[sacw] SACW #2 | 26 April. 02

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch #2 | 26 April 2002
http://www.mnet.fr

__________________________

#1. Statement by scholars and intellectuals re the pogrom in Gujarat 
(participants at a recent conference in the US)
#2. Monuments in Gujarat bear brunt of communal hatred (ndtv)
#3. India Watches Quietly As Communal Riots Intensify (Scott Baldauf)
#4. Communal Upheaval as Resurgence of Social Darwinism (Jan Breman)
#5. Sangh is waiting for, baiting a backlash (Swami Agnivesh & 
Reverend Valson Thampu)
#6. Mouse Mightier Than Missile For Riots Samaritans (Sujan Dutta)
#7. Round Table conference on the Gujarat Carnage 2002 (April 26, New Delhi)

__________________________

#1.

Statement Issued by the participants at the 'Siting Secularism 
Conference', 21 April 2002, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, USA. 
(http://www.oberlin.edu/~shansi/conference/)

We the participants of the Siting secularism conference express our 
serious concern at the state sponsored pogrom launched against 
Muslims of Gujarat for over 45 days now.

The incident at Godhra shocked us all and was immediately condemned 
by various religious and human rights organisations. However, we 
unequivocally condemn the cynical use of that incident by the RSS, 
BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal and the Gujarat state machinery to justify 
the massacre that followed.

Several fact finding reports have revealed the pre-meditated nature 
of the violence and the planned targeetting of Muslim lives and 
businesses with the full backing and connivance of the police and 
state administration. Every government official who took a 
principalled position has been targetted, harassed and transferred. 
There is also no doubt that the VHP and the RSS have been the primary 
organisors of the carnage in Gujarat.

We are deeply alarmed by the continued refusal of the Indian 
government to take action against the government of of Gujarat 
headed by Mr. Narendra Modi and by the recent public pronouncements 
of India's Prime Minister Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee describing the 
Muslim communities of India and elsewhere as trouble makers.

We are equally concerned at the prospects of elections being held in 
the state of Gujarat under the present conditions where the Muslim 
community is in a state of siege.

We call upon all Indians to:

- Put pressure on the Prime Minister of India to dismiss the 
government of Mr. Narendra Modi and commence criminal proceedings 
against the Gujarat government and Sangh parivar organisations.
- Expose the use to which donations to the VHP especially from abroad 
are being put
- Build Sub-continental solidarities with others involved in 
contesting and fighting religious intolerance and the politics of 
religious hatred in South Asia

Signed by:
Partha Chatterjee (Professor of Political Science and Director, 
CSSSC, Calcutta, India)
Shyam Benegal (Film maker, Bombay, India)
Nira Benegal (Bombay, India)
Mushirual Hasan (Director, Academy of Third World Studies , Jamia 
Milia Islamia, New Delhi)
Kum Kum Sangari (Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi, India)
Ravi S. Vasudevan (Fellow,Centre for the Study of Developing 
Societies, New Delhi, India)
Nivedita Menon (Delhi University, India)
Raveena Agarwal (Assoc. Professor of Anthropology, Smith College, USA)
Rachel Sturman (Asst. Professor of South Asian History; Fellow, 
Society of Fellows, University of Michigan, USA)
Upendra Baxi (Professor of Law, University of Warwick, UK)
Akeel Bilgrami (Professor of Philosophy , Columbia University, New York, USA)
Gyan Prakash (Professor of History, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA)
Gyanendra Pandey (Professor of Anthropology and History, Johns 
Hopkins University, USA)
Anuradha Dingwaney Needham (Professor, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Tadhg Foley (Professor, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland)
Anupama Rao (Asst. Professor, History, Barnard College, Columbia 
University, USA)
Shabnum Tejani (Lecturer, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA)
Tayyab Mahmud (Professor of Law, Cleveland State University, Ohio, USA)
Raza Mir (Professor of Management, Monmouth University, USA)
Ali Mir ( Assoc. Professor of Information Systems, Monmouth University, USA)
Biju Mathew (Prof. of Information Systems, Rider University, USA)
Srimati Basu (Asst. Professor, Anthropology, De Pauw University, Indiana, USA)
Zoe Shernin (Asst. Professor Music, University of Oklahoma, USA)
Bhaskar Sarkar ( Asst. Professor, Film Studies, UC Santa Barbara, USA)
Amitava Kumar (Assoc. Professor, English, Penn State University, USA)
Bishnupriya Ghosh (Assistant Professor, English, UC Davis, USA)
Manu Bhagvan, ( Asst. Professor Manchester College, USA)
Suchi Kapila (Asst. Professor, Keynon College, Ohio, USA)
Sanjay Ruparelia (Cambridge University, UK)
Wendy Kazd (Assoc. Professor, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Jennifer Bryan (Asst. Professor, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Ravindran Sriramachandran (Columbia University, New York, USA)
Sivakumar Arumugam (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Teena Purohit (Columbia University, New York, USA)
Neelam Srivastava ( Student, Oxford University, UK)
Poornima Paidipaty (Columbia University, New York, USA)
Malvika Kasturi (History Dept., Oberlin College, Ohio)
Priya Kumar (Asst. Professor, University of Iowa, USA)
Arvind Rajagopal (Assoc. Professor New York University, USA)
Josna Rege (English Department, Dartmouth College. columia 
University, New York)
Rajan Krishnan (Columbia University, New York, USA)
Amardeeep Singh (Lehigh University, USA)
Christi A Merrill (Asst. Professor South Asian Literature, University 
of Michigan, USA)
Jyotika Virdi (Asst. Professor, film/media studies, University of 
Windsor, Canada)
Harsh Kapoor (South Asia Citizens Web, France)
Dwaipayan Sen (Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Shahana Siddiqui (Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Rashne Limki (Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Pamela de Bourg (Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Sarah Green (Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)
Morgon Williams ( Oberlin College, Ohio, USA)

