SACW | Nov 5-8, 2009 / Sri Lanka: Spoils of War / Pakistan: Islamist Fund Raising / Pak India Impasse / India: Rights and Wrongs / Lamb Allies with Wolf!
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Sat Nov 7 22:46:18 CST 2009
South Asia Citizens Wire | November 5-8, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2663 -
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] Life is cheap in Bangladesh (Rater Zonaki)
[2] Sri Lanka: Pariahs of the fourth Estate (Editorial, The Sunday
Leader)
+ Politics and the war in Sri Lanka: To which victor the spoils?
[3] Pakistan: Boxing the faith (Nadeem F. Paracha)
[4] Pakistan - India: The limits of coercive diplomacy (Happymon Jacob)
+ Pakistan must accept India’s offer of peace (I.A. Rehman)
+ Jailed Fishermen Await Thaw in India-Pakistan Relations
(Zofeen Ebrahim)
[5] India: The Honest Leftist - K. Balagopal was the conscience of
Andhra society (Ramachandra Guha)
[6] India: Two Parallel Narratives (Sumanta Banerjee)
[7] India: Press Release by Independent Citizens Fact Finding Mission
to Manipur
[8] EU tramples on India's poor (David Cronin)
[9] India: Resources For Secular Activists
(i) Sign the Online Petition to Indonesian Authorities to
Rescind Their Invitation to Narendra Modi
(ii) Lamb Allies with Wolf! The Myth of Love Jihad (Ram
Puniyani)
[10] Announcements:
(i) Two Day National Seminar on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and the
National Education System (New Delhi, 11-12 November 2009)
(ii) Applications are sought for the Ambedkar Sanskrit Fellowship at
Columbia University in the City of New York
_____
[1] Bangladesh:
LIFE IS CHEAP IN BANGLADESH
by Rater Zonaki
Published: November 05, 2009
http://www.upiasia.com/Human_Rights/2009/11/04/
life_is_cheap_in_bangladesh/4465/
Hong Kong, China — "Life is so cheap in Bangladesh ,” a senior
journalist pointed out to a Bangladesh Army colonel who had come to
his office to intimidate him. “My life can be ended at any time … by
any of the violence that goes on around us. Why are you so concerned
about my life?”
The colonel, an officer of the Directorate General of the Forces
Intelligence, had come to warn the journalist to stop speaking out
against lawlessness during the two-year state of emergency that ended
in December, 2008.
The DGFI is known for the specialized torture cells it maintains in
the country’s garrisons, used to interrogate suspects. Many of the
country’s politicians have experienced the taste of torture in those
cells.
Bangladeshi authorities routinely prove that life is cheap in the
country. The poor man’s life is cheapest of all. An incident occurred
last Saturday at Tongi in Gazipur district, near the capital Dhaka ,
that illustrates this point.
Around 1,500 workers reporting for work Saturday morning at Nippon
Garments, a readymade garment factory, were met by a notice stating
that the factory would be closed for a month. They had not been told
of this closure when they ended their day’s work on Friday, and their
monthly wages of US$30 had not been paid.
This is a frequent occurrence in the country’s readymade garment
industry. Employers or their loyal staff terminate ordinary workers
whenever they wish, often by verbal notice, as most workers do not
have written contracts that detail their employment status and salaries.
It is a “national tradition” in Bangladesh that the laws favor those
in power, not the ordinary people. This has often caused frustration
among the people, who then demonstrate to express their demands,
regardless of their legitimacy or logic.
The outraged workers of the closed garment factory demonstrated on
the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway. When factory authorities failed to meet
the workers or respond to their demands, they got impatient and began
vandalizing vehicles.
The government sent riot police to control the situation. The police
suddenly started firing indiscriminately at the demonstrators,
killing at least three people – a rickshaw-puller who had gone to
rescue his garment-worker wife, a pedestrian and a mason. Many others
were wounded by police bullets.
The media claimed there were even more deaths, and accused the police
of a cover-up to suppress the truth. But Home Minister Sahara Khatun
denied that anyone was killed by police gunfire. Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina seems to have ended the issue simply by declaring that
none would be spared if found guilty.
Unfortunately, Bangladeshis already know that they cannot expect
justice from their politicians. Deaths due to police gunfire or other
unwarranted violence are quite common. The police torture or kill
people in custody. Political parties also kill their rivals in open
attacks.
In recent years, for example, a number of people were killed in
Sherpur, Jamalpur and adjacent districts when police opened fire on
farmers who were demanding fertilizer to grow their crops.
Around eight villagers of Shibganj in Chapainawabganj district were
killed by police gunshots for demanding electricity, after being
forced to pay electric bills without having received even the minimum
power supply.
A similar incident occurred in Fulbari of Dinajpur district when
locals protested against a multinational company that wanted to mine
coal without regard for the local environment and without adequate
compensation for local people displaced by the mines. Several were
killed by police gunfire.
After each of these shocking incidents, the ruling party made
rhetorical speeches and promised compensation to the victims. But
they failed to even identify the perpetrators or investigate the
situation. No comprehensive or sustainable solution was offered, and
the suffering of the victims was ignored.
After each such incident, the opposition parties became government
critics and voiced their sympathy to the victims while lamenting
their inability to change things because they were not in power. But
no progress is made even when the same opposition becomes the ruling
party.
There is no remedy or explanation for the unruly violence caused by
law enforcement authorities.
It is the political parties that have always benefited from violent
acts. Bangladeshi politicians have repeatedly demonstrated their
penchant for weak and bad policies, irresponsible practices,
uncontrollable desire to plunder state property, and greed for power
and money.
While they survive with all their drawbacks, they have no time or
ability to overcome them – let alone helping ordinary citizens or
solving problems of state and public institutions.
The police – regardless of whether they are riot, traffic or normal
police – are part of Bangladeshi society, which has grown impatient
with such behavior. This situation prevails in all public
institutions, including the basic legal institutions, which fail to
address the problems calmly and fairly.
People die unnatural deaths every day, but nobody cares. Such
carelessness deserves to die its own death in an "intellectual
firing.” The nation should immediately start building an intellectual
infrastructure to kill this ongoing carelessness. Otherwise, life
will remain as cheap as the lives of the laborers in the garment
industry.
-
(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in
Hong Kong , working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a
Bangladeshi national who has worked as a journalist and human rights
activist in his country for more than a decade, and as editor of
publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues.)
_____
[2] Sri Lanka:
(i)
The Sunday Leader, October 31, 2009
Editorial : PARIAHS OF THE FOURTH ESTATE
Given the deafening silence the local media greeted the news of two
death threats received by two editors at this newspaper last week we
reached just one conclusion. That The Sunday Leader is seen to be the
pariah of the fourth estate – and its editors and staff are easily
expendable.
It is in the same manner that the local media pontificated and almost
justified the brutal killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge – whispering
amongst themselves that he was no journalist. That he in fact
tarnished the very image of this August profession – trashed the
altar upon which it stands by prostituting “quality” journalism for
“petty and personal political gain.”
Thus convinced, the Editor’s Guild, The Sri Lanka Newspaper Society,
Free Media Movement and the Sri Lanka Press Institute decided it was
good enough reason not to pay tribute to him — not to honour him or
even remember him on a night when The Journalism Awards for
Excellence was held in all its glory on Tuesday, July 14, this year.
Brow beaten to complacency and mediocrity the local media will not
dare rear its head or stand tall – too afraid anymore to voice
solidarity or condemn a cowardly and dastardly act as the sending of
death threats to two women editors in this country. Two colleagues –
who obviously the local press, believe — do not matter – if they are
indeed killed. That we were threatened we were told was our fault –
for having “upset” the sensitivities of a person or persons who
remain paranoid, jittery, trigger-happy of any adverse publicity.
A senior editor of another English language weekly in fact said that
if indeed anyone did want to kill us they wouldn’t warn us in
advance. Perhaps, Lasantha too was of similar thought which is why
he discounted the deadly but all too real threat that came to him
three weeks before he was murdered.
