[sacw] SACW #2 | 12 April. 02

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire #2 | 12 April 2002
http://www.mnet.fr

PUNISH THE GUILTY OF GUJARAT GENOCIDE
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ptggg/petition.html

__________________________

#1. Call for a National Campaign For Defence of the Indian Constitution
#2. Has communalism changed? - I (Imtiaz Ahmad)
#3. Vajpayee goes to Gujarat (Anjali Mody)
#4. Hindu Militants Bar Muslims From Work (Rama Lakshmi)
Books:
#5. - "Sexuality, Obscenity, Community" by Charu Gupta,
#6. - "Competing Nationalisms in South Asia" Edited by Paul R. Brass 
and Achin Vanaik

__________________________

#1.

PUNISH THE GUILTY OF GUJARAT GENOCIDE
Call for a National Campaign For Defence of the Indian Constitution
NB : This statement is being circulated as a contribution to the 
ongoing public discussion on the current events.

The recent events in Gujarat demonstrate without a shadow of doubt 
that a section of the Indian ruling establishment is generating 
communal conflict and undermining the Indian Constitution. It 
includes political leaders, officials and extra-constitutional 
centres of power such as the RSS and its fronts. The symptoms of this 
creeping coup d'etat against the Indian Constitution are as follows:

1./ Mob violence and barbarity have been legitimised by high 
executives of the State. After the heinous and reprehensible attack 
on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra, that led to the death of 57 Hindu 
rail passengers, the entire Muslim community of Gujarat was held 
responsible for the actions of a few. The brutal killings of innocent 
men, women and children was sought to be justified in the name of the 
fascist doctrine of collective guilt, the doctrinal basis of 
Hitlerism.

2./ Revenge and retaliation have been made instruments of state 
policy. In Gujarat, armed gangs owing allegiance to the ruling party 
and its parent body, the RSS, have been given free rein by the state 
Chief Minister to indulge in crimes against humanity without any fear 
of the law. The police were neutralised by orders from elected 
authorities who are under oath to protect and implement the 
Constitution. By failing to acknowledge this fact the Union 
Government has sought to legitimise officials who have violated their 
oath of office. The VHP attack on the legislative assembly in 
Bhubhaneshwar demonstrates yet again the confidence displayed by 
criminal elements with political links to the Union Government. This 
government, that claims to be in the forefront of the so-called war 
against terrorism, is itself guilty of harbouring terrorists and 
promoting their activities in the name of so-called Hindu 
nationalism. The preaching and practice of collective guilt in India 
(and in other countries of South Asia), require that the crime of 
genocide be incorporated into the criminal justice system. Political 
assassination is no less a crime when its victims are ordinary Indian 
citizens.

3./ Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees to every Indian, the 
right to life and liberty unless deprived of them by due process of 
law. Events in Gujarat since February 27, 2002, demonstrate that 
state officials unilaterally and illegally withdrew these protections 
from a section of Indian citizens. Similar malicious misuse of the 
state machinery took place during the massacre of Sikh citizens in 
1984. (The fact that the Indian Parliament can meet in joint session 
to pass draconian laws, but has not yet condoled the mass murder of 
Sikh citizens in 1984, is a matter of shame for Indian democracy). 
Such events are part of the same process and demonstrate the same 
truth - that certain criminal elements in the body politic function 
as if they were above the reach of the law. This is a blatant 
violation of the oaths of office taken by elected state officials.

4./ By acts of deliberate deception, (such as the recent arguments in 
favour of the VHP by Attorney General and the acceptance of the 
so-called Ramshila in Ayodhya by a state official), the Union 
government is supporting the unilateral claim of the RSS and VHP that 
they represent all Hindus. By so doing, the swayamsevaks in high 
office are undermining the authority of Parliament, which has been 
elected by millions of citizens, including a large proportion of 
Hindus. A PARALLEL SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATION IS BEING FORCED UPON THE 
INDIAN PEOPLE. This must be rejected as a violation of the Indian 
Constitution. We reiterate that the RSS-VHP do not represent all 
Hindus, nor do the Muslim Personal Law Board and Babri Masjid Action 
Committee represent all Muslims.

