SACW | August 7-8, 2008 / Remembering CR Hensman / Patriarchal Left / anti-terror / Hiroshima Declaration 2008 / Communalised Jammu

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | August 7-8, 2008 | 
Dispatch No. 2548 - Year 10 running

[1] Sri Lanka - CR Hensman: To the Memory of My Father (Rohini Hensman)
[2] Left leadership in Bangladesh - 
Conversations: Being A Woman (Rahnuma Ahmed)
[3] Pakistan: A new address for ISI ?
   (i) In fairness to the ISI (I.A. Rehman)
   (ii) Keeping the ISI under leash (Omar R. Quraishi)
[4] India - Sangh Parivar Stoking Communal Fire in Jammu:
    - Unquiet Waters (Edit,The Telegraph)
    - Unholy alliance (Edit, The Hindu)
    - Motley group flies Amarnath flag Lawyer, 
priest & soldier at helm (Muzaffar Raina)
[5] India : Human Rights & Anti Terrorism
  - Laws like POTA don't fight terror, just stifle freedom (Antara Dev Sen)
  - In the name of terror (Shiv Visvanathan)
  - Violence runs through this 'stable' India, 
built on poverty and injustice (Pankaj Mishra)
[6] Tibetan Questions : An Interview with Tsering Shakya
[7] Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba's Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2008
[8] Orombi: a child of empire? (Priyamvada Gopal)
[9] Announcements:
  (i) People's Tribunal on the Atrocities 
Committed Against Minorities in the Name of 
Fighting Terrorism (Hyderabad, 22-24 August, 2008)
(ii) Call for entries: Himal Southasian Cartoon 
Competition (submission deadline 1 September 2008)

______


[1]

Lambika News
3 August 2008

APPRECIATION

To the Memory of My Father

by Rohini Hensman

The twenty-fifth anniversary of Back July 1983 is 
an appropriate time to remember my father, C.R. 
('Dick') Hensman, who died peacefully on 9 July 
2008. At that time, under the pseudonym L. 
Piyadasa, he wrote a book - Sri Lanka: The 
Holocaust and After (published by Marram Books in 
1984) - which documented and analysed the events 
not only of that fateful day but also of the 
periods preceding and following it. This was one 
of the first publications to expose the shocking 
evidence of government sponsorship of the 
violence, and involvement of people at the 
highest levels of power in what would today be 
classified as crimes against humanity.

The analysis was continued in a sequel, Sri 
Lanka: The Unfinished Quest for Peace, (Marram 
Books, 1987), published following the Indo-Lanka 
Accord of 1987. What was striking was that it 
attributed the violence not to widespread 
inter-ethnic hatred but to the drifting of the 
Sri Lankan state towards fascism. It was made 
very clear in both books that the solution was 
not a separate Tamil Eelam, which would 
inevitably suffer from the same authoritarian and 
exclusivist politics as the proposed Sinhala 
Buddhist state, but a Sri Lanka where people from 
all ethnic and religious communities could live 
in any part of the island in security, dignity 
and peace. His message remains as relevant today 
as it was then.

Recently there has been a tendency for 
authoritarian regimes in the Third World to 
represent themselves as somehow fighting against 
imperialism by
resisting pressure from First World countries to 
respect human rights. The rank hypocrisy of this 
claim is exposed by my father's writings. Much of 
his earlier work, and especially his books China: 
Yellow Peril?Red Hope? (SCM Press, 1968), From 
Gandhi to Guevara: The Polemics of Revolt (Allen 
Lane The Penguin Press, 1969), Sun Yat-sen (SCM 
Press 1971), and Rich against Poor: The Reality 
of Aid (Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1971) had a 
strong anti-imperialist focus. He identified 
whole-heartedly with the struggles of Third World 
peoples against both old-style European 
colonialism and the more recent US imperialism, 
and had a wide knowledge of liberation movements 
in all their diversity. Yet his critique of 
political leaders in Sri Lanka and other 
developing countries who robbed and oppressed 
their own people was equally trenchant.

In later life, his aversion to all forms of 
injustice and cruelty made him a natural ally of 
all those battling against the exclusion and 
oppression of women, children and gay people. His 
concern for social justice as well as his 
interest in environmental issues found expression 
in his more philosophical and theological works, 
Agenda for the Poor: Claiming Their Inheritance, 
(Centre for Society and Religion, 1990), New 
Beginnings: the Ordering and Designing of the 
Realm of Freedom, (Third World Perspectives, 
1992) and The Remaking of Humanity, (Christhava 
Sahithya Samithi, 2000).

His personal life embodied the same principles. 
My mother supported him in all his endeavours, 
accompanying him back and forth across thousands 
of miles, and taking on the role of the steady 
breadwinner so that he could have the opportunity 
to freelance. All too many men take that kind of 
devotion from their spouses for granted, and 
never dream of reciprocating in any way, but not 
my father. For some years past, as my mother's 
health deteriorated, he spent more and more of 
his declining strength caring for her, and he 
continued right to the very end. His devotion to 
her, and love for his other close relations and 
friends, were as important to his identity as his 
more public achievements.

Among the many people sending in tributes to my 
father, several refer to the enormous influence 
he had on them, and I suppose I belong to that 
category too. He introduced me to revolutionary 
politics as well as liberation theology at an 
early age, and his vision of global justice has 
inspired me all my life. In the last few weeks of 
his life, he said more than once that he 
considered my work to be a continuation of his 
own, and it makes me feel very proud indeed to 
think that some part of him lives on in me.

______


[2]

New Age
5 August 2008

CONVERSATIONS: BEING A WOMAN
Left leadership in Bangladesh

Listening to Mishu, I think, so the left movement 
assumes that men are not gendered creatures. That 
men, by virtue of being men, have been able to 
rise above mere gender concerns. That when they 
agitate, they do it on behalf of both men and 
women. That it is women who are particularistic, 
they can represent only other women. They alone 
are gendered. They alone are sexual beings. 
Familial beings, writes Rahnuma Ahmed


[the relationship between class struggle and 
women's liberation is] very close. Women were the 
first to be oppressed, and will be the last to be 
liberated when class oppression ceases. So the 
test of whether class oppression still exists is 
if women's oppression still exists or not.

Comrade Parvati, central committee member and 
head of women's department, Communist Party of 
Nepal (Maoist)

Š communist men should know that the revolution 
and the gains of revolution can only be preserved 
and furthered when more and more women join and 
lead the revolution.

Comrade Parvati, CPN (M)

'IF YOU look at efforts to develop women's 
leadership aimed at establishing equal relations 
between men and women, the party leadership seems 
to think that it is a waste of time. That women's 
contribution will somehow be lesser. I don't know 
how, through which process, they come to that 
conclusion. And the one or two women leaders like 
us, those who have managed to make it to the top, 
we are looked upon as exceptional. On some 
occasions, we are lauded, on others, condemned.'

I was talking to Moshrefa Mishu, president of the 
Garment Workers Unity Forum and convenor of 
Ganotantrik Bam Morcha. In the twenty-five-plus 
years that I have known her, on the few occasions 
that we have met, nearly always we have fallen 
into each other's arms and talked non-stop. About 
a whole lot of issues, garments workers wages, 
the mercilessly exploitative conditions under 
which they work, her party's organisational work, 
the struggles of women workers as women, her own 
personal struggles, government persecution, the 
forty-odd cases against her. She has always been 
curious about my own work, what I am writing, 
what I am reading, and has always stressed the 
need to share ideas.

Mishu continued, there are many dedicated women, 
women who have ceaselessly devoted every living 
and thinking moment to the party, but they are 
not even central committee members. Look at the 
CPB (Communist Party of Bangladesh), Hena Das 
became a central committee member only when she 
was eighty. Or at Krishna di, she became a 
central committee member recently, in her 
sixties. Men? Oh, at a much younger age. Maybe at 
my age, I am forty-five now, in a few cases, even 
in their late-thirties. Do left women talk about 
these things, I asked. A bit, said Mishu. I 
remember, several months ago, Shireen apa 
(Shireen Akhter, joint general secretary, Jatiya 
Samajtantrik Dal) took Zaman bhai (Khalequzzaman 
Bhuiyan, Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal) to task 
because Rousseau apa, Joly apa are not even 
central committee members. Even though they are 
such dedicated women, have tremendous leadership 
qualities and organisational capabilities. They 
are not even alternate members of the central 
committee. No woman has ever become a member of 
BSD central committee.

