SACW - 12 Dec 2016 | Afghanistan’s Accidental Broker? / Nepal: A costly constitution / Pakistan: anti-science via textbooks / Bangladesh: Struggling to stay secular / India: Fear & Hate ; Citizens Appeal on Kashmir / Ghosts Spain Tries to Ignore / Soviet Leaders and Intelligence / China universities and Communist party

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 12 Dec 2016 - No. 2921 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:

1. Pakistan: Promoting anti-science via textbooks | Pervez Hoodbhoy
2. Faith, dissent and extremism: how Bangladesh is struggling to stay secular | Samia Huq
3. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - India: In BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh police denied permission to Kerala Chief Minister from visiting Bhopal - the reason protests by RSS
 - India: Are we ready to trade personal freedoms for cashless nationalism? (Sagarika Ghose)
 - India: What is Hindutva? (A.G. Noorani)
 - India: Pro-Hindutva Activists vandalise Pakistan stalls at Punjab International Trade Expo held in Amritsar
 - How India's right wing is trying to create its own intellectual space (Shoaib Daniyal)
 - India: Draupadi’s Travels and Travails (Urmimala Sarkar Munsi)
 - India: Triple talaq is neither constitutional nor a Quranic form of divorce (Irfan Engineer)
 - India: For the second consecutive year, Jaipur Art Summit disrupted by goons of the Hindu Right [dec 2016]
 - India: Jaipur Art Summit being held from December 7-11, 2016 comes under attack from Right-wing group Rashtriya Hindu Ekta Manch who vandalise & take away artwork
 - India: Police charges against mention how the Hindutva outfit Sanatan Sanstha has been administering psychotropic drugs at its 'healing clinics'

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
4. Bangladesh: What is convincing so many young men to give in to the ways of the militants? | Editorial, Dhaka Tribune
5. Nepal: A costly constitution | Anurag Acharya
6. ISIS, Afghanistan’s Accidental Broker? | Sune Engel Rasmussen
7. Filmmaker Flees Afghanistan, is Still Seeking to be Heard
8. How Buddhism connects SAARC | Javed Naqvi
9. Dec 2016 Appeal by the Concerned Citizens Collective for support for a Humanitarian Intervention in Jammu and Kashmir
10. India: Why Mamata Banerjee’s Suspicions of the Army Shouldn’t be Dismissed as Paranoia | Ravi Nair
11. India: As Oxymorons Go, 'Swadeshi Science' Is At Best, Dubious, And At Worst, Dangerous (Editorial, The Telegraph)
12. India: A humanist of rare elegance, statesman of science | C. Uday Bhaskar
13. Pakistan plans to expel Turkish teachers linked to opposition at home | Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain
14. India: The Politics of Fear and Hate Hidden in Demonetisation | Shankar Gopalakrishnan
15. When a Naga kills a Naga: Of strife and tragedy in the North-East | Shail Desai
16. India:  Pro-Hindutva Activists vandalise Pakistan stalls at PITEX
17. Shauna Singh Baldwin’s Reluctant Rebellions | Iftikhar H. Malik
18. The Ghosts Spain Tries to Ignore | Dan Hancox
19. Turnbull on Garthoff, 'Soviet Leaders and Intelligence: Assessing the American Adversary during the Cold War'
20. China universities must become Communist party 'strongholds', says Xi Jinping | Tom Phillips 

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1. PAKISTAN: PROMOTING ANTI-SCIENCE VIA TEXTBOOKS
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
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Published in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year, a biology textbook declares that "The theory of evolution, as proposed by Charles Darwin in the 19th century, is one of the most unbelievable and irrational claims in history". Ridiculing the notion that complex life evolved from simpler forms, it claims this violates common sense and is just as "baseless" as assuming that when two rickshaws collide "a motor car was evolved".
http://sacw.net/article13048.html

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2. FAITH, DISSENT AND EXTREMISM: HOW BANGLADESH IS STRUGGLING TO STAY SECULAR 
by Samia Huq
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The recent violent attacks on a Hindu temple in Bangladesh’s Netrokona district, and previous assaults on temples and homes in October in Brahmanbaria are a troubling illustration of Bangladesh’s struggle to protect two of its fundamental values: secularism and pluralism.
http://sacw.net/article13053.html

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3. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
======================================== 
 - India: In BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh police denied permission to Kerala Chief Minister from visiting Bhopal - the reason protests by RSS
 - India: Are we ready to trade personal freedoms for cashless nationalism? (Sagarika Ghose)
 - India: What is Hindutva? (A.G. Noorani)
 - India: Pro-Hindutva Activists vandalise Pakistan stalls at Punjab International Trade Expo held in Amritsar
 - How India's right wing is trying to create its own intellectual space (Shoaib Daniyal)
 - India: Draupadi’s Travels and Travails (Urmimala Sarkar Munsi)
 - India: Triple talaq is neither constitutional nor a Quranic form of divorce (Irfan Engineer)
 - India: For the second consecutive year, Jaipur Art Summit disrupted by goons of the Hindu Right [dec 2016]
 - India: Jaipur Art Summit being held from December 7-11, 2016 comes under attack from Right-wing group Rashtriya Hindu Ekta Manch who vandalise & take away artwork
 - India: Police charges against mention how the Hindutva outfit Sanatan Sanstha has been administering psychotropic drugs at its 'healing clinics'

 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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4. BANGLADESH: WHAT IS CONVINCING SO MANY YOUNG MEN TO GIVE IN TO THE WAYS OF THE MILITANTS?
Editorial, Dhaka Tribune
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(Dhaka Tribune - December 11, 2016

Editorial: What is going on?

What is convincing so many young men to give in to the ways of the militants?

Every day, according to news reports, it seems as though more and more youths are going missing.

It is high time that the authorities got to the bottom of this.
After the July 1 attack at Holey Artisan Bakery, questions still remain as to what led to seemingly normal young men to be so radicalised and conduct such a horrendous massacre.
And if the pattern of missing youths continues, it is only a matter of time before we might see a repeat of the tragedy that befell us no more than five months ago.

Not only do the authorities need to figure this out, they need to do so fast. This alarming trend must be properly investigated, and answers must be provided to the questions raised.
What exactly is going on here? What is convincing so many young men to tread the path of militancy?

And how many exactly have gone missing?

We need answers.

It is also imperative that we figure out a way to bring our boys back.
There must be a long-term plan in place which tackles these questions: How many are missing and how do we bring them back?

But this, too, is not enough.

We cannot afford to continue to lose young men with bright futures to the path of violence.
A holistic approach to the current security situation of the nation is required. Only then can the government confidently fight the war against terrorism and establish peace and safety in the country.

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5. NEPAL: A COSTLY CONSTITUTION
by Anurag Acharya
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Al Jazeera - 8 Dec 2016

Crucial issues ignored in the debate over the constitution will create faultlines in Nepali politics once it's passed.

Activists from ethnic Madhesi political parties shout anti-constitution slogans during a protest to mark Nepal's first constitution day in Kathmandu on September 19 [EPA]Activists from ethnic Madhesi political parties shout anti-constitution slogans during a protest to mark Nepal's first constitution day in Kathmandu on September 19 [EPA]

Last November marked a decade since Nepal's Maoists ended their bloody "People's War" in 2006 to join competitive politics. The conflict, which started after a fringe communist group declared an armed revolt against the government in 1996, claimed the lives of more than 16,000 Nepalis.

In 2007, the reinstated parliament of Nepal adopted an interim constitution, declaring the country a secular, federal republic and called for an election of a constituent assembly that would write Nepal's first democratic constitution within four years. But this gruelling exercise took eight years of political bickering that saw six governments fall and two constituent assemblies elected.
Nepali protesters risk lives in fight to change charter

The final months of the constitution drafting was marred by violent protests by ethnic Madhesis and Tharus against arbitrary federal demarcation and citizenship provisions in the southern part of the country. Nepal's first constitution delivered by the people's elected body had pushed the country into further instability and violence.

Nobody would realise that better than former President Ram Baran Yadav, who has spent the past year publicly repenting the fact that he was forced to promulgate a constitution that is now in limbo and that has divided the country.

Yadav has all the time in the world to regret and reflect whether his loyalty towards then ruling party Nepali Congress betrayed his judgment in promulgating a bitterly contested document. But what followed next has created faultlines that have made Nepali politics more unstable than ever.
Geopolitical tectonics

A landlocked nation, Nepal has always been dependent on its neighbours for importing essential goods, especially India, with which it shares more than 1,800km of largely unregulated borders.

The mountain barrier with China in the north meant Beijing has mostly been a distant observer of Kathmandu's affairs. This has historically given New Delhi leverage, especially since it brokered the 2006 accord between the Maoists and Nepal's political parties.

So, when Madhesis and Tharus, who share geographical and cultural affinities with people living on the Indian side, took to the streets against the draft constitution in August last year, the government in New Delhi used its diplomatic channels to put pressure on Kathmandu to address their demands.

The Madhesis and Tharus have long complained about being treated unfairly by dominant hill caste groups, taunted and politically marginalised for appearing to be "more Indian and less Nepali". The community's aspiration for autonomy is among one of the long-standing struggles in recent Nepali history.

The demand for federal autonomy was revived during the 2007 uprising known as Madhes Movement, and the issue became contentious as the constitution drafting team in the constituent assembly came up with a proposed federal demarcation.

The Madhesis and Tharus, each demanding an autonomous province with a demographic advantage, took to the streets protesting arbitrary demarcation of provincial boundaries.

Having exhausted its diplomatic efforts, India resorted to a blockade on Nepal, crippling life across the country for six months and causing a massive shortage of essential goods including petroleum products and medicines.

The angry government in Kathmandu under then Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxists and Leninists, reacted by signing a historic treaty with China and vowing to build a petroleum pipeline between Tibet and Kathmandu.

Emboldened by Kathmandu's overtures, Beijing sent a fleet of petroleum tankers to Nepal. When the tankers arrived in Kathmandu on the first week of November 2015, they were greeted by cheering crowds waving national flags.

Despite ridiculously vague provisions in Article 17 and 19 clearly limiting individual and the media's freedom of expression, there has been no serious lobbying from citizen groups to pressure political parties to amend these coercive provisions.

For a country surrounded by two nuclear giants, Nepal may have little room for manoeuvring when it comes to managing its foreign affairs.

But the country is being held hostage to the diktat of incompetent and greedy leaders, who have made political careers playing one powerful neighbour against the other, forcing the country into a dangerous political course.

Every small country treads a thin diplomatic line to balance its national interests against those of its larger neighbours, but it takes years of consistent bad governance and diplomacy to arrive at the mess Nepal currently finds itself in.
State of limbo

The April 2015 earthquake and the political blockade may have momentarily brought international media focus to Nepal, but the world has moved on, leaving Nepal to deal with its problems.

