SACW - 4 Nov 2015 | Nepal: Citizens Appeal Against Blockade / Sri Lanka: other minority / Pakistan: Fundos on Campus / Pak-India nuke war? / Bangladesh: Islamists Killing Free Speech / India: Intellectuals Rise Against Hate / Indonesia Censorship / Will Processed Meat Give You Cancer ? / Daily Life and Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Central Europe

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 4 November 2015 - No. 2875 
[since 1996]

Contents:
1. Prominent Nepali Citizens Appeal to U.N. to Help Lift Economic Blockade
2. Secular publishers and authors of Bangladesh under continued attack: statements and editorials
3. BBC Report: Publisher, blogger discuss attacks on free speech in Bangladesh
4. Sri Lanka: The other oppressed minority | Ahilan Kadirgamar
5. Win Pak-India nuke war? | Pervez Hoodbhoy
6. Pakistan: Fundamentalist Islami Jamiat-e-Talba are a menace across the universities of the country
7. Pakistan and the Nasr Missile | A H Nayyar, Zia Mian
8. India: Three audio recordings from Pratirodh - A convention of writers and intellectuals
9. Video: Romila Thapar explains how the hindutva view of Indian history is based on colonial scholarship
10. India Today: Reasons for Concern | Jairus Banaji
11. India: Protest Statement by Academics against Dadri Lynching and killings of MM Kalburgi and others
12. India: Historians' Statement against intolerance
13. India: Over 350 Artists Sound the Alert on the Right to Dissent - Full text of Statement released by SAHMAT
14. Indian Christians Condemn Growing Intolerance in the Country
15. India: Karva Chauth Capitalism | Mohan Rao

16. Recent On Communalism Watch:
  - Video: "The Kind Of Intolerance We Have Witnessed In Last 1 Year Has Been Unprecedented" - Sharmila Tagore, the celebrated actress
  - 'India's Daughter' Filmmaker Mobilises UK Protest Against Modi
  - India: Modi isn't silent, dear liberals. He's shouting all toxic Hindutva tropes (Manisha Sethi)
  - India: It's useful (and not before time) that India Inc. has begun to speak up against majoritarian bullying (Mukul Kesavan)
  - TV Interview: PM Modi's silence deliberate, says Arun Shourie
  - Indian music wizard Mehta slams culture of hatred against Pakistan (Jawed Naqvi)
  - Tribute by French journalists group to the assassinated Bangladeshi secularist Avijit Roy in the form of a street name plaque - We dont do such things in south Asia
  - Anti Sikh Massacre - Who did it ? (Shamsul Islam) 

::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT :::
17. Bangladesh: Free thinking under attack again - We strongly condemn | Editorial, The Daily Star
18. Nepal’s time for plural, democratic socialism | Pritam Singh
19. Bangladesh: Amnesty comments out of line - Editorial, Dhaka Tribune
20. Sri Lanka: Address Muslim issues through Geneva process | Jehan Perera
21. Geeta in India - Editorial, The Daily Times
22. India: Universities have lost their radical streak | CP Bhambhri
23. India: Too late for bhajans and qawwalis | Jawed Naqvi 
24. Simply put: Why raining fire on Maoist rebels could singe the state too | Sushant Singh
25. Are India's Hindu nationalists trying to start a beef? By banning beef? | Maddy Crowell
26. Censorship is returning to Indonesia in the name of the 1965 purges | Laksmi Pamuntjak
27. Book Review: Guha on Alpers, 'The Indian Ocean in World History'
28. So Will Processed Meat Give You Cancer? | Anahad O’Connnor
29. Book Review: Daily Life and Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Central Europe | Hannah S. Decker

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1. PROMINENT NEPALI CITIZENS APPEAL TO U.N. TO HELP LIFT ECONOMIC BLOCKADE
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A coalition of independent Nepali citizens – including diplomats, journalists, women’s rights leaders, medical doctors and former U.N. officials – is calling on the international community and the United Nations to take “effective steps” to help remove an “economic blockade” imposed on Nepal.
http://sacw.net/article11973.html

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2. SECULAR PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS OF BANGLADESH UNDER CONTINUED ATTACK: STATEMENTS AND EDITORIALS
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In two violent and gory incidents on 31 October 2015, four publishers and bloggers were attacked in Bangladesh resulting in the death of one and severe injuries to three others who were in critical condition . . . These are direct attacks on our freedom of speech and thought
http://sacw.net/article11937.html

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3. BBC REPORT: PUBLISHER, BLOGGER DISCUSS ATTACKS ON FREE SPEECH IN BANGLADESH
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On BBC World News TV, Mahrukh Mohiuddin, director of Dhaka-based University Press Limited and Arif Rahman, a blogger from Bangladesh currently living in London, discuss the attacks on free speech, including the hacking to death in Dhaka of Faisal Arefin (Dipan), who published writings by the Bangladeshi-American secular blogger/writer Avijit Roy, also hacked to death in Dhaka this February. Faisal Arefin's father gives his reaction too.
http://sacw.net/article11965.html

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4. SRI LANKA: THE OTHER OPPRESSED MINORITY | Ahilan Kadirgamar
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25 years since the eviction of 75,000 Muslims by the Tamil Tigers from Sri Lanka's North, the livelihood concerns of this marginalised section remain neglected. It is time for the political elite — both Sinhala and Tamil — to probe their own consciences and evolve a more inclusive resettlement framework
http://sacw.net/article11840.html

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5. WIN PAK-INDIA NUKE WAR? | Pervez Hoodbhoy
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That Pakistan may first use nuclear weapons in a future war with India was announced last week by Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry. Coming just two days before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Oct 22 visit to Washington, this could be considered a reiteration of the army's well-known stance. But, significantly it came from the Foreign Office rather than GHQ or Strategic Plans Division. Coming from both ends of the power spectrum, this confirms that Pakistan has drastically
http://sacw.net/article11933.html

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6. PAKISTAN: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAMI JAMIAT-E-TALBA ARE A MENACE ACROSS THE UNIVERSITIES OF THE COUNTRY
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For decades activists of the notoriously thuggish fundamentalist Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami has carried out its hooliganism with impunity, terrorising students who are legal adults and not beholden to have their behaviour policed according to the precepts of some moralising band of roving fanatical vigilantes.
http://sacw.net/article11950.html

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7. PAKISTAN AND THE NASR MISSILE: SEARCHING FOR A METHOD IN THE MADNESS
 by A H Nayyar, Zia Mian
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Pakistan’s nuclear planners have sought to develop and plan deployment of the short-range Nasr tactical missile to deliver nuclear weapons against advancing Indian armoured forces. This article explores the limited utility of the use of tactical nuclear weapons which could still prove to be catastrophic by triggering the escalation of a conventional conflict into nuclear war. An alternative could be that Pakistan and India revive the idea first proposed by India in 1949 and 1950 of a No-War Agreement.
http://sacw.net/article11685.html

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8. INDIA: THREE AUDIO RECORDINGS FROM PRATIRODH - A CONVENTION OF WRITERS AND INTELLECTUALS
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recordings of interventions by Prof. Irfan Habib, Ashok Vajpeyi and Romila Thapar at Pratirodh: A convention of writers and intellectuals held in Delhi on 1 st Nov 2015. (recordings via sacw.net audio archive)
http://sacw.net/article11943.html

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9. VIDEO: ROMILA THAPAR EXPLAINS HOW THE HINDUTVA VIEW OF INDIAN HISTORY IS BASED ON COLONIAL SCHOLARSHIP
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Romila Thapar, at the launch of the two websites of the Indian Writers’ Forum Trust, speaks on the recent attempts at the rewriting of history to suit the purposes of a Hindu India. The proponents of this theory claim that history must not only be rewritten, but corrected – a more dangerous proposition than rewriting. 
http://sacw.net/article11874.html

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10. INDIA TODAY: REASONS FOR CONCERN
by Jairus Banaji
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This statement by Jairus Banaji was read out at the public lecture titled "Indian Society and the Secular" by Romila Thapar delivered on 26 October 2015 in Bombay.
http://sacw.net/article11873.html

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11. INDIA: PROTEST STATEMENT BY ACADEMICS AGAINST DADRI LYNCHING AND KILLINGS OF MM KALBURGI AND OTHERS
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We, as social scientists, scholars, teachers and concerned citizens, feel extremely concerned about the lynching at Dadri, and the murders of scholars and thinkers like MM Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and others, and wish to register our strong protest.
http://sacw.net/article11881.html

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12. INDIA: HISTORIANS' STATEMENT AGAINST INTOLERANCE
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Concerned about the highly vitiated atmosphere prevailing in the country, characterized by various forms of intolerance, we, as academic historians and as responsible citizens of a democracy that has greatly valued its inherited traditions of tolerance, wish to express our anguish and protest about the prevailing condition.
http://sacw.net/article11900.html

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13. INDIA: OVER 350 ARTISTS SOUND THE ALERT ON THE RIGHT TO DISSENT - FULL TEXT OF STATEMENT RELEASED BY SAHMAT
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The artist community of India stands in firm solidarity with the actions of our writers who have relinquished awards and positions, and spoken up in protest against the alarming rise of intolerance in the country. We condemn and mourn the murders of M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, rationalists and free thinkers whose voices have been silenced by rightwing dogmatists but whose ‘presence’ must ignite our resistance to the conditions of hate being generated around us.
http://sacw.net/article11861.html

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14. INDIAN CHRISTIANS CONDEMN GROWING INTOLERANCE IN THE COUNTRY
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We the undersigned Indian Christians as citizens of our country India and as Christians in unequivocal terms denounce the growing intolerance in the country.
http://sacw.net/article11958.html

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15. INDIA: KARVA CHAUTH CAPITALISM | MOHAN RAO
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There has been a steady decline in India's overall sex ratio (SR) over the 20th century. Something entirely new, going beyond the traditional cultural arguments, is afoot, as anti-female attitudes spread to new regions and new communities, armed with technology and aggression.
http://sacw.net/article11926.html

