SACW | Feb 3-4, 2007
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Sat Feb 3 19:26:42 CST 2007
South Asia Citizens Wire | February 3-4, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2357 - Year 8
[1] What to do about Burma (Thant Myint-U)
[2] India: Modi, Mody & Co (Rajdeep Sardesai)
[3] India: Who Will Decide Whether Gujaratis Want to See Parzania or Not?
[4] India: The Shiv Sena led coalition sweeps the polls in Bombay - 2 edits
[5] India: Spreading communal violence
(i) Sangh Parivar Again Incites Communal Violence (G N Nagaraj)
(ii) Riots as an alibi for gangsterism -
Moditva in east UP (Edit, Economic Times)
[6] Publication Announcement:
BURMA SPECIAL - Himal South Asian - February 2007
____
[1]
London Review of Books
Vol. 29 No. 3 dated 8 February 2007
WHAT TO DO ABOUT BURMA
by Thant Myint-U
There is an enduring myth that in 1948, when it
achieved independence from Britain, Burma was a
rich country with every reason to expect a bright
future and that the policies and practices of the
military government are alone to blame for
today's miseries. It is beyond dispute that many
of these policies and practices have been
disastrous. But there is a deeper history of
misfortune which needs to be understood.
At independence, Burma was a country devastated
by war, with a collapsed economy and a peculiarly
debilitating colonial legacy dating back to 1885,
when Lord Randolph Churchill, the secretary of
state for India, dispatched an expeditionary
force to sort out the 'Burma problem' of the day.
When the Burma Expeditionary Force seized
Mandalay, British policy-makers decided not only
to dethrone the king, Thibaw, but to abolish the
monarchy altogether. The nobility was soon
disbanded too and families who had held sway over
their villages for centuries were fatally
undermined. The old social order collapsed during
the 'pacification' campaign of the late 1880s,
when tens of thousands of British and Indian
troops attempted to quell unexpectedly harsh
guerrilla resistance, and with this collapse came
the disappearance of an ancient tradition of
Buddhist and secular scholarship. This was
followed by a period of peace and considerable
prosperity, which lasted from the early 1890s to
the late 1920s. There were new connections -
intellectual as well as commercial - to England,
India and elsewhere, and a generation of
well-educated men and women hoped to be part of a
more progressive world. But the foundations of
future problems were being laid.
There was, for example, a massive influx of
immigrants from other parts of British India. In
some years, more than two million Indians arrived
in Burma, mostly to work, and though many
eventually left, enough stayed for the Indian
portion of the population to grow rapidly. In the
1920s and 1930s, more than two-thirds of the
inhabitants of Rangoon were ethnic Indians.
Indians became the country's wealthiest
businessmen, doctors and lawyers, as well as its
shopkeepers, industrial workers and labourers.
Their presence was, in many ways, a huge
advantage to the country, but any sudden,
large-scale immigration is bound to create
problems, and this one contributed to the growth
of a particularly sour and defensive Burmese
nationalism.
Equally damaging was London's long indifference
to Burmese concerns and sensitivities, its
treatment of Burma as just one more province of
India. Ethnic minorities - the Karen and the
Kachin, for example - were brought into the
Indian army and military police, but the ethnic
Burmese (two-thirds of the population) were
classed as a 'non-martial race', which angered a
people brought up on stories of ancient military
prowess. In the 1920s, young radicals looked to
the IRA for inspiration; in the 1930s, to
Stalin's Russia. Some also looked to Japan.
The Japanese invasion of 1941-42 turned Burma
into a giant battlefield, drawing in hundreds of
thousands of Allied soldiers, and igniting an
ethnic conflict, between the Burmese and the
Karen, which continues to this day. Over the
course of the war, dozens of cities and towns
were obliterated; bridges and railway lines,
dockyards and ports, oilfields and refineries
were blown up; and the civil administration
collapsed everywhere. A small group of Burmese
student politicians, led by the charismatic Aung
San (the father of Aung San Suu Kyi), escaped
from the country, received military training from
the Japanese, and then reappeared alongside the
invaders as the Burma Independence Army. They
helped to form a government of collaborators,
before tiring of the Japanese and eventually
turning against them in March 1945, just in time
to style themselves as an Allied force. Student
radicals had turned into partisans, and in 1945
the country was awash with weapons.
London meanwhile needed a Burma policy. During
their wartime exile in Simla, Reginald
Dorman-Smith, the governor before the British
retreat in 1942, and his colleagues drew up what
became a White Paper for the reconstruction of
the Burmese economy and a gradual transition to
home rule. A representative executive council,
including all the political parties, would advise
the governor before fresh elections could be
held. Ethnic minorities in the highlands would be
fully consulted on their place in an independent
Burma. But Aung San's group, now fashionably
called the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League,
demanded to be recognised immediately as a
provisional government. The 31-year-old Aung San
was already wildly popular and his speeches were
attracting huge crowds. But for London, in late
1945, Burma was low down on any list of
priorities.
A showdown took place, between Dorman-Smith,
increasingly aware of the need to placate Aung
San but charged by Whitehall with implementing
his dated White Paper, and Aung San himself,
presiding precariously over a coalition of
Communists and socialists, militia leaders and
former Japanese collaborators, all now dreaming
their different dreams of the Burma to come.
In August 1945, Aung San had flown to Kandy to
meet with Mountbatten, then supreme allied
commander for South-East Asia. What emerged from
their discussions was a new Burma army, with half
its battalions drawn from the old British-trained
Burma Army, mainly Karen and Kachin soldiers from
the highlands, and half from Aung San's
Japanese-trained Burma Independence Army, almost
all of whose officers were die-hard Burmese
nationalists. Throughout the colonial period, the
highlands had been ruled with a light hand and
separately from 'Burma proper'. Many of the Karen
and Kachin had converted to Christianity and
there was considerable distrust between the two
halves of this new army. It was a recipe for
disaster.
