SACW | Nov 21-23, 2009 / Trial of Burmese in India / Global Climate Impasse / Freedom of Speech

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | November 21-23, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2668 -  
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]  India - Burma: Spirit of Panglong in Kolkata Court (Nandita Haksar)
[2]  US pours millions into anti-Taliban militias in Afghanistan (Jon  
Boone)
[3]  Pakistan - India:  Talk sooner than later (I. A. Rehman)
[4]  Climate Change:
       (i) Breaking The Global Climate Impasse: India should seize  
the moment! (Praful Bidwai)
       (ii) Privatising atmosphere (Vandana Shiva)
[5]  India: Adivasis, Salva Judm and the State: who is provoking  
whom? (Ashok Mitra)
[6]  India: Resources For Secular Activists - Shiv Sena's attack on  
the media
       (i) Wither idea of India (Kuldip Nayar)
       (ii) He doesn't roar but mews (Dileep Padgaonkar)
       (iii) The fist is mightier than pen in India (Mahesh Rangarajan)
[7]  Announcements:
  -  Report Release & Panel Discussion : Democracy 'Encountered'  
Rights Violations in Manipur (New Delhi, 23 November 2009)


_____


[1] India - Burma:

mizzima.com, 20 November 2009

SPIRIT OF PANGLONG IN KOLKATA COURT			

by Nandita Haksar

Mizzima News - For the lawyers practicing at the city sessions court  
in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal Thursday, November 12th, 2009  
was just another busy day. They passed by the court of Ms Kavita Dey  
without as much as a second look. For them the scene was familiar –  
lawyers dressed in their black gowns, the court clerks sitting at the  
table and the judge dictating to the stenographer.

The curiosity of some lawyers was aroused when they heard some  
passionate arguments and they may have drifted into the room in the  
hope of hearing some interesting point of law. The Public Prosecutor  
was telling the Judge that foreigners could not be allowed to depose  
without proper summons. He argued that summons for foreigners had to  
be served in accordance with the proper procedure laid down under the  
Code of Criminal Procedure.

A look at the large wooden cage at the back of the airy courtroom  
held 34 men.

Most of them were too tired to stand and were squatting on the cold  
stone floor. In any case they could not understand English or the  
intricacies of the legal points being debated. There were, however,  
some men who were holding the bars straining to listen to the  
arguments. Anxiety writ large on their faces.

On the last of the three rows of chairs in the large court room sat  
two men, looking calm and unperturbed, but listening carefully.

Finally the lawyer for the 34 men inside the wooden cage had  
persuaded the judge to allow him to call his witness. The lawyer  
informed the Judge that the first defence witness was Mr Harn Yawnghwe.

Mr Yawnghwe stood up and walked to the witness box. The other person  
sitting next to him was requested to go out of the court. The rules  
did not allow the defence witnesses to listen to each other before  
they themselves had deposed.

Harn Yawnghwe stepped into the rickety wooden witness box and was  
told to take oath and was ready to depose. The men in the wooden cage  
could not hear him but his dignified presence and his calm demeanor  
commanded respect. The Bengali stenographer‘s struggle with Burmese  
names and unfamiliar accent lent a slightly comic air.

Harn Yawnghwe was born in Burma 62 years ago. Both his parents came  
from Shan aristocracy and that was evident in his bearing. In quiet,  
measured words he told the Court that his father had been the first  
President of the Union of Burma in 1948. However, when Gen Ne Win  
staged a coup his father was imprisoned and died in jail. His older  
brother was executed by Gen Ne Win. These tragic circumstances had  
forced his family to take refuge in neighbouring Thailand and after  
that Harn got asylum in Canada and was a Canadian citizen.

It was not only his parentage but his professional qualifications  
that were impressive. He was a trained mining engineer and financial  
analyst, living in Canada. But all his life he had been involved in  
the movement for the restoration of democracy in Burma.

Harn Yawnghwe had traveled all the way from Canada to testify in the  
court. He told the Judge that the 34 Burmese being held inside the  
wooden cage at the back of the court were genuine freedom fighters.  
He also told the court that he was now the executive director of the  
Euro Burma Office with its headquarters at Brussels. The Euro Burma  
Office had released funds for the costs of the trial. There was no  
way that such funding could be given if there was even a suspicion  
that the 34 were gun runners involved in violating Indian security  
interests.

After he finished his deposition he stepped down and the second  
witness was called. The second witness was Dr Tint Swe. Dr Tint Swe  
told the Court that he was a professional doctor and had practiced  
for 15 years before resigning from his job and joining the National  
League for Democracy, the party of the legendary Daw Aung San Suu  
Kyi. The doctor stood for election in 1990 and won. But the military  
junta refused to hand over power to the democratically elected  
representatives of the people. Instead they sentenced Dr Tint Swe to  
25 years of imprisonment and he had to leave his home and country by  
walking six days and five nights to reach Mizoram, India.

Dr Tint Swe told the court that he knew that the 34 Burmese accused  
were framed by an Indian military intelligence officer called Lt Col  
Grewal. He told the court that he knew Grewal personally and he had  
been instrumental in deporting 11 other Burmese in 1996. Dr Tint Swe  
conveyed to the court that the Prime Minister of the Government in  
exile (National Coalition Government of Union of Burma) had wanted to  
depose in the court but he had not been given a visa.

That afternoon Mr Harn Yawnghwe and Dr Tint Swe were given permission  
to meet the men in the cage. Each of them shook hands with all the 34  
freedom fighters, Arakans and Karens.

At that moment it seemed that Gen Aung San’s spirit descended in the  
court. Here were the leaders of the Burmans and ethnic nationalities  
working together for the release of Burmese freedom fighters. The 34  
Burmese were Arakans and Karens, Harn Yawnghwe, a proud Shan,  
representing the Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC) and Tint Swe, a  
nationalist Burman, representing the NCGUB. Was it the Spirit of  
Panglong that had come alive in the Kolkata court?

The majority of the Burmese media had failed to fully grasp the  
relevance of the moment, capture the poignancy of the handshakes. For  
47 years the Burmese military has justified itself by following Buda- 
batha Myanmar-lumyo policy. The military has denied the people  
democracy and sought to obliterate the memory of Gen Aung San’s  
vision of a democratic and federal Burma. And that vision came alive  
in a Kolkata court.

In defiance of the Myanmar Junta the representatives of the Ethnic  
nationalities and the Burman majority community had come together to  
fight for the lives of 34 Burmese freedom fighters.

Indian human rights activists and Indian media were both absent.  
There was neither a sense of solidarity with the Burmese peoples’  
struggle against the most brutal regime in the world, nor were they  
outraged by the fact that democratic India had kept Burmese freedom  
fighters in jail for more than 12 years. Indians could have learnt  
important lessons on the Panglong spirit and the need to build an  
inclusive democracy based on federalism.

As I walked out of the court that day I knew that the Panglong spirit  
had touched the court and perhaps the 34 Burmese freedom fighters  
would be free soon.  But I felt an overwhelming sadness that we,  
Indians and Burmese, had missed an opportunity to learn a lesson from  
the moment in history when the Panglong spirit came alive in the  
court in Kolkata.

The author is a prominent Indian human rights lawyer and a writer.  
She had taken up the case of 34 Burmese freedom fighters since 1999.  
Her latest book “Rogue Agent: How India's Military Intelligence  
Betrayed the Burmese Resistance Movement” reveals that an Indian  
Military Intelligence officer named Lt. Col V.S. Grewal as the man  
masterminding the plot to betray the Burmese freedom fighters.