The way political parties and the newly formed government in Kathmandu have gone about their business, it seems that they have conveniently forgotten that the constitution was delivered at the cost of precious Nepali lives.

Now, a year under a dysfunctional statute, the present political equation in the parliament may finally favour the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) and the Nepali Congress to table an amendment proposal and bring the protesting constituencies into an agreement.

But with the Oli-led CPN-UML party taking to the streets, obstructing the house and trying to polarise public opinion, the Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal will find himself cornered.

Dahal will look to strike a compromise deal with UML to get the proposal endorsed and secure a good campaigning chip for his party during the next elections. The largest Nepali Congress party, too, has invested huge political capital in the process by backing a Maoist-led government, and would want to see the amendment bill tabled.

But, even if the amendment bill is endorsed by the parliament, it will come at the cost of more than half of the population still being denied their rights to equal citizenship. Under the Article 11 (5) and (7) of the present constitution, Nepali women cannot pass down citizenship rights to their children without declaring the citizenship status of the man who fathers the child.

Such a provision is deeply humiliating and discriminating for women who want to exercise their right to be treated equally by the constitution, and it violates several provisions under international law including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Nepal's former child soldiers fight for recognition

On the crucial issue of federal demarcation, the proposed amendment seems to have recognised indigenous Tharu people's demand for autonomy by carving a province that includes six districts with demographic advantage for Tharus.

But, in a glaring display of political dishonesty, the proponents have left out Kailali and Kanchanpur districts which have a major Tharu population, to suit the political interest of a few leaders including Nepali Congress boss Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Unfortunately, the Tharus of midwest and far west Nepal lack a strong voice in Kathmandu and may go unheard today, but it will create a major faultline in Nepal's federal politics in the years to come.

But, the biggest letdown in this constitutional amendment debate has been the passive role of Nepal's civil society and intelligentsia.

Despite ridiculously vague provisions in Article 17 and 19 clearly limiting individual and the media's freedom of expression, there has been no serious lobbying from citizen groups to pressure political parties to amend these coercive provisions.

While the Nepali media has been busy dissecting other constitutional provisions and their possible impact on national life, it sees no merit in questioning the limits put on its own constitutional rights.

Nepal has lived through a decade of bloody conflict and another decade of painful transition, but the country is yet to be at peace with its own people and their liberated political aspirations. The broader acceptance of the constitution is a minimum requirement to ensure it, which the proposed amendment may not guarantee after all.

Anurag Acharya is a Kathmandu-based journalist. 

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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6. ISIS, AFGHANISTAN’S ACCIDENTAL BROKER?
by Sune Engel Rasmussen
========================================
(The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2016)

KABUL, Afghanistan — On a recent afternoon, I found myself squeezed into the back seat of a car, one of about 50 vehicles in a procession recklessly speeding through the Afghan capital. The passengers — all men, all members of Afghanistan’s Shia Muslim minority — were headed toward the Kart-e-Sakhi shrine, where the previous night a suicide attacker loyal to the Islamic State, the radical Sunni group, had killed more than a dozen Shias.

In the front, three men occupied the passenger seat, limbs splaying out of the open door. The cars raced through the streets, forcing traffic to halt and make way. The black-clad men thumped their chests in religious fervor, shouting “Ya Hossein” in allegiance to the Shias’ third imam and waving flags depicting children in green headbands that said the mourners belonged to the “House of Hussein.” The scene had the marks of a sectarian conflict in the making. In fact, that was just what they were determined to prevent.

It was Oct. 12, and Ashura, the holiday when Shias commemorate the martyrdom in 680 A.D. of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and, according to them, his rightful heir. (Shias believe the prophet chose Hussein’s father, Ali, as his successor; Sunnis believe he picked his own father-in-law, Abu Bakr.) The men I rode with were intent on mourning their fellow faithful the same way they emulate the suffering of their imam: by self-flagellating with fists, chains and knives.

Afghans have lived through decades of conflict but have largely been spared the kind of sectarian war that ravages other countries in the region, such as Iraq and Pakistan. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has seemed intent on changing that since it surfaced in Afghanistan last year, when pockets of fighters in the eastern part of the country started pledging allegiance to the group.

Militants loyal to the Islamic State have now taken the fight to the capital: Over the past few months, they have carried out three massive attacks on Shia civilians in Kabul, including one last week that killed more than 30 people. At no point since a mass execution by the Taliban in Bamiyan province in 2001 have Afghanistan’s Shias been as targeted as they are now.

Estimates vary — there has been no census since 1979 — but Shias are generally believed to constitute up to 15 percent of the Afghan population. Most Afghan Shias are ethnic Hazaras and mainly reside in Kabul or the central highlands. Many Hazaras pride themselves on holding comparatively liberal social views, but partly because of ethnic discrimination they also often belong to the lower economic rungs.

The Taliban, who remain Afghanistan’s main armed opposition group, tend to view Shias as apostates, but they do not systematically persecute them. One reason may be that the Taliban are rooted in local, rural communities. They wage armed jihad but are also a nationalist, political movement that in certain areas strives to be perceived as a better provider of services and security than the government in Kabul.

The Islamic State doesn’t have such concerns. Whereas the Taliban presumably still hope to govern Afghanistan one day, the Islamic State’s goal is to destroy the nation state and make it part of a transnational caliphate. The Afghan government estimates that 90 percent of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan are foreigners — they also include a few former Afghan Taliban — and that the Islamic State leadership here is mainly Pakistani.

The Kart-e-Sakhi shrine sits in the middle of a sprawling cemetery at the bottom of Kabul’s TV Hill, named after the antennas poking out of its peak. Headstones dot the landscape like the scattered timber of a wreckage on a beach. On weekends and holidays, the area doubles as a fairground, complete with Ferris wheels and balloon sellers.

When our Ashura procession pulled up outside the mosque, hundreds of men spilled into the courtyard and stripped down. They brought out chains with five-inch blades and started whipping their bare torsos. Boys, some looking as young as 10, with thin arms and backs with no trace of muscle, swung the chains up high and brought them down, cutting their skin open with every strike.

Many Shias find the ritual archaic and repulsive. But for those who partake, from Iran and Afghanistan to Pakistan and India, self-flagellation is the purest form of worship.

For many years, the Ashura rituals were kept underground, and during the Taliban regime, in the 1990s, many Shias fled to Iran. But the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 heralded new religious freedoms. This year in Kabul, the Ashura ceremony was also a way for the mourners to protect their religious expression and to defy the threat posed by the Islamic State.

“In the past, we have been used to political and tribal war,” Sayed Yusuf Hosseini, the head cleric at the Kart-e-Sakhi shrine, told me. “But we did not experience religious war.”

I met Mr. Hosseini a few days after the Ashura attack in his office, which smelled pleasantly of rose water and overlooked the mosque’s courtyard. Mr. Hosseini, 35, was dressed in a crisp white tunic and black vest, and had a ring with a big yellow stone. He was shaken by the recent killings, yet sounded confident. “The enemy is trying to bring religious divisions,” he said, referring to the Islamic State, “but it will be impossible for them.”

The Islamic State did try again. On Nov. 21, a suicide bomber killed more than 30 worshipers in another Shia mosque in Kabul. The Islamic State claimed to have sent him. Counting this attack, the Ashura attack in October and another bombing in July, the group has killed at least 125 people while targeting Shias in the capital.

These strikes only seem to have brought Afghan Sunnis and Shias closer together. On social media, the dominant sentiment among young Afghans is one of solidarity. The Shias I traveled with on Ashura did not seem animated by revenge. The Islamic State may hope to trigger a religious war here, but at least for the moment the Afghan people seem unwilling to take the bait.

If anything, the emergence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan may present an opportunity for the Taliban, and the Afghan government: The Taliban are by no measure a harbinger of modernity, but they are, by comparison with the Islamic State, moderate and more in sync with the population.

When future peace talks between the Taliban and the Kabul government get underway, success will depend on the two sides’ capacity for pragmatism. The Taliban have already shown such an inclination, for example by teaming up with Iran, a Shia state and a historical foe, to fight the Islamic State in Afghanistan. Now, thanks partly to the popular reaction to the Islamic State, the Taliban may have come to realize that, to be a legitimate part of modern Afghanistan, they must make space for the country’s Shias, too.

Sune Engel Rasmussen is a journalist living in Kabul.

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7. FILMMAKER FLEES AFGHANISTAN, IS STILL SEEKING TO BE HEARD
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(Voice of America - December 10, 2016)

In 2014, despite decades of conflict in Afghanistan, and several recent militant attacks, the country's capital was home to a vibrant youth scene of musicians, artists, athletes and activists. Hassan Fazili opened a cafe for artists and filmmakers, but threats from the Taliban forced him to shut it down.
In 2014, despite decades of conflict in Afghanistan, and several recent militant attacks, the country's capital was home to a vibrant youth scene of musicians, artists, athletes and activists. Hassan Fazili opened a cafe for artists and filmmakers, but threats from the Taliban forced him to shut it down.
Filmmaker Hassan Fazili fled Afghanistan last year in search of a home where he could speak freely after the Taliban threatened him with death over one of his movies.
But Fazili, who moved to Serbia, will nevertheless be voiceless at a German film festival next week, when his work will be screened but he cannot attend because of his refugee status.
The Censored Women’s Film Festival, opening Monday in Berlin, plans to show his short fiction film, “Mr. Fazili’s Wife,” a 10-minute drama about a single mother who fights expectations that she will become a prostitute.
It is a rarely expressed critique by an Afghan man on patriarchy in Afghanistan.

Women’s issues

Fazili, 37, said he began making movies about women’s rights a decade ago after marrying his wife, Fatima, who in Afghanistan’s conservative society had been prevented from going to school.
“I must do something to raise up this issue to the world,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation Friday from Belgrade, speaking Farsi through an interpreter.
He took up filmmaking and also taught his wife, who has become a filmmaker in her own right, he said. He opened Kabul’s Art Cafe and Restaurant, hoping to provide space for men and women to meet and discuss art and politics openly.
But in 2014, police and religious authorities began a crackdown that forced him to close the cafe. At the same time, the Taliban criticized his latest film, “Peace in Afghanistan,” and the death threats started.
“I received phone calls saying that they will kill me making movies like this,” he said.

From Afghanistan to Serbia

While living in Afghanistan, Fazili said he was forced to turn down invitations to show his films in the United States and Britain because of visa restrictions.
He had hoped this time would be different.
“It was really important for me to be there, to know what people get from this movie,” he said.
Fazili is one of about 6,400 migrants from Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan in Serbia, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
They have been stranded in the Balkan country since border closings prevent them from moving further into Europe. Film festival organizers said they have petitioned UNHCR to allow Fazili to make the trip.
“We are desperate for Hassan to come to Berlin and share his story,” said Paula Kewskin, a festival spokeswoman.
Serbian authorities could not be reached for comment.

