SACW - 1 Feb 2016 | Pakistan: What made Mumtaz Qadri a hero / Sri Lanka: Megapolis master plan / Bangladesh: Unsafe Workplaces / India: Right-Wing Take Over of education / Arab uprising and destruction of Muslim Brotherhood

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 1 February 2016 - No. 2883 
[since 1996]

(This issue of  SACW-dispatch is dedicated to the memory of two intellectuals who were teachers and friends of the left and progressive social movements in India. Professor Randhir Singh passed away on the 31st January 2016, Bas Wielenga, passed away on December 23, 2015. They both contributed to discussions on Marxist ideas & politics, strove for left unity and raised the ecological question within left circles among other things. We will carry tributes to both in the coming future)

Contents:
1. Pakistan: How did we become a society that calls Mumtaz Qadri a hero and Malala Yousafzai a villain? Just how? | Farah Zia
2. Bangladesh: Despite Rana Plaza Disaster Promises of Safe Working Conditions in Garment Factories Remain Unfulfilled - Selected resources
3. Sri Lanka's missing thousands | Amantha Perera
4. Sri Lanka: Mega questions over the Megapolis master plan | Vijay K. Nagaraj
5. Pakistan - Afghanistan: the two Talibans and how they operate - An Explainer | Michael Semple
6. Pakistan: Attack on Bacha Khan University & Schools as Taliban vows to kill Pakistan’s future leaders ’in their nurseries’
7. Pakistan: Textbooks and militancy | Fawad Ali Shah
8. Two UN Special Rapporteurs urge Pakistan to halt construction of new metro line in Lahore that is causing evictions and threaten protected heritage sites
9. India: Photos from the People's March in Defence of the Republic (New Delhi 30 Jan 2016)
10. India: Text of statement calling for People's March in Defence of the Republic - 30 January 2016
11. Tributes to Mrinalni Sarabhai (1918-2016)
12. India: The Right-Wing Take Over of the Universities and Educational Institutions
13. India: Reports of sexual violence by security forces from parts of Bastar, Chattissgarh - reportage by Chitrangada Choudhury
14. Audio Recording: Dutch Socialist Scholar Marcel van der Linden recounts origins and history of Anarchism
15. Recent On Communalism Watch:

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
16. India:: 'Complain, demand and rebel': The president's Republic Day speech offers hope | Apoorvanand  
17. Interview with Ananya Vajpeyi on Modi's India | Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose
18. India: What's in a rape? | Reena Martins
19. India: Jean Dreze Explains How Odisha Managed To Make Public Distribution System Work | Shriya Mohan
20. Review: Usha Sanyal on Margrit Pernau. Ashraf into Middle Class
21. Did the Arab uprising destroy the Muslim Brotherhood? | Steven Brooke 

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1. PAKISTAN: HOW DID WE BECOME A SOCIETY THAT CALLS MUMTAZ QADRI A HERO AND MALALA YOUSAFZAI A VILLAIN? JUST HOW? | Farah Zia
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The biggest challenge in fighting this war against terrorism and extremism comes from within the society itself. The society is radicalised beyond belief and no action plan is taking this into account.
http://www.sacw.net/article12347.html

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2. BANGLADESH: DESPITE RANA PLAZA DISASTER PROMISES OF SAFE WORKING CONDITIONS IN GARMENT FACTORIES REMAIN UNFULFILLED - SELECTED RESOURCES
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Some reports on Bangladesh Garment Factories in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza Disaster
http://www.sacw.net/article12311.html

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3. SRI LANKA'S MISSING THOUSANDS | Amantha Perera
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Journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda disappeared without a trace on 24 January 2010. . .
The Eknaligoda case is one among tens of thousands of missing persons cases that the new government of Maithripala Sirisena has pledged to resolve.
http://www.sacw.net/article12332.html

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4. SRI LANKA: MEGA QUESTIONS OVER THE MEGAPOLIS MASTER PLAN | Vijay K. Nagaraj
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The extent of the city of Colombo is around 37 square kilometres or about 9140 acres. In other words, nearly 50% of the population of the city occupies just under 10% of its area. But even 10%, we are told, is too much for the poor and they need to be further densified i.e. pushed into high-rises. Why does the Megapolis plan fail to recognise the extent of existing spatial inequality and actually call for measures that worsen it while claiming to be pursuing social equity? Why is there little more than lip service to equity and inclusion?
http://www.sacw.net/article12328.html

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5. PAKISTAN - AFGHANISTAN: THE TWO TALIBANS AND HOW THEY OPERATE - AN EXPLAINER | Michael Semple
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The ustads who plot the Afghan Taliban attacks in Kabul and the TTP attacks in Pakistan developed their skills in the old camps of Waziristan. In a sense they are all graduates of the same “terrorist university”. Both Taliban movements are still able to mount a terror campaign because they have used the time since summer 2014 to relocate themselves, reorganise their logistics, train new fighters and go back into action.

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6. PAKISTAN: EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS CONTINUE TO BE UNDER ATTACK FROM ISLAMISTS
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http://www.sacw.net/article12340.html

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7. PAKISTAN: TEXTBOOKS AND MILITANCY | FAWAD ALI SHAH
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Many voices have been raised over the role of madrassas in creating militants. However, most people are silent on the role of government schools in this regard. The government is in a state of denial about the subjectivities and cultural identities produced by the textbooks of Pakistan.
http://www.sacw.net/article12318.html

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8. TWO UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEURS URGE PAKISTAN TO HALT CONSTRUCTION OF NEW METRO LINE IN LAHORE THAT IS CAUSING EVICTIONS AND THREATEN PROTECTED HERITAGE SITES
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GENEVA (22 January 2016) – Two United Nations experts today called on the Government of Pakistan to halt the ongoing construction work of the Orange metro line in Lahore, which has resulted in numerous forced evictions and threatens a large number of protected heritage sites and historic buildings.
http://www.sacw.net/article12327.html

