SACW | Aug 17-18, 2008 / Book Bangladesh's Islamists / Pakistan: Power games / India: HIV/AIDS; Communal turn in Kashmir

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | August 17-18, 2008 | Dispatch No. 2553 -  
Year 10 running

[1] Bangladesh: Will the fascists who want to bomb their way to an  
Islamic State be brought to book?
   - Questions, mysteries still haunt public on August 17 (Edit, New  
Age)
   - Why Bomb Blasts Remain A Mystery For So Long? (Edit, Daily star)
[2] Pakistan: Misplaced Nationalism and a Corrupt Elite
    (i) Conduct unbecoming (Edit, Daily Times)
    (ii) The Impeachment of Musharraf - Then What? (Fatima Bhutto)
[3] HIV/AIDS and the ethics of responsibility in India (Amartya Sen)
[4] Pakistan-India: The Partitioned Hearts of 1947 (Kuldip Nayar)
[5] India - Kashmir:  A Pilgrimage to Madness - Between Hindutva  
nuts, Azadi walas and a Militarization overdoze
    - Playing with fire in Jammu & Kashmir (Praful Bidwai)
    - Heading towards a major humanitarian crisis (Edit, Kashmir Times)
[6] India: cut down defence spending to fight inflation (Ashok Mitra)
[7] India: Is the Official Secrets Act, the state's regressive omerta  
code, an 'invalid' law! (Saikat Datta)


______

[1]  Bangladesh: So whatever happened to the fascists who want to  
bomb their way to an Islamic State ?
      [two editorial from the Dhaka Papers]

New Age
August 18, 2008

Editorial

QUESTIONS, MYSTERIES STILL HAUNT PUBLIC ON AUGUST 17

THREE years after the August 17 serial blasts of 2005, when over 400  
bombs were set off across 63 of the country’s 64 districts in a  
matter of hours, killing at least two people, the questions and  
mysteries surrounding this subversive act still outnumber answers and  
explanations. While the outlawed radical Islamist group Jamaatul  
Mujahideen Bangladesh claimed responsibility for the attacks, the  
government has not, till date, sought to offer an organised  
explanation for what the goals or motives of the perpetrators may  
have been, how they procured the funding for this massive operation,  
and how a small Islamist group could carry out a countrywide bombing  
without the intelligence agencies getting wind of it.

    The need to see these questions answered becomes all the more  
significant given the backdrop of a series of low intensity attacks  
that culminated in the serial blasts, the Ramna Batamul blast in 2000  
and the grenade attack in Sylhet in 2004 among them. While the  
government security agencies have often provided piecemeal  
information on these attacks, the spectre of Islamist terrorism at  
large, and the identity of the financial and political backers of  
these radical groups, remains elusive.

    In fact, successive governments in the past seem to have taken  
great pains to avoid answering these questions. In the wake of the  
arrest and subsequent trial and hangings of Shaikh Abdur Rahman and  
Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai – the chief ideologues of the JMB – the  
BNP-led alliance government announced that it had broken the back of  
Islamist radicalism in the country. It has subsequently emerged that  
the JMB was largely a creation of some leaders of the BNP and its  
allies, giving lie to claims or intent of rooting out this radical  
group. In these very pages, we had also warned at the time, that mere  
arrests and hangings of individuals could not combat the phenomenon  
of Islamist radicalism.

    There is good reason to believe that the Islamist radical  
movement as a whole and the JMB in particular are regrouping and  
recovering from the damage they have incurred. We have also noted  
with growing concern the tendency of the military-controlled interim  
government, as well as governments of the past, to handle radical  
Islam with kid gloves, when the same security agencies reserve their  
worst excesses for left-wing radicals. We believe that all those who  
cross democratic norms in advancing their political agenda must be  
dealt with in line with the rule of law and the judicial process,  
which we see respected in the case of right-wing radicals and  
violated in favour of extrajudicial killings in the case of their  
left counterparts.

    At the heart of the government’s failure to adequately tackle  
radical groups – be they left or right – is a lack of commitment to  
long-term political solutions, rather than the easier, more populist,  
option of arrests and executions. The growing appeal of radical  
ideology in the Bangladeshi countryside is largely driven by  
political, social and economic repressions and deprivations, and more  
draconian laws to tackle this trend will only drive radical groups  
underground and further nourish their appeal. Stronger invasions of  
civil liberties and human rights by the state are likely to be far  
less effective than stronger state presence in providing quality  
education, jobs, and opportunities.

o o o

The Daily Star
August 18, 2008	
   	
Editorial

WHY BOMB BLASTS REMAIN A MYSTERY FOR SO LONG?
Ensure exemplary punishment of those responsible for explosions

THREE years ago, on August 17 2005, extremist elements belonging to  
now banned Jamaatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB) had exploded bombs in  
63 districts. It was a dark day in our history when, through the  
brazen act, the obscurantists imparted the message that they had no  
allegiance to the laws of the land. They openly announced that they  
did not give any credence to the country's constitution. It remains a  
mystery as to how, with so many members of the intelligence and law  
enforcing agencies active in the field, so many people could carry  
bomb making materials to 63 destinations and detonate them without a  
single one getting caught.

The dangerously armed and motivated militants subsequently carried  
out further bomb attacks, this time with the intent to kill. Law  
enforcers once again failed to apprehend them until it was too late.  
It was only after the mayhem that took the lives of judges in a  
courthouse including many innocent people that some arrests were  
made. However, at one point of time, some of the top leaders were put  
on trial and later the caretaker government carried out the court  
execution order. It was expected that the backbone of the  
fundamentalist outfit was crushed forever but soon our notion was  
proved wrong. We noted with considerable alarm that remnants of the  
party began to regroup in a clandestine way in some remote parts of  
the country. Though the law enforcing agencies continued to pick up  
these elements at regular intervals, the outfit remains far from  
giving up on their mission. They remain as convinced and focused  
today as they were before and this fact is reflected in the media  
reports that say members have recently met a number of times to form  
new committees (Sura) at the district and local levels. They are  
known to be more busy now recruiting young people to reinforce their  
organisation.

We believe there is much to be troubled by the fact that because of  
the existing legal system it has not been possible to end the trial  
of all the cases and convict the perpetrators. One report says that  
out of the 169 cases, trial of only 37 cases has been completed in  
the last three years; investigation of 34 cases has not been  
completed yet; trial is continuing in 98 cases and all five accused  
in one case have been given release order by the court.