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16. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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  - Memorandum submitted by the Congress party to the President of India regarding growing atmosphere of fear and intolerance (3 Nov 2015)
  - India: A blast from the colonial past (Peter Ronald deSouza)
  - India: Video recording of Author Krishna Sobti On 'Growing Intolerance In The Country' [in Hindi]
  - India: Families of Murdered Rationalist Writers Come Together to Seek Justice
  - Video: "The Kind Of Intolerance We Have Witnessed In Last 1 Year Has Been Unprecedented" - Sharmila Tagore, the celebrated actress
  - India: Congress party leaders petition President over 'rising intolerance'
  - India: Now, historian Shekhar Pathak to return his Padma Shri Award in protest against the atmosphere of intolerance in the country
  - India: 'Intellectuals will be silenced': historians express fears . . . (Report in The Guardian)
  - India and the Politics of Extremism (Hari Prasad and Samir Kumar)
  - India:: ‘Growing intolerance’ - The fringe has taken over the core (Sitaram Yechury)
  - Too late for bhajans and qawwalis (Jawed Naqvi)
  - India - Karnataka: Will behead CM if he eats beef in Shivamogga says BJP leader
  - Portents of a religious autocracy (Pushpa M. Bhargava)
  - India: Video of Romila Thapar's intervention at Pratirodh - "Decline in governance: fear, violence and disharmony rule society" (1 Nov 2015)
  - India: Open Letter from Writers to everyone
  - Indian Christians Condemn Growing Intolerance in the Country - A statement
  - India: the fight is on for pluralism (David Griffiths)
  - 'India's Daughter' Filmmaker Mobilises UK Protest Against Modi
  - India: Modi isn't silent, dear liberals. He's shouting all toxic Hindutva tropes (Manisha Sethi)
  - India: It's useful (and not before time) that India Inc. has begun to speak up against majoritarian bullying (Mukul Kesavan)
  - “Pehle Babri, Phir Dadri, Aur Ab Hindutva Ke Naam Pe Bahaduri”
  - TV Interview: PM Modi's silence deliberate, says Arun Shourie
  - Indian music wizard Mehta slams culture of hatred against Pakistan (Jawed Naqvi)
  - Tribute by French journalists group to the assassinated Bangladeshi secularist Avijit Roy in the form of a street name plaque - We dont do such things in south Asia
  - Anti Sikh Massacre - Who did it ? (Shamsul Islam) 

  -> available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: RESOURCES & FULL TEXT :::

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17. BANGLADESH: FREE THINKING UNDER ATTACK AGAIN - WE STRONGLY CONDEMN | EDITORIAL, THE DAILY STAR
=========================================
(The Daily Star - 1 November 2015)

Editorial
Free thinking under attack again
We strongly condemn

In two violent and gory incidents yesterday, four publishers and bloggers were attacked resulting in the death of one and severe injuries to three others who were in critical condition till going to press. These are direct attacks on our freedom of speech and thought and we condemn them in the strongest terms.

In one incident Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, a friend and publisher of Avijit Roy, along with two colleagues, was attacked in his office in Dhaka by a group of men, reportedly armed with machetes and guns. In the other incident later in the day, Faisal Arefin Dipan, another publisher, was attacked in Shahbag and succumbed to his injuries.

The way these attacks were carried out speaks volume about the ever increasing recklessness of the extremists who commit such crimes. In the first case, the armed assailants reportedly barged in Tutul's office in broad day light and locked him along with two of his colleagues from outside. All three were stabbed and at least one of them was shot.

The question that looms large at this point is this: Did the law enforcement agencies provide Tutul with adequate security, if at all, after he filed a complaint with the police, being threatened with death on Facebook following the murder of Roy earlier this year?

These attacks give a new dimension to the whole thing; not only bloggers, but also those associated with them are now being targeted. And the extremists seem to be operating with impunity. Regrettably, so far, of the five blogger-murder cases, some progress has been made only in one. There must be a well-coordinated effort to identify these extremist groups as well as their sources of funding, anticipate their actions and catch and award them the due punishment.  

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18. NEPAL’S TIME FOR PLURAL, DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
by Pritam Singh
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(The Tribune, 2 November 2015)

The moral of the Nepal transition is that neither pacifism nor armed struggle is superior to the other. It is the context that decides what is politically feasible and, therefore, moral

Nepal’s time for plural, democratic socialism
Newly elected Nepal President Bidhya Bhandari being sworn in on October 29. AFP
BY most known measurements of economic development, Nepal may be described as an underdeveloped country, but in terms of ideological and political development, it is number one in the world right now, having democratically elected communists to the two top posts in the country — the President and the Prime Minister. 
 
Khadga Prasad Oli was recently elected Prime Minister and has been followed by Bidhya Devi Bhandari being elected President of the country. Ms Bhandari has the honour of also being the first woman President of her country as well as the first woman to be President of a communist-ruled country. If one were to construct a gender-index measure of development, Ms Bhandari’s electoral victory to the top post in the country will put Nepal in the top league.
 
Many questions immediately spring to mind. How has the Left achieved this amazing victory? What are the implications of this victory for the future shape of development in Nepal? Is such a left dominance sustainable? What are the lessons for the left-wing movements in other parts of the world? What are likely to be the implications of this left-wing ascendency for Nepal’s neighbours, especially India and China?
 
From a historical point of view of political progress, one of the shining achievements of the Left in Nepal was its central role in bringing over-250 years of monarchical rule to an end. This transition became possible both because of the internal balance of forces in Nepal as well as the crucial changes in the international political and military environment. The Maoist movement in Nepal had been engaged in a bitter armed struggle against the monarchy for decades. The Maoists had carved out a significant area of Nepal as their sphere of influence which could be called close to their notion of ‘liberated area’. However, they could not be confident of overthrowing the monarchical rule by force. On the opposite side, the monarchy could use its military power to inflict heavy damage to the Maoist movement but not without human rights violations. Both sides knew their strengths and vulnerability. Internationally, the US with India’s help did toy with the idea of helping the monarchy to militarily crush the Maoists but eventually did not follow this path because of its army being already overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation had reached a fine balancing point. The Maoists made a historic move to announce the end of their armed struggle if the monarchy agreed to abdicate. Other political formations were willing to compromise with the monarchy but the Maoists stuck to their demand. Their courage and principled stand received overwhelming support from wide-ranging sections of society that included even some sections in the military. Had the Maoists not been armed, the monarchy would have certainly crushed the anti-monarchy forces, and if the Maoists had not openly declared that they were willing to abandon armed struggle conditionally, it would have certainly led to civil war. The Maoist strategy won and the monarchical rule came to an end.
 
This Nepali experience of transition from monarchy to republicanism has sobering lessons for both pacifist fundamentalists and armed-struggle fundamentalists. Pure pacifist approach would have certainly allowed the monarchy to crush the opposition — the Maoists’ guns prevented that military onslaught. However, if the Maoists had mindlessly persisted with the armed struggle, they would have been alienated from wider sections of Nepali society. They chose the path of parliamentary struggle at the right time and converted the political balance of forces in their favour. The moral of the Nepal transition is that neither pacifism nor armed struggle is superior to the other. It is the context and the balance of forces that decide what is politically feasible and, therefore, morally desirable.
In Chile in 1973, Salvador Allende, the first Marxist to become President of a Latin American country through democratic elections, refused to arm his supporters when they demanded and needed to be armed and was, therefore, overthrown and murdered by the right-wing military forces led by General Pinochet. The Chilean society suffered terrible human rights violations for 15 years of military rule before it returned to the democratic path. Chilean society paid a very heavy price for President Allende’s pacifism and constitutionalism. 
 
Nepal is a small landlocked country sandwiched between two huge economic powers — China and India. This geographical location has a huge disadvantage of both the powers wanting to use Nepal for their own goals, but Nepal can turn this disadvantage into advantage by using the competition between these two rivals to win concessions from both. Nepal faces huge challenges of poverty and inequality, and following an ecologically sustainable model of development. In this, it has the advantage of late development in not following the flawed model of Soviet-style industrialisation which was harmful to nature. It can also learn from the mistakes of the Chinese model of agrarian change. Nepal can leapfrog by innovating a path of transition to socialism which is democratic, compatible with nature and respectful of pluralism and diversity. The initial steps taken in developing a federal constitution is a healthy sign.
 
The most crucial challenge facing the Nepali transition to socialism would be land reforms. The land reforms can be the centrepiece of an agricultural model of development that can ensure the participation of the rural masses in the development process. 
 
Marx’s vision of socialism was based on transition from the most developed capitalist economy to socialism. Nepal throws a challenge to socialist theory by embarking on transition from one of the most underdeveloped capitalist economies to socialism. Therein lays the historical significance of Nepal having elected democratically communist politicians to govern its destiny.
 
The writer is a Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford.

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19. BANGLADESH: AMNESTY COMMENTS OUT OF LINE - EDITORIAL, DHAKA TRIBUNE
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(Dhaka Tribune - 31 October 2015)

Amnesty International is perfectly within its rights and mandate to proffer its opinion as to the credibility of the war crimes trials and other instances that fall within its ambit, such as recent restrictions on freedom of expression in Bangladesh.

But to criticise the government for failing to prosecute war crimes committed by pro-independence forces in 1971 is out of order and only serves to buttress the government’s claims that Amnesty just has it in for them.

No one is denying that such atrocities took place. However, to draw any equivalency between the two sides is willful blindness on the part of Amnesty, and to raise the issue in the context of the ongoing trials is a deliberate provocation that smacks of bad faith.

There is a world of difference between isolated human rights violations committed during a conflict and those which were committed with the full power of an occupying army behind the perpetrators and committed as a stratagem of war, intended to break resistance and sow terror.

The war crimes trials may have their imperfections, but the fact that they have not put on trial pro-independence perpetrators is not one of them.  To suggest that the Bangladesh government has a duty to try pro-independence war crimes is to hold the process to an impossible and unprecedented standard.

