SACW | July 22-23, 2009 / Afghan Media under Pressure / Sri Lanka: Price of War Coverage / Pakistan's Ideological Blowback / India: A Superstition Superpower / Batla House Encounter Cover Up / Teachers of hate
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Thu Jul 23 07:50:14 CDT 2009
South Asia Citizens Wire | July 22-23, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2648 -
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] Afghanistan: At Tolo and other Afghan media, pressure from all sides
[2] Sri Lanka: Associated Press correspondent penalised for his war
coverage
[3] Pakistan's Ideological Blowback (Shibil Siddiqi)
[4] India: A Superstition Superpower, Forty years after the lunar
landing
- Where people pray for drought, forget Kyoto Protocol (Jawed Naqvi)
- Dams full, pujas begin
- 'Govt does not have the guts to stop superstition' (Chandran Iyer)
- Indian villagers perform frog wedding to combat rain shortage
(Los Angeles Times)
- Rationalists seek to prove holy men's power not so 'divine'
after all (Rahul Bedi)
- When faith eclipses reason (Salil Tripathi)
[5] India: 'Encounter Deaths' - The Official View Vs the Dissenting
View of Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group
[6] India: Where the state pays for teachers of hate (Praveen Swami)
_____
[1] Afghanistan:
CPJ Blog - Press Freedom News and Views
AT TOLO AND OTHER AFGHAN MEDIA, PRESSURE FROM ALL SIDES
by Bob Dietz/Asia Program Coordinator
July 22, 2009
With elections due on August 20, pressure is mounting on Afghan
journalists, and it's coming from all sides. The International
Federation of Journalists helped organize a meeting in Kabul last
week to draw the fractious journalists' community together; there are
four or five competing organizations, all vying for recognition,
dominance, and funding. In March, the donor organizations to the
United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan called on the groups
to sort themselves out before they'll start sending money. In a
release yesterday, the IFJ addressed both problems: attacks and abuse
aimed at journalists as the elections approach and military activity
increases; and the inability, so far, of journalists to organize
themselves into a cohesive unit.
I spent this morning at one of the front-running media organizations
in Afghanistan, Tolo TV, which says that, yes, while the pressure is
mounting, they're running with it. I spoke for an hour with Jahid
Mohseni, CEO of the Moby Group, run by the Mohseni family that
operates a large array of media operations, Tolo TV being the most
prominent. I was supposed to meet with Mujahid Kakar, Tolo's director
of news and current affairs, but he could only pop in and out a few
times. Tolo is giving its best shot at airing a presidential debate
tomorrow and it's his job to make it work, including a new set built
specially for the debate.
They think the three leading candidates will show up, although
Mohseni said he's not sure all of them will make it. His newsroom was
buzzing with the electricity only an election can create: "Two months
ago everyone was saying the incumbent [Hamid Karzai] is going to
romp, that there's going to be a 90 percent first round win for him.
Suddenly this thing is going the other way around and people are
scratching their heads asking why is this happening," he told me. Of
course, the newsroom was running hard to keep up with the increase in
violence in recent days, too.
Tolo has 10 reporter-cameraman crews in Kabul and 21 one-man bands
spread around the country. Most are expected to turn in two stories a
day; Mohseni says he reckons the average age of his staff to be about
23 so they can usually meet their daily double deadlines.
What about threats and violence directed at his news crews?
"There is increased sophistication in the ways they do intimidation.
All the blunt instruments of harassment CPJ knows of. There are
continuing problems with the insurgents, but a lot of our problems
end up being with government. They use different ways of coming at
us: We have a number of court cases about broadcasting Indian drama
serials or retransmitting Al-Jazeera, and we expect more when they
are unhappy with us. It's difficult when the judiciary is selected by
the president's office. They've charged us under the national
security legislation for airing India serials--that sort of law is
designed to go after the guys trying to blow up the country. The
bottom line is the government feels it can do whatever it wants
without real accountability."
"You're saying the pressure comes more from the government than
anywhere else?" I asked. "What happens to crews in the countryside
when they run tough stories? Is it just the government that complains?"
"Generally, but, sure, we have complaints from the other side as
well. That pressure seems to be easier to manage. In some ways they
seem to be much more media savvy. They seem to be more concerned
about their relationship with the media than the government does,"
Mohseni told me.
The other side being?
"Well it depends, because there are the Taliban and other groups
within the Taliban. There's no single group opposing the government
in an armed fashion. There are clear cases of intimidation, and it's
not all hunk-dory. ... There have been plenty of incidents of
intimidation, people being shot at, but the intimidation isn't the
same as it is with the government. I think it's largely because they
understand they need media and they're very careful about how they go
about treating us, whereas the government sees it otherwise.
They need media because they're the underdogs?
"Effectively, yes. They are careful about their PR, about what
information they are releasing, and they are careful about how
harshly the media will come down on them if they do something wrong.
But they're trying to convey a message about being part of the
people, so it becomes hypocritical if they start attacking media. It
undermines their core message."
Your greatest fear?
"For our reporters, it's a tough environment. For reporters, there
are personal security issues. ... They're doing hard stories about
corruption, hard stories about things people don't want us to
broadcast. The only thing that's protecting them is their name and
their fame with the general public."
(Reporting from Kabul)
UPDATED: We condensed the original entry's third-to-final paragraph
to clarify Jahid Mohseni's point.
_____
[2] Sri Lanka:
Reporters Without Borders
22 July 2009
ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT PENALISED FOR HIS WAR COVERAGE
Reporters Without Borders today called on the Sri Lankan government
to give a more convincing explanation about its refusal to renew the
press visa of the Associated Press correspondent in the country Ravi
Nessman.
Nessman, an American national who has been based in Sri Lanka since
2007, was forced to leave the country on 20 July after his visa was
not renewed.
Advisor to the head of state, Lucien Rajakarunanayake, said the
refusal was because foreign correspondents were not allowed to stay
in the country for more than two years, but one international media
correspondent said he had never heard of this “rule”. A spokesman at
the American news agency called the decision “very disturbing”
Nessman had a by-lined exclusive on a UN internal report drawing
attention to the real toll of civilian victims of the conflict in the
north and east of the country that ended when the Sri Lankan army
defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009. The report seriously
implicated top UN and government officials.
“News agencies have been some of the few media that managed to cover
the bloody conflict in Sri Lanka independently. Now journalists are
being unfairly punished for having written these reports,” the
worldwide press freedom organisation said.
“After attacking human rights activists and doctors, the government
is now taking it out on foreign journalists who reported on the
suffering of the people. It’s extremely unfortunate,” the
organisation added.
Reporters Without Borders has obtained information that at least
eight foreign reporters or contributors to international media have
been forced to leave the country because of threats from the
authorities or their supporters since 1st January 2009. At least 30
Sri Lankan journalists have fled their country since the start of 2008.
_____
[3] Pakistan:
REPORT: PAKISTAN'S IDEOLOGICAL BLOWBACK
by Shibil Siddiqi (June 29, 2009)
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
If the bucolic Swat valley, tucked into the Himalayas less than 100
miles from the capital city of Islamabad, is a bellwether for
Pakistan's war against the Pakistani Taliban,1 the war is going
badly. The Swat District — an integrated part of Pakistan's North
West Frontier Province (NWFP) as opposed to the autonomous Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — has been beyond government control
since 2007. In this period the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi
(Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammaden Islamic Law), a militant
Pakistani Taliban group,2 thoroughly destroyed the threadbare state
institutions that existed in the area. Most notably they targeted
schools and the police force. Rebuilding these will take years.
The Pakistani government concluded a truce in Swat in February 2009.
The embattled left-leaning provincial government in NWFP, whose
parliamentarians the Islamist3 Taliban ruthlessly targeted, urged the
central government to do so. It passed the Nizam-e-Adl (System of
Courts) regulation that instituted Sharia courts under de facto
Taliban control. The deal provided the Pakistani Taliban with an
autonomous enclave where they freely dispensed frontier justice and,
according to their spokesman, prepared to spread their version of
Sharia to all of Pakistan.
The truce came after months of fighting between government and
Taliban forces following previous failed deals that merely gave the
insurgents room to regroup and neutralize community opposition
through widespread terror. The conflict killed and maimed thousands,
and displaced hundreds of thousands more, an indication of the
vicious zeal of the Taliban and the indiscriminate brutality of the
military response. Despite the staggering human cost of the
engagement, a military contingent of up to 16,000 troops failed to
dislodge some 3,000 Taliban fighters. In this context, the ceasefire
accord was a de facto ceding of territory but also an abdication of
the state's de jure legitimacy.