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#2.

ndtv.com

Monuments in Gujarat bear brunt of communal hatred

NDTV Correspondent
Thursday, April 25, 2002 (Ahmedabad):
An estimated 300 monuments in Gujarat have been completely destroyed 
or defiled in the recent communal riots and conservationists warn 
that unless restoration work on these sites starts soon, they may be 
lost forever.
Although the Gujarat government has said it will act upon the NHRC's 
recommendations to restore these monuments, no work has yet started 
on this.
For all practical purposes, the final resting place of Vali Gujarati 
never existed. Nearly two months after the tomb of this 18th century 
poet widely regarded as the father of Urdu poetry was desecrated, all 
traces of it have been covered by tar. In fact, this is the case with 
around 300 monuments across Gujarat.
While places of worship have been more common targets, cultural 
places like graves of poets, writers and musicians have not been 
spared either.
Even wayside shrines revered by people from Hindu and Muslim 
communities have been destroyed. The irony is that while the nature 
of these attacks are clearly communal, the architecture of many 
monuments in Gujarat reflects the close synthesis of different 
cultures.
According to Prof R J Vasawada, an architect, "Historically speaking, 
the city represents a very strong synthesis coming out of different 
cultures. This synthesis is really the strength of the region. What 
is happening right now is that people are simply talking in terms of 
two different religions but nobody is talking of the strength which 
came out of this synthesis of cultures."
Turbulent times [...]
http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=Gujaratviolence&slug=Gujarat+monuments+targets+of+mob+frenzy&id=8945&callid=0

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#3.

The Christian Science Monitor
April 25, 2002 edition

INDIA WATCHES QUIETLY AS COMMUNAL RIOTS INTENSIFY
Yesterday, thousands fled to relief camps, as India's government 
faces pressure to stop the violence.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

AHMEDABAD, INDIA - After seven weeks and 900 deaths, the communal 
riots in Gujarat show no signs of stopping. In fact, the police here 
and many locals were simply watching yesterday as a few dozen Hindu 
hoodlums broke into Muslim-owned shops and hurled the contents into 
the street before setting the shops aflame.

Out on the Mahatma Gandhi bridge, which crosses the Sabarmati River, 
Hindus have stopped their cars to watch the smoke rise above the 
Muslim parts of town. Some have brought plastic bags of salty snacks, 
as if this were a movie.

"This is only for a short period," assures Rajesh Modi, a 
well-dressed accountant from Ahmedabad. "The violence will come down 
in one or two months."

The riots of Gujarat may have begun as revenge for the torching by a 
Muslim mob of a Hindu-crowded train in the Gujarati town of Godhra 
Feb. 27, but they now have clearly taken on a momentum of their own.

The violence comes in a state that pro-Hindu parties consider a 
laboratory of the philosophy of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness, and where 
Hindu politicians increasingly tell the Muslim and other minorities 
to know their place. While state leaders say the law-and-order 
situation has largely returned to normal, the continued death toll 
suggests otherwise. The effects, both on the local economy and on 
India's international image, have been immense. The inability of 
officials to stop the violence raises serious questions about future 
communal harmony in a state that Mahatma Gandhi once called home.

