SACW - 15 July 2013 | Sri Lanka: Military landgrabs / Pakistan: Malala; Taliban/ India: journalism, Ishrat Jahan & Modi; / Egypt vs Muslim Brotherhood . . .

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Sun Jul 14 19:47:13 EDT 2013


South Asia Citizens Wire - 15 July 2013 - No. 2793
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Contents:

1. Bangladesh: Anti Feminist Views of Allama Shafi of Hefazat-e-Islam
2. On military land grabs in post war Sri Lanka (Ruth Canagarajah)
3. Thousands of women across Nepal are still seeking justice for war time rape  (Toofan Neupane)
4. Pakistan: ‘Here I stand, one girl’ (Ghazi Salahuddin)
+ Pakistan Taliban 'sets up a base in Syria' (BBC)
5. Fishing in Risky Waters of Pakistan and India: The troubled lives of Fishermen
6. Bharat Bhushan on Journalism in India
7. India: The murder of Ishrat Jahan (Praful Bidwai)
8. India: Threat to the life and security of Shamima Kauser and others. Letter to Union Home Secretary (Vrinda Grover)
9. India: Is the Hindustan Times running a slander campaign against Ishrat Jehan? Third protest letter to Editor (Vrinda Grover)
10. India: FAC Clearance to KKNPP - Press release People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy
11. Daily Rockwell’s Book review of ’The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide by Ayesha Jalal
12. Selected Posts on Communalism Watch:
- Bangladesh: Jamaat-Shibir men go on rampage
- Bangladesh islamists run riot ahead of war crimes verdict against Ghulam Azam 
- India: Photo of Hindutva propaganda billboard in Hindi at the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela 
- Nadeem F. Paracha on spectacle of religiosity in the Pakistan cricket team
- India: No pink chaddis for PMK (S Anand)
- India: Modi's “kutte ka baccha” comment and compliant journalism (Teesta Setalvad) 
– Online poll on India Today - Caste-based rallies should be banned all over India
– Thailand's teenagers popular sensation - Hitler | SS style bikes, swastika tattoos, T-shirts with Hitler
– India: RSS drops its veil, prepares blueprint for BJP to get ready for 2014 polls
– India: BJP has decided to induct Janata Dal leader Subramanian Swamy
- India: Bodh Gaya Blasts - Terrorist Violence and Political Agenda (Ram Puniyani)
- India: Bodhgaya Bomb Blasts - Moving Beyond the 'Usual Suspects' (subhash gatade)
- India: Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Mangalore demands ban on 'Bhaag Mikha Bhaag' movie
- India: The killing of eight migrant labourers from Assam triggers mass exodus of migrant labourers 

:::: Full Text ::::
13. India: When incomes grow, but jobs elude (Sonalde Desai)
14. Bookshop Memories in a Changing India (Jairaj Singh)
15. Book Review | The Mirror of Beauty (Muhammad Umar Memon) 
16. Egypt now needs truth, reconciliation and no rush to the ballot box (Magdi Abdelhadi)
17. Whither Egypt's Democracy? (Ahmad Shokr)


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1. BANGLADESH: ANTI FEMINIST VIEWS OF ALLAMA SHAFI OF HEFAZAT-E-ISLAM
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A video recording of the totally retrograde speech by the founder of the right wing Hefazat e Islam in Bangladesh
http://www.sacw.net/article5003.html

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2. ON MILITARY LAND GRABS IN POST WAR SRI LANKA
by Ruth Canagarajah
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Since the civil war, the Sri Lankan military has seized land under the pretenses of security and development.
http://www.sacw.net/article4991.html

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3. THOUSANDS OF WOMEN ACROSS NEPAL ARE STILL SEEKING JUSTICE FOR WAR TIME RAPE 
by Toofan Neupane
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true peace will come only when the rapists are tried and put behind bars.
http://www.sacw.net/article5020.html

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4. PAKISTAN: ‘HERE I STAND, ONE GIRL’
by Ghazi Salahuddin
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Without hesitation, I confess that I cried listening to Malala Yousufzai when she addressed a special session of the United Nations on Friday evening. I could see that many in the audience were also overwhelmed by emotion. This was a moment in history that could not have been imagined. And considering what we have made of Pakistan, do we deserve a Malala?
http://www.sacw.net/article5015.html

--See Related--
PAKISTAN TALIBAN 'SETS UP A BASE IN SYRIA'
By Ahmed Wali Mujeeb BBC Urdu 
The Pakistani Taliban have visited Syria to set up a base and to assess "the needs of the jihad", a Taliban official has told the BBC.
He said that the base was set up with the assistance of ex-Afghan fighters of Middle Eastern origin who have moved to Syria in recent years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23285245

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5. FISHING IN RISKY WATERS OF PAKISTAN AND INDIA: THE TROUBLED LIVES OF FISHERMEN
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Fishermen are treated and exchanged like prisoners of the war by India and Pakistan.
http://www.sacw.net/article5014.html

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6. BHARAT BHUSHAN ON JOURNALISM IN INDIA
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India’s growing global importance and ambitions have had a detrimental impact on free speech, creating a discourse that drowns out diversity in the media. Its “big power discourse” has been shaped primarily by two processes — economic liberalisation, which began in 1991, and the nuclearisation of India, in particular the five nuclear tests India conducted in 1998.
http://www.sacw.net/article5004.html

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7. INDIA: THE MURDER OF ISHRAT JAHAN
by Praful Bidwai
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    India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has charged eight Gujarat policemen, including senior officers DG Vanzara and PP Pandey, with premeditated murder for the 2004 ’encounter’ killing of teenager-student Ishrat Jahan and three others. They were falsely accused of plotting to kill Narendra Modi. The police abducted and unlawfully detained the victims, blindfolded and drugged them, and pumped 70 bullets into them. The First Information Report had already been fabricated.
http://www.sacw.net/article5021.html

