SACW - 22 July 2013 | Bangladesh: Rooppur / Pakistan: weapons / India: Nurses ; nuclear secrecy ; food security ; kashmir/ Essays on Fascism / Algeria: the real lessons for Egypt / Anti women Arab spring

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 22 July 2013 - No. 2794
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CONTENTS:
1. Bhutan Elections: A case of India’s diplomatic bankruptcy! | Anand Swaroop Verma
2. The Food Security Debate in India | Jean Dreze
3. Bangladesh: Petition to Govt. re Concerns over the Safety and Economic Viability of the Proposed Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP)
4. Pakistan: Why we can’t rid society of weapons (Naeem Sadiq)
5. Pakistan’s Osama bin Laden report is more cover-up than self-criticism (Tariq Ali)
6. India - Kashmir: It’s been 22 years since the Konan Poshpora mass rape
7. Nisha Susan’s essay on Malayali Nurses
8. India: An open letter to the ’Hindu Nationalist’, Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat (Shamsul Islam)
9. India: Starting Kudankulam - When deception triumphs (by Praful Bidwai)
10. Karachi Solidarity Meeting for the Workers of Maruti Suzuki, India held on July 19, 2013
11. India: Killing of Unarmed Protestors in Kashmir - Press Release by Human Rights Watch
12. Essays on Fascism: A collection (edited by Jairus Banaji) [De-commoditized version PDF's + audio]
13. India: 18 July 2013 Bombay and Bangalore Workers in Solidarity with Maruti Automobile Workers in Manesar
14. The ’death Holes’ of India (Vidya Bhushan Rawat)
15. India: Letter to the President on the Gujarat extra judicial killings by Ex DGP Sri R B Sreekumar
16. India: Political Resolution of the Annual Convention of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan, Delhi, March 1992  (via Dilip Simeon's Blog)
17. India: A Brief History of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (SVA) (via Dilip Simeon's Blog)
18. India: Pabnava to Natham - Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Annihilation of Caste (Subhash Gatade)
19. The David Headley Lies Continue - 17 July 2013 Press Release from Justice for Ishrat Jahan Campaign
20. India: Lift the lid off nuclear secrecy (Christopher Clary)
21. India: CNDP Statement on Koodankulam Reaching Criticality
22. India: Save the Narmada Social Movement (NBA) Counters Narendra Modi’s Propaganda regarding Narmada Project - Hindi press release (15 July 2013)
23. India: Sahmat and CJP Press Statement on Supreme Court clean chit to Narendra Modi
24. Algeria: the real lessons for Egypt (Karima Bennoune)
25. Selected Posts on Communalism Watch:
 - Book review: Ayodhya Conspiracy 1949: The Real Story (Anil Rajimwale) 
 - India: Manufacturing consent, saffron style - Modi’s Public Relations machinery
 - India: I am a Hindu Nationalist Billboards in Bombay with Narendra Modi's photo
 - Jawed Naqvi: Of pet hate and pet love
 - Review: Arthurs on Hametz, 'In the Name of Italy: Nation, Family, and Patriotism in a Fascist Court' 
 - Photo of Hindutva propaganda billboard in Hindi at the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela
 - Thailand's teenagers popular sensation - Hitler | SS style bikes, swastika tattoos, T-shirts with Hitler 

::: Leads + Full Text :::
26. Sri Lanka bans film on Tamil conflict 
27. Amartya Sen: India has many achievements but some gigantic failures – video - The Guardian
28. Bangladesh: Commotion over Ghulam Azam’s verdict must not distract ICT (Editorial, New Age) 
29. Bangladesh: A crucial voice of support for women (Editorial - Dhaka Tribune)
30. India: Modi’s concern for puppies (Brinda Karat)
31. Pakistan: Parallel ‘justice’ (Editorial, The News)
32. India: Notorious fake courts back in Tamil Nadu (by A Subramani)
33. Pakistan: From Swat to Karak (Edit, Daily Times)
34. Book review: Ananya Vajpeyi on Berenschot's Riot Politics - Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State 
35. Bangladesh: A disgrace to their faith (Editorial - Dhaka Tribune)
36. Pakistan: Solidarity expressed with Maruti Suzuki workers
37. India: Kashmir grannies who fear kids’ questions (Muzaffar Raina)
38. Arab Spring: Harsh and unfair to Egyptian women's rights (Mervat Tallawy)
39. USA: PLO delegation mourns death of Helen Thomas
40. The story of Stanislav Petrov -'I Had A Funny Feeling in My Gut' (David Hoffman)
41. USA: Has `Caucasian´ Lost Its Meaning? (Shaila Dewan)

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1. BHUTAN ELECTIONS: A CASE OF INDIA’S DIPLOMATIC BANKRUPTCY! | Anand Swaroop Verma
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India’s foreign policy makers will have to rethink over its mentality towards neighbors and realize the need to rectify it at the outset.
http://www.sacw.net/article5100.html

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2. THE FOOD SECURITY DEBATE IN INDIA | Jean Dreze
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The right to food is finally becoming a lively political issue in India. Aware of the forthcoming national elections in 2014, political parties are competing to demonstrate – or at least proclaim — their commitment to food security. In a country where endemic undernutrition has been accepted for too long as natural, this is a breakthrough of sorts.
http://www.sacw.net/article5099.html

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3. BANGLADESH: PETITION TO GOVT. RE CONCERNS OVER THE SAFETY AND ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF THE PROPOSED ROOPPUR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT (RNPP)
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We, the scientists, engineers, academics, doctors, surgeons and other professionals of Bangladeshi origin living abroad as well as conscientious foreign nationals and dignitaries, are very much concerned about the safety and economic viability of the proposed nuclear power plant at Rooppur.
http://www.sacw.net/article5083.html

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4. PAKISTAN: WHY WE CAN’T RID SOCIETY OF WEAPONS
by Naeem Sadiq
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With each blast, massacre and killing, Pakistan as a state, fails one more time. How many citizens will be slaughtered or blown apart by militants before our delusion gives way to reality? Pakistan stubbornly continues to live in a state of denial, refusing to acknowledge that it is being brutally attacked by a bloodthirsty enemy from within and without. Already driven to the wall, the only mindless response that the state has to offer is yet more barriers, check posts, bunkers, statements and resolutions. To many, it is still not obvious that we are on a suicidal path and unless we can take proactive and radical measures, the violence could only conclude in total collapse of the state.
http://www.sacw.net/article5071.html

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5. PAKISTAN’S OSAMA BIN LADEN REPORT IS MORE COVER-UP THAN SELF-CRITICISM
by Tariq Ali
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The tone may sound honest, but the notion that Bin Laden entered Pakistan in 2002 without the ISI’s knowledge is risible
http://www.sacw.net/article5081.html

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6. INDIA - KASHMIR: IT’S BEEN 22 YEARS SINCE THE KONAN POSHPORA MASS RAPE
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It’s been 22 years since the Konan Poshpora mass rape. With yet another round of investigations set to begin, women in two villages of Kupwara, now joined forever, ask when will the questions end and the answers begin
http://www.sacw.net/article5097.html

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7. THE MALAYALI NURSE ON THE MOON
by Nisha Susan
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In February 2011, bodies of anti-Gaddafi protesters piled up in Tripoli hospital mortuaries, then spilt out in heaps into the corridors, onto empty table tops. A few days later came the stories of Libyan soldiers invading hospitals and ripping off patients’ oxygen masks, the wires connected to their monitors,their drips, their tubes, and taking them away. Of the 18,000 Indians in Libya at the time, news reports say the majority were young Malayali nurses bandaging and swabbing the civil war. When the Indian government began evacuation of its citizens from Libya, many of these nurses were surprisingly reluctant to leave. Repatriated and living temporarily in Delhi, they roamed around Kerala House like ghosts wondering whether they’d had made a mistake. They talked about the loans they had taken for their courses, the fact that even big city hospitals in India think nothing of making a nurse work 65 hour weeks for Rs 3000 per month, their parents in rural Kerala. Who’d argue with them? By now, many of them are back in Libya.
http://www.sacw.net/article5098.html

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8. INDIA: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ’HINDU NATIONALIST’, NARENDRA MODI, CHIEF MINISTER OF GUJARAT
by Shamsul Islam
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Modi Sir, we find here ’Guru’ Golwalkar referring to the Swayamsevaks loaned to the political satellite as ‘nat’, performers, who are meant to dance to the tune of the RSS. It should be noted here that Golwalkar’s above design of controlling the political arm was elaborated in March 1960, almost nine years after the establishment of the Jana Sangh (the forerunner of the BJP) in 1951. What I would like to know from you is whether you are serving the democratic-secular polity of India or are a mere ‘nat’, a tool in the hands of the RSS for turning India into a theocratic state.
http://www.sacw.net/article5096.html

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9. INDIA: STARTING KUDANKULAM - WHEN DECEPTION TRIUMPHS
by Praful Bidwai
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India’s nuclear establishment is continuing its march of folly at the expense of safety in the false belief that atomic power is the energy of the future. It’s not. Nuclear power is in relentless global decline, says Praful Bidwai.
http://www.sacw.net/article5095.html