A written threat which elsewhere on our pages today a professional
graphologist maintains when compared with the two death threats sent
to us on October 22, could have been written by the same fist.
But none of this is of importance. At least, not to those
institutions and press organisations which lobby and receive millions
of rupees by way of foreign funding, pontificating to foreign donors,
professing to fight and stand up for freedom of expression and media
rights which includes protection to journalists under threat. Not a
single one of these organisations issued a line last week condemning
the death threats sent to editors at this newspaper.
Not a single member from any one these organisations bothered to even
telephone the offices of The Sunday Leader and express any kind of
concern or solidarity – despite the fact their phone bills are met by
foreign donors to do just that. Publishers and editors in fact went
a step further, barring their newspapers from reporting the issue.
Actions which speak volumes as to where the threat even the media
believe originated. Which is why, they dare not speak his name. As
they cower – glad that The Sunday Leader continues to be picked out
as – for the moment at least – they all remain safe. It is not their
turn yet. And will never be as long as The Sunday Leader even when it
crouches would still continue to stand taller than all the horses in
this trade.
But this is nothing new. When The Sunday Leader was sealed on an
arbitrary order issued by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga none
of these institutions bothered so much as to issue a statement
condemning her unlawful action – which was subsequently overruled by
the Supreme Court.
As a result, Lasantha resigned as a member of the Editor’s Guild
followed by his brother and Chairman of Leader Publications Lal
Wickrematunge who also tendered his resignation from the Newspaper
Publishers Society. Up to the day that Lasantha was killed he never
returned to the Editors Guild as a member despite repeated requests
from the latter to do so – ultimately even relinquishing any and all
ties with the Sri Lanka Press Institute too, before he was killed.
Of course the fact that The Sunday Leader continues to stand alone in
its fight for freedoms and democratic rights must make the current
political administration delirious with joy. After all, when a
couple more journalists need to be picked out for slaughter there is
no guessing as to where the die will be first cast.
While the rest of the media fraternity can whisper little self-
congratulatory messages to themselves content they can no longer be
seen nor heard — never mind the fact that 11 journalists have been
killed in the last two years and more than 30 attacked – the media
fraternity have acceded to an unseemly pact – they will simply play
ball.
At least at The Sunday Leader – we remain unbowed and unafraid. We
stand proud that we do not bury our head ostrich like in the sand.
Lasantha was only one in a long line of journalists who have laid
down their lives for their profession. The threat facing the
country’s media continues. Any event and/or organisation that
represent media professionals must take a stand to defend a
profession that continues to being terrorised into submission. And
we are not afraid to take that stand.
The Sunday Leader will continue to function courageously. We are
convinced that being so will finally allow the media in this nation
to survive as a meaningful and moderating influence on this country’s
society and governance.
Many people suspect that The Sunday Leader has a political agenda: it
does not. If we appear more critical of the government than of the
opposition it is only because we believe that there is no point in
bowling to the fielding side. Remember that for the few years of our
existence in which the UNP was in office, we proved to be the biggest
thorn in its flesh, exposing excess and corruption wherever it
occurred. Indeed, the steady stream of embarrassing exposés we
published may well have served to precipitate the downfall of that
government.
Neither should our distaste for the war be interpreted to mean that
we support or have supported the Tigers. The LTTE are among the most
ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested this
planet. There is no gainsaying that we applaud this government for
having eradicated its menace from our shores. But to do so by
violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them
mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim
to be custodians of the Dhamma is forever called into question by
this savagery, much of which is unknown to the public because of the
self censorship carried out by the local press.
It is indeed opportune to reproduce a favourite quote that inspired
Lasantha during his career as a journalist. That of the German
theologian, Martin Niem”ller.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for
you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual,
dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid,
with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take
that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever
sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory
or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve our
sacrifice is another matter. God knows – we try.
o o o
(ii)
The Economist print edition, Nov 5th 2009
POLITICS AND THE WAR IN SRI LANKA: TO WHICH VICTOR THE SPOILS?
The mysterious ambitions of Sri Lanka’s victorious army commander
Reuters Fonseka keeps his testimony under his hat
NOT even six months has elapsed since the protracted war with Tamil
Tiger rebels ended in a bloody climax, leading to the Sri Lankan
government’s triumph. But already the leaders of the military
campaign are sparring ahead of an election due next year. For weeks
the press has been speculating about friction between the
administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka, the
hawkish army general who commanded troops in the final assault
against the Tigers.
Jittery over rumours, spread mostly by opposition parties, that
General Fonseka will challenge Mr Rajapaksa in the election, the
government in October banned reports about his political ambitions. A
communiqué from the army’s spokesman warned the press that several
laws would be used against those who published “false reports” using
the names of serving senior army officers.
General Fonseka is no longer army commander. But as chief of the
defence staff, a post obtained after the defeat of the Tigers in May,
he is the highest-ranking military officer in service. He cannot
contest elections while in uniform. But his term ends in December and
he has hinted that he might reject any offer of an extension.
During a visit to America which ended abruptly this week, General
Fonseka, who holds an American green card (ie, permanent residence),
told Sri Lankan expatriates he would step out of uniform to bring the
country back on track “if it continues to go on the wrong path even
after defeating terrorism.” Such statements, combined with goading
from the opposition, have increased agitation in government, and
particularly presidential, quarters. Some ministers are already
cautioning the public about the pitfalls of a military regime. Others
have claimed ownership of the victory for Mr Rajapaksa himself,
rather than his military chiefs.
The plot thickened this week when General Fonseka notified the
government that America’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had
sought his testimony in a probe into alleged human-rights violations
by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s defence secretary and the
president’s brother, a naturalised American citizen.
General Fonseka was hastily flown back from America on the day the
DHS interview was to have taken place. Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry
said no American government agency had questioned him before his
departure. Still, it had taken several days of feverish diplomacy to
prevent the meeting, which, intriguingly, General Fonseka had
consented to two days before notifying the defence secretary.
The government’s obvious anxiety about General Fonseka’s possible
candidacy is a consequence of Mr Rajapaksa’s plans to call a
presidential election in early 2010, nearly two years before the end
of his six-year term. He naturally wants to capitalise on the
popularity generated by the military victory. But this strategy may
backfire if he is challenged by the former army commander, who is
hugely popular among the president’s main support base, the Sinhalese
Buddhist majority.
As one independent Tamil analyst put it, the ruling regime’s main
achievement has been to win the war. But with the victors apparently
squabbling among themselves, which ones should people support?
Mangala Samaraweera, a parliamentarian who defected to the opposition
from Mr Rajapaksa’s party, says his former leader will now “not have
the guts” to hold an early poll. Judging by the president’s actions
this week, that prediction sounds premature. At the convention of a
big trade union, he promised a pay rise in January for all public-
sector employees. The next day, as General Fonseka flew back to
Colombo, the president took a helicopter to previously Tiger-
controlled areas and told soldiers that the salaries of all security-
force personnel would be raised with immediate effect. This hardly
sounds like a man shy of an early dash to the polls.
_____
[3] Pakistan:
Dawn, 8 November, 2009
BOXING THE FAITH
by Nadeem F. Paracha
Once upon a time, charity boxes of so-called Islamic welfare
organisations were a ubiquitous sight at shops in our cities. These
boxes were claimed to have been put there by the shopkeepers and
Islamic welfare groups to raise money for the building of mosques and
madressahs.
They started appearing in shops during Pakistan’s involvement in the
so-called anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad in the 1980s — a decade that saw a
proliferation of mosques and madressahs across the country, mostly
funded by aid from the Gulf countries, and patronised by the Ziaul
Haq dictatorship. By the 1990s, however, it became quite apparent
that the funds collected through these boxes weren’t necessarily
being used to build mosques and madressahs that were already thriving
and in abundance.
The money in this case was largely ending up in the laps of various
Kashmiri and Afghan Jihadi organisations, and from 1989 onwards,
sectarian organisations too started to place their respective charity
boxes at shops. Most of the charity boxes belonged to the Jamaatud
Dawah Pakistan, a so-called charity organisation formed in Lahore in
1985 by a former university professor of Islamic Studies.
