SACW | Oct. 29, 2006

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | October 29, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2314


[1]  USA: A Country Ruled by Faith (Garry Wills)
[2]  Pakistan - Karachi: 
   A city for the rich (Zubeida Mustafa)
   Who owns the allotted islands? (Naseer Memon)
[3]  Bangladesh-India: Illegal but licit (Itty Abraham)
[4]  India: The Scar On The Moon (Saba Naqvi Bhaumik)
[5]  Terrorism: Hour of The Assassins (Sumanta Banerjee)
[6]  Terrorism: Facts versus Myths (Ram Puniyani)
[7]  India: Call For Action: Support Sharmila, 
Repeal AFSPA, Restore Right to Life
[8]  Books / Events: 
  (i) Religion, caste, and State by P. Radhakrishnan
(ii) Taliban's War on Women by Minakshi Das
(iii) Play performance -Reading Chernobyl  (Delhi, 30 October)
(iv) Seminar by Gananath Obeyesekere: Colonel 
Olcott and Madame Blavatsky: Enlightenment and 
Anti-Enlightenment Discourse in the Theosophy 
Movement (Princeton, 30 October)
____


[1] 

New York Review of Books
November 16, 2006

A COUNTRY RULED BY FAITH
by Garry Wills

The right wing in America likes to think that the 
United States government was, at its inception, 
highly religious, specifically highly Christian, 
and even more specifically highly biblical. That 
was not true of that government or any later 
government-until 2000, when the fiction of the 
past became the reality of the present. George W. 
Bush was not only born-again, like Jimmy Carter. 
His religious conversion came late, and took 
place in the political setting of Billy Graham's 
ministry to the powerful. He was converted during 
a stroll with Graham on his father's 
Kennebunkport compound. It is true that Dwight 
Eisenhower was guided to baptism by Graham. But 
Eisenhower was a famous and formed man, the 
principal military figure of World War II, the 
leader of NATO, the president of Columbia 
University-his change in religious orientation 
was just an addition to many prior achievements. 
Bush's conversion at a comparatively young stage 
in his life was a wrenching away from mainly 
wasted years. He joined a Bible study culture in 
Texas that was unlike anything Eisenhower bought 
into.

Bush was a saved alcoholic-and here, too, he had 
no predecessor in the White House. Ulysses Grant 
conquered the bottle, but not with the help of 
Jesus. Other presidents were evangelicals. Three 
of them belonged to the Disciples of Christ-James 
Garfield, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan. But 
none of the three- nor any of the other forty-two 
presidents preceding Bush (including his 
father)-would have answered a campaign debate 
question as he did. Asked who was his favorite 
philosopher, he said "Jesus Christ." And why? 
"Because he changed my heart." Over and over, 
when he said anything good about someone 
else-including Vladimir Putin-he said it was 
because "he has a good heart," which is 
evangelical-speak (as in "condoms cannot change 
your heart"). Bush talks evangelical talk as no 
other president has, including Jimmy Carter, who 
also talked the language of the secular 
Enlightenment culture that evangelists despise. 
Bush told various evangelical groups that he felt 
God had called him to run for president in 2000: 
"I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but 
God wants me to do it."[1]

Bush promised his evangelical followers 
faith-based social services, which he called 
"compassionate conservatism." He went beyond that 
to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law 
enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based 
medicine, and faith-based science. He could 
deliver on his promises because he stocked the 
agencies handling all these problems, in large 
degree, with born-again Christians of his own 
variety. The evangelicals had complained for 
years that they were not able to affect policy 
because liberals left over from previous 
administrations were in all the health and 
education and social service bureaus, at the 
operational level. They had specific people they 
objected to, and they had specific people with 
whom to replace them, and Karl Rove helped them 
do just that.

It is common knowledge that the Republican White 
House and Congress let "K Street" lobbyists have 
a say in the drafting of economic legislation, 
and on the personnel assigned to carry it out, in 
matters like oil production, pharmaceutical 
regulation, medical insurance, and corporate 
taxes. It is less known that for social services, 
evangelical organizations were given the same 
right to draft bills and install the officials 
who implement them. Karl Rove had cultivated the 
extensive network of religious right 
organizations, and they were consulted at every 
step of the way as the administration set up its 
policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence 
programs, creationism, and other matters that 
concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals' 
resentments under previous presidents, including 
Republicans like Reagan and the first Bush, were 
now being addressed.

[. . .] .

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19590

_____


[2] 

Dawn
October 28, 2006  

(i) A city for the rich
(ii) Who owns the allotted islands?

o o o

(i)

A CITY FOR THE RICH

by Zubeida Mustafa

"WHEN the Diamond City comes up on Bundal 
(Bhundaarh in Sindhi) island all the rich of 
Karachi will move in there and the poor will be 
left behind. We will then not even get drinking 
water," observes Ahmad (not his real name) with 
profound wisdom. Ahmad has been in the fishing 
trade for decades. He studied up to grade four in 
Ibrahim Hyderi village before joining his father 
in his boat trips to learn the maritime skills. 
He now knows the Indus delta and its various 
creeks, where he plies his hired motor launch, 
like the back of his sea-worn hands.

