South Asia Citizens Wire - 21 May 2015 - No. 2858 [since 1996] Contents: 1. Pakistan: Set Their Minds Free | Pervez Hoodbhoy 2. Audio: Mahenaz Mahmud Remember's Daughter Sabeen / Video: Sabeen Zinda Hai - A tribute in urdu read out by Zaheer Kidvai 3. Tahmina Anam on refugees adrift in the Andaman Sea 4. India: Modi government - one year of dismantling the welfare state | Harsh Mander 5. India: Text of Supreme Court Rulings of 2000 and 2005 on Religious Noise Pollution 6. Recent On Communalism Watch: - India: For the Record - Delhi Police Encounters | statement by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association - India: Tathagat Roy takes charge as Tripura governor amidst his Hindutva ideology controversy - India: Road Signs With Muslims' Names Defaced, No Action Follows (Subhashini Ali) - India: Electoral wins or religious peace? (Pradeep Chhibber and Harsh Shah) ::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT ::: 7. Myanmar must recognise Rohingyas as its citizens - Editorial, The Daily Star 8. Publication Announcement: Three Responses to Perry Anderson's Indian Ideology 9. Media Jingoism Alienates Nepalis - Rise of 'The Ugly Indian'? | Praful Bidwai 10. India: Assamese woman wants to meet her Chinese parents deported during 1962 War | Samudra Gupta Kashyap 11. Bangladesh’s Persecuted Indigenous People | Julia Bleckner
:BOOK REVIEWS: 12. Moulding the science to fit (Steve Jones) 13. Sara Hidalgo García Reviews Democracy without Justice in Spain ======================================== 1. PAKISTAN: SET THEIR MINDS FREE by Pervez Hoodbhoy ======================================== Giving logic a back seat has led to more than diminished math or science skills. The ordinary Pakistani person's ability to reason out problems of daily life has also diminished. There is an increased national susceptibility to conspiracy theories, decreased ability to tell friend from foe, and more frequent resort to violence rather than argumentation. The quality of Pakistan's television channels reflects today's quality of thought. http://www.sacw.net/article11193.html ======================================== 2. AUDIO: MAHENAZ MAHMUD REMEMBER'S DAUGHTER SABEEN / VIDEO: SABEEN ZINDA HAI - A TRIBUTE IN URDU READ OUT BY ZAHEER KIDVAI ======================================== Mahenaz Mahmud the mother of Sabeen Mahmud remembering her daughter (audio - BBC interview) | Zaheer Kidwai a mentor and friend of Sabeen reads out a tribute in urdu (eacpe video) http://sacw.net/article11201.html ======================================== 3. TAHMINA ANAM ON REFUGEES ADRIFT IN THE ANDAMAN SEA ======================================== In 1971 Ravi Shankar and George Harrison organised a concert in New York City's Madison Square Gardens to fund relief efforts for war-torn Bangladesh. The album featured the image of a starving child on the cover, which became a symbol of an impoverished country emerging out of the rubble of war. Forty-four years later, another image is now associated with Bangladesh: that of the abandoned refugees who float on the Andaman Sea with no hope of rescue. http://sacw.net/article11202.html ========================================= 4. INDIA: MODI GOVERNMENT - ONE YEAR OF DISMANTLING THE WELFARE STATE by Harsh Mander ========================================= A dominant feature of the first year of Narendra Modi's leadership is the quiet dismantling of India's imperfectly realised framework of welfare and rights, covertly, by stealth. http://sacw.net/article11203.html ========================================= 5. INDIA: TEXT OF SUPREME COURT RULINGS OF 2000 AND 2005 ON RELIGIOUS NOISE POLLUTION ========================================= Two court rulings from India which raise the issue of curtailing and regulating use of loudspeakers in religious places such as temples, mosque, churches, gurudwaras and other places. http://sacw.net/article11204.html ========================================= 6. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH: ========================================= - India: For the Record - Delhi Police Encounters | statement by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association - India: Tathagat Roy takes charge as Tripura governor amidst his Hindutva ideology controversy - India: Road Signs With Muslims' Names Defaced, No Action Follows (Subhashini Ali) - India: Electoral wins or religious peace? (Pradeep Chhibber and Harsh Shah) available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/ ::: RESOURCEs & FULL TEXT ::: ========================================= 7. Myanmar must recognise Rohingyas as its citizens - A key solution to the humanitarian crisis | Editorial, The Daily Star ========================================= (The Daily Star - May 20, 2015) IN the wake of a much publicised international humanitarian crisis relating to boatpeople, thousands of whom are languishing in the high seas, Myanmar's reluctance to attend Thailand's May 29 regional summit to solve the issue, is disconcerting. There is no denial that countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, the usual destinations of these Bangladeshis and Rohingyas who end up in terrifying slave camps, must discuss how to humanely deal with the crisis. But Myanmar cannot go on a denial mode when it comes to providing citizenship to the Rohingya people. In fact Myanmar has intimated that it will not attend this crucial summit if the term 'Rohingya' is used. The official line of Myanmar's government is that those whom we (and the rest of the world) refer to