SACW - 29 June 2014 | Sri Lanka: Statement on anti-Muslim violence / Nepal Constitution Making | Bangladesh: Killings at Geneva Camp / Pakistan: Quiet revolution/ India: Hindi and the republic; Don’t smother dissent!; Open letter to Comrade Ganapathi / Fance: The Essence of the Strike

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Sat Jun 28 16:36:17 EDT 2014


South Asia Citizens Wire - 29 June 2014 - No. 2826 
[since 1996]
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Contents:
1. Sri Lanka: Statement of Protest following anti-Muslim violence
2. Sri Lankan Muslims describe brutal communal violence
3. Book Review: Nepal - Constitutional Nationalism and Legal Exclusion by Mara Malagodi
4. Book Review: Newberg on Raghavan, '1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh'
5. Bangladesh: RAB, party hypocrisy and impunity | David Bergman
6. The Killings at Bangladesh’s Geneva Camp – Murder Mystery or Murder with Impunity? | Nadine Shaanta Murshid 
7. India: Modi's mute mode | Bharat Bhushan
8. India:: Scare-Mongering About Foreign Funding: Don’t smother dissent! | Praful Bidwai
9. India: AIDWA condemns the move by the Modi Government to dismiss the heads, and members of autonomous institutions
10. India - Assam: Bengali Muslims can’t be ‘cleansed’ by massacres and rhetoric | Harsh Mander
11. India's Publishers: Falling like ninepins | Urvashi Butalia
12. Pakistan - India: Nawaz Sharif’s Visit to India | Ram Puniyani
13. India: Fact Finding Report on Communal Attacks on Muslims of Pune
14. India: Watchdog or Lapdog - How media ‘covers' Modi | Subhash Gatade
15. India: Can the Left recover from its election debacle? | Praful Bidwai
16. India: Cinemas remove Sri Lankan film after threat
17. India: An open letter to Comrade Ganapathi, General Secretary, CPI (Maoist) | Sumanta Banerjee
18. India: Uphold Sustainable Development! - A satement
19. Recent content on Communalism Watch:
  - PIL for Uniform Civil Code: Delhi High Court roots for religious pluralism
  - India: The Consolidation of the Right Under Hindutva Banners
  - Announcement: Idea of India Conclave, July 4-5, 2014
  - India's Health Minister questions condom use in AIDS fight . . .
  - Bangladesh: Sentence against Harkat-ul Jihad-al Islami member for 2001 bombing
  - India: On a high, Hindu outfits plan wider reach in UP
  - India: PM Modi’s directive, home ministry destroys 1.5 lakh files
  - India: Arrest warrant against the cricketer MS Dhoni based on petition filed by VHP
  - India: RSS prepares for a new 10-storey office complex in Delhi
  - India: Hindu Janajagruti Samiti says 'Don't wait for govt to establish Hindu nation'
  - Inside the RSS, India's Hindu nationalist movement, where Modi got his start 

::: Full TEXT :::
20. Pakistan: A quiet revolution (Editorial, Daily Times)
21. Sri Lanka: Remains of the hate | Frances Harrison
22. India: The Spectre Of Babel - Hindi and the republic | Mukul Kesavan
23. France: The Essence of the Strike | Maud Vergnol

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1. SRI LANKA: STATEMENT OF PROTEST FOLLOWING ANTI-MUSLIM VIOLENCE
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We the undersigned Sri Lankans strongly condemn the Bodu Bala Sena’s (BBS) highly inflammatory hate speech against, and brazen physical attacks on the Muslim community in Aluthgama, Beruwala, Welipenna and Dharga-Town in June 2014. We believe that the violence is directly linked to recent statements by the BBS targeting Muslims. We call upon the authorities to immediately conduct independent investigations into the incidents, and hold to account perpetrators and those complicit in such acts. We believe inflammatory statements made by the General Secretary of the BBS, Galagodathera Gnanasara, clearly demonstrates his pivotal role and responsibility for the violence. We therefore call upon the authorities to take immediate steps to arrest and charge him for the deaths and destruction in the area.
http://sacw.net/article8969.html

