SACW - 14 June 2013 / Bangladesh: Violence and CHT / Pakistan: Filthy Rich Election / India: If Modi takes power, it will be absolute; report on pogrom in Kandhamal ; choking funds to suppress dissent/ Taksim Square Protests in Turkey - commentary

Thu Jun 13 18:57:14 EDT 2013

South Asia Citizens Wire - 14 June 2013 - No. 2786
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Contents:

1. Pakistan: The Filthy Rich Election (Tariq Ali)
2. Kabita Chakma: Sexual violence, indigenous Jumma women and CHT, Bangladesh
3. Dina Siddiqi: So Bangladeshi Factory Workers Need Saving?
4. Bangladesh: Indigenous Peoples engulfed in Chittagong Hill Tracts land conflict - say Amnesty
5. Rethinking Development (Q. Isa Daudpota)
6. India: Text of statement by Eduardo Faleiro re. nomination of Narendra Modi as the Chairman of the National Election Campaign Committee of the BJP
7. India’s Coal Rush: Interview With Jharkhand Leader Bulu Imam
8. India: Statement condemning the Targeting and Vilification of Harsh Mander by Narendra Modi
9. India: Launch of Report Assessing the Damage during the Anti-Christian pogrom in Kandhamal in 2007 2008
10. India: Choking foreign funds of NGOs to suppress dissent
11. Striking Workers, Bangladeshi Activist Challenge Wal-Mart on Labor Conditions at Stores & Factories
12. India: Uphold Freedom of Expression. Condemn Fabricated cases against Film and Media persons in Kerala
13. Selected Posts on Communalism Watch:
- India: If Modi takes power, it will be absolute (Bharat Bhushan) FULL TEXT
- India: It's high time the RSS dropped the fiction of being apolitical and distant from BJP matters Editorial, The Indian Express, June 13 2013
- On Narendra Modi’s PR agency : APCO Worldwide - A report by Shelley Kasli
- H-Net Review: Nechtman on Carson, 'The East India Company and Religion, 1698-1858'
- India: Saffron uniform for Gujarat govt school in walled city
- India: Media, police ducking the question of Hindutva terror 
- Bangladesh: Use of religion by some Islamist parties and organisations in electioneering for city level elections 

14. SACW Special on Taksim Square protests in Turkey - a compilation of relevant commentary for readers in South Asia
contents: FULL TEXT IN PDF
a) Memories of a Public Square (Orhan Pamuk)
b) Erdogan, Gezi Park And the Headscarf (Tulin Daloglu)
c) Turkey's protesters proclaimed as true heirs of nation's founding father (Luke Harding) 
d) Behind Turkey's Viral Revolution, There Are Mad Men (Actually Women) (Emre Kizilkaya) 
e) Educator’s jailing reveals Turkey at crossroads (Trudy Rubin)
f) Taksim Square protests: not a Turkish spring, but the new Young Turks (Betty Caplan)
g) The Turkish Government Do Not Wish To Demolish A Park, But Rather A Democracy (Chimene Suleyman)
h) What Would Ataturk Think? (Octavia Nasr)
i) For A Park And A Few Trees (Ilker Ayturk)

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1. PAKISTAN: THE FILTHY RICH ELECTION
by Tariq Ali
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Not long before last month’s elections, dozens of workers (the youngest was 12) were burned to death in factory fires in Karachi and Lahore. Pakistan’s rulers were unmoved: there were token expressions of regret but no talk of tough new laws being passed after the election. There is barely any safety regulation in Pakistan, and if any legislation does impede business a modest bribe usually solves the problem. Factory inspections were discontinued during the Musharraf regime in order, it was claimed, to protect industry from harassment by state inspectors. Ali Enterprises, the factory that burned down in Karachi, somehow passed an inspection by a New York-based body called Social Accountability International.
http://www.sacw.net/article4729.html

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2. KABITA CHAKMA: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, INDIGENOUS JUMMA WOMEN AND CHT, BANGLADESH
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There has been a high rate of violence against women all over Bangladesh in recent years. Kapaeeng Foundation figures for January 2007 to December 2012 reveal that Jumma women and girls endured three times higher violence rates than their indigenous sisters living in the plains of Bangladesh, writes Kabita Chakma
http://www.sacw.net/article4727.html

