SACW - 5 May 2014 | Bangladesh: Better debate Rooppur / Pakistani journalists against censorship and attacks / Sri Lanka: Bodu Balu Sena Propaganda / India’s Jekyll and Hyde; Assam Violence; Keep god out of elections / Salman Rushdie on Gabriel García Márquez / Boko Haram abductions in Nigeria

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 5 May 2014 - No. 2821
[since 1996]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents:
1. Bangladesh: Understanding Rooppur better | Abdul Matin
2. Joint statement of solidarity by senior Pakistani journalists
against censorship, urging media unity against threats and attacks
3. India: The Marxvadis in Wasseypur, Dhanbad | Javed Iqbal
4. Border Crossings | Suchitra Vijayan
5. Kashmir: Secularism in the Valley  | Badri Raina
6. India: Assam Violence  | Irfan Engineer
7. India: Debating Elections, Debating Development | Ram Puniyani
8. Audio: Daniel Klingensmith on Environmentalisms in an Era of Global
Political Crisis
9. India: Uphold Democratic Values and Condemn Violence against
Activists - Statement by concerned citizens
10. India: What is there in Manifestoes of political parties for the
minorities? | Irfan Engineer
11. India: For “God Sake” - Keep God Out of Electoral Battle | Rajindar Sachar
12. India: Tsundur Massacre - Normalising Injustice the Judicial Way |
Subhash Gatade
13. Afghanistan, India and Pakistan: Conversations with women on
militarisation and life in conflict zones
14. India: The brave girl of Haryana [article in Hindi] | Vidya Bhushan Rawat
15. Selections from Communalism Watch:
 - Feku and his morons must understand a bit about Bangla and sindhi
speaking people and spurn this anti migrant talk
 - How India's elections affect Hindu-Muslim marriages
 - India: Assam flare-up linked to 2014 elections
 - India: The violence in Assam is about neither 'Hindu-Muslim' nor
'illegal Bangladeshi immigrants' | Kaustubh Deka
 - India: The Carnage in Kokrajhar | Saba Sharma
 - India: Hindu preachers, the Shankaracharyas of Puri and Dwarka
furious with BJP’s Narendra Modi
 - India: Mamata dares Modi on Bangladeshi migrants issue
 - After Modi, who? If not PM, What?
 - What is ‘communal’? The problem of false equivalence: Sheba Tejani
 - Those opposed to Narendra Modi should make their voices heard: Anish Kapoor
 - We Must Not Turn a Blind Eye to the Election of Narendra Modi,
India's Milosevic
 - India's new Hinduism is about order, not wonder | Amit Chaudhuri
 - Why the hell does AAP's Mr Kejriwal invoke god in the elections ?
 - India: Tripura Board of Secondary Education Withdraws Pol Science
textbook that described BJP as a 'communal party'

::Full Text::
16. Sri Lanka Govt Official Debunks Bodu Balu Sena Claims on Muslim IDPs
17. Bangladesh: Hoping for a strong Modi | Arild Engelsen Ruud
18. In Spite of the Law, Afghan ‘Honor Killings’ of Women Continue |
Rod Nordland
19. Narendra Modi: India’s Jekyll and Hyde | Edward Luce
20. India: After Modi, the deluge | Nandini Sundar
21. India's Cruel Election Season | Nilanjana S. Roy
22. Salman Rushdie on Gabriel García Márquez: 'His world was mine'
23. Nigeria: 220 schoolgirls haven't been 'abducted' by Boko Haram,
they have been enslaved | Nick Cohen

=========================================
1.BANGLADESH: NEEDS PUBLIC DEBATE ON ROOPPUR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
by Abdul Matin
=========================================
It is apparent from the questions asked from the floor, and also from
the opinions expressed in the media that there are some real concerns
regarding the RNPP, particularly regarding the shortage of trained
manpower, safety, the environmental impact of the plant, the
management of the project, and its total cost. These issues need to be
discussed openly and thoroughly before we proceed with the
construction of Bangladesh’s first nuclear power plant.

=========================================
2. JOINT STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY BY SENIOR PAKISTANI JOURNALISTS
AGAINST CENSORSHIP, URGING MEDIA UNITY AGAINST THREATS AND ATTACKS
=========================================
(via beena sarwar)
Dozens of senior Pakistani journalists have signed a statement
expressing unity and solidarity with each other in today’s divisive
times. we the undersigned, express solidarity with the Pakistani media
and working journalists, and stand against any proposed ban on any
television or radio channel or newspaper.

=========================================
3. INDIA: THE MARXVADIS IN WASSEYPUR, DHANBAD | Javed Iqbal
=========================================
Speaking to the mini-meeting of the women from Wasseypur, all from BPL
families, they had no idea about who their incumbent candidate was, or
who was going to win, or anything about this ‘Modi wave’. They did not
know that Lok Sabha Minister Pushpati Nath Singh from the BJP, won the
previous elections with 58,047 votes defeating second place
Chandrashekhar ‘Dadai’ Dubey of the Congress (who is now running on a
TMC ticket), nor did they know that their Congress candidate is Alok
Dubey. Nor did they know who was AK Rai, a charismatic Marxist trade
unionist, three time MLA, and three time MP from Dhanbad, who is
responsible for the organized coal miners in Dhanbad to earn around
Rs.40,000 to Rs,60,000 a month, who’re the only miners in the country
who talk about the stock market while having their chai breaks. AK
Rai, is today in the twilight of his life, who still managed 85,457
votes in 2009 without campaigning for a single day, with the rumour
that his election campaign budget was Rs.25,000.

=========================================
4. SUCHITRA VIJAYAN: BORDER CROSSINGS
=========================================
Can the lines that divide two countries create a break between the
people and their shared past? A look at the lives of those living
along India’s borders.

=========================================
5. KASHMIR: SECULARISM IN THE VALLEY
by Badri Raina
=========================================
In this season of hurt sentiments, it is my turn-and with emphasis. It
has been declaimed lately from a broad-chested but small minded podium
that Kashmir, pointedly meaning the valley, has been turned into a
"communal" place by the Abdullahs; the barely concealed sub-text being
that it always has been so-a communal place. I am deeply offended at
not just the ignorance, but the dangerous ignorance, that seems to
have propelled that irresponsible comment about kashmiri secularism.


=========================================
6. INDIA: ASSAM VIOLENCE
by Irfan Engineer
=========================================
What is happening in Assam should shame humanity and Indian democracy.
Official figures of dead in Kokrajhar and Baksa Dist. (Assam) is 32.
Citizens were fired upon and killed on 1st May and 2nd May for their
voting choice. Unofficial sources say number of dead toll may be even
higher as 31 persons are still missing and not accounted for.

=========================================
7. INDIA: DEBATING ELECTIONS, DEBATING DEVELOPMENT
by Ram Puniyani
=========================================
The ongoing elections have created turmoil and churning in the society
at an unprecedented level. Media, social sites and whatever platforms
are there, are full of the intense debate about the so called ‘Gujarat
Model’ the failures of the UPA II and related issues. While there may
be few who are sitting on the fence, a large numbers has made up their
mind one way or the other. To ensure that most people vote Election
Commission wrote to all the educational heads to appeal to their
students to vote.

