SACW | Nov 16-17, 2008 / Kashmir's 'Arranged' Election / Bangladesh: Emergency / Nepal: Peace / India Censorship of Film and Literature

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | November 16-17, 2008 | Dispatch No. 2581 -  
Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net

[1] UN and the Peace Process in Nepal (Kanal Mani Dixit)
[2] Bangladesh: No rationale to prolong emergency (Editorial, New Age)
[3] India Administered Kashmir:  A marriage is arranged (A.G. Noorani)
[4] India: Sangh parivar's double talk: Beware perverse patriotism (B  
G Verghese)
[5] The discovery of America (Ananya Vajpeyi)
[6] India: Violence cloud on job scheme (Rudra Biswas)
[7] India’s election season: bad for minorities (Meenakshi Ganguly)
[8] Censorship in India: State and Non State Actors
(i) Film on North Indian's struggle in Mumbai canned in Maharashtra  
(Yogesh Naik & Bharati Dubey)
(ii) Stories of us (Indian Express)
(iii) A fatwa against Madhushala (Manjari Mishra)
[9] India: Andhra’s ‘healing touch’ to tortured, ‘innocent’ Muslims:  
Rs 30,000 each (Sreenivas Janyala)
[10] 'Hinglish' Films: Translating India For U.S. Audiences (Bilal  
Qureshi)
[11] Diary (Sanjay Subrahmanyam)
[12] Papers at International Association of Historians of Asia 20th  
Conference, JNU, New Delhi
[13] Announcement:
Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival (New Delhi, Nov 26 -  
30, 2008)

-----

[1]

Nepali Times, 07 - 13 November 2008

THE UNITED NATIONS NOW
  The interests of the UN and Nepalis coincide in making the peace  
process a success

by Kanal Mani Dixit

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to Nepal was so short it is  
hard to remember when he came and when he left.

When he flew down to Bhairawa en route to Lumbini on his Bombardier  
jet, he was retracing the footsteps of Dag Hammarskjold , the second  
UN Secretary-General and the first to visit Nepal. On his outbound  
trip in March 1959, he made detour on King Mahendra’s DC-3 to take  
pictures of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri.

You could term this Nepal’s first ’mountain flight’, and  
Hammarskjold’s photographs and article were printed in the January  
1961 issue of the National Geographic. In September 1961  
Hammarskjold  died in an air crash while on a peace mission to Congo-  
a country that is still ravaged by civil war.

Our own Rishikesh Shaha, a man of letters and a permanent  
representative to the UN, was asked to chair the crash investigation.  
Shaha had himself faced near-death when he was stabbed in Manhattan’s  
Central Park. The rumour mill in Kathmandu has it that Shaha was  
within striking distance of serving as Hammarskjold’s successor, but  
King Mahendra scuttled it.

It was Burma’s U-Thant who succeeded Hammarskjold, and he visited  
Nepal in April 1967. His famous tears at the sight of dilapidated  
Lumbini helped launch international interest in the site of the  
Sakyamuni’s nativity. The UN commissioned Japanese architect Kenzo  
Tange to develop the site as a spiritual centre dedicated to world  
peace. Tange was the designer of the Hiroshima memorial, but 50 years  
later, his Lumbini masterplan gathers dust while various sects  
compete in ostentatiousness.

There is a United Nations Committee on Lumbini, made up of Buddhistic  
nations and led by Nepal. Sadly, the committee has been allowed to  
lapse, primarily because those who ran the Kathmandu government  
through autocracy and democracy did not understand the value of this  
committee in maintaining the spiritual and meditative nature of  
Lumbini as well as in fund-raising.

The United Nations, of course, has been in Nepal right after the end  
of the Rana era. Toni Hagen, the Swiss geologist who was already here  
in 1949, evolved as a UN development expert. Various UN agencies have  
been active in Nepal since, and it is fair to say that the  
overwhelming peace focus of the Ban Ki-moon visit did not give enough  
importance to Nepal’s development arena in which the UN has been a  
central player.

It was during Kofi Annan’s tenure that the UN saw the departure from  
development work to conflict resolution. UNMIN was established by the  
Security Council in January 2007, responding to a request by the  
Nepal government after New Delhi was convinced this was the only way  
to get the Maoists to abandon their ’people’s war’. The verification  
process and election support have been completed by UNMIN, and its  
extended term is about to expire on 23 January. It is not likely that  
the ’integration’ and ’rehabilitation’ of Maoist combatants will be  
completed by then.

After their success in the April elections there is an attempt in  
some Maoist quarters to shift the goalposts when it comes to the  
incomplete peace process. The wholesale entry of politically trained  
cadre of one party into the national army would lead to crisis.

Simply put, the acceptable formula would be the free-choice entry of  
individual combatants into the NA based on accepted standards. In one  
stroke this would allow the Maoists to mollify their cadre, and  
address the practical necessity of partial integration, while  
ensuring genuine rehabilitation of the rest.

Nepali political actors will decide the nature of integration and  
rehabilitation of Maoist combatants, of course, but it would be good  
if the UN was on the same page. Today, the interests of United  
Nations and the citizens of Nepal coincide in making the peace  
process in Nepal a lasting success, where Nepalis can return to being  
a society where political violence is rejected absolutely.