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3. DINA SIDDIQI: SO BANGLADESHI FACTORY WORKERS NEED SAVING?
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This 2009 article revisits the figure of the ‘third world sweatshop worker’, long iconic of the excesses of the global expansion of flexible accumulation in late twentieth-century capitalism. I am interested in how feminist activists concerned with the uneven impact of neo-liberal policies can engage in progressive political interventions without participating in the ‘culture of global moralism’ that continues to surround conventional representations of third world workers. I situate my analysis in the national space of Bangladesh, where the economy is heavily dependent on the labour of women factory workers in the garment industry and where local feminist understandings of the ‘sweatshop economy’ have not always converged with global feminist/left concerns about the exploitation inherent in the (now not so new) New International Division of Labor.
http://www.sacw.net/article4726.html

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4. BANGLADESH: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ENGULFED IN CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS LAND CONFLICT - SAY AMNESTY
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The Pahari Indigenous Peoples are still waiting for the Bangladeshi government to restore their traditional lands
http://www.sacw.net/article4725.html

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5. RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT
by Q. Isa Daudpota
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Trickle-down economics invariably fails in poor countries. For long-lasting progress, development policies that are bottom-up, those that ‘put the last first’, often succeed. Ideas supportive of this thesis are presented in the post-election Pakistani context.
http://www.sacw.net/article4723.html

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6. INDIA: TEXT OF STATEMENT BY EDUARDO FALEIRO RE. NOMINATION OF NARENDRA MODI AS THE CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE OF THE BJP
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statement by former Union Minister, Shri Eduardo Faleiro re. nomination of Shri Narendra Modi as the Chairman of the National Election Campaign Committee of the BJP
http://www.sacw.net/article4720.html

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7. INDIA’S COAL RUSH: INTERVIEW WITH JHARKHAND LEADER BULU IMAM
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(via Dilip Simeon's Blog)
Jharkhand activist Bulu Imam is Director of the Sanskriti Research Center in Hazaribagh, and coordinator of the Karanpura Campaign, a nearly 25-year-old campaign against open-cast strip coal mines. Imam also serves as the convener of India’s National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.
http://www.sacw.net/article4718.html

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8. INDIA: STATEMENT CONDEMNING THE TARGETING AND VILIFICATION OF HARSH MANDER BY NARENDRA MODI
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With great pride we would like to put on record that the work of our colleague and friend Harsh Mander, for the last several years, both inside the Government as a civil servant, as well as outside the Government as a policy maker, researcher and activist has been, that of promoting in the most ethical way, non-violent ways of ensuring justice to survivors of violence due to their gender, class, caste, religious group, ethnicity or nationality. It is shocking that the “aspirant PM” Narendra Modi has been targetting Harsh for the last week calling him a Maoist. Thus trying to belittle his work, raising doubts about him and villifying his name in public. This targetting of individuals and organisations and vilifying them is not new, earlier too he had spewed venom against Syeda Hammed, Teesta Setalvad and Shabnam Hashni amongst the several and now the new whipping boys are Harsh Mander and Dr. Binayak Sen.
http://www.sacw.net/article4719.html

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9. INDIA: LAUNCH OF REPORT ASSESSING THE DAMAGE DURING THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN POGROM IN KANDHAMAL IN 2007 2008
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Centre for Sustainable Use of Social and Natural Resources (CSNR), Bhubaneswar and Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), Delhi, launched a report: Unjust Compensation: Assessment of Damage and Loss of Private Property during the Anti-Christian Violence in Kandhamal, India using the HLRN ‘Eviction Impact Assessment Tool’ today, 7 June 2013, at Red Cross Bhawan, Bhubaneswar.
The report was released by Mr Miloon Kothari, former UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing. The panel also consisted of Mr Dhirendra Panda, Secretary, CSNR, Ms Shivani Chaudhry, Associate Director, HLRN, Mr Prafulla Samantaray and Father Nicholas Barla, human rights activists.
http://www.sacw.net/article4709.html

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10. INDIA: CHOKING FOREIGN FUNDS OF NGOS TO SUPPRESS DISSENT
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Amid an intensifying crackdown on non-governmental groups that receive foreign funding, Indian activists are accusing the government of stifling their right to dissent in the world’s largest democracy.
http://www.sacw.net/article4708.html

