SACW - 29 Feb 2016 | Bangladesh: Witch Hunt Against Daily Star editor / CHRI's report on Maldives / Nepal's Balancing Act / Pakistan: What happened to Class? / India's Crackdown on Dissent / Guru Inc.: India’s holy men into big business

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 29 February 2016 - No. 2886 
[since 1996]

Contents:
1. Bangladesh: Witch Hunt Against Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam
2. Bangladesh: Don't let religious extremists divide society
3. CHRI's fact finding mission's report on Maldives (February 2016) 
4. Pakistan: Social, not class, consciousness | Afiya Shehrbano
5. India's Crackdown on Dissent - selected editorials and commentary Feb 2016
6. Be Warned, the Assault on JNU is Part of a Pattern / India’s angst / India’s descent into muscle power / What Passes for Sedition in India /
7. India: What is to be Undone ? | Dilip Simeon
8. India: Hyper-nationalism promoted by the right wing | Zoya Hasan
9. Indian Nationalism and Execution of Afzal Guru | Tapan Bose
10. PUDR Open letter to the Chief Justice of India regarding physical attacks and eviction drives against women activists by police and vigilante groups in Chhattisgarh
11. INDIA: THE ICONIC ’HALL OF NATIONS’ AT NEW DELHI’S PRAGATI MAIDAN UNDER THREAT OF DEMOLITION - REPORTS
12. India: Selected video recordings on JNU crisis of Feb 2016 - Interventions in the Parliament & TV Debates 
13. Statement from Sri Lanka in solidarity with protesting students of India
14. India: Statement Concerning the Clampdown in Jawaharlal Nehru University issued by Citizens Committee for the Defense of Democracy
15. India: Statement by Delhi University Teachers in Solidarity with JNU
16. Lecture by Prof Mridula Mukherjee on on the centrality of civil liberties in India's freedom struggle
17. Video: Prof. Achin Vanaik's lecture on Nation States and Nationalisms at the JNU Teach-in of 26 February 2016
18. Recent On Communalism Watch:
  - India: How India can avert a youth backlash (Siddharth Chatterjee and Unni Karunakara)
  - India: The world at large knows what’s happening in India (Mark Tully)
  - India - Haryana: Jats' fight to retain domination (Surinder S Jodhka)
  - India: Many Kashmiris who espouse 'azadi' are as conservative and anti-'Communist' as right-wing 'nationalists'
  - India: Excerpt from The Spring of 2016 and the Idea of JNU by Rajat Datta
  - Is India becoming a Pakistan? (Afsan Chowdhury)
  - India: Swastika-shaped building -- the Sanskrit department -- at JNU
  - India: How television media uncritically reproduced the Sangh’s narrative of “nationalist” versus “anti-nationalist” (Sandeep Bhushan)
  - Letter from US Law Makers re increasing intolerance and violence experienced by members of…religious minority communities
  - India’s Right-Wing Hindu Supremacy Rises in Parallel With Donald Trump’s Bigotry (Sonali Kolhatkar)
  - Announcement: Public Meeting on Sedition (2 March 2016 at Gandhi Peace Founation, New Delhi)
  - Video: ongoing vilification of intellectuals, glorification of brute force, marginalization of rationality, creation of mob frenzy - Purushottam Aggarwal
  - India: Fetishisation of the nation - expanded application of the term ‘anti-national’ serves to maintain an environment of perpetual threat
  - India: BJP’s Attempt to Harness Retired Soldiers to Its Rath
  - We have reached a place of ugly, triumphant majoritarianism (Namita Bhandare)

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
19. Nepal's Balancing Act - Walking the Tightrope Between China and India | Fahad Shah
20. Afghanistan’s Lonely Hearts Call ‘Emergency’ | Jessica Donati and Ehsanullah Amiri
21. India's ABVP: In the footsteps of Pakistan’s Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba; ominously so | Javed Anand
22. USA: Who Gets to Fund Higher Education? A Hindu Nationalist Donor Raises Controversy | Vijay Prashad
23. Guru Inc.: India’s holy men enter the world of big business | Rama Lakshmi

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1. BANGLADESH: STOP HOUNDING DAILY STAR EDITOR MAHFUZ ANAM
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Reporters Without Borders - 26 February 2016
Prime Minister wages personal war against outspoken newspaper
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to stop hounding Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam over his admission on 4 February that, like many of the country's newspapers and TV stations, he published information in 2007 that seemed to implicate Hasina in corruption although it could not be verified independently.
http://sacw.net/article12448.html

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2. BANGLADESH: DON'T LET RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS DIVIDE SOCIETY
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Editorials from Dhaka tribune and The Daily Star regarding the attack on a Hindu temple and the murder of a priest on a day which, for Bangladeshis, symbolises plurality, tolerance and secularism
http://sacw.net/article12446.html

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3. CHRI'S FACT FINDING MISSION'S REPORT ON MALDIVES (FEBRUARY 2016)
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Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) undertook a fact-finding mission to the Maldives on November 22–26, 2015
http://sacw.net/article12449.html

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4. PAKISTAN: SOCIAL, NOT CLASS, CONSCIOUSNESS | Afiya Shehrbano
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A two part article that critiques a postmodern, post-Soviet, post-real or virtual reality era. Fanning the flames of this ideological cremation is the complete surrender of class analysis by our New Intelligentsia.
http://sacw.net/article12447.html

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5. INDIA'S CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT - SELECTED EDITORIALS AND COMMENTARY FEB 2016
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    India is in the throes of a violent clash between advocates of freedom of speech and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its political allies on the Hindu right determined to silence dissent. This confrontation raises serious concerns about Mr. Modi's governance and may further stall any progress in Parliament on economic reforms.
http://sacw.net/article12418.html

