SACW Jan 17, 2011 / Taseer's Killing to Arizona / RSS links to terror / Sedition and Blasphemy

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Mon Jan 17 02:46:37 EST 2011


South Asia Citizens Wire -  Dispatch No. 2699 - January 17, 2011
From: sacw.net

[1] Pakistan: The naked emperors  (Sikander Amani)
   - Military operations in FATA not against Taliban
  (i) Plight of FR Peshawar IDPs  (Farhat Taj)
  (ii) The Taliban strike back (Express Tribune)
[2] Bangladesh : Malik-speak- demonisation and denial (Rahnuma Ahmed)
[3] India Hindutva Terror Exposed:
    (i) Aseemananda’s Confession (Edit., EPW)
   (ii) Swami, Sangh and Terror Links (Ram Puniyani)
[4] India: UP khap bans jeans for girls
[5]  In India and Pakistan, British era laws on sedition and blasphemy are meant to muzzle dissent (Anil Nair)

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[1] Pakistan:

Daily Times, 17 January 2011

The naked emperors 

by Sikander Amani

What matters for the religious right is obviously not the rightfulness or justice of its cause, be it substantial or procedural, it is naked power. And there are few things like the blasphemy law to give the appearance of power

The aftermath of Salmaan Taseer’s shooting is so very depressing. In a sense, it mirrors the aftermath of the Arizona shooting in the US, where a young man killed six people and injured 14 others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In both cases, we see the more progressive elements of the country embark on massive soul-searching. In the US, a vast debate on the role of the Tea Party’s extreme rhetoric in inciting violence has been launched. In Pakistan, many have written and spoken in defence both of Taseer and the values he stood for; many have revisited recent history to understand the causes of such violence, the betrayal of Jinnah’s dream, the ever damaging legacy of Ziaul Haq, the ambiguities of the subsequent governments towards extremists, and the cowardice of the current government in tackling them. Many are pondering about what went wrong, and how to change the course of a country seemingly running at full speed towards complete failure.

Conservatives have been far more discreet. Remorse? Soul-search? Regrets? Pfft. Not in the least. In the US, Sarah Palin once again distinguished herself by her uncouth and disgraceful speech where, surprise, surprise, she managed to portray herself as the victim. In Pakistan, it is far worse (as everything always is: floods are worse, earthquakes are worse, terrorist attacks are worse...Pakistan excels at doing everything in excess). Not only does the religious right not feel any remorse for its role in creating a space of violence against minorities and dissenters, it actually seems to enjoy calling for murder and issuing fatwas (edicts) left, right and centre. Everyone agrees Salmaan Taseer was not a blasphemer; but he defended a person accused of blasphemy, so by association he deserves to die. And beware! Anyone who defends the one who defended the blasphemer is also at risk now; and by extension, anyone who defends the one who defends the one who defends. The beauty of this regression to infinity is that you ensure the continued supply of traitors to Islam needed for the religious right to keep its fake momentum going. (Oh and by the way: for all those self-appointed defenders of Islam who revel in sending me hate-filled and venomous e-mails, please spare your religion the indignity, and me, the annoyance of your bloodthirsty threats.) The conflation of the blasphemer, the defender of the blasphemer, the defender of the defender suits the religious right well, as it knows that it holds, in blasphemy, its only trump card. This is also why it keeps organising demonstration after demonstration on it, even though this most cowardly government has by now repeatedly stated that no, it would not touch a hair of the blasphemy law, despite its evident injustice. The most recent demonstration, purportedly against the Pope’s statement, just shows the vacuity of their cause, and the instrumentalisation of blasphemy itself (notwithstanding the fact that if one were to demonstrate every time the Pope comes up with some controversial statement, we would be perpetually on the streets). So we can trust them to find an endless source of alleged threats to the Pakistani blasphemy law. The religious right also conveniently omits to explain how one man, Mumtaz Qadri, is allowed (under any type of law — human or divine) to single-handedly decide who deserves to die or not. If any Muslim in entitled to judge any other Muslim’s right to live, coexistence might become a rather, ahem, dicey affair.