Clearly, there needs to be a two-pronged strategy now: first, the  
snail's pace at which investigation, trial and conviction is taking  
place will have to be radically speeded up. Secondly, to ensure peace  
and stability in the country, the intelligence and law enforcing  
agencies will have to identify their mentors and sources of funding  
and destroy their network. Notably, we have graduated from the denial  
mode to a hands-on approach in dealing with extremism. This is the  
right time to move forward.

______


[2] Pakistan: Misplaced Nationalism and a Corrupt Elite

(i)

Daily Times
17 August 2008

EDITORIAL: Conduct unbecoming

The NGOs and ordinary citizens who went to attend the candle-light  
vigil at the border post of Lahore, Wahga, to celebrate Independence  
Day together with the Indians on the other side, were not treated  
well by the Rangers. While the Indian authorities showed respect to  
their citizens shouting Pakistan Zindabad, our side subjected the  
crowd gathered there to a brutal baton charge.

Not only that, a TV channel hosted a discussion later in the day on  
the “shame” of a leading Pakistani human rights activist performing  
bhangra with Sikhs from the other side on the occasion of Pakistan’s  
Independence Day. Reference was made repeatedly to the martyrdom of  
the Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz on the Line of Control inside  
the Indian administered Kashmir and it was agreed that it was  
disrespectful to the struggle of the Kashmiris to have celebrated  
together with the Sikhs from India. So much for the people-to-people  
contacts that the world is expecting India and Pakistan to encourage.  
This TV channel and its sister print publications are a blot on the  
fair name of the media for continuing such personalised attacks on  
respected and reputed human rights activists. *

o o o

(ii)

counterpunch.org
August 16 / 17, 2008

THE IMPEACHMENT OF MUSHARRAF - THEN WHAT?

by Fatima Bhutto

The murky abyss of Pakistani politics has been especially murky over  
recent months, and true to form it just keeps getting murkier. The  
one thing that is absolute when dealing with the dregs that run my  
country is this: nothing is ever as it seems. Nowhere is that more  
true than in the current scenario involving President Musharraf's  
likely impeachment by the ruling coalition.

"It has become imperative to move for impeachment," barked Benazir  
Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, at a press conference in Islamabad  
last week. Sitting beside the new head of the Pakistan People's party  
was Nawaz Sharif, twice formerly prime minister of Pakistan. Zardari  
snarled every time Musharraf's name came up, seething with political  
rage and righteousness, while Sharif did his best to keep up with the  
pace of things. He nodded sombrely and harrumphed every once in a  
while. The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching  
dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.

But Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari are unelected. They're not just  
unrepresentative in that they don't hold seats in the parliament -  
they have absolutely no mandate in Pakistan. They head the two  
largest, and most corrupt, parties in the state but hold no public  
office. Pots and kettles.

The rest of the coterie that wields power behind this administration,  
the attorney general and the interior minister for instance, also  
happen to be unelected. They serve, and I use the term ever so  
lightly, by appointment only. Some 170 million Pakistanis have lived  
under military rule of law for nine years. Musharraf stepping down  
from his army post has not changed that. Neither did the recent  
selections. Sorry, I meant elections, obviously.

The current administration - a party coalition comprising two  
formerly mortal enemies, the PPP and the PML - has enjoyed five  
months in office. And what has this thriving democratic union  
accomplished? It passed the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an  
odious piece of legislation that wipes out 15 years' worth of  
corruption cases against politicians, suspiciously covering 11 years  
of PPP and PML rule. Bankers and bureaucrats were also given the all- 
clear. Worse still, the ordinance contains a clause that makes it  
virtually impossible for future charges to be filed against sitting  
parliamentarians.

But they must have done more than that, surely? Well, all that really  
changed is that food inflation has accelerated, oil subsidies have  
been cut, gas prices have doubled, and those pesky militants in the  
Swat district the tribal regions have turned up the fighting. Several  
days before the decision to impeach Musharraf hurtled through the  
airwaves, a small story came in from the tribal areas: the militants  
are close, the story said, they've vowed to target the government,  
even to the point of attacking state schools. This is a civil war,  
the story said.

So what does the government do when its country appears to be tearing  
apart at the seams? Go on the attack. Impeach the tyrant. "The period  
of oppression is over for ever," declared the prime minister, Yousuf  
Raza Gilani, at an event marking 61 years of Pakistani independence  
yesterday. "Dictatorship has become a story of the past." Deny  
everything. Nothing is wrong, democracy is good and we hate  
dictators. Well done.

Pakistan is a sovereign country. We are a proud, resourceful,  
independent nation. We have options. Zardari is not an option. Sharif  
is not an option. The army is not our one and only option. The  
mullahs have not become an option yet. There are close to 200 million  
of us: I'm sure we can think of something better.

Fatima Bhutto is a poet and a columnist for the News in Pakistan


______


[3]

The Telegraph
17 August 2008

IN IT TOGETHER
- HIV/AIDS and the ethics of responsibility in India

by Amartya Sen

The ethics of responsibility has been a big subject in analysing the  
social aspects of AIDS. The point has been made, with considerable  
influence, that since HIV infection is primarily contracted through  
voluntary acts, such as unsafe sex, it is the individual rather than  
the society that should take responsibility for avoiding the disease  
and accepting the consequences of irresponsible actions. This way of  
seeing the social ethics of AIDS would have vast implications for  
what an afflicted person can or cannot expect the state to do for the  
ill.....

The idea that somehow the afflicted person bears the responsibility  
for his or her own unfortunate condition, since the infection could  
have been avoided through changing personal behaviour, is indeed  
quite prevalent — not just in advanced countries like the United  
States of America, but also in India. There is certainly an element  
of narrow plausibility in this general outlook. Many of the actions  
that may lead to the infection are certainly within the person’s own  
control, and the role of personal responsibility is indeed an  
important connection to bear in mind in planning strategies for  
prevention, through greater availability and use of information and  
more social education and advocacy. And yet to see this as an ‘open  
and shut’ case of just personal responsibility also misses the nine- 
tenth of the iceberg that lies below the water, hidden from view.

