SACW | Feb 23, 2007
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Thu Feb 22 17:26:35 CST 2007
South Asia Citizens Wire | February 23, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2364 - Year 9
[1] Bangladesh: The counter-reformation (Zafar Sobhan)
[2] Pakistan: The wages of poverty (I.A. Rehman)
[3] Oceans of Hatred and jahiliya (Razi Azmi)
[4] Pakistan: How not to handle a 'sensitive' issue (Omar R. Quraishi)
[5] UK - India: Equal Opportunity Fundamentalism (Salil Tripathi)
[6] India: Punjab's Electoral Competition (Pritam Singh)
[7] India: Why are the authorities not investigation a Hindutva Bomb Factory ?
[8] India: Protest as Christian graveyard is dug in Gujarat
[9] Upcoming events:
- Press Conference by Citizens for Justice and
Peace (New Delhi, 23 February 2007)
- Press Conference re 6 day event to mark the 5
years of Gujarat carnage (Ahmedabad, 23 February
2007)
____
[1]
The Daily Star
February 23, 2007
Op-Ed.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
by Zafar Sobhan
Sunday, February 11: Joint forces arrest S.M.
Nuruzzaman, ex-commissioner of the Phulbari town
municipality and a leader of the Phulbari chapter
of the national committee resisting the Phulbari
coal mining project. Nuruzzaman was instrumental
in organising the anti-mining protests at
Phulbari last year that led to BDR firing that
killed six people.
He was arrested by joint forces personnel and
severely beaten up in the Phulbari market-place
(in full public view) and then thrown in jail,
with instructions to the local constabulary to
hold him on whatever charges they could think of.
It was only following protests and reporting of
the incident in the media that he was released
the next day.
So how should we understand this shocking
incident? Yet another example of the caretaker
government over-stepping its brief and taking
action that is both high-handed and
unconscionable? This is exactly the problem with
the current situation of unaccountability, right?
Not so fast. This kind of action is indeed a
problem, but not for the reason that most think
it is. It is not simply a case of the caretaker
government acting in an authoritarian and
unaccountable manner. The danger, I am afraid, is
far more fundamental than that.
Consider this: almost two weeks after the
incident, there is still no information as to who
gave the order to arrest Nuruzzaman and what the
intention behind the action was. Right now the
chain of command is so muddy that it is
impossible to get to the bottom of the question
of on what authority and with what objective
actions are being taken.
The danger is not so much that the caretaker
government is abusing its authority in an
unaccountable and non-transparent manner. The
danger is that there remain those within both the
army and the administration who are sympathetic
to the outgoing BNP administration and who are
using the confusion to try to bring about the
downfall of the present government.
The current set-up is such that those within the
government who wish for it to fail and be
discredited are able to take actions and give
orders that are actually harming the credibility
of the government. Unchecked, they will only get
bolder and more audacious.
This is how best to understand the bostee
evictions and the anti-hawker drives. It is not a
question of the caretaker government as a unified
body being authoritarian and contemptuous of the
public. Indeed, to this day, the caretaker
government still cannot state with certainty on
whose authority these policies were implemented,
let alone on what grounds.
What is happening is that BNP loyalists are using
the current confusion and the fact that there is
no centralised authority and universally
acknowledged chain of command to take actions
that they know will bring the current government
into disrepute.
The idea is to create pockets of resistance
against the current administration so that when
the time comes to put 50,000 people out on the
streets to protest power shortages (or whatever)
it will have a ready supply of men and women with
a bona fide grievance against the current
government.
It is heart-breaking that many of the bostee
dwellers who had known nothing except extortion
and marginalisation and repression these many
years and had cheered the coming of the new order
on January 11 found themselves its first victims.
Their euphoria has, of course, turned to
disillusionment and anger. That's the idea.
Nowhere is the spectre of the BNP machinations
more apparent than in the attorney general's
office and the judiciary. The egregious handling
of the corruption cases is not merely the work of
an over-matched and over-extended prosecutorial
team, but reflects the concerted efforts of BNP
loyalists still in the attorney general's office
to cast a pall of doubt over the entire process.
The loyalists know that they have a sympathetic
judiciary that is ever happy to step in and hand
down judgments that defy both rationality and
established precedent and procedure, and that if
there are any holes in the prosecution that these
will be seized upon gratefully by both defence
and arbiter.
In other words, the counter-reformation is very
much alive and well. It would be a mistake to
think that these people are going to lie down and
play dead. They will not give up without a fight.
And as long as their bank accounts remain
untouched and Tareq Rahman remains at large and
the judiciary and attorney general's office
remain in their hands and their people in every
corner of the administration and army continue to
sabotage the caretaker government, they will
believe that they are still in with a fighting
chance. And they would be right. Don't count them
out just yet.
The stakes for the caretaker are unimaginable,
the cost of failure unthinkable. If we are really
to put in place the reforms necessary to make our
democracy functional and really do something
about the culture of corruption and criminality,
and, most importantly, impunity that has
flourished in the period of the Fourth Republic,
then we have to be aware of this ferocious
rearguard action that is being waged by the
forces of the counter-reformation.
This is the answer to the question as to why so
many of the most corrupt and criminal remain at
large and outside the dragnet. It is important
for the country to understand that there are
split loyalties in the current administration and
there remain four-party sympathisers at its core
who are pulling out all the stops to protect
their allies, and that their machinations need to
be recognised for what they are and neutralised
without delay if the country is to not descend
into chaos.
It would thus be a mistake to think that these
machinations are signs that the caretaker
administration is even worse than what came
before it or take these actions as evidence that
we need to return to where we were on January 10.
In fact, the opposite is true.
