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South Asia Citizens Wire |14 August, 2005 [1] 'If Bush Is So Acceptable To Manmohan And The Congress, Why Lose Sleep Over Modi?' An Interview with Arundhati Roy (S. Anand) [2] India : Anti Sikh riots of 1984 riots and the endless wait for justice (i) Victory To The Mob - The Nanavati report is utter garbage (Khushwant Singh) (ii) A Misfired Apology (Sangeeta Mall) (iii) ENSAAF's response to Nanavati Commission report and Govt's Action Taken Report [3] Sri Lanka: Condolence Letter following assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar (Madanjeet Singh) [4] Rights and peace activists plan to jointly celebrate Indo-Pak independence at the Wagah-Attari border ______ [1] Outlook Magazine August 22, 2005 Special Issue: Independence Day Special INTERVIEW 'IF BUSH IS SO ACCEPTABLE TO MANMOHAN AND THE CONGRESS, WHY LOSE SLEEP OVER MODI?' The world is a small place. At least it is to the Booker-winning author. She talks on, perhaps, every defining topic of our times. S. Anand interviews Arundhati Roy I was about to buy batteries for my recorder for this interview and was avoiding, as usual, a certain unrepentant brand associated with the Bhopal gas tragedy. Sometimes, such independent choices are not even possible in this world which some say is becoming flat. What are your thoughts? We live in an Age of Spurious Choice. Eveready or Nippo? Coke or Pepsi? Nike or Reebok?-that's the more superficial, consumer end of the problem. Then we have the spurious choice between the so-called "corrupt" public sector and the "efficient" private sector. The real question is, does democracy offer real choice? Not really, not anymore. In the recent US elections, was the choice between Bush and Kerry a real choice? Was the choice between Blair and his counterpart in the Conservative Party a real choice? For the Indian poor, has the choice between the Congress and the BJP been a real choice? They are all apparent choices accompanied by a kind of noisy theatre which conceals the fact that all these apparently warring parties share an almost complete consensus. They just exchange slogans depending on whether they're in the opposition or in the government. So there's a lack of choice despite political democracy? The last Lok Sabha election was fundamentally about two issues: the economy and right-wing Hindu nationalism. I would say that in most rural areas, issues of economy were at the forefront of the voter's mind. During the countdown, the campaign rhetoric of the Congress was about marginalising disinvestment, taking a new look at privatisation, taking a new look at 'corporate globalisation'? But as soon as it won, even before they took office, senior Congress leaders had begun reassuring the market that it would not make any radical change. Look at what's happening now. Privatisation and corporatisation are proceeding APACE. Meanwhile, by arbitrarily adjusting the poverty line, by redefining what constitutes poverty, the Planning Commission drastically reduces the official number of poor people to 27 per cent of the population. Half of India's rural population has a food energy intake below the average of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet one of the first things finance minister P. Chidambaram does is to slash the rural development budget to the lowest it has ever been! The one ray of hope was the Rural Employment Guarantee Act. But I'm not at all sure it will go through. Is it just smoke and mirrors, a game of Good Cop/Bad Cop that trades on the almost saintly status of Sonia Gandhi and the credibility of some extraordinary people in the National Advisory Council in order to garner the Congress some brownie points? PM Manmohan Singh, who lost a Lok Sabha poll from the posh South Delhi constituency in 1999, is called a decent, incorruptible statesman. Is he able to carry off a neo-liberal agenda because of this non-politician halo? I don't know why technocrats like President Kalam and this new breed of bureaucrat/politician seem to have the middle class and the mass media in their thrall. Maybe because they have power without being frayed at the edges by real political engagement. Maybe because they are the architects of the process separating the Economy from Politics-and thereby keeping power where they think it really belongs, with the elite.Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P.Chidambaram have fused into the Holy Trinity of neo-liberalism.Their vision of the New India has been fashioned at the altar of the world's cathedrals: Oxford, Harvard Business School, the World Bank and the IMF.They are the regional head office of the Washington Consensus.They are part of a powerful network of politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, consultants, bankers, businessmen and retired judges who trade jobs, contracts, consultancies and vitally-contacts.Right now, for example, there's a lot in the news about the scandalous Enron contract being "re-negotiated" for the third time-the contract that resulted in MSEB having to pay Enron millions of dollars not to produce electricity. The renegotiation is all very secret (like the initial Enron negotiation). The nodal ministry involved in the re-re-negotiation is the finance ministry headed by P. Chidambaram