SACW | July 15-17, 2009 / Military NGO complex / Child Soldiers / Religion and State / KK Aziz / Siachen / The Far Right Connections / Everyday Patriarchy / Iran crackdown
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Thu Jul 16 21:13:10 CDT 2009
South Asia Citizens Wire | July 15-17, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2645 -
Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net
[ SACW Dispatches for 2009-2010 are dedicated to the memory of Dr.
Sudarshan Punhani (1933-2009), husband of Professor Tamara Zakon and
a comrade and friend of Daya Varma ]
____
[1] The Afghanistan industry (Nushin Arbabzadah)
[2] Child soldiers in Sri Lanka: Retraining Tiger cubs (The Economist)
[3] Bangladesh: Going back on their word (Jalal Alamgir)
[4] Pakistan: Citizens Letter / Petition Seeking Separation of
Religion and State
- Tariq Ali on the North-West Frontier
- Historian K.K. Aziz dead (Dawn)
[5] Pakistan and India: Dialogue Among Deaf
- Siachen: time for settlement (Brian Cloughley)
- Making of sideshow artists (Jawed Naqvi)
[6] India / Europe: The Far Right Connections
- Hindu Triumphalism and the Clash of Civilisations (Meera Nanda)
[7] India: Dousing Tribal Flare-ups In Assam’s Hills (Ratna Bharali
Talukdar)
[8] Everyday Patriarchy:
- Nepal widows dismiss marriage incentive (Joanna Jolly)
- The Evil That Men Do (Ajit Sahi)
- Tried And Tested (Editorial, The Telegraph)
- Mama’s labour: virgin tests - MP govt move to check
‘fake’ kanyadan sparks anger (The Telegraph)
- Safe Within Nine Yards Of Cloth (Adheesha Sarkar)
[9] India's Dalit Elites and Class: The illusion of images (S Anand)
[10] Miscellanea:
- Joint Petition Against a new wave of crackdown and
oppression in Iran
- Text of a US federal appeals court decision barring Bible
distribution in a Missouri public school district
_____
[1] Afghanistan:
The Guardian
16 July 2009
THE AFGHANISTAN INDUSTRY
For ordinary Afghans, the west is part of the machinery of corruption
that thrives on the conflict
by Nushin Arbabzadah
When the Taliban arrived in a village in Farah in May, the village
elders approached them and asked them to leave. They told the Taliban
that if the fighters stayed, the foreigners would bomb their village.
The Taliban said: "We are fighting and dying for Islam and so should
you. Why should you be spared death? Is your blood redder than ours?"
And so the foreign planes came, dropped their bombs and, according to
locals, killed more than 100 civilians. "What could we do?" said a
local man to the BBC's Afghan service. "The Talibs were young men
with guns and grenades. We had no weapons to protect ourselves and no
young men to help us."
But the western intervention in Afghanistan has long ceased to be
about improving the lives of civilians. It has become a separate
entity, with its own economy, creating lucrative jobs – for those
who knew how to exploit the situation. Not all Afghans have come out
of this war poor and destitute; not all foreigners are dying there.
Unemployed expatriate Afghans from the west have returned to the
country, setting up NGOs and flying around their relatives – who
have become their employees – in helicopters with foreign aid money.
After all, 80% of foreign aid is channelled through NGOs. Reckless
Afghans with expertise for violence have been recruited to provide
security for foreign special forces.
A cabal of discredited Afghan warlords accused of war crimes and
ousted by the Taliban allied themselves with the foreign troops
against the Taliban, and were co-opted into the system, becoming
ministers, MPs and governors. To Afghans they remained just that –
warlords – albeit warlords with new "democratic" titles and western
friends. The 2001 intervention was a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 done
on the cheap. As local wisdom has it, there are three types of people
in Afghanistan today: al-Qaida (the fighters), al-faida (the
enriched) and al-gaida (the fucked). Most Afghans belong to the third
category.
From the perspective of Afghans on the ground, the west is part of
this machinery of corruption which thrives on the continuation of the
current situation. If the Afghan leadership is corrupt and
incompetent, so is the western leadership involved in Afghanistan. If
Afghan warlords ignore international standards of warfare and engage
in torture, so does the US in Bagram and Guantánamo. If the Taliban
endanger civilian lives by suicide attacks, so do the foreign troops
by carrying out reckless air strikes. The lines between the bad and
the good, the problem and the problem-solvers, have become blurred.
Moreover, the problem-solvers have themselves become part of the
problem; they are costly but ineffective. Every little project, from
digging a well to conducting a research project, involves hiring an
entourage of armed security guards.
Far from disarming the many Afghan militia gangs, the current
intervention has created a new set of armed men who are highly
trained and well-equipped. Their daytime job is to protect foreign
problem-solvers. But in their spare time, they run their own criminal
businesses, robbing and intimidating locals and recently, even
killing a government official.
The local population are capable of doing many of the projects for a
fraction of the cost (and without a single bodyguard) but they are
not being employed. The civilian and military problem-solvers are cut
off from the population they are supposed to help. They talk to each
other but not to Afghans, unless the Afghans in question are part of
the English-speaking elite. In the words of an MEP who I met
recently, "We have good ideas; the only thing missing is the Afghans
themselves."
From a local perspective, Afghanistan has become a laboratory where
a disparate set of international military and civilian problem-
solvers and their Afghan colleagues are trying out and dropping
various ideas and making a comfortable living out of it. Not everyone
is starving in Afghanistan. The al-faida are doing well.
It took Afghans many years to openly criticise western involvement in
the country. The fear that criticism might dishearten the
international well-wishers was a powerful incentive to remain silent,
and those who spoke out, like presidential candidate Ramazan
Bashardost, were punished for daring to antagonise westerners.
So the conspiracy to whitewash problems carried on until the truth
came home in coffins. The Afghan population shares the British
people's anger and bewilderment at the situation. With every dead
foreign soldier, the chances increase of the west abandoning
Afghanistan. Afghans are aware of this but what can they do? After
all, beggars have no choice.
When foreign troops arrived in Afghanistan, there was little concern
for Afghan public opinion. Since then, they've had seven years to win
a war against a once-discredited Taliban. Seven years to repair the
Kajaki hydroelectric dam and win the hearts and minds of the restive,
opium-producing south. Seven years to disarm the militias and bring
war criminals to justice, as promised in 2001. Now that the seven-
year itch has set in, they might decide to leave just as they
arrived, in a hurry and with no more concern for Afghan opinion than
they came with.
_____
[2] Sri Lanka:
The Economist
CHILD SOLDIERS IN SRI LANKA: RETRAINING TIGER CUBS
July 16th 2009 | Ambepussa And Colombo
Is as hard as it sounds
AFP In Ambepussa, child soldiers struggle to be children again
FAIRNESS cream; scented hair oil; talcum powder: these are things
that female ex-combatants of the Tamil Tiger rebels, many forcibly
recruited as children, hesitantly ask for when placed in
rehabilitation. Thousands of exhausted rebels surrendered in the
weeks before the government declared its victory over the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May. The army says more than 9,000
are now in custody. Some face prosecution; more are being absorbed
into the army; others will be sent into rehabilitation as soon as
space becomes available in these overburdened camps. But to judge by
the stories of the former child soldiers, turning their lives around
will be a lot harder than providing some of the frills denied them
during their years of warfare.
The Protection and Rehabilitation Centre in Ambepussa is run by the
Bureau of the Commissioner-General of Rehabilitation. To reach it,
you take a narrow lane that snakes through paddy fields and thick
woods, climbs a steep incline and stops at a neat collection of
single-storey buildings. As the LTTE fought its final, doomed battle,
112 ex-fighters arrived there, fresh from combat, aged between 14 and
29.
Tall and thin, a young man with fragile features is summoned by army
officers. Ganeshalingam Thayalan speaks softly, uncertainly. He has
just turned 18. Today, he pores over maths and chemistry books to
pass his advanced-level examination and enter university. There is no
hint from his outward appearance that Thayalan was a trained suicide
bomber
He was just two when his parents died in an air-force bombing and he
was sent to Sencholai, a rebel “orphanage” in the Kilinochchi
district. Every school holiday, he was trained in the use of weapons,
psychological warfare, combat skills, and other military activity.
After his ordinary-level exams he was taught to be a human bomb. The
Tigers showed him how to wear and activate a suicide jacket. It was a
compulsory lesson: other friends from Sencholai also had to learn it.