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2. SRI LANKAN MUSLIMS DESCRIBE BRUTAL COMMUNAL VIOLENCE
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World Socialist Web Site reporters this week visited the Sri Lanka coastal town of Aluthgama, 60 kilometres from Colombo, where Buddhist extremist thugs have attacked the Muslim community. The communal violence was whipped up by an anti-Muslim meeting organised by Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), or Buddhist Brigade, in Aluthgama on June 15.
http://sacw.net/article9049.html

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3. BOOK REVIEW: CONSTITUTIONAL NATIONALISM AND LEGAL EXCLUSION: EQUALITY, IDENTITY, POLITICS, AND DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL (1990-2007), BY MARA MALAGODI
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This book presents a thorough case study of Nepal's post-1990 constitutional experience. Mara Malagodi looks to trace the evolution of Nepal from a constitutional monarchy to a republic by analysing the drafting of the 1990 Constitution, the impact of the Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) on demands for constitutional change, the relationship between conflict and demands for recognition, and the role of Nepal's Supreme Court in the articulation of identity politics. Amanda Snellinger finds that the book will be a striking read for scholars interested in legal exclusion, Nepal's political history, and constitutions and national identities.

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4. BOOK REVIEW: NEWBERG ON RAGHAVAN, '1971: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE CREATION OF BANGLADESH'
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In October, 1971, New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg began an anguished piece in Foreign Affairs with spare prose: “History, geopolitical forces, power balances and election results all helped shape the crisis in East Pakistan.” But, he continued, “only in terms of ‘the pathology of the subcontinent,' as one diplomat described it, can this bloody upheaval be adequately explained.”[1]
http://sacw.net/article9035.html

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5. BANGLADESH: RAB, PARTY HYPOCRISY AND IMPUNITY
by David Bergman
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These forces have been given so much power and authority that they have blatantly disregarded constitutional provisions, human rights laws as well as court law.
http://sacw.net/article9037.html

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6. THE KILLINGS AT BANGLADESH’S GENEVA CAMP – MURDER MYSTERY OR MURDER WITH IMPUNITY?
by Nadine Shaanta Murshid 
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(via: http://alalodulal.org)
There are multiple stories. We are either to believe one of them or 
http://sacw.net/article8997.html

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7. INDIA: MODI'S MUTE MODE
by Bharat Bhushan
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Following a voluble campaign, Narendra Modi has gone remarkably quiet after taking over as Prime Minister. So has his entire government. The Bharatiya Janata Party which runs the government is also muted after its president and most of its spokespersons were appointed ministers.
http://sacw.net/article9053.html

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8. INDIA:: SCARE-MONGERING ABOUT FOREIGN FUNDING: DON’T SMOTHER DISSENT!
by Praful Bidwai
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A journalist isn’t generally expected to comment on news items in which s/he personally figures as an actor. But I’m compelled to do so in respect of a leaked report prepared by the Intelligence Bureau, which received wide coverage, and which names me as part of a conspiracy by “foreign-funded” non-governmental organisations to “take down” Indian development projects, set the country’s economy back, and halt this society’s forward march.
http://sacw.net/article8999.html

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9. INDIA: AIDWA CONDEMNS THE MOVE BY THE MODI GOVERNMENT TO DISMISS THE HEADS, AND MEMBERS OF AUTONOMOUS INSTITUTIONS
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The reports that have appeared in the media about the Modi Government taking measures to ease out the heads of various institutions, including the Chairperson of the National Commission for Women, is an undemocratic act which thoroughly exposes the intention of the BJP to bring all structures within its political power.
http://sacw.net/article8982.html

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10. INDIA - ASSAM: BENGALI MUSLIMS CAN’T BE ‘CLEANSED’ BY MASSACRES AND RHETORIC
by Harsh Mander
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Histories cannot be erased. Areas cannot be ‘cleansed’ of ethnic and religious populations by inflamed rhetoric and brutal massacres of the kind that Narayanguri witnessed. These diverse peoples cannot be barred under India’s constitutional guarantees from settling, farming, earning their living and indeed participating in governance in any part of the country. They cannot be reduced as they are today to dread and insecurity.
http://sacw.net/article9023.html