Not part of the conversation
But Fazili said he is resigned to missing the opportunity to present his work to an international audience. His regret is that now, freed from persecution and bent on making women’s rights heard, he still is not part of the conversation, he said.
“They might have questions about the movie and, as a director, I’m supposed to answer the questions,” he said. “But we can’t do much from here.”

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8. HOW BUDDHISM CONNECTS SAARC
by Javed Naqvi
========================================
(Dawn, December 6, 2016)

AT a South Asian summit in the Maldives during the Zardari era, Pakistan decided to acknowledge its past assertively, not as it imagined its history through the familiar neo-religious prism as, say, Ziaul Haq would see it, but as it actually transpired.

The world-renowned image of the fasting Buddha, which Pakistan inherited from the treasure trove of relics in Taxila and different connections it acquired from the deep past in Mohenjodaro were placed on display at the cultural pavilion in Male. Every Saarc nation summons its past at such meetings as a statement of identity. The choice of the historical motifs is usually conditioned by how anyone sees their identity in the present, and occasionally on how they wish to project an imagined past into a surmised future. Such choices shift with time.

The current Indian state is veering towards Hindutva, as distinct from liberal Hinduism, and tellingly prefers to distribute copies of the Geeta to foreign dignitaries. In doing so, the state is expressing an identity crisis that is at least partly manufactured by political exigencies. In more confident times, say under Jawaharlal Nehru or his daughter, the visiting dignitary would have been shown a truly rooted glimpse of the cultural mix that India has been for centuries.

Well-produced pictorial books of a more socially woven India were the likelier parting gifts. There used to be one on different forms of turbans that South Asian men wear, including different strata of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Parsis or even some Jains. The Brahminical tendency to subsume Buddhism, Jainism and even Sikhism, and reclaim the religions, which came out of the belly of a socially segmented heritage, mocks the truth.
The choice of historical motifs at Saarc summits is usually conditioned by how rulers see their identity in the present.

In Male, Zardari’s Pakistan was emerging from the darkened alcoves of its conjured past. India, on the other hand, is speeding towards the vacated spaces of narrow sectarian imagination of an identity far removed from the mosaic it is and was.

One of the less discussed activities of the Pakistan high commission in India in recent years has been the gifting of officially produced books on the history and architecture of the Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. I’ve asked them for books on Pakistan’s Christian and Parsi heritage too. A journalist colleague Reema Abbasi wrote a well-researched book on Hindu temples of Pakistan. Indians loved it.

It all depends on where you want to see your history starting. Most Pakistanis, inspired by the Zia legacy of religious nationalism, would see their identity as rooted in the invasion of Sindh by Mohammed bin Qasim. The genuinely curious would go back to Buddhism and even earlier than 2,500 years when Buddha was born in Lumbini, part of what is now Nepal.

What struck me about Buddhism during a 10-day course of complete silence in Vipassna in Kerala recently was how the eight member states of Saarc have a Buddhist link, more than a Hindu, Muslim or a Christian connection between them. This was not the main discussion during the informed lectures on Vipassna. It was just the way the mind strayed during the practice.

We have discussed Pakistan’s Buddhist heritage and we are also aware of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Built in 507 AD (the smaller one) and 554 AD (the larger figure), the statues represented the classic blended style of Gandhara art. They were 35 and 53 metres tall, respectively, and were destroyed in 2001 by Afghan Taliban zealots. Bhutan and Sri Lanka are the two officially Buddhist member states of Saarc though they practise different ways of Buddhism. Had Sikkim not been annexed by India in 1975, there would perhaps be a third officially Buddhist state in the South Asian club.

What about the others? India may have exported Buddhism to the world but it didn’t seem to respect the teachings of Buddha much. And, therefore, we cannot find a single Buddhist from the old stock. What we have instead are the neo-Buddhist, converted from the lowest social strata of the erstwhile untouchables by Dr Ambedkar.

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Buddhists comprise the third largest community in Bangladesh, mostly the tribes-people from areas bordering Myanmar. We still need to explain the Buddhist connection of the Maldives. As it turned out, the Maldives offers the most absorbing stories about how Buddhism came to the atoll.

The ancient Maldivian kings promoted Buddhism, and the first local writings and highly developed sculpture and architecture are said to belong to that period. The conversion to Islam is mentioned in the ancient edicts written in copper plates from the end of the 12th century AD.

I travelled to the 1997 Male Saarc summit from Colombo. On the way, the Maldivian ambassador to Sri Lanka told me a fascinating story about how Islam came to his island nation. There was a demon called Rannamaari. Simple Buddhist folks would have to surrender a young virgin girl to his temple retreat on a small hillock every week. In the morning, the girl would be found raped and killed. One day a Moroccan visitor learnt of the ordeal and he promised to end the suffering. He hid inside the darkened temple only to find that the killer was none other than the king himself. The king embraced Islam and his dark identity was never revealed by the Moroccan.

Another thing I remember from the Male Saarc summit in the Zardari era, probably in 2012, was that Muslim extremists from the Maldives had attacked Pakistan’s Buddhist exhibits. They went on to vandalise the country’s history museums with their rare works of art from Buddhist times. As a culturally syncretic country, I thought India would intervene against the vandalism against Pakistan’s attempt to reclaim its ancient heritage. But India looked on silently. And it was not the silence of Vipassna.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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9. DEC 2016 APPEAL BY THE CONCERNED CITIZENS COLLECTIVE FOR SUPPORT FOR A HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR
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Appeal by the Concerned Citizens Collective for support for a Humanitarian Intervention in Jammu and Kashmir in response to plight of civilians, in particular children, facing a serious medical crisis.

We are aware that during past five months, in the stone pelting by agitators and counter fire by security forces in Kashmir, many children have suffered serious injuries from pellets and shelling in Kashmir. A large number of minors are suffering extensive injuries, including disfigurement, eye injuries and some blinded for life. Children and their families are suffering from psycho-social trauma in a context where the very limited psychiatric facilities are already strained.

According to the report of an all India fact finding team consisting twenty-five citizens representing people's movements, women’s organisations, trade unions, human rights groups, journalists, writers and filmmakers, who visited Kashmir from 11 to 20 November 2016,

"In the last 135 days, over 102 unarmed civilians have been killed; more than 15,000 people have been injured in pellet firing and shelling, of which around 7,000 are cases of severe injury. A majority of those who have been injured are young and many are minors."

Local groups and organisations are already engaged in health care work and have conducted medical camps at Tral, Shopian, Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama, Old-town Baramulla, Sopore, and Palhalan. According to their assessment, the entire medical infrastructure of J & K is under severe stress in coping with both the extensive injuries, disfigurements, and blindings, as well as other medical needs such cardiac, pulmonary, and pediatric complications.   

This is an urgent appeal for experts in ophthalmology, cardiology, pulmonology, endocrinology, pediatrics, orthopedics, and psychiatry to offer their services for as much time as they can to supplement the meagre facilities available in J&K.  

Donations of medicines and equipment (jaw plates, antibiotics, anti-allergic, antidepressants, pain relievers, cough syrups, hypertensive drugs, penicillin, mutli-vitamins, iron and folic acid pills, gastro-intestinal medicines, general medicines related to BP and diabetes) would also be greatly welcome.

Efforts are being made to diagnose gaps and remedies for the ophthalmological infrastructure of the state. Also to be determined is the appropriate design for a community based psycho-social care intervention. A humanitarian delegation will be visiting the Kashmir valley in early December to map the human cost borne particularly by children, youth and women, and to develop the scope of an appropriate medically oriented humanitarian response. 

Dr Srinivas Murthy, an experienced conflict counselor formerly associated with WHO, has kindly agreed to help with this initiative. Dr. Mathew Verghese, formerly Director of St Stephen’s Hospital Delhi and Dr. Shobna Sonpar, a clinical psychologist with experience in conflict related trauma, have indicated their support for this effort. We have also received encouraging response from doctors from different states including senior doctors in government service who have indicated their willingness to participate in this initiative in their personal capacity. 

We appeal to you to contribute in cash and kind as well as volunteer for providing the urgently needed medical, mental health and social support to the beleaguered people in Kashmir.

Please send your contributions to:

Aman Biradari Trust
A/C No. 010104000156950
IDBI Bank
1/6 Siri Fort Institutional Area
Khel Gaon Marg
New Delhi 110049
IFSC Code: IBKL0000010

For more details and offers of assistance, please contact urgently: [Harsh Mander, Aman Biradari, manderharsh[at]gmail.com; Dunu Roy, Sanchal Foundation, qadeeroy[at]gmail.com; Tapan Bose, South Asia Forum for Human Rights:bose.tapan[at]gmail.com]

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10. INDIA: WHY MAMATA BANERJEE’S SUSPICIONS OF THE ARMY SHOULDN’T BE DISMISSED AS PARANOIA
By Ravi Nair
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(The Wire - 5 Dec 2016)

The increasing liberties taken by the army are symptomatic of the decline in civil and military relations that has occurred because of an erosion of constitutional norms.

Mamata Banerjee who decided to stay put at the secretariat till the army left the toll plaza. Credit: PTI/Files

The  recent dispute about the army deployment in Kolkata’s toll plazas is indicative of a deeper malaise in civil and army relations in India. It is difficult to imagine that a colonel in the army was writing to inspectors of the Kolkata police about what they sought to do “routinely”. Regular security meetings between the army and civil administration are held in all states. Apart from security assessments, these meetings also serve as clearing houses for more mundane matters, as the army claimed to have been doing in West Bengal. In addition, the union cabinet secretary has a military wing to ensure better coordination for a range of issues across India. Clearly, the most charitable explanation is that the eastern command of the army was grossly inefficient and inept in this instance. An unqualified apology to the chief minister of West Bengal is in order.

The army must realise that there exists deep discomfort within enlightened circles about its ever increasing imprint in matters outside its immediate purview. But when democratic values and norms have been systematically weakened since the early 1970s, it shouldn’t be surprising that the uniformed services – and especially the army – will not remain untouched by the erosion of constitutional norms.

Legally, the civilian administration can seek the assistance of the army for maintaining law and order and also ask for help when natural calamities, such as earthquakes, occur. The Defence Service Regulations, though, are unequivocal. Fort William may want to consult Chapter-VII, Paras 301-306 of the regulations for military aid to civil power again. The page number is 100 for their ready convenience. Another ready reckoner is the Criminal Procedure Code – Sections 130 and 131 in particular.

Historically, a unique set of circumstances ensured civilian supremacy in independent India. No uniformed individual could hold a candle to the intellectual worth and political sagacity of the then political leadership. The higher-ups in the army were happy to defer to the topi-wallahs – the sole exception being their objection to reintegrating Indian National Army personnel and Royal Indian Navy mutineers.