In the Burmese version, the story of 1946 is the
story of Aung San and his colleagues refusing to
compromise, heroically leading 'the people' and
facing down the British Empire. In fact, in 1946,
Burma was at best a minor irritant given the
enormous challenges Britain faced at home, as
well as in Europe, Palestine and India. Allied
forces in Burma had been rapidly scaled down and
Nehru made it clear that Indian troops would not
be on hand to quell a nationalist revolt. Aung
San threatened violence, then pulled back from
the brink to demonstrate who was now in charge.
Had Britain desperately wanted to remain in
Burma, it would have been able to deal with Aung
San, but with India on the eve of independence,
the Burmese economy a shambles and the country no
longer of any strategic importance, Burma just
wasn't worth the effort. The Labour government
decided to give it up. The White Paper was
revoked; Dorman-Smith was replaced by Hubert
Rance. Aung San then called a general strike:
tens of thousands took to the streets. Rance
quickly entered into negotiations with Aung San,
who was invited to London. And in London, in
January 1947, Britain agreed essentially to hand
over power to Aung San and his League.
Independence would come within a year. In the
interim, he would form a cabinet and effectively
be treated as a dominion prime minister.
What happened next is seen by the Burmese as the
central tragedy of their modern history. Aung
San, a man with a strange and magnetic
personality, had managed to gather together in
his cabinet many of the country's most able
politicians, including several ethnic minority
leaders. But on the morning of 19 July 1947, as
the cabinet was meeting in downtown Rangoon,
armed men in uniform burst through the wooden
doors and killed nearly all its members,
including Aung San. It still isn't clear
precisely who was responsible; at least some
British officials were most probably involved,
though (contrary to Burmese conspiracy theories)
there is little to suggest any involvement by the
British government. For a politically divided
country ravaged by war the loss of these men was
incalculable.
The coalition that Aung San had put together
disintegrated. The Communists, under their leader
Than Tun, condemned the 'sham' independence from
Britain, called for a people's revolution, and
prepared for an armed insurrection. Other groups
- among them, the Islamic Mujahidin in Arakan
(along the Bengal border) and the 'White Flag'
Communist guerrillas of Thakin Soe - were already
in revolt. Even more uncertain was the loyalty of
Aung San's own paramilitary organisation, the
huge People's Volunteer Organisation or PVO:
demobbed partisans and newer recruits, young men
who had grown up in wartime and could imagine
nothing more exciting than the battles they hoped
were coming. Nervously watching from the
sidelines were the ethnic minorities, especially
the Karen, who had seen the rise of a militant
ethnic Burmese nationalism and had suffered
terribly at the hands of the Burma Independence
Army in the early days of the war.
And so when the last of the Yorkshire Light
Infantry sailed away from the docks at Rangoon,
Burma was far from being on the road to a happy
future. Within weeks, Than Tun's Communists had
attacked government posts up and down the
Irrawaddy valley and were soon joined by the PVO.
The army began to fall apart, some ethnic Burmese
units joining the growing insurrection. In late
1948, the Karen battalions, British-trained and
representing more than a third of the armed
forces, also peeled away. Cities and towns
throughout the lowlands fell to one rebel faction
or another, or to bandit gangs and local militia.
Mandalay was jointly held by the Communists and
the Karen. By February 1949, the army was down to
a couple of thousand men, barely holding on to
the outskirts of Rangoon and facing widespread
insurgency. At its core was the Fourth Burma
Rifles, trained by the Japanese and led by
General Ne Win, a deputy of Aung San and now the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
When Aung San was killed, the governor selected
his close colleague U Nu to take his place. U Nu
was very different from Aung San, less the
enigmatic tough guy and more the eccentric, the
charmer, the consummate politician - he went on
to win three general elections for his party. He
was also a committed democrat. In the darkest
days of the civil war, it was U Nu who rallied
the government side, flying around the country in
a seaplane, and setting out his vision of a
progressive and internationally-minded Burma. His
best friend and confidant, especially on matters
of foreign policy, was my grandfather, U Thant,
who would later become Burma's ambassador to the
UN and then its third secretary-general. They had
both been uneasy with Burmese nationalism's
flirtations with Fascism and were also resolutely
opposed to Communism.
In the meantime General Ne Win and his
Japanese-trained officers were doing the actual
fighting in the countryside. And it wasn't easy.
Barely had Ne Win's small army managed to push
back the Communists and the Karen when an
entirely new enemy emerged in the eastern Shan
hills. In 1949, with the fall of Peking and the
retreat of Chinese Nationalist forces to Taiwan,
a small remnant of Nationalists had retreated
southwestward into Burma. The United States began
arming and supplying them. The Burmese protested
vigorously against this at the UN but in vain.
The lesson for Ne Win was clear: Burma couldn't
rely on the UN or international declarations of
friendship; it had instead to build up a
professional military machine, able to crush the
insurgencies but also to defend itself against
all its enemies.
As the insurgents were pushed back, the army
began taking over administrative tasks, largely
because the civil structures were so fragile and
so compromised by political rivalries. The
military fretted about political interference in
their affairs, and believed that party politics -
often corrupt and violent - were too messy to
meet Burma's needs. In the early morning of 2
March 1962, tanks and mechanised units loyal to
Ne Win rolled into Rangoon, surrounding
Government House and the Secretariat, arrested U
Nu and all the other senior political figures,
and installed the military dictatorship that
survives to this day.
An army coup in East Asia in the early 1960s was
no big deal. Pakistan, Thailand, South Korea,
Indonesia were or would soon be military
dictatorships. But Ne Win and his Revolutionary
Council made disastrous policy decisions, which
even now lie at the heart of many of Burma's
problems. The first was to nationalise all major
industries, including banking and international
trade, even though the state lacked the capacity
to run them. The second was to expel
approximately 400,000 ethnic Indians, including
many whose families had lived in Burma for
generations. The third was to undermine and
eventually dismantle civilian institutions. The
parliament was done away with immediately, and
over the next decade, the courts, the police, the
universities, the civil service and the old
British-era system of district administration
were critically weakened or abolished as army
officers took over. The fourth wrong decision was
to seek a military rather than a political
solution to the country's long-running civil war.
