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South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch #2 | 6 November, 2004 [1] India: The latest victim (Shiv Visvanathan) [2] India: Letter to the Editor (Ammu Abraham) [3] India: [the new law against ] Communal violence (Editorial, Deccan Herald) [4] India: The BJP: From tragedy to farce (Praful Bidwai) [5] India: BJP Seeks Continued Support of Right-Wing Group (Virendra Kapoor) [6] India: Top Hindu Hawks May Face Trial for Demolition of Mosque (Ranjit Devraj) -------------- [1] The Hindustan Times November 6, 2004 THE LATEST VICTIM Shiv Visvanathan Let me begin autobiographically. Any autobiography is a statement of bias, location and expectation. It valorises storytelling over analysis and attempts to combine both in some framework of reflectivity. When the investigation into the Gujarat riots shifted to Bombay, I sighed with relief. It was a sigh of relief for democracy and a salute to the courts and to the NGO who had kept an issue alive. The sadness of Gujarat was not merely the tragedy of violence, it was the sadness of silence, the sadness of a story left untold. The witness was allowed to complete her story, the law was to proceed with its interrogation and between interrogation and storytelling, democracy and justice were breathing. When the media reported how the witness, a woman, identified the perpetrators in court, one sensed the drama of the moment. Justice had reached a turning point. When the same media reported that the witness had retracted, I realised that justice had turned into an unending serial. What one confronted was not the professional witness who litters our lower courts, but the revolving witness, who by changing her mind changes history and marks all the characters around her. When the witness turns hostile, the needle of suspicion points in other directions. When Zahira Sheikh accused Teesta Setalvad of monitoring, sequestering or being indifferent to her, one immediately faces three questions. First, one confronts the ambiguity of victim as witness. The victim becomes marked by the violence of the event (the riot), but also by the violence of the aftermath. The event which began as rape, murder, humiliation, now becomes an opportunity for publicity and mobility. It becomes convertible into money, to currency beyond the fact of compensation. What adds to this ambiguity is Narendra Modi's statement that NGOs should be audited, examined and evaluated. A new public space for rumour, suspicion and speculation is created. We have the entry of a third term: the NGO as middlemen, as representative and agent of civil society. The details seem sordid. The media report that Sheikh observes that money was floating into the NGO coffers because of her presence. She demands a house and money for her bakery in Mumbai. By locating herself as source, she also defines herself as beneficiary. The question is no longer of justice or witness, but of individual opportunity. Expectedly, some NGOs resent the fact that Setalvad has monopolised the victim. Like Sheikh, they see missed opportunities. Suspicion magnifies rumour when one of the perpetrators alleges that Setalvad has threatened him. Setalvad now appears as a manipulative coercive ogre. Strangely, the innocence or laziness of rumour in public space seems to confirm some modicum of suspicion. We confront a distressing situation. A crisis of the legitimacy of the State, police and party has been deftly turned into a crisis of the NGO. We have an allegedly wounded state as represented by the CM, a confusing witness and an ambiguous NGO. There is no mention of Setalvad's courage, dedication or professionalism. It's almost as if Setalvad and NGOs are on trial. How do we, especially those of us who saw activism as a testimony and a testament for democratic society, confront this? Let us begin with the obvious as the obvious sometimes eludes debate. There are good and bad NGOs, like good and bad cops, politicians, bureaucrats. Every time we confront a corrupt politician, we don't question the possibilities of politics. It makes dialogue impossible. Secondly, and critically, it is time society and politicians realise that there has been - and will continue to be - an internal critique among NGOs about their current role. The writings of Bunker Roy, Aruna Roy, Harsh Sethi and Madhu Kishwar testify to this. The quality of critique is relentless and the nature of reflection profound. One also realises that NGO leaders can be more impervious to criticism than any political leader. We mustn't, however, lose the main point: that NGOs have created a new sphere, a zone that's still fragile, an area where the vulnerable tribal, women, peasant or minority can raise their voice. The NGO has sought to raise their voice. The NGO has sought to protect voices, amplify, represent and preserve them. The NGO has been listener, storyteller and representative of this new voice that party politics and trade unions failed to articulate. This is a major contribution to democracy that no cynicism can destroy. Yet the NGO and this space are doubly vulnerable. Activism, for all its noise and community, is a lonely affair. Second, it is subject to the market for funds, either from government or international agencies. The consumption of activism sometimes determines its style. Third, there's an ambiguity in the relationship between victim and the NGO. They are bound together and both feel that the other owes them an unpayable debt. The activists feel that they have protected the victim and