FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

Power to the Powerless- Reservation is the Key

The Holy Quran describes them as ‘Mustazefeen’ (the weakend), Gandhi called them Daridranarayan, Franz Fanon, the Ideologue of the Third called them ‘the wretched of the earth’, the Constitution which emphasizes the principles of Equality and Justice in its Preamble and lays great emphasis on decentralization of power calls them ‘the weaker section’. Since 1950 all political parties have adopted the slogan of Power to the Powerless, though it is difficult to believe that those who are in power, rightfully or otherwise, shall ever agree to share power with the powerless. The Constitution also provides a guideline for uplifting the weaker sections and the backward classes. But with political awakening, the once powerless masses armed with voting rights and progressing inch by inch, shall one day achieve the goals of egalitarianism. 

The Muslims, as a community, are almost at the bottom of the ladder but they are not the only deprived, marginalized and powerless group in the Indian society.

            For the first time, the Report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector published in 2007 quantified the poverty level of various social groups.  It divides the people among Extremely Poor, Poor, Marginally Poor and Vulnerable as well as two higher income groups, namely Middle Income and High Income.  In 2004-05 the first group namely the Poor formed  76.7% of the people as a whole.  However, social analysis brought out that 87.8% of SC/STs and 84.5% of the Muslims fell in this category.  Non-Hindu OBCs were not far behind with 79.9% but all others were way up with 54.8%. In 2004, the Muslim percentage had somewhat improved, but it still remained the second poorest social group in the country. 

Adult franchise was introduced in 1950 which made all citizens equal without any distinction on the basis of religion or caste or region or race or language and gave them the first taste of power. But 60 years have lapsed, over 75% of the people remain poor, largely illiterate, hungry and shelterless and most of the time without any regular income. They have a consumption level of less than Rs.20 per day.  Most of them sleep on empty stomachs.  As a sovereign people they have a share in the assets and resources of the nation but under our present system they have no real control on their future as they do not have any other power except their right to a vote once in five years; they have no control on the administration, almost no access to the Government or Judiciary, they have no hand in planning their destiny.  Indeed, under our political system the Government generally represents only about 20% of the voters. 

The masses do not share power; they have no sense of participation in management or administration.  Gandhiji wanted free India to be administered in a manner which would give priority attention to  the Daridranarayanan.  This is the talisman which he gave Nehru to test the correctness of the government, whether any decision it takes is going to make any difference to the life of the common man.  Gandhiji also preached against governmental extravagance and declared that whatever could not be shared with the masses was a taboo for him.  But today the Government repeats the principles but the cost of governance has gone up and up. 

The people feel that the politicians who constitute the members of the Legislature’ are running the country. In fact, it is the members of the majority party or coalition which wields power. On deeper analysis, it is not even the governments or the ministers who are really running the country.  It is the Bureaucracy.  Therefore, under any scheme worked out by the Government of the day to promote the welfare of the people whether free education or free public health service or universal employment for the rural poor, with leakage from top to bottom, finally the poor receive much less than their due.  The Government and the Bureaucracy are both controlled by the rich, namely, the Middle Income and High Income Groups. They subsidise themselves to live a life vastly and incomparably different from that of the common poor. 

This is the general picture but for historical reasons the Muslim Indians, who lag behind in educational and economic development as well as suffer from social incoherence and sectarian differences, have never received due share of the fruits of the development.  Being geographically widely dispersed roughly among 150 districts in 10 States, the existing electoral system does not give them adequate representation in the Legislatures primarily because even parties which swear by Secularism do not field them in adequate numbers, because of their ‘secular’ calculation that the vast Hindu majority will not vote for them. Thus the Muslims have been consistently under-represented in the Legislatures and therefore, in the Governments.  In addition, because of their educational backwardness and partly because of the latent Hindu hostility marked by communal bias and intolerance, they are unable to find Government employment, receive their share in development benefits as well as in flow of bank credit.  Unfortunately, the Government for reasons of its own is not prepared to face the truth and hold a Development Census every 10 years which would show whether a social group has gone up or down.

Muslims Indians largely accept their misfortune.  Unlike other groups and sub-groups which agitate for their due share, they remain silent.  Therefore, their access to the power structure, for redressal of grievances or even to the fruits of development at the lowest operational level is limited.  Their localities are deprived of basic infrastructure even primary schools,  public health facilities & roads.  Political parties chase them at the time of elections for votes but forget them later. Therefore, the Administration remains insensitive to their basic needs.

A formal analysis of the reasons which have led to their deplorable state of backwardness will establish that the political system and the electoral system are to a large extent responsible but it is beyond their capacity to force any change in the rules ofthe game.  All they can do is to represent their case to the Government and the administration which may not be sensitive to their woes but sometimes they may take token measures to assuage their feelings.

The Sachar Committee Report through scientifically compiled data and technical analysis has made it absolutely clear that the Muslim community is almost as backward as the SC/ST and more backward than all the non-Muslim OBCs. But the Sachar Committee for political reasons failed to suggest any effective remedial steps for the removal of backwardness.  They have suggested improvement in the infrastructure of some towns of Muslim concentration, some increase in the number of scholarship and educational institutions including colleges in their areas.  However, these uplift measures have their limitations.  The Government has selected some 100 districts of minority concentration, of which in about 65, the major minority community is the Muslim.  They also selected 358 towns of minority concentration.  The flaws in the plan lie in that the programme does not lay down the location of the infrastructure such as the new schools or drainage system and in total Muslim population these chosen districts or towns does not cover more than 35% of the total Muslim population of the country. This means that measures will leave the majority of the community out in the cold.  Similarly, it has been suggested that 15% of the plan allocations for social development should be earmarked across the board for Muslims.  But, this is feasible only in districts/panchayats where they constitute 15% or more of the population.  In a vast majority of the cases they have smaller proportion and are therefore left out.  And, where they exceed 15%, the local bureaucracy would limit the Muslims to 15%.

The Mishra Commission whose Report is yet to be tabled in the Parliament has gone far beyond the Sachar Committee. That is the reason why it remains frozen to date.  It has reaffirmed the constitutionality of reservation for a backward religious group and recommended that 15% of the Government jobs as well as admission to higher education should be reserved for the minorities, out of which 10% should be exclusively for the Muslims who constitute nearly 2/3rd of the religious minorities in the country. The Muslim under-representation in the Bureaucracy, in the Armed Forces, the Police Force as well as the Central Paramilitary Forces would have been covered. The Mishra Commission also recommended the induction of Muslim and Christian Dalits in the SC Lists. But in an election year the Government is apprehensive of antagonizing the Hindu voters and in particular of providing material to the Sangh Parivar to intensify their charge against the Government of building up a Muslim vote bank. So, the Mishra Report, which could have changed the situation gathers dust.

 For Reservation in the legislatures for a minority, a Constitutional amendment is a must.  But otherwise, Muslims should enjoy the privilege of reservation, with the same conditions and exceptions as in the case of other backward groups.  This is essentially a matter of political will.

In view of the long standing prejudice against the Muslim community accentuated by the establishment of Pakistan the Muslim community’s long struggle to achieve its constitutional and human rights calls for unity, organization and sacrifice, as well as for cooperation with Dalits, and OBCs and even with the poor sections of the higher castes.  In fact, Islamic concept of ‘adl’ demands hat all those whatever be their caste or religion who are unable to lead a life of dignity should be assisted by the State to enter the mainstream and reap the benefits of developments.

 It is not necessary that the Muslims form a political party of their own but they make experiment with secular parties whose doors are open and which is prepared to join hands with other parties with similar goals which represent Dalits or  OBCs.  Thus the Muslims must realize that the remedy to the situation lies only up to a point within their own hands but beyond the community it lies in the hands of the understanding and cooperation with all those who are fighting for their share in the assets and governance of the country.

The only panacea for powerlessness is political empowerment. Through its due representation in the legislatures, it can find an effective platform to place its grievances as well as suggestions before the government even if it does not form part of the ruling alliance. Through Legislatures it can also place its case before the nation and correct misinformation and misrepresentation in the media as well as draw the attention of the civil society to the bias and discrimination that it is facing in every walk of life at every step.

In 1947, the Community more or less buried the Indian Union Muslim League and took shelter under the umbrella of the Indian National Congress, which not only wrote a secular Constitution but promised equal and non-discriminatory treatment. However, by 1971, the  Community began to feel that neither the Congress nor other political parties which also spoke of secularism had done the minimum feasible for their uplift and they had steadily gone down not only politically but also economically and socially. Since then the idea of forming an all India Muslim Party has been on their mind. I doubt even if this will win them more seats in the Legislature under the existing system but it is certain that it will further vitiate the communal environment; it may even cause defeat of secular forces by the BJP.

In the meantime, the Community has been experimenting with various political alternatives on a regional, if not on a national scale. It adopted various emerging regional leaders as their leaders beginning from Jyoti Basu, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav  and supported their candidates. But when they formed governments, they failed to fulfill their promises. Then they decided not to support a particular secular party on national or state basis but the most winnable candidates of a secular party on a constituency-by-constituency basis. They found that non-Muslim MLAs and MPs elected with their support hardly ever raised their voices in time of distress. The Community experimented briefly with establishing a  secular party of its own with Muslim leaders in the driving seat. This did not work because the primary basis of unity of all Muslim at the constituency level was not available as they were scattered among secular parties as well as on sectarian and caste lines.

The essence of the problem is that the Community has failed to nurse, produce and project one or more Muslim leaders of national stature whose word would count. Many Muslims are also divided between those who wish to keep away from elections and those who wish to treat all parties, secular and anti-secular, equally.

The confusion has added to their disenchantment with politics and led them into a political ghetto. There is no sign of Muslim consolidation or of the much publicized possibility of alliance with the Hindu OBC’s, SCs and STs. The game is always the same in the first-past-the-poll-system. The system acts against the interest of the Muslim minority. No party has every put up Muslim candidates in general or state elections in proportion to their population and all legislatures as a rule never had more than 50% of their due representation.

Every political party entering the arena hopes to attract Muslim support with some promises in its manifesto, plus a little rhetoric. But their objective is to keep the Muslims divided and keep those who enter the Legislatures on their tickets under firm control. The result is that today the Muslims are voiceless, even urgent question relating to the Community are not raised in the Legislature, session after session.

The second essential truth is that no party whether its ideology has the political will to deal honestly with the problems facing the Community. The few show-pieces they have may speak a few words. They have no say on their parties.

The Community has also tried the mechanism of internal consultation. The AIMMM which was established in the wake of wide spread communal violence in north India never took a political shape. Many splinter groups appeared, some disassociated from the Mushawarat. Political adventurers entered the field with subterranean links with one party or the other; changing sides in every election, sometimes putting up candidates against money received from the potential winner for as many rotes as they could divert.

In the 90s after the Demolition of the Babri Masjid some leading Muslim organizations like the Mushawarat, the JIH, the Milli Council, THE aimplb and the JUH embarked upon the experiment on the eve of national elections to present common Charter of Aspirations to leading secular parties for inclusion in their MiniFESTOS, work out List of Muslim Winnable Constituencies, and demand selection of acceptable Muslim candidates. In the next stage, with some other likeminded groups they visited such constituencies to sound the Muslim public opinion about potential candidates and possible parties. Sometimes some demands were included in the manifesto but the party in power ignored them.

Today the Muslims have reached another existential crisis. In the run up to terrorist blast they live in a state of siege, they have lost hope, they have given up the will for struggle, the capacity for organization and suffering for a common cause. In a country of continental dimensions, which is moving forward economically, Hindu Communalism has penetrated every fibre  of national life. The upper classes are communalised. Only when a major disaster overtakes them the Muslims may receive some taken attention but innumerable local issues which arise at every step cry for remedial measures. But no one feels their pain.

So, what is the way towards empowerment? It has been suggested that the Muslims may boycott elections. But fresh electoral equations will be formed by omitting them. It has also been suggested that the Muslims may  choose one major political party and inundate it with their presence but no party can afford to depend upon Muslim support alone and in the game of communal calculation no party shall do justice to the Muslim grievances. In the long term at least the Muslim elite, academicians and intellectuals should press for political and economic reforms for a truly representative democracy for all other deprived sections but this will take time. Who has the patience for a long and sustained struggle? In the meantime the Muslim continue to be led by local religious leaders and small-time operators who  will always be ready for a deal through the back door.

In the meantime, the  community is sinking into the wells of frustration. The history of the Freedom Movement tells us that the Muslims have little patience for day-to-day political activities but they enter the arena when they have a clear objective before them.

Today the most pressing issue before the Community is the question of Reservation. To reenergize themselves, it can pursue a one point programme with all the strength it can muster and all the support it can garner from other deprived groups. In my view, the Community should relate its stance in the coming general election solely to the question of Reservation. It should vote only for a party which put Reservation on the top of its agenda. In case of conflict between more than one parties, it should vote at constituency level, for the most winnable candidate, forgetting all other social and political considerations. Linked with the question of Reservation are demands for electoral reform for unemployment allowance for all unemployed matriculates and graduates, for universal and quality school education up to higher secondary level, for small states and decentralization of power, for of planning from below and for execution of central and state  social development scheme at the Panchayat level.

Nothing has worked. Reservation, recommended for the first time by a National Commission headed by a former Chief Justice of India and increasingly supported by several political parties like SP, RJD, DMK, LJP and JD(S) may prove to be a panacea for this exhausted Community. It has no one to wipe its tears.

New Delhi

1 October, 2008                                     

DEMOCRACY

On The Persistent Political Under-Representation of Muslims In India

Rajeev Bhargava,  Professor and Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Developing Society, Dehli.

This Paper is divided into three sections. In the first section I provide a brief historical overview of Hindu-Muslim relations in India and of the condition of Indian Muslims today. I conclude by claiming that Indian Muslims are a marginalized minority who have been persistently underrepresented in political institutions, particularly in the Indian Parliament.

In the second section, I examine the case for political representation for Muslims. This was a much debated issue in pre-independent India. It was debated with subtlety and in considerable detail in the Constituent Assembly debates on the Indian constitution. However, with the partition of the country and the formation of the separate state of Pakistan, all debate on the political representation of Muslims ceased. I examine the merits and demerits of the case for the political representation of Indian Muslims. I also attempt a brief explanation of why this issue has virtually disappeared from the public arena in India. I conclude in the section that although political representation of Muslims qua Muslims is desirable, it is still unfeasible in the prevailing situation in India. I would support the recommendation to the Indian State that political rights not to be granted to any religious community.If political theory was to remain a handmaiden of state policy, then the matter ends right here.

However, since I believe that political theory must think for the long run and design just institutions and policies for the future, and since, there is, I claim, no principled objection to the political representation of Muslims, in the third and final section I briefly outline which of the several electoral mechanisms are best suited to ensure fair political representation for Muslims in the future. In my view, the principle of fair political representation for Indian Muslims is best fulfilled by a complex I acknowledge my debt to Jaby Mathew, Ephril and Anthony Stephen for research assistance in writing this paper. mechanism consisting of preferential voting in multi-member constituencies with intra-party quotas in proportion to the overall population of Muslims in the country.

Allow me to sum up the salient points of this debate. First, there are ascriptive communities in any society and some of these have the status of more or less permanent minorities. Second, the interests of these minorities must be safeguarded. Third, these interests must be articulated in a political forum and therefore they must have an effective voice in the deliberations of the legislature. Fourth, in a representative democracy this can be done by representatives of the community. Thus, some form of descriptive representation, one designed to constitute an assembly that mirrors the relevant ascriptive features of the community in question, is required for meaningful political inclusion, to overcome the possible tyranny of the majority and the consequent alienation and marginalisation of minority communities. Inclusion in the political process is important for the legitimacy of decisions arrived through the process. Even if a decision goes against the interests of the minority, the chances are that they would be gracefully accepted if the process Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. III, May 1, 1947. Mahavir Tyagi (1899- 1980) was an Indian freedom fighter and a parliamentarian from the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. He was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India. 102 1 L. & ETHICS HUM. RTS. (2007) Rajeev Bhargava through which they were made had included them in a meaningful way and given them an effective voice. The Congress rejected generalized descriptive representation, not restricted descriptive representation. There were two main arguments against the specific mechanism for descriptive representation. First, they objected to the idea that Muslims alone can represent members of their community. Second, they were worried about democratic accountability. Third, that descriptive representation does not guarantee substantive representation. In other words, it is entirely possible that a Muslim represents Muslims not just inadequately but badly. Fourth, they were worried that they would sharpen communal difference to a dangerous extent and prevent the development of a healthy national life. Eventually, in the aftermath of the violence during the partition of India, this fourth reason was decisive and became the basis for the rejection not only of separate electorates but of any kind of political self-representation of Muslims.

B. OBJECTIONS TO GROUP-BASED POLITICAL

REPRESENTATION IN INDIA TODAY

This issue, seven possible arguments against group-representation for Muslims that still might be doing the rounds in India. I say this with some uncertainty because there is virtual silence over this issue in the public sphere. The benefits of group representation that would accrue to Muslims and the costs they continue to bear for remaining politically under-represented are hardly ever discussed.

The first is the standard liberal-individualist argument against group representation more generally. This argument comes in two versions. The first version is motivated by a genuine concern that any community specific representation undermines the freedom and autonomy of individual citizens. The second is motivated by purely instrumental reasons and is deployed ironically by right-wing, communal Hindu forces which claim that any such right is a privilege granted to one group and therefore undermines inter-group equality. A second objection is that community-specific political representation is valid in the case of historically oppressed groups, i.e., groups which have faced systematic discrimination intergenerationally, over a long period of time. It is not valid in the case of marginalized groups. Proponents of this argument accept that some remedial measures should be undertaken to rectify this injustice.

This objection runs into another third one offered by secularists. For most Indian secularists, any group representation is permissible as long as religion is not the principal criterion of individuating groups. Any segmentation or classification of society along religious lines, it is claimed, contravenes the secular fabric of society. Political recognition to religion-based communities grossly violates the principles of political secularism. Yet another fourth objection is that the demand for community-specific political representation is pressed only by a fringe group with nostalgia for  pre-partition politics. It is not preferred by a majority of Muslims who seek an alliance, if not merger with the subaltern classes. A good system of political representation must respect the preferences of its members.

A fifth objection claims that group representation for minority communities makes the majority unaccountable to the minorities. continues to inhabit the political landscape. Some opponents of group representation believe that all arguments which were valid and sound against separate electorates hold equally well for any kind of group representation. Thus, they argue that once Muslims begin to represent themselves, non-Muslims will feel that they are no longer accountable to the Muslims. They may even take decisions that adversely affect Muslims. Thus, a measure that looks good on paper may lead to another form of majoritarianism and to the ghettoization of the minorities. Muslims self-representation might lead to their exclusion.