But why dwell on these trivial requirements of justice: why dwell on the natural and Islamic imperative of justice; why dwell on the inherent impossibility for one man to unilaterally decide another should die. What matters for the religious right is obviously not the rightfulness or justice of its cause, be it substantial or procedural, it is naked power. And there are few things like the blasphemy law to give the appearance of power. Nothing like it to mobilise people on the streets; it is easy, it is cheap, and it comes at the expense of dispensable minorities. The blasphemy law is a corrupt politician’s dream: an easy tool with which to threaten, mobilise, energise his base constituency, without lifting a finger to fulfil more substantial needs of the population, such as criminal or social justice, or economic inequality, which are incidentally no less important in Islam. Why choose the hard way when the cheap one works so well, snigger our frantic mullahs.

In a famous tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of two weavers who promise an Emperor the finest, most elegant and sophisticated suit of clothes. It is to be made in the finest fabric, so delicate and unique that it is invisible to anyone unfit for his position, “hopelessly stupid”, or incompetent. The Emperor does not see the clothes, but out of fear of appearing stupid he pretends he does, as do his ministers. When the weavers-swindlers claim to have finished the suit, they dress the Emperor, who then proudly marches off, stark naked, in a public procession before his subjects.

Though they are thankfully no emperors, the mullahs who spend their time dishing out fatwas and threats in every direction are very much like the naked Emperor: they have nothing. No political legitimacy, no concern for justice, nothing but a flimsy, self-proclaimed theological authority, no electorate, and please, let us not forget that they have lost dismally at every single democratic election held in Pakistan — but the invisible clothes of threats and imprecations against blasphemers (and assimilated) is efficient in keeping everyone, at least in the government, terrified. As the government gapes in awe, like the stricken ministers of the Emperor whose vanity prevents them from admitting that he is naked, the religious right marches off vainly through the streets of Lahore or Karachi. But let not their threats of violence fool anyone: they are actually naked.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at sikander.amani at gmail.com

o o o

Daily Times
January 15, 2011

Plight of FR Peshawar IDPs 

by Farhat Taj

To the people of FATA, one thing has been established beyond doubt: the military operations in FATA have never been meant for the elimination of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the area. The aim is to displace the local people to vacate the area for the Taliban who carry forward the agenda of strategic depth

Frontier Region Peshawar, commonly known as FR Peshawar, is located towards the south of Peshawar and is part of FATA. The military operations in Bora and Pastawana areas in FR Peshawar in 2010 displaced thousands of people. On May 30, 2010, Daily Times reported that the displaced people have been waiting to get internally displaced persons (IDPs) status for the last two months. The report quoted some of the displaced people requesting the government to grant them IDP status at the earliest so that they become entitled to relief from aid organisations. These people have fled empty-handed from their homes and have been living in pathetic conditions in Peshawar and Nowshera. Many have gone to Karachi and many others went to live in the former Afghan refugee camp called Shamshato.

These people have not been given IDP status by the government of Pakistan even after the passage of about seven months. They continue to live in pathetic conditions in rented houses or with relatives without any relief from the authorities or aid organisations. Most of the children who attended schools in FR Peshawar have no opportunity to go to schools in the areas of their current residence due to the poverty of their parents. The displaced people have no health facilities. Many of them have no access to clean drinking water. They have been constantly approaching the authorities, but to no avail. Moreover, the media of Pakistan, it seems, has forgotten these people.

These people could not go back to their native areas due to the poor security situation. They complain that the military operations have failed to eliminate the Taliban. Within days after the first military operation in FR Peshawar, the Taliban, the majority of whom was non-local, came back to the area. They occupied the houses left by the displaced people. Many of them brought their families with them to FR Peshawar. Moreover, the Taliban have killed the leading tribal leaders of the area, like Malik Kala Khan and Malik Akbar Khan. They have also kidnapped another noted tribal leader, Malik Musa Khan.

It is pertinent to mention that Bora and Pastawana in FR Peshawar are on the border of village Adeyzai in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The tribal jirga in Adeyzai has made an anti-Taliban lashkar in response to the activities of the Taliban in FR Peshawar and Darra Adam Khel. The assassinated leader of this lashkar, Haji Abdul Malik, told me in an interview prior to his assassination that there were heavily armed Taliban, only 25 in number, in Pastawana. He said that he had been pleading with the authorities to eliminate them or let his lashkar’s men do the job. He complained that the authorities showed no interest in taking on those 25 Taliban and also stopped his lashkar’s men from eliminating them. The Taliban in Pastawana were the ones who sent a suicide bomber who killed Haji Malik in November 2009. Haji Malik would have been alive today and Pastawana free of the Taliban, if only the authorities had appropriately responded to his pleading.

