[sacw] SACW #1 | 7 April. 02

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #1 | 7 April 2002
http://www.mnet.fr

__________________________

#1. South Asia: Indigenous print media: bridges or barriers? (Javed Jabbar)
#2. Conference: Gujarat Carnage and Bangalore Resolution
Assault on Constitutional Order and Unity of India (7 April , New Delhi)
#3. Hate mobs deny peace a chance in Gujarat (Namita Bhandare)
#4. Is it high time Narendra Modi quit? (Rajiv Desai)
#5. Kashmir's tragedy goes beyond headlines (Urvashi Butalia)
#6. Opinion Poll 65% Say VHP, State Connived In Riots
#7. A Parsi school for would-be priests in Mumbai rechristens itself, 
to avoid being targets in a riot
(Pramila Phatarphekar)
#8. A Conference on the Interface of Religion, Culture, and Politics 
in Pakistan (Washington)
__________________________

#1.

DAWN
6 April 2002

Indigenous print media: bridges or barriers?

By Javed Jabbar

An unprecedented conference is taking place in Karachi on April 6 and 
7. For the first time, editors and senior journalists of leading 
newspapers and magazines in the principal indigenous languages of 
Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are 
meeting in the country to explore a theme of timely relevance.
The subject to be addressed is: "Newspapers and magazines in the 
indigenous languages of South Asia - bridges or barriers?" with the 
sub-theme of "the challenges of promoting collective regional 
approaches to peace and co-operation even as internal, bilateral and 
regional tensions continue in South Asia."
In the age of linguistic globalization when English is the world's 
fastest-growing language, and dozens of languages are withering and 
dying, the assertion of viewpoints that reflect the linguistic 
pluralism of South Asia becomes a positive development.
The range of languages represented at this unique conference includes 
Urdu, Sindhi, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Malyalam, Gujrati, 
Pushto, Sinhalese, Tamil, Nepalese, Dhivehi (from the Maldives) and 
Punjabi. While English is the common denominator, bilingual Canada 
(French and English) is also represented, as is German from Germany.
Though literacy remains low in South Asia with well over one billion 
people out of about 1.4 billion people being neither buyers nor 
readers of newspapers, indigenous language print media do render an 
influential role in forming public opinion even as satellite TV 
channels and radio in indigenous languages become more numerous.
Enabling communication between editors whose working languages are as 
different as Sindhi is from Sinhalese or Urdu is from Telugu, is good 
old - or bad old! - English.
Indigenous language print media in South Asia reach over 90 per cent 
of the newspaper-reading public in the region's seven countries. Yet 
due to their sheer multiplicity and their consequent inaccessibility 
to those who do not know a particular language, English becomes the 
principal lingua franca for internal communication in some cases as 
also for cross-border communication between states. Governments, 
decision-making groups and opinion-forming elites even though English 
print media reach only about 10 per cent of the region's population.
This paradox of numbers and imbalances has to be seen in conjunction 
with the effect that language has on the shaping of content and on 
the perceptions of that content by regular users of a language and by 
non-regular users of a language.
While this is better left for separate reflection, at this time the 
concern is to examine whether in a region with such a wide range of 
languages, it is possible to formulate a collective approach to any 
subject, leave alone a subject as complex as regional co-operation.
One response may be that despite the wide diversity of languages in 
India, the country has been able to hold regular elections over a 
period of 55 years to become the world's largest entity in this 
particular field. But a sceptical response could well be that it is 
precisely because of such diversity that the country has been obliged 
to form a consensus on the conduct of regular elections, with 
periodic polling serving as a substitute for a singular language.
It may also be said that it is exactly because most Indians do not 