5./ The systematic and violent humiliation of one or other section of 
the Indian population by the highest State authorities will tear our 
society apart, brutalise the social ethos, destroy the economy and 
polarise the people towards extremist ideologies.Today, tens of 
thousands of Gujarati Muslims are living in anguish and fear, housed 
in refugee camps, with no guarantee of personal security or 
rehabilitation. The relentless use of communal hatred and violence by 
the Indian ruling elite has converted the dream of national 
independence into a nightmare for ordinary Indians. Our rulers have 
progressed from the hiring of criminals to the propagation of 
brutality and criminality as a means of obtaining power. This process 
will result in nothing less than the fragmentation of the Indian 
Union and the demolition of Indian democracy.

6./ We would like to recognise that there are honest and 
conscientious officials in the bureaucracy and police who have 
honoured their professional obligations and striven to defend the 
right to life and liberty of the citizens. We acknowledge their 
commitment, and condemn the Gujarat government for transferring those 
police officers who did their best to prevent bloodshed. In the words 
of the NHRC Chairman, Justice J S Varma, we call upon all state 
officials "not to seek permission to perform their duty under the 
law".

7./ Communal violence in other countries of the region is no less 
vicious. From time to time, Hindus, Christians and Ahmadiyas in 
Pakistan, Hindus and Hill Tribes in Bangladesh, and Tamils in Sri 
Lanka have been made targets of hatred and violence. These campaigns 
are also fascist in nature, and serve to exacerbate communal tensions 
in India. In the light of the close inter-linkages between various 
types of communal and chauvinist politics in all these countries, it 
is necessary that determined efforts be made towards cooperation 
amongst democrats across all frontiers in South Asia. We 
unequivocally denounce and reject all forms of communal hatred and 
violence, whether this is done in the name of Hindus, Muslims, 
Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs or any other identity.

In the light of the above, we believe that:

The Indian Constitution is being deliberately undermined by those 
sworn to protect it

Democracy is being misused for the purpose of destroying democratic 
institutions; the secular and pluralist tradition is being undermined 
by cultural policing and intellectual censorship

Mob violence enjoys the tacit or open support of certain high state 
officials and political leaders

The culture of violence and bloodshed is being propagated 
ideologically as a 'nationalist' virtue

Civil society in India is being rapidly converted into a war-zone; and

Indian citizens are faced with nothing less than a constitutional 
breakdown, heralded by a section of their political leadership
In the face of this alarming situation, WE HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO 
LAUNCH A PROLONGED AND NON-VIOLENT SATYAGRAHA TO DEFEND THE LETTER 
AND SPIRIT OF THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION. To this end, we call upon all 
peace-loving and democratic citizens to unite in a Coalition For the 
Defence of the Indian Constitution. (name to be decided by 
consensus). The first step in this direction can be the arrangement 
of regional conventions. This process could culminate in a national 
convention later in 2002. The convention should construct a platform 
unifying all democratic forces on a consensual programme for 
resisting fascism and defending democracy. We suggest the following 
principles for such a convention:

1./ The Convention should be a gathering of concerned individuals 
rather than of representatives of parties and groups. (This will not 
prejudice their right to remain members of any parties or groups).

2./ The Convention will address the grave crisis outlined above and 
strive to mobilise a sustained and organised campaign to protect 
democratic institutions, pluralist values and constitutional liberties

3./ The entire process will be funded only by individual 
contributions in cash or kind

Among the demands that the convention can consider are the following :

That sworn testimonies of eye-witnesses and officials be placed 
before judicial authorities of unimpeachable impartiality, that 
executive and criminal culpability for the Gujarat events be 
established, and the guilty punished.

That hateful communal propaganda of all varieties be stopped 
forthwith, that the VHP and Bajrang Dal.be prosecuted under Section 
153-A of the Indian Penal Code.

That a joint session of Parliament be convened to condemn and condole 
the death of innocents in Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro in 1984, Gujarat in 
2002, and all communal killings in general

Signatories (in alphabetical order)

Dilip Simeon
Dunu Roy
Harsh Kapoor
Jairus Banaji
Purushottam Agrawal
Rohini Hensman

[11 April 2002]

[ Join us and sign online: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ptggg/petition.html ]

_____

#2.

The Hindu, Friday, Apr 12, 2002
Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Has communalism changed? - I
By Imtiaz Ahmad

Where the distinction really lies is in that majority communalism can 
mask itself as a `nationalist force' and can leverage state power. 
Minority communalism lacks this capacity.