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8. INDIA: THREAT TO THE LIFE AND SECURITY OF SHAMIMA KAUSER AND OTHERS. LETTER TO UNION HOME SECRETARY
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From: Vrinda Grover Date: 11 July 2013 14:32 
Subject: Fwd: THREAT TO LIFE AND NEED FOR PROTECTION AND SECURITY FOR SHAMIMA KAUSER AND OTHERS
Please See Attached Letter Sent To Union Home Secretary, Mr. Anil Goswami And Copied To CBI Director. The Same Was Also Released To The Press.
http://www.sacw.net/article5002.html

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9. INDIA: IS THE HINDUSTAN TIMES RUNNING A SLANDER CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISHRAT JEHAN? THIRD PROTEST LETTER TO EDITOR
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It appears that Hindustan Times and its Delhi based correspondent, Abhishek Saran, are leaving no stone unturned in tarnishing the reputation of Ishrat Jahan. When they can find no material or factual basis to do so, misleading headlines and insinuations are pressed into service.
http://www.sacw.net/article4985.html

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10. INDIA: FAC CLEARANCE TO KKNPP - PRESS RELEASE PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT AGAINST NUCLEAR ENERGY
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The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has granted clearance for “First Approach to Criticality (FAC)” of Unit-1 of KKNPP “as the next major stage of its commissioning.” It is pertinent to remember that the AERB gave this very same clearance on August 10, 2012 (No. AERB/ITSD/PRESS/2012/03). That Clearance was to be followed by compliance to various pre-requisites, review of the various commissioning procedures, results, inspection reports etc.
http://www.sacw.net/article4987.html

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11. DAILY ROCKWELL’S BOOK REVIEW OF ’THE PITY OF PARTITION: MANTO’S LIFE, TIMES, AND WORK ACROSS THE INDIA-PAKISTAN DIVIDE BY AYESHA JALAL
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In her new biography of her great uncle (The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide, HarperCollins India, 265 pages, Rs. 599), historian Ayesha Jalal does little to dispel the notion that Manto should be lionised as a unique writer who need not be considered in the context of a literary milieu. Though she does nod at his many contemporaries, this is only to showcase Manto’s place as a combative genius among lesser figures. This tendency is particularly noticeable when she discusses his relationship with the Progressive Writers’ Association, which blacklisted him in 1948 for being a ‘reactionary’ writer.
http://www.sacw.net/article5022.html

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12. SELECTED POSTS ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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- Bangladesh: Jamaat-Shibir men go on rampage
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/bangladesh-jamaat-shibir-men-go-on.html

- Bangladesh islamists run riot ahead of war crimes verdict against Ghulam Azam 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/bangladesh-islamists-run-riot-ahead-of.html

- India: Photo of Hindutva propaganda billboard in Hindi at the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/photo-of-hindutva-propaganda-billboard.html

- Nadeem F. Paracha on spectacle of religiosity in the Pakistan cricket team
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/nadeem-f-paracha-on-spectacle-of.html

- India: No pink chaddis for PMK (S Anand)
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/no-pink-chaddis-for-pmk-s-anand.html

- India: Modi's “kutte ka baccha” comment and compliant journalism (Teesta Setalvad) 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/india-modis-kutte-ka-baccha-comment-and.html

– Online poll on India Today - Caste-based rallies should be banned all over India
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2013/07/online-poll-on-india-today-caste-based.html

– Thailand's teenagers popular sensation - Hitler | SS style bikes, swastika tattoos, T-shirts with Hitler
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2013/07/thailands-teenagers-popular-sensation.html

– India: RSS drops its veil, prepares blueprint for BJP to get ready for 2014 polls
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2013/07/india-rss-drops-its-veil-prepares.html

– India: BJP has decided to induct Janata Dal leader Subramanian Swamy
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2013/07/india-bjp-has-decided-to-induct-janata.html

- India: Bodh Gaya Blasts - Terrorist Violence and Political Agenda (Ram Puniyani)
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/bodh-gaya-blasts-terrorist-violence-and.html

- India: Bodhgaya Bomb Blasts - Moving Beyond the 'Usual Suspects' (subhash gatade)
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/india-bodhgaya-bomb-blasts-moving.html

- India: Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Mangalore demands ban on 'Bhaag Mikha Bhaag' movie
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/india-hindu-janajagruti-samiti-in.html

- India: The killing of eight migrant labourers from Assam triggers mass exodus of migrant labourers 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/india-killing-of-eight-migrant.html


==FULL TEXT==

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13. INDIA: WHEN INCOMES GROW, BUT JOBS ELUDE
by Sonalde Desai
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(Indian Express, 3 July 2013)

The latest NSSO data also underlines the increasing absence of women from the labour market

Every time results from one of the "thick" rounds of the National Sample Survey come out, we get into a feeding frenzy, trying to slice and dice the statistics for changes since the previous round. Since NSS large rounds are typically conducted every five years, there is perhaps some sense to it, particularly when studying consumption expenditure, although employment changes need a longer horizon. However, since this time, the 68th round follows the last thick round of 2009-10 with a bare two-year gap, this rush to judgement seems excessive. Economic changes in household well being are long-term, and instead of being euphoric, we should be suspicious of the data if we see major changes after a bare two-year interval. Moreover, the reason the NSSO conducted a second survey in 2011-12 in such quick succession was due to the unusual economic conditions in 2009-10, a drought year when some parts of the economy were affected by the worldwide recession, thus making it a bad base year for comparisons.