These actions are best understood as the
desperate struggle of the ancien regime to try
and sow the seeds of confusion to discredit the
current administration and return itself to power
by any means necessary. The danger is very real,
and it is crucial that we all understand what is
at stake.
Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.
_______
[2]
Dawn
February 22, 2007
THE WAGES OF POVERTY
by I.A. Rehman
IF by putting his little children up for sale,
Shaukat Ali of Mian Channu, a Punjab town known
for well-off farmers, had tried to shake the
authority out of its slumber, and remind it of
its foremost duty to guarantee each citizen's
right to life, he does not seem to have
succeeded. The matter has been treated as an
individual grievance and the protester promised
some relief, but there is no indication that the
scale of citizens' plight caused by lack of
gainful employment has been addressed, or even
realised.
Amazingly, the government leaders appeared to
have been surprised by Shaukat Ali's tale. Some
of his fellow citizens have now realised that his
audacity in offering his children for sale gave
the country a bad name. That a good number of
children are sold in Pakistan every year should
be common knowledge. Perhaps the prime minister,
who rushed to the aid of Shaukat Ali, is unaware
of the auction of girls in the NWFP. Is it
possible to describe the giving away of girls in
marriage under the custom of vulvar (or in
exchange for money under any other pretext) as
anything other than sale of girls?
Last year a Peshawar court expressed its disgust
and anger when it noted the sale of women by
their fathers and brothers under the guise of
marriage. The authorities are also perhaps aware
of considerable trafficking of women and their
sale in Pakistan cities, and not all of them are
from Bangladesh or Burma. Many a brothel-keeper
buys and sells women under the nose of custodians
of law and order and not infrequently in
connivance with them.
Likewise, bonded labourers, particularly those
working on farms and brick-kilns, sell not only
their labour but also their bodies and their
freedoms. A new evil is the sale of parts of
human body, mostly kidneys, that have been
recognised as an important source of earning
foreign exchange. One has seen hospitals that
advertise kidney-transplant services on the
internet and have added floor after floor to
their establishments. They are making huge gains
by finding poor Pakistani sellers of their
kidneys for sick people from India (women as well
as men) or the Middle East (usually richly-robed
men only).
The main cause of this large-scale trade in human
body or its organs is poverty made unmanageable
by lack of job opportunities. The number of
Pakistani citizens caught in this vicious trade
is legion. How many cheques for 100,000 rupees
each can be signed by the prime minister and how
many unemployed people can be offered and
satisfied with low-wage jobs? Extending relief in
individual cases is not the way to deal with so
widespread a phenomenon as poverty of the
unemployed hordes in Pakistan has become. From
the point of view of the people this is the
biggest and the most critical challenge Pakistan
faces today.
Sale of labour, sale of organs, sale of children
- these are not the only symptoms of the grinding
poverty in which millions of Pakistanis live as a
result of their failure to find adequably gainful
employment or any employment at all. The nexus
between poverty-unemployment and a rise in
suicide cases is now fairly widely recognised.
Many jobless young persons drift into a life of
crime. Poverty impels a large number of citizens
to abandon their children to quasi-religious
seminaries in the hope that they will get
something to eat and something to wear.
The poverty-stricken areas have also provided the
militant organisations with their main recruiting
grounds. Anybody who wishes to fight terror or
militancy without mounting a meaningful assault
on poverty does not know what he is talking about.
It will be grossly unfair to say that the
government has not seen the need to combat
poverty. Quite a few schemes have been launched
under the label of poverty alleviation, and the
government's belief in the trickle-down effect of
development and the rich becoming richer has
never been shaken. But all these schemes and
ideas amount at best to ensuring that some of the
poor do not become poorer than they are. What
Pakistan urgently needs, however, is a strategy
to prevent the people from falling into the trap
of poverty in the first instance, and that can be
done only by recognising the right to work and
the right to social security of all those who are
permanently or temporarily unable to earn their
living.
The basic issue then is the state's determination
not to recognise the right to work. Pakistan came
into being at a time when social and economic
rights of the people had begun to be debated and
a bare 16 months after its birth the United
Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which duly emphasises the right to
work.
The governments of the day could not ignore their
people's right to work but they were unsure of
their capacity to concede it. They therefore
sought ways to avoid mandatory guarantees in this
regard. Thus we find the authors of the Indian
constitution, adopted in 1950, inserting the
following article in the chapter on the Directive
Principles of State Policy:
"41. Right to work, to education and to public
assistance in certain cases: The state shall,
within the limits of its economic capacity and
development, make effective provision for
securing g the right to work, to education and to
public assistance in cases of unemployment, old
age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases
of undeserved want."
The language of this article makes it clear that
the state does not deny its citizens' right to
work and to public assistance of old, sick and
unemployed citizens but makes practical
realisation of these rights subject to
availability of resources.
The authors of Pakistan's constitutions also were
not unaware of the right to work and the
obligation of the state to provide for the
unemployed poor. But they have been consistently
averse to using the expression 'right to work'
and have avoided making a strong state commitment
to helping the unemployed. The formula adopted in
the chapter on the Directive Principles of State
Policy in the 1956 constitution was:
"29. The State shall endeavour to:
(b) provide for all citizens, within the
available resources of the country, facilities
for work and adequate livelihood with reasonable
rest and leisure;
(c) Provide for all persons in the service of
Pakistan and private concerns social security by
means of social insurance or otherwise;
(d) provide basic necessities of life, such as
food, clothing, housing, education and medical
relief, for all citizens, irrespective of caste,
creed or race, as are permanently or temporarily
unable to earn their livelihood on account of
infirmity, sickness or unemployment."
After some editing of the foregoing article the
Ayub government laid down the following articles
in the chapter under the shortened title '
Principles of Policy';
"10. Opportunity to Gain Adequate Livelihood: All
citizens should have the opportunity to work and
earn an adequate livelihood, and also to enjoy
reasonable rest and leisure.