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10. Karachi Solidarity Meeting for the Workers of Maruti Suzuki, India held on July 19, 2013
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Pakistan Institute of Labour Education & Research (PILER) organized a solidarity meeting with Maruti Suzuki workers India on July 19, 2013 at 4pm, PMA House Karachi.
http://www.sacw.net/article5091.html

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11. India: Killing of Unarmed Protestors in Kashmir - Press Release by Human Rights Watch
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The Indian government should appoint an independent commission to promptly and transparently investigate the killing of four protesters by Border Security Force (BSF) troops in Jammu and Kashmir state, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should act to end the BSF’s longstanding impunity for large numbers of killings over many years.
http://www.sacw.net/article5084.html

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12. Essays on Fascism: A collection (edited by Jairus Banaji) [De-commoditized version PDF's + audio]
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Essays on Fascism by Jairus Banaji, Arthur Rosenberg, Kannan Srinivasan and Dilip Simeon
http://www.sacw.net/article5067.html

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13. INDIA: 18 JULY 2013 BOMBAY AND BANGALORE WORKERS IN SOLIDARITY WITH MARUTI AUTOMOBILE WORKERS IN MANESAR
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In solidarity with Maruti workers struggle in Manesar, there was demonstration and meeting held in Bombay on the 18th July by the Trade Unions Solidarity Committee. The handbill in Hindi is attached along with some photos (by Stanley). A solidarity action was also held in Bangalore where a leaflet was produced in English. (the text is posted below)
http://www.sacw.net/article5073.html

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14. THE ’DEATH HOLES’ OF INDIA
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
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The news of three deaths of sanitation workers in sewage line at the prime location of Indira Gandhi National Centre for Art (IGNCA) in Delhi on July 14th, has passed off ‘peacefully’ as the country is ‘busy’ in many things and media has no time to raise the issue as these are not ‘political deaths’, to raise pitch on our studios. The government is unable to bring new law so far as the parties have no time to pass it. Our huge growth and infrastructure developmental activities are unable to find machine to clean sewage lines and we need a particular community of Balmikis to enter into it. And poverty, isolation, oppression force the young men of the community to enter into these ‘hellish’ ‘death holes’ or ‘shit bombs’ knowing fully well the dangers involved in it.
http://www.sacw.net/article5080.html

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15. INDIA: LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT ON THE GUJARAT EXTRA JUDICIAL KILLINGS BY EX DGP SRI R B SREEKUMAR
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Recent investigation by CBI into extra judicial killings of Ishrat Jahan and 3 others, had reportedly brought out substantial evidence on the culpable guilt of a few Central IB officials, in planning and execution of this fake encounter, by teaming up with Gujarat police. The Sangh Parivar, Modi Government, self-appointed supporters and resource persons of IB have, of late, launched a vigorous campaign to get the accused IB officials immunized from arrest and prosecution.
http://www.sacw.net/article5066.html

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16. INDIA: POLITICAL RESOLUTION OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE SAMPRADAYIKTA VIRODHI ANDOLAN, DELHI, MARCH 1992
via Dilip Simeon's Blog
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Political Resolution of the Annual Convention of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan, (Movement Against Communalism) Delhi, March 1992
NB -This document is being placed in the public domain as a beginning to an archive. The SVA was an anti-communal civic campaign floated by concerned citizens in the post ’84 period. It carried on a tenuous existence for nearly ten years. It was one of the few secular campaigns which maintained an organisational existence with a written constitution, regular  (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article5058.html

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17. INDIA: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SAMPRADAYIKTA VIRODHI ANDOLAN (SVA)
via Dilip Simeon's Blog
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A Brief History of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (1984-1993)NB - This history has been prepared by some activist participants, and may be liable to correction, revision and improvement over time. It is presented here after having been placed on Facebook about a year ago as a Note on my wall - Dilip
1/ The Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan, or Movement Against Communalism, was founded by some of the activists working in the relief camps in Delhi in November 1984. Its original concept was  (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article5059.html

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18. INDIA: PABNAVA TO NATHAM - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE STRUGGLE FOR ANNIHILATION OF CASTE
by Subhash Gatade
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Pabnava of Haryana and Natham of Tamilnadu, separated from each other by hundreds of kilometers, peopled by communities speaking different languages and cultures, is it possible to connect one with the other. Should one claim that they are examples of India’s much celebrated ‘Unity in Diversity’ ? The manner in which dalits ’copy’ their oppressor/dominant castes is visible also from areas which are infamous for medieval sounding decisions of the caste/community councils.
http://www.sacw.net/article5056.html

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19. THE DAVID HEADLEY LIES CONTINUE - 17 JULY 2013 PRESS RELEASE FROM JUSTICE FOR ISHRAT JAHAN CAMPAIGN
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The David Headley Lies Continue: There is Nothing ‘New’ About It
    “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” This is a quote often misattributed to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. So widely is it believed to have been the key to Goebbelsian propaganda that it often employed by those whose politics is inspired by Goebbels’s Feuhrer.
    This is exactly what we are seeing in this frenzied rush to pronounce Ishrat Jahan as a Lashkar operative  (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article5048.html

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20. INDIA: LIFT THE LID OFF NUCLEAR SECRECY
by Christopher Clary
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The consequences of leaving nuclear bosses to their own devices are too dangerous to contemplate. Fifteen years after Pokhran-II, it is possible the world knows less about India’s nuclear weapons programme than any other nuclear state, except North Korea. This is not proud company for the world’s largest democracy to share.
http://www.sacw.net/article5042.html

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21. INDIA: CNDP STATEMENT ON KOODANKULAM REACHING CRITICALITY
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The Koodankulam reactor was made critical despite the massive and sustained peaceful popular protests against the plant, and despite numerous warnings by nuclear experts, including former AERB chairman A Gopalakrishnan, about the plant’s vulnerability to hazards and the use of substandard equipment supplied by Russian company Zio-Podolsk.. ... it violates the spirit of the Supreme Court’s May 6 order, which asked that NPCIL, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Ministry of Environment and Forests and Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board "oversee each and every aspect of the matter, including the safety of the plant, impact on environment, quality of various components and systems in the plant before commissioning of the plant. A report to that effect be filed before this Court" prior to its commissioning.
http://www.sacw.net/article5041.html

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22. INDIA: SAVE THE NARMADA SOCIAL MOVEMENT (NBA) COUNTERS NARENDRA MODI’S PROPAGANDA REGARDING NARMADA PROJECT - HINDI PRESS RELEASE (15 JULY 2013)
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Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has challanged false public claims regarding the Narmada Project made by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at a public meeting in Pune city, in western India. See attached press release in Hindi.
http://www.sacw.net/article5030.html

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23. INDIA: SAHMAT AND CJP PRESS STATEMENT ON SUPREME COURT CLEAN CHIT TO NARENDRA MODI
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In an interview to the foreign news agency Reuters that was published on July 12 2013, Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief minister has made a desperate attempt to creat an impression that Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT which was appointed by it to investigate the criminal complaint of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on 27.4.2009. A section of the media, without verifying the facts has allowed this impression to gain credibility. 
http://www.sacw.net/article5025.html

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24. ALGERIA: THE REAL LESSONS FOR EGYPT
by Karima Bennoune
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For all its problems, Algeria never became an Islamic state. Like Algerian progressives in the 1990s, Egyptian progressives now have to carve out the space to construct a credible alternative under the shield of the new transitional process, and simultaneously challenge the military’s human rights abuses
http://www.sacw.net/article5044.html

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25. SELECTED POSTS ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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Book review: Ayodhya Conspiracy 1949: The Real Story (Anil Rajimwale) 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/book-review-ayodhya-conspiracy-1949.html
India: Manufacturing consent, saffron style - Modi’s Public Relations machinery
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/india-manufacturing-consent-saffron.html
India: I am a Hindu Nationalist Billboards in Bombay with Narendra Modi's photo
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/india-i-am-hindu-nationalist-billboards.html
Jawed Naqvi: Of pet hate and pet love
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/jawed-naqvi-of-pet-hate-and-pet-love.html
Review: Arthurs on Hametz, 'In the Name of Italy: Nation, Family, and Patriotism in a Fascist Court' 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/review-arthurs-on-hametz-in-name-of.html
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
Thailand's teenagers popular sensation - Hitler | SS style bikes, swastika tattoos, T-shirts with Hitler 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/07/thailands-teenagers-popular-sensation.html

::: LEADS + FULL TEXT :::
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26. SRI LANKA BANS FILM ON TAMIL CONFLICT 
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http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/south-asia/sri-lanka-bans-film-on-tamil-conflict/article4917379.ece

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27. AMARTYA SEN: INDIA HAS MANY ACHIEVEMENTS BUT SOME GIGANTIC FAILURES – VIDEO - THE GUARDIAN
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https://tinyurl.com/mwsbc34