To the people of FATA, one thing has been established beyond doubt: the military operations in FATA have never been meant for the elimination of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the area. This has never been the objective of even the military high command. The aim is to displace the local people to vacate the area for the Taliban who carry forward the agenda of strategic depth or to mislead wider society in Pakistan and the world at large that there is a people-backed militancy in FATA led by the Taliban who are the people of FATA. The Mehsud tribesmen of South Waziristan informed that there have been 17 small and big operations in their area and not even a single Taliban commander or foot-soldier has been killed in these operations. On the other hand, the Mehsud tribesmen have repeatedly become IDPs in these operations. Such fake military operations may be in the ‘interest’ of the state as defined by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. This, however, has left the people of FATA in the most inhumane conditions. The people of Bora and Pastawana are an example of this. They have been abandoned by the state, which has not even recognised them as IDPs despite their displacement months ago.

The Bora and Pastawana IDPs request the UN secretary general, and authorities in the Red Cross, World Food Programme, UNICEF and other national and international aid organisations to request the government, on their behalf, to register them as IDPs so that they become entitled to relief help provided by the aid agencies.

The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban

o o o

The Express Tribune, December 9, 2010

The Taliban strike back

Kohat is only nominally under Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's administrative control despite the fact that it is an important Pakistan Air Force base.

After the announcement by the Pakistan Army that neighbouring South Waziristan was cleared of the Taliban and that in Orakzai 85 per cent of the area was likewise cleared, a bloody response from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the shape of a suicide bombing in Kohat has shaken the country. A boy, with 10 kg of explosives tied to his body, killed 18 and injured 32 persons from among the families going to Orakzai.

Almost at the same time, teachers of a school have been abducted in neighbouring Hangu, also a ‘settled’ district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Earlier, two suicide bombers killed scores of elders gathered at the headquarters of the political agent of Mohmand Agency. The agency abuts on the provincial boundary and was once considered relatively peaceful but subject to inroads from an old Harkatul Mujahideen, Umar Khalid, who was once used as a ‘freedom fighter’ by Pakistan in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Kohat is around 60 kilometres south of Peshawar, accessible by the Kohat Pass. In 1901, the population was 217,865, showing an increase of 11 per cent in the decade. By 1998 (the time Pakistan conducted its most recent census) it had swelled to 1.4 million. It has a Hindko-speaking Paracha community, closely allied to the madrassas of Javed Ibrahim Paracha, the so-called ‘al Qaeda lawyer’ with links to Lal Masjid in Islamabad. He was once a PML-N MNA and a JUI candidate but is now a defender of al Qaeda men arrested in Pakistan and has named his son Osama. Kohat is only nominally under Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s administrative controle, despite the fact that it is an important Pakistan Air Force base. The people there live under the twin administration of the Pakistani state and the Taliban, who are said to rule at night.

The same thing can be said about Hangu, where the Taliban exercise a lot of authority and complicate the city’s sectarian map. The sectarian distribution of Kohat has assisted in the leaning of some fanatics to allegiance to the Taliban who do not hesitate to target the Shia community in the entire region, up to Kurram Agency. The current leader of the Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, earned his notoriety as a killer of the Shia. Kohat city also has a monument to the first batch of al Qaeda prisoners — mostly Chechen — who were brought here as prisoners but were killed in an encounter with the Pakistan Army.

To give a glimpse of how Kohat is left at the mercy of the Taliban and the sectarian divide existing there, one will have to hark back to an interview Javed Ibrahim Paracha gave to a television channel on September 12, 2003. According to him: “After 9/11, Bulgarian and Chechen mujahideen fled from Afghanistan and came down to the Tribal Areas from where they came to Kohat where already 27 Arab mujahideen were in jail. They were the offspring of the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet — pbuh) and were Ahle Bait (from the family of the Prophet — pbuh).”

After the al Qaeda men were killed, according to him, their blood began to smell like perfume and was collected by the people of Kohat in bottles. Paracha then organised a jirga which built a monument to the ‘martyrs’ who had been killed.

It is in this environment that Pakistan has to fight the Taliban. The Kohat-Hangu region is close to Orakzai Agency where the army is in the process of concluding a praiseworthy operation, with the Taliban on the run. The latest attack — as pointed out by the army spokesman — is an indication of the discomfiture the terrorists are experiencing.