"11. Social Security: All persons in the service
of Pakistan or otherwise employed should be
provided with social security by means of
compulsory social insurance or otherwise.
"12. Provision of Basic Necessities: The basic
necessities of life, such as food, clothing,
housing, education and medical treatment should
be provided for citizens who, irrespective of
caste, creed or race, are permanently or
temporarily unable to earn their livelihood on
account of infirmity, disability, sickness or
unemployment."
The 1973 Constitution incorporated the scheme and
content of guarantees of the people's social and
economic well-being contained in the 1956 and
1962 texts in Article 38 in the chapter on
Principles of Policy with two changes. Firstly
the 'should' in the 1962 document and the 'State
shall endeavour to' in the 1956 text were
discarded in favour of a firmer commitment by
declaring that "the State shall secure"/ and
"provide". And, secondly, the principle of
rejecting discrimination on the basis of sex was
added to unacceptability of distinction on the
basis of caste, creed or race.
Governments of Pakistan, however, have rarely
paid due respect to the Principles of Policy.
Since the facilities or opportunities promised to
citizens and other persons in the Principles of
Policy are not justiciable, no law or act of
government can be challenged on the ground of its
being in conflict with these principles. Further,
each authority is competent to decide whether its
actions are in accord with the principles of
policy.
Thus, the president and the governors have
consistently ignored their duty to present every
year in the National Assembly / provincial
assemblies "a report on the observance and
implementation of the Principles of Policy."
Members of the National and provincial assemblies
also have made no attempt to provide for
discussion on such reports by the assembly
concerned.
Government spokespersons often claim that
everything required to be done under the
Principles of Policy, and that is subject to
availability of resources, has been done and is
being done. Such assertions can easily be
challenged. The state is spending on its organs
and its establishment much more than it should
and is depriving the people of the employment
opportunities and social security to a greater
extent than anyone can fairly justify.
Besides, some of the most fundamental rights (to
work, education, health and social security) have
been kept out of the chapter on fundamental
rights for over 50 years. For how many more years
must the Pakistani people be fopped off with
principles of policy that are not implemented in
place of judicially enforceable rights?
A recognition of the right to work and extension
of social security net to all citizens and
persons alone will mark the beginning of a
genuine effort to stop sale of children and
provide relief to all the miserable Shaukats in
Pakistan.
Since we are living in a period when
constitutional provisions and laws no longer
offer the disadvantaged and the marginalised any
comfort, the cynics are likely to refer to
non-implementation of the laws and guarantees
that are already there. A new constitutional
guarantee for the people's right to work and
their right to freedom from poverty and want will
not immediately solve the problems of the poor
and the helpless, but it will at least offer them
a sound plank to fight on and take their fight
from the closed chambers of authority to the no
less closed councils of political parties.
______
[3]
Daily Times
February 22, 2007
OCEANS OF HATRED AND JAHILIYA
by Razi Azmi
Extreme conservatism, the preaching of jihad,
Islamist supremacist chatter and terrorist
attacks in Europe and America have allowed one
Israeli academic to advance a theory that life
can become untenable when the Muslim population
of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent
Sixty-six mostly elderly people from India and
Pakistan visiting or returning from a visit to
their relatives across the border were
incinerated on a train. Not by accident, but by
design. The carriage they were travelling in was
firebombed by people who do not approve of the
process of reconciliation and normalisation of
relations between the two neighbours.
No one has yet claimed responsibility and
probably never will, for the crime is too ghastly
to claim credit for. But one can easily surmise
that the perpetrators are religious fanatics or
religio-nationalist extremists. They could be
Pakistani jihadists graduated from the many
madrassahs that dot the land or Indian Hindu
extremists from the Sangh Parivar.
The perpetrators may choose to hide because of
shame, but they stand stark naked before the bar
of public opinion. In the name of religion they
worship hatred, and are happy to sacrifice
innocent human beings at its altar. "I haven't
seen anything like this. Some bodies were burnt
beyond recognition, and I saw one pair stuck to
each other at the stomach," said a railway police
inspector, Shiv Ram.
Zille Huma, the Punjab minister of social
welfare, has just been shot dead by a stonemason
for simply daring to be a minister and not
putting on the veil. Sarwar Mughal, fittingly
known as Maulvi Sarwar, believed that a woman's
place in Islam was in the home and behind veils.
And having arrogated to himself the role of
lawmaker, judge and executioner, he killed the
mother of two in Gujranwala, the political and
cultural heartland of Pakistan.
And why not? Maulvi Sarwar, like many before him,
had a few years ago murdered six women for being
'immoral', but the case against him had been
dismissed for "lack of evidence". When it comes
to women in Pakistan, especially poor women, it
seems that men have an open season. Women are
even less protected than the Hubara bustards.
Brainwashing can do wonders. We have seen
evidence of it throughout history and all around.
North Korea is a good current example. Its
starving and deprived people have successfully
been led to believe by their despotic and
totalitarian government that they live in a lucky
country.
But brainwashing in the name of God and with
paradise as an incentive can achieve even greater
results, as is obvious from the jihadists'
romance with murder, mayhem and suicide. No city,
no country is safe from their grip: New York,
London, Madrid, Bali, Nairobi, Casablanca,
Riyadh, Cairo, Baghdad, Bali, Islamabad and
Kabul. The list lengthens.
Suicide bombings are now occurring in Pakistan
almost on a weekly basis. As in Afghanistan, the
Pakistani Taliban are making short shrift of all
kinds of 'infidels' -teachers, social workers,
women activists, shi'as, army recruits, judges
and lawyers.