"To know why this is happening in Gujarat, you have to know that 
Gujarat has the largest proportion of petit bourgeoisie, the 
shopkeepers and small businessmen," says Prem Shankar Jha, a veteran 
political analyst and senior columnist for Outlook magazine.

Small businessmen "have always been the breeding grounds of fascism," 
Mr. Jha continues. "Owner-managed small businesses always feel the 
least control over [their] future. That breeds a certain insecurity, 
and they become extremely biased against people they see as a threat."

The communal strife and the accusations that state leaders are 
encouraging the rioters has caused some aid groups, including the 
European Commission, to question whether they should continue sending 
aid.
[...]
Indeed, even the rioters are well dressed. While the police tend to 
blame the violence on a small group of "miscreants," most of the 
rioters outside the police station wear designer jeans, Western 
sneakers, and the obligatory handkerchief across the face. Behind 
them, businessmen in shirts and ties and housewives in silk saris 
watch the excitement, showing no desire to stop the violence. [,,,]

Full Text at : http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0425/p06s02-wosc.html

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#4.

Economic and Political Weekly
April 20, 2002
Commentary

Communal Upheaval as Resurgence of Social Darwinism

There can be no two opinions about the well-entrenched nature of the 
Hindutva movement and its predecessors in Gujarat, strongly opposed 
to communal harmony and to the design of society as a melting pot of 
diverse and open-ended social segments. However, this explanation of 
the recent tragic events in the state has to be contextualised within 
the changing political economy of Gujarat. The comments that follow 
relate to Ahmedabad, the primary location of many of the horrors that 
have been reported.

Jan Breman

The recent pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat was not the first I have 
observed from close quarters. The wave of communal violence engulfing 
the state after the destruction of the Ayodhya temple coincided with 
a round of rural and urban research in which I was engaged during 
late 1992 and early 1993. I wrote on the shock and dismay in the 
village of my fieldwork when the news arrived of the urban carnage 
taking place in Mumbai, and on the state of disorder which still 
prevailed in Surat and Ahmedabad during my subsequent stays in these 
cities.1

In Spring 2002, the religious cleansing operation has been more 
severe, larger in scale and longer lasting than on earlier occasions, 
mainly because the state apparatus - both the leading political party 
and government agencies - condoned or even facilitated the pogrom, 
rather than stopped it, while it was taking place in late February 
and early March. The breakdown of civic society has been discussed 
from various angles, such as the unique history of Gujarat with 
deep-seated lines of fission between religious majority and 
minority, a progressive state of flux in the caste balance caused by 
upward mobility and the concomitant assertion of the middle class, or 
finally the character of the region as a cultural frontier.

I myself am inclined to give a lot of weight to the well-entrenched 
nature of the Hindutva movement and its predecessors in this part of 
the country, strongly opposed to communal harmony and to the design 
of society as a melting pot of diverse and open-ended social 
segments. The mobilisation of low and intermediate castes to 
participate in the activities of the Sangh parivar organisations in 
the last two decades has broadened the base of Hindu fundamentalism 
as a social-political force. The price these previously denigrated 
segments have to pay for their acceptance within the Hindutva fold is 
their willingness to express antagonism to Muslims as members of the 
religious minority and, in brutal acts of confrontation, to do the 
dirty work of cleansing on behalf of their high-caste brothers and 
sisters. The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are intricately 
interwoven.

However, this explanation also has to be contextualised within the 
changing political economy of Gujarat. My following comments relate 
to Ahmedabad, the primary location of many of the horrors that have 
been reported. Since 1998 I have been carrying out research in 
localities in the city which used to be marked by the smoking 
chimneys of textile mills, many of which had a history of production 
for close to, or even more than, a hundred years. To this branch of 
industry Ahmedabad owed its fame as the Manchester of India. That 
proud record came to an end when, from the early 1980s onwards, these 
factories started to close their gates. Twenty years later more than 
50 mills have stopped production and, in this still ongoing crisis, 
at least one lakh workers have lost their jobs. While around the 
middle of the 20th century half of the city's workforce used to earn 
its livelihood from employment in the composite textile enterprises 
dominating the industrial landscape, this percentage has now dwindled 
to a tiny fraction.