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11. INDIA'S PUBLISHERS: FALLING LIKE NINEPINS
by Urvashi Butalia
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The Dina Nath Batra episodes show that self-censorship is an issue that publishers, writers and readers need to address seriously and urgently.
http://sacw.net/article9018.html

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12. PAKISTAN-INDIA: NAWAZ SHARIF’S VISIT TO INDIA
by Ram Puniyani
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India Pakistan relations have always been mired with in various controversies, which have been preventing the friendly relations with our neighbor, who in ‘popular perception’ is seen as an enemy. It is due to this that while all the members of SAARC countries have been invited, the one to draw maximum popular attention has been the coming of Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan. In a deft move India’s the then Prime Minister designate sent an invite to all the heads of SAARC countries for his swearing in ceremony, (16 May 2014) which was held with great pomp and show.
http://sacw.net/article9009.html

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13. INDIA: FACT FINDING REPORT ON COMMUNAL ATTACKS ON MUSLIMS OF PUNE
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Report of a recent fact finding group which investigated the Pune IT youth’s lynching by a Hindutva group.
http://sacw.net/article9005.html

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14. INDIA: WATCHDOG OR LAPDOG - HOW MEDIA ‘COVERS' MODI
by Subhash Gatade
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On completion of 30 days in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he had no luxury of 'honeymoon' period. Any neutral observer would tend to disagree and can easily throw light on the great hiatus between Mr Modi's claim and actual situation on the ground.
http://sacw.net/article9050.html

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15. INDIA: CAN THE LEFT RECOVER FROM ITS ELECTION DEBACLE?
by Praful Bidwai
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Almost as incredible as the Left parties' electoral rout, which halved their Lok Sabha seats to their lowest-ever total (12, even counting two Left-backed independents), is their failure to come to terms with its magnitude, quality and causes. Instead of acknowledging the debacle as the result of deep-rooted flaws in its programmes and strategies, a massive leadership failure, and its alienation from the people, the Left first practised denial by alleging large-scale rigging, then admitted to its “poor” showing, and finally accepted its central leaders' “primary responsibility for the failure”.
http://sacw.net/article9042.html

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16. INDIA: CINEMAS REMOVE SRI LANKAN FILM AFTER THREAT
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Threats from pro Tamil groups scuttle screenings Sri Lankan film in India
http://sacw.net/article9041.html

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17. INDIA: AN OPEN LETTER TO COMRADE GANAPATHI, GENERAL SECRETARY, CPI (MAOIST)
by Sumanta Banerjee
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    Let me begin by reminding you of a resolution which your party - CPI(Maoist) – adopted at your 9th Congress in March, 2007. Entitled `Resolution Against Hindu Fascism,' it said: “The CPI(Maoist) pledges to fight resolutely against each and every instance of the trampling on the democratic rights of the oppressed minorities and others by the Hindu fascists. It pledges to do its best to defend the sections of the population targeted by the Hindu fascists. Our party is willing to unite in a broad front with all the genuine democratic forces which would be willing to fight back the Hindu fascist offensive.”
http://sacw.net/article9036.html

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18. INDIA: UPHOLD SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT!
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We, the following organizations and individuals are deeply shocked at the dubious methods used by the Intelligence Bureau of the Home Ministry of India, to discredit many important social activists in this country who have committed their lives in social action for years. For a long time, these activists have consistently questioned the destructive path of development India is following and have demanded a model of sustainable and equitable development which does not harm the environment, local communities, culture and the future generations.
http://sacw.net/article9028.html
 
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19. RECENT CONTENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH
=========================================

India: PIL for Uniform Civil Code: Delhi High Court roots for religious pluralism
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/pil-for-uniform-civil-code-delhi-high.html

India: The Consolidation of the Right Under Hindutva Banners
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-consolidation-of-right-under.html

Announcement: Idea of India Conclave, July 4-5, 2014
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/announcement-idea-of-india-conclave.html

India's Health Minister questions condom use in AIDS fight . . .
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/indias-health-minister-questions-condom.html

Bangladesh: Sentence against Harkat-ul Jihad-al Islami member for 2001 bombing
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/bangladesh-sentence-against-harkat-ul.html

India: On a high, Hindu outfits plan wider reach in UP
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-on-high-hindu-outfits-plan-wider.html