their memories, while the victim feels that activists turn possessive, even monopolistic, given the fund- driven nature of the NGO market. The condition in Gujarat makes this even more difficult. There are activists like Setalvad and Cedric Prakash, Shabnam Hashmi with tacit support from the Congress, and finally the shadows of Action Aid, who, idealistic and courageous, still have to capture the nuances of local politics. They need to negotiate locally with the Congress and the Sangh parivar in Gujarat. What's occurring now is a split between the politics of peace (read: stability) and the politics of justice. One can read this more poetically as the split between the politics of memory and the politics of forgetting. At the local level, these are complex issues, where ideals and the tactics have to forge a compromise. What NGOs do in a hurry is to simplify issues. Chess gets confused for checkers. Achyut Yagnik shrewdly observes that by competing against each other, NGOs have failed to create local coalitions. In fact, they tend to be impatient, with the local and the grassroots levels accusing them of doing little or nothing. Yet, the NGO is right in saying the judiciary at the local level did little; that one had to appeal to the nation to create the space for justice. This inner failure to understand the politics makes the NGO vulnerable to the cynicism of party politics. One must insist of the need for the NGOs' courage and politics. They are irritants, but necessary. To drown them in suspicion or gossip is to destroy the politics of democracy in Gujarat. The NGO channelises voices in the wilderness to communities of protest. The tragedy of Zahira Sheikh's statement seen in tandem with Modi's 'editorial' is that it creates a double vulnerability - the vulnerability of the victim as a witness and the vulnerability of the NGO as listener, community and voice for the vulnerable. No accusation of naiveté or impropriety can rob them of this achievement. Any attempt to do this is foolhardy in the long run. Democracy and Gujarat owe them a debt, a debt they can only repay through critical hospitality. ______ [2] 5th November 2004, Mumbai Letter to the Editor: As an anti-communalist who has been keenly following the developments after the Gujarat genocide of Muslims, I was really distressed first when Zahira Sheikh became a hostile witness in the BEST Bakery case in Vadodara. Her recantation cast the shadow of doubt on all accounts of the genocide in Gujarat. Many like myself, who are not directly involved in the Gujarat 2002 cases felt that the Supreme Court order shifting the trials to Mumbai created a chance to redeem the faith of the citizenry in India's judicial process. The latest turnabout by the 'star witness' Zahira and her bizzare accusations against Teesta Setalvad and the CJP hardly moves one at all. Because the real victims of the BEST bakery attack and burning were not Zahira and her family which owned the bakery. The real victims were their employees. These youth from poverty stricken families, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who find a meagre livelihood by attaching themselves to bakeries, in Gujarat and elsewhere in the country, live and work in miserable conditions usually. In the BEST bakery trials going on in Mumbai, they are the real 'star' witnesses. The decision of the Supreme Court has given them the opportunity to speak out bravely and to bear witness to the attack on themselves and their colleagues who are no more. Most of them have spoken most convincingly in court. Zahira and her family seem concerned mostly about their business; her third recantation has betrayed these workers, above all. We are all hopeful I am sure, that justice will prevail in the end and the wisdom of the court will weigh the sincerity and consistency of the witnesses adequately. sincerely, Ammu Abraham ______ [3] Deccan Herald November 06, 2004 | Editorial COMMUNAL VIOLENCE The new law against communal violence is futile without the political will to back it up Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil has said that the government would soon bring in a model comprehensive law to tackle communal violence in the country. The UPA's Common Minimum Programme had promised a separate comprehensive law on communal violence under which investigations would be carried out only by Central agencies and prosecution by special courts. Mr Patil's statement indicates that the government intends bringing in legislation to contain communal violence. Some have questioned the need for new legislation on the matter. After all, there are several laws to take care of such situations. For instance, Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code provides for punishment for any act, which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, linguistic, or regional groups or castes or communities and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquillity. There is legislation to tackle the inciting of violence and so on. However, the proposed legislation is being described as a step forward. It will be a Central enactment. This means that if a state government does not take steps to check communal violence, the Centre can intervene to do so. Existing legislation to tackle communal violence has failed in the past because of poor implementation and a lack of political will. As evident in Gujarat in 2002, the attack on minorities assumed the immense proportions it did because the BJP government in the state along with the police force was complicit in the violence