Similarly, the army leadership displayed great political sense during the Emergency. More so, when Indira Gandhi chose to extend the life of parliament for a year, without elections. Mercifully, Indira Gandhi did not deploy the army, in spite of the advice of the coterie around her son, Sanjay Gandhi. It saved General T.N. Raina the dilemma of choosing between the constitution and an illegitimate political leadership based on a parliament that had illegitimately extended itself.

In a strange quirk, many of the exalted in the army have found favour in the present NDA dispensation.

Lest it is forgotten, Mamta Banerjee cut her political teeth in the Youth Congress of the 1970s – a street fighter in the battle for control of Kolkata’s streets with the Naxalites and CPI (M) cadres.  Eastern Command at Fort William may not have a historical memory, but Banerjee has the politician’s elephantine memory. She would not have forgotten the all-important role of General Sam Manekshaw in the clandestine “night and fog” operations of the army that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of young men for the alleged crime of being Naxal activists or sympathisers  – an operation done without written orders.

The January 2012 army exercise that kept half the government awake through the night was also explained away as “routine”. The lack of any meaningful inquiry into the rogue unit constituted by General V.K. Singh – now a member of the ruling party – is worrying. Bland acceptance that Colonel Srikanth Purohit of the Bhonsale military academy fame, was acting as a lone ranger would be stretching credulity.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses Army officers and soldiers at a base camp during his visit to Siachen October 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Files

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses Army officers and soldiers at a base camp during his visit to Siachen October 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Files

Banerjee’s healthy suspicion of the uniformed forces is not the peregrination of an overactive mind. Professionalism amongst the commissioned officer class is what prevents Bonapartists in any army.

It would be instructive to have a civilian academic audit on how defence academies teach subjects on socio-political and economic aspects of governance and security. Socio-political study includes the study of cultural heritage, the study of the constitution, the various arms of the state, society and related subjects. When an active effort is on to inculcate a majoritarian understanding in all walks of life, the choice of readings, guest speakers and structure and design of the curriculum should be audited by the public.

The Indian Army has, thus far, been above the political fray but the enlisted man and the officer are not apolitical. He or she exercises his postal ballot in all elections and is not immune to the issues that agitate the average citizen’s mind – demonetisation, farmer suicides, communalism, terrorism et al.

It is evident that the army section in South Block and Kashmir House on New Delhi’s Rajaji Marg is the final authority not only in Kashmir but across the Northeast as well. The Supreme Court has sagely cautioned the armed forces in Extra-Judicial Execution Victim Families Association (EEVFAM) and Ors. Vs. Union of India (UOI) and Ors., Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 129 of 2012 (Under Article 32 of the constitution of India) and held:

    (ii) ………….However, as observed by the Justice Punchhi Commission on Centre-state relations an ‘internal disturbance’ by itself cannot be a ground for invoking the power under Article 356(1) of the constitution “if it is not intertwined with a situation where the government of a state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the constitution.

    (v) The postulates for a declaration under Section 3 of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) are that a public order situation exists and that the assistance of the armed forces of the Union is required in aid of the civil power. In such a situation, the AFSPA enables the armed forces of the Union to exercise vast powers.

In Naga People’s Movement of Human Rights the constitution bench sought to explain this expression by implication, namely, a situation that has made the deployment of the armed forces necessary for the maintenance of public order. It was made clear that such deployment does not mean that the civil power becomes dormant – civil power continues to function and the armed forces do not supplant or substitute the civil power – they only supplement it. The court said:

    The expression “in aid of the civil power” in Entry 1 of the state list and in Entry 2-A of the Union list implies that deployment of the armed forces of the Union shall be for the purpose of enabling the civil power in the state to deal with the situation affecting maintenance of public order which has necessitated the deployment of the armed forces in the state. The word “aid” postulates the continued existence of the authority to be aided.

‘Objective Civilian Control’ limits the authority of the military but also requires self-restraint by civilian leadership to stay out of the military realm. Political grand-standing on surgical strikes clearly crossed these red lines. Civil-military relations in India, for the most part, rest on adherence to constitutional norms. Yet systems of control are frayed. Ketchup colonels and rogue units are not products of feverish imagination. The professional officer corps are unable to get a full complement of individuals with Officer Like Qualities. There is deep disaffection about the perceived downgrading of defence officers by the civilian bureaucracy. The discontent over OROP is too well known to reiterate here.

Ravi Nair can be reached at ravinairsahrdc[at]gmail.com 

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11. INDIA: AS OXYMORONS GO, 'SWADESHI SCIENCE' IS AT BEST, DUBIOUS, AND AT WORST, DANGEROUS
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(The Telegraph, 8 December 2016)

Editorial

Knowing better

As oxymorons go, 'swadeshi science' is at best, dubious, and at worst, dangerous. It might provoke critical citizens of a modern and secular republic like India to recall their prime minister's use, at the inauguration of a state-of-the-art hospital, of the grafting of an elephant head onto a human body as an example not so much of a mythological creature as of the gloriousness of ancient Indian plastic surgery. But the promotion of swadeshi science is the express purpose of a non-governmental organization that is proving to be more governmental than expected. Four departments of the Narendra Modi government are spending three crore rupees each to organize the India International Science Festival jointly with this NGO - called Vijnana Bharati - which will also be mopping up the entire revenue from the stalls rented at this festival. Apart from the impropriety of such a mode of operation (at a time when there has been a massive crackdown by the Centre on other kinds of NGO funded indigenously as well as internationally), what such an event does to the idea of science by wedding it to the spirit of nationalism should also be something for the critical citizen to wonder about. Perhaps it is precisely such a critical spirit - inextricable from what most modern societies would regard as the scientific temperament - that Mr Modi's government wants to keep well within its control in the name of swadeshi.

Such an extravagant state-sponsored "festival" does not only undermine the principles of science and technology by harnessing them to regressive ideology; it also makes a mockery of scientific education by being ridiculously condescending to a few thousand students brought into Delhi from the villages for the inculcation of the scientific spirit. Unsurprisingly, the rubrics under which the encouragement of scientific knowledge and ideas are going to be channelled at this event include Mr Modi's pet schemes: Make in India, Swachh Bharat, and Smart City. This event will be hosted at the National Physical Laboratory, which is part of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Lest all this seem provincial, scientific internationalism will be embodied in 550 young students dressing up as Albert Einstein to achieve a new high in the Guinness Book of World Records. Will the 21st century soon be declared the new anti-national?

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12. INDIA: A HUMANIST OF RARE ELEGANCE, STATESMAN OF SCIENCE
C. Uday Bhaskar
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The Hindu - November 23, 2016

Professor M.G.K. Menon, better known as MGK or Goku, who passed away on Tuesday, was a multi-splendoured person.

Scientist, S&T policy-maker, scholar, parliamentarian, Cabinet Minister and a humanist of rare elegance — he has been described as one of India’s most eminent “statesmen of science”.

Awarded a Ph.D. at a relatively young age of 25 by the University of Bristol, U.K. in 1953, he joined the TIFR in 1955 at the invitation of Homi Bhabha. This marked the beginning of the extraordinary MGK trajectory. It commenced with his appointment as TIFR Director in 1966 after his mentor’s untimely death in an air crash. (Menon was not yet 38 years old at the time.) In 1971, he made the transition to Delhi when he was appointed Secretary in the Department of Electronics and for two decades plus, he was the veritable ‘vamana’ of Indian science and technology policy-making. The number of responsibilities that devolved upon him (thanks to the implicit confidence reposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) were quite dizzying.

With the death of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai in 1971, he was given additional charge as Chairman of ISRO and the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. This was over and above TIFR and Electronics.

To his credit, his ability to spot talent and entrust it with responsibility was borne out in the manner in which he enabled the appointment of Professor Satish Dhawan, then at the IISc, to the Chairmanship of ISRO. Subsequently he was appointed Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister in 1974 and concurrently looked after the DRDO. In 1978 he was appointed Secretary, Department of Science and Technology and Director-General of the CSIR. Then followed a stint as Secretary, Department of Environment, where he saved the ‘Silent Valley’ in Kerala; Chairman, SAC, to the Cabinet; Member, Planning Commission for seven years till 1989; SA to PM Rajiv Gandhi for three years till 1989; a Minister of State in the short-lived V.P. Singh Cabinet; and a Rajya Sabha member from 1990 to 1996.

His foot-print extended from his own personal discipline of physics to electronics, space and defence-related S&T issues and he was one of the most versatile architects of India’s scientific and technological endeavour. He had the rare distinction of having held the position of president of the three major academies of science — the Indian Academy of Sciences; Indian National Science Academy; and National Academy of Sciences, India. Respected internationally for his academic accomplishments and policy-making role, he was also a Founding Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy.

My personal association with Prof. MGK began at the India International Centre (where he was president) when I was studying India’s nuclear policy-making and he was a veritable vault of information, sharing forgotten nuggets about personalities in the decision-making loop.

He of the ‘mellifluous voice’ was eloquent and elegant in his choice of word and phrase — always delivered softly but with persuasiveness and panache.

I had the privilege of working with him at the IIC during his second term as president and his humanist values and sensibilities came to the fore at the centre. Goku-sir used to dwell at length on what he called the “IIC spirit and temperament” and in his gentle and understated manner, was anguished at what can only be characterised as a general lowering of the benchmark of rectitude, civility and self-restraint.

His attention to detail was legendary and included carefully reading the personal profile of every potential member of the IIC!

RIP Goku-sir.

(The writer is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi)

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13. PAKISTAN PLANS TO EXPEL TURKISH TEACHERS LINKED TO OPPOSITION AT HOME
by Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain
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(The Washington Post - December 10, 2016)

A second-grade English class at the PakTurk International School in Peshawar, Pakistan, is temporarily being taught by Pakistani teachers because the regular Turkish teachers are being told to leave the country. (Pam Constable/The Washington Post)


PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In a second-grade classroom, decorated with colorful posters of letters, numbers and animals, students were reciting English sentences using the future tense. Down the hall, kindergartners were enjoying a lunchtime party with cupcakes and funny hats.

But something was missing from this picture of studious nurturing. In many classes at the Pak-Turk International School last week, the regular teachers from Turkey were absent. They had been banned from the premises after the Pakistani government abruptly announced on Nov. 15 that they had five days to leave the country.

Since then, the expulsion orders against about 100 Turkish teachers and their families have been challenged in provincial courts, and most have been granted temporary visa extensions. But despite criticism from international rights groups and Pakistani educators, all expect to be forced to leave, and some said they fear being harassed and arrested if they return to Turkey.