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6. BE WARNED, THE ASSAULT ON JNU IS PART OF A PATTERN / INDIA’S ANGST / INDIA’S DESCENT INTO MUSCLE POWER / WHAT PASSES FOR SEDITION IN INDIA 
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There is by now little doubt that India is currently being governed by those that seem to have an anti-intellectual mind-set. An ambience of terror and intimidation is being generated
http://sacw.net/article12413.html

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7. INDIA: WHAT IS TO BE UNDONE ? | Dilip Simeon
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Indian politics has entered a phase of extreme danger – from the standpoint of the laboring citizens who need democracy the most. It is disturbing to see a section of India’s ruling class seeking to bypass and undermine constitutional rule by validating a politics of hatred and intimidation. Hindu Rashtra and Akhand Hindustan are mutually contradictory ideals: if you want one you will automatically rule out the other. The relentless tirade against Muslims, Christians and Communists by the Sangh Parivar will produce the contrary of what they wish for (or say they do). The theories of Savarkar, Hedgewar and Golwalkar are recipes for India’s disintegration. Extremism feeds on itself by appearing in different forms.
http://sacw.net/article12415.html

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8. INDIA: HYPER-NATIONALISM PROMOTED BY THE RIGHT WING | Zoya Hasan
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The crackdown on JNU is in keeping with the right-wing project to ensure its world view becomes India's as well
http://sacw.net/article12425.html

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9. INDIAN NATIONALISM AND EXECUTION OF AFZAL GURU | Tapan Bose
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The Indian state sees the movement in Kashmir as Pakistan’s proxy war. It refuses to accept that there is popular support for the movement for self-determination in Kashmir. Yet it has tied down nearly half a million members of its armed forces in crushing the movement in the valley for more than two and a half decades.
http://sacw.net/article12416.html

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10. PUDR OPEN LETTER TO THE CHIEF JUSTICE OF INDIA REGARDING PHYSICAL ATTACKS AND EVICTION DRIVES AGAINST WOMEN ACTIVISTS BY POLICE AND VIGILANTE GROUPS IN CHHATTISGARH
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We wish to draw your attention to the recent incident of physical attack on AAP leader, Soni Sori, by unidentified men near Geedam town on the night of 20th February 2016. The attackers threw some black substance on her face which caused immediate burns and pain. Consequently, she has had to be hospitalized. This attack comes close on the heels of the eviction drives against lawyers Shalini Gera and Isha Khandelwal of Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JagLag) and journalist Malini Subramanium. All three have been given notice to find alternate accommodation. There is also news of a similar eviction drive against Bela Bhatia, an independent scholar and activist.
http://sacw.net/article12419.html

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11. INDIA: THE ICONIC ’HALL OF NATIONS’ AT NEW DELHI’S PRAGATI MAIDAN UNDER THREAT OF DEMOLITION - REPORTS
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When Hall of Nations, one of Delhi’s iconic structures, was inaugurated in 1972, it became a symbol of India’s rapid progress and modernity. Hall of Nation, India’s first pillar-less building, was constructed to commemorate 25 years of the country’s independence. Architect Raj Rewal and structural engineer Mahendra Raj who designed these buildings said they were prepared to fight till the end to save the structures.
http://sacw.net/article12404.html

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12. INDIA: SELECTED VIDEO RECORDINGS ON JNU CRISIS OF FEB 2016 - INTERVENTIONS IN THE PARLIAMENT & TV DEBATES 
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http://sacw.net/article12432.html

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13. STATEMENT FROM SRI LANKA IN SOLIDARITY WITH PROTESTING STUDENTS OF INDIA
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We, the undersigned organizations, civil society activists, academics and students from Sri Lanka vehemently condemn the institutional murder on 17th January 2015 of Dalit research scholar and activist Rohith Vemula of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), India and the violence meted out against those seeking justice for Rohith’s death.
http://sacw.net/article12431.html

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14. INDIA: STATEMENT CONCERNING THE CLAMPDOWN IN JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY ISSUED BY CITIZENS COMMITTEE FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY
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The Citizens Committee for the Defense of Democracy strongly condemns the clampdown in Jawaharlal Nehru University. We deplore the targeting of students and teachers and condemn the culture of authoritarian menace that the Central Government has unleashed. We strongly believe that dissent is not sedition and invoking sedition laws against students, ordering the police to enter the campus and unlawfully arresting a student leader, issuing warrants against many others on charges of inciting violence, attacking students, teachers and arrested student in the court premises, are serious assault on the fundamental rights of the citizens of this country. The right to dissent is fundamental to maintaining democracy and the recent developments have shaken the foundations of democracy. We condemn the indiscriminate use of the colonial law of sedition on dissenting voices.