and refused to take steps to arrest its spread. There is no guarantee that the Central government would necessarily act to check communal violence if the state government is reluctant to do so. The BJP-led government in the centre simply looked the other way in the case of Gujarat. The Congress was in power at the Centre and in Maharashtra in 1992, when communal violence broke out after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The Centre took no action when the Maharashtra government did not act effectively to halt the violence. No communal riot can occur if the government and its law and order machinery are determined to prevent or arrest the spread of such violence and virus The need for keeping the intelligence apparatus in a fine fettle and making effective use of the input for nipping the trouble in the bud is also equally crucial. What is needed is political will to prevent the spread of the communal virus. The proposed new law could end up as just another piece of legislation if the government does not back it with effective implementation. ______ [4] Frontline Nov. 06 - 19, 2004 FROM TRAGEDY TO FARCE Praful Bidwai The BJP is so deeply mired in crisis that it has fallen back on hardline leader L.K. Advani. This proves its second-generation leadership's bankruptcy and fractiousness and is a recipe for further turbulence and disarray inside the Hindutva camp. IF the Bharatiya Janata Party wanted to prove through live action the validity of Marx's observation about history repeating itself "first as tragedy and second as farce", it could not have done it better than by appointing Lal Krishna Advani as its president. During his last avatar as the party's head (in two phases, from 1986 to 1990, and from 1993 to 1998), Advani prepared the ground for, or presided over, some of the grimmest tragedies, including ferocious communal violence, that India has witnessed. Advani's stewardship of the BJP was inseparable from a hardening of the Hindutva line, hate-driven mobilisation around the Ayodhya issue beginning in the mid-1980s, the Ram rath yatra of 1990, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and the orgy of killing that followed. Aggressive, militant Hindutva was also the inspiration behind the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 - Independent India's worst, and uniquely, brutal state-supported butchery of a religious minority. Now, the same man has returned to head the BJP at a time when it stands badly demoralised from, and almost totally unreconciled to, the two electoral batterings it has suffered in five months. The BJP is trying to present this act of panic and despair as a rescue-and-rejuvenation operation. The incongruity of the drums of BJP apparatchiks beating a jubilant beat as the party licks its wounds and its cadres futilely fight total depression will be lost on nobody. In the low comedy now being enacted, the hero himself barely comprehends what has happened to the organisation, which was so confident of returning to power that it did not even bother to make contingency plans for another eventuality. National Democratic Alliance Ministers saw the Lok Sabha elections as but a short interregnum; they kept old arrangements going in anticipation of returning to power. Advani's explanation as to why the NDA lost in 24 out of the 28 States, and why the BJP in particular performed badly virtually everywhere, is simply that the party strayed from its core "ideology" and neglected its karyakartas (grassroots workers), and that there was a "disconnect between good governance and electoral victory". This explanation is question-begging: Why should there be such a "disconnect", even assuming, as BJP leaders later conceded, that the "India Shining" campaign was over-pitched? Does Advani believe that the voter acted irrationally by not recognising the NDA's record of governance and punishing it at the hustings? Why should the NDA be singled out for punishment? More important, the hypothesis detaches governance from the NDA's right-wing policies which became deeply unpopular because of their harmful impact on people's livelihoods and on the quality of democracy. The NDA lost both because its government was insensitive to India's agrarian crisis, growing unemployment and worsening food insecurity, and because it was perceived as Machiavellian and unacceptably manipulative. The BJP was mauled particularly badly in areas where the numerically large middle and lower orders of society rejected it - because it had nothing to offer to them. Underlying this electoral performance is continued contraction of the social base of the BJP and its principal allies - a "structural" cause that will prove far more damaging in the long run than any temporary ups and downs in voting patterns. Such contraction is revealed in the recent Maharashtra Assembly elections and the byelections in key States too. In most byelections - a notable exception being the two Assembly seats in Gujarat - the BJP did badly or indifferently. In Uttar Pradesh, it lost its security deposit in seven out of 11 constituencies. In the bulk of these contests, it finished fourth or fifth. There has been a serious erosion in the BJP's support-base in Uttar Pradesh as the Rajputs, who turned towards it in the 1990s, deserted it. State unit president Kesari Nath Tripathi admits as much. In large parts of the State the BJP's core support has been reduced to the Bania caste, with some Brahmins thrown in. More generally, in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the BJP has lost the