SACW - 31 March 2016 | Pakistan: Easter Bloodbath in Lahore & A Siege in the Capital / India: a counter-reformation / Brazil: Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 31 March 2016 - No. 2889 
[since 1996]

Contents:
1. Pakistan: Easter Bloodbath in Lahore & A Siege in the Capital ; an unending cycle of extremism - commentary and reports
2. India seems to be in the middle of a counter-reformation | Mukul Kesavan
3. India: Stop surveillance and harassment of Kashmiri students! - Press Release by PUDR
4. India: A stranger in one’s own Land | Ali Khan Mahmudabad
5. India: Middle class or Insecure Juveniles? | Salil Desai
6. International Court of Justice Concludes Hearings in Preliminary Phase of Historic Nuclear Disarmament Cases
7. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - Pakistan: D-Chowk in Islamabad under seige by pro Quadri supporters
 - Religion-based Nationalism is back in Full Force: Romila Thapar (Sabrang India - 29 March 2016)
 - India: Idea of Bharat Mata is European import - Irfan Habib
 - Bangladesh court upholds Islam as religion of the state (David Bergman)
 - India: Hindutva's quiet entry in Assam (Appu Esthose Suresh)
 - India: Have You Passed the Nationalism Test? (Shiv Visvanathan)
 - India: Govt vs Urdu writers - Attack on freedom to express? (India Today TV debate)
 - Manufacturing Emotive Issues: Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Hurling Anti Nationalism for Dissent
 - India: Cow vigilantism - Families contest Jharkhand government's claims on Latehar lynchings
 - Imitating Pakistan: Punjab’s sacrilege law opens a can of worms for Indian democracy (Editorial, The Times of India, 23 Mar 2016)
 - India: The Constitution does not require a citizen to "chant" anything - A Letter from Mukul Dube
 - India: Jai Hind: What have the Sanghis got against it? (Faraz Ahmad)
 - India: The assault on thought - Putting pebbles into young people's minds (Prabhat Patnaik)
 - India: The lunatic fringe is now the Hindutva mainstream (Samar Halarnkar)
 - India: India Today TV Interview with Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the Modi Govt and use of Ultra Nationalism to uleash a frenzy on opponents 

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
8. A Crisis for Minorities in Pakistan | Rozina Ali
9. Pakistan: Easter massacre | Mahir Ali 
10. Lahore attack — Where do the real fault lines lie? | Akhtar Abbas
11. Pakistan: Piety for profit | Pervez Hoodbhoy
12. India’s Secularism, Deeply Rooted, Now Hangs on a Precipice | Prem Shankar Jha 
13. India - Assam: New Election Old Scars [The Illegal migrant ,'the foreigner' and ambiguities of citizenship] Sanjib Baruah
14. Book Review: A saga of oppression and resistance | Zaman Khan 
15. 'Witch-hunting' in India?: Do We Need Special Laws? | Madhu Mehra and Anuja Agrawal
16. India: Utpal Dutt’s Daughter on the Seditious Writer, Director and Actor  | Bishnupriya Dutt
17. Brazil: Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff - It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning | Alfredo Saad Filho

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1. PAKISTAN: EASTER BLOODBATH IN LAHORE & A SIEGE IN THE CAPITAL ; AN UNENDING CYCLE OF EXTREMISM - COMMENTARY AND REPORTS
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the cancer of religious extremism spreading all over in Pakistan.
http://sacw.net/article12549.html

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2. INDIA SEEMS TO BE IN THE MIDDLE OF A COUNTER-REFORMATION
by Mukul Kesavan
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Citizenship, in the jargon of medical insurance companies, is a pre-existing condition. Our rights as citizens cannot, should not, be taken away from us unless we break our republic’s laws. It follows from this that citizenship and its attendant promise of life and liberty, cannot be subject to litmus tests of patriotism devised by political parties, celebrity nationalists, bureaucrats and gau rakshaks. But increasingly they are.
http://sacw.net/article12524.html

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3. INDIA: STOP SURVEILLANCE AND HARASSMENT OF KASHMIRI STUDENTS! - PRESS RELEASE BY PUDR
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Peoples Union for Democratic Rights expresses its outrage at the harassment and arrest of Kashmiri students in Mewar University, Rajasthan, and other educational institutions, amidst an intensifying surveillance of Kashmiris across the country.
http://sacw.net/article12534.html

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4. INDIA: A STRANGER IN ONE’S OWN LAND | Ali Khan Mahmudabad
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The new enemy property ordinance is more draconian than the one in 2010. It retrospectively rewrites the 1968 act and forecloses judicial recourse for countless Indians
http://sacw.net/article12522.html

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5. INDIA: MIDDLE CLASS OR INSECURE JUVENILES?
by Salil Desai
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Does the middle-class have no understanding of how nationalism and exaggerated sense of greatness is manipulated historically for consolidating power. 
http://sacw.net/article12550.html

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6. INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE CONCLUDES HEARINGS IN PRELIMINARY PHASE OF HISTORIC NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT CASES
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The International Court of Justice (ICJ) today concluded the oral arguments in the preliminary phase of the nuclear disarmament cases brought by the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) against India, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. The hearings, which took place at the ICJ from 7-16 March, were the first contentious cases on nuclear disarmament ever heard at the Court.
http://sacw.net/article12533.html

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7. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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 - Pakistan: D-Chowk in Islamabad under seige by pro Quadri supporters
 - Religion-based Nationalism is back in Full Force: Romila Thapar (Sabrang India - 29 March 2016)
 - India: The Bharat Mata pivot (Ashutosh Varshney)
 - India: Idea of Bharat Mata is European import - Irfan Habib
 - Bangladesh court upholds Islam as religion of the state (David Bergman)
 - India: Hindutva's quiet entry in Assam (Appu Esthose Suresh)
 - India: Have You Passed the Nationalism Test? (Shiv Visvanathan)
 - India: Govt vs Urdu writers - Attack on freedom to express? (India Today TV debate)
 - Manufacturing Emotive Issues: Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Hurling Anti Nationalism for Dissent
 - India: Latehar's deceased cattle trader Majloom Ansari was a cow protector of sorts
 - India: Cow vigilantism - Families contest Jharkhand government's claims on Latehar lynchings
 - India: The Bharat Mata Trap (Saba Naqvi)
 - Imitating Pakistan: Punjab’s sacrilege law opens a can of worms for Indian democracy (Editorial, The Times of India, 23 Mar 2016)
 - India: The Constitution does not require a citizen to "chant" anything - A Letter from Mukul Dube
 - India: Jai Hind: What have the Sanghis got against it? (Faraz Ahmad)
 - India: The assault on thought - Putting pebbles into young people's minds (Prabhat Patnaik)
 - India: The lunatic fringe is now the Hindutva mainstream (Samar Halarnkar)
 - India: India Today TV Interview with Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the Modi Govt and use of Ultra Nationalism to uleash a frenzy on opponents 

-> available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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8. A CRISIS FOR MINORITIES IN PAKISTAN
by Rozina Ali
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(The New Yorker, March 29, 2016)

When the bomb went off in Lahore’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, on Sunday, families were settled into the lull of Easter celebrations. Picnics were out and children were scattered across the playground. The suicide bomber walked purposefully to the swings before blowing himself up, along with the kids around him. More than seventy people died in the attack, at least twenty-nine of them children, and more than three hundred people were wounded. One reporter who arrived at the scene told me that victims were rushed to the hospital in ambulances, taxis, private cars, and rickshaws, while surviving children were rounded up as security guards tried to find their families.

Jamaat ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistan Taliban that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, took credit for the attack, claiming that it targeted Christians (in fact, more Muslims than Christians were killed). For nearly two decades, as terrorist attacks have intensified in the country, its minorities—Christians, Sufis, Shias—have been under assault. Mehreen Zahra-Malik, a Reuters journalist based in Islamabad, told me that the Christian families she spoke with in Lahore insisted that the government is doing its best to protect them. In the aftermath of past attacks, authorities had increased security at churches, especially on Sundays. Perhaps as a result, some surmised, the terrorists attacked a public park—not just hurting Christians, but Pakistanis of all faiths.