How do I dare to speak? Well, because I lead the 
Garment Workers Unity Forum, I work at the 
grassroots level. I am accepted. I think women 
comrades of other left parties, they might tell 
you one or two things but only off the record. Is 
it because of party loyalty, I interrupt. No, me, 
I am loyal too, I speak because I think it's 
necessary. I think if they were to speak out they 
may well be suspended from the party. After all, 
how many heads does one have on one's shoulders?

While transcribing Mishu's interview, and in 
between breaks reading Comrade Parvati's 'Women's 
Leadership and the Revolution in Nepal', these 
lines catch my eye. 'It is seen that 
revolutionary communist movements have always 
unleashed women's fury, but they are not able to 
channelize this energy into producing enduring 
women communist leaders. The question has been 
raised again and again as to why there are so few 
women leaders in communist parties when Marxism 
offers such a deep penetrating analysis and 
solution to women's oppression.'

This is Mishu's question too, why are there are 
so few women leaders in the left movement in 
Bangladesh? What role have respective communist 
and socialist parties played in developing women 
leaders?

Where, I wonder, does one begin to seek answers?
'Women agitation'

The other day I was so shocked, says Mishu. 
Ganotantrik Bam Morcha held a meeting to review a 
human chain programme organised to protest 
against the rise in prices of essentials. A young 
Morcha leader, personally I like him a lot, he is 
very modern in his outlook, said, 'photographers 
rush off to photograph Mishu apa. They want to 
present the protest as a "women agitation". I 
think we should be careful. We should keep an eye 
out for others, for senior leaders around us.'

I was truly shocked, said Mishu. I raised two 
questions: what do you mean by women agitation? 
Does that mean only men can, and should agitate, 
that women cannot? Even though women garment 
workers are a majority, even though most of our 
party members are women workers? Do you mean to 
say that these women should retreat to the back 
when men raise slogans, and should fall silent? 
You ask women to be present at the front of 
rallies, but when their photographs get taken, 
you become unhappy, you say, it becomes a women 
agitation. Of course, I am aware of the politics 
of media representation, of turning events into 
women events, but surely that is a separate issue.

Why does a woman leader's photograph create 
problems, but not a male leader's? Why is it that 
when photographers raise their cameras at me, I 
become a mere woman, that I am not a leader, like 
any other leader? Mishu added, I told them, I do 
not think of Tipu Biswas, or Comrade 
Khalequzzaman as 'men', I think of them as my 
comrades. And anyway, how is it possible, amidst 
all that jostling, shoving and pushing, with the 
police coming down upon us, to keep an eye on who 
is where. I told them, unlike many other women 
comrades, I do not deny my womanness. Yes, of 
course, I am a woman. However, what intrigues me 
is why, and when, this gets raised as an issue.

Listening to Mishu, I think, so the left movement 
assumes that men are not gendered creatures. That 
men, by virtue of being men, have been able to 
rise above 'mere' gender concerns. That when they 
agitate, they do it on behalf of both men and 
women. That it is women who are particularistic, 
they can represent only other women. They alone 
are gendered. They alone are sexual beings. 
Familial beings.

Let me tell you of another incident, says Mishu. 
It happened when I was much, much younger. I was 
then president of the Chhatra Oikya Forum, the 
only woman president among forty or so student 
organisations. I was arrested, I was accused of 
possessing arms, and of attempted bank dacoity. A 
group belonging to the Sarbahara Party had been 
caught while committing dacoity at a petrol pump 
station in Gazipur, I had been publicly critical 
of that party, so when they were caught, they 
falsely implicated me. They said I had led the 
dacoity but had managed to escape by driving away 
in another car. Members of my student 
organisation, my sisters who were then new 
recruits to the party, had gone around asking 
left leaders to give a signed statement 
protesting my arrest, but they refused. They 
said, it was not a political matter. Nirmal Sen 
had wryly said, at least, we now have a woman 
dacoit in Bangladesh. My question is, how can my 
arrest, and the false cases not be political? 
Would they have uttered my name if I was a 
housewife? Some left members went to the extent 
of wondering aloud - I know for sure because one 
of them, a woman leader later asked me - were you 
romantically involved with any of the Sarbahara 
members? Did he implicate you because of an 
affair gone sour?

Listening to Mishu I think of Kalpana Chakma, a 
pahari leader, abducted by army personnel from 
her house in Marishya, twelve years ago. A 
similar story, that she was romantically involved 
with Lieutenant Ferdous, that she had eloped with 
him, had been spurn. That similar threads of 
reasoning, albeit a very gendered one, exist in 
discourses conducted by institutions one assumes 
to be poles apart, continues to amaze me.
Comrade in marriage

Comrade Parvati writes, women who have potential 
do not emerge as leaders of the revolution in 
Nepal because of the institution of marriage. The 
People's War is changing the pattern but even 
within the PW, marriage and the decision to have 
children results in a lack of continuity of 
women's leadership. Having children is a 
'unilateral burden', the birth of each new child 
brings greater domestic slavery. Communist women 
complain that 'having babies is like being under 
disciplinary action', since they are cut off from 
party activities for long periods. Bright, 
aspiring communist women are lost to oblivion, 
even after marrying comrades of their choice. 
There is little support for women during their 
reproductive, child-bearing years. Women cadres 
are overtly or covertly pressurised into marrying 
since both men and women are 'suspicious' of a 
woman who is not married. Sexual offences, she 
says, are taken more seriously than political 
offences.

I ask Mishu, how have the social relations of 
marriage and sexuality impacted on women who 
belong to the left tradition in Bangladesh? And 
you yourself, you are single. Tell me, how have 
left women shaped and formed the project of 
women's emancipation in their aspirations for 
bringing socialist change in Bangladesh.

What I have seen from my left student 
organisation days to now, at the Party level, 
women who are brilliant and beautiful, shundori 
and sharp, in the language of left men, are 
selected for marriage. The idea is, this will 
ensure that they will remain within the left. 
But, that is not necessarily the case, for they 
often disappear into domestic oblivion. I have 
also heard brilliant left men say, in cases where 
both comrades are equally qualified, have similar 
potential, both cannot be built up, one needs to 
be crucified. Well, adds Mishu with an impish 
smile, I myself have never seen men being 
crucified. Of course, people in the left always 
speak of the contributions of Jenny Marx, of 
Krupskaya, also of Leo Panitch, who was Rosa 
Luxemburg's husband. And I myself, I deeply 
respect and admire our male comrades, they have 
not sacrificed any less, they have endured, 
persevered against all odds, they are not 
lacking, it's just their outlook, they are so 
terribly chauvinistic. Also, in a racist sense, 
you cannot imagine all the talk I overhear about 
forsha (fair) wives, and kalo (dark-skinned) 
wives.

Progressive men, communist men here, and I say 
this Rahnuma, in all seriousness, and with the 
utmost confidence, they do not practise equality 
between men and women in their personal lives. 
Neither towards their wives, nor their daughters, 
nor sisters. They emerge as korta (lord, master). 
I do not want to mention names, but daughters of 
left leaders have been known to be given away in 
marriage to good grooms, good meaning husbands 
with qualifications from abroad. I have discussed 
this with other women, and their experiences are 
similar. And what about party women who marry 
comrades, party leaders, I ask. Often, says 
Mishu, these women are new to the party, new to 
Marxist philosophy. In this situation, receiving 
a proposal and marrying so-and-so is perceived as 
bringing more status, greater prestige. They seem 
to form an elite by themselves.

What about the issue of sexuality? You are 
single, you have remained single, I return to an 
earlier thread of our conversation. This word is 
never ever mentioned, says Mishu. It is taboo. I 
have seen men sit and chat, they laugh among 
themselves, I can tell that they are talking 
about these things. I am sure if I had a couple 
of men friends, I would not have a leg to stand 
on in politics. There would be no space for me. 
After being released from jail, I hear the word 
'sacrifice' being muttered, but I know there 
would be no space for me if I had lived 
differently. I would have liked it I had a male 
friend, of that I am sure. And what about male 
comrades, I ask. Is it different? But, of course, 
she replies. Many male comrades were single. It 
seems, they had women friends, but no one gossips 
about it. You mean their political image does not 
suffer as a result? No, says Mishu. You mean, in 
your case, they would call you characterless? Oh, 
absolutely. I wouldn't be surprised if I were to 
be called a 'prostitute'. On hearing Mishu's 
words, I wasn't surprised either. As a university 
teacher, during the 1998 anti-rape movement on 
Jahangirnagar campus, an influential teacher who 
was furiously angry at my role in the movement 
had referred to me as a bessha. He had said it to 
another university teacher, who could not bring 
himself to repeat the word when he related the 
incident to me. Women are framed and located 
within a bou-bessha dichotomy, an everyday tool 
men use to whiplash female dissenters of 
patriarchy. Progressivist men dismiss it as 
ruchir obhab (tasteless), or nimno srenir bhasha 
(lower class language). The left cannot afford do 
it. The dichotomy itself is woven out of class-ed 
and gender-ed ideas. That, and its middle-class 
reception, both remain unexamined.