However, the 68th round of the NSS provides an opportunity to take stock of the economic changes in the country over the past 20 years. Comparisons of NSS data from 1993-94 with 2011-12 paint an interesting picture of the Indian economy. In broad brushstrokes, several key observations deserve attention: First, average per capita expenditure, used as a proxy for income, has grown rapidly for both urban and rural areas, although the growth in urban areas far outpaces rural growth when taking inflation into account. Rural average monthly consumption per person has grown from Rs 942 in 1993-94 (in 2011-12 prices) to Rs 1,287 in 2011-12, a 37 per cent growth. In contrast, urban expenditure has grown from Rs 1,597 to Rs 2,471, a 55 per cent increase. Although since 2009, the pace of rural expenditure growth has been more or less similar to the pace of urban growth, this fails to overcome years of rural disadvantage with average rural expenditure being only half of urban expenditure. Consumption for the top income earners in urban areas has risen even faster, so that while consumption for all sections of society has grown, the urban rich have benefited disproportionately.

Second, in spite of the boast of nearly 14 million new jobs created since 2009-10, when adjusting for population growth, with the exception of rural women, employment levels in India have been virtually stagnant. Among men, worker to population ratios (WPRs) are largely unchanged from 553 per thousand population in 1993-94 to 543 in 2011-12 for urban areas, and from 521 to 546 in rural areas; WPRs for urban women also remain at more or less the same levels, going from 155 to 147. The minor differences we see could easily be attributable to changes in population age structure. However, the decline in the WPR for rural women is large in magnitude — a drop from 328 to 248 over the past two decades.

This decline in employment for rural women is merely an overt sign of tremendous churn in rural labour markets. It is well recognised that the contribution of agriculture to the Indian economy has declined steadily since Independence. The declining importance of agriculture is a normal transformation accompanying economic development. Where India differs from other countries is in the lack of manufacturing opportunities and the consequent crowding of workers in agriculture. While the proportion of the GDP from agriculture has fallen by 50 per cent since 1983, the proportion of workers in agriculture has barely declined by 25 per cent. About half the Indian workforce is still concentrated in agriculture, although it accounts for only about 17 per cent of the GDP.

With the declining share of agriculture in the economy, it is imperative that more and more workers move out of agriculture into non-agricultural work. To some extent, the 68th round documents this shift and for the first time, less than 50 per cent of workers are concentrated in agriculture. However, these opportunities appear to be limited, and are more easily available to men than to women. Consequently, while rural men increasingly move into non-farm work, particularly in construction labour, women appear to be stuck in agriculture, often squeezed out of the labour force.

The decline in rural women's work participation has slowed down, however. Between 2004-05 and 2009-10, rural women's WPR, including both primary and secondary activities, fell from 327 to 261 and further fell to 248 in 2011-12. This amounts to an annual decline of about 2.5 per cent in the past two years, compared to about 4.5 per cent in the prior five years. At least some of this improvement may be attributable to MGNREGA, which mandates that at least one-third of the beneficiaries be women, and men and women should be paid equally. Nonetheless, regardless of the opportunities in MGNREGA, women's exclusion from rural labour markets remains a potential concern.

How we think about this decline in women's work participation is a matter of perspective. Since a vast majority of women reside in households with employed men and with increasing engagement of men in non-farm jobs, household incomes have been rising. This may account for some of the decline in women's work participation. Thus, analysts often see this as a positive rather than negative development, with the pull factor of higher household incomes leading to women's withdrawal from the labour force to concentrate on household duties. However, the push factor due to blocked labour market opportunities cannot be easily dismissed. The pull explanation gains support from NSS data that documents similar unemployment rates for women as for men; however, an alternative data source offers a different explanation. The second employment and unemployment survey conducted by the Labour Bureau at the same time as the 68th round found the unemployment rate for rural women to be nearly double that for men, there by lending credence to the push explanation.

A decrease in rural women's employment is at least partially responsible for the continued large gaps between urban and rural incomes. Moreover, the increasing absence of women from the labour market creates a vicious cycle that makes women invisible and reduces opportunities for women who need to work, such as poor women, or female household heads. This suggests that the solution for jobless growth may lie in improving access to non-farm employment for women.

The writer is professor of sociology at University of Maryland, US, and senior fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, Delhi. Views are personal

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14. BOOKSHOP MEMORIES IN A CHANGING INDIA
by Jairaj Singh
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(India Ink / The New York Times, June 21, 2013)
In the summer of 1984, two years before I was born, my father, Ajit Vikram Singh opened a small corner bookshop, Fact & Fiction, in South Delhi’s Vasant Vihar area, opposite a decrepit cinema hall that would screen films like ‘The Sex Life of Animals’ to a packed audience. Nearly 30 years later, it’s disheartening to see him disillusioned with the Indian book industry.

A descendant of a royal family, my father was brought up in old, decadent fashions and with a pet elephant in the house. He got a degree in science from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, but veered toward the art of curating, collecting, and making a life selling carefully selected books.

I grew up in a world unlike his, one filled with books. When I was a baby, he would carry me in a tiny basket to the bookstore. One day, he found me crawling on the floor and sinking my teeth on books lying on the floor. “You literally grew up biting into the word,” he chuckled.


In the early 1990s, I would see my father diligently scan catalogues of international publishing houses, highlighting titles he wanted for the bookstore. He knew where a book in the store was kept because he would stack them himself.

“A bookstore isn’t about keeping books you like to read,” he would say. “It’s about filling it with books that people will want to pick out and buy.” This was perhaps his first lesson in selling books.

It was neither a luxurious nor a profitable trade, and my friends at school would wonder how my father managed to pay my school fee. My literary-minded colleagues, however, would imagine the store as a retreat filled with days of quiet reading and fancy thoughts of opening their own bookstores.

My father’s days at the bookstore are still punctuated by visits from a bewildering cast of characters, fewer than before. There will be sophisticated gentlemen seeking details of an international best seller; a hassled aunt wanting a birthday gift option for a prodigal niece seeking a “nice” book; a television celebrity hanging around the aisles, hoping to be recognized and drop names of writers she has interviewed; the vague intellectual who proffers instant dismissive reviews of books others pick out while he thumbs through another book he wouldn’t buy; and people with neither the recollection of the title nor the name of the publisher, yet persistently describing a book they want to purchase.

