South Asia Citizens Wire #1 | 8-9 October, 2004 via: www.sacw.net
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[1] Bangladesh: Bigots out to mine secular space
- Women's soccer (Editorial, Daily Star)
- Fanatics, civil society face off today
[2] Pakistan:
- Human rights activists march against honour killings
- NWFP Mullahs wants cinemas and cable TV to be shut down during Ramzaan
[3] India: Open Letter to the Media by feminists, rights activists & organisations
[4] India: Hindutva Mayhem in Karnataka | secular protest planned (Bangalore 9th October)
[5] India: Hindutvaisation of a Gorakhnath Mutt -The Yogi and The Fanatic (Subhash Gatade)
[6] India: The Squabble that Never Ends - Religion and Fertility (Alaka M Basu)
[7] India: RSS and Johns Hopkins University (I.K.Shukla)
[8] India: No ideological lines drawn - The issues Maharashtra manifestos don't mention
(J. Sri Raman)
[9] India: Remembering Muk Raj Anand: Salute to a Mentor (V.B.Rawat)
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[1]
The Daily Star - October 8, 2004 | Editorial
WOMEN'S SOCCER
The threat must be dealt with an iron hand
An Islamist party, raring to exploit people's religious sentiments, has announced a three-day agitation programme to stop an on-going women's football tournament in the city. Playing football has somehow been viewed by the party as something objectionable. It seems the obscurantists' list of objections is getting longer day by day.
The women's football tournament is being organised by the Bangladesh Football Federation with the permission of the government. It is part of the activities that the Federation has to undertake as the highest regulating body for football in the country and as a member of the FIFA. The resistance coming from a party, known for its ultra-conservative views, is neither acceptable, nor tenable. Playing football cannot have anything indecorous or indecent about it. One must take note of the fact that the local girls are using costumes that conform to our tradition of not wearing anything bordering on indecency or sartorial brevity. So, what do the bigots find in it that upset their sensibilities? Second, we are part of a global sporting family, each member of which has endorsed the idea of bringing more and more women to the sporting arena. Women are playing football in most of the countries. So, it doesn't stand to reason that we will lag behind others only because some religious fanatics don't want women to take part in outdoor sports. We cannot afford to remain isolated, nor can we break with our tradition as a sports-loving nation. The obscurantists are also planning to prevent women from swimming, and it is not known what will be their next target.
It is a clear case of politics and religion being mixed up with sports, which is highly undesirable and thoroughly unacceptable. Women are supposed to have their due place in sports and games, and it would be a meek capitulation to the agitators if the government and others concerned do not take a firm position to neutralise the threat to women's sports.
o o o
The Daily Star- October 8, 2004 FANATICS, CIVIL SOCIETY FACE OFF TODAY Staff Correspondent
Tension reigns in Narayanganj as religious fanatics and the civil society members stand fiercely opposed to each other on the former's programme to capture the Ahmadiyya mosque in the city today.
Anti-Ahmadiyya outfits Khatme Nabuwat Committee Bangladesh and Aamra Dhakabashi yesterday reiterated that they will continue with the programme.
They called on their adherents to gather and hold a demonstration at DIT Mosque after the Juma prayers and march towards Missionpara Ahmadiyya mosque.
"The Kadianis (Ahmadiyyas) are misleading the 'real Muslims' by calling their place of worship mosques," read an Aamra Dhakabashi press release yesterday.
"We don't want to capture anyone's property, but as Muslims, we have the religious obligation to save the fellow Muslims from being deceived by the Kadiyanis," the press release added referring to the prospective capture of the Ahmadiyya mosque.
Meanwhile, a number of socio-cultural and political organisations and professional bodies have declared to resist the capture programme.
Led by Narayanganj Sangskritik Jote, the South Asian People's Union against Fundamentalism and Communalism (SAPUFC), and Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, these organisations have asked the people to assemble at the mosque in the morning to foil the bigots' capture programme.
Superintendent of Police in Narayanganj Ibrahim Fatemi said yesterday they had taken necessary preparations to stop the anti-Ahmadiyya zealots.
Police remained posted at different points of the town yesterday. Paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles might also join them today, said sources.
Police picked up two operatives of Khatme Nabuwat while they were making announcement in loudspeakers Wednesday noon to let them off an hour later.
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[2]
The Daily Times - October 09, 2004
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS MARCH AGAINST HONOUR KILLINGS
* Call government bill a 'fraud'
* Want better legislation, implementation
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of human rights activists and civil society representatives marched against honour killings, rejected the proposed government bill against honour crimes and demanded that the government pass effective legislation.
Friday's march from China Chowk to Parliament House was organised by the Citizen's Action Group. Leading human rights activists including Asma Jehangir, Afrasiab Khattak, MNA Chaudhry Aitizaz Ahsan and former federal law minister Syed Iqbal Haider led the march. MNA Mehnaz Rafi also joined in.
