South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch #1 | 20 Dec., 2004 via: www.sacw.net
[1] Pakistan-India: Courting insecurity through arms (Praful Bidwai)
[2] Pakistan-India: All part of the safari jeep (Jawed Naqvi)
[3] Pakistan-India: Partition has failed to solve communal bias (Kuldip Nayar)
[4] India: R. Champakalakshmi talks to historian Romila Thapar
[5] India: Update on the 'Employment Guarantee Bill'
[6] India - Upcoming events :
(i) Lecture by Prof. Theodore Wright on "U.S. Intervention in South Asia and the Middle East" (New Delhi, 21 Dec 2004)
(ii) Second Promise of India Conference 'Making Peace with Diversity and Development' (Bombay, 10 Jan, 2004)
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[1]
The News International, December 16, 2004
COURTING INSECURITY THROUGH ARMS
Praful Bidwai
Although it would be premature to pronounce a negative judgment on it yet, the India-Pakistan dialogue is running into a number of roadblocks and probably a phase of stagnation. The two governments have made little progress on the worthy 14 month-old proposal to launch a bus service between the two capitals of divided Kashmir. They also remain stuck in a conservative groove while discussing nuclear and conventional military confidence-building measures (CBMs), which will reduce the threat of a conflict in this volatile, now-nuclearised, region. While the hitch on the first issue concerns the nature of the documents to be carried, the talks on the second are marred by a lack of will to take the bold steps that are necessary in the South Asian context.
Beyond a point, it is immaterial if the blame for this stagnation lies with Pakistan or India. Each has its own special concerns, compulsions, preoccupations and anxieties. At the end of a year, after they agreed to re-start their first serious dialogue since the nuclear tests of 1998, what matters is whether they have addressed these or failed to do so. Unless the dialogue leads to results, India and Pakistan will fail in the eyes of the world.
Even worse, each of the two has launched a huge arms-buying spree. India is acquiring sophisticated air defence systems, new submarines from France and Russia (including a nuclear-powered submarine), the Patriot range of US anti-missile missiles, as well as new warplanes and an air-defence ship. It is now among the world's three largest arms importers. Pakistan is buying more P-3C Orion maritime surveillance-cum-submarine-hunter aircraft, Phalanx rapid-fire guns, and TOW missiles, etc.-worth a $1.2 billion from the US alone.
Washington is encouraging both to acquire new, ever-deadlier weapons. Indeed, selling such weaponry to them was the principal function of US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's recent India-Pakistan visit. This has created rancour and resentment in both our capitals. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee protests against the US argument that the weapon sales to Pakistan are meant "to contain terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Taliban ... Nobody uses F-16 fighter planes and other weapons meant for big wars to fight terrorists". He even warns that the sales could "jeopardise the peace process". Pakistan retorts that India is "paranoid" about Islamabad's arms acquisition. This is only meant to "restore symmetry and bring stability to the region" by filling up "the gap that emerged during the '90s due to US sanctions..."
Mukherjee is right to say that weapons like the Orion and F-16 or anti-tank missiles are meant "for big wars and not to fight terrorism". But that's hardly the point. The new deadly toys are a reward for Pakistan's invaluable assistance to the US in fighting al-Qaeda in and around Afghanistan. Similarly, Washington has rewarded India for its "strategic partnership": first by approving the sale of the US-Israeli "Green Pine" radar and the associated air defence system, and then by offering top-of-the-range weapons such as the Patriot-II missile interceptor, as well as other conventional materiel.
Two transformations are visible here. During the Cold War, particularly between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, and then in the 1980s, the India-Pakistan arms race was fuelled by rival powers: respectively, the USSR and the US. Today, the same power drives the race: the US. India and Pakistan both vie for its attention and favours. In the process, both sustain, and in the long run intensify, their rivalry.
Second, the US is far from even-handed. In one phase, it tilts towards Pakistan; in another, towards India. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, it offered F-16s to Pakistan on an exclusive basis, but in the early 1990s, imposed restrictions under the Pressler Amendment, etc. After 2000, it suddenly warmed up to India and offered "strategic partnership" plus a role in Ballistic Missile Defence. Then a few months ago, suddenly, it designated Pakistan a Major non-Nato Ally. For all its rhetoric about India's great power "potential" and its democracy, the US does not support India's candidature for the permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
Now Washington is dangling different carrots before the two states. President Bush has again described Pakistan as a "frontline state" against terrorism and called Pervez Musharraf "a world leader". Washington is equally effusive when describing India as an "emerging power, a regional power and a world power with which we want a growing relationship".