=========================================
8. AUDIO: DANIEL KLINGENSMITH ON ENVIRONMENTALISMS IN AN ERA OF GLOBAL
POLITICAL CRISIS
=========================================
Audio recording of public lecture by Prof. Daniel Klingensmith on 28th
April, 2014 at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi.

=========================================
9. INDIA: UPHOLD DEMOCRATIC VALUES AND CONDEMN VIOLENCE AGAINST
ACTIVISTS - STATEMENT BY CONCERNED CITIZENS
=========================================
These brazen acts of violence by both Hindu and Muslim fundamentalist
parties, within the protective umbrella of the police, are horrifying
and must be strongly condemned. These parties are breeding an inhumane
culture of intolerance in the name of religion and corrupting the law
and order system.These incidents provide a glimpse of the hatred,
disorder and deteriorated law & order situation that will be the order
of the day when these parties come into power.

=========================================
10. INDIA: WHAT IS THERE IN MANIFESTOES OF POLITICAL PARTIES FOR THE MINORITIES?
by Irfan Engineer
=========================================
Election time is season for Manifestoes of major political parties
participating in the poll. Manifestoes are seen by some members of the
public with cynicism and disinterest as they are observed more in
breach by the party voted to power and major promises forgotten. When
BSP was voted to power in UP, they did not have a manifesto and in any
case given the levels of literacy, how many members of the electorates
bother to read manifestoes of the parties is a good question. Large
sections of voters in India go more by oral promises of the candidates
contesting elections, some vote on consideration of caste, ethnicity,
language and religious community, others vote on the basis of local
constituency level issues and popularity of the candidate contesting.

=========================================
11. INDIA: FOR “GOD SAKE” - KEEP GOD OUT OF ELECTORAL BATTLE
by Rajindar Sachar
=========================================
Modi, BJP Prime Ministerial candidate is rushing through the country
projecting Gujarat development model which he claims will be applied
on All India level so as to make India as one of the envious countries
of the world. It is a different matter that many credible critics like
Peoples Union for Civil Liberties a Human Right Organization “founded
by Jaya Prakesh Narayan during Emergency 1975” has published a book
Truth on Gujarat development, which shows all these claims to be
false. But when Modi invokes God to his support in the elections, as
he did recently by saying “that he has been chosen by God to rescue
the country…..that God chooses certain people to do the difficult work
and he believes God has chosen me for this work”, is a statement that
violates every teaching and tradition of Hinduism.

=========================================
12. INDIA: TSUNDUR MASSACRE - NORMALISING INJUSTICE THE JUDICIAL WAY
by Subhash Gatade
=========================================
Tsundur, Guntur, A.P. which had made headlines way back in 1991 when
eight dalits were lynched by a 400 strong armed mob of Reddys
supposedly to teach the dalits a lesson, is again in the news.The
recent judgement of the A.P highcourt has overturned the judgement of
the Special courts and has acquitted all the accused involved in the
case for ’want of evidence’.

=========================================
13. AFGHANISTAN, INDIA AND PAKISTAN: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN ON
MILITARISATION AND LIFE IN CONFLICT ZONES
=========================================
Across the region, the security agenda of states has undermined the
rule of law and accountability. Escalating defence expenditures,
declining social funding and predatory development models that exploit
national resources and marginalise and displace communities have
deepened structural inequalities. The growing democratic deficit and
rampant corruption are reinforcing extremist, militant and
fundamentalist ideologies. As such, the region has become a playground
for private and state actors with global geo-strategic interests, and
people, especially women, pay the price.

=========================================
14. INDIA: THE BRAVE GIRL OF HARYANA [article in Hindi]
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
=========================================

interview with Asha ( name changed) who was abducted and raped in
September 2012 in Hisar. Asha has truly become hope for many like her.
She has fought her battle despite all odds and also helping others.
She lost her father immediately after the incident as he committed
suicide. This is a story how vulnerable Dalit girls are in Haryana.

=========================================
15. SELECTIONS FROM COMMUNALISM WATCH
=========================================
 - Feku and his morons must understand a bit about Bangla and sindhi
speaking people and spurn this anti migrant talk
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/feku-and-his-morons-must-understand-bit.html

 - How India's elections affect Hindu-Muslim marriages
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-indias-elections-affect-hindu.html

 - India: Assam flare-up linked to 2014 elections
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/india-assam-flare-up-linked-to-2014.html

 - India: The violence in Assam is about neither 'Hindu-Muslim' nor
'illegal Bangladeshi immigrants' | Kaustubh Deka
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/india-violence-in-assam-is-about.html

 - India: The Carnage in Kokrajhar | Saba Sharma
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/india-carnage-in-kokrajhar-saba-sharma.html

 - India: Hindu preachers, the Shankaracharyas of Puri and Dwarka
furious with BJP’s Narendra Modi
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/india-hindu-preachers-shankaracharyas.html

 - India: Mamata dares Modi on Bangladeshi migrants issue
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/india-mamata-dares-modi-on-bangladeshi.html

 - After Modi, who? If not PM, What?
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/after-modi-who-if-not-pm-what.html

 - What is ‘communal’? The problem of false equivalence: Sheba Tejani
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-is-communal-problem-of-false.html

 - Those opposed to Narendra Modi should make their voices heard: Anish Kapoor
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/those-opposed-to-narendra-modi-should.html

 - We Must Not Turn a Blind Eye to the Election of Narendra Modi,
India's Milosevic
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/we-must-not-turn-blind-eye-to-election.html

 - India's new Hinduism is about order, not wonder | Amit Chaudhuri
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/indias-new-hinduism-is-about-order-not.html

 - Why the hell does AAP's Mr Kejriwal invoke god in the elections ?
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-hell-does-aaps-mr-kejriwal-invoke.html

 - India: Tripura Board of Secondary Education Withdraws Pol Science
textbook that described BJP as a 'communal party'
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/india-tripura-board-of-secondary.html

::: FULL TEXT :::
=========================================
16. SRI LANKA GOVT OFFICIAL DEBUNKS BODU BALU SENA CLAIMS ON MUSLIM IDPS
=========================================
(The Island, April 28, 2014)
Wilpattu dispute: Presidential Task Force allocated lands for Muslims
- Mannar DS

* Sinhalese (2.6 percent) given 378 acres after clearing scrub jungle

by Zacki Jabbar recently at the Wilpattu National Park Border

Mannar Divisional Secretary S. Keetheswaran, refuting allegations by
the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) that Muslim families driven out of the Musali
Pradeshiya Sabha Division by the LTTE in 1990, had recently encroached
on the Wilpattu National Park, said that it was a Presidential Task
Force (PTF) Committee established in terms of the Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that had identified the location for
their resettlement.

Unnecessary tension and conflict could have been avoided, if an
attempt had been made to examine the Survey Department Plans and the
decisions taken by the PTF Committee headed by the Secretary to the
Ministry of Resettlement, to identify land for Internally Displaced
Persons, in terms of the LLRC’s recommendations, Keetheswaran said,
pointing out that the Committee’s deliberations had been endorsed by
representatives of the Land Commission, the Forest Department, the
Wildlife Department, Survey Department, the Army, the Navy, the
Central Environmental Authority, the Agriculture and Land Ministry,
the Government Agent and the respective Divisional Secretaries. "We
had several rounds of discussions and undertook two field visits prior
to recommending on January 2, 2013 that the Muslims who were evicted
from the Musali Pradeshiya Division in Mannar by the LTTE be allocated
land on the following basis - Marichchikkatti (100 acres), Palaikuli
(100 acres) and Karadikkuli (80 acres)."

