SACW - 7 Feb 2017 | Bangladesh: Creeping Islamism, declining left / Pakistan: Segregated Campus; outsourced Justice / India - Pakistan: Ground rules for true referendum / India: Praful Bidwai Memorial Award, 2017 - Call for Nominations / Ceaușescu’s orphans / Vietnam's High Ground

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 7 Feb 2017 - No. 2926 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Bangladesh’s Creeping Islamism | K. Anis Ahmed
2. Pakistan: Karamat Ali with Kamran Khan on Buldia Factory Issue on Dunya TV - excerpt from TV newsreport
3. Pakistan: Boltay Kyun Nahi Meray Haq Mein [Why dont you speak in my defence ?] | EACPE Video Contest 2016 (1st Prize Winner)
4. India - UP assembly Elections 2017: An Appeal to Voters of UP to Protect Democracy and Defeat the BJP
5. India: Restore the Rule of Law in Bastar - An appeal from lawyers, artists, writers, journalists and concerned citizens
6. Praful Bidwai Memorial Award, 2017 - Call for Nominations
7. USA: Letter to the Organizers of the Women’s March - Why Use The Headscarf (Veil) As A Symbol For Islam? | Manea Elham 
8. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
9. The declining left - Bangladesh expects more | Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed
10. Pakistan: Boys vs girls - the problem with separate canteens and entryways | Imran Gabol & Shiza Malik
11. Bangladesh is committing suicide by shifting from secularism to Islamisation | Shantanu Mukharji
12. Pakistan: Outsourcing justice - Editorial, Dawn
13: India - Pakistan: Ground rules for true referendum | Jawed Naqvi
14. India: Bengal government must address concerns on power plant, not send in police | Bolan Gangopadhyay 
15. Ceaușescu’s orphans: what a regressive abortion law does to a country | by Sharon Maxwell Magnus
16. Ten Bullets to One, Twenty to Another | Thomas Meaney
17. Tajikistan plans world’s biggest dam - Moscow’s lever in Central Asia | Regis Gente
18. Blaker on Harris, 'Vietnam's High Ground: Armed Struggle for the Central Highlands, 1954-1965'

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1. BANGLADESH’S CREEPING ISLAMISM | K. Anis Ahmed
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The battle for a secular Bangladesh is both political and cultural. Bangladeshis continually evaluate what they will or will not accept in the name of Islam. In universities, as many women seem to wear jeans as hijabs. Young people openly celebrate Valentine’s Day. But there has been a significant shift over the past few decades.
http://sacw.net/article13099.html

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2. PAKISTAN: KARAMAT ALI WITH KAMRAN KHAN ON BULDIA FACTORY ISSUE ON DUNYA TV - excerpt from TV newsreport
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Television News report in Urdu regarding Baldia Fire in Karachi and the compensation by a German company. Karamat Ali speaking to TV journalist from Dunya TV in Pakistan
http://sacw.net/article13096.html

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3. PAKISTAN: BOLTAY KYUN NAHI MERAY HAQ MEIN [WHY DONT YOU SPEAK IN MY DEFENCE ?] | EACPE Video Contest 2016 (1st Prize Winner)
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A short film in Urdu by Media 6. 1st Prize Winner in the EACPE Video Contest
http://sacw.net/article13102.html

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4. INDIA - UP ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2017: AN APPEAL TO VOTERS OF UP TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY AND DEFEAT THE BJP
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Voters of Uttar Pradesh will be electing their next state government in February 2017. UP is the largest state in the country. The political choices of its citizens determine not only the shape of state politics, but national politics as well. This time much more is at stake than usual. The voters of UP will not only elect their state government but will play a role in determining the fate of democracy in India. This puts a special responsibility on them to cast their votes with extreme care and wisdom.
http://sacw.net/article13097.html

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5. India: Restore the Rule of Law in Bastar - An appeal from lawyers, artists, writers, journalists and concerned citizens
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A galaxy of eminent lawyers, scholars, writers, artists, editors, journalists and other concerned citizens have signed a strong appeal today, calling for the restoration of the rule of law in Bastar.
http://sacw.net/article13094.html

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6. PRAFUL BIDWAI MEMORIAL AWARD, 2017 - CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
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Praful Bidwai Memorial Award, 2017 carries a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh - Do send in names and contact details of the nominee/nominees you propose. The last date for receiving this information will be March 31, 2017
http://sacw.net/article13093.html

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7. USA: LETTER TO THE ORGANIZERS OF THE WOMEN’S MARCH - WHY USE THE HEADSCARF (VEIL) AS A SYMBOL FOR ISLAM? | Manea Elham
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http://sacw.net/article13098.html

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8. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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 - 
 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::

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9. THE DECLINING LEFT - BANGLADESH EXPECTS MORE | Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed
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(The Daily Star - February 06, 2017)

Suranjit Sengupta had been a stalwart of the Awami League for the last four decades or so. An articulate parliamentarian and a vociferous constitutionalist, Mr. Sengupta had been a robust voice in favour of socialist principles. Marred by a corruption scandal in 2012 which tainted an otherwise glittering political career, the former Railways Minister represented the progressive left-wing faction of the Awami League. With his demise, we are yet again reminded of the potentiality of this unique brand of politics. At the same time, we silently and sadly observe the severe ideological and partisan incoherence of those in the left end of the political spectrum. 