The dismissed workers were driven into the informal sector of the 
economy, to depend on casual rather than regular jobs, requiring no 
or only minimum skills, remunerated with very low wages and paid, 
moreover, not on time but on piece rate. Hired for hardly more than 
15 to 20 days per month, most of them have been forced to strengthen 
the economy of their household by bringing former dependents, women 
and also young children, into the labouring process. Even all these 
efforts combined generally result in a life standard far below the 
poverty level. In the process of immiseratisation the erstwhile mill 
workers have been made to surrender the regularity, stability and 
dignity they used to enjoy in the formal sector of the economy.2

Pauperisation is not only contained within the sphere of these 
households but has become publicly visible in the run-down quality of 
the industrial localities in and around the old city centre. In 
contrast to the new prosperity displayed so glamorously in the 
middle-class neighbourhoods on the right bank of the Sabarmati river, 
the low-income districts on the left bank, inhabited by a huge labour 
reserve army of underemployed own-account producers, home workers and 
casualised wage earners, have been thoroughly deprived of their 
former economic dominance and vitality.

The closure of the textile mills has resulted in more than just 
massive loss of earnings and employment. Hardly less dramatic is the 
collapse of the social infrastructure that has accompanied it. It is 
certainly not a coincidence that the orgy of violence that has taken 
place in Ahmedabad since the end of February seems to have reached a 
climax in ex-mill localities populated by social segments from which 
a major part of this industrial workforce used to be recruited: 
subaltern Hindus (mainly dalits, OBCs and intermediate castes, 
especially patels) and Muslims.

Whenever communal tensions have flared up and erupted in street riots 
in the past, these clashes could be defused by appealing to working 
class solidarity, which transcended the boundaries of primordial 
loyalties. The social consciousness produced by factorised employment 
did not arise spontaneously but had been built up during the social 
struggle in which the Majoor Mahajan Sangh played a pivotal role. 
Over a period of many decades this famous trade union, established in 
1920 as the outcome of a strike led by Mahatma Gandhi, successfully 
galvanised the collective interest of workers in the textile 
industry. Preaching an ideology of class harmony instead of class 
conflict and with unconditional acceptance of the composite character 
of its membership, the Gandhian leaders of this social movement 
aroused the need for concerted action and tried to scale down more 
parochial interests along lines of caste and religion.

No doubt, there were communal disturbances also then. When riots 
broke out in 1969 the police agreed to set up a control room at the 
headquarters of the trade union and on the basis of messages received 
by phone from its cadre in the mill localitities the leadership kept 
the authorities informed about the latest incidents. The factories 
had stopped production but on the third day of the riots the call 
came for members of the MSS to report back to duty. Workers of the 
same shift but with different caste and religious identities were 
told to go to the mills and back home in mixed batches in order to 
safeguard each other's well-being. Nowadays there is hardly any space 
left for that sort of intercommunal sharing and mutual protection. 
The union which at that time with more than 1,50,000 members was one 
of the largest and best organised in the country is a spent force, 
reduced to less than one-tenth of its former strength and depleted of 
all economic and political power. In mid-March 2002, with parts of 
the city still under curfew, I met the secretary-general in his 
office, a big building once vibrant with activity but which now 
stands desolate in the heart of the old city. This veteran, at the 
age of 88 years and in failing health, told me with anguish how a 
fortnight ago he had endeavoured for many hours to reach the police 
commissioner as well as prominent politicians. When he received no 
response to his incessant calls on February 28, he realised that the 
state machinery deliberately refused to give shelter to the victims 
and to protect life and property when the rampage of killing and 
looting was at its worst. In the relentless drive towards a regime of 
informality as the dominant mode of employment, labour appears to 
have forfeited not just its economic value, bargaining power and 
dignity. In vain this Gandhian stalwart had tried to persuade his 
office staff, cut down from its former impressive size to a few 
helpers, to come along with him on a tour of the industrial 
localities in order to pacify the incited mob. In addition to their 
blunt refusal to go out into the streets they also warned him against 
risking his life on such a hopeless mission.

The trade union movement which used to be the main platform for 
collective action has withered away. Neither have other kinds of 
social movements been able to stem the rising tide of communalism. 
Apart from a few exceptions the wide variety of non-government 
organisations in Ahmedabad which claim to represent civic society 
remained by and large lethargic under the communal onslaught. In the 
words of one commentator:

The space, which allows, mediates and keeps alive the possibility of 
dialogues, seems to have disappeared from our social, cultural, 
political and even our educational life [my note: in Gujarat]. Public 
life has become so implicated and impoverished that in the face of 
crisis there is no one individual or collective which can exercise 
moral authority and rescue the dialogic space.3

At Sabarmati

This state of paralysis could not have been better illustrated than 
by the decision of the board of the Sabarmati ashram to close its 
gates when the violence spread through the city on February 28. Where 
the founding father of this institution would not have hesitated to 
rush to the scene of the 'hoollad', the lame excuse of the ashram's 
trustees was that they had to protect Gandhi's heritage. The way 
they did this betrayed the very ideals the Mahatma stood for all his 
life and which in the end also became the cause of his death.