Further afield, Iraq is in the throes of a civil
war and a sectarian conflict so gruesome as to
defy imagination. Multiple suicide bombings of
markets and buses occur every day and the monthly
death toll is in the thousands. On Tuesday, in
one attack, thirteen members of a family from a
tribe known to oppose the actions of Al Qaeda in
Iraq were killed on the road to Falluja.
If fantasy and hatred are the end-products of
indoctrination, then ignorance is their breeding
ground. The parents of 24,000 children in the
tribal areas in northern Pakistan have refused to
allow health workers to administer polio
vaccinations. Rumours are rife that the vaccine
is a US plot to sterilise Muslim children, the
aim of which is to depopulate Muslim countries.
Imams and maulvis in the NWFP used loudspeakers,
sermons and illegal radio stations to spread this
message to villagers. The scare-mongering and
appeals to Islam echoed a similar campaign in the
Nigerian state of Kano in 2003. The disease then
spread to 12 polio-free countries over the
following 18 months.
Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, chief surgeon at the main
government hospital in Bajaur, was killed when a
remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded as he
was returning from a jirga (tribal council) to
debunk rumours of an 'infidel vaccine' and
persuade people to immunise their children
against polio.
Paramedic Hazrat Jamal, who is one of the three
injured in the explosion, said that the residents
of Mullah Said Banda were against the polio
campaign. "As soon as we reached there, an armed
prayer leader warned us against visiting the
area. Some locals said: "On one hand, our enemy
(a reference to the United States) is bombing us
for no reason while on the other hand you are
coming here disguised as polio campaigners to
spread vulgarity," he told Daily Times at the
hospital.
One recalls that when the US government first
introduced the Diversity Visa lottery programme
in the early 1990s, many people in Pakistan,
Bangladesh and elsewhere refused to believe that
the US government could mean what it said. It was
widely suggested that the DV programme was a
conspiracy and a trap to blacklist applicants for
visa purposes.
The fact is that the Washington was perfectly
honest and truthful in this matter. Thousands of
Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and others have been
able to migrate to and settle in the US by being
successful in the draws. In other words, while
the programme sounded too good to be true, the US
government acted faithfully and implemented it
just as it said it would, year after year.
Nobody should be surprised that resistance to the
polio vaccinations is highest in areas where
conservative clerics and self-styled 'Pakistani
Taliban' hold sway. It is worth mentioning that
everywhere and always, Muslim ulema have
consistently opposed the spread of science and
education.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that some women
have been brave enough to defy their men on the
issue of polio vaccination. According to a
report, "up to 200 babies a day are vaccinated at
the Khyber teaching hospital in Peshawar, where
burqa-clad women arrive with children in their
arms. Some arrive in secret, slipping into the
clinic in defiance of male relatives who oppose
vaccination."
Extreme conservatism, the preaching of jihad,
Islamist supremacist chatter and terrorist
attacks in Europe and America have allowed one
Israeli academic to advance a theory that life
can become untenable when the Muslim population
of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per
cent. Professor Raphael Israeli, who specialises
in Islamic history at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, said Muslim immigrants had a
reputation for manipulating the values of Western
countries, taking advantage of their hospitality
and tolerance.
Professor Israeli said that in France, which has
the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at
about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There
were regions even the police were scared to
enter, and militant Muslims were changing the
country's political, economic and cultural
fabric. "French people say they are strangers in
their own country. This is a point of no return."
The Jewish professor may simply be advancing
Israeli interests in promoting this theory, but
the world is listening, for there are a lot of
worried people out there. Irrespective of what
the people of the world may think of jihadists
and extremists, surely the masses of Muslims
present a picture of backwardness and ignorance,
best captured by the Arabic word 'jahiliya'.
______
[4]
[February 18, 2007]
HOW NOT TO HANDLE A 'SENSITIVE' ISSUE
by Omar R. Quraishi
One has to say that the government completely
mishandled the issue of razing mosques built on
encroached land. When NGO activists and the
liberal types take to the streets and organize a
protest rally they are dealt with an iron fist by
the state. Usually they are arrested as soon as
they begin to assemble, baton charged or even
tear-gassed and dragged away (the women sometimes
held by the hair) into police vans and to the
lock-up. And then we have the students of the
Jamia Hifsia in Rawalpindi who occupied a
children's library for days, in protest against
what they believe was the government's wrong
policy to raze mosques built on encroached land.
Armed with sticks (at least), they refused to
leave the children's library with the government
and Islamabad administration seemingly helpless
to act against them.
The controversy began when the Capital
Development Authority issued notices to the
administration of around ten mosques and their
adjoining seminaries in that there structures
were built on encroached land or illegally taking
up green belts in the federal capital. The mosque
and madressah adminstrations were told to clear
the encroachments themselves and were given a
deadline of 15 days to do that. But what did they
do?
Instead of following the CDA's directive, they
chose to adopt a very aggressive protest in which
the khatib of one of the mosques while addressing
a large demonstration threatened to use suicide
attacks in response to the CDA's directive. That
is also when the occupation of the children's
library occurred - with the police and
law-enforcement agencies becoming silent
spectators as the female students of the
madressah carried out their illegal act.
No matter what one's ideological leanings or
political worldview may be, it is clear that
mosques are not supposed to be built on land that
had been illegally appropriated or encroached.
Assuming that the CDA must have done its homework
with regard to the technical details beforehand,
it would be safe to assume that the mosques were
built on encroached land and hence there should
be no objection if they are razed. Besides, the
Council of Islamic Ideology has already ruled
that mosques and/or seminaries built on
encroached land are un-Islamic and can be
demolished because they are unauthorized
construction.
