South Asia Citizens Wire - 22 August 2014 - No. 2831 [since 1996] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- SACW - 22 August 2014 |
Contents: 1. Statement by Citizens of India and Pakistan on Cancellation of Secretary Level Talks 2. Citizens For Democracy Deplores Cancellation of Secretary Level Talks by India with Pakistan 3. Bangladesh: Workers, not serfs | Shariful Islam 4. Inhumane and illegal deportation of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka should be stopped - Civil Society Statement 5. Sri Lanka: Lessons of 1994 | Savitri Hensman 6. Sri Lanka’s Majoritarian Society | Bharat Bhushan 7. Sri Lanka: ’Socialism was in the air’ | Wimal Fernando 8. Pakistan: Risk of destabilisation and extra-constitutional forces gaining grounds - August 2014 | reports and commentary 9. Pakistan: Concerned Citizens Speak out in Defence of People's Right to a Legitimately Elected Government 10. Pakistan: Labour activists speak up against use of religion for political gain, seek electoral reforms, strengthening of labour rights and workplace safety 11. Political Turmoil in Pakistan: A Discussion on Indian Television 12. India: How Popular Television is Legitimizing “Hindu” Mythological Tropes to Produce a Monocultural Past 13. India: Freedom of Speech and The Triumphant Hindu Right | Ananya Vajpeyi 14. India: Where The Mind is Not Without Fear | Rukun Advani 15. India: Re Court ruling on Irom Sharmila and CrPC 144 in Ukhrul - Statement by Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur and the UN 16. India: Mr. Modi's doublespeak | Rohit Prajapati 17. India: Full Court of Supreme Court Must Apologise To Judge, J-1 | Dr. Paramjit Singh Sahni 18. India: Progressive Muslims Condemn the Brutal Atrocities by ISIS Fundamentalists in Iraq and Syria +++++From The Archives++++++ 19. India: Bulletin of the Communist Platform, No. 1 (1977) 20. India: Aligarh Riot of October 1978 - A Report to People’s Union for Civil Liberties (Delhi) 21. India: Rape, Society and the State - a PUCLDR publication 22. India: 1977 Appeal by Tarkunde Civil Rights Committee investigating ’Encounter Killings’ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 23. India: A ’Raksha Bandhan’ Campaign Designed To Divide | Subhashini Ali 24. India: Labour reforms of the wrong kind | Harsh Mander 25. India: The Planning Commission needed mending, not ending | Gopalkrishna Gandhi 26. India: Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005: Handbook for Parliamentarians | CLRA 27. India: Invitation to Narmada Valley - to stand up for rights (August 23 – 25, 2014) 28. Glimpses of Lauren Bacall the Hollywood film icon who passed away 25. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: - Are These Claims on Rise of Muslim Population in the Sundarbans True or This Too is Communal Propaganda ? - Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena etc were to Hold Rally to Support Israel on July 21, 2014 in Mumbai - says announcement - India: 20000 March in Calcutta in Solidarty with Israel - August 16 event organized by a political outfit known as Hindu Samhati - These Posters Regarding Women's Dress in Porbander Gujarat Amount to Moral policing - Hindutva has moved from the fringe to the centre of Indian politics - 'MP government vision paper attempt at communalisation' - Shruti Tomar - BJP's Election Plan for Kashmir - India Pakistan Talks Sink: because of BJP's domestic agenda - targetting of Kashmir special status, ‘Mission 44+’ electoral plan - India: Regressive social mindset - ‘love jihad’ sounds nutty, but it is now endorsed by India’s ruling party - India: Will the majoritarian project subvert the very democratic tradition that has brought the BJP to power? - Saba Naqvi - India: The story of my Sanskrit - Ananya Vajpeyi - Modi supporter cum CSDS prof now stands up for Lt. Col Purohit (who was arrested for involvement in Hindutva terror cases) - The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar ::: FULL TEXT ::: 30. Stab In The Back For Painful Afghanistan Election Process? | Karlos Zurutuza 31. An Inept Pakistan Policy: Modi Government Commits Big Mistake By Cancelling Talks And Cutting Hurriyat Out | Prem Shankar Jha 32. Radcliffe and his 1947 job by the poet WH Auden in Partition 33. Book Review: The Good Germans - Inside the Resistance to the Nazis | Peter Hoffmann ========================================= 1. STATEMENT BY CITIZENS OF INDIA AND PAKISTAN ON CANCELLATION OF SECRETARY LEVEL TALKS ========================================= We the citizens of India and Pakistan are concerned and dismayed by the decision of the Government of India to call off the Foreign Secretary Level talks between India and Pakistan that were scheduled on 25th August 2014 at Islamabad in the background of Pakistan High Commissioner Mr. Abdul Basit's meeting with a leader of Huriyat Conference. http://sacw.net/article9381.html ========================================= 2. CITIZENS FOR DEMOCRACY DEPLORES CANCELLATION OF SECRETARY LEVEL TALKS BY INDIA WITH PAKISTAN ========================================= Citizens For Democracy deplores the decision of India for cancelling the Foreign Secretaries level talk between India and Pakistan which was scheduled to be held on25th August, 2014 in Islamabad. The reason for cancellation is trivial and a non-issue. This decision is a significant drift in the foreign policy which shows that Modi government has decided to follow a policy of aggressive nationalism http://sacw.net/article9365.html ========================================= 3. BANGLADESH: WORKERS, NOT SERFS | Shariful Islam ========================================= In this age of economic globalisation and neo-liberal economy, the principle of profit over people plays a crucial role. Here, the state or a certain class of the society benefits from this economic globalisation, while creating a huge social inequality where certain sections, particularly the working class, become vulnerable in the name of development. In case of the RMG sector in Bangladesh, this claim is quite evident. While the owners become richer day by day, the workers die from factory fires, collapses, while suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and disease due to lower wages and lower safety standards of their workplaces. http://sacw.net/article9299.html ========================================= 4. INHUMANE AND ILLEGAL DEPORTATION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM SRI LANKA SHOULD BE STOPPED - CIVIL SOCIETY STATEMENT ========================================= As Sri Lankan citizens and Sri Lankan civil society organizations, we are appalled by the recent arrests and deportation of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka. According to the UN, 108 Pakistanis have been deported as of 14th August. According to the UNHCR, this included at least 11 women and 8 children and families have been separated, including a pregnant woman that had been left behind after the husband was deported http://www.sacw.net/article9404.html ========================================= 5. SRI LANKA: LESSONS OF 1994 | Savitri Hensman ========================================= May 2014 marked the fifth anniversary of the brutal end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, amidst massive human rights violations by rival armies that killed thousands of civilians. While many Sri Lankans felt relieved to be free of the fear of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, communalism has since been allowed to flourish and democracy and the rule of law undermined. Yet 16 August represents a very different sort of anniversary. Twenty years ago, through non-violent direct action, a heavily-armed dictatorial regime was forced to give up power and peace was temporarily restored in an island wracked by violence from many quarters. This was achieved in the main through mass action by ordinary Sri Lankans, though international human rights activism also played a part. Though the hopes raised by the 1994 general election were not completely fulfilled, I believe there are important lessons to be learned. http://sacw.net/article9349.html ========================================= 6. BHARAT BHUSHAN: SRI LANKA’S MAJORITARIAN SOCIETY ========================================= Sri Lanka is a textbook case of how a majoritarian democratic system can exclude minorities from political power by encouraging political mobilisation on the basis of ethnicity. Its 75 per cent Sinhala, 11 per cent Lankan Tamil and 9 per cent Muslim population each have their own ethnic parties. Political scientists have observed that in ethnically or religiously divided societies with democracy, parties are incentivised to campaign along narrow sectarian lines. So, instead of making Sri Lankan democracy inclusive, Colombo has promoted the ideology of a Sinhala Buddhist nation that excludes minority groups from political power. Such a majoritarian approach runs the risk of radicalising minorities again. http://sacw.net/article9348.html ========================================= 7. SRI LANKA: ’SOCIALISM WAS IN THE AIR’ | Wimal Fernando ========================================= Wimal Fernando, the veteran left and democratic rights activist and former trade unionist, was interviewed by Ahilan Kadirgamar and Balasingham Skanthakumar in January 2011. These excerpts were transcribed and annotated by B. Skanthakumar. The interview is published in Pathways of the Left in Sri Lanka, edited by Marshal Fernando and B. Skanthakumar, Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue, Colombo 2014, pp. 217-240. http://sacw.net/article9312.html ========================================= 8. PAKISTAN: RISK OF DESTABILISATION AND EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL FORCES GAINING GROUNDS - AUGUST 2014 | REPORTS AND COMMENTARY ========================================= statement by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, News reports and editorial commentary http://sacw.net/article9297.html ========================================= 9. PAKISTAN: CONCERNED CITIZENS SPEAK OUT IN DEFENCE OF PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO A LEGITIMATELY ELECTED GOVERNMENT ========================================= Karachi, Aug 18, 2014: We have gathered to share our utter condemnation of the ongoing political drama created in the Capital that has not only stalled the everyday governance of the state, it is directly challenging the political choice and the system of democracy that the people of Pakistan have achieved after so much sacrifice. http://sacw.net/article9367.html ========================================= 10. PAKISTAN: LABOUR ACTIVISTS SPEAK UP AGAINST USE OF RELIGION FOR POLITICAL GAIN, SEEK ELECTORAL REFORMS, STRENGTHENING OF LABOUR RIGHTS AND WORKPLACE SAFETY ========================================= A compilation of news reports from Pakistan http://sacw.net/article9294.html ========================================= 11. POLITICAL TURMOIL IN PAKISTAN: A DISCUSSION ON INDIAN TELEVISION ========================================= India's World - Rajya Sabha TV Programme, Aug 19, 2014 http://sacw.net/article9380.html ========================================= 12. INDIA: HOW POPULAR TELEVISION IS LEGITIMIZING “HINDU” MYTHOLOGICAL TROPES TO PRODUCE A MONOCULTURAL PAST | Ather Farouqui ========================================= So what's going on at 'Kaun Banega Crorepati'? The problem is not that there are questions from Hindu scriptures; it is only right for one to be aware of the plurality of myths, legends and beliefs that make up our cultural past. The problem lies in the complexity and frequency of the questions derived only from the Hindu universe which are asked in such a matter-of-fact manner that it assumes that everyone would know. http://sacw.net/article9393.html ========================================= 13. INDIA: FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE TRIUMPHANT HINDU RIGHT | Ananya Vajpeyi ========================================= In February, Penguin Books India pledged to cease publishing The Hindus: An Alternative History, a 2009 book by Wendy Doniger, a prominent American scholar of India and Hinduism. The publisher also promised to recall and pulp all copies of the book available for sale in India. Penguin's decision was prompted by a complaint filed by Dina Nath Batra, a retired schoolteacher who heads a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (Campaign Committee to Save Education, or SBAS). The group claimed that Doniger's work denigrated Hinduism and Hindus and thus violated Indian laws prohibiting “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.” Batra's organization is affiliated with the hard-line Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Patriotic Organization, or RSS), which is driven by an ideology of Hindutva (Hinduness) and envisions India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation) — a state defined by and restricted to Hindus. http://sacw.net/article9379.html ========================================= 14. INDIA: WHERE THE MIND IS NOT WITHOUT FEAR | Rukun Advani ========================================= A possible future of mass self-censorship by writers and thinkers makes a mockery of protestations of democratic freedom in India http://sacw.net/article9320.html ========================================= 15. INDIA: RE COURT RULING ON IROM SHARMILA AND CRPC 144 IN UKHRUL - Statement by Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur and the UN ========================================= The Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur and the UN (CSCHR), a coalition of twenty-four (24) indigenous peoples' human rights organizations of Manipur in India's North East region, welcomes the historic and far-sighted judgment and orders passed on 19 August 2014 by the District and Sessions Court of Imphal East District of Manipur for the immediate release of Irom Chanu Sharmila who has been continuously on a fast since 2000 for the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 as victory of her and the people of Manipur's moral and political stance. http://sacw.net/article9391.html ========================================= 