SACW | April 27, 2007 | Nepal elections / Pakistan: "Obscured" women, Freedoms / Bangladesh's co-administration by the Army / India: UP elections, Rationalists take on mumbo jumbo / Hide and seek Hindutva in the US

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | April 27, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2395 - Year 9

[1]  Nepal: The risks and opportunities of delayed elections (Yash Ghai)
[2]  Pakistan:
      (i) "Misguided women" (Kamila Shamsie)
     (ii) 'Bastion of freedom' (Masud Alam)
    (iii)  Pakistan bans satire about burqas (CNN)
[3]  Bangladesh: Risk assessment (Zafar Sobhan)
[4]  Bangladesh: Moving Towards or Away from Democracy? (Kirsty Hughes)
[5]  India: Civil society organisations demand 
Bajrangi's [ a Hindutva Thug] arrest
[6]  India - UP elections and BSP:
       - In a league of her own (Dipankar Gupta)
       - The Year of The Elephant (Mahesh Rangarajan)
[7]  India: Acquiesce  (Sagari Chhabra)
[8]  India: Rationalists confront modern spiritual godmen, propagate secularism
[9]  USA: The Deception Continues: Hindu[tva] 
Students Council Fails to Deny CSFH Charges

____


[1]

Nepali Times
Issue #345 | 20 April 07 - 26 April 07

One more chance
The risks and opportunities of delayed elections

From Issue #345 (20 April 07 - 26 April 07) | TABLE OF CONTENTS

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REFERWrite to Editor WRITE TO EDITOR


The decision to postpone elections to the 
constituent assembly came as a damp squib, rather 
than a bombshell. Perhaps this is an indicator of 
the leisurely style of the transition to the new 
political and social order.

Cancellation of June elections has led to 
disappointment, confusion, anxiety, and even 
anger among the people. But even those who heaved 
a sigh of relief did so, not because they did not 
see the value of a June election, but because 
they were afraid of the consequences of flawed 
elections and contested results.

The postponement gives much-needed time for a 
number of processes. There is an opportunity to 
provide people with information about the 
constitution-making process and the role of the 
constituent assembly, and time to promote the 
participation of the people in 
constitution-making. Perhaps voters can now cast 
their votes knowing its consequences, something 
that would certainly not have been the case in 
June.

The longer interregnum allows time to prepare for 
the elections and for the work and facilities of 
the constituent assembly. The parties-and other 
groups who have been focusing solely on 
elections-have a chance to reflect on the nature 
of the constitution-making process. The 
grievances of marginalised communities may be 
dealt with more systematically. There is also 
time to explore substantive options for the new 
constitution.

There are potential pitfalls, of course. An 
undemocratic system is getting a new lease of 
life. No significant progress has been made on 
any constitution and assembly-related matters 
since the reinstatement of the House of 
Representatives and the formation of multi-party 
government a year ago. The government itself has 
all the problems of a coalition, and these are 
likely to increase the longer the somewhat 
unstable coalition has to function. The 
recriminations and squabbling between the 
-parties provoked by postponement of elections 
could divert attention even more from the 
procedures critical to a meaningful 
constitution-making process. Already at least one 
party has said it feels freed from inter-party 
agreements on the path to a new constitution. For 
the peace process, the problems in the 
cantonments will intensify, posing an additional 
threat to the viability of the interim 
constitution.

The way in which the interim constitution was 
negotiated, and the rather cavalier approach of 
the political parties to it, had already devalued 
its role as a roadmap. It is possible that it 
will be further marginalised, as parties haggle 
over partisan political advantages. Key decisions 
on constitutional and political structures could 
continue to be ad hoc and exclusionary, perhaps 
not always made in a principled way by a small 
group of party leaders-constitution-making in a 
crisis. Some even think that perhaps, piece by 
piece in this way, a constitution will be 
stitched up by the coalition, making the 
constituent assembly irrelevant, even 
unnecessary. It is possible that well before we 
reach that stage the whole thing will have spun 
out of control and the transitional arrangements 
negotiated over such a long period would collapse.

If this comes to pass, a great opportunity will 
have been squandered to move the country to a 
stable and just democratic future. The promise of 
a participatory process culminating in a truly 
representative constituent assembly, commanding 
the respect of all communities and regions, could 
have helped Nepal negotiate a new national vision 
and identity, and legitimacy for state 
structures. A democratic and participatory 
transitional process, at least after the initial 
ceasefire and peace issues are settled, is 
essential to consolidate democracy. In this 
regard the process so far has not served the 
country well. People feel let down because they 
are convinced a mid-June election was within the 
reach but has been allowed to slip away. But the 
postponement of the elections will give time to 
reflect on all this, and open the way to a more 
participatory and legitimate process. One way 
forward would be to appoint an independent 
commission to consult widely on constitutional 
options and prepare recommendations for the 
constituent assembly.

This will reassure the people that the process is 
on track and that they are being listened to.

Yash Ghai is professor emeritus at the University 
of Hong Kong, was chair of Kenya's constituent 
assembly, and has been senior adviser to the 
constitution-making processes in Afghanistan and 
Iraq.


______


[2]  

(i)

New Statesman
30 April 2007

"MISGUIDED WOMEN"

by Kamila Shamsie

Disparaging terms for burqa-clad women used to be 
a joke - but not after female students began a 
campaign of kidnap, intimidation and issuing 
fatwas.

The ninjas. The burqa brigade. The women in 
black. For some years now I've been hearing such 
terms thrown around with disdain by 
"burqa-unfriendly" sections of Pakistani society 
to describe the women who swathe themselves 
entirely in black. The terms are disparaging, but 
until recently they were a joke, not invested 
with the property of fear invoked by the ninjas' 
male counterparts: the beards, the fundos, the 
jihadis. In the past few weeks, all that has 
changed.

The first sign of trouble occurred in January 
when the female students of Islamabad's Jamia 
Hafsa madrasa occupied a children's library to 
protest against the demolition of 80 mosques 
encroaching on public land. Rather than resorting 
to its usual brute-force tactics, the government 
sent in the minister for religious affairs to 
promise that those mosques already demolished 
would be rebuilt. Many voices started grumbling 
about the government's inability to stand up to 
"a group of girls". But it didn't take much to 
imagine the PR fallout for Musharraf's government 
if he sent in baton-wielding police officers 
after a group of teenaged girls objecting to the 
razing of mosques in a country where illegal 
buildings are hardly out of the ordinary.

Then, in March, dozens of girls from Jamia Hafsa 
kidnapped three women and a baby from a house 
they claimed was a brothel. Next they kidnapped 
two policemen. Newspaper front pages were 
splashed with pictures of the ninjas chasing away 
plain-clothes policemen while wielding long 
sticks. They have also taken to patrolling the 
bazaars, threatening the owners of DVD and CD 
stores, which they claim spread pornography and 
vice. Every few days the papers now carry 
pictures of DVD bonfires.