At first there were talks with the rebels but
they soon collapsed and the fighting became more
brutal still. Fifth and most important was Ne
Win's decision to isolate Burma from the rest of
the world.
Exactly why he did this is difficult to explain.
A failed university student and one time post
office clerk, Ne Win quickly came to dominate the
armed forces after Aung San's death. U Nu trusted
him. He had a reputation as a man about town, an
avid golfer, often to be seen at the race track
or the better diplomatic parties. Even after his
coup he continued to travel the world, shopping
in London and for a while seeing a psychiatrist
in Vienna. But he seems to have absorbed the
colonial prejudice that the Burmese were, yes,
nice people, talented in their own way, but unfit
for self-rule, a people not quite ready for the
responsibilities of government and needing
direction and an iron hand. The Burmese must
learn to do things for themselves, the general
often said.
There were other, perhaps higher motives for his
actions. In the early 1960s the Vietnam War was
underway and China's Cultural Revolution was
imminent. It was easy to see how Burma might be
drawn into a superpower conflict. Hiding from the
outside world would provide a degree of
protection. But it was a catastrophic policy even
so. Aid programmes were terminated and all inward
investment was banned. Burmese were very rarely
allowed out and foreigners were not allowed in,
even as tourists. The economy creaked to a
standstill. There were shortages of every kind.
Very little outside information filtered in.
Rangoon turned into a big sprawling village, and
the country settled in for a long, nightmarish
sleep.
By the mid-1980s, few people were happy. Ne Win
was approaching eighty and increasingly
eccentric. Always a keen numerologist, he one day
changed all currency notes to denominations
divisible by nine (9, 90, 180). Everyone began to
feel that something had to change. Even the army
was tired of its never ending battles in the
distant hills and looked enviously at its peers
in South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia, who were
getting rich in business. In 1988, when tens of
thousands of people took to the streets and then
rallied behind Aung San Suu Kyi, there was no one
to defend the status quo. But how exactly would
the country change? Who would be in charge? And
how could the outside world best help?
For the army, the uprising of 1988 was a shock.
The government came close to being toppled and
the strength of popular feeling was plain to see.
Hundreds of people in Rangoon were killed as the
government crushed the protests. But then there
seemed to be some desire for compromise. People
were allowed to form political parties, Aung San
Suu Kyi and other politicians were (for a while)
permitted to campaign, and elections were held in
1990. But when the election returned a landslide
for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy (rather than the mixed parliament the
army was possibly hoping for), and when some in
the NLD began to talk about 'Nuremberg-style'
trials for senior officers, the army went back on
its promises.
Meanwhile, a completely new development - almost
entirely unreported in the West - was
transforming the political landscape of the
country. In the summer of 1989, the Burma
Communist Party, the government's chief
battlefield opponent for forty years, with an
army of more than twenty thousand well-trained
and well-armed troops, collapsed after a mutiny.
In the 1960s, the government had come close to
defeating it, only to see it re-emerge with the
active support of Communist China. By 1970, it
controlled a huge swathe of territory in the Shan
hills. But in 1989 its army splintered into
several ethnic-based militias. The government,
reversing its decades-long policy of seeking only
a military solution to the civil war, entered
into talks with these successor militias and all
sides agreed to a ceasefire. The militias would
be allowed to keep their arms and their
territory, pending a final settlement. (Many
turned to trading in narcotics.) Government
forces were then able to pressurise or persuade
nearly all the remaining ethnic insurgencies to
stop fighting. By the mid-1990s, only the Karen
National Union held out, but it came under fierce
attack and lost all its remaining bases near the
Thai border. For the first time in half a
century, the guns were almost silent. There was
an opportunity finally to end Burma's civil war,
the longest-running armed conflict in the world.
For many in the West, the Burmese morality play
of the past fifteen years has pitted Aung San Suu
Kyi and her supporters against the army
leadership and its Orwellian-sounding State Peace
and Development Council. One side stands for
democracy and human rights, the other locks up
opponents and allows very little political
freedom. It's easy to take sides, easier still to
support sanctions or boycotts and be happy that
national governments and the UN should
continually be expressing concern. But it's
important to see that at least three different
challenges currently face Burma: the need to find
a just and sustainable end to the armed conflict;
the need to help the country undo decades of
economic mismanagement and develop its economy;
and the need to begin a transition to democratic
rule.
Burma's history makes all these challenges
exceedingly difficult. With the collapse of royal
institutions in 1885 and the subsequent failure
of colonial institutions to take root, the army
is, for better or worse, the only effective
national institution left. It's no surprise that
the leading officials of the NLD (other than Aung
San Suu Kyi) are all retired army officers. A
transition to democracy means not just removing
the army from government, it means building up
the other institutions that would make a civilian
administration possible. Equally important is the
country's history of militant ethnicity, the
failure of successive political elites to
understand that they live in a multicultural
country and need to develop a more inclusive
national identity. We tend to see Burma as a
Velvet Revolution gone wrong, when in fact it is
an impoverished war-torn society of 55 million
people, half of them under the age of 18, with
armed forces of more than 400,000 men (and over a
dozen insurgent armies) who know only the
language of warfare.
Some people still argue that trade and investment
sanctions against the Burmese government are the
only way to push the army leadership into talking
with Aung San Suu Kyi. But the sanctions argument
is deeply flawed. First, it assumes a regime very
different from the one that actually exists. That
is, it assumes a government that is committed to
rejoining the world economy, that sees clearly
the benefits of trade and investment or is in
some way sensitive to the welfare of ordinary
people. True, there are some in the army who like
the idea of trade and investment and care about
popular welfare, and for them sanctions might
constitute a sort of pressure. But many in the
military don't care. For them, national security,
as they see it, is everything. Compromise might
be possible on other issues, but if the choice is
between political suicide and interacting with an
outside world they fundamentally distrust, then
there is no debate. Isolation is their default
condition: not ideal, but comfortable all the
same.
