SACW | Nov 12, 2009 / Deserters / Media and the money / State and religion / Remember MB Naqvi

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | November 12, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2665 -  
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 ]

NOTICE to ALL: This issue of the sacw is specially dedicated to  
honour and remember M B Naqvi the prominent journalist, humanist and  
progressive voice. He played a very active role in the Pakistan India  
People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, the Pakistan Peace Coalition,  
among other platforms. Mr Naqvi died on the 7th of November 2009.  
Since late 1990's Naqvi saheb's articles were regularly redistributed  
via the South Asia Citizens Wire. His last article was carried in  
SACW dispatch of November 9-11, 2009. "Naqvi Saheb we will sorely  
miss you!".

____

[1] Sri Lanka: Interview with Dr. Asoka Bandarage (Ben Linden)
     + Time to revisit the citizenship debate (Lynn Ockersz)
[2] Pakistan:  M.B. Naqvi passes away (Dawn)
      + Les pots-de-vin du président pakistanais (Guillaume Dasquié)
      + Al Jazeera Interview with Seymour Hersh on US and Pakistan  
nuclear weapons
[3] Celebrating desertion (Jawed Naqvi)
[4] India: The medium, message and the money (P. Sainath)
[5] India: Fated To Fade Away - It is high time the Left wore its  
thinking cap again (Ashok Mitra)
[6] Address on occasion of 2009 UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the  
Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence (Madanjeet Singh)
[7] India: Resources For Secular Activists
        (i)   Encroaching Places of Worship (Editorial, Economic &  
Political Weekly)
        (ii)  Not Relevant Indians? (Omar Khalidi)
        (iii) Intolerant politics a threat to urban living (Amritha  
Ibrahim)
[8] Miscellanea:
- Human rights before religion (Seyran Ates)
- Catholic Church’s interference in Obama’s health bill robs women of  
rights (Editorial, New York Times)
- When state and religion mix (Danny Rich)

_____


[1] Sri Lanka:

IA-FORUM SPEAKS WITH PROF. ASOKA BANDARAGE ABOUT SRI LANKA AND THE  
TAMIL CONFLICT.
by Ben Linden (9 November 2009)

International Affairs Forum: Where does the situation in Sri Lanka  
stand today? Is the humanitarian situation in the Tamil areas in the  
North as bad as it was following this year's military offensive?

Dr. Asoka Bandarage:First of all, in Sri Lanka there are no areas  
that are exclusively Tamil or Sinhalese or Muslim, and much of this  
conflict is about that. In the Eastern Province, there are  
populations from all the ethnic groups, and the Tamils are a minority  
there. The notion that the North is a Tamil area is not true in that  
there was ethnic cleansing of Sinhalese and Muslims from the area. I  
want to make that clear from the outset.

Along with that, it needs to be said that the majority of Tamil  
people in Sri Lanka live outside of the Northern Province and a very  
large proportion of the Sri Lankan Tamils are also outside of the  
country—one quarter or so is part of the diaspora. These demographics  
are important to understand the situation.

With regard to the humanitarian situation, there is no question that  
there has been a crisis, not just following the military offensive  
but during the armed conflict as well. There is a lot of criticism of  
the government for maintaining Tamil people in camps—over 300,000 of  
them after the offensive. From what I’ve read, now there are less  
than 200,000, so 100,000 or more have been resettled. There is no  
question that this is the most important issue, but the issue is  
nonetheless a very complicated one given that many of the people in  
the camps came from areas that were under the control of the LTTE and  
there is evidence that there are LTTE cadres in those camps. For the  
security of all the people, it is important to make sure that  
potential terrorists are not released into the larger population. So  
checking and taking care of other security matters are important. And  
de-mining the northern areas is also important, since so many mines  
have been planted there over the years.

One of the criticisms that have been leveled at the government is  
that it has not allowed media to go into the camps and that it has  
stopped the rest of the world from finding out what is really going  
on. I think that needs to be corrected, just as the rehabilitation of  
all Tamil civilians needs to be addressed. But there is also the  
reality faced by the government. It has been under a lot of attack  
from the international media and there have been fabricated stories  
and criticisms. So there is a reluctance on the part of the  
government to open up certain areas to the media. For example, there  
was a video that Channel 4 in London aired which supposedly  
documented Sri Lankan soldiers shooting and killing Tamil civilians.  
It received a lot of attention around the world. But later it was  
revealed that this was a concocted video, and Channel 4 expressed  
apologies accepting that it was duped by a group claiming to be a  
human rights organization which had provided the video. I’m just  
giving that as an example of why the government and certain segments  
of the Sri Lankan population are wary of the international media and  
human rights groups. This is not to justify keeping the media out  
because we need to have accountability and transparency, but at the  
same time, it is important to recognize the possible continuation of  
the LTTE, which was the most ruthless terrorist organization in the  
world. So, the government has to take the necessary precautions  
against the LTTE rearming and reactivating itself.

IA-Forum:So are you saying that the current policies are purely  
security-based? Seeing all the celebrations that occurred in Sri  
Lanka following the military victory, one wonders if there was there  
was any element of collective punishment or spoils going to the winner.

Dr. Bandarage:We have to move beyond seeing this as a Sinhala versus  
Tamil primordial conflict, which is the dominant analysis of this  
conflict, and I take this on in my book. I’m not denying there is an  
ethnic dimension. But the fact is that the entire population— 
Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims—were all victimized by the LTTE.  
Terrorism is the greatest of all human rights violations. The Tamils  
were more victimized in a way by the LTTE than any other group. They  
were forced to give their children up as suicide bombers. In certain  
regions, like for example the Eastern Province, each family  
supposedly had to give a child for the cause. The LTTE established a  
totalitarian regime which did not allow any kind of dissent. So not  
having the LTTE opens up possibilities for Tamils and other groups to  
come together and try to fashion a better future for all the people.

IA-Forum:What was the nature of this conflict as you see it? A civil  
war? A regional conflict?

Dr. Bandarage:It is a separatist conflict with domestic, regional and  
international dimensions. There are Tamils as well as Sinhalese and  
regional and international actors supporting the creation of a  
separate Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Likewise,  
there are Sinhalese as well as Tamils and regional and international  
actors supporting the continuation of the unitary state of Sri Lanka.

As I said before, there is an ethnic dimension to the conflict, but  
the predominant tradition in Sri Lanka has been one of mutual  
coexistence. Different ethnic and religious groups have lived  
together side by side for hundreds if not thousands of years. But in  
the course of this war, ethnic polarization deepened. But, it is  
wrong to see this simply as a domestic conflict. In my book, I  
present the broader regional dimension—the demand for a separate  
Dravidian-speaking state of Dravidasthan in southern India and the  
quashing of that separatist movement by India when it passed the 1963  
anti-secessionist amendment to its constitution. The spread of Tamil  
nationalism in southern India in conjunction with developments in Sri  
Lanka produced this conflict. And then, as I discuss in my book, the  
conflict became internationalized by the Tamil diaspora, which is  
quite wealthy and influential in western countries, and which is  
still supporting the separatist struggle in Sri Lanka.

IA-Forum:From a counter-insurgency perspective, what worked and what  
didn't? Which tactics by the Sri Lankan government improved the  
situation and which exacerbated it?

Dr. Bandarage:I’m not a counter-insurgency expert but from what I  
understand there were a number of factors. The Sri Lankan government  
started working with other governments in the international community— 
and interestingly, it a was a Tamil, Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was a  
former foreign minister, who initiated contact with some of the  
western countries to ban the LTTE as a terrorist organization,  
including in the US. Efforts to cut off funding for the LTTE and  
efforts to separate the Tamil issue from the LTTE also had a role to  
play because the LTTE presented itself as the sole representative of  
the Tamils. Making that distinction was important.

Also, the country became war-weary. It had gone through several peace  
processes and attempts at negotiation with the LTTE including the  
2002 peace process. When that failed, not just the Sinhalese, but  
also some Muslim and other Tamil groups became fed up with the LTTE.  
So there were both internal and external factors which came together  
to create a sense of urgency to bring the armed conflict to an end.  
This doesn’t mean that the political conflict is resolved. There is  
still a lot of work to be done, but, the conclusion of the armed  
conflict opens the space to address those broader issues.