The girls of Jamia Hafsa have their male 
counterparts at the adjoining Jamia Fareedia 
madrasa for men. But "Jamia Fareedia" has not 
entered Pakistan's vocabulary in the way "Jamia 
Hafsa" has, and the part that the male students 
play in their campaign of "virtue" has gone compa 
ratively unremarked on, though they, too, were 
present at the kidnappings and are part of the 
intimidation of video store owners. In fact, the 
femaleness of the female students seems to be 
causing almost as much consternation as the 
decision by the brothers who run the two madrasas 
to impose a parallel sharia system of justice 
within their premises and their warnings of 
suicide attacks if the government doesn't also 
impose sharia law.

The gendered nature of the commentary about the 
Jamia Hafsa students cuts across many sections of 
society - from the radio DJ who, tongue firmly in 
cheek, declared the theme of his show "girl power 
- in honour of the ladies of Jamia Hafsa", to the 
highly respected journalist deploying the phrase 
"chicks with sticks", to the head of 
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (the offshoot of the banned 
militant party Lashkar-e-Toiba) opposing the 
students' actions on the grounds that it is 
un-Islamic for women to take a leadership 
position, to General Musharraf dismissing the 
vigilantes as "misguided women" - which seems to 
suggest that they wouldn't or couldn't behave as 
they were doing if not for someone else 
(presumably male) guiding their actions. 
Musharraf has also used gender as an excuse for 
not taking action against their flagrant 
violations of the law. "We respect women," he 
intoned with great sincerity, put ting aside the 
fact that women are being harassed and kidnapped 
by the JH students.

Repent and be forgiven

If Pakistan's outspoken feminists are not rising 
up in objection to the sexist subtext of all 
these comments it is because they're far more 
concerned with the threat that the JH students 
pose to other women. They have already announced 
that they know of 30 other "brothels" in 
Islamabad that they're going to raid, though the 
male head of the madrasa has generously added 
that any prostitute who turns herself in and 
repents will be forgiven (he will set the example 
of forgiveness by marrying one of them). Not 
content with threatening alleged prostitutes, the 
JH students have also declared a fatwa against 
Pakistan's tourism minister after she was shown 
on television paragliding and then hugging her 
French coach. Both actions are deemed to be 
un-Islamic.

It's easy to think of the paragliding minister 
and the burqa-clad militant as opposite poles of 
Pakistan's complex pictures of womanhood. 
Newspapers have taken to juxtaposing 
"oppositional" photographs in support of this 
thesis: a tracksuit-wearing female athlete with a 
javelin beside stick-wielding women in black; a 
bare-headed, short-sleeved female protester 
holding up a sign saying "No to Extremism, Yes to 
Music" taking the front-page space given the 
previous day to more stick-wielding women in 
black (the photographs of the JH students are 
taken from different angles, in different places, 
but are ultimately always the same photograph). 
The more complicated truth is that the real 
opposites are the women who appear on the front 
pages and those who don't appear anywhere at all, 
except in a small column tucked away inside, 
detailing a story of a woman raped, a woman 
killed for "honour", a woman stoned alive.

"Obscured" women in Pakistan are a metaphor to a 
greater extent than they are a literal presence. 
(Sometimes, as in the case of the JH students, 
when they are literally obscured, they are also 
front and centre of the nation's view.) Though 
Pakistan's women are, in temperament, probably 
more powerful than its men, they are also almost 
entirely absent from the structures of power - 
and on the rare occasions when they do enter 
those structures, it is often as some man's wife 
or daughter. Small wonder, then, that when they 
enter the public sphere with any gesture of 
defiance - be it progressive or regressive - 
their femaleness attracts particular attention. 
Women should stay tucked away in the local news 
section of newspapers, is the implicit message of 
all this gendered scrutinising; to behave 
otherwise is simply not appropriate.

Kamila Shamsie's most recent novel is "Broken Verses" (Bloomsbury, £7.99)


o o o

(ii)

BBC News

Freedoms in Pakistan!: A harsh depiction but largely true

PAKISTAN: 'BASTION OF FREEDOM'
BBC: April 25, 2007

The BBC Urdu service's Masud Alam takes a wry 
look at freedoms in military-led Pakistan 
compared with those on offer in the West.

Freedom, like happiness and embarrassment, can be 
found in the most unlikely places.

I went looking for it - freedom, that is - across 
three continents and then returned home to find 
it here. Absolute, complete and unadulterated 
freedom for all, right here in Pakistan.

It's the kind of freedom people living in the 
West may envy all they can - but will never enjoy 
for themselves because they are so shackled by 
laws, bylaws, regulations and conventions.

They are so hemmed in that they cannot figure out 
for themselves what freedom is.

The Americans even had to include "pursuit of 
happiness" in their constitution! And how do they 
go about this pursuit?

Every week-end they stand dutifully in long 
queues outside night clubs, suffer humiliation at 
the hands of foul-mouthed bouncers, get served 
insipid, ridiculously low-alcohol beer at 
exorbitant prices, and are subjected to music so 
loud, no one can make out how bad it is...

Here in Pakistan, nothing and no-one is allowed 
to stand in the way of an honest citizen's right 
to do as they please.

Stealing the show

The other day, some of the top army generals 
finished a hard day's work at a conference in 
Islamabad and decided they'd earned a bit of 
entertainment.

Buoyed by their own spontaneity, they had that 
evening's sold-out performance of the musical 
Bombay Dreams cancelled for ticket-paying 
patrons, and enjoyed an exclusive viewing of 
Pakistani girls dancing to Indian music director 
AR Rehman's tunes.

That's freedom! Freedom to steal the show, in this case.

Even though alcohol is banned by law, 
industrialists are free to run breweries and 
entrepreneurs make up the shortfall through 
bootleg operations.

As a result, a Pakistani gets his beer (scotch in 
mild weather, vodka in winter) delivered at the 
doorstep by a friendly neighbourhood bootlegger, 
at roughly the same price, if not less, than an 
American pays for a similar brand at a liquor 
store.

London has its Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, 
where political workers, religious zealots and 
nutcases of all varieties stage a shouting match 
on Sundays.

But in Pakistan every citizen has, and exercises 
at will, the right to free speech, any time, 
anywhere.

The head of a mosque in the capital routinely and 
publicly humiliates the government and threatens 
it with suicide bomb attacks.

But the government still pays towards the running 
costs of two seminaries whose students are urged 
to carry out his threats.

'Sexuality in Pakistan'

The media is free to go on speculating about a 
"deal" between President Musharraf and the 
opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), just as 
both parties are within their rights to 
forcefully deny it today and coyly admit to it 
tomorrow.