The LTTE subsequently deployed Thayalan in Vavuniya and ordered him
to continue studying until they found him a target. He was living
with a friend when, acting on a tip-off, the police arrested him.
Would he have exploded himself when told to? Yes, he says, because
the Tigers were watching. If he had disobeyed, they would have killed
him anyway.
The rehabilitation centre provides children and adults with
vocational training, and education in maths, computer science and
languages, including Sinhalese, the tongue of the majority Sinhala
Buddhists they had once been coached to kill. There are cultural and
sporting events and occasional field trips. But the children are
chaperoned on all excursions and, while parents and relatives may
visit, the centre is not open to outsiders. In October 2000 a Sinhala
mob attacked a similar venture in Bindunuwewa and killed 26 people.
Hiranthi Wijemanne, a consultant to the commissioner general, says
that most of the inmates want to leave the country after
rehabilitation. Social stigma will not permit them to return to their
own villages or to mingle with the population in the Sinhala-
dominated south. More than 50 reformed fighters have already gone
abroad.
James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef in Sri Lanka, calls the centre a
genuine attempt to help child soldiers learn how to be civilians.
From 2003 to the end of 2008, Unicef recorded more than 6,000 cases
of child recruitment by the rebels but the number is thought to have
soared in the final months of the war. To cope with the influx, the
bureau is expanding its centres in the northern Jaffna peninsula and
Welikanda in the east. It is also building a new facility in
Vavuniya, where many ex-combatants now while away the time, awaiting
their turn.
_____
[3] Bangladesh:
The Daily Star
July 11, 2009
GOING BACK ON THEIR WORD
by Jalal Alamgir
BANGLADESH'S democratic deficit looms large at the local level.
Elected union and upazila councils have little power against top-down
political and fiscal decisions. In its election manifesto, Awami
League wisely promised to empower local-level decision-making. But
unwisely, party MPs have moved away from empowering local communities
either financially or politically.
The recent budget allocates just over a fifth of ADP to local
government, which is a small proportion compared to most other
countries of South Asia. Both union parishad chairmen and upazila
chairmen have justifiably asked for a larger share.
But allocation is only part of empowerment; the crucial element is
the ability to spend it independently. Under current convention, most
local government money will be spent according to the wishes of
ministries and MPs. The World Bank notes correctly that Bangladesh
remains "one of the most centralised large countries in the world."
There is strong evidence from around the world that devolution and
decentralisation lead to better government performance. For poverty
alleviation in particular, which is the aim of the ADP, participatory
decision-making has a more positive impact than do centralised
approaches. Local democracy matters, greatly. But when it comes to
decentralisation, Bangladesh repeatedly ends up preferring, for
mainly political reasons to strengthen local government, but not
local democracy.
In India, which is a federal system to begin with, constitutional
amendments in 1993 further empowered local democracy, especially
grassroots level panchayats. The panchayats got taxation powers, a
better share of state revenues, and the elected bodies became
stronger decision-makers about the development track of their
respective localities.
It was not easy for Indian states to give up some of their decisional
authority. Many state-level politicians continued to meddle in
grassroots democracy. In places where reforms were genuinely
implemented, such as Karnataka and Kerala, financial and
developmental performance improved. Studies show that local
communities felt, for the first time, that they had power to shape
the course of their lives.
AL's manifesto clearly had the same spirit when it promised: "Union,
upazila and district councils will be strengthened through
decentralisation of power." Furthermore, AL's Vision 2021 assured
that "self-reliant local self-government institutions will be
established at upazila and zila levels." Even the recent budget
speech echoed this stance: "To empower people and to decentralise the
power of the central government, the union and upazila parishads will
be vested with additional powers."
But what has happened on the ground threatens to relegate these
pledges to mere rhetoric. The new parliament passed a law in April to
make MPs advisors to upazila councils, stipulating further that local
councils would be bound to accept the "advice" of MPs.
In one swift stroke, the paranoia and triumphalism of new parliament
members dampened the enthusiasm for local democracy that the local
elections of January 22 had created. Then, in May, the LGRD ministry
published guidelines that further eroded the independence of other
elected council members against the executive.
Elected union and upazila council chairmen strongly -- and rightly --
opposed this move. As one of the chairmen lamented: "I wouldn't have
contested the upazila election had I known beforehand that parliament
would make such law." Another noted: "It seems we are elected just to
sit idle in our offices." Some chairmen even threatened to declare
MPs as persona non grata in upazila complexes.
The problem is not advice. MPs should be able to influence affairs in
their constituencies. The problem is mandatory advice, which will
choke local independence and perpetuate the ties that keep local
leaders dependent on central politicians.
In exercising their power, but not wisdom, the MPs seem to have
forgotten that they rely on local leaders in their own election
campaigns. The mistrust will surely affect the implementation of
local aspects of the ADP. Moreover, budget 2009-10 envisions greater
revenue mobilisation at the local level. How would that come to
fruition without strong cooperation from locally elected bodies?
The Indian experience showed that stronger local democracy led to
better checks and balances, healthier competition within governmental
authorities, and better civic culture due to people's participation.
If these are outcomes that Bangladesh too has reason to value, then
the parliament must reconsider its bill and take genuine steps to
strengthen local democracy. The ruling party MPs were elected on a
mandate of change, including empowerment of local democracy. They
need to stay true to their word, fiscally and politically.
Jalal Alamgir is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a member of the Drishtipat
Writers' Collective.
_____
[4] Pakistan:
(i)
Date: July 16, 2009 at 11:08 AM
*Subject: petition for constitutional reform- time to act for citizens*
Dear Friends,
We have had enough with taliban and other religious political parties
who keep supporting extremism in the face of all the killings and
bombings. the establishing of Parliamentary Committee on
Constitutional Reform on the 28th of June has opened a window of
opportunity for us. the Chair Raza Rabbani has asked the civil
society and all others to send in their proposals for the
ammendments. I strongly feel that this is the time we should act and
ask them that we want a separation between the state and religion. we
dont want any party to impose their brand of religion on us.
Attached is a petition that can be submitted to PCCR on the 27th of
July. if we can collect enough signatures we can make an impact on
the committee. We will submit the first batch of petitions at that
time and continue collecting more signatures. We can do a second
submission one or two weeks later.
Those who are good with the net please set it up so that people could
do it through email or through a web. Eventually all of them need to
be collected in islamabad, email and mailing address given below.
My request to you is to quickly develop a mechanism to delegate and
collect the copies of the petition back and then send them to the
following address
mailing address. house 11, st 42, F 8/1 islamabad
email mehergarh (at) yahoo.com
I believe that there is a majority of people in this country that
does not want one party or the other to tell us how to be a good
muslim and to impose their strange versions of Islam on us. We just
need to make ourselves visible and state our point of view so that it
gets counted.
in solidarity
Fouzia Saeed
a citizen of pakistan
TEXT OF PETITION
Petition to the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms
Citizen’s Demand for Constitutional Amendment
We do not want people like the Taliban and other opportunists to
impose their versions of Islam upon us. Zia ul Haq imposed state-
sanctioned religious policies that damaged the basic concept of
Pakistan, opening the door for extremism and terrorism in our
country. We want that damage to be reversed and real freedom of
religion to be returned to Pakistan. In order to achieve this
condition, it is necessary that we return to the spirit of the
Federal Democratic nature of Pakistan by separating religion from the
State.
No. Name Address City Signature
o o o
(ii)
London Review of Books
23 July 2009
Diary
Tariq Ali on the North-West Frontier
June is never a good month on the plains. It was 46ºC in Fortress
Islamabad a fortnight ago. The hundreds of security guards manning
roadblocks and barriers were wilting, sweat pouring down their faces
as they waved cars and motorbikes through. The evening breeze brought
no respite. It, too, was unpleasantly warm, and it was difficult not
to sympathise with those who, defying the law, jumped into the Rawal
Lake, the city’s main reservoir, in an attempt to cool down. Further
south in Lahore it was even hotter, and there were demonstrations
when the generator at Mangla that sporadically supplies the city with
electricity collapsed completely.
As far as the political temperature goes there is never a good month
in Pakistan. This is a country whose fate is no longer in its own
hands. I have never known things so bad. The chief problems are the
United States and its requirements, the religious extremists, the
military high command, and corruption, not just on the part of
President Zardari and his main rivals, but spreading well beyond them.
