SACW | April 17-21, 2009 / Secular Democracy or Suicide

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | April-17-21, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2617 -  
Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net

[1] Sri Lanka: LTTE Is No Excuse For Killing Vanni Civilians  
(University Teachers for Human Rights)
[2] Bangladesh: Syeda Rizwana Hasan Awarded the 2009 Goldman  
Environmental Prize
[3] Pakistan: The price of moral cowardice (Ardeshir Cowasjee)
- Islamabad in frontline of Pakistan struggle with Islamic militants  
(Declan Walsh)
- Pakistan: Children of the Taliban - A Television Documentary by  
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
- Life in Swat after the peace deal (Farhat Taj)
- Swallowing up Pakistan (Zafar Hilaly)
- Sufi Muhammad shows true colours (Editorial, Daily Times)
[4] India's Elections:
(i) India's Polls and South Asian Peace (J. Sri Raman)
(ii) In an election for the masses the rich will be the winners  
(Praful Bidwai)
[5] India - The Daily Assault of Communalism
  - Muslims Find Bias Growing In Mumbai's Rental Market (Emily Wax)
  - Forgetting slaughter (Harsh Mander)
  - Gujarat: Assault on Anhad and Aman Samudaya activists in  
Gandhinagar, Gujarat
  - Shock Value (Editorial, The Telegraph)
  - Enter, Hindu Ayatollahs (Neelabh Mishra)
[6] India: Tributes to Ahilya Rangnekar (1922-2009)
[7] Announcements:
  (i) Book Launch "Roots Of Tolerance In Pakistan And  
India" (Karachi, 24 April 2009)
  (ii) Film Screening: Yi As Akh Padshah Bai [There was a Queen…]  
Directed by Kavita Pai, Hansa Thapliyal (Bombay, 27 April 2009)

_____


[1] Sri Lanka:

LTTE IS NO EXCUSE FOR KILLING VANNI CIVILIANS
by University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), 17 April 2009

UTHR(J) Information Bulletin No. 47
http://www.uthr.org/bulletins/Bul47.htm
http://www.sacw.net/article842.html

______


[2] Bangladesh:

THE GOLDMAN PRIZE 2009 RECIPIENT FOR ASIA

Working to reduce the impact of Bangladesh’s exploitative and  
environmentally-devastating ship breaking industry, leading  
environmental attorney Syeda Rizwana Hasan spearheaded a legal battle  
resulting in increased government regulation and heightened public  
awareness about the dangers of ship breaking.
http://www.goldmanprize.org/2009/asia

______


[3] Pakistan:

Dawn
19 April, 2009

  THE PRICE OF MORAL COWARDICE

by Ardeshir Cowasjee

Pervert form of religion has been legally sanctified to terrorise the  
state: Ardesh Cowasjee. — APP
AUGUST 11, 1947, in the constituent assembly of Pakistan at Karachi:  
“You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing  
to do with the business of the state.” — Founder and maker of  
Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

February 19, 1948, a broadcast to the people of Australia: “But make  
no mistake: Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it.” — Jinnah.

Later in February 1948, a broadcast to the people of the US: “In any  
case, Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state — to be ruled by  
priests with a divine mission.” — Jinnah.

Deliverance into the hands of the theocrats came a mere six months  
after the death of Jinnah, the delivery made by the man who had  
succeeded him as the leader of his nation. The Objectives Resolution  
was adopted on March 12, 1949 by the constituent assembly of  
Pakistan, proposed by the prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan. It  
clearly and unambiguously declared that religion had much to do with  
the business of the state. There could be no recovery, as history has  
proven over the past 60 years.

Now, with the resolution passed in the National Assembly of Pakistan  
on April 13, 2009, a perverted form of religion has been legally  
sanctified to terrorise the state, to threaten the nation, to widen  
the already alarming internal divide, and to spread alarm and  
despondency amongst those who still had hope that one day the creed  
of Jinnah would prevail.

The Nizam-i-Adl resolution, unanimously passed by the political  
parties present in the assembly on that disgraceful Monday in April  
is pure and simple appeasement by a weak government, by parties who  
have abandoned their principles, by other parties imbued with the  
bleakness of fundamentalism, all backed to the hilt by an army of  
over half a million men who were routed by a band of brainwashed  
terrorists.

To those of us who remember our history the signing of the regulation  
by the president of the Republic is akin to Great Britain’s Prime  
Minister Neville Chamberlain’s gesture on his return to London from  
Munich at the end of September 1938, when he waved a piece of paper  
in the air and declared that there would be “peace in our time,” thus  
setting in place preparations for a long and bloody war.

Appeasement is, to put it mildly, a naïve policy denoting weakness.  
It is a yielding of compromise and sacrificial offerings. More  
bluntly, it is moral cowardice exhibited by pathetic men and women  
who offer concessions at the expense of others. Appeasement is doing  
deals with men who have insatiable territorial appetites with the  
wish to impose their own brand of false theological practices and  
beliefs. It is an indulgence in wishful thinking — peace in our time  
— at the price of surrender.

But all was not lost. The Chaudhry of Chakwal, brave and true to  
himself, spoke up when all were silent. My friend and co-columnist  
Ayaz Amir salvaged some of the disgrace when he told his fellow  
parliamentarians just what is what when it comes to dealing with the  
Taliban, when it comes to giving in to them, and when it comes to  
appeasement. He was rightly harsh on the government for its moral  
cowardice, and on the army in which he once served for having  
crumbled, for the abandonment of its pride. His warnings were valid,  
but have gone unheeded. He and the many whose heads are not in the  
sand are now at the mercy of a ragtag and bobble band of maniacal  
‘students’ of a cruelly false religion.

Reservations are many about the MQM. We cannot forget the early  
1990s, nor May 12, 2007. The party cannot be absolved of its past  
sins and crimes and its ‘cult’ image is somewhat off-putting. But  
last Monday it went far to redeem itself when Farooq Sattar, minister  
of this government and parliamentary leader of the party rose, prior  
to Ayaz, and told the house that a wicked precedent was being set,  
that the passing of the resolution will embolden all the militant  
parties of the land — and they are more than sufficient unto the day  
— that democratic and parliamentary norms were being violated, and  
that this pernicious resolution may prove to be the last nail driven  
into Jinnah’s Pakistan. He then led his party members out of the  
house and later further addressed the press in the same tone.

And that was it — just two went out on a limb, two out of the horde  
of parliamentarians, all of whom have vowed to uphold and honour the  
constitution of Pakistan, which constitution makes no provision for  
the passing of any such regulation as the Nizam-i-Adl, nor of the  
setting up in the country of a parallel judicial system, nor of  
ceding territory to dangerous fanatical outlaws.

The party in power claims to be a secular party as does the ANP of  
which the less said the better. The PML-N does not openly admit to  
secularism, its chief not being that way inclined as we know from his  
attempted 15th Amendment, but it also does not lay claim to be  
motivated by militant fervour. Those who let down the nation most  
severely were all the women parliamentarians, the most affected, the  
prime targets of the Taliban.

And where is ‘civil society’, where are the lawyers? They motor- 
marched for the independence of the judiciary. Why are they comatose  
when it comes to the imposition of a parallel judiciary by a supine  
parliament? The fearsome Muslim Khan of the Taliban may have  
threatened the lives of those who oppose the infamous Nizam-i-Adl,  
but there should be some, other than Ayaz Amir and the MQM, who can  
show a bit of spunk. The press, at least some portions of it, are  
doing their bit and speaking up and out. Where is everyone else? The  
army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, went to the rescue of the government  
at Gujranwala in March, but now he and his army have succumbed to  
obscurantism.

Now, only the US and the rest of the world can step in — we, in  
nuclear Pakistan, can do nothing but wait and see which way the cards  
fall. We, including the legislators, are all helpless, they by  
choice, we by default.