Over the years, I’ve watched my father become a solitary man who spends his days manning the store from a squeaky chair behind a tiny desk along with the help of a manager. He knows the regulars well — writers, scholars, journalists – who years ago walked into the store as awkward young men and have grown up to be people whose books found a place on his bookshelves.

My father shares a unique rapport with them. He knows who reads graphic novels, he knows who seeks philosophy, and he knows who wants science fiction. There are some who make an annual pilgrimage to the bookshop, for whom he’ll disappear into the hidden attic, and fish out a book he has been saving for them. He would even read unpublished manuscripts. In a ruthless, brash city like Delhi, here was an independent bookstore where you could openly talk about literature, religion and politics.

Over the years, my father has come to acquire a reputation of being an eccentric bookseller. A few Sundays ago, I was sharing a cup of coffee with him at the bookshop, when a man walked in and asked for the “self-help books” section.

“Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose,” my father replied. Another time, a man asked him the same question, and he was pointed toward the “religion and philosophy” section.

What upsets him is the way people treat books. It bothers him when he sees the corners get turned when someone tries to shove a book back in its place on the shelf without looking. It hurts when people walk in and complain how small the bookstore is and then don’t look at his books. It annoys when people insist on heavy discounts for a $10 book, but wear shirts that would cost $50.

Delhi, he often says, is a city with more writers than readers. “Books are not written because the world needs to read another one,” he once told me a long time ago. “It’s because writers feel the world must read their books.”

We were somewhere in North Delhi at a used bookstore. I was sitting on a pile of books, sipping a cold drink, my hands caked in book dust, wondering how on earth my father had found this decrepit place and why people feel the need to write books.

There was a time when my father would skulk around the city, forever on the lookout for old and out-of-print books. He knew every nook and cranny of the city where he could find them and sometimes would take me along on these intrepid “treasure hunts”. My father would get a lot of leads from the pavement and second-hand booksellers.

In turn, he would help them sift through their stash and lend a friendly ear to their troubles. He also had a knack of mending old books, ravished by termites and silver fish, by treating them with spirits, and selling them for a small price. Today, like independent bookstores, the pavement and second-hand booksellers are also finding it hard to keep books and survive.

A chain bookstore the size of a food court that opened much later in the same marketplace openly declared that they will have him shut by the end of the year. They couldn’t.

In the past few years, independent booksellers like Fact & Fiction around the world are fighting to stay in  business. The flurry of chains, online retail, and now e-readers and tablets are gradually edging the corner bookstore out. But the bigger dragon to slay is the skyrocketing rents of commercial spaces in recent times, spitting fire on the ground on which they stand. Had my brother and I been in school today, perhaps my father would not have been able to afford the fees.

Many claim there is little or no future for small corner bookstores. But it isn’t books that will suddenly cease to exist if the corner bookstore goes. The glut of shopping malls swelling on the Indian cityscape house outlets of a chain bookstore offering stationery, stuffed toys, DVDs, and books at a discount.

Online book retailing is no longer a mere threat. Earlier this month, Flipkart.com sold one million books in a single day. According to a Nielsen survey, it occupied an average 40 to 45 percent share of the book trade in 2013. Vying for the same space is Amazon, which has just entered the Indian market.

A day will dawn when a section of readers might miss the experience of walking into a corner bookstore, recognizing a few faces, stumbling upon an unexpected book, long for the civility of a conversation outside a bookstore, crave for a bookseller whose approving smile on the purchase of a copy of Man Without Qualities could be the beginning of a beautiful literary friendship.

Few might remember the smell of a bookstore in the morning after the shutters are lifted. And, who would tell me the story a writer confessed about skipping lunch to save enough for a particular book he wanted from Fact & Fiction?

A bookstore is a sea of stories. India needs to support its independent bookstores, perhaps now more than ever, for the same reason it seeks to preserve its architectural heritage.

I am often surprised how a tiny bookstore in a market dominated by a cinema, garish bars, and garment stores attracted and inspired a generation of writers and scholars.

A good bookstore, however, can’t survive on its lore.

My father and others who run independent bookstores can no longer get access to the books they were once known for. Their shelves are going barren by the day as they are rejecting the mass-market pulp fiction and the lowbrow offerings the publishers are forcing their way.

At a recent literature festival, a popular writer who has sold close to two million copies of a truly mediocre novel was introduced to a renowned novelist. “So, what do you like to read,” asked the renowned novelist. “Actually sir, I don’t like to read. I just like to tell stories,” he answered.

For years, my father has been dealing with inept marketing people of publishing houses to keep his selection eclectic. Today they are the ones responsible for bringing books to India and are turning their backs on him. It’s sad because they are only concerned about ordering books in bulk to meet sales margins —  Books that are tried-and-tested, formula-driven drivel, found on international bestseller lists. Books they can’t go wrong on excel sheets.

Every day independent bookshops around the world are shutting down. Booksellers like my father are being swept out of the book trade. An evening is not far when books will close on corner bookstores like his and the blues he softly plays will forever stop.

Jairaj Singh is the editor of Time Out, Delhi.

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15. BOOK REVIEW | THE MIRROR OF BEAUTY
This epic novel gathers a whole way of life in 18th and 19th century India in its encyclopaedic sweep
Muhammad Umar Memon 
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(Live Mint, 06 2013)
A panoramic view of the city of Delhi (circa 1863), which comes alive with all its cultural richness in Faruqi’s ambitious novel. Photo: Samuel Bourne/Alinari/Getty Images

The Mirror of Beauty | Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
Portrait of a vanished time

