SACW | Sept 30-Oct 2, 2009 / Sri Lanka: Is the War Over? / Bangladesh: Micro Credit Inc. / Pakistan: A Tribute to Dr. Faheem Hussain / Quarrel over the deadliness of India's nuclear bomb

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | September 30 - October 2, 2009 | Dispatch  
No. 2656 - Year 12 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]  Doing the Right Thing in Sri Lanka (Rohini Hensman)
[2]  The Grameen Bank, Micro-credit and the NGO Paradigm in  
Bangladesh (Lamia Karim)
[3]  Pakistan:  Faheem Hussain - As I Knew Him (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
[4]  India: Cycle of State / Non State Violence & Eroding Human Rights
      - Close encounters (Antara Dev Sen)
      - Social activists and innocents are the latest targets in  
Manipur’s unending cycle of repression (Divya Gupta)
      - Illegal Detentions and Torture Continue in Gujarat: A press  
release by relatives of victims and by human rights activists
      - Operation Green Hunt, the offensive against Naxals, might  
blow up in our faces (Shoma Chaudhury)
      - IAF seeks permission to open fire at Maoists
      - Letter from Bombay: Anatomy of a Siege (Marie Brenner)
[5]  India: Resources For Secular Activists
        - Fourth pillar, fifth column (Jawed Naqvi)
        - It's About Choice (Editorial, The Times of India)
        - Political Communalisation of Religions and the Crisis of  
Secularism (D L Sheth)
        - An Interview with D.R. Goyal
        - Sangh's motorised cow drive before the Assembly elections
[6]  Hawks quarrel over the deadliness of India's nuclear bomb:
       - Cry for India (Editorial, The Economic and Political Weekly)
       - A New Nuclear Debate in India (J. Sri Raman)
[7]  Announcements:
      (A) “Delhi Rally” Program - National Alliance of Anti-nuclear  
Movements (New Delhi, 2 October 2009)
      (B) Dr Faheem Hussain's memorial (Lahore, 4 October 2009)
      (C) Daniel Pearl Awards for cross-border investigative journalism

_____


[1] Sri Lanka

http://www.sacw.net/article1159.html

DOING THE RIGHT THING IN SRI LANKA

by Rohini Hensman

Freedom for Vanni Internally Displaced Persons

It was a relief to hear that the government of Sri Lanka was at last  
responding to mounting domestic and international criticism, and had  
begun releasing the Vanni IDPs. Perhaps the shocking report in the  
Sunday Times on 6 September about human trafficking at the internment  
camps was partly responsible. An exemplary piece of investigative  
journalism, it revealed that up to 20,000 IDPs had been ransomed by  
desperate relatives who were able and willing to pay lakhs of rupees  
to secure their release, and had left the camps. This exposes so- 
called ‘screening’ for what it is: a cover for a lucrative flesh  
trade, carried out with the collusion of elements in the government  
and armed forces who get a cut out of it. It also explains why the  
camp authorities refused to release a one-year-old child to leave  
with its grandmother, in a case cited by V. Anandasangaree of the  
Tamil United Liberation Front: since an infant could hardly be  
suspected of being a dreaded LTTE terrorist, the reason was surely  
that a ransom had not been paid.

One would have to be naïve indeed to believe that those who have been  
ransomed are ‘innocent’ while those who remain are more likely to be  
LTTE cadres. On the contrary, anyone in the camps who had any value  
for the LTTE diaspora would certainly have escaped by now.  
Conversely, we can be sure that the unfortunate souls left rotting in  
these camps are of no interest to whatever remains of the LTTE. They  
are the victims, not perpetrators, of crimes. The UN too seems to  
have woken up to the fact that by funding these camps it is  
colluding, willy-nilly, in a crime against humanity – the denial of  
liberty and other fundamental human rights to a civilian population –  
and has made it clear that it cannot continue doing so much longer.  
UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe  
reiterated the demand that the Vanni IDPs should be granted freedom  
of movement during his recent visit.

While we welcome the government’s announcement that it is willing to  
release IDPs from the camps to relatives willing to house them, it is  
a matter of concern that even while President Rajapaksa was telling  
Mr Pascoe that the reason so few IDPs had been released to live with  
their relatives was because there were so few applications, the GA of  
Vavuniya was refusing to release IDPs to their relatives! This  
suggests that ransoms are still being demanded, and IDPs unable to  
pay them are not being released. The condition that IDPs should be  
released only to relatives makes sense for unaccompanied children,  
but why can’t adults go and live in rented accommodation instead of  
staying with relatives if they so choose?

Furthermore, the whole farce of ‘screening’, which has been dragged  
on for more than four months, should be stopped. The best proof that  
the LTTE is no longer a threat in Sri Lanka is the release of top  
LTTE cadres Daya Master and George Master, who were with Prabakaran  
almost to the very end. Would the authorities have released them on  
bail if there were any danger from the LTTE? Hardly. If they can be  
released, why are lakhs of innocent civilians being detained? Did the  
President avoid the UN General Assembly because he was unable to  
answer this question?

Release should not be confused with resettlement. IDPs who wish to go  
and live outside the camps should be free to do so. Those who wish to  
remain in the camps until their original habitats are de-mined and  
reconstructed should be allowed to remain, but should be free to move  
in and out of the camps instead of being imprisoned in them as they  
are now, and free to leave permanently as and when they wish. The  
only condition attached should be that they inform the international  
and local agencies which are providing for them whenever they leave  
for good, to make it clear that there is no need to feed them any  
longer. The resources freed by their departure could be used to speed  
up de-mining and reconstruction in the war-devastated areas, and will  
undoubtedly improve conditions for those who choose to remain in the  
camps. The release of all the Vanni IDPs would end this shameful  
chapter in Sri Lanka’s history.

Resettlement

Pressure on the government to ensure speedy resettlement of all IDPs  
should also be kept up. This should include not only IDPs who fled  
the recent fighting but also those who were displaced earlier,  
including Muslims displaced in 1990. Citizens’ committees would need  
to be set up to deal with problems, such as those which occur where  
others are living in the homes of displaced people who wish to  
return. It will not be easy, but with goodwill, these problems can be  
resolved, and the sooner the better. All those who want to return to  
their original homes should be accommodated, if not in their original  
homes, at least in the neighbourhood, or in some other place of their  
choice. This is the only way to reverse the ethnic cleansing drives  
carried out by both the state and the LTTE, and rebuild integrated  
communities.

An unnecessary obstacle to resettlement is created by the  
government’s designation of some of the areas from which people have  
been displaced as ‘High Security Zones’ (HSZs), some of which double  
as ‘Special Economic Zones’(!). Earlier attempts to dismantle these  
were stalled by the argument that they were necessary so long as the  
LTTE had not been disarmed. Now that the LTTE has definitively been  
disarmed, they serve no justifiable purpose. The only way their  
persistence can be explained is as a form of ethnic cleansing, since  
in practically every case, the people displaced by them are Tamils  
and Muslims. A good example is Sampur in the East, where the  
inhabitants were driven out by shelling and are now being denied the  
right to return, while India colludes in this ethnic cleansing by  
undertaking to build a coal-fired power plant on their land. The  
process of resettlement cannot be regarded as complete until people  
displaced by HSZs have also been granted the right of return. But,  
some people argue, the LTTE is still a threat, and therefore we need  
to retain the HSZs, along with the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA)  
and Emergency provisions. Is this true?

Is the War Over? Or Was the President Lying?