Another sixth argument is grounded in the value of national unity. Political recognition to religious communities is reminiscent of the demand for separate electorates which, so the argument goes, was a major contributory factor to the partition of India. Similar demands today will only lead to the polarization of Indian society and also possibly to its balkanization.

Focuses on the adverse impact of religion based political representation. On this view, such a measure is self-defeating for Muslims. It is selfdefeating because it is bound to generate a “communal backlash” and revive a majority-minority syndrome. Such a syndrome in the present context in which Muslims lack the capacity to fight back is bound to lead to a vicious majoritarianism that would be perceived to be legitimate by a majority of Hindus. Any demand for group representation of Muslims, no matter how correct in principle, is imprudent and should be abandoned.

Though the political self-representation of Muslims does not necessarily violate liberal, democratic, or secular principles, it is not prudent to have it in the present context in India. The political self-representation of Muslims is desirable because it ensures maximum political inclusion and a fairer system of representation, yet it is not feasible in India today.

A PROPOSAL FOR THE FUTURE

If political theory remained a prisoner of the current context, was exclusively policy-oriented or worse: was a mere tool in the service of the state, then this conclusion would be the end of the matter. However, political theory works for the long run. It must embody a vision of the future. It should probably not recommend anything that goes against the grain of a plausible moral psychology of the society in question but nor, if there are morally objectionable features in a society, should it leave things entirely as they are, particularly when social situations are replete with injustice. I envisage a situation in which conditions are ripe for the introduction of special representation rights for Muslims. The only crucial and pertinent question then is what precise form this must take.

In India, for reasons already outlined above, separate electorates do not enjoy popular legitimacy. The most familiar strategy for enhancing political representation of any group is to reserve seats in the Parliament. Such reserved seats based on joint electorates are provided for the former “untouchables” (SC) and for the indigenous people (ST). Should there be similar reservation for Muslims? reservations have several problems (and even then provisions for such reservation for SC’s and ST’s exist in India despite these problems.) First, they essentialize. Second, they ignore the possible fluidity in a person’s identity. Third, reservations impose a particular group identity on individuals. This too undermines individual freedom and autonomy. Finally, in societies where past differences have turned into bitter conflicts, a policy of reservation which freezes differences has a propensity to encourage the growth of further cleavages and to permanently entrench inter-community conflict. What holds true for reservations is also true for gerrymandering, i.e., community conscious districting.

At any rate, Muslims in India are mostly dispersed so that any attempt at gerrymandering is unlikely to generate Muslim majority constituencies.

What then is the most appropriate mechanism for Muslim selfrepresentation in the Legislatures? Recall that any mechanism must remain faithful to the following four values: (a) it must fulfill the legitimate political demands of groups to have fair representation, to have a powerful voice in the deliberative process; (b) as much as possible, it should not violate individual autonomy; (c) Muslims retain their choice to be represented by non-Muslims; (d) although there is a presumption that Muslims share the same life conditions and life prospects and therefore the same interests, this cannot be an immutable assumption. There must therefore be some space for the idea that shared experience and participation in the same practices give a practical knowledge to people of each others interests, regardless of their ascriptive characteristics. If all these conditions are to be met, the following recommendation may be most appropriate in the Indian context.

(1) Multimember constituencies;64

(2) Proportional representation in the form of preference                           voting; 65

(3) Intra-party quotas in proportion to population;

(4) The identification by the election commission of the constituencies where intra-party quotas are to be allotted. My view is that the proportion of Muslims in the legislature should reflect their proportion in the population but only if Muslims choose to do so. What is grossly unfair is their under-representation by virtue of the circumstances created in the absence of procedures of fair group representation.

With the assistance of intra-party quotas proportional to the population, we ensure that parties field at least some candidates from among Muslims. Intra-party quotas guarantee that Muslims have at least the opportunity to select someone from their own community, one that they might use or forgo. But what if parties fill this quota by fielding Muslims in those constituencies where there is every likelihood of their losing? This possibility is prevented by (1) and (4).

(4) is necessary to ensure that parties do not field Muslim candidates where they are bound to lose. An impartial body such as the election ommission must determine those constituencies where parties are required to field Muslim candidates.. Multi-member constituencies create an incentive for parties to run Muslim candidates.

By (2), preference voting, the system ensures that Muslim can choose between a Muslim or a non- Muslim candidate. So, this proposal rejects the idea that Muslims must select a fixed number of legislators from their own community. (4) prevents the possibility of system being abused by parties who are hell bent on ignoring the interests of minorities. All four together helps us combine values of fair group representation and individual autonomy.

Shahabuddin’s Letter to Prof. Rajeev Bhargava, 22 May, 2008

I have gone through your article on persistent political under-representation of Muslims in India in Alpjan Quarterly Vol. (1 & II).

I find your approach largely sympathetic towards the objective of securing due recognition and adequate representation of Muslims community in the legislatures. I however, find that your proposal is too complex and complicated making it impracticable. It will only delay the advent of adequate Muslim representation. If the exclusion of Muslim Indians from the political structure is regarded as a detraction from the quality of Indian democracy, while all sensible people of the country consider universal inclusion of all social groups as legitimate and desirable, some simpler way must be found, as in the case of the SC/ST.

The ground reality is that the Muslim Indians have moved far from their pre-partition insistence on separate electorate over-representation and parity and now seek at least proportional representation. But, in the existing electoral system with joint electorate, because of their wide dispersal, even Muslim-sympathetic parties do not field adequate number of Muslim candidates from Muslim-winnable constituencies.

 Secondly, the Muslim Indians have never voted en bloc for any party and therefore, even in Muslim concentration seats, anti-secular or ultra right Hindu parties come through.

Another ground reality is that Muslim masses are increasingly alienated from the present system, not only because of under-representation but more by the fact that even those who get party tickets in their name and are elected with their support do not pursue their legitimate grievances in the legislatures or with the governments. They are more royalist than the king, generally more loyal to their parties than to the community, as they are always apprehensive that in the next election they may be refused party tickets, if they take up an aspiration of the Muslim community.

I do not see, as Jawed Alam does, an increasing schism between the Muslim ‘elite’ and the Muslim masses. Within the Muslim community which is a deprived community on the whole (Sachar finds them more backward than non-Muslim OBC’s), they are divided between less deprived and more deprived sections, notwithstanding the few in senior position who can be counted on fingertips. 

Naturally, like every conscious social group/sub-group they will also look critically at the party lists and will generally vote for a party whose list they have been nationally or regionally or sub-regionally adequately represented.

I am glad that a political scientist or your stature has applied his mind to this problem. In 1994, I had organized a National Seminar on this question but it had no academic pretensions. Of late, through the

All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat we have been seeking ways of using the existing party and electoral systems to enhance Muslim representation in the legislatures. This has succeeded to some extent through ‘tactical voting’. For example, the UP Assembly elected in 2007 has the highest ever number of Muslim MLAs. It is another matter that many of them are loyal to their political masters or do not have political stature or intellectual ability or integrity to press for the redressal of the genuine grievances of their community. But next time, the community will punish those who do not come up to their expectation. As you know, a churning is taking place in all social groups including constitutional conglomerates like OBC, SC and ST and, I dare say, the Muslim minority.

I would like to come and discuss the question with you at your convenience. I would be grateful if you would kindly let me know if and when I can see you.

PM’s Speech on Independence Day  August 15, 2008 (Extracts)

We want every section of our society to get access to education. Every child belonging to a family of SC, ST, OBC and all Minorities, every single child, boy or girl, must have access to modern education.  Schemes for pre-matric and post-matric scholarships for children hailing from SC, ST, OBC and Minority families are being implemented. Special scholarships for meritorious students from SC, ST, OBC and Minority families have also been launched. National merit-cum-means scholarships for children hailing from economically weakers sections  have also been approved.

I am happy to say that we are sincerely implementing most of the recommendations of the Justice Sachar Committee Report on social, economic and educational empowerment of our Muslim community.

India will be transformed only when every Indian is literate, well fed, healthy and can secure gainful employment. I want to see a modern India, imbued by a scientific temper, where the benefits of modern knowledge flow to all sections of society.

NATIONALISM.

Both Tagore & Gandhi had Reservations on Nationalism

Saba Naqvi, Editor Outlook

Nationalism always invokes some contradictory emotions. Take George Orwell’s essay, Notes on Nationalism, for instance. It’s a harsh critique where he writes that “as nearly as always, no nationalist ever thinks, talks or writes about anything except the superiority of his own unit”.

In a country with far more diversities than England, it is perhaps instructive to examine the intellectual evolution of a romantic idealist like Rabindranath Tagore. The author of our national anthem went from being a nationalist to a universalist in his later years. In his slim book, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism , sociologist Ashis Nandy has found Tagore to be a “dissenter of nationalist ideology” for whom “nationalism itself became gradually illegitimate”. At one point, Tagore stated that “India trying to build a nation is like Switzerland trying to build a navy”.

Even Gandhiji had reservations about European-style, armed nationalism which he saw as being no different from imperialism. The dilemma about a commitment to the nation deteriorating into crude chest-thumping or jingoism that targets the other is profound, and has engaged many thinkers across the world. It is certainly more complex and relevant in the Indian context. At the psychological level too, the dilemma could be greater in the Indian psyche. There are, after all, two contradictory streaks in Hinduism. There is a deep commitment to the land referred to as Bharat (the term ‘Hindustan’ or ‘land of the Hindus’ was first used by travellers from the Muslim world). Yet, there is also a great universalism in Hindu philosophy. Even the icon of the Hindu Right, Atal Behari Vajpayee, repeatedly falls back on “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (all the world is one family).

Meanwhile, there is the straightforward liberal view that too much of nationalism is actually “unhealthy, intellectually stifling”. Jingoism gives satisfaction to its practitioners when it targets, defeats or undermines others. Ultimately, it’s a negative emotion, many liberals would argue. Ashutosh Varshney, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, gives an explanation for liberal ambiguity. Liberals, he says, have always had a complex relationship with nationalism primarily because they are not only committed to country but also to individual rights and freedoms. “It is the communitarians who don’t feel such tensions. For them, the community is always more important than the individuals who comprise it,” he says.

Which is why liberalism is such a hard philosophy to follow. In professions like journalism, where cynicism with the national state of affairs is deep-rooted, there is a certain irreverence that often creeps in when discussing what may pass for patriotic posturing. Like the joke about winning cricket matches creating delusions of Indian greatness.

But nationalism isn’t really about medals or winning cricket matches. It’s about a larger, hard-to-describe commitment to the watan, the janmabhoomi or simply “my native place”.

It is about the comforting familiarity of our villages or small towns, it’s the emotion that tugs at our hearts when we hear an old patriotic song, the respect our children show when they stand up as the national anthem is played. In spite of ourselves, we have become a nation. The poor and marginalised obviously cannot celebrate a state that often appears to have forgotten them. But the middle classes, across states, linguistic barriers, caste and community do indeed celebrate the Indian nation.

As we approach the 61st independence day, some thoughts on those not privy to the global dream. As Union minister and author Mani Shankar Aiyar says, “We have achieved a great deal of self-confidence but also lost so much...we now find the 836 million poor Indians a mere distraction. We are too busy counting Indian millionaires.” Aiyar’s credentials as a Congressman don’t stop him from making a scathing critique of the current state of affairs: “Gandhiji used to say, when in doubt, summon the poorest Indian. Now politicians and policymakers summon the richest millionaire. The seething part of our humanity cannot be part of this process of national pride.”

Certainly, empathy for the poor was a defining feature of the national movement. Which is certainly lost to us today. In fact, in a strange twist of fate, nationalism has now gone global for the rich and aspirational middle classes. Rama Bijapurkar, market analyst and author of We Are Like That Only, says  “today it’s more about where we stand in the world. Nationalism is not so much about what we do within our own borders”.

In India itself, the mindset is changing. Prof (Dr) Nimesh G. Desai, head, department of psychiatry at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, Delhi, sees three distinct phases in the evolution of Indian nationalism. Post-independence, there was a collective attempt at institution-building; the ’70s and ’80s were a period of uncertainty when India appeared to be struggling and doubts were emerging about national pride. “But from the ’90s onwards,” he says, “Indian nationalism has emerged in a form that is very akin to American nationalism.” His main point is that individual enterprise is now celebrated as opposed to collectivism. “If along the way the nation benefits, so be it,” he says. In other words, we want to be part of a great nation but we don’t want to face any personal inconveniences. As long as we are doing well, we believe all is well in our country.

But is it? What of the political rot, falling standards in public life, the vexed question of whether the ruling Congress or any other party today upholds any national values. Clearly, the grand old party is not what it was at the time of independence. The ideal of serving a nation has been replaced by lip service to a family.

In the midst of all this churning there is the BJP, posing as the “only and true” protector of national interest.The rhetoric of leaders like L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi too is replete with imagery of the Indian nation. In the party and Sangh parivar tradition, Bharat Mata imagery and patriotic songs rich in Hindu symbolism are the ‘warm-up’ at public rallies.

So is the Hindu Right then the inheritor of the nationalist mantle today?

But blueprints for growth do not always materialise in what is a complex society. The saffron party does have it in them to play up the hyper-jingoism or patriotism bit. Prof Desai says that “if you make a point from an extreme position, it gives you the latitude to be jingoistic. A centrist position does not”. He also argues that the BJP’s strength lies in the basic human need to belong to social identity groups. “The psychological dilemma for the Congress will always be greater as it is difficult to whip up emotions if you come from a neutral egalitarian position,” he says. But the BJP has stolen the march in mouthing jargon. Besides the big two, the nation’s political destiny lies in a multitude of small parties who speak the language of caste and region as opposed to nation.

In the political matrix that now makes up India, no one party or individual can claim to carry the national colours. There is a thread here, a design there, a fine webbed pattern on the border. The tragedy of great poverty in great numbers. And the global dream of those are the winners of the Indian game, “masters of the universe”, a breed of new-age global conquerors. Even as many of us endure and survive, they appear to be living this dream that is now being sold to India.

(Source: Outlook, 18 August, 2008)

SECULARISM

Secularism under Threat

T.N. Srinivasan, Eminent Scholar

The Oxford University Dictionary defines ‘secularism’ as a doctrine of moral philosophy which holds that mortality should be based on regard to the well-being of mankind to the exclusion of all consideration from belief in God or in a future state. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, offers a similar definition of secularism in philosophy as the belief that life can be best lived by applying ethics, and the universe best understood by processes of reasoning, without reference to a god or gods or other supernatural concepts. It goes on to add that in society, secularism means any of a range of situations where a society less automatically assumes religious beliefs to be either widely shared or a basis for conflict in various forms, than in recent generations of the same society. In this sense, secularism is linked to the sociological concept of secularization and may be upheld as an academic thesis, rather than advocated as a desirable stare of affairs. And in government, ‘ a policy of avoiding entanglement between government and religion (ranging from reducing ties to a state church to promoting secularism in society), of non-discrimination among religious (providing they do not deny primacy of civil laws), and of guaranteeing human rights of all citizens, regardless of the creed. Secularism as a philosophical doctrine is not necessarily the same as atheism nor does it prelude philosophical realists from being religious.

It is evident that belief in secularism as a philosophical doctrine does not preclude belief in the existence of one or more gods nor does it imply that thics derived from pure reasoning independent of any reference to god(s) or religion(s) would necessarily be in conflict with values derived from religions. It is also evident that only an extremely narrow interpretation of secularism would confine it exclusively to the private sphere and exclude it altogether from having any role in the public sphere of politics and government.

Noah Feldman (New York Times Magazine, 3 July, 2005), points out that the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 that ended religious wars in Europe formally enshrined the very long held assumptions that the official religion of the state was that of its ruler, so that each region would have its own relgion, namely, that of its sovereign. This model of church and state was profoundly disturbed by the radical idea emanating from the American Revolution-that people were sovereign; since a religiously diverse but sovereign people by definition cannot have a single religion as official religion, a new understanding of church and state was called for and framers of the American Constitution designed a state(national government) that had no established religion at all.

Feldman observes that the non-establishment of religion, with a simultaneous guarantee of its free exercise was an elegant solution but not a complete one. He characterizes the contemporary church-state debate in American life as being dominated by two camps. The first, which he calls ‘value evangelicals’, contends that ‘the right answers to government policy must come from the wisdom of religious tradition’. The opposite camp, which he calls ‘legal secularists’ see religion as a matter of personal belief and choices, largely irrelevant to government. This camp argues that government should be secular and the laws should make it so. The American project, if it can be described as such, aimed to create a nation with a common identity and objectives while welcoming and sustaining religious diversity. Feldman argues that although both camps claim to share the goal of reconciling national unity and religious diversity and differ in the means for achieving it, neither lived up to its own expectations. The conflict between the two is becoming a political and a constitutional crisis on its own.

In the twentieth century, a number of countries with significant ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity made a conscious attempt to insulate the state and the public sphere from the private practice of religion through the establishment of secular states. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, Kemal Ataturk imposed a secular state in Turkey. After World War II, countries which were otherwise different in their political frameworks, adopted secular constitutions on achieving independence. Three prime examples are the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and the former Yugoslavia. British colonial India was partitioned into secular India (with a large Hindu majority and a significant (10%) Muslim minority population) and the Islamic state of Pakistan, with a very small non-Muslim population.

A common thread running through all these examples is, in effect, the imposition of secularism in societies and politics, in which it apparently had no deep roots, by charismatic leaders in albeit with varying degrees of support in their own political movements. In the case of Pakistan, interestingly and ironically, the President of the Muslim League and Pakistan’s first Governor-General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was instrumental in getting India partitioned along religious lines, was a secular Muslim. Yet, having fought for Pakistan on the ground that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations who needed their own states to realize their potential, he had no alternative but to create Pakistan as an Islamic state. The parallel with secular Jews establishing a non-secular Jewish state of Israel is striking.

With some exaggeration, one could say that secularism was a foreign, largely western, element introduced within the body politic of most of these countries. One of the fundamental questions is to what extent the secular model should be viewed as a norm and an ultimate objective for non-western societies. Was it indeed the case, as has been argued by many, that the western model of a secular state, as it evolved in the post-Enlightenment era, necessarily was not applicable to the rest of the world? If it was not, there was a distinct possibility that a non-western society would reject it sooner or later.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, secularism is under great threat in many countries. Apart from the possible incompatibility of the western concept of secularism with non-western cultures, another force undermining secularism, and strengthening non-secular elements, was geopolitics. In its war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US recruited and armed the so-called Mujahideen, consisting of Afghans, Pakistan, and nationals of other Muslim countries, many of whom were religious fundamentalists. The rise of the Taliban with the support of Pakistan and its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, was one of the outcomes of the Afghan war. Another outcome was Afghanistan becoming the refuge and base for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. Indeed, the rise of religious fundamentalism within the armed forces of Pakistan is in part a legacy of the war and in part of the use of religion by Zia ul Haq.

