SACW | 2 June 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 2 June,  2005

[1] Nepal: Arrest this drift into obscurantism (CK Lal)
[2] Pakistan:
     - Desecrating Lahore's historic memory (Editorial, Daily Times)
     - Sheer madness (Editorial, Dawn)
[3] India: Briefing on the Consultation on 
Communal Violence (Suppression) Bill, 2005
[4]  Announcements: Events and Publications
(i) Meeting to Remember Moneeka Misra Tanvir (New Delhi, 4 June 2005)
(ii) Course on health and human rights (Bombay, July 4-15, 2005)
(iii)  July 2005 Issue of Himal is out
(iv) Conference - Negotiating ethnicity in 
Nepal's past and present (Kathmandu, September 12 
- 14, 2005)


--------------


[1]



Nepali Times
27 May - 2 June 2005

ARREST THIS DRIFT INTO OBSCURANTISM
Statecraft can't be divinely pre-ordained in this day and age

by CK Lal

Last week, an honorary ADC to the king made a 
very startling statement. Brigadier General 
Bharat Keshar Simha asserted from a public forum 
that a Hindu king had no need to follow a 
constitution as he was bound by higher norms of 
his religion.

Gen Simha has a reputation of being somewhat of a 
gadfly, hence the usually vociferous civil 
society of Kathmandu chose to ignore his remark. 
But in an age when even the gods have to conform 
to the laws of the land, there seems to be method 
in the madness of those bent on transforming a 
nominal Hindu kingdom into an obscurantist regime.

Since King Gyanendra was declared 'the emperor of 
the world's Hindus' in September 2002 all kinds 
of Indian godmen have given their stamp of 
approval to his political moves. Despite extreme 
sensitivity to interference in our internal 
affairs whenever the subject is human rights and 
democracy, the royal regime extolled this 
endorsement by communal Indian politicos like 
Yogi Adityanath and Ashok Singhal. These are 
views that even the BJP finds too radical. The 
president of the World Hindu Federation in Nepal 
accepting sermons of sundry holy men from across 
the southern border on divinely ordained 
statecraft is extremely worrisome.

We need to be worried about the RSS-brand of 
Hindutva that resulted in the destruction of the 
Babri Mosque and the Gujarat pogroms. Despite an 
overwhelming proportion of our population being 
Hindus, Nepal is a country of tremendous racial, 
religious, linguistic, cultural, and ethnic 
diversity. Religious fundamentalism, political 
authoritarianism and social racism are 
interrelated. People with democratic aspirations 
have to begin by separating their private 
beliefs, which can be religious, and public 
behaviour that has to be secular.

Intolerance is a by-product of politicised 
religion, the hallmark of Hindutva 
fundamentalism. For Nepal, further deepening of 
existing fissures is sure to be catastrophic. If 
accident of birth or adoption of faith be the 
arbitrator of fate, nothing can stop a 'low-born' 
or a non-believer from rebellion.

We lay grandiose claims to over 700 years of 
religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence. 
But as the September riots last year in the wake 
of killing of innocent Nepalis in Iraq showed, 
our veil of urbanity is thin. There is great risk 
of inflaming the passions of a seething urban 
population. Already in the grips of a senseless 
class-war, we can't afford to open the far more 
dangerous front of a communal flare up.

Once let loose, it is a genie that won't easily 
go back into the bottle. And religious 
fundamentalism in any form anywhere is inimical 
to peace everywhere. The only way to fight 
fascism is to prevent it from raising any of its 
three heads: fundamentalism, authoritarianism and 
racism.


_______


[2]

