SACW | June 15-16, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | June 15-16, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2419 - Year 9

[1]  Unlikely popular heroes of Pakistan's 
opposition: lawyers (Mark Sappenfield and David 
Montero)
  +  All political detainees must be freed (HRCP Press Release)
[2]  Sri Lanka: Public Statement by International 
Independent Group of Eminent Persons
[3]  Nepal: Supreme Court Orders Action on 
'Disappearances' - End Impunity (Human Rights 
Watch)
[4]  India - Gujarat:  MS University fracas - 
independent inquiry please (Deepak Nayyar, Romila 
Thapar, Andre Betaille)
[5]  India: Where We Protect Our Own (Teesta Setalvad)
[6]  Book review: Impasse in India (Pankaj Mishra)
[7]  The many faces of multiculturalism (Sami Zubaida)
[8]  Announcements:
(i)  Public Forum: PSC Interim Report on 
Electoral Reforms: Reforming the Electoral System 
or (Re-)forming the Electorate? (Colombo, 21 June 
2007)
(ii) Public Meeting: Revisiting Emergency: 
Growing Assault on Freedom of Expression in 
Gujarat (Ahmedabad, 21 June 2007)
  (iii) Call For Papers - Genealogies of Virtue: Ethical Practice in South Asia

______

[1]

(i)

The Christian Science Monitor
June 11, 2007

UNLIKELY POPULAR HEROES OF PAKISTAN'S OPPOSITION: LAWYERS
Thousands of lawyers have taken to the streets to 
protest Musharraf's controversial dismissal of 
the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
by Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor


(Photograph)
Hero's welcome: Lawyers march with the car of 
suspended judge Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Anjum Naveed/AP

LAHORE and KARACHI, PAKISTAN - - Never having so 
much as attended a protest before, S.M. Shah was 
not keen to be manhandled, pelted with rocks, and 
accused of terrorism for leading rallies against 
President Pervez Musharraf.

But he has been, many times. As he sat in his 
office two weeks ago, surrounded by the hefty 
tomes of Pakistani law, the gray-haired president 
of the Lahore Bar Association gave a hint of the 
zeal of a Mohandas Gandhi in leather loafers.

For three months, he and tens of thousands of 
lawyers nationwide have mounted the most serious 
challenge to Mr. Musharraf's regime during his 
eight-year tenure. They have taken to the streets 
to protest the president's controversial 
dismissal of the chief justice of the Supreme 
Court earlier this year.

For defying Musharraf when political parties and 
the disgruntled masses did not dare, Mr. Shah and 
his colleagues have become inadvertent 
revolutionaries - and the great hope of a nation 
longing for change. Pakistanis have showered them 
with flowers, given them gold rings, and offered 
them free merchandise in local shops.

The outpouring is a measure of how dissatisfied 
many Pakistanis have become with Musharraf's rule 
as both president and Army chief. And it is only 
appropriate that the challenge should rise from 
the ranks of bar associations across Pakistan, 
experts say, noting that they are one of the last 
vestiges of democracy in a country ruled by the 
military since Musharraf seized power in 1999.

"The bar is the only organization in Pakistan 
that has consistently held elections, and we are 
now reaping the benefits," says Asma Jahangir, a 
human rights attorney in Lahore. "It is a very 
functional democracy."

The protesting attorneys appear to have inspired 
other dissenters. On Saturday, Musharraf 
capitulated to a week of massive protests when he 
rescinded an anti-media law designed to limit 
coverage of the lawyers.

For its part, the Pakistani bar was first stirred 
into action with remarkable effect on March 9, 
when Musharraf tried to force Supreme Court Chief 
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to quit, alleging that 
he had misused his office for personal gain. Yet 
despite reports of a five-hour private showdown, 
in which Musharraf - in full military dress - 
called in generals and politicians to intimidate 
Mr. Chaudhry, the chief justice did not buckle.

Musharraf ended up tossing him off the court 
anyway, but the judge's defiance rallied a 
nation. Like most experts here, Pakistan's 
lawyers were outraged, arguing that Musharraf 
wished only to silence a judge who had been 
ruling against him. "This was the first time a 
person resisted all alone against the Army," says 
Iftikhar Qasi, president of the Karachi Bar 
Association.

At issue, lawyers say, was the independence of 
the judiciary and the last check on Musharraf's 
authority, and their response was immediate. The 
following day, bar associations from Karachi to 
Lahore called emergency meetings, in which tens 
of thousands of lawyers chose to fight the only 
way they knew how. "Lawyers know the law, and the 
law says everyone has a right to express 
themselves," says Shah.

In doing so, he has led a gathering that was 
pelted by tear gas. He has also been roughed up 
by police and he is now being investigated for 
terrorist activities. But Shah remains unbowed. 
Now, he says, he will not stop until Musharraf 
promises that he will abide by the results of 
elections this autumn and that the poll will be 
free and fair.

"In the past, the judiciary has been in collusion 
with the military," he says. "There is a chance 
now - if it comes out from under the military, 
that some relief will be given to the people of 
Pakistan."

Since March 9, lawyers have led rallies to 
coincide with every hearing on the chief 
justice's appeal, as well as one nationwide 
boycott of the courts each Thursday. Mr. Qasi of 
Karachi estimates he has held 46 rallies in 90 
days, and that nationwide, lawyers are 
collectively losing $170,000 in income a day to 
support the protests. In Pakistan, the per capita 
income per day is about $2.60.

