SACW - 28 Jan 2013 | India - Pakistan: Play Sport Not War / Sri Lanka: Ultra-nationalism / Pakistan: Qadri who? / India: Hindutva Terrorism / The Taliban of Timbuktu

Sun Jan 27 16:48:54 EST 2013

South Asia Citizens Wire - 28 January 2013 - No. 2768
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Contents:

1. The pathological India — Pakistan confrontation (Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed)
2. India - Pakistan Peace Now - Global Vigil on Sunday, 27 January 2013 - Press Statement
3. India - Pakistan: Play Sport Not War
  (i) Sports and borders - The News (Pakistan), Editorial 
 (ii) SAHMAT Statement on Cultural and Sports contacts with Pakistan
4. Pakistan: The Qadri enigma, stunt & aftermath (Nadeem F. Paracha)
5. Kathmandu Declaration, South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) 4th General Assembly, 18-19 December 2012
6. The Practicality of Nuclear Civil Defence in South Asia (A H Nayyar, R Rajaraman, Zia Mian)
7. Sri Lanka: Ultra-nationalism threatens economy (The Island)
8. Sri Lanka: Bodhu Bala Sena Wants Law Changed to Permit a Sinhalese Man to Marry Five Wives to Propagate the Sinhala Race (Dharisha Bastians)
9. India: Photos from ’Freedom Parade’, New Delhi, 26 January 2013
10. India: Who Is Afraid of Tipu Sultan ? (Subhash Gatade)
11. India: Citizens Statement of Protest and Demand for withdrawal of Gallantry award to SRP Kalluri
12. India: The Verma Commission and Women’s Status (Walter Fernandes)
13. Communalism here, fascism there (Jawed Naqvi)
14. India: Joint Public Statement on Hindutva Terror
15. Action against Communal Politics: Call for Impartial and Appropriate Action - Press Statement
16. India: To hell with modesty (Kim Arora)
17. India: The quiet grip of caste (Jean Drèze)
18. India: selected posts on Communalism Watch 
 - Bombay: Far Right Shiv Sena hands out kitchen knives and chili powder to women
 - The umbrage over Hindu terror is overdone
 - The Old New BJP Chief says he never met Sadhvi Pragya of Malegaon Blasts Fame ?
 - India: A severe turf war inside the RSS for control of top party post in BJP 
 - India: Ashis Nandy in shit for making clumsy casteist claims at the Jaipur literature festival 2013 
 - India: Dhule video unmasks rioters in police uniform	
 - India: IAMC Open letter to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi regarding arrest of Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi 
 - What I want is neither a Ram Rajya or a Buddha Raj
 - Editorial in The Hindu on the Tamil Nadu Govt's capitulating before those who protested against the film 
 - Choose another temple? An Open Ramble to Madhu Kishwar
19. Nadeem Aslam: ‘I vote with every sentence I write’  - interviewed by Nandini Nair

INTERNATIONAL:
20. Mali: The Taliban of Timbuktu (Karima Bennoune)
21. Day a one-eyed jihadist came to Timbuktu (Xan Rice) + Hendrina Khan Hotel
22. Music is vital to political struggle across Africa – not just in Mali (Ian Birell)  

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1. THE PATHOLOGICAL INDIA — PAKISTAN CONFRONTATION
by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed
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(The Daily Times, 28 January 2013)

The tragedy is that those forces that wish to derail the normalisation and peace process seem to be able to do it any time they want

This is my last article for now as I take a break until April. For a few days, war clouds had gathered over the subcontinent after Pakistan claimed on January 7, 2013 that one of its soldiers had been killed by firing by the Indian troops on the Line of Control (LoC). India denied the accusation outright. Next, India claimed that Pakistan had beheaded one of its soldiers and mutilated the body of another. Voices in India were raised for retaliation. The response of the Indian media has been forceful and threatening while that in Pakistan was subdued. Pakistan denied its troops had anything to do with the beheading and mutilation. Later, Pakistan reported that two more of its soldiers had been killed by the Indians. However, saner voices could also be heard calling for calm and restraint. Both sides decided to deescalate the situation. Everybody knows that a war between these upstart nuclear states can get out of hand.

Those who argue that nuclear weapons are the best guarantors of ‘peace’ in South Asia base their complacency on a questionable ‘rational’ calculation: that the costs of a nuclear exchange are too prohibitive and therefore in spite of all the calls for revenge, ultimately neither side would be willing to risk such a war. On the other hand, the counter-argument is that nuclear weapons guarantee peace only as long as they are not used. There is nothing to suggest that in case a conventional war breaks out it would not escalate to a nuclear war. In fact, nuclear weapons on both sides have encouraged greater risk-taking in the form of sudden firing, infiltration, beheading of soldiers and other horrific acts of barbarism because the assumption is that nuclear weapons rule out an all-out war.

In Crossed Swords (2008) Shuja Nawaz quoted the late General Yahya Khan on the partition of India and the British Indian Army. He writes that Major Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan (later president of Pakistan General Mohammad Yahya Khan said at the ‘break-up’ party, at the Staff College, Quetta, to Colonel S D Varma, the chief instructor: “Sir! What are we celebrating? This should be a day or mourning. As a united country, we would have been a strong and powerful nation. Now we will be fighting one another” (page 21). This was prophetic. The partition of India solved neither the so-called Hindu-Muslim problem nor that of abject poverty of the masses on either side of the border. Both these problems were subsumed under the India-Pakistan wars, suspicion and hatred. On the contrary, it created problems that probably would not have existed in the first place. In Pakistan, “Who is a true Muslim?” and in India, “What are Muslims (the same number in India as in Pakistan) doing in India if Pakistan is the state of the Muslim nation?” became menacing questions posed by right-wing forces.