who, until the day he became finance minister, was Enron's lawyer. The other members on the committee are Montek Ahluwalia and Sharad Pawar-the two who were instrumental in signing the disastrous contract in the first place. It's like asking an accused in a criminal case to investigate the crimes he's been accused of. Do people in rural India view these technocrats and bureaucrat-politicians differently? A few years ago (when Manmohan Singh was between jobs), I was in Raipur at a meeting of iron ore workers from the neighbouring districts. I'll never forget a young Hindi poet who read a poem, called Manmohan Singh kya kar raha hai aaj-kal? (What's Manmohan Singh doing these days?). The anger in the poem was so acute, so shocking even to me. All the more so because it was aimed at such a gentle, soft-spoken man. The first two lines were: Manmohan Singh kya kar raha hai aaj-kal/Vish kya karta hai khoon mein utarne ke baad. (What does poison do once it has entered the bloodstream?) At the time, I came away disturbed and shaken.... But today? The thing is, rural India is in real distress-and many do link their distress to Manmohan Singh's reforms when he was finance minister in the early '90s. What did you make of the PM's Oxford address? Timing is everything, it was an unambiguous political statement. Right now, Western powers and several right-wing academics, like the historian Niall Ferguson, have embarked on a project of valorising Imperialism. This is the argument they use to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and all the ones still to come. At this point in history, for the Indian PM to publicly and officially declare himself an apologist for the British Empire is pretty devastating. After a few cautious caveats in his speech, Manmohan Singh thanked British Imperialism for everything India is today. Ironically, at the top of his list was all the machinery of repression put in place by a colonial regime-the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police, Rule of Law. He then went on to express gratitude for the gift of the English language-the language that separates India's elite from its fellow countrymen and binds its imagination to the western world. Macaulay couldn't have asked for a more dedicated disciple. The only people who might have a valid reason to view the British Empire with less anger than the rest of us are Dalits. Since to the white man all of us were just natives, Dalits were not especially singled out for the bestial treatment meted out to them by caste Hindus. But somehow, I can't imagine Manmohan Singh bringing a Dalit perspective to colonialism while receiving an honorary PhD in Oxford. You once said that on several issues-Babri, N-bombs, big dams, privatisation-the Congress sowed and the BJP swept in to reap a hideous harvest. With the Congress at the helm, what has fundamentally changed? I'll be honest. When the BJP lost the elections, in spite of my intellectual analysis of the situation that nothing was going to change economically, I certainly feel less hunted.This is a totally selfish point.I think this incredible communal churning has ceased. The BJP has a far more vicious way of implementing the same policies. I don't think we can deny that. What is the future of the BJP? It's different in the Centre and the states (like Rajasthan, Gujarat and MP).If you look at the number of seats it won and its voteshare, it does not indicate that it should have fallen apart like it has. It seems to have been held together by the glue of power. And when that went, it fell apart. I am not mourning this. They seem to have exhausted this Ramjanmabhoomi agenda totally. But we also need to have a strong Opposition in this country.... The BJP doesn't seem to have the time for that. But the Left thinks it is playing opposition. I think the Communist parties run the risk of making themselves ridiculous by contesting everything initially and then caving in eventually. They are playing the role of a 'virtual opposition'. This Left-Congress combine could well become the secular version of the parivar. All the arguments are reduced to being family squabbles. What does it mean to be independent today? Has Independence Day become a mere annual ritual? As corporatisation and privatisation proceed APACE and more and more people are rendered jobless, homeless, and have no access to natural resources, anger and unrest will build. The central function of the State will increasingly be to oversee the repression of an unemployed, dispossessed population on behalf of the corporates. The State will have to evolve into an elaborate tyranny which retains all the rhetoric of democracy. Look at what's happening in Orissa-the new crucible of corporate globalisation. Multinational mining companies-Sterlite, Vedanta, Alcan-are devastating Orissa's hills and forests for bauxite. They say Kashmir is like Palestine. True. But Orissa is getting there too. Orissa is a police state now. For some years now, there has been a resilient, feisty, anti-mining movement in Kashipur. You ask what independence means to most Indians-visit Kuchaipadar, the extraordinary little Adivasi village at the heart of the Kashipur struggle, and you will have your answer. Kuchaipadar is surrounded by police. People cannot move from one village