SACW | Dec 1-2, 2009 / Sri Lanka militarism / Balochistan / Siachen / Liberhan Report / Goa: Hindu right / Bhopal Anniversary
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Tue Dec 1 19:58:35 CST 2009
South Asia Citizens Wire | December 1-2, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2672 -
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] Sri Lanka: The president and the general (Himal)
[2] Pakistan - India: Let's start with Siachen (Dr. Saleem H. Ali)
[3] Pakistan: Balochistan - too small an olive branch (Qurratulain
Zaman)
[4] India: Resources For Secular Activists
(i) 17 Years since 6 December 1992 (Editorial, EPW)
(ii) The Liberhan Report: What Should It Mean? (Badri Raina)
(iii) Read Babri report right (Rajeev Dhavan)
(iv) Going Soft On [Hindutva] Terrorism [in Goa] (Vidyadhar
Gadgil)
[5] Miscellanea:
- Book Review: The Religion of Capitalism (Dilip Simeon)
- Announcements:
(i) Bhopal Gas Tragedy 25th Anniversary Commemoration 01-03
December 2009
(ii) 2010 Daniel Pearl Awards for cross-border investigative
journalism
_____
[1] Sri Lanka:
Himal SouthAsian, December 2009
THE PRESIDENT AND THE GENERAL
The Sri Lankan military won the war against the Tamil Tigers over six
months ago. But since that time, the island has been steadily losing
the peace that the people – Muslim, Tamil and Sinhalese – so
deserve. The main hurdle towards lasting peace has been the
continuing war mentality and ultra-nationalism on the part of the
Rajapakse regime – for this is what we have to call it. Those
elements that had been the regime’s main strengths in fighting the
war – the dangerous mix of militarisation and Sinhala Buddhist
mobilisation – are now not only undermining peace, but also creating
instability in the government hallways of Colombo.
In the single-minded pursuance of the war, President Mahinda
Rajapakse and his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya, with full
support from the military, put together a broad and formidable
coalition. This was made up of the ultra-nationalist Jathika Hela
Urumaya (JHU), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and then its
breakaway faction, sections of the left parties, as well as Tamil
paramilitaries, including the breakaway faction of the LTTE. Yet just
weeks after the last shot was fired, that coalition began to unravel,
with increasing anti-government mobilisation by the JVP, criticism
from sections of the JHU and, finally, the need felt by the president
for a full overhaul of the armed-forces leadership.
The latest in these twists and turns has been the alienation and
vocal opposition of the former army commander, General Sarath
Fonseka, who is popularly credited with winning the war. Gen Fonseka,
even more a militarist and Sinhala Buddhist nationalist than the
president, is now expected to contest Rajapakse in the next
elections. And with the opposition United National Party (UNP)
backing the general’s candidature, there appears to be little hope
of a credible or strong or strong opposition.
Within weeks of the end of the war, the Rajapakses changed the entire
high command of the armed forces, giving the top military brass
different assignments, from secretaries of other ministries to
ambassadorial appointments. Gen Fonseka’s control over the army was
severely clipped, by ‘promoting’ him to a symbolic position as
chief of defence staff. The general, in his recent resignation
letter, claimed that it was widely understood that he was sidelined
because various agencies misled the president regarding the
possibility of a military coup.
The sidelining of Fonseka is not very surprising, given that the
Rajapakses have been clear that they have no ‘friends’ – only
their large clan. Brothers, cousins and nephews are thus being put
into key political positions without any sense of embarrassment.
Initially, they seemed certain that with the war victory they could
entrench the family in power for the foreseeable future. Very
quickly, however, that future began to seem uncertain, with the
challenge posed by Fonseka.
Over the last three years, both Gen Fonseka and Defence Secretary
Gotabhaya Rajapakse have considerably politicised the military, by
making Sinhala nationalist and anti-minority statements. Now, an open
challenge between the general and the president could further
deteriorate the situation. As Himal went to press, the president
announced early presidential elections, almost two yers ahead of the
end of his term. Analysts expect this to take place in late January
2010. The president wants to hold elections before he loses momentum
from the war victory, but with Gen Fonseka running against him the
Sinhala-nationalist vote stands likely to be split. Yet while the
minorities’ vote could become significant, given that both Rajapakse
and Fonseka are seen as Sinhala chauvinists it will be hard for the
minority communities to choose.
Trumping militarism
With international pressure mounting, the 300,000 people interned in
camps at the end of the war are finally being resettled. While close
to 150,000 displaced individuals have apparently been allowed to
return home (or elsewhere), and Basil Rajapakse announcing that all
IDPs will finally have freedom of movement starting in December,
their full access to humanitarian agencies in the north continue to
be of concern. Moreover, it must be accepted that rehabilitation and
development alone are not sufficient unless accompanied by
demilitarisation and genuine political devolution.
Indeed, the regime’s lingering war mentality remains amply clear.
The signals are not only in the exalted status accorded to the
president’s brother as defence secretary; nor in the numerous
checkpoints in Colombo, and continued militarisation of the
internment camps for displaced peoples in the north and east of the
country. Such indicators can also be seen in the regime’s ongoing
flirtation with the Burmese junta, whose guest President Rajapakse
saw fit to be soon after winning the war – a visit recently
reciprocated by General Than Shwe himself. Just as the LTTE dug its
own grave through a totally military mindset, the Rajapakse regime
could now be weakening itself irrevocably. For the country and its
people, a dangerous instability could ensue.
Emergency rule and the Prevention of Terrorism of Act continue to be
the primary supports of authoritarianism and corruption, with
parliamentarians lacking the fortitude to repeal them and thus take
the Rajapakses head-on. As the Tamil minority suffocates in the north
under the military jackboot, police brutality is on the rise in the
south. Meanwhile, the media, which should have learned the dangers of
authoritarianism over the decades of war, continue their
irresponsible projection of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and
opportunistic support of the government.
Job losses and increasing unemployment propelled by the global
economic downturn are creating conditions for social unrest and
disenchantment among labour, and the unemployed are already pushing
many onto the streets. Alongside, Sri Lanka’s aggravated relations
with the European Union are putting more jobs at risk. The political
tightrope that President Rajapakse has been walking between the East
and West – mobilising India, China, Pakistan and Iran to counter
pressure from the EU and the US on human rights and conduct of the
war – is looking increasingly difficult to manage, as allegations of
war crimes in Sri Lanka are presently under consideration by the US
State Department and Congress. Incredibly, the president’s
brothers – Gotabhaya as well as Basil, who is in charge of
development – are both US citizens, and could thus become the
subject of greater US pressure.
Yet on the ground, the challenge remains the same: the need for sane
voices for peace and co-existence – democratic voices that can take
up the decades-long grievances of the minorities, and the rising
economic questions and inequalities that plague Sri Lanka’s post-war
future. In the end, it is neither the moorings within Colombo’s
militarised elite nor the megaphone diplomacy of the international
actors that will change Sri Lanka’s future. To take a leaf from Sri
Lanka’s three decades of war, the UNP’s authoritarian regime –
first under J R Jayawardena and then Ranasinghe Premadasa – though
seemingly entrenched, was dislodged after 17 years following the
unleashing of democratic forces and peoples movements. Can peace and
democracy trump authoritarianism, militarism and nationalism one more
time and deliver peace?