In the coming days, more trouble could be in the offing because of Muharram, when the martyrdom of Imam Hussain is remembered and observed. Already the Shia community of Kohat has had to give up the celebration of Nauruz — a traditional festival — and now might be exposed to more suicide bombings by the Taliban on the run in neighbouring tribal agencies. There is no doubt that the problem of terrorism will be tackled in the long run but, at this point in time, Kohat remains vulnerable because the writ of the state there is weak, if not occasionally non-existent.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2010.

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[2] Bangladesh:

New Age (Bangladesh)
17 January 2011

LIVING WAGES FOR GARMENT WORKERS
Malik-speak: demonisation and denial

by Rahnuma Ahmed

I DON’T think anyone gets taken in by what they say. No, not any longer.  Not unexpected, for, after all, how long can one spin the same old story and I DON'T think anyone gets taken in by what they say. No, not any longer.

Not unexpected, for, after all, how long can one spin the same old story and expect people to fall for it? Day after day. Year after year.

Even prime minister Sheikh Hasina had sounded exasperated. Factory owners, she said, give garment workers 'not only insufficient but also inhuman' wages.

Coming from someone who heads a government which, as Shahidullah Chowdhury, president, Bangladesh Trade Union Centre, points out, is 'essentially biased' towards protecting and promoting the interests of the rich (like all previous governments in Bangladesh), her comment is quite revealing.

Industry leaders, of course, had a fit. Labour unions had demanded 5-6,000 taka, owners grudgingly agreed to 3,000 taka. Far below living wages. But as Annisul Huq, former head of the BGMEA (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association), a factory owner whose clients include H&M and Wal-Mart, ruefully told the New York Times, 'If it's 5,000 taka, I would close all my factories.' He added, 'Even if it's 3,000 taka, lots of factories will close within three or four months' (July 16, 2010).

One cannot, of course, deny that the government needs to take measures to strengthen Bangladesh's most successful manufacturing industry which accounts for 80 per cent of annual export earnings. For one, it needs to ensure uninterrupted power supply. Abdus Salam Murshedy, the head of BGMEA, in an attempt to convince workers to accept 1,969 taka as wages said last June, 'We have been reeling under acute gas and power crisis, which has affected our productivity.'

Second, it also needs to takes measures to bring down escalating food prices, as food inflation matters most to minimum wage garment workers. In May last year, rice prices went up by between 18 per cent and 32 per cent, according to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh. But in defiance of Bangladesh labour laws which dictate that wages should be reassessed and adjusted every three years, recent wage increases were awarded after 2006. After spilling blood. They have been dubbed 'malnutrition' wages by some, 'poverty' wages by others.

The acute shortage of electricity, insists BD Rahmatullah, former director general of the Power Cell (ministry of power, energy and mineral resources), is a 'manufactured' crisis. As a former insider, he should know; further, no one from the energy ministry has contested his allegation. One cannot help but ask, why would a government electorally committed to increasing and stabilising power generation, manufacture a crisis, much to the detriment of people's, and industrial interests? WikiLeaks leaked Dhaka US Embassy cables incline me to suggest that the manufactured crisis is possibly aimed at rallying public support for awarding oil, gas and coal contracts to foreign companies (People's resistance to global capital, govt collaboration is vindicated, New Age, January 3).

As for the food crisis, according to the Election Manifesto of Bangladesh Awami League-2008, 'commodity prices increased by 100 to 200 percent' during the BNP Jamaat alliance rule (2001-2007), the 'infamous Hawa Bhaban' under the 'leadership of the son of the [former] Prime Minister [Khaleda Zia]' patronised 'criminal syndicates'. All true, but although the ruling party has changed, although Hawa Bhaban which ran a 'parallel government' no longer exists, food syndicates still do. Fourteen months after taking power, finance minister AMA Muhith declared, a 'cartel or syndicate of traders' is responsible for price hikes of essentials including rice, that the government was 'seeking ways and means to stabilise the market' (February 2010). Six months later, it seems the government had stopped seeking ways and means, for as Muhith stated, government attempts to break up the syndicate had failed (August 12, 2010).

It is obvious that the 'rich' interests which the Awami League government protects and promotes extend not only to the garment sector but also to oil, gas, coal and food. That the government is committed to serving the interests of global and local capital. Not those of the majority. Not those who voted it to power.

