SACW - 7 July 2015 | Pakistan: Heatwave Petition / Learn from Sri Lanka / Bangladesh & Beyond: Voltaire Lecture 2015 / India: Senseless celebration of 1965 war; Praful Bidwai (1949-2015) / Stop prosecuting bad behavior as rape / India’s Environmental History / How Corporate America Invented Christian America

Tue Jul 7 05:47:35 EDT 2015

South Asia Citizens Wire - 7 July 2015 - No. 2862 
[since 1996]

[This issue of the dispatch is dedicated to remember and celebrate Praful Bidwai, the journalist and peace activist who was long standing member of the sacw list. We announce that there is memorial meeting
for Praful Bidwai on the 8 July 2015 @ IIC Delhi - 6-8 pm]

Contents:
1. Pakistan: Text of the Constitution Petition in relation to the Heat Wave Tragedy
2. 'Fighting machetes with pens': Voltaire Lecture 2015 by Rafida Ahmed Bonya
3. Why it is senseless to celebrate the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War | Bharat Bhushan
4. India - Travel ban imposed on human rights defender Teesta Setalvad
5. Praful Bidwai (1949-2015) | Pritam Singh
6. Text of Praful Bidwai's Intervention at the February 1999 Pakistan Peace Conference in Karachi
7. Audio: Richard Falk Interviewed by Praful Bidwai
8. India: A Farewell For Praful . . . | Pamela Philipose
9. India: 27 June 2015 photos from Praful Bidwai's Funeral in Delhi
10. India's World - Nepal grapples with Constitution drafting | A TV discussion
11. India: Worship on streets not a fundamental right says Bombay High Court
12. India: Apoorvanand, Ali Javed and Satish Deshpande report on Atali village - ‘Are you a Mulla or one of us?'
13. August 15 1947 - Communist Party's Appeal to the People of Pakistan
14. India: Leading communist and veteran journalist Comrade Jagjit Singh Anand is no more
15. India: No Mercy For the Poor | Jean Drèze (The Wire 17 June 2015)
16. India: Anhad report on first 365 days of the Narendra Modi Government
17. Militarised Borders of Asia - Focus of IIAS Newsletter Summer 2015
18. India: 1998 interview with Subhadra Joshi by Sagari Chhabra
19. Recent on Communalism Watch:
- India: a film about Nellie Massacre
- India Shiv Sena’s new normal (Suhas Palshikar)
- India: Researcher denied access to CID records on VD Savarkar, despite CM Devendra Fadnavis's recommendation
- India: Kanwarias can’t carry hockey sticks, trishul, lathis this ‘Shravan’
- India: Newsclick interview with Nandita Haksar - Malegaon Blast, NIA, BJP and Saffron Terror
- Book Review: Right-Wing Populism in Europe
- India: Need a favour from the government? Contact your local RSS man
- How Saudi funded Rs 1,700 crore for Wahabi influence in India (Vicky Nanjappa)
- India: The Subversion of Hindutva terror trials - After Malegaon, Ajmer Blast Case Faces Allegations of Sabotage
- India: After Swamy plea, court to review penal provisions for hate speech
- Tension in Muzaffarnagar village, Muslims remained besieged in a mosque for half a day
- The Indian Medical Association demands strict action against Ramdev
- India: Delhi University has gotten lost in a quagmire of parochial interests
::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT :::
20. Aung San Suu Kyi on the state of democracy in Burma | Fred Hiatt 
21. Buddhist monks seek to ban schoolgirls from wearing headscarves in Burma | Simon Lewis
22. Female Literacy: What the Indian economy needs to learn from Sri Lanka | Saurabh Mukherjea
23. Despite being a woman - South Asia is one of the worst places in the world to be female | Banyan
24. We need to stop prosecuting bad behavior as rape | Cathy Young 
25. Book Review: Shifting Ground – People, Animals, and Mobility in India’s Environmental History | Shekar Dattatri
26. Book Review: Kevin M. Kruse. One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

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1. PAKISTAN: TEXT OF THE CONSTITUTION PETITION IN RELATION TO THE HEAT WAVE TRAGEDY
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That the subject-matter of this present Petition is in relation to the deaths of over one thousand (1000) people and injury caused to over 40,000 people affected, inter-alia, by heat waves striking Karachi and various parts of Sindh and the gross negligence and illegalities of the Respondents [hereinafter referred to as the ‘Heat Wave Tragedy’]. It is submitted that the Petitioners, through this Petition, seek justice and enforcement of the fundamental rights and the law, for the victims, the survivors and their families, and also seek further directions from this Honourable Court to inquire into the deaths of/injury to a huge number of people in relation to the Heat Wave Tragedy, fix the responsibility for such deaths and injury, to suggest measures in order to deal with the ongoing Heat Wave Tragedy and also to deal with such Heat Wave Tragedies in the future.
http://www.sacw.net/article11327.html

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2. 'FIGHTING MACHETES WITH PENS': VOLTAIRE LECTURE 2015 BY RAFIDA AHMED BONYA
=========================================
My late-husband, Dr. Avijit Roy and I were Bangladeshi-American citizens and Humanists, and we are the recent victims of Islamic terrorism in Bangladesh. Avijit and I visited our homeland, Bangladesh, on Feb 16th, to attend the Annual National Book Fair. The fair is a nationally renowned event, attended by thousands, held through the entire month of February.
http://www.sacw.net/article11338.html

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3. WHY IT IS SENSELESS TO CELEBRATE THE 1965 INDO-PAKISTAN WAR
by Bharat Bhushan
========================================
Pakistan stopped celebrating the 1965 War with India some time ago, after some of its generals questioned the triumphalism being built around the debacle. India, however, it seems, has taken over from where Pakistan left off. To celebrate India’s military victory over Pakistan, a month-long ’commemorative carnival’ and a ’victory festival’ topped with a victory parade is to be held on Rajpath in Delhi on 20 September.
http://www.sacw.net/article11347.html

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4. INDIA - TRAVEL BAN IMPOSED ON HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER TEESTA SETALVAD
========================================
On 29 June 2015, a travel ban was imposed on human rights defender Ms Teesta Setalvad one week before the Supreme Court proceedings on granting her bail.
http://www.sacw.net/article11345.html

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5. PRAFUL BIDWAI (1949-2015)
by Pritam Singh
========================================
Praful Bidwai leaves a rich legacy of a whole generation of journalists and activists mentored by his erudition, moral integrity and commitment to peace and ecological sustainability. He will be deeply missed by progressive people in India and abroad but his combination of professional competence and political commitment would forever remain a shining inspiration.
http://www.sacw.net/article11344.html