The news of another attack came as no surprise in Pakistan, where more people are killed by terrorism than in Europe and the United States combined. In one of the country’s deadliest incidents, the Taliban massacred a hundred and thirty-two children at an Army school in Peshawar, in December, 2014. Lahore, too, has seen regular extremist violence. Jamaat ul-Ahrar attacked two churches last year, killing at least fifteen people. Still, Sunday’s bombing, which was big, public, and in reality indiscriminate, came as a shock to the city. It reflected terrorism’s alarming spread from the mountains of Northwest Pakistan and the chaos of Karachi into the heart of Punjab province, where Lahore—a city of history and poetry, fashion and music, famed foods and delicate gardens—is located.

Both Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Shehbaz, the province’s Chief Minister, hail from Lahore. Despite this—or perhaps because of it—the province has enjoyed relative autonomy, escaping the strong fist of the Army. While the Army has been conducting widespread counterterrorism raids in Karachi over the past two years, detaining thousands, Sharif’s political party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), has refused to allow such troop levels into Punjab. Instead, it has relied on police and counterterrorism forces inside the province to weed out extremists. Pakistan has regularly teetered between Army and civilian rule, and while 2013 saw the first transition from one civilian government to the next, the threat of military rule, especially in light of the government’s failure to prevent recent terrorist attacks, is all too present.

Even as the tension between the military and political establishments came to the fore with the Lahore bomb blast, the government was under severe pressure from religious hard-liners in the capital of Islamabad, a hundred and sixty miles south. Last month, the government executed Mumtaz Qadri, a policeman who assassinated Punjab’s relatively liberal governor, Salman Taseer, in 2011. Taseer was trying to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which criminalize desecration of holy (mainly Islamic) places and books, and he had defended a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who was given the death penalty by Punjab’s government for insulting the Prophet Muhammad (the sentence was later overturned).

When Qadri killed Taseer, right-wing religious groups lauded him as a hero. This weekend, tens of thousands of his supporters, members of the Barelvi movement of Islam, marched into Islamabad to protest his hanging, setting fire to buses and metro stations and damaging property around the city. Since Sunday, their numbers have dwindled into the thousands, but the group has settled in front of the parliamentary building as police try to quell any more violence. They have presented the government with a list of demands, which include implementing their version of Sharia law, removing secular and Ahmadi Muslim politicians from government, executing Asia Bibi, declaring Qadri a martyr, and releasing jailed Sunni clerics even if they were convicted of terrorism.

Unlike the Taliban, who follow the Deobandi and Salafi strains of Islam, Barelvis are relatively tolerant of minorities. Still, when I spoke with Raza Rumi, a commentator and analyst based in Ithaca, he said that blasphemy was a key issue for the Barelvis and that they condone violence to protect religion. Sharif’s party, the P.M.L.(N.), has historically relied on right-wing groups such as the Barelvis for political support, but as the government moves toward tolerating a more outspoken civil society and clamps down on extremism (Rumi told me Qadri’s execution would have been unthinkable five years ago), the right-wing base is pushing back. “These groups feel betrayed by Nawaz,” Rumi said.

Yesterday, after closed-door deliberations and strong statements by Sharif that he will “avenge every last drop” of blood spilled in Sunday’s attack, Army rangers entered Lahore for their first counterterror raids in the province. More than five thousand people have reportedly been arrested. The military’s strong presence in the political heartland of the country could conceivably weaken the Sharifs’ hold on power. Meanwhile, the protesters in Islamabad are in the third day of their sit-in. Some reporters speculate that government representatives are speaking with the protesters today, but so far authorities have neither cracked down on nor negotiated with them. Zahra-Malik, the Reuters journalist, articulated the question that almost everyone in Islamabad seems to have: “What is the government’s strategy?”

There might not be a long-term one. Imtiaz Gul, the executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, in Islamabad, told me that the “reliance on counterterror actions” is effectively a reliance on the military. “The political capacity to handle matters such as in the Islamabad sit-in seems poor,” he added. But security in Pakistan can’t be maintained only by a military-led aggressive war on terrorism. Extremism in the country is intertwined with minority rights and tolerance, and requires a shift in politics that allows civil liberties and space for minorities. One start would be continuing Taseer’s efforts and reforming blasphemy laws, a move that requires courage and will from the top.

Rozina Ali is a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff.

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9. PAKISTAN: EASTER MASSACRE
by Mahir Ali 
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(Dawn - 30 March 2016)

THERE are times when it is possible to be shocked and horrified without entirely being surprised. Sunday’s atrocity in Lahore falls into that category. The mass murder in a public park, evidently aimed primarily at Christians celebrating Easter, in the full knowledge that a large proportion of the victims would be children, epitomises the mindless brutality of forces unleashed almost four decades ago.

A comment in The Guardian on Monday lamenting the Gulshan-i-Iqbal suicide bombing was titled ‘Religious extremists will never succeed in taking over Pakistan’. It’s a well-intentioned piece, but it ignores the fact that Islamic fanatics did in fact take over Pakistan in 1977. Their triumph was never complete, but what was wrought under the aegis of Gen Ziaul Haq has never completely been rolled back either.

The Taliban are a post-Zia phenomenon, but most factions, whether Afghan or Pakis­tani, would probably be willing to acknowledge him as a pater familias. Their infiltration into Afghanistan, reportedly alongside Pakistani security personnel, was intended in part to establish an Islamabad-friendly regime in Kabul. Another motivation, apparently, was to banish from Pakistan the dangerous ideology in which they had been indoctrinated.
What was wrought under the aegis of Zia has never been rolled back.

That turned out to be wishful thinking. It wasn’t just that it was far too late to prevent a Taliban mentality from taking hold in Pakistan’s northwest, or that the initial success of the Afghan Taliban lent succour to like-minded elements in the neighbouring state. The Pakistani security establishment, notably the ISI, remained determined beyond its role in Afghanistan to destabilise Indian governance in Kashmir through outfits such as Lashkar-e-Taiba.

More or less throughout the ascendancy of Pervez Musharraf, the United States was well aware that Pakistan was playing a double game, attacking some Taliban while coddling others. The acknowledgment earlier this month by Sartaj Aziz, the prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, that the Afghan Taliban have a sanctuary in Pakistan, was intriguing in respect of its confessional novelty, but hardly shifted the international perception of the nation’s dubious role in Afghanistan.

It is not particularly reassuring, then, when the army gives notice of its intent to scour Pakistan’s dominant prince, Punjab, in order to root out extremism. Will it go after the Jamaatul Ahrar, a Pakistani Taliban splinter group that has unequivocally claimed responsibility for the Gulshan-i-Iqbal massacre, while ignoring other groups of the same ilk?

Surely, only an army that divests itself of all extremist links, domestically and internationally, could possibly play a decisive role in combating the terrorist threat. It is far from clear whether Gen Raheel Sharif’s force measures up to that criterion.

There has been conjecture, apparently with good cause, that Sunday’s mayhem was in part a response to the execution of Salmaan Taseer’s assassin. It is certainly interesting that the despicable ex-policeman’s chehlum was brought forward by almost a fortnight to March 27, which also happened to be the deadline given by religious groups to the Punjab provincial government for rescinding its attempt to legislate protection for women in the face of domestic violence.

Opposition to this mild and quite conceivably ineffective legislation has been articulated not just by outlawed outfits but by legitimate political parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami. Such organisations have consistently bolstered the terrorists, even when they ostensibly do not advocate violence.

It was 60 years ago last week that Pakistan was formally designated an Islamic republic. The subsequent trajectory of the nation that Mohammad Ali Jinnah founded would in all likelihood have reinforced his fear that he had made a mistake.

The terrorist outrage in Lahore followed hot on the heels of the one in Brussels, where half as many people were murdered in suicide bombings at the airport and in the metro. The reaction to that appalling crime prompted some soul-searching about why it attracted so much more attention and outrage than bigger death tolls, in similar circumstances and by equally repulsive culprits, in cities in Iraq, Turkey and Yemen.

The whole problem stems, arguably, from a reluctance to see all victims as fellow human beings. Deaths by remote control, via drones, are not supposed to count as terrorism, and since no one can conclusively verify what is going on in the dark corners of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia, the civilian deaths can easily be underestimated.