The ceasefire quickly unraveled when the Taliban used the military
withdrawal to bleed into the surrounding areas, particularly Buner,
Dir, and Malakand. Under intense U.S. pressure, the military has once
again invaded Swat, with tanks, heavy artillery, and air support. It
has urged residents of Swat and neighboring districts to flee,
displacing up to 3 million people — more than half the total
population. The United Nations warned that the Swat valley could be
the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Details of the latest offensive are sparse since the military has
prevented independent observers and media from entering near the
combat zone. But even if it declares victory in this fourth major
military offensive in Swat since November 2007, the military is
unlikely to eliminate the Taliban in Swat and hold territory long
enough to begin much-needed reconstruction. Further, the relief
effort is underprepared, underfunded, and overwhelmed. Ill-
preparedness for the arduous tasks of conducting effective
humanitarian and reconstruction operations could turn even a decisive
military victory into apropaganda and recruiting coup for the Taliban.
fig1
Figure 1: Map of Pakistan highlighting the Swat region
Similar stories unfold from Waziristan to Bajaur in the Tribal
Agencies: limited advances culminating in ceasefires signed from a
position of weakness and in the absence of any broad-based dialogue
with affected communities. Under the umbrella of these armistices,
militants are projecting their power and spreading their influence
deeper into Pakistan. The sophisticated attacks in recent months in
Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore — Pakistan's political, military,
and cultural capitals, respectively — demonstrate the reach of the
Taliban network. It also marks the end of the phase where the
insurgency could be contained in the miserable badlands on Pakistan's
periphery. The fight is now moving to the very heart of Pakistan in
the province of the Punjab.
fig2
Figure 2: Map detail of the highlighted area in Figure 1.
Why has the seventh-largest military machine in the world —battle-
hardened in wars, ongoing border disputes, numerous external and
internal campaigns, and peacekeeping missions — been so ineffective
against the Taliban militia?
A stock explanation from analysts and officials alike is that the
Pakistani military, with conventional warfare against archenemy India
as its raison d'être, possesses inadequate capability to wage a
successful counterinsurgency campaign. Moreover, the army isn't
sufficiently motivated to battle its compatriots and coreligionists.
Such reasoning is the basis for the Pakistani military's successful
bid to seek a renewed aid package from Washington. The new deal
provides $3 billion a year to the military, contrasted with half that
amount for development assistance.
This conventional wisdom, however, is inadequate and obscures a
deeper and more worrisome issue. Pakistan is facing ideological
blowback from over five decades of using political Islam as a tool of
domestic and foreign policy.
A History of Counterinsurgency
The Pakistani army has been fighting indigenous insurgencies for as
long as it has fought India. It fought its first internal uprising in
1948, less than six months after Pakistan emerged as a sovereign
state following the dismantling of the British Empire in India. The
reason for its deployment was the Khan of Kalat's declaration of
independence of what is now the province of Baluchistan. Pakistan's
military subdued and annexed the state, swiftly putting down a
resulting rebellion supported by Afghanistan. 4
Baluch resentment has boiled over into armed insurrection a number of
times since, notably in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and then recently
from 2005 to 2008. Each time the military moved with dispatch to
quash the uprisings. At the zenith of operations in the 1970s, the
government deployed more than 80,000 troops along with massive
armored and air support. Most recently, the military refused all
overtures of a negotiated settlement, including those made by a
special parliamentary committee and its own government. Instead it
vowed to crush the militants. "Don't push us," said the then-Army
Chief and President General Pervez Musharraf, or "you won't even know
what hit you." Underlining its seriousness, the military dropped a
bomb on the venerable octogenarian politician and rebel leader Nawab
Akbar Bugti, igniting a firestorm of protest across the province. The
military and intelligence agencies "disappeared" thousands of Baluch
political activists, taking advantage of the legal and moral
blindspots of the Global War on Terror. The whereabouts of many of
them remain unknown.
The war for independence in the former province of East Pakistan (now
the independent Bangladesh) in 1971 is just as telling. The province
declared independence after Pakistan's then-military rulers refused
to allow it to form a government after winning a majority in the
elections of 1970. Pakistan faced over 100,000 armed Bengali rebels,
led by trained military officers and troops that had hitherto been
part of the Pakistani army. The insurgents enjoyed the benefits of
sanctuary, supplies, and training provided by India. Yet the
Pakistani army, along with tens of thousands of militant volunteers
drawn from right-wing Islamist parties, was more or less set to
extinguish the rebellion. Decisive Indian military intervention on
the side of the Bengalis stymied Pakistan.5 The military command's
ruthlessness in East Pakistan led to serious accusations of war
crimes that continue to haunt Pakistan to the present day.
In addition, the military has successfully faced down a number of low-
grade insurgencies in rural Sindh, the city of Karachi, and indeed
the provinces of NWFP and FATA in the 1980s and 1990s.6 The military
also possesses extensive experience in organizing massive guerrilla
campaigns in Afghanistan and Kashmir, giving it an inside knowledge
of insurgency that only a few other militaries can equal.7
In all the above cases the military fought compatriots and co-
religionists largely employing tactics of asymmetric and guerrilla
warfare. In each case its counterinsurgency techniques were
disproportionate and undeniably brutal. Yet they were ultimately
successful in quelling the uprisings without making any notable
concessions to the insurgents (with the exception of East Pakistan,
which turned into a conventional war with India).
But not anymore. Why is the current military operation against the
Pakistani Taliban so different?
The army's present counterinsurgency difficulties are not entirely
explained by the military's alliance with the United States or its
ambivalent relationship with the Taliban. In any case the army's
position toward the Taliban has hardened over the last two years, as
Taliban commanders have increasingly targeted state institutions and
the military in particular. Nor are the present government's
disorganization and institutional inertia sufficient reasons. A
guardian army that has ruled Pakistan for most of the country's
existence, firmly handles all national security issues, and has tens
of thousands of personnel already deployed and under attack would not
wait on a civilian government's instructions. 8
The key difference is the present insurgency's ideological dimension.
Whereas all previous insurrections have been primarily secular ethno-
nationalist, the Pakistani Taliban for the first time represent a
serious Islamist challenge to the Islamic Republic.
A History of Islamization
Discussions of Pakistani politics and the present Islamist insurgency
seldom stray far from familiar frameworks. Under commonly held
perceptions of Pakistan's history, the country's Islamization begins
only in the late 1970s with the sclerotic military dictatorship of
General Zia ul-Haq. The United States declared Pakistan a "frontline
state" in the battle for freedom against the Soviets and communists
in Afghanistan and, with the help of its Western and Arab allies,
sponsored the anti-Soviet jihad from Pakistani soil. They accentuated
the Islamic dimension of the insurgency, 9 strengthening militant
Islamist forces, madrassah networks, and jihadist internationalists.
This led to a stupendous growth and radicalization of Islamist and
right-wing factions in Pakistan. Drug smuggling and weapons pilfering
by Afghan warlords and the Pakistani military — with U.S. collusion —
resulted in the influx of the "heroin and Kalashnikov culture" and
skyrocketing levels of violence.10 U.S. policy toward Pakistan in the
aftermath of the Soviet and Western withdrawal from Afghanistan and
the region can be summed up by the words "do as thou wilt." With the
Cold War at an end and the Gulf War on the horizon, Pakistan too was
abandoned. Most aid and assistance dried up and it was left to its
own devices. It had free reign in installing the ultra-orthodox
Taliban regime in Kabul, in the process utilizing and entrenching all
the criminal and Islamist strains that the anti-Soviet jihad had
birthed.
This history contributes to explaining the relative strength of the
Islamists in Pakistan today. But it doesn't entirely account for the
relative weakness of Pakistan's million-strong army in its attempts
at confronting an estimated 15,000 Taliban fighters. Pakistan's
current predicament lies in the fundamental ideological orientation
and mobilization of the state.
Pakistan was created in 1947 as a homeland for India's Muslims. A
largely secular and landed elite led its nation-building struggle.
These elite have continued to govern it to the present day, in
collusion with the military that has ruled Pakistan for much of its
life. Pakistan is an ethnically diverse country with adherence to a
shared religion — that too fractured by multifarious sectarian
differences — as the only common denominator. Thus, it has been
plagued by an unresolved search for national identity. Is it to be a
heterogeneous and pluralistic Muslim country or a doctrinal Islamic
state?
This debate frames some of the basic political choices available to
Pakistan. Its secularist, leftist, and ethnically based parties have
long supported a loose federation of Pakistan's provinces, resolving
questions of identity in favor of regional ethnic and cultural ties.
Its ruling elite, and particularly its colonial-style military and
bureaucrats, have stood for a strongly centralized state that can
assert control over provincial resources to build up its internal and
external coercive capacity. 11 Strong regional identities would
undercut such a centripetal state. Therefore, from its very earliest
days, political Islam has been utilized as a means of mobilizing
identity,12 of subsuming regional affiliations into the political
agendas dictated by the center.