First, infection can come to a person in a way over which he or she  
has little control. This applies not only to those who get the  
contagion from blood transfusion, but also to children who get the  
disease before they are able to run their own lives. Less obviously,  
the same lack of control applies to members of the family who get the  
ailment from their spouses or partners when they are not in a  
position to ascertain the infection status of their consorts. Women  
are particularly affected by this lack of control, and among the  
millions of arguments for women’s empowerment, the fight against this  
epidemic has a clearly defined place.

Second, while ignorance of the law cannot be taken to be a legitimate  
excuse for a legal lapse, lack of knowledge of the process of  
transmission and of the ways and means of preven-tion can certainly  
rob a person of the ability to relate actions to consequences. The  
presumption of ‘rational choice’... is compromised by many  
limitations, one of which — an important one — is clearly linked with  
informational ambiguity.

Third, even when there is a general understanding of the risks  
involved in certain types of actions, individual conduct is often  
swayed by the prevailing modes of behaviour. For example, in the  
success of the sex workers’ unions in Calcutta in moving the  
vulnerable population towards a 100 per cent use of condoms..., a  
critical difference is made not just by the dissemination of  
information, but also by developing group-based behavioural norms  
that indi-viduals can follow without having to muster unusual resolve  
and will power in each behavioural choice. Personal responsibility is  
indeed a big part of the fight against AIDS, but the routes to its  
exercise go through many related territories, including knowledge,  
understanding, individual resolve and group norms.

Fourth, people are influenced in their behaviour not only by well- 
reasoned advocacy (the role of clear reasoning was clearly very  
strong in the Calcutta initiative just mentioned), but also by what  
may look like ‘thrilling’ behaviour. This not only applies to  
smoking, which is another area of huge health adversity, but also to  
drug-taking, which has played a very important part in the spread of  
HIV infection in parts of the country (for example, in Manipur). Easy  
availability of drugs can play a big role in enhancing the exposure  
to that type of temptation (as it indeed did in Manipur). The  
exercise of personal responsibility varies radically from one  
community to another depending on the social circumstances, and it  
would be rather simple-minded to see these variations as endogenous  
diversities in personal decision-making, divorced from the way  
society influences the choices and actions of individuals.

Fifth, while it is easy enough to advocate ‘just say no’ in any field  
with any kind of danger, living a life does not consist only of  
invariably choosing the safest courses of action. While the purist  
ascetic might find the entire field of sexual activity to be suspect  
territory, the fact is that the spread of HIV infection is closely  
linked with one of the most powerful propensities of human beings.  
Love and physical relations are not activities that are themselves  
base and sordid — indeed the world would have been immensely poorer  
in poetry and culture if the inclinations that go with them were  
absent in human psychology. So this is not an area of life that can  
be simply ‘censored out’ through reasoning, but something where  
behavioural modification is needed in line with the dangers and  
threats that arise, as and when they do arise.Throwing the baby out  
with the bath-water can hardly be the object of the exercise.

Finally, the criminalization of some types of human relations can  
contribute to driving them underground, which makes it very difficult  
to bring them into standard public discussion — much needed both for  
the dissemination of information and for open discussion of safer  
behavioural norms. In particular, Section 377 of the Indian Penal  
Code offers the possibility of ten years of imprisonment as a fitting  
penalty for gay sex. This provision of the penal system was imposed  
on India in the 1860s, during Victorian British rule, and while the  
British have liberated themselves from their Victorian past, the  
Indian officialdom seem to have found their own reasons in favour of  
retaining this bit of imperial legacy.

When that law came into force, America was just trying to liberate  
itself from the institution of slavery. Section 377 is presently  
being debated in the Indian courts, and one can only hope that the  
liberation of gays from prospective police threat (and blackmail)  
will come before long, even if 150 years late. Openness has a huge  
role in the use of knowledge and shared reasoning, and among the many  
implications of the AIDS epidemic is the need to normalize a kind of  
sex that many people find perfectly normal, no matter how distressed  
some others are even at the thought of such relations.

I conclude by reaffirming the need to take personal responsibility  
seriously (it certainly must have a big role in tackling the HIV  
epidemic), but along with that, by emphasizing how dependent the  
exercise of personal responsibility is on a variety of social  
circumstances — informational, behavioural, organizational, economic,  
and legal. Those who want to ‘rely’ on personal responsibility,  
divorced from social contingencies, may be, in one respect, better  
informed than those who fail to see the role of personal  
responsibility altogether. But partial understanding can also be the  
source of very serious misdiagnoses.

Nearly 2000 years ago, philosophers of the Nyaya school in India  
pointed to the fact that the familiar case of mistaking a rope for a  
snake, much discussed by classical Indian epistemologists, occurs  
only because of half-knowledge — not full ignorance. One needs an  
understanding of the ‘snake concept’ to take a rope to be a snake.  
Someone who had no clue about what a snake looks like would never  
mistake a rope for a snake. We have to avoid the errors of half- 
understanding as well as those of ignorance. It is important for us  
to see a rope as a rope, and a snake as a snake, for they are both  
parts of the world, including the world of AIDS. But first we have to  
stop blaming the victims and stop looking for reasons for leaving  
them to look after themselves. We are in it together.

THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM AMARTYA SEN’S FOREWORD TO AIDS SUTRA: UNTOLD  
STORIES FROM INDIA, EDITED BY PRASHANT PANJIAR AND PUBLISHED BY  
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA


______


[4]

A STORM THAT BLEW OVER

by Kuldip Nayar (Kashmir Times, August 14, 2008)

Pakistani has said in a letter to leading English daily at Karachi to  
recall the "10 million Muslim refugees who made immense sacrifices to  
make the country a reality, besides nearly one million who got  
massacred" at the time of the partition. He has taken exception to  
the words that Tahira Mazar Ali Khan, a well-respected left activist  
used in a letter to the same paper: "I now realize with ample pain  
that our land was butchered and aimlessly cut into pieces. We cannot  
reach out to those we love in times of stress and grief." One of her  
old friends had died in Mumbai and Tahira had found herself helpless  
in contacting her friend's relations.

I too feel like Tahira, cut off from those with whom I have spent  
early years of my life. I am from Sialkot city where I was born and  
brought up. I love my friends in Pakistan, not many left now, and  
their children in the same way as I do my friends and their children  
in India. I am at home in their company as much as on this side. I do  
not find any contradiction. It does not make me less Indian.