As one writes this (a week prior to its
publication), the occupation of the children's
library was continuing as was the government's
dilly-dallying over the matter. The matter was
raised in parliament by some members but they
were admonished by some ministers who seemed to
remind them that the matter was 'sensitive'. The
matter would not have become so sensitive had the
government dealt with it promptly and had the
law-enforcement agencies under its command had
prevented the female madressah students from
occupying the children's library. Calling it
'sensitive' seems to be a pretext to not do
anything about it and that is a bad thing because
it gives the impression to the rest of the
country that it pays to adopt violent methods and
extremist positions. It has to be said that the
mishandling of this issue also flies in the face
of repeated calls given by President Musharraf
himself asking people to unite against the forces
of extremism and obscurantism.
Given the way that those occupying the children's
library have been allowed to violate the law with
impunity, it seems that the president's view of
resisting and fighting extremism does not have
too many enthusiastic supporters in the
government or the Islamabad administration. For
instance, several days after the occupation began
- and with no sign of it ending - the religious
affairs minister (almost an apologist for the
madressahs in the past) met those behind the
protests and assured them that their demands
would be looked into. Such a soft approach,
coming on the heels of threats of suicide
bombings by those behind the occupation is
difficult to fathom. If anything, it should have
been clear to the government that such a soft
approach to dealing with those of the extremist
bent of mind had not really paid any dividends in
the past and was unlikely to do so now. The
extremists and obscurantists usually perceive it
as a sign weakness on the part of the government
and end
up taking full advantage of it. The idea should
have been to not let them be in a position where
they do that and the government ends up looking
as if its been held hostage by the extremists -
the impression given by the whole children's
library occupation saga.
As for the extremists, they justify their actions
presumably under the pretext that (a) the
government of the land is un-Islamic itself since
it is beholden to and at the beck and call of its
so-called 'western masters' and (b) that the
building and location of a house of worship
cannot be circumscribed by temporal laws.
_______
[5]
Tehelka
Feb 17 , 2007
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FUNDAMENTALISM
The right's only objection to MF Husain's
depictions of Hindu deities is that they are made
by a Muslim, says Salil Tripathi
Who's Profane? A Husain interpretation of Lakshmi
As you enter London's netherworld - its
labyrinthine underground subway system - you will
notice large images of a Hindu deity, looking
sinuous and sensual, cavorting cheerfully and
wearing almost no clothes at all. There are other
posters nearby, of sexy women advertising
perfumes or holidays, wearing almost as little as
the god in the poster, but the god wins hands
down in attracting your attention.
More unusually, nobody from London's
neo-hypersensitive Hindu community has expressed
any criticism or outrage over the nearly-naked
image of the Hindu god staring at almost 2.5
million commuters daily. This is surprising. I
remember last year, when Asia House - a gallery
near Oxford Street in central London - hosted an
exhibition of paintings, which included some
canvases of nude Hindu deities, a self-styled
Hindu human rights organisation (and the
so-called Hindu Forum in Britain, claiming to
speak for the 700,000 Hindus who live in the
country), protested immediately, and forced the
gallery to cancel the exhibition.
Why are the Hindu groups quiet this time? And why
were they so noisy last time? The answer is
simple, revealing, and banal: for them, the show
last year had to be opposed because the artist,
Maqbool Fida Husain, was a Muslim. But the show
this year was to be revered, for what the Sackler
Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly
is showing are the famed Chola bronzes: seductive
and erotic certainly, but presumably untouched by
the hands of a Muslim artist.
The Royal Academy has brought together nearly 40
sculptures, from India, Germany and the United
States. These sculptures are consistently
evocative, exuding virility and sensuality. You
see a divine male caressing a female deity;
elsewhere, a willowy maiden strikes poses meant
to guide the viewer towards her attract-ive body.
To be sure, the Chola bronzes are not only about
sex or erotica. The quintessential Chola image, -
of the dancing Nataraja performing the celestial
tandava nritya - personifies not only the defeat
of evil, but also the destruction of the world as
we know it, so that a new world can begin.
True, Husain has painted several goddesses in the
nude, but his works reshape our thinking about
Hindu myths, they are not lewd drawings meant to
titillate
But then Husain's art is also hardly meant to
titillate. That's the deep-rooted hypocrisy among
people who claim to lead Hindus - in Britain or
in India. They say they are deeply wounded when a
Husain depicts Draupadi, Saraswati or Sita
without clothes, even if the image Husain
portrays is elegant, bold, linear and sharp.
Inspired by the expressionists, Husain's figures
are not always complete, and leave a lot for the
viewer to imagine. The Chola bronzes, in
contrast, are curvaceous and vivacious. For much
of December, they competed for attention, in that
respect, with the majestic sculptures of Rodin,
which were also on display at the Royal Academy
at the time.
Whether coincidental or by design, the
coexistence of Rodin and Chola at the Royal
Academy was resonant with meaning. As William
Dalrymple noted in an article in the Guardian:
"In Western art, few sculptors - except perhaps
Donatello or Rodin - have achieved the pure
essence of sensuality so spectacularly evoked by
the Chola sculptors; or achieved such a sense of
celebration of the divine beauty of the human
body. There is a startling clarity and purity
about the way the near-naked bodies of the gods
and the saints are displayed. Yet, by the
simplest and most modest of devices, their spirit
and powers, joys and pleasures, and above all
their enjoyment of each other's beauty and their
overwhelming sexuality, is highlighted."
And yet, those offended Hindu leaders in Britain
have remained silent about the bronzes. It is a
tragedy of our times that Hindu nationalists have
succeeded in running a nearly decade-long
campaign against Husain and forced him into
involuntary exile, shuttling between Dubai and
London.
True, Husain has painted several goddesses from
the Hindu pantheon in the nude, but those are
bold works that reshape our thinking about Hindu
myths, revealing them in a new light; they are
not lewd drawings meant to titillate. His nudes
delineate the body in sharp lines, elevating it
to an abstract realm, suggesting the formlessness
of divinity.
