SACW | Jan 14-17 , 2009 / War Mongering and Democratic Space - S. Asia to Gaza

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | January 14-17, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2598 -  
Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net

[1] ICRC fear for Sri Lanka civilians (BBC)
[2] Bangladesh: Pirojpur district made off limits to women by a self- 
styled 'pir'; Administration finally acts (The Daily Star)
[3] Sri Lanka: Defend Media Freedom, Defend Democracy (Law & Society  
Trust)
[4] India and Pakistan: Democratic forces must speak out loudly  
against war mongering
[5] India: Freedom of Expression Shrinks - Outrageous Bar by State  
and Non State Actors on Pakistani (and Israeli) Artists
      - Frightened by the mirror (Jawed Naqvi)
      - E-mail from Lucknow: Pakistani and Israeli artists cant perform
[6] South Asian Voices on War on Gaza:  Save Israel From Israel /  
Will there be a Secular Palestine Now ?
   - Is solidarity with the Gazans same as solidarity with Hamas?  
(Mukul Kesavan)
   - Holocaust in Gaza? (Rohini Hensman)
   - Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza (Kamal Mitra Chenoy)
   - Gaza and India: A view from Pakistan (Faheem Hussain)
[7] India - Chattissgarh: The continued incarceration of Dr Binayak  
Sen is a blot on democracy
    - No bailouts? ( Editorial, The Indian Express)
[8] India - Gujarat: Hindutva Propaganda and Big Business
    (i) Call for Cellular Silence Day - Petition Against India Inc.  
Supporting Narendra Modi
   (ii) Gujarat’s Development Masks Other Realities (Rohit Prajapati,  
Trupti Shah)
[9] Manufacturing compulsions of national security (Ashok Mitra)

_____


[1]


BBC  News
16 January 2009

ICRC FEAR FOR SRI LANKA CIVILIANS

Camp for displaced people in Sri Lanka
The ICRC says there should be an escape route for civilians

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that intense  
fighting in northern Sri Lanka has caused a "massive displacement" of  
civilians.

It says thousands of people trapped inside rebel-held territory have  
had to flee several times in recent months.

An ICRC official, Paul Castella, told the BBC that fighting had  
stopped relief supplies being delivered to rebel-held areas for  
nearly a week.

He said that there were serious concerns about a lack of food.

See map of the region

A Sri Lankan military spokesman insisted a supply convoy had been  
sent to the rebel-held territory and that there were adequate stocks  
of food.

'Repeated displacements'

The ICRC said it was "extremely concerned" no safe escape route had  
been agreed.

"This has put at risk the lives of patients who cannot receive  
suitable treatment on the spot and therefore need to be transferred  
to Vavuniya hospital, in government-controlled territory," the ICRC  
said in a statement.

Sri Lankan soldiers
The military say that civilians are safer in areas held by them

It said that civilians who had already been forced to move numerous  
times were increasingly seeking the safety of government-controlled  
areas.

On Wednesday, the defence ministry said that a total of 1,707 people  
had crossed over to government-held areas in the first two weeks of  
January and were given emergency relief supplies.

"Repeated displacements, often involving the loss of their personal  
belongings, have taken a toll," said Mr Castella.

The ICRC says that thousands of displaced civilians are now  
concentrated in an area so small that there are "serious concerns for  
their physical safety and living conditions, in particular in terms  
of hygiene".

The organisation is one of the few international relief agencies  
allowed to operate in rebel-held areas.

The government said this week it was fully prepared to handle "the  
mass exodus of civilians" the fighting with the rebels might cause.

A massive offensive by Sri Lankan troops in recent weeks has left  
Tamil Tiger rebels surrounded in their last remaining stronghold -  
the north-eastern coastal town of Mullaitivu.

The Tigers have been fighting for a separate homeland for 25 years.  
At least 70,000 people have been killed in the insurgency.

_____


[2]

The Daily Star
January 14, 2009

Editorial
SIMPLY UNHEARD OF!

Inaction of the administration puzzling

As reported in this newspaper yesterday a public road in Mathbaria of  
Pirojpur district has been made off limits to women by a self-styled  
'pir' of the area. And this has been so, as we understand from the  
report, for quite sometime. It should put all right thinking person  
to shame to see such a state of affairs prevail in this age.

What is very disconcerting is that the administration has taken no  
action against an act that is patently illegal, directed exclusively  
against women, and which has created tremendous inconvenience to the  
women of the locality, including the fact that they cannot use the  
services of the post office that happens to be located on that  
particular road. To cap it all, the so-called pir has had the  
temerity to put up a signboard displaying the so-called prohibition  
order, and personally patrol the area with stick to chase away women  
who venture on the road. The lone man's audacity, apparently, have  
escaped the notice of the administration.

This is a rabid form of exploitation of religion that must be  
deterred before it becomes tendentious. Reportedly, sometime back  
during the erstwhile 4-part alliance regime, a clique had wanted to  
prevent the use of the road by the womenfolk but had failed in the  
face of local resistance thus the entry of the fake 'pir'. And the  
reason for such a 'directive' there happens to be a mosque at the end  
of the road and as such, according to the bogus 'pir', it is  
forbidden for women to use the road. The action is dangerous for many  
reasons but more because there cannot be a more blatantly anti- 
religious statement than the explanation given. When women are  
allowed to attend congregation prayers in mosque how can anybody  
prevent them from using a road on which a mosque is situated? The  
masjid committee is against the so-called pir's prohibition and that  
should suffice.

We are baffled at the inaction of the administration. We cannot  
believe that they are ignorant of the matter either. It is an act  
that is not only illegal, it also goes against the teachings of Islam.

o o o

The Daily Star
January 14, 2009
Pirojpur Road Graffiti on woman ban erased

http://www.thedailystar.net/photo/2009/01/14/2009-01-14__f05.jpg


_____


[3]

12th January 2009

DEFEND MEDIA FREEDOM, DEFEND DEMOCRACY

The Law & Society Trust (LST) shares the public outrage and revulsion  
over the assassination of Mr Lasantha Wickramatunga, Editor-in-Chief  
of the Sunday Leader newspaper, on Thursday 8 January 2009, only  
metres away from the security cordon surrounding the Ratmalana Air  
Force Base.

The Sunday Leader newspaper has been a vigorous critic of the present  
and previous governments and has exposed corruption and abuse of  
office at the highest levels of State.

This cowardly murder of a leading media commentator follows the  
destruction of the main control room of Sri Lanka’s largest private  
television and radio organisation, Maharaja Broadcasting Corporation  
(MBC), on 6 January 2009, through armed assault and arson.

Law enforcement agencies must carry out their mandatory duty in  
identifying the perpetrators of this and similar crimes such as the  
torching of the Sunday Leader press in 2007, abduction and brutal  
assault of Keith Noyahr in 2008, and the murder and harassment of  
media workers.

We call upon our fellow citizens to rise to protect the lives of  
journalists, lawyers, politicians, and human rights defenders on whom  
the gun could next turn, and to resist through peaceful protest and  
public action, the dismantling of democracy in Sri Lanka.


