[sacw] SACW #1 | 10 Mar. 02 [Gujarat, India & onward march of Communalism]

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #1 | 10 March 2002
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

[Gujarat, India & onward march of Communalism]
Join the struggle against fundamentalism and fascism. Dont let the 
VHP thugs and sponsors from the "Jang Parivar" wreck peace in Ayodhya 
on the 15th March 2002.!!

* For daily news updates & citizens initiatives in post riots Gujarat
Please Check: http://www.sabrang.com

** Also see new information & analysis section on the recent Communal 
Riots in Gujarat on the SACW web site: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/

__________________________

#1. Press Statement Professor K.N. Panikkar
#2. Blazing Gujarat: The Image of India's Future? (Radhika Desai)
#3. Ayodhya solutions (Rajeev Dhavan)
#4. Climate of intolerance (A.G. Noorani)
#5. ... we must take our non-violence into the streets. and not
give up till sanity and humanity is restored. (Anand Patwardhan)
#6. Is India Rwanda? (Vinod Mehta)
#7. 'Gujarat riots were designed to undermine the Muslim community's 
economic foundation'
(Mushirul Hasan)
#8. Peace initiatives are gathering momentum across the country - and 
stories are emerging of people who put humanity first and helped save 
lives during last week's madness in Gujarat (Sputnik Kilambi )
#9. Till Retaliation Do Us Part (Dilip D'Souza)
#10 The 1947 Partition of India: A Paradigm for Pathological Politics 
in India and Pakistan
(Ishtiaq Ahmed)
#11. "Ram Mandir" and "Lahoo main doobe yeh haath kab tak ?" 2 Urdu 
poems by (Gauhar Raza)
#12. After Mumbai, it's Gujarat: Life might limp back to normal in 
Gujarat but it will not be the same again. (Kalpana Sharma)
#13. Genocide in the land of Gandhi - The violence in Ahmedabad and 
other parts of Gujarat was unparalleled for its barbarism. (Anjali 
Mody )
#14. Mutations of communalism (Jeremy Seabrook)
#15. Is Shankaracharya's formula acceptable? (Sitaram Yechury)
#16. Whose undisputed land is it anyway?
Nintey-eight per cent of the undisputed land in Ayodhya that the Ram 
Janambhoomi Nyas claims to own was in fact only leased to it by the 
UP Government . And the Nyas's plans to build a temple on that land 
violates the terms on which the property was leased to it.

________________________

#1.

March 8 2002
Press Statement (by Professor K.N. Panikkar)

The agony that Gujarat has gone through during the last one week 
raises several questions about the well-being of the society and 
polity of Gujarat in particular and the nation in general. It needs 
no emphasis that the government of Gujarat has acted in a manner, 
which leaves no doubt about its communal character. The politicians 
belonging to the ruling party and the various arms of the government 
have openly colluded with communal elements and have acted in an 
extremely despicable manner. Today the faith of citizens in the 
impartiality of the government has been shaken. The political system 
in India has to think seriously whether such a government has any 
right to continue in office. This is a blot on our democracy and the 
principles of governance which society can overlook only at great 
peril.

People from various walks of life have responded to this 
unprecedented situation in Gujarat in a critical, sympathetic and 
constructive manner. Even if the government has not come forward to 
reach succour to the affected people, society has responded in an 
admirable fashion. This indicates the existence of a sane segment 
within our society which requires to be reinforced and space for its 
activity expanded. That is perhaps the most important task in this 
hour of crisis. It can be achieved only if all secular and democratic 
groups and individuals come together on a common platform.

What happened in Ahmedabad and other towns and villages in Gujarat is 
not a spontaneous action. The methods used for destruction of life 
and property presupposes a fairly well-organised preparation. It is 
clear that many incidents during these last ten days could not have 
happened without such a preparation. In a way it indicates a 
long-term process of communalisation and brutalisation of society. A 
major issue which society has to face is the influence of brutality 
which appears to have conquered the minds of men. This is the result 
of the systematic and long-term atrocities of communal organisations 
and heightened by the irrational and emotional coercion of the people 
by both the VHP and the RSS. A way out from this pathology of 
violence is not easy to find. But society cannot survive unless a 
solution to this is immediately found. That this has happened in the 
city of Mahatma Gandhi, the laboratory of non-violence and tolerance 
is a sad occurrence. One hopes that the people of Gujarat would 
invoke the great ideals of social harmony that Gandhiji has 
bequeathed to the nation by the example of his life, work and 
teaching.