_____
[2] Pakistan-India:
LET'S START WITH SIACHEN
by Dr. Saleem H. Ali
The News International (Pakistan, December 1, 2009).
The Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh was given a warm
reception in Washington DC last week. Clearly both the United States
and India have much to share in terms of trade ties and a mutual
tradition of democratic institutions. However, despite his
intellectual pedigree and celebrated reputation as a moderate on
matters of war and peace, Dr. Singh has shown little leadership in
resolving any territorial disputes with Pakistan. Mr. Obama is
reputed to have tried to exert some pressure on India in this regard
but to no avail. The Indian-American lobby has succeeded in
marginalizing Pakistan and getting it lumped together with
Afghanistan as an "Af-Pak" phenomenon. The acronym appears to have
some media appeal more for phonetic sound bites than for any real
substance. Indeed, tying the problems of Pakistan’s tribal areas
with Afghanistan has created a self-fulfilling prophecy for the "Af-
Pak" adherents since this conflation fuels the fire of conspiracy
theorists who keep insidiously suggesting that the US has an interest
in destabilizing Pakistan.
Sadly on the eastern frontier, the Mumbai attacks have served the
goal of the terrorists and the military hawks on either side by
stalling the peace process. However, Dr. Singh could still show some
mark of statesmanship and move towards a resolution of the long-
standing territorial disputes between the two countries. Kashmir is
certainly an intractable problem because it can lead to a slippery
slope for India’s myriad other sectarian conflicts. Providing some
further measure of autonomy in Kashmir could further strengthen other
separatist movements that are simmering in Assam and other parts of
the country. Since a comprehensive dispute settlement strategy has
eluded both countries for sixty two years, perhaps the best way to
approach Kashmir is incrementally resolve some of the other
territorial disputes. First on the list should be a resolution to the
Siachen conflict.
Several pragmatic solutions have already been proposed and with very
little loss in political capital both countries can make a huge
cognitive jump in resolving this dispute. For the past several
years, various constituencies in South Asia and beyond have been
attempting to establish a jointly managed conservation area, or
“peace park,” in the Karakoram mountains, which divide the hostile
nations of India and Pakistan. Researchers, mountaineers, and
conservationists have joined forces to promote their vision of using
environmental cooperation to make the magnificent Siachen Glacier
region — militarized since 1986 — safe for geographers, tourists,
and wildlife. This is an uninhabited region which military leaders on
both sides agree has little military importance and yet soldiers are
dying of hypothermia at elevations exceeding 18,000 feet above sea
level.
“Peace parks” are transboundary conservation areas that seek to
mitigate conflict through environmental cooperation between
neighboring countries. The idea can be traced back to the time-tested
tradition of postwar memorials aimed at healing wounds between
adversaries. However, they can also be used in zones of active
conflict as a conflict resolution strategy. For example, the
establishment of a peace park in the Cordillera del Condor region,
mediated by the United States and Brazil, was key to resolving the
decades-long war between Ecuador and Peru; the 2004 treaty between
the two nations explicitly used environmental conservation as a
conflict resolution strategy by establishing a jointly managed
protected area between the two countries.
The Siachen Peace Park, while unlikely to bring peace to India and
Pakistan singlehandedly, may be a catalyzing variable that not only
hastens the peace-building process but also makes it more durable.
Those of us who have worked on this proposal for the past several
years will continue to move forward with our efforts and our efforts
are to address all questions that may be raised by skeptics. For
example, what would be the role of the militaries in the peace park?
As absolute demilitarization is unrealistic in this case, the project
is considering encouraging the militaries to act as rangers and
assist in managing the park, which would allay fears about security
and allow the two armies to work together for a constructive purpose.
Another issue facing the project is delineating the park’s border, a
task that would have to be undertaken in phases to develop trust
between the countries. Visitor access, too, poses a problem: do
tourists visiting the park need visas for both countries? More
realistically, visitors from either India or Pakistan could be
allowed to enter the peace park on their entry visas from either
country—but not permitted to cross over the park’s boundary into
the other country.
To begin the process, both countries must overcome their
institutional inertia and sign an agreement in principle. In 2004, a
unified grassroots campaign, combined with a strategic push from
influential groups, sought to usher in the fiftieth anniversary of
the first ascent of K-2 (a mountain in the Karakoram range that is
the second-highest peak in the world) by pushing the effort forward.
The Italian government, which facilitated this process, established a
meteorological measurement site near K-2. The proposal was submitted
to both Pakistani and Indian governments, and during his 2006 visit
to Siachen, Dr. Singh stated that he hoped the area would some day
become a “peace mountain.” Since then, the project has focused on
using science as the conduit for peace building, as does the
Antarctic treaty. In March 2008, Indian and Pakistani glaciologists
met in Kathmandu with support from the US National Science Foundation
for the first time and established a detailed plan for research
partnerships that might ultimately reduce tensions and pave the way
for a peace park.
The framework for moving forward in this is clearly evident and this
is a pragmatic proposal rather than an idealistic one. There have
even been joint reports by Indian and Pakistani brigadier generals as
well as the retired Air Marshall of the Indian armed forces K.C
Cariappa on the strategic salience of such a common-sense solution.
All that remains is leadership to move forward. With the Copenhagen
summit on climate change approaching, the prospects for using the
Siachen peace park as a measure of conflict resolution in the name of
science is even stronger. Since Indian forces are in control of the
glacier itself, the initiative must come from them to move ahead with
this effort. Dr. Singh, you have it within your power to leave a
lasting legacy and resolve this senseless dispute in the name of
science and environmental conservation once and for all.
(Dr. Saleem H. Ali is associate professor of environmental planning
at the University of Vermont (USA). His books include “Treasures of
the Earth” (Yale University Press, 2009) and the edited volume
“Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution” (MIT Press,
2007). www.saleemali.net)
_____
[3] Pakistan:
BALOCHISTAN: TOO SMALL AN OLIVE BRANCH
by Qurratulain Zaman
27 November 2009
Open Democracy
http://www.opendemocracy.net/qurratulain-zaman/balochistan-too-small-
olive-branch
(Qurratulain Zam is a journalist who has worked with Pakistan’s
leading daily “Daily Times” and Germany’s international
broadcaster “Deutsche Welle”. She is currently working as a
freelancer in Bonn, Germany“)
Brutal rule by Pakistan’s security agencies in Balochistan has
radicalised moderate Balochs in this largest and poorest province.
Now Pakistan’s government has offered a conciliation package. But it
looks as if it is too little, too late.
They ordered me to rape her. She was so thin and was crying when they
brought her in the room. I was terrified to look at her, as I thought
she was a spy or an agent”, says Munir Mengal, a 33- year- old
Baloch, living in forced exile in Paris.