In any event, whether pro-independence forces are put on trial or not has zero bearing on the cases at bar, and for Amnesty to raise the issue in the context of the ongoing trials does nothing more than to undercut its own credibility and lend credence to the view that it is not an honest broker on the subject.

No one has ever been put on trial for the fire-bombing of Dresden or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII to point out only the two most obvious instances.

To hold Bangladesh to a higher standard for its war crimes trials and to denigrate the process for not doing so is unacceptable and makes it hard to take Amnesty’s other critiques seriously.

If Amnesty wishes to be taken seriously on the war crimes trials, it needs to be far more even-handed in its approach. Its latest comments suggest that this is far from the case.


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20. SRI LANKA: ADDRESS MUSLIM ISSUES THROUGH GENEVA PROCESS
by Jehan Perera
=========================================
(The Island, 27 October 2015)

This week marks 25 years since the Muslim people inhabiting the north were evicted by the LTTE in a matter of hours that ranged from two hours to two days. Their treatment in Jaffna, the seat of Tamil civilization, was particularly harsh as there they were given only two hours to leave. Those who tried to take their valuable possessions with them, such as deeds to their land, jewellery and money, were stripped of them at the LTTE checkpoints. In many places their Tamil neighbours intervened on their behalf but to no avail. The LTTE was not a democratic organization that heeded the voice of the people when it differed from their purposes. Five years later, in 1995, the Tamil people living in the Jaffna peninsula suffered a similar fate at the hands of the LTTE when they were ordered by them to evacuate rather than come under the Sri Lankan military who recaptured the peninsula.

Today about 80 percent of those Muslim families who were evicted from the north continue to live outside it. Many have successfully rebuilt their lives. Despite the ruthless nature of their displacement only a few of them lost their lives so that the family units, the greatest long term strength of any community, remained intact. But in every other aspect they lost heavily, their moveable properties, their jewellery and their traditional homes and villages. There are complications attached to their return although six years have passed since the end of the LTTE. As a result the majority of the Muslim people who were displaced remain in a state of frustration and distress over their fate, which spills over into the larger Muslim community of being unjustly treated. The problems faced by this section of the Sri Lankan population and finding a just solution have not been given either the governmental attention or priority that it deserves.

The new government’s decision to co-sponsor the UN Human Rights Council resolution on Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka provides an opportunity for the country to come to terms with it many war-related problems and finding a just solution to them. While the focus of this resolution is the last phase of the war it nevertheless covers a broad range of concerns. The government has agreed to set up a judicial mechanism with international participation to investigate the past violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws, and prosecute those found guilty of those offenses. On the other hand, the UN investigation report on which the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council is based covers only the period 2002 to 2009. It is therefore possible that the expulsion of Muslims of the north which took place more than a decade earlier in 1990 may be considered to fall outside of its scrutiny.

INCLUDE MUSLIMS

There is a valid reason for seeking to restrict the time period of a judicial investigation in to the past that will lead to legal consequences and punishments. Properly constituted courts of law take a great deal of time to proceed with their documentation of cases, examinations, cross examinations, legal verdicts and appeals. Any fully fledged legal process is likely to be a slow one and capable of dealing with only a few cases at a time. The shorter period of 2002- 2009 may therefore be more conducive to the judicial accountability mechanism that is proposed to be set up with international participation. However, if it means that those serious violations of human rights that took place prior to 2002 are going to be ignored, it will mean that the accountability process is seen as partial to one group of victims rather than treating all victims alike.

Any victim-centered process needs to be fair to all victims and hear their voice and note their grievances for remedial action. It is to be noted that the government has not only proposed a judicial mechanism to address the hard issues of accountability. It has also proposed three other mechanisms which will contribute directly to the healing of the wounds of the past. These are the proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Office of Reparations and Office of Missing Persons. The mandate of these three mechanisms can be expanded to take in complaints of serious violations that took place prior to 2002. They can go back in time to cover the expulsion of the Muslims of the north in 1990 so that their voices and their grievances can reach the entire country and international audiences too.

Although the expulsion of the northern Muslims took place 25 years ago, and not in the last phase of the war, it too needs to be investigated and the circumstances under which it took place need to be known to the world. It also needs to become a part of Sri Lanka’s history that is remembered and never again repeated. What happened to the Muslims a mere two years ago with the rise of the Sinhalese nationalist Bodu Bala Sena continues to generate unease within the larger Muslim community. It may also be appropriate to give the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the power to recommend prosecution of crimes that took place prior to 2002 if exceptional circumstances warrant it.

OVERCOME PAST

The sudden upsurge of anti-Muslim sentiment two years ago, and its open manifestation amongst sections of the ethnic majority population, came as a shock to Muslims and they have still to recover from it. Muslims in Sri Lanka had believed themselves to be integrated into the mainstream of society. But when the anti-Muslim campaign that was undertaken by the Bodu Bala Sena struck, it was not challenged publicly by any significant section of the polity. Perhaps the reason was that it was feared that behind the anti-Muslim campaign was the hidden hand of a section of the then all-powerful government. Nevertheless, the unwillingness of the political parties to speak up and make a critique of the anti-Muslim propaganda at that time was an indication of the failure of post-war reconciliation. To this day, there is a sense of vulnerability of the Muslim community which needs to be dispelled.

So far the present government’s effort to deal with the past failure of governance, and to obtain the support of the Sri Lankan people and the international community, appear to be on course. The international community has been impressed by the government’s cooperative approach. The government’s decision to co-sponsor a resolution that was specific to Sri Lanka was unique, as mentioned by the UN Human Right Commissioner, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. The government has thereby committed itself to implement the recommendations of the resolution. It is important to note that these are not limited to accountability for war crimes, but also include other areas of governance. One of these is to "investigate all alleged attacks by individuals and groups on journalists, human rights defenders, members of religious minority groups and other members of civil society, as well as place of worship."

It is not only the government that is to be commended for its willingness to take the country on a new path that gives priority to the protection of human rights and values of good governance. The people of Sri Lanka too have been prepared to give the government the time and space to carry out its reforms without getting misled by propaganda of the opposition parties. The contrast to how the country received the UN resolution of 2013, with wildly emotional protests and demonstrations and how it received the present resolution of 2015 shows that the Sri Lankan people are by and large open minded. Sri Lanka is today an oasis of peace in its absence of armed conflict and political violence. There is also at present no overt display of hostility between the ethnic and religious communities. But the need for inter-ethnic and inter-religious peace building and reconciliation is never ending, as a glance at what is happening in other parts of the world will show.

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21. GEETA IN INDIA
Editorial, The Daily Times
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(The Daily Times, 28 October 2015)

The heartwarming case of life imitating art was nearing its conclusion, but for a late twist in the tale that has increased the ‘filmy’ factor in Geeta’s story. Geeta, the hearing and speech impaired young woman who got stuck on the wrong side of the border for more than a decade, finally landed in India on October 26 with great fanfare. After accidentally crossing into Pakistan, the then pre-pubescent girl could not identify herself or where she came from due to her condition and was consequently taken care of by the Edhi Foundation all these years. The campaign to return her to her home was galvanized due to the popularity of the Bollywood film Bajrangi Bhaijaan, whose story dealt with a similar case with nationalities reversed. Thus, a truly remarkable and humanitarian tale of cooperation between citizens and governments of two countries who are otherwise caught in escalating tensions has been improbably witnessed. The Indian government received calls from a number of families claiming Geeta, and one credible seeming family’s photos were forwarded by the Indian High Commission to the Karachi shelter of Edhi Foundation where Geeta claimed to recognise her relatives. It was then arranged for her to be flown to India, accompanied by representatives of the Edhi Foundation and they were all warmly received. Prime Minister Modi in particular took a break from his busy schedule to meet her, heaped praise on Abdul Sattar Edhi and his organization and thanked them for their compassionate care and facilitating the return of Geeta. He offered a donation of Rs 10 million but was politely refused by Edhi, who urged the prime minister to spend that amount on rehabilitating deaf and mute children in India. However, the celebrations were marred when, according to India’s foreign minister, Geeta refused to recognise her purported family. Now she is to be housed in a shelter in Delhi while DNA tests are conducted to unravel the mystery.

There were already doubts about the veracity of her family when their claims did not match the story familiar to Edhi workers but nonetheless her Indian nationality was not in doubt and the right decision was taken by Edhi Foundation and the respective governments to send her to her homeland. Geeta, despite the family confusion, was overwhelmed on her return and the Indian government is now in a better position to identify and trace her real family. It is hoped that she has a happy reunion after years of being stranded. Regardless of how this saga ends, this affair has once again brought to light the staggering humanity, compassion and commitment to social justice possessed by one of Pakistan’s greatest citizens. Abdul Sattar Edhi and his wife are truly extraordinary individuals whose essential goodness is inspirational. That two countries permanently at the brink of war can come together on such occasions is another aspect that engenders hope.*

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22. INDIA: UNIVERSITIES HAVE LOST THEIR RADICAL STREAK
by CP Bhambhri
=========================================
(Hindustan Times, Oct 26, 2015)

In the protest against the growing culture of intolerance and violence against religious minorities, why are our universities — JNU included — so silent? (AP File)

At a time when a large number of Sahitya Akademi awardees have returned their awards in protest against the growing culture of intolerance and violence against religious minorities, why are our universities — JNU included — so silent?

So stunning has been their stillness that the RSS has taken notice of this. RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi has said: “There is a huge question mark on the honesty of the writers who are giving back their awards. Where are university-based professors when great men and women of letters are fighting for the preservation of (the) ‘basic values and structures of (the) constitution’ of India? Are university professors, generally described as ‘intellectuals’ or ‘academics’, not expected to actively participate in this ongoing struggle…?”

It was not always like this.

