Harsh Kapoor
Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:04:20 -0800
South Asia Citizens Wire | December 5, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2332 - Year 8 [1] Sri Lanka's international straitjacket (Sunil Bastian) [2] Sri Lanka: Reject the War for Peace Road (Press Release, National Peace Council) [3] India: Playing Cops and Reporters (Nivedita Menon) [4] India: Coastal Karnataka in the throes of communal fires stoked by the BJP (Sugata Srinivasaraju) ____ [1] Himal South Asian December 2006 SRI LANKA'S INTERNATIONAL STRAITJACKET The failure of Sri Lanka's peace process is partially due to the simplistic government-versus-LTTE formulation adopted by international mediators. by | Sunil Bastian While the history of the current process of Sri Lanka's globalisation goes back to the colonial period, the opening up of the country's economy 40 years ago worked to intensify it. The civil war that has plagued the island nation for more than two decades has done almost nothing to undermine this dynamic. Rather, the conflict has brought the international system into affairs that had hitherto been protected on the basis of the nation's sovereignty. Today Sri Lanka is indeed a fragmented state, part of which is controlled by the LTTE, but all of which is now inextricably linked to the global politico-economic system. Unfortunately, it is largely the contradictions of the global system that have exerted such influence on Sri Lanka, leading to pessimism in the context of the breakdown of the peace process. The dynamic today is relatively straightforward: on one side, violence and conflict; on the other, a framework for the peace process, dominated by international actors, that is not working. Even when the war was being fought at its highest intensity in the past, this had not been the case. For example, at the time of the People's Alliance regime's 'war for peace' strategy, war was a reality, but the space for peace was still open and available. Today that space is closed, given a procedural structure that seems ineffectual, while the violence continues. Within Sri Lanka there have been diverse responses to the intervention of international actors in the country's peace process. The Sinhala nationalists and old-style leftists have been uncomfortable with it, and some have actively opposed it. Some liberal internationalists, on the other hand, view the world community as a bunch of do-gooders, eager to deliver peace to the island. They ignore the politics and power-play that are part and parcel of these interventions in a globalised world. The construction of the term 'international community' itself is a ploy to hide the politics inherent in this dynamic. What Sri Lanka needs today is an analysis that can highlight the politics of power in these interventions, so that its citizens can spot the contradictions, as well as the opportunities available to promote the cause of peace. Growth in conflict The liberalisation of the Sri Lankan economy in 1977 was a turning point in the expansion of the involvement of international actors in the country's affairs. Sri Lanka was the first country in Southasia to liberalise, and the process generated a tremendous response from the aid agencies. At one time, Sri Lanka received one of the highest per capita levels of international aid in the world, both bilateral and multilateral. While the civil war has forced some donors to rethink their policies, Sri Lanka has consistently enjoyed the commitment of key donors, including Japan, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund. From around the mid-1980s, the latter three accounted for about 75 percent of foreign aid to the country. Meanwhile, the implementation of Sri Lanka's economic-reform process has always been more important to these key donors than concerns over the civil war. Aid from them has regularly been reduced, adjusted or diverted to new projects depending on how successful the Colombo government has been in carrying out the economic-reform agenda towards the further development of liberal capitalism on the island. The war was for a long time only of concern to these organisations to the extent that it impacted on the economic agenda. But the Sri Lankan economy has been performing reasonably well despite the conflict, with an average of four to five percent annual growth. This has not been the eight percent growth that mainstream economists have been hoping for in order to equal the East Asian miracle, and certainly Sri Lanka would have performed better had there been no civil war. But the fact remains that the conflict has not significantly affected the country's economy, which in turn has allowed donors to view the country as relatively 'stable'. According to international indicators, Sri Lanka is no longer a 'poor' country, but rather a 'low middle income' one, with an annual per capita income of more than USD 1000. The economy has diversified from its agricultural base, and a significant portion of people now earn an income in sectors linked to the