Qasi doesn't calculate how much money he has 
personally lost, but he does estimate that he 
works 18 to 20 hours a day and only eats one meal 
a week with his family. Shah of the Lahore Bar 
Association has dropped legal work entirely to 
focus on organizing rallies and mobilizing 
support, rising at 6:45 a.m. and returning home 
at 12:30 a.m.

Such dedication has won the hearts of many 
Pakistanis, partly because the lawyers are not 
part of any political movement - and therefore 
their sacrifice is seen to be selfless. Qasi says 
he recently went into a shop to buy a car mat, 
only to find that the owner would not allow him 
to pay. Judges, who normally sneer at lawyers, 
say Shah and others, have opened up their 
chambers to help lawyers organize protests.

"When people see me in the black coat [of a 
lawyer], they give me the thumbs up," Qasi says.

Standing beside a makeshift juice stand near the 
Lahore Fort, repairman Shakil Ahmed says the 
lawyers are "doing a good thing." But for him, 
the rallies are about much more than button-down 
Clark Kents finding their inner Superman. In a 
country where the military is perceived as acting 
as a law unto itself, the question of justice 
stirs people deeply - and the judiciary is seen 
as the last bulwark of fairness.

"If someone like me needs justice, [the court] is 
the only place I can go," Mr. Ahmed says, his 
tunic stained and dirty.

(ii)

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Press Release

  ALL POLITICAL DETAINEES MUST BE FREED
Lahore, 12 June 2007

Thousands of activists belonging to various 
opposition parties are currently reported to be 
in jails across the country, most of them in the 
Punjab.

Claims by members of the provincial government 
that only a handful of people have been detained 
over the past few weeks, since the popular 
agitation triggered by the removal of the Chief 
Justice of Pakistan intensified, hardly seem 
credible. Especially so in light of complaints by 
the PPP, the PML-N and the MMA that hundreds of 
their activists have been arrested in towns 
across the Punjab.  HRCP has also received 
complaints from political parties regarding the 
arrest of prominent figures. The leader of the 
Labour Party of Pakistan, Farooq Tariq, is among 
those being held. Some of the activists have been 
detained for three months.

HRCP demands that the political workers held with 
the obvious purpose of preventing rallies against 
the current regime be freed immediately. The 
misuse of laws on the maintenance of order to 
incarcerate these persons is appalling. So too 
are the reports of elderly workers being dragged 
out of their homes late at night or of activists 
moved to prisons located in towns at a great 
distance from their homes as a means to harass 
their families.

HRCP warns that such a blatant display of 
contempt for people's rights to assembly and to 
the free expression of their grievances will only 
aggravate the current situation. The 
indiscriminate jailing of people, in an attempt 
to intimidate them, can only spur further 
feelings of anger and add fuel to the deeply felt 
passions that are currently pushing ahead the 
movement against autocracy and injustice in the 
country. 

Iqbal Haider

Secretary General

_____


[2]

International Independent Group of Eminent Persons
Public Statement

15 June 2007

Further to our previous public statement of 11 
June 2007, we, the International Independent 
Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) are concerned 
that the conduct of the President's Commission of 
Inquiry to Investigate and Inquire into Alleged 
Serious Violations of Human Rights (the 
Commission) is inconsistent with international 
norms and standards.  Failure to take corrective 
action will result in the Commission not 
fulfilling its fact-finding mandate in conformity 
with those norms and standards. 

Central to our concerns is the role of the 
Attorney General's Department in the Commission. 
On 27 February 2007, we raised these concerns 
with the Chairman of the Commission, stating that 
the conflict of interest arising from the 
involvement of the Attorney General's Department 
in the Commission compromises national and 
international principles of independence and 
impartiality that are central to the credibility 
and public confidence of the Commission. We urged 
the Commission to reconsider the role of the 
Attorney General's Department and to appoint 
independent counsel in its place. On 12 May 2007, 
the Commission conceded that the IIGEP's concerns 
of a conflict of interest were valid. This 
understanding was confirmed in writing by the 
IIGEP on 13 May 2007.  Contrary to this 
understanding, on 14 May 2007 the Chairman of the 
Commission publicly announced that the Attorney 
General's Department was to make a statement 
outlining the nature of the case currently under 
investigation and would lead evidence of 
witnesses. Despite further representations by the 
IIGEP on this issue, to date the role of the 
Attorney General's Department remains unchanged. 

During the initial sessions of investigation and 
inquiry, conducted between 14 and 29 May 2007, 
the IIGEP observed examples of a lack of 
impartiality.  Prior to the presentation of any 
evidence, when publicly outlining the case, 
counsel from the Attorney General's Department 
stated as fact matters which are controversial in 
the case. Furthermore, the witness was improperly 
led, material questions were not asked by the 
counsel from the Attorney General's Department 
and information relied on by the witness and the 
Attorney General's Department was not made 
available to the IIGEP. The Commission does not 
seem to have taken sufficient corrective measures 
to ensure that its proceedings are transparent 
and conform with international norms and 
standards of independence, impartiality and 
competence.  Throughout these initial sessions, 
the Commission heard one witness' full testimony 
and part of a second witness' testimony.  Taking 
evidence in this manner will not, in our opinion, 
reveal the information and evidence necessary to 
identify perpetrators of human rights violations 
and enable the Commission to achieve its mandate 
in a timely manner. 


P N Bhagwati
Chairman, IIGEP

_____


[3]

Human Rights Watch
Press Release

Nepal: Supreme Court Orders Action on 'Disappearances'
GOVERNMENT SHOULD TAKE IMMEDIATE STEPS TO END IMPUNITY

(New York and Geneva, June 15, 2007) - The Nepali 
government should quickly implement the Supreme 
Court's recent order to establish a Commission of 
Inquiry to investigate the thousands of enforced 
disappearances in Nepal's civil conflict, Human 
Rights Watch and the International Commission of 
Jurists said today.