16. INDIA: MR. MODI'S DOUBLESPEAK - the self-proclaimed PS's lip-service to “populist governance” is nothing but empty words with contradictory action | Rohit Prajapati ========================================= The contradictions between Mr. Modi's political record and his speech were numerous. In an instance of blatant flattery for political ends, Mr. Modi stated “My dear countrymen, this nation has neither been built by political leaders nor by rulers nor by governments. This nation has been built by our farmers, our workers, our mothers and sisters, our youth.” This recognition of the importance of farmers and common people stands in stark contrast to the Modi Government's recent moves, which are anti-small-marginal-farmers, anti-working class and anti-people in general. Instead of going for more deserving amendments in ‘The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013', the Modi Government is planning to dilute the act to get rid of almost all major progressive provisions by way of amendments to allow for more land-grabbing. The Modi Government has begun the process to amend present labour laws to make them more investment-friendly so that industries have free reign as promised in the election. http://sacw.net/article9388.html ========================================= 17. INDIA: FULL COURT OF SUPREME COURT MUST APOLOGISE TO JUDGE, J-1 | Dr. Paramjit Singh Sahni ========================================= With in a span of less than four weeks two retired judges of the Supreme Court facing sexual harassment charges are being treated differently. What about the equality before the law clause as enshrined in the Indian Constitution? http://sacw.net/article9377.html ========================================= 18. INDIA: PROGRESSIVE MUSLIMS CONDEMN THE BRUTAL ATROCITIES BY ISIS FUNDAMENTALISTS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA ========================================= A public statement denounces religious intolerance, persecution and violence in the name of Islam in Iraq and Syria; this was signed by progressive Muslims — activists, intellectuals, community and religious leaders, scholars and academics – representing very many organizations from across India was released to the media at simultaneous Press Conferences held in Delhi and Mumbai at 3 p.m. on 19 August 2014 http://sacw.net/article9376.html +++++From The Archives++++++ ========================================= 19. INDIA: BULLETIN OF THE COMMUNIST PLATFORM, NO. 1 (1977) ========================================= A scanned copy of the first issue of the Bulletin of the Communist Platform. A unique journal from India’s new left in the late 1970s. http://sacw.net/article9357.html ========================================= 20. ALIGARH RIOT OF OCTOBER 1978 - A REPORT TO PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES (DELHI) ========================================= The 1978 report for PUCL (Delhi State) on the Aligarh Riot of 1978 has long been out of print it was scanned as part of sacw’s digital archive. http://www.sacw.net/article9347.html ========================================= 21. INDIA: RAPE, SOCIETY AND THE STATE - A PUCLDR PUBLICATION ========================================= This report by Amiya Rao, Sudesh Vaid and Monica Juneja was published in 1979 by the Delhi based People’s Union for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights, Delhi http://sacw.net/article9345.html ========================================= 22. INDIA: 1977 APPEAL BY TARKUNDE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMITTEE INVESTIGATING ’ENCOUNTER KILLINGS’ ========================================= Scanned copy of the mid 1977 advertisement by a Tarkunde Civil Rights Committee launching investigations into encounter deaths in Andhra Pradesh. http://sacw.net/article9304.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================= 23. INDIA: A ’RAKSHA BANDHAN’ CAMPAIGN DESIGNED TO DIVIDE by Subhashini Ali ========================================= This weekend marked Raksha Bandhan, a festival dedicated to strengthening bonds of love, affection and support between brothers and sisters. The threads that sisters tie on their brothers’ wrists are symbolic of what binds them and what they expect from each other. It is a festival that has been celebrated to cement relationships beyond familial ones and one in which people of many communities have traditionally participated. It is a matter of concern that this year, the Sangh Parivar has launched a campaign all over India to ’celebrate’ this festival in its own unique fashion. Thousands of volunteers carrying bags of rakhis are to fan out all over the country, specially to villages in Uttar Pradesh, so that Hindu girls and women can tie rakhis on their Hindu brothers’ wrists in order to protect them from Muslim men and forced conversions. http://sacw.net/article9311.html ========================================= 24. INDIA: LABOUR REFORMS OF THE WRONG KIND by Harsh Mander ========================================= There is indeed an urgent need for labour reforms, but not the dilution of the few labour protections which still survive on India’s statute books. Instead, what is essential is the rationalization and codification of all labour protections into a single law, and the commitment of employers and governments to adhere to this law and extend its coverage resolutely to every worker in the country. http://sacw.net/article9291.html ========================================= 25. INDIA: THE PLANNING COMMISSION NEEDED MENDING, NOT ENDING | Gopalkrishna Gandhi ========================================= Abolishing the Planning Commission turns the clock's hands back. It distances the Indian state from India's federal spirit. It makes self-analysis and self-criticism alien to government. It makes bridge-building between the weak and the strong, the centre and the peripheries, seem irrelevant. http://sacw.net/article9366.html ========================================= 26. INDIA: PROTECTION OF WOMEN FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACT 2005: HANDBOOK FOR PARLIAMENTARIANS | CLRA ========================================= http://sacw.net/article9362.html ========================================= 27. INDIA: INVITATION TO NARMADA VALLEY - TO STAND UP FOR RIGHTS (AUGUST 23 – 25, 2014) ========================================= We are writing to you on behalf of Delhi Solidarity Group, a group to support people’s movements in the country, and invite you to join the rally to Narmada valley organised by the Narmada Bachao Andolan to meet the people, visit the villages and townships on the banks of Narmada and to assess the reality versus fake claims made by the authorities. . . . You must have heard about the decision taken by the Narendra Modi led NDA government to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. While there are thousands of families in the 177 villages of Madhya Pradesh alone and hundreds of families in the adivasi villages of Maharashtra and Gujarat who are “affected at 122 meters-the present height of the Dam”, the Union and the state government can’t carry further construction at the dam ! This being the legal position and the mandate of ‘No submergence without full rehabilitation of any family’ as well as compliance on environmental conditions, the decision is illegal! It is in violation of the Narmada Tribunal Award and other judgements. http://sacw.net/article9346.html ========================================= 28. GLIMPSES OF LAUREN BACALL THE HOLLYWOOD FILM ICON WHO PASSED AWAY ========================================= http://sacw.net/article9317.html ========================================= 29. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: ========================================= available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/ - Are These Claims on Rise of Muslim Population in the Sundarbans True or This Too is Communal Propaganda ? - Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena etc were to Hold Rally to Support Israel on July 21, 2014 in Mumbai - says announcement - India: 20000 March in Calcutta in Solidarty with Israel - August 16 event organized by a political outfit known as Hindu Samhati - These Posters Regarding Women's Dress in Porbander Gujarat Amount to Moral policing - Hindutva has moved from the fringe to the centre of Indian politics - 'MP government vision paper attempt at communalisation' - Shruti Tomar - BJP's Election Plan for Kashmir - India Pakistan Talks Sink: because of BJP's domestic agenda - targetting of Kashmir special status, ‘Mission 44+’ electoral plan - India: Regressive social mindset - ‘love jihad’ sounds nutty, but it is now endorsed by India’s ruling party - Former Narendra Modi aide Parindu Bhagat to become BJP treasurer - Annoucement: A Panel Discussion on Right to Choose & Politics of Love Jihad (New Delhi, August 22, 2014) - Does Love know any boundaries? - RSS wants Ram Temple - VHP Meet in Bombay (report in Mail today 19 Aug 2014) - India: Will the majoritarian project subvert the very democratic tradition that has brought the BJP to power? - Saba Naqvi - India: The story of my Sanskrit - Ananya Vajpeyi - Modi supporter cum CSDS prof now stands up for Lt. Col Purohit (who was arrested for involvement in Hindutva terror cases) - The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar - Endangered freedom | Vidya Bhushan Rawat - India: Police complaint against top BJP leader Subramanian Swamy for “inciting religious hatred” - India: Shia man wanting to donate body stumped by family and clerics - India: Move to scrap Planning Commission has federal and consitutional implications - UP committee the communal violence in Saharanpur point to administrative lapses and India's ruling party BJPs role ::: FULL TEXT ::: ========================================= 30. STAB IN THE BACK FOR PAINFUL AFGHANISTAN ELECTION PROCESS? by Karlos Zurutuza ========================================= KABUL, Aug 20 2014 (IPS) - A knife fight late Tuesday among several auditors at the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) still inspecting the results of the presidential elections held in mid-June could be the stab in the back for what has been a painful election process. The vote audit process was resumed following a three-hour delay on Wednesday, a commission official said. Two months after Afghans voted in a second runoff for election of the country’s president, ballots are being recounted amid growing questions on who is really arbitrating the process. "What we see is what we expected: an endless fight between the two sides as each ballot is disputed” – Thijs Berman, chief observer of the European Union The four corrugated iron barracks east of Kabul that constitute the centre of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan in which the 22,828 ballot boxes are piled up, have become the Afghan insurgency´s main target. In the June 14 runoff, presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai won 56.44 percent of the votes, while his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, received 43.56 percent, despite having been the most voted candidate in the first runoff on April 5. The turnout was equally surprising: eight million out of 12 million voters, an unlikely figure given that most polling stations were reportedly empty on election day. With Abdullah Abdullah’s allegations of massive fraud having put the electoral process on the brink of collapse, the two candidates were persuaded to agree to a full ballot recount. In an audit that started mid-July, the ballot boxes are being examined by a team formed by auditors of both candidates and members of the IEC. Afghan as well as European Union observers are also on the spot in a process closely monitored by U.N. assistants. “I have spent the last two weeks taking part in this massive farce,” Abdullah Abdullah´s auditor Munir Latifi told IPS. “The United Nations and the Independent Electoral Commission are working together so that Ghani takes the win but there´s nobody supporting us,” he said before returning to his seat. Latifi has to discuss whether the handwritten “V”, “X” or a circle on each candidate´s tick box is repeated in several of the ballots, or if it is really “one person, one vote”. Boxes suspicious of fraud are put in quarantine and records are taken by hand in a notebook. Resources may look scarce but Shazad Ayubee, a Pashtun from Paktiya in southeast Afghanistan and one of Ghani´s auditors, told IPS he was “a hundred percent” satisfied with the process, although “things would be smoother if Abdullah´s auditors didn´t struggle to delay the publication of the results by any means necessary.” Similar handwriting among different ballots “doesn´t necessarily imply fraud,” he added. “In the most remote villages of Afghanistan almost everybody is illiterate. Families simply show up at the polling stations and the one who can write marks their ballots,” explained Ayubee during the lunch break. The most suspicious ballot boxes are those that arrive unlocked, the ones that boast over the maximum of 600 ballots, or even random objects such as traditional felt hats or tobacco packets. Many auditors claim that full boxes arriving from Taliban-controlled areas should be systematically discarded because the Afghan armed opposition consistently prevents the population from taking part in elections. But Ayubee says he knows the reason behind the unexpected turn out in Taliban strongholds: “Unlike Pakistani or Uzbek Taliban, the Afghan Taliban told people to vote for Ghani because he is a Pashtun – a majority of the Afghan insurgents belong to that ethnic group. Everyone knows that Ghani will defend their interests much better than a Tajik like Abdullah Abdullah.” Mid-morning, Noor Mohammad Noor, spokesman for the IEC, appears in the press room opposite the barracks and starts his speech with a “sincere commitment to democracy” as opposed to “unfounded rumours and lies over the development of the audit.” The IEC spokesman describes a “joint effort of 220 IEC workers, 305 auditors for Abdullah, 306 for Ghani and 1014 international observers.” Asked