appreciable support it once garnered among the Other Backward Classes especially through the Ram Janmabhoomi mobilisation of the 1980s and the "rainmaker" role of former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh at one time. In Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh did for the BJP what nobody else has been able to do: combine the appeal of Mandal (OBC politics) with kamandal (hardcore Hindutva). In Bihar too, the BJP piggybacked on "the forward march of backwards" through the leadership of Sushil Kumar Modi and by allying with the Samata Party (stewarded by OBC leader Nitish Kumar, himself a Kurmi) and the Janata Dal (United) of Sharad Yadav. But that trend is now over. In the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the BJP and its Hindutva ally, Shiv Sena, had a good chance to, and were expected to, better their Lok Sabha performance. (They won 25 seats against the Congress-led Democratic Front's 23.) The D.F. government had a poor record of governance, was marked by corruption, ineptitude and mishandling of drought relief. It changed its Chief Minister midstream, and was scarred by the Telgi scam. The BJP-Sena managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, more than just reversing the ratio of seats won vis-a-vis the D.F. (119 against 146). Their combined vote lagged six percentage points behind the D.F's. This indicates a decisive rejection of the BJP-Sena. They were unable to break the hold of smaller parties and "independents" (mostly Congress-Nationalist Congress Party rebels) who together polled 24 per cent of the vote. An analysis of the vote by social class, caste and gender suggests that the D.F. is better implanted among the poorer layers of the population, and among Dalits, Muslims and Adivasis, although the BJP-Sena does have significant OBC support (The Hindu, October 24). (In Marathwada and Vidharba, the Shiv Sena, for instance, emerged in the early 1990s as a major force by virtue of becoming an OBC foil to the Maratha-dominated Congress-NCP.) However, now this OBC base is eroding. After the Maharashtra debacle, the BJP seems set to enter a period of decline, with few opportunities to recoup its losses. The next round of Assembly elections, due in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana, could result in a further setback to the BJP. In Bihar, Laloo Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress form a formidable combination. The BJP's former ally, the Janata Dal(U), is having serious second thoughts about joining hands with it. Even with an alliance, the BJP camp would find it hard to combat the RJD-Congress alliance. Without one, the BJP will be badly beaten. In Jharkhand, Shibu Soren's "martyrdom" through his resignation and arrest will work against the BJP. And in Haryana, Bansi Lal's re-entry will help the Congress immensely. It seems fairly clear that Om Prakash Chautala will not ally with the BJP. And in the round that follows in 2006, with elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the BJP is not even in the running! The NDA is generally in bad shape throughout the country. Advani's reappointment as BJP president has produced disquiet in the already demoralised, rudderless and increasingly fragmented alliance. The very first signals that Advani sent out at his press conference and the National Council meeting of October 27 were strongly of the back-to-the-Hindutva-basics kind: with an emphasis on "trademark" issues such as a "grand" temple at Ayodhya, "unapologetic" defence of the Sangh ideology, attack on Sonia Gandhi's "foreign origins", warnings against a "demographic invasion by Bangladeshis" and the "baneful" influence of the Left, and criticism of "soft" and corrupt leaders inside the party. Even more telling was Advani's very first trip out of Delhi on taking over as BJP president - to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh headquarters in Nagpur, where he addressed the Vijayadasami rally. Going by reports, Advani and sarsanghchalak Sudarshan discussed organisational matters pertaining to the BJP at length, including appointments to key offices. Advani is clearly steering the BJP towards the RSS - not from a position of strength, but of weakness, following electoral defeats and the inability of the "second-generation" leadership to manage the party's affairs. These leaders do not lack ambition; they lack a social-political base, long-term vision and, above all, political strategy. They are intensely competitive vis-a-vis one another, align themselves with one of the top leaders, and have no compunctions about sabotaging their rivals' plans. Someone like Uma Bharati, for instance, never accepted M. Venkaiah Naidu's authority as party president and openly accused him of trying to scuttle her Tiranga yatra. There is growing rivalry between some of these leaders: for instance, Pramod Mahajan and Arun Jaitley, or Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharati. They all have good PR, and are adept at manipulative politics and shady deal-making like "micro-management" in elections - read, encourage your opponent's opponents to split votes through caste loyalties, and so on. Such tactics worked when the BJP was in the ascendant or had a prior advantage over its rivals. They no longer work. And no BJP leader has a clue as to what might work as a better substitute. During its ascendant phase, the BJP could rely upon its NDA allies and at times use them to limit the RSS's influence and attempt to chart out a semi-autonomous course for itself. For instance, it told that the RSS it could not pursue "divisive" agendas like the Ayodhya temple, Article 370 and a uniform civil code because its allies would not accept that. Now, the RSS-BJP balance of power has changed. The BJP needs the Sangh desperately to rope in karyakartas, garner the larger Parivar's support, and do door-to-door campaigning for votes. Yet, there is no guarantee that the RSS can rein in Vishwa Hindu Parishad firebrands like Ashok Singhal from openly opposing and attacking the BJP. Outside the Parivar, the situation is bleak. Several BJP allies and partners, including the Telugu Desam Party, the Akali Dal, and the J.D.