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11. STRIKING WORKERS, BANGLADESHI ACTIVIST CHALLENGE WAL-MART ON LABOR CONDITIONS AT STORES & FACTORIES
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As celebrities including Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman celebrated Wal-Mart at its annual meeting last week, workers and activists converged to demand sweeping changes at the company’s U.S. stores and global factories. Around 100 striking workers with the group OUR Walmart arrived in a caravan from across the country to protest what they allege to be retaliation against those seeking to change company practices on wages, safety and unions. Kalpona Akter, a workers’ rights activist from Bangladesh, urged Wal-Mart to stop rejecting new safety standards after the Dhaka building collapse that killed over 1,100 workers in April. Wal-Mart is one of only a few major retailers that have refused to sign onto an industry-wide agreement that establishes legally binding protections for garment workers.
http://www.sacw.net/article4707.html

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12. INDIA: UPHOLD FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. CONDEMN FABRICATED CASES AGAINST FILM AND MEDIA PERSONS IN KERALA
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We the undersigned strongly condemn the blatant attempt by the Kerala police to intimidate five colleagues from the field of film and media by filing fabricated cases against them for ’rioting";, ’unlawful assembly’ and ’public obstruction; (IPC Sections 143, 147, 149 and 283 ). These five individuals- K.P.Sasi, noted filmmaker and activist, I. Shanmukhadas, film critic, Prasannakumar T.N., film activist, Shafeek, journalist and Deepak, filmmaker and film society activist- were participating in a peaceful protest on February 11 at Thrissur, Kerala, along with many others, outside the venue of the Vibgyor Film Festival 2013 against the concept of capital punishment and the summary execution of Afzal Guru. The peaceful protest which lasted for an hour, in no way disturbed public order or caused communal unrest. For this act of democratic expression, these fraudulent and trumped charges have been filed against them.
http://www.sacw.net/article4706.html

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13. SELECTIONS FROM COMMUNALISM WATCH
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INDIA: IF MODI TAKES POWER, IT WILL BE ABSOLUTE 
by Bharat Bhushan
(The Asian Age. June 13, 2013)

Despite taking back his resignation, the veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani has managed to rain on Narendra Modi’s parade. His resignation drama has flagged to the nation that Mr Modi’s elevation to the chairman of the BJP’s campaign committee – seen by his supporters as a half-way house to his being declared as the party’s prime ministerial candidate – was contested and not unanimous even within his own party. Irrespective of what happens to Mr Advani’s own political fortunes, this stigma of unacceptability – and, by implication, unsuitability -- for the top job in the country will stick to Mr Modi.

The moment Mr Modi was anointed the future face of the BJP, three things were clear. One, that the move came with the blessings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Two, that nothing would be the same again in the RSS, and its political front, the BJP. And three, that the future of all leaders opposed to Mr Modi in the party would henceforth be uncertain.

It is the prospect of these cataclysmic changes that perhaps prompted Mr Advani’s belated attempts to put brakes on Mr Modi’s rise as the sole leader of the BJP. He objected to the interference of the RSS in the running of the BJP, saying in his letter that he was unable to reconcile holding party posts “with the current functioning of the party and the direction in which it is going”. He was pointing a finger at the way the triumvirate of Mr Modi, party president Rajnath Singh and the RSS functionary Suresh Soni were pushing through decisions in the party.

Mr Advani’s second charge of the value system of the party being eroded and leaders only promoting themselves was a direct hit at Mr Modi and his acolytes, though the cap fitted Mr Modi best as he left no stone unturned to project himself as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the next general election. However, it might also fit Mr Singh who, perhaps, expects to be the collateral beneficiary of the BJP increasing its seats in the coming general election but Mr Modi being unacceptable as the leader of an alliance that could form the next government.

Mr Soni was perhaps working for a larger ideological cause. For, in the projection of Mr Modi, the RSS has found the missing piece of the fascist jigsaw puzzle that the RSS had been trying hard to put together – the cult of the Fuhrer in the persona of Mr Modi. Mr Advani seemed to have recognised this but it was too late for him to recoil from the monster he had himself helped fashion.

Mr Modi’s hijacking of the BJP will have direct consequences for the relationship between the mother organisation – the RSS, and the BJP.