Throughout the history of Bangladesh's political journey, left-wing principles have been a subsidiary attachment to the mainstream national story. During the 1960s, the Red Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani led East-Pakistan's struggle against Ayyub Khan's military authoritarianism. Although, some may rightly argue that Bhashani lit the fire which spurred notions of Bengali nationalism, it was the charismatic Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who wielded the baton of hope for East Pakistanis. During the 1971 Liberation War, the Awami League led the political struggle for freedom, while left-leaning student leaders of the Dhaka University Students' Union (DSSU), such as ASM Abdur Rab, Shahjahan Siraj and Nur-e-Alam Siddique, organised armed resistance against the Pakistani forces. It may be notable to state that the leaders of the DSSU played a critical role in enhancing the notion of Bangladeshi independence. Bhashani was still a prominent actor, and gave his blessings to Bangabandhu to lead Bangladesh to freedom. Sheikh Mujib, whose philosophy and policies could be best described as that of a left-leaning centrist, enshrined the values of secularism and socialism in Bangladesh's post-liberation Constitution. This was in no uncertain terms, the greatest achievement for the political left in Bangladesh. 

Yet it is safe to say that the left never truly governed or led Bangladesh from the frontlines. Additionally, leftist principles fail to catch the imagination of the public in a way that it has in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, the left continues to have an enduring effect in our everyday politics. Firebrand leaders such as Rashed Khan Menon and Hasanul Haq Inu serve in PM Sheikh Hasina's Cabinet. Matia Chowdhury, the fiery protégé of Maulana Bhashani, is one of Sheikh Hasina's closest advisers. 

The shift of leftist politicians towards mainstream political forces is not a new phenomenon. Former Prime Minister Kazi Zafar Ahmed, a proponent of Bhashani's Islamic socialism, had justified his participation in both the Ziaur Rahman and HM Ershad governments as being part of his intention to bring progressive change from within the established system. A similar reasoning has been used by the likes of Menon and Inu when asked about their philosophical u-turn. Perhaps they are right. Or perhaps their actions represent the duopoly of our two largest parties. Without relying on the Awami League or the BNP, it is simply impossible to stand at the topmost stratum of political governance. And this fact entails that left-leaning progressives of the likes of Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and Nuh-ul-Alam Lenin, have joined political organisations whose philosophies might very well be different from those they share. 

However, there is another side to the leftist story. The troubles of Bangladesh's two-party system have been brought forth by those left-leaning politicians who believe in bringing progress through activism. They have been dubbed unambitious, irrelevant and ineffective. The media gives them minimal attention. They rarely get electoral support. But the small group of prominent outsiders deserve respect from the public. The Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) is a decaying organisation. Yet it is headed by the widely respected Mujahidul Islam Selim who continues to be a voice of reason and anti-establishment politics. The CPB and other small leftist parties played a supporting role in ousting General Ershad and restoring parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh in 1991. They have been vocal in their intention to protect labour rights and ensure environmental protection in the last two decades. Due to their small support base, their voice has never truly been heard by the mass public. In more recent times, the young Zonayed Saki put his name forward in an unsuccessful attempt at the Dhaka mayoral race. Yet Saki gives us hope. He provides us with an unconventional alternative. The left provides us with much needed competition in the political process. Suffice it to say however, as an amalgamated entity, the political left is in a precariously difficult position in modern Bangladesh.

Power lures even the best away from their ideologies. It seems many left-leaning leaders have succumbed to this phenomenon. They may be right, however. One may question the practicality of sitting outside and doing nothing about a system which is not right. However, it is this very difference in structural opinions which is proving detrimental to the left. Factionalism, intra-party feuds and a lack of ideological consistency have created a scenario where it is impossible for them to be a united entity. Left-wing politics is different from centrist or right-wing politics. 

In countries where socialist norms have succeeded, in almost all cases the left has stood up as a united face. Countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark are classic examples. In Bangladesh, we have the exact opposite. Not only is the left divided on all sides, there is no interest amongst politicians sharing the ideology to unite. The two main political parties have capitalised on this, resulting in a growing third force from maturing. This is indeed sad for Bangladesh.

In an ideal scenario, Suranjit Sengupta would probably have been happy to depart this world seeing a strong leftist political grounding in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The evolution of the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the USA is a refreshing sign for even those who do not necessarily share the views of the political left. The public of Bangladesh continue to put their weight behind the two main parties, yet they would welcome the growth of a strong, powerful and united alternative brand of politics. 

Bangladesh is inherently secular, but the country also prides its Muslim heritage. It is an exclusive blend which requires an exclusive approach from political actors. As such, the basic principles of left-wing politics such as social justice, national welfare and equality are ideas, which should in theory, captivate the public mindset. Only if the left can strive forward as a single force and not capitulate to the constraints of our two-party system, only then would leftist norms truly be relatable to the common man. 

Bangladesh is stuck in a frenzy of the two main political parties. Although, these two parties deserve credit for playing a great political game, the failures of the left have only assisted in creating such a system. Now more than ever, the political left needs to adapt to 21st century Bangladesh, and take their rightful place in the highest echelon of the country's political system. 

The writer is an undergraduate student of Economics and International Relations, University of Toronto. 

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10. PAKISTAN: BOYS VS GIRLS: THE PROBLEM WITH SEPARATE CANTEENS AND ENTRYWAYS
by Imran Gabol & Shiza Malik
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(DAWN - Jan 28, 2017)

LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: With girls huddled at the back and boys at the front, a chemistry lab class is in full swing at Lahore’s historic Punjab University (PU) — ranked second in Pakistan. For Urooj, this kind of segregation is quite common. “As long as we can hear the lab attendant’s voice, we have to stand at the back of the class,” she says while talking to Dawn.com.

