South Asia Citizens Wire - 23 September 2014 - No. 2833 [since 1996] --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents: 1. Infographic: Religious Violence in Post-War Sri Lanka 2. Saad Hafiz: Fascisms of every kind 3. Bangladesh: Development and Un-Development at a Gas Field in Sylhet 4. Bangladesh: Outlaw marital rape says Editorial in Dhaka Tribune 5. 100 Days of Modi Points to Emergent Disaster - An Independent Report Released in the US 6. Gehal Singh The Unsung Communist Who Fought Against the Partition Killings of 1947 in Punjab 7. Pakistan - Baldia Factory Fire: A September 11, That The World Doesnt Talk About 8. Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy urges the PM to step up flood relief and rescue work in Kashmir 9. 2014 Appeal(s) to donate for flood relief in Kashmir 10. Pakistan: Cult versus parliament | Khaled Ahmed 11. Marieme Helie Lucas Responds to Chelsea Manning's strategy to leave ‘self contained' enclaves for IS to rule 12. Video: Noor Inayat Khan who Defied the Nazis In WW II Paris 13. Beijing Thanks South Africa for Blocking Dalai Lama Trip Say Reports 14. Saadia Azim: The Jihad (struggle) for Love! 15. India: Spreading Fear Through Stereotypes - The politics of ‘love jihad’ | Praful Bidwai 16. India: Vibrant Gujarat – No Place for Muslims? 17. India: Never Confuse The Terrorists With The Community Whose Cause They Claim to Champion - Message from Mumbai | Javed Anand 18. India: "The divisive agenda of RSS is now Public" - Film maker Hansal Mehta interviewed by Teesta Setalvad 19. India: Rule by the Majority | Mukul Dube 20. India: Muktibodh - The worker of poetry | Apoorvanand 21. Video: When you are in Love, What is there to Fear - Hindi film song ’Jab Pyar kiya to Darna Kya’ 22. India’s Polavaram Project : Destruction Unlimited | Vidya Bhushan Rawat 23. India: "We want lovers to unite no matter which caste, community, religion or place they come from" 24. India: BJP Appointed Kerala Governor P Sathasivam's Graham Staines Judgement Revisited | Pratik Sinha 25. India: Delhi University's Incalculable Losses | Mukul Managalik 26. India: Uma Bharti water resources minister says athiest and non believer shit caused himalayan disaster in Uttrakhand 27. India: Mass Arrest in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh: Black days of Emergency are here? - CDRO Press Statement 28. India: Lest we Forget: The Batla House Case, six years on 29. Video: Charlie Chaplin’s Speech in The Great Dictator 30. 2nd Anniversary of Baldia Factory Fire in Karachi 31. Facing 2014 Kashmir Floods: ’What you see all around is the beauty of humanism, and what you don’t is the government’ 32. India: Full text of Fali Nariman’s Lecture ’Minorities at Cross Roads: Comments on Judicial Pronouncements’ 33. India: ‘Gujarat model’ of communal politics flourishing in UP | Harsh Mander 34. India: To The Teacher Bipan Chandra With Love [Audio and Text] | Mukul Mangalik 35. India: Modi disinvesting moral authority from his high office | B G Verghese +++++From The Archives++++++ 36. Video: Meera Nanda on "Science and Hindu Nationalism", Daniel Thorner Lecture, 2004, Paris 37. 1974 Pamphlet from Communist Party of India on The Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind 38. India: 2004 Appeal from the progressive intelligentsia to left parties 39. Declassified 1962 CIA Briefing on India’s Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute 40. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: 41. The truth that will not die: Anand Patwardhan’s Tribute to Shubhradeep Chakravorty ::: FULL TEXT ::: 42. Excerpt: The Underground Girls Of Kabul - In Search of A Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan | Jenny Nordberg 43. After the deluge, the fog | Jawed Naqvi 44. The Scottish Path to Independence | Pritam Singh 45. Why the Fight for Independence Isn't Over: Project Fear and the Scottish Vote | Tariq Ali 46. The death of universities | Terry Eagleton ========================================= 1.CPA INFOGRAPHIC: RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE IN POST-WAR SRI LANKA ========================================= http://sacw.net/article9580.html ========================================= 2. SAAD HAFIZ: FASCISMS OF EVERY KIND ========================================= Fascism’s many faces continue to threaten societies by dividing the people into “we” and “they” and by implanting a sense of historic wrong waiting for the mass upsurge to right them. Unlike earlier fascists, there is no stated policy to kill, deport or enslave entire races and populations that are considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with superior people. But the same desired result of a racially homogeneous society that avoids the intermixing of superior peoples and those deemed to be part of inferior races is still sought. The holy men representing religious fundamentalism appear more zealous than extreme far-right parties. http://sacw.net/article9566.html ========================================= 3. BANGLADESH: DEVELOPMENT AND UN-DEVELOPMENT AT A GAS FIELD IN SYLHET ========================================= On the one hand are Chevron’s narratives, which conjure up an appealing picture of community development, entrepreneurship and ‘empowerment’, relying upon idioms of sustainability and ‘helping people to help themselves’. On the other are the narratives of people living in the villages surrounding the installation. http://sacw.net/article9523.html ========================================= 4. BANGLADESH: OUTLAW MARITAL RAPE SAYS EDITORIAL IN DHAKA TRIBUNE ========================================= The law needs to be clearly on the side of victims, not provide loopholes. We call on the government to make marital rape an offence under the law. http://sacw.net/article9522.html ========================================= 5. 100 DAYS OF MODI POINTS TO EMERGENT DISASTER - AN INDEPENDENT REPORT RELEASED IN THE US ========================================= The Ghadar Alliance, a US-based educational/watchdog coalition created by concerned citizens in the wake of the BJP victory, today released a comprehensive ‘100-day report' evaluating the performance of the Modi government's first 100 days in office. The report, titled “Fast Track to Troubling Times,” is being released as Modi prepares for his first visit to the US as India's Prime Minister. Modi's US tour begins on September 26th. http://sacw.net/article9608.html ========================================= 6. GEHAL SINGH THE UNSUNG COMMUNIST WHO FOUGHT AGAINST THE PARTITION KILLINGS OF 1947 IN PUNJAB ========================================= In 1947. A colonial operator Sir Cyril Radcliffe had drawn a dividing line to dismember the body Punjab. A new country called Pakistan – the land of the pure – purportedly on the basis of religion of Islam came into being. Migration of population on the largest scale in known human history was taking place and the Muslims and Sikhs were slaughtering each other. A full-fledged civil war was on. In the total madness, there were some