The MMS did not merely negotiate better labour standards with the 
captains of the textile industry in the city. Throughout much of the 
20th century, a large outreach staff worked together with social 
workers assigned by municipal agencies to dignify the circumstances 
of the working class by promoting a wide range of welfare practices - 
such as sport clubs, reading rooms, classes for adult education, 
family care and counselling courses, day nurseries, primary health 
centres - in the mill localities. All these activities naturally 
became meeting points, which facilitated interaction between people 
of different identities. The 'Other' was not at a distance but highly 
visible and touchable as a workmate, a neighbour or a friend with 
whom close contact was maintained both within and outside the mill. 
This mesh of social cohesion that transcended the separate niches of 
caste and religion broke down once the MSS started to fade away and 
municipal welfare agencies, due to lack of funding, had to cease or 
drastically curtail their activities.

The trend towards spatial segregation which already began several 
decades ago should be understood as both cause and effect of the 
erosion of intercommunal networks. The formation of ghettos has taken 
place within and beyond the neighbourhood. In the first round 
segregation came about at the level of the locality itself, as people 
moved to blocks inhabited by members of the same community or faith. 
Living together creates the illusion of having found adequate shelter 
and a feigned ability to resist in case of attack. In this 
restructured setting streets become zones of demarcation. In times of 
unrest, crossing from one side to the other means putting your life 
at risk. Nevertheless, bridges are kept intact by peace-makers on 
both sides who discretely exchange information on what to do or not 
to do, even at the height of the upheaval. They try to keep their own 
youngsters, who are eager to make mischief, in check and agree on 
rules of engagement or disengagement. Passing from one zone to the 
next during the latest round of mayhem, one cannot but be impressed 
by the quality of the grass roots leadership and the goodwill that 
continues to exist between people now separated but who still 
remember the years when they used to work and live together. One 
Muslim in Gomtipur, a former jobber in a textile mill, narrated his 
nightmarish experiences but added that he refused to see Hindus as 
his enemy. He was sure that the large majority of them, on his count 
four out of five, did not wish him harm. As a matter of fact, a few 
hours before the signal for the hunt on Muslims spread like wildfire, 
a Hindu friend had phoned with the urgent warning to stay at home and 
see to the safety of his family. With trusted friends like this one, 
he was accustomed to sharing food, participating in their rituals and 
celebrating festivities in the house.

In the second round of ghettoisation, members of the minority are 
driven out of localities in which they themselves have lived all 
their lives, and often generations before them. I witnessed and 
described such instances of collective deportation during my stay in 
Ahmedabad in early 1993.4 Also this time there are reports of 
large-scale treks of members of the minority fleeing to marginal 
sites on the outskirts of the city. Juhapura, on the right bank of 
the river, has emerged as a huge Muslim enclave. It is an overcrowded 
district which has been inundated with many tens of thousands of 
refugees in a short period of time. The area is known popularly as 
'mini Pakistan' and most of the people living there seem to have slid 
into a state of utter deprivation. In the mind of the Hindu outsider, 
they constitute an anonymous mass. It is with reference to such alien 
landscapes at remote distances from more 'civilised' parts of the 
city that the Other is constructed as having neither name nor face 
and becomes demonised as an anti-social, criminal underclass which 
cannot be accepted as part and parcel of mainstream society.

No End in Sight

The end of the Hindutva politics of exclusion is not yet in sight. 
Before my departure from Ahmedabad, I acquired a pamphlet urging the 
Hindu majority to avoid all economic transactions with Muslims. The 
call for a total boycott - don't buy from their shops or engage in 
business with them, don't employ or be employed by Muslims - is not a 
new one and the same message of systematic discrimination already 
circulated in previous rounds of communal rioting. There is also the 
appeal in the text to Hindu men to keep their daughters and sisters 
under close scrutiny lest they fall prey to the lust of the bestial 
Other. The hatred radiating from these sentences is as ignominious 
for the targeted males as it is for the females belonging to the 
majority, who are portrayed as lacking the will and the capability to 
be in charge of their own virtue. One could, of course, argue that 
the separate niches occupied by Hindus and Muslims in the labour 
market militate against exclusion from economic life of a newly 
created segment of untouchables. I am not so sure that such a plan of 
action, contingent upon a more comprehensive blueprint and backed up 
by the kind of intimidation we have already witnessed, would prove to 
be abortive in the end.