Law & Society Trust (LST)
3, Kynsey Terrace
Colombo 08
Sri Lanka

_____


[4]

Kashmir Times, 17 January 2009

January 17, 2009

Editorial

LET’S SAY NO TO WAR
Democratic forces in India and Pakistan must speak out loudly against  
war mongering

Noted civil rights and peace activist Justice Rajinder Sachar has  
rightly took exception to the ill-conceived statement of the Army  
Chief General Deepak Kapur, that "military action against Pakistan  
was open", describing it as "dangerous". The former chief justice of  
Delhi rightly pointed out that the Army chief had "crossed the  
parameters of his duties and has no right to discuss military  
options." In a democratic system it is the prerogative of the  
political executive to decide about options and policy matters. The  
role of other agencies of the state like the bureaucracy and military  
is only to implement these policies. In no case they are supposed to  
publicly speak on policy matters. It is unfortunate that for the past  
some time senior bureaucrats and Army generals have been constantly  
speaking on policy matters, particularly in respect of India-Pakistan  
relationship or terrorism. Such statements by them are indeed  
alarming enough to be ignored. While the impropriety of such  
statements by the Army chief and senior bureaucrats is beyond doubt  
what is equally a matter of concern is the provocative statements  
being made by the politicians in power and war cries being raised by  
the hawks and other political vested interests and faithfully echoed  
by the large section of the media both in India and Pakistan. While  
anger over the Mumbai terror attacks is understandable it needs to be  
realized that war between the two nuclear-armed neighbours is no  
answer to it. The democratic forces in the two countries must refuse  
to be consumed by jingoism and sabre-rattling, fear and war-mongering  
unleashed by the horrific Mumbai terror attacks. While the  
frightening war cries need to be silenced it is also important to  
ensure that the democratic rights of the people are not further  
curbed in the name of fighting terrorism. That is the agenda of the  
terrorists and there is no reason why the saner elements in the two  
countries and political establishments fall into their trap.

It’s time for the democratic forces both in India and Pakistan to  
assert against the frightening war cries being raised by the nuclear  
armed political establishments and parroted by a large section of the  
media in the two countries. An appeal "for solidarity for sanity in  
our neighbourhood" signed by the concerned citizens in the two  
countries has rightly called for unity of the democratic forces  
across the borders, shrugging off their defensive silence to raise  
their strong collective voice against war mongering. The consequences  
of such war rhetoric are deepening fear and insecurity all around. In  
such a climate the people’s democratic rights become a casualty. The  
draconian Unlawaful Activities Prevention Act, amended recently and  
the establishment of the National Investigation Agency, which usurps  
the rights of the states, are the cases in point. Such draconian  
laws, as our experience in Jammu and Kashmir and North East shows,  
are always abused and misused to curb the democratic rights of the  
people. Terrorism and political violence flow from injustice and  
denial of democratic rights to the people. The menace can be  
eliminated not by further curbing these rights and letting loose a  
reign of terror, fear and intimidation. For fighting the monster of  
terrorism it is imperative to push forward the peace process between  
India and Pakistan, instead of abandoning it and strengthen the  
people-to-people contacts between the two countries. Unfortunately,  
instead of abolishing the restrictive and cumbersome visa regime for  
facilitating free movement of the people across the borders further  
curbs have been placed to restrict such contacts. Instead of talking  
at each other through the hawkish section of the media the two  
countries must talk to each other through diplomatic channels both  
for fighting terrorism and pushing forward the peace process. The  
dialogue process must continue as the issues that divide the region  
and have all the potentials of fueling conflict can only be resolved  
through such a process. The people of Jammu and Kashmir have suffered  
most due to the prolonged conflict between India and Pakistan and  
they shudder over the prospects of another war between the two  
nuclear powers. Let’s say no to war, politics of hate and exclusion  
which breed political violence. Let peace be given a chance.

_____


[5] Freedom of Expression Shrinks in India: Shameful Coming Together  
of State and Non State War Mongers to Bar Performances by Pakistani  
Artists

Madeeha Gauhar and Sheema Kermani barred them from staging their  
plays in India

http://www.sacw.net/article501.html


FRIGHTENED BY THE MIRROR

by Jawed Naqvi, 15 January 2009

BEFORE unidentified functionaries of the state barred them from  
staging their plays in India this week, Madeeha Gauhar and Sheema  
Kermani were facing the wrath of cultural vigilantes in their  
respective backyards in Pakistan.

Their torment was not unusual. Three Booker Prize winners from India  
— Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai — have found  
themselves in a similar quandary with their own zealots, including  
those claiming literary pretence. Is it because writers and activists  
hold a mirror to realities we refuse to acknowledge?

As an Indian reviewer observed recently, the bitter, unrelenting  
criticism towards Adiga’s The White Tiger in his country after the  
Booker triumph had a familiar ring to it. Earlier, Roy’s book, The  
God of Small Things, met with an equally hostile reception from the  
Indian literary establishment as well as the political class she  
targeted in her book.

“And the murmurs about betrayal began as soon as Kiran Desai beat her  
formidable peers in the shortlist to grab the big one with The  
Inheritance of Loss, just a couple of years ago,” wrote Vijay Nair in  
The Hindu. An admixture of professional peevishness and cultural  
narrow-mindedness can be disastrously potent. It matters little to  
the vigilantes that in little over a decade, three Indians have  
prevailed over the Booker competition.

How did Adiga rub his critics the wrong way? The White Tiger deals  
with India’s class and caste divide. It draws its protagonist from an  
impoverished family of rickshaw pullers who were in the business of  
making sweetmeats before fate intervened. How this change in family  
fortunes happened is explained thus to the reader:

“See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest  
nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well-kept, orderly zoo.  
Everyone in his place, everyone happy. Goldsmiths here. Cowherds  
here. Landlords there. The man called a Halwai made sweets. The man  
called a cowherd tended cows. The untouchable cleaned faeces … To sum  
up — in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in  
India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies,  
and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat or get eaten  
up.”

Indian audiences have welcomed Sheema Kermani in the past. One of her  
plays — Those Who Have Not Seen Lahore Have Not Lived — received a  
standing ovation even this week when she was allowed to stage it at  
Delhi’s National School of Drama albeit amid heavy police protection.  
Then someone told her she couldn’t take the troupe to Lucknow. It  
would be a security hazard. The warning had no basis.

The play was written by Indian playwright and leftwing activist  
Asghar Wajahat and staged countless times across India by Habib  
Tanvir. If anything the play is a sharp critique of the absurdity of  
the communal partition of India. There would be fewer surprises were  
it banned in Pakistan because it implicitly questions the validity of  
the religious fault lines that eventually justified the quest for  
Pakistan. But then the play was not allowed to be staged in Lucknow,  
and that is the point to ponder. There is something about Sheema  
Kermani’s theatre that appears to threaten the establishments in  
India and Pakistan alike.