In Pakistan, the Sharif brothers, as businessmen, have been accused of pursuing relative liberalism as an economic end. Even if that is so, their project is worthy of support, provided its goals are unambiguous. Everyone knows that Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif were nurtured by Zia, but if they have changed their minds about what they once stood for, it is a welcome development. The fruits of this switch, though, are yet to be harvested.

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10. LAHORE ATTACK — WHERE DO THE REAL FAULT LINES LIE?
by Akhtar Abbas
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(Dawn, March 28, 2016)

Gulshan-e-iqbal is a big public park situated in Lahore's Allama Iqbal Town. The place has long stretches of grass where families spend their leisure time eating home-made food over a spread bedsheet, or go boating in the lake, or explore the maze of inner Lahore or take joy rides in electric gondolas. 

As a kid, I lived in a house just opposite one of its main gates; the park is featured in most of my childhood pictures. 

Cricket was not allowed in the park area; even football was looked down upon by the gardeners. Mostly because the grass was fresh and the flower beds fragile. 

However, near Gate No. 1, there was a secluded area, where the walls were a few feet higher and no one from the administration seemed to go there. We would often take out our cricket bat and play a game or two — the usual bet in summer times would be a breakfast of halwa puri and channay. 

Recently, passing by the park, I wondered if kids still climb the wall and carry out their shenanigans the way we used to. 

Yesterday, the place where you could not touch flowerbeds without a guilty conscience was riddled with human flesh and blood.

They chose the target carefully. Being Easter, the park was bound to be flooded with Christians. If their aim was maximum casualties, it was achieved without a doubt. 
ADVERTISEMENT

A year back, the Army Public School was attacked. The entire nation stood united in its message of fighting the war on terror. We even composed songs promising retribution against those who carried out these attacks and a safe country for our children. 

Soon Operation Zarb-i-Azab (a joint military offensive conducted by the Pakistan Armed Forces against various militant groups) was declared a success and it seemed that issues like corruption in institutions and action against 'rogue' political parties would be the talk of town. 

The Lahore attack reminds us that perhaps we were too quick in celebrating that victory. 

Perhaps, the enemy lives deeper among us than we imagined, and perhaps it might take more than a few years to cleanse the mess we have generated for years.

The only way blasts like these can come to an end is by dismantling the terrorist network of well-wishers, sympathisers, sleepers, logistic supporters and planners. 

The Lahore park carnage is a grim reminder that we are far from decapitating the terrorist network. Their network is like a jigsaw puzzle and we are far from sorting out the full picture. 

Is it possible that somewhere someone is still holding an essential piece?

We may have understood how different religio-political groups have distanced themselves from violence in Pakistan, but can we be sure that all within the ranks of those groups adhere to this 'strategically' right proclamation?

There is a proverb in Pashto, "When an oven is hot, anyone can put their dough in it for cooking."

Are we still keeping the oven hot enough for others to take advantage? Where do the real fault lines lie? Can we ever make a critical analysis of the situation we are in?

The biggest battle in this war is changing the mindset. 

Recently singer-turned-evangelist Junaid Jamshed was targeted at the Islamabad Airport; a big mob is protesting against the hanging of Salmaan Taseer's killer, Mumtaz Qadri; a Shia lawyer was gunned down in Dera Ismail Khan last week. These occurrences are reminders that perhaps the narrative of peaceful sects of Islam and violent ones is a convenient tool that helps us avoid the real problem. 

If looked at closely, these three recent incidents are of the same origin: Our across-the-board inability as a society to accept the opinions of others. 

You don't have to agree with Junaid Jamshed or Taseer or the Ahmedis, Christians or Shias in their beliefs, but harming someone for their beliefs is where the trouble starts. 

There are various degrees to this, the simplest by denigrating their epithets, the ultimate by blowing up near their festivals — and to some extent we are all guilty of it. Each layer is supported by the less violent one beneath it. 

If we have to fight terrorist networks, we must fight extreme opinions. 

The tools in the immediate battle against terrorists might be the guns and sticks of law enforcement agencies, but ultimately, it is the pen of the writers, the mic of the anchors, the voice from the pulpit and the clicks of ordinary citizens that will dismantle it.

The writer is an engineer from Pakistan. 

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11. PAKISTAN: PIETY FOR PROFIT
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
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(Dawn - March 26, 2016)

THE other day I somehow wandered into an Islamabad store which specialises in Islamic honey. I was curious: how might it be different from, say, Australian honey? Would honey with a religious flavour earn me spiritual points as well? Although the storekeepers handed me a glossy 20-page brochure in Urdu, which I read later, I found their answers quite unsatisfactory. Still, the range of their honeys did seem rather appetising.

I was about to open my wallet to buy some varieties when another product caught my eye: ‘Islamic Nuts’. On the shelves were cans of various sizes, inscribed with Quranic verses. The listed contents included pecans and filberts.

But hang on! How could pecans and filberts ever have grown in desert climes? No one in this large store knew either their Urdu or Arabic equivalents. Besides, I was aware that filberts are named after St Philbert, a French saint. It seemed so fishy that I left the store without buying anything.

But suppose I had indeed decided to buy honey and nuts. My choices for payment would have been two-fold. Apart from plain cash, I could have used my ordinary credit card. Else, my newer Sharia-compliant credit card. (To be honest, I really don’t know why I have two. However, I do recall that the Sharia card salesperson visited me in my office two to three years ago. She was so persuasive and persistent that I surrendered to a second one from her bank.)

Business and commerce now freely use Islam as a brand name.

Today I use both pieces of plastic, sometimes randomly. What’s the difference? With either I can purchase the same things or use an ATM. Plus, the Sharia-compliant one charges as much as the ordinary one. Most importantly, although the Sharia card refuses to call it interest, the annual rates charged by both banks are similar. After all, a bank is a bank. And banks exist to make profit, not dispense philanthropy.

The wilful use of Islam to sell products continues to reach astonishing new heights every year. When I heard of an ablution bottle that lets you ‘Istinja like a Ninja’, I first thought someone was pulling my leg. How utterly gross! But then it turned out that you can buy it from simplyislam.com in three colors — red, orange, and purple.

Business and commerce now freely use Islam as a brand name, a situation that gets worse with the year. There are now Islamic potato chips, Islamic soaps, luxury prayer mats, and designer abayas with Swarovski crystals. Religious sensibilities are cleverly exploited — such as when a Geo TV anchor handed out abandoned babies to childless couples during Ramazan. The goal was clearly to increase viewership, ie feed crass commercialism and compulsive consumerism. Profit trumps decency and morality.

How have various religions judged commercialism and consumerism from ancient times to the present? In The Sin of Greed, theologian Sheila Harty makes an interesting comparative survey. She says that when religions define sin, they begin with offences against the sacred — idolatry or blasphemy. Next, they focus on offences against the commonweal — murder, adultery, theft, usury.

Harty notes that usury is the only business practice condemned by all religions, including Islam. The reason was a deeply moral one. Usury — charging interest on a loan — was once a killer. Lenders with plenty could easily extend loans to borrowers, usually those short of cash, until the next harvest. No loan meant that you might starve. Therefore the rich could thoroughly exploit the poor.

But the 21st century is very different from the world of long ago. Survival is an issue today only for the very poor. On the other hand, the middle and upper classes live in a throwaway culture associated with greed, wastage and frivolous desires. Commercialisation, with advertising and marketing as its handmaidens, creates artificial wants. In this situation does usury still deserve to be called the greatest of sins? Or has it been overtaken by other sins so great that they now threaten life on this planet?

My friend John Avery, a professor of chemistry in Denmark, has a recent book on the new sins. He explicitly spells out how unbridled consumption imperils human civilisation and the world’s environment — perhaps irreversibly. Economies are obsessed with achieving a “never-ending exponential growth on a finite planet”, a result of American-style capitalism having invented a culture of desire that confuses the good life with goods. Goods require use of polluting resources such as fossil fuels and minerals. But, from a broader world perspective, this is unsustainable.

The rush to consume fuels the modern banking system. Every bank wants people to own more cars and more material goods. Its activities are shrouded in the technical language of finance — derivative products, equity swaps, adjustable mortgages, etc. No one, including top financial experts, can figure out how much usury occurs in such a complex system where everything is interconnected. Sharia-compliant banking has added to the confusion with its particular terminologies. But profit is the real god.