Footnote: Karachi is already feeling the Taliban pinch. Co-  
educational schools in Defence, Clifton and Saddar areas are known to  
have received visits and been threatened if they do not change,  
others have been sent letters with the same message.

o o o

The Guardian, Saturday 18 April 2009

ISLAMABAD IN FRONTLINE OF PAKISTAN STRUGGLE WITH ISLAMIC MILITANTS

by Declan Walsh in Islamabad

Fortifications are springing up across Islamabad as foreigners  
retreat from public view and Pakistanis worry about the possibility  
of a Mumbai-style attack on shops, offices or even schoolchildren.
Twelve-metre (40ft) high sandbag walls, nests of gun-toting soldiers  
and concrete blast walls have started to appear around the once  
sleepy federal capital, where over the last year Taliban suicide  
bombers have attacked a five-star hotel, the Danish embassy and  
several army and police posts.
The most visible precautions have been taken at UN offices, most of  
which now resemble facilities in war zones. "In terms of security  
instability Pakistan has become as dangerous as Iraq and  
Afghanistan," said a senior UN official.
Last week a Taliban commander, Mullah Nazir Ahmed from South  
Waziristan, threatened to overrun the city. "The day is not far when  
Islamabad will be in the hands of the mujahideen," he told al-Qaida's  
media wing As-Sahab.
Few residents take that warning seriously, but there is a creeping  
sense of menace fed by the march of extremist forces in neighbouring  
North-West Frontier province. This week the government met Taliban  
demands to impose Sharia law in Swat, 100 miles north-west of  
Islamabad. On Thursday it released the firebrand cleric Abdul Aziz,  
who led the bloody Red Mosque siege two years ago, on orders from the  
supreme court.
Only four years ago Islamabad was considered one of the safest places  
in Pakistan, a small city of wide boulevards and low crime, if a  
muted social scene. Now it wears a tense face. Streets have been  
sealed, five-star hotels are fortified like army bases and a heavily  
protected area around parliament is known as the "red zone".
Convoys bristling with gunmen escort ministers to work, while western  
ambassadors travel in bullet-proof limousines. The government is  
urging foreign embassies to move into a diplomatic enclave that may  
soon resemble Baghdad's green zone.
A spring ball at the British high commission, due to take place  
tonight was cancelled yesterday over security concerns. Meanwhile  
hardware stores have found a lucrative new product line: blast film.  
"If a bomb goes off, it stops the glass from flying into your home,"  
saleswoman Zahida Hashmi explained at the Ideal Home store.
But the most profound changes are being felt by Pakistanis, including  
the well-heeled, who are starting to feel their city has moved to the  
frontline of the war against militancy. Last weekend most English  
language schools in the city closed, some for several days, amid  
rumours of a commando-style gun attack on a school. One institution,  
which caters to foreigners, remains shut, with classes continuing by  
email.
School owners said they were installing closed circuit television and  
hiring armed guards, but admitted the precautions were insufficient  
to stop a suicide bomber. "Privilege won't buy you security any  
more," said one. "We are wondering how we can stay here if your kids  
are not safe."
For others, the closure of a main road outside the anonymous-looking  
headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) this week was a  
measure of the seriousness of the threat.
It is also hitting business. At Sufi restaurant, a popular kebab  
joint opposite a police building, sales are down 40%, said waiter  
Muhammad Asfandyar. "People are afraid to come out these days," he  
said, indicating a row of empty tables.
Some flag their resistance through culture. At the height of last  
weekend's scare, theatregoers flocked to see a play about Bulleh  
Shah, an 18th century Sufi mystic who defied the mullahs with a  
message of love and tolerance.
The play sold out, said director Madeeha Gauhar. "Unfortunately a  
minority seems to be winning this war of ideas through coercion. But  
this sends a strong message that people want to live, to be  
entertained, and to watch a play."

o o o

Pakistan: Children of the Taliban
A Television Documentary by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan802/video/ 
video_index.html

o o o

The News
April 13, 2009


Life in Swat after the peace deal


by Farhat Taj

On Feb 16 a peace agreement was signed between Sufi Mohammad, leader  
of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) and the government  
of the NWFP with complete blessing of the PPP-led federal government.  
Sufi Mohammad reached Swat with a promise to convince his son-in-law,  
Maulana Fazlullah, and his fighters to surrender weapons for the sake  
of peace. Two months after the peace deal, how is life in Swat? What  
is happening to people? Is the peace deal working?

‘The peace deal is not working and will fall sooner than later,’  
veteran ANP politician Afzal Khan Lala tells me. He is the only  
politician who is still standing up to the barbaric Taliban in Swat  
despite several death threats and the demands of his old age — the  
rest of the ANP leadership has fled the area. During a telephone  
conversation, he elaborated: Ô’The peace deal has been made by non- 
Swatis. People of Swat have not been taken into confidence on the  
deal. Also, I was never consulted by the ANP government in making of  
the peace deal.’

Day-to-day happenings in Swat clearly indicate that the apprehensions  
of Afzal Khan Lala are not misplaced and the peace deal has been  
strengthening the writ of the Taliban over Swat’s 5,337-square- 
kilometre area. The Taliban have made the 1.7 million people of Swat  
hostage, and the people continue to suffer. The government in Swat  
seems helpless and paralysed. I will elaborate it with some examples.

Fazlullah, the leader of Swat Taliban, led the prayer at his home  
village, Mamdirai on Friday, April 3. He was warmly received by his  
followers, as well as military officials and officials of the  
district administration. Those who prayed behind him were key  
military and civil officers—including Brigadier Tahir Mubeen, Syed  
Javed Hussain, the commissioner of Malakand region, Khushhal Khan,  
the DCO of Swat, Danishwar Khan, Swat’s DPO and the man in charge of  
Operation Rah-e-Haq. After the prayers Fazlullah gave an emotional  
and threatening speech which was heard with zeal and respect by all,  
including the military and civil officials, like obedient subjects.  
How funny is it that key state functionaries are praying behind the  
terrorist who killed soldiers of the Pakistani army, NWFP police  
officers and civilians of the Valley. During the telephone  
conversation with this writer Afzal Khan Lala said: ‘There cannot be  
two swords in one sheathe. There cannot be two kings of one land. In  
Swat one king is Fazlullah and the other the government.’ The conduct  
of the state functionaries in Swat showed who the real king of Swat is.

The people of Swat owe an explanation from the Pakistani army and the  
government of the NWFP. Would the army care to explain why its  
commander in Swat was offering namaz behind the terrorists who killed  
soldiers of the army and policemen? Would the ANP government care to  
explain why its senior-level government servants pray behind a  
terrorist who killed civilians in the very constituency that elected  
the ANP to power? It is also pertinent to mention that police in Swat  
have registered at least 60 cases related to suicide bombings,  
kidnappings, attacks on civilians, police and armed forces and damage  
to public and private property against Fazlullah.

Taliban have created their own income-generation sources in Swat.  
They have taken over the possession of the famous Mingora emerald  
mines. Mingora city is the district headquarters and a busy  
commercial centre of the valley. The Shamozai emeraled mine, some 25  
kilometres from Mingora and now the Gujaro Killay emerald mine in the  
adjacent district of Shangla are also under the control of the Swat  
Taliban. Mining is in progress in these mines and precious stones are  
auctioned in the premises of the Mingora mine every Sunday, where the  
dealers from all over Pakistan come for shopping. Federal and  
provincial governments have kept silent over this looting and plunder  
of State properties.

The Taliban are in league with the timber mafia. They are mercilessly  
cutting the forests of Malamjaba, Fatehpur, Miandam and Lalko. They  
also cut the fruit orchards of the landlord opponent to them. The  
fruit orchards in Barabandi, on the main road and near to army check  
post, have been cut down in broad daylight. Barabandi is some six  
kilometres from Mingora.

The Taliban have plundered the Training Institute for Hotel  
Management (Paitahm), a joint venture of Pakistan and Austria, and  
the Malam Jaba tourist resort. The Taliban have carried away its  
furniture, Computers and electric appliances, even its doors, windows  
and ventilators. They have established a warehouse in Barabandai  
where all these things are auctioned. The Taliban call it mal-e- 
ghanimat (war booty). This is another of the income-generation  
sources of the Taliban.

The Taliban militancy is spreading towards the lower part of  
Malakand. The Taliban have banned women from markets and bazaars in  
Batkhela and Thana towns in Malaknd. Thana’s Mina Bazaar, a famous  
market popular with women, has been razed to the ground.