sane voices around. The Punjabi communists of Sikh, Hindu and Muslim backgrounds were actively involved in peace committees trying to save the lives of innocent people. Comrade Gehal Singh was one of them. http://sacw.net/article9597.html ========================================= 7. PAKISTAN - BALDIA FACTORY FIRE: A SEPTEMBER 11, THAT THE WORLD DOESNT TALK ABOUT ========================================= To mark the second anniversary of the Baldia factory fire incident, which caused deaths of over 250 workers and injuries to over 40 others on September 11, 2012. PILER, along with other partner organisations (trade unions and civil society organisations) held a press conference on Tuesday, Sep. 9, 2014 at Karachi Press Club. Attached is coverage of the press conference in English press of Pakistan. http://sacw.net/article9545.html ========================================= 8. PAKISTAN INDIA PEOPLES’ FORUM FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY URGES THE PM TO STEP UP FLOOD RELIEF AND RESCUE WORK IN KASHMIR ========================================= We have been watching with increasing concern and dismay the fast deteriorating situation on the ground – on both sides of the border, especially in the Kashmir valley and the hilly terrains of the Jammu region. The scale of devastation is unprecedented though the armed forces are doing their best. We strongly believe that much more needs to be done on an urgent basis. http://sacw.net/article9550.html ========================================= 9. 2014 APPEAL(S) TO DONATE FOR FLOOD RELIEF IN KASHMIR ========================================= Appeals from different organisations for Relief work in wake of 2014 floods in Jammu and Kashmir [from Aman Biradri / Aman Trust / COVA / ANHAD / Pakistan India People’s Forum For Peace and Democracy and others] http://sacw.net/article9520.html ========================================= 10. PAKISTAN: CULT VERSUS PARLIAMENT by Khaled Ahmed ========================================= Two cult leaders — one with his private army — are present in Islamabad’s Red Zone. The state that talks to them begins its discourse with “inshallah”, the same as the cult challenger, just like the Arab armies in the Middle East that cry “Allahu Akbar” before killing each other. The two cults challenging the state today are clearly different, as all cults must be varied. One leader is a cleric and can ask his followers to lay down their lives without fearing disobedience from them. The other is less sure of obedience but relies on religious inspiration and knows that dead bodies will ensure success. http://sacw.net/article9533.html ========================================= 11. MARIEME HELIE LUCAS RESPONDS TO CHELSEA MANNING'S STRATEGY TO LEAVE ‘SELF CONTAINED' ENCLAVES FOR IS TO RULE ========================================= First and foremost, it is for those directly concerned, endangered, already under the boot of the green-fascists - not for Soldier Manning- , to tell the world how they want the monster to be contained, and also - clearly - how they do not want the situation to be dealt with. Although a US/Europe military intervention may not be what they are looking forward to, i doubt that they fancy the alternative as posed by Manning and others: being abandonned, unarmed, to their own forces, facing green-fascists armed to their teeth by the very same US and European powers. http://sacw.net/article9564.html ========================================= 12. VIDEO: NOOR INAYAT KHAN WHO DEFIED THE NAZIS IN WW II PARIS ========================================= http://sacw.net/article9519.html ========================================= 13. BEIJING THANKS SOUTH AFRICA FOR BLOCKING DALAI LAMA TRIP SAY REPORTS ========================================= selected news reports from the South African Media (September 2014) http://sacw.net/article9521.html ========================================= 14. SAADIA AZIM: THE JIHAD (STRUGGLE) FOR LOVE! ========================================= With the controversy surrounding mixed religion marriages in India these days and terming them as ‘Love Jihad’ or part of a greater conspiracy, it seems it is time for me to stand up and share my story of ‘my JIHAD FOR LOVE’. After a long challenging battle for social acceptability and stability for more than fifteen years I eventually come out today as just another common Indian married woman living life in my terms. The only difference here is that I am married by my choice to a man from another religion who I met, fell in love and married. http://sacw.net/article9544.html ========================================= 15. INDIA: SPREADING FEAR THROUGH STEREOTYPES - THE POLITICS OF ‘LOVE JIHAD’ by Praful Bidwai ========================================= How does Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lofty slogan Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikaas (inclusion and development for all) square up with India’s social-political reality as vulnerable groups such as the religious minorities experience it? The honest answer is that these groups had the most to fear from a Bharatiya Janata Party election victory, and some of their fears are coming true. The BJP’s leaders, Mr Modi included, have done very little to allay them although it’s their duty to do so. http://sacw.net/article9538.html ========================================= 16. INDIA: VIBRANT GUJARAT – NO PLACE FOR MUSLIMS? ========================================= Hotelier Mustafa Patel from Gujarat- owner of Jyoti Hotel - is a very sad these days. His famous hotel– which lied on Viramgam highway, merely ninety minute drive from Ahmedabad, is now closed. Anyone who has travelled on that road would vouch about its quality preparations, All the employees who worked with him are in search of another job. Undoubtedly, for Mr. Mustafa it was a very painful decision to close it, but there was no other option. It is being alleged that he was receiving (...) http://sacw.net/article9525.html ========================================= 17. INDIA: NEVER CONFUSE THE TERRORISTS WITH THE COMMUNITY WHOSE CAUSE THEY CLAIM TO CHAMPION - MESSAGE FROM MUMBAI by Javed Anand ========================================= Never confuse the terrorists with the community whose cause they claim to be championing. The greatest challenge in fighting terrorism lies in winning over the trust of the community and thus isolating the terrorists. It’s evident from the experience of other countries, which also tells us that a bullets-alone approach is never the answer to terrorism. http://sacw.net/article9515.html ========================================= 18. INDIA: "THE DIVISIVE AGENDA OF RSS IS NOW PUBLIC" - Film maker Hansal Mehta interviewed by Teesta Setalvad ========================================= Film Director Hansal Mehta in an interview has expressed serious concerns over the overt activities and statements of the RSS and allied organizations, after the recent central government’s victory in the general elections of 2014. He has stated that the "Communal and