Professor K.N. Panikkar
Vice Chancellor, Shree Shankracharya Vidyapeeth, Kochy
Ahmedabad

_____

#2.

[A shorter edited version of the below article appeared in The Hindu, 
March 6, 2002. The full version is now available at : 
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/radhika032002.html ]

ooo

Blazing Gujarat: The Image of India's Future?

Radhika Desai

Once again Gujarat will take the monstrous distinction of 
experiencing the
worst communal violence in a nation-wide campaign of the Sangh Parivar.
Indeed, it promises to be a lot worse this time around with a BJP
government in Gandhinagar, the structures of the state, including the
police forces, highly communalised, and with a BJP-led government in power
in New Delhi apparently unrestrained by its allies, and certainly pulled by
the bloodthirsty forces it has so long nurtured. The widely publicised
image of a young Muslim man begging mercy from his unseen assailants, his
eyes seeking a small scrap of humanity in them, possibly vainly, haunts the
mind relentlessly.

Gujarat has become a byword for casteism and communalism. 
Violence against
lower castes, tribals, Muslims and Christians has become routine over the
past two decades, during which an entire generation has grown to maturity,
ignorant of the civility of which Gujarat once boasted. It is, after all, a
distant memory even for one who has participated in its graces, not knowing
they were the last. Expressions of contempt for the lower castes, Muslims,
Christians, the poor and the tribals, hitherto beyond the pale of polite
conversation, have become the common currency of drawing room conversations
of the Gujarati well-to-do. Even the "I'm a liberal secularist, but..."
type of qualifiers are dispensed with. As a Gujarati, it is tempting to
just hang one's head in grief, shame and silence.

But surely it might be a little more useful, and not 
impertinent, to dwell
on the underlying structures out of which this savage distinction springs.
For it may well be that this is where the country as a whole is rapidly
heading. Gujarat is simply ahead in the form of capitalist development
combined with upper and middle caste and class Hindu assertion which has
become so widely accepted as the way for India. As Marx admonished the
Germans prone to feel superior about the depradations of capitalist
development in England, "The story is about you".

While the first large scale post-independence communal riots 
took place in
1969, it was not until the 1980s that frequently violent political
assertion of the upper castes and classes became routine in Gujarati
politics. For the 1970s had been a decade during which this assertion found
more peaceful and "respectable" outlets: Gujarat was, after all, the
western wing of the politically ambiguous JP movement and elected the
country's first Janata Morcha ministry under Babubhai Jasbhai Patel as the
apogee of the non-Congressism of the upper and middle castes and classes
which had been gathering force even before Mrs Indira Gandhi's populist
phase, which they so came to hate, properly began.

The 1980s witnessed an acute class-caste polarization as some 
of the worst
anti-reservation riots in the country occurred in Gujarat. The
OBC/SC/Tribal/Muslim based (the famous KHAM strategy, remember?) Congress
Government under Madhavsingh Solanki, and other Congress governments which
followed, foundered on the impossibility of a government in contradiction
with civil society: political power that did not reflect social and
economic power was unsustainable. The upper and middle castes and classes
registered their frustrations on the streets. As riots and agitations
became the stuff of Gujarati politics, the Sangh Parivar and the BJP made
accelerated gains, finally being able to form governments in the latter
part of the 1990s.
Gujarat shows few signs of looking back now. Its minorities are regularly
cowed by violence. Its urban geography, reconfigures by riots with blatant
connections with real estate transactions, now features "borders" between
communities. As I write Muslims who managed to weather 1992-3 but for whom
this has been the last straw (how much can anyone be expected to take?) Are
leaving the state, with wounds of betrayal. They leave behind property and
position, now to be grabbed by those who feel secure in current conditions.
Such are the gashes which together make up the tearing of the "social fabric".

This horrifying reality is made up of certain traits of 
Gujarati society
which set it apart from the rest of the country by degree, not fundamental
difference. Gujarat is highly industrialised to the extent that the
agrarian propertied have made some of the deepest inroads into urban
sectors of the economy. More than in most states, the divides between the
agrarian and industrial propertied have been blurred with the propertied
groups sporting fairly uniform, if also competing, interests. The control
of labour is chief among them and much of the worst "communal" violence
occurs in South Gujarat, a centre of hothouse agricultural as well as
industrial development in the state, the part of the Golden corridor which
northward up from Vapi to Godhra and beyond along the Bombay-Delhi railway
line via Ratlam. Among the 9% Muslims of Gujarat, there is also a
bourgeoisie and riots present their Hindu counterparts with plum
opportunities to settle business scores.