Back in May, President Rajapaksa gave a speech in which he claimed  
that ’our Motherland has been completely freed from the clutches of  
separatist terrorism’. He spoke of ‘the proud victory we have  
achieved today by defeating the world’s most ruthless terrorist  
organization’ and ‘the defeat of the LTTE and the breakdown of their  
armed strength’. There was no ambiguity about his words: he told us  
that the war was over, the LTTE defeated, their armed strength broken  
down. On this understanding, there were widespread celebrations, and  
the President gained enormous popularity.

There is no reason to suppose that the President was lying. Yet in  
August a senior government official was reported as saying that the  
LTTE was still capable of reorganising in Sri Lanka, and in September  
IGP Jayantha Wickramaratne reiterated that the threat of the Tamil  
Tigers is still alive in Sri Lanka, and they have not been completely  
defeated. On the face of it, these people were implying that the  
President was a liar when he said that Sri Lanka had been completely  
freed from separatist terrorism, and a fraud for claiming credit for  
the defeat of the LTTE. So why does the President tolerate such  
insults from his underlings?

The reason seems to be that the government is caught in the same trap  
of war-dependence which was the downfall of the LTTE. A war justifies  
repressive measures that would never be acceptable in peacetime, and  
the LTTE would have been unable to function without these. That is  
why it broke one ceasefire after another, let slip one opportunity  
after another to negotiate a just peace. But this had a disastrous  
effect on its support base. With all due respect to the soldiers who  
risked and lost their lives in the war, their courage alone would not  
have brought about the defeat of the LTTE. The Israeli armed forces  
are many times stronger than the Sri Lankan military, and the  
Palestinians’ arsenal is pathetic by comparison with that of the  
LTTE, yet the Palestinian resistance has survived for over sixty  
years. That is because it has the support of the people: precisely  
what the LTTE lost due to its dependence on war.

The last straw appears to have been the peace process which began in  
2002. It ushered in an unprecedentedly long cessation of hostilities,  
and made it clearer than ever that the LTTE was incapable of handling  
peace. I was among those who criticised the 2002 CFA for allowing the  
LTTE a free hand to kill Tamil dissidents, conscript children and  
prepare for war, but in retrospect, I can see that it also served a  
positive purpose. Karuna’s defection was only the visible tip of a  
vast iceberg of discontent, as Tamil people who had hoped the LTTE  
would deliver them from fear, humiliation and violence realised that  
it offered them only more of the same. Their disillusionment and  
consequent withdrawal of support allowed the state to defeat the LTTE.

Now the Rakapaksa regime faces the same dilemma that Prabakaran faced  
earlier: if the war is over, how can it justify the measures that  
give absolute and unaccountable power to the state? So it has to  
invent an ’LTTE threat’ in order to continue with policies that would  
be unacceptable in peacetime. But the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka  
are not fools. They will realise, like the Tamil people before them,  
that this ‘threat’ is simply being concocted to justify disastrous  
economic and political choices. With all the fire and brimstone  
directed against foreign-funded NGOs, it is amusing to note that Sri  
Lanka now has a government that is dependent on foreign funding. The  
Ministry of Finance and Planning reported in August 2008 that the  
national debt stood at over 3 trillion rupees, with 1.39 trillion  
being foreign debt. The IMF loan eased the immediate problem, but at  
the cost of getting the country deeper in debt: in other words, it  
can repay its debts only by expanding them, placing an ever greater  
burden on the people. If the EU GSP+ facility is lost, the economy  
will plunge even deeper in the red. In this context, detaining lakhs  
of civilians and expanding the armed forces constitute unnecessary  
and ruinous expenditures.

The social and political costs are equally huge. Horrific reports of  
police brutality, including the murder of two boys, Dhanushka Aponso  
and Dinesh Fernando, at Angulana and the abduction and torture of  
student Nipuna Ramanayake by SSP Vaas Gunawardene and other officers  
of the Colombo Crime Division, are reminiscent of the murders of the  
schoolboys of Embilipitiya, and result from the same conditions:  
rampant impunity for crimes committed by politicians in power, the  
state security forces and the police. This impunity, in turn, is  
fostered by the suspension of the rule of law resulting from the PTA  
and Emergency Regulations, which can only be justified by claiming  
that the LTTE is still a threat.

The only way to reverse the degradation of Sri Lanka’s economy and  
polity is to acknowledge that the war is over and take the  
appropriate measures: release all the Vanni IDPs immediately, slash  
military spending, dismantle the paramilitaries, redeploy demobilised  
soldiers to civilian reconstruction tasks, replace military and ex- 
military administrators with civilian ones, dismantle the HSZs,  
resettle all displaced civilians including those displaced by HSZs,  
repeal the PTA and Emergency Regulations, restore democratic rights,  
especially to freedom of expression, and release J.S. Tissainayagam  
and others incarcerated for exercising this right. The best way to  
ensure that Sri Lanka retains its EU GSP+ facility is to do the right  
thing, failing which, the government must take full responsibility  
for the loss of jobs and revenue.


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[2]  Bangladesh:

sacw.net,12 September 2009

THE GRAMEEN BANK, MICRO-CREDIT AND THE NGO PARADIGM IN BANGLADESH

by Lamia Karim

This article is an abbreviation of a longer article that appeared in  
Cultural Dynamics, 20(1); 5-29, 2008 entitled "Demystifying  
Microcredit: The Grameen Bank, NGOs and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh."

In this paper, I argue that the developmental NGO is the purveyor of  
a new economic sovereignty that is represented by corporate capital  
interests and local institutional interests (NGOs), and is an  
architect of neoliberalism within a modernist developmental discourse  
of poor women’s empowerment through the market. Focusing on the micro- 
credit policies of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Grameen  
Bank of Bangladesh, and three other leading non-governmental  
organizations in the country, I analyze the centrality of gender in  
the expansion of globalization and neoliberalism in Bangladesh.1 I  
examine how Bangladeshi rural women’s honor and shame are  
instrumentally appropriated by micro-credit NGOs in the welfare of  
their capitalist interests. I analyze this relationship between rural  
women and NGOs by placing it within the economy of shame, a concept I  
explain later.

Full Text at: http://www.sacw.net/article1100.html

_____


[3] Pakistan:

(i)

http://www.sacw.net/article1158.html

FAHEEM HUSSAIN - AS I KNEW HIM

by Pervez Hoodbhoy (1 October 2009 )

It was mid-October 1973 when, after a grueling 26-hour train ride  
from Karachi, I reached the physics department of Islamabad  
University (or Quaid-e-Azam University, as it is now known). As I  
dumped my luggage and "hold-all" in front of the chairman’s office, a  
tall, handsome man with twinkling eyes looked at me curiously. He was  
wearing a bright orange Che Guevara t-shirt and shocking green pants.  
His long beard, though shorter than mine, was just as unruly and  
unkempt. We struck up a conversation. At 23, I had just graduated  
from MIT and was to be a lecturer in the department; he had already  
been teaching as associate professor for five years. The conversation  
turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Together  
with Abdul Hameed Nayyar - also bearded at the time - we became known  
as the Sufis of Physics. Thirty six years later, when Faheem Hussain  
lost his battle against prostate cancer, our sadness was beyond measure.