Milan Kundera observes somewhere that the novel does not write a society’s history. Its overwhelming concern is, rather, with the existential condition of the individual. Philosophical discourse is not part of its provenance, though its characters may engage in philosophy where the latter is not the object of novelistic intention, but only an element of its strategy, to reveal tellingly some aspect of the character’s persona.
In his masterwork, The Mirror of Beauty, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi seems to have found a middle ground. It is a novel as much about Wazir Khanam—a stunning beauty of infinite elegance, grace, dignity and gravitas—as about Indo-Muslim culture in its heyday and during its precipitous decline, mostly at the hands of the British in 19th century India, but partly also because of the sapped energies of the late Mughals.
Faruqi, however, does not turn his protagonist into a monochromatic or, at best, two-dimensional character divested of all personality, volition and selfhood. His substantial knowledge of world literature in easily half-a-dozen languages, compounded by his uncannily intuitive sense of all the nuances and intricacies of the poetics of good fiction, enables him to bring the culture and the character so deftly together that neither can survive without the other.
photo
The Mirror of Beauty: Hamish Hamilton, 984 pages, Rs 899
Both, almost as a dialectical necessity, interact and complement each other. It is the culture that makes Wazir Khanam who she is, and it is the mirror of her being in which the entire elegance of that culture, its decorum, its insatiable love of the literary arts, miniature painting, music, and a myriad of crafts, is reflected in a rainbow of warm, dazzling colours. The delightful ambiguity of “beauty” in the title further reinforces the author’s twin concern, as the two merge so seamlessly it is impossible to think of one without the other, or to discern where reality eases into illusion.
Central Asian culture, transplanted to India by the Mughals with an ecumenical absorption of native Indian customs and conventions, is enacted through Wazir Khanam and a fairly extensive cast of characters, some from the lower classes and in subservient roles, but most drawn from the nobility—indeed some of them historical personages—and in commanding positions.
Although fictionalized, Wazir Khanam is a historical character. She was the mother of the Urdu poet Dagh Dehlavi. Born sometime in early 19th century Delhi, Wazir’s ancestors lived in Kishangarh, Rajputana, until the miniature painter Mian Makhsusullah moved to Kashmir. Still later, his two grandsons, Daud and Yaqub, moved to Farrukhabad and Delhi, with a brief stopover in their ancestral Rajputana.
Wazir comes through as an individual minutely conscious of her unassailable erotic powers over men. But she knows how to restrain herself from riding roughshod over her drooling admirers, schooled as she is in the courtesies and mores, and with a perfect regard for the requirements and limits of her culture. Sprightly, self-willed, unwilling to submit to domesticity, full of wit and subtle humour, with a passion for life and the demands of her flesh, she never oversteps those limits, yet manages to keep her individuality intact.
Mistress of three men (Englishman Marston Blake in the employ of Company Bahadur; Nawab Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan, a close relative of the poet Ghalib; and Agha Mirza Turab Ali), hoping some day to rise to the status of wife, she is singularly unlucky as the lives of all three are snuffed out prematurely. Blake meets his end in Jaipur at the hands of a frenzied mob; the Mirza is done in by thugs; while the public hanging of the nawab owes in no small measure to the humiliation the Resident to the State of the Company Bahadur, Nawab William Fraser Sahib, suffered at having lost the affections of Wazir to the nawab (not content with his burgeoning seraglio of half-a-dozen desi bibis and numerous boy-lovers, Fraser wanted to add Wazir to his harem as well). Her fourth wooer, none other than the Mughal prince and heir apparent Mirza Fathul Mulk Bahadur, who finally bestows on her the much longed for dignity of becoming a legally wedded wife, dies suddenly in 1856, just a year before the sun was to set irrevocably on the Mughal empire, or whatever was left of it amid the steadily encroaching power of the English.
Wazir goes through her tragic vicissitudes with exceptional fortitude, stoicism, and superhuman grace. The deaths of the four men in her life, whom she loved in her own way, are not the only wounds life has given her. Practically disowned by her religiously devout father and eldest sister, who could not put up with what they assumed to be her unconventional ways, she also had to deal with the hauteur, the hubris, the sordid machinations and jealousy of the relatives of her four lovers. She is divested not just of material assets after their deaths, but also forced to give up her two children with Blake, who were practically snatched from her lap by Blake’s cousins, the Tyndales.
Something of an epic in its expansiveness, The Mirror of Beauty defies any attempt even to enumerate its tantalizing wealth, much less to adequately discuss it in a few hundred words. It would be tantamount to attempting “to see a world in a grain of sand” or describing “eternity in an hour”. The whole way of life of 18th and 19th century India is gathered in the novel’s encyclopaedic sweep. One can literally assemble countless inventories of manners, ceremonies, festivals, fabrics, jewellery, arts and crafts, arms and weaponry, you name it. The description of Wazir’s attire at her first visit to Nawab Shamsuddin is itself spread over four pages, and that of his palatial residence in Daryaganj takes up over five.
Some individuals defy our notions of human possibility and limit. Faruqi is one such individual. A civil servant in the postal department until his retirement, he accomplished in letters what few are able to in educational institutions and literary academies. A poet, a critic, a theorist of literature, a fan and translator of detective novels, a polymath, with a profound knowledge of music and painting—the list of his achievements is endless.
As if his studies of Ghalib and Mir, his incisive comments about the nature of fiction, his insightful forays into lexicography and prosody, and, lately, his three-volume critical work on the Urdu dastan (cycle of tales), undoubtedly a stunning contribution to world literature, were not enough to leave ordinary mortals breathless over his vast erudition and creativity, he has achieved in a single novel what writers toil a lifetime to achieve, but rarely do: the brilliant portrait of a vanished time.
Faruqi came to fiction rather late in his career. Some 10 years ago, Urdu readers were literally stunned by the appearance of about half-a-dozen short stories, all dealing with the lives and circumstances of major Urdu poets, all penned by different authors whose names had not been encountered before, and all bearing the marks of an accomplished writer. Eventually, Faruqi owned these literary gems as the product of his craftsmanship. He published them in a single volume, Sawar Aur Doosray Afsanay (The Rider And Other Stories). While readers were still reeling from the stunning beauty of these stories, a treasure trove of cultural riches broke upon their senses with a crashing force—his gargantuan novel Ka’i Chand the Sar-e Asman (The Mirror of Beauty in its English reincarnation).
The Mirror is not a translation. It is a reworking in English of the Urdu original, but in its main events it rarely, if ever, drifts away from the original. The entire story is carried over intact into English. And Faruqi alone could have accomplished this formidable feat.
The characters of a bygone age, their every breath and movement steeped in the unmistakable ambience of a self-sufficient but, ultimately, doomed culture, with its penchant for high living, pleasure, allusion and poetry, required an idiom commensurate with their times and cultural personality. The stylized English invented by Faruqi—notwithstanding its few infelicitous contemporary “heys” and “girlies”—gives the novel its razor-sharp edge of authenticity.
India should be rightly proud that two of the greatest living Urdu writers, both recipients of the Saraswati Samman—Faruqi and Naiyer Masud, a scholar and short-story writer—make their home in its bosom. And Penguin, equally, should be congratulated for publishing them both in the same year (Masud’s The Occult, Seemiya in its original Urdu, will appear later this year).
The author is professor emeritus of Urdu literature and Islamic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US.