The fall of the atheistic Soviet empire, to which its defeat in Afghanistan was a contributor, has spawned, as yet weak, religious movements in some of its Muslim republics. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia into ethnic entities, though not directly related to it, followed the fall of the Soviet empire. Whether Indonesia will be able to fight off the threats to secularism is an open question.

After the decline of Nehru’s Congress party and its hold on the central government in India, and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the future of secularism in India also seems to be in doubt. The events in Gujarat during which thousands, of which a large majority were Muslims, dies as a result of communal carnage is a pointer. Following the violence, the legislature of the state was dissolved and election to replace it were held in December, 2002. The BJP, with Modi as its leader, was re-elected with a much large majority. In the electoral campaign, the BJP campaigned on its platform of promoting ‘Hindutva’’ which it describes as ‘nationalism and Indianness’ and which others describe as narrow ‘Hinduness’. With the BJP promising to repeat its Gujarat campaign in the rest of the nation, the threat to secularism in India is frightening and the alleged abetting of violence by Pakistan, do not augur well for secularism.

In Pakistan, the once secular army and civil service are now increasingly sympathetic to religious fundamentalists. Whether the government of Pakistan will be able to keep the fundamentalists (and terrorists among them) in check is open to doubt, now that many Taliban and Al Qaeda elements have slipped into Pakistan. In Bangladesh alone, the influence of religious fundamentalism seems to be rising. In Sri Lanka, the ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, which has cost many lives, has a religious undertone, as well-the Sinhalese are overwhelmingly Buddhist, while the Tamils are largely Hindu but also include some Muslims. Elsewhere, the political power of the religious and orthodox parties in Israel is very significant, although it is hard to say whether it is rising. Fundamentalist Christian churches seem to be increasing their influence in parts of Africa. In contrast, there are signs of a return to some form of secularism in Iran.

Fundamentalists Flourish in Secular Vacuum

 M J Akbar, Eminent Journalist

The great contradiction of fundamentalist politics is that it cannot deliver on the basic problem that provoked its rise, economic deprivation...Ordinary Indians hunger for more bread, not more guns...The bad news is that it takes only 1% to wreak havoc.

Who, or what, is a fundamentalist? The word might even be a tautology, for a believer can only be true to his faith if he believes in its fundamentals. You cannot be very faithful, can you, if you believe only in supplementaries? I fast during Ramadan, one of the five fundamental tenets of Islam: I hope this does not make me a fundamentalist.

The slide begins when one faith begins to encroach upon a separate conviction. The first symptom of fundamentalism is aggression. When this aggression is channelled through an organized section of a community, it becomes communalism. When a state codifies such aggression through statute, or executive authority, it becomes a fundamentalist state.

Is an Islamic state ipso facto fundamentalist? No. The exemplar of the Islamic state is obviously the period when the Prophet was head of the city-state of Medina in addition to being rasool of the Muslims. Medina was multi-religious and multi-ethnic, with a mixed population including Jews, Christians and non-Muslim Arabs. There is no instance of a church or synagogue being destroyed under his watch. There was instead a Muslim-Jewish covenant. Jews and Muslims had the same rights and duties. “The terms of the covenant were primarily based on recognition of diverse affiliations and did not demand conversion,” writes Tariq Ramadan (The Messenger, Penguin).

This hardly means that Muslims today cannot be fundamentalists, but it is illogical to blame Islam for the sins of Muslims.

Indian secularism, turned into a modern political force by Mahatma Gandhi, a great expert in fusing the best of Hinduism and Islam, is based on the equality of “diverse affiliations”. His personality and philosophy attracted unprecedented Muslim support. No Indian has commanded as much allegiance from Indian Muslims as Gandhi did during the Khilafat movement (1919-1922), but that support withered after the Mahatma abandoned the movement arbitrarily after Chauri Chaura. One section of the disillusioned community drifted, over the next fifteen years, inexorably towards the politics of separation and eventually Pakistan.

British India re-mapped itself into three nations. Each has a father figure: Gandhi, Jinnah, Mujibur Rehman. All three wanted their children to believe in a multi-faith nation.

One measure of prevalent fundamentalism would be the distance that each nation has wandered from the vision of its father.

The shift towards fundamentalist politics, even by a minority within a minority, needs a combustible base as well as a spark. Some Indian Muslims have been drawn towards extremist rhetoric by a growing sense of economic victimization. Not unnaturally, this was most evident among the young, who feel the humiliation of discrimination in jobs most keenly.

Rising India seems sympathetic to only two categories: the winner and the victim. The first becomes a celebrity; the latter wallows, effectively, in the swamp of the collective. The government has created a sanctimonious comfort zone for the victim. It is called reservations. Muslim youth have been denied the false comfort of reservations as well.

The spark is demagoguery. Oratory is a fine art in Indian Muslim culture; demagoguery is periodic epilepsy. The to hysteria during the Shah Bano episode in the 1980s. was soon answered by the equally ferocious hysteria of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. It took the conflagration of the winter of 1992 and 1993 to put hysteria on hold.

The pause did not eliminate the strain in either gene. The culture of verbal violence had an inevitable physical by-product, organized riots and terrorism.

Fundamentalism flourishes best in the space vacated by secular parties. As the principal standard-bearers of secularism have devalued and corrupted their ethics, smaller parties have emerged with fewer reasons for restraint. Governments may screen their misdemeanours artfully, but their record is even more reprehensible. The overt indulgence of minority fundamentalism is compensated by covert compromise with majority fundamentalism. The end result is an unholy mess.

The great contradiction of fundamentalist politics, its epic flaw, is that it cannot deliver on the basic problem that provoked its rise, economic deprivation. Rage is not an economic policy. Violence is the antidote of economic progress. Ordinary Indians hunger for more bread, not more guns. This is what keeps the overwhelming majority away from fundamentalism.

The bad news is that it takes only one per cent to wreak havoc.

(Source: The Times of India, 7 September, 2008)

COMMUNALISM

Rising Middle Class Wants Development backed by Authoritarianism

Ashish Nandy, Eminent Scholar

Political psychologist Ashis Nandy is in the news after the Ahmedabad- based National Council for Civil Liberties filed a case against him for his article, Blame the Middle Class, published in The Times of India in January, analysing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s victory in the Assembly elections. The charge against Nandy is “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth and language”. Some 178 academics and intellectuals have signed a statement to protest the case against Nandy on 16 June, 2008. In an interview with TUSHA MITTAL, Nandy explains how modernity is devastating India.

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. We studied politics empirically, and I realised its pervasive presence in Indian social life, how much of a pace-setting agency it really is. A second major change came with the Emergency. Neither my political studies nor my understanding of Indian politics had prepared me for it. It was a shock. Then, I began to look for new ways of looking at Indian politics. My discovery of Gandhi happened at that time. I had always disliked Gandhi: his allegiances had looked primordial; his style a deviation from our idea of cosmopolitanism; his politics anti-modern. But I rediscovered Gandhi. I became more sceptical of the Indian state, which was modelled on the colonial state that had ruled us. I saw that the categories that dominated Indian politics had no openness to the experiences of a majority of Indians. Often, as with terms like ‘secular’, they could not even be translated into vernacular languages.

Secularism is a tool to achieve certain goals of tolerance and amity. It has not been able to touch the heart of most Indians, who have found it flawed, an abstraction used for political purposes only. I think we would gain much more if we entered it through the various cultural and religious traditions of India to confront the forces fomenting communal conflict. They are actually anti-Hindu and anti-Islam. They will destroy these faiths in the arrogant belief that they can defend them. We don’t defend faiths; faith defends us. In fact, the people often called religious fanatics usually do not care about religion. They are modernists who want a European- style nation state in India. They consider Gandhi primitive because he brought into politics ideas such as fasting and nonviolence. Gandhi was the counter-modernist who said that modernism was an intrusion in Indian culture and could only devastate India culturally, economically and socially, [that] it is intrinsically hostile to India’s environment, local knowledge systems and diversity. Ethnic and religious conflict is a pathological expression of modernity, not of tradition. The way modernisation is conceptualised leads to genocides; an enormous degree of violence; the demolition of civilisations.

Can you give an example?

I did a major study on sati, the first in contemporary times. I showed that sati epidemics primarily occurred when a community was under attack. For example, sati in late 18th and early 19th century was a direct product of the colonial political economy, the kind of collapse of traditional norms then taking place in India, the monetisation of the economy and human relationships. Half the cases of

Sati took place in Calcutta and its slums not in villages.

In my article, ‘Gujarat: Blame the Middle Class’, you talked about how development has de-civilised society, leaving only a shrinking space for the life of the mind.

This is a product of democratic processes. The people entering the middle class do not have middle-class values. They only have middle-class incomes and middleclass consumption.. They have neither the traditional nor the modern concept of cosmopolitanism. They have just risen in the social hierarchy. They have only.

The middle class values are degree of tolerance and the ability to live with minority views which are different from yours; some acceptance that you do not protect divinities, that divinities can protect themselves.

Gujarat is a ‘cultural desert’.

If has produced an intellectual culture where some of the finest minds, thinkers, writers, artists don’t feel comfortable at all. Perhaps it is not America but Singapore that is their utopia, at least in the short run. They want Singapore-style development. They are looking forward not only to Singapore-style malls but also to Singapore-style authoritarian prime ministers. Large numbers of the middle class are now perfectly willing to sacrifice large sections of the society for the sake of development. In most countries, spectacular development has been associated with spectacular authoritarianism. The enormous diversity of India has always troubled modern Indians. They think some degree of homogenisation imposed from above is the perfect remedy for India’s ills. They think they are the strict school teachers who can teach the rest of India how to behave when the government takes away land for SEZs, when it builds mega dams. They want to shut their eyes to what development really means. They are its beneficiaries and feel it must be protected at all costs.

Everybody predicted the demise of religion in the 19th century. Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, we find religion stronger than ever. It has re-emerged from its isolation and marginalisation in a big way, taking advantage of the democratic process. Unless we learn the language of religion and enter the people’s mind through that path, we have no way of truly influencing their choices. That’s why one of the most creative persons of our time, Gandhi, said that people who say religion and politics have nothing to do with each other understand neither religion nor politics. Other creative persons who may or may not call themselves Gandhian follow that method. The Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King they have all used religion very creatively. In India, people like Baba Amte and Sunder Lal Bahuguna never attacked religion;. When you talk of saffronisation, it offends most Hindus. Saffron is not the colour of extremism. It is the colour of renunciation — sanyasis wear saffron. Extremists have hijacked it because we allowed them to; they have hijacked it even when they don’t believe in it themselves.] Savarkar was an atheist. He didn’t believe in Hinduism but produced the bible of Hindutva. Hindutva is a political ideology while Hinduism is a form of faith. Ideologies enter when faiths become weak and do not have a meaning for people. Hindutva is a way of using Hindu sentiments politically to push towards the development of a Hindu nation state. The concept of a nation state is not Hindu. It is a 19th-century European concept, but Europe is moving away from it while we continue to cling to it. As Rabindranath Tagore once said, India trying to build a nation is like Switzerland trying to build a navy.

Psychologically, the Leftist and the Hindutva ideologies are not far from each other. They offer the same kind of closure, the feeling of having reached an absolute truth by which to live. People who have faith don’t usually have strong ideologies. But many Indians also have blind faith in ideologies because they feel if they don’t have the support of an ideology, the meaning of life will collapse.

Like our politicians, the young are increasingly getting de-ideologised. They don’t understand Hindutva but they have picked up its slogans as ideology. They cling to it with the passion of a lover because without that clinging, they feel they will not be able to call themselves Hindu, because otherwise they are going out and downing beef hamburgers. Alternatively, they are moving towards a new, generic version of Hinduism obtained from gurus. This flooding of the market with gurus has also come from this need. You could be a Malayali working in Himachal Pradesh. You have no access to your own village gods and goddesses, to the Malayali version of Hinduism with which you have lived it doesn’t even make sense to you anymore. Then you take a generic version of the faith [from the gurus]. Somehow it gives you solace, a feeling that you are part of the Hindu community.

Hinduism is becoming a faith in the way that Christianity in many parts of the West is a faith. That wasn’t our concept of religion. Today, there are many in India willing to fight for the cause of India to the last Indian. Exactly as in Islam: they are many willing to fight for Islam to the last Muslim. They despise Muslims for not participating in the struggle and don’t care how many of them die. Because they have very little compassion for Muslims, their compassion is reserved for the vague idea of Islam. Similarly, in India you will find a lot of people who have a vague idea of what India is — they have a statist, mechanical concept of India and of Hinduism, and they are willing to sacrifice a million people to achieve that end. But the Indian state is the Indian culture and that extends from South Vietnam all the way to the borders of Persia.

We are seeing an Arabisation of Islam in India. At one time, Indian Muslims were proud that their Islam represented the best of the world’s traditions. But they are increasingly losing that confidence, as a direct product of 19th-century European scholars who claimed that West Asian Islam was the real Islam while other strands were influenced by local religions. These scholars endorsed fundamentalist Islam as the real Islam. Muslims are virtually in uniform with skull caps and kurta-pyjama.

Our economic and social vision is very close to writing off the bottom 10 percent of our society. We would be happy if they were all dead. How do we find people who will use the language of religion to re-enter the public imagination, someone who will re-enter as a person, articulating principles in direct continuation with his or her religion, without practising the dominant slogans of the pack. There are many, even our finance minister, who seem to believe that “development” and industrialisation are the way out of poverty, as that is the only model of social change they have learnt. America consumes 30 percent of the world’s resources with only six percent of its population. To become America we will have to kill off everybody else in the world and consume all the world’s resources and even then we will not have the American standard of living. According to a prediction, the Ganga will die out in 28 years. Something like that will probably awaken the consciousness of the people.

Space for dissent is shrinking

Their own conviction in their being right is so small. Because they are themselves not convinced that what they are doing is right, they look at all dissent as an attack, not only on their ideas but on them directly. You are planting the idea in their mind, making them think that they could be wrong  that is their fear.

Every community of India has its own history, not only in terms of jati puranas but their own mythic history: memories handed down for generations. There are many ways of constructing the past, history is only one of them. But with this passion for history that came to India in the 19th century, everything has been “historised”. That, I think, has diminished us. Today, history is a major part of the knowledge industry, but that no longer enhances us. This search for truth about the past closes many pasts.

(Source: Tehelka 5 July, 2008)

COMMUNAL VIOLENCE-ORISSA

Second Link in the Chain

K.N. Panikkar, Eminent  Academician

COMMUNAL violence is not new in Orissa, or for that matter in any part of the country. But the latest incident is different, just as what happened in Gujarat in 2002. It is by far the most violent, brutal and widespread incidence of communal attack in the history of Orissa.

It is not a riot but a unilateral assault on the life and property of minorities by the members of Hindu communal organisations. Nor was it sudden or spontaneous. Behind it is an effective organisation and careful planning with a view to demarcating and isolating religious minorities from the national mainstream. It is also part of a larger political scheme of imparting a Hindu identity to the nation. There is a long preparation behind it, dating back to the 1940s when Hindu communal organisations struck root in the State. Since then communalism found its public articulation through expression of hatred towards minorities in manifold ways and through incidents of localised violence.

Communal consciousness has slowly but surely colonised society, constantly innovating its modes of social intervention. Several social activists who have noticed this alarming development have cautioned against the emerging communal situation in the State. The testimonies of the victims of communalism from Orissa before an Independent People’s Tribunal in Delhi during March 20-22, 2007, contains the record of the intimidation, persecution and physical assault perpetrated by members of the Sangh Parivar against the minorities in the past few years. Fear and helplessness were writ large on the faces of those who took courage to appear before the tribunal (see Rise of Fascism in India: Victims of Communal Violence Speak, New Delhi, 2008).

One of the victims described what she experienced as follows: “A whisper, a look, a comment are weapons in the hands of the powerful that make us shiver. The RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh] men look at us when they circle our village. They come and go as they please. They taunt us in the bazaar. They beat the men and women. They whisper about us. They look at me and I feel sick. My children are afraid. When it is time, we know that the Sangh will act. Sometimes, I think what they might do. We are prisoners, slowly being pushed into darkness.”

The anticipated darkness has engulfed Orissa, sooner than expected. Most victims believed that a Gujarat is in the offing, for communalisation of Hindu community, just as happened in Gujarat, was taking place very fast. As a result, the incidents of August were not entirely unexpected. As feared by several secular activists, Hindu communalism has succeeded in establishing its second laboratory.

Gujarat Prototype

The communal trajectory of Orissa has very closely followed the Gujarat prototype. What the Sangh Parivar organisations successfully experimented with in Gujarat was to launch a series of religion-centred programmes and institutions. Their aim was to create religious solidarity on the one hand and religious antagonism on the other. A variety of methods were adopted for achieving this objective. Among them, a very effective input came from social and cultural organisations. There is no reliable count of such organisations working in any one region in India. But there is hardly any social or cultural sector in which the Parivar has not failed to set up its “outlet”.

It is estimated that in Orissa it commands about 1,700 cultural organisations. Their activities and a large number of their publications are directed at the demonisation of the minorities as enemies. While in Gujarat, Muslims were cast in this role, in Orissa it was the turn of Christians to be accorded that status.

Although riots had occurred in the past against Muslims in Rourkela and Bhadrak, the communalisation of Orissa was primarily based on an anti-Christian project. All activities of Christian organisations and institutions were represented as steps towards evangelisation. Although the Christian population has not marked any increase in the past two decades, Christian missionaries were depicted as a threat to the future strength of the Hindu community.

Conversion, therefore, became a very emotive issue, which the Parivar invoked to close the ranks of the otherwise caste-differentiated Hindu community.

The ignorant and unsuspecting members of the community not only believed this canard but also swelled the fighting band of the Parivar. Particular attention was devoted to the tribal people who were recruited to the Parivar fold through different strategies of Hinduisation. One of the main reasons for the attack on Christian missionaries was to eliminate them from the tribal areas.

Slow, steady and continuous work, according to Professor Angana Chatterji, a political scientist working in California, has resulted in at least 12,000 of 20,000 villages in Orissa coming “under very strong influence” of the Parivar. In these villages, more than the RSS, it is the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) that command greater influence by recruiting the unemployed youth.

An important feature of the process of commu-nalisation has been that it has occurred unobtrusively, even when its expansion has been rapid. It is the result of a conscious strategy so that communal forces get enough space to operate in its initial stage. This is not to suggest that the communal forces had not struck before. In fact, there were several instances of communal assertions, some of them very violent, like the murder of Graham Staines and his children, followed by several communal incidents and riots in different parts of the State.

These incidents, primarily coercive in character, were intended to prevent conversions and to bring back to the Hindu fold those who were already converted. Much of these coercions are not known outside the locality and do not appear even in the local language press. Lately, the Parivar has used force on the converts in a variety of ways. The converted women are taken to the village square, stripped and tonsured.