Daily Times
June 02, 2005
EDITORIAL: DESECRATING LAHORE'S HISTORIC MEMORY

In order to win accolades without doing much, the 
city government of Lahore under Mian Amer has 
advertised its decision to rename roads after 
famous "Islamic" personalities (mashaheer). The 
chief public relations officer of the Lahore 
nazim says in the advertisement that the listed 
names would be changed if no one objects to them 
or comes up with better ones. For instance Chowk 
Yateem Khana on Multan Road has been renamed 
Anjuman-e-Himayat-e-Islam Chowk and 13 streets in 
Shahdara have been named after the buzurg 
shakhsiaat (elders) of the Mehr Brothers. Bachian 
Chowk has been renamed after a "leading Pakistani 
industry", Haier; and Lahore's famous Qila Gujjar 
Singh will now be called Qila Shah Faisal!
There are dozens of other streets whose names 
would be Islamised through the names of the 
Companions of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon 
him), and it doesn't matter if their memory is 
desecrated through the abysmal sanitary state in 
which the streets will be kept. The late King 
Faisal will not be greatly pleased with the state 
of the area now named after him. (We renamed 
Lyallpur after King Faisal, then drowned it in 
what is today an extreme example of urban 
degradation.) What a comedown it will be after 
the grand mosque in Islamabad! Cooper Road will 
henceforth be Ansari Street. We are sure that 
poet Munir Niazi was not consulted before his 
name was put on Ganda Nallah Road! Lake Road will 
be Hakim Allah Ditta Road and Durand Road will be 
Musaddaq Ahmad Khan Shaheed Road! There are also 
roads and streets named after former nazims and 
local councillors.
There is nothing new in what is being done. The 
big roads were "Islamised" under General Zia 
during the first surge of Islamic overhaul that 
most of our rightwing politicians supported in 
their frenzy to wipe away the recent past. In 
pushing aside the recent past they also destroyed 
the distant past whose memory was embedded in our 
culture and its creative manifestations. Many 
cities lost their old names. The British names 
were taken off and "Muslim" names were given. In 
some cities like Toba Tek Singh in Punjab and 
Jacobabad in Sindh, the local populations 
objected to the proposed changes and retained the 
names their ancestors had accepted. In distant 
places, Fort Munro and Fort Sandeman survived in 
collective memory because local culture refused 
to submit to this vandalism of names. In Lahore, 
Davis Road is still the name to give to the taxi 
driver because the Aga Khan mentioned on the old 
road, with his full name and his number in 
succession, is so tedious that it has been 
rejected by the citizens. The same goes for Hall 
Road, Beden Road and Temple Road, and dozens of 
other roads in the city.
What happens when we give a road a new name and 
it fails to stick? The first thing that happens 
is that collective memory is jolted so violently 
that it refuses to accept the new name. The 
government puts up a plaque and polishes it 
periodically but people simply refuse to read it. 
What accounts for the persistence of collective 
memory and why do people resent its obliteration 
by the bureaucracy? The answer is culture. People 
form their culture spontaneously and not through 
a religious edict under threat of violence. Their 
past is peopled by names and places and they get 
their bearing from the emotional coordinates the 
old city provides them. When Saadat Hassan Manto 
mentions Beden Road and Lakshmi Chowk in his 
short stories his readers know exactly what 
ambience he is trying to conjure. When 
Qurratulain Hyder writes about Birdwood Road, 
popular memory gratefully accepts it as something 
that lives on location. If you replace them with 
names from your pantheon of hardline religious 
personalities, and they get rejected, it is your 
religion that gets insulted. You create a 
wasteland where there was once a habitation of 
past memory.
This is real desecration. Nothing less than a 
series of civil society protests will thwart 
these city government officials who have nothing 
much to do in the way of creating new localities 
of residence and passage for the people of 
Lahore. Bringing in new names for new roads and 
new settlements would be perfectly justified, but 
to destroy the people's memory to earn kudos from 
the clerical parties on the eve of local 
elections is not a very moral thing to do. The 
roads may be dirty and pot-holed and may bring 
nothing but insult to the religious saints they 
are being renamed for, but they are a part of the 
citizen's internal world which must be 
safeguarded against trespass. Who will cast the 
first stone against those who would vandalise our 
historic memory? *