India’s cultural czars have eagerly encouraged the stereotype about  
the hold religious groups have on life across the border. Madeeha  
Gauhar has defied the easy perception and her plays had been well  
received in India. She is credited with fighting the pro-Taliban  
establishment as recently as during the Musharraf regime. Her  
controversial play Burqavaganza riled rightwing Muslim politicians  
who brought a censure motion against it in the National Assembly.

Burqavaganza was a satirical play, which used the veil as a metaphor  
for double standards and cover-ups in society. The play showed all  
characters (men and women) wearing burqas, including politicians,  
terrorist leaders and policemen. Issues addressed included gender  
discrimination, religious extremism, terrorism, love marriage and  
media programmes promoting intolerance. It had been made very clear  
in the brochure of the play and before and after the play that the  
theme of the play was not critical of any one’s religious beliefs or  
dress preference, but about hypocrisy and double standards and the  
feudal mindset. The audience in Pakistan loved the play and it got  
very good press reviews. The play had been staged in collaboration  
with the Lahore Arts Council. It was again staged at the Panjpani  
Indo-Pak Theatre Festival at Arts Council in Lahore.

There was a time when cultural exiles from Pakistan would find  
sanctuary in India. Pakistan’s progressive poet Fahmida Riaz lived in  
Delhi for months to escape Gen Ziaul Haq’s stifling religious rule.  
Journalist Salamat Ali had found refuge in Delhi at about the same  
time. Madeeha Gauhar was as good a candidate as any to be applauded  
in India for her fight against religious bigotry. Therefore it didn’t  
make any sense to know that she was told by the National School of  
Drama not to come to Delhi.

Gauhar had sought to expose how Gen Musharraf despite his religiously  
moderate profile was weak-kneed and apologetic before her pro-Taliban  
critics. In her petition against the harassment by the mullahs,  
Gauhar had slammed the regime for its inaction over the Jamia Hafsa  
stand-off, “Islami Jamiat attacks in Punjab University and moral  
policing in the NWFP” that had not only damaged the government’s  
credibility and ability to establish its writ, but had emboldened the  
fanatics to spread their tentacles. “The government has totally  
failed to punish those who are challenging its writ and intimidating  
students and artists. It has also miserably failed to protect those  
are being intimidated and attacked by the pro-Taliban elements,” she  
wrote.

Today the boot is on the other foot. Indian vigilantes could make the  
Taliban look like school kids. “American pop icon Paris Hilton  
corrupts Indian minds,” wrote the Wall Street Journal quoting unnamed  
mandarins of Indian culture. So they had barred television channels  
in India from airing Ms Hilton’s new music video, Stars Are Blind. It  
was yet another example of the censorship fever sweeping the country.

But why has a supposedly moderate government in Delhi agreed to give  
rightwing vigilantes the authority to decide what was culturally  
acceptable or what wasn’t? Does Madeeha Gauhar’s critique of her  
government — that it was weak-kneed and vulnerable before religious  
bigots — apply equally to the Indian establishment? Or could it be  
that independent writers and cultural activists on both sides of the  
border pose an equal threat to their establishments and also the one  
on the other side of the border, simply because they mirror an  
unpleasant reality for both.


o o o

E-MAIL FROM LUCKNOW: PAKISTANI AND ISRAELI ARTISTS NOT ALLOWED TO  
PERFORM

Dear All,

Regret to inform you that Local administration has not granted  
permission to perform  Pakistani and Israeli artists to  perform at  
the Bharat Rung Mahutsav taking place at Lucknow because of the  
protest of an local Sectarian outfit "Sunni Majlis-e-Amal". Its  
delegation has met with local authorities and impressed upon  
administration that because of 26/11  terrorist attack on Mumbai by  
Pakistani terrorists and the atrocities of Israeli govt on  
Palistinians we shall not allow their Artist to share our stage.

We strongly condemn this kind of irresponsible and immature attitude  
of fundamentalist people. These Artists are not the representatives  
of Pakistani Govt. They are the messengers of peace and communal  
harmony.They have always raised their voices against their respective  
governments and terrorists outfits of their own country.Even in any  
kind of worst political situation we shall not break the people to  
people  diplomacy and communication. If we do allow this, it means  
that we are widening the gap of hatred and misunderstanding  among  
the common people and strengthening the hands of Fundamentalists and  
Terrorists. I request all sensible people to come forward and raise  
their demand to local authorities to grant permission.

Thanks and regards

Irfan Ahmad
V.P.Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace & Democracy (U..P.Chapter.
V.P.PUCL (U.P.)
Ex. Hon'y Secretary AMU Old boys Asoociation,Lko
Coordinator Asha Parivar & NAPM


o o o

ndtv.com

Outrage over Pak artist's removal by MNS

Tejas Mehta, Paresh Mishra

January 16, 2009, (Mumbai)
In Mumbai there is outrage after a Pakistani stand up comedian  
Shakeel Siddiqui was forcibly removed from a TV set by members of the  
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

The act by Raj Thackeray's men has received a divided response from  
Mumbai's artistic community.

Some like flute maestro Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia have strongly  
condemned the action.

"I will really respect and appreciate their coming in my country.  
They would be my guests. Just because a few people decide to spread  
terror does not make a terrorist out of all Pakistanis," said Pandit  
Chaurasia.

But many others, especially from the film and TV industry, supported  
the move in the wake of the recent terror strikes, even though they  
didn't agree with the methods.

"It's not the fault of the Pakistani artists. But there is bound to  
be anger. These people should be respectfully sent back," said  
Khayyam, musician.

"I had mentioned it before that these artists should not play with  
fire. We Indians are a little outraged. Let things come back to  
normal," said Pandit Jasraj, musician.

Shakeel Siddiqui was shooting for a show for a television channel  
when MNS activists demanded he leave the country.

As per sources, no complaint has been filed with the police but the  
comedian immediately returned to Pakistan.

The television channel spoke out in support of the decision to hire  
the actor.

"Shakeel was in India on an official visa. We can't hold every  
Pakistani responsible for the attack. Unless the government decides  
to severe all ties with Pakistan, why should anyone else decide what  
should be done?" said channel sources.

Sportspersons and musicians from across the border have in the past  
been targeted by the Shiv Sena. Now the MNS has taken over.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Home Minister Jayant Patil has virtually  
justified the act. He said that anger against Pakistani artists  
reflected public sentiment after 26/11 and would die down in time.  
When asked if the state would act against the MNS, he said he still  
had to examine the issue.


o o o

BBC News - 16 January 2009

Artists targeted over Mumbai row
By Zubair Ahmed
BBC News, Mumbai
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7834016.stm


_____


[6]


SOUTH ASIA VOICES FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE TO PALESTINE/ISRAEL

http://www.sacw.net/article499.html

  PRINCIPLE OF EXCLUSION - Is solidarity with the Gazans same as  
solidarity with Hamas?
by Mukul Kesavan (The Telegraph, January 15, 2009)

As Israel’s monstrous destruction of Gaza grinds on, Hamas becomes,  
by bloody default, the face of Palestinian resistance. Mahmoud Abbas,  
nominally the president of the Palestinian Authority, and the party  
he leads, Fatah, have begun to seem, fairly or otherwise, creatures  
of Israel and the West. At the very moment that Fatah, whose  
headquarters were bombed into rubble by Israel in the time of Yasser  
Arafat, is being hailed by Israel and America as the legitimate  
representative of all Palestinians and their only bridge to a  
Palestinian state, Hamas has become, in the eyes of most Palestinians  
and Arabs, the emblem of that aspiration.