There are several new training camps in Swat where the Taliban train  
teenage boys for militancy. The boys belong to the schools that have  
been destroyed by the Taliban. Lack of occupation and the jihadi  
preaching of the Taliban turn Swat’s young men to jihad. Their  
schools are destroyed. The Taliban have banned TV and music and  
playing of cricket. The young men have no activity and the Taliban  
constantly invite them to jihad. Hundreds of boys have joined the  
training camps, most of them without the permission of their parents.  
According to the Taliban’s version of jihad, parents’ permission is  
not needed at all. The helpless parents have nobody to ask for help  
in order to stop their children from joining the Taliban. The Taliban  
threatens parents who stop their children from joining the so-called  
jihad.

Some months down the road Pakistani right-wingers and so-called  
liberal leftists obsessed with anti-Americanism will say that the  
Taliban are popular in Swat and the proof is that their ranks have  
grown. But today no one is paying attention to the plight of the  
helpless parents who earnestly wish to stop their children joining  
the ranks of the Taliban but have no one in the entire Pakistan to  
help them.

The Swat Taliban sent 350 fighters to strengthen the Dir Taliban.  
People in Dir have made a local people’s army against the Taliban. To  
combat the local people’s army the Dir Taliban sent an SOS call to  
the Swat Taliban, who sent armed Taliban to Dir to slaughter the  
people of Dir.

More than a hundred Taliban crossed from Swat into the adjacent  
district of Bunair on April 5. Arms clashes have been reported  
between the militants and the armed lashkar. The army has vacated  
many check posts on the demand of the militants in Swat. The Taliban  
are not allowing the army to enter the areas that they were  
occupying. Commenting on this situation Afzal Khan Lala said: ‘The  
army will meet tough resistance and will suffer a great deal when  
retaking the area because the Taliban have strengthened their  
positions in Swat.’


o o o
  	
SWALLOWING UP PAKISTAN

by Zafar Hilaly
April 16, 2009

The surrender of Swat politically was as humiliating as that of Dhaka  
militarily. It doesn’t matter whether the Nizam-e-Adl regulation is  
good or bad, barbaric or Islamic. Or whether the court judgements  
will be super-quick or delayed. Or whether presiding officials are  
called ‘qazis’ or ‘justices’. What matters is that the agreement was  
extracted by force and specifically by the slaughter, amputations,  
abductions, rape and terrorising of innocent citizens.

Again it doesn’t matter that once upon a time the laws and practices  
under the Adl existed as part of the customary law of Swat. So did  
Sati in India; infanticide in Arabia and karo-kari (honour killings)  
in Pakistan. But they will never be enacted into law, notwithstanding  
demands of locals or a parliamentary resolution. But it is  
unconscionable that Swati women should be denied education and work  
when even the Prophet permitted it in Islam.

Muslim Khan, the Taliban spokesman, announced that there would be  
more executions, showing off a list of those the Taliban want to try  
under the new Adl courts. His list included senior government  
servants, a woman whose husband serves in the US military and many  
others. Already Swat is full of Taliban militants, who in due course  
will invite drone attacks. Yet, they’ll go about their deadly task.  
In which case the Adl will bring death and destruction rather than  
peace to Swat.

Within a day of the accord being announced, Khan said, contrary to  
what was agreed, that the Taliban in Swat would not surrender their  
weapons on the grounds that Islam permitted the carrying of weapons.  
The Awami National Party (ANP) spokesman explained that what Khan  
meant was that “personal weapons” would not be surrendered. Earlier,  
Khan had made the Taliban forsaking weapons conditional on “the  
enforcement of Sharia on the ground by the government” when no such  
condition was included in the infamous agreement with the ANP.

With the acceptance of the Adl demand, the fear that extremism may  
overwhelm Pakistan has been replaced by the certitude that it will.  
Lives are being planned accordingly and so too are investments.

In moments of national stress, the people look up to their leaders  
and in moments of peril to the armed forces. In Pakistan today  
neither is evident. Of the national leadership, including that of the  
Opposition, the less said the better. The stifling of debate on the  
legislation in Parliament notwithstanding the historic nature of the  
Adl law that virtually creates a State within a State; the decision  
to forgo secret balloting meant that many, perhaps the majority of  
the Members of National Assembly (MNAs) who opposed the law, were  
silenced. Or was it that terrified by the Taliban threat to kill  
those who did not support the legislation, the MNAs thought that  
discretion was the better part of valour and opted for a voice vote?

Of the Army, public expectations were high and hence the  
disappointment greater. If the truth be told, one of the largest  
standing armies in the world, with nuclear weapons to boot, is in  
headlong retreat. A rag-tag gang of killers has it on the run.

Pakistanis are waking up to the prospect that they have no one to  
defend them but themselves. As one recently retired major,  
discounting any opposition by the establishment to the seemingly  
irresistible advances of the Taliban, said: “Oil your guns, Sir, and  
keep the ammo handy. It is we, the public, who will have to do the  
fighting.”

It seems that the crucial psychological moment when a people and a  
society take destiny in their own hands is happening. By the time  
this process, whether forced on them by circumstances or undertaken  
by their own will, is completed, Pakistan would have changed, been  
irretrievably transformed. One can only pray that the metamorphosis  
that takes place will be for the better.

Zafar Hilaly is a former Pakistani Ambassador

Courtesy: The News


o o o

Daily Times
April 21, 2009

EDITORIAL: SUFI MUHAMMAD SHOWS TRUE COLOURS

Highly charged discussants who appeared on TV to defend the Nizam-e- 
Adl of Sufi Muhammad in Swat must have been dismayed by the TNSM  
boss’ latest statement in front of a mammoth gathering at Mingora:  
“The country’s superior courts are un-Islamic and cannot not hear  
appeals against decisions of the newly set up qazi courts”. He did  
not leave it at that and told his audience that there was no room for  
democracy in Islam and western democracy was a system of infidels  
that had divided the clerics and the people of Pakistan into factions.

Defying another benign interpretation of the “harmless” text of Nizam- 
e-Adl Law, he demanded that the government withdraw all judges from  
the Malakand-Kohistan jurisdiction and appoint qazis for courts at  
the district and tehsil levels. It goes without saying that he will  
have the power to approve or disapprove the qazis as and when they  
are appointed. This will be necessary to streamline the functioning  
of the qazi courts, venturing into areas of adjudication where the  
law is still uncodified. He has ended his statement with a warning  
that tells us where the authority lies: “The government will be  
responsible for all the consequences if our demands are not  
implemented”.

The Deobandi ulema have already signalled their acceptance of Sufi  
Muhammad’s Islam. One must however keep in mind that all madrassa- 
linked clergy has been opposed to the sharia enforced under the  
Constitution and has consistently insisted upon their own brand of  
law which functions without the “polluting” presence of such British  
Raj leftovers as the Penal Code. They also reject the fundamental  
principle of the Constitution that any law which is not repugnant to  
Islam should be acceptable as a part of the sharia system. Now, they  
will have to reconcile to the edict of Sufi Muhammad that democracy  
itself is repugnant to Islam.

If the religious parties — who not long ago functioned as MMA in  
national politics — choose to look into this edict closely, they may  
have much to adjust to. Maulana Samiul Haq of JUIS will have to  
review his observation that Nizam-e-Adl has been a fulfilment of his  
dreams. He will have to disband his party because taking part in  
politics under a democratic system is un-Islamic in the eyes of the  
Swat lawgiver. If the Islamic order of Sufi Muhammad rejects  
democracy it must, like Iran, reject all political parties, and the  
system of regular elections. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the most  
pragmatic cleric of them all, will have to pull out of the federal  
coalition too.

Sufi Muhammad is right in his own way when he says the jurisdiction  
of the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court must be ousted. The  
sharia his qazis are going to practise will not accept such “infidel”  
accretions as the Family Law Ordinance that still guides an important  
area of adjudication in Pakistan. The Sufi will be particularly  
interested in ousting them so that they do not intervene to cancel  
such punishments meted out by the qazis as the cutting of hands and  
stoning to death. Pakistani sharia has these punishments on the  
statute book but the superior judiciary has always held back their  
execution under the Islamic concept of istehsan (benign approach in  
light of circumstances).