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6. TEXT OF PRAFUL BIDWAI'S INTERVENTION AT THE FEBRUARY 1999 PAKISTAN PEACE CONFERENCE IN KARACHI
=========================================
Praful Bidwai, the Indian Journalist and Peace activist had made a powerful case for building a peace movement to oppose Nuclear weaponsiation of India and Pakistan
http://www.sacw.net/article11339.html

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7. AUDIO: RICHARD FALK INTERVIEWED BY PRAFUL BIDWAI
=========================================
Richard Falk the widely acclaimed law professor from Princeton who served as the special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights for the United Nations Human Rights Council was interviewed by the well known journalist and peace activist Praful Bidwai in Delhi in late January 2011. The recording was made by Harsh Kapoor for sacw.net and a large excerpt is made available here for non profit and and educational use.
http://www.sacw.net/article11336.html

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8. INDIA: A FAREWELL FOR PRAFUL . . .
by Pamela Philipose
=========================================
sacw.net - 29 June 2015
Friends, there was no video livestreaming or any of that for yesterday's funeral. This is by no means a comprehensive account, and there may be much that has been inadvertently left out. It is just a brief recalling of that event using words in the old fashioned way, even as the memories of it are still fresh in one's mind. The electric crematorium at Lodhi Road, Delhi, is a dreary place at the best of times (and it sees mostly the worst of times). But it has this (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article11322.html

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9. INDIA: 27 JUNE 2015 PHOTOS FROM PRAFUL BIDWAI'S FUNERAL IN DELHI
=========================================
random photos of the people who attended the funeral on the 27th June 2015 in Delhi of Praful Bidwai the sterling journalist with lifelong commitment to the left and social movements. The photos below were taken by Mukul Dube 
http://www.sacw.net/article11319.html

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10. INDIA'S WORLD - NEPAL GRAPPLES WITH CONSTITUTION DRAFTING | A TV DISCUSSION
=========================================
Rajya Sabha TV discussion on Nepal (23 June 2015) Guests: Jayant Prasad (Former Ambassador of India to Nepal); Rakesh Sood (Former Ambassador of India to Nepal) and Shivshankar Mukherjee (Former Ambassador of India to Nepal
  Anchor: Bharat Bhushan
http://www.sacw.net/article11308.html

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11. INDIA: WORSHIP ON STREETS NOT A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT SAYS BOMBAY HIGH COURT
=========================================
Worshiping idols at public places is not a fundamental right, the Bombay high court said on Wednesday, when it made more stringent the norms allowing temporary pandals to be set up for festivals such as dahi handi, Navratri and Ganeshotsav on public roads and footpaths.

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12. INDIA: APOORVANAND, ALI JAVED AND SATISH DESHPANDE REPORT ON ATALI VILLAGE - ‘ARE YOU A MULLA OR ONE OF US?'
=========================================
All of us in civil society are in debt to the authors of this report, for visiting Atali and recording the views of the people who live there. It is sad to see the latest manifestation of a pattern - it is the least we can do to remember this and understand what it means. Violence against ethnically defined groups (ethnic cleansing); ghetto-fication and suspension of lawful governance for the benefit of politically motivated criminals; or controlled mobs - these have been the recurrent features of communal politics in India for decades. They conduce to a steady process of criminalisation of the state - a process that is ongoing.
http://www.sacw.net/article11305.html

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13. AUGUST 15 1947 - COMMUNIST PARTY'S APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN
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This is document from the Communist Party of India issued on August 15, 1947
http://www.sacw.net/article11337.html

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14. INDIA: LEADING COMMUNIST AND VETERAN JOURNALIST COMRADE JAGJIT SINGH ANAND IS NO MORE
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Veteran Journalist, Former MP and once a leading figure in communist movement in Punjab & Chief Editor of Nawa Zamana Newspaper Jagjit Singh Anand has passed away.
http://www.sacw.net/article11304.html

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15. INDIA: NO MERCY FOR THE POOR | Jean Drèze (The Wire 17 June 2015)
=========================================
Even as it claims to be fighting the perception that it is anti-poor, the Modi government has just dealt a big blow to the poorest of the poor: the planned phasing out of the Antyodaya programme under the Targeted Public Distribution System (Control) Order 2015. This move is unjust and illegal.
http://www.sacw.net/article11301.html

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16. INDIA: ANHAD REPORT ON FIRST 365 DAYS OF THE NARENDRA MODI GOVERNMENT
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This report published by Anhad documents the intense and multi pronged attack on democratic rights of citizens and on secular values enshrined in India’s constitution by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The report takes stock of the first full year of the Modi Government from June 2014 to June 2015. This 194 page report is edited by John Dayal and Shabnam Hashmi and has been published by ANHAD a Delhi based non profit body.
http://www.sacw.net/article11299.html

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17. MILITARISED BORDERS OF ASIA - FOCUS OF IIAS NEWSLETTER SUMMER 2015
=========================================
Focus of the summer 2015 issue of IIAS newsletter: Even as borders are increasingly being bridged today through international cooperation, many border peoples across the world live precarious existences in military battle zones. Bringing together essays by anthropologists, historians, and ethnomusicologists, this Focus section refocuses the readers’ gaze on militarized borderlands in Asia. The articles portray the far-reaching impacts of militarization on those who live in the immediate proximity of the border, as well as on those who move away.
http://www.sacw.net/article11300.html

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18. INDIA: 1998 INTERVIEW WITH SUBHADRA JOSHI by Sagari Chhabra
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[Excerpt from Sagari Chhabra’s book, In Search of Freedom: Journeys Through India and South-East Asia (Harper-Collins Publishers India)]
http://www.sacw.net/article11346.html

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19. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
=========================================
- India: a film about Nellie Massacre
- India Shiv Sena’s new normal (Suhas Palshikar)
- India: Researcher denied access to CID records on VD Savarkar, despite CM Devendra Fadnavis's recommendation
- India: Kanwarias can’t carry hockey sticks, trishul, lathis this ‘Shravan’
- India: Newsclick interview with Nandita Haksar - Malegaon Blast, NIA, BJP and Saffron Terror
- Book Review: Right-Wing Populism in Europe
- India: Need a favour from the government? Contact your local RSS man
- How Saudi funded Rs 1,700 crore for Wahabi influence in India (Vicky Nanjappa)
- India: The Subversion of Hindutva terror trials - After Malegaon, Ajmer Blast Case Faces Allegations of Sabotage
- India: After Swamy plea, court to review penal provisions for hate speech
- Tension in Muzaffarnagar village, Muslims remained besieged in a mosque for half a day
- The Indian Medical Association demands strict action against Ramdev
- India: Delhi University has gotten lost in a quagmire of parochial interests
- India wasn't the first place Sanskrit was recorded – it was Syria (Shoaib Daniyal)
- Dalits are segregated, and have unequal access to public goods in India’s biggest cities
- India: Were the nuts of the Hindutva Right involved in making Wiki entries on Nehru family from NIC IP addresses?
- India: Narendra Modi govt plans official celebration of Raksha Bandhan on August 29
- Saffronisation of education: Madras HC issues notice to HRD ministry
- India: Since the arrival of the Modi Govt, special public procesutor Rohini Salian told to go soft on accused (Hindu extremists)
- Atali, an old new story - It is a warning India must heed (Apoorvanand)
- India: Saffronization fears over history text rewrite plan (Akshaya Mukul)
- Hindu Muslim Wedding has Police in Knots
- India: BJP, Why No Apology for Slander of Hamid Ansari? (Rana Ayyub) / Hey Ram ! Madhav (Subhash Gatade)
- India: In Riot-Hit Muzaffarnagar, a Beacon for Female Victims of Violence by Urvashi Sarkar on 21/06/2015 (The Wire) 
- available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/