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9. INDIA: PHOTOS FROM THE PEOPLE'S MARCH IN DEFENCE OF THE REPUBLIC (NEW DELHI 30 JAN 2016)
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The citizen's march of 30 Jan 2016 in New Delhi attracted over 2000 people from different organisations and citizens campaigns.
http://www.sacw.net/article12344.html 

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10. INDIA: TEXT OF STATEMENT CALLING FOR PEOPLE'S MARCH IN DEFENCE OF THE REPUBLIC - 30 JANUARY 2016
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As inheritors of a secular and democratic Constitution, it is our duty to resist this assault on the Indian Union. We call upon all those who cherish the statutes, values and ideals of the Republic, to join our march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar on January 30, 2016, in defence of Indian democracy
http://www.sacw.net/article12331.html

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11. TRIBUTES TO MRINALNI SARABHAI (1918-2016)
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Mrinalini Sarabhai was a celebrated Indian classical dancer, choreographer and instructor. She passed away on the 21 January 2016 in Ahmedabad.
http://www.sacw.net/article12343.html

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12. INDIA: THE RIGHT-WING TAKE OVER OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
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The R.S.S. has been waiting to introduce its radical agenda on the cultural and academic landscape in place of the Modi government's promise of development.
http://www.sacw.net/article12325.html

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13. INDIA: REPORTS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE BY SECURITY FORCES FROM PARTS OF BASTAR, CHATTISSGARH - reportage by Chitrangada Choudhury
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Human rights violations during military operations in Chattissgarh
http://www.sacw.net/article12310.html

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14. AUDIO RECORDING: DUTCH SOCIALIST SCHOLAR MARCEL VAN DER LINDEN RECOUNTS ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF ANARCHISM
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This is a full recording of a talk by Marcel van der Linden at Ramjas college, Delhi University held on 21 January 2016 [This audio is part of sacw.net archive]
http://www.sacw.net/article12323.html

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15. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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  - India: How The RSS Tried To Rewrite History On Godse And Gandhi - And We Bought It (Karam Komireddy)
  - Academics Open Letter to the University of California, Irvine regarding donors’ intentions to fund only certain kinds of religious practitioners
vIndia: Report on the 30 Jan 2016 Delhi protest march against religious intolerance (The Statesman)
  - India: After beef found in BJP leader’s house, right-wing activists demand removal of meat shops in Madhya Pradesh town
  - India: VHP, Bajrang Dal moral police oppose Kiss of Love campaign in Karnataka
  - India: BJP-led Goa government cancels release of book on Nathuram Godse at a state-run auditorium on Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary
  - India: Sanskrit initiative has little to do with national unity, has everything to do with a cultural agenda (Kanti Bajpai)
  - India - Uttar-pradesh: Bajrang Dal Mob at work man tonsured, garlanded with shoes, paraded for ‘converting 3, feeding beef’
  - India's Northeast: RSS in show of strength - March in Shillong on Netaji birth anniversary
  - India's Prime Minsiter to address principals of Vidya Bharati schools - a prominent front organisation of the RSS
  - India: Rihai Manch press note english & hindi Rihai Manch condemned the captivity of researcher Anil Yadav in RSS office Muzaffarnagar
  - India: How the RSS's Hindu-isation gameplan in Arunachal draws upon Nehru's Hindi-isation policy for what was then NEFA
  - India's education ministry ordered a probe about Islamisation of Pondicherry university following compalint by Hindutva nuts
  - Leadership of Indian Muslims need to break out their ghetto mentality to express solidarity with other underprivileged groups
  - Hindu takeover of tribal religion: Unholy politics of India’s far right (Clea Chakraverty)
  - Radical brotherhood - Fraternity and the republic (Mukul Kesavan) 
 
-> available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
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16. INDIA:: 'COMPLAIN, DEMAND AND REBEL': THE PRESIDENT'S REPUBLIC DAY SPEECH OFFERS HOPE
by Apoorvanand  
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scroll.in - 29 January 2016

In an atmosphere where criticism is seen as a seditious act, President Pranab Mukherjee's exhortation couldn't have come at a better time.

"Let us continue to complain, demand and rebel."

It was these eight words that stood out in President Pranab Mukherjee’s 1,487-word long address to the nation on the eve of India’s 67th Republic Day.

In his speech, the president listed the country’s achievements and asked people to applaud them. But his exhortation to his compatriots to treat complaining, demanding and rebelling as virtues of democracy is what makes this speech stand out from the usual celebratory sermons that people do not even bother to listen or read.

The significance of the president’s words cannot be missed when read in the backdrop of what senior functionaries of the incumbent government have been saying in recent months.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing graduating students of the Ambedkar University in Lucknow last week, invoked the Dalit icon. He talked about Ambedkar’s struggles and travails, and said his refusal to complain was what made him great. His tough experiences did not make him bitter, and instead of complaining and criticising, Ambedkar dedicated himself to the task of nation building.

Modi’s speech echoed the remarks of Union home Rajnath Singh at a debate during the winter session of Parliament on rising intolerance in the country. Singh cited Ambedkar to run down actor Aamir Khan, who had sparked controversy after saying that his wife had discussed leaving India because she felt unsafe in the country.

Singh said that Ambedkar had faced insults and humiliation but had never contemplated leaving the country; he endured and chose to remain in India.

It is a different matter that Aamir Khan did not actually say that he or his wife wanted to leave India. He had only expressed disquiet that religious and cultural minorities were increasingly under attack for their food habits, lifestyles or increasing numbers.

Safeguarding democracy

Babasaheb Ambedkar, an icon of Dalit protest all over India, is now being moulded into a nationalist, as someone who drafted our constitution and framed laws. Our duty as citizens remains to follow those laws and serve the nation. It is only in this way can we be his true followers, according to prevailing narrative.

The act of criticism is central to democracy, which begins and ends with the people. Sovereignty ultimately lies with the people. The people are above the government, the state, and even the nation. There are no holy cows in a democracy.

In the recent past, since this government came to power, criticism has been seen as a seditious act and efforts have been made to criminalise and outlaw it.

We have heard the spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Union government attack late Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula and his colleagues for criticising the hanging of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon. We were asked not to sympathise with Vemula, who committed suicide last week, as he was espousing an anti-national cause.