This is now Obama’s war. He campaigned to send more troops into
Afghanistan and to extend the war, if necessary, into Pakistan. These
pledges are now being fulfilled. On the day he publicly expressed his
sadness at the death of a young Iranian woman caught up in the
repression in Tehran, US drones killed 60 people in Pakistan. The
dead included women and children, whom even the BBC would find it
difficult to describe as ‘militants’. Their names mean nothing to
the world; their images will not be seen on TV networks. Their deaths
are in a ‘good cause’.
More than two million refugees (‘internally displaced persons’ –
IDPs in NGO jargon) have been driven out of the areas of the North-
West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan by the army, and from
the Swat Valley both by the brutalities of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP) and the military response to them. NGOs, knowing this is where
Western cash is headed, swarm around the refugee camps like flies.
Here, too, corruption is rife, despite the presence of many dedicated
volunteers. One of them told me that the only organised and non-
corrupt presence was that of the army, which, if true, must be a
first. The same volunteer, who worked in a camp near Mardan, proudly
showed me pictures of herself on General Nadeem Ahmed’s helicopter
– he commands the operation to help the IDPs – while informing me
that the overwhelming bulk of refugees blame the United States and
the army for their plight, not the ‘terrorists’ in their various
guises. Listening to her, I wondered whether Samuel Huntington’s
idea of moving peasants into ‘strategic hamlets’ in South Vietnam
had been the model for this operation as well: remove the people from
war zones and the enemy will have no one to recruit. It’s hardly a
secret here that the US is paying the army to build new cantonments
in the cleansed zones on the Pak-Afghan frontier. It won’t work, but
it sounds good and it’s good for the army’s cashflow. Some in
Pakistan seriously believe that a few hundred TTP heads in the basket
will solve their problems, and are supportive of the army while
distancing themselves from the US use of drones, but the two go
together. Others gaze admiringly at the ruthlessness with which the
Sri Lankan army rooted out the Tamil Tigers, regardless of the
collateral damage.
In May this year, Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul,
published an assessment of the crisis in the region in the Huffington
Post. Ignored by the White House, since he was challenging most of
the assumptions on which the escalation of the war was based, Fuller
was speaking for many in the intelligence community in his own
country as well as in Europe. It’s not often that I can agree with a
recently retired CIA man, but not only did Fuller say that Obama was
‘pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by
George Bush’ and that military force would not win the day, he also
explained to readers of the Huffington Post that the Taliban are all
ethnic Pashtuns, that the Pashtuns ‘are among the most fiercely
nationalist, tribalised and xenophobic peoples of the world, united
only against the foreign invader’ and ‘in the end probably more
Pashtun than they are Islamist’. ‘It is a fantasy,’ he said,
‘to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.’ And I
don’t imagine he is the only retired CIA man to refer back to the
days when Cambodia was invaded ‘to save Vietnam’.
I left Islamabad on 1 July, a day before the Independence Day party
held by the US ambassador, Anne Patterson. Probably the most heavily
guarded event in the global social calendar, this is the modern
equivalent of the viceroy’s garden parties in old New Delhi. The
leaders of the political, military and economic elite jostle with
each other and with favoured journalists for the attention of the
ambassador. Observers note that Patterson spent more time talking to
X from Baluchistan than to Y from Peshawar. Might this mean that the
frontline is going to be shifted to Baluchistan? Less important
guests peer over heads and shoulders to see who else is present so
that they can determine the pecking order of flattery.
Patterson can be disarmingly frank. Earlier this year, she offered a
mid-term assessment to a visiting Euro-intelligence chief. While
Musharraf had been unreliable, saying one thing in Washington and
doing its opposite back home, Zardari was perfect: ‘He does
everything we ask.’ What is disturbing here is not Patterson’s
candour, but her total lack of judgment. Zardari may be a willing
creature of Washington, but the intense hatred for him in Pakistan is
not confined to his political opponents. He is despised principally
because of his venality. He has carried on from where he left off as
minister of investment in his late wife’s second government. Within
weeks of occupying President’s House, his minions were ringing the
country’s top businessmen, demanding a share of their profits.
Take the case of Mr X, who owns one of the country’s largest banks.
He got a call. Apparently the president wanted to know why his bank
had sacked a PPP member soon after Benazir Bhutto’s fall in the late
1990s. X said he would find out and let them know. It emerged that
the sacked clerk had been caught with his fingers literally in the
till. President’s House was informed. The explanation was rejected.
The banker was told that the clerk had been victimised for political
reasons. The man had to be reinstated and his salary over the last 18
years paid in full together with the interest due. The PPP had also
to be compensated and would expect a cheque (the sum was specified)
soon. Where the president leads, his retainers follow. Many members
of the cabinet and their progeny are busy milking businessmen and
foreign companies. ‘If they can do it, so can we’ is a widely
expressed view in Karachi, the country’s largest city. Muggings,
burglaries, murders, many of them part of protection rackets linked
to politicians, have made it the Naples of the East.
There is also a widespread feeling that the methods used to manoeuvre
Zardari into the presidency after Benazir’s assassination were
immoral. A documentary shown on the first anniversary of her death on
the privately owned GEO TV raised a number of serious questions
regarding her security and asked why the man responsible for
organising her protection drove away when her car was held up. When
she was hit, he was nowhere to be seen. This man, Rehman Malik, an
old Zardari crony and one of the family’s principal contacts with
Western intelligence agencies when it was in exile, is currently the
interior minister.
For several months now, wild and unsubstantiated rumours linking
Zardari to his wife’s death have swept the country. A woman I know
who was once very close to Benazir is convinced that there is some
truth in them and is much irritated by my scepticism. She provided me
with an account, which, if true, would require Asifa Zardari, the
couple’s younger daughter, to give evidence in court against her
father. The same story has been repeated to me by many others, none
of them paranoid or given to thoughts of conspiracy. Stranger things
have happened in the country, but I remain unconvinced. What is
interesting is not that these tales circulate, but the number of
people who believe them – which indicates how the widower is
generally regarded.
These rumours came into the open at the end of June, when the head of
the Bhutto clan, Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, chairman of the Sind National
Front, publicly accused Zardari at a press conference, alleging that
‘the killer of Murtaza Bhutto had also murdered Benazir . . . Now I
am his target. A hefty amount has been paid to mercenaries to kill
me.’ (Zardari is generally regarded as having ordered his brother-in-
law Murtaza’s death. Shoaib Suddle, the police chief in Karachi, who
organised the operation that led to Murtaza Bhutto’s death, has now
been promoted and is head of the Intelligence Bureau.) Mumtaz Bhutto
demanded an inquiry into Benazir’s assassination and pooh-poohed
attempts by Washington and its local satraps to blame the crime on
the TTP leader, Baitullah Mahsud. Bhutto predicted that Zardari and
his cronies would soon be convicted of corruption or forced to flee
the country, but this is wishful thinking, and assumes a great deal,
including a shift in US policies.
Mahsud and his followers are specialists in sawing off heads,
flogging women and kidnapping people. Grisly videos of informers
having their throats cut are circulated by the TTP as a deterrent.
Yet, only a few months ago, Mahsud could be seen at wedding
receptions and press conferences. Today he has the distinction of
being the first Pakistani with a price on his head. The US announced
a $5 million reward, to which the Pakistan government added a miserly
$600,000, for his capture dead or alive. Head money has also been
offered for Mahsud’s junior commanders: $182,000 for Faqir Mohammed
in Bajaur and $122,000 each for three others, much less than the
Indian Premier League offers Pakistani cricketers. While welcoming
back the Pakistan cricket team after their triumph in the Twenty20
championship this summer, the country’s token prime minister, Yousaf
Gilani, insisted that we must follow the example of our cricket team
and defeat the terrorists.
The refugees from the Swat Valley, where the TTP have committed
serial atrocities, tell a different story from the Pashtuns displaced
by US drones, bomber jets and Pakistani army forays in South
Waziristan, near the Afghan frontier. They say they were abandoned
for years by the government and left to the mercy of armed fanatics.
This is true. And if you ask why the Pakistani state tolerated armed
groups that openly challenged its monopoly of violence, the answer is
straightforward. These groups were regarded in Islamabad as
auxiliaries in the coming battle for Afghanistan. The decision to
crush the leadership of the TTP was taken under heavy US pressure,
which is why Mahsud and his deputy in Swat, Maulana Fazlollah, regard
the assault on their positions as treachery.