The left political tradition in Bangladesh, Mishu 
continues, is very masculine. That women can 
contribute to that tradition, both theoretically, 
and through their experiences as women, is 
something that is not seriously entertained. It 
is generally assumed that women can only inspire. 
They cannot lead. That women's leadership can 
radically transform existing relations of power, 
this is not given any serious theoretical 
consideration. Men are considered to be 
theoretically superior. We women are adjuncts. 
That women's participation, and women's 
leadership can initiate changes in a masculine 
power structure, and that this is necessary, men 
in the left just do not give this any serious 
thought.

If we cannot create space to work together as 
comrades, if socialist aspirations for women are 
restricted to 'yes, we must do something for the 
women too', if socialist ideals of equality are 
not practised at every level, in the party, in 
the family, in personal lives, in marriage, it 
will not happen automatically. If I raise these 
issues I am accused of being a neo-Marxist, of 
being a feminist, but what my Marxist comrades 
fail to realise is that this is essential for the 
creative development of Marxism. Her face 
suddenly breaks into a smile as she says, at 
least they no longer tell me, the masses won't 
accept you. I work at the grassroots level, 
unlike many. I have no problems in gaining 
acceptance. And yes, did I tell you, women 
members are expected to wear mostly white saris. 
You mean dress like widows? Why on earth, I ask. 
We burst out laughing.

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your 
revolution, had said Emma Goldman, 
Lithuanian-born American international anarchist.

Women's emancipation: a male script

Left men have created a framework. Women's 
emancipation will have to be thought from within 
that framework. You will lead your life within 
that framework. If you do, you can preside at the 
next meeting. If not, regardless of the 
leadership qualities you may have, you cannot. I 
want to repeat, I respect my male comrades, I 
think very highly of them, they are not an 
oppressive lot, but I find it difficult to accept 
their framework of thoughts and ideas. Leaders of 
other parties will compliment me on my work, they 
will also expect me to seek advice from them, 
contrary to norms of party discipline. If I do 
so, I am a good woman, I mean an ideal woman 
leader. An ideal woman leader must be a good 
woman, as defined by dominant social norms. We 
are still expected to believe that once socialism 
is achieved, women will become emancipated. It 
will happen automatically. This is an 
over-simplification. If and when it does happen, 
we will advance only one step, women will gain a 
few rights. What will be achieved is macho 
socialism.

And what about women party members, I ask. I 
don't think their experiences are very different. 
As newcomers, often they receive proposals. Such 
a situation may be upsetting. She may not like 
it. She may leave. She may become disillusioned. 
To say that women have to be strong enough to 
handle this, ignores the question of Party 
responsibility to tackle these issues head-on. To 
make creative space for women members. For those 
who are the party's 'other'.

Our long conversation comes to an end. I am 
reminded of Russian revolutionary Alexandra 
Kollontai who had insisted that the emancipation 
of women requires not only the end of capitalism, 
but also a concerted effort to transform human 
interpersonal relations - of sexuality, love and 
comradeship - along with the struggle for social 
change.


_______


[3] PAKISTAN:

Dawn, August 7, 2008

IN FAIRNESS TO THE ISI

by I.A. Rehman

WHATEVER the merits of the move to change the 
address of the Inter Services Intelligence 
Directorate, the genius behind it earned extra 
marks for ham-handedness.

But the storm in the media that followed 
indicated that the government did not have a 
monopoly on naivety.

The main ground of attack on the government was 
that the agency was being targeted only to please 
the US and the country's security had been 
undermined. It was also said that the PPP wanted 
to use the agency to hound its opponents. The 
demonstration of solidarity with the agency was 
truly amazing. After a few flashes from 'hailers' 
(those who welcome everything the government does 
without necessarily knowing what is there to be 
welcomed) the scene was dominated by 'wailers' 
(those who lament without necessarily knowing 
where they have been hit). Leaving the hailers 
and wailers aside, it is possible to discuss the 
matter - and in fairness to the ISI.

The government certainly deserved a spanking for 
behaving like an urchin who runs away from school 
after planting a safety pin on his teacher's 
seat. It could not have been unaware of the need 
for explaining its portentous move. Everybody put 
on the cryptic notice the interpretation that 
suited him or her. The fact is a debate on the 
role of the ISI has been pending for decades.

One does not know whether the present controller 
of the interior ministry was around when soon 
after becoming premier in 1988 the late Benazir 
Bhutto appointed a committee, headed by Air Chief 
Marshal (retd) Zulfiqar Ali Khan, to review the 
working of security and intelligence agencies. 
The committee did submit its report. This report 
was never made public and nothing is known about 
any decisions taken on it.

There was nothing unusual about the decision to 
set up the review committee. Every government has 
a duty to ensure that the country's security 
needs are adequately met. Those were the days of 
glasnost and its converts at home were led by the 
then army chief, Gen Aslam Beg. But openness was 
an extremely brief diversion and Zulfiqar Khan 
was left to wonder in his ambassadorial room in 
Washington whether anybody had had time to read 
his report.

However, public interest in the ISI never waned. 
It often received kudos while the 'mujahideen' 
advanced on Kabul. After some time Air Marshal 
Asghar Khan took his complaint of the ISI's 
interference in national elections to the Supreme 
Court and the country was shocked to learn of a 
former agency chief's confession. Bringing credit 
neither to the country's apex court nor its 
invisible government, the case has not been 
disposed of despite repeated requests for 
resumption of hearing.

Meanwhile, the agency continued to attract 
uncomplimentary notices at home and abroad. What 
probably proved to be the last straw was the 
government statement in the Sindh High Court in 
2006, in regard to a case of disappearance, that 
the ISI was not under its operational control. 
From that point onward the argument for a fresh 
review of the functioning of the ISI has been 
unexceptionable.

While raising the matter in public one should 
bear in mind that the other party is not free to 
discard its robes of secrecy and cannot answer 
its critics. Also nobody can be foolish enough to 
suggest that intelligence agencies should be 
disbanded. Until humankind attains the level of 
maturity, responsibility and transparency where 
cloak-and-dagger games become redundant, no state 
can do without intelligence services.

The only issue is that since all intelligence 
agencies work in the name of the state there 
should be some way of ensuring that they do not 
step outside their mandate and do not, by 
accident or by design, cause any harm to the 
national interest. These guarantees should be 
discussed, subject of course to the requirements 
of discreetness and circumspection.

The lack of knowledge about the laws and rules 
under which the ISI operates has caused much 
confusion and unhappiness. The common view that 
the ISI has become a state within the state can 
be repelled if the people can be sure that it is 
bound by a functional code as to what it can do 
and what it cannot. Any newspaper reader knows 
that situations do arise when states are obliged 
to enlarge or curtail the responsibilities of 
intelligence agencies. In some countries this 
necessitates reference to the law-makers. How are 
such calls answered in Pakistan?

The announcement about the ISI's new address, 
that is c/o the Ministry of Interior, did not 
explain what was wrong with the previous address 
or what the previous address was. If the idea was 
that the ISI should not meddle in domestic 
politics, a demand manifestly backed by a 
national consensus, the interior ministry should 
be the last portal to serve as the agency's host. 
The relegation of the agency to the interior 
ministry has been contested with the claim that 
the ISI is only concerned with external threats 
to the state. That raises the question whether 
the Foreign Office has anything to do with 
intelligence - how it is gathered and processed 
and used.

Some confusion has also been created by lack of 
information about the ISI structure. Judging by 
the agency's designation one presumes that it 
draws upon the cadres of, or serves the needs of, 
all three defence services. But is the practice 
of its being headed invariably by an army officer 
something mandated by law?

Then statements to the effect that the ISI 
reports to the president or the prime minister 
are meaningless. Although Pakistan's claim to be 
a parliamentary democracy has no basis in fact, 
one may venture to point out the principle that 
the head of state must not be directly accessible 
to any state service and that all official 
information to him should come through the 
cabinet. And what is meant by reporting to the 
prime minister? Does it mean anything more than 
informing the PM of the agency's accomplishments? 
The essential questions are: Who sanctions the 
agency's operations? Who allocates it financial 
resources and what is the system of audit, 
administrative as well as financial?