The Divisional Secretary said that the population in Musali Division
in 1990 comprised Muslims (84 percent) Tamils (13.4 percent) and
Sinhalese (2.6 percent). When state lands were alienated in 1995 the
original Muslim inhabitants evicted in 1990 were living temporarily in
various parts of the country including in camps in Puttalam.

In Mullikulam around 700 acres of land were taken over by the Navy for
security purposes. Those who lived in Mullikulam were relocated in
Kayakkuli village. In order to resettle the Sinhalese comprising 2.6
percent of the total number evicted in 1984 and their natural
increase, 378 acres had been allocated after clearing the scrub forest
that had grown, he observed.

However, 73 families from Marikkarthevu Marichchikkatti who were not
accommodated had put up temporary huts about one kilometre away from
the Wilpattu National Park border, Keetheswaran pointed out. "We,
visited them on April 4, 2014 and assured alternative land. I can
certify that no part of the Wilpattu National Park has been used for
any resettlement scheme including the Jasmine City Housing Project
which is in fact situated in the Marichchikatti Grama Niladari
Division."

=========================================
17. BANGLADESH: HOPING FOR A STRONG MODI
by Arild Engelsen Ruud
=========================================
(Dhaka Tribune - 30 April 2014)

If Narendra Modi has to be a factor in the India-Bangladesh
relationship, a strong Modi is the best hope for a meaningful
resolution of India’s internal conflicts of interests

Bangladesh is facing an interesting future. Its largest and most
important neighbour by far, India, may have a new government in a few
months time. If there is a new government then it will probably be
headed by Narenda Modi of the BJP.

As readers will know the BJP, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is a Hindu
nationalist party, and Modi himself is a proud member of the RSS,
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu chauvinist cultural organisation.

These organisations have for many years been feeding on anti-Muslim
sentiments, and although Modi nowadays professes policies that are
more focused on development and economic issues than cultural
nationalist ones, he still cannot make himself say sorry for the
events that killed thousands of Muslims under his watch. For a
politician of such ambition, surely a simple apology would not matter
much? But his inability or unwillingness to do so suggests that his
antipathy against Muslims is not just a political gimmick but
something that runs deep in his personality.

What can a much smaller neighbour, the Muslim majority Bangladesh hope
for with such a man at the helm just across the border?

The first thing to note is that the position of prime minister in
India is a relatively less powerful position than that of the prime
minister of Bangladesh. Formal institutions are stronger and more
independent in India than in Bangladesh, for instance the courts, the
election commission, and various other government institutions.

A second thing to note is that India being a federal republic has some
powers divested to the states, meaning out of reach of the prime
minister. This is particularly so in cases where the state is run by a
party different from that of the central government.

A third thing to note is that although important powers do rest with
the central government, the political reality of contemporary India is
that of coalition politics. No central government can hope to remain
independent and efficient without the considerable goodwill of
regional parties.

A fourth point to note, and perhaps the most important one, is that
India’s general objectives will not change with a new government.
Whichever party heads the government, the general aim will be the
same. The overwhelming political consensus in India today is that of
economic growth.

The Congress too wants economic growth, even if they emphasise on
distribution more than growth in their election campaign. Indians in
general are all in favour of economic growth. They are in favour of
foreign investments, of improved export, of greater opportunities for
business, and of more and better jobs for the millions of hopefuls all
over the country.

To meet such aspirations India will need friendly relations with world
powers, the ability to match strength with China, the absence of
conflicts along its borders in order to look good in the UN, massive
import of energy fuels, and new markets.

India today has a relatively positive image in the world, based on its
ability to build economic growth while ensuring (relatively) social
distribution and maintaining democracy. Modi is business-friendly, and
his businessmen friends will tell him how important this soft power is
for new opportunities overseas.

Modi also realises the need for friendly relations with countries in
the Middle East. No economic development is possible without oil and
gas. Modi also realises the need to aviod, if possible, conflicts that
will ruffle American or European feathers. International conflicts
will ruffle feathers.

The US is India’s largest trading partner, but even larger is the
European countries combined in the EU. With friends like that, you
don’t need enemies. Your friends will keep you on the straight and
narrow.

India’s priorities are set by deep aspirations in the country and will
not change much even if the Hindu nationalist topples the secular
dynasty from the throne. A strong prime minister will do his utmost to
steer the country towards a direction that seeks to fulfill those
aspirations.

For Bangladesh it would mean politics as usual. Perhaps a little less
cordial than the present bonhomie between Dhaka and New Delhi, but
still a professional relationship. With Modi at the helm, New Delhi
will wish a good, efficient, working relationship with Dhaka.

Issues of common concern are the corridor to India’s north-east,
trade, and the many issues relating to the border including water
sharing. But a strong government will not wish to prolong such
conflicts, however Hindu nationalist it may be. Business will remain
the primary aim.

The fly in the soup

The question is how a weak prime minister might do. It may well be
that Modi will not win as many seats as his spin doctors suggest.
Opinion polls are generally unreliable, and tend to overemphasise the
urban and the middle class, where Modi’s support is higher.

Besides, the Indian voter, apart from being prone to change of opinion
at the last minute, is reticent with information about his or her
preferences. Moreover, the American style projection of Modi as the
main man on whom all light shines is an untested strategy in the
Indian context. Equally important is the fact that in some of the
large states, most notably in Uttar Pradesh, the four big parties in
the fray (SP, BSP, BJP and Congress) all hover around the 20%-25%
mark.

This makes it virtually impossible to guess the outcome. Parallel
situations prevail in other states. We have in other words only a dim
idea about the outcome of the election. Will Modi secure 220 seats for
the BJP? Or perhaps 230? Or only 190?

A weak Modi will be vulnerable. He has a number of close allied
parties in the existing alliance, but a weak result for these or for
the NDA itself will make it necessary for Modi to find new friends.
This is not an unlikely outcome. The problem is that the available
partners will sell themselves dearly. A possible candidate in this
respect is Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress from West Bengal.

She may well secure 20 seats in her home state, a number that will
make her extremely interesting to a weak Modi.

Mamata Banerjee has improved her chief ministerial touch over the two
and a half years of her rule. But she has some of the maverick
agitator of the past left in her. This feature resurfaces every now
and then, and we last saw it during the election when she thought
herself as above law and the election commission.

As every reading Bangladeshi knows, there are two major outstanding
issues of contention between India and Bangladesh. One is the sharing
of the Teesta water and the other is the land boundary agreement
regarding the northern enclaves. In both these the maverick Mamata
Banerjee has claimed a political stake for her state.

If she is to sell herself to Modi, it will be in exchange for a heavy
influence on these two issues. If she is strong enough she may gain
veto power over both issues. A weak Modi may in fact outsource his
entire Bangladesh policy to Mamata Banerjee.