Fazlollah’s reign of terror antagonised most Pakistanis, including
those hostile to the US presence in the region. The public flogging
of a Swati woman, captured on video and then shown on TV, generated
real anger. For once the TTP was put on the defensive and publicly
dissociated itself from the flogging. Making use of this display of
weakness the government wheeled one of the country’s top religious
scholars, Dr Sarfraz Naeemi Al-Azhari, in front of the cameras to
declare the TTP an ‘anti-Islamic’ organisation, since Islamic
tradition forbids suicide and by extension suicide bombings – for
that reason often known as ‘martyrdom operations’. On 12 June, the
TTP despatched a suicide bomber to take care of Al-Azhari. Both men
were ‘martyred’. Earlier, the government had bribed, cajoled and
bullied one of Mahsud’s lieutenants, Qari Zainuddin, to break with
his leader and denounce him in public. Qari did as he was asked,
though the eventual denunciation was characteristically bizarre. He
accused Mahsud of being a triple agent and claimed he was working for
India, America and Israel, as well as other enemies of Pakistan. That
is why, Zainuddin said, he was targeting the Pakistan army and its
security services. Some actually believed this nonsense and it
irritated Mahsud. On 23 June, one of Qari Zainuddin’s bodyguards
shot him dead. There will almost certainly be more of this in the
coming months.
Meanwhile Mahsud’s parents have been picked up by the police and are
in ‘protective custody’ – in other words, being used as
hostages. On the day this was announced, Owais Ghani, the beleaguered
governor of the North-West Frontier Province, warned on TV that if
the US-Nato leaders don’t develop an exit strategy soon, the
indiscriminate repression of Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand
Line will lead to an uprising against the foreign troops. Mahsud
wasn’t the only problem, in other words. The following day Pakistan
air-force chiefs were paraded on TV with the Chinese (‘our all-
weather friends’) government company that is building JF-17 Thunder
aircraft at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex. Might some of these be
ready in time to track down Mahsud, something that US surveillance
and reconnaissance missions have so far failed to do?
The TTP is a product of the recent Afghan wars, Russian, indigenous
and American, its thinking a poisonous combination of traditional
tribal patriarchy and Wahhabi prescriptions. It has been severely
criticised by the Afghan groups fighting Nato for not participating
in that struggle. Capturing and killing its leaders may make people
feel better, but it will solve very little. The bulk of TTP
supporters will simply melt away and regroup to fight another day.
Attempts to destroy them will lead to even more civilian casualties.
Many of Mahsud’s supporters are now leaving Swat and linking up with
other Pashtun groups in Waziristan to fight the Pakistan army. There
are reports that a new organisation uniting the previously competing
mujahedin groups has been formed. Gul Bahadur, considered a pro-
government Pashtun commander because he signed a truce agreement in
February 2008, has reneged on the deal and joined the opposition.
This new group claimed responsibility for the ambush of a military
convoy on 28 June that led to the death of 15 soldiers in response to
air-strikes carried out on villages the week before, in which a
number of civilians were killed – their names were not released.
The longer the war continues, the greater the possibility of serious
cracks within the army. Not at the level of the high command, but
among majors and captains, as well as among the soldiers they
command, who are far from happy with the tasks assigned to them.
Religious divines have been found to pronounce that a soldier killed
in fighting the TTP is a martyr and will go to heaven, but the
potential martyrs know that most mullahs believe they will go to
hell. Quite a few, no doubt, think they’re already there.
Tariq Ali’s latest book, Protocols of the Elders of Sodom and Other
Essays, will be published by Verso this summer.
o o o
(iii)
Dawn, 16 July 2009
HISTORIAN K.K. AZIZ DEAD
Khurshid Kamal Aziz was an outstanding historian and a prolific writer
LAHORE: Renowned historian K.K. Aziz passed away in a Lahore hospital
on Wednesday at the age of 81.
Khurshid Kamal Aziz was an outstanding historian and a prolific
writer. He authored a large number of books that opened up angles on
history and culture sought to be concealed by official chroniclers.
Quite aptly, one of his famous works is titled ‘The Murder of
History’.
K.K. Aziz’s was an expansive canvas and while he has to his credit
books such as ‘History of the Partition of India’, ‘The Meaning
of Islamic Art: An annotated bibliography’ and ‘Public Life in
Muslim India: 1850-1947’, he also came up with volumes on some
important individuals who helped shape history in the subcontinent at
critical junctures – among them Sir Agha Khan III and Chaudhry
Rehmat Ali.
‘The Coffee House of Lahore – A memoir 1942-57’ is his gift to
the city which had helped him determine his own place in history. His
autobiography is titled ‘The Pakistani Historian’.
He is mainly known for his English writings but he was equally at
ease with Urdu prose and a staunch believer in the power of Persian
to enlighten a seeker of knowledge.
In his Urdu work ‘Woh Hawadis Aashna,’ he focusses on his father
and his family’s history.
Son of Barrister Abdul Aziz, a well-known historian in his own right
who added to his fame by initiating pioneering work on Heer Waris
Shah, K.K. Aziz was born in the village of Ballamabad near Lyallpur
(now Faisalabad) on December 11, 1927.
He studied at the Government College, Lahore, where his teachers
included Ahmed Shah Bukhari Patras and Prof Sirajuddin.
He went on to teach at Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Toronto,
Khartoum and Heidelberg.
His research enriched by the exposure abroad, he would return to his
country to work on extremely difficult themes that brought out the
best in him – and quite often the worst in self-employed minders of
Pakistan’s ideology.
In 1978, he was working as the head of the National Commission of
Historical and Cultural Research in Islamabad when he was forced to
leave Pakistan by the Ziaul Haq regime that was anathema to
independent scholarship.
This was followed by teaching assignments in England, Germany and
Sudan before he finally settled in Lahore some years ago, writing
profusely and frequently undertaking foreign tours.
His wife Zarina Aziz told Dawn that he had been ill for almost five
years, but still worked for 10 hours a day. He was hospitalised on
May 11 and discharged on June 13. He was again admitted to hospital
on Tuesday, where he passed away on Wednesday.
Mrs Aziz says that her husband had written 50 books and used to say
that his books were his children and would keep his name alive.
His books include: ‘The Making of Pakistan: A Study in
Nationalism,’ ‘Studies in History and Politics,’ ‘Party
Politics in Pakistan 1947-1958,’ ‘Britain and Pakistan,’
‘Britain and Muslim India,’ ‘Muslims under Congress Rule
1937-1939: A documentary record,’ ‘British Imperialism in India’
and ‘The All India Muslim Conference 1928-1935: A documentary
record’.
_____
[5] Pakistan and India: Dialogue Among Deaf
The Daily Times, July 16, 2009
SIACHEN: TIME FOR SETTLEMENT
by Brian Cloughley
The Musharraf-Vajpayee summit of 2001 took place in Delhi on 14-16
July, and there is a meeting between Prime Ministers Yousaf Raza
Gilani and Manmohan Singh in Egypt today, July 16. Perhaps there is
something about July that encourages discussion, but it is
regrettable that little of substance has emerged from India-Pakistan
dialogue in that or any other month.
Exactly twenty years ago, when Benazir Bhutto was prime minister, the
armies of India and Pakistan were confronting each other in the
Siachen Glacier region, but it was recorded by the International
Institute for Strategic Studies that “in the face of a disheartening
history of hostile relations, Bhutto is trying to navigate a smoother
course with India”.
In the course of navigation, Ms Bhutto invited Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi to visit Pakistan, and twenty years ago today, on July 16,
1989, she went to greet him at Islamabad Airport where she said
Siachen was a difficult problem but “we will definitely take
advantage of Mr Rajiv’s visit to make movement on the issue”.
Alas, there was no movement as regards Siachen or any other dispute.
The reasons for India’s invasion of Siachen in 1984 are a mystery,
but a brilliant Indian analyst, Colonel (retd) Pavan Nair, wrote a
penetrating study in India’s Economic and Political Weekly last
March and concluded that the incursion, Operation Meghdoot, was a
“strategic blunder”. (See also two excellent books about the
Siachen debacle, Heights of Madness by Myra MacDonald of Reuters, and
Siachen: Conflict Without End by the estimable Lieutenant General VR
Raghavan.)
The Siachen conflict has shown that the countries’ leaders are
unable to agree on a key matter that could be resolved by the stroke
of a pen, without cost to either in terms of prestige, vital
territory or national finances.
Resolution of the Siachen confrontation would save soldiers’ lives,
remove significant economic penalties, and show the world that India
and Pakistan can set an example in peacefully resolving a bizarre and
useless quarrel. So why can’t Delhi and Islamabad bring themselves
to the sticking point?