Encouraging a common Islamic underpinning to an otherwise ethnically
and socially diverse country has been a means of stressing
integration of the state's peripheries with the core. It's a strategy
of bringing the badlands of Baluchistan, NWFP, and FATA under the
comfortable hegemony of the Pakistani heartlands of the Indus Valley:
the provinces of Punjab and, to a lesser extent, Sindh. This religion-
based identity serves to combat centrifugal ethno-nationalist
tendencies and reinforces control of the over-centralized colonial
state. This state, and the bloated military that is its ultimate
guarantor, has been supported by the United States and the West in
general since the 1950s.13
The Pakistani state, with the military as its dominant institution,
has used all means of political and social engineering to emphasize
an Islamic ideology and orientation for the country. In fact,
Pakistan is the first country in the world to adopt the appellation
"Islamic Republic" as part of its official designation. It has used
religious notions of jihad in its wars against India and its own
ethnic minorities, crafted educational syllabi to teach a warped
Islamicized history, controlled media to disseminate official
propaganda, and passed laws to persecute non-Muslims and limit
critical discussions of political Islam. The country's ruling elite
has also long sought to equate loyalty to Pakistan with fealty to
Islam, labeling most serious expressions of dissent as un-Islamic.
Most importantly, the state, through the dominant institution of the
military, has stifled democratic aspirations by controlling or
manipulating the political arena outright. It has created and
patronized several Islamic and right-wing political parties. 14
Pakistan's constitution explicitly recognizes both its (albeit
undefined) Islamic ideology as well as the imperative to bring all
laws in line with Sharia. Islamic ideology as a result has become the
keystone of Pakistani identity — not through an organic grassroots
process but rather through the supra-political machinations of the
authoritarian state. In the process, and quite by design, the state
has discredited largely secular and progressive nationalist forces.
For instance, the disparaging Urdu term ladiniyat, meaning
"irreligious," has entered the vernacular as the word for
"secularism." It is thus unsurprising that the space for expressing
public dissent on the enforcement of Islamic laws and mores has
dramatically contracted.
Such processes grew starker under the regime of General Zia ul-Haq,
as both juridical and other forms of state and social coercion
multiplied so as to disseminate the official, Islamic viewpoint and
silence all opposing stances. But General Zia and his policies are
not an anomaly within Pakistan's political development. They are a
natural outcropping of the government's use of political Islam as
state ideology. Zia simply read from the blueprints that had already
been crafted by Pakistan's previous (mostly military) rulers. That
the fallout from his regime has been more toxic says less about his
role as an arch-villain in Pakistani history than it does about the
tipping point that was reached in the state's Islamization project.
Pakistan was already at the banks of the Rubicon; Zia merely swam
across.
The majority of Pakistanis may disagree with the Taliban's
puritanical zeal. Indeed, Islamists traditionally fare poorly at the
polls. 15 But the broader social trends incubated by the state itself
have made it difficult to openly counter the Taliban's key message of
propagating Sharia law and public displays of piety and religiosity.
The Pakistani establishment has for decades been cynical in its use
of political Islam as a tool of domestic and foreign policy. It has
lionized the struggles for a theocratic state embodied by the Taliban
and other Islamic holy warriors in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and beyond.
Thus, for many the Taliban's proclamations of being "jihadis" or
"mujahideen" garbs them in the cloak of popular Islamic legitimacy.
Such a perception of legitimacy has been (and continues to be)
fostered by the state itself.
Ideological Blowback
The Pakistani Taliban and their vocal sympathizers, largely
radicalized and feted through the state's ideological apparatus, are
now turning their ideas — and their guns — on the state itself. They
are proving increasingly adept at appropriating the official
discourse of Islamic legitimacy and recasting it in a radical mold.
The Taliban have been assisted immeasurably in this by the political
and ideological alienation of the Pakistani state in the aftermath of
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Previously, Pakistan
brandished its Islamic credentials by presenting itself as a champion
of regional causes from Afghanistan to Kashmir. Its foreign policy
reorientation after 9/11, when it allied itself with the United
States against its former Taliban allies and curbed its support for
militant Islamists in Kashmir, has called its Islamic commitment into
question. But Pakistan has failed to re-imagine its moral authority
in different normative terms.
In effect, the Taliban are stepping into this breach. They are out to
realize the state's rhetoric. This subverted discourse is not
precisely illegitimate or terroristic since it originates with the
state. The state finds itself hamstrung in its ability to craft a
strategic narrative on taking concerted action against the Taliban,
in military as well as political terms. From a strategic perspective,
this is the primary reason Pakistan's vast military machine is
foundering against the Taliban. Opposing the Taliban's message of
Islamization would hurt the legitimacy that the state has tried so
hard to embed within Islamic qualifications. However, acknowledging
alternative actors for such Islamization subverts the state's de jure
authority. In either case, the state stands to hemorrhage its
legitimacy.
This schizophrenia is reflected in the ambivalence and prevarications
of the broader public as well as the elected parliament on the issue
of Talibanization. Recent opinion polls indicate that as many as 69%
of Pakistanis recognize the Taliban as presenting a profound threat
to Pakistan. Yet 56% also state that they support the Taliban's key
demand of spreading Sharia to all parts of Pakistan. Similarly,
nearly all parties in the Pakistani parliament, from the rightist
Jamaat-e-Islaami to the secular and left-leaning Awami National Party
or the ruling Pakistani Peoples Party, voted in favor of the Nizam-e-
Adl Regulation, which established Sharia law in Swat.16 Clearly the
electoral defeat of Islamic parties in the elections of 200817 has
not translated into stemming the spread of Islamization, nor is such
a prospect likely in the near future. The state has shaped political
discourses in such a way that the ideological demand for Sharia has
become, in a sense, an internalized and depoliticized fact of life in
Pakistan. Just as the idea of human rights in Western society often
cuts across partisan lines and specific dogma, Sharia is increasingly
forming a similar overarching narrative in Pakistan.
Nor is the military, even as its own social class,18 immune from such
trends or the groundswell of conservative religiosity visible in
Pakistani society today. The military has always been at the
forefront of the so-called Islamization campaigns, most visibly
during the Western-supported regime of General Zia ul-Haq in the
1970s and 1980s, and is the architect of Pakistan's Islamist
direction. Further, Pakistani soldiers imbibe not only a narrow
nationalistic ideology common to most militaries of protecting the
country's borders. They are also taught to think of themselves as
"Soldiers of Islam," entrusted with the defense of Pakistan's
"ideological frontiers" as an Islamic state.19 The military's tell-
tale motto, "Iman, Taqwa, and Jihad fi SabilAllah," (faith, piety,
and jihad in the way of Allah) indicates how the Islamist Taliban
have played havoc with its ideological moorings.
Pakistan is losing the battle of ideas, and the Taliban have been
taking advantage of the state's contradictions. They have moved
beyond being a purely negative force capitalizing on the unpopularity
of Western and specifically U.S. policies in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, to increasingly advancing a constructive agenda in the
areas under their control. Obviously, they have been most vocal about
the need for a true Islamic state. But some practical contours are
becoming visible past this rhetoric. For example, they have backed an
Islamic welfare state in Pakistan that addresses basic services and
socioeconomic inequalities. Further, the Taliban campaign leading up
to their takeover of Swat fully exploited deep class resentments. All
of Pakistan's traditional power brokers, from the military to
mainstream political parties and Islamists, have generally opposed
land reform, with the latter viewing private landholdings, no matter
how inequitable, to be sacrosanct. In contrast, the Taliban drove out
large landowners in Swat and engaged in more egalitarian
redistribution of land. They are attempting to follow similar tactics
in Buner.
Such actions have gained the Taliban both popularity and legitimacy
in the eyes of many belonging to the region's under-classes. If the
Taliban prove earnest in enforcing a redistributive agenda they, or
Punjabi militant groups with similar ideologies, may find it easier
to make inroads into the Pakistani heartlands where land and income
distribution continues to overwhelmingly favor wealthy landowners and
the elite. Already, a group calling itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban
Punjab (Movement of Punjabi Taliban) has carried out attacks in the
province. If this support from the under-classes becomes generalized,
the Taliban (or their like-minded allies) will be able to tap into a
very large constituency. After all, the vast majority of Pakistanis
are poor. According to conservative estimates, 33% of Pakistan's
population of 170 million live below the poverty line, and nearly 75%
live on less than $2 a day.
The Taliban are increasingly succeeding in one crucial aspect of an
insurgency, as outlined by the renowned Pakistani scholar, the late
Dr. Eqbal Ahmad. The Taliban are focusing not simply on outfighting
the Pakistani army, but on out-administering the state. They are
draining the state's political and ideological legitimacy while
broadening their own.20 This increases the state's moral and
political isolation from the people. Insurgencies succeed when this
isolation becomes total and irreversible. 21 Thus, ideological
blowback has turned the battle between the Pakistani state and the
Taliban militia into a struggle over legitimacy: not just the
coercive power to rule but the moral authority to do so. The
battlefield isn't just the rugged mountains of FATA and NWFP, but
also the ideological terrain where the struggle for legitimacy is
being waged.
Positioning AfPak
The recent U.S. AfPak strategy is complicating matters for Pakistan.