On June 1, the Supreme Court ruled on a large 
number of enforced disappearance cases, including 
80 habeas corpus writs, and ordered the 
government to immediately investigate all 
allegations of enforced disappearances. The court 
ordered that this Commission of Inquiry must 
comply with international human standards. 

"Nepal's new government has promised to find the 
truth and ensure justice for 'disappearances,' 
but has been slow to make good on these pledges," 
said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights 
Watch. "Implementing the Supreme Court's order on 
'disappearances' will be a key test of the Nepali 
government's commitment to establishing 
accountability and the rule of law." 

Human Rights Watch and the International 
Commission of Jurists welcomed the comprehensive 
Supreme Court decision. 

"Through this decision, Nepal's Supreme Court has 
demonstrated the important role any judiciary can 
play in upholding respect for the rule of law and 
international human rights principles, even in a 
country just emerging from conflict," said Wilder 
Tayler, deputy secretary-general of the 
International Commission of Jurists. "This 
decision should be a source of inspiration to 
other judiciaries in the world as they struggle 
to deal with cases involving enforced 
disappearances." 

The Supreme Court also ordered the government to 
prosecute those responsible for the death in 
custody of Chakra Bahadur Katuwal. Katuwal was 
transferred to army barracks following one day of 
detention in Okhaldhunga District police station. 
On the same day he was transferred to the army 
barracks he was returned to the police station 
showing severe signs of torture. He died later 
that day. When his family enquired about his 
whereabouts, they were told he had been 
transferred to another district. 

The Supreme Court also ordered that while the 
investigations take place the government should 
take administrative action against members of the 
security forces under investigation for 
involvement in Katuwal's death. The order 
requires the administrative action to be in line 
with the report of the Detainees Investigation 
Task Force formed by the Supreme Court, which 
recommended suspensions of those under 
investigation for enforced disappearances. 

The court ordered the government to provide 
interim relief to the families of the victims of 
the "disappeared," which is to be provided 
without any effect on the final outcome of these 
cases. The court also ordered the government to 
enact legislation that would criminalise enforced 
disappearances and take into account the new 
International Convention for the Protection of 
all Persons from Enforced Disappearance. 

Thousands of individuals were reportedly 
"disappeared" during Nepal's 10-year conflict. 
According to the United Nations Working Group on 
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Nepal in 
2003 and 2004 recorded the highest number of new 
cases of enforced disappearances in the world. 
Between May 2000 and January 13, 2007, the 
National Human Rights Commission of Nepal 
received 2,028 cases of enforced disappearance. 
The fate or whereabouts of over 600 of these 
people remains unknown. 

The Nepali government's failure to hold 
accountable even a single perpetrator of these 
enforced disappearances perpetuates the culture 
of impunity in Nepal. This contributes to the 
current failures of law and order in the country 
and could lead to gross human rights violations 
in the future. 

"The government must address impunity for past 
human rights violations, especially enforced 
disappearances, in a meaningful way," said Wilder 
Tayler. "Victims of human rights violations, 
their communities and wider civil society must be 
involved in decisions about establishing the 
truth, ensuring justice and providing 
reparations." 

Human Rights Watch and the International 
Commission of Jurists called on the Nepali 
government to:

       
     * Propose a new law specifically on enforced 
disappearances, in line with the Supreme Court 
order, rather than amend the Civil Code, as the 
government currently proposes. Such legislation 
should take into account the International 
Convention for the Protection of all Persons from 
Enforced Disappearance and recommendations made 
by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for 
Human Rights, Amnesty International and the 
International Commission of Jurists; 
     * Form a ministerial-led taskforce from the 
Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary 
Affairs and the Ministry of Peace and 
Reconstruction to take responsibility for action 
on relevant parts of the Supreme Court order; 
     * Provide the families of the 84 victims with 
the interim relief as ordered by the Supreme 
Court; 
     * Initiate a criminal investigation into the 
death in custody of Chakra Bhadur Katuwal and 
prosecute those found responsible for or involved 
in his death; 
     * Suspend those identified by the Supreme 
Court as responsible for the death of Chakra 
Bhadur Katuwal and other "disappearances."


Human Rights Watch and the International 
Commission of Jurists called on the Nepali 
government to take immediate steps to implement 
the order of the Supreme Court. 

"Nepal's government needs to end its 
foot-dragging on impunity for human rights 
violations by enforcing this order quickly and 
comprehensively," said Brad Adams. "We'll soon 
see if the government is serious about protecting 
its own citizens."



_____


[4]

Indian Express
June 14, 2007

MS UNIVERSITY FRACAS: INDEPENDENT INQUIRY PLEASE

  Deepak Nayyar, former vice-chancellor, Delhi 
University, Romila Thapar, professor emeritus of 
history, JNU, and Andre Betaille, professor 
emeritus of sociology, Delhi University have just 
written a letter to the prime minister, reminding 
him that no action has been taken on the recent 
incident at the

MS University, Baroda. (This is an edited version of the letter.)

Dear Prime Minister:

We are writing to you to draw your attention to 
the recent incident at the MS University at 
Baroda. This is a matter of grave concern to the 
academic community, since it not only involved 
the violation of the freedom of expression 
granted by the Constitution to citizens, but is 
equally an assault on university autonomy. 
Members of a political party were permitted to 
enter the university, destroy the work submitted 
for examinations by a student of the arts faculty 
and have the student arrested by the police. When 
the dean intervened to protect the student, he 
was suspended by the vice-chancellor.