The Dawah collected funds to provide healthcare to wounded Afghan and
Kashmiri Jihadis, and also claimed to be providing financial support
to the families of Islamist guerrillas killed in action. According to
the celebrated investigative journalist, Amir Mir’s book ‘The
Talibanisation of Pakistan,’ the Dawah became closely associated with
the notorious Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT) in 1990, an organisation that
eventually became the ‘military wing’ of the Dawah.
After the tragic 9/11 episode when Pakistan became an ally in the
West’s ‘War on Terror,’ the LeT was banned by the Musharraf regime,
but the Dawah was allowed to continue with its ‘charity activities.’
Musharraf’s regime was constantly accused by American and Indian
intelligence agencies of taking only selective action against Jihadi
groups. According to Mir’s book, most of these groups were said to be
the handiwork of Pakistani intelligence agencies to ‘wage low
intensity insurgencies in Indian Kashmir and Afghanistan.’
After the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks undertaken by Pakistani Jihadis
that India says were trained by the LeT, the democratically elected
government of Yousuf Raza Gilani finally banned the Dawah. The
organisation was also accused by the United Nations for aiding LeT
men in planning and conducting the Mumbai attacks. The Dawah chief,
Hafiz Saeed — a former member of the Jamat-i-Islami’s student wing,
the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT) — denied his group’s involvement in
the Mumbai attacks.
The other prominent ‘charity organisation’ that fully utilised the
services of the charity box, was the Al-Rashid Trust. Formed in 1996,
the trust described itself as a ‘welfare organisation’, and one of
its original charters was to carry out welfare projects within
Pakistan, with financial resources provided by public donations. It
then expanded its mandate to carry out ‘relief activities’ for
Muslims in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan. It perceived the various
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) currently working in
Afghanistan as ‘enemies of Muslims.’
The trust also promoted the concept of Jihad. One of its numerous
booklets states: ‘The holy war is an essential element of Islam’ and
that ‘every Muslim must carry weapons if the need would be felt to
fire on a non-Muslim.’ Suspected of raising funds for Al-Qaeda and
the Taliban, the Al-Rashid Trust was also banned by the UN in
December, 2008.
Earlier, the placing of charity boxes in shops by so-called Islamic
charity organisations was finally banned by the Musharraf regime in
2003 when Pakistan cracked down on certain Islamist organisations.
Shopkeepers defying the ban were heavily fined and some were arrested
for having links with the banned organisations. The Jihadi charity
box phenomenon across the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s was aided by
three main factors associated with the shopkeepers.
Firstly, a bulk of shop owners in urban Pakistan belongs to the
conservative petty-bourgeois class that heartily supported Ziaul
Haq’s ‘Islamisation process.’ Many shopkeepers actually believed the
charity was being used to build mosques.
Secondly, many shopkeepers could not decline to keep these boxes,
because those who did were harassed by Islamist organisations and
labelled as ‘American/Indian agents’ and ‘Quadianis.’ Lastly, some
shopkeepers actually did have links with Jihadi organisations, and
played a central role in raising funds through their business
connections with some wealthy overseas Pakistanis residing in various
Middle Eastern countries as businessmen, doctors and engineers.
Today, shops in Pakistan do not carry these charity boxes. Boxes
having logos and pleas of various Islamic charity organisations and
sectarian groups have now been replaced by boxes belonging to genuine
charity organisations, such as the Edhi Foundation, The Shaukat
Khanum Hospital Foundation, SUIT, The Kidney Centre, etc.
But some congested shopping areas in Karachi and Lahore still have a
few shops that have boxes pleading charity for mosques. Some believe
these are harmless, while others claim that the presence of these few
boxes proves that the ‘Islamist’ charity box menace is not fully
taken care of and may continue to raise funds for organisations bent
on creating havoc in the name of Islam.
_____
[4] India - Pakistan:
The Hindu, November 4, 2009
THE LIMITS OF COERCIVE DIPLOMACY
by Happymon Jacob
PTI PEACE IS AT HAND: In this July 16, 2009 photo Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani greet
each other during a bilateral meeting at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt.
Photo: PTI
India has achieved all it can hope to with its silence; there is
nothing more it can reasonably hope to gain by refusing to restart
the dialogue process with Pakistan.
The so-called ‘peace overture’ that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
made to Pakistan from the Kashmir Valley last week, came almost a
year after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and New Delhi’s subsequent
indefinite halt of the peace process with Islamabad. The major
dialogue channels between the two countries — the composite dialogue
and the back-channel negotiations — continue to remain closed. Since
November 2008, there have only been some underdeveloped and half-
hearted attempts towards a thaw in the prevailing icy state of
relations between the two countries. There seems to be no way forward.
However, following mounting international pressure and an increasing
number of jihadist attacks on its soil, including an audacious
assault on the Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and a series
of attacks on police installations in Lahore, Pakistan has urged a
resumption of dialogue with India. Dr. Singh’s peace overture has
come at a time when there is an urgent need to re-examine India’s
policy of ‘no-dialogue’ with Pakistan.
Has it worked?
It is perhaps an opportune time to ask whether the Indian strategy of
coercive diplomacy has worked against Pakistan. What has India gained
by not talking to Pakistan for 11 months, and what more is India
likely to gain if it continues along this path? Do New Delhi’s
foreign policy mandarins think India profits strategically by
refusing to engage Pakistan in discussion?
Do they assume that India can indefinitely retain the moral high
ground it thought it had when it broke off relations with Pakistan
last year? They seem to hold this assumption, erroneous though this
might be. As a result, New Delhi is not only losing precious time by
isolating itself from Pakistan, but is harming its own strategic
interests.
India has achieved all it can hope to with its silence; there is
nothing more it can reasonably hope to gain by refusing to restart
the dialogue process. Pakistan has accepted that the perpetrators of
26/11 came from its territory and has, in principle at least, agreed
to prosecute them. India also helped focus the attention of the
international community on Pakistan post-26/11. However, New Delhi’s
insistence that it will talk to Islamabad only after Jama’at-ud-
Da’wah (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed is prosecuted may indeed be
demanding too much. India should work with Pakistan to initiate
Saeed’s prosecution rather than hounding Islamabad to go it alone: a
strategy of pure coercion and compellence with no reasonable payoff
is clearly counterproductive.
If New Delhi continues along this route, Pakistan may well up the
ante against India (through border incursions, for example) in an
attempt to bring India to the negotiating table: states have a
tendency to behave irrationally when pushed to the corner. India’s
strategy of compellence has never really worked against Pakistan. And
it is unlikely to work in the future.
Counterproductive
Not only is a ‘no-dialogue’ policy towards Pakistan not useful, it is
indeed counterproductive. Consider the following. First of all, the
former Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, is increasingly becoming
a ‘persona non-grata’ among the ruling elites of Pakistan — both
civilian and military. There is an emerging tendency among many
Pakistani politicians and retired generals who once worked under Gen.
Musharraf, to feign ignorance of his statements and actions
(especially vis-À-vis India) and to distance themselves from him.
In other words, there is today a clear unwillingness in Pakistan to
own the political legacy of its former military dictator. It is now
widely recognised that the 2004-2008 peace process — which was
seriously considering out-of-the-box solutions to resolve outstanding
rifts — not only had the full support of Dr. Singh and Gen. Musharraf
but, through its back-channel route, had even prepared a tentative
blueprint for peace. More precisely, it is believed that the
bilateral back-channel negotiations had taken the peace process on
Jammu and Kashmir to a new level. If the new government and the
strategic community in Pakistan renege on Gen. Musharraf’s past
promises, there will be serious implications for Indo-Pakistan
relations, especially with respect to Kashmir.
Therefore, undoing Gen. Musharraf’s legacy will also mean undoing the
Indo-Pakistan peace process and all that it may have achieved over
time. If this process of demonising and demolishing Gen. Musharraf’s
legacy is already under way in Pakistan, then India’s consistent
refusal to engage Islamabad will only further contribute to the
undoing of the gains of the Indo-Pakistan peace process. In other
words, the Indian unwillingness to engage Pakistan will reverse the
gains that India had made in recent years in resolving its conflicts
with Pakistan.