The design does not seem to be so dissimilar from what happened 
during the initial phase of the Nazi regime in Germany. Prior to the 
actual elimination of Jewish people from mainstream society by the 
state, their property was identified and either destroyed or 
confiscated. In the latest orgy of violence in Ahmedabad, which 
combined a killing spree with the selective and ruthless destruction 
of Muslim shops, garages and other business establishments, I see a 
notable resemblance to the Kristallnacht in the early 1930s when the 
policy of German Nazification began in earnest. Seen from that 
perspective it is quite alarming to observe the complete absence of 
feelings of shame and remorse among those who propagated or 
participated in the Ahmedabad onslaught after the worst of the pogrom 
was over. The dominant mood was rather one of glee and satisfaction, 
or even a sense of fulfilment, expressed in statements such as 'they 
had it coming' or 'they got what they deserved'. The chairman of the 
VHP in Ahmedabad went on record as proudly claiming that 'it had to 
be done'.5 What sort of future does the Sangh parivar leadership have 
in store for the religious minority in the country? As second-class 
citizens, as the apex body of the RSS made clear at a recent 
Bangalore meeting: 'Let the Muslims understand that their real safety 
lies in the goodwill of the majority'. Such phrases come dangerously 
close to labelling them as Untermenschen.

Both first-hand reporters and more analytical commentators have 
squarely laid the blame for the communal upheaval in Ahmedabad on the 
proponents of the Hindutva movement, helped by the power of the state 
- which, in Gujarat, happens to be under control of the BJP. Although 
I have no qualms about accepting that verdict, my argument is that 
the viciousness of Hindu fundamentalism still needs a follow-up 
explanation which takes into consideration the globalised nature of 
the political economy that has emerged. The welfare capitalism that 
was both cause and outcome of the emancipation of labour in the 
Atlantic part of the world from the end of the 19th century onwards 
arose out of a specific mode of production, distribution and 
consumption which, in retrospect, proved to be time-bound and did not 
spread to the colonised economies. During the struggle for national 
freedom in the first half of the 20th century the Indian leaders made 
promises to the working class for a better deal. The new society to 
be shaped after the end of foreign rule would be just and fair to 
all. Although repeated again and again this pledge has fallen into 
abeyance in the post-colonial era. The brand of lumpen capitalism 
that came to dominate in the so-called development decades is based 
on an ideology of social-Darwinism, could not care less about the 
urgent need to raise labour standards and shows precious little 
interest in increasing the dignity of the working poor.

In a recent essay on how the regime of neo-liberalism has worsened 
the plight of labour at the bottom of Ahmedabad's urban economy, I 
concluded that:

Gujarat could be understood as an experiment for trying out what will 
happen to state and society under a policy regime which does not 
attempt to harness the most brutal consequences of a market-led mode 
of capitalist production. The total eclipse of the kind of Gandhian 
values which, for the better part of the last century were so 
important in the promotion of a public image both within and outside 
the country, has also led to the shrinking of social space needed for 
humanising economic growth. The disappearance of a climate leaning 
towards social democracy and tolerance has been accompanied by an 
increase in communal hate politics.6

Effect on Labour

Public order had not yet been restored when I left the city close to 
the end of March. The curfew was lifted in some parts of the city one 
day, only to be reimposed the next day in the same or other 
localities because new incidents had occurred. There has been hardly 
any discussion of what all this has meant for the large number of 
working class households who fully depend for their daily subsistence 
on the erratic and meagre yield of their labour power. Even under 
so-called normal circumstances steady employment is difficult to come 
by, but for more than three weeks at a stretch now these people have 
not been able to move around in their cumbersome search for gainful 
work. For many of them the regular state of deprivation in which they 
live has further deteriorated into destitution. Without any food 
reserves left and bereft of all creditworthiness, they have to 
survive on whatever private charities are willing to dole out to 
them. It comes as no surprise that the front organisations of the 
Sangh parivar were able to mobilise mercenaries from this lumpenised 
milieu of subaltern castes to assist in the operation of killing, 
burning and looting.