Maybe, it is an emotional baggage of history. Maybe, it is nostalgia.  
But persons of my generation cannot efface the memories of youth  
spent in each other's country. We represent the culture which  
transcends borders and religions. I have no doubt that one day the  
wall of hatred between the two countries will come down. While  
retaining our sovereignty, we shall be moving from one country to the  
other as people do in Europe.
In fact, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan,  
wanted India and Pakistan to be like America and Canada, with  
facilities to travel without any fuss. Since the writer of the letter  
mentioned Jinnah, I thought he or she should know the Qaide-e-Azam's  
vision.

Yet I want to remove the impression given in the letter that the  
Muslims who went from India were alone in undergoing sacrifices and  
losing their dear ones. We, Hindus and Sikhs, too were victims of a  
similar type of frenzy, verging on fanaticism. The number of the  
killed on one side would probably tally with those on the other. The  
uprooted from both the countries totalled nearly 20 million; half of  
them were from India and half from Pakistan.
I have seen murder and worse while travelling from Sialkot to the  
Amritsar border. I can assure you that it was the same drama of blood  
and butchery, force and ferocity, on both sides. The only difference  
was that the victims up to the Amritsar border were non-Muslims and  
from then onward Muslims. There were similar types of atrocities- the  
killing of passengers in trains, raping of women and kidnapping of  
young girls and children. When I migrated to India on Sept 13, 1947,  
one month after the partition, most of killings in both Punjabs had  
subsided. I still saw piles of bodies on both sides of the road, the  
half burnt vehicles, strewn luggage and empty trucks which bore  
testimony to the murder and looting that had taken place.

If some one were to tell me that Hinduism showed more tolerance or  
that Islam more compassion. I would beg to differ. I have seen their  
followers becoming murderers in the name of religion. Perhaps, what  
it teaches them is noble and sublime. But when it comes to putting  
them into practice, one community is no different from the other.  
Resounding in my ears are still the deafening slogans of Allah ho  
Akbar and Har, Har Mahadev. I saw how unashamed were people on both  
sides in brandishing weapons to kill.

Yet I cannot forget one touching scene while crossing into India. It  
was still daylight when I passed the white-washed drums with India's  
flag atop a pole that demarcated the border. Some of us stopped to  
see a group of people-just to see- going to Pakistan. None spoke  
neither they, nor we. Both had left behind their homes and hearths,  
their friends and neighbours and the relationship of living together  
for centuries. We could relate to each other. It was a spontaneous  
kinship. It was that of pain and loss. Both had been broken on the  
rack of history. Both were refugees.

What exacerbated the situation was the complication of two things:  
one, the announcement by Britain that it would withdraw on August 15,  
1947, instead of June 6, 1948 as declared earlier; two, the failure  
of the boundary force which was constituted to curb the rioting. Many  
years later, when I was writing my book, Distant Neighbours, I asked  
Lord Mountbatten at his residence at Broadlands, near London, why did  
he change the date because that resulted in the massacre of two  
million people?

He did not contradict me. He argued that he had to advance the date  
because he could not hold the country together. "Things were slipping  
from my hands." Mountbatten explained: "The Sikhs were up in arms in  
the Punjab. The Great Calcutta Killing had taken place and communal  
tension prevailed all over. On top of it, there had been the  
announcement that the British were leaving. Therefore, I myself  
decided to quit sooner."

The Boundary Force, formed on 1 August, did little to stop ruthless  
and well-armed persons from killing innocent men, women and children.  
It merely recorded what it saw. It said in a report: "Throughout the  
killing was pre-medieval in its ferocity. Neither age nor sex was  
spared: mothers with babies in the arms were cut down, speared or  
shot...Both sides were equally merciless."

In terms of men, the Boundary Force had a strength of 55, 000 men,  
including Brigadier Mohammed Ayub Khan who later became Pakistan's  
President. The force had a high proportion of British officers. In  
fact, this proved to be its undoing because they were interested in  
repatriation to Britain, not in an operation which might tie them  
down to the subcontinent for some more time. The British Commander of  
the Force. General Rees, had instructions to protect only "European  
lives."

Looking back, however, one cannot but blame Mountbatten for doing so  
little to ensure protection of the minorities on both sides despite  
his assurance. When rivers of blood flowed in Punjab and other parts  
of the sub-continent, when destruction engulfed habitations, and  
when, on the one hand, Jinnah begged Mountbatten (23 June) to "shoot  
Muslims" if necessary and, on the other, Nehru suggested handing over  
the cities to the military, Mountbatten's response was feeble. He  
appeared more interested in becoming the common Governor General of  
India and Pakistan-an office which Jinnah did not let him have-than  
curbing the lawlessness. He should have been tried.


______


[5]

Playing with fire in Jammu & Kashmir

by Praful Bidwai
(The News, August 17, 2008)

Jammu and Kashmir is burning. Jammu has witnessed an intensely  
chauvinist, communal and violent agitation for over seven weeks over  
the cancellation of an order transferring 100 acres of forest land to  
the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. This is pitting Jammu against  
Kashmir, ethnic groups against other ethnic groups, and Hindus  
against Muslims in dangerous new ways.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has politicised and exploited the  
agitation cynically. It imposed an economic blockade which closed the  
Jammu-Srinagar highway for weeks and brought goods transportation to  
a halt, causing great public suffering.

The explosion of intolerance in Jammu is reproduced like a mirror- 
image in the Kashmir Valley, where mainstream parties joined  
separatists in marching to Muzaffarabad with the ostensible aim of  
selling perishable fruit in Pakistani Kashmir—just when the blockade  
was lifted. More than 20 people were killed in condemnable,  
highhanded police action.

The twin agitations threaten J&K’s unity and plural, multi-cultural,  
and multi-religious character in unprecedented ways. In less than two  
months, the BJP has succeeded in driving an emotional and political  
wedge between Jammu and Kashmir—something that jihadi separatists  
working with Pakistani agencies couldn’t achieve in the nearly 20  
years of the azadi movement.

The origins of the present ferment go back to the state government’s  
decision to establish the SASB, thus interfering gratuitously with  
spontaneous Hindu-Muslim cooperation in organising the pilgrimage for  
decades. It has promoted this on a gigantic scale.

Matters came to a head last May when the Congress-People’s Democratic  
Party government illegally transferred forest land to the SASB. This  
triggered militant protests in the Valley.