At a time like this we need to ask if solidarity with Gazans in  
particular and Palestinians in general is the same thing as  
solidarity with Hamas and its objectives, and the answer to that must  
be, no, it isn’t the same thing. It is a tragedy (and the prime  
movers in this tragedy are the United States of America and Israel)  
that the remarkable, secular struggle for a genuinely independent  
Palestine has come to a pass where a sectarian, Islamist party is  
seen as the last best hope of a beleaguered people.

Hamas was founded just over twenty years ago as the Palestinian  
chapter of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Arab version of India’s  
Jamiat-e-Islami. Its extraordinary success in supplanting Fatah can  
be measured by the fact that in less than twenty years of its  
founding, Hamas swept the parliamentary elections held in January  
2006, winning a clear majority of seats. Fatah’s rout (it won less  
than a third of the total number of parliamentary places) was partly  
on account of its well-deserved reputation for corruption, but mainly  
because the long promised two-state solution, put forward by the US  
and that slippery creature, the international community, began to  
seem like a cruel mirage. Since Fatah had signed on to the two-state  
idea and had got nothing in exchange (except for the bantustan  
sponsored by President Clinton and accelerated Jewish settlement on  
the West Bank), it began to be seen as both corrupt and co-opted by  
the enemy. After Yasser Arafat’s death, American and Israeli  
patronage of the more pliant (or less intransigent) Abu Mazen  
confirmed this impression.

Hamas moved quickly to fill this vacant nationalist space. Its  
maximalist vision (Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist  
and sees as its object an Islamic Palestinian state encompassing all  
of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank), the goodwill it has earned by its  
charitable work and its reputation for armed jihad resonated with a  
Palestinian population brutalized by the Israeli occupation and  
desperate for inspirational leadership.

Hamas’s legitimacy and its heroic credentials were confirmed when the  
Western powers, acting in concert with Israel, refused to recognize  
the results of the 2006 elections because the party they preferred,  
Fatah, hadn’t won. Denied a power-sharing arrangement in the West  
Bank, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip by violently ousting Fatah  
members from administrative and security positions. In retaliation,  
Israel blockaded Gaza, the European Union and the US imposed  
sanctions on Hamas, and the ‘international community’ acquiesced in  
the punishment of a population guilty only of voting in a free and  
fair election.

Hamas began rocketing southern Israel partly to show it couldn’t be  
cowed, but mainly to protest the economic strangulation of Gaza.  
Israel’s policy of collective punishment was explicit: an Israeli  
general described one particular blockade as a way of “putting Gazans  
on a diet”.

So it isn’t difficult to understand why Hamas has come to symbolize  
the resistance to the occupation to Palestinians and to people the  
world over who feel a sense of solidarity with Palestinians. But  
though Hamas speaks for Palestinians at this moment in the present,  
it cannot, indeed must not, embody their future. Whether you support  
a two-state solution or the more utopian vision of a single state for  
Jews and Arabs alike, Hamas’s version of Palestine is likely to be  
antithetical to it and to any just or workable resolution of the  
Palestinian question.

Israel’s propagandists point to the anti-Jewish feeling that  
disfigures Hamas’s documents; they cite the influence of discredited  
conspiracy theories like the Protocols of Zion; they invoke Iran’s  
aid to Hamas and its potential nuclear threat to Israel’s existence.  
Jeffrey Goldberg, once an Israeli army officer, now an American  
journalist, tells of the time when a Hamas leader, Nizar Rayyan,  
confirmed to him that he believed a passage of scripture suggested  
that God had turned disobedient Jews into apes and pigs; in this way  
do Hamas’s enemies seek to shape world opinion by invoking the  
spectre of anti-semitism and the Holocaust. It’s hard to judge  
without a working knowledge of Arabic how accurate these citations in  
English are and it’s increasingly hard to take Western reportage on  
any aspect of the Palestinian question seriously.

But Hamas doesn’t have to be anti-semitic for sensible Indians to  
oppose its vision for the future, even as they acknowledge its  
current service to the Palestinian cause. It is enough for us to know  
that Hamas is at once a nationalist party and a fundamentalist Muslim  
organization that envisions the Palestinian nation as an Islamic  
state. Its leaders claim that Muslims, Jews and Christians can co- 
exist under ‘the wing of an Islamic state’, but surely the point is,  
why would any Palestinian Christian struggle to build an Islamic  
state, leave alone live in it. Nationalism and self-determination  
aren’t in themselves laudable things. Palestinian suffering can’t be  
the only raison d’être for a Palestinian state — that state must  
contain within itself a pluralist commitment to equality, to equal co- 
existence. Why would someone like Edward Said give his life to  
intellectually opposing a majoritarian Jewish state if its successor  
was to be a majoritarian Muslim nation? Why would the Palestinian  
struggle have a claim on our solidarity, if it’s only goal was to  
create yet another denominational state?

A radical friend of mine objected to my characterization of Hamas as  
a fundamentalist and sectarian party. Think of its extraordinary  
record of public service, he said, the schools it runs, the hospitals  
and orphanges that it has built, the commitment it has shown to  
constructively improving the lot of the Palestinian people. I had to  
point out to him that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh could claim  
credit for exactly the same achievements. And since he wouldn’t want  
Indian Muslims, Christians and Sikhs to live in an India defined by  
Hindutva, we should be wary of a party like Hamas that would have  
Christians, Jews and Muslims live in a state defined by political  
Islam. Paradoxically, then, even as we empathize with the sufferings  
of Palestinians in Gaza and admire the fortitude of their leaders in  
their rearguard action against the Israeli assault, we should hope  
that when Palestine comes into being, it will leave behind it the  
narrow, sectarian nationalism of Hamas.
mukulkesavan at hotmail.com

o o o

http://www.sacw.net/article498.html

HOLOCAUST IN GAZA?

by Rohini Hensman, sacw.net, 14 January 2009

In February 2008, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai  
warned that if Hamas continued firing rockets, they would bring upon  
themselves a ’bigger shoah,’ the word used by Israelis to refer to  
the Nazi genocide or holocaust. This statement came in the wake of  
attacks on Gaza which left 32 Palestinians dead, including eight  
children, the youngest a six-month-old baby. These regular attacks,  
combined with a blockade which deprived Palestinians in Gaza of food,  
fuel, potable water, medicines and educational materials, was the  
slow-motion shoah which had been taking place up to December 27. The  
full-scale bombing which began on that date is surely the ’bigger  
shoah’ promised by Vilnai, and, according to Israeli reports, it was  
being planned as long back as February (1).

