SACW | July 12-19, 2007

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | July 12-19, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2431 - Year 9

Interruption Notice: Please note there will no 
dispatches between 20 July - 6 August 2007.

[1] Pakistan:
   (i) Another wake-up call? (I.A.Rehman)
   (ii) An Open letter to Qazi Hussain Ahmed [of MMA] (Tapan Bose)
  (iii)  Letter from Pakistan: Days of Rage - 
Challenges for the nation's future (William 
Dalrymple)
[2] Sri Lanka: How the world fails internally displaced people (Robert Muggah)
+ Sri Lanka : Decades of Displacement - A UNHCR Video on You Tube
[3] India: Defining India's minorities (Zoya Hasan)
[4] India: Into thin air (Sumanta Banerjee)
[5] India: Tweak the dowry law  (Ratna Kapur)
[6] India's Prisons:
(i) Reading the bar codes (Chaitanya Kalbag)
(ii) Let sunlight into our prisons Kiran Bedi
[7] Film Review: Nightmare on Zamzama Street (Ananya Vajpeyi)
[8] Announcements:
(i) Book release: "Submergence of Justice" (New Delhi, 19 July 2007)
(ii) Public Meeting on "Democratic Aspirations of 
Pakistan" (Bombay, 25 July 2007)

______


(i)

Dawn
July 12, 2007

ANOTHER WAKE-UP CALL?

by I.A.Rehman

"IF Pakistan is to move forward as a democratic 
and progressive state it is necessary to firmly 
check sectarian activities, otherwise Pakistan 
will be reduced to a retrogressive medieval 
state."-Punjab CID chief, 1952 ONE of the most 
relevant ways of looking at the Lal Masjid affair 
is to treat it as another wake-up call - 
hopefully the last one. On the one hand, this 
case has introduced us to a new, and perhaps the 
deadliest, form of religious militancy, and on 
the other hand, it has revealed the upgraded 
standing of the theocratic camp.  A combination 
of these two will be disastrous for the polity 
Pakistan has no far experimented with, unless 
those in command have wisdom and guts to redefine 
the foundational assumptions of the state, and do 
not ignore the present warning in the manner they 
have done so far.  The polity adopted by Pakistan 
at independence was an admixture of the Viceregal 
system and rudimentary democracy. The founding 
elite saw little wrong in this model and this was 
one of the major reasons for its failure to frame 
a new constitution for the state. The 
contradiction between this system and the 
religions basis of the demand for partition was 
ignored by the Muslim League leadership but those 
attracted by theocratic ideals had reason not to 
follow suit.  Soon after independence they served 
their first warning of their political ambition 
when a memorandum calling for Islamisation of the 
state was submitted on behalf of the country's 
ulema.  The government did not accept the ulema's 
demands and yet it produced the Objectives 
Resolution. Despite government spokesmen's 
rhetoric in the Constituent Assembly (statements 
such as 'Pakistan was not supposed to be a 
laboratory for Islam'), the religious lobby 
viewed the resolution as the foundation-stone of 
a religious state (for instance, Jamat-i-Islami 
leader Mian Tufail Mohammad's claim that after 
the adoption of the Objectives Resolution, the 
reservation on accepting Pakistan as an Islamic 
State had become redundant) The religio-political 
lobby began challenging its rivals in power 
through the anti-Ahmadia agitation in Punjab. The 
government followed the way shown by its colonial 
predecessor. Two Ahrar leaders were sent to 
prison for making objectionable speeches in 
mosques. Their sentence was however remitted and 
the idea of prosecuting anyone for speeches in 
the house of God was almost totally given up. 
During the 1953 riots that followed, Maulana 
Abdul Sattar Niazi, who had been an important 
leader of the Punjab Muslim League, offered the 
first face of religious militancy and Lahore's 
Wazir Khan Mosque became the pole of power to 
challenge the state.

What happened after this government-mosque clash? 
The military had a dress rehearsal for martial 
law. Prime Minister Nazimuddin ordered Mumtaz 
Daultana to vacate the Punjab Chief Minister's 
couch and propose Firoz Khan Noon's name as his 
successor. Many political parties that had jumped 
at the opportunity for populist politics learnt 
the lesson they are relying upon to this day - 
that it is possible to distance oneself from the 
methods of a protest and yet benefit from its 
fallont. Finally, Justices Munir and Kayani wrote 
a report on the anti-Ahmadi riots, which bears 
the former's name only and which became a sort of 
Bible for middle class secularists, who deluded 
themselves with the thought that the challenge in 
the name of belief had been beaten off for good.
The post-1953 reality was otherwise. The 1956 
constitution revealed the extent of the religious 
lobby's nibbling at the polity. The republic 
became Islamic Republic; under the directive 
principles of policy, the state undertook to 
enable the Pakistani Muslims to order their lives 
in accordance with the Holy Quran and Sunnah, to 
make the teaching of the Quran compulsory, and to 
secure the proper organisation of Zakat, Waqfs 
and mosques; an Islamic research institution was 
set up; a bar was created against any legislation 
that was repugnant to Islamic injunctions and the 
existing law was to be brought into conformity 
with such injunctions (the latter task was to be 
done in the light of a commission's report). 
These were quite significant gains for the 
religio-political lobby.  The imposition of the 
military regime in 1958 froze the tussle between 
the theocrats and the liberals - both so 
described for want of better definitions. The 
struggle for democratic rights dominated the 
national scene. The religio-political factions 
joined this struggle as it offered them a means 
to widen their base, but since the central issues 
were revival of parliamentary democracy and 
demands for provincial rights, they could not 
push their call for theocracy to the top of the 
national agenda.  In 1970, as the possibility of 
an end to military autocracy emerged, the 
liberals received another wake-up call. All 
religio-political groups joined the race for 
power. Much was made of an alleged burning of the 
Holy Quran and socialists were told they were 
going to lose their tongues. The theocrats failed 
because they were divided, the majority wing 
population did not brook any deviation from their 
struggle for autonomy and leadership of the 
state, and a majority of the West Wing people 
were swinging to the tune of the most effective 
slogan in Pakistan's democratic politics - roti, 
kapra aur makan. But they had reason to be 
optimistic.

The new branch of the political elite, that had 
begun by proclaiming Islam as one of the three 
pillars of its ideology, increased the role of 
belief in constitutional life. Along with 
reiteration of democratic and socialist ideals, 
Islam was made the religion of the state.

So far the state's pro- religion inclinations 
were not wholly became of pressure from 
religio-political factions. A stronger impetus 
was the argument developed by liberal Islamic 
scholars that Islam was in total accord with not 
only democratic governance but also with 
egalitarian economics. Some went on to argue that 
Islam envisaged a socialist order. Thus, Bhutto 
and Nasser (vide the constitution of the United 
Arab Republic) could swear by socialism while 
declaring Islam to be the religion of the state.

The most essential premise of this approach was 
the theory that determination of the political 
requisites of belief and their enforcement was 
not the monopoly of the theocratic camp - this 
authority lay with the country's population and 
was to be exercised through its elected 
representatives.
The Zia years marked four substantial changes in 
the situation.  First, the state accepted the 
goal of a theocracy and began working towards it. 
Secondly, traditionalists were enabled to 
consolidate their monopoly over religious 
discourse with the help of constitutional 
instruments. Thirdly, the authority to interpret 
Islamic injunctions and to enforce them was in 
effect taken away from parliament and handed over 
to officially recognised scholars. And, fourthly, 
the use of the gun to capture state power was 
added to the curriculum of a vastly expanded 
network of religions seminaries.  All this led to 
the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the 
inevitable diversion of their attention to 
Pakistan. Lal Masjid constitutes a relatively 
small item on the agenda of the new breed of 
religious militants; some of their bigger 
enterprises are in Fata and the adjoining areas 
(hitherto described as settled districts).  The 
situation now is that the contenders for state 
power fall into three categories. The first 
category comprises political elements that swear 
by democracy and constitution, they may be 
called, for the sake of convenience, democrats, 
who can gain their goal only through political / 
electoral means. The second group comprises 
advocates of theocracy who accept elections as 
one of the legitimate means of securing power but 
are also open to other means. And the third is 
the army of militants who have acquired the skill 
to get their way by holding the state to ransom.