SHOULD WE characterise what happened, and is still happening, in 
Gujarat as communalism? What happened in Gujarat is not a recurrence 
of the old and familiar phenomenon of violence between Hindus and 
Muslims for which the word communalism was originally invented. It is 
an entirely different phenomenon. What is the basis for arguing that 
the Gujarat carnage is different from communalism, as we have 
historically understood it? It is the differential role of the state. 
Communalism, as historically understood, arose in the context of a 
colonial state required to act neutrally between conflicting 
communities. The state acted to restore peace without being swayed by 
the consideration of which community was perpetrating violence and 
which was targeted. In this sense, communalism was a phenomenon that 
essentially belonged to civil society and the state sought to control 
it. The Gujarat phenomenon is different because the state abandoned 
the time-honoured principle of even-handedness and sided with one 
community.

One must, to understand the full import of this difference, go back 
to the familiar distinction between majority and minority 
communalism. Historically, this distinction was couched in the 
argument that minority communalism arose because the majority was 
communal. If the majority ceased to be communal, minority communalism 
would have no reason to exist and would peter out. This line of 
reasoning failed to see that this was an insufficient reason for the 
distinction to be made at all. Communalism relies for its operation 
on the creation of a mindset and control of civil society.

In this respect, no sustainable distinction can be maintained between 
the communalism of the majority and the minority. Where the 
distinction really lies is in that majority communalism can mask 
itself as a `nationalist force' and can leverage state power. 
Minority communalism lacks this capacity. It grows under perceived 
threats to community identity. This is one reason why liberal forces 
find it hard to push the agenda of democratisation within minority 
communities.

Under the colonial state and for a considerable time thereafter, the 
inherent propensity of majority communalism to become ascendant and 
take control of state power was held in check by the neutrality of 
the state. The state recognised that communalism, whether of the 
majority or the minority, was essentially a phenomenon of civil 
society which it was obliged, in terms of the principles of rule of 
law and equal dispensation of justice, to tolerate only so far as it 
did not become threatening to the state and civil society.

The state was not always able to adhere to these time-honoured 
principles or to act neutrally. Many analysts tend to equate these 
deviations and distortions with what is happening currently to 
suggest that much difference does not exist in the character of the 
state under the Congress during the first 50 years and now. What 
makes for a difference in the two contexts is that in the first, if 
the state fell victim to the communal tendencies inherent in civil 
society, it was able to banish the communal forces, whether of the 
majority or the minority community, to the margins of state power. 
Now, the state has been so taken over by majoritarian forces 
(appropriately speaking, those speaking in the name of the majority, 
which is and remains otherwise extremely differentiated) that it is 
willing to allow itself to be guided by them and to protect them if 
they choose to execute pogroms against those they regard as the 
other. This significant difference is often glossed over when the 
distortions and deviations, such as those during Meerut riots or the 
anti-Sikh pogrom in 1984 under Congress rule, are equated with the 
current situation.

What happened in Gujarat is a brutal manifestation of the takeover of 
state power by communal forces. The state allowed organised groups to 
go around perpetrating violence in full view of the law and order 
machinery. It offered justifications for that violence as if the 
function of the state was not to control violence but rather to 
adjudicate over the question of what sorts of violence it would 
permit and what forms it would bring under control. The principle of 
state neutrality in the control of communal violence was openly 
thrown to the winds.

One can also invoke a series of more immediate political reasons to 
explain the violence in Gujarat. The first is the drubbing majority 
communalism received in the recent Assembly elections. This prompted 
majoritarian forces to revert to their time-tested strategy of 
communal polarisation to prevent further erosion. Second, since 
majoritarian forces anticipated realignment of forces at the Centre 
following the debacle in Uttar Pradesh, their logic was that if their 
Government had to go, it must do so on a plank which brought them to 
power in the first instance. They also felt that they lost the 
Assembly elections because of the Centre's soft attitude on the Ram 
Mandir issue. Construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya signifies for 
them control of state power and a weapon for polarising society along 
communal lines. The logic is: polarise society, reap electoral 
benefits and consolidate hold over state power to shape the nation 
and society according to a majoritarian vision.

Obviously this is unlikely to go unchallenged by the minority 
communities. Sooner or later, they too are going to throw up lunatic 
fringes, which would seek to challenge the hegemonic domination of 
the state by majoritarian communal forces. As this happens on an 
increased scale, the country will be witness to spiralling of both 
communal hatred and violence. All the more because the state would in 
the process remain a passive onlooker to communal street battles. 
Once this starts happening on an increased scale, the state would 
gradually lose even a limited pretence to neutrality. It would start 
discriminating between the violence perpetrated by majority communal 
forces and that executed by minority communal forces who will 
increasingly see in the discriminatory attitude of the state a fair 
rationale for engaging in violence as the only means available to 
redress their complete oppression. It would condone majority 
communalism as a legitimate expression of a powerful national 
sentiment and penalise minority communalism as a kind of terrorism 
directed against the state. This will bring forth increased reprisals 
against minorities leading to large-scale genocidal violence in which 
the state would openly seek to legitimise majoritarian violence.