And audiences are also free to decide they are 
not bothered one way or the other.

My colleague, Sanwal, interviewed a roadside 
vendor in Lahore for a feature on "Sexuality in 
Pakistan".

This man called himself Dr Khan - or something 
similar - and sold herbal remedies for 
sexually-transmitted diseases. He told Sanwal his 
line of business does well all year round because 
"men exercise as little control over their sexual 
organs as they do over their tongues and minds".

This is the extent of freedom enjoyed by men in 
Pakistan. As for women, they are also free, as 
pointed out by President Musharraf, to seek 
emigration to Europe or Canada by pretending to 
be victims of sexual crimes.

The political system is just as emancipated. 
Unlike the West, where power tends to revolve 
between a handful of politicians, the Pakistani 
model is far more inclusive.

It has made popular political figures out of 
serving and retired army generals, World Bank 
executives, illiterate land owners, semi-literate 
industrialists, simple-minded sons and daughters 
of public figures... Everyone is free to be a 
leader.

At the street level, there's even more freedom. 
Pakistanis don't require a driving licence to 
operate anything from a motorcycle to a heavy 
vehicle, neither are the local police fussy about 
regulating the traffic.

'No ganja'

Regulations, most Pakistanis believe, are just 
another instrument of state oppression that has 
no place in a free and just society like theirs.

So motorists go about fluttering all over the 
unmarked roads which they share with pedestrians, 
hawkers, cyclists and horse-drawn carts.

The only rule is: when in doubt, honk. Motorists 
here believe in honking more than they trust 
their brakes or steering wheel, and definitely 
more than their eyes.

I generally dislike noise. Perhaps the policeman 
in the middle of the square does too. But he 
cannot interfere with the freedom of citizens to 
honk as much as they like.

I'm impressed with the amount and variety of 
freedom exercised in this country. And it beats 
me why the tourism ministry hasn't thought of 
highlighting the fact in its brochures, 
especially in "Visit Pakistan" year!

Maybe they don't need to spread the word.

I ran into three working-class Britons, sitting 
in a foul mood outside a café across the road 
from Rose and Jasmine Garden where their camp 
site was. One of them approached me, and pointed 
an accusing finger at my person.

He hissed: "We worked hard and saved money for 
this holiday. We could have gone anywhere. But we 
chose Pakistan. You know why, mate? Because of 
its ganja. Now we are here and we have no ganja!"

Freedom - even to get stoned - is not a commodity 
that can be taken for granted.

o o o

(iii)

CNN
April 26, 2007

PAKISTAN BANS SATIRE ABOUT BURQAS

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Irate Islamist 
lawmakers have persuaded the Pakistan government 
to stop a theatre group staging a satirical play 
about the burqa, the all-covering head-to-toe 
garment worn by conservative Muslim women.

"Burqavaganza" played earlier this month during 
an arts festival in Lahore, the eastern city 
regarded as Pakistan's cultural capital, and home 
to some of the most liberal and most puritanical 
parts of the Muslim nation's society.

"The burqa is part of our culture. We can't allow 
anyone to ridicule our culture," Culture Minister 
Sayed Ghazi Gulab Jamal told the National 
Assembly.

The minister announced Thursday that the 
government had barred the play, which had already 
ended its run in Lahore, from being performed in 
other Pakistani cities.

Veiled female parliamentarians and Islamist 
lawmakers cheered Jamal and thumped desks in 
approval, while trading barbs with women from 
both the ruling party and liberal opposition 
parties.

Described by critics as a romp, the play sought 
to highlight the impact of the veil on society, 
by showing how wearers use it as a way to hide 
what they want to keep private.

In the play, young men and women wore the burqa 
to go out on secret dates, and it featured a 
character called Burqa bin Badin.

The play also showed a burqa-clad married couple 
put to death for making love in public.

Predictably, religious conservative Pakistanis 
did not find it funny, going as far as to 
describe the play as blasphemous, a crime in 
Pakistan that can carry a death sentence.

"They have committed blasphemy against the 
Prophet (Mohammad)," Razia Aziz, a female 
lawmaker from the Islamist opposition alliance, 
told the National Assembly.

She demanded the government take action against 
people responsible for staging "Burqavaganza".

Mehnaz Rafi, a lawmaker for the ruling Pakistan 
Muslim League from Lahore, opposed the government 
giving in to the Islamists.

"A few people cannot dictate affairs of the 
state. Every person has the right to lead his 
life his own way. A few people cannot snatch 
freedom from society," Rafi said.

Shahid Nadeem, the director of the play, told the 
weekly Friday Times that the play aimed to raise 
awareness about a trend to force women to wear 
the veil.

Progressive Pakistanis have become increasingly 
shocked by how bold religious radicals have 
become in spreading their Taliban-style values in 
society.

Last month, burqa-clad female students from an 
Islamic school, or madrasa, raided a brothel in 
the capital, Islamabad, and abducted three women. 
The women were released only after they were made 
to repent before the media.

Students from Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and its 
adjoining madrasa have also pressured music and 
video shop owners to wind up their businesses as 
part of their anti-vice campaign.

Copyright 2007 Reuters

______


[3]

Daily Star
April 27, 2007

RISK ASSESSMENT
by Zafar Sobhan

The fiasco surrounding the so-called "minus two" 
plan to send Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia into 
exile seems to indicate that the current interim 
government shares at least one trait with its 
predecessor elected governments to put it kindly, 
a competence deficit.

The entire process was a travesty from beginning 
to end. From the start, the plan was clearly 
ill-conceived, but even an ill-conceived plan can 
be executed with a minimal level of efficiency. 
From the contradictory public statements of the 
interim government, to the apparent failure to 
take care of elementary issues such as the 
agreement of one of the intended host countries, 
to the issuance and withdrawal of warrants and 
the filing and dropping of charges -- the entire 
sorry spectacle has only succeeded in diminishing 
the much-needed credibility of the interim 
administration.

Indeed, the interim government's record over the 
past three months has certainly left much to be 
desired. But perhaps I am being too harsh. In 
mitigation, one could argue that the reform 
agenda that it has chalked out is unprecedented 
in its scope and ambition, so that errors are 
inevitable, and that things are certainly not 
helped by the fact that the council of advisers 
is not the only body making and implementing 
executive decisions.

Perhaps this is, in fact, the crux of the 
problem. One of the main hesitations that many 
have had about the functioning of this caretaker 
government is that it remains unclear where 
authority is ultimately invested and that there 
is neither transparency as far as how decisions 
are made or accountability for those who make 
them. That a government without transparency and 
accountability is more likely to make mistakes 
than one, which is transparent and accountable is 
Politics 101.