Here, it was distressing that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was not  
heard to utter the words ’impunity’ and ’accountability’ during his  
Kathmandu stopover. There can be no lasting peace, nor democracy,  
without them.

A denoument which is respectful of the people’s desire to live  
without violence and in pluralism, and which responds to humanitarian  
needs of individual Maoist combatants, will leave Nepal at peace and  
the United Nations Secretary-General with the satisfaction of a job  
well done.

_____


[2]

New Age
17 November 2008

Editorial

NO RATIONALE TO PROLONG EMERGENCY

The commerce adviser, who is also the official spokesperson for the  
council of advisers, has asserted that the military-controlled  
interim government has completed all preparations to hold  
parliamentary polls on December 18. ‘The entire nation is now ready  
for the democratic transition through the December 18 elections to be  
participated by all the parties,’ Hossain Zillur Rahman said at a  
press briefing after meeting with the chief adviser. While we have no  
doubt that the nation is ready and eager for a democratic transition  
and has been for many months, we are not so sure about the state of  
preparation of the present regime and the Election Commission – let  
alone the major political parties. By preparation, we refer not only  
to administrative and logistical tasks, some of which are still  
ongoing, but also to the levelling of the electoral playing field and  
the creation of an environment that is conducive to free and fair  
polls. So, while we want elections to be held at the earliest, we  
would like all disputed issues between the political parties and the  
present regime to be resolved and for the commission to have actually  
completed all preparations, including the publishing of constituency- 
wise voters’ rolls that are still only half-done.

    Also, we continue to stress on the need for the immediate  
withdrawal of the state of emergency so that the upcoming elections  
can be held in a free and unrestrictive atmosphere. While we have  
repeatedly stated that truly participatory and credible elections  
cannot be held under a state of emergency, and have commended the  
major political parties for making withdrawal of emergency prior to  
elections one of their principal demands, it is worth mentioning that  
the chief election commissioner himself made the same point on  
February 24. He had said, ‘I do not understand how the election can  
be held under a state of emergency, because the necessary scope for  
electioneering should be facilitated. Emergency means, from what I  
understand from my experience as a magistrate, that ten people cannot  
hold an assembly. Emergency is more serious than the imposition of  
Section 144. So emergency should be lifted. If it is not lifted, then  
how do you campaign? How do you address the voters, through the  
television? That is why we ask for the creation of an environment  
that will enable the people to move about freely and go for  
electioneering.’ We agree completely.

    On Saturday, Hossain Zillur said, however, that the regime will  
consider the full lifting of the state of emergency if ‘the election  
environment develops smoothly’. First of all, the adviser must  
understand that the conditions that justify a state of emergency are  
enshrined in our constitution and that a not-so-smooth election  
environment is not a justification for emergency. Therefore, he must  
refrain from adding to the constitutional provisions nebulous  
conditions of his own. Also, the adviser should know by now that a  
qualitative change in the nature of politics can only be brought  
about through vibrant political activity by the democratically- 
oriented people, not by restricting the political process.

    Hence, if the government wants to see a qualitative change in the  
nature of politics, the only route forward is through restoration of  
normal political process, holding of truly participatory and credible  
parliamentary elections and a peaceful transfer of power to a  
government elected by the people. In order to do so, the regime must  
withdraw in full the state of emergency and resolve all remaining  
disputes with the major political parties to bring them to the polls.

______


[3]

Dawn, 15 November 2008

A MARRIAGE IS ARRANGED

by A.G. Noorani

THE annals of rigged elections in Kashmir provide no precedent for  
the polls that will begin there on Nov 17. Even the Unionist parties,  
the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party, are  
opposed to them.

The Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami admitted on Oct 10  
that “we have taken a risk”, adding, “If the political parties are  
not ready, then how can we conduct elections now?”

The right to advocate a boycott of elections is as integral a part of  
the democratic process as is the right to vote. He conceded that the  
political parties “can call a boycott” provided they did not use  
force. This right has been systematically denied by New Delhi through  
the arrests of leaders like Shabbir Shah, house arrests of Syed Ali  
Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and curfews and arrests of  
activists to prevent peaceful rallies and processions.

The president of the PDP, Mehbooba Mufti, said on Nov 10: “The polls  
have been thrust on the people and the PDP.” In the valley, which has  
46 of the 87 seats, public opinion is inflamed after the upheaval  
there and in Jammu in August. “Public meetings cannot be held in the  
manner they used to. The people are not coming out.”

The NC’s president, Omar Abdullah, said: “The timing is not ideal for  
elections. We had said this to the Election Commission and in our  
statements”. Why then did the EC go ahead and why did the NC decide  
to participate in the polls?

The EC obeyed the wishes of elements in the Government of India who  
felt that a change was necessary. In 2002 the NC was ditched in  
favour of the PDP. In 2008 the roles are reversed. Farooq Abdullah,  
the NC’s patron, did not contest the polls then. He will do so now.  
But he revealed, on Oct 28, that “Omar will finally take over  
charge.” The confidence that he will, indeed, become chief minister  
is a giveaway.

The game plan was revealed on July 9 by A.S. Dulat, a former RAW  
chief and for long an adviser on Kashmir affairs. “If I have to bet  
on anybody as the next chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, then I  
will bet on Omar Abdullah, because only the mainstream parties are  
going to fight the elections and the National Conference has an edge.”