global economy. A large number also make use of global labour markets. Although Sri Lanka has a heavy burden of foreign debt, many believe that the debt-service ratio, meaning the proportion of export earnings spent on servicing foreign debt, is still at a manageable level. In addition, there is no danger of Sri Lanka defaulting on debt-service payments. Of course, this relative success does not mean that the country has solved its development problems. Both the economy and society show the usual social contradictions of a capitalist economy. Nonetheless, it is crucial to note the fact that, seen through the logic of capital, Sri Lanka has performed reasonably well in the midst of the civil war. A number of factors explain this peculiar picture. First, the core of economic production has been confined to areas surrounding the capital. Close to 50 percent of the gross domestic product is now within the Western Province, close to Colombo. So long as the war is confined to the north and east - which were never particularly important economically, even before the conflict began - the economy can function perfectly well. Many sectors in Sri Lanka, not to mention the incomes of more and more of its people, depend on the health of the global economy. Hence, if the global economy performs better, so too does Sri Lanka's - regardless of the war. Finally, several other factors have helped Sri Lanka to achieve economic gains while simultaneously waging an expensive war: generous donor support, the reduction of the burden on the state coffers by getting rid of loss-making state enterprises, and the relative degree of autonomy that the central bank has maintained. The entry of the Norwegians as mediators in the peace process coincided with the breakdown of this order. This took place during 2000 and 2001, years of a global economic recession. Then, in 2001, the same year that a severe drought struck the island, the LTTE carried out a devastating attack on the country's only international airport - the nerve centre for an economy that depends on global linkages. These factors combined to produce a negative economic growth in 2001 for the first time since Independence. The International Monetary fund came up with a rescue loan package, and the People's Alliance government of Chandrika Kumaratunga requested the Norwegians to act as mediators in negotiations with the LTTE. However, it was the United National Front (UNF) government, elected in December 2001, that made use of the Norwegians' entry to sign a Ceasefire Agreement, embark on an extensive programme of economic reforms, consciously expand the internationalisation process, and include the US, EU and Japan as co-chairs of the peace process. The political objectives of the UNF strategy - led by Ranil Wickramasinghe, the nephew of former President Junius Jayawardene, the architect of Sri Lankan liberalisation - included not just peace, but also the pushing of the economic-reform agenda begun by President Jayawardene. This agenda, which developed independently of the peace process, had its sights on an extensive reform programme covering all aspects of the economy. The Wickramasinghe government consciously sought international support for both of these agendas. This strategy lasted for a very short period, however, and its neo-liberal peace was defeated by both Sinhala and Tamil nationalism, working side by side. Two-sided stranglehold The current situation is thus one wherein a war is being fought and fuelled by nationalist forces on both sides. At the same time, contradictions of the international set-up inherited from the Wickremasinghe period are not only complicating matters, but do not allow much hope for securing a long-term settlement. The Norwegians, who are very much wedded to the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) secured during the UNF period, are working with a framework much more suited to an inter-state conflict based on a two-actor model. Hence, the CFA recognises only two sides, the LTTE and the Colombo government. There is an acceptance of the presence of two armies, rules of engagement and no-go areas between these two armies, and rules dictating how either side can withdraw from the agreement. This set-up entirely ignores the complexities of conflicts that build on the basis of identity politics. It legitimises the demands of the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamils, and undermines space for democracy within the Tamil population. It also forgets that there have always been struggles for political supremacy among Tamils, even while simultaneously fighting the Sri Lankan state. The LTTE has taken care of this issue by eliminating its opponents. Meanwhile, the rights of the Muslim population have not been given due importance, thus pandering to a position among Tamil nationalists that has deliberately ignored Muslim rights by creating a notion of a Tamil-speaking people. The two-actor structure of the CFA also cannot take into account the complexities of politics among the Sinhalese, which