IA-Forum:What, if anything, did the insurgency achieve for the Tamil  
people?

Dr. Bandarage:The Tamil people really lost a lot due to the  
insurgency. The community lost its moderate leadership. It lost some  
of the best and brightest people, who left the country. That is not  
just a loss for the Tamil people—it is a loss for the entire country  
because they were among the most talented and experienced  
professionals. And with the insurgency, the Tamil culture and  
community were destroyed and weakened. The Tamil community had been a  
relatively advanced community, so this was a tremendous loss. So many  
leaders were killed. That’s why it’s important not to continue this  
conflict and start another cycle of war. Instead Tamils have to take  
their rightful place in society because they have a lot to contribute  
to Sri Lanka and they always have.

IA-Forum:Not to justify it in anyway, but through the use of violent  
struggle, did the insurgency succeed at all in at least calling  
attention to the legitimate grievances of those Tamils who felt they  
were disadvantaged?

Dr. Bandarage:Yes, I think so. For example, if we look at some of the  
post-independence legislation, which was meant to redress grievances  
of the Sinhalese majority that had been discriminated against during  
the British colonial era. In retrospect, the insurgency has made  
people question if those were the right steps. So I think it has  
opened up an opportunity to really look at the whole history of the  
country and relations between different communities. The loss of all  
those lives also raise questions about the meaning of democracy and  
justice for all groups. I try to do this in my book—to look at Tamil  
grievances but also the grievances of other groups, and how all of  
that can be redressed.

One thing that often gets overlooked when we talk about the Sinhalese  
or the Tamils as monolithic groups is the differences and  
inequalities within groups. Within the Sinhalese, the majority are  
underprivileged. Similarly, within the Tamil community, there are  
differences between elites and masses and caste differences. And now,  
of course, you have the difference between the diaspora and the  
people on the ground. The diaspora supported the armed conflict,  
which was the longest running armed conflict in Asia. Now, after the  
military offensive is over, they are continuing the separatist  
struggle outside of the country through political means. This makes  
it difficult for the government and domestic Tamil groups to move  
forward in terms of rehabilitation and development because the  
political conflict has intensified. This is not to say that that  
political issues should not be addressed, but it should be done in a  
constructive way rather than in a way that polarizes communities and  
continues the acrimony. The diaspora and other groups should be  
focusing on how to bring communities together—and they should think  
of the people on the ground, like the people in the camps, who are  
the ones that have suffered the most. They are the real victims.  
Meeting the basic needs - shelter, employment, land, access to water,  
and education for children—needs to become the priorities over the  
political interests of elites from all communities whether they be  
Tamil, Sinhalese or Muslim.
[. . .]
FULL TEXT AT: http://www.ia-forum.org/Content/ 
ViewInternalDocument.cfm?ContentID=7468.

Asoka Bandarage is a professor in the Public Policy Institute at  
Georgetown University. Her latest book is entitled “The Separatist  
Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism, Ethnicity, Political  
Economy” (Routledge, 2009)

o o o

The Island, November 12, 2009

TIME TO REVISIT THE CITIZENSHIP DEBATE
by Lynn Ockersz

A mob attack on a place of religious worship in a Colombo suburb  
recently, while drawing public attention to the simmering fires of  
religious intolerance in some quarters in this country, provokes a  
reexamination of unresolved issues at the heart of Sri Lanka’s  
citizenship question.

The attack on the place of worship needs to be unequivocally  
condemned by all, including, of course, the state. Rather than  
withdraw into a state of self-induced inner paralysis, the wanton  
attack should be condemned by the right-thinking, not only in the  
name of religious harmony and unity but also in recognition of the  
need to defend and uphold the Rule of Law.

If the laws of the land have been violated by anyone associated with  
the place of worship in question, he should be subjected immediately  
to the due process of the law and punished by the relevant organs of  
the state. Under no circumstances should he be allowed to be a victim  
of murderous mob violence. In this instance no persons were harmed  
but the place of worship was vandalized, which is equally violative  
of the law. Apparently, the ‘long arm of the law’ was completely  
inoperative when the acts of lawlessness were unleashed. This amounts  
to undermining the Rule of Law and giving criminality and lawlessness  
a further boost.

It was only the other day that a man who was described as mentally- 
ill was done to death by persons who were identified as law-enforcers  
in the seas off Bambalapitiya, in an unsettling reminder of the  
degree to which the Rule of Law has crumbled. If this deleterious  
trend goes unchecked, brutality could very well become  
institutionalized.

It would amount to labouring the obvious if it is stated that it  
would be none other than Sri Lanka which would suffer the ill  
consequences if the Rule of Law is thus relentlessly undermined. One  
of the tragedies of our times is that brutality is being seen by some  
as synonymous with heroism, and conscience and reason are being  
interpreted as signs of weakness. A terrible blight has indeed been  
born.

The state has a lot of explaining to do in this latest instance of  
destructive violence which has apparently been unleashed with  
impunity, because a representative of a minor party in the UPFA has  
been quoted as having justified the attack on the centre of worship.  
If this is so, some sections of the ruling alliance stand accused of  
fostering lawlessness. The government is obliged to put the record  
straight and bring all wrong-doers in this incident to justice, if it  
intends taking governance seriously. Besides, the state must ensure  
that incendiary observations by its alliance partners, which have a  
destructive impact on national unity, are henceforth put an end to.

Since then we have had a statement from the National Bhikku Front,  
which, among other things, draws attention to the mutually-  
reinforcing nature of ‘fundamentalisms’. This is a timely perception  
which should not go unnoticed and unappreciated. There is no  
disputing that fundamentalisms of all kinds militate against the  
democratic health of a country.

What is equal in importance to this gamut of issues relating to law  
and order, are the implications, some statements issued in the wake  
of the attack on the place of worship by hard line nationalist  
opinion, have, for fostering an equal citizenship in Sri Lanka and  
consequently, for generating social peace.

Apparently, the opinion was voiced by the above sections that Sri  
Lanka ‘belongs’ to only those who profess the majority religion and  
so, practitioners of other religions cannot be accommodated in the  
Lankan fold. Implicit in such narrow sentiments is the opinion that  
one’s identification with the majority religion, culture and ethnic  
group is a ‘must’ for being signified as a Sri Lankan. In other  
words, those who do not possess these labels of identification are to  
be considered ‘aliens’; in most cases, in the land of their birth.

Therefore, decades after the enactment of the infamous Citizenship  
Acts of 1948, which resulted in tens of thousands of plantation  
workers of Indian origin losing their citizenship of Sri Lanka, the  
myths of who constitute Lankan citizens, are stonily present,  
preventing the establishment of an inclusive Sri Lanka and precluding  
the possibility of the expeditious founding of a united country.

Viewed superficially, Sri Lanka’s citizenship laws could be described  
as, more or less, equitable in the sense that they do not allow for  
any distinctions once Lankan citizenship is acquired by a person ‘by  
descent or by virtue of registration’. In fact Article 26(1) of the  
Lankan constitution states that, ‘There shall be one status of  
citizenship known as "the status of a citizen of Sri Lanka"’.

Moreover, Article 12(2) of the constitution states that, ‘No citizen  
shall be discriminated against on the grounds of race, religion,  
language, caste, sex, political opinion, place of birth or any one  
such grounds,’.

However, the truth is that discrimination against citizens on a  
number of grounds, flourishes in some state institutions. Not all  
functionaries of the state regard the above constitutional provision  
as sacrosanct; this, this writer knows for a fact. The 30 year war in  
Sri Lanka, growing out of the ethnic issue, was proof of the  
inadequacy of these constitutional provisions, if not their near  
total impotence.

Apparently, Sri Lanka needs to greatly expand on its constitutional  
provisions regarding citizenship and also ensure their stringent  
implementation. What we need are constitutional provisions that  
clearly acknowledge and spell out the plural character of the Lankan  
state. Citizenship needs to be defined as encompassing all the ethnic  
and cultural groups of the land and should cease to be seen as the  
sole preserve of this or that ethnic or cultural group. The current  
provisions on citizenship fall short of these standards by being too  
general in nature. By lacking specificity, they fail to meet the  
country’s concrete requirements as regards minority rights.