Now let’s consider if a limited war of the type that took place at Kargil is worthwhile. What would it attain? Nothing in terms of any territorial readjustment on the LoC. Sooner or later, both would be forced to go back to the original LoC. However, several hundred or possibly thousands would be killed on both sides. How many widows, how many orphans, how many shattered parents and siblings would such reckless jingoism create, one can only guess. The hatred that would be sowed would be incalculable. Here I must quote the greatest anti-war poem on this theme written in 1965 by Sahir Ludhianvi (1921-1980):

Aye shareef insano

Khoon apna ho ya paraaya ho/Nasl-e-aadam ka khoon hai aakhir/Jang maghrib mein ho ke mashriq mein/Amn-e-aalam ka khoon hai aakhir/Bam gharon par giren ke sarhad par/Rooh-e-taameer zakhm khaati hai/Khet apne jalein ke auron ke

Zeest faaqon mein tilmilaati hai/Tank aage baden ke peeche haten/Kokh dharti ki baanjh hoti hai/Fat-ha ka jashn ho ke haar ka sog/Zindagi mayyaton pe roti hai/Is liye ai shareef insaano/Jang talti rahe to behtar ha/Aap aur hum, sabhi ke aangan mein/Shama jalti rahe to behtar hai (Dear civilised people, Be this blood ours or theirs/Humanity is bloodied/Be this war in east or west/A peaceful earth is bloodied/Whether the bombs fall on homes or borders/The spirit of construction is wounded/Whether it is our fields that burn or theirs/Life is wracked by starvation/It matters not that tanks advance or retreat/The womb of the earth becomes barren/Be it a celebration of victory or loss’ lament/The living must mourn the corpses/That is why, o civilised people/It is better that war remains postponed/In your homes, and in ours/It is better that lamps continue to flicker).

Even without a war, the damage has been done. The home ministers of the two countries had just signed an historic agreement to relax visa rules for those 65 years of age and above to get a visa for two years to the other country on arrival. Being 65 and a Pakistani-origin Swedish citizen, I thought I would make a good case for it, but given the brutal killings of the soldiers on the LoC, the two-year visa for 65-year olds has been put on hold. The tragedy is that those forces that wish to derail the normalisation and peace process seem to be able to do it any time they want. That is why I consider the India-Pakistan imbroglio pathological.

Many friends wonder if I suggest a reunion between India and Pakistan. I do not. On the other hand, the idea of a porous border not only in Kashmir but also along the entire international border would be desirable. That of course would not happen as long as we have extremists and terrorists have a free hand. The verdict of history is with us and we have to learn to move on and accept each other. As the two major nations of the region we can cooperate and work together and give our people — the largest concentration of poor people in the world is in South Asia, greater even than sub-Saharan Africa — a chance to live and not just exist. This argument pervades my new book, Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), released on January 15, 2013.

The writer is a PhD (Stockholm University); Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013; The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books, 2011). He can be reached at billumian at gmail.com 

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2. INDIA-PAKISTAN PEACE NOW - GLOBAL VIGIL ON SUNDAY, 27 JANUARY 2013 - PRESS STATEMENT
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We, the people observing this global vigil for peace between India and Pakistan on January 27, 2013, want to tell the governments of India and Pakistan that people in dozens of cities across six continents want them to continue the dialogue and take forward the peace process.
http://www.sacw.net/article3607.html

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3. INDIA - PAKISTAN: PLAY SPORT NOT WAR
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(i) SPORTS AND BORDERS - The News (Pakistan), Editorial 

It is highly unfortunate that sports continues to be one of the victims of political and military tensions between India and Pakistan. The Indian government appears to be tacitly complicit in these moves. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s hockey players were sent back home from India after extremists protested against their participation in a professional hockey league there. And now our women’s cricket team faces extra pressure as it hopes to makes its presence felt in the World Cup, despite receiving a hostile reception in India. It is apparent that a vast majority of people on both sides of the border are in favour of improved relations between the two countries. They also overwhelmingly support a long-term revival of bilateral sporting ties.
http://www.sacw.net/article3606.html

(ii) SAHMAT STATEMENT ON CULTURAL AND SPORTS CONTACTS WITH PAKISTAN

As a cultural organisation, devoted to the cause of solidarity of all peoples, SAHMAT has been dismayed by the series of official and semi-official measures that have followed the unfortunate incidents on the Line of Actual Control in Jammu and Kashmir, in which soldiers on both sides have lost their lives. On such occasions it is most important to keep the avenues of communication open, even if for the purpose of conveying one’s own version of events to such people on the other side whom one can reach. To close down such avenues deliberately is surely sense-less and self-defeating. By shutting down visas that were to be made available to aged Pakistan entrants, sending back Pakistan cricketers and sportswomen, refusing to stage Manto’s plays by visiting Pakistan theatre persons, and banning Pakistan’s persons of literature from participating in functions in India, are measures that manifestly belittle the image of our Republic, and do nothing to serve the cause of peace and improve relations between our two peoples.
http://www.sacw.net/article3583.html

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4. PAKISTAN: THE QADRI ENIGMA, STUNT & AFTERMATH
by Nadeem F. Paracha
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Was it the establishment who used Tahirul Qadri but failed, or was it Qadri who used the establishment and succeeded?
http://www.sacw.net/article3609.html

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5. KATHMANDU DECLARATION, SOUTH ASIA ALLIANCE FOR POVERTY ERADICATION (SAAPE) 4TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY, 18-19 DECEMBER 2012
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    We therefore pledge ourselves in favour of a secular, democratic, humanist order free from discrimination, denial of dignity, and artificial boundaries that impede our travel and our friendships, especially at a people to people level. We want a society that guarantees us all Human rights, especially that which is contained in the international Bill of Rights.
http://www.sacw.net/article3599.html

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6.  THE PRACTICALITY OF NUCLEAR CIVIL DEFENCE IN SOUTH ASIA
by A H Nayyar, R Rajaraman, Zia Mian
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While nuclear arsenals in India and Pakistan keep growing, there has been some suggestion of them seeking to develop civil defence measures to protect their populations from a nuclear war. This paper discusses the practicality of nuclear civil defence in south Asia.