One should, however, be careful when implying that underprivileged 
segments in the underbelly of urban (or for that matter rural) 
society can easily be incited to engage in indiscriminate and 
sustained combat against each other. Indicative is the recent change 
in meaning of the term communal. The riots which broke out in the 
early 1980s were a reaction by the high and intermediate castes 
against the reservation policy introduced by the Congress government 
to favour their clientele from the lower social classes. The first 
anti-reservation agitation targeted the dalits, while the second 
round of the same backlash which erupted in 1985 included the OBCs 
which stood to gain from the proposed expansion in the system of 
reservation. While the notion of communal until then tended to refer 
to frictions between top and bottom of the caste hierarchy, the 
social forces pushing the Hindutva agenda gave a different slant to 
the term by propagating the unity (although most certainly not on 
par) of Hindus high and low. In their guidelines for societal 
reconstruction, inferiority and subjugation were coined as the 
exclusive stigma of Muslims. It remains to be seen whether, as part 
of a long-term strategy - if not dictated then at least inspired by 
the interests of classes higher up in society - the fragmented 
segments of the labouring poor can be trusted to go on waging war 
against each other. Particularly in the localities inhabited by 
dalits it is not only possible to detect remnants of a previous 
class-based solidarity but there is the realistic awareness that in a 
next round of violence they might again be at the receiving end of 
the discriminatory policies that have been practised by the powers 
that be from generation to generation. Of undiminished and even 
striking relevance here is the observation with which Gooptu ends her 
study of the urban poor in India at the beginning of the 20th century:

...in the case of the untouchable or the Muslim poor, their caste 
status and religious affiliation further reinforced their 
stigmatisation and social exclusion by the urban upper and middle 
classes, who were predominantly higher-caste Hindu, and included 
orthodox commercial groups as employers of labour and as zealous 
promoters of Hindu revitalisation movements. All sections of the poor 
in varying degrees found themselves culturally and socially 
distanced, at times even physically segregated as the middle classes 
retreated into the safe havens of new urban residential areas.7

We need historical reports not only for the sake of writing the 
chronicles of today's events, but also to get an idea of things to 
come. Accounts with a focus on la longue duree might give us a handle 
on the kind of future we are heading for, or drifting towards.

Notes
1 See 'Rural Impressions of the Urban Carnage' The Times of India, 
mid-January 1993; 'An Anti-Muslim Pogrom in Surat' in Economic and 
Political Weekly, Vol 28, No 16, 1993:737-41; 'Ghettoisation and 
Communal Politics; Inclusion and Exclusion in the Hindutva Landscape' 
in R Guha and J Parry (eds), Institutions and Inequalities; Essays in 
Honour of Andre Beteille, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1999:259-83.
2 J Breman - A Turn for the Worse: The Closure of the Ahmedabad 
Textile Mills and the Retrenchment of the Workforce, Wertheim Annual 
Lecture 12. Centre for Asian Studies, Amsterdam School of Social 
Science Research. University of Amsterdam 2001.
3 T Suhrud - 'No Room for Dialogue' in Economic and Political Weekly, 
Vol 37, No 11, 2002: 1011-12.
4 See J Breman in Guha and Parry 1999 oc.
5 S Bhatt, 'VHP's Startling Revelation' in Mainstream, Vol 40, No 13, 
March 16, 2002.
6 See the S Chakravarty Memorial Lecture which I delivered on 
November 16, 2001 at the Delhi School of Economic Growth. The text of 
the lecture is part of a larger essay 'An Informalised Labour System; 
End of Labour Market Dualism', published in Economic and Political 
Weekly, Vol 35, No 52, 2001:4804-21.
7 N Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early 
Twentieth-Century, India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 
2001:420.

______

#5.

Indian Express, Friday, April 26, 2002

SANGH IS WAITING FOR, BAITING A BACKLASH
The Gujarat government's seeming indifference to the riot victims 
thronging refugee camps in the state masks a far more sinister 
agenda: push the minority against the wall, then watch the backlash
Swami Agnivesh & Reverend Valson Thampu
http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=1536

______

#6.

The Telegraph
26 April 2002

MOUSE MIGHTIER THAN MISSILE FOR RIOTS SAMARITANS

FROM SUJAN DUTTA

New Delhi, April 25:
When a mob surrounded his locality on the night of February 28 and 
frantic calls to the police through the day elicited little response, 
Salim Sheikh of Bapunagar, Ahmedabad, logged on to the Internet and 
sent e-mails to friends in his city and elsewhere in the country in 
the hope that someone somewhere would act as messiah.

Sheikh, an activist of the Ahmedabad-based civil rights group, Jan 
Sangharsh Manch, kept sending reports right till the early morning of 
March 1. Sheikh's live messages were among the inputs along with 
reports on arson in a slum in Gomtipur that went into a petition 
drafted by lawyer Mukul Sinha against Gujarat police.

In the weeks that followed, the police have been persuading Sinha to 
withdraw the petition that names a police officer and gives his 
vehicle registration number, but Sinha and his group have been 
adamant.