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28. BANGLADESH: COMMOTION OVER GHULAM AZAM’S VERDICT MUST NOT DISTRACT ICT
Editorial, New Age (Bangladesh), 17 July 2013
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THE conviction of former Jamaat-e-Islami chief Ghulam Azam on the charges of conspiracy and planning of, incitement to and complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity, and also four murders, committed during the war of liberation in 1971 untangles yet another historical knot and thus erases another stain from the collective conscious and conscience of the people of Bangladesh. The three judges of the International Crimes Tribunal 1 were decisive in their recognition of ‘the gravity and magnitude of the offences committed by the accused’ and ‘unanimous’ in their conclusion that ‘he deserves the highest punishment, i.e. capital punishment.’ Still, as reported in New Age on Tuesday, the judges took into cognisance ‘the mitigating circumstances’, i.e. the age and long ailment of the accused and, instead of a death sentence, condemned him to imprisonment for an aggregated 90 years on different charges, with ‘the period of sentences’ running ‘consecutively or till his death.’ The leniency thus shown to Ghulam Azam would certainly be a sterling example of magnanimity shown by the nation to a person who had masterminded genocide and crimes against humanity during its war of liberation more than four decades back. That said, it needs to be pointed out that the judges could surely have set a point of reference for future cases in this regard, i.e. at what age may a convict in war crimes trial be spared death sentence.
Curiously, the verdict instigated similar reaction, i.e. rejection, and action programme, i.e. countrywide dawn-to-dusk general strike, from the Shahbagh protesters and left-leaning student organisations, and Jamaat-e-Islami and its student front Islami Chhatra Shibir. The rejection of the verdict as ‘government-directed blue print and politically motivated’ and the call for general strike by Jamaat and Shibir is understandable; after all, they have very few options other than questioning the credibility of the tribunal in their bid to save the skin of their top-notch leaders. However, the same cannot be said about the rationale of the Shahbagh protesters and the left-leaning student organisations for their rejection of the verdict and call for the hartal. In their apparent fixation with capital punishment, the organisers of the Shahbagh movement and the student organisations seem to have developed a tendency of dismissing any verdict that does not carry the death penalty as farcical and, in the process, undermining the credibility of the tribunal and the trial itself. While it is important to keep vigil against any attempts by any quarters to manipulate the tribunal, they need to realise that such impulsive questioning of its credibility could very well strengthen the Jamaat-Shibir agenda of legitimising their demand for its dismantling. Curiously still, and no less dishearteningly, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party chose not to make any statement about the verdict; such deafening silence looks to point to political opportunism on its part.
Also disheartening is the apparently unquestioning allegiance of Shibir leaders and activists to the top Jamaat leaders, especially those already convicted of or under trial for crime against humanity during the liberation war. These young people were born to a sovereign state, the emergence of which was actively opposed by the same group of people that they appear so determined to protect from the law. The Shibir leaders and activists, many of whom have proven academic aptitude, need to rethink their acceptance of, let alone allegiance to, a bunch of war criminals as their leaders.
Be that as it may, the war crimes tribunal must not get distracted by the outpouring of negative emotions, even from sources that it has deemed supportive and sympathetic. The tribunal, which has journeyed through various controversies, some genuine and some not so, needs to remind itself that the ultimate price of compliance with the law and pursuit of justice is that one cannot please everyone and thus have everyone on his or her side.
Meanwhile, since, in its verdict against Ghulam Azam, the tribunal once again referred to the ‘command responsibility’ of Jamaat for the genocide conducted against the unarmed people of Bangladesh, the government should take Jamaat as an organisation and its affiliated bodies of the time to court for committing crimes against humanity.

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29. BANGLADESH: A CRUCIAL VOICE OF SUPPORT FOR WOMEN
Editorial - Dhaka Tribune, July 15, 2013
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This rebuke from the highest rung of government is a boost to progressive forces working to defend women's rights in Bangladesh

It was heartening to hear Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina condemn the remarks made against women by Hefazat-e-Islam leader Allama Shah Ahmed Shafi. This rebuke from the highest rung of government is a boost to progressive forces working to defend women’s rights in Bangladesh.

Shafi’s widely circulated speech is not only offensive to women, it has the potential to cause real harm. He recommended that girls be deprived of secondary education. He criticised working women as immoral, and even went so far as to say that violence against women who leave their homes is justified.

Unfortunately, his heinous remarks are likely to find sympathetic ears among a significant portion of the population. Violence against girls and women is still a serious problem in our country and societal norms are already stacked against the participation of women in the economy.

However, in spite of the barriers, in recent years women have made some significant strides in education. Their mass participation in the RMG industry demonstrates that women can make an invaluable contribution to the economy.

The words of Shafi and his sympathisers threaten to undo their hard-won progress.

Various rights groups and leaders of society have expressed strong condemnation of Shafi’s words. However, coming from the leader of the country, the statement from the prime minister is particularly significant.

We, as a country, have a duty to let people like Shafi know that this type of backward, manipulative and derogatory remarks have no place here. 

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30. INDIA: MODI’S CONCERN FOR PUPPIES
With his inappropriate analogy, he has opened up the wounds of Gujarat afresh
by Brinda Karat | Jul 16, 2013
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The Times of India
https://tinyurl.com/m3kuq56

In defence of the insulting and repugnant 'puppy' analogy he used when asked in an interview about the 2002 pogroms in Gujarat, Narendra Modi tweeted "In our culture every form of life is valued and worshipped." Except, he could have added, if you are a Muslim or a Christian.

From another angle, his concern for puppies is as touching as was Hitler's love for his dog. In 1933, the German government enacted one of the most comprehensive animal protection rights legislations in the world, as a first step in a series of laws to protect animals - ranging from anaesthetising fish before they were cut up, to ensuring that lobsters were killed swiftly rather than having to experience the pain of being slowly boiled, before being served up as special delicacies to those accustomed to fine dining.

In the moral hierarchies born and bred in Nazi minds, there was no conflict between care for animals and genocide of Jews, since, in the Nazi reading, Jews were subhuman beings lower than most animal species, comparable to vermin.

Similarly, the Gujarat chief minister, brought up in schools of thought that preach hatred towards the minorities in theory and in practice, can find it easy to express sadness for a puppy run over accidentally, but cannot bring himself to directly express sympathy for the thousands of Muslims, including women and children, who were butchered under his watch in 2002.

The analogy is inappropriate for another reason too. There was nothing accidental about the carnage. Incontrovertible evidence is now available in the voluminous records of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to show the culpability of the state. It is this SIT set up by the Supreme Court, and headed by former CBI director RK Raghavan, that gave Modi the 'clean chit' he now flaunts.

The records were inexplicably kept secret by the SIT and have come into the public domain only recently, through the Zakia Jafri petition in the Gulbarg Society case. The petition is to reject the SIT's clean chit to Modi and has been admitted by a court in Ahmedabad where arguments are being heard.

A reading of the material would lend support to the legitimacy of such a petition. Details of the post-Godhra transcripts of frantic police messages to headquarters provide a blow-by-blow account of the build-up to the massacres and the role of various players like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Modi himself.

They reflect the puzzlement of the police why no action was taken on their reports. Why did the government not act in time in spite of warnings? Nor was it a question of being temporarily overwhelmed by unforeseen circumstances. The transcripts of state intelligence reports prior to the kar sevaks leaving for Ayodhya, from a week before the horrific Godhra crime, also describe the highly communal public slogans that were given by their leaders.

Was it good governance not to take any preventive steps? Was it good governance to allow the post-mortem of the Godhra victims on a railway platform in full public view, as Modi did? According to SIT records, he was present at the Godhra station at the time. Was it good governance to then hand over the bodies to precisely those organisations like the VHP, who the police warned, were out to create a communal conflagration?

Or were these the actions of a self-described Hindu nationalist whose very idea of India has more in common with Hitler's Germany than Ambedkar's Cons-titution? Or is this an example of the decisiveness that Modi boasted of as a sterling quality for his claim to leadership in the same controversial interview?

The question to be asked is decisiveness in whose interest. Certainly not in the interests of justice. Only recently Modi decided to send to UP as his proxy Amit Shah, a man chargesheeted in a fake encounter case, while defending others involved in the cold-blooded murder of Ishrat Jahan. And here it is not only a question of taking swift decisions against justice for the minorities, although that is the paramount issue in the context of the Gujarat model.

It is the lack of concern in decision-making for justice to the poor, the undernourished, those deprived of the right to literacy. As analysts of the Gujarat model have convincingly shown, the indicators of social inequalities remain very high in Gujarat, even as corporates have benefited enormously from the quick decisions taken by Modi. Decisiveness without a moral compass is of little use to India's working masses.

Those who have experienced the sorrow of an untimely death of a loved one know only too well the importance of moving on, of finding some kind of closure, essential for the process of healing the wounds of grief. But for loss inflicted by deliberate policy, by design, by the illegal use of power, closure only comes when those responsible are held accountable and punished.

Modi was at the wheel when Gujarat burnt. In the face of his recent defiant justification, the wounds bleed afresh and force us once again to remember the horror of 2002. And to ask the question, is this the model that India needs?

(The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP and politburo member of the CPM). 

