SACW | March 1-2, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | March 1-2, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2369 - Year 9

[1]  Pakistan: Contradictions to deal with (Irfan Husain)
[2]  Pakistan: Quetta blast sends chilling message (Editorial, Gulf News)
[3]  Bangladesh: The ripple effect (Zafar Sobhan)
[4]  India:  A blind eye to bigotry (Mike Marqusee)
[5]  India: Women's groups protest on the beach, 
say 'No More Gujarats' (Georgina Maddox)
[6]  India: [Irom Sharmila - the crusader against 
militarised law] Forget her not (Aakshi Magazine)
[7]  India: "Right to Live" sit-in by 
organisations campaigning for justice after the 
Bhopal disaster
[8]  India: [Hindu right win the elections in 
Punjab] - Hitting secularism for a six (J Sri 
Raman)
[9]  India: The Ink Is Soiled (Nayantara Sahgal)
[10]  India - Gujarat: 'No change in State's attitude to minorities, riot-hit'
[11]  Upcoming Events:
  (i) Aman Yuva Convocation [Youth convention for 
peace] (New Delhi, March 2, 2007)
  (ii) Theorizing the Indian State - Lecture by 
Akhil Gupta (Los Angeles, March 13, 2007)

____


[1]

Dawn
February 24, 2007

CONTRADICTIONS TO DEAL WITH

by Irfan Husain

I WAS staying with old Turkish friends in their 
house on the Aegean sea when we learned about the 
lethal blast in a Quetta courtroom. My hostess 
was very concerned as she has been to Pakistan 
many times, and has visited the Balochistan 
capital as well.

But hardened as we Pakistanis have become to such 
daily horrors, I must confess that apart from 
making some perfunctory remarks, I was unable to 
muster much shock and horror. The truth is that 
over the years, terrorism has taken a heavy toll 
not just on human lives, but on our ability to 
share the suffering of the survivors.

The mind can only react to a certain amount of 
violence; after a limit has been reached, it 
becomes numb to yet more news of death and 
disaster. Everybody from Musharraf downwards goes 
through the motions, and we are promised that the 
perpetrators of the latest carnage will be caught 
and punished. But within a couple of days, it is 
business as usual until the next atrocity.

After two decades of ethnic and sectarian terror, 
we now face the prospect of endless political 
terrorism in which officials and state 
institutions are targeted for conventional and 
suicide bombing. Needless to say, thousands of 
innocent lives are being lost in this campaign. 
And given the issues involved, as well as the 
uncompromising nature of the foe, it is hard to 
see any light at the end of this particular 
tunnel.

What drives a person to strap a bomb to his waist 
and kill himself, as well as strangers who have 
not harmed him in any way? Where foreign 
occupation is concerned, and there are few 
weapons available to confront the enemy, it is 
understandable when the oppressed take up this 
extreme means of resistance. But even here, it is 
not justifiable to target innocent civilians.

While discussing Islamic extremism in the West, 
Musharraf and other Muslim leaders have rightly 
emphasised the need to resolve issues like 
Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya to deprive the 
terrorists of their appeal. But this does not 
explain the growing phenomenon of 
Muslim-on-Muslim killings. How does the bomb 
blast in Quetta or the daily car bombs in Baghdad 
solve anything? And why is the Islamic world 
silent in the face of this violence?

A couple of years ago, a Karachi monthly magazine 
ran a cover story on the terrorism in Kashmir. 
One fighter was asked what he would do if a 
political resolution was found for the disputed 
valley. Revealingly, he replied that he would not 
lay down his gun, but turn it on the Pakistani 
leadership, with the aim of installing an Islamic 
government there.

This is the crux of the entire problem. The 
violence we are experiencing today is entirely 
local, entirely home-grown. The young killers 
hitting targets across the country are neither 
fighting for a homeland, and nor are they seeking 
to evict a foreign occupier. They want nothing 
less than to seize power, and to turn Pakistan 
into their version of the ideal Islamic state. In 
their incoherent, ill-formed vision, this would 
include restoring the caliphate, as well as doing 
away with all western influence and elements of 
modernity, except, perhaps, the Kalashnikov and 
the Internet.

How, you may ask, has it come to this? The answer 
does not lie far from anybody living in Pakistan. 
Today, well over 20,000 madressahs are imparting 
religious instruction (and precious little else) 
to millions of children across Pakistan. And 
while most of them do not actively encourage 
violent revolution, they do effectively brainwash 
their students into rejecting reason and 
independent thinking.

Despite repeated promises from Musharraf, these 
seminaries continue to teach their narrow 
syllabus. Religious parties have ignored the 
government's attempts to monitor the source of 
their financing, as well as the subjects they 
teach. A certain number of madressahs are 
indoctrinating young minds in the way of jihad, 
as well as filling them with hatred for 
everything western. Even worse, each sect runs 
seminaries that teach students that only their 
version of the faith will lead them to salvation, 
and that other Muslims are not true believers.

If readers think I am overstating my case, they 
only have to look to Lal Masjid in Islamabad, the 
scene of the stand-off between the government and 
a group of young female madressah students. 
Despite the provocation offered by these girls 
who occupied a children's library while armed 
with batons the government beat a hasty retreat. 
More chilling than the actions of these students 
was their words: they openly stated that they saw 
their role as being mothers and wives of suicide 
bombers.

Clearly, the madressah teaching these girls 
should be shut down, and the staff tried for 
brainwashing their wards. I shudder to think of 
the kind of people who send their children to 
such places. But surely, the government has a 
role in ensuring that young Pakistanis are not 
taught noxious matter that harms them and the 
state.