India: PM Modi’s directive, home ministry destroys 1.5 lakh files
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-pm-modis-directive-home-ministry.html

India: Arrest warrant against the cricketer MS Dhoni based on petition filed by Vishwa Hindu Parishad
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-arrest-warrent-against-cricketer.html

India: RSS prepares for a new 10-storey office complex in Delhi
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-rss-prepares-for-new-10-storey.html

India: The week-long convention organized by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti says 'Don't wait for govt to establish Hindu nation'
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-week-long-convention-organized-by.html

India: RSS book in Vadodara schools
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/india-rss-book-in-vadodara-schools.html

Inside the RSS, India's Hindu nationalist movement, where Modi got his start 
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/06/inside-rss-indias-hindu-nationalist.html

::: FULL TEXT :::

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20. PAKISTAN: A QUIET REVOLUTION (Editorial, Daily Times)
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(Daily Times, 21 June 2014)
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday issued a 32-page judgement on the rights of religious minorities. Chief Justice (CJ) Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, hearing a petition filed by Sindh Hindu community representative Ramesh Kumar about incidents where their places of worship were desecrated, issued a comprehensive judgement detailing how the rights of members of minority communities have been usurped by extremist groups because of negligence by the authorities in safeguarding individual rights. In its judgement, the SC ordered the formation of a national council for minorities’ rights to monitor and ensure the practical realisation of these rights and safeguards under the constitution, and a specially trained police taskforce charged with protecting their places of worship The SC noted that while the constitution specifies the rights to freedom of religion and its propagation, the ground reality was one of increasing prejudice and discrimination against minority communities. Reports such as the recent finding that members of the Ahmedi community have begun fleeing to China in a bid to escape persecution by extremist groups prove just how timely this judgement is. The court noted that propagation of extremist literature and hate speech via social media needed discouragement and the distributers of hate speech must be brought to justice. Noting that there was a general lack of awareness about the issue of minority rights among people and law enforcement agencies, the court also directed changes to curricula taught at schools and universities to promote a culture of religious tolerance. Minority groups have been ruthlessly persecuted partly because religious extremists have hijacked and framed the debate around Islamic traditions in terms of community viewpoints rather than constitutional rights. By reframing the debate in terms of the obligations of the state to its citizens, the SC has made the distinction between protection of religious minorities as groups, which is affirmative action to correct social imbalances, and individual rights it is bound to protect. The latter are subject only to law, public order, and morality, notions that the SC observed were “not reducible to the Islamic meanings of those terms”, acknowledging that the history of jurisprudence, Islamic and otherwise, cannot be limited to the narrow interpretations of one particular religious group or sect. This is a re-evaluation of the place of religion in Pakistani society, and yet is in the tradition of Islamic ijtehad (consultation) since the court also observed that Islam provides complete religious freedom “documented in both the Holy Quran and the prophetic teachings known as Sunnah”. This was reinforced when the CJ noted that no religious group, minority or otherwise, has the right to force an individual in religious matters, echoing Quranic teachings as well as Mohammad Ali Jinnah's oft quoted statement, “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Hence, while the reality on the ground remains perilous, this judgement is a significant step on the path to normalising interfaith relations and protecting Pakistanis of all faiths.   

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21. SRI LANKA: REMAINS OF THE HATE
by Frances Harrison
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(The Hindu, June 25, 2014)

Many Sri Lankans do not recognise the extremist Bodu Bala Sena as embodying Buddhist values at all, but they are increasingly unwilling to speak out about their opposition to it

Sri Lanka has just experienced the worst communal violence in decades but you wouldn’t always know it from the behaviour of its politicians. Six members of the main Opposition party went on a fact-finding mission to look into the well-being of the animals in Dehiwala Zoo, in particular the deaths of lions and hippopotamuses. No matter that four humans had just died, 80 injured and hundreds of properties including at least 17 mosques attacked, leaving thousands homeless. A few days earlier, Muslims living near the zoo had been planning to evacuate after wild rumours spread that their houses could also be attacked by the extreme Sinhala chauvinist group, the Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Brigade).