It is this context, in which the people – especially those from the most oppressed sections – are being told to be good, non-complaining citizens. that the president’s words shine as a beacon of hope.

The president also makes other interesting points in his speech.

    Reverence for the past is one of the essential ingredients of nationalism. Our finest inheritance, the institutions of democracy, ensure to all citizens justice, equality, and gender and economic equity. When grim instances of violence hit at these established values which are at the core of our nationhood, it is time to take note. We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason.

In discussing the importance of showing reverence for the past, the president does not hark back to ancient times. He does not refer to some mythological past. According to him, it is the institutions of democracy that are our most valuable inheritance. The values we need to cherish and defend are the values of justice, equality, and gender and economic equality. These are very modern and democratic values. It is the institutional processes which ensure that these values are realised for the well-being of the people.

The president wants us to guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason that undermine and destroy our institutional life.

Intolerance is the one word this government would not have wanted to figure in the president’s speech. It does not take extraordinary intelligence to know which forces of violence were being alluded to by the President.

Fountain of knowledge

As the President of India, Mukherjee also happens to be the Visitor of 114 central institutions. Teachers have been aggrieved by his silence on the recent developments at Hyderabad Central University. The last portion of his speech seeks to make amends. His convocation speeches often lament the failure of Indian universities to feature in the top 200 institutions of higher learning. On this occasion, he felt it necessary to say that to become world class, universities need approach knowledge differently:

    An ecosystem that fosters critical thinking and makes teaching intellectually stimulating is necessary. It must inspire scholarship and encourage unfettered respect for knowledge and teachers. …. It must breed a culture of deep thought and create an environment of contemplation and inner peace. Through an open-minded approach to the wider spectrum of ideas emanating from within, our academic institutions must become world-class.

These statements are refreshing because the words “knowledge” and “critical thinking” feature in an official discourse after a very long time. We do not hear these words even on platforms such as the Indian Science Congress. The president argues for an open -minded approach to the wider spectrum of ideas. But this cannot be done if you are fettered by nationalism or culturalism.

The speech lifts itself to a higher plane by calling upon the people in general and scholars in particular to develop and inculcate a culture of deep thought and contemplation.

Theodore Adorno, in his essay Education After Auschwitz ponders the means to prevent the recurrence of atrocities against minorities:

    I do not believe it would help much to appeal to eternal values, at which the very people who prone to commit such atrocities would merely shrug their shoulders. I also do not believe that enlightenment about the positive qualities possessed by persecuted minorities would be of much use. The roots must be sought in the persecutors, not in the victims, who are murdered under the paltriest of pretences.

Adorno further says:

    It is not the victims who are guilty… .Only those who unreflectingly vented their hate and aggression upon them are guilty. One must labour against this lack of reflection, must dissuade people from striking outward without reflecting upon themselves. The only education that has any sense at all is an education toward critical self-reflection.

The President expresses an Adornian concern when he says:

    Peace is the primary objective of a rational consciousness as well as our moral universe. It is the foundation of civilisation and a necessity for economic progress. And yet, we have never been able to answer a simple question: why does peace remain so elusive? Why has peace been so much more difficult to attain than degenerate conflict?

How do we educate for peace or against violence? What should be the aim of education? It should not be the production of nationalist, conforming subjects. It is, as the President says by quoting Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, to create a free and creative man.

The President is not a free man. He is aware that he is a creature of the state, that he has to speak on behalf of a government which is most conservative and illiberal in its outlook. Should the weakest and oppressed lose hope in the nation? The President, in his own way, has chosen to speak for an imagination of India, the yarns woven by the values of secularism, equality, justice, and asks us to fearlessly defend this imagination.

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17. INTERVIEW WITH ANANYA VAJPEYI ON MODI'S INDIA
Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose
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(Foreign Affairs, January 27, 2016 India Politics & Society)

Ananya Vajpeyi, Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, sits down with Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose to discuss Narendra Modi and politics in India.

This interview has been edited and condensed. A rush transcript is below.
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Gideon Rose: Ananya, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in India these days, but let's start with Narendra Modi. The Indian Prime Minister made his name as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, bringing supposedly economic growth and dynamism, but also controversy over ethnic tensions and riots, communal riots in his state. When he won election at the national level, the hope was that he would bring economic dynamism to the country at large, and the fear was that he might sponsor some sort of communal tension. Have either of the hopes or the fears been realized in the year plus that he has been in power?

Ananya Vajpeyi: I think unfortunately that the fears have been realized more than the hopes.

Gideon Rose: So you've got the tensions, but not the economic dynamism.

Ananya Vajpeyi: That's right. That's right. We haven't seen the kinds of sweeping economic reforms, the kind of turnaround that he promised. It's not necessarily a better atmosphere for investors and people wanting to flock to India with their business from all over the world and so on. On the other hand, there has been an escalation in communal tensions. There's been a lot of incidents of actual violence against minorities.

Gideon Rose: Such as what? So you have incidents of violence against minorities. Are we talking about Kashmiri Muslims, are we talking broader than that, or what?

Ananya Vajpeyi: We're talking broader than that. Kashmir has been a conflict zone for the last 25, 30 years, so that's an ongoing issue. But now it seems like ordinary Muslims and ordinary Dalits and... Just could be in any part of the country, could be not necessarily an entire region or community or even a village, it could even be just individuals getting targeted by mobs, getting lynched. The most recent sort of flashpoint was this family in a place called Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, which is the largest state in India. There was some suspicion that the Muslim family, that they had beef in their refrigerator. And the head of the household, this man called Mohammad Akhlaq, was just dragged out and lynched and just murdered by a mob in front of his young children and his wife. And it was just the most sort of frightening kind of expression of a majoritarian force.

Gideon Rose: Does Modi see himself as a Hindu nationalist, or do the Hindu nationalists see him as one of them?

Ananya Vajpeyi: Well, this is the thing. When he was winning his national election last year. He represented this new kind of rising middle class and the possibility of India getting out of a rut of being ruled by the Gandhi family, and this kind of dynastic democracy issues, corruption, and so on. And that if he brought with him a broader spectrum of the Hindu right, and that some of those people were on the extreme right. He would be able to somehow manage those internal differences But increasingly that fringe has gotten more mainstream, it has become more vocal.