to the next. Cannot hold meetings, rallies or protests. Over the last two years, they have been shot, beaten, lathicharged, jailed and several have been killed. Last year, on Independence Day, Kuchaipadar's villagers hoisted a black flag. That's what independence means to them. Oh, and who's on the board of directors of Vedanta, one of the biggest mining companies prospecting in Orissa? P. Chidambaram, who resigned on the day he was appointed FM; David Gore-Booth, former UK high commissioner in India; Naresh Chandra, former cabinet secretary and ex-Indian ambassador to the US, and former chairman of the Foreign Investment Promotion Bureau. It's a bedroom farce with blood on the tracks. There's been an outsourcing boom. The Indian IT and IT-enabled services industry business touched $17.2 billion in 2004-05. Fifty per cent of Fortune 500 companies are clients of Indian IT firms. Surely, some people are benefiting? Of course, some people benefit. Otherwise there wouldn't be the kind of vocal support that it does have among sections of the people and the national media.The outsourcing industry has created thousands of jobs, mostly in urban areas, and in India that small percentage amounts to a huge number of people.But in return, there is a larger section that gets disempowered, dispossessed.The point, as always, is: who pays, who profits? This section that benefits is full of the joy of having cars, mobile phones, lifestyles that they could not even have dreamt of a few years ago.They control the media, television, they make the movies, they fund them, act in them, distribute them. They form a little universe of their own, sending each other signals of light. For the rest, the darkness deepens. However, be assured: if at any point outsourcing begins to cost America, if it begins to affect their population seriously, outsourcing operations will be shut down in a flash.We live on sufferance. And that's not a safe place to build a home. While the UPA government initially promised to ensure some kind of affirmative action in the private sector, 21 leading industrialists led by Ratan Tata have pronounced the entire generation of Dalit/ tribal people with degrees from Indian institutions "unemployable". They have decided to create a new generation of Dalits/Adivasis through "skill upgradation". When it appears that Dalits and other backward classes are getting represented suddenly in our democracy, people in power will find ways of undermining this process. That's what privatisation and corporatisation is about. Dalits, Adivasis and other dispossessed people should realise that they can't bank on the politics of compassion. Because there is none left, and they have no leverage on Ratan Tata. Dalit spokespersons such as Chandrabhan Prasad have been arguing that if US corporates can employ blacks under the policy of diversity, can't Ford and GE do similar social engineering here? It was not an act of compassion on the part of Ford and GE. At the time in the US, the black civil rights movement was an international force to be reckoned with. So some negotiation had to happen. Power concedes nothing unless it is forced to. No one knew that better than Ambedkar. It was at the centre of his brilliant demolition of Gandhi's argument in 'Annihilation of Caste'. Right now, the Dalits have no leverage. Today, the Dalit movement is fractured and scattered. We need a strong Dalit movement. Unfortunately, it is not a movement that anyone has to negotiate with, least of all India Inc. The UN this April appointed two special rapporteurs to investigate and find solutions for caste-based discrimination in India. Can something come out of this internationalisation of the Dalit issue? The UN is such a shaky organisation. It has not been able to bring any kind of authority to international issues of late, as we have seen from what happened in Iraq. The UN was used to disarm Iraq before the attack, and then was just kicked aside. Maybe their (the UN rapporteurs') coming is a good thing. But I'll believe it when I see something really happening. Because today India is a market. All the major corporations are looking at India with greedy, greedy little eyes. Whether it is the genocide that took place in Gujarat, or whether it is everyday discrimination against Dalits, I don't see any of this being allowed to come in the way of Thomas Friedman's dreamland project. The treatment of Dalits in India is by no means any less grotesque than the treatment of women by the Taliban. But is any of the violence against Dalits in the Indian or international mainstream press? But if you are a willing and open market, will they bomb the caste system out of India, like they wanted to bomb feminism into Afghanistan? I am not a believer in these UN-driven institutional therapies. You have to wage your struggles, you have to put your foot in the door. That brings us to Friedman's dreamland, New Gurgaon, an outsourcing hub.The Congress harped on the 'aam aadmi' before the election.But the aam aadmi got pulped in Gurgaon.What lessons do we learn? Unfortunately, underpaid as they are, and humiliated as they have been, the Honda workers are not aam aadmi. They're supposed to be the real beneficiaries of globalisation.At least they have work. Far from the glare of TV cameras, the aam aadmi