Classifying Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theatre — AfPak —
might capture some of the tactical realities faced by NATO troops in
Afghanistan. U.S. military planners don't see any reason to
distinguish between different groups that target NATO forces. But
conceptually, this may carry significant strategic drawbacks. It will
likely lead to more interdependency and cooperation between insurgent
groups in the two countries. Failure to distinguish between the
Taliban and al-Qaeda resulted in greater cooperation and ideological
identification between the two. Strategic failure to distinguish
between the Taliban groups operating on either side of the Durand
Line may also lead to a similar amalgamation. Indeed, one of the main
aims of al-Qaeda propaganda has been the project of convincing the
Taliban — in Afghanistan and Pakistan alike — that they are not
simply engaged in national struggles but are part of a global war for
Islam. Mullah Omar, the reclusive leader of the original Taliban
group that took power in Kabul in the 1990s, has similarly called for
greater unity between Pakistani and Afghan Taliban. AfPak dovetails
nicely with these pan-Islamic notions of a unified struggle.
AfPak so far appears to be a confused and multi-vocal policy.
Essentially it's an escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan and its
expansion in Pakistan. The recent Pakistani military offensives are
part of this strategy. In fact, the United States has been flexing
its diplomatic muscle to obtain a guarantee from India to restrain
military tensions with Pakistan, which in theory frees up the bulk of
Pakistani troops stationed near the Indian border in Punjab and Sindh
to focus solely on counterinsurgency operations in NWFP and FATA. The
operations in Swat are a stepping stone to the real prize-fight the
United States has been urging on Pakistan: pacification of FATA,
particularly the inhospitable Waziristan agencies, which are
allegedly home to the bulk of al-Qaeda's regional leadership as well
as several top Taliban commanders.
Stepped-up drone attacks on FATA have already killed an estimated 700
civilians (for 14 al-Qaeda leaders assassinated). The United States
is considering an expansion of airstrikes into Pakistan proper by
targeting Taliban leaders in the province of Baluchistan. Baluchistan
has a history of episodic armed rebellion against the central
government, as well as a large Pashtun population. The province is
already on tenterhooks with ongoing provincial unrest. Any expansion
of missile attacks into the province and attendant civilian
casualties would have grave consequences for stability in Pakistan.
The trebling in size of a large military base in Afghanistan's
Helmand province, adjacent to Baluchistan, as well as the appointment
of General McChrystal as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in
Afghanistan, are also worrisome. McChrystal is an enthusiastic
supporter of Special Forces commando raids and "precision" strikes,
with all the risks they entail. A recent airstrike in the Farah
province of Afghanistan reportedly killed as many as 150 people. His
appointment and background in aggressive counterterrorism are good
indications that the use of such tactics in Afghanistan and Pakistan
will continue. The Helmand base also signals that U.S. presence in
the region and operations in Pakistan will expand for the foreseeable
future. The linking of U.S. military aid to cooperation in the AfPak
stratagem will ensure for the time being that the Pakistani army will
remain engaged in internal military operations.
Ultimately, U.S. violations of Pakistani territory, as well as the
massive military operations creating millions of refugees, will only
further erode the legitimacy of the state and increase its moral
isolation. Failing state structures and barters of sovereignty will
in turn translate into the political support that sustains long-term
insurgencies. This will be especially true if the AfPak escalation
entails U.S. ground excursions into Pakistan. U.S. incursions into
and bombing of Cambodia in 1973 to clear out Viet Cong sanctuaries
were a key factor in the rise of Khmer Rouge. U.S. actions demolished
the credibility of the pro-U.S. government and sent many of the
millions of refugees into the arms of the guerillas. With the caveat
that historical analogies with other countries are most often tricky
and imprecise, AfPak may have similar unintended consequences.
A Losing Battle?
If the military is to be believed, its most recent offensive is
successfully clearing out Taliban holdouts in Swat. Credible
information is hard to come by. But in contrast to its previous
military actions, this one enjoys broad support in parliament. There
is also a wider social dialogue on the challenge of dealing with the
Taliban expansion.
But the military response will not likely sustain this support for
long. Unless the army is able to wrap up operations relatively
quickly and then hold its gains, the human cost of the offensive (3
million displaced) will quickly sap political and societal support.
Already the squalid refugee camps are seething with anger at the
military offensive and have turned into ideal recruiting grounds for
the Taliban. Because the relief operations are ill-planned, more than
80% of the refugees have not sought shelter at the camps but have
migrated, sometimes en masse, to other parts of the country, stoking
ethnic tensions in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh in particular.
An expansion of the offensive into FATA will further compound these
difficulties, particularly as the military and government lumber on
without any apparent exit strategy or post-conflict vision.
Still, an unwarranted alarmist tone prevails in the United States,
Canada, and many other countries regarding Pakistan. Successful
insurgencies against an established and entrenched state — as opposed
to a foreign occupier that, by definition, can pick up and leave —
require a shift from terrorist and guerilla tactics to conventional
warfare. Holding large tracts of land and dense urban centers
requires more than a few thousand gunmen. The Taliban will not likely
be in any position to stand toe-to-toe with the Pakistani military
and its massive conventional arsenal in the foreseeable future. Thus
contrived panic in Western capitals over the Taliban nesting in Swat,
less than 100 miles from the capital, as well as over the security of
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, is both naively exaggerated and cynically
self-serving. The Taliban are not about to sweep into power, and
Pakistan's nuclear weapons have sophisticated controls in place. 22
Such alarmism is geared more toward serving Western needs in
Afghanistan and buoying NATO presence in the region than showing any
genuine concern for the constitutional regime in Islamabad. They
create a pretext and ex post facto justification for intervention and
escalating the war in AfPak. At the very least, NATO can blame the
morass in Afghanistan on the sanctuaries available to the Taliban in
Pakistan, and thereby absolve the occupation forces of much of the
responsibility. Cross-border attacks fell by as much as 50% in 2008
while attacks inside Afghanistan are rising, indicating that the
problems of the Afghan insurgency can't be simply attributed to
Pakistani support and safe havens.
The struggle against the Taliban in Pakistan is in its earliest
phases. As with most insurgencies, it will go on for a long time. The
actual threat to the state is not an overnight collapse. The Swat
fiasco and Nizam-e-Adl Regulations provide a taste of the Pakistani
state's future management strategies. It's willing to patch up its
legitimacy by pandering to the obscurantist demands of the Taliban
and to undercut their momentum by making its own judicial system
mirror a rough Sharia justice. The real threat isn't that the Taliban
will take over but, rather, that they might not have to.
Effectively opposing the Taliban isn't simply a technical or military
problem, but a moral and political one.23 Intellectual resistance to
the Taliban requires reassessing Pakistan's state ideology and
carefully crafting a modicum of social consensus. It needs a closer
alignment of ideological projects with popular political aspirations,
with the former subservient to latter. The struggle to define the
idea of Pakistan must be brought within democratic space, rather than
being imposed from above by a colonial state and its ideological
apparatus. An open and sustained public dialogue must take place on
the symbolic signifiers of the state, particularly its foundational
myths, and on the ways Islam is, or is not, to play a role in its
public sphere. Most of all, it requires realizing the democratic
aspirations of Pakistan's long-suffering multitudes, in want of basic
services and the necessities of life. Western support in this respect
needs to be geared toward strengthening representative institutions
and civil society as opposed to Pakistan's entrenched military and
permanent establishment.
Pakistanis in the streets see alternatives. Take, for example, the
recent mass movement led by Pakistan's lawyers. Though often referred
to in terms of instability in Pakistan — whereas similar movements
elsewhere, even where they are less than organic, are given romantic
sobriquets of Rose or Orange Revolutions — the movement clearly
highlighted the deep-seated commitment of many Pakistanis to
democracy and rule of law. These forces and impulses must be
harnessed to provide a new direction for the Pakistani state.
Nevertheless, a consensus on opposition to the Taliban and a
reorientation of the state will prove difficult given a Pakistani
polity that is increasingly fragmented along political, class,
ethnic, sectarian, religious, and urban/rural lines. But "initiating
a sustained dialogue on the political issues of who we [Pakistanis]
are, where we have come from and where we want to go is crucial." 24
In the words of one Pakistani analyst, "It's a question of Pakistan's
identity. Was [Pakistan] created for Islam? This kind of confusion is
a threat to Pakistan's existence as a nation state."
The crisis in Pakistan is not simply political or military. It
involves ideas and identity.
Notes
1. 'Pakistani Taliban' is not a precise term. This article uses the
term to denote any number of different militant Islamist Pashtun
groups based primarily in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA) or North West Frontier Province (NWFP) that are in
conflict with the Pakistani Government. The composition of such
groups is constantly in flux. The main umbrella group for the Taliban
is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Movement of Taliban of Pakistan)
led by Baitullah Mehsud. It brings together more than 40 different
militant outfits in a loose grouping. See Hassan Abbas, 'A Profile of
the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan', CTC Sentinel, Vol. 1, Issue 2,
January 2008.