The present representative of militants is more 
dangerous than his precursors because he does not 
demand personal or group favours, he only demands 
enforcement of an Islamic order, a demand nobody 
can oppose. His strength also lies in the fact 
that his attempt to seek political ends through 
force cannot be seriously questioned in a country 
where seizure of state apparatus by force has 
been held legitimate more than once.

The appearance of the new militant has changed 
the political equation in favour of the 
theocratic lobby. While the so-called democratic 
camp remains divided (the latest proof is the 
London APC), and their division will not end so 
long as the military has its finger in the 
political pie, the religio-political parties have 
managed to forge functional unity. They stand to 
benefit from the militant elements' adventures 
without commending their tactics, secure in the 
belief that public (and even government) 
endorsement of the militants' demand advances 
their own agenda.

Pakistan's real crisis is that so long as the 
military retains power it cannot but contribute 
to the growth of militancy, and even if these 
militants do not succeed in toppling the regime, 
they will have paved the way to the success of 
religio-political parties - the final result of 
the military establishment's forays into politics.

o o o

(ii)

July 14, 2007
AN OPEN LETTER TO QAZI HUSSAIN AHMED,
PRESIDENT OF MUTTAHIDA MAJLIS-E-AMAL (MMA - UNITED ACTION FORUM)

Dear Qazi Sahib,


While speaking on the Geo TV on July 13 you 
claimed that around 1,000 male and female 
students were murdered during the military 
operation in Jamia Hafsa, the Islamic school 
attached to the Red Mosque.  You also said that 
the dead were being buried mercilessly in the 
darkness of night by the army and paramilitary 
forces. It seems that the Qazi is grieving for 
the dead in the Red Mosque. According to The 
News, Lahore, July 13, MMA's Punjab party Chief, 
Mr. Liaqat Baloch said, "... the death toll was 
much higher - more than one thousand and the MMA 
had decided to register a murder case against 
General Pervez Musharraf for killing a large 
number of innocent men, women and children."

This is rich. Even before the blood of the dead 
of the Red Mosque could dry, you and your friends 
in the the MMA, a constituent of the government 
of General Musharraf - a partner in the crime of 
murder of democracy in Pakistan have started 
proclaiming your innocence. When Nawab Bugti was 
killed, you and the MMA did not call the General 
a murderer. During the last two years the forces 
of the government of Pakistan have killed 
hundreds in Waziristan, Baluchistan and FATA and 
yet the MMA did not see those acts of mass 
killings as murders. But the killings in the Red 
Mosque seem to have shaken you. Or is it really 
so?

Why do I feel that your grief and Mr Baloch's 
rhetoric are sham and empty gestures? Qazi Sahid 
can you please explain why you and your cohorts 
remained a part of a government which is headed 
by a "murderer' and wait for him to kill more, 
particularly those who in your opinion were 
innocent persons. I am sure if you and the other 
illustrious leaders of the MMA including the 
great Maulana of JUI had all put a human chin 
around the besieged Red Mosque, the "Murdering 
General" would have stopped in his tracks.

May I ask you, Qazi Sahib whether you believed in 
the brand of Islam propagated by Abdur Rashid 
Ghazi and Mohammed Abdul Aziz and approved the 
so-called "arresting", "detaining", 
"indoctrinating" and "punishing" of ordinary 
civilians for their  "moral lapses" by the young 
and the "innocent" men and women of the Jamia 
Faridia and Jamia Hafsa. Pray why did you and the 
leaders and the members of the MMA not join the 
Imams of the Red Mosque. Pray why did you remain 
quiet all these days when the government of the 
"murderer Musharraf" was threatening to take 
action against the young and "innocent" men and 
women 'inspired' by the philosophy of the Imams?

Qazi Sahib, what General Musharaf and his forces 
have done in the Red Mosque is bad. But in the 
first place do you think that those "innocent" 
young men and women should  have been put in that 
situation at all?  Imam Gazi and Imam Abdul Aziz 
are directly responsible for the safety of young 
people in the mosque. They were students of 
religion. They were training to be scholars of 
theology. But the two Imams indoctrinated these 
young people from very poor homes and turned them 
into a band of moral police.. Most of these young 
people had no places to go to. The seminaries of 
Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa were the only homes 
they knew.  Their graves were dig by the Imams 
when hey started indoctrinating these young 
"innocent" recruits.  Musharraf's killers only 
finished the job that the Imams started.

Qazi Sahib, this is not a new situation. You have 
expressed such helpless grief in not so distant 
past over the hundred of Mujahids whom you and 
your good friend Maulana Fazlur Rahaman recruited 
from the homes of the poor in NWPF, Baluchistan 
and rural Punjab and sent to Afghanistan for 
Jihad. What did you do Qazi Sahib, when General 
Musharraf abandoned these boys in Afghanistan and 
left them to be butchered by the American 
soldiers? You raved and ranted! You expressed 
extreme grief. And, you joined the government of 
General Musharraf. This is the simple truth about 
you and the MMA.

I the name of the God the Merciful, I request you 
not to sully the memory of these innocent youth, 
men and women, who would have been alive today 
had they not been so horribly indoctrinated and 
turned into the soldiers of the Red Mosque.

Tapan Kumar Bose

o o o

(iii)

The Nation
July 23, 2007

LETTER FROM PAKISTAN
DAYS OF RAGE: CHALLENGES FOR THE NATION'S FUTURE.

by William Dalrymple

[Photos] Asma Jahangir, a human-rights lawyer, 
has fought for a secular civil society. Female 
vigilantes from a madrassa calling for the 
establishment of full Sharia law, before the 
siege of the Red Mosque.

In the white glare of a hot summer's noon, the 
broad avenues of Islamabad, Pakistan's modern 
capital, are usually empty. But on a sweltering 
day this May the streets were crowded with 
noisily chanting protesters, all of them 
demonstrating against the military government of 
President Pervez Musharraf. Three separate 
protests were under way. Each one represented a 
slightly different vision of the future that 
Pakistan might have if-as now seems more likely 
than ever-Musharraf's government were to fall.

The largest crowd by far was made up of lawyers 
in starched collars, white shirts, and black 
suits. They marched in orderly ranks, three 
abreast, like emperor penguins in a nature film. 
Some held up very British-looking umbrellas, on 
which markedly un-catchy slogans, such as "Long 
Live Lawyers Unity," had been carefully daubed in 
white paint. In earlier demonstrations, the 
lawyers had clashed with riot police, and the 
country's most senior barristers, silk ties 
flying, had responded with surprising vigor, 
hurling back tear-gas cannisters at 
staff-wielding policemen and jabbing at them with 
furled umbrellas.

The lawyers began demonstrating when, on March 
9th, Iftikhar Chaudhry, Pakistan's Chief Justice, 
was suspended, reportedly because Musharraf had 
accused him of using his position for personal 
gain and for trying to get his son a top police 
job. The first demonstrations, which consisted of 
a few hundred lawyers protesting against 
Musharraf's attack on the independence of the 
judiciary, escalated into a full-scale campaign 
against military rule when, a week later, riot 
police attacked first the protesters and then the 
offices of an Islamabad news channel that had 
broadcast images of police beating up barristers. 
By May, the demonstrations had turned into a 
countrywide protest movement calling for fair 
elections, a civilian government, and the return 
of real democracy.