Another emerging trend in Pakistan is to accuse India of sponsoring
terrorism against Pakistan. Today many in the Pakistan establishment
are making serious allegations that India supports the Baloch
insurgents as well as some Pakistan Taliban groups. While such
allegations may not be wholly new, what is perhaps new is the
focussed and predetermined manner in which these accusations are
being made today and the manner in which this argument is gaining
currency within Pakistan’s strategic elite. Although this may be
purely for domestic consumption — as the international audience is
unlikely to buy this line of argument — a Pakistani population and
civil society unfavourably disposed towards India is not something
New Delhi should ignore. It will be genuinely counterproductive for
Indian interests in the long term.
More so, this shows that there is a perceptible change in Pakistan’s
attitude: from being defensive and cornered in the months immediately
after 26/11, it is now on the offensive. To some extent this has been
a result of India’s overuse of coercive diplomacy, which it continues
to indulge in without properly weighing its options in a cost-
effective manner. Quite apart from the fact that this approach has
degraded relations between the two countries and made Pakistan feel
more insecure (which in turn may prompt it to be more belligerent),
it has led the international community to regard the two countries as
part of the problem rather than as part of the solution. More so, the
more time India spends refusing to have a dialogue with Pakistan, the
more difficult it will be for the country to start talking if and
when it decides to talk.
Status quo bias
New Delhi’s unwise handling of Pakistan is a result of a deep-seated
status quo bias that permeates New Delhi’s policy towards Pakistan,
terrorism, and even Kashmir which in many ways is the ‘ground zero’
of Indo-Pakistan relations and India’s struggle against terrorism.
This status quo bias has manifestly narrowed the Indian government’s
understanding and approach to terrorism in the region.
New Delhi sometimes appears to consider terrorism a problem that is
unique to India, as though no other country has ever suffered its
consequences. It therefore persists with its demand that others (that
is, Pakistan) ‘fix’ the problem first before it (the perpetual
victim) will discuss other political and security issues.
This head-in-the-sand approach ignores the reality that terrorism is
a global/regional problem requiring a global/regional solution. This
solution can only be achieved in a cooperative mode and by creating
cooperative mechanisms to contain the menace of terror in the region.
And India needs to take the lead in this process, however challenging
and long-drawn-out it may turn out to be. It is imprudent to attempt
to enact unilateral measures to ‘control’ terrorism, precisely
because terrorists respect no borders and are by their very nature
extremely difficult to control.
A status quo bias may ‘benefit’ the painfully slow-moving Indian
political and bureaucratic apparatus, but it is not beneficial for a
country that desires to become a great power in an age of fast-
changing international politics. To start with, therefore, New Delhi
needs to shed its status quo bias and restart the dialogue with
Pakistan in its own long-term strategic interests.
o o o
Deccan Chronicle, November 6, 2009
PAK MUST ACCEPT INDIA’S OFFER OF PEACE
by I.A. Rehman
REGARDLESS of the views of the hawks in Pakistan’s establishment, and
howsoever strong they may be, Islamabad must give a positive response
to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s offer of peace.
Normal relations and mutually-beneficial cooperation between the two
closest South Asian neighbours has always been desirable for many
reasons but their urgency has been increased many times over by the
extremists’ challenge to the Pakistan state.
No sane person on either side of the border can deny that the threat
to the stability of Pakistan is also a threat to India’s vital
interests, and their joint efforts are needed to ensure victory over
the terrorists.
That Pakistan needs peace along its border with India in order to be
free to deal with the conflict in its tribal areas is only part of
the argument for establishing peace in the subcontinent. Much more
urgent is the need for India-Pakistan cooperation for winning the
battle for democracy, tolerance and social justice. Losses in this
battle will plunge the people of both India and Pakistan into
unimaginable ordeals.
Hitherto a common view in Pakistan has been that India is ignoring
the threat to itself posed by the terrorists’ campaign against Pakistan.
There was reason to believe that the pro-confrontation lobby in India
saw in Pakistan’s predicament an opportunity to squeeze it for
concessions it might not be willing to make in normal times. Such
elements should not be expected to stop undermining the Indian Prime
Minister’s initiative.
It is in Pakistan’s interest to ensure that he is not forced by
anyone to withdraw his offer.
The Pakistan government too will be under pressure from hardliners in
its ranks and outside. Any compromise with such elements will cause
Pakistan irreparable harm. Islamabad should, therefore, press for the
earliest possible resumption of the composite dialogue with India.
Unfortunately, several new factors have fuelled tension between India
and Pakistan. One of them is the way the Ajmal Amir Kasab affair has
been dealt with by both sides.
The unnecessarily prolonged haggle over Kasab’s confessional
statement merely exposed the size of the trust deficit. Was it
impossible for India to supply Pakistan with an English translation
of the court and police record in Marathi and was it impossible for
Pakistan to get this work done?
Questions regarding the admissibility of a text not officially
admitted by India could have been sorted out in due course. The two
sides have to act in a spirit of cooperation to put the Mumbai
outrage behind them. Pakistani authorities have been accusing India
of interference in Balochistan and the tribal areas. One hopes they
have much more credible evidence to support their charges than the
use of Indian-made weapons by the Taliban in Waziristan or the
receipt of some funds by the Baloch nationalists from Afghanistan.
The extremists’ access to arms manufactured in a particular country
is no decisive proof of that country’s support for their cause and
experts in money-laundering have considerable experience in using
channels through any country. In any case, these complaints should be
addressed on an urgent basis at India-Pakistan joint meetings.
This matter will assume greater seriousness as India’s relations with
Afghanistan are likely to grow with faster speed than at present. If
Pakistan succumbs to the temptation of opposing India’s overtures to
Afghanistan it will only reduce the chances of normalisation of
relations with both Afghanistan and India.
A better way of protecting Pakistan’s interests in a democratic
Afghanistan would be to grant the latter its due place in South Asian
councils and develop a regional response to the twin curse of foreign
intervention and civil war that are perpetuating the Afghan people’s
three decades-long tribulations. No single power can guarantee
Afghanistan’s recovery and peaceful progress; the task can only be
accomplished by countries in Afghanistan’s vicinity (all of them,
including Pakistan and India) acting in concert.
The significance of the fact that Dr Singh chose to extend his hand
of peace while on a visit to Srinagar is unlikely to be missed by
Pakistani hawks. They will again advance settlement of the Kashmir
issue as a precondition for normal relations with India.
Nobody can deny the importance of the Kashmir issue, especially to
the people of Jammu and Kashmir who have been wronged by both India
and Pakistan.
But the disastrous consequences of sustaining a costly confrontation
until the Kashmir issue is resolved are too apparent to permit
persistence in this policy.
While talks to move towards a Kashmir settlement acceptable not only
to India and Pakistan but also, and more essentially, to the people
of Jammu and Kashmir, should continue, progress or setbacks in this
area must not obstruct other initiatives for cementing India-Pakistan
friendship and cooperation. More and more people are realising that a
Kashmir settlement will follow India-Pakistan friendship and not
precede it.
Above all, peace-loving people in both India and Pakistan are getting
weary of meetings and talks that do not result in increasing India’s
stakes in a stable and prosperous Pakistan and Pakistan’s stakes in a
stable and prosperous India. Apart from giving a boost to India-
Pakistan trade it is necessary to think of joint industrial ventures
and meaningful cooperation in the fields of agriculture, education,
health and culture.
It is possible that the current political crisis in Pakistan will be
advanced by one side or another to put India-Pakistan bilateral talks
on hold. The time for using such arguments has passed. In today’s
situation the only sensible course is to press on with establishing
peace in the subcontinent regardless of the political crises in
either country or a change of regime here or there.
o o o
JAILED FISHERMEN AWAIT THAW IN INDIA-PAKISTAN RELATIONS
by Zofeen Ebrahim
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49130
_____
[5] India:
The Telegraph
7 November 2009
THE HONEST LEFTIST
- K. Balagopal was the conscience of Andhra society
Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha
In a recent lecture, delivered in Mumbai in memory of Nani
Palkhivala, the home minister, P. Chidambaram, attacked “left-leaning
intellectuals” and “human rights groups”, who, in his view, “plead
the naxalite cause ignoring the violence unleashed by the naxalites
on innocent men, women and children”. “Why are the human rights
groups silent?” asked the home minister.