2. The TNSM is part of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
3. The terms "Islamist" and "Islamism" are highly contested. For the
purposes of this study, I use the simple definition if Islamism
adopted by the International Crisis Group that sees Islamism as
synonymous with Islamic Activism. That is, "the active assertion of
beliefs, prescriptions, laws or policies that are held to be Islamic
in character. There are numerous currents of Islamism in this sense:
what they hold in common is that they found their activism on
traditions and teachings of Islam…". See International Crisis Group,
"Understanding Islamism," Middle East/North Africa Report No. 37,
March 2005.
4. Selig S. Harrison, In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and
Soviet Temptations (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
1981), p. 25-26.
5. An authoritative account on the birth of Bangladesh remains
Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War and Seccession: Pakistan, India
and the Creation of Bangladesh (University of California Press, 1991).
6. On these points see Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan,
its Army and the Wars Within (Oxford Karachi, 2008).
7. A comprehensive account of these issues is found in Steve Coll,
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden,
from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin Press, 2004).
8. On the classification of the Pakistani army as Guardian Army, see
Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy
(Oxford Pakistan, 2008), particularly p. 51-54.
9. A good study on this point is Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in
Afghanistan (Cambridge, 1990).
10. On the impact of this on Pakistan, see Gilles Kepel, Jihad: On
the Trail of Political Islam (Belknap, 2002), particularly at p.
143-144.
11. For a good discussion on these issues, see Ayesha Jalal, The
State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's political economy of
defence (Cambridge, 2008), particularly at p. 49, and Husain Haqqani,
Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2005).
12. Mobilizing idenitity here refers to, "the process by which…[a
community defined in terms of identity]…becomes politicized on behalf
of its collective interests and aspirations". See Milton J. Esmer,
Ethnic Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 28.
13. On this point see Haqqani, Between Mosque and Military, as well
as Nawaz, Crossed Swords.
14. For a good study on these issues, see Haqqani, Between Mosque and
Military.
15. The historic high for the religious parties was the 1970 election
where they gathered 14% of the popular vote. Since then their
electoral support had been in terminal decline till 2002, when their
share of the popular vote ballooned to 11%. The machinations of the
military government at the time ensured that a coalition of religious
parties were in government in two provinces and akin to the official
opposition at the centre. Figures are from Owen Bennett Jones,
Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (Yale, 2003), p. xvii-xviii. The religious
parties received a drubbing in the February 2008 elections. They
secured only 7 seats in the 342 seat National Assembly and only 2.2%
of the popular vote. See Election Commission of Pakistan, available
online at http://www.ecp.gov.pk/NAPosition.pdf (accessed October 2,
2008).
16. The sole exception was the Karachi based Muttahida Qaumi Movement
(MQM), whose 24 legislators boycotted the vote in protest. See Irfan
Ali, 'MQM rejects parliamentary approval of Nizam-e-Adl', Daily
Times, April 15, 2009. Available online at http://
www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\04\15
\story_15-4-2009_pg7_8 (accessed April 15, 2009).
17. The religious parties received a drubbing in the February 2008
elections. They secured only 7 seats in the 342 seat National
Assembly and only 2.2% of the popular vote. See Election Commission
of Pakistan, available online at http://www.ecp.gov.pk/NAPosition.pdf
(accessed October 2, 2008).
18. On the emergence of the Pakistani army as a separate class, see
Siddiqua, Military Inc., p. 83-111.
19. The idea of being "Soldiers of Islam" and Islamic "ideological
frontiers" is often attributed to General Zia. See, for example,
Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam
(Columbia, 2007), p. 18. In actual fact it was given voice by the
whiskey swivelling General Yahya Khan, Pakistan's military dictator
from 1969 to 1971. See Haqqani, Between Mosque and Military, p. 51.
20. Carollee Bengelsdorf and Margaret Cerullo, 'Introduction' in
(Eds.) Carollee Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo and Yogesh Chandrani,
The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad (Oxford Karachi, 2006), p. 4.
21. See Eqbal Ahmad, 'Revolutionary Warfare: How to Tell When the
Rebels Have Won', in (Eds.) Carollee Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo
and Yogesh Chandrani, The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad (Oxford
Karachi, 2006).
22. For a useful overview of Pakistan's nuclear concerns and
controls, see Tariq Ali, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of
American Power (Scribner, 2008), p. 209-216.
23. I draw this theme from Eqbal Ahmad and his insightful writings on
revolutionary and counterrevolutionary warfare. See Eqbal Ahmad,
'Revolutionary Warfare: How to Tell When the Rebels Have Won', in
(Eds.) Carollee Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo and Yogesh Chandrani,
The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad (Oxford Karachi, 2006).
24. Author's conversation with Tasneem Siddiqui, a renowned Pakistani
social entrepreneur and activist.
Shibil Siddiqi is a Gordon Global Fellow with the Walter & Duncan
Gordon Foundation in Toronto. His research interests focus on
Pakistan and Afghanistan, countries where he has lived and worked
extensively. He has presented research briefs on South Asia at the
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the
Afghanistan Taskforce at Foreign Affairs in Canada. He is a
contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
_____
[4] India: Superpower of Superstition:
Dawn
29 June, 2009
WHERE PEOPLE PRAY FOR DROUGHT, FORGET KYOTO PROTOCOL
by Jawed Naqvi
The rains will come when nature has a good reason to send them to us:
Jawed Naqvi.
The white heat is searing and I dread looking at the weather report.
Luckily my home is not very far from the chief minister’s private
house, which could explain the fewer power outages that I get as
opposed to the rest of Delhi where electricity blackouts have
triggered violent protests. There is no shortage of water either in
my vicinity, or shall I say, not yet. I live among uncaring folks who
callously leave their bore-well pumps on for hours, which daily soak
up whatever remains of the dwindling water table from the ground
beneath. Reminders have failed to evoke any response.
This is the same lot of well-heeled people who last year canvassed
support for an assembly candidate only if he would get the cluster of
slums across the railway lines removed. People from there were
committing thefts, they informed the would-be MLA. Even the police
seemed embarrassed by the cock-sure tone of their accusations. After
the elections the residents did get their pound of flesh and the
clusters were gone. None cared about what became of the few hundred
human beings, fellow Indians to boot?
That the twin issues of water and power shortages are directly linked
with the lifestyle that passes for shining India is hardly ever noted
as a factor for public discourse. Across the road from where I live
tens of thousands of pilgrims headed for the shrine of Khwaja
Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer are taking a break. They defecate on the
streets and sleep on the furnace-like pavements, a far cry from the
high priority plans under way for the Amarnath pilgrimage in Kashmir.
This is the time of the annual ‘urs’ in Ajmer and on this occasion
Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi found her way to the Sufi shrine.
The gesture may indicate her gratitude to Muslim voters who helped
her fetch a surprisingly large tally of seats for her party last
month. It would be seen as remiss of Ms Gandhi if she did not also
pray at the shrine for the rains to come soon.
Not that everyone who prays there or anywhere else for that matter
gets his or her boon. Two of Pakistan’s erstwhile military rulers
drew a blank in Ajmer, as did duly elected leaders from Pakistan or
other neighbouring countries.
I once shared this observation with Gen H.M. Ershad of Bangladesh
when he was a mere former ruler. On his way from London to Dhaka he
decided to drop by to pay his respects to the Khwaja. I happened to
be visiting Ajmer to meet my daughters at a boarding school.
A staunch devotee, Ershad did not approve of my mistrust of popular
beliefs surrounding boons. Yet after that pilgrimage he didn’t make
much headway in politics and continued to lead a life in relative
oblivion. Or perhaps that is what he had prayed for.
Beliefs and superstition are not unique to India. However, whereas in
moments of calamity such as a drought, the world would be praying on
its knees for early relief, there is a history of malice in India in
which people who stand to profit from the calamities pray for
disasters to occur. A typical beneficiary from water shortages would
be the man who runs tanker business. Similarly power outages give a
boost to the business of private generator sets, so what if they have
become a major source of urban pollution.
Poor quality of electricity is a boon for the makers of voltage
stabilisers. When the Mumbai terror attack took place the price of
candles went up in Delhi because of the steep demand for countless
vigils that came in its wake.
In times of strife many residents of Delhi head for the Jantar
Mantar, the site of a few hundred years old observatory, where
protesters are still allowed to assemble peacefully. I learnt the
original meaning of the word Jantar Mantar from David Hardiman’s book
called “Feeding the Baniya: Peasants and Usurers in Western India”.
“Baniyas were not infrequently tempted to put their literacy to
supernatural use by dabbling with magic diagrams (known as yantras)
or book of spells (yantra-mantra),” he says. So this is how the word
originated. “It was common knowledge in mid-nineteenth century
Gujarat that many Baniyas had a weakness in this direction, often
becoming so involved that their business suffered. In using such
knowledge against their clients they were extending their control
over the written word, seen already in the manipulation of account
books, into one more domain of power, that of the supernatural.”
I might add here that the highest rating for mumbo-jumbo TV shows
still comes from Gujarat.