Soon after the incident, two of us wrote to 
President Kalam expressing our anxiety over what 
had happened and requested him to intervene if 
need be through the governor of Gujarat... We are 
not aware of any follow-up action that may have 
been initiated by the president.

Meanwhile, there have been a large numbers of 
protests at many universities across the country 
as also by Indian academics abroad, over this 
incident, in particular the action of the 
vice-chancellor of MS University. The vehemence 
of the protest is also a reflection of the 
feeling that such actions bring shame to the 
country as a whole.

We recognise that higher education is a state 
subject and the MS University Baroda is not a 
central university. Even so, we are writing to 
you because we believe that actions such as these 
are not confined to a single state. They can 
quite easily become a mechanism of curbing the 
pursuit of independent knowledge at a university. 
We are writing to you not only as the prime 
minister of India but also as a person who has 
been a distinguished academic and recognises the 
sanctity of university autonomy.

Furthermore, this is not an internal matter of 
the university, since it involves outside public 
intervention in the functions of the university. 
Therefore, in our view, an inquiry conducted 
internally by the university cannot suffice. A 
pre-condition of such an inquiry is that the dean 
be reinstated and the charges against the student 
be withdrawn, until such time as the inquiry has 
been completed.

We would request that either the governor in his 
capacity as chancellor of the University or the 
University Grants Commission be asked to set up 
an independent inquiry committee. Such a 
committee should not be constituted by the 
vice-chancellor, since his actions are being 
inquired into, nor should it be constituted by 
the state government. The committee should 
consist of academics from other universities and 
concerned citizens from other states.

We feel that this is particularly necessary to 
set the right kind of precedent. University 
functionaries... should not be allowed to behave 
in an authoritarian manner and should be reminded 
that there is a wider university community beyond 
the particular state and its government, to which 
they are accountable.

We sincerely hope and trust that you will take some action in this matter.


_____


[5]

Deccan Herald
June 15, 2007

WHERE WE PROTECT OUR OWN
by Teesta Setalvad

In the majority of cases where witnesses turn 
hostile in criminal trials it is because trials 
take too long to reach completion and because 
both the police and defence lawyers (sometimes 
even the prosecutors) are the vehicles used to 
turn the witness.

Weeks back, another scandal rocked the nation's 
media waves, forcing the hands of a Member of 
Parliament and also the august legal body that he 
is a member of, to take a stand.

The issue was one of basic professional ethics, 
the role of an advocate (the prosecutor in the 
instant case) exhorting a key witness to turn 
hostile and offering hard cash to facilitate the 
process.

Splash, the media had played its role and after 
the immediate waves that were created, the matter 
died down. There was no sense of outrage among 
our legal bodies and Bar Associations.

The essence in a criminal trial is this, a public 
prosecutor needs both ability and integrity 
whereas all the defence advocate needs is 
debility, the ability to turn a witness hostile.

These were the pearls of wisdom offered by a 
senior defence counsel, a respected professional 
in the presence of this writer, following the 
developments in the now well-known Best Bakery 
case. Well-tested practices, then within a 
criminal justice system that is widely accepted 
today, as being on the brink.

If it was criminal trials like the Best Bakery 
case, the Jessica Lal case and the Priyadarshini 
Mattoo case that focused national attention on 
what ails the system, especially the role of 
police as investigating agency, public prosecutor 
as officer of the court and the key role of the 
witness, who in over 75 per cent of our trials 
turns hostile.

Ironically, however, in all these cases, the role 
of advocates, in the apex court and in the trial 
courts was seriously questionable, our courts 
themselves (with rare exceptions) stopped short 
of pulling up advocates for their questionable 
roles.

So, while Zahira Shaikh paid the price for 
committing perjury, her legal representatives who 
assisted her in this suicidal course, escaped 
even mild reprimand from the august judiciary.

Similarly, be it in the Jessica Lal case or in 
the ongoing Khairlanji trial (a family of Dalits 
was brutalised and massacred a few hours from 
Nagpur on September 30, 2006), a witness turns 
hostile before a moffusil court.

If courts are not meant to be mere spectators to 
crime and subversion of the rule of law, an 
inquiry must be ordered into each and every one 
of these instances and stringent ethical 
practices and deterrence's placed on every lawyer 
in the country from assisting and abetting 
witnesses from turning hostile.

Despite the lofty words of the country's apex 
court in historic judgements like D K Basu v/s 
state of West Bengal and Zahira Habibullah Shaikh 
v/s state of Gujarat, police stations in the 
country default every day in the non-registration 
of FIRs (first information reports) when serious 
crimes have been committed and registration of 
malicious complaints.

In the majority of cases where witnesses turn 
hostile in criminal trials it is because trials 
take too long to reach completion and because 
both the police and defence lawyers (sometimes 
even the prosecutors) are the vehicles used to 
turn the witness.

Yet instead of getting to the bottom of the 
matter, except in piecemeal cases, the system, 
even august institutions of democracy tend to 
protect their own.

State governments and even the Centre are given 
the easy treatment by our higher courts; lawyers 
escape stringent remarks and professional 
rebukes. The system, corrupt and discriminatory, 
lives on.

While citizens continue to approach the judiciary 
for the deliverance of justice, the faith in the 
legal system is not robust enough to prevent poor 
witnesses from turning hostile.

Society, institutions (including the omnipresent 
media) need specifically to focus attention on 
witnesses who can and do stand up and deliver. 
While no news may be good news and bad news news, 
it must not be only the story of hostile 
witnesses that hog the headlines.