Instead of regulating and monitoring schools 
established in the country, the government gives 
more and more space to these hate-mongers. 
Incidents like the Quetta suicide bombing are the 
inevitable outcome of the state's inability to 
act. This is especially so when self-styled 
politicians like Ijazul Haq, the dead dictator's 
son, hobnob with the mullahs in charge of Lal 
Masjid openly, and plead their cause. Their cause 
being, of course, the illegal occupation of state 
land.

But perhaps the contradictions that paralyse 
Musharraf are hard-wired into Pakistan's very 
existence. As religious parties point out, not 
entirely inaccurately, if Pakistan was to be a 
secular state, why was India partitioned? 
Clearly, they insist, Mr Jinnah had desired an 
Islamic state, and therefore it follows that the 
law of the land should be the Shariat, and the 
constitution ought to be the Quran.

You can quote from any speech of Jinnah's you 
like, but the fact of the matter is that over 
time, the religious right has moved its agenda 
forward, while rationalists have been 
marginalised. Leaders like Musharraf want it both 
ways: to wield power with the support of the 
mullahs, while showing a modern face to the rest 
of the world.

However, as he might discover soon, straddling 
the fence is uncomfortable work. Meanwhile, the 
mayhem will go on, as the graduates of madressahs 
take their shortcut to the houri-filled paradise 
of their fevered imagination.

_____


[2]

Gulf News
19 February 2007

Editorial

QUETTA BLAST SENDS CHILLING MESSAGE

The suicide bomb blast that killed a district 
judge and 14 others in Pakistan's south-western 
province of Balochistan matches the pattern of 
six other suicide bomb attacks that have rocked 
the country's cities in recent weeks. It must be 
strongly condemned, not least, because the 
bombers cause grievous harm to innocent 
non-combatants.

As investigators begin to piece together the 
evidence by reconstructing the face of the 
suicide bomber which, as in the Islamabad hotel 
blast, has curiously been found intact, they will 
find yet again that the trail leads back to the 
pro-Taliban-Al Qaida parties that have taken root 
in the states bordering Afghanistan.

Indeed, Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, 
rocked by a troubling insurgency and the killing 
by Pakistan's army of one of its leaders in his 
hideout, is ringed by Afghan refugee camps, which 
the international community believes is the 
command and control centre of the resurgent 
Taliban. While Pakistan has stoutly denied the 
accusations, the repeated attacks on its body 
politic point to the widening arc of the 
Taliban's pernicious reach and the militia's 
ability to mount hit and run attacks with 
apparent ease on both sides of the border.

Clearly, the peace pact with North and South 
Waziristan is fraying and madrassa reform is of 
little use. The time to negotiate with terrorists 
is over, especially when they are imbued with the 
arcane values of ultra-conservative closed 
societies, as demonstrated by the tragic killing 
of a government official offering to inoculate, 
not emasculate, children against polio.

Pakistan is paying the price for allowing 
xenophobic tribal chiefs to march to a different 
drummer. These men operate beyond the purview of 
the law, their agenda at odds with the norms of 
international society. The international 
community can only applaud Islamabad if it 
abandons its softly-softly tone for an all too 
necessary sledgehammer approach.


______


[3] 


Daily Star
March 02, 2007
  	 
THE RIPPLE EFFECT
by Zafar Sobhan

Ever since Dr. Muhammad Yunus's announcement 
earlier this month that he would be launching his 
own political party with a view to contesting in 
all 300 constituencies in the next general 
election, the entire country (or at least the 
chattering classes) seems to have become 
embroiled in the question of whether this is a 
good idea or not and whether this move by Dr. 
Yunus will be beneficial to the country or not.

I have to confess that I find the question as to 
whether Dr. Yunus's entry into politics will be 
good for Bangladesh or not to be a little 
puzzling. Honestly speaking, I simply don't get 
it. Why would it be bad for Bangladesh for one of 
our most eminent citizens to aspire to serve the 
nation in a political capacity?

There appears to be some notion that as a Nobel 
laureate, Dr. Yunus should remain above 
controversy and above the fray. The best response 
to this line of argument comes from a pithy and 
sardonic blog-post by Naeem Mohaiemen: "So we 
should wrap our 'only' Nobel laureate in tin foil 
and put him in the glass cabinet in drawing room, 
so that mehmans can see it and go 'aha aha'?"

The whole point, surely, is that for years the 
nation has collectively bemoaned the fact that 
good people do not get into politics and that 
politics is filled with crooks and gangsters. At 
the same time, when Dr. Yunus (or anyone else) 
made one of his infrequent critiques of the 
political system, the snide rejoinder was always: 
"Well then, why don't you enter politics, if you 
think you can do better?"

Well, now Dr. Yunus has entered politics and the 
knives are still out for him. I guess the first 
lesson of politics is that you can never please 
some people.

I think that the more good people we have in 
politics and the more political parties committed 
to the common good, the better. In Dr. Yunus, I 
see a man who has worked for the common good for 
thirty years, who has engendered a social and 
economic revolution in terms of how the potential 
of the rural poor (specially women) is viewed 
both by themselves and by others, who has not 
enriched himself in the process, and who is of 
unimpeachable personal integrity and 
accomplishment.

How we could be worse off due to his entry into 
politics, I really don't see. If Md. Zafar Iqbal 
or Prof. Jamal Nazrul Islam or Abdullah Abu 
Sayeed or Fazle Hasan Abed decided to enter 
politics I believe that we would be similarly 
blessed. Why not? These are individuals with 
demonstrated commitment to the public good and 
integrity. How could we be worse off if they 
decided to try their hand in government?