::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT :::
=========================================
20. AUNG SAN SUU KYI ON THE STATE OF DEMOCRACY IN BURMA
by Fred Hiatt
=========================================
(The Washington Post - June 16, 2015)

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel peace laureate and chair of the opposition National League for Democracy party in Burma, spoke Tuesday by telephone about her recent trip to China, elections scheduled for November and other matters. An edited transcript is below.

Fred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of The Post. He writes editorials for the newspaper and a biweekly column that appears on Mondays. He also contributes to the PostPartisan blog. 

Q: What did you learn on your trip to China?

A: It was a good discussion. We all understand that neighbors have to live in peace and harmony.

Did you discuss the imprisonment of [fellow Nobel peace laureate] Liu Xiaobo?

I have to keep explaining that I never discuss details of my conversation with leaders of governments or organizations. These are usually considered private.

During your imprisonment, the Chinese weren’t supportive of you, and you welcomed when foreign leaders raised the issue of your imprisonment.

Freedom and democracy in each country will be something that their own people will work for. With regard to our relationship with China, it’s always been based on independence, and I believe we can maintain this relationship, even if we don’t agree on the ideologies we wish to practice within our respective countries.

So “freedom and democracy in each country will be something that their own people will work for” — is that the attitude the U.S. should take toward Burma?

I think all people work for what they want for their own country, and of course they do expect their friends to help if they can.

Well, let me ask about your own country.

Yes, please do. I think I prefer talking about my own country.

How likely are elections in the fall to produce a government that’s representative of the people?

Well, we’ve entered a very exciting period. For the first time we’ve started discussing draft amendments to the constitution in the legislature. How free and fair the elections will be will be linked to whether the constitution has been amended to provide a level playing field.

So there’s still a chance the constitution will be amended before the election?

Oh, there’s always a chance. We’re not counting on it, we’re not campaigning for the elections on the assumption that the constitution will be amended. But we don’t entirely shut off the possibility.

If not, can the people’s will be reflected in the president and parliament that are elected?

If the elections are free and fair, of course, the legislature will reflect the will of the people. With regard to the presidency, that will depend on whether the constitution has been amended.

But what about the 25 percent rule [reserving one-quarter of parliament seats for the military]?

We know about the 25 percent rule, but rules, you know, don’t last forever, they don’t have to. And don’t people say that rules are made to be broken?

So if it’s not changed before the election, would the NLD have the political wherewithal to get it changed?

The NLD has stated very clearly that unelected representatives are not democratic, and this will have to be changed. But we have also said that in the interest of national reconciliation, this will have to be negotiated step by step, and we’re not going to insist on all the unelected members leaving the legislature.

In general, how do you view the state of political reform?

What we had hoped for is that the government would enter into genuine negotiations to make sure that the democratization process is a real one. But it has become increasingly obvious that the government is not really very interested in negotiation. . . .

But on the other hand we really hadn’t expected it to be smooth running all the way.

Could the government succeed in stopping the process where it is now, or where Cambodia, say, is now, with a veneer of democracy, but with the government and former generals still controlling most of the economy and political power?

We do worry that the reforms will turn out to be a total illusion, and we think that we need more concrete steps to ensure that the democratization process is what it was meant to be.

But we’re very different from Cambodia. I think the problems are much more difficult to sort out than the problems of Cambodia. The size of the country, the size of the population, the internal wars and battles that have been taking place for such a long time.

Why the rise of Buddhist nationalism?

I think we have to make a distinction between nationalism and extremism, and what we worry about is extremism. Nationalism, when it’s controlled and when it’s used in the right way, that is not a bad thing. It’s extremism that is a problem.

And is it a problem at this point in Burma?

I think extremism all over the world, not only in Burma, in any society, extremism would be a problem.

What’s the source of it in your country? Why are we seeing it now?

Well, I wonder, too. But of course, if you’re talking about the [western state of] Rakhine, these problems have existed for many, many decades. They’ve been simmering for quite some time, and the government has not done enough to lessen the tension and to remove the sources of the conflict.

Do you think the Rohingya should have citizenship?

The government is now verifying the citizenship status under the 1982 citizenship law. I think they should go about it very quickly and very transparently and then decide what the next steps in the process should be.

What do you say to your friends outside the country who say you should have been speaking more about the plight of the Rohingya and other minorities?

We have many minorities in this country, and I’m always talking up for the right of minorities and peace and harmony, and for equality and so on and so on, all the democratic values that the NLD and others have been fighting for for three decades now. We have been subjected to tremendous human rights violations all these years, and so have others, and many, many of our ethnic minorities took up arms because their rights have not been protected.

The protection of rights of minorities is an issue which should be addressed very, very carefully and as quickly and effectively as possible, and I’m not sure the government is doing enough about it. Well, in fact, I don’t think they’re doing enough about it.

What do you mean by “very, very carefully”?

It just means that it is such a sensitive issue, and there are so many racial and religious groups, that whatever we do to one group may have an impact on other groups as well. So this is an extremely complex situation, and not something that can be resolved overnight.

Do extremist parties pose a political risk to the NLD, and could that be one reason such sentiment is being fomented?

It’s possible, because the NLD has never supported extremism of any kind, so extremist groups would not look upon themselves as friends of the NLD, and it’s very possible that there’s a political motive behind the rise of so-called religious movements.

How much of an impact could voter roll problems have?

We’ve studied 10 townships in the Rangoon Division, and in some townships the mistakes were as high as 80 percent. That’s very bad. In some they were as low as 30 percent. How are we going to correct all of these lists in time for the election? And if things are that bad in Rangoon, how will they be in the border areas, for example? The election commission chairman is very serious about correcting all of these mistakes, but I just wonder if they have enough time and technical expertise to be able to correct these mistakes in time.

Has there been a retrenchment of basic freedoms since the early liberalization?