“We are really sad about our teachers. They give us parties. They give us love. We don’t want them to go,” said Marosh Zishan, 8, whose English class was being taught by a substitute Pakistani teacher.

Asked what the second-graders had learned from their Turkish teachers, Malisha Shaheed, 7, stood up eagerly. “Not to fight,” she said.

The teachers at Pak-Turk International in Peshawar, and at 27 other such schools with 11,000 students across Pakistan, have not been accused of doing anything wrong. The private schools, established in the 1990s by Turkey’s Gulenist movement, are rated among the best in Pakistan. They meet British university exam standards, and many Pakistani professionals send their children there.

But this summer, the teachers were caught up in an international controversy, stemming from a failed military coup in Turkey in July. After the uprising was quelled, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unleashed a crackdown in which thousands of academics, lawyers and political activists were arrested.

Erdogan also singled out the Gulenists as having influenced the army to rebel and denounced their leader,  Fethullah Gulen, as a mastermind of the revolt. Gulen, 77, a Turkish Muslim cleric, has lived in exile in Pennsylvania for 17 years. He condemned the uprising, writing in the New York Times that his philosophy is “antithetical to armed rebellion.”

Still, Gulen loyalists had worked for years to infiltrate Turkish institutions, according to analysts in Turkey. Many in the police and judiciary used their positions to target military and political leaders, including Erdogan allies. 

Erdogan’s international stature has plummeted since the crackdown, but he remains a valued ally of Pakistan. In mid-November he was welcomed here for a high-profile visit. He addressed a session of Parliament, where he denounced the Gulenists as a “bloody terrorist group” and warned that they could also endanger Pakistan. Before arriving he requested that the teachers be expelled, and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif complied.  

The Pak-Turk schools are part of Gulen’s Hizmet program, which has educational and social welfare projects in numerous countries. Gulen’s teachings have a strong Islamic component, but Hizmet publications and members describe it as a “civil society movement” that promotes “human values” including empathy, mutual respect and community service.

Many Pakistani parents of Pak-Turk students have vocally protested the government’s move, participating in demonstrations in various cities over the past several weeks. They insist that the schools do not promote any radical religious ideas, and they praise the Turkish influence as building moral character in the young.

“My children have been going here for four years, and I have never heard anything about the Gulenists,” said Mohammed Zubair, a medical doctor and hospital official in Peshawar who said he chose Pak-Turk over several other highly ranked private schools. “They teach ethical values and build good citizens. This is completely unfair.”

Mohammed Aqeel, 24, who attended the Peshawar school and now teaches there, called the visa cancellations “a shameful event” that had compromised Pakistan’s independence and damaged its educational standards. “There is no foreign ideology here,” he said. “I love this school. It grooms us to be good human beings as well as students.”

The Pakistani government has not fully explained its action, but government lawyers have described it as a “foreign policy matter” and noted that Pakistan has the right to not renew foreign visas. Officials have also suggested that little harm is being done to the students, since the schools will remain open. 

Critical analysts, however, said it was strictly a move to please Erdogan, who is close to Sharif and supports Pakistan in its rivalry with India. Pakistan has been isolated abroad because of accusations that it harbors Islamic terrorists, and Turkey has remained one of its few staunch friends.

Amnesty International condemned the expulsion order, saying Pakistan “needs more classrooms and more teachers, not a politically motivated decision to purge educators at the behest of the Turkish government.” Pakistan’s public school system is poorly funded and equipped, and millions of children work instead.

Babar Sattar, a lawyer and commentator in Islamabad, observed that “asking all Turkish teachers in an excellent school [chain] to exit the country at the drop of a hat, in the middle of the academic term, is an insult to the Turkish teachers and a disservice to their Pakistani students. Why couldn’t our prime minister tell Erdogan that this wasn’t the right thing to do?”

The PakTurk Educational Foundation immediately challenged the expulsion order in Pakistani courts, which have responded in various ways. The Islamabad High Court said the group should petition the Interior Ministry for visa extensions but noted that allowing foreigners to remain is “the sole prerogative of any state.” The Peshawar High Court issued a temporary injunction on the expulsions in November and later extended it until Dec. 13. 

Meanwhile, the teachers remain in limbo, suddenly jobless in Pakistan and fearful of what awaits them in Turkey. One faculty couple with two children, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, said they now rarely leave the rented house they share with another Turkish family. 

“If people at home know I work here, it will be enough to send me straight to jail,” said the husband, 30, who has taught math in PakTurk schools for the past several years. “We have started to sell all our furniture. We don’t know where else we can go and what will happen to us in Turkey,” he said.

His wife, a science teacher, started to cry, then spoke angrily.

“We were so happy here,” she said. “My kids learned Urdu. Then suddenly they told us we were going to be deported in three days. What have we done? If they say we are terrorists, where is the proof?” she demanded. “My parents are telling me it’s too dangerous for us to come back, but we have no choice. We are open targets now.”

Erin Cunningham in Istanbul contributed to this story.

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14. INDIA: THE POLITICS OF FEAR AND HATE HIDDEN IN DEMONETISATION
by Shankar Gopalakrishnan
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(The Wire - 12 December 2016)

Demonetisation may be unprecedented as an economic policy, but there is nothing novel about this kind of politics, as the Sangh parivar knows all too well.

By now, the government’s post demonetisation plans seem quite clear. Next year, the government will launch a new welfare scheme by extracting a higher dividend from the RBI and/or collecting revenue through new tax provisions. This could be as simple as putting money in Jan Dhan accounts. Most believe that this will ‘work’ – that is, it will win the BJP votes.

But the demonetisation is not just about elections. It is also in line with the kind of politics that the Sangh parivar and this government have always promoted. In this sense, the note ban is already ‘working’ at three levels.

A sacrifice that isn’t a sacrifice

The first level is the rhetoric of ‘sacrifice’ regarding demonetisation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked people to bear these “temporary inconveniences” and assured them that their “sacrifices” will not go in vain. The move’s supporters have also appealed to the public, saying that if people can stand in queues for sales, surely they can do so at an ATM.

But how exactly does dealing with demonetisation constitute a sacrifice? By definition, a sacrifice is not a sacrifice if it is not done out of choice. Living with the effects of demonetisation is not a matter of choice. No one suffering as a result of the move actually chose to do so, and those who chose to impose it are not the ones suffering. Whether you are willing to stand in a queue for a sale or not, you still have to do so now. So where’s the ‘sacrifice’?

But there is one choice that everyone does have to make – and that is, how we react to what we are forced to do. This is precisely the choice that supporters are referring to. The sacrifice they cite is not a choice about demonetisation as such, but the decision to accept or even celebrate the resulting losses. The thing being sacrificed is the public’s capacity to dissent. In this view of the world, only those who choose to cheerfully obey have put the nation’s interest above their own.

This confusion over which sacrifice is being demanded of the people leads us to the second level of politics. The language of sacrifice is a language of dignity and honour. That language is very valuable in a context like India’s. Observing the seemingly widespread support for the move, several commentators have referred to the anger that the poor feel against the rich. But this is only part of the picture. For the majority of Indians, the most destructive fact of life is not poverty as such but the deeply unpredictable, insecure and unsafe lives they have to lead. Whether it is migrant and daily wage workers who have no idea what kind of work they will find, farmers unsure of rains and prices or households fearing the loss of their life savings to a medical emergency – there is a constant threat of instability. This leads one to be dependent on the goodwill of others, such as netas, police, government staff or shopkeepers in order to survive. Thus this insecurity is experienced as a fundamental lack of dignity, of being a lesser human being.

For decades, we have all been told that black money and its cousin, corruption, are India’s biggest problems and that those guilty of corruption are precisely these people – the face of a callous state and a brutal exploiting class. Now, demonetisation makes many feel that their sacrifice somehow makes them part of a larger crusade that hits out at the very people who keep brutalising them. Ironically, the more powerless a person is, the higher the initial attraction.

The third level at which the policy is ‘working’ is precisely the widespread economic damage being created by  demonetisation. This is not about lines. The massive cash crunch means lost wages, possible distress sales, the closing of businesses and so on. Those seriously ill or short on food are, quite simply, dying. However, to most people, these losses look very much like the insecurity that was already present in their lives. The vast majority of those hit by the policy cannot necessarily draw a straight line connecting the government’s decision to demonetise to their suffering. Demonetisation is making things much worse for the majority. But for each of these individuals, the BJP is hoping that it can continue to claim that black money is the ultimate cause of poverty and insecurity, rather than the scheme itself.

Once the BJP delivers its new welfare scheme, the logic comes full circle. From this ‘national endeavour’, many people will receive a direct benefit. The benefit and those responsible for delivering it will be obvious, while the much larger losses will be scattered and invisible. Thus it will be ‘proven’ that those who did not make the ‘sacrifice’, who chose to not be loyal, are at best selfish busybodies and at worst traitors.

The RSS and its ‘politics of obedience’

Demonetisation may be an unprecedented move in the realm of economic policy, but there is nothing novel about this kind of politics. This is what the Sangh parivar practices in every situation. The entire cadre base of the RSS is built upon this kind of bargain. There are two sides to it. On the one hand, give up your autonomy and your right to ask questions of the powerful and instead target ‘enemies’ (Muslims, anti-nationals, terrorists) since they are responsible for all problems. On the other hand, in exchange, receive benefits for yourself from those same powerful classes or castes – but only if you obey. This is particularly true of the Sangh parivar’s organising among marginalised sections. Thus Adivasis get access to Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram clinics and schools if they quietly accept that they are ‘backward Hindus’; Dalits get access to temples and public life in exchange for accepting the Brahminical RSS and its deep casteism; women get access to political activity and public leadership in exchange for extolling ‘motherhood’ and the very patriarchal values that excluded them in the first place.

In this sense, demonetisation is the most successful Sangh parivar campaign so far. It has hit literally every household in the country simultaneously. Moreover, the enemies it claims to be fighting are completely invisible. The government gets to decide who is labelled an enemy. Thus gigantic corporate tax evasion,  such as the 2014 Vodafone tax case, is not described as black money. But every town in India is now full of rumours about the guy down the street caught with Rs 6 crores or 29 lakhs or whatever. Just like all other Sangh parivar campaigns, the real structure of tax evasion is not being confronted (leave alone the structures responsible for poverty). Instead, individuals are being asked to loyally obey the ruling party, while it attacks other individuals, who are seen as the enemy.

The result is a climate of fear more intense than ever before. Supporters proudly march and shout while critics, especially those who don’t belong to the elite, whisper their criticisms in corners. Many people feel obliged to say, after narrating their struggles or losses, that it’s all worth it for the sake of the country. Demonetisation is a hate-mongers’ dream. Incidentally, we can also expect to see Sangh outfits build on this. Cash could be the new beef, with private, official and joint official-private raids becoming the norm. Opposition parties, in particular, will be easy targets.