So far it is unclear exactly what will be the 
platform of Dr. Yunus's new party, but I presume 
it will be something a considerable portion of 
the country will be able to get behind. And if 
they feel that they want to vote for such a 
platform, all well and good. Others might not. 
They may have a difference of opinion on the 
issues or believe that one of the other political 
parties will be able to deliver better 
governance. That's all well and good, too.

That is what democracy is all about. Choices. One 
of the problems we have faced in the past was 
that too often we were not given much of a 
choice. Take a look at the major party 
nominations for the abrogated January 22 
elections. In constituency after constituency, 
the voters were denied a true alternative, and 
would have had to choose between candidates who 
were corrupt if not criminal.

Right now we are in a unique period in Bangladesh 
history. The Fourth Republic (1991-2006) has come 
to a close, and as a nation we need to put lots 
of thought into how to formulate the Fifth 
Republic, which will, hopefully, last for a lot 
more than fifteen years.

We need to go back to the drawing board and start 
over. We need to think very carefully about what 
reforms need to be put in place to make the 
political process more honest and responsive and 
to make sure that in the Fifth Republic our 
democracy is more functional than it was in the 
fourth.

Frankly, I would even favour a constitutional 
convention to put everything on the table to see 
what would work (as I wrote in a column as far 
back as July 29, 2005). One thing which is clear 
is that the Fourth Republic of caretaker 
government and parliament boycott and hartal and 
non-accountability and court-packing and 
partisanisation of institutions and impunity for 
official wrong-doing was neither sustainable nor 
will it be missed.

But, of course, reforms by themselves are never 
enough. Reforms only work to the extent that 
there is honesty within the political culture. 
The caretaker government is a good example of how 
even the best intentioned and ingenious of 
reforms can be subverted and compromised if the 
political will is not there.

What is needed in this country is reform of our 
political culture. Come on. When elected 
representatives import luxury cars duty-free only 
to sell them and pocket the profits, something is 
seriously wrong. When political parties feel free 
to ignore their own political manifestos and 
election pledges once in power, something is 
seriously wrong. When people trying to form a new 
political party have to fear for their lives, 
something is seriously wrong.

This is not to say that the political system and 
indeed the existing parties are not capable of 
reform. There are many, many people of good 
conscience and integrity in all the political 
parties in Bangladesh. In many instances, it is 
these grassroots workers who have been let down 
and marginalised by their leaders, but the core 
of honesty and integrity is there.

One thing that Dr. Yunus's entry into politics 
will do will be to empower these people within 
their own party. We are, in fact, already seeing 
this in the aftermath of the recent 
anti-corruption drive, with the politicians left 
standing understanding that the time has come for 
them to clean up their act and no longer tolerate 
criminals within their ranks.

The existing political parties command the 
respect and loyalty of tens of millions of 
Bangladeshis, and, more than anything else, they 
need to be responsive to the public. They need to 
listen to their voters and their party workers 
and understand that their mission is to represent 
the people.

This has not happened much in the immediate past, 
but now the political parties realise that they 
have no choice. They were on their way towards 
irrelevance, but now they have the opportunity 
and the compulsion to reform themselves.

Win or lose, succeed or fail, I believe that Dr. 
Yunus's entry in politics has helped set in 
motion what I hope will be an irreversible push 
towards openness, honesty, and responsiveness in 
the body politic, a push towards creating a 
democracy that is truly functional and 
representative, and that the nation can only be 
the richer because of it.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.

______



[4]    [Five years after one of the bloodiest 
pogroms in India, a wide variety of apolitical 
developmentalist NGO's in Europe and North 
America that are involved with India just sit and 
twiddle their thumbs and remain oblivious to mass 
violence by the hindu right. Its a shame they 
havent woken up to vigourously supporting secular 
activism!  -- SACW  ]

o o o

The Guardian
March 1, 2007

A BLIND EYE TO BIGOTRY

Five years on, those behind the Gujarat 
anti-Muslim pogrom are still running the state

by Mike Marqusee

Five years ago this week, across the Indian state 
of Gujarat, the stormtroopers of the Hindu right, 
decked in saffron sashes and armed with swords, 
tridents, sledgehammers and liquid gas cylinders, 
launched a pogrom against the local Muslim 
population. They looted and torched Muslim-owned 
businesses, assaulted and murdered Muslims, and 
gang-raped and mutilated Muslim women. By the 
time the violence spluttered to a halt, about 
2,500 Muslims had been killed and about 200,000 
driven from their homes.

The pogrom was distinguished not only by its 
ferocity and sadism (foetuses were ripped from 
the bellies of pregnant women, old men bludgeoned 
to death) but also by its meticulous advance 
planning. The leaders used mobile phones to 
coordinate the movement of an army of thousands 
through densely populated areas, targeting Muslim 
properties with the aid of computerised lists and 
electoral rolls provided by state agencies.

Much of the violence unfolded with the full 
collaboration of the police. In some cases, 
police fired at Muslims seeking to flee the mobs. 
When asked to help a group of girls being raped 
on the roof of a building, police officers 
demurred, explaining: "They have been given 24 
hours to kill you." Subsequent investigations 
confirmed that police knew in advance of the 
pogrom and had been instructed not to interfere 
with it.

Indian and global human rights organisations have 
singled out Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra 
Modi, of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), as the 
principal culprit. As a result of his alleged 
complicity in mass murder, he was denied a visa 
to the US and cannot visit Britain for fear of 
arrest.