In denial

Denial has reached surreal proportions in the paradise island. After the media announced a curfew for the troubled areas on Sunday evening there was complete silence on radio, TV, mainstream news websites and even the hyperactive SMS news subscription sites, known for sending out texts every time the Sri Lankan cricket team scores a six. The websites and social media channels of all government institutions just went strangely silent, including those of the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Defence and the Sri Lankan Army site.

“It was literally nothing. It was bizarre. It was unprecedented as a response. It was no response,” says Sanjana Hattotuwa who runs the citizen journalism site, ‘Groundviews,’ in Colombo, who was literally begging the government to react to events. There were a couple of tweets from the President and that was all for three days as the anti-Muslim violence inflamed by the Buddhist monks of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) continued to simmer. The Rajapaksa brothers said nothing publicly and when the President returned home from Bolivia on the fourth day, he just made a few statements about the need for reconstruction after visiting the area. He also presided over the inauguration of a Buddhist Advisory Council and spoke of the need “to protect Buddhism” from threats and then told a visiting delegation of Buddhists that it was only those who couldn’t bear to see the island at peace who spread false information abroad.

The government says it will investigate but resists calls to ban or prosecute the BBS for inciting racial and religious hatred. There are reports that Muslims who went to police stations to report incidents have themselves been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the violence. The only punitive action seems to have come from Facebook, which took the BBS page offline after a flood of complaints.

Sri Lankans have been asking why there has been nothing from their own government addressing the grief of thousands of Muslim survivors now sheltering in schools and mosques while there were swift messages of condolence and concern from the U.S. Embassy, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the U.N., Canada, the European Union and religious and diaspora groups.

“This is a community that’s devastated,” says Mr. Hattotuwa, “not just in terms of bricks and mortar but utterly traumatised and now they’re being asked to return to homes that don’t exist. The fear is of a degree I have not encountered before. People talk to you in hushed tones and it’s palpable.”

Many Sri Lankans do not recognise the extremist BBS as embodying Buddhist values at all, but they are increasingly unwilling to speak out about their opposition to it. Recent reports of an attack on a monk who had been critical of the BBS sent shock waves through Sinhala communities; local media initially quoted the police as saying the cleric had been kidnapped and left bound and naked by a river after an attempt to circumcise him with a knife. In a country that holds the Buddhist clergy in the highest respect it was extraordinary that obscene comments appeared on Facebook attacking the monk for being too soft on Muslims, saying he deserved the brutal treatment. Subsequently the police said the monk had confessed that he had staged the attack and self-inflicted his wounds. The monk is to be charged with filing a false complaint to the police.

Element of paranoia

Few want to challenge the BBS because they know it has been nurtured and protected by those in power and therefore had impunity for its actions. The Rajapaksa brothers have openly attended their functions, allowed them to have airtime on television and constantly echo the BBS rhetoric about the need to protect Buddhism under threat. Indeed a cabinet minister, Champika Ranawaka, was filmed warning that the Muslim population was expanding so rapidly that they would soon take over the country — repeating the refrain of the BBS. This paranoia about Muslim population growth is also shared by Myanmar’s 969 Movement whose leader dubs himself the Buddhist bin Laden and recently befriended the leader of the BBS in Sri Lanka.

On social media, Sri Lankans have repeatedly noted the similarity of recent events to 1983, when the President of the day also remained silent during the pogrom against Tamils — the turning point in the civil war which sparked an exodus of Tamils abroad. The scale might be different this time but there were other parallels. Muslims complained that the mob had local knowledge and generally targeted only Muslim-owned properties and that the police and the paramilitary Special Task Force on several occasions stood by and allowed the attacks to happen. Instead local people credited the Army with finally bringing the situation under control. A few politicians have been asking why the Sri Lankan government allowed the BBS to hold a rally in Aluthgama in the first place and then move through the Muslim quarters when it was so clearly provocative given recent tensions there. Some Muslim groups had actually written to the authorities warning that there could be riots and begging them not to allow the gathering. When so many students, trade union activists and families of the disappeared are denied the right to hold peaceful protests it does seem extraordinary that the BBS was allowed to bus in hundreds of supporters.