Besides, and equally importantly, minority safeguards should be  
emphatically incorporated into the constitution. In fact, the state  
should seriously consider incorporating in the constitution and  
rigorously implementing, measures that could contribute towards the  
empowerment of minority communities, as is done in India, for instance.

It could be seen that plenty of awareness-raising needs to be done on  
the above and related issues by the state and other sections who need  
to evince a keen interest in them. If the groundwork in this  
direction is laid, the appeal of the current ‘fundamentalisms’ could  
be greatly blunted and democratic development ushered in.

_____


[2] Pakistan:


Dawn, 8 Nov, 2009

M.B. NAQVI PASSES AWAY

Mohammad Baqir Naqvi, a senior journalist and human rights activist,  
died at the age of 81.—File photo

Karachi: Mohammad Baqir Naqvi, a senior journalist and human rights  
activist, died at a hospital here on Saturday afternoon. He was 81.  
He left behind his wife, two sons and a daughter.

He had been facing cardiac problems for a long time, but his health  
was stable. After he complained of pain and congestion on Thursday,  
his wife took him to the National Institute of Cardio-vascular  
Diseases, where doctors advised hospitalisation.

His condition suddenly deteriorated on Saturday morning and he died  
in the afternoon.

Born in Amroha (India) in 1928, M.B. Naqvi, as he was popularly  
known, got his education there. After migrating to Pakistan, he took  
up journalism, joining Indus Times (Hyderabad). After some time, he  
joined Dawn.

Then he moved to Rawalpindi and joined Radio Pakistan.  After return  
from Rawalpindi to Karachi, he again started writing for Dawn and  
later wrote for The News. He was also a contributor to Herald, a  
monthly magazine.

For the past few years he was busy writing a book on the country’s  
nuclear programme and foreign policy. The work remains unfinished.

A number of foreign publications used to solicit his articles. Among  
them were Daily Star (Bangladesh), Deccan Herald (India), Gulf News  
(UAE).

M.B. Naqvi was an untiring human rights activist and consistently  
highlighted injustice against women and other oppressed sections of  
society.

He had a long association with the Human Rights Commission of  
Pakistan, Aurat Foundation and similar forums.

o o o

Liberation, 11 Novembre 2009

LES POTS-DE-VIN DU PRÉSIDENT PAKISTANAIS

Ali Zardari aurait touché des commissions dans l’affaire des sous- 
marins de la DCN.
par Guillaume Dasquié
http://www.liberation.fr/societe/0101602179-les-pots-de-vin-du- 
president-pakistanais

o o o

AL JAZEERA INTERVIEW WITH SEYMOUR HERSH ON US AND PAKISTAN NUCLEAR  
WEAPONS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EDaSbMkrfY&feature=player_embedded

_____


[3]

Dawn, 12 Nov, 2009

CELEBRATING DESERTION

by Jawed Naqvi
	
IT may seem sinister but it is commonplace. Frenzied soldiers shoot  
their fellow officers, also comrades, all the time. Or they desert  
armies they otherwise served loyally. The more senior officers plot  
military coups.

Sven Kempe and his wife Ann-Charlotte would favour desertion any day  
to bloodletting. In the 1960s, the Swedish couple ran a virtual  
asylum — though they called it a commune — for American army  
deserters. It was located in a scenic spot in Uppsala, not far from  
Stockholm.

Sven belongs to a wealthy industrialist family and heads a textiles  
business in Sweden. His burly frame and capitalist pedigree mask a  
gentle, giving human being. He speaks with nostalgia about the days  
when a successful anti-war movement raged from Europe to the United  
States. And he became an important part of it. The commune they ran  
won the couple many friends from far and near.

Among them was their last week’s host in Delhi, a common friend at  
whose farmhouse I met the couple over a lazy late afternoon lunch. My  
interest was mainly to find out what opinions the more neutral  
observers had managed to form of Major Nidal’s murder of 13 fellow  
soldiers at Fort Hood. What I got in return was a glimpse into the  
tragic story of the US army’s Major Jerry Bhagwan Das.

Bhagwan Das was an Indian orphan who somehow found himself cleaning  
ships in Thailand. That was when an American naval officer and his  
childless wife spotted him. They adopted the boy and brought him up  
as an American patriot who would join the army. Jerry, as he came to  
be called, was so good at his work that he was inducted as a member  
of an elite force in Vietnam. He killed many Vietcong guerrillas and  
civilians; too many, as he later told his friends.

During an R&R break in Germany in 1969, Jerry escaped to Stockholm,  
which had become a sanctuary for deserting soldiers from the US army.  
Often when the soldiers subsequently wanted to return home, even when  
they were prepared to face the stigma and punishment (as pugilist  
Muhammad Ali did for dodging the draft) they were set humiliating  
conditions. They had to say their return was prompted by their  
mistreatment in Sweden, which was a lie.

At the commune, Jerry befriended a Swedish girl and both were happy  
together. Then, very quietly, almost stealthily, he one day doused  
his body with kerosene and set himself on fire. His friends rushed to  
save Jerry but he perished in hospital after a brief struggle. Sven  
doesn’t quite know why the young officer took his life but their  
horrific deeds in Vietnam did haunt many of his guests from the  
world’s most powerful army.

Sven and Ann-Charlotte celebrated the desertion by the soldiers  
because they were opposed to the Vietnam War. If asked, they would  
also consider desertion the only proper way for the licensed killers  
to atone for their deeds. The alternative is too forbidding to  
contemplate. There must be so many Major Nidals lurking inside the  
most disciplined armies across the world. They are just waiting to be  
provoked.

It would be interesting to find out if there were peaceful ways for  
Major Nidal Malik Hasan to say ‘no’ to a proposed assignment in  
Afghanistan without being branded a deserter, an option he did not  
choose. This is assuming that he is not an Al Qaeda-like fanatic,  
which he is being made out to be.

Al Qaeda and Taliban, though they lend themselves easily to the  
description, are not the only fanatics in the business of  
bloodletting. Not too long ago it was routine for violent military  
coups to be staged at the behest of powerful democracies. A lot of  
innocent blood was spilt and still continues to be wasted.

Desertion and killing of fellow officers has a history. Patriots in  
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh rejoice in the great sepoy mutiny of  
1857 against the British. On their part, the British bribed or  
coerced local chieftains to switch sides not always without a bloody  
mess. There is at least one familiar instance of a Gandhian leader  
who exhorted the military to revolt, albeit peacefully, against a  
rival civilian despot.

The exact phrase that Jaiprakash Narayan used in urging India’s  
security forces to rebel against Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism is  
a matter of dispute. But bereft of the semantics involved it was  
nothing short of a call to mutiny. However, Mrs Gandhi found a good  
ruse in the exhortation and suspended democracy before she realised  
her mistake and called elections, which she lost.

In India, it is not infrequent to hear of regular soldiers and  
paramilitary troopers, particularly in the punishing terrain of  
Kashmir, turning their guns on fellow officers. The Sikh rebellion in  
Punjab of the 1980s shook the Indian army to its core but that was  
not the end of the matter. It was Mrs Gandhi’s vetted security  
guards, in the sanctum sanctorum of the state’s authority, who  
murdered her in revenge for a military assault on the Golden Temple  
in Amritsar.

Pakistan of course lost a large chunk of its army when many of its  
officers became embroiled in the political turmoil that led to  
Bangladesh. From the 1951 Rawalpindi case, which involved officers  
and communist leaders in a plan to overthrow the state, to a more  
eerie assassination plot against Gen Musharraf, Pakistani soldiers  
have had their share of infidelity and bloody-mindedness. Reported  
desertions by Pakistani soldiers during their ongoing war with the  
Taliban were probably a more agreeable statement to make than the  
unimaginable horrors of bloody subversion from within.

Of all the desertions that took place in history, the First World War  
saw possibly the highest toll. As the seemingly endless war went on,  
desertion and mutinies became an increasing problem. To deal with the  
problem, commanders began tying deserters and mutinous troops to  
poles where they would be executed by firing squad. The British shot  
320 men and the French 700. The Germans shot about 50, according to  
one estimate.