divisive Agenda of the century old rightist organization RSS is now open and public." This interview is the launching video of a series of audio-visual interviews, available for viewing on the internet on the joint You Tube video channel by Communalism Combat and www.hillele.org http://sacw.net/article9512.html ========================================= 19. INDIA: RULE BY THE MAJORITY by Mukul Dube ========================================= What does the dominance of the majority entail? Harsh Mander writes in the Hindustan Times, "In the three months since Narendra Modi’s spectacular triumph, many corners of the country have begun to smoulder in slow fires of orchestrated hate and distrust against India’s Muslims.... The culpability for each of these clashes lies with the communal organisations bent on fomenting animosities. But it is shared equally by the shamefully weak-kneed (or actively prejudiced) responses of the state and district administrations in these states.... After characterising the millennium of Indian history when the majority of its rulers were Muslim as an era of slavery, the studied silence of the otherwise garrulous Prime Minister about these attacks is both deafening and ominous. http://sacw.net/article9562.html ========================================= 20. INDIA: MUKTIBODH - THE WORKER OF POETRY by Apoorvanand ========================================= Why did Muktibodh become uniquely significant in the summer of 1964? Why did almost all the weeklies, monthlies and dailies start introducing him to their readers?” Fifty years ago, Shamsher Bahadur Singh asked this question in the preface to Chand Ka Munh Tedha Hai, the first anthology of the poems of Muktibodh. http://sacw.net/article9554.html ========================================= 21. VIDEO: WHEN YOU ARE IN LOVE, WHAT IS THERE TO FEAR - HINDI FILM SONG ’JAB PYAR KIYA TO DARNA KYA’ ========================================= Video clip of celebrated Hindi film song ’Jab Pyar kiya to Darna Kya’ from the film Mughal e Azam http://sacw.net/article9553.html ========================================= 22. INDIA’S POLAVARAM PROJECT : DESTRUCTION UNLIMITED by Vidya Bhushan Rawat ========================================= Polavaram is an example that despite heavy damages due to the destruction of nature, we have not learnt our lessons yet. India will remain one of the top class countries experts in killing its own environment and people in the name of development. Hope this destruction does not bring another Tsunami in the following years for which the country is not yet prepared and has no plan of action. http://sacw.net/article9552.html ========================================= 23. INDIA: "WE WANT LOVERS TO UNITE NO MATTER WHICH CASTE, COMMUNITY, RELIGION OR PLACE THEY COME FROM" ========================================= With a vision of uniting love birds who have attained the legal age of marriage, Love Commandos claimed to have united over 30,000 couple in a short spell of four years. "We want lovers to unite no matter which caste, community, religion or place they come from. There should be a society where love prevails over everything," says Chairman of Love Commandos, Sanjoy Sachdev. http://sacw.net/article9596.html ========================================= 24. INDIA: BJP APPOINTED KERALA GOVERNOR P SATHASIVAM'S GRAHAM STAINES JUDGEMENT REVISITED | Pratik Sinha ========================================= P Sathasivam's lop-sided judgment in the Staine's case now seen in hindsight P Sathasivam, the BJP appointed Governor of Kerala, was part of the Supreme Court bench who had upheld the Orissa High Court's decision to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment in the case of Dara Singh, who played the lead role in the burning alive of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his young sons Timothy and Philip. The next two paras is how the judgment delivered by Sathasivam justified (...) http://sacw.net/article9598.html ========================================= 25. INDIA: DELHI UNIVERSITY'S INCALCULABLE LOSSES | Mukul Managalik ========================================= Delhi University (DU) re-opened to chaos and arbitrariness for the fourth year running. Thoughtlessness, dangerous neglect, the irregular and ad-hoc, the anti-academic, anti-democratic and anti-intellectual are, it seems, being normalized by the DU Administration. University functioning, driven by diktats and fear of authority following the massive usurpation of powers by the Vice-Chancellor (VC), is being kept in a state of perpetual instability ensuring a banalisation of serious concerns regarding education, freedom, equality, collective decision- making, workplace safety and other difficulties facing students, employees and pensioners. http://sacw.net/article9589.html ========================================= 26. INDIA: UMA BHARTI WATER RESOURCES MINISTER SAYS ATHIEST AND NON BELIEVER SHIT CAUSED HIMALAYAN DISASTER IN UTTRAKHAND ========================================= A year after the devastating floods in the mountain state of Uttrakhand, Uma Bharti, the Union minster for water resources in India's Hindu nationalist driven government led by Mr Narendra Modi has publicly claimed that "underlying” cause of the disaster — defecation near the shrine by non-believers. http://sacw.net/article9588.html ========================================= 27. INDIA: MASS ARREST IN TELANGANA AND ANDHRA PRADESH: BLACK DAYS OF EMERGENCY ARE HERE? - CDRO PRESS STATEMENT ========================================= The AP and Telangana State governments have coercively prevented the one day convention of the FORUM FOR ALTERNATIVE POLITICS in Hyderabad on 21 Sep 2014 from being held. This is a most condemnable, undemocratic and unconstitutional acts of the two governments. http://sacw.net/article9595.html ========================================= 28. INDIA: LEST WE FORGET: THE BATLA HOUSE CASE, SIX YEARS ON ========================================= 19th September marks the sixth anniversary of the Batla House ‘encounter'. Six years ago, on this day, the Special Cell of Delhi Police claimed to have hit upon the perpetrators of the serial blasts that had struck the capital city the previous week. The so-called encounter resulted in the death of Inspector Sharma, a veteran of dozens of encounters and two young men, Atif Ameen and Sajid. http://sacw.net/article9591.html ========================================= 29. VIDEO: CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S SPEECH IN THE GREAT DICTATOR ========================================= http://sacw.net/article9508.html ========================================= 30. 