is fought through a problematic multi-party system. The Norwegian approach gives the impression of being based on 'primordialist' interpretations of identity conflict, where a monolithic group of Sinhalese, represented by the Colombo government, is fighting a monolithic group of Tamils, represented by the LTTE. As such, the Norwegians are involved as impartial mediators between these two 'underdeveloped' communities, to find a 'rational' solution that only Europeans can provide. The formation of the 'co-chairs' group came about due to initiatives of the UNF government, and not the other way around. In order to understand the positions of the co-chairs, it is important first to focus on the individual policies of each of these countries. The fundamental objective of the Japanese, US and EU policies is one of security and stability, in order to continue work on the economic agenda, and promote capitalism in the island. At the very beginning of the peace process there were divergences from this position, mainly among EU countries. Pressure from the global 'war on terror', however, has pushed these countries into uniform alignment. The recent ban on the LTTE by the EU as a 'terror' group is a reflection of this policy convergence, made with the objective of establishing stability. This position is strengthened by support given by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which work on the basis of a similar policy perspective. Of course, promoting negotiations is an important element in this strategy, with the aim of ensuring security. But the fundamental motivation of supporting negotiations is very different from the objectives behind the Norwegian two-actor, impartial-negotiator model. Suddenly what becomes more important is not balancing between warring parties, but rather the stability of an established state in order to promote capitalism. Despite the presence of this fundamental position, it is not one that the ruling classes of Sri Lanka can take for granted. Continuation of this policy, after all, will depend on the good behaviour of those elites. Developments such as a stepped-up military strategy could worsen the humanitarian crisis, increase human-rights violations, instigate a greater flow of refugees and destabilise the core areas of the economy - evolutions that would clearly go against the policy objectives of the co-chair countries. Similarly, any significant reversal of the economic agenda, or any move to undermine the influence of the co-chairs by courting other international actors, could also bring about a change in the international approach. As much as the two-actor model reveals contradictions that undermine the chance for long-term peace in Sri Lanka, the policies of the co-chairs have their own inconsistencies. For example, even while calling for negotiations, two of these actors - the EU and the US - have banned the LTTE as a 'terrorist' organisation. Though prescriptive statements are made about human rights, humanitarian crises and the like, there remains a continuous flow of foreign aid from these key donors, so long as the reform agenda is maintained by the Colombo authorities. Promotion of the private sector likewise continues unabated, with the support of many agencies. Finally, although security and stability are the underlying motives of this approach, there is very little commitment to actually support Sri Lanka through military means. The contradictions of this international conundrum create complicated problems for those who accept that working with international actors is essential in the current context of global capitalism. This is relevant not only for Sri Lanka, but for other countries in Southasia as well - particularly in the situations of internal conflict that have become such an integral part of the region's socio-politics. Unfortunately, our dominant response to these complicated issues is generally one of two. We either remain within a framework of liberal internationalism that naively believes in the goodness of an 'international community'; or our response originates among nationalists of various guises, who believe in an ahistorical notion of sovereignty. The time has come for us in the global south to break through this conceptual trap, which does not provide us a framework with which to deal with these international interventions. All our societies are now already a part of globalised capitalism. Our belief in the sovereignty of the nation-state will not isolate us from it. Neither can we afford to go along with liberal internationalism naively. Globalisation, while integrating the world, also brings out differences more sharply. How global factors affect South Asia will thus be a result of our own histories and social conditions. Only a much closer look at our specific historical situations will help us to identify spaces within global capitalism that we can make use of for our own purposes. And only in this lies the foundation for a new politics with which to deal with international intervention. _______ [2] National Peace Council of Sri Lanka 12/14 Purana Vihara Road Colombo 6 Tel: 2818344, 2854127, 2819064 Tel/Fax:2819064 E Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Internet: www.peace-srilanka.org 04.12.06 Media Release REJECT THE WAR FOR PEACE ROAD The total breakdown of the peace process in Sri Lanka was manifested in stark form when an LTTE suicide bomber targeted Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa's motorcade in the heart of Colombo. The National Peace Council condemns this attack, especially in view of the recent pledges by LTTE spokespersons of their continued commitment to the Ceasefire Agreement, and we call for an immediate cessation of hostilities. The abortive suicide bombing in Colombo epitomises the futility of the present military strategies being used by the parties to the conflict. People got killed and injured, life got disrupted and the situation turned from bad to worse. Neither will retaliatory strikes by the government lead to a conducive environment for an end to the conflict. In his Heroes Day speech, LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan appealed to the international community to recognise the just struggle of the Tamil people and assist them to achieve their aspirations. If such international recognition is to materialise, it is incumbent that the LTTE immediately halt the very actions that caused it to be internationally banned as well as make a greater commitment in its involvement in the peace process. The National Peace Council believes that the democratic aspirations of all the people can only be met through a process of negotiations in which the use of violence is mutually renounced. We welcome the fact that the ruling party and the main opposition party are discussing a consensual political reform package which can be the basis for political dialogue. We call on the government and the LTTE to arrest their current slide towards a total return to war and support the initiatives of the Norwegian facilitators to get the peace process back on track, however difficult it may seem. The time has come for us reject once and for all theìwar for peaceî road that was tried in the past if we are to save presentand future generations ofSri Lankans fromcycles of humanitarian crises that a return to war will most certainly entail. Executive Director On behalf of the Governing Council ______ [3] The Telegraph December 05, 2006 PLAYING COPS AND REPORTERS Nivedita Menon wonders what happens to police procedures and media reportage when nothing less than national security is at stake The author is reader in political science, Delhi University Get the real picture Here's an amusing little story. According to reports in a leading daily (August 26 and September 4), Hoshangabad police charged a couple with the murder of their twelve-year-old son. Their son was indeed missing, and a body was found near the railway track. The parents confessed to the crime, and spent over 45 days in jail. Six months after his murder, young Gabbar turned up in town. He had fallen asleep while selling peanuts on trains, and woke up in Jalgaon. There he was put into a correctional institution, and later, sent to Bhopal. Finally, he managed to convince someone to send him back home. Present in court, he listened to the government pleader arguing that the parents had confessed to the murder, so he could not be Gabbar; that the body found near the railway track was not that of Kallu alias Tufan, as claimed; and that neighbours had identified the dead body as that of Gabbar. The neighbours, meanwhile, told the reporter that they had never identified the dead body as his, and that this boy was indeed Gabbar. "We know him since he was born," said one of them simply, "how could we make such a mistake?" As for the parents who confessed to the murder of a son who was alive - "They broke three of my fingers with sticks," said the father. The parents were tortured in custody for a night and made to sign a confessional statement the next morning. A routine investigation in a poor neighbourhood, of a small boy's murder. Nothing at stake in it for the police but that of showing a solved case. And police pursuit of this mundane, low-profile incident involved torture, a forced false confession and falsified evidence (neighbours' supposed identification of the dead body). It further involved, in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the boy being alive, reiterations in court of the police version under oath, urging the court instead to prosecute Gabbar's family for producing another person as Gabbar. Would this blatant miscarriage of justice have been reported in the media if the parents had been arrested on a different sort of charge? If Gabbar himself had not turned up alive? What if Gabbar had been killed in an encounter? So the amusing little story metamorphoses into a nightmarish question: what happens to police procedures and media reportage when nothing less than national security is at stake? Last month, a woman widely known in academic