The kind of gender segregation she is referring to extends well beyond the classrooms. “Even outside the classrooms there are different spaces for girls and boys. There are a number of canteens where girls aren’t allowed. And in the ones they are allowed, curtains are drawn to separate them from the boys,” says Urooj.

According to the 2015 fact book of the university, there are only two per cent more boys than girls studying at the institution. With the population almost evenly divided, segregation on logistical grounds is a flimsy argument. Rather, it appears to be a moralistic pursuit based on one of Pakistan’s widely accepted and deeply problematic social constructs: the belief that interaction between girls and boys leads to immorality, and the disintegration of society.

Moral policing and gender segregation seem to have become the norm on university campuses, manifesting a kind of intolerance that is deeply uncharacteristic of a progressive academic culture.

Bizarre codes of conduct enforced at many universities

Late in October, a group of agitated, club-wielding students marched through a part of the PU campus. They were looking for a boy who they had found sitting with a girl in the vicinity of the sociology department.

“Some of them stormed the [department’s] building, broke the gate and tortured the guard. They slammed doors and shattered the windows. All this hooliganism lasted more than an hour or two,” recalls Hanain Afridi, a student who witnessed the events that took place at the university’s Institute of Communication Studies (ICS).

Calling the shots

The student activists were believed to be part of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT), a rightwing organisation that acts as the unofficial student wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami. Elements of the IJT are notorious, students say, for using aggression to assert power.

Today it seems that the IJT is behind much of the moral policing that happens at one of the country’s largest public universities. How do they command such a position of authority? Some say the IJT owes its success to the consistency and organisational ability it has embodied over the years. Others feel that factions in the university administration are complicit in nurturing and facilitating the organisation.

Urooj feels that at times students do resist the student organisations but the administration remains silent. “It seems that the administration is also following an unwritten agenda of moral policing.”

When asked how the organisation justifies its stance on gender segregation, a representative of the IJT, Furqan Khalil, says they have always protested against co-education. “We demand that the government should establish separate educational institutions for boys and girls,” he says. “Local culture demands that young girls and boys should not sit as couples. We never discourage girls and boys in groups.”

Codes of separation

While the PU has its segregation ‘code’ enforced by the activists of the IJT, in other universities the administrations ensure ‘morality’ on campus.

Gender segregation is enforced through codes of conduct, policies, notices and fines. The ‘code of conduct’, usually found on an institution’s website, vary greatly from explicit to ambiguous rules leaning towards the bizarre.

At one of Comsats university’s colleges, the university seeks to implement a rule barring “entering entryway of opposite sex on campus or allowing the same”, leaving much room for imaginative interpretation.

Muhammad, a student at Comsats’ Abbottabad campus, feels that the regulations are merely meant to pay lip service. “We don’t have many restrictions but couples are fined if they’re found sitting together. The fine is Rs5,000 for each individual,” he says.

Not quite concerned over the restrictions, he adds: “People in Punjab have a relatively freer mind; but here in Abbottabad, boys and girls don’t interact that much anyway.”

The National University of Science and Technology (Nust) has a regulation in its policy and procedures document that encapsulates a profoundly ambiguous moral compass.

Nust, it states, opposes “indecent behaviour exhibited on the campus including classes, cafeteria [and] laboratories, defying the norms of decency, morality and religious/cultural/social values by a single or group of students”.

The moral settlement embedded in the Nust’s ‘code’ falls squarely in the realm of fluid and arbitrary notions of morality. To that degree, it casts a wider net on unsuspecting students who could at any point find themselves in trouble over having violated the university’s norms of decency, morality or religion.

The Nust’s website states: “Undue intimacy and unacceptable proximity, openly or in isolated areas, will not be tolerated. The tendency of taking advantage of common places like cafeteria and shops is objectionable and undesirable. Also, students are advised to avoid movement in mix groups on the campus after sunset.”

Sara Ansari, a student at Nust, argues that such rules are rarely implemented, but when they are it is done arbitrarily. “For example, girls and boys are not allowed to play football together but they can play squash and table tennis. Similarly, while the rules for both genders are the same, girls bear the brunt of these restrictions. If a boy is caught smoking on campus he is given a warning but if a girl is smoking, she is reported to the department and official action is taken,” she explains.

Under the umbrella of an academic culture, moral policing is bound to be problematic. Until more tolerant guidelines built from socially progressive values are introduced, a student who wishes to have friends outside his or her own gender may need to keep a spare Rs5,000 note in the pocket to pay the impending fine.

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11. BANGLADESH IS COMMITTING SUICIDE BY SHIFTING FROM SECULARISM TO ISLAMISATION | Shantanu Mukharji
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(Daily O - 5 February 2017)

It's high time secular forces from the country as well as India jointly embarked on a loud protest.

On one hand, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina deserves kudos for her determination and grit in fighting Islamic terror afflicting her secular nation. Yet, on the other, she seems to be losing her battle against the Islamic zealots trying to steadily put Shariat and Islamic agenda in place.

Political skeptics, however, assess that she is not only losing the battle but cleverly giving in to the fundamentalist forces, ostensibly for the general elections, due in early 2019. Hence there is no contest. In reality, the secular fabric of the 46-year-old nascent nation is succumbing to the pressure of the Islamic right wing reactionaries, leading to a marked regression.