2ND ANNIVERSARY OF BALDIA FACTORY FIRE IN KARACHI ========================================= September 11, 2014 marks the second anniversary of the horrific fire that killed more than 250 workers at the Baldia factory in Karachi. Labour groups are still campaigning for compensation to workers families and for bringing to book those responsible http://sacw.net/article9506.html ========================================= 31. FACING 2014 KASHMIR FLOODS: ’WHAT YOU SEE ALL AROUND IS THE BEAUTY OF HUMANISM, AND WHAT YOU DON’T IS THE GOVERNMENT’ ========================================= An account from Srinagar by Basharat Peer, the noted journalist and writer in a major national daily in India. http://sacw.net/article9563.html ========================================= 32. INDIA: FULL TEXT OF FALI NARIMAN’S LECTURE ’MINORITIES AT CROSS ROADS: COMMENTS ON JUDICIAL PRONOUNCEMENTS’ ========================================= Fali S. Nariman delivered the 7th Annual Lecture of National Commission of Minorites, Friday, 12th September, 2014 at the constitution club in New Delhi http://sacw.net/article9565.html ========================================= 33. INDIA: ‘GUJARAT MODEL’ OF COMMUNAL POLITICS FLOURISHING IN UP by Harsh Mander ========================================= There is nothing, nothing which can persuade us to return to our villages. They burned and looted our homes: We could barely save our lives, as we desperately ran with our children in our arms and just the clothes we were wearing. What is there for us to return to?’ Words I heard over and over again in a harrowing journey through the districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, exactly a year after a storm of hate overnight tore this peaceful countryside apart. http://sacw.net/article9567.html ========================================= 34. INDIA: TO THE TEACHER BIPAN CHANDRA WITH LOVE [Audio and Text] by Mukul Mangalik ========================================= Sadness gripped me when I heard of Prof Bipan Chandra’s passing on August 30, 2014. Before it could settle in, however, images took over, memories from the 1970s when I was a student and Bipan saheb a teacher at the Centre for Historical Studies (CHS), JNU. http://sacw.net/article9496.html ========================================= 35. INDIA: MODI DISINVESTING MORAL AUTHORITY FROM HIS HIGH OFFICE by B G Verghese ========================================= We seem headed for government and governance by innuendo. The PM is silent when he should speak and speaks when he should remain silent. These straws in the wind have not gone unnoticed. The Modi mystique is unravelling even before the 100-day “celebrations” of his regime. The nation’s 5.7 per cent growth rate in the quarter ended June is welcome but derives from decisions, emerging trends and impulses that essentially belong to the earlier UPA era, whatever the government might claim. http://sacw.net/article9492.html +++++ From The Archives @ sacw.net ++++++ ========================================= 36. VIDEO: MEERA NANDA ON "SCIENCE AND HINDU NATIONALISM: How Postmodernism Aids Vedic Science", Daniel Thorner Lecture, 2004, Paris ========================================= A video recording from sacw.net archive of a lecture by Meera Nanda, the well known science scholar and public intellectual. http://sacw.net/article9516.html ========================================= 37. 1974 PAMPHLET FROM COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA ON THE JAMAAT-E-ISLAMI-E-HIND ========================================= A pamphlet by Ghulam Hyder on the Politics of Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind was published by the Communist Party of India in 1974. This document has long been out of print and has been digitised by sacw.net for non commercial and educational use. http://sacw.net/article9498.html ========================================= 38. INDIA: 2004 APPEAL FROM THE PROGRESSIVE INTELLIGENTSIA TO LEFT PARTIES ========================================= On 16 May 2014 leaders of the two major parliamentary left parties were submitted the following appeal on behalf of approx 200 prominent artists, intellectuals from across India http://sacw.net/article9524.html ========================================= 39. DECLASSIFIED 1962 CIA BRIEFING ON INDIA’S COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE SINO-SOVIET DISPUTE ========================================= A very detailed CIA assessment in 1962 of the of the sino soviet split and its impact in in sharpening divisions in the Communist Party of India. http://sacw.net/article9413.html +++++ ========================================= 40. THE TRUTH THAT WILL NOT DIE: ANAND PATWARDHAN’S TRIBUTE TO SHUBHRADEEP CHAKRAVORTY ========================================= These are dark days Shubhradeep, but times will change. Some day this nation will remember who its real heroes were – those who fought, not for their own narrow caste or creed, but for a truth and humanity that will never die. http://sacw.net/article9609.html ========================================= 41. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: ========================================= available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/ - 100 Days of Modi Points to Emergent Disaster - Press Release by Ghadar Alliance - Love Jihad : Hail Goebbles! (Faraz Ahmad) - Zahid and friends at school in one of Muzaffarnagar’s worst riot-hit villages (Pritha Chatterjee) - India: The Hindutva Outfit Dharm Jagran has pots of Money - Spending Rs 50 lakh to ‘bring back home’ converted Hindus [or this is propaganda report] - Udayon Misra on Assam-Nagaland Border Violence [Sept 30, 2014, EPW] - India: Moral police, cops lay siege to Greater Noida park - RSS rewrites history: Dalits 'created' by invaders | 100 historians deployed - India: Which side are you, Mr Rajnath Singh?: An open letter to the Union Home Minister (Shamsul Islam) - India: Communal Riots in Uttar Pradesh (Badri Narayan) - India: ABVP, the student wing of the RSS to set up vigilante groups on UP's Campuses - India: Tools for Divisive Politics: Hate Speech and Patriarchy (Ram Puniyani) - India: Minorities Commission wants assurance from Home Minster that action will taken on hate speech - India's Yogi Adityanath of the Hindu Right and His Tricks - India: Electoral competition sometimes incentivises communal mobilisation (Suhas Palshikar) - India: Across UP, an invasion by Hindutva’s foot soldiers and Dharm Jagran - India: conversions for marriage and selective outrage - Stop shitting near the shine or floods will happen - says Uma Bharti [chief inspector-detector of holy and non-holy shit] - Pakistan: civil society groups support demand arrest of killers of Hindu traders of Umerkot - India: Meet engineer Ajay Tyagi and such in RSS’s Hindu Behen Beti Bachao Sangharsh Samiti - India: ‘Non-Hindu males should carry IDs to garba’ - India: Love, faith and conversions (Mushirul Hasan) - India: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal ransack the office of University Vice Chancellor for expressing sympathies with Kashmir flood victims - BJP & Shiv Sena duel about seats in 2014 Maharashtra election - Cartoon by R Prasad and Graphic on the political backdrop (Mail Today, 16 Sept 2014) - BJP leader Sakshi Maharaj an accused in Babri mosque demolition case and now in a murder case is Maharaj is absconding look up: http://communalism.blogspot.in/ ::: FULL TEXT ::: ========================================= 42. EXCERPT: THE UNDERGROUND GIRLS OF KABUL - IN SEARCH OF A HIDDEN RESISTANCE IN AFGHANISTAN | Jenny Nordberg Chapter One – The Rebel Mother ========================================= "Our brother is really a girl." One of the eager-looking twins nods to reaffirm her words. Then she turns to her sister. She agrees. Yes, it is true. She can confirm it. They are two ten-year-old identical girls, each with black hair, squirrel eyes, and a few small freckles. Moments ago, we danced to my iPod set to shuffle as we waited for their mother to finish a phone conversation in the other room. We passed the headphones between us, showing off our best moves. Though I failed to match their elaborate hip rolls, some of my most inspired sing-along was met with approval. It actually sounded pretty good bouncing off the ice-cold cement walls of the apartment in the Soviet-built maze that is home to a chunk of Kabul's small middle class. Now we sit on the gold-embroidered sofa, where the twins have set up a tea service consisting of glass mugs and a pump thermos on a silver-plated tray. The mehman khana is the most opulent room in an Afghan home, meant to show off the wealth and good moral character of its owners. Cassette tapes with Koran verses and peach-colored fabric flowers sit on a corner table where a crack has been soldered with Scotch tape. The twin sisters, their legs neatly folded underneath them on the sofa, are a little offended by my lack of reaction to their big reveal. Twin number two leans forward: "It's true. He is our little sister." I smile at them, and nod again. "Yes." Sure. A framed picture on a side table shows their brother posing in a V-neck sweater and tie, with his grinning, mustached father. It is the only photo on display in the living room. His oldest daughters speak a shaky but enthusiastic English, picked up from textbooks and satellite television from a dish on the balcony. We just have a language barrier here, perhaps. "Okay," I say, wanting to be friendly. "I understand. Your sister. Now, what is your favorite color, Benafsha?" She goes back and forth between red and purple before passing the question to her sister, where it gets equally serious consideration. The twins, both dressed in orange cardigans and green pants, seem to do most things in perfect girly synchronicity. Their bobbing heads are topped with glittery hair scrunchies, and only when one speaks will the other's scrunchie be still for a few seconds. Those moments are a beginner's chance to tell them apart: A small birthmark on Beheshta's cheek is the key. Benafsha means "flower"; Beheshta, "paradise." "I want to be a teacher when I grow up," Beheshta volunteers for our next topic. When it becomes each of the twins' turns to ask a question, they both want to know the same thing: Am I married? My response mystifies them, since — as they point out — I am very old. I am even a few years older than their mother, who at thirty-three is a married mother of four. The twins have another sister, too, in addition to their little brother. Their mother is also in the national parliament, I say to the twins. So there are many things I am not, compared to her. They seem to appreciate that framing. Their brother suddenly appears in the doorway. Mehran, age six, has a tanned, round face, deep dimples, eyebrows that go up and down as he grimaces, and a wide gap between his front teeth. His hair is as black as that of his sisters, but short and spiky. In a tight red denim shirt and blue pants, chin forward, hands on hips, he swaggers confidently into the room, looking directly at me and pointing a toy gun in my face. Then he pulls the trigger and exclaims his greeting: phow. When I fail to die or shoot back, he takes out a plastic superhero from his back pocket. The wingman has blond hair, shiny white teeth, two gun belts slung across his bulging chest, and is armed with a machine gun. Mehran says something in Dari to the figurine and then listens intently to him. They seem to agree: The assault has been a success. Benafsha comes alive at my side, seeing the chance to finally prove her point. She waves her arms to call her brother's attention: "Tell her, Mehran. Tell her you are our sister." The corners of Mehran's mouth turn downward. He sticks his tongue out in a grimace before bolting, almost crashing into his mother as she walks into the room. Azita's eyes are lined with black kohl, and she wears a little bit of blush. Or perhaps it is the effect of having had a cell phone pressed to her ear. She is ready now, she exclaims in my direction. To tell me what I came to ask about — what it is like, almost a decade into America's longest war and one of the largest foreign aid efforts of a generation, to be an Afghan woman here. When we first meet, on this day, I am researching a television piece on Afghan women and Azita has been a member of the country's fairly new parliament for four years. Elected to the Wolesi Jirga, one of the legislative branches installed a few years after the 2001 defeat of the Taliban, she had promised her rural voters in Badghis province that she would direct more of the foreign aid influx to their poor, far-flung corner of Afghanistan. The parliament she entered was heavily populated with drug kingpins and warlords and seemed to be in a state of paralysis due to deeply entrenched corruption, but it was at least an attempt at democracy that many Afghans expressed hope for. It followed many forms of failed governance during the last century: absolute monarchy, communism, and an Islamic emirate under the Taliban. Or no government at all in times of civil war. As some foreign diplomats and aid workers around Kabul came to know Azita as an educated female parliamentarian who not only spoke Dari, Pashto, Urdu, and Russian, but also English, and who seemed relatively liberal, invitations to events poured in from the outside world. She was flown to several European countries and to Yale University in the United States, where she spoke of life under the Taliban. It was not unusual for Azita to invite foreigners to her rented home in Macroyan, either, to show her version of normal life in a Kabul neighborhood. Here, laundry flutters on the balconies of dirt-gray four-story buildings, interrupted by the occasional patch of greenery, and in the early mornings, women gather at the hole-in-the-wall bakeries while men perform stiff gymnastic exercises on the football field. Azita takes pride in being a host and showing herself off as an exception to the way Afghan women are portrayed in the outside world — as secluded inside their homes, with little connection to society, often illiterate and under the spell of demonizing husbands who do not allow them any daylight. And definitely not receiving visits from farangee, or foreigners, as the historical invaders were once dubbed by Afghans. These days, foreigners usually go under amrican, regardless of their passport. Azita enjoys demonstrating her running water, the electricity, the television set in her