The two major central universities of Delhi — JNU and Delhi University (DU) — had proved they were centres of dissent when the authoritarian forces during the emergency of 1975-77 arrested a few members of the teaching faculty and students. The very fact that the ruling elite felt it was essential to terrorise teachers and students of the two universities is the best evidence of their intellectual strength and conviction. Even abroad, in the US, the turmoil on the campuses had compelled the government to re-think America’s war against Vietnam. University professors and students participated in demonstrations on the campuses under the banner: “It is not our war, withdraw from Vietnam.” The campus revolt of students in 1968 in France and some European universities thrilled French philosopher Jean Paul-Sartre to proclaim that the campuses will create new levels of social avalanche against the ruling classes.

However, the present ruling formation at the Centre, rattled by the revolt of the Sahitya Akademi awardees and other persons of eminence, has ignored JNU and DU as if they do not exist. The explanation for this is that a very large component of the teaching faculty consists of people who choose to play safe and expect benefits from the government. They act as supplicants before government agencies for appointment to government committees, or before foreign funders for fellowships to travel abroad. This works well for foreign funders also because they have learnt, to their discomfiture, that being on the wrong side of the government has its disadvantages. How can such teachers be taken seriously as dissenters by the government, which is distributing goodies to favour-seekers? The central and state governments have successfully silenced them by simply corrupting the academic community.

JNU and DU should have revolted against those who have indulged in character assassination of the men of letters. While students of the FTII could stand up to the government against the imposition of a supposedly undeserving chairman, the teaching faculty of universities is not ready to play even a small price by taking out a demonstration in their support.

Favour-seeking professors are not only intellectually marginalised, those who dole out favours have contempt towards them. This is the reality in which teachers of JNU and DU find themselves in.

CP Bhambhri taught politics at JNU. The views expressed are personal) 

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23. INDIA: TOO LATE FOR BHAJANS AND QAWWALIS
by Jawed Naqvi 
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(Dawn - 3 November 2015)
COME winter in Delhi and the municipality hosts some fabulous classical music concerts at the manicured Nehru Park. A certain municipal commissioner had his cultural constraints. Any vocalist, man or woman, was requested to sing a bhajan after the main recital. Most indulged him, but when he approached Gangubai Hangal and whispered his standard request, she used the microphone to discipline him. “Hum bhajan wajan nahi gaatey hain. Pakka gana sunna hai to baith jaao,” she roared. (‘Bhajans are not for me. If you wish, you may sit down and listen to some classical music’.)

Without leaning excessively on this incident, I do believe that devotional singing in a classical concert is a relatively recent innovation, and it has become a fixation with deepening religious revivalism. Gangubai, of the exploited Devadasi extraction, unlike her predominantly upper-caste colleagues, had a problem with that. It is not that she was averse to traditional raag compositions with references to Hindu gods. Her morning melody in Raag Asaavri celebrates Mata Bhavani very evocatively.

But bhajan was not for the concert floor. Just as there are separate venues for qawwalis and shabad singing, there were formats and gatherings for abhang and bhajan.

The reason I am recalling this story is that the other day I went to a meeting in Delhi, which was dedicated to the memory of three martyred rationalists — Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi. The suspected killers in all cases happened to be Hindu extremists or, as Romila Thapar rightly calls them, terrorists. The meeting began with a bhajan that Gandhiji liked. Vaishnav jan to tene kahiye je peerh paraai jaane re. Narsi Mehta’s 15th-century verse describes the true follower of Lord Vishnu as one who shares the pain of others without flaunting it as charity.
Public intellectuals are not political parties that need vague cultural symbols to state their case.

Nice, but how was the poem relevant to the occasion? Suppose the meeting was organised by Dalit intellectuals, which it was not, how would they have choreographed the occasion? Ambedkar, the most towering of the Dalit intellectuals, has described Hinduism as a chamber of horrors.

He had a serious problem with Gandhi’s mixing of religion with politics. Can we conceive of a liberal campaign without negotiating the hard questions Ambedkar had challenged Gandhi with? A respected intellectual at the meeting quoted from Tulsidas and Geeta to illustrate the ‘agreeable’ side of Hinduism. This doesn’t work in fighting fascism. Progressive Pakistanis try every opportunity to avoid passages from the scriptures at their meetings. There could be non-believers in attendance, as Ambedkar was and his followers are.

Many of Ambedkar’s fans have sadly formed alliances with the Hindutva establishment. Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan made a great point about cow worship in a meeting in Aligarh some years ago. “The Brahmin calls the cow his mother. But when the cow dies, he orders members of my community to remove the carcass. Will I be invited to lend a shoulder to his real mother’s body? Never.”

Cultural offshoots of communist parties have also found themselves committed to irrelevant and inappropriate poetry at times. After the pogroms in Gujarat, a young qawwal was commandeered to sing Khusro’s quasi devotional Chhap tilak sab chheeni mohse naina milaike to bemused listeners at India Gate. The way to fight the fight was eventually shown by Teesta Setalvad.

Public intellectuals are not political parties that need vague cultural symbols to state their case. Nor do they beat about the bush or worry about treading on someone’s toes. They must say what they have to say with clarity and a sense of purpose. Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib are seasoned campaigners in this realm. But these are disturbing times.

Thapar was in Mumbai for a lecture when she got an early morning call from the police. They were determined to protect her since they feared someone might throw ink at her or worse. And so she was escorted to the jam-packed venue where she was heartily applauded. Then she was gently escorted back to her hotel. “I am going to be 84 and I began as a lecturer at 28. I must confess I have never felt so deeply depressed in my whole career,” she told a meeting of writers and scientists in Delhi. “It’s 68 years since independence and today I need police protection to give a lecture on secularism!”

India needs a uniform civil code, she said boldly in a recent talk. That demand usually comes from the Hindu right. It’s a tribute to Thapar’s standing in the Muslim society that no cleric threatened to shun her. If the spirit of the proposed code is rights-based and it seeks gender equality no khap panchayat could short change anyone. Thapar speaks with conviction against a creeping culture of Hindu fascism because she is against a death sentence passed on Salman Rushdie or a fatwa handed to music composer A.R. Rahman.

Another legendary historian spoke at the Sunday conclave under the banner of Pratirodh, or resistance. Prof Irfan Habib has faced reactionary Muslim ire through much of his teaching career at Aligarh. He has fought right-wing Hindu detractors just as resolutely. He is candid in his evaluation of the Hindutva threat, which he likens to Nazi Germany. “They claim to have won a big battle by changing the name of Aurangzeb Road. Why don’t they change Mansingh Road also, since he was a traitor to the Hindutva cause?” he said of Mughal ruler Akbar’s main Rajput associate. “We know they dare not touch him.”

Megha Pansare, daughter-in-law of the slain communist-rationalist, made the most urgent point. “My father-in-law always said the rightist forces are not strong. It is the progressive forces that are scattered.” Bringing them together will require sustained hard work and a shrewd strategy. Bhajans and qawwalis can wait.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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24. SIMPLY PUT: WHY RAINING FIRE ON MAOIST REBELS COULD SINGE THE STATE TOO
by Sushant Singh
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(Indian Express - October 27, 2015)

In gunship mode, the medium machine gun fitted in the helicopter’s nose pod fires. A helicopter in gunship mode is at a much lower spectrum of airpower usage than airstrikes by fighter or bomber aircraft.

Commandos have practised strafing in Chhattisgarh — though IAF has said it won’t undertake offensive strikes on Maoists. SUSHANT SINGH explains the issues

Is firing of small arms from helicopters the same as carrying out airstrikes?

No. Commandos firing small arms from helicopters is not even the same as using an attack helicopter in gunship mode. In gunship mode, the medium machine gun fitted in the helicopter’s nose pod fires. A helicopter in gunship mode is at a much lower spectrum of airpower usage than airstrikes by fighter or bomber aircraft.
On October 21, The Indian Express quoted Chhattisgarh’s Additional DG (Anti-Naxal Ops) R K Vij: “The law has never stopped us from retaliation. We have conducted exercises...”
On October 21, The Indian Express quoted Chhattisgarh’s Additional DG (Anti-Naxal Ops) R K Vij: “The law has never stopped us from retaliation. We have conducted exercises…”

What is India’s policy on using airpower against domestic insurgencies?

Jawaharlal Nehru turned down the Army’s request for use of airpower against Naga insurgents in the mid-1950s, provoking some officers to complain that they were being forced to fight with a hand tied behind their backs. But the Army accepted the limits imposed on the use of heavy force — artillery or airpower — and this has been the standing principle ever since. At its heart also is the understanding that domestic insurgencies need political solutions, that have only limited use for military power.

So, has India never used airpower against domestic insurgents?

Yes, it has — in Mizoram. On February 28, 1966, Mizo National Front rebels captured the government treasury at Aizawl and besieged the 1st Assam Rifles headquarters in the town, along with the posts at Champai, Darngaon, Vaphai, Lungleh and Demagiri, which housed both the troops and their families. Indira Gandhi ordered out Hunter and Toofani aircraft which used guns and air-to-ground rockets to break the rebel siege. On March 4, 1966, Hunter and Toofani formations attacked predesignated targets in Aizawl.

Has it ever contemplated the use of helicopter gunships against insurgents?

Following the success of armed helicopters in the Kargil War, it was decided, in 2000, to use helicopter gunships against terrorists in the Kashmir Valley. Two Mi-35s were prepared for the role — but after a couple of failed attempts at coordinating with the Army officer who could not be accommodated in the cockpit, a decision was taken to use the bigger Mi-17s instead. An Mi-17 crew did, on one occasion, fire at militants on the ground, but the results could not be ascertained.

In Kargil, the Pakistanis were on snow-bound terrain with no vegetation, far from inhabited areas. During Valley missions, on the other hand, helicopters had to operate close to populated areas with vegetation that was dense at places — providing terrorists cover, and making it very difficult to distinguish friend from foe from the air. The experiment was quickly abandoned.

What is the argument for not using helicopter gunships in Chhattisgarh?

If the conflict has not been found severe enough for the Army to be called out, it follows that there is little rationale for using the IAF either. Induction of the IAF could appear as an admission of the Maoists’ strength, reinforce the air of invincibility about them, and have a negative psychological impact on the population. If the Maoists succeed in downing a helicopter, the pressure to retaliate could lead to the deployment of fighter aircraft — an escalation that must be avoided.