It should also be obvious that the rich of one sector collude with the rich of another. At a reception in May 2008, accorded by the Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the BGMEA to the newly-elected office-bearers of FBCCI, the apex chamber body, the newly-elected FBCCI president Annisul Huq and other business people urged the government to take immediate steps for exploring coal and gas to overcome the energy crisis, to put an end to the debate on the coal policy, to go for open-pit coal mining (The Daily Star, May 3, 2008). Environmental activists say, the latter will lead to the forcible eviction of not 1,30,000 people as the government commissioned report claims, but ten times more, that it will wreck the environment. But those at the Chittagong reception seemed to shrug off these concerns, affected people could 'easily be rehabilitated'.

'We are not blood-suckers,' he said excitedly, a young garment factory owner, whose name I'm afraid I couldn't catch, he was on a talk show on a private TV channel, it was midway through, this was nearly 3 weeks ago. All this talk of 'capitalism' and 'exploitation' portrays us in a bad light. I refuse to listen to all this. I'll walk out right now, he said, jerking his head toward what was presumably the studio door. While MM Akash, professor of economics, Dhaka University, sat silently grinning, while the anchor of the programme desperately tried to restore peace, I sat open-mouthed at the TV screen. Huh, and I'd thought all our drama queens belonged to parliament.

Over the last few weeks, I have had the fortune to watch two other live TV programmes graced by factory owners. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when I heard AK Azad, president of the FBCCI, chairman of the Ha-Meem Group, fifth largest clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh, a big supplier of readymade garments for Gap, whose That's It Sportswear at Ashulia caught fire last December leading to the death of 23 workers, insist that safety measures were meticulously followed in his factories. There were regular fire drills but since they were 'merely' drills with no real fires, it had been difficult to foresee and prevent the deaths. Where on earth are real fires lit during drills?

And yes, both Azad, and later, in another TV programme, Anwar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury Parvez, former BGMEA president, owner of Evince Group, insisted (seemingly speaking from the same script), the new wage structure is being followed in their factories, in all other factories that they know of, to say otherwise is a smear campaign, out to malign the industry. They spoke in a voice of benevolence, their workers were happy, contented, well-looked after. Parvez got a bit carried away, I never fail to address them as my children, I call them baba, ma, but he quickly fell silent when the anchor interjected, 'but, how does that affect the wages paid?'

Factory owners' self-construction as benevolent, kind, concerned and caring, as is evident from the discourse of BGMEA leaders, reminds me of colonial discourses since workers are simultaneously constructed as passive and backward, who are easily amenable to being 'incited' and 'instigated', who turn 'violent', go 'berserk', on a 'rampage', who vandalise, loot and destroy. They need to be pacified, and to do so, an industrial police force has been established (October 2010). To maintain 'law and order' in the export processing zones, said the prime minister, to help maintain 'smooth and uninterrupted productions' at mills and factories.

Even though leaders admit at times that there may be a few bad apples among the owners who give the industry a bad name, as a collective, they authoritatively claim to represent the nation's interest, for it is they who are taking the nation forward, who have strengthened the national economy. The garment industry is a national resource, they say, but in contemporary business speak, as Lucy Kellaway writes, ownership is the biggest lie of all. Using the 'national good' as a rhetorical device covers 'private advantage', simply using the word 'nation' does not make one 'nationalists' (David Burrow).

Genuine worker grievances-rising from meagre wages, by all accounts, far short of living costs, and 'notoriously' bad safety records-are covered up by speeches, both by factory owners and political leaders, who point fingers at 'foreign' forces bent on sabotaging the nation's progress, at vested quarters attempting to spread anarchy, at creating terror. Foreign, one must note, are both good and bad, the good ones are those that the owners are aligned to, foreign buyers, foreign investors, while the baddies are international labour rights and human rights organisations with whom local and national groups network to fight against grave injustices toward Bangladesh's garment workers, who have the privilege of receiving the lowest wages in the highest earning industrial sector. The only industrial sector in Bangladesh which, since its inception, has been wracked by labour unrest, one which often enough spills out into city streets, whether in Dhaka, or Chittagong or Narayanganj, which disrupts public life, causes death and injury to members of the public (on December 12, 2010, a rickshaw driver was killed when police fired at demonstrating workers in Chittagong EPZ), and severe financial losses (cars set alight, buses torched).

But BGMEA enjoys the blessings of prime ministers both past and present. During her first tenure as prime minister, Sheikh Hasina had inaugurated the construction of the BGMEA Bhaban in November 1998. After completion, in October 2006, the building was inaugurated by then prime minister, Khaleda Zia.