The short answer is that they aren’t, and haven’t been, silent. There
are very many intellectuals and rights activists who have regularly
condemned — in newspapers as well as in specialist journals — Maoist
methods such as the recruitment of juveniles as militants, the
indiscriminate use of landmines, the killings of alleged informers,
and the murders of forest guards and police constables who cannot, by
any stretch of the imagination, be dubbed ‘class enemies’.
It may just be that Chidambaram is new to the job, and that in his
previous assignments his reading chiefly consisted of business
magazines and stock market reports. It seems that he has been ill
served by his assistants, who are paid precisely to avoid their
ministers making such obvious factual mistakes in public.
If this assumption is correct, then the deficiencies can be remedied
easily enough by the home minister being asked to read the writings
of an intellectual who died the very week of his Palkhivala lecture.
His name was K. Balagopal. Balagopal was described (by a younger
friend) as “the conscience of the collective self known as Andhra
society” — with reason, as for 30 years and more his chief focus of
work and writing had been the politics and culture of his home state.
However, he was revered outside Andhra Pradesh too — in Kashmir,
which he once referred to as the “only foreign country I have
visited”; in Chhattisgarh, where he was among the first to document
the excesses of the vigilante movement that goes under the name of
Salwa Judum; in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and other cities,
where his work for human rights was admired by those who sought to
emulate him while knowing that they could never match his
intellectual originality or his physical and moral courage.
Indians active in human rights usually come from a humanistic
background — they are most often lawyers, social scientists, or
journalists. Among the exceptions are the man who founded the first
human rights organization in independent India — the engineer, Kapil
Bhattacharya — and Balagopal. After taking a PhD in mathematics from
Warangal, Balagopal taught for several years at Kakatiya University.
Then, in the mid-1980s, he was forced to quit his job, and turned to
working fulltime on civil liberties. In the late 1990s he acquired a
law degree; now, his vocation complemented his activism, for the
cases he fought in court were usually on behalf of subaltern groups
victimized or harassed by the State.
In person, Balagopal could appear forbiddingly austere. Small talk
and invocation of common friends got one nowhere — as I discovered
when we were once placed on a panel together. But it was enough to
hear him speak, and more so, to read him in print. His fellow Andhras
read him in Telugu; the rest of us, in the Economic and Political
Weekly, where he wrote regularly from the early 1980s until his
death. His English prose was direct and economical — as befitting a
mathematician, although I am told that in his own language he would
allow himself an occasional flourish, as befitting the grandson of a
major Telugu poet.
Like some others of his generation, Balagopal was powerfully shaped
by the Emergency, against whose authoritarian excesses it was then
automatic to juxtapose the youthful idealism of the Naxalites. And it
was undeniably the case that in his native Andhra only the Naxalites
worked among the very poor — such as the sharecroppers and landless
labourers of Telengana, and the poor and often destitute tribals of
the Agency areas.
Over the years, Balagopal arrived at a less romantic view of the
Naxalites. He deplored their cult of violence in articles in English
and, perhaps more effectively, in articles in Telugu that were
directed at and read by the objects of his criticism. In the late
1990s, he wrote a brilliant essay that anatomized the means, foul and
often brutal, used by Maoists to enhance their power and dominance
over recalcitrant individuals and groups. (In what follows, I rely on
a translation by the historian Rajagopal Vakulabharanam.) Here
Balagopal dealt in detail with various cases of harassment,
intimidation and murder practised by Maoist groups in Andhra Pradesh.
He wrote that “we should publicly interrogate those who claim for
themselves the right to kill for the sake of ‘progress’ and the
wisdom to define what is progress. We need not hesitate to critique
those who do not hesitate to usurp the rights of others, including
their right to live, for the sake of revolution”. “[If] Naxalites had
any respect for the humanistic values or the sentiments of those
close to whom they kill,” he remarked, “they will not kill them by
smashing their faces in such a way that they are virtually
unrecognizable.”
To be sure, Balagopal also wrote often (and perhaps more often) of
crimes and errors on the other side, of how the police and
paramilitary brutalized innocent citizens in the name of Law and
Order, of how politicians and industrialists seized the land of poor
peasants in the name of promoting ‘Development’ while in fact lining
their own pockets. In his last years, he was particularly active in
opposing the acquistion of farmland for special economic zones in
Andhra Pradesh. In sum, Balagopal refused to accept, from either
State or Maoist, the justification of “a culture and mentality which
celebrates power and use of force in society”.
Balagopal was that altogether rare animal, a genuinely independent
Indian intellectual, whose moral clarity and commitment to the truth
meant that he could not resort to special pleading for any party or
interest. The flawed institutions of our imperfect democracy were all
subject to his rigorous scanner — the police, the judiciary, the
bureaucracy, and not least, corrupt and authoritarian politicians.
When Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy was first elected chief minister,
Balagopal wrote that while a pliant media sought to clothe him with
“the image of a good doctor who has turned to politics to cure
society”, in truth YSR was “anything but a vendor of humane visages.
His rise to power has been accompanied by more bloodshed than that of
any other politician in this state”. As it happens, he was also among
the first to see through YSR’s predecessor, pointing out that
“Chandrababu [Naidu] is merely an ambitious political schemer who has
managed to con quite a lot of intelligent people because he knows
their hunger for the image he has put on — a third world politician
in the mould of a corporate executive spewing IT jargon and the
verbiage of the World Bank’s development policy prejudices — is too
acute for the normal functioning of their other senses”.
Those concerned with the security of the State often criticize human
rights workers for living in an ivory tower, for not knowing the law,
and for making excuses for the Naxalites. When (or if) made against
Balagopal, none of these charges held any water. He knew rural India
intimately: a tireless fieldworker, he had explored, on foot or in
crowded buses, almost every district of Andhra as well as many
districts in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Kashmir. He was extremely well
acquainted with the Indian Penal Code as well as the Constitution,
and hence could pinpoint how, and in what measure, the State had
violated its own laws. And no one could accuse him of being a Maoist
apologist.
His friends and readers shall mourn Balagopal’s death, at the
comparatively young age of fifty-seven. On the other hand, the
ideologues and leaders of the Maoist movement are probably quite
relieved at his passing. That caveat ‘probably’ can be dispensed with
when it comes to the Andhra police, Andhra politicians, and the Union
home ministry. For the most credible critic of their crimes and
impunities has unexpectedly been removed from their midst.
_____
[6]
The Economic and Political Weekly, October 31 - November 06, 2009
TWO PARALLEL NARRATIVES
by Sumanta Banerjee
The case of the Sri Ram Sene leader Pramod Muthalik, who is facing
some 40 criminal cases in Karnataka, epitomises the Indian state's
pussyfooting in dealing with Hindu religious extremists, while that
of the Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy typifies the same state's trampling
down on dissenters upholding the cause of the poorer classes. In
parallel, the confrontation between the morality of those who govern
the Indian state and that of their Maoist opponents can best be
encapsulated in a recapitulation of the careers of Union Home
Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and the Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy.