Again, given the thickly forested terrain of Chhattisgarh, and the manner in which Maoists often operate — mixing with the rural population — it will be difficult to distinguish innocents from insurgents. The US air force has made mistakes in Afghanistan, and the level of technology at which Indian forces operate is far lower. Any killing of innocents will be counterproductive in counterinsurgency ops, which are about controlling the terrain and winning over the population.

Also, breaching the principle of no use of heavy force in counterinsurgency will establish a new threshold for using airpower internally. Security forces could start expecting its use more frequently in disturbed areas.

And what is the argument for using helicopter gunships in Chhattisgarh?

A helicopter is most vulnerable while coming in to land and, if shot at, the immediate reaction of the pilot is to raise the “collective” and fly out of the danger bubble. It follows, therefore, that there is a case for sanitising the landing area by offensive fire from the air prior to the helicopter sitting down. The IAF could also have another helicopter hovering in perch, looking out for hostile activity from the ground, and answering it with machinegun fire. During the Algerian insurgency, the French mastered the art of clearing the landing ground of insurgents by offensive action, and timing the arrival of helicopters just after such actions. The troop-carrying helicopters would also be similarly covered from the air. Attack helicopters could also be used to neutralise Maoist camps from the air, and troops could then be used for mopping-up operations.

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25. ARE INDIA'S HINDU NATIONALISTS TRYING TO START A BEEF? BY BANNING BEEF?
by Maddy Crowell
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(Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 2015)

Over 20 policemen appeared at the Kerala House, a popular dining venue in Delhi after a call was made to police claiming the restaurant sold beef. Just how strong is India's beef ban?	

On Monday night in Delhi, 20 police officers showed up at Kerala House, a popular government restaurant that served “beef” on the menu, after receiving a call from a Hindu religious leader. Although no arrests were made, the story went viral – and became a warning for a country that is becoming increasingly religious.

Protests against the “raid” soon took place outside the restaurant in central Delhi, where protestors called out against what they saw as a larger problem in India: intolerance for non-Hindus.

Cows have been considered sacred in Hinduism for centuries, when the cow became divinely associated with the Indian god Krishna. Despite this, beef dishes have been a popular treat in Indian restaurants spanning across the country – especially in parts of India that are home to other religions like Kerala's Christian population or Jammu & Kashmir’s Muslim population. In March this year, however, laws began to change.
Recommended: How well do you know India? Take the quiz.

In early March, beef was banned in Maharashtra, the country’s second largest state and home to India’s largest city of Mumbai. Restaurants were forced to remove any beef content from the menus, and offenders could be charged with up to five years in prison. The state government extended the ban to include bulls and oxen, causing an estimated 500,000 beef farmers to lose their jobs. A few weeks later, the state of Haryana followed suit and passed similar laws.
Test your knowledge How well do you know India? Take the quiz.
Photos of the Day Photos of the day 10/27

To date, beef is banned in 11 of India’s 29 states, including major cities like New Delhi and Mumbai. This isn’t a problem for a country that’s eighty percent Hindu, but for the 138 million Muslims and 24 million Christians, resentment towards the government is mounting, and, in some cases, leading to murder.

Earlier this month, a young Muslim man was beaten to death in a village outside Delhi for allegedly killing a cow. Protestors also beat his 75-year-old mother. In September, a mob in the north Indian city of Dadri dragged a man from his bed in the middle of the night and beat him to death with bricks for having eaten beef. And a few weeks ago, the Indian government banned beef in Kashmir during Eid - and then, to quell protests, they banned the Internet.

Much of the recent change can be attributed to India’s new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who swept into power under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a pan-Hindu group that has, in the past, advocated a national ban on beef. The party has been accused of being aggressively “hard-line” when it comes to promoting Hinduism, and has passed a series of conservative measures to reclaim Hindu roots. In December 2013, for example, homosexuality was re-criminalized.

Still, protestors are pushing back against the BJP. Soon after police raided the Kerala House, owners of the restaurant promised to remove all buffalo meat from the menu – a favorite of Kerala’s government officials who often visit the government-run establishment. (Beef is not banned in Kerala, India’s southernmost state and home to a large Christian population.) 

But a few hours later, following a call from Kerala’s Chief Minister to Modi, Indian papers reported that beef fry will be back on the menu tomorrow.

[Editor's note: An earlier version misstated the proximity of Haryana to Maharashtra.]

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26. CENSORSHIP IS RETURNING TO INDONESIA IN THE NAME OF THE 1965 PURGES
by Laksmi Pamuntjak
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(The Guardian - 27 October 2015)

Even by the standards of post-totalitarian nations’ lingering paranoia the last month in Indonesia has seen a disheartening return to Suharto-era tropes of repression and neurosis
Members of the Youth Wing of the Indonesian Communist party are guarded by soldiers as they are taken by open truck to prison in Jakarta, 1965.


A week ago I received a message from Janet DeNeefe, director of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.

“I just wanted to let you know that the UWRF is being censored this year, and we have been told to remove all programs to do with ‘1965’,” she wrote. “Or else next year they will not give us a permit to hold the festival.”
Indonesian writers' festival forced to cancel events linked to 1965 massacre
Read more

I felt a chill when I read these lines, and a faint sense of absurdity that accompanied the sting. For one, I was on my European book tour, having done almost nothing else in the past one and a half month but speak to German and Dutch audiences about my novel, an epic love story set against the backdrop of the Indonesian anti-communist purges of 1965.

In Düsseldorf or Erfurt, Amsterdam or the Hague, I encountered nothing but genuine empathy and solidarity for Indonesians’ collective struggle to come to terms with our violent past as well as to render tangible justice for an untold many. It was particularly so in Germany, with its experience of national trauma.

This brings us to the irony of current domestic politics. For have Indonesians not, in the past 17 years since the fall of the Suharto regime, enjoyed a measure of hard-earned freedom from fear, censorship, and from restrictions to creativity?

Have we not witnessed the unprecedented burgeoning of new expression, in forms and language so alien to the 32-year pit out of which it was born? Have we not experienced, in the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, a literary forum which for 12 years has been able to keep the “1965” discourse alive without any state intervention?

Have we not pledged ourselves to the quest for alternative histories, for new ways of seeing and thinking about the world? Have we not seen the infrastructure of freedom so long devalued – bookstores, publishing houses, the press – finally standing up for themselves and giving people their voices back?

Have we not heard of private screenings – known by the abbreviation nobar (nonton bareng; watching together) – of Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing? Screenings that keep popping up despite crackdowns by the authorities, suggesting that Indonesians know what they want and are resourceful enough to get it?

Up until a month ago, we still tended to look on the 17 years of political and cultural renaissance as a triumph of the collective memory. Or, rather, the failure of Fascism’s central conceit: that domination does not breed resistance to itself.

If the calamity of authoritarianism gave Indonesian democracy its cause, this past month threatens to show that the rifts Suharto tore in our body politic may never be mended. That censorship should coincide with the 50th anniversary of the genocide might be the key to understanding why that is.

However, if in the past month I was tentative in my public discussion of the festival censorship – stopping short, in other words, of saying that there is a rise of neo-anti-communism in Indonesia – it has become harder to do so now. Similar incidents that occurred within a few days of each other smack of a disheartening return to old tropes of official neurosis: taken together, they suggest an eerie revival of the Suharto era.

Take the case of Tom Iljas, a 77-year-old former political exile in Sweden. He was arbitrarily arrested and deported earlier this month for visiting a mass grave of 1965 victims in West Sumatra, in search of the final resting place of his father.

The irony of having been barred from coming home 50 years ago, only to be banished once more in so-called peaceful times, tests the limits of humiliation. In a statement, Iljas and his supporters said: “[J]ust to look at the mass graves of family members we still get terror and intimidation ... We recognise that what is happening is the result of efforts for reconciliation and the fulfilment of the rights of victims.”

Even by the standards of post-totalitarian nations, with their lingering paranoia and tendency to be consecrated to the memory of official ideology and legitimacy of power, this incident was quite stunning in its audacity. It was utterly lacking in substance – legal, moral or otherwise.

The other case, no less Suhartoesque, concerns the confiscation and burning of the Satya Wacana University student magazine Lentera. The students produced a special 10 October edition, which explored the 1965 purges in Salatiga. Reportedly, the mayor, police and military complained after the magazine was distributed. The student editors were interrogated on 18 October, and the whole 500-copy print run was torched. Editor Bima Satria Putra told Tempo magazine that the university – incidentally no stranger to reformist activism and progressive thought – was also reprimanded by the police.

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings,” Heinrich Heine famously said, and yet, in present day Indonesia, there is something almost caricatural to this offence.

For one, it brings us right back to the second half of the 80s and the first half of the 90s, when you couldn’t count the number of student arrests for producing and distributing “subversive” material. The normalisation of campus life (Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus) decree of April 1978 and coordinating body for student affairs (Badan Koordinasi Kampus) formed the NKK/BKK policy that forced Indonesia’s system of higher education to its knees. That acronym became shorthand for the death of universities and the death of thinking in Suharto’s Indonesia.

The other inglorious incident that occurred within the past month happens to concern myself, although I would not lose sleep over it. The morning I arrived in Frankfurt, some 10 hours before the opening of the 67th Frankfurt Book Fair in which Indonesia was the guest of honour, the press officer of our National Committee informed me that some Muslim groups had been demonstrating against me and a fellow author in front of one of the ministries in Jakarta.

When I asked whatever for, he replied: “For being at the forefront of the national committee’s alleged active promotion of Communism at the fair.” My first instinct at the time was perversely self-congratulatory in nature. Not for being demonstrated against, but, rather, for encountering some kind of confirmation of a deeply-held personal theory: that in the past 17 years, the great dichotomy that used to characterise the Suharto dictatorship – the state, versus civil society – has been replaced by the increasing aggression of hard-line Muslim groups seeking to force their values on the vast diversity that is Indonesia. Yet I came to this conclusion before the news of the repatriation of Tom Ilyas and the barbaric act committed against the student body of the Satya Wacana University had reached my ears.