Yet Modi remains chief minister and has become 
not only the BJP's most popular figurehead, but 
also a poster boy for big business, foreign and 
domestic. Gujarat, which contains 5% of India's 
population, now boasts 18% of its investment and 
21% of its exports. At this year's Vibrant 
Gujarat conclave, the showpiece of the BJP 
regime, the great names of Indian capitalism - 
Ambani, Birla, Tata - sang Modi's praises, echoed 
by delegations from Singapore, Europe and the US. 
Anxieties about dealing with a politician accused 
of genocide have been allayed by the appeal of 
Gujarat's corporation-friendly environment, not 
least its labour laws, which give employers 
hire-and-fire rights unique in India.

Five years on, Muslims in Gujarat still live in 
fear. About 50,000 remain in refugee camps. Most 
of the cases filed by victims of the violence 
have never been investigated. Witnesses have been 
intimidated. No more than a dozen low-level 
culprits have been convicted. None of the major 
conspirators has been brought before the courts.

The events of 2002 did not conform to the 
paradigm of the war on terror, in which India was 
a prize ally, so never achieved the infamy in the 
west they deserved. An array of interests - in 
New Delhi, London and Washington - is dedicated 
to ensuring the atrocity is consigned to 
oblivion. For them, the release of Parzania, a 
feature film centred on the violence, is an 
uncomfortable development. Despite dramatic 
flaws, it accurately depicts the savagery of the 
anti-Muslim violence, its planned, coordinated 
character, and the complicity of the police and 
the state government. Cinemas in Gujarat, under 
pressure from the Hindu right, are refusing to 
screen the film.

If and when Parzania reaches audiences here and 
in the US, it will offer a necessary counter-tale 
to the fashionable fable of the Indian neoliberal 
miracle, exposing the brutality and bigotry that 
have gone hand in hand with zooming growth rates 
and hi-tech triumphalism.

· Mike Marqusee writes a column for the Hindu; 
his most recent book is Wicked Messenger: Bob 
Dylan and the 1960s.


_____


[5]

Mumbai Newsline
March 01, 2007

WOMEN'S GROUPS PROTEST ON THE BEACH, SAY 'NO MORE GUJARATS'
'The action is intended to send out a message 
that communal riots and massacres affect women 
very deeply, physically and emotionally'

by Georgina Maddox

Mumbai, February 28: Women's groups gathered on 
Chowpatty Beach on Wednesday afternoon to stage a 
silent protest against violence. Dressed in 
black, the colour of mourning, they lay down on 
the sand to spell out the words, "No More 
Gujarats".

"The action is intended to send out a message 
that communal riots and massacres, whether it was 
the Sabarmati Express or the post-Godhra riots, 
affect women very deeply, physically and 
emotionally as well as in the context of 
livelihood," said Nadita Gandhi and Nandita Shah 
of Akshara and Forum Against Oppression of Women 
(FAOW) in their joint statement.

Other women's groups like Awaaz-E-Niswaan, LABIA, 
Women's Centre, Sahet Janwadi Mahila Sanghtan, 
Stri Mukti Sanghtan and Special Cell for Women 
and Children also issued a joint statement 
against what they called "state sponsored 
violence".

The statement said: "Five years after the carnage 
in Gujarat in 2002, it bears repeating that this 
was a massacre unprecedented in Independent 
India, openly led by the State against its own 
citizens. It left over 2,000 dead and lakhs 
displaced, terrorised and scarred. At a 
conservative estimate, over 300 women were 
sexually brutalised-raped and killed in full 
public view."

The women who had gathered at the beach also 
point out that the Gujarat government returned Rs 
19.1 crore to the government saying that there 
were no more refugee camps, while over thousands 
of Muslims still living in makeshift camps around 
the state are unable to return to their homes.

They hope this action of theirs in Mumbai will 
bring some attention to the issue and not allow 
people to forget about the homeless victims in 
Gujarat.

______


[6]

HindustanTimes
February 28, 2007

FORGET HER NOT

by Aakshi Magazine

Go to Room No 8A of the Ram Manohar Lohia 
Hospital in Delhi. You will find three policemen 
guarding the room. They will not let you take 
your bag or phone in. You will be greeted by a 
man who will be genuinely happy to see that you 
have come to show your support to his sister. His 
sister is Irom Sharmila Chanu.

Sharmila has been on a fast for more than six 
years now protesting against the Armed Forces 
Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur. She began 
when she was 28. She is 34 now. The AFSPA gives 
the armed forces unchallenged powers to arrest, 
search, shoot and kill on suspicion alone.

It has been grossly misused in Manipur for 49 
years. Women have been raped in front of their 
families by army officials. Many people have 
simply disappeared only to be found later with 
bullets in their bodies. The uncertainty and 
trauma of living in such an atmosphere is 
something that we can't quite understand. In any 
case, how can we understand when we are never 
even told about it.

Last week, about 20 students from our college 
visited Sharmila in the hospital. We sat there in 
shock as we were told about the situation in 
Manipur. We came back disturbed and shaken by the 
inhuman silence of the government and the media. 
Sharmila began her fast in Manipur but came to 
Delhi in 2006

in the hope of being heard. She was arrested and 
admitted to hospital. She spends her day reading 
or practising yoga while being force-fed through 
a tube attached to her nose. It has been six 
years and yet she has not lost hope.

Predictably, the State is indifferent. More 
shockingly, so is the media. One might agree or 
disagree with her politics but to do that, one 
needs to hear her out first. The media, 
meanwhile, continues to celebrate 'Gandhigiri' 
and middle-class 'activism'.

Aakshi Magazine is a second year History Honours 
student, Lady Sri Ram College, New Delhi.