And at this point, there is just an outcry for him to respond to incidents like this. So the expectation is that Prime Minister Modi will rise above being a Hindu, or being the leader of the BJP, or being a Hindu nationalist, or being any kind of, representing any one particular group, and that as Prime Minister, he will say that "This is not on. You can't be lynching members of the minority community. And I distance myself from the crazies on the right who are coming out and saying things like... "

Gideon Rose: And he hasn't done that.

Ananya Vajpeyi: No, he hasn't done that. He just doesn't... He's not easily pushed into responding to something as though it were a national emergency rather than being somebody's problem in particular some community or other.

Gideon Rose: India has an established and long in place system of affirmative action programs, reservations. They were designed to help the backward castes under the untouchables and so forth, and then expanded to some other groups. They have become quite controversial, and in fact, there was a protest in Gujarat recently. Half a million people driven by the affirmative action issue backlash you might say. What was that all about?

Ananya Vajpeyi: Yes, so... Social inequality is a big problem in India, and it can be driven by caste which is a sort of traditional way in which social hierarchy manifests itself in India. There's increasing amounts of economic inequality because the growth is also... It's making some people wealthier, but it's also making other people poorer than they were and the disparity is growing. So, the state does have a strong affirmative action mandate and a program, and it's actually a constantly expanding program. But interestingly what is happening in Gujarat, for example, is that communities that were traditionally powerful. Affirmative action doesn't include them, because they were never the targeted beneficiaries because they were already doing fine; it was the other people who were being left out...

Gideon Rose: So it came at their expense in some ways, actually?

Ananya Vajpeyi: Right, but now that we've had many decades of the state trying to help other weaker communities, people belonging to communities that were traditionally more well-off and powerful feel that somehow the only way to actually access resources and opportunities and employment and so on coming from the state is if you're covered under the affirmative action program. So, they're saying that, "We too should be recognized as qualifying for being backward. And unless we do that, we're not gonna get what are essentially freebies because left to ourselves when all these other people are basically out of the running because they have reserved jobs and seats and educations... "

Gideon Rose: We want our quotas too.

Ananya Vajpeyi: We want our quotas too, but for that, we actually have to somehow establish that we deserve them. That is to say there's a race to be more backwards than now which is the exact [chuckle] opposite of what reservationist is supposed to do...

Gideon Rose: So, everybody touting their grievances, in other words instead of actually moving past them. Do you see what's going on in some of these protests in India as having any link to the kind of populist surge that's going on in other areas of the world?

Ananya Vajpeyi: Well, it depends what you mean by populism, I mean because, last year, the theory was that Modi himself represents a kind of populism, right, because he comes personally from a non-elite background, and he's a great demagogue, he's a great speaker, he's a great campaigner, and he's personally very charismatic for most people.

And everyone says this is all like this, he represents aspirational India and the new possibilities of access to power and participation and representation which most communities have not had. But the dark side of it is such that it's tearing apart the constitutional basis and the secular foundations of the country, and the fact of the matter is underneath all the glitz, I mean it's the world's most diverse population, and for it to hang together and work as one nation, you have to have a sort of healing touch. You can't be divisive in your politics, and, I think, succeed in the long run even if you manage to attract investment, and it's not clear that... That has happened either. I think there is economic trouble brewing actually, that seems to be whatever I follow of the news on that front.

Gideon Rose: So Indian politics could become more turbulent still in years to come?

Ananya Vajpeyi: Yeah, because there's a lot of big important state elections coming up, and a lot rides on whether the BJP can win in these different states.

Gideon Rose: What happens if Modi wins, and what happens if he loses? I mean not Modi himself, but his forces, the party.

Ananya Vajpeyi: Yeah. Well, if he wins, then that's a big shot in the arm for him I think, because winning Bihar and ruling India are tightly related in all kinds of ways. If he loses, or if it's very, very close, that could really be... That could be a big setback. It would mean that even ordinary people in a very poor and backward state are taking notice of the fact that the BJP represents a certain kind of bellicose Hindu majoritarian politics, which is not really sustainable, I think, for democratic India.

Ananya Vajpeyi: Ananya Vajpeyi, a somewhat depressing update.

Gideon Rose: [laughter] I'm so sorry about that.

Ananya Vajpeyi: But thank you for bringing it to us.

Gideon Rose: Okay, thanks, Gideon. Thanks.

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18. INDIA: WHAT'S IN A RAPE? | Reena Martins
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(The Telegraph, January 27 , 2016) 	

The Supreme Court believes that rapists cannot be dealt with leniently. It’s time lower court judges paid heed to the apex court, says Reena Martins

The Supreme Court called it a “spectacular error”. These were the uncompromising words it used while referring to mediation efforts by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in a case relating to a sexual assault on a minor. Yet, despite the apex court’s strict views against leniency being shown to people convicted or accused of rape, courts across the country have been dealing with the crime with kid gloves.

In recent years, there have been several instances of judges doling advice to rape victims to settle with their rapists. Take the case of the 21-year-old rape victim in Tamil Nadu who had to marry the man who’d left her with a child after lacing her drink and raping her in 2008. This came after “mediation” by Madras High Court judge P. Devadass. 

The victim, who had been resisting the move all along, finally succumbed to pressure. Late last year, she told the court that she was living with the man who’d raped her.

Rasika, a 25-year-old Mumbai resident who had accused her boyfriend of raping her, would have urged her not to do so. Rasika was advised by a trial court to arrive at a settlement and marry the accused. The charges were dropped and the couple went ahead with the judge’s advice. Three years ago — just a few years after they were married — they were back in court. Rasika wishes she had never heeded the judge’s counsel.
Judges have been able to pass such controversial judgments because of the inherent power given to them by the law itself: Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The section gives a high court judge the power to act in the “interest” of justice. For instance, if a man is denied bail by the lower court but needs to undergo treatment, the high court can give him bail for the purpose.