Protesters carried placards demanding effective legislation against honour killings and shouted slogans against what they said was the government's inability to respond to the challenge posed by the growing number of honour killings.
"Despite statements of concern for women's rights at home and abroad by government leaders, ministers and others in authority, and despite tall claims about defending women's rights by parliamentarians, no action has been taken to prevent the murder and maiming of thousands of women in the name of honour," said a statement distributed by the march organisers.
"The official bill against honour killings passed by the NA Standing Committee on Thursday is a fraud, as are the commitments made by General Musharraf on the BBC," said Asma Jehangir while addressing marchers outside Parliament House. She said human rights activists would wait six months for the legislation and enforcement of an effective law against honour killings. "If nothing changes at the ground level, we will come again after six months," she said.
Mr Aitzaz Ahsan said that honour killings must be stopped. "We need not just legislation, but enforcement," he added.
He said Friday's protest and march were against the lack of legislation, its enforcement and the attitude toward this practice. Mr Iqbal Haider told Daily Times that the government was being hypocritical. On one hand, it condemned honour killings, and on the other its ministers opposed moves to curb honour killings, he said.
"The speaker of the National Assembly should be dismissed because he blocked a resolution in the National Assembly against honour killings in November 2003," he said. The president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Justice (r) Tariq Mahmood, said Gen Musharraf had promised in 2000 to curb honour killings.
"Since then, Gen Musharraf has monopolised power, but no law has been made so far against honour killings. Gen Musharraf has made an alliance with the mullahs and does not seem to be honouring the commitment he made against honour killings," he added.
Protesters observed one minute of silence for all those women who have been killed so far in the name of honour.
o o o o
BBC News - 7 October, 2004, 18:20 GMT 19:20 UK
PARTIES SEEK MEDIA BAN AT RAMADAN
By Haroon Rashid
BBC correspondent in Peshawar
The government in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) wants cinemas and cable TV to be shut down during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3724904.stm
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[3]
www.sacw.net | October 8, 2004 URL: http://www.sacw.net/Wmov/Openletter30092004.html
OPEN LETTER TO THE MEDIA
[September 30, 2004]
We are appalled by at the media's (especially television) coverage of the 'Gudiya-Taufiq-Arif' case. We strongly resent the growing instances of trial by media, the media's self-appointed role as resolvers of conflict, and the use of people's personal tragedies to increase network ratings. Headlines like 'Kiski Gudiya?'also symbolised the regressive image of women as property that informed the media's coverage.
Zee's advertisement for its show said, "A man gets his life back....... a family gets its future: A soldier at Kargil spends 5 years as POW. His newly wed wife waits in futility and then re-marries. The soldier returns to find his life turned upside down. ... At Zee news we are happy to be the forum where the issue was resolved. As India's largest media house, its our duty to the nation". This is particularly tasteless and disturbing, but the other channels like NDTV and Aaj Tak fared little better. It is bad enough having village panchayats and religious representatives enforcing particular decisions, without having the media act as an alternative court.
The terms of the 'debate' were backward to say the least. Television anchors repeatedly asked Arif and Taufiq what they wanted, while Gudiya was rarely given a chance. The 'public' at large, which has no locus standi in the case, was asked for their opinion, and again the terms of the debate were set as a choice of which of the two men should get her. The media thus repeatedly reinforced the idea of a woman as an object to be handed around between various men.
One of the questions concerned the status of the child - i.e. whether Arif should keep the child or if Taufiq should take it back once it is born. The decision of the Deoband Ulema that Arif should keep the child, but Taufiq should pay for its upkeep also reduces parenting to a question of money and 'ownership'. But most of all, one got no sense in all this, that it is Gudiya's child as well, or rather, Gudiya's child most of all. Far from displaying any sense of social responsibility, the media have reinforced the idea that women should have no control over their fertility, bodies and lives- and that these should be controlled by the husband, family, panchayat and now the media.
The media claims in its defense that noone forced the parties to come to the media. However, there is a fine line between choice and coercion when the media decides to take over an issue like this. Besides, in complex situations of this kind, people may use any avenue to get their point of view across. Rather than resolving conflict, as Zee and others claimed to be doing, the media enhanced conflict in this case by forcing relatives to give public statements against one another. Gudiya and other family members have since complained of the media's violation of their privacy (HT, 26.9.04).
We also note a communal subtext to the coverage. Even as the media reduced Gudiya to silence, they kept focusing on how the decisions were being made for her by the Ulema and the village panchayat, the underlying message being that Muslim women have no choice and that the community is ruled by fatwas. We wish to point out that retrogressive caste or religious panchayats are a common feature of both Hindu and Muslim life.