It is not impossible that the new government 
wishes to streamline the ISI's decision-making 
procedures with a view to making the agency more 
efficient and less vulnerable to the charge of 
freedom from any discipline. If that is the idea 
there is no harm in taking the people into 
confidence about collective decision-making 
proposals. The creation of a special cell 
comprising responsible representatives of both 
civil and military wings of authority could well 
be considered. After all, management of 
intelligence matters should not be incompatible 
with institutionalised governance. Or is it 
otherwise?

o o o

The News, August 3, 2008

KEEPING THE ISI UNDER LEASH

by Omar R. Quraishi

Let's face it -- notwithstanding the apparent 
fiasco of the government transferring the ISI to 
the interior ministry and then being coerced into 
reversing it a few hours later, the fact is that 
the most important issue in this whole matter is 
that there should be some kind of check and 
oversight on the state's various intelligence 
agencies.

While some people have already jumped to the 
conclusion that placing the ISI under the control 
of the interior ministry was an ill-advised move 
to begin with, given that the ministry is headed 
by a non-elected individual and whose loyalty is 
thought by many to lie primarily with PPP 
co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari. However, this seems 
to be a hollow argument given that one should not 
be looking at individuals but rather the 
mechanism under which the said intelligence 
agency would henceforth work under. If that is 
made the central criterion, then clearly 
transferring the agency to the interior division 
made sense.

The reason is simple. Till now, and for the past 
many years, the ISI has become a dreaded 
organisation -- and one isn't talking about the 
Indians but among domestic public and political 
opinion -- and has been accused of everything 
from running its own jihad, to picking up people 
and keeping them incognito for months and even 
years in some cases, to actively working against 
the government itself or at least against its 
larger interests. And while technically one could 
say that it was working under civilian control 
already, since its chief reports to the prime 
minister, the fact also is that its chain of 
communication with the executive depends on the 
military's relations with an elected (or even 
selected) government. Since the head of the ISI 
is normally a three-star general, appointed by 
the army chief, for better or for worse he works 
closely with the army chief, and the central role 
of the intelligence agency of information 
gathering and its sharing with the government may 
to a considerable extent depend on the army 
chief's relationship with the prime minister and 
his/her government.

Besides, all those who cried foul (and these were 
not only men in khaki or who had worn khaki in 
the past) after the change and were relieved when 
it was reversed need to understand that this may 
be a good way to at least nominally bring the 
agency under some kind of civilian oversight. Of 
course, the best approach would be to bring it 
under the appropriate National Assembly and 
Senate standing committees but here one should 
remember that some years back, even the heads of 
the armed forces welfare organisations had 
point-blank refused to appear before parliament. 
This tendency to consider it below oneself to 
appear before parliament has quite unfortunately 
become part of the psyche of some senior men in 
uniform (and even retired men in uniform) and 
stems from the perception that they and their 
institution are either above the law or that 
there is a separate (read unequal) law for them 
and hence there is no need to appear before a 
group of elected representatives and answer their 
questions. Of course, this kind of system where 
parliamentary committees have the authority to, 
and do, exercise considerable oversight over 
law-enforcement and intelligence agencies is the 
bed-rock of a genuine democracy and can be seen 
in the way this system works in the US or the UK.

Of course, this is not to say that the CIA, the 
NSA, or the MI6 don't have rogue operations or do 
things that are at best in the law's grey area, 
but they know that if things go wrong (and this 
is particularly true when these relate to their 
own citizens) then parliament can play a 
reasonably effective role. One only has to look 
at former Guantanamo Bay detainees who were 
citizens of countries like Canada, Australia or 
the UK who after their release publicly berated 
their governments and national intelligence 
agencies of colluding with the Americans to allow 
gross human rights abuses -- how many people in 
this country in a similar situation have done 
this?

************

The so-called recently-signed peace deal in Hangu 
seems to be nothing more than an eyewash, and 
which will help only the local Taliban. (In fact, 
a well-known US-based blog has already said that 
the government, for reasons best known to itself, 
seems to have ceded Hangu to the Taliban with 
this agreement).

Well, the details are as follows and readers can 
decide for themselves exactly what has 
transpired. On July 8, a flag march of the police 
came under heavy fire. It retaliated and a 
firefight ensued. In it, the police managed to 
arrest seven militants -- the rest apparently 
fled -- and these included Rafiuddin, the 
reported deputy or close aide of Baitullah 
Mehsud. The militants were taken to a nearby 
police station but soon their comrades returned 
in full force. Scores of local Taliban laid a 
siege to the police station, which lasted about 
20 hours. They also blasted the transformer that 
feeds the facility in an effort to make the 
police surrender their colleagues. Luckily this 
did not happen and the SHO of the area, Jehangir 
Khan, radioed for help.

Eventually the army moved in from Kohat and the 
siege was lifted. The militants left before the 
military arrived and by then the provincial 
government decided to launch an operation to 
clear the area of local Taliban. Once this was 
achieved -- most of the militants simply 
relocated to the neighbouring Orakzai and 
Waziristan agencies -- the Taliban cleverly 
issued an ultimatum to the NWFP government to 
call off the operation or face the consequences. 
The provincial government willingly obliged and 
the operation was called off the next day.

A jirga was then convened, with the local MNA, 
MPA and district nazim being the most 
enthusiastic about it. A 'peace agreement' was 
soon signed and though details of the terms 
agreed upon were not made public, a contributor 
writing in this newspaper's editorial pages wrote 
that one member of the jirga had revealed that 
three of the seven militants who had been 
arrested by the police in early July would be 
released, in exchange for the release of hostages 
taken by the Taliban. It is likely that one of 
those released would be Rafiuddin -- and not only 
this, the army would withdraw from the area in 
exchange for an assurance by the local Taliban 
that they would not in future challenge the 
government's authority. Surely, what was the need 
for launching an operation, given that the arrest 
of the seven militants precipitated the 
conditions that led to it, when the government 
was going to release three of them anyway? Also, 
when in the past have the militants ever stuck to 
their side of the deal?

Proof of this came the day after the peace deal 
was signed when the brother of the Hangu district 
nazim, a key member of the jirga that formulated 
the agreement, was kidnapped and the house in 
Kohat of SHO Jehangir Khan was attacked -- both 
actions done presumably by the militants.

Is there any other way to label this other than calling it abject surrender?

The writer is Editorial Pages Editor of The News

______



[4]  The

The Telegraph, August 8, 2008

Editorial

UNQUIET WATERS

The apparent frivolity of Jammu's protesters, 
wading in the waters of the Tawi to defy a 
curfew, may take some of the gravity away from 
the all-parties meet held on the same day to 
quell the disquiet in Jammu and Kashmir. But it 
powerfully conveys the image of what the nation 
is up against. The protest in Jammu against the 
revocation of the land transfer to the Amarnath 
Shrine Board is distinctly popular, distinctly 
communal. And it is showing the same promise of 
moulding the reactions of political parties as 
that other protest in Kashmir against the land 
grant that had brought the state government down. 
In response to carefully instigated popular 
passions that saw the lease of forest land to the 
management of a Hindu pilgrimage as a betrayal of 
Kashmiriyat, the People's Democratic Party had 
not only gone back on its word on the land grant, 
but also pulled the plug on the PDP-Congress 
administration a little over a month ago. Now, a 
similar intransigence in Jammu is heightening the 
political pitch among both Hindutva and 
non-Hindutva parties. No political formation, 
least of all the Bharatiya Janata Party whose 
stakes in the state have doubled after the snub 
in the trust vote, can be seen to be conceding to 
measures that are anything less than a 
full-fledged transfer of the land to the shrine. 
Certainly not when the assembly elections are 
scheduled a month away, and the general elections 
are just around the corner. So despite first-hand 
knowledge (as in Ayodhya) of where such passions 
can lead to, the leader of the Opposition can 
only agree with the prime minister on the dangers 
of a communal conflagration but cannot compromise 
on an irreconcilable stand.