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16. EGYPT NOW NEEDS TRUTH, RECONCILIATION AND NO RUSH TO THE BALLOT BOX
The Muslim Brotherhood thought that democracy was a winner-takes-all game – but Egypt needs politicians who build bridges
by Magdi Abdelhadi
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(The Guardian, 12 July 2013)
https://tinyurl.com/mjpyzde

Muslim Brotherhood Head-Quarters Attacked As Anti-Morsi Protests Are Held
Protesters shout from the windows of the Cairo headquarters of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as they ransack the building. Photograph: Ed Giles/Getty Images

Another Friday and Egypt is poised again for more mass demonstrations that will underline anew its profound and dangerous divisions.

The army has said it will deploy elite troops to deal with violence and armed troublemakers. With talk among some of Morsi's supporters of martyrdom, let us hope the soldiers exercise maximum restraint to avoid a repeat of the bloody events outside the Republican Guard compound in Heliopolis on Monday.

With the overthrow of Morsi, Egypt has entered a second period of transition. The goal that eluded it since the fall of Mubarak, genuine democratic rule, remains a distant hope. The ghosts that plagued its first transition (from February 2011 to June 2013) have not gone away. If anything, they have been compounded by a new spectre: the resurgence of Islamist violence.

While television cameras captured the tragic deaths of more than 50 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) outside the Republican Guard base on Monday, none were present when Islamists went on the rampage in Alexandria or upper Egypt. Particularly frightening was the targeting of Christians in the south and the killing of a Coptic priest in Sinai in brutal retaliation for the Copts' support of the army's removal of Morsi. This has confirmed everyone's worst fears.

Worse still for the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadi rhetoric and the violence have led to growing calls that the organisation be designated a terrorist outfit, outlawed and disbanded.

Given this language, it's hard to imagine how can Egypt re-integrate the MB into the political process – arguably one of the most difficult challenges facing the country right now.

The police have rounded up many of its leaders on charges of incitement to violence. Others are on the run. The MB has declined offers to be included in the new interim administration.

The ripples of Egypt's second upheaval are still being played out and their full impact may not be clear for some time. But one of its most important consequences has been throwing into sharp focus the question of the compatibility of Islamism and democratic values.

It has become pretty obvious to everyone that democracy for the MB means nothing more than the ballot box and winner-takes-all. That is primarily why they have failed to build bridges with the opposition and create consensus – the only way to run a divided society like Egypt.

Now, the MB has a choice to make: either do some soul-searching or continue to blame it all on foreign conspiracies and the "crusader west". The former could pave the way for compromise and power-sharing. The latter would consign it to a slow and painful death.

The MB has perfected the art of double-speak: the language of democracy and human rights to its western interlocutors, but that of jihad and xenophobia to fire up its poor masses. That too has to change if it wants people to believe its avowal to respect democratic values, and I don't see that happening any time soon.

No less important for the MB is the need to revise its founding myth (its core ideas have remained untouched since its founder Hassan Al Banna more than 80 years ago) that sharia is the panacea to the ills of society. This fallacy has been exposed and is why people quickly became disillusioned with Morsi. The poor and hungry cannot eat sharia, neither can holy books or piety alone create jobs or grow the economy. Egyptians revolted against Mubarak in January 2011 not because of a supposedly lost Muslim identity, but to demand freedom, dignity and social justice.

Two years and four months later, and power is once again in the hands of unelected leaders who promise to deliver democracy. The interim president, Adly Mansour, has announced an ambitious timetable. It is clearly designed to assuage international fears that Egypt is sliding back into some kind of military rule, and that there will be a quick return to normal politics, with an elected parliament and president in nine months. This is very unrealistic given the amount of work still required to bring all parties to the negotiating table to agree on a new constitution.

Egypt should not rush its transition again. It was haste during the first transition (promoted by the MB out of pure self-interest) that plunged the country into a series of unending crises culminating in the latest upheaval.

Before rushing to the ballot box Egypt is in desperate need of its own truth and reconciliation process. Ideological differences have solidified into a personal hatred that has often led to violence. With the bitterness so intense, it is hard to imagine how can Egypt heal its rifts without a Nelson Mandela or a nonviolent grassroots movement committed to that goal. Were that ever to happen, it would be a victory for the culture of democracy over the deeply ingrained autocratic instincts of the establishment and the political class.

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17. WHITHER EGYPT'S DEMOCRACY?
by Ahmad Shokr	| Merip, published July 12, 2013
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https://tinyurl.com/ptfr2ex

On July 3 I walked down the Nasr City autostrade toward the Raba‘a al-‘Adawiyya mosque, where the Muslim Brothers of Egypt were holding a sit-in. Two and a half hours would pass before the defense minister, Gen. ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, addressed the nation to announce the end of Muhammad Mursi’s one-year presidency. But the army’s seizure of power had begun. Armored personnel carriers rolled onto the street, one after another, to block access to the protest. A cordon of tense soldiers in riot gear poised for confrontation.