Well, it was more than a year ago that we began to notice that the government was beginning to crack down on freedom of the media. You must have heard about it, how some journalists were arrested and sentenced to somewhat longish terms in prison. And we felt then that the reform process was not only stalled but perhaps going backwards.

Are reforms still going backward?

I don’t think anything is going to happen ahead of the elections, apart from the constitutional issue, and in my opinion the government is totally opposed to constitutional amendment. That’s regression enough, don’t you think?

How does it feel to be turning 70?

Well, I don’t feel very different, but it’s interesting that I’ve made it this far.

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21. BUDDHIST MONKS SEEK TO BAN SCHOOLGIRLS FROM WEARING HEADSCARVES IN BURMA
by Simon Lewis in Rangoon
=========================================
(The Guardian - 22 June 2015)

Influential group of monks also plans to encourage people to vote for candidates who ‘will not let our race and religion disappear’ in this year’s elections

An influential group of Buddhist monks in Burma is proposing to ban Muslim schoolgirls from wearing headscarves, in the latest sign of growing religious tension in the country.

The Organisation for the Protection of Race and Religion, a panel of monks known locally by the acronym Ma Ba Tha, said the headscarves were “not in line with school discipline”.

Ma Ba Tha held a conference in Rangoon at the weekend. Some 1,300 monks from monasteries around the country gathered to discuss plans to promote a nationalist agenda as the country heads toward landmark elections later this year.

In a list of recommendations released late on Sunday, Ma Ba Tha told its members to lobby the government to put further restrictions on the country’s beleaguered Muslims, and included references to the wearing of either headscarves or burqas.

“We will demand seriously for the government to ban Muslim students wearing the burqa in government schools and to ban the killing of innocent animals on their [Muslims’] Eid holiday,” it said, referring to Muslim cultural practices that Buddhist nationalists believe go against the culture of Buddhist-majority Burma.

Explaining the move, Ma Ba Tha monk U Pamaukkha said: “When they [Muslims] live in Myanmar, they need to obey the law and regulations of the country. We are not targeting or attacking their religion.”

The group also said it would “show the people the right track” when it came to the elections, expected in November, encouraging people to vote for candidates who “will not let our race and religion disappear”.

The group would keep monitoring “crimes by non-Buddhists” and using Facebook to spread news about alleged threats to Buddhism in Burma, its statement said.
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Ma Ba Tha was officially formed in June 2013, when bouts of inter-communal violence were spreading around the country, with Buddhist mobs targeting members of the Muslim minority. Riots have been triggered by social media posts reporting alleged rapes of Buddhist women by Muslims.

Inter-communal violence in western Burma’s Rakhine State the previous year displaced some 140,000 people, mostly stateless Muslims identifying themselves as Rohingya, who have since taken to the sea in their thousands fleeing oppressive conditions, sparking a regional human smuggling crisis.

The monks have already proved their ability to wield influence over Burma’s quasi-civilian government, which replaced a military junta in 2011. After a Ma Ba Tha signature campaign, president Thein Sein’s administration drafted four laws restricting interfaith marriage and religious conversion, banning polygamy and limiting population growth.

While the laws have met with little resistance in a parliament dominated by former and serving military officials, so far only the population control law – which enables officials to restrict women to one child every three years – has been passed.

The prominent nationalist monk U Wirathu spoke at the conference on Saturday, pledging that Ma Ba Tha would increase its pressure on the government to pass the remaining laws.

The monk also extolled the growth of Ma Ba Tha in its first two years. “It’s as if we’ve come from the sky,” he said.

The group of monks is at the vanguard of a nationalist movement that threatens to overshadow gains made by Burma’s reformers, with many suggesting it has the backing of an anti-reform faction in the ruling elite.

David Mathieson, a senior researcher on Burma for Human Rights Watch, said: “The Ma Ba Tha have become an unaccountable and arrogant political force based on extremist religious and social views, like a fifth column using Buddhism to serve shady political and economic interests.”

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22. FEMALE LITERACY: WHAT THE INDIAN ECONOMY NEEDS TO LEARN FROM SRI LANKA
by Saurabh Mukherjea
=========================================
(Daily News and Analysis, 18 June 2015)

What I saw in the Sri Lankan villages impressed me enough to delve deeper into understanding why Sri Lanka has delivered so much more for its citizens than India has been able to.

I had visited Colombo five years ago, just after the civil war ended, and had found it to be a pleasant but unremarkable city.

Then during my children’s summer holidays in May, I found myself making another trip with my family to Sri Lanka. This time round, after a brief stay in Colombo – a city which has become visibly more prosperous and that much more interesting over the past five years – we ventured further into the countryside.

What I saw in the Sri Lankan villages impressed me enough to delve deeper into understanding why Sri Lanka has delivered so much more for its citizens than India has been able to. 

Visually there are four very striking things about this island country and its countryside: 

The levels of filth are visibly lower: Neither in the cities nor in the Sri Lankan countryside did I see the sort of squalor and filth that we associate not only with overcrowded Indian cities like Mumbai but also with most parts of northern and eastern India. Not only are large open drains absent in Sri Lanka, urban planning – even in a small town like Galle (population of 1.1mn) – is clearly exercised more tightly than in the vast majority of Indian cities. 

Women are much more visible: Having grown up in Delhi, I am used to living in Indian cities where for every ten men on the street, you see two or three women. In Sri Lanka, the men:women ratio is very visibly 50:50. 

The quality of housing is much better: I asked an auto rickshaw driver in Galle to take me to his residence. Then I walked around the neighbourhood in amazement because I could see from the series of parked auto rickshaws on the street that their drivers lived in properly built houses (neither flats, nor tenements) with little gardens in the front and with a spacious living room which looked on to narrow but clean streets. 

The Chinese are everywhere: In December 2014 Mahinda Rajapaksa was voted out and Maithripala Sirisena became the President in an election which was supposedly influenced by India. Mr. Rajapaksa was supposedly more sympathetic to the Chinese than Mr. Sirisena is. However, the latter’s victory clearly has not deterred the Chinese from continuing to extend their influence in Sri Lanka. The port in Colombo is being built by the Chinese and the port in Hambantota has already been built by the Chinese. The superb highways along the entire Sri Lankan east coast (which did not exist until three years ago) have been built by the Chinese and I could not help but notice that most of the containers in the Colombo’s main container terminal were Chinese.

Thirty years ago both the countries had similar levels of per capita income – around US$300. Now, however Sri Lanka’s per capita income is more than twice India’s – US$3600 vs US$1600. How did Sri Lanka pull away so much from India? 

When it comes to GDP growth, India has actually done better than Sri Lanka – over the past 20 years, India’s real GDP has delivered a CAGR of 7% vs 5% for Sri Lanka.

However, Sri Lanka has done a much better job of controlling the denominator of the per capita income ratio. Sri Lanka’s population growth has slowed from 1.6% in the 1970s to 1.4% in 1980s to 1.2% in the 1990s to 0.8% in the noughties.