The ANP will be upset too even if it doesn’t show it. The text of the  
Nizam-e-Adl law was quite harmless. It thought that the provincial  
judiciary will get to appoint the qazis and will then exercise some  
supervisory role in the setting up of Darul Qaza appellate courts.  
Its claim that the law will fulfil the long-standing desire of the  
Swat people to reintroduce the sharia of the Wali of Swat will be  
falsified soon after the courts start handing down punishments that  
the Wali’s judicial system never did. The Wali’s system was cheap and  
quick but it was not based on sharia as there were no hudood  
punishments under it.

An Al Qaeda website in February this year lauded a Somali court run  
by an armed militia called Shabab for sentencing to death a 55-year- 
old politician for being guilty of “showing sympathy for  
Christianity”. After being riddled with bullets, his corpse was  
thrown into the infidels’ cemetery. And Somalia today is counted as a  
“failed state”. *

_____


[4] INDIA'S ELECTIONS:

(i)

truthout.org, 16 April 2009

INDIA'S POLLS AND SOUTH ASIAN PEACE

by J. Sri Raman

Women line up to vote in India's national elections.

Women line up to vote in India's national elections. (Photo: Ruth  
Fremson / The New York Times)

     "Just as the winds of change have swept across the United  
States, I have no doubt that India too will witness change when the  
next parliamentary elections take place in a few months."

     Thus spoke, some time ago, Lal Krishna Advani, former deputy  
prime minister of India and the far right's candidate for the  
country's top political post. Seldom were more misleading words spoken.

     India, indeed, embarks on an extensive democratic exercise on  
April 16, 2009. The general election - in which some 714 million  
people are scheduled to cast their votes in 543 constituencies across  
35 States and smaller Union Territories in five phases until May 13 -  
cannot but have giant consequences. The epic event will lead to far  
more than the formation of a new Lok Sabha (the Lower House of  
India's Parliament) and a new government (by the first week of June).

     The election can unleash winds of change across not only India,  
but South Asia as well. But it can bring change of the kind Barack  
Obama represented for the American voter only if the people of India  
reject and rout Advani and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

     History will pronounce its verdict on whether Obama lives up to  
the voters' hopes. There never was any doubt, however, about the  
meaning of their mandate. Theirs was a vote against wars and one for  
an all-inclusive American identity. Advani, the "shadow prime  
minister" of the BJP, cannot cast himself as an Obama-like candidate  
of pro-changers merely through an imitative media and Internet campaign.

     A vote for Advani and his party will be one for wannabe  
representatives of a religious majority with an agenda of rabid anti- 
minorityism. It will also be a vote for reversal of the peace  
processes and an escalation of the role of militarism in regional  
relations. A pro-BJP and a pro-Advani vote will mean this all the  
more for the particularly vicious campaign the party has chosen to  
pursue this time. It has been searching for a single wining issue,  
but in vain. No major corruption scandal, no manmade mega calamity of  
the kind that can lead to a landslide victory for a wily opposition  
has come its way. The BJP has made up for this lack by manufacturing  
a series of state-level issues of religious communalism aimed at the  
two major minorities - Muslims and Christians.

     The party and the "'parivar" (as the far-right "family" calls  
itself ) have combined their anti-minority violence with hate  
campaigns aimed at polarizing voters on religious lines and  
harvesting a Hindu vote that has never really been cast on a national  
scale. The far right is hitting a new low this time with speeches  
frothing with hate.

     Young BJP leader Varun Gandhi (a nephew of former Prime Minister  
Rajiv Gandhi) set a trend with a videotaped and widely circulated  
tirade, where he is heard threatening violence against "circumcised"  
traitors (with few nonparty takers for the theory about a "fake  
tape"). Narendra Modi, who presided over the infamous Gujarat pogrom  
of 2002, has been carrying the same divisive message across different  
parts of the country as a rabble-rouser with an elevated party role.  
Advani himself continues to insist on "cultural nationalism" as the  
true import of the party's religious communalism, while strongly  
defending Varun and Modi against the diatribes of "pseudo-secularists."

     What is the likely fallout, in this context, of a far-right poll  
victory for South Asia?

     Pakistan-India relations should be the area of primary concern  
on this count. Islamabad has repeatedly expressed the hope that the  
strains between the nuclear-armed neighbors after the Mumbai  
terrorist strike of November 2008 will start easing after the Indian  
general elections are over. New Delhi, for its part, even while  
denying any electoral politics behind its current toughness towards  
Pakistan on terrorism, has suggested revival of the India-Pakistan  
peace process after reassuring post-Mumbai action by Islamabad.

     The BJP, however, is in no hurry to offer such a hope. In one of  
his recent election rallies, in fact, Modi has virtually threatened a  
Mumbai in Pakistan in India. "Response to terrorism should be given  
in the language of terrorism," he declared. "Pakistan should be made  
to understand in Pakistani language."

     The BJP has not mentioned India's other Muslim neighbor,  
Bangladesh, in connection with Mumbai, though Pakistan has done so.  
This, however, does not mean that the party has decided to pursue a  
policy of peace with Dhaka. The BJP has officially hailed the victory  
of Sheikh Hasina Wajed's Awami League in the Bangladesh general  
elections and her government's declared goal of a South Asian anti- 
terrorist task force. It has been left to Modi to revive talk of  
Bangladeshi "infiltrators" (never called either "migrants" or  
"refugees") as part of the party's election rhetoric.

     It is not only the minority in India's northeast, close to  
Bangladesh, that has been left quivering by Modi. Migrants in Mumbai  
and New Delhi, eking out a precarious existence in the most miserable  
of slums, also have reason to fear a recrudescence of attacks on them  
and their livelihood.

     Hearts are not going to leap up with joy at any prospect of a  
BJP victory in the Himalayan state of Nepal as well. The BJP has not  
for a moment cared to conceal its disapproval of the dethronement of  
a hated monarch there and the advent of a democracy under Maoist  
leadership. The party is particularly upset at the re-born nation  
ceasing to be a Hindu kingdom and turning into a secular republic.

     Alone among India's political parties, the BJP described Nepal's  
declaration as a "negative development." Senior BJP leader and former  
External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh waxed emotional when he said,  
"As an Indian and a believer in 'sanatan dharma' [Hinduism], I feel  
diminished." In the event of the BJP's victory in the elections, the  
rulers in Kathmandu cannot look forward to a smooth revision of an  
old, unpopular and unequal Indo-Nepal treaty, as proposed some months  
ago.

     Sri Lanka, another neighbor, cannot be sanguine about the  
prospect of a BJP return to power in New Delhi either. Officially, of  
course, the party takes the stand that it is for Colombo to deal with  
the terrorist problem of its own. Not many have noticed it at the  
national level, but the ethnic issue of the emerald island is  
becoming an electoral one for the party in one of the southern states.

     In Tamilnadu, where the voters have a sense of ethnic solidarity  
with the suffering Tamil minority of Sri Lanka, the BJP is trying to  
include the issue in its ever-bloating religious-communal baggage.  
Recently, a party unit in the state staged a protest over the  
killings of "Tamil Hindus" in Sri Lanka and urged the Centre to take  
into consideration the deaths of "Hindus along with the Tamils" in  
that country. A local BJP leader said, "The BJP is taking it up as a  
Hindu problem, to which the whole nation will respond. The Central  
Government [in New Delhi] is not responding because they think of it  
as a Tamil problem alone."

     What the people of India, including common Hindus, can do in  
order to promote peace within India and with its neighbors is clear  
indeed. They can vote for this change by voting against the BJP.

o o o

(ii)

The Guardian, Tuesday 21 April 2009

IN AN ELECTION FOR THE MASSES THE RICH WILL BE THE WINNERS

Identity, not economic need, is the prime mover as the great  
democracy of India goes to the polls. The affluent can rest easy

by  Praful Bidwai

India's general election, which began last week, is as full of  
variety and dauntingly complicated as the country itself. The polling  
spreads over five phases lasting a month, with 714 million voters  
using more than 828,000 polling booths and 1.3m voting machines,  
which demand 6.1 million civilian and security personnel.