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15. INDIA: STATEMENT BY DELHI UNIVERSITY TEACHERS IN SOLIDARITY WITH JNU
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We, the undersigned teachers of Delhi University, extend our solidarity with the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University. We unequivocally condemn the police action on campus following the events of February 9, 2016, the lodging of an FIR and the arbitrary arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar on grounds of sedition, and the subsequent attack on him and other citizens within the precincts of the Patiala House courts in the presence of large numbers of police personnel.
http://sacw.net/article12427.html

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16. LECTURE BY PROF MRIDULA MUKHERJEE ON ON THE CENTRALITY OF CIVIL LIBERTIES IN INDIA'S FREEDOM STRUGGLE
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Lecture No 8 from the open air JNU protest teach-in on Nationalism (28 Feb 2016) by the historian Professor Mridula Mukherjee
http://sacw.net/article12452.html

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17. VIDEO: PROF. ACHIN VANAIK'S LECTURE ON NATION STATES AND NATIONALISMS AT THE JNU TEACH-IN OF 26 FEBRUARY 2016
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    This is a video recording of a lecture by Prof. Achin Vanaik, former Professor of Political Science at Delhi University on the topic "The Power of Nationalism" delivered on the 26th of February 2016 at 5 p.m. at JNU Protest Teach-in held at the Administrative Block, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
http://sacw.net/article12436.html

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18. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
========================================
  - India: How India can avert a youth backlash (Siddharth Chatterjee and Unni Karunakara)
  - India: The world at large knows what’s happening in India (Mark Tully)
  - India - Haryana: Jats' fight to retain domination (Surinder S Jodhka)
  - India: Many Kashmiris who espouse 'azadi' are as conservative and anti-'Communist' as right-wing 'nationalists'
  - India: Excerpt from The Spring of 2016 and the Idea of JNU by Rajat Datta
  - Is India becoming a Pakistan? (Afsan Chowdhury)
  - India: Swastika-shaped building -- the Sanskrit department -- at JNU
  - India: How television media uncritically reproduced the Sangh’s narrative of “nationalist” versus “anti-nationalist” (Sandeep Bhushan)
  - Letter from US Law Makers re increasing intolerance and violence experienced by members of…religious minority communities
  - India’s Right-Wing Hindu Supremacy Rises in Parallel With Donald Trump’s Bigotry (Sonali Kolhatkar)
  - Announcement: Public Meeting on Sedition (2 March 2016 at Gandhi Peace Founation, New Delhi)
  - Video: ongoing vilification of intellectuals, glorification of brute force, marginalization of rationality, creation of mob frenzy - Purushottam Aggarwal
  - India: Fetishisation of the nation - expanded application of the term ‘anti-national’ serves to maintain an environment of perpetual threat
  - India: BJP’s Attempt to Harness Retired Soldiers to Its Rath
  - We have reached a place of ugly, triumphant majoritarianism (Namita Bhandare)
  - Video: Samaj, Sampradayikta Aur Hinsa [society, Communalism and Violence]
  - India: The mob is suddenly everywhere: not just on the streets, but on the TV, in our minds (Uttam Sengupta)
  - BJP’s culture jihad: Acche din are nowhere in sight, India is being polarised and pulverised as never before
  - India: BJP's "Hindu migrant vs Muslim migrant" policy lands it in trouble in Assam
  - Communalism Explained : A Graphic account - youtube video link
  - India must choose freedom over intolerance (Priyamvada Gopal) 

-> available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
=========================================
19. NEPAL'S BALANCING ACT - Walking the Tightrope Between China and India
by Fahad Shah
=========================================
Last week, during a visit to India, Nepalese Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli shot down accusations that he was playing his “China card” in order to irritate India. A month earlier, Oli had threatened to begin 2016 by visiting China first, against tradition. His announcement came after a five-month standoff between India and Nepal. Kathmandu had accused New Delhi of supporting a group of protestors from the Madhesis ethnic group, which is of Indian origin and makes up 52 percent of Nepal’s population. In Nepal, some of the Madhesis had used trucks and cars to close off the border and essentially impose a blockade against crucial imports of medicine and food from India. They wanted Nepal, which had adopted a new constitution in September, to give them more rights. India had unofficially encouraged Nepal to revise its constitution and Nepal, in turn, accused it of interfering. A few days before Oli’s visit to India, however, the Madhesis called off the blockade after Nepal promised to amend the new constitution.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2016-02-25/nepals-balancing-act

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20. AFGHANISTAN’S LONELY HEARTS CALL ‘EMERGENCY’
Afghans dial police hotline to chat up the opposite sex; ‘I like your voice’
by Jessica Donati and Ehsanullah Amiri
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(The Wall Street Journal - Feb. 19, 2016 )

KABUL—In the age of Facebook and online dating, some Afghan men are still looking for love in an old-fashioned way—by calling the emergency-services hotline.

“We receive many calls telling us ‘I love you,’ ” said Fatana Yalda, 27 years old, who was taking calls in her booth recently and, like her colleagues, wore a head scarf over dark hair.

Across much of Afghanistan, women rarely leave home except in a head-to-toe burqa. Men don’t have much opportunity to make an approach, especially when many women aren’t allowed out without male chaperones. Few outside big cities have access to social media.

Thus, the one surefire way of speaking to a member of the opposite sex is to call Kabul’s police-and-emergency services. Operators say they receive as many as 70 crank calls a day.

“Especially illiterate men from the villages,” said Ms. Yalda. “We tell them that this is the 119 police call center. ‘Don’t make traffic on our line.’ ”

Amorous Afghan men, not so easily discouraged, often provide long, finely detailed reports about fires, in order to keep the conversation going. Firefighters dispatched to the scene often discover nothing burning but a man’s heart.

Another ploy is to report impossible-to-solve mysteries regarding missing livestock. “Some callers tell me, ‘my sheep and cows are lost.’ I ask who robbed them. They say, ‘you are police, so you have to find out,’ ” said 23-year-old Wida, who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. “They usually bother us like this.”

Lailuma Farouqi, who has worked at the center for eight years, said men keep calling despite their lack of success, probably because they enjoy the novelty of speaking to a woman who isn’t a relative.

“ ‘I like your voice, let’s be friends and give me your personal number,’ ” said Ms. Farouqi. “My ears are full of these words.”