The above argument is buttressed by the fact that there is a distinct manipulation of the educational curriculum in Bangladesh. The well calculated tampering is part of an Islamic agenda which desires more Islamic presence and references in textbooks.

What's more worrisome is the removal of Hindu names from the curriculum who once formed an integral part of the education system, contributing substantially to the academic canvas of the country.

Notable those removed from the list are famous Bengali litterateur Sarat Chandra Chattopadhay and Michael Madhusudan Dutta - literary giants of all times who have enriched Bangla in Bangladesh with a vision for posterity. Also axed from the list are Sunil Gangopadhyay and Sufi singer Lalon Fokir. Excerpts from the Ramayana, running for many, many years have evaporated under the Islamic heat.

Significantly, Rabindranath Tagore lived in Selidaha, Kushtia, Bangladesh, in pre-Partition Bengal, and churned out the best of literary works inclusive of short stories, novels, plays and music, and is also the author of the national anthem of Bangladesh.

If this disturbing trend is not curbed, Tagore may also vanish into thin air due to the ongoing diktat of the Islamic forces. It would appear that these historical figures are targeted for their being Indian and possibly because their origin is Hindu.

Rabindranath Tagore lived in Selidaha, Kushtia, Bangladesh, in pre-Partition Bengal. (Photo: India Today) 

Lamentably, this trend is noticed in Pakistan too where history has been repeatedly flirted with distorted versions causing hatred for India by the younger generation. It's ironical that Bangladesh is emulating Pakistan - a nation which tried killing the spirit of Bangla and the rich culture. There is an obvious attempt to put the clock back.

Bangladesh owes India a great sense of unforgettable gratitude for India for the latter's supreme sacrifices during the former's liberation war and it's a historical reality that Bangladesh came into being due to India alone, which trained the freedom fighters and helped defeat the occupation forces.

This fact cannot be ignored and all out resistance must be put to stop any attempt made to distort it in the textbooks of history.

Against this backdrop, it is also imperative to identify the villains responsible for subverting the education system. The principal enemy of this initiative is the Islamic outfit Hefazat-e-Islam. Headquartered in Chittagong, this entity has only six years of existence but has been flexing its muscles to put an Islamic agenda since 2013. 

In brief, within three years, it was on the streets airing its demands. It has a 13-point charter which, inter alia, calls for introduction of Shariat law, madarsa education, death to those defaming Islam and other related demands reminiscent of the medieval period.

According to the trend, therefore, Bangladesh is being transformed towards Islamisation. Sadly again, Hefazat-e-Islam is largely composed of teachers and academics who are meant to shape the youth, instilling education on liberalism and tolerance but their blueprint is just the opposite. Their level of intolerance has Sufis and Ahmediyas on target. 

Regrettably, a segment of the Bangladeshi youth has lately come to notice, being romanticised by IS-sponsored radicalism. This is evident by the complicity of the "educated" youth participating in the terror attacks in Dhaka and neighbouring districts. The same youth will get more radical ideas by the corrupted version of the curriculum. This remains an area meriting close vigil.

Defending her decision to allow such Islamic forces to get the better of her and her policies, the Prime Minister is reported to have confided that she cannot allow such Islamic forces to be wooed by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and any tie-up with them may impair her own electoral prospects.

Politically, her move could be astute but for a forward thinking nation with a bloodied past, it will be suicidal to give in to the radical lobbies. As it is, there are numerous cases of forced conversions, grabbing of Hindu property, desecration of Hindu places of worship, etc.

Amid this, if O (in Bangla) is written as Orhna (scarf to cover the body part) instead of earlier Ol (yam) in the textbooks, then certainly Islamic orthodoxy will replace the secular credentials, undoing all achievements consolidated so far by Bangladesh.

It's high time secular forces from India and Bangladesh jointly embarked on a loud protest and prevented our immediate neighbour from going completely Islamic, bringing disastrous consequences to the region.

There are still about two years to go before the next elections and both countries need to collaborate to defeat such forces. Better sense must prevail sooner than later.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DailyO.in or the India Today Group. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.

Writer
Shantanu Mukharji 

The author is a retired IPS officer who has held key positions in the Government of India handling sensitive security issues within and outside India.

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12. PAKISTAN: OUTSOURCING JUSTICE
Editorial, Dawn
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(Dawn - Feb 06, 2017

BY passing a bill that gives legal and constitutional cover to the jirga and panchayat system of dispute resolution, the National Assembly has only highlighted its own weaknesses. The non-serious approach to the matter must also be criticised: only 23 members of the house were present, and none of them pointed out the lack of quorum, allowing the crucial responsibility of administering justice to be outsourced to some of the most regressive elements in society. It may be true that the jirga and panchayat system has existed in the country for centuries, but that does not mean it should be handed the responsibility to administer justice, even in supposedly minor cases. Over the years, this system has given us heinous ‘judgements’, supposedly endorsed by ‘tradition’, such as vani where young girls are forcibly married off in order to settle disputes or enmities. If the law minister, who introduced the bill, thinks that the provision of attaching ‘neutral arbitrators’ to each case is sufficient to ensure that the verdicts pronounced will be in accordance with the law and fundamental rights, and will protect the rights of women, then it can reasonably be assumed that he is washing his hands of the responsibility of providing justice to the common citizens of this land.