Under the section, judges often try and “mediate” in a rape case by getting the accused and the victim married because they believe such moves further the cause of justice.

“But these judgments are fundamentally wrong,” avers Justice Hosbet Suresh, retired judge of the Bombay High Court. “Instead of punishing the rapist, we’re punishing the victim. The judge’s intention may be to let a child born out of rape grow with a father, but what about the victim? How can she forget the offence? Instead, get the state woman and child welfare department to provide support to the victim and her child till he or she is 18.” 

The Supreme Court has, on many occasions, spoken out against judges who show leniency to rapists. Last year, it pulled up the Madras High Court judge who’d given bail to the rape accused so that he could mediate with the victim. The apex court had said the offer of wedlock by the rapist was “nothing but putting pressure in an adroit manner”.

It said: “In a case of rape or attempt of rape, the conception of compromise under no circumstances can really be thought of. These are offences which suffocate the breath of life and sully the reputation. There cannot be a compromise or settlement as it would be against her honour which matters the most. It is sacrosanct.”

The Supreme Court also came down heavily on the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s 2008 judgment that watered down the rape of the seven-year-old girl to “assault with the intention to outrage a woman’s modesty”, and reduced the jail term to one year, as the victim’s parents had entered into a compromise with the accused. The accused was sent back to custody.

“These [lower court] judges try to sound paternalistic, but are actually patronising and regressive,” says Jaya Menon, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Mumbai. “They ought to treat rape as a crime and strictly follow the law instead of letting off the accused lightly.”

But this sort of a miscarriage of justice is nothing new. In the 2000 case of the State of Karnataka vs Krishnappa, the Supreme Court criticised the Karnataka High Court for justifying the reduction of sentence for the accused rapist on grounds that he was unsophisticated, illiterate, addicted to drinking, provided for his family, and had committed rape in a state of intoxication.

“The measure of punishment in a case of rape cannot depend upon the social status of the victim or the accused, but the conduct of the accused, state and age of the sexually assaulted female and the gravity of the criminal act,” the Supreme Court said.

In 2005, Mumbai’s then sessions court judge, Laxmi Rao, was transferred after women’s rights activists cried foul over her two consecutive “lenient” judgments to two accused rapists. After one of them was sentenced to life but released on probation after a 45-day jail term, another man accused of having raped a minor girl was let off after a day’s imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000. The reason behind both these acquittals was that the accused had families that depended on them. 

Often, the victims succumb to pressure and give in to judges’ attempts at reconciliation. Women activists had tried hard to convince the minor rape victim and her mother to stay the course and fight, but they lost faith in the courts, says Avisha Kulkarni, an activist who’d joined women’s groups in taking the matter to Maharashtra’s then home minister, R.R. Patil.

“But even the government did not do much, and the case just fell through,” Kulkarni says.

Despite the Supreme Court’s strong views on the subject, what is it that prompts courts to dole out lenient punishment to rapists when the punishment for rape under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code is seven to 10 years in jail?

“The main reason why such regressive judgments are passed is patriarchy,” sums up Noorjehan Safiya Niyaz, co-founder, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan. “Either they (the judges) are unaware of their patriarchal mindset, given how deeply embedded it is, or they are plain insensitive to women.”

Lawyer and Mumbai’s former top cop, Y.P. Singh, points out that such judgments are especially common in the districts. “But criminal law considers these offences not just against an individual, but also against the state,” he says. “If the deterrent factor in law is removed, it will only encourage people to commit more of rapes.”

In 2005, the Supreme Court had said in the State of MP vs Bala @ Balaram case, “The crime here is rape. It is a particularly heinous crime, a crime against society, human dignity and one that reduces a man to an animal.” But are the judges listening?

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19. INDIA: JEAN DREZE EXPLAINS HOW ODISHA MANAGED TO MAKE PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM WORK
by Shriya Mohan
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(Catch News - 25 January 2016)

The system

    Odisha has reformed its Public Distribution System. Jean Dreze discusses what is different
    Full distribution now seems to be the norm in Odisha, he says

The reform

    PDS outlets have been largely de-privatised and handed over to community institutions.
    The entire system has been computerised and monitoring mechanisms put in place

More in the story

    What are the weaknesses in the Odisha PDS?
    What has been the impact of the National Food Security Act?
    What has been the feedback from the ground?

Good governance stories are rare in India. Rarer still are stories of large development programmes which reach the poorest, most deprived persons, on time. While most have heard of Chhattisgarh's reform in the Public Distribution System, few have heard of the newest state on the block to ace it - Odisha.

Development economist Jean Dreze spoke to Catch on how Odisha has nailed the PDS reach, digitising weighing scales to cut down on pilferages and used community involvement and local panchayat level governance mechanisms to ensure accountability and better monitoring.

Edited excerpts:

You have mentioned that Odisha is the new PDS miracle story. Why do you think so?

You must be paraphrasing, because I don't believe in miracles, least of all in matters of governance. But it is true that the Public Distribution System in Odisha has greatly improved in recent years. There is evidence of this from National Sample Survey data as well as from independent studies, such as a Mihika Chatterjee's study of the PDS in Koraput and the Public Evaluation of Entitlements Programme (PEEP) survey conducted in 2013.

To illustrate, in the PEEP survey, sample households had received 98 percent of their foodgrain entitlements during the previous three months. Basically, full distribution now seems to be the norm in Odisha, or at least in western Odisha where the survey was conducted.

Odisha essentially took a leaf from Chhattisgarh's book, with very good effect

Since the National Food Security Act has just been rolled out within Odisha, literally some weeks ago, critics argue that the NFSA in the state is actually making families get lesser. Because a family of 5 gets lesser grains at 5 kg per head (25 kg) rather than the stipulated 35 kg guaranteed for every family under the PDS. Is the NFSA pinching the bellies of rural households?

This is incorrect. Odisha reduced the entitlements of BPL families from 35 kg per month to 25 kg per years ago. The Act widens the coverage without reducing the average entitlements. Further, since NFSA entitlements are defined in per-capita terms (in this case, 5 kg per person per month instead of 25 kg per household), the inter-household distribution is now more equitable.