No wonder the PDP’s president Mehbooba Mufti said on Oct 28 “an  
impression is being created that New Delhi has decided to select the  
National Conference for governance”. She added: “We won’t give a free  
hand to the parties claiming victory in advance”.

The manifestos of the two parties on the state’s governance are  
revealing. Unprecedentedly Farooq Abdullah has asserted emphatically  
that the polls concern issues of governance alone. The solution to  
the Kashmir dispute lies in the dialogue between India and Pakistan,  
he said, while releasing the NC’s ‘Vision document’ on Oct 31.

The PDP published two documents on Oct 28. An ‘Election manifesto —  
2008 make ‘self-rule’ happen’ and ‘Jammu & Kashmir: the self-rule  
framework for resolution’. The two overlap. The NC had spelled out  
its views in detail in 1999 in the ‘Report of the state autonomy  
committee’. As Kashmiri contributions to the debate, the rival  
documents on autonomy merit analysis later. We are here concerned  
with their views on governance.

The most striking thing about them is their studied restraint on some  
issues that vex the people, e.g. discrimination in the services. “No  
commissioner or secretary in the state government is a Muslim,” The  
Hindustan Times reported on Aug 17. “There have been only two Muslim  
DGPs — ever.” Most top police posts are with non-Muslims. Most senior  
civil servants and police officers are Hindu. Here is an issue on  
which the PDP and the NC could have gone to town legitimately without  
compromising their stand on Kashmir’s accession to India. But neither  
risks annoying New Delhi. The same holds good for torture, release of  
detainees, withdrawal of the army from prized lands, including  
orchards, etc.

Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah consistently wrecked the centre’s  
moves for a rapprochement with the Hurriyat made by three successive  
prime ministers as Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed supported  
them. The PDP seeks to balance support to the Union with espousal of  
some Kashmiri causes.

The NC’s vision document makes promises on panchayati raj,  
rehabilitation of militancy affected people, planning, unemployment,  
power, tourism, agriculture, horticulture, women empowerment, and  
‘balanced development’. Its emphasis is on ‘good governance’. Much  
the same ground is covered in the PDP’s manifesto. Its emphasis is on  
its ‘governance and development agenda’; but in the context of ‘self- 
rule’.

Elections are little affected by words alone. Perceptions are  
decisive. On May 2, 2003 the state’s former deputy chief minister,  
Muzaffar Hussain Beigh, belonging to the PDP, revealed that he had  
told the centre’s interlocutor N.N. Vohra that “the Government of  
India has always been purchasing the leaders of the State. That can  
be done even today.” A former governor B.K. Nehru noted in his  
memoirs Nice Guys Finish Second that the CMs “had been nominees of  
Delhi” who won power “by the holding of farcical and totally rigged  
elections”.

Today N.N. Vohra is governor. For the Abdullahs it is now or never.  
Defeat spells oblivion. Yet, victory will earn added disrepute. New  
Delhi will have to talk the Hurriyat and to Pakistan. The impact on  
the peace process of this farce can well be imagined.

The writer is a lawyer and an author.

_____


[4]

Deccan Herald,
November 12, 2008

SANGH PARIVAR'S DOUBLE TALK: BEWARE PERVERSE PATRIOTISM

by B G Verghese

It causes deep concern that the armed forces may have been penetrated  
by ideologically driven groups.

One must beware of perverse patriotism, disturbing signs of which  
have been recently manifest. The arrest of an Army officer on  
suspicion of having assisted alleged Hindu right extremist terror  
bombings in Malegaon and possibly elsewhere appears sinister. At the  
moment here are only allegations that must be thoroughly investigated  
before definitive conclusions are reached.

Nevertheless, enough has been established to cause deep concern that  
the armed forces may have been penetrated by dangerous, ideologically  
driven groups.
The civil and, specially, uniformed services are non-political  
servants of the people acting under the directions of the government  
of the day, owning allegiance to the Constitution and not to any  
extraneous ideology or group.

The defence minister has taken note of whatever has happened and  
intends to get to the root of the matter so that incipient mischief  
is nipped in the bud. Meanwhile, the single incident that has come to  
light should not be considered a trend but an aberration.

What is surprising, however, is the response of the spokesmen of the  
Parivar. They disown any association with sadhvi Pragya and other  
civil suspects held for the Malegaon bombing. Yet they take the line  
that Hindus cannot be terrorists and that the armed forces are a part  
of Indian society which has been horrified by the pusillanimous and  
apologetic approach of the UPA government to terror attacks and  
cannot therefore be blamed for patriotic reactions.

This apologia comes close to showing sympathy for and indirectly  
condoning what is undoubtedly a grave dereliction of duty and rank  
indiscipline. It echoes the chorus from across the border in praise  
of “freedom fighters” as opposed to terrorists, “our” boys versus the  
dreadful “other”. Such pernicious double talk is scarcely in keeping  
with the Parivar’s insistent demand for “strong” action against terror.

The same attitude of “patriotic anger” was revealed in the  
disgraceful conduct of young ABVP hoodlums who broke up a Delhi  
University meeting on Democracy and Fascism last week and spat on one  
of the invited speakers, SAR Geelani, who was discharged by the  
Supreme Court in the parliament bombing case. What was witnessed was  
fascism in action, made worse by two comments by the saffron  
fraternity. ABVP president, Nupur Sharma said that the offenders were  
not ABVP members but “outsiders” and then went on to state in a TV  
discussion that she would have done much the same thing in patriotic  
anger against the government’s poor record in fighting terror.