If the government wants to bring in alternate dispute resolution mechanisms to help reduce the caseloads in the courts, which is the language in which it is justifying the passage of this controversial bill, then an option already exists in the form of the office of the federal and provincial ombudsman. That office can be strengthened and expanded to perform dispute resolution functions in the 23 different offences applicable in the jirga and panchayat bill. This way dispute resolution will remain the responsibility of the government while minor issues can be settled quickly in accordance with the rules and principles the state is obligated to uphold. If it can find ‘neutral arbitrators’ for jirgas and panchayats then surely it can find the personnel to staff the office of the ombudsman at the union council level too.

No assurance given by the law minister regarding the protection of the rights of women under a jirga and panchayat system should be entertained. The lawmakers who were present in the Assembly on the day the bill was voted upon, disgraced their oath of office by approving the bill with such little discussion. The Senate should move to block its passage, and if that fails, the provincial governments should steer clear of invoking its provisions. Perhaps the Supreme Court can examine its legality as well. The state should be working on strengthening modern forms of dispute resolution, not reinforcing antiquated bodies that do more harm than good and giving them legal cover.

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13: INDIA - PAKISTAN: GROUND RULES FOR TRUE REFERENDUM | Jawed Naqvi
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(Dawn - 7 February 2017)

A FORMER Indian diplomat, the rare service where you can still find a few liberal souls, once served in Indonesia. What the diplomat told me left me aghast. It seems that a clutch of soldiers from Subhash Chandra Bose’s defeated Indian National Army had retreated to safer territories in Indonesia after the British won the decisive Southeast Asian war against Japan.

When India and Pakistan gained independence in August 1947, the soldiers who had waged a valiant anti-colonial battle went to the new Indian embassy to process their passage back home. They were asked their religion. Muslims were asked to apply to the Pakistan embassy. Things haven’t changed much, have they?

Babu Khan ‘mistri’ ran a garage for old crocs in Lucknow where my father’s Ford Prefect was cared for like a pet. Babu wore a fur cap in all seasons somewhat like Firaq Gorakhpuri and loved to pepper his conversation with Urdu couplets. He had returned from Karachi in the 1950s where he failed to find a promised job. He was in this way an economic migrant as migrants often are. Babu soon returned home as people do. He was missing Lucknow and he believed he could still find a life in his old hometown.

The Indian law had no room for his mushy expressions of homes-sickness and the police arrived to repatriate Babu to Pakistan. My lawyer father was a staunch supporter of Nehru. He carried a bullet wound in his arm from his student days. As a young freedom fighter he climbed the roof of Lucknow’s Christian College where a senior British official was due to visit. His job was to tear down the Union Jack and put up the Indian flag in its place. The deed done, the young man was rusticated but not before being shot through the arm during the melee. Father got Babu a stay order from the courts and he lived a happy life in Lucknow till his death.
Being connected helps. Being a non-Muslim is all the advantage one needs as an Indian visa-seeker from Pakistan.

One of my father’s routine pro bono works was to get stay orders, which may be no more possible, for Pakistanis returning to Lucknow. I think Shyam Benegal’s film Mammo captured a similar quandary about a simple Muslim woman who kept dodging the police because she had to stay on in her old Bombay home with her sister and nephew.

An uncle, the late professor S.M. Naseer, was beaten and jailed in Kanpur during the freedom struggle. He was a communist. For reasons that took many liberal Muslims to Pakistan, Naseer migrated and became a much-loved economics professor in Karachi. He was baffled that he could never get a visa to India. Then national security adviser J.N. Dixit dug out the files and found intriguing facts in Naseer’s dossier. Dixit solved the mystery. The Indian CID knowingly blacklisted Naseer because the British predecessors had marked him as a communist threat. Naseer got his visa finally and broke down at the ancestral graveyard in Mustafabad near Rae Bareli where many of his cousins and elders lie interred. That’s all that he came to do.

There are so many Pakistanis who would get Indian visas because they were one way or the other linked with progressive activism. Faiz was a leading example. But Sajjad Zaheer returned home from Pakistan and he didn’t have to take a stay order to get his Indian citizenship back. It’s all a bit of a lottery. Being connected helps. Being a non-Muslim is all the advantage one needs as an Indian visa-seeker from Pakistan. The prejudice didn’t spare soldiers of the INA. It is with this perspective that I saw Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s mocking address to Pakistanis the other day. The speech reminded me of an unambiguous couplet.

“Lagey moonh bhi chidhaney dete dete galiyan saahab/Zubaan bigdi to bigdi thi, khabar leeje dahan bigda.” (Hissing curses was not enough that you’ve started making faces at me. Your tongue was truly dreadful but now, pay heed, your visage looks poised to lose its shape.)

Everyone knows that Pakistanis are harassed and terrified by religious extremism they directly or indirectly helped create. Twisting the knife instead of offering helpful advice, Mr Singh asked Pakistanis to hold a referendum if they would like to migrate to India.

Or perhaps he said the referendum should be about joining India. A similar public survey or plebiscite would continue to be denied to the Kashmiris, he clarified, because Kashmir was in any case an integral part of India.

So what was Singh’s point? The question flows from a less mocking quest — in fact, a heartfelt petition — pursued previously by Indian leaders of stature. People like Ram Manohar Lohia, a leftist, who had many pitched battles in parliament on behalf of secularism, died dreaming of a confederation between India and Pakistan. Nehru, one or two years before his death, said he too favoured a confederation but did not raise the idea because it frightened Pakistan. You could find this treasure hidden away in the footnotes of Gunnar Myrdal’s Asian Drama.