Revolutionary, humanist, and scientist, Faheem Hussain embodied the  
political and social ferment of the late 1960’s. With a Ph.D that he  
received in 1966 from Imperial College London, he had been well- 
placed for a solid career anywhere in the world. In a profession  
where names matter, he had worked under the famous P.T. Mathews in  
the group headed by the even better known Abdus Salam. After his  
degree, Faheem spent two years at the University of Chicago. This  
gave him a chance to work with some of the world’s best physicists,  
but also brought him into contact with the American anti-Vietnam war  
movement and a powerful wave of revolutionary Marxist thinking. Even  
decades later, Faheem would describe himself as an "unreconstructed  
Marxist". Participating in the mass anti-war demonstrations at UC had  
stirred his moral soul; he felt the urge to do more than just  
physics. Now married to Jane Steinfels, a like-minded soul who he met  
in Chicago, Faheem decided to return to Pakistan.

Faheem and Jane made an amazing couple. Fully immersed in the  
outstanding causes of the times, they seemed to have a limitless  
amount of revolutionary energy. Long before I knew them, they had  
been protesting against the Pakistan Army’s actions in East Pakistan.  
As Faheem would recount, this was a lonely fight. Many Marxists in  
those times, inspired by Mao’s China, chose to understand the issue  
in geopolitical terms rather than as a popular struggle for  
independence. Some leftists ended up supporting the army’s mass  
murder of Bengalis.

With Bangladesh now a reality, things moved on. Bhutto’s rhetoric of  
socialism and justice for the poor had inspired nascent trade union  
movements to sprout across Pakistan’s cities. Many, however, quickly  
turned into organizations for labour control rather than  
emancipation. There were genuinely independent ones too, such as the  
Peoples Labour Federation (PLF), an independent Rawalpindi based  
trade union that saw through Bhutto’s shallow rhetoric. In the early  
1970’s, Faheem and Jane were highly influential in this organization,  
sometimes providing security and cover to its hunted leadership.  
Iqbal Bali, who passed away in the middle of this year, would vividly  
recount those days.

Very soon, I joined the small group of leftwing activists that looked  
up to this couple for instruction and guidance. We formed study  
groups operating under the PLF, both for self-education and for  
spreading the message through small study groups of industrial  
workers. Some, including myself, branched out further, working in  
distant villages. Gathering material support for the Baloch  
nationalists, who were fighting an army rejuvenated by Bhutto, was  
yet another goal for the group. The dream was to bring about a  
socialist revolution in Pakistan.

All this crashed to an end with Bhutto’s death by hanging in 1979 and  
the subsequent consolidation of General Zia-ul-Haq’s coup. Pakistan’s  
Dark Age had just begun. Although Bhutto’s regime had turned  
repressive and violent in its last desperate days, it was gentle in  
comparison with what was to follow. With dissent savagely muzzled,  
the only option was to operate underground. On 3 November 1981, three  
of our QAU colleagues and friends were caught, imprisoned, and  
savaged by the military regime. Jamil Omar, a lecturer in computer  
science and the "ring leader" - was tortured. Two others - Tariq  
Ahsan and Mohammed Salim - were also imprisoned and their careers  
destroyed. Their crime was involvement in the secret publication of  
"Jamhoori Pakistan", a 4-page newsletter that demanded return to  
democracy and the end of army rule. A triumphant Zia-ul-Haq went on  
Pakistan Television, congratulated the men who had succeeded in  
arresting the teachers, and pledged to "eliminate the cancer of  
politics" from Quaid-e-Azam University.

Although Faheem was not directly involved in "Jamhoori Pakistan", we  
knew he was being closely watched by the intelligence and could have  
chosen to hide. Instead, with characteristic fearlessness, he did all  
that was possible to help locate the abducted teachers, and then to  
secure their release. Tariq Ahsan wrote to me from Canada that "His  
solidarity during those long years was an invaluable source of  
support for our families and friends."

But the struggle took its toll. By the mid 1980’s, Faheem was in the  
doldrums. Situated in an academically barren environment, he was able  
to publish little research of worth. Politically, there was no chance  
of doing anything significant in the climate of repression. Things  
had gone downhill in personal terms as well - his marriage with Jane  
was coming apart. To the great sorrow of their friends, the couple  
parted ways and Jane returned to America. Encouraged by Faheem, she  
had written school books on Pakistani history that are still sold and  
used today. In 1989, Faheem left QAU formally but his involvement in  
academic and political matters had already dropped off in the year or  
two before that.

 From this low point in his life, Faheem struggled upwards. Initially  
in Germany, and then elsewhere later, he now concentrated solely upon  
his profession and was able to learn an impressive amount of new  
physics. Professor Abdus Salam, who by now had received a Nobel Prize  
for his work, invited Faheem to become a permanent member of the  
theoretical physics group at the International Centre for Theoretical  
Physics in Italy. Faheem remained there until his retirement in 2004.  
Getting this position was no mean achievement: theoretical physics is  
a fiercely competitive and notoriously difficult subject. Faheem was  
the first Pakistani to publish a research paper in one of its most  
challenging areas - superstring theory.

With a cheerful and positive disposition, and an abiding concern for  
the welfare of others, Faheem quickly became popular at the ICTP. His  
laughter would resonate in the institute’s corridors. With time, he  
took on administrative responsibilities as well and was instrumental  
in setting up a "Diploma Programme" that admits students from third  
world countries for advanced studies in various areas. Now married to  
Sara, a beautiful and even-tempered Italian woman, he was equally  
comfortable with Italians and Pakistanis or, for that matter,  
Indians. To Faheem, a cultural amphibian, differences between nations  
carried no meaning.

And then came retirement time. What to do? I wrote to Faheem: come  
back! He agreed. Finding money was not a problem - Pakistan’s higher  
education was experiencing a budgetary boom. But his old university,  
plagued by base rivalries and a contemptuous disdain for learning,  
refused. Specious arguments were given to prevent one of its own  
founding members, now one of Pakistan’s most distinguished and active  
physicists, from being taken on the faculty. Initially at the  
National Centre for Physics in Islamabad, Faheem was eventually  
offered a position at the newly established science faculty of LUMS  
in Lahore.

Faheem’s unpretentious mannerisms and gentleness of spirit ensured  
that LUMS too was enamored of him. Asad Naqvi, one of Pakistan’s  
leading physicists and a faculty member at LUMS, wrote to me upon  
hearing of Faheem’s death: "I am lost after hearing this. I only knew  
him for about 5 years, and in that short time, I had grown really  
fond of him. We are all poorer today, having lost such a lovely  
person who touched us so deeply."

Surely, there shall be many other such tributes from Faheem’s many  
friends. But, to be true to him as well as my own self, I must admit  
that in later years we did disagree on some important things -  
"unreconstructed Marxism" to me is an anachronism, a relic of the  
1960’s and still earlier, meaningless in a world that has become far  
more complex than Marx could have possibly imagined. Nor can I  
reflexively support today’s so-called "anti-imperialism" of the left  
that ends up supporting the forces of regressive fundamentalism. But  
let these issues stand wherever they do. Why is it necessary for  
friends to agree upon everything?

 From atoms to atoms - death is inevitable, the final victory of  
entropy over order. Meaningless? No! To have lived a full life, to  
have experienced its richness, to have struggled not just for one- 
self but for others as well, and to have earned the respect and love  
of those around you. That is a life worth living for. Faheem, my  
friend, you are gone. May you now rest in peace, with a job well done.

_____


[4]  India: State and Non State Violence and Eroding Human Rights


Deccan Herald
1 October 2009

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

by Antara Dev Sen

The Centre has now filed an affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan killing to  
support her mother’s call for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)  
enquiry. And to counter the claim of the Gujarat government that, in  
gunning down the teenaged student and her friends in 2004, it had  
acted on the advice of the Centre. But you said they were Lashkar-e- 
Tayyaba (LeT) terrorists, said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state  
government to the Congress-led Centre.