The Sangh’s basic problem

Of course, in the long run, the RSS faces a much deeper problem, to which it has no answer – its entire politics is built on a lie. Obedience to it produces more instability, not less; so it has to keep generating new enemies for it to ‘save’ people from. It never fulfils its ultimate promise of prosperity and security, because it strengthens the structures that create injustice and insecurity.

Several commentators have pointed out that this leads to a cycle of escalation, where something bigger is constantly required to detract attention from the previous stunt. And it is not merely bigger and bigger stunts that are necessary. All of them will be of this obedience versus dissent, enemies versus society type. This is what makes them far more devastating than merely dictatorial moves. This is also what leads so many people to draw parallels between the Sanghis and the Nazis, for this was the distinguishing feature of fascism: the mass mobilisation of people against “enemies” while strengthening the already powerful.

What the demonetisation has also shown is that both the BJP and the Modi government – confident in the Sangh parivar’s massive support base and the backing of big corporates – are quite capable of sudden drastic moves beyond the constraints that bind normal politics. In this sense, the sky is the limit. We do not know what they will do next and we do not know how many people will pay for it.

But this is not a counsel for despair. By its very nature, a politics built around constant insecurity is not a long term form of politics. It reduces its own supporters’ lives to ever-growing chaos and propels never-ending searches for the ‘real leaders’ who can deliver the safety these supporters seek. Moreover, this kind of pseudo-empowerment is no match for a genuine liberatory politics. Indeed, it creates the conditions for such a politics to emerge, as anyone who can tie the threads together can expose the whole enterprise as a sham. At the local level, wherever the RSS has confronted a genuinely strong progressive force, it has lost. The problem is for the latter to emerge at the national level – and the price that will be paid as long as it does not. Both, the most terrifying and hopeful lesson of demonetisation, is that politics as usual no longer works in Modi’s India. 

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15. WHEN A NAGA KILLS A NAGA: OF STRIFE AND TRAGEDY IN THE NORTH-EAST | Shail Desai
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(Live Mint - 11 December 2016)

With no end to the conflict between the army and the rebels in sight, a tiny village in Nagaland mourns one of its own

The sleepy village of Shiyong was abuzz on Sunday. Conversations over a session of rice beer revolved around one topic—the attack on an Assam Rifles convoy in Arunachal Pradesh on 2 December.
While there are conflicting reports on the number of soldiers killed in the ambush orchestrated by Naga rebels from the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, or NSCN(K), this was about one person—Nanwang S. Konyak, a resident of Shiyong who joined the force just four years ago.
The 29-year-old’s body arrived on Monday, when the locals usually go about their business in the fields and the tea plantations that dot the hillside, but on this day, Shiyong came to a standstill. It was a first in modern times for the village—a Naga had killed a Naga.
Nanwang’s body arrives in Shiyong. Photo: Shail Desai

Nanwang’s body arrives in Shiyong. Photo: Shail Desai
From noon onwards, an entourage of bikes sporting black flags piled up at the village gate alongside a convoy of the Assam Rifles from the village of Wakching, located on a neighbouring hill. The discussions were around the prevalent situation in the north-east.
This was the third attack on an army convoy in the region in two weeks—a situation that the locals are all too familiar with. Only this time, it was one of their own who had sacrificed his life.
Shiyong, in Nagaland’s Mon district, is home to the Konyak tribe—one of the fiercest warrior clans, once famous for their practice of headhunting.
During World War I, the British recruited Naga tribesmen for their fearlessness. Jonathan Glancey writes in his book, Nagaland: A Journey to India’s Forgotten Frontier: “German troops who occasionally came up against Naga warriors in the trenches during the First World War were shocked to have to fight ‘savages’. They thought this demeaning and complained to their High Command. What worried them most, though, was the fact that Nagas saw war in the trenches, no matter how alien, as an opportunity for headhunting on an epic scale. In the event they agreed to bring back the spiked helmets of their victims rather than their severed heads.”
While the practice of headhunting has long been discontinued, the warrior culture isn’t dead—for years now, the Konyaks have been recruited as part of the army and the Nagaland Police. About 14 from Shiyong are currently serving in some of these institutions, not to mention a number who have retired. Most, however, don’t remember there every being a casualty from the village, which made Nanwang’s loss all the more emotional.
The eldest of seven siblings, Nanwang had joined the Assam Rifles four years ago. He did not have a flamboyant personality, but he was known for his hard work on duty, remembers a member of his unit from the 16 Assam Rifles who had come to attend the funeral.
He had been stationed in Tirap district, Arunachal Pradesh; while on patrol, their convoy of two vehicles was attacked just outside the village of Disa, some 20-odd km from the India-Myanmar border. A barrage of bullets rained down on Nanwang’s vehicle, and he fought back to the best of his abilities.
“Even if it was a simple chore, if it was left to Nanwang, you knew that it would be done well,” says the unit member, who declined to be named.
He added that Nanwang’s vehicle was completely destroyed by the end of the attack. His helmet had blocked four bullets, but one got through and he died in the hospital later that evening.
One of the villagers said that Nanwang was a blood relative to the second-in-command at NSCN(K), which added to the agony of the situation. He added that the government had of late deployed mostly local boys in camps close to the border, which has not gone down well with communities in the north-east.
As the first of the escort vehicles arrived from the town of Mon, the cavalcade started off. The locals led the procession, followed by the vehicle bearing Nanwang’s remains and trucks carrying Assam Rifles personnel. They drove all the way to the end of the main road in Shiyong, as villagers thronged the sides and followed.
The coffin wrapped in the Indian flag was offloaded at the Ahngpan Morung, which housed young Konyaks back in the day as they readied for battle. It was the same place they brought back their dead, along with the heads hunted during the fight.
Photo: Shail Desai

The entire village mourned the loss alongside Nanwang’s family. Youngsters fired shots into the air in homage; the following day, the Assam Rifles unit did the same. Prayers were said for the departed soul, who was later buried on a slope below the Morung.
***
Groups demanding nationhood for Nagaland have been around for years. The fight was led by Angami Zapu Phizo after Independence, and is today continued by various underground groups.
While most of the other rebel factions have either surrendered or declared a ceasefire with the Indian government, the NSCN(K), which claimed responsibility for the attack, remains active. The faction is camped in Myanmar and conducts strikes time and again, chasing the dream of an independent Nagaland.
Among the villagers in Shiyong though, there seems to be little enthusiasm for such a dream. A local schoolteacher believes that Nagaland cannot stand on its own as there are not enough resources within the state, as a result of which they bank on India for the basics.
“The rice we grow here is good for four months—the rest of the time, we go to the local shops to get our supply. This extends to a lot of other essential items. How does this demand for independence make sense?” he asks.
The rebel groups depend on local Naga communities for supplies; another villager says that they have little choice but to comply—resisting would simply lead to more trouble.
***
There is a craze for guns in these parts, which started when the first armed British explorers arrived. The Konyaks were quick to learn the mechanism, and soon started making their own guns. Travelling around Mon district, it’s hard to miss the single-barrelled rifles slung across the shoulders of many of the locals.
The same love for arms continues to these days among the youngsters—the army, then, becomes an obvious choice for many.
Those joining forces with the rebel groups come from underprivileged backgrounds, with little access to education or a livelihood, said a teacher in Shiyong. Some are even army aspirants, who failed to make the cut during their stringent recruitment drives, and some are shown dreams of an easy life, once independence is attained, he added.
“This belief that all will be well if their demands are met draws a lot of youth, who have little idea of the consequences. They dread the migrant, jungle life, but are sold to the ideology. The educated ones know that this isn’t the solution,” says one villager.
The army camps situated in strategic locations provide help to the villagers time and again, claims one officer, who also declined to be named. From organizing football tournaments for the youth to helping the locals with basic resources such as water, it’s their way of showing support, he says.
“It’s the villagers who have to stand up against these rebel groups to deny them basic necessities. These Konyaks are a warrior race after all, who can defend themselves when needed,” says an army officer.
“What is happening is the result of a failed state government, who have not been able to create employment opportunities for the Nagas. This community now realizes that this fight is pointless, and wants to progress just like anywhere else in India,” he adds.
But the truth remains—and the officer cleverly brushes aside the query—that there is little security for the Naga villages, including those who have laid down their arms to lead a normal life. While the government offers help with jobs and farming, there is no line of defence when the rebel groups decide to pay a visit.
***
In the old days, when a tribesman’s status as a warrior depended on the number of heads he had, a Naga would attack another Naga for reasons ranging from social to spiritual, and sometimes simply as a matter of survival. But the internecine violence of the present day leaves many wondering whether there’s any point.
Accusations fly fast and thick, including some against the Indian government and those that call Nagaland a “disturbed state”. But at the end of the day, one wonders exactly why Nanwang had sacrificed his life.
A ceasefire may be the best answer for now, given that a long-term solution is hard to define and envision. All parties could to sit at a table and figure out a solution that is best suited for Nagaland. 
Until then, a Naga may still fall to another Naga.
Shail Desai is a Mumbai-based writer.

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16. INDIA:  PRO-HINDUTVA ACTIVISTS VANDALISE PAKISTAN STALLS AT PITEX
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(The Indian Express - December 11, 2016)

Members of VHP, Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal remove Pakistani flags from shops selling products made there.
Written by KAMALDEEP SINGH BRAR | Amritsar 
pakistani-stalls-759 Members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad demand removal of Pakistani flag from a stall at the Punjab International Trade Expo in Amritsar on Saturday. Rana Simranjit Singh

Activists from pro-Hindutva outfits Saturday barged into venue of PITEX (Punjab International Trade Expo) here and removed the pictures of Pakistani flags from the shops selling products manufactured in Pakistan even as the police watched. SAARC countries have been participating in this international festival.

Pakistan’s participation has already been the lowest at PITEX in the last 10 years. There have been few stalls selling Pakistani products. A day earlier, Shiv Sena members had visited the PITEX office and warned against the presence of Pakistan traders.

On Saturday, activists of Vishav Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena entered the venue of PITEX in the afternoon and started removing the flags and signboards from the shops belonging to Pakistan.

Police and security were mute spectators. Fifty-four exhibitors from Pakistan had got visas to participate in the PITEX. None of them, however, came citing demonetisation blues.

A few stalls of Pakistan were booked by an Indian promoter which are manned by Indians. The attackers targeted these stalls.

“We had warned them to remove flags themselves. But they didn’t. So we were forced to remove these flags and sign boards. We have also made an appeal to people to not buy Pakistan-made products. Pakistan is encouraging terrorism in India and we should stand by the Army instead of Pakistani traders,” said, Sanjay Suri, a local Shiv Sena leader. They also demanded that Pakistan traders should not be given visas.