and activist circles in Delhi - Sunita of Daanish Books, a small alternative publisher - was detained by the police in Chandrapur, where she had set up a book exhibition at an annual festival celebrating B.R. Ambedkar's conversion. Books from her stall were seized, and she was interrogated for several hours over two days. She was able to contact friends and family in Delhi, and when concerned phone calls and faxes started pouring in, the police claimed that they had "clinching evidence" (a phrase they repeatedly used) that this Sunita was a Maoist activist from Jehanabad, where her Maoist husband had been killed some years ago in an encounter. During her interrogation, the official insisted that she admit she was from Jehanabad, despite her assertion that she is from Bhagalpur, and that she had never lost a husband to police bullets. A policeman told her confidently at one point, "Hum saabit kar ke rahenge ki aap vohi Sunita hain, Jehanabad ki (We will prove that you are the Sunita from Jehanabad)." Reports in local Hindi newspapers published the police version without any further comment or corroboration. Let me pass quickly over the alarming fact that the books that were "seized" as threatening to national security were books by and on Marx, Lenin, Mao, Clara Zetkin and Bhagat Singh. That during interrogation Sunita was asked, "Why do you sell books on Bhagat Singh? The British have left, haven't they?" That other questions included demands that she explain why she does not use a surname and why she wears a bindi when her husband is dead (the one killed in Jehanabad, remember?) We will pass over these questions only because the one that concerns me here is this. Sunita is a well-known figure among people who can make a noise in high places, and so the police attempt to manipulate her identity failed. What of all the others? In September, three letter-bombs went off hours before the president visited Kerala. Immediately, several Muslim youths were arrested and kept in police custody for weeks, being interrogated to reveal their links with Islamic organizations. But as investigations continued, the culprit turned out to be a Hindu man with personal grudges to settle. The slick website of the Thiruvananthapuram city police announced the closing of the case with the information that the accused was a "meek character with a scientific temperament, using an innovative method to intimidate his enemies." In psychoanalytic mode, the police statement adds: "The accused always aspired for peer respect as an innovator. The mail bombs seemed to be a 'deviant expression' of the desire to seek revenge and prove oneself at the same time." So, not a word about the wrongly detained and most probably tortured Muslims, and a veritable certificate of merit for the Hindu culprit. Maybe they should induct him into the police force so that he can redirect his lack of self-esteem and scientific temperament more fruitfully - in hunting down the real anti-national elements. Like, for example, Mohammad Afzal? All those members of India's democratic public, filling the coffers of mobile phone companies by SMS-ing TV channels that Afzal should hang - what is the basis of their informed decision? The media, of course, pliantly reproduce police hand-outs as news. The police say they have arrested two Pakistani nationals, and Pakistani nationals they become for ever after, in newspapers and on TV screens, with not a single "alleged", "claimed", and after the first time (and sometimes not even then), "according to police reports". Even in stories that use the last phrase, the total lack of analysis and commentary makes them news items rather than reports of police briefings. A recent story in a national daily reported in alarmist style that senior police officers informed the paper on the basis of intelligence tip-offs that Maoists have "launched a campaign" across Jharkand, Bihar and Chhatisgarh - a campaign to do what? Exterminate the class enemy? Blow up police stations? Turns out the "extremists", as the police call them, have a sinister plan to concentrate on local weekly markets and perform plays and sing songs in local dialects! Further, taking advantage of the villagers' newly acquired literacy, the police said disapprovingly, they sell books on and by communist thinkers, some of which have been vigilantly seized. So there they are, the Maoist extremists, singing and performing in public places, and selling widely available books at local markets - you need "intelligence tip-offs" to know this? And why does the reporter not have an intelligence tip-off from his own intelligence, to add one single word more than what the police gave him? This story carried a by-line, mind you. Of course, not always do the media simply report police briefings as news. Sometimes, they are proactive. A new Hindi TV channel last week indignantly reported that dangerous leftist literature is freely available in the cultural festivals that are a tradition in Punjab. Having spoken to the person handling one such stall - who