as Rohingyas, are actually illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The 1982 Citizenship Law of Burma (now Myanmar) denied the Rohingyas citizenship despite the fact that they have been living in that country for centuries. The abhorrent persecution of Rohingyas in the Rakhine State, led to thousands of displaced Rohingyas to take refuge in Bangladesh. While Bangladesh, which still has thousands of Rohingya people in their refugee camps, must not turn away Rohingyas or any other boat people, the present circumstances behooves Myanmar to recognise its role in the matter. Although the democratically elected Aung Sun Suu Ki's party did not display the expected change in attitude towards the Rohingyas earlier, the recent statement by her party's spokesperson that stateless Muslims in Myanmar should be given citizenship, gives us a sliver of hope. We eagerly wait for a possible end to the miseries of the Rohingya people through their official recognition as Myanmarese citizens. ========================================= 8. PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: THREE RESPONSES TO PERRY ANDERSON'S INDIAN IDEOLOGY ========================================= Partha Chatterjee, Sudipta Kaviraj, Nivedita Menon The Indian Ideology Three Responses to Perry Anderson With an Introduction by Sanjay Ruparelia When the Marxist historian Perry Anderson published The Indian Ideology—his scathing assessment of India’s democracy, secularism, nationalism, and statehood—it created a furore. Anderson attackedsubcontinental unity as a myth, castigated Mahatma Gandhi for infusing Hindu religiosity into nationalism, blamed Congress for Partition, and saw India’s liberal intelligentsia as by and large a feckless lot. Within the large array of responses to Anderson that appeared, three stand out for the care and comprehensiveness with which they show the levels of ignorance, arrogance, and misconstruction on which the Andersonian variety of political analysis is based. Collectively, these three ripostes representa systematic critique of the intellectualfoundations of The Indian Ideology. Confronting Anderson’s claim to originality,Nivedita Menon exposes his failure to engage with feminist, Marxist, and Dalit scholarship, arguing that a British colonial ideology is at work in such analyses. Partha Chatterjee studieskey historical episodes tocounter the “Great Men” view of history, suggesting that misplaced concepts from Western intellectual history canobfuscate political understanding. Tracing their origins to the nineteenth-century worldview of Hegel and James Mill, Sudipta Kaviraj contends that reductive Orientalist tropes such as those deployed by Anderson frequently mar European analyses of non-European contexts. Vigorous polemic merges with political analysis here, and critique with debate, to create a work that is intellectually sophisticated and unusually entertaining. partha chatterjee is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Columbia University, New York, and Honorary Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. His manybooks include Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (1986), The Nation and Its Fragments (1993), A Possible India (1997), The Politics of the Governed (2004), Lineages of Political Society (2011), and The Black Hole of Empire (2012). sudipta kaviraj is Professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He taught for many years at SOAS, London University, following a long teaching stint at JawaharlalNehru University, New Delhi. He has been a Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as at the University of Chicago. His most recent books are The Invention of Private Life (2014), The Trajectories of the Indian State (2012), The Enchantment of Democracy and India (2011), and The Imaginary Institution of India (2010). nivedita menon is Professor, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the author, most recently, of Seeing like a Feminist (2012) and editor (with Aditya Nigam and Sanjay Palshikar) of Critical Studies in Politics: Exploring Sites, Selves, Power (2013). An active commentator on contemporary issues in newspapers and on the blog kafila.org, she has translated fiction and nonfiction from Hindi and Malayalam into English. sanjay ruparelia is Assistant Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research, New York. His publications include Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India (2015), and Understanding India’s New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? (2011). Hardback / 175pp / Rs 495 / World rights / April 2015 Permanent Black ========================================= 9. MEDIA JINGOISM ALIENATES NEPALIS - RISE OF 'THE UGLY INDIAN'? by Praful Bidwai ========================================= (Kashmir Times) Barely two weeks after a major earthquake which killed more than 8,000 people, Nepal suffered a powerful aftershock, adding to its misery and killing over 100 people. More than 3.5 million people are still in need of food assistance; 479,000 houses have been destroyed and 263,000 damaged; and only five percent of the $415 million aid Nepal needs has reached it. Given the extensive destruction and caving in of hill roads, it has been near-impossible to reach relief material to those in dire need. The aftershock presents India with a real test of demonstrating its solidarity with Nepal, but it's a sure bet that India won't rise to the challenge. Operation Maitri, the post-April 25 rescue effort by the National Disaster Response Force