has been facing not just the lathi, but also goli-in Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala.The atrocity on the Honda workers happened at the heart of corporate paradise. In Thomas Friedman land. Trouble broke out in the bubble.Gurgaon is one of three New Economic Zones where existing labour laws have never really applied.In the race to the bottom-cheaper labour, longer hours, more 'efficiency'-the company's labour contractors, like all labour contractors, hired 'trainees' and paid them stipends, not salaries. When their 'training' was through, they fired them in order to hire more 'trainees'. The TV coverage cuts both ways-it can either frighten people or enrage them. I think the police was given instructions to be so brutal and repressive in order to make an example of workers so that others would not dare to do this again anywhere. But the uproar that has ensued and the fact that Honda has been forced to reinstate those who it sacked could mean that workers realise that when they act together they do become a force to reckon with. Doesn't the Indian elite and the middle class conveniently vent its anger on the political class and yet align with the state on most issues? This is again about the hollowing out of democracy. Even as we sell our credentials on the international stage as a democracy, even if there's democracy at the level of panchayati raj or Laloo and Mayawati, there's a certain amount of fear in the Indian elite that the underclasses are being elected. How do you undermine that? You undermine it by corporatisation, by creating a situation in which the politicians may hold the theatre and the audience, but the real economic power has shifted from their hands. The elite in Pakistan has seen so little democracy. So, strangely enough, they know the difference between themselves and the state. Najam Sethi can be rounded up, beaten up and put in jail. People tell me: if you had been in Pakistan, you would have been shot by now. But whoever comes to power (in India), the chances of that happening to N. Ram or Vinod Mehta are still quite remote. The Indian elite is fused with the state in many ways. We think like the state. We're all wannabe policymakers. No one's just a citizen. What do you think of India's new role as a US ally? The Indian government should seriously study the history and fate of former and present US allies-the world is littered with the carcasses of their people. Only a few years ago, they were shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and a little before that they were doing it with the mujahideen. Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Chile, other countries in Latin America and Africa. Look what happened to Argentina. And the former USSR. We are tying ourselves into an intricate economic and strategic web. Once we're in, there's no out. We're in the belly of the beast. Once you're there, you eat predigested pap. You behave. You do what you're told, buy what you're sold. If you disobey, you're in trouble. Already, you can see the signs. Condoleezza Rice says the oil pipeline deal with Iran will be a bad idea. Manmohan, on cue, promptly declares to the Washington Post that he thinks it will be very hard to raise money for the project. What's that supposed to mean? But experts say the nuclear deal with the US puts India in a 'win-win' situation. If a swordfish signs a deal with a crocodile, can it be a win-win deal? Right now, it's strategically important for the US to allow us to believe our own publicity about being a superpower. India is not a superpower.It's just super-poor. It's not enough to discuss the nuclear 'deal' as an issue about nuclear energy and nuclear bombs-though that's important too.Where are the studies that show that the right kind of energy for India is nuclear energy? Have we seriously explored alternative forms of energy? Why has the debate been posited as one solely between nuclear energy and fossil fuels? What are the pros and cons of nuclear energy versus energy from fossil fuels? Why has there been no public debate about these things? But the real issue is not about whether India has escaped nuclear isolation.It's not about whether the government has capped its nuclear programme. It's about whether it has capped its imagination. It's about whether it has restricted its room to manoeuvre politically, economically and morally. Has it imbricated itself intimately into an embrace it can never escape? But both Gen Musharraf and Manmohan Singh want to be Bushies. We have two begums competing for the attention of Sheikh Bush. Both of them are fighting for attention and are jealous of each other. Edward Said would have perhaps approved of this interesting Orientalist metaphor. But seriously, what should be the terms of the nuclear debate? Actually, it is Orientalist and sexist. I shouldn't have said it...anyway. For all these experts appearing to debate and disagree on the nuclear issue, these are matters of state and foreign policy which are not to be debated in terms of morality and principles, because that's not how foreign policy works. It's about 'strategy'. I know that. But I don't want to think like the state. As a human being, I ask: is it alright for our prime minister, on behalf of all of us, to dine at the high table and wave from