acknowledged that they do use these occasions to propagate their political ideology - the channel then interviewed the SSP of police. What was the police doing about this blatant availability of books and CDs that incite people against the state? The SSP assured the reporter that he would act immediately. People of India, I give you the media - democracy is safe in their hands. _____ [4] Outlook Magazine | Dec 11, 2006 Photo: http://www.outlookindia.com/images/bajrang_dal_karnataka_20061211.jpg Bajrang Dal activists line up outside Sufi saint Baba Budangiri's dargah in Chikmagalur to perform Datta Jayanti puja KARNATAKA: COMMUNAL TURMOIL A Piercing Conch Blows Coastal Karnataka is in the throes of communal fires stoked by the BJP by Sugata Srinivasaraju Godhra To Mangalore The Sangh parivar and the BJP play the communal card in Karnataka: * Liberating the shrine of Sufi saint Baba Budangiri in Chikmagalur and converting it into a place of Hindu pilgrimage is the main plank. The shrine has been billed as the "Ayodhya of the south". * Campaign launched to project Tipu Sultan as anti-Kannada, anti-Hindu * The Ramjanmabhoomi issue has been revived successfully in Dakshina Kannada district * There is a sustained campaign that coastal Karnataka is infested with Muslim terrorists * Effort on to communalise the constabulary in coastal Karnataka * 'Proactive' cow protection and moral policing on in sensitive districts A few years ago, BJP leaders liked to refer to Karnataka as the party's gateway to the south. Today, with the saffron party in alliance with the JD(S) in power, there is a buzz in the BJP in Bangalore-that the state, like Gujarat, is the Sangh parivar's new laboratory in the south. And for those waiting for a Hindutva surge in Karnataka, December 6 may well turn out to be a red letter day. It is on that day that the 'prestige' bypoll in Chamundeshwari, where JD(S) and BJP have fielded a joint candidate against S. Siddaramaiah of the Congress, will be decided. It is believed that victory or defeat in this poll will prove crucial for the ruling coalition. If the BJP combine wins, it will be a shot in the arm for the parivar. Other than being the 14th anniversary of the 'fall' of the Babri Masjid, December 6 is also the day when the Datta Jayanti celebrations will get under way at the shrine of Sufi saint Baba Budangiri in Chikmagalur district, an event that has been a source of communal tension. The BJP and the Sangh's declared objective is to instal an idol of Dattatreya, a local Hindu deity, appoint their own priest and conduct Vedic rites and prayers. The Baba Budangiri shrine has always been a place where both the Sufi saint and Dattatreya are worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims. The Sangh parivar now wants to claim the whole shrine and keep the Muslims out. The communal riots in Mangalore in October were a rude reminder The Sangh parivar in Karnataka has been preparing for December 6. The Mangalore communal violence in October, in which two Muslims were killed, is spoken of as a 'big message' to the Muslim community in the state. When Mangalore was burning, BJP minister Nagaraj Shetty, in charge of the district, reiterated how much he idolised Narendra Modi. Yatras by BJP leaders in the Malnad region, western Karnataka, over the last few months have been done with the purpose of "liberating" Baba Budangiri shrine. In 1999, former Union minister H.N. Ananth Kumar had sworn that the shrine would be the Ayodhya of Karnataka. This time around, with the BJP in power in the state, the parivar feels it is within striking distance. In October, a revered icon in Karnataka, Tipu Sultan, became the target of the Sangh parivar after the BJP education minister, D.H. Shankara Murthy, painted him as an 'anti-Hindu' and 'anti-Kannada' ruler. These statements had come without any provocation, but the print space it consumed in the Kannada press was unprecedented. And the Ram mandir issue has been successfully revived in the communally sensitive Udipi and Dakshina Kannada districts where roadside meetings in towns and villages, sponsored by the Rama Mandira Nirmana Samarthana Samithi, happen almost everyday. "Nothing explosive may happen on December 6, but the very build-up and the hate campaign that we see in every corner of coastal Karnataka and in parts of Malnad is a well-planned strategy to intimidate the minorities," says Anand Kodimbala, a Mangalore college lecturer. Such a meeting witnessed by this correspondent right outside the deputy commissioner's office in Mangalore on November 27 went like this: It is 4 pm in the evening, children are coming out of three Christian convents down the road (St Ann's, Carmel and Rosario). In the crowd, there are young girls with hijabs (the city has nearly 40 per cent Muslims) and nuns (20-25 per cent are Christians). In the vicinity there is also a dargah. There are more than 50 Mahindra jeeps with saffron flags parked. Traffic has been blocked. About a thousand people are squatting on the road listening to some