There has been no fighting in Siachen for almost five years but the
toll from non-combat menaces such as avalanches and lung disease
continues. As declared by retired Indian Air Force Group Captain AG
Bewoor in 2003, “Siachen is not worth another dead soldier; it never
was.” Now there’s a man of common sense.
As I have written elsewhere, Delhi could have made a reasonable case
in international law for a claim on Siachen, but chose force rather
than negotiation, thereby breaking the 1972 Simla accord. “That the
two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful
means” — just as Pakistan violated it by invading Kargil ten years
ago.
India’s claim was based on the fact that the Line of Control ended
at Grid Reference NJ980420, near Kargil, further delineation being
limited to the vague phrase “then north to the glaciers”. But
India came to consider, twelve years after agreeing with Pakistan
about the division, that because there was no formal accord governing
the barren lands between the end of the Line and the Chinese border,
the area should belong to India. Mrs Gandhi ordered invasion,
whereupon Pakistan rushed troops to the area, but not in time to
enable tactical parity.
Fighting went on, and soldiers died for nothing but the pompous pride
of politicians (such a common occurrence around the world; look at
Britain in Afghanistan), but in June 1989 it appeared there was
agreement about Siachen, because the foreign secretaries of India and
Pakistan, Mr SK Singh and Mr Humayun Khan, met in Islamabad and, as
reported by the BBC, “At a joint news conference Mr Khan announced
that both sides have now decided to withdraw to the positions that
they held at the time of the Simla Accord.” And Mr Singh publicly
concurred with what was said by his counterpart.
It seemed that, at long last, senior representatives of the countries
were authorised to take decisions that would pave the way for further
confidence-building measures, but this was not the case.
A “clarification” was issued by India’s Ministry of External
Affairs. The “chronology of events”, said a spokesman, had been
“muddled and confused”. He went on to explain that “the Indian
foreign secretary had endorsed the Pakistani foreign secretary’s
observations on their talks, whereas the report has made out as if he
had endorsed the Pakistan foreign secretary’s remarks on the defence
secretaries’ talks.” Which statement was, of course, not muddled
or confusing. Delhi denied “that Pakistan and India had reached an
agreement on this issue.”
In June 2005 Dr Manmohan Singh said that “Siachen is called the
highest battlefield where living is very difficult... Our efforts
should be that such an environment of peace is created wherein nobody
feels any threats, and there is no scope for a conflict, and this
place becomes an example of peace.”
But then he declared that “we feel these [Siachen] boundaries are
important not only for our security but it relates to the country’s
prestige also.”
So, following today’s meeting between Dr Singh and Mr Gilani, can we
expect any movement on Siachen, as desired by Ms Bhutto twenty years
ago?
It is high time there was peaceful agreement about this absurd state
of affairs. India and Pakistan should withdraw their troops by mutual
arrangement and leave Siachen as it was before 1984 — militarily
unoccupied and valueless to all but mountaineers: the “example of
peace” so desired by Dr Singh. It would be magnificent if India and
Pakistan could set an example to the world in conflict resolution.
The prime ministers would go down in history, deservedly, as
peacemakers.
A Nobel recognition would not be excessive were they to achieve
agreement. Indeed it would be almost guaranteed for both of them.
Or are July meetings doomed to failure because the political curses
of “prestige” and national pride are more important than lives and
common sense?
The writer can be found on the web at www.beecluff.com
o o o
Dawn, 16 July, 2009
MAKING OF SIDESHOW ARTISTS
by Jawed Naqvi
By carrying their laundry bags to regional and international summits,
albeit to meet on the so-called sidelines, the two countries come
across as churlish and immature neighbours. - Reuters photo of the
NAM summit venue.
One day Pakistan and India would declare to each other - and to the
rest of the world - that their peace process is irreversible come
what may. The next day their envoys would be seeking the first
available agony aunt to offload their all-too-familiar problems to. -
Reuters photo of the NAM summit venue.
NEWS headlines in both countries are shamelessly self-absorbed:
leaders of India and Pakistan will meet in Egypt today where they are
to attend the Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) summit. In the recent
past the two sides have met at other foreign venues.
After last November’s terror assault on Mumbai, India’s prime
minister and Pakistan’s president met in Russia after considerable
global nudging though without any obvious signs of success. Before
that, following last July’s suicide attack on Delhi’s embassy in
Kabul and a cluster of terror attacks across major Indian cities,
when their ties were yet again strained, the prime ministers met in
Colombo. This is ridiculous, more so because at least India claims
that bilateral disputes, which include the Kashmir issue, should not
be internationalised.
By carrying their laundry bags to regional and international summits,
albeit to meet on the so-called sidelines, the two countries come
across as churlish, immature neighbours. This is not an encouraging
attribute for the nuclear-weapons states they both have gate-crashed
their way to become. One day they declare to each other — and
thereby to the rest of the world — that their peace process is
irreversible come what may. The next day their envoys would be
seeking the first available agony aunt to offload their all-too-
familiar travails to, be it about life-threatening terrorism or life-
giving water resources among their other unresolved bilateral topics.
They almost seem to have been better off during the Cold War. One was
militarily anchored to the West with extensive strategic tie-ups in
the Middle East, the other ideologically tethered to the Third World.
They were not the best of friends, but they were geopolitical adults.
In fact, on one occasion when for a brief moment India found itself
on the same page of the global divide with Pakistan in 1977, it was
greeted by Islamabad with a big (some said embarrassing) hug: the
Indian prime minister was decorated with the neighbour’s highest
civilian honour.
On other occasions if their rivalries delivered a lacerating blow
both would bear with candour and not wince or howl in pain. They knew
how to get even but they did so discreetly. India, though, mostly had
the upper hand right up to the Simla Accord and beyond.
Take 1983. Indira Gandhi became host of the NAM summit in Delhi by
default. It was Saddam Hussein’s turn to take over from Fidel
Castro, but since Iraq was engaged in a brutal war with Iran, the
honour was diverted to the Indian prime minister. She needed the
opportunity to refurbish her image after the fiasco of her 1975-77
emergency rule. The Cold War was at its peak when Mrs Gandhi took the
gavel from Castro. That year Moscow and Washington were playing cat-
and-mouse in Afghanistan and to an extent in Iran.
India and Pakistan were not unencumbered by their global loyalties.
Mrs Gandhi had veered close to Moscow in 1971. By 1975 she was
accusing her opponents of working for the US and China. Both happened
to be Pakistan’s close partners. Analysts have argued that her claim
was not entirely inaccurate considering that the pro-America Jan
Sangh and pro-China communists led the anti-Indira movement. On the
other hand Moscow-backed communists had supported her emergency. It
is another matter that they later regretted it, as communists often do.
Gen Ziaul Haq, who represented Pakistan at the 1983 NAM summit in
Delhi, looked forlorn and friendless. Mrs Gandhi was the presiding
deity while her rival was a pariah having offended senior Third World
leaders who had unsuccessfully pleaded for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s
life to be spared. They never forgave Zia for his cruelty to one of
their icons. I vividly remember the general smiling bravely to
himself as other NAM leaders seated with him were riveted to the
Indian military pageantry Mrs Gandhi had especially organised for the
occasion.
The general’s smile may have masked his reverie. Here was Mrs Gandhi
putting up an impressive show before the world, but only he knew how
seriously she was singed by the raging insurgency in Punjab, which
was looking menacing with each passing day. Her Sikh bodyguards
assassinated Mrs Gandhi the following year. Benazir Bhutto was to
later admit to Pakistan’s culpability in India’s Punjab tragedy.
It did not require a great sleuth to see the link from London to
Washington and Ottawa. The fingerprints in the Punjab upheaval were
there for all to see. And yet did we hear any war drums? On the
contrary, the next few years raised the most promising hopes for
peace between India and Pakistan. Check this out in the details of
the Rajiv Gandhi-Benazir Bhutto talks. It was a different era
altogether.
I am not sure if Mrs Gandhi and Gen Zia met again after 1983.