While one may have every sympathy for Arif's trauma as a Kargil POW, this does not mean that 'the nation' owes him a wife. Nor does Taufiq become a hero because he 'accepted soiled goods' as one interviewee graciously informed us on television. If anyone is the real heroine, it is Gudiya, who has endured both her village panchayat, clerics and Arif's unreasonable demands that she abandon her child.
We also object to the way in which a woman who is eight months pregnant and reportedly ill due to the pressure of decision-making was virtually 'kidnapped' and subjected to long hours in the studio.
Finally, we believe that Gudiya should have been given the space to make her decision, away from the media and the contending families, village panchayats, clerics etc.
Many organisations and individuals, some of whom are listed below, have endorsed this letter:
Organisations: PUDR, Saheli, Nirantar, Lok Raj Sanghatan, Sama, CREA, Tarshi, Centre for Development and Human Rights, PRISM, Sahrwaru, Delhi University GCash, Purogami Mahila Sanghatan, Akshara, Awaz - e- Niswan, Vacha, Forum Against Oppression of Women, Ashray Adhikar Manch, Rahi, Jagori, Mati Munsiari, Ankur, Anandi, Olakh, Sanlaap, Swayam, Gramya Resource Centre, Majlis, Labia
Plus
Individuals: Sujata Patel, Prabha Nagaraj, Neha Sood, Nivedita Menon, Aditya Nigam, Rakhee Timothy, K. Johnson, Malini Ghose, Farah Naqvi, Laxmi Murthy, Ujjwal Singh, Anupama Roy, Vineeta Bal, Paramjeet Singh, Prateeksha Baxi, Vikram Vyas, Janaki Abraham, Nandini Sundar, Dipta Bhog, Shahana Bhattacharya, Sharmila Purkayastha, Jaya Sharma, Mosuhumi Basu, Sucharita, Manjeer, Poornima Gupta, Shalini Joshi, Deepika Tandon, Sarojini, Sonal, Nischint, Kumud, Yasmeen, Nandita Gandhi, Shivanand Kanvi, Kalyani Menon, Bina Srinivas, Veenu, Malika Virdi, Soma KP, Ammu Joseph, Priyanka Trehan, Sunita Menon & Others.
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[4]
HINDUTVA MAYHEM IN KARNATAKA
Now the criminal groups of Sangaparivar VHP and Bajarangdal are using the Ganesha festivals for impose their agenda of Hidutva through genocide. One of such development took place in outskirts of Bangalore city India a week back. The local criminals of Yelahanka and surrounding area are in settled in the criminal groups of the Sangaparivar. They all joining together organized the Ganesha festival in the surrounding villages. The leader of VHP Mr. Promodh Muthalik Desai addressed the public in vidyaranya pura on the occasion of the Ganesha festival. He openly asked the youth to attach on Muslims. The local leaders of the Sangaparivar organized a rally on 26th of September 2004 Sunday evening at the end of the Ganesha festival. The tragedy is that the procession is planned to pass Chikka bettahally a poor Muslim dominated area. Around 600 youth belongs to the VHP and Bajarangdal was prepared for create violence. Chikka bettahally is a Muslim dominated area with the population of 4,000. 90% of the population is poor Muslims who workers has daily wages.
Above 600 youths attacked the poor Muslim houses in Chikka bettahally. Many people injured. Many feared families migrated with their children and valuables. Social action committee and other organizations able to prevent a planned genocide by pressurizing the state to organize maximum police force in the spot.
Social action committee has planned to do a fact finding on 3rd October 2004.
Social action committee with support of many other organizations and individuals organizing a huge public gathering to protest the genocide plans of the Sangaparivar.
Date of the protest: 9th October 2004 Saturday.
Venue: Town hall Bangalore.
Time: 4 PM.
Participants:
Swami Agnivesh, Ms. Teesta setlwad, Dr. U R Anathamurthy, Agni Sridhar, Prof. Raviverma Kumar, DSS, KJS, KVR, PVC, SSD, KRRS, General and Garment workers union, Sangama, Samvada, Bahumukhi, Janamatha, Karnataka komu souhardha vedike, PDF, MRHS and many others.
With regards,
Social action committee.
Bangalore.
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[5]
sacw.net | October 8, 2004
HINDUTVAISATION OF A GORAKHNATH MUTT THE YOGI AND THE FANATIC by Subhash Gatade
INTRODUCTION
The last two decades of the 20 th century have been witness to the coming to the fore of the careful and planned unfolding of what one sociologist calls 'spatial strategies of Hindutva'. Ranging from the then obscure looking Ayodhya focussed place / site based strategy in the early 80s to the shameful use of many religious Yatras or the n number of Political Yatras it undertook, it has thus taken under its ambit places / sites, areas as well as routes to spread the homogenising and hegemonic agenda of Hindu Rashtra . No doubt barring a few disasters ( like the recent 'India Shining' Yatra) this strategy has paid rich dividends to the saffron combine.