The RSS is shrinking and there is no infusion of new blood. A senior BJP leader is believed to have told the current RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, that he is like Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last emperor of India presiding over a crumbling empire. By contrast, the BJP has expanded all over the country because of its electoral successes. Its increased patronage-giving ability attracts hoards of direct recruits. Today it is the BJP that grants legitimacy to the RSS rather than the other way round. With Mr Modi effectively at the helm of the BJP, the importance of the RSS will decline further. He himself came as a nominee of the RSS and knows well how the system of controlling BJP units through organising secretaries nominated by the RSS works.

Once he has taken power, Mr Modi will not need the RSS and may in fact see it as an obstacle to his political authority. His predominantly corporate agenda is not shared by the RSS. Students of history might recall how Hitler had ordered the chief of the Storm troopers, Ernst Rhome, shot dead when the militia he led became a threat to his political power.

The BJP as a party that reflects many voices and many leaders within the Hindutva spectrum will cease to exist. Witness
what happened to all those who opposed Modi in Gujarat
-- Shankersinh Vaghela is in the Congress, Keshubhai Patel, Suresh Mehta and Gordhan Zadafia are sitting at home,and Haren Pandya is dead. The national party will also split between those who are with Mr Modi and those opposed to him.

Mr Modi’s intolerance of Sanjay Joshi even as a member of the party’s large national executive or of Nitin Gadkari as party president are straws in the wind for anyone who does not show unflinching loyalty to him. Consider that no action was taken against the office-bearers of the youth wing of the BJP who demonstrated outside Mr Advani’s house for not supporting Mr Modi – the same faces who were shouting “Dada hosh mein aao (Come to your senses, grandad)” outside Mr Advani’s residence were distributing sweets at the BJP headquarters the next day! Under Mr Modi, the BJP will, in effect, become a party driven by a single leader.

Alas, the owl of Minerva, as the saying goes, only takes flight at dusk. Only in the twilight of his life has Mr Advani understood the historical truth about the RSS, the way it controls its front organisations, and the fascist leadership it promotes. But this is only because he himself could not be the leader that the RSS wanted. That Mr Advani finally backtracked after some conciliatory assurances by Mr Bhagwat shows that

he has no ideological disagreements with the essential objectives of the RSS. He was only begging not to be publicly discarded as its chosen instrument.

Mr Advani could have gone down in history if he had had the courage to tell the RSS to stop its incessant propaganda against the minorities, to stop interfering in the BJP and worked towards severing the ideological links between the RSS and BJP. In the end, however, the old man failed to measure up to what the moment required of him.

o o o

[SEE ALSO:]
- India: It's high time the RSS dropped the fiction of being apolitical and distant from BJP matters
Editorial, The Indian Express, June 13 2013
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/06/india-its-high-time-rss-dropped-fiction.html

- On Narendra Modi’s PR agency : APCO Worldwide - A report by Shelley Kasli
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/06/on-narendra-modis-pr-agency-apco.html

- H-Net Review: Nechtman on Carson, 'The East India Company and Religion, 1698-1858'
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/06/h-net-review-nechtman-on-carson-east.html

- India: Saffron uniform for Gujarat govt school in walled city
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/06/saffron-uniform-for-gujarat-govt-school.html

- India: Media, police ducking the question of Hindutva terror 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/06/india-media-police-ducking-question-of.html

- Bangladesh: Use of religion by some Islamist parties and organisations in electioneering for city level elections 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/06/bangladesh-use-of-religion-by-some.html

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14. SACW Special on Taksim Square protests in Turkey
- a compilation of relevant commentary for readers in South Asia
=========================================
contents:
a) Memories of a Public Square (Orhan Pamuk)
b) Erdogan, Gezi Park And the Headscarf (Tulin Daloglu)
c) Turkey's protesters proclaimed as true heirs of nation's founding father (Luke Harding) 
d) Behind Turkey's Viral Revolution, There Are Mad Men (Actually Women) (Emre Kizilkaya) 
e) Educator’s jailing reveals Turkey at crossroads (Trudy Rubin)
f) Taksim Square protests: not a Turkish spring, but the new Young Turks (Betty Caplan)
g) The Turkish Government Do Not Wish To Demolish A Park, But Rather A Democracy (Chimene Suleyman)
h) What Would Ataturk Think? (Octavia Nasr)
i) For A Park And A Few Trees (Ilker Ayturk)

FULL TEXT PDF AT:
http://www.sacw.net/article4730.html

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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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