While it will deal with Major Nidal according to its sovereign laws,  
the United States has been less than generous with rebels even from  
rival armies. It induced large-scale desertions from the Iraqi army  
following their 1990-91 conflict. Around 4,000 Iraqi deserters were  
sent back to Iraq against their will in 1992 only, according to a  
Canadian document.

“Some countries of resettlement, such as the US, were sensitive about  
the security risk involved in the operation and were conducting  
extensive background checks for criminal elements among the  
candidates for resettlement,” the document by the Immigration and  
Refugee Board of Canada stated. “For example, the US decided to  
refuse all Iraqi army officers.” Sven and Ann-Charlotte still have a  
job to do. They can start refurbishing their fabled commune.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.


_____


[4]  India:

The Hindu, October 26, 2009

THE MEDIUM, MESSAGE AND THE MONEY
by P. Sainath

The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode  
across Maharashtra. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for  
almost any coverage at all.

C. Ram Pandit can now resume his weekly column. Dr. Pandit (name  
changed) had long been writing for a well-known Indian language  
newspaper in Maharashtra. On the last day for the withdrawal of  
nominations to the recent State Assembly elections, he found himself  
sidelined. An editor at the paper apologised to him saying:  
“Panditji, your columns will resume after October 13. Till then,  
every page in this paper is sold.” The editor, himself an honest man,  
was simply speaking the truth.

In the financial orgy that marked the Maharashtra elections, the  
media were never far behind the moneybags. Not all sections of the  
media were in this mode, but quite a few. Not just small local  
outlets, but powerful newspapers and television channels, too. Many  
candidates complained of “extortion” but were not willing to make an  
issue of it for fear of drawing media fire. Some senior journalists  
and editors found themselves profoundly embarrassed by their  
managements. “The media have been the biggest winners in these  
polls,” says one ruefully. “In this period alone,” says another,  
“they’ve more than bounced back from the blows of the ‘slowdown’ and  
done so in style.” Their poll-period take is estimated to be in  
hundreds of millions of rupees. Quite a bit of this did not come as  
direct advertising but in packaging a candidate’s propaganda as “news.”

The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode  
across the State. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for  
almost any coverage at all. Issues didn’t come into it. No money, no  
news. This effectively shut out smaller parties and independent  
voices with low assets and resources. It also misled viewers and  
readers by denying them any mention of the real issues some of these  
smaller forces raised. The Hindu reported on this (April 7, 2009)  
during the Lok Sabha elections, where sections of the media were  
offering low-end “coverage packages" for Rs.15 lakh to Rs.20 lakh.  
“High-end” ones cost a lot more. The State polls saw this go much  
further.

None of this, as some editors point out, is new. However, the scale  
is new and stunning. The brazenness of it (both ways) quite alarming.  
And the game has moved from the petty personal corruption of a  
handful of journalists to the structured extraction of huge sums of  
money by media outfits. One rebel candidate in western Maharashtra,  
calculates an editor from that region, spent Rs.1 crore “on just  
local media alone.” And, points out the editor, “he won, defeating  
the official candidate of his party.”

The deals were many and varied. A candidate had to pay different  
rates for ‘profiles,’ interviews, a list of ‘achievements,’ or even a  
trashing of his rival in some cases. (With the channels, it was  
“live” coverage, a ‘special focus,’ or even a team tracking you for  
hours in a day.) Let alone bad-mouthing your rival, this “pay-per”  
culture also ensures that the paper or channel will not tell its  
audiences that you have a criminal record. Over 50 per cent of the  
MLAs just elected in Maharashtra have criminal charges pending  
against them. Some of them featured in adulatory “news items” which  
made no mention of this while tracing their track record.

At the top end of the spectrum, “special supplements” cost a bomb.  
One put out by one of the State’s most important politicians —  
celebrating his “era” — cost an estimated Rs.1.5 crore. That is, just  
this single media insertion cost 15 times what he is totally allowed  
to spend as a candidate. He has won more than the election, by the way.

One common low-end package: Your profile and “four news items of your  
choice” to be carried for between Rs.4 lakh or more depending on  
which page you seek. There is something chilling about those words  
“news items of your choice.” Here is news on order. Paid for. (Throw  
in a little extra and a writer from the paper will help you draft  
your material.) It also lent a curious appearance to some newspaper  
pages. For instance, you could find several “news items” of exactly  
the same size in the same newspaper on the same day, saying very  
different things. Because they were really paid-for propaganda or  
disguised advertisements. A typical size was four columns by ten  
centimetres. When a pro-saffron alliance paper carries “news items”  
of this size extolling the Congress-NCP, you know strange things are  
happening. (And, oh yes, if you bought “four news items of your  
choice” many times, a fifth one might be thrown in gratis.)

There were a few significant exceptions to the rule. A couple of  
editors tried hard to bring balance to their coverage and even ran a  
“news audit” to ensure that. And journalists who, as one of them put  
it, “simply stopped meeting top contacts in embarrassment.” Because,  
often, journalists with access to politicians were expected to make  
the approach. That information came from a reporter whose paper sent  
out an email detailing “targets” for each branch and edition during  
the elections. The bright exceptions were drowned in the flood of  
lucre. And the huge sums pulled in by that paper have not stopped it  
from sacking droves of staffers. Even from editions that met their  
‘targets.’

There are the standard arguments in defence of the whole process.  
Advertising packages are the bread and butter of the industry. What’s  
wrong with that? “We have packages for the festive season. Diwali  
packages, or for the Ganesh puja days.” Only, the falsehoods often  
disguised as “news” affect an exercise central to India’s electoral  
democracy. And are outrageously unfair to candidates with less or no  
money. They also amount to exerting undue influence on the electorate.

There is another poorly assessed — media-related — dimension to this.  
Many celebrities may have come out in May to exhort people to vote.  
This time, several of them appear to have been hired by campaign  
managers to drum up crowds for their candidate. Rates unknown.

All of this goes hand in hand with the stunning rise of money power  
among candidates. More so among those who made it the last time and  
have amassed huge amounts of wealth since 2004. With the media and  
money power wrapped like two peas in a pod, this completely shuts out  
smaller, or less expensive, voices. It just prices the aam aadmi out  
of the polls. Never mind they are contested in his name.

Your chances of winning an election to the Maharashtra Assembly, if  
you are worth over Rs.100 million, are 48 times greater than if you  
were worth just Rs.1 million or less. Far greater still, if that  
other person is worth only half-a-million rupees or less. Just six  
out of 288 MLAs in Maharashtra who won their seats declared assets of  
less than half-a-million rupees. Nor should challenges from garden  
variety multi-millionaires (those worth between Rs.1 million-10  
million) worry you much. Your chances of winning are six times  
greater than theirs, says the National Election Watch (NEW).

The number of ‘crorepati’ MLAs (those in the Rs.10 million-plus  
category) in the State Assembly has gone up by over 70 per cent in  
the just concluded elections. There were 108 elected in 2004. This  
time, there are 184. Nearly two-thirds of the MLAs just elected in  
Maharashtra and close to three-fourths of those in Haryana, are  
crorepatis. These and other startling facts fill the reports put out  
by NEW, a coalition of over 1,200 civil society groups across the  
country that also brought out excellent reports on these issues  
during the Lok Sabha polls in April-May. Its effort to inform the  
voting public is spearheaded by the NGO, Association for Democratic  
Reforms (ADR).

Each MLA in Maharashtra, on average, is worth over Rs.40 million.  
That is, if we treat their own poll affidavit declarations as  
genuine. That average is boosted by Congress and BJP MLAs who seem  
richer than the others, being well above that mark. The NCP and the  
Shiv Sena MLAs are not too far behind, though, the average worth of  
each of their legislators being in the Rs.30 million-plus bracket.