What can be considered the key elements of this strategy. The 'success' of such a 'place /area / route' centred strategy hinges around basically two things : one the particular site / place should be 'invested with a unique particularity' and two, the 'other' should be implicated in it.
The movement for the 'liberation of Ram Janam Bhoomi' which ultimately led to the demolition of a four century old year mosque and the biggest communal conflagaration in postinependent India to the periodic raising of tempers at Mathura / 'Krishnajanambhoomi' or Kashi Vishwanath Temple / Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi can be called the centrepiece of their activities in the 90s. But apart from focussing themselves on these 'sacred places' and further staking claim to 30,000 more similar shrines / mosques / mazars spread all over the country one was also witness to the playing out of the another type of 'place centred interventions' by the Hindutva forces which apparently had 'secular ' overtones. The controversy over the Hubli Idgah Maidan and the attempts to unfurl Tricolour over it had been a case in point.
Another type of such interventions can be categorised by looking at the changes wrought in at places / sites which claim a syncretic tradition. The homogenising / hegemonising project of Hindutva has continued with its feverish attempts to destroy the composite character of such places. Baba Buddhan Giri is a case in point. While a few such places have really succumbed to the 'hinduisation' drive but at many places it has been difficult for them to break the communal unity of the broad masses of the people.
A third category of 'place centred' interventions has involved the gradual Brahminisation / Hindutvisation of temples, mutts which had remained outside the Brahminical fold and had their genesis in the revolts of the subalterns in the medieval times against the stranglehold of Brahminism. The way the historic Veershaiva movement started by the great Basava as a cultural rebellion is being slowly coopted in the Hindutva fold or the way a section of the famous Nath movement is being coopted in the overall gameplan of the Hindutva forces is for everyone to see.
Definitely the efforts of the Hindutva brigade which has cleverly made plans, provided space, built networks or started agitations supposedly to involve them in their grand project have played an important stimulating/ catalytic role in their metamorphosis but these type of 'external' interventions cannot be said to be solely responsible for the ensuing changes. At times one has also been witness to the way the 'internal' dynamic also plays a role in their transformations. Apart from the rising political ambitions of the chief Guru whose influence is widespread, the internal squabbles among the mutts have also played a role in their transformations. At times the growing 'Sanskritisation' of the followers of a particular mutt has also rather forced the chieftains of the mutts to shed a few of its overtly nonBrahminical rituals or introduce a few Brahminical rituals.
This brief writeup focusses on the hinduisation / hindutvaisation of a famous mutt in Eastern Uttar Pradesh which has the potential of impacting the regional politics in a big way.
Full Text at: http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/gatade07102004.html ]
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[6]
The Economic and Political Weekly Census 2001 and religion data September 25, 2004
THE SQUABBLE THAT NEVER ENDS Religion and Fertility
An impartial examination of the complexities underlying simple measures of fertility and population growth will reveal that we are all - Hindu, Muslim and Christian - driven by the same basic quotidian needs and constraints, and that our reproductive behaviour is one important way of reflecting these desires and dilemmas. These conclusions are not exciting, but they need to be publicised in the same way that the raw religious differences have been. This is the joint social responsibility of academia, the press, and political and religious 'leaders'. Such personal exercise of responsibility is essential because demonising the 'other' is easy, but it is also dishonest and it is often brutally consequential for all sides.
by Alaka M Basu
Most of the time, I think of my discipline, demography, as too dry to be of interest to the kind-hearted friends and relatives who ask me what I do. I give them as brief a synopsis as possible and run before I can see their yawns. But then, every now and then, someone throws a match into this dry tinderbox and suddenly everyone, it turns out, has been a closet demographer all his life - the politician, the journalist, the fish seller, my uncle, his third cousin and the third cousin's wife.
The fish seller, my uncle, and his cousin and spouse used to be, in the past, of little consequence. They could spout demography till the cows came home, but all they would enjoy would be the sounds of their own voices. Suddenly, in recent years, this is no longer the case. Joined and egged on by the politician and the journalist, these mini-demographers now have 'agency', a word that is much lauded in the current NGO literature, but one that can take ominous form when it comes with the misinformation, misunderstanding and moral righteousness that seems to drive this new nationalistic agency.
The uproar over the recently released religion tables from the 2001 Census illustrates this excellently. After the inexplicable and expensive mistake in which the Registrar General's Office press release put out all-India growth rates for the different religious groups of India without adjusting for the absence of Assam in the 1981 Census and Jammu and Kashmir in the 1991 Census, the public fallout was inevitable and predictable. From each comment, with no other knowledge, one could identify the religion as well as the ideological leanings of the commentator. The high command of the Sangh parivar was as predictable and monotonous as the Imam of Fatehpuri Jama Masjid Delhi.