o o o

Dawn, June 1 2005 | Editorial

SHEER MADNESS
IT'S sheer madness. There is no other word for 
the suicidal frenzy that has gripped the country. 
The fires of bigotry and sectarianism stoked by 
the Zia regime and not only ignored but often 
fanned by other governments continue to exact a 
frightening toll, dying out for a while but 
breaking out again with renewed force. After the 
Bari Imam carnage that killed and injured scores 
of people on Friday, an attempt to attack an 
imambargah in Karachi on Monday was foiled, but 
six people were killed when one of a group of 
suicide bombers blew himself up as he was 
checked. Even more chilling, six bodies were 
recovered early on Tuesday morning from a nearby 
restaurant that was set on fire by an enraged 
crowd reacting to the attack. How many innocent 
people have been killed in the name of religion, 
how many sacred places of worship attacked, how 
many families left without succour? A deep 
fault-line has been created in society by decades 
of holy rhetoric and the pampering, as part of 
state policy and strategy, of holy warriors. The 
frustration felt by ordinary people at the 
indifference of state agencies is manifested 
after each terrorist incident in mindless street 
assaults when again it is the innocent who 
suffer. A very determined effort is needed on the 
part of everyone to confront this monster that we 
have nurtured in our ranks.
Also on Monday, the bullet-riddled body of a 
Jamaat-i-Islami leader was found in Karachi. 
Aslam Mujahid was returning after attending the 
funeral of a party activist murdered on Sunday 
night when he was waylaid and then shot in his 
car. This reflects another dimension of the 
violence that has hit Karachi. With local 
elections in the offing, a blame game has started 
between the Jamaat and the MQM, and citizens fear 
that the political tussle will slide into 
internecine warfare. These are all troubling 
signs of a society in disorder, particularly if 
one remembers what has been happening in 
Balochistan and the tribal regions. How can 
respect for the law be expected in a country 
where constitution and institutions are 
repeatedly subverted? This is another aspect of 
the national crisis that needs to be addressed as 
we mourn the dead and lament the lack of sane 
leadership on the part of governments and 
political parties.


_______


[3]


BRIEFING ON THE CONSULTATION ON COMMUNAL VIOLENCE (SUPPRESSION) BILL, 2005

Held in Delhi on 18th May 2005

Organized by Centre for Study of Society and 
Secularism (Mumbai) in collaboration with 
National Foundation for Communal Harmony

I. Background

The Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India 
had recently circulated the Communal Violence 
(Suppression) Bill, 2005. Different individuals 
and groups have raised their critiques and 
suggestions on this and had taken up this there 
concerns regarding improving the orientation and 
scope of the Bill. However, none of these 
suggestions found mention in the draft, which the 
Ministry has come out with. Representatives from 
these organizations and concerned citizens from 
different parts of the country held a meeting on 
18 May 2005 to discuss the draft. A discussion on 
ways to articulate opinions from four different 
civil society drafts and to publicize the need 
for reworking the Bill was also held.

II. Important outcomes of the Meeting

       Rejection of the Draft of the Communal 
Violence (Suppression) Bill, 2005 elaborated by 
the UPA government and communication of this 
rejection to the UPA government.

1.
Draft Bill circulated by the Ministry was 
rejected unanimously by the participants- a group 
of social activists, lawyers and legal experts 
who attended this consultation. The unanimous 
rejection was based on the outcome of extended 
debate that the proposed draft doesn’t address, 
in a satisfactory way, the issues related to 
communal violence. The main grounds for rejecting 
the Bill were:

2.
The Ministry seems to have not understood the 
importance of the exercise, even after the 
pressing situations following the Gujarat 
massacres. Many sections of the existing laws 
which were designed to give more ‘repressive’ 
powers to the State, like the POTA and the AFSPA 
1953 and TADA were included nearly verbatim. This 
indicates that sufficient amount of in-house 
consultation itself was not done by the legal 
research section, indicating a serious flaw in 
the preparatory phase.

3.
Constitutional and legal experts said importance 
should be on Constitution and rule of law-that 
implementing provisions in the constitution 
regarding protecting minorities and marginalised 
people is the main priority, which has not been 
taken as a serious matter by different 
governments. Also the matter of having a new law 
should focus on devising measures to have time 
bound, prompt and effective to address the 
accountability factor of the state. Two broad 
points of criticism were that the Act:

4.
This last point is object of concern and prompted 
a vigorous rejection of the draft since this 
increase of power of the armed forces and the 
police are seen as a draconian measure that will 
only worse the safety of the minorities in a 
situation of communal violence.

5.
The participants felt that the proposed draft 
does not do anything towards considering communal 
violence as large scale human rights violation, 
and that internationally accepted norms and 
emerging scholarship on protection of affected 
people is ignored in the government draft. Also 
it has not consulted the processes in preventing 
communal violence in the Indian context, some of 
which lie in the pre independence period.