On that particular May day, the overwhelming 
majority of the protesting barristers were men. 
Yet at the center of the group was a 
fragile-looking, diminutive woman in a crisp 
white shalwar kameez, a neat black jacket, and 
heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, named Asma Jilani 
Jahangir. She is in many ways a symbol of the 
values that the lawyers are fighting for. 
Pakistan is a notably patriarchal society, but 
Jahangir is its most visible and celebrated-as 
well as most vilified-human-rights lawyer. She 
has spent her professional life fighting for a 
secular civil society, challenging the mullahs 
and generals, and championing the rights of women 
at risk of "honor killing" and religious 
minorities accused of blasphemy. She has 
investigated alleged extrajudicial killings by 
the security forces, set up a shelter for 
vulnerable young women, and campaigned to end 
child labor. For Pakistan's liberals, she is a 
symbol of freedom and defiance, comparable to 
Aung San Suu Kyi, in Burma.

"These protests really have touched a chord," 
Jahangir shouted to me as the lawyers chanted 
around her. "There is so much pent-up anger. The 
country is beginning to stir."
[. . .].

Full text at:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/23/070723fa_fact_dalrymple

______



[2]

Ottawa Citizen
July 07, 2007

HOW THE WORLD FAILS INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE

by Robert Muggah, Citizen Special

International and local human rights monitors are 
witnessing a horrifying escalation of war and 
displacement in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. A 
particularly odious new trend is the targeting 
and killing of aid workers-expatriates and 
nationals. Regardless of whether it involves 
crossing an international border or not, 
population displacement is a symptom of a 
country's inability or unwillingness to protect 
all of its citizens. In Sri Lanka, 
displacement-together with the miserable "camps" 
set up to deal with it * signals a patent failure 
of the international system designed to address 
the consequences of migration.

While forced migration has a long history, the 
international community only recently began 
elaborating meaningful strategies to deal with 
it. The dramatic dislocation of more than 50 
million Europeans in the aftermath of the Second 
World War catalyzed the nascent United Nations to 
forge a Convention on the Status of Refugees in 
1951 and, later, a Protocol in 1967. Since then, 
more than 145 countries officially adopted at 
least one of these instruments, although neither 
India nor Sri Lanka has signed on.
The UN Refugee Convention and Protocol carry some 
clout. With assistance from the United Nations 
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 
signatories are legally obligated to protect 
asylum claimants regardless of their origin. They 
are also bound to provide refugees with durable 
solutions, whether integration in the hosting 
country, resettlement to a third country, or 
repatriation home.
The idea of providing analogous support for 
internally displaced persons (IDPs) did not 
emerge as a major priority until the 1990s, when 
the UN sanctioned the Guiding Principles on 
Internal Displacement.
Although the principles were only cautiously put 
into practice by governments around the world, 
Sri Lanka was one of the first states to formally 
endorse them. Given the severity of the country's 
displacement crisis, this is hardly surprising.

Sri Lanka first encountered displacement on a 
catastrophic scale in the 1980s. At the urging of 
the Indian government, Sri Lanka "invited" UNHCR 
to the country in 1987 to assist in a major 
refugee repatriation exercise from India. 
Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan civilians had 
been languishing in "refugee camps" in Tamil Nadu 
since the early 1980s. At least three times as 
many made their way to the West, including to 
Canada. Sri Lankan refugees from Scarborough to 
Melbourne were expected to return home in the 
wake of the controversial Indian Peacekeeping 
Operation of 1987-'90. Far fewer came home than 
had been anticipated.
With the resumption of all-out war in the 1990s, 
UNHCR found itself for the first time in its 
history facing both a massive refugee exodus and 
prospects for a major repatriation. But as North 
American and European countries began shutting 
their doors to new Sri Lankan refugees and the 
war with the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil 
Eelam) intensified, the agency witnessed a 
dramatic escalation in internal displacement. 
Without a clear, legal mandate to deal with IDPs, 
UNHCR and the Sri Lankan government scrambled to 
come up with interim solutions.
There was a significant problem: IDPs are not 
entitled to the same kinds of protection as 
refugees.
Because internal displacement occurs within a 
state's borders, IDPs are by definition the 
sovereign responsibility of that state. This 
leads to a manifest incongruity: states are both 
the perpetrators and arbiters of internal 
displacement.
But while international refugee law mandates an 
international response to refugee crises, 
interventions for IDPs draw on such laws only by 
analogy. Although subject to international human 
rights law, protection and durable solutions for 
IDPs are ultimately a national prerogative even 
if literally hundreds of relief and development 
agencies assume a prominent role in providing 
assistance.

Interventions were chaotic and often fell short 
of international standards. At the time of the 
2002 ceasefire agreement between the armed forces 
and the LTTE, more than 21 government agencies 
were instructed to protect refugees and IDPs in 
Sri Lanka. Literally hundreds of NGOs also 
flooded into the country.
Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the 
government agencies as well as those of the NGOs 
is an urgent priority if protection and durable 
solutions are to be successfully achieved.
There are an estimated 300,000 new IDPs in Sri 
Lanka today, most of them forced off their lands 
since the beginning of 2007.

Hundreds of thousands more languish in hellish 
"welfare centres"-abandoned public buildings and 
dilapidated housing-scattered throughout the 
north and east despite ongoing efforts by the 
government to liquidate them.
Meanwhile, the government has sponsored dozens of 
"relocation villages," although these are 
controversial. Together with UNHCR, the 
government has also promoted return- confusingly 
described as "resettlement" in Sri Lanka-of tens 
of thousands of IDPs back to their villages of 
origin.
The rapidly deteriorating political situation in 
Sri Lanka is a reminder that protection and 
durable solutions cannot be limited to 
humanitarian relief. They require thinking 
differently about a country's responsibilities to 
its population.
The Sri Lankan government must fully accept its 
responsibility to protect the internally 
displaced. Likewise, together with the 
international community, it must think creatively 
about durable solutions, especially when it is 
unable to fulfil its responsibilities on its own.
Local integration, voluntary relocation and 
return are durable solutions that Sri Lanka must 
pursue in earnest.
Robert Muggah is a project manager at the 
Graduate Institute on International Studies in 
Geneva. He is the author of "No Refuge: The 
Crisis of Refugee Militarization in Africa," and 
the soon to be released "Relocation Failures: A 
Short History of Displacement and Resettlement in 
Sri Lanka."

o o o

SRI LANKA : DECADES OF DISPLACEMENT - A UNHCR VIDEO ON YOU TUBE
June 20, 2007

http://snipurl.com/1o6ml


______


[3]

The Hindu
July 14, 2007

DEFINING INDIA'S MINORITIES

by Zoya Hasan

A meaningful conception of minorities would 
include sections of people who, on account of 
their non-dominant position in the country as a 
whole, are targets of discrimination and 
therefore deserving of special consideration.
The Constitution (103rd Amendment) Bill, 2004 to 
grant constitutional status to the National 
Commission for Minorities envisages a change in 
the way minorities are specified. The Cabinet has 
reportedly approved a proposal (May 2007) to 
define minorities State-wise in line with several 
Supreme Court judgments, most notably that in 
T.M.A. Pai. For the purpose of this legislation, 
minority will be specified as such in relation to 
a particular State/Union Te rritory by a 
presidential notification issued after 
consultation with the State Government; this will 
be in addition to the five minorities (Muslims, 
Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Parsis) 
referred to in the NCM Act, 1992. The new 
approach is not consistent with the understanding 
developed in the Constituent Assembly on the 
protection of minorities and the constitutional 
compact between the State and minority groups.