the balcony arm-in-arm with a liar and a butcher called President George Bush? A man who has lied about WMDs in Iraq, whose lies have been exposed, whose military cowardly killed 1,00,000 Iraqis after getting the UN to disarm Iraq, and killed 25,000 more subsequently? It's worth keeping in mind that collaboration in wars against sovereign nations is a war crime. And also, if Bush is so acceptable to them (the Congress), why lose sleep over Modi, our own overseer of mass murder? We are told it's a strategic alliance with the US, and morality doesn't apply. But why is it that every time a government goes to war, the only reasons offered are moral reasons? "To spread democracy, freedom, feminism, to rid the world of evil-doers?" Why is it that states expect morality of us, but we as individuals can't debate an issue in moral terms? I don't understand. You've travelled in Kashmir... It's impossible to pronounce knowledgeably on Kashmir after just a few short trips. But some things are not a mystery. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives in this conflict. Both Pakistan and India have played a horrible, venal role in Kashmir. But among ordinary Kashmiri people, Pakistan still remains an unknown entity-and for that reason it's become an attractive idea, an ideal even, conflated by many with the yearning for 'azaadi'. It's ironic that a country that is a military dictatorship should be associated with the notion of liberation. The ugly reality of Pakistan is not something that most Kashmiris have experienced.The reality of India, however, to every ordinary Kashmiri, is an ugly, vicious reality they encounter every day, every ten steps at every checkpost, during every humiliating search.And so India stands morally isolated-it has completely lost the confidence of ordinary people.According to the Indian army, there are never at any time more than 3,000-4,000 militants operating in the Valley. But there are between 5,00,000-8,00,000 Indian soldiers there.An armed soldier for every 10-15 people. By way of comparison, there are 1,60,000 US soldiers in Iraq.Clearly, the Indian army is not in Kashmir to control militants, it is there only to control the Kashmiri people. It is an army of occupation the Indian media-and here I include the film industry-has played a pretty unforgivable part in. In totally misrepresenting the truth of what's really going on. How can we even talk of 'solutions' when we simply deny the reality? State repression, religious fundamentalism and corporate globalisation seem interconnected. But hasn't resistance to this nexus become symbolic, tokenist, NGO-ised and even a career for some professionals, including some would say for you? It's true.Sometimes NGOs wreck real political resistance more effectively than outright repression does. And yes, it could be argued that I'm yet another commodity on the shelves of the Empire's supermarket, along with Chinese cabbages and freeze-dried prawns. Buy Roy, get two human rights free! But between the NGOs and Al Qaeda-frankly, I'm with the many millions who are looking for the Third Way. And the prognosis for the War on Terror? Clearly, it's spreading. Empire is overstretched. The Iraqis have actually managed to mire the US army in what looks like endless, bloody combat. More and more US soldiers are refusing to fight. More and more young people are refusing to join the army. Manpower in the armed forces is becoming a real problem. In a recent article, the remarkable un-embedded journalist Dahr Jamail interviews several American marines who served in Iraq. Asked what he would do if he met Bush, one of them says: "It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor." It's for this reason that the US is looking for allies-preferably low-cost allies with low-cost lives. Because the media is completely controlled, no real news makes it out of Iraq. But last month, I was on the jury of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. We heard 54 horrifying testimonies about what is going on there, including from Iraqis who had risked their lives to make it to the tribunal. The world knows only a fraction of what's going on. The anger emanating out of Iraq and Afghanistan is spreading wider and wider.... It's a deep, uncontrollable rage that you cannot put a PR spin on. America isn't going to win this war. It has been eight years since 'The God of Small Things'. Is there a second novel in you or has too much politics meant the end of Arundhati Roy's imagination? You have also been talking of disengaging from political writing? All writing is political. Fiction is especially subversive. But it's time for me to change gear. I am sort of up for anything right now, which is exciting. Let's see what happens. Any positive thoughts to end this dark conversation? Let me share a sweet little thing. I saw a news report about two Adivasi girls getting married to each other. And the whole village was saying: if that's what they want, it's fine. They had this ceremony, with all the rituals and customs, and they let them get married. That's a moment of magic. It reveals their level of modernity, of their sophistication. Of their beauty. ______ [2] [ India : Anti Sikh riots of 1984 riots and the endless wait for justice ] (i) Outlook Magazine Aug 22, 2005 VICTORY TO THE MOB THE NANAVATI REPORT IS UTTER GARBAGE. ALL THE KILLERS ARE ROAMING FREELY. by Khushwant Singh I have only two words for Justice G.T. Nanavati's inquiry report on the butchery of Sikhs 21 years ago: utter garbage. I have the report in hand, all 349 pages, plus the Action Taken Report presented by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government in Parliament on August 8. I thought it would take a whole day or two to go through it. It took only a couple of hours because it is largely based on what transpired in zones of different police stations and long lists of names which meant nothing to me. There are broad hints about the involvement of Congress leaders like H.K.L. Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler, Dharam Dass Shastri and Sajjan Kumar. He gives them the benefit of the doubt and suggests yet another inquiry commission to look into the charges against them. Yet another commission? For God's sake, is he serious? To say the least, I was deeply disappointed with the whole thing. But the game of shirking responsibility was to attain higher levels! First, the government took its own sweet time to put the report on the table of the House, waiting till the last day allotted to it for doing so. Union home minister Shivraj Patil had assured the House when the report had been submitted to him six months ago that the government had nothing to hide. However, he hid it till he could hide it no more. That shows the government's mala fide intent in the whole business. Even the Action Taken Report makes sorry reading. Most of it is aimed at the policemen now retired from service and hence no longer liable for disciplinary action. Any wonder why, despite monetary compensation, the sense of outrage among families of victims has not diminished by the passage of years. About 21 years ago, northern India down to Karnataka witnessed a bloodbath the likes of which the country had not experienced since Independence nor after. In Delhi, over 3,000 Sikhs were murdered, their wives and daughters gangraped, their properties looted, 72 gurudwaras burnt down. The all-India total of casualties was close to 10,000, the loss of property over thousands of crores. What triggered off the holocaust was the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. On the morning of October 31, 1984, she was assassinated by two of her Sikh security guards. As the news of her death spread, rampaging mobs of Hindus shouting khoon ka badla khoon se lenge (we will avenge blood with blood), armed with cans of petrol, matchboxes and lathis set upon Sikhs they met on the roads-easily identifiable because of their distinct appearance-and set them on fire. Sikh-owned shops and homes were attacked and looted. Most of this mayhem and murder took place in Congress-ruled states. Word had gone round, "Teach the Sikhs a lesson"; the police was instructed not to intervene. It was then people realised how much ill-will Sikhs had earned because of the hate-filled utterances of Bhindranwale against Hindus and the years of killings carried out by his hoodlums in Punjab. No Sikh leader, neither Congress nor Akali, had raised his voice in protest. Consequently, when Mrs Gandhi ordered the army to enter the Golden Temple to get Bhindranwale dead or alive, no Hindu condemned the action as unwarranted. Sikhs were deeply hurt by Operation Blue Star and ultimately two of them decided to murder Mrs Gandhi. What followed was largely condoned by Hindus and the Hindu-owned media. Girilal Jain, editor of the Times of India, wrote that Sikhs should have been aware of what lay in store for them. N.C. Menon, editor of the Hindustan Times, wrote that they had "clawed their way to prosperity" and deserved what they got. There were few people left to share their pain. It must be acknowledged that some leaders of the Sangh parivar and the RSS, including A.B.Vajpayee, went out of their way to help the Sikhs.So did men like Ram Jethmalani, Soli Sorabjee and a few others. It was evident that the central government had abdicated its authority. President Giani Zail Singh, who returned from a foreign tour, called at the AIIMS and after paying homage to Mrs Gandhi's body returned to Rashtrapati Bhavan. His car was stoned on its way. Thereafter, he refused to entertain phone calls. When I rang him up for help as a mob was reported to be on its way to my flat, his secretary Tarlochan Singh (now an MP and chairman of the Minorities Commission) told me that Gianiji was of the opinion that I should move into the house of a Hindu friend. No more. And when a group led by I.K. Gujral and General J.S. Arora and Patwant Singh muscled their way into Rashtrapati Bhavan, he assured them he was doing everything he could. He had done the same kind of thing earlier: Operation Blue Star took place without his knowing anything about it till he learnt about it from the media. Then he made noises in strict privacy but did not resign. Nor did he when fellow Sikhs were being butchered. He brought the prestige of the President of the Republic to an all-time low. Rajiv Gandhi, who flew in from Calcutta with his cousin and confidant Arun Nehru, was quickly sworn in as prime minister by Zail Singh without consulting other ministers or chief ministers of states. Rajiv was busy receiving foreign dignitaries coming