Activist groups have used the Internet to send across their messages 
in the wake of the pogrom in Gujarat like never before in this 
country. Indeed, the use of the Internet in the campaign against the 
pogrom is comparable to the messages sent out via e-mail by dissident 
groups in China in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings.

Tens of hundreds of e-mails, photographs and write-ups have been sent 
and received by students, academics, journalists, professionals and 
almost everyone with regular access to the Net. Much of the mail has 
detailed the grisly killings in Gujarat. A substantial number are 
debates and discussions involving Internet users across the globe.

They have contributed to the wave of revulsion among professionals, 
challenging the secular credentials of the Vajpayee government in a 
way that has not happened since the NDA assumed power.

The deluge of e-mails on Gujarat has not been from activist groups 
alone. Individuals with little or no political allegiance have used 
the Net and the anonymity it provides to fuel the campaign against 
the Hindutva brigade which itself is sophisticated in its propaganda 
and extremely Net savvy.

This week, a team from the Editors' Guild of India that returned from 
a visit to Gujarat has noted that e-mail, along with television, has 
contributed in very large measure to the coverage of the violence.

"The e-mail and the SMS on mobiles have been used extensively in 
Gujarat to spread information or disinformation on the events," says 
Dileep Padgaonkar, a member of the team.

In 1989, after Chinese government forces mowed down students in 
Tiananmen Square, the defining image of the event was that of a lone 
protester, flag in hand, trying to stop a tank.

The defining image of the Gujarat carnage following Godhra has been 
that of a Muslim youth pleading with folded hands to the police for 
help. But along with it, the idea of a man, sitting in a slum in an 
Ahmedabad ghetto, typing out e-mails as his locality is being 
attacked and burnt, must rank as a triumph for the Internet in India.

"In 1989, at the time of the events in Tiananmen Square, the Internet 
was used only by a few researchers and pro-democracy agitationists in 
China; the World Wide Web was yet to be used, there was no browser 
around," says information warfare consultant Ravi Visveswaraya Prasad.

"Now, there is the idea that the 'mouse is more powerful than the 
missile'. Any individual can broadcast anything he likes without much 
care for credibility. Even party organs exercise greater restraint. 
The Internet is free-for-all and in issues of a sensitive nature, 
reliance on the Internet is dicey because, even in the case of 
Gujarat, pro and anti-Muslim groups have been using it 
no-holds-barred."

While few take the credibility of all the material floating about the 
Internet as gospel truth, the sheer wealth of material and the 
freedom of choice it offers are valuable inputs today for researchers 
and writers who are even sourcing information and giving credit to 
websites.

This has also come to be accepted by major academic publishers. And, 
this is where the pro-Hindutva campaigners have lost out in the 
propaganda war over Gujarat despite having realised the potential of 
the Net earlier.

Among those who have been instrumental for this is Paris-based social 
activist Harsh Kapoor, who runs the South Asia Citizen's Web.

"I personally don't think there has been an astoundingly successful 
anti-Hindutva campaign by secular groups. But we have broken some 
ground. The Hindutva circuit has used the net to peddle its ideas 
since 1993, in ways that the wide range of secular groups didn't. But 
since the late 1990's many secular initiatives have run highly 
successful campaigns. My own artisanal SACW 
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/) and 
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/act/) started in the mid 1990's grew 
dramatically in popularity after the 1998 N tests," he writes in an 
e-mail.

"And since then many other groups have emerged and are doing a 
formidable job. I would name, Sabrang / Communalism Combat in Bombay; 
South Asia Citizens Wire & South Asia citizens Web; BJP govt watch or 
Saccer.org [a bit inactive now] these had some of the older web sites 
and mailing lists."

Among the main target groups of activist groups in India using the 
Net has been the audience in the West, where the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad itself operates a sophisticated network.

The flood of messages out of India has been driving a schism in this 
support base to the extent that the e-mails have helped mobilise 
numbers to organise protests outside Indian missions abroad.

______

#7.

Indian democracy is under grave threat. Our people
have witnessed a major assault on the democratic and
secular foundation of the country. Even today the
violence is continuuing in Gujarat, with thousands
lying in relief camps with no hope of rehabilitation.

We are organising a Round Table conference on the
GUJARAT CARNAGE 2002 on

Friday, April 26

and would be very grateful if you could spare the
time to participate.

We hope to confirm your presence at Committee Room I,
India International Centre, Lodhi Estate on April 26
at 3p.m. sharp.

> Anuradha Chenoy
> Kamal Mitra Chenoy
> Seema Mustafa
> SP Shukla
> KS Subramanian
> Achin Vanaik

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