The islands Ahmad was referring to have been in 
the news for sometimes now. It has been reported 
that Port Qasim Authority has signed an agreement 
with Emaar, the Dubai-based construction company, 
to develop Bundal and the adjoining Buddo (Dingi 
in local parlance) island into an exclusive area 
for a diplomatic enclave, an offshore financial 
district, hotels, recreational spots, water 
sports and a five star residential area. 
According to reports the Governor of Sind, 
members of the local government and the Board of 
Revenue are working on the plan. To obtain the 
Port Qasim Authority's point of view I put in a 
number of calls but was told that only the 
chairman is authorized to speak to the press. The 
rear admiral was locked in a meeting every time I 
tried to reach him and he never returned my call.

Ahmad took us on a cruise of the islands in the 
Phitti Creek, one of the 17 major creeks of the 
shrinking Indus delta which still, along with 
five others, receives fresh water from the river. 
The remaining are now fed only by the salty 
waters of the Arabian Sea.

A trip to Bundal and Buddo was most rewarding and 
exploded quite a few myths being propagated by 
supporters of the island project. They are not 
exactly as they are being described - uninhabited 
and deserted, and of no use to any one. Buddo 
which is about 20 minutes launch ride away from 
Ibrahim Hyderi is lush green and has a rich 
mangrove plantation. There were camels grazing 
there and Ahmad informed me that the animals swim 
from the nearby coast and are brought here to 
allow them to have their fill. Wildlife is in 
abundance as the pictures we took testify to.

It took us another 20 minutes to reach Bundal, 
the largest island in the delta, eight km in 
length and four km in width. It emerges as a 
solid block of mangroves as you approach it from 
the north. But further south the mangroves thin 
out and sand dunes take their place pointing to 
the wave erosion taking place there. As the 
launch moves on there emerges a shrine - that of 
the loisare held after Eid every year. The 
changes in the fresh water courses in this area - 
many man-made - have not been good for the 
mangroves. The ravages inflicted by human 
development have been worse. From 263,000 
hectares in 1977 the mangroves covered area has 
shrunk to a mere 80,000 hectares in 2002.

The sea weaving through the inlets in the 
islands, the greenery, the wildlife and the clear 
blue sky converge to present scenic beauty 
untouched by human hands. But for how long? When 
Emaar enters the scene and fortifies these 
islands as claimed by the Port Qasim Authority, 
the first casualty would be the ecology of the 
area. Land would be reclaimed from the sea, as is 
already being done off the DHA coast, and a 
bridge 1.5 km in length would link Bundal with 
the mainland. The mangroves will obviously have 
to go. The wildlife would migrate when its 
natural habitat is disturbed. These changes will 
mean the end of the breeding grounds for the 
fish, shrimps and green turtles.

The fisher folk, the real stakeholders in the 
area, have been deeply upset. They feel the noose 
tightening round their neck. They can anticipate 
the fate that awaits them. When the PAF base at 
Korangi Creek came up they were shooed away and 
asked to keep a distance from the shore. Then the 
Marina and Creek Clubs made more areas out of 
bound for them. The new city will take away their 
historical rights to vital resources, namely, 
water, air and biodiversity, which the Indian 
activist Vandana Shiva refers to as the 'common 
spaces'. Conventionally these cannot be 
privatised and are held in perpetuity as the 
common property of a community. Not so when 
12,000 acres are handed over for development.

Bundal is also used by the fishermen as a transit 
point when they venture out to the high seas for 
fishing. We saw some temporary shelters and 
families camped there. They were drying their 
catch of fish and mending their nets. We could 
have disembarked there but jumping off the launch 
to a smaller boat to reach the shore didn't 
appear to be a very inviting exercise. The five 
children who had accompanied us with our 
seven-man crew nimbly made it to the shore. They 
have virtually lived on the boats I was told, as 
they are too poor to go to school.

Nearly 4,000 fishing boats make a trip every day 
near the Bundal coast. The Fisher folk Forum 
fears their routes will be disturbed. Even today, 
the deep water channel has narrowed down due to 
the changes that have taken place. With more land 
reclamation, the construction of a bridge and 
deforestation, the depth and width of the 
navigation channels will be affected.

Given these implications, the debate on 
jurisdiction - the federal or the Sindh 
government's - seems to detract from the real 
issue. That is the need to preserve the ecology 
of the area, as any environment impact assessment 
would confirm. Land use will ignore social and 
environmental considerations. Worst of all the 
project will be undertaken for the rich without 
consulting the stakeholders who also happen to be 
poor. The class divide will widen further.