This explanation, which is faithful to Hindu
philosophy, is too abstract for the semi-literate
fundamentalists who have protested against his
works and, in some cases, ransacked art galleries
displaying his art in India. There are some 1,200
cases filed against him.
Even though he does not need to, Husain has
apologised for hurting sentiments. Explaining his
motives, the painter has traced his art to
India's millennia-old heritage in which gods and
goddesses were "pure and uncovered".
But we live in complicated times. Instead of
celebrating the openness of Hinduism, which
should make those who claim to lead the faith
feel proud of a non-Hindu artist expressing
homage to their gods, Hindu nationalists are busy
trying to outdo other faiths, by complaining that
they, too, have the right to be offended. So if
Muslims want Danish cartoons banned, Hindus want
Husain's drawings banned. The attention Muslims
have commanded with their protests against images
they consider blasphemous - a concept alien to
Hinduism - has left Hindus wanting equal
treatment. Don't mistake them for being liberals.
The sacred and the profane have always coexisted
in India. As a faith, Hinduism is broad enough to
include some sects that think sex is the main way
to enlightenment, and broadminded enough to
overlook sadhus roaming around naked, their
bodies smeared with ash, during the Kumbh Mela.
Indeed, in many aspects of Indian literature and
art, nudity connotes purity and openness, not
vulgarity. Architects have decorated many temples
with nude deities. The Chola bronzes, which
depict scantily-clad Hindu goddesses are no less
divine. The temples in Khajuraho from the
Chandela period have hundreds of erotic statues.
The Gangaikondacholapuram Shiva Temple has an
almost nude Parvati, and that hasn't diminished
her holiness. The Parshvanatha Temple of
Khajuraho has nude sculptures of the holiest of
the holies in the Hindu pantheon. And many
sculptures in Bikaner have Hindu divinities clad
only in exquisite and ornate chains, necklaces
and bangles.
For the Hindu nationalists, if Husain did any of
that, it would be sacrilegious. But when
anonymous sculptors carve such figures, it
becomes divine, even if not high art. That's the
hypocrisy that is so fundamentally against the
Indian ethos, not Husain's art. Husain's art may
not be sacred, but what the fanatics are doing is
profane.
______
[6]
Economic and Political Weekly
February 10, 2007
PUNJAB'S ELECTORAL COMPETITION
The assembly election scenario in Punjab is
reverberating with calls to regional identities.
All major political parties talk about the fact
that development issues have overtaken the old
divisive issue of religion and community. But
none of them mentions the rapid commodification
of life taking place in Punjab.
by Pritam Singh
The electoral competition between the two main
parties in Punjab - the ruling Congress Party and
the op-position Akali Dal - for the Punjab
assem-bly elections in February is resulting in
the reinforcement of regional Punjabi
identi-ties. The Akali Dal under the leadership
of Parkash Singh Badal is invading the
traditional Congress support base by an
unprecedented encouragement to Punjabi Hindus to
join the Akali Dal. For the first time in its
history, the Akali Dal has put up a substantial
number of Hindus as its party candidates. This
newly emerging Hindu-Akali relationship is not a
one way process of Akalis approaching Hindus. In
town after town, the Punjabi Hindus are
themselves joining Akali Dal. If on one hand, the
Punjabi Hindus seem to be realising the need to
hook their destiny with a Punjab-based regional
party instead of being tied to "national" parties
like the BJP and the Congress Party, on the
other, the Akali Dal seems to have realised that
the long-term future of Akali politics lies in
becoming inclusive of all sections of Punjabis.
The process of the transforma-tion of Akali Dal
from a Sikh party to a regional Punjabi party
seems to be at last beginning to take place.
On the other side, the Congress Party in Punjab
under the leadership of chief min-ister Amarinder
Singh has made serious inroads into the
traditional Sikh support base of the Akali Dal.
Amarinder Singh has endeavoured to rebrand the
Congress Party from one obsessed with national
issues to one rooted in the economy, his-tory and
culture of Punjab. His daring move in passing the
river water bill in the Punjab assembly
abrogating the previous river water treaties,
which were unfavour-able to Punjab, has left a
deep impact on the consciousness of all sections
of Punjabi people, especially the Sikh peasantry.
During my field trip in Punjab in the month of
December 2006-January 2007, I talked to a large
number of people in both rural and urban areas
who invariably picked up this achievement of
Amarinder Singh to highlight his commitment to
Punjab andits people. He has also been
consistently taking a lead in celebrating various
religiousand cultural festivals relating to the
history of Punjab and has managed todent the
Akalis' claim as the sole defenders of Punjab's
economic and cultural interests. Irrespective of
the election results, it is inconceivable that
this process of the Badal-led Akalis attempting
to be more inclusive, and the Amarinder Singh
strategy of making Congress Party more
Punjab-rooted, would be easily reversible. It
appears that the democratic process, however
faulty it may be, is gradually contributing to
the devolu-tion of political decision-making
processes away from the centre to the states. It
does not mean that the centralisation of
political power in the national parties like the
Congress and BJP has ended, but it cer-tainly
means that the state-level leadership of these
parties is increasingly shaping the political
agenda at least at the state level. This process
certainly opens more space for articulation of
regional politico-economic interests and regional
identities. Deepening of Capitalism in Punjab
The change taking place in the political
strategies of the two main parties in Punjabis
partly the result of electoral to the staggering
economic changes taking place in Punjab. Punjab
is witnes-sing the deepening of capitalism in its
economy, society and culture. The first
large-scale penetration of the logic of
capitalism took place in Punjab with the launch
of the Green Revolution in the 1960s. In its
second phase now, the post-liberalisation phase,
capitalism is entrench-ing and transforming the
Punjabi eco-nomy but more so its society and
culture in an alarming way.1 Capitalism is
leading to the commodification of everything
-land, cattle, trees, education, health,
reli-gion, music, marriage, sex, family, social
and personal relationships. If on one hand, this
capitalist transformation of Punjab is eroding
old religious and sec-tarian divisions and is
contributing to the making of new political
alignments as discussed above, it is also leading
to cultural pauperisation.