The BJP spokesman, Ravi Pratap Rudy’s comment was that the protest  
against Geelani could have been “more hygienic” but was nevertheless  
an expression of “patriotic emotion” on the part of students with  
regard to what was perceived as Geelani’s mistrial. VHP’s Pravin  
Togadia repeated the same mantra as senior RSS spokesmen and other  
saffronites that a Hindu by definition cannot be a terrorist. He  
warned that persisting with such “false charges” against a Sadhvi and  
army personnel would evoke a “political backlash.”

In another episode last August, BJP-backed protesters in Jammu rioted  
and vandalised property during the Amarnath Yatra Board land  
agitation. Here again the commentary extolled demonstrations by  
“patriotic Indians” holding aloft the tricolour, as against Valley  
separatists brazenly marching to Muzaffarabad. The national flag must  
be honoured but cannot be used as a shield against riot police.

Perverse patriotism feeding on false notions of jingoistic  
nationalism must be squarely fought as it manifests a malignant  
fascism. Terrorism is terrorism, irrespective of community, and can  
find no place in a democratic society that offers many avenues for  
grievance redressal. Even if poor or partisan governance, political  
bias in policing and a creaking criminal justice system have closed  
many doors, wrong means cannot be justified in the name of seeking  
right ends.

The Delhi High Court has sternly admonished police officials to stop  
rushing to hold press conferences to leak premature and fallible  
“leads” that disclose their line of investigation and instead get on  
with their job of bringing criminals to justice. Warped notions of  
public interest and press freedom have made nonsense of good  
reporting and a growingly irresponsible section of the media is  
becoming a social menace rather than performing its proper role of  
mediation.

Two other straws merit comment. Though Chaat Puja passed off  
peacefully, one must be wary of the tendency to use festivals for  
political and electoral mobilisation and to overawe “the other”  
whosoever that other might be.

The second relates to a parliamentary committee recommendation that  
would make a non-official chairman of the Central Wakf Board rather  
than a Joint Secretary as at present. But why on earth should  
government enter this constitutionally forbidden territory and,  
likewise, fund Haj, Kailash-Mansarovar and other pilgrimages at the  
taxpayers’ expense? This is to dilute secularism, court trouble and  
invite competitive religiosity to garner votes.

Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind clerics have just met in Hyderabad to reinforce  
their previous Deoband fatwa denouncing terror masquerading as jihad.  
This is a positive move and should the starting point for further  
efforts in the direction of national integration. Bhutan and the  
Maldives are happily marching towards democracy and Barack Obama has  
set an inspiring example by going beyond narrow identity politics to  
set himself larger and higher goals for the United States and the  
world. These are beacon lights to follow.


_____


[5]

Economic Times
15 Nov 2008

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

by Ananya Vajpeyi

On Tuesday November 4, in my classroom in Boston, I taught the  
opening chapters of Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India. My  
students, Americans all, sat spellbound by words that fell into place  
in a moment of uncanny historical echo that would be hard to re-create.

About half of them had voted in the morning; the rest were headed to  
the polls after class. “Whether we were foolish or not, the  
historians of the future will judge. We aimed high and looked far”,  
Nehru wrote in Ahmadnagar jail, April 1944. In our minds, we heard  
his words rendered in the unmistakable voice of the man who 12 hours  
later would become America’s new President-elect, Barack Obama: “We  
aimed high and looked far.”

Watching Obama head into victory late in the evening, surrounded by a  
dozen good friends in a house in firmly Democratic Massachusetts, I  
forgot I am not a citizen of the United States. I remembered instead  
that I am a citizen of the world’s largest democracy, India. After we  
had popped the champagne cork, clapped, shouted, called home, texted  
friends and made wisecracks, we fell into pin-drop silence, rivetted  
by Obama’s presidential acceptance speech on television. There wasn’t  
one person in the room full of men and women, citizens and non- 
citizens, who was not moved. Shots of the surging crowd in Chicago’s  
Grant Park reflected our emotions: faces came into focus, some known  
— Reverend Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey — others unknown, each one  
bathed in tears, like us.

We knew we were in the midst of history. In chapter III of Discovery  
of India, Nehru describes his hectic travelling in late 1936 and  
early 1937, in the lead-up to the general elections for the  
provincial assemblies in the final decade of British rule. His  
working days were often 18-20 hours long; crowds of 20,000 were par  
for the course, and occasionally 100,000 people would gather to hear  
him speak.

He estimates he addressed 10 million people, while many more millions  
were indirectly touched by his passage through India. He slept in  
snatches in the car, sometimes just half an hour. Eight years later  
he writes: “How I managed to carry on in this way without physical  
collapse, I cannot understand now, for it was a prodigious feat of  
physical endurance... But what kept me up and filled me with vitality  
was the vast enthusiasm and affection that surrounded me and met me  
everywhere I went.”

Two students leading the class discussion, both male, both Boston  
Irish, spoke about Nehru’s remarkable journeys: “Nehru wasn’t running  
for President in 1937, but it sounds like he was on the campaign  
trail — just like we’ve seen in the past few months”. The  
indefatigable campaigner Obama, with his signature mix of energetic  
and cool, calm and inspirational, wry and warm, animated the pages we  
read from another time, another country.