Munir Mengal spent 16 months in underground jails of the Pakistani
intelligence agencies. “The low rank officers came back to the room
and started beating me because I didn’t obey their orders. They took
off my clothes by force, and hers too, and left us alone. In her sobs
I heard her praying in Balochi language. She was praying for someone
named Murad. That’s how I got to know she is my fellow Baloch. That
gave me the courage to talk to her.” Munir says that, still sobbing,
she told him her name was Zarina Marri. She used to be a school
teacher. She and her son Murad, who was only a few months old, were
picked up by the intelligence agencies from Kohlu.
Munir said, “Zarina was crying and asking me to kill her. Meanwhile,
3 or 4 low-ranking officers came in the room with a toolbox and told
me that if I refused to rape her they would make me impotent. I
didn’t have a clue why they were doing this to me. I fainted. In
the morning, before the faj’r prayer they kicked me and took Zarina
Marri with them. I have no idea what happened to her.”
Munir said he was tortured physically, mentally and emotionally every
day. A chartered accountant by education and training, Munir wanted
to open up a Baloch TV channel in Pakistan. He was working on his TV
channel “Baloch Voice”, when he was picked up for the first time
when he flew into Karachi international airport on April 4, 2006.
“After 5 months in an underground jail in Malir (Karachi), one day
they took me to Major Nadeem’s office. He said they hadn’t found
anything against me and wanted to negotiate with me.” The Military
Intelligence (MI) officers informed Munir they had changed their
plans. “They were going to take me to meet President Pervez
Musharraf. They trained me how to talk to the president. They told
me I had to address him as ‘your Excellency’ and should not tell
him anything about what had happened to me in the torture cell”,
remembered Munir. “On October 26, they gave me a haircut, new
clothes and blindfolded me. Then they took me to some military
barracks to meet the then president, Pervez Musharraf.”
Munir said the president expressed concern about the Balochistan
issue. “He said he would take care of my family’s future now,
although according to him I was becoming more dangerous than the
Baloch rebel leaders Nawab Akbar Bugti and Attaullah Khan Mengal. He
said it was just a few sardars, tribal leaders, who were making
things bad in Balochistan with foreign aid. “I stayed quiet most of
the time”, says Munir.
“They offered to make me the liberal, educated voice of Balochistan
against the sardars. They said the’d give me and my family full
protection. But I refused to become a part of their game. That is why
in the end I fled Pakistan.”
Munir Mengal’s is not an isolated story.
The largest province of Pakistan, Balochistan is witnessing its 5th
insurgency since 1947. Many Balochs say that their region was annexed
by Pakistan. They believe the centre and the most populous province
Punjab has usurped their resources. It is the most impoverished and
underdeveloped province of Pakistan. Balochs will tell you, for
example, that although vast amounts of gas are extracted from Sui,
Balochistan, there are many parts of the province without gas until
today.
The Baloch nationalists kept demanding autonomy and an equal share in
the resources. However, they never got it. The Pakistan federal
government distributes resources on the basis of population, and
Balochistan accounts for only four percent of Pakistan’s population.
24 year old Shahzeb is a law student. He was picked up by the
intelligence agencies in March this year. In their traditionally
decorated first floor living room in Balochistan’s capital, Quetta,
Shahzeb’s mother said “We were worried about Shahzeb’s life. My
family and I prayed every day for him.” Shahzeb was taking his
sister-in-law to a neighbouring district in Quetta when he was picked
up. “They tortured me every day”, said Shahzeb Baloch. “During
interrogation, my hands were tied and I was blindfolded. They asked
me questions about the Baloch liberation movement. They kept accusing
me of being an agent of the Indian intelligence agency RAW and
insisted that I had provided weapons to militants.”
Shahzeb was careful not to share details about his three months’
ordeal in the military detention centre in front of his mother. He
switched to English in her presence. “I don’t want to repeat all
these things in front of her. She starts crying. They released me on
the condition that I won’t get involved in student politics.”
Both Munir and Shahzeb said that they came across many Baloch
detainees in the military-run secret jails - Munir under the
military dictatorship of Musharraf, and Shahzeb after the civilian
government had taken over last year. According to the Baloch Women’s
Panel and the Baloch Student Organization (BSO), 4,000 Baloch are
still missing. Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik said this
week that the government had a list of 1,011 missing people.
Most observers agree that things became worse in Balochistan during
the Musharraf years, after Musharraf sent the army in against the
Baloch tribes. Nawab Akbar Bugti, head of the Bugti clan, a former
chief minister and governor of the province in his eighties, was
forced to hide in a mountain cave and finally killed in an airstrike
by the Pakistan air force.
Suriya Ameeruddin is a senator from the ruling Pakistan People’s
Party in Balochistan. “A few years ago, we used to live in harmony,
in peace. Pashtuns, Baloch, Hazaras and Punjabis - all of us used to
live next to each other but since the day Pervez Musharraf martyred
our Nawab Sahib, the situation has turned violent”, she said.
Relations between the different ethnic groups have become bitter.
Senator Suriya Ameeruddin is not an ethnic Baloch, but a “settler”
in Quetta. But she lives in a Baloch-populated area. “Every day when
my son and daughter- in- law leave for work I am afraid. Boys come on
motorcycles in busy markets and residential areas, kill and vanish.
Not a single ‘target killer’ has been caught so far. No one has
the courage to catch them. It’s the law of the jungle here.”
Quetta looks like a war-zone, with army checkpoints even in the
markets and parks. The city is clearly divided in two parts. One is
the “cantonment” fully controlled by the army and paramilitary
forces; the other area is a stronghold of Baloch separatist groups –
like Balochistan University.
A 24- year- old former president of the Baloch Student Organisation
(BSO) said, ‘’you feel you are entering a garrison, not a
university. Pakistan’s security agencies have left us no political
way forward. They have radicalised all the liberal forces by
torturing them.’’
According to him, the BSO serves as a nursery for nationalists who
are in hiding or fighting in the mountains. The student leader’s
father was an active member of the established Balochistan National
Party (BNP), which traditionally stood by Pakistan, while demanding
more rights for the Balochs. But he and his brothers advocate a
“free” Balochistan. ‘’We have convinced our father after long
fights and arguments. Today he is a radical like me.’’
Not long ago, the student was a patriotic Pakistani. He had a poster
of a war hero, Captain Karnel Sher Khan as a teenager. “Pakistan
needs to reflect upon what made me hate Pakistan”, he said. “They
make us feel that we are slaves. I can wear western clothes and move
freely in the city but if I’m wearing my baggy Baloch shalwar,
they’ll strip search me.”
The one and a half year old democratic government has finally tabled
the long awaited Balochistan package named “a beginning of
Balochistan rights” in the national assembly this week. Prime
Minister Gilani promised to bring back the missing people to their
families, to re-integrate exiled Baloch leaders into the political
scene and to withdraw the army and paramilitary forces from the
province.
Balochistan will finally enjoy political autonomy like the other
provinces, and economic development, the government promises.
However, all Baloch parties have rejected this package. They say they
were not consulted, and after sixty years they have lost their trust
in Pakistan.
Malik Siraj Akbar, the bureau chief of the English national paper
“Daily Times” in Quetta, said, “although the democratic
government has taken over, the machinery is run by the security
agencies. The chief minister and governor have no role. There are
more than 50 ministers in the government, but they have nothing to
do.”