Two recent incidents in New Delhi suggest how the Indian state
applies different yardsticks to treat its opponents. On 19
September, Pramod Muthalik, the Sri Ram Sene leader, who is facing
some 40 criminal cases in Karnataka for attacking women in pubs,
vandalising churches, and delivering inflammatory speeches directed
against religious minorities, had free access to an ashram in
Pahargunj in Delhi, where he addressed hundreds of delegates of some
18 militant Hindu organisations from 11 states. In his public speech,
he exhorted them to follow his tactics to defend Hinduism, and
announced the formation of a 15-member body to co- ordinate such
activities all over India. The deputy commissioner of police, under
whose jurisdiction Pahargunj falls, later told reporters that he had
no information of the meeting. Muthalik is still at large, moving
around and recruiting cadres. Two days later - 21 September - the
Delhi police announced the arrest of Kobad Ghandy, a member of the
Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)] politburo. The
national press reported that the Andhra Pradesh police, the Delhi
police and the Intelligence Bureau, had nabbed this top Maoist from
a hideout in Delhi the previous day, in a joint operation. They
accused him of "preaching Maoism" in Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai, Patna,
Bhubaneshwar and other places. When on 24 September, a lawyer met him
in jail, Kobad Ghandy gave out the real story. He was actually
kidnapped by the police on 17 September at Bhikaji Cama Place, and
was then kept under illegal detention for four days, during which
time he was subjected to grilling and torture for hours. A cardiac
patient, and also suffering from prostate cancer, Ghandy had come to
Delhi for treatment. He now remains incarcerated in Tihar Jail. The
two incidents epitomise the Indian state's dual policy of
pussyfooting in dealing with Hindu religious extremists on the one
hand, and trampling down on dissenters upholding the cause of the
poorer classes on the other. The Congress-led government in
Maharashtra till today has refused to take action against the Sangh
parivar goons who had been indicted by the Srikrishna Commission for
killing Muslims in 1992-93. It allows the Shiv Sena and other Hindu
armed outfits to go on the rampage against exhibitions and cultural
functions by secular organisations in Mumbai. Conceding to their
demand, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government
at the centre continues to deny protection to India's famous artist
Maqbool Fida Husain, who because of the threat to his life by the
Hindu extremist groups, is forced to live in exile. In sharp
contrast to this appeasement of Hindu religious armed outfits, Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has come out with an aggressive policy
targeting the Maoists as the "gravest threat". In other words, he is
willing to ignore those (the Sangh parivar leaders) who are openly
defying the basics of the Indian Constitution enshrined in its
Preamble - belief in a "...Socialist, Secular Democratic Republic and
to...promote... Fraternity assuring the dignity of the indi- vidual
and the unity and integrity of the Nation..." Yet, he is keen on
pouncing upon the Maoists, who, ironically enough, openly announce
their commitment (in their Sumanta Banerjee (suman5ban at yahoo.com) is
best known for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the
Naxalite Movement in India (1980). party programme) to these very
basics of the Preamble. In fact, in their areas of control (described
as the "Red Corridor" by the media), they have been able to secure
to the villagers at least two of the three conditions guaranteed by
the Indian Constitution's Preamble - "Justice, social, economic and
political" and "Equality of status and opportunity..." This has been
confirmed not only by non-partisan media reports, but also by the
government's own Planning Commission expert group. (As for the other
condition - "Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and
worship" - the Maoists, one has to admit, have shown a woeful
disregard for such concerns, there- by besmirching their positive
image.) That there is a deliberate design in this lopsided reversal
of priorities of the Indian state (whether under the present UPA or
the previous National Democratic Alliance government) is confirmed by
the union home minister's recent stress on apprehending the political
ideologues of the Maoist movement. "Besides taking them (the Maoists)
on in jungles, the union government has decided to pluck out the top
leadership to render the Maoists rudderless..." (www.ex-
pressbuzz.com, 25 September 2009). The arrest of Kobad Ghandy - one
such ideo- logue - is therefore being claimed as a "big catch" by the
union home ministry. But if we look at the other end of the pole, it
is surely not mere oversight that the political ideologues of the
Sangh parivar - leaders like Pramod Muthalik, Bal Thackeray, Vinay
Katiyar, Praveen Togadia, who openly preach violence against
religious minorities and secular forces - are seldom touched by the
police. The Indian state winks at them - since they pose a threat
only to the minority section of the population, whose interests have
been already sacrificed by the politicians at the altar of
majoritarian nation alism. The concept of the Indian nation state
is fashioned either by the ideal of "Hindu Rashtra" of the Sangh
parivar, or the "soft Hindutva" of the Congress Party, which is
generally shared by the various other political parties, whether
regional or national, which may claim to be secular.
A Tale of Two Leaders
In the meantime, the confrontation between the morality of those who
govern the Indian state and that of their Maoist opponents can be
best encapsulated in a recapitulation of the careers of two
participants in the contest. One of them is the Union Home Minister
Palaniappan Chidambaram and the other is the Maoist ideologue whom
the former's police have captured as a prime catch - Ghandy. Both of
them are contemporaries - Chidambaram born in 1945, and Ghandy a year
later. Both shared a common background of upper class upbringing and
education. Chidambaram hails from the aristocratic family of
Chettiars of Tamil Nadu, did his Masters in Business Administration
from Harvard, came back to India to practise law, and then joined
politics to finally occupy the present position of the union home
minister. Ghandy comes from a Mumbai-based upper- class Parsi
family, his father being a prosperous businessman. He completed his
schooling from the prestigious Doon School and joined Bombay's St
Xaviers' College. He then went to London to pursue studies in
chartered accountancy. While in England, he became initiated into
leftist politics. On returning to Mumbai, he became active in the
anti-Emergency movement during 1975-77.
The careers of the two individuals are a study in contrast. Let us
examine Chidambaram's biodata. During his tenure as a minister of
state in the union commerce ministry under Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao, he was found to have invested in Fair-growth, a company
allegedly involved in the securities scam - an exposure which
compelled him to resign from the government on 10 July 1992. In 1997,
during his next stint as a minister at the centre, he came up with
the dubious proposal called "voluntary disclosure of income scheme"
which granted income tax defaulters indefinite immunity from
prosecution! The proposal invited condemnation from the Comptroller
and Auditor General of India, who in his report that year described
it as "abusive and fraud on the genuine taxpayers of the country".
There is no end to Chidambaram's unsavoury associations. He
represented the controversial British mining conglomerate Vedanta
Resources (of whose board of directors he was a member) in the Mumbai
High Court till 2003, when he became the union finance minister.
After assuming the ministerial office, significantly enough, he is
not known to have taken any measure to recover the massive tax dues
that the Vedanta group company Sterlite Optical Technologists Ltd
owed the government.
While Chidambaram worked his way up in the political ladder through a
combination of profitable legal practice on behalf of the corporate
sector, and party-hopping (from Congress to Tamil Manila Congress and
then again to the Congress when the UPA came to power in 2004),
Ghandy chose a different path on his return to India from London.
After having taken part in the anti-Emergency movement, he played a
leading role in establishing the Committee for the Protection of
Democratic Rights (CPDR) in Mumbai in the late 1970s. Under his able
leadership, the organisation took up the issue of human rights of
the oppressed poor, not only in Maharashtra, but other parts of India
through coordination with similar organisations like the People's
Union of Democratic Rights, the People's Union of Civil Liberties,
the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, and the Association for
the Protection of Democratic Rights. It was in this capacity that he
came to be known to us in the civil liberties movement. All through
the 1980s, Ghandy campaigned for the persecuted poor on the human
rights platform, through the available democratic means. But down the
line, at one stage, may be from his frustrating experiences as a
human rights activist, he could have realised that neither the
administration nor the judiciary was prepared to listen to the voices
of the oppressed. He joined the Maoist movement, and went underground
at the end of the 1990s. With his wife Anuradha Shanbag (an equally
brave woman who left her comfortable upper middle class home to join
the move- ment), Ghandy moved to Nagpur where he lived amongst the
poor, and took up the responsibility of propagating and publicising
the ideology and practice of his party. While underground, Anuradha
was struck by cerebral malaria, and deprived of proper medical
treatment in the conditions in which they lived, she passed away in
April 2008. Kobad also developed cardiac problems and suffered from
prostate cancer - ailments which led him to seek treatment in Delhi,
where he was arrested. Babes in the Wood, or Snakes in the Grass?