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31. PAKISTAN: PARALLEL ‘JUSTICE’
Editorial, The News, July 15, 2013
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http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-8-189969-Parallel-justice

Hearing a suo motu case where a jirga in the Punjabi district of Rajanpur handed down a punishment akin to waterboarding, the Supreme Court last week directed the federal and provincial governments to finally get serious about clamping down on this archaic and often brutal system of parallel justice. For the most part, the courts have done their bit, with the Sindh High Court declaring the jirga system illegal in 2005 and the Supreme Court usually overturning outrageous verdicts handed down by jirgas. However, the power of implementation lies with the governments and they have shown little interest in upholding the supremacy of the legal code. Part of the problem is that jirgas comprise the influential members of an area, the very same class from which elected representatives derive their power, authority and money. The government has also often used jirgas in Fata as intermediaries in talks with the Taliban, even though many jirgas have taken decisions – like supporting polio vaccination bans – that should be contrary to the government's wishes. Given this situation, the Supreme Court will likely have to follow up the verdict in this case by constantly pressurising the government and holding it accountable for refusing to the respect the law.

Part of the enduring popularity of jirgas stems from the impression that they provide verdicts in a speedy manner. While there is some truth to the maxim that justice delayed is justice denied, the jirga system takes this too far by essentially denying defendants the right to appeal. Quick justice becomes worthless when the accused are not given a proper chance to prove their innocence. The concept of collective justice, so beloved of jirgas, is also contrary to all precepts of justice and fairness. Here, the courts can play their part by speeding up their own work. Cases languish in courts for years, with a backlog that stretches into the tens of thousands. Certainly, the government needs to get serious about taking on the jirgas but this must be accompanied by steps to reduce the popularity of tribal justice. We have become so accustomed to the jirga system that we end up cheering small improvements like the recent formation of an all-woman jirga in Swat. Such stopgap, band-aid measures are not a permanent solution; only the complete abandonment of the jirga system will suffice.

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32. INDIA: NOTORIOUS FAKE COURTS BACK IN TAMIL NADU
by A Subramani, TNN | Jul 15, 2013, 02.46 AM IST
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The Times of India / http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Notorious-fake-courts-back-in-Tamil-Nadu/articleshow/21076562.cms

These fake courts conduct civil, criminal, service and contempt proceedings by usurping the functions and powers of high courts and the Supreme Court.

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu's notorious 'fake courts', which hold civil and criminal proceedings and exercise even 'contempt of court' jurisdiction, are back in news with all their paraphernalia such as court halls, national emblem and 'judges' accompanied by mace-wielding duffedars calling out 'Silence'.

In 2011, after The Times of India carried reports about the thriving racket and a PIL too was filed, the Madras high court banned them. However, in May this year, the court had permitted the PIL-petitioner to withdraw the case.

Now the 'fake courts' issue has reached the portals of the Supreme Court, with advocate Manikandan Vathan Chettiar filing a PIL saying these 'courts' operated from various locations and had their own websites too. He now wants the apex court to appoint a sitting or retired judge of the court to head a special investigation team to probe the menace and annul several hundred 'judgments' delivered by these 'courts'.

Manikandan said these fake courts had a separate registry, filing wing, cause lists, examiners and even registrars. The 'judges' presiding over the proceedings came in a car sporting a red beacon light and were addressed as 'My Lord' during hearings.

These fake courts conduct civil, criminal, service and contempt proceedings by usurping the functions and powers of high courts and the Supreme Court, the PIL said, adding that names and photographs of several sitting and former judges too were being used by those running the racket. The PIL named at least 25 former as well as sitting judges, and said they were being cited as 'patrons' and 'legal advisors' of these courts.

"They (fake courts) charge a preliminary court fee of 9.5% of the value of property and function under various names such as evening courts, arbitral tribunal, etc. The decrees (awards) of the fake courtsa re issued on Rs 150 stamp paper which hears a court emblem with a seal resembling that of a civil court. It also carries a copyist seal, resembling that of the madras high court," the PIL said.

"Calling themselves people's courts, evening courts, human rights organizations and tribunals claiming to function under the aegis of the Human Rights Act, Arbitration Act, etc., its masterminds issue advertisements in vernacular dailies and build a network of members by collecting subscriptions and donations, the PIL said.

Worse, these decrees are often executed by state registration officials with police aid, since the 'directions' resemble a mandamus issued by the higher judiciary. According to Manikandan, these courts issue advertisements, solicit litigation and operate through a network of touts and advocates. "They concoct and entertain all types of cases, including service and criminal matters and issue routine directions in the nature of mandamus to police and registration departments, which obey the orders ruining hundreds of families," the PIL said.

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33. PAKISTAN: FROM SWAT TO KARAK
Editorial, The Daily Times (Pakistan), 22 July 2013
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The 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai addressed the world from one of the biggest forums of the world, the UN. And women from a certain area are barred from stepping out in a public place unless accompanied by a mehram (relative) male. The tragic irony is not lost on any rational person. Both are Pasthun females from the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and while one celebrates the bravery, spirit and struggle for the right of females to education, the other is an indication of the primitive thought process for subjugation of women, still very much in practice in some areas of Pakistan. The edict by Maulana Mirzaqeem, a cleric and tribal elder, is so outrageous in its entirety that its very implementation would be a severe blow to the basic rights of women in a region where the restrictions are already too harsh and the ‘freedom’ too limited.

In the Karak District of KP, on the conflict-ridden border with Afghanistan, as per Maulana Mirzaqeem, “Those who will visit markets without male relatives will be handed over to police...They spread vulgarity and spoil men’s fasting in Ramzan.” The announcement is shocking, to say the least. In a very conservative, tribal place like Karak, still rooted in traditional ways, women who are already very modestly dressed are a danger to men’s ‘virtue’? The ‘iman’ (faith) of the menfolk is so feeble that merely sighting a woman clad in very simple and modest clothing, with even her face covered in most cases, will be tantamount to provocation for very immodest thoughts: what is wrong with this picture? Everything. Stop the men from looking at women and having such thoughts. Why torture an already tormented gender more? Announcing the ban in local mosques is just another way of inciting violence towards women and that could be highly perilous, paving the way for more suppression of women. A religion among whose two main female icons are the wives of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) Hazrat Kadijah (a businesswoman whom he worked for) and Hazrat Ayesha (leader of the army in some battles) has followers today who will lock women within four walls. The ban is not just a huge inconvenience for housewives, a financial setback for business in the area, it is a reiteration of the rigid thinking that women are third-class citizens without access to even fundamental rights. A Malala, despite being shot, has not been silenced, ergo, the wrath seems to be targeted on all who are still in the clutches of regressive, tyrannical, misogynistic males who either pick up guns to shoot or lash out at their women to prove their manhood. One question disturbs on another level: the police arresting the ‘shameless’ women must be mehram. Does the maulana have any idea how that criterion will be met? *


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34. HATE AND THE STATE: HINDU-MUSLIM RIOT POLITICS IN INDIA
by Ananya Vajpeyi
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The New Republic, October 12, 2012 / https://tinyurl.com/p49546r

Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State
by Ward Berenschot
Columbia University Press, 320 pp., $40

THE PHRASE “Gujarat 2002” has, for the past decade, struck fear and shame in the hearts of many Indians. It marks a period of about three months, from late February 2002, when the Western state of Gujarat, and especially its first city, Ahmedabad, erupted into ugly mass violence targeted at local Muslim communities. About 2,500 people died (though official figures claim half that number), and tens of thousands were displaced, many of them permanently.

The episode produced a sense of national crisis: the violence seemed overwhelmingly directed at the Muslim minority (though Hindus also died); much of it was heinous and brutal (particularly for women and children); and by all independent accounts, it proceeded with the full knowledge, support, and complicity of the state government, led by the Hindu supremacist Bhartiya Janata Party. Worse, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has been re-elected to power twice in Gujarat since that dark time. The state’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, enjoys such absolute political popularity on his home turf that he is currently presenting himself as a possible contender for Prime Ministership in India’s general elections in 2014. In the moral conscience of secular Indians, both within Gujarat and elsewhere, 2002 remains a calamitous setback for India’s diverse and democratic polity.

In the bloody tumult of Gujarat in 2002, one incident that stood out for its heinousness took place in a locality called Naroda Patiya, an industrial suburb of Ahmedabad, where close to a hundred Muslims were massacred on February 28. The details of the rape, gang rape, and mutilation of women are too awful to bear repeating—in any case media reports at the time, as well as subsequent recollections, have been graphic enough. This year, on August 29, a verdict pronounced by a fast-track Gujarat court on the basis of a report filed by a Special Investigative Team (SIT), convicted 32 persons for their role as perpetrators in the Narodiya Patiya massacre. Those sentenced include Maya Kodnani, a gynecologist, a thrice-elected legislator from Naroda constituency, and a former minister for Woman and Child Development in Modi’s cabinet, as well as Babubhai Patel or Babu Bajrangi, a local leader of one of the Hindu nationalist organizations on the far right, the militant Bajrang Dal. Kodnani faces 28 years of imprisonment; Patel, a life-sentence. Neither one was sentenced to be hanged, even though India still upholds the death penalty.

The Gujarat verdict has been ubiquitously described as “stunning,” because so few expected any justice would be done, and because powerful politicians such as Kodnani and Patel, protected and promoted by the BJP, and by Modi personally, were indicted at long last. Never before in the history of India’s courts has a sitting legislator been given what is effectively a life-sentence for inciting mass violence. Stunning also was the fact that Kodnani is a woman and a doctor; that she was repeatedly elected to her seat in the Gujarat legislature; and that Modi actually rewarded her ghastly instigation and abetment of violence (for example, by distributing sharp weapons to rioters) by appointing her a minister—with ghoulish irony—in charge of the welfare of women and children.