Whatever their serious differences they never took their
confrontation to this or that world capital. Though they came from
opposite ideological corners, both countries were signatories to NAM
resolutions. Some of these agreements may have been loftier than the
capacity of their sponsors to translate them into practice — i.e.
declaration of the Indian Ocean as a nuclear-free zone, support for
PLO, Swapo and goodness knows how many other burning and usually
legitimate issues of the time. The war between Iran and Iraq became
the most important of these. Those were the days when India was
perceived as a credible voice from the developing world and Pakistan
was secure in its role as a frontline state in the Cold War. They
were not the sideshow artists they were to become at any available
venue abroad.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
_____
[6] India and Europe - The Far Right Connections
The Economic and Political Weekly
Vol. 44, No.28, July 11 - July 17, 2009
HINDU TRIUMPHALISM AND THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS
by Meera Nanda
This essay examines the emergence of Hindu triumphalism which openly
and unapologetically celebrates its conception of “superiority of
Hinduism over the alleged depravity of Semitic monotheistic
religions”, namely, Islam and Christianity. It focuses on the
publishing house called Voice of India which has emerged as the most
vocal source of Hindu triumphalism. It takes a closer look at who the
VOI ideologues are, what they are saying, how they are making
connections with the European New Right and how they are influencing
the political culture of India.
Full text at: http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13705.pdf
_____
[7] India: Ethnic turf war
DOUSING TRIBAL FLARE-UPS IN ASSAM’S HILLS
by Ratna Bharali Talukdar
Karbi Anglong Hills District (Women’s Feature Service) - Walson
Teron, 51, who belongs to the Karbi tribe and lived in Langmili
village in the Karbi Anglong Hills District of Assam, has gone
through many a nightmare. But the worst was when his 12-year-old
daughter, Prativa, was gang-raped in October 2003. Teron had to carry
her on his back across a 14-kilometre-long hilly route to the
district headquarters of Diphu to get medical assistance. While he
knew his child needed immediate medical care, the traumatised father
was also wondering how he could file a report at the police station.
A day earlier, while Teron and his wife were out working in the paddy
fields nearby, the child had been gang-raped inside their house by
personnel belonging to the Assam Police. The police personnel were
deployed in an area domination exercise, as part of counter-
insurgency operations against the Dima Halam Daoga (DHD), an
insurgent outfit that was active at that time in both Karbi Anglong
and the adjacent North Cachar Hills districts.
For around a decade, the United Democratic People's Solidarity
(UPDS), who represent the Karbi tribe, and the DHD, who fight for the
interests of the Dimasa tribe, have been engaged in an ethnic turf
war. In fact, hundreds of innocent tribals have been caught in the
crossfire - and in the counter-insurgency firing, as well.
As Teron was making his way to Diphu with his daughter, he met a
group of women from the Karbi Nimso Chingthur Asong (KNCA), the apex
women’s body of the Karbi tribe which was set up in 1986. When these
women learnt of the atrocity - one of the endless instances of abuse
that women and children experience in this conflict-ridden district
area - they promptly decided to help Teron. Experienced in fighting
cases for female victims of conflict and ethnic violence, the KNCA
members quickly made arrangements for the girl’s treatment at a
district hospital.
They simultaneously spearheaded a movement to pressurise the
authorities to punish the guilty police personnel. This, however, was
not an easy task. According to Kajektak Bipi, 45, President, KNCA,
senior officials in the district administration allegedly tried to
conceal the evidence. The medical report, however, established that
rape had been committed on the minor girl, following which the KNCA
registered a case in the Diphu Police Station. The organisation also
moved the Assam State Women Commission and the Assam Human Rights
Commission (AHRC) in their campaign to seek justice for the child.
For Prativa, however, life was never the same again. The KNCA’s
assistance could not spare her the social stigma that comes with
rape, and her poor, illiterate parents would not dare take her back
home. Instead, the young victim found accommodation as a domestic
help in Diphu town, in the home of a Christian priest, who was kind
enough to ensure that the girl went to school. Hope resurfaced when
Prativa was able to identify the culprits during an identification
parade. The KNCA members were constantly in touch with her and her
parents during this period. The guilty police personnel were
thereafter dismissed from service and sent to prison. Teron went back
home in 2003, but without his daughter.
Unfortunately for Teron and his family, their traumas were far from
over. Two years after the assault on his daughter, he along with his
entire village was forced to flee their homes when an ethnic clash
between the DHD and UPDS flared up on October 8, 2005, in different
pockets of the district. The sudden attacks claimed 11 lives
immediately. The extremists burnt down 15 villages in the area and
forced the residents to flee at gunpoint. The attack and retaliation
in the entire district resulted in over 200 people getting killed and
led to the displacement of about 49,000 people belonging to both the
tribes. The displaced persons had to take shelter in different relief
camps. They eventually settled down in Chachear Langso village near
the Diphu town, having had to abandon their original Langmili village.
People started settling in Chachear Langso, which is 10 kilometres
from Langmili, from 2006, but without receiving any rehabilitation
grant. The families were allotted houses under the Indira Awaj Yojna
later in 2008. All the families have been allotted one acre of land
by local Karbi people, but for the Jhum cultivation they still go to
Langmili. As the area falls in a conflict zone, they go to their
jhumland in groups during agricultural season.
The KNCA members, toughened through years of conflict, are not
deterred by these clashes. They focus on their mission to help and
empower women and girl-child victims of insurgency. Prativa’s case
is just one among the many they have taken up. In addition to such
assistance, they stand by the affected families, just as they stood
by Prativa’s parents when they finally found the courage to bring
their daughter home in 2008.
Even as the organisation continues to work towards its initial goal
of empowering Karbi women, it has also taken up peace-building
initiatives as one of its activities. Through its 96 branches and a
joint-action committee with the Dimasa Welfare Society, the women's
body of the Dimasas, the KNCA has undertaken peace-building
programmes in the entire district, mobilising women to jointly raise
their voices for an end to violence, including inter-tribal conflict.
Their members have been holding peace rallies, visiting relief camps
of both tribes, distributing relief materials and motivating the
women to join in their initiatives. Says Bipi, "The indiscriminate
killing by militant outfits, the ethnic clashes, and the atrocities
of security agencies on common people during search operations, have
made our lives vulnerable. Many from traditional tribal families have
become homeless, as they have had to abandon their original villages.
From being farmers most have become daily wage earners today. Women
and children are the worst sufferers of this desolation and misery."
Mikon Rongpharpi, Vice President, KNCA, reveals that even elderly
women are sexually harassed by security agencies. In 2007, a 55-year-
old Karbi woman was raped by army jawans (soldiers) in the remote
Singhasan Timung village. Her case is still pending in the Guwahati
High Court. Given the extremely isolated location of the village and
the age-related ailments of the victim, it is difficult for her to
appear before the court on time and the possibility of justice being
delivered to her grows more remote by the day.
Bipi points out that even KNCA members are often subjected to
harassment. For instance, on December 25, 2005, two Karbi girls,
allegedly involved with the Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills
Liberation Front (KLNLF), were apprehended by security personnel, and
subsequently raped and killed. Later, the forces claimed that the
bodies of the girls were not recovered. The KNCA, although they had
nothing to do with the alleged involvement of the girls in militant
activities, demanded disclosure of the postmortem report. Instead of
responding to them, the police started harassing KNCA members,
accusing them of having links with KLNLF.
But there is a good news story here as well. The KNCA’s struggle for
peace and for ensuring more political power to women has resulted in
the election of the first Karbi woman, Kabon Ingtipi, to the Karbi
Anglong Autonomous District Council. In 1996, Ingtipi was elected
from the Hamren constituency as Executive Member.
This is how a small, determined group of women, far away from the
centres of power, overlooked by the mainstream media, have made a
significant difference to the lives of forgotten people.
(The names of the rape victim and her parents have been changed to
protect their identity.)
(© Courtesy: Women's Feature Service)
____
[8] Everyday Patriarchy:
BBC News, 16 July 2009
NEPAL WIDOWS DISMISS MARRIAGE INCENTIVE
by Joanna Jolly
BBC News, Kathmandu
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8153193.stm
o o o
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO
by Ajit Sahi
Tribal women claiming rape by Salwa Judum men in Chhattisgarh put a
question mark on the NHRC, which rejected their testimonies
http://tinyurl.com/mrwgv9
o o o
The Telegraph
13 July 2009
Editorial
TRIED AND TESTED
Liberal reform is often the last thing driving State-sponsored mass
marriages among the underprivileged. A bizarre mix of corruption and
moral policing, implicating the state government as well as the
beneficiaries, has come to light in the mass weddings in Madhya
Pradesh that were made famous by the chief minister himself ‘giving
away’ the brides on most occasions. Poverty and middlemen led some
couples who were already married to pretend to have come to be wed,
and the way this was exposed is the stuff of grotesque comedy. A
‘bride’ went into labour a few moments before the ritual exchange
of garlands, with the groom and his family looking on unperturbed.