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7. SRI LANKA: ULTRA-NATIONALISM THREATENS ECONOMY
A very dangerous trend, says business chamber
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Muslim businessmen and corporate leaders expressed concern and disappointment over being targeted by the radical group ‘Bodu Bala Sena’, warning that it would have an adverse impact on the economy as the country struggles to mobilise both domestic and foreign investment while business chambers decried growing ultra-nationalistic sentiments in the country, putting the very foundations of the economy at risk.
The Bodu Bala Sena last weekend carried out a vociferous picketing campaign outside clothing retail chain Nolimit’s outlet in Maharagama, alleging that complementary sweets given to customers were laced with chemicals inducing impotency.
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/sri-lanka-ultra-nationalism-threatens.html

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8. Sri Lanka: Bodhu Bala Sena Wants Law Changed to Permit a Sinhalese Man to Marry Five Wives to Propagate the Sinhala Race
by Dharisha Bastians
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http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/15219

Concerns are being raised internationally about the growing intolerance of Muslims, led by a Sinhala chauvinist group calling themselves the Bodhu Bala Sena with a heavy contingent of saffron-robed monks at their helm. The group is agitating against what it calls Muslim infiltration of the Sri Lankan food and cosmetics industry, the alleged conversion of Sinhalese girls marrying Muslim youth and all manner of other atrocities being allegedly perpetrated on the majority community by conspiring fundamentalist Muslims.

Incongruously, a leader of the Bodhu Bala Sena group is advocating that Sri Lankans laws be changed to permit a Sinhalese man to wed five women, in order to propagate the Sinhala race.

Many of the claims by the groups would be funny if they did not project disastrous communal tension and if they were not being given a free pass by the authorities to rage against Muslim places of worship and Muslim enterprises. Justice Minister Rauff Hakeem denounced the violence in front of No Limit Maharagama this week. Not a single arrest has been made following the riot.

Minister Hakeem bemoans the impotence of the law and order machinery that remained mute in the face of this hate speech and violence perpetrated by a minority community. But critics say his Party continues to be a key ally of a ruling regime that is – even tacitly – promoting this demonisation of the other without acting with decision against those who try to inflame communal passions.

UNP Kegalle District MP, Kabir Hashim is reportedly deeply concerned about the anti-Muslim trend and even raised the issue at the party’s Working Committee meeting held on Monday (21). Hashim told UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe that the UNP has always stood for communal harmony and commands the support and goodwill of all minority communities in the island. He said that it was the duty of the UNP to be proactive in this situation and ensure that the rabid passions of chauvinists being given a free hand under the ruling administration do not allow the country to lapse back into violent crisis.

If the handling of the impeachment crisis was anything to go by, the country’s main Opposition party will have little role to play in determining the trajectory of this latest onslaught against a minority community. Hatred and intolerance of the other and the creation of enemies, domestic and foreign has become so much a part of the national lexicon, largely perpetuated by the incumbent political leadership, has created the space necessary for the emergence of a movement such as the Bodhu Bala Sena.

Whispers of its initial activity, actively supported by some members of the ruling coalition in the beginning, went largely ignored and like all monsters, it has grown quietly in the dark, threatening hatred and violence that a country coming out of 30 years of ethnic strife should have learned by now, to remain constantly vigilant about.

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9. INDIA: PHOTOS FROM ’FREEDOM PARADE’, NEW DELHI, 26 JANUARY 2013
sacw.net
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New Delhi - 26 Jan 2013: An estimated 1000 people staged a " Freedom Parade" from Mandi house to Jantar Mantar in the heart of Delhi demanding gender equality and speedy implementation of recommendations of Justice Verma Committee set up after a Delhi gang-rape incident.
http://www.sacw.net/article3602.html

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10. INDIA: WHO IS AFRAID OF TIPU SULTAN ?
BY SUBHASH GATADE
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The fast changing political developments in Karnataka has rather overshadowed the manner in which Tipu Sultan- who died fighting the Britishers at Srirangapatna (4 th May 1799) - is being denigrated by people owing allegiance to Sangh Parivar. The latest in series happens to be the higher education minister of Karnataka Mr C T Ravi, who claimed that for them ’Tipu is also a foreigner’ like the British.
http://www.sacw.net/article3596.html

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11. INDIA: CITIZENS STATEMENT OF PROTEST AND DEMAND FOR WITHDRAWAL OF GALLANTRY AWARD TO SRP KALLURI
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We, the undersigned, are appalled at the conferment of the President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service to SRP Kalluri, IGP of Chhattisgarh. Mr Kalluri raped a tribal woman, Ledha Bai, when he was the SP of Sarguja District, ordered her gang-rape by his juniors, and then terrorized her and her lawyer when she decided to file a complaint against him. Coming on the heels of the award of the President’s Gallantry medal to Ankit Garg, who had sexually assaulted another tribal woman in his custody, Soni Sori, it appears that sexual violence against women by the police is well tolerated, and even decorated, by the government. Is it any wonder then, that we are witnessing a spiraling increase in crimes against women?
http://www.sacw.net/article3594.html