Having said this, it is true that BPL households with a small family size get less under NFSA than they used to get. That is a virtually unavoidable consequence of the shift from household entitlements to per-capita entitlements. The best way to deal with it is to expand the Antyodaya quota, with priority to vulnerable small households such as single women and elderly couples. Households with an Antyodaya card are still entitled to 35 kg of foodgrain per month.

How has Odisha managed to curb pilferage in the system? How has it ensured more accountability and delivered better?

Odisha essentially took a leaf from Chhattisgarh's book, with very good effect. PDS coverage was expanded, prices were lowered and entitlements were simplified - all this helps to generate public pressure on the system to work. PDS outlets were largely de-privatised and handed over to community institutions. The entire system was computerised. Intensive monitoring was initiated, along with some grievance redressal measures. Transport agencies were separated from distribution agencies. Fixed distribution schedules were introduced.

These are the sorts of PDS reforms that have well demonstrated effects, and are now common in many states - not just Odisha or Chhattisgarh. Odisha's system also has some distinct features. For instance, a majority of PDS outlets in Odisha are now managed by Gram Panchayats, with some safeguards of course. This strikes me as a sensible arrangement, and it seems to work.

Give us some examples from the field that you were surprised to encounter and showed that PDS had transformed in the state.

Last month, we witnessed the distribution of PDS rice and wheat in one Gram Panchayat of Sundargarh district. It was quite impressive in many ways. NFSA ration cards had been distributed there during the first half of December, and during the second half, people were already getting their full rations as per NFSA norms.

The distribution was orderly and well organised. Electronic weighing machines were in place. People were clear about their entitlements and kept an eye on the weighing machine. We verified 200 ration cards from the official list and none of them were fake. In the meantime, horror stories about NFSA were appearing in the local media. I am sure that they had some basis, but that's only one side of the picture.

We verified 200 ration cards from the official list and none of them were fake

What are the remaining problem areas?

There are many of course. PDS distribution has improved a lot for foodgrains, but my impression is that this may not apply to other commodities such as kerosene. As in other states where NFSA is being implemented, the identification of eligible households in Odisha is very challenging.

Odisha opted for a self-declaration system, which is vulnerable to exclusion as well as inclusion errors. Last but not the least, there is some confusion about the Antyodaya programme. Along with social security pensions, Antyodaya is an extremely important form of economic support for the poorest households. It deserves much greater attention, as an integral component of the National Food Security Act.

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20. REVIEW: USHA SANYAL ON MARGRIT PERNAU. ASHRAF INTO MIDDLE CLASS
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 Margrit Pernau. Ashraf into Middle Class: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 544 pp. $69.75 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-809228-5.

Reviewed by Usha Sanyal (Queens University of Charlotte)
Published on H-Asia (January, 2016)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha

Middle-Class Muslims

This is an ambitious and sophisticated work of historical scholarship that engages with current debates on identity, community formation, religion, gender, communalism, and politics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century South Asia. Its canvas is vast: Muslims in Delhi during the nineteenth century, from the British takeover in 1803 until the Khilafat and noncooperation movements of the early 1920s. What did it mean to be a Muslim man or woman in Delhi at different periods during the nineteenth century? How did people of the nobility or the merchant or scholarly classes see themselves in relation to the British assumption of power which continually impinged on their lives at an individual, community, regional, and national level? When and how did a Muslim middle class emerge, how did this relate to the emergence of a new public sphere, and what role did religion play in the reconfiguration of community identities and evolving legal/power structures?  

The author draws on an impressive range of original source material in Urdu and English, as well as the extant secondary literature on South Asian studies in several European languages. She delved into government records in Britain and India (mainly in Delhi), newspaper sources, Urdu journals, novels, personal memoirs, and family histories. Likewise, her knowledge of European languages, chiefly German, is also significant. She emphasizes the importance of cultural "translation" both within South Asia and across academic specialties in Europe and South Asia. Arguing that scholars on Europe and South Asia need to be in dialogue rather than for Europeanists to see South Asian history as the "Other" that has no relevance to their academic endeavors, she wants to "provincialize" Europe. Concretely, she raises the question of comparing the German burgher class with the Muslim ashraf in nineteenth-century South Asia--while at the same time being mindful of the historical specificities of the two. Rather than assuming that Indian concepts and culture are too different from European ones to be comparable, Pernau argues, we have to unpack them.

Likewise, the concept of entanglement is important to the book: "entangled history is a useful concept, particularly where it goes beyond the traditional history of influences and examines the interconnectedness of a whole host of transfer processes in both directions" (p. 434). We cannot understand the histories of any one group without simultaneously understanding those of other groups around them, as they are related and connected. The histories of men/women, Muslims/Hindus, India/Great Britain--all are "entangled" and have to be understood in relation to one another. More importantly, Pernau proposes that we adopt a polycentric model of identity, one defined not by drawing boundaries between self and other, but one constructed in relationship with the other, including identification with the other. As she puts it, "Identity would then originate in ... relation to a centre, not to a boundary" (p. xix). Instead of sharply demarcated binaries, she favors fuzzy boundaries and overlapping identities.

Thematically, the book connects an evolving Muslim class structure with differences in religious observance and gender relations during the nineteenth century. Early in the century the Mughals and nobles tended to favor Sufi devotionalism (in the Chishti order), whereas reformist Islam became "a key means to social advancement for ... socially mobile merchant groups" (p. 430). Demonstrations of piety—the foundation of mosques and madrasas, philanthropy, and performing the pilgrimage to Mecca—were a means for the latter to lay a claim to sharafat, defined as nobility of behavior rather than nobility of birth. Furthermore, gender norms changed in the course of the nineteenth century. Women enjoyed more power and more opportunities for participation in the public arena before the 1830s (as illustrated, for example, by Begum Samru, and the wives of Akbar Shah and Bahadur Shah Zafar) than later. There was a convergence between British Victorian mores and reformist Islamic ones, the latter becoming stronger as the nineteenth century progressed. Pernau argues that the more women were talked about and made the subject of men's reformist texts, the further they were driven from public view. A third argument is that communalism, usually interpreted as a "secularization deficit," was actually "only possible once secularization ha[d] already taken place" (pp. 431–432). The key to Pernau's argument here is that during the course of the nineteenth century a person's religious identity became distinct from his or her personal faith. The individual's personal faith (his transcendental relationship with God) became privatized, while the articulation of demands for community advancement were framed as legal and/or political goals. The prime examples of this phenomenon were Sayyid Ahmad Khan in the late nineteenth century and Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the early twentieth.