(U), are alarmed at the BJP's turn to the temple. Some NDA parties - the Trinamul Congress, for instance - are in a state of disintegration: Many Trinamul MPs are queuing up to join the Congress. The once-mighty J.D.(U) and TDP have shrunk to a fraction of their size. Even the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is not quite comfortable with the BJP. The NDA probably will not survive another electoral defeat in a major State. Advani is in effect faced with a near-impossible task: of reviving a party which no longer has the support of a social movement (as the Ram Janmabhoomi/anti-Babri Masjid campaign undoubtedly was) or the appeal of a growing force with whom it might be expedient for anti-Congress parties to ally. Six years ago, the BJP was an untested entity with the "novelty factor" in its favour. Now, it has been tried, tested and found wanting. THIS raises a larger question: Did the BJP grow as it did over the last 15 years because it touched something deep in the "soul of India", and because it successfully combined religious identity and politics by forging social coalitions of diverse Hindu groups? Or did it rise meteorically by capitalising on its opponents' weaknesses and gaining from circumstances of others' making, including larger social and political processes? This writer has always been inclined to the second hypothesis. The BJP inadvertently became the greatest beneficiary of the erosion of the Nehruvian paradigm and the long-term decline of the Congress from the mid-1980s onwards. It also gained from the global ascendancy of conservative forces following the end of the Cold War. It could capitalise further on one specific Indian phenomenon of the 1990s - the sway of neoliberal policies, the rise of an aggressive, ambitious, elite unburdened by Enlightenment values, and the growth of belligerent forces of nationalism and identity politics. Now, however, other, more powerful social forces have asserted themselves, rooted among the plebeian layers of the population, for whom the agendas of equity and justice matter more than hollow identity politics based on religion or ethnicity. The Congress is in revival mode and the Centre-Left space in the political spectrum has considerably expanded. All this makes for further erosion of the BJP and greater turmoil within its ranks. It is doubtful if any BJP leader has the analytical equipment or the theoretical framework to comprehend this and to devise appropriate strategies. Advani certainly has shown no signs that he does. He, and his colleagues, are likely to fall back upon hackneyed formulas and snake-oil remedies, especially Hindutva-inspired slogans which evoke little popular response, as the repeated recent failures of attempts to agitate the temple issue have shown. Tired slogans cannot prevent the BJP's long-term decline ______ [5] Gulf News November 6, 2004 BJP SEEKS CONTINUED SUPPORT OF RIGHT-WING GROUP By Virendra Kapoor Last week saw the rare sight of the opposition's seniormost leaders - BJP President L.K. Advani and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee - paying obeisance to junior apparatchiks at the Rashtriya SwayamsewakSangh headquarters. An hour after the meeting at Keshav Kunj and there was no clarity in the ideologically and organisationally amorphous Sangh. The right-wing RSS has no economic philosophy of its own, though given the proximity of a couple of freelance dabblers in power politics, of late it had allowed itself to be identified with the voodoo economics of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. But then, the talk of economic direction was just a cover. The visit was to ensure their support for the BJP so that they could rely on its vast cadres as election cannon-fodder. The duo seem unaware that even the RSS cadres are upset by the BJP's none-too-happy record in power. Though the RSS leaders did not name names, they did talk about the decadent style of living of quite a few BJP leaders. Even ordinary RSS workers were miffed with the BJP for the manner in which its top leaders had allowed their immediate relatives to make money under the benign shadow of the avuncular Vajpayee. Spin doctors are an integral part of the Indian political scene. Thus it was that people close to the saffron 'sadhvi' (ascetic), Uma Bharti, put out the story that her refusal to join the newly-constituted Advani team was due to the appointment of Pramod Mahajan as one of the general secretaries. The truth was that Bharti was keen to go back to Madhya Pradesh as chief minister but the BJP leadership was unwilling to allow it, given her "erratic and temperamental" ways. However Mahajan's acolytes were quick to counter the reports emanating from quarters close to the Bharti camp. They insisted that the real reason why she was not accepting Advani's offer of general secretary was that she was keen on becoming the Madhya Pradesh chief minister. More