    Political Islam in Indonesia rarely ever acts alone in its quest for hegemony.

Indeed, there appeared a darker, older supervising power that has kept this process under surveillance all along, and the realisation that this was the case hit me quite hard. For the truth of the matter is that political Islam in Indonesia rarely ever acts alone in its quest for hegemony. Its alliance with the military has seen its members, particularly from the Nahdlatul Ulama, committing many of the killings between 1965 and 1968.

Stoked by frequent evocations of the Madiun Affair of 1948, in which Communist rebels murdered some Muslim leaders before they were defeated, many Muslims were sold on the idea that they were victims of Communist aggression. For many youths, executing Communists was a religious duty.

This symbiotic relationship was demonstrated again less than a month ago at the 50th anniversary commemoration of the murder of six army generals and one lieutenant – part of an attempted coup that was attributed by Suharto to the Indonesian Communist party. At the start of the event, both the Jakarta chief of police and the head of the menacing hardline Muslim group Islamic Defenders Front grandly denounced Communism in one of the starkest public shows of their partnership to date.

I should have realised it then, as I should have heeded an earlier portent: the moment the chief of South Jakarta police turned up with a militant Islamic group at an art centre three years ago, to crack down on a public lecture by the reformist Muslim intellectual Irshad Manji.

However, to say Communism is an empty threat, given Suharto made sure that nothing was left of Communism in Indonesia, is of course to miss the point. Anti-Communist propaganda has worked before as a legitimising basis of power and control, and a variation on it will work again given how deeply conditioned a large majority of Indonesians still are by the old regime’s official history.

What we are witnessing is not the rise of neo-anti-communism per se, even if it seems that way on the surface; instead, anti-communism is merely a pretext for state terrorism and heightened control in the larger, and a more concerning scheme of a re-militarisation of government.

To many seasoned analysts of Indonesian politics, this volte-face might come as no surprise. Yet the hard-earnedness of reformasi – the period of democratic transition that followed Suharto’s reign – may have imprinted a certain intractability upon those who had fought for it, if not a downright refusal to accept the possibility of a regression of any kind.
It is 50 years since the Indonesian massacre of 1965 but we cannot look away

Still. There is no denying the telltale signs. The return to anti-communist rhetoric as a pretext for state intimidation. The return to the culture of fear when there is nothing to fear of except for the healthy probings of historical inquiry that are essential to a nation’s healing.

President Joko Widodo has not helped matters much through his refusal to apologise to victims of the anti-Communist slaughter. His last message on the issue – that an apology is impossible when both sides claim to be victims – may give us no relief. However, despite civil society’s best efforts, it may be the clearest picture yet of where we are in our struggle against forgetting. This does not mean we should lose hope. We may be on the brink of sliding back into the dark ages, but we have always known how to fight back.

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27. BOOK REVIEW: GUHA ON ALPERS, 'THE INDIAN OCEAN IN WORLD HISTORY'
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 Edward A. Alpers. The Indian Ocean in World History. New Oxford World History Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Illustrations, maps. 172 pp. $19.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-533787-7; $44.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-516593-7.

Reviewed by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin)
Published on H-Empire (October, 2015)
Commissioned by Charles V. Reed

This slim volume appears in a series (New Oxford World History) that aims to publish histories that emphasize connectedness, present the narrative from various perspectives, and ultimately analyze and reconstruct “the significant experience of all of humanity” (series editors’ preface, p. ix). The book addresses the vast Indian Ocean, which might nowadays be defined as stretching south to Australia, east to the South China Sea, and west to the east coast of Africa. But Edward A. Alpers cautions us that both the idea and reality of the ocean have changed through the millennia.

The book is divided into six chapters: the first discusses how the Indian Ocean was apprehended as a single entity. Logically enough, such conceptions were formed by travelers who journeyed through it rather than abided in one spot on its coast and that topic opens chapter 1. Experience of the sea is shaped by the vessels used to traverse it and the navigational and cartographic knowledge of the seafarers. The regular use of the monsoon winds around India, beginning perhaps 2,500 years ago, changed the outlines of the ocean as experienced by travelers by closely connecting certain harbors of eastern Africa with their counterparts in India and skipping others altogether. Alpers elegantly presents evidence from Roman, Arab, and European sources to illustrate this. He also introduces archaeological evidence of settlement, trade, and migration by sea from very ancient times and uses both descriptions and images of the seacraft that traversed it.

This chapter transitions into one on the Ancient Indian Ocean, which spans the period from 5000 BCE to the expansion of Islam after 700 CE. The movements of resources that deeply affected everyday life, most especially many cultivated plants and a few domesticated animals, receive due attention. The unobtrusive but dramatic expansion of the Austronesian languages, today found from Madagascar to Hawaii and Easter Island, is explained in terms of the development of “ocean nomadism” and its associated navigational techniques and knowledge (p. 26). This is a refreshing corrective to textbooks that focus exclusively on navigation between the early civilizations of the Old World. These too are, however, treated at appropriate length, though the largely inland campaigns of Alexander of Macedon are discussed too extensively in this chapter. It ends with what Alpers describes as a mid-sixth-century collapse of oceanic networks and major states, perhaps related to the spread of bubonic plague.

The next phase of the life of the Indian Ocean was marked by its becoming an Islamic sea (chapter 3). Here the narrative begins at the eastern margin of the ocean. Older Buddhist circuits remained active but Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) harbors now had sizable settlements of Arab traders who had come around the coasts of India and southeast Asia, where culturally Indian states had been emerging through the first millennium CE. The narrative then shifts to the far west, the land of the wealthy Abbasid Caliphate, which drew commodities from across the ocean and sought to establish large-scale slave-worked farms in southern Iraq. The African slaves imported to toil here successfully rebelled (869-883 CE) and the system had to be abandoned. Large-scale slaving, Alpers notes, did not return until the eighteenth century. This chapter makes good use of the great travelogue of Ibn Battuta, but also of Marco Polo and Nicolo Conti. It ends with a discussion of the famous voyages of the Ming admiral Zheng He between 1405 and 1433. The representation of imperial power is then balanced by a discussion of those irrepressible subalterns, the various pirates who raided throughout the ocean.

Chapter 4 introduces the well-known story of Portuguese navigation and conquest in the Indian Ocean, which Alpers describes as a form of “state piracy” (p. 75). But these depredations did not go unchallenged; they were confronted by regional seamen from East Africa to Indonesia, and also the newly arriving Ottoman Empire that only retreated at the end of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese then consolidated their rule of the sea with strong coastal fortresses, just in time to meet attacks from Protestant nations seeking to break into the Indian Ocean trade. The result for a period was that “every player regarded ... its rivals as pirates” (p. 86). Lesser-known participants emerged too: the peoples of Madagascar with a few European expatriates formed states based on slave raiding and piracy. Nearby French plantations stimulated demand for the slaves the Malagasy captured. The establishment of the Siddi (Ethiopian) naval state at Janjira (Jazeera) near Mumbai finds mention, as does the rise of Oman as a militant empire that drove the Portuguese from several bases in East Africa between 1643 and 1698. Through all this, however, Gujarati merchants managed to deal with multiple powers and spread around the harbors on both sides of the ocean. This epoch ended gradually with the establishment of the British predominance over both local powers and European rivals that marked the “the long nineteenth century” (the title of chapter 5).

The dynamics of the ocean changed dramatically during the nineteenth century. Steam ships and the associated coal depots altered sea routes, while ancient staples, like cloves, began to be grown outside their original centers and New World crops, such as rubber and cinchona, changed regional agriculture. Large epidemics of cholera spread across land and sea, killing tens of thousands. The Industrial Revolution overturned the world industrial order that had been based for centuries on the export of Indian cotton textiles. Imperial effort, especially British, reduced slave trading to minimal levels. Testimonies of slaves and slave catchers add an extra dimension to this chapter, which also rejects the glib identification of indentured labor with slavery. Alpers selects three groups of people who were prominent migrants in this century: Chinese, Indians, and Hadramis. The resident populations of the first two numbered 430 million and 250 million in 1850 respectively,[1] but the Hadramis came from a very small population. Those labeled such, however, filled the niche of Islamic religious leadership around the Indian Ocean. By the 1930s, 140,000 “could claim Hadrami origins” (p. 122). The operative word here (I think) is “claim”: high-status niches are very attractive. For example, the Arab tribe of the Quraish has multiplied enough to staff innumerable halal butcher shops in India. The nineteenth century thus saw more rapid transformations in the Indian Ocean world than any before the yet more transformative twentieth century, which is the subject of chapter 6.

Oil was struck in Khuzistan (Iran) in 1908, and then at various sites around the Gulf. Five other themes of the twentieth century can, Alpers argues, all be linked to it: air travel, the continued expansion of Islam, the threat of environmental catastrophe, resurgent piracy, and the renewed geopolitical significance of the Indian Ocean. Postcolonial nationalism inevitably is featured in this chapter, both by way of new boundaries and ethnic discrimination against immigrant communities who had grown up under earlier imperial suzerainty. The expansion of pilgrimage networks and new strains of religious purism are duly analyzed. Oil wealth has led to a massive demand for labor and millions of expatriates have moved to toil in small Gulf states, dwarfing local populations. Enormous increases in trade alongside more vulnerable ships navigating marine bottlenecks, such as the Straits of Melaka, have allowed a resurgence of piracy. The better-known case of piracy off the coast of eastern Africa naturally figures prominently in this narrative. Then we move to a mention of museums and exhibitions showcasing maritime and migration histories. The chapter ends with a return to the experiences of ordinary people with memories of recent migration and dislocation.