Inequality is built into the guts of this system; the veneer of morality is paper thin. If the owners and managers of the Islamic banks were genuinely moral people and concerned about sin, wouldn’t they pay themselves less? The lowest paid bank employee in a Pakistani bank — whether a Sharia-compliant one or otherwise — makes between 100-1,000 times less than his CEO, for whom a seven-digit monthly salary is perfectly normal.

To conclude: commercialised piety now rakes in profits, reducing religion and spirituality to business. It’s time to get priorities right. Eliminating interest on loans, whether advanced for real or frivolous needs, has so far grabbed all the attention. But would a just God prefer that you pray to Him on a luxury prayer mat — even if purchased with a Sharia-compliant credit card? Why would He give lower priority to the Quranic injunction of adl (justice)? In a system that is unjust at the roots, surely the fight to build a just, sustainable, and compassionate society should take precedence over form and ritual.

The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.

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12. INDIA’S SECULARISM, DEEPLY ROOTED, NOW HANGS ON A PRECIPICE
by Prem Shankar Jha 
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(The Wire - 26 March 2016)

The RSS is sparing no effort to create a sense of siege among Muslims; it is stirring this cauldron of despair at the nation’s peril 

Even as Prime minister Modi lauds the plurality of India and the profound peacefulness of Sufi Islam, the RSS and its cohorts have been sparing no effort to drive a deep wedge between the Hindus and Muslims in our country.

A single day’s newspaper tells us that the student Umar Khalid found, while being questioned in jail, that his interrogators had already decided his guilt before they talked to him, because he was a Muslim whose father had been an activist of the now banned SIMI. Anirban Bhattacharya was repeatedly cajoled by his interrogators to get all charges against him dropped by pinning all the blame for the February 9 sloganeering on Khalid.

Waris Pathan, a Muslim MLA, In Maharashtra is suspended from the state assembly for refusing to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai. On the same day four Kashmiri students are arrested in Rajasthan because someone reported to the police that they were eating beef in their hostel.

In Jharkhand, two Muslim cattle traders are murdered by a gang of criminals, and the public and the media immediately conclude that the killers belong to a cow protection group.

In Delhi the BJP MP from Agra, Ramshanker Katheria, (who is a member of Mr Modi’s council of ministers, no less ) publicly warns the UP state government that Agra will see a ‘different kind of Holi’ if cases lodged against one BJP and two local VHP ‘leaders’ for making hate speeches against Muslims, comparing them to ‘rakshasas’ who need to be cornered and destroyed’, are not withdrawn before the festival.

All this news appearing on a single day evinces no shock because, from Ghar Wapsi, to ‘Love Jihad‘, to throwing beef into a temple, to killing Mohammad Akhlaq, to changing the name of Aurangzeb Road in Delhi, such inflammatory statements and actions have become routine in the past 21 months.

Intimidating dissenters

What is relatively new is the brazen attempt to intimidate anyone – like Kanhaiya Kumar or Teesta Setalvad – who has the courage to take up cudgels in defence of the freedom of speech, thought, justice and legal process; the administration of punishment to them through harassment, torture and beatings while in judicial custody, the cancellation of licenses and denial of access to funds.

Beneath all of this runs one leitmotif : The Muslims are not ‘us’. In anthropological terms, they are the alien ‘other’ and don’t belong in a resurgent Hindu India. The Muslim conquest of India was an aberration, and its impact on Hindu culture must be erased.

The damage was real, but was done aeons ago by rulers and generals now long dead. What does the Sangh parivar hope to gain from making people who are not even their lineal descendants pay a price today? Does it think that the community will take this lying down forever? And if it does not, can India be purged of 190 million Muslims?

No matter what its motives are, if it persists it will push the country into civil war and force it to disintegrate, as the states in the south and east scramble to insulate themselves from the virus being exported ­­­from the north. Instead of a Hindu rashtra India will become the world’s largest failed state.

This may sound alarmist but beneath the surface calm, changes have been taking place in the structure of the Indian economy and society that have been weakening our collective faith in the possibility of a prosperous future. These are being felt most acutely by the youth, who have their entire lives ahead and do not see how they will traverse it. The need of the hour is to reverse these changes so that they can begin to hope again. The BJP/RSS is doing the exact opposite.

Muslims’ worsening plight

Partition made the first serious dent in India’s syncretic culture by planting resentment and suspicion in Hindus, and a wary defensiveness in Indian Muslims. With the pre-partition Muslim elite having largely opted for Pakistan, the community desperately needed educational and economic assistance to recover their place in Indian society. But a bitter legacy of Partition was the Congress’s adamant refusal to even consider the reservation of jobs and seats in schools and colleges for Muslims, as this was the tool the British had used to split the Indian social fabric.

V.P Singh was among the first to recognise the long-term damage this had done. He understood that a rural peasantry newly empowered by the Green Revolution was demanding reservation in government jobs and colleges not for the sake of a handful of poorly paid sinecures, but to create an urban base from which their children and grandchildren could acquire the education that was the only avenue to the modern world.

But he too shied away from making an overt commitment to the Muslims on this incendiary issue. As a result, in the 1990s the rate of urbanisation among the OBCs surged ahead, while that of the Muslims actually declined. As the Kundu commission noted, a process of ‘exclusionary urbanization’ set in.

The full impact of six decades of neglect was laid bare by the Sachar committee, which found in 2006 that not only was Muslim enrolment in secondary schools and colleges well below their share of the population, but their representation in salaried jobs was less than two-thirds of the national average.

The imbalance was even worse in the Central government where despite being 14.4% of the population Muslims filled only 4 percent of the senior police and paramilitary posts, only 3% of the IAS, 1.8% of the IFS and perhaps most importantly, only 6% of the posts in the constabulary. The situation was equally grim in the universities, banks and central Public sector undertakings.

The UPA government responded to the shock the report gave it by mooting an Equal Opportunities Commission and creating a Ministry of Minority (note, not Muslim) Affairs. But six years later, no perceptible dent has been made in the structural disadvantages of the Muslim community.

A study of actual disbursements till the end of March 2011, showed that of the allocation till then of Rs 3,780 crores for minority concentration districts, only Rs 846 crores actually reached the districts and only Rs 131 crores had reached the intended beneficiaries. Despite this, when the Ministry of Minority Affairs asked for Rs 58,000 crores in the 12th plan, it was allocated only Rs. 17,323 crores.

The Muslims fared no better in raising concessional bank loans, for these were monopolized by Sikhs and Christians who secured 47% of the funds when they made up 21% of the minorities. Muslims who made up 69% got only 44%.

It would have been surprising indeed if being at a perennial disadvantage had not created dissatisfaction, and a feeling of being discriminated against in Muslim youth who found their path into modern India severely constricted. Wahhabi Islam backed by an abundance of Saudi money and flashy new mosques offered a new sense of purpose and source of hope. Gradually, but relentlessly, it began to erode the Sufi base of traditional Islam in India.

But even this would not have not have dented communal harmony had Pakistan not intervened. Determined to take revenge for the splitting of the country in 1971, it began to actively encourage insurgency and dispatch of terrorists across the borders of Punjab and Kashmir.

As all governments that have faced armed uprisings have learned, state responses to terrorism tend invariably to be indiscriminate. In India, this has meant sudden descents upon Muslim neighbourhoods, sustained, unfriendly interrogations, and an automatic presumption of Muslim involvement even when, as in the Malegaon idgah bomb blast and the burning of the Samjhauta express, the victims are all Muslims. The casual ‘elimination’ of terrorists in staged ‘encounters’ sowed fear and anger, especially in young Muslims just when they had begun to realise that the economic resurgence of the country was passing them by. Quite suddenly, therefore, the ground beneath their feet began to quake.

The Gujarat riots gave a new twist to the  fear of young Muslims because for the first time in their lives they felt that the state had not protected, but actually targeted them. Ahmedabad, therefore, created India’s first home-grown Muslim Islamist terrorists.

Roots of Indian syncretism

Indian syncretism has survived despite this because it is based upon an easy acceptance of diversity.  In the mosaic that is India, Tamils, Bengalis, Mizos, Nagas, Manipuris, Odias, Punjabis, Parsis, Bohras, Memons, Christians – everyone feels different. We are comfortable with being different and demonstrate it by unselfconsciously wearing different headgear, different cuts of beard and moustache, different lengths of hair, even different lengths of pyjamas. We wear different clothes, build little temples, mosques, and shrines to Jesus or one of the Sikh gurus, wherever we wish. We spread prayer mats on a busy road at midday in order to pray, and some of us even walk down the street wearing no clothes at all.