bedroom; all paid for with money she has made as the breadwinner of the house. She knows that impresses foreigners. Especially female foreigners. With her glowing cheeks, sharp features, and military-grade posture, elegantly draped in black fabric from head to toe, and exuding a warm scent of musk mixed with something sweet, Azita does look different from Afghanistan's majority of women. At five feet six — perhaps a little taller in her pointy size-eleven sling-back heels — she even towers over some visitors. Those usually arrive in more practical shoes, as if on a trek somewhere. On the topic of progress for women since 2001, Azita expresses little satisfaction to visiting foreigners, of which I am just the latest: Yes, more women are seen on the streets of Kabul and a few other larger cities than when the Taliban was in power, and more girls are enrolled in school, but just as in earlier eras when reforms were attempted, most progress for women is limited to the capital and a handful of other urban areas. Much of what the Taliban had banned and decreed regarding women is still effectively law in large parts of this mostly illiterate country, enforced by conservative tradition. In many provinces, burkas are still commonplace, and women rarely work or leave the house without their husbands. The majority of marriages are still forced, honor killings are not unusual, and any involvement of the justice system in a rape case usually means that only the victim goes to jail, charged with adultery or with having had premarital sex — unless she, as a commonly imposed solution, is forced to marry her rapist. Women burn themselves to death using cooking fuel to escape domestic abuse here, and daughters are still a viable, informal currency used by fathers to pay off debts and settle disputes. Azita is one of few women with a voice, but to many, she remains a provocation, since her life is different from that of most women in Afghanistan and a threat to those who subjugate them. In her words: "If you go to the remote areas of Afghanistan, you will see nothing has changed in women's lives. They are still like servants. Like animals. We have a long time before the woman is considered a human in this society." Azita pushes her emerald green head scarf back to reveal a short black ponytail, and rubs her hair. I shake off my scarf, too, and let it fall down on my neck. She looks at me for a moment, where we sit in her bedroom. "I never want my daughters to suffer in the ways I have suffered. I had to kill many of my dreams. I have four daughters. I am very happy for that." Four daughters. Only four daughters? What is going on in this family? I hold my breath for a moment, hoping Azita will take the lead and help me understand. And she does. "Would you like to see our family album?" Excerpted from The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg. Copyright 2014 by Jenny Nordberg. ========================================= 43. AFTER THE DELUGE, THE FOG by Jawed Naqvi ========================================= (Dawn, September 23rd, 2014) UJJAIN University’s vice chancellor, J.L. Kaul, is an old-fashioned Kashmiri Pandit, a man of liberal values, somewhat in Nehru’s genial mould. Armed men of the Hindutva brigade mercilessly beat him up the other day. Why had he appealed to the city’s landlords who housed Kashmiri students to forgo the month’s rent, the men demanded to know. Mr Kaul obviously thought the students could use the savings in their own small way to help their families cope with the catastrophe that has swamped their homeland. But the agitated men of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, seen as the sword arm of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anti-Muslim political coterie, saw Mr Kaul as a traitor to their cause. While the vice chancellor was rushed off to the hospital, a shattered portrait of Mahatma Gandhi remained fixed to his office wall to tell the story. Bile also flowed copiously on TV channels like stale, putrid water of vicious intent. Why were the Kashmiri traitors now accepting help from the Indian army, whose soldiers, on any given day, they wanted to vacate their strife-stricken region? The Hindutva chorus was loud and enormous. They mocked the Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Muslims, not unused to their abuses, came out to help trapped Hindu neighbours or to bail out Indian tourists from the swirling deluge, they were still regarded with scorn. Elections are due in Kashmir later this year, and Mr Modi’s party was hoping to inject a large dose of communal polarisation to exploit it. The flood calamity interrupted the trajectory. The party will need some way to crawl back to its comfort zone of religious identity before it gets late. The BJP was hoping to exploit the Kashmir polls but the floods interrupted its trajectory. A TV channel accused Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik of hijacking an official boat with food supplies. It was a damned good thing if he did that because TV footage, which was apparently never aired for reasons not so hidden from the discerning eye, showed an overwhelmed Sanatani Hindu priest from Uttar Pradesh. He never seemed to tire of repeating how he owed his life and that of 200-plus Hindu men and women, including his mother who was a nun on a pilgrimage to Kashmir, to Mr Malik’s rescue act. “I am a Brahmin from UP, and in our community we are not allowed to touch food or water that has been handled by a Muslim,” the Hindu holy man confessed. “But I have to say this publicly that it was only due to the timely help of Yasin Malik — I don’t know the man, and I don’t care what you think of him — that so many of us are alive today.” There was no administration worth the name, the man shouted to the shocked woman journalist who seemed surprised by the unusual bonding between a Muslim-hating priest and a former separatist militant. “Without the many kilos of cooked yellow rice Yasin plied for us in his boat, we would have perished.” There were stories of the army going all out to rescue trapped people, but the sadhu seemed unaware of that. Another report spoke of Muslim women helping a Hindu visitor deliver her baby in the melee. “If they took the state apparatus and its innate prejudices out of the equation, Indians are adept at helping each other out,” declaimed a young man readying himself to wade into chest-deep waters near Maisooma, close to Mr Malik’s home in downtown Srinagar. Stranded people had coped similarly the previous year with little help from the state when thousands of Hindu pilgrims were trapped and many killed in the flash floods that hit Uttarakhand. Unaware of the floodwaters snaking towards Srinagar’s living rooms on Sept 3, environment experts and peace activists from Delhi were winding up a fortuitous meeting in a ramshackle hotel in Jammu. For some years now, the local chapter of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy has been nudging its civil society partners on pervasive if intractable issues such as peace