Thus, perhaps the way forward for the interim 
government to regain its credibility and to 
ensure that further missteps (and there have been 
plenty, not just the "minus two" plan, e.g. slum 
eviction, removal of hawkers markets, etc) are 
not taken is to operate with greater transparency 
and openness. Essentially, what I would suggest 
for any government, democratically elected or 
otherwise.

Both problems -- lack of transparency and 
confusion over who is running the show -- have 
the same root: right now power is being shared 
between the interim government and the army, and 
there is no unitary executive authority.

The solution is for the caretaker government to 
operate with the same level of openness that we 
would expect from any government and for it to 
make clear to its backers in the army that the 
more authority the government has and the smaller 
the role the army has in running the affairs of 
state, the better.

To the extent that without the state of 
emergency, at the behest of the army, the nation 
would have been subjected to a farcical one-sided 
election on January 22, the fact that the army 
has stepped in and is playing a role in carrying 
out much-needed reform, while problematic, is not 
necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, it can be 
argued that but for the army, the likes of 
Tarique Rahman would never be behind bars, and 
this too is a positive intervention

But, however necessary army support is for the 
current state of affairs, we should all be able 
to agree that the smaller the role it plays and 
the further in the background it stays, the 
better -- both for the country and for the armed 
forces as an institution.

No one wants martial law or for the army to take 
more direct control over the affairs of state. 
Even those with no memory of our last unhappy 
experience of military rule instinctively sense 
that no possible good can come of such an 
eventuality.

However, the most worrisome aspect of the current 
dispensation is the establishment of a governance 
culture without transparency and accountability 
and rule of law. Not that this is anything new 
for us. Indeed, these were the hallmarks of the 
last elected government. But in many ways the 
current situation is far more opaque.

No one knows who is making what decisions and on 
what basis. With fundamental rights suspended and 
it being unclear what the chain of command is and 
what the relations are between the various 
parties sharing power, we don't even know how to 
go about seeking transparency and accountability 
for decisions made and actions taken.

Nevertheless, even knowing all of this about the 
past three months, many Bangladeshis have been 
willing to go along and give the current 
situation the benefit of the doubt. The thinking 
behind this attitude has been that cleaning up 
Bangladesh's politics and creating a truly level 
playing field for the next elections was always 
going to require some degree of irregularity, but 
that this was the price that we had to pay. These 
were acceptable costs.

But key to the notion that the costs of the 
enterprise were acceptable was the belief that 
this was a temporary situation only and that the 
army would quietly move into the background when 
things were done. In retrospect, it always was a 
gamble, requiring a great deal of faith and 
trust, and, of course, good sense.

All things considered, it seems to me that the 
most prudent course of action for the nation 
would be for the interim government to wrap up 
the anti-corruption and election reform drives as 
quickly as possible and move towards elections at 
the earliest.

If certain politicians are banned from politics 
as a result of their crimes and misdeeds, that 
would be a good thing. Most of the problems in 
the system can be resolved with appropriate 
legislation.

One hopes that the shock of the past three months 
will be sufficient that, moving forward, it will 
ensure that the corruption and the 
criminalisation of politics can be reduced to a 
minimum.

This may not be the grand sweeping reform that 
many had once hoped for. But the truth is that 
that was always an unlikely prospect and it is 
becoming crystal clear that the risks associated 
with the current situation may soon outweigh the 
likelihood of a positive outcome.

It seems to me that the best we can hope for now, 
realistically, would be to ensure that the very 
worst offenders are removed from public life and 
that systemic changes be put in place to make it 
difficult for the kind of criminalisation of 
politics we have endured for so long to return, 
and to move forward. It is not a perfect 
solution, but it might just be our best bet now.

______


[4]

EPW
April 14, 2007

BANGLADESH: MOVING TOWARDS OR AWAY FROM DEMOCRACY?

by Kirsty Hughes

The promise of Bangladesh's caretaker government, which is
backed by thearmy, to cleanse competitive politics of corruption
and abuse has been widely welcomed. But is the army settling in
for a long haul or is there a timetable for restoration of democratic
activity? On that there are worries and misgivings.

http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2007&leaf=04&filename=11292&filetype=pdf

______


[5]

Ahmedabad Newsline
April 26, 2007

CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS DEMAND BAJRANGI'S ARREST
Express News Service

Ahmedabad, April 25: As a mark of protest against 
police inaction in arresting Babu Bajrangi, the 
self-styled messiah of Hindu girls, civil society 
organisations staged a demonstration in front of 
the Ellisbridge Police Station in Ahmedabad on 
Wednesday. Representatives of ANHAD, New Delhi 
and Sanchetna, Centre for Development, Aman 
Samuday, Safar took part in the programme.

The protest comes in the wake of a kidnapping 
complaint lodged by one Mausami Shah. Mausami 
alleged that Bajrangi's men abducted her from her 
paramour's place and forcefully got her to 
remarry her Hindu husband Rajesh. Earlier, 
Mausami was advised by the Ellisbridge police 
inspector Vinay Shukla and Bajrangi at the police 
station to return to Rajesh with whom she broke 
up as she had a premarital affair with the Muslim 
man.

Mausami returned to her husband but fled to her 
paramour's place later and then was abducted by 
Bajrangi's men. Following which, she lodged a 
complaint with Ahmedabad Police Commissioner.The 
Supreme Court had already issued notices to 
Bajrangi, and the state governments of Gujarat 
and Maharashtra following similar complaint by 
some boys from Mumbai who married Gujarati girls 
and were harassed by Bajrangi's men as the girls' 
parents had sought help from Bajrangi. Apart from 
several complaints of abduction, Bajrangi is also 
one of the prime accused of infamous Naroda 
Patiya massacre during the 2002 post-Godhra 
riots. Talking to Express Newsline, Shabnam Hasmi 
from ANHAD said that Bajrangi is operating freely 
in the state with police connivance. "Mausami is 
not the only case in point," said Hashmi, adding 
that it is sad to see that in spite of having 
Special Marriage Act facilitating inter-religion 
marriages, people like Bajrangi infringe upon 
democratic rights freely and get away with it. 
"We demand immediate arrest of Bajrangi and 
removal of PSI Vinay Shukla," she added.

"People like Babu Bajrangi who arouse so much of 
terror among a section of society cannot operate 
alone. It is important to restrict people who 
support them," said Sophia Khan from Safar.

"While we are fighting for the empowerment of 
women, Bajrangi and his ilk are pushing the women 
backwards by their acts, diktats and terrorising 
a community. The man needs to be arrested 
immediately," she added.