_____


[2]

The Guardian, 22 November 2009

US POURS MILLIONS INTO ANTI-TALIBAN MILITIAS IN AFGHANISTAN

• Special forces funding fighters in Afghanistan
• Fears strategy could further destabilise country

by  Jon Boone in Kabul

A former Taliban fighter hands over his arms to join government  
troops in Herat. Photograph: Reza Shirmohammadi/AFP/Getty Images

US special forces are supporting anti-Taliban militias in at least 14  
areas of Afghanistan as part of a secretive programme that experts  
warn could fuel long-term instability in the country.

The Community Defence Initiative (CDI) is enthusiastically backed by  
Stanley McChrystal, the US general commanding Nato forces in  
Afghanistan, but details about the programme have been held back from  
non-US alliance members who are likely to strongly protest.

The attempt to create what one official described as "pockets of  
tribal resistance" to the Taliban involves US special forces  
embedding themselves with armed groups and even disgruntled  
insurgents who are then given training and support.

In return for stabilising their local area the militia helps to win  
development aid for their local communities, although they will not  
receive arms, a US official said.

Special forces will be able to access money from a US military fund  
to pay for the projects. The hope is that the militias supplement the  
Nato and Afghan forces fighting the Taliban. But the prospect of re- 
empowering militias after billions of international dollars were  
spent after the US-led invasion in 2001 to disarm illegally armed  
groups alarms many experts.

Senior generals in the Afghan ministries of interior and defence are  
also worried about what they see as a return to the failed strategies  
of the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said  
the US risked losing control over groups which have in the past  
turned to looting shops and setting up illegal road checkpoints when  
they lose foreign support.

"It is not enough to talk to a few tribal elders and decide that you  
trust them," Ruttig said. "No matter how well-trained and culturally  
aware the special forces are they will never be able to get to know  
enough about a local area to trust the people they are dealing with."

Another controversial aspect of the programme is the involvement of  
Arif Noorzai, an Afghan politician from Helmand who is widely  
distrusted by many members of the international community.

Although many western officials want to sideline Noorzai and give  
oversight to the Afghan army and police, some of the CDI militias  
will build upon the 12,500 militiamen in 22 provinces Noorzai helped  
to set up this summer in the run up to the presidential elections on  
20 August, an official said.

Despite the lack of any announcement about the programme, which could  
radically affect conditions in unstable areas across Afghanistan, it  
has begun in 14 areas in the south, east and west, but is expected to  
extend far beyond that.

Another diplomat in the south-east of the country said in the last  
six weeks special forces have held several meetings with elders in  
restive districts in Paktia, close to the Pakistani border, seeking  
to embed themselves with the local people.

The diplomat said: "It is not clear anything has happened yet, but  
the elders in the area are all seeing dollar signs and very much want  
to qualify for this programme."

According to some western officials, the US government will make a  
pot of $1.3bn (£790m) available for the programme, although the US  
embassy said it could not yet comment on CDI.

A US military spokesman also declined to comment saying the programme  
was still in its early phases and public discussion could jeopardise  
the lives of some of the Afghans involved.

The plan represents a significant change in tack from a scheme  
promoted just last year by General McChrystal's predecessor, David  
McKiernan. The Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF) was piloted in  
Wardak province and involved the rigorous vetting of recruits who  
were then given basic training, a uniform and came under the  
authority of the Afghan police.

"McChrystal was always quite dismissive about APPF," a senior Nato  
official in Kabul said. "It was too resource-intensive and so slow we  
would have lost long before it had been spread to the whole country."

He added: "He wanted to move to a much more informal model, which is  
far less visible and unaccountable, using Noorzai to find people  
through his own networks and then simply paying out cash for them to  
defend their areas."

The US has shared few details of its plans with its allies. The  
programme is controlled by a newly created special forces group that  
reports directly to McChrystal as head of US forces in the country,  
but which sits outside the authority of the International Security  
Assistance Force, the Nato mission in Afghanistan.

_____


[3] Pakistan - India:

The News on Sunday, 22 November 2009

TALK SOONER THAN LATER

If the governments of India and Pakistan cannot start cooperating  
against the common enemy soon enough, today's accusations will become  
facts and tenets of belief tomorrow and serious exchanges will become  
harder than ever

by I. A. Rehman

Hopes of resumption of India-Pakistan dialogue, aroused by Prime  
Minister Manmohan Singh's speech in Srinagar last month, have not  
borne fruit as early as one had expected or wished for. But there is  
some consolation in the fact that both sides seem to be trying to  
overcome whatever reservations on picking up the thread they have.

Mr Manmohan Singh referred to ties with Pakistan at the end of his  
address on building a "new Kashmir", in the course of which he  
declared that "the perpetrators of the acts of terror must pay the  
heaviest penalty for their barbaric crimes against humanity". Then he  
added:

"It is a misplaced idea that one can reach a compromise with the  
ideology of the terrorists or that they can be used for one's own  
political purpose. Eventually they turn against you and bring only  
death and destruction. The real face of the terrorists is clear for  
the people of Pakistan to see with their own eyes. I hope that the  
government of Pakistan will take the ongoing actions against the  
terrorist groups to their logical conclusion. They should destroy  
these groups wherever they are operating and for whatever misguided  
purpose. I call upon the people and the government of Pakistan to  
show their sincerity and good faith. As I have said many times  
before, we will not be found wanting in our response… I appeal to the  
government of Pakistan to carry forward the hand of friendship that  
we have extended. This is in the interest of the people of India and  
Pakistan".

Mr Manmohan Singh was not as eloquent a seeker of peace as he was in  
January 2007 when he had declared: "I dream of a day, while retaining  
our respective national identities, one can have breakfast in  
Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. That is how my  
forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live".  
Still, considering the hiatus in India-Pakistan relations throughout  
the past 12 months the Indian Premier's gesture could only be  
welcomed. This was duly done by the Pakistan Foreign Office but  
subsequently it gave the impression that while Islamabad wanted to  
resume negotiations New Delhi's response was not wholly positive. One  
should like to hope that this impression is not correct and that Mr  
Manmohan Singh sincerely meant what he had said.

It is not difficult to imagine what the obstacles to resumption of  
talks are. Nobody in Pakistan should quarrel with India about its  
reaction to the terrorist raid on Mumbai a year ago. India was  
wounded materially and in its pride at the exposure of a security  
lapse no one could comfortably live with. Not only the government but  
also the people of India were outraged. On the eve of a critically  
important general election the Indian government was under pressure  
to talk tough and reject negotiations with Pakistan until those  
believed to be responsible for terrorism in Mumbai were surrendered.

The impasse caused by Islamabad's inability to concede New Delhi's  
demand was a somewhat expanded version of the earlier disruptions  
following acts of terrorism in Delhi (parliament house) and Mumbai  
(trains). Since Pakistan is unlikely to hand over the persons named  
by India it is required to offer satisfaction in some other form, as  
had happened earlier. General Musharraf was able to keep the  
composite dialogue going without surrendering the man wanted by India  
by promising New Delhi relief in Kashmir. And, after a couple of  
abortive attempts, he did manage to deliver what he had promised. Can  
the present Pakistan government accomplish something similar? And,  
what is more important, can this government be credited with the  
strength to honour its commitments?