which the Indian media hyped up, has left a bitter taste in Nepal. After the first week, the message trending Nepal's social media was #GoHomeIndianMedia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the tone for Indian arrogance when he declared that Nepal's Prime Minister Sushil Koirala only got to know about the first earthquake through his Twitter message-a horrible indiscretion, even if it's true. Not to be left behind, finance minister Arun Jaitley boasted that India has now established itself as a world leader in rescue and relief. In reality, the 700-strong NDRF team was only one of the 34 international rescue contingents totalling 4,050 members. It succeeded in rescuing less than 20 live victims and pulling out 133 bodies from rubble, according to its chief OP Singh (Indian Express, May 9). But as Nepal's mighty neighbour, India wanted to take credit for everything. The Indian media's "shrillness, jingoism, exaggerations, boorishness and sometimes mistakes in coverage ... rankled the host community," Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of Himal magazine, told the BBC. The media hijacked the disaster response on behalf of the Indian government, and indulged in chest-thumping. It shamefully ignored the Nepali people's pain, borne with great dignity, as well as their valour. The self-congratulatory and triumphalist message of the Indian media was accompanied by total apathy towards human suffering. Whole helicopter sorties were flown into Nepal carrying only Indian journalists and cameras, without medical personnel, food or relief material. Many Indian reporters behaved like embedded wartime journalists insensitive to the destruction they see. Their main story was not the suffering of the Nepali people, to be conveyed with empathy, but the generosity of the Indian government, reported with hubris. A reporter intruded into the emergency ward of a hospital and insisted on reading out his story by the bed of a boy with broken limbs and a head injury-with no concern for his condition. Three factors explain the loutish conduct of the Indian media: chauvinist nationalism, competitive rivalry with China, and an attitude of superiority towards the Nepali people, society and culture. The media reflects the crass, aggressive "Mera-Bharat-Mahan" nationalism imbibed by the Indian middle class, especially its illiberal, consumerist upper crust. This stratum regards greed as a virtue and has psychologically seceded from ordinary citizens; indeed, it sees the poor as a drag on itself. Many factors have contributed to the false idea of India's "manifest destiny" as a Great Power to be more feared than respected. These include an excessively nationalistic education curriculum-which presents India as the world's greatest civilisation marked by a unique continuity-a steadily coarsening Right-leaning public discourse, and India's recent rise as an economic power. Take the Chin factor. China is seen as an adversary which inflicted a humiliating defeat on an innocent India in 1962 and grabbed its territory. But reality is more complex. India supported Tibetan secessionism, refused to negotiate its borders with China, citing colonial precedents like the MacMahon Line, and launched an adventurist "forward policy", which China repulsed with a punitive expedition. The operation over, the Chinese troops went back to their positions, taking no prisoners. The two countries have since come around to negotiating borders along the formula China first proposed. China is in a different economic and military league from India, and its major trading partner. India recognises China's high status internationally, but not in its immediate neighbourhood or "strategic backyard". One reason for India's hyped-up rescue mission was to show its superiority over China, and tell the Nepalis that India remains indispensable to them. This badly backfired. India has intervened in Nepal's affairs countless times by making/brokering partisan political deals, fomenting movements against particular rulers, imposing a blockade (as in 1988-89, when Kathmandu wanted to import Chinese arms), or foisting unpopular water-sharing agreements. Indian ambassadors to Nepal often expect to be treated like viceroys, who must be consulted before any major policy decision is made by its supposedly sovereign government. India played an obnoxious role in trying to help King Gyanendra stay in power in the face of the massive popular movement of 2006, and later to keep the Maoists out of government. This was widely resented. Regrettably, many Indians, especially middle-class Indians, hold this superior attitude towards Nepal-partly because of their ignorance of Nepali culture and traditions, and partly out of a class bias. Most Nepalis they encounter are poor labourers. They don't realise that Nepal may be tiny and poor, but its people take tremendous pride in their culture, identity and autonomy. Nepal has set its Standard Time 5.45 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time/Greenwich Mean Time. The 15-minute time-difference with India is less a fact of geography than a sign of the social-political distance from India that Nepal wants to stress. Indians must appreciate and respect this, but most don't. That only breeds further resentment. India's relations with other neighbours-barring Pakistan and China, which are in a different category from these "friendly" countries-are similarly skewed, unequal and often tense. India played a hugely helpful role in liberating Bangladesh, but pursued its own