Mukhtar Chalgiri, the regional director of the Strengthening
Participatory Organization, one of the few NGOs still working in the
province, added:
“Ordinary people are unhappy. Inflation, poverty and a sense of
deprivation leads to all this violence we see in our society today.
Every cabinet member in this government is corrupt. They are selling
jobs.”
Many Baloch parties are boycotting the political process altogether.
Their demands have become more radical over the years.
Dr Abdul Hakeem Lehri, a senior leader of the Baloch Republican Party
said, “we’re not interested in living with the corrupt Pakistani
elite any more. We want freedom.”
The Baloch Republican Party (BRP) is considered the political face of
the underground, separatist Baloch Republican Armay (BRA). Hundreds
of their activists have disappeared. Party chief Brahamdagh Bugti, a
grandson of the slain leader Akbar Bugti, is in hiding. For many
youngsters, the handsome 28- year- old Bramdagh is a kind of Baloch
Che Guevara. Pakistani officials say he is in Afghanistan, and have
accused India of supporting him through its consulates there. But
party leader Lehri rubbished all claims that the separatist movement
is run by a “foreign hand”:
“If Pakistan had any real evidence that India supports us, would
they have spared us? Every Baloch household has a reason to fight
with them. This version is just to satisfy the Pakistani elite.”
From his forced exile Munir Mengal too rejects the economic package
proposed by the Pakistani government. He pointed out that many Baloch
nationalists are socialists and abhor religious fundamentalism.
“There is no solution with packages, and our problem can’t be
solved with dialogues either. Our ideology is different from
Pakistan’s. We can’t live under an imposed and fake religious
identity. We are secular people.” And he added a question: “Do you
really think these economic packages will satisfy Zarina Marri’s
mother?“
Former school teacher Zarina Marri is still missing, and no official
record exists about what happened to her after she was last seen by
Munir Mengal in Karachi.
_____
[4] India: Resources For Secular Activists
(i) The Economic and Political Weekly, November 28, 2009
Editorial
17 YEARS SINCE 6 DECEMBER 1992
There will never be a closure to the black event that was the Babri
Masjid demolition.
It has taken 17 years for the Justice M S Liberhan Commission set up
to investigate the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6
December 1992, to arrive at what has been known from the time the
mosque was brought down. The Liberhan Commission has delivered a
searing indictment of the Sangh parivar as the primary culprit for
the demolition. It also names (in the commission's words) the "pseudo-
moderate" leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the
secondary culprit and officials of the state machinery and
administration as tertiary participants in the horrendous act that
stripped the Indian state's claim to be secular.
The Liberhan Commission's report focuses on the ideology, world view
and organising power of the Sangh parivar, and the manner in which it
single-mindedly attempted to create a frenzy among the masses for the
demolition. It details how "the inner core of the Parivar" - the
leadership of the Rashtriya Swaya- msevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, the B ajrang Dal, the BJP and the Shiv Sena - bears
"primary responsibility" for the crime. It also points out how the
BJP leadership, comprising Atal Behari Vajpayee, L K Advani and
Murli Manohar Joshi, was privy to the decisions of the Sangh parivar
on the demolition, but pro- tested innocence in order to project a
"moderate" image because it had been tasked to shed the "best
possible light" on the plan of the RSS. And last but not least the
commission indicts officials of the Kalyan Singh government in Uttar
Pradesh for deliberately collud- ing with the parivar in razing the
Babri Masjid.
The one-man commission has no doubt done a painstaking and thorough
examination of the events that led up to the demo- lition - the
intrigue, the subterfuge, the sabotage of law and order and even the
inter-mixing of religion and politics. But did it have to take close
to two decades to present its findings? Justice Liberhan's original
brief was to conclude its investigations in three months, but he took
40 extensions to finalise his report. The commission certainly faced
many obstacles in its work. The culprits did everything possible to
delay and stretch out the pro- ceedings. But the commission has taken
an inexcusably long time since 16 December 1992, when Justice
Liberhan was appointed head of the judicial commission, to
investigate the events that led up to the destruction of the mosque
at Ayodhya.
Justice Liberhan points to the failure of many an institution of the
Indian state - including the media and bureaucracy along with the
polity - but he reserves his indictment for the Sangh parivar and is
silent on the Congress Party. Indeed, even as the commission has
revealed the conspiracy underlying the demolition, what is intriguing
is the clean chit it has given to the then Narasimha Rao government
in New Delhi and the silence it has maintained about the role of
previous Congress governments in fuelling the "Ram Janmabhoomi"
claim. If there is a contemporary marker in the events leading to the
demolition it is surely the decision taken by the local adminis-
tration in January 1986 to remove the "judicial" locks that had been
placed on the mosque for nearly four decades. This too is common
knowledge, that it was done at the instance of the then Rajiv Gandhi
government, which was anxious to "win" Hindu support to compensate
for its decision to placate the Muslim clergy after the Shah Bano
judgment. The report is also silent about the poor mobilisation of
central paramilitary forces at the Ayodhya site even after the
demolition, where kar sevaks continued to run riot following the
dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government.
The aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition is well known. As much
as this incident legitimised communal rhetoric in Indian politics,
leading of course to the BJP heading a government at the centre for
six years, it also hugely damaged public administration, the results
of which were immediately evident in the handling of the Bombay riots
of January 1993.
Despite indicting 68 individuals as being directly responsible for
the demolition and pointing fingers at the Sangh parivar and the BJP
leadership, the commission is quiet about pressing charges against
those individuals and organisations who have hitherto escaped
arraignment. Instead the report waxes eloquently on the reforms
needed in the functioning of the bureaucracy, on regulations for the
media and on upholding secularism. The Action Taken Report also does
not suggest that the central government is thinking of initiating
proceedings against those identified as responsible for the
demolition. Therefore, all the effort taken to lay out the details of
the conspiracy and the failure of the state government of Uttar
Pradesh, and the recommendations and the responses listed in the
Action Taken Report end up as a futile exercise.
Justice Liberhan has described how the Sangh parivar corroded and
shamed the secular image of the Indian state and how officials sworn
to the Indian Constitution were brazenly complicit in this crime that
changed Indian politics and public administration for the worse. But
given how every single institution of the Indian state and polity has
pussy-footed around the Babri Masjid demolition and continues to do
so, there will never be any closure to this shameful event. The BJP
may have been electorally vanquished in two Lok Sabha elections but
the virus it nurtured in the course of its campaign to destroy the
mosque at Ayodhya remains implanted in India's social and political
fabric.
o o o
ZNet, November 30, 2009
THE LIBERHAN REPORT: WHAT SHOULD IT MEAN?
by Badri Raina
On December 6,1992, hordes of right-wing Hindutva extremists
(called karsevaks) took the town of Ayodhya hostage with the full
and willing connivance of the then state government of Uttar Pradesh
and in physical presence of most of the top leaders of the Sangh
Parivar (the RSS and its affiliates/fronts like the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena, and the Bhartiya Janata
Party).