Hurriyat moderates and the PDP joined hardline separatists in giving  
a communal colour to the land transfer, prompting its cancellation— 
only to provoke counter-protests in Jammu, which were taken over by  
the BJP through the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti.

The twin agitations have deepened communal polarisation, and  
radicalised both Hurriyat and Hindutva hardliners.

The Centre failed to enforce the law and open the Jammu-Srinagar  
highway until it was too late. Its belated attempt to defuse the  
situation through an 18-member all-party committee hasn’t made headway.

The SASS wants the land re-transferred to the SASB and Governor N N  
Vohra removed. Such demands are vindictive or totally devoid of  
political rationality. This only shows that the BJP wants to prolong  
the Jammu crisis and milk it politically.

The SASS, a 28-group network, is basically a Sangh Parivar  
enterprise. Its three top leaders—Leelakaran Sharma, Mahant Dinesh  
Bharti and Brig (Retd) Suchet Singh—have RSS backgrounds and are  
closely linked with the J&K National Front, which demands the state’s  
trifurcation: Jammu and Kashmir as separate states, and Ladakh a  
Union Territory.

The demand is despicably communal. No wonder the RSS national council  
backed it in 2001. In the 2002 Assembly elections, the RSS supported  
the Jammu State Morcha, which demands statehood for Jammu.

Any division of Jammu and Kashmir along religious lines is a recipe  
for the separation of the Kashmir Valley from India. It will harden  
and freeze two opposing identities—a “Muslim Kashmir,” and a “Hindu  
Jammu.” Nothing could better help the Valley’s discredited pro- 
Pakistan Islamic separatists like Syed Ali Shah Gilani, who oppose a  
pluralist, secular identity for Kashmir.

The demand for trifurcating J&K will play straight into the hands of  
Pakistani hardliners who want to erase whatever progress has been  
made in informal talks seeking a solution to the Kashmir problem  
without redrawing boundaries, and who want to retrogress to the  
perspective of securing Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan—as part of  
“the unfinished agendas of Partition.”

Why has the BJP embarked on this dangerous course? It’s desperate to  
rescue its sagging fortunes by finding any issue on which to win  
support. It’s organising traffic blockades on the Amarnath issue  
nationally and mouthing shopworn clichés like “injustice to Hindus.”

The BJP even brazenly denies that there ever was an economic blockade  
in J&K! General secretary Arun Jaitley calls this “a myth” and  
contends that the Jammu agitation is entirely peaceful.

Yet, Jammu’s protestors, who increasingly resemble Hindutva’s storm  
troopers in Gujarat-2002 in appearance, have indulged in stone- and  
acid-throwing attacks on truck drivers. According to the far-from- 
hostile state government, Jammu has witnessed 10,513 protests and 359  
“serious incidents of violence” on the Amarnath issue, in which 28  
government buildings, 15 police vehicles and 118 private vehicles  
were damaged.

Eighty cases of communal violence were registered, in which 20  
persons were injured and 72 Gujjar homes were burnt.

As many as 117 police personnel and 78 civilians were injured in the  
Jammu violence, and 129 cases were registered and 1,171 arrests made.  
Schools, colleges, government offices and hospitals were paralysed.

Grievances in Jammu, many of them legitimate, took this regrettably  
violent expression thanks to communalism’s baneful effect.

The BJP was pivotal in planning and executing this violence. Its  
leaders have gone Back to Basics—unembellished, crude, super- 
sectarian Hindutva.

L K Advani just can’t wait to become prime minister. His speeches  
have become shrill, and his body language has changed. This is no  
longer the Advani who wanted to inherit the “moderate” Vajpayee  
legacy. This is the Advani of many past Rathyatras—aggressive,  
warlike, spewing communal venom, and leaving a trail of blood.

Advani will now stoop to any level to collect political brownie  
points, regardless of the issue. The other day, the issue was the UPA  
government’s alleged weakness in the face of terrorism. Then, it was  
the India-US nuclear deal, the culmination of a long process the BJP  
itself initiated, and which its urban-middle-class core constituency  
supports.

Now, Advani is drumming up Hindu-chauvinist hysteria over 100 acres  
of land, laying claim to it on the specious ground that the Hindus  
must have the first claim to land anywhere in India by virtue of  
their numerical majority—and hence primacy.

This is an egregiously, if not classically, anti-secular proposition.

Why is the BJP so desperate? Barely one month ago, after a series of  
Assembly wins, it had primed itself up into believing that its  
victory was imminent in the next Lok Sabha. It even started  
announcing candidates.

But the BJP was badly checkmated during the confidence vote. It lost  
it—despite trying every trick in the book. Worse, Advani was eclipsed  
by Mayawati’s dramatic emergence as an alternative.

The BJP’s plans went awry. The victorious and now aggressive Manmohan  
Singh couldn’t be convincingly depicted as “India’s weakest-ever  
prime minister.” The BJP botched up its in manipulative political  
act, where it’s supposedly unmatched.

It wanted to create a Bofors out of the cash-for-votes “sting.” But  
after the CNN-IBN tapes’ telecast, that looks like collusive but  
ineffective “entrapment.”

The highest number of MPs defying their party whip during the  
confidence vote were from the BJP. Thanks to its MPs’ involvement in  
the “cash-for-questions” scam, human trafficking, and the latest acts  
of defiance, the BJP has lost 17 of its original 137 Lok Sabha seats.

The National Democratic Alliance once had 24 members. Now it’s down  
to five.