Each time a giant poll exercise is gone through in this most complex  
of electoral democracies, we congratulate the Election Commission on  
a fine job. Rightly so, in most cases. For, many times, its  
interventions and activism have curbed rigging, booth capturing and  
ballot stuffing. On the money power front, though — and the media’s  
packaging of big money interests as “news” — it is hard to find a  
single significant instance of rigorous or deterrent action. These  
too, after all, are serious threats. More structured, much more  
insidious than crude ballot stuffing. Far more threatening to the  
basics of not just elections, but democracy itself.

_____


[5] India:

The Telegraph, November 6 , 2009

FATED TO FADE AWAY - It is high time the Left wore its thinking cap  
again

Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra

A faded group photograph one chances upon shows the faces of the  
earnest members of the first national executive committee of the  
Congress Socialist Party formed exactly 75 years ago, in 1934. The  
CSP was put together within the folds of the Indian National Congress  
as a kind of ginger group to push the lugubrious juggernaut of the  
great parent party towards a more radical direction. The elderly  
caretakers of the Congress listened — half-mockingly, half- 
patronizingly — to the new breed who talked of such exotic things as  
happenings in the Soviet Union and the rise of the Nazis in Germany  
and the fascists in Italy as direct spin-offs of economic depression  
and mass unemployment. Even in the United States of America,  
capitalism was said to be malfunctioning, the ranks of hunger marches  
swelled every day, extensive public works under State auspices were  
somehow saving the system. The dedicated crowd milling within the CSP  
were grappling with the significance of these events for India. The  
nation must of course be freed, here and now, from foreign shackles,  
but that was not enough. What sort of free India was it to be, what  
would be the contours of its social and economic order? India  
belonged to its masses: the overwhelming number of dispossessed  
peasantry and underpaid workers and artisans of various descriptions  
as well as the mute castes and tribes at the receiving end of  
exploitation over centuries. The Congress must adopt concrete  
programmes for a total reconstruction of the economy in post- 
independent India so that a proper kisan-mazdoor raj emerged. The CSP  
was going to see to all that.

Its first national executive committee, the faded photograph attests,  
was a curious mélange: Farid Ansari, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Dinkar  
Mehta, Nabakrushna Choudhuri, Narendra Deva, P.Y. Deshpande, S.M.  
Joshi, Soli Batlivala, S. Sampurnanand, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay,  
Jayaprakash Narayan, N.G. Goray, Achyut Patwardhan, Purushottam  
Trikamdas, Charles Mascarenhas. It was too improbable a combination  
to last long; it did not.

Communists like Namboodiripad, Batlivala and Dinkar Mehta left this  
clandestine shelter by 1941. Nabakrushna Choudhuri, the devout  
Gandhiite, also soon detached himself, and later became Congress  
chief minister of Orissa, and subsequently joined Vinoba Bhave in his  
bhoodaan mission. Sampurnanand too, at some point, became Congress  
chief minister of India’s largest state; by then he was an arch- 
social conservative leaning towards Hindu orthodoxy. Minoo Masani, a  
great admirer of Soviet collectivization in the 1930s, somersaulted,  
ending up as a foaming-in-the-mouth anti-communist and co-founded the  
Swatantra Party. Narendra Deva, the gentlest of souls, gradually  
withdrew from active politics and remained satisfied with his role as  
an ideologue of socialism, a slice of Marx, a slice of Gandhi, mostly  
Rousseau. Jayaprakash Narayan, the underground hero of the 1942 Quit  
India movement, mellower with the years; most of the time he was with  
the Praja Socialist Party — the CSP’s direct legatee — but was also  
with Vinoba Bhave. He finally led the nava nirman struggles in the  
1970s to emerge as the father figure of the Janata Party, which  
demolished Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. He was lucky to die before his  
handiwork broke into smithereens.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was always a rebel of a woman in search of a  
cause, which at the end she discovered in cottage crafts and the  
theatre movement. Of the rest, S.M. Joshi, Achyut Patwardhan and N.G.  
Goray clung for long years to the Praja Socialist Party and its later  
incarnations, walked into the Janata Party when J.P. put it together,  
then migrated to the Janata Dal or one of its innumerable factions.  
Some of them had developed pockets of influence among a number of  
caste groups, ‘other backward classes’; innate feudal instincts,  
however, drove them to waste their strength in endless internal  
squabbles until it was disaster time.

The Indian National Congress, it would seem, was both the curse and  
the ultimate provider of shelter for several of those rebels who  
loved to talk socialism in their calf days. It supposedly represented  
‘the stream of national consciousness’; its cloying charm was almost  
impossible to resist. For quite a few of them, the expression,  
‘national consensus’, would have a bewitching effect: yes, engage in  
debate, let arguments and rhetoric have free flow, yet, at the end of  
it, it would be gross lack of patriotism not to fall in and join the  
national mainstream.

Others had disappeared; for the past few decades it is, therefore,  
only the communists who could claim the socialist inheritance. The  
Left and the communists became synonymous. Given their ideology, the  
communists, many had expected, would not get caught in the trap of  
‘national consensus’. Were not they the quintessential Left, the  
other side in the class war, where there could be no scope for  
compromise with adversarial forces? Their failure to tackle  
satisfactorily the class-caste dialectic was, however, a major  
problem. Equally ticklish was the issue of whether the global  
brotherhood of the working classes transcended national priorities.  
The communists have been extraordinarily cautious after the  
experience of 1962, and have taught themselves to be careful so that  
nobody could dub them as less than ‘patriotic’. The Left led by the  
communists has, for instance, ceased to question the huge allocations  
in the name of defence and national security. The nuclear agreement  
signed with the US can be safely opposed; but courage fails when the  
question is one of across-the-board reduction in defence outlay; to  
argue for such reduction would not be ‘politically correct’. The Left  
has thus modulated its ideology; it too must be an integral part of  
the patriotic front.

Consider this other instance. The Left in the past used to advocate  
the thesis that the Indian nation is a conglomerate of linguistic —  
and sometimes ethnic — sub-nationalities, and overall national  
progress was impossible if these sub-nationalities were left out in  
the cold. Its emphasis on an equitable structure of Centre-state  
relations stemmed directly from this understanding of the polity.  
They availed of the opportunity of the temporary decline of the  
Congress in the post-Emergency phase and were able to gain much  
credibility for their demand for expanded financial powers for the  
states. They dazzled only to disappoint. In the course of the past  
couple of decades, they have swung completely in the other direction:  
the state headed by the Left in West Bengal became most vocal in its  
support for full fiscal integration across the nation, a cause dear  
to the heart of the capitalists. It has indeed been a bizarre  
spectacle, the Left campaigning for a financial regime where the  
states will in effect be permanently at the mercy of the Centre.

Even on the issue of globalization, the Left has succumbed to  
centripetal urges. The state governments under its control mouth the  
formal party line against economic liberalization. This is  
nonetheless being accompanied by a desperate zeal to invite capital,  
including foreign capital, into their premises. In a competitive  
environment, the Left, the argument goes, could not allow the  
territories under its influence to turn into an industry-less desert  
because of dearth of capital. Examining the feasibility of  
industrialization via the public sector route is no longer on the  
agenda.

Now for the tailpiece. The Congress ruling at the Centre, according  
to party theorem, represents feudal-bourgeois oppressor classes  
against whom the Left is to pursue a relentless battle. True, the  
Left is under great stress since the Maoists, for their own reason,  
have chosen the formal Left as their principal enemy. Even so, it is  
altogether incongruous how, to combat the Maoists, the Left has  
totally identified itself with the Centre. The incongruity appears  
all the greater because not so long ago the Left was vociferously  
opposed to the very concept of the Centre raising a police force; was  
not law and order a state subject?

These are disturbing developments. Should not the Left re-wear its  
thinking cap? And, while doing so, should not it ask itself how a  
situation could be allowed to develop where Maoists can instantly  
mobilize a few thousands to lay siege on a railway station in a  
tribal belt, where a partisan of the Left dares not enter the area  
without adequate security guard?

Or has a decision already been reached for self-destruction, the Left  
is to fade away — like the faded faces in that group photo discussed  
in the earlier paragraphs?