India’s population growth has also slowed down during the last four decades but the rate of growth of population remained much higher than Sri Lanka’s. India’s population growth slowed down from 2.3% in the 1970s to 2.2% in 1980s to 1.8% in 1990s to 1.5% in the noughties. As result, over the last 30 years, Sri Lanka’s population density which stands at 327 people per square feet has risen at a CAGR of just 1% vs India’s 1.7% (India has 421 people per square feet). 

So why has Sri Lanka been able to control its population in a way that India simply has not been able to? Economists believe that there is a direct relationship between women’s literacy rates and the number of children they have.

A study conducted by the Registrar General of India and the East-West Population Institute noted that: “The states in which female literacy rates are high, fertility rates typically are low. In those states that have low fertility rates, child mortality rates are also low.” Not only are overall female literacy rates for India way behind Sri Lanka (we are at 66% vs their 90%) but the situation is especially bad in the northern and western Indian states (literacy rates well below 60%). Interestingly, southern Indian states like Kerala (92%) and Tamil Nadu (74%) have female literacy rates and fertility rates closer to Sri Lanka’s than to northern India’s.

If ever proof was needed that culture plays as big a role in economic outcomes as politics does, this contrast between India and Sri Lanka as well as between different parts of India and Sri Lanka would make an interesting case study.

In the meantime, Indian policymakers and those of us with an interest in public policy would do well to read Amartya Sen’s book, “The Argumentative Indian”, in which he writes, “In my view the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education. Caste divisions, religious conflicts, aversion to work, precarious economic conditions – all centre on this single factor”.

Saurabh Mukherjea is CEO - Institutional Equities, at Ambit Capital and the author of “Gurus of Chaos: Modern India’s Money Masters”. 

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23. DESPITE BEING A WOMAN - SOUTH ASIA IS ONE OF THE WORST PLACES IN THE WORLD TO BE FEMALE
by Banyan
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(The Economist - Jun 13th 2015 | From the print edition)

INDIA’s bachelor leader, Narendra Modi, struggles with the opposite sex. Last year he tried to be seen to revere his mother by rushing to her side after his big election victory. But then he failed to invite her to his grand inauguration. He has talked, admirably, about the need to respect women. But he defines “our mothers, daughters and sisters” by their relationships with men and as treasures to protect. It does not help his reputation that, until he was running for the prime ministership, he refused to acknowledge that he has an estranged wife, whom he was forced to marry as a teenager and has not lived with since.

For a man usually so eloquent, Mr Modi occasionally lands his sandalled foot in his mouth: on June 7th he made an especially crass comment during an otherwise successful visit to Bangladesh, praising his host, Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, for being tough on terrorism “despite being a woman”. Critics back home accused Mr Modi of having retrograde views, typical of those who revere the country as “Mother India” but who treat women atrociously. Yet such attitudes are widely shared, not just in India but across South Asia. The whole region fails to grant women equal respect or opportunities.

That may seem odd, given how prominent a role women play in South Asian politics. China, Japan, Russia and many other countries have failed to produce a female prime minister or president. South Asia has had several. If Hillary Clinton is elected next year to lead the world’s most powerful democracy, it will be a full half-century after Indira Gandhi first led the world’s largest one. Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike pipped her to become the world’s first female head of government, in 1960. In that country, uniquely, both a mother and her daughter have held the highest political office. In the late 1990s Chandrika Kumaratunga even served as president at the same time as her ageing mother, Mrs Bandaranaike, completed a third, mostly ceremonial, term as prime minister.

Women prosper at the top of South Asian democracies partly because they are propelled by dynasties that long formed the core of political parties. In Bangladesh the two battling begums have ensured that no other politician gets a look-in. Sheikh Hasina lets no one forget she is the daughter of the country’s murdered founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Her fierce rival Khaleda Zia, the opposition leader, joined politics after the murder of her husband, also an early president. Pakistan’s only female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto, entered politics after the execution of her father, Zulfikar Bhutto, a populist prime minister. In India some talk seriously of Priyanka Gandhi as a future leader of the Congress Party—mostly because her mother, Sonia Gandhi, has done the job, as well as her lookalike granny, Indira.

But if South Asia is one of the best places on Earth for elite women who aspire to a political career, it is one of the worst places to be an ordinary woman. The occasional chauvinism faced by females at the top pales beside the burdens heaped on those at the bottom. South Asian women fare terribly in a “Mothers’ Index” put together in May by Save the Children, a British charity. It ranks 179 countries according to the well-being of their women, using indicators such as maternal mortality, the survival of young children and women’s involvement in politics. Subcontinental nations come out the worst in Asia. Women in India and Pakistan (ranked 140th and 149th) have a quality of life only a little brighter than those in Afghanistan (152nd) and far behind those in China (61st), who are far more likely to survive childbirth, or see their offspring spend a long time in school.

Not everything is gloomy. Over the past 25 years, thanks to economic growth and official health schemes, some things have improved dramatically for South Asians. Take the blight of child weddings. In the mid-20th century the average Indian woman was married at 15 and endured early, frequent and often debilitating pregnancies. Now Indian women are more likely to tie the knot after getting an education, marrying on average at 21.

Another measure is the 289,000 women, globally, who died in childbirth in 2013. South Asia accounted for a quarter of them. But here too, improvements are striking. The rate of such deaths in the region has plummeted from 550 for every 100,000 live births in 1990 to 190 now. Poorer countries in South Asia—Nepal, Afghanistan and Bangladesh—have made notable gains by providing free maternal and child care, and recruiting more female health workers.

Let money do the talking

Yet South Asia will need to spend a lot more on women in order to see further improvements. The region devotes barely 1% of GDP to public health (China spends 3.1%). This puts a heavy burden on those who give birth and take most responsibility for child care. In part this is because of lingering poverty: World Health Organisation figures from 2012 show that combined public and private funds for health care, per person, came to a little over $50 per year in South Asia. Africa spent nearly double that; in East Asian countries it was ten times more. In North America spending on health, per person, was $8,500 a year.

The resources spent on women in South Asia are shared more unevenly than in most places. Among the richest quintile in Delhi (it is a similar story in Dhaka and elsewhere), women can enjoy maternal and other care close to first-world standards. By contrast the poorest quintile in the same cities, especially in slums, endure conditions as bad—or worse—than in far poorer villages: in Delhi only 19% of such women have someone skilled present when they give birth. Barely half of their children have had a measles jab and nearly three-fifths are stunted. Reducing such inequality would be one way to make existing resources go further in South Asia. But that is likely to happen no quicker than changing old-fashioned attitudes to women.