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12. INDIA: THE VERMA COMMISSION AND WOMEN’S STATUS
by Walter Fernandes
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At a time when are losing faith in the judiciary, the Verma Commission has done its bit to restore their credibility. The Commission has kept its promise of getting the report ready fast and got a more than 600 page report ready in 29 days. In so doing it has respected public opinion and has gone through the 80,000 representations made to it but it has not gone overboard by making populist recommendations or giving a politically correct report as many Commissions have done in the past. It has recommended strong action but has resisted pressure on death penalty for rape or lowering the age of juveniles. But it has not hesitated to make politically unpopular recommendations such as a review of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) which shields many security persons who commit this heinous crime and enjoy impunity.
http://www.sacw.net/article3590.html

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13. COMMUNALISM HERE, FASCISM THERE
by Jawed Naqvi
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Owaisi is perhaps the youngest scion of the erstwhile fascist organisation of Indian Muslims known as the razakars that sought to create an independent Islamic state from the nizam’s sprawling territories in the heart of India.
http://www.sacw.net/article3585.html

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14. INDIA: JOINT PUBLIC STATEMENT ON HINDUTVA TERROR
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While one may or may not agree with the terminology employed by the Home Minister in his recent speech at Jaipur, we feel that for long prejudice has ruled investigations, obscuring the role of organizations and their multiple affiliates in planning and executing of attacks and bombings in the country. The veneer of ’nationalism’ — narrow, exclusionary and based on hatred for minorities as it is— cannot hide the violence that Sangh and its affiliates beget and peddle.  (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article3582.html

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15. ACTION AGAINST COMMUNAL POLITICS: CALL FOR IMPARTIAL AND APPROPRIATE ACTION - PRESS STATEMENT
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We the undersigned are concerned by the developments in Andhra Pradesh following the alleged hate speech by Mr. Akberuddin Owaisi recently.
http://www.sacw.net/article3581.html

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16. INDIA: TO HELL WITH MODESTY
by Kim Arora
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(Times Crest, January 19, 2013)
The vocabulary of sexual assault framed in the 19th century still persists in the IPC.
Language is seldom value-neutral. It is more like a looking glass that shapes perceptions, creates moral codes and tells us who we are and what we stand for or against. The vocabulary of sexual assault, as laid down in the Indian Penal Code and used in the courtroom, is no exception. Not only does it betray a lack of empathy for the victim but also shows distinct gender insensitivity and the influence of patriarchy.

Take for instance the use of the word, modesty, in legal parlance. Section 354 of the IPC criminalises "assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty. " The Oxford English Dictionary (2005) defines modesty as "dressing or behaving so as to avoid impropriety or indecency, especially to avoid attracting sexual attention". In other words, any woman dressed "immodestly" is part of the problem because she seems to be attracting attention. Incidentally, the word "modesty" does not appear in the law specifically pertaining to peno-vaginal penetrative sexual assault, but in those concerned with molestation and sexual harassment. Section 509 of the IPC penalises "Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman. "

Activist lawyer Madhu Mehra of Partners for Law in Development (PLD) insists that "language is not an innocent side issue;rather, it is the way we adjudicate and perceive rape victims. " PLD has made a submission to the Justice Verma Committee raising the issue of the vocabulary of the country's rape laws. Adds Dr Ranjana Kaul, lawyer and member of the Delhi Commission for Women, "The language currently used in our statute is terribly Victorian and patriarchal. It looks at 'modesty' as something to be guarded. There is an utmost urgency to give clarity to what sexual assault means. "

The language goes back to 1860 when the Indian Penal Code drafted by Lord Macaulay came into practice. Though the IPC has been amended countless times since, the immense concern with a woman's private sexual conduct remains. And it seems that on the issue of women's sexual autonomy, present-day Indian jurisprudence is in agreement with the 19th century British administrator and the era he belonged to. Judges through the decades have tried wrapping their heads around the issue, without once coming up with the idea of formally acknowledging that not just the word, but the entire concept of sexual "modesty" is outdated.

Consider this. Back in 1966, while hearing a case of a penetrative assault on a seven month old, the then Chief Justice of India A K Sarkar made some interesting observations. The accused was being tried for "outraging the modesty of a woman" under section 354, and not rape. The judgment, eventually passed in the favour of the prosecutor, had the following remarks by Justice Sarkar: "I do not think a reasonable man would say that a female child of seven and a half months is possessed of womanly modesty. If she had not, there could be no question of the respondent having intended to outrage her modesty or having known that his act was likely to have that result. I would for this reason answer the question in the negative. "

How the lack of "womanly modesty" nullifies the violence of an assault is a point that Justice Sarkar neglected to make. He did, however, make one allowance for the women of India. "If it is proved that criminal force was used on a sleeping woman with intent to outrage her modesty, then the fact that she does not wake up nor feel that her modesty had been outraged would be no defence to the person doing the act. The woman's reaction would be irrelevant in deciding the question of guilt, " he added in the judgment.
Fast forward to March 2007. The apex court of the country made an observation that set a precedent for codifying women's sexual behavior and autonomy within the legal system. A Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia ruled: "The essence of the woman's modesty is her sex". Critics say this observation only reinforces objectification of women. Says Madhu Mehra, "Modesty has nothing to do with a woman's sex. This reduces her personhood to a sexual characteristic. "