Second, sanctions really only mean Western
sanctions. In the years since 1988, Burmese trade
with China and several other neighbouring
countries has grown considerably, and tens of
billions of dollars' worth of natural gas have
been discovered offshore. To believe that China
would impose sanctions and cut off their access
to Burma's energy supplies in order to push the
country towards democracy is naive. Sanctions
going beyond those already in place would mean in
effect increased influence for China; not
something likely to lead to democratic change.
Third, imagine for a moment that somehow,
miraculously, extremely tight sanctions were
possible - involving China, India and Thailand -
and that these brought the government to its
knees, without a dollar or renminbi left to pay
for vital imports. While there is a possibility
that reasonable heads would prevail, there is
also a very good chance that the army leadership
would stay in their Führerbunker until the bitter
end, as the country collapsed into anarchy around
them. Many of those who support sanctions hope
that greater outside pressure would lead to
disagreements within the army. Nothing could be
more dangerous: the country could easily fall
apart into dozens of competing military factions,
insurgent armies and drug warlord militias. If
that happened, all the troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan wouldn't be enough to put Burma back
together; it would be a disaster for Asia.
The problem with sanctions is best illustrated by
the opportunity that was lost in the early 1990s,
when a new generation of generals, eager for
change, launched a series of reforms and opened
up the economy to the outside world. Hundreds of
foreign companies set up shop. Rangoon was
transformed, with new hotels, shopping centres
and official buildings, traffic jams on
previously empty roads, and the first real influx
of tourists in years. Satellite dishes went up
everywhere. But thanks to boycotts and then, in
the later 1990s, more formal sanctions (as well
as continued government mismanagement of the
economy), Western firms began to pull out,
leaving Burma in limbo: with more than enough
regional trade to stay afloat, but nothing like
the momentum to begin changing society. If, over
the last fifteen years, there had been aid and
investment (as there has been in Vietnam), rather
than a half-hearted 'regime-change' strategy from
the West, there could have been real economic
growth and social change. The isolation on which
the regime depends would have diminished and it
would have become increasingly clear to the
officer corps that proper government is too
complex for the army to manage. And this in turn
would have created a better situation for Burma's
democrats and more leverage for Western
governments. As it is, Western leverage is close
to zero. Focusing on political change at the top
is not the answer.
This is not to say that Burma shouldn't be a
democracy, or that the Western supporters of
democracy and human rights in Burma should give
up. Far from it. Liberal democracy is the only
sustainable form of government for a country as
culturally and ethnically diverse as Burma, but
we need to start from the way things are. Per
capita aid to Burma is less than a tenth of per
capita aid to Vietnam and Cambodia: this should
not be acceptable. Serious diplomacy that
includes both the Burmese government and its
neighbours should have priority over a new round
of condemnation.
Thant Myint-U, a former fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, is the author of The River of
Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma.
______
[2]
Hindustan Times
February 1, 2007
MODI, MODY & CO
by Rajdeep Sardesai
There are two Mr Modis I know in Gujarat. One
spells his surname with an 'i', the other with a
'y'. Narendra Modi is a familiar household name.
He is the Chief Minister of a 'Vibrant Gujarat',
his political constituency's 'Hindu Hriday
Samrat' and the BJP's man-in-waiting. After more
than five years in power, he is the unquestioned
leader of the Gujarat BJP and easily the most
popular political figure in the state today. In
the last five years, he has won every election in
the state with a comfortable majority, from
panchayat polls to a two-thirds victory in the
assembly elections. His face adorns hoardings
across the state and his supporters and
well-oiled propaganda machine have anointed him
Gujarat's modern-day sardar. Truly, in the last
five years, Narendra Modi has been catapulted
from a relatively faceless RSS pracharak to
becoming a larger-than-life figure within the
Hindutva pantheon.
But this article is not meant to be about the
Modi you know. Let me introduce you to another Mr
Mody from Gujarat, the one who spells his surname
with a 'y'. It's unlikely you've ever met, or
heard of, Dara Mody. In his early 40s, Dara Mody
is the typical anonymous Indian. He works in the
Gujarat government's Science City in an Ahmedabad
suburb as a projectionist in an Imax theatre.
Driving around in his two-wheeler across the
city, he is a God-fearing Parsi, soft-spoken and
rather shy. Television cameras are unlikely to
follow him, no one will chant his name and he
hasn't ever appeared on a hoarding. He is very
different from the other Mr Modi, and yet the
fate of the two men are strangely linked.
For the last five years, while Narendrabhai has
been winning election after election and building
an ever-rising personality cult, Dara Mody has
been roaming the streets of Ahmedabad and its
police stations in search of his son. Dara's
14-year-old son, Azhar, went missing on February
28, 2002, the day the post-Godhra violence tore
apart parts of Gujarat. It was a defining day in
the lives of both the Modi(y)s. While the
violence transformed Narendra Modi into a
modern-day hero of hatred and a 'saviour' of
Hindus, Dara Mody's humdrum middle-class life was
shattered irrevocably.
Dara lived in Ahmedabad's Gulberg society. When
he left for work at 9 am that February day, he
could have scarcely imagined how his little world
would be changed forever. Gulberg was the scene
of one of the worst massacres of the 2002 Gujarat
riots, where more than 49 people were butchered
(there is no other word that can be used to
express the savagery) to death. Among them was
the former Congress MP, Ehsaan Jaffrey. Dara's
teenaged son, Azhar, was with his mother, Rupa,
and sister, Binaifer, when the mob attacked
Gulberg. A frightened Rupa held on to her two
children, desperately telling the attackers that
she was a Parsi and not a Muslim. Her son was
snatched away, never to be found. She and her now
13-year-old daughter have lived to tell the tale
of horror and bestiality.
While Narendrabhai has thousands of supporters
cheering him on, Dara has his distraught wife and
shell-shocked daughter for company. What binds
Dara's family together is their search for their
lost son, his memories captured in a fading photo
album, including the last image of Azhar in his
school uniform, proudly holding the tricolour. In
the last five years, Dara, like the other
families in Gulberg society, has been unable to
return home. Their three-room house is still
locked, a portrait of Zarathustra and a wall
calendar with a February 2002 dateline the only
reminders of what was once a happy, innocent
little world. Time has stood still in Gulberg, a
burst of bougainvillea in the central garden the
only sign of life in an abandoned neighbourhood.