By evening of that fateful day, the 460 year old mosque built there
by one of Babar's lieutenants, Mir Baqi, was razed to a heap of
rumble on the grounds that the mosque was built over a temple which
enclosed the birthplace of the god, Ram.
To this day, there is no evidence of any kind that a temple of any
sort pre-existed at the site of the demolished mosque.
Interestingly, the Prime Minister of the day, late Narasimha Rao,
failed/refused to respond to insistent pleas both from some members
of his cabinet and many others from civil society across religious
communities to intervene to forestall that unprecedently brazen
assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.
The local government of Kalyan Singh was to cock a final snook at the
central government and resign office after the deed was done, and
in daylong glare of television coverage, preempting the possibility
of being dismissed from office.
Almost instantly, riots broke out, and Muslims were killed with
impunity by Hindutva draftees who saw no obstacle to their
exertions. In the city of Mumbai, about a thousand innocent Indians
lost their lives. (The Justice Srikrishna Commission inquiring into
those Mumbai killings was to squarely hold the Shiv Sena and other
Hindutva bodies responsibe for those massacres, and recommend legal
action including against the Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray. To this
day, however, no action has followed, although the state of
Maharashtra has been since ruled by the Congress/Natiionalist
Congress Party combine with only an interregnum of Shiv Sena rule.)
Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan was appointed in January of 1993 to
enquire into the sequence of events that led to the demolition of the
Babri mosque, and to fix responsibility.
After seventeen long years, the Liberhan report is in. Over a
thousand pages long, the Liberhan report concludes that "the RSS was
the author" of the carnage, and all "logistical arrangements" were
"coordinated between RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal, and the BJP," calling the
latter "a front of the RSS"-the worst-kept secret of India's modern
political history.
Characterising the event as the result of "tailor made" and
"meticulous" conspiracy rather than a spontaneous outrage, the
Liberhan report draws up a list of 68 names whom it holds culpable of
the same, names that include almost every scion of the Sangh
Parivar. Significantly, it lists the erstwhile Prime Minister, Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, at number 7, holding him responsible of taking the
"country towards communal discord." A day before the demolition,
Vajpayee had been recorded on video making a public speech in
Lucknow, the Capital of Uttar Pradesh, expressing the need for the
ground at Ayodhya to be "leveled" inorder to facilitate the karseva
(collective religious activity) the next day.
Justice Liberhan exonerates the then Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao of
responsibility on the ground that he was duped by sworn affidavits
submitted by the chief minister, Kalyan Singh, to the Supreme Court
of India, undertaking to see that no harm would come to the mosque.
Liberhan also accuses the Sangh leaders of duplicity in having
"lulled" him and the central government into complacence through
their misleading pronouncements. While this is true enough, not many
are convinced that this fact alone forestalled any action on behalf
of the Prime Minister.
There is substantial evidence that one or two of his own cabinet
ministers had warned him of the RSS plans for December 6 well in
advance. One of those ministers, Makhan Lal Fotedar-a distinguished
Kashmiri Pandit secularist-has revealed how the then governor of
Uttar Pradesh was instructed by Rao not to recommend President's rule
till asked by Rao to do so. Fotedar claims he was told about this by
the then President of India, Shankar Dayal Sharma-another
distinguished secularist Brahmin-- whom he found in tears on the day.
Whereas Justice Liberhan has not recommended any specific action
against anyone, it has noted some correctives, chief among these the
need to have laws in place punishing the use of religion in political
activity.
II
Mysteriously, the Liberhan report was leaked to the media before it
was tabled in Parliament. Both the Home Minister and Justice
Liberhan deny responsibility for the leak.
The BJP which has been in tatters recently as a result first of its
electoral reverses, then of the most unedifying internecine discord,
and finally of the open and overt take-over of its decision-making
prerogatives by the RSS, its puppet master since inception, has
sought to unite around two issues: a fake outrage at the naming of
Vajpayee (whom both the RSS and Advani have wanted out for long), and
at the leaking of the report.
It has also sought to make much of the report having been submitted
17 years after the event-a detail that in the BJP's view renders it
only of academic interest, warranting no follow up.
That, even as it continues to demand action against the perpetrators
of the Sikh killings of 1984-eight years prior to the Babri
demolition-and even as it admires the Zionists no end for pursuing
Nazi war criminals some half century after the second world war.
Having led the assault on the mosque on the grounds of a four-century
old "dishonouring" of a "Hindu nation," it advises that there is
little point in revisiting the Babri demolition some 17 years after
the demolition! It utters not a word of remorse at the dishonouring
of Muslim sentiments.
Privately the BJP hopes that the submission of the Liberhan report
and the recorded culpability of the Sangh Parivar may help to portray
the Sangh, and with it the BJP, as martyrs and warriors in the cause
of "cultural nationalism," and revive its political fortunes which
stand now at nadir.
III
There are, however, fatal reasons why the demolition of the Babri
mosque by a fascist, Hindutva putsch must never be relegated as just
one communal episode among many in post-independence India.
The controversy whether the Babri mosque site was indeed the
birthplace of the Hindu god, Ram, has for a hundred years or so
remained a matter of localized and legal contention, as "title"
suites are still being argued in courts to determine whether the
Muslim Wakf Board or some Hindu organization had rightful claim to
possession of the site.
Till as late as 1983, nobody outside Faizabad District in Uttar
Pradesh bothered a great deal about what was going on in those
suites. And not many did so even in Faizabad and Ayodhya which,
paradoxically, had remained bastions of age-old inter-community
harmony. Indeed, many of the plethora of temples in Ayodhya were
managed and run by Muslim devotees of Ram.
It was between 1983 and 1992 that the Sangh decided to convert the
Ayodhya issue into a cause celebre of "cultural nationalism," leading
to the assault on December 6, 1992. That as a ploy to enter
Parliament with some seats more than the humiliating two it had got
in the elections of 1984.
In projecting the issue as they did, the Sangh had a macro-historical
enterprise in mind, something that had little or nothing to do with
the Hindu god, or with the purity of faith.
One, the project was to assert the majoritarian premise that India,
notwithstanding its secular constitution, was first and foremost, a
Hindu nation-state.
So that as the pick-axes rained on the domes of the mosque to the
accompaniment of the grossest communal abuse, the fury of the doing
suggested that it was not a mosque that was being demolished but,
verily, the very body-incarnate of Islam. The subliminal rage of the
erasers might have suggested that it was not a dome they were bashing
but the head of the Moghul, Babar. Very much as in demolishing the
Berlin wall, the body of the wall was seen to represent not an entity
that separated two parts of a city but as an entity that embodied
Communism.
Far from being just one vandalising episode at the hands of sectarian
hordes, the assault on the mosque was constructed and propagated as a
campaign to vanquish the secular Constitution of India and to shame
it once and for all as being at bottom tilted against Hindus, and
violative of racial principles of nationhood-an idea for which the
erstwhile RSS ideologue and President, Golwalker, was to be full of
praise for Hitler and the Nazis.
Never reconciled to the secular Republic, the RSS thought to make of
the campaign an occasion to reverse the principles of secular and
pluralist citizenship that India had chosen to give to herself after
Independence in 1947.