Money culture is all pervasive. There
arewidespread reports of party tickets,
especially in the Congress Party, having been
"sold" for "crores of rupees". When political
parties talk of "development" as an issue which
has overtaken the old divisive issue of religion
and community, they are partly speaking the truth
but partlyglossing over the commodification of
life. During my field trip, I was told thatthere
were instances, for the first time, of sex work
taking place even in the villages and that "call
girl" rackets were being reported even in small
towns. Capitalismis certainlyleading to the
developmentof markets, products and techniques,
but it is also leading to cultural and moral
degradation. None of the politicalparties has
shown any vision or proposed any programme to
deal with this two-pronged nature of capitalism.
This is true even of the Left parties who could
have been expected to demon-strate a more radical
and alternative perspective.
It is worth remembering that it is the cultural
dislocation caused by Green Revolution capitalism
in the 1960s and 1970s which had contributed to
the rise of religious revivalism in the 1970s and
1980s.2 If the deprivation caused by the
deepening of capitalism now in the 2000s is not
subjected to critique and challenge from a
radical perspective, there is the dangerof some
retrograde ideology emerging as a response to
this capitalist deprivation.
Another offshoot of deepening capital-ism in
Punjab is the large-scale environ-mental
degradation taking place in Punjab. This vital
issue remains, by and large, outside the mental
landscape of all the political parties in Punjab.
Environmental politics believes in
decentralisation and itis hoped that the
regionalisation of Punjabi politics would
eventually force Punjabi people and politicians
to deal with the environmental consequences of
deepening capitalism in Punjab.
Notes
1 This argument was developed in my paper
'Deepening Capitalism in Punjab's Rural Society:
Unleashing Development, Degradation and
Resistance', Annual Conference of the South Asian
Anthropologists' Group, Goldsmiths College,
London, July 3, 2006.
2 For elaboration of this, see my paper 'Two
Facets of Revivalism' in Gopal Singh (ed), Punjab
Today, Intellectual Publications, Delhi,1987.
______
[7]
The Hindu
22 February 2007
NANDED BLAST "A POSSIBLE EXPLOSIVE ACCIDENT"
Staff Reporter
Inquiry calls for stringent action
MUMBAI: The explosion that killed two persons and
damaged a biscuit factory unit in Nanded on
February 10 was not a fire accident but a
possible explosive accident, says preliminary
findings of Concerned Citizen Inquiry, conducted
by Teesta Setalvad, Justice B.G. Kolse-Patil and
Arvind Deshmukh. The final report will be out in
a month, which will include details on the
Malegaon blasts, the recovery of RDX and several
other recent events.
On February 10, 2007, at about 12.15 a.m.,
28-year-old Pandurang Ameelkanthwar died on the
spot as the biscuit boxes he was carrying
exploded. His cousin, Dnaneshwar Manikwar, who
sustained 72 per cent burns, died on February 16
at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai.
Teesta Setalvad, socio-legal activist, wondered
why the police hastened to declare it a fire
accident before getting the forensic result.
She said there were two versions from Dnaneshwar,
one saying it was a short circuit and another
saying he did it to claim insurance. Justice B.G.
Kolse-Patil said they went to the site with a
forensic expert, who did not want to disclose his
identity, took pictures, and interviewed people
around the area. They also spoke to the owner,
the civil surgeon, fire brigade officials, SP
Fatehsingh Patil and other police officials.
The expert opinion was that the shutter that took
the impact of the explosion would not have been
thrown to a distance of 40 feet had it been a
normal fire. He also hinted at low intensity
volatile explosives.
The inquiry recommends: "The Central Government
should keep a close watch and monitor the
increasing low intensity terror generating
activities being conducted by political outfits
that are misusing Hindu religion."
It also recommends "stringent action so that the
accused in the earlier Nanded blasts - including
those never arrested despite evidence - are
arrested or not released on bail, as the case may
be. Proceedings of these investigations must be
conducted in full public glare."
______
[8]
PROTEST AS CHRISTIAN GRAVEYARD IS DUG IN GUJARAT
PRESS RELEASE
[22 February 2007]
Under the leadership of All India Christian
Council, the minority Christian community
organizes a big Dharana Programme to voice
against Gujarat Government as Roman Catholic
graveyard at Vatva has been dug up, tombs have
been broken, crosses on tombs have been broken
and it has been tried to destroy the graveyard.
The Christian Community of Gujarat is demanding
to suspend Police Inspector of Vatva Police
Station under jurisdiction of Ahmedabad City
Police Commissioner and other Government officers
by registering F.I.R. from immediate effect.
Minority Christian Community organizes a big
Dharana programe in front of Ahmedabad District
Collector as attacks are carried out on the
graveyard of minority Christian community by
blessings of B.J.P. Government for solution of
problems for protection graveyard for its
maintenance and to stop the attacks.
[. . .]
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/02/protest-as-christian-graveyard-is-dug.html
______
[9] UPCOMING EVENTS:
Citizens for Justice and Peace
February 22, 2007
PRESS INVITE
Citizens and human rights activists including
local activists from Nanded, under the
chairpersonship of Shri Kolse Patil (retired
Judge, Mumbai High Court) have conducted a
detailed investigation into the second Nanded
bomb blasts of February 10, 2007. Preliminary
Findings of the Concerned Citizens Inquiry°©—An
Independent Scrutiny will be shared with the
media in Mumbai tomorrow.