parochial agenda. India rapidly forfeited its goodwill by building the Farakka barrage on the Ganga, unilaterally depriving Bangladesh of water flows during the lean season. India took 41 years to ratify a land boundary agreement with Dhaka, and hasn't still signed the Teesta waters accord. The Indian elite fails to appreciate Bangladesh's recent achievements in literacy, health and food security, and treats it as a backward or inferior country. India has militarily intervened and politically messed around in Sri Lanka and Maldives, creating complications which rebounded on it-as in the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, whom New Delhi financed, armed and trained. LTTE turned against India, drew her into a disastrous "peace-keeping" operation, and eventually assassinated Rajeev Gandhi. India also became complicit in the Rajapakse regime's brutal armed operations against Tamil civilians. It's only with Bhutan, a virtual protectorate of India since colonial times, that India has had consistently smooth, friendly relations. But India didn't use its influence to prevent the kingdom from expelling minority ethnic groups totalling one-seventh of Bhutan's population. The Nepal rescue episode revealed another unpleasant truth. The conduct of many Indians is regarded as macho, combative, confrontational, aggressive and unacceptably rude in the neighbouring countries. Their body language is offensive and their street behaviour often raucous. India, rather the middle-class Indian, is increasingly acquiring an unenviable reputation worldwide, similar to what was depicted in the famous 1963 film The Ugly American starring Marlon Brando, based on a political novel. The novel's location is a fictional nation in Southeast Asia (meant to allude to Vietnam). It describes the United States' losing struggle against Communism because of American officials' arrogance and failure to understand the local culture. The film shows how a well-intentioned new US ambassador to this Asian country creates a political disaster because of his poor judgment and obsession with seeing his mission in Cold War terms. This analogy happens to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the US's ignominious withdrawal from the country, albeit after killing three million civilians. The term Ugly American soon came to be used to refer to the "loud and ostentatious" type of visitor from the developed world in another country, who might be well-meaning but who courts hatred by displaying arrogance and superiority and by behaving in insensitive and uncouth ways. Many Indians, especially affluent ones who travel abroad, are acquiring just such a reputation because they talk loudly, set high ring-tones on their cellular phones, shout across long distances to one another, smoke in no-smoking areas, and leave litter everywhere they go-just as they do at home and close to where they work. In Southeast Asia, they have become notorious for first driving hard bargains, and then still demanding further discounts. This is undermining India's "soft power", or at least adding a crude, unsavoury dimension to it. The "Ugly Indian's" nation will impress none and put off many. Indians must pause and ask where their hubris is taking them. ========================================= 10. INDIA: ASSAMESE WOMAN WANTS TO MEET HER CHINESE PARENTS DEPORTED DURING 1962 WAR by Samudra Gupta Kashyap ========================================= (The Indian Express - May 19, 2015 Leong Linchi has been able to establish contact with her parents who are now living in China after they were deported over 53 years ago. Fifty nine-year-old Leong Linchi aka Pramila Das – a woman of Chinese origin who belongs to Makum in upper Assam – was separated from her parents in the wake of the Chinese aggression of 1962. Of late she has been able to establish contact with them, now living in China after they were deported over 53 years ago. “I was in my grandmother’s house when police came and whisked away my parents from Rangagora tea estate along with many other people of Chinese origin. They were first shifted to an internment camp in Deoli in Rajasthan, and from there packed off to China. I was only about six years old then,” recalled the woman. Leong alias Pramila, who now lives in Kehung tea estate in Tinsukia district in upper Assam, however, managed to establish contact with her parents about 20 years ago. “They sent me a letter by post. That was around 1990. Since then I have been exchanging letters with them. But they are now growing old. They must be between 80 and 90. I want to desperately see them,” said the woman. Leong was in Guwahati to release the English version of ‘Makam’, an Assamese novel written by Sahitya Akademi award-winning author Rita Choudhury that for the first time focused on the plight of a small community whose roots were in China, but had become Assamese after having spent at least four generations now since they were brought to Assam by British tea planters. “Separated from my parents, I have been passing my days with deep pain in my heart. I have never seen my parents since then. However, now that I know that they are alive and are longing to see me, I want to go and see them. They are growing old, and time will not wait for long,” she lamented, tears in her eyes. Leong alias Pramila Das, lives with her husband, a son and a daughter and their families in Kehung. Interestingly, though her mother was deported along with her father on the pretext of being of Chinese origin, she said her mother was actually a