This time the scale of the enterprise isn't matched by its political  
content, with no grand issues at stake, no major ideological  
contentions, and no fault lines. But there is unprecedented horse- 
trading and political promiscuity. This is in contrast to the last  
election, five years ago, which became a referendum on the communal  
politics of the rightwing Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata party -  
most horrifically expressed in Gujarat's anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 -  
and its claim that India was "shining". The BJP lost in 23 of 28 states.

In earlier elections too major issues were at stake - the self- 
assertion of previously voiceless underprivileged people, the decline  
of the Congress party, the rise of regional parties, and the  
mainstreaming of multiparty coalitions.

Today's electoral contention is multipolar, with two big blocs - the  
Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and the BJP-led National  
Democratic Alliance - and a still evolving Third Front comprising the  
left plus some motley regional formations. Then there are the as yet  
unaffiliated parties and individual entrepreneurs who would like to  
join a winning coalition when one emerges.

Policies and programmes aren't central to the campaign, which has  
been extraordinarily raucous and, in the first phase, violent. An  
example of abusive campaigning was the venomous attack on Muslims by  
Varun Gandhi, Nehru's great-grandson and the BJP's candidate in Uttar  
Pradesh. Gandhi threatened to chop up Muslims, and demanded that  
Muslim men be forcibly sterilised.

Logically, action against Gandhi should have come from India's  
autonomous election commission, which condemned his comments as  
pernicious and anti-democratic. But it cannot legally prevent Gandhi  
from contesting the election. It can only disqualify candidates after  
a court has sentenced them to two years or more. More than 3,000  
people have been disqualified, but none during actual campaigning.

This institutional weakness is only one peculiarity of India's  
democratic system. Another is the central role of identities in the  
election bazaar - ethnic, caste, linguistic, regional and religious -  
and, less so, economic. The BJP wants to exploit politicised  
religious identities. Mayawati, the leader of the Dalits (fomerly  
known as Untouchables), uses the caste as her fulcrum. Equally  
significant are other identities, including low and middle castes  
(OBCs - Other Backward Classes - in officialese), regional and sub- 
regional, tribes and clans.

In the Hindi-speaking "cow belt" caste finds expression in parties  
with strong OBC profiles. These parties spun off the Socialist  
movement, which itself coalesced in the Janata party, the Congress's  
nemesis, in the 1970s. The south's dominant parties are also based on  
regional identities. Relatively large umbrella parties like the  
Congress shelter disparate groups, without subsuming them under a  
caste-neutral category.

Strangely, identities based on economic status play a far smaller  
role. Party manifestos don't directly address questions about acute  
poverty, lack of healthcare, education, sanitation or malnutrition -  
which affect half of India's children. Most parties don't even make  
pledges on redistribution, preferring palliatives such as free  
electricity, subsidised food, and even free TV sets.

Remarkably no party, not even on the left, demands that the rich be  
taxed adequately to generate revenue that can finance public  
services. The affluent in India pay among the world's lowest tax  
rates, usually under 20%. Nor is there inheritance tax in this super- 
hierarchical society where privilege at birth guarantees lifelong  
status.

The result is a disjuncture between what has been called the natural  
centre of political gravity and its actual centre. The former lies  
firmly on the left of the spectrum, reflecting the reality of  
persistent deprivation, structurally rooted poverty, disgraceful  
income disparities, and lack of equitable growth. But, given the  
peculiarities of India's political culture, the actual centre is  
diffuse and close to the centre-right.

Neither 150,000 farmers' suicides over a decade nor even the loss of  
millions of jobs during the current economic slowdown have provoked a  
strong policy-oriented response from most parties. In part this is  
because free-market ideas remain fashionable within the elite, which  
may represent only a tenth of society, but is vastly influential in  
shaping policy discourse and media-led perceptions. It's also because  
of India's sheer size. Each directly elected MP represents almost 2  
million people. Small groups have virtually no voice in policy- 
making. Working people are poorly organised and hence feebly  
represented.

So don't expect this election to produce dramatic change - unless the  
BJP wins. If a Congress-led coalition or a regional parties-plus-left  
alliance wins, change will be modest.

• Praful Bidwai is the co-author of South Asia on a Short Fuse:  
Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament

_____


[5] India - The Daily Assault by the Communalist Forces

The Washington Post
April 19, 2009

MUSLIMS FIND BIAS GROWING IN MUMBAI'S RENTAL MARKET
Recent Increase Is Blamed On Terrorist Attacks Last Fall
	
by Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service

Mumbai -- The sunny apartment had everything Palvisha Aslam, 22, a  
Bollywood producer, wanted: a spacious bedroom and a kitchen that  
overlooked a garden in a middle-class neighborhood that was a short  
commute to Film City, where many of India's Hindi movies are shot.

She was about to sign the lease when the real estate broker noticed  
her surname. He didn't realize that she was Muslim, he said. Then he  
rejected her. It was just six weeks after the November Mumbai  
terrorist attacks and Indian Muslims were being viewed with suspicion  
across the country. He then showed her a grimy one-room tenement in a  
Muslim-dominated ghetto. She felt sick to her stomach as she watched  
the residents fight over water at a leaky tap in a dark alley.

"That night I cried a lot. I was still an outcast in my own country  
-- even as a secular Muslim with a well-paid job in Bollywood," said  
Aslam, who had similar experiences with five other brokers and three  
months later is still crashing on friends' sofas. "I'm an Indian. I  
love my country. Is it a crime now to be a Muslim in Mumbai?"

In the months after the brazen three-day Mumbai terrorist attacks,  
stories like Aslam's are common, even among some of the country's  
most beloved Bollywood actors, screenwriters and producers in India's  
most cosmopolitan city. The accusations of discrimination highlight  
the often simmering religious tensions in the world's biggest  
democracy, where Muslim celebrities can be feted on the red carpet  
one minute and locked out of quality housing the next.
ad_icon

The phenomenon has become known here as "renting while Muslim." It  
raises questions that go to the heart of India's identity as a  
secular democracy that is home to nearly every major religion on the  
planet. Although India has a Hindu majority, it also has 150 million  
Muslims, one of the largest Islamic communities in the world.

"The new generation wants a better India that isn't bogged down in  
religious strife," said Junaid Memon, 34, a Muslim Bollywood director  
who is trying to promote religious harmony through his films and his  
Facebook site. "We shouldn't be an India that ghettoizes all Muslims  
to apartments near a mosque. This is a real test for modern India."

With national elections across India that began Thursday and last a  
month, some Muslim activists and Bollywood film directors are raising  
the issue with political parties and trying to form a voting bloc.  
"This election, we have to talk about housing discrimination against  
Muslims," said Zulfi Sayed, a Muslim actor who is outspoken about the  
issue and is courting Hindus who agree with him. "In a shining India,  
this shouldn't be still such a common practice."

Muslims have long served as an important swing vote in India since  
Hindus are increasingly divided among nearly 200 regional parties.  
Historically, India's Congress party won elections with the help of  
the Muslim vote by running on a platform of promoting religious  
diversity. The opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party  
has, at times, used anti-Muslim sentiment to court votes while  
pledging to keep Hindu heritage alive.

India blames the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-i- 
Taiba for the November attack in which 10 gunmen left more than 170  
people dead, including 40 Indian Muslims.

Many Muslims here feared the attacks would unleash cycles of revenge  
killing of the sort that has been a recurring theme of India's modern  
history, from the violence of partition between India and Pakistan in  
1947 to the 1992 riots in Mumbai. In the days after November's Mumbai  
attacks, Muslims from all corners of society united, holding  
candlelight vigils with a message to protest terrorism and pledge  
loyalty to India. In the end, there was no communal violence.

But across the country, reports of housing discrimination have  
increased.

Afroz Alam Sahil, 21, a student activist at Jamia Millia Islamia  
College in New Delhi, said that more than a dozen students from  
states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar -- which have large Muslim  
populations -- have been unable to find housing since the Mumbai  
attacks.