A technical assessment from experts on the clues
and pointers on the site will also be shared.
The haste with which the state police is
dismissing the possibility of any occurrence but
a petrol driven fire for claiming insurance
money, the on site significant pointers and
clues, detailed video shootings of the site as
well as photographs and findings by technical
forensic experts will be shared.
Shocking documents related to the first Nanded
bomb blasts of April 2006 have also been
investigated by Communalism Combat and provided
to the Concerned Citizens Inquiry that will be
shared with the media. These documents reveal a
questionable design on the part of the
investigating authorities not to explore the root
of an emerging network of terror groups that are
linked to hate driven political outfits within
India.
We request you to send your representative to
cover the press conference. Members of the CCI
were Justice Kolse Patil, Teesta Setalvad
(Convenor) and Shri Arvind Deshmukh (Nagpur).
Local activists provided core support and
infrastructure.
Venue: Sahmat, 8, Vithalbhai Patel House,Rafi Marg, New Delhi – 110 001
Time: 4 p.m.
Date: February 23, 2007
Teesta Setalvad
__________________________________________________________________________
Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai - 400 049.
Ph: 2660 2288 email: cjp02in at yahoo.com
o o o
(ii)
Sach ki Yadein, Yadon ka Sach
PRESS INVITATION
Kindly find herewith, a backgrounder to a six-day
(26th February to 3rd March 2007) event to
commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Gujarat
Carnage of 2002, entitled "Sach ki Yadein,
Yadon ka Sach" being organized in Ahmedabad by
several organizations.
The programmes will include seminars, a
convention with survivors, film-shows, drama,
street plays, painting exhibitions, etc. The
whole focus of the programme is to serve as
platform where all of us stand together for
preserving the memory against forgetting.
To introduce the weeklong programmes and to
provide their details, we are inviting you to a
Press Conference :
On Friday, 23rd February 2007
At 1600 hrs.
At "PRASHANT"
Near Kamdhenu Hall, Drive-in Road
Ahmedabad 380 052
Tel: 27455913 / 66522333
We sincerely hope you / your Reporter and
Photographer will attend this Press Conference.
We further request you to cover the events of the
weeklong programmes that are being organized.
Thanking you in anticipation for the same,
For and on behalf of the Organizing Collective
Fr. Cedric Prakash
---------------------------------
SACH KI YADEIN, YADON KA SACH
(26 February - 3 March 2007)
Gujarat 2002 witnessed an estimated killing of
2000 people, rape of approximately 400 women,
property damage worth Rs 3800 crores, around 1100
restaurants destroyed, 563 religious places (302
dargahs, 209 mosques, 30 madrassas, 18 temples
and 3 churches) destroyed or damaged. About 2.5
lakh people were directly displaced.
Recent surveys reveal that 5,000-10,000 families
are still living in around 80 relief camps, not
recognized by the state govt. and without any
basic civic amenities! Out of a total 4252 FIRs
lodged (minuscule, compared to unofficial
figures), 2208 cases were summarily closed and
most of the accused were released within one year
of the carnage. 214 people are still languishing
in jails under POTA, all Muslims barring five!
The legacy continues! The politicians are still
reaping benefits; academics are still trying to
make sense of it for the long-term future of
Indian democracy; media persons are still divided
over it; activists are still trying to wrest for
the victims whatever minuscule doles they can
from an otherwise hostile state and the victims
are still struggling to make two ends meet or to
come to terms with the nightmare they had to
undergo.
Meanwhile the memory of it all is being
overwritten! It is being touted instead that all
is well with the proverbial Gujarati world and
the state continues to march on its way to glory.
Those raising doubts are portrayed as conspiring
to divide the five crore Gujaratis. The pathetic
condition of the minorities does not raise any
concern rather becomes a solid example to
showcase the state as ruthless and hence very
focused. And what is the state’s track record on
other fronts? Gujarat's status remains as number
five in debt. According to NSSO May 2005, each of
the 48 lakh farmers in the state is reeling under
a debt of Rs. 15526. Officially, in the three
years till 30 June 2006, 100 dalits have been
murdered. Gujarat is also number five in the
worst sex ratio record. At the same time,
small-time thugs are not allowing Fanaa and
Parzania to be screened inside Gujarat; are
forcibly breaking inter-religious marriages apart
and working for intense polarization among the
tribals against the minorities.
The happenings of 2002 form the larger backdrop
against which the events continue to unfold. How
do we then pursue, an honest admission of truth
and moral responsibility through a collective and
public exercise as well as state's responsibility
for the acts of its organs or agents and for its
own failure to prevent or adequately respond to
the commission of gross human rights violations,
remains the challenge.
One continues to demand for the right to fair and
adequate compensation; the right to restoration
of the situation existing prior to the violation;
the restoration of dignity and the right to a
guarantee, by means of appropriate legislative
and/or institutional intervention and reform,
that the violation will not be repeated. A
crucial aspect in all this is the symbolic
reparation, especially in the backdrop of the
gravest threat of 'erasure from memory and
history', encompassing a process of remembering
and commemorating the pain. It aims to restore
the dignity of victims and serve as a continuing
reminder. As we know, post-holocaust Germany is
an example of that.
It is in this spirit that this six-day event is
being organised. To serve as a platform where all
of us stand together for preserving the 'memory'
against 'forgetting'.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PRASHANT - A Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace
Street Address : Hill Nagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall,
Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052, Gujarat, India
Postal Address : P B 4050, Navrangpura PO, Ahmedabad - 380 009, Gujarat, India
Phone : 91 79 27455913, 66522333
Fax : 91 79 27489018
Email: sjprashant at gmail.com
www.humanrightsindia.in
______
[6]
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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