Like UP, Gujarat has a disproportionally high upper caste population,
just under 15%. Unlike UP, however, over the last century the technically
middle-caste patidars, who constitute 12% of the population, have
experienced a rise in their socio-economic position, such that in the late
20th century, no part of upper class/caste society could condescend to
them. While, until recently, an important axis of Gujarati politics
revolved around the political competition between upper castes and
Patidars, the BJP succeeded in more or less uniting them. With the high
rate of development, these upper and middle caste and class groups
represent an immense concentration of socio-economic and political power.

Gujarat is probably unique for the sheer number of castes it features -
more than 80 Brahmin and 40 Bania castes alone, e.g. It has only a weakly
developed linguistic or cultural unity, probably as a consequence of this
(though a history of political fragmentation combined with the creation of
modern Gujarat state out of three quite distinct regional societies also
played a role). Hindutva has provided the ideology with the best prospect
of unifying predominantly Hindu upper and middle caste/class formation. All
over the country, Hindutva attempts to unite upper and, if less
successfully, middle castes, to constitute a more coherent power group.
The survival of important middle caste parties in UP and Bihar which remain
opposed to Hindutva is more due to their underdevelopment than the
commitment of the Yadav leaders to secularism. There important conflicts
still divide the middle agrarian castes from the urban upper castes as they
do not in Gujarat and much of the rest of the country. There even when the
middle-caste based regional parties remain separate, they have not proved
hostile to Hindutva as was imagined in the days when the CPM managed to
constitute the United Front Government of "democratic and secular forces"
out of them.

A final factor contributing to the political dominance of Hindutva in
Gujarat is the large numbers of emigres. In many ways Gujarat has long been
something of a decapitated society - many of its most economically,
socially and culturally advanced members living in Bombay or Calcutta or
other parts of the world. Today these emigres constitute a central bulwark
of the NRI community, particularly in the US and the UK, and provide many
of the chief personnel of the overseas organizations of the Sangh Parivar.

Gujarat may be merely in the vanguard of the overall trend of the
development of the rest of the country. This is the reason why the problem
of the hegemony of Hindutva in Gujarat needs to be taken very seriously.
Pointing to yhe roots of Hindutva in our current model of development is
not to say that it is an unstoppable force. Few things in history are
inevitable, no matter how much they look like that in retrospect. Deepest
among the political tragedies in India is that lower castes and classes who
have the deepest investment in secularism as well as egalitarian economic
development have only ever been offered populist and opportunistic forms of
political mobilization. This cycle has surely run its course in Gujarat
where the Congress's lamentable record in the 1980s seems to have more or
less extinguished it as anything other than a protest vote repository. Even
as the Congress party, where it is successful today, is necessarily based
among the lower socioeconomic class/caste strata in the country, it is
evading its vocation of being their authentic party, still hankering after
being the party of the upper strata of the country. The Left too often
seems to be happier performing small but ultimately unsustainable little
feats of parliamentary political engineering rather than expanding its base
among these groups country-wide, as its own convictions require of it. 

The powerful can no longer be shamed into demonstrating a modicum of
liberalism and secularism. It is only when secularism becomes more than the
profession of one's good breeding, becomes the true property of those who
could not care less about such snobbish distinctions, who are able to
question the roots of communalism in inequality, that it can become the
political force this country now badly needs. Only then will Indians have
earned the privilege of looking back on Gujarat of the turn of the century
as a horrific but also now past, peculiarity in the van of a road which the
rest of India mercifully did not take. If this does not happen, Gujarat
could well be the image of the country's future.

_____

#3.

The Hindu
Saturday, Mar 09, 2002

Ayodhya solutions

By Rajeev Dhavan

We cannot concentrate on merely building the temple, and ignore the 
destroyed mosque.