Mamata Banerjee is not anti-Bangladesh, and she is not anti-Muslim.
But she is a populist and a tactician. She is a populist in the sense
that she appeals unashamedly to Bengali sentiments, including the deep
sense of deprivation and despair that prevails in a state once rich
and powerful, but now economically in the backwaters while others
surge forward.

So she promises to protect their interests – the interests of her
state. These interests include, naturally one might say, “their water”
and every inch of the motherland. These are issues that sit well with
a large section of the electorate and deflect from her poor economic
results.

Mamata Banerjee is also a tactician, an ambitious politician who will
seek every opportunity to strengthen her hold on power and ensure its
prolongation. She is not overly concerned about India’s relationship
with Bangladesh or with the US, and she has never shown any interest
in international issues. Her primary interest is her own position
within India. If she can exploit nationalist (or regionalist)
sentiments to enhance her position, there is little reason to believe
that she will not do so, even if at the cost of the country’s
international reputation.

She may be the chief minister of West Bengal and have a strong
position there, but it is clear that she has national ambitions as
well. To achieve such an ambition she may need emotional issues that
will project her image.

Bangladesh will want a peaceful and mutually agreeable resolution of
outstanding issues with its most important neighbour. This can be done
if the neighbour feels confident and strong; strong enough to be a
little generous. A reputation as the neighbourhood bully is not in
India’s interest now.

Its ambition points to a much larger scene, and so India too will want
a peaceful and mutually agreeable resolution of outstanding issues.

But a huge but weak neighbour is a liability. With its Bangladesh
policy outsourced to Kolkata, India seen from Dhaka will be erratic,
uncooperative, unpredictable, and prone to making risky allegations.

Bangladesh can best hope for no Modi. But as a second choice, it can
hope for a strong Modi.
- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/long-form/2014/apr/29/hoping-strong-modi

=========================================
18. IN SPITE OF THE LAW, AFGHAN ‘HONOR KILLINGS’ OF WOMEN CONTINUE
by Rod Nordland
=========================================
(The New York Times, May 3, 2014)

Zakia, 18, and Mohammad Ali, 21, in an undisclosed location in
Afghanistan last month. They eloped against the wishes of Zakia’s
family, and fear being killed. Credit Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New
York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — An 18-year-old runaway named Amina agreed two
weeks ago to leave the women’s shelter in which she had taken refuge
in northern Afghanistan and go home with her brother and her uncle.

What happened next is a cautionary tale for two young people from
Bamian Province who eloped and are still in hiding, even as some
activists are trying to persuade them to turn themselves in.

Amina had run away to avoid marrying a man her family had forcibly
betrothed her to, and agreed to return only after her family had
signed guarantees that she would not be harmed. For good measure, her
father and brother repeated their vows on video camera at the Ministry
of Women’s Affairs in Baghlan Province, and she left with them.

She never reached home. Hours after she got into her family’s car, a
gang of gunmen dragged her out of the vehicle and shot her to death,
her brother and uncle later claimed. Everyone else was unharmed.

Whoever was responsible — the police blame the jilted fiancé’s family,
but women’s activists accuse Amina’s family of staging her killing —
Amina became yet another victim of an “honor killing” to absolve some
sort of family shame.

Zakia and Mohammad Ali are fleeing threats of arrest and death in
Afghanistan as a result of their marriage, which crosses cultural
boundaries.
Credit Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Rubina Hamdard, a lawyer at a coalition of women’s advocacy groups,
the Afghan Women’s Network, estimates that 150 cases of honor killing
occur annually in Afghanistan, based on statistics kept over the past
five years. Fewer than half of them are formally reported, however,
and very few end in convictions.

It was just such a possible fate that prompted the Bamian couple,
Zakia, 18, and Mohammad Ali, 21, to flee into hiding after they eloped
in March, fearing that Zakia’s family would kill them because she had
refused her father’s choice of a husband.

Neither Amina nor Zakia and Mohammad Ali did anything against the law
— or, more specifically, against two of the legal systems in effect in
Afghanistan: the body of civil law enacted over the past decade with
Western assistance, or the classic Islamic code of Shariah that is
also enshrined in law. Both protect the rights of women not to be
forced into marriage against their will.

But in Afghanistan, an unwritten, unofficial third legal system has
remained pervasive: customary law, the tribal codes that have
stubbornly persisted despite efforts at reform. “In Afghanistan judges
stick to customary law, forget Shariah law, let alone civil law,” said
Shala Fareed, a professor of law at Kabul University.

Ms. Hamdard said: “In any society it’s not just the law that shapes
everything, it’s the behavior of the judges, and how they interpret
the law.”

But in many places, judges are poorly educated — a majority do not
have actual law degrees, and a significant percentage have not even
finished high school — a situation that continues to exist, despite
$904 million in “rule of law” funding from the United States alone
between 2002 and 2010, much of it earmarked to improve the judiciary.

Under customary practices widely prevalent here, fathers have absolute
power over their daughters until they marry, when such power passes to
their husbands. They can marry girls off at birth, or at any age, with
or without their permission, often making them bartered goods to solve
family debts.

An often-invoked customary offense that does not exist in written
Afghan law is that of running away from home. Even if the runaway girl
is 18, legally an adult, courts still frequently impose a jail term of
one year, based entirely on customary law. In fact, Afghanistan’s
Elimination of Violence Against Women Act specifically forbids
prosecuting runaways. “There is no such crime as running away from
home,” said Shukria Khaliqi, a lawyer and legal program director at
Women for Afghan Women, an aid group that runs women’s shelters. “In
some cases the judges don’t even pay attention to Shariah law; they
ignore that and they will say to the girl, ‘It’s not Europe or the
West here, it’s not up to you, it doesn’t matter if you’re an adult or
not.’ ”

Despite the problems with the courts, Ms. Khaliqi said it was
possible, particularly in Kabul, where judges were better educated, to
win cases like those of Zakia and Mohammad Ali. She has been in touch
with them by telephone to persuade Zakia to let her take her case to
court — which would mean she would have to return to a shelter while
the case was decided.

Reached by telephone in their undisclosed hiding place, Mohammad Ali
said the couple were unpersuaded. Zakia had already spent six months
in a shelter in Bamian, with no legal relief. “No one takes the law
seriously in this country,” he said.

Statistics suggest as much. Of 4,505 cases of violence against women
last year — which includes issues like “denial of relationship,” or
trying to prevent someone from choosing their own husband or wife —
less than 10 percent are resolved through legal process, according to
the latest report from the Women’s Ministry. Nearly half of the cases
were either dropped or settled out of court, often to the women’s
detriment. “We are safe where we are,” Mohammad Ali said. “Either we
leave the country or we stay in hiding.”

Zakia’s brother, Gula Khan, 20, also reached by telephone, was
unrepentant about the family’s threats against his sister. “If we were
men, we would have done something by now,” he said. “She really
dishonored our family. As they have ignored the law, we should as
well.” But he said that the family had no violent intentions against
his sister. “We don’t know if she is dead or alive,” Mr. Khan said.
“If she is dead, we want her body. If she is alive, we just want her
back with us.”

