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Muslim India
MONTHLY
JOURNAL OF REFERENCE, RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION
VOL. XXV NO. 283 CONTENTS JANUARY, 2008
From the Editor’s Desk: Gujarat, 2007 & The Future of secular India Chronology of the Month : ( 1 – 31 December, 2007
Babari Masjid: K.N.Panikkar on Myth, History and Politics
Communal Violence:I qbal A. Ansari on Police Reform & Communal Violence
Composite Culture: Bhikhu Parekh on India’s Composite Culture
Dynastic Politics: S. Prasannaraja on Pornography of Politics
Education: MHRD Note on SSA Focus on Minorities
:Tahir Mahmood (Ed): Politics of Minority Educational Institutions
:Renuka Bisht on Prejudices Start Early with Schools, Textbooks
:Letter to MP CM on Hinduisation of School Culture
Economic Inequality: Praful Bidwai on Deepening Poverty & Increasing Inequality
Government: PM’s Remarks at 54th National Development Council, 19 Dec., 2007
Gujarat Genocide2002: S.Prasannarajan on Sins of Silence
:Neelesh Mishra on Perennial Victimhood
:Maja Daruwala on Peace with Honour, Not of the Grave
Gujarat Election: AIMMM’s Appeal to Secular Voters & Statement on BJP’s Victory
:CPI (M) GS Prakash Karat’s Views
Hindu Rashtravad: Ashish Nandy’s Psychological Analysis of Modi’s Bid for Power
:Pamela Philipose on Gujarat as ‘New India’ :Vidya Subramaniam on Sangh Privar in Deep Ferment
Islamophobia: Report on UK: Poisonous and Dangerous Anti-Muslim Propaganda
:Report on Rise of Mosque as Catalyst for Conflict Across Europ
:Madeleine Bunting on West’s Persecution of Muslims Today
Kashmir Situation:Vice President Hamid Ansari on Agriculture as
Key to Socia-Economic Development
:Athar Parvaiz on Kashmir’s Orphans and Wounded Psyche
Mass Media: Sagarika Ghose Media Activism! No Substitute for Political Action
Muslim Development: Govt. Scheme for Research and
Publicity on Progress of Uplift Programme
:A.G.Noorani on Humayun Kabir’s Role in Redressing Muslim Grievances
:Praful Bidwai on Not by Haj Subsidies Alone
Muslim World-Pakistan: Mubarak Ali on Ideological Illusions: 60 Years of Pakistan
:Assassination of Benazir Bhutto, PM’s Tribute, AIMMM Statement 42
:Western Strategy against Islam : V.T. Rajshekhar on Move to “Mellow Muslims”
: Saudi Arabia Rachel Bronson on 5 Myths about U. S. Saudi Relations
: Palestine: JohnCherian Report on Balance-Sheet of Annapolis, 27 Nov. 07
: Turkey :Subash Chopra on Europe’s Relations with Muslim Turkey 46
National Politics-INC: Speeches & Resolutions of AICC Session, Delhi 17 Nov., 07
: Jug Suraiya on Congress Future
: C. P. Bhambhari on Inheritance of Power in Political Families
Other Minorities: V. Venkatesan on Gap between Rhetoric and Reality
Personal Law: Tahir Mahmood on Triple Talaq & Delhi HCRuling
Reservation:RSSChief Sudarshan’s Speech on Vijayadashami (Extracts)
Report on West Bengal: S.N.M Abidi on Muslim Anger in Bengal
Rule of Law: Iqbal A. Ansari on Tyranny of Labels
: Tavleen Singh on Injustice against muslims
: Jyoti Punwani on Blatant Double Standards
Secularism: Soli J. Sorabjee on Elixir for a Multireligious State
Social Justice: AIMMM’s Letter to Advani on‘Communal Budgeting’,
Votebank Politics and Question of Equity,
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
GUJARAT, 2007 AND THE FUTURE OF SECULAR INDIA
Narendra Modi massive victory in the Gujarat Election, 2007 has taken both friends and foes by surprise and has been described as ‘historic’, ‘fabulous’, ‘phenomenal’ and ‘extraordinary’. The BJP has won the electoral battle for the 4th time in succession and Modi has been installed as Chief Minister for the 3rd time, almost matching the record of the Left Front in West Bengal.
BJP’s margin of victory in terms of number of seats is indeed surprising, considering the odds that it faced, not counting the anti-incumbency factor. The state BJP was divided with some eminent members including two former Chief Ministers openly critical to the point of some leaders and legislatures joining hands overtly or covertly with the Congress; the national leadership of the BJP had no doubt endorsed Modi but only half heartedly; Modi’s arrogance had reached the point of megalomania to project himself as the lone hero of Hindutva battling against the demons. His style of functioning had alienated his colleagues and had displeased the Sangh Parivar-the RSS, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal which had worked day and night for him in 2002 but were no longer in the picture. Even the sadhus and sants who command much influence in Gujarat did not join his campaign. Other BJP leaders, including national office bearers and CM’s did not come forward to share his burden. Even Advani who peeped in from time to time left the field to Modi. His campaign was thus a one man show. Modi more or less distributed party tickets, replacing many sitting MLAs, developed his own campaign team and with his incomparable energy and organizing ability, addressed hundreds of public meetings, big and small throughout Gujarat. With his eloquent command over Gujarati, coupled by his body language, choosing his words carefully, the unparalleled spindoctor that he is Modi conveyed to his audience through hints and gestures, suggestions and innuendoes, what he wanted, his real meaning and message and succeeded in identifying Muslims as the historic enemy and the real adversary he did not name them to avoid falling fail of the Election Commission. He only brought to the surface their deep seated animosities fears and anxieties. With no love for democracy, with no belief in the rule of law, with no respect for human rights Modi remained true to his convictions and unapologetically preached his essentially anti-Muslim message. He never uttered a word of sympathy for the victims for 2002 nor a word of regret or remorse.
Modi thus faithfully played the Hindutva tune, spiced with Gujarati sub- nationalism and the common man’s desire for economic development. He enjoyed the support of the business elite and the rising middle class and the Gujarati diaspora in the West which had financed him all along and saw him as the incorruptible and efficient standard bearer of militant Hinduism and the saviour of the Hindus whose mission was to consolidate Hindutva, based on Hindu supremacy with Gujarat as the chosen laboratory of Hindu Rashtravad. A Koli by caste, with a moderate background, Modi had a passion for social engineering to consolidate all Hindus into an irresistible and hegemonic political force and to make Gujarat into a model state blending Hindutva with development. No doubt after this election Modi has not only emerged as the tallest Hindutva leader in Gujarat but also the tallest among the second generation leaders of the BJP. Never before regarded as the natural successor to Vajpayee-Advani duo, his victory has almost settled the question of succession.
As in 2002, the election was basically a one-to-one contest between the Congress and the BJP. But the former lacked the vision, strategy and even tactical finesse to meet Modi’s thrust. It did somewhat better than in 2002, gained 11 more seats and 3.8% more votes. But it could have done better and reduced the gap but it faced a number of adverse factors. Because of in-fighting between old timers and newcomers it failed to designate a Chief Minister in-waiting. The state party long exiled from power, was in poor shape and the cadres lacked direction and confidence. They were further demoralized by seeing BJP rebels being given undue weight and accommodated against winnable seats at the cost of party hopefuls. The BJP rebels included some who had been directly and deeply involved in the carnage of 2002 whom the Congress faithful at the grass rots could not stomach or campaign. What is worse they lowered the Congress credibility in the public eye. Not surprisingly, all 14 BJP rebels embraced by the Congress lost, except one.
Other secular parties including CPI, CPM RJD and SP drew blank apart from the NCP which won 3 seats out of 10 allotted to it. The BSP which contested 166 seats, against 34 in 2002, also did not win a single seat but by cutting into the Congress votes caused considerable damage. It was responsible for the defeat of 10 Congress candidates and reduced the margin of victory in 13 others. Independents including Congress rebels with or without the BSP caused the loss of 10-20 more seats to the BJP. It is obvious that in a direct fight and against a consolidated secular alliance, the BJP would have been routed.
Modi played the development card on the basis of the universally acknowledged economic progress registered by Gujarat with large scale foreign investment, raising the average annual GDP growth to 10%. Over the years Gujarat has seen impressive development of infrastructure like highways, roads, water and power. Modi had maintained the tempo and introduced some innovative welfare programmes. As such, all Congress denial of development under Modi failed to win public credibility. Had the Congress identified regions and social groups which did not equitably benefit from development and were bypassed or left behind, its anti-Modi argument would have made better appeal. It should have publicized that Gujarat has always been on the fast track and that its take-off did not owe it to Modi. Instead the Congress brought up forgotten grievances, of farmers and small industrialists which Modi had anticipated and attended to during this least year in office. Yet Modi lost several ministers who looked after development portfolios.
The biggest flaw in Congress strategy was its absolute silence over the ideology of Hindutva. It saw the people of Gujarat as mesmerized by the minions of the Sangh Parivar into acolytes of Hindu Rashtravad, who had abandoned their nationalist roots and Gandhian heritage and going further back even Vaishnava philosophy of peaceful coexistence and the cultural interaction and synthesis under the Saltanat which K. M. Pannikar described as the first nationalist state in India. A people may succumb to difficult situations, keep out of the way and turn into silent spectators. But as soon as situations change, they regain their essential ethos. In fact, deliberately or otherwise, once again Congress played the soft and pale saffron card as in 2002 against the hard and deep saffron, the assumption that the Hindu Gujaratis were beyond redemption.
Indeed towards the end of the campaign when Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Digvijay Singh, by implication, pointed out the ugly face of Moditva in 2002 and thereafter, in the resulting war of words Modi turned the issue on its head and exploited it to reawaken the latent communal sentiments lodged in the mind of Hindu masses for decades and inculcated over the BJP years. For example he played upon the memory of Muslim invasions and the post 9/11 identification of Muslims as terrorists and reminded Hindus that his government had saved Gujarat from Muslim terrorists.
Right from the word go, indeed after losing in 2002, the Congress should have hit the nail on the head, condemned the ideology of Hindutva without mincing words in terms of its divisive nature, exclusivist approach, its the threat it posed to national integration, the damage it did to our international reputation, the cost it exacted in human terms. The Congress should have placed in the people’s court, Modi’s calculated defiance of the rule of law, the detention of Muslims under POTA without trial for years, the deliberate and systematic fake encounters, the cleavages in Gujarati society through social and economic boycott of Muslims, forcing the displaced to live in ghettos and makeshift colonies, unable to return home in peace and dignity. The Congress should have pointed out the lack of progress of criminal cases relating to 2002, reopened under orders of the Supreme Court. It should have accused Modi of persistent violation of human rights, which begins with Muslims & Christians but ultimately threatens freedom and dignity of everyone.
For 5 years the Congress had not dared to take on Hindutva in Gujarat and its symbol Modi, mortally afraid of alienating Hindu votes. It failed to perceive that time had not stood still and the Hindu mind had inevitably perceived the damage that Modi has done to the reputation and traditions of Gujarat. Communal polarization had palpably receded. There was increasing sense of remorse among many Gujaratis who had sat on the fence in the dark days of 2002 and did not come out into the streets to defend the innocent victims. This misperception of the changing public mood led the Congress not only to embrace the BJP rebels but also to reduce tickets for the Muslims.
It is striking that of the 6 Muslim candidates fielded by the Congress, 5 won, 2 more than in 2002. This indicates that the winning Muslim candidates received the votes of some Hindus who felt ideologically distant from Hindutva and closer to secularism. One wishes that the Congress had fielded more Muslim candidates in winnable constituencies. There are only about 15-20% constituencies in Gujarat in which the Muslims constitute 15% or more of the electorate. The Congress appears to have won most of them, obviously with Muslim support. Out of 66 riot-affected constituencies, mostly in Central Gujarat, BJP this time secured only 39 against 27 going to the Congress. In the second phase the Muslims overcame their timidity shaking away fear and nervousness and voted for the Congress wherever they could rejecting the advice of those who urged them to keep away from election, lest they provoke another bout of Hindu militancy. Muslim political workers silently mobilized Muslims voters and canvassed for Congress candidates without any fan-fare. But the voting pattern of Muslims does not necessarily mean renewal of trust in Congress but the absence of any other option.
The caste and religious break-up of the general constituencies in Gujarat, of the candidates put up by the Congress and by the BJP, of those who won are not available although both the parties must have taken the dominant caste, or its main rival, into consideration as far as possible in distributing their tickets.
In the event, the Congress also made gains in the seats reserved for SC’s and ST’s (15/20, plus 4). Both groups felt that they had been used by the Sangh Parivar in 2002 and then left to fend for themselves.
Among the OBC’s, the Congress shortsightedly favoured Leuba Patils who dominate Saurashtra both politically and economically but this meant that other backward castes who have been traditionally exploited by the Patils like the Kolis went back to the BJP. The Congress even lost some Kshatriyas it banked on to rebuild the old KHAM alliance, as they were traditional rivals of the Patils. The Congress did not pay due attentions to the MBC’s, the Backward Backwards.
Regionally, BJP took three regions of Kutch- Saurashtra, North Gujarat and South Gujarat with marginal increase of seats but lost to Congress heavily in Central Gujarat which had been comparatively the most disturbed in 2002.
For the Muslims it is time for introspection. They should not lose heart. They cannot afford to remain aloof from the day-to-day struggles of the people and expect secular parties to give them their due place in the party organization or in the candidates‘ lists at the time of elections. Muslim youth have to reject extremism, stop looking for patronage or favour and join the battle for Democracy, Secularism and Social Justice, shoulder to shoulder with other marginalized and deprived sections. Not through bravade and provocative gestures but through dialogue, cooperation and accommodation, can they preserve their identity, secure their human and constitutional rights, overcome fear and alienation, regain equality and dignity and reestablish mutual trust and acceptance.
It would be premature to write off the Congress in Gujarat. But to give a credible fight to the BJP in the next Assembly election, it will have to rethink both its strategy and tactics. In any case, Modi’s victory is not as formidable as it appears on the first sight or as projected by the mass media which appear to have changed their tune. Statistically, the BJP secured 50.3% of the votes cast against 42.8 for the Congress. With an overall turn-out of 62.5% this implies that BJP received the active support of only 31.4% of the electorate against 26.8 for the Congress. With all his eloquence Modi could not attract more voters or touch their hearts and mind or inspire them to go out and vote for his brand of politics. This also implies, as Sonia Gandhi also realized, that rallies do not translate into votes on the polling day. In the final analysis, there is only a difference of about 4.6% between the two contenders at the electorate level. This could have been easily bridged by an alternative strategy and tactics and astute leadership.
Advani has described Modi’s victory as a ‘turning point’ and the BJP ‘on the come back trail’. The entire BJP leadership sees it as a decisive step towards restoration in 2009. But there are many a slip between the cup and the lip. Gujarat is not India. Nor can Modivad be equally plausible, or his style presentable or his spin effective in other parts of the country. Nor do all states repeat Gujarat’s development pattern.
All is not lost. Secular forces have lost the battle but not the war. They have lost Gujarat today but not the country for ever. Tthey have not hit the end of the road nor have they fallen in a dark, closed alley.
What is needed is a determined and continuous struggle against Hindu Rashtravad whose virus has no doubt seeped deep inside the psyche of Gujarat and infected the body politic. But the infection can be cured. Secular parties have to work sincerely for the formation of a National Secular Alliance, stop trying to outsmart each other, and, at the end, undermine each other. The Alliance has to address the problems and grievances faced by the SCs and STs, the religious minorities as well as the non-Muslim MBC’s, take up issues related to rule of law, social justice, human rights and minority rights, at the grass roots level as well as the difficulties faced by the common man. They have to keep an eye on the track record of all social welfare schemes like the SSA, the NREGP, the IAY, the NRHP etc. in all states, irrespective of the party in power. Thus alone can they rebuild the people’s faith in the democratic system and the secular parties.
New Delhi
1 January, 2008
ORGANISATIONS
AIMMM Elections, 2007
Presidency
Dr. Zafrul Islam Khan has been elected & as the President for the term 2008-09.
The President elect has assumed charge of his office on 1 January, 2008.
Markazi Majlis-e-Mushawarat
Elected Members for the term 2008-2011
1. Maulana S. Jalaluddin Umri (JIH)
2. Mr. Syed Shahabuddin, Delhi
3.Mr. Amanullah Khan
4. Dr. Abu Saleh Shariff, Bangalore
5. Ml. Aqeelul Gharvi , Delhi
6. Maulana Ejaz Ahmad Aslam, Chennai
7. Dr. Syed Farooq, Dehradun
8. Dr. S.Q.R.Ilyas, Nagpur
9. Dr. Abdul Haq Ansari, Aligarh
10. Mr. M.Naim Khan, Delhi
11. Prof. Shakeel Ahmad, Gaya
12. Prof. Umar Hayat Khan Ghori, Bhopal
13. Mr. S.M.Y. Nadeem, New Delhi
14. Hakim Md.Irfan Al Husaini, Kolkata
15. Dr. S.M.Yahya,New Delhi
16. Mr. Ishrat Aziz,,Ddelhi
17. Prof. Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman, Aligarh
18 Vacant
19. Vacant
20. Vacan
Nominated Members for the term 2008-09
1.Maulana Asghar Imam Mahdi Salafi (JAH)
2. Mr. Mohammed Sulaiman
3. Mr. Hafiz Rashid A Choudhary
4. Mr. Ahmad Rashid Sherwani
5. Mr. Abu Asim Azmi, MP
6. Mr. Navaid Hamid
7. Mr. Justice P.K.Shamsuddin
8. Maulana Zeeshan Hedayati
9. Mr. Bashirduddin Babukhan
10. Dr.Abdus Sattar, Chennai
GOVERNMENT
54th Meeting of National Development Council, 19 Dec., 2007
PM’s Opening & Closing Remarks
I- Relavant Extracts from Opening Remarks
This brings me to another concern – that is the slow reduction in poverty. Poverty is coming down, but not fast enough. We need a growth process that will achieve a rapid reduction in poverty, and bring measurable benefits to SCs, STs, minorities and other excluded groups.
In a nutshell, what I am drawing your attention to can be termed as our equity concerns. Equity is the foundation on which our democratic polity has to rest and thrive. It is the basis on which our citizens develop a sense of ownership of the State and its organs. Inequity can lead to large scale migration, disaffection and discord. Development is a process that should not divide our people but should unite them all.
Together, outlays on agriculture, health, rural development and education, account for more than half of the Central GBS as compared to less than 1/3rd in the X Plan.
This is a major structural shift. Our commitment to investing in the skills and resources needed for enabling all marginalized groups and regions to benefit from processes of economic growth; and, our common commitment to rapid, inclusive growth. This structural shift is the hallmark of the XI Plan.
Education is an area of special focus in the XI Plan. We need a greatly expanded supply of educated and skilled labour to support our ambitious growth targets. Education is also our best hope for achieving inclusiveness and for spreading development to backward regions and marginalized groups. Nothing will ensure an effective spread of opportunity to all sections of the population more than the availability of good quality education particularly in rural areas. The XI Plan attempts to bring about a massive transformation in this area through many new initiatives. While strengthening the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, a new scheme for universalizing secondary education is being proposed.
This Plan lays special emphasis on the problems of minorities, SCs, STs and minorities. It has specific, focused programmes, both for skill development and education and also for improving the basic infrastructure in areas inhabited predominantly by these marginalized groups.
We are aiming at a development process that enables rapid, inclusive growth.
The XI Plan focuses on marginalised sections and marginalised regions without sacrificing enterprise and growth.
II- CM Modi’s Criticism
The Prime Minister’s New 15-Point Programme in the Eleventh Plan stipulates earmarking 15 per cent of targets and outlays, wherever possible, under various schemes for minorities. Opposing “communal budgeting” for a “vote bank”, Modi said that, such earmarking of certain outlays of various developmental schemes and programmes of the Government of India amongst the eligible beneficiaries, based on their minority status, should be reviewed in the interest of maintaining the social fabric of the nation.” “Such discrimination, for flow of funds based on minority status, will not help the cause in taking people of India together on the path of development,”.
How was “religion important” for a government strategy on inclusive growth.? Poverty has no religion” and only poverty should determine allocations in the Plan, he added.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
Deepening Poverty & Increasing Inter-personal
& Inter-group Inequality in India
Eminent Academician Paraful Bidwai
October 17 has been designated the United Nations International Day for Poverty Eradiation. So this is a good occasion to take a hard look at poverty, want and inequality in the world and in India.
The overall picture is so dismal that public-spirited citizens must hang their heads in shame. Despite a glut of food, and a spectacular increase in the globe’s capacity to grow more, hunger remains one of the world’s major problems. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, 850 million people worldwide, or one in seven human beings, go hungry every day.
In the Institute’s Global Hunger Index, India belongs to the bottom fourth of the world’s nations, with a rank of 94 (among 118 countries). This score is even lower than India’s relative Human Development Index rank (126 of 177 countries). India’s hunger index rank is way below China’s (47), and lower even than Pakistan’s (88). One reason for this abysmal state is that almost one-half of India’s children are malnourished and underweight.
Besides chronic hunger, another index of India’s poverty has recently received media exposure through a report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector. Based on National Sample Survey data, this shows that a frightening 77 per cent of our population lives on a pathetic Rs.20 (half a U.S. dollar) a day. This brings out the depth and pervasiveness of poverty in India far more starkly than official “poverty line” numbers, measured in calorie consumption.
The 77 per cent translates into some 840 million citizens. Their subsistence is simply incompatible with any notion of human-level existence with dignity. Clearly, we are condemning the vast majority of people to live wretched, or disabled lives under which they cannot develop their elementary potential as human beings.
Even gloomier is the story of rising inequalities almost everywhere in the world, and especially in India. Inequality is now being hotly debated in many countries, including the United States parts of Western Europe Latin America (the worst victim of neoliberal dogma), and even China, where the central focus of the Communist Party Congress is on fighting poverty, the “regulation of incomes” and “gradually reversing” growing income disparities.
Scholars and policymakers are now discussing the disparities issue with a level of concern and keenness not seen since the 1970s. Notable here is the publication last December of the World Distribution of Household Wealth Report by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki, which makes the shocking disclosure that the richest 2 per cent of the world’s adults own more than half of global household wealth.
The richest 1 per cent alone owned 40 per cent of global assets in 2000, and the richest 10 per cent accounted for 85 per cent of the world total. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth.
Even the International Monetary Fund has devoted its latest World Economic Outlook Report on rising inequalities amidst increasing per capita incomes across regions and population segments.
Among the most revealing – and disturbing – recent analyses of India’s disparities scenario is “Patterns of Wealth Disparities in India during the Liberalisation Era” (Economic and Political Weekly, September 22). This shows, on the basis of NSS data, that there was a perceptible increase in inter-personal wealth inequality in India between 1991 and 2002.
The top 10 per cent of the population increased its share of total national wealth to 52 per cent, while the share of the bottom 10 fell to just 0.21 per cent.
Even more distressing numbers are contained in the Asia-Pacific Wealth Report just released by Merrill Lynch-Cap Gemini. This says that the number of India’s “high net-worth individuals (HNIs)” has increased by 20.5 per cent over the past year to reach 100,000. Even more important is the disclosure that this minuscule minority holds $350 billion in assets – or about half of India’s entire gross domestic product!
The contrast between this obscene concentration of wealth at the very top, and the prevalence of mass poverty, with the most appalling conditions of life at the bottom, should shock us all. Not only is this morally indefensible and unacceptable in itself; but coupled with deep and entrenched inequalities of opportunity in this super-hierarchical, casteist society, it is especially repugnant.
Such extreme, and yet growing, inequalities belie the hope that the vast majority of India’s citizens believe, or will come to believe, that this society is based on a modicum of justice and fair play. They also make nonsense of any appeal to the “common” or “national” good as the basis of making social, economic and political decisions. In the absence of such an appeal, citizens cannot be expected to have faith in the state and its decision-making apparatuses, not even in the rule of law, leave alone obedience to authority.
Extreme inequalities violate the minimal level of social cohesion that is necessary for decency in civic life and for the moral, psychological and social foundations of democracy.
Author Patwant Singh has lucidly, and starkly, documented the dualistic state of Indian society in his extremely readable and accessible new book, The Second Partition: Fault-Lines in India’s Democracy. He points out: “The planners of the new Indian democracy visualised a dazzling future… [But their solemn assurances to Indian citizens were soon betrayed]. After spelling out… how the new Republic would safeguard its people’s every right, the pledge was broken, the promises remained unfulfilled, and several hundred million Indians have been left to starve… while the country’s new urban rich, indifferent to – if not contemptuous of – their luckless fellow countrymen, coarsely flaunt their new-found wealth.”
Patwant Singh describes “how little the destitute and the deprived, the homeless… the ill and malnourished, the oppressed and abused, count for in democratic India. The hospitals turn them away The slum-dwellers can find their homes burnt to the ground overnight in mysterious fires or bulldozed within hours by municipal authorities. And then, lo and behold, apartment buildings start coming up…”
The author asks is it possible that the genius of India’s people… cannot implement a nationwide food-for-work programme that can put the poor to work, feed them and rekindle hope in them?”
But to do this, he argues, India will have to reverse its Second Partition – between the privileged classes, and the “hundreds of millions of people put to the outer fringes by their affluent counterparts”.
It is high time we examined how to fill the moral deficit within our elite, and how to empower the wretched of the Indian earth, while breaking with our “GDP-ism” and sincerely addressing the issue of inequality. At stake is civilised social life, and democracy.