"Some Muslim friends have dropped out of college because they have  
nowhere to stay," Sahil said. "There is intense suspicion. Sometimes  
I ask myself why I was born Muslim."

Rana Afroz, a Muslim editor with the newspaper the Hindu, is  
investigating the issue after spending three months unable to find a  
landlord willing to rent to her and her husband.

"It is a ridiculous that I have to prove to non-Muslims that I am not  
making bombs in my kitchen," she said. "Is this really the modern  
India I live in?"

In India, Muslims are often segregated, and they experience high  
poverty rates and low literacy. Although they make up nearly 14  
percent of India's population, they hold fewer than 5 percent of  
government posts and are just 4 percent of the student body in  
India's elite universities, according to a 2006 government report.

But there are few issues more emotional than housing, especially in  
Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, India's pulsating city of dreams  
where aspiring farmers and filmmakers come from across the country to  
seek fame and fortune.

"The ethos of Bombay is a city open to the world. The Muslims of this  
city feel that way, too. But the real question is why do we as Indian  
Muslims always have to be proving our loyalty?" asked Nawman Malik, a  
popular Bollywood producer who spent months searching for an  
apartment. "We have no problem with security screenings; in fact, we  
prefer it. But to reject us outright for our religion is harassment."

Mumbai has always had tensions over what are known here as  
"vegetarian buildings," where meat eaters are not allowed to live and  
are thus seen as devices to keep out Muslims and lower-caste Hindus.  
Those kinds of buildings have become more common in middle-class and  
posh neighborhoods as more merchants and industrialists from the  
neighboring state of Gujarat, where vegetarian Hinduism is the norm,  
migrate to India's richest city.
ad_icon

Vegetarian-building managers say they don't want the smell of meat in  
their hallways. But they often also explain their rules by saying  
they are worried about security and want like-minded residents to  
live together.

"Say you check one renter and they seem okay. But then they go to  
mosque and bring back their bearded friends and those friends are  
terrorists," said Raj Pathak, a vegetarian-building manager in  
downtown Mumbai. "Why do we have to live with such fears?"

Muslims, who have seen housing discrimination and the number of  
vegetarian buildings spike after every terrorist attack, see the  
issue as blatant discrimination.

"Everyone knows the vegetarian-only restriction is code language for  
'No Muslims,' " said Naved Khan, a Muslim real estate broker who is  
trying to help Bollywood's Muslims find housing.

Muslim technicians, editors, cinematographers and writers are the  
backbone of the film industry. Many of the country's top film stars  
are also Muslim, including mega Hindi hero Shahrukh Khan, known as  
King Khan. On a recent afternoon, Aslam, the producer, hung out at a  
cafe, as she sometimes does so she doesn't get on the nerves of those  
she is staying with. She wore jeans and a hooded sweat shirt. Her  
khaki side bag was festooned with countercultural buttons. Until  
January, she was living with a Hindu roommate. Then their lease  
ended. Her roommate was getting married.

"So I thought I would get my own place as a successful adult," said  
Aslam, who had come to Mumbai from Kolkata with dreams of landing a  
Bollywood job. "My mom was really proud of me. Now she's really upset."

A broker recently showed her a house in a working-class neighborhood.  
"It looked haunted. But I was denied even that," she said.

Another broker gave her advice: "Madam, live with a Hindu roommate.  
Only then will you get a flat."

Special correspondent Ria Sen in New Delhi contributed to this report.


o o o

(ii)

Forgetting slaughter-Harsh Mander/Barefoot-The Sunday Magazine/The  
HIndu-March 22, 2009
				
FORGETTING SLAUGHTER

by Harsh Mander

Seven years after the engineered communal hate and carnage, Gujarat  
remains a bitterly divided society…

Only when there is remorse and healing, ‘they’ and ‘we’ will together  
be able to authentically ‘move on’.

Seven years have lapsed since blood spilt on streets across Gujarat  
and fires rose to the skies, in a terrifying inferno of engineered  
communal hate. Wounds refuse to heal, people of diverse faiths live  
side by side or in segregated ghettoes but in a n uneasy, brittle  
truce, without the restoration of genuine trust and normal social and  
economic intercourse. The State remains openly hostile to a segment  
of citizens only because they belong to a different faith from the  
majority. Muslim youth are picked up almost randomly on charges of  
terrorism, and their deaths in so-called “encounters” or extra- 
judicial killings are explained away by State authorities with rarely  
even the façade of any credible evidence. An ominous subtext  
characterises re-engineered social relations: new realities of  
settled hate, settled fear and settled despair in all villages and  
urban settlements that were torn apart by the gruesome mass violence  
of 2002. Gujarat continues to be a society bitterly, and some now  
grimly fear, permanently divided.

But, at the same time, many senior BJP leaders and police officers  
are on the run, pursued by a special investigation team appointed by  
the highest court of the land. It is often suggested that there is a  
self-evident conflict or disconnect, some would suggest even a  
contradiction, between the goals of justice (particularly legal  
justice or justice delivered through the formal and impersonal  
instruments of the modern State), and reconciliation. In the  
aftermath of Gujarat 2002, there are many who argue that the efforts  
of human rights groups (including those that I am engaged with) which  
strive to secure justice for the survivors, are actually blocking  
efforts at reconciliation, or the spaces for forgiveness. Such  
enterprises are seen to be akin to scraping the scab off old wounds  
and not letting these heal naturally: they are seen as not letting  
the survivors forget their suffering. Those opposed to such efforts  
dispute: “What is achieved by reviving memories of what is done and  
over with? We should let the people affected by the admittedly  
unfortunate mass violence move on, without being constantly pulled  
into the quicksand of a painful past”.

What cost reconciliation?

It is significant that rarely do such suggestions emanate from those  
affected by the violence themselves, or from those who belong to the  
Muslim community and suffer intensely even if only vicariously from  
the continuing injustice and persisting gruesome outrages like mass  
graves and evidence of killings in false encounters in Gujarat. There  
are some among the affected communities in Gujarat — usually traders  
or better-off victims and mostly men — who choose not to fight for  
legal justice, but this is not because they do not value justice or  
because they suffer no anguish for the injustice and betrayal of the  
past, but as a practical act of individual survival by surrender and  
compromise, in a climate of persisting hate and fear. The suggestions  
for hastily closing the past come mostly from people of the majority  
community who have not suffered directly or even vicariously the  
torment of the survivors of the carnage, or from persisting  
insecurity and contested citizenship rights, or indeed from the  
impact of a drift into a re-moulded majoritarian social and political  
order.

Of course as a nation and as a people, we need to move on, pushing  
decisively behind us chapters of collective shame and tribulation,  
such as what unfolded in the killing fields of Gujarat in 2002. But  
the decision to impatiently surge ahead without looking back cannot  
justly be imposed on women and men, boys and girls who live with not  
only with the memories of the trauma of unspeakable loss and  
violence, but the daily lived realities of continued persecution,  
boycott, expulsion, fear and hate. They should not feel coerced into  
a spurious amnesia, imposed on them by those who did not suffer and  
by their absence of remorse and compassion. It is only when the  
survivors are able to deal voluntarily with this painful past, and  
when they are assisted to rebuild their homes, livelihoods and social  
relations, that they will be able to look to the future with optimism  
and confidence. Traditions like the annual ritualised mourning of  
Moharram or the commemoration of the Holocaust in gut-wrenching  
museums acknowledge the importance of remembering, even while  
forgiving and letting go. Only when there is remorse and healing, it  
is possible that hand in hand, “they” and “we” will together be able  
to authentically “move on”. Else, as philosopher Santayana wisely  
prophesised, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to  
repeat it”. We have repeated the history of communal violence and  
pogroms too many times already in India to risk its further  
repetition through forgetting the unhealed wounds of our recent history.

Imbalances

A survivor of apartheid in South Africa famously and tellingly  
reminded members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the  
great imbalances of power that are implicit in alternate notions of  
reconciliation and justice. “Reconciliation is only in the vocabulary  
of those who can afford it”, he agonisingly countered them. “It is  
non-existent to a person whose self-respect has been stripped away  
and poverty is a festering wound that consumes his soul”. I have  
found nothing in what members of the Commission said that adequately  
responds to his anguished challenge.