This comfort with diversity makes India the envy of European nation states which were created through enforced cultural homogeneity. But this is what the RSS mistakes as weakness, and is bent upon erasing.

The Muslim community has responded to their Muslim baiting by consolidating its vote and building closer ties with the opposition. But it is defenceless against the economic impact that programmes like the ban on beef, and the liberalisation of the economy are having upon its future in a period of unending jobless growth.

There are 3,600 legal and 30,000 illegal slaughterhouses in India, that export 2.4 million tonnes of beef and buffalo meat valued at 4.8 billion dollars. The ban on cow slaughter is threatening the livelihood of anything up to half a million families, the majority of whom are Muslims. While the ban on beef exports has received a great deal of attention all over the world, its even more deadly impact on the leather industry has been all but ignored. Maharashtra’s ban on the slaughter of all cattle and its spread to several other states has starved the industry of hides. According to the industry, by June 2015, 98 tanneries had shut down in Kanpur alone and 150,000 workers had lost their jobs. Here too most were Muslims.

The ban has also affected farmers and cattle herders – Dalits, and OBCs – to whom aged cattle and male calves rendered surplus by the spread of tractors and automotive transport, have been an important hedge against sudden financial need or drought. Today, as large parts of the Deccan are reeling under one of the worst droughts they have ever experienced, the price of cattle has crashed and this source of succour has been cut off.

Perhaps the most serious and least noticed setback has come from the ‘scissors’ effect on the profitability of the  power loom industry from falling tariffs on imports after economic liberalization, and the simultaneous, relentless annual increases in the minimum sale price of cotton decreed by the state governments. While this is killing the power loom industry all over the country, in Maharashtra whose two centres, Bhiwandi and Malegaon, account for three quarters of the power loom industry, the vast majority of the workers are Muslims.

These are three exemplars of an even more terrifying crisis that Muslims in particular face. This is the assault upon the entire artisanal sector of industry – fine textiles, embroidery and handicrafts, by cheap imports from China. From Kashmiri carpets, Pashmina and Jamawar shawls, to Lucknowi Chikan, Hyderabadi Bidriware and  Kancheepuram and Banarasi saris, all are facing shrinking markets as mill-made alternatives, domestic and foreign, push their products out.

Muslims are the prime sufferers in every case because only 23% of them have salaried jobs against 34% of the Indian work force. Three-quarters are therefore self-employed, as against two-thirds of all Indian workers. What is worse, while many of the Hindu workers, both salaried and self employed, own small pieces of land in their villages, very few of the Muslims do. They have, therefore, nothing to fall back upon when their traditional skills become redundant.

So let us see what future a typical 18-year-old 12th pass Muslim boy faces. He finds it difficult to get into the army; he will almost certainly not get taken into the police. He is unlikely to qualify for a lower grade clerical post in the government, given that 52% of these are already reserved for OBCs and Dalits ; his schooling has not equipped him for any of the traditional skills his family excelled in, and in any case these skills being made redundant. So how long will he be able to hold out when a recruiter offers him 400 dollars a month to join a jihad somewhere in the world, even India, to ‘save Islam’? The RSS is stirring this cauldron of despair at the nation’s peril.

Prem Shankar Jha is a Delhi-based author and commentator

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13. INDIA - ASSAM: NEW ELECTION OLD SCARS [THE ILLEGAL MIGRANT ,'THE FOREIGNER' AND AMBIGUITIES OF CITIZENSHIP] Sanjib Baruah
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(The Indian Express, March 23, 201

A remarkable number of candidates fielded by various political parties in Assam are veterans of the Assam Movement — the protests against the entry and enfranchisement of “foreigners” that dominated the state’s politics for six long years from 1979 to 1985. Four elected ministries collapsed during that period and there were three spells of president’s rule. Even the census of 1981 could not be conducted in Assam during that period. Post-Independence India’s most violent elections are also part of this history, including the horrendous Nellie massacre.

Assam Movement veterans feature not only on the list of candidates of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the regional party that grew out of the movement and now an ally of the BJP. They are also among the candidates of the two major national parties:

The BJP as well as the Congress. Prominent among them are the BJP’s chief ministerial hopeful, Sarbananda Sonowal, and a number of former AGP heavyweights, as well as the Congress party’s Zoiinath Sarma, who led the volunteer force of the All Assam Students Union during the movement.

Then there are the politicians who made the transition to national political parties a long time ago such as the Congress party’s Bharat Narah. The Guwahati MP, Bijoya Chakraborty of the BJP, is also an Assam Movement veteran. This time, her daughter, Suman Haripriya, is the BJP candidate for the Hajo constituency.

In retrospect, the Assam Movement turned out to be the school and recruiting ground for a major segment of the next generation of Assam’s political leaders. And the Congress and the BJP appear to have succeeded in remaking themselves as national parties with a regional orientation — as the former chief minister, the late Hiteswar Saikia, had promised the Congress would become.

This story can easily be told as a warm and fuzzy self-congratulatory narrative of the inclusiveness and resilience of India’s democratic institutions. But the picture gets more complicated when one tries to take stock of the goals of the Assam Movement. How successful was it?

A novice may be excused for thinking that with so many veterans of the Assam Movement now part of the political establishment, the central issue of the movement must have been settled a long time ago. But that is not the case. From the perspective of the thousands who responded to the calls of the movement’s leaders and came out to the streets during those six years, what has transpired in the three decades since then is a story of bitter disappointment and betrayal.

It is not only supporters of the Assam Movement who are disappointed. Even the Supreme Court has expressed similar views. When in July 2005, it declared the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act unconstitutional, it spelt out the dangers to Assam from the continued unauthorised immigration from Bangladesh using a language that was reminiscent of that used by the leaders of the Assam Movement. There can be “no manner of doubt,” said the apex court, that Assam is facing “external aggression and internal disturbance” because of large-scale unauthorised immigration from Bangladesh. In July 2008, the Gauhati High Court said a “large number of Bangladeshis” play “a major role in electing the representatives both to the legislative assembly and Parliament and consequently, in the decision-making process towards building the nation”.

Such pronouncements by authoritative institutions cannot but eat away at the legitimacy of elected governments. It is not surprising that the failure of the Assam Movement created the ground for the rise of the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa) that argued in favour of an extra-constitutional path for defending Assam’s historical identity and wellbeing.

In recent years, the ambiguities of citizenship that the Assam Movement sought to address have been a potent source of civil strife in various parts of the state. When violence between Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims broke out in the summer of 2012, a number of media reports and commentaries blamed it on the influx of “illegal Bangladeshi migrants” into the area, in effect portraying Muslims of East Bengali descent inhabiting western Assam — many of them descendants of the early 20th century settlers from East Bengal — as “Bangladeshis”.

A couple of years later, militants of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) gunned down 81 Adivasis — descendants of tea workers brought as indentured labourers to Assam in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Adivasis have been victims of violence and dispossession in the land conflicts on the Assam-Nagaland border as well; some of their forefathers having settled on those lands bordering tea plantations — technically reserved forests — after their contracts had expired. Quite a fate in 21st century India for a group of people whose forefathers provided the muscle for the 19th century capitalist transformation of Assam.

If one goes by the assessment of the Supreme Court of the IMDT act — a law passed by the Indian Parliament in order to deal with the challenges presented by the Assam Movement to the post-Partition citizenship regime — our decision-making process has become far too porous; it gives “too many actors the means to stifle adjustments in public policy”, to borrow the words of Francis Fukuyama used in a different context. The costs of the Assam Movement’s failures have been steep, but obviously not for its leaders. The price is being paid by some of the country’s most disadvantaged citizens: In blood, and in lives lost. After three decades of the Assam Movement, they are still unable to reclaim a sense of everyday security.
The writer is professor of political studies, Bard College, New York 

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14. BOOK REVIEW: A SAGA OF OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE
by Zaman Khan 
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(The News on Sunday - March 6, 2016)

The autobiography of veteran Leftist Chaudhry Fateh Mohammad Jo Hum Peh Guzri documents the history of Left-wing politics and struggle of working classes

The freedom fighters of India used different tactics and organisations to liberate India from the yoke of British imperialism. In the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was formed and despite all odds and oppression it became a symbol and vanguard of resistance in the united India.