(Source: Frontline, 2 November, 2007)
SOCIAL JUSTICE
AIMMM on ‘Communal Budgeting’, Votebank Politics & Question of Equity
Letter to BJP Leader L.K.Advani, 24 December, 2007
The BJP has on several occasions, lastly at the meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) articulated its objection to what it calls the ‘communal budgeting’ motivated by vote-banks politics, in allocations for central development and welfare schemes, under the regular budget or under the five year plan for the uplift of the minorities. Your colleagues have, however, spoken with commendable compassion emphasizing the socio-economic development of the poor and the marginalized, cutting across religion or caste.
Broadly speaking, I share both the reservation and the compassion. I have always opposed any special scheme for the exclusive development of the Muslim, though I have always raised my finger when I find that eligible Muslims have been kept out in operationalisation of any scheme. I see no difficulty in catering to the national imperative of uplifting the backward and deprived sections of our people through schemes which apply universally to all persons who are eligible under a common criterion. For example, if the criterion is BPL and all persons/families who belongs to the BPL category, if I may suggest, whose total family income is below the average family income in the state. In such schems, there is no question of any discrimination against any one on any account including religion or caste.
However, many social development schemes which are individually targeted cannot be universalized for lack of resources and are limited to a fixed number of beneficiaries in a given area, which may be the Panchayat, the Parkhand or the Zila or the Municipality. It is here that bias and prejudice prevail over equity and justice. The applicants who share their religion or caste or language or even domicile with the selector or the decision makers have an upper hand to the disadvantage of those who are not so fortunate. For such schemes, equity and justice demand that the available resources for the operational area be divided among eligible applicants therein from various sections of the people in proportion to their population at this level, without modifying the eligibility criteria. I give you an example, under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan a population unit of 300 is entitled to a primary school but, resources being limited, the education deficit cannot be made up in a single year. We find that in actual practice from year to year Muslim localities are bypassed or ignored or deprived of their rightful claim, on one pretext or the other. If there is a survey to identify the deficit areas, by Panchayats or Wards, and the annual programme for establishing new primary schools takes the quantum of deficit into account and not leave it to the subjective decision of the bureaucracy, there need be no grievances.
Let me give you another example of Indira Awas Yojana which is not universal but allocations are made Panchayat-wise every year. I know that Panchayats with Muslim majority hardly ever received any benefit. This is unfair. There need be not a prior reservation for any group or area but distribution of the benefits sanctioned for a given Panchayat should, by and large, match the proportion of various social groups in the area, given the segmented character of our society, in all such cases. The share of any group which is not fully utilized for lack of eligible takers should go to the other backward groups which have a surplus of the eligible.
May I add that the BJP is a national party and it should not adapt a stance which is adversarial or appears to the Muslims as prima facie anti-Muslim. This explains why the Muslim community, generally speaking, is not attracted by the BJP and in fact finds it repulsive. In the eyes of the BJP it becomes a vote-bank for its adversaries. The fact is that in the country as a whole the Muslims never vote for a single party but for different parties in the different states and even in different constituencies of the same state. I feel that wherever the BJP sheds its negative stance towards Muslims its acceptable candidate may also attract Muslim voters, just as others do.
I request you to consider the contents of this letter in spirit in which it has been written.
SECULARISM
Elixir for a Multireligious State like India
Soli J. Sorabjee, former Solicitor General of India
The essence of secularism is that no particular religion in the state should receive any state patronage or no one religion should be given any preferential status or unique distinction. Secularism mandates equal treatment of all religions and creeds and, in substance, embodies the principle of equality.
Secularism found its place in the Preamble to our Constitution in 1976, by virtue of the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. However, the concept and spirit of secularism was ingrained in us by our national leaders. Gandhiji regarded secularism as “Sarva-Dharma-Samabhava” or equal regard for all religions. According to Pandit Nehru, a secular state “does not obviously mean a state, where religion is discouraged. It means freedom of religion and conscience, including freedom for those who have no religion, subject only to their not interfering with each other in the basic conception of our state.” To Dr S. Radhakrishnan, secularism in the Indian context meant “an equal status for all religions”. The emphasis was on equal status for all religions. Equality and religious tolerance were regarded as essential components of a secular state.
The main objective of our founding fathers was the establishment of a secular state, founded on the principle of equality and embracing diverse faiths and religions. There was general belief in the peaceful accommodation of all faiths in an enlightened, secular, democratic system that guaranteed freedom of religion as an aspect of liberty and equality. Indian secularism is the direct result of acceptance of democracy and the principles of liberty and equality. The 42nd Amendment, in effect, made explicit what was implicit in our Constitution. The belief that the concept of secularism was implanted in our Constitution for the first time in 1976 is erroneous.
In the Indian constitutional jurisprudence, a secular State is “neither anti-God, nor pro-God; it treats alike the devout, the agnostic and the atheist. It eliminates God from matters of state and ensures that no one shall be discriminated against on the ground of religion.” Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees to all persons, citizens and aliens alike, freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate their religion, subject to explicit restrictions on ground of public order, morality and health.
Religion is not defined in our Constitution. The Supreme Court in its landmark decision in The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras versus Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt ruled that ‘religion is certainly a matter of faith with individuals or communities and it is not necessarily theistic’. There are well-known religions in India like Buddhism and Jainism, which do not believe in God or in any intelligent first cause. A religion undoubtedly has its basis in a system of beliefs or doctrines, which are regarded by those who profess that religion as conducive to their spiritual well-being, but it would not be correct to say that religion is nothing else but a doctrine of belief.
In its subsequent decision in the S.P. Mittal versus Union of India case, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that religion need not be theistic and that religion means ‘a system of beliefs or doctrines which are regarded by those who profess that religion as conducive to their spiritual well-being’.
Although our founding-fathers were quite clear that there should be no place for state religion, nor for official patronage of any religion, they did not adopt the Jeffersonian theory of an impregnable wall between church and state.
An adherent of any religion may publish and disseminate the religious books such as the Bible, the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita in exercise of the guaranteed right of freedom of religion. However, a secular state cannot directly or indirectly, by way of subsidy or otherwise extend financial assistance to such activities. Muslims are certainly entitled to go to Haj at their own expense, but it is not right for a secular state to defray such expense from the public exchequer directly or indirectly. That will be clearly contrary to the spirit of Article 27, which prohibits compelling any person to pay taxes for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion or denomination. Indeed, the prohibition in Article 28 against imparting religious instruction in educational institutions extends only to institutions wholly maintained out of state funds.
Again there are some exceptions to the prohibition of religious instruction in state-supported schools. Attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in educational institutions is not totally prohibited, and a student is permitted to participate in it if he/she, or his/her guardian, in case he/she is a minor, has consented to it.
Mention of religion is not impermissible and God is not a ‘dirty’ word in our secular state. In a country of diverse faiths and religions like ours, which recognises and accepts plurality of religions and accords equality of treatment to all religions and its adherents, secularism is indispensable. No wonder that in the celebrated judgment of the Supreme Court in the Keshavananda Bharati case, all the judges have regarded secularism as a basic feature of the Constitution, which cannot be abrogated without damaging the basic structure of our Constitution.
(Source: The Week 30 December, 2007)
Safeguards for Minorities
“Minorities mean a combination of things. It may be that a minority has a different religion from the other citizens of a country. Their language may be different, and the combination of all those various elements-religion, culture, race, language, arts, music, and so forth – makes the minority a separate entity in the state, and that separate entity as an entity wants safeguards.” (Quaida-Azam’s speech on the Report of the Joint parliamentary Committee on the Indian Constitutional Reform in the Central Legislative Assembly on February 7, 1935)
COMMUNAL VIOLENCE
Police Reform & Communal Violence
Iqbal A. Ansari, Eminent Human Rights Activist
I- Why Police Fails?
1. The failure of the police to impartially enforce law for prevention and control of riots and proper investigation and prosecution is due to following:
a. Command-Control System: Dependence of the police on the direction (or lack of direction) of the political executive based on cynical calculations in the game of power. Honest police officers trying to do their duty get marginalized.
b. Police Attitudes: The biased attitudes and behaviour pattern of sections of officials and police-personnel, who can easily become hostile towards Muslims based on their negative stereotypes of disloyal and violent people who deserve to be taught a lesson.
c. Social Composition: The majoritarian social composition of the police and other wings of law-enforcement including justice system - at higher levels mostly upper caste Hindu, thus reducing the chances of neutralization of biases.
d. Nnexus between thepolice, and the powerful social and economic groups - based on caste, class, money, land and business - and criminals in liaison with the political class All this adversely affects impartial law-enforcement during inter-group conflicts.
e. Use of Force and Firearms: The Riot Control Scheme and Manual on Use of Force and Firearms encourage deterrent use of firearms at the initial stage to repress riots - which gets translated into use of brutal methods including shooting to kill them who are perceived as responsible.
f. Methods and Techniques: Lack of adequate training in effective and humane methods and techniques of controlling an unarmed mob without using lethal weapons.
2. The Role of the Judiciary
Except for few cases related to the Gujarat 2002 carnage, the judiciary has never shown any activism in dealing with communal hate speech and crimes. Apart from treating communal hate-speech and mass hate crimes as routine cases, it has been ever willing to show indulgence to organized hate-mongers, rioters and contemnors. This has encouraged a pervasive climate of impunity, which has emboldened partisan police officers and personnel along with hate leaders who repeat acts of violence.
3. The Political Class
All political parties have stakes in the police functioning as their tool. Rather control over the police is part of the struggle for power, for political, social and economic benefits. Both the Indian National Congress and the BJP and on occasions other parties with secular pretensions have been major beneficiaries of communal conflicts and violence - hence the reluctance to implement even the reforms suggested at first NIC (1961) and NIC (1968) for amending service rules of DM & SP, making them accountable for the failure to prevent and control riots and for amending Ss 153 A etc. to make them more effective.
4. The Civil Society
In spite of our civilization’s claim to non-violence, the average Indian is ready to passively accept undeserved suffering of the innocent - especially when the victim is the ‘other’. In the case of Muslims it is the demonized ‘other’ (for perceived wrongs of history including Partition) who deserves to be taught a lesson.
Moreover, lack of any process of accountability having been undertaken for the genocidal killings of a million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in 1947 and half a million during secession of Bangladesh, in 1971, communal massacres do not cause any general outrage, except among small sections of intellectuals and activists.
II- Need for reform & Recoganisation
Given our understanding of the situation we have been raising the demand since 1993-94 for reorganization of the police ensuring:
i. its functional independence from politically partisan directions.
ii. its accountability to law, which should fix responsibility and civil and criminal liability for acts of omission and commission of both the political executive and all State players, including administrative and police officers, and procedure of proximate action against erring leaders and officers, not limited to transfer and suspension.
iii. Socially diverse composition of all wings and at all levels of the police and justice system, with adequate representation of minorities and other vulnerable groups.
iv. The Police Manual and riot Control Schemes, especially on use of firearms to be brought into conformity with human rights standards, not using it against unarmed protestors/ mobs for deterrence.
III- Supreme Court Direction & Model Police Act
We have welcomed with some satisfaction the Supreme Court’s direction of September 2006 on police reforms and Model Police Act by the Drafting Committee led by Soli J. Sorabjee. The Model Police Act does provide for adequate representation of minorities in the composition of the State Police Board and also the direction that “the Police Service shall, as far as possible, reflect adequate representation of all sections of society” Again it makes the provision that while deploying the police to deal with situations of conflict, its composition should “reflect the social diversity of the area including adequate representation of weaker sections and minorities”.
It is also welcome that the chapter on ‘Role, Functions, Duties and Responsibilities of the Police’ include the social responsibility of the police “to ensure that in all situations, especially during conflicts …. conduct of police is always governed by the principles of impartiality and human rights norms, with special attention to protection of weaker sections including minorities” Significantly the Preamble specifically mentions “the constitutional obligation of the State to provide impartial and efficient Police Service safeguarding the interests of vulnerable sections of society including the minorities”
However demand regarding adherence to human rights standard on use of force and firearms do not find any place in the Act. There is a need for a detailed examination of the functions and powers and composition of the Police Accountability mechanism, which appears to be not adequately empowered.
The definition of ‘misconduct’ and ‘serious misconduct’ shouldinclude not only death in custody but all killings by the police in all situations except for situation of fighting with armed groups. The Chapter on Internal Security, there is a need for a sub-section on Hate Crimes.
(Source: The Milli Gazette, 1-15 December 2007, page 16)
COMPOSITE CULTURE
India’s Composite Culture Illumines All Aspects of Life
Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Noted Academician
Political communities are fragile entities. It takes decades to build them. And just when we think their unity is secure, they begin to show cracks and even unravel in a remarkably short period of time.
By a strange miracle, India continues to main intact. The North-East and Kashmir still remain volatile. On the whole, however we have remained a united country and, with some exceptions, a united people. How did this happen?
Democracy has certainly helped. Although it sometimes encourages fissiparous tendencies, it has been open enough to include new groups, empower them and give them a hope. Without the legitimacy that it has given to our political institutions, many Indians would have had no stake in the country, and could easily have been tempted to resort to acts of violence and disorder.
Even more important than democracy is our composite culture, which sustains and gives it its energy and openness. The composite culture is evident in its cuisine, language, music, dress, literature, and the arts. They are all creative products of the centuries-long interaction between the different cultures that came to our land. Every Indian language has at least a third of its vocabulary drawn from Persian, Arabic, or Turkish. Our dresses, including the sari, are a composite product, and so are our traditional musical instruments and ragas. All our great minds have been raised on the milk of many cultures. Rabindranath Tagore, on his own testimony, is a product of the classical Hindu, Muslim, Christian and secular influences. Gandhi is so unclassifiable that is difficult to isolate the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Jain, the Christian, the Judaic and the secular-liberal elements of his thought.
The composite culture of Indian has a highly complex identity. It is not unitary and homogeneous, but plural, and contains within it a large range of inassimilable diversity. Yet this diversity is not chaotic and has a recognizable structure and language of expression. It includes the contributions of the Hindu culture, itself a composite product of classical Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and other influences, as well as those of Islam, Christianity and secular modernity. These interacting stands of thought, sometimes in tension and sometimes in harmony, have created over time a highly complex framework within which different groups of Indians lead their lives.
Most Indians, by they Hindus, Muslims, or Christians, can hardly speak for five minutes without resorting to their Sanskirit-derived local language, Urdu and bits of English. Their mode of thinking and the structure of their identity are also multi-conceptual. They draw on Hindu heritage in some areas of life such as moral and social relations; Muslim heritage in music and romantic love; their secular and western heritage when dealing with civil, economic and political matter; and their Christian heritage in matters involving social service and non-violence. Sometimes they even draw on all of these heritages, as in architecture and the interior décor of their house.
Our composite culture is our collective asset. It has no single source or owner, and that is its strength. All Indians see something of themselves in it, some no doubt more than others, and feel uninhibited in embracing it. This is not to say that there are no tensions. Some Hindus feel uneasy about Islamic and Christian elements, just as some Muslims feel about Hindu elements. What matter is the different communities have enough in common to communicate with each other and take pride in it.
The influence of the composite culture in shaping our religious, regional and ethnic consciousness should not be understand. The Indian Muslim views his religion differently from the way his Saudi Arabian or even Pakistani counterpart does. He values it, thinks it the best, yet he is generally not only tolerant but respectful of others. Among the Muslim migrants to Europe those from India are often the highest achievers, the least militant, most accommodating, hardly ever likely to be involved in terrorist activities and by and large comfortable with secular modernity. This is also true of Indian Christians whose reading of their religion is less dogmatic and absolutist than that of the their counterparts in many other societies.
Thanks to our syncretic culture and its pluralist ethos, we are at home with differences, sometimes more than we should be. We appreciate that there is no single model of a good Indian. Each of us has a different personal and political biography, and appropriates Indian in his or her own different way. We are also embedded in our regional cultures and identities, which deeply matter to us and mediate our relations with our Indian identity. Our strong regional loyalties nurture the national. One does not need to stop being a proud Bengali or Kashmiri in order to be a proud Indian. We have seen in recent years how regional pride. Whether in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat or Karnataka, can release great entrepreneurial energy and stimulate new political experiments without undermining the commitment to national unity.
Even the atrocities committed after the Godhra train incident did not shake the Muslim’s faith in India. Although they were rightly angry with the government of Gujarat, they loved its languages, customs, easy-going manners, tolerance, commercial spirit and hospitality. This explains the fact that Gujarati Muslims settled abroad did not have a bad opinion of Gujarati Hindus. They continued to visit the state just as they had done before. Our composite culture has been a great source of stability and energy. Even when groups of people are unhappy with the policies of the government, their anger against the government does not translate into that against the country or the region.
The Sangh Parivar is patriotic and loves India, albeit in its own way. But there is not a shadow of doubt that its ideology of purging Indian culture of its so-called foreign elements is driven by the fundamentally false belief that the continuing Muslim presence in India is either culturally illegitimate or an expression of Hindu generosity. When Pakistan was sliced off, the rest of India remained what it had always been, a multi-religious and multi-cultural country. Indian Muslims do not represent the unfinished agenda of the Partition. They are, like other communities, integral to the country, and contributed to the creation of our composite culture.
(Source: India Today, August 20, 2007)
NATIONAL POLITICS-INC
AICC Session on 60th Anniversary of Independence
New Delhi, 17 November, 2007
Sonia Gandhi’s Address (Extracts)
The welfare of minorities –both in terms of their security and security and economic opportunities has been a priority for our Party for decades. Our government has taken a number of measurers for their education particularly and is implementing a detailed action plan based on the recommendations of the Sachar Committee.
PM’s Address (Extracts)
We appointed the Sachar Committee to find out the factional position about the conditions of minorities. The committee has established that the conditions are unsatisfactory and a lot needs to be done to improve them. We have launched a new prime Minister’s 15 Point Programme with a view to improving their conditions. We have stared a massive scholarship programme to minorities. In addition, we are giving special emphasis to 121 minority concentration districts where it will be our endeavor to improve educational, health and banking facilities.
Rahul Gandhi’s Address (Extracts)
There are different perceptions about the people of India. I too have my own opinion. Whenever I meet my countryman I only see his Indianness. This is how I recognize him. I do not see any difference of religion, class or anything else among our countrymen. The only difference, which I see, is that of access to opportunity.
In our country there are people on one side who get any opportunity in the development process of our country. On the other side there are people who do not get a chance to participate in this progress. This is the important difference which determines my political thinking. After all what is poverty- the poor are those who lack opportunity. We must link the poor and the weaker sections with our country’s and the world’s economy. I fee that is the biggest challenge facing our generation.
Political Resolution (Extracts)
*T h e AICC declares with all sincerity that, for the Congress party, secularism — equal respect for all religions both in theory and practice — is a moral imperative. We apologise to none for being secular, for promoting secularism and for defending secularism. We proudly declare that we shall continue to devote our energy and efforts to defend our secular ideals. The AICC reiterates the Congress’s steadfast determination to combat communalism of all kinds. This has always been the priority of the Congress. But it acquires even greater importance and urgency now. The law of the land should be applied without fear or favour against any individual, institution or ideology spreading communal hatred and bigotry and inciting religious passions and prejudices. For the Congress, secularism and all that it entails, including the fulfilment of fundamental obligations enshrined in our Constitution, is an article of profound faith.
*The AICC congratulates the Congress-led UPA government for the various initiatives it has taken so far for the welfare of minorities, particularly in the areas of education. The appointment of the Sachar Committee is a salutary measure which is the latest in a series of steps taken in the past, the most important being the 15-point programme of Smt. Indira Gandhi which has been reinforced from time to time all aimed at the welfare of minorities. The empowerment of minorities is a basic ideology of the Congress and is a pre-condition for inclusive growth. The AICC calls upon the Congress-led UPA government to unveil a timebound schedule for the implementation of the recommendations of the Sachar Committee. The AICC recalls that Congress governments were responsible for introducing reservations for minorities in Kerala and Karnataka in education and government employment according to Constitutional provisions. The Congress governments in Andhra Pradesh and Manipur also has taken such a measure. This has led to a whole new educational environment for minorities.
Muslim Representation in the INC
General Secretaries: 0/6
Incharge: 0/6
CWC Member: 3/23 – Shri Ahmad Patel Smt. Mohsina Kidwai Shri Saifuddin Soz
Permanent Invities: 1/11 –Shri C.K. Jaffer Sharief
Special Invities: 0/6
Secretaries: 4/35 – Shri bdul Mannan Shri Mehboob Ali Kaisar Shri Mirza Irshad Baig Shri Shakeel-Uzzaman Ansari
Spokesmens: 1/7 – Dr. Shakeel Ahmad
Media Department: 0/1
Department of Policy Planning and coordination : 0/10
Training Department: 1/8 – Shri Irshad Mirza
Publicity and Publication Committee: 0/8
Manifesto Committee: 1/15 – Shri Salman Khurshid
Group to look into Future Challenges: 1/13 do
NATIONAL POLITICS-INC
Prayer For Congress
Jug Suraiya
Today, the Congress — India’s Grand Old Party — is seeking salvation from too many different sources and has placed itself in mortal jeopardy. Its jettisoning of the much vaunted Indo-US nuclear deal in the face of Left intransigence and the fear of mid-term elections underscored what has long been an open secret. Namely, that the party has abandoned any ideology it might once have had and that its only credo is to perpetuate itself in office.
However much you might deplore their politics, both the Marxists and their sworn foes, the BJP, have at least some avowed principles, or points of dogma for which they are prepared to risk electoral losses. While nowhere near as ideologically pure as the Marxists, the BJP does owe open fealty to Hindutva and cultural nationalism. With both the reds and the saffronites, you know where they stand, like it or lump it. such singularity of purpose compels acknowledgement, even while it might not inspire admiration. In stark contrast, the Congress has long been a party without any well-defined ideology. Or, rather, it has promiscuously flirted with too many supposed faith-systems, made itself the foundling child of too many lesser gods. As a result it has lost not just credibility but its very reason for existence.
A brief genealogy of the political morals of the party shows that it has already allowed itself to be fathered by a multiplicity of often contradictory creeds: from Nehruvian socialism and non-alignment, through Indira Gandhi’s ‘licence raj’ and ‘committed government’ (committed to her, that is), followed by Rajiv Gandhi’s betrayal of secularism to Narasimha Rao’s eco-nomic liberalism, Manmohan Singh’s valiant but ultimately futile championing of the nuclear deal, and Sonia Gandhi’s sudden recollection of the plight of that periodic mascot of all endangered political parties — the common man.
The Congress president’s concern for aam aadmi would be touching were it not for a couple of inconvenient truths. Firstly, by her late husband’s own reckoning while he was prime minister, of every rupee spent by his government on the uplift of aam aadmi only 16 paise reached the targeted recipients (this evaluation has subsequently been scaled down to between 5 and 6 paise). Secondly, the long-suffering aam aadmi has shifted his hopes elsewhere: to Mayawati’s BSP which is rapidly gaining ground and vote banks; Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party; and any number of regional organisations. The three traditional support bases of the Congress — the Dalits, the Muslims, and the upper-caste Hindus — have all found better home-delivery alternatives.
Since its founding in 1885, the Congress has had a long and for the most part — barring criminal aberrations like the Emergency — honourable innings. Like a great banyan, it gave rise to many offshoots of itself. But sadly, the political market has changed significantly since its heyday. Today, that market favours regional products and the coalitions to a monolithic political Wal-Mart which has all things for all people. So what stops the Congress from calling it a day and disbanding? Its single-point agenda of keeping the party going as the family business it has been since Nehru’s time.
like everything else, the politics of personality follows the law of diminishing returns. Already, Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee lead their own DIY Congresses. Will the future see more such franchisee avatars of the Congress?
(Source: Times of India, 17 October, 2007)
Inheritance of Power in Political Families
C. P. Bhambhri
Sonia Gandhi has followed the well-established tradition of the Hindu patriarchal system by publicly nominating, on November 17, at a formal AICC session, her male child, Rahul Gandhi, as the inheritor of her assets — like the leadership of the Congress party. It is a befitting reply to Hindu communal political outfits who have attacked her for being a foreigner. In this regard, she has chosen to conduct herself like a true Hindu.
But Sonia Gandhi is not alone. Almost every party has religiously followed this time-tested tradition, including a rationalist atheist like M. Karunanidhi and a Sikh politician like Parkash Singh Badal. Whether NCP’s Sharad Pawar would have declared his daughter his inheritor if he had had a son, is a moot question.
Except for the cadre-based, ideologically-oriented communist parties — and to some extent the Sangh Parivar — every political formation is flush with funds. How can leaders keep complete control over the financial resources of a party without nominating a ‘successor’? Politics is expected to define the socio-economic goals for society, and parties concretise their societal programmes with a view to winning elections and implementing their programmes. Yet self-appointed practitioners of ‘secular democracy’ have not hesitated to extend support to practitioners of Hindutva politics, or actively compromised with obscurantist religious elements. Serious ideological politics has, thus, been displaced by the politics of opportunism; and MPs, MLAs, ministers, et al, have come to regard politics as an opportunity to maximise private benefits for themselves and their children. If senior politicians have tasted the fruits of power and if they have found that it is also financially productive, the logical step is to hand over the ‘business’ to their children. It is not without reason that the Congress and other parties are pressured by political veterans to nominate their children as candidates so that the ‘succession’ can be expedited.
When Lalu Yadav had to serve time in jail for the fodder scam, he could not have handed over power to anyone but his wife. Such illustrations can be multiplied to substantiate the argument that prosperous political shops with are patented by the ‘shop owners’. Modern democracy based on the principle of rule by the people is a product of great struggles against the practitioners of the divine right to kings, but in Indian democracy, the children of political families inherit the ‘empire’ of their parents, political families are the ruling elite on India.