Modi’s escalating efforts to project himself as prime ministerial material, as well as his insistent denials that any harm was done to Gujarat’s Muslims with his government’s complicity, have been seriously damaged. The challenge to his apparent impunity is indeed stunning, for him as for the public. But the Naroda Patiya verdict also rekindles in the nation’s consciousness the old trauma of why, how, and when Mahatma Gandhi’s Gujarat became the theater of India’s worst nightmare of religious politics, sectarian strife and horrible, indeed atavistic, violence.

The term that Gandhi used to spell out his political creed of non-violence in the first half of the twentieth century throughout India’s anti-colonial struggle was ahimsa. We now think of ahimsa as a Gandhian coinage, but in fact the term and the idea both existed for close to three millennia in Indian religious and philosophical thought, particularly in Jainism and Buddhism. The significant presence of Jains in elite Gujarati society—the Jains have constituted wealthy commercial classes from ancient times, and continue to do so in Gujarat today—exposed Gandhi to the concept of ahimsa, literally “the absence of the desire to harm others,” from a very young age.

As he became the leader of India’s nationalist movement against the British Raj, Gandhi transposed non-violence from the esoteric and ascetic doctrines of the Jain philosophy into popular politics, urging the people to fight for the truth without visiting violence upon their enemies, even the hated English rulers. For Gandhi, India’s political goal was swaraj or self-rule, but for every Indian freedom-fighter, self-rule was not only a collective project of emancipation from foreign rule; it was also the effort to liberate the self from the desire to harm others, and thereby to achieve a real mastery over violent impulses lodged in each and every human being. In the Gandhian struggle, ahimsa and swaraj were inextricably connected to one another—there could be no true freedom, for the individual or for India, without non-violence.

British India’s violent partition into the two nation-states of India and Pakistan in 1947 undid Gandhi’s decades-long leadership of a non-violent freedom movement. He was devastated by the slaughter of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs at the hands of their fellow-countrymen. Unable to bear the ripping apart of the subcontinent, the millions dead and displaced, the sectarian animosities spreading like wildfire from Punjab in the west to Bengal in the east, he retreated from public life. Six months later, in January 1948, he was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic, who represented the resentful hope of many Indians that if there were no more Gandhi, there would be no more archaic talk of ahimsa hampering the unambiguously violent advance of the new nation into its postcolonial future.

In keeping with this cruel volte-face of history, Gujarat, Gandhi’s home state, was the first to forget him and move on. Today the symbol of Gujarat is not Gandhi but Modi, who could hardly be a more Manichean Other to the Mahatma. He is committed to the unashamed deployment of himsa—etymologically, both “harm” and “the desire to harm”—as a necessary tool of governance and development (his two pet agendas, according to his own propaganda). It is not only the fact of violence but also the hidden agenda—the wish to dominate the weak, to put minorities in their place, to establish supremacy through bullying and hurting the most vulnerable of Gujarat’s citizens—that makes Modi’s politics starkly anti-Gandhian.

The name given in Indian politics to strife between religious groups is “communal violence,” and the ideology driving such violence—a peculiarly Indian inflection of Fascism—is called “communalism.” Throughout the past century, in both British India and independent India, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and others, indeed all types of Indian groups whose identities are based broadly on religion and on religious politics, have been both the perpetrators and the victims of communal violence.

From its earliest appearance in Indian political discourse—in 1905, when the Viceroy Lord Curzon announced the partition of the province of Bengal into two Hindu-majority and a Muslim-majority sectors—communal antagonism between groups has been seen as the outcome of a meddling, malignant state, out to “divide-and-rule.” Partition in 1947 was widely perceived as an apotheosis of such policies on the part of the British. After independence, the Indian state—and particularly the ruling Congress Party that led the national movement since its foundation in 1885—smoothly took over the function of dividing communities and setting them against one another for electoral gains and raisons d’état. In recent memory, communal violence against Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 (following on the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards), and against Muslims in North India and Bombay in 1992–1993 (following on the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya by the BJP and its Hindu majoritarian allies) both vindicated the assumption of government complicity in the targeting of particular groups.

Gujarat 2002 was no different. The state became the source of threat, rather than the refuge, for its Muslims. (Proving this well-known fact in court has been an uphill battle for survivors, witnesses, and concerned organizations.) The term that the modern state has deployed to describe communal violence while absolving itself of responsibility, is “communal riot.” The word “riot” suggests the image of unruly, irrational, and violent citizens, who must be curbed, controlled, and perhaps incarcerated (if not put down or taken out altogether) by the authorities. Delhi 1984 has often been called “the anti-Sikh riots”; post-Babri 1993 violence “the Bombay riots”; and inevitably, what happened in Gujarat in 2002 was also cast as spontaneous “rioting” rather than the planned, targeted murder of a very large number of people belonging to one community with the full cooperation of the law and order machinery.

When Gandhi advocated ahimsa, he taught his followers to curb their violent tendencies, to fortify themselves against the urge to “riot” against the overbearing force of the British colonial state. The idea that violence will bubble up and erupt, like lava that runs just beneath the skin of the body politic, has been used to ominous effect by guilty politicians. Rajiv Gandhi, son of the slain Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, spoke of the gruesome massacre of nearly 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi in early November 1984 as the inevitable destruction that ensues, the earth that shakes, “when a big tree falls.” Narendra Modi talked about the horrors visited upon Gujarat’s Muslims in spring 2002 in terms of “action” and “reaction,” applying the pseudo-Newtonian language of inevitability to killings that had actually taken months if not years to orchestrate and realize.

Ward Berenschot’s new book, Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State renders signal service to the social science of violence, particularly communal violence in South Asia, in two respects. First, it clarifies the role of the state in engineering and executing such violence through an intricate coordination of political actors, bureaucrats, police and ordinary citizens—Berenschot fills out the somewhat abstract formulation of what it means, in concrete terms, for the state to have a policy of “divide-and-rule.” Second, it demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that rioting is anything but spontaneous, unplanned, unpredictable, and subjective. It is, rather, a well-understood and well-recognized form of political engagement, with all of the institutional, administrative, and ideological paraphernalia necessary for organized and comprehensible political activity undertaken by individuals and groups who stand in a series of determinate relationships with one another.

Communal violence is not the magical effluvium of disembodied state power—it is the carefully constructed artifact of what Berenschot names “riot networks”; and the communal riot is the visible outcome of a particular form of politics that Berenschot names “riot politics,” which carries on in a regular, routine, continuous way, punctuated by the spectacular episodes of violence that it is designed to deliver now and again. As elections take place from time to time in a properly functioning democracy, so riots take place from time to time in a properly functioning communal state.

Through immersive observation and extensive interviews conducted in Ahmedabad localities in 2005 and 2006, Berenschot, who speaks some Gujarati, builds up a number of credible portraits of the people behind riots—the netas (politicians), goondas (strongmen), and chamchas (sycophants) for whom “rioting is maintaining relations.” From the outside, these people might appear as anti-political, sociopathic, almost inhuman; but in reality they are firmly embedded in their neighborhoods, communities, and the larger urban fabric, where who they are, what they do, and why they do it are all perfectly tractable to others within their circles. But Berenschot does not want to humanize and thus vindicate the authors of terrible violence. Instead he wishes to enter into the intricate ecology of relationships—the infrastructure of violence—the social psychology of a place that is diverse but also divided—the conditions of possibility that turn neighbors into informants and attackers, and peaceable, even cowardly citizens into inflamed mobs of rapists and butchers. Regular problems of access to state resources and electoral power; regular forms of political mediation and institutional corruption; regular actions and interactions involving bureaucrats, politicians, party workers, policemen, social workers, civil society activists, lawyers; are also the stuff of which, occasionally, so-called riots are made.

Berenschot inserts himself (a foreign anthropologist) in three socio-economically distinctive parts of the city over a period of some fifteen to eighteen months. He follows a range of characters—from legislators and parliamentarians, to opposition party leaders and political activists, to fixers, handlers, procurers, mediators, municipal councilors, assassins, ideologues, spokespersons and hangers-on—all of whom populate what he calls the “institutional riot system.” The worlds of the people that he describes are almost jarringly bustling and vital—a constant reminder that rioting is how these individuals and many thousands of others like them make their living and get by in contemporary Gujarat. The persons he discusses come from a spectrum of castes, religious communities, and economic backgrounds; he also looks at some women of the Hindu right (he mentions Maya Kodnani in passing, with apparently no inkling of her future indictment as a mass murderer). The overall mood of the book is busy, upbeat—in contrast to, say, some of the films made in recent years about Gujarat 2002, such as Rakesh Sharma’s Lanzmannian Final Solution (2004) and Nandita Das’s brooding Firaaq (2008), both of which are heavy with the unspeakable memories and the scars of deadly violence. Riot Politics is more a vivid snapshot of a society where like many other kinds of activity and exchange, communal violence too is part and parcel of business as usual.