“Once a Jain merchant of Gujarat who had built up a large stock of
grain wished to offload it at high prices,” says Hardiman. “He asked
his guru to write a spell on a piece of paper which he tied to the
horn of a black deer. The effect of this spell was to allow rain only
in those places in which the deer was at the time. All other places
experienced drought. This went on for seven years. Eventually a
woodcutter noted that wherever the black deer went the earth became
green with grass. He went to the raja and informed him about this.
The raja caught the deer and took the paper from its horns and threw
it in a well. After this, it rained heavily.”
Hardiman quotes another story narrated by the seventeenth century
chronicler Muhmot Nainsi. In this story the Baniyas in Kutch suffered
because of four successive years of good rain and bumper crops. They
therefore approached a person skilled in powers of black magic who
agreed to lock up the rain and cause a famine in the land.
J.C. Oman has recounted some other means used for such ends by
Baniyas, in this case in the Punjab. “They sometimes made chapattis
which they then mistreated in such a way as to offend the gods, the
logic being that the grain from which the chapattis were made came
from the bounty of the gods who provided the rain. It was believed
that the angered gods would subsequently withhold the rain.
Hardiman quotes another story by Oman:
'At another time I learned that a Baniya had recourse to a still more
effectual method of keeping the rain off. He had a charkha, or a
spinning wheel made out of the bones of dead men. Such an article
could only be made very secretly and for a large sum of money, but
its action was most potent. Whenever clouds were gathering the Baniya
set his virgin daughter to work the charkha the reverse way, and by
that means unwound or unwove the clouds, as it were, thus driving
away the rain…'
The rains will come when we have given nature a good enough reason to
send them to us. In the meanwhile, there is a tussle about the cost
and benefit if the rain gods fail us. Forget the Kyoto Protocol here.
o o o
http://tt.ly/1D
The Times of India
DAMS FULL, PUJAS BEGIN
TNN 22 July 2009
MYSORE: Chief minister B S Yeddyurappa will offer pooja and bagina -
a traditional offering to river Cauvery, on Friday at 8.15 am. The
timing
was fixed by priests as it is considered to be auspicious.
After a long gap, the Krishnasagar dam has filled to its brim in July
itself and that too in a single stretch . A fortnight ago, before the
onset of Punurvasu (phase of a rain as per Hindu calendar) rain on
July 7, the water level in the dam was at its lowest of 70 feet. But
thanks to copious rain in Kodagu district, the water started flowing
steadily into the dam with the water level increasing foot by foot on
daily basis. In 15 days the water level rose by 53 feet from 70 feet
to 123 feet.
On Wednesday, the water level in the dam stood at 123.90 feet against
a maximum level of 124.80. Inflow into the dam stood at 21,080 cusecs
against an outflow of 4,610 cusecs. It was in 1991, the dam was
filled in June resulting in floods in the low lying areas of the dam.
Over 25 villages of Pandavapur, T Narsipur and Kollegal taluk were
submerged forcing the authorities to airlift the people who got
surrounded by flood water from KRS Dam. That year, the combine
release of water from KRS and Kabini crossed a record high of 2.2
lakh cusecs.
In Kabini, the water level stood at 2283.22 feet against a maximum
level 2284 feet. While inflow was 16,056 cusecs against an outflow of
7,050 cusecs.
Meanwhile, the KRRS leaders are planning to meet the chief minister
at KRS dam site and submit a memorandum to him highlighting the
problems faced by the farmers, particularly sugarcane growers.
o o o
INDIAN VILLAGERS PERFORM FROG WEDDING TO COMBAT RAIN SHORTAGE
July 21, 2009
Frog wedding
A severe rain shortage prompted villagers in the Indian state of West
Bengal to fall back on an old tradition -- the frog wedding. The
villagers pooled their money to pay for the wedding of two frogs
named Ram and Sita, named for the two primary characters in the
Sanskrit epic the Ramayana.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/
6a00d8341c630a53ef01157220d71f970b-500wi
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/07/indian-villagers-
perform-frog-wedding-to-combat-rain-shortage.html
o o o
Mid Day
'GOVT DOES NOT HAVE THE GUTS TO STOP SUPERSTITION'
by Chandran Iyer Date: 2009-03-23 Place: Pune
Dr Narendra Dabholkar, the founder-president of Maharashtra
Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti, has been demanding an anti-
superstition bill.
And now, in view of the horrific rape of a 21-year-old girl by her
own father in connivance with a tantrik, their demand assumes even
more significance.
Curb superstition:
Dr Narendra Dabholkar,
the founder-president of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti
People have been believing in superstitions and have been following
aghori practices in rural areas. How do you see the shocking incident
that took place in Mira Road near Mumbai where a father raped his own
daughter in collusion with a tantrik?
It's really appalling. Such cases used to happen in rural areas but
such a thing happening in a city like Mumbai is indeed shocking. I
doubt whether we are actually living in the 21st century.
Don't you think some stringent laws should be made to curb such
practices?
Of course. There was an urgent need to have such law. The Democratic
Front government, as a part of its common minimum programme, had
promised to pass an anti-superstition law but nothing has happened so
far.
Why do you think is government wavering on it?
The government does not have the political will. It does not want to
displease some section of the society who would be hurt if such
legislation is passed. The Maharashtra Legislative Council had passed
a resolution in 1995 to enact a law against superstition but it was
never implemented.
But what according to you is the problem in implementing the law?
Some right-wing organisations have been opposing the implementation
of the anti-superstition law. The government very well knows that
there is no substance in their argument. However, it doesn't want to
antagonise them as it could affect their vote bank.
Apart from the law, what else do you think should be done to stop
such things?
The media should play a constructive role. I am sorry to say but the
electronic media has been overplaying irrational thinking and
behaviour. Look at the stories and serials that are being shown on
the TV channels.
They are just creating more superstitions in the minds of the people.
o o o
Irish Times
July 13, 2009
RATIONALISTS SEEK TO PROVE HOLY MEN'S POWER NOT SO 'DIVINE' AFTER ALL
DELHI LETTER: Rural Indians who believe in the supernatural are often
prey to charlatans posing as ‘god men’, writes RAHUL BEDI
SEVERAL HUNDRED villagers in northern India watched enthralled as a
longhaired sadhu, or holy man, dressed in saffron robes produced ash
out of thin air, exploded huge stones with “mental power”, and turned
water into blood.
Captivated by his supernatural deeds in a small village near Rohtak
in Haryana state, 60km (37 miles) from the capital New Delhi, the
people witnessing this magical performance last month were
intimidated by the man’s “divine power”.
They hoped, through generous donations at the end of his performance,
to dissuade the miracle man from unleashing havoc on their village
through his avowed “supernatural” prowess.
But as the awestruck villagers reached into their pockets, the holy
man whipped off his saffron robes to reveal himself as the local
college science teacher.
He then repeated his presentation, but this time round showed his
audience how he had achieved the “miracles” using sleight of hand and
a few chemicals.
Such proceedings are regularly organised by the Indian Rationalist
Association in a bid to debunk belief in miracles, palmistry and
astrology in the countryside, where the majority of people are
illiterate and believe in the supernatural.
But, above all, the association endeavours to expose thousands of
“god men” or imposters who terrify superstitious rural people into
paying them large sums of money.
“Charlatans have a strong hold on rural India and exploit their fears
with feats that are a matter of elementary chemistry,” says Sanal
Edamaruku, the head of Rationalist International in New Delhi.
Edamaruku (53) joined the rationalist movement as a student activist
shortly after it was established several decades ago with the aim of
exposing superstition, obscurantism and paranormal claims.
He says thousands of volunteers regularly travel throughout rural
India demystifying the so-called holy men’s “wondrous deeds” by
demonstrating how exactly they are executed.
He says this sustained campaign has resulted in villagers in states
including Haryana, neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar and Orissa
in the east, stoning the confidence tricksters and chasing them away.
The charlatans’ performances often include setting objects on fire
through “mind energy”, eating glass, walking on burning embers,
piercing their flesh with steel tridents and, at times, even levitation.
A trick that Edamaruku says never fails to impress people is one that
results in a small explosion after water is sprinkled on a stone.
However, he says this is accomplished simply by pouring water on
scattered sodium crystals.
Similarly, lighting candles or setting piles of dry grass on fire
with the flick of a finger is achieved by using chemicals that ignite
on exposure to sunlight.
Piercing the body with a trident is managed if it is bent specially
at strategic points, giving the impression of deep penetration.
Other “marvels”, such as walking on fire, swallowing ground glass,
producing ash out of air and levitating, can be carried out through a
combination of chemicals, craftily-erected apparatus and dexterous
manipulation in which sleight of hand plays a vital role.
“These tricksters have a basic knowledge of chemistry but an exalted
understanding of human psychology,” says Edamaruku.
The Indian Rationalist Association, whose nationwide membership has
swollen to about 100,000, was founded six decades ago by a handful of
scientists and intellectuals in the southern city of Chennai
(formerly Madras).