Although the Constitution does not define a 
minority or provide details relating to the 
geographical and numerical specification of the 
concept, it is clear that the constitutional 
scheme envisages this to be determined at the 
national level. Periodic judicial interventions 
and categorisation has had major repercussions. 
Over the years, judicial pronouncements have 
sought to give a restricted meaning to minority 
rights by limiting them to education and defining 
minorities at the state level in terms of 
protection under Article 30 which provides 
religious minorities the right to set up 
educational institutions of their choice. The 
legitimation of a restrictive conception of 
minority rights can also be noticed, in this 
context, in the Central Government's proposal to 
adopt a State-specific notion of minorities.

Supreme Court principle
In the 2002 judgment, in T.M.A. Pai Foundation & 
Others vs. the State of Karnataka and Ors, the 
Supreme Court deliberated on the various 
contentions that the Centre, State, or a 
particular region within a state may be 
considered as the basic unit for protection of 
the right of minorities to set up minority 
educational institutions, and whether a minority 
in a state would lose its minority status if 
within a particular region of the State it 
happened to be in a majority. The Court has set 
out the principle that minority status should be 
determined in relation to the population of the 
State and not to India as a whole. It ruled that 
as the reorganisation of the States in India had 
been effected on linguistic lines, for the 
purpose of determining a minority, the unit would 
be the State and not the whole of India. Thus, 
religious and linguistic minorities, who have 
been placed on a par in Article 30, have to be 
considered in terms of the State concerned. Not 
surprisingly, this issue surfaced again in Bal 
Patil (2004) and Srivastava (2007); these two 
judgments have further complicated the question 
of definition of minorities, as both these 
judgments relate, for the most part, to 
definitional issues. Bal Patil questioned the 
identity of Sikhs as a religious minority while 
Srivastava ruled that Muslims, by virtue of their 
numbers, cannot be considered a minority in Uttar 
Pradesh.

The principal rationale for State-specific 
minorities rests on the idea that the linguistic 
reorganisation of States necessitates that they 
be treated as the basic unit for determination of 
minorities. As both linguistic and religious 
minorities are covered under Article 30, both 
sets of minorities have to be State-specific. The 
linguistic reorganisation of States meant that, 
for the purpose of Article 30, linguistic 
minorities had to be determined in relation to 
the State because their language was not one of 
the official languages; other minorities are 
those whose mother tongue is an official language 
but who live outside the State(s) where the 
language is official.
In this sense, the linguistic reorganisation of 
States has a definite bearing on linguistic 
minorities because protection under Article 30 is 
available not only to the linguistic minorities 
sharing the major languages of the States, but 
also to speakers of the numerous languages that 
are not represented by any particular State on 
its own.
As regards religious minorities, linguistic 
reorganisation should not really matter in the 
exercise of their right to set up educational 
institutions of their choice or seek admission in 
such institutions or the exercise of other 
minority rights. In comparison to linguistic 
minorities, for whom the official language 
matters, there is no congruence between religious 
identity and State boundaries. For protection 
under Article 30, linguistic minorities make 
claims upon the States rather than the Centre, 
but this need not be so for religious minorities 
that are dispersed throughout India and whose 
identity is not linked to specific State(s). In 
this context, defining minorities at the State 
level would limit the notion of minorities, 
entailing as it does the adoption of an 
essentially statistical conception of minorities. 
Thus, a religious group, which is numerically 
smaller than the rest of the population of the 
State to which it belongs, would be entitled to 
be termed a minority in that State even though 
the group may be numerically in a majority in 
India as a whole and hence not lacking in power 
or voice in the decision-making structures. This 
will doubtless add to the list of minorities and 
extend the benefits of minority entitlements to 
these groups, even as it will deny the same 
benefits to groups that are minorities in 
accordance with nationally and internationally 
accepted definitions of minorities.

Scope for distortions
Such a State-specific conception of minorities 
will result in distortions in minority rights. If 
this rationale is extended, Hindus in Punjab who 
are a numerical minority there though they are a 
majority in relation to India as a whole, will be 
entitled to minority protection there as indeed 
they would be in Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, 
Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Lakshadweep. To take 
another example, failing the statistical test, 
Sikhs in Punjab and Christians in the above 
States will be held to be a majority and 
consequently deprived of constitutionally 
sanctioned minority rights. In Punjab, the 
minority Hindus will be able to set up 
educational institutions of their choice and 
apparently Hindus from other States will be 
eligible for admission to these institutions 
unless admission is to be limited to minorities 
domiciled in the State.

By the same logic, Christian students will be 
ineligible for admission in minority educational 
institutions, such as St. Stephens College or 
Loyola College, as they will not have a domicile 
minority status there. In other words, 
eligibility for admissions to minority 
educational institutions will be limited to 
minorities domiciled in the States, and what is 
more, some minority community applicants will not 
be able to avail themselves of minority quotas 
outside their State(s) because they are not a 
minority in their own States.

At the heart of the current controversy is 
confusion about which groups qualify as 
minorities and regarding the nature of the unit 
of determination under this rubric. However, 
internationally, some agreement exists. Commonly 
cited characteristics that make groups 
distinctive and expose them to discrimination 
include religion, language, culture, and gender. 
There is also a unanimous opinion that the term 
'minority' refers to a power relationship. In 
this, the size of a group may bear some relation 
to the degree of power it wields, but presumably 
because other factors are also involved in the 
equation, the relationship of group size is not 
all that significant.

Contrary to this widely accepted perception of 
minorities, the Government's new proposal for 
State-specific minorities is driven by a 
statistical or numerical approach. The size of 
the group is not what should concern our 
policy-makers or those committed to eradication 
of inequity, prejudice, and discrimination. This 
is because numbers per se merely quantify and 
describe the proportion of a group in a 
population; they do not tell us anything about 
whether a particular minority group is powerful 
or powerless, advantaged or disadvantaged, 
represented or under-represented. A more 
meaningful conception of minority status would 
include sections of people who, on account of 
their non-dominant position in the country as a 
whole (not a specific State), and because of 
their religion, language, caste or gender, are 
targets of discrimination and therefore deserving 
of special consideration. The statistical 
approach disregards the crucial qualitative 
condition of vulnerability and disadvantage.

The numerical proportion of a population of a 
particular community in a State, distinguishable 
on religious grounds, cannot entitle it 
automatically to minority rights.

The temptation to treat minority educational 
rights as similar to other minority rights has 
limited the concept of minority rights to the 
ambit of Article 30 and to the operational 
details of administering minority educational 
institutions at the State level. Aside from 
matters that fall under the purview of Article 30 
protection, on most other substantive issues of 
equity, identity, and security, religious 
minorities frequently lean on the Centre in the 
hope that it is less likely to fall under the 
sway of narrow sectarian concerns and will be 
guided by a constitutional vision and philosophy 
rooted in ideas of fairness, justice, and equity. 
In the circumstances, defining and confining the 
category 'minority' to States is not the best way 
forward; it would be far more helpful to 
recognise the comprehensive character of minority 
rights, in consonance with the demands of 
substantive equality, to include them by 
revisiting the concept of affirmative action. 
This would be in step with the slew of policies 
and measures currently under consideration to 
address the economic, social, and educational 
deprivation that minorities experience.

(Zoya Hasan is a Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University.)