As trouble brews in all of its state units, the BJP will use  
inflammatory tactics to buoy up its fortunes. The Indian public will  
have to pay the price—unless it sends the party packing.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and  
human-rights activist based in Delhi

o o o

Kashmir Times
August 18, 2008
Editorial

A shattered economy
Heading towards a major humanitarian crisis

One of the biggest casualties of the ongoing crisis, emanating from  
the two separate agitations going on in the Valley and in Jammu,  
apart from the rupture to the secular fabric and communal harmony of  
the state as also the loss of precious human lives, is the blow to  
its economy. The economy throughout the state has been adversely hit  
due to prolonged bandhs, violent street protests, curfews and the  
economic blockade. Facts need to be sifted from fiction. Much as the  
agitating leadership in Jammu is distancing from its earlier  
statements, the economic blockade was announced at least thrice by  
the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti. But even before the blockade was  
announced, it had been in place. The movement on the highway has been  
disrupted for the last two months due to violent protests that  
spilled out on the highways, affecting the movement of vehicles. When  
the Kashmir agitation against the Amarnath land transfer began, the  
movement on the Jammu-Srinagar highway was disrupted. The revocation  
of the land transfer and the start of a counter agitation in parts of  
Jammu region shifted the disruptions to the other side of the tunnel.  
The movement of vehicles including trucks carrying supplies has been  
hit for a long time. The announcement of economic blockade followed  
by reports of increasing harassment of drivers on the highways,  
especially Kashmiri drivers and incidents of their thrashing by mobs  
on the Jammu-Srinagar highway as also in the state of Punjab, caused  
widespread fear, further hitting the supplies.
Myth also needs to be dispelled that Kashmir Valley alone is hit by  
the blockade. In fact, the supplies have been affected throughout the  
state including Jammu region. While the plains of Jammu too are hit  
at the moment, the situation may not be too alarming because of the  
fact that they have easy access to the outside world and not doomed  
by fair weather road conditions. Its hill districts of Rajouri,  
Poonch, Doda and parts of Udhampur are equally badly affected. The  
plight of Ladakh, which is cut off from rest of the world for most  
part of the year may turn out to be the worst. A little more than a  
month is left before the Zojilla Pass to Ladakh would be closed down  
and the region should have enough supplies in stock for the next  
eight months. So the crisis is not simply an economic one, it is a  
humanitarian crisis and needs to be resolved.

It is a pity that the government has allowed the highways to be  
hijacked by agitating mobs for so long without taking any action. The  
administration certainly cannot be excused of the deep slumber it  
went into over the issue. It was only after the army was called in  
that trucks began to trickle up and down with lesser incidents of  
disruptions. However, the movement on the highways has not been  
normalized as yet. For one, fear continues to stalk drivers in  
Kashmir who have refused to move out. The government has again put up  
a miserable fight, not even attempting to talk to the Kashmir based  
transporters, provide them the necessary confidence and protection.  
But more importantly, the continuum of general strike in Jammu with  
absolute closure of Jammu based transport companies, has also  
affected the supplies. Jammu is the gateway for the rest of the  
State. Disturbances in Jammu would naturally affect supplies  
throughout the state, whether it is Jammu-Srinagar national highway  
or the Jammu-Poonch highway.

While the administration must finally gets its act together, it is  
time that street protests on both sides are called off. They have not  
only affected the supplies on the highway, they have also adversely  
impacted entire economic growth in the State. While everybody has a  
right to protest, the shattering economy of the state, with a  
cumulative loss of thousands of crores of rupees, is in nobody's  
interest. But even if protests must stay, the transport companies on  
both sides must be treated as essential services, given the  
topography of the state and its fair weather roads, as also the  
approaching winter months, and allowed to operate. The administration  
should facilitate normalization of movement of trucks rather than  
simply trying to cover up for its follies and sheepishly counting the  
marginal movement on trucks on the highway as a major achievement.  
Simple denial of non existence of economic blockade is not going to  
ease things. Neither are assurances that supplies can always be air- 
lifted. This is nothing but eyewash. Certainly truckloads cannot be  
airlifted. Most of the areas in the state need advance stocking for  
the winter months too. Supplies barely sufficient for a week or even  
a month is not a comfortable position. There is need to understand  
what the state is really heading for. The divisions and differences  
have to be tided over at least for this one good common cause. All  
sides have to respond with certain flexibility, lest we are doomed to  
face a major humanitarian crisis we will not be able to cope up with.

______


[6]

The Telegraph
18 August 2008

INFLATION AND MORALS
- The answer to inflation is to cut down defence spending

by Ashok Mitra

Please have a heart; to ask a government wedded to the philosophy of  
the free market to discipline the demon of rising prices would be no  
less than cruelty. Inflation opens a floodgate of opportunities for  
producers and traders. A time lag exists between the production of a  
commodity and its sale. If prices shoot up during this interval, the  
producer makes a windfall profit in addition to the normal profit he  
already had borne in mind in his calculations. Given the gap of time  
between the purchase of stocks and their actual sales, the trader too  
experiences a windfall gain if market prices shoot up meanwhile. Free  
market economics ordains non-interference on the part of the  
government with happenings in the market. The continuing process of  
inflation helps producers and traders to keep making windfall  
profits. They should be allowed to do so, admonishes the doctrine of  
laissez-faire, the government must look the other way.

Such, then, is the crux of the matter. Inflation in the country, as  
measured by movements in the wholesale price index, is currently  
spilling beyond the rate of 12 per cent; in terms of the retail price  
index, it must be even higher. The government, given its commitment  
to neo-liberalism, can only watch the situation. It watches the  
situation with complacence for another, more intimate reason. The  
producers and the traders who are gathering in the profits are its  
classmates; their support sustains the government.

True, there is the other point of view. Whatever its class interests,  
the government functions within a democratic framework and will have  
to face the electorate soon. The overwhelming majority of the  
electorate consists of the poor and middle classes who are the  
severest victims of inflation. They could very well turn away from  
the parties constituting the government in case the wounds inflicted  
by rising prices become intolerable. Should not the government, for  
dear life, do something to save itself from the wrath of the people?  
For instance, could it not arrange to supply, through the public  
distribution system, essential commodities at a subsidy to the less  
fortunate sections? No, it could not; the proposal would be  
immediately shot down by decision-makers who shape and guide the  
destiny of the government. It is all very simple. Subsidized supply  
of commodities would adversely affect money-making by producers and  
traders; demand gets diverted from the free market to the public  
distribution system. That is as good as sabotaging the free market.  
The government, therefore, makes up its mind; it would not expand —  
on the contrary, it would phase out — the practice of supplying  
essential goods at subsidized prices.

There is a more basic reason why votaries of free market economics  
disfavour subsidies. Subsidies involve extra outlays on the part of  
the government. Such additional spending calls for additional  
taxation, the main burden of which supposedly falls on the traders  
and producers who rake up the profits engineered by inflation. Once  
more, class interests emerge as the issue. That part, the government,  
the free market doctrine says, is an evil; by its very existence, it  
stifles the freedom of individuals. This evil should not be allowed  
to extend its sphere of activities beyond defence and the maintenance  
of law and order. Offering subsidies belongs to this category of  
forbidden expenditure.