The much talked about Ruchika Girhotra case dragged on for over two decades in various courts. The 14-year-old Ruchika was molested by a senior police officer in Panchkula. After three years of criminal intimidation, systematic physical torture of her brother and threats of violence followed by her complaint, the young teenager ended her own life. Everything Rathore did was covered under "outraging the modesty of a woman" for which he was convicted. The 2010 Punjab Haryana High Court judgment in relation to the case goes so far as to point to the exact moment when the young victim's modesty was outraged. "The other act of the petitioner of encircling the waist and holding one hand of Ms. Ruchika and pushing her towards his chest is enough to conclude that her modesty had been outraged at that moment itself. "

As of now, the Criminal Law Amendment Bill still retains the word "modesty". "Whoever has drafted these laws has no knowledge of feminist jurisprudence, " says lawyer Vrinda Grover. Until that comes about, the women of India will have to guard what the courts deem to be their "honour".

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17. INDIA: THE QUIET GRIP OF CASTE
by Jean Drèze
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The real issue, actually, is not so much caste consciousness as the role of caste as an instrument of power. But the two are linked. To convey the point, some of us collected information on the share of the upper castes in positions of power and influence (POPIs) in Allahabad — the press club, the university faculty, the bar association, and the commanding posts in trade unions, NGOs, media houses, among other public institutions. 
http://www.sacw.net/article3382.html

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18. INDIA: SELECTED POSTS ON COMMUNALISM WATCH 
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Bombay: Far Right Shiv Sena hands out kitchen knives and chili powder to women
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/bombay-far-right-shiv-sena-hands-out.html

The umbrage over Hindu terror is overdone
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/the-umbrage-over-hindu-terror-is.html

The Old New BJP Chief says he never met Sadhvi Pragya of Malegaon Blasts Fame ?
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/the-old-new-bjp-chief-says-he-never-met.html

India: A severe turf war inside the RSS for control of top party post in BJP 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/india-severe-turf-war-inside-rss-for.html

India: Ashis Nandy in shit for making clumsy casteist claims at the Jaipur literature festival 2013 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/ashis-nandy-in-shit-for-making-clumsy.html

India: Dhule video unmasks rioters in police uniform	
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/india-dhule-video-unmasks-rioters-in.html

India: IAMC Open letter to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi regarding arrest of Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/open-letter-to-mrs-sonia-gandhi.html

What I want is neither a Ram Rajya or a Buddha Raj
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/what-i-want-is-neither-ram-rajya-or.html

Editorial in The Hindu on the Tamil Nadu Govt's capitulating before those who protested against the film 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/editorial-in-hindu-on-tamil-nadu-govts.html

Choose another temple? An Open Ramble to Madhu Kishwar
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/01/choose-another-temple-open-ramble-to.html

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19. NADEEM ASLAM: ‘I VOTE WITH EVERY SENTENCE I WRITE’  - INTERVIEWED BY NANDINI NAIR
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Indian Express Jan 26 January 2013

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-i-vote-with-every-sentence-i-write-/1064969/0

For British-Pakistani author Nadeem Aslam, the personal and the political coalesce effortlessly. Author of three acclaimed novels, he is now out with The Blind Man's Garden (Random House), which takes the reader into the war-wounded areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. While the book might deal with trauma and tragedy, in true Aslam style, it is ultimately a love story of doomed alliances. In an interview with Nandini Nair at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the author reveals his experiments with blindness, the importance of craft and the next 11 novels in his head.

We must unfortunately start with asking you about what you make of the recent brouhaha created by certain groups over the presence of Pakistani authors at the festival.

I am probably the wrong person for that question. Frontiers and boundaries don't mean anything to me. If I loved someone, I could live anywhere. There is no end to the ingenuity of hate. If they wish, people will find differences and will use those differences to create walls and barriers. I am not interested in it. My India is not the India of BJP or RSS.

One of the speakers said that freedom is the choice to be political, or not to be political. Do you feel that as a British-Pakistani author, you are denied that choice?

There are a number of authors of my ethnic background who choose not to be political. If I wanted to, I could also choose not to be. But with me, I vote every time I write a sentence. I am interested not in politics per se, but in the effect it has on human beings. I am most interested in love. Most of my novels are love stories where there are a number of obstacles to overcome, and one of those could be political. Authors don't tell people what to think, they tell you what to think about. We have lived through an extraordinary decade, beginning from 9/11 to the Arab Spring...I wanted a novel that would mention all this (the turmoil of the decade). But The Blind Man's Garden is ultimately a work of fiction. It is not a pamphlet.

The Blind Man's Garden moves between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the action also occurs in the mythical town of Heer. Tell us about Heer.

I wanted to create a fictional town. I wanted to connect the place with my land of India, Punjab, Pakistan. Heer (after Heer Ranjha) is a symbol of rebellion. From now on, all my future novels will be located in Heer. I've 11 more novels to write. Yes, it will be 11. Subject matter is the easy part. I knew The Blind Man's Garden would be about Pakistan, The Wasted Vigil (2008) was about Afghanistan. I begin with an issue, then I look for characters who will best help me define those complexities. My next novel, for which the draft is complete, is called One Thousand Miles by Moonlight. It is about the blasphemy laws of Pakistan.

Rohan, the owner of the mythically beautiful garden and father of the two main protagonists in The Blind Man's Garden, slowly loses his sight. How did you create his character? 