______


[6]

Hindustan Times
April 09, 2007

IN A LEAGUE OF HER OWN

by Dipankar Gupta

Mayawati was Chief Minister twice and is on the 
roll for a possible third stint if the elections 
work out her way. Her success is not because she 
is a crass opportunist or an incurable 
megalomaniac as she is made out to be in the 
popular press, but because she is a careful 
strategist. Unlike many other Dalit leaders, she 
knows that one way of getting around the 
obstinate arithmetic of caste numbers is to fox 
the opposition with the chemistry of alliances.

It must be recognised that Mayawati thinks along 
class lines even though she gives the impression 
of being a caste-obsessed politician. She has 
gone off the beaten track and actively wooed the 
upper castes, including the Brahmins, because she 
knows that the Dalits have no immediate class 
contradictions among them. In fact, there are 
large areas of concordance between the upper 
castes and the Dalits for whom, in both 
instances, the common enemy is the aggressive 
OBC. True, the Dalits are mostly in villages and 
the upper castes in cities, but because 
contemporary politics has given an overbearing 
presence to OBCs in both these locales, a most 
unusual class alliance has emerged.

Brahmins, Baniyas and Kayasthas do not see the 
Dalits as antagonists as they do the rising 
'tractor capitalists'  led by Mulayam Singh. The 
Yadavs, Jats and Gujjars are competing against 
Brahmins and Baniyas for urban jobs. These 
traditionally privileged urban upper castes do 
not mind the Dalits for they are reconciled to 
reservations for them, and have been so for 
years. Their immediate combatants are the 
Mandal-energised OBCs. This may come as a 
surprise to many urban observers who have been 
bred on traditional textual renditions of Brahmin 
caste oppression.

It is here that Mayawati's genius kicks in. She 
knows from intimate experience that it is the 
same cluster of OBCs that threaten and terrorise 
the Scheduled Castes in India's villages. In 
fact, the Yadavs, Kurmis, Jats and Thevars are 
probably more cruel and rapacious in their 
relationship with the Scheduled Castes than the 
traditional upper castes were. I have been told 
by Dalits in western Uttar Pradesh that they 
would be happier in erstwhile zamindari areas of 
east UP because the Jats and Gujjars (the leading 
OBCs) are not the dominant communities there. 
This is the rationale behind Mayawati's attempt 
to get traditional upper castes on her side for 
she knows that a deal of this sort would not hurt 
the Scheduled Castes as a naïve understanding 
might propose.

So what we have is a grand alliance that brings 
together urban and rural India like never before, 
and yet all of this is under the rubric of caste. 
In this lies the beauty and elegance of her 
scheme. It is like a classic one-two punch in 
boxing that totally disorients the opposition. 
Mayawati can think innovatively because she lives 
at ground level reality whereas her detractors 
only read about it second-hand. She knows 
grandstanding on purist themes would sound good 
to the literate classes but would be of little 
use in advancing Dalit interests. In this she is 
mohallas ahead of her competitors including the 
communists and her fellow travellers in 
Maharashtra and elsewhere. She has no time for 
preening before the UN commissariats in Durban, 
nor does she tremble before the ghosts of Gandhi 
and Ambedkar.

Mayawati's moves have a Maoist touch to them 
though their stated ideologies were far apart. 
Like the Chinese leader, Mayawati too is a great 
strategist. She is constantly on the lookout for 
alliance partners and finds them in places where 
purists would not even deign to look. For those 
with long-term memories it may be recalled that 
Mao, too, was attacked by Russian and European 
Marxists for he allied with the rich peasants 
when it suited him and occasionally with 
landlords too - the somewhat impoverished ones.

Through all this, Mao never took his eyes off the 
ball. The poor peasants were always his most 
durable friends, just as the Scheduled Castes are 
for Mayawati. Many communists in the West berated 
Mao for his unorthodox peasant-Marxism, but he 
made the Revolution whereas his detractors did 
not. Likewise, there are many today who see only 
an opportunist in Mayawati, but she became Chief 
Minister twice and is readying herself for many 
more stints in that chair.

It is true that Mayawati learnt her basic lessons 
from her mentor Kanshi Ram, but she soon 
outstripped him as a strategist and tactician. 
She knew that her terms as Chief Minister were 
going to be tenuous leaving her little room to 
make a long-term dent on the uplift of the 
Dalits. Big things can hardly be done at such 
short notice.

Once again she thought out of the box. Time was 
short but she wanted to leave behind a legacy of 
her chief ministership that would be hard to 
overlook no matter which political high street 
one took. In a few months she set up Ambedkar's 
statues all over UP. She may no longer be the 
boss anymore, but every time you see Ambedkar's 
stylised icon you cannot help but think Mayawati.

Through hundreds of these concrete Ambedkar 
memorials, Maya-wati has solidified her 
reputation with Dalits in the cities and villages 
of UP. I know from my own field experience in 
rural UP that OBCs resent this constant in your 
face Ambedkar/Mayawati presence much more than 
the Brahmins, or other members of the upper 
castes, do. If I could sense it, I am sure 
Mayawati knows all about it and revels in her 
ability to haunt the OBCs as a perennial spectre 
and a looming éminence grise.

Brahmins and other upper castes are of little 
consequence in the villages but can tip the 
scales in terms of numbers and can also be useful 
if one could leverage on their social networks. 
Unlike many other Dalit hotheads, Mayawati does 
not demonise these so-called upper castes for she 
sees them essentially as toothless and effete 
tigers. Even so if their reputation, such as it 
is, can be mobilised to advance the Dalit cause, 
where is the harm?

Nowhere, in this very careful reasoning, does 
Mayawati ever betray her mass base which 
continues to be the Scheduled Castes, whether in 
urban Lucknow or in rural Mirzapore.

There will always be the very poor village-bound 
OBCs who would find Mayawati a possible 
alternative, and then there are the strays that 
the BSP can pick up from factional wars in the 
ranks of the Samajwadi Party and the BJP. She 
has, therefore, nothing to lose in her strategic 
pursuit to win over the upper caste bloc.

We must hand it to Mayawati that she is not 
blinded by caste passions. Her political strategy 
is premised on the belief that caste sentiments 
are fashioned by class interests. This is what 
allowed her to forge an alliance between 
traditionally antagonistic castes for she 
recognised that they had a common enemy in the 
OBCs. This truth, along with the political 
opportunities it presented, was much dearer to 
her than any elevated copybook morality. After 
all, her commitment is to the Dalits and not to 
the real estate brokers of ivory towers.