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24. WE NEED TO STOP PROSECUTING BAD BEHAVIOR AS RAPE.
by Cathy Young 
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(The Washington Post, May 20 2015)

Feminists want us to define these ugly sexual encounters as rape. Don’t let them.
We need to stop prosecuting bad behavior as rape. 

There was the time when, 19 and naive, I was guilt-tripped into entirely unwanted physical intimacies with a much older married man. And the time, three or four years later, when I went to visit an on-and-off long-distance boyfriend and quickly realized that it was over for me — but he assumed we were still on, and I didn’t have the nerve to say no. And the time I told a man, “Look, I’m not going to sleep with you,” and it was taken as, “Try again in a couple of hours.” He did, and it worked.

When they happened, my views of these encounters ranged from “it was a mistake” to “it’s complicated.” They still do — even though, these days, we are encouraged to reinterpret such experiences as sexual violations. To many feminists, stories like these are evidence of a pervasive, misogynistic rape culture. “Kids see movies where there’s an aggressor who gets pushed away, but keeps trying until the girl relents,” advocate, author and filmmaker Kelly Kend writes. “. . . This is a rape dynamic that has been played off countless times as just how it works.” Canadian feminist author Anne Thériault laments “the still-pervasive and very flawed idea that if she doesn’t say no, it’s not rape” — clearly referring not just to attacks involving violence or incapacitation (for which few would demand a verbal “no” as proof of rape), but encounters in which a woman yields to unwanted overtures, like I did.

This isn’t just feminist theory; it’s having an impact in the real world. Consent-education programs on college campuses, from Columbia University to the University of Texas at Austin, are increasingly adopting the “yes means yes” approach. But this crusade against “rape culture” oversimplifies the vast complexity of human sexual interaction, conflating criminal sexual acts such as coercion by physical force, threat or incapacitation — which should obviously be prosecuted and punished — with bad behavior.

Was I a victim? Even in the first incident, in which the man knowingly pressured me into something I didn’t want, I could have safely said no to him. Despicable behavior is not always criminal, just like getting guilt-tripped into giving money to a freeloading friend is not robbery.

In the second instance, it would be an infantilizing insult to deny my responsibility for a mutual misunderstanding. In the third, what happened was not only consensual but wanted; my initial “no” was sincere, but it was mainly an attempt to stop myself from acting on an attraction against my better judgment.

Besides, I know that sometimes the roles have been reversed. There was the ex-boyfriend I thought I was seducing in the hope of getting him back — only to realize, the one time he finally said no harshly enough, that it had been more pressure than seduction. There was the man who told me it was too soon for us to get involved and said, more than once, “We shouldn’t be doing this” the evening we first went to bed. If I were to claim victimhood, I would either have to admit to being a perpetrator as well or fall back on a blatantly sexist double standard.

Forty years ago, feminist reformers successfully challenged the discriminatory treatment of rape complainants, from the requirement of physical resistance to condemnations of a woman’s “unchaste character.” Feminist advocacy also deserves credit for clarifying that forced sex is always rape, even in a relationship. (I am talking here about being forced by physical violence, restraint or threats, or being subjected to sexual acts while physically helpless.) But the anti-rape activism that emerged in the 1990s and has surged on college campuses and on the Internet in recent years goes far beyond that. Today, it not only embraces an absolutist version of “no means no,” in which any hint of reluctance must halt further attempts at sexual intimacy; the movement also insists that only a clear (and sober) “yes” means yes.

Sometimes, the movement’s supporters claim that the new rules amount to little more than common sense: Don’t have sex with someone who isn’t a willing partner. In practice, a male student at California’s Occidental College was recently expelled for having sex with a woman who was willing and enthusiastic, but apparently too intoxicated to think clearly.

Others champion a far bolder vision. Thériault writes that we must “raze” nearly all our cultural beliefs about sex and “create an entirely new foundation” — built on the understanding that consent must be explicit and almost certainly verbal, not simply a “yes” but an “ongoing conversation.” Increasingly, this is also the approach adopted by consent-education programs on college campuses. A bizarre “consent porn” video created as an educational aid shows make-out sessions proceeding to a constant mutual refrain of “Is this okay?”; the apparent idea is to show that “consent is hot,” but the result looks more like a particularly tacky parody.

Affirmative-consent proponents often assert that the new rules will make for better sex by encouraging people to talk about what they like in bed. Such arguments have unpleasant overtones of “we decide what’s best for you”; Kend explicitly states that if you cannot have “an adult conversation” about sex, “you shouldn’t be having it.” The meddling turns starkly authoritarian when the “encouragement” involves potential penalties — expulsion from college or even criminal charges if affirmative consent becomes a legal norm.

Meanwhile, there is little regard for the preferences of people who like intuitive give-and-take rather than requests and directions. Sensual, playful or raunchy bedroom talk is very different from compulsory questions checking for a clear signal that you’re not crossing a line. Reluctance to engage in frank sexual communication is treated solely as a puritanical hang-up rather than a valid desire to preserve some spontaneity or dignity. And the wrong kind of communication, such as persuading an initially hesitant partner, is equated with sexual assault.

Despite its scorn for reticence, the new sexual revolution has a deep puritanical streak. Consensual sex is viewed as always under control, the result of a rational, fully autonomous choice. In this vision, there is either unequivocal “enthusiastic consent” or reluctant submission. In real life, though, there are many other possibilities.

You could agree to have sex to please your partner, despite not being in the mood, and get enthusiastic later. You could be sexually eager but emotionally ambivalent, or vice versa. You could be torn between passionate desire and ethical or practical reasons not to act on that desire. You could get drunk to quiet your scruples, or you may hope to be coaxed into surrendering to temptation. (Obviously, “coaxed” does not equal “physically overpowered.”) Some of this behavior may be unhealthy or immature. But if it involves consenting adults — who can refuse sex without reasonable fear of harm — those adults should be free to make mistakes.

Ultimately, ensuring that sexual consent is always free of pressure is an impossible goal. Consent advocates already fret that even an explicit “yes” may not be given freely enough. A series of educational campus posters includes the warning that “if they don’t feel free to say ‘No,’ it’s not consent”; a Canadian college campaign cautions that consent is invalid if it’s “muted” or “uncertain” rather than “loud and clear.”

This advocacy creates a world where virtually any regretted sexual encounter can be reconstructed as assault (unless the person who regrets it initiated it while fully sober) and retroactive perceptions of coercion must always be credited over contemporaneous perceptions of consent — even though we know that memory often “edits” the past to fit present biases.

In theory, this regime is gender-neutral. Yet real-life cases like the one at Occidental show a strong presumption — openly acknowledged by a dean at Duke University — that in a heterosexual encounter, it’s the man who must gain consent and bear the blame if both partners are intoxicated. Whether cloaked in traditional chivalry or feminist rhetoric, it’s still a paternalistic double standard.