Months ago, when the Prof Sabherwal murder in 
Ujjain once more shocked the nation, cameras 
rolled and headlines screamed. It was a murder 
that took place in front of hundreds of people, 
yet no one really "saw" Prof Sabharwal being 
killed.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan was 
quick to call Prof Sabharwal's murder an 
accident. The allegation was that the CM was 
protecting the student body affiliated to his 
party, the BJP, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi 
Parishad. He also claimed that no FIR was lodged 
in the case.

But Komal Singh Sengar, a peon at Madhav College 
where Prof Sabharwal used to teach, came out, 
stood strong and said that he did file a 
complaint with the police the same evening Prof 
Sabharwal was killed. Komal is now a witness in 
the case.

Shockingly, the sole witness was interned in a 
police lock-up and the witness was thereafter 
threatened by the superintendent of police.

Komal Singh spent 72 hours in police custody 
facing intense pressure from the police to change 
his statement. Sure enough, all the key witnesses 
in the case, including Komal Singh, turned 
hostile a few days later. He told a media channel 
that he was pressurised.

No one from Ujjain came forward to support or 
protect him. No representative from the 
established criminal justice system spouted lofty 
words on justice delivery and initiated action 
against the brazen actions of policemen, 
including the SP.

The statement of the chief minister, unnecessary, 
and untimely (in that it could influence 
investigations) was not queried or investigated.

(The writer is co-editor, Communalism Combat)


______


[6]

New York Review of Books
Volume 54, Number 11 · June 28, 2007


IMPASSE IN INDIA
by Pankaj Mishra

The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future
by Martha C. Nussbaum
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 403 pp., $29.95

Last summer Foreign Affairs, Time, Newsweek, and 
The Economist highlighted a major shift in 
American perceptions of India when, in cover 
stories that appeared almost simultaneously, they 
described the country as a rising economic power 
and a likely "strategic ally" of the United 
States. In 1991, India partly opened its 
protectionist economy to foreign trade and 
investment. Since then agriculture, which employs 
more than 60 percent of the country's population, 
has stagnated, but the services sector has grown 
as corporate demand has increased in Europe and 
America for India's software engineers and 
English-speaking back-office workers.[1] In 2006, 
India's economy grew at a remarkable 9.2 percent.

Dominated by modern office buildings, cafés, and 
gyms, and swarming with Blackberry-wielding 
executives of financial and software companies, 
parts of Indian cities such as Bangalore, 
Hyderabad, and Gurgaon resemble European and 
American downtowns. Regular elections and 
increasingly free markets make India appear to be 
a more convincing exemplar of economic 
globalization than China, which has adopted 
capitalism without embracing liberal democracy.

However, many other aspects of India today make 
Foreign Affairs' description of the country-"a 
roaring capitalist success-story"-appear a bit 
optimistic. More than half of the children under 
the age of five in India are malnourished; failed 
crops and debt drove more than a hundred thousand 
farmers to suicide in the past decade.[2] Uneven 
economic growth and resulting inequalities have 
thrown up formidable new challenges to India's 
democracy and political stability. A recent 
report in the International Herald Tribune warned:

     Crime rates are rising in the major cities, a 
band of Maoist-inspired rebels is bombing and 
pillaging its way across a wide swath of central 
India, and violent protests against 
industrialization projects are popping up from 
coast to coast.[3]

Militant Communist movements are only the most 
recent instance of the political extremism that 
has been on the rise since the early Nineties 
when India began to integrate into the global 
economy. Until 2004 the central government as 
well as many state governments in India were, as 
the philosopher Martha Nussbaum puts it in her 
new book,

     increasingly controlled by right-wing Hindu 
extremists who condone and in some cases actively 
support violence against minorities, especially 
the Muslim minority. Many seek fundamental 
changes in India's pluralistic democracy.

In 1992, the Hindu nationalist BJP (Indian 
People's Party) gave early warning of its 
intentions when its members demolished the 
sixteenth-century Babri Mosque in North India, 
leading to the deaths of thousands in 
Hindu-Muslim riots across the country. In May 
1998, just two months after it came to power, the 
BJP broke India's self-imposed moratorium on 
nuclear testing by exploding five atomic bombs in 
the desert of Rajasthan. Pakistan responded with 
five nuclear tests of its own.
Reading the World ad

The starkest evidence of Hindu extremism came in 
late February and March 2002 in the prosperous 
western Indian state of Gujarat. In a region 
internationally famous for its business 
communities, Hindu mobs lynched over two thousand 
Muslims and left more than two hundred thousand 
homeless. The violence was ostensibly in 
retaliation for an alleged Muslim attack on a 
train carrying Hindu pilgrims in which a car was 
set on fire, killing fifty-eight people. 
Nussbaum, who is engaged in a passionate attempt 
to end "American ignorance of India's history and 
current situation," makes the "genocidal 
violence" against Muslims in Gujarat the "focal 
point" of her troubled reflections on democracy 
in India. She points to forensic evidence which 
indicates that the fire in the train was most 
likely caused by a kerosene cooking stove carried 
by one of the Hindu pilgrims. In any case, as 
Nussbaum points out, there is "copious evidence 
that the violent retaliation was planned by Hindu 
extremist organizations before the precipitating 
event."

Low-caste Dalits joined affluent upper-caste 
Hindus in killing Muslims, who in Gujarat as well 
as in the rest of India tend to be poor. 
"Approximately half of the victims," Nussbaum 
writes, "were women, many of whom were raped and 
tortured before being killed and burned. Children 
were killed with their parents; fetuses were 
ripped from the bellies of pregnant women to be 
tossed into the fire."