(Source: The Indian Express, 5 December, 2007)
DYNASTIC POLITICS
S. Prasannarajan on Pornography of Politics
Harlotry in the name of Social Justice, Energised by Dynastic Impulses
Once upon a time in India ruled a prime minister called Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda, the most favoured farmer after Charan Singh in the mutative history of the Janata experiment. His migration, semaphored by a lucky constellation of stars in the southern sky, from the fertile farmlands of Karnataka politics to the treacherous heart of Delhi, marked the lowest point in the politics of alternatives.
There he was, the prime minister as a peasant in perpetual passivity with the weltanschauung of a panchayat president. The farce of those nine months in the 1990s further magnified the hollowness of the much marketed anti-elitism of that tag line: I’m a humble farmer.
Such manufactured modesty was only a cover for his vulpine project in power, whose ultimate source for the most provincial of prime ministers was his home state of Karnataka: Delhi was subordinated to Holenarsipur.
In retrospect, perhaps he only wanted to be an ex-prime minister; that inglorious tenure in South Block was a national interlude in a life enriched by the harvest of rural caste politics in southern remoteness. He would return to more infamies of the politics of family farming—to be at home.
Today, as Gowda looms over the ruins of a coalition Government in Karnataka.
In the so-called age of coalition. The profusion of regional parties— most of them have national aspirations—is not necessarily directly proportional to the federal evolution of India. It may reflect the expansiveness of Indian democracy and the near impossibility of bipolarity in politics. It nevertheless continues to be the primary source of political skullduggery and instability. In Karnataka, the size of the problem is as large as the greed and vanity of the Gowda clan.
It is not a unique Karnataka story, even if Gowda is singular in playing out his paternal instincts with such brazenness.
The variations of the ugly Indian politician continue to be staged elsewhere as well, in equally gaudy backdrops. Next door, the world seen through the dark glasses of Dravidian exceptionalism is a very special place, where family values still dominate the script of power.
For Karunanidhi, the Tamil interest comes only after the clan interest—one is negotiable, the other is not. In Kerala, Karunakaran, the doddering father-fighter, has already ceased to be even comical; he has become incomprehensible as power-lust is accompanied by senescence. In the north we have all the types, ranging from the most accomplished performer of social justice to the avenging diva of dalit salvation.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, currently one of the most trusted loyalists in the Sonia durbar, may play the subaltern jester for electoral effect. The legacy of the Lalu kitchen raj, though, is steeped in dynastic perversions of the badland variety. Mayawati has all the paranoia of the supreme leader who detests questions and invents enemies, and she too, like Lalu of the Bihar days, has turned the romance of social justice into a reign of terror and fear in the name of the dispossessed.
They are only the most obvious ones, and they are united by the depravity of power. They carry forward the tradition of political pornography perfected by such veterans like Charan Singh, Raj Narain and Om Prakash Chautala.
The socialists, somehow, occupy the front row in the history of political vulgarism. Their evolutionary story is a study in how power repudiates the last vestige of idealism. The political heirs of Lohia have come a long way from lofty anti-Congressism; they have reduced the distance between pragmatism and opportunism with such unprincipled aplomb.
They have become wreckers of the first order, though, today, they don’t have a spiritual guru like Madhu Limaye. They have only performers with cultivated rusticity like Lalu Yadav. And the aesthetic of every political vulgarian is kitsch, which plays with the mass mind.
The Nazis and Communists perfected it through the spectacles of the State. Today, almost every politician armed with a self-serving sociology of liberation is a practitioner of kitsch— from Jayalalithaa to Karunanidhi to Mayawati, all me-alone leaders driven by an exaggerated sense of indispensability. Kitsch in politics keeps the gullible mesmerised and gives the vulgarian in power a false sense of immortality.
Does it only further accentuate the farcical progression of the Indian project in democracy, which, after all, is elastic enough to accommodate any junk? In the first phase of freedom—the Nehruvian age—it was a project sustained by the idealism of nation-building, even though it was partly inspired by the Soviet model.
Still, the romance was overwhelming for a generation of leaders shaped by the freedom movement. Politics remained largely honorable. The rise of Mrs G marked a defining cultural shift. The mythology of the great leader was born, and the durbar of the dynasty became the highest shrine of Indian democracy.
Power began to rhyme with paranoia, and genealogy replaced ideology. As Gowda was frantically trying to restore family power in Bangalore, the first family of Indian politics was setting the stage for another dynastic ascension in Delhi amid choreographed sycophancy.
The Congress show presided over by the wannabe Mrs G looked so natural and inevitable while the farmer drew all the moral flak. So political pornography is not the prerogative of foxy farmers and kitschy vaudevillians alone; India’s Grand Old Party has not abandoned the tradition.
(Source: India Today, November 23, 2007)
RESERVATION
Muslims & Christians as not Minorities,
Dalit Christians & Muslims Must be Excluded from SC Lists
RSS Chief Sudarshan’s Speech on Vijayadashami (Extracts) Nagpur, 20 Oct., 2007.
At the out set we should realise that to call Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs of our country as minorities is nothing but an extension of the British policy of ‘divide and rule’. Minorities are those who were uprooted in their own countries and took refuge in this country, and, because they did not have any roots in this country, they might need certain rights to protect their identity. That way, only the Jews and the Parsees may be called minorities who came to Bharat two thousand and one thousand years ago from Israel (Sic) and Iran respectively. In no other country did they get such a considerate treatment as we got here. And we see that they did not suffer any disability what so ever.
This being the situation, how can the statement of our Prime Minister be justified that the minorities have the first claim on the resources of our country? In giving compensation also to the families of those killed, the government perpetrates discrimination. For the Pakistanis killed in Samjhouta Express explosions, the compensation given was 10 lakhs per person, for the Muslims killed in Malegaon, Hyderabad etc. it was five lakhs per person whereas for those Hindus who were killed in Mumbai explosions the compensation was two lakhs, meaning thereby that the lives of Hindus are cheaper than those of the so-called minorities. The Leftist Government in West Bengal, with their eyes on the forth-coming panchayat elections, has declared that 30 per cent of the budgetary allocation will be earmarked for the minorities, they will be trained at government expenses for recruitment in the Police force in large numbers, new minority schools will be established and a lenient view will be taken about the madarsas. Is this not a crass appeasement of the minorities and discrimination of the worst order? The so-called minorities in West Bengal form 28 per cent of the population and of them 25.25 per cent are Muslims. Of the 50 (Sic) Muslim majority districts in the country, 12 belong to the West Bengal alone. Over and above that there are the recommendations of the Sachar Committee, which recommends reservation of seats in institutions of higher education. Is this not a shameful example of minority appeasement? On the other hand, those who are converted to either Christianity or Islam from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward communities have started demanding reservations in the government services. Is it not an encroachment on the privileges of the SCs, STs and OBCs of the Hindu society?
It should be remembered that the demand that the provisions of reservations for the SCs, STs and OBCs as enshrined in the Constitution, should be extended to the Christian and Muslim converts also, has been rejected by the Supreme Court in a number of public interest litigations. It has held that the reservation policy has been adopted to remove the social disability inflicted because of the caste-system prevailing in the Hindu society. Any Hindu converted to either Islam or Christianity is thrown out of the Caste system. To covert a man to their faith the Christian fathers take recourse to the plea that there is no caste discrimination in the Christian society. Will the church leaders, before demanding reservation for Dalit Christians, declare that they do have caste discrimination in their society? From the regulation of the Government of India 1935 to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe regulation, 1950 and the orders promulgated from time to time afterwards also are very clear about this point. This matter was thoroughly discussed by our Constitution makers and they had rejected the extension of privileges to converts.
If this demand for reservation for converts is accepted then most of the reservations will be cornered by them with the help of enormous foreign funds being pumped into our country from abroad. The greatest obstacle experienced by the Christian missionaries and Muslim moulavis in their task of proselytisation will be removed and the pace of conversion will enormously increase, creating problems for the unity and integrity of our Nation. The leaders and public representatives of SCs and STs should realise this danger and see through their hidden game plan and come forward to thwart their mischief. In addition to that those of them who have come above the poverty line should come forward to renounce those privileges for themselves and their dependents so that their brethren who are still below the poverty line may get the benefit of reservations. Reservation after all is akin to crutches which are taken recourse to when due to some accident we begin to limp. Once the disability is removed the crutches are discarded.
(Source: The Organoser, 4 november, 2007)
HINDU NATIONALISM
Sangh Parivar- an Ideological Family in Deep Ferment
Vidya Subrahmaniam
In the shadowy world of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party, nothing apparently can be ruled out. A favourite, deposed in full public view, can be recalled and bestowed the highest party honour. A “super hero,” feted as the definitive Hindutva warrior, can be denounced as a deviant who must be taught a lesson.
The stories of Lal Krishna Advani and Narendra Modi, one called upon to captain the BJP in the next election, and the other sought to be undermined in the middle of a crucial State election, are stories of an ideological family in deep ferment.
The patriarch knows as do the wards that the halcyon days of the joint family — where the father dictated and they obeyed — are over. Advani has stepped into Vajpayee’s shoes without having to retract his appreciation of Jinnah’s 1947 secular-liberal vision. Similarly, whether Modi wins or loses, he will never again be the unsung pracharak who did as ordered.
In the summer of 2005, Advani, then BJP helmsman and beloved of the RSS, snapped the link between guru and shishya. Within two months of applauding Jinnah, Advani was stripped of his party post. In the eyes of the Sangh, and indeed the party, there could be no greater sacrilege than praise for Jinnah, creator of Pakistan and destroyer of the parivar’s dream of Akhand Bharat.
Today even as Advani returns to the Sangh’s reluctant embrace, Modi, another of its protégé, has come under fire — this time for flouting its ideals of obedience, self-denial and commitment to ideology. Advani and Modi were the RSS role models. If the former felt umbilically connected to the Sangh, the latter was its ultimate, unrivalled hero. One clambered atop a rath to stoke dormant Hindu passions. That cataclysmic journey pushed his party, for years a distant also-ran, to the centre of power politics.
The second went farther than anyone thought possible. Modi took Advani’s metaphorical rath to its inevitable, logical destination — to Gujarat and to the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002. Advani laid the foundation and Modi built upon it. The conflagration brought Modi unprecedented popularity in Gujarat even as it damaged him nationally and internationally. Through all this, Advani stood by him.
Had the Advani-Modi combination continued on this destructive path, none should have been happier than the head of the family. Alas each had a mind of his own, and each was ambitious, wanting a future larger and brighter than what was allowed in the Sangh’s scheme of things.
Advani was at the peak of his career, when in 1995, he handed the party on a platter to Vajpayee. He himself stepped back for the most obvious reason. As party ideologue, he could deconstruct Hindutva and deliver it to the common people in an idiom they understood. But there still existed a gap between the core vote which he brought to the party and the seat of power which only the persuasive charm of Vajpayee could bridge — which he did by wooing those that swore never to sup with the BJP. As ally after hesitant ally smashed through the ideological barrier to join Vajpayee, his acceptability grew, and as opinion polls were to show later, he remained without a rival through the six-year rule of the Advani trailed in the popularity stakes, polling in the region of three to five per cent to Vajpayee’s consistently scored 70 per cent.
There was a lesson in this for the hardliners. There was only so far an ideologue could travel in India. Vajpayee was as much a swayamsevak as Advani. He was as apt to take a sectarian line as anyone else in his party. Yet there was about him an aloofness, a certain charm, not to mention a haziness over where he stood on any issue. He changed, edited and overturned his statements, emerging the better for it. Indeed, the wishy-washy liberalism he cultivated, added to his appeal. The leader of the BJP-led NDA folded Nawaz Sharif to his chest, and made bold to visit Minar-e-Pakistan, the first Indian leader to do so. The Sangh seethed at this daring but could do nothing to the teflon Prime Minister.
Advani was stuck with the opposite image, and he despaired of it. As early as 1980, he spoke of the limitations of ideology and the inverse relationship between ideology and electoral appeal. Years later, he would reiterate this in interviews given as Deputy Prime Minister. Finally the image shattered and how. Hindutva’s most faithful adherent praised Jinnah on Pakistani soil and paid for it with humiliation and opprobrium. The Sangh extracted his resignation from party presidency, though it grudgingly allowed him to continue as parliamentary party leader. Through this time, an amazing thing happened. Just as Vajpayee was ever the liberal, Advani was ever the Jinnah man — no matter how much he harked back to Hindutva and how much he defended Modi, that hate ideology’s most recognised face.
In 2005, the Jinnah adventure looked like a gamble horribly gone wrong. Yet today, Advani must feel vindicated. He has been invited to lead the party by the same RSS that banished him from its hallowed quarters. Before 2005, there was a huge question mark over whether the BJP’s allies would accept the transition from Vajpayee to Advani. That doubt has been cleared with the NDA constituents giving him the go-ahead.
One question remains, though. The BJP has always flaunted its second generation. Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Venkaiah Naidu were all Prime Minister material, the party said, contrasting this large pool of talent with the stifling presence of the dynasty in the Congress. But when the time came, the Sangh picked the 80-year-old Advani over the younger stars. At the time of the next general election in 2009, he will be almost 82. Admittedly, Vajpayee is a hard act to follow. Yet the years have not robbed Advani of his intellect. He was and remains the BJP’s only ideologue.
But there was another reason why the Sangh hastened with the promotion of Advani. None in the BJP’s second generation commanded a popular base. Far from it, they were all in comprehensive danger of being beaten in this department by the phenomenon called Narendra Modi.
An iconic figure in his home State, the Gujarat Chief Minister towered over his peer group, and indeed, on the campaign trail showed how easily he could overshadow them. Thin attendance greeted anyone who went to Gujarat to campaign for Modi. BJP chief Rajnath Singh of course drew little response. But the smallest of crowds awaited even Advani — and in his own constituency of Gandhinagar.
What matters is that the Sangh abhors the personality cult, believing the individual to be always beneath the organisation. The saffron outfit’s official stand — decided in 2005 by a resolution — is that it would stay neutral in elections. Yet in Gujarat, it has looked the other way as pracharaks campaigned against Modi. The unofficial message is that the Gujarat Chief Minister needs to be brought down a notch.
Modi was made into a cult by the RSS. Up until 2001 he was just a backroom operator providing the logistics for the BJP’s unending campaigns and yatra. The Sangh parachuted him into Ahmedabad knowing his taste for communal politics. Today, he has grown into a Frankenstein’s Monster that it cannot control.
The Gujarat Chief Minister has his own agenda — be it marketing himself as the development man or reverting to virulent Hindutva. He has tasted power and adulation and he will not do as told. Ditto for Advani. Of course, he would compromise with Hindutva and such to buy peace. But he has personally experienced the limitations of Hindutva.
(Source: The Hindu, 14 December, 2007)
GUJARAT ELECTION
Modi Can and Must be Defeated
AIMMM’s Appeal to Secular Voters, 7 Dec.,07
‘The coming Assembly election in Gujarat is of critical importance to the future of the secular order in the country. There is a direct contest between the Congress and the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi who stands for Moditva, the fascist form of Hindutva.
We must recall that Modi has not offered a word of apology or even regret for the Genocide of 2002 which tarnished the image of Gujarat. On the other hand, in his election campaign he has repeatedly moved away from the issue of development, to incitement of Hindu communalism in order to mobilize his old electorate. He has done precious little to rehabilitate the victims and has deliberately undermined the rule of law to delay the punishment of the culprits.
There is an atmosphere of fear in the whole of Gujarat and a sense of terror in the Muslim localities across the state. Modi’s modus operandi is to terrorize some voters into abstention and some others even to vote for him out of fear.
In 2007, secular forces are better organized and more active to meet Modi’s challenge than they were in 2002. Now people who believe in Gandhian ideology and are committed to communal harmony and secularism have taken the field against him. The farmers, as the class ignored by Modi in his passion for industrialization, the dalits and the tribals, who were used and discarded by him in 2002, are also standing up in defiance. The people of Gujarat can and must defeat Modi.
Muslims constitute 9% of the state electorate. They have a sizable presence in at least 25 constituencies but their votes count even where they form a small slice of the electorate. In our system every vote matters; In 2002 Modi won several seats by very small margins.
To defend secular values, to re-shine the tarnished name of Gujarat, to dispel fear from the minds of the people, to punish the perpetrators of genocide and to rehabilitate its victims and, above all, to build a New Gujarat on the foundation of Social Justice and Peace, the AIMMM appeals to all secular voters, particularly the Muslims, the dalits and the tribals, to vote massively, unitedly and fearlessly against the BJP and for Congress & for others winnable secular candidates.’
AIMMM Expects CM Modi to FulfillExpectations of All Gujaratis,
26 December, 2007
‘The All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) respects the verdict of the electorate in Gujarat Assembly Election, 2007, and offers its best wishes to Shri Narendra Modi on his reinstallation as Chief Minister for fulfilling the common expectations of all the people of Gujarat for social peace and accelerated development.
The AIMMM fervently hopes that the Modi Government shall treat the Muslim community, not as an adversaries or as the ‘other’ but, as equal citizens and as partners in development and thus seek to heal the wounds of 2002. In particular, it should endeavour to remove the environment of fear that persists and keeps thousands of displaced Muslims families from returning to their homes in peace and dignity.
Representatives of the Muslim community MLA’s in the Assembly have a double responsibility to fulfill, as members of the Congress opposition and as representatives of their community. On one hand, they should resist any encroachment on the identity and dignity of their community, and defend their constitutional and human rights in accordance with law; on the other, they should protect the legitimate interests and aspirations of all the marginalized and deprived sections of the people and promote progress and well-being of all Gujaratis.
HINDU RASHTRAVAD
Is Gujarat the New India?
Pamela Philipose
Can the politics of communal polarisation practised successfully in Gujarat be replicated in the country? There is the argument that Modi’s model of governance has a certain resonance in the New, Resurgent India, which is impatient with the burdens of the past, and its legacy of poverty, backwardness and encrusted Nehruvian values. Gujarat, with its ‘winning’ combination of muscular cultural nationalism and unstoppable China-like economic growth, offers the citizens of New India a passport out of Old India. There are some — for the moment confined largely to those sympathetic to the Sangh Parivar — who even argue that the country cannot do better than acquire a PM like Narendra Modi; and the BJP, if it wishes to re-capture power at the Centre, couldn’t do better than embrace hardline Hindutva.
There is, of course, no denying that the consolidation of what can be broadly termed ‘sustainable Hindutva’ has been achieved in Gujarat. The fact that the BJP has been able to account for more than 40 per cent of the votes over three consecutive elections — 1995, 1998 and 2002 — underlines this. There cannot also be any doubt about its impressive economic achievements: according to the Gujarat government, it recorded a growth rate of 12.7 per cent in 2006-07 and 26 per cent of total bank finance was in Gujarat in 2006-07, according to RBI figures. The Gujarat Model could appear compelling indeed.
But Gujarat is not, and cannot be, India and Narendra Modi’s future ascendancy to prime-ministership is a political pipe dream. First, we need to clarify that Gujarat’s ‘growth’ — on which Modi has put his personal imprimatur — actually dates back a thousand years in a region that has been at the intersection of innumerable trade routes. Gujarat’s economic history is bound to its geographical location both as a border region and a maritime one. Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, in their book The Shaping of Modern
Gujarat, observe, “For almost a thousand years now, merchant communities — Hindus, Jains, Muslims, and later, Parsis — not only dominated the economic sphere but also wielded influence in Gujarati society and power in political affairs.” Much before they had their own state, Gujarati traders played a decisive role in creating Bombay’s share bazar. Once the state of Gujarat came into being, it saw both the Green and White revolutions. Today, Gujarat calls itself a ‘mini China’; in the early eighties, it was considered a ‘mini Japan’ — both claims of course coming at great environmental cost, but that’s another story. Between 1993 and 2000 — before Modi represented Gandhinagar — Gujarat’s manufacturing grew by 94 per cent. So we can safely assume that regardless of which party controls it, Gujarat will remain a high growth state.
That apart, Gujarat itself has a social composition that does not approximate India’s. Not only does it have a higher percentage of upper caste population, it has lower Muslim representation. This combination and makes it easier for Gujarati politicians across party lines to practise the politics of communal polarisation, something that is considerably more difficult to do at the national level.
Now let’s look at how the BJP had gained ascendancy in the late nineties. At least two broad phenomena helped power it to Raisina Hill. First, the historic decline of the Congress. has hit a pause. At the national level today, the Congress appears far more convincing as a political force than it had in the second half of the nineties even as the BJP has lost the potent appeal of unfulfilled promise that it seemed to embody in the 1998 general election. Some within the Sangh Parivar would argue that this is precisely why the BJP needs to return to hardline Hindutva as represented by personalities such as the Modi of today, and the Advani of the early nineties.
Which brings us to the second phenomenon that brought the party to power at the Centre: the increasingly forgotten moderation of Vajpayee. The combination of Advani, with his hardline politics, and Vajpayee with his fuzzy appeal, did the trick. Neither leader could have achieved power on his own terms. Advani knows this well. That is why as PM-in-waiting he tries to be both hardliner and moderate by turns.
Christophe Jaffrelot has argued that if the BJP wishes to remain an all-India party, it needs to do at least four things: one, stick to its moderate line, given the compulsions of its allies; two, be generous with its regional allies in terms of seat adjustments and portfolios; three, ensure the allies continue to consider the Congress as its rival to power, and not the BJP; four, rein in the political ambitions of its own cadre in these states. Modi, who having presided over the 2002 post-Godhra progrom in Gujarat and who went on to win an election on the passions it had unleashed; Modi, who has never lost an opportunity to brandish his Hindutva credentials —is not the man to achieve such a sync. Advani has at least stated publicly that the day that saw Babri Masjid demolished was the saddest day of his life; Modi has not deigned to do even this vis-à-vis the 2002 pogrom.
If Modi wins, there will be many who will proclaim him the country’s future prime minister. That needs to be seen against the complex realities of a country called India.
(Source: The Indian Express, 21 December, 2007)
Gandhi’s Talisman
Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj (self-rule) for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
– Mahatma Gandhi
HINDU NATIONALISM
A Psychological Analysis of Modi’s Bid for Power
Ashis Nandy
Narendra Modi, is one of those who, like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav, H.D. Deve Gowda and Mayawati, comes from previously marginalised social groups. He belongs to the caste of oil-pressers, like most of Godhra’s Muslims. One can speculate whether his role in the pogrom of 2002 had something to do with self-hatred.
However, unlike all others in this category, Modi has not projected himself as a backward class leader. Nor is he seen as one. Though he calls himself the leader of five crore Gujaratis, his “caste” constituency is the Gujarati middle class and his rhetoric and political style are geared to that class.
Even the Muslims who support him seem to come from the same class. His language, dress and mannerisms are quintessentially modern and upper middle class.
Why Modi has retooled himself as a typical, middle-class politician is obvious: he has larger, pan-Indian ambitions; he has to cut across the boundaries of local cultures, which means he cannot but flaunt capabilities and skills identified with the Indian middle class. Also, Gujarat is a small state studded with a large number of cities—at least 50 of them. It therefore has an urban middle class that matters much more than in other states. Lastly, Modi began his life as an RSS pracharak and the RSS is typically a product of middle-class India: it involves a rejection of both folk Hinduism and ordinary Hindus. Built on Hindu self-hatred and hostility to what is seen as the disorganised, folksy, anarchic, non-rational style of Hinduism that pervades village India, the RSS and the Hindu nationalists might make compromises with it for the sake of electoral politics, but like their alter-ego, the Leninist Left, they presume that an enlightened middle class of partly deracinated Hindus will act as the vanguard and lead the Hindus towards an European-style nation-state. It is not an accident that the founding fathers of the RSS were mostly non-believers or weak believers. And even the present leadership of the RSS is not known for its love of Hinduism as it is; they want to retool Hinduism and make it more like Islam and Christianity.
I first met Narendra Modi over 15 years ago when I interviewed him. I found him dangerous. He was just getting into politics then and as a young RSS pracharak, his ideology, especially his almost paranoid perception of Muslims, was neat, earnest and frightening. I fear the earnestness of ideologues, and the incorruptible among them are the worst. It’s a disastrous combination: incorruptibility and earnestness. They will self-destruct rather than compromise on ideology.
Modi’s earnestness, thankfully, has declined; he has become more instrumental. He is at once less threatening and more dangerous. He can now go farther in politics with his personality and psychological resources, exactly as the bjp over the years has become a less ideological party and therefore politically more skilful and accommodative.
I do not consider Modi as dangerous and as invulnerable now as I did. Now, Modi’s ambitions and his political aspirations protect us. He has changed in other ways as well—he is more polished, even more determined, but without that touch of desperation you see in many politicians of this kind. Modi is quite unlike these other politicians, whose anxiety to stick to power is as obvious as their blatant attempts to make money or to put their own people in decision-making positions. He is far more sophisticated.
Politics has blunted the edge of his ideological sharpness. His rhetoric is more calculative, or instrumental, than it was. To that extent, democracy has tamed him and exposed him to other possibilities.
I’m saying, but I’m inclined to believe that the Gujarat riots were not indiscriminate and mindless. Instrumentality was an important part of it. If you see the geography of the riots, you will see that the riots did not take place in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, where the bjp was strong. Modi’s love of Hinduism extended from north Gujarat to central Gujarat, the two areas where the Congress was stronger and he could snatch the initiative from the Congress.
Modi’s attitude to Muslims is understandable. His ideology, has to set up a fall guy or anti-self. And that anti-self defines him. But politics has changed the nature of his commitment; he may be now more willing to sell out his party and his ideology for the sake of power. The encounter of a politician with politics is different from that of a political analyst. Power and politics have changed him. The older Modi is not dead but there’s more calculation in what he says: he says these things because his constituency loves it. Gujarati middle class is at the moment having a love affair with hatred and paranoia. Like Bengali babus and Kashmiri Muslims, they were traditionally classified as non-martial by the British Empire and they smarted under that classification. Even when they themselves do not embrace violence, they vicariously enjoy it. They enjoy it even when the violence is directed towards them. In Surat city there’s now a statue of Shivaji, who sacked Surat more than once! Modi has tapped into that self-hatred of the Gujarati middle class and the sanction for violence that flows from it.