to attend his mother's funeral. Days later, in his first public speech, he exonerated the murderers: "When a big tree falls, the earth beneath it is bound to shake." He meant to take no action in the matter and retained men named as leaders of mobs in his cabinet. Home minister Narasimha Rao did not stir out of his house. When a few eminent Sikhs approached him, he listened to them in studied silence. He remained, as he always was, the paradigm of masterly inactivity. With the three men at the top refusing to do their duty, little could be expected from the Lt Governor of Delhi or the police commissioner. Section 144 of the ipc, forbidding gatherings of more than five people, was not promulgated or enforced; no curfew was imposed, no shoot-at-sight order given. A unit of the army was brought in from Meerut but when it was discovered that they were Sikhs, it was ordered to stay in the cantonment and not meddle with the civic unrest. The only word I could think of using for the way the authorities carried out its duties? Downright disgusting. It was like spitting in the face of all democratic institutions. However, there were citizens' organisations which refused to allow a crime of this magnitude to go uninvestigated and unpunished. Leading them were Dr Rajni Kothari and Justice (retd) V.M. Tarkunde. Kothari's report, Who Are the Guilty, named men like H.K.L. Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, Dharam Dass Shastri-all MPs and leaders of the Delhi municipality amongst leaders of goonda gangs. None of those named took these men or organisations to court for criminal libel. When Jagdish Tytler claimed that none of the commissions of inquiry implicated him in the anti-Sikh violence, he was lying. You can see it in the smirk on his satanic face. Only sarkari commissions let him off the hook. More important than Kothari and Tarkunde's findings were those of the non-official commission of inquiry set up under retired chief justice of the Supreme Court, S.M. Sikri. Comprising retired ambassadors, governors and senior civil servants (none of them a Sikh), the commission castigated the government in no uncertain terms. The government could not ignore its verdict.Ultimately, Rajiv Gandhi took the Sikh problem in his own hands. He appointed Arjun Singh governor of Punjab to make contacts with Akali leaders in jails.They were released in small batches to create a favourable atmosphere.Secret negotiations with Sant Harchand Singh Longowal were started. Zail Singh, Buta Singh and others were kept in the dark. On July 24, 1985, the Rajiv-Longowal Accord was signed. Amongst other items, it provided for an inquiry commission into the incidents of violence of November 1984. Justice Ranganath Mishra of the Supreme Court was appointed as a one-man commission. 'Operation Whitewash' had begun. Before Mishra was half-way through, the panel of lawyers representing victims of the holocaust led by Soli Sorabjee expressed its lack of confidence in the learned judge's impartiality and withdrew from the commission. Mishra went ahead and submitted his findings to the government. As expected, he held the Lt Governor and the police commissioner of Delhi guilty of dereliction of duty. It must have occurred to him that neither of the two could have acted the way they did without the instructions of higher-ups, including the prime minister or someone acting on his behalf or the home minister. I doubt if Mishra can look at his own face in a mirror. I don't think Rajiv Gandhi was himself a party to the anti-Sikh pogrom. If he was guilty of anything, it was allowing it to go on for two days and nights till his mother's funeral was over. Behind it all was his eminence grise who sent out the message: "Teach the Sikhs a lesson". No commission of inquiry, official or non-official, has looked into the role of this sinister character, although he is still very much alive and around in Delhi's political circuit. Nor, unfortunately, can I look into it at this stage. After the Mishra Commission, nine others were instituted by the government. Their terms of reference were restricted. Nothing much came out of their findings as most of them focused on the shortcomings of the Delhi police in handling the crisis. Resentment against the government continued to simmer. Ultimately, in May 2000, the government set up yet another commission of inquiry under Justice G.T. Nanavati. He was to submit his report in six months. At the leisurely pace he heard evidence tendered, it took him five years to do so. I did not expect very much from him. But H.S. Phoolka, who had taken charge of presenting victims' grievances, persuaded me to file an affidavit and appear before him. I did so, but the way the inquiry commission functioned didn't inspire much confidence. It was less like a court dealing with criminal charges and more like a tea party with lawyers on both sides exchanging pleasantries. I told the commission what I had seen with my own eyes taking place around where I live: burning of Sikh-owned taxi cabs and the desecration of a gurudwara behind my flat, looting of Sikh-owned shops in Khan Market-all in full view of dozens of policemen armed with lathis lined along the road but doing nothing. I also told him of my futile attempts to get President Zail Singh on the phone. There