ANY SOLUTION in Ayodhya must be fair - not just to buy an uneasy 
peace, but as an enduring tribute to community understanding and 
secularism. So far, Ayodhya solutions have not been unfair. In 1949, 
a temple was built inside a mosque. This was purely an act of 
criminal trespass. A modern day travesty in itself. The ensuing 
status quo preserved the temple for Hindus but froze the site for 
Muslims. In 1986, under suspicious circumstances, the temple's locks 
were opened to allow prayers before Hindu idols in a mosque. On 
December 6, 1992, the mosque was razed to the ground. But the 
miscreants were rewarded. A makeshift temple was permitted on the 
site of the ruins of the mosque. Was this temple removed? No, 
instead, the Ayodhya Act of 1993 preserved the status quo of January 
1993. The mosque remained rubble, the illegal temple survived. In 
1993, the BJP White Paper justified the demolition on the basis of 
the politics of historical revenge.

In 1994, the Supreme Court delivered a majority judgment replete with 
angularities preserving the Hindu status quo of the 1993 Act. It went 
further to permit the return of the 67 acres of surrounding Hindu 
land, if the land was not required for the final solution. Even this 
goes beyond the normal land acquisition law. The minority judges 
rightly protested that the solution was one-sided. Meanwhile, the BJP 
prospered from the politics of Ayodhya to form the Union Government. 
>From the Kumbh Mela in January 2001, the VHP and the sants have 
uncompromisingly threatened to violate the law to build the temple. 
Mayhem has followed. Now, the Sankaracharya of Kanchi has suggested 
another angular solution - to reward a Hindu temple whilst the mosque 
lies in ruin. What has happened is as gross as unfair. So far, the 
Muslim community has borne all this with fortitude, amidst violence 
and fury. What is a fair solution? The test of fairness is that the 
solution must be just to all communities and consistent with the 
secularism that holds India's fragile democracy together. We cannot 
concentrate on merely building the temple, and ignore the destroyed 
mosque. Hindu demands and Muslim sentiments have to be aggregated, 
not set off against each other. No one says the temple should not be 
built. But the commitment to re-build the mosque has been ignored. In 
Afghanistan, we support the restoration of the Bamiyan statues. India 
cannot have a secular foreign policy for Kashmir and a communal 
policy for Ayodhya. The Babri Masjid was also a protected monument. 
So many structures in England and Europe which suffered World War 
damages were restored - including St. Paul's, the Inns of Court and 
Parliament. The angular bias remains if we talk of constructing a 
temple without prioritising the re-building of the mosque.

To interpret the Supreme Court's judgment of 1994 to read permission 
to build the temple first on the undisputed 67 acres is both legally 
incorrect and unjust. Despite its oddities, the Supreme Court 
judgment was totally clear that the dispute over the site had to be 
resolved first and the 67 acres dealt with later. The court said that 
if the Muslims got the site "...their success should not be 
thwarted... by exercise of rights of ownership of Hindu owners of the 
adjacent properties". Further, some of these 67 acres could be 
allocated to the Muslims to ensure "...the effective enjoyment of the 
fruits of success of the final outcome". No question arose of handing 
over the 67 acres in advance of a final solution. In my view the 
`final solution' can be adjudicated in the very complex suits or 
negotiated. There are 22 major issues divided further into another 17 
issues covering a huge canvas. Many defy adjudication. The real issue 
is the site. Prima facie the mosque stood on the site. Then there are 
arguments of procedure, limitation and adverse possession. A just 
solution cannot be evolved on legal quibbles. A negotiated solution 
is possible. But it requires statesmanship, not guile.

How would a solution be resolved? The first step to any solution must 
be an apology for the destruction of the mosque accompanied by a 
declared priority commitment to re-build it exactly as before. This 
would not only redress the mosque's tragic demolition in 1992 but 
reward Indian secularism with a clear framework. Both Mr. Vajpayee 
and Mr. Advani - and especially the BJP - must join this commitment 
along with the VHP, the sants and the Sangh Parivar. Second, as an 
act of good faith, the mosque must be built first; or at least 
simultaneously. This flows from the logic of events. Anything else 
would be a continuing injustice. These two parts of a final solution 
require courage and secular clarity. Can our politicians and sants 
rise to the challenge?

The third facet concerns the location of the sites of the re-built 
mosque and the temple. There are many alternatives. Both cannot be 
built on the same site except as a complex for all religions. This 
may be as unacceptable to the Hindus as the rebuilding of the mosque 
at the original site. Alternatively, the site could be given up by 
both communities so that the reconstructed mosque and temple are 
built elsewhere. But, even an alternative solution of giving up the 
site for either the temple or the mosque does not defy a negotiated 
solution. But, a solution cannot come of politics of terror, 
destruction and mob tactics. A reasonable solution may evolve 
provided its first two conditions are accepted for immediate 
implementation - an apology and commitment to rebuild the mosque, 
which should be done first or simultaneously.