As the only upwardly mobile caste leader whose constituency is not his caste, Modi knows how to keep the middle class captive—through rhetoric, fear and anxiety. He knows only too well that his success lies in keeping that fear and anxiety alive. Thanks to the dramatic way he broke the threshold of violence in a society where the tolerance of violence has always been low, Gujaratis have begun to feel heroic. Modi has given them the vicarious pleasure of participating in violence, even while maintaining a certain distance from it. That is why the Gujarati middle class has become so hostile to any criticism of the present political culture of Gujarat. In many ways it’s a sick culture. K.P.S. Gill, no stranger to violence himself, once said there was no expiation, no guilt or shame in Gujarat about the violence in 2002.
But relying on a middle-class constituency makes Modi a more anxious politician than most, because the fidelity of this class is notoriously unstable. He has to take more risks, be more theatrical and perpetually mediagenic. That is probably why some call Modi a megalomaniacthe has presumed total immunity. The political culture of immunity has been built carefully over the last few decades by some of the so-called stalwarts of our political system. They believe they have to be barefaced about the way they flout laws and norms, because they do not have the sophisticated networks that other politicians have with industrialists and the press. They have to arm-twist the prospective financiers, openly make money out of the policy decisions they take, sell postings and transfers, and treat the media with disdain. So they look megalomaniac.
The swagger extends to intra-party affairs as well. Modi acts as if he’s the leader of a regional party. He knows that the political culture of Gujarat is distinctive and that he can challenge the party and get away with it.
He may change his style if he loses this election. Of course, he has a streak of narcissism, but which politician doesn’t?
His present incarnation, as part of the political mainstream, makes him less fearsome but more dangerous. He can go far even if he loses this election. In five years, he has a fair chance of making it to the top of his party at the national level. No pan-Indian party could have picked him as a leader in his earlier incarnation, as a clone of someone like Bal Thackeray or Praveen Togadia. Thackeray and Togadia are captive to their rhetoric and leave themselves no space for manoeuvre. Modi has cleverly created some space for himself in recent years.
All of us have a bit of Modi in us, but we don’t acknowledge it. The ruthlessness you see in him is the ruthlessness of an ideology that believes it has a superior understanding of history. Anyone who believes in the ideology believes he has the right to intervene in history, even if it costs the lives of millions. It’s this self-righteousness that is frightening. This dependence on killer ideologies is a feature of our modern times.
Fortunately, Modi is not a highly intelligent politician, like say P.V. Narasimha Rao. Modi is more intuitive than intelligent, with a sense of survival that comes from his background. It is the instinct for survival of a person coming from a social sector that has never tasted power. There is always a touch of desperation about their attempts to hold on to power, a tendency to live at the margins of law and social decency. Unlike Narasimha Rao, Modi is not fully in control of his self. What Narasimha Rao did by not doing, Modi has to do by doing. The system will not allow him to get away with it. To understand this is to understand a key component of the culture of democracy in India.
(Courtesy: Outlook, December, 2007) REPORT ON WEST BENGAL
Muslim Anger in Bengal
S N M Abdi
If CPM head honchos like Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose have concluded that by throwing Taslima Nasreen out of Kolkata and blocking her return they have regained the confidence of Muslims in West Bengal, they should think again and think hard.
In hindsight it is clear that the street violence over the Bangladeshi author which forced a nervous chief minister to deploy the army was a manifestation of bottled-up disillusionment and grievances of Muslims - comprising a significant 25 per cent of the state’s population - against a government they have faithfully voted to power in election after election.
Now, with Nasreen out of the way, it should be intros-pection time for the party. It must go to the roots of Muslim anger if it is serious about retaining their alle-giance in the difficult days ahead, particularly if it wants to forge a third front to counter the Congress and the BJP nationally.
Muslims - Bengali and Urdu-speaking - are saying for the first time that they have had enough of communists and want to dump them. Their biggest grouse is that the CPM has taken them for granted.
Crucial panchayat elections are only five months away. Forward Bloc, a key constituent of the CPM-led Left Front, has announced that it will contest the panchayat elections on its own. From the CPM’s perspective, the immediate threat-cum-worst case scenario is mass desertion by Muslim voters in May.
To be honest, Taslima is like an item number in the saga of Muslim alienation in West Bengal. She had her five minutes of fame in a ‘plot’ whose fuse was actually lit by a judge - Justice Rajindar Sachar. His stunning report on how minorities were faring in various states, released last year, blew the lid off the West Bengal communist government’s supposedly pro-Muslim policies.
It exposed how Muslims constitute 25.2 per cent of the population of West Bengal but have only 2.1 per cent of state government jobs. In contrast, Muslims account for 24.7 per cent of Kerala’s population and have 10.4 per cent of state government jobs. Assam’s ratio is 30.9 per cent and 11.2 per cent respectively. Bihar: 16.5 per cent and 7.6 per cent. Andhra Pradesh stands head and shoulders above others: 9.2 per cent and 8.8 per cent of jobs. Uttar Pradesh: 18.5 per cent and 5.1 per cent.
The upper echelons of the party and the government remain reserved for caste Hindus. The politburo has no Muslim although the party derives its strength from Bengal and Kerala which have substantial Muslim populations. Key portfolios like home, finance, industry, power, planning & development, panchayat & rural development, health, information & culture or information technology have never been given to Muslims.
Not surprisingly, resentment is growing even among Muslim MLAs and MPs. Their pleas to punish senior police officers named in the Rizwanur Rahman scandal were arrogantly dismissed by the CM although he publicly admitted that there was a “communal angle” to the graphic designer’s death. Do Bhattacharjee and Bose know that countless Muslims in their so-called communist bastion are forced to assume Hindu identities to escape discrimination and injustice? Among them are not only domestic help, fish sellers and food stall owners but even university students. Little wonder that Muslims are thinking that it is time to shake things up, if only just once.
(Source: The Times of India, 24 december, 2007)
MASS MEDIA
Media Activism no Substitute for Political Action
Sagarika Ghose
Another constant in Modi’s campaign speeches: Was the evils of the English-speaking, Delhi-based national media. Although many sections of the national press that are now approv of Modi, Gujarat’s self-styled alpha male has deliberately targeted the media. In the ideology of Moditva, the English-language media are Gujarat’s Enemy Number One.
The English-language media exemplify everything that the Gujarati must be programmed to resist. The press are the English-speaking, Left-inclined, upper-class, Nehru-style firangis who, ever since the neglect of Sardar Patel by the congress, have failed to give Gujarat its due. Modi’s attack on the media is a propaganda weapon designed to tap into a sense of wounded Gujarati asmita, aimed at setting up a Delhi versus Gandhinagar battle.
On the other hand, for the national media, a continued focus on the 2002 riots is seen as evidence of a commitment to the rule of law and to secularism; for Modi, that focus is nothing but a persistent attempt to malign Gujarati society. Why do the media only report on Gujarat through the prism of a genocide; why don’t they report on the state’s economic success, ask the chief minister’s supporters?
Indeed, in the ‘Opposition-free environment’ of Gujarat, the media seen & be the only opposition to Modi. After all, a loud headline or a recurring TV image is almost a match for a fiery speech or a massive crowd. Yet, the relationship between Modi and the media is curiously symbiotic, both breathing new life into each other, yet both insisting that the other has no right to free speech.
The media have called Modi egoistic, arrogant, Hitler, fascist, abettor of pogroms, abuser of human rights, “chief monster”, abrasive and dictator. Modi has called the media rootless, publicity-hungry, elitist, driven by personal careerism. Yet Modi himself is an adept user and abuser of the media. His website is assiduously updated. His favourite reporters are given the first pickings of his interviews. He bans TV channels; his supporters ban films like Fanaa and Parzania and routinely attack journalists. The Modi camp is fierce about the journalists it likes and dislikes. Anyone who criticises Modi is the enemy of bharat; ‘with us’ or ‘against us’ is the only slogan that his supporters understand.
The media are crucial to the Gujarat story. Gujarat 2002 was India’s first televised riot, where TV images branded themselves so powerfully on the national consciousness that normally apolitical people were galvanised into outrage, commissions and courts gasped in horror and took proactive steps, conscientious folk found themselves becoming activists and secular society at large got the demon that it collectively and subconsciously yearned for.
There was no TV screen to show us. We did not see how the ‘subliminal moment’ was reached in 1984, as we saw in 2002. Or how it may have been reached in Meerut, Maliana and Hashimpura in 1987, Bhagalpur in 1989, or even Mumbai in 1993. There was no 24-hour TV then and so India did not ‘see’. But India did ‘see’ Gujarat, and Gujarat is, therefore, sui generis. ‘Seeing’ has meant doing. Media images of the riots have spurred a courageous activist movement, which has systematically followed cases and provided legal aid.
A prosecution and investigation that was simply not neutral was challenged. Witnesses who were being paid off or threatened were provided protection. Perhaps because of this media-inspired activist movement, many of the injustices of 2002 have been realised and fought. The Supreme Court has ordered the reopening of 2,000 cases. Nine people were given the life sentence in the Best Bakery case; 11 were convicted in the Eral case. More rioters have already been convicted for Gujarat 2002 than for Delhi 1984. A still greater campaign is perhaps needed to press for justice for the over 100 young men languishing under Pota, accused of burning the train at Godhra station.
Yet, the danger is that in Gujarat, media activism is becoming political activism. A political battle against the personality of Modi cannot be fought through the media. Politicians must take on Modi and the BJP through processes of politics, through the public, through competitive public manifestoes, through campaigns and rallies. A sting operation or a planted story or ‘guided’ media coverage of a certain type cannot take the place of political activity and mass-contact initiatives on the part of politicians.
The politician, or even the well-meaning NGOs, should not expect journalists to play the role of footsoldiers in an ideological war in which there is no space to analyse the shades of grey that exist in Modi’s Gujarat. Unfortunately, Gujarat has become symbolic of a sharp polarisation within the media.
Without constant obeisance to the altar of ‘anti-Modi-ism’, there is a constant danger of being denounced as a ‘fascist sympathiser’ or ‘sold out to hindutva’ or ‘PR agency for Modi’ or ‘closet saffron’ by activists and politicians. Congress politicians will sit in their drawing rooms in Ahmedabad and Delhi and expect the media to do their work for them. Those who cannot muster crowds for election speeches expect the media to whip up a virtual crowd by television coverage. The party line, on both sides of the ideological divide, that it goes against the very grain of the free press.
When the media take a collective position, for example, for or against the Iraq war, it is a stand based on beliefs on just war or just peace, pacifism or aggression. But for the Indian media to judge themselves constantly on the benchmark of whether they are ‘pro-Modi’ or ‘anti-Modi’ would place so much emphasis on a single personality that all objective reportage would simply become a personalised reflex action.
(Cource: The Hindustan Times, December 20, 2007)
EDUCATION
MHRD Note on Focus on Minorities in SSA
November 14, 2006
The Census 2001 data reveals that Muslims are 13.43% of India’s population. 10 States have substantial muslim population namely J&K (67%), Assam (30.9%), West Bengal (25.2%), Kerala (24.7%), Uttar Pradesh (18.5%), Bihar (16.5%), Jharkhand (13.8%), Karnataka (12.2%), Uttaranchal (11.9%) & Delhi (11.7%).
The 2001 Census also shows that whereas the all India literacy rate is 65.6%, the all India muslim literacy rate is 59.1%. Major States which have muslim literacy rates below State literacy rates are Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Assam & West Bengal. The differentials are highest in West Bengal, Assam and Delhi. However, several States particularly, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have muslim literacy rates higher than the State literacy rate.
I. SSA has set up database on muslim childrens’ participation in elementary education
• Data on status of muslim children in elementary education has been developed through
(i) DISE data will include disaggregated school statistics on muslim children from 2006 onwards.
(ii) SRI-IMRB Survey 2005 included information on muslim children – 9.97% of total 2.25 crores muslim children in 6-14 age group were estimated to be out of school (about 12 lakh boys & 10 lakh girls). 12% of the out of school children were in rural & 7% in urban areas.
The out of school muslim children in some major States is presented below:-
S. State % of out of school Total (in lakhs)
No children
1. Bihar 28% 6.22
2. U.P. 14% 7.82
3. West Bengal 11% 3.87
4. Assam 8.6% 0.84
5. Jharkhand 14% 0.65
6. Maharashtra 3.13% 0.62
7. M.P. 2.55% 0.38
8. Karnataka 2.27% 0.25
9. Rajasthan 5.73% 0.25
10. AP 2.13% 0.21
11. Tamil Nadu 2.3% 0.13
(iii) District-wise Census 2001 data on muslim population and literacy rates has become available recently. 87 districts have more than 20% muslim population.
II. Interventions in SSA for Education of Minority (Muslim) Children 88 districts with more than 20 % have been identified based on the 2001 Census data for focused attention and monitoring.
• One of the thrust areas is to ensure availability of schools in all minority concentrated districts. During 2005-06, 4624 primary and Upper Primary schools, and about 31,702 EGS Centres were sanctioned in minority concentrated districts. During 2006-07, 6918 new primary and upper primary schools have been sanctioned in minority-dominated districts. 32,250 EGS centres with a total enrolment of 120.90 lakh children have been sanctioned for 2006-07.
• Sanction has been accorded for enrolment of 11.25 lakh children in Alternative & Innovative Education centres/AIE during 2006-07 in these districts.
• Madrasas/ Maktabs have been covered under SSA. The Madrasas affiliated to the State Madarsa Boards and satisfying certain conditions are eligible for such assistance as is available to other regular schools under SSA. So far 8309 madarsas have been assisted.
• Taking note of the fact that a large number of children, especially girls, are found studying in other Madrasas the State have been advised that, an EGS centre or an AIE intervention may be started at such Madarsas by the local body concerned, whereby free textbooks and an additional teacher if required can be provided. 4867 maktabs/madarsas have been taken up under EGS/AIE.
• Free textbooks are provided to all minority girls from classes I – VIII.
• Urdu textbooks are provided for urdu medium schools & for urdu as a subject.
• Based on the 1981 Census, 93 districts (now 99) in 16 states have been identified for focused attention. The major focus is on the states of Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.
• Out of the 1180 KGBVs, 210 schools have been sanctioned in minority blocks, 1430 minority girls have already been enrolled in KGBVs till 31.3.06.
• From 2006 onwards, the category Minority (Muslim) is being included in the reporting of enrolment from each school in the country under the DISE database of SSA. Similarly, each state could collect habitation wise information on out of school children for which the Muslim Community is being included as a separate category.
III. Special focus on 93 districts (1981 Census) with more than 20% muslim population, for SSA investments in 2006-07.
• Targetted sanctions to meet infrastructure gaps for schools, classrooms & teachers.
• Provision for 22 lakh children out of school through EGS/AIE.
• Additional madarsas/maktabs to be supported under AIE component. Sanctions in minority concentration districts in 2006-07
25.25% of the total allocations under SSA for 2006-07 were approved for these minority concentration districts.
Item Number % of total
sanctions
Opening of New PS 2596 21.5%
Opening of New UPS 4322 14.4%
Appointment of New Teachers 63784 28.7%
Construction of PS Buildings 10166 30.5%
Construction of UPS Buildings 2133 12.6%
Construction of Addl. Classrooms 105282 38.5%
Children to be enrolled in EGS 12.90 Lakh 24%
Interventions for CWSN 7.3 Lakh 25%
Tahir Mahmood (Ed): Politics of Minority Educational Institutions
Review by Malini Sood
The problem of minority education deserves urgent attention, particularly in today’s competitive world where human resource development is fundamentally important for national development. Equally important is the state’s solemn obligation to ensure a sizeable presence of minorities in institutions of educational, professional, and vocational studies. This obligation and the corresponding rights of minorities to have their rightful place in the state’s educational network, have full recognition in international human rights law as well as in the national laws of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The challenge for India, as Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer reminds us in his foreword, is to transform ‘a feudal’, communal, colonial country into a truly socialist, secular and democratic republic with absolutely equal rights for all its citizens irrespective of their majority-minority status’.
A survey made under the National Education Policy of 1986 found that Muslim—the largest minority in the country, constituting 13.4 percent of India’s population —were educationally the most backward of the minorities. The literacy rate among Indian Muslim women is particularly deplorable. Yet nothing effective has been done officially to eradicate the educational backwardness of Muslims. Muslims lags behind not only because of confusion about the constitutional provision pertaining to minority education but also because they have not received much help in this regard form the state. This sorry state of affairs, argues Mhamood, has been perpetuated in the name of secularism, which is always seen by the custodians of state authority as a barrier to the making of any special arrangements for Muslims in educational institutions receiving any amount of government aid, howsoever meager.
Education and literacy among the other minorities has been more satisfactory. The Christian, the second largest minority in the country, have a long history of involvement and innovation in the field of education. In recent years, their ventures have been denounced in some quarters as part of an evangelist agenda aimed at securing conversions among tribals and lower-caste Hindus. The Sikhs, the third largest minority, have been very active on the educational front, establishing a large number of schools, colleges, universities, and professional institution. Yet literacy among the Sikhs is not 100 percent. Some Sikh institutions have complained of denial of legally due minority rights and harassment by the local authorities. The Parsis, the smallest religious community recognized as a minority at the national level, are educationally advanced and economically well-off.
During Mahmood’s term of office as Chairman, the National Minorities Commission was inundated with complaints and representations from minority institutions throughout the country, ranging from charges of excessive interference by the education department at the local level, denial of minority rights by the district authorities, withholding of legally due government aid by the University Grants Commission for alleged failures to the norms for scheduled caste reservation, and discrimination in employment by municipal authorities. The recommendations made by Mahmood in the annual reports of the NMC for 1996—99 have been ignored by successive governments.
Mahmood, like many of the contributors decries the general hostility to Article 30 of the Constitution—aimed at a proper educational development of the minorities on a par with the majority—at all levels. He argues that the misuse of Article 30 by some unscrupulous elements for purely commercial gain and poor administration by some minority educational institutions have provided an excuse to the custodians of state authority to seek an unduly restrictive application of constitutional provisions pertaining to minority education.
The legacy of social injustice towards the Muslims and the policy of official inaction inherited by the British continue in post—independence India. The findings of official studies on the problem of under-representation of Muslims in educational and employment from the 1870s until today have been as consistent as official inaction on the matter, Mahmood writes. Beginning with Sir William Hunter’s study on the causes of Muslim unrest, published in 1871 under the title our Indian Musalmans, to the Sachar Committee Report submitted in 2006, there is ‘nothing novel or unprecedented’ about the findings or the recommendations. Yet the various reports remain a closely guarded secret, despite demands for their release, and when these are eventually made public, no action is ever taken. We see this with the 1983 Gopal Singh Panel report and the 1996 report of the NMC. Or the reports and their recommendations become embroiled in ugly controversies, as with the 2006 Sachar Committee report as charges of minority ‘appeasement’ are made. He calls for remedial action to correct the imbalance, injustice, and inequity prevailing in respect of the participation and performance of minorities (particularly of Muslims) in education and employment, rural development, industry, financial institutions, armed forces, and police and paramilitary services.
Arshad Alam, Uzma Naheed, and Yoginder Sikand, writing on the history and traditions of madarsa education in India, offer a valuable corrective to the recent popular notion of madarsas as hothouses of Islamic terrorism. It is important to note that some madrasa combine religious instruction with secular education. Still, a madarsa modernization scheme launched by the central government in the 1990s. remains a taboo for them. Not surprisingly, this attitude is based on resentment of the alleged links between madarsas and terrorism, fear of undue governmental interference, and apprehension of loss of identity. Attempt are sometimes made to extend the country’s education and labour laws to the madarsas, educational institutions having been regarded by the courts as an ‘industry’.
In Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Islam is the state religion, no special laws or regulations for minority educational institutions exist. Although minorities is Pakistan (estimated at a little over 3 per cent of the population) are granted religious and educational rights, the ground reality is different. As in Pakistan, the constitution of Bangladesh contains no provision specific to the minorities, estimated to range between 12 and 17 per cent.
The volume offers up-to-date information on various statutes, instruments, and court rulings (both Indian and foreign) on minority education, as well as brief profiles of the most important minority educational institutions in South Asia. Anyone concerned about the place of secularism and democracy in India (and their unfulfilled promise) will find valuable insights and thoughtful analyses here form a range of perspectives –legal, judicial, constitutional, historical, educational and comparative.
(Source: The Book Review/ October, 2007)
Urdu & Parsian PhDs Run Dhaba/ Store in JNU!
Running a dhaba, photostat shop or a general store for a living is not what one would have on mind after spending 12 years in academics to get a PhD. But that’s what a few of the PhD holders from JNU, in Persian and Urdu, have been doing for a living.
Salahuddin of Siwan, came to JNU in 1989 with nothing but a dream to get a decent job. He secured a PhD in Persian with distinction in 2003. “Ever since I’ve been trying to get a teaching job but in vain. They are all fixed. Former VC approved this shop for me on which I’m surviving,” says the doctor. Impressed by the quality of his book, The origin and development of Persian historical novel writing, experts at HRD ministry ordered for 50 copies. And there are many others like Salahuddin. Shahzad Ibrahimi, a PhD in Urdu, runs the dhaba- Mamu’s. It was a matter of survival, so he thought of setting up a dhaba on the campus.
“They doubted if a PhD could run a canteen but I proved them wrong,” says Ibrahimi. Now ‘mamu’ is writing a recipe book. Like my thesis, this will be well researched too,” says the doctor.
Tauseef is another PhD scholar who runs a dhaba, Mughal Durbar in front of Mahi hostel. His story is no different. “There are many like me. While we were studying, we didn’t know what future had in store for us,” he says.
Ghufran Mustafa did his PhD on “The Impact of Russian Revolution on modern Persian poetry,” now runs a cyber caf and #233;. “Students of European languages have many jobs in the tourism sector unlike us,” says Mustafa.
Right next to Mustafa’s cyber caf and #233;, two brothers Ateequr Rehman and Aqeekur Rehman run Hilltop communications- a photostat shop cum cyber cafe. They hold PhDs in Urdu and Persian.
“Even if we are forced by circumstances to run a pan shop, we will do it in JNU style and today I challenge even the biggest of the chefs to beat me,” says Ibrahimi.
(Source: Hindustan times, 9 December, 2007)
Prejudices Start Early with Schools, Textbooks
Renuka Bisht
Every time violence creeps into a school, not only does the quality of education suffer, but the basic tenets of tolerance and civilization are also compromised among its students.
The UNESCO constitution says, “Since wars began in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” Schools can provide one of the most powerful bulwarks of this defense and become harmonious anchors in an increasingly unstable world. But if we consider two trends, the curriculum wars and the mistreatment of dalits, it seems that our education system remains steeped in illiberalism and prejudice.
Sometimes an administration’s zealous interventions in the name of history are almost humorous, such as when Madhya Pradesh banned its tiny tots from singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep to curb “western influences.” More ominously, Gujarat school textbooks have labeled religious minorities as foreigners and extolled Nazism.
In Karnataka, the minister for higher education has deemed references “glorifying” Tipu Sultan’s achievements unfit for school textbooks. His justification: “Tipu was an anti-Hindu ruler.” This suggests that students should not be trained in critical enquiry, a vital learning tool with which they can assess historical figures for themselves.
Parochial schools such as the RSS-run Vidya Bharatis and the 30, 000 odd madrassas in the country can be especially blasé in refusing to promote reflexive thinking and liberal values. In the latter, it is still common to teach commentaries upon commentaries of old textbooks, and to focus on the orthodox tenets.
As far as Dalit students are concerned, the Human Rights Watch 2007 report titled “Hidden A Apartheid” notes that the way in which caste discrimination is treated in textbooks helps sanction segregation in government schools. Humiliations melted out to Dalit students range across not allowing them to drink water from public taps, and declaring that they are beaten. IndiaTogether reporter Puja Awasthi finds that even Dalit teachers bear the brunt of degradation sometimes denied kitchen duties during teachers training and prohibited from punishing non-Dalit children at other times.
In a society marred by conflicts, schools that emphasize shared values can effect a peaceful transformation. But if our schools remain ensconced in a climate of intolerance, we will raise a generation riddled with inter-group antagonism, with little respect for the civil foundations of secular democracy. As “the liberal conscience of The Washington Post” Colman Mc Carthy has warned, unless we teach children peace, someone else will teach them violence.
(Source: Hindustan Times, 10 September, 2007)
Hinduisation of School Culture is Unconstitutional
Letter to MP CM 13 December, 2007
Please refer to my letter of 11 January 2007 protesting against the decision of your government to introduce compulsory Surya Namaskar in all government schools, with effect from 25 January, 2007.
The Surya Namaskar was not introduced as a regular programme but was only held once. Your next programme as announced is on January 12, 2008. The participation is optional but you will appreciate that if the overwhelming majority of students in the school participate in a mass programme, the few Muslim and Christian children may feel embarrassed in standing aloof and abstaining from participation. So the bar is illusory.
This is why I had pointed out to you that Surya Namaskar is a Hindu ritual and should not be introduced in a government school.
We request you to take fresh a look at your decision.
Copy for information and necessary action to:
Shri Arjun Singh, Minister of HRD,
MUSLIM DEVELOPMENT
Govt. Scheme for Monitoring, Reasearch & Publicity of Minorities Development Programme
The Ministry of Minority Affairs has finalized the Scheme of research/studies, monitoring and evaluation of development schemes including, publicity as a central scheme to be administered by it. Part A of the scheme covers expenditure on research/studies including baseline survey/ monitoring and evaluation of studies on various programmes and schemes of the Ministry including the PM’s New 15 Point Programme for the welfare of Minorities throughout the country but with a special focus on minority concentration districts/blocks/towns, either proposed by the institution/organization or by the Ministry.