Two, the campaign was calculated to register the view that the will
of the majority community superceded all the institutions of state,
an initial gambit towards turning India into a theocracy, or a Hindu
Rashtra in consonance with the well-laid out ideology of the Hindu
Mahasabha and the RSS (see Golwalker's We, Our Nationhood Defined,
and Savarkar's Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?). A mirror image of the
hardline Islamic idea of nationhood and state!
It should surprise nobody that the Sangh has a standing list of
thousands of mosques which are slated to be demolished and replaced
by temples, some 36,000 at last count. The question is never asked
as to how many temples stand at sites that used to be Buddhist or
Jain stupas.
And, not the least, to catapult the BJP as being the primary
"nationalist" political formation of India, and relegate the Congress
and the Leftists as essentially "appeasers" of Babar's progeny, the
Muslims, whose right to Indianness was to be formally damaged by the
construction that they continue to be non-indigenous and disloyal
progeny of invaders.
IV
India may have come a long way since 1992; yet so long as the BJP
remains a mannequin to the RSS, so long as it fails or is unwilling
to transform itself into an autonomous "political" formation, so long
as, willy nilly, it harks back to "cultural nationalism" as its chief
raison d' etre of political existence, remaining thereby unreconciled
to secular citizenship, minority rights, and equality of opportunity
and equality before the law, so long as, in one word, its chief point
of political reference remains its visceral hatred of Muslims, it
would be fatal to forget the lessons of the Babri demolition.
In that context, the indifferently evolved secular convictions of the
Congress party after Nehru pose no small obstacle to any forthright
firming up of the Constitutional regime. It cannot be said that many
more than half a dozen top leaders of the Congress hold Nehruvian
secularism to be sancrosanct, especially when votes are in question.
And the Congress has only one way of disproving those reservations,
namely, to grab Liberhan's injunction about the separation of
religion and politics, and to put in place legislation that may
heretofore brook no heinous mixing of the two.
Legislation, it must be noted, that is then backed up with the legal
resolve never to pussyfoot any instance of communal appeal to the
polity, and to come down with the full majesty of the law and the
state on instances of communal violence instigated by political
agents, whoever they be, or however high or mighty.
Taking a cue from the Liberhan recommendations, the Election
Commission of India, a Constitutional Body beholden to no political
or governmental regime, may consider the time ripe for laying down
that any political use of religion would be ground for derecognition
of the party found culpable.
This must include due and prompt punishment to all those who, in
school, pathshala, madrasa, or wherever else seek to frame curriculi
around communal perceptions of history and polity, calculated to
undermine the rights and prerogatives of secular citizenship or to
instill antagonism towards other religions, and a ruthless denial of
all attempts to grab public spaces for unauthorized communal/
religious use/propagation (something that the Supreme Court has
recently enjoined) as well.
Even if the current UPA dispensation forgave all the designated
culprits of the Babri crime (very few believe that the state has the
will to do otherwise) but made the long-lasting redressals
suggested by Liberhan and listed above, the generation of Indians to
come might inherit a worthwhile democracy in regard at least to the
matter of a non-negotiable secular citizenship and a country free of
"internal dangers" far worse and debilitating than pockets of
insurgency floated around issues of livelihood.
And if none of that were to be done, the Liberhan exercise would
indeed have been a criminal waste at tax-payer's expense. And,
worse, an incentive to further depredations along the lines of the
Babri crime.
o o o
Mail Today, 30 November 2009
READ BABRI REPORT RIGHT
by Rajeev Dhavan
Those indicted culpably by the Liberhan panel must not hide behind
procedure or the leak of the report
AT LAST after 17 years, 399 settings, 48 extensions, a cost of Rs 17
crores, embarrassing differences between the Commission’s counsel
and Chairperson, litigation in court to delay it, the Liberhan Report
on the destruction of Babri Masjid has arrived. Submitted on 30th
June 2009, Home Minister P Chidambaram held on to it until, it was
leaked on 23rd November 2009 amidst accusations of conspiracy and
finally tabled on 24th November.
First, the leak. It was a coup for a newspaper. If anyone knows about
the leak, surely it is that newspaper which stole a march to make a
coup. In fact, what was wrong was the archaic law of non- disclosure.
It is an absurd relic from English practice. There is no reason why
reports should be disclosed to parliament first.
On one occasion in 1960 or so, Pandit Nehru was accused of breach of
parliamentary privilege because he pre- disclosed to the press a
comment he was to make in Parliament. This part of parliamentary
privilege should be removed by legislation. An Act should be enacted
which simply says “ All reports to Parliament shall be submitted to
the Speaker and Chair of each House; and simultaneously published
straightaway; ( 2) Any Action Taken Report ( ATR) shall be declared
to Parliament within one month”. This cat- and- mouse game of
publication will disappear consistent with RTI principles of
transparency. No report should be withheld from the public by either
the government or parliament.
Precedent
Second, the spat between the Chairperson and Liberhan Counsel Anupam
Gupta was unnecessary.
Self- advertisement is not unknown to Gupta who acquired notoriety in
other controversies over judicial corruption in 1993. Liberhan
appointed Gupta.
There is no reason to doubt Liberhan’s integrity. Making media
capital out of personal recriminations is not right morally, under
lawyerconduct rules or otherwise.
Everytime a report comes out, we do not have to wail that all
commissions are useless and designed to gather dust.
Reports are of many kinds: on corruption, riots, events or people.
Corruption reports on Kairon and TT Krishnamachari were given to
Nehru who took action. Today, Prime Ministers and all political
parties tolerate corruption.
Parliament’s own Joint Committee Report on Bofors, on Rajiv
Gandhi’s involvement, has never been accepted as true or convincing.
Commission reports should not become political toys. The Babri Masjid
report explores a damning event of our history.
It is easy to dissolve its findings in acerbic party- political acid.
But this should not happen.
Let us look at the Report and the political antics designed to
obfuscate its message. This is a people’s paredness of the
Karsevaks, there was a well planned conspiracy to destroy the Masjid;
( 3) Financial support came from Sangh Parivar funds including bank
accounts operated by various named persons; ( 4) The, then, Chief
Minister Kalyan Singh and his handpicked bureaucrats were involved in
the conspiracy to destroy the Masjid and allowed a “ parallel
government” and “ cartel” to facilitate the campaign which
infiltrated the government; ( 5) The state ( of UP) had become a
willing ally and co- conspirator in the joint common enterprise…
( of) demolishing the structure; ( 6) The conspiracy arose from the
single- minded efforts of the RSS and VHP ideologues and theologians
to manipulate ordinary people into a frenzied mob; ( 7) The campaign
had nothing to do with a popular mandate from the people who were
manipulated to support it; ( 8) The police fell in line with this
conspiracy; ( 9) The union government was crippled by failure of
intelligence and the “ all- is- well reports by its rapporteur Tej
Shankar”; ( 10) Not a single video camera was put in place; ( 11)
The media “ and report for the people to find their way around a
people’s issue on an event that divided India. 6th December 1992,
when the Masjid fell, is a watershed in India’s contemporary
history. Through the demolition, the Sangh Parivar legitimised the
politics of destructive communal hate. Hitherto, communal tension was
regarded as an evil in governance.