The fanaticism that is taking India's 
northern-most state to the brink cannot work in a 
vacuum. There are deep misunderstandings and 
mistrust between the communities that owe as much 
to history as to recent politics. The communal 
rift in Jammu and Kashmir has been widened by the 
shameless greed of politicians and by a supine 
administration at the Centre that has refused to 
see the problem in the eye. The groundwork for 
the two phases of violence in the state - one 
which precipitated the governor's rule and the 
other which has led to the siege of the valley - 
has been systematically laid over the years, both 
by radical Islamists and a rejuvenated Hindutva 
brigade who have played on the people's sense of 
victimhood. It will take more than conciliatory 
meetings and speeches to end the impasse and stop 
the fire from spreading.

o o o

The Hindu
August 08, 2008
Editorial

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

Jammu and Kashmir is teetering on the edge of a 
communal abyss. For the past fortnight, violent 
mobs have disrupted civic life in Jammu, staged 
assaults on policemen, and blockaded supplies 
headed north on the highway to Srinagar. Muslims 
have been attacked, and their properties torched. 
The Amarnath Yatra Sangarsh Samiti, a coalition 
of Hindu religious and communal organisations, is 
on the war path. Its aim is to compel the 
government to restore 40 hectares of land earlie 
r granted to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board - a 
grant that was revoked following a similar, 
communally charged agitation in Kashmir. Hindutva 
leaders in Jammu claim that the revocation of the 
land transfer is an affront to Hindu 'religious 
rights' - a claim as bizarre as that of Islamists 
who claimed the transfer was part of a conspiracy 
to alter Kashmir's Muslim-majority character. The 
reality is that all land granted to the Shrine 
Board remains available to pilgrims, just as it 
was long before the Shrine Board came into 
existence. However, appeals to reason and 
national interest have cut no ice with leaders of 
the sangh parivar. Kashmir's marginalised 
Islamists, and the Hindu communal bloc in Jammu, 
which had its nose rubbed in the dirt in the last 
Assembly elections, are clearly locked in an 
unholy alliance to maximise trouble.

It is a reflection on the Bharatiya Janata 
Party's cynical political agenda that it refused 
to call for calm or endorse Governor N.N. Vohra's 
appeals for dialogue. BJP leaders must reflect on 
the grave implications of the course they have 
taken in India's most troubled and vulnerable 
State. From the time of the Ayub Khan 
dictatorship, Pakistan has backed what is called 
the Chenab Plan, a proposal to divide the State 
along the river that marks its communal 
frontiers. Over the years, variants of this 
partition plan have been endorsed by both Hindu 
and Muslim communalists. The Lashkar-e-Taiba 
tried to implement the plan by massacring Hindus 
along the Pir Panjal mountains, in the hope of 
provoking their southward migration and the 
expulsion of Muslims through retaliatory riots in 
Jammu. Where its guns and bombs failed, the 
Shrine Board riots seem to be succeeding. It 
isn't just the BJP that needs to reflect on its 
role in this dangerous affair. So too must the 
People's Democratic Party, which first assented 
to the land transfer decision and changed course 
to capitalise on Islamist resentment. The 
Congress must also take its share of the blame 
for precipitating the current J&K crisis in the 
first place. The all-party meeting, a worthwhile 
if belated firefighting effort by the central 
government, failed to produce anything other than 
a general endorsement of the desirability of 
creating a congenial environment to resolve the 
crisis through dialogue. Unless all the major 
players cooperate with Governor Vohra in his 
efforts to find a modus vivendi along 
uncompromisingly secular lines, there will be a 
horrific price to pay.

o o o

The Telegraph
August 8, 2008

Motley group flies Amarnath flag
Lawyer, priest & soldier at helm

by Muzaffar Raina

Protesters demonstrate against governor NN Vohra in Jammu on Thursday. (PTI)

Srinagar, Aug. 7: A lawyer leads them. A young 
priest lends his voice to fire the masses. A 
former brigadier has set himself the goal of 
winning back what he says was snatched away from 
them. And a top government advocate, who quit his 
job, is determined to end Jammu's 
"discrimination" by "Kashmiri rulers".

Meet the mixed band leading the Amarnath campaign 
since the state government went back on its 
promise to give forest land to the trust that 
runs the cave shrine.

They aren't the only ones. There's a politician 
who goes from one locality to another, mobilising 
the masses against what he calls the "hegemony" 
of Kashmiri leaders. And a man who has taken it 
upon himself to wrest basic privileges refugees 
from Pakistan have been denied for 60 years.

A Sangh parivar brainchild, the Shri Amarnath 
Sangharsh Samiti (SASS) has drawn people from 
different walks of life. But Leela Karan Sharma, 
an obscure name before June 30, the day the 
Samiti was born, will be the most sought after 
when a central team visits Jammu to find a way 
out of the standoff that has crippled the state.

"Among the first few names that were proposed to 
lead the Samiti was that of Dinesh Bharti, but it 
was turned down as we thought its president 
should be apolitical," says Annan Sharma, chief 
of the Kranti Dal, one of the dozens of groups 
now part of the Samiti.

Although Leela Karan has a long association with 
the RSS, he is a lawyer by profession. "He was an 
obvious choice," says Sharma, the Kranti Dal boss.

Dinesh Bharti, a mahant of Jammu's Radha Krishna 
temple, is the Samiti's firebrand face from the 
VHP who mobilises masses with patriotic songs 
like Mera Rang De Basanti Chola.

In his early thirties, Bharti's favourite theme is "Kashmir blockade".

Brigadier (retired) Suchet Singh is often seen at 
RSS meetings but has apparent disdain for 
politics. "I have never been into politics and 
would never join it," he says.

Singh, who served the army for 32 years, says he 
joined the Samiti because the decision to revoke 
"land allotment to the shrine board hurt Hindu 
sentiments".

"Kashmir leaders misled Kashmiris by telling them 
that the government was settling Hindus on that 
land. Is it possible to settle people there (in 
such adverse weather conditions)?"

One of the few non-parivar faces in the Samiti 
top brass is B.S. Salathia, the head of Jammu's 
bar association.

The Congress sympathiser quit his job as 
additional advocate general before joining the 
Samiti. One of his main grievances is the alleged 
discrimination meted out to the people of Jammu 
by "Kashmiri rulers".

Discrimination is also the pet slogan of Shiv 
Sena state leader Ashok Gupta, who criticises the 
"hegemony" of Kashmiri leaders.

Several other groups campaigning for rights of 
particular sections of Jammu's society have also 
put their weight behind the Samiti.

While Narain Singh's Rajput Sabha is fighting for 
Rajput rights, Annan Sharma's Kranti Dal wants 
more privileges for West Pakistan refugees. 
Sharma, a former VHP state chief, says his only 
goal now is to get "the land back".

______


[5]

Asian Age
7 August 2008

LAWS LIKE POTA DON'T FIGHT TERROR, JUST STIFLE FREEDOM

by Antara Dev Sen

Two knees are better than one brain. For one, in 
a crisis, you can instantly jerk a knee or two 
and swiftly set new rules rather than tax your 
elusive little brain. Besides, mindless 
genuflecting is a much better national pastime 
than intellectual games and puzzle-solving.

So we are not surprised that the Delhi police has 
now zoomed in on bicycles as a tool of terrorism. 
Why? Because bombs were planted on cycles in the 
recent blasts in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Jaipur. 
So shops in Delhi now cannot sell cycles without 
checking the buyer's proof of identity and filing 
it as evidence. But it's not just examining the 
backgrounds of possible cyclists - mostly poor 
peons, rich kids and demanding bridegrooms (the 
cycle is as essential to a modest middle-class 
wedding as the priest or maulana). Cybercafé 
owners and hotels must keep meticulous records on 
their clients. For email threats of terror 
attacks have made the whole cyber world suspect.

You think your freedom is being curtailed? Wait 
till the State controls your computers, mobiles, 
pressure cookers, tiffin carriers, briefcases, 
schoolbags, even old-fashioned letters - since 
all of these have been linked to bomb blasts in 
India. Once the knee-jerk method of dealing with 
terrorism gets swinging, we can forget about our 
democratic rights and individual freedoms.

So every time there is a bomb attack there are 
cries for new, stringent anti-terrorism laws. 
It's in the air even now. Bring back Pota, cry 
the right-wingers. Not Pota, just anti-terror 
laws, say the more flexible. Give us more sticks 
and stones, scream the paranoid, kill all 
suspects! And the knee-jerk school of governance 
readies to meet their demands.

Which is disastrous. We already have appalling 
laws that curtail human rights. Like the UAPA 
(Unlawful Activities Prevention Act), the AFSPA 
(Armed Forces Special Powers Act) or the Special 
Security Acts in individual states, to name a 
few. Each of these give the police enormous 
powers to torment, confine and control any 
citizen with impunity in the name of security. We 
certainly don't need more disgraceful tools of 
State repression. Instead, we need to get rid of 
the dehumanising laws we shamelessly cling to for 
political power.

In 2004, when the UPA government grandly repealed 
Pota (Prevention of Terrorism Act), it quietly 
made amendments in the old UAPA to incorporate 
many of Pota's horrific clauses. That law has 
been used ever since to smother dissent and 
critical dialogue, or to terrify groups and 
communities. When the very police force that 
routinely attacks human rights and fails to 
protect citizens is given almost unlimited 
powers, and the power of the judiciary is 
curtailed, it does not bode well for democracy.