Not one person has been convicted for the Gulberg
massacre, and Dara can't hope to return to his
home for fear that the killers may be roaming on
the streets outside the colony.
Till a few weeks ago, Dara's story was just
another statistic on the bloody map of Gujarat
2002, a map that includes both those who lost
their loved ones in the Sabarmati train tragedy
and those who suffered in the riots. At least the
families of those who died in the Sabarmati blaze
have the comfort of knowing that the alleged
perpetrators have been arrested under Pota and
are awaiting sentencing. By sharp contrast, there
has not been a single conviction in any of the
major riots cases. Ask Dara what he feels today,
and the eyes become moist. "How can I feel
anything when I have lost my teenaged son," he
says, without, remarkably, any trace of rancour.
And then, with a hint of a smile, he reminds you,
"I work for the government in Science City. How
can I say anything about my employers!"
Now, Dara's story is the subject of a major
movie, Parzania, a film that has already won
critical acclaim across the world, but is
unlikely to be screened in Gujarat itself. Why
should we have to revive the ghosts of 2002,
Gujarat has moved on, runs the argument. On the
face of it, Gujarat has indeed moved on. The
state ranks second today in terms of new
investments - proof, say Modi's fan club, that
Gujarat's entrepreneurial spirit has triumphed
over the scars of violence. The 'Vibrant Gujarat'
conclave - the showpiece of the Modi government -
has been seen as a resounding success, with 363
MoUs being signed, and investments worth
thousands of crores being promised. With the
entire weight of India Inc - from Ratan Tata to
Mukesh Ambani - lining up behind the Chief
Minister, Gujarat's pariah status is gone. Five
years ago, CII and several corporates had
questioned the Modi government's handling of the
riots. Today, virtually every business house is
extolling the virtues of the Chief Minister,
widely seen as being non-corrupt and
administratively efficient. In a state where the
Opposition is feeble, and where previous chief
ministers have been seen as either corrupt or
ineffectual, Modi stands out as someone who has
brought a muscular energy and a reputation for
financial probity to the CM's office.
Why then should pesky 'secularist crusaders'
spoil the party by repeatedly raising the ghosts
of the 2002 violence? Why should human rights
activists from outside Gujarat hold public
hearings in the state to find out about missing
persons? Why should only the stories of grieving
families of the riots cases be told? Why not make
a film on the Panchal family, whose four members
died in the Godhra train burning? And why give so
much attention to Dara Mody, when the real hero
of Gujarat is perhaps the other Modi?
Unfortunately, those who ask these questions fail
to answer certain more basic questions: how can
the quest for individual and collective justice
be seen in narrow, partisan terms? How can the
political ascent of an ideology be used to sweep
aside the human dimension of a tragedy? Can a
state's success be measured only in terms of
monetary investments? What about the social
fabric that remains badly ruptured? Is the
shining present good enough to sweep aside the
darkened recent past?
Perhaps, some answers can be found if the two
Modi(y)s meet. Maybe, Narendrabhai may wish to
consider placing his arm around Darabhai's
shoulder, maybe he might find the time to share
Dara's grief, maybe he could even consider doing
something as simple as saying sorry to the Mody
couple. It is not just communal hatred that
divides Gujarat even today. It is the absence of
a sense of remorse or compassion. In the long
run, this cannot be the recipe for a 'Vibrant
Gujarat'.
Rajdeep Sardesai is Editor-in-Chief, CNN IBN and IBN 7
______
[3]
WHO WILL DECIDE WHETHER GUJARATIS WANT TO SEE PARZANIA OR NOT?
ANHAD is announced today on February 2, 2007 a
SMS and e-mail contest for the Gujarati youth
(15-25 years).
Topic: Let Parzania be Screened
Perturbed by the constant censorship by the State
government on people's right to freedom of
expression , Anhad has decided to announce this
competition where young people can freely and
creatively express their feelings.
Young people are requested to send in their
entries as 1. SMS messages and 2. e-mails.
The best five entries from each category will
get a very special prize : that is they will meet
the cast and the director of the film. So 10
young people ( 5 from both categories) will have
an exclusive interaction with Naseeruddin Shah,
Sarika and Rahul Dholakia . They will also be
given certificates of merit.
Entries will be judged by a panel of 3 people .
Weightage will be given to the content and
creativity both.
Category 1: sms to be sent to 9212110643
Category 2: e-mails to be sent to <mailto:parzania at gmail.com>parzania at gmail.com
Last date: 10 February, 2007
Prizes will be announced on February 14, 2007
Shabnam Hashmi
ANHAD ( Act Now for Harmony and Democracy)
310, Shanti Sadan Estate
Laldarwaza, Opp Dinbai Tower
Ahmedabad
______
[4]
The Hindu
February 03, 2007
Editorial
SAFFRON RIDES AGAIN
If there is one clear political message from the
results of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation
elections, it is that the city's secular parties
are so divided by mutual antagonism that they
cannot overcome the ideologues of Hindutva. This
lack of cohesion among non-communal parties has
resulted, in the past, in the ascendancy of the
Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies at the
Centre. Successive elections in Gujarat have also
shown the edge that a purposefully directed
Hindutva campaign has over a disunited secular
front. The same scenario has now been played out
in India's commercial capital, which the
Congress-Nationalist Congress Party coalition
that rules Maharashtra had hoped to wrest from
the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. That hope was
unrealistic, since the Congress and the NCP
failed to arrive at a pre-poll seat-sharing
arrangement. They thus virtually handed over the
elections to the saffron combine: while the
secular vote was badly fractured between these
two major players, small but cumulatively
significant segments of the cake were carried off
by Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navanirman Sena,
the Samajwadi Party, the various factions of the
Republican Party of India (RPI), and rebel
candidates from all parties.