Dipankar Gupta is Professor, Social Sciences, Jawharlal Nehru University


o o o


The Telegraph
April 11, 2007

THE YEAR OF THE ELEPHANT
- A BSP win will make the party a player on the national stage
by Mahesh Rangarajan

The author is an independent researcher whose 
most recent work is an edited volume, 
Environmental Issues in India

Way back in 1985, Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh 
witnessed a Lok Sabha by-election with three 
players, each of whom symbolized a different 
strand of north Indian politics. The winner was 
Meira Kumar, former Indian foreign service 
officer, and daughter of Jagjivan Ram, the man 
who served with only two breaks at the Union 
government- level from the provisional government 
of 1946 right until 1979. The other was a rising 
icon of politics, a former member of Bihar's 
legislative assembly and celebrated Dalit leader 
- Ram Vilas Paswan. The latter was trounced by 
barely 2 per cent of the popular vote. The 
Congress retained the seat, but it had been given 
a scare. Paswan's supporters, then as now, had a 
slogan - "Goonje dharti aasman, Ram Vilas Paswan" 
- on how the earth and the sky rumbled with their 
leader's name. Yet, the spotlight belonged to a 
27-year-old woman who came third with 18 per cent 
of the vote. A graduate of Meerut University with 
a BA and a BEd, she also had a law degree from 
Delhi University. The daughter of an MTNL 
supervisor, she represented a party born only two 
years ago, the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Today, two decades hence, Mayavati can look back 
on a career with several milestones. By now the 
words, 'Dalit' (the oppressed) and 'Bahujan' (the 
majority), have become part of the accepted 
lexicon. Yet, more than nomenclature, the key 
change wrought by her mentor, Kanshi Ram, was to 
transform Dalits from voters to king-makers, from 
supporters to rulers in their own right.

The party polled a million votes nationwide in 
the 1984 general elections, a fact that then went 
widely unnoticed. The major breakthrough came 
even before the demolition of the Babri Masjid, 
when an alliance of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the 
BSP trounced the Bharatiya Janata Party in two 
by-elections for the Uttar Pradesh state 
assembly. In December 1993, they came to power on 
a joint platform, beating back the BJP in UP to 
second place.

There have been many sea changes since then. 
Mayavati has thrice been chief minister, but for 
a total of less than two years. She was the first 
ever woman Dalit chief minister in India's 
history. As Badri Narayan's recent work on Dalit 
popular cultures shows, her rise to power was 
paralleled by the rise of autonomous oral 
histories and of Dalit heroines, who were freedom 
fighters, into popular icons.

Except for 1993, when the BSP allied with Mulayam 
Singh Yadav, and three years later, when it 
became the senior partner of the Congress, the 
party has tended to fight on its own. Aided by 
the fact that more than one in five voters in UP 
is a Dalit, Mayavati has been able to solidify 
the bulk of them into a cohesive bloc. What is 
significant is that in 2002, the BSP emerged as 
the chief opposition party. By then, it was 
assiduously cultivating non-Dalit voters. The 
very word, 'Bahujan', denotes the majority, and 
reaches out to other groups lower down on the 
social scale. As many as 14 Muslim MLAs were 
elected that year on the BSP ticket.

What is significant about 2007 is that there is a 
widespread perception of Mayavati as the 
front-runner in the state assembly polls now 
under way. This view has been given further 
credence by opinion polls that place her party 
ahead of all others. There are variations. Star 
News ACNielsen places the BSP tally at 135 in a 
house of 403; NDTV-MODE gives her party 155 seats 
with a five-seat margin of error.

One factor that may well explain this is 
anti-incumbency. Mulayam Singh Yadav has ruled 
for 44 months as chief minister - longer than 
anyone since 1960. He already holds the record 
for the third longest tenure in the office in UP 
since independence. Given the insuperable 
problems of the state, with per capita income 
less than half the all-India average, discontent 
is but natural.

The second party would be best placed to exploit 
such anger. In 2004, during the Lok Sabha polls, 
the BSP came first or second in as many as 224 
assembly segments. This gives it a far wider 
geographical spread than the once-almighty BJP. 
The voters, eager for change, are turning away 
from the bicycle (the SP symbol) to the elephant 
of the BSP. Yet there is more to the elephant's 
dance than a mere switch of voters' allegiance. 
For one, there has been an assiduous attempt, 
over the last five years, to transcend the image 
of a sectional force. In 2002, Mayavati's 
supporters began equating the elephant symbol 
with Ganesh, the Hindu deity. This year, she has 
more than doubled the number of Brahmins on her 
platform. With as many as 86 candidates on her 
list, she only outranks the saffron party in her 
courtship of this large and culturally 
influential community of voters.

This is significant, both electorally and 
socially. One of four Brahmins in India lives in 
UP. The state also has the largest Dalit 
population in India: about 23 per cent of the 
state's voters are Dalit or adivasi. Since the 
dissolution of the Congress-led social coalition 
in the late Eighties, this is the first such 
attempt to unify these groups in the political 
arena. The difference this time is that the top 
slot is set aside for the Dalits, who are the 
drivers of change.

More than the candidate profile, there has been a 
concerted bid to identify the core issue that can 
unify voters cutting across caste lines. The Star 
News ACNielsen poll found that law and order rank 
high in the voters' list of concerns. The 
patronage of figures like Anna Shukla, Raja 
Bhaiya, Amarmani Tripathi and Ateeq Ahmed by the 
ruling party has given the BSP a chance, which it 
has been quick to seize. It is not so much a 
spurt in crime but official patronage of those 
who defy the law that is at issue. Like Indira 
Gandhi long before her, Mayavati is seen as a 
woman who is not for turning. Her tough stance on 
law and order is a critical issue and may clinch 
the case even among those who earlier strongly 
opposed her.

It is still unclear what kind of post-poll 
combinations will be required to place the BSP in 
the seat of power. Yet its vote-base has always 
been underestimated by election analysts and 
journalists. It began by unionizing the 
government employees who held reserved jobs, but 
then reached out to the vast majority of 
scheduled castes who lie in the rural hinterland.

The creation of an umbrella-like structure by a 
party that began by mobilizing a deprived section 
cannot but be a moment for celebration in a 
democracy. It will be another matter how such a 
party rises to the occasion in realizing the 
potential of the economy and society in a state 
where one out of six Indians still lives. A BSP 
win will make it a player on the national stage 
that no party or force can afford to ignore. This 
may well be the year of the elephant.