and human rights that concern people on both sides of the Line of Control. The issue this time round was palpable and urgent. The focus, the meeting decided, was to be put squarely on the deleterious impact on the Himalayan ecology of human greed and military strife, chiefly on the river systems its alarmingly denuded snow-peaks and melting glaciers were struggling to feed. In this context, the decades-old stand-off between India and Pakistan in the Siachen Glacier — seen by an American observer as a fight between two bald men over a comb — came in for flak. Mr Modi and his fawning supporters may continue to believe that the sacred Ganges river they worship flows from the matted dreadlocks of Lord Shiva. An excellent UNDP documentary shown at the Jammu conclave, however, offered a different explanation for the plight of the Ganges as also for its origins. The river flowed from the same ecological system as the Indus and the Brahmaputra, Mekong and Yellow rivers, and they all leaned on the depleting Himalayan reservoirs for sustenance. More than 50,000 glaciers are rapidly shrinking in the Himalayan mountain region threatening billions of lives and livelihoods throughout Asia, according the documentary Himalayan Meltdown. Kashmir, Uttarkhand, Bihar, Assam have routinely experienced the depredations. In much of South Asia, the link between the sea and the mountains has not been fully grasped. In Nepal, for example, climate change is not only melting the Himalayan glaciers, it is also leading to drought and ironically, inordinately rising sea levels. Many communities, as shown in the documentary, have seen seasonal monsoon rains disappear. One of the solutions helping villagers adapt is the use of low-cost moisture-trapping nets that convert fog into drinking water. Is that going to be the way forward for Kashmir now, to pray for the fog to descend? The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. ========================================= 44. THE SCOTTISH PATH TO INDEPENDENCE by Pritam Singh ========================================= (Economic and Political Weekly, September 13, 2014 | Web Exclusives) The outcome of the Scottish referendum vote on 18 September notwithstanding, the major legacy of the vote would be the transparent and democratic nature of the process leading to the vote. The outcome of the referendum on Scottish independence from Britain is certainly of huge significance for Britain, Europe and even beyond but what has been missed in the debate on Scottish independence is the significance of the process leading to the outcome. The process of arriving at the outcome determines the legitimacy and the quality of the outcome. In the Scottish case, the process has been so democratic, open, and transparent that it is close to being exemplary. The decision to have a referendum has been arrived at after a long period of debate and negotiations. That Scotland, which became a part of the United Kingdom in 1707, has a distinctive identity is very well recognised by all sides on the debate. This recognition of distinctive identity was given further boost during Tony Blair’s prime ministership when the long standing demand of Scottish people to have their own parliament was accepted and the Scottish Parliament with devolved powers started functioning in 1999. This devolved power was partly aimed to weaken the demand for full independence which was at that time a minority political tendency. The decision to create the Scottish Parliament by the Blair government was not seen as a party partisan initiative but was arrived at in a consensual manner by all sides of the Westminster-based political establishment. The three mainstream British political parties - the Conservative, Labour and the Liberal Democrats - all agreed on the need for a Scottish Parliament with devolved powers. The role of the Scottish National Party The Scottish National Party (SNP), formed in 1934, has been the main champion of complete independence although subsequently the demand for independence has been supported by the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Green Party. SNP remained a minor political current in Scottish politics which for a long time has been dominated by the Labour party. Even the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 did not enable the SNP to become the largest, ruling political party although it emerged as the second largest party and the main opposition party. However, in 2007 the party emerged as the single largest party in the Scottish parliament and formed a minority government with support from the Green Party. In 2011, it gained an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament but still did not claim that its electoral victory should be seen as an evidence of Scottish people’s support for complete independence. It put forward a case for Scottish independence with a demand for referendum on the issue. On the opposite side, the UK government did not ignore the electoral victory of the SNP and gradually came to accept the need for referendum to determine Scottish people’s choice regarding independence. This eventually resulted in the UK government and the Scottish government agreeing in 2013 on the arrangements for the referendum. 18 September, 2014 date was agreed for the referendum vote and the question on the vote agreed was: Should Scotland be an independent country? It was also agreed that there would be only two choices for the voters: Yes or No. Although the SNP wanted a third choice of greater devolution of powers to Scotland short of complete independence, it eventually agreed to the UK government’s insistence on making a clear choice between Yes and No. Secession – Military suppression or political solution? There are not many examples of such agreed way of resolving the demands for secession. The closest one before this has been the Quebec referendum to secede from Canada in which the secessionists lost the vote. Most demands for secession get resolved either by military suppression of the secessionist movement or by the secessionists winning the military battle and achieving independence. In both cases, the legitimacy of the outcome remains a contested issue. The most well-known example of peaceful secession (“the velvet divorce”) is the separation of Czech Republic and Slovakia but here the elites of the two regions agreed to separate; the democratic choice of the people of the seceding region Slovakia was not ascertained. In the case of Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, these states got independence through peaceful means of massive mass mobilisation but no vote was allowed. Russia, the dominant region of the crumbling Soviet empire, that had economic and political interests in keeping control over the Baltic states, was not in a fit state-militarily and politically- to suppress the independence moves of these states but now it constantly resents in different ways, as seen most starkly in the recent Ukrainian case, that these former Soviet republics managed to become independent. The