We merely talked of a tip off, said the Centre. The affidavit, said  
home minister P. Chidambaram, “did not give a licence to the state  
government to kill innocent people”.
Curiously, instead of focusing on the illegal and immoral act of  
staging an encounter, the debate now seems to be centered around  
whether or not the youngsters were terrorists. “The LeT’s official  
website has claimed that all four were their agents, then why is the  
Government of India trying to prove the contrary?” argued BJP  
spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy. Adding, “It seems the institution of  
the Intelligence Bureau (IB) is under threat”.
Sadly, the danger is far greater. It is not the IB, or any particular  
government or any political party, but the very idea of democracy  
that is under threat. By sidestepping the main issue of individual  
freedoms and right to life and offering full-throated non-arguments  
about “terrorists”, we are hitting at the very foundation of our  
democratic state. Whether the victim of an extra-judicial killing  
deserved to be killed or not is not the point. In a democratic state  
we need accountability and fair treatment. Without which we cannot  
hope for justice.
Ishrat’s case was a fake encounter, ruled Gujarat Metropolitan  
Magistrate S.P. Tamang. It appears that Ishrat Jahan, 19, Javed  
Ghulam Sheikh, 19, Amjad Ali, 25, and Jisan Johar, 17, were not  
linked to any terror group and were killed in cold blood by the state.
The Gujarat police kidnapped them from Mumbai, brought them to  
Ahmedabad, murdered them in custody, lined up their bodies on the  
streets at night, planted weapons on them and pretended they were  
Pakistan-supported LeT terrorists who had come to kill Narendra Modi.  
The fiendish cops were led by D.G. Vanzara, then DIG (now in jail for  
faking the “encounter” killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauser Bi)  
and his deputy N.K. Amin, along with several other top police  
officers including then Ahmedabad police commissioner K.R. Kaushik  
and the then chief of the Crime Branch, P.P. Pandey.
And what are we, the people with a voice, the students, the media,  
the aam janata that keeps democracy in motion doing about such  
calculated murders? What do we do when we see justice being thrown  
out of the ring as politicians wrestle with mob sentiments and  
twisted reasoning, much like the monstrous men in a WWF wrestling  
match? We cheer them on. They play to the gallery and we, the  
gallery, play along.
Because it is the laziest thing to do. It’s easy for us to accept  
victims of encounters as terrorists and to support their murder. We  
skip all the steps between an “encounter killing” and its  
justification. First, was it a real encounter or a staged killing?  
Second, if real, was killing the only option? Third, was the victim a  
truly dangerous criminal or armed terrorist? And finally, did the  
victim really deserve to die? There could be several more steps  
between the killing and the justification, but that doesn’t concern us.
We ignore the process and base our support on assumptions. Here’s our  
lazy logic. First, the victim was an armed terrorist. Second, he must  
die to make us safe. Third, the police killed him to protect us.  
Finally, the police must be hailed as heroes. This social sanction  
allows the police to get away with murder.
Exactly a year ago, we saw the “encounter” at Batla House near  
Delhi’s Jamia Millia University that killed two youngsters. Encounter  
specialist M.C. Sharma was killed in the incident, apparently shot by  
the “terrorists”. The media served up the police version almost  
verbatim, hailing the heroic Sharma as a braveheart killed by  
“terrorists”, zealously demanding bravery awards for the hero and  
denouncing the boys killed and captured by the cops. The boys, some  
of them students at Jamia, were from Azamgarh district of Uttar  
Pradesh, which the media promptly renamed Atankgarh (terror-fort).  
And except for a couple of notable exceptions, made no attempt to  
probe the holes in the police theory. The boys were presumed guilty,  
thus their killing was justified and their assumed killer made the  
superhero. Never mind that Sharma had been in fake encounters before,  
like the one at Ansal Plaza where two people were murdered and passed  
off as Pakistani terrorists — in fact as members of the LeT, like  
Ishrat and friends.
The police do seem to have this nasty habit of killing Muslims and  
passing them off as Pakistani terrorists. But if you thought not  
being a Muslim protected you from such “encounters”, think again.  
They could pretend you were an armed criminal. Like they did with  
Ranbir Singh, 24, the management student killed in Dehradun in  
August. Or they could pretend you were linked to extremists, like  
they did when they killed Chungkham Sanjit and the young and pregnant  
Rabina in Imphal in July. It’s easy to get away with murder in  
Manipur, like elsewhere in the neglected Northeast. The security  
forces, with their special impunity in the troubled states, can  
murder, rape and torture at will.
And that is a power they are willing to share in Naxalite-dominated  
regions. Vigilante groups armed and empowered by the state are  
joining in these extra-judicial killings while we sigh about the  
“Naxal menace”. There are thousands of encounter killings around the  
country, from Kashmir to Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat to Chhattisgarh and  
Assam, and we support it all out of sheer laziness. Some of those  
killed may be Naxals, some may even be terrorists. But most are not.  
The point is not whether the victims were innocent or culpable. But  
whether they got justice. That’s the only way to protect our human  
rights.
Due process of law, which is tossed aside through security measures  
like encounter killings and tough terror laws, must be respected if  
we are to keep ourselves and our democracy safe. We must stop  
supporting instant justice by the police. Because we cannot be a  
nation of lynch mobs. And finally it is fair procedure — and not  
murderous cops — that protects us and all that our nation stands for.

* Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine.

o o o

manipur crackdown: Aftershocks Of A Daylight Murder
Social activists and innocents are the latest targets in Manipur’s  
unending cycle of repression.
by Divya Gupta (Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 40, Dated October 10,  
2009)
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp? 
filename=cr101009aftershocks_of.asp

o o o

Illegal Detentions and Torture Continue in Gujarat: A press release  
by relatives of victims and by human rights activists
http://www.sacw.net/article1157.html

Weapons Of Mass Desperation:
Operation Green Hunt, the offensive against Naxals, might blow up in  
our faces.
by Shoma Chaudhury (Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 39, Dated October  
03, 2009)
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne031009coverstory.asp

IAF seeks permission to open fire at Maoists
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/IAF-seeks-permission-to- 
open-fire-at-Maoists/articleshow/5077761.cms

o o o
	
Letter from Bombay: Anatomy of a Siege
by Marie Brenner (Vanity Fair, November 2009)
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/11/taj-hotel- 
siege-200911?printable=true


_____


[5] India - Resources For Secular Activists :

(i)

Dawn, 01 Oct, 2009

FOURTH PILLAR, FIFTH COLUMN

by Jawed Naqvi

A healthy trend is perceptible in Pakistani journalism of late to  
question the ISI’s role in and hold over the fate of the country. In  
India though institutions such as RAW and IB are still largely  
treated as holy cows and remain undiscussed and uncritiqued.—AP/File  
Photo

QUEEN Victoria cancelled her £500 subscription with a leading British  
wire agency for giving spurious intelligence in the Crimean War.

Kim Philby worked as a journalist both before and after becoming a  
spy for Britain, even as he earned part of his keep from Moscow.

In an era of embedded journalism the collusion between spies and  
journalists has not vanished; it has, in fact, become legitimate. An  
American reporter single-handedly created the much-needed mythology  
against Saddam Hussein to legitimise the US invasion of Iraq and of  
its subsequent occupation.