At first, I thought I would ask blind people about their experience of blindness, but every time I met them, I thought it would be intrusive to ask that. I wrote this book over four years. For three years, for one week every year, I taped shut my eyes and lived like a blind man. So in total, I could not see for three weeks. And I learned so much from that, which made its way into the book. I once touched something warm and I felt my head flooded with red. That happened twice, so I used it in the book. When raindrops fell on my hand, I saw the twinkling of stars.

The book also has rather graphic accounts of torture and atrocities. Why did you include those?

I always remember Toni Morrison's line, 'If they can live it, I can write it'. I will go further and say, 'If they can live it, I can write it, you can read it'. I can't make all that up. I can't make up the gang rape of a 14-year-old boy in a Taliban prison. People should become upset, that might galvanise them to prevent it. News is the most emotional programme on television for me. What is the alternative? Going around the world thinking that it is wonderful? But in my novels, there is beauty and horror side by side.

Your sentences tend to be very lyrical and often flirt with poetry. There are stories of you putting up sentences on your wall and working on them for years to get them right. Tell us about your craft.

I think my work used to be very poetic. It's true I used to put up sentences on the wall. But now I don't feel the need to do that. It's like a table maker. After 20 years, he knows a few things about making a table. Writing is also a craft. And it is important to see how one word in a sentence looks at another word in that same sentence.

Poetry is intrinsic to my work. I now write on a computer in 12 points on Times Roman. I used to write long hand. When I am done with a chapter, I print it out in eight points. You'll find that when you read a smaller print, you read faster, you take in more information, as the eye wants to reach the edge of the page. At this time, I am not looking at the local effect, I am looking at the general storyline. I am interested in seeing how it works as a narrative. I then print it out in 14, that slows down the eye and I look at every word and how they relate. I like phrases like "raw sprawl", there is an echo to it, even if the reader might not realise!

Your father wanted to be a poet but then circumstances took over and he never became one. You wanted to be a writer and you became one. Does your father's thwarted ambition play a role in your work?

When you look around, you'll find that there isn't a single street in India that hasn't produced a poet. It is quite a common story, writers become writers when their parents couldn't. That is the story of VS Naipaul and Orhan Pamuk and Hanif Kureishi. My father had done the groundwork for me, the freeing of the mind had already been done at home. My father used to write poetry under the fictional name, Wamaq Saleem. I now use the figure of a great poet under that name in all my novels. I have done for my father in the universe of my novels what he could not do in life.

You left Pakistan as a 14-year-old and returned only after close to two decades. What were your most vivid memories of the land of your birth?
I was afraid I'd never see a peepal leaf or a bulbul or a red-ringed parakeet again. I even asked a friend to pick a peepal leaf, put it in an envelope and send it to me. My most vivid memories were of the music, of Madam Noor Jahan and Lataji and Mehdi Hassan.

Maybe it is an unfair question, but sometimes, are you torn between whether you are a Pakistani writer or a British writer?
That is actually an excellent question. I like to think I am made in the East and assembled in the West. I once cut out

Pakistan and the UK from the world map and stuck them close together. So the GT Road passed from Pakistan into England, from Peshawar to Khyber Pass through to Newcastle. I think that is where I am from. I don't have a name for it as yet.

Perhaps Heer or the Republic of Heer?
(Laughs) Yes, that...or maybe we can have a reader's competition for this combined country of Pakistan and England.

INTERNATIONAL
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20. MALI: THE TALIBAN OF TIMBUKTU
by Karima Bennoune
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/opinion/the-taliban-of-timbuktu.html?ref=africa&_r=0

New York Times, January 23, 2013

Before the recent French intervention in Mali began, 412,000 people had already left their homes in the country’s north, fleeing torture, summary executions, recruitment of child soldiers and sexual violence against women at the hands of fundamentalist militants. Late last year, in Algeria and southern Mali, I interviewed dozens of Malians from the north, including many who had recently fled. Their testimonies confirmed the horrors that radical Islamists, self-proclaimed warriors of God, have inflicted on their communities.

First, the fundamentalists banned music in a country with one of the richest musical traditions in the world. Last July, they stoned an unmarried couple for adultery. The woman, a mother of two, had been buried up to her waist in a hole before a group of men pelted her to death with rocks. And in October the Islamist occupiers began compiling lists of unmarried mothers.

Even holy places are not safe. These self-styled “defenders of the faith” demolished the tombs of local Sufi saints in the fabled city of Timbuktu. The armed groups also reportedly destroyed many churches in the north, where displaced members of the small Christian minority told me they had previously felt entirely accepted. Such Qaeda-style tactics, and the religious extremism that demands them, are completely alien to the mainstream of Malian Islam, which is known for its tradition of tolerance.

That openness is exactly what the jihadists seek to crush. “The fact that we are building a new country on the base of Shariah is just something the people living here will have to accept,” the Islamist police commissioner in the town of Gao said last August. Until military action began this month, local citizens were on their own in resisting the imposition of Shariah — and they fought back valiantly. A radio journalist was severely beaten by Islamist gunmen after speaking on the radio against amputations. Women marched through the streets of Timbuktu against Islamist diktats on veiling until gunfire ended their protest.

The acting principal of a coed high school in Gao told me his school had been occupied by militants from the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa. They announced that they had come to protect the premises. Instead, they quickly stole its computers, refrigerators and chairs. “We consider ourselves under occupation,” the principal told me. “We consider ourselves martyrs.” He has risked his life to keep his school open, to continue to educate boys and girls together, though he must put them on opposite sides of the classroom now. “My presence creates hope for my students. I cannot kill this hope,” he told me.