Meanwhile, while Ghandy languishes in jail, his contemporary in
politics, Union Home Minister Chidambaram has come up, apparently
with the blessings of his prime minister, with the ill-conceived
militarist measure, pompously called Operation Green Hunt. It
threatens to clear the Maoist-dominated "Red Corridor" through an all-
out offensive (including possible air-attacks on their bases in
densely populated tribal areas), after which "developmental
activities" (the euphemistic term used to describe the state's
permission to the corporate sector's unbridled exploitation of the
natural resources) can be undertaken in those areas. At the same
time, in the face of stiff resistance by the Maoists and widespread
criticism of such an operation by human rights groups, Chidambaram is
now announcing his willingness to talk to the Maoists if they abjure
violence. But the talks can take place only when the state also
abjures violence. The Maoists (in Lalgarh in West Bengal - the
present boiling point) demand the withdrawal of the security forces
whose atrocities there on the tribal populace provoked the violent
retaliation against the state. In Chhattisgarh again, the Maoists are
demanding an end to the violence by the state-sponsored Salwa Judum
and the security forces. These are legitimate demands which have
attracted worldwide attention (through reports by human rights
groups). But instead of responding to these de- mands in a positive
humanitarian way, the cabinet duo - the prime minister and the home
minister - seems to be marching to- wards disaster, from either
monstrous innocence, or bloated self confidence. Their bungling is
not confined to the Maoist problem. Whether it is the insurgencies in
the north-east or Kashmir, or popular upsurges against special
economic zones (SEZs) in other parts of the country - the two are
responding with knee-jerk reactions to the "sea of troubles" that are
overwhelming the Indian state. In the trouble-torn north-eastern
state of Manipur, for instance, the UPA government digs its head in
an ostrich-like position in retaining the infamous Armed Forces
(Special Powers) Act, against which the Manipuri people have been
fighting for decades - their protest exploding into public outbursts
following the exposure of the recent killing of innocent men and
women in the name of an "encounter" with terrorists. Demanding the
withdrawal of the Act, Irom Sharmila had been fasting for the last
nine years - being forcibly fed in police custody. Although the
case has drawn worldwide condemnation from human rights activists,
neither the Indian prime minister nor the Congress president (both of
whom enjoy reputation as humanitarian personalities among world
politicians) has cared to show an iota of concern for the plight of
Sharmila and her people.
In Kashmir, the centre continues to bungle over one incident after
another - the latest being its confusion over the state government's
handling of the Shopian rape case, which provoked a resurgence of
mass demonstrations in the streets of Srinagar, and which were met
again with the usual response of shooting down of protestors. The
UPA government's worst militarist response however is reserved for
those who are known as Maoists or Naxalites - who have been described
by the prime minister as "the gravest threat". Lauded by his admirers
for his sober and discerning stance on controversial issues, he seems
to lose his cool whenever it comes to the Maoists. Strangely enough,
neither he nor his home minister appears to be perturbed in the least
by what should be considered as the "gravest threat" to Indian
democracy. It is posed by the home-grown armed outfits (as distinct
from the terrorist infiltrators from Pakistan) of the Sangh parivar -
publicly operating in the names of the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu
Parishad, and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It is they who by their
violence have accounted for the largest number of killings of
innocent members of the minority communities all over India - during
Advani's infamous Rathyatra, the demolition of Babri Masjid, the
aftermath of the Godhra train fire in Gujarat, the massacre of
Christians in Orissa, and the continuing onslaughts that are taking
place in Karnataka and other places. The Bharatiya Janata Party's
recent defeat in the elections should not blind us to the still
alive monster of terrorism represented by the Sangh parivar's thugs
and militia.
Yet, we find the prime minister and his home minister totally
impervious to this threat, and are instead aiming their guns at
outbursts of popular protests which stem from genuine grievances -
whether the denial of political rights to the Kashmiris or the
Manipuris, or the deprivation of economic and social rights of the
adivasis in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal's Jangalmahal. At
times, I wonder whether these two eminent members of the union
cabinet are babes in the wood being led up the garden path by their
advisers in the bureaucracy and the intelligence services - who have
acquired over the years the unsavoury reputation of always misreading
the ground reality, misleading their ministers with wishful thinking,
and misdirecting them into a suicidal path. Or, are these two
gentlemen, hitherto known for their sagacity, deliberately treading
into the grass of an unknown territory - obsessed with the delusion
of a militarist solution to the explosion of popular grievances?
_____
[7] INDEPENDENT CITIZENS FACT FINDING MISSION TO MANIPUR
Imphal, 7th November, ‘09
PRESS RELEASE
A team of concerned citizens comprising Dr. K.S. Subramanian, IPS
(retd.), formerly of the Manipur-Tripura cadre and currently Visiting
Professor, Jamia Millia University, New Delhi, Sumit Chakravartty,
Editor, Mainstream, Kavita Srivastava, PUCL National Secretary, and
Vasundhara Jairath of Delhi Solidarity Group is on a fact finding
mission to Manipur from 5th of November onwards in the wake of the
heightened tensions in the State since July 2009.
http://www.sacw.net/article1210.html
_____
[8]
The Guardian, 6 November 2009
EU TRAMPLES ON INDIA'S POOR
The EU is pushing an unsavoury free trade deal that would force India
to give up control of its banking sector and drugs industry
by David Cronin
The punishing schedules that world leaders follow don't leave much
room for reflection. So I suspect that senior EU figures visiting New
Delhi today are not dwelling on the enduring relevance of Mahatma
Gandhi's teachings, even as they lay a wreath in his honour at the
Raj Ghat memorial. Nor are they sifting through the abundant evidence
in present-day India that proves Gandhi's aphorism: "Poverty is the
worst form of violence."
The European commission hopes that the latest annual summit can give
a new impetus to talks aimed at reaching a comprehensive free trade
agreement between the two sides. Three years ago India was identified
as the second most important "emerging" market on the radar screen of
trade officials when the commission issued Global Europe, a blueprint
for enabling rich multinational companies to penetrate every corner
of the globe. The first was South Korea, with which the EU clinched a
trade agreement in October.
Peter Mandelson, the EU's trade commissioner for much of this decade,
continues to present India as an economic titan, telling the UK-India
Business Council that he viewed the launching of free trade talks
with New Delhi as one of his greatest achievements. When he arrived
in Brussels in 2004, Mandelson was "struck by a sense that Europe
didn't quite get the pace of Indian change and the implications for
the global economy", he said.
What Mandelson didn't say is that hundreds of millions of Indians
have been excluded from the benefits of the robust growth that left
him so mesmerised. Just as he famously mistook mushy peas for
guacamole, he seems to think that India comprises only a burgeoning
middle class and gleaming skyscrapers. That India has one of the
highest concentrations of poor people on this planet has escaped his
attention. Estimates of what proportion of its billion-plus
inhabitants subsist on less than a dollar a day vary from about 40%
(according to the World Bank) to nearly 80% (according to a report in
2007, commissioned by the Indian government). Regardless of which
source is most accurate, it's clear that extreme hardship is widespread.
Mandelson's successor in Brussels, Catherine Ashton, isn't any
better. She has kept the trade talks with India high on her list of
priorities. She has also kept the details of the discussions secret
to ensure that they will not be subject to anything as irksome as
democratic scrutiny. Still, drafts of the agreement that her aides
are pushing India to sign have leaked. And their contents are
frightening.
An analysis by the fair trade organisation Traidcraft has exposed how
the EU's preferred agreement is driven by the flawed thinking that
helped cause the financial crisis. As part of a deregulation agenda,
India would be required to effectively cede control of its banking
sector to the masters of global capitalism. Foreign banks are
currently allowed to open only 12 new branches in India per year; the
EU is pushing vigorously for that restriction to be scrapped.
Worse, the EU is demanding that India should accept standards of
intellectual property that go beyond those agreed at the World Trade
Organisation. Once the related provisions enter into force, India
would have to tailor its evolving patent regime more to serve the
profits of pharmaceutical corporations than the medical needs of its
population. India's status as a leading manufacturer of low-cost
generic drugs would be imperilled if EU trade officials and their
chums in the pharmaceutical industry have their way.