astonishing demagoguery by pontiffs of local Hindu maths, including the influential Pejawar Vishvesha Teertha Swamiji. The speeches are, among other things, about their '92 kar seva experience when Babri Masjid fell; the Upanishadic shlokas "found on the bricks" that came falling; Mohammed Afzal's hanging and how they would worship the judge who sentenced him as "Mahatma"; how the dome of the Babri Masjid appeared like the bald pate of then PM, P.V. Narasimha Rao etc. Surprisingly, there is no mention of Sonia Gandhi. When Outlook asked Mangalore SP B. Dayanand why permission was granted for such a provocative meeting, he pleaded helplessness. "We denied permission for a protest procession. This meeting was only meant to give a memorandum to the DC and therefore we allowed it. We can't stop all meetings, we can only regulate them. We are actually in a Catch 22 situation-if we do not allow these meetings they will take a violent shape," says Dayanand. Almost all MLAs and MPs in coastal Karnataka are from the BJP. D.V. Sadananda Gowda, the state BJP chief, is Mangalore's MP. An inflammatory Sangh parivar rally in Mangalore in front of the DM's office Dakshina Kannada district, in which Mangalore falls, is representative of the communal tension in Karnataka. It is feared that if the situation is allowed to slip any further, it would be the "Godhra of the south". The October communal violence justifies the fear: it was the first time in Karnataka that a constabulary had been accused of being communal. A charge that was treated casually by the state's home minister, M.P. Prakash, who reportedly told a human rights delegation that "you cannot help the presence of such elements in the force". But the stories going around of the Muslim victims of the riots from Prof Phaniraj and G. Rajashekar, who went round meeting victims and are authors of a history of communal violence in Dakshina Kannada, is disturbing. Hear this one about a family in Ullal, on the outskirts of Mangalore, where the police barged into and allegedly "looted" a number of Muslim homes: "The police did not even have the names of people who they needed to arrest. It is just that Muslims had to be rounded up," say Rajashekar and Phaniraj. Like it happened in Gujarat, where there was a sustained hate campaign against the Muslim community for more than 15 years before Godhra happened, Dakshina Kannada too has a history of communal violence, which came to the fore first during the riots in December 1998. "We, the people of Udipi and Dakshina Kannada, tend to boast of our accomplishments as highly literate districts, as leaders in the banking and hotel sectors. Now we have one more feather in our caps: we are the districts with the highest rate of violence against minorities, courtesy the Sangh parivar. Simply put: there is one such incident of violence almost every day," say Phaniraj and Rajashekar. Additional district magistrate A.G. Bhat, who agrees the situation in the district is volatile, says: "There are three issues around which clashes happen in the district-cattle slaughter, elopement and eve-teasing, and religious conversions and processions." On the day we were in Udipi, there was a case of a Muslim boy being beaten up by Sangh parivar activists for talking to a Hindu girl who was his classmate. Earlier, there have also been instances of Bajrang Dal activists storming a movie theatre in Puttur with the hope of catching young lovers of different faiths "red-handed". There have been attacks on youngsters taking a stroll on the beach. There have also been brutal murders for the crime of having fallen in love with a person of another faith. "The atmosphere is vitiated, my personal view is that there is a feeling of insecurity among Muslims here," says Bhat. The cow-protection programme of the Sangh parivar in the district is pursued so seriously that in May 2006 a gang of 10 Bajrang Dal activists assaulted a Brahmin priest in Udipi district, for mediating the sale of cows. Similarly, the Hindu Yuva Sena ensured the Nejaru village gram panchayat cancelled the licence of Kasim Saheb to sell beef. In Adi Udipi, a Muslim father and son were paraded naked for trading in cows. In conversion cases the attack is mostly on the Protestant community. Strangely, Opposition politicians are silent. Senior Congress leaders like Margaret Alva, Oscar Fernandes, Veerappa Moily and Janardhan Poojary all hail from coastal Karnataka, but they have been mum about the trauma of the minorities. Even during the October riots, they were missing. "The Congress leaders have forfeited the political space to the Sangh parivar," says Rajashekar. When an alliance was forged with the BJP in February 2006, CM H.D. Kumaraswamy had said he was still searching for the meaning of the word "secularism". One can only hope that the communal situation in Dakshina Kannada would offer him some insight. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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/ 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