______


[4]

Hindustan Times
July 10, 2007

INTO THIN AIR

by Sumanta Banerjee

There was always a sting in the tail of economic 
growth - whether in post-Industrial Revolution 
Europe or the Soviet Union and China. 
Expropriation of natural resources like 
agricultural land, forestry, tanks and rivers, at 
the cost of certain sections like poor peasants, 
traditional artisan communities, tribals and 
forest dwellers who owned these resources, 
contributed in a large measure to the growth. An 
intensification of the same trend is to be seen 
in the latest, neo-liberal phase of development 
in India today. But to their chagrin, the policy 
makers as well as their ideological touts are 
finding it difficult to replicate the old model 
in 21st century India, facing popular resistance 
from the local people - against a proposed SEZ in 
Nandigram in Left-ruled West Bengal; a Tata steel 
project in Kalinganagar in Orissa ruled by a 
Right-of-the-Centre coalition; a mega hydel 
project in Kinnaur in Congress-ruled Himachal 
Pradesh; the setting up of nuclear reactors in 
Koodankulam in DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu. These are 
only a few examples of the growing outbursts of 
popular discontent against developmental 
programmes undertaken by state governments. The 
anti-Narmada dam movement was their precursor.
The 'fundoos' of neo-liberalism, however, are not 
willing to attach any importance to the basic 
causes of these militant demonstrations, and 
reiterate instead that "collective social unrest 
isn't driven by economic reasons..(but) by social 
and political reasons_based on caste/religion". 
Asking us to wait for the trickle-down effects 
that would follow soon to benefit those who are 
being thrown out from their hearth and home, they 
advise the government to treat "deprivation as an 
individual issue" and dismiss the present 
demonstrations of protest as isolated hiccups of 
"individual discontentment" (Bibek Debroy in 
Indian Express, June 12, 2007) and disparage 
their leaders as anti-industrial 'jholawalas'. 
But the cavalier manner in which they tend to 
disregard the human tragedy of massive 
displacement, loss of income and environmental 
pollution, indicates the abyss of moral 
insensitivity and social irresponsibility to 
which the corporate sector and the pedlars of its 
ideology have sunk in the present era of 
neo-liberalism - compared to the somewhat 
accommodating policies that their predecessors 
followed, before the so-called 'reforms' came 
into force.
Let me give an example. Arijit Banerjee, who was 
an executive vice president in the Haldia 
Petro-Chemicals Limited in the early 1990s, told 
me how his company in those days set about 
acquiring land and planning rehabilitation for 
those who were to be ousted from the proposed 
site of its factory (in the same West Bengal 
district where Nandigram is situated). Describing 
the differences between then and now, he narrated 
his own experiences. "My first task," he said, 
"was to talk to the villagers. I hired a car, 
fixed a mike atop and visited every village 
addressing the farmers whose plots were to be 
acquired." While explaining to them the 
importance of the petro-chemical complex for the 
country's overall economic growth, and assuring 
employment in it for the local people, he made it 
clear to them that the factory would deal with 
hazardous chemicals - albeit under adequate 
protective measures.
Inviting the village youth to join the venture, 
he introduced his company: "We are 
snake-charmers. If you want to play with snakes, 
join us." Some among the villagers dared and 
opted for jobs in the factory, some accepted 
compensation in cash, some were given 
agricultural plots in different areas, and others 
were accommodated in a special rehabilitation 
colony, which has today become a thriving 
township.
That the takeover of land for the Haldia 
petro-chemical complex (a public-private 
partnership) in the early 1990s did not create a 
Nandigram-type explosion could be attributed to a 
number of factors. Arijit Banerjee tells me that 
the then Chief Secretary of the West Bengal 
government (even then run by the Left Front) was 
sensitive to the needs of the oustees, which 
helped him overcome the bureaucratic hurdles in 
rehabilitating them. The solicitude and 
tactfulness demonstrated then both by the 
corporate sector and the government, according to 
Banerjee, are missing today.
A Leftist political activist and film-maker, 
Sumit Chowdhury, who is involved in the 
present-day anti-SEZ agitation in Nandigram has 
another explanation for the difference in the 
popular response then and now. "At that time, the 
affected villagers might have accepted whatever 
compensation that was given to them for the loss 
of their lands. Today, increasingly aware of the 
market value of the lands and their democratic 
rights, they are refusing to be taken for 
granted, and are spontaneously resisting the 
acquisition of their lands," he says. Commenting 
on the political contours of such resistance, 
Chowdhury says: "It cannot remain confined to a 
struggle for higher compensation in cash, or 
alternative plots of land, or promise of jobs in 
the proposed SEZs. We are challenging the basic 
concept of the neo-liberal model of development."
The popular movements that are breaking out in 
different parts of India against industrial and 
developmental projects demonstrate certain 
features which are peculiar to the post-reforms 
era of neo-liberalism. These challenge the 
stereotypes of conventional political party-led 
agitations with which we had grown up.
First, although most of these movements began as 
spontaneous protests by people of a cluster of 
villages over specific and immediate problems, 
they stem from a common source - the prevailing 
model of uneven growth that leads to 
dispossession of their land and destruction of 
their occupations.
Second, these movements have a loose structure 
that brings together the disaffected from 
different classes and communities, which provides 
them with a wider base of support in their 
respective areas.
Third, they have given birth to a new generation 
of social and political activists who have moved 
into the vacuum created by the failures and 
defeats of the old Left. They are usually from 
among the locals and approximate to what Antonio 
Gramsci defined as 'organic intellectuals'. These 
grassroots activists are more canny, and freed 
from fixed political loyalties, they have no 
hesitation in fighting any political party in 
power.
While defining a new form of direct democracy and 
decentralisation of leadership, these movements, 
however, still lack a clear ideological vision 
and an alternative concept of development. 
Negative opposition to the mega-projects or SEZs 
cannot take them beyond the elementary demands 
for the removal of such projects from their 
farms, or bargaining for increased compensation 
in lieu. Further, such limited demands help the 
same old opportunist political parties to hijack 
their movements - like the Trinamool Congress in 
Nandigram, or the CPI(M) in Orissa's anti-Posco 
movement. They may end up as mere pressure groups 
within a political system dominated by these 
parties and politicians.
It is also to be seen whether such loosely 
structured movements can hold together for long 
without coordination among themselves at the 
national level. But ultimately, their success 
will depend on their challenging the prevailing 
neo-liberal growth model with an alternative 
functional model of development - a model that 
can ensure equitable distribution of income and 
social justice. It can evolve from dialogues and 
cooperation between the conscientious members of 
the old Left and the new generation of activists 
of these movements.
Sumanta Banerjee is the author of In the Wake of 
Naxalbari. A History of the Naxalite Movement



______


[5]

Times of India
July 13, 2007

TWEAK THE DOWRY LAW
by Ratna Kapur

When 22-year-old Pooja Chauhan walked on to the 
streets of Rajkot last week in her undergarments 
protesting the mental and physical abuse by her 
husband's family for not bringing dowry and 
bearing a girl child, the city took notice. 
Chauhan's protest draws attention to the 
desperate situation of many women regarding dowry 
harassment and the failure time and again of 
police to take cognisance of their complaints. 
Dowry harassment by a husband or his relatives 
was outlawed in 1983 under section 498A of the 
Indian Penal Code. The offence is non-bailable 
and non-cognisable, meaning that arrests can be 
made simply on the basis of a complaint by the 
victim and the accused kept in jail for the 
duration of the trial. The conviction rate 
remains appallingly low and there is considerable 
reluctance on the part of the police to register 
cases for at least two reasons. There is an 
assumption that as dowry harassment takes place 
within the home it is a private matter. Such 
disputes are located within the realm of the 
family and hence must also be resolved within the 
family.

Ever since the 19th century, social reformers and 
women’s rights activists have sought to extend 
legal intervention, particularly of the criminal 
law, into areas dealing with sexual violence in 
the realm of the family. Resistance to law reform 
of the private arena served as a symbol of Indian 
resistance to colonial rule and subjugation. This 
resistance to state intervention in the private 
realm continues to inform the present. The 
responsibility of violence in the home remains 
the responsibility of women to resolve. Women are 
the perpetrators of violence, for example as 
mothers-in-laws, and it is women who must resolve 
that violence.