It is scandalous that the unsavoury consequences of the free trade
agreement are receiving scant attention from the mainstream press in
both Europe and Asia. Awed by free trade rhetoric, The Business
Standard in India has reported that the negotiators are striving to
create an "almost Lennonesque utopia", where Indian lawyers will be
able to practise freely in Spain and aspiring epicures in Delhi could
"enjoy a buttery glass of French wine without having to spend a
month's wage on it". The Japan Times, meanwhile, has noted that the
EU is vying with Japan to first sign a free trade agreement with the
Delhi government. "The race for India is on," the paper says, a
conclusion that should make anyone with a knowledge of the country's
history shudder.
"The weak can never forgive," Gandhi also said. "Forgiveness is an
attribute of the strong." India's poor have every right to be
incensed at how their government is being pushed into signing trade
agreements that are inimical to their interests. Forgiveness for the
harm inflicted on the poor probably won't be sought; it certainly
won't be granted.
_____
[9] India: Resources For Secular Activists
(i) Sign the Online Petition to Indonesian Authorities to Rescind
Their Invitation to Modi
http://www.petitiononline.com/modi09/petition.html
To: Government of Indonesia
Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia
50-A, Chanakyapuri
New Delhi - 110 021
INDIA
Email: iembassy at giasdl10.vsni.net.in
Your Excellency, Mr. Ambassador:
This is in reference to a published report on October 9th, 2009 by
DeshGujarat (http://deshgujarat.com/2009/10/09/gujarat-cm-narendra-
modi-accepts-invitation-to-visit-indonesia/) that the Chief Minister
of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi has been invited to visit Indonesia by
Mr. Syavral Yasin Limpo, Governor of Indonesia’s South Sulawesi
province.
In February 2002, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr. Modi presided
over and orchestrated widespread riots in which about 2000 hapless
Muslims were massacred and more than 200,000 were rendered homeless.
The execution of what has been called the Gujarat Genocide has been
widely reported and documented by the media (http://www.tehelka.com/
home/20071103/ ; http://bit.ly/qR7fO ; http://bit.ly/qOdTB)
Tens of thousands of displaced Muslims are still unable to return to
their homes fearing further attacks. The process of justice has been
subverted to deny justice to the victims. There have been many
incidences of harassment of Christians and burning of Churches.
Mr. Modi and 61 others that include cabinet colleagues, policemen and
civil servants currently are under criminal investigation by the
Special Investigation Team (SIT) specially constituted by the Supreme
Court of India for their role into allegations of mass murder and
criminal conspiracy.
The US and many European countries have already denied entry visa to
Mr. Modi in punishment for his role in the Gujarat carnage. More
recently Sultanate of Oman denied Mr. Modi’s claim that he was
invited by Oman (http://twocircles.net/2009oct25/
oman_modi_sorry_we_have_not_invited_you.html). With the well-deserved
harvest of global condemnation, Mr. Modi is desperately courting
foreign investments and collaboration to mend his image as a
progressive in an effort towards a political restitution, through a
visit to Indonesia. The question is - Will Indonesia offer Mr. Modi
that restitution, by legitimizing his record of promoting hatred and
violence against the minority Muslims and Christians of Gujarat.
We, the signatories to this petition, request the genteel, peace and
justice loving people of Indonesia, and the enlightened government of
His Excellency Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to rescind visa to Mr. Modi
and make investments and collaborations with the Gujarat government
contingent on justice to the innocent victims of the Gujarat
Massacre. This will reaffirm the morality-based friendship of
Indonesia and India, without the stain of appearing to condone Mr.
Modi’s crimes against humanity.
Respectfully,
Najid Hussain: najidhussain at yahoo.com
Mirza A. Beg: mirza.a.beg at gmail.com
Zafar Iqbal: raabta1 at hotmail.com
Tariq Farooqi: tfarooqi2000 at yahoo.com
Fazal R. Khan: fazalr_khan at hotmail.com
Nishrin Hussain: nishrinh at yahoo.com
o o o
(ii) LAMB ALLIES WITH WOLF! The Myth of Love Jihad
by Ram Puniyani
At a point of time there was a slogan by RSS combine, Pehle Kasai
Phir Isai (First the Muslims then the Christians). And lo and behold
that was the pattern of communal violence. First it began against
Muslims and in the decade of 1990s Christians were also put on the
chopping block. It must be a real ingenuity of RSS combine, popularly
called Sangh Parivar to rope in the Kerala Bishops Council to fight
against the Love-Jihad, a word coined by their propaganda mill, a
word which combines two words and converts them in to a tool to
torment the lovers, in case the boy happens to be a Muslim and the
girl a non Muslim. It is the latest tool to launch attack against
Muslim minorities.
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2009/11/myth-of-love-jihad.html
_____
[10] Announcements:
(i) TWO DAY NATIONAL SEMINAR ON MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD AND THE
NATIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM
Organised by the National University of Educational Planning and
Administration (NUEPA)
& Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi
Date: November 11 & 12, 2009
Venue: NMML, Teen Murti House, New Delhi
Programme
11 November 2009
Inauguration: 10 AM to 11 AM
Welcome: R. Govinda (Vice Chancellor, NUEPA)
A Brief Introduction: S. Irfan Habib
Inaugural Address: Shri Somnath Chatterjee (Former Speaker, Lok
Sabha)
Vote of Thanks: Mridula Mukherjee (Director, NMML)
Tea
Session I: 11.30 AM to 1.30 PM
CHAIRPERSON: Deepak Kumar
S. Irfan Habib: ‘Maulana Azad and the Beginnings in Education and
Culture’
Syeda Hameed: ‘Reflecting the Educational Philosophy of Maulana Abul
Kalam Azad and K. G. Saiyadain’
Mushirul Hasan: ‘Images of Jamia‘
Lunch
Session II: 2.30 PM to 5.30 PM
CHAIRPERSON: Arjun Dev
Salil Mishra: ‘Challenges in the Writing of History Textbooks’
Vinod Raina: ‘Maulana’s Commitment to Free and Compulsory Education
and the Right to Education Bill 2009’
Akhtar Siddiqui: ‘Maulana Azad and Teacher Education’
5.45 PM
High Tea with the Hon’ble Minister Shri Kapil Sibal
6.15 PM
Address by Shri Kapil Sibal
6.30 PM to 7.30 PM
Widely acclaimed Solo Play “Maulana Abul Kalam Azad” by veteran
actor Tom Alter, directed by Dr. Sayeed Alam
Dinner
12 November 2009
Session III: 10 AM to 11.30 AM
CHAIRPERSON: Dipankar Gupta
Krishna Kumar: ‘Combating Divisive Forces through Education’
Rizwan Qaiser: 'Madarsa Islamia, Ranchi: Maulana Azad's
Experimentation with Madarsa Education'
Tea
Session IV: 12.00 AM to 1.30 PM
CHAIRPERSON: Mridula Mukherjee
Geetanjali Surendran: ‘Looking Back at the Institutions of Art and
Culture ‘
Mukul Priyadarshini: ‘Implications of the Choice of Medium of
Instruction’
Sanaya Nariman: ‘Disadvantaged Groups, Democracy, Drop-out Rates and
Curriculum Reforms’
Lunch
Session V: 2.30 PM to 4.00 PM
CHAIRPERSON: Harsh Sethi
Dhruv Raina: ‘Dr. Zakir Husain’s Notion of a Modern University for
India’
Sudhanshu Bhushan: ‘Policy Processes in Higher Education’
Dinesh Abrol: ‘Evolution of Higher Education: From UGC to HEC’
o o o
(ii)
Applications are sought for the Ambedkar Sanskrit Fellowship at
Columbia University in the City of New York. This is a five-year
award covering tuition and stipend. One fellowship will be awarded
for the academic year 2010-11 (deadline for application to the
Department of Middle East, South Asia, and African Studies is January
4, 2010), and, it is anticipated, two more in each of the following
two years. Applicants are expected to have completed work at the
Master's level prior to admission. Preliminary inquiries, including a
brief statement of purpose explaining what the applicant intends to
study and why that course of study, may be directed to Sheldon
Pollock, sp2356 at columbia.edu
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. An offshoot of South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
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