With Nehru as with Obama, the sheer intelligence of the man shines  
through every word written or uttered. Only occasionally does history  
throw up a figure who so perfectly embodies the ligature of democracy  
with language, who understands how political will and ethical promise  
meet in that most evanescent, yet most enduring of places: the word.

If there was anything George W Bush taught us, it was that one who  
cannot speak properly, cannot lead properly, for he lacks the  
fundamental qualification for democratic leadership, command over  
language. This capacity — a linguistic power that enhances political  
power — Nehru had, six decades ago, and Obama has, today, as he makes  
America’s tryst with destiny.

Nehru literally conjures up with his words the body politic — the  
“thousands of eyes”, the “forest of hands” — where each individual  
recognises an ineffable and yet deep and true bond with every other  
individual in the collective. In the presence of the great man, the  
“assembled multitude” is transformed into a nation.

Almost at the stroke of the midnight hour of November 4/5, 2008, we  
witnessed Obama stepping up before the thousands of eyes, the forest  
of hands, the smiling faces of the Americans gathered to celebrate  
his victory — and their own — in Chicago, enveloping him in their  
warm embrace, and murmuring after him, “Yes, we can”. The murmur  
became a mighty roar: “Yes, we can!”

After my class ended, one of my students, a black man in his 40s,  
came shyly up to me. He has been enthusiastic and vocal all semester,  
though not sophisticated in the way he speaks. Sessions on Gandhi’s  
Hind Swaraj, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Tagore’s The  
Home and the World had elicited reactions from him, full of genuine  
feeling if not always astute or coherent. But I was not ready for  
what he told me this time: “I’m a barber,’ he said. ‘I wanted to say,  
this book has changed me forever.” His eyes shone.

“I’ll never be the same again,’ he continued, ‘now that I’ve read  
Nehru. I just wanted you to know that.” My student, Marlon Peters,  
knows the change he can believe in, and so does America.

_____


[6]


The Telegraph
November 10, 2008

VIOLENCE CLOUD ON JOB SCHEME
by Rudra Biswas

Economist Jean Dreze at the meeting in Ranchi. Telegraph picture

Ranchi, Nov. 9: Two murders, two suicides, complete  
institutionalisation of corruption, exclusion of women, manipulation  
of records and absence of a grievance redressal system are some of  
the highlights of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in  
Jharkhand.

To add to the woes, over the past two days, two NREGA activists at  
Manika in Latehar district made a narrow es- cape after they were  
tar- geted by contractors and their hired goons.

“In the absence of mass awareness against rampant corruption — both  
among people and the political leaders — there is little hope that  
the central scheme could provide jobs to the millions of im-  
poverished people in Jharkhand,” economist Jean Dreze told The  
Telegraph at the end of a three-day state-level convention that  
concluded at Ranchi today.

Meanwhile, the NREGA activists belonging to some 51 organisations  
conceded that there has been a marked improvement in the  
implementation of the scheme since the last few months .

A final statement issued today by NREGA Watch pointed out that no  
such incidence of deaths due to murders and suicides have been  
reported from any other state in the country in connection with the  
job guarantee implementation scheme.

“A sinister nexus of corruption and violence has grown around NREGA  
in Jharkhand,” the statement alleged. Field surveys and social audits  
of NREGA in Jharkhand show that there is massive fraud in the use of  
NREGA funds, perhaps more than anywhere else in the country. These  
investigations show that the chain of corruption extends very high in  
the state administration and political leadership. The administration  
has failed to take firm action in cases where fraud was exposed.

On the contrary, the administration often ended up protecting the  
culprits and indulging in cover up operations in the guise of  
official enquiries. Similarly, all political parties have been  
protecting private contractors and other corrupt elements involved in  
the embezzlement of NREGA funds, the final declaration noted.

“Jharkhand along with UP and Bihar rank amongst the lowest in terms  
of high rate of corruption and non implementation of the job  
guarantee scheme. In Rajasthan where 35 per cent of job card holders  
received jobs for 100 days in a year, in Jharkhand the figure is  
around 3 percent,” social activist Reetika Khera told The Telegraph.

Khera pointed out that women of the state were the worst affected.  
Though the Act provides that of the total work force deployed, at  
least one third should be women, in Jharkhand only such works like  
digging up of wells are being taken up where women cannot be deployed.

However, the lucky few who have been receiving minimum wages for the  
first time in their lives now have smile on their faces which gives  
us the motivation to work hard and expose the wrong practices in the  
state, Khera said.

_____


[7]

open democracy.net
3 November 2008

INDIA’S ELECTION SEASON: BAD FOR MINORITIES

by Meenakshi Ganguly

The world's largest democracies are holding great election contests  
in 2008-09. There are intriguing parallels and contrasts in the way  
that prominent issues are discussed and managed by the respective  
political systems in Washington and New Delhi.

Meenakshi Ganguly is senior researcher on south Asia for Human Rights  
Watch


The United States presidential election, which reaches its climax on  
4 November 2008, was dominated for a good part of its course by  
debates about race and gender; the result has been to make the  
prospects of a first black president and first woman president look  
far more normal than they once did. India's election (to be held by  
May 2009) will take place in a country which has had Sikh and female  
prime ministers, as well as Muslim, Sikh and Dalit presidents; today,  
a Dalit woman is a serious contender for the prime-minister's job  
(see KV Prasad, "Can Mayawati do a Barack Obama?", The Hindu, 4  
November 2008). In this, India could try to claim that it has already  
successfully addressed the problems which the US is now only  
beginning to face.