______


[7] 

[an edited version of the below article was 
carried in the Times of India, edit page, on the 
25th April 2007]

o o o

ACQUIESCE

by Sagari Chhabra

Some years ago, I went to Pararia in Bihar. The 
women had been brutally gang-raped by police-men. 
The judgement in the courts had gone against the 
women and as Nimmi Devi said, "the police went 
scot-free, some even got promoted". I was 
shooting a film on rape - 'Now, I Will Speak' and 
one of the rapists came to intimidate the women 
and myself at the site; obviously to stop the 
story from breaking out.  I continued to film the 
testimonies of several women, each of whom told 
me how they were sleeping inside their huts when 
the police broke in "by breaking the kaccha 
roof". One said "They came in uniform. They were 
not one but six who raped me". Her mother in-law 
confided; "she couldn't sit or eat for days. She 
cried so much; it was as if blood was flowing 
from her eyes." Then she fell silent.
  After filming I wandered around the area; the 
village was a remote one, by a river. I chanced 
upon a large site, dug up, with earth-moving 
equipment lying idle. What is this, I asked? I 
was told that a dam was being built and that 
Pararia was going under water. It was obvious to 
me, that there was a resistance to moving from 
the area and the police raping the women in 
uniform; were teaching them a lesson to 
acquiesce. Who was that man who came to where we 
were filming, I asked?  "He is the contractor of 
this dam and one of the accused" I was told. I 
asked if any compensation had been received so 
far; "none" replied a young man "sarkar ki aise 
halat hein, to kya kahen?" - "the government is 
like this, so what can one say?". This was the 
year 1991.
	I then walked through the forests of 
Sagbara district in Gujarat to meet Guntaben, a 
young tribal woman who had been raped by two 
policemen and then brutalised. Her case had been 
taken up by Amnesty International and the two 
policemen had been sentenced to ten years of 
rigorous imprisonment.  Guntaben was a tribal who 
had been displaced by the Ukai dam. I am still 
unsure of the motives of the police who raped 
her, but I am certain that Guntaben, being a 
displaced tribal, was vulnerable as she was far 
away from her own village and people. Displaced 
people have nothing they can call their own.
	Violence particularly against women is a 
tactic to smash the morale of any movement. It 
not only shatters the psyche of the women, it 
traumatises their men-folk as the old man in 
Pararia who had a stick stuck up his backside 
when he protested the rape - "mere se raha nahi 
gaya" - "I couldn't bear to see what was 
happening".   
Since 1947 a study estimates nearly 60 million 
people have been internally displaced as 
projected affected people, (Walter Fernandes, 
20th January '07, Economic and Political Weekly). 
Not all are victims of physical violence, but 
what about psychological violence? How 
heart-breaking is it to see your home torn down 
and being moved to an area far away, without your 
consent? The figures make Auschwitz and Birkenau 
come real on to our own home-ground; a mass 
grave-yard of the poor, which we have trampled 
upon.
	Some time back I visited the Narmada 
valley. I went by boat on the river Narmada 
through Madhya Pradesh to a tribal area, Nandubar 
in Maharashtra, which I had been told had been 
submerged. If it is submerged, how are the huts 
still there, I had wondered? "We have moved four 
times" pointed out a tribal, and I could see the 
little islands submerged in water.  But did they 
not want to leave, there was after all no 
electricity and no schools, just a little 
'jeevanshala' run by activists? "No" they said, 
"what will we get elsewhere? Here we catch our 
fish from the river and make our homes from the 
forest. We know every tree, every bush in the 
woods." But, move they must as the Gujarat 
government has decided to raise the height of the 
dam, still further. The colossus money for river 
valley projects or big dams overtakes some 
budgets of state governments; yet those allocated 
for rehabilitation is abysmal. The poor must make 
way for the rich and come to the urban centres as 
destitutes. If you think things get better with 
time, this is what the Centre of Science and 
Environment report (1999) says about the Hirakud 
dam oustees, the first major river valley 
project; "they occupy open lands, not legally 
theirs and are harassed to vacate by forest 
officials". In Singrauli the oustees have been 
displaced three or four times in three decades, 
due to lack of co-ordination by the different 
departments. A spiral of impoverishment sets into 
motion.
	Tribals have been living close to nature 
and could teach the climate change and global 
warming experts a few things, about sustainable 
living. But when you deprive them of the natural 
resources they live by, you do so by savaging the 
civilized. Sixty per cent of those displaced are 
tribals and unlike Dalits they do not have a 
political party or any political representation. 
One person who has taken up the cause of the 
tribals is Medha Patkar, who has presently been 
charged with "sedition" by a contractor and 
someone who allegedly assaulted her in Sabarmati 
ashram. If this sounds murky, what can be more 
heart-breaking than the capitalists who made a 
killing over the land and the communists who did 
the killing in Nandigram?
	Surely it is time to call halt and set up 
a well thought out rehabilitation policy, for 
those who are being displaced through 
'development'. This policy will have to take the 
informed consent of the project affected people 
well in advance. The new areas will have to be 
set up and running well in advance; not empty 
shells that haunt like ghost towns. But most of 
all, we will have to challenge the mainstream 
discourse on development.  For whom is this 
development for? The tribals desperately need 
representation in mainstream politics, but they 
are not a cohesive group. Despite the armed 
constabulary, we are increasingly finding 
Naxalism spreading in more and more districts, 
like wild fire. Social justice will have to go 
hand in hand with development.


______


[8]

Pune Newsline
April 27, 2007

RATIONALISTS TARGET YOGA, SPIRITUALITY, ART OF LIVING
Activists call them 'pseudo science' and say they are superstitions
Express News Service

Pune, April 26: Indian spirituality, yoga and Art 
of Living have been accepted worldwide. But the 
Federation of Indian Rationalist Association 
(FIRA) has questioned the new age "pseudo 
science" which bank on spirituality, yoga and Art 
of Living that are "manipulating the masses." The 
FIRA will undertake a campaign to question the 
beliefs of these gurus and ask them to present 
their evidence before the common man.

FIRA patron B Premananda, who is in the city, 
said that a lot of people are taken for a ride 
under the name of spirituality and yoga. "This is 
nothing but superstition," he said. The FIRA will 
be training people to question such gurus and ask 
them to provide evidence for their actions.

The first training camp will be held in Karnataka 
wherein 30 activists will be given advanced 
training on the "antics and acts" of "godmen". 
"Anyone can produce a ring, vibhuti and 
vermillion from air. It is nothing but 
manipulation and science," said FIRA president 
Narendra Naik.

Secretary of Orissa Rationalist Association, 
Sudhanshu Dhada, claimed he too, like the other 
yoga experts can stop the heart beat and breathe 
through only one nostril. "These are not acts of 
God. Anyone who has studied anatomy can do such 
things," he said.

The training camps will be funded by 'Network for 
Science, Technology and Communication' at the 
cost of Rs 3.5 lakh.

Meanwhile the Vivekwadi Mahasangh will organise 
its sixth national conference at Wagholi from 
April 27. The conference will be held at BJS 
College and will have attendance of activists 
from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, 
Karnataka, Haryana, Bihar, Goa and Punjab.

Addressing a press conference, Maharashtra 
Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti executive chairman 
Dr Narendra Dabholkar said that the national 
conference will focus on a four-point agenda: 
"Confront modern spiritual godmen, propagate 
secularism, bring educational institutes, media 
and political parties together and discuss on the 
anti-superstition bill for Maharashtra and 
formulate a bill for separation of religion from 
politics."