This approach is extremely helpful, because it distances itself equally from the notion that the state systematically invests in social conflict and the assumption that human beings are already always susceptible to what George Kateb called “political evil.” It also wades squarely into the question that has long troubled many analysts of modern South Asia: Why is mass violence in this part of the world not exactly genocidal? What—apart from numbers—sets communal violence apart from what is defined, in the parlance of international law, as “genocide”? Why can we think of Gujarat 2002 as stopping short of, or being qualitatively different from, a genocide of Gujarati Muslims? Berenschot’s careful exposition of riot politics, premised on the existence, cultivation, and maintenance of riot networks, provides a robust model for why even extreme and shocking communal violence is not much more than an extension of ordinary institutional vicissitudes and political processes in a mixed and internally fractured society.

Berenschot’s fine-grained analysis shows that even what happened in 2002, as well as its aftermath that still continues to vitiate political life in Gujarat, is not as exceptional as we might suppose. In the longer historical context of postcolonial Gujarati politics, and in the complex web of give-and-take that makes up the everyday unfolding of the political in Gujarat, such violence does not mark a setting apart of people into rigid categories of perpetrators and victims, murderers and Muselmänner, “sovereign power” and “bare life.” While it is true that the watershed of 2002 produced many new slums, ghettos, and refugee settlements for internally exiled Muslims, and that living conditions in these areas are abysmal, there is also a sense in which the continuum of prejudice and exclusion both precedes and stretches on after the pogroms.

It would seem that state institutions, political parties, and civil society are arranged in a circle, and sometimes—at moments that are not quite predictable, but not utterly preposterous either—at the center of these linkages there opens up the abyss of unimaginable violence. Gandhi apprehended that violence is the appalling hub of both social networks and individual consciousness. The sovereignty of the self lies precisely in its mastery over deep, primordial, and adamantine violence. Political freedom does not reside in the sovereign state’s establishment of its exclusive monopoly over violence, but in the complete or near-complete extinguishing of the desire to harm from the very orientation of the self towards the other. Even as an old man, Gandhi recognized, in his own stubbornly assertive sexual urges, the veiled face of his greatest life-long enemy, ahimsa: the will to power, the desire to dominate, the urge to do violence to another. Literally to his dying day, still obsessed with a recalcitrant celibacy, an elusive detachment, he never stopped trying to achieve ahimsa.

The BJP was defeated in the general elections of 2004, and has spent the past eight years in the political wilderness, at least at the level of national politics. Whether it can recover lost ground in the next couple of years remains to be seen—for now, its prospects and its preparedness compare rather well to the disarray of the Republican Party in America. But in Gujarat, Modi has clung tenaciously to power. Increasingly, he fancies himself a national leader of the Hindu Right. Manipulative and mendacious media stories set him up as India’s next Prime Minister, even though his political creed bluntly impugns the country’s constitutionally mandated secular character, and he, his party and his government—including twisted figures like Maya Kodnani, the woman who abetted the torture, humiliation, rape and murder of other women—have the blood of thousands of Muslims on their hands.

In such a setting, scholarship such as Berenschot’s ethnography of what we may characterize as “riot culture” assumes a significance far beyond the academy. It helps bring to the fore the mutually enabling relationship of modern hate and the modern state: two entities with which the citizens of democratic India, as much as any other nation in the world today, must familiarize themselves to a far greater extent than they might have hoped a few decades ago, at the time of the founding of their new republic.

Ananya Vajpeyi’s book, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India was published in September by Harvard University Press. She is with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. 


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35. BANGLADESH: A DISGRACE TO THEIR FAITH
Editorial - Dhaka Tribune, July 19, 2013
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Jamaat-e-Islami’s eagerness to continue threatening ordinary citizens and cause turbulence during Ramadan speaks volumes about their integrity

The death of four people, including a nine-year-old girl, in violence committed by Jamaat and Shibir activists during Tuesday’s hartal is further evidence, if any more were needed, of the depths to which the party and its supporters can sink.

It’s all the more upsetting considering that the hartal was called because of presumptions that Ghulam Azam is innocent and therefore not deserving of punishment.

Jamaat-e-Islami’s position on the ICT verdict is highly questionable, but there can be no question that the people killed in the panicked frenzy created by rampaging party activists were entirely innocent and not deserving of any sort of punishment at all, let alone the loss of their lives.

This string of Jamaat-e-Islami hartals during the spiritually significant month of Ramadan, all of which have resulted in violence and vandalism, are extremely contradictory moves by members of an organisation committed, ostensibly at least, to the principles of Islam.

To cause injury and harm during a month that has been set aside for self-restraint and introspection is very far from those principles indeed, but terrorising commuters and office-goers during any month of the year cannot be tolerated in a civilised society, especially when it results in something as unforgivable as the death of a child.

Jamaat-e-Islami’s eagerness to continue threatening ordinary citizens and cause turbulence during Ramadan speaks volumes about their integrity, and challenges their claims to be the party that addresses the nation’s spiritual wellbeing. 

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36. PAKISTAN: SOLIDARITY EXPRESSED WITH MARUTI SUZUKI WORKERS
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Daily Times (Pakistan), 20 July 2013
KARACHI: Pakistani trade unions have expressed solidarity with Maruti Suzuki (India) workers, and have demanded the Indian government to accept the workers’ demands, besides releasing all the arrested labour leaders.

In a meeting at the PMA House on Friday, key trade union and labour leaders expressed concerns over the growing violence against workers in the South Asian region.

They decided to hold a protest demonstration in front of the Karachi Press Club, and a press conference next week. The meeting also agreed to compile a booklet and get signatures from workers of all South Asian countries against the action on Indian workers.

The participants were briefed that Suzuki Maruti workers had been struggling for their rights since 2000. On July 18, 2012, Maruti’s Manesar plant was hit by violence, as workers at one of its auto factories protested against the misbehaviour of supervisors. staff report


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37. INDIA: KASHMIR GRANNIES WHO FEAR KIDS’ QUESTIONS
Muzaffar Raina In Kunan Poshpora (North Kashmir)
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The Telegraph, July 15 , 2013
Ghulam Ahmed Dar with his niece who was allegedly raped by the security forces. Dar’s wife was also allegedly gang-raped. Picture by Abdul Qayoom

Abdul Ahad Dar alleges he could hear his wife’s cries as soldiers raped her while their comrades beat him, gave him electric shocks and thrust his head into a bucket of chillies.

Any mention of that winter night 22 years ago, when soldiers allegedly gang-raped dozens of young and old women here — daughters, mothers and grandmothers — still moves many villagers to tears.

For years, unmarried village girls could not find suitable grooms because of the social stigma of rape. Young boys even now drop out of school unable to bear the questions of classmates.

Many of the alleged victims, who were middle-aged mothers then and are grannies now, say they don’t know what to say when their young grandchildren ask about that night.

The army and the Centre claim the rapes never happened and the Press Council of India, invited by the army to investigate, dismissed the villagers’ allegations as a “massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathisers”.
Abdul Ahad Dar points to a shed where he alleges he was tortured while his wife was being raped. (Abdul Qayoom)

Kunan Poshpora is particularly aggrieved at the silence of Indian civil society.

“We want the accused soldiers tried under Indian law, the same law under which the accused in the Delhi rape and murder case are being tried,” said Ghulam Ahmed Dar.

“Her (the Delhi victim’s) suffering shocked us deeply but equally shocking for us is the silence of India’s civil society (about Kunan Poshpora).”

Tired of sharing their “ordeal” with outsiders while continuing their unending wait for “justice”, Dar and others spoke to this correspondent with a degree of reluctance but agreed to be quoted.

Here is their version of the incidents of February 23 night in 1991, which turned the adjoining villages of Kunan and Poshpora into Kunan Poshpora, one village with one name, as if the mention of one was incomplete without the other:

At 11pm, when the village was under a thick carpet of snow and most residents had gone to bed, scores of soldiers from a nearby army camp stormed into their homes.

They allegedly took the men folk out, ostensibly for an identification parade — a common occurrence during the height of militancy — and assaulted the women.

“My sister was raped. We had to marry her off to a man more than double her age. Many other girls too had to make such compromises. We still face problems in getting suitable grooms for them,” said Ghulam Dar.

Abdul Dar said his son had left school after Class IX.

“His classmates and teachers would want him to narrate what happened that night, perhaps out of sympathy. But they couldn’t understand how painful it is for a son to narrate the brutality his mother suffered. Several other boys faced a similar problem and they too gave up their studies,” he said.

Not all the questions come from outsiders.

“I have narrated my ordeal before many but not before my children. We don’t discuss such things with our children,” said a 57-year-old, a mother of five sons and four daughters and an alleged rape victim.

“It’s the questions from my grandchildren that worry me. Now they want to know what happened with us that night. Tell me, how do I answer them?”

She said the soldiers had raped her in one room and two of her daughters in another.

“I had my infant baby, whom I was still breastfeeding, in my arms. My four daughters were also in the room. They threw the baby to one side and dragged my two elder daughters to an adjoining room. They violated us through the whole night.”

She said she had lodged a police complaint “about my rape but we didn’t report the rapes of my daughters, thinking who would marry them? I wish I had died that day”.