This must be one of the critical questions faced by former Foreign  
Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan during his Track Two mission to India.  
One does not know whether his choice for backdoor diplomacy was meant  
to be an atonement for the ungainly way of his removal from the  
Foreign Office, or whether it was an acknowledgment of his  
professional competence, or whether he was given a broad mandate.  
(Incidentally, without questioning Mr Riaz Mohammad Khan's impressive  
credentials, the difficulties Track One diplomacy veterans face in  
descending to Track Two cannot be overlooked.)

It is difficult to believe that meaningful talks with India can be  
revived without a shared understanding that both India and Pakistan  
will give top priority to the task of preventing terrorist attacks  
from across the borders and a clear promise of a joint struggle to  
rid the subcontinent of the spectre of suicidal terrorism.

The reasons for attaching priority to the composite dialogue begun in  
2004 are obvious. It has been the most mature concept of all India- 
Pakistan normalisation exercises. It covers a wide range of issues:  
confidence-building measures related to peace and security; the  
Kashmir issue; Siachin, Sir Creek, Wullar Barrage; terrorism and drug  
trafficking; economic cooperation; and friendly exchanges in various  
fields.

Nobody can deny that some progress has been registered in each of the  
areas indicated above, however small it may appear, especially to  
people who are in a hurry to claim trophies. The point to be  
understood is that the composite dialogue by itself will not end all  
India-Pakistan disputes, disagreements and differences but the  
process could enable the two countries to start appreciating the  
benefits of mutual understanding and friendly cooperation. Only then  
will it be possible to tackle the serious causes of the illogical and  
unaffordable confrontation that has grievously harmed the people of  
both India and Pakistan.

A fresh reason for resuming India-Pakistan dialogue is a palpable  
worsening of their relations. Islamabad continues to accuse India of  
interference in Balochistan. And now it has started blaming India for  
aiding the militants challenging the Pakistan state in the tribal  
region, although one cannot imagine the Indians to have forsaken  
wisdom and prudence to the extent of feeding the genie that is  
threatening not only Pakistan but also India and the rest of South  
Asia. If the governments of India and Pakistan cannot start  
cooperating against the common enemy soon enough, today's accusations  
will become facts and tenets of belief tomorrow and serious exchanges  
will become harder than ever.

Meanwhile, both India and Pakistan will do themselves a great deal of  
good by easing the restrictions on the people-to-people exchanges.  
The people on both sides of the frontier perhaps have a much clearer  
comprehension of the imperatives of normal relations between their  
countries than their rulers do. They are quite capable of helping  
their governments in an orderly descent from the bastions of  
confrontation where they have perched themselves longer than  
warranted by good sense.

_____


[4] Climate Change:

(i) BREAKING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE IMPASSE: INDIA SHOULD SEIZE THE MOMENT!

www.prafulbidwai.org, November 6, 2009

by Praful Bidwai

As the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen approaches, the  
North is trying to shirk its responsibility for climate change and  
pass on a good portion of its burden on to the South’s  
underprivileged people.

A yawning rift has opened up in the climate negotiations just ahead  
of the Copenhagen conference of the UN Framework Convention on  
Climate Change beginning on December 7. It centres on the twin issues  
of responsibility for climate change—unfolding through extreme  
weather events, rising sea-levels and rapid melting of ice-sheets and  
glaciers—, and sharing the burden to remedy it. Going by climate  
science, the responsibility rests primarily with the industrialised  
Global North for its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The North  
accounts for more than three-fourths of GHG concentrations in the  
atmosphere.

However, going by the brutal logic of power, the picture is  
different. The North is trying to shirk its responsibility and pass  
on a good portion of its burden on to the South’s underprivileged  
people. This is doubly unjust: it’s the South’s poor who are most  
vulnerable to climate change. They’re already suffering its  
consequences through more frequent and ferocious cyclones, erratic  
rainfall, increased water scarcity, and growing destruction,  
devastation and death.

The UNFCCC negotiations are deadlocked not just over the percentages  
by which the North must reduce its GHG emissions, or its financial  
obligation to compensate the South. There’s an impasse on fundamentals 
—the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”  
enshrined in the Convention, and a clear distinction between the  
North’s legally binding obligations and the South’s voluntary  
Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), for which it must  
be paid.

These distinctions were written into the UNFCCC’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol  
and the 2007 Bali Action Plan after protracted debate. Kyoto mandated  
the Northern countries, called Annex 1, to cut their emissions from  
their 1990 levels by a modest 5.2 percent during the “first  
commitment period” ending 2012. The target will be missed. In the  
European Union, “the good boy in the climate cast”, only Germany,  
Britain and Sweden will achieve their targets. The worst culprit is  
the United States, which refused to ratify Kyoto, and has raised its  
emissions by 14 percent.

The US under President Obama says it’ll return to the UNFCCC process,  
but at a price: dismantle the Kyoto Protocol, abolish the principle  
of North-South (or any other) differentiation, and negotiate an  
altogether new agreement, which sets ineffective, sub-critical  
targets. Australia has developed such a draft with national  
“schedules” but no internationally binding commitments. If it  
prevails, there’ll be no Kyoto, no differentiated North-South burden- 
sharing, no stringent compliance or penalties. Such a single,  
artificially homogenous and paltry agreement won’t prevent dangerous,  
irreversible climate change.

No deal would be clearly preferable to such a bad deal. But so  
desperate are most Northern countries to bring the US on board at any  
cost that they’re prepared to renege on their own past commitments,  
including each rich country’s “comparable effort” at mitigating  
climate change in proportion to its responsibility and financial- 
technological capacity. This poses a conundrum. The Kyoto Protocol is  
far from perfect; in fact, it’s full of flaws, including low emission  
reduction targets which aren’t firmly linked to GHG concentrations  
and temperatures; omission of aviation and shipping; and lack of  
compliance requirements and penalties. Kyoto promotes the Clean  
Development Mechanism under which polluting Northern corporations get  
generous emissions quotas. If they exceed them, they needn’t cut  
emissions, as would be logical. Instead, they can buy cheap carbon  
credits from Southern projects, which supposedly cut or avert emissions.

Most CDM projects do nothing of the sort. For instance, two-thirds of  
Indian credits are earned by two companies which first produce a GHG  
refrigerant called HFC-23, and then destroy it! Most of the dams for  
which credits are claimed worldwide were already under construction  
or completed before applying for CDM. The Corrupt Destructive  
Mechanism lets the North buy its way out of emissions cuts—and buy it  
cheap.

Kyoto needs reform. But it does have a rational kernel. That lies in  
its acknowledgement of the rich countries’ historical responsibility  
for climate change. Kyoto imposes quantifiable emissions reduction  
obligations on them. It’s the only legally binding climate agreement  
the world has, with time-bound targets. It would be dangerous to  
abandon it for a loose unenforceable deal. The US wants to do just that.

The Southern countries, represented by the G-77+China bloc, have  
strongly defended the Protocol as “an international and legally  
binding treaty and the most important instrument embedding the  
commitment of Annex 1 parties”, collectively and individually. The  
proposed new agreement would “drastically water down” their  
commitments. Most Northern countries’ rationale for supporting it is  
that it might be able to include the US. However, says the G-77,  
going out of a binding protocol with collective and individual  
targets into a new agreement without internationally binding targets  
means “taking the international climate regime many steps backwards”.  
Besides, the US may not even sign the agreement.