by IPS whether the auditors are skilled in graphology, Mohammad showed no sign of hesitation: “This is a process under the close guidance of the United Nations, which displays 50 advisors on a daily basis. Besides, it´s the United Nations which has the last word over the ballots.” Final decision Speaking to IPS by phone from his office in Brussels, Thijs Berman, chief observer of the European Union, told IPS that it was “too early” to take stock of the process. “What we see is what we expected: an endless fight between the two sides as each ballot is disputed.” Commenting on the fact that the United Nations was acting both as adviser for the electoral process and as arbitrator in the recount, Berman said that “in countries like Spain or Holland we would have relied on a fully external body but in the case of Afghanistan we are dealing with very young institutions that do not yet have a significant credibility.” “I agree that the U.N. role can be criticised, but what is the alternative,” he asked before reiterating that the E.U. delegation is determined to conduct its work “even in the case that the United Nations does not fulfil its part.” Despite repeated calls and emails from IPS, the U.N. spokesman only agreed to respond to a questionnaire sent via e-mail. Jeff Fischer, senior international expert on elections and head of the U.N. Independent Electoral Commission advisory team, labelled the scale and scope of the audit as “unprecedented in the history of the United Nations.” He stressed that all the auditors had received training on IEC procedures and invalidation and recount criteria before they could start working as advisors. Confusion over who has the last word in the audit grows while pressure from the outside strives to break the poll deadlock. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has recently warned that the alliance will be forced to take a decision regarding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan unless the new Afghan president signs the security agreements. According to Rasmussen, the NATO summit scheduled for September 4-5 in Wales would be “very close” to a deadline for taking that decision. (Edited by Phil Harris) ========================================= 31. AN INEPT PAKISTAN POLICY: MODI GOVERNMENT COMMITS BIG MISTAKE BY CANCELLING TALKS AND CUTTING HURRIYAT OUT by Prem Shankar Jha ========================================= (The Times of India, 21 August 2014) From the moment news broke that the Modi government had cancelled the foreign secretaries’ talks scheduled for August 25, the Indian media have been accusing Pakistan of sabotaging the talks by scheduling meetings between the Hurriyat and its high commissioner in Delhi, and refusing to heed a plea from the Indian foreign secretary to postpone these till after the talks. The truth is a little more complicated. Delhi has known that Abdul Basit telephoned the Hurriyat leaders to come to Delhi not at the last minute but on August 10. According to Greater Kashmir (August 13), Islamabad wanted an update from them on developments in the Valley for the meeting in Islamabad. Such consultations had become routine after India and Pakistan began to talk peace bilaterally, in earnest. The Pakistan high commissioner himself spoke openly about it at a social gathering just two days earlier. The volte face on Monday, August 18, therefore came not from Pakistan but India. Foreign secretary Sujatha Singh made her request only hours before Basit’s first of the scheduled meetings, when the Hurriyat leaders were already in Delhi. This made it impossible for Islamabad to accede to it. PM Nawaz Sharif had already been roundly criticised at home for not meeting the Hurriyat when he came to Delhi for PM Modi’s inauguration. Acceding to such a peremptory last minute demand when he was besieged at home by Imran Khan and the Canada-based Barelvi preacher Tahir-ul Qadri would have been political suicide. PM Narendra Modi now has two options: to reject everything that the Vajpayee and Singh governments achieved in the past 11 years and go back to square one, or gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of Indo-Pak relations, and make a fresh start with Kashmir and Pakistan in the near future. The first step on the latter road is to acknowledge that he is not the sole patriot, or indeed the sole custodian of India’s national interest. In January 2005, when Pervez Musharraf sent then PM Shaukat Aziz to New Delhi and Hurriyat flocked to the capital to meet him, then PM Manmohan Singh faced the same dilemma but adopted a very different course of action. Through an intermediary, he tried to persuade them to observe diplomatic protocol by meeting him first, before they met Aziz. Since Singh had met the Hurriyat leaders through me three years earlier, he asked me to be the intermediary. I spent the entire day urging, cajoling and eventually warning the Mirwaiz, Butt and Bilal Lone that they would irretrievably turn the PMO against them if they insulted not only the PM but also the Indian state. But they refused to budge. Only in the late afternoon did Hurriyat chairman Abdul Ghani Butt explain why: “If we do this”, he told me bluntly, “we will be killed”. To anyone not familiar with Kashmir’s tragic history this would have sounded like self-expiating melodrama. But Butt’s confession took the wind out of my sails. For beginning with the assassination of Mirwaiz Umar Farouq’s father Maulvi Farouq on May 21, 1990 (three weeks after he gave an interview to BBC outlining requirements for a return to peace) and ending with the assassination of Abdul Ghani Lone exactly 12 years later, each and every Kash-miri nationalist leader who dared to discuss, or even consider, a solution within the Indian Union, had been assassinated by ISI agents. ISI had, in fact, administered its most recent punishment for disobedience only eight months earlier when it arranged the assassination of Maulvi Mushtaq Ahmad, the Mirwaiz’s uncle, and torched his family’s 100-year-old school in Srinagar, when he did not succumb to its threats and met deputy prime minister L K Advani on February 2, 2004, for a second round of talks on Kashmir. Butt’s own brother had been killed by the same agency in 1996, so his and Hurriyat’s fear was understandable. Despite that, by refusing to meet Manmohan Singh first, they burned their bridges with NSA Narayanan and, as subsequent events have shown, hastened their descent into irrelevance. But Singh did not prevent the meeting with Aziz. He allowed Hurriyat leaders to interact freely with Pakistani decision-makers in Delhi and Islamabad, and kept his doors open for them. By doing that he kept the Kashmiris a part of the decision-making process, and brought India and Pakistan within a whisker of resolving the Kashmir dispute in 2007 before the judges’ crisis fatally weakened Musharraf. Monday’s action may make BJP look tough, but it has severely hurt India’s long-term interests. It has revoked the commitment previous governments, including Vajpayee’s, made to keep Kashmiris within the decision-making