Assassins too have posed as journalists. Rajiv Gandhi and Ahmed Shah  
Masood were victims of killers who found access to their quarries  
with the help of accreditation cards. Iranian leader Ali Khamenei  
lost a hand to a bomb hidden in a journalist’s tape recorder. Last  
week, plainclothes policemen pretending to be journalists trapped an  
alleged Maoist leader in West Bengal. A few have expressed anguish  
over this underhand method of catching a fugitive since it undermines  
the credibility of the media. The problem is more entrenched.

It is tempting to suspect Pakistani journalists who scream inanities  
about India on television and in newspapers as being influenced or at  
least encouraged by the espionage agency there. The same suspicion is  
legitimately aroused when Indian journalists rant, almost always on  
cue, against Pakistan. They equally quickly shut up when the prompt  
is given to do so.

In the Orwellian nightmare the brainwashed sheep chant ‘four legs  
good, two legs bad’ at the start of their revolution against man’s  
exploitation of fellow animals. After the revolution dissipates and  
animal icons acquire the mannerisms of their foe – man – the sheep  
switch to chanting ‘two legs good, four legs bad’. In the Murdochian  
nightmare of today no need is felt to change the sheep’s tune. It is  
far easier to change the subject and the headline.

Journalists who struggle to remain upright against the daily body  
blows to their profession are, therefore, truly courageous. I eagerly  
await a matching triumph of journalism from an Indian TV channel to  
its Pakistani counterparts who frontally took on their state and the  
government recently to establish a vital fact.

The Pakistanis defied their oft-lethal establishment to prove to the  
world that the sole living terrorist from the Mumbai massacre was  
indeed their own fellow citizen. The family of Ajmal Kasab was  
skilfully brought into the frame to defy Islamabad’s fiat, which had  
initially decried claims of Kasab’s Pakistani citizenship.

The Tehelka exposés of shady defence deals and more recently of  
fascistic methods of carrying out religious massacres could be  
considered India’s contribution to courageous journalism.

It is not easy to take on the might of the state, of course, which  
includes the police, the army, the judiciary and lawmakers among its  
key props. Increasingly, business houses are becoming important  
ancillaries of the state. Government officials and ministers are  
fired or appointed at their bidding.

American journalism has been more robust in several crucial ways than  
many others in exploiting the chinks in the armour of the secretive  
state. The CIA, the FBI and other state outfits are, wherever  
possible, kept accountable to the people by the legislature. They are  
kept subjected to incessant media scrutiny too. A healthy trend is  
perceptible in Pakistani journalism of late to question the ISI’s  
role in and hold over the fate of the country. In India though  
institutions such as RAW and IB are still largely treated as holy  
cows and remain undiscussed and uncritiqued.

It is another matter that one or two former officers from these  
outfits chose to vent their anguish at the state of play through  
autobiographical books. Maloy Krishna Dhar’s account of his days as  
the additional chief of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) is noteworthy.

In his survey of the Mumbai bombings of 1993 he reveals a few  
interesting facts, which may be of particular use to journalists. He  
describes how he infiltrated the underworld led by Dawood Ibrahim to  
track people and maritime landing points involved in the act of terror.

‘I kept the director (of IB) informed, without going through the  
official channel of the Bombay unit of the IB,’ he writes in his book  
Open Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled. ‘I was, in fact,  
freelancing in Bombay at my own risk, as a journalist from a reputed  
English daily. I had in my possession at least three faked identity  
cards of the leading papers, and one identity card of a TV channel.  
Obviously, our boys in the technical wing of the IB had manufactured  
these.’

Dhar openly confessed to his sympathy with the Hindu right. He names  
senior RSS leaders as his personal friends whose homes he would visit  
for discussions and meals. He says he was opposed to the demolition  
of the Babri mosque, however, lest he is accused of approving an  
illegal act.

In this strange mélange between journalism and intelligence, laced  
with a particularly insidious religio-nationalist ideology, Dhar says  
the second person he contacted during that assignment in Mumbai was  
Dhirubhai Ambani, the late billionaire tycoon.

‘Ambani was amazed to see a comparatively junior officer approaching  
him on mundane matters like opening the roadblock to my meeting with  
Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena supremo, Keshu Bhai Patel, the BJP  
leader from Gujarat and Chhabil Das Mehta, the chief minister of  
Gujarat.’

Ambani was ‘acclimatised to the officials in Delhi in matters of  
money, business and transactions,’ Dhar notes encouragingly. ‘To my  
amazement the much adored and vilified tycoon was more than  
cooperative. I found him to be highly patriotic and concerned about  
the stability of the western region of the country where most of his  
major ventures were located.’

Bal Thackeray ‘minus his standard behavioural peculiarities’ received  
Dhar well. Thackeray introduced Dhar to members of ‘XXX Rajan and YYY  
Gawli’ gangs. These men drove him ‘to the deeper niches of the Bombay  
underworld’. There he met people who knew of certain youths who had  
gone to Pakistan for subversive training.

It is not clear whether Dhar met the underworld in his avatar as a  
journalist or as a sleuth. He says he was ‘impressed’ by Bal  
Thackeray’s ‘firm commitment to narrow Maharashtrian cause, Hindu  
nationalism and his sway over sizeable sections of the underworld and  
organised groups of criminals. However, I did not like tinges of  
intolerance in him’.

Dhar may not be alone – as a sleuth or as a journalist – in his  
affection for the religious right. There is a certain gentleman from  
the Indian army intelligence being currently investigated for  
plotting bomb blasts to trigger communal violence. Indian journalists  
– once a true blue fourth pillar of its democracy – are heirs to a  
lofty tradition started by Gandhi and Nehru. They are best equipped  
to confront the fifth column within.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

o o o

(ii)

The Times of India
23 September 2009

EDITORIAL : IT'S ABOUT CHOICE

What could cause the Darul Uloom Deoband and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind  
to join forces with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad? Answer: homosexuality,  
which according to all of the above should be severely punished by  
the law. Sikh and Christian bodies are also negative about repealing  
the parts of Section 377 which criminalise homosexuality. Joining  
them is a motley group of godmen, astrologers, politicians and now  
even a child rights group, the Delhi Commission for Protection of  
Child Rights.

Such a grand alliance is bound to make any move to decriminalise  
homosexuality a political hot potato, even if that is what the Indian  
Constitution's guarantee of equal rights to all citizens demands. Not  
surprisingly the Union cabinet played safe and lobbed the ball back  
to the Supreme Court, when asked for the government's position on  
whether gay sex ought to be legalised or not, following landmark  
legislation by the Delhi high court which declared much of Section  
377 unconstitutional.

When India, in general, is keen to protect minorities of all sorts,  
what is it about this particular minority the homosexual community  
that presents seemingly intractable problems? It's that homosexuals  
snap the bond between sex and procreation, invoking the spectre of  
individual pleasure that exceeds any collective, utilitarian ethic.

The interesting thing about Section 377 is that it outlaws not just  
homosexual behaviour, but most forms of heterosexual activity that  
even lawfully married couples engage in. The only kind the law  
permits is that with direct procreative potential. Canute-like,  
Section 377 attempts to lock sex into a utilitarian grid.

Historically, most societies have sought utilitarian control over  
sex. Religions, especially proselytising ones, would like to multiply  
their numbers. Thus the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply.  
Socialism enforces an all-embracing altruism. According to its  
calculus individual pleasure can open the floodgates to selfish  
bourgeois vices. That's why most communist countries brutally  
suppressed homosexuality. Ditto for fascist states. Authoritarian  
societies, in general, tend to see homosexuality as disruptive of  
social order and cohesion, a quality they prize above anything else.