But the government’s reaction has turned the whole racket into
something more sordid and abusive. All the women who had come to be
married were summarily subjected to virginity and pregnancy tests. It
was then assumed that the 14, among the 152, brides who were found
pregnant (the virginity-test findings have not been reported) must
already have been married, and hence were barred from the scheme.
So, testing the women has become the government’s sole means of
checking abuse of the scheme. This is an easy way out of addressing
the root of the corruption, being abusive of the women’s (and indeed
the couples’) bodies, dignity and privacy. The government’s stance
is founded on the essentially moralistic assumption that unmarried
women do not have sex, the obverse of which is that women who are not
virgins should not be allowed to have their marriages endorsed by the
state government and its chief minister. The pregnancy tests are also
founded on similarly bigoted logic, which takes advantage of the
powerlessness of poor (often tribal), pregnant women. The Madhya
Pradesh government must stop these tests on women and find some other
way of checking the misuse of this scheme.
o o o
The Telegraph
July 12 , 2009
MAMA’S LABOUR: VIRGIN TESTS - MP GOVT MOVE TO CHECK ‘FAKE’
KANYADAN SPARKS ANGER
by Rasheed Kidwai
Bhopal, July 11: If you aren’t a virgin, you can’t be mama’s girl.
“Uncle” Shivraj’s kanya, that is.
The Madhya Pradesh administration has begun conducting virginity and
pregnancy tests on would-be brides before solemnising a
“kanyadan”, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s pet mass-
marriage scheme that helps girls from poor families tie the knot at
government expense.
The decision to conduct the tests before the weddings — whose
popularity has earned Chauhan the nickname mama (maternal uncle) —
came after an embarrassing moment in Shahdol district when a bride
developed labour pains minutes before exchange of garlands.
More surprising was that the groom and the would-be in-laws didn’t
throw a fit.
The organisers immediately stopped the mass wedding and ordered
pregnancy tests on the 152 brides who had assembled for the June 30
kanyadan. The tests revealed 14 of them were “expecting”.
Sources in the chief minister’s office said it was an
“aberration”, a “belated” bid by some married couples to get
their hands on the Rs 5,000 in cash the newly-weds get as part of the
scheme that also includes a free community meal and other marriage-
related expenses.
But residents said some “middlemen”, in connivance with local
authorities, were misusing the scheme, under which 90,000 marriages
have already taken place. They said the middlemen were producing
recently married couples and then taking a “commission” from them.
Faced with allegations of solemnising “fake marriages”, the local
administration started conducting the virginity and pregnancy tests.
But mama’s move to weed out already-married nieces has kicked up a
storm.
In tribal-dominated Shahdol, 350km from Bhopal, many Adivasis and
rights activists are up in arms over the decision to conduct the tests.
“We are aghast,” said Umpa Rai, a member of the state women’s
commission. “Surely, there are better and more discreet ways of
checking the antecedents of those already married. These tests are an
insult to womanhood.”
Rai’s colleague Amita Chapra, who toured Shahdol, said the local
Bega tribals were furious. “Even if assuming that some are misusing
the scheme, it does not mean that others can be subjected to
humiliation.” She said the state women’s commission would take up
the matter with Chauhan.
Shahdol collector Neeraj Debe feigned ignorance. He said he had asked
his subordinates and district medical authorities to look into
reported incidents of virginity and pregnancy tests.
o o o
The Telegraph, July 16 , 2009
SAFE WITHIN NINE YARDS OF CLOTH
What a woman should do seems to be everybody’s business but her own.
Well, there isn’t anything new in this. Over time, the rigid
patriarchal hierarchy in Indian society has relaxed into a more
inclusive structure, no doubt. But this has not changed the fact that
a woman is still not free to do her own bidding. The patriarch-
guardian is still watching her every move, ready to correct her
whenever she happens to transgress the limits set for the traditional
Indian woman.
The Ram Sena staged a mini-riot in Mangalore a few months back over
what they considered to be a violation of Indian culture. Women —
wearing urban clothes like jeans and short skirts and drinking
alcohol in pubs — had apparently provoked their anger. They openly
accused these women of abusing the culture of this country (besides
beating them up). What is, and what is not, a violation of Indian
culture is a different debate altogether. To put it in a nutshell, if
string-tops and jeans are vulgar, and therefore an insult to Indian
culture, then what about the kanchuli (an ancestor of the bra) worn
by the female figures of Khajuraho? Again, so-called ‘Indian
costume’ is often an amalgam of a number of foreign elements — the
sari is accompanied by the blouse, which is of European origin, and
the salwar-kurta has a Middle-Eastern lineage. But the question is
not what is appropriate as an Indian way of dressing. Why, at all,
should an adult woman be expected to dress according to the whims of
a section of society?
Pramod Muthalik, the chief of the Ram Sena, had demanded that women
stick to a dress code compliant with Indian culture. What a relief
that no one took him seriously. But then, are there really enough
reasons to be relieved as yet?
What Muthalik suggested has deeper implications. It points to the
social, and often religious, discontent with public behavior that
marks the dilemma of urban India when dealing with globalization and
its after-effects. What is worrying is that this discontent is
directed towards women in particular. A woman is supposed to
safeguard culture while a man is free to explore the world outside.
Even in post-feminist India, this is how it should be, not just for
Muthalik and his men but also for a sizeable section of society.
The Kanpur colleges have made this all the more evident. Reportedly,
these colleges tried to impose a no-jeans dress code on its female
students, saying this will protect them from eve-teasing. This
justification has a number of implications. First, it implies that a
woman’s right to safety is determined by the way she dresses.
Second, it suggests that a woman wearing jeans is likely to provoke a
man to physically abuse her, lending a kind of legitimacy to his
actions. The preposterousness of these ideas apart, what is truly
significant is the way jeans have been deemed inappropriate simply
because of their Western origin. Otherwise, why would a sari be seen
as less provocative than a pair of jeans?
A section of the society is desperate to banish Western clothes from
the wardrobes of Indian women. Is it because it relates Western dress
to the image of an independent woman? After all, women’s liberation
migrated to India from the West, teaching shy Indian girls to speak
more loudly than Indian culture would allow them to.
ADHEESHA SARKAR
_____
[8] Dalit elites sweep issues of class under the carpet
Magazine Section / The Hindu
5 July 2009
THE ILLUSION OF IMAGES
by S Anand
The statues Mayawati erects and the massive birthday cakes she cuts
do not usually bother me. The same media that heaps scorn on Mayawati
habitually and predictably, enthusiastically celebrates and
participates in Rahul Gandhi’s paternalistic and offensive gesture
of getting the Congress cadre to feed Dalits on his birthday, and
gleefully reports the gestural politics of his occasionally spending
a night in Dalit homes. I am, in many ways, unrepentantly proud of
Mayawati. Here’s a Dalit woman who bears no patriarchal initial or
surname; a woman who perhaps shall leave no progeny behind. A self-
made icon who is not Maa in a mother-goddess fixated nation, but
Behen (sister). A voice of the disinherited who has turned the legacy
of inherited brutalities into an instrument of political power.
Mayawati is not adequately appreciated for scrapping an order by
Uttar Pradesh’s university and college principals to ban young women
on campuses from sporting jeans—smacking of gender bias and moral
policing. But in the news, again, is her obsession with statues of
Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram, and now, of herself. Mayawati’s statues may
cost the exchequer a lot, but unlike the secret installation of Ram
Lalla in Ayodhya, her idolatry does not threaten the social fabric.
The erection of statues is not, anyway, Mayawati’s unique idea.
Statues,and the symbolism inherent in them, have for long been a way
of claiming and reclaiming public space.
The spread of Buddhism ensured that life-size and giant images of the
Buddha sprouted across South Asia and the Far East. The first temples
(stupas) in the subcontinents were for the Buddha, Tara and other
Buddhist deities. Emperor Asoka’s edicts and pillars of the third
century BCE, at a time when there was little Brahmi literacy in
India, have survived to tell us the tale of the spread of dhamma.
After Buddhism was brutally stamped out of the country of its origin,
what we recognize today as ‘Hindu temples’ began to spring from
the eighth century onwards, their spread spurred by the bhakti
movement and the worship of beloved deities.