The second Part of the Scheme is to launch a coordinated Multi Media campaign for dissemination of information relating to programme, schemes initiatives of the Ministry by reputed private media agencies which have professionalism expertise and infrastructure normally not available for government agencies with special focus on the 15 Point Programme and in areas of Minority concentration.
Social science research Council/Institutions/Organizations minority organizations Universities and institutions of national repute etc. are eligible for research/survey for the Multi Media campaign. The Ministry has invited interested institution/organization to apply to the Ministry in the prescribed format along with an outline of the proposed study/campaign. The proposal received by the government shall be screened by the government’s committee headed by Secretary, Ministry of Minority Affairs. The Pattern and quantum of assistance as well as the terms and conditions and other details may be obtained from the website of the Ministry by interested parties.
Humayun Kabir’s Role in Redressing Muslim Grievances
A.G. Noorani
A contemporary at Oxford, the journalist D.F. Karaba wrote “… But the power behind us all was Humayun Kabir… one of the greatest products of modern Oxford… I remember Kabir that night at the Majlis dinner. Seldom have I seen any one speak with such sincerity… It was the soul of India that was pouring out of the mouth of Humayun Kabir – the soul of the new India, my India, his India, the India of those like us, who are young and unafraid” (I Go West, London; 1938).
Twenty years later as a member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet, Humayun Kabir took an initiative that exposes the rank dishonesty of those who describe the Sachar Committee’s Report and the Government of India’s efforts to implement its recommendations as “appeasement of Muslims”. Had Kabir’s voice been heard, nearly half a century ago, there would have been no need to set up the Sachar Committee.
Humayun Kabir, who was respected by Jawaharlal Nehru and was a confidant of Maulana Azad. He was highly educated. He did not live off politics, saw no conflict between his loyalty to the country and his concern for his community. Even on sensitive issues such as Kashmir and relations with Pakistan, he put forth his own viewpoint.
High credit is due to Jawaharlal Nehru, who valued his independence and insights. How many Indian Cabinets since could have boasted of members of comparable quality? Two of his books deserve mention – Minorities in a Democracy (1968), dedicated to “Rajaji, to whom we owe so much”; and Muslim Politics (1906-47) and Other Essays (1969), dedicated to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. But it is not only the sordid Sarkari Musalman but also the no less sordid parasitical “leaders” of the community whom Kabir’s personality and endeavours expose as charlatans,
The All India Congress Committee’s (AICC’s) Minority Committee held two particularly important meetings on September 9 and 13, 1957. Kabir was one of its members. The question of inducting into the services “an adequate number of qualified persons belonging to minority communities was discussed in detail”, the minutes record. The committee suggested submission of returns by the Central and State governments as also public sector units showing “the position (a) before independence, (b) after independence for every year up to 15.8.1957, and thence (c) for every quarter”.
Home Minister G.B. Pant forwarded to Kabir, on January 10, 1958, an article by Syed Iqbal Ali Shah, a noted academic from Meerut, on “Integration of Muslims in Indian body politic”. The writer, Kabir noted, had only “posed the problem without suggesting any measures for dealing with it”. Kabir had by then taken up the matter with Nehru and Azad. In his reply to Pant, on January 29, he mentioned that they felt it was “a matter which was primarily the concern of the Home Ministry”.
Kabir’s First Note
Kabir forwarded to him “A Note on the Minorities Problem” dated January 30, 1958, copies of which he sent to the Prime Minister and to the Congress president.
He noted that a feeling had “developed among some sections of the minorities that they are not getting an adequate share in services, trade and commerce and representative bodies at various levels”. There were problems in recruitment to higher posts by holding competitive examinations. But for a large number of appointments in the lower ranks of the Military, the Railways, the Police, the Postal Services and similar departments, appointments are made without any competitive examinations. There was the same sense of grievance in respect of industry, trade and commerce. Licence-permit raj held sway then. The minorities felt “that they have not received their adequate share in the issue of such licences and permits in the last ten years”. Nor had they been properly represented in the legislatures and, indeed, “even within the Congress organisation”.
The real solution was “a long term” one, namely education, which would improve the economic development of the minorities. Here, again, problems confront the minorities, especially in regard to admission to medical, engineering and other technical institutions. “If necessary, seats in engineering, medical and technical colleges can be reserved for such minorities for a period of ten years so that without becoming a drag they can become effective and creative members of the nation.”
He suggested inter alia “annual returns showing the number of persons from among the minorities appointed in different categories of public services” since Independence; similar returns with regard to permits and licences in industry, trade and commerce. The Central government as well as the Congress should “keep under constant review” the representation of the different minorities in the legislatures, in local bodies as well as in the Congress organisation.
Nehru’s Suggestions to CM’s , 26 March, 1958
Nehru wrote a letter to the Chief Ministers on this subject on March 26, 1958. (Letters to Chief Ministers 1947-1964; volume 5, 1958-1964; pages 34-37) It bears quotation in extenso because of its relevance to the present situation. Communalism held sway, he regretted. But he drew a distinction which is very relevant today with the BJP’s espousal of Hindutva. “We have also, let us be frank about it, communalism not only in the minority but very much so in the majority. The chief difference is that in the majority it puts on the garb of nationalism and democracy. But that is a false democracy” (page 35; emphasis added throughout). No wonder the Sangh Parivar hates Nehru.The Prime Minister made concrete suggestions. “I shall not refer here to many matters which affect the minorities. I want to lay stress on one particular aspect. This relates to services. In our present conditions in India, recruitment to the services plays a very important part in producing a sense of satisfaction or the reverse in the minds of the minority groups. I have sometimes called for figures of recruitment and these have been very unsatisfactory insofar as the minorities are concerned.
“When I have asked for an explanation, I have been told that recruitment was made by examinations and it is nobody’s fault if people did not pass the tests. That is not a good enough explanation. Firstly, there is a tendency for the minority group not to appear for these examinations in sufficient numbers because they imagine that things are weighted against them. Secondly, subjects and tests for the examinations also come in their way. For instance, in the Hindi-speaking areas especially, Hindi is a compulsory subject and the type of Hindi required is high-flown and difficult. Many people who know simple Hindi quite well cannot easily pass that difficult test. This applies often to Muslims in the Hindi-speaking areas. They know the Urdu version of Hindi and they learn Devanagari etc. and try hard to improve their knowledge of the language. But this is no easy matter after a certain age. The result often is that while they are quite good in other subjects, they fail in Hindi. This is unfair and bad for the minority as well as for the State which loses sometimes good people and gets secondraters.
“Long ago, the Congress Working Committee, dealing with the question of all India public examinations, laid down a rule that while these examinations may in future be conducted in Hindi, English or the regional language, a compulsory paper on Hindi should not be included as this would obviously be unfair to the non-Hindi speaking people. After the person has passed the examinations, Hindi or any other regional language should be learnt and, if necessary, an examination could be held in it at a later stage. This was I think a fair provision….
“Hindi, as used now, is becoming more and more an artificial language far removed from common speech. Something very radical has to be done about this if the growth of Hindi is not to be checked.
“I would beg your attention to this question of recruitment for services. I would suggest to you to examine why the present methods come in the way of members of the minority communities appearing [for] these examinations or passing them. I know bright young men who have failed when persons not nearly as good as they are, have passed.
“Then there is the question of recruitment to the Police, Army, the Railways, Postal Services and many minor services where no examinations are necessary. This requires particular attention because here it is easy for partiality to creep in.
“I would request you to have charts prepared showing how the system of recruiting for these various services by examination or otherwise is working. There might be quarterly charts and I would be grateful if you could send me these charts every three months. I have referred to the services because the state is directly concerned with them. But this applies in a different way to trade and industry and commerce, to our Corporations in the public sector.”
On May 7, 1958, the Government of India sent a letter to the Chief Secretaries of all the States to provide information in an attached pro forma “in respect of employment of members of the minority communities in each of the State services”. So, the idea is nearly half a century old.
Kabir’s Second Note, 4 August, 1958
Kabir prepared “A Further Note on Minorities” dated August 4, 1958, elaborating on the points made in the earlier note. The special measures “must be self-liquidating over a number of years”. They must not be perpetuated. He gave a good rule of the thumb for assessing backwardness – “any class which is not adequately represented in these [public] services is educationally and, therefore, also socially and economically backward”. Hence, the need for statistics. The same rule applied to annual income-tax returns. “When these surveys have been completed, communities which are under-represented in the services should be declared to be socially and educationally backward classes of citizens.” In regard to States, the population figures of the State would be relevant.
“In the case of State services, a community which is defined as backward in the above terms should be given similar protection by reserving a proportionate number of seats in the higher State services.” At the Centre as well as in the States, reservation of seats should not last beyond a generation – 25 years. Simultaneously the long-term remedy – improved educational facilities – should be pursued.
Kabir analysed the provisions of the Constitution, particularly Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 32(4), to establish that his suggestions were constitutionally valid. He also cited Articles 338 (3) and 340. This Note was sent to the Prime Minister as well as the Union Home Minister on August 6, 1958.
The AICC, however, set up a National Integration Committee of which, surprisingly, Kabir was not a member. Its report was published on May 23, 1961, with an Introduction by Congress president Indira Gandhi. It opined: “No proportions can or should be fixed for minorities but it would be worthwhile to examine the present position and take steps to expand opportunities where expansion is justified” – a quaint phraseology for under-representation. It mentioned public services. “The position seems to have deteriorated.” Private enterprises could also help. “There is no dearth of suitable candidates.” It made an important assertion: “Where the administration is efficient, rioting, loot and arson do not take place. Where there is a breach of peace, the responsibility for it should be fixed and appropriate action taken.”
( Source: Frontline, January, 2008)
KASHMIR SITUATION
Agriculture Key to Sustainable Socio-Economic Development
Convocation Address by Vice President M. Hamid Ansari, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Srinagar. 25 November 2007
A university is a place of learning where the students learn to think, acquire knowledge, polish their thought process and learn a thing or two about how the world functions in the diversity of its activities. When they step out of its precincts, they discover that the real world is more complex, somewhat harsher. The training of the mind, however, helps them understand this better and respond appropriately. This is all the more important in a specialised, technical, institution devoted to the most important area of activity, namely, agriculture.
The facts speak for themselves:
· The agriculture sector, that includes horticulture, forests, sericulture, fisheries, animal husbandry and allied fields is pivotal to the economy of J&K as it contributes more than 50% to the net domestic product and is the main source of livelihood for around 80% of the population.
· Agriculture in the State is characterised by small peasant holdings and subsistence farming. A heavy dependence on cereals has led to a sub-optimal cycle of low productivity and low investment.
· Productivity of most crops is below the national average and the State suffers a deficit in food crops, oil seeds and vegetables.
· Over 80% of net sown area is of food crops and only 42% of the area is under irrigation.
· A large number of people are dependent on cattle rearing and sheep breeding. The productivity in this sector, however, is low and the State depends on imports of animal products.
· Though the state has a high ratio of 900 animals per 1000 persons, only 4% of the gross cropped area is under fodder cultivation.
· Facilities for processing of wool are virtually non-existent.
· 25 lakh people are connected directly or indirectly with the horticulture sector. Yet, productivity is low and the sector suffers from low investment, disadvantage of location, poor infrastructure and the presence of many layers of intermediation.
This situation is compounded by literacy levels lower than the national average. In terms of the human development indices, J & K is nearer the bottom than the top. The scars of the recent past are all too evident.
In such a context every graduate of this institution can make a value addition to the socio-economic development of the state, and to the overall well being of the people. The potential of this is enormous.
This potential can be harnessed for public good by sound public policy. For a state that has faced the problem of militancy for close to two decades, the path back to normalcy and eventual prosperity goes through the down-to-earth and grass-root sector of agriculture. It is agriculture that has the potential not only to revitalise the economy of the state, but also bring about greater social inclusion and sustainable rehabilitation even while preserving the unique cultural and religious heritage of the state.
My emphasis on the role of the agriculture sector has wider relevance. For the country as a whole, the current share of agriculture in GDP is around 18.5%, that of services is 55% and of industry around 26%. The growth rate in the agriculture sector has been a mere 2.7% in the last financial year. Yet, more than half of the population directly depends on this sector.
The adverse impact of the low growth in agriculture has implications for “the inclusiveness of growth”. There is therefore a need to refocus our efforts on the agricultural sector not just in Jammu & Kashmir, but also in the rest of the country. I would even venture to say that the Government of India’s proposed push to agriculture through a Second Green Revolution could start from Jammu & Kashmir on a pilot basis.
The low levels of employment opportunities in J&K have been a matter of concern to the public. The need of the hour is to think innovatively and the University has a role to play in this fascinating venture. A few possibilities readily come to mind:
· The University can modulate its syllabus and curriculum to the agro-economic needs of the state. A focus on agro industry would be the most effective way of generating employment in the background of an industrial base that has been eroded by long years of militancy.
· It can take the lead in adult literacy and skills up-gradation programmes in employment intensive sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, food processing, and even agro-tourism.
· It could explore the opportunities to the students so that they can use their energy and enthusiasm to start out on their own, thus creating jobs and prosperity. Agricultural entrepreneurship could be the key to sustainable socio-economic development of the state; the potential for innovation in agriculture is enormous and it has a multiplier payback effect on the society.
The Extension Education Programme of the University has conducted training programmes for a diverse profile of beneficiaries such as students, extension workers, farmers and homemakers. Such efforts to inform and demonstrate to the farmers the findings of research on improved practices are essential to improve rural living and to increase agricultural production.
The recipients of various degrees and honours. I wish them success in their careers and happiness in their lives. I am confident that they will carry forward the ideals imbibed and continue to work for the development of the state and improving the quality of life of common people, especially in the rural areas.
Kashmir’s Orphans and Wounded Psyche
Athar Parvaiz, Human Rights Activist
Both the direct and indirect consequences of conflict on children or youth of the valley haveÿtaken a heavy toll on their academic excellence. Imagine the psyche of a student who gets questioned, frisked and undergoes scores of other harassments almost on a regular basis. Imagineÿa student’sÿinclination towards his studies when he witnesses bomb blasts, cross-firings, grenade attacks and land-mine explosions occurring around him; imagine his eagerness for his studies when his father, brother, sister or any other close relative gets beaten in front of him. Worse still; imagine his craving for studies when his father or brother gets killed in front of him or for that matter his sister or mother gets molested or raped.
Ever since the inception of conflict in Kashmir in 1989, a sizeable percentage of Kashmiri students have witnessed the dance of death and destruction. In these 17 odd years of turmoil they have witnessed thousands of violent incidents. As per the official figures 66590 violent incidents have occurred since 1989 till August 2007. According to the newspaper reports around 450 children have got killed during the turmoil so far, not to mention thousands of other civilian killings, and disappearances.
There is a shocking number of thousands of fatherless children who lost their male parents. “Earlier we used to search around in order to find orphans in various areas of the valley to get them in our Trust for upbringing and education, but after the inception of militancy, the number of orphans has multiplied in such a manner that thousands of them have nobody to fall back upon”, said, an official of the Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Trust (JKYT).ÿÿ
The exact number of the children, who have been rendered orphans by the Kashmir conflict so far, still remains to be worked out, notwithstanding the creation of a Rehabilitation Cell by the government and the presence of a number of NGOs and separatist organisations.
With no cross check available in this regard, projection continues. In year 2000 rediff.com quoted the then Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir, Khursheed Ahmad Ganai as saying that there could be at least 30,000 orphans in the valley. ÿ “I would say around 20,000 fathers have been killed in the violence.if you take each family had two to three children, and make allowances for the ones who have now grown up, that still leaves at least 30,000 orphans”, the news portal quoted Ganai.
There is one version in Kashmir according to which 50 percent children in the valley have no one to fall back upon with their male parent consumed by the conflict.
Some villages in the valley have suffered heavy damage in particular have hundreds of orphans and widows. Their hamlets have undergone a series of tribulations during all these years at regular intervals.
Not surprisingly, the routine encounters and roaring of guns have influenced the children of these villages (and most of the other villages in valley) in a particular fashion. Tufail Ahmad of Dever Lolab is a 6th standard student. He and his peers in the village have got so fascinated by the guns that they have developed a special interest in “operating” these weapons. ÿ Ask Tufail what he wants to become in his life, pat comes his reply, “a Commander” regardless of caring about which commander, a military or a militant commander.
“It gives the enjoyment of spraying bullets”, Tufail justifies his career option. ÿTufail and his friends in Dever are not the only children who have developed fondness for guns; residents of most of the villages say that the children love to enact encounters while carrying toy guns.
The children, enact the gory picture of the years of turmoil in their own style. After year 2000, a number of stage theater shows and painting competitions were organised by various organisations. The majority of the students portrayed the agonizing scenes of violence in their paintings: guns and graves; scenes after bomb explosion; wailing women and so on. ÿ “Let us Play Firing Firing”. “The Valley is in Danger”. “My Valley on Fire.” These themes, chosen by these children, gave enough indication about the impact of violence on children. The picturesque scenes of Kashmir were a rarely displayed by these little angels.
How the conflict has impacted the psyche of the children is yet another worrisome fallout of violence. The psychiatrists term it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). According to Dr Mushtaq Margoob, a renowned psychiatrist of the Valley, loss of a loved one or witnessing someone getting ruthlessly beaten or killed, causes PTSD. He opines that apart from this, damage to ones person or a peer also causes stress disorders among the students.
Projected estimate by the government officials puts the number of disabled or maimed persons, mostly children, ÿin valley between 5000 and 7000. About 60 percent of these are believed to be in their teenage.
“The most crucial problems... the children face after the death of their fathers include economic hardships (48.33 per cent), psychological setback (22.00 per cent), denial of love and affection (13.66 per cent), and apathy by relatives and friends (08.66 per cent)”, observes Dr Bashir Ahmad Dabla, former Head Department of Sociology Department of Kashmir University, in his study: “Impact of Conflict Situation on Women and Children in Kashmir.”
Out of the 300 orphans he surveyed, 87 received no help at all. “As a result most of them began to work in the carpet, handicrafts and agriculture sectors, as child labour”, says Dr Bashir.
According to Zahoor Ahmad Tak, Chairman of the J & K Yateem Trust, about 15,000 orphans are those whose parents were militants. As per the estimates of his organization, ÿ only 1/4th of these 15,000 children have some source of sustenance, the rest of the lot is without any sustenance since the ex-gratia relief, which the surviers of the militancy victims get, is not given to the survivors of the militants by the government.
Scores of orphanages are being run in Kashmir valley currently, but only a few thousand orphans are being brought up in them. For example in JK Yateem Trust, there are only 600 children out of whom 50 percent are those affected by militancy. These orphans are also provided education by the Yateem Trust, but the chairman of the Trust says that most of these children are not able to read even the basic alphabets when they are brought to the Trust. “We get tutors to teach them and hardly manage to bring them on track”, says Tak.
The conflict also caused a huge dropout rate in the schools and colleges. Dr A G Madhosh in his study “Children Under Armed Conflict in Kashmir - The Educational Scenario” observes: “Our in-depth investigation revealed that the stress conditions in the state allowed the students to enroll themselves for different courses without really going to attend the classes. This is true for all classes including colleges and university. Even the professional colleges of Medicine, Engineering and Polytechnic wore a graveyard silence.”
(Source: The Kashmir Tomes,30 November, 2007)
BABARI MASJID
Myth, History And Politics
K.N. Panikkar
Over the years, the political appeal of Rama has waned despite his strong presence in the religious life of believers. Rama ceased to be of much emotional value that would provide political advantage to Hindu communal forces. In the elections of 2004, the Ram temple did not figure as an issue at all. This can be taken as an indication that believers were inclined to abandon the Sangh Parivar’s aggressive Rama and return to worshipping his benign image, looking upon Rama Katha, as they had for centuries, as an “allegory of the life of the spirit as it journeyed through the world”.
It is in this context that the Ram Sethu project has come in handy for the Sangh Parivar, to revive the appeal of Rama in order to breathe some life into its sagging fortunes. In the process it is attempting to turn myth into history, blurring the distinction between the two, in order to gain legitimacy for its political project.
Implicit in the as Ram sethu affidavit is an important question regarding our approach to the past: Is there a distinction between myth and history?
The distinction does not imply a counterposition of myth and history as false and true. Myth is a way in which the human mind comes to grips with reality, and therefore, it can be said that it refers to reality. Yet, myth in itself is not reality.
Similarly, the Ramayana being a literary piece, which was not originally a religious text it would be futile to try to correlate them with historical fact and establish their authenticity. Such a view is not in any way a denigration of Rama or a critical reflection on the Ramayana’s literary quality.
The Sangh Parivar has been trying for long to impute to incidents in the epic a historical quality to legitimise popular belief, under a false notion that belief would be reinforced by historical truth.
In an attempt to attribute historical authenticity to the epic the Sangh Parivar has been striving to privilege one single version of the Ramayana. But the Ramayana has several versions.
The many Ramayanas connote that the debate on whether the Ramayana is a true story or whether Rama is a historical figure is, therefore, off the mark.
The issue of Ram Sethu requires to be situated in the general context of the mythological character of the Ramayana. When myths become part of the belief system, they can be put to use for different purposes. Nobody in India has understood this better than the Sangh Parivar as is evident from the manner in which they have manipulated the myth and history of Ayodhya. Ram Sethu is an opportunity they are unlikely to let go of easily.
Unlike historical facts, what constitutes a myth is not verifiable. Myths are used for a variety of purposes. They often serve as an agency of legitimisation, as in the case of Parasurama reclaiming land from the sea. They may also be employed for explaining a natural phenomenon, as in the case of Helios’ chariot in Greek mythology.
The use of myths has been integral to the politics of the Sangh Parivar. Beginning with the movement for the construction of the temple at Ayodhya, the Sangh Parivar has been engaged in providing authenticity to various myths surrounding the life of Rama. The central issue of the Ayodhya movement was the identification of the exact birthplace of Rama, which was difficult to ascertain owing to the lack of evidence. Local tradition identifies Ayodhya through a popular myth, which runs as follows: “After Treta Yuga when Ram was supposed to have been born Ayodhya could not be located. While Vikramaditya was looking for Ayodhya, a saint told him to leave a calf loose and the place at which the calf secreted milk would be the place where Ayodhya was located. Vikramaditya did as he was told, and where the calf secreted milk he located Ayodhya.” This mythical story became the basis for the identification of Ayodhya as well as the birthplace of Rama.
The place of birth becomes an indisputable fact of history. Following this identification, the VHP accorded historical status to a series of myths. These include the existence of the Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid and the attempts by Hindus to reclaim the temple through 77 battles against the Muslims in which 300,000 sacrificed their lives. These myths have now become authentic histories; not only are they paraded as historical facts, they have found place in textbooks as authentic history. Over a period of time, many of these facts could become part of popular history also.
The politics of the Sangh Parivar is essentially irrational. The attempt to turn myth into history and to use it for political advantage is rooted in irrationality. Now that Ayodhya is no more a potent force, Ram Sethu has emerged as a possible alternative. The Sangh Parivar is gearing up to exploit it.
(K.N. Panikkar, a former professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a former Vice-chancellor of Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, is currently he chairs the Kerala Council for Historical Research.) (Source: The Frontline, October, 2007)
RULE OF LAW
Course of the Law on Riots and Terror: Tyranny of Labels
Iqbal A. Ansari, Eminent Human Rights Activist
Given that people are now ready to see how the denial of justice to victims in periodic communal violence, especially since the 1980s, has provided a fertile ground for home-grown terrorism, a fresh perspective on the administration of justice that motivates civil society to mobilise for reform of the judiciary and the police is overdue. Muslims should no longer be made to feel that they are up not only against the police but also the judiciary.
Lack of punishment of the instigators and organisers of the riots of December 1992-January 1993, and of the 31 officials indicted by the Srikrishna Commission, whose connivance caused the killing of more than 900 innocent persons, is being widely discussed in the media and civil society.
What did the Bombay High Court and subsequently the Supreme Court do to the petition of some concerned citizens who approached the courts for direction to the government of Maharashtra to prosecute Bal Thackeray for spreading hatred against Muslims, and inciting his “boys” to commit violence through his editorials in Saamna, during the time when Mumbai was burning in the communal fire? In the editorial of Saamna of December 5, 1992, Muslims were called “traitors who partitioned the country and haven’t allowed us to breathe ever since”. On December 8, 1992 Muslims were simply terrorised by holding out the threat that they “should draw a lesson from the demolition of Babri Masjid, otherwise they will meet the same fate as Babri Masjid”. On December 9, 1992, the entire Muslim community (whose number was given as 25 crores) were called one of Pakistan’s seven atomic bombs, who will stage armed insurrection on behalf of Pakistan. On January 8, 1993, Shiv Sainiks were directed to shoot on the spot the Muslims of Bhindi Bazar, Null Bazar, Dongri and Pydhonie (the areas called mini Pakistan). It is this organised hate-gang of Shiv Sainiks that played a leading role in the bloodbath in Mumbai in December 1992-January 1993, which drove some frustrated Muslim youth to desperation. They committed acts of terrorism in March 1993 as they had lost all hope in the system.
The Bombay High Court took two years to give its decision on September 21, 1994, dismissing the petition of J B D’Souza and others seeking direction to prosecute Bal Thackeray on the ground that the editorials did not violate the law as in their lordships’ view the reference was only to anti-national Muslims and not all Muslims and that in their view “25 crore Muslims” appeared to be “typographical mistake”. Moreover they were of the view that any prosecution of Bal Thackeray would cause the “raking up” of old wounds. The special leave petition in the Supreme Court for direction was dismissed on January 6, 1995 on the ground that it was not wise, nor in public interest for the Supreme Court to give direction, overruling the Bombay High Court. This decision of the apex court was strongly deplored by leading jurists. H M Seervai expressed the opinion that a clearer violation of Sections 153A and 153B was difficult to imagine. He called the interpretation of 25 crore Muslims as a typographical error, absurd and perverse. In his view the government of Maharashtra was determined not to prosecute Thackeray, though its affidavit clearly established that the government knew that the passages, complained of, violated the provisions of Section 153A.