There is always an exception to the rule. Free marketeers do not mind  
increases in government expenditure if it is for defence spending.  
They would also not protest against the government laying out extra  
money on an extravagant scale for supposedly ensuring greater  
security for the nation, more specifically, for its leaders.

One further argument posted by those opposing subsidies is that these  
often lead to an excess of public spending over the government’s  
aggregate income. The inevitable sequel is again inflation, since too  
much money allegedly chases too few goods. Somewhat breathlessly, the  
conclusion is then drawn: any attempt to contain inflation via  
subsidies is self-defeating, it would only feed into inflation. Such  
simplistic logic will scandalize the followers of John Maynard  
Keynes, who had proved most effectively how a skilful deployment of  
deficit financing ensures gushing increases in income and employment  
and does not cause inflation. But Keynesians are now in the doghouse  
and the orthodoxy of balanced budget is back as king.

A timid soul might still offer a suggestion at this juncture: by all  
means have a balanced budget, but why not cut back on defence  
spending and use the savings to provide subsidies that could quell  
inflation? The timid soul, the chances are high, would immediately be  
dubbed an enemy of the country. Members of parliament will debate for  
hours on end the wisdom of according farmers an additional fertilizer  
subsidy of a thousand crore rupees; they will pass without discussion  
a 30,000-crore hike in the defence budget.

Better admit the nitty-gritty of reality: inflation is one of the  
corollaries of a free market existence. It widens the scope of profit- 
making. The higher the level of profit enjoyed by the top brackets in  
society, the greater is deemed to be the success of the liberal  
experiment, never mind what it does to the majority of the nation.  
There is, of course, a flip side to it. While the nation’s majority  
might feel helpless for a while, being at the receiving end of the  
maulings caused by inflation, this helplessness could gradually give  
rise to resentment and anger; this could have repercussions on the  
ballot box.

That bridge will be crossed, it will be said, when the government  
arrives there. A caste-, clan-, ethnicity-divided electorate can be  
expected to produce a caste-, clan-, ethnicity-divided parliament. In  
that event, it might well be possible to manoeuvre a majority support  
and come back to governance. Traders and producers, currently having  
it so good thanks to inflation, could then prove to be a most  
effective deus ex machina.

Inevitably, a moral will be sought to be drawn. Inflation and absence  
of subsidies do not necessarily topple a government. The not-so- 
ancient history of the collapse of the Soviet Union might be alluded  
to as a counter-point: the Soviet authorities subsidized about  
everything, from childcare to house rent to opera tickets, and yet  
failed to defeat destiny.

But is not a wrong reason being adduced here for the collapse of the  
Soviet Union? Its population enjoyed the bliss of comprehensive  
social welfare measures. Yes, the shadow nonetheless fell. Most of  
the population yearned for the richer, more luxurious things in life;  
which the State was unable to provide. Budgetary constraints stood in  
the way. A middle-income country’s leaders had vaulting ambition,  
they wanted to match the United States of America in military  
prowess, including in the arena of nuclear capability. The strain was  
too much on the country’s resources; the better things in life had to  
be denied to the populace. The disappointed people turned their backs  
on the leaders — and on their party.

If there is a lesson from the Soviet catastrophe, it is for reining  
in defence expenditure and spending what is saved thereby to provide  
the people with the kind of things they badly want. That moral should  
stand all countries in good stead and in all seasons, including in  
the season of inflation.

______


[7]

Outlook Magazine - 25 August 2008

EXCLUSIVE LAW: OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT
India's Best Kept Secret
The Official Secrets Act, the state's regressive omerta code, was  
never notified. It isn't actually a law! ......

by Saikat Datta


An "Invalid" Act?

Here's the untold story of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) 1923:

     * It was passed in April 1923 by the Legislative Council.
     * The Act was never notified in the Gazette of India.
     * To become law, every Act must be notified in the Gazette of  
India. The National Archives of India, ministries of Home and Law say  
they are not in possession of any such notification. None exists in  
the 1923 Gazette of India either.
     * The OSA was amended twice, in 1951 and 1967, and made more  
stringent. But only the amendments were notified in the  
'Extraordinary Gazette of India'.
     * Legal luminaries say that if an Act is not notified, it is an  
"invalid" law.

***
Why The British Wanted OSA In 1923

     * Bolsheviks could fester unrest in India directly or indirectly
     * They have "increased our troubles on the North West Frontier  
and Waziristan". This could "lead to a rupture with Afghanistan".
     * Prominent "Mussalman" leaders have shown sympathy with the  
Afghans. Unwise to disregard possibility of "fanatical Muslims in  
India" acting in sympathy with them.
     * Increased Japanese activity in Burma calls for better means  
for "obtaining information"
     * Post- (First World) War enemy powers are out to ferret secrets
     * In the event of a war between Japan and America, the former  
may try to arouse Indian feelings against the British Empire
     * There are no existing laws to deal effectively with such  
activities

(From the note prepared by General C.W. Jacob, Chief of General  
Staff, in 1921. Document sourced from the National Archives of India,  
Delhi.)

***

"I checked all the dates from 1923 and no such notification for the  
OSA exists."
Maj Gen V.K. Singh Ex-Raw


"It’ll jeopardise any more future prosecutions under the OSA.  
Technically, it’ll all be invalid."
Hosbet Suresh, Ex-Judge, Bombay HC


"If it has not been notified, the very validity of the Act can be  
challenged in court."
Rajindar Sachar, Ex-CJ, Delhi HC


"After the RTI Act came into force, the OSA has no place... even its  
relics cannot remain."
Veerappa Moily, Congress pointsman


"The law was perpetuated by the bureaucracy, to insulate itself from  
public scrutiny."
Aruna Roy, Ex-NAC Member

***
In 2007, the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) headed by senior  
Congress leader Veerappa Moily finally decided to bite the bullet on  
the draconian Official Secrets Act (OSA). It put it on record that an  
Act "enacted in the colonial era" (1923) had no place in democratic  
India. The controversial piece of legislation had to either be  
amended or scrapped. But as is wont to happen, a committee of  
secretaries set up later by the upa government examined and rejected  
the Moily panel recommendation. The status now: a cabinet  
subcommittee is taking a second look at the suggestions put up by the  
ARC.