_____


[6] 2009 UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance  
and Non-Violence

ADDRESS BY UNESCO GOODWILL AMBASSADOR MADANJEET SINGH
November 16, 2009

Excellencies, my UNESCO colleagues, friends:

May I at the outset warmly felicitate the 2009 UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh  
Prize laureates, Abdul Sattar Edhi of Pakistan and François Houtart  
from Belgium, as well as the Honourable Mention nominees, the St.  
Petersburg Government Programme on Tolerance, Russian Federation, and  
the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, United Kingdom, for  
promoting peace through intercultural dialogue, human rights,  
tolerance, and non-violence.

It was an intense desire to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary  
of Mahatma Gandhi that prompted me to fund the UNESCO Prize,  
notwithstanding financial constraints. May I also mention a proximate  
event of great significance: November 14 marks the 120th birth  
anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, the apostle of secularism. I was  
naturally delighted when, in 1995, the UNESCO Executive Board  
unanimously created the Prize, and decided to award it biannually on  
16th November, the day on which UNESCO was established and the United  
Nations declared it as the Day of Tolerance.

The lifelong efforts by the 2009 UNESCO Prize laureates to promote  
international cooperation is a corollary of the fall of the Berlin  
wall in 1989 – the historic legacy of which we are celebrating this  
week. It formally ended the cold war and spurred on the unity and  
expansion of the European Union. The euphoria the fall of the wall  
created among the people of a united Germany proved there is no such  
thing as permanent enmity among nations – that peace is forged  
horizontally as well as top down but basically from the bottom up.  
The event heralded the triumph of multiculturalism over selfish  
unilateral schemes.

UNESCO highlighted the cultural connotation of these concerns at the  
33rd session of the General Conference when its 183 Member States  
adopted a resolution on 'Convention on the Protection and Promotion  
of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions'. The objective was to  
create, in the context of an increasingly interconnected world, a  
rich creative diversity in which all cultural expressions may be  
affirmed. This strengthened the ties that bind the diversity of  
cultures and their development to foster mutual understanding and  
dialogue between peoples. UNESCO’s historic decision reiterated that  
multiculturalism is essentially holistic, comprising global issues  
such as protection of the environment, unfettered trade and commerce,  
regional cooperation, and amicable partnerships, accessible to all  
for the benefit of humanity.

There was a time when Europe greatly benefitted from Asian and  
African cultures born and bred in India, China, Mesopotamia, Egypt,  
and so on. Later the imperial European powers amassed enormous wealth  
by exploiting their colonies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The  
Second World War turned the tide and the winds of change began to  
blow in the opposite direction. The fall of the Berlin wall was the  
watershed, wrote Professor Brahma Chellaney of the Indian Centre for  
Policy Research, because as  “Europe got freedom, Asia became rich.”   
Barely six months before the wall crumbled, I recall asking the West  
German Ambassador in Washington if East and West Germany would ever  
unite. “Not in my lifetime,” he was convinced. But the world suddenly  
changed in ways inconceivable only a few months earlier.

East has in fact met the West, contrary to Kipling’s adage "never the  
twain shall meet." Against this background I am confident that the  
wall of India’s Partition erected by the Indian and Pakistani vested  
interests shall inevitably crumble as suddenly as the Berlin wall. I  
am convinced that my vision of creating a rainbow partnership of  
South Asian counties and a common currency shall become the anchor of  
economic stability, security and regional cooperation -- as the  
ASEAN, African, Latin American, and Gulf countries are planning to  
launch a common currency by emulating the Euro.

Before I close, may I take this opportunity to heartily congratulate  
Mme Irina Bokova, the first woman to be elected Director-General of  
UNESCO. Her unprecedented appointment has shattered the wall of  
UNESCO machismo since the organisation was established 65 years ago  
on this day. Let us celebrate the breaching of this formidable wall  
as well.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting and  
participating in this exceptional event.

_____


[7] India: Resources For Secular Activists

(i)

Editorial
Economic & Political Weekly, November 7, 2009

ENCROACHING PLACES OF WORSHIP
The Supreme Court delivers a bold interim order on construction of  
places of worship on government land.

Those who occupy public places in the name of religion have received  
a warning from the Supreme Court. An interim order of the apex court  
has halted with immediate effect all fresh construction of temples,  
churches, mosques, gurdwaras in public streets or public spaces  
across the country until the Court finally resolves all cases  
relating to illegal religious structures.  The bench directed the  
state governments and union territories to review current disputes  
over unauthorised worship places on a “case by case” basis.

The apex court was hearing an appeal by the central government  
against an order of the Gujarat High Court. The high court had in  
2006 given a directive to municipal corporations in Gujarat to  
demolish all illegal religious structures in public spaces in the  
state. The central government interfered in this matter when a riot  
was triggered in Vadodara after the demolition of a dargah and the  
army had to stage a flag march to restore order. The centre had  
approached the apex court to stay the order of the Gujarat High Court  
on the demolition drive. (On 17 September 2009, before the Supreme  
Court gave its interim order, a meeting called by the Solicitor  
General with the representatives of states and union territories to  
discuss the issue of mushrooming religious structures on public land  
reached a consensus to stop fresh construction of worship places on  
all such land, a decision that was communicated to the Court.) The  
tendency to encroach on public spaces and government wasteland  
(“peramboke” land) for religious purposes has become a threat to our  
definition of secularism as enunciated in the Con- stitution.  
Hitherto, any religious institution or individual has been able to  
install an idol or a cross anywhere on public land.  Such structures  
are usually seen on waste or unoccupied land to avoid government  
actions against the illegal occupation. The site gradually becomes a  
full-fledged place of worship – be it a temple, a dargah or a saint’s  
shrine. Public gatherings simultaneously increase and the performance  
of daily rituals begins and a collection box is also installed; the  
accountability of the collection is, however, not considered a public  
matter.

The local administration initially does not take any action to stop  
such activities on government land. The legality of such structures  
becomes an issue only when the government decides it needs the site  
for some activity. Then the authorities are unable to act, for  
“sentiments” are likely to be affected. Because it is a matter of  
religious sentiments, political parties are not to be left behind in  
arguing in support of the illegal structure. It has not been uncommon  
for civic action against such illegal structures to lead to a  
communal conflagration. It is therefore not surprising that  
government bodies are loath to remove these structures.  The interim  
order of the Supreme Court only temporarily halts new religious  
structures. It would be interesting to see to what extent the local  
governments will feel empowered by the Supreme Court’s order and  
prevent new buildings of worship from coming up on public land. As  
far as the existing illegal structures are concerned, which is the  
real problem, the apex court has passed the ball to the state  
governments and union territories and asked them to deal with the  
issue on a case by case basis. Various cases involving religious  
structures constructed on public land are pending in the high courts  
across the country and given the influence that religious sentiments  
have come to exercise on public action, it is doubtful if any  
municipal/state government will  want to take action clearing such  
buildings.

(ii)

Outlook, Nov 10, 2009
		
NOT RELEVANT INDIANS?
NRIs are largely seen as rabid supporters of right-wing Hindutva, but  
there is another category of them who like to see themselves as  
having made the likes of Narendra Modi into a political pariah abroad

by Omar Khalidi

In the United States, Indian Americans are often seen as a highly  
educated, tech savvy, upwardly mobile, wealthy minority along the  
lines of other "model minorities", such as the Asian Americans and  
Jews. Like other immigrant groups, most Indian-Americans have been  
happy to be apolitical high achievers inhabiting upscale suburbs from  
coast to coast.

Of those politically active NRIs within American politics, in the  
past, almost all seemed to confine themselves to three broad areas:  
uncritical support to India’s security concerns involving China and  
Pakistan, US-India economic ties, and issues involving Indian  
Americans within the United States.

For example, the US India Political Action Committee, (USINPAC),  
consciously modelled after American Israeli Political Action  
Committee (AIPAC), is the apex organization formally established in  
2002, dedicated to providing uncritical support to India’s foreign  
policies and furthering of Indo-US economic ties. It has never  
concerned itself with India’s domestic issues.

However, there are NRIs who do concern themselves with India’s  
domestic issues. Two obvious examples are some of the Kashmiri and  
Sikh groups actively, and often successfully, influencing US  
legislation and state policies on Punjab and Kashmir.