Here was a case of hate speech with malicious intent that aggravated the communal tension and caused bloodshed, fit for successful prosecution, which would have sent the message that Muslims, a vulnerable group, enjoyed equal protection of the law, which is an essential requirement of secularism. But collusion between the Congress government, which flaunts its secularism, and the Shiv Sena, that claimed responsibility for demolition of Babri masjid, and an overindulgent view of the learned judges of the higher judiciary made the hate leader enjoy impunity. While reporting the events in Mumbai in the New York Times Rosenthal had commented that “Shiv Sena could have been put down in hours. The state and national governments behave like Weimer reborn – disorganised, frightened, gutless.” Having failed to protect Muslims, the Congress government exerted its utmost to save their oppressor from the clutches of law.
Subverting Justice
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) White Paper on Ayodhya and the Ram Temple Movement considers that this is so (April 1993, p 152). Expressing satisfaction over the role of the judiciary in the opening of the gates in 1986, the BJP’s White Paper observed: “... When the government is not against, such things can, and do, happen. Even the courts respond.” It has also been confirmed by Swami Swaroopananda Saraswati, who claimed during the Mahakumbh Mela of January 2001 that it was at his behest that prime minister Rajiv Gandhi got the locks opened for political considerations (The Times of India, January 22, 2001).
The most glaring example of such denial of justice is the case of Hashimpura Meerut and Maliana killings of Muslims on May 22-23, 1987 by the Uttar Pradesh’s Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). This was not a case of people getting killed by police firing during riots. Innocent people were picked up from their homes and taken near the upper Ganga canal-Hindon river in Muradnagar (Ghaziabad), where more than 40 young Muslims were shot dead, whose bodies were thrown into the river water. The candid founder-editor of Mainstream, Nikhil Chakravarty compared the event with the “Nazi pogrom against Jews, to strike terror and nothing but terror in a whole minority community”. Eminent citizens, including I K Gujral, Rajindar Sachar and Kuldip Nayar demanded trial of the guilty PAC personnel for treason. What really happened in the case is unprecedented even in the history of Indian judiciary. UP’s Crime Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department (CBCID) took seven years to complete the inquiry in February 1994. Of the 66 PAC personnel indicted in the report, cases were filed against 19 – all of lower ranks – in the court of chief judicial magistrate (CJM) Ghaziabad on May 20, 1996. All of them, charged with conspiracy, murder and concealment of evidence, continued to be in the active service of the PAC. However, they were never produced before the CJM court between January 1997 and April 2000, though six times bailable and 17 times non-bailable warrants were issued against them. When they surrendered after public and media pressure in June-July 2000, the district judge considered it a fit case for bail – and the public prosecutor was too willing to extend full cooperation to the defence. The court did not even inform the victims, who were pursuing the case. Having watched the course of law in Ghaziabad from 1996 to 2000, I took the initiative to get the case transferred by the Supreme Court to Delhi on September 27, 2002. Issues related to procedural law about the appointment of the public prosecutor succeeded in delaying the trial, which started in July 2006. During the whole year just three witnesses have been examined. It will continue for many more years. Three of the accused have died. The remaining 16 are enjoying freedom. Officers, including the one who ordered firing by the PAC at Maliana on May 23, 1987, which took a toll of 30 lives, are enjoying promotion.
The learned additional sessions judge of Meerut granted permission to the government of Uttar Pradesh led by chief minister Kalyan Singh of the BJP to withdraw the cases related to communal killing of 19 Muslims at Nigar Cinema of Meerut in 1991. Besides charge of murder, the accused were also charged with arson and looting. Charges had been framed and the trial had started. Records show that on December 11, 1998 the government of UP had declined to withdraw the case; but subsequently at the last stage of Kalyan Singh’s chief ministership, an order for the withdrawal of the case was issued on December 12, 1999, without assigning any reason that prompted it to revise its earlier decision. The withdrawal appears to have been politically motivated, as the accused were associated with the BJP.
Reporting about the role of the judiciary during Moradabad riots of 1980, the academicians Satish Saberwal and Mushirul Hasan observed that: “various organs of administration including, alas, the judiciary, appeared to act in a way supportive to the activities of the local police and the PAC” which were partisan; and further that the “Judicial action on the granting of bail and the like were generally such as to let the Hindus off lightly and to come down hard on the Muslims. Clearly the Muslims were up not only against the police but also the judiciary.”
In the Ayodhya cases, especially in 1990 and 1992. Did the judiciary lack the will to deliver justice? Why did it not heed the warning for stopping L K Advani’s Rath Yatra? Why did it not heed the warning on the permission for Kar Seva on December 5-6, 1992?. But what made the judiciary lack the requisite will to prevent “the act of national shame” and to treat the case of demolition of Babri masjid as the greatest act of terrorism in independent India?
Restorative Justice
In our search for restorative justice that may herald lasting social stability, it is time to remind the judiciary to review its functioning at the subordinate as well as higher levels to identify the sources within the system of delay, distortion and denial of justice in cases related to hate speech and mass hate crimes. There is a need for NGOs and groups involved in promoting police reform to seek supplementary direction from the Supreme Court in its order of September 2006 for implementation of reform measures required for prevention and control of communal violence, which was dealt with by the National Police Commission in chapter VI (1981) and the NCM report, some of which are already incorporated in the Model Police Act (2006) prepared by the Police Act Drafting Committee headed by Soli J Sorabjee, including the recommendation on socially diverse composition of all wings of the system, ensuring adequate representation to minorities.
It is time the judiciary developed a policy perspective on the socially diverse composition of the justice administration system in its entirety, along with institutional measures for neutralisation of biases. But most significantly, it needs to show greater judicial statesmanship while deciding cases having a bearing on issues related to nationhood, culture and religion, the best guides for which will be international human rights norms.
Muslim Grievance is Injustice
Tavleen Singh
As are saw from reactions to Tehelka’s sting operation, we are still a long way from understanding the Muslim problem, leave alone dealing with it. Reactions were depressingly predictable. From secularist quarters, we heard the usual hysterical condemnation of Modi and his communal politics.
From the spokesmen of Hindutva we heard that the Tehelka expose was politically motivated. What we need to know is why the criminal justice system has failed to punish men who admit without compunction, albeit on a hidden camera, that they tore open the wombs of pregnant women and hacked Muslims to pieces before burning them alive. What we need to know is how we dare call ourselves civilised if monsters like this remain free.
Some of the killers were jailed briefly for the crimes they admit but apparently had no difficulty in obtaining bail. Why? There have been many, many reports on the Gujarat violence. Commissions of inquiry continue to ponder over various angles of the violence that began with the attack on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra. The commissions will probably continue pondering for years before they produce voluminous, unreadable reports, but what about justice? When can we expect to see killers in jail? When can we expect to see some hanged? Why does it always take so long?
On the 24th anniversary of the massacre of more than 3,000 Sikhs in a pogrom that was to become Modi’s model after Godhra. Nearly all the killers walk free and remain faceless. Governments changed, prime ministers came and went, and still justice remained elusive.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Hashimpura massacre in which more than 4o Muslim men, taken to a lonely spot on the banks of the Ganga canal and shot to death. The killers were policemen. Nobody has been punished.
Nobody ever is after a communal riot, which is the main reason why we continued to have this kind of violence till Gujarat 2002. Then, Modi did the country a favour by not realising that television had made it impossible for the state to get away with murder and Tehelka’s investigation is proof of this.
But the question of justice remains and unless the Indian state can convince Muslims that they will not be denied justice and equal opportunity we will continue to have a Muslim problem.
It is not just about the punishment of crimes against the community but also about social justice. What is needed is a sincere and dedicated effort to help ordinary Muslims out of the morass of illiteracy and poverty in which the vast majority remain mired. In areas where the problem is acute what will make a real difference are schools, skills training programmes and economic assistance. The task is massive and requires honesty and commitment. But because this is something our political class is incapable of, what we get instead are the political games in which the winner secures the Muslim vote bank.
The Sachar Committee report is typical of this approach. It recommends sops in the form of jobs in the police and administration which are unlikely to do more than help the Hindutva case.
The jihad has an allure that becomes irresistable to those who see India as a country in which there are one set of rules and one kind of justice for Hindus and another kind for Muslims. This perception exists and will only change when the Indian state proves that it does not take sides, not whether it is secular or communal. Both words have become meaningless with overuse. What is important is that we acknowledge that we have a Muslim problem and it is in India’s interest that we solve it.
(Source: The Indian Express, 28 October, 2007)
Blatant Double Standards
Jyoti Punwani
In India’s fight against terrorism, one group of terrorists is being completely excluded. Neither the RSS nor any of its militant wings are ever suspected by the police of being behind any of the bomb blasts that have targeted Muslims.
Police plants its own ‘‘Jehadi Maulvis’’ to lure Muslim youth to commit terrorist acts.
These two factors taken together are enough to destroy the credibility of the intelligence and the police. Yet, the latter continue to act true to type after every blast.
It is ironic that the very congregations of Muslims that have always been treated with suspicion by the police have become the targets of terrorist killings since 2003.
The preoccupation was clear: with Muslims gathering in such large numbers to listen to sermons in mosques, there was every chance of them going berserk thereafter.
Yet, there is little evidence of the high-profile Anti-Terrorist Squads (ATS), set up in Maharashtra and elsewhere, having conducted raids on RSS outfits. In fact, the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act has not been applied even to the Nanded RSS accused, while it has been to those accused for the July 11 , 2006 train blasts, the Malegaon blasts and the alleged Naxalites. Nanded’s Muslims had to move the court before the state even called in the ATS to investigate the case.
You don’t need to be the IB to fear a blast during Diwali. Imagine the backlash if that happens. Yet, a blast on the eve of Ramzan Eid at India’s best-known Muslim shrine created no such reaction. The Ajmer dargah was teeming with devotees who had fasted the entire month and planned to spend their most important religious festival at their favourite shrine. Compare this extreme restraint with the threats given by the Modis, Thackerays, Togadias and Singhals in similar circumstances.
After every bomb blast killing Hindus, these self-styled Hindu leaders ask why Muslims have not condemned it. Their logic is clear: Some Muslims have targeted Hindus, the entire community has to distance itself from them or else share their guilt. But not once in the recent blasts targeting Muslims has such a demand been made by Muslims of Hindus; neither have Hindu organisations condemned such acts.
The state’s agencies have different yardsticks when dealing with terrorist acts targeting Hindus and Muslims. What’s more disturbing is the difference between the conduct of the victim communities in the aftermath of such acts. Isn’t this difference an indication of the power equation between the majority and largest minority in our secular democracy?
PERSONAL LAW
Triple Talaq is Untenable
Tahir Mahmood
In a laudable judgment on triple talaq, Delhi high court judge Badar Durrez Ahmad said: “The harsh abruptness of triple talaq has brought about extreme misery to divorced women and even men who are left with no choice to undo the wrong or any scope to bring about a reconciliation...if it is rooted out such a move would not be contrary to any basic tenet of Islam or the Qur’an or any ruling of Prophet Muhammad”.
Triple talaq is not based on the Qur’an or the Hadith. It had emerged from a ruling of the Second Caliph given years after the Prophet’s demise and evidently not meant to become law for all times to come.
Under pre-Islamic custom a husband could pronounce a divorce and then revoke it at his sweet will irrespective of the wife’s wishes. Using this custom, men would often play hide and seek with their wives by playing a game of repeated divorces and revocations thus keeping them tied to themselves without fulfilling their matrimonial obligations. Islam introduced rational reforms by ruling that revocation of talaq would be permissible only twice in one’s lifetime, each time within three months, and if a man did not revoke a talaq within that period the marriage would terminate after which renewal of marriage would be possible only if the wife freely consented to it.
Further, if a man divorced his wife for the third time ever in his life it would result in an instant termination of the marital tie leaving no room either for revo-cation of talaq or renewal of marriage.
Not happy with this reform, some men began pronouncing three talaqs at a time effecting an instant divorce. The Prophet frowned upon this innovation.
Realising that in such cases women often themselves desired to get rid of an undesirable husband forthwith, the Second Caliph ruled that the claim of three talaqs together could be given effect.
Both the original Islamic reform and the Caliph’s ruling were pro-women moves; like the former the latter also was never meant to be used by men as an engine of oppression against women.
Muslim husbands in India naively believe that three talaqs is the only Islamic procedure for divorce and resort to it (generally in a state of anger) in total ignorance of its implications. In 99 per cent of such cases both the parties wish to continue in marriage, but the traditionalists would not let them do so unless they agree to a so-called ‘intervening marriage’ (wife’s marriage to another man followed by divorce after its consummation).
‘Intervening marriage’ is a distortion of the original Islamic rule. If a third-time divorcee gets remarried and is divorced by her second husband and is desiring to marry once again, instead of finding a third man she may lawfully marry the man who was her first husband should he be interested. This exceptional rule has unfortunately been turned into a so-called device for legalising resumption of marital ties between ‘triply divorced’ couples. This is a slur on women’s dignity.
(Source: The Times of India, 1 December, 2007)
Talaq in Extreme Anger not Valid, Delhi HC
“If a talaq is pronounced in extreme anger where the husband has lost control of himself, it would not be effective or valid,” .
Triple talaq or talaq-e-bidaat as “sinful but valid”, the court said such a mode for dissolution of Islamic marriages had caused “extreme misery to divorced women and even to men, who are left with no chance to undo the wrong or any scope to bring about a reconciliation”.
Triple talaq would only mean a single pronouncement of “talaq”, revocable by the husband or wife if they decide to reconcile.
The pronouncement of triple talaq’s “revocable” on the ground that a premium be given for reconciliation between the spouses.Mere pronouncement of talaq did not ipso facto (on the face of the fact) amount to dissolution of marital tie between the spouses.
“The wife upon whom talaq has been pronounced has the right of residence as well as of maintenance and she cannot be disturbed, she continues to be the wife of the man in the iddat period during which the marital tie remains in suspense,”
(Source: The indian Express, 29 Oct., 2007)
Muslim Objective is Islamisation & Another Partition
Editorial, Jansangh Today, August, 2007
Ever since India became independent in 1947, measures have been taken by the Indian leaders to create an Islamic state in the Indian Republic:
a) Special and superior rights were provided for Muslims in the Constitutions of India (Articles 25 to 30)
b) Matters of concern to the Muslims were included in the Chapter on Fundamental Rights whereas those relating to Hindus were put in the Chapter on Directive Principles of State Policy.
c) Hindu personal laws were changed whereas those of Muslims were not touched.
d) Wakfs created by Muslim rulers through expropriation of Hindu lands and properties were not nationalized.
e) Taxes paid by the Hindus to the Government of India finance Muslim universities, madrasas and Haj etc.
f) Personal law cases are decided by the Courts. In the case of Muslims, Islamic courts or Darul Qaza exist practically in all parts of India.
Indian leaders do not realize the danger of surrendering to Muslim demands which in most cases are anti-national in character. Muslim objective is not another partition but Islamisation of India.
GUJARAT GENOCIDE-2002
Gujarat: Sins of Silence
S. Prasannarajan
It is a permanent struggle in the life of nations with a sense of guilt: how to overcome the shame of yesterday. Beneath the placid comfort of the present stir a million ghosts, the unseen remains of our inhumanity. To remember them is to redeem ourselves, and that is the least the living can do to those who were denied dignity in death—and justice even after.
There are nations whose abiding identity is built on the blood marks of the past, and whose actions and attitudes are defined by the moral obligations of memory. India is not one of them, not yet. History lies abandoned outside our conscience. Power is incompatible with the politics of morality. The fabled stoicism of the wisest land of the Orient has become the cynicism of an arriviste regional power. Is it that we, dazzled by the sensations in the marketplace and the statistics of the growth rate, as a nation on the fast track, can’t afford to be snared by the horrors of the past? Or, is it that one of the world’s most cited examples of democracy has no moral or emotional content?
In spite of Partition, we continue to be partitioned in so many ways, the pantomime of hate choreographed by gods conjured out of misread scriptures and politicians who tap the raw passions of victimhood and villainy.
Calcutta, Jamshedpur, Moradabad, Delhi, Meerut, Bhagalpur, Bombay, Coimbatore, Godhra, Ahmedabad, Marad… These are randomly selected datelines of fear and death, and they invariably tell the same story. Each of them follows the familiar script of violation and transgression, and once the dead are counted and relegated as statistics to government files and the inside pages of newspapers, the story comes to an end with no justice in sight. The law takes its own course, but it is such a winding course that seldom we get to see the enormity of the crime being matched by the severity of punishment. There would be more of the same but there would be no mobilisation of conscience.
The embers of Gujarat 2002 reinforce this truism further. What followed in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in the state after Godhra, , was not a communal riot in the conventional sense, certainly not in the beginning. It was the genocidal rage against a community. The administrative failure was appalling. And remember it happened in a state with a history of religious hate; After Ayodhya, Ahmedabad was the international story on the ‘horrors of Hindu nationalism.
Modi became the new four-letter word in the Leftliberal glossary of evil—a Hindu fuhrer Gujarat made all of us smaller. It happened a few months after 9/11, an event that introduced the new century to the evil of faith, to the murderous profanity of religion. Gujarat was India’s moment to be ashamed—and awakened.
Now, thanks to an intrepid reporter armed with a spy cam and a false identity, we have the names and faces and words of some of those political perverts who were in the vanguard of the Gujarat massacre. In spite of the occasional flourish of pamphleteering in the reportage and the one-dimensionality of truth, what the sting operation brings out is chilling in its savagery & The braggadocio of some of those barbarians.
The revelations, nevertheless, are the first testaments of the killers, and the enormity of their crime makes them obvious outcasts in any civilised society. What happened in the wake of Godhra was not spontaneous rage of the fanatic Hindu but, in the words of the killer, a well-planned political operation, the religious cleanser aware of his power and privilege. There are graphic descriptions of rape and butchery, of police collaboration and subversion of the legal process.
In India, though, after knowing more than what we want to, Gujarat seems to be forgiven as well as forgotten. There have been perfunctory murmurings of revulsion and the customary finger-wagging, but Gujarat is not a moral priority of our political class. BJP, understandably, has to stand by one of its few popular leaders. Modi, once the most demonised Indian politician who was even denied entry into America, has already acquired a new vocabulary of development. The erstwhile mascot of militant Hindutva has become the brand ambassador of “resurgent” Gujarat, though he is yet to get an invitation to Davos. Smart politics, and it worked. In spite of his democratic mandate, the stigma remains. And his administration failed in containing the post-Godhra fury. Still, BJP can’t afford to campaign for the trial of Modi for his “crimes against humanity”.
The comrades can. Gujarat Unravelled has everything the Indian communist can ask for: the “imperial” arrogance of the oppressor; blood in the dispossessed ghettos; the ransacked ideal of secularism; and the murderous sweep of communalism. Amazingly, such overwhelming credentials have not made Gujarat a cause worthy of a CPI(M) campaign.
The communists’ inexplicable indifference is matched by the tactical silence of the Congress. Ideally, he should mark a cultural shift in power. And as a Sikh, he “understands the trauma of being labelled”. Well, he said BJP was responsible for “the Holocaust in Gujarat”.
That was an angry one-liner. But it is unlikely that the dehumanisation in Gujarat will sway the conscience of his government—or of his party. Bad conscience can’t be the reason, for remorse has never been a Congress trait. It doesn’t mean that others are more humane. No.
The entire political class is guilty of communal crimes. Secularism is a lofty ideal, and a necessary slogan. It is still alive in our civil society because of the decencies of those citizens for whom religion is not a political dispute. Secularism, however flawed it may be, survives in spite of the duplicities of our political parties.
There is no communal riot without political motivation; still, there is no payback time for the politician. Moradabad ’80, Delhi ’84, Bombay ’92, and many more before and after them but who are the rioters? Who are there waiting for the judgment day? Who are the condemned? Modi is not alone. In the land without justice, he alone seems to have horns and fangs.
The horror of Gujarat 2002 calls for the immediate reactivation of the judicial process, but it should not distract us from the terrifying moral vacuum in our political structure, and the failure of the state that can’t ensure justice. If we have the political will, we will know a lot more than what a sting operation has exposed. We will have enough suspects to fill an Indian version of Guantanamo.
In the end, the Indian tragedy is political: those who have the power to seek the truth have already abandoned the quest. Gujarat and other infamies of India will remain unpunished as long as the political class is steeped in lies. Don’t we need on open device to deliver justice?
(Source: India Today, 12 November, 2007)
Perennial Victimhood
Neelesh Misra
Labels come easy and crisp in Gujarat. Pro-Modi. Anti-Modi. For the rest of the world, you are either with him or against him. Which is why when it comes to the Muslims of Gujarat, and the Muslim victims of the 2002 riots, it is best to stick to the safe story: Muslims live in mortal fear in Gujarat and non-governmental organisations have given a new life to riot victims.
That many in the media and many NGOs want to keep Gujarat’s Muslims refrigerated as ‘victims’ for all foreseeable times to come. Even if some in the community don’t want to be seen as victims, and even if they want to unshackle themselves and get on with their lives for their future.
How else does one explain the media’s complete inability — or reluctance — to describe Gujarat’s Muslims in no way other than whiners? How can they not see and write about Gujaratis like the maulana who bought an apartment from his stock market earnings, the Muslims running English-medium schools in the ghettos, the stock broker who lost everything in the riots and went on to pioneer Islamic finance in India, the riot survivors now writing TOEFL exams and getting ready to go overseas to study? Or the sprawling Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind school for riot and earthquake orphans — Hindus and Muslims —in remote Kutch that has changed hundreds of lives?
Or how they ignore simple facts: Muslims in Gujarat have a literacy rate of 73 per cent, more than Muslims anywhere, and more than the national average. Gujarat’s 45 lakh Muslims — just over 9 per cent of the state’s population — fare better than the national average for all religions on several counts including sex ratio and work participation. Yes, Muslims and Hindus don’t get homes in each other’s neighbourhoods. There is actually a law in Gujarat that bans such sales in several places. Yes, Muslims do feel discriminated against in many areas. But they are doing all this despite all that. Modi or no Modi, Gujarat’s Muslims are armed with the supreme weapon that every Gujarati is armed with: their centuries-old entrepreneurial spirit. No amount of imposed victimhood can take that away.
Yet, there is a deep and astounding disconnect between what we in the media believe the condition of Gujarat’s Muslims to be and what it actually is. And maybe there is a lesson in that. Still, the image of Gujarat’s Muslims as perceived outside Gujarat and outside India is one we have created and nurtured: that they are helpless victims, no better than second-class citizens.
Then there are the NGOs. Many of these organisations took money from the riot victims before letting them live there in Godhra. That doesn’t sound like relief to me. It sounds like a subsidised real estate deal.
Worse, these families don’t even own these two-room sets. The properties have not been transferred in their names. The head of the Islamic Relief Committee, which supervised these constructions, told me that this was done “so that the riot victims don’t sell those homes... . And that money was taken “so that they know that everything does not come free”.
Then there’s the place that provoked the National Commission of Minorities to state, “If there is hell under the sun, it is here.” Citizen Nagar, a neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, is where Muslim riot victims live next to the city’s largest garbage dump, where sewage flows through their lanes in the monsoons and they battle disease and squalor.
For five years, Citizen Nagar is, for the NGOs, the symbol of what is wrong with Gujarat’s Muslims. They lost their l
ivelihoods, they are far from their places of work, schools or medical facilities. But who chose that location? Who bought the land and resettled the families near the reeking garbage dump? The same NGOs who are complaining today.
Rather than encourage and prepare them to return home (Sic) or to rebuild their lives, the NGOs, according to a prominent Muslim philanthropist, “threw money at the families and created victims for life”.
It was haphazard, poorly thought out and downright cruel. First the mad rioters killed people and Modi’s government looked the other way. And since then, the media and many NGOs are trying to ensure that they always remain just that: victims.
(Source: Hindustan Times, December 10, 2007)
GUJARAT GENOCIDE 2002
Peace with Honour, Not of the Grave?
Maja Daruwala
Professor Bandukwala must be lauded for his sentiments that Muslims in Gujarat must stand up and forgive their tormentors. At one level, this is the right and proper thing to do. But it is as well to recall that good as he is and as gentle as he is, he is just one of the 500,000 Muslims affected by the riots.
Salma Bibi is another. She asks, “How can I forgive? How can I forget those people from my own village who so enjoyed tearing my family limb from limb and killing them and so enjoyed snatching my baby from my arms before raping me one by one, while all the while I cried and pleaded with them? I said stop, stop, help me please, save me please. Don’t hurt my baby, please. But they killed him even as they raped me. So how can I forgive; why should I forgive?”
There is something beautiful in imagining the victim group rising up collectively, hands outstretched, to embrace the perpetrators and say I forgive you. There’s something ennobling and uplifting in that moment. But who would they go to? To the mass who today spit at them in scorn; who isolate them in stinking ghettos; who watch them live out broken lives each day, without pity or remorse; who won’t let them back into their land and homes and who make sure that every step to justice is subverted and there is agony without end?
What is forgiving really? Does it require giving up the battle for justice? Does it mean there will be no punishment? What a relief that would be for the few who are wriggling hard at court to buy and threaten their way out of getting their just desserts. What a laugh it would be for those who think nothing of telling passing researchers that they have themselves raped, burned and killed — sometimes for the fun of it, sometimes at the behest of others who they knew would protect them to the bitter end, thanks to the thick bonds of guilt that bind them. As thick as the blood on their hands.