The reluctance to take up complaints of dowry 
harassment is also informed by the overwhelming 
view that women are bringing false charges, 
manipulating the legal process to their advantage 
to extract property and money from the accused. 
Yet, the latest available National Crime Records 
statistics show that there have been over 58,000 
incidents of dowry harassment and over 6,700 
dowry murders in 2005. Most of the cases of dowry 
harassment are also filed after the woman is 
dead. And there are an extraordinary number of 
empirical studies documenting the pervasiveness 
of dowry harassment.

The fact that the offence is non-cognisable is 
cause for great concern. It assumes the guilt of 
the accused, violating his due process rights and 
hence deemed objectionable for the same reasons 
as anti-terrorist legislation. In 2003, the 
Malimath committee recommended that the offence 
be made compoundable and bailable in the 
interests of reconciliation, to preserve the 
sanctity of marriage and to ensure that the wife 
is not left economically destitute and to protect 
the husband from adverse consequences of false 
claims. The committee’s position was that a wife 
should be supported in the marriage, but to 
remain in the marriage, not to exit from it. 
While the recommendations were important, they 
were unfortunately couched in antiquated notions 
about the sanctity of marriage and women’s proper 
roles in the family.

The fear over filing of false cases remains. In 
2005, one Supreme Court decision upheld the 
constitutional validity of the dowry provision, 
but at the same time warned against its misuse 
leading to what it described as legal terrorism. 
While empirical evidence suggests that women 
experience harassment for dowry, the government 
should review the dowry provision and render the 
offence cognisable. Victims should be able to 
resort to the protection provisions of the 
recently enacted Domestic Violence Act to secure 
protection orders to keep the husband and other 
family members accused of harassment out of the 
marital home or home where the woman resides. The 
courts and the state also need to seriously 
incorporate the norm universally recognised at 
the 1993 Vienna World Conference of Human Rights 
that harms inflicted in the so-called private 
arena are subject to human rights scrutiny.


______


[6] India's Prisons

(i)

Hindustan Times
June 28, 2007

READING THE BAR CODES

by Chaitanya Kalbag

Strange how time's machine travels back and forth 
at warp speed. Two hundred and fifty-one years 
ago, Siraj-ud-daulah demonstrated what an 
overcrowded prison can do to human beings with 
the Black Hole of Calcutta. "Figure to yourself, 
my friend, if possible, the situation of 146 
wretches, exhausted by continual fatigue and 
action, crammed together in a cube of 18 feet, in 
a close sultry night, in Bengal, shut up to the 
eastward and southward (the only quarters from 
whence air could reach us) by dead walls_" JZ 
Holwell of the East India Company wrote in the 
Annual Register, 1778. Holwell was one of the 23 
survivors. The dead were piled so high, the door 
wouldn't open when they were finally let out. A 
year later the Nawab of Bengal was defeated by
Clive at Plassey, but that is another story. 
Nearly 200 years later, Mary Tyler, an English 
schoolteacher, met and fell in love with a 
Naxalite called Amalendu Sen in Germany, came to 
India, married him, and ended up in the 
Hazaribagh Central Jail in Bihar, where she spent 
five years before being released "on grounds of 
inexpediency". Tyler's powerful account of her 
experience, 'My Years in an Indian Prison', 
talked matter-of-factly about the inhumanity of 
the prison system, and the way poorer prisoners 
are treated because they are poor and, therefore, 
at the mercy of the system. Once, when a 
particularly greedy warder is transferred to 
Patna, Tyler congratulates him on his promotion 
to where the "top people" are. "What do I want 
with the top people? It's the poor I get my money 
from," says the warder.

I'm sure things have come a long way since those 
days in Hazaribagh, when Tyler was forced to join 
her fellow prisoners in eating rat's meat: "_it 
tasted little different from the frogs' legs I 
had eaten in France, or indeed from rabbit."

Prison reform - now there is an Indian oxymoron - 
is once again becoming the topic du jour in the 
drawing rooms of the chattering classes. Six 
inmates at Tihar Jail have died this month, and 
there is a lot of reportage round and about the 
causes of their deaths. The time machine took me 
back to Tihar yesterday, and I remembered several 
trips there more than two decades ago - watching 
Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh in the special 
courtroom at the prison in the Indira Gandhi 
assassination case; visiting Billa and Ranga on 
death row, and noting that those cells were 
roomier, better lit, and better ventilated than 
the stinking, crowded barracks I walked past; and 
keeping tabs on the antics of Charles Sobhraj, 
who engineered an audacious jailbreak after 
drugging his warders at a birthday party.

Tihar is a huge prison, the biggest in Asia. It 
sprawls across 400 acres and has ten 'jails' 
including one in Rohini. Tihar is designed to 
hold 6,250 prisoners, but was crammed with 13,253 
on Wednesday morning. The population is going to 
go up, so six more jails are being built at 
Mandavali in east Delhi to house another 3,600 
'inmates'. Just to put Tihar in context, India 
has a total of 1,147 prisons, with a capacity of 
235,012 prisoners and an actual population of 
331,391, which means they are about 40 per cent 
overpopulated. Tihar has more than twice its 
capacity.  What is going on?

Put simply, as Delhi's Principal Secretary (Home) 
Shamsher Sheriff does, the 'tripod' of the 
police, the prosecutorial process, and the 
custodial/correctional process isn't really 
standing on its three legs. Put even more simply, 
the system just does not work.

Nearly 11,000 of Tihar's prisoners are 
'undertrials', which means they have not been 
sentenced yet. This is a problem across India, of 
course, but Delhi, home to the highest court of 
the land, comes off particularly poorly. It is 
only fractionally better than Bihar, where 82.8 
per cent of prisoners are undertrials. If you 
drill down into the numbers at Tihar, 92 per cent 
of the undertrials have been incarcerated for 
periods of up to two years. The Criminal 
Procedure Code lays down that if a prisoner has 
been behind bars for half or more of the maximum 
sentence his crime attracts, he must be let go by 
a magistrate on a personal bond even if he cannot 
afford his bail. Last week the Delhi High Court 
ordered the release of 623 prisoners who were in 
'preventive' custody. In other words, if you are 
a 'history sheeter' or the neighbourhood lout, 
the police are within their rights to pick you up 
and toss you into Tihar merely on suspicion that 
you might be up to no good.

Many things have changed at Tihar since the 
1980s, not forgetting the activist period when 
Kiran Bedi ran the prison and introduced 
Vipassana and the beginnings of transactional 
analysis. Now, the biometrics of every prisoner 
are logged on a computer, and a fingerprint 
reader can call up every detail including his 
photograph, the crime of which he is accused, and 
the number of times he has been visited. 
Baggage-screening machines that put our airports 
to shame herald visitors and home-cooked food 
twice a week. A canteen dispenses better food if 
a prisoner can afford it. Computer classes and 
even MBA courses are possible at a university 
barrack, and so on.
But the barracks are telling. Ceiling and exhaust 
fans notwithstanding, they are terribly hot. BK 
Gupta, Director-General of Prisons, issued orders 
for more nimbu pani to be dispensed free to the 
thirsty hordes, but I could see the potential for 
upset and unrest in spillover areas like 
verandahs where rows of prisoners lolled 
restlessly on thin mattresses. Gupta pointed out 
that unlike prisons in the West, Tihar gives its 
denizens upwards of nine hours of outdoor freedom 
every day - except, that is, for the hundred or 
so high-security terrorists, or the 10 men on 
death row who include Mohammad Afzal.