Meanwhile, research into the origins of the OSA has thrown up a  
shocker, putting a question mark on the very validity of the Act.  
Documents accessed under the RTI Act from the ministries of home  
affairs (MHA) and law and justice, as well as the National Archives  
of India (NAI), show the OSA was never notified in the Gazette of  
India—a mandatory requirement to make any Act a law.

Incredible as this may seem, the MHA, law ministry and NAI have  
stated in writing that they have no record of such a notification.  
While the two ministries have stated that they are not in possession  
of the notification number of the OSA, the National Archives, which  
maintains all records, has stated unequivocally that "the gazette  
notification of the OSA is not available with the library".

This startling revelation came after Major General V.K. Singh (retd)— 
author of India’s External Intelligence, the controversial book  
exposing corruption in raw—had a case slapped against him under the  
OSA last year. He was charged with making public what was alleged to  
be secret information in the form of documents pertaining to the  
functioning of the agency. Singh immediately filed several RTI  
applications with the MHA and the ministry of law and justice to try  
and track the origins of this colonial Act. Says Singh: "The reply  
from the MHA was very interesting. It stated that after going through  
their old files, records and libraries, they found that the Act was  
probably notified on April 2, 1923, and asked me to check with the  
national archives."

But Singh, who is a registered research scholar with NAI, was  
surprised to discover that no such notification exists in the Gazette  
of India of 1923. "I was shocked and therefore I immediately filed an  
RTI application with the national archives to confirm my findings. I  
thought, what if it was published somewhere else or in the  
extraordinary gazette?" he says.

Open lines The communiques from the ministries to Maj Gen Singh’s  
requests; Dr Meena Gautam’s reply from the NAI

The reply from Dr Meena Gautam, the chief public information officer,  
was categorical: "The gazette notification for OSA in 1923 is not  
available with the library." Neither does any notification on April  
2, 1923, exist in the national archives nor does the OSA figure in  
the gazette of 1923 on any other date. "I checked all the dates from  
the year and no such notification exists. The reply from the national  
archives is self-explanatory," notes Singh.

This discovery puts a serious question mark over an Act that has  
drawn flak from rights activists as well as legal luminaries.  
Rajindar Sachar, ex-chief justice of the Delhi High Court, told  
Outlook, "If it has not been notified, the very validity of the Act  
can be challenged in court." Agrees Justice Hosbet Suresh, former  
judge of the Bombay HC: "If this is the case, then it could  
jeopardise any future prosecution under this Act. Technically,  
anything done under the Act therefore becomes invalid. And anyway,  
with the passage of the RTI Act, the OSA should have been abolished."

Post-Independence, the OSA has seen two major amendments. The first  
was in 1951 when it was amended to delete all references to Great  
Britain. In 1967, a second set of changes took place when it was  
turned into an even more severe law than the one laid down by the  
British. It was no longer incumbent upon the police or any  
investigating agency to "prove the guilt" of a person accused of  
spying. It was enough to judge his/her character and the  
circumstances of the case to be prosecuted and and awarded life  
imprisonment. Even here, crucially, only the amendments were  
notified, not the original Act!

So today, under the OSA the government can accuse anyone of spying  
and keep him in custody for months together. Little wonder then that  
the Act has been roundly criticised by advocates of the RTI Act.  
Former National Advisory Council member and Magsaysay award winner  
Aruna Roy, an ardent advocate of measures to ensure transparency and  
accountability in governance, says the OSA is "an imperial act".

The archaic law "has been perpetuated by the bureaucracy. It stems  
partly out of its need to insulate itself from public scrutiny".

"Every government has perpetuated it, purely out of self-interest. We  
need secrecy in government, but only for a few documents and that too  
in a time-bound sense. You cannot have an all-pervasive secrecy in  
perpetuity. This issue must be examined from the perspective of the  
people of India," she adds.

The OSA and its misuse is startling. Like the case of retired nuclear  
scientist Capt B.K. Subba Rao, who was picked up from Mumbai airport  
in 1988. He was charged with sharing the country’s nuclear secrets.  
When he was finally produced in court, all the prosecution had by way  
of evidence was his doctoral thesis. After 20 months of incarceration  
and five long years of litigation, Capt Rao was finally acquitted.  
But by then, his life was in a shambles. Arrests under the Act can be  
effected for even possessing the number of a foreigner. Innocuous  
documents from one’s office table can serve as evidence. One judge in  
Delhi found it strange that four persons arrested under the OSA from  
different locations as militants all possessed a map of Meerut  
Cantonment. They seemed to have been photocopied by the police!

In fact, while deliberating over the RTI Act, Parliament’s standing  
committee for law and justice passed adverse remarks against the OSA  
and its blatant misuse. "We pointed out that the Act has no place in  
a democracy. Only those agencies exempted under the RTI Act can be  
categorised as secret," Sudarshan Nacchiappan, chairman of the  
parliamentary committee, told Outlook. "However, it must be noted  
that if it’s a corruption or rights violation case, even the exempted  
agencies have to share information," he added.

Moily is unequivocal in his demand that the Act be repealed. As he  
puts it, "After the RTI Act came into force, the OSA has no  
place...even its relics may no longer remain." In fact, upset with  
the secretaries’ panel for rejecting his proposal, Moily says he will  
take up the matter with PM Manmohan Singh.

The colonial nature of the OSA can be gauged from documents accessed  
from the national archives. An April 30, 1921, opinion of the then  
chief of general staff, General C.W. Jacob, clearly states that the  
Act is essential to curb "Bolshevik activity" and the show of "open  
sympathy from prominent Muhammadan leaders" towards Afghans. Jacob’s  
note also lists the threats from the Japanese and other enemies  
"inimical to the British race" in India. This was the kind of  
rationale that gave birth to the OSA. As Aruna Roy says, "The OSA  
should have been scrapped in 1947 itself, when we gained Independence."

Senior advocate and constitutional expert Rajeev Dhawan, who has  
criticised the Act on several occasions, has written that the OSA of  
Great Britain (enacted in 1889) was "replicated in one day in India  
in 1923". Ironically, in Great Britain the Act has seen three  
revisions, the last time in 1989 after civil society groups raised a  
ruckus over its validity in a democracy.

Major General Singh’s research and efforts through the RTI Act has  
brought to light a significant flaw in an archaic law that has no  
place in this day and age. Will the cabinet subcommittee have the  
vision to consign it to the dustbin? As of now, its deliberations  
continue to be a state secret.


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

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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