The fourth strand is that after evolving a negotiated solution, the 
Centre should intervene in the Lucknow suits and have them settled on 
the basis of the negotiated compromise. This takes us to the fifth 
aspect as an alternative. In 1991, the Places of Worship Act put a 
quietus to all disputes by preserving "...the religious character of 
a place of worship existing on August 15, 1947". This is a good 
solution for a new beginning. All pending suits were superseded. But, 
Section 5 of this Act excluded the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid 
dispute from this 1947 status quo. Had Parliament intervened in this 
dispute, all matters would have been resolved. Even so, the Ayodhya 
dispute now cries out for a fair settlement. The Ayodhya "compromise" 
could also be included in the Act of 1991 from which it is presently 
excluded. Once this is done, India can go beyond temple politics to 
address the real problems of poverty, diseases, violence and cruelty 
that confront it.

Any solution for Ayodhya is not just a solution for Muslims and 
Hindus but for Indian secularism - so that India can say to itself 
and the world that it was fair and just to all. It is not a matter of 
finding a legal answer. Legal quibbles will neither satisfy the 
communities nor secular justice. But, a fair and just solution will. 
A solution which, even if binding, provokes discontent is not a 
durable one.

Today, death stalks the streets of Indian democracy. The greatest 
experiment in secular governance the world has ever known is 
dissolving into chaos. The Government looks on - witness to mass 
murder, mayhem, arson, and pillage. This is not just a matter for 
Hindus and Muslims, but for Indian secularism on which the country's 
future depends. A fair solution credits our future. An unfair 
solution does not.

______

#4.

>From Hindustan Times/ Op-ed page March 5/ 2002
Climate of intolerance
by A.G. Noorani

As the French say, nothing is convincing that requires to be 
explained elaborately. A two-page denial, written by a speechwriter 
and issued two days later, cannot repair the damage done by a remark 
which was reported in identical terms by national dailies.

Especially when the denial virtually confirms the remark. Prime 
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was clearly reported to have said at 
Varanasi on February 19 that the BJP would win the UP assembly 
elections even if the Muslims voted against it - but would like to 
secure their support. His 'clarification' claimed that he had said, 
"For one thing, the BJP is going to win even if they vote against the 
party. But my question is, why should they vote against us?"

The latter part confirms press reports of another remark which had 
escaped notice. For Vajpayee had also said that it was not 'proper' 
for Muslims to adopt an 'anti-BJP stance'. The PM, thus, had not only 
singled out a community, but had also accused it of lack of 
propriety. This is not the language to court votes. It is a censure.

This incident came close on the heels of another of the same kind. 
Vajpayee said at Chandigarh on February 7 of Sonia Gandhi: "She is a 
woman, and that too a foreign woman." The first part of the remark 
was sexist; the rest was, on the best construction, a veiled 
imputation of weaker nationalism, if not one of lack of patriotism. 
The next day's clarification read: "In referring to Sonia Gandhi as a 
'videshi' in my speech, I meant no disrespect to her." The reference 
was not germane to the political debate unless it was intended to 
make a point.

There are not isolated utterances. They conform to a pattern of 
intolerance of dissent and opposition which the BJP government 
established soon after it came to power in 1998 as the dominant 
partner in the NDA. The intolerance is not an aberration. It stems 
inescapably from the situation in which the BJP finds itself. It has 
sought to pursue its own divisive agenda while professing to abide by 
the NDA's and is alarmed as it finds the ground slipping away from 
under its feet.

When on December 6, 2000, the PM said that "the project for 
constructing a Ram temple in Ayodhya was the expression of 
nationalist feelings", he knew - or ought to have known - that the 
assertion flew in the face of the facts and, certainly, the Supreme 
Court's ruling in the case. The court treated it as a dispute between 
two communities and struck down as void S.4 (3) of the Ayodhya 
Acquisition Act, 1993, because it aborted litigation pending between 
them in the high court.