Basic Misrepresentation
What one could not so easily anticipate were the garbled journalistic reports on the subject, not just in the popular Indian press, but even in usually more thoughtful outlets like the BBC and Outlook online pages. I am not referring here to all the armchair analysis on the 'unacceptably' high Muslim fertility that opinion pages have been spewing out. Whether these pieces are antagonistic or sympathetic to the Muslim population of India, they often do a kind of analysis that would be rejected outright by any scientific review process.
But, in the first days of reporting, even the very statement of the 'problem' was framed in meaningless language in the press. Concepts of rates, proportions, absolute numbers, were all misinterpreted and tossed into the hyped-up reporting on the demographic state of the nation. Take the very first sentence from the September 6 report in OutlookIndia.com: 'The first-ever census report on religion today showed a 'high growth' of Muslims at 36 per cent in sharp contrast to the 'decline' in the Hindu population to 23 per cent in the country'. What on earth does this sentence mean? It is full of misconceptions. In particular, is it is the population growth rate of the Hindus that has 'declined', not the population of Hindus. That is, there is absolutely no fear of the absolute numbers of Hindus having come down a jot regardless of BJP president Venkaiah Naidu's remark that he was 'disturbed' by the "decline in the Hindu population" (report in OutlookIndia.com, September 7). And what does it mean for the Hindu population to have declined to "23.0 per cent in the country"? That wording implies that Hindus now constitute 23 per cent of Indians, a factual distortion of the highest order.
Such basic misrepresentations (and there are scores more, in the press as well as from the mouths of political heavyweights) would be amusing if they were not also chilling, leading as they do with strident calls for punitive action against a community that must be sick to death of these constant demands to demonstrate its patriotism. To that extent, we are fortunate that some of the media outlets have, in subsequent reports, at least got their definitions more correct, even if one wonders who is going to bother to understand these clarifications.
Quite apart from the mass media gymnastics, there are a few other lessons that standard demography teaches that are worth repeating to place these popular hysterics in context. The first of these is that the population growth rate is not simply a synonym for the population birth rate. Population growth is the outcome of the net balance of births, deaths and migration, with migration, in this case, being both territorial as well as religious - that is the Muslim population of India can in principle rise or fall due to movements of Muslims across Indian borders as well as a rise in conversions to and from Islam within India.
So many sweeping statements have been made about both these kinds of migration, and especially about the Bangladeshi migrants flocking to India, that addressing them in this paper will take me too far outside the word limit that this note has been allotted. The only point worth making quickly one more time is that if Bangladesh was ever the basket case that Kissinger claimed it was, that epithet can only sound silly today. The remarkable social progress made by that country can be ignored only by a stubborn Indian nationalism that sees only what it wants to see. On all social indicators - birth rates, death rates, school enrolments, female labour force participation - Bangladesh is today very close to, if not often better than, India. And given that the Indian data include 'star' performers like Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, it follows that many other parts of the country must often be much worse than Bangladesh; hardly a reason for impoverished Bangladeshis to keep coming to our benevolent land forever.
But there is another important determinant of population growth that has been completely missing from the popular analyses I have seen. The common tendency for those reports that do not rage about Bangladeshi migration is to attribute the higher growth rates of Indian Muslims to their uncontrolled fertility. But population growth is a function of births as well as deaths. So if two populations have the same birth rates, the one with a lower death rate will show a higher rate of growth. And at least a part of the higher growth rate of Muslims in India can be attributed to their lower morality rates. We are strangely tightlipped about 'this' particular 'religious' difference. Naturally, because acknowledging it would require acknowledging that a higher Muslim growth rate doesn't automatically imply unbridled Muslim fertility. Worse, it would also require an acknowledgement that the Muslims in India seem to be better than the Hindus are at ensuring the health and survival of their children in general and their daughters in particular.
The National Family Health Survey of 1998-99 has some readily available statistics on this subject. In this survey, infant mortality rates (or the IMR - the number of babies per thousand births dying within a year of birth) were 58.8 and 77.1 for Muslims and Hindus respectively - a difference that is consequential for inter-religious population growth rates of course, but is also telling given the generally lower socio-economic conditions of Muslims. This difference is repeated for children between the ages of one and five, so that overall child mortality (the numbers of children per thousand births that die before their fifth birthday) was 82.7 for Muslims, but 107.0 for Hindus. That is, even today, more than 10 per cent of Hindu children die by the age of five.
It would be as foolish to attribute the higher Hindu infant and child mortality entirely to something inherently 'Hindu' as it is to insist that the higher birth rates of Muslims primarily represent something inherently 'Muslim' and we need much more academic understanding of both these differences so that both religious groups can learn from one another. That is, if we are into teaching lessons, then perhaps we ought to be more amenable to taking lessons as well. And while I am at it, I may as well add that the IMR for Christians is 49 per thousand births, for Jains it is 47 and for Sikhs it is 53 - all well below the figure for Hindus.