comprehend what other Indians are reading or saying that, by default, 
they have been able to stay on course on the electoral path! But that 
is another story.
On a regional and international level, a wide range of languages has 
not been an obstacle in enabling the construction and evolution of 
the European Union, the greatest achievement in inter-state 
co-operation in recorded history.
One of the world's most stable and prosperous states is multi-lingual 
Switzerland.
So the point may be made that when it comes to creating a consensus 
in favour of a particular process, be it regular elections or 
national cohesion or regional co-operation, language is a secondary 
factor. What matters most of all is the substance or the content of 
any action, as to whether it is respectful of all citizens and of all 
communities in a particular country and of all countries within a 
regional treaty.
The first place where the thesis of language being seen as a 
secondary factor is shattered is our own Pakistan. Perhaps the most 
potent root cause of the disintegration in 1971 of the original 
structure of Pakistan was the failure in 1948 to recognize the 
significance of the Bengali language as a binding element for a 
unique two-winged country.
In contrast, today's Pakistan is an eloquent expression of linguistic 
pluralism. Urdu remains the national and, with English, the official 
language while Radio Pakistan broadcasts every day programmes in 20 
other Pakistani languages and dialects including Punjabi, Sindhi, 
Seraiki, Pushto, Balochi, Hindko, Chitrali, Gojri, Wakhi and Balti, 
amongst others.
The conference is being organized by the South Asian Editors' Forum 
(SAEF) in co-operation with the South Asian Media Association (SAMA) 
and with valuable support from the Institute for Media, Policy and 
Civil Society of Canada. This is the fifth in a series of such 
inter-actions. The first such meeting took place in June 1999 in 
Colombo, the second was held in Kathmandu in November 1999 where SAEF 
was formally created, the third was convened in the Maldives in April 
2001 followed by the fourth workshop in Bentota, Sri Lanka, in 
February 2002.
In a relatively short period the SAEF initiative has demonstrated the 
capacity to build upon the work initiated by SAMAA in 1991 by 
bringing editors and analysts together face-to-face even at times 
when crisis situations have erupted in the region, whether twice in 
1999 shortly after Kargil or after the change of government in 
Pakistan, or after the deployment of troops on the Pakistan-India 
border in 2002. Several actions have been taken to improve 
cross-linguistic communication and cross-border co-operation 
including the preparation of a joint paper on media by Pakistani and 
Indian researchers.
The theme of the Karachi Conference provokes reflections on at least 
four dimensions. Do indigenous languages engender as well as 
reinforce isolation? Some content of media will get reported and read 
in a way that makes language irrelevant. For example, an event such 
as the decision to hold a referendum or the death of the Queen Mother 
in Britain.
Some other content of the media is crucially shaped by the language 
used, particularly nuances and subtleties and the explicit usage of 
known buzz-words that act as triggers for pre-conceived patterns of 
reactions based on a host of elements such as ethnic, religious or 
sectarian identities. For instance, in Pakistan there are three 
different worlds of readership as created by the Urdu Press, the 
Sindhi Press and the English Press. Is there a nexus between 
indigenous language media and tendencies to extremism? Do the 
perceptual demarcations defined by different languages become hard 
borders and iron walls of the mind?
Can meetings marked by goodwill and the adoption of guidelines for 
promoting a South Asian ethos in journalism prevent the recurrence of 
bloody pogroms? Or prevent canals from filling up with distrust, 
instead of water? The international conference in Karachi promises to 
be a significant step in the search for answers to such questions.
The writer is founding chairman of the South Asian Media Association 
and a former Federal Information Minister.