It is time to rethink this crusade, which criminalizes bad or uncomfortable sex, thereby trivializing actual sexual violence. Anti-rape efforts should focus on criminal conduct and law enforcement responses. In college communities, young people who feel wronged in sexual situations that stem from misunderstanding, pressure or insensitivity could be offered support without being treated as “rape survivors”; remedies might include mediation or joint counseling, clearly inappropriate in cases of sexual assault. Sexual ethics based on honesty, respect and communication can be discussed without turning every lapse into a crime.

The quest for perfect consent is profoundly utopian. Like all such quests that ignore human realities, it points the way to dystopian nightmare.

(Cathy Young is the author of two books, and a frequent contributor to Reason, Newsday, and RealClearPolitics.com.)

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25. BOOK REVIEW: SHIFTING GROUND – PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND MOBILITY IN INDIA’S ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
by Shekar Dattatri
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(Conservation India - 23 June 2015)

Shifting Ground – People, Animals, and Mobility in India’s Environmental History
Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan
Oxford University Press

This weighty book, containing 10 essays by as many scholars – and a comprehensive introduction by its eminent editors – is clearly meant for consumption primarily by other scholars. To this reviewer, who can at best describe himself as a discerning reader, the adjective ‘esoteric’ often came to mind while thumbing through its 310 pages.

Given the extremely wide gamut covered by the essays – from the historical distribution of one-horned rhinos, to animal sacrifice in Uttarakhand – I often caught myself asking, “What is the purpose of this book?” The answer can be glimpsed in this quote from the introduction: “Clearly, the larger picture in a more globalized India, one with expanding regimes of legally enforceable rights, is substantively at odds with the picture in the 1980s. Much of what is contained in this volume will not illuminate this shift in the environmental debates of the last three decades. But it will present new evidence and analysis on the historical processes by which people, animals, and social or physical mobility had consequences for the environment and for ideas of nature, its conservation, or protection. Case studies dealing with the vast and complex period of the second millennium CE will indirectly engage the scholarly and public debate and its shifts, since the 1980s, by reflecting on how a deeper and more subtly interpreted ecological history does inform contemporary environmental politics and beliefs.”

The other question that I had about the book was, “What is its relevance in today’s world?” The answer to this, at least, is quite evident. Knowledge of history is of crucial importance for many reasons. For one, as the philosopher and writer, George Santayana, put it succinctly, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But there are other reasons as well, such as the providing of a wider framework in which to form our beliefs. Hence this volume is an important addition to the scanty literature on India’s environmental history. Personally, I felt rewarded for my painstaking reading of it with a better perspective on certain issues, as the book is peppered with interesting information and insights.

For instance, commenting on widely held perceptions about pre-colonial and colonial India, Kathleen D. Morrison, in her essay, ‘Conceiving Ecology and Stopping the Clock: Narratives of Balance, Loss, and Degradation’, cautions us against blindly accepting “the idea of a universal colonial watershed.” As she observes perceptively, while empirical claims such as “India was densely forested until the 18th century” or “serious impact on the Ghat forests began only under colonialism” are de rigueur, a careful sifting of the historical evidence doesn’t quite bear this out. She goes further in demolishing our romantic visions of the past, when she argues against the popular notion “that pre-colonial South Asians formed a kind of textbook ecosystem that was stable, sustaining to its members and in equilibrium.” Conservationists will find much food for thought in this powerful essay.

There are three other essays that I found particularly fascinating. In ‘From Eminence to Near Extinction – The Journey of the Greater One-Horned Rhino’, Shibani Bose meticulously documents the past distribution of the one-horned rhino, and its erstwhile place in culture and society. That this once widely distributed animal, which ranged from “Sind to the Brahmaputra valley, as well as the terai regions of Nepal and Sikkim” is now confined to small pockets in Assam, West Bengal and Nepal, is tragic. Given that its stronghold, Kaziranga, is literally bursting at the seams with rhinos, perhaps this knowledge of its historical distribution can help us help the species recolonize parts of its former range that are presently protected.

In ‘Lions, Cheetahs, and Others in the Mughal Landscape’, Divyabhanusinh delves deep into the copious written and pictorial records left by the Mughals, in an essay replete with interesting and intriguing facts. A quote from Francois Bernier, a French Physician who travelled the Mughal empire between 1656 and 1668 is particularly striking: “In the neighbourhood of Agra and Delhi along the course of the Gemna (Jumna) reaching to the mountains (Himalayas) and even on both sides of the road reaching to Lahor, there is a large quantity of uncultivated land covered with copse wood or with grasses six feet high.” The nostalgia engendered by this small historical snippet is almost too much to bear for those of us who yearn for the vast grasslands that were once a common feature across India.

Although this essay does not give any estimates of lion or cheetah numbers in the wild in Mughal times, the records painstakingly unearthed by the author give us an indication of just how abundant they must have been. He estimates that about 1500 lions were shot just in the 60 years between 1820 and 1880 in India outside the Kathiawar peninsula. He goes on to record that during Akbar’s half-a-century-long reign he is reputed to have collected 9,000 cheetahs!

I will round off this review with the last essay in the book, ‘The ‘Tiger Crisis’ and the Response: Reclaiming the Wilderness in Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan’, which focuses on an issue that is still fresh in the minds of all conservationists – the local extinction of tigers in Sariska. Ghazala Shahabuddin is a scientist with years of familiarity with Sariska and, as such, has had a ringside, clear-headed view of what transpired during and after 2005, when it was discovered that not a single tiger remained in the reserve. Examining the causes and effects of this local extinction, and the reintroduction of tigers that followed, she decries the continuance of the top-down and unscientific approach adopted by the authorities in managing l’affaire Sariska, and the tiger crisis in general.

‘Shifting Ground’ lives up to its name in that it clearly shows us that the world is never static and ever shifting. It demolishes any notions we may have had of a utopian past where forests and wildlife were universally plentiful, free of all the problems that plague the present.

Both scholars and lay readers will find the notes at the end of each essay as interesting and useful as the essays themselves, and the extensive bibliography at the end a treasure trove worth delving into.

Given its specialized nature, ‘Shifting Ground’ is no easy read, and demands your undivided attention. While the ‘scholarese’ that pervades the volume can be intimidating to the non-scholarly, once you get past it, there is much that is both fascinating and illuminating. I suspect that not all CI readers will find all the essays to be of relevance. My advice: pick what interests you, and skim through the rest!

Shekar Dattatri is a Chennai-based wildlife and conservation filmmaker.