Those who oppose post-violence human rights struggles also often  
suggest that efforts for legal justice undertaken long after visible  
violence has ceased on the streets, only revive enmities and cause  
further unrest and tensions rather than encourage peace. These  
threaten the fragile peace that is constructed with so much  
difficulty in post-conflict societies. This argument reminds me again  
and again of beliefs that a family in which a woman accepts repeated  
violence in the hands of her spouse without complaint or resistance  
is a peaceful one, and a household in which she is encouraged or  
supported (or instigated?) to be emboldened enough to speak out is  
one in which the peace and sanctity of family life is being  
imperilled and destroyed.

Indeed the pleas for shrouding throbbing pasts in suffocating silence  
are particularly unjust for women survivors of communal violence.  
There are, even in normal times, enormous conspiracies of silence  
that surround violence against women, whether in homes, workplaces or  
on the streets. In all communal squalls, the bodies of women are  
specially targeted. Women’s bodies are refashioned as the property of  
the hated “other” and as symbols of their honour, therefore attacks  
on these aim to humiliate the men who “own” them and help break their  
spirit. Imposed consent for silence as forms of spurious  
reconciliation are likely to muffle the unhealed agony of women  
survivors most of all. It is hard for me as a man to even speculate  
what reconciliation means to women who survived rape. And even more  
so to those who continue to face the torments of their rapists, and  
the shame of surviving rape in their own communities. Feminist  
observers perceive a change in “rape cultures” in Gujarat following  
the brutally gendered violence of 2002, even in relation to Hindu  
women, and the increased trafficking of women and girls in marriage  
and on the sex market. In the painful stoic or muffled silences of  
the survivors, the questions still shout to be heard about whether  
there is an impossibility of reconciliation for survivors of rape,  
especially when the rapists and those who instigated them walk free?  
Who can speak to them of finding spaces in their hearts for  
forgiveness, and who indeed should? Do such paths exist at all for  
the women who carry burdens of the pain and humiliation such as of  
2002? If such paths exist, they must I believe traverse also the  
daunting treacherous journey of justice.

Persistent hate

In my interviews with hundreds of survivors of the Gujarat carnage of  
2002, I learnt that the families of most had not suffered for the  
first time in the carnage of 2002. Each had many agonising tales of  
losing loved ones, and the looting and torching of their homes in  
several successive riots. In fact, the saga of their lives seemed  
like the spaces between various communal riots, often starting with  
the cataclysmic upheavals of 1947. These spaces were almost stolen,  
tragically fragile, insecure interludes during which they struggled  
to lead full and happy lives before being overtaken and destroyed  
once again by the persistent politics of hate. Whenever they reflect  
on and talk of their futures, riots continue to dominate their  
mindscape. They speak repeatedly of their plans of what they would do  
for the protection of their families, not if a communal riot breaks  
out again, but when it does. (Their plans were usually of finding  
safety by shifting to Muslim ghettoes and sometimes by arming  
themselves and very occasionally in fantasies of bloody retributive  
violence). On such tragic and hopeless certainties of recurrence of  
the trauma of periodically repeated profound loss and suffering in  
violent communal upheavals, no enduring peaceful future can be built.  
This, to my understanding is crucial, that all notions of authentic  
reconciliation relate to a situation when the moment of atrocity can  
be relegated to a past. But for the Gujarat survivors, the  
persecution is repetitive: what can then be reconciliation in these  
situations of sustained boycott, segregation and hate?

In these circumstances, what are the ethical ways of remembering the  
past in order to forge a better, kinder, fairer shared future?


o o o

(iii)

http://www.anhadin.net/article76.html

ATTACK ON ANHAD AND AMAN SAMUDAYA ACTIVISTS IN GANDHINAGAR, GUJARAT

20 April 2009

Anhad and Aman Samudaya activists were brutally beaten up today by  
BJP/ VHP members at two different locations in Shastri Nagar,  
Naranpura (Gandhi Nagar Constituency) while they were doing a door to  
door campaign.

The activists were surrounded near Pallav 4 Rasta and in Arpit  
Restaurant in Shastri Nagar abused, women activists were pushed  
around . Sachin Pandya and Robin Soni were kicked, punched and beaten  
with sticks. Using extremely filthy language the hoodlums threatened  
the activists never to enter that area again or face dire consequences.

All this happened around 1:00 pm. A man on black activa having BJP  
sticker on it, came and asked them to stop campaigning in the area.  
He made several calls and soon sachin and robin were surrounded by  
around 20-25hoodlums, who started beating them . Arpit restaurant  
where volunteers of Anhad & Aman Samuday were sitting to have lunch  
were also surrounded by BJP activists came on bikes and car (some of  
the nos. of cars and bikes are – GJ 1 FM 5547, GJ 1 DF 7347, GJ 1 EL  
2080, GJ 1 6931, GJ 1 FM 2993). In the mean time a lady named Geeta  
and a man named Gautam, both BJP activist came in the fore front  
started abusing with fowl language. Rasheeda and Shivani Singh were  
pshed around and manhandled by the BJP hoodlums. They also ruffed up  
other activists.

The BJP goons took away all the campaign material.

We have complaind to the election commssion. We are in the process of  
filing a complaint with the Police Commissioner.

Anhad demands an immediate arrest of the hoodlums who attacked the  
activists.

This has happened in the ’PM in waiting’ Advani’s constituency. Is  
this going to happen all over India if he becomes the PM?

o o o

(iv)

The Telegraph
21 April 2009

Editorial

  SHOCK VALUE

It is alarming that crucial decisions regarding something as  
fundamental to human health and happiness as sexuality are taken by  
leaders of the nation whose thinking on the matter is a dangerous mix  
of bigotry and ignorance. The Committee on Petitions has recommended  
that there should be no sex education in schools since this promotes  
promiscuity and since India’s “social and cultural ethos are (sic)  
such that sex education has absolutely no place in it”. Headed by the  
Bharatiya Janata Party’s Venkaiah Naidu, the committee comprises nine  
Rajya Sabha members from the entire party-political spectrum, and has  
only one woman in it. The committee’s outrage is directed against the  
human resource development ministry’s Adult Education Programme.  
Launched in 2005 and backed by the National AIDS Control  
Organization, the AEP had focused on safer sex, together with  
adolescent physical and mental development, for the 14-18 age group.  
Not only was the committee “highly embarrassed” by the HRD ministry’s  
PowerPoint presentation on this curriculum, but it has also  
recommended for this age group an alternative curriculum based on the  
lives and teachings of saints, spiritual leaders, freedom fighters  
and national heroes. This would endorse “national ideals and values”  
and “neutralize the impact of cultural invasion from various sources”  
with the help of naturopathy, Ayurveda, Unani, yoga and, of course,  
moral education.

Such a combination of conservatism, chauvinism and sheer  
irrationality is disconcerting for several reasons. First, emanating  
from the highest levels of the polity and uniting a diversity of  
political positions, it shows the extent to which the lives and  
bodies of some of the most vulnerable members of society remain in  
the control of the limited understanding and unlimited powers of a  
few. A blinkered and almost mythological understanding of the lives  
and sexuality of growing children, generalized to the point of  
absurdity, underpins such a mindset. The children themselves, as well  
as the adults who are responsible for their well-being, remain  
entirely deprived of agency in the making of these decisions and  
policies.

Finally, the assumptions on which this mindset is founded, and the  
terms in which they are publicly expressed, are equally frightening.  
The committee upholds that pre-marital sexual exploration, together  
with sex outside marriage, is “immoral, unethical and unhealthy”;  
consensual sex before the age of 16 “amounts to rape”; sex education  
promotes abusive behaviour in school, among students as well as  
between teacher and student, and is detrimental to the stability of  
the family. Perhaps the only hope lies in the fact that these are  
just nine shockingly regressive individuals trying to control the  
robustness of millions of sensible Indians.

o o o

(v)

Outlook Magazine, April 27, 2009

ENTER, HINDU AYATOLLAHS
Advani's missive to sadhus portends a turn towards darkness .........

by Neelabh Mishra

Be prepared to make some room for armchair economists. If elected  
prime minister, L.K. Advani of the God's Own Party might like to  
consult ash-smeared Naga Sadhus on how to fight the recession. And in  
Advani's promised dispensation, the Shankaracharya's views on India's  
foreign policy and strategic options would vie for the government's  
attention with the advice of experts in these areas. Please do not  
take this as the usual liberal hyperbole about the swinging Hindutva  
bluster of the prime ministerial aspirant and his BJP.