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#2.

Convention
organised by
AMU Old Boys Association

Gujarat Carnage and Bangalore Resolution
Assault on Constitutional Order and Unity of India

Sunday, April 7, 2002
The Speaker's Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110001
10 am onwards

ARJUN SINGH
MANI SHANKAR AIYAR
HARKISHAN SINGH SURJEET
SOMNATH CHATTERJEE
A.B. BARDHAN
D. RAJA
UDIT RAJ
SHAHID SIDDIQUI
ARIF MOHAMMAD KHAN
DINESH TRIVEDI
SWAMI AGNIVESH
NIRMALA DESHPANDE
REV. VALSON THAMPO
SUMIT SARKAR
ARUNDHATI ROY
SHARMILA TAGORE
KULDEEP NAYYAR
MUSHIRUL HASSAN
MJ AKBAR
MARK TULLY
HARISH KHARE
AMIT SENGUPTA
NAMVAR SINGH
GAUTAM NAULAKHA
KAMAL MITRA CHENOY
JAWED NAQVI

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#3.

The Hindustan Times
Sunday, April 7, 2002

Hate mobs deny peace a chance in Gujarat
Namita Bhandare
(Ahmedabad, April 6)

How do you begin the process of healing when any attempt to talk 
peace is met with threats of even more violence? The answer, 
apparently, is you don't really. In Mehmadabad town, some 50 km from 
Ahmedabad, an attempt to hold a peace rally was thwarted when the 
organiser was threatened by a 500-strong mob.

Mehmadabad has a population of about 15,000 Muslims and 25,000 
Hindus. Some weeks after communal riots first broke out, Vipin 
Shroff, the editor of a small monthly publication called Vaishvik 
Manavad published a pamphlet asking people to maintain communal 
harmony. A local paper carried the pamphlet on March 25.

The next step was a peace rally slated for March 31. But on the night 
of March 30 a mob landed up at his doorstep.

Shroff was not at home but his wife was. The hoodlums asked for 
Shroff and told his wife they would cut him to pieces. "Tell him we 
don't want Hindu-Muslim ekta," some people said before bombarding his 
house with stones for close to 15 minutes.

The next day, Shroff put up boards at prominent places calling off the rally.

In Ahmedabad a group of NGOs and public-spirited people, including 
danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, was supposed to hold a meeting to discuss 
relief and rehabilitation on Sunday. Permission was obtained from the 
Gujarat Vidyapeeth, an institution set up by Mahatma Gandhi, to hold 
the meeting there.

But suddenly, on Friday evening, Sarabhai got a call from the 
Vidyapeeth's Kiran Shah telling her the meeting was off since "the 
current climate was not conducive". "They simply refused us their 
venue at the last minute," said Sarabhai.

Attempts to contact Shah proved unsuccessful but the meeting will now 
be held at the Gandhi Ashram.

"There is a lot of fear in the city and that is why there has been no 
big public outcry against the riots," says Chunnibhai Vaidya, a 
senior Gandhian who lives close to the ashram.

"There is simply no confidence amongst the people," says Stalin K. of 
the Drishti Media Collective. "Twenty-four hours after the PM's 
visit, a group of people putting up billboards for peace were 
threatened."

Mira Mehta, a social worker who has been working at the Shah Alam 
camp for Muslims affected by the riots, says she routinely gets 
abusive phone calls.

"There's a desperate need to form peace committees to get people out 
of the camps and back into their homes," says Kanubhai Kothia, a 
former MLA who is deeply involved in the communally polarised Bapu 
Nagar. "But people are very scared to stick their neck out at times 
like this," he says.

______

#4.