The 15-story structure, standing tall, is illegal, having been built on land that is government-owned, without approval from Rajuk, the city development authority, land which had been set aside for the Begunbari-Hatirjheel integrated development project. Having been built on land filling that was a part of the Hatirjheel lake, in gross violation of two laws, including the Environment and Wetland Protection Act 2000, it is said to be the main reason for chronic and severe water-logging in Dhaka city. Urban experts, academicians and environmentalists have repeatedly called on the government to demolish the BGMEA building because it is right in the middle of the canal, it 'defies the law in the heart of the city,' it inspires others to violate the law (Abdullah Abu Sayeed).

BGMEA's vice-president Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin's response, the government must decide which is more important, the lake or the BGMEA, rests on the language of power. That of environmentalists, as do those of garment workers and their leaders, speak of justice. The law requires Rajuk to go ahead and demolish the building without waiting for a political decision, says noted environmentalist and director of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association Rezwana Hasan. 'If law is subject to politics, justice can never be ensured.'

I myself don't understand what all the fuss is about. If the affected people of Phulbari can 'easily be rehabilitated', surely, so can the BGMEA headquarters? Maybe it is time BGMEA leaders and members learnt to live by the law, not to bend it to serve their own sweet will. It is only then that their claims of being committed to 'national interests' will be honoured by the public.


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[3] India:

(i)

The Economic and Political Weekly, January 15, 2011

Editorial

ASEEMANANDA’S CONFESSION
The links of the RSS to terror stand exposed, as does the incompetence and complicity of the Indian state.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the confession made by Swami Aseemananda relating to the planning and execution of the bomb blasts in Malegaon (2006 and 2008), on the Samjhauta Express (2006), and in Mecca Masjid (2007) and Ajmer Sharif (2007). What is even more significant is that Aseemananda’s confession was made voluntarily before a magis- trate, after he was kept away from the police, in judicial custody for two days, to ensure that it was not being made under duress. Aseemananda is no ordinary person. He is a Rashtriya Swayam- sevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak, head of the RSS-affiliated Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Gujarat and he runs a religious centre in the Dangs district of Gujarat. He is powerful enough to have Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi visit him and share the dais with him on frequent occasions.

In his confession, Aseemananda has laid bare the entire con- spiracy, and he has named the people involved. His sudden decision to confess voluntarily is melodramatic, and somewhat suspicious. This swami apparently met, in a Hyderabad jail, one among the young boys who were arrested by the police after the Mecca Masjid blast and tortured. This young boy, Abdul Kaleem, im- pressed Aseemananda so much with his behaviour and kindness, that when he came to know that Kaleem spent a year and a half in jail and suffered police “interrogation”, he wanted to repent and thus came his confession. Whatever be the reason, Aseemananda has detailed in a sworn testimony to a magistrate the entire working of RSS-inspired Hindutva terrorism in India. Such a confession before a magistrate has weight in the court of law, but more importantly it gives the investigating authorities the full picture of the entire conspiracy, its execution and the people involved. It, therefore, makes it that much easier for them to find the substantiating evi- dence to charge sheet all those involved and obtain convictions. In sum, Aseemananda’s confession has shown that a large number of terror strikes in India have been the handiwork of Hindutva terror- ists who have close organisational and ideological links with the RSS and its front, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The jigsaw puzzle, which was being slowly pieced together by the police of different states, after the stellar investigative work of Hemant Karkare and his team in Maharashtra, has suddenly all fallen into place thanks to this five-hour confession. However, it is hardly a certainty that this confession will lead to convictions and punishment of the guilty. Far less probable is that there will be any serious action against the RSS and its “parivar”, which have now, once again, been shown to be dangerously violent and a threat to the republic. In their actions following each of these cases of terror, most of the police and the other investigative agencies have shown themselves to be thoroughly incompetent, politically compromised and infiltrated by the personnel and ideologies of this very Hindutva brigade.

In each of the cases, where now evidence has been found of the involvement of Hindutva groups, the police had instinctively arrested Muslims and put out elaborate stories about Islamic terrorist groups planning and executing these attacks. Hundreds of young men were arrested, tortured into giving false “confes- sions” and hauled up in courts, which in turn happily carried on with this charade. (The media has emerged no less honourably; it was ever ready to swallow police theories of Islamic funda- mentalists from Bangladesh to Pakistan as masterminds and painted grand theories of syncretic Islam being threatened by these extremists.) Now that we have Aseemananda’s confession, reading those police accounts of how Islamic terrorists executed these attacks shows the extent of the incompetence and duplicity of our men in khaki. To expect them, as an institution, to take the prosecution to a successful conclusion is perhaps asking for too much. In addition to all its innate failings, the law and order machinery may not even receive sufficient political backing from the government, as it takes on India’s principal opposition party’s paterfamilias, the RSS.