There were demonstrations against the Israeli bombing by outraged  
protestors throughout the world as the Palestinian death toll climbed  
to more than 300 in three days, but Palestinians in Gaza felt that  
the international community were acting as mere spectators to the  
massacre. They were right. Protest demonstrations are not enough to  
stop a holocaust. Even less effective are sanctimonious statements by  
the UN and EU equating one Israeli life to more than a hundred  
Palestinian lives, which make the outright support for the massacre  
by George W. Bush almost attractive in its honesty. So what can we do?

Debunking Myths

The first necessity is to debunk myths that have successfully been  
used to vitiate all previous actions against Israel. Firstly, the  
myth that the founding of the Zionist state has anything to do with  
the Nazi genocide. In fact, the project was conceived decades before  
the Nazi holocaust, and was a straightforward colonial agenda in  
which European settlers would evict indigenous Third World people  
from their land and take it over. Gandhi saw this very clearly, which  
is why he refused to give the Zionists his support when they  
approached him, despite his sympathy for persecuted Jews (2).

The second myth is that criticism of or opposition to the Zionist  
state of Israel constitutes anti-Semitism, and is an attack on all  
Jews. This is not true; indeed, Jews are among the most trenchant  
critics not only of Israeli atrocities, but also of the whole idea of  
a Zionist state. The notion that Judaism and Zionism are one and the  
same is shared by anti-Semites and Zionists; the former assume that  
all Jews are responsible for the crimes of the Zionists, while the  
latter assume that all condemnation of Zionist crimes constitutes an  
attack on Jews. These assumptions, equally reprehensible, are simply  
two sides of the same coin.

The third myth is that there was ever a possibility of a two-state  
solution. There were two models of settler-colonialism debated by the  
Zionists. One model, supported by very few, was the South African  
one, where the indigenous Palestinians, though evicted from their  
land and herded into Bantustans, would be allowed to remain in the  
country. The majority view was that the indigenous population should  
be eliminated, like the indigenous peoples of North America and  
Australia. To this end, massacres were carried out to terrorise the  
population into leaving, a process then known as ’transfer of  
population’ and now as ’ethnic cleansing’, and ever since the  
Nuremburg trials considered to be a crime against humanity (3). Both  
sides saw Israel as swallowing up the whole of Palestine, and one  
look at a map of Palestine/Israel today shows that this has now been  
achieved, with the Apartheid wall carving up the West Bank into  
ghettos, while the very fact that Israel could blockade the Gaza  
strip so effectively shows that it, too, is nothing more than a ghetto.

If Israel controls the non-contiguous borders, the coastal waters,  
the ground water and air space of the proposed ’Palestinian state’,  
if the people of Gaza can be starved and bombed simply because they  
exercised their franchise to elect a government which the Israeli  
state did not approve of, there could be no clearer proof that  
Palestinian self-determination is not an option so long as the  
Zionist regime remains. The struggle, therefore, is not for a  
separate Palestinian state but, as in Apartheid South Africa, for one  
democratic state with equal rights for all in the whole of historical  
Palestine. This would solve the problem of the second-class status of  
Palestinian citizens of Israel, the need for self-determination for  
Palestinians in the territories occupied in 1967, and the right of  
return of Palestinian refugees, all without driving Israeli Jews out  
of the country. It is the only possible solution (4).

The fourth myth is that Israel attacks Palestinians in self-defence.  
Take the most recent massacre, for example: it is claimed by Israel,  
and repeated by other politicians and the media, that it was Hamas  
which broke the ceasefire. Yet a careful scrutiny of ceasefire  
violations shows that once Hamas defeated Fatah and took control of  
the Gaza strip, violations from its side dropped almost to zero,  
until Israel broke the ceasefire by an air attack and ground invasion  
on November 4. Furthermore, throughout the ceasefire Israel  
implemented a siege and naval blockade of Gaza, defined as acts of  
war in international law. So it was Israel which broke the ceasefire  
in an act of aggression, and the legally elected Hamas government of  
Palestine which was acting in self-defence (5). This means that in  
international law, the murder of each one of the over 550  
Palestinians killed in the most recent massacre, whether the vast  
majority of civilians or the small minority of guerrilla fighters, is  
a crime equivalent to the crime of killing one Israeli civilian.

Indeed, even before the December onslaught, it was clear that what  
Israel was doing in Gaza amounted to genocide according to the  
Genocide Convention (1948), reiterated in the Rome Charter of the  
International Criminal Court (2002), which includes: ’(c)  
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to  
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’ (6). The  
launching of rockets into Israel by Hamas was, like the Warsaw ghetto  
uprising of 1943, a response to impending extermination: a desperate  
bid for survival. The Zionists’ hostility to anyone standing up for  
the rights of Palestinians led them in 1948 to murder Count Folke  
Bernadotte, who had negotiated the release of tens of thousands of  
prisoners from German concentration camps and was subsequently  
appointed UN Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict.  
More recently, their shameful abuse of Richard Falk, UNHRC Special  
Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine (himself an American Jew), who in  
December 2008 was denied entry, ill-treated and deported, suggests  
that only pragmatic considerations prevented them from assassinating  
him too (7).

What Needs to be Done?

According to twenty-one human rights activists (including Jews) from  
South Africa visiting the West Bank in July 2008, the situation in  
Palestine/Israel was ’worse, worse, worse than everything we endured.  
The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality, are worse  
than the worst period of apartheid;’ ’What we went through was  
terrible, terrible, terrible – and yet there is no comparison. Here  
it is more terrible’ (8). An international response at least as  
strong as the response to Apartheid South Africa therefore seems to  
be appropriate, and this is constituted by the Boycott, Divestment  
and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel called for by Palestinian  
civil society groups on 9 July 2005, to be continued until the  
apartheid regime is replaced by a democratic one. This includes  
cultural, academic and sports boycotts, and a consumer boycott of  
Israeli goods (barcode starting with 729), as well as a boycott of  
companies investing in, sourcing from, or otherwise supporting  
Israel, and pressure on them to change their policies. It would also  
include pressure on governments to break off diplomatic, economic and  
military ties with Israel, pointing out that these constitute  
complicity with Israel’s crimes (9).

There should be extra pressure on openly collaborationist regimes,  
like those of Mahmoud Abbas, Hosni Mubarak, and the Arab allies of  
Israel, which ought to be made to feel that their people will reject  
them unless they cease their complicity in Israeli crimes. Enormous  
pressure would also have to be brought to bear on the US, which  
assists Israel with billions of dollars annually as well as other  
forms of support. Given the indications that no change in US policy  
towards Palestine and Israel is planned by Barack Obama’s  
administration, the pressure should begin immediately, before his  
inauguration. And pressure from within the US should be augmented by  
international pressure.