This is an enormous span to cover in 146 pages of text. The book is nonetheless clear and readable, and the author unobtrusively but insistently brings in the tales of common folk and seafarers, both as victims and as perpetrators of violence. People’s imaginings of the great ocean are presented in the first chapter, but are less prominent in the last, though surely it is significant that at the creation of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation, nineteen countries from South Africa to India joined, but not the Comoros, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, or Myanmar, or any country on the South China Sea—a different imagination of the ocean was evidently at work in those parts (p. 143).

Not unexpectedly, there are a few misstatements which I correct here. Nearchos came to India overland from Persia with Alexander of Macedon, built a fleet on the Jhelum River, and sailed it to Babylonia on the return (p. 28). The Maurya Empire was founded in Alexander’s time by Chandragupta; the Gupta dynasty reigned five hundred years later (p. 30). The name “Yava-dvipa” (modern Java?), if Sanskrit, means “Island of Barley,” not of gold (p. 33).

The real weakness of the book for classroom or general use is the quality of the maps. There is no list of maps and some are confusingly drawn. For instance, in the “Ancient Indian Ocean” map (pp. 20-21), modern names and ancient ones are juxtaposed in the same font as though they coexisted and successive empires are presented together but are geographically separated (e.g., “Persia” and “Sassanian Empire” or Gupta Empire and Maurya Empire). On another map (pp. 42-43), “Dwarka” (Gujarat, India) has been placed in Baluchistan (Pakistan or Iran); in the early modern map (pp. 72-73), Janjira is placed south of Goa whereas it lies a full two degrees north. On pages 100-101, “Plassey” has shifted about three hundred kilometers and a mysterious “Tanga” has appeared on the Brahmaputra River; several regions have moved to accommodate the labeler’s convenience. Even the twentieth-century map is characterized by misleading labeling and spelling. Perhaps political correctness requires that each state get the same font, but it results in, for example, Kuwait lying partly in Iranian territory. Maps of unfamiliar regions are vitally needed to give students a sense of the spatial organization of the narrative. All the maps in this book could do with careful re-editing. It is a pity that this aspect of such a well-written volume with an excellent apparatus of references and suggestions for reading did not receive any attention.

Note
[1]. Sumit Guha, Health and Population in South Asia from Earliest Times to the Present (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 4.

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28. SO WILL PROCESSED MEAT GIVE YOU CANCER?
by Anahad O’Connnor
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(The New York Times / SundayReview - 1 November 2015)

FOR the first 18 years of my life, I was raised as a vegetarian. My father was convinced of the perils of red meat after my paternal grandmother died on the operating table from late-stage colon cancer. While my father would no doubt be pleased by the news last week that a panel convened by the World Health Organization declared processed meats a cause of colorectal cancer — and red meat a probable one — I’m not convinced.

By no means am I a staunch defender of red meat. It has a greater impact on the environment than any other food in our diet: An estimated 20 percent of all greenhouse gases are attributable to raising animals for food. A vast majority of the meat we consume comes from factory farms, where animals are fattened with hormones and antibiotics and routinely subjected to inhumane conditions that breed disease. These are all compelling reasons to cut back on meat consumption — and part of the reason, even though I’m no longer a strict vegetarian, I rarely eat red meat.

But does bacon cause cancer, as the World Health Organization seemed to assert this week? That’s not a risk I worry about.

The main problem with the public health messages put out by the W.H.O. is that the agency did a poor job of explaining what its risk-ranking system really means. By most accounts, it’s arcane and even confuses some scientists. That’s because it’s based only on the strength of the overall research, not on the actual danger of a specific product.

A result is that the agency has created a hodgepodge of probable and possible carcinogens that borders on the ridiculous: pickled vegetables, coffee, cellphones, frying, working as a barber (think hair dye) and now red meat. As for bacon? The agency listed it alongside cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos, plutonium and salted fish. Of the more than 900 potential carcinogens the W.H.O. has evaluated since 1971, it has determined that only one — a nylon-manufacturing chemical found in drinking-water supplies — is “probably not” carcinogenic.

Even the most strident anti-meat crusader knows that eating bacon is not as risky as smoking or asbestos exposure. Smoking raises a person’s lifetime risk of developing lung cancer by a staggering 2,500 percent. Meanwhile, two daily strips of bacon, based on the associations identified by the W.H.O., would translate to about a 6 percent lifetime risk for colon cancer, up from the 5 percent risk for people who don’t enjoy bacon or other processed meats.

But that’s not the message that came across.

“Processed Meats Rank Alongside Smoking as Cancer Causes — WHO” read a headline in The Guardian.

“Bacon, Hot Dogs as Bad as Cigarettes” read another.

We do know that eating a lot of processed meat or red meat is associated with higher cancer risk; the W.H.O. report cited 800 studies documenting the association. But that’s a long way from cause and effect. It may simply be the so-called healthy user bias, the idea that people who eat lots of bacon are more likely to engage in risky behaviors (like smoking or a sedentary lifestyle) that lead to cancer; and that non-meateaters exhibit other healthful virtues (like exercise or eating vegetables) that protect them.

Untangling the effect of red meat from all these other risk factors is extremely difficult. And relying too heavily on relatively small associations to draw conclusions can lead health authorities down the wrong path.

It was a lesson learned after years of recommending that women take menopause hormones to protect their hearts, a finding based on observational studies that showed women who took hormones had fewer heart attacks. But when a large government study actually compared hormone use to a placebo, the result was the precise opposite of what the observational data had suggested. Women who took hormones had a higher risk of heart attack.

Other examples abound. Observational studies have suggested that a high intake of beta-carotene and vitamins B, C and E could protect against death from heart disease. Clinical trials showed they did not. Fiber and folic acid seemed to protect against colorectal cancer in observational studies; clinical trials indicated they did not.

John Ioannidis, the chairman of disease prevention at Stanford University, published a paper in 2012 titled “Is Everything We Eat Associated With Cancer?” He and a co-author scoured the medical literature and found many foods — among them eggs, coffee and even carrots and tomatoes — that had been linked to both an increased and a decreased risk of cancer in various studies.

Dr. Ioannidis said his normal inclination would be to dismiss the meat and cancer link “as one of these 500 foods that have studies all over the place.” But in this case the link, while relatively tiny, he said, is consistent across many studies.

Dozens of studies have shown that red and processed meat is also linked to increased risk of heart disease, type II diabetes, and...

“We could be wrong,” he added. “But my best interpretation is that there’s probably something there.”

His co-author, Jonathan Schoenfeld, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, offered the analogy of driving a car in the rain, which makes you significantly more likely to get into a car accident.

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t drive when it’s raining,” he said. “It means it might not make sense to speed in the rain — or to be one of the highest consumers of processed meat.”

Perhaps the single most important measure you can take to protect yourself from colorectal cancer, experts say, is to get a screening between the ages of 50 and 75. But only 58 percent of people in that age range do so.

“There’s nothing wrong with the concept of reducing your intake of red and processed meat,” said Amy Elmaleh, director of Colon Cancer Canada, an advocacy group. “But there’s a better conversation to have about screening, which is a huge opportunity to prevent colon cancer.”

If the number of adults who underwent screening rose to 80 percent by 2018, then 280,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 203,000 deaths from the disease could be averted, said Stacey Fedewa, the director of screening and risk factor surveillance for the American Cancer Society.

Because of my family history, I plan to have a colorectal cancer screening sooner than people of average risk. I have an older brother who is almost 40. I haven’t asked him about his intake of bacon. But last week I sent him a text message reminding him to get screened.

“I’ll make sure I get checked out,” he responded. “Thank you.”

Anahad O’Connnor is a health reporter for The New York Times.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on November 1, 2015, on page SR5 of the New York edition with the headline: So Will Processed Meat Give You Cancer?.

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29. BOOK REVIEW: DAILY LIFE AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CENTRAL EUROPE
Hannah S. Decker
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 Ingeborg Meyer-Palmedo, ed. Sigmund Freud - Anna Freud: Correspondence, 1904-1938. Translated by Nick Somers. Cambridge: Polity Books, 2014. xiii + 513 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7456-4149-2.

Reviewed by Hannah S. Decker (University of Houston)
Published on HABSBURG (October, 2015)
Commissioned by Jonathan Kwan

This book is the complete correspondence between Sigmund Freud and his youngest daughter, Anna Freud, beginning when Anna was nine years old and her father fifty-two, although for the first six years, the letters are only from Freud. When Anna is fifteen (1910), we begin to see her letters.

While Freud’s correspondence with various important non-family figures in his life has been extensively mined and studied in the most minute detail, this is not the case for the early letters of his daughter. Thus, this volume tends to teach us more about Anna than her famous father, although in the analytic world Anna became quite famous in her own right. This fame rests primarily on her contributions to the understanding of human defense mechanisms—gambits we all employ to deal with troublesome issues, some of these maneuvers helpful, some destructive—and on her advances in early childhood education and psychology

We owe the publication of this book under review to the fact that, for better or worse, Freudians consider every aspect of the Freuds’ lives vital knowledge. Still, the reader may wonder why correspondence that begins with material addressed to a nine-year-old is considered significant enough to merit publication, and I might add, coupled with unusually extensive annotation. This last feature, by the way, actually turns out to be one of the highlights of the book if you are a Freud/psychoanalysis researcher.

But another reason for publication of the correspondence, although perhaps not even realized beforehand, is that both Sigmund and Anna were great letter writers, who, when separated, often at vacation time, wrote about everything. Thus their letter writing is a marvelous compendium of some of the mores of the middle class in central Europe during the first four decades of the twentieth century, and the comprehensive annotation contributes here as well. So intellectual matters take second place in what is essentially a book about Freud family matters, although inevitably psychoanalytic professional concerns do enter. However, these have less to do with ideas than with the running of the psychoanalytic enterprise and Anna’s intensifying involvement in it. This came partially as a result of her father’s increasing incapacitation owing to his oral cancer, which first became manifest when he was sixty-seven and she thirty-eight.

At the same time, much in these letters does not deserve enshrining. The Freud family had the unusual habit of rarely traveling together during vacation times, so there is much correspondence dealing with travel plans and news from various resorts. Apt comparisons can be made to the ways texting, Facebook, and Twitter are used today. In short, the letters are filled with mind-numbing trivia, of interest only to the individuals at that moment. One can conclude that the correspondents probably would also have used Instagram if it had been available.