Parveen Rathee, Regional Director, PHDCCI in Chandigarh, said, “We have informed police about today’s episode. Officers had come and reviewed the security arrangements. We have been assured that the security will be strengthened to avoid any such incident in future.”

ACP (north Amritsar) Bal Krishan said, “We have received a complaint from the PITEX organisers. We will take appropriate action. Nobody will be allowed to create any trouble in this trade show.”

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17. SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN’S RELUCTANT REBELLIONS
by Iftikhar H. Malik**
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“I write for those who can read, a very small percentage of six billion people. And within that, I write for that small percentage who can read in English. And within that, I write for a shrinking percentage of readers who like fiction. And within that, I write for that tiny percentage of readers who like literary fiction”. 1
	
Novelists, poets and playwrights often do not expound on ‘hidden meanings’ or the intent of their creativity; instead they leave it to their readers while assuming anonymity in a kind of joyous ambiguity. Surely, they feel elevated when their creation is applauded and get hurt, when some critic lambasts them for not being original enough or for assuming cavalier attitude towards some specific human sensitivity. Philosophers, on the contrary, play with ideas and while wrapping them in words, they do not shirk from turning into rabble-rousers though unlike by now familiar Dawkinsonian strand, the former avoid being too intrusive on human sensibilities. Poets go even further than that, as they cajole, reflect and, once in a while, shock their readers and audience. Their wordsmithery, specifically within South Asian genre of poetry recital—Mushaairaa—is intently built upon eloquence, rendition and shock. Most philosophers would never compromise on the invincibility and primacy of human reason by relegating faith to some secondary status, though classicists such as Averroes and modernists like Muhammad Iqbal or Isaiah Berlin could still find compatibility between religion and reason. Iqbal, brought up in Muslim traditions yet replenished by Nietzsche, Goethe and Bergson, in his efforts to find a synthesis, seems to be struggling between the two though to him faith would mean devotional love and nor just ritualism which brought him closer to Sufis. Iqbal shied away from talking about his own poetry and philosophy except for in a very few letters on the subject and so did Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Intizaar Hussain, the two preeminent Urdu writers straddling both sides of 1947. On the other hand, Khushwant Singh, Ahmed Ali and Saadat Hasan Manto never shied away from lambasting narrow mindedness, and used both pen and literary platforms to further vocalise their written word. Shauna Singh Baldwin, through this volume, goes beyond being a literary chronicler and forcefully unveils rationale, meanings and even the purpose of her fictional works, which have flourished with time and despite traversing epochs and continents, mainly remain rooted in the two subcontinents of South Asia and North America. Her audience are not merely South Asian, post-colonial writers but a world at large that, like this Sikh feminist, is slowly becoming cognisant of what Satwinder Bains calls “Indian-Sikh-South-Asian-North-American familiarities”. Bains, in her introduction to this lively and defiantly bold collage of Baldwin’s writings, would rather start with where Baldwin ends her volume: “Begin anywhere, but begin”. Of course, Baldwin, like several other writers of her league, is not going to let go of her own culture(s) which, contrasted with Lionel Shriver’s recent sweeping generalisation on the same, remains a more persuasive argument.  
	Shauna Singh with a Persian first name—Sha{h}naaz—and Baldwin her family name is conscious of her multiple identities, anchored upon her Sikh origins in Canada with schooling in India until her higher studies near the Great Lakes and final settlement in Milwaukee. Quite different from Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, she made all her decisions on her own including a 29-year long partnership with the Late David Baldwin, and has benefitted from her travels and research across the three continents. Besides listening to others especially her Maternal Grandmother, she often writes reclusively. Her Grandmother is Roop, the main character in her What the Body Remembers, and was born in a little Pothowari hamlet called Pari Darwaza. The village lies close to the eastern end of the Salt Range and not too distant from Pir Kattas, Bhaun, Nandana and Kalar Kahar of the historic fame and is in the proximity of the River Jhelum. Here Roop’s father, neighboured by Muslims, tilled his land that barely afforded a subsistence economy and gave the hand of his daughter to a well-established Sardarji from Inner Rawalpindi as his second marriage since Satya, the first wife, could not bear him any children. The story of Roop is the story of Western Punjab before Partition as it is the story of two women in the same household in Bagh Sardaraan—not too distant from Punja Sahib, on the western side of the Margallas. The hamlet of Hasan Abdal is almost overlooked by Abbot’s Needle guarding the old Grand Trunk Road before one would venture into Taxila of the Buddhist and Alexander fame.  Tribulations of a joint household help Roop grow into a successful wife who is able to migrate through the strenuous pangs of Partition and eventually narrates her personal life to her granddaughter. Coming from that part of the world and occasionally nostalgic about mustard fields, blue skies and low lying green hills of the Salt Range, I can certainly seek commonalities with Baldwin’s nostalgia for her roots on maternal side.
 Listening to Pothowari Punjabi spoken by her Grandmother in a cosmopolitan Delhi where Desi English {Hinglish} and a Sanskritised Hindi had long displaced Urdu, is part of our author’s childhood until she decides to travel to her ancestral lands. No less anguished over 1947 and viewing Pakistan as the result or possibly a factor behind the tumultuous events accompanying dislocations of all the communities, she finds Pakistanis warming up to her though she does like flaunting her Sikhness to study their reactions. They are warm, polite and non-obtrusive to a girl of their own, which leaves Shauna further ambivalent about this “camel-and-goat country”. It is exactly like Pakistan’s Punjabi Muslims visiting East Punjab feeling “lost from home to home” though Kapurthala and Patiala might be tantalising like Rawalpindi due to massacres of almost an entire generation. Guided by Kakaji and chaperoned by David, she finds herself “before a regal but decrepit four storey haveli. Long shadows played over scalloped arches and doorways that meant the haveli was built by Sikhs”. Kakaji, himself a refugee in a country whose refugee population runs in millions, does remind her of pre-1947 partitions that were anchored on the idea of class and creed as Muslims were not allowed into the kitchens of their Sikh and Hindu friends. {“Sikhs never ate with us”, Kakaji would remind her.} It could be a distorted issue of pollution, which was augmented by a strong class dimension since Sikhs had been, in fact, allotted jagirs by the Lahore Darbar whereas Hindus looked after the business and finance through a huge moneylending enterprise. Muslims, not enamoured of usury and true to their predominantly land-based disposition, were in a majority but largely an underclass. Some of these issues, while converging with communalist politics of pre-1947 Punjab, triggered that heinous chain of violence that, as per Baldwin, is only exceeded by the two World Wars.
	Shauna Baldwin did go across the Margallas and touched the Punja Sahib at Hasan Abdal in the proximity of Wah’s Mughal Gardens and just short of the Indus, an area that I often roamed about combing Kala Chitta Pahaar—which were once my favourite haunt among the low lying northwestern chains but only after the Salt Range! Perhaps, here like Khushwant Singh, Gulzar and Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi, I am biased towards Kohistan-e-Namak, the geographic name for the Range due to Khewara Salt Mines and all those historic hamlets. Baldwin feels spiritually energised by touching the Punja Sahib and a modern woman carrying her own little kirpan is reassured of her Sikhi. She is certainly a person in her own right and took a stand with Uncle Len to marry outside her own community though is no less aggrieved to remember her practising father’s experiences in a more segregated Canada of 1962. He was pressurised by his employers to take off his turban that he did not and Uncle Len stood by him, yet in case of our author’s marital choice, he stood with her and not with the Father. They did reconcile latter in1985 in Delhi though Uncle Len was aghast at the caste-based practices in India, which agitates Shauna time and again in almost each of her fifteen essays included in this volume. She is scornful of discrimination, often justified in the name of creed though it might have to do with class and complexion combining all the variegated and pernicious ingredients of racism. She is not forgiving of powerful Western societies and especially those writers, who, in a labyrinth of self-sufficiency continue orientalising non-White communities. . “Writers in North are protected by shared prosperity, social services, and freedom of speech from the many terrible condition blighting the efforts of writers in other countries”. But her criticism of Western societies does not stop her from critiquing multiple forms of racism and sexism that vulnerable South Asians go through in their homes and even in Diaspora. In the next breath, she is quite vocal in alerting her readers of a pervasive “daughter aversion” among South Asians as she is abhorrent of a social taboo, “what people will say”. Baldwin’s strong unease with the salience of colour, caste and gender—as often noticeable among South Asians—is quite evident since most of her stories and their heroes happen to be women. Like Noor Inayat Khan/Madeleine of her historical fiction, The Tiger Claw, Baldwin wants Asian women to make their own vital choices even to the extent of non-conformity. In a way, Noor confuses Baldwin as she also seems to be empowering women like her. Noor, a practising Muslim daughter of a Sufi and the author of children’s books, is possibly in love with a Jewish man who is being held by Gestapo and sacrifices her life to prove that working as a spy for the Raj is a price worth paying for to reconnect with her lover. Baldwin’s critique of U. S. policies singling out Muslims after 9/11 and consequently fuelling racism with attacks on mosques, brown people and certainly the tragedy of the Gurdawara in 2012 in her own town of Milwaukee is meant to locate macro factors behind “reluctant rebellions”. To her, “Reluctant rebellion is a mode of thinking that questions boundaries and pushes back, kindly and firmly. It says, I respect you, and I also respect myself. It says, I will do what is good for the family unless it threatens my body, my livelihood, or my self-respect. And I expect my parents, brothers, partner(s), and sons to know that about me, and do the same”. Baldwin is a thoughtful, assertive and defiant rabble-rouser whose own cultural authenticity may cause some Shriverian frowns, but her dictum is certainly anchored on two strong elements of nativity and cosmopolitanism

1. Shauna Singh Baldwin, Reluctant Rebellions, Abbotsford, B.C: Vichar & Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies, 2016, p. 16.
 In her speech at Brisbane’s literary festival, Shriver, rather presumptuously and in a banal way, advised writers to offload their cultural moorings by observing: “I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad”, The Guardian, 13 September 2016:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad

**Iftikhar H. Malik, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is a member of Wolfson College in Oxford, and Professor of History at Bath Spa University, England. 
http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/our-people/I.Malik

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18. THE GHOSTS SPAIN TRIES TO IGNORE
by Dan Hancox
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(The New York Times - December 8, 2016)

“In Spain,” wrote the poet Federico García Lorca, “the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.” García Lorca was writing in 1933; only three years later, he was assassinated by a militia supporting Gen. Francisco Franco’s fascist uprising, only a month into the Spanish Civil War.

Despite extensive detective work, excavations and even recent DNA tests of his relatives, García Lorca’s remains have never been found, and he has never been given a proper burial. In this at least, he is not alone. It is thought that at least 114,000 victims of fascist death squads remain missing or unidentified from the period of the civil war and the dictatorship that followed Franco’s victory in 1939. Most were political prisoners who supported the left-wing Popular Front government, executed under cover of darkness, then bundled into unmarked mass graves.