Members are quick to point out that, though many of them are
atheists, they are not opposed to freedom of religion but want to
expose the widespread and cynical exploitation being carried out in
its name.
“Our basic aim is to bring the rudiments of science and logic to
ordinary people,” says Edamaruku.
Over the past four decades the rationalists have successfully
targeted internationally popular “god men” who boast a following of
millions, exposing their activities as nothing but “well-packaged
gimmickry”.
However, repeated challenges by the rationalists to some of the holy
men, particularly those in southern India who have millions of local
and overseas followers, to perform in their presence have not been
accepted.
Indeed, given the extent to which the holy men continue to control
people’s lives across India, the rationalists face an arduous task.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
o oo
livemint.com
July 22 2009
WHEN FAITH ECLIPSES REASON
Forty years after the lunar landing, superstition continues to
influence thinking at the highest levels
Here, There, Everywhere
by Salil Tripathi
It isn’t often that I get an email from one of India’s foremost
astrologers. So when he wrote to me earlier this week, marked urgent,
I clicked on it promptly. He was warning me, fore-telling major
clashes within my family or at workplace this week, unless…and I had
to click on a link which would have taken me to a Web page that would
have described how I could ward off the evil hurtling towards me.
The reason he was so concerned was because the moon was going to pass
between the sun and the earth (that has happened six times this
decade, including twice last year) which would, for some time, make
the sun disappear. Of course, he did not explain it so simply; he
invoked the mythical character, Rahu. And then he added: If I did
this and that, some vulnerable house within my horoscope would be
protected. Major credit cards accepted.
It is a charming coincidence that the eclipse, an astronomical
phenomenon, occurred precisely during the week when the world
celebrated the 40th anniversary of the real moonwalk— that small step
for man which became a giant leap for mankind. Here, we were
celebrating the anniversary of a historic achievement which
demystified the universe; there, we were supposed to be worried that
a relatively rare phenomenon, perfectly explainable by science, could
wreak havoc on our lives. How do these two universes coexist?
Centuries coexist in our minds. A rocket scientist may smear his
forehead with Sai Baba’s ash, and an astrologer might send you an
email. The profound difference between faith and reason is an
argument as old as civilization. Forty years after two astronauts
showed that the moon is neither made of cheese, nor can a cow jump
over the moon, we are supposed to worry when its shadow falls,
temporarily removing it from our line of vision. But the moon is...a
piece of rock. If anything, its lifeless surface which is dark and
devoid of any luminosity should at least convince poets not to use it
as a metaphor to describe the face of the loved one. But poets have
the licence to imagine, and good verse never harmed anybody.
Superstition can harm. Judged by the sheer frenzy the eclipse has
sparked—people cancel trips, postpone appointments, plan elaborate
bathing rituals at precise hours at the ghats in Varanasi, and some
pregnant women, anxious about what Rahu could do, may contrive to
delay delivering their babies during eclipse, an act which might
endanger themselves or their babies, as they pretend they are not in
labour—that old argument, between reason and faith, isn’t about to
end soon. An event that one should witness—with due precautions to
protect the retina—is assumed to control our lives, dictate our
choices and determine our outcomes.
Forty years after the lunar landing, superstition continues to
influence thinking at the highest levels. In the US, the problem was
acute during the Bush administration, when creationists succeeded in
some parts of the country in demanding equal time for “intelligent
design” as an alternative to the theory of evolution. The Bush
administration also blocked stem cell research, which offered the
possibility of yielding remedies to fight as-yet incurable diseases.
Europeans feel smug when they hear of this, thinking that they are
more rational, and inherently superior. But under the pretext of the
so-called precautionary principle, European governments blocked the
introduction of new agricultural technologies not only on the
continent but also in Africa, raising fears of mutated crops. When he
was a minister in the Indian cabinet, Murli Manohar Joshi wanted to
redesign the math and science curriculum but, fortunately, elections
intervened, killing that faith-based initiative.
This is not to suggest that science has solved everything. But good
scientists are humble—they don’t make claims they cannot prove. And
in the face of superior evidence, they amend and adapt their
theories. They seek certainty, but are far from certain themselves.
And when they witness evidence of something they haven’t seen before,
they are struck by awe: Recall the face of François Truffaut in
Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when he
sees aliens step out from the spaceship. That look is not one of
fear, but of wonder.
It is that natural curiosity that took American astronauts to the
moon. I was a schoolboy when the lunar module landed at the Sea of
Tranquillity, and I was among the thousands of people who lined the
roads of Bombay, as it was then known, cheering the three men—Neil
Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins—as their motorcade drove
by. They made the unknown seem less fearsome, they became the icons
of imagination. On the moon, they left a gold pin in the shape of an
olive branch; they came in peace for all mankind.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome
at salil at livemint.com
_____
[5] India: Encounter Deaths - Official View Versus The Views of Jamia
Teachers Solidarity Group
Mail Today
23 July 2009
NHRC DANCES TO DELHI POLICE TUNE
By Praveen Kumar and Aman Sharma in New Delhi
AFTER a two- month probe into the controversial Batla House
encounter, the National Human Rights Commission ( NHRC) on Wednesday
left key questions unanswered while giving the Delhi Police a clean
chit.
The rights panel solely depended on the police version of the events
of September 19 last year, post- mortem reports of slain inspector M.
C. Sharma and two alleged terrorists Atif Ameen and Mohd Sajid, and
forensic reports to observe that “ there was no violation of human
rights and the action of the police was fully protected by law”. In
its report submitted to the Delhi High Court, the NHRC doesn’t
mention whether it interviewed other occupants of the L- 18 building
in Batla House, locals of Jamia Nagar and the Azamgarh- based
families of the killed ‘ terrorists’ to arrive at its conclusion.
The report, in fact, doesn’t dwell on the key aspect whether that
Atif and Sajid were terrorists in the first place. “ That’s not an
issue before the commission; it is to be decided by the court. The
scope of the inquiry before us is limited,” the report notes.
The NHRC probed only one point — whether the police opened fire
without justification. Its conclusion: the cops acted in self-
defence. But it’s unclear how the NHRC arrived at this conclusion.
The NHRC report seconds the police version that seven policemen
stormed a flat in the building following specific
information that Atif, a terrorist involved in the Delhi blasts, was
hiding there.
But how can it be said that the alleged terrorists opened fired
first? After Atif and Sajid were killed, the police claimed to have
found a third alleged terrorist, Mohd Saif, hiding inside the flat’s
bathroom.
Latching on to this version, the NHRC reasons, albeit unconvincingly:
“ If the police had fired first, Atif and Sajid would have been
injured and would not have been in a position to fire back at the
police. Hence, the occupants of the room started firing first. The
police party acted in the right of self- defence because there was
imminent danger to the life of the policemen.” The panel dismisses
the details of the post- mortem reports of Atif and Sajid in a
cursory paragraph ( see box). It makes no mention of the fact that
pictures of Sajid’s body showed multiple bullet marks on his skull,
probably because he was made to sit down and then shot in cold blood
from above.
This dismissal reminds one of a similar desperation showed by the
Delhi Police when it refused to reveal the contents of the duo’s
post- mortem reports under the RTI Act despite an order from the
Central Information Commission. The police had also opposed a
mandatory magisterial inquiry into the encounter.
The Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group rejected the NHRC report, saying
the panel “ has proved to be a brazenly partisan body by hearing out
only the police version”.
o o o
http://www.sacw.net/article1033.html
INDIA: NO TO FARCICAL ENQUIRIES; SHAME ON THE NHRC FOR ITS PARTISANSHIP
by Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group
[22 July 2009]
Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group rejects the NHRC’s report on the
Batla House ‘encounter’, which gives a clean chit to the Delhi
Police. The NHRC claims that on the basis of the “material placed
before us, it cannot be said that there has been any violation of
human rights by the actions of police”. Indeed, we would like to know
what material was placed before the NHRC for inspection. The NHRC
enquiry into the case, one will remember, came far too late, and that
too at the insistence of the High Court. For months, the NHRC refused
to take any initiative to independently enquire into the ‘encounter’
which several civil rights groups, including JTSG, deemed suspect.
The NHRC enquiry was carried out in an inexplicably secret manner;
even applications by residents of Azamgarh to depose before the
Commission were not acknowledged by the NHRC. If people of Azamgarh,
the family members of the accused and killed boys, civil rights
groups who have been working and campaigning on the issue were never
heard by the Commission, we wonder what was the material that was
placed before the Commission. It appears that NHRC, like the
Lieutenant Governor prior to this, was satisfied by hearing the
police version alone. The JTSG Report, Encounter at Batla House:
Unanswered Questions, a damning indictment of the police version had
been submitted to the Commission earlier this year. By ignoring all
contrary voices, the NHRC has proved itself to be a brazenly partisan
body, and damaged its own standing and independent credibility.In its
bid to carry out the dictats of the State, the NHRC even chose to
forgot that the Delhi Police had consistently violated even its own
guidelines about encounter killings. Worse still, a body which is
supposed to act in the interests of the human rights of the country’s
citizens, pronounces that an ‘encounter’ did not involve any human
rights violation only tells us about its flawed and distorted
understanding of human rights and subverts the very basis of its
guidelines.