Mizo. “Though my father Leong Kok Hoi was of Chinese origin, my mother was not. She was actually a Lushai (Mizo). But the police and the government took he to be a Chinese just because of her facial appearance,” she said. Author Rita Choudhury, who last week introduced her to union home minister Rajnath Singh when the latter was releasing the English version of her novel in the national capital, said the home minister listened intently to Leong’s life story. “The home minister has promised to do something. But since time won’t wait, I appeal to the people to come forward to help her with funds so that Leong can travel to China and meet her parents,” Choudhury said. ========================================= 11. BANGLADESH’S PERSECUTED INDIGENOUS PEOPLE by Julia Bleckner ========================================= (Inter Press Service NEW YORK, May 18 2015 (IPS) - The August 2014 killing of Timir Baran Chakma, an indigenous Jumma activist, allegedly in Bangladeshi military custody, was protested by his supporters. His death, and the failure of justice, like the plight of his people across the Chittagong Hills region, received little international notice. Representatives of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission came to New York this month to shed light on the dire situation in the border region between India and Burma. Describing the ongoing crisis to the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, they expressed one clear and simple ask: to finally implement the terms of a peace accord established almost two decades ago between the government and local armed groups. One member of the community told the U.N. that the Bangladesh government has taken “repressive measures and deployed heavy military,” adding that instead of ensuring their protection, the military presence “has only aggravated human rights violations.” In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, the indigenous groups—who mostly practice Theraveda Buddhism and speak local dialects of Tibeto-Burman languages—have a long endured displacement and suffering. In the late 1970s, then-president Ziaur Rehman instituted a government-run “population transfer programme” in which the government provided cash and in-kind incentives to members of the country’s majority Bengali community to move to the Chittagong Hills area, displacing the local population. >From 1977, the military moved into the region in response to the rise of local >armed groups opposed to the “settlers” and the imposition of Bengali identity >and language. The army’s failure to protect the Jumma from settlers, and in some cases aiding in attacks on indigenous families, has been well documented. In the years following, there were credible reports of soldiers subjecting the indigenous civilians to abuses including forced evictions, destruction of property, arbitrary arrests, torture, and killings. According to one source, more than 2,000 indigenous women were raped during the conflict from 1971-1994. The security forces were implicated in many cases of sexual violence. The 1997 peace accord aimed to bring an end to this violence and officially recognised the distinct ethnicity and relative autonomy of the tribes and indigenous people of the Chittagong Hills region. However, 17 years later, the terms of the peace accord still have not been implemented. Instead, the Jumma face increasing levels of violence from Bengali setters, with no effective response from the state. Members of the CHT Commission, a group of activists monitoring the implementation of the 1997 peace accord, told Human Rights Watch that the settlers have attacked indigenous homes, shops, and places of worship—in some cases with the complicity of security forces. There are reports of clashes between the two communities. The situation is so tense that even some members of the CHT Commission were attacked by a group of settlers in July 2014. The perpetrators are yet to be identified and prosecuted. The peace accord specifically called for the demilitarisation of the Chittagong Hills area. But nearly two decades later, the region remains under military occupation. The army’s failure to protect the Jumma from settlers, and in some cases aiding in attacks on indigenous families, has been well documented. Successive Bangladeshi governments have failed to deliver the autonomy promised by the peace accord, representatives of the CHT Commission said. Instead the central government has directly appointed representatives to the hill district councils without holding elections as mandated by the peace accord. With the tacit agreement of the military, Bengali settlers from the majority community have moved into the Chittagong Hills, in some cases displacing the Jumma from their land without compensation or redress. The Kapaeeng Foundation, a foundation focused on rights of the indigenous people of Bangladesh, has reported that at least 51 women and girls suffered sexual violence inflicted by Bengali settlers and the military in 2014, while there have already been 10 cases as of May 2015. Earlier this year a group of Bengali settlers gang raped a Bagdi woman and her daughter, according to the Foundation. The perpetrators are seldom prosecuted. In some instances, survivors—such as the Bagdi women—who file cases at the local police station have faced threats from the alleged perpetrators if they do not withdraw their case. In an effort to block international attention to the plight of the Jumma, in January, the Bangladesh Home Ministry introduced a discriminatory