforcement powers, like 
the World Trade Organization."

These are big thoughts -- utopian, a skeptic 
might say -- and Bangladeshis think mainly of 
tomorrow. Will there be enough rice? Enough clean 
drinking water? Will the tiger get me? All of us 
have the same human tendency to plan for the next 
day, next week, next year. Projecting political 
developments 10, 20, 50 years into the future is 
a chancy business, as imprecise a science in its 
way as the modeling of climate change. But those 
are undoubtedly the terms, and the timescales, on 
which we now have to think.

o o o


(ii)

Feminist Review
Volume 88, Issue 1 (April 2008)

GENDERED EMBODIMENTS: MAPPING THE BODY-POLITIC OF 
THE RAPED WOMAN AND THE NATION IN BANGLADESH

by Nayanika Mookherjee

Abstract

There has been much academic work outlining the 
complex links between women and the nation. Women 
provide legitimacy to the political projects of 
the nation in particular social and historical 
contexts. This article focuses on the gendered 
symbolization of the nation through the rhetoric 
of the 'motherland' and the manipulation of this 
rhetoric in the context of national struggle in 
Bangladesh. I show the ways in which the visual 
representation of this 'motherland' as fertile 
countryside, and its idealization primarily 
through rural landscapes has enabled a 
crystallization of essentialist gender roles for 
women. This article is particularly interested in 
how these images had to be reconciled with the 
subjectivities of women raped during the 
Bangladesh Liberation War (Muktijuddho) and the 
role of the aestheticizing sensibilities of 
Bangladesh's middle class in that process.

Keywords:
sexual violence, Bangladesh war, aesthetics, motherhood, landscape


______


[5]  India - Chattisgarh:

(i)

Hindustan Times
July 20, 2008

CHATTISGARH AND THE DANGER OF DISSENT

by Paramita Ghosh, Hindustan Times

If Ajay TG had been smart enough to know where to 
point his camera, his films might have been 
showing in Osian today. As it stands, he is in 
Durg jail, 40 km from Bhilai.

Having started making films 7-8 years ago, he 
would capture "daily life, festivals and rituals 
of Durg", and particularly, says Ajay, in a 
statement, "my own neighborhood - an old village 
now surrounded by urban growth." In Chattisgarh 
though, these are acts of terrorism.

This week, www.releaseajaytg.in, a website was 
set up by a committee for his release. Playwright 
Habib Tanvir, activist Aruna Roy, professor Dr 
Kamal Chenoy, ex-director ActionAid India, Harsh 
Mander, law expert Usha Ramanathan, journalist 
Siddharth Vardharajan, among others, are its 
members.

Renowned film-maker Mrinal Sen who signed the 
petition condemning Ajay's arrest, says: "I wish 
I was 30 years younger, so that I could have 
physically joined you all in this campaign."

Tanvir says, "Chattisgarh was always a peaceful 
place. It is a great shame that artists, film 
makers and journalists are being targeted in this 
state."

British film-maker Margeret Dickinson who taught 
Ajay the use of the camera, notes that, "even as 
a student, Ajay instinctively tended to opt for a 
non-authoritarian point of view when developing a 
film". For example, when he made a short film on 
malaria prevention, Ajay told the story from the 
point of view of village children confronted with 
a
friend's illness.

He joined the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties 
(PUCL) in Bhilai, a leading civil rights 
organisation, as a voluntary member. Dr Binayak 
Sen, was its general secretary. Ajay started 
making films on human-interest stories: on 
old-age homes, health, the politics of power in 
two adivasi melas.

Are these crimes? National Award winning 
cinematographer Rajan Palit asks whether the 
decision to investigate state repression 
creatively is enough to be branded a Maoist. "For 
the last 20 years, even civil society efforts in 
Chhattisgarh to protect land, water, culture and 
livelihood have been attacked," says film-maker 
maker Amar Kanwar, who put together the committee 
for the film-maker's release. "The message the 
police is sending out is - if you see something 
wrong with the system, do not make films about 
it."