______


[7]


"Right to Live" dharna: parents of babies born 
malformed due to Carbide's poisons demand the 
children should receive free medical care

Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha
Bhopal Group for Information and Action
Bhopal Ki Aaawaaz

February 25, 2007

PRESS STATEMENT

At a press conference in Bhopal today, parents of 
14 children born with congenital abnormalities 
attributable to exposure to Union Carbide's 
poisons demanded free medical care for their 
children and monthly pension of at least Rs. 1000 
per month from the state government. 10 of these 
children had been successfully treated by the 
Chingari Trust set up by Rashida Bee and Champa 
Devi Shukla, leaders of survivors organisations 
sitting on dharna for the last five days 
demanding medical care, economic and social 
rehabilitation and protection from Union 
Carbide's poisons from the state government.

Chromosomal aberrations have been found among the 
people exposed to Union Carbide's toxic gases 
giving rise to apprehensions of birth defects 
among children of gas exposed parents. Several 
scientific studies by government and 
non-government agencies have confirmed the 
presence of several birth defect causing 
pesticides, chemicals and heavy metals in the 
ground water in and around the abandoned Union 
Carbide factory.

Studies by the MP Pollution Control Board have 
shown that pesticides such as endrin, dieldrin, 
carbaryl, methoxychlor and others that can cause 
birth defects are present in the ground water 
samples collected from the area. International 
environmental organization Greenpeace reported 
finding tetra-, penta- and hexa- chlorobenzene as 
well as lead and mercury in soil and ground water 
samples, all of which can cause birth defects.

The Chingari Trust was set up with a fund of Rs 
56 lakhs that Rashida Bee and Champa Devi 
received with the Goldman Environment Prize 
awarded to them in 2004 for leading the campaign 
of the survivors of the Union Carbide disaster. 
Last year the Trust identified 100 children with 
different kinds of birth defects in the gas and 
contaminated ground water exposed affected 
communities. 65 of these children were seen by 
medical specialists from New Delhi and Bhopal at 
a health camp in December 2006.

The specialists found that an unusually large 
number of children suffered from cerebral palsy 
that causes total disability. The doctors also 
found children with cleft lip and missing palate 
and with disabilities related to vision, hearing 
and mental functions. According to them a large 
number of these children could significantly 
benefit from surgical treatment and counseling.

Rashida Bee and Champa Devi have so far organized 
treatment for 10 children with limb deformities, 
cleft lips and missing palates in New Delhi and 
Bhopal. Last month they apprised the Minister of 
Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation 
about the findings of the health camp and have 
urged the state government to arrange for medical 
treatment of children born with malformations due 
to Union Carbide's poisons.

The four organisations that are determined to 
continue with their dharna till the state 
government concedes to the demands of their 
"Right to Life" campaign have called for medical 
treatment of children with congenital 
malformations and monthly pensions to their 
families. They are also demanding monthly 
pensions for women who were widowed by the 
disaster, persons who are too sick to earn a 
livelihood, survivor families living below the 
poverty line and those above 60 years with no 
family to depend on.


Rashida Bi, Champa Devi Shukla
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh
94256 88215

Syed M Irfan,
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha
93290 26319

Shahid Noor
Bhopal ki Aawaaz
98261 82226

Satinath Sarangi, Rachna Dhingra
Bhopal Group for Information and Action
98261 67369

Contact : House No. 60, Near Cold Storage, Union Carbide Road, Chhola, Bhopal

Please visit www.bhopal.net for more information 
on the campaign for justice in Bhopal

______


[8]

Daily Times
March 01, 2007

HITTING SECULARISM FOR A SIX
by J Sri Raman

The more serious and somewhat unexpected factor 
this time, by all accounts, has been a sudden and 
sharp spurt in prices, especially of vegetables, 
on the election eve. This is a factor that has 
led to the fall of governments and governing 
parties in the past. Onion prices, in particular, 
have brought tears to the eyes of ruling parties 
and politicians

Will Virendra Sehwag return to form? Will Irfan 
Pathan regain his rhythm? Team India has left for 
the World Cup cricket tournament in the West 
Indies, and India is in the midst of intense 
speculation about not just the eleven but the 
performance of individual players as well.

A retired cricketer, however, has just proved 
himself in a political game. Former Test opener 
Navjot Singh Sidhu even campaigned in the just 
concluded State Assembly election in Punjab as a 
cricketer. He was magnificent, clouting an 
imaginary ball with an invisible bat and clearing 
the top over the mid-off in a televised 
street-corner rally. And he won in the Amritsar 
constituency by a handsome margin.

The whole country once used to celebrate Sidhu's 
towering, trademark sixers. His election victory, 
however, was no cause for national elation. He 
did not bring joy to everyone by winning a seat 
for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an ally of 
the regionalist Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) that 
has recaptured power in Punjab. But few would see 
his score in this very different ball game as a 
blow for what India's far right describes as 
'cultural nationalism'.

That catchphrase, of course, is a camouflage for 
majority communalism, which is not what has won 
in the home-state of India's Sikh minority. Nor 
was 'Hindutva', as the far right calls its 
ideology, responsible for the simultaneous BJP 
victory in the hill-State of Uttarakhand. The 
party managers of the campaigns in the two 
States, Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad, 
admit that it owes the twin trophies to two 
factors of a far more mundane kind.

They and media pundits alike attribute the poll 
outcomes, primarily, to the 'anti-incumbency 
factor'. In both the states, the people have 
voted out the party in power, the Congress in 
these cases. The assumption - true for a long 
while in all cases except left-ruled West Bengal 
and extreme-right-ruled Gujarat - is that any 
party is liable to get tainted after a term in 
office. Some other time, we will come to the 
question of what the exceptions prove, besides 
the rule.