is no doubt about it: the November 1984 anti-Sikh violence will remain a blot on the face of our country for times to come. No one will take the findings of these sarkari commissions of inquiry seriously. It will be left to historians to chronicle events that led to this tragedy and the miscarriage of justice that followed. A few salutary lessons that the experience has taught us should be kept in mind by our leaders.The most important is to understand that crimes unpunished breed criminals.Another equally important thing to bear in mind is that the State must never abdicate its monopoly of punishing criminals, if it overlooks its duty or delays dispensing justice beyond limits of endurance, it encourages aggrieved parties to take the law in their own hands and settle scores with those who wronged them.If we do not learn these lessons now, we will have more holocausts in the years to come. o o o o (ii) www.sacw.net August 13, 2005 INDIA: A MISFIRED APOLOGY by Sangeeta Mall Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech in the Rajya Sabha on August 11, 2005, apologizing for the trauma caused to the Sikhs in 1984 is late by about 21 years. The apology was required on November 5, 1984, when the massacre of the Sikhs abated somewhat, rather than now, when people have other and fresher issues to agonise over. At the very least it should have been delivered six months ago, when the Nanavati Commission submitted its report. If there is anything the Prime Minister should apologise for now, it is the fact that his party and his government pulled out all stops to prevent the report from being tabled at all, and did so at absolutely the last moment when there was no other choice left. We must thank the Prime Minister for removing at least the Union Minister for NRI Affairs, Mr. Jagdish Tytler, a man with an infamous record that goes back to the hooligan days of Sanjay Gandhi, from the Government. We must also thank him for his speech in Parliament, albeit a shamelessly belated one, which reflects a genuine sense of anguish. But we, the citizens of India, must point out to Dr. Manamohan Singh why his speech is all wrong [. .. ] . http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/SangeetaMall13082005.html o o o o >Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 13:52:02 -0700 >Subject: ENSAAF Update: Response to 1984 Report & Other News >From: Ensaaf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >August 8, 2005 > >GOVERNMENT RELEASES REPORT by >COMMISSION on 1984 MASSACRES > >(New Delhi, India) The Indian government tabled the 339-page >final report of the Nanavati Commission, established to investigate >the 1984 pogroms of Sikhs. The government also tabled its Action >Taken Report, in which it culled and responded to ten recommendations >from the Commission's report. Please read ENSAAF's response at: >http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jaskaran/2005/08/08#a475 . > >Twenty-one years after the brutal massacres of Sikhs, organized by >state and political institutions such as the Congress Party and Delhi >Police, survivors are left grasping at fleeting dreams of justice. Once >again, through yet another commission, the government has strengthened >impunity for perpetrators of mass murder and stonewalled justice. >Hundreds of victims took to the streets in New Delhi in protest. Gujjar >Singh, who lost his father in the violence, said: "The mob entered our >home in east Delhi and dragged my father out and cut him to pieces.... >You cannot understand how I have been living since then....Just give us >justice." > >Other News: > >* Read a review of ENSAAF's report Twenty Years of Impunity, >published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal at >http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss18/marwaha.shtml > >* Outlook India has published a detailed story on the Punjab >illegal cremations matter pending before the Indian National Human Rights Commission at: http://tinyurl.com/a988f ______ [3] Condolence Letter following assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar 13 Aug 2005 I am deeply shocked and grieved at the dastardly assassination of Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, chairman of the Sri lankan chapter of South Asia Foundation; from its very inception, he played a leading role in promoting regional cooperation and peace in South Asia. His death is an irreparable loss to SAF and extremely painful to me personally as he was a friend, guide and advisor. On behalf of all the SAF chairpersons, I convey with a heavy heart our heartfelt condolences to Mrs. Suganthi Kadirgamar and their family. Madanjeet Singh Founder, South Asia Foundation UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador ______ [4] Daily Times August 14, 2005 JAC plans joint Indo-Pak celebrations LAHORE: The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Peoples Rights, an alliance of over 30 civil-society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and Indian human rights and peace activists plan to jointly celebrate Indo-Pak independence at the Wagah-Attari border on August 14. The caravan led by JAC Convenor Shah Taj Qizilbash. staff report _____ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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/