In northern Baghlan Province, Amina’s brother and uncle had said
pretty much the same thing, according to Uranus Atifi, head of the
legal department of the women’s ministry in Pul-e-Kumri, the
provincial capital. Amina had run away from her family in a remote
village rather than obey her father and marry a man who she believed
did not care for her. Undercover police found her wandering in a
bazaar in Pul-e-Kumri, trying to find the women’s ministry, and
brought her to a women’s shelter.

When the police in Afghanistan find unmarried women, even though
legally adults, unaccompanied by a close relative, the women are
arrested and routinely subjected to a virginity test by a forensic
pathologist, another customary practice that exists outside the law.
Amina passed the test, and was not charged.

Ms. Atifi said she only handed over Amina after meeting with her
privately. “She didn’t want her case to get bigger and create more
problems for her,” she said.

But Ms. Atifi was worried enough that she called Amina several times
during her long car trip home. She last reached her at 8 p.m. on April
21. “She told me she was all right and they were still driving,” Ms.
Atifi said. At 10 p.m., her cellphone no longer answered. The next
day, contacted by Ms. Atifi, the young woman’s brother said that nine
masked men had stopped the car, dragged his sister away and shot her
to death. Her family did not seem concerned enough to report the
crime, until the women’s ministry did.

A version of this article appears in print on May 4, 2014, on page A10
of the New York edition with the headline: In Spite of the Law, Afghan
‘Honor Killings’ of Women Continue

=========================================
19. NARENDRA MODI: INDIA’S JEKYLL AND HYDE
by Edward Luce
=========================================
(Financial Times, April 30, 2014)

If you want the best case for Narendra Modi, you can do no better than
read my colleague Gideon Rachman’s latest column – India needs a jolt.
After a decade of prevarication under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
(to put it politely), India’s economy is languishing and investors
have lost confidence in its reform story. Delhi is almost permanently
mired in corruption scandal and politics has turned into a national
joke. India desperately needs a change. Who better than Gujarat’s
chief minister to give the subcontinent the decisive governance it
craves?

That, in a nutshell, is the rationale much of India’s secular elites
have backed themselves into. It is a counsel of despair. Mr Modi is
certainly a decisive leader. In contrast to Mr Singh’s style of
operating, which has been dilatory and weak, files rarely gather dust
in Gujarat. Investments get swiftly approved. Projects are executed on
time. And bribes are rare. Gujarat continues to outpace most of India
in terms of its investment flows and per capita income growth. By
electing Mr Modi, India’s middle classes hope he can transpose
Gujarat’s story to the national level.
That is the hope. It should also be the fear. Much like Jekyll and
Hyde, there are two sides to Mr Modi’s character. And the dark side is
very dark indeed. In addition to presiding over its impressive
economic performance, Mr Modi has killed the spirit of Indian
secularism in Gujarat. The region of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth has
become a shrine to Nathuram Godse, the Hindu nationalist who
assassinated him in 1948. Twelve years after more than 1,000 Muslims
were killed in one of India’s most brutal pogroms, Muslims are treated
as second class citizens in Gujarat. Tens of thousands have fled the
state altogether.
Mr Modi’s apologists point out that India’s Supreme Court cleared him
of direct involvement in the 2002 riots. But absence of proof is not
the same as innocence.
I was living in India in 2002 and remember very well the inflammatory
rhetoric Mr Modi deployed on the day that 85 Hindu pilgrims burnt to
death in a train fire in Godhra. The incident was immediately blamed
on the Muslim tea-sellers who hawked their wares at the train station
where the horrific accident occurred. A subsequent exhaustive
government inquiry absolved the tea-sellers of any blame for the fire,
which was thought to have been caused by kerosene.
Mr Modi did not wait for any inquiry. Just a few months before facing
re-election in a contest he was by no means certain to win, Mr Modi
seized on the Godhra incident to show how decisive he could be. Citing
Newton’s Third Law: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”,
Mr Modi gave the rioters the cue they needed.
No one, Indian or foreigner, who covered the following, gruesome, 72
hours, was in any doubt about the meaning of Mr Modi’s signal. For
three days and nights, mobs of fanatics went from house to house armed
with electoral rolls (to identify the religion of each household),
dragged women and children out of their homes, poured kerosene down
their throats and ignited them to crowds of cheering onlookers. The
police in Ahmedabad and other Gujarati cities did not intervene. After
72 hours, the police intervened and the rioting stopped. Defenders of
Mr Modi would have us believe that he lost control of his own police
force. That would make him a weak leader, which contradicts his
principal selling point. I do not believe that explanation. Six months
later Mr Modi won re-election in a landslide. As he put it at the
time, the Hindu majority had awoken.
Apologists also point out that Mr Modi has mellowed since 2002 and
discarded the harsher sides of his communal ideology. They forget that
he is a life-long member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the
quasi-fascist Hindu militant group to which Gandhi’s assassin also
belonged. He is a life-long celibate in the cause of Hindutva –
literally Hinduness – to which the RSS subscribes. Given Mr Modi’s
reputation as a Hindu nationalist, he can afford to tack to the centre
as far as he likes. He will never lose the Hindu nationalist vote.
This is the risk India’s beleaguered secular classes are taking. They
want the sunny Dr Jekyll and pray the nocturnal Mr Hyde has been put
away for good. It is big bet.
For my part, I believe Mr Modi is a brilliant tactician who is saying
and doing what it takes to reach India’s top job. After that, who
knows? Apologists say he could never afford as prime minister to
repeat the kind of communal hatred he has institutionalised in
Gujarat, since he would head a coalition government that would quickly
fall apart. They may be right. Deepak Lal, the distinguished Indian
economist, asks whether Modi is a Margaret Thatcher or an Adolf
Hitler. He concludes that Modi is probably a Thatcher. If so, as
Gideon Rachman has rightly argued, a dose of Thatcherism is precisely
what India needs. They may be right. I suspect they are wrong. Either
way, I would rather not take the risk of finding out.

=========================================
20. INDIA: AFTER MODI, THE DELUGE
by Nandini Sundar
=========================================
(Indian Express - May 2, 2014)
Modi has no regard for any other kind of court, least of all a
constitutionally appointed judiciary. Modi has no regard for any other
kind of court, least of all a constitutionally appointed judiciary.
Summary
The refrain that democratic institutions will survive him ignores how
weak they are.

In a competitive bid to bare each other’s dirty linen this election
season, political parties have raised the ghosts of 1984 and 2002.
Each party claims that the other is guilty but as for itself, it has
been given, in that peculiarly Indian phrase, a “clean chit”. Narendra
Modi tells us he will be found innocent in the “people’s court” and
was “waiting to hear their verdict”. Clearly Modi has no regard for
any other kind of court, least of all a constitutionally appointed
judiciary. He is not alone in this — every major political party seems
to believe that winning elections is an alternative to judicial
accountability. The one point where Modi is right, of course, is when
he asks, “What is the system of pardoning people through apology?”