The hotline’s policy calls for answering politely, reminding crank callers the line is for emergencies and not engaging in long conversations.

Persistent callers have their numbers blocked, a list of which The Wall Street Journal viewed. When contacted, no one on the list admitted to seeking love over the hotline.

“I have never called 119,” declared a shopkeeper named Hussain from eastern Ghazni province. “Crank-calling is totally against Islam!”

Some rural callers whose numbers were on the center’s blocked-numbers list denied calling 119 but admitted to speaking to female strangers on the phone when the women called first.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said those seeking love shouldn’t call the hotline. “It should only be used for emergencies,” he said, “and tips that could prevent attacks.”

One Kabul university student said after moving to the capital from his east-Afghanistan village he struggled to start conversations with girls. So he decided to try crank-calling women to practice, at random, not even using the hotline. On his only attempt, “she insulted me with bad words.”

Women crank-call, too. Beyond the country’s urban areas, most women remain out of public life. Girls lucky enough to attend school are typically pulled out at puberty and are under intense pressure to stay home.

One recent day at the call center, a male operator named Zikrullah took a call from a woman who tried to keep him on the line saying she was looking for friendship.

Zikrullah: “What you’re doing now is a making a nuisance call.”

Woman: “I’m not.”

Zikrullah: “You keep making our lines busy. You bother us. We are here to listen to emergency calls and to help our countrymen.”

Woman: “Can you connect me to Anil Kapoor?” the mustachioed Bollywood actor. He scolded her and she hung up.

Zikrullah, who has a mop of jet-black hair and honey-colored eyes, said he never gives out his number. It would get him into trouble.

“Lots of prank calls tell us that I like your voice and let’s be friends,” said Wida, the hotline worker. “So far that trick hasn’t worked here.”

Young Afghans have been known to call the police hotline seeking romantic advice. Some call for help escaping arranged marriages.

“For example: A girl loves a boy, but her family wants her to marry someone else,” said Gen. Mohammad Humayoon Ayni, who is in charge of the call center. “She does not agree, so she calls 119 for help.”

The center usually refers such callers to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

The call center, which was set up in 2007 and funded by the United Nations Development Program, has tried to tackle the problem. Calls used to be free. Now they cost 1.5 afghani a minute (about 2 cents), which Mr. Ayni said has helped. The center gets about 500 calls per 24 hours, he said.

The fees haven’t stopped men identifying themselves as Taliban from phoning female operators, the center’s operators said. The Taliban, who believe unrelated men and women should be segregated in education and the workplace, harass operators for working for the police, according to operators who have received threats from them. Their numbers are blocked.

The Web offers an alternative to young urbanites able to get online. “We have to thank Mark Zuckerberg and also Yahoo Messenger because they helped us a lot,” said one man, smiling at his fiancée over tea at a Kabul cafe.

The couple met on Facebook and communicated for a year before meeting. “He said, ‘may I love you?’ ” she said, describing the moment they agreed to be together. “I said, no problem.”

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21. INDIA'S ABVP: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PAKISTAN’S ISLAMI JAMIAT-E-TALABA; OMINOUSLY SO | Javed Anand
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sabrangindia.in - February 25, 2016

The unfolding Modi-BJP-RSS-ABVP nexus in India is but a replay of the Zia ul Haq-Jamaat e Islami-Islami Jamiat e Talaba axis in Pakistan in the 1970s

Ideologically speaking, the ‘Hindu nationalist’ Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with its Hindu Rashtra agenda is the mirror image of the Abu Ala Maududi’s Jamaat-e-Islami with Islamic state and Shariah law as its goal. It should not be surprising then that the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) – the student body floated by the RSS – is beginning to look more and more, and ominously so, like the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) – the student wing floated by Maududi in Pakistan.

“If you want to change a country, change its students,” noted American writer and journalism, Dan Brooks in an article, ‘Know your theocrats: Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba’, which he wrote in 2011. The RSS wants to “change India” just as the Jamaat-e-Islami is trying to “change Pakistan”. If the ABVP is the former’s instrument for ‘changing students’ in India, the IJT is the latter’s tool for “changing students” in Pakistan.

The comparison does not end there. The RSS and the ABVP claim that the latter’s real growth in numbers took place during the years that the Congress-led UPA governments were in power, that is, before Narendra Modi’s rise to the top. The Jamaat-e-Islami and the IJT too can make a similar claim. Read, Nadeem F Paracha’s excellent 2009 essay, ‘Student politics in Pakistan: A history, lament and celebration’.

Though left-wing student unions retained their dominant position in Pakistan’s colleges and universities through the 1950s, by the early 1960s the IJT had started “to emerge from the sidelines of student politics and materialise as an affective right-wing force on the campuses”. Until then, though the IJT had been around for more than a decade “it was almost completely overshadowed by DSF (Democratic Students Front) and the NSF (National Students Front),” Paracha writes.

In tune with the movement worldwide, the 1960s are often referred to as the “golden era of student politics” in Pakistan. According to Paracha however, “it is the 1970s that one can truly call the golden era of student politics in Pakistan”. It was in the latter decade that Pakistan witnessed the emergence of a state-party-student nexus. What we are witnessing in India today is a replay of the same devious plot.

“When [after ousting Zulfikar Ali Bhutto] President Zia [ul Haq] brought in members of the Jamaat-e-Islami to form his first cabinet (to help him ‘Islamize Pakistan’), IJT’s notorious ‘Thunder Squads’ that were formed in the 1960s at the universities of Karachi and Lahore to challenge leftist student activists, went on a rampage, harassing and physically manhandling their opponents”.