Take the detention of Dr Binayak Sen. He has been 
in jail for more than a year on charges of 
treason and waging war against the state. The 
doctor and PUCL (People's Union of Civil 
Liberties) activist was imprisoned as a Naxalite 
- as he protested human rights violations against 
the tribals in Chhattisgarh by a state government 
keen to kill "Maoists" in fake encounters. Dr Sen 
is not the only human rights defender being held 
under the fiercely-repressive UAPA. Among several 
others held without bail are independent 
filmmaker Ajay T.G. and journalists Praful Jha 
and Sai Reddy from Chhattisgarh, activist Lachit 
Bordoloi from Assam, independent editor Govindan 
Kutty from Kerala, journalist Prashant Rahi from 
Uttarakhand, activists Vernon Gonsalves, Shridhar 
Srinivasan, Arun Ferreira, Ashok Reddy, Dhanendra 
Bhurule and Naresh Bansode from Maharshtra.

Meanwhile, in the Northeast and Kashmir, AFSPA 
allows the Army to act without accountability, 
making them as big a problem for locals as the 
insurgents. The rape and killing of Manorama in 
Manipur in 2004 seemed to be the last straw and 
triggered unprecedented anger and protests, 
including the march of naked middle-aged women 
carrying an "Indian Army, Rape Us!" banner. This, 
along with Irom Sharmila's continuing 
eight-year-long hungerstrike (and the forced 
nasal feeding) protesting against the atrocities 
and murders by the Army, shocked the nation.

But not enough to force the government to repeal 
the AFSPA. Meanwhile, new repressive laws are 
being thought up. Such targeting of civilians, 
especially human rights activists and 
journalists, only fuel more extremism as saner 
voices give way to extremists who spurn dialogue 
and plot drastic measures to reclaim control over 
their lives and regain lost dignity. 
Anti-terrorism laws are notoriously 
counterproductive. They do not reduce insurgency 
but aggravate political disaffection. The 
unbridled power it gives security forces 
alienates citizens, pushing them to sympathise 
with rebels against the brutal State.

To counter terrorism, we must not slide into 
paranoia, stifling democratic freedoms, trampling 
human rights and celebrating vicious laws. And we 
certainly must not allow the State to take away 
our rights. Besides, just because the United 
States has the Patriot Act and Europe has similar 
harsh anti-terrorism laws, it doesn't make it 
right. Especially since our police force has been 
so corrupt, inefficient, unethical and 
perpetually pliable to political manipulation. 
Our police system does not fit a democracy - it 
still operates under ancient British rules, when 
the police were a repressive force. To top it 
all, our justice system takes forever to deliver.

Besides, laws are slaves to our passions and 
biases. The Jaipur bomb blasts saw a bloodthirsty 
attempt to capture and punish Bengali Muslims - 
apparently they were all Bangladeshi terrorists! 
Earlier, Pota was used to clap hundreds of 
Muslims in jail in Narendra Modi's Gujarat as 
dreaded terrorists, without bail or democratic 
rights. We need to set the basics right before we 
reach for tighter control, if ever. India has 
faced the world's worst terrorist violence on its 
own soil, after Iraq, with the highest number of 
deaths and terror attacks. Already this year, 
terrorism has killed about 2,400 people in India. 
We have been struggling with terror for over two 
decades. But we still don't have a proper 
counter-terrorism agency or network. There is no 
sharing of information between states and the 
Centre (law and order is a state subject). And we 
are still waiting for police reforms.

To counter terrorism, we may be willing to 
surrender some freedoms at certain times, but 
even-handedly, without targeting specific 
individuals or groups. Which is what our 
knee-jerk anti-terrorism laws do. In a ruthless, 
repressive State where dissent is disallowed and 
civil rights are cast aside, where you can be 
jailed as a terrorist for protesting against 
extra-judicial killings, terrorism may seem like 
a lesser evil.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. 
She can be contacted at sen at littlemag.com


o o o

Indian Express
August 08, 2008

IN THE NAME OF TERROR

by Shiv Visvanathan

The toll that insecure times exact on diversity and dissent

  Times of terror often become times of 
intolerance. A diversified society suddenly 
behaves in terms of homogenous scripts. Security 
becomes the key word around which a temporary 
social contract is built. A society in its 
attempt to hold together forsakes the very thing 
that makes its secure, its sense of difference 
and its tolerance for disorder. Disorder offers a 
sense of debate, the possibility of negotiation; 
it eliminates a sense of a final doctrine and a 
final solution. Fear unravels the threads of 
diversity by reordering a society around order, 
uniformity and homogeneity. Fear and the sense of 
helplessness against terror allow it to tolerate 
forms of intrusion, modes of violence that a 
society would not normally countenance. The 
greater good of the whole makes it ready to 
sacrifice a part. National security allows one to 
sin and violate in a way a democracy would see as 
impermissible. Yet oddly and ironically, national 
security has become one of the guiding tenets of 
our democracy.

Emile Durkheim, the great French sociologist, 
improvised two concepts to understand the 
transition to modernity and industrialism. He 
postulated a distinction between mechanical and 
organic societies. A mechanical society is based 
on likeliness, an organic society, on difference. 
Organic societies are based on the division of 
labour, on specialization, on differentiation. 
Mechanical societies respond homogenously to 
violence by asking for revenge, valuing a head 
for a head, an eye for an eye. Organic societies 
thriving on difference move from physicality to a 
rule of law which is actually a celebration of 
difference.

The solidarities that thrive on each are radically different.

However, there are times when an organic society 
behaves in terms of mechanical solidarity. 
Security and times of terror create such 
occasions. At that moment, any form of dissent 
becomes threatening and is immediately read as a 
security threat. Like feels at home on 
likeliness, feeding on it. Often what is seen as 
a temporary crisis becomes a perpetual regime, 
abbreviating the very rights and values we hold 
as fundamental.

The first casualty of terror is human rights. The 
second victim is everydayness, the third target, 
diversity. But these are three things that make a 
society livable, create the forms of well being 
we cherish. We face an apparent paradox. To 
protect the society and the social order we have 
created, we destroy the very things we value. 
What creates this rite of passage or this 
reversal from peace to a simpler form of order is 
security as a response to terror. It transforms a 
protean society celebrating diversity, fluidity 
and border crossing to a procrustean one, with 
monolithic centers and monolingual definitions. 
Terror destroys the dialects of difference which 
make dialogue possible. Society speaks in a 
single voice and without a hearing aid. Between 
the megaphone and silence, there is no 
possibility for the worlds we call noise.

Security militarises civil society into a set of 
disciplinary structures. It sees no major 
differences between controlling traffic and 
controlling thought. To put it differently, it 
wants to see thought as mere traffic so its 
channels could be easily blocked. In emphasisng 
order, stability, control, it revalidates 
authoritarianism in the name of democracy, a 
syllogism that the middle class in particular is 
susceptible to. Finally human rights become a 
luxury, a conspicuous consumption we can ill 
afford.

Rights are not merely a set of protective devices 
against harassments or a set of entitlements 
guaranteeing access to forms of competence. They 
make spaces for forms of life, forms of thought, 
forms of difference. Rights protect difference 
against threat. Security protects monolithic 
order against the right to be different. But 
rights are only a guarantee of a framework of 
plural thoughts. Rights to survive against the 
pressures of security or terror needs to be 
animated by dissent.

Dissent is a label that includes a variety of 
celebrations of difference. Dissent includes the 
radical rebel, the eccentric, the deviant, the 
pluralist and the seeker of alternatives. Terror 
and security need all of them as an antidote to 
the very instability or false stability they 
create. Eccentricity is a question of style, a 
way of doing things differently. It focuses more 
on the odd or the quixotic. It is individual. 
Amplified to the level of collectivity, we 
confront ethnicity. Meanwhile, the rebel 
challenges authority, especially its 
authoritarianism or corruption. Whistle-blowing 
is one well known form of rebellion. Radicalism 
demands system transformation. NGOs can be 
rebellious while Naxalities can threaten a 
radical alteration of the social structure. 
Dissent involves a critique of society at every 
level of texture. It differs in thought and in 
action because a way of thinking is frequently 
accompanied with a change in lifestyle. It can 
move from suspicion and scepticism to an advocacy 
of more differences within the frame or an 
alternate frame. Unless security, rights, 
sustainability play themselves out within the 
tenor of life, they will remain un-nuanced. 
Security then will set the stage for that worst 
of tyrannies, the monoculture of the mind.