The more serious and somewhat unexpected factor 
this time, by all accounts, has been a sudden and 
sharp spurt in prices, especially of vegetables, 
on the election eve. This is a factor that has 
led to the fall of governments and governing 
parties in the past. Onion prices, in particular, 
have brought tears to the eyes of ruling parties 
and politicians. This must have mattered far more 
in Punjab, for example, than the laughter to 
which the famous Sidhuisms may have moved his 
listeners.

This is a price, say Congress apologists, which 
must be paid for an inevitably inflationary 
growth of the economy. We will keep the question 
of whether there can be growth without tears, or 
with onions, for some other time again. The point 
made by all this is that the BJP is a beneficiary 
of popular discontent on issues that have nothing 
to do with its anti-people ideology.

Having discovered this silver lining to the dark 
cloud, those who consider themselves secular may 
hasten to close further discussion. They must 
not. The more important point to be made is that 
this makes no case for complacency. The vote may 
be against 'incumbency' and price increases, but 
it can still be a victory for the camp of 
'cultural nationalism'.

This is not the first time the far-right has won 
an election on people-friendly issues here or 
elsewhere. Nowhere has the fact prevented it from 
exercising democracy-given power in a far-right 
direction. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, 
after all, had no popular mandate for enacting 
Pokharan II or presiding over the Gujarat pogrom 
of 2002.

These election results also come as a repeated 
caution against complacency of another kind. It 
deserves note that the BJP has done repeatedly 
well in elections in the period when it has been 
racked more by internal feuds and factionalism 
than ever in the past. The BJP and its parent, 
the Jan Sangh, were known for discipline when 
power remained its distant dream. It is perceived 
proximity to power that has promoted politicking 
inside the party.

Forces opposed to the far-right cannot win the 
good fight by merely gloating over its factional 
strife. They can do so only by exposing the 
divisive and destructive agenda that 'cultural 
nationalism', combined with pretended concern 
over the people's problems, conceals. The BJP can 
be fought better by forging an alliance of 
parties that cannot back communalism at least for 
the sake of their constituencies.

The far-right, above all, needs to be engaged 
frontally. Sidhus of the political playground are 
good players of the googly!

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, 
India. A peace activist, he is also the author of 
a sheaf of poems titled 'At Gunpoint'


______


[9]

Outlook Magazine | March 05, 2007

The Ink Is Soiled
WE CAN'T DO WITHOUT THE UNIQUE ANGLE OF VISION 
THAT GEOGRAPHY LENDS TO LITERATURE
by Nayantara Sahgal

Many years ago I was in college in America, at a 
time when most Americans were surprisingly 
ignorant about the rest of the world. I remember 
listening to a quiz programme on the radio-there 
was no TV then-where questions were being put to 
an audience, and the first person to raise his 
hand and give the right reply got a money prize. 
At the end came the big $64,000 question: "Is 
there any other Athens besides Athens, Ohio?" 
After a pin-drop silence, one person raised his 
hand and said, "Athens, Greece." He got huge 
applause as well as the big prize.

	I think of that when I hear it said 
nowadays, with great authority, that there is no 
Indian writing of worth except diasporic writing. 
It sounds to me like knowing there is an Athens 
in Ohio, and having to be told there is also an 
Athens in Greece. In more ways than one we are 
living in strange times.
When I was thinking about what to say to you on 
this occasion, I thought of a wonderful sentence 
of Nirmal Verma's in an interview he gave about 
ten years ago. He said that India had two great 
epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but that 
its third great epic was the culture we call 
Indian. To this I would add that if any product 
deserves to be labelled Brand India, it is this 
composite, many-faceted culture which has no 
parallel anywhere. If it is alive after 5,000 
years, we know it is because it has remained open 
and assimilative. Yet we take this third epic so 
much for granted, we forget it is something of a 
continuing miracle, when in Europe in recent 
years great multicultural entities have 
disintegrated into fragments, and here, too, we 
are facing the heat of a deliberate onslaught 
directed at destroying our diversity and 
shrinking us into a monoculture. Personally, I 
would not know how to squeeze myself into the 
uniformity of a monoculture. I am a Hindu by 
accident of birth, but half-Muslim by culture, 
not to mention all the Christian, Buddhist, and 
atheist influences that are an integral part of 
my Indianness. We have so far rejected the call 
for a monoculture and chosen to cherish all the 
strands that have gone into the making of our 
modern identity. I like to think that it is an 
aspect of our third epic which the Sahitya 
Akademi celebrates every year through the 
literatures of our many languages.

Indian writing has spread far and wide. It now 
comes out of several continents, and the 
experience of migration has added an exciting new 
dimension to literature. Art has crossed borders. 
But nothing has yet eliminated borders. Borders 
exist. I keep hearing that this is One World, but 
of course that is one of the fables of our time. 
It is a better connected world, but the 
nation-state is very much with us. Nations drive 
furious bargains with other nations to protect 
their resources and preserve their identities. 
There is fierce competition in the race for 
armaments and there are separate national 
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. 
Nations think nothing of attacking, invading and 
occupying other nations. And, as always, the 
powerful lay down the agenda that others have to 
follow. So, as long as there are nations, there 
are going to be national literatures, each rising 
out of its own particular soil, and out of the 
subsoil of its collective consciousness. Our own 
collective consciousness has been hauntingly 
expressed by Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a writer 
himself, in these words: "For we are very old, 
and trackless centuries whisper in our ears."