What the Zia-Jamaat-IJT did in the campuses in Pakistan in the 1970s is exactly what the Modi-BJP-RSS-ABVP has been re-enacting in India’s premier educational institutions in recent months— Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), IITs, Hyderabad Central University, JNU…  The difference: In Pakistan the IJT was fighting the “enemies of Islam”; in India the ABVP is fighting “desh drohis”, or put differently, the “enemies of Hindu Rashtra”.

Though ideologically a mirror image of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami, the RSS has chosen a different organisational path. The ABVP may not need to form its own “thunder squads” since the RSS has already put in place complementary fronts for the purpose: VHP, Bajrang Dal, sundry other Hindutva-inspired outfits, even rogue lawyers as witnessed in the Patiala court recently

Though ideologically a mirror image of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami, the RSS has chosen a different organisational path. The ABVP may not need to form its own “thunder squads” since the RSS has already put in place complementary fronts for the purpose: VHP, Bajrang Dal, sundry other Hindutva-inspired outfits, even rogue lawyers as witnessed in the Patiala court recently.

The ABVP may not mimic the IJT’s misdeeds in Pakistan step-by-step. It and the ‘thunder squads’ of the RSS may march separately but they have the same goal in mind: Changing students to change the country. Bearing this in mind, there still are lessons we in India must learn from the IJT’s trajectory post-1970s.

As was only to be expected, Zia’s harsh crackdown on the left-wing student unions in Pakistan discredited the IJT. According to Paracha, “the [Zia] regime’s plans to repress progressive student groups through its allied party, the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing… had left IJT in the clutches of uncontrollable violence so much so that the support it had managed to gather through student union elections in the 1970s, now stood eroded, triggering a sympathy wave for the anti-IJT student organisations.”

In the 1978 elections IJT lost out heavily to the Punjab Progressive Students Alliance (PPSA) in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and in many colleges of Lahore. Meanwhile in Karachi and Sind province, the IJT was seriously challenged by the student wings of the newly-formed Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM) of Altaf Hussain and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
With Pakistan heavily involved in the USA-Saudi Arabia backed Afghan struggle against occupation by the Soviet army, to stay relevant the IJT grabbed the opportunity to bring the “AK-47 culture” to the campus.

However, in the 1983 elections to student unions the IJT was comprehensively voted out in a majority of colleges and universities across the country. In 1984, the Zia regime outlawed all student unions and politics. The ban continues till date but that does not mean, the IJT has ceased to exist. Here below are some examples of its recent activities:
 

    February 19, 2016: Baloch students hold protest demonstrations in Punjab, Quetta and Uthal against attacks on students in Punjab by IJT.
    October 13, 2015: Young women playing cricket at Karachi University are beaten by religious thugs. Members of the IJT who had earlier warned the cricket-playing women, broke up a mixed-gender game and beat up both the men and women members of the Punjabi Students Association with batons.
    December 2, 2013: Pakistan TV telecasts footage on how IJT “attacked and tortured teachers in Punjab University”.
    September 2013: Pakistan’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies arrest students belonging to the IJT, also suspected to have Al Qaeda links.  
    March 2013: The founder and leader of MQM, Altaf Hussain demands banning of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba for their connections with terrorists... 
    February 2012: Activists of Imamia Students Organization (ISO) stage a protest demonstration against IJT activists for torturing an ISO activist at the Punjab University.
    July 2011: "After philosophy students and faculty members rallied to denounce heavy-handed efforts to separate male and female students, Islamists on campus struck back: In the dead of night, witnesses say, the radicals showed up at a men's dormitory armed with wooden sticks and bicycle chains.

           "They burst into dorm rooms, attacking philosophy students. One was pistol-whipped and hit on the head with a brick. Gunfire rang out, although no one was injured. Police were called, but nearly a month after the attack, no arrests have been made.

          "Few on Punjab University's leafy campus, including top administrators, dare to challenge the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, or the IJT, the student wing of one of Pakistan's most powerful hard-line Islamist parties.

"At another Lahore campus, the principal disdainfully refers to the Islamists as 'a parallel administration'."

The few examples cited above are apart from the IJT’s ongoing campaigns against Ahmediyas, celebration of New Year and Valentine’s Day and “forbidding progressive literature from the university libraries”.

The ABVP may not, as yet, be able to match the fine record of its Pakistani counter-part. But with the Modi-BJP-RSS-ABVP axis now in place who can say what lies ahead.

P.S.: In an article which may be accessed on SabrangIndia, Prathama Banerjee reports that in Gwalior a few days ago, a meeting organised by the Ambedkar Manch involving an Ambedkarite professor Vivek Kumar from JNU was attacked by ABVP members, who went on to not only fire gun-shots at the gathering but even burn the Indian Constitution, perhaps to avenge Ambedkar’s burning of the Manusmriti half a century ago! 

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22. USA: WHO GETS TO FUND HIGHER EDUCATION? A HINDU NATIONALIST DONOR RAISES CONTROVERSY
by Vijay Prashad
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(truthout.org - 23 February 2016)

While public universities must go to private entities to raise money, few would like to give money for a use they do not control.Public universities are increasingly turning to private entities to raise money, but few private donors wish to give money for a use they do not control. (Image: Flying dollars via Shutterstock, University of California; Edited: JR / TO)

Stories like this are published thanks to the generous support of our readers. Help ensure Truthout can keep publishing - sign up today to make a small donation each month and keep independent news alive!