directive which, among other things, increased military checkpoints and forbade both foreigners and nationals from meeting with indigenous people without the presence of government representatives. In May, under national public pressure, the Home ministry withdrew the restrictions. But in practice, the government continues to restrict access by requiring foreigners to inform the Home Ministry prior to any visit. The Jumma people have waited far too long to be heard. It’s time we listen. Implementing the Chittagong Hills peace accord would be an important first step. Julia Bleckner is a Senior Associate in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch. Edited by Kitty Stapp BOOK REVIEWS: ========================================= 12. MOULDING THE SCIENCE TO FIT (Steve Jones) ========================================= (Times Higher Education - 13 March 2014) Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 By Marwa Elshakry University of Chicago Press, 448pp, £31.50 ISBN 9780226001302 and 1449 (e-book) Published 11 February 2014 Steve Jones considers a reflection on the Origin of Species’ influence on everything (except biology) I have only once been alarmed when giving a lecture: in Syria a decade ago, when I gave a talk on evolution at the University of Damascus. The students were polite and interested, but several members of the faculty – large mustachioed men with smokers’ faces – denounced me for insulting Islam (at least I assumed they were faculty, which was perhaps naive). Quite why, I could not understand for, unlike the Book of Genesis, the only overt account of human origins in the Koran refers to Allah moulding the clay of the earth into the form of a man, which is in fact quite close to one model of the origin of life by adsorption of chemicals on to a finely divided surface. Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 is an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting account of the chequered history of the theory of evolution in the Arab world. On the Origin of Species was greeted in just the same way as it had been in the West – as a political, moral and even theological document rather than as a work of science. Its translators, both oriental and occidental, were equally at fault: the first German edition was produced by someone who did not believe that species evolve into new forms, while the French equivalent included a discussion of the inevitability of progress that infuriated Darwin. Arab accounts, too, did not hesitate to bring in hints of natural theology or even of something not far from intelligent design in the versions presented to the public. In the West, the Origin was used as an excuse for imperialism, for socialism, for communism and for fascism, for eugenics and for women’s rights, for racism and for internationalism, for atheism and, with equal fervour, as a call for the renewal of Christianity with a new agenda, or a cry for the Church to return to its roots. The Arab world was just the same. Some of the parallels are uncanny: Alfred Russel Wallace insisted that all creatures had evolved through natural selection – except, that is, Homo sapiens, which had, he said, “something which he has not derived from his animal progenitors – a spiritual essence…[that] can only find an explanation in the unseen universe of Spirit”. (Darwin commented that the statement was “not worse than the prevailing superstitions of the country”, in other words Christianity.) Several Islamic writers made an identical claim; that evolution proved the God-given uniqueness of man himself. Darwinism made its initial impact in Syria, which was then – as, until quite recently, now – a light of reason in the Middle East. The theory was promoted in American-run missionary colleges (which had almost no success in making converts) until the fundamentalists back home got wind of what was up and put a stop to it. Even so, it spread widely through popular science magazines and may have had a greater effect on Arabic-speaking intellectuals than it did in its European homeland. This is a learned account of the influence of a book on biology – the book on biology – on almost everything except biology itself. To those of us in the trade, using the Origin as raw material for theology, philosophy or politics is akin to using Moby-Dick as a zoology textbook: it entirely misses the point. At a time when more than 90 per cent of Egyptians deny the fact of evolution, we need a modern reading of Darwin in Arabic that tells us what he actually said, and not what others have said about him. I have no immediate plans to give further lectures in Syria. Dawkins, where are you when we really need you? Reviewer: Steve Jones is emeritus professor of genetics, University College London. He is author, most recently, of Darwin’s Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England (2009) and The Serpent’s Promise: The Bible Retold as Science (2013). ========================================= 13. SARA HIDALGO GARCÍA REVIEWS DEMOCRACY WITHOUT JUSTICE IN SPAIN ========================================= Omar G. Encarnación. Democracy without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. 249 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4568-4; $65.