Since the jihadist takeover, Gao’s economy has come to a standstill. Every Thursday, there are theocratic show trials in Arabic, a language many residents do not speak. The fundamentalists focus on teaching the predominantly Muslim population of Gao “how to be Muslim.” Like Al Shabab in Somalia and the Taliban in Afghanistan, they have a morality brigade that patrols the city, checking who is not wearing a sufficient veil and whose telephone sins with a musical ringtone. Speaking to a woman in public is an offense; this ban has caused such terror that some men flee in fear if they simply see a woman on the street.

The principal had been attending public punishments to document the atrocities. This meant repeatedly watching his fellow citizens get flogged. He has seen what it looks like when a “convict” has his foot sawed off. Close to tears, he said: “No one can stand it, but it is imposed on us. Those of us who attend, we cry.”

Some local and international opponents of military intervention have advocated negotiation with the rebel groups as an alternative. But negotiating with groups who believe they are God’s agents and whose imposed mode of governance is utterly alien to the people of northern Mali is unlikely to succeed, especially while the north remains occupied. “The population is not for the Shariah” is the refrain I heard again and again — from those displaced from Timbuktu and Kidal; from women and men; from Muslims and Christians. The preservation of Mali’s tradition of secularism is essential for them all.

Policy decisions regarding this potential Afghanistan-in-the-Sahara must be informed by the fact that what is happening there is not simply a question of regional or global security, but of basic human rights. The current intervention in Mali could deal a decisive blow to the recent advance of fundamentalism across North Africa, but only if French and West African soldiers take care to distinguish between civilians and their jihadist oppressors, who hide among the innocent.

They must also avoid simply shifting the problem elsewhere in the region. After all, one of the causes of the Islamist occupation of northern Mali was the displacement of armed men from Libya after the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011. Algeria had lost hundreds of thousands of its own people to fundamentalist armed groups since the 1990s. Since then, many Algerian jihadists have crossed the border into northern Mali, reproducing the problem there.

Some Malians fear that foreign intervention may have grave consequences for their homes and livelihoods. But most of the displaced northerners I met last month, before France intervened, had already decided that “the risks of nonintervention are 10,000 times worse than the risks of intervention,” as a women’s rights activist told me in Bamako. Or, as a young refugee from Gao whom I met in Algeria put it: “We do not want war, but if these people don’t leave us alone, we have to fight them.”

Karima Bennoune, a professor of international law at the University of California, Davis, is the author of the forthcoming book “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories From the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism.”

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21. DAY A ONE-EYED JIHADIST CAME TO TIMBUKTU
by Xan Rice in Ségou, Mali
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Financial Times - January 25, 2013
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/461e8872-66d8-11e2-a805-00144feab49a.html#axzz2J1gbuwxH

A French soldier stands guard as a villager looks on in front of pickup trucks used by Islamist rebels in Diabaly

War was coming to Timbuktu, and Abderhamane Alpha Maiga knew he had to move fast. He dug a hole in the sandy courtyard of his hotel and buried its stock of beer, whiskey and gin. Then he moved from room to room, where a Bible and a Koran sat on each bedside table for his guests. He grabbed the Bibles and hid them in his house.

The next morning, the first Sunday in April last year, government soldiers fled and Tuareg rebels swept through northern Mali into the desert city of fabled history, a treasure trove of ancient manuscripts. Islamist fighters who had assisted the Tuaregs followed the next day in pickups mounted with machine guns and flying the black flag of al-Qaeda. Five vehicles pulled up at the Hendrina Khan hotel, where Mr Maiga, 58, was waiting nervously.

An Islamist militant told him that his boss – a bearded man with a missing left eye – wanted to inspect the premises. “We went to eight rooms,” Mr Maiga recalled. “In each room the chief took the holy Koran, opened it and kissed the pages before putting it down.”

When they went outside, an elderly man who lived nearby and feared for Mr Maiga’s safety told the jihadi boss the hotelier cooked food for the poor every Friday, and was a “Muslim before you were a Muslim”.

The jihadi boss chose not to stay in his hotel. But after giving Mr Maiga a mobile number to call if anyone threatened his hotel, he put his hand on his shoulder and said: “Continue to do good things. Don’t leave Timbuktu. Stay here with us.”

A bodyguard told Mr Maiga “the man’s name was Belaouer – ‘the one-eyed’”.

Mr Maiga said: “My heart was pounding and I was so afraid. I had heard a lot about him.”

Now the world has too.

“Belaouer” is Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a notorious jihadist who organised the raid on the gas plant in Algeria last week that left 38 foreign hostages and 29 militants dead. A leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, he is also dubbed “the uncatchable”.

After fighting with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, he returned to Algeria, where he joined a succession of violent Islamist groups. He became renowned in northern Mali for kidnapping western hostages for ransom, and smuggling drugs, weapons and cigarettes, earning him a third nickname: Mr Marlboro.

His presence in Timbuktu last year heralded not just the end of a relaxed way of life in the city where Mr Maiga had grown up, but also the start of an Islamist uprising in a country hitherto known for its tolerance, music and culture, a rebellion that has had consequences beyond Mali’s borders.

o o o

OF RELATED INTEREST TO SOUTH ASIANS:

http://continenttours.com/mali/mali-hotels/hendrina-khan-hotel/

HENDRINA KHAN HOTEL

The Hendrina Khan Hotel in Timbuktu is a new and modern hotel located approximately 20 to 30 minutes walk from the old town. Rooms are basic but clean and all have private facilities with hot water available 24 hours a day. The hotel has an open air restaurant as well as an indoor air-conditioned restaurant.
General Description
It was built by the Pakistani Scientist, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had amassed properties at home and abroad and transported fancy carved furniture to the hotel by an air force plane. Hendrina Khan hotel, named after Dr Khan's Dutch wife, in the city of Timbuktu

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22. MUSIC IS VITAL TO POLITICAL STRUGGLE ACROSS AFRICA – NOT JUST IN MALI
by Ian Birell
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(The Observer, Sunday 27 January 2013)
Banning music in Mali is outrageous, not least because it's crucial to the country's wellbeing

At dinner last month after a concert by the Congolese rapper Baloji, I found myself sitting next to his drummer, Saidou Ilboudo. As we chatted over the chicken, he told me the remarkable story of how as a teenager growing up in Burkina Faso he had been recruited one day by Thomas Sankara, the country's president, to play in a state band.