Gujarat's pro-business chief minister, Narendra 
Modi, an important leader of the BJP, 
rationalized and even encouraged the murders. The 
police were explicitly ordered not to stop the 
violence. The prime minister of India at the 
time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, seemed to condone the 
killings when he declared that "wherever Muslims 
are, they don't want to live in peace." In public 
statements Hindu nationalists tried to make their 
campaign against Muslims seem part of the US-led 
war on terror, and, as Nussbaum writes, "the 
current world atmosphere, and especially the 
indiscriminate use of the terrorism card by the 
United States, have made it easier for them to 
use this ploy."

A widespread fear and distrust of Muslims among 
Gujarat's middle-class Hindus helped the BJP win 
the state elections held in December 2002 by a 
landslide. Tens of thousands of Muslims displaced 
by the riots still live in conditions of extreme 
squalor in refugee camps. Meanwhile, the Hindu 
extremists involved in the killings of Muslims 
move freely. Though denied a visa to the US by 
the State Department, Narendra Modi continues to 
be courted by India's biggest businessmen, who 
are attracted by the low taxes, high profits, and 
flexible labor laws offered by Gujarat.[4]

Describing the BJP's quest for a culturally 
homogeneous Hindu nation-state, Nussbaum wishes 
to introduce her Western readers to "a complex 
and chilling case of religious violence that does 
not fit some common stereotypes about the sources 
of religious violence in today's world." Nussbaum 
claims that "most Americans are still inclined to 
believe that religious extremism in the 
developing world is entirely a Muslim matter." 
She hints that at least part of this myopia must 
be blamed on Samuel Huntington's hugely 
influential "clash of civilizations" argument, 
which led many to believe that the world is 
"currently polarized between a Muslim monolith, 
bent on violence, and the democratic cultures of 
Europe and North America."
[. . .].
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20339


______


[7]

opendemocracy.net
5 - 6 - 2007

THE MANY FACES OF MULTICULTURALISM
by Sami Zubaida


Tariq Modood's revised multiculturalism 
acquiesces in rather than critiques the 
essentialising, religious mythology that 
surrounds the subject, says Sami Zubaida.

[Sami Zubaida is replying to the article by Tariq Modood:

"Multiculturalism, citizenship and national identity" (17 May 2007)]


Tariq Modood is clearly correct in pointing out 
that common citizenship and nationhood do not 
depend on cultural uniformity or ideological 
consensus - which are, in any case, impossible to 
create in a complex society. Questions, however, 
can be raised about his argument - in his new 
book Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea (Polity, 
2007) and openDemocracy article 
("Multiculturalism, citizenship and national 
identity", 17 May 2007) - as to what constitutes 
multiculturalism in the present context, and how 
it is related to social and political alignments.

? Cultural diversity vs. unit cultures

Multiculturalism in modern societies is clear for 
all to see: cultural diversity, hybridity and 
fusion in music and the arts, literature, food, 
dress and religion. Media, travel and commerce 
accelerate these processes of cultural mixing. 
This is a different sense of multiculturalism, 
however, from the idea of distinct unit cultures, 
whether ethnic or religious.

Cultural boundaries are fluid and shifting, 
especially over the generations. There are 
identifiable groups and locations of, say, 
Bangladeshi culture (more specifically, Sylheti), 
or Pakistani (more specifically Kashmiri and 
Punjabi), although these are in various processes 
of transformation and mixing over the 
generations. Each one of these cultural complexes 
includes a religious component.

Can we, however, discern a "Muslim culture" as 
such? There is a tendency, and Modood can be seen 
as contributing to it, of presenting religion as 
the essence of group identity. Sunny Hundal makes 
the point very well in his response, that diverse 
Muslims are totalised into a "Muslim community". 
It is not just that there are ethnic and social 
diversities within Muslims, but that many of them 
are nominal Muslims, and religion enters 
marginally, if at all, into their lives.

The political implication is that all Muslims are 
to be "recognised" in terms of their faith, as a 
community, which is clearly not sociologically 
viable. But it is politically pursued by those 
individuals and institutions that seek communal 
authority and leadership, encouraged by 
government quarters which seek such "leaders" for 
shows of consultation and participation.

? Islam and culture

Islam is woven into the cultures of different 
ethnic communities. It is often hard to 
disentangle what is religious from what is 
cultural. The question of separating the two 
arises frequently in relation to women and family 
issues, including veiling (are these rules and 
customs Islamic, or merely cultural?). Arguments 
on the issue proceed between conservatives, 
modernists and fundamentalists.

A most important consequence for the subject in 
hand is the emergence on different fronts of 
"pure" Islam, purified from culture, which had 
added to it layers of popular religiosity and 
practices which are judged by modernists and 
fundamentalists alike to be contrary and 
antithetical to "true" Islam. Salafis/Wahhabis, 
as is well known, reject and denounce the 
religious practices of the "folk". The veneration 
of saints, the celebration of the birthday of the 
Prophet Mohammed, the inclusion of music, dancing 
and charismatic elements in ceremonies, or indeed 
in weddings and other celebrations - all common 
folk practices of south Asians and other Muslims 
- are anathema to the fundamentalists.

Those latter have been most successful in 
recruiting the younger generation to their 
causes, whether conservative or militant. Active 
young Muslims, including jihadis, have rejected 
the religion and culture of their parents in 
favour of the stern religion of the scriptures 
and the sunna. Equally, modernists inclined to 
accommodation of Islam to the European 
mainstream, the Tariq Ramadan school, have also 
rejected the cultural boundaries of the older 
generation.