Five of the alleged rape victims, four of whom were grandmothers, have died.

One woman said: “They raped my mother-in-law, who was around 70 years old, her two daughters-in-law including me, and her granddaughter-in-law. There were cries from everywhere. My mother-in-law died heartbroken a few years ago.”

Abdul Ahad Shah said his wife was so badly brutalised that her wounds never healed and she died of her injuries two years later. “She was too young to die, just 37. She has left a big void in our family.”

‘Hoax’ or ‘shame’?

The Press Council team, led by former editor B.G. Verghese, had said: “(It) turns out to be a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathisers and mentors in Kashmir and abroad as a part of sustained and cleverly contrived strategy of psychological warfare and as an entry point for re-inscribing Kashmir on the international agenda as a human rights issue.”

But foreign minister Salman Khurshid stirred a hornet’s nest recently when he became the first Union minister to express “shame” at the alleged incident and “shock” at being unable “to do anything about it”.

But Abdul Dar said a statement by a minister was not enough. “We want justice, not statements.”

After the alleged incident, residents claim, the army cordoned the village off for several days to prevent the matter being reported. Three days after the alleged rapes, some villagers managed to lodge a complaint with Kupwara deputy commissioner M.Y. Yasin, who visited the village and reported to his superior that “soldiers behaved like beasts”.

The Telegraph was the first newspaper in the country to report the alleged incident in March 1991, publishing Yasin’s confidential letter. Protests and international outrage followed.

Initially, 23 women complained they were raped, with 10 more later joining them when an FIR was lodged 22 days later. “The 33 women were sent for medical examination which confirmed their rape,” human rights activist Khurram Parvez claimed.

The then station house officer of Kupwara, Farooq Ahmad, reported that “the offence under 376 RPC (rape) stands made out against 4 Rajputta Rifles”. “RPC” stands for the Ranbir Penal Code, which is in effect in the state in place of the Indian Penal Code.

The army accepted that 125 officers and jawans had taken part in a cordon-and-search operation in the village that night but denied rape. No identification parade was held.

In September 1991, the state police’s then director of prosecution wrote in a closure report that the case was “unfit for criminal prosecution” as the “incident was stage-managed”. He said the witness statements were “stereotyped” and had “serious discrepancies and contradictions”.

The police made the closure report public only in March this year, filing it before a Kupwara court after a public interest litigation asked Jammu and Kashmir High Court to order a reinvestigation.

“The closure report was filed (in court) 22 years late. It was done only to subvert the process (before the high court),” Khurram said.

The families challenged the police report and asked for a reinvestigation. But the high court disposed of the PIL after noting that the closure report had been filed in the Kupwara court.

On June 18, the Kupwara court ordered a investigation.

“When it is prima facie established that during night hours, the men folk were taken out from their houses…then who could have raped the women folk for the entire night… is a circumstance which makes an unbreakable chain to put the suspects on trial,” the court observed.

“Further, there is presumption in a gang rape in favour of the victim,” it noted.

In 2004, the victims had approached the state human rights commission, which ordered a reinvestigation in 2011. The commission’s orders are not binding on the government.

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38. ARAB SPRING: HARSH AND UNFAIR TO EGYPTIAN WOMEN'S RIGHTS
by Mervat Tallawy | National Council of Women-Egypt - Sun, 21 Jul 2013
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source URL: http://www.trust.org/item/20130721001656-p7j9f/

It all started with a dream …. for a better future for our kids, for social justice for all citizens and for the kind of proper democracy and freedom that can stand up to the name of Egypt.

Egyptian women of all ages were at the heart of the 25th January 2011 revolution as well as the 30th of June revolution this summer. Their voice was described as the voice of the revolution.

Women also suffered all the consequences of the revolution. They not only endured the loss of loved ones martyred in the violence or saw fathers, husbands, sons and brothers wounded, but they themselves were among the martyrs as well. Amira Samir, Liza Mohammed, Christine Sylla and others were lost.

For two years since the January 25th revolution, women have struggled to maintain their hard-won gains, especially with the emergence of new types of socio-economic oppression and marginalisation targeted by the Islamic conservative parties who rose to power.

Evidence of marginalisation was clear, as the following actions were taken against women since 25th January 2011:

-          Only men were appointed to draft an interim constitution,

-          The 64-seat quota for women's representation in parliament was abolished,

-          Very low representation of women—7 out of 100--in the Founding Committee for Drafting the Constitution,

-          The number of women in the first people's assembly was 9 out of 508,

-          Radical Islamist members of the previous parliament attempted to cut back women's recognised rights.

-          Women lost rights acquired in previous constitutions. A new constitution defined women's rights within the rules of Islamic Sharia law, a law subject to  different interpretations.

-           The first and only woman among the 19 members of the Supreme Constitutional Court was removed,

-          The new draft election law for parliament declined requests to put women’s names in the top one-third of the lists of political party candidates, a request designed to promote the participation and inclusion of women in politics.

-           Islamist groups call for veiling women; approving early marriage for girls; decriminalising female genital mutilaton; revoking the Khoul law (women’s right to divorce without men’s permission) and lowering the age of a mother’s custody of a child from 15 to 7.

-          Documented cases of violence against women were reported, especially at protest demonstrations, as a means of preventing women from participation in politics.  

-          Famous women public leaders were removed  from their posts: Zeinab Saleh and  Kausar Issa Nagwa Ashry who were Undersecretaries at the Ministry of Awqaf; Nagwa Ashry, a Chief of Qanater City; Ahlam Abdel Aal, Ismailia Governor Assistant Secretary General and Aziza El Said, Local Unit Chief of Moshtoher.

Moreover, women endured the burden of the negative effects upon their families after the revolution due to bad economic conditions. They faced high rates of unemployment and many lost their jobs. Families also had to deal with price inflation on basic commodities and an overall lack of security. The situation caused more isolation of women as they became increasingly occupied in securing basic needs for their families.

Again, as through history, women wrote the story of victory but reaped little of the gains.  In Egypt’s case, they reaped only suffering and losses.

However, the National Council for Women and other active women’s NGOs worked very hard during the last two years to protect women’s legal rights from being negatively altered by the parliament.  They also actively campaigned to raise public awareness by providing training, issuing booklets and legal materials to counter misinterpretations of Islam.  

The National Council for Women stood firmly against the wrong actions taken by various ministries against women, such as changing the school curricula, removing pictures of historical female leaders and preventing reference to reproductive rights and services.

All these efforts gained momentum with the REBEL movement, carried out by young people who succeeded in collecting 22 million signatures leading up to the 30th of June  revolution, when more than 33 million Egyptians took to the streets around the country to reject the regime. Therefore, this is a popular revolution, not a coup d’etat.

Gender equality as a fundamental human right is a prerequisite for the establishment of democratic societies. The transitional period offers a  better chance for the new government to achieve democracy through gender equality that requires strategies, policies and programs to be tailored in accordance with the realization and understanding of the challenges women are facing to enjoy full and equal participation with men.

The hope lies now at the corrective revolution where women's full participation is essential to re-write the Egyptian roadmap for the future. Egypt is now at crossroads. The coming transitional period will witness an amended constitution that respects women’s rights, presidential and parliamentary elections, and other steps to attain our dream of a democratic nation.

--Mervat Tallawy is chair of the National Council for Women in Egypt

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39. USA: PLO DELEGATION MOURNS DEATH OF HELEN THOMAS
Ma'an News Agency, 21/07/2013 
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ETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The general delegation of the PLO to the United States on Sunday expressed its condolences for the death of American journalist Helen Thomas, who passed away on Saturday.

"Helen Thomas will be remembered for her courage to ask tough questions to Presidents and political officials," the statement read.

"A staunch advocate for the rights of Palestinians, Thomas expressed an unrelenting commitment to advancing the Palestinian quest for justice and statehood. She was a true friend to the Palestinian people."

From her front row seat in the White House press room, Thomas was a formidable, sharp-tongued inquisitor of every US president she covered.

She was such a fixture, she had the unique privilege of a front row seat with her own name on it.

Thomas' passing triggered a torrent of tributes, including one from Obama.

"Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism," he said in a statement.

"What made Helen the 'Dean of the White House Press Corps' was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account."

Thomas began covering the White House for United Press International in the early 1960s, one of only a few women in a male-dominated Washington press corps.

The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she had a strong interest in the Middle East and was a fierce defender of Palestinian rights.

"The General Delegation of the PLO to the United States joins the rest of the Palestinian community all over the world in offering its condolences to the family and friends of Helen Thomas, with whom we share a great loss today," the PLO statement said.

AFP contributed to this report

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40. 'I HAD A FUNNY FEELING IN MY GUT'
by David Hoffman
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Washington Post Foreign Service
Washington Post, February 10, 1999; Page A19

MOSCOW – It was just past midnight as Stanislav Petrov settled into the commander's chair inside the secret bunker at Serpukhov-15, the installation where the Soviet Union monitored its early-warning satellites over the United States.

Then the alarms went off. On the panel in front him was a red pulsating button. One word flashed: "Start."

It was Sept. 26, 1983, and Petrov was playing a principal role in one of the most harrowing incidents of the nuclear age, a false alarm signaling a U.S. missile attack.