Although the CPI was a secular party, in the end it supported the division of India and creation of Pakistan. It also asked its Muslim members to join Muslim League. At the time of partition, it asked its Hindu and Sikh members to migrate to India and Muslims to Pakistan.

The CPI became legal after the Soviet Union joined the Word War II against fascist Nazi Germany, though it was already working on different fronts.

If one goes through ‘A History of All India Kissan Sabha’ by Abdullah Rasul, one would find the mention of Kissan Committees in the present Pakistani Punjab and its ‘morchas’ but after partition there was a vacuum because of the migration of comrades to India.

The migration of Communists to India was a big setback for the Communist movement. Anyhow the remnants left in this part, Pakistan, started to reorganise the Communist Party afresh despite all odds.

The autobiography of 90-year-old veteran leftist Chaudhry Fateh Mohammad ‘Jo Hum Peh Guzri’, published recently, contains the history of Left-wing politics and struggle of peasant and working classes. He has highlighted mistakes and trends in the movement of the Left.

Chaudhry Fateh Mohammad, a graduate from Jullendher, was among the first few recruits. The tradition in old days was that the youth and intellectuals were asked to work among peasants and workers. Fateh Mohammad started working in Kissan Committee in the villages of Toba Tek Singh, a Tehsil of Lyallpur (Faisalabad).

Chaudhry Sahib has also given an account of the forced migration of his family and the murder of his father and other ordeals. He went to see his father in Chishtian (Bahawalnagar) when he was just 4/5. He fell in the village pond but was timely rescued. After graduation, he joined the British Indian Army and was sent to fight at the European front but since war soon came to an end so he was sent back. He says that his dream was shattered by the business of allotments in Pakistan.Zaman Khan

He was inspired and made a party member by Dr Mohammad Abdullah in 1948. The first Punjab Kissan Conference was held on March 28, 1948 in village 405 JB.

The 247 pages of the book are divided into 42 small chapters. It is a normal practice in autobiographies to boast of one’s achievements but Chaudhry Sahib has also criticised himself and the split in the Left movement.

The book contains accounts of different Kissan conferences held up till the famous Toba Tek Sing Kissan Conference on March 23, 1970. It was a tradition of the Communists to involve the urban intellectuals in the peasant struggle so one finds the mention of Professor Eric Cyprian, Mazhar Ali Khan, Safdar Mir, Arif Abdul Matin, Syed Matlabi Faridabadi and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi besides Sardar Shaukat Ali and C.R. Aslam. He has especially mentioned the names of individuals who influenced his thinking: Joshi, Dr. Mohammad Abdullah, Prof. Eric Cyprian and C.R. Aslam.

Chaudhry Fateh Mohammad had been sent to jail a number of times but the first ‘yatra’ was when he was a candidate of the CPP for the 1951 Punjab Assembly elections. He was also detained in the notorious Lahore ‘Shahi Qila’ torture cell.

The Muslim League was pro-Capitalism and was keen to develop close relations with the USA so it used different tactics to oppress and persecute the Communists in Pakistan. Although the resentment in the ranks of army against the ‘Gora officers’ was known to authorities for quite some time, it used the time of general elections in Punjab to announce the Rawalpindi conspiracy. All the accused were members of armed forces except Sajjad Zaheer, Secretary General of CPP, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Mohammad Hussain Atta. The government was successful in creating terror and instilling fear in the party workers and general public. But the party continued its work.

Chaudhry Sahib was assigned the task to work among the textile workers in Lyallpur in 1953. He has also briefly mentioned the Communist Party office at Jhang bazaar Lyallpur, but did not say it was gobbled up by a ‘comrade’. It would be an interesting study to find out what happened to the property owned by the CPP, including 114 McLeod Lahore.

On page 77, he tells us about a public meeting held near his village 305 GB where they had a separate enclosure for women but when woman labour leader Kaneez Fatima started addressing, the women participants removed the partition.

He talks about his travel to Dacca by train to attend the founding convention of National Awami Party but the most interesting part is his transit through India (which may seems a dream to Pakistanis today). The first and the last special train taking scouts from Lahore to Dacca National Scout Jamhoori chugged in 1960.

The Sino-Soviet split led to the breakup of international communist movement. The National Awami Party also split into the NAP (Bhashani) and the NAP (Wali Khan). Later on, there was another split in the NAP Bhashani in West Pakistan.

The best part of the book is that although Comrade Fateh Mohammad has shed light on different personalities and left groups, there is no malice and bitterness in his writing.

He has also discussed the 1970 Toba Tek Singh Kissan Conference which was the zenith of the NAP (Bhashani) Kissan Movement. The Left workers, intellectuals and students from all over West Pakistan attended the conference in a large number. It may not be incorrect to say that it was the biggest Kissan Conference in the history of West Pakistan. A special ‘Kissan train’ took Maulana Bhashani and other leaders and workers from Lahore went to Toba. This scribe also travelled by this train leading a Nationalist Students Organisation (NSO) delegation. In fact, every ‘Kissan Conference’ used to be a festival of workers and Toba Kissan Conference was no exception. One remembers Faiz Sahib reciting his poem.

In a separate chapter, Chaudhry Sahib, while talking about his stay in jail, has especially mentioned Faiz Sahib. According to him, Faiz Sahib was a very good company in jail.

Chaudhry Sahib quoted some part of Bhashani’s speech but missed the important and damaging part of Bhashani’s speech. In his speech, President of NAP Bhashani gave a call for a general strike and said ‘good bye’ to West Pakistan without consulting the leadership of NAP. This had had a negative impact on the NAP politics and most of the NAP workers joined the PPP. This also led to the creation of the Socialist Party and a later split between C.R. Aslam and Abid Hasan Minto.

Chaudhry Sahib has also talked about different efforts to unite the Left groups which could not materialise although on November 11, 2012 three leftist groups decided to merge and form the Awami Workers Party. Abid Hasan Minto was elected its president and Chaudhry Fateh Mohammad its Peasant Wings President and member of central committee.

Jo Hum Peh Guzri
Author: Chaudhry Fateh Mohammad
Publisher: Sanjh Publications
Price: Rs500
Pages: 247

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15. 'WITCH-HUNTING' IN INDIA?: DO WE NEED SPECIAL LAWS?
by Madhu Mehra and Anuja Agrawal
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(Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 51, Issue No. 13, 26 Mar, 2016)

Madhu Mehra (madhu05.m at gmail.com) is founding member and Executive Director of Partners for Law in Development. Anuja Agrawal (anujaagrawal at gmail.com) is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi.

This paper discusses the findings of a socio-legal study on witch-hunting conducted by the Partners for Law in Development in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. It highlights the results of the study in order to offer a critical perspective on the increasing reliance on special laws to address the problem of witch-hunting. The socio-legal evidence from the states which already have such special laws on witch-hunting shows their inefficacy in dealing with witch-hunting and related forms of violence. Criminalisation of witch-hunting through special laws is an inadequate response to the problem which has much in common with other forms of violence. There is a need to focus on accountability and reform of the agencies that activate the criminal justice system and to plug the vacuum in relation to reparative justice.

- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/13/special-articles/witch-hunting-india.html

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16. INDIA: UTPAL DUTT’S DAUGHTER ON THE SEDITIOUS WRITER, DIRECTOR AND ACTOR 
by Bishnupriya Dutt
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(The Quint - 30 March 2016)

Amidst the prolonged tension and anxiety of the crisis at Jawaharlal Nehru University, there have also been moments of exhilaration.

For me, it was a unique experience, as in the kaleidoscopic rush from the 1960s and the 1970s, when in the midst of the agonistic and antagonistic politics of India, along with the communist leaders, even actors, directors and performers were arrested under the law of sedition.