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26. BOOK REVIEW: KEVIN M. KRUSE. ONE NATION UNDER GOD: HOW CORPORATE AMERICA INVENTED CHRISTIAN AMERICA. New York: Basic Books, 2015. 384 pp. $29.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-04949-3.
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Reviewed by L. Benjamin Rolsky (Drew University)
Published on H-AmRel (June, 2015)
Commissioned by Bobby L. Smiley

The Businessman's Revival

Once in a blue moon a monograph comes along that both contributes decisively to an ongoing scholarly conversation and introduces its readers to a plethora of little-known documents, archives, organizations, and individuals. Not only does this type of text challenge taken-for-granted historiographic tendencies, but more importantly it also makes conceptual space for those interested in taking up one of the many institutions, individuals, or events encountered in the text as a subject of an undergraduate research paper, graduate seminar paper, or perhaps even a doctoral dissertation. Historian Kevin M. Kruse’s One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Made Christian America is just this kind of book.

Published with Basic Books, One Nation Under God explores the recent political past of the United States by going back to two of its most iconic moments: the New Deal of the 1930s and the Cold War scares of postwar America. Spread across eight chapters and three major sections appropriately titled, “Creation,” “Consecration,” and “Conflict,” Kruse’s narrative explores a “history that has been hiding in plain sight” (p. xvi). For Kruse, the notion of America being “one nation under God” is a very recent and modern one that has very little to do with the Founding Fathers and everything to do with strategic allegiances between presidential administrations, various corporate leaders, and the entertainment industry. Kruse’s task is to explain why so many Americans have come to believe that the United States has been and always will be a Christian nation. While his evidentiary base is nothing less than impressive, Kruse’s overall argument is less so since it has to span virtually the entire twentieth century while utilizing the ever-useful vignette to illuminate and elucidate his incisive arguments. Executed in this manner, the text relies heavily on individual stories to explain an almost century-long process. As a result, we often hear from the periods’ voices more so than we do from Kruse himself. Regardless, Kruse’s text is a significant contribution to the history of the Christian Right, the Cold War, and the culture wars of the recent past for historians and scholars of American religion.

Kruse’s narrative begins in the tumultuous decades following World War I. Echoing the recent work of American religious historian Matthew Sutton, Kruse argues that “corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase ‘freedom under God’” in the name of “Christian Libertarianism,” a newly emergent strand of Protestant thought that supported a mutually supportive relationship between capitalism and Christianity.[1] For these men, including Congregationalist minister James W. Fifield Jr. who forged many of the early relationships between industrials and ministers, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was nothing less than “pagan statism.” Not only did the New Deal possess totalitarian tendencies because it was federally administered, but it also threatened to suffocate the sanctity of the individual due to its emphasis on social engineering as an outgrowth of the social gospel. Fifield and others responded vociferously by bringing Wall Street and Protestant ministers together through organization building including Spiritual Mobilization, perhaps the most significant product of this religiously rambunctious period. Such individuals and their political leanings lend support to one of Kruse’s most powerful arguments: “These businessmen were alarmed less by the foreign threat of the Soviet Union and more by the domestic menace of liberalism, which had been recently reinvigorated by President Truman’s surprising re-election in 1948” (p. 22). Fifield and others were also willing to use Hollywood’s support for many of their faith drives, including appearances from Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, and even Ronald during their Fourth of July “Freedom Under God” celebrations in 1951.

Perhaps the most important period in Kruse’s account is this very decade, the Dwight D. Eisenhower years of the 1950s. For one Baptist minister, government of the people had descended into “government of the people by pressure groups for the benefit of minorities” (p. 32). It was up to Eisenhower to respond to this growing sense of discomfort with the federal government, and not the Cold War, by addressing what many at the time called a “crisis of spirit.” As Kruse argues, “Countless people were certainly driven to prayer” by the fear of nuclear war, but “the spiritual revival of the postwar era was much more than fallout from the nuclear age” (p. 37). The creation of novel institutions during the Eisenhower administration, including the Abraham Vereide and Conrad Hilton-led Presidential Prayer Breakfast with the support of evangelist Billy Graham, was such a response by the president in an effort to popularize public prayer at the expense of politicizing it. Despite the focus on domestic matters, many a minister including Vereide encouraged their congregations to mobilize against the “forces of the anti-Christ” by making a choice between “Christ or Communism” (p. 49). In opposition to the progressive, interfaith “American Way” of the 1930s, Eisenhower helped design “The Credo of the American Way of Life” with the help of Herbert Hoover and the pro-business Freedoms Foundation, which appeared in the pages of Reader’s Digest in 1949. For Kruse, the Eisenhower administration, in addition to Eisenhower’s Oval Office baptism, did much to ingrain the mentality of “God Consciousness” within the populous through what can only be called a corporate-led Christianization effort on par with colonial America’s awakenings and revivals. Despite the ultimate defeat of the senator-led “Christian Amendment” in 1954, the mottos “One Nation Under God” and “In God We Trust” acknowledged the country’s dependence on a higher Christian power beyond the state in an unprecedented, bipartisan manner. From this moment on, conservative readings of “America’s fundamental nature would have a seemingly permanent place in the national imagination” (p. 125).

For Kruse, the Cold War created a false sense of American unity in the face of a foreign threat that in reality concealed the vehement disagreements taking place on the ground over the politics of piety and patriotism. “The concept of ‘one nation under God’ had seemed a simple, elegant way to  bring together the citizens of a broadly religious country,” argues Kruse, “but at the local level ... Americans were anything but united” (p. 170). The various church/state rulings of the Supreme Court during this period reinforced the on-the-ground divisions between the future “Silent Majority” of the Nixon era and the progressive National Council of Churches. Combined with the growing disillusionment of a multitude of laypersons over their ministers’ support of the court, this phenomenon led to a “growing gap between leaders of major denominations and the laypeople to who they ministered” (p. 200). These religio-political conditions set the stage for not only the emergence of the Christian Right but also the presidency of Reagan and the culture wars of America’s late twentieth century. For Reverend George T. Cook, rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church of Oceanside, New Jersey, the court’s decisions were hailed by “a small but loud-mouthed group of confused clergy who have supported the National Council of Churches in its headlong rush towards socialism” (p. 210). Like the earlier comment on interest groups and minority representation, it is not mere coincidence that both quotes find common causes with our contemporary political discourse over bailouts, Wall Street, and austerity.

Despite concluding the text with a somewhat rushed epilogue that brings the reader up to the present, Kruse leaves us with arguably the key to understanding the ascendance of conservative Protestantism since the 1960s. “If conservative Christians at the grassroots would simply organize themselves according to their politics rather than their particular denominations, they could end the reign of the religious establishment” (p. 237). In short, Kruse helps us see how the polarization of our current moment finds much of its initial fervor in the actions of those Christian Libertarians and businessmen in search of a motto for the nation in uncertain domestic times.

Note

[1]. For more on this argument, see Matthew Sutton, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalist Antiliberalism in a Global Age,” Journal of American History 98, no. 4 (2012), 1052-1074.

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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/

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