The Congress as a party and the government under its dispen- sation have, at best, been indecisive in their approach to Hindutva violence. Congress administrations have been known for their ambivalent and often complicit behaviour when dealing with RSS-inspired anti-Muslim violence, whether it was in Ahmedabad in 1969, Hyderabad in 1978, Meerut in 1987, or the post-Babri masjid demolition riots in Mumbai, Surat and other places. Lastly, it should be remembered that in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, it was the police under Congress or coalition administrations which arrested and tortured innocent men whose only crime was their religion. Given such a track record, it is but obvious that suspicions will remain about the ability of the present governments, both at the centre and in states like Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, to successfully prosecute those named by Aseemananda and, further, to investigate the actual involvement of the RSS and its affiliates in these terror acts.

Within a month of Aseemananda’s confession, the usual play-acting has started. The RSS and its affiliate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have denied the charges and attacked the Central Bureau of Investigation for playing Congress politics. They have claimed that the Congress is using this to divert at- tention from corruption and inflation. The media in its stilted attempt to balance the story has downplayed the culpability of the RSS. In any case, this is not the first time that the RSS has been exposed for its violent, communal and destructive politics, and given its deep penetration of social and political institutions, it has managed to come out of such situations in the past too. This battle against the RSS and the world view it represents has to be won politically. Aseemananda’s confession will hopefully
disabuse many of those who have come to view the RSS, through its electoral affiliate – the BJP – as a legitimate organisation and expose once again its true character. If popular political pres- sure, combined with media scrutiny and civil society activism, can be sustained, there is a possibility that those guilty of the present round of terror acts may be punished. This itself will be a major achievement.
Finally, we must now ask Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which is the “biggest internal security threat” to the idea of India. Is Maoism, as he often says, a basic threat to India, or, on the basis of the mass of evidence of right wing extremist involvement in terror, can it be Hindutva? Perhaps Congress Party General Secretary Rahul Gandhi shows greater awareness of the reality.

(ii)

SWAMI, SANGH AND TERROR LINKS

by Ram Puniyani

Investigating acts of terrorism have multiple complex issues as things are mired in secrecy. To add to the problem is the mindset of investigating authorities and those in power. 

FULL Text at:
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2011/01/swami-sangh-and-bomb.html

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[4]  India:

The Times of India

UP KHAP BANS JEANS FOR GIRLS
PTI, Jan 17, 2011, 12.45am IST

MUZAFFARNAGAR (UP): A khap panchayat (caste council) banned girls from wearing jeans. Village elders blamed the attire for provoking eve-teasing and encouraging young couples to elope.

The khap panchayat led by Battisa Khap Council head Baba Suraj in Bhenswal village passed the diktat which claimed that wearing jeans had a "bad effect" on young women and eve-teasing incidents had increased due to their objectionable clothes".

The panchayat also formed a five-member committee of women to implement the ban in the village. Earlier, caste councils or kangaroo courts, which have been accused of supporting "honour killings", had banned the use of mobile phones by unmarried girls in the district. They used the same argument, saying the phones encouraged women to step out of the home.

On November 14, all khap panchayats from Shoram village in Muzaffarnagar had assembled to oppose same gotra (sub-caste) marriages and demanded the government amend the Hindu Marriage Act to enforce a ban.

The government is drafting a legislation dealing specifically with killings ordered by khap panchayats.


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[5]  Pakistan and India:

Bangalore Mirror, January 16, 2011

IN BOTH COUNTRIES, IT’S THE LINE OF CONTROL

In India and Pakistan, British era laws on sedition and blasphemy are meant to muzzle dissent

by Anil Nair

Intolerance is on the rise in the Indian subcontinent. That’s hardly surprising. What is frightening, however, is that the murder of Salman Taseer in Pakistan and the sentencing of Binayak Sen in India are basically of the same kind and differs only in degrees. What is condemned as ‘blasphemy’ in Pakistan and used as an instrument to get rid of sober and cultivated voices, is called ‘sedition’ here and used to the same effect.