Some commentators have suggested that this is all about whipping up nationalist sentiment before the next elections; others that it is about deflecting attention from the U.N. inquiry into Sri Lankan war crimes. One theory is that the plan is to instigate a violent Muslim reaction that could be portrayed as an Islamic terror threat and used to woo back western support, while at the same time not alienating the Buddhist hardline at home. Already there has been talk by government ministers of al-Qaeda infiltration into Sri Lanka and attempts to blame Muslims for attacking Sinhalese. Extraordinarily, an official government communiqué to the U.N. Human Rights Council on the issue failed to mention the BBS at all, and took for granted as fact that there had been a Muslim attack on a Buddhist monk, when that has yet to be established.

Attacking the messenger

A handful of brave professional and citizen journalists were responsible for the bulk of the news coming out and they now feel very exposed. They are being attacked in the state media as “vultures” and “trained agents” of subversion, while some reporters received death threats or were physically attacked when trying to do their job. The site ‘Groundviews’ and others did their best to sift, filter and corroborate news, erring on the side of caution for example if the meta data of a photograph caused concern. They constantly had to deny rumours and misinformation, calming panic and calling for calm. “Social media was the only coverage,” says Mr. Hattotuwa, “It was self correcting if there were flaws, but it was mostly in English.”

What has shocked many is how easy it had been to provoke the fears of the Sinhala majority and how deep the racism against Muslims now runs, especially among the young. Sinhala language comment pages online are awash with vitriol. ‘Groundviews’ has been monitoring 35 Facebook fan pages and found the hate speech against Muslims has increased exponentially.

Of course it’s not clear if the venom spewed out on cyberspace actually translates into violent acts in the real world. The bulk of the users are very young Sinhalese, many attending the leading schools of Colombo. Much of what is online in Sinhala chat pages is offensive.

“It's the stuff of nightmares, the glimpse into hate, the sheer bile is mind-boggling,” says Mr. Hattotuwa, adding, “we need to coin a word to describe how bad it is.”

(A former BBC correspondent in Colombo, Frances Harrison is the author of Still Counting the Dead, Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War.) 

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22. INDIA: THE SPECTRE OF BABEL - HINDI AND THE REPUBLIC
by Mukul Kesavan
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(The Telegraph (India), 27 June 2014)
Narendra Modi’s election campaign advanced Hindi’s claim to be India’s political lingua franca. By campaigning in Hindi in every part of India and winning not just a substantial mandate but by making important breakthroughs in the south and the east, Narendra Modi and his party demonstrated that Hindi wasn’t politically radioactive outside the Hindi belt.

Politicians from Gujarat have, historically, embraced Hindi as India’s principal language. Gandhi championed Hindi’s cause, as did Vallabhbhai Patel without feeling that Hindi’s pre-eminence threatened Gujarati’s standing as an Indian language. Modi’s fluency and rhetorical skill in Hindi and Rahul Gandhi’s ineptness in the language made Modi seem the authentically grounded neta while making the Gandhi scion sound like the natural voice of India’s babalog.

Like Modi, Kejriwal campaigned both on television and on the road in Hindi. Clearly, Hindi as a language of pan-Indian political communication is more acceptable now than it was through the first 50 years of republican politics.

Not content with having rehabilitated Hindi politically, Modi’s government decided to formally underline Hindi’s primacy as the official language of the republic. The government of India directed the Central government’s civil servants to ensure that official accounts on social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Google and YouTube compulsorily used Hindi, or both Hindi and English, with Hindi being written above or first. A subsequent circular, issued by the official languages department of the ministry of home affairs, instructed government departments to do their work in Hindi and to make file notings in Hindi.

These directives predictably provoked politicians from non-Hindi speaking states, especially Tamil Nadu, to denounce the move as an attempt to make Hindi hegemonic. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s allies in Tamil Nadu, the PMK and the MDMK, were as vehemently opposed to the move as Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi. In the face of this opposition, the Central government made soothing noises and finally fudged the matter by ‘clarifying’ that the directives were only aimed at Hindi-speaking states.

This little spat tells us something about the way in which the BJP conceives of India as a nation. Its earlier political avatar, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, was formally committed to the slogan, “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”. In seeing a single dominant language as a necessary precondition for a robust nation, both the Jana Sangh and the BJP aren’t exceptional: they are, in the most orthodox possible way, trying to align their nationalist practice with the templates they have inherited from European histories of nationalism.