Early industrial capitalism, too, would like to expand the labour  
force to multiply production and profits. That gives it an interest  
in encouraging procreative heterosexual behaviour and driving  
homosexuality underground. It's only in late 20th century, post- 
industrial capitalism predicated on consumption as much as it is on  
production that the equation begins to shift. With the modern  
consumer, individual pleasure matters and choice comes into play.  
Procreation and perpetuation of race/religion/society/nation aren't  
everything. Add to that the green imperatives of the early 21st  
century, and growing populations with expanding ecological footprints  
even begin to look menacing.

The principle of choice can also extend to sexual lifestyles.  
Homosexual activity has been around for ages. But the notion of  
'lifestyle', a peg on which one hangs one's very identity, emerges  
only under modern consumer capitalism. One can 'consume' alternate  
sexualities. In that context the emergence of sexual minorities is a  
marker of ongoing globalisation. It's no accident that with  
liberalising and globalising tendencies washing up on Indian shores,  
the question of gay rights has come to the fore as well.

Take the gay pride parades which are being held in more and more  
Indian cities, reaching Bhubaneswar and Chennai this year. The annual  
parades are held in sync with similar events in cities across the  
world, and commemorate the Stonewall riots that took place in New  
York's Greenwich village in 1969. On June 27 of that year police  
raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the area. While such  
raids had been routine, on that occasion the crowds fought back and  
the neighbourhood erupted in riots and protests for the next few  
days. That event sparked the worldwide gay liberation movement. No  
wonder that Bhim Singh of the Jammu and Kashmir Panthers' Party  
describes the movement to legalise homosexuality as an "American  
invasion".

It's the 1960s that mark the shift to post-industrial capitalism,  
spurred by the global communications revolution which began that  
decade (causing Marshall McLuhan to quip, famously, that electronic  
technology was contracting the world into a "global village").  
According to social thinker Anthony Giddens the communications  
revolution dating from the 1960s ushered in a more radical and  
thoroughgoing modernity than that of the Enlightenment, touching the  
core of private life and incorporating what he calls 'emotional  
democracy'. This is associated with the rise of new social movements  
that emphasise life politics (to do with private life) rather than  
emancipatory politics (to do only with public institutions).

When Vikram Seth and others wrote an open letter addressing the  
government and judiciary, urging the overturning of Section 377 which  
"punitively criminalises romantic love and private, consensual sexual  
acts", quite apart from the utilitarian value of combating HIV/AIDS,  
it's also the private rights of the citizen that they are concerned  
to defend. It's time for the state to treat Indian citizens as  
adults, moving away from the patron-client relationship preferred by  
our political and bureaucratic elites.


o o o

(iii)

POLITICAL COMMUNALISATION OF RELIGIONS AND THE CRISIS OF SECULARISM
in: The Economic and Political Weekly,September 26 - October 02, 2009

by D L Sheth

The Indian state has managed the asymmetrical relationships in a  
hierarchical, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society by redefining,  
institutionally and legally, the relationship among communities, and  
between them and the state in the terms of secularism. This  
recognised the basic rights of individuals as citizens and their  
collectively held cultural rights as members of communities. However,  
this framework has now been replaced by a new form of pluralist  
discourse that totalises interests and community identities, and this  
has resulted in a battle between majoritarian and minoritarian  
communalism. The Congress-led coalition’s victory in the 2009 Lok  
Sabha poll has given it a second chance after 2004 to restore the  
secularisation process by shifting the focus of the development  
discourse from communality to the backwardness of groups, which has  
remained submerged within every community of faith.

Full Text at: http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13967.pdf

o o o

(iv)

AN INTERVIEW WITH D.R. GOYAL
Frontline, Vol:26 Iss:19, Sep. 12-25, 2009
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2619/stories/20090925261912000.htm

o o o

(v) SANGH'S MOTORISED COW DRIVE BEFORE THE ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS
http://tt.ly/2W

_____


[6] India: Quarrel Over the Deadliness of the Nuclear Bomb


The Economic and Political Weekly
September 26, 2009

EDITORIAL : CRY FOR INDIA

What does it say about us when our policymakers squabble about the  
deadliness of a nuclear bomb?

Pity our bomb makers. They have the difficult job of deciding if one  
of the devices they tested under the sands of Pokhran in 1998 could  
be good enough for a thermonuclear bomb that has the power to murder  
a few million people or if it can murder only a few hundred  
thousands. (To "murder" is surely the appropriate word to describe  
the use of a nuclear weapon.) The squabble, in which our bomb makers  
have descended to calling each other names, could have been dismissed  
as a ridiculous turf war if only it had not been about something as  
horrific as the potency of a nuclear bomb. Everyone from Prime  
Minister Manmohan Singh onwards has deemed it important enough to  
have a say on the "yield" of the thermonuclear device tested on 11  
May 1998.  Pity then the issues of bread and butter, social tensions  
and environmental degradation that have been pushed out of the public  
eye because our legendary club of strategic affairs experts is once  
more ruling the air waves and pouring ink all over the newspapers on  
the potency of India's "hydrogen (H)-bomb".  The quarrel among  
serving and retired scientists, defence personnel, political  
officials and commentators would not be worthy of comment if it were  
not for the larger and very serious issues involved. Whether or not  
the thermonuclear device of Pokhran lived up to its expectations is  
irrelevant. Indeed, the international scientific community tracking  
these matters had expressed an opinion soon after May 1998 that  
India's H-bomb test was a "dud".  Those views were dismissed in those  
heady days of jingoistic fervour. What has come out into the open now  
is that there were divisions within officialdom at that time as well  
about the result of the test. (We should not forget though that there  
is no difference of opinion whatsoever about the "success" of the  
fission tests for the conventional nuclear bombs, which can murder a  
few hundred thousands in densely populated centres.)

There is a simple answer to why the spat has resurfaced. Even as they  
are united in their fervour that India must be a nuclear weapons  
state, there has always been a certain schism between the nuclear  
weapon scientists as a group and the strategic affairs/ international  
relations community. For the former, bigger and more is better; for  
the latter what matters is the quality of a so- called "minimum  
deterrent". Some in the scientific community also feel that a few  
tests as in Pokhran in May 1998 do not make India nuclear weapons  
capable. The argument is that the established five nuclear powers  
(the United States, the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom,  
France and China) carried out dozens of tests before they were  
confident about their nuclear capability. If in 1998, political  
considerations - the need not to displease the US too much by going  
on a spree of nuclear tests - led to a moratorium, the matter has now  
acquired a new urgency.  The urgency is that unlike the George Bush  
administration, the Barack Obama presidency gives some importance to  
controlling what the Americans call "nuclear proliferation". India  
may be a bit player in these matters and also call itself "a  
responsible nuclear power". However, since the government of India  
seeks a seat at the high table, it will have to observe the etiquette  
of that table, and for the US it appears that signing and adherence  
to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is now once again a  
priority.  If Obama insists and India decides to sign, the option of  
further testing of the H-bomb device will disappear.

Those inside and outside government who make strategy cite India's  
"no first use" policy and the philosophy of a so-called "credible  
minimum nuclear deterrent" to argue that we need not worry about  
whether or not we have a H-bomb. And that India's policy is not to  
win a nuclear war but to deter a potential attack.  What is relevant  
then is the creation of "a reliable, robust and survivable" nuclear  
arsenal that can withstand an attack and inflict "unacceptable  
damage" on the aggressor. Hence, according to this school, whose  
views form the basis of the Indian Nuclear Doctrine, even if the  
thermonuclear test was a fizzle, India has a sufficient number of  
proven 25 kiloton (kt) warheads to constitute a "credible minimum  
nuclear deterrent".