On 23 September 1965, my father and renowned playwright and actor Utpal Dutt was arrested under the Preventive Detention Act. ‘Another side of the struggle’, an article in the Deshitaishi was cited as a seditious piece. The issue was banned and Dutt was arrested and lodged for the next seven months at Presidency Jail, Calcutta. My memories of him being in jail resonate with his accounts of his time:

   I am no hero, I hated every minute of my prison time. But the seven months passed off quickly, because all the top leaders of the Marxist Party (of India) were already there and there was a lot to learn from them. And then there were the fascinating convicts – murderers, bandits and completely innocent men sent to prison by conniving feudal lords. I filled two notebooks with interviews and realized for the first time why Marx had included the prison in his definition of the state machinery of repression. About 98% of the prisoners serving sentences in jail had been convicted for the so-called crimes against ‘property’. The prisoner is a weapon in the class struggle, in the ceaseless war to maintain private property. All the talk of reforming and re-educating criminals is balderdash.

The accounts of Dutt’s prison stint follows encounters with his comrades and the other convicts. With his comrades, they organised cricket matches, reading groups and of course, a one-act play on Bukharin’s trial called ‘Louhamanab’ (The Iron Man). He writes about his inmate comrades:

   The discipline of the Communist detenues, their tenderness towards the convicts, their study of Marxist philosophy and economy in an organised manner every afternoon, further strengthened my belief that in this party is concentrated all that is good and militant in our country. 

‘Red Salute Comrade’

The cultural event at JNU titled ‘Country Without a Post-Office’ supposedly turned violent when a group of people from nowhere arrived to shout anti-India slogans.

The administration and the State thought it was the ideal opportunity to clamp down on JNU which has remained amongst the right wing swing and its neo-liberal nexus, a space out of bounds for intervention and changeover into a neo-liberal space.

These moments of exhilaration came after the arrest of the JNU Student’s Union President, Kanhaiya Kumar, when students— outraged, but also in panic— started assembling in front of the JNU administration block; meeting, performing, listening to scholars and teachers speaking on nationalism and breaking out in slogans of ‘Red Salute Comrade’.

As the numbers swelled in front of the administration buildings —which got named ‘Freedom Square’ by the students —the protest slogans got louder. On the day of the release of Kanhaiya and subsequently Umar and Anirban, the slogans of Azadi and ‘Red Salute to Comrade’ resonated around the quiet forests that encase the 100 acres of the premier University campus.

A number of my colleagues at JNU felt that while the ‘azadi’ slogan is inclusive, the slogan ‘Red Salute Comrade’ could be alienating for those who do not adhere to a left ideology, though the three students arrested and released on bail have no problems in announcing their communist ideological commitment. All who gather at these events, however, echo the slogans, and the same number of hands go up with ‘azadi’ as they do with ‘red salute’.

Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban’s speeches after their release also came with a positive voice, an understanding of a state’s mechanism to punish if you do not adhere to a consensus-based democracy. What makes a prison experience for people who believe in a left ideology a positive experience, which adds to their general optimism about the world? Why does the state fail to ‘reform’ the communists by taking them to jail, violating the natural justice system?

There is no remorse in going to jail, in risking their own careers —and in a world where students, scholars and performers are ready to align with state and corporate powers to become entrepreneurs or artpreneurs, how do they, the believers, stand aside and critique the system?
A Positive Voice

As far as slogans and mass mobilisation are concerned, the day Dutt and his comrades were released from prison, a large gathering at the Maidan was organised. A ship was built in remembrance of Dutt’s masterful play, ‘Kallol’, which the state wanted to censor. After the speeches at the Maidan, excerpts of the play were performed. It was an experience people wrote about and remembered for a long time.

All the leaders of the Communist Party were there and scenes from ‘Kallol’, particularly Khyber’s joining of the mutiny, were played out. Slogans, greetings and the sheer transformation of the space into a people’s space was what we all remembered. Kanhaiya, Omar and Anirban’s speeches created the same visceral excitement in us.

Need More Egalitarian Society

In conclusion, to answer the question I have raised, what makes the communist feel optimistic amidst a population which embraces neo-liberalism and acts as tacit supporters through general cynicism?

Did the communists of India ever really envisage a socialist revolution, or did they imagine of a more active democratic practice of inclusion and egalitarianism? Was it a dream of seeing a society where the middle class did not adopt the privileged position given to them and to be a more inclusive society? Do our idealistic students still hold onto the dream?

If they do, we can also dare to dream. My father told me his dream, one of a democratic society based on egalitarianism. Our students are dreaming the same dream so why can we not join them?

The future gives the ‘red salute’ to the past. Red Salute to a seditious playwright, director, actor and father, Utpal Dutt, on his birthday.

(Bishnupriya Dutt is a Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies, at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU)

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17. BRAZIL: OVERTHROWING DILMA ROUSSEFF - IT’S CLASS WAR, AND THEIR CLASS IS WINNING
by Alfredo Saad Filho
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(Brasil Wire, March 22, 2016)

The Judicial/Mediatic coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for 50 years.

Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.

Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was re-elected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a difference of 3.5 million votes.

Dilma’s second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and US-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers’ Party) was bad news for the opposition, among other reasons because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silva could return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010 and, when he left office, his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazilian history. This threat of continuity suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. They immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.

Dilma inherited from Lula a booming economy. Alongside China and other middle-income countries, Brazil bounced back vigorously after the global crisis. GDP expanded by 7.5 per cent in 2010, the fastest rate in decades, and Lula’s hybrid neoliberal-neodevelopmental economic policies seemed to have hit the perfect balance: sufficiently orthodox to enjoy the confidence of large sections of the internal bourgeoisie and the formal and informal working class, and heterodox enough to deliver the greatest redistribution of income and privilege in Brazil’s recorded history. For example, the real minimum wage rose by 70 per cent and 21 million (mostly low-paid) jobs were created in the 2000s. Social provision increased significantly, including the world-famous Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer programme, and the Government supported a dramatic expansion of higher education, including quotas for blacks and state school pupils. For the first time, the poor could access education as well as income and bank loans. They proceeded to study, earn and borrow, and to occupy spaces, literally, previously the preserve of the upper-middle class: airports, shopping malls, banks, private health facilities and roads, with the latter clogged up by cheap cars purchased on 72 easy payments. The Government enjoyed a comfortable majority in a highly fragmented Congress, and Lula’s legendary political skills managed to keep most of the political elite on side.

Then everything started to go wrong. Dilma Rousseff was chosen by Lula as his successor. She was a steady pair of hands and a competent manager and enforcer. She was also the most left-wing President of Brazil since João Goulart, who was overthrown by a military coup in 1964. However, she had no political track record and, it will soon become evident, lacked essential qualities for the job.

Once elected, Dilma shifted economic policies further away from neoliberalism. The Government intervened in several sectors seeking to promote investment and output, and put intense pressure on the financial system to reduce interest rates, which lowered credit costs and the Government’s debt service, releasing funds for consumption and investment. A virtuous circle of growth and distribution seemed possible. Unfortunately, the Government miscalculated the lasting impact of the global crisis. The US and European economies stagnated, China’s growth faltered, and the so-called commodity super-cycle vanished. Brazil’s current account was ruined. Even worse, the US, UK, Japan and the Eurozone introduced quantitative easing policies that led to massive capital outflows towards middle-income countries. Brazil faced a tsunami of foreign exchange, that overvalued the currency and bred deindustrialisation. Economic growth rates fell precipitously.

The Government doubled its interventionism through public investment, subsidised loans and tax rebates, which ravaged the public accounts. Their frantic and seemingly random interventionism scared away the internal bourgeoisie: local magnates were content to run Government through the Workers’ Party, but would not be managed by a former political prisoner who overtly despised them. And her antipathy was not only resesrved for the capitalists: the President had little inclination to speak to social movements, left organisations, lobbies, allied parties, elected politicians, or her own ministers. The economy stalled and Dilma’s political alliances shrank, in a fast-moving dance of destruction. The neoliberal opposition scented blood.

For years, the opposition to the PT had been rudderless. The PSDB had nothing appealing to offer while, as is traditional in Brazil, most other parties were gangs of bandits extorting the Government for selfish gain. The situation was so desperate that the mainstream media overtly took the mantle of opposition, driving the anti-PT agenda and literally instructing politicians what to do next. In the meantime, the radical left remained small and relatively powerless. It was despised by the hegemonic ambitions of the PT.