The US economy is in deep crisis, with more than $ 10 trillion of  
national debt, and the only reason it can keep bankrolling Israel is  
that the US dollar is treated as world currency and oil sales are  
denominated in it, so the US has been getting more or less unlimited  
credit from the rest of the world. Russia and the Gulf Cooperation  
Council (GCC) countries must be pressurised into supporting the  
rights of Palestinians by immediately denominating their oil sales in  
euro, in preparation for moving to roubles in the case of Russia, and  
a common Gulf currency in the case of the GCC countries. Countries  
like China and Japan, with their massive US dollar reserves, should  
make the extension of further credit conditional on the US ceasing to  
fund Israel as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and  
countries with smaller dollar reserves should shift their reserves to  
other currencies. Such a move is required not only by ethical  
considerations, but also by pragmatic ones: if the credit extended is  
used to rebuild the US economy, there is a chance that it might be  
returned, whereas if it is used to fund aggression against Palestine,  
Iraq and Afghanistan, it will never be returned. In this campaign,  
very little individual action is possible, and success would depend  
on putting collective pressure on governments to boycott the US  
dollar until the US ceases to engage in and support imperialist  
aggression. With very few exceptions, governments of the world are  
complicit in the atrocities being committed in Gaza, just as they  
were in the crushing of the Warsaw ghetto uprising (10), and strong  
public pressure would be needed to expose, condemn and end their  
complicity.

The myths enumerated above need to challenged in every forum, along  
with the more diffuse racism that constitutes their premise. We may  
disagree with the politics of Hamas, just as we may disagree with the  
politics of the British Labour Party, but it does not follow that we  
should condone the slaughter of all leaders and members of Hamas,  
their families, government employees, and random members of the  
Palestinian population which elected them to power, any more than we  
would condone the slaughter of all leaders and members of the Labour  
Party, their families, government employees, and random members of  
the British population which elected them to power. The fact that the  
US and EU cannot see this equivalence demonstrates that they are  
dominated by the same racism which allowed slavery to flourish and  
the indigenous peoples of North America and Australia to be  
exterminated. Where Black people are killing Black people, as in  
Rwanda, or White people are killing White people, as in Bosnia, there  
is a chance that the UN may take action, however weak and belated.  
But where White people are killing Third World peoples, as in  
Palestine, there is no hope that it will take any action unless  
citizens of the world put massive pressure on their governments to  
support a solution which can bring justice and peace to Palestine/ 
Israel. It is good that there have been worldwide protests against  
the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, but a ceasefire would be no  
better than putting a sticking plaster over a festering wound, which  
will only erupt again sooner or later. The wound cannot heal until  
the infection has been eliminated by replacing the Apartheid state  
with a democratic one, and long-term, concerted action is required to  
achieve that goal.

Notes

(1) ’Israeli minister warns of Palestinian ’holocaust’, Guardian, 29  
February 2008, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/ 
israelandthepalestinians1

(2) A.K.Ramakrishnan, ’Mahatma Gandhi Rejected Zionism,’ The Wisdom  
Fund, 15 August 2001, www.twf.org/News/Y2001/0815-GandhiZionism.html

(3) The debates as well as the methods by which the ethnic cleansing  
of Palestine was achieved are meticulously recorded in Ilan Pappe’s  
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2007

(4) See the One Democratic State Group website at www.odsg.org/

(5) ’On Sderot and Ashkelon,’ Jews sans Frontiers, 30 December 2008,  
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2008/12/on-sderot-and- 
ashkelon.html

(6) For this argument see Ilan Pappe, ’Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic  
Cleansing In the West Bank, 28 January 2008, http:// 
www.countercurrents.org/pappe280108.htm

(7) Stephen Lendman, ’Obama v. Richard Falk on Israel and Occupied  
Palestine,’ Countercurrents, 24 December 2008, http:// 
www.countercurrents.org/lendman241208.htm

(8) Gideon Levy, ’Twilight Zone / "Worse than Apartheid",’ Haaretz,  
12 July 2008, www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1000976.html

(9) For details of the BDS campaign, see Global BDS Movement –  
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine, http:// 
www.bdsmovement.net/ The website of the International Jewish Anti- 
Zionist Network (IJAN) also has suggestions for action, including  
signing a petition in support of UN General Assembly President Miguel  
D’Escoto Brockmann, who has spoken out to condemn Israeli apartheid  
and called for boycott, divestment and sanctions www.ijsn.net/  
Information about companies linked to Israel can also be found in the  
Boycott Apartheid Israel leaflet published by the Friends of Al Aqsa  
at http://www.aqsa.org.uk/Portals/0/Leaflets/LF_24_Boycott.pdf

(10) See Joseph Massad, ’The Gaza Ghetto Uprising,’ The Electronic  
Intifada, 4 January 2009, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ 
article10110.shtml
Sections

o o o

ISRAEL’S DEVASTATING ATTACK ON GAZA
What India and the International Community Should Do ?
by Kamal Mitra Chenoy, (sacw.net, 16 January 2009)
http://www.sacw.net/article508.html

GAZA AND INDIA: A VIEW FROM PAKISTAN
by Faheem Hussain, (sacw.net, 11 January 2009)
http://www.sacw.net/article489.html

_____


[7] India - Chattissgarh: Shrinking Democratic Space

Dr Binayak Sen Now in Prison for 19 Months
http://www.freebinayaksen.org

o o o

Editorial, The Indian Express, January 15, 2009

NO BAILOUTS?

Even in the best of times, law enforcement and human rights are in  
tension with each other. Keeping the peace means arming the  
enforcers, arms they might misuse. Which is why a robust civil  
society and dogged monitoring are always needed to keep an eye on  
power. These are not the best of times. Terrorism from without and  
Naxalism from within pose a serious challenge to the Indian state and  
to its capacity to ensure security to its citizens. The horror of  
Mumbai only highlighted the need for a tough response. The state  
seems to have got that message, giving law enforcers additional  
tools. The recently passed anti-terror laws, the National  
Investigation Agency and better equipment are only some of the new  
tools law enforcers have been given to keep the peace. But a tough  
Terror regime must always be seen as a work in progress, and the  
tension between law enforcement and civil liberties should be tracked  
relentlessly. Look at the extraordinary measures available to the  
government: 180-day detention, targeting “sympathisers”, and shifting  
the evidentiary burden all risk violating the rights of detainees.  
These troubled times call for a tough law enforcement regime, but  
such tough laws also call for closer monitoring and stricter  
supervision to prevent misuse.

That possibility of misuse has come real in the case of Binayak Sen.  
And his case raises questions that must not be silenced. Arrested for  
supporting Naxalites on evidence that is fast unravelling, Binayak  
Sen has been in jail for 19 months without bail. Even indisputable  
criminals arrested on harder evidence get bail more quickly. The law  
that Sen has been arrested under significantly expands the definition  
of a “sympathiser”, casting a net wide enough to ensnare even traders  
who unwittingly sold cloth to Naxalites. Police officials say such a  
law is necessary, given that Naxalites hide under forest cover, and  
require supporters in urban areas to provide them with food, medical  
and legal aid.