6.
The orientation of the bill suggest that the 
draft seems to have not discussed in detail among 
different agencies in the Government, like the 
NHRC, which had appraised the governments of the 
lacunae in criminal procedure system and state 
machinery in preventing violence and assuring 
relief to the affected in the aftermath of 
Gujarat massacres. It was also mentioned that an 
adequate bill on Communal Violence Suppression 
has to address the following aspects:

Accountability of the political authorities (state and central level)

Reparation, Compensation and Rehabilitation of the victims

III. Creation of a committee of lawyers and legal 
experts to formulate another draft of the Bill.

This group shall elaborate another draft 
addressing the aspects mentioned above and 
dealing in particular with difficult questions 
like legal justice (framework for the 
constitution of an independent statutory body, 
investigation procedures, prosecution) and 
compensation (how to calculate it), and other 
issues.

IV.  Publication of a booklet in order to open 
the debate in the civil society on this issue.

This booklet should contain the following elements:

the reasons for the rejection of the present draft made by the UPA government;

the previous 4 drafts of the bill presented to 
the government that seemed not to have been taken 
in consideration;

the new proposed draft done by the appointed 
committee and detailed explanation of each 
provision.


The brief note was prepared by

Joana and Bijulal
Human Rights and Law Unit,
ISI - New Delhi
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]

_______


[4]   Announcements:


(i)

SAHMAT
8, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg
New Delhi-110001
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]

1.5.2005

Moneeka Misra Tanvir passed away on 28 May, and 
with her, we lost an incredible life devoted to 
theatre. Through Naya Theatre, the company she 
ran with her husband Habib Tanvir, she helped 
make some of the finest theatre many of us ever 
saw. For those who knew her personally, her 
delightful, full-throated laughter will ever 
remain alive.

Come together to remember Moneeka-di, to share her memories, to salute her:

4 June 2005, Saturday, 5.00 p.m., Deputy 
Speaker's Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg [New 
Delhi]

Jana Natya Manch
Sahmat



o o o o

(ii)


Dear Friends,

An intensive course exploring linkages between 
health and human rights and  Building skills in 
rights based monitoring and use of international 
and national instruments, designed for health and 
human rights activists is being organized by 
CEHAT and TISS from July 4-15, 2005 [Bombay]

Please check website and register

http://www.cehat.org/hhrindex1.html

Best wishes

Kamayani

CEHAT
Survey No. 2804 & 2805
Aram Society Road, Vakola, Santacruz East
Mumbai -400055
Tel: 022-26673571 / 26673154
Fax: 26673156
Email : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://www.cehat.org>www.cehat.org

o o o o

(iii)

Himal Southasian is out on the net with an extended article on the
proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline -- "Within Grasp: Persian
Gas for the Southasian Engine" by Kanak Mani Dixit.

http://www.himalmag.com/

o o o o

(iv)

Social Science Baha-- Institute of World Society 
Studies /University of Bielefeld
CNAS /Tribhuvan University - German Research Foundation - EU-Asia-Link

Negotiating ethnicity in Nepal's past and present
September 12 - 14, 2005, Kathmandu