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8122-0905-1. Reviewed by Sara Hidalgo García Published on H-Socialisms (May, 2015) Commissioned by Gary Roth Democracy, Justice, and Forgetting The title of this book, Democracy without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting, neatly summarizes its principal theme. When referring to the politics of forgetting, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, focuses on the Pact of Forgetting, enacted in Spain in the wake of dictator Francisco Franco's death in 1975. According to Encarnación, "no one [responsible during the dictatorship] was put on trial for the political crimes of the old regime or disqualified from playing a role in the politics of the new democracy, since the pact was accompanied by a broad amnesty law that granted immunity for all political crimes committed prior to 1977" (p. 2). The book frames Spanish exceptionalism as a unique trait that allowed democracy to flourish without transitional justice's legal tools. The author analyzes the roots of this situation, paying special attention to the dictatorship and its consequences for Spanish society. Moreover, he emphasizes the irony that despite being a democracy built on the Pact of Forgetting, Spain is a leader in human rights, expanding the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities and also prosecuting former despots from around the world. Encarnación addresses the shift that took place during the Socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (2004-11) with the passing of Law of Historical Memory in 2007. Comparisons with other similar cases, especially in Latin America, take on new meaning. Drawn from press accounts, interviews, and scholarly literature, Encarnación's book provides a meticulously detailed overview of twentieth-century Spanish politics, the origins of Spain's exceptional situation, and the consequences for the contemporary world. In chapter 1, Encarnación summarizes the history of the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent repression, stemming from the "violent and vengeful" nature of the Francoist regime. Republican prisioners were punished repeatedly. Some were enslaved, others subjected to harsh punishment and long terms of imprisonment, while still others were separated from their children. The dictatorship also suppressed the separatist desires that might threaten "Franco's myth of a culturally homogeneous Spain," as was the case in the Basque Country (p. 40). Encarnación describes Francoist political socialization, which, to achieve its purposes, cynically manipulated Spanish history. The Republicans, for instance, were blamed for the 1937 German bombing of Guernica. Even though this type of propaganda was eased during the 1960s to improve Spain's image abroad, it was always done in a manner that put the repressive regime first. In chapter 2, the author describes the transitional political processes that led to the so-called era of forgetting. This period runs from 1977 to 1981. At that time, the political goal "was not to punish the old regime but to get democracy off the ground in as swift and nonconfrontational manner as possible" (p. 50). That is, a politics of consensus based on "forgetting" was embraced by almost all political parties, including those of the Left. This consensus included the king of Spain, Juan Carlos de Borbon, chosen specifically by Franco to come after him as head of state. Encarnación asks: why did the Left, repressed and banned during Franco's reign, accept this consensus? The answer: they did it for strictly pragmatic reasons. This pragmatism was based on two main factors: the trauma of democracy's collapse in the 1930s and the political environment of violence during the transition. Thus, the politics of consensus, supported by Right and Left parties, was intrinsically linked to the politics of forgetting, and "the linchpin of the politics of consensus was a comprehensive amnesty law" approved in 1977 (p. 71). The amnesty resulted in "a period of intense cooperation between the government and the opposition in crafting democratic institutions" (p. 74). Some important compromises were achieved: the acceptance of the monarchy, a resolution to address the separatist demands of the Basque Country and Catalonia, and the Pacts of Moncloa (a series of agreements signed by some left-wing and right-wing parties and by some unions in order to alter political and economic conditions in the late 1970s). In his analysis of the transition, Encarnación pays special attention to the ideological changes that took hold within the Socialist Party (PSOE) during the 1970s. At that time, the party redefined itself and presented the forgetting as an essential part of the project to modernize Spain. Actually, PSOE wanted to erase Spain's long history of being referred to as a backward country. In chapter 3, Encarnación focuses on the era of PSOE rule from 1982 to 1996, the years of "disremembering." The disremembering was a response to the threat of a coup that the newborn democracy feared from the armed forces. The Socialist government followed a policy of letting "bygones be bygones" in order to ensure its electoral victory and open enough political space to cope with other problems, such as the difficult economic situation and the Catholic Church's power. The Pact of Forgetting also let the PSOE create a new historical narrative that repositioned Spain's place within an increasingly collective European identity. To complete this narrative, it was thought best to obscure the true history of the civil war and the legacy of Francoism, historical episodes that distanced Spain from the emerging European ideal. Thus, events that occurred in 1992, such as the 1992 Olympic Games, Expo '92, and Madrid's designation as a European Capital of Culture, were presented as