Sankara is an almost-forgotten figure these days in the west, but in the mid-80s he was one of the most charismatic leaders of his age, a revolutionary known as "Africa's Che Guevara" who pushed public health, promoted feminism and faced down the global financial institutions causing such damage to the continent.

This was an amazing break for a boy just out of school. For a few years, he enjoyed the privileges and security that went with being part of the president's circle, while playing in a band that had a dual purpose: to entertain young people while proselytising political messages. Then, in 1987, Sankara was murdered in a French-backed coup and life became trickier.

The idea of publicly funded pop groups might sound strange, but many leading figures of African music served time in such institutions. Given the continent's oral tradition, there is a proud history of praise singers, and musicians were for centuries vital voices, used and abused by politicians and tribal leaders who understood their power. Think only of Franco, whose liquid guitar-playing made Congolese rumba the heartbeat of Africa while promoting the messages of Mobutu Sese Seko, his thieving president.

After the end of colonialism, musicians were used to fuse countries carved out of often disparate communities. Nowhere was this truer than Mali, a nation on the faultline between the African and Arab worlds in which music is more threaded into the fabric of cultural, social and political life than perhaps any other place on Earth.

Salif Keita, the honey-voiced albino singer, first achieved fame in a band set up by the minister of information to play a residency in a station hotel. He was then poached by the chief of police to join their rivals, whose guitarist was Amadou Bagayoko, now a global superstar with his gold guitar alongside his wife, Mariam. It is hard to envisage coalition ministers, let alone Met police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe, performing a similar role.

Mali stakes a claim as birthplace of the blues – the foundation stone of modern music – and many of its best-known artists have taken their songs around the world. They remain respected political voices at home. Oumou Sangaré, the country's biggest female star, made her name in her early 20s with a breathtaking album tackling issues such as female circumcision and women's roles in society. Now one of her former backing singers, Fatoumata Diawara, has pulled together 40 stars from all over the country to sing together in a symbol of unity.

The current tragedy of Mali is intensified by its tradition of tolerance. Its strand of gentle Sufism could not be further removed from the hate-fuelled Islamists of al-Qaida. So when an outspoken reggae singer called Tiken Jah Fakoly upset the rulers of his native Ivory Coast and was then declared "persona non grata" by Senegal's president, he made his home in Bamako, where he can fill football stadiums.

But not these days. For music is banned in two-thirds of Mali following its collapse last year with first a coup, then the capture of the vast northern desert regions by Islamist militias, whose members come from as far afield as Pakistan. Even in the south of the country, despite the Franco-African intervention, there is such instability that these artists whose music provides pleasure around the world cannot perform in their home towns.

The banning of music is hideous anywhere, but in Mali of all places it seems somehow sacrilegious. This is a poor country; as one of its most famous artists says, music is its mineral wealth. And the mujahideen have not just banned it: they declared war on musicians, destroying their equipment and threatening to slice off their fingers. It underlines how at heart this is a cultural conflict, between those embracing the turbulent values of liberal democracy and those seeking the certainties of theocracy.

I first went there almost a decade ago for the fabulous Festival in the Desert, held on white sands a couple of hours from the fabled city of Timbuktu. Today, this area is at the heart of the fundamentalist badlands, but westerners could not have been made more welcome. At daytime, I sat in a tent chatting over tea and biscuits to celebrated guitarist Ali Farka Touré; at night, there was stunning music from an array of amazing artists such as Amadou and Mariam. Afterwards, I lay under the Saharan stars listening as members of Tuareg rockers Tinariwen strummed away beside a campfire until dawn.

It was an intoxicating experience. Mali and its music seeped into my soul. There in the desert I met Damon Albarn. Afterwards, we set up Africa Express, bringing together musicians from Africa and the west to embrace that unified spirit of music, joy and generosity found in the desert. Many of these Malian artists have been linchpins of the project.

Music is a powerful force, as true in the west as anywhere else. But somehow in Africa it has even more potency. Perhaps this is down to weak political institutions, often lamentable political leadership or the lack of strong literary tradition in some places. Or maybe it is just that the music is so damn good. But from Fela Kuti fighting a corrupt military dictatorship in Nigeria to Miriam Makeba challenging the evil of apartheid in South Africa, this genuine protest music has been a ray of hope through troubled times.

As the continent shakes off the shackles of the past and races into the future, musicians remain important voices. Look at Senegal, next door to Mali. Baaba Maal preached awareness about HIV/Aids, takings his songs from village to village and playing a key role in ensuring infection rates remained comparatively low. Last year, when a president in his 80s tried to cling on to power, it was a youth movement led by rappers that prevented him. Now Youssou N'Dour is a cabinet minister.

Perhaps the Islamists are right to fear music's strength. But they can never contain its power in a place like Mali. As Fatoumata Diawara said last week, it remains a source of hope amid the nightmare that has engulfed her nation.

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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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