So let’s not make a mockery of an idea that was embraced and may have never been discarded by very well-meaning men and women on both sides of the border. As referendums go, here is a real poser without rancour or malice. Mr Singh should free the borders. Be lavish with visas. And then only both sides could jointly ask: do both people want to live in peace with each other? Do they want to jointly fight terrorism of all forms? Should they be allowed to visit each other freely? Should their countries divert their humungous defence budgets to building schools and hospitals?

These are some of the ideals Bose and his soldiers fought for. The answers are all too well known. Mr Singh would be scared of them.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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14. INDIA: BENGAL GOVERNMENT MUST ADDRESS CONCERNS ON POWER PLANT, NOT SEND IN POLICE.
by Bolan Gangopadhyay 
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(The Indian Express - February 7, 2017

The 13.5 acres of land on which the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) has chosen to set up a power grid substation belonged to farmers. This lowland area is full of fisheries and farmlands which yield four crops a year.

The assembly constituency of Bhangar in the South 24 Parganas district of Bengal has been in the headlines for the growing popular movement against the construction of a power grid substation in the area. Since the protesting villagers organised a massive road blockade on January 11, the media’s attention to the movement only increased with stories of police raids and ransacking, arrests and the persistent refusal of the protesters to let the police enter their villages.

The death of two villagers, Alamgir Hossain and Mafijul Haq, from bullet injuries on January 17, was a particularly poignant moment in the movement. The recent arrests of several activists and villagers associated with the Committee to Save Land, Livelihood, Ecology and Environment, a body formed by the villagers with the help of others to coordinate the movement, have further aggravated the situation. The villagers complain of daily intimidation by the state police, aided by local Trinamool Congress strongmen. They are even more agitated by the discrepancy between the verbal assurances made by leaders of the state government that the substation will not be built, and their experience that the construction work for the same is proceeding within the boundary walls of the acquired land.

The 13.5 acres of land on which the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) has chosen to set up a power grid substation belonged to farmers. This lowland area is full of fisheries and farmlands which yield four crops a year. In this rather densely populated locality, farming and fishing are the main sources of livelihood. The general economic condition is not poor. Adjacent to the sprawling New Town-Rajarhat neighbourhood of Greater Kolkata, which has seen a real estate boom in the last decade, these villages are located near Kolkata.

The decision to set up the 400/220 kv, SF6 gas-insulated Rajarhat Power Grid substation was taken in 2012. It was only after they had been induced to sell their lands below the market price that the people of the concerned villages came to know in 2014 that the proposed construction on their land would be a power grid substation, and not a distributing substation, meaning that it would not have any effect on improving local electricity supply. On several occasions since 2014, the villagers have submitted their questions and objections in writing to the local administration, and sought clarification on the difference between distributing and power grid substations. But the authorities did not care to answer those queries.

Last October, the PGCIL authorities agreed to a meeting in the BDO’s office with the villagers where the latter put forward their three main demands, asking for: One, a written document from PGCIL, clarifying that it was indeed about to start a power grid substation in the specified land; two, a formal clearance certificate from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; and three, a written assurance from PGCIL that SF6 gas would not cause harm to local practices of fishing and harvesting or to animals and humans in the future. Till date, they have not received any answer.

In the absence of any clear and definitive answers in writing from the authorities, local concerns have been heightened. The perceived dangers of using SF6, a most potent greenhouse gas, and of being exposed to an allegedly high-level electro-magnetic field have been at the centre of local conversations. Scientific theories and counter-theories have been hurled at each position, and the strange silence of the government and the PGCIL has certainly added to the villagers’ fears of health and environmental hazards.

The crucial point to note here is the sheer sidestepping of the consultative process that should be a political minimum in any democratic structure. The very fact that PGCIL can choose to set up a power grid substation without organising a meeting with the gram sabha and explaining the details of the plan in the local language exposes the deep authoritarianism in the state’s notion of “development”. The systematic neglect by the authorities of the legitimate questions of the villagers is, perhaps, powered by the faith that sending a police force will make up for the lack in scientific explanation and community consultation.

The writer is a Kolkata-based human rights activist

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15. CEAUȘESCU’S ORPHANS: WHAT A REGRESSIVE ABORTION LAW DOES TO A COUNTRY | by Sharon Maxwell Magnus
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(The Conversation - February 1, 2017)

Donald Trump’s announcement of the reinstatement and reinforcement of the “global gag” – which means the US will no longer fund any non-governmental health organisations working outside the US that give information about abortion – will have a devastating impact in some countries. I know because I have witnessed it happen before.

In 1990, as a young reporter specialising in women’s issues, I travelled to Romania a few weeks after the revolution that deposed the dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu. While I was there, I spent time with Francu – a mother of two. In my mind’s eye, we are in a bare Bucharest hospital corridor which doubles up as recovery room. Francu is relaxed and smiling although she’s about to have an abortion. But that’s because this one is going to be performed by doctors.

She’d performed the last one herself using dirty rubber piping and had been in near-death agony afterwards. But the ban on abortion at the time – and the ban on even receiving information about abortion – meant she’d had to deal with the blood, pain and risk of death in secret.

The reason she’d got to this point was hidden in another ward. There, I encountered hundreds of Romania’s “orphans”. They lay under once white blankets, in little glass boxes like museum exhibits behind glass. The room was as quiet as a provincial museum. At the time, having little experience of babies, I did not realise that the lack of crying was a sign of emotional deprivation. The nurses were kind but they were few and the babies many. The nurses could not attend to them when they cried so the babies had given up crying. It saved energy. These “orphans” probably had parents – but they’d been given away because their parents could not feed the children they already had.