There is a chorus of people telling Muslim victims to forgive and forget. The Hindus are telling them, the police is telling them, the courts are telling them, the administration is telling them, their own leaders are telling them, and now we have one more gentle physics professor telling them. People are trying. They have moved on. They have restarted lives. They are settling down. They are trying to move away from their nightmares, to get past the screaming grief and loss. They want peace. Just like Bandukwala.
But there is the peace with honour that justice brings and then there is the peace of the grave. Bandukwala has his beliefs and I have mine.
(The writer is director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative)
(Source: The Indian Express, 6 December, 2007)
Status Report on the Criminal Cases of Genocide 2002
1. Number of criminal cases pending in courts
outside Gujarat: 13
2. Number of criminal cases pending in courts in
Gujarat: 4,652
3. Criminal cases in which charge-sheets filed: 2,037
4. Cases closed due to lack of evidence: 2,032
5. Closed but reopened under Supreme Court order: 2000
6. Reopened cases in which new arrests made: 830
7. Reopened cases in which fresh charge sheets filed; 59
8. New cases registered based on investigation
of old cases: 15
9. Cases in which accused convicted 13
10. Departmental action initiated against
investigating / supervisory officers: 114
OTHER MINORITIES
Gap between Rhetoric and Reality
Only 13 Persons Punished for Delhi Carnage, 1984
V. Venkatesan
THE 1984 riots against Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere, in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, is a shameful chapter in the history of independent India. Even as India prides itself as the only country with rich diversity in the subcontinent to stick to the democratic path, characterised by the rule of law, the failure of the state to punish those who planned and executed the carnage right in the national capital will for ever undermine its claim to be a part of the civilised world. Therefore, the quest to know why and how it was allowed to happen, despite strong institutional safeguards created by the Constitution and the law, continues, irrespective of half-hearted attempts by state-appointed inquiry commissions.
This book, authored by journalist Manoj Mitta and senior advocate H.S. Phoolka, takes us nearer to the truth by revealing, for the first time, several aspects that had remained hidden from public scrutiny.
The book is divided into two parts. The first is a reconstruction of the carnage by Mitta, who tells us how it all started and how it was facilitated by the collusion of the police with the riot (ruling party) leaders and by the connivance of key functionaries in the government. Mitta drew his material from police records, affidavits filed before the Ranganath Misra Commission (1986) and the G.T. Nanavati Commission (2005), and the reports of these two and other Commissions set up to examine the various dimensions of this carnage.
Tracing the carnage to the failure of the authorities to respond to the early signals of trouble on October 31, 1984, Mitta points out that the then Home Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who secured the general clearance at the Cabinet meeting held on that day to take necessary steps, could well have called for reinforcements immediately from the Army and the paramilitary forces and deployed them alongside the police at the earliest. Had there been any clear signal from Rao to do whatever it took to protect the Sikhs, the top brass of the Delhi Police would not have ignored the plea of the Sabzi Mandi police station to clamp a curfew on the evening of October 31. The two police officers who had asked for such permission were, instead, pulled out of action. Though curfew was declared on November 1, there was a lapse of 48 hours before it was enforced, leading to the killing of more than 3,000 Sikhs. The delay of a few hours made all the difference to the scale of the massacre, which was carried out over 72 hoursmostly on November 1.
“The Army was called late simply because there was no feedback of incidents by the station house officers,” the Misra report had said. According to Mitta, such facile reasoning brought the Misra report the odium of doing a whitewash.
The Nanavati report reiterated that Lieutenant Governor P.G. Gavai and Police Commissioner S.C. Tandon were responsible for the delayed reaction.
Bringing out the discrepancies in the versions of Gavai, Tandon, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister P.C. Alexander, and of the Delhi area, Major General J.S. Jamwal (as recorded by the Nanavati Commission), Mitta says it is hard to make out who spoke the truth about the cavalier manner in which the Army was deployed later rather than sooner. “If those four did want the Army to be deployed without delay, there must have been some force in the government beyond their control that delayed the process, with tragic consequences. Such a force, if any, could only have been the political leadership of the government,” Mitta says, and adds that Narasimha Rao gave no explanation for not visiting a single affected area. Mitta, therefore, is critical of the Nanavati Commission’s clean chit to Narasimha Rao, calling it laconic.
Citing the official death toll, Mitta puts the carnage in perspective. “Out of the 2,733 Sikhs killed in Delhi in the first week of November 1984, 1,234 were killed in East Delhi alone. Though more than half of those killings took place on November 1, only 26 people were arrested in East Delhi on that fateful day, and all of them were Sikhs, that is, members of the very community that was being massacred.” The corresponding figures for West Delhi were 40 Sikhs, and 31 members of rioting mobs. Mitta rightly cites these figures to rebut the suggestion of the then government led by Rajiv Gandhi that the killings were spontaneous.
Read with police records, the affidavits filed by victims shed light on the manner in which the massacre was organised by Congress leaders and then executed with the collusion of the police. Mitta points to the eyewitness accounts of a series of meetings of Congress workers held in and around Trilokpuri on the night of October 31 and the morning of November 1. It was against the backdrop of such meetings that a mob, armed with iron rods, and kerosene tins, descended on Block 32 of Trilokpuri on the morning of November 1.
The Station House Officer of the Kalyan Puri police station, Soor Veer Singh Tyagi, forced Sikhs to return to their homes, making them easy prey for the mobs led by local Congress leaders. None of the police officers responsible for the Block 32 massacre – Tyagi, Sewa Dass and Jatav – was penalised, whether in criminal cases or through departmental proceedings. All of them got on with their careers and went on to get their promotions. The Nanavati Commission neither indicted these police personnel nor recommended any action against them. Ti these Congress politicians involved in the massacre – namely, H.K.L. Bhagat, but did not recommend any further action against them.
Mitta lifts the veil of silence over the rapes during the carnage. He refers to the abduction of 30 Sikh women of Block 32, Trilokpuri, who were held captive for over 24 hours at the nearby Chilla village and sexually assaulted. The women were rescued by Jugti Ram, head-constable at the Kalyan Puri police station, who later faced harassment by his superiors.
Mitta reveals that rioters were paid in proportion to the number of Sikhs they killed. The Misra Commission glossed over this part of her affidavit as it contradicted with its finding that the violence had begun spontaneously.
In Part II, Phoolka offers an inside account of the conduct of the official inquiry commissions, how he sacrificed his professional interests to work with the carnage victims in Delhi and organised the forum, Citizens Justice Committee (CJC), comprising eminent intellectuals, to intervene on their behalf.
Phoolka narrates how the Misra Commission used the in-camera device to bar not only the media from covering its proceedings but also the victims’ counsel from cross-examining the officials the in-camera device came in handy for parties to the proceedings, to get advance information about the identity of the victim-witnesses and the timing of their depositions, and threaten them beforehand. The CJC, therefore, decided to withdraw from the proceedings, even while continued to function as counsel for the victims.
Phoolka reveals that the legal system has so far imposed punishment on just 13 persons in half a dozen murder cases relating to the carnage. In all other cases, either the police have closed the file or the courts have acquitted the accused.
The gap between the rhetoric and the reality of the rule of law in India is indeed astounding.•
(Source: Frontline, December, 2007)
ISLAMOPHOBIA
Persecution through Extermination, Subjugation or Segregation
Jews Yesterday-Muslims Today
Madeleine Bunting
Christmas is steeped in nostalgia. Christmas would not be Christmas without fond nods to our medieval past.
The “medieval” has become a form of cultural shorthand, and it serves many purposes. It is not just about plotlines or a stunning aesthetic — it is also used as a pejorative term. People talk of Africa as medieval, or argue that Islam is “stuck in the Middle Ages.” Medieval becomes synonymous with hard, short lives, barbarism, and a brutal, arbitrary use of violence. We are both captivated and repelled by this period of our past.
Fascinating explanations
Dig a bit deeper and some fascinating explanations emerge of why the medieval should still have such cultural currency. For all the huge differences between today and 12th-century Europe, there are also remarkable parallels which, arguably, bring these two societies closer together than any in the intervening period. First, we share pervasive anxiety about an apocalypse the end of the world.
Secondly, we share a fear of Islam and uncertainty about how to deal with it.
Thirdly, the emergence of a cash economy had prompted deep concern. The pursuit of profit produced inequality and contemporaries bewailed the breakdown of community and family. Finally, there was a crisis of authority in 12th-century Europe, with the church and nobility riddled with corruption and a revolution in government as it sought to expand its power into its subjects’ lives. Our corollary is a political process eviscerated by apathy and disillusionment, while the state insists on acquiring unprecedented new powers through ID cards, DNA databases, and surveillance.
How did our 12th-century forebears deal with all this insecurity and dramatic change? They invented a persecution society, one that systematically identified whole categories of people and then set about exterminating, subjugating or segregating them.
Just as the origins of modern Europe and its global expansion can be tracked back to the momentous political and economic changes of the 12th century, so can its corollary, a state built to persecute minorities, which has intermittently characterised Europe’s history ever since.
This is the argument brilliantly explored in R.I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society. The relevance of its argument today is uncanny. Moore demonstrates that the demonisation of the Jews and the emergence of systematic antisemitism was part of a broader process in which the threat from very disparate groups of people was inflated — heretics, gays, all become subjects of new legislation — and new methods of intervention in the lives of individuals, including inquisition and torture, were invented.
The position of Jews deteriorated all over Europe, their lives circumscribed by punitive regulations and mass murders. There was the brutal persecution of Cathar heretics in south-west France and its invention of the inquisition.
European attitudes towards Islam fit into the thesis. They deteriorated sharply in the 12th century and an initial curiosity gave way to abusive prejudice. There was a process of deliberate forgetting of the great achievements of Islamic scholarship which had been known a century earlier — Europe simply lost interest in learning Arabic.
This prejudice, this impulse to stigmatise and persecute, was not a reaction to a new threat. There had always been plenty of Jews, heretics and homosexuals and, of course, they had been the subject of violence before, but not in the 12th-century version of a deliberate and socially sanctioned violence by the state and other institutions.
The persecution was not a response to Jews becoming rich from usury (as the history used to run) but a response of a society in tumultuous change as powerful interests sought to take advantage. Crucially, the state and its new functionaries were intent on expanding their power, and used persecution of entirely new “crimes” as a way to develop the machinery and legitimacy with which to exercise this new power.
It’s a legacy that Moore argues has plagued European history, erupting each time with greater force and more devastating consequences.
One can see the pattern in 16th-century witchcraft trials and religious persecution, right up to the Holocaust.
We are now witnessing a concentration of power in a political/economic elite that is struggling to assert its legitimacy at the same time as extending its power. Crucially useful to it in doing that is the increasingly harsh rhetoric now endemic in public debate, as new groups are identified as threats — Muslims, asylum seekers and irregular migrants — and the scale of those threats is absurdly inflated. It makes a mockery of the idea that we use “medieval” as a term of abuse to fling at others, when really it is a term that correctly defines enduring and deeply shameful characteristics of our own society against which history warns us to be scrupulously vigilant.
(Source: Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007 )
UK: Poisonous and Dangerous Anti-Muslim Propaganda
Seumas Milne in the Gardian, London
The apparent fabrication of evidence underpinning an inflammatory report into British Muslims by the Tory-linked think tank Policy Exchange has revealed the soft underbelly of an increasingly poisonous and dangerous campaign.
Throughout this year, a steady stream of hostile and sensationalised stories about the Muslim community in both press and television - often based on research by apparently reliable think tanks - has helped feed anti-Muslim prejudice to the point where Britons were found this years by a Harris opinion poll to be more suspicious of Muslims than Americans or citizens of any other major west European country.
Policy Exchange’s October report, The Hijacking of British Islam: How Extremist Literature is Subverting Britain’s Mosques - which claimed that a quarter of a representative sample of 100 mosques had been found to be selling “extremist material, some of it anti-semitic, misogynistic, separatist and homophobic” - was a typical case. The story was given top billing by several newspapers and broadcasters, including the Times and the BBC.
BBC’s Newsnight revealed that it had investigated five out of 25 receipts for such literature provided by Policy Exchange’s researchers and found clear evidence that they had been faked, written by the same person and/or were not issued by the mosques in question.
It might be assumed from this that the other 20 receipts were found to be authentic and that Policy Exchange’s basic case was solid. It has now become clear that is not the case. Newsnight insiders make clear that they didn’t have the time or resources to check the other receipts - and in at least one of those that they didn’t look into, supposedly issued by Edinburgh Central Mosque, the mosque authorities have said that leaflets claimed to have been found there calling for the killing of the apostates were in fact dumped there grounds after the report was published.
Given the clear evidence of falsification at the heart of Policy Exchange’s work, it cannot be taken in any way as a piece of reliable research - and there must be serious doubt as to whether the 100 mosques supposedly surveyed were in fact a representative sample.
Earlier the methodology and reliability of another heavily-publicised Policy Exchange Report on alleged British Muslim Attitudes, Living Apart Together, came under heavy academic attack.
But the constant regurgitation by the media of Muslim-baiting “research” by hard right think tanks (the Centre of Social Cohesion is another offender) not only misleads the public about one of the most sensitive issues of our time - it is also clearly driven by a neoconservative political agenda, which seeks to convince people that jihadist terror attacks in Britain and elsewhere are driven not by outrage at western violence in the Muslim world but by opposition to western freedom.
A quick glance at the profiles of those involved in Policy Exchange underlines its neo-com connectinns.
Rise of Mosque- Catalyst for Across Europe Conflict
Ian Traynor in Wangen, Switzerland
North of Berne in an idyllic Alpine valley cowbells tinkle, a church steeple rises, and windowboxes tumble with geraniums. It has always been like this.
But down by the railway station the 21st century is rudely intruding and the villagers of Wangen are upset.
But in the case that has gone all the way to Switzerland’s Supreme Court, setting a keenly watched precedent, the Turks of Wangen have just won the right to erect a six-metre-high minaret.
“We’ll build it by next year. says Mustafa Karahan, the sole spokes person for Wangen’s Turkish Cultural Association. “We don’t have any problems. It’s the other side that has the problems.
If Ulrich Schlüer has his way the Wangen minaret will be toppled. An MP from the rightwing Swiss People’s party (SVP), the country’s strongest, Mr Schlüer has launched a crusade to keep his country culturally Christian.
“Unlike other religions,” he argues, “Islam is not only a religion. It’s an ideology aiming to create a different legal system. That’s sharia. That’s a big problem to be tackled. If the politicians don’t, the people will.”
Schlüer has launched a petition demanding a new clause in the Swiss constitution stating: “The building of minarets in Switzerland is forbidden.” He already has 40,000 signatures. If, as expected, he reaches 100,000 a referendum is automatically triggered.
A minaret is different. It’s got nothing to do with religion. It’s a symbol of political power.”
In a country with more than 300,000 Muslims, mainly immigrants from the Balkans, there are only three minarets in Switzerland. Wangen would be the fourth and the first outside the cities.
“Culture clashes” over Muslim religious buildings have erupted in Italy, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands.
In Austria the far right leader Jörg Haider is also calling for a ban in his province of Carinthia, even though there are few Muslims and no known plans for mosques. or the protection of “our dominant western culture.”
In Italy the mayors of Bologna and Genoa last month cancelled or delayed planning permission for mosques. One leader, Roberto Calderoli, threatened to stage a “day of pork” to offend Muslims and to take pigs to “defile” the site of the proposed mosque in Bologna.
Islam is now the fastest-growing religion in Europe and clamouring for its places of worship to be given a rightful and visible place in west European societies.
“Islam is coming out of the backyards. It’s a trend you see everywhere in Europe,” says, a Bonn University geographer.
Last month there were scuffles at the site of the Westermoskee in west Amsterdam. A Dutch government minister broke ground for building one of the Netherlands’ biggest mosques last year. But the project is mired in controversy.
(Source: The Guardian,October 11, 2007)
MUSLIM WORLD-PAKISTAN
Ideological Illusions: Sixty years of Pakistan
Dr. Mubarak Ali, Eminent Pakistani Historian
Pakistan with its newly emerging society inherited three elements as legacy. First was the poetry of Altaf Hussain Hali and Muhammad Iqbal, structured around an illusion of a supposedly glorious past, giving birth to revivalist movements of all hues. Second, having developed, perhaps understandably, an inferiority complex and a sense of insecurity, the Muslims of the subcontinent adopted an anti-democratic attitude. Third, the leadership quickly turned to dealing with all political issues sentimentally rather than rationally.
When the demand for Pakistan was put forward, it shaped itself into a claim for a separate homeland for Muslims where they could live according to their beliefs. Consequently, separation rather than integration became the core of the Pakistan movement. Today, sixty years after independence, as we look back at our history we find these elements still alive in Pakistan’s body politic.
The country has faced a number of political, social, economic and cultural crises after its creation. However, the state survived and took a direction that was supposed to help determine its identity. The factor that played an important role in shaping this identity and determining its destiny was the formulation of an ideology. To have an identity separate from India, the new country also required an ideology. If India was secular, Pakistan had to be an Islamic state in order to justify its separation and the partition of the subcontinent.
In the early phase, the task of framing this ideology lay in the hands of modern scholars such as IH Qureshi and SM Ikram who provided a historical basis for the concept of ‘two nations’ and the role of Islam in shaping a solid Muslim community on the subcontinent. In his book titled Ideology of Pakistan, published in the fifties, Javed Iqbal observes, “Obviously Pakistan is an ideological state and can therefore survive now only as long as its ideological integrity is ensured. It is this ideology which is the foundation of our nationhood, and is the source of our national, political, economic, cultural, religious and moral values or ideals and their expression.” He further writes, “Pakistan claims itself to be an ideological state because it is founded on Islam.”
In the second phase, the task of consolidating and solidifying the Pakistan ideology was taken over by religious scholars and educationists or authors of textbooks who had government backing. In one such textbook, Pakistan Studies, the author, Gul Shahzad Sarwar says, “The ideology of Pakistan means the ideology of Islam. It guides us in every aspect of life.” The same theme is repeated in other textbooks prescribed by educational institutions. Guided by ideology, the state and society itself underwent the process of Islamisation with rapid transformations in our educational, legal and economic systems.
The implication of the Pakistan ideology is that the state is a religious entity whose official faith is Islam. It contradicts the concept of a modern nation state, in practice in modern democracies all over the world, whose base is secular nationalism. It naturally excludes all non-Muslim minorities from the concept of nationhood and relegates them to secondary citizenship. A severe blow was dealt to these minorities in Pakistan when the Objectives Resolution was passed in 1949 declaring, “Sovereignty belongs to God”. The very idea contradicts the modern concept of democracy in which sovereignty belongs to the people. The resolution also declared that no law could be passed that goes against the texts of the holy Koran and the Sunnah (traditions of the holy prophet).
Consequently, as far as Pakistan was concerned the entire process of law-making remained at a standstill if viewed from the perspective of a fast changing modern world, new technologies and a revision of outdated or extinct values. According to the Pakistan ideology, the concept of two nations did not end with partition and serves even today to know the difference between Muslims and non-Muslims. Today our ideology is sacrosanct and to challenge or deny it is a crime punishable with 10 years of rigorous imprisonment (under a law passed during former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s regime).
Today this ideology seeps into every aspect of an average Pakistani’s life. Religious parties have gained strength while repeatedly calling for the creation of a ‘truly Islamic’ state. They adopt two approaches to achieve their objective. In one case, the strategy is to capture power by armed struggle, which they call jihad, against secular and irreligious elements. In the other, there are parties that would like to control the state through the democratic process but with a promise to implement the shariah. Mainstream political parties also publicise the religious provisions in their manifestos to counter religious parties and gain popular votes. Undeniably, religion has become the most important factor in the politics of Pakistan, even dragging the army into the fray when the army’s job is to defend the nation’s frontiers.
The same elements have transformed Muhammad Ali Jinnah into a religious figure. The fact that he was secular in his private life is comfortably ignored. On the basis of speeches in which he mentioned Islam, his personality and his views were reconstructed and he is today portrayed as a deeply religious person. In a tactical move, the religious parties, instead of disowning Jinnah, transformed and adapted his image to suit their interests. Popular articles, especially in Urdu newspapers, narrate stories about his religious zeal. In his official portrait Jinnah is deliberately shown dressed in the traditional sherwani. These fabricated images of Jinnah are effective tools in the hands of right wing parties today.
An ideological state has to carry a heavy burden. It has to constantly defend and protect itself from all manner of challenges on a permanent basis. It must also justify its existence scientifically, culturally and socially, distort facts in order to hide its weaknesses and reinterpret its image on a quasi-perpetual basis to legitimise its existence and usefulness. In an ideological state only one truth prevails. All thought is discarded. All doors to new ideas are adamantly banged shut.
Its society has suffered and declined as a result of this ideological stranglehold. Since there is no space for new ideas and fresh thought, creativity has seen a decline; it is no longer capable of producing philosophers, historians, poets, artists, filmmakers, architects, writers, or musicians. Intellectually and culturally, it has become barren. There is nothing that could nourish young minds except obsolete or outmoded ideas.
In the academic field, too, the country suffered heavily. To meet the exigencies of an ideological state, two new subjects, “Pakistan Studies” and “Islam”, were introduced at all levels of education to turn successive generations into “good” Pakistanis and “good” Muslims. Historians and political scientists began expending all their energy in attempting to justify the creation of Pakistan. As the standard of academic research declined, Pakistani “scholars” lost all contact with international academia. Sadly, there are no organisations for social scientists to come together and discuss recent research, and only a few substandard research journals that are, understandably, not recognised internationally. Internationally, Pakistan stands nowhere in academic status and credibility. This is a tragedy.
When only one truth and one ideology prevail, society plunges into extremism and fundamentalism grows rapidly as the only solution to all problems. As there is no alternative to challenge this fundamentalism, society at large believes in its validity and its power to change and reform. Ironically, information technology is also helping to popularise conservative ideas with the help of cassettes, CDs, Internet and email. Almost every television channel in Pakistan broadcasts programmes that promote extremism and preach more narrow-mindedness.
In a sign of superficial religiosity, the organisation of religious gatherings has become a popular phenomenon in order to express piety and devotion. There is a popular trend to go for Haj and Umrah in order to earn respectability. In the name of charity, the rich, especially the business community, donate a lot of money to madrasas and masjids. But in spite of this show of Islamic fervour, society remains morally corrupt. Crimes against women are increasing: kidnapping, rape, honour killing and the parading of naked women has become routine.
In these sixty years while some individuals and groups have raised their voices against ideological restrictions, and made an attempt to create a liberal and progressive atmosphere. They have not received much attention.
(Source: Communalism Combat, August - Sept, 2007)
MUSLIM WORLD
Western move to “Mellow Muslims” after Failing to Defeat Islam
V.T. Rajshekhar, Editor, Dalit Voice
Fear of Muslims — real or imaginary — has gripped America and the whole of Europe so much that every “evil” idea and deed is attributed to these people. Muslims are so much hated, much more than the Blacks.
The prejudice against Muslims is so much in Europe (but it is much more in India) that some writers have given it a name — Eurabia — indicating the fear of an ever growing Muslim Europe-within-Europe. Another Arabia is growing within Europe?
A book titled Londonistan says a Pakistan is exploding within London. Britain’s largest number of Muslims come from Pakistan and they are said to be the angriest and determined to take revenge for the White, Western, Christian war and violence on Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine etc.
It is only this fear of Muslims that is keeping Turkey out of the European Union, driving that country closer to Islam, and brought Sarkozy as President of France.
Look at the double-standards of the White Western Christians. They want to introduce democracy to “save” Muslim countries. European hate-mongers are actually helping Turkey forcing it to find its Islamic roots.
In fact the Muslim hatred is much more in Europe than in America. Unbiased Western researchers into this anti-Muslim paranoia say that the roots of the Muslim hate can be found in the Jewish manipulation.
When the Christians have finally failed to “defeat” the Muslims, the latter have finally won and made the whole world see that Truth and Justice are on their side. History itself has pronounced its verdict.
The verdict is Christians and Muslims are brothers and have nothing against each other and that Christians should stop getting manipulated by the common enemy.
History has started changing in America with the dramatic ouster of neocons one by one, the impending fall of President Bush and the belated realisation by the American ruling class, the Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christians, that they have been taken for a ride by the neocons ruling class in the West at the behest of zionist manipulators like Samuel Huntington that launched the “civilisational war” against Muslims. In this war the West is finally defeated. At least at this stage there is need for urgent realisation of the historical mistakes and earnest efforts for course correction.
As the curtain is gradually coming down on the world’s most violent war on Muslims, we are getting reports of a novel Western plan to “contain” the Muslims in the West. And that is called “integrating” or “assimilating” Muslims —a technique which worked miracle with the Blacks in USA and England.
Affirmative action (called reservations in India) helped the Hindus to co-opt Dalit into Hindu caste system — once for all killing the anger and rebellious spirit instilled in them by Ambedkar.
The “educated” Untouchables have become good Hindus, worshipping the gods of the very enemy, marrying upper caste girls. They not only continue to remain as slaves but slaves enjoying their slavery. The uneducated Dalits are in great number but they are the sweat labour , their women in brothels and men obedient servants.
India’s affirmative action may have benefitted only about 5% of the Untouchables. About 95% of the Dalits are not only drowned in the pits of poverty but facing racist attacks in the rural areas daily.
After having tackled the Blacks in America and also UK and fully integrated, assimilated them, the plan now is to extend the same principle to Muslims.
Many books have been written on the subject asking Muslims to “forget their religion and behave as part of the vast humanity”. They are asked to look at the “exemplary” Black behaviour and emulate them.
But will Islam allow itself to be sucked and lose its identity? This is the question.
Our experience is the Muslims will never, ever allow themselves to be absorbed. History has enough proofs.