Although virtually unknown to the West at the time, the false alarm at the closed military facility south of Moscow came during one of the most tense periods of the Cold War. And the episode resonates today because Russia's early-warning system has fewer than half the satellites it did back then, raising the specter of more such dangerous incidents.

As Petrov described it in an interview, one of the Soviet satellites sent a signal to the bunker that a nuclear missile attack was underway. The warning system's computer, weighing the signal against static, concluded that a missile had been launched from a base in the United States.

The responsibility fell to Petrov, then a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel, to make a decision: Was it for real?

Petrov was situated at a critical point in the chain of command, overseeing a staff that monitored incoming signals from the satellites. He reported to superiors at warning-system headquarters; they, in turn, reported to the general staff, which would consult with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov on the possibility of launching a retaliatory attack.

Petrov's role was to evaluate the incoming data. At first, the satellite reported that one missile had been launched – then another, and another. Soon, the system was "roaring," he recalled – five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched, it reported.

Despite the electronic evidence, Petrov decided – and advised the others – that the satellite alert was a false alarm, a call that may have averted a nuclear holocaust. But he was relentlessly interrogated afterward, was never rewarded for his decision and today is a long-forgotten pensioner living in a town outside Moscow. He spoke openly about the incident, although the official account is still considered secret by authorities here.

On the night of the crisis, Petrov had little time to think. When the alarms went off, he recalled, "for 15 seconds, we were in a state of shock. We needed to understand, what's next?"

Usually, Petrov said, one report of a lone rocket launch did not immediately go up the chain to the general staff and the electronic command system there, known as Krokus. But in this case, the reports of a missile salvo were coming so quickly that an alert had already gone to general staff headquarters automatically, even before he could judge if they were genuine. A determination by the general staff was critical because, at the time, the nuclear "suitcase" that gives a Soviet leader a remote-control role in such decisions was still under development.

In the end, less than five minutes after the alert began, Petrov decided the launch reports must be false. He recalled making the tense decision under enormous stress – electronic maps and consoles were flashing as he held a phone in one hand and juggled an intercom in the other, trying to take in all the information at once. Another officer at the early-warning facility was shouting into the phone to him to remain calm and do his job.

"I had a funny feeling in my gut," Petrov said. "I didn't want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that was it."

Petrov's decision was based partly on a guess, he recalled. He had been told many times that a nuclear attack would be massive – an onslaught designed to overwhelm Soviet defenses at a single stroke. But the monitors showed only five missiles. "When people start a war, they don't start it with only five missiles," he remembered thinking at the time. "You can do little damage with just five missiles."

Another factor, he said, was that Soviet ground-based radar installations – which search for missiles rising above the horizon – showed no evidence of an attack. The ground radar units were controlled from a different command center, and because they cannot see beyond the horizon, they would not spot incoming missiles until some minutes after the satellites had.

Following the false alarm, Petrov went through a second ordeal. At first, he was praised for his actions. But then came an investigation, and his questioners pressed him hard. Why had he not written everything down that night? "Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don't have a third hand," he replied.

Petrov, who was assigned to the satellite early-warning system at its inception in the 1970s, said in the interview that he knew the system had flaws. It had been rushed into service, he said, and was "raw."

Petrov said the investigators tried to make him a scapegoat for the false alarm. In the end, he was neither punished nor rewarded. According to Petrov and other sources, the false alarm was eventually traced to the satellite, which picked up the sun's reflection off the tops of clouds and mistook it for a missile launch. The computer program that was supposed to filter out such information was rewritten.

It is not known what happened at the highest levels of the Kremlin on the night of the alarm, but it came at a climactic stage in U.S.-Soviet relations that is now regarded as a Soviet "war scare." According to former CIA analyst Peter Pry, and a separate study by the agency, Andropov was obsessed with the possibility of a surprise nuclear attack by the West and sent instructions to Soviet spies around the world to look for evidence of preparations.

One reason for Soviet jitters at the time was that the West had unleashed a series of psychological warfare exercises aimed at Moscow, including naval maneuvers into forward areas near Soviet strategic bastions, such as the submarine bases in the Barents Sea.

The 1983 alarm also came just weeks after Soviet pilots had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and just before the start of a NATO military exercise, known as Able Archer, that involved raising alert levels of U.S. nuclear forces in Europe to simulate preparations for an attack. Pry has described this exercise as "probably the single most dangerous incident of the early 1980s."

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41. USA: HAS `CAUCASIAN´ LOST ITS MEANING?
by Shaila Dewan
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The New York Times July 6, 2013  / https://tinyurl.com/kxqwqzm

AS a racial classification, the term Caucasian has many flaws, dating as it does from a time when the study of race was based on skull measurements and travel diaries. It has long been entirely unmoored from its geographical reference point, the Caucasus region. Its equivalents from that era are obsolete - nobody refers to Asians as "Mongolian" or blacks as "Negroid."

And yet, there it was in the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. The plaintiff, noted Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in his majority opinion, was Caucasian.

To me, having covered the South for many years, the term seems like one of those polite euphemisms that hides more than it reveals. There is no legal reason to use it. It rarely appears in federal statutes, and the Census Bureau has never put a checkbox by the word Caucasian. (White is an option.)

The Supreme Court, which can be more colloquial, has used the term in only 64 cases, including a pair from the 1920s that reveal its limitations. In one, the court ruled that a Japanese man could not become a citizen because, although he may have been light-skinned, he was not Caucasian. In the other, an Indian was told that he could not become a citizen because, although he may have been technically Caucasian, he was certainly not white. (A similar debate erupted more recently when the Tsarnaev brothers, believed to be responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing, were revealed to be Muslims from the Caucasus.)

The use of Caucasian to mean white was popularized in the late 18th century by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German anthropologist, who decreed that it encompassed Europeans and the inhabitants of a region reaching from the Obi River in Russia to the Ganges to the Caspian Sea, plus northern Africans. He chose it because the Caucasus was home to "the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgians," and because among his collection of 245 human skulls, the Georgian one was his favorite wrote Nell Irvin Painter, a historian who explored the term´s origins in her book "The History of White People."

 In 1889, the editors of the original Oxford English Dictionary noted that the term Caucasian had been "practically discarded." But they spoke too soon. Blumenbach´s authority had given the word a pseudoscientific sheen that preserved its appeal. Even now, the word gives discussions of race a weird technocratic gravitas, as when the police insist that you step out of your "vehicle" instead of your car.

"If you want to show that you´re being dispassionate then you use the more scientific term Caucasian," Ms. Painter said.

Susan Glisson, who as the executive director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation in Oxford, Miss., regularly witnesses Southerners sorting through their racial vocabulary, said she rarely hears "Caucasian." "Most of the folks who work in this field know that it´s a completely ridiculous term to assign to whites," she said. "I think it´s a term of last resort for people who are really uncomfortable talking about race. They use the term that´s going to make them be as distant from it as possible."

There is another reason to use it, said Jennifer L. Hochschild, a professor of government and African-American studies at Harvard. "The court, or some clever clerk, doesn´t really want to use the word white in part because roughly half of Hispanics consider themselves white." She added, "White turns out to be a much more ambiguous term now than we used to think it was."

There are a number of terms that refer to various degrees of blackness, both current and out of favor: African-American, mulatto, Negro, colored, octaroon. There are not a lot of options for whites. In Texas, they say Anglo. And there is the pejorative we were so pithily reminded of when a witness in the racially charged George Zimmerman trial said the victim, Trayvon Martin, had called Mr. Zimmerman a "creepy-ass cracker."

IN the South, I was often asked about my ethnic origins, and I had a ready answer. "My father is from India," I would recite, phrasing it in such a way as to avoid being mistaken for an American Indian. "And my mom is white." Almost invariably, if I was speaking to black people, they would nod with understanding. If I was speaking to white people, I would get a puzzled look. "What kind of white?" they would ask. Only when I explained the Norwegian, Scottish and German mix of my ancestry would I get the nod.

I theorized that this was because blacks understood "white" as a category, both historical and contemporary - a coherent group that wielded power and excluded others. Whites, I believed, were less comfortable with that notion.

But Matthew Pratt Guterl, the author of "The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940," had a different take. "They´re trying to trace your genealogy and figure out what your qualities are," he said. "They´re looking in your face, they´re looking in the slope of your nose, the shape of your brow. There´s an effort to discern the truth of the matter, because all whitenesses are not equal." In other words, they weren´t rejecting the category, they were policing its boundaries.

Such racial boundaries have increasingly been called into question in the debate over affirmative action, once regarded as a form of restitution to descendants of slaves, but now complicated by all sorts of questions about who, exactly, is being helped. "What if some of them aren´t poor, what if some of them don´t have American parentage, what if some of them are really stupid?" Ms. Painter, the historian, asked. "There´s all kinds of characteristics that we stuff into race without looking, and then they pop out and we think, `I can´t deal with that.´ "

Doubtless, this society will continue to classify people by race for some time to come. And as we lumber toward justice, some of those classifications remain useful, even separate from other factors like economic class. Caucasian, though? Not so much.

Shaila Dewan is an economics reporter for The New York Times.


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