Conclusions
After Babri Masjid, BJP leaders and the Parivar set a new political
standard which declared that the destruction of masjids, killings of
people, destroying of art works were a legitimate pursuit of a
communal pseudo- Hindu nationalism advancing the cause of the “ true
Aryan” people.
Liberhan was not examining a “ who- done- it”. He was looking at a
phenomenon that shook India’s secular, multicultural people and
polity. What Liberhan found was what we already know but need to know
better. His conclusions in chapter 14 were ( 1) Babri Masjid was not
an unintended spontaneous event except for “ self- serving
hyperbole”; ( 2) Logistically, given the total pre journalists were
subjected to systematic harassment”; ( 12) Leaders like Vajpayee, MM
Joshi and L. K. Advani, and Govindacharya knew of the designs of the
Sangh Parivar and lent their support in various ways; ( 13) Muslim
leaders “ wittingly or unwittingly” did not counter the plans of
the RSS and VHP, effectively to make the latter’s task easier; ( 14)
68 persons are found “ culpable”, including Advani, Vajpayee and
Joshi, but not Narsimha Rao.
There are several recommendations for the future on both the
inadequacy of response and the need for new changes. None of the 68
indicted culpably should hide behind procedure ( even if those like
Vajpayee have a genuine grievance of not being called a witness in
his defence) or the leak of the report. Let them replace artful
defence with honesty and candour. The indicted persons face two
alternatives other than criminal proceedings. The first alternative
for them is to candidly state: “ I was involved in the destruction
of the Babri Masjid and I am proud of it”; and face the social,
legal and political consequences. Alternatively, if they are
innocent, then each individual in this group of 68 should be prepared
to say: “ I never intended or participated in any conspiracy to
destroy the Masjid; I denounce and condemn its destruction as illegal
and unconscionable; I express my regrets over its destruction and
promise never to be involved in any conspiracy and actions to destroy
religious structures or victimise people of other faiths and
religions.” There is no other alternative. It’s truth or nothing.
Nation
India must put this divisive event behind it. The Supreme Court
decisions on the Ayodhya Act and Presidential reference case of 1994
have stated that the vesting of the Babri Masjid area in the Union
Government makes the latter trustees and not owners of the structural
area until the Lucknow court decides this issue. At least court
proceedings have brought temporary peace. But, following the Liberhan
Commission report there should be ‘ truth and reconciliation’ in
which statements and regrets are talked through.
The BJP and Sangh Parivar must be truthful. The nation cannot move on
until the truth is told. The Liberhan Commission invites a premium on
truth not for further divisiveness but to heal a nation which was
split open. But if obtaining political power is more important than
governance, these games will continue to infiltrate our psyche. The
most frightening part of the Liberhan report is how the ‘ state’
and ‘ governance’ can be hijacked into manipulation and control.
Fascism began in this way.
The writer is a Supreme Court lawyer
o o o
Herald, 30 Nov 2009
GOING SOFT ON TERRORISM
That the Chief Minister isn’t taking firm action against the Sanatan
Sanstha is an ominous sign, says Vidyadhar Gadgil
It is now a month and a half since the bomb blast in Margao on Diwali
eve, which killed two Sanatan Sanstha activists who were allegedly
carrying a bomb in their scooter. One would have expected that after
this incident at least there would have been appropriate action
against the Sanstha, which has long been linked to hate speech,
communal propaganda and terrorist violence. But that has hardly
happened.
Immediately after the incident, there was a knee-jerk reaction of
sorts, with Home Minister Ravi Naik making statements about “strong
action” needing to be taken against the Sanstha. But his target was
clearly his bete noire Transport Minister Sudin Dhavalikar, who has
close links with the Sanstha, rather than the organisation itself. A
Special Investigation Team (SIT) was set up and the Maharashtra Anti-
Terror Squad (ATS) came in to assist in the investigations. The
investigations have been making slow but steady headway, and a number
of activists of the Sanstha have been arrested for being involved in
the bomb plot. Recent reports in Herald reveal that the police have
unearthed a well-planned conspiracy, where trial runs of the bombs
were carried out at the Talaulim-Ponda hillock and SIM cards had been
obtained on the basis of bogus election photo identity cards (EPIC).
It is to be hoped that these investigations will be carried to their
logical conclusion and all those involved in the bomb plot will be
brought to book.
So far, so good – but what of the Sanstha itself? After the bomb
incidents, the Sanstha launched a disinformation campaign, in an
attempt to wash its hands off the whole incident. The line was
initially that its activists had been framed and that the activists
who died in the bomb blast were actually the victims of a bomb
planted in their scooter by others.
Since such an obvious cover-up carries little conviction, the Sanstha
simultaneously took the line that these activists were ‘misguided’
persons who had taken the wrong path. The same argument had been made
by the Sanstha when some of its activists were arrested for violence
against Christians in Ratnagiri and after the Gadkari Rangayatan bomb
blasts in Thane.
As noted rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar asked in a public meeting
in Panjim, how is it that the Sanstha’s activists so often take the
same kind of ‘wrong path’ – and more pertinently, how is it that
this unconvincing argument is accepted at face value and the Sanstha
gets away without any action being taken against it as an
institution? It also defies belief that a few rogue activists of the
Sanatan Sanstha, a tight-knit, secretive organisation, independently
carried out the blasts without the knowledge or involvement of any of
the senior persons in the organisation.
It is not as if there were not enough indications, even before the
incidents in Thane and Goa, that the Sanstha’s propaganda was of the
type that justified violence in the ‘defence of religion’. Much
has been written about the nature of the literature that the Sanstha
produces and distributes, the kind of hate speech and communal
propaganda that takes place in its Dharma Jagruti Sabhas, and the
‘defence training’ that it provides to selected cadre. And then
we had the logical culmination of all this in the blasts in Thane and
Goa. Despite all this, the state governments, both in Maharashtra and
Goa, continue to take a soft stance towards the Sanstha. The
Maharashtra government has long been delaying banning the Sanstha,
and a recommendation last year by then ATS chief Hemant Karkare to
ban the organisation was rejected. In Goa, there have been repeated
demands to ban the Sanstha, the most recent one coming from the
Congress Legislature Party (CLP). Yet nothing has been done. Masterly
inaction is the USP of Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and his
government in Goa. A ban may not necessarily be the best way to
tackle the problem, but the soft attitude displayed by the government
defies understanding.
The BJP has, of course, been trying to soft-pedal the issue, given
that it is a direct electoral beneficiary of the kind of propaganda
carried out by the Sanatan Sanstha and its offshoots like the Hindu
Janajagruti Samiti.
Manohar Parrikar made distinctly double-faced statements immediately
after the bomb blasts, demanding foolproof evidence of the
involvement of the Sanstha in the Margao bomb blasts – this coming
from a man who, without any evidence whatsoever, blamed SIMI for the
temple desecrations in Goa. Other BJP politicians, like BJP
spokesperson Laxmikant Parsekar, have been making similar statements
and trying to defuse the whole issue.