These arguments are made with great complexity from multiple perspectives, within a strictly historical framework. The nineteenth century political context falls into two roughly equal halves, pre-1857 and post-1857, as the political context is quite different in each. The nature of the historical sources for these two periods is also quite different, as Pernau explains. Looking at it from the British perspective, there was a break in the 1830s as a result of the debate between the Orientalists (Warren Hastings, William Jones) and the Utilitarians and Anglicists (Lord William Bentinck, Thomas Babington Macaulay) being resolved in favor of the latter. The era of the White Mughals ended in the 1830s. Pernau illustrates this with reference to the case of William Fraser's murder. The purpose of Company rule shifted from purely commercial concerns toward its framing as a "civilizing mission." This trend was accentuated in the post-1857 period. Basically the Indians were deemed culturally too different from the British to appreciate British culture. It was best to leave them alone and not to interfere in their religious customs, the argument went. However, because the British needed low-level clerical workers, they promoted British-style education, which had begun during the 1840s, especially at the university level. (Elementary and high school education were initially not deemed important.)

Pernau also explores the Muslim sources in great depth to give us a picture of changes at the local level. Most important, at the center of Muslim intellectual life in the first half of the nineteenth century was the Madrasa Rahimiya, where Shah Abd ul-Aziz, the eldest son of Shah Wali Allah, steered a middle course between acquiescence in the British assumption of political control in Delhi after 1803 and a call to armed resistance, most strikingly in his fatwa deeming it permissible for Delhi Muslims to take and receive interest on loans in view of their straitened economic circumstances but not to rebel, given that they were able to freely observe their ritual obligations. Economic considerations figured prominently at this time in the fatwa literature, Pernau notes (p. 53), a fact that presaged the growing importance of traders in the Muslim social structure. While the early nineteenth-century class structure was divided between the nobles and the landed elite (ashraf) and the low-born (ajlaf), including traders—a division that coincided with those deemed to have foreign origins and local converts to Islam—this twofold division would change in the 1830s and beyond. Traders then became a key group in a newly emerging middle class.

In the Madrasa Rahimiya, by the early 1830s nuanced argument gave way to hardened boundaries and an emphasis on religious texts rather than personal devotion to a master. Under the leadership of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (d. 1831) and others, opposition to growing British control of northern India, now under direct rather than indirect rule, led to periodic outbreaks of fighting in northwestern India and the "Wahhabi trials" of the 1860s in Patna. Another trend at the Madrasa Rahimiya, paradoxically, was what Pernau refers to as "desacralization," which had its roots in "reformist Islam" (pp. 158–159).

Pernau's research into the politics of the Mughal dynasty and certain key families, including the Loharu family and the family of Hakim Sharif Khan, was for me one of the highlights of the book. Accounts of the intrafamily politics of  Akbar Shah II, who ruled from 1806 to 1837 and was followed by Bahadur Shah Zafar (Mirza Abu Zafar), favored by the British but not by his father in part because his mother was of humble origin (p. 31), are interwoven with descriptions of the religious loyalties of different family members, the layout of the city, and the politics of key players/intermediaries between the British and the Mughals. The role of the latter after the 1857 uprising, including their varied economic fortunes and political roles, lends thematic continuity to the book's many foci and keeps it grounded in the unfolding history of nineteenth-century Delhi.

To return to one of the key themes of the book, namely, the gradual emergence of a Muslim middle class in the post-1857 period, Pernau argues that what was key was not the economic basis of the new middle class, as there was no industrial output in Delhi and hence nothing like an industrial elite, as in England, but the participation by a mix of educated professional groups, poets, religious elites, and some traders in the emerging institutions of the mid- to late nineteenth century and the concomitant growth of a new public sphere. Differentiation into separate spheres increased, which led to greater secularization. Pernau argues that secularization does not imply the reduction of importance in religion, so much as its compartmentalization.

Among the most important constituents of the new institutions were the print media and educational institutions. Delhi College in particular is discussed at great length. Under British patronage in the 1820s and 1830s, the college had an "Oriental" department, where Arabic and Persian—with an emphasis on "languages, law, a little philosophy and logic, mathematics, and some geography" rather than theology, were taught (p. 112), and an English department which focused on Western learning, the latter taught in Urdu translation. The graduates of this college become a learned elite who exercised great influence on the Muslim intellectual scene prior to 1857. They included the novelist Nazir Ahmad, the reformer Zaka Ullah, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and others. When the British began to include Indians in municipal government in the 1860s and thereafter, many of the former graduates of Delhi College were included in the British designation of "natural leaders" of the Muslims, together with Punjabi traders.

The values of this nascent Muslim middle class, as reflected in novels such as Nazir Ahmad's, centered around piety, frugality, education, and hard work. These were the achievement-oriented values of the "new" ashraf. Urdu magazines such as Ismat (Woman) articulated new gender roles, reconceived around the notions of female domesticity, piety, and Islamic education, which drew upon both Victorian and reformist Islamic sources of inspiration.

Pernau's book, in my view, makes a significant contribution to South Asian studies in terms of its breadth and depth of scholarship, its use of source material, most well known but some less so, and by engaging with the current literature in the field in both English and other Western languages. This book does not uncover new ground so much as it revisits a history already well known and thoroughly researched, by raising new questions. That Pernau has gone on since publishing this book (first in German, and subsequently in English translation) to work on the history of emotions in South Asia attests to the fact that she continues to look at South Asian history in new and interesting ways.