Codruta, a Romanian orphan, at 13 years of age in 1990. Angela Catlin

The reason for “Romania’s orphans” was Ceaușescu’s fixation on achieving a larger workforce. Measures to grow the birth rate included a near-complete ban on abortion – and information about it – combined with extremely limited access to contraception (though some was smuggled in). There was workplace pregnancy-testing to ensure women didn’t arrange abortions themselves.

It was a policy which gifted Romania the highest maternal mortality rates in Europe, the highest number of deaths from abortion, and a generation of emotionally afflicted, malnourished “orphans” raised in miserable conditions until, after the revolution, charities (and philanthropists such as JK Rowling) supplied help and funds.

In Romania before the revolution it was illegal to have an abortion, it was illegal to talk about abortion, it was illegal to give anyone information about abortion. Yet as my experience shows – and works such as Gail Kligman’s The Politics of Duplicity, Controlling Reproduction in Ceaucescu’s Romania confirm – women still had abortions. Some of the women I interviewed had friends who died from illegal abortions, but that didn’t stop them having one that was equally dangerous.

Backwards step

This is why Trump’s reinstatement of the “Mexico City” policy on abortion and aid is so retrograde. All that will happen, as activists have pointed out, is that in developing countries such as Nepal and in Sub-Saharan Africa life chances will be diminished and the abortion rate may even go up.

This result was observed in a World Health Organisation study of a previous iteration of this policy which was brought in by George W Bush in 2001 and was rescinded in 2009 by Barack Obama.

The death rate of women in these countries will also climb. In the first year after abortion was legalised in Romania, the maternal death rate fell by 50%.

This “gag” could have been offset if it had been matched by a vast increase in federal funds for contraception in those countries which are going to be affected. But – no surprises here – that hasn’t happened.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act in the UK. The figures for death from illegal abortion prior to that year are hard to confirm but the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists states they were the leading cause of maternal death in the 12 years before the Act.

If women in a rich country died then through a lack of information and access to legal abortion, how much worse the plight of women in developing countries today. What this means globally is hungrier babies, reduced life chances and the needless death of young women in countries which are already struggling.

(Sharon Maxwell Magnus - Principal Lecturer in Journalism, University of Hertfordshire)

Disclosure statement:
Sharon Maxwell Magnus won the Rosemary Goodchild Award for her coverage of women’s health in the aftermath of the Romanian revolution.

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16. TEN BULLETS TO ONE, TWENTY TO ANOTHER | Thomas Meaney
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(London Review of Books, Vol. 39 No. 3 · 2 February 2017)

Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World by Steven Kemper
    Chicago, 480 pp, £31.50, January 2015, ISBN 978 0 226 19907 8

Tamil: A Biography by David Shulman
    Harvard, 416 pp, £25.00, September 2016, ISBN 978 0 674 05992 4

The Seasons of Trouble: Life amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War by Rohini Mohan
    Verso, 368 pp, £16.99, October 2015, ISBN 978 1 78168 883 0

Independence was handed to Ceylon’s elite on a platter. ‘Think of Ceylon as a little bit of England,’ Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, the first native governor-general, said. This was a point of pride. Don Stephen Senanayake, the country’s first prime minister, remarked: ‘There has been no rebellion in Ceylon, no non-cooperation movement and no fifth column. We were among the peoples who gave full collaboration while Britain was hard-pressed.’ After independence in 1948, Ceylon alone among the former colonies not only retained but promoted the monarchy: the Union Jack flew alongside the Ceylon flag; a new constitution was drafted by an LSE professor, Ivor Jennings; Colombo debutantes were presented at Buckingham Palace; and, thanks to some genealogical ingenuity, George VI was recognised as the latest monarch in the ancient line of Kandyan kings. While the rest of the empire in Asia smouldered – in India there was Partition, in Malaya the Emergency, in Burma the civil war – Ceylon became Whitehall’s model for the transfer of colonial power. ‘There was no fight for that freedom which involved a fight for principles, policies and programmes,’ Solomon Ridgeway Bandaranaike, the anti-colonial head of state who took power in 1956, said when he reviewed the transition a decade later. ‘It just came overnight. We just woke up one day and were told: “You are a dominion now.”’

The full text of this book review is only available to subscribers of the London Review of Books.

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17. TAJIKISTAN PLANS WORLD’S BIGGEST DAM - MOSCOW’S LEVER IN CENTRAL ASIA
by Régis Genté
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(Le Monde Diplomatique - February 2017)
 
To Uzbekistan’s great displeasure, Russia has long supported the high version of the Rogun Dam (335m). By so doing, Russia gave itself a powerful means of keeping the most populous of the Central Asian republics within its ambit. (Uzbekistan has around 30 million people while Tajikistan has a little over eight million.)

In 2004, when relations between the Russians and Uzbeks were poor, President Putin promised Tajikistan $2bn. To fund this, the Kremlin looked to the aluminium giant RUSAL, run by Oleg Deripaska, who became a billionaire under Boris Yeltsin. It is very much in Russian industrialists’ interests to be associated with the government’s social or foreign policy, including financially, if they want to continue to do business untroubled by the tax authorities and anti-corruption agencies. So RUSAL was encouraged to invest in completing the dam, rebuilding the foundry at the Tursunzoda aluminium plant and constructing a new plant. In exchange, Deripaska was granted a majority share in the dam and a share in the profits from the Tursunzoda plant. At the time, Tajikistan had concerns about this poisoned gift, which forced it to give the Russians 20% of its national power production and 60% of its exports.