Mursi supporters, men and women, arrived by the score, in an atmosphere of shock mixed with indignation. Some were crying. Others shouted at the soldiers. A small group of them surrounded an army vehicle and banged on the chassis with their fists. Still others pulled their friends away, fearful of provoking the troops. Chants of “Down with military rule!” -- a slogan of revolutionaries during the period of direct administration by Egypt’s generals in 2011-2012 -- echoed in the streets. Suddenly, a soldier fired in the air to disperse the crowd. The shooting continued for minutes. Most people ran, but diehards stood their ground. Moments later, the army decided to let protesters join the assembly, searching and videotaping them one by one, but the mood remained charged.

My memory took me back ten months to a casual lunch at the home of a Muslim Brother in an affluent Cairo neighborhood. When I arrived, a senior member of the organization was holding court, surrounded by a dozen or so followers. He boasted that Mursi’s victory in the 2012 presidential election was no mundane event; it had to be understood in otherworldly terms. Every step of the campaign had involved risky decisions that could have gone awry. That they did not showed the outcome was divinely ordained. Nowhere did the leading Brother mention the popular revolution that had toppled a dictator in February 2011 or its political possibilities. His account looked inward. The Brothers’ ascent to power was the fulfillment of destiny, the culmination of an 80-year struggle against oppression in which the protagonists had finally triumphed.

Now, in the midsummer of 2013, it was all about to be lost -- an abrupt ending to a short-lived Cinderella story.

The week after Mursi’s ejection witnessed a mind-numbing battle over nomenclature. Was what happened a coup d’état or a broad-based rebellion? The two are not mutually exclusive. What happened was that the generals (in cooperation with others) grabbed the state from an elected president, but their action was precipitated by millions who revolted against the Muslim Brothers’ government, on a scale unprecedented in the history of Egypt.

Behind the terms “coup” and “revolution” are conflicting claims about where legitimacy lies -- in the ballot box, in the streets, in state institutions? Commentators like Noah Feldman are ill at ease with the idea that elections can be trumped by other forms of collective expression. Orderly process, they insist, is fundamental to constitutional democracy. To think otherwise would unsettle a core liberal assumption that politics are a consensual affair where social contracts are forged in discrete moments of ceremony -- elections, referendums, the ratifying of constitutions -- rather than a realm of perpetual conflict. To many Egyptians, however, democracy has proven not to fit in any predetermined template.

Perhaps the more important questions in Egypt today concern the past and the future, rather than the present. How did Egyptian politics reach this breaking point? Has the process that began in 2011 been irreparably sabotaged?

Mursi and his organization, the Society of Muslim Brothers, are undoubtedly to blame for Egypt’s crisis. It became clear early in the Islamists’ rule that they were more interested in consolidating their grip than in building a democratic order. The Brothers preserved all those institutions of Mubarak’s regime that did not overtly threaten their authority, including, notoriously, the security apparatus. According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the police tortured and killed at nearly the same rate under Mursi as under Mubarak. The Brothers’ style of governing was unilateral and exclusionary. Crude majoritarian logic said that victory at the ballot box gave the Society license to rule Egypt however it pleased. The most egregious example was in November 2012 when Mursi claimed absolute powers for himself in a constitutional declaration. The Brother-led constituent assembly then rammed through a draft constitution -- tailored to appease the military and ultraconservative salafis -- that caused consternation among liberals, leftists, Christians, women and others outside the Islamist bloc. The document was approved in a referendum that saw the lowest turnout of any post-Mubarak vote. Over two thirds of the electorate decided not to participate.

Policy was treated as the exclusive domain of Brother-affiliated officials and the few allies they managed to cultivate within the bureaucracy. The government failed to engage with activists, non-governmental organizations or other stakeholders. After June 14, 2012, Egypt had no parliament and no elections on the horizon. Mursi appointed a public prosecutor whose sole function appeared to be pursuing vocal opponents of the president. The Brothers incited their followers to violence, notably during December 2012 clashes with protesters against the constitutional declaration in front of the presidential palace. They relied on divisive religious rhetoric, at times reaching the level of sectarian incitement, when it suited them. The weeks before Mursi’s ouster saw a surge of anti-Shi‘i hate speech that the Brothers allowed and sometimes indulged in to rally hardline Islamists, their only remaining friends, behind the president. They failed to address ordinary Egyptians’ economic grievances -- rising prices, regular petrol shortages and power outages -- and any plans for reform were little more than recycled ideas from the final decade of Mubarak’s rule.

Theirs was not simply a government with disagreeable policies. The Muslim Brothers, and the Guidance Bureau at their helm, became viewed as a secretive, untrustworthy clique that placed the organizational interest above any other. As a result, they earned the contempt of most segments of Egyptian society outside their traditional constituency. Claims that the rebellion-turned-coup has subverted the democratic process overstate the extent to which such a process existed to begin with. The Brothers viewed their opponents as saboteurs to whom no quarter could be given. As one Egyptian analyst, ‘Amr ‘Abd al-Rahman, told me: “Since December 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood has turned politics into a zero-sum game. In the end, a zero-sum game is what they got, but they could not win.”

Mursi became hugely unpopular within state institutions as well. As early as December, reports described him as feeling “isolated in the political arena and even within his own government” and hence falling back on his traditional Islamist base. To many in the bureaucracy, Mursi and the Muslim Brothers were unwanted guests, a menace to institutional fiefdoms. Their closeness to hardline Islamists concerned the security and intelligence agencies that are self-appointed guardians of Egypt’s “national security.” Some generals reportedly saw Mursi’s presence at a June 15 Islamist conference, where clerics denounced Shi‘a and encouraged Egyptians to fight alongside the rebels in Syria, as the last straw. It was no secret that many Interior Ministry personnel were among the crowds on June 30. At one point, a protester next to me joked, “The state is revolting against itself.” He was partly right.