The writer is a social scientist

o o o


The Guardian,
August 7 2008

VIOLENCE RUNS THROUGH THIS 'STABLE' INDIA, BUILT ON POVERTY AND INJUSTICE
The country the west loves to call a peaceful, 
capitalist success has a terrorism death toll 
second only to Iraq

by Pankaj Mishra

In the past five years bomb attacks claimed by 
Islamist groups have killed hundreds across the 
Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, 
Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. An Indian 
Muslim was even involved in the failed assault on 
Glasgow airport in July last year. Yet George 
Bush reportedly introduced Manmohan Singh to his 
wife, Laura, as "the prime minister of India, a 
democracy which does not have a single al-Qaida 
member in a population of 150 million Muslims".

To be fair to Bush, he was only repeating a 
cliche deployed by Indian politicians and 
American pundits such as Thomas Friedman to 
promote India as a squeaky-clean ally of the 
United States. However, Fareed Zakaria, the 
Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek 
International, ought to know better. In his new 
book, The Post-American World, he describes India 
as a "powerful package" and claims it has been 
"peaceful, stable, and prosperous" since 1997 - a 
decade in which India and Pakistan came close to 
nuclear war, tens of thousands of Indian farmers 
took their own lives, Maoist insurgencies erupted 
across large parts of the country, and Hindu 
nationalists in Gujarat murdered more than 2,000 
Muslims.

Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to 
mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy 
journal of America's elite, has declared a 
"roaring capitalist success story". Add 
Bollywood's singing and dancing stars, beauty 
queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the 
Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the 
picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity 
is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already 
puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in 
Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the 
National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in 
Washington that the death toll from terrorist 
attacks in India between January 2004 and March 
2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In 
the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such 
attacks in Pakistan, the "most dangerous place on 
earth" according to the Economist, Newsweek and 
other vendors of geopolitical insight.)

To put it in plain language - which the NCTC is 
unlikely to use - India is host to some of the 
fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more 
than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir 
and the northeastern states.

Manmohan Singh himself has called the Maoist 
insurgency centred on the state of Chhattisgarh 
the biggest internal security threat to India 
since independence. The Maoists, however, are 
confined to rural areas; their bold tactics 
haven't rattled Indian middle-class confidence in 
recent years as much as the bomb attacks in major 
cities have.

Politicians and the media routinely blame 
Pakistan for terrorist violence in India. It is 
likely that the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence 
agency, was involved in the bombings two weeks 
ago in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, which killed 46 
people. But their scale and audacity also hints 
that the perpetrators have support networks 
within India.

The Indian elite's obsession with the "foreign 
hand" obscures the fact that the roots of some of 
the violence lie in the previous two decades of 
traumatic political and economic change, 
particularly the rise of Hindu nationalism, and 
the related growth of ruthlessness towards those 
left behind by India's expanding economy.

In 2006 a commission appointed by the government 
revealed that Muslims in India are worse educated 
and less likely to find employment than low-caste 
Hindus. Muslim isolation and despair is 
compounded by what B Raman, a hawkish security 
analyst, was moved after the most recent attacks 
to describe as the "inherent unfairness of the 
Indian criminal justice system".

To take one example, the names of the 
politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen 
who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat 
in 2002 are widely known. Some of them were 
caught on video, in a sting carried out last year 
by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling 
how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as 
Amnesty International pointed out in a recent 
report, justice continues to evade most victims 
and survivors of the violence. Tens of thousands 
still languish in refugee camps, too afraid to 
return to their homes.

In an article I wrote for the New York Times in 
2003 I underlined the likely perils if the 
depressed and alienated minority of Muslims were 
to abandon their much-tested faith in the Indian 
political and legal system. Predictably Hindu 
nationalists, most of them resident in the UK and 
US, inundated my email inbox, accusing me of 
showing India in a bad light.

It is now clear that a tiny but militantly 
disaffected minority of Indian Muslims has begun 
to heed the international pied pipers of jihad. 
Furthermore, there is no effective defence 
against their malevolence. Conventional 
counter-terrorism strategies - increased police 
presence or greater surveillance - don't work in 
India's large, densely populated cities. Nor do 
draconian laws such as the Prevention of 
Terrorist Activities Act, which allowed police to 
hold suspects without charge for six months and 
was repealed in 2004.

Gung-ho members of the middle class clamour for 
Israeli-style retaliation against jihadi training 
camps in Pakistan. But India can "do a Lebanon" 
only by risking nuclear war with its neighbour; 
and Indian intelligence agencies are too inept to 
imitate Mossad's policy of targeted killings, 
which have reaped for Israel an endless supply of 
dedicated and resourceful enemies.

As we now know, the promoters of pre-emptive 
strikes and rendition have proved to be the most 
effective recruiting agents for jihad. In that 
sense the Indian government's inability to raise 
the ante, to pursue an endless war on terror or 
to order 150 million of its poorest citizens to 
reform their religion is a good thing. For it 
helps to maintain a necessary focus on terrorism 
as another symptom of a wider crisis that will be 
alleviated not so much by better policing, 
intelligence gathering or consultation with 
mullahs as by confronting socioeconomic 
frustrations and political grievances.

The absence of "tough" retaliation also leaves 
the jihadi terrorists incapable of dealing more 
than a few glancing blows to the Indian state. 
Certainly, a hysterical response of the kind that 
followed the 7/7 attacks in London - a crackdown 
on civil liberties and demonisation of Islam - 
would in India only have accelerated the 
radicalisation of the Muslim minority.

It is true that nihilist terrorism has no greater 
adversary than people who refuse to be terrorised 
or provoked. There have been remarkably few 
instances of retaliation against Muslims in the 
wake of terror attacks. In Mumbai, where nearly 
200 people were killed by bomb explosions on 
commuter trains in 2006, normal life resumed even 
more quickly than in London in July 2005.

But the resilience of India's poor, who have no 
option but to get on with their lives, should not 
be taken for granted, or used to peddle India as 
a stable, business-friendly country. For their 
stoicism in the face of terror also expresses the 
bitter wisdom of the weak: that violence is far 
from being an aberration in the inequitable world 
our political and business elites have made.

· Pankaj Mishra is the author of Temptations of 
the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and 
Beyond
kannauj at gmail.com

______


[6]

New Left Review
May June 2008

TIBETAN QUESTIONS : AN INTERVIEW WITH TSERING SHAKYA

The leading historian of modern Tibet discusses 
the background to recent protests on the Plateau. 
What has been the evolution of its culture, 
modern and traditional, under the impact of the 
PRC's breakneck development and market reforms?

http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2720

______


[7]

FOLLOWING IS THE COMPLETE TEXT OF MAYOR TADATOSHI 
AKIBA'S HIROSHIMA PEACE DECLARATION 2008:

Another August 6, and the horrors of 63 years ago 
arise undiminished in the minds of our hibakusha, 
whose average age now exceeds 75. "Water, 
please!" "Help me!" "Mommy!" -- On this day, we, 
too, etch in our hearts the voices, faces and 
forms that vanished in the hell no hibakusha can 
ever forget, renewing our determination that "No 
one else should ever suffer as we did."

Because the effects of that atomic bomb, still 
eating away at the minds and bodies of the 
hibakusha, have for decades been so 
underestimated, a complete picture of the damage 
has yet to emerge. Most severely neglected have 
been the emotional injuries. Therefore, the city 
of Hiroshima is initiating a two-year scientific 
exploration of the psychological impact of the 
A-bomb experience.

This study should teach us the grave import of 
the truth, born of tragedy and suffering, that 
"the only role for nuclear weapons is to be 
abolished."

This truth received strong support from a report 
compiled last November by the city of Hiroshima. 
Scientists and other nuclear-related experts 
exploring the damage from a postulated nuclear 
attack found once again that the only way to 
protect citizens from such an attack is the total 
abolition of nuclear weapons. This is precisely 
why the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the 
International Court of Justice advisory opinion 
state clearly that all nations are obligated to 
engage in good-faith negotiations leading to 
complete nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, even 
leaders previously central to creating and 
implementing U.S. nuclear policy are now 
repeatedly demanding a world without nuclear 
weapons.

We who seek the abolition of nuclear weapons are 
the majority. United Cities and Local 
Governments, which represents the majority of the 
Earth's population, has endorsed the Mayors for 
Peace campaign. One hundred and ninety states 
have ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty. One hundred and thirteen countries and 
regions have signed nuclear-weapon-free zone 
treaties. Last year, 170 countries voted in favor 
of Japan's UN resolution calling for the 
abolition of nuclear weapons. Only three 
countries, the U.S. among them, opposed this 
resolution. We can only hope that the president 
of the United States elected this November will 
listen conscientiously to the majority, for whom 
the top priority is human survival.