Though still sub judice, the many troubling aspects of the case  
indicate the possibility of miscarriage of justice on a colossal  
scale. Given the enormity of the Naxal threat, it is inevitable —  
perhaps necessary — that the state responds in earnest. But the  
travails of Binayak Sen carry a message: when the the law is made  
tighter, there must be attendant thought to the possibility of  
misuse. Tough times need, not just tough responses, but tough  
monitoring as well.


_____


[8]  INDIA - GUJARAT: Hindutva and Big Business

(i)

India: Call for Cellular Silence Day on 61st death anniversary of  
Mahatma Gandhi

Petition Against India Inc. Supporting Narendra Modi

Dear Friend

The collective amnesia of the captains of Indian industry,  
Messrs.Tata, Mittal and Ambani embracing Narendra Modi and endorsing  
his candidature as future PM of India, disturbed me immensely.

This petition is my humble effort to engage the conscience of  
corporate India and make it known to them that the Indian citizen is  
not to be trifled with.Just as we can vote for or against the  
poitician, we can pinch the corporate bottom-line in order to engage  
their attention to mend their ways.

It is not an easy task for us to keep our cell phones and  
Blackberries switched off for an entire day on January 30th,- the  
61st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.

However, it ought to be sufficient to get the message across to  
corporate India that we will not tolerate the endorsement of fascists  
as future Prime Ministers.

May I request you visit the link below to sign and thereafter  
circulate the petition below, if you feel as strongly about this matter

sincerely
  Ranjan Kamath

The petition title is: Cellular Silence Day 30th January 2009. The  
petition URL is: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/30JAN09/petition.html

The petition is directed to: India Inc.
  The start date is: ..January 15th, 2009
  The end date is: ..January 30th, 2009

The petition statement says:

Dear Messrs, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani

I am one of a billion Indian citizens.

I am somewhere in the middle of that pyramid that you wish to give  
voice - from bottom to top - through wealth creation.

I am proud of the brands you represent that have made India proud.

I am one of the burgeoning Indian middle-class that share your  
aspirations of mutating India from indolent elephant to thundering  
tiger.

It ends there...

I have hitherto been accused of being indifferent and apathetic,  
simply because I am overawed and felt overwhelmed in a system replete  
with Goliaths.

But when I saw you embrace the fascist mastermind of state sponsored  
genocide as a future Prime Minister and endorse the Modi-fication of  
India, it was disappointingly apparent that the brands that aspire to  
make India rich shall continue to languish in ethical poverty.

While I am filled with revulsion at your endorsement of Narendra  
Modi, I must respect your right to do so as a fellow citizen.

In writing this petition I am a mere David amongst the mightiest  
corporate Goliaths but I feel empowered to address your collective  
amnesia - through recollection of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 - by the  
true Goliath among Gujaratis in particular and Indians in general -  
Mohandas Gandhi.

All those who sign this petition will switch off their Tata Indicomm,  
Airtel and Reliance cellular phone and broadband connections from  
midnight on January 30th 2009.

It is eminently possible that I might be the one voice in a billion  
who will observe the 61st death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on as  
Cellular Silence Day.

Then again, there might be close to a billion who could join me on  
January 30th, 2009 expressing their solidarity and silently insisting  
that the captains of India Inc adopt an ethical, compassionate path  
to wealth creation rather than the single-minded pursuit of the  
bottom-line.

We shall know that by the end of 30th January, 2009


o o o

(ii)

http://www.sacw.net/article496.html

GUJARAT’S DEVELOPMENT MASKS OTHER REALITIES

by Rohit Prajapati, Trupti Shah (sacw.net, 13 January 2009)

PRESS RELEASE
DATE; 13TH JANUARY 2009
·        The success story of the two digit growth has masked the  
several digit realities of loss of livelihood, land acquisition,  
displacement and permanent loss of natural resources which are  
treated as free goods in this process.

·       The investment figure without the displacement and depletion  
of natural resources figure and the employment figure without loss of  
livelihood does not make sense. – Rohit Prajapati and Dr. Trupti Shah

·        No wise person would talk about the income without talking  
the cost of acquiring that income or wealth.

In the midst of the euphoria created by the investment flooding in to  
Gujarat and lakhs of new jobs likely to be created we would like to  
draw the attention of the 5.5 crore of Gujaratis that this is only  
one side of the story.

The success story of the two digit growth has masked the several  
digit realities of loss of livelihood, land acquisition, displacement  
and permanent loss of natural resources, which are treated as free  
goods in this process. The investment figure without the displacement  
and depletion of natural resources figure and the employment figure  
without loss of livelihood does not make sense. No wise person would  
talk about the income without talking the cost of acquiring that  
income or wealth.

It is a shocking fact that we have never tried to arrive at even a  
realistic estimate of these figures but the magnitude of the loss can  
be guessed from some of the facts emerging from various important  
research works. This is just a tip of iceberg.

Development-Induced Displacement in Gujarat 1947-2004 report prepared  
by Dr. Lancy Lobo and Shashikant Kumar of Centre for Culture and  
Development clearly indicates that there are 4,00,000 households  
displaced and affected in Gujarat during 57 years of Independence,  
amounting to 5% of the total population of Gujarat from developmental  
projects such as water resource related, transport and  
communications, industries, mines, defence, sanctuaries, human  
resource related, government offices, tourism and so on. This report  
further indicates that a total of 33,00,000 hectares of land has been  
acquired during 1947-2004 as computed from 80,000 Gazette  
notifications of the government of Gujarat and from Land Acquisition  
Departments from 25 Collectorates through RTI Act. This figure does  
not include the land acquired and people affected by the most  
controversial project Sardar Sarovar Dam [Narmada]. The acquisition  
of land was not based on the market value of the land but by  
bypassing all the rules of market mechanism.

This figure of displaced also does not include the people who were  
dependent on land for their livelihood but were not the owner of the  
land. Thus real figure of loss of livelihood may even cross the  
figure of 50,00,000. We hope that this figure is not negligible for  
the Government of Gujarat.

2007 and now in 2009 vibrant Gujarat summit is talking about huge  
investment but is silent on the issue of land acquisition and loss of  
livelihood because of the land “acquisition”.

We would like to inform 5.5 Crore Gujaratis that because of haphazard  
industrialisation, Gujarat has a number of industrial pollution Hot- 
Spots, where pollution levels are critical in surface water,  
groundwater and air. Ankleshwar, Vapi, Nandesari and Vatva are some  
such Hot-Spots.

However, no zoning atlas is available for heavily industrialised  
districts in the Golden Corridor, where, in addition to existing  
industries, the Government has planned a number of Mega chemicals  
Industrial Estates.

In Gujarat, groundwater is the major source of drinking water in  
several talukas including those with a high concentration of  
industries. This groundwater has been contaminated in some areas of  
about 74 talukas out of 184 talukas. Some of them are in the Golden  
Corridor - areas along the Kharicut Canal near Ahmedabad, areas  
around Ankleshwar Industrial Estate, some areas along ECP, and the  
areas surrounding Vapi which are among the critical polluted areas.  
The types of groundwater pollutants are TDS, hardness, salinity,  
chloride, COD, color, heavy metals, and POPs.