on the BJP. It seems Varun Gandhi, the one scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family with a sharp intellect and a master's degree, was keen on being made the general secretary of the BJP. Advani was approached since Varun believed that he would be one up on his cousin, Rahul, if he was appointed the general secretary of a national party. Advani did not say no directly. But a couple of emissaries were sent to tell Varun that "we in the BJP do not function that way". His time would come but he will have to serve the party in some other capacity for a couple of years. Varun was found a place in the BJP national executive, though there was no dearth of old-timers who questioned his nomination at an age when he was not old enough to even contest a parliamentary seat. Petty politics can play havoc with one's perspective. On learning that the monthly newspaper bill of Jaswant Singh, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, was about Rs14,000 (Dh1,200) as against only about Rs2,000 (Dh165) for his Congress predecessor, Manmohan Singh, a senior minister in the UPA Government sought to 'plant' the story on a friendly journalist. The idea was to show the BJP leader in poor light until it was pointed out to him that Jaswant Singh could well list his eclectic reading interests and his broad mental horizon by releasing the copies of the itemised bill. Included in the charge are certain foreign publications well known for their cerebral approach to world affairs. The bill is paid by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat. The buzz in the BJP circles is that the right-wing columnist, Swapan Dasgupta, unofficial adviser-cum-speechwriter of Advani, was to be appointed one of the secretaries. But Advani chickened out at the last minute due to the unconcealed hostility of the small but loud Vajpayee establishment which has not been allowed to forget the slight it had first felt when in a rather candid phrase Dasgupta had ascribed in print some of the questionable actions of the NDA Government to the 'dining table caucus' around the then prime minister. Sudheendra Kulkarni, who was in the media set-up of the Vajpayee PMO, has been accommodated as a secretary of the BJP precisely because he has been at pains to keep both the Advani and Vajpayee camps in good humour. ______ [6] Inter Press Service - Nov 5, 2004 TOP HINDU HAWKS MAY FACE TRIAL FOR DEMOLITION OF MOSQUE Ranjit Devraj NEW DELHI, Nov 5 (IPS) - The top leadership of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could stand trial for the December 1992 demolition of the medieval Babri Masjid mosque, which propelled the right wing, pro-Hindu party to national power but deeply polarised the country's two main religious communities - the Hindus and Muslims. A bench of the Allahabad High Court, which has jurisdiction over northern Uttar Pradesh, home of the demolished mosque, issued fresh notices on Tuesday to 21 BJP leaders including former deputy prime minister Lal Krishan Advani - whose party was shockingly defeated in the May parliamentary elections by the avowedly secular Congress party. Another prominent pro-Hindu leader who faces possible trial is Bal Thackeray, supremo of the militant Shiv Sena (Shiva's Army) which partnered the BJP in the keenly fought provincial elections in western Maharashtra state last month but lost to a coalition led by the Congress party in what is seen as a secular wave sweeping through the country. ''This is a major development and a step towards making accountable those responsible for an act of arson which unleashed so much communal trauma on the country,'' Purushottam Agarwal, political analyst and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) told IPS. A special court hearing the cases had dropped proceedings against the BJP leaders in May 21, 2001 amidst charges of political pressure. Although the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) made a revised petition in the following month, it had to await changes at the helm before it could be considered by the courts. This week's notices issued by Justice M.A. Khan of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court, included several former BJP ministers who had led mobs in the demolition of the tri-domed Babri Masjid on Dec 6, 1992. Names in the notices included Murli Manohar Joshi who held the human resources development portfolio in the last government and Uma Bharti, till recently chief minister of central Madhya Pradesh state. Last month, the Lucknow bench, to in order to ascertain culpability, ordered special screenings of videotapes which clearly implicated Advani, Joshi and Bharti in the demolitions. But prominent lawyer and BJP spokesman, Arun Jaitley dismissed the development as a ''procedural matter'' and one to which his party would rebut in a legal response. Jaitley claimed that the fact that the case was still tenable was proof that his party had not interfered with legal proceedings while it was in power, as alleged by its political opponents and human rights activists. Nonetheless, Shabnam Hashmi, who leads the well-known rights group ANHAD was not convinced. ''What can you expect when the leading people accused in the demolition case hold such high posts as that of deputy prime minister?'' he asked. The BJP's discomfiture comes at a time when Advani, its current president, has indicated plans to revive the party's fortunes. He wants the party to return to its fundamentalist roots and is advocating a previously shelved project to build a Hindu temple on the exact spot