In the end, the only question that matters is if nuclear weapons  
provide or endanger security. Whatever the phalanx of strategic  
affairs experts may say, the answer is unambiguous. The availability  
of nuclear weapons does not prevent wars. The history of south Asia  
since 1998 itself offers sufficient proof - remember Kargil 1999?  
Nuclear weapons increase risks and provoke war-like behaviour -  
remember the many threatening statements both India and Pakistan made  
in 1999, 2001 and 2002 on using the bomb? Nuclear weapons are unique  
for they inflict immense human suffering - can we ever forget  
Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And, finally, there is no bigger case against  
nuclear weapons than the moral argument about the use of this  
"Destroyer of Worlds".

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mohandas Karamchand  Gandhi said, "The  
atom bomb has deadened the finest feelings which have sustained  
mankind for ages...It has resulted for  the time being in the soul of  
Japan being destroyed. What  has happened to the soul of the  
destroying nation is yet too  early to see."

If Gandhi were to hear the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime  
Minister of India say in 2009 that India need not worry, because it  
is capable of unleashing a 200  kt atomic weapon, then surely the  
soul of this nation that calls him its "Father" has also died.

o o o

truthout.org, 22 September 2009

A NEW NUCLEAR DEBATE IN INDIA

by J. Sri Raman

     As an anti-nuclear-weapon activist of India, I am abashed to  
admit this. But the main nuclear debate in the major South Asian  
country has not been the one between nuclear militarists and their  
opponents. It has been the one between two schools of nuclear  
militarism. The debate has acquired a new dimension, with the hawks  
of all these years suddenly made to appear doves.

     The US has figured in the debate all through. If George W. Bush  
initiated the earlier polemics by presenting a nuclear deal to India,  
the current controversy has a Barack Obama connection.

     India's nuclear-weapon tests of May 1998 in the desert site of  
Pokharan did provoke some serious protests from sections that saw  
what these presaged for South Asia. These, however, led to no  
national debate. The voice of the anti-nuke agitators was drowned in  
the high-decibel celebrations of Pokharan II (as the test series was  
named, Pokharan I was given as the title of the "peaceful nuclear  
explosion" conducted at the same site in 1974).

     The nation witnessed its first major nuclear debate after former  
President Bush and India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met in  
Washington in July 2005 and announced their decision to go for a "US- 
India nuclear deal." Right from then, a loud and lacerating political  
controversy raged in India over the deal, until July 2008 when the  
Singh government won a parliamentary confidence vote on the issue.

     Yes, we in the anti-nuke camp declared war on the deal, too. We  
did so because the deal gave India the dubiously high status of a  
nuclear-weapon state, with which Washington and its allies were  
willing to do nuclear business. The "civilian nuclear cooperation  
agreement," signed in March 2006, clearly helped and did not hamper  
India's strategic nuclear program. Under the deal, New Delhi could  
keep specified strategic nuclear reactors out of the purview of the  
inspectors of he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). And the  
nuclear commerce, for which the deal opened the doors, freed up  
India's indigenous nuclear fuel resources for use in its weapon program.

     Our case was a cry in the wilderness, only faintly heard in the  
mainstream media with headlines reserved for the war of militarists.  
The main discourse was dominated by opposition to the deal from a  
point of view diametrically opposite to ours. The far-right Bharatiya  
Janata Party (BJP), which was in power 11 years ago and presided over  
Pokharan II, decried the deal as an attempt to derail the weapon  
program.

     A tokenistic Washington position about future Indian testing  
(which was to be allowed anyway if a changed strategic situation was  
deemed to demand it) was presented as proof that the deal sought to  
"cap" New Delhi's strategic nuclear schemes. Even sections of the  
left joined this lopsided opposition to the deal by seeing it as an  
attack on India's "sovereignty" in relation to its strategic nuclear  
program.

     It is over the issue of testing again that the current, second  
major Indian nuclear debate has erupted. The sides, however, are not  
he same.

     On the deal, pitted against each other were the BJP and its  
fiends on the one hand and Singh's Congress Party and its allies on  
the other. The BJP and the Congress are now on the same aide of the  
barricades.

     Some prominent individuals, too, have switched sides, most  
notably former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. The BJP first hailed  
Kalam, scientist operationally in charge of Pokharan II, as the  
father of the Indian bomb and helped him into the presidential palace  
in New Delhi. It, however, condemned him as a compromiser of India's  
sovereignty when he upheld the deal as the answer to the country's  
need for uranium. But the party and Kalam are making common cause in  
the current controversy.

     No mystery shrouds their motive. Both of them share a stake in  
preserving Pokharan II as a symbol of Indian pride. And the  
controversy has put that avowed achievement in question.

     It all began when K. Santhanam, a scientist who worked under  
Kalam in 1998, was reported on August 27 as trashing the test series.  
He was quoted as alleging, in effect, that the leaders of the then  
BJP-headed government and the nuclear establishment had lied to the  
nation about the tests. According to him, as many foreign experts had  
said at the time, the thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb tests had ended  
in a "fizzle."

     A "fizzle" occurs when the testing of a nuclear bomb fails to  
meet its expected yield or falls short by 30 percent or more. The  
yield is the amount of energy discharged when a nuclear weapon is  
detonated, with the amount being expressed in kilotons (thousands of  
tons) or megatons (millions of tons) of trinitrotoluene (TNT).

     A hydrogen bomb can produce far greater destructive power than  
an atom bomb. The biggest bomb tested by the Soviet Union is said to  
have produced 50 megatons of explosive power - nearly 3,000 times  
more destructive power than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which  
killed 80,000 people instantly, according to the most conservative  
estimate. This is the weapon India has, the BJP and its band claim.  
It is what India has yet to acquire, Santhanam and others wail.

     Santhanam put the yield at 15 to 20 kilotons, or less than half  
the officially claimed 45 kilotons. The pride-puncturing estimate has  
the predicted reactions from everyone with a reputation resting on  
Pokharan II. It has also been rejected by the reigning nuclear  
establishment.

     Past heads of the establishment, however, have condemned  
official claims on Pokjaran II almost in a chorus. One of them,  
former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) P. K.  
Iyengar, has also added a political dimension to the debate that is  
bound to embarrass the Pakistan-obsessed BJP.

     According to Iyengar, the tests were done in haste at the  
bidding of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government of  
the day in order to beat Pakistan to it. He says that, in March 1998,  
two months before Pokharan II, India's intelligence probably found  
out that the Pakistanis were about to test. "If Pakistan fired an  
explosion before India," asks Iyengar ironically, "what would a  
common man in India have thought?"

     A more intriguing question is: why are Santhanam and others  
raising the issue over a decade after the event? Writes Ramesh  
Thakur, director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs.  
Waterloo, Canada: "The reason for Santhanam's revelation may be to  
put pressure on the government to conduct further tests for  
validating the design of India's hydrogen bomb, before the window is  
closed if the Obama administration ratifies the Comprehensive Test  
Ban Treaty and pressures remaining hold-outs to follow."

     The demand by Santhanam and others for more tests, despite  
India's voluntary moratorium on testing, reinforces Thakur's reasoning.

     Added to this, perhaps, is an anti-China angle. The controversy  
has broken out around the same time as India is witnessing a media- 
powered campaign to create new tensions between New Delhi and  
Beijing. Santhanam has strengthened this suspicion by calling for "a  
series of thermonuclear bomb tests" in order to "protect the nation's  
security" from China. "We are totally naked vis-à-vis China" and its  
nuclear might, he adds.