Leaving aside these two exceptional and regional groups, advocating  
extra-Constitutional solutions, a third group of politically  
conscious NRIs has emerged, particularly after the 2002 carnage in  
Gujarat. They are increasingly visible as a critical voice in India’s  
domestic politics, leveraging public opinion, US legislators, and  
even the executive branch of the government, particularly the  
Department of State.

Among these politically conscious NRIs who want to influence policy  
outcomes in India are academics, journalists, community activists  
working in conjunction not just within the diaspora Indians but also  
Americans of a diverse set of political and social agendas. These  
individuals and organizations have built coalitions, alliances and  
networks based on a vision of India that is democratic,  
decentralized, secular, pluralistic, and gender just. They lay a high  
emphasis on economic and social justice along with accountability.

There is as yet no well-funded, central organization along the lines  
of USINPAC, nor do these NRIs focus only on US government to the  
exclusion of other states involved in relations with India. Informal  
organization, shoe-string budgets, uncertain funding, and loose  
coalitions characterize these organizations and individuals who  
represent a new breed of NRI activism. But they are digitally  
connected --  within United States, within India and everywhere else.  
New technologies have created and connected communities out of a  
world divided by space and time.

For starters, note some of the recent successful lobbying efforts:

In March 2005, the new breed of US NRIs successfully persuaded the US  
State Department to revoke visa to Narendra Modi, the pogrom-tainted  
Gujarat chief minister. The visa revocation sent shock waves into the  
Gujarati Vaishyas, Modi’s staunch supporters, now chastened, are  
beginning to see Modi as bad for business. In August 2008, the US  
State Department confirmed in a letter to Congresswoman Betty  
McCollum (D-MN), that Modi remains persona non grata despite lapse of  
time since the pogrom of 2002.

In November 2007, a group of over one hundred professors at leading  
American universities led by an Indian academic at Massachusetts  
Institute of Technology wrote to World Economic Forum in Geneva  
asking it not to invite Narendra Modi to its forum in Davos,  
Switzerland. The professors’ campaign was based on press reports  
citing Gujarat government chief secretary’s claim that WEF had  
invited Modi. In response to the professors’ petition, the WEF  
officially denied it ever invited the chief minister.

In May 2009, numerous NRI groups with the full support of Amnesty  
International and Human Rights Watch brought immense political  
pressure, backed by an impressive array of medical practitioners and  
academics, to force the Chhattisgarh government to release Dr.  
Binayak Sen, the physician-turned human rights activist who was  
jailed in Bilaspur.

In August 2009, the United States International Commission on  
International Religious Freedom, a federally-funded organization  
placed India on its Watch List of countries where there is absence of  
religious freedom. This was a sequel to legislations in various  
Indian states curbing freedom of faith. The Watch List, developed  
with input from a broad spectrum of NRI opinion, effectively  
bracketed India with habitual offenders of religious freedom such as  
Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and China.

In September 2009, following public criticism, the ‘FDI Asian  
Personality of the Year’ awards by FDI Magazine of the Financial  
Times group given to Narendra Modi was withdrawn; instead the award  
went to Gujarat state.

At the same time in September 2009, a group consisting of 21 members  
of US House of Representatives, wrote to Orissa Chief Minister Navin  
Patnaik expressing deep concern about the violence against Christians  
and calling for immediate end to restrictions on religious freedom  
and to bring perpetrators of violence to justice.

In October 2009, US and France-based activists launched a web  
campaign asking the Sultanate of Oman to rescind an invitation that a  
minister of that country had given to Narendra Modi. The Oman Embassy  
in New Delhi, fearful of adverse publicity for hosting a pogrom- 
tainted politician, took unprecedented action by purchasing  
commercial space in two New Delhi-based Indian newspapers  
disassociating itself with the invitation, thus effectively slamming  
the door against Modi’s entry into Muscat. Stung by the rebuff, the  
BJP spokesman was reduced to calling the ad “ in bad taste”.

In November 2009, Jagdish Tytler, Congress politician accused in the  
1984 pogrom of Sikhs was dropped out of a delegation to Britain  
fearing arrest by Scotland Yard. A British MP had merely asked that  
such an action be taken by Scotland Yard at the behest of his Indian  
constituents.

While this sounds like a series of successes, there have been  
failures too: In September 2006, RSS spokesman Ram Madhav met US  
State Department officials despite NRIs protest, though the US  
government was careful to say that the meeting did not amount to an  
endorsement of RSS’s hate ideology. While the new breed of NRIs  
succeeded in preventing Sadhvi Rithambra, the hate mongering ascetic  
from speaking from the official platform of a Florida town hall in  
2007, the NRI’s failed to persuade some Gujarati temples from  
inviting her again in 2009.

What does the new political mobilization of NRIs in general, and in  
the United States in particular, portend for India’s domestic issues?

Long dismissed as Not Relevant Indians, the NRIs now are highly  
relevant for Indian domestic political issues. The era of old- 
fashioned “patriotic” lobbying for anything Indian--regardless of  
what some politicians do as represented by USINPAC--is over. The  
series of rebuffs to Modi ruined his political career outside Gujarat  
and if he remains caged in Ahmadabad, it is likely that business  
savvy Gujarati corporate community will begin to see him as a  
political liability to be shed as soon as possible. Controversial  
politicians and good business are bad combinations.

The NRIs’ political mobilization, despite its short life, has cast a  
long shadow on Indian domestic politics. To the politicians who  
thought they will remain immune from critical scrutiny of an alert  
public opinion among overseas Indians, there is bad news. You are  
under the radar. For those who want informed input for introducing  
accountability in Indian political system, this may be the trend they  
were hoping for.

As Modi begins to pack his suit cases for a trip to an obscure  
province in Indonesia, there are already attempts across the world  
asking Jakarta to fall in line with world public opinion. If  
Indonesia rescinds the invitation that the South Sulawesi Governor  
gave to Modi, will it unpack Modi’s suit cases for ever? The fear of  
a law suit and arrest in Britain prompted Jagdish Tytler, the  
Congress politician involved in the Sikhs’ pogrom in 1984, to drop  
out of a delegation to Britain.  Modi may not necessarily meet the  
same fate, given Indonesia’s general indifference to India’s domestic  
issues, but the Indonesian government may not want to be the one to  
welcome a political pariah.

Hyderabad-born, MIT-based Omar Khalidi is the author of Muslims in  
Indian Economy, and Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India

(iii)

INTOLERANT POLITICS A THREAT TO URBAN LIVING
by Amritha Ibrahim
http://tt.ly/y

_____


[8] Miscellanea:

The Guardian, 26 September 2009

HUMAN RIGHTS BEFORE RELIGION
Have we forgotten to protect women in our bid to accommodate  
practices carried out in the name of Islam?

by Seyran Ates

Worldwide, women and children are among those most affected by human  
rights abuses; women and children make up the majority of victims of  
domestic violence; it is mainly women and girls who are deprived of  
an education, or even denied an appropriate position in the labour  
market despite a good education; political opportunities for women  
are still minimal, despite active and passive suffrage. This is the  
case regardless of culture or religion. In this sense, achieving  
gender equality is one of the greatest political challenges of our  
century.

This standardised picture requires one qualification. Without wishing  
to relativise violence and human rights abuses or create a hierarchy,  
there are grave differences between what has already been reached in  
some countries and a standard that can be denoted as stable. While  
women and girls in western countries generally no longer, for  
instance, have to worry about whether or not they are allowed to work  
or go to school, or whether they will soon be married off to a cousin  
or a much older man, this is still a reality for countless women in  
most Islamic countries and in South America, Asia and Africa.

This global perspective is necessary to understand the particular  
situation for many Muslim women and girls in European countries,  
especially those who live in parallel societies. In a plural, open  
and liberal society such as Germany, different cultures and religions  
jostle together so closely that conflicts are unavoidable and  
solutions supposedly hard to find. The fear of ostracising foreign  
cultures and religions and stoking xenophobia has led to a  
politically precarious situation, in which every criticism of  
Islamically justified misogyny can make you a racist, an enemy of  
Islam or even a Nazi. Such labels are thrown around with abandon.