The confluence of dissatisfactions became an irresistible force in 2013. The mainstream media is rabidly neoliberal and utterly ruthless: it is as if Fox News and its clones dominated the entire US media, including all TV chains and the main newspapers. The upper-middle class was their obliging target, as they had economic, social and political reasons to be unhappy. Upper-middle class jobs were declining, with 4.3 million posts paying between 5 and 10 minimum wages vanishing in the 2000s. In the meantime, the bourgeoisie was doing well, and the poor advanced fast: even domestic servants got labour rights. The upper-middle class felt squeezed economically, and excluded from their privileged spaces. It was also dislocated from the state. Since Lula’s election, the state bureaucracy had been populated by thousands of cadres appointed by the PT and the left, to the detriment of ‘better-educated’, whiter and, presumably, more deserving upper-middle class competitors. Mass demonstrations erupted for the first time in June 2013, triggered by left-wing opposition against a bus fare increase in São Paulo. Those demonstrations were fanned by the media and captured by the upper middle-class and the right, and they shook the Government – but, clearly, not enough to motivate them to save themselves. The demonstrations returned two years later. And then in 2016.

Now, reader, follow this. After the decimation of the state apparatus by the pre-Lula neoliberal administrations, the PT sought to rebuild selected areas of the bureaucracy. Among them, for reasons that Lula may soon have plenty of time to review and to regret, the Federal Police and the Federal Prosecution Office (FPO). In addition, for overtly ‘democratic’ reasons, but more likely related to corporatism and capacity to make media-friendly noises, the Federal Police and the FPO were granted inordinate autonomy; the former through mismanagement, while the latter has become the fourth power in the Republic, separate from – and checking – the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The abundance of qualified jobseekers led to the colonisation of these well-paying jobs by upper-middle class cadres. They were now in a constitutionally secure position, and could chew the hand that had fed them, while loudly demanding, through the media, additional resources to maul the rest of the PT’s body.

Corruption was the ideal pretext. Since it lost the first democratic presidential elections, in 1989, the PT moved steadily towards the political centre. In order to lure the upper-middle class and the internal bourgeoisie, the PT neutralised or expelled the party’s left wing, disarmed the trade unions and social movements, signed up to the neoliberal economic policies pursued by the previous administration, and imposed a dour conformity that killed off any alternative leadership. Only Lula’s sun can shine in the party; everything else was incinerated. This strategy was eventually successful and, in 2002, ‘Little Lula Peace and Love’ was elected President. (I kid you not, reader: this was one of his campaign slogans.)

For years the PT had thrived in opposition as the only honest political party in Brazil. This strategy worked, but it contained a lethal contradiction: in order to win expensive elections, manage the Executive and build a workable majority in Congress, the PT would have to get its hands dirty. There is no other way to ‘do’ politics in Brazilian ‘democracy’.

We only need one more element, and our mixture will be ready to combust. Petrobras is Brazil’s largest corporation and one of the world’s largest oil companies. The firm has considerable technical and economic capacity, and it was responsible for the discovery, in 2006, of gigantic ‘pre-salt’ deep sea oilfields hundreds of miles from the Brazilian coast. Dilma Rousseff, as Lula’s Minister of Mines and Energy, was responsible for handling exploration contracts in these areas including large privileges for Petrobras. The enabling legislation was vigorously opposed by PSDB, the media, the oil majors and the US Government.

In 2014, Sergio Moro, a previously unknown judge in Curitiba, a Southern state capital, started investigating a currency dealer involved in tax evasion. This case eventually spiralled into a deadly threat against Dilma Rousseff’s Government. Judge Moro is good-looking, well-educated, white and well-paid. He is also very close to the PSDB. His Lavajato (Carwash) operation unveiled an extraordinary tale of large-scale bribery, plunder of public assets and funding for all major political parties, centred on the relationship between Petrobras and some of its main suppliers – precisely the stalwarts of the PT in the oil, shipbuiding and construction industries. It was the perfect combination, at the right time. Judge Moro’s cause was picked up by the media, and he obligingly steered it to inflict maximum damage on the PT, while shielding the other parties. Politicians connected to the PT and some of Brazil’s wealthiest businessmen were summarily jailed, and would remain locked up until they agreed a plea bargain implicating others. A new phase of Lavajato would ensnare them, and so on. The operation is now in its 26th phase; many have already collaborated, and those who refused to do so have received long prison sentences, to coerce them back into line while their appeals are pending. The media turned Judge Moro into a hero; he can do no wrong, and attempts to contest his sprawling powers are met with derision or worse. He is now the most powerful person in the Republic, above Dilma, Lula, the speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate (both sinking in corruption and other scandals), and even the Supreme Court Justices, who have either been silenced or are quietly supportive of Moro’s crusade.

Petrobras has been paralysed by the scandal, bringing down the entire oil chain. Private investment has collapsed because of political uncertainty and the politically-driven investment strike against Dilma’s Government. Congress has turned against the Government, and the Judiciary is overwhelmingly hostile. After years of sniping, the media has been delighted to see Lula fall under the Lavajato juggernaut, even if the allegations are often far-fetched: does he actually own a beach-side apartment that his family does not use, is that small farm really his, who paid for the lake and the mobile phone masts nearby, and how about those pedalos? No matter: in a display of bravado and power, Moro even detained Lula for questioning on 4 March. He was taken to São Paulo airport and would have been flown to Curitiba, but the Judge’s plan was halted by fear of the political fallout. Lula was questioned at the airport, then released. He was livid.

In order to shore up her crumbling administration and protect Lula from prosecution, Dilma Rousseff appointed Lula her Chief of Staff (the President’s Chief of Staff has ministerial status and can be prosecuted only by the Supreme Court). The right-wing conspiracy went into overdrive. Moro (illegally) released the (illegal) recording of a conversation between President Dilma and Lula, pertaining to his investiture. Once suitably misinterpreted, their dialogue was presented as ‘proof’ of a conspiracy to protect Lula from Moro’s determination to jail him. Large right-wing upper-middle class masses poured into the streets, furiously, on 13 March. Five days later, the left responded with not quite as large demonstrations of its own against the unfolding coup. In the meantime, Lula’s appointment was suspended by a judicial measure, then restored, then suspended again. The case is now in the Supreme Court. At the moment, he is not a Minister, and his head is posed above the block. Moro can arrest him at short notice.

Why is this a coup? Because, despite aggressive scrutiny no Presidential crime warranting impeachment proceedings has emerged. Nevertheless, the political right has thrown the kitchen sink at Dilma Rousseff. They rejected the outcome of the 2014 elections and appealed against her alleged campaign finance violations, which would remove from power both Dilma and Vice-President Michel Temer, now the effective leader of the impeachment drive (and strangely enough, this case has been parked). The right simultaneously started impeachment procedures in Congress. The media has attacked the Government viciously, neoliberal economists ‘impartially’ beg for a new administration ‘to restore market confidence’, and the right will resort to street violence as necessary. Finally, the judicial charade against the PT has broken all the rules of legality, yet it is cheered on by the media, the right and even by the Supreme Court Justices.

Yet… the coup de grâce is taking a long time coming. In the olden days, the military would have already moved in. Today, the Brazilian military are defined more by their nationalism (a danger to the neoliberal onslaught) than by their right-wing faith and, anyway, the Soviet Union is no more. Under neoliberalism, coups d’état must follow legal niceties, as was shown in Honduras, in 2009, and in Paraguay, in 2012.

Brazil is likely to join their company, but not just now: large sections of capital want to restore the hegemony of neoliberalism; those who once supported the PT’s national development strategy have fallen into line; the media is howling so loudly it has become impossible to think clearly, and most of the upper-middle class has descended into a fascist odium for the PT, the left, the poor, and blacks. Their disorderly hatred has become so intense that even PSDB politicians are booed in anti-Government demonstrations. And, despite the relentless attack, the left remains reasonably strong, as was demonstrated on 18th March. The right and the elite are powerful and ruthless – but they are also afraid of the consequences of their own daring.

There is no simple resolution to the political, economic and social crises in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff has lost political support and the confidence of capital, and she is likely to be removed from office in the coming days. However, attempts to imprison Lula could have unpredictable implications and, even if Dilma and Lula are struck off the political map, a renewed neoliberal hegemony cannot automatically restore political stability or economic growth, nor secure the social prominence that the upper-middle class craves. Despite strong media support for the impending coup, the PT, other left parties and many radical social movements remain strong. Further escalation is inevitable. Watch this space.


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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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