How, then, are we to accommodate this de-cultured 
Islam to Modood's idea of multiculturalism? It is 
not a cultural complex that seems to be Modood's 
object, but an imagined religious community. It 
should more appropriately be labelled 
"communalism" rather than "multiculturalism".


? Culture and social boundaries

For the earlier generations of Muslim immigrants, 
cultural difference coincided with social 
boundaries. Residential concentrations, language 
barriers, confined sociability and intermarriage, 
perpetuated inner worlds of distinct cultures 
(now being recreated in certain quarters; see 
below). From a socio-political point of view, 
these cultural/social boundaries posed little 
problem for social order. The complete otherness 
of the British was taken for granted and did not 
typically lead to hostility. Equally, barring 
limited racist hostilities, the dominant British 
attitude was one of indifference more than 
tolerance. Cultural difference and social 
boundaries in that situation posed few and mild 
problems. The problems that are perceived now are 
the product of the erosion of cultural boundaries 
and the emergence of de-cultured religious 
ideology, which is not indifferent to the other.

New forms of social boundaries are being erected. 
Conservative salafis, such as those of the 
Tablighi sect, preach and practice total 
separation of Muslims from the surrounding 
society. Strict ritual observance and avoidance 
of the ambient world of sin, separate and 
insulate the believer from the infidel. 
Apologists and spokesmen for these groups argue 
that they are apolitical and that their 
religiosity does not imply hostility or militancy 
against non-believers. But in practice it is but 
a short step.

The other orientation of separation is that of 
the militant and jihadi ideologies. These are 
explicit in their hostility to non-believers and 
their solidarity with a (theoretical) umma of 
Islam, which is under attack from equally 
totalised Christians, Jews and Hindus. These 
views are typically held by the "de-cultured" new 
generations of Muslims, such as the actors of the 
7/7 London bombings. These men are not culturally 
distinct from the mainstream. They were 
proficient and articulate in English, spoke with 
local accents, were products of British 
education, social life, sports and 
entertainments. They had separated from the 
cultural religion of their parents and embraced 
militant salafism. Their hostility to their 
British compatriots did not proceed from cultural 
difference but from ideological hostility, one 
that is phrased in the idioms of British culture. 
The recorded conversations played at the trial of 
other would-be bombers revealed them justifying 
the planned slaughter at a nightclub in terms of 
the "slags" dancing there: who could say they 
were "innocent"?

? Social segregation

There is another form of social segregation, with 
cultural components which cannot be seen as 
compatible with "national integration" (itself an 
ideological notion). This is the continuation, or 
rather the reformation of ethnic and racial 
boundaries in poorer communities, especially in 
the old industrial enclaves of northern England.

Many reports show that schools in these areas are 
increasingly segregated, with over 90% majorities 
of pupils of Asian or white (see "Revealed: UK 
schools dividing on race lines", Observer, 27 May 
2007). This is partly accounted for by racism, 
discrimination and "white flight". But there is 
also the inward consolidation of Asian 
communities, close intermarriage, including the 
importation of partners from the subcontinent. 
Media technology, satellite broadcasting and the 
internet, connecting these communities to the 
milieus of their "home" cultures, reinforce the 
insulation. These reinforced communal boundaries 
contribute to the disaffection and radicalisation 
of the youth.

This phenomenon is not "multicultural", but 
rather a socio-cultural ghettoisation. Expansion 
of faith schools can only contribute to this 
segregation. This phenomenon has been noted in 
relation to Turkish communities in some German 
regions (see "Many German Turks Wedded to 
Tradition", International Herald Tribune, 26-27 
May 2007). It is estimated that as many as 50% of 
Turks seek their spouses from the home country. 
Children of these unions are less likely to be 
proficient in German language or culture, thus 
perpetuating segregation and alienation. In some 
towns, it is reported, Turks are self-contained 
within their parallel communities, with separate 
services and commerce.

? National integration

The trends surveyed here are not characteristic 
of most British or European Muslims, who, if 
religious at all (and we don't know how many are) 
tend to be "cultural" Muslims. However, the "umma 
nationalism" of the radicals - the idea of a 
totalised universal Muslim community under attack 
by Christians and Jews - constitutes an 
"ideal-type" discourse which appeals to many 
otherwise indifferent Muslims.

The logic of this belief is that the allegiance 
of a European Muslim is to those of his community 
under attack, often with the connivance, it is 
perceived, of his/her European compatriots. Most 
ordinary people are not engaged in resolving or 
rationalising this dilemma, and, like most people 
drift into the routines of life which tend to 
integrate them into their societies, as revealed 
by the attitude surveys quoted by Modood. That 
umma nationalism, however, remains in the 
background, and is brought forth and strengthened 
by the surveillance and discrimination instituted 
by the security regimes in the west in 
confronting the hostility and potential violence 
of the jihadis.

A reality test

Tariq Modood refers to the powerful myth, 
discussed in the foregoing, of the complicity of 
British and European countries in the 
victimisation of "Muslims" in many parts of the 
world, and the sympathy and hostility this 
arouses among Muslims in Europe. This myth is 
prevalent, and has the effect of essentialising 
diverse conflicts as ones of religion.

American imperialism, in fact, sides with some 
Muslims against others (Saudis vs Iranians, for 
instance), and that has little, if anything to do 
with their being Muslims. During the Iraq-Iran 
war of 1980-88, the United States - alongside the 
Soviets, the British and most Arab governments - 
supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, then 
turned a blind eye to the massacres he 
perpetrated against the Kurds and the southern 
Shi'a.