DV Edit Sept.16, 2006: “Islam-Christian reconciliation needed to save world from sure Armageddon”.
(Source: Dalit Voice, June 16-30, 2007)
5 Myths About U.S.-Saudi Relations
Rachel Bronson
T he United States and Saudi Arabia form one of the world’s most misunderstood partnerships. Saudi Arabia a longtime oil supplier for the U.S. economy — but on 9/11, accounted for 15 of the 19 hijackers. The Bush family and the House of Saud are close — yet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls for greater democracy in the region. To understand the relationship, a few misconceptions must be debunked:
1 The U.S.-Saudi relationship
is a bargain of oil
for security.
There’s more to it than that. Oil is, of course, critical to U.S.-Saudi ties — it can hardly be otherwise for the world’s largest consumer and largest producer. But Washington’s relationship with Riyadh more closely resembles its friendly ties to oil-poor Middle Eastern states such as Jordan, Egypt and Israel than its traditionally hostile relations with oil-rich states such as Libya and Iran. Deep oil reserves have never translated into easy relations with the United States.
A major reason for the close ties between the two nations was their common fight against communism. Both countries worried about the Soviet Union, and that solidified their oil and defense interests, and minimized differences. In hindsight, by supporting religious zealots in the battle against communism, the two countries contributed to the rise of radical Islamic movements.
2 The 9/11 hijackers
undermined otherwise
strong U.S.- Saudi ties.
Actually, things were never that smooth. Historians refer to the “special relationship” established when Saudi Arabia’s King Abdel Aziz and President Roosevelt met in 1945. But since then the relationship has endured oil embargoes, U.S. restrictions on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and tensions around Israel and Palestine. Dissension permeates the entire history of U.S.-Saudi relations.
Since the end of the Cold War, relations have become particularly fraught, with the 9/11 attacks being the most recent issue. Oil, defense and some regional interests keep the countries together, but both sides have made clear that the relationship is less special today. In 2005, Rice stated that “for 60 years . . . the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither.”
Meanwhile, members of the Saudi royal family are debating the utility of close ties with the Americans. 3 The Bush family and House of Saud are too close for comfort.
An overstatement. Unquestionably, the two families are close, in no small part because Saudi Arabia contributed to Operation Desert Storm in 1991, one of the highlights of President George H.W. Bush’s tenure. The late King Fahd provided extensive financial and political assistance to the operation, and allowed U.S. troops on Saudi soil.
All previous presidents have sought close relations with the kingdom, recognizing its value to the United States. Even presidents such as Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, who were initially skeptical of the Saudis, found themselves drawn to this relationship for strategic reasons.
4 Washington can call the shots
with the Saudis because the United
States is all-important to them.
It’s more complex than that. Growing oil demand from China, India and the developing world means that others are pursuing closer ties with the kingdom. Chinese President Hu Jintao flew from Washington to Riyadh in April, despite Bush administration protests that China was “locking up long-term oil deals” with oil-rich countries.
Last year, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, stated that Saudi Arabia and China now have a “strategic relationship,” because Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of crude to China. Of course, Beijing will not replace Washington as the Saudis’ key global partner. But growing oil demand elsewhere radically alters the options at Saudi Arabia’s disposal.
5 The House of Saud
is about to
collapse.
Not likely. Since the Saudi monarchy’s earliest days, observers have anticipated its demise. However, it has shown a remarkable ability to overcome such challenges as palace infighting, assassination and incapacitated leaders. There are still many sons of kingdom founder Abdel Aziz waiting in an orderly queue for their chance to reign.
This hardly means the Saudi rulers will have an easy time of it. Osama bin Laden has made toppling the House of Saud one of his key goals, and there have been a series of al-Qaeda attacks since May 2003. Also, Saudi Arabia faces demographic challenges: Sixty percent of the population is younger than 25, and jobs f are scarce.
Meanwhile, insurgent fighters eventually will return from Iraq, trained and determined, Sunni-Shiite battles of Iraq can easily spill into Saudi Arabia, Shiites make up 10 to 15 percent of the population.
But he services cleavages are visible in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is now aggressively pursuing terrorists on its soil, and reform-minded Saudis view King Abdullah as an ally.
The royal family is also the best chance Washington has to realize its oil and counterterrorism goals — and avoid alternatives that could be worse.
(Source: Washington Post.com, May 21, 2006)
Balance-sheet of Annapolis Conference on West Asia, 27 Nov. 07
Eminent Journalist, John Cherian
Bush is the most avowed pro-Israeli President the U.S. has ever seen. It was the Bush administration that gave the green signal to Israel to invade Lebanon in 2006 and destroy the infrastructure of the country. Now Bush is trying to cast himself in the role of an “honest broker” who will help expedite a two-state solution to end the Israel-Arab conflict.
Although sceptical about the motives of the Americans, the Arab states accepted the invitation to attend the one-day summit. Saudi Arabia initially voiced reservations about its participation but later relented. Syria, which threatened to boycott the summit, finally sent a Deputy Foreign Minister. Syrian territory it had annexed. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad said in Annapolis that Syria continued to be in favour of the Saudi Arabian peace initiative, which offered Arab recognition of Israel provided the Jewish state withdrew from the occupied territories.
The Hamas leadership, too, has emphasised on several occasions that it is willing to coexist with Israel provided it withdraws to its pre-1967 borders. But the Bush administration continues to turn a blind eye as Israel keeps on building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Uri Avnery, the perceptive Israeli writer and peace activist, recently wrote that in the U.S. the “Jewish and evangelical lobbies, together with the neo-cons, will not allow one critical word about Israel to go unpunished”.
Although more than 40 nations, including India and Pakistan, participated in the summit, Iran did not find a place at the table. India, which was quick to accept the last-minute invitation, was represented by Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal.
Many leading Arab states are wary of Iran’s growing influence in the region. Iran’s image in the region. Iran is a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause. Iran and Syria are among the strongest supporters of Hizbollah, which inflicted an improbable military defeat on the Israeli military in 2006. Both the countries are also supporters of Hamas, which controls Gaza and is the democratically elected voice of the Palestinian people. Hamas was not invited for the talks. The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that one of the main purposes of the Annapolis summit was isolating Hamas. The game plan of the U.S., Israel and the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) President Mahmoud Abbas did not find favour with many of the key participants. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal said that Hamas should have been invited. “Peace cannot be made by one man or half a people,” he said. Israel has placed an economic blockade on Gaza, which is under total Hamas control. The Hamas spokesman said that Abbas had no right to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. Many in Abbas’s Fatah Party, which is in control of the West Bank, voiced similar opinions. The majority of Palestinians believe that the Palestinian delegation led by Abbas had no right to negotiate with Israel as he was not backed by a national consensus.
A joint statement, which pledged that Israel and the P.A. led by Abbas would restart talks, was issued at the end of the talks. Read out by Bush, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, it expressed the hope of resolving the 59-year-old dispute before the end of Bush’s term. “We agree to immediately launch good faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements,” it said.No deadline for a final agreement was set. The joint statement talks of both sides making “every effort” to reach a peace deal by the end of 2008, but the declaration is short on specifics. There is no talk of the shape of the Palestinian state that would emerge and it is silent on contentious issues such as borders, refugees, Israeli settlements and the status of Jerusalem.
What the statement emphasises is “that the implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States”. This in effect means that the U.S. will be the sole judge on whether the Palestinians are sticking to the road map. The role of the “Quartet”, in which the United Nations, the U.S., Russia and the European Union are equal partners, will be diminished further, leaving the Palestinians at the mercy of Israel and its chief patron – the U.S.
Bush’s only request to the Israeli side was to “remove unauthorised outposts, end settlement expansion and find other ways for the Palestinian Authority to exercise its authority without compromising Israel’s security”.
Israeli trust in Bush was not misplaced. In a statement at the summit, he described Israel “as the national homeland of the Jews”. This will give Israel the justification to expel the remaining Palestinians on its territory. In his speech.
He said that his letter to the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was an important step in the peace process. In that letter, Bush agreed with the Israeli position on refusing Palestinians “the right of return” and supported Israel’s annexation of Palestinian land.
Prior to the Annapolis summit, the Israeli Knesset had approved a Bill barring any agreement to divide Jerusalem. Israel has been insisting that its obligations under the U.S.-sponsored “road map” will only be implemented after the P.A. suppresses all anti-Israeli violence, including fighting “terrorism” and dismantling “terrorist networks”. On top of the Israeli demands is the suppression of the democratically elected Hamas – which the Israelis and the U.S. have labelled as “terrorists”.
The other important demand, which the Israeli government has been making, is that the P.A. recognise Israel as a Jewish state. So far, the P.A. has refused to budge on this issue, despite pressure from the White.
MUSLM WORLD- TURKEY
Uncomfortable with Muslim Turkey
Subhash Chopra
I-Creeping Islamophobia
Reflecting the native British perception of Islamist fundamentalism, or at least part of it, Boris Johnson, Tory MP and candidate for the position of London Mayor at the next London Assembly elections, is known to have strong opinions. He is a strong advocate of inculcating ‘Britishness, especially into young Muslims’.
He fervently believes: ‘We should teach English and we should teach in English. We should teach British history. We should think again about the jilab (hijab), with the signals of apartness that it sends out, and we should probably scrap faith schools. We should forbid the imams from preaching sermons in anything but English ? we cannot continue with the multicultural apartheid.’ Localism, could lead to sharia law because ‘large chunks of Muslim population did not feel British.’ ‘Supposing Tower Hamlets or parts of Bradford were to become governed by religious zealots believing in that system?’ he asked.
Such rhetoric may not be totally representative but it does strike chords in many hearts and therein lies a disruptive danger to wider community life.
Prime Minister Brown in announcements on Iraq over the fortnight around the end of September and beginning of October has announced a graduated withdrawal of British troops from the war theatre. On a visit to the troops in Basra at the start of October he declared that one thousand out of five and a half thousand British troops in Iraq will be home by the end of the year, with the prospect of almost half out of Iraq by next spring.
Whatever the internal differences, the British are steadily but surely pulling out of Iraq, which all parties seem to say is costing them the good will of millions of people in the Islamic world.
At the same time, they are tightening the dragnet on terrorist outfits. Tory leader David Cameron in his speech at the party’s annual conference said that, if elected, his government would ban Hizb-ut-Tehrir, a theoretically peaceful group but widely suspected as a terrorist outfit by security agencies. Cameron also said his party would review the human rights legislation which is hindering the fight against terrorism.
Notwithstanding official or diplomatic words of restraint, the courts, police and administrations across Europe are hardening their stance on terrorism, al-Qaeda, or Islamic fundamentalism. Police and intelligence agencies are increasingly more watchful and courts are passing harder sentences. Gone are the days when the fundamentalists could claim the benefit of doubt or get instant cover of civil liberties and human rights. Hideouts are becoming fewer by the day. At the same time, the authorities also insist that their fight is not against law-abiding Muslims, only against the fundamentalists among them.
The militants, who claim to represent the Ummah or international Islam, are being singled out, not just by the West but also Muslim countries from Pakistan to Algeria.
It is clear that al-Qaeda is not just fighting the West, it is challenging Islamic regimes all over. It is holding a veiled threat to the governments represented in the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) as well. It is fighting to become the sole spokesman of the Ummah or global Islam.
II-Europeans Dilemma over Turkey
Europe, in turn, is facing another dilemma, a long-standing one ? the issue of allowing Turkey to join the European Union or keeping it out. Turkey has been a member of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) since 1952 and has been an associate member of the European Club since 1963. How long will Europe keep it waiting outside the door? Turkey’s credentials as a staunchly secular applicant are impeccable. The human rights objections are widely seen as an excuse which cannot wash any longer. What is holding Turkey’s membership? Is it because Turkey is a Muslim country and the European Union is a Christian club? That certainly is the wide perception in Turkey and large parts of Europe.
Europe’s Turkish or Islamic dilemma has acquired a fresh and immediate urgency with the election of foreign minister Abdullah Gul as the country’s president. A devout Muslim and an acknowledged former Islamist, he was Prime Minister Erdogan’s AKP or Justice and Development Party’s nominee for the nation’s top post. Gul poses a dilemma not just for Europe but for Turkey’s own military.
The AKP, in its former avatar as Welfare Party, was banned and its leader Erdogan was jailed in 1998. The turbulence between the army and the Erdogan-Gul combine continues, despite the party leadership having done its utmost over the past five years to actively pursue a moderate, secular, liberal and pro-European agenda. Fears of creeping neo-Islamism still remain very much on the surface.
Gul has been opposed by the secularists not just because of his persona but also because of his wife Hayrunnisa’s image. She wears a head-covering scarf, forbidden in official Turkey. Her headscarf is not a face-covering or a top-to-toe hijab or burqa but the Kemalist Republic of Turkey cannot countenance the First Lady of the republic challenging the ban. The scarf, however colourful and splendid, is a symbol of separation and cause for objection in large and powerful parts of Europe too ? from France to Austria and others.’ It is not just Turkey’s dilemma, it is Europe’s dilemma too.
(Subhash Chopra is a freelance journalist and author of India and Britannia - An Abiding Affair.)
(Source: Asian Affairs, November, 2007)
CHRONOLOGY
Monthly Chronology of Events of Concern
( 1-31 December, 2007 )
I. National Developments
Gujarat Assembly Elections: * BJP under the leadership of Modi secures 2/3rd majority although Congress gains 11 seats and about 3.8% votes more than in 2002. Congress probes reasons for unexpectedly by small margin (see editorial)
* Victory galvanizes BJP hope of returning to power in Delhi in 2009. * Modi sworn in for third term and emerges as tallest among second generation leaders.
* 5 Muslims wins out of 6 fielded by Congress against demand for 14 * BJP had no Muslim candidate.
HP Assembly Election: *Congress loses another State, fifth in a row, with its tally down from 43 to 23 against BJP 15 to 41.* BJP nominee Dhumal becomes CM(30 Dec.).*BJP is now in power in 8 states.
National Politics: * Congress defeat in Gujarat and HP removes possibility of mid-term election.*Congress focusses on coming elections in Karnataka, MP, Rajasthan, Delhi and J& K.
* CPI(M) continues to criticise UPA government for succumbing to US pressure.* joins BJP in walk-out over the Indo-US Nuclear deal (5 Dec.) and calls on government to conclude talks with IAEA (9Dec.) * Accuses Congress for following saffron line in Gujarat, proposes mass agitation against Fundamentalism and Hindutva. *Considers formation of Third Front.
RSS & VHP: * Though sidelined in campaign, Sangh Parivar hails Modi’s victory and expects closer alignment of BJP with Hindutva.*Holds Ram Sethu Rally in Delhi
Reservation: *Koch-Rajbanshis and Advasis demand ST status in Assam * National Commission for SC proposes reservation in appointment of judges.*Also supports inclusion of Dalit converts to Islam/Christianity, but opposes that of all Christian and Muslim Dalits, in SC lists (25 Dec.)*Following rejection of Gujjar demand by Chopra Commission, Gujjar leadership threatens to revive agitation for change from OBC to ST status* Chopra Commission proposes revision of ST criteria.
* Former CJI Khare opposes reservation in Super Speciality Hospitals like AIIMS.
Development: * NDC meets to approve 11th Five Year Plan with proposed outlay of……………lakh crores.*PM emphasizes due benefit to minorities.* CMs of BJP ruled States denounce PM’s proposal as ‘communal budgeting’ and divisive.* BJP leadership alternatively proposes benefit to all marginalized sections, irrespective of religion or caste (19 Dec.)
Nandigram Violence: *Governor Gandhi visits Nandigram (3 Dec.)*CM Bhattachrya expresses regret and admits failure in handling situation *CBI unearths more graves and dead bodies.* Sonia Gandhi criticizes cult of violence and use of party cadres and police force by State (6 Dec.).*CM addresses public meeting to promote reconciliation.
Judiciary : *Law Ministry rejects parliamentary proposal for inclusion of MPs in national judicial council (20 Dec.) * Former CJI Verma demands statutory bar on SC judges against post-retirement paid work.* Parliament demands transparency in appointment as well as accountability for conduct in higher judiciary.
*SC asks HC’s to exercise restraint in admitting PIL petitions; subsequently CJI Balakrishnan asks them to hear or dismiss them on merit.
Criminalization :*SC admits PIL against continuance of sitting legislators on conviction in criminal cases with sentence of more than 2 years
NREGP: * Shortfall in meeting targets but impact on rural migration reported (4Dec.)
Other Minorities : * Shiromani Akali Dal demands separate courts for minorities and amendment to Article 25 to confirm separate religious identity for Sikhs(23Dec.)
II. Other Matters of Concern and Interest to Muslim :
Babri Masjid : * 15th Anniversary of Demolition observed all over country by Muslims peacefully.* VHP celebration as Shourya Divas in Ayodhya turns a flop.*Questions raised in both house of Parliament leading to adjournment.*CPI(M) leader Karat blames former PM Narsimha Rao for allowing demolition.*Muslim organizations including Mushawarat demand revision of notification to join criminal cases for expeditious trial, submission of report by Liberhan Commission and early verdict in title suit (6 Dec.)
*First witness in Demolition case records evidence of total inaction by Faizabad DM and SSP during Demolition (5 Dec.) *Liberhan granted another 2 months extention.
SriKrishna Report : * 350 Muslims court arrest in Mumbai to press for effective action.
Muslim Uplift: * Mishra Report not tabled in Parliament during winter session.
* No progress made in implementation of Sachar Report.* MMA advertises two schemes for research and publicity.
Kashmir: * Five civilian captives released by militants in Kulgam Masjid.*Siege ends with killing of 3 militants
Muslims Organisations : *Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadith Working Committee adopts resolutions, inter alia, condemning terrorism and demanding implementation of Sachar and Mishra Reports. *An All India Qaumi Tanzeem Delegation calls on PM to demand publication of Liberhan Commission report, action on Srikrishna Report, expeditious trial of Hashimpura massacre case and implementation of Sachar Committee report(7Dec.)
III.Terrorism and Violence :
Terrorism: *Authorities report 269 bomb blasts during 2007 (19Dec.) *SC suspends execution of Ashfaq convicted of attack on Red Fort (3Dec.)
*Nasir Bhat, head of Hizbul Mujahideen in J&K, arrested.*ULFA-linked militants blow up part of Rajdhani Express in Assam, 5 killed (13 Dec.)* UP police ‘arrests’ Tariq and Khalid alleged to be members of HUJI (22 Dec.) * Both claim earlier detention. *Arrests Ansari top HUJI militant in Kolkata.
Communal Violence : * Communal incident triggered by alleged cow slaughter in Kumanpura, Chittorgarh, Rajasthan, 1 killed in police firing (24 Dec.) * Another incident in Mehndawal, Sant Kabir Nagar, UP, on Eid-ul-Adha with considerable damage to Muslim property.*Attack by Shiv Sena on joint dharna by Muslims in Delhi to mark Demolition (6 Dec.) no action by police.
Anti Christian Violence in Orissa : *Nearly 30 churches vandalized, hundreds of houses torched, 1 killed, in four towns of Khandamal district of Orissa, during Christmas week.*Following national outrage state government orders judicial probe. * Local MLA, a Minister, resigns on moral grounds (28Dec.)
* Christian staff serving in Don Bosco School physically attacked in Vadodara district. Ironically, police files case against victims (24Dec.)
State Violence: *No action taken by AP Govt. on alleged torture of Muslim youth held in connection with bomb blasts. National Commission for Minorities holds public hearing in Hyderabad (19Dec.)
* Prosecution of 4 policemen for custodial killing of Khwaja Yunus in Jan 2003 sanctioned (5 Dec.)
1984 Delhi Disturbances : * Delhi Court orders CBI to record evidence of eyewitness currently in USA and further investigate role of Congress leader Jagdish Tytler(18 Dec.)
IV. Religious Questions:
Taslima Nasreen Case: * Taslima withdraws objectionable pages from auto-biography.* JUH calls upon Muslims to close chapter (11Dec.).* IUML demands deportation. *Taslima protests against ‘solitary confinement’ by GOI in Delhi and wishes return to Kolkata. Foreign Minister denies report and reiterates earlier conditions on her stay.* On Jyoti Basu’s intervention, West Bengal agrees to return provided Centre guarantees her security.
World Tablighi Ijtema : *Held near Azamgarh, UP. Attended by lakhs (29-31 Dec.)
Haj : * Nearly 1,50,000 Indian pilgrims perform Haj. About 250 die from natural causes. Haj subsidy reaches 400 crores. *Official Haj Delegation led by Minister A.R.Antulay visits Saudi Arabia, includes several scholars and public figures (14 Dec.)
Registration of Marriage: * Tahir Mahmood, Member, Law Commission suggests amendment to, or preferably replacement of, Qazi Act, 1988, for registering all Muslim marriages and divorces (26 Dec.).
*Delhi introduces compulsory registration of all marriages with effect from 1Jan.08 (14 Dec.)
Orthodoxy:* Ad filming by Sania Mirza in Makka masjid objected to. She apologizes.
*Islamic scholar Zakir Naik apologises for using a suffix, seen as objectionable by both Sunnis and Shias ( 22 Dec.) *Deputy CM, J&K bans stage dance performance by Kashmiri women in and outside state.
Cow Slaughter: * Darul-Uloom, Deoband, reiterates standing fatwa to restrain from cow slaughter on Baqrid in interest of communal harmony.
V.Educational and Cultural Affairs:
AMU : * CBI arrests two for campus murder in April 2007 which led to closure. * 75% attendance made compulsory for admission to examinations (15 Dec.).* Three tier students grievances redressal mechanism set up. *Opening of educational centres in areas of Muslim concentration decided (3 Dec.)
Minority Institutions: * Delhi High Court allows freedom to minority institutions to choose recipients of free education (6 Dec.)
Madrasa Education : *UP establishes Madrasa Shiksha Parishad to affiliate and aid all madrasas registered as Societies. *UP Deeni Talimi Council releases two collections of writings by Maulana Abdul Hasan Ali Nadvi
Christmas Milan : * India Islamic Cultural Centre holds reception.
Commemoration : *Ghalib Institute distributes Ghalib Award for 2007; *Ghalib Academy: holds annual lecture.* Ghalib Memorial Movement organises candle light procession in Chandni Chowk led by CM and others (24 Dec.) *79th death anniversary of Hakim Ajmal Khan observed in Delhi in presence of CM Dikshit (27 Dec.) *Sahmat organizes cultural function in Delhi to mark 20th anniversary of fatal attack on Safdar Hashmi with participation of Pakistani artists (31 Dec.)
Muslim World :
Pakistan : * Government dismisses former Chief Justice, Justice Bhagwan Das and Justice Khaleelur Rahman (5 Dec.)* Musharraf lifts emergency and promises elections as scheduled on 8 January (15Dec.).*Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim Leaague & Jamaat-e-Islami decide to boycott elections unless Supreme Court judges reinstated.* Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam(F) and PPP decide to participate.*Nomination papers of Nawaz Sharif and of his brother Shahaz rejected.* PPP and All Parties Democratic Movement formulate charter of demands for participation in elections, with difference persisting on reinstatement of judges.
*Bhutto and Sharif commence poll campaign (16 Dec.)
*At close of campaign Benazir Bhutto shot at close range and killed (26 Dec.)*Accounts by eye-witnesses and Pakistan Government differ.*Assassination universally condemned and mourned. PM, Sonia Gandhi and Advani ……….*Large scale disturbances follow all over Pakistan.* Body buried besides her father in family mausoleum.
*PPP chooses son Bilawal as Leader with husband Zardari as President protem. *Sharif offers to form alliance with PPP * Election postponed to 18 February.
Sub-continent : * Government excludes persons of Indian origin who had migrated and settled in Pakistan/Bangladesh from dual citizenship for security reasons.
Malaysia : *Former Dy PM Anwar Ibrahim supports agitation by ethnic Indians against discrimination (1 Dec.)*Malaysian FM cautions India against meddling in its internal affairs (2 Dec.)* India conveys concern (3 Dec.) *PM avoids meeting Hindu Rapid Action Force delegation from Malaysia (6 Dec.)* Malaysian PM appreciates India’s stand (10 Dec.)* HRAF leaders face prosecution for sedition.*Malaysia Minister SamiVelu of Indian origin charge to monitor status of Hindus shrines and submit report. Velu assures community against demolition of any temple, legally or illegally built, without full check and dialogue (24 Dec.)
Iran : * US intelligence report on Iran having stopped nuclear weapons programme in 2003 strengthens Iran’s defiance of international pressure to halt Uranium. Russia supplies Uranium enrichment (3 Dec.)
* Foreign Secretary SS Menon visits Iran to clarify Indian stand (20 Dec.)*CPI(M) calls for review of government policy(22 Dec.)
Palestine :* MOS E Ahamed participates in Conference of Donors at Paris which promises $5.6 billion as aid over next 3 years to Mahmood Abbas, President of Palestine Authority (18 Dec.).*Abbas and Olmert have preliminary round of talks but construction of Israeli settlements continue. Hamas rejects deal.
Iraq : * UK hands over control of Basra Iraq.
Afghanistan : * Taliban strikes NATO convoy as well as Afghan army (5 Dec.)
Turkey : * bombs hundreds of Kurd villages, despite concern expressed by both Iraq and USA (5 Dec.)
Bangladesh : * Observes commemoration of liberation. Massive gathering in Dhaka demands punishment for war criminals ( 14 Dec.)
Algeria : * experiences massive bomb blast , in Algiers biggest since 90’s; 67 killed, attributed to Al Qaeda (11 Dec.)
Mulslim Minorities : * Victoria school authorities in Australia permit both hijab for Muslim girls and kirpan for Sikh boys (6 Dec.)*Nepal abolishes monarchy sets up national council (28 Dec.)
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