Many among Mumbai's middle class had been looking
forward to these polls, enthused by the presence
of untested but clean, independent candidates
supported by citizens' action groups: individuals
whose campaigns had emphasised civic issues such
as bureaucratic accountability, public hygiene,
and the availability of basic amenities. Despite
their best efforts, the turnout was below 50 per
cent. These votaries of Utopia will be
disappointed; the politics of Mumbai is still
determined by charismatic demagoguery and ethnic
loyalties. The Shiv Sena, claiming the mantle of
the `zaanta Raja' (the compassionate monarch),
denied tickets to a large number of sitting
corporators, in response to complaints from
constituents. The Sena also persuaded its
patriarch, Bal Thackeray, to roar again in the
cause of `Hindu nationalism.' The BJP flew in
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to woo the
city's substantial Gujarati voters. This
concerted strategy inspired large numbers of
Sena-BJP supporters to vote; by contrast, the
secular parties had nothing to offer except
looming cut-outs of their leaders. The results
from Mumbai and the nine other municipal
corporations in Maharashtra are viewed, in some
quarters, as a foretaste of what the 2009
Assembly elections will bring. While Maharashtra
does tend to vote differently at the civic and
the State levels, the ruling Congress-NCP
coalition will be fooling itself if it made light
of its defeat at the grassroots.
o o o
Indian Express
February 03, 2007
Editorial
SENA GETS MUMBAI KEYS AGAIN
CIVIC POLLS: Message from across the state: Congress the loser, advantage Pawar
Mumbai February 2: After two of its senior
leaders, Narayan Rane and Raj Thackeray, walked
out with their followers, Bal Thackeray's Shiv
Sena was facing what was perceived as its worst
civic election. But today, the ageing Tiger led
his party and the saffron combine to a third
successive term at the Brihanmumbai Municipal
Corporation.
The Congress could increase its numbers
marginally from 63 to 71 over the last polls
while the NCP could not add a single seat to its
strength of 14. And though the Sena's strength
has come down from 103 to 83 and the BJP's from
from 37 to 28, the saffron alliance has emerged
as the single largest combine.
Raj Thackeray's MNS won just seven, Arun Gawli's
Akhil Bharatiya Sena, two, and the Samajwadi
Party, eight. The Sena-BJP combine is set to take
the corporation with a little help from friendly
Independents in the 227-member House.
The Sena-BJP alliance won the neighbouring Thane
and Ulhasnagar and wrested Nagpur from Congress.
That was not all for the Congress: In Pune, which
was once its bastion, it needs NCP's support to
rule and in neighbouring Pimpri Chinchwad, its
junior partner in the state is miles ahead of the
Grand Old Party. So if there's a clear loser in
the poll, it's the Congress.
"Some people had teased the Tiger," a jubilant
executive president of the Sena, Uddhav
Thackeray, said after the election results were
declared. "Now the Tiger has struck back." He
said that he would give credit to his father,
forefathers and Gods _ an indication of the
emotive appeal of Marathi Manoos made by Bal
Thackeray.
The senior Thackeray attributed the victory to
the leadership of heir-designate Uddhav
Thackeray. He was dismissive of those who had
left the party - Narayan Rane,now the state
revenue minister, and nephew Raj Thackeray, who
formed his own Maharashtra Navanirman Sena - and
described them as "insects."
He also said he was suprised at the "surge of the saffron alliance."
The statement faxed to newspapers said he praised
senior leaders like Manohar Joshi, Subhash Desai,
Ramdas Kadam, Pramold Navalkar and others for
their efforts.
For Uddhav this was a test. Leading a poll
campaign after facing the revolts from Narayan
Rane and
Raj Thackeray, he had his back to the wall. "It
was an acid test for me, though I had passed
similar tests in 1997 and 2002," he said.
"But because of the blessings of our forefathers
and Gods as well as our loyal supporters, our
votes did not split."
But despite the division in its ranks and its
weakening ally, the BJP _ it was going through a
leadership crisis after the death of Pramod
Mahajan _ Sena did have a few advantages.
The Congress and the NCP had failed to forge a
pre-poll alliance; and the Dalit parties had
formed a Third Front with the Samajwadi Party and
Left parties
The Sena, which had little to flaunt about
improvement in civic affairs in the last decade,
worked out a clear strategy. Aware of its
anti-incumbency factor, it denied tickets to 58
sitting corporators and nominated new young
faces. Then, the Sena leaders blamed the central
and state governments (read the Congress party)
for not giving Mumbai its share of taxes (a
whopping Rs 70,000 crore).
During the election campaign, the party decided
to focus not on civic issues, but on emotive
ones: the ageing and ailing Bal Thackeray (who
had the misfortune of witnessing the
fragmentation of the party he nurtured for four
decades); the declining numbers of Marathi Manoos
in Mumbai (which the Sena placed at 32 per cent);
the "conspiracy" of the Congress to severe Mumbai
from Maharashtra to make it a city-state or a
union territory for affluent migrants; the
insecurity faced by Mumbaiites in wake of terror
attacks; and the assurance that only Shiv Sainiks
could protect the citizens from the terror of the
"green monster" (read Muslims) as they claimed to
have done during the 1993 riots.
To drive home the party's point, Hindutva's
poster-boy and Gujarat's chief minister Narendra
Modi was brought in to campaign for the Sena-BJP
alliance.
The educated and the affluent class did not come
out to vote, as usual, while the traditional
votebank of the Sena - the Marathi-speaking lower
middle-class and those living in slums and chawls
responded to the ageing Tiger's appeal.
The success of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in the
BMC is a wakeup call for the Congress and the NCP.
In the 2004 assembly polls, the NCP had emerged
as the single largest party with 71 MLAs and the
Congress had 68 MLAs in the House of 288. The
Congress got a boost a year later, when Bal
Thackeray's trusted lieutenant Narayan Rane
revolted against Uddhav and joined the Congress.
Rane got re-elected on a Congress ticket to
become the revenue minister in the Deshmukh
cabinet.