The developed countries indeed want to dilute their commitments.  
Instead of the 25-40 percent emissions reductions by 2020 (over  
1990), recommended by climate scientists in 2007, and the 40-45  
percent needed in the light of recent scientific developments, they  
have only made reduction pledges of 16-23 percent, excluding the US.  
If the US climate bill’s target is included, the figure falls to  
11-18 percent and 10-23 percent, according to different estimates.  
Such reductions won’t stabilise the climate. The G-77+China is right  
in criticising these measly offers as a breach of trust. The Climate  
Convention was a grand bargain, under which the North would lead in  
emissions reductions as part of a global cooperative effort.

India must stiffly oppose the North’s attempt to renege on that  
bargain. Yet, certain lobbies want India to dump the G-77 for more  
exclusive groupings. The G-77 represents 130-odd Southern countries,  
the bulk of them poor and backward, as are most of India’s people.  
But these lobbies want India to join the world’s High Table by  
signing a bad climate deal that pleases the North. Most Indian  
diplomats privately speak of the developing countries and Non- 
Alignment with contempt and antipathy. Some want India aligned with  
the US in the climate talks.

That’s the crux of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s leaked letter  
to Prime Minister Singh, in which he explicitly asks that India  
should “not stick with G-77 but be embedded in G-20 …” Mr Ramesh also  
writes: “If the Australian proposal … maintains this basic  
distinction … of differential obligations we should have no great  
theological objections.” But the Australian proposal demolishes the  
distinction.

This is a recipe for a confused, unprincipled climate stand, which is  
unworthy of a nation that aspires to global leadership. Its advocates  
are only concerned with the narrow interests of the Indian elite,  
barely one-tenth of the population, which is addicted to high- 
consumption lifestyles and rising emissions. The elite doesn’t want a  
strong climate deal because that’ll restrain its consumption. A  
majority of Indians, by contrast, have a stake in a strong deal  
because the burden of climate change which falls disproportionately  
on them will grow under a weak deal.

A principled approach to the climate negotiations must put the poor  
at the centre and acknowledge that the climate crisis and the  
developmental crisis—which perpetuates poverty—are integrally linked.  
Climate change will aggravate poverty and exacerbate inequality,  
undoing the right of the poor to fulfil their basic human needs and  
live with dignity. It’s imperative to combine developmental equity  
and poverty eradication with climate effectiveness. A defining  
criterion of a strong climate deal is that it reduces the burden on  
the underprivileged.

India will face hard choices at Copenhagen, where several scenarios  
are conceivable—from optimistic to middling outcomes, to complete  
collapse. The best scenario is one where the North makes deep, early  
emissions cuts (40 percent by 2020); the bigger Southern countries  
agree to 15-25 percent voluntary cuts (NAMAs); and there’s adequate  
funding. Under a middling scenario, there’ll be a strong agreement on  
fundamentals, but not on emissions cuts and finances; nevertheless,  
all agree to negotiate numbers within a time-bound period.

Of course, the talks may collapse because there’s no agreement on  
anything and some countries walk out. This would be unfortunate. But  
the truly nightmarish scenario is one which “greenwashes” a bad  
agreement: the North agrees to low and paltry cuts such as 7-15  
percent by 2020, with no compliance or penalties, and only a fraction  
of the funding needed materialises. Such a deal will fail to  
stabilise the climate, but lock the world into an emissions-intensive  
trajectory that aggravates both climate change and the developmental  
crisis.

India should walk out of the talks rather than agree to such  
“greenwash”. In the few weeks left before Copenhagen, India should do  
its utmost to consolidate the G-77+China position, lobby Northern  
governments, including the US, when Dr Singh meets President Obama  
late this month, and make voluntary commitments to show that it’s  
more serious about combating climate change than appears—thanks to  
its ambivalence on Himalayan glacier melting and its lip service to  
poverty eradication, even while practising elitist policies. India  
must be flexible on transparency and generous on delivering modern  
energy services to its poor. But it should be hardnosed about holding  
the North’s feet to the fire. There must be no compromise here.


o o o

(ii)