process. And it has sealed the doom of Hurriyat and all ‘separatists’ who had tacitly accepted the Manmohan-Musharraf formula for peace. Modi has damaged even the so-called mainstream parties, for the anger he has provoked in the Valley will make the boycott of the coming state election far more effective. PDP, which brought Kashmir close to the end of militancy in 2008, will be the main sufferer. In the longer run, the weakening of both the mainstream parties and Hurriyat will leave the field open for the final fight – between the real separatists who are the Ahl-e Hadis and radicalised youth of Srinagar, and the Indian state. ========================================= 32. RADCLIFFE AND HIS 1947 JOB BY THE POET WH AUDEN IN PARTITION ========================================= Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition Between two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods. 'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late For mutual reconciliation or rational debate: The only solution now lies in separation. The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter, That the less you are seen in his company the better, So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation. We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu, To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.' Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away, He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect, But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot, And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot, But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided, A continent for better or worse divided. The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not, Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot. Partition, 1966 by WH Auden. ====================== 33. BOOK REVIEW: THE GOOD GERMANS - INSIDE THE RESISTANCE TO THE NAZIS by Peter Hoffmann ====================== (Foreign Affairs, July/August 2014 Issue) No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters Against Hitler in Church and State. BY ELISABETH SIFTON AND FRITZ STERN. New York Review Books, 2013, 157 pp. $19.95. When Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Europeans had a long tradition of armed resistance to authority from which they could draw. In countries such as Denmark, France, and Poland, substantial movements emerged in opposition to Nazi occupation. Yet inside Germany itself, a comparatively small resistance struggled to gain traction and rarely posed a serious threat to Hitler’s rule. Most Germans worried primarily about their own survival and thus, as information began to leak out about the deportation of Jews and other Nazi abuses, they kept any concerns they might have had to themselves. After all, mentioning such matters could carry the death penalty, as could listening to foreign radio stations and spreading rumors. The threat of harsh punishment largely worked: the Nazis effectively sealed off most Germans from outside information, and anyone who did learn the truth and was troubled by it risked a great deal by acting on such thoughts. The brave few who did join in resistance were painfully aware of their lack of internal or external support, but it came as no surprise to most of them. Yet explanations of why so few Germans rose up against Hitler and why so many stuck with him to the bitter end have tended to leave little room for the stories of the men and women who did oppose Nazi rule. In No Ordinary Men, Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern help fill this gap by chronicling the lives of two leading members of the German resistance: the noted theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his lesser-known brother-in-law the jurist Hans von Dohnanyi. In telling the stories of Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi, the book offers a fascinating portrait of the anti-Nazi underground. Among its many insights, perhaps the most important is that, although those who opposed Hitler often had political and strategic motives unrelated to Nazi anti-Semitism, the most influential resisters were driven primarily (or at least in great part) by a shared sense of horror at the mass murder of Jews. HALTING THE WHEEL Both Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi opposed the Nazi regime from the start, but Bonhoeffer’s conflict with the Nazis was more public and is therefore better remembered today. Born to a prominent Berlin family, Bonhoeffer decided to pursue a career as a pastor when he was only 14. Sifton and Stern suggest that in addition to the influence of his mother’s side of the family (his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were pastors), Bonhoeffer may have been attracted to a life of service in response to the “moral uncertainty” and “spiritual turmoil” that characterized the years following World War I. Later, Bonhoeffer studied for a year at the Union Theological Seminary in New York under the philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr (who happens to be Sifton’s father). By 1933, the year Hitler was appointed Germany’s chancellor, Bonhoeffer was an ordained pastor who was already well known for his theological writings. At the time, the German Lutheran Church, to which he belonged, had no unified position on National Socialism. A strong faction within the church, whose members dubbed themselves “German Christians,” favored what it considered a Germanic version of Christianity, proclaiming an “Aryan Jesus” and supporting Nazi anti-Semitism. Most German pastors were not Nazi extremists, however, but nationalists, loyal to whatever government was in place. Bonhoeffer rejected both stances. Just two days after Hitler’s appointment, he delivered a radio address warning that if a strong leader (Führer) such as Hitler violated the trust of the people, he stood “in danger of becoming the great seducer” (Verführer). The Nazis, meanwhile, launched a major effort to assert control over the administration of the church and purge its clergy of “non-Aryans.” Moral minority: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1924. (BPK, Berlin / Staatsbi Bliothek Zu Berlin / Art Resource, NY) Soon after his radio address, Bonhoeffer published “The Church and the Jewish Question,” an essay arguing that the German church had “an unconditional obligation toward the victims of any ordering of society.” Although the church’s role was “neither to praise nor censure the laws of the state,” he wrote, it should question whether its actions were justified. Moreover, the church might be obliged to not only “bind up the wounds of those who have fallen beneath the wheel . . . but at times halt the wheel itself” by taking direct political action. In the words of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, the essay made Bonhoeffer “the first and almost only pastor to grasp and deal with the centrality of the Judenfrage [Jewish question].” Unable to abide what he considered the cowardice of the Lutheran Church in the face of Hitler’s efforts to control