     The best answer to this bogey comes, ironically, from a security  
analyst long associated with the bomb lobby. K. Subrahmanyam, in a  
newspaper article co-authored with scientist V. S. Arunachalam,  
points out: "... even with 25-kiloton fission bombs, the damages are  
going to be far more extensive than what Hiroshima and Nagasaki  
suffered, given the higher population densities in the cities of  
China and South Asia and the urban development of recent years.  
Therefore, the Indian deterrent posture will not lose its credibility  
if India is compelled to rely on fission weapons only."

     The article goes on to say what Indian and Pakistani militarists  
can do to the people of South Asia with the nuclear arsenals they  
already have. "In a nuclear war, once the missiles are launched,  
entire countries on both sides become battlefields. It is difficult  
to control or regulate the firing of the missiles since both sides  
are under compulsion to use the missiles before they are eliminated  
by the enemy strike. As soon as the first city is hit, populations of  
all cities would attempt to empty out into the countryside since  
there will be panic that their own city will be the next target in  
the next few minutes."

     The article adds: "Think of the entire urban population of a  
country becoming internally displaced persons in a matter of hours."  
The authors, however, do not argue against strategic programs that  
can bring no security to the region and its people.

     Participants in India's main nuclear debate think pretty little  
about this and other possible fallouts of their folly. The anti- 
nuclear-weapon activists, meanwhile, can only hope at the most to  
have their say in the alternative media.


_____


[7] Announcements:

(A) “DELHI RALLY” PROGRAM - National Alliance of Anti-nuclear  
Movements (NAAM)


[1] September 30, 2009, Wednesday:

Welcome to the guests who are coming from outside Delhi! For your  
stay, we have booked Garhwal Bhawan (on Panchkuian Road; phone:  
011-23540380) which is close to Jhandewala Metro Station.  
(Directions- From New Delhi railway station, you can take a pre-paid  
auto which will charge around 30 to 40 rupees. The prepaid booth is  
on Paharganj side of the station. In case you want to take the Metro,  
the station is on Ajmeri Gate side. Please take metro from there to  
Jhandewala. When you come out of the Jhandewala station, ask for  
Garhwal Bhawan. It is very close to the station. If you have any  
questions, please call us: Ahivaran Singh - 9811330977; Shree Prakash  
- 9871880686; Kabir Arora - 9911879675; or S. P. Udayakumar -  
09865683735.)


[2] October 1, 2009, Thursday

7:30 AM: Breakfast at Garhwal Bhawan
8:00 AM: Buses leave Garhwal Bhawan to Indian Social Institute (ISI)  
near Sai Temple.

9:00 AM to 1:00 PM:   National Seminar on

“Nuclear Threats to India’s Children and Their Futures”

Venue: Indian Social Institute (ISI)
Near Sai Temple, 10, Institutional Area, Lodi Road , New Delhi - 110003
Phone: 24622379/ 24625015 Extn: 780/781

Opening Songs:                                    Sowmini & Venice
Welcome Address:                               S. P. Udayakumar,  
PMANE, CNDP
Inaugural Address:                                Achin Vanaik, CNDP

Speakers:
Sheelu, Women’s Collective,
Sukla Sen, CNDP,
Binalakshmi Nepram, CAFI,
Anil Chaudhury, PEACE, CNDP
Soumya Dutta, BJVJ, Delhi Platform
V. T. Padmanabhan
Gurshant Singh, IDPD

Sharing
(Anti-nuclear activists sharing info on local nuclear woes,  
struggles, and strategies followed to contain the nuclear menace)

Saraswati Kavula, Movement Against Uranium Project, Andhra Pradesh
Samuel Jyrwa, Khasi Students Union, Meghalaya
Neeraj Jain, Jaitapur Struggle, Maharashtra
Santanu Chakraverti, Haripur Struggle, West Bengal
B. M. Kumaraswamy, Kaiga & Gulbarga, Karnataka
Kishore Kumar Patnaik, ODAF, Orissa
Initha and A. S. Ravi, PMANE, Koodankulam NPP, Tamil Nadu

Keynote Address:                                 Praful Bidwai, CNDP

Politics of Nuclear Energy and the Indian State

Audience Interventions and Interactions

Vote of Thanks:                                    Rishab Khanna, IYCN

1: 30 PM to 2:30 PM: Lunch at ISI
2:30 PM:                                  Buses leave for Garhwal Bhawan

                                                 (Afternoon: Free Time)
3:30 PM to 5:00 PM:               Press Meet at IWPC, Windsor Place
6:00 PM to 7:00 PM:               Memorandum to H. E. The President  
of India
8:00 PM:                                  Dinner at Garhwal Bhawan

                                                 NAAM Strategy  
Meeting at Garhwal Bhawan


[3] October 2, 2009, Friday (Gandhi Jayanti)

7:30 AM:                                 Breakfast at Garhwal Bhawan
8:00 AM to 11:00 AM:            NAAM – Networking; State-level meetings
11:00 AM:                               Buses leave Garhwal Bhawan to  
Rajghat
11:30 AM:                               Programs

·        Wailing and Crying at Gandhi Samadhi about India’s reckless  
nuclear policies, programs and projects.

·        National appeal from Rajghat to all the Gram Sabhas across  
the country to pass a resolution condemning India’s nuclear policies  
and programs, and demanding the closure of the local nuclear-related  
projects, both ongoing and upcoming.

12:00 Noon:                             “Delhi Rally” starts at  
Rajghat (Samta Sthal)
2:30 PM:                                  “Delhi Rally” ends at  
Jantar Mantar / Packet Lunch
3:00 PM:                                  Buses leave for Teen Murti
3:30 PM:                                  Discussion at Teen Murti  
Auditorium
4:30 PM:                                  Charter of Demands; Pledge- 
taking for Nuclear-Free India
5:00 PM:                                  Theater Y performance on Peace
6:00 PM:                                  Plenary - Youth Vision for  
Peace
7:00 PM:                                  Buses leave for Garhwal Bhawan
8:00 PM:                                  Dinner at Garhwal Bhawan

o o o

(B) Dr Faheem Hussain's memorial - Sun 4 October, Lahore

Dr. Rehana Kariapper will be holding a gathering of family and  
friends in memory of her dear brother this Sunday at her house. Your  
attendance would be very welcome and please circulate this invitation  
to all his friends who would like to attend.

Date: Sunday, 4th October
Time: 1p.m.
Venue: E-1052, Ali Street Nadirabad, Lahore Cantt.

For confirmation and directions, please contact:

Rehana: 0300 4530119 and 35709140
Aman: 03444 648479


o o o

(C) DANIEL PEARL AWARDS FOR CROSS-BORDER INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

The 2010 Daniel Pearl Awards competition, which honors the worlds  
best cross-border investigative journalism, is now accepting entries.

Deadline: January 15, 2010

The contest is open to any journalist or team of journalists of any  
nationality working in any medium. Entries must involve reporting in  
at least two countries on a topic of world significance.

There is no entry fee. Submissions from Latin America, Asia, Africa  
and the Middle East are especially encouraged.

Granted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists  
(ICIJ), the awards include two $5,000 first-place prizes, along with  
five additional $1,000 prizes. The awards will be presented at the  
6th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva,  
Switzerland, in April 2010.

Formerly the ICIJ Awards, the prizes were renamed in 2008 in honor of  
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain by militants  
in Pakistan in 2002.

For more details go to: http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/ 
icij/awards/


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

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