Last year, the University of California at Irvine (UCI) was offered a substantial donation to set up four chairs in South Asian Studies. The shackles of the endowment irked the students and faculty. A faculty committee looked into the gift and decided to turn it down. The Dean agreed. It is an object lesson in who gets to fund higher education. This is that story.

Walking through the University of California's campus at Irvine is a startling experience. More than half the students are of Asian descent. When students set up their tables to advertise their clubs on the plaza, the diversity amongst the Asians is apparent. There is an Afghan Students Union and a Chinese Association, with at least six Korean American clubs. There is the Indian Students' Association, but also the Indian Subcontinental Club, a Hindu Yuva, the Muslim Students Union and the Secular Students Alliance (which hosts a Bhangra Night).

Student diversity is superb for brochures. But students complain - as a number of them told me - that they would like to see more classes about their histories. The Asian students and faculty who teach about Asia say that they would like to have more classes on the continent and its relationship to the rest of the world. But, as with most public institutions in the United States, the University of California system appears broke and is unwilling to spend what money it has on developing curricula to cater to the interests of the diverse student body about which it boasts.

While the University of California is making sweeping promises in response to students' complaints, it is unclear whether these promises will be backed with the financial commitments necessary to execute them. For example, starting in 2017, the University of California's Los Angeles campus will establish a diversity-related course requirement for students who enroll in 2017 and beyond. Students will be required to take a class that "substantially addresses racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, sexual orientation, religious or other types of diversity." This is a laudable goal, but does UCLA have the faculty to provide classes necessary for the 16,000 students it enrolls in each class?

There's no question that hiring people to enrich the curriculum should be a major goal of higher education in the United States. The problem - for public universities - is that legislatures are hesitant to finance such initiatives. The university, then, must go to private entities to raise the money. Individuals of great wealth have their own agenda. Few would like to give money to a university for a use that they do not control - a situation that has been exacerbated as the status of the Humanities declined (now donors with no training in the Humanities believe that they have as powerful a claim to defining curriculum as scholars). This is one of the great dilemmas of 21st century higher education in the US.

Controversy Erupts Over Funding From the Dharma Civilization Foundation

In May 2015, UC Irvine announced a partnership with the Dharma Civilization Foundation and the Thakkar Family to endow a Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Vedic and Indic Civilization Studies. The gift of $1.5 million came from a prominent San Fernando-based nephrologist, Dr. Ushakant Thakkar and his wife Irma Thakkar. This money would be followed by other funds for a Sikh, Jain and Modern Indian Studies chair. This sounds like a good reason for UC Irvine to celebrate: money for four positions that would diversify the curriculum, providing classes that the students had long wanted.

So what's the problem? Why did many graduate students who work on South Asia express their dismay at this gift, and why have many faculty members joined in their outrage?

One problem is the donor - the Dharma Civilization Foundation. Kalyan Vishwanathan, the executive vice president of the foundation, tells me that the foundation is "an American organization, registered in the State of California." It is, in other words, legitimate. So what is the problem? A letter of concern from the UC Irvine Department of History points to the linkages between the Dharma Civilization Foundation and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an extreme right group based in India, and its US affiliate the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS).

The founder of the Dharma Civilization Foundation - Manohar Shinde - is an RSS-trained man who was one of the founders of the HSS. Several of its trustees (Ved Nanda, Sunil Agarwal) have been leaders of the HSS - while its Vice President, Dr. Vinod Ambashta - was the HSS Director. Vishwanathan rejects that these groups have any role in the Dharma Civilization Foundation. On the other hand, Vishwanathan suggests that there is nothing improper in these groups, and those who argue against them "wish to discredit the millions of people who are involved in these organizations in India and elsewhere." Indeed, to take Vishwanathan's point further - the current Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a member of the RSS.

The faculty and students, however, do not believe that the RSS and the HSS are benign, nor do they believe that the Dharma Civilization Foundation is utterly independent of these organizations. There was good reason for the United States to deny Modi a visa to enter the country for a decade. Allegations of complicity in the killings of over 2,000 people in a pogrom in 2002 have dogged Modi. The sensibility of the RSS is anti-Muslim, and this sensibility has manifested itself in riots and in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, following Gandhi's words of goodwill toward Muslims. A senior Congress Party leader - Digvijay Singh - once likened the RSS hatred for Muslims to the Nazi hatred for Jews.

After students and faculty spoke out against the donation, UC-Irvine's administration hastily backed off from their celebrations. The Dean, Georges Van Den Abbeele, appointed a committee to investigate the unease with the gift. I asked Dean Van Den Abbeele about the Dharma Civilization Foundation's linkage to the RSS. Irvine, he says, has a track record of increasing offerings in Asian religions that precedes the Dharma Civilization Foundation gift - for at least four years before the foundation came into the picture, the university used non-tenure-track faculty such as adjuncts and postdocs to teach these classes. Irvine, he said, wants to hire a full-time faculty member to "reverse the general and regrettable trend in academia towards increased reliance on contingent rather than permanent instructors." This is a laudable goal, but not one that answers the question of the RSS's involvement. One of the faculty members who played a role in the episode, Professor John Miles, told me, "How close these alleged links are does concern me."

Stipulations Require Hiring of Scholars Who Imbibe Hindu Ethos

The Dharma Civilization Foundation asks those who take its money to follow two basic principles.

First, the foundation demands that its recipients hire scholars who "imbibe the spirit of Hindu Ethos in their personal lives." What does this mean? Does the scholar have to be a practicing Hindu? In its assessment of the University of Southern California, the Dharma Civilization Foundation writes approvingly of Professor Duncan Williams who teaches Buddhism because "he is a practicing Buddhist."