Had Mursi remained president after June 30, his presence would have continued to poison the atmosphere. But where does Egypt go now?

To characterize the unfolding struggle as a battle between illiberal democrats and undemocratic liberals is to oversimplify matters. A vast number of those who participated in the June 30 protests do not fit neatly into either camp. The predominant sentiments were not partisan; rather, millions were spurning what they considered a pariah regime that did not represent Egypt. For some time, there has been a growing loss of faith in elite politics and a deepening conviction that the entire political class is bankrupt. This dynamic was quite discernible on June 30. There were few displays of loyalty to politicians from the anti-Mursi opposition. Hardly any party slogans could be seen or heard among the masses. Instead of articulating a clear alternative, many demonstrators took impetuous recourse to the army as a guarantor of stability and an institution that would restore a sense of national pride. Some even yearned for icons from the distant past. A minority protested the rule of the generals and the Guidance Bureau in the same breath, and reiterated the revolution’s call for bread, freedom and social justice.

The political forces endorsing the new transition are a motley crew. Few of them have anything more than a frail base of support among the population. Those who led the June 30 protests -- a shaky agglomeration of old regime sympathizers (fuloul), revolutionaries, liberal elites and disillusioned Mursi voters -- will soon go their separate ways. There are already signs of fracture within the coalition. Disagreements have emerged over cabinet appointments, with the salafi Nour party -- the only Islamist group that consented to the army’s road map -- emerging with something like veto power. The army-appointed interim president, ‘Adli Mansour, issued a constitutional declaration on July 8 that was roundly criticized by factions that were not privy to the contents beforehand. The mainstay of the new regime is the army, backed by reactionary Arab states that are relieved to see Mursi gone and the Brothers weakened. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates rushed to promise financial packages worth an estimated $12 billion. Meanwhile, the United States hesitates to label the events a “coup” and plans to move ahead with the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt as part of its annual aid package.

The largest and best-organized players will be crucial to how the drama unfolds in the coming months. The country is now gripped by a showdown between two of its most undemocratic institutions -- the army and the Muslim Brothers. The latter’s response to Mursi’s removal has been outright defiance. Their leaders have vowed to fight the generals’ maneuver to the bitter end. “We will not leave the streets until President Mursi is reinstated,” the Brothers’ supreme guide, Muhammad Badi‘, declared to a crowd on July 5 in Nasr City. At stake in this standoff is more than the fate of aggrieved Islamists. The exclusion of the Brothers casts a long shadow over Egyptian politics. Without their participation in the renewed transition, Egypt will inevitably slide toward more heavy-handed repression -- and many players could eventually pay a hefty price. Already, Mursi and most of his presidential advisers are held incommunicado by the army without charge. Senior Brothers and other prominent Islamists are detained. Pro-Mursi television stations are off the air. The ground is being prepared for criminal charges against the heads of the organization should they remain non-compliant. The Brothers’ stubbornness may close whatever window of opportunity there is for reintegration. The army’s killing of more than 50 Mursi supporters on July 8 may have irreversibly hardened the group’s stance.

Egypt is still ruled by the armature of the old regime. Two and a half years of elite factionalism -- the inability to forge a stable alliance -- have set off a game of musical chairs. In this period, the momentum has rotated among Islamists, liberals, state bureaucrats, businessmen, military and security officials, and Mubarak-era dregs. They share a fetish for capturing the state but also the lack of a novel vision for dealing with Egypt’s deep structural problems. Attempts by any combination of these figures to restore full-fledged authoritarianism are likely be tempered by some level of public disobedience. At the same time, there is no revolutionary coalition strong enough to begin overturning the undemocratic and inegalitarian legacies of previous regimes. A balance of weakness has set in whereby no side in Egyptian politics is able to claim outright victory.

More distressing, perhaps, is a societal mood that is becoming more inclined toward intolerance and scapegoating. Egypt’s unsavory climate of chauvinism, intransigence, opportunism and deceit from almost every side has been made worse by Mursi’s ouster and its bloody aftermath. Media outlets are constantly in search of fifth columnists to demonize, whether as “terrorists” or as “infidels.” The Brothers are portrayed as traitors with a penchant for violence who must be forcibly subdued. For their part, the Brothers paint the revolt against their rule as a little more than a conspiracy hatched by the old regime. They insist their resistance to the army is peaceful, but the string of violent acts by Mursi supporters -- the killing of protesters in Cairo and Alexandria, the intimidation and mob attacks directed at Christians in Minya and Marsa Matrouh -- tells a different story. There were even accusations that the interim president is secretly a Jew.

The upsurge of aggressive patriotism on the other side is worrying, too. In Cairo, images of Gamal Abdel Nasser are becoming common, as are intemperate professions of affinity with the army. Foreigners are viewed with suspicion. Conspiracy theories abound. “Obama supports terrorism,” is a standard refrain at protests, referring to the US president’s imagined fidelity to the Muslim Brothers. Under new visa regulations, Syrian refugees are threatened with deportation, while prominent television personalities whip up animosity toward them. Abuses committed by anyone who is not Islamist -- from sexual assaults at public gatherings to police brutality -- are ignored, or worse, justified by most state and private media. Critical sensibilities are numbed amidst a profusion of nationalist euphoria. Two narratives are increasingly dominating Egyptian politics: one of Islamist defiance in the face of victimization and another of a revitalized nation set free from tyranny. The pluralistic landscape -- revolutionary, Islamist, fuloul -- that existed for much of the post-2011 period is pulling apart toward these two poles.

Revolutionary moments can arouse the greatest hopes but also expose the deepest fears. The line between those two feelings is a fine one. June 30 may have been an inspiring triumph of popular will, one unseen since the 18 days that toppled Husni Mubarak. But left unchecked that will can be usurped and fashioned into a new authoritarian consensus from below. Only time will tell. But such a development would be a big setback for the revolution.


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