But the reality is not so benign. India's experience also shows that  
access to a position of power does not of itself entail an end to  
rampant discrimination against minorities or marginalised groups. In  
2008, some of India's largest political parties and their supporters  
have instigated or defended violence and hate against ethnic  
minorities - thus demonstrating that electing a woman or a Dalit is  
far from enough to guarantee equality and human rights. Rather,  
electing leaders from disadvantaged populations can - unless this is  
matched by coherent social action and education - come to be a shiny  
facade that conceals a vacuum where real commitment by the state to  
protect minority rights should be.

A turn inward

A number of recent events has focused attention on the wounded status  
of minorities in India. Since August 2008, Kandhamal district in  
Orissa state has been the scene of acts of religious violence  
following the murder on 23 August of an elderly leader of the  
extremist, rightwing Hindu group the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). In  
retaliation, mobs went on a protest rampage of killings, rape and  
arson. Initially, a Maoist insurgent group active in the region was  
held by many to be responsible for the death of Swami Laxmanananda  
Saraswati and his four aides - and even made a claim of  
responsibility itself. But the VHP and its youth wing, the Bajrang  
Dal - which are closely affiliated to India's main opposition party,  
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - chose instead to blame and target  
the local Christian community.

For decades, Christian missionaries have offered health and education  
programs to marginalised tribal groups in Orissa and similar areas;  
this has led many residents subsequently to convert to Christianity.  
The Hindu groups have over the last decade demanded that they  
"reconvert" to Hindusim, in a campaign that often included force and  
intimidation. Thus, when the VHP leader was shot, they found it  
convenient immediately to assume that local Christians were  
responsible (see Jacob Ignatius, "India's Christians: politics of  
violence in Orissa", 1 September 2008).

One family described how they managed to flee into the nearby jungles  
when the mob arrived. But a relative, confined to a wheelchair, could  
not get away and was beaten and killed. Priests described how they  
suffered extensive beatings; one of those attacked, Father Bernard  
Digal, died in hospital on the night of 28-29 October. Two days  
later, on 31 October, five police officers were suspended for  
dereliction of duty after a nun recounted her rape. Nearly forty  
people were killed, scores injured and thousands displaced in the  
violence.

The perpetrators of this brutality show no remorse. Instead, they  
display a confident assertion of Hindu identity, no doubt in the hope  
that such aggression will be rewarded with Hindu votes for the BJP.  
The attacks on churches and Christians have even spread to other  
parts of India, including the states of Kerala and Karnataka. In  
Orissa, where the state government failed to anticipate and prevent  
the violence, villagers still report that they are allowed to return  
to their ravaged homes only after they have been through a  
"reconversion" ceremony.

The VHP and Bairang Dal have also sought to exacerbate tensions in  
the troubled state of Jammu & Kashmir. In an election-year there, a  
dispute exploded over the proposed transfer of land to build shelters  
during an annual Hindu pilgrimage into the Muslim-majority Kashmir  
valley; some parties (including separatist groups) mobilised to  
oppose this, and when the transfer was revoked the Hindu-majority  
areas of Jammu in turn erupted in protest (see Muzamil Jameel,  
"Kashmir's new generation", 13 October 2008). Some demonstrators  
attacked police officers and government property. There are  
persistent allegations that the violence was to a large degree  
instigated by vote-seekers.

In Mumbai (Bombay), the cosmopolitan capital of Maharashtra, the  
glorious bustle of emerging India is often disrupted by violence from  
supporters of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a regional party  
that claims to speak for people native to the state. The supporters  
of the hardline MNS leader Raj Thackeray, regularly harass and  
assault migrants to the city from the poorer Hindi-speaking states of  
northern India.

The effect is to coarsen and politicise local discourse and social  
relations. Two incidents in October 2008 are emblematic. First, MNS  
activists broke into a railways-recruitment examination, insisting  
that such jobs should be reserved for locals, and beat up and chased  
away the candidates from other parts of the country. Second, around a  
quarter of the near-800 Jet Airline employees who were to lose their  
jobs appealed to Raj Thackeray for support and found a ready  
response, including threats to the airline.

 From words to action

After a spate of terrorist bomb-attacks in several Indian cities in  
2008, police arrested a number of alleged members of the group that  
claimed responsibility - which called itself the "Indian  
Mujaheddin" (believed by investigatoes to be affiiliated to the  
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami [HuJI] and Students Islamic Movement of  
India [Simi]). The true perpetrators of such indiscriminate attacks  
should indeed be brought to justice, though a long history of  
"rounding up the usual suspects" (which usually means Muslims) and  
failing to arrest the perpetrators mean that there is little faith in  
the Indian authorities' counter-terror efforts (see Ajai Sahni,  
"India's urban war: through the smoke", 17 September 2008).

Moreover, Indian politicians usually ignore demands for transparent  
and independent investigations into incidents of arbitrary arrests or  
deaths in custody. Now, however, elections are due: and suddenly, the  
issue of human rights finds itself at the centre of extraordinary  
attention in political debates. Some parties are demanding judicial  
investigations into allegations of police killings in New Delhi,  
while other parties oppose this; each accuses the other of base  
attempts to appeal to their Muslim or Hindu voters.

