SACW | 26 Apr 2006

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 26 April, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2241

[1]  Nepal: Revolution comes to South Asia (Aasim Sajjad Akhtar)
[2]  Pakistan damaged Kashmir or vice versa? (Editorial, Daily Times)
[3]  India - Pakistan:  Lifting The Film (Editorial, The Telegraph)
[4]  Do India's Socialists have a future, after all? (Praful Bidwai)
[5]  India: On Dissent and Democracy (Shiv Visvanathan)
[6]  India:  Narmada Bacho Andolan Demands Clarifications From Prime Minister
[7]  USA: Hindutva Defeated Again in California Courts
[8]  National Rally Against Forced Evictions And 
Dispossession (New Delhi, 28th April)
       Candle Light Vigil (New Delhi, 30th April)

___

[1]  

The News International
April 25, 2006

REVOLUTION COMES TO SOUTH ASIA
by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

The writer is a political activist associated 
with the People's Rights Movement. He also 
teaches colonial history and political economy at 
LUMS

Over the past few years, radicals and idealists 
of all stripes have invoked Latin America time 
and again when responding to the by now familiar 
'we are saving the world for democracy' rhetoric 
of the Bushs and Blairs of the world. The 
radicals and idealists have asserted - quite 
rightly - that the arguably revolutionary 
upheavals taking place across the Latin American 
continent suggest that class struggle is alive 
and well, in spite of the best efforts to make it 
disappear with the magic wand of hype and 
propaganda in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's 
disintegration.

But it has been difficult to ignore the fact that 
the re-emergence of a working class politics has 
been largely confined to Latin America. While 
many have hoped for the emergence of 
anti-systemic mass movements in other parts of 
the post-colonial world, upheavals like those in 
Latin America have yet to materialise.

The remarkable explosion of popular protest in 
tiny Nepal has rocked not only that small 
country's royal establishment but also the ruling 
class in much of South Asia and beyond. There has 
been political unrest in Nepal for well over a 
decade. But, as with all revolutionary processes, 
very few observers could have predicted in 
advance the swell of mass protest that has 
gripped the country in recent weeks. And as with 
all such revolutionary processes, it is 
impossible at this juncture to predict exactly 
how events will pan out.

It is a measure of the vitality of the political 
process in Nepal that all of the opposition 
parties have come together to voice the sentiment 
of the people. Included in the current consensus 
are the Maoist guerrillas who the king and his 
henchmen have always insisted represent the 
greatest threat to Nepal's security and progress.

The people of Nepal, in their own right and 
through the political parties recognise that 
their very existence and credibility is dependent 
on the people's will, and have made it very clear 
that they consider the king the biggest threat to 
Nepal's security and progress. The defiance of 
curfews by ordinary Nepalese is ultimately a 
defiance of an obsolete authority whose time to 
go has come. It is no surprise that the coercive 
institutions of the state that have been propping 
up the king - including the police and the army 
-have rapidly been rendered impotent by the loss 
of morale within the ranks.

That revolution has spread from Latin American 
and come to South Asia is immensely important. It 
is important because all such processes have 
contagious effects. In most of the region, a 
similar brand of organic and popular politics 
already exists. For example, in recent times 
activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) 
have once again garnered centre-stage in India 
through their principled protest against the 
three-decade-old Sardar Sarovar Project that has 
already inflicted enormous social and ecological 
destruction in large parts of Central and West 
India.

Bangladesh is home to a perennial politics of 
democratic dissent. Sri Lanka, even though it 
continues to suffer from the effects of 
deep-rooted ethnic strife, also has a 
well-established tradition of progressive 
politics. The current revolutionary process in 
Nepal will no doubt encourage the left in these 
countries to push forward, to build upon the 
gains that have been made by working people over 
many decades, and to build as formidable a 
challenge to their governments - that continue to 
face a crisis of legitimacy - as the Nepalese 
people have done.

However, the uprising in Nepal is also important 
because it sends a message to the American empire 
and its stooges across the sub-continent that the 
people of the region are alive and kicking, and 
that machinations of power will not go 
unanswered. At a time when the rhetoric of peace 
is being used and abused by all and sundry, the 
Nepalese people have made it clear that there can 
be no peace where there is injustice and tyranny. 
The imperialist peace is never a genuine peace, 
and the stooge governments in South Asia would do 
well to bear this in mind.

However, in spite of the overall sense of 
euphoria that necessarily exists when an organic 
revolutionary process is unfolding in front of 
our very eyes, one cannot help but lament the 
fact that politics in Pakistan is so unlike that 
in the rest of the region. Arguably the only 
politics in Pakistan that has retained a popular 
dimension is that of the oppressed nationalities, 
the most notable of these at this particular 
conjuncture being the Baloch.