Samjukta Kandi of Kilipal, one of the many women who was subjected to such humiliation, described her experience as follows: “We were alone in the house with my two children and my sister-in-law. The men barged into our house and grabbed me. They dragged us to the square of the village and there in front of everyone, tonsured our heads. The children and my sister-in-law managed to escape to the forests. A VHP activist got up on the square and told us that he would be the second Dara Singh and would kill every one of us.” In many cases, economic boycott forced the converts to flee their villages. The instances of rape, which the victims referred to with tearful eyes, were many.

Social Discrimination

The VHP’s work is centred on forced reconversions in the tribal areas where Christian missionaries have been active through their philanthropic work. The VHP’s case is that conversions to Christianity are not voluntary and are effected with the lure of money.

Angana Chatterji’s study shows that generally the converts do not gain any benefits from converting. “As they are Dalits, oppression makes them all the more dissatisfied with the Hindu religion and further acts as a stimulant for converting them to Christianity or Buddhism in order to escape the discrimination that Hinduism inflicts upon them.”

Whatever the causes of conversion, the minorities have become the targets of social discrimination and economic marginalisation. Instead of looking inward, the Hindu communal organisations have taken the easier route of blaming other communities for conversion.

Retaliation for the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, the VHP claims, is the reason for the widespread communal violence. Who killed the swami is uncertain. Is it the Maoists, or the Christians who were provoked by the swami’s anti-Christian tirade, or those who were looking for easy money? Praveen Togadia and the VHP would like to believe that it is the handiwork of local Christians. As in the case of the Godhra incident, was the murder of the swami the occasion rather than the cause?

The Hindus, at least a section of them, were so much communalised and arraigned against Christians that the attack would have taken place even if the murder had not occurred. The suggestion in the media that the swami was chosen as a useful scapegoat by the VHP itself cannot be dismissed lightly, given the fascist track record of the Parivar. At any rate, unlike in the past, this time the violence was not localised. Although Kandhmal is the epicentre of the violence, seven other districts were affected simultaneously, indicating careful planning and organisation. No accurate estimate of the loss of life and property can be made now.

Failure of the state

Yet, it is reported that more than a 100 Christian institutions have been destroyed and about two dozen lives have been lost, including that of the woman who was burnt alive. Thousands of people have escaped to the forest to save their lives. Like their counterparts in Gujarat, they will be doomed to spend their lives in makeshift tenements in future. Orissa is yet another example of the failure of the state to contain communalism.

It is to be expected that the government of Orissa with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as one of its partners would be soft towards communal elements. But the Central government has not shown any urgency or willingness to address the issue of communalism even though it came to power on a secular platform. In fact, no step has been initiated in the past four years to contain the communal virus that is spreading across the country. If anything, the leading partner in the coalition, the Congress, has adopted a soft Hindutva posture whenever it suited its political interests.

Even now when Orissa is burning, the Central government has refused to take any initiative to quell it, taking cover under some legal formalities. That is precisely what the BJP did when the Gujarat riots happened. Given its communal track record, it is understandable. But then the Congress claims to be a secular party.

What is happening in Orissa is not just another communal riot, caused by some local differences between the members of two communities, as has often happened in the past. It is part of a larger plan of which Gujarat was the first expression. That is why the Orissa government, under the BJP’s influence, has not taken adequate steps to bring the situation under control. The plan can be defeated only through the intervention of civil society.

(Source: Frontline, September 26, 2008)

GOVERNANCE-TERRORISM

State Bid to Re-enact POTA from Backdoor

Centre Reluctant to Approve States’ Bills against Organised Crime Due to Overlap of Counter Insurgency and  Import of Draconian Measures from POTA

WHENEVER there is a terrorist strike anywhere in the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party does not lose the opportunity to blame the Centre for its inaction in according approval to the BJP-ruled States’ legislation to control organised crime. In particular, the BJP’s Prime Minister-in-waiting, L.K. Advani, has sought the Centre’s immediate approval for the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2003, and the Rajasthan Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2006. The Centre has maintained silence over the issue all along. One reason could be that these two Bills, as also similar Bills from other States, pending with the Centre involve substantial deviation from the existing national or Central policy on tackling terrorism. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power on the plank of repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) as it considered the anti-terror law a draconian piece of legislation.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the submission of a Bill for approval of the Government of India before its introduction in the State Assembly – if the subject of the Bill pertains to a matter listed under the Concurrent List – is not a constitutional requirement, but is based on convention. It added that this convention need not be taken as restricting the discretion of State governments to take independent action should they consider the need for such action1 that in their view was so urgent that prior consultation with the Centre was not possible.

The Centre, in a communication in 1972, told State governments that prior concurrence of the Central government could ensure that there were no complications subsequently when the Bills were sent up for the President’s assent. When Bills are referred for approval, the comments of the Government of India should invariably be awaited before they are introduced in State legislatures. However, when a Bill passed by the State Assembly is reserved by the Governor of the State for consideration of the President under Article 200, the same is processed for obtaining the assent of the President.

Four Bills

The MHA’s response reveals that the Rajasthan Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2006, and the Andhra Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2006, are pending with the Central government for its approval before they can be introduced in the respective State legislatures. The Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2003, and the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2007, have been passed by the legislatures of those States and have been reserved by the respective Governors for the President’s consideration under Article 200. All the four Bills are modelled on the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), 1999 (which has since been extended to Delhi from 2002), and the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act, 2002. The Maharashtra Act received the President’s assent on April 24, 1999, while the Karnataka Act received it on December 22, 2001.

The Maharashtra and Karnataka Acts received the President’s assent when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was in power at the Centre. Andhra Pradesh, too, had an Act to control organised crime but it expired on November 4, 2004.

The Andhra Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Act, 2001, was brought into force on November 5, 2001, after it received the President’s assent. Section 1(4) of the Act stipulated that it would be in force for a period of three years from the date on which it took effect.

The State government decided to re-enact the Act without the time-limit clause and sent the new Bill to the Centre for its approval, in step with the convention, before introducing it in the State Assembly.

The Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2003, has a somewhat different trajectory. Modelled on the MCOCA, the Bill blindly adopted its special procedure for interception of electronic communications, little realising that the Bombay High Court had struck down the MCOCA’s chapter on interception of communications as beyond the State’s legislative competence in Bharat Shantilal Shah vs. State of Maharashtra.

The High Court struck down Sections 13 to 16 of the MCOCA, which pertained to authorisation to tap oral or electronic communication, on the grounds that a State could not legislate on a subject that was enumerated in the Union List, on which the Telegraph Act held the field. It held that this was a colourable exercise of power.

In view of this, the President, under Article 201 of the Constitution, directed the Gujarat Governor to return the Bill to the State Assembly for reconsideration and necessary amendment. The Gujarat Assembly reconsidered the Bill and passed it again, on June 2, 2004, after deleting Sections 14, 15 and 16, which gave blanket powers to District Collectors and District Superintendents of Police to intercept and record telephone and other means of communication of suspects and accused under the Act. These Sections virtually empowered the government to violate the privacy of a citizen on a mere suspicion. It is this revised Bill that is now with the Centre for the President’s assent.

The State Bills reserved by the Governor for consideration of the President are examined from the following angles:

(a) Whether the proposed legislation is constitutionally valid; or (b) Whether there is any conflict with an existing Central law, and if so, whether the conflict may be consciously permitted; or (c) Whether the proposed State enactment involves any deviation from existing national or Central policy to its detriment, or would be a hindrance to enactment of uniform laws for the country.

It is significant that, investigation shows, the State Bills under examination with the Centre do not qualify under each of these tests evolved by the Centre over the years. The MCOCA and the KCOCA also do not qualify under these tests, but the Centre cannot direct the two States to repeal these Acts because they had secured the President’s assent before the UPA government came to power at the Centre in 2004.

Once the President’s assent is given, it would imply that the Centre had permitted consciously any perceived conflict of the State law with the Central law when both relate to the same subject matter listed under the Concurrent List. The question of the constitutional validity of these Bills has not yet been finally settled by the judiciary. The MCOCA, for example, defines “organised crime” as any continuing unlawful activity by an individual, either as a member of an organised crime syndicate or on behalf of such syndicate, by use of violence or threat of violence or intimidation or coercion, or other unlawful means, with the objective of gaining pecuniary benefits, or gaining undue economic or other advantage for himself or any other person, or promoting insurgency.

“Promoting insurgency”

The inclusion of the words “promoting insurgency” was challenged in the Bombay High Court on the grounds that the State legislation trespassed into the exclusive domain of Parliament. The High Court held that insurgency, terrorism and crimes relating to these were subjects on which only Parliament could legislate as these affected India’s sovereignty and were transborder in nature.

However, the High Court took the view that though “insurgency” was a facet of terrorism, it could also be a facet of “organised crime”. The court ruled that the reference to insurgency in the context of organised crime was merely an incidental overlap with terrorism, falling under the Union List, and as such a permissible encroachment.

The Special Leave Petition (SLP) appealing against this judgment is pending in the Supreme Court in Sabeer Ahmed Masiullah vs. State of Maharashtra.

The Maharashtra government took the stand that the MCOCA was a piece of legislation made under Entry 1 of the State List, namely, Public Order. The Bombay High Court judgment accepted this view. However, a subsequent judgment by the same High Court took the view that the MCOCA was a law enacted under Entry 1 of the Concurrent List, namely, “Criminal Law”. The Supreme Court, on the contrary, has consistently held that crimes of terrorism and insurgency would fall outside the ken of both “public order” and the ordinary criminal justice system.

The KCOCA also uses the phrase “promoting insurgency” in the definition of “organised crime” as did the lapsed Andhra Pradesh Act. The Gujarat Bill does not use the word “insurgency” in defining “organised crime”, thus weakening the State government’s and the BJP’s claims that the legislation could be an asset in fighting terrorism.

The Uttar Pradesh Bill, unlike the MCOCA and the other State Bills pending with the Centre, defines organised crime as, among others, causing loss of life or property by the use of explosives, or fire, or firearms or other violent means to spread terror or overthrow the government by force or violence, or to indulge in anti-national or disruptive activities or to hold government or other public authorities to ransom on threat of death or destruction. Clearly, the U.P. Bill aims to control “insurgency”, even though the word itself does not find a mention in it.

According to the SLP in the Sabeer Ahmed Masiullah case, the moment any crime, organised or otherwise, is associated with insurgency, the nature of the offence is altered into an offence against the nation’s defence and security. It argues, therefore, that a law dealing with organised crime cannot, incidentally, affect insurgency.

Basic principles

To understand whether the State Bills are in conflict with the Central law it is necessary to explain some of the basic principles. Under Article 254 of the Constitution, if any provision of a law made by a State legislature is repugnant to any provision of a law made by Parliament, or to any provision of a law on a matter enumerated in the Concurrent List, then the law made by Parliament shall prevail over the State law.

However, if the State law has received the President’s assent, then it will prevail in that State. But the President’s assent does not bar Parliament from enacting at any time any law with respect to the same matter, adding to, amending, varying or repealing the law so made by the State Legislature.

The SLP in the Sabeer Ahmed Masiullah case states that insofar as the MCOCA dealt with insurgency, it was first repugnant to the unamended Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, enacted by Parliament. This repugnancy was noticed in 1999, it says and argues that that was why the President’s assent was obtained for the Act. Later, when Parliament enacted POTA in 2002 and, following the repeal of POTA, amended the UAPA in 2004, Parliament evinced the intent to occupy the whole field with respect to insurgency, and in light of this there is bound to be repugnancy between the Central law and a State law dealing with insurgency, the SLP states.

Sources in the MHA claim that the MCOCA and the KCOCA deal with control of organised crime and, therefore, cannot be deemed repugnant to the UAPA, which deals with activities directed against the integrity and sovereignty of India. But the fact that these State Bills – which are similar to these Acts – have been referred to the Centre suggests that there is an implied repugnancy and it needs to be sorted out.

Draconian provisions

While amending the UAPA in 2004, Parliament consciously avoided including in it the draconian provisions of POTA.

These are i) considering certain confessions made to a police officer as admissible evidence; ii) presumption as to the guilt of an accused until he proves himself to be innocent; and iii) stringent bail provisions ensuring a long period of detention of an accused.

All the proposed State Bills contain these provisions and are, therefore, contrary to Parliament’s intention in repealing POTA and amending the UAPA.

The Centre’s decision not to include these draconian provisions in the amended UAPA stems from its conviction that they are neither useful in the trial and conviction of terrorist offences nor in their prevention, and that they are poor substitutes to serious investigative and prosecutory efforts.

Can States be allowed to bring in the very provisions Parliament detested, in order to tackle terrorism by calling it organised crime?

(Source: Frontline, August 29, 2008)

KASHMIR CRISIS

Azadi

It’s the only thing the Kashmiri wants. Denial is Delusion

Arundhati Roy, Noted Writer

Since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half-a-million heavily-armed soldiers in the most densely militarised zone in the world.

After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government’s worst nightmare has come true. Having declared that the militant movement has been crushed, it is now faced with a non-violent mass protest, but not the kind it knows how to manage. This one is nourished by people’s memory of years of repression in which tens of thousands have been killed, thousands have been ‘disappeared’, hundreds of thousands tortured, injured, raped and humiliated. That kind of rage, once it finds utterance, cannot easily be tamed, re-bottled.

For all these years, the Indian State, known amongst the knowing as the Deep State, has done everything it can to subvert, suppress, represent, misrepresent, discredit, interpret, intimidate, purchase­and simply snuff out the voice of the Kashmiri people. It has used money (lots of it), violence (lots of it), disinformation, propaganda, torture, elaborate networks of collaborators and informers, terror, imprisonment, blackmail and rigged elections to subdue what democrats would call “the will of the people”. But now the Deep State has tripped on its own hubris and bought into its own publicity. It made the mistake of believing that domination was victory, that the ‘normalcy’ it had enforced through the barrel of a gun was indeed normal, and that the people’s sullen silence was acquiescence.

The well-endowed peace industry, speaking on people’s behalf, informed us that “Kashmiris are tired of violence and want peace”. What kind of peace they were willing to settle for was never clarified. Bollywood’s cache of Kashmir/Muslim-terrorist films has brainwashed most Indians into believing that all of Kashmir’s sorrows could be laid at the door of evil, people-hating terrorists.

To anybody who cared to ask, or, more importantly, to listen, it was always clear that even in their darkest moments, people in Kashmir had kept the fires burning and that it was not peace they yearned for, but freedom too. Over the last two months, the carefully confected picture of an innocent people trapped between ‘two guns’, both equally hated, has, pardon the pun, been shot to hell.

A sudden twist of fate, an ill-conceived move over the transfer of 100 acres of state forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board  suddenly became the equivalent of tossing a lit match into a barrel of petrol. Until 1989, the Amarnath pilgrimage used to attract about 20,000 people who travelled to the Amarnath cave over a period of about two weeks.. By 2008, more than 5,00,000 pilgrims visited the Amarnath cave in large groups, their passage often sponsored by Indian business houses. To many people in the Valley, this dramatic increase in numbers was seen as an aggressive political statement by an increasingly Hindu-fundamentalist Indian State. Rightly or wrongly, the land transfer was viewed as the thin edge of the wedge. It triggered an apprehension that it was the beginning of an elaborate plan to build Israeli-style settlements, and change the demography of the Valley.Days of massive protest forced the Valley to shut down completely. Within hours, the protests spread from the cities to villages. Young stone-pelters took to the streets and faced armed police who fired straight at them, killing several. For people as well as the government, it resurrected memories of the uprising in the early ’90s. Throughout the weeks of protest, hartal and police firing, while the Hindutva publicity machine charged Kashmiris with committing scommunal excess, the 5,00,000 Amarnath pilgrims completed their pilgrimage, not just unhurt, but touched by the hospitality shown by local people.

Eventually, taken completely by surprise at the ferocity of the response, the government revoked the land transfer. But by then the land transfer had become what senior separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani called a “non-issue”.

Massive protests against the revocation erupted in Jammu. There, too, the issue snowballed into something much bigger. Hindus began to raise issues of neglect and discrimination by the Indian State The protests led to the blockading of the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only functional road link between Kashmir and India. The army was called out to clear the highway and allow safe passage of trucks between Jammu and Srinagar. But incidents of violence against Kashmiri truckers were being reported from as far away as Punjab where there was no protection at all. As a result, Kashmiri truckers, fearing for their lives, refused to drive on the highway. Truckloads of perishable fresh fruit and Valley produce began to rot. It became very obvious that the blockade had caused the situation to spin out of control. The government announced that the blockade had been cleared and that trucks were going through.

But it was too late, the damage had been done. It had been demonstrated in no uncertain terms to people in Kashmir that they lived on sufferance, and that if they didn’t behave themselves they could be put under siege, starved, deprived of essential commodities and medical supplies. The real blockade became a psychological one. The last fragile link between India and Kashmir was all but snapped.

Not surprisingly, the voice that the Government of India has tried so hard to silence in Kashmir has massed into a deafening roar. Hundreds of thousands of unarmed people have come out to reclaim their cities, their streets and mohallas. They have simply overwhelmed the heavily armed security forces by their sheer numbers, and with a remarkable display of raw courage.

Raised in a playground of army camps, checkposts and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly discovered the power of mass protest, and above all, the dignity of being able to straighten their shoulders and speak for themselves, represent themselves. For them it is nothing short of an epiphany. They’re in full flow, not even the fear of death seems to hold them back.And once that fear has gone, of what use is the largest or second-largest army in the world? What threat does it hold? Who should know that better than the people of India who won their independence in the way that they did?

The circumstances in Kashmir being what they are, it is hard for the spin doctors to fall back on the same old same old; to claim that it’s all the doing of Pakistan’s ISI, or that people are being coerced by militants. Since the ’30s onwards, the question of who can claim the right to represent that elusive thing known as “Kashmiri sentiment” has been bitterly contested. Who is it today? The mainstream political parties? The Hurriyat? The militants? This time around, the people are in charge. There have been mass rallies in the past, but none in recent memory that have been so sustained and widespread. The armed militants who, through the worst years of repression, were seen as the only ones carrying the torch of azadi forward, if they are around at all, seem to be content to take a backseat and let people do the fighting for a change.

The separatist leaders who do appear and speak at the rallies are not leaders so much as followers, being guided by the phenomenal spontaneous energy of a caged, enraged people that has exploded on Kashmir’s streets. The leaders, such as they are, have been presented with a full-blown revolution. The only condition seems to be that they have to do as the people say. If they say things that people do not wish to hear, they are gently persuaded to come out, publicly apologise and correct their course. This applies to all of them, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani who at a public rally recently proclaimed himself the movement’s only leader. It was a monumental political blunder that very nearly shattered the fragile new alliance between the various factions of the struggle. Within hours he retracted his statement. Like it or not, this is democracy.

Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm around places that hold terrible memories for them. They demolish bunkers, break through cordons of concertina wire and stare straight down the barrels of soldiers’ machine-guns, saying what very few in India want to hear. Hum kya chahte? Azadi! We Want Freedom. And, it has to be said, in equal numbers and with equal intensity: Jeevey Jeevey Pakistan. Long live Pakistan.

That sound reverberates through the Valley like the drumbeat of steady rain on a tin roof, like the roll of thunder before an electric storm. It’s the plebiscite that was never held, the referendum that has been indefinitely postponed.

On August 15, India’s Independence Day, the city of Srinagar shut down completely. The Bakshi stadium where Governor N.N. Vohra hoisted the flag was empty except for a few officials. Hours later, Lal Chowk, the nerve centre of the city was taken over by thousands of people who hoisted the Pakistani flag and wished each other “Happy belated Independence Day” (Pakistan celebrates Independence on August 14) and “Happy Slavery Day”.Humour, obviously, has survived India’s many torture centres and Abu Ghraibs in Kashmir.

On August 16, more than 3,00,000 people marched to Pampore, to the village of Hurriyat leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who was shot down in cold blood five days earlier.

On August 18, an equal number gathered in Srinagar in the huge TRC grounds (Tourist Reception Centre, not the Truth and Reconciliation Committee) close to the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to submit a memorandum asking for three things­the end to Indian rule, the deployment of a UN Peacekeeping Force and an investigation into two decades of war crimes committed with almost complete impunity by the Indian army and police.

The day before the rally the Deep State was hard at work. On the night of August 17, the police sealed the city. Streets were barricaded, thousands of armed police manned the barriers. The roads leading into Srinagar were blocked. For the first time in eighteen years, the police had to plead with Hurriyat leaders to address the rally at the TRC grounds instead of marching right up to the UNMOGIP office which is on

On the morning of the 18th, people began pouring into Srinagar from villages and towns across the Valley. In trucks, tempos, jeeps, buses and on foot. Once again, barriers were broken and people reclaimed their city. The police were faced with a choice of either stepping aside or executing a massacre. They stepped aside. Not a single bullet was fired.

The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air. Everyone had a banner; houseboat owners, traders, students, lawyers, doctors. One said, “We are all prisoners, set us free.” Another said, “Democracy without freedom is Demon-crazy”. Demon Crazy. That was a good one. Perhaps he was referring to the twisted logic of a country that needed to commit communal carnage in order to bolster its secular credentials. Or the insanity that permits the world’s largest democracy to administer the world’s largest military occupation and continue to call itself a democracy.

There was a green flag on every lamp post, every roof, every bus stop and on the top of chinar trees. A big one fluttered outside the All India Radio building. Road signs to Hazratbal, Batmaloo, Sopore were painted over. Rawalpindi they said. Or simply Pakistan. It would be a mistake to assume that the public expression of affection for Pakistan automatically translates into a desire to accede to Pakistan.Some of it has to do with gratitude for the support­cynical or otherwise­for what Kashmiris see as a freedom struggle and the Indian State sees as a terrorist campaign. It also has to do with mischief. With saying and doing what galls India, the enemy, most of all.

Everywhere there were Pakistani flags, everywhere the cry, Pakistan se rishta kya? La ilaha illa llah. What is our bond with Pakistan? There is no god but Allah. Azadi ka matlab kya? La ilaha illallah. What does Freedom mean? There is no god but Allah.

For somebody like myself, who is not Muslim, that interpretation of freedom is hard­if not impossible­to understand. I asked a young woman whether freedom for Kashmir would not mean less freedom for her, as a woman. She shrugged and said, “What kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers?” Her reply silenced me.

Standing in the grounds of the TRC, surrounded by a sea of green flags, it was impossible to doubt or ignore the deeply Islamic nature of the uprising taking place around me. It was equally impossible to label it a vicious, terrorist jehad. For Kashmiris, it was a catharsis. A historical moment in a long and complicated struggle for freedom with all the imperfections, cruelties and confusions that freedom struggles have.

As the crowd continued to swell, I listened carefully to the slogans, because rhetoric often clarifies things and holds the key to all kinds of understanding. I’d heard many of them before, a few years ago, at a militant’s funeral. A new one, obviously coined after the blockade, was Kashmir ki mandi! Rawalpindi! (It doesn’t lend itself to translation, but it means­Kashmir’s marketplace? Rawalpindi!) Another was Khooni lakir tod do, aar paar jod do (Break down the blood-soaked Line of Control, let Kashmir be united again). There were plenty of insults and humiliation for India: Ay jabiron ay zalimon, Kashmir hamara chhod do (Oh oppessors, Oh wicked ones, Get out of our Kashmir). Jis Kashmir ko khoon se seencha, woh Kashmir hamara hai (The Kashmir we have irrigated with our blood, that Kashmir is ours!).

It took hours for Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani to wade through the thronging crowds and make it onto the podium. When they arrived, they were born aloft on the shoulders of young men, over the surging crowd to the podium. The roar of greeting was deafening. Mirwaiz Umer spoke first. He repeated the demand that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Disturbed Areas Act and Public Safety Act­under which thousands have been killed, jailed and tortured­be withdrawn. He called for the release of political prisoners, for the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road to be opened for the free movement of goods and people, and for the demilitarisation of the Kashmir Valley.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani began his address with a recitation from the Quran. He then said what he has said before, on hundreds of occasions. The only way for the struggle to succeed, he said, was to turn to the Quran for guidance. He said Islam would guide the struggle and that it was a complete social and moral code that would govern the people of a free Kashmir. He said Pakistan had been created as the home of Islam, and that that goal should never be subverted. He said just as Pakistan belonged to Kashmir, Kashmir belonged to Pakistan. He said minority communities would have full rights and their places of worship would be safe. Each point he made was applauded.

Oddly enough, the apparent doctrinal clarity of what he said made everything a little unclear. I wondered how the somewhat disparate views of the various factions in the freedom struggle would resolve themselves­the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front’s vision of an independent state, Geelani’s desire to merge with Pakistan and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq balanced precariously between them.

Briefly, I had another thought. I imagined myself standing in the heart of an RSS or VHP rally being addressed by L.K. Advani. Replace the word Islam with the word Hindutva, replace the word Pakistan with Hindustan, replace the sea of green flags with saffron ones, and we would have the BJP’s nightmare vision of an ideal India.

Is that what we should accept as our future? Monolithic religious states handing down a complete social and moral code, “a complete way of life”? Millions of us in India reject the Hindutva project. Our rejection springs from love, from passion, from a kind of idealism, from having enormous emotional stakes in the society in which we live. What our neighbours do, how they choose to handle their affairs does not affect our argument, it only strengthens it.

Arguments that spring from love are also fraught with danger. It is for the people of Kashmir to agree or disagree with the Islamic project (which is as contested, in equally complex ways, all over the world by Muslims as Hindutva is contested by Hindus).Perhaps now that the threat of violence has receded and there is some space in which to debate views and air ideas, it is time for those who are part of the struggle to outline a vision for what kind of society they are fighting for. Perhaps it is time to offer people something more than martyrs, slogans and vague generalisations. Those who wish to turn to the Quran for guidance will no doubt find guidance there. But what of those who do not wish to do that. Do the Hindus of Jammu and other minorities also have the right to self-determination? Will the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, many of them in terrible poverty, have the right to return? Will they be paid reparations for the terrible losses they have suffered? Or will a free Kashmir do to its minorities what India has done to Kashmiris for 61 years? What will happen to homosexuals and adulterers and blasphemers  thieves and lafangas and writers who do not agree with the “complete social and moral code”? Will we be put to death as we are in Saudi Arabia? Will the cycle of death, repression and bloodshed continue? History offers many models for Kashmir’s thinkers and intellectuals and politicians to study. What will the Kashmir of their dreams look like? Algeria? Iran? South Africa? Switzerland? Pakistan?

At a crucial time like this, few things are more important than dreams. A lazy utopia and a flawed sense of justice will have consequences that do not bear thinking about. This is not the time for intellectual sloth or a reluctance to assess a situation clearly and honestly. It could be argued that the prevarication of Maharaja Hari Singh in 1947 has been Kashmir’s great modern tragedy, one that eventually led to unthinkable bloodshed and the prolonged bondage of people who were very nearly free.

Already the spectre of partition has reared its head. Memories of the bloodbath that ensued and claimed the lives of more than a million people when India and Pakistan were partitioned have come flooding back.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that history will repeat itself. Not unless it is made to.

However, none of these fears of what the future holds can justify the continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified the colonial project.

Of course there are many ways for the Indian State to continue to hold on to Kashmir. It could do what it does best. Wait. And hope the people’s energy will dissipate in the absence of a concrete plan. It could try and fracture the fragile coalition that is emerging. It could extinguish this non-violent uprising and reinvite armed militancy. It could increase the number of troops from half-a-million to a whole million. A few strategic massacres, a couple of targeted assassinations, some disappearances and a massive round of arrests should do the trick for a few more years.

The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnourished population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more prisons in Kashmir?

The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all.It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir. It’s all being stirred into a poisonous brew and administered intravenously, straight into our bloodstream.

At the heart of it all is a moral question. Does any government have the right to take away people’s liberty with military force?

India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much­if not more­than Kashmir needs azadi from India.

(Courtesy: Outlook, 1 September, 2008)

India’s Phantom Limb Is Paining Again

Prem Shankar Jha, Eminent Journalist

Sixty-one years ago, the newly formed government of Pakistan arrived at a “standstill” agreement with Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir, but then it imposed an economic blockade on his state in order to force him to accede to Pakistan. The move backfired and Kashmir became a part of India. Today another economic blockade, this time imposed by Hindu fanatics in Jammu, is threatening to set off a chain reaction that could take Kashmir out of the Indian Union. Were that to happen, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would be squarely to blame.

In the hysteria triggered when 60,000 Kashmiris began to march towards the Line of Control (LoC) with the intention of crossing it, most commentators have traced the origins of the agitation to the dispute that was ignited by the transfer of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB). This has allowed everyone in New Delhi to put the blame for the present conflagration upon ‘Kashmiri separatists’ who have seized upon the issue to revive their political fortunes. According to this interpretation of events, N.N. Vohra, governor of Jammu & Kashmir, made a mistake when he hastily annulled the land transfer. Had he not done so, Hindu bigots in Jammu would not have gained an opportunity to go on the warpath, and the BJP would not have been tempted to fish in troubled waters.

But this version of events is factually incorrect. And far from being a culprit, Vohra could be India’s best hope for preventing the resumption of another bloodbath in Kashmir. The Amarnath shrine board affair was an agitation waiting to happen. Eighteen years of militancy, followed by incessant attacks on yatris by a new breed of jehadis after the Kargil war, made it necessary to provide yatris with heavy security. This forced the state to play a major role in the organisation of the yatra. Instead of coming in small groups spread over the entire summer, yatris were asked to come within a 15-day period, later extended to a month. That changed the nature of the yatra.

As the prosperity of the middle class added to the number of yatris, Kashmiris began to increasingly see it as a mini-invasion. The formation of the SASB, with a New Delhi-appointed governor as its head provided he was a Hindu, and a recent proposal to extend the yatra to two months, strengthened that impression. To most Kashmiris, however, the issue was not religious or cultural, but political, for it was one more reminder of their virtual exclusion from decisions that affected their future.

The transfer of forest land to the SASB and the remarks made by its secretary provided the spark that lit the fire. Far from having engineered the agitation, the ‘separatists’ were caught by surprise and found themselves in danger of being swept away. But they were not the only ones in this position. The PDP and the National Conference faced the same fate. The decision to join the agitation was therefore forced equally upon all of them by the spontaneous protest among the people.

Vohra, immediately repealed the land transfer. This touched a raw nerve in Jammu. But the initial opposition to the repeal of the land transfer reflected the deeply rooted belief that Jammu has been given second-class treatment within the state ever since Independence. It was not, therefore, communal in origin.

After calming Kashmir, Vohra visited Jammu, met dozens of groups of citizens, and assured them that the yatra would not be affected in any way.By mid-July both parts of the state seemed headed for normalcy.

But Jammu too has its quota of Hindu bigots. And these found strong support from a BJP that was smarting from its defeat in Parliament over the Indo-US nuclear agreement and intent upon using the shrine issue to whip up support for Hindutva. On July 28 the Jammu Sangharsha Samiti declared an economic blockade of the valley. For six days nothing moved on the road to Srinagar. Muslim traders and shopkeepers, and truck drivers with a Kashmir registration, were threatened, beaten up, and had their goods burnt. By the time the army was called out on August 2 to reopen the road, the distribution pipeline in the valley had been disrupted. That much reduced flow of goods into Kashmir.

The Kashmiri response, an attempt to force open the road to Muzaffarabad, did not come from Huriyat but from the Kashmir Fruit Growers’ Association, which found itself facing the ruin of its entire crop of apples and pears. It was a response born of desperation that acquired a political colouring when it was strongly supported not only by the Huriyat but also the PDP. But the demand is not a fig leaf for secession. Mehbooba Mufti has made it clear, time and again, that it is a demand to fulfil the promises that Delhi and Islamabad have already made, time and again, to the Kashmiris.

In Kashmir, the J&K government has been accused of not being firm enough with the Jammu agitators; in Delhi and elsewhere, it has been accused of not being firm enough with the protesters in Kashmir. But neither accusation is justified. Curfew was declared and the army was called out and given shoot-at-sight orders in Jammu in the beginning of August. The police did open fire on more than one occasion and this did result in a number of deaths. The toll has been higher in Kashmir because the crowds of demonstrators were much larger. If the government is guilty of anything, it is of a marked reluctance to use more than a minimum of force.

What is less easy to understand is the six days’ delay between the start of the economic blockade and the calling out of the army to force open the road. Those six days instilled in Kashmiris a fear of the road and of the reception that awaited them in Jammu, a fear that kept large numbers of Kashmiri truck owners and drivers off the road. It also caused the fear of economic strangulation to take root in Kashmiris and opened the way for the politicisation of the agitation in the valley.

Today, the danger of Kashmir spinning out of control has become very real. People have died. Their funerals will become occasions for outpourings of grief and anger. They will give rise to more demonstrations and that may lead to more deaths. The central government has to break this spiral of grief and violence without delay.

It also needs to reassure Kashmiris that it is determined to honour its commitment to progressively soften the border between the two parts of Kashmir and that it will work with all political parties and movements in Kashmir to make this happen the moment peace is restored. If there is any silver lining to the developments, it is that they have brought virtually all Kashmiri nationalist elements together on a single platform. This has created an opportunity for a meaningful dialogue with New Delhi that did not exist before.

(Source: Outlook, 25 August, 2008)

The Hawk On The King’s Shoulder

Prem Shankar Jha

On August 25 the Indian state ‘reasserted its authority’ over the Valley. The Valley-wide crackdown that occurred on August 24 and 25 was crafted by one man: M.K. Narayanan, national security advisor (NSA) to the prime minister. On August 20 he descended upon Srinagar accompanied by a team of security chiefs, Narayanan is believed to have roundly criticised Governor N.N.Vohra for taking a ‘soft line’ on ‘Islamists’.

To illustrate the meltdown of India’s authority in the Valley, Narayanan also detailed the number of occasions on which the crowds had evicted the security forces from their bunkers, the pulling down of the national flag at Lal Chowk on Independence Day, the frequent hoisting of the Pakistani flag, the chanting of pro-Pakistan and pro-Lashkar slogans, and the jeering and taunting of Indian troops. So on August 24, nine districts were handed over to the army, 20 battalions of CRPF moved into Srinagar, and curfew was imposed on the Valley. Local newspapers were banned and foreign journalists were rounded up and sent out of Kashmir, cable TV was shut down and the Internet temporarily disrupted. The sms facility on mobiles had already been withdrawn.

As an exercise in crowd control, the crackdown has been a success. Far fewer people were killed than had been feared only eight in all although hundreds were injured.

But it is difficult to divine what the government hopes to gain. Will it douse the anger that people are feeling? Will the people go quietly back to a normal life. Or will the curfew only bottle up anger and turn Kashmir into a pressure cooker, bringing ever larger numbers out on the streets.

Both the central and state governments have persuaded themselves that, with the leaders under arrest, the movement will fizzle out. Relying mainly on ‘intelligence’ reports and intercepts of messages from Pakistan, they convinced themselves that the agitation over the shrine board land was created by ‘separatists’ who had been marginalised by the Valley’s return to normalcy and the prospect of a high turnout in the October elections. It did not, therefore, have much support among the people.

There can be no doubt that by mid-July, a fortnight after Vohra had revoked the May 26 land transfer decision of the Azad cabinet, Kashmir had returned to normal. Kashmiris were bemoaning their loss of earnings from tourism, and the Hurriyat, which had capitulated to Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had egg all over its face.

But the highway blockade by the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti and the Sangh parivar on July 28 changed all this. In an astounding display of ineptitude, the Centre allowed it to carry on unopposed for 11 days before ordering the army to open the highway. Even after that, the traffic remained a quarter to half of what it used to be. The anger in the Valley mounted as the season’s pear crop ripened and began to rot, coal ceased to arrive, petrol became scarce, and the cement plants had to shut down. Milk powder, medicines and newsprint began to be hoarded.

The establishment of an air bridge between Srinagar and Chandigarh for perishable fruit and essential supplies, and an announcement that henceforth the army would protect convoys of trucks plying to and from the Valley would have destroyed the very basis of the anger, and sent Kashmiris the powerful message that the Centre doesn’t only coerce, it also protects. But the Centre said and did nothing.

It did nothing even when the Kashmir fruit growers association announced that its members would take the crop to Muzaffarabad. But that was the lesser part of the reason for their anger and sudden unity. The greater part was the openly communal agitation in Jammu. From the very first day, the Samiti demanded not the unrestricted use of land to cater to the needs of the pilgrims but its permanent transfer to the shrine board. But it was the takeover of the agitation by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Shiv Sena, and its use of every symbol of a new fascist version of Hinduism, from swords and trishuls to saffron flags, along with the tricolour national flag, that finally convinced the Kashmiris that ‘Hindu India’ had declared economic war on the Muslims of Kashmir. As Geelani told an all-faith delegation, “I had closed my shop and gone home. It was the people who pulled me out. What I had not been able to achieve in 50 years was done for me in a fortnight by the Samiti.”

The ‘fruit’ march to Muzaffarabad was a result of all of these pressures part anger at a betrayal, part desperate attempt to break an economic stranglehold, and part political opportunism. But the resulting 40 deaths completed the delegitimisation of Indian rule in Kashmir. But all was not lost even then. For the governor’s determination that there must not be any more deaths in Kashmirshared by the prime minister and the consequent restraint, had begun to mend fences once more.