Nevertheless, the letters turn out to have some legitimate interest. I propose to structure my review around six themes in the correspondence, although in some cases the subjects may receive just minor attention: First, the way a society copes with inevitable health problems is always important, so we will begin by noting the reliance on spa “cures” in the medical armamentarium of central Europeans a hundred years ago. A subtheme of this is Freud’s own conviction of the necessity of drinking the mineral water from Karlsbad (today in the Czech Republic) to treat his ongoing stomach complaints. Second, we will examine conditions in central Europe during World War I and its aftermath, including the new problem of procuring passports and visas after World War I after almost a half-century when this had not been necessary in Europe. Another point of interest is the fallout from the extreme inflation that occurred in the small new Austrian state. Third, I will highlight an uncommon reference to anti-Semitism, surprisingly a subject rarely openly written about by members of the Freud family, even though it affected their lives continually. Fourth, we will follow Anna Freud’s (b. 1895) unconventional trajectory as a middle-class girl and woman who had little interest in finding a husband and how this troubled Freud for many years until he made his peace with her desire for a career and her interest in intellectual matters. This will be examined in tandem with Anna’s intense personality and her tendency to push herself to the point of exhaustion. Relevant here also is the creation of a tight bond between father and daughter that eventuated in Anna’s dedicated caring for him in old age and sickness. Fifth, I will briefly discuss Anna’s increasing involvement with the psychoanalytic movement, eventually acquiring prominent roles in the governance of the movement and in the development of psychoanalytic knowledge about children. Finally, we must mention Freud’s mortal illness, an oral cancer, that began when he was sixty-seven and which he steadily made worse by his extreme addiction to cigars.

Spa cures remain a fixture among many Europeans, and at the turn of the nineteenth century they were considered vital to the treatment of chronic conditions of every variety. Different spas became famous for their supposed therapeutic effect on specific illnesses and some in particular were known for their treatment of women’s complaints. The standard cure available to the middle- and upper-class clientele consisted of a stay of three to six weeks, frequent immersion in the therapeutic baths, drinking the mineral waters, which had a laxative effect, relaxation by strolling through the well-kept gardens and parks, and partaking of the particular diversions of each spa, ranging from quiet to lively. Patients often took home bottles of the mineral water or could buy them at home. Freud relied on Glauber’s Salt, first processed in the seventeenth century, being essentially the sodium salt of sulfuric acid (also used today in detergents!). When he came to the United States in 1909 and found American cuisine unsettling to his stomach, he was bereft of his usual treatment, one of several factors that turned him against American culture. In his later years, Freud preferred to go on vacation to Bad Gastein (in Austria), famous for its thermal springs and also frequented by large numbers of Jews (p. 186). From time to time, other members of the Freud family frequented various spas, or spent winters especially in Merano, today in northern Italy, then famous as a resort for tubercular patients and for its drink of whey made with radioactive grapes.

World War I, of course, had to figure prominently in the life of Freud (1856-1939) and his family. His three sons served in the Austrian army; one was wounded and the other was a POW, so there was worry aplenty. However, what is strikingly apparent from the letters is the extent to which, at first, the war scarcely interrupted the usual rhythms of life. The family and their friends and relatives continued their vacations and travel in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, and the mail continued to function well. Judging from the letters, only gradually did difficulties at borders arise and some problems with food appear. In the summer of 1915, the hotels in Bad Ischl (Austria) were crowded in August, and the war seemed distant. However, the next year in Bad Gastein, there was a shortage of white bread and Freud found the black bread “uneatable” (p. 124). However, Anna in nearby Altaussee found the bread fine. In 1917, vacations continued, and Freud, to offset anticipated shortages, brought with him supplies of eggs, cheese, butter, and bread (and cigars) that had been sent by friends. Freud’s practice had dwindled, yet travel continued even in the fateful last months of the war when Freud went to Csorbato in Slovakia and Anna to Budapest. But now, she brought back food to Vienna, and in September recorded living on beans and potatoes. Freud, still away, complained about the “miserable” mail delivery (p. 146). The war years in the correspondence ended with Anna looking forward to her trip to Budapest for a psychoanalytic congress, which was duly held the autumn of 1918 while cataclysmic events were ripping apart the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

All over central and eastern Europe, new countries were coming into being. The new republic of Austria was proclaimed on November 17, 1918. The use of passports and visas, begun as a temporary war measure, continued. The word “passport” had come into existence in the seventeenth century, and by the end of the eighteenth century almost every country in Europe had set up a system to issue passports to their subjects. In addition, travelers had to have visas issued by the countries they wanted to visit. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the frequent use of railroads led to such extensive travel, much of it crossing multiple borders at high speeds, that passports were abolished beginning in the 1860s. By the eve of World War I, passport requirements had been eliminated virtually everywhere. The war changed all that, and a “temporary” need for travel documents emerged. Temporary morphed into permanent. While Anna had no trouble vacationing in the mountains of Bavaria in July 1919, the next month friends and family in Austria, wishing to join her in Germany, had problems getting passports and visas, although they did arrive eventually. In response to the new circumstances, the League of Nations held a conference on passports in 1920, which resulted in the issuance of passport guidelines. Here we see yet another legacy of the Great War: barriers to population movements and refugees, still with us today (although the situation is somewhat ameliorated within the European Union).

The problematic food situation, which had reached epidemic proportions by the time of the armistice in November 1918, also continued for a few years due both to actual shortages and to increasing inflation. Long-established trade patterns were disrupted, the British blockade continued through the spring of 1919, and a black market thrived. Yet, while food supplies were scarce in Vienna in 1919, this was not the case in spa resorts, probably because the clientele represented a wealthier part of the population. Freud had begun treating English patients who paid in pound sterling, and later Americans who paid in dollars; both currencies could be exchanged for the millions of Austrian kronen needed for many food purchases. In the early 1920s, the Austrian economy was close to collapse.

In such turbulent times, it is not surprising that the subject of anti-Semitism surfaced, although it was not usual for the Freuds and their contacts to dwell on it. Anti-Semitism never came up at the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society or in Freud’s analyses of the patients for which we have records (and he had many Jewish patients). Early in his life he openly confronted it, later on he dreamed of it, and at forty-one he joined the Jewish men’s fraternal order, B’nai Brith, although the Freud family was non-observant. In the present correspondence the subject was raised by Anna, who while in Gottingen in 1922 observed that although it was good the German trains were running on time, “the ... bad thing is what I see of the passengers; I don’t know whether they are really all anti-Semites, but they look it. And I can hardly think of any other country where one has a stronger feeling of being among ‘foreigners’” (p. 292). Anti-Semitism caught up with the family in 1938 when they left Vienna after the Nazis had invaded.

In my conclusion I want to focus on Anna and her father. The correspondence is evocative of “the Victorian construction of womanhood” spelled out so clearly in Cynthia Eagle Russett’s Sexual Science (1991). Very early in the letters, it becomes clear that Anna, at fifteen, has intellectual ambitions, does not have some conventional “girlish” values (p. 45), and pushes herself towards hard work. However, Freud hopes and expects Anna to ready herself for marriage like her two older sisters, and he only reluctantly gives way to allow her advanced education to prepare herself for a career as an elementary school teacher. He writes to a close colleague: “Anna is insatiable with her education plans” (p. 79).

Both Freud and his wife are concerned that their daughter’s intellectual activities will harm her health. Freud wants Anna on vacation to become ”sensible” (p. 59), to rest, and to put on weight. Anna has been sent to the health resort of Merano for months of rest after her exhaustion from her high-school leaving exams. She is even told not to return for her sister’s wedding. She, however, frets “about my doing nothing all day long when I am not sick” (p. 63). Anna also informs her father that she is reading some of his books and that “you shouldn’t be upset: I’m big now” (p. 64). But Freud insists she should not overexert herself, and speaks out against the ”fervent overzealousness in your activities that has been your downfall to date.” He informs her when she is eighteen, “We will recognize [your rights as a young woman] when you no longer ascetically shun the distractions of your age but enjoy what other girls take pleasure in” (p. 65). 

Nevertheless, when Anna takes a trip to England at the age of nineteen, Freud cautions her not to get involved with the analyst Ernest Jones and not to be alone with him, and writes to Jones that Anna is too young to consider a serious relationship. Freud implores Anna to “let me know about everything that goes on with and around you” (p. 80). Jones wryly notes with oedipal perspicacity that “she is of course tremendously bound to you” (p. 87).

Freud did indeed construct unbreakable oedipal ties with his youngest daughter. By the time she went to England, she had already been in analysis with him for a year, and it went on for another three, a psychologically fraught situation. Then Freud tacked on another short analysis to prepare Anna for seeing patients. In addition, Anna, on and off, continued to request individual sessions of “follow-up” analysis (p. 156n3). For her part, Anna continued for most of her life to sign off her letters to her father with the same kisses she had sent him at fifteen. Freud began coming to terms with reality, albeit ambivalently, when Anna was twenty-six, announcing he was putting away money for Anna for either marriage or independence. He wrote to friends and colleagues that he hoped she would find a husband although he recognized “her attachment to her old father” (p. 249). 

Anna went on to become a mainstay of the psychoanalytic establishment, starting when she was still young by becoming a proofreader, translator, and editor of psychoanalytic literature and gradually expanding her activities to become an analyst in her own right and an officer in the international psychoanalytic movement. As in her youth, she pushed herself to the point where she suffered physical symptoms. And once Freud developed his oral cancer in 1923, she became his caretaker and professional representative, sometimes to a stage of exhaustion. After her father died, she became a vigilant gatekeeper, guarding her father’s legacy and preventing the publication of material that might cast Sigmund Freud in a negative light. This correspondence serves as a chronicle of Austrian life a century ago and also offers us a window through which to observe the creation of one of the most famous father-daughter pairs in Western history.  

 
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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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