Deccan Chronicle, 20 November 2009

PRIVATISING ATMOSPHERE

by Vandana Shiva

The UNITED Nations climate change conference at Copenhagen next month  
is meant to further the goals of a global environmental treaty — the  
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In  
1988, a resolution of the UN General Assembly considered the climate  
change matter as a “common concern for mankind”, and the Inter- 
governmental Panel on Climate Change was created. On May 9, 1992, the  
UNFCCC was adopted in New York and opened for signing in June 1992 at  
the Earth Summit in Rio. It came into effect on March 21, 1994.
The goal of the Convention, according to Article 2, is to “stabilise  
the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level  
that prevents all dangerous anthropogenic disturbance of the climate  
system”. Since the historic polluters were the rich, industrialised  
countries, the Convention required that by 2000 they stabilise their  
greenhouse gas emissions at their 1990 level.
Under the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto on  
December 11, 1997. The Kyoto Protocol set binding targets on  
industrialised countries for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions  
to an average of five per cent against the 1990 levels over a five  
year period, 2008 to 2012.
However, in 2007, America’s greenhouse gas levels were 16 per cent  
higher than their 1990 levels. The much-announced Waxman Markey  
“American Clean Energy and Security Act” commits the US to 17 per  
cent emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2020. However, this is  
a mere four per cent below their 1990 levels.
Further, the emissions trading or offsets, in fact, are a mechanism  
to not reduce emissions at all. As the Breakthrough Institute in  
United States, “a small think tank with big ideas”, states “If fully  
utilised, the emissions ‘offset’ in the American Clean Energy and  
Security Act would allow continued business as usual growth in the US  
greenhouse gas emissions until 2030, leading one to wonder: where’s  
the ‘cap’ in the ‘cap and trade’”.
The Kyoto Protocol allows industrialised countries to trade their  
allocation of carbon emissions among themselves (Article 17). It also  
allows an investor in an industrialised country (industry or  
government) to invest in an eligible carbon mitigation project in a  
developing country and be credited with Certified Emission Reduction  
Units that can be used by investors to meet their obligation to  
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is referred to as the Clean  
Development Mechanism under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. The  
Kyoto Protocol gave 38 industrialised countries, that were the worst  
historical polluters, emissions rights. The European Union Emissions  
Trading Scheme rewarded 11,428 industrial installations with carbon  
dioxide emissions rights. Through emissions trading, Larry Lohmann,  
the co-author of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate  
Change, Privatisation and Power, observes, “Rights to the earth’s  
carbon cycling capacity are gravitating into the hands of those who  
have the most power to appropriate them and the most financial  
interest to do so”. That such schemes are more about privatising the  
atmosphere than preventing climate change is made clear by the fact  
that emissions rights given away in the Kyoto Protocol were several  
times higher than the levels needed to prevent a two-degree-celsius  
rise in global temperatures.
Just as patents generate super profits for pharmaceutical and seed  
corporations, emissions rights generate super profits for polluters.  
The Emissions Trading Scheme granted allowances of 10 per cent more  
than 2005 emission levels; this translated to 150 million tonnes of  
surplus carbon credits which, with the 2005 average price of $7.23  
per ton, translates to over $1 billion of free money.
The UK’s allocations for the British industry added up to 736 million  
tonnes of carbon dioxide over three years, which implied no reduction  
commitments. Since no restrictions are being put on northern  
industrial polluters, they will continue to pollute and there will be  
no reduction in CO2 emissions.
Market solutions in the form of emissions trading are thus doing the  
opposite of the environmental principle that the polluter should pay.  
Through emissions, trading private polluters are getting more rights  
and more control over the atmosphere which rightfully belongs to all  
life on the planet. Emissions trading “solutions” pay the polluter.
Carbon trading is based on inequality because it privatised the  
commons. It is also based on inequality because it uses the resources  
of poorer people and poorer regions as “offsets”. It is considered to  
be 50 to 200 times cheaper to plant trees in poorer countries to  
absorb CO2 than reducing it at source. The Stern Review states,  
“Emissions trading schemes can deliver least cost emissions  
reductions by allowing reductions to occur wherever they are  
cheapest”. In other words, the burden of “clean up” falls on the  
poor. In a market calculus, this might appear efficient. In an  
ecological calculus, it would be far more effective to reduce  
emissions at source. And in an energy justice perspective, it is  
perverse to burden the poor twice — first with the externality of  
impacts of CO2 pollution in the form of climate disasters and then  
with the burden of remediating the pollution of the rich and powerful.
It is because of this failure of the rich countries to cut back on  
emissions that the global climate negotiations are not moving  
forward. When secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited India in  
April 2009 and tried to apply pressure on India to cut back on  
emissions, Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh responded: “Even  
with eight-nine per cent GDP annual growth for the next decade or  
two, our per capita emissions will be well below developed country  
averages. There is simply no case for the pressure we face to reduce  
emissions”.
When Ms Clinton stated that the per capital argument “loses force as  
developing countries rapidly become the biggest emitters”, Mr Ramesh  
replied that India’s position on per capita emissions is “not a  
debating strategy” because it is enshrined in international  
agreements. “We look upon you suspiciously because you have not  
fulfilled what developed countries pledged to fulfilled”, he said  
candidly. The failure of the rich countries to fulfill their climate  
obligations has created a “crisis of credibility”.
The US is leading the dismantling of the UNFCCC. At the Bangkok  
negotiations, the lead negotiator of the US said: “We are not going  
to be part of an agreement that we cannot meet. We say a new  
agreement has to be signed by all countries. We cannot be stuck with  
an agreement that is 20 years old. We want action from all  
countries”. The proposal of the US is to get out of the legally- 
binding UNFCC, to set targets nationally which could be noted down in  
a new international agreement, without it being legally binding  
internationally and without a people compliance mechanism.
Copenhagen is supposed to evolve new commitments for Annexure I  
countries for the post-Kyoto period. The science of climate change  
tells us the five per cent reduction commitments of Kyoto are too  
small, 80 to 90 per cent reduction is needed to keep air pollution at  
350ppm and temperature increase within 2°C to avoid catastrophic  
climate change. Instead of taking on their legally-binding  
commitments and deepening cuts, the rich countries want to abandon  
UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.
The press release of October 9, 2009, from the G-77 and China  
categorically stated: “This is simply unacceptable. It would betray  
the trust of the world public that is demanding a major step forward  
and not a major step backwards, in developed countries commitments  
and actions. We will also consider the Copenhagen COP meeting to be a  
disastrous failure if there is no outcome for the commitments period  
of the Kyoto Protocol”.
The UNFCCC is the only international agreement we have in the context  
of climate change. The challenge at Copenhagen is to prevent its  
dismantling. The global environmental movement needs to throw its  
weight behind the countries of the South who are trying their best to  
uphold the climate treaty.

* Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust


_____


[5] India:

The Telegraph, 20 November 2009

THE SPLIT REALITY - Adivasis, Salva Judm and the State: who is  
provoking whom?
by Ashok Mitra

Bastar tribal people at the Araku Valley market

Some news is considered more worth publicizing than some other news.  
This is part of an essential discipline, for otherwise we will remain  
perennially buried under an avalanche of data, information and  
gossip. The wheat, never mind the change of metaphor, has to be  
separated from the chaff. The media perform this task. Occasionally  
the government of the land helps the media to do the choosing: the  
authorities have their own views on what is printable and what is not.

The prime minister had recently convened a conference of chief  
ministers to discuss the ways and means for implementing the  
Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition  
of Rights) Act, passed by Parliament in 2006. The Union ministers of  
state for environment and forests as well as for tribal affairs were  
in attendance. Most of the chief ministers, however, stayed away;  
they obviously had more important matters to deal with on the day.  
The only exception was the chief minister of Orissa.

The absence of chief ministers did not deter the prime minister from  
unburdening himself. There has been, he said, a systemic failure in  
giving the nation’s adivasis a stake in the breathtaking economic  
progress the country is experiencing. On the other hand, the  
development process has actually led to an encroachment on both the  
living space and the means of livelihood of the tribal population.  
Such alienation of the adivasis from the national mainstream has  
persisted over decades. But enough ought to be enough, the social and  
economic exploitation of the tribal communities could not be  
tolerated any longer. The 2006 act, the prime minister told his  
listeners, embodies the government’s resolve to reverse the trend.  
The nation’s energy and resources must be fully mobilized to make  
effective the provisions of the act. The Union and state governments  
have to move together in the matter, and it would be necessary to  
‘factor in’ the different nuances of tribals living in different  
parts of the country.

The prime minister drew attention to the need to improve rules and  
procedures to ensure prompt and adequate compensation to tribal  
people displaced from their habitat because of on-going development  
projects. That apart, the tribal people, he emphasized, must also  
directly benefit from these projects. Mere monetary compensation for  
land taken over and provision of alternative sources of income could  
hardly be the end of the matter. Preservation of traditional culture  
is of equal importance. The act, the prime minister asserted,  
addresses itself to these problems. He urged the chief ministers to  
post committed and competent officers in tribal areas who could cope  
with the challenge of the responsibilities assigned to them and  
interact with the tribal communities with tact, understanding and  
friendliness. At the same time, he urged the adivasis to eschew acts  
of violence; sustained economic activity is not possible under the  
shadow of the gun.

The media spared no efforts to give wide coverage to the contents of  
the prime minister’s speech. It was of tremendous significance in the  
context of aggravated Maoist violence in the country’s tribal  
hinterland. The prime minister, it was generally recognized, had  
spoken with great restraint as well as great civilization.

But the media happen to be choosy too, and the authorities encourage  
them to be choosy. While the prime minister’s address, oozing noble  
intentions, received saturation coverage, a veil of silence has  
descended on the findings of a certain official committee. The  
committee on state agrarian relations and unfinished tasks of land  
reform was set up in January last year under the chairmanship of the  
then Union minister for rural development under the auspices of his  
ministry. The committee submitted its report in March this year to  
the present Union minister for rural development, and is now  
available as an official publication. Chapter IV of the report has a  
couple of concluding paragraphs, which are being quoted in full.