And then we have the Congress. While the CLP has demanded a ban,
Chief Minister Digambar Kamat still takes a soft stance, despite the
fact that had the plot succeeded, it would have set off a huge
communal conflagration in his constituency of Margao, given that the
intention of the Sanstha’s activists was clearly to direct suspicion
towards the Muslim community.
Does Digambar Kamat have sympathies for the Sanatan Sanstha? His
actions (and lack of them) seem to suggest that. He had had no qualms
about tacitly supporting the rabidly communal and provocative
exhibition of photographs of Kashmir by Francois Gautier, organised
by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti. The Sanstha and its offshoots have
only had to say “boo” for him to get terrified and bow to their
unreasonable demands, whether it is to order an M F Husain film to be
withdrawn from IFFI 2008 or to curtail the exhibition of Ganesha
paintings by Subodh Kerkar from 11 days to 2 days!
Apart from the indecisiveness and saffron-friendliness of our Chief
Minister, the Congress has always taken a soft stance towards
Hindutva, under the misguided impression that stern action may
alienate the Hindu community. While firm action may sometimes lead to
temporary electoral damage, in the long term it can only strengthen
the secular base of Indian politics, on which the Congress depends to
survive. Allowing politics to become communalised is bound to hurt
the party very badly in the long run.
The situation in the Congress is complicated by the fact that it has
always been a hold-all party, and has always accommodated communal
elements within its fold. This was seen in the 2007 elections, when
it admitted hardcore RSS activist Mohan Amshekar into its fold.
Digambar Kamat himself has an RSS background, and joined the Congress
after defecting from the BJP, having been the Deputy Chief Minister
in the Manohar Parrikar government. Is that why he is going soft on
the communal forces? If not, what is the explanation?
Going soft on religious extremism is not a problem limited to Goa. In
Maharashtra too, the Congress has shown little inclination to come
down hard on Abhinav Bharat, the Bajrang Dal, the Sanatan Sanstha and
the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, all of which have been implicated in
setting off bombs in the state. Of all holy cows, religion is the
holiest.
But if Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and his cabinet colleagues do
not realise the danger in not taking action against the Sanatan
Sanstha, someone in the Congress High Command should understand that
their state governments are sending out the wrong signals; and
strengthening the ground for communal forces that have terrorists in
their ranks.
_____
[5] Miscellanea:
Outlook Magazine, 7 December 2009
Book Review:
THE RELIGION OF CAPITALISM
A book that exhorts India’s planners to see its poor as human
beings, not as ‘factors of production’
by Dilip Simeon
The Face You Were Afraid To See: Essays On The Indian Economy
By Amit Bhaduri
Penguin, 208 pages | Rs 250
This small and readable book is a layperson’s introduction to
India’s economic catastrophe. Since many people believe in an
ongoing economic miracle, such views are often dismissed as doomsday
talk. But it is better to be aware of reality than to live in an
illusion. The title is apt—Bhaduri offers us an unsettling vision of
what awaits us if we continue along the current path. He alerts us to
the ideological assumptions underlying the scientific detachment of
our growth-obsessed economists, who operate as metaphysicians of
capitalism rather than as acute observers. That is why they will not
address the fact that “the market as an institution has no
accountability except for the largely make-believe ideology of self-
regulation”.
For the past two decades, India has undergone a transformation.
Celebrated by an elitist media, the ongoing economic changes have
acquired political endorsement across a spectrum ranging from the CPI
(M) to the BJP and Congress. In a country where over three-fourths of
the population has a daily income of less than Rs 20; some 61 million
of whose children are stunted by malnutrition (the world’s highest
figure); and over 90 per cent of whose labourers work in conditions
of informality, what sense does it make to adhere to a growth
strategy that systematically punishes the poor, destroys their
livelihood and makes a mockery of democratic citizenship? Bhaduri
points to the reality in Indian agriculture, where a farmer commits
suicide every 30 minutes; where vast tracts of tribal-inhabited land
in mineral-rich areas of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh
(protected by Schedule 5 of the Constitution) are being acquired by
fair means and foul—mostly the latter. Intimidation, police
shootings and corruption accompany the transfer of lands for mining
and industrial allotments. Forcible acquisition and dispossession
amounts to nothing less than violent internal colonisation. And
that’s official: a review of land reforms by the rural development
ministry describes this as “the biggest grab of tribal lands after
Columbus”.
The strategy so far can be called ‘developmental terrorism’ where
state governments are agents of corporate interests.
Reigning common-sense talks in glib assertions about development and
growth. It stubbornly refuses to consider the question: development
for whom and at whose cost? At what cost to the environment and to
the country’s resources? The strategy adopted thus far, says
Bhaduri, can only be described as developmental terrorism. This is a
blatant assault on Indian democracy by state governments that have
become agents of corporate interests. When the central government
fails to protect India’s weakest citizens, when peaceful struggles
and repeated attempts at legal redress fail, when all political
parties fawn on capitalists as the messiahs of growth, the impression
is bound to grow that the Indian State itself is rapidly on the way
to possession by a mafia. The climate is ripe for extremist ideas to
flourish—especially as vested interests and political leaders have
thrown the Constitution to the winds.
There is a way out, one that steers between the extremes of a
bureaucratic state-controlled economy and untrammelled corporate
rapacity. Medha Patkar joins Bhaduri in the last essay, which deals
with feasible solutions. They do not oppose industrialisation—that
is another glib assertion of an establishment that remains deaf to
far-reaching criticism—rather, they ask for an industrialisation
that can tap “the enormous productive potential of the people”.
They call for growth led by the need for employment rather than
corporate profits, growth with a focus on agriculture, domestic
demand of ordinary people, the fiscal empowerment of panchayats and
devolution of development initiatives—all within the constitutional
framework.
It would have been useful if the essays, written over the past few
years, had been revised more extensively. Yet its many repetitions do
not irritate, for these themes bear repetition. Above all, this is a
book about India’s poor as human beings, not as “factors of
production”. That is why it could contain more on people’s
movements that are not insurgent, but continue to resist the new
industrial regime. An excellent introduction to a burning issue, it
deserves to be widely read, and made compulsory reading for
bureaucrats, policemen and politicians. And, lest we forget, economists.
o o o
Announcements:
(i) Remember Bhopal
Bhopal Gas Tragedy 25th Anniversary Commemoration 01-03 December 2009
http://www.sacw.net/article1235.html
(ii)
Daniel Pearl Awards for cross-border investigative journalism
The 2010 Daniel Pearl Awards competition, which honors the worlds
best cross-border investigative journalism, is now accepting entries.
Deadline: January 15, 2010
The contest is open to any journalist or team of journalists of any
nationality working in any medium. Entries must involve reporting in
at least two countries on a topic of world significance.
There is no entry fee. Submissions from Latin America, Asia, Africa
and the Middle East are especially encouraged.
Granted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
(ICIJ), the awards include two $5,000 first-place prizes, along with
five additional $1,000 prizes. The awards will be presented at the
6th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva,
Switzerland, in April 2010.
Formerly the ICIJ Awards, the prizes were renamed in 2008 in honor of
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain by militants
in Pakistan in 2002.
For more details go to: http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/
icij/awards/
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