Had Narayanan and his cohorts had a slightly open mind, they would have seen that the restraint exercised by the state government on August 16/18 had already tilted the balance of power within the coordination committee decisively back in favour of the moderates. At its meeting on August 20, a day before the Idgah prayers, the Mirwaiz had dropped Naeem Khan and Shabbir Shah, both close to Geelani and, it was suspected, to the Lashkar-e-Toiba, from the committee. He had replaced them with Geelani’s bete noire Sajjad Lone, who had in 2002, over his father’s body, openly accused the isi and its protege in Kashmir (Geelani) of the murder. In another significant shift, this was the first meeting of the coordinating committee that was not held at Geelani’s house but at Mirwaiz Manzil.

The meeting lasted for hours but could not reach a decision another indication of disagreements between the ‘separatists’. But the restraint shown by the state during the massive gathering at the Idgah the next day tilted the balance even further in favour of moderation.

The NSA had never favoured restraint, he allowed Kashmiri newspapers to conclude that Delhi would continue with the policy of restraint provided there was no violence. But all he was doing was buying time, waiting for an excuse to crack down. This was provided by the lumpen elements at the fringes of the azadi movement. As the realisation sank into them that the armed police would not open fire when provoked, gangs of lumpen youth, born and brought up during the insurgency and filled with hate for India, took to teasing, insulting and, on occasion, physically molesting the jawans.They yelled derisive anti-India slogans and put up Pakistani flags. The flags were the last straw. The Indian state was finally provoked and the only policy that could have brought Kashmir back on an even keel was abandoned in favour of naked force.

With the PM determined to maintain his vow of silence, with the home ministry determined to negotiate with criminals in Jammu while it shoots their victims in Kashmir, only the absurdly optimistic can believe that the Kashmir movement will fizzle out. On the contrary, reports from the Valley suggest that the demonstrators will take a leaf from the Sangharsh Samiti’s book and put women and children in front.

But one firm commitment, given personally to the Kashmiris by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, could still make the difference between peace and war in Kashmir. This is that India will decisively break the economic blockade of Kashmir using army convoys and an air bridge from Chandigarh; greatly hasten the opening of all the agreed border points between the Valley and PoK, if Pakistan cooperates; and invite the members of the coordination committee to participate in determining the future of Kashmir with him and Vohra as soon as normalcy returns to the entire state.

None of this would break new ground.. Srinagar is only an hour away. That is the kind of change of direction and focus of energies that might still save Kashmir and India from a future that neither wants.

(Source: Outlook, 8 September, 2008)

Kashmir: is Secession the Answer?

Kanti Bajpai, Noted Academician

The protests and violence in Jammu and Kashmir have once again raised the issue of the State’s secession from India. While the Amarnath shrine dispute is clearly the trigger for the secessionist calls in the Valley, the agitation there seems to be part of a deeper malaise.

Recognising this, a body of opinion outside Kashmir argues that it is probably time to let the State go. A sense of fatigue over Kashmir and a feeling of discomfort over compelling people to stay within the Indian Union when they want to leave are evident in these arguments. This is understandable: it has been 20 long years of conflict and pain; and it is discomfiting to think that we are holding a people within a community when they are unhappy.

However, secession is never simply a choice internal to the community seeking it because the consequences may well be felt in the larger community from which it is separating and in the international community which it seeks to join. This does not mean that secession is ruled out forever. There are times when it may well be necessary.

Under what circumstances can (or should) a people secede? Political theorists argue that in the face of genocidal violence, a people has a right to secede. They also suggest that massive discrimination and denial of human rights are grounds for secession. But is Kashmir an instance of genocide, discrimination, and egregious human rights abuses?

Have Indian actions in Kashmir amounted to genocidal violence? The roll-call of abuses is a melancholic one, but it is not genocide — either in intent or in practice. The Indian government has not sought the extermination of the Kashmiri people whatever its motives and actions over the past 20 years.

Can the government be accused of massively discriminating against them? It would be hard to show that this is the case. If anything, it is the opposite. Article 370 of the Constitution gives the State special rights and privileges. Kashmir has its own Constitution, the only State to have one. No Central law can apply there without the assent of the State legislature. Indians from other States cannot own property in Kashmir. It is true that New Delhi has fiddled with Article 370 or at least with the spirit of it, but it would be an exaggeration to say this amounts to a case for secession.

Economically, Kashmir is better placed than most other States. It has amongst the lowest levels of poverty. It gets more per capita transfers from the Central government than virtually any other State. One might argue that it could have done better economically; but so could have many other States. The development problems of Kashmir are hardly unique to the State. These cannot be attributed to a policy of government vindictiveness.

Human rights violations might be a ground for secession even if discrimination is not. Indian government agencies have a lot to answer for, as noted above. But are their actions a case for secession though? If the government made no attempt to improve its record and if it is true that the Indian political system is without resources and methods to improve its approach to Kashmir, then the case for secession would be strengthened.

Once again, it would be hard to show that the Indian government has been unwilling to rein in its agencies and make restitution for earlier lapses and mistakes. It has prosecuted some members of the police and armed forces who committed human rights excesses. It has got rid of two draconian laws, TADA and POTA, which gave the authorities the power to detain and hold citizens preventively (although there are special powers in place that have not been dismantled).

New Delhi has also tried to educate the army and para-military forces on human rights conduct. Crucially, despite its earlier electoral record of manipulation, the Indian government has held free and fair elections in the State, and the media continue to report on Kashmir, including the excesses of the government. This is not a brilliant record, but it does suggest that the system can be made more accountable.

Even if the government’s record does not justify the case for secession, we might still support the separation if it is shown that those who claim to lead or might come to lead the independent state are representative and responsible agents who would make life better for Kashmiris.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), which claims to represent Kashmiri opinion and which might lead an independent Kashmir, has never been tested electorally, principally because it has chosen not to contest. there are parties which are members of the APHC and which do not necessarily support secession. The militants, who are fighting for secession, are even more unknown; evidently, they are more feared than loved. Finally, whatever support the APHC and the militants enjoy in the Valley, their base in Jammu and Ladakh is much smaller.

The APHC has been remarkably coy about its political values and preferences, so it is hard to tell how respectful it is of democracy. It is ridden with internal conflicts and has displayed little coherence. Perhaps, as a result, it has failed to articulate a cogent view of politics in an independent Kashmir. As for the militants, they have attacked not only the agencies of the Indian government but also unarmed civilians, Muslim and Hindu, with great regularity. Violence against unarmed people is terrorism pure and simple and is surely not encouraging in terms of the political values of these groups. The rising influence of fundamentalist Islam in the Valley also does not augur well for a democratic, pluralist, and open Kashmir.

Before we countenance secession, let us also ask whether or not the geopolitical setting of an independent state would be conducive to independence. Kashmir would be surrounded by three regional powers, two of which are mega states, India and China, and the third. All three will have claims to Kashmiri territory and allegiance, and will exert enormous pressures on the state in their own strategic interests. Kashmir is landlocked. Whatever the rights of landlocked states and upper riparians under the international law, Kashmir will be dependent on the goodwill of India and Pakistan, if not China.

Secession is not simply a choice that a community makes of its own free will. Since the effects of secession may be felt far and wide, the international community has a right to bear on the issue. It has a right to ask if the new state will be stable and well organised and capable of preserving its independence. It must also ask whether the effects of secessionism are, on the whole, positive for those near and far. Secession from India could well have calamitous effects within India and Pakistan and on their mutual relations: the fragility of these states and their relationship makes it almost certain that the independence of Kashmir will lead to massive political convulsions. The effects of Kashmiri secession may not be restricted to South Asia.

Kashmiris in the Valley and Indians outside the Valley must consider these issues before accepting the case for secession. It would be foolish to argue that the secession of a people is ruled out forever. It would be equally foolish to choose secession without a careful thought of the larger ramifications.

(Source: The Hindu, 6 November, 2008)

No Peace in this Accord

With the Recent Amarnath Accord the government has not bought Peace but Trouble

A G Noorani, Eminent Columnist

The accord between the Jammu and Kashmir government and the Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (SAYSS) on August 31, 2008 is far worse than the government’s order to transfer land to the shrine board only three months earlier on May 26. The accord grants the SAYSS concessions beyond those contained in the transfer order. It is one-sided and marks an abject surrender to violence, blockade and to communal forces. The differences between the order and the accord are glaring. Here is a list:

l The order was made pursuant to a decision on May 20 by the cabinet in which both Jammu and Kashmir were represented. The accord completely ignores Kashmir where the land is to be given. Jammu alone was represented. A week earlier there was a clampdown in the valley and top leaders were arrested.

l Though hotly disputed, even the controversial order did not use the word “exclusive” anywhere. Yet the SAYSS felt so emboldened as to demand it and threatened to wreck the deal if it was not conceded. The government yielded in the early hours of August 31. Para 6A of the accord says that the government “shall set aside for use by the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board exclusively the land in Baltal and Domail”. This order is cloaked under a lie that claims the land is “traditionally under use for the annual yatra purpose”. The traditional route for over a century is the Pahalgam route. The Baltal route is a recent demand. It was regarded as dangerous both by the army and by the Nitish Sengupta Committee report. It is also unnecessary if the limit of yatris set by the committee report (one lakh) is observed.

l This violates the citizen’s fundamental right under Article 19(1)(d) of the Constitution to move freely throughout India. The demand for exclusivity was not made either in May 2008 or in earlier decades. It is pure communal aggression, using the yatra for political demonstration not religious piety.

l The duration of use has been extended to cover both the pre and post-yatra period. Para 6C of the accord first says that the land will be used “for the duration of the yatra”, including the period of preparations and winding up. But the very next para contains these sinister words: “The aforesaid land shall be used according to the board’s requirements from time to time, including for the following”. There follow nine measures, including construction, setting up of sheds and shops, etc, which can be carried out even beyond the yatra period “from time to time” and “according to the board’s requirements”, perhaps all the year round.

l Para 8 of the transfer order insisted that the land “shall return” to the state. This was dropped in the accord. This accomplishes SK Sinha’s objective – permanent use the year round.

l  Also dropped totally is Para 4 on payment for users.

l Dropped too is Para 6, an undertaking of foolproof measures against water pollution, and Para 7, on the payment of fines for any damage to the forest. There is a pious provision contained in Para 6C(ix) of the accord, among the objectives of land users, namely “undertaking measures relating to… preservation of ecology”, etc. Breach entails no fine.

l The order of May 26 was rescinded on July 1. The accord will require a fresh order to implement it. By itself the accord has no legal force. Section 2(a) of the Jammu and Kashmir Forest (Conservation) Act says “the government shall not, except on a resolution of the council of ministers based on the advice of the advisory committee” constituted under the act, “make any order directing that any forest land or any portion thereof may be used for any non-forest purpose”. The earlier phrase, “council of ministers”, alone was revised by an amendment in 2001 and the Forest Advisory Committee’s advice requirement was added and made mandatory. “Council of ministers” is specific. It is different from the “Jammu and Kashmir government” whose powers vest now in the governor. The law intentionally provides the resolution as a safeguard. This council can come into existence only after the next elections. In any case the Forest Advisory Committee’s advice on July 12, 2007 cannot apply to the new accord which must be vetted afresh by that committee. It was given before the Supreme Court’s final judgement in the TM Godavarman case on November 23, 2007 which lays down the law and makes important observations on balancing development with protection of the environment. Failure to consider it vitiates the decision.

The accord lacks legal efficacy as well as moral and political legitimacy. Any order in its implementation will be void in law. It is a pity that the state should bend all rules to buy peace with communal forces, which includes a promise to consider compensation for lawbreakers. The parivar in Jammu has already begun asking for more. The government has not bought peace but trouble. It is gunah be lazzat (crime sans joy).

If the state can thus bend its knees before the sangh parivar on an issue like this what hopes of justice can Kashmiris entertain when it comes to restoring the raped Article 370 to a status of worth and respect?

(AG Noorani is a lawyer, columnist, author and political commentator.)

(Source: Communal Combat, September, 2008)

A Jihad Grows in Kashmir 

Pankaj Mishra

FOR more than a week, hundreds of thousands of Muslims filled the streets of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir, shouting “azadi” (freedom) and raising the green flag of Islam. These demonstrations, the largest in nearly two decades, remind many of us why in 2000 President Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan, as “the most dangerous place on earth.”

Dangerous, to whom? Though more than a decade old, the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir, which Pakistan’s rogue intelligence agency had infiltrated with jihadi terrorists, was not much known outside South Asia. But then the Clinton administration had found itself compelled to intervene in 1999 when India and Pakistan fought a limited but brutal war near the so-called line of control that divides Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani-held portion of the state. Pakistan’s withdrawal of its soldiers set off the series of destabilizing events that culminated in Pervez Musharraf assuming power in a military coup.

After 9/11, Mr. Musharraf quickly became the Bush administration’s ally. Seen through the fog of the “war on terror” and the Indian government’s own cynical propaganda, the problem in Kashmir seemed entirely to do with jihadist terrorists.

It is true that India’s relations with Pakistan have improved lately. But more than half a million Indian soldiers still pursue a few thousand insurgents in Kashmir. While periodically holding bilateral talks with Pakistan, India has taken for granted those most affected by the so-called Kashmir dispute: the four million Kashmiri Muslims who suffer every day the misery and degradation of a full-fledged military occupation.

The Indian government’s insistence that peace is spreading in Kashmir is at odds with a report by Human Rights Watch in 2006 that described a steady pattern of arbitrary arrest, torture and extrajudicial execution by Indian security forces. A survey by Doctors Without Borders in 2005 found that Muslim women in Kashmir, prey to the Indian troops and paramilitaries, suffered some of the most pervasive sexual violence in the world.

Over the last two decades, most ordinary Kashmiri Muslims have wavered between active insurrection and sullen rage. They fear, justifiably or not, the possibility of Israeli-style settlements by Hindus; reports two months ago of a government move to grant 92 acres of Kashmiri land to a Hindu religious group are what provoked the younger generation into the public defiance expressed of late.

As always, the turmoil in Kashmir heartens extremists in both India and Pakistan. Hindu nationalists formed an economic blockade of the Kashmir Valley — an attempt to punish seditious Muslims and to gin up votes in next year’s general elections. In Pakistan, the intelligence service can only be gratified by another opportunity to synergize its jihads in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

What of the Kashmiris themselves, who have repeatedly found themselves reduced to pawns in the geopolitical games and domestic politics of their neighbors? In 1989 and ’90, when few Kashmiris had heard of Osama bin Laden, hundreds of thousands of Muslims buoyed by popular revolutions in Eastern Europe regularly petitioned the United Nations office in Srinagar, hoping to raise the world’s sympathy for their cause. Indian troops responded by firing into many of these largely peaceful demonstrations, killing hundreds of people and provoking many young Kashmiris to take to arms and embrace radical Islam.

A new generation of politicized Kashmiris has now risen; the world is again likely to ignore them — until some of them turn into terrorists. It is up to the Indian government to reckon honestly with Kashmiri aspirations for a life without constant fear and humiliation. Some first steps are obvious: to severely cut the numbers of troops in Kashmir; and to allow Kashmiris to trade freely across the line of control with Pakistan.

India’s record of pitiless intransigence does not inspire much hope that it will take these necessary steps toward the final and comprehensive resolution of Kashmir’s long-disputed status. But a brutal suppression of the nonviolent protests will continue to radicalize a new generation of Muslims and engender a fresh cycle of violence, rendering Kashmir even more dangerous — and not just to South Asia this time.

(Source: New York Times, 26 August, 2008)

Views of Kashmiri Leaders

Centre will be Forced to Grant Maximum Autonomy

Farooq Abdullah,

National Conference Leader

TODAY, A new generation is out on the streets. Their seniors have realised that the gun failed their agitation but this generation does not fear death. The divide between Jammu and Kashmir is growing dangerously and will have disastrous consequences for the subcontinent. But Jammu is talking of neglect. The economic blockade led to a feeling amongst the Kashmiris that their lifeline was being choked, triggering the Muzaffarbad Chalo agitation. I begged Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley to not have an all-India agitation saying it will internationalise the Kashmir issue again. I told them it could lead to a Gujarat-like situation. I fear Muslims in the rest of India will be affected. The only permanent solution is maximum autonomy and the Centre will be forced to grant it.

Delhi does not Understand Land is an Identity Issue

Mebooba Mufti,

President, Peoples Democratic Party

WE ARE being projected as an anti-national force when we are the ones who have been pursuing a healing-touch policy. Mufti Saab had the political acumen to stop the land transfer three years ago because we knew it would become an atomic bomb.. Yes, PDP ministers were part of the Cabinet meeting allotting the land but then Arun Kumar, the Chief Executive Officer, played a dangerous game. He announced at a press conference that the facilities that would come up on the 800 kanals would be permanent. He also talked of Hindu pollution and Muslim pollution during Haj. Can a government officer talk like this without powerful political backing? Delhi does not understand that land is an identity issue. Everyone spoke up for Nandigram; why not Kashmir? Surely, the Shrine Board is not above Jammu and Kashmir, above India. The immediate solution lies in opening the Muzaffarabad route. If goods can go through Wagah, why not Muzaffarabad? And Delhi (must) think about Musharraf’s proposal on joint control. You can’t wish away the problem.

Kashmir is a Beautiful Prison.

Give us the Right to Self-determination

Syed Ali Shah Geelani,

Hurriyat Conference Leader

THE AGITATION is not about the yatra. Over five lakh yatris came this year and not one of them was harmed. Kashmiris organised langars for them and will continue to do so. Governor SK Sinha misused his powers and got the land transferred. He made another mistake by extending the yatra for two months. What will happen to the environment? In Uttarakhand, the number of pilgrims to the Gangotri are restricted to less than 300 a day, by the BJP-run government. If there are restrictions there, why not here? Today’s Kashmiri youth thinks that India wants them to be their ghulam. They think the military will forcibly take their land away. Why is the namaz not allowed in schools, when vande mataram is allowed? Jammu and Kashmir is not an integral part of India. People are demanding the right to self-determination which was promised by Nehru. You can keep saying Kashmir is an integral part but remove the army and lets see how many people say ‘Hindustan zindabad’. We are not communal; the BJP is. We will protect the yatris with our lives. We don’t want to divide J&K. We will preserve unity because Hindus are our brothers. There is only one solution: we are in a beautiful prison. Please give us our freedom and the right to selfdetermination. If the people decide to stay with India, we will accept that but let India respect our rights.