Washington practises double standards based on short-term considerations. India and Pakistan realise and resent this. Regrettably, they have both fallen a victim to it. All this would be relatively unimportant if it did not have strategic consequences. But the India-Pakistan rivalry is aggravated by Washington's policies and moves. In particular, these can vitiate the present climate and put a spoke in the peace process.
It is not just hypocritical, but downright foolhardy, for Washington both to supply new weapons to India and Pakistan and then expect them to negotiate an authentic peace. The logic of the first process-escalation of military preparations, and increased hostility-is sharply different from the logic of dialogue, reconciliation and peace.
It is even more unrealistic and foolish of India and Pakistan to imagine they can continue to arm themselves to the teeth against each other and thus make themselves insecure, and at the same time, hope to become secure. The hawks told us this would happen in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s-through the conventional route. It didn't. The sale of F-16s to Pakistan probably featured on the front pages of Indian newspapers on an average of 200 days out of 365 days in the year in the 1980s as a major bone of contention. But the contention didn't end when the planes' spares stopped reaching Pakistan. Then, said our Right wing "experts", nuclear weapons would provide "strategic balance" and stability. They didn't. India and Pakistan went to war within a year of their nuclear tests!
India and Pakistan have tried to talk peace without taking their foot off the nuclear accelerator or even stopping the conventional arms race. This too suits the hawks' prescription, based on the utmost cynicism. For instance, Indian ultraconservatives believe that the US's "coddling" of Pakistan to the point of it becoming, as one of them puts it, a US "protectorate", is a good thing. It will keep Pakistan on its "best behaviour"; by contrast, "whenever American interest flagged... [the] Pakistanis have run riot". Besides, US military sales to Islamabad will help New Delhi demand "parity"-new, yet more lethal weapons, in keeping with India's "emerging" position.
This logic is fatally flawed: seeking "balance" through arms sales will lead to the creation and widening of existing imbalances. These imbalances in turn furnish an argument for "balance" through yet more tilting of the sales. A tilt in one direction, followed by a tilt in the other, violates the interests of fairness - and peace. If you want peace, you must wage peace, not war. It would be suicidal for India (and Pakistan) to forget this great lesson of the 20th century.
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[2]
Dawn 20 December 2004
ALL PART OF THE SAFARI JEEP By Jawed Naqvi
Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Indian Held Kashmir are ugly phrases because they smack of official patronage, of government-inspired positions and not even-handed journalism. Why can't we say Indian-administered Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir and wait for the issue to be resolved before assigning a name it eventually chooses for itself?
It is strange that we in India and Pakistan have learnt to pour scorn on embedded American and British journalists who we believe are adept at endorsing the occupation of Iraq by subtle and, where it works better, crude methods.
Using the same argument, how can we ignore that most of us in the subcontinent have been assiduously practising a similar embedded journalism for half a century or more?
We do this by using a vocabulary that is insidious in intent and which creates an enemy in our neighbourhood instead of an organically structured nation peopled by the same kind of ideological jostling that we find in our own respective national boundaries.
Actually, we in India like to proclaim our love or contempt for Pakistan and Pakistanis depending on the season of the year. Even the movies change their story lines according to the season - Border or Mission Kashmir goes with the season of warmongering and Veer Zara, etc., reflect our maudlin love for the "other" side in less vitiated days.
In Pakistan it has been pretty much the same pattern. Like George Orwell's sheep the media in both countries by and large bleats "Four legs good, two legs bad" and vice versa, depending on the mood in the prime minister's office in our capitals as also, in Pakistan's case, at the General HQ in Rawalpindi.
Those who love or hate Pakistan and Pakistanis care little about the finer points of the problem. They suffer from the deception of the tiger in a wildlife sanctuary. If you stay in the open jeep the lurking tiger is likely to mistake you to be part of the jeep and not attack you as it would any other easy prey.
Indians and Pakistanis who care to concern themselves with each other appear to perceive the other side like the deceived tiger. It is scarcely part of a normal discourse in India, for instance, that there are at least four types of political Pakistanis that we are looking at.
The army, the mullahs, the followers of Benazir Bhutto and the followers of Nawaz Sharif represent the four corners. To an untrained Indian mind, they are all part of the safari jeep called Pakistan.