it, Bonhoeffer and his fellow pastor Martin Niemöller led a group of more than 2,000 pastors to form a new organization called the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer soon abandoned that group, as well, believing its members were still too timid to counteract the Nazi sympathizers and operatives who sought to control Germany’s churches. The Gestapo seemed to believe the Confessing Church nevertheless posed a threat and arrested some 800 of its pastors in 1937. Three years later, the Nazis forbade Bonhoeffer from preaching or speaking publicly at all. While Bonhoeffer was testing the limits of opposition to the Nazis, Dohnanyi was working at the highest levels of the Nazi system. Dohnanyi, a son of the celebrated Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnanyi (and eventually father of the acclaimed conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi), had grown up in Berlin and had known the Bonhoeffers from childhood. While working toward a doctorate in law at the University of Hamburg, he met Bonhoeffer’s sister Christine and married her in 1925. Four years later, the couple moved back to Berlin, where Dohnanyi entered the Justice Ministry and held a string of prestigious posts. In 1933, he became the chief assistant to the justice minister, Franz Gürtner. Deeply repulsed by the Nazis, Dohnanyi used this privileged position to begin keeping a record of their illegal acts. He later told his Nazi interrogators that it was “arbitrariness in matters of law, and National Socialist procedures in Jewish and church questions,” that had motivated him to resist. But Dohnanyi also faced grave risks due to his own heritage: he had a Jewish grandfather. Like all civil servants, Dohnanyi was required to provide evidence of his Aryan descent. But Gürtner informed Hitler that his assistant was indispensable, and Hitler decreed that Dohnanyi was not to “suffer any disadvantage because of his racial origins.” To provide further assurance of Dohnanyi’s safety, Gürtner appointed him a judge on Germany’s supreme court, removing him from direct Gestapo surveillance. The Nazis’ confidence in Dohnanyi was misplaced. As early as 1934, he had begun actively subverting the Nazi state: secretly assisting Jews whom he knew or who approached him and using his access to clandestinely collect and index copious records of official crimes. In 1939, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, the German military’s counterintelligence arm, recruited Dohnanyi to work as a specialist officer in his organization. Under Canaris, who was also a secret opponent of Hitler, Dohnanyi was able to continue assisting Jews, in some cases pulling strings to transfer them from a particular concentration camp to a less dangerous one. Dohnanyi also used his new position to help link various resisters throughout the German officer corps. Meanwhile, Dohnanyi often sought the spiritual council of his brother-in-law Bonhoeffer; Dohnanyi’s continuing service to the criminal regime, even if it was only a front, troubled him deeply. But by 1939, both men had come around to the same point of view: rather than being true to one’s convictions and showing open disapproval of the regime’s policies, it was better to hold on to the most influential Nazi post available in order to undermine the regime from within. Bonhoeffer faced his own dilemma. In 1940, he was likely to be drafted into the army, and he was profoundly troubled by the thought of having to serve Nazi criminals in a military uniform. But he considered conscientious objection to be virtual suicide, since those who refused to serve were typically executed. After Bonhoeffer’s request to serve as an army chaplain was rejected, Dohnanyi and his associates managed to get Bonhoeffer’s military service deferred by recruiting Bonhoeffer into the Abwehr as a civilian liaison. Bonhoeffer subsequently became a full-fledged member of an active anti-Nazi conspiracy in the Abwehr. Its members -- including Canaris; General Hans Oster, the second officer in command of the Abwehr; Ludwig Beck, the retired chief of the German general staff; and Helmuth James von Moltke, another Abwehr officer and a descendant of Bismarck’s famous field marshal Helmuth von Moltke -- were all appalled by Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. But like Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi, they had determined that the best chances of halting Hitler existed nearest to the levers of state power, requiring an involuntary complicity with the regime. Perhaps the most significant scheme Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi hatched as officers in the Abwehr was an attempt to gain support for a coup from the United Kingdom. In May 1942, Bonhoeffer learned that George Bell, the bishop of Chichester and a member of the House of Lords, was visiting Sweden. Bonhoeffer knew Bell and flew to Stockholm to meet him. He told the bishop that a group of conspirators of some standing in Germany were ready to overthrow the Nazi regime. And he asked that the British government treat the potential coup seriously and refrain from taking military advantage of any instability that might result in Germany should the coup succeed. Bell delivered the message to the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. But Eden refused to make any hypothetical commitments, and Bell got no further with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The German resistance had made similar appeals to other foreign governments, with the same result, so Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi had had no illusions about their chances of success. But they had felt that they had to attempt to secure some encouragement, if not the kind of material aid that the Allies were extending to every resistance movement in Europe except the German one. Given the German public’s enduring support for Hitler, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi also understood the risks that resistance carried for themselves and their families. As Sifton and Stern put it, they sacrificed “everything that was good in the private realm so as to combat evil in the public realm.” It was in this spirit that Dohnanyi orchestrated the smuggling in 1942 of 14 Jews from Berlin to Switzerland, disguising them as intelligence agents, which allowed the group to cross the border with the approval of Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief. But the gambit ultimately proved to be Dohnanyi’s undoing: in April 1943, the Nazis arrested Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer on charges of currency violations connected with the funding of the Switzerland mission. In the book’s final section, Sifton and Stern describe the two men’s imprisonment, which lasted nearly two years, noting their steadfast refusal to name any associates. The authors describe how in the face of grueling interrogations, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi drew on their formidable dialectical and legal training in a final act of resistance, deflecting the Gestapo’s