Gupta is also very short-staffed. He has only 700 
people on his team against a full complement of 
1,100. In general, Indian prisons have a ratio of 
one prison employee to six prisoners. In Britain, 
they have two employees for every three 
prisoners.  India does not have a Prison Service, 
except in Andhra Pradesh, and prisons are run by 
senior police officers who are about to retire 
and have not the slightest interest in improving 
things. We spend an average of Rs 50 per prisoner 
every day, which makes our prison population one 
of the cheapest in the world. That is possible 
because prisoners are used for nearly every task 
inside the high walls - cleaning, cooking, 
washing, baking bread, making furniture, even 
making the cardboard files in which their case 
histories are enclosed.
Do you want to know why things are so bad? Look 
no further than the Prisons Act of 1894. That's 
right - our prisons are governed by legislation 
that was drawn up 113 years ago. Delhi passed its 
own Prisons Act in 2001, but across the nation, 
legal experts will tell you that it is high time 
we had a revised Prison Manual.

Despite its shrubbery, its clean courtyards, the 
homilies painted on its walls (Andhera aur ujala 
dono tumhari aankhon mein) and its neem and 
peepul trees, Tihar is still a place you enter 
with a shudder. Colonel Pradeep Upamanyu, who 
arrived at the prison last Sunday because, he 
says, a local politician has wrongly accused him 
of murder, said the treatment he had received so 
far was better than when he was fighting on the 
Siachen glacier. But he was glad he had been 
bailed out. "It's the walls," he told me. "It's 
the walls, and knowing you are behind them."

o o o

(ii)

Indian Express
July 05, 2007

LET SUNLIGHT INTO OUR PRISONS

by Kiran Bedi

India has the lowest prison-population ratio in 
the world. It is just 30 per one lakh population. 
Compare this with 737 in America and 613 in 
Russia. Yet, despite this, the Delhi High Court 
had to order the direct release of prison inmates 
from Delhi's Tihar prisons recently in order to 
decongest them. It also directed the Delhi Police 
not to send to Tihar, persons arrested under 
107/151 (apprehension of breach of peace) of the 
Criminal Procedure Code.

Why does India arrest the least and yet find 
itself unable to handle the current prison 
population in its 1,140-plus prisons? Not a day 
passes without bringing negative news from within 
the prisons: shoot-outs, abuse of premises by 
incarcerated gangsters or politicians, deaths 
caused by delayed medical attention, poor 
infrastructure and contaminated provisions, 
prison staff indulging in malfeasance. The list 
in endless.
What are the problems? Let me enumerate some key 
ones. First, from my experience in running Tihar 
a decade ago, prisons as institutions are not 
considered to be a part of critical 
infrastructure of value. They are deliberately 
hidden from public view. This allows all possible 
social ills to flourish within their precincts. 
Further, a whole lot of negative myths surround 
prison as a service. This ensures that it is 
insulated from any form of exposure, allowing the 
mafia inside the prison system to operate 
unchecked.
Prisons remain isolated from legislative bodies 
as well, a fact underlined by the lack of 
effective prison legislation. Imagine the world's 
largest elected democracy still has to live with 
the Prison Act of 1894. This isolation impinges 
on executive action. Prisons, as institutions, 
are barely considered when it comes to state 
budgets. As a result, they find themselves 
starved of adequate funding. This systematically 
constructed isolation of our prisons deflects the 
gaze of civil society institutions, which 
includes the media. As a result, society remains 
largely ignorant about, and indifferent to, 
prison reforms.
This state of affairs suits the police too, for 
it ensures that what they cannot do outside 
prison walls, they can do within them. They 
respond by rounding up the "law breakers" and 
keeping them out of sight in punishing situations 
so that they are forced into total submission. To 
be consigned to live in sub-human conditions, 
even if not convicted, is message enough. But the 
police seem to forget that such submission is 
only too temporary. It is in such an environment 
that criminal gangs prosper and grow more 
vicious. The best friendships, even in the 
criminal world, are formed in adverse situations.
While regular magisterial inspections are 
mandatory, little comes of them. After all, who 
is to judge the judges? If the inspections and 
their reports were taken seriously, then why is 
it that Indian prisons continue to have a very 
high population of undertrials? Or large 
vacancies of doctors? Or poorly-equipped 
dispensaries having no para-medical staff? Or bad 
food? Who can refuse the honourable judges when 
they seek information or action taken reports?
Then take our prison administration. India does 
not have an Inspectorate of Prisons. With their 
seniors busy in other more important departments, 
prison staff are left on their own, barring an 
occasional court summons on a petition filed by a 
prisoner. In any case, prison posting is treated 
as punishment posting. Once posted, the staff 
spend their entire life feeling truly imprisoned. 
They get very few chances to be posted to some 
other department and get to perceive prison 
administration in a broader light - in terms of 
rehabilitation, for instance. Training is 
negligible and research non-existent. Tihar to 
date, despite being the biggest prison complex in 
the Asia Pacific region, does not have a prison 
staff training centre of its own.
So where do we go from here? How do we urgently 
make up for our bankruptcy in terms of planning 
and investment, both in the hardware and software 
of prison administration? The Central government, 
under a modernisation grant, is providing money 
to the states to build more prisons. The latter 
have to contribute only 25 per cent of the cost. 
Yet some states are not even doing this!
We also need to urgently replace the Police Act 
of 1861 and the Prison Act of 1894. The Model 
Prison Manual, compiled by the Bureau of Police 
Research and Development, has been in circulation 
since 2005. Once it is notified, many of the 
problems in the administration of our prisons 
would be addressed. What's more, it would usher 
in a more transparent regime.
Let sunlight into our prisons.
It will prove to be the biggest disinfectant.
The writer is director general, Bureau of Police Research and Development

______


[7]

The Telegraph
July 10, 2007

NIGHTMARE ON ZAMZAMA STREET
Otherwise a commendable film, Winterbottom's A 
Mighty Heart is not free of subtle stereotyping,
writes Ananya Vajpeyi