An election is supposed to be the cornerstone of a democracy, the  
event where its core principles of debate, plurality, tolerance, and  
free choice are displayed and celebrated. The electoral process in  
India is increasingly distant from this ideal (see Sumantra Bose,  
"Uttar Pradesh: India's democratic landslip", 29 May 2007). What it  
churns out is a lot of ugliness, a poisoning of societies with hate  
simply in an effort to gain votes.

India's political parties would serve citizens, the country and  
ultimately also themselves better if they remember that what voters  
want most is safety and security. These can be achieved only through  
respect for minorities - whether migrants from other parts of the  
country or people of different religious faiths.

India may have had a Dalit president, and the country has laws that  
outlaw descent-based caste discrimination; yet the practice remains  
all-pervasive and deeply rooted. The authorities do little to punish  
lawbreakers.

_____


[8]  Censorship in India: State, Non-State

(i)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/ 
Film_on_N_Indians_struggle_in_Mumbai_canned_in_Maharashtra/ 
articleshow/3706463.cms
The Times of India
13 Nov 2008

FILM ON NORTH INDIAN'S STRUGGLE IN MUMBAI CANNED IN MAHARASHTRA

by Yogesh Naik & Bharati Dubey, TNN

MUMBAI: The state government on Wednesday banned the Hindi film  
`Deshdrohi', saying it would create a divide between north Indians  
and Marathis.
( Watch )

The low-budget movie by Bhojpuri film-maker Kamal Khan, who also  
plays the lead, is about a north Indian migrant's struggle in Mumbai.  
It was banned under Section 6 of the Bombay Cinema Regulation Act,  
1963, which empowers the state or police to suspend screening - even  
if the film is cleared by the censor board - if they think it can  
create a law-and-order problem.

Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gafoor said, "We had found certain  
scenes in `Deshdrohi' objectionable and had informed the government  
about it.'' He confirmed on Wednesday night that he had received the  
ban order from the state government.

After the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday, chief minister  
Vilasrao Deshmukh said the ban should not be viewed as "moral  
policing''. The initial idea was to ask the producer-director to  
remove the controversial scenes, but finally, the cabinet decided to  
ban the film, he said.

Additional chief secretary (home) Chitkala Zutshi told TOI that the  
film dwelt on issues which had created trouble between communities in  
the recent past. "The government felt it would inflame passions and  
emotions further, hence we decided to ban the film for 60 days.''

Last week, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena had asked for a ban on the  
film after watching its promos on TV but after Akhilesh Chaubey, MNS  
leader Raj Thackeray's lawyer, watched the film at a special  
screening, he said there was "nothing objectionable'' in it. "The  
promos are misleading.''

Soon after the government's announcement that it would ban the film,  
MNS spokesperson Shirish Parkar demanded legal action against Kamal  
Khan, the producer-director of `Deshdrohi'.

"The exhibition of this film should be stayed for some time. It  
should not be screened as long as the campaign to spread hatred  
between communities and Marathis and North Indians does not stop,''  
Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Sanjay  
Nirupam said.

Mumbai Congress chief Kripashankar Singh said such films spreading  
hatred must be banned. In fact, they should not be made. He said that  
Marathi plays spreading hatred should also be banned. One such play  
is `Bhaiyya Haath Paay Pasari', which shows how a poor north Indian  
migrant comes to Mumbai and ends up buying the entire building in  
which he had rented a room.

Producer Kamal Khan said on Wednesday that he would challenge the ban  
in the high court. "It's a story about an unemployed youth who is  
used by politicians and eventually becomes a criminal. Maybe that's  
what some politicians didn't like in my film.''

However, someone who has seen the film told this paper, "There are  
some derogatory remarks against north Indian and Maharashtrians which  
may create problems. Had the film not got so much publicity, it  
would've gone unnoticed.''

It was not easy for Khan to get censor clearance. The executive  
committee of the Mumbai board had given ten cuts and an `A'  
certificate to the film. But the producer got his film cleared from  
the appellate tribunal in Delhi with five cuts and a UA certificate.

Vinayak Azad, regional officer of the Censor Board in Mumbai said,  
"We have certified the film for public exhibition but law and order  
is a state subject and the state can stop the exhibition of the film  
if it thinks it will create a law and order problem.''

Mahesh Bhatt said, "It's a shame that those who claim to be the  
crusaders of freedom have violated the rights of freedom of speech of  
the film-maker. They are no different from any repressive regime. You  
can't use the pretext of law and order to ban a film.''

o o o

(ii)

STORIES OF US

The Indian Express, Nov 15, 2008

: The lyricist Javed Akhtar famously described Bollywood as “one more  
state in this country”. He has a point. Bollywood, even when its sons  
and daughters dance around Swiss meadows, has given Indians a  
distinct culture, a common dream, one that is accessible to all. The  
state of Bollywood is largely a blue state. The progressive  
representation of Muslims for example, though a tad stereotypical,  
has stressed harmony rather than fissure. The zest that the Guru Dutt  
cinema of the ’50s put into social reform, finds utterance now  
through the financial freedom that multiplex movies enjoy. Bollywood  
has at its best been when engaging with India — warts and all.