It is only common sense that where we are located 
on the map is what gives us our particular camera 
angle of vision, along with the insights and 
conclusions that flow from it. It is a different 
matter that we may be using themes and locations 
other than our own, or that what is written on 
Indian, or Turkish, or Hungarian soil may have a 
meaning and a resonance far beyond its borders.

It should. That is the mark of great literature. 
But it is much too soon to dispense with the 
stamp of geography on literature which makes for 
its unique angle of vision, and for the bond 
between soil and story-no matter that the current 
fashionable theory may tell us that 
cross-cultural connections are more relevant 
today than roots. Relevant to whom, we might ask, 
since most of the world's people still stay put. 
I have always found it useful to cultivate a 
little deafness toward judgements and verdicts 
laid down for us elsewhere, and to come to my own 
conclusions from where I sit. And I believe what 
is relevant is not to be subsumed into the kind 
of globalisation where some of the world's people 
are privileged to keep their distinct identities 
while others are required to surrender theirs.

We see the diverse effects of soil on story even 
within our own borders where we have no single 
lump called Indian literature. It varies from 
region to region not in language alone, but 
because imagination draws as much on a region's 
history, memory and psychology as on personal 
experience. In the same way, diasporic writing 
occupies different regions and spaces of its own. 
One expatriate writer has unshackled the English 
language and turned it to exhilarating and 
acrobatic uses. Another has made the whole of 
Asia his literary canvas. All writing is 
adventure. But the daily business of living in 
India makes for its own kind of writing. Those 
who live here are joined by the gut to the nitty 
gritty of this particular social and political 
environment, which is only another name for the 
conditions we live under: caste, corruption and 
religious fundamentalism alongside computers and 
satellites and a sexual revolution. To whom can 
all these possibly matter but to the lives that 
are affected by them, the people who enjoy or 
suffer their consequence and those who feel the 
need to join battle against them? The ultimate 
battles for a new world are fought on one's own 
soil, and part of every battle is putting it into 
words. Stories are not about social and political 
conditions, but whatever you are writing 
about-whether it be the mouth-melting flavours of 
your grandmother's cooking, or the sound of rain 
on your roof, or your love for your beloved-it 
would be a very different story if it were 
happening somewhere else, under another sky, in 
the entirely different living conditions of some 
other society.

Considering the dangers and challenges we face 
within our own borders, and the changes we need 
to bring about in our society, we are fortunate 
that we have politically conscious novelists and 
poets among us, for politics, like everything 
else, is the material of fiction and poetry, as 
it is the material of all art. We would not have 
been stirred by some of the tragedies and traumas 
of the twentieth century but for the plays of 
Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett, 
and the art of Picasso, not to mention many other 
works of European, American and Latin American 
fiction. The artist is a political animal, more 
so when the line between public events and 
private life disappears and vast numbers have to 
face the terrible consequences of public events 
in their private lives. Art cannot float in a 
void. It relates to, and is acutely sensitive to 
its environment.

There are, of course, states of mind and being 
that affect the human condition everywhere. One 
does not have to migrate to feel exiled or alien. 
Take my experience of childhood in British India. 
I was reduced to feeling like a foreigner in my 
own home town because, in the heart of Allahabad, 
there was no reminder of anything Indian. The 
cinema showed English films. The confectioner was 
English and sold English cakes. Every 
establishment catered for an English clientele. 
And there was an iron ceiling above which Indians 
could not hope to rise in their professions 
except with the approval of the British.The 
punishment for rebellion against this scheme of 
things was imprisonment, deportation or death, 
and my father was one of the Indians who, in 
these circumstances, went to his death.

But why go back as far as childhood in an 
occupied country? To some extent I still feel 
alien in a world whose political arrangements, 
economic priorities and military solutions are 
not of my choosing. A number of us on this planet 
are in a condition of permanent alienness, having 
to live on the terms laid down by those who make 
the rules.

In reverse, a migrant can feel securely rooted to 
the ground where he has settled. It is a need of 
human nature to put down roots, and it is natural 
to adapt to one's surroundings and be influenced 
by them. This may be why a diplomat, who is a far 
less sensitive creature than a writer, is 
transferred to a new post every three years so 
that he doesn't become too closely identified in 
outlook with any one post. So there are no hard 
and fast categories that define exile, or 
alienness, or roots. And there is no such divide 
in literature. In the end, fiction can only be 
divided into two categories. It is either good or 
bad. But what distinguishes writing here from 
Indian writing elsewhere is simply that the 
home-grown writing of any country comes out of a 
home-grown sensibility. And that is a priceless 
possession, not to be given up, at least so long 
as there are nation-states and national 
literatures.



(Nayantara Sahgal is a novelist and writer. This 
essay reproduces the speech she gave at the 
Sahitya Akademi Awards function on February 20, 
2007.)


______


[10]


Ahmedabad Newsline / Indian Express
February 27, 2007

'NO CHANGE IN STATE'S ATTITUDE TO MINORITIES, RIOT-HIT'
Panel discussion, exhibition on Day One of 
six-day event marking Gujarat riots; activists 
lash out at State Govt
Express News Services

Ahmedabad, February 26: More than 25 civil 
society organisations have joined hands to 
organise a six-day-long series of programmes to 
commemorate the Gujarat riots of 2002 _ Sach ki 
Yadein Yadon ki Sach _ which got under way here 
at Gujarat Vidyapith on Monday. The first 
programme of the series was a panel discussion by 
various social activists on "revisiting 150 years 
of 1857, 100 years of Satyagrah and 5 years of 
Gujarat Carnage."

Speaking on the occasion, noted social activist 
Teesta Setalvad observed that there has been no 
perceptible change in the State Government's 
attitude towards minorities in the last five 
years.