Sd/-Manisha Sethi and Adeel Mehdi on behalf of the JTSG
_____
[6] Kashmir:
The Hindu
July 23, 2009
WHERE THE STATE PAYS FOR TEACHERS OF HATE
by Praveen Swami
The Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to hire hundreds of
schoolteachers linked to the Jammat-e-Islami.
Back in 1945, Islamist ideologue Abul Ali Mawdudi called on his
followers to “change the old tyrannical system and establish a just
new order by the power of the sword.” He demanded that members of the
party founded in his name “seize the authority of state for, an evil
system takes root and flourishes under the patronage of an evil
government, and a pious cultural order can never be established until
the authority of government is wrested from the wicke d.”
Last week, the National Conference-Congress government quietly moved
to help realise Mawdudi’s ugly dream. Hundreds of jobs, a Cabinet
decision taken on July 14 mandates, will be handed out to
schoolteachers linked to the Jammu Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami, the party
set up in Mawdudi’s name. More than 440 Falah-i-Aam Trust teachers
will now be inducted into the State school system. Seventy-four
unskilled workers who lost their jobs when Falah-i-Aam schools were
closed down in 1990 will also get State government jobs.
For years, successive governments in Jammu and Kashmir have ruled out
fresh recruitment, saying the State can barely meet the salaries of
its existing employees. Only recently were Rehbar-i-Zirat
agricultural scientists, who are provided a stipend if they cannot
get a job, told that there was no early prospect of employment. By
hiring the Falah-i-Aam teachers, the National Conference evidently
hopes to build bridges with its decades-old Islamist adversaries. But
the costs of the decision could prove horrific.
Early in the 20th century, Kashmir saw the emergence of the religious
neo-fundamentalist movement that was to lay the foundation for the
rise of the Jamaat-e-Islami. From the outset, education was a core
part of the neo-fundamentalist programme. In the minds of the
religious right, education was an instrument
In 1899, Mirwaiz Rasul Shah — whose grandnephew and clerical heir is
today the All Parties Hurriyat Conference chief — started the Anjuman
Nusrat ul-Islam (Society for the Victory of Islam). It aimed not only
to give Kashmir’s nascent middle class modern scientific education
but also eradicate folk Islam and create a religion-centred political
consciousness. The Anjuman funded the creation of the Islamiya High
School in 1905. Rasul Shah’s successor, Mirwaiz Ahmadullah, went on
to set up the Oriental College in Srinagar. In turn, Ahmadullah’s
successor, Mirwaiz Yusuf Shah, set up Kashmir’s first printing press,
and used the two magazines it published to rail against what he saw
as heretical practices embedded in Kashmiri folk Islam.
Perhaps the most important voice of the neo-fundamentalist movement
was the Jamaat-e-Islami. Drawing on Mirwaiz Rasul Shah’s early
efforts, it went on to create an educational empire.
Born into a family long-linked to Kashmiri Sufism, Tarabali had come
to despise the faith of his parents, seeing it as the cause of the
political weakness of the people of Kashmir. Early in his life, he
encountered the work of the seminal Islamist ideologue, Maulana Abul
Ala Mawdudi, through the Islamist journal Tarjuman al-Quran. Tarabali
also despised the socialism of Jammu and Kashmir’s most important
political figure, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.
Having started his career as a teacher at the Islamiya High School,
Tarabali went on to work at government-run educational institutions
at Chrar-e-Sharif, Baramulla and Shopian. Before he left government
service to devote himself full time to Jamaat-e-Islami work, Tarabali
had succeeded in recruiting dozens of young men from elite Pir caste
families. Most were from Baramulla, Shopian, Srinagar, and Pulwama —
the very areas which have seen clashes between police and stone-
throwing mobs since last summer. “Islam, for them,” scholar Yoginder
Sikand has noted in his seminal study of the Jamaat-e-Islami, “was a
call for political assertion in a context of perceived Muslim
powerlessness.”
Among the young who joined the Jamaat was Syed Ali Shah Geelani — now
the patriarch of Kashmir’s Islamist movement. Geelani, like Tarabali
and many other Jamaat leaders, started his adult life as a
schoolteacher. He first worked at the government-run primary school
in Srinagar’s Pather Masjid area, and then at the Rainawari high
school. Many teachers at the Rainawari school, interestingly, went on
to become influential figures in the Jamaat-e-Islami.
From the outset, the Jamaat understood the centrality of education
to its political project. According to the account of Pakistani
scholar Tahir Amin, Jamaat schools were intended to prepare the
ground for a “silent revolution.” The Jamaat believed, Mr. Sikand has
written, “that a carefully planned Indian conspiracy was at work to
destroy the Islamic identity of the Kashmiris, through Hinduizing the
school syllabus and spreading immorality and vice among the youth. It
was alleged that the government of India had despatched a team to
Andalusia headed by the Kashmir Pandit [politician and state Home
Minister] D.P. Dhar, to investigate how Islam was driven out of Spain
and to suggest measures as to how the Spanish experiment could be
repeated in Kashmir, too.”
In Jammu, where the Jamaat feared that Muslims battered in Partition
violence would give up Islam, Maulana Ghulam Ahmad Ahrar called for
the setting up of schools to spread education and Islamic consciousness.
Not long after independence, the Jamaat set up the first of what
would become a network of schools in Srinagar’s Nawab Bazaar, with
five students and one teacher. The organisation developed its own
textbooks, built around a curriculum that included English, Arabic,
Urdu, mathematics and Islamic studies. The Jamaat cadre were
appointed instructors. In time, many Jamaat-run schools evolved into
higher secondary institutions. Students, Mr. Sikand records an
observer as saying, were “inspired to work for the victory of Islam,
jihad in the path of Allah, freedom and self-determination of the
Kashmiri people.” Many of the students, Pakistani scholar Alifuddin
Turabi has recorded in an essay on the contribution of educational
institutions to the Kashmiri secessionist movement, went on to play a
key role in the jihad that began in 1989.
During the Emergency, Sheikh Abdullah cracked down on the Jamaat.
Some 125 schools run by it, with over 550 teachers and 25,000
students, were banned. So were another 1,000 evening schools run by
the organisation, which reached out to an estimated 50,000 boys and
girls. In one speech, Abdullah described the Jamaat schools as “the
real source for spreading communal poison.”
But Jammu and Kashmir’s crackdown on the Jamaat proved short-lived.
In 1977, the party founded the Falah-i-Aam trust and charged the Doda-
based Islamist activist Saadullah Tantray with reviving its school
network.
The Jamaat also formed a student wing, the Islami Jamaat-e-Tulaba.
Helped by Saudi Arabia-based Islamist organisations, the IJT soon
grew into a powerful force in schools and universities. In 1979, the
IJT was granted membership of the World Organisation of Muslim Youth,
a controversial Saudi-funded body which financed many Islamist groups
that later turned to terrorism. The next year, the IJT organised a
conference in Srinagar which was attended by dignitaries from across
West Asia, including the Imam of the mosques of Mecca and Medina,
Abdullah bin-Sabil.
By the end of the decade, the IJT had formally committed itself to an
armed struggle against the Indian state. Its president, Sheikh
Tajamul Husain — now a mid-ranking leader of the secessionist
movement — told journalists in Srinagar that Kashmiris did not
consider themselves Indian, and that the forces stationed there were
an “army of occupation.” Mr. Husain also called for the establishment
of an Islamic state. A year later, in 1981, he reiterated his call to
his followers to “throw out” the Indian “occupation.”
In 1990, as the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir gathered momentum, the
state cracked down on the Jamaat-e-Islami once more. The party was
banned, and the Falah-i-Aam schools were shut down. Promises were
made that the teachers would be brought into the State school system.
However, fearful that the Falah-i-Aam teachers would misuse their
position to spread the Jamaat message, successive governments went slow.
No great imagination is needed to see what the Jamaat hopes to get
from the party affiliates whose salaries will now be paid by the
Jammu and Kashmir government — and the tragedy that could lie ahead.
In the Jamaat’s view, scholar Mohammad Ishaq Khan has noted,
“Kashmiri Muslims need to be converted afresh.” In 1945, Tarabali
called for the institution of an authentic Islam “because of whose
truth and universalism the cultures and even languages of the most
civilised countries of the world were abandoned by their people.” For
his part, Mawdudi warned believers that under a secular state, “the
civilisation and way of life which he regards as wicked, the
education system which he views as fatal: all these will be so
relentlessly imposed on him, his home and his family, that it will be
impossible to avoid them.”
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah — whose secular credentials are
impeccable — must act to prevent the poisoning of the State’s school
education system.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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