evidence of a democratic and modern Spain. Soon after, in 1996, the PSOE lost the elections and the Conservative government came to power. This year also started a rollback of "disremembering," a period in which the Pact of Forgetting started to be questioned, mostly by the Socialists. This is explained by the new Conservative government's project to reinvent the history of the civil war and Franco's dictatorship, popular sentiment against the Pact of Forgetting, and pressure from the liberal media for a debate over the issue of historical memory. In fact, in 1996—the fortieth anniversary of Franco's coup against the republic—the Left tried to introduce legislative initiatives questioning the Pact of Forgetting and reclaiming the memory of the republic. In chapter 4, the author analyzes the role of civil society in the forgetting. During the Spanish transition, grassroots movements in general did not demand a retroactive justice toward Francoism. By doing so, they were acknowledging their acceptance of the pact. On this point, Encarnación provides an interesting analysis on how certain emotions played a role in this decision. Specifically, he emphasizes the role of fear and shame among those who opposed the dictatorship. Fear of the past—deepened by the failed 1981 military coup against the new democracy—led many to support the process of forgetting. Shame had been internalized by some of Francoism's victims, who had suffered years of ongoing repression, surveillance, and public humiliation. This was reinforced by the "Myth of Equal Culpability," the assumption that "both sides in the Civil War bore equal responsibility" (p. 113). The remembrance of Francoism was an intensely complicated issue for Spanish society. This situation also had roots apart from the democratic changes of the 1970s. One of the most important was the economic boom of the previous decade. As a consequence of significant economic and social improvements, the Spanish population was encouraged to distance itself from the past. During the transition, these varied factors influenced people's behavior in contradictory ways. While the transition ensured a peaceful and orderly transition to democracy, it was detrimental for building a strong civil society. Rejecting the "rupture" thus led to a "tactical demobilization" (p. 123). Chapter 5 analyzes one of the most important reasons for the waning of the Pact of Forgetting: the 1998 indictment of Chile's former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. This affair destabilized the consensus on the Pact of Forgetting because it prompted a repoliticization of the past when it reopened the debate on unresolved memory. In chapter 6, Encarnación examines what can be called "the second transition," that is the second Socialist government headed by Zapatero (who belonged to a new generation of Socialist leaders). The Law of Historical Memory of 2007 attempted to restore the actual history of the republican era, and it questioned aspects of the Pact of Forgetting. Encarnación, however, is critical of Zapatero's initiative because of the ambiguity of its intent; that is, the Law of Historical Memory had many points of continuity with the Pact of Forgetting. The proposed revisions prompted much debate, particularly among historians, with right-wing intellectuals opposed to any changes in the Pact of Forgetting, while left-wing scholars were divided between those who considered that the forgetting was a wise and necessary choice in a complex context and those who deemed that a subsequent rollback of the pact would be beneficial for Spanish society in order to finally cope with its past. In the last chapter, Encarnación underlines the lessons to be learned on how to deal with the past. Firstly, the Spanish transition was an example of how "domestic circumstances can take precedence over international human rights norms in shaping how states settle a dark past." Secondly, the "Spanish experience suggests the seldom-acknowledged ambiguous relationship between transitional justice and democratization." Finally, "coming to terms with the past is not as static or formulaic a process as the transitional justice movement would suggest" (pp. 187-188). On the whole, Democracy without Justice in Spain is an intriguing and suggestive study of the Spanish transition and the politics of forgetting. Encarnación provides a detailed overview of Spanish history since the civil war, and he stresses the uniqueness of Spain as a country that encouraged a politics of forgetting in order to create and solidify democratic institutions. On one point, however, more could have been written. Encarnación does not emphasize enough the important social and intellectual movements of the last decade, especially the last five years which have seen new demands to update more fully the memory of the republican era. The new voices question the accepted view of the transition and the supposed usefullness of the forgetting, while reclaiming forgotten aspects of the past and raising the issue of reparations. An example of this is the debate around "El Valle de los Caídos" (Franco's tomb), where thousands of the republic's supporters are buried in a mass grave. For those who question the forgetting, this place should become a memorial. Those opposed, however, want it to remain as it is. This ongoing debate is evidence that the politics of forgetting remains controversial for Spanish society. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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