Incidentally, this is not simply a matter of Hindus being less able to look after their births. There is a more unpalatable factor underlying these mortality differentials as well. According to the just released census figures, the juvenile sex ratio (the number of females per thousand males in the 0-6 year age group) of Indian Muslims is 950 compared to 925 for Hindus; that is Hindu girls are paying a disproportionate cost of these religious differences in child mortality. Given that there is no reason to believe that little Hindu girls are much weaker than their brothers, compared to Muslim girls relative to their brothers, one must shamefacedly ask if the gap between Hindu and Muslim population growth rates would be smaller if Hindu female mortality was a little closer to Hindu male mortality. At this stage, it might be only fair to also acknowledge the greater gender egalitarianism of Indian Christians (a juvenile sex ratio of 964) and bemoan the worse performance of Sikhs and Jains (786 and 870 respectively) - the Sikh and Jain success at keeping infant mortality low comes at a painfully high cost to its daughters it seems. The tone of moral righteousness in the public debates over these census results on growth rates compels me to raise these other 'moral' inter-religious demographic matters.
Having said all this, it is nevertheless true that Muslim fertility is clearly higher than Hindu fertility today. But acknowledging these differences is not the same as understanding them and the recent politicking on the subject has not even millimetred us towards a greater understanding of the matter. Once more, there are several theoretical and empirical ways of increasing this understanding. Such research would focus on religion naturally, but would also look at the religious correlates of socio-economic factors such as income, education and minority group status, as well as on more technically demographic factors such as age distributions, widow remarriage and the like.
Some of this theory and empirical analysis is already available in the academic literature, but much more needs to be done and hopefully there are objective researchers who will rise to do this in the coming months. Right now, I want to point out something that the trends in growth rates in the census hint at but do not specify clearly enough.
Fertility Declines
The census results suggest that once we have adjusted the absence of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir in the Censuses of 1981 and 1991 respectively, not only have Muslim growth rates in India fallen, they have fallen more than have Hindu growth rates. And more direct fertility data indeed confirm that there are differential rates of fertility decline too in the two communities, leading to a convergence in fertility levels. The best way to demonstrate this is to look at two different measures of fertility in the 1998-99 National Family Health Survey. In the report from this survey, if one looks at what demographers call 'completed family size', that is, the mean number of children ever born to ever-married women aged 40-49 years (this age group assumes, legitimately enough, that the women in it are unlikely to bear any more children), the Hindu-Muslim difference is as large as 1.38 births per woman (the completed family size being 4.34 for Hindus and 5.72 for Muslims).
'Completed family size' is a measure of past fertility. But if one looks at current fertility (which is captured by what is called the TFR or Total Fertility Rate - the mean number of children that a woman today will end up with if at each age she has the number of births that women who are presently of that age are having), the Hindu-Muslim difference collapses to 0.81 (the Muslim TFR being 3.59 and the Hindu 2.78). In other words, not only is Muslim fertility falling in the same way as Hindu fertility (and indeed global fertility); it is in fact falling faster than Hindu fertility.
This finding makes nonsense of those predictions that purport to tell us how few decades or centuries it will take for Muslims to outnumber Hindus in this country. All those predictions assume unchanging birth and population growth rates in the different population groups, whereas in fact what is more likely is that universal fertility declines coupled with differential rates of decline in the two communities will lead to eventual (and by 'eventual' I do not mean in a few centuries) fertility levels that are very similar in all significant sub-groups groups of the Indian population, so that the proportional numbers of these groups also stabilise.
As for policies to further increase the pace of Indian fertility decline, Muslim fertility is of academic and policy interest for itself, not for what it is relative to Hindu fertility. If it is relative positions that we are interested in, there is no reason to treat Hindu reproductive behaviour as the gold standard. Instead, given the 'national' goal of population stabilisation, perhaps we should be asking why the Hindu TFR of 2.78 in 1998-99 was significantly higher than the Christian TFR of 2.44 and the Sikh one of 2.26. Any Christian or Sikh group that suggested that this difference reflected a sinister Hindu plot to drive Christians or Sikhs into oblivion would be dismissed for its impertinence; more benign and socio-economic explanations would and should be sought.
If we apply this same kind of intellectual lens to understanding the fertility patterns of Muslims in India, we might come to the surprising conclusion that there is much more convergence with other groups than the publicised differences project. A more impartial examination of the complexities underlying simple measures of fertility and population growth will also reveal that finally, we are all - Hindu, Muslim and Christian - driven by the same basic quotidian needs and constraints, and that our reproductive behaviour is one important way of reflecting these desires and dilemmas.
Such conclusions are not exciting, but when they are thrown up, they need to be publicised in the same way that the raw religious differences have been. This is the joint social responsibility of academia, the press, political and religious 'leaders', and my uncle's third cousin's wife. Such personal exercise of responsibility is essential because demonising the 'other' is easy, but it is also dishonest and it is often brutally consequential for all sides.