The activists said there was a need for a common 
nationwide anti-superstition bill which can be 
adopted by states according to the black-magic 
and superstition practices followed there. 
"Maharashtra's law for anti-superstition is a 
model and appropriate. Now the law should be 
sanctioned immediately and implemented," Naik 
said.

______


[9]


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Deception Continues: HSC Fails to Deny CSFH Charges
Report is "Spot on" say report writers

For Info: Samip Mallick-514 274-6184*Murli Natarajan 973 570 3391 *
hsctruthout at stopfundinghate.org

New York, Monday, April 23, 2007: On Sunday, 
April 15, 2007, the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate 
(CSFH) released a 65-page new report titled 
"Lying Religiously: The Hindu Students Council 
and the Politics of Deception," (LyR) that 
comprehensively documented the links between the 
North American campus based organization, the 
Hindu Student Council (HSC) and the ultra-right, 
violent, Hindu chauvinist network of 
organizations in India-the Sangh Parivar. The 
report was released at the "2007 Organizing Youth 
(OY!) Conference" held in NYC from April 13-15 
and was enthusiastically received by South Asian 
American youth at the OY conference.

In its response to the report, the HSC press 
release of April 20, 2007 characterizes the CSFH 
report as a "smear campaign" that is "based on 
inaccuracies" and "outdated information." Beyond 
these assertions the press release only repeats 
banal platitudes about itself and its vision 
without denying even one item of evidence 
presented in the LyR report.

The first charge is curious since almost all 
information presented in the CSFH report are 
drawn directly from official HSC or Sangh Parivar 
sources. This leaves no room for claiming that 
the sources are invalid or the representation is 
"inaccurate" since these are all the HSC's own 
statements about itself, and various Sangh 
organizations' official statements about the HSC 
(See our first press release and a summary power 
point presentation at 
hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org for details of 
the report). The methodological emphasis on 
sources internal to the Sangh family is to ensure 
that the evidentiary basis of the conclusions 
drawn is of the highest standards. Given this, we 
can only conclude that the HSC leadership is in 
denial.

Nevertheless, CSFH would like to highlight a few 
pieces of the evidence that the National HSC 
leadership has chosen to avoid and invite the HSC 
to publicly comment on the same.

a. The CSFH report documents that HSC maintains 
and hosts numerous Sangh websites (RSS, VHP, 
VHPS, ABVP, and others), thus playing the role of 
a mature partner in the Sangh family or parivar. 
This information is documented in detail with IP 
addresses in section 2.4.3, and Appendix A of the 
CSFH report. Does the HSC deny this?

b. In 1993, the HSC claimed that it became fully 
independent of the Sangh. Yet, in December 1995, 
the HSC was an invited participant at the Vishva 
Sangh Shibir (Global Sangh Training Camp). 
According to the press release of the organizers 
of that camp, "all its delegates were from 
several affiliated organizations of RSS 
[Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh], which operate 
abroad as Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, Sewa 
International, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu 
Students Council, Friends of India Society 
International, etc.," and the camp was "conducted 
on RSS ideology for NRI [non-resident Indians] 
workers." CSFH challenges the National HSC 
leadership to comment on how it gained access to 
the sanctum sanctorum of an RSS shibir without 
being a member of the Sangh?

c. Despite all disavowals by the HSC leadership 
about their relationship to the Sangh, the VHP of 
America, has repeatedly, and most recently in 
2003, said that the HSC was its project. Here is 
an extract from an archived VHPA page from 2003: 
"The programs and projects are defined by the 
local community needs within the broad framework 
of the Parishad mission. The ongoing projects 
are: Hindu Student Council: It is the youth wing 
of VHP-A functioning in 50 universities and 
colleges in the USA." Given the official HSC 
position that it severed all links with VHPA in 
1993, this amounts to a minimum of ten years of 
deception. Does the HSC deny that this link 
existed at least until 2003 officially? The VHP-A 
website still lists the HSC as an "Organizational 
Component" that it "facilitates and promotes". Is 
the VHP-A website also "based on inaccuracies" 
and "outdated information"?

There are many more such examples in our report. 
The fact is that M/s Bhutada and Trivedi of the 
HSC National (who issued the HSC's press release) 
are still trying to hide the connections between 
the HSC and Sangh. "The National HSC's inability 
to contest even a single piece of evidence 
outlined in the report is nothing but an attempt 
to cover up with a hope that the chapters will 
not ask too many questions" said Ashwini Rao, a 
CSFH coordinator. "The report" he continued, "is 
spot on!" The HSC National leadership does not 
owe the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate any 
explanation. It owes its members in all the 
universities across North America an explanation 
as to why these affiliations were not revealed to 
them and why their futures were being endangered 
by associating them with an extremist group of 
organizations. We would urge members of every HSC 
chapter across the US and Canada who was not 
aware of these links to demand an explanation of 
the National HSC. The members of HSC who were not 
told about these connections were certainly duped.

One other matter raised in the HSC press release 
deserves comment. The HSC National leadership 
accuses CSFH of insensitivity in launching such a 
campaign at a moment when they are busy offering 
solidarity to the Virginia Tech HSC chapter after 
the tragic events of April 16. We find this 
diversionary tactic most hypocritical, for the 
HSC has stood by in stony silence after each riot 
carried out by its sister organizations in India. 
In 1993, the HSC rationalized and celebrated the 
destruction of the Babri mosque (and the 
anti-Muslim violence that followed) as "the 
beginning of the new age of Hindu Renaissance, a 
new Hindu Revolution". Again, after the 2002 
Gujarat pogrom, the National HSC promptly (and 
rightly) called for apprehending the perpetrators 
of the Godhra carnage, but was understandably 
silent about justice for the families of the more 
than 2000 Muslims massacred in what was probably 
the worst carnage since 1947. In fact, in the 
post-genocide days, the National HSC was busy 
oiling the machinery of the Sangh's global 
propaganda network (by maintaining the electronic 
infrastructure of the Sangh). Is the National HSC 
not complicit in the cover up that has ensued 
since 2002?

CSFH urges a public debate and discussion on this 
within the South Asian community, especially 
among Hindu-American youth, whose trust has been 
betrayed by the National HSC leadership. There 
could be no better starting point for a 
collective sorting out of the truth from the lies 
than with the HSC national leadership answering 
the challenges to the three very concrete and 
specific points we have raised above. The LyR 
report is replete with such evidence and if 
needed CSFH will break this down 
release-by-release for the benefit of the 
Indian-American community.

CAMPAIGN TO STOP FUNDING HATE


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

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