Second, and linked to this, the foundation stipulates that the hire must not be "confused and distorted by secularism." What does the foundation mean by this? Rajiv Malhotra, a telecom executive, has written a number of books against scholarship that "undermines Indian culture" by recourse to Western categories. The guidelines from the foundation say that such scholars exhibit "an outlook of contempt and disdain for anything Hindu." This, Vishwanathan told me, "is a cause for frustration among the members of the Dharma [Hindu] community."

Dean Van Den Abbeele told me that he informed the Dharma Civilization Foundation that UC-Irvine "cannot be bound by this phrase" - confused and distorted by secularism - "or any other stipulation that restricts the academic freedom of the chair holder." The committee set up by Dean Van Den Abbeele wrote at length about these restrictions. "We are particularly concerned about any language that implies that religious affiliation or participation in religious events is a prerequisite for chair holders," they write in their February 18 report.

Kalyan Vishwanathan of the Dharma Civilization Foundation suggests that these stipulations are an attempt to counterbalance the fact that religions from worlds outside Judeo-Christian traditions have for a long time been studied as inferior. Hinduism, he says, is often seen "as a kind of social pathology."

But has the Dharma Civilization Foundation created a straw man? Is there really disdain for Hinduism currently within the US academy? I asked several students at Irvine what they thought of this charge. Their reactions were skeptical. The academy, said Ali Olomi, is "not a locus of Hinduphobia." Olomi is the president of the History Graduate Students Association. "Both the faculty members and the student body have made clear their commitment to the academic study of Hinduism," he said.

Robert Goldman, who teaches at UC Berkeley, is the General Editor and one of the main translators of the enormous project to translate Valmiki's Ramayana (Princeton University Press). Goldman says that scholars who study India "do so out of love for the subject."

Telecom executive Rajiv Malhotra suggests that Western scholars - like Robert Goldman and Columbia University's Sheldon Pollock - lack adhikara, guru-given authority. Both Goldman and Pollock are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Pollock was awarded a prestigious Padma Shri award by the Indian government. Neither is a practicing Hindu. Malhotra criticizes Pollock for his "leftist and secular commitments." It is this that seems more the burr under the saddle than the scholars' actual work, which is widely recognized to be of the highest quality.

Funding at the University of Southern California

The Dharma Civilization Foundation failed at Irvine, but it had a success at the University of Southern California, where it endowed a chair in Hindu Studies in 2012. The process for that chair took over a year, with active work from the president of the University of Southern California, the chair of the School of Religion - Duncan Williams, whom the foundation praised for being a practicing Buddhist - and Varun Soni, the Dean of Religious Life.

The University of Southern California hired Rita Sherma - who was on a list of Scholar-Practitioners provided by the Dharma Civilization Foundation to the university - on a two-year short-term position for that chair. Sherma is a major donor to the Dharma Civilization Foundation and is praised in multiple places on the foundation's website. That she was hired for the position suggests that the University of Southern California was not averse to following the guidelines given by the foundation. Professor Sherma told me that she "applied along with others" and got the job. "I served my term and have taken a post elsewhere," she said. She now teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in a Dharma Studies program funded by the same foundation. She is, in other words, a key scholar-practitioner who is repeatedly hired for positions funded by the Dharma Civilization Foundation.

When the foundation made its gift to University of Southern California, the school's Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was Howard Gillman, now the Chancellor at UC-Irvine. I asked the Chancellor if he had any role to play in the gift. Through his Associate Chancellor, Ria Carlson, Chancellor Gillman said he "was not involved in conversations regarding the gift or the hiring of related faculty." Gillman's name is not on the gift agreement of June 25, 2012 - although he did not leave the university till 2013. It does seem unusual for the Dean of the College not to be involved in such a substantial ($3.24 million) gift. It is even more curious that the foundation moved from the University of Southern California to UC Irvine - as Gillman moved from one job to the next.

The Danger of Reliance on Private Funds

Higher education is truly in a bind. New fields of study appear, but there is no money from austerity-driven legislatures. Reliance upon private funds has become commonplace. But UC Irvine's own history shows that higher education need not be prone before the funders. When the Massiah Foundation - created by Fariborz Maseeh, an Iranian-American entrepreneur - approached UC Irvine to create a Center for Persian Studies in 2005, the discussion was more mature. "A faculty-led committee negotiated directly with the donor," remembers Professor Mark LeVine, who teaches Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine. This committee "was very explicit in how the donation would work, the importance of academic independence, and related issues and there have been no problems."

"Young children going to school and colleges in the US," Kalyan Vishwanathan from the Dharma Civilization Foundation said to me, "deserve a better approach to their heritage traditions." Of course, erroneous stories about any part of the world or any tradition would ill-prepare any student, not just those who can claim heritage from them. But the problem is not in this sentiment. It is in how better stories can be told. Should those stories be determined by a foundation with close ties to groups like the RSS? Or should they be produced by the rough and tumble world of academic debate and discussion, where protocols of academic freedom govern the sensibility of the scholars?

Ultimately, after consideration of the possibility of a program funded by the Dharma Civilization Foundation, UC-Irvine's faculty committee recommended that "none of the chairs be established." Dean Van Den Abbeele wrote to the faculty, "I will support these and other recommendations." It appears that the door to the Dharma Civilization Foundation at Irvine has closed. Students will continue to be eager for classes in Indian thought and history. The money will have to come from elsewhere.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
 
 Vijay Prashad teaches at Trinity College. He is a columnist for Frontline (India), for BirGün (Turkey) and al-Araby al-Jadeed. His forthcoming book is The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (2016).