His importance in the party grew as seven of his
supporters in the Sena resigned as MLAs and six
of them got re-elected on Congress tickets.
This made the Congress overtake the NCP in
numbers in the assembly and become the largest
party with 75 MLAs. On the eve of the BMC polls,
Rane had promised that he would wipe out the
Sena, but instead, most of his supporters fielded
by the Congress, got defeated owing to infighting.
_____
[5] [The Hindu right is having a party in India;
These specialists of communal violence have been
at work in Karnataka, in Madhya Pradesh and most
recently in Eastern UP. There is likelihood of
more violence as the legislative elections
approach. ]
o o o
(i)
People's Democracy
February 04, 2007
KARNATAKA
Sangh Parivar Again Incites Communal Violence
by G N Nagaraj
WHILE the earlier episodes of communal violence,
the 10 days of curfew and the disruption of life
were fresh in the memory of the people of
Karnataka, the Sangh Parivar instigated yet
another episode of well planned violence in two
assembly constituencies of Bangalore where the
BJP had won. The reason is simple. The BJP, which
won an unprecedented 79 seats in the Karnataka
assembly last time, is afraid of losing many of
its seats in the event of a new election. That is
the main reason that for both partners of the
present coalition government --- the BJP and the
JD(S), with the letter S ironically standing for
"secular" --- are somehow continuing their unholy
alliance with all its contradictions. The Sangh
Parivar wants to use the BJP's hold on
administration to polarise the polity on communal
lines and make the state one of its secure bases.
It has held several baithaks here and the RSS's
chief and other national leaders are making
frequent visits to the state --- many a time
unannounced.
RALLY'S FAILURE & ITS AFTERMATH
That is why the Parivar is inciting a number of
local or village level communal conflicts in its
old bases from where its men were elected several
times in elections. They made in the past and are
still making all out efforts to create a
controversy around a Sufi dargah in Baba
Budangiri and use the issue to polarise the
people on communal lines. When the NDA government
was in power in New Delhi, the BJP's Ananth
Kumar, then a central minister, had openly
declared that they would make Baba Budangiri the
Ayodhya of the south and Karnataka a Gujarat.
Recently, in November 2006, during the rallies
that were held to raise anew the Baba Budangiri
issue, they incited communal violence in
Mangalore and the surrounding talukas. The ten
days of curfew that had to be imposed at that
time, some other factors and also the CPI(M)'s
intervention ignited the common people's dislike
for the communal forces. This was evident from
their rally at Baba Budangiri on December 3,
2006. While the Parivar used to mobilise 30,000
to 50,000 people in the earlier previous years,
the December 3 rally was a big failure, with only
3,000 people participating in it.
However, the Sangh Parivar's response to its
failure has been to step up its communal
propaganda and drive by organising a series of
"Virat Hindu Samaveshas" (Grand Hindu
Congregations) in the name of M S Golvalkar's
centenary at the takuka and district levels and
within cities. For its public meetings during
this drive, the Parivar not only roped in popular
swamis and mutt chiefs belonging to many castes,
but also misused the images of Bhagat Singh,
Vivekananda, Ambedkar, Karnataka's social
reformers like Basavanna and Kanaka Dasa,
venerated by Lingayats and shepherds, along with
Golvalkar's images. The Parivar also sought to
exploit issues and non-issues like terrorism, the
so-called minority appeasement, cow slaughter and
conversions etc in a bid to incite communal
hatred. Tens of lakhs of rupees were spent to
decorate whole towns or cities with cutouts,
banners and flags. Many of the cutouts displayed
the images of cow slaughter, or of Shivaji
thrusting his sword into the body of a Mughal
commandant, or of gods in militant postures.
These Virat Hindu Samaveshas were preceded by
meetings involving doctors, advocates, bus
owners, hotel owners and workers in such
establishments. Several motorcycle rallies were
organised as part of preparation of each
Samavesha. The whole scene looked intimidating
and made the minorities, particularly the
Muslims, anxious.
A recent development is that this situation is
being used by Muslim fundamentalists who have
formed an organisation, called the Karnataka
Forum for Dignity (KFD), and are working in close
association with the fundamentalist National
Democratic Front (NDF) of Kerala. It is also
associated with the PWG group of naxalites in
Karnataka. They are thus only giving excuses to
Sangh Parivar to incite communal hatred by making
crude efforts to attack the Sangh Parivar rallies
and organise Muslims for rallies. The KFD too is
spending several lakhs of rupees on propaganda
materials and other things.
COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN BANGALORE
On the same day when the CITU held a grand rally
at the conclusion of the all-India CITU
conference in Bangalore on January 21 when a
massive turnout of workers raised militant
slogans against communalism, the RSS organised
three Virat Hindu Samaveshas at three different
places in Bangalore city. While going in a
procession to the venue of the Samavesha being
held at Halasur, Sangh Parivar's activists passed
through minority areas and markets where they
burnt buses and auto-rickshaws as well as looted
and burnt shops. More than 40 vehicles (buses and
auto-rickshaws) belonging to drivers from the
minority community were thus consigned to flames.
When the police resorted to lathicharge and
firing, a boy of 12 years of age was killed and
more than 40 persons were wounded. Curfew was
imposed for two days. Though curfew was relaxed
later, section 144 continued for some more time.
More than 400 youth were arrested and kept in
undisclosed places but, surprisingly, most of the
people hurt in the lathicharge and firing as well
as most of those arrested after the violence
belonged to the minority community. Policemen
also barged into the houses of Muslim citizens at
the midnight, and beat up women, children and old
people while arresting the able-bodied persons.
Perhaps to avoid the stigma that stuck to the
Sangh Parivar in regard to the Mangalore communal
violence a few months ago, the Parivar cunningly
used the protest actions organised on January 19
by the Muslim masses against the hanging of
Saddam as its starting point. On January 19
itself, a communal conflict erupted when two
groups destroyed banners and festoons belonging
to one another. Many vehicles were damaged, and
lathicharge and firing had to be resorted.