The Times of India, APRIL 07, 2002

Is it high time Narendra Modi quit?
IN BLACK AND WHITE/RAJIV DESAI

Swarna aksharey lakhshey kaviyon jai gatha Gujarat ni (Poets will 
write of Gujarat's glory in golden letters) - so went the state's 
anthem 42 years back.
Plucked from the cosmopolitan comforts of Bombay and cast into the 
mofussil earthiness of Ahmedabad then, I found myself responding to 
this dream.
We would create a Gujarat that would be the envy of the nation, I 
believed. However, venal politicians and submissive bureaucrats 
sabotaged Gujarat's tryst with destiny. The promises of May 1, 1960 
was never realised. Instead, less than a decade after it was formed, 
the state was convulsed with recurrent mob violence based on caste 
and religion.
Sectarian conflict and hypocritical policies such as its idiotic 
adherence to prohibition and its foolhardy experiment with vernacular 
education slowly but surely removed Gujarat from the national 
mainstream. Despite the hype about its economic prowess, Gujarat 
merely facilitated the unregulated growth of noxious industries such 
as plastics, fertilizers and chemicals that created few jobs and 
destroyed the environment.
Thousands of its citizens emigrated to the West in the seventies. 
There, their native entrepreneurial skills helped them flourish: the 
London corner shop, the New York newspaper kiosk, the Patel motels, 
the Dunkin Donut franchises. Over the next two decades, they became a 
source of repatriated funds and extreme ideologies for their kinfolk 
back home.
This created a money-order middle class, rootless and mean-spirited, 
sustained by monetary infusions from New York and New Jersey, 
Leicester and Leeds. These newly-emergent groups are non-commissioned 
officers in the caste and religious conflicts that have regularly 
paralysed the state. Professional rabble-rousers, these groups formed 
the primordial soup from which Narendra Modi and his marauding 
minions surfaced to hold the state to ransom.
Given the influence of these small, visible, wealthy but 
culturally-barren groups that form the money-order middle class, the 
emergence of Modi was a foregone conclusion. So while Modi's brazen 
bigotry is an embarrassment to the vast majority of Gujaratis, it is 
sadly not surprising.
Nor is it surprising that despite evidence of his government's 
complicity in the pogroms that followed the heinous Godhra incident, 
Modi sought to brazen it out with Goebbelsian cunning, blaming 
variously the ISI, Indian Parliament and the media for Gujarat's 
bloodletting.
On the other hand, he conjured up a statistical analysis to show the 
National Human Rights Commission that communal violence is normal in 
Gujarat. To compound the confusion, he told a press conference in 
Mumbai that violence was limited only to a handful of places in 
Gujarat.
Modi's bluff and bluster give the impression that he speaks for all 
of Gujarat. The Gujaratis that he claims to represent are a gentle 
and civil people, not genocidal goons of the kind that assembled in 
the wake of Godhra. Far from giving approval to Modi's bigotry, we 
are appalled at the disrepute he and his middle class have brought to 
our native state.
The bullying tactics of Modi and his storm-troopers have cowed the 
majority of Gujaratis. Can they rise to confront the challenge posed 
by this mutant group? My guess is they can, if they find support 
among fellow Indians outside Gujarat.
To help them, we must bring relentless moral and constitutional 
pressure to bear and ask for Modi's ouster. It will serve as a fillip 
to the millions of Gujaratis suffocating under the crude and brutal 
regime of the money-order middle class.
It could be an important watershed in the state's tragic history and 
a way to redeem the pledge made in 1960, not wholly or ins 
substantial measure but at least enough to the rekindle the poetic 
dream espoused in the state's anthem.
(The writer is a political commentator)

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#5.

The Times of India, 7 April 2002

Kashmir's tragedy goes beyond headlines
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SUNDAY, APRIL 07, 2002 12:52:23 AM ]
Hardly a day passes without some news or the other about Kashmir. If 
it isn't the arrest of a well-known leader, it is a grenade attack in 
a marketplace, or it is the loss of lives in ''encounters'', or a 
statement by a politician.
In this welter of information from the strife-torn Valley and its 
surrounding areas, there's very little mention of those who live, on 
a day to day basis, with the consequences of this violence: the 
women, children, the old and infirm. Yes, if a militant outfit takes 
it upon itself to dictate a dress code for women, they suddenly - and 
ironically - become visible. At other times they remain, as they have 
always done, largely invisible.
In the last few years, women activists - both individuals and groups 
- have begun to work with women in Kashmir to look seriously at the 
impact of twelve long years of violence and strife. The statistics 
are staggering: 50,000 children orphaned, more than 5,000 women 
widowed, an equal if not larger number of ''half-widows'' (those 
whose husbands have disappeared), innumerable rapes and so on.
''The biggest casualty of these long years,'' says a teacher from 
Srinagar, ''is that we can no longer trust anyone. It doesn't matter 
if you are talking to your son, or brother or relative, there's no 
trust. And then, we live with a constant sense of fear. When you put 
these two things together, the combination is devastating.''
Few people are aware of the hidden consequences of war, the women of 
Kashmir point out repeatedly. There are children here, they say, who 
have known nothing but violence. The gun is a toy for them, except 
that it is real. How will you expect them to understand, or even 
desire, something called ''peace'' if they don't know what it means?
The loss of earning members - in virtually every family, someone has 
been killed or is missing - has put the burden of bringing in an 
income on women. This, coupled with the fear that young children - 
particularly boys - will be drawn into militancy has resulted in 
children being pulled out of school and put to work at home to 
supplement the family income. The net result: an increase in child 
labour.
Another hidden consequence of political conflict. Levels of domestic 
violence are on the rise. As the violence of conflict enters the 
home, and society becomes brutalised, women are subjected to more and 
more violence. Yet, who can they speak to about this most private of 
things?
In the ''hierarchy'' of violence that such conflict sets up, the 
violence of the home somehow is seen as less important, as having an 
inferior status. When the nation is at stake, the home seems 
unimportant. And we are forced to ask the question: if and when peace 
returns to Kashmir, what will such a peace mean for women ? Will it, 
for example, mean a reduction in domestic violence?
Dress codes - of which so much has been made - are only part of the 
problem; there's also the lack of hospital services, the high levels 
of stress and trauma, the constant shadow of fear, the sense of being 
caught in a conflict not of their own making.
Whether it is ordinary women, or the wives, sisters, mothers of 
militants or securitymen, it is in their lives, and the lives of 
their children, that one sees some of the most frightening, long-term 
consequences of conflict.
(Urvashi Butalia has edited a collection of essays, Speaking Peace: 
Women's Voices from Kashmir, published by Kali)