This makes the Maharashtra government’s ban on Deshdrohi all the more  
ironic. The film centres around the problems faced by north Indian  
migrants to Mumbai. Evidently, the Maharashtra Government found this  
too close to reality and banned it. It couldn’t be anything else: the  
censor board cleared it, and the film is running everywhere else.  
More importantly, the fracas over migration into Mumbai is a very  
real one, and the need of the hour is a platform for sensible debate.  
Hindi cinema, by and large, is capable of providing that platform,  
and has in the past. In fact, as so many other times, this time too  
it seems to have attempted to weave stories around issues that civil  
society has not been able to discuss frankly enough. The ban also  
plays into regional faultlines. Already, the usual suspects have  
taken positions around state boundary lines: While Bihar’s Ram Vilas  
Paswan has condemned the ban, the Maharashtra Congress party supports  
censoring it. Even lawbreaker-in-chief Raj Thackeray has agreed with  
the ban, believing — a self-fulfilling prophecy? — that the film will  
give rise to law and order problems.

The Indian Constitution permits all Indians to move freely between  
its states. This right is at the very core of our federal structure,  
and that is why Thackeray’s anti-migrant rhetoric is so dangerous.  
The Maharashtra ban on Deshdrohi is just as insidious: it limits the  
free movement of ideas across different parts of India. The ban must  
go now.

o o o

(iii)

The Times of India
16 November 2008

A FATWA AGAINST MADHUSHALA

Manjari Mishra, TNN

LUCKNOW: It’s an indictment that came 73 years too late. Harivansh  
Rai Bachchan’s magnum opus Madhushala, which made him an overnight  
celebrity with its publication in 1935 has ruffled holy feathers here  
for “it’s potential for promoting moral depravity and licentiousness  
in society, particularly among youth”.

On Friday evening, Shahar Qazi Lucknow, Maulana Mufti Abul Irfan  
Ahmad Jaimul Aleem Qadiri who is also the president of Idara-e-Sharia  
issued a fatwa against Madhushala.

The book he decreed, “was anti Islamic and also unfit to be taught at  
any academic institute”. And even as the edict by the veteran cleric,  
generally regarded as a liberal, has invoked a passionate debate  
among literary circles, not to mention a feeble protest from his  
younger colleagues like Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahali, the  
mufti justifies his stance.Mufti Qadiri said that a Muslim  
organisation from Madhya Pradesh approached him on November 10 with a  
copy of Madhushala.

“They had sought my opinion over the wisdom of prescribing as text  
book in schools and colleges a book that eulogised alcohol and  
drunkenness in society.

The decree, said mufti, was passed after going through the contents  
which “turned out to be extremly hurtful to the setiments of devout,  
though this kind of writing has its own set of admirers”. Bachchan  
sahab may have been a good shair but artistic license can be allowed  
upto permissible limit which he obviously crossed in his writings,  
the fatwa maintained.

It categorically states that “paeans to alcohol can only pollute  
young and impressionable minds and bring about social ruination.  
Moreover, use of words like masjid, muazzin, Allatala, Eid, marsia,  
namazi etc along with sharab, sharabi and maykhana is truly  
blasphemous. The usage only signified mental bankruptcy.”

_____


[9]

Indian Express
November 14, 2008

ANDHRA’S ‘HEALING TOUCH’ TO TORTURED, ‘INNOCENT’ MUSLIMS: RS 30,000 EACH

by Sreenivas Janyala
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/andhras-healing-touch-to-tortured- 
innocent-muslims-rs-30-000-each/385496/1


_____


[10]

'HINGLISH' FILMS: TRANSLATING INDIA FOR U.S. AUDIENCES

by Bilal Qureshi
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96914703

_____

[11]

The London Review of Books
6 November 2008

DIARY
Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Anyone who has read the inside pages of Indian newspapers over the  
past few decades will be familiar with the recurring stories of  
violent urban crime. Some concern ‘crimes of passion’ and use a  
peculiar Indian English journalistic vocabulary, involving such terms  
as ‘eve-teasing’, ‘absconding’ and ‘paramour’. Some of the stories  
have to do with incest or close family relationships – say, between  
father-in-law and daughter-in-law – while others are tales of  
paedophilia and ‘child molestation’. Another popular subject of which  
Delhi residents will be well aware are the crimes committed by the  
‘criminal castes’, often linked in the neocolonial imagination of the  
city’s bourgeoisie to the villages and smallholdings that are  
gradually being asphyxiated by Delhi’s expansion. It’s been an urban  
legend since the 1990s that people are being bludgeoned to death in  
their houses with blunt instruments even though they haven’t  
resisted; and that the intruders show their contempt for their  
victims by defecating in their living-rooms. Class elements are  
present in the reporting of crimes of passion, which the elite  
naturally associate with slum-dwellers and squatters: the second type  
of crime involves something approaching class warfare.
[. . .]
http://tinyurl.com/6872xs

_____

[12]

International Association of Historians of Asia (IAHA)
20th Conference, JNU, New Delhi
(14 -17 November 2008)

Papers to be presented may be of interest to some.
http://www.jnu.ac.in/conference/iaha/iaha%20booklet.pdf

_____


[13]    Announcement:

Department of Sociology, University of Delhi

Presents

DELHI INTERNATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM FESTIVAL
Nov 26 - 30, 2008
http://sociology.du.ac.in/dieff/

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Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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