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21. DID THE ARAB UPRISING DESTROY THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD?
by Steven Brooke 
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(The Washington Post - January 26, 2016)

Supporters of Mohamed Morsi and members of the Muslim Brotherhood chant slogans during a rally on Dec. 14, 2012, in Cairo. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

This time five years ago, crowds swelled, regimes shook and the Muslim Brotherhood stood poised to become the biggest winners of the Arab uprisings. Long a force on the ground, the Brotherhood soon translated that strength into political power in regimes across the Middle East. But parliaments and presidencies proved tougher to navigate than opposition — and now the Islamist ideological project is trapped between the roiling violence of the Islamic State and the stultifying oppression of revived autocracy. Protesting has become a means and an end. Meanwhile, the Islamic State’s explicit rejection of politics in favor of brutal violence looms as a potent alternative model for those disgruntled by a lack of progress.

Still smarting from a harsh crackdown that ran through the 2010 legislative elections, the Brotherhood officially joined the Jan. 25 uprising only once it tipped against then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. As the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took control, the Brotherhood was among those pushing hardest for early elections, betting that their existing grass-roots networks gave them an edge over their less-organized competitors. Their bet seemingly paid off, as the Brotherhood ran off an impressive string of victories in constitutional referendums and parliamentary and presidential elections. Yet this political domination crested in the summer of 2013, when Egypt’s military ousted the Brotherhood and set about reestablishing its hold over the country.

There are a number of efforts underway to use these events to revisit and rethink what we knew about Islamist groups and consider what we got wrong. At least in the case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, what these past five years have driven home to me is the extent to which their mission has become politicized, in the sense that electoral participation and success is their organizing principle. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, Hasan al-Banna, famously described the Brotherhood as “a Salafiyya message, a Sunni way, a Sufi truth, a political organization, an athletic group, a cultural-educational union, an economic company and a social idea.” But amid the tumult of the Arab uprisings, this broad, societal mission telescoped into a narrow, electoral one.

Early on, the Brotherhood tried to create a firewall, separating a party striving for power from a movement dedicated to social change. While in theory the Freedom and Justice Party was supposedly independent from the movement, in practice the two were indistinguishable: leadership and membership overlapped, messaging aligned and resources merged.

This politicization was a movement-wide phenomenon, but two examples from the realm of social-service provision illustrate what it meant in a daily context. Prior to the uprisings, the Brotherhood had been wary of explicitly leveraging their wide network of charities for political gain (indeed it was against the law). But this changed after Mubarak fell, as the Brotherhood bent their entire social-service network to the purpose of turning out and persuading voters. While this met with some resistance, particularly from those activists who were wary of squandering their hard-earned social capital for fleeting political gains, the pull of politics proved too strong.

Two examples capture this point. First, in most hospitals in Egypt, one receives a ticket and then waits until a doctor is available. In one of the Brotherhood’s hospitals I visited, there was a life-size campaign sticker of the Freedom and Justice Party’s leader Mohamed Morsi’s face placed on the ticket window at eye level, creating for visitors the effect of receiving care from Morsi himself. Second, in early 2013, Egyptians witnessed a massive social-service project, “Together We Build Egypt,” under the combined auspices of the FJP and the Brotherhood. Despite denials, the campaign effectively erased any line between the group’s social and charitable endeavors and their political ambitions. Volunteers clad in FJP vests swarmed across the country, while under FJP and Brotherhood banners, Egyptians crowded to receive sharply discounted and free medical care from party personnel.

This mobilization was the stuff of pure politics, and the Brotherhood was great at it. Indeed, in the immediate context of 2011-2013 Egypt it would have been more exceptional if the Brotherhood had resisted the urge to leverage all its assets for electoral success. But this politicization raised fundamental questions about what, exactly, the Muslim Brotherhood represented, and how it was different from alternatives. For the Brotherhood, the explicit politicization of all corners of the movement suggested a shortcut around the gradualist, bottom-up process of Islamization that al-Banna had laid out. And for Egyptians, if receiving medical care from the Brotherhood came with expectations of electoral support, then the Brotherhood became basically indistinguishable from its political competitors (who did the same thing, just not as well).

Repeated political successes allowed the group to avoid confronting these questions, but the events surrounding the summer 2013 military coup forced a reckoning. By the time the military presented the Brotherhood with an ultimatum, the group had effectively backed themselves into a corner. After framing each election or referendum as a crisis requiring mobilization of not just the political party but the entire movement, it was effectively impossible to concede that that harvest was little more than a bargaining chip. Politics had monopolized the mission of the organization, and the party had overwhelmed the movement. In the moment of crisis, the Brotherhood calculated that it was worth risking the movement to save the party, and in the end they lost both.

The reverberations of this decision are likely to echo for years. Most immediately, the Brotherhood’s entire religious and social service network is slowly being uprooted, in part because it played such a demonstrable role in the group’s political success. The intellectual consequences are no less serious. The Brotherhood still remains unable to articulate a raison d’etre beyond continued street protest in support of a return to the status quo ante: that Morsi be reinstated, the military return to the barracks, and that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and his comrades be held accountable. The Brotherhood is effectively in a holding pattern because they cannot articulate the movement’s mission without reference to electoral politics. Protesting has become a means and an end.

What does this all mean for how we study the Brotherhood? Avi Spiegel makes the point that academic researchers should do more to conceptualize and measure Islamist “success” without reference to electoral politics. I think this is a worthy goal and that there is much work to do on this point. But we should also beware the opposite — automatically assuming that there exist realms of Islamist activism that can be detached from the influence of politics. As we extend and revisit our pre-Arab-uprising understanding of Islamists, it is worth keeping in mind the extent to which the Brotherhood acted like a normal political party.

Among the revelations of the past five years has been the extent to which the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has allowed, if not encouraged, an electoral logic to pervade all corners of the movement. An irony, of course, is that the group’s commitment to electoral politics was a serious question prior to the uprisings. But now the Brotherhood, and the academic researchers who study them, will have to puzzle over what political Islam means when the political is disallowed.

Steven Brooke is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Middle East Initiative of the Harvard Kennedy School and an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Louisville.

This piece is part of a series of reflections on the Arab uprisings after five years.

  
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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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