“A civil-war-like situation has gripped the southern districts of  
Bastar, Dantewada and Bijapur in Chattishgarh. The contestants are  
the armed squads of tribal men and women of the erstwhile Peoples War  
Group now known as the Communist Party of India (Maoist) on the one  
side and the armed tribal fighters of the Salva Judm created and  
encouraged by the government and supported with the firepower and  
organization of the central police forces. This open declared war  
will go down as the biggest land grab ever, if it plays out as per  
the script. The drama being scripted by Tata Steel and Essar Steel  
who wanted 7 villages or thereabouts, each to mine the richest lode  
of iron ore available in India. There was initial resistance to land  
acquisition and displacement from the tribals. The state withdrew its  
plans under fierce resistance. An argument put forward was ‘you don’t  
play foul with the Murias’, it’s a matter of life and death and  
Murias don’t fear death. A new approach was necessary if the rich  
lodes of iron ore are to be mined. The new approach came about with  
the Salva Judm, euphemistically meaning ‘peace hunt’. Ironically the  
Salva Judm was led by Mahendra Karma, elected on a Congress ticket  
and the Leader of the Opposition and supported wholeheartedly by the  
BJP led government. The Salva Judm was headed and peopled by the  
Murias, some of them erstwhile cadre and local leaders of the  
Communist Party of India (Maoist). Behind them are the traders,  
contractors and miners waiting for a successful result of their  
strategy.

“The first financiers of the Salva Judm were the Tata and the Essar  
groups in the quest for ‘peace’. The first onslaught of the Salva  
Judm was on Muria villagers who still owed allegiance to the  
Communist Party of India (Maoist). It turned out to be an open war  
between brothers. 640 villages as per official statistics were laid  
bare, burnt to the ground and emptied with the force of the gun and  
the blessings of the state. 350,000 tribals, half the total  
population of Dantewada district are displaced, their womenfolk  
raped, their daughters killed, and their youth maimed. Those who  
could not escape into the jungle were herded together into refugee  
camps run and managed by the Salva Judm. Others continue to hide in  
the forest or have migrated to the nearby tribal tracts in  
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. 640 villages are empty.  
Villages sitting on tons of iron ore are effectively de-peopled and  
available for the highest bidder. The latest information that is  
being circulated is that both Essar Steel and Tata Steel are willing  
to take over the empty landscape and manage the mines.”

One is suddenly made aware of the two-level reality defining our  
nation. At one level, we have the gushing rate of GDP growth, the  
ever-expanding list of Indian billionaires, perfunctory talk of  
making the growth process inclusive, and the prime minister’s  
stentorious declaration to put an end to tribal exploitation  
alongside advice to the adivasis to abjure violence. The other level  
is the state of things depicted in the paragraphs reproduced from the  
report submitted to the Union minister for urban development. It is  
not a report prepared by some civil liberty zealots. It is a formal  
official report which narrates in lurid detail what is happening on  
the ground notwithstanding the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional  
Forest Dweller (Recognition of Rights) Act and in total contradiction  
of the prime minister’s honey-soaked words.

It would be outrageous for the authorities to pretend innocence about  
the gruesome occurrences in the 640 villages in the district of  
Dantewada. Officers must have known, ruling politicians must have  
known too. A few officers and influential politicians must have also  
colluded with the perpetrators of the grisly acts of massacre and  
pillage that took place there. No development activity is possible,  
according to the prime minister, under the shadow of the gun. Will  
he, please, identify the wielders of the guns in this instance? Or  
will he repudiate the findings of a committee set up by his own  
government?

A goody-goody piece of legislation passed in New Delhi cannot  
override ground reality. There is, beside, an issue of semantics as  
well: what is violence and what is counter-violence? A small news  
item last week mentioned that a guesthouse run by an industrial group  
in the forests of Orissa was attacked by a group of tribals. This  
particular industrial group is one of the major financiers of the  
Salva Judm in Chattisgarh. Who provoked whom?


_____


[6] India: Resources For Secular Activists

(i)

The Daily Star, November 21, 2009

WITHER IDEA OF INDIA

by Kuldip Nayar

IT is happening too often and it is too vicious. Parochialism is  
rearing its ugly head in Mumbai too frequently. The Shiv Sena is  
threatening to throw out "outsiders" from the city and the rest of  
Maharashtra. Self-centred party chief Bal Thackery has created a  
ruckus once again, this time dragging into controversy Sachin  
Tendulkar, the world's best batsman, who said after the 20th year of  
playing cricket that he was proud to be a Maharashtrian but he was  
Indian first. How should this remark irritate anybody? Still the  
shrill voice is coming from Mumbai.

I think it is time that Mumbai be made a Union Territory.  
Industrially and commercially, it is the hub of India's financial  
activity. Delhi is a Union Territory because it is the centre of the  
country's political activity. Why should Mumbai, which is India's  
financial capital, have a different status from that of Delhi?

People from the various part of the country have settled in Mumbai,  
making large investments and contributing their labour and  
entrepreneurship for decades to make Mumbai what it is today. More  
money has come from others, not the Maharashtrians. Even population- 
wise, my impression is that the non-Maharashtrians are a bit up. (A  
claim for joint control by Andhra Pradesh of Madras was rejected  
because two-thirds of the latter's population was Tamil speaking.)

If nothing else, the contribution by "outsiders" should shut up the  
Shiv Sena and its ilk, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, from saying that  
they are a burden on Mumbai or that the jobs in the state should be  
given to the Maharashtrians alone. This pernicious thesis, the son-of- 
the-soil articulation, was advanced by many states, including  
Maharashtra, before the Fazl Ali States Reorganisation Commission in  
1955. It firmly rejected the various claims and held: "It is the  
Union of India that is the basis of our nationality." In its report,  
the Commission said that "it (Bombay) has acquired its present  
commanding position by the joint endeavour of the different language  
groups."

The proposal that Bombay should be constituted as a separate unit was  
first mooted by the Dar Commission when the Constituent Assembly was  
debating in 1949 the formation of linguistic states. The then ruling  
Congress party accepted the proposal for the reorganisation of states.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru took fancy to the idea of keeping  
Bombay apart. He pushed it when Maharashtra and Gujarat were  
agitating against the Commission's recommendation to integrate them  
into one, bi-lingual state. Nehru presented before the cabinet a  
proposal to have three units: Maharashtra, Gujarat and the city of  
Bombay. The then finance minister, C.D. Deshmukh, agreed to the  
formula. But he changed his stand following the furore in Maharashtra  
and submitted his resignation from the government. Bombay was made  
part of Maharashtra.

Nevertheless, the linguistic states have not been of much help to the  
country. They are increasingly becoming "islands of chauvinism." The  
son-of-the-soil thesis is having precedence. This was the danger to  
which Nehru drew attention after new boundaries were drawn on the  
basis of language. The BJP-run Madhya Pradesh is the latest one to  
announce that it does not want the Bihari labour.

Unfortunately, the manner in which certain administrations have  
conducted their affairs has partly contributed to the growth of  
parochial sentiments. The rulers have an eye on elections, not  
realising that the idea of India gets defeated if people have the  
domicile considerations at the top.

After the formation of states, it was understood that the regional  
language could be learnt after the recruitment. But now its knowledge  
has been made compulsory before a person is eligible for a job. This  
is making the state services an exclusive preserve of the majority  
language group of the state.

The prosperity of some states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu  
and Karnataka has raised questions in UP, Bihar and Orissa, the  
economically backward areas, that they were not getting their due.  
Relations between the centre and the states have become strained on  
this count, and they get aggravated when the states are hit by flood  
or scarcity.