______

#6.

Outlook Magazine | Apr 15, 2002

OPINION POLL
65% Say VHP, State Connived In Riots
An exclusive opinion poll on the index of insecurity in the riot-torn 
state. 72 percent feel unsafe, 52 percent think BJP will win if 
elections are held today.
PREMCHAND PALETY

The Jet Airways flight to Ahmedabad was nearly empty. But nothing 
spoke more eloquently of the state of the Gujarat economy than the 
fact that at the Regency Hotel, I was the sole guest. Wherever I 
went, fear hung like a pall over the people. Random stabbings 
continue and both Hindus and Muslims feel unsafe and insecure. 
Rumours fly thick and fast, and no argument can convince the people 
that these may be just rumours. That 500 Hindu women were gang-raped 
at Godhra before the train was set on fire, that a pregnant Muslim 
woman was cut open by rioters and the unborn child hoisted on a 
trishul.

The polarisation seems complete. Even middle-class and 
upper-middle-class Hindus participated in the rioting. A majority of 
Hindus seem actually to see Narendra Modi as their saviour and 
guardian! Even taxi drivers and petty businessmen, who have had 
hardly any income in the last one month, say that they don't care, 
the Hindu-Muslim problem should be settled once and for all this 
time. When I ask people whether the police were biased in handling 
the riots, I am met with answers like: "Yes, they were. So what? They 
did the right thing!" What is amazing is that after the first phase 
of the riots, Dalits and Adivasis have taken a lead role in 
anti-Muslim attacks. The VHP's dream of Hindu unification seems to 
have been realised in the most perverted way in Gujarat.

Secular organisations are tragically inactive. Congress and other 
Opposition politicians have been conspicuous by their absence in the 
troubled areas. Chunni Bai Vaid, a prominent Gandhian leader, says 
that the rumours and machinations of the VHP and RSS have totally 
communalised Gujarat. The secular forces have grossly failed to 
counter the situation.

But right next to Sabarmati Ashram, the Dalits with whom Vaid has 
been working for decades say they revere him but support Modi's 
actions. I drive around Ahmedabad all day, stopping at street corners 
to ask people questions from my list. "Do you feel safe and secure in 
Gujarat?" I ask my first question to a man I have called over to the 
car window. "What do you think?" he asks me. "If you are feeling safe 
and secure, why don't you get down from the car?" He is right.

Outlook-CFORE Opinion Poll In Gujarat 

Do you feel safe and secure in Gujarat?

Can't say : 3%
Yes : 25%
No : 72%

Were the riots that followed Godhra justified?

Can't say : 19%
Yes : 37%
No : 44%

Do you think the VHP and the state government connived to target Muslims?

Can't say : 15%
Yes : 65%
No : 20%
Do you think the Modi government did enough to quell the riots?

Can't say : 10%
Yes : 32%
No : 58%

Do you think police action was biased?

Can't say : 13%
Yes : 67%
No : 20%

Did the central government do enough to stop the rioting?

Can't say : 27%
Yes : 25%
No : 48%

Should the VHP be banned?

Can't say : 11%
Yes : 38%
No : 51%

Should the Modi government be asked to go?

Can't say : 14%
Yes : 38%
No : 48%

If polls are held today, which party will win?

Can't say : 9%
Congress : 39%
BJP : 52%

Do you think relief and rehabilitation has been adequate?

Can't say : 15%
Yes : 37%
No : 48%

Following the NHRC verdict, should the PM seek Modi's resignation?