disputed outcome is significantly due to the lack of perceived legitimacy of the process of achieving independence in the case of some of the former Soviet republics. The most recent case of secession (South Sudan) is also interesting from the view point of the process of achieving secession. Although there have been violent conflicts due to personal political rivalries, the legitimacy of the secession has not been doubted due to the referendum vote that had led to secession. Conclusion In the Scottish case, almost every aspect regarding the case for and against independence has been debated and most significantly in the form of nationally televised debates between Alex Salmod, the First Minister of Scotland, arguing the case for independence and Alistair Darling, a Labour leader, arguing the case against independence on behalf of all the three mainstream British parties. Whatever the outcome of the referendum vote on 18 September might be, the major legacy of the vote would be the transparent and democratic nature of the process leading to the vote. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Scottish example might become the template for resolving secessionist disputes in the process. The very high intensity of interest shown by Catalonia, the region with a demand for secession from Spain, in the Scottish referendum debate and vote is a pointer in this direction. Pritam Singh (psi...@brookes.ac.uk) teaches at the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, Faculty of Business, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. ========================================= 45. WHY THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE ISN'T OVER: PROJECT FEAR AND THE SCOTTISH VOTE by Tariq Ali ========================================= (Counterpunch, Weekend Edition September 19-21, 2014) Unionists of every stripe from the Orange Lodges to Tories and Labourist all sorts will be delighted with Scottish results. The United Kingdom has been saved. They won by 400,000 votes. Not a great triumph but a victory nonetheless and a defeat for the independence movement. I’ll wait for the detailed breakdown of age, gender, class before commenting on these aspects, but the story isn’t over. Their victory was made possible by Project Fear that required a media campaign of ferocious intensity that even Goebbels might have admired. It was reminiscent of the recent offensives in South America, but there our side won despite 99 percent media opposition. Here, too, the media was backed by a violent corporate campaign–with bankers in the lead— and all the mainstream parties. Despite this the independence vote was almost 45 percent and Glasgow and Dundee had majorities for independence. How short memories are in these times was demonstrated by the elevation of Gordon Brown as the saviour of the Union. He performed well, shedding crocodile tears for the NHS that he and Blair had already begun to privatise and weaken by dubious private finance initiatives. New Labour’s Health Secretary Alan Milburn now works for private medicine, for a company that he helped as a government minister! What will happen now? Cameron will use the victory to portray himself as the man who saved the union and with some justification. Project Fear was launched in Downing Street, after all with Nick Clegg and Ed Moribund pressed into service as page boys. Simultaneously Cameron will push through (with the devo max measures) a bill disallowing Scottish MPs from voting on English questions. This will keep the Tories united, UKIP happy and Labour shafted. No more Scottish cannon fodder for Westminster votes on the budget! In Scotland itself there will be a lot of soul-searching within the Scottish Nationalist Party. How could they lose in some of their strongholds? Did they work hard enough? Should Alex Salmond go and be replaced by Nicola Sturgeon? And who knows what else…. On the left the spirited and non-sectarian Radical Independence Campaign fought well. It would be important to preserve and enhance this current in Scottish politics to argue the case for a very different Scotland and this means keeping the movement together. Radical Scotland will not disappear and the model here should not be any reversion to the tried and tested failures of the socialist left but something more like Podemos in Spain. There will be sadness and demoralisation and this is perfectly understandable, but it won’t last too long. British politics is getting worse not better. Fear leads to passivity and even though in this case the Unionists managed to get the fearful out to vote, they might never be able to do that again. Hope leads to activity and that is what the independence campaign represented. We will win the next time. Tariq Ali is the author of The Obama Syndrome (Verso). ========================================= 45. THE DEATH OF UNIVERSITIES by Terry Eagleton ========================================= (The Guardian, December 17. 2010) Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much deeper than tuition fees, writes Terry Eagleton A scene from the 1989 film Dead Poet’s Society. ‘If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute.’ A scene from the 1989 film Dead Poet’s Society. ‘If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute.’ Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question is absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear from pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one. Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The quickest way of devaluing these subjects — short of disposing of them altogether — is to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name. The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties. If the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it is, among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of higher education as such. When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It was to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social order had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This remoteness meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also allowed the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom. >From time to time, as in the late 1960s and in these last few weeks in >Britain, that critique would take to the streets, confronting how we actually >live with how we might live. What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud. In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they do not cost much to be housed. How can this be achieved in practice? Financially speaking, it cannot be. Governments are intent on shrinking the humanities, not expanding them. Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees. Terry Eaglton is a literary critic, writer and chair in English literature in Lancaster University’s department of English and creative writing. His latest book is The Event of Literature. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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