In the end the Tajik authorities avoided having to reject the Kremlin’s offer. On 13 May 2005 the Andijan massacre took place in the Uzbek region of the Ferghana valley. The Uzbek president Islam Karimov put down a protest movement with the loss of 187 lives according to official figures, though some NGOs believe the death toll was several hundred. Karimov accused the US of having orchestrated the insurrection and threw himself into Russia’s arms again.

As a result, the Kremlin no longer needed to threaten Uzbekistan by offering to fund Tajikistan. Russian pressure on the Uzbeks was relaxed — as was the projected height of the Rogun Dam. And RUSAL breathed a sigh of relief as it had seen no economic advantage in getting involved. The dam project was definitively shelved in 2007, officially because of disagreement over the shares granted to RUSAL in the management company and the aluminium plants.

Since then, Uzbekistan has again pulled away from Russia and is looking to the US once more. It even agreed the opening of a NATO liaison office in Tashkent in 2013. The investiture of Shavkat Mirziyoyev, following the death of President Karimov last September, may signal the return of better Russo-Uzbek relations: the new man is seen as being relatively close to the Kremlin.

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18. BLAKER ON HARRIS, 'VIETNAM'S HIGH GROUND: ARMED STRUGGLE FOR THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS, 1954-1965'
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 J. P. Harris. Vietnam's High Ground: Armed Struggle for the Central Highlands, 1954-1965. Modern War Studies Series. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016. Illustrations, maps. 552 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2283-2.

Reviewed by Christopher N. Blaker (Oakland University)
Published on H-War (February, 2017)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

The Indochina Wars—a series of regional, national, and international conflicts fought in Southeast Asia during the Cold War—were among the bloodiest and most controversial wars waged during the second half of the twentieth century. While the First and Second Indochina Wars have been dissected by historians for decades, an unparalleled degree of complexity that characterizes those wars continues to be uncovered to this day. J. P. Harris’s Vietnam’s High Ground: Armed Struggle for the Central Highlands, 1954-1965 contributes a great deal to the history of the Indochina Wars. It highlights the wars’ effects on a region of Vietnam that is rarely mentioned in many historical sources—the Central Highlands, which were among the most important areas in all of Vietnam during the wars. After briefly touching on the early history of Vietnam, relationships between Vietnamese and Highlander ethnic groups, French and Japanese conquests of Vietnam, and the First Indochina War (1946-54), Harris focuses the rest of his book on the early period of the Second Indochina War between 1954 and 1965.

The author is careful to emphasize the ethnic differences between Vietnamese and indigenous Highlander populations and explains how those differences were accentuated during the period of 1954-65. Despite both the North and South Vietnamese governments maintaining a national desire for independence, neither was prepared to offer the Central Highlands any kind regional autonomy. Contrarily, both sides ravaged the landscape through countless battles and exploited the region’s indigenous people for their own gain. North Vietnam brought the war to the Central Highlands by forming the Ho Chi Minh Trail alongside the region and luring South Vietnamese military units to the Highlands to trigger decisive, destructive battles. South Vietnam’s Diem Regime was just as invasive, forcing indigenous Highlanders into the war through involvement with South Vietnam’s Civilian Irregular Defense Group, Strategic Hamlet Program, and army.

Harris focuses specifically on the year 1965 in the last sections of his book. He offers detailed accounts of the Siege of Plei Me and Battle of Ia Drang, which were the first major clashes between the armed forces of North Vietnam and the United States. Events of 1965 ultimately marked the Vietnam War’s transition from an insurgency/counterinsurgency war to a far more conventional conflict, which is how it remained until the war’s end nearly a decade later.

Research materials from the period of 1954-65 reveal a great deal of previously undiscovered history of the Vietnam War. During that period, the war was conducted largely by special forces and guerilla units of all factions, which resulted in few after-action accounts or official military reports being compiled and archived. For that reason, much of the detailed history of the Vietnam War before 1965 remains a mystery.

However, historians today have access to more and better sources than existed in years past. Harris makes good use of both primary and secondary sources on the war and takes advantage of having access to materials originating in the United States, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam, and with insurgent groups, such as the Viet Cong. He is thus able to offer a balanced account of the many political and military developments occurring during the war and remains objective throughout his work.

Full-page maps of Vietnam and especially the Central Highlands help ground readers in the country’s geography. Detailed graphics of military operations augment the author’s descriptions of battle. High-resolution photographs of indigenous peoples at home in the Highlands; Vietnamese citizens and military personnel during the early war; and well-known U.S. Army personalities, such as General William Westmoreland, Major General Harry Kinnard, and Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, illustrate scenes painted by the author’s prose. Finally, a useful chart in the book’s introduction indicates that despite being in the minority throughout the country, ethnic Highlanders were not contained only to the Central Highlands but lived in most northern provinces of South Vietnam.

Military history enthusiasts and scholars of the Vietnam War will appreciate the historical findings presented in Harris’s work. The author offers a well-researched and well-organized testimony to the war’s impact on Vietnam’s Central Highlands, a region that received little attention during the war and perhaps receives even less in the present. While Harris views the war through a wide, anthological lens and presents a great deal of information pertaining to the conflict, his major argument—that the Central Highlands both significantly influenced and were greatly influenced by the Indochina Wars—remains at the forefront of his work. Ultimately, Vietnam’s High Ground succeeds in broadening the value of international understanding of the Vietnam War.


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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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