The Congress has tried to apologise its way out of 1984, as if that’s
all it took to repair devastated lives. In Bastar, the Congress
candidate, Deepak Karma, admitted that Salwa Judum was a mistake, even
as he was given a ticket precisely because he was Mahendra Karma’s
son, a man who pillaged his way through his own people. The word that
is curiously missing in all this is “justice”. When liberal
commentators tell us that we need not fear for India’s democratic
institutions under Modi, one wonders which institutions they are
referring to. In truth, almost every major “pillar” of Indian
democracy — political parties, the media, the judiciary, even the
electoral system — has been rendered so fragile over the years that it
will not need too drastic a push to render them impotent. Already
people have begun to censor themselves, to “balance” their previous
criticism with high praise and to urge forgiveness for 2002 as if it
was theirs to forgive. Almost all the major political parties are
headed by individuals whose personalities outweigh any institutional
process. For long, the BJP prided itself on its collective
decision-making, but that is clearly a thing of the past. Modi appears
larger than life, especially to himself, with his narcissistic illeism
or references to himself in the third person. It is hardly surprising
that his immediate model is Indira Gandhi. Not only do we have the
Emergency-era promise that he will make the trains run on time, but
like her, one of the first things he has done is destroy his own
party. Just as the Congress has never recovered from Indira, it is
hard to imagine what a post-Modi BJP might look like.

to help us personalise your reading experience.

The media is a player in the electoral process, rather than a watchdog
of democracy. It is hardly an impartial mirror to the elections. The
“news” as it comes to us is an endless repetition of X “slammed” Y, Y
denied Z, with none of the parties being forced to provide a clear
vision on the important questions facing the country like the
environment, job creation, health or education. Social media is not an
alternative, given the symbiotic relationship it has with mainstream
media, with the same personalities and issues dominating in both. Of
course, there are some important exposes and many brave journalists,
but it is precisely because of them that the more substantial
propaganda functions of the media get by. Even if ministers who swear
on the Constitution when taking oath forget the basic principle of
separation of powers, the judiciary has not performed too well,
either, in calling politicians to account. Some of this may be due to
the enormous burden of cases that the courts face, but if 10, even 30,
years on, the victims of 1984, 2002, Pathribal, Salwa Judum or the
Kandhamals remain without justice, surely the judiciary cannot escape
blame. In a wonderful essay, English historian Douglas Hay shows how
18th century courts consolidated a belief in the impartiality of law,
even at a time when laws were changed to expropriate peasants and
capital punishment was freely prescribed for crimes against property.
A few good judgments, a few capital pardons and a few rich men hanged
were enough to make people believe in the majesty and mercy of the
law. Little has changed up to the 21st century.

The electoral system is held hostage to money and to the
first-past-the-post system. A recent analysis in The Times of India,
based on 2009 Lok Sabha figures, showed that barely 22 per cent of MPs
polled more than 50 per cent of the votes cast. Given that 60 per cent
is considered a high voting rate, most winning candidates actually
have the support of very small minorities in their constituency. The
EC is a remarkable institution, but its omnipotence during elections
and the fact that it is not always right in its judgement shows up
some of the deeper biases in the electoral system. Door to door
campaigning, which is the preferred option of the poor, is banned just
before voting, but full-page newspaper advertisements that invade
one’s home on polling day are not. The AAP certainly provides hope
that democracies can throw up surprises. However, the very fact that
many AAP candidates — activists, lawyers, journalists and even
corporate stars —  are contesting because they feel that they can
change the system only through politics, tells us how poorly other
professions fare. It is time we stopped expecting elections to deliver
democracy by themselves, and woke up to the state of our institutions.
Whoever wins, they may be tested so much that they may not pass.

The writer teaches sociology  at Delhi University

=========================================
21. INDIA'S CRUEL ELECTION SEASON
by Nilanjana S. Roy
=========================================
(The New York Times, May 2, 2014

NEW DELHI — It was the peak of the shopping day in Old Delhi’s Sadar
Bazaar when a printer’s handcart overturned, spilling across the
packed street election posters and paper masks of Indian political
leaders. For a few moments, I waded through a sea of disconcertingly
realistic images of Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, the leaders,
respectively, of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party.
The printed faces with cut-out eyes — more Modis than Kejriwals — were
trampled by busy traders. I tried not to look down at the sightless
masks; in such profusion, their blank gazes were unsettling.

Across India this election season, discussions about politics have
deteriorated into a bullying, heckling match. Among opposing political
parties, the mood has been confrontational. Mr. Kejriwal had ink
thrown at him and allegedly was slapped by members of the B.J.P. These
humiliations galvanized his supporters: After each act of violence,
donations to the Aam Aadmi Party reportedly went up. But the undertow
was ugly: Candidates are jeering at one another on social media or in
the squares of small-town India, while their supporters tremble on the
brink of active violence.

I am skeptical of the media stories that predict an outright victory
for the B.J.P., in part because of the drop in the freedom of the
Indian press over the last 10 years. Reporters in the Hindi-language
media I spoke to privately didn’t doubt the consolidation of support
for the party, or Mr. Modi’s charisma, but they felt, as I do, that
the riots that took place in Gujarat in 2002 during Mr. Modi’s watch
as chief minister have left their mark of distrust and fear, diluting
some of the enthusiasm for the growth he promises to achieve. The
possibility of a coalition government is not so far-fetched.

In Sadar Bazaar, the owner of one of the city’s oldest printing
presses told me a story from the Indira Gandhi years, about a meeting
between his father and a prominent editor in Uttar Pradesh who had
changed his political linen to be in good odor with that authoritarian
prime minister.

“My father asked him, ‘Editor Saheb, is your spine better now?”’ the
printer said, smiling at the memory. The editor had answered,
surprised, that he had no back problems. The printer’s father then
apologized: He had been sure, he said, that the editor must be
suffering a terrible back sprain after bending over backward so far to
prove his loyalties to Ms. Gandhi.

My friend and I could name many candidates for spine injuries this
election season.

Much recent commentary has centered on Mr. Modi: A minor deity to his
legions of fans, he stands in the minds of others as the emblem of the
politics of hate. This is not so much because of his administration’s
role in allowing the 2002 riots, but rather because of his glaring
failure in the years since to apologize to the victims and his
government’s apparent unwillingness to bring them justice, reparation
or comfort.

But the moral issues of this brawling, bitter campaign are larger than
any one man. In any debate where the 2002 riots come up, they are
weighed against the 1984 massacre of the Sikhs following the
assassination of Indira Gandhi; if the B.J.P. led the government in
2002, in 1984 Congress was in charge. The way we discuss riots and
massacres is unspeakably callous, as though we were weighing onions
and potatoes in the market.

Rather than ask why many riot victims in both 1984 and 2002 have not
yet received compensation, or why so many of the state officials,
police officers and political party members implicated in the violence
have not been prosecuted, we use one riot to justify the other. Many
of Mr. Modi’s fans depict him as the victim, dismissing any questions
about his role as attempts to vilify him; even some liberals say it’s
time to “move on”; other people point out that the Congress has also
been responsible for its share of communal violence.

This election, in other words, has devolved into a contest of identity
politics, unreflective and divisive. In a perverse mirror to the
matrimonial ads — with their identifiers for caste, religious identity
and community — no Indian can enter a political argument today without
being classified as Muslim or Hindu from a privileged caste, minority
or mainstream, a devotee of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, or a
saffron-wearing right-wing supporter.