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[7]
RSS AND JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY I.K.Shukla
Free Speech has suddenly found votaries among those who don't give a tinker's damn to others' right to free speech, who have penalised and strangled free speech times without number, and who believe in the gagging of free speech as a categorical imperative in their totalitarian ideology.
The sophistry being adduced in favor of Free Speech, so lewdly (not just loudly), is farthest from conceding that it is the constitutive element of a democratic, modern, pluralistic polity and society within the larger ambit of cilvil liberties and human rights.
That there are vulgar vigilante groups , swathed in saffron, who are the loudest and most apish in touting the virtues of free speech and their right to it, is no surprise.
What is a surprise is that a university has decided to host the spokesman of a fascist party. There are serious ramifications involved, dangerous consequences entailed in this decision of a varsity. This amounts to conferment of legitimacy and respectability to a mafia committed to violence, genocide of minorities and their extirpation, and defiant suborning of the constitutional order. The university would seem to be endorsing and encouraging a criminal outfit dedicated to disrupting the rule of law, demolishing the nation, desecrating its heritage, destroying its unity, devastating the lives of millions through assassinations, rapes, torching people and properties, looting and thuggery. This person is the representative of a party which has Gandhi's blood on its hands, besides the blood of over 2000 Gujarat Muslims, to name just two of its heinous, anti-national crimes.
That some of the left believe the right to free speech as an absolute, without any context, is worrisome.
It is useful to recall how some of the left got blinkered about Kosovo and Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and became partisans of the empire.
Let those who oppose the JHU feting the spokesman of a fundamentalist- terrorist gang, guilty of innumerable crimes, speak out now. The empire has always enlisted such ones in its foreign legions for purposes that it calls foreign policy.
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[8]
The Tribune - October 9, 2004
NO IDEOLOGICAL LINES DRAWN The issues Maharashtra manifestos don't mention by J. Sri Raman
WHICH has a greater bearing on the forthcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections - Mr Bal Thackeray's beard or the Shiv Sena's ideological baggage? By all accounts thus far, the answer is unmistakable: the former. This may sound frivolously facetious, but it is a serious comment on the character of the country's first major political contest after the last Lok Sabha polls.
The two major alliances supposed to be locked in a titanic struggle - the Congress-NCP camp and its Shiv Sena-BJP counter - have both come out with joint manifestos. This, in theory, should have meant a drawing of clear ideological lines on identified issues. It has, in fact, meant quite the opposite. To a Martian visitor, the manifestos would make no sense at all as political statements of contending parties.
Both promise free power to farmers, both dodge the Vidarbha issue, and both speak of a Shivaji memorial. If there are differences on important issues, neither of the documents divulges them. Both are silent on issues that are supposed to divide them. The silence is eloquent, especially on the issues of so-called "Hindutva". It is even more so on the Shiv Sena's own issues that combine religious chauvinism with the regional variety.
The two camps are silent on these issues in different ways and for different tactical reasons. It is not as if neither of them was going to raise these issues. One of them was already raising them and going to raise them, away from its manifesto. It is the Congress-NCP alliance that has betrayed an unconcealed anxiety to keep them away from the entire election campaign, except perhaps in pockets of minority predominance. The alliance has adopted a tactical line of least resistance to what, far from elections, it denounces as fascism deserving of a mortal combat.
The "saffron" duo would seem to have two reasons for its two-track electoral diplomacy. In the first place, it wants no encounter with the Election Commission. Mr Thackeray himself has made a public promise to comply with the EC's directive to keep religious issues out of the campaign (though he has also, in all innocence, asked: "Is Ayodhya a religious issue or not? Can someone tell me?"). The coyness about some of the Shiv Sena causes, especially regional-chauvinist ones like Mee Mumbaikar and virulent opposition to the idea of a Vidarbha State, is also the outcome of its alliance with the BJP that has to keep up its all-India appearances.
Neither of these reasons applies to the other side. The Congress and the NCP are not going to fall foul of the EC by taking up a campaign against communalism. On these issues, they have revealed no differences that should restrain such a campaign. Not after Mr Sharad Pawar's somersaults have disposed of the once allegedly fundamental differences on the issue of "foreign origin". What restrains the tricolour team is what restrained the Congress campaigns in the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat.
What holds the alliance back is the fear of alienating communalised constituencies. Little wonder, no one from the alliance has answered Mr Thackeray's question. No one has told him and, through him, the voters that Ayodhya is not indeed a religious issue, but one of pseudo-religious politics. The Congress is certainly not going to draft Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar, who once called it a "real-estate issue", for the campaign. The party can only disown this as the Petroleum Minister's "personal view" like his recent clanger of closer relevance on Veer Savarkar. The alliance, in other words, will avoid a frontal clash with the "Chhatrapati" of today's Maharashtra as the Congress did with the "Chhote Sardar" of Gujarat.