Current knowledge of the Gujarat Government on surface and  
groundwater contamination is very limited. Isolated reports exist of  
groundwater contamination in industrial areas. Comprehensive studies  
to identify the contamination of entire aquifers are absent.

Rohit Prajapati
[ROHIT PRAJAPATI]
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST
Trupti Shah
[Dr. TRUPTI SHAH]
ECONOMIST

_____


[9]

http://www.sacw.net/article511.html

MANUFACTURING COMPULSIONS OF NATIONAL SECURITY

- Why has the Centre set up a National Investigation Agency?
by Ashok Mitra

Whom are the authorities hoping to fool?

Ten young men, armed to the hilt with artillery and explosives that  
are products of the state-of-the-art terror technology, quietly land  
in Mumbai, saunter into three or four locations of high visibility  
and hold the city to ransom for three ghastly nights and days. They  
make a merry bonfire of this country’s security. They must have  
planned the operation meticulously over weeks and months on end. The  
nation they targeted knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about it. The  
agencies and institutions responsible for this sorry state of affairs  
are not difficult to list. These are, seriatim: (a) the office of the  
national security adviser; (b) the Research and Analysis Wing, the  
country’s outfit for external espionage, with its agents all over the  
world including, under clandestine designations, in our high  
commission in Islamabad; (c) the Indian navy, coming under the  
umbrella of the ministry of defence; (d) the country’s air force,  
again an integral part of the ministry of defence; (e) the national  
coastal guard, once again a wing of our armed services, and, finally,  
(f) the Port Authority of India that presides over the Mumbai Port  
Trust and is very much under the jurisdiction of the Centre.

The Mumbai shame could take place because of the failure, both  
individual as well as collective, of these agencies to do their duty  
by the nation. If a people’s tribunal were to sit in judgment, the  
chances are it could not reach but one conclusion — the head of each  
of these agencies ought to roll, their incompetence does not justify  
their further continuance in office, and democracy without  
accountability is a big zero.

While nothing has happened at the Central level except token  
sacrifice of a convenient scapegoat — the gentleman of supposedly  
sartorial elegance who was in charge of the ministry of home affairs  
— a different kind of game is on. Till today, no charges have been  
posted in any quarters that any part of the responsibility for the  
Mumbai catastrophe is to be laid at the door of any agency of any of  
the state governments. All that the state government of Maharashtra  
has been charged with is alleged failure to inform the public  
regarding the magnitude of the disaster. And yet, in an extraordinary  
display of effrontery, the authorities in New Delhi have rushed to  
use the pretext of the Mumbai horror to set up a National  
Investigation Agency. The agency has been given staggeringly sweeping  
powers, overriding the constitutional provision that jurisdiction  
over law and order belongs to the state government.

The Centre could accomplish this bit of derring-do because of the  
frenzy let loose by the happenings of November 26-28 last. That  
frenzy, why not say it, is largely a manufactured product. Those who  
have appropriated most of the milk and honey from India’s inequitous  
economic system suddenly feel menaced. Unlike the series of  
explosions occurring in different parts of the country in the recent  
past and affecting only humdrum ordinary people, it is the super-rich  
who were principally targeted in Mumbai. The resulting sense of  
insecurity is reflected, verbatim, in the media, owned by and large  
by the super- rich. The media have gone about as if they have  
proprietorial rights over the nation’s mind. Taking advantage of the  
situation, a government, which has failed to secure the nation and  
stands thoroughly exposed, has the gall to vest itself with further  
powers as reward for its incompetence. Not that protests have not  
been aired against this vulgar act of opportunism. Such protests are,  
however, muted — and for understandable reasons. Were dissent to rise  
to a higher pitch, the dissenters might well be accused of lack of  
patriotism.

No reason, however, exists to be less than blunt. Little people are  
in charge, people who lack the faculty to think through. They are  
evidently unable to appreciate the implications of what they have  
embarked upon. The way things have been allowed to develop, the  
situation is now ideally suited to those who would like nothing  
better than see the democratic functioning of the Indian polity  
stilled for ever. The electronic media have, in fact, already gone on  
record: they do not want politicians, they want only the commandos. A  
former national security adviser, a career democrat, has quickly  
added his input: multi-party politics is dangerous for national  
security, it encourages divisiveness amongst the people. Armed with  
such species of wisdom, New Delhi could feel tempted to avail itself  
of the new pieces of legislation, including the one establishing the  
NIA, to indulge in a danse macabre, curbing, in the process, both the  
ambit of state governments and the prerogative of ordinary citizens  
to think on their own.

Is it not all a great confidence trick? No question, the activism  
displayed in the establishment of the NIA has a direct link with the  
strategic alliance sealed with the United States of America. The  
American lobby in India has been campaigning long for such an  
alliance, and for setting up here a federal investigative agency in  
the mirror image of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI  
has actually been trying for the past two decades to open outposts in  
India so as to cope better with both the immediate peril of ‘Islamic  
terror’ and the impending peril of the US losing its global hegemony  
to China. Once a Central investigative agency comes to have a corpus  
in India and closely collaborates with the FBI, the latter would be  
saved the trouble of dealing with intelligence outfits at different  
layers of administration, including the states. The FBI’s wishes have  
now been fulfilled. Perhaps for reasons of bashfulness, the new  
outfit will be known as the National Investigation Agency and not the  
Federal Investigative Agency — but that is a small matter.

Given the present mood of the nation’s rulers, funds can be expected  
to be voted generously for the new agency, with little parliamentary  
control over how these funds are spent. At the same time, as the  
global economy sinks deeper into recession, here too, the pace of  
economic activities will slow down, leading to a considerable  
shrinkage in public revenue. The state of the budget will however  
have no impact on the allocations for the nation’s security, which  
will bulge and bulge. Since taxing the rich is an unthinkable  
proposition, the authorities will therefore either raise the burden  
of taxation on the nation’s poor or cut back spending on anti-poverty  
measures, or do both, to meet the compulsions of national security.

The consequences are predictable. With issues of food security and  
employment-creation pushed to the background, mass discontent will  
intensify, eventuating in occasional bloody confrontations between  
the protesters and State power. Inevitably, a new genre of terror  
will emerge. Thanks to the electronic media, even those denied the  
minimum opportunities of life and living are growing aware of the  
quality of indolent existence indulged in by the nation’s rich and  
super-rich.

The underprivileged and the dispossessed, determination writ large on  
their faces, will like nothing better than to proximate to the living  
standards of the fortunate ones in society. They will not worry over  
the means they deploy to reach their objective. They will steal,  
snatch, maim and kill. That is to say, they will not flinch from  
taking recourse to terror. The outcome will be a kind of wish  
fulfilment for the NIA; it will be able to justify its existence. And  
since it will have a veto over points of view expressed either by any  
state government or by conscientious dissenters, all worthwhile  
checks and balances on unbridled exercise of power will wither away.


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S o u t h   A s i a   C i t i z e n s   W i r e
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. An offshoot of South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/

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