If this race had been about just one issue that affects the majority
of Indians, it would have focused on inequality. But behind the
widespread demand for growth lies a reckless greed. A recent study by
Human Rights Watch reported the casual acceptance of segregation in
schools across the country: Muslim, Dalit and tribal children often
dropped out partly because of discriminatory practices by teachers.
Yet the strident calls for an economic recovery over these past few
months have been couched as demands for the betterment of the Hindu
majority, not the poor or others on the margins.

The intolerant, anti-intellectual mood sweeping the nation is
frightening. The current Congress-led government has contributed to it
by displaying moral indifference and apathy, and the right wing by
breeding an explosive combination of anger and entitlement. I fear
that greed and a lack of compassion will destroy India, whether or not
it’s Mr. Modi and the right wing that come to power.

Nilanjana S. Roy is an essayist and critic, and author of the novel
“The Wildings.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on May 3, 2014, in The
International New York Times.

=========================================
22. SALMAN RUSHDIE ON GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: 'HIS WORLD WAS MINE'
by Salman Rushdie
=========================================
(The Telegraph, UK - 25 April 2014)

Salman Rushdie recalls how he fell in love with the novels of the late
Gabriel García Márquez

Gabo lives. The extraordinary worldwide attention paid to the death of
Gabriel García Márquez, and the genuine sorrow felt by readers
everywhere at his passing, tells us that the books are still very much
alive. Somewhere a dictatorial “patriarch” is still having his rival
cooked and served up to his dinner guests on a great dish; an old
colonel is waiting for a letter that never comes; a beautiful young
girl is being prostituted by her heartless grandmother; and a kindlier
patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, one of the founders of the new
settlement of Macondo, a man interested in science and alchemy, is
declaring to his horrified wife that “the earth is round, like an
orange”.

We live in an age of invented, alternate worlds. Tolkien’s
Middle-earth, Rowling’s Hogwarts, the dystopic universe of The Hunger
Games, the places where vampires and zombies prowl: These places are
having their day. Yet in spite of the vogue for fantasy fiction, in
the finest of literature’s fictional microcosms there is more truth
than fantasy. In William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, RK Narayan’s
Malgudi, and, yes, the Macondo of Gabriel García Márquez, imagination
is used to enrich reality, not to escape from it.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is 47 years old now, and in spite of its
colossal and enduring popularity, its style – magic realism – has
largely given way, in Latin America, to other forms of narration, in
part as a reaction against the sheer size of García Márquez’s
achievement. The most highly regarded writer of the next generation,
Roberto Bolaño, notoriously declared that magic realism “stinks”, and
jeered at García Márquez’s fame, calling him “a man terribly pleased
to have hobnobbed with so many Presidents and Archbishops”. It was a
childish outburst, but it showed that for many Latin American writers
the presence of the great colossus in their midst was more than a
little burdensome. (“I have the feeling,” Carlos Fuentes once said to
me, “that writers in Latin America can’t use the word ‘solitude’
anymore, because they worry that people will think it’s a reference to
Gabo. And I’m afraid,” he added, mischievously, “that soon we will not
be able to use the phrase ‘one hundred years’ either.”) No writer in
the world has had a comparable impact in the past half-century. Ian
McEwan has accurately compared his pre-eminence to that of Charles
Dickens. No writer since Dickens was so widely read, and so deeply
loved, as Gabriel García Márquez.

The great man’s passing may put an end to Latin American writers’
anxiety at his influence, and allow his work to be non-competitively
appreciated. Fuentes, acknowledging García Márquez’s debt to Faulkner,
called Macondo his Yoknapatawpha County, and that may be a better
point of entry into the oeuvre. These are stories about real people,
not fairy tales. Macondo exists; that is its magic.

The trouble with the term “magic realism”, el realismo mágico, is that
when people say or hear it they are really hearing or saying only half
of it, “magic”, without paying attention to the other half, “realism”.
But if magic realism were just magic, it wouldn’t matter. It would be
mere whimsy – writing in which, because anything can happen, nothing
has effect. It’s because the magic in magic realism has deep roots in
the real, because it grows out of the real and illuminates it in
beautiful and unexpected ways, that it works. Consider this famous
passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude:

“As soon as José Arcadio closed the bedroom door the sound of a pistol
shot echoed through the house. A trickle of blood came out under the
door, crossed the living-room, went out into the street, continued on
in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and
climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a
corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the
Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the
parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs… and came out in
the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack 36 eggs to make
bread.

‘Holy Mother of God!’ Úrsula shouted.”

Something utterly fantastic is happening here. A dead man’s blood
acquires a purpose, almost a life of its own, and moves methodically
through the streets of Macondo until it comes to rest at his mother’s
feet. The blood’s behavior is “impossible”, yet the passage reads as
truthful, the journey of the blood feels like the journey of the news
of his death from the room where he shot himself to his mother’s
kitchen, and its arrival at the feet of the matriarch Úrsula Iguarán
reads as high tragedy: a mother learns that her son is dead. José
Arcadio’s lifeblood can and must go on living until it can bring
Úrsula the sad news. The real, by the addition of the magical,
actually gains in dramatic and emotional force. It becomes more real,
not less.

Magic realism was not García Márquez’s invention. The Brazilian
Machado de Assis, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges, and the Mexican
Juan Rulfo came before him. García Márquez studied Rulfo’s masterpiece
Pedro Páramo closely, and likened its impact on him to that of Kafka’s
Metamorphosis. (In Pedro Paramo’s ghost-town of Comala it’s easy to
see the birthplace of García Márquez’s Macondo.) But the magic-realist
sensibility is not limited to Latin America. It crops up in all of the
world’s literatures from time to time, and García Márquez was famously
well read.

Charles Dickens’s unending court case, Jarndyce vs Jarndyce in Bleak
House, finds a relative in One Hundred Years of Solitude’s unending
railway train that passes by Macondo for a week. Dickens and García
Márquez are both masters of comic hyperbole. Dickens’s Circumlocution
Office, a government department which exists to do nothing, inhabits
the same fictional reality as all the indolent, corrupt, authoritarian
governors and tyrants in García Márquez’s work.

Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, metamorphosed into a large insect, would not
feel out of place in Macondo, where metamorphoses are treated as
commonplace. Gogol’s Kovalyov, whose nose detaches itself from his
face and wanders around St Petersburg, would also feel at home. The
French Surrealists and the American fabulists are also of this
literary company, inspired by the idea of the fictionality of fiction,
its made-up-ness, an idea that unshackles literature from the confines
of the naturalistic, and allows it to approach the truth by wilder,
and perhaps more interesting, routes. García Márquez knew very well
that he belonged to a far-flung literary family. William Kennedy
quotes him saying: “In Mexico, surrealism runs through the streets.”
And again: “The Latin American reality is totally Rabelaisian.”

But, to say it again: the flights of fancy need real ground beneath
them. When I first read García Márquez I had never been to any Central
or South American country. Yet in his pages I found a reality I knew
well from my own experience in India and Pakistan. In both places
there was and is a conflict between the city and the village, and
there are similarly profound gulfs between rich and poor, powerful and
powerless, the great and the small. Both are places with a strong
colonial history, and in both places religion is of great importance,
and God is alive, and so, unfortunately, are the godly.