"There is a deliberate attempt to look at the 
burning of train at Godhra and the subsequent 
riots through different glasses," Teesta observed 
adding, "While most of the riot accused are 
roaming freely, as many as 87 people from Godhra 
are incarcerated under POTA and are behind the 
bars for last five years.

Coming down heavily on the State Government, 
Teesta said that while Chief Minister Narendra 
Modi refuses to comment on the ban of releasing 
the movie Parzania, his indulgent silence on Babu 
Bajrangi's imposition of the ban speaks volumes. 
"Who is running the state? Narendra Modi or 
Bajrangi and people like him?" she asked.

She also raised an alarm on political apathy 
towards the entire issue. "Why are the protests 
and remembrances so apolitical? Why is the 
opposition silent on the issues of justice and 
rehabilitation of riot victims?" she asked.

"There have been a lot of talks on the role of 
Gandhian institutions during the riots and post 
riots, but one may also look at the role of the 
premier educational institutions in Ahmedabad and 
Baroda," Teesta observed, adding that in spite of 
being autonomous by nature, their silence only 
indicates that 'fascism' has been deeply 
entrenched in the Gujarat civil society.

A recent study by "Citizens for Justice and 
Peace," reveals that till date as many as 8,700 
riot-hit people are still living in camps without 
BPL cards or ration cards, Teesta said adding 
that going by that study, only about 15 families 
got a compensation of Rs 40,000 while a majority 
had to do with meager or no compensation. "There 
has been no justice for women who were victims of 
gender violence during the riots," she further 
pointed out.

"The Nanavati Shah commission has enough evidence 
to ask extremely uncomfortable questions to the 
State Government," Setalvad said adding that as 
the report of the commission is expected by the 
end of this year along with Assembly Election, 
the civil society needs to remain extremely 
vigilant and prepared to take to streets if such 
a need arises.

Speaking on the occasion, Sophia Khan, Director, 
Safar said that while the state government has 
been making tall claims regarding the state being 
peaceful and investor friendly, the current peace 
is an uneasy calm that is a result of silenced 
justice. "A lot of people ask me why we are 
observing this commemoration programme? Why are 
we reopening the wounds," Sophia said adding that 
the wounds of the riot victims are far from 
healing. "It is only the civil society which is 
trying with their limited means to heal the 
wounds, while at the State's level, the process 
hasn't even started so far," she added.

Others who spoke on the occasion included Mallika 
Sarabhai from Darpana, Zakia Jawhar from Action 
Aid, Ila Pathak from AWAG and so on.

Later, an exhibition of paintings in Mithila 
tradition on the context of Gujarat carnage of 
2002 by Santosh Kumar Das was inaugurated at 
Amdavad ni Gufa as a part of the programme.

______


[11]  UPCOMING EVENTS

(i)

dear friends,

This is a just to remind you of the Aman Yuva 
Convocation scheduled for tomorrow i.e. March 02 
at 2 pm at the Auditorium of Dept of Social Work, 
D[elhi] U[niversity] (North Campus).

Its an event to acknowledge the efforts made by 
the young people who have worked as Aman Yuva 
volunteers in different places on the issues of 
communal strife, poverty and urban homelessness, 
and hunger at different points of time in the 
last one year. We all get together to share their 
experiences and observations and the 
transformation that has taken place within their 
perspective and alternative approach towards the 
mentioned issues and concerned effected people.

An expert panel comprising Prof B B Pandey, NHRC, 
Prof Tanika Sarkar, JNU, Prof Uma Chakravarti and 
Ms Anu Aga will moderate the discussion and 
sharing, and will finally debrief and conclude 
the session.

Ms Anu Aga, Thermax Industries, has given her 
consent to be our chief guest for the programme.

I request you again to please block your date for 
tomorrow and be a part of this aspect of sharing 
and reflection within the larger campaign for 
peace, justice and care.

Please find the attached programme schedule.

Hope to see you all there tomorrow.

Regards
Tanveer
-------------------------
Aman Biradari
R-38/A, Second Floor, South Extension Part II
New Delhi 110 049
Telefax: +91-11-41642147
Phone: +91-11-41645661
<http://www.amanbiradari.org>www.amanbiradari.org (under construction)


---

(ii)

Center for India and South Asia
The University of California, Los Angeles

THEORIZING THE INDIAN STATE


Lecture by Akhil Gupta, UCLA
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095

In this talk, Akhil Gupta will present some of 
the framing arguments from his study of two 
Indian state bureaucracies. From fieldwork 
conducted in the tehsil-level offices of these 
bureaucracies, he will endeavor to construct a 
theory of the state in India. Whereas some of the 
literature has emphasized the strength of the 
Indian state and its seeming centralization, 
ethnographic approaches to the state discover 
something that is far more tentative and 
disorderly. The idea of "the state" is itself 
constructed out of the many everyday practices of 
bureaucracies, and this has profound consequences 
for the legitimacy of politicians and bureaucrats.

Akhil Gupta is professor in the Department of 
Anthropology at UCLA. He has previously taught at 
Stanford University and at the University of 
Washington. He is the author of several books, 
including Red Tape: Corruption, Inscription and 
Governmentality in Rural India (forthcoming, Duke 
Univ. Press), Postcolonial Developments: 
Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Duke 
Univ. Press, 1998), and, as editor, of The 
Anthropology of the State (Blackwell, 2006); 
Caste and Outcast (2002); Culture, Power, Place 
(1997); and Anthropological Locations (1997).

For more information please contact

Jyoti Gulati Tel: 310-206-2654
cisa at international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/southasia

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