After more than four years of conflict in Iraq, 
at last it is evident in American public life 
that the country is at war. For a long time you 
could never guess, from anything you saw or heard 
in America, that the country was fighting such a 
protracted and bitter war elsewhere. But, 
finally, we know that Americans know they are at 
war, because the war has begun to translate into 
narratives in Hollywood and the American media. 
Nothing is really real in America, unless it is 
on television and in the movies. In this sense, 
Iraq has finally become real.
The new Hollywood film, A Mighty Heart, tells the 
story of the few terrible days between the 
kidnapping of Daniel Pearl in Karachi in January 
2002, and the news of his death by decapitation 
in February of the same year. Danny Pearl was the 
south Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street 
Journal, living in Mumbai. Together with his wife 
Mariane, also a journalist, he was out on an 
assignment in Karachi in early 2002, a trip he 
did not survive. The film reconstructs the 
passage of that gut-wrenching month for Mariane, 
who was pregnant at the time, Danny's colleague 
and friend, Asra Q. Nomani, and others who waited 
for him to return, and fruitlessly tried, in the 
meantime, to find his kidnappers. The crime was 
eventually traced to Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was 
sentenced to death in Pakistan and has challenged 
this verdict, and to Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, 
detained in the US custody at Guantanamo Bay.
Asra Nomani, formerly with the Wall Street 
Journal and now teaching at Georgetown 
University, in a piece in The Washington Post 
(June 24) entitled "A mighty shame", denounced 
the film for not being about Danny. Strictly 
speaking, she is right, but this is not a flaw in 
the film. It is about Danny's death, not about 
his life. It is about how his wife, parents, 
siblings, colleagues, friends and others - 
American and Pakistani officials, intelligence 
and the press - lived through the awful weeks 
between his disappearance and murder. Also, the 
screenplay is based on Mariane Pearl's 2003 
memoir of the same title, and both Mariane and 
Asra Nomani served as consultants to the 
scriptwriter, John Orloff.
Before I go any further, let me put my cards on 
the table. I knew Danny and Mariane Pearl. I met 
them in Bangalore and Mumbai in 2001. I also 
happened to spend all of September 2001 in New 
York before, through and after the destruction of 
the World Trade Center. It's been about six years 
since 9/11 and Danny's gruesome death in February 
2002, and I can say honestly that I have not been 
able to get over either event. Like countless 
other individuals, not least Nomani, I too am 
unable make my peace with what happened.
A few months ago, I watched The Journalist and 
the Jihadi, an HBO television documentary about 
Danny Pearl and Omar Sheikh, which left me with 
mixed feelings. I also watched The Road to 
Guantanamo, directed by Michael Winterbottom, 
director of A Mighty Heart. It was Winterbottom's 
chillingly realistic style of filmmaking, the 
overwhelming cinematic power and strong political 
message of The Road to Guantanamo that moved me 
to watch A Mighty Heart, even though I had my 
doubts about the wisdom of casting a Hollywood 
superstar like Angelina Jolie in the role of 
Mariane Pearl. Hats off, once more, to 
Winterbottom, who not only gets a convincing 
performance out of Jolie, but also manages to 
prevent her from distracting viewers with her 
presence or diluting the nerve-wracking narrative.
As someone who knew Danny and Mariane, I was 
relieved that the film did not depict Danny's 
captivity or the ghastly way in which he was 
killed, despite the fact that the kidnappers 
themselves released a video of their dreadful 
act, and this was widely circulated on the 
internet. Winterbottom conveys the unspeakable 
nature of what happened to Danny without 
visualizing it in any way, and one cannot be 
sufficiently grateful to him for showing such 
restraint when graphic and gratuitous torture 
scenes have become routine in the movies. In 
keeping the inhuman mode of his death off-screen, 
the director showed respect for Danny's life and 
work, and for the irredeemable pain of those who 
loved him.
What I found shocking about this film, then, was 
not any of the things that I had been 
apprehensive about: misplaced focus (Nomani's 
criticism), casting Jolie (a controversial 
choice, by all accounts), and depicting Danny's 
atrocious end (the road, thankfully, not taken). 
Rather, what struck me as most unfortunate was 
the way in which Karachi came through as not 
merely the city where this sordid saga unfolded, 
but as a space that fundamentally resists 
deciphering. It appeared to be a frightening and 
incomprehensible palimpsest of urban chaos, 
poverty and Islamic terrorism, teeming with 
Muslim men who are scarily numerous, devoutly 
religious, and horrendously violent no matter 
which side of the law they happen to be on. Even 
the sympathetic "Captain" Javed Habib, the chief 
of the Pakistani CID's counter-terrorism unit 
(impeccably played by Irrfan Khan), who is 
sensitive to Mariane's agonizing circumstances, 
can torture a man almost to death and then 
proceed directly afterward to the mosque for his 
morning prayers. It seems we cannot expect 
anything but cruelty in this place, at once 
hellish and baffling.
Winterbottom is too politically discerning a 
filmmaker to portray Karachi or Pakistan with the 
outright Islamophobia that makes Bernard 
Henri-Levy's book, Who killed Daniel Pearl?, so 
odious as to be unreadable. Winterbottom shows us 
that Mariane Pearl never lost her moral compass 
even in the immediate aftermath of her husband's 
brutal assassination, and publicly came out a day 
or two later to say that ordinary Pakistanis 
suffered as much from acts of terror as did 
Westerners like her. Who would have experienced 
Karachi as sinister if not Mariane, but she 
desisted from indiscriminate blame. And yet, in 
Winterbottom's vision, Karachi is nightmarish in 
a way that is subtly connected to its cultural 
essence, its identity as an overpopulated, poor, 
lawless and, worst of all, radicalized 
megalopolis, located in an underdeveloped Muslim 
country, a place of evil where civilized, 
trusting and competent Americans and Europeans 
enter at their own peril and probably end up dead.
Danny Pearl was a superb journalist and a 
cosmopolitan man. He was an American Jew married 
to a French Buddhist (Mariane is actually part 
Afro-Latina Cuban, and part Dutch). He lived in 
Mumbai, and he loved south Asia. He went to 
Karachi, his beloved Mumbai's sister city, to 
follow a story, like any reporter worth his salt. 
Yes, he died in a way that no one should die in. 
He is, and will always be, mourned by everyone 
who knew him. The men who abducted him were 
anti-Semitic and anti-American, and killed him 
for what, according to them, he stood for (his 
religion and his country). They hated him for an 
ideology he did not espouse, and attempted to get 
symbolic caché out of his totally undeserved 
slaughter. But as someone who interacted with 
him, even just a little bit, I am certain that he 
did not perceive Karachi, Pakistan or Muslims 
with the racism, prejudice and otherness that 
scar Levy's whodunit, and taint even so fine a 
film as Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart.

______



[8] Announcements:

(i)

INDIAN SOCIAL INSTITUTE
and
THE ASOKA FOUNDATION
invite you to the release of the book
"SUBMERGENCE OF JUSTICE"
A Survey of Displacement and Rehabilitation in 
Madhya Pradesh due to the Sardar Sarovar Project.
by
Smt. Aruna Roy
Founder member of  Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)

on Thursday, July 19, 2007, at 6 pm at
India International Centre (Annexe)
Lodhi Estate (next to the World Bank), New Delhi. 110 003

Dr. Upendra Baxi
Former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University
has kindly consented to preside.

Dr. Jimmy Dabhi
Executive Director,
INDIAN SOCIAL INSTITUTE,
10, Institutional Area, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. 110 003
(You are kindly invited for tea at 5.30 pm.)


o o o

(ii)

PUBLIC MEETING ON "DEMOCRATIC ASPIRATIONS OF PAKISTAN"

Speakers: Ms Asma Jahangir and Mr. Nasir Aslam Zahid


Pakistan is on the boil! Arguably on the brink too.

On the one hand popular aspirations for a 
democratic order have exploded triggered by the 
arbitrary suspension of a Supreme Court Chief 
Justice, Iftikhar M. Chaudhury, on March 9 last 
by the President, also the chief of the armed 
forces, and led by the legal fraternity.

On the other, the bloody Lal Masjid episode, 
Operation Silence, early this month at the end of 
a six-month long open stand off – in a way 
closely paralleling the Golden Temple, Operation 
Blue Star, separated by some twenty three years 
and an international border, brings out 
graphically the dangers of popular grievances 
being mobilized by extremist religious forces out 
to foist their own brand of a deeply oppressive 
regime in place of the incumbent one by inflaming 
primordial passions. While the Golden Temple 
aimed to foment and represent religious 
fanaticism of only a small section of the Indian 
people labouring also under a sense of ethnic 
discriminations, the Lal Masjid aimed at 
overtaking, and not seceding from, Pakistan. In 
that sense, it parallels Hindutva on this side of 
the border.

Whether on the brink or not, Pakistan definitely 
stands at the crossroad with the roads ahead 
badly tangled up. The military is trying to 
present itself as a defender of modem values and 
religious moderation, popular grievances are 
facing the danger of being coopted by religious 
extremism, mainstream political parties are 
taking ambivalent and opportunist stances, and 
the democracy movement itself is appearing to 
present only a somewhat limited agenda for 
"democratic" reforms.

It is against this tangled and worrisome 
backdrop, Ms Asma Jahangir, a leading human 
rights activist and UN Special Rapporteur on 
'Religious Freedom or Belief' and Mr. Justice 
Nasir Aslam Zahid, a retired justice of the 
Supreme Court of Pakistan would address a public 
meeting on "Democratic Aspirations of Pakistan" 
organized by the Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum 
for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) and Peace Mumbai 
in collaboration with the St. Xavier's College to 
untangle the knots and solicit popular support 
from this side of the border for democracy in 
Pakistan.


Venue: St. Xavier's College Auditorium, Mahapalika
Marg, Near Metro Theater [Bombay]


Schedule: 25th July, 2007 (Wednesday) / 06.00 PM
Sukla Sen


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

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/

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