In Europe’s historical experience of nation-formation, the principal basis for national identity is language. Even the names of European nations are, often, assertions of the hegemony of dominant languages: Portugal, Spain, France, England, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Romania, Poland, Sweden, Norway and so on.

The near-unvarying coincidence of nation and language was negatively illustrated by the collapse of states which tried to transcend linguistic homogeneity such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Yugoslavia. Earlier, polyglot empires like the Austro-Hungarian or the Ottoman, yielded to and were superseded by, language-based nations such as Greece, Turkey, Germany, Italy and so on.

Belgium is always on the verge of splitting into its French and Flemish halves, Canada has long confronted Québécois secessionism, Kurdish speakers want to be consolidated into a Kurdish nation instead of being linguistic minorities ‘stranded’ in Turkish and Arab nations, and when linguistic differences coincide with religious differences, as in Sri Lanka, between Sinhala-speaking Buddhists and Tamil-speaking non-Buddhists, a separate state seems not just a temptation but mandated destiny.

A hegemonic language may not be a sufficient basis on which to organize a nation state, but the European precedent seems to suggest that it is a necessary condition. Consequently, nations inhabited by majorities who share one language and one linguistic culture are seen as the historical norm. A single dominant language is seen as the indispensable glue that keeps citizens together.

The practice of the United States of America makes this explicit: learning English is part of becoming American. In the past anxious levies of writers have preemptively protested against any move to grant the spreading presence of Spanish any official recognition. The presence of more than one language within a country’s borders is seen as a threat to the the sense of community essential to a nation state, to the idea of a unified citizenry.

So regardless of whether the nation as a language community was willed into being by the State through mass education and deliberate policy or was the product of economic modernity and print capitalism, historical accounts of nationalism tend to map the creation of vernacular communities of feeling.

The history of the dominant strain of Indian nationalism is an exception to the European rule. It doesn’t fit Western templates and because we don’t acknowledge the novelty of Indian nationalism, we misread the nature of the Indian State and underestimate the extent to which it offers an alternative model of nationalism.

Indian nationalism was not a variant of some Western nationalist precedent. It was a novel and original nationalism which stood the first principle of European nationalism on its head, namely the homogeneity of the national community. Instead of basing its claim to represent the nation on its ability to embody some unifying principle — language, faith, race and so on —it based its representative credentials on its capacity to represent India’s diversity.

The political fetishization of India’s diversity wasn’t inevitable: it happened because a peculiar political organization — the Congress — understood India in a particular way and mobilized politically on the basis of that understanding. A pluralist nationalism wasn’t determined mechanically by India’s diversity; it was a political choice. There were (and are) Indian nationalists who saw the pruning and disciplining of diversity as a pre-requisite for a modern Indian nation. Not everyone was enthusiastic about India’s multi-linguality.

There is a not very funny joke about the insular American who thought Indians spoke Indian. Unlike Indonesia, which sponsored a national language, Bahasa Indonesia, as the Indonesian language, India has no Bhasha India, no language privileged as ‘Indian’.

The diversity of India’s religious and linguistic cultures is a fact, but the pluralism that defines the republic is a political choice that politically engaged Indians made after much trial and error. The language communities on which the European nationalisms of the 19th centuries were based offered very little guidance in the context of the sub-continent’s dizzying linguistic variety.

It’s useful to examine the way in which the young Indian republic dealt with the matter of language and the fear of Babel that’s hardwired into the Western conception of nationalism.

In Western histories, a multiplicity of languages isn’t just seen as a kind of redundancy, it’s seen as dangerous, a portent of disunity and incoherence. There’s even Biblical warrant for this in the story of the tower of Babel told in Genesis. In the beginning, when men were virtuous “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech”. Then, when humans succumbed to hubris and tried to build a tower that would touch the heavens, god intervened:

“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth... and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”

This fear of being scattered by a babel of tongues haunts nation states. The Congress, thanks to Gandhi, had embraced India’s many languages by organizing the party into linguistic regions, but the rulers of the new republic in its early years were still attracted by the unifying discipline of a single language. You see this in the attempt to install Hindi as the pan-Indian official language, India’s rashtra bhasha. Even Nehru thought that a flexible and everyday Hindi was needed to bind India together.