In recent years, the clamor to acknowledge and commemorate Spain’s many ghosts has grown louder. Last month, 50 bodies were excavated in the small town of Porreres on the Balearic island of Majorca, off the Spanish mainland — a full 80 years after their deaths. Most showed signs of having been shot in the head at close range. According to local historians, they were lined up alongside the wall of the town church before being executed. The passage of time, and the lack of records about the executions, makes both finding and identifying victims fiendishly difficult, although DNA testing will help in some cases. It is thought there are 47 such mass graves on Majorca alone.

The excavation followed campaigning by a relatives’ group, the Memory Association of Majorca, and the passing of a law by the Balearic Islands’ regional parliament in May, which also funded the digging. Civil society, in particular, has taken up the cause, thanks to an absence of government support. Last month, Amnesty International started a campaign, Justice for Christmas, calling for the government to investigate mass graves.

Bones exhumed last month from a mass grave in Porreres, Spain, of people executed during the Spanish Civil War.
JAIME REINA / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

The citizen-driven historical memory movement came into being at the turn of the millennium, and as public pressure grew, the Spanish government under the center-left prime minister at the time, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, passed a “law of historical memory” in 2007, lending government support and funding to excavation, commemoration and reburial. Many on the right accused Mr. Zapatero of politicizing tragedy and reopening old wounds, while historical memory campaigners felt the legislation had been watered down.

When the right-wing People’s Party won the election in 2011, the new prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, promptly defunded the project and closed the Office of Victims of the Civil War and the Dictatorship. The Spanish people, Mr. Rajoy had said in 2008, would have to “look to the future, and generate neither tension nor division.”

It may sound like a noble sentiment in isolation, but it is disingenuous. Spain is no more able to escape its past than any other country, and historical memory is not just an interest of Spain’s defeated left. Under Franco’s dictatorship, the winners in the civil war not only spent 36 years writing the history of their victory, teaching it in schools and enshrining it in popular culture, but also left exactly the kind of solemn monuments to their dead that have been denied to the missing 114,000. The most profound and awe-inspiring example of these is Franco’s final resting place, the Valley of the Fallen. It is a basilica topped by the largest memorial cross in the world, at nearly 500 feet high — and is the site of annual commemorations by the far right, dressed in fascist uniforms, on the anniversary of Franco’s death.

As a new generation of fascists gains influence with governments from the United States to Hungary, it may be the source of some surprise that Spain has no equivalent to Greece’s Golden Dawn or France’s National Front, especially given the desperate and long-lasting effects of the economic crisis in Spain. In part the absence of a major contemporary Spanish far-right party is a legacy of the civil war and dictatorship, and the mass killings that ensued, which loom over the country to this day. In part — and this is the other reason Mr. Rajoy would prefer to look to the future — it is because the governing Popular Party absorbed much of the Francoist political machinery. The party’s founder, Manuel Fraga, had been a government minister under Franco.

The fault lines over the mass graves run deep in Spanish politics and society. During the transition after Franco’s death in 1975, as Spain edged toward the re-establishment of democracy, the spirit of the age was enshrined in the political parties’ self-explanatory Pact of Forgetting. There was no reckoning, no equivalent of de-Nazification of the civil service, judiciary or security forces. To cement the spirit of top-down amnesia, a 1977 amnesty law prevents any legal proceedings into crimes committed during the civil war and the dictatorship; Spain would not enter into anything resembling a “truth and justice” commission.

This institutional blockade has not gone unnoticed outside Spain. In 2013, the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances censured Mr. Rajoy’s government and the Spanish judiciary, and demanded Spain overturn the amnesty law and stop obstructing investigations into the hundreds of thousands of missing victims. Ana Menéndez Pérez, Spain’s permanent representative to the United Nations, rejected the suggestion that the Spanish judiciary was not independent and impartial. (That would have been news to Spain’s famous campaigning judge, Baltasar Garzón, whose attempts to bring Francoist crimes to trial in 2008 were followed by his being put on trial himself only a few years later.) Ms. Menéndez Pérez also accused the committee of “excessive focus on the past.”

In doing so, Ms. Menéndez Pérez accused not just the United Nations committee, but great segments of Spanish civil society, and the descendants of hundreds of thousands of murdered Spaniards still searching for justice. Some local administrations have begun taking action in contravention of the government in Madrid (highlighting another Spanish tradition: the great tension between the capital and the regions). Following the Balearic Islands’ example, the Valencian regional government is now preparing the way to pass its own historical memory law and apportion funds for excavations.

In April, Mr. Rajoy angered historical memory groups when he said on the popular TV program “Salvados” that he didn’t think there was anything his government could do to help. Soon he may not have much choice. He returned as prime minister in October, but with a slender minority government. The major center-left opposition parties in the Spanish Parliament, the Socialist Party and the new left-wing party Podemos, are planning to force the government to restore funding to the historical memory project nationwide in 2017.

The dirt has been smoothed over in Majorca, but forgetting may not be possible for much longer.

Dan Hancox is the author of “The Village Against the World.”

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19. TURNBULL ON GARTHOFF, 'SOVIET LEADERS AND INTELLIGENCE: ASSESSING THE AMERICAN ADVERSARY DURING THE COLD WAR'
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 Raymond L. Garthoff. Soviet Leaders and Intelligence: Assessing the American Adversary during the Cold War. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015. 160 pp. $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-62616-229-7; $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-62616-228-0.

Reviewed by Brian Turnbull (University of Kansas)
Published on H-War (December, 2016)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Raymond L. Garthoff sets out in this book to provide needed insight into the role intelligence played in Soviet leaders’ decision making toward the United States throughout the Cold War. As a former ambassador to Bulgaria and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, he is in a unique position to do so. His experience comes through with interesting anecdotal accounts of conversations with his Soviet counterparts, but does not form the empirical core of this work. The primary research for this book comes from intelligence and Cold War literature in both Russian and English. Many of the English works will be familiar to students of intelligence or national security studies. As a student of this literature myself, I have already read similar arguments and conclusions in other scholarship. Contrary to what the reader may initially expect from the title, intelligence played a minor role in influencing the perspectives and decisions of top Soviet leaders, and when intel did manage to gain an ear it was often counterproductive and even dangerous. Many factors created an environment where leadership disregarded or totally ignored the intel produced—a political environment that rejected or even punished views counter to the status quo, perspectives dominated by Soviet ideology, a focus on “active measures” and operations at the expense of analysis within the intelligence apparatus, and attempts by intelligence leaders to influence the political situation by modifying or suppressing intel.

Garthoff takes a strategic perspective by focusing exclusively on the four primary general/first secretaries of the Soviet Union: Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. A chapter is dedicated to each, with a chronological walk-through of how each leader’s perspective shifted over time and how this shift altered the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. This approach lends a “Great Man” flavor to his argument that is further reinforced by the apparent lack of any real influence on their own decision making outside of their personal interpretation of events and first-hand experience with US leaders. While it is well established that general secretaries had an enormous, relatively unconstrained personal influence on Cold War relations between the two superpowers, the lack of any real analytical attempt to go beyond explaining this relationship in terms of the men involved takes this book down well-trodden avenues. The reader finishes the book wanting more explanation, particularly of the causal connection between the personal experiences of the Soviet leaders and the formation and modification of their perspectives. Garthoff takes us through the adaptation of perspectives to contemporary events, but we have to take his opinion for granted. More empirical support for these connections would have been enormously beneficial and would have provided valuable new information for the field. Admittedly, such information may be impossible to obtain. Garthoff couches many of his assertions in the biographies of these leaders, which may be the best available sources, but in turn this reliance relegates these aspects of the book to more of an analytical literature review.

The historical walk-through approach results in the large majority of the book being dedicated to a straightforward historical progression of Soviet leadership, leaving little room for actually establishing the role of intelligence. Again this likely stems from the lack of real influence intelligence had in top leadership circles, but I finished the book still not having a detailed understanding of the relationship between Soviet leadership and the intelligence community. Garthoff does provide some nuggets, particularly with regard to the interaction between the KGB chairman Yuri Andropov and Brezhnev, which are interesting, but the work would have benefited from a greater focus on the intelligence apparatus. Instead, the near exclusive focus on leadership brings the analysis around to the intel world only on the rare occasion Soviet leadership interacted with the KGB or GRU (Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, or Main Intelligence Agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces), interactions that appear to have had no real effect. Garthoff does provide some insight into the counterproductive role played on occasion by the intelligence community, such as the continual exaggeration of American capabilities and threat, and even false alarms on impending nuclear attacks, which ironically may have been the most influence the intelligence apparatus ever had on decision making.

The main conclusions that are drawn from this book are the surprising lack of good intel available to both Soviet and American leadership. Garthoff does provide a thorough account of the many failings by intel agencies on both sides to keep their leaders well informed on the adversary. He spends much less time discussing the American intelligence community, but the information he does offer may run counter to the initial understanding of many with regard to US intel capabilities during the Cold War. Finally, the most useful and novel conclusion presented by this book is his discussion of the early shift in Soviet thinking across much of its leadership to the pursuit of a relatively peaceful coexistence with the United States. My own understanding put the earliest real shift toward a less aggressive stance vis-à-vis the United States during the Brezhnev détente era, but Garthoff illustrates a substantial change in thinking as far back as Khrushchev. Furthermore, attempts by Soviet leaders to shift toward a more peaceful relationship were often thrown off track by aggressive posturing by American administrations, another facet that is often glossed over in the American intelligence literature. These conclusions are well supported and provide what appears to be Garthoff’s main theme in this work. In fact, the reader would be better prepared if “intelligence” was left out of the title entirely, and the focus left on the Soviet leadership’s assessment of the American adversary.

Regardless, Garthoff provides a thorough description of key events within the Cold War and the influence of Soviet leadership on the progression of the USSR-US relationship in a concisely worded book that would be useful for those without a great deal of experience in intelligence or Cold War literature. For those better versed, many of the arguments in this work will be familiar, but the discussion of the genuine effort on the part of Soviet leadership in the pursuit of more peaceful relations between the two superpowers may be both novel and valuable.

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20. CHINA UNIVERSITIES MUST BECOME COMMUNIST PARTY 'STRONGHOLDS', SAYS XI JINPING
by Tom Phillips
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(The Guardian - 9 December 2016)
All teachers must be ‘staunch supporters’ of party governance, says president in what experts called an effort to reassert control
Students undertake ‘Gaokao’ national college entrance exam, China

Chinese authorities must intensify ideological controls on academia and turn universities into Communist party “strongholds”, President Xi Jinping has declared in a major address.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/09/china-universities-must-become-communist-party-strongholds-says-xi-jinping


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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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