in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya town where the Babri Masjid mosque once stood. That project has been stymied by a Supreme Court stay order on construction activity. Hindu fundamentalists believe that iconoclastic Muslim invaders built the Babri Masjid over the remains of a Hindu temple that once marked the exact spot where the warrior deity Rama was born. Although there is no historical or archaeological evidence to prove that claim, the BJP campaign to restore the temple, which was personally led by Advani, resulted in huge political dividends accruing to the party. Recent statements by Advani that the BJP would have taken up the temple building issue if it had been returned to power has drawn loud protests from its two main regional allies, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in southern Andhra Pradesh and the Janata Dal United (JDU) in eastern Bihar state. Both the TDP and the JDU have blamed the party's overt pro-Hindu communalism for the utter rout of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the last elections and have threatened to withdraw from the coalition if the BJP persists with its temple-building agenda. ''It is natural for allies like the JDU and the TDP to be alarmed at the prospect of the BJP once again embarking on a project which smacks of political immaturity and is certain to lead to further violence and communal strife,'' said Aggarwal. But the political analyst said the BJP was in serious crisis after its electoral debacles and was now in a delicate situation where it had to balance the interest of its regional allies against those of hard-line Hindu groups which support it like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum. The VHP, which has been in the vanguard of the movement to build a Ram temple at the Ayodhya site has warned the BJP not to take its continued support for granted. Its firebrand leader, Ashok Singhal, one of those who were issued notices on Tuesday by the Lucknow bench, has expressed dissatisfaction with Advani's leadership of the BJP and said he expected a change soon. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid, several provinces were hit by bouts of rioting, the worst of them in the western port city of Mumbai once famed for its cosmopolitan outlook and its prosperous Muslim trading community. But the worst violence related to the Babri Masjid issues occurred in western Gujarat state in 2002 after Hindu pilgrims returning by train from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya clashed with Muslims living around Godhra railway station resulting in a an entire carriage going up in flames and immolating 58 passengers. What followed was an anti-Muslim pogrom in the state that resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people and the destruction of property owned by the community in such cities as Baroda and Ahmedabad. Political analysts like Aggarwal have attributed the electoral rout of the BJP six months ago to the sole failure of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to act in time to contain the pogrom or to sack the man widely held responsible for it, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. (END/2004) ______ [5] The Times of India November 6, 2004 Pass riots film without cuts, HC tells censors MUMBAI: Upholding the freedom of speech and expression, the Bombay high court on Friday directed the censor board to certify the feature film Chand Bujh Gaya , set in the backdrop of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, without any cuts. One of the characters in the film apparently resembled Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. The film, produced by Faaiz Anwar, weaves the story of a young couple-a Hindu boy and a Muslim girl- whose friendship and lives are torn asunder in the riots. Anwar's application for a censor certificate in September 2003 met with a refusal from the board, which feared that the film contained scenes capable of igniting communal passions. But the high court bench comprising Chief Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice D Y Chandrachud held the board's decision as legally unsustainable. The judges said that "no democracy can countenance a lid on suppression of events in society". Revisions and deletions made in the film after the censor board's initial objection to a few scenes did not satisfy the board, which wanted to exercise its scissors once again. P A Sebastian, counsel for the producer who approached the court against the arbitrary and unreasonable demands of the board, said any further deletions would weaken the film and dilute the message of communal harmony. The producer's appeal before the film certification appellate tribunal against the censor board's decision was also unsuccessful. The tribunal felt that the film contained characters which are "easily identifiable with real-life personalities". But after viewing the film, the judges noted that the court had the right to intervene when the constitutional right guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression was being breached. In this case, the censor board was indeed contravening such rights, the court said. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ Sister initiatives : South Asia Counter Information Project : snipurl.com/sacip South Asians Against Nukes: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org Communalism Watch: communalism.blogspot.com/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/act/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/