I knew García Márquez’s colonels and generals, or at least their
Indian and Pakistani counterparts; his bishops were my mullahs; his
market streets were my bazaars. His world was mine, translated into
Spanish. It’s little wonder I fell in love with it – not for its magic
(although, as a writer reared on the fabulous “wonder tales” of the
East, that was appealing, too) but for its realism. My world was more
urban than his, however. It is the village sensibility that gives
García Márquez’s realism its particular flavour, the village in which
technology is frightening but a devout girl rising up to heaven is
perfectly credible; in which, as in Indian villages, the miraculous is
everywhere believed to coexist with the quotidian.

He was a journalist and never lost sight of the facts. He was a
dreamer who believed in the truth of dreams. He was also a writer
capable of moments of delirious, and often comic, beauty. At the
beginning of Love in the Time of Cholera: “The scent of bitter almonds
always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” At the heart of
The Autumn of the Patriarch, after the dictator sells the Caribbean to
the Americans, the American ambassador’s nautical engineers “carried
it off in numbered pieces to plant it far from the hurricanes in the
blood-red dawns of Arizona… they took it away with everything it had
inside general sir, with the reflection of our cities, our timid
drowned people, our demented dragons.” The first railway train arrives
in Macondo and a woman goes mad with fear. “It’s coming,” she cries.
“Something frightful, like a kitchen dragging a village behind it.”
And of course, unforgettably:

“Colonel Aureliano Buendía organized 32 armed uprisings and he lost
them all. He had 17 male children by 17 different women and they were
exterminated one after the other on a single night before the oldest
one had reached the age of 35. He survived 14 attempts on his life, 73
ambushes, and a firing squad. He lived through a dose of strychnine in
his coffee that was enough to kill a horse.”

For such magnificence, our only possible reaction is gratitude. He was
the greatest of us all.

© 2014, Salman Rushdie

=========================================
23. NIGERIA: 220 SCHOOLGIRLS HAVEN'T BEEN 'ABDUCTED' BY BOKO HARAM,
THEY HAVE BEEN ENSLAVED
by  Nick Cohen
=========================================
(The Observer, 3 May 2014)

Boko Haram is a vile manifestation, yet the liberal press stays
silent, fearful of 'demonising the other'

Terrorists from a religious cult so reactionary you don't have to
stretch the language too far to describe it as fascistic attack a
school. The assault on a civilian target, filled with non-combatant
children, has a grotesque logic behind it. They call themselves "Boko
Haram", which translates as "western education is forbidden". The sect
regards learning as oppression. They will stop all teaching that
conflicts with a holy book from the 7th century and accounts of
doubtful provenance on the life and sayings of their prophet written
hundreds of years after he died.

A desire for sexual supremacy accompanies their loathing of knowledge.
They take 220 schoolgirls as slaves and force them to convert to their
version of Islam. They either rape them or sell them on for £10 or so
to new masters. The girls are the victims of slavery, child abuse and
forced marriage. Their captors are by extension slavers and rapists.

As you can see, English does not lack plain words to describe the
foulness of the crimes in Nigeria, and no doubt they would be used in
the highly improbable event of western soldiers seizing and selling
women.

Yet read parts of the press and you enter a world of euphemism. They
have not been enslaved but "abducted" or "kidnapped", as if they will
be released unharmed when the parties have negotiated a mutually
acceptable ransom. Writers are typing with one eye over their
shoulder: watching their backs to make sure that no one can accuse
them of "demonising the other".

Turn from today's papers to the theoretical pages of leftwing journals
and you find that the grounds for understanding Boko Haram more and
condemning it less were prepared last year.

Without fully endorsing Boko Haram, of course, socialists explained
that it finds "resonance in the hearts of many poor and dispossessed"
people, who are revolted by "the corruption and flamboyant lifestyle
of the elites". Islamism is recast as a rational reaction to local
corruption and the global oppression of "neoliberalism", one of those
conveniently vague labels that can mean just about anything.

Once, rightwing newspapers or ultra-Catholic or orthodox Jewish
writers would have been the least concerned about the subjugation of
women and the most willing to find excuses for religious persecution.
But with the reliability of a speaking clock, it is leftwing writers
of the 21st century who seek to minimise violent reaction if – and
only if – the reactionaries are anti-western. (They speak out against
the lesser crimes of the US religious right, without a thought for
their own double standards.)

"The mechanical denunciation of the west," wrote the French political
theorist Pascal Bruckner in 2010, "forbids the western bloc, which is
eternally guilty, to judge or combat other systems, other states,
other religions. Our past crimes command us to keep our mouths
closed." He might have been writing today, so persistent is the belief
that the west is the root cause of the only oppression worth
mentioning.

But the appearance that nothing has changed is deceptive. It was
always absurd, and in its own way racist, to blame the problems of the
world on "the west". Leftists came to resemble American
neoconservatives. The US right, or an element of it, thought American
military power could solve any ill. The left, or an element of it,
talked as if the west was responsible for all ills. Both were
self-obsessed. Both believed that the west remained the motor of
history while the rest of humanity were bit players.

The most grievous offence was the failure of solidarity. You cannot
ally with what liberal and leftwing forces there are in any country
from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe if your are blaming their oppression on
colonialism, neoliberalism or any other "ism" that is buzzing around
in your head. You will end up excusing your comrades' enemies instead.

If occidentalism was absurd in the past, it's preposterous now. Boko
Haram is not reacting to western intervention in Nigeria, for there is
none. The only way you can pretend the west is to blame is by agreeing
that knowledge is "western knowledge", rather than the property of the
entire human race, and that the education of girls is "western
cultural imperialism" – a road that leads you to nihilism as soon as
you step down it.

Meanwhile, we are moving faster than anyone expected to a new age in
which China will be the world's largest economy. For the first time
since the 18th century, the dominant power will not allow internal
opposition or the Chinese equivalent of the campaigns on behalf of the
victims of its foreign policy that we saw in Britain, France and the
US in the last 200 years. We have not begun to understand the turn for
the worse the cause of global human rights is taking as empires shift.

On the few occasions western leftists feel they have to justify
themselves, they say they must dedicate their energies to challenging
what they can change. They cannot influence the Taliban or Boko Haram,
but can lobby their own governments. Even if you take these
explanations at face value – and I don't – they have a Tory feel to
them. Until recently, it was conservatives, not leftists, who said
that "charity begins at home" and quarrels in faraway countries were
no concern of ours.

Peter Singer, a great radical philosopher, made the old distinction
clear with a thought experiment. Imagine you are passing a shallow
pond and see a child going under. You know that if you save the child
you will ruin your clothes. Should you wade in? Of course you should,
everyone replies: "It would be obscene to put your desire to save
spending £50 on a new outfit before the life of a child."

Why then, asks Singer, do you not give money you can afford to spare
to save the life a child in Africa?

The majority of conservatives say the deaths of children they know
nothing of are not their business. Leftists, and again I accept I am
generalising, revolt against such parochialism. Yet when it comes to
violence against civilians and, most notably, the denial of women's
rights, they change the conversation to anything except the deeds of
the criminals in front them. The girl can drown or be enslaved and
raped. They have more pressing concerns.

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

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