accusations, threats, and verbal abuse. Both were hanged in April 1945 -- just weeks before the Red Army took Berlin. KILLING HITLER To be sure, not all German resisters counted Jewish persecution as their primary motivation. Other Nazi offenses were abhorrent enough: the suspension of Germany’s democratic constitution, the abrogation of civil rights, the unscrupulous sacrifice of millions of soldiers, the mass murder of Soviet prisoners of war. Over the course of the war, Henning von Tresckow, a senior military officer, planned and attempted several coups, all of which involved efforts to take Hitler’s life. None succeeded, and after the failed July 1944 “Operation Valkyrie” assassination attempt, Tresckow committed suicide. But a year before his death, Tresckow made clear to his trusted secretary that it was the mass murder of the Jews that had driven him and his coconspirators to seek Hitler’s death. Claus von Stauffenberg, the colonel who planted the bomb intended to kill Hitler in the Valkyrie plot, also cited the murder of the Jews as a main motive. In April 1942, talking with a staff officer in the army high command, Stauffenberg expressed his outrage at the brutal treatment of the civilian population in German-occupied Russia, the mass murder of the Jews, and the starvation of Soviet prisoners of war. In May, on receiving an eyewitness account of SS men rounding up Jews in a Ukrainian town, making them dig their own mass grave, and then shooting them, Stauffenberg determined that Hitler must be removed. “They are shooting Jews in masses,” he later told another officer. “These crimes must not be allowed to continue.” Tresckow and Stauffenberg were not alone: surviving Gestapo records individually quote 15 of the several dozen resisters who tried to kill Hitler in July 1944 as telling their interrogators that they opposed the Nazi regime for its persecution of the Jews. After months of interrogating and torturing the conspirators, the Gestapo concluded that the entire inner alienation from the ideas of National Socialism that characterized the men of the reactionary conspiratorial circle expresses itself above all in their position on the Jewish Question. . . . They stubbornly take the liberal position of granting to the Jews in principle the same status as to every German. Why did the attempts on Hitler’s life between 1938 and 1944 consistently fail? A central reason was that the Nazis were unsparing in suppressing dissent inside Germany. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis, using state-sanctioned procedures, executed some 77,000 Germans for political offenses and murdered innumerable domestic opponents in concentration camps without any semblance of due process. German courts-martial executed some 25,000 German soldiers. (By comparison, Allied courts-martial relating to World War II resulted in fewer than 300 death sentences.) Gestapo informers regularly thwarted attempts at forming coalitions. The radio was exclusively in government control; that left duplicating and spreading leaflets by hand, an inefficient method quickly detected and easily halted by the police. And given how difficult it was just to distribute anti-Nazi leaflets, devising a plan to assassinate Hitler was far from simple. Several plots came close to succeeding, however, and most were frustrated by bad luck, technical malfunctions, or unpredictable changes in Hitler’s schedule. The Valkyrie plot, which hinged on the detonation of a briefcase bomb, was no exception. Stauffenberg, whose service in Tunisia had left him with one eye and just three fingers on a single hand, was the plot’s key orchestrator. On the morning of July 20, he arrived at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters, on the eastern front, and set about activating the fuses of two 1,000-gram packets of explosives -- a process that was interrupted by an orderly who asked Stauffenberg to hurry to a midday briefing with Hitler that had already begun. In immediate danger of being detected, Stauffenberg cut short the activation and went off to the briefing with only half the amount of explosives that he had planned to use. The bomb exploded, and Hitler might still have been killed if Stauffenberg’s briefcase had been placed -- or had remained -- close enough to Hitler. But Stauffenberg had departed the meeting (leaving his briefcase behind) to fly back to Berlin, where he was the only conspirator willing and able to run the next stage of the planned coup. This points to the appalling fact that no one in Berlin except Stauffenberg could be relied on to set things in motion after the assassination attempt. Tresckow was fighting on the eastern front, and Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were already in Nazi custody. As a result, Stauffenberg had an impossible double role -- managing two parts of the plot in two separate places, 350 miles apart. The fact that he was the only one with the will and the courage to go through with the entire undertaking is the deeper and more tragic reason for the plot’s failure. In the weeks leading up to his execution, Dohnanyi offered a similar explanation for the resisters’ lack of success: “The obtuseness and cowardice of people of property and influence, and the stupidity of most officers, frustrated all efforts.” This kind of thinking, of course, was a common refrain of German resisters bemoaning the weakness of their own movement. “Since the conquest of Poland, three hundred thousand Jews in this land have been murdered in the most bestial manner,” read one 1942 leaflet distributed by the White Rose, a student resistance group at the University of Munich. “The German people are again sleeping on in obtuse, stupid sleep, giving these fascist criminals the temerity and opportunity to continue to rage -- and they are doing it. . . . Everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!” (The group’s leaders, Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie Scholl, were beheaded the following year.) Sifton and Stern conclude their book with a look at how even after the Nazis’ defeat, the Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi families faced public and official calumny for being relatives of traitors. In Germany today, of course, the two resisters are officially honored. But if the stories of the men and women who did oppose Nazi rule are still not widely known, it is in part because they shame those who did not resist, whether owing to a preoccupation with survival, lack of opportunity, weakness of character, or active support for the Nazi regime. Sifton and Stern, then, have done an important service, exploring the lives of two men who took the path that, in Dohnanyi’s mind, “a decent person inevitably takes.” _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ South Asia Citizens Wire Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ ##### #### _\_ ________ ##=-[.].] | \ \ #( _\ | |------| # __| | |||||||| \ _/ | |||||||| .--'--'-. | | ____ | / __ ` |__|[o__o]| _(____nm_______ /____\____ 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