(Courtesy:Tehelka, 30 August, 2008)

HINDU-TERRORISM

Ban the Bombers: Ban Bajrang Dal & VHP

Appoint a Three Judges Tribunal to Monitor Investigation into all Blast Cases

 Teesta Setalvad, Eminent Fighter for Human Rights

Last issue of Communalism Combat highlighted not just the disturbing phenomenon of the emergence of a wide network of ‘Hindu’ terror. Far worse is the attempt by the central investigating agency, the CBI, to cover-up this fact during its investigations. Instead of a thorough probe into the Nanded blasts case of April 2006, the charge sheet submitted by the CBI before the Nanded court shows a very clear bias. (CC cover, Blast After Blast.)

On August 28, 2008 we organised a public meeting in Delhi to focus attention on the issue and to reiterate a citizen’s demand for a ban on the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD). This demand was one that we had repeatedly made between 1999 and 2002 along with other secular activists. Justice BG Kolse Patil (former judge, Bombay High Court), filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, former director general of police, Gujarat, RB Sreekumar, and I addressed the meeting.

Four days before the meeting two activists of the Bajrang Dal had died in yet another accidental blast in Kanpur. Around the same time there was the grotesque manifestation of mob-cum-state terror against innocent Christians in Orissa. Here again, the same sangh parivar outfits were involved. This added urgency to our renewed demand for a ban.

As ominously, the same organisations currently being investigated by the Maharashtra ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) for the blasts that took place in Thane and Panvel (Maharashtra) in May and June this year – the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, the Sanatan Sanstha and the Guru Kripa Pratisthan – have also been found to be active in the Jammu region. Prominent members of these outfits were the most vocal and communal voices in the Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti.

Our meeting was well attended. Though media persons were present in large numbers, there was little reportage in the print or the electronic media. This is strange. It is particularly surprising given the fact that an attempted cover-up by the CBI was spelt out in great detail.

Justice Kolse Patil, who had earlier exchanged notes with other jurists and legal experts, emphasised that no other issue in the country warranted greater attention than the one being raised at the meeting. Among the issues of concern was the deliberate turning of a blind eye to an obvious pseudo-Hindu terror network active in different states by the crime branch, the ATS or the STF (Special Task Force) in each state. A point that was specifically highlighted was the CBI’s attempted cover-up of the entire RSS-Bajrang Dal-VHP terror network unearthed by the Maharashtra ATS in the Nanded 2006 blasts case.

What emerged from the Delhi meeting was a demand for the constitution of a special tribunal consisting of three judges of the Supreme Court to monitor and examine the investigations in all blasts cases in the country. The outfits involved in the ‘pseudo-Hindu’ blasts are the same outfits in whose agenda ‘hate Muslims’ is an integral part. Given this scenario, the question of a non-discriminatory approach by investigating and other law enforcement agencies is critical if confidence in the process must be assured.

A failure by the Indian state, the political class and the media to respond to this crying need does not augur well for abiding peace and justice in the country. The deafening silence of the media on this issue even as it remains proactively engaged in the glossy makeover of the master of state-sponsored terror, Narendra Modi, raises both suspicions and hackles.

Former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and currently general secretary of the AICC, Digvijay Singh is one politician who has been quite vociferous in demanding a ban on the Bajrang Dal and the VHP. It was also a demand made by his government in 2001 during NDA rule at the centre.  The silence from the rest of the Congress party both then and now is deafening.

The demands made at the meeting on August 28 a ban on the Bajrang Dal and the VHP and a special tribunal  were addressed to the central UPA government.

Among the few papers that reported on the meeting were the Delhi edition of The Hindu and Mail Today. To its credit, Outlook magazine has taken its journalistic investigations even further. Tehelka too has been fair and consistent in its coverage of the issue. But Frontline continues to turn a blind eye. As for the electronic media, there was no reportage, no emotionally charged panel discussions, no attempt to bring to national attention the dangerous emergence of Hindu terrorist outfits. The silence of the same media that thrives on the sensational, that otherwise inundates us with information after every bomb blast, is strangely silent about blasts involving Hindu extremist outfits. Its silence is as telling as that of both the ruling party and the major opposition parties. Is there an unholy conspiracy of silence?

The opening lines of the special report in the latest issue of Outlook make the same observation: “in a curious convergence of views, policymakers – regardless of the party in power – administrators/police and journalists appear to be united in the belief that to put the activities of Hindu militants under the scanner in the way their Muslim counterparts are would somehow upset the social balance.” The report is prefaced with a chilling quote accessed from the VHP’s official website: “The Bajrang Dal has proved as a security ring of Hindu society. Whenever there is an attack on Hindu society, faith and religion the workers of the Bajrang Dal come to their rescue.” That the sinister meaning of this message is lost, or is being wilfully ignored by state agencies which are supposed to ensure the rule of law and to protect the life and property of every Indian, is extremely ominous. Where are we heading?

The Outlook investigation lays bare the activities of the Bajrang Dal in the Jammu region. In 2004 Surendra Jain, the all-India secretary of the BD said that the organisation was working undercover in the Hindu-dominated villages in Jammu city, Poonch, Doda and Rajouri. Its activists had also penetrated the village defence committees. In the last four years the BD appears to have changed its tactics  from mob terror to bomb terror.

CC has repeatedly warned of the nefarious designs of the Bajrang Dal since 1999. Under the benevolent gaze of the NDA until 2004, the RSS-VHP-BD triumvirate were openly involved in arming Hindus through the distribution of trishuls and military training camps for young men and women. And as the ATS investigation into the Nanded blasts uncovers, by 2003 the BD with covert support from the VHP and the RSS had graduated to training in the making and blasting of bombs.

A police officer who prefers anonymity told Outlook, “While the BD may not be as powerful as other terror outfits, it has the know-how. For instance, during the state-sponsored Gujarat genocide that killed 2,500 Muslims in 2002, some 500-600 bombs went off, a majority of which were linked to Hindu organisations. In Orissa, the police have recorded a conversation between two local BJP leaders about how the violence in that state will help the party politically.”

As staggering and frightening as these facts are, who is listening?

(Source: Communal Combat, September, 2008)

Blast After Blast : Who Is Responsible?

Teesta Setalvad

The news in April 2006 that a bomb had accidentally exploded in the house of an RSS man in Nanded in Maharashtra, killing two persons and injuring four others – all Bajrang Dal activists – created a national sensation within days the police investigation itself revealed that the incident was in fact the result of an unintended explosion of bombs that were being assembled by Hindu extremists with the clear intention of targeting mosques and terrorising Muslims.

Communalism Combat has been closely monitoring the Nanded case from the start. CC’s sustained investigation unravels a story of police bias, half measures by the ATS and, worst of all, an all too apparent bid, ‘Operation Cover-up’, by the CBI. Much was expected from the CBI by way of a thorough and non-partisan investigation but its conduct has been the most shocking. This raises the obvious question: is the apex investigation agency in the country communally tainted?

On the night of April 5-6, 2006 a bomb exploded in the house of Laxman Gundayya Rajkondwar, a retired executive engineer at the PWD, Nanded. Two persons – Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse – died on the spot while four of their accomplices – Maroti Keshav Wagh, Yogesh Deshpande (alias Vidulkar), Gururaj Jairam Tuptewar and Rahul Manohar Pande – were seriously injured.

On hearing of the incident, an assistant police inspector (API) from the local Bhagyanagar police station, Ravindra Purushottam Dahedkar, who was on patrol duty, registered the first complaint. On the say-so of the surviving injured, he registered an FIR. The FIR said Naresh Rajkondwar was running a firecracker business from his home. The blast occurred because Rajkondwar and Wagh were smoking too close to where the firecrackers were stored. In short, it was an unfortunate accident.

It must have been a matter of some embarrassment, in retrospect, for the then district superintendent of police, Fatehsingh Patil, & the district collector of Nanded, Radheshyam Mopalwar. Relying presumably on Dahedkar’s FIR, both of them repeated the firecrackers-did-it story to the media.

Within days however the inspector general of police, Nanded range, Dr Suryaprakash Gupta, set the record straight, telling the media that the incident involved a bomb blast. During examination the police (Dahedkar himself) found “splinters” on the bodies of the deceased and the injured. A live pipe bomb was also found at the explosion site. It was thus obvious that the firecracker story was a deliberate fabrication in order to mislead the police.

Further investigations revealed that the deceased and wounded persons were all active workers of the Bajrang Dal who had been assembling bombs to target Muslim places of worship, camouflaging their entire operation to resemble a terror operation run by Muslims. Laxman Gundayya Rajkondwar, in whose house the bombs were being manufactured and whose son Naresh died in the explosion, is an RSS man. Diaries, important documents, suspicious maps and mobile telephone numbers that were unearthed from the houses of the accused incriminated them further. In a manner of speaking, members of the sangh parivar were literally caught red-handed with bombs in their basement.

In the first few days following the blasts the police arrested 16 persons who were then remanded to police custody. The remand application highlighted two points. One, the accused persons knowingly provided the police false information on the day of the crime, saying the blast was caused by firecrackers when in fact it was a bomb blast. Two, investigations had revealed that the accused persons possessed diagrams, maps and other documentary material related to the manufacture and storage of bombs and the identification of target areas for the purpose of creating terror in the country.

Named among the accused were a practising advocate at the Nanded district court, Milind Arvind Ektate, and a medical practitioner, Dr Umesh Dinkarrao Deshpande. One of the accused men, Rahul Manohar Pande, had sustained serious injuries in the blast but had escaped from the scene and sought surreptitious medical attention. Advocate Ektate was among those who helped Pande go into hiding while Dr Deshpande provided medical care without notifying the police. Curiously, neither of the two men had any difficulty in obtaining anticipatory bail from the district court. Ektate applied for and was granted anticipatory bail through an ad interim bail application on April 10 while Dr Umesh Dinkarrao Deshpande made a similar application on April 13. He was also granted ad interim bail the same day following an oral “no objection” from the assistant public prosecutor, AJ Kurtadikar. As of today, all the accused, apart from the absconding Rahul Manohar Pande, are out on bail.

Heinous deeds by Hindu extremists

On May 4, 2006 the case was transferred to the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra police. By the time the ATS filed its first charge sheet on August 24, 2006, it had already amassed a mountain of damning evidence against a whole network of Bajrang Dal and other sangh parivar workers engaged in terrorist activities.

Considering the circumstances in which the CBI was brought into the picture, one would have expected the country’s premier investigating agency to conduct nothing less than a thorough, free, fair and transparent investigation so that the real culprits and masterminds of the crime could be identified, caught and punished. Instead, the CBI chose to function behind a veil of secrecy, refusing to brief the public at all about the investigations and thus raising suspicions about its unprofessional conduct.

Conclusion

Through its creditworthy investigation of the accidental blast in Nanded, the ATS uncovered a dangerous terrorist network. Its investigations revealed that the bomb blasts at Parbhani, Jalna, Purna and Nanded were no ordinary crimes with simple motives. Involved in each of them were activists of the Bajrang Dal who had sought and received systematic training from experts in bomb-making and bomb explosion. Their insidious acts of terror at mosques include not just planting the bombs but also disguising themselves as Muslims while committing the crimes.

The ATS investigations further revealed that it was not just a handful but as many as three dozen Bajrang Dalis from all over Maharashtra who received training in Pune where more than a hundred of them from all over India were similarly trained at the Bhonsala Military School in Nagpur. While the Pune camp was organised by the Bajrang Dal, the Nagpur one was organised by its parent body, the RSS. And while those directly involved in lobbing the bombs were Bajrang Dal members, there are clear indications that the RSS and the VHP also form part of the nexus. The men who imparted this training to the Dal’s cadres included retired officers of the country’s military and intelligence services.

According to the admissions of several of the accused, their agenda was to challenge what they regarded as “Muslim bombs” with “Hindu bombs”. At the same time it was clearly part of the Hindu extremist strategy to make their malevolent actions appear as if they were the work of Muslim extremists.

All of this is truly sinister and raises several very disturbing questions: Is “Hindu terrorism” now an integral part of the sangh parivar’s “Hate Muslims” agenda, at least for the Bajrang Dal, acting with the covert blessing of and logistical support from sections within the VHP and even the RSS?

How do we know that the Bajrang Dal and others have not been conducting similar bomb training camps in states other than Maharashtra? (After all, but for the bomb blowing up accidentally in Nanded the Maharashtra police might still be clueless about the people involved in the local terror plot. The way investigations have been conducted into the second accidental blast in Nanded in 2007 raises other serious issues.) as communal violence now donned a terrorist garb on both sides of the communal divide?

If as part of their strategy Hindu extremists disguise themselves as Muslims and then engage in terrorist activity, could they also be responsible for sending out emails claiming responsibility for blasts under assumed Muslim names and using an Islamic vocabulary?

How then can we know who is responsible for the series of blasts that have ripped through a succession of Indian cities? What then of national security, public peace and communal harmony? Are our investigating and intelligence agencies also handicapped by their ideological blinkers insomuch as they are blind to or soft on acts of “Hindu terrorism”?

The spate of blasts in Panvel and Thane in May-June 2008 where once again some Hindu extremist outfits have been implicated lends an added urgency to these questions. Given the CBI’s miserable failure in taking the ATS investigations forward, only an open and in depth inquiry carried out by a high court judge will help trace the tentacles of this hitherto unsuspected monster that threatens national security, public peace and harmony.

(Source:Communalism Combat, 31 August, 2008)

Shades of Saffron: VHP Reinvents itself, with Revised Agenda, New Strategy and New Leaders

Kallol Bhattacherjee

On June 17, 2008 the telegenic Swami Ramdev had a meeting with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leadership at his Patanjali Yog Peeth in Haridwar. He joined hands with the VHP and became the convener of the Ganga Raksha Manch. After spearheading recent movements in Jammu and Orissa, the VHP has taken up the cause of the sacred Ganga. Ramdev will launch the movement for purifying the polluted river in Kanpur on September 18, followed by similar programmes in New Delhi. On the same day, the VHP plans to hold agitations in all district headquarters in the country, demanding an end to the neglect of the Ganga by the government.  

The man behind the VHP-Ramdev alliance is the Parishad’s central secretary Rajendra Pankaj. This soft-spoken man from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, is in charge of the VHP’s major agitations. A veteran of Emergency era’s anti-Congress protests, Pankaj was jailed for nine months in 1975.

Pankaj is supported by a few new leaders. Prakash Sharma, who is a lawyer, runs the Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the VHP) from Kanpur. Then there is Surender Mishra, a Hindu dharma defender from Jammu. And the third ally is VHP central secretary Vinayak Deshpande, who has plans to revive the effort for a Hindu rashtra within the boundaries of secular India. Thanks to organisational changes taken by VHP supremo Ashok Singhal, these leaders are now being projected after the agitation in Jammu and the turmoil in Kandhamal, Orissa.

For Sharma, Hindutva activity in Kanpur was difficult as the city was a hub of labour rights activists. But he toiled and convinced labourers that they had to protect their religion and culture while demanding fair wages. Recognition came quickly from Singhal and firebrand leader Pravin Togadia. Soon, he was asked to take over important cultural projects across the country that needed the Bajrang Dal’s muscle.

While Singhal and Sadhvi Ritambhara led the agitation for Ram Janmabhoomi in the early 1990s, Sharma and his friends were getting trained in the art of mobilising the masses. As the NDA government exited in 2004 and new strategies were thought of by the VHP to revive the Hindutva project, Sharma came to the limelight. “The new movements in Orissa and Amarnath reflect our concerns,” he said.

“In Jammu, we have set an example of a successful campaign and that is the future of VHP,” said Pankaj. Change in the strategy and image of the VHP tops the agenda for the time being. “We have to change the way people view Hindu organisations like the VHP and the Bajrang Dal,” said Singhal. “We are not destructive forces in the country, we are only responding. I want the organisation to convey this to the masses.”

The strategy is clear. “Civil society is first, while the organisation comes second. In the past, we have seen that organisations mobilise people around a cause and then betray their expectations. This will not be repeated this time,” said Singhal, hinting at the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that brought the BJP to power.

The new VHP leaders coordinated among themselves to draw maximum national mileage from the Amarnath crisis. While Sharma gave the Amarnath movement a national tint, it was Mishra who made key moves in Jammu. “We kept the VHP at the backroom and allowed the Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti and the people of Jammu to take the lead. We taught a lesson to the government that peoples’ sentiment is supreme,” said Mishra.

While the VHP achieved its aim without much violence in Jammu, the situation went out of control in Orissa, Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati was not a member of the organisation. Instead, they say he was only a margdarshak or direction-giver. “Lakshmanananda was brutally murdered and the violence in Orissa is a result of that first act,” said Sharma.

The VHP, which had experimented with various projects earlier, had now successfully zeroed in on the ‘civil society first’ model after the Jammu agitation. Pankaj added that the Ram Setu agitation fizzled out as the VHP was at the forefront. “As organisational men, we like to take charge of movements. But the challenge is to step back and let the people take over,” he said.

The Amarnath issue has also catapulted master strategist Deshpande to the limelight. Following up on the ‘soft approach’ proposed by Singhal, Deshpande plans to mobilise Hindus and Sikhs in Nanded, Maharashtra, between October 30 and November 4 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of Khalsa Panth.

Though these leaders appear softer than Togadia and Ritambhara, they are hardliners as far as politics is concerned. And they are merciless when it comes to the BJP. “Choosing Advani as the prime ministerial candidate was out of compulsion and not out of pleasure as he passed the test of contemporary politics where a mildly secular image helps,” said Sharma. All these new leaders believe that the BJP should not be allowed to become bigger than its supporters. “That is the way to ensure that the BJP delivers on its electoral promises,” Sharma added.

(Source: The Week, September, 21 2008)

‘ISLAMIN’ TERRORISM

People’s Sagacity as Protector against Consequence of Vicious Cycle

 M J Akbar, Eminent Journalist

Terror is testing the resilience of the Indian government and the sagacity of the Indian people. The first is in shambles, but the second is holding up. The will of the people has become the safety net protecting the Indian state.

The power of terrorism lies in its ability to generate fear. Arbitrary death — anonymous, place uncertain, extent unknown — is the principal means by which the terrorist seeks to shroud a nation under a pall of dread. But the essence of fear is personal: the collective is only a sum total of individual fears. This makes the potential reaction more intense, for the threat to one’s life so easily breeds irrational rage. Rage is but one final provocation away from violence.

The Indian Mujahideen, whoever they might be know what they are doing. Their strategy of slander-and-slaughter is not aimed at the Indian government, for which they have utter contempt in any case. Their target is the real enemy, the people of India. They are sowing continuous poison along Hindu-Muslim seam lines in order to enrage the former, provoke communal violence and exploit the resultant angst among Muslim youth so that more might drift towards terrorism.