Implying then that the objective of Ajay TG's 
arrest is to tell the local journalist, the local 
film-maker and the local poet to look elsewhere 
and not come in the way.

o o o

(ii)

India: Chattisgarh's War Against Naxal's 
Continues to Target Human Rights Activists

Ajay TG: An innocent film-maker in prison

http://www.releaseajaytg.in/


______


[6]

The Times of India
21 July 2008

LAW CAN DO LITTLE TO STOP HORSE TRADING

by Manoj Mitta

NEW DELHI: "Constitutional morality is not a 
natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We 
must realise that our people have yet to learn 
it. Democracy in India is only a top dressing on 
an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic."

For all the durability of Indian democracy, these 
words of B R Ambedkar on the deficiencies in its 
morality have proved to be prescient on more than 
one occasion, the latest being horse trading by 
both sides in the run-up to Tuesday's vote of 
confidence.

If constitutional morality is yet to be 
cultivated even six decades after independence, 
there is little that law can do to check horse 
trading at such a critical juncture given the 
inherent loopholes in the anti-defection 
provisions. It is not legally feasible for a 
political party to prevent an MP from voting 
contrary to its whip. Legal sanctions can apply 
only post facto, after horse trading has already 
played a crucial role in bringing down or saving 
the government.

For all its activism to maintain probity in 
public life, the Supreme Court too has been 
unable to find a solution to the recurring 
problem of horse trading whether at the Centre or 
in the states. The last time it dealt with the 
issue was barely two years ago in the context of 
the UPA government's ill-fated decision to impose 
president's rule in Bihar apparently to prevent 
NDA from getting over a fractured mandate through 
horse trading.

It is ironical that that very government that is 
now engaged in horse trading for its survival had 
sought to justify the President's rule in Bihar 
by arguing vehemently that no political party 
could be allowed to stake a claim if its majority 
had been obtained by foul means or unethical 
practices.

But given the suspicious timing of the 
President's rule in Bihar, the Supreme Court 
found no scope to give a ruling on the impact of 
horse trading on constitutional morality. 
Instead, it held that "the object of ordering 
dissolution was not the professed anxiety to 
prevent distortion of the political system by 
defections and employment of unethical means but 
the sole object was to prevent a particular 
political party from making a claim to form the 
government and such action was wholly illegal and 
mala fide."

The Supreme Court's failure to deal with the 
possibility of horse trading in the context of 
Bihar came on top of its controversial ruling in 
the JMM bribery case conferring immunity on MPs 
who took bribes and voted in the Lok Sabha to 
help defeat a no-confidence motion in 1993 
against the Narasimha Rao government.

Senior advocate Anil Diwan said that the MPs who 
took bribes in the current context should be 
forced to make a confession on the transactions 
since they anyway enjoyed immunity against 
criminal proceedings. "Given the astronomical 
figures being bandied about, the tax authorities 
would be entitled to question the bribe taking 
MPs to trace the source of funding," Diwan added.

In a related reform, senior advocate P P Rao 
suggests that the Representation of the People 
Act should be amended to make provision for 
registering pre-poll alliances with the Election 
Commission in order to reduce the susceptibility 
of splinter groups to horse trading.


______



[7] Announcement:

31st July 2008, 5 PM
Seminar Hall, CSDS
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054

RAJNI KOTHARI ANNUAL LECTURE

On the Distinctiveness of Indian Democracy: 
Reading Indian Democracy through Tocqueville

by

Professor Sudipta Kaviraj

Chair: Professor Ashis Nandy

ICSSR National Fellow, CSDS


Professor Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Indian 
Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia 
University, is Rajni Kothari Chair Professor at 
CSDS. His publications include The Unhappy 
Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and 
the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India 
(OUP 1993); (Ed.) Politics in India (OUP 1998); 
(Ed. with Sunil Khilnani) Civil Society: History 
and Possibilities (Cambridge 2000); (Ed. with 
Martin Doornbos) Dynamics of State Formation: 
Europe and India Compared (Sage 1998); and (with 
Krishna Bharadwaj) Perspectives on Capitalism: 
Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter and Weber (Sage 1989).


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