This is because Advani has written to over 1,000 religious leaders,  
most of them Vishwa Hindu Parishad-affiliated sadhus/sants, earnestly  
assuring them: "It will be my endeavour (as prime minister) to seek  
on a regular basis the guidance of spiritual leaders of all  
denominations on major challenges and issues facing the nation. For  
this, we shall evolve a suitable consultative mechanism."

In thus seeking the 'support' of assorted godmen for his campaign,  
Advani has gone beyond just vague assurances of informal  
consultations with the sadhu samaj, as some apologetic BJP  
functionaries have tried to spin it so as not to alarm middle-class  
opinions. In promising to "evolve a suitable consultative mechanism",  
Advani has proposed an institutional arrangement, something like the  
National Advisory Council set up by the UPA government under the  
chairpersonship of Sonia Gandhi and later abandoned in the wake of  
the Office of Profit controversy.

It is a pity that the party that had castigated a consultative  
mechanism to seek expert non-governmental advice from qualified  
activists and academics—some with long records of engagement with  
development issues—has no qualms in proposing a parody like this.  
Religious leaders, whatever else their accomplishments, simply have  
unproven abilities on these complex issues. It is impossible to  
divine who Advani is fooling—the VHP's sadhu-sant following, gullible  
and devout voters or himself. The Congress and the Left have of  
course criticised Advani's letter on the ground that it violates the  
secular character of the Constitution by brazenly mixing religion and  
politics.

While the criticism is valid, the BJP would hope to wish it away by  
showing the disconnect between the secularists and a generally  
religious India and exploit the gap to its political advantage. But  
it forgets simple truths: even a deeply devout farmer does not  
consult a priest or sadhu on which crops to sow or which fertiliser  
or pesticide to use. And while an industrialist might consult an  
astrologer for an auspicious date for launching a new venture, he or  
she would never dream of soliciting advice on running the ebusiness  
from the family priest. They necessarily operate on a clean  
separation of categories. Thus even the average, religious Indian  
voter might regard the BJP leader's proposal with some ridicule. It  
was not for nothing that the most genuinely religious of Indian  
leaders, Gandhi, had said he would have insisted on a secular  
constitution even if there had been no religious minorities left in  
the country.

As the election campaign has progressed, the BJP has increasingly  
raised its Hindutva pitch, probably trying to humour its core RSS  
support base. It defended the indefensible misdemeanour of Varun  
Gandhi, and the party manifesto resurrected core Hindutva issues like  
the Ram temple, Article 370 and the Ram Setu, which were earlier  
denied prominence for fear of alienating the BJP's allies in the NDA.

While issues perpetuating a sectarian schism in the polity along  
Hindu-Muslim or Hindu-Christian lines have been central to the BJP- 
RSS ideology of Hindu nationhood, its use of religious symbolism for  
political mobilisation was not unregulated.The RSS-BJP kept religious  
and temporal issues under strict segregation: for instance,  
corruption or national security would never be melded with, say, the  
Ram temple. These would be used as separate nodes of mobilisation  
altogether. But these days, the BJP seeks religious endorsement for  
temporal issues. For instance, Baba Ramdev backed Advani's call to  
retrieve Indian black money from Swiss banks, and religious leaders  
can hope to be regularly consulted on other important issues. The  
BJP's old goal of a sectarian nationhood has taken on a pronounced  
theocratic hue, a retrogressive step from relative modernity to  
medievalism.

While blatantly fortifying its extreme positions, the BJP no longer  
cares about losing its allies or attracting new ones who lie outside  
the Hindutva fold. Is it a disdain born of supreme political  
confidence? Or a sense of deep resignation? In its attempted Hanuman  
leap of Hindutva, the BJP should mind the political chasm before it.

_____


[6]   TRIBUTES TO AHILYA RANGNEKAR (1922-2009)

Comrade Ahilya Rangnekar
http://cpim.org/statement/2009/04192008-ahilya.htm

Ahilya Rangnekar fought for people’s causes
http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/20/stories/2009042059241000.htm

Pioneer in democratic women’s movement
http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/20/stories/2009042059151000.htm

_____


[7] Announcements:

(i)

The Arts Council of  Pakistan, Karachi cordially invites you to  
attend a book launch of
ROOTS OF TOLERANCE IN PAKISTAN AND INDIA
Speakers: Dr Jaffer Ahmad, Chairperson Pakistan Studies Dept. Karachi  
University
Mr. Ghazi Salauddin, Journalist, author, media personality
Mr. Owais Tauheed, Journalist, Media Activist
Dr. Fouzia Saeed, social activist, author of Taboo
                                                                         
                  Author:  Dr. Kamran Ahmad

                                                       Time:  7pm
Date:  24th April, 2009
Venue:  The Arts Council of Pakistan
M.R. Kiyani Road , Karachi

  o o o

(ii)

VIKALP @ PRITHVI

Is a collaboration between Vikalp: Films for Freedom and Prithvi  
Theatre. We bring you a curated selection of short films, animation  
films and documentary films on the last Monday of every month at  
Prithvi House.

  ON MONDAY, 27th APRIL, 2009

Starting 7 PM

Film screening followed by a session with filmmakers Kavita Pai and  
Hansa Thapliyal

Yi As Akh Padshah Bai
(There was a Queen…)

105  minutes, Documentary film
  In Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi and English with English subtitles

Credits

Directed by Kavita Pai and Hansa Thapliyal |Produced by Other Media   
Communications | Cameraperson Ranu Ghosh |Sound by Gissy Michael |  
Editing by Gouri Patwardhan | Music by Manish J. Tipu

Directors’ Note

"Give us guns and we'll play our role!"
This is what Farhana had to say, less than a week after her sister  
was buried.

Farhana's sister Shahnaza, and her friend, Ulfat, victims of  
'crossfire', were barely seventeen when they died - as old as the  
tehreek that exploded into existence in 1989, shattering forever the  
peace of the Valley, turning it into one of the most critical  
conflict zones in the world.

Over these eighteen years, flashes of intensified conflict and bouts  
of negotiations have followed one another with monotonous regularity  
in Kashmir. Newspapers and television channels manufacture  
predictable binary images of conflict – angry men and weeping women,  
misguided innocents and fundamentalist separatists, victims and  
aggressors. Over and above these is the image that erases all  
differences – the Kashmiri as terrorist.

When we set out to make a film on peace initiatives by women in  
Kashmir, the question uppermost in our minds was, do women really  
want peace, as opposed to men? At what cost? Can 'peace' still the  
turmoil at the heart of every Kashmiri? What are the conditions that  
beget violence, that drive young men to take to the gun? What then,  
are the conditions for peace?

It felt strange to speak to women, only women, ignoring the other  
half. So we spoke to a few men – one a former militant, another who  
had sent his son for training across the border with his blessings, a  
third, a school master, who lost his son in a gun battle only to  
realize he was a militant, a fourth, a school boy, whose brother was  
killed in crossfire – we spoke to men and realized that while every  
story in Kashmir has the power to shock and move, while the stories  
of both men and women were compelling in their honesty, in their  
rage, in their grief, in their helplessness,  in their contempt, in  
their fierce refusal to forget; the women's stories are markedly  
different in their determination to survive, to nurture.

It is through these women – proud, strong, with an undying zest for  
life – that we try to explore what peace means and how it can come  
about in Kashmir.

* No Entry Fee. Limited Seating.
* Prithvi House, Opposite Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu, Mumbai.
* The registration desk will be open between 6 pm to 6:45 pm only.


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

South Asia Citizens Wire
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.