How 'nationalist' can such a project be? Home Minister L.K. Advani 
himself acknowledged on June 18, 1991: "Had I not played the Ram 
factor effectively I would have definitely lost from the New Delhi 
constituency." Sushma Swaraj admitted in Bhopal on April 14, 2000, 
that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was "purely political in nature and 
had nothing to do with religion".

It is this impossible policy which has landed the BJP in a mess of 
its own making. It pursues a divisive agenda while aspiring to 
national acceptance. In the process it loses out at both levels. The 
VHP accuses it of hypocrisy for the tactical compromises it makes. 
The nation is increasingly restive over the government's policies, 
whether on Ayodhya, education or national security.

The government does not respond to criticism. It denounces the 
critic, not for error of judgment, but for lack of patriotism. 
Opposition must be silenced by imputations on its integrity.

This predicament was fairly predictable and was foreseen by Advani 
himself soon after the BJP was born. In an interview to the 
Panchjanya in 1980, he said: "In India, a party based on ideology can 
at the most come to power in a small area. It cannot win the 
confidence of the entire country." He said that the BJP's ancestor, 
the Jan Sangh's "appeal increased to the extent the ideology got 
diluted. Wherever the ideology was strong, its appeal was diminished."

The BJP got nowhere. It won only two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984. 
As Advani said in the Speaker's Chamber in July 1992, "You must 
recognise the fact that from two seats in 1984 we have come to 117 
seats in 1991. This has happened primarily because we took up this 
(Ayodhya) issue." The success was won at a price. Nemesis never fails 
to overtake opportunism. Panic at the prospect of a bleak future 
drives the BJP regime to rank partisanship and intolerance.

This is precisely the course which Lyndon Johnson adopted in the 
declining years of his presidency. The style was "characterised by 
three organically connected qualities", as one of the foremost 
critics of his Vietnam policy, Hans J. Morgenthau, described it, "the 
refusal to deal with an argument on its own merits; a cavalier 
attitude toward ascertainable facts; and the attempt to discredit by 
invective." Johnson's hatchet man, John D. Roche, applied this smear 
to Morgenthau, a naturalised citizen: "A scholarly urbane European 
intellectual, his major thesis is that Americans cannot be trusted 
with power and since Johnson. is an American, there is little more to 
say."

Advani said on November 7 last year that those who ensured the defeat 
of POTO in Parliament "will willingly or otherwise help terrorists". 
HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said on February 7 apropos Sonia 
Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav's opposition to POTO: "They obviously 
support terrorism."

There can be two opinions on whether Pokhran II was necessary or 
desirable. Comment on the political motivation was, however, 
perfectly legitimate. In 1996, Vajpayee gave orders for such a test, 
though he did not have a majority in the Lok Sabha. In 1998, the 
green signal was given on April 11 by a government which took power 
on March 19. The promised National Security Review had not been 
undertaken before the tests were held on May 11 and 13.

Yet, to a legitimate question on whether the tests were politically 
motivated, Brajesh Mishra, the PM's principal secretary, retorted on 
May 11: "If you are not concerned with security, you can say that." A 
week later, Advani denounced the "pseudo-liberals".

The Comptroller and Auditor-General has been roundly attacked for his 
report on the 'Coffingate' affair. Law Minister Arun Jaitley said on 
December 17 that he had "acted on hearsay and not on facts". This was 
before the Public Accounts Committee had considered the report. 
George Fernandes said on February 8 that the CAG had given a 
'deliberately misleading' report. "It can happen to that point where 
politicians and constitutional authorities are prepared to lie, lie 
and keep lying. it is a very dangerous situation," he said.

Of a piece with this is BJP spokesman V.K. Malhotra's denunciation on 
December 4 of historians of repute like Romila Thapar and R.S. Sharma 
as "perverts". Meanwhile, the government's programme of 
saffronisation of education and subversion of institutions proceeds 
at a feverish pace.

Never before has a government or ruling party at the Centre waged 
such a campaign of calumny of its critics and opponents.

_____

#5.

Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 06:17:05 +0000
To: aiindex@m...
From: Anand Patwardhan (Bombay)

[...]
peace marches are being planned across the country in view of the potential
disaster of march 15.
something i wrote to a site which had rightly condemned both godhra and its
aftermath but in my view had wrongly equated the two:

i know the need to appear balanced and so denounce fundamentalism on "both
sides" but ultimately this kind of neutralization hides the ugly fact that
in india we are squarely up against fascists who use lumpen elements to
further a far from religious cause in the name of religion. this has been
the case since the mid 80's and it marks a radical shift from the india
that existed since independence.

there has from time to time been a muslim backlash, seen in the bomb blasts
of bombay and the murderous fire at godhra. u do not have to be a prophet
to know where it will all lead. as bits and pieces about the nature of
provocation at godhra begin to emerge, the pattern of hate is seen to be
replicated until at some point or the other it erupts. one can never
condone the murder of innocents but if we want to know how to stop the
chain of events we had better learn to distinguish (even as we continue to
condemn all violence) the desperate acts of a hunted minority from those of
an arrogant, gloating, bullying majority that has begun to revel in its
power and invincibility, buoyed by the knowledge that the government
belongs to them.

the people of india (whose hindu majority i believe still do not subscribe
to the violence done in their name), have no choice but to rise up and
overthrow this brutal regime. this alone will not end the brutality
immediately for the poison has spread very deep but it is a necessary first
step. it almost does not matter who the alternative will be for the
unknown in this case cannot be worse than the known.

in the meantime we must take our non-violence into the streets. and not
give up till sanity and humanity is restored. as our friends put it: Godhra
ho ya Ahmedabad, Sampradaykta (Phirkaprasti) ho barbaad.

______

#6.

Outlookindia.com
March 18, 2002
Is India Rwanda?
Is our country an emerging world power? Or is it a barbaric banana repubic.
By Vinod Mehta
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?sid=3&fodname=20020318&fname=Cover+Stories

______

#7.

Tehelka.com
'Gujarat riots were designed to undermine the Muslim community's 
economic foundation'
Noted historian Mushirul Hasan
speaks to Rinku Pegu
http://www.tehelka.com/channels/currentaffairs/2002/mar/8/ca030802mush.htm

______

#8.

Audio Report from Free Speech Radio: March 8, 2002
International Women's Day celebrations in India are taking place in a 
somber atmosphere. The country remains shaken and shocked by last 
week's carnage in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The official 
death toll now stands over 700 though peace groups say it could be as 
high as 2000. There are fears of fresh violence in other parts of the 
country amid reports that the Hinduist BJP led government has agreed 
to allow Hindu activists to offer prayers at the disputed site in 
Ayodhya on March 15. However, peace initiatives are gathering 
momentum across the country - and stories are emerging of people who 
put humanity first and helped save lives during last week's madness 
in Gujarat and elsewhere. Sputnik Kilambi reports from the southern 
city of Hyderabad where there is also a history of Hindu/Muslim 
violence.
http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/freespeech/fsrn20020308.ra&start="9:32.8"

_____

#9.

Rediff.com March 8, 2002

Till Retaliation Do Us Part
Dilip D'Souza
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/08dilip.htm

_____

#10.

The 1947 Partition of India: A Paradigm for Pathological Politics in 
India and Pakistan
by Ishtiaq Ahmed ( 2002)
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/IshtiaqAhmed2002.html

___

#11.

"Ram Mandir" and "Lahoo main doobe yeh haath kab tak ?"
Two poems of Gauhar Raza: [March 2002, New Delhi]
Rendered into English By Sohail Hashmi
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/gauhar2002.html

___

#12.

The Hindu | Magazine - 10 March 2002
After Mumbai, it's Gujarat: Life might limp back to normal in Gujarat 
but it will not be the same again.
By Kalpana Sharma

_____

#13.

The Hindu - 10 March 2002
Genocide in the land of Gandhi
The violence in Ahmedabad and other parts of Gujarat was unparalleled 
for its barbarism.
By Anjali Mody

_____

#14.

The Statesman - 10 Feb 2002
NEW VISTAS: Mutations of communalism
By Jeremy Seabrook
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.editorial.php3?id=4338&theme=A

_____

#15.

The Times of India
Is Shankaracharya's formula acceptable?
By Sitaram Yechury
[ SUNDAY, MARCH 10, 2002 12:40:25 AM ]
http://203.199.93.7/articleshow.asp?art_id=3302608

_____

#16.

Indian Express - 10 March 2002
Whose undisputed land is it anyway?
Nintey-eight per cent of the undisputed land in Ayodhya that the Ram 
Janambhoomi Nyas claims to own was in fact only leased to it by the 
UP Government . And the Nyas's plans to build a temple on that land 
violates the terms on which the property was leased to it.
http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020310/top2.html

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