Inspite of such incidences of violence, however,
the administration granted permission for holding
the RSS's Hindu Samajotsava and rallies.
CPI(M)'S STANDPOINT
The CPI(M) has been consistently intervening in
the situations of communal violence in the past.
Its cadres and leaders have visited the affected
areas, consoled the people and demanded actions
against the culprits and also against the
conniving police officials.
On the issue of the RSS-BJP depredations
regarding the Baba Budangiri shrine, the CPI(M)'s
independent intervention and its joint actions
along with progressive forces, litterateurs and
other intellectuals had forced the state
government to go on defensive. Even though being
a ruling coalition partner, the BJP could not
have its way in introducing Hindu rituals in the
Sufi shrine and converting this Sufi dargah into
a Datta temple.
The DYFI organised at Baba Budangiri a rally of
the youth from all over the state, with the
slogan "Youth March for Communal Harmony."
With regard to the Virat Hindu Samaveshas also,
the CPI(M) has condemned the misuse of images of
Bhagat Singh and other national heroes, and has
taken initiative to mobilise the progressive
forces to condemn this practice.
In regard to the Bangalore violence, a fact
finding mission of the CPI(M), led by its state
secretary G N Nagaraj, visited on January 23 the
areas affected and the hospitals where the
injured were undergoing treatment. The delegation
comprised the party's state secretariat members V
J K Nair, Maruthi Manpade, S Y Gurushanth and
Prasanna Kumar, state committee members K Prakash
and K N Umesh, a number of activists and auto
drivers.
On January 24, another fact finding team visited
the areas; it consisted of some eminent writers,
and film and theatre artists, dalit activists,
trade unionists and others. These progressive
intellectuals and leaders from the Left parties
also addressed a joint press conference, while a
delegation of intellectuals and Left parties
later met the state's chief minister and the home
minister.
Now the CPI(M) has made the following demands:
1. Ban on holding Virat Hindu Samajotsavas or Samaveshas in coming days.
2. Removal of cutouts and banners inciting
violence or spreading communal hatred.
3. Action against the authorities who
permitted the holding of the Virat Hindu
Samajotsavas and rallies relating to them on
January 21, even after the communal violence of
January 19.
4. Removal of R Ashok, minister in charge of
Bangalore district, who belongs to the BJP and
was responsible for permitting the Hindu
Samajotsavas on January 21.
5. Release of all the innocent people arrested.
6. Action against such speeches as incite communal violence.
The CPI(M) has also appealed to the swamis and
mutt chiefs not to participate in the Virat Hindu
Samajotsavas. Further, it has also appealed to
the followers of these mutts and the followers of
Basavanna, Kanaka Dasa, Ambedkar etc to raise
their voice against these Hindu Samajotsavas.
It is ironical that while misusing the symbols
and saints of various castes and giving a call
for the Hindus of all castes to unite, many of
the upper caste mutt chiefs as well as BJP
leaders protested against giving eggs as part of
the midday meals scheme claiming that egg is a
tamas (lowly) food and that only satvika
(vegetarian) food like milk and fruits must be
given under this scheme. The chiefs of mutts
belonging to the non-vegetarian castes have been
keeping mum for the fear that they would not be
invited to the Hindu Samajotsavas. It is ironical
that the JD(S) chief minister, who is identified
with a non-vegetarian caste and champions the
cause of the OBCs, succumbed to the pressure from
BJP leaders and mutt chiefs to withdraw the order
regarding distribution of eggs and instead
ordered the supply of milk.
_____
(ii)
Economic Times
FEBRUARY 03, 2007
RIOTS AS AN ALIBI FOR GANGSTERISM
Moditva in east UP
Lest the opponents of Narendra Modi's politics
think otherwise, BJP president Rajnath Singh's
decision to drop the Gujarat CM from the party's
Parliamentary Board and Central Election
Committee does not spell his marginalisation.
In the BJP, it's politics that ultimately drives
the organisation. So, it's immaterial whether
Modi the individual holds any organisational post
as long as the politics he personifies continues
to yield dividends.
Moditva - characterised by a state of affairs in
which the minorities are cowed down and in a
state of fear - has of late assumed pan-Indian
proportions. The communal violence in east UP,
where economic assets of the minority community
are being specifically targeted, bears its stamp.
Deliberate attempts at economic cleansing has
reportedly been a pattern during various communal
riots the state has witnessed over the past
couple of years. The emergence of a Muslim
entrepreneurial class from among craftsmen and
artisans in some areas of the state, post
liberalisation, has reconfigured traditional
social relations.
This may have led to tension which has been
exploited by those inclined towards communal
politics. It would be facile to argue that the
relative economic prosperity of a section of the
minority community inevitably leads to communal
riots. The reality in most Indian cities is that
the major communities are thoroughly economically
entwined.
But in times of trouble, such as Bombay in 1993
or Gujarat 2002, communal tensions, never far
from the surface in India, can be stoked with
devastating results. This results in attacks on
business establishments owned by members of the
minority community.
The Hindu Yuva Vahini - which has orchestrated
most of those riots, and which is in between a
gang and a socio-political organisation - is a
perfect embodiment of UP's new communal ethos.
It's true that Vahini chief and BJP's Gorakhpur
MP Adityanath has been arrested.
But he, like most key architects of riots in UP
and elsewhere, is likely to be released without
prosecution. That is only to be expected in
communally polarised states where all parties,
irrespective of their ideological professions,
are engaged in identity politics.
Forces like the Vahini, and their ideological
impulse, can be defeated on the battlefield of
socio-economic transformation; not identity
politics.
______
[6]
Himal Southasian
February 2007 issue
BURMA SPECIAL
Articles
* Gandhi and the general, by Amar Kanwar
* Reframing the 'Burma Question', by Thant Myint-U
* The distasteful Burma-India embrace, and
* The victims of Operation Leech, by Soe Myint
* Oil in the eyes, by Kim
Photo Feature
Naypyitaw: Dictatorship by cartography, by Siddharth Varadarajan
All can be downloaded at <http://www.himalmag.com>www.himalmag.com
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