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23. GURU INC.: INDIA’S HOLY MEN ENTER THE WORLD OF BIG BUSINESS
by Rama Lakshmi
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(The Washington Post - February 27, 2016)

NEW DELHI — For more than a decade, the orange-robed guru Baba Ramdev hosted a popular TV show, showing millions of Indians how to breathe correctly, eat herbs and knot themselves into impossible yoga postures.

Ramdev, 50, always augmented his talks with a diatribe about the dominance of foreign companies in India.

Today, the guru of good health is a business magnate himself. His ashram manufactures hundreds of herbal and organic products including soap, shampoo, cleaners, juice and honey. The company, called Patanjali, is worth more than $600 million, Ramdev says.

Some call it Guru Inc. — the rise of businesses run by gurus and holy men. Buoyed by the popularity of religious television programming in the past decade, many spiritual leaders in India are starting their own product lines, tapping into the renewed faith in the country’s ancient knowledge systems such as yoga and ayurveda.

In the past year, Patanjali has become the fastest growing consumer product company in India, with plans to quadruple the number of manufacturing plants by year’s end.
The flashy Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh — whose devotees call him a “messenger of god” and “saint” but not a businessman — lent his name to a line of organic products, expanding beyond the music videos and movies he makes and stars in. (Courtesy of Ajay Dhamija)

“Our goal is not to build a brand. The brand is just a byproduct,” Ramdev said at a news conference in New Delhi this month. “We want that Indians’ wealth should remain here, it should not be taken out of the country. This makes the multinational companies sweat. Why? Have we untied and let loose their buffaloes?”

[India welcomes foreign companies, but is the nation ready for them?]

Ramdev is one of the most visible success stories of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” movement — a push to boost indigenous manufacturing that includes India’s ayurvedic and yoga market, a $490 billion industry.

A report by the brokerage firm IIFL Associates projected that Patanjali’s revenue is likely to reach $3 billion by 2020. The report said the company poses a “credible threat” because it does not try to beat other established companies at their game, but “it changes the game for them.”

“The global consumer product companies are now waking up to the fact that the rise of Ramdev’s products is not a fad,” said Arvind Singhal, chairman of Technopak, a consumer market consultancy. “They now acknowledge that they have a challenge in their hands.”

He added that Hindustan Unilever, an Indian subsidiary of Unilever, recently acquired a local herbal hair oil company, a move aimed at countering Ramdev’s market gains.

India’s modern gurus defy the stereotype of men who opt out of worldly occupations, live in Himalayan caves and meditate for days.

Today, they own large swathes of real estate, hoard untaxed wealth and gold, and drive luxury cars. They hobnob with powerful politicians and businessmen — Ramdev is a longtime ally of Modi. Some are battling charges of sexual misconduct and improper land acquisition in courts.

Ramdev is not the only guru whose face now adorns products on supermarket shelves. The spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of the Art of Living makes herbal toothpaste and hair products. Shankar’s discourses relate to urban stress and trauma and he propagates breathing techniques.

Last month, the flashy Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh — whose devotees call him a “messenger of god” and “saint” — lent his name to a line of organic products, expanding beyond the music videos and movies he makes and stars in.

Ramdev is no stranger to controversies. He opposes homosexuality and has claimed he has the cure for AIDS. He opposes sex education in schools and recently called for a movie to be banned because it portrayed Hinduism unfavorably.

[Obama’s visit spurs hope that obstacles to U.S.-India relations can be overcome]

In recent months, there have been several media reports about complaints about his food products, including fungus in butter and insects in noodles. He responded by accusing foreign companies of conspiring to tarnish his image by paying consumers to file false complaints.

Last year, Nestle India’s popular instant noodles, called Maggi, faced a national scandal after local tests found monosodium glutamate and high lead levels in some samples. The company did its own testing and said the noodles were safe, but withdrew the product for several months. During that time, Ramdev quickly launched his own brand of noodles to capitalize on Nestle’s misfortune.

“Increased competition energizes the market,” said Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director for Nestle India.

Ramdev’s company was India’s biggest television advertiser during the last week of January, overtaking several global companies. Thousands of his followers who run neighborhood stores also double up as his retailers. And now he has partnered with large retail supermarket stores.

Ramdev likes to remind his opponents that his products are not made in huts but in large factories.

“We have destroyed the mind-set that if a product is made by a foreign company and expensive, it must be good. And if it is cheap and Indian-made, then it must be bad,” said Acharya Balkrishna, the managing director of Patanjali.

Security guards at Patanjali plants — there are 10 around India — greet visitors with the Hindu chant of “Om.”

Orange-robed holy men double as factory supervisors between daily yoga and meditation sessions. And Ramdev’s top advisers are not business school graduates, but disciples who work pro bono, producing items such as toothpaste and other toiletries. One television commercial for toothpaste shows holy men grinding herbs on the labels.

Ramdev has no designation in the company and draws no salary. He sleeps on the floor at the ashram, weaving tales about restoring India’s ancient glory.

“His products have an Indian soul,” said Sandeep Tanwar, 43, who was shopping for toothpaste and honey in a Patanjali outlet in New Delhi recently.

Market analysts expect that such guru businesses will continue to be popular.

“Patanjali’s products leverage the prevailing mood of resurgent national pride among Indians now,” said Vandana Das, president of the advertising agency DDB Mudra, which handles the campaign for the company’s products. “Earlier there was a mind-set that if you are using a foreign brand, you are cool. That is no longer there.”

Rama Lakshmi has been with The Post's India bureau since 1990. She is a staff writer and India social media editor for Post World.


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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
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