That's how a Hindutva rabble-rouser like Narendra Modi could get away by painting all Pakistanis as children of General Pervez Musharraf! Which of course is not very different from the description given by Mr Modi's Hindu fanatics to Indian Muslims - that they are all children of Mughal emperor Babur who kept Hindu slaves and who built the Babri Masjid after razing their scared temple in Ayodhya, as the Hindutva mythmaking has it.
It eventually would take an educated Indian leader like Arif Mohammed Khan to object to Mr Modi. And he did, proclaim even if somewhat impishly: "We are Pathans, we had fought the Mughals. Please do not abuse us."
Last week a large group of Pakistani journalists arrived in India. We are told the Indian government had sponsored the trip. How this media trip was going to be any different from the recent ones organized by some media NGOs is difficult to divine.
Some of these journalists were quoted last week as saying how keen they were to meet former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. General Musharraf had asked them to meet Mr. Vajpayee, one of them said. They would also meet Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. But Mr. Vajpayee appeared to be someone special.
Is there nothing else in India for Pakistanis, more so their journalists, to be interested in? Have they ever tried to meet the ordinary people, people in the villages, in small towns, in the discotheque? How about meeting the Naxalites, the only people, as far as one can remember, who came out in droves in the streets against the war hysteria that was whipped up by Mr. Vajpayee and tacitly endorsed by Ms Gandhi's party through much of 2002?
These orchestrated visits of journalists reminds me of the time when I was under the impression that I was allowed to travel alone in Iran during the Khomeini era. I went to to the Davamand mountain resort north of where the Imam lived in Teheran's Farmaniyeh district.
There I found on the snow-laden slopes of the mountains the most amazing sight - scores of women bereft of the hijab were skiing across the picturesque hills. Rock music was blaring from all corners.
And the revellers - men and women - were using their skis to write large love messages in the snow to each other, some so large that they could be read from an aeroplane. It was a completely different world to the one we were tutored to believe in.
Click, click, click went my camera. I hadn't of course noticed the 'shadow' that was tailing me, not until the next morning when the camera mysteriously disappeared from the locker in my hotel room.
Never mind that. The memories of the Davamand experience are still fresh in my mind. The day this experience becomes possible for Indians and Pakistanis to savour freely in each other's country, small bits of the Orwellian nightmare might begin to wane.
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[3]
Gulf News December 18, 2004
PARTITION HAS FAILED TO SOLVE COMMUNAL BIAS by Kuldip Nayar
A former Chief of Air Staff of the Pakistan Air Force made a poignant remark at a farewell party in New Delhi.
Leading a delegation of retired military officers to India a few days ago, he said he wished those who had left Pakistan after its formation had not done so because his country missed the texture of society it intended to have.
Probably he did not realise that theirs was not an easy choice. They had to leave because they were non-Muslims. When they locked their houses behind they thought they would return after things had settled down.
There was no going back and this realisation came to them only when they saw two streams of human beings on the main Grand Trunk Road, one flowing towards India and the other towards Pakistan. Muslims went through the same traumatic experience.
However, thousands of them have come back to the state, not Punjabis but others. In contrast, there are hardly any Hindus in West Punjab. This is what makes India different despite all the onslaughts of Hindutva. Non-Muslims would have stayed back in Pakistan if Mohammad Ali Jinnah's reinterpretation of the two-nation theory had been carried out.
Its ethos became secularism, not religion. He said that Muslims ceased to be Muslims and Hindus ceased to be Hindus; they were either Pakistanis or Indians.
Mahatma Gandhi, in turn, declared that he would live in Pakistan and seek no visa to enter. Gandhi was shot dead by the extremists and Jinnah was abandoned by similar elements and left dying as a disillusioned man.
Both leaders who were at the helm of political affairs then did not envisage that the minorities would have to quit because of their religion in the country to which they belonged. Both were dejected when the migration began.
I recall the talk I had with Jinnah in 1946 when he addressed the Law College at Lahore. I was then in the final year. I asked him what would happen in the subcontinent after the departure of the British because the hatred between Hindus and Muslims had reached a boiling point.
He said: "Some nations have killed millions of each others and yet an enemy of today is a friend of tomorrow."
That is history. Look at France and Germany which have fought each other for hundreds of years. I wish that had come true in the subcontinent.
We have fought three and a half wars and killed thousands. Retired military officers who came here and some of ours who went there were then in the forefront. The problem between the two countries has got more aggravated over the years