Little wonder, again, that the rebellions in both the camps and inside all the four parties have acquired almost the same relevance as the main contest for Maharashtra. The contest between the two alliances, to look at it another way, appears not very different from the issueless conflicts between the official and rebel candidates of the same party.
The media coverage of the Mahabharata in Maharashtra, too, mirrors this situation. Because the contending camps do not talk about these issues, much of the media also does not. Reading newspaper reports and watching television coverage, you would hardly imagine that the elections involve ideological issues of the haziest import. Rebellions, caste politics, and personality factors - a combination of these would seem to hold the key in constituencies across the State. The media is not even asking the contenders for their views on subjects of larger social concern.
A striking illustration is the way the war of succession in the Shiv Sena is presented to public view. The rival claimants to Mr Thackeray's throne - his son Uddhav Thackeray and nephew Raj Thackeray - have both faced barrages of questions from interviewers. No one, however, has asked either of them where he stood, for instance, on declaring a cut-off date for Mumbai citizenship. Or on deporting alleged Bangladeshis or beating up Bihari applicants for railway jobs. Or queering the pitch for India-Pakistan cricket or censoring out India-Pakistan films and even pure-Indian cinema of impermissible themes. And a host of similar other queries on issues closer to the Shiv Sena's heart than free power or non-returnable loans to farmers.
The scene is distinctly reminiscent of the days of the last Lok Sabha contest. Then, too, we were told that the BJP had decided to stop campaigning on divisive issues and start doing so on "developmental" ones. Later, it came to light that, even while big leaders were talking about "bijli, pani aur sadak", common party cadre concentrated on communal issues, like the Bhoj Shala dispute in Madhya Pradesh and the conversions scare in Chhattisgarh, for just two examples.
Even then, after the defeat of the National Democratic Alliance in the elections, Mr Thackeray went public with his opinion that the BJP's soft-pedalling of "Hindutva" was responsible for the result. The bland Shiv Sena-BJP manifesto cannot, and does not, mean that the alliance has gone miraculously "developmental" at the grassroots.
The two parties and the rest of the "parivar", in fact, have been on the communal offensive for quite some time in "mohallas" away from cameras of the high-profile media. Ear-to-the-ground accounts say that the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance has resolved, actually, to step up this offensive in order to win the support of North Indians alienated by the Mee Mumbaikar movement. The Bajrang Dal has chosen this time to start a Statewide campaign against cow slaughter (besides one against picture of Hindu deities and symbols on the covers of audio - and video-cassettes). The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is distributing "trishuls" (tridents) and booklets asking Hindus to give the Babri Masjid treatment to the Afzal Khan tomb. This is an indicative, not an exhaustive, list.
There is, obviously, more at stake in the Maharashtra elections than Mr. Thackeray's beard, which he has reportedly vowed to shave off only if his alliance wins. We have not been told what will happen to it, if the results spell a hung Assembly as predicted by an opinion poll. The more important question, however, is what the verdict will be on issues the manifestos do not mention.
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[9]
www.sacw.net | October 7, 2004
SALUTE TO A MENTOR by V.B.Rawat
Dear Uncle Mulk,
I wanted to write this to greet you on your 100th birthday later this year in December but
sadly I am writing to you when you have departed. Yet, how can a person like you depart who has contributed so much to Indian literature. How can I forget the nice wonderful moments with you at 'Lokayat' which has your imprint and your values even today. The green trees of deer park, the chirping of birds and your morning walk in the Deer Park. How can I forget the sharing of morning tea and scanning the morning newspapers and then breaking for the breakfast. Therefore, I am still feeling that you are there and we greet you on your century.
Though you have gone after a well-attained life still I moan for your incomplete hundred. I wanted to see you either in Mumbai or Delhi to greet on your magnificient hundred though I did not meet you after our last meeting in early 1994. I don't feel this is right time for me to explain to you as what prompted me to see you afterwards even when I had left Lokayat in the end of 1992.
I still remember the days as a student, when I used to write you from the hills. Your stories became my favorite narratives. Your letter, though small became my ray of hope for a better future at a time when I was passing through deep desperations. I was just feeling to get out of a hell, which I was put in. I saw a life of miseries, personal catastrophes and really impossible. And I wanted an entirely personal decision from you- to get me out of the hell I was. And one day, I received a letter from you to come to Delhi for an interview. It was a great moment of joy and even those who did not like me felt that I have done a miracle. For them, being with Mulk Raj Anand was an opportunity to learn, though some of them thought that it was a way towards success and earn money through favour.
[...]
[Full Text at: http://sacw.insaf.net/free/vbrawat07102004.html
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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
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