In modern times, the British erected statues of civil servants and
soldiers and named roads and buildings after them;post-independence
the Congress pantheon’s imprimatur was stamped on roads, buildings,
housing colonies and parks. Government schemes have been launched in
the name of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. Once regional parties
became powerful, local icons came to be celebrated. These were hardly
ever subjected to the kind of scrutiny and criticism reserved for
Mayawati.Reclaiming space
Symbols and memorials play a crucial role in deepening and broadening
the scope of democracy. Despite his admonition, Ambedkar’s birthday
was celebrated and his statues were erected in his own lifetime. The
Ambedkar birth centenary in 1990 saw his statues crop up in almost
every Dalit inhabitation in India. Poor Dalits pooling hard-earned
money erected these; in rural and urban ghettoes the statue became a
site of Dalits claiming hitherto-denied civic space, resulting
sometimes in social strife.
But an inflated and overused symbol ceases to have meaning. Symbolism
can only take the Bahujan Samaj Party and Mayawati thus far; she will
have to deliver on material questions. As Nicolas Jaoul, a French
scholar who has done a micro-history of Ambedkar statues in Uttar
Pradesh says, “Ambedkarite symbolic politics have reached a
saturation point… While symbolic politics have played a significant
part in democratisation, today this seems a convenient motive for the
Dalit middle class leadership to sweep issues of class under the
carpet and to talk exclusively of issues of dignity.”Recording dismay
Mayawati could turn to Ambedkar and introspect.
Ambedkar’s 1916 letter
On 28 March 1916, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, then a M.A. student at
Columbia University, published his first public letter in the Bombay
Chronicle. Following the death, in 1915, of Pherozeshah Merwanjee
Mehta, one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, and of
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, another Congress leader and founder of
Servants of India Society,Ambedkarnotes: “The memorial for Mr
Gokhale is to take the form of establishing branches of Servants of
India Society at various places, while that of Sir P.M. Mehta is to
stand in the form of a statue before the Bombay Municipal Office.”
While appreciating the memorial for Gokhale, Ambedkar records his
dismay over a statue for Mehta being “very trivial and
unbecoming.” He is “at pains to understand why this memorial
cannot be in a form” that will be “of permanent use to
posterity”. He suggests that the memorial should be a public library
named after Mehta. Drawing from his experience at “one the biggest
universities in the U.S.,”Ambedkar laments how we have not yet
“realized the value of the library as an institution in the growth
and advancement of society.”
Later, Ambedkar acted on these principles when he had the
opportunities. Driven by the belief that education was the greatest
weapon Dalits could have, he founded People’s Education Society in
1944;three branches of Siddharth College beginning 1946; and Milind
Mahavidyalayain 1950. Ambedkar’s choice of Buddhist names for the
educational institutes he founded came from his understanding that
universities in ancient India — Takkasila, Nalanda, Vikramasila,
Somapura, Odantapuri, Jagaddala, Vallabi — were all
Buddhist.Hinduism never set up universities, only ashrams and
gurukuls where only a few Brahmin and Kshatriya men were imparted
training.No excuses
But Mayawati should not offer excuses today for the literacy rate
among Dalit women in UP being 30.5 per cent. The total number of
Dalit graduates in UP is a pathetic 3 per cent. Ambedkar would
shudder at this. The UGC says India needs 1,500 more universities.
Mayawati could focus on the education of Dalits, create universities
of excellence and name them after Ambedkar, Phule and other forgotten
subaltern icons. Statues for herself — “very trivial and
unbecoming” — only feed her obscene delusions of grandeur and
betray a fear of mortality.
In his concluding speech to the Constituent Assembly on November 25
1949, Ambedkar noted: “In India, ‘Bhakti’ or what may be called
the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics
unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any
other part of the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the
salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a
sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”
Mayawati could yet heed Ambedkar.
Anand is the publisher of Navayana. He recently completed a
documentary film, “Bhagwan Das: In Pursuit of Ambedkar”.
_____
[10] MISCELLANEA:
Iran:
This statement is from issue number 24 of Khiaban newspaper.
To receive electronic copies of the paper in Persian, write to:
khyaboon at gmail.com
JOINT STATEMENT: AGAINST A NEW WAVE OF CRACKDOWN AND OPPRESSION IN IRAN
Khiaban #24 / Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Struggling people of Iran, freedom-loving peoples of the world!
The act of millions of demonstrators who took to the streets recently
in most cities in Iran was a huge show of power by a people
challenging the injustice, deceit and the constant oppression of this
regime. A challenge that was answered by the exercise of violence by
the anti-democratic system of the Islamic Republic and its security
forces. Up to now, we have had definite reports of tens of deaths
and hundreds of injured. Available reports tell of thousands of
detained or disappeared among the activists and dissidents against
the regime. Meanwhile, the university dormitories have been among
the first targets of the forces of oppression, leading to tens of
deaths and innumerable arrests of students. The widespread wave of
nightly raids of and arrests in the homes of the youth, journalists
and students, and the disappearance of others remind us of the fear
and the terror during the 1980s. The masses of the detained, in
addition to being sent to known prisons such as Evin or Gohardasht
or ... are being sent to military bases, Basij offices and unknown
locations.
Despite the severe censorship, the reports, pictures and videos that
have been sent out are incontrovertible documents indicating that the
dimensions of the tortures, the ruthlessness and cruelty of the
torturers have reached unimaginable levels in the Islamic Republic.
The beatings, throwing the detainees and the prisoners from elevated
heights while blindfolded and with hands tied, along with other
unbearable psychological and physical tortures—all these have given
a heavier bulk to the Islamic Republic’s files on violations of
human rights. The well-established methods of creating fear among the
people, of constant attrition-by-torture of the prisoners to force
“confessions” from them for televised interviews—these are among
the crimes that these days can be seen on a vast scale. Prisoners are
tortured around the clock, day and night, in order to break them and,
despite their will and wishes, to force “confessions” that fly in
the face of their lives, their values and aspirations. We declare
unambiguously that forcing prisoners to give dictated
“confessions” has no [legal] validity, and can only be used as
hard evidence against the Islamic Republic regime, which has placed
such interviewee under harsh pressure and torture.
The families of the detained, without any news of their children and
relatives, have no channel for pursuing their cases and for
clarifying the situation and fate of their loved ones. Disturbing
news pertaining to the killing and the secret burials of detainees
have raised the concerns of the families and spread wider an
atmosphere of fear and terror in the society. The efforts of mothers
of the recently detained in finding their children by repeated
gatherings have been countered by the arrests of family members by
the regime. Street killings and kidnappings are currently on the
agenda of the regime’s security forces, and we face the dangerous
beginnings of systematic and widespread executions. The regime is
pursuing a ruthless, systematic and planned crackdown on the active
and persistent opposition; a trend, which without widespread protests
in Iran and the world, can turn into extensive killings by the regime
at any moment.
A number of the signers of this statement are political prisoners,
who experienced harsh prison lives and tortures in the 1980s. Many of
us are survivors and witnesses to the killings of 1981 and 1988. And
for this reason, we can be sure that the dimensions of the crackdown,
torture and the killings go much farther than indicated in the
reports made available to the public. Bearing these reasons in mind,
we demand immediate, widespread and multilateral action against the
current situation in the prisons and the torture chambers in Iran.
Let us hope that international efforts, as well as efforts by
Iranians outside the country, will be a worthy reflection of the
current sensitive situation.
Along with alerting Amnesty International and the International
[Committee of the] Red Cross regarding the repetition of another
crime against humanity, we ask these institutions to use all their
capabilities to stop the repetition of such crimes, and to visit all
the official and unofficial [secret] prisons of the Islamic Republic
regime, and to spare no efforts in saving the prisoners’ lives.
∑ We demand the unconditional freedom of all political prisoners,
and the banning of any form of torture in prisons.
∑ We demand the unconditional banning of death penalty in Iran.
Freedom loving people! Come and let us use all our resources in an
effort to free the political prisoners. We, former political
prisoners of the Islamic Republic regime, in support of the freedom
struggles of the people and the freedom of all political prisoners,
and in particular those detained in the recent events, and in order
to prevent widespread mass killings, on July 24th and 25th, will
conduct a hunger strike in Berlin, Germany. We ask all freedom loving
political activists, organizations, institutions and the defenders of
human rights to participate in this strike and play a role in
preventing yet another round of mass killings.
o o o
FULL TEXT OF A US FEDERAL APPEALS COURT DECISION BARRING BIBLE
DISTRIBUTION IN A MISSOURI PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT. (16 JULY 2009)
http://www.siawi.org/article871.html
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