Since 1990, ethnicity formation has provoked a 
large number of public debates in Nepal, and it 
has remained on the political agendas until the 
beginning of 2005. Immediately after the "spring 
awakening", the image of a multicultural, 
multi-religious and multi-lingual Nepalese 
society emerged as a powerful counter-project to 
the official rhetoric describing Nepal in an 
assimilative and homogenising language during the 
Panchayat period. However, the project to depict 
the Nepalese society as 'multicultural' has 
proven to be an embattled ground where diverse 
visions, strategies and grievances have come to 
intersect and to contest each other. The aim of 
the conference is to understand these 
negotiations and specifically to grasp the 
dynamics of 'ethnicisation' and 
'de-ethnicisation' in Nepal's past and present. 
The conference's architecture is designed around 
several crucial topics pertaining to ethnicity 
formation as well as to alternative projects. At 
the same time, the conference also aims to locate 
Nepali experiences within a wider South Asian and 
global contexts.
1. On the popularity of ethnicising discourses in contemporary Nepal
Currently, ethnicising discourses tend to 
influence peoples' conceptions of social orders 
all over the world, and they dominate much of 
political communication inside and outside Nepal. 
According to the critics, the 'ethnic paradigm' 
is based on the closure of we-groups using 
culturalist criteria and resulting in 
exclusionary practices; for its proponents, it is 
a necessary devise in order to mobilise resources 
and to realise rights. The 'ethnicisation of the 
political' is activated wherever the ethnic 
paradigm comes to dominate the political agendas 
and when it captures a substantial share of 
public representations, charging the discourses 
emotionally and instrumentalising them in social 
negotiations. With ethnicity as a mode of social 
ordering ranking high on political agendas, 
certain individual and collective actors manage 
to get access to political forums and media more 
easily than others, whereas other discourses tend 
to be silenced.
The major question to be addressed in the first 
panel is: why and how did the discourse(s) about 
ethnicity (janajati) become dominant at a 
particular juncture in Nepalese history and why 
did the discourses about other cultural groups 
(religious, regions) get overshadowed or even 
forgotten? Thinking about the question of 
ethnicity in Nepal, we have to locate the ethnic 
issue (janajati issue) within the broader 
question of cultural difference (thus including 
issues pertaining to religion (Buddhism, 
Christianity, Islam, animisms, etc) and region 
(Madhesis, Tibetans, etc.) and also perhaps even 
Dalits. For instance, there was a time when there 
was a lot of discussion about conversion 
especially to Christianity, but this issue was 
slowly overshadowed by the janajati issue and 
then the Maoist movement. And earlier there was 
the issue of the Tarai. Thus, the 'ethnic 
paradigm' has recently become the dominant model 
silencing other discourses such as class, region 
and religion. This panel seeks papers seeking to 
explain this shift in discursive 
reconfigurations. Is the attractiveness of the 
'ethnic paradigm' to be seen in the previous 
marginalisation and exclusion of ethnic 
population, with grievances coming to light, once 
the democratisation process unfolded from 1990 
onwards? If so, through which interconnections 
were ethnic discourses imported to Nepal? Is its 
attractiveness to be at least partly attributed 
to its strength and popularity in the global 
space? Is it especially to be seen in the context 
of the paradigm shift in the aftermath of the 
1990-political transformation? Or are the 
alternative discourses not powerful enough at the 
current political moment? Can the 'ethnic 
paradigm' be seen as a powerful resource that can 
be deployed in order to reach particular goals?
2. The diversity of stakeholders and their discourses on ethnicity
The 'ethnic paradigm' is not uncontested and 
there is no agreement regarding its contents and 
shapes. The second panel seeks therefore to 'map 
out' the key-actors involved in political debates 
on the ethnicity issue and to grasp their diverse 
discourses about ethnicity (and cultural 
differences). The key actors include Maoist 
leaders, state officials and politicians, leaders 
and members of various ethnic organisations, 
academicians (Nepalese and foreigners), 
journalists, donors and others (such as possibly 
tourists and entrepreneurs in the tourist 
business).
It will be of interest to see which arguments, 
which discursive figures and which images are in 
use. Do they coincide or do they diverge? How is 
the validity of a discourse justified or 
rejected? Do the diverse discourses form a 
discursive field in the sense that they borrow 
from one another, or challenge the opposite (thus 
unacceptable) positions, while simultaneously 
taking up the opponents' concerns? To what extent 
is there a diversity of ethnic discourses to be 
observed, differences based on different 
objectives of particular ethnic groups? Are there 
strong contestations between and within ethnic 
groups? Is there a regional dimension to be 
grasped? Do discourses in Kathmandu coincide with 
those carried out in local contexts (urban and 
rural)?