This is not a hyperbolic statement. The primitive nature of the Aasia Bibi case which culminated in Taseer’s killing and the equally primitive manner in which the public there - at least large and vocal sections of it - glorified it comes from some dark and dangerous place, something as inexplicable and ominous as the amygdala or the reptilian part of the human brain. In contrast, Sen’s sentencing seems more like a momentary loss of sanity on the part of the Indian state. Yet, the relatively less violent nature of the Indian state’s response to dissent, and to perceived or imagined threats to its sovereignty, shouldn’t blind us to its more methodical and institutionalised, and thus arguably more dangerous, nature. 

When the establishment here – and this includes the political class and the judiciary – didn’t hesitate to slap sedition charges on Sen because he allegedly colluded with Maoists, what it was attacking was not Naxalism but the very possibility of strongly and consistently voicing any idea that differed radically from the middleclass mainstream’s Idea of India. What this Idea of India in effect prohibits is a whole range of actions and alternative ideas – from a more equitable redistribution of resources across regions and classes to punishing those actually guilty and culpable for the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat. In terms of the hegemony it claims and enforces, the Indian state thus is hardly different from the non-state actors in Pakistan. The Pakistani case appears far more reprehensible only because of the theological elements and, with the bad name that religion already enjoys, that was only to be expected.  

Interestingly, sacrilege (and blasphemy) and sedition and are closely connected. Even more interestingly, sacrilege though cast in a religious garb was originally intended for secular reasons, whereas sedition though in apparent secular garb possesses a religious core. The main definition of sacrilege and blasphemy is that the name of the lord should not be taken in vain. Obviously the motive was to enforce the idea of the sacrosanct, of what could be said and who had the right to say it but, equally, it was concerned with the far more profound and secular notions about language and rationality, of the need to be thoughtful and measured and to rise above profanity and sheer garrulousness, what the French scholar Alain Cabantous in Blasphemy: Impious Speech in the West from the 17th to the 19th Century vividly describes as “the diarrhea of the mouth”.

Sedition, in contrast, continues to press on merely with the idea of the sacrosanct, except that the nature of authority has changed from religious to political, from church to state. Colonialism, whose entire rationality was based on a captive audience, consolidated this idea of the sacrosanct. And we in modern-day India have strengthened it even more, beholden as we are with our British legacy. It’s not just that the letter of the sedition law - Section 124A of the Penal Code - which proclaims that “Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excited or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life …” is archaic.

Our mindset itself continues to be deeply colonial. Arundhati Roy, for instance, has said some outspoken things about Kashmir but, as she also rightly pointed out, she was merely repeating what Jawaharlal Nehru himself and other luminaries have said many times. Why is it that Roy becomes treasonous and Nehru doesn’t? It is because we continue to privilege hierarchy over rationality, the authorized voice over the unauthorized one – hence Nehru is an oracle but Roy a mere subversive.

It is no different in Pakistan, even though on the outside nothing seems more antithetical than Islamism and British colonialism. Salman Taseer was as much a believer as Mumtaz Hussain Qadri his bodyguard-turned-assassin, though unlike the latter he didn’t have a blackened callous in the middle of his forehead, worn like a scar and acquired by bringing his head to the ground in supposedly pious genuflection a prescribed number of times each day, day in and day out. What Taseer had instead was real faith in god and the prophet (holy be his name), which is why he was not going to feel challenged or insecure by what Aasia Bibi did. Bibi, a Christian woman, in Pakistan’s Punjab province who when pressured by certain zealots tried to renounce her faith, retorted that whereas Jesus died on the cross for the sake of humanity what had their god done for them?

Rather than be offended, Taseer would have, much like Asra Nomani does in her piece in The Daily Beast, appreciated the irony of the situation: Of how the Sisters of Loretto that Bibi worked for, and the Vatican to which it is affiliated, by virtue of being archaic patriarchal institutions themselves can hardly claim the moral high ground. But the point, as Nomani writes, and for which Taseer paid with his life, is to see the larger picture and to go beyond one’s co-religionists and the colonial legacy to fight the common enemy – ignorance, bigotry, a wrong understanding of what is sacred.

Finally, whether it is India or Pakistan, sedition or sacrilege, what is at stake is the enlightened notion of knowing how each one of us is different but never preventing that from reaching out to those who are different from us, and to try and bridge the chasm, however big that might be.  

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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
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