Those who still dare to criticise religious practices in the Islamic  
community or other cultures often receive death threats or are the  
victims of a character assassination. In both cases, the aim is to  
strike from public discussion the issue of violence against women  
done in the name of Islam or some other understanding of cultural  
values. Some wish to do so because they are themselves rightwing  
(Islamic fundamentalists and/or nationalists), others (those who are  
allegedly political correct, leftwingers and do-gooders) because they  
are afraid that such criticism will play into the hands of the  
xenophobic rightwing Germans. But silence plays into their hands even  
more. The elections in Austria and Switzerland are good examples of  
this.

Five years ago, almost no one in Germany wanted to speak openly about  
arranged marriages, genital mutilation and honour killings. The hijab  
has led to strong political polarisation since roughly 1998. It is  
fast becoming a matter of course to see it in the street and it has  
changed something – people are talking more and more about the  
issues. Yet just as German women in the 70s had to put up with a lot  
of political malice, because they demanded women's centres and talked  
openly about violence, these days we have to put up with hearing that  
the public debate over the subjugation of women in the Islamic  
community is more of an insult to Islamic women than a help.

In Germany's recent past, in the kaleidoscope of cultures and  
religions in this multicultural society, many people have forgotten  
that human rights must come before religious practices. I do not say  
that as a critic of Islam – I don't know why people label me as such  
– no, I say it as a practising Muslim and human rights activist, who  
lives in a democratic state and would like to continue to express her  
opinion freely.

o o o

The Ban on Abortion Coverage

Editorial, The New York Times
November 9, 2009

When the House narrowly passed the health care reform bill on  
Saturday night, it came with a steep price for women’s reproductive  
rights. Under pressure from anti-abortion Democrats and the United  
States Conference of Catholic Bishops, lawmakers added language that  
would prevent millions of Americans from buying insurance that covers  
abortions — even if they use their own money.

The restrictions would fall on women eligible to buy coverage on new  
health insurance exchanges. They are a sharp departure from current  
practice, an infringement of a woman’s right to get a legal medical  
procedure and an unjustified intrusion by Congress into decisions  
best made by patients and doctors.

The anti-abortion Democrats behind this coup insisted that they were  
simply adhering to the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bans the use  
of federal dollars to pay for almost all abortions in a number of  
government programs. In fact, they reached far beyond Hyde and made  
it largely impossible to use a policyholder’s own dollars to pay for  
abortion coverage.

The bill brought to the floor already included a careful compromise  
that should have satisfied reasonable legislators on both sides of  
the abortion issue. The vast majority of people expected to buy  
policies on the new exchanges would pay part of the premium and  
receive government tax credits to pay for the rest. The compromise  
would have prohibited the use of the tax subsidies to pay for almost  
all abortions, but it would have allowed the segregation and use of  
premium contributions and co-payments to pay for such coverage. A  
similar approach allows 17 state Medicaid programs to cover abortions  
using only state funds, not federal matching funds.

Yet neither the Roman Catholic bishops nor anti-abortion Democrats  
were willing to accept this compromise. They insisted on language  
that would ban the use of federal subsidies to pay for “any part” of  
a policy that includes abortion coverage.

If insurers want to attract subsidized customers, who will be the  
great majority on the exchange, they will have to offer them plans  
that don’t cover abortions. It is theoretically possible that  
insurers could offer plans aimed only at nonsubsidized customers, but  
it is highly uncertain that they will find it worthwhile to do so.

In that case, some women who have coverage for abortion services  
through policies bought by small employers could actually lose that  
coverage if their employer decides to transfer its workers to the  
exchange. Ultimately, if larger employers are permitted to make use  
of the exchange, ever larger numbers of women might lose abortion  
coverage that they now have.

The restrictive language allows people to buy “riders” that would  
cover abortions. But nobody plans to have an unplanned pregnancy, so  
this concession is meaningless. It is not clear that insurers would  
even offer the riders since few people would buy them.

The highly restrictive language was easily approved by a 240-to-194  
vote and incorporated into the overall bill, which squeaked through  
by a tally of 220 to 215. It was depressing evidence of the power of  
anti-abortion forces to override a reasonable compromise. They were  
willing to scuttle the bill if they didn’t get their way. Outraged  
legislators who support abortion rights could also have killed the  
bill but sensibly chose to keep the reform process moving ahead.

The fight will resume in the Senate, where the Finance Committee has  
approved a bill that incorporates the compromise just rejected by the  
House. We urge the Senate to stand strong behind a compromise that  
would preserve a woman’s right to abortion services.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 10, 2009, on  
page A34 of the New York edition.

o o o

The Guardian, 29 October 2009

WHEN STATE AND RELIGION MIX
The JFS case shows that wherever religious groups accept state  
funding, a tangle of problems is likely to arise

by  Danny Rich

The Jewish community of Britain has frequently made history, and its  
appearance in the first ever case in Britain's new supreme court is a  
further, albeit hardly auspicious, example.

The case involves the refusal by the Jews' Free School (JFS), a state- 
funded secondary school, to admit a child, the mother of whom was  
converted to Judaism by a Progressive synagogal authority. Despite  
the fact that at least a third of Britain's Jews reject the authority  
of the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue, the JFS  
defines "who is a Jew" for the purposes of entry by reference to the  
regulations of that office. It was for this reason that I advised the  
Treasury Solicitor that the policy was "politically motivated" in the  
sense that the state funded JFS was showing a clear, unreasonable,  
and discriminatory bias in favour of one part of the Jewish community  
over its other sections.

Who is a Jew can be a complicated matter even for Jews! Most sections  
of the British Jewish community use as a main criterion "birth to a  
Jewish mother", and thus they faced falling foul of the appeal  
court's decision that it is not permissible to discriminate on racial  
grounds in the provision of services. Liberal Judaism was the only  
sector of the mainstream British Jewish community which welcomed the  
ruling, since – whilst birth may be a factor – it accords Jewish  
status to an individual on the basis of self-expressed words of  
recognition or acts of identification.
For much of history the state took a great interest in religious  
identity but the rise of the democratic, secular state included a  
demand for "the separation of religion and state" and the assumption  
that religion was essentially a private matter. The United States of  
America is the best constitutional example of this, although former  
President Bush's affection for state/faith initiatives stood in  
marked contrast to the position of his contemporary Tony Blair's  
policy of the time: "We do not do God".

Although England has its established church, Britain's multifaith  
environment is much in evidence, and the current government has built  
increasing partnerships with religious communities. Statutory  
services have been devolved to religious based charities; Hindu, Sikh  
and Muslim schools have received public funding; "faith advisors"  
have been appointed to a number of government departments, and there  
is a special immigration track for ministers of religion.

It was inevitable in my view that if religious communities received  
state funding it would not be long before religious institutions  
providing public services would face legal and other challenges. Thus  
secular, legal and other authorities have been drawn into areas where  
it was not intended they be and where they may not be best equipped  
to arbitrate.

Perhaps the result of the current case – whether the outcome (which  
will take some time to be delivered) is to uphold the lower court or  
not – will be to re-affirm the desirability of the separation of  
religion and state, whereby the state meets its functions in an  
impartial manner and religious groups fund their own particular needs  
and keep their squabbles to themselves.

_____

Announcements

You are invited to the

Fourth Annual Discussion on State of Parliamentary Democracy in India

Speakers:
Manoranjan Mohanty, Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social  
Development, Council for Social Development;
Achin Vanaik, Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi and
Vijay Naik, Consulting Editor, Sakal Group of Newspapers.

Discussants:
Interns from Lok Sabha

Chair:
Suhas Borker, Convener, Working Group on Alternative Strategies

12 November 2009  6.30 p.m.

India International Centre (Conference Room II)
40, Max Mueller Marg
Lodhi Estate
New Delhi 110 003

Conference Room II is located on the 2nd Floor.

If required please take the lift located in the Main Reception Area.

Jointly organised by

India International Centre &
Working Group on Alternative Strategies

In solidarity

Suhas Borker
Convener
Working Group on Alternative Strategies
[Vaikalpik Rananiti Karya Samuh]

Towards a secular, democratic, inclusive, participatory
and equitable development paradigm
1992-2009: 17 Years

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

South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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