To achieve the will of the majority by 2020, 
Mayors for Peace, now with 2,368 city members 
worldwide, proposed in April of this year a 
Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol to supplement the 
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This Protocol 
calls for an immediate halt to all efforts, 
including by nuclear-weapon states, to obtain or 
deploy nuclear weapons, with a legal ban on all 
acquisition or use to follow by 2015. Thus, it 
draws a concrete road map to a 
nuclear-weapon-free world. Now, with our 
destination and the map to that destination 
clear, all we need is the strong will and 
capacity to act to guard the future for our 
children.

World citizens and like-minded nations have 
achieved treaties banning anti-personnel 
landmines and cluster munitions. Meanwhile, the 
most effective measures against global warming 
are coming from cities. Citizens cooperating at 
the city level can solve the problems of the 
human family because cities are home to the 
majority of the world's population, cities do not 
have militaries, and cities have built genuine 
partnerships around the world based on mutual 
understanding and trust.

The Japanese Constitution is an appropriate point 
of departure for a "paradigm shift" toward 
modeling the world on intercity relationships. I 
hereby call on the Japanese government to 
fiercely defend our Constitution, press all 
governments to adopt the Hiroshima-Nagasaki 
Protocol, and play a leading role in the effort 
to abolish nuclear weapons. I further request 
greater generosity in designating A-bomb 
illnesses and in relief measures appropriate to 
the current situations of our aging hibakusha, 
including those exposed in "black rain areas" and 
those living overseas.

Next month the G8 Speakers' Meeting will, for the 
first time, take place in Japan. I fervently hope 
that Hiroshima's hosting of this meeting will 
help our "hibakusha philosophy" spread throughout 
the world.

Now, on the occasion of this 63rd anniversary 
Peace Memorial Ceremony, we offer our heartfelt 
lamentations for the souls of the atomic bomb 
victims and, in concert with the city of Nagasaki 
and with citizens around the world, pledge to do 
everything in our power to accomplish the total 
eradication of nuclear weapons.

Tadatoshi Akiba

Mayor of the City of Hiroshima

______


[8] 

guardian.co.uk, August 05 2008

Orombi: a child of empire?
The Bishop of Uganda's dismally homophobic views 
must not be viewed as anti-colonialist: in fact 
they come from a deeply colonised mindset

by Priyamvada Gopal

The Bishop of Uganda has taken a tough line on 
the British empire. Henry Orombi has denounced 
the Archbishop of Canterbury's decision to invite 
some pro-gay American clergy to the Lambeth 
conference as a "remnant of British colonialism". 
He and his fellow Ugandan bishops have refused to 
attend the conference as an act of passive 
resistance to the "clear violation of biblical 
teaching".

Inspiring though it might be to hear 
anti-colonial views at a time when the British 
empire and its legacies are often justified and 
celebrated, there's a small problem here. For the 
Anglican church in Uganda is itself not exactly a 
non-colonial institution. It too is one of the 
great legacies ("remnants") of colonialism in 
Africa - embraced by many, like the English 
language or the railways - but derived from the 
colonial project nevertheless. The spread of 
Christianity in Africa, through missionary 
activity and the consequent establishment of 
churches and an African clerisy was very much 
part of colonial rule, even if British 
missionaries and administrators did not always 
agree on how to deal with subject populations. 
The training and ordination of local African 
priests who would proselytise more effectively 
and convert their heathen brethren to Christian 
ways was integral to the consolidation of 
colonialism's "civilising mission". Given this 
genealogy, it is not clear that the good bishop 
is himself in a good position from which to 
attack a fellow priest as a "colonial".

This kind of tendentious anti-colonialism, coming 
from quarters not otherwise known for radicalism, 
is part of a phenomenon that might be called the 
"blacking" of homophobia. This dismaying process 
has made it acceptable for some members of 
cultural and ethnic minorities not only to 
articulate intolerant views (which they would not 
accept if directed against themselves), but to 
have these prioritised in the name of religious 
sensitivities and cultural difference. So it was 
with the judicial validation of Nigerian-born 
registrar Lydia Ladele's refusal to conduct 
same-sex civil partnerships because it violated 
her "devout Christian" beliefs. Far from being 
progressive, the upholding of such rigid beliefs 
is often premised on the pervasive, nonsensical 
and frankly, colonial, idea that non-Europeans 
are instinctively more "religious" and should 
therefore be exempt from engaging with the 
demands of democratic legislation and a diverse 
society.

While homosexuality has come under attack in many 
cultures at different points in history, the 
irony is that this particularly immoveable form 
of hate and intolerance, expressed by Orombi in 
the name of Christian love, was institutionalised 
by colonial law. Far from being critical of 
colonialism, the bishop's insistence on his 
reading of the scriptures as the only correct one 
is, in fact, indicative of a deeply colonised 
mindset, where extremely literal readings of the 
written word replaced more fluid customary law 
and oral interpretive traditions. In India, 
activists have been fighting a campaign to repeal 
a 19th century colonial law that criminalised 
homosexuality, "carnal intercourse against the 
order of nature". This campaign - not the call to 
further entrench outdated colonial ideas - is the 
real movement towards decolonisation and 
eliminating the "remnants" of colonialism.

The tragedy for the larger Anglican communion is 
that the intolerance once spread abroad in the 
name of Christianity has now returned to haunt 
and hold back its laudable attempts to move 
forward. But in undoing this colonial legacy, it 
should not be deterred by false accusations of 
colonialism. Hatred is not love and homophobia is 
not anti-colonialism.

______


[9] Announcements:

(i)

PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL ON THE ATROCITIES COMMITTED 
AGAINST MINORITIES IN THE NAME OF FIGHTING 
TERRORISM

August 22-24, 2008, Hyderabad

Each time there is a bomb blast, the Indian State 
reaches out its 'long arms of injustice' to pick 
a scapegoat from amidst the Indian population to 
cover up its own incompetence in providing 
security to its citizens.

What we have witnessed in the last decade is that 
after each blast or surprise violent act, arrests 
are made, organisations named but the police and 
investigative agencies have not been able to 
prove their claims in any of the cases. But the 
people arrested continue to languish in jails or 
suffer other kinds of victimisation. It is very 
disturbing as it shows that the agencies 
responsible for the security of the people are 
incapable and to cover their inefficiency, they 
keep abducting people from the minority community 
which are produced at their chosen time. The real 
culprits remain at bay and the threat remains 
undiminished.

Anhad, Human Rights Law Network and Peace in 
collaboration with a number of organisations from 
Andhra Pradesh is organising a people's tribunal 
to document the atrocities committed on innocent 
people especially from the minority community in 
the name of fighting terrorism by the state.

The tribunal is inviting cases from across India. 
The cases of victims who will depose in front of 
the tribunal are being documented in advance by a 
team of Anhad volunteers in different states. The 
report of the tribunal will be published within 
two months after the Tribunal is over.

The Tribunal Committee will bear the travel 
expenses and local hospitality for those who come 
to depose and one accompanying activist from each 
state.

We are writing to you with the request to support 
this tribunal by helping us identify such cases 
from your state and sending them to Hyderabad to 
depose before the tribunal as well as participate 
in the tribunal.

We are enclosing the format for the case histories.

Sincerely

Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad)

Colin Gonsalves (Human Rights Law Network)

Anil Choudhary (Peace)

Office: 23, Canning lane, New Delhi-110001/ Tel-01123070740/ 22
  Mail: anhad.delhi at gmail.com


format for the case histories
http://www.anhadin.net/IMG/pdf/case_study.pdf


---


(ii)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

06 August 2008


HIMAL SOUTHASIAN CARTOON COMPETITION

DEADLINE APPROACHING 

Hurry! The countdown begins. Only twenty-four 
days remaining. The deadline for the Southasian 
Cartoon Competition organised by Himal 
Southasian, the only regional magazine, published 
from Kathmandu, is approaching. In every country, 
state, province, city, village and society as 
well as across Southasia, there is a dramatically 
growing divide. To explore the various aspects of 
this gulf, Himal invites cartoonists to submit 
works on the subject Dramatic Divide: The 
distance between the powerful and the powerless. 
Established artists, wannabe cartoonists, new 
entrants and freelancers are all welcome, as long 
as the topic is relevant to Southasia. 

A cash prize of USD 1000 will be awarded to the 
winning entrant, with USD 500 for the first 
runner-up, as well as publication of cartoons in 
Himal. All short-listed candidates will receive 
citations. Winning candidates will also be flown 
to Kathmandu for the Southasian Cartoon Congress 
in November, where the prize will be announced. 
The closing date for submission is Monday, 1 
September. 

Visit www.himalmag.com for full details and 
regular updates on the competition. Please 
contact surabhip at himalmag.com for queries.


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

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