The Union and state governments have not been tested by a post-terror conflagration because the overwhelming majority of Hindus have shown an exemplary commitment to peace, but this can hardly be taken for granted. The Union home ministry seems to have a single, callous default position: amnesia. It has convinced itself that if it can fudge its way through a few days after any calamity, people will forget, or that popular consciousness will be overtaken by the next big story. Its abject failure to stem the tide of terrorism is evidence that its investigation is essentially non-serious, reminiscent of the police solution to any problem was to “round up the usual suspects”. A narrow pattern in names, suspect-sketches and allegations is pulled out from the same soiled bag within 24 or 48 hours of any incident. This cliché-approach begs a question: if the range is limited, why cannot the perpetrators be caught despite their repeated audacity? For starters, someone qualified should check whether there is ever any resemblance between suspect-sketches and those eventually arrested.

In the absence of genuine culprits, alibis and red herrings are fed to public opinion in the hope that the appetite for punishment will be sated, memory dulled. But memory is an accumulator. Fear is a gathering storm, which needs to be dispersed before it breaks.

Terrorists have inflicted the greatest damage on those in whose name they pretend to act, Indian Muslims. Already burdened by multiple anxieties, Indian Muslim youth are now frozen in the headlights of suspicion, and thus easy fodder for a police force that exploits suspicion to harass a community instead of eliminating criminals. When the police admit a mistake, there is nothing like a stainless release.

The victim of bias or misjudgment faces a hopeless future as even his meagre job disappears from the shrinking bundle of options. We never truly understand the despair of poverty, for even the sympathy of a brother does not extend beyond the fleeting breadth of emotion.

At one level, Muslims share the dread of sudden death with their fellow Indians. The bomb is not programmed to kill only non-Muslims. The killer devices do not have a selective device to demolish only the objects of the Indian Mujahideen’s hatred. A bomb has neither religion nor discrimination.

But this pales before the dread of consequences, the worst of which is a riot. But consequences come in less hostile forms as well. Discrimination does not advertise, and the unwillingness to rent homes to Muslims in cities is only the most well-known form of it. Ghettos begin in the mind before they transfer into property. The desperate, and sometimes contradictory, search for alibis by Muslims indicates the pressure that the community feels. Conspiracy theories get fertile reception.

A measure of its collapsing faith in the Congress is the fact that these theories finger government agencies as frequently as they do traditional adversaries like the RSS and Bajrang Dal.

Dissection pares arguments down to the bone in the search for any consolation.

Sometimes, a sense of discrimination propels some Muslims towards a prickly offensiveness. But these are palliatives that cannot hide the harsh truth, evident, after any incident, in the eyes of nameless Muslims, clouded by worry and uncertainty and in the shuffle of their step as they hurry home to their small mohallas in some corner of the urban sprawl.

News is a reflection of the visible. It has no space for the invisible. But each riot that did not take place also smuggles its way into the receptacles of the heart and the mind. For that we should be grateful to the sagacity of India.

(Source: The Times of india, 20 September, 2008)

STATE-TERRORISM

Muslims as targets of StateTerrorism

Harsh Mander, Human Right Activist

As bombs explode in crowded market places and places of worship - whether in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Mumbai or Delhi - many innocent lives are abruptly snuffed out, while others are marked for life, maimed or traumatised. Television screens in our living rooms are inundated with images of bloodstains on sidewalks and weeping family members unable to even comprehend their loss. The success of the shadowy organisations which plant these explosives runs deeper, as the engineered mistrust between people of diverse faiths further consolidates with each blast. Millions of men and women, merely because they happen to be born into Muslim homes - believers and non-believers, students, working people, home-makers and the aged, the wealthy and the impoverished - are all, with each blast, dragged into the dock of the hearts and minds of people of other religious persuasions. Here they are charged with guilt at least of solidarity if not active complicity for the horrible crimes that the overwhelming majority of them intensely abhor. They find their eyes lowered, their spirit crushed, for heinous offences which they oppose no less than their neighbours.

This labelling and blanket condemnation of people merely because of their Muslim identities - now a global phenomenon - is not confined to lay people. It extends more dangerously to how States respond to terror attacks, in effect holding the entire Muslim community guilty unless they can prove their innocence.

How this can destroy innocent lives forever was illustrated starkly in a series of devastating testimonies in a People’s Tribunal on atrocities committed against minorities in the name of fighting terrorism, organised by Anhad and the Human Rights’ Law Network from August 22 to 24, 2008 in Hyderabad.

The Tribunal, confirmed that “a large number of innocent young Muslims have been and are being victimised by the police on the charge of being involved in various terrorist acts across the country. This is particularly so in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, though not limited to these States”. It concluded that “this victimisation and demonisation of Muslims in the guise of investigation of terror offences, is having a very serious psychological impact on the minds of not only the families of the victims but also other members of the community. It is leading to a very strong sense of insecurity and alienation.”

The pattern in India has been that just hours, sometimes even minutes after an attack, the police claim irrefutable proof that an Islamist organisation is behind the terror act. For many years, they would declare that this is the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI, or Pakistan-based terror groups. For geo-political reasons that one can only speculate on, governments more recently shifted their instant indictments eastwards to Bangladesh, particularly to a till recently little-known organisation called HUJI. Now the “foreign hand” seems to have receded; and the prime culprit has become even more worryingly the “enemy within”, the home-grown Indian Mujahideen, supported by the controversially banned SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India). If the government indeed had such conclusive evidence in every case about the guilty, why did it not act on time to prevent the terror attack? And even when a mosque is bombed, as in Hyderabad, the possibility that some of the terror attacks could have been engineered by extremist organisations of other persuasions than Islamist is not even considered. The State seems tacitly to subscribe to the canard that terrorists can only be Muslim, forgetting that in India itself we lost the father of the nation and two Prime Ministers to terror attacks, and none of their terrorist attackers was Muslim.

Suspects, mostly Muslim youth. Testimonies from Hyderabad spoke of their experience of being illegally abducted by police in civil uniforms and unmarked vehicles, blindfolded and driven to locations where they are tortured. In other States, the experience of torture is common, also in “legal” police custody and sometimes even in judicial custody. They are undressed, beaten relentlessly with belts made from old tyres or sticks, given electric shocks including on their genitals, their faith humiliated, their loved ones such as a pregnant wife or an aged father repeatedly summoned to police stations, and ultimately they agree to sign on blank confession papers.

If they are picked up from their homes, people report midnight knocks, violent searches and beating even of children and old women. Many testify to the ransacking of their homes and shops. If they are picked up from elsewhere, their families are not informed, and they run from one police station to another to find their loved ones.

The youth come from diverse backgrounds, mostly with no previous criminal records. They maybe students, auto rickshaw drivers, ice cream sellers, clerics or computer professionals. But as soon as they are targeted by the police, they are disgraced, usually their employment is terminated, their livelihoods boycotted, and even Muslims are scared to associate with the family, for fear that they also maybe tarnished with the same crimes. The media usually accepts the police version uncritically, and broadcasts it with shrill sensational overtones which affirm the guilt of the accused persons to the general public, aggravating their stigmatisation.

The courts are also usually more than willing to go along with the police version, extending remand, denying bail, often responding with little urgency even in habeas corpus petitions, and most gravely, wilfully failing to act on even visible signs of torture on the body of the young men produced before them, refusing to act and take on record their complaints of torture, let alone actively confirming from them that they were not tortured. They also allow criminal proceedings to persist against minors. Sardar was 17 when he was charged with complicity in the Coimbatore blasts. He was 27 when he was acquitted, but only after nearly a decade of harrowing incarceration.

Many young lives are destroyed forever by the police labelling them as terrorists. The charges are often flimsy and far-fetched. It matters little that eventually the police is, in most cases, unable to prove the charges, and it sometimes itself drops the charges or the youth accused of terror crimes are eventually freed by the courts. But no one is held responsible for the lost years of dishonour, incarceration, and the crumbling of families. Many of the arrested are sole bread-earners: sons caring for aged parents and siblings, or for a young wife and small children. The tribunal heard tens of testimonies from every State, of families reduced to pitiful destitution because those who earned for them were detained for many long years. Most are ultimately acquitted, but return heartbroken to crushed and diminished families. Some die in custody, never to return, some lose their sanity.

There is no doubt that the governments and people of this land need to combat terrorism, and to track down and punish those who randomly take innocent lives. But in this battle we must not sacrifice our convictions, of democracy, law, justice and humanity. We must not profile people because of their faith. We must not incarcerate people without evidence and torture them to extract spurious proof. If we do, our jails may overflow with men we dub to be terrorists, but the terrorists would still triumph, victorious in their battle of enabling fear and hate to extinguish our sense of goodness and fairness.

(Source: The Hindu, 21 September, 2008)

SIMI QUESTION

The SIMI Story-I

Yoginder Sikand, Well Known Academician

The identity of those behind the bomb blasts that shook Mumbai [in 2006] remains unclear. Some claim Hindutva terrorists were responsible while others suspect the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit, Lashkar-i Tayyeba, or the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) or a combination of both. In the meanwhile, scores of suspected SIMI activists have been detained by the police.

Whether or not the SIMI was behind the blasts will be known only after a fair and impartial investigation. Yet the fact remains that groups like the SIMI, although representing a tiny fringe of the varied landscape of Islam in India, do pose a grave threat not only to the country as a whole but, equally, to Indian Muslims as well. In a sense a response to growing Hindu fascism and deadly anti-Muslim pogroms, SIMI-style radical Islamism helps feed Hindutva forces, leading to further communal polarisation, with all the consequences that this has for the country’s welfare and that of the Muslims themselves, already a beleaguered and marginalised minority. In the wake of the Mumbai blasts and the allegations of SIMI involvement, many Indian Muslims are now wakening to the need to denounce not just Hindutva chauvinism but similar Muslim groups, such as the SIMI, as well that speak the language of conflict, hatred, violence and revenge.

Established in 1977 and banned by the Government of India in 2001, the SIMI’s vision of Islam derives from the voluminous writings of the Islamist ideologue, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami. For Maududi, as for the SIMI, the mission of the Prophet Muhammad is seen principally as having been the struggle to establish true monotheism or tawhid. This is taken to mean not just the worship of the one god but also, and equally importantly, the rule of the one god.

Political power, in other words, is seen as central to the Islamic mission. All man-made systems of law are condemned as ‘false’, even Satanic, and Muslims are reminded that unless they actively struggle to be ruled in accordance with the Shariah their commitment to and faith in Islam is not complete and remains suspect. Struggling to establish the Islamic state, the caliphate or khilafah, is seen as a duty binding on all Muslims and one that the Muslims of India, despite being in a minority, must abide by. Muslims who are ‘comfortable living under an un-Islamic order’ are warned that they shall be consigned, rather uncharitably, to hell.

In the absence of the khilafah, the SIMI believes that Muslims cannot lead their lives fully in accordance with Islam. The khilafah is seen as a divinely ordained order and also as the only solution to the many problems of not just the Muslims alone but of all humankind. It is envisaged as a pan-Islamic polity, for all Muslims are said to belong to the same nation (qaum, millat). Islam, in the SIMI’s interpretation, does not recognise any national differences and all Muslims are brothers to each other. Hence they must be ruled by a single khalifa. Nationalism is seen as a false ‘idol’ and one devised by the non-Muslim ‘enemies of the faith’ to divide the Muslims and thereby weaken them. National as well as racial, regional, linguistic and sectarian identities are seen as a sign of ‘ignorance’ (jahiliya), which is vehemently opposed to Islam, and represent major hurdles in the path of establishing the rule of a single khalifa over all Muslims.

In line with the general Islamist understanding, the SIMI sees Islam as a ‘complete programme’, providing detailed instructions on all matters from the most intimately personal to collective affairs such as the state and international relations. Thus secularism, even in the form of state neutrality vis-à-vis religion or the separation of religion and state, is seen as inherently anti-Islamic, for to choose not to be ruled by god’s laws is a sign of rebelliousness against him. Likewise, democracy is also condemned, for to be ruled by man-made laws instead of the Shariah is tantamount to the unforgivable sin of shirk or associating partners with god.

All ideologies and religions other than Islam are condemned as false and sinful (taghuti) and their adherents as ‘rebels against god’. All non-Muslims are branded together as kafirs and no distinction is made among them. Muslims are exhorted to give up the ways of the ‘unbelievers’ and to inculcate an unrelenting hostility to ‘un-Islamic’ culture and to fully abide by the path of the prophet. Because the ‘enemies of god’ are expected to show stiff resistance to Islam, violent jihad is to be waged, if need be, against those who put hurdles in the path of the struggle for establishing the khilafah. Islam thus comes to be seen as a militaristic political programme.

This understanding of Islam and the SIMI’s methods of realising its vision of the Islamic polity make no room for the particular context in which the SIMI operates, where Muslims are a relatively small and insecure minority. It is as if to contextualise the faith and that demands that it makes upon the faithful would be tantamount to cowardice, hypocrisy or deviation from Islam or even amount to apostasy. The fact that to actively and openly struggle for the establishment of an Islamic polity in the Indian context would certainly invite stiff opposition from other communities is recognised but the trials and tribulations that this would mean for Muslims are, it is insisted, to be welcomed as a true test of their faith and commitment and to have always been the lot of the true believers, from the prophet’s time onwards.

As Shahid Badr Falahi, president of the SIMI, once put it, “The Koran itself says that the kafirs will naturally oppose the Muslims. If through any of our actions the kafirs are agitated, this itself is proof that what we are doing is right [.] We have deliberately adopted the policy of the prophet in this regard. If this drives the enemies of Islam to anger, we cannot help it.” An unflagging commitment to a combative and extreme understanding of the faith is thus seen as a sign of faithfulness to the prophet and for activists of the SIMI this is indeed a major source of the movement’s appeal, faced as they are with a sense of being completely besieged.

The SIMI was floated by the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in the late 1970s. Although it was intended to work among Muslim students to create among them what it saw as ‘Islamic consciousness’ and to engage in peaceful missionary work among non-Muslim students, a succession of events occurred immediately after the founding of the organisation that forced it to take an increasingly hard line position. The young SIMI activists seem to have relished controversy and sensationalism, seeing it as an opportunity to present their vision of Islam as the ideal ‘solution’. Being free of the control of the more moderate and experienced older leaders of the Jamaat, whom they saw as effete and too moderate, the young leaders of the SIMI drifted in the direction of a growing radicalism.

In 1979, less than two years after the SIMI was established, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the shah of Iran and in Pakistan, the military dictator, Zia ul-Haq, set about imposing Islamic criminal laws by force. The SIMI voiced its opposition to the Soviet invasion, welcomed the Iranian revolution, seeing it as the first step in the eventual global revival of Islam, and wholeheartedly supported Zia’s ‘Islamisation’ policy. Gradually, as a result of events abroad and the consciousness of Muslims being an increasingly threatened community in India, the SIMI’s rhetoric grew combative and vitriolic, insisting that Islam alone was the ‘solution’ to the problems of not just the Muslims of India but of all Indians as such and indeed of the whole world.

This growing radicalisation of the SIMI was not looked upon favourably by top leaders of the Jamaat, who had been working to present a moderate image of their organisation, seeking to dialogue with people of other faiths and to promote democracy and secularism in the face of the rapid growth of militantly anti-Muslim Hindu organisations. Jamaat leaders demanded that the SIMI work under the Jamaat’s overall command but the SIMI refused. Accordingly, in 1982 the SIMI separated from the Jamaat which then revived its own students’ wing, the Students Islamic Organisation. Yet both the Jamaat as well as the SIMI continued to share a commitment to a common vision, as developed by Maududi, differing only on the question of the precise tactics and strategy needed in the Indian context to bring Maududi’s vision to fruition.

Following its separation from the Jamaat, the SIMI expanded considerably, setting up branches in various parts of India. It published several periodicals in different languages and formed its own publishing company to propagate its message of ‘Islamic Revolution’. By 2000 the SIMI had some 400 full-time workers or ansars and 20,000 sympathisers or ikhwans in addition to a cell for young children aged between seven and 11, called the Shahin Force. It also established a special wing to work among madrassa students and ulema, the Tahrik Tulaba-i Arabia. Most of its activists and members belonged to lower middle and middle-class families living in towns and cities. It appealed to a class of Muslim students that saw themselves as, in some sense, deprived, for whom its message of the ‘superiority’ of Islam over the ‘decadent’ and ‘immoral’ West and ‘polytheist’ Hindus struck a welcome chord.

The SIMI’s evolution from the 1980s onwards was dictated almost entirely by events taking place in India and in the wider world, these being interpreted as attacks directed against Islam and Muslims by the ‘enemies’ of the faith. Inevitably, then, the SIMI was driven to an increasing radicalism that won it support among a small number of Muslims in India who saw themselves as increasingly beleaguered, victims of both Hindu chauvinism and the Indian state that was seen as representing essentially ‘upper’ caste Hindu interests.

The SIMI organised protest demonstrations against attacks on Muslims, both in India and elsewhere, which provided it publicity as well as possibilities for new recruits. It sought to intervene in and generate public support for its stand on other issues of major concern to the Indian Muslims, such as efforts to do away with the separate Muslim personal law, moves to dilute the Muslim character of the Aligarh Muslim University and the Hinduisation of textbooks in government-run schools. Its activists were also involved in relief work among Muslims affected by anti-Muslim violence, which helped bolster the image of the organisation as being seriously committed to the rights of the Muslims. It also provided other services such as libraries and free coaching classes for Muslim students from poor families.

The SIMI sought to propagate its message through mass contact programmes, lectures, seminars and rallies as well as through its abundant literature, mainly the writings of Maududi himself. A regular feature was its special week-long campaigns aimed at creating an awareness of the Islamic ‘solution’, in which, inevitably, the intention was to ‘prove’ that Islam alone had the solution to all problems afflicting humankind. Thus, for instance, in 1982 the SIMI organised an ‘Anti-Immorality’ week in the course of which ‘social evils and general immorality’ were condemned and ‘immoral’ literature was publicly burnt. In 1983 the Kerala unit of the organisation held a special ‘Anti-Capitalism’ week in which it was sought to be stressed that the ‘Islamic economic system’ alone could provide genuine social justice. In an effort to win the support of ‘low’ caste Dalits in its attacks on Hinduism, in 1994 the SIMI organised the ‘Anti-Varna Vyavastha’ week all over India, in the course of which, through public lectures and the distribution of leaflets and posters, it was stressed that the salvation of the Dalits lay in conversion to Islam, demanding, rather simplistically, an ‘immediate end to the caste system’.

Although a forceful champion of what it called ‘Islamic Revolution’ ever since its inception, the SIMI witnessed a further radicalisation of its rhetoric from the 1990s until, by 2000, the organisation was proclaiming the need for Muslims to engage in armed jihad in India. The radicalisation of the SIMI since the 1990s must be seen in the context of, and as a response to, the growth of Hindu militancy, particularly in the North Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where the SIMI also had a noticeable presence. (to be continued)

The views expressed in the articles and statements published in the Journal are those of their authors and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the Editor or the Members of the Editorial Board.

                                                - Editor