But when the policy encountered serious resistance, the republican State shamelessly fudged the matter. First Hindi was formally given pre-eminence, then English ‘temporarily’ retained, then the champions of regional languages were mollified by neutering Hindi: the provinces were allowed to communicate with the Centre in English. Did this fudge ‘solve’ the question of a ‘national’ language? No. But it wasn’t intended to. The republic’s leaders had served a long apprenticeship as anti-colonial pluralists: it had taught them how to procrastinate, to defer, to postpone, to buy time till hot button issues went cold.

A pluralist nationalism ducks the task of defining the national ‘self’. Recognizing that in a diverse country ‘one size can’t fit all’, the republic improvises ways of avoiding the homogenizing definitions that Western constructions of nationalism press upon nation states. And thanks to this talent for postponement, republican India managed to lay the spectre of Babel, the fear that diversity makes a democratic nation incoherent, disunited, unworkable.

Majoritarianism is so hard-wired into the BJP that, in office, it instinctively returns to the task of making Hindi hegemonic because it believes as an article of faith that a nation needs a single dominant language in the way a formal kurta needs starch: to give it body, to keep it from crumpling. It’s a dangerously simple idea for a complicated republic. The cause of Hindi as India’s lingua franca is better served by political campaigning and popular cinema than it is by coercive bureaucratic directives. The linguistic identity of the Indian nation is a hydra that was spelled into sleep by the early wizards of the republic. However much it wishes to undo Dumbledore's doings, the BJP ought to let this sleeping serpent lie.

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23. FRANCE: THE ESSENCE OF THE STRIKE
by Maud Vergnol
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Translated Tuesday 24 June 2014, by Isabelle Métral

ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: L’essence de la grève
http://www.humanite.fr/lessence-de-la-greve-544790

All of the French cultural economy is being rocked by a massive strike by artists of all disciplines and their attendant technicians in protest against a bill that undermines their current rights to unemployment benefits as “intermittent” workers (“Fr. “intermittents”). The current régime takes into account their actual work in between, that is, in preparation for, their public performances.

« There are still people to whom strikes are a scandal, » Roland Barthes protested indignantly in 1957, in reaction to le Figaro’s reactionary opinion columns. Serge Dassault’s Figaro has remained faithful to the values of its owner’s class: it has been doing its utmost for the last week to discredit a social movement that is fighting for our common good. The real novelty is that in so doing, it is at one with the government that draped itself in a socialist flag to get elected, and whose leader pretends not to understand the “meaning” of all these strikes. Or is it that he understands it only too well?

For why, precisely, does the French employers’ confederation (MEDEF) target the “intermittents”? Why, indeed? Clearly, the reason is that appendices n°4, 8, and 10 to the unemployment benefits law represented one of the very few dispositions that protected immaterial and intermittent (or discontinuous) jobs. The bosses are no fools. They will not have their hyper-flexibility model tampered with. Already in 2003, the “intermittents”‘ strike innovated in bringing to the forefront two civilizational questions: the place of culture and secure employment, and their redefinition in the light of the changes that employment has undergone.

Even before the crisis was invoked as a pretext for doing away with all social rights, it became clear to the “intermittents” that they must wage a political battle over the increasing insecurity and discontinuity of employment that are now affecting many other sectors besides the cultural and audio-visual sectors. History has proved them right. For, through all the recent reforms or protocols, employers have succeeded in turning a system based on mutual benefits into an insurance scheme in which individuals must fend for themselves.

How then can “intermittents” be branded as self-interested “corporatists”? Is Manuel Valls the only person to have missed the “meaning” of this strike? A rail worker [1] who came last Monday to express his support to the “intermittents” saw this clearly, and put it neatly: “We are your spectators, and you are our users”, he said.

Let us turn to Roland Barthes for the concluding formula: “For what we find here indeed is an inherent feature of the reactionary mentality, which consists in breaking up the community into isolated individuals, and the individual into essences”.

[1] French rail workers are currently on strike over a bill that would open the way to the liberalization of passenger lines and further impair the maintenance and development of the infrastructure : see article 2491.


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