Such dangers have beleaguered India since independence. The country's  
unity has been the uppermost in the mind of policy makers. There have  
been a few movements here and there, raising the standard of  
autonomy. But the democratic system with a federal structure,  
established firmly after the introduction of the constitution in  
1950, has taken the wind out of the separatists' sail in the country.  
Except for a few militants' organisations in the Northeast, the  
people's heart is in the country's unity.

In the late fifties, the southern states generally felt that they  
were not getting their share. There were agitations and public  
rallies. Nehru was quick to convene a National Integration Conference  
to discuss the different grievances and points of view. The  
conference appointed many committees to give their recommendations on  
how to bring about national integration.

Before they could submit the reports, China attacked India in 1962.  
All committees made just one comment: The Chinese invasion had united  
the entire country. Indeed, this was true because all dissenting  
voices died in no time. Even the Chinese were surprised because their  
assessment before hostilities was that India was disintegrating.

The country had a jolt in the eighties. The Akalis in Punjab  
revolted. The state was in the midst of militancy for about a decade.  
The Sikhs themselves turned against the militants who had made their  
life hell. Punjab is today one of the peaceful states.

The odd voice of linguistic chauvinism, the fallout of the  
reorganisation of the states in 1955, has been heard in some areas  
off and on. The real purpose has been to gain votes in the name of  
the "step-motherly treatment" meted out to a particular community. It  
must be admitted that slogans in the name of language or caste have  
helped.

The only state where parochialism has been constantly fostered by  
Shiv Sena is Maharashtra. The group even once won an election with  
the support of the BJP, on the slogan: "Throw out outsiders from  
Maharashtra." The Bihari labourers were beaten up, something which  
Raj Thackery, nephew of Bal Thackery, repeated after breaking away  
from the Shiv Sena.

No doubt, the basis of nationality is the Union of India. The states  
are but the limbs of the Union. Yet the limbs must be healthy and  
strong. Some states have too many poor people concentrated in their  
territory. Yet, what keeps India together is its diversity. By  
dividing the country into linguistic spheres or by injuring the  
rights of those who are in a minority, the parochial elements are  
posing a danger to the very idea of India. It is better that  
organisations like the Shiv Sena understand this.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.

o o o

(ii)

The Times of India, 21 November 2009

HE DOESN'T ROAR BUT MEWS

by Dileep Padgaonkar

For three decades Bal Thackeray has ranted about one issue or the  
other with dollops of coarse humour to the delight of his flock and  
the wrath

of his detractors. Early in his political journey he realized that to  
achieve success he needed to exploit the insecurities of the urban,  
middle and lower middle class Maharashtrians. They had been left far  
behind by the enterprising Jains, Gujaratis, Sindhis, Punjabis, south  
Indians and north Indians. The feverish rhetoric of regional  
identity, he reckoned, would mobilise the Marathi manoos more  
effectively than the tall talk of progress, secularism and national  
pride.

And so it is that he directed his ire first at the 'Madrasis', then,  
high on the heady brew of Hindutva, at the Muslims and finally  
against the 'Bhaiyyas' of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Time and again the  
arms he deployed against these communities proved to be lethal:  
intimidation, threats, harassment and, with growing intensity, raw  
violence. These were the times when one statement at a Shivaji Park  
rally, one editorial in the party organ Samnaa, one order issued from  
Matoshri, his Bandra residence, could shut down Mumbai and send his  
opponents cowering for cover.

Thackeray had the means, and the gall, to "teach a lesson" to anyone  
who crossed his path: a defector, builder, film star, businessman,  
underworld don or journalist who failed to pay obeisance to the  
Supremo. In such instances, he showed a sovereign disregard for the  
rule of law and constitutional niceties. He placed himself on a  
pedestal higher than the highest court in the land.

That is why he could gloat over his 'achievements' that included the  
felling of the Babri masjid and the wave of violence he unleashed  
against Muslims in Mumbai. None of this would have been possible had  
his declared adversaries, the Congress and especially the NCP, not  
played footsie with him. But that Faustian deal was Thackeray's  
insurance against arrest and prosecution.

The idyll was too good to last. The deaths of a son and of his wife  
shattered him. He became more vulnerable when close associates began  
to abandon the ship. Age, too, had started to take its toll. But what  
crippled him was the crisis that gripped the family. In the bitter  
fight between his son, Uddhav, and his nephew, Raj, to take control  
of the party, Thackeray cast his lot with the son. But the son could  
simply not match his cousin's charisma, organisational abilities,  
determination or his rapacious ambition.

The result was obvious in the recent assembly polls when the MNS  
outsmarted the Shiv Sena reducing it to a sideshow. This should have  
encouraged Bal Thackeray to introspect. He did nothing of the sort.  
Instead, he chose to revile the Marathi manoos for stabbing him in  
the back. Later he sought to make some amends. His statement, he  
argued, was made not in a fit of anger but merely to express a benign  
patriarch's feelings of hurt over the conduct of his errant progeny.  
It triggered a fusillade of ridicule.

Hardly had the dust raised by the display of 'hurt feelings' begun to  
settle down than Thackeray fired another diatribe. This time the  
target was none other than a national icon: Sachin Tendulkar. The  
nation, and the world at large, applauded him as a cricketer beyond  
compare. But India discovered another, immensely attractive side of  
him when he declared that he placed his Indian identity above his  
Maharashtrian identity. He took great pride in both but his  
priorities were clear. Add to this his assertion that Mumbai belonged  
to all Indians.

Bal Thackeray, ever eager to seize the initiative from nephew Raj,  
gave Sachin an 'affectionate' earful. The ploy misfired. Sachin has  
emerged from this episode as an enlightened citizen of the republic,  
one who bears not the slightest taint of any sort of parochialism  
and, by that token, represents the face of a modern, self-confident  
and pluralistic India. In the process, he has exposed Bal Thackeray  
the troubadour of communal strife and regional chauvinism and the  
destroyer of Bombay's much cherished cosmopolitan character for what  
he has become today: a caricature of his former self with nothing but  
bile flowing in his veins. He cannot, or will not, read the writing  
on the wall. It says: your time is up.

o o o

(iii)

Mail Today, 23 November 2009

THE FIST IS MIGHTIER THAN PEN IN INDIA

by Mahesh Rangarajan

THE attack on the leading Marathi editor Nikhil Wagle and two offices  
may be shocking but are not surprising.

There has been, in urban Maharashtra a palpable sense of crisis in  
the Shiv Sena about the new outfit by Raj Thackeray having stolen its  
thunder. The leading writer Shobha De, no less, even singled out the  
younger man as having “ felt the pulse of the street” in the recently  
concluded State Assembly polls.

The Shiv Sena was in crisis. What better way to retrieve lost ground  
than intimidating an editor and his staff whose only defence lies in  
pen, camera and computer board? The fist it appears in India of 2009  
is far mightier than the pen, the muscle of the bully over the word.  
It is not a party or a leader who alone should be singled out. It is  
the very nature of politics that sees bravery and courage in the  
politics of intimidation.

It is not an editor or a media house that is under threat. It is the  
right of free speech, the freedom to express one’s views, the  
freedom, within bounds of the law and decency, to cause offence.

Were dissent to die, democracy would be lifeless. Were free speech to  
end, the country would be akin to a prison. The very defence of the  
Shiv Sena speaks volumes. The editor, its leaders say, had caused  
offence several times to the Marathi people. The people of one of  
India’s largest states, one that gave this country some of its finest  
sons and daughters, the home of reformers who reshaped the course of  
our joint history, are now said to be in crisis.