Can't say : 23%
Yes : 37%
No : 40%

Methodology
Centre for Forecasting and Advisory Research (Cfore) conducted the 
survey in the cities of Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Baroda, Banaskantha and 
Panchmahal between April 1 and April 3. Over 1,800 persons were 
interviewed. The sample was representative of different communities 
and locations: Dalits and Scheduled Tribes, 25 per cent; Muslims, 10 
per cent; Rajputs 15 per cent; other caste Hindus, 45 per cent; and 
others, 5 per cent.

(The author is director, Cfore, and conducted the survey in Gujarat.)

______

#7.

Outlook Magazine | Apr 15, 2002 
Atul Loke
COMMUNITY
Renaming Ceremony
A Parsi school for would-be priests in Mumbai rechristens itself, to 
avoid being targets in a riot
PRAMILA PHATARPHEKAR
Gurukul and madrassa are two words that you would never expect to see 
on either pillar of a building, particularly in the Dadar Parsi 
Colony, and in as combustible times as now. But that is what happens 
when you feel that the bullets and petrol bombs that ripped through 
Gujarat are about to ricochet through the foundations of your faith, 
as you study to become a Parsi priest in one of Mumbai's most 
peaceful neighbourhoods.
In this quiet green locality, where over 500 children have studied 
the Zoroastrian religion and graduated as Parsi priests or navars 
from the 'Athornan Boarding Madressa', the class of 2002 suddenly 
woke up one morning to find their school had a new name.

The class of 2002 woke up one morning to find their 
'madressa' had a new name: the signboard suggested they were now the 
students of a Parsi Gurukul, written not in English, but Hindi

The 38 young students of ancient Persian languages like Pehlavi came 
out into the garden of roses and pomegranates and looked up at a sign 
that declared they were now the students of a 'Parsi Gurukul'. This 
sign, unlike the one that said Athornan Boarding Madressa, was not 
written in English, but in Hindi.
Ervad Dr Ramiyar P.

Karanjia, principal of the institution, says after the Gujarat 
massacres, many trustees and well-wishers suggested a change of 
name-they feared the word 'madressa' might identify them with 
Muslims, unwittingly making them the targets in a riot.
How were they going to be able to carefully secede from the Islamic 
connotations and ward off potential attacks on this entirely 
non-Muslim educational institution? In reality, the word madrassa 
predates Islam. Dr Karanjia, a scholar of ancient Persian languages, 
explains that it is a Persian word documented from the Sassanian 
times (226-641 AD) when Zoroastrianism became the official state 
religion for the first and the last time. A part of parlance before 
the birth of Prophet Mohammed, a Zoroastrian priestly school was 
known as a madrassa or aerpatastan. But gurukul, they collectively 
felt, would bring them closer to a Hindu milieu while retaining their 
primary identity as Parsis. And in a legible turning point in 
Mumbai's history, the new signboard reveals a deepening dread of 
Hindu mobs felt by the unlikeliest of people-the soft-spoken and 
genial Parsi priests.
Ironically, this is despite having been favourably featured and 
co-opted by the RSS in their mouthpiece Panchjanya (a magazine of 
whose existence few Parsis would know of, let alone subscribe to or 
read). On the 40th anniversary of the Parsi Fire Temple in Delhi, 
while 80-year-old Scylla met schoolfriends after 30 years and the air 
carried a whiff of the fried fish that would follow the 
mewa-nu-achaar with wafers, Panchjanya photographers and reporters 
were there too, though not so much for the food as for a scoop.
A few days later while Scylla recalled the debate with her friend 
about whether it was surmai or rawas that was served at the temple, 
Panchjanya published a story about the Parsi patriots of India who 
had fled from Persia after refusing to convert to Islam and 
integrated into India like "sugar into milk". This was despite the 
Parsis celebrating their faith with 1,000-year-old rites and rituals 
they brought from Persia to India.
While they may have changed their language to Gujarati and dressed in 
saris worn Gujarati-style, their religion stayed sacred and ritually 
pure. Parsi priests-from the Sassanian empire right down to the class 
of 2002 at the 'Athornan-madressa-gurukul' in Dadar-continue to learn 
by heart the 83,000 recorded words of Zarathustra that make up the 
prayers, collectively known as the Avesta. All of them, children of 
priests (priesthood is inherited), wake at five in the morning, 
spending their days in prayer, learning the scriptures with recital 
and ritual. After noon it is time for general education and learning 
other languages like Gujarati, English, Avesta, Pehlavi and Farsi, as 
also Iranian history.