For example, the projection of the Ayodhya dispute as a Hindu-Muslim 
conflict not only concealed its otherwise political content but also 
aimed at helping majority communalism consolidate and expand its 
social base. This made it possible for the majoritarian forces to 
shift the onus of blame for the continuing impasse onto the Muslims. 
In a nutshell, the state's actions were a part of the majoritarian 
communal forces' strategy to achieve their vision of the nation and 
society.

(The writer teaches Political Sociology at JNU.)

_____

#3.

The Hindu, Friday, Apr 12, 2002
Opinion
Vajpayee goes to Gujarat
By Anjali Mody

The Prime Minister, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Narendra Modi, 
underlined that he is not willing to do more than make speeches.

IF EVER there was a sign that we are a tin-pot little country, it was 
unmistakably there at the Shah Alam Roza in Ahmedabad. The Prime 
Minister, of what claims not only to be the world's largest democracy 
but also a nuclear power, told the captive survivors of a bloody 
carnage and the world that he was just a bystander, as shocked by the 
unbelievable horror and inhumanity of what Gujarat was going through 
as the next man. It was tantamount to saying I am good for a couple 
of nuclear tests, but I cannot stop you being killed.
[...].
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002041200911000.htm

_____

#4.

The Washington Post, Monday, April 8, 2002; Page A12
Sectarian Violence Haunts Indian City
Hindu Militants Bar Muslims From Work
By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post
AHMADABAD, India -- A month ago, Razak Usmanbhai watched mobs of 
Hindu militants set fire to his Muslim neighborhood in religious 
rioting that killed more than 700 people in western India. Weeks 
later, he felt brave enough to go back to his workplace, the only 
Muslim-owned car repair garage in a predominantly Hindu area.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10827-2002Apr7.html

_____

#5.

The Telegraph, 12 April 2002
BOOK REVIEW / THE SEARCH FOR AN IDENTITY
BY GARGI GUPTA

SEXUALITY, OBSCENITY, COMMUNITY
By Charu Gupta,
Permanent Black, Rs 650

It is uncanny how much this book presages current events. Not just 
the cycle of retributive violence in Gujarat today, but also every 
instance of communal violence starting with the riots during 
Partition. As well as the supposed roots of this violence: the 
virulent, almost pathological, hatred of Muslims, the fear that 
"they" are out to usurp what is ours - our women, our resources, our 
country, that "they" are a corrupt, dirty and lascivious race which 
will breed the Hindus out of existence, that they are the cause of 
the "corrupt" state of Hinduism today. Even the calumny and the lies 
used by the Hindu propagandists to spread violence foreshadow recent 
happenings.

Charu Gupta's sphere of inquiry is Uttar Pradesh in the late 19th and 
early 20th centuries. Her concern is the emergence of an aggressive 
Hindu cultural and political identity, and how it depended upon a 
refashioning of patriarchy and the further restriction of the daily 
lives of women. But her conclusions, culled from a wide variety of 
materials ranging from political pamphlets and other polemical 
tracts, magazines, newspaper reports, novels, poetry and even oral 
literary traditions, are as relevant today as they were at the time 
of writing. Some of this literature could be easily transported to 
the present day, and they would be as applicable, as provocative, 
even today. [...] .

____

#6.

Dear Friends,

A volume in honour of Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer on his completing sixty 
years entitled "Competing Nationalisms in South Asia" has now been 
published by Orient Longman. It has been edited by noted India 
scholar from USA Prof. Paul R. Brass and noted journalist Achin 
Vanaik. Various scholars from USA, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc. 
have contributed essays to this volume.

This volume was planned in honour of Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer for his 
commitments and unceasing efforts for containing communalism and 
promoting communal harmony and peace for the last 30 years. This book 
can be ordered from Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd., 1/24 Asaf Ali Road, New 
Delhi:- 110 002. Its cost is In Indian Rs.525/-. Their e-mail address 
is olldel@d...

Centre for Study of Society and Secularism

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