3. The shift of the 'ethnic paradigm' during the last 15 years
Even during such a short span of time after the 
'spring-awakening' of 1990, the discourses on 
ethnicity and on other dimensions of social 
boundaries have most certainly shifted. The third 
panel invites papers that seek to elaborate on 
these transformations. Has the term 'janajati' 
gained in popularity? Are there new notions that 
are challenging the 'ethnic paradigm', such as 
the notion of social exclusion? How do diverse 
discursive figures come to intersect? Are other 
claims becoming more urgent such as those made by 
the Dalits? Are there shifts in public attention 
and / or recognition? Are there shifts in 
identity politics to be discerned? (For instance 
between 'minority protection', 'majority 
protection (nationalist argument)', 'politics of 
recognition' etc.?) Is there a tendency for 
ethnic discourses to lose their immediacy at 
present ('de-ethnicisation')? Which factors make 
for all these changes?
4. Ethnicisation and its consequences
What are the consequences of these discourses for 
'practices' - i.e., in terms of social inclusion 
and exclusion, power, status, inter-ethnic 
relations, etc.? To this panel contributions are 
invited that look at both state laws and policies 
(a.o. legal amendments, political representation) 
and also the 'popular' culture and practices. 
Equally important is the study of discourses and 
practices of ethnic groups vis-à-vis other ethnic 
groups, high and low caste Hindus, Madhesis, 
Christians and Muslims. Also, the gender 
dimension deserves attention in this field: are 
ethnicising discourses re-configuring gender 
relationships? Furthermore, the issue of emerging 
solidarity networks formed between diverse 
movements and organisations and their action, or 
lack thereof, should be discussed. And: how have 
identity politics contributed to shaping the 
nature and scope of the political communication 
space in Nepal?
5. Ethnicisation and de-ethnicisation in Nepal's past
In order to grasp the present-day dynamics of 
ethnicisation and de-ethnicisation, the history 
of Nepal provides a fascinating field of inquiry. 
This topic is in fact so broad and so 
understudied that it could be discussed in a 
separate workshop with several panels. Some of 
the key issues and topics which could be 
addressed in this panel are:
a) Moments of ethnicisation in the Nepalese 
history: To this panel contributions are invited 
that will analyse key-moments when ethnic 
categories have been shaped and deployed in 
political language and measures. Such 'moments' 
can be seen in
a. the promulgation of Muluki Ain in the year 1854,
b. the petitioning by ethnic actors to amend 
stipulations within the Muluki Ain,
c. ethnic ordering in political rituals, especially on the occasion of Dasain,
d. the connection between ethnicity and enslavement,
e. the implications of the introduction of the 
term 'Gorkha' and of Gorkha-recruitment,
f. negotiations over communal land-rights (kipat);
b) Discovery and use of history as argument - 
discourses of past wrongs, vamsavalis as argument;
c) Ethnicity formation in the context of 
development and of environmentalist discourses;
d) The role of language in the processes of ethnicity formation;
e) The role of religion in the processes of ethnicity formation.
Nepal's 'ethnic paradigm' from a comparative perspective
In addition to papers on Nepal, the conference 
will invite scholars working on issues of 
ethnicisation and de-ethnicisation in other 
national contexts, for instance in India, Sri 
Lanka, Malaysia, Ecuador, Nigeria, Canada and 
Switzerland. Their contributions would not be 
confined to one panel. These scholars will be 
asked to present papers about their own countries 
in different panels and in two public lectures. 
We solicit abstracts of about 300 words from 
interested scholars on any one of the 
themes/issues outlined above. The deadline for 
submitting abstracts to the Social Science Baha 
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or any of the 
conference coordinators is 15th May, 2005. Only a 
limited number of abstracts will be accepted, 
based on quality and relevance. Participants are 
expected to make their own travel arrangements; 
however, local expenses (hotel/meals) in 
Kathmandu will be covered.
Important dates
Deadline for submission of abstracts May 15, 2005
Information about acceptance of abstracts May 30, 2005
Submission of papers August 15, 2005
Conference coordinators
Dr. Rajendra Pradhan, Social Science Baha ([EMAIL PROTECTED] )
Prof. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Institute of World 
Society Studies /University of Bielefeld 
([EMAIL PROTECTED], 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] )
Prof. Nirmal Man Tuladhar, CNAS, Tribhuvan 
University ( [EMAIL PROTECTED], 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] )
Conference Secretariat
Social Science Baha
Himal Association
Patan Dhoka,
PO Box 166, Lalitpur, Nepal
Phone: 977- 1- 5542544/5537408/5548142
Fax: 977- 1- 5541196
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.himalassociation.org/baha


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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.


_______________________________________________
Sacw mailing list
Sacw@insaf.net
http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net