What's different between Sassanian times and today, though, is the 
pleasure and sport that the young priests-in-the-making enjoy-from 
Ervad Noshir Gowadia who represented Maharashtra state in boxing 
tournaments and others who returned as victors in cricket, table 
tennis, chess and track and field events. The younger ones wearing 
their black skull caps also love playing Free Cell, Nintendo, Gameboy 
and Sega on the computer and on video.
Even the menus here have a delectable ecleticism that you'd scarcely 
expect in a solemn seminary. A favourite evening snack is bhelpuri or 
sandwiches, and the occasional burgers from McDonalds. But true to 
their Parsi genes, lagan-nu-bhonus or wedding meals, from the famous 
Godiwala caterers, are looked forward to with forks and spoons ready 
to cut into steamed fish in banana leaves, fried chicken, mutton 
pulao and a delectable array of condiments.
But none of this takes away from the seriousness of their study-the 
rigorous scriptural training of memorising the manthra or the Holy 
Word of the Avesta. They also study for the SSC, doing formal abyas 
(which has the same meaning as it does in Sanskrit, studying with a 
teacher). Many navars or priests also go on to become lawyers, 
accountants, doctors or engineers, and others return to assist in the 
family business. Some become full-time priests, many others become 
part-time priests in fire temples tending to the holy fire in India 
and abroad.
Believing as deeply as they do in ritual and racial purity-through 
strictly intra-community marriages and temples-Parsis stand as far 
from Muslims, as they do from Hindus or any other faith. But, right 
now, for the 38 priests-to-be at the Dadar Athornan Boarding 
Madressa, the distance from communalist forces feels as close as that 
of a stone from a glass window. And one prays that the young priests 
will continue to study the four R's of religion, reading, writing and 
'rithmetic without any disruption by another R, the RSS.

______

#8.

A Conference on the Interface of Religion, Culture, and Politics in Pakistan

Location: Butler Pavilion, 6th Floor, Boardroom, American University,
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC

Sponsor: American University's School of International Service
Conference Program

Dr. Louis W. Goodman,
Dean, School of International Service

Dr. Mustapha Kamal Pasha, Conference Chair

Panel I INTERROGATING RELIGION AND POLITICS

Chair: Dr. Mustapha Kamal Pasha, American
University

Dr. Asma Barlas, Ithaca College
Islam and (Mis) Representation
Dr. Tayyab Mahmud, Cleveland State University
Postcolonial Anxieties and Designs of the State: Official Islam and Its
Discontents
Dr. Paula Newberg, United Nations Foundation
Ideology and Rights
Dr. Saeed Shafqat, Quaid-e-Azam Distinguished
Professor, Columbia University
Religious Groups and Politics in Pakistan

Panel II IDEOLOGY, CULTURAL POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT
Chair: Dr. Agha K. Saeed,
University of California-Berkeley
Dr. Syed Bashir Hussain, University of Wisconsin
Ideology and Praxis of Islamic Economics:
The Case of Pakistan
Dr. Manzur Ejaz, The News
Islamization, the University and Political Distemper in Pakistan
Dr. Anita Weiss, University of Oregon
Engendering Development, Engendering
Rights: Women and Public Space in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Dr. Agha Khalid Saeed, University of
California-Berkeley
Mari Bukl deh wich Choor nee: Morphology of Cultural Politics in
Pakistan

Dr. Riffat Hassan, University of Louisville
Islamic Society and Civil Society: A Direction for Pakistan

Panel III PAKISTAN AND ISLAM: THE WIDER SETTING

Chair: Dr. Louis W. Goodman
School of International Service
Dr. Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair, American
University
Ethnicity and Islam in Regional and Global Perspective
Dr. Raju G. C. Thomas, Marquette University
Religion, Nation, and the State: Pakistan in Comparative Perspective
Dr. Aurangzeb Syed, Northern Michigan University=20
The Vortex of Identities: Kashmir, Islam and Nationalism
Dr. Stephen P. Cohen, Senior Fellow, Brookings
Institution
The Military and Islam: Regional Implications

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