During those episodes and subsequently, Saddam 
killed a great many Muslims, but not on account 
of their being Muslim. Yet when Saddam fell out 
with the Americans and most Arabs in the 
occupation of Kuwait (more "Muslims" killed), 
Islamist militancy confronted "the west" in the 
name of religion, with the mounting agreement of 
Muslim opinion in many quarters. Clearly, those 
situations, and the current ones in 
Palestine-Israel, Iraq, Kashmir and Afghanistan, 
can only be understood as political and military 
issues, not as wars on Islam. It becomes 
important for scholars and public intellectuals 
to point out these political considerations and 
not to acquiesce in the mythology of religious 
wars.

Sami Zubaida is emeritus professor of politics 
and sociology at Birkbeck College, London. Among 
his books are Islam, the People and the State: 
Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East 
(IB Tauris, 1993) and Law and Power in the 
Islamic World (IB Tauris, 2003)



______



[8]  ANNOUNCEMENTS:

(i)

Law & Society Trust

LST FORUM

PSC Interim Report on Electoral Reforms: 
Reforming the Electoral System or (Re-)forming 
the Electorate?

Kingsley Rodrigo
Peoples Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL)

&

A. Kandappah
Political Analyst and Commentator


Thurs 21 June 2007

5pm @

3, Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 08

RSVP Janaki 2691228 /2684845 Email <mailto:lst at eureka.lk>lst at eureka.lk

(ii)

INVITATION
PUBLIC MEETING

REVISITING EMERGENCY: Growing assault on FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION in Gujarat.

(Focus on Fine arts faculty  - MS University incident)

: SPEAKERS:

Chair person:        Com. DWARIKA NATH RATH (Political Activist)

1.         Mr. IFTIKHAR (Member of ACUA-Association of Academics, 
Artists and Citizens for University Autonomy-and 
Reader History Dept. M.S University)

                         2.         Dr. Saroop 
Dhruv (Poet; Writer and Cultural activist)

Others to be confirmed.

DATE:                    25th June, 2007 Monday.
TIME:                    6-00 P.M. (Sharp) to 8-30 P.M.

VENUE:      MAHENDI NAWAZ JUNG
HIMAVAN
PALDI
AHMEDABAD

ORGANISED BY:

INSAF-GUJARAT; SAMVEDAN SANSKRUTIK MANCH; DARSHAN.

CONTACT:           079-2681 5484; 6541 3032:    94261 81334(Hiren Gandhi)

(ii)

CALL FOR PAPERS - Genealogies of Virtue: Ethical Practice in South Asia
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, September 2007

        Daud Ali					Anand Pandian
        SOAS, London				UBC, Vancouver

Recent scholarship in numerous fields has renewed 
attention to the subject of ethics, understood as 
a concrete practice of self-engagement and 
self-transformation rather than as a collection 
of moral rules or abstract judgments.  We intend 
to contribute to this vital conversation by means 
of an international workshop on the subject of 
ethical and moral traditions in South Asia. 
These traditions have either been celebrated in 
nationalist writings as the mirror opposite of 
Western modernity, or easily derided in scholarly 
prose as idioms of religious or political 
ideology and social oppression.  A serious 
interdisciplinary engagement with the myriad 
textual, historical, and quotidian answers to the 
question "How ought one to live?" in South Asia 
is still wanting.  We intend to invite up to 
fifteen scholars from the fields of social and 
cultural history, cultural anthropology, 
historical sociology, literary history, religious 
studies, comparative philosophy, and philology to 
share papers and contribute toward a published 
volume on the subject of South Asian ethical 
thought and practice.  Our approach will address 
these ethics in their historical and contextual 
specificity: in relation to social processes such 
as class and caste formation, political 
developments such as nationalism and state 
building, and moral horizons such as legal codes 
and religious doctrines.  We examine the moral 
and ethical traditions of South Asia in all their 
historical diversity, contemporary vitality, and 
uneven resonance with those of the West, with the 
conviction that they may cast a new light on the 
intractable problems of a troubled global 
present.  We invite papers addressing topics such 
as:

1. Formation of ethical subjects.  How do 
individuals in South Asia come to inhabit an 
ethical world and deploy its practices, dictums, 
and purposes in their daily lives? What forms of 
discourse-scriptural, poetic, pedagogic, 
proverbial, nationalist, cinematic, and so 
on-prove most consequential in particular 
instances of ethical formation?

2.  Moral horizons of ethical practice. In 
relation to what moral traditions and collective 
orientations-courtly, martial, commercial, 
ascetic, scribal, agrarian, and so on, if they 
can in fact be described as such-do ethical 
practices evolve and gain their intelligibility? 
What metaphors of discrimination and discourses 
of virtue orient ethical lives?

3. Ethics in history.  What role have changes in 
economy, state, society, and ideology played in 
the transformation of ethical discourse and 
practice? How do South Asian practices of virtue, 
for example, intersect with Western discourses on 
the exercise of moral judgment in public and 
private life in the nineteenth century?

4. Ethics and politics.  How are ethical 
practices of self-making enlisted in the 
formation of larger communities of identity and 
affinity? How, for example, does the vast corpus 
of "wisdom" literature become transformed into an 
instrument of nationalist pedagogy?  Under what 
conditions do ethics emerge as an effective idiom 
of social critique?

Contact Anand Pandian (pandian at interchange.ubc.ca) or Daud Ali (da7 at soas.ac.uk)

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

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: http://insaf.net/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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