The oppressed nationalities continue to clamour 
for the establishment of a genuine federalist 
form of government as has been promised by the 
ruling establishment from the country's 
inception. But the politics of ethno-nationalism 
is, in its logical culmination, inherently 
divisive. If it is to take on a progressive edge, 
it needs to be infused with a politics that views 
oppression and exploitation as a phenomenon that 
is not limited to particular ethno-national 
groups, while recognising that historical 
circumstances dictate that some ethno-national 
groups are more oppressed than others.

Such a politics is currently on show in Nepal, 
and is a force in India, Sri Lanka and 
Bangladesh. As suggested at the outset, such a 
politics is sweeping across Latin America. 
Indeed, around the world, the radical left is on 
the rebound, even if it is a left very different 
from that which preceded it. Yet such a politics 
is conspicuous by its absence in Pakistan. If one 
is prone to optimism, it could be posited that 
the Nepalese example will also have an effect on 
Pakistanis. Then again, hoping is insufficient; 
it is struggle that produces change.

This is not to suggest that there are no 
struggles for justice and dignity in Pakistan. In 
fact there are innumerable such struggles that 
have existed in the past, continue to exist now, 
and will do so in the future as well. What really 
needs to be considered is why these struggles 
remain fragmented and weak. The answer is that - 
to some extent or the other - the myth of the 
indivisible monolith of Pakistani nationalism 
remains intact. The political entities that 
project themselves as committed to the cause of 
democracy take refuge in the same symbols of 
jingoism (read: Kashmir and the bomb) that have 
propped up oligarchic rule and the stupefying 
hegemony of Pakistan's security. If there is 
resistance to these myths, it is most often 
expressed - as pointed out above - in the idiom 
of ethno-nationalism that on its own will never 
be enough to challenge ruling class hegemony.

Put more simply: At the end of the day, what the 
Nepalese people have shown - as every such mass 
movement necessarily implies - is that they 
believe that their collective struggle will lead 
to change, a change that is genuine and of their 
own making. To the extent that they continue to 
believe this, their struggle will continue and so 
will the process of change. Pakistanis for the 
most part are victims of a distinct apathy that 
privileges sifarish and jaan-pehchaan over 
collective struggle. Until we too, like our 
neighbours, start to believe that we can change 
our collective fate, revolution will remain so 
close yet so far away.

____

[2]

Daily Times
April 25, 2006

EDITORIAL: PAKISTAN DAMAGED KASHMIR OR VICE VERSA?

Syed Salahuddin, the Islamabad-based leader of 
Hizbul Mujahideen, the Indian-held Kashmir-based 
freedom-fighting militia, has said that Pakistan 
has caused "irreparable damage" to the cause of 
Kashmiri fighters by pursuing peace with India 
without winning more concessions from it. He 
repeated the line taken by the opposition in 
Pakistan when he said, "One-sided pragmatism and 
confidence building measures, which are not 
reciprocated by the Indian side, have caused 
irreparable damage to the ongoing freedom 
struggle in the (Kashmir) Valley". He accused the 
Musharraf regime of appearing to be "exhausted in 
extending support to the Kashmir cause".

Pakistan's "official" line has always been that 
it is not extending any military or financial 
assistance to the Kashmiri freedom fighters and 
that its support remains essentially moral. Of 
course, no one has believed this "line". The fact 
is that it has indirectly "intervened" in 
Indian-held Kashmir through the so-called 
mujahideen who trained on territory under 
Pakistani control. And many objective observers 
actually say that Pakistan has damaged the 
Kashmir cause by not controlling the men and that 
it became ideologically subservient to the groups 
created mostly under the tutelage of the 
religious parties in Pakistan. The conclusion in 
many studies is that a mishandling of the Kashmir 
cause has damaged Pakistan instead of the other 
way around.

There will be few examples in human history that 
improve upon the sacrifice Pakistan has made for 
a just resolution of the dispute over Kashmir. 
There will also be few examples of a state 
damaging itself by making such a 
half-a-century-long sacrifice. Pakistan put 
everything at stake in 1990 when the insurgency 
in Kashmir started. It diverted a stream of 
"mujahideen" volunteers from a successful Afghan 
war to Kashmir and by the mid-1990s had created a 
situation in Kashmir that made the world wake up 
and take note of the Kashmir issue. But the irony 
is that the Pakistani "support" that Syed 
Salahuddin thinks is now gone was sabotaged by 
the evolving nature of the "struggle" itself and 
what the international community came to think of 
it.

Hizbul Mujahideen itself is an offshoot of 
Jamaat-e-Islami in Indian-held Kashmir. It can no 
longer claim the support of the entire Kashmiri 
leadership in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference 
(APHC). The Jamaat leader Ali Gilani has been 
refusing to come to Pakistan because he doesn't 
want to appear the only Kashmiri leader who 
opposes Pakistan's new Kashmir policy. Therefore 
Syed Salahuddin should first come to terms with 
the reasons behind the loss of support for its 
jihad among the APHC leadership. What has come to 
the fore in recent days is the real antipathy of 
this leadership towards the hard-line religious 
militias which have sought to change Kashmiri 
society coercively and have resultantly diverted 
international support to India.

Pakistan can hardly be accused of letting down 
the Kashmiris. It fought a number of wars with 
India on the account of the Kashmir cause. It 
predicated its foreign policy on the "peaceful" 
resolution of the Kashmir dispute with India with 
"international support". The last time it tried 
to push India towards a "solution" was at Kargil 
in 1999 when Pakistan's survival itself came into 
question and an elected prime minister had to beg 
the United States to stop India from inflicting 
another defeat on the country. What Pakistan lost 
was the most important prop - that of 
"international support" - in its Kashmir 
strategy. Now that Pakistan's Kashmir policy has 
undergone a much needed change, it may not be to 
the liking of Syed Salahuddin and the religious 
parties in Pakistan, but it has met with approval 
from the APHC leadership in Held Kashmir.

The real damage Pakistan suffered was in the 
social consequences of the Kashmir jihad. Without 
detracting from the tragic human losses of the 
Kashmiris, we can say that in many ways it is a 
far deeper wound on Pakistan than the effects of 
India's atrocities in Held Kashmir. The militias 
deployed by Pakistan in this privatised war 
penetrated Pakistani society and clashed with 
state sovereignty. Their pockets full of money 
and their armouries full of the latest weapons, 
the jihadi organisations took over entire cities 
in Pakistan and literally ran the administration 
there, killing at will people who opposed them.

Pakistan's population has seen violence in real 
life as never before. Religion has been so 
exploited at the behest of the Kashmir cause that 
even the state has lost the ability to see right 
from wrong; and the entire strategic underpinning 
of jihad has fallen apart after it turned 
sectarian, and faith started eating its own 
children. Now finally as Pakistan self-corrects, 
in coordination with the Kashmiri leadership, 
Syed Salahuddin should ponder whether his call 
for more jihad rather than less will not end up 
hurting both Pakistan and the Kashmir cause. *


___


[3]

The Telegraph
April 25, 2006

Editorial
LIFTING THE FILM

Symbolic connections are always thrilling, and 
they become more so when layers of symbolism are 
uncovered. Perhaps that is part of the 
satisfaction generated by the screening of 
Mughal-e-Azam in Pakistan, where Indian films 
have been banned for years. The coming out of the 
Indian film in Pakistan, that is, its coming out 
of the closet of pirated videotapes and discs, 
has been welcomed on both sides of the border as 
an important step in mutually enjoying a shared 
cultural heritage. This had been a conspicuous 
lack: it would seem that the shared love of 
cricket, which has contributed to the lowering of 
barriers between the countries, is less 
substantial or enduring than a shared culture in 
literature, art and music. And the popular Hindi 
film is loved in Pakistan as it is in many 
unexpected corners of the world. The first film 
to break the ice was made in Bombay but set in 
Lahore in the time of the Mughals. But the 
symbolism does not end here. It is perhaps almost 
poetic that the film depicts the tragic history 
of the doomed love between Prince Salim and the 
slave-girl, Anarkali, played, again with almost 
poetic irony, by Dilip Kumar and Madhubala. The 
pleasure of claiming part in a common culture, of 
retrieving a shared memory made vivid and 
beautiful by a popular art, adds to the pure 
enjoyment of the film a dimension that is both 
emotional and political.

This dimension is evident even in the way the 
film came to be shown - through the request of 
the director's son. And it is even more evident 
in the permission given to the showing of a more 
recent film, Taj Mahal, soon to be released in 
Pakistan. The film's sponsors donated generously 
to the relief fund for the victims of the October 
earthquake in Pakistan. There is hope that this 
initial thawing will result in breaking the ice 
completely. At the same time, it is interesting 
to speculate on the reasons for the bar. 
Aspirations to nationhood and to homogeneity in 
faith lead to a closing of the mind, while 
culture is inextricably tied to both. Hence a 
shared culture becomes a highly sensitive and 
fragile region to tread upon, once patriotism and 
enmity have acquired new connotations through a 
divisive history. That is why it is particularly 
heartening to find that things are changing, 
however slowly and unobtrusively. Sharing fun can 
be as significant as hard-nosed politics.


___


[4]

Khaleej Times
22 April 2006

DO INDIA'S SOCIALISTS HAVE A FUTURE, AFTER ALL?
by Praful Bidwai

FROM a thundering beginning in Bombay to a 
whimpering end in Bihar after three stints in 
power in New Delhi. That sums up the career of 
George Fernandes, one of India's most colourful 
politicians. Fernandes looked distinctly 
off-colour after losing the election to the 
president's post in the Janata Dal (United). He 
received only 25 votes against his one-time 
protégé Sharad Yadav's 413.

Fernandes is a bitter, lonely old man without a 
future. He's too deeply compromised with the 
Bharatiya Janata Party to be respected by his 
colleagues. Yet, he's not in the Sangh's core, 
despite having rescued it countless times. He 
gave a clean chit to the Bajrang Dal for the 
burning alive of Graham Staines, and rationalised 
the Gujarat pogrom. He may at best get a 
decorative Parivar position.

Fernandes began as a dynamic leader of Bombay's 
dockworkers, and later of taxi-men and 
bus-drivers. Control over the city's arteries 
made him the Uncrowned King of the Bandh. He 
vanquished the powerful Congress boss, S K Patil 
in South Bombay in 1967.

He led the 1974 railway strike, one of the 
biggest struggles in India's history, which 
frontally challenged Indira Gandhi. The railway 
strike gave the opposition a national character. 
But it exposed serious flaws in Fernandes' 
leadership: he vanished when thousands of 
arrested railwaymen needed help.

The railway strike marked the peak of George the 
Giant-Killer's career. When the Janata Party came 
to power following the Emergency, Industry 
Minister Fernandes was in search of gimmicks - 
like throwing out Coca-Cola and IBM while 
imposing German multinational Siemens upon the 
public sector BHEL. He also advocated nuclear 
cooperation with Libya.

Fernandes' trajectory since has been erratic and 
calculated to shock, but was always guided by 
blind opposition to the Congress and the 
Communists. In 1974, he condemned India's first 
nuclear test: so long as Indians lack "enough 
food, clothing and shelter", even thinking of 
nuclear weapons is 'obscene'. But he became 
hawkish as the number of Indians without enough 
food swelled. By 1998, he was a votary of nuclear 
weapons. Fernandes became Hindutva's greatest 
apologist outside the BJP and moved close to the 
RSS. Tehelka and the coffin-import scam showed 
him deeply compromised.

Fernandes' is the latest case of a Socialist 
turning a traitor to his cause. Alas, he's not 
the only one. Recently, H D Deve Gowda supported 
his son in forming a defectors' government with 
the BJP in Karnataka. Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas 
Paswan and Sharad Yadav have also been Hindutva 
collaborators.

Today, the Socialist movement, which emerged as 
an independent current in 1934, is in danger of 
dissolution. Most veteran Socialists are in 
regional groupings like the Samajwadi Party, or 
in one-person outfits. The movement lost its 
organisational identity long ago. It could soon 
lose the ideological affiliation many of its 
leaders shared.

The Indian Socialists' history is regrettably a 
story of splits. Thus, in the first 17 years 
after Independence, they underwent four splits, 
driven as much by personality considerations as 
by ideology. Socialist politics has been largely 
reactive. The worst disintegration of the 
movement came in 1978 when the Janata Party split 
over its Jana Sangh component's dual membership 
issue. The split was initiated by Socialist Madhu 
Limaye. But the Socialists themselves got 
divided. They briefly regrouped under the Janata 
Dal, but that too underwent fission.

The Socialists' history of disorientation is 
doubly tragic. They once formed an important 
current representing the poor. In the Hindi 
heartland, they provided a counterweight to 
social conservatism and Right-wing politics and 
became the sole progressive alternative for 
millions of idealistic youth.

Secondly, the Socialist movement threw up 
brilliant leaders, from Narendra Dev and Ram 
Manohar Lohiya to Ashok Mehta, Jai Prakash 
Narayan, H V Kamath, Madhu Limaye, S M Joshi and 
N G Goray. Some (e.g. Lohiya) were original 
thinkers who developed a sophisticated 
understanding of Indian society based not just on 
class, but also caste. The Indian concept of 
affirmative action owes much to Lohiya. Lohiya 
went politically astray after his 1967 strategy 
of forming anti-Congress governments 
indiscriminately. But his contribution to the 
understanding of the importance of Dalit and OBC 
empowerment, secularism, women's equality, and 
radical social reform is undeniable.

The Socialist movement was marred by three great 
flaws: obsessive anti-Congressism; Cold War-style 
anti-Communism, which prevented joint actions 
with the rest of the Left; and personality 
politics. For instance, Fernandes's erstwhile 
Samyukta Socialist Party had no qualms in joining 
hands with Right wing groups against the 
Communists.

A pernicious role was played in this regard by 
JP, who bestowed respectability upon the RSS 
through the Bihar agitation. Without him, the 
Jana Sangh couldn't have found a place in the 
Janata, nor acquired the influence in the 
post-Emergency government that it did. The 
Sanghis consciously infiltrated the government 
apparatus and the media - a key to their urban 
middle-class influence in later years. The 
Socialist movement is today at a crossroads. 
Either its remnants will regroup as a Left-wing 
secular current with a progressive agenda. Or it 
will sink without a trace.

Fortunately, four years ago, leaders like Kishan 
Pattanaik, Madhu Dandavate, Surendra Mohan and 
Mrinal Gore floated the Socialist Front, to 
regroup Socialists outside the National 
Democratic Alliance and the Congress.

The Front started a dialogue with people's 
movements like Narmada Bachao Andolan, Samajwadi 
Jan Morcha, and other grass-roots groups working 
on human rights, and Adivasi and Dalit 
empowerment. They also opened a productive 
conversation with the Communists and proposed a 
merger of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha with the CPI-led 
AITUC. The merger didn't materialise. But there 
is greater coordination between the Front and the 
rest of the Left - as evidenced by the recent 
remarkable solidarity campaign around the Narmada 
issue.

One can only wish the Front well. There is room 
in India for progressive groups and movements 
that take up grassroots issues with tenacity. If 
it succeeds, it can put behind itself the 
Fernandes legacy and make a positive contribution 
to politics.


___

[5]

The Times of India
April 25 2006

ON DISSENT AND DEMOCRACY
by Shiv Visvanathan

One of the great indicators of any society is the 
creativity of its radicals and the availability 
of its eccentrics. Equally critical is the 
tolerance and understanding that society shows 
its dissenters.

One needs the notion of human rights not just to 
emphasise that you are human but recognise that 
within that humanity, you can be utterly 
different.

This is easier said than done, especially in a 
society where time begins accelerating and 
mobility rather than justice becomes the tuning 
fork of welfare. One dreams and demands the 
instant infrastructure of roads, refineries, dams 
and laboratories.

A society in double quick time may be impatient 
with those who are slowing it down, rendering 
viscous its dreams of speed, desire and 
acceleration. Viewed within such a perspective, 
one can understand a society's intolerance to the 
dissenter.

Medha Patkar seems iconoclastic and outdated, 
hysterical and utterly oblivious to every 
counter-argument. Why tolerate her? Why not 
harass her? It seems inevitable but the tragedy 
begins here.

Let us remember if India as a society can stand 
with its head high in the world, it is not merely 
because of IT but because of individuals like 
Medha.

If IT is the brand name for the kind of 
development now embodied in the mobile phone and 
IPod, Medha is the brand name for quality of 
conscience and the availability of critique in 
India.

Wherever people talk of costs of development, her 
name springs up automatically. In a deep and 
fundamental way, if India celebrates a Ratan 
Tata, a Narayana Murthy or an Ambani, we have to 
be equally grateful to a Vandana Shiva, an Aruna 
Roy and a Medha.
These three individuals have deeply contoured our 
perception of science, our sense of democracy and 
our responsibility to the victims of development. 
Let us be clear that recognition of their 
charisma or their moral and political status does 
not demand a complete agreement with their ideas.

I might want the dam and still realise that Medha 
provides a furiously different, ethical and 
cognitive understanding of it. I can love my fan 
in summer and love/hate her for reminding me of 
what that fan means to the life, livelihood and 
life chances of other people.

Medha connects. She connects us to the moral and 
the ethical dimensions of the dam. She demands 
answers. It is time to realise that silencing her 
is not the answer. She is reminding us of the 
genocidal consequences of our lifestyle.

Ask yourself what is your genocidal quotient? 
Don't be so innocent. How many people are you 
ready to kill or displace to get your 
electricity? Ten? Hundred? Ten thousand? One 
hundred thousand? A million? Medha threatens and 
irritates.

But to ostracise her because she differs, to 
brutalise her because she objects, and to 
humiliate her because she refuses to go away is 
unacceptable. A society that harasses Medha is a 
closed society.

To condemn her as anti-national, anti-social and 
anti-scientific is silly. Of course she is 
cantankerous, repetitive, even screechy. But why 
should Cassandras come in comfort packs?

All she demands is that you care, that you can't 
be indifferent to the moral and democratic 
dimensions of the dam. Of course, she is 
repetitive but what can you do when an elite is 
knowledge proof?

Of course, she is noisy but noise, as 
communication theorists repeat, is but unwelcome 
music. Every time the Supreme Court raises the 
height of the dam, she raises the quality of the 
protest. Politics has a beauty of its own.

One woman and a small band of protestors have 
created one of the great morality plays of this 
century. One can point out that her tactics have 
not always been correct. She overuses the fast.

But when a milkman protests against a 
multinational, does our politics end by 
lathicharging the milkman? Today we owe Medha the 
right to dignity in protest. To carry her like a 
cadaver demeans us.
To force-feed her because she finds our arguments 
indigestible is a kind of torture. If we are a 
decent society and the PM claims that we are, 
then the police cannot touch, torture, beat or 
humiliate her.

It is time we respect and honour her, salute a 
heroic battle which she insists is not yet over. 
In any other era, she would have got a peace 
prize for her battle against development. There 
is a story that used to fascinate me from a 
potboiler movie called Zulu.

It was about the last battle between the English 
and the Zulu nation. Expectedly a large army of 
Zulus loses to a small group of English soldiers. 
The latter celebrate as the Zulu retreat and then 
suddenly the Zulu army returns in full force and 
regalia.
The English are confused and then stunned when 
they realise the warriors are saluting them. They 
keep repeating 'The bastards are saluting us'. At 
that moment one wonders who was more civilised.

Today when a middle-class Indian confronts Medha 
one also wonders about the fate of protest and 
dignity. Do we salute her heroism, ideas, courage 
or treat her like yesterday's newspaper?

Any democratic society must be grateful to its 
dissenters for it is the jugalbandi, the 
competitive reciprocity between mainstream ideas 
and dissent that helps determine the quality of 
democracy and democracy in a society.

The writer is a social scientist.

___


[6]

NARMADA BACHAO ANDOLAN
Press Note/ April 26, 2006

OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE OVERLOOKS NWDT, SC RULING: WHY REFER TO GRA OF M.P
ONLY: R&R NORMS ALREADY VIOLATED: STOPPING SSP WORK IS ONLY OPTION
   NBA Demands Clarifications From PM

We are puzzled as to how and why the Prime Minister of India has set
up a three-member panel of Sardar Sarovar Project relief and
rehabilitation oversight committee. It is unbecoming of the Prime
Minister to unilaterally appoint such committee without consulting the
Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), that too after the indefinite fast of 20
days by the main activists, which triggered off the subsequent
developments regarding the dam. It is also curious that the Prime
Minister has refused to intervene to protect the lives of the people
when the Review Committee of Narmada Control Authority (RCNCA)
recommended the suspension of the dam work. At that time he left the
matter for the Supreme Court and when the Court has warned about the
possibility of staying the dam work, if the resettlement is not
satisfactory, Prime Ministers office springs into action.

The Committee is supposed to assess the resettlement work and give
suggestions in accordance with the provisions of the Narmada Water
Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) has stipulated and subsequently the Supreme
Court verdicts, within three months, till July 2006.

However, by this action, he has only reaffirmed the failure of the
resettlement. The terms of references (TOR) of this Oversight Group,
as was published by the PIB, is contrary to what the Narmada Water
Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) has stipulated and subsequently the Supreme
Court had endorsed in October 2000 and March 2005.

Accordingly, the resettlement and rehabilitation should be completed at least
6 months before the submergence and the raising of the corresponding
dam height. So for the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) of those
affected by the height of 122 meters of dam height they should have been
given cultivable land and house plot one year before the
submergence and the entire resettlement should have been completed 6
months before the submergence, that is by December 2005. The Special
Oversight Committee is expected to assess the situation, give
suggestions regarding the proper ways of resettlement within three
months, that is till July 2006. This is directly contrary to and in
violation of the NWDT provisions and Court rulings. It admits that the
work of resettlement below the height of 122 meters is not complete.
The first thing, before constitution of any such committee, would have
been to stop the work on the dam, before such committee starts working
to give suggestions etc.

The Committee has been asked to the see whether the oustess were
offered alternative land or not and whether those who have
rejected the land have done so voluntarily or not. We are not sure
what the measure of such 'voluntary' rejection is and what the
government wants to drive at.

Moreover the Special Committee has to give suggestions regarding
Madhya Pradesh resettlement on the basis of the NWDT provisions,
Supreme Court rulings and on the basis of the decisions of the of the
Madhya Pradesh Grievance Redressal Authority (GRA). It must be
remembered that the GRA has to give decisions regarding the
resettlement only according to the NWDT provisions and this is the
jurisdiction of its work. In its ruling in March 2005, the Supreme
Court has rejected with adverse comments the decisions taken by the
Madhya Pradesh GRA regarding discrimination between the oustees
affected by temporary and permanent submergence. The Madhya Pradesh
GRA also accepted the sate government's policy of giving cash
compensation in lieu of the land-based rehabilitation, which was
termed as illegal in the meetings of the Narmada Control Authority
(NCA) till September 2005. However, it is curious that the Prime
Minister's announcement does not mention the GRAs of Maharashtra and
Gujarat, but reefers specifically to the GRA of Madhya Pradesh.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan demands the clarification on these and
other relevant issues from the Prime Minister. We still insist that
the Prime Minister or any Court of justice is duty-bound by law and
Constitution to ensure that the work on the dam not be irreversibly pushed
ahead, submerging the homes, farms and rights of thousands
and thousands of tribals and farmers.
The work on the dam must be immediately stopped 
and the all the affected families must be ensured
full and just rehabilitation in a time bound manner.

Medha Patkar


____

[7]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

www.friendsofsouthasia.org

HINDUTVA DEFEATED AGAIN IN CALIFORNIA COURTS. Judge Rejects HAF's
Demand for Preliminary Injunction Against School Textbooks! Community
Groups Applaud Decision


OAKLAND, CA (April 24, 2006) - Friends of South Asia (FOSA) applauds
the decision by the Superior Court of California in Sacramento to
reject the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)'s demand for a preliminary
injunction against publication of new sixth-grade textbooks.

On Friday, April 21, after giving HAF lawyers a long, patient hearing,
the court denied the injunction.  The court's ruling means that HAF
failed to demonstrate to the judge even one of the three soft
requirements for a preliminary injunction: that the suit had a
likelihood of success on the merits, or that there was going to be any
irreparable injury, or even that granting the injunction will advance
the public interest.

HAF had asked for an injunction to stop the California State Board of
Education (Board) from approving publication of new History-Social
Science textbooks, until HAF's lawsuit against the Board could be
tried.  In its suit, HAF is asking the court to reverse the March 8
decision by the Board to reject the seriously distorted version of
Hinduism and ancient Indian history demanded by two groups, the
so-called Hindu Education Foundation (HEF) and the Vedic Foundation
(VF).  The Board's March 8 decision was supported by the majority of
the South Asian community as well as over two hundred scholars and
university faculty who do research and teach in the area of South
Asian history and religion.

Community groups and scholars have challenged the efforts by Hindutva
(Hindu supremacist) groups to influence textbooks in California since
those efforts began last year.  Over the last six months, concerned
individuals, South Asian-American groups and scholars made several
presentations to the Board to make it aware of the fact that not only
did the HAF, HEF and VF not speak for the larger South Asian-American
community, but that they did not even speak for any but a small
fraction of Hindus in the United States.  The Board's attention was
also directed to the sectarian nature of, and complete lack of
scholarship behind the changes being demanded.  After many public
hearings and gathering information from subject area experts from
universities across the U.S., the Board rejected the changes sought by
the Hindutva organizations in the textbooks.

Following the Board's rejection of Hindutva demands, the HAF started a
large publicity and fundraising campaign, and filed a lawsuit on March
16, projecting itself as the representative of an aggrieved minority
in the U.S.  Even before the hearing on the Preliminary Injunction,
the HAF demanded a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to freeze the
textbook approval process, but a Superior Court judge rejected that
demand on March 21.  At the same TRO hearing, the judge also rejected
HAF's demand to be allowed to attend corrections meetings between the
Board and the publishers.

On April 18, FOSA and six other South Asian community groups, the
Ambedkar Center for Justice & Peace (ACJP), Campaign to Stop Funding
Hate (CSFH), Coalition Against Communalism (CAC), EKTA, Federation of
Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA), and the Guru Ravidass
Gurdwaras of California, filed a friends of the court brief (Brief
Amici Curiae) opposing the HAF's claims.  The brief demonstrated the
absurdity of HAF's stand that the proposed textbooks maligned and
misrepresented Hinduism and would "harm" Hindu children, and
questioned the legitimacy of HAF to speak on behalf of Americans who
profess Hinduism, leave alone all Hindus.  Amici also pointed out to
the court that the version of Hinduism being advocated by HAF was
nothing but Brahmanism with its undisguised contempt for Dalits,
women's rights and historical truth.  Amici directed the court's
attention to the sectarian political ideology driving the changes
being demanded by the HAF, HEF & VF, and to the fact of these
organizations being the U.S.-based institutional fronts of the broader
Hindutva movement, a supremacist movement whose current interest in
rewriting school textbooks in the United States demonstrably comes
from the movement's failure to impose its textbook agenda in India.

Along with the brief by amici, 126 university faculty and scholars
with expertise in South Asia submitted a declaration to the Court
denouncing the efforts of the HAF to distort history.  The faculty
declaration challenged the changes advocated by HAF because such
changes would be historically inaccurate, and also pointed out the
Hindu nationalist ideology underpinning these changes.  The
declaration said in part:

"Hinduism, it is widely recognized by scholars and most practitioners
alike, is constituted of diverse and plural traditions, and
consequently the religion cannot be reduced to a narrowly defined
group of texts and precepts. Many of the changes that plaintiffs [HAF
and others] seek will distort the distinctive character of Hinduism by
defining it exclusively as a monotheistic religion. Such a monolithic
concept of Hinduism, with Brahminical texts at its core, has been used
extensively by Hindu supremacists in recent years to delegitimize the
various folk and syncretic traditions that give Hinduism its vibrant,
lived form."

Signatories to the declaration include many prominent scholars from
around the world, such as D.N. Jha, the president of Indian History
Congress, Suvir Kaul, Director of the South Asia Center at the
University of Pennsylvania, and Stephanie W. Jamison (Watkins),
Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures, and Head of the Program in
Indo-European Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

The HAF's claims are so patently absurd that the court had little
difficulty in rejecting them.  It is important to note that in
Friday's court hearing, the judge ruled that the HAF not only failed
to demonstrate the merits of its arguments on the alleged procedural
violations by the Board, but also failed to support its claims in
relation to the substantive issues involved-the depiction of ancient
Indian history and Hinduism.  The court's decision means that the
Board can move ahead with the approval process for publication of the
new history-social science textbooks, whether or not the HAF withdraws
its now meritless lawsuit.

FOSA is pleased to note that today's decision by the Superior Court of
California has sounded the death knell for Hindutva's broad offensive
to inject its sectarian ideology into textbooks in the U.S.  This is a
clear victory for the forces of secularism and pluralism, and no less
a victory for the children of California, who will benefit from new
textbooks that include greatly expanded sections on South Asian
history, religions and cultures, reflecting the insights of historical
scholarship instead of sectarian propaganda.

It is HAF's hubris in arrogating to itself the right to speak on
behalf of Hindus and Hinduism that has resulted in its utter failure
to convince two different judges of the merits of its case - despite
hiring expensive, high-powered legal talent.  HAF also seems to have
forgotten that Hindus can see as well as other people, and have no
trouble in seeing right through its façade and look upon its sordid
ties to the broader anti-minority, anti-dalit, and anti-women Sangh
Parivar agenda in India.  If, as it claims, the HAF really cares about
Hindus, particularly Hindus in the United States, it must not only
withdraw its lawsuit, it must abrogate all ties with Hindu supremacist
groups in the U.S. as well as those in India, and work to heal the
hurt it has caused to the community through its attempts to distort
and delay textbooks for California schoolchildren.

____

[8]

NATIONAL RALLY AGAINST FORCED EVICTIONS AND DISPOSSESSION
Friday 28th April
11 AM
Rajghat to Rashtrapati Bhavan [New Delhi]


CANDLE  LIGHT  VIGIL
Sunday 30th April
6:30 PM
Jantar Mantar [New Delhi]


The violent and forced eviction of people from 
their natural habitat and homes, be it in the 
Narmada Valley, the slums of Mumbai or Delhi, or 
the adivasi areas of Orissa, is a matter of 
increasing alarm and worry.  It seems to be 
happening in a more and more systematic, 
calculated and sinister way. The government  is 
clearly promoting this violent neoliberal 
paradigm of development at the cost of its people.

We cannot remain silent any more. We will NOT 
tolerate this violation of democracy and human 
rights any more.

Peoples' movements and struggles from across the 
country must come together and unite forces to 
fight this battle against injustice.

Join the National Rally on 28th April to raise a 
collective voice: NO MORE FORCED EVICTIONS!!!! NO 
MORE SLUM DEMOLITIONS!!! NO MORE DISPOSSESSION OF 
PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES, LANDS AND LIVELIHOODS!!!

Come light a candle on 30th April at Jantar 
Mantar to express your solidarity with people's 
struggles for their rights.

From Narmada to Mumbai, from Delhi to Orissa... our struggle is ONE.

This is a critical issue that concerns each one of us. Democracy is at stake.

We must unite to speak truth to power!! The time is NOW!!

PLEASE BE THERE!!! PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW IN DELHI!

in solidarity,

Delhi Solidarity Group for the NBA

For further information Please Contact :
9868200316, 9818205234, 9313053093, 9818030423, 20506929, 29232515


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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