First, it was the campaign against the so called outsiders, the taxi  
drivers and chatwalahs who make Mumbai their home so they can remit  
money to pay for a child’s education, lessen the burden of farm  
family back home in the plains of the Ganga.

Now, it is Maharashtrians who dare to differ with the tiger of the  
Shiv Sena. After all, more than four decades ago this was how a  
cartoonist launched a career in the arena of politics. First it was  
Communists, and then it was south Indians. Over the last two decades,  
the targets have shifted, sometimes this minority and sometimes that  
one.

All along the larger parties have watched, waited and struck deals  
when it suited them. The Congress saw in the rise of the Sena in VP  
Naik’s long tenure as chief minister, the perfect stick to beat  
labour unions and leftists with. By the late Eighties, defence of  
saffron, a colour associated traditionally with renunciation, was  
pressed into service for the pursuit of power.

Protest

The tighter of the Sena and the lotus flower of the ascendant  
Bharatiya Janata Party took them to the position of a powerful  
Opposition in Mumbai and New Delhi and made them partners in power in  
the state as well as Centre.

It is striking how nearly 17 years on, the massacres of Mumbai have  
gone unpunished, the leader of a party who day in and out referred to  
practitioners of faith as ‘ harive saap’ or green serpants, found the  
police and the ministers could not find a clause in the Criminal  
Procedure Code that he had violated.

What the elder Thackeray did, the younger soon excelled at. In 2004,  
aspirants coming to Mumbai to appear for a railway entrance exam were  
beaten up on the railway stations, with the police as mute spectator.  
‘ Ask not for whom the bell tolls’, the poet John Donne wrote, ‘ it  
tolls for thee.’ But what is striking about the Maharashtra of today  
like the Gujarat of today, is how few voices are raised in protest.  
In Pune, where a mob attacked and vandalised the Bhandarkar Oriental  
Research Institute, barely a few down men and women, mostly aged  
litterateurs, many since deceased, gathered to protest.

This ability to garner support for the right to speak is lifeblood  
for democracy.

It is but natural that an opinion should cause offence and that a  
view should provoke others to disagree with its proponent.

Of course, the tradition of trying to wrest the public space over to  
one group and deny others any voice at all is not new or novel to  
India or Maharashtra in particular.

Precedent

Ramakrishna Govind Bhandarkar, the great historian and Orientalist  
himself was witness to the power of the mob when he clashed with Bal  
Gangadhar Tilak on the issue of the Age of Consent Bill. In the  
1890s, the government, under pressure from social reformers embarked  
upon a new legislation. This was not a revolutionary measure: it  
would simply have raised the age of consent for Hindu girls from ten  
to the age of twelve years.

The measure, much like prohibitions on Sati earlier in that century,  
was attacked by conservatives.

Leading the group were nationalists who were proud to be extremists  
in opposition to the Raj. The law they felt would endanger the family  
and interfere with religion. The Shastra would give way to secular  
legislation.

Voices were raised in support of the measure.

Among them was Vivekananda who asked if religion meant being a mother  
at a tender age.

There was Jyotiba Phule who saw this as the orthodoxy shackling  
women’s rights. Bhandarkar for his part contested the readings of the  
Shastra. He drew on his formidable knowledge of Sanskrit to show  
there was no such sanction in the Shastra for under age marriage.

The extremists were not able to hold ground. But they struck at a  
weaker target. The Parsi social reformer Bahram Shah Malabari was  
assaulted in public. The Reform Conference had its stage broken up  
and its speakers forcibly dispersed. Malabari was publicly attacked  
and in print. He was, the articles said, a Parsi who dare not meddle  
in the affairs of Hindus.

Community came before nation, and culture before women’s rights. And  
needless to add, coercive power ranked above free speech.

The campaign against the age of consent had an ugly side, a mood of  
intolerance, a streak of fanaticism.

It did not merely differ with its opponents. It sought to crush them,  
literally and physically. It is a different matter that social reform  
continued. Its spirit did not break.

Failure

Such incidents are easy to dismiss as the products of personal  
ambition and the petty affairs of parties and factions. But this  
might be to err and err seriously. It is not a paper or a channel, an  
essay or its contents that are at stake. It is the failure all round  
of so much more.

First, the failure of the government to do its minimal duty to  
protect those that need the shield of the law. Equally so, it has to  
wield the law to bring to account the accused. Further, it is the  
silence of the many. It is this as much as state inaction that  
emboldens the bully.

It is the idea of an India that gives us all our space to live,  
breathe and speak in. How can a country be part free and part  
silenced? If the ruling party is serious about being claimant to a  
liberal space, the time for deeds has come. Deeds, not words. Or else  
the nightmare in Mumbai and Pune will be one for all of India.

The writer teaches history in Delhi University

_____


[7] Announcements:

Invitation to  Report Release of the Independent Citizens’ Fact  
Finding Mission to Manipur (5th – 8th November 2009) & Panel Discussion

Democracy 'Encountered' Rights Violations in Manipur


To be released by Prof. Randhir Singh

Followed by a panel discussion with Tapan Bose, Shoma Chaudhury and  
Babloo Loitongbam

Date: 23rd November    Time: 3:00pm

Venue: Basement Lecture Hall, India International Centre (IIC) Annex,  
Lodhi Road, New Delhi

The widely reported fake encounter killing of Chungkham Sanjit and  
Rabina Devi (5 months pregnant) on July 23rd 2009 and the arrests and  
arbitrary detention of several noted environmental and human rights  
activists under various laws like National Security Act, 1980;  
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, created a ripple of  
reactions, within the media, the general public and the Government.  
In this context, a team of concerned citizens undertook a fact  
finding mission to Maniour from 5-8 November to investigate and  
report their findings on the state of heightened tensions and civil  
unrest in Manipur.


The Independent Citizens’ Mission comprised of Dr. K.S. Subramanian,  
IPS (retd.), formerly of the Manipur-Tripura cadre and currently  
Visiting Professor, Jamia Millia University, New Delhi, Shri. Sumit  
Chakravartty, Editor - Mainstream, Kavita Srivastava, National  
Secretary PUCL, and Vasundhara Jairath representing Delhi Solidarity  
Group. Shri. Prabhash Joshi, veteran Hindi journalist and a  
consistent voice against violation of human rights, who was to join  
the team on November 6 and had expressed grave concern over the  
situation in Manipur, sadly passed away due to a cardiac arrest on  
5th night. This report will also be a dedication to his un-daunting  
commitment to justice, peace and free speech, particularly in the  
field of journalism.


The report will be released by Prof. Randhir Singh, former Professor  
of Political Theory, University of Delhi and author of several books  
on left politics in India.The release will be followed by a short  
panel discussion on the situation in Manipur and the report findings.  
The panelists are:

     * Tapan Kumar Bose, General Secretary, Pakistan-India Peoples’  
Forum for Peace and Democracy and is also associated with the South  
Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR)
     * Shoma Chaudhury, noted journalist and Editor (Features), Tehelka
     * Babloo Loitiongbam, Executive Director, Human Rights Alert,  
Manipur


On behalf of organising groups,

Purnima, Intercultural Resources (9711178868)
Benny, Focus on Global South (9873921191)
Vijayan, Delhi Forum (9868165471)
Wilfred, INSAF (09825171919)
Madhuresh, NAPM Delhi (9818905316)



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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/

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