Ahmad understands this too well. Hence his 
plaintive query, "Can't you stop the new city?".

o o o

(ii)

WHO OWNS THE ALLOTTED ISLANDS?

By Naseer Memon

LAST month, the federal government allotted, 
through the Port Qasim Authority (PQA), the 
Bundal and Buddo islands located off the Karachi 
coast to a UAE-based real estate giant Emaar. 
This company is to develop a modern city on this 
land with an investment of $43 billion over the 
next 13-16 years.

The ownership of the islands is disputed as the 
Sindh government claims that they were not 
included in the area leased to the PQA for port 
related operations. However Prime Minister 
Shaukat Aziz declared (on Oct 14) during his 
visit to assumed owners besides the PQA including 
the Defence Housing Authority, Pakistan Navy and 
the Sindh government. Sadly the historical claim 
to ownership of the islands of the poor fishermen 
is not recognised.

The City District Government of Karachi (CDGK) 
has also laid to the islands and according to 
reports appearing in this newspaper (Oct 8) it 
signed an MoU with four entrepreneurs (including 
a firm from Thailand) for establishing an IT 
infrastructural project. This envisaged the 
'Karachi Technology Island City' to be set up on 
a 300-acre piece of land, opposite the creek of 
Karachi. At the MoU signing ceremony, the City 
Nazim at the time, Naimatullah Khan, had assured 
the signatories that the city government was 
ready to provide land and other infrastructural 
facilities for the project but federal minister 
for science and technology, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, 
who was the chief guest on the occasion, 
apparently understood the implications of the 
ownership issue and urged all the stakeholders to 
be clear about giving a legal shape to the 
project.

PQA has been a major player in the race for 
occupying the islands. At one stage it was 
considering the Bundal island as one of the 
potential sites for setting up a terminal for 
liquid natural gas (LNG) and a consortium of 
leading Japanese and Korean companies had 
expressed interest in setting up an LNG terminal 
at Bundal island in response to an Expression of 
Interest (EOI) issued by PQA. This sparked a 
strong reaction from the Sindh government which 
challenged the ownership of the area.

At one stage the Port Qasim Auhtority had also 
allotted 2,700 acres of land to Pakistan Navy, 
without any authorisation. Although Pakistan Navy 
later shifted the facility to Ormara for which 
the land was acquired though it still lays claim 
over the Bundal island.

The Defence Housing Authorityreportedly 
approached General Musharraf in 2001 to get this 
land to develop a theme park. The Chief 
Executive's secretariat sent a letter to the 
government of Sindh, which stated, "while 
approving the concept of developing Bundal and 
Khipranwala islands, the Chief Executive directed 
that first the status of ownership of these 
islands be determined by DHA asking comments from 
the government, the ministry of communications, 
PQA and Pakistan Navy." However the project 
requiring an investment of 69 million dollars 
could not take off as the Sindh government took a 
strong stand on the ownership of the island.

The EDO (Revenue) of Karachi through a letter 
sent on Sept 6, 2001 reported, "the ownership of 
these islands vests in the provincial government. 
In the past the government of Sindh has made 
allotments to DHA and PQA but these islands have 
not been allotted."

The Sindh government continued to claim the 
ownership of the islands. In a meeting held at 
Sindh Governor's House on Feb 23, 2006 the Senior 
Member Board of Revenue said that the islands are 
the property of the government of Sindh. 
According to him, when PQA was established, its 
area of operation was defined, which does not 
include the Bundal island.

The Senior Minister (Excise and Taxation) also 
endorsed this point of view and said that Bundal 
island has never been allotted to PQA.

Legal perspective

The provincial law department is also of the view 
that the land allotted by the federal government 
was the property of the provincial government. 
According to the law secretary Syed Ghulam Nabi 
Shah, under Sindh Land Revenue Code (Repealed) 
all lands, the bed of the sea, harbours, creeks 
below the high-water mark etc. were the property 
of the provincial government. Similarly, Section 
50 of the Sindh Revenue Act, 1967, also upholds 
the same right of the provincial government. The 
Sindh High Court has also given a judgment in 
favour of the provincial government in a dispute 
with the DHA about the latter's claim to 250 
acres of reclaimed land near the seashore of 
Clifton beach.

Barrister Zamir Ghumro says the federal 
government does not possess any land in any 
province and all land within the jurisdiction of 
any province belongs to the province only. 
However the federal government can approach the 
provincial government for acquiring land for a 
specific purpose. But this will not change the 
ownership status of the land. In this context PQA 
cannot be the owner of the island, since it 
acquired the area from Sindh province for port 
related activities only.

A letter of the law department, dated Sept 9, 
2000 explains the legal position: "Under Article 
172 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic 
of Pakistan, 1973, the land reclaimed through 
natural or artificial process located in the 
province of Sindh vests in the government of 
Sindh. This view gets support from the 
observations made by Mr. Justice Shabbir Ahmed, 
Honorable Judge of the High Court of Sindh, while 
deciding the injunction application by the 
government of Sindh in suit No 778 filed by the 
government of Sindh."

According to Section 50 of the Land Revenue Act 
of 1967 any forest or quarry or any unclaimed, 
unoccupied, deserted or waste land or any 
spontaneous produce or other accessory interest 
in land belonging to no landowners, it shall be 
presumed to belong to the government.

Article 172 (1) of the constitution also supports 
the point of view of the Sindh government. It 
says, "any property which has no rightful owner 
shall, if located in a province, vests in the 
government of that province and in every other 
case, in the federal government."

It is strange that no one from the local 
communities has ever been consulted to ascertain 
the historical rights of fishermen, who have 
lived and worked in the area long before the 
country came on the world map.


_____


[3]

IIAS Newsletter 42  |  Autumn 2006 
underworlds & borderlands 42

ILLEGAL BUT LICIT

by Itty Abraham

A  housewife in Kolkata buys bhindi (okra) from 
her neigh-bourhood vegetable seller for her 
child's dinner. In doing so, she may have 
participated in an illegal activity. Depending on 
how far back we want to go, the chain of 
illegality can be said to have begun with the 
Bangladeshi farmer who planted the vegetable six 
months earlier. Or it may be more sensible to 
start with the social 'commodity chain' of women 
who transport bundles of vegetables by foot and 
ferry in the early hours of every morning across 
the hundreds of legal and unmarked 
bor-der-crossing points from Bangladesh into 
India. Crossing with-out papers or passports, 
they sometimes bribe border guards to let them 
pass. This is when the first 'crime' takes place.

The 'criminals' include both the vegetable seller 
and the state border representative. Once in 
India, some women sell their produce to 
intermediaries in border villages and return to 
their homes in Bangladesh. Others board crowded 
passenger trains to Kolkata and sell their 
produce at the city's wholesale vegetable market. 
Then they return home, sometimes stop-ping to 
purchase goods with a high resale value in 
Bangla-desh and other household items. They reach 
Bangladesh that evening, sometimes bribing border 
guards again, depending on the tacit, socially 
sanctioned norms that govern this illicit flow. 
Before they arrive home, they may have stopped in 
a bor-der village to meet relatives, drink tea 
and chat with friends, and to help arrange 
marriages for young men and women.

From the city vegetable mandi (market), 
mini-wholesal-ers and retailers fan out into the 
city's neighbourhoods, sometimes selling directly 
to consumers who may include undocumented 
Bangladeshi maids working in middle class 
households, who sometimes resell the produce at a 
slight mark-up to neighbourhood shops. This is 
where the second 'crime' takes place. Clearly no 
taxes are paid on Bangla-deshi okra: the 
'criminals' include the (Indian) vegetable 
sellers and her (possibly undocumented) 
consumers. This is micro-business, comparable to 
micro-credit in scale, and it is not without its 
dangers. Women, especially those travelling long 
distances alone, risk conducting business without 
guarantees of safety or reliability. Credit is 
rare, as this is almost entirely a cash business, 
making them vul-nerable on their return: they may 
be caught up in random police sweeps or 
threatened by goondas (thugs). What pro-tects 
them is the ubiquity of their behaviour and the 
well-known social rules that govern their 
international travel and transactions.

Illicit flows
Illicit movement across national borders takes 
place world-wide on a daily basis. Operating in 
the conceptual and empirical gap between these 
illicit activities and the means of describing 
and understanding them, the research project 
Illegal but Licit (see p.3) does not seek to 
condone or justify the undocumented crossing of 
national borders or the wilful breaking of 
municipal laws. Our aim, rather, is to understand 
and analyse the linked chain of social activities 
that violate one or another country's laws. 
Furthermore, we seek to do so with-out recourse 
to the state's languages of (il)legality or 
national (in)security. To attempt this is to 
encroach on the domains of a number of 
disciplines, including sociology, international 
rela-tions, economics, geography, migration and 
border studies.  All of these fields offer some 
insights, yet none is complete in itself. In 
other words, the subject of enquiry and our 
analytic approach lie at the margins of national 
boundaries and disci-plinary fields. There are, 
we believe, considerable rewards for occupying 
this interstitial position, not least of them 
being a better understanding of some of the most 
commonplace human activities today.

What this imagined journey above describes when 
we consid-er the tens of thousands of people 
involved is the vast scale of the daily movement 
of goods and people, cash and commodi-ties that 
the city of Kolkata barely acknowledges and yet 
could hardly do without. This combination of 
unwitting dependence and structured invisibility 
under conditions of transnational illegality is 
characteristic of what we have termed 'illicit 
flows'.  Other examples that make the same point 
abound. The US Border Patrol, driving along the 
most militarised and high-tech-defended border in 
the world, must allow hundreds of undocumented 
Mexican and other migrants to enter the US every 
day - or else the price of daily wage labour 
rises and Cal-ifornia's powerful farm lobby 
starts to complain. In Jakarta's enormous Pramuka 
bird and pet market, hundreds of illegally 
trapped birds and animals are openly on sale. And 
sales are brisk: according to one estimate the 
average trader sells their stock in two weeks, 
which would mean 40,000 wild birds are sold to 
local customers every month. The penalties for 
illegally capturing and trading in protected 
species are severe but are of little effect.
To point to these or other examples is not to 
argue that the world is full of criminals, but 
that we have not yet begun to appreciate the 
extent to which formal illegality surrounds us in 
the course of our daily lives. It should further 
be noted that people involved in criminality of 
this order do not consider themselves criminals. 
Of course it could be said, what crimi-nal does? 
But the point here is that neither the 'criminal' 
nor the consumer of the illegal commodity 
acknowledges the stig-ma of criminality in their 
transactions; they are more likely to point to 
the difficulty of separating crime from licit 
activity, and, by extension, perpetrators from 
victims.
The more sophisticated among them will point to 
the exist-ence of legally sanctioned spaces where 
what can only be called criminal behaviour 
flourishes: the tax havens of the Cayman Islands, 
Liechtenstein and the Channel Islands, or the 
maritime 'flags of convenience' offered by 
countries like Liberia and Panama, whose sole 
purpose is to give ship-ping companies a legal 
way of avoiding regulations. What makes those 
sites of non-'criminality' different from 
slip-ping across the border between Burma and 
Thailand to work below minimum wage or buying 
smuggled Bollywood DVDs in Karachi markets? What 
we are pointing to is more than a sharp contrast 
between social mores of acceptable behaviour and 
the state's own terms of defining the difference 
between legitimate and illegitimate activity; it 
is also the difficulty of doing so consistently 
and without recourse to circular rea-soning.

The underground and the borderland
A simple matrix (above) can go beyond the 
contrast between socially acceptable forms of 
criminality, or 'licit', and legally banned forms 
of activity, which the state calls 'illegal'. It 
is useful to think of the social spaces that 
emerge from this sim-ple contrast of two 
idealised forms of authority, one emanat-ing from 
the state, the other from society, producing the 
terms legal/illegal and licit/illicit, 
respectively.
The left diagonal boxes (A) and (D) are 
end-points of a contin-uum, representing spaces 
privileged by liberal political theory.  (D) 
represents a space where neither social nor 
political rules matter: it is nothing but a 
'state of nature' where individual might and 
illegitimate force rules the day. For the 
original social contract theorists, and for 
contemporary writers like John Rawls, societies 
seek to move from such 'nasty and brut-ish' 
places to (A), which represents the ideal 
political space where social norms and political 
rules mesh seamlessly and are indistinguishable.
Far more interesting (and realistic), however, 
are the spaces represented by (B) and (C). 
Consider in particular (B), the 'underground' 
space produced by the intersection of 'ille-gal' 
and 'licit'. The underground represents social 
zones of interaction that, though banned by 
formal political author-ity, are nonetheless 
sanctioned and supported by prevailing social 
mores. Among the many sites that can fit this 
descrip-tion are physical locations such as gay 
bathhouses, brothels, gambling dens, pornographic 
video parlours, certain kinds of social clubs and 
coffee houses, and virtual locations such as 
chat-rooms and private list-servers. This space 
may also be represented by mobility, as in the 
chain of writers, translators, copiers and 
readers who circulated samizdat literature in the 
Soviet Union. What marks these spaces as distinct 
entities are the conditions of entry because, as 
Igor Kopytoff puts it, 'consumers...must first 
purchase access to the transaction.' In other 
words, these are spaces that may exist in plain 
view, but in order to get access to their 
offerings an additional resource, usually 
information, is needed. This resource may be 
coded in ethnic, political, religious, 
linguistic, social, sexual or class terms; the 
effect is to produce what we call the 
'underground', a space that is set apart from 
everyday life by these socially produced and 
enforced barriers to entry, and where the writ of 
formal law is suspended.

Also typical of cell B is the 'borderland'. If 
the underground is characterised by a temporary 
dominance of private social orders over the legal 
order, the borderland is a zone where pri-vately 
produced social order and formal political rules 
are in a constant state of uncertainty and 
conflict. As numerous stud-ies of borderlands 
have shown, these regions are character-ised by a 
complex interplay of power and authority. For 
those living in the borderland, it is a zone unto 
itself, neither wholly subject to the laws of 
states nor completely independent of them. Their 
autonomous practices make border residents and 
their cross-border cultures a zone of suspicion 
and surveil-lance; the visibility of the military 
and border forces an index of official anxiety. 
Yet the militarised border seeks not only to 
protect the nation from external forces, but to 
control those already 'inside'. What the Indian 
political scientist Ranabir Samaddar calls a 
'nationalist lament' emanates among border 
security forces because, as they put it, 'people 
here do not have the feelings of nationalism so 
that they would point out or tell us who the 
outsiders are.' The difficulty of distinguish-ing 
insider from outsider produces confusion in the 
minds of state forces that can no longer tell 
where they themselves are located. This 
uncertainty is a product of the interplay of the 
licit and the illegal, an effect produced by the 
coincidence of the geographic and political 
limits of the state.

In summary, this project seeks to draw attention 
to the inter-twined nature of the legal and the 
illegal - the illicit - in many cross-border 
activities, emphasising the conceptual and 
prac-tical difficulty of establishing fixed 
criteria for identifying one or another activity 
as 'criminal'. Its ultimate goal is to help 
analyse the effects of illicit flows on spaces 
that are produced by the intersection of 
legitimate social and political author-ity, and 
to do so without (circular) recourse to the 
state's own categories of legitimate and legal. 
We developed this frame-work in order to help 
advance the study of the varieties of everyday 
social behaviour that break laws and cross 
national borders, but which in our view do not 
constitute 'criminal behaviour' as conventionally 
understood. Nowadays, when so much activity is 
described by the all-encompassing term of 
international terrorism, it is important that 
scholars do not unwittingly endorse and 
participate in the fulfilment of pow-erful state 
interests without due reflection and concern for 
human rights.


[BOX]
FORM OF AUTHORITY LEGAL ILLEGAL
LICIT Ideal state (A) Underworld / borderland (B)
ILLICIT Crony capitalism / failed state (C) Anarchy (D)

[PHOTO] Border crossing at Tachilek, northern 
Thailand. Here, at the heart of the Golden 
Triangle, legal and illegal flows of goods and 
people intermingle with little regard for 
official state borders.
Willem van Schendel

[PHOTO] A Bangladeshi border guard refuses entry 
to people rounded up in India and deported to the 
border on suspicion of being illegal immigrants.
Shibshankar Chatterjee


_____


[4]


Outlook
Nov 06, 2006

THE SCAR ON THE MOON
Imrana may well be seen as a symbol of all that 
is wrong about Islam as seen to be practised in 
India today.

by Saba Naqvi Bhaumik

The general confusion over the sighting of the Id 
moon could be a metaphor for the state of the 
Muslim community in India. And Imrana, the 
faceless, burqa-clad woman famously raped by her 
father-in-law over a year ago, may well be seen 
as a symbol of all that is wrong about Islam as 
seen to be practised in India today.

All religions, from Judaism to Christianity where 
Eve was no more than Adam's rib, to Hindu social 
customs such as the sati and widow maltreatment, 
can be charged with discriminating against half 
the human race. But modernity put limits on the 
anti-women position one could take in public life 
in many parts of the world. Indeed, the Indian 
subcontinent went on to produce an impressive 
list of women leaders much before Maggie Thatcher 
emerged in the West.

That is why one of the great mysteries of our 
times is why the Indian state and establishment 
confer legitimacy to a bunch of self-seeking 
career mullahs and maulanas whose singular 
purpose seems to be to increase their stake on 
so-called "Muslim issues"? Especially when these 
amount to little more than preserving a 
patriarchal order and denying women their basic 
rights. The stances such Muslim 'leaders' take 
are frighteningly medieval, but the irony is we 
play along, to protect 'minority rights'.

Take the Imrana case. When the scandal broke, the 
All India Muslim Personal Law Board first sent a 
fact-finding team that concluded that no rape had 
taken place. The idea was clearly to protect the 
virtue of the good male, her father-in-law. But 
when Imrana did not play along, the law board 
hemmed and hawed while clerics tried to pressure 
her by declaring it was no longer feasible for 
her to live with her husband, the father of her 
children.

Now that the fast-track court set up by the UP 
government has sentenced the father-in-law to 10 
years imprisonment, the men at the helm of Muslim 
affairs are annoyed. Rehana Adib, a 
Saharanpur-based social activist who's in 
constant touch with Imrana, told Outlook that the 
judgement has brought her no relief. Indeed, the 
pressure is again being mounted on her husband to 
leave Imrana. Maulana Abdul Hameed Naumani, of 
the powerful Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind which controls 
the Deoband network of madrassas, has no doubt 
Imrana must pay for her father-in-law's lust. 
"The fatwa that says she must separate from her 
husband is correct," he says. "It is a matter of 
correct interpretation of Islam."

And then there's the law board that's cleverly 
chosen to support the clerics while pretending to 
pay lip service to the law. They had gone 
ballistic on the Shah Bano case, but on Imrana 
they're being deliberately vague. Their position 
can be summed up thus: it is a matter of 
religious interpretation; it is up to Imrana and 
her family to decide; we represent so many 
schools of Islam that we don't want to take a 
stand. Sociologist Imtiaz Ahmad does not mince 
his words: "Let's not fool ourselves about the 
law board. They are there to uphold the power of 
the clerics. That is why they exist."

The logical conclusion of this argument is 
overwhelmingly depressing. Most of the 
individuals occupying the so-called Muslim public 
space don't really care about the community's 
fate. The dismal socio-economic indicators the 
Sachar commission report on Muslims describes 
will be discussed in seminars and edit pages. Our 
bearded denizens claiming to be guardians of the 
community are just interested in guarding their 
turfs and indulging in some "votebank" 
negotiations. A law board membership (lifelong) 
here, an MLA ticket there, an invitation to a 
meeting with a PM who must seem to be engaging 
with the largest minority group in this age of 
growing domestic terror.

What's worse perhaps is that our secular guilt 
makes us complicit in the career graphs of such 
individuals.What does the mass murder of Muslims 
in Gujarat have to do with a media-hogging mullah 
in UP? Perhaps nothing. But some of my 
well-meaning secular friends believe it's better 
to keep mum about warts in the Muslim community 
since it's the target of the BJP/RSS and the 
pivot around which Hindutva politics moves. I 
disagree. The crooks must not be allowed to use 
victimhood as a shield. There is a difference 
when I as a Muslim woman interact with the 
patriarchal mullahs. They may make some hearts 
bleed with their tales of discrimination but I 
have only distaste for men who check out my 
religious credentials.

I have far greater respect for Anwar, my driver, 
who tried his best to make the most of the two 
moons that the mullahs of India sighted. He took 
his mandatory Id holiday, then appeared the next 
day with a hopeful expression-madam your mullahs 
(Shias) are celebrating Id today; perhaps I 
should say my prayers again. I smiled at Anwar's 
enterprise and told him that on some days I 
transformed into a Sunni.

The moon sighting too is another case of clerical 
moonshine. Technology now allows us to predict 
the moon's appearance with minute precision. But 
the clerics insist they see with their own 
perfect eyes. Which vision gets clouded when it 
comes to Imrana. In her, they see a woman who's 
worthless compared to the man who raped her.

_____


[5] 

Economic and Political Weekly
October 14, 2006 4329

HOUR OF THE ASSASSINS
Terrorism rears its head whenever a society 
suffering from great inner political confusion 
and social disintegration reaches a cul-de-sac, 
where certain aggrieved sections of the people 
find that
the democratic business of political change 
becomes an impossibility, and when the socialist 
and secular forces break faith with these 
disgruntled and desperate masses by failing to 
provide an alternative leadership. Tragically, 
governments have in turn put in place a state of 
permanent emergency through a slew of draconian 
laws, and created a monolithic monster that 
controls every activity of individuals - from 
street demonstrations to air travel.

by Sumanta Banerjee

. . . and now when we are retreating into the 
silence of our past ambivalence. . .Now is the 
hour of the assassins!
- Arthur Rimbaud,
'Matinee d'ivresse'  in Illuminations (1872).

As the death toll rises in Iraq, Palestine, 
Kashmir, Assam, Mumbai and Malegaon, the 
atrophied conscience and paralysed will-power of 
the Left and other democratic forces are opening 
the doors of civil society to an authoritarian 
world order. The forces behind both terrorism and 
state repression need each other as accomplices 
to tie everybody in a bloody circle. Both create 
false alibis to garner public support for their 
respective causes, and both share an identical 
goal - power with a capital P that holds down the 
people in total subjugation.

In the near future, both the repressive state and 
its terrorist opponents may come to a Yalta-type 
agreement on a territorial division of 
power-sharing, which will allow the 
hitherto-designated "terrorists" to run their own 
governments in territories that are under their 
occupation. They will be incorporated into the 
institution of the state that will legitimise 
their old methods of extortion, subordination and 
terrorisation.
[. . .].
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=10&filename=10656&filetype=pdf

_____


[6] 

www.sacw.net
28 October 2006

TERRORISM: FACTS VERSUS MYTHS
by Ram Puniyani

http://sacw.insaf.net/free/TerrorismFvM.pdf

_____


[7] 

CALL FOR ACTION: 6 YEARS OF HUNGER STRIKE

SUPPORT SHARMILA, REPEAL AFSPA, RESTORE RIGHT TO LIFE

Dear friends,

During the last few decades, the people of Manipur
have witnessed severe repression with the
implementation of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act
(1958). Under this law, the security forces have:

* The power to arrest and enter property without
warrant
* The power to shoot, arrest, and kill at the mere
hint of suspicious activity, even without the lives of
members of the security force being at imminent risk
* Immunity against legal action.

The implementation of this law has led to brutal rape,
arbitrary detentions, “disappearances”, killings, and
loot are being actively used by security forces to
terrorize and subordinate local communities in the
name of counter-insurgency. The implementation of this
draconian law AFSPA has challenged not only the
democratic norms of Manipur, but also of the entire
freedom loving people in India for allowing such
blatant repression to take place.

Recently the recommendations of the Justice Jeevan
Reddy Committee on Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act,
1958 formed in November 2004 has commented that
''....the Act....has become a symbol of oppression, an
object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and
high handedness'' and ''...it is equally necessary to
ensure that where they (Armed Forces of India)
knowingly abuse or misuse their powers, they must be
held accountable....'',

Protesting against AFSPA, Irom Sharmila Chanu, the
young poet from Manipur has been on an indefinite
hunger fast for many years. On November 2, 2006, the
hunger strike of Sharmila Irom is going to complete
six years. She is being forcefully nasal-fed in AIIMS,
Delhi, by the authorities. She has only one demand:
the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers)
Act (1958) from Manipur.

This year 2006 happens to be the 100th year of the
non-violent and peaceful protest form`Satyagraha'
initiated by Mahatma Gandhi. But in the land of Gandhi
this is the first time in Indian history somebody has
gone through a hunger strike for six years.

The struggle of Sharmila Irom is generating moral and
social support and solidarity from all over. Protest
actions and solidarity actions are being planned in
Trivandrum, Trichur, Kottayam, New Delhi, Bombay,
Calcutta and Manipur.

We, the following organisations extend full support to
the struggle of Sharmila Irom and peoples oppressed by
AFSPA. We call all democratic organisations to extend
your support by joining these protests and initiating
solidarity actions wherever possible in your area.

ANHAD
National Alliance of Peoples Movements (NAPM)
Theeradesa Mahila Vedi, Kerala
Global Alternate  Information Applications(GAIA),
Kerala
Visual Search, Bangalore
Samvedan Cultural Programme (Ahmedabad)
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), New Delhi
KRITI, New Delhi
PEACE, New Delhi
Centre for Contemporary Studies & Research, Lucknow
& many others

(Please send reports and protest stills of your
actions to campaign at manipurfreedom.org so that these
actions can be publicised.
For more information on the issue please visit: http://www.manipurfreedom.org)


_____


[10]  ANNOUNCEMENTS: PUBLICATIONS AND EVENTS:


(i)

Religion, caste, and State
by P. Radhakrishnan

Religion, caste, and State are key words in 
understanding India's failure to mature into a 
full-blooded democracy.
There is all-round failure of Indian State, in 
particular its executive and legislative wings. 
Judiciary still retains some credibility. 
Millions of Indians still look to it for succour. 
But given its lackadaisical style of functioning, 
and slow grind, it has also belied people's 
expectations.
The pernicious nexus of religion with politics 
and the mindless use of it as purveyor of 
communal hate are matters of grave concern. The 
BJP's Hindutva politics still remains the most 
abominable form of use of religion in politics.
The cascading effects of globalisation on 
religion have not received much attention in the 
media and in scholarly works. There are other 
issues as well relating to globalisation and 
religion such as the continuing use of religion 
to peddle superstitions, obscurantism and 
irrationality, and international terrorism both 
state-sponsored and religion-centred.
The use of caste in politics, and the depravity 
and depredations of India's political class 
reflecting the aberrations and absurdities of 
caste-based politics continue to undermine and 
slow down India's transformation into a 
full-blooded democracy.
The State's failure to see the education system 
in perspective and strengthen it from primary to 
tertiary levels, and the entry of private 
entrepreneurs into the education sector in a big 
way have already driven the system haywire. The 
recent decision of introducing reservation in 
higher education is likely to add to the problems 
of Indian education and to the confusion and 
frustration of the youth across the entire social 
spectrum.
Such and several other important issues which are 
indeed of nation's concern have been discussed in 
the book.

P. Radhakrishnan is a Senior Professor at the 
Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. 
His research experience spans nearly three 
decades. He has published widely. His books and 
monographs include "Peasant Struggles, Land 
Reforms, and Social Change: Malabar 1836-1982"; 
"Progress Towards Education for All: The Case of 
Tamil Nadu"; and "The Perfidies of Power: India 
in the New Millennium".

<>http://www.rawatbooks.com/ShowDetails.ASP?BookID=1795

___


(ii)

Taliban's War on Women:
Live Experiences of Afghan Women in Transit on Ethnicity and their Identity

by Dr. Minakshi Das

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/asiaResearchCentre/pdf/WorkingPaper/ARCWP13MinakishiDasApr2006.pdf

___

(iii)

Play performance -Reading Chernobyl  by
Mr Parnab Mukherjee

Venue: Delhi School of Social Work
  Opp Shankar Hall
Near Mall Road bus stop
3, University Road
Delhi-7

30th Oct at 3:30 p.m

____

(iv)

South Asia Seminar - Spotlight Event
Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky: 
Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment Discourse in 
the Theosophy Movement

Gananath Obeyesekere
Princeton University	October 30, 2006
12:00 PM
Charles Nelson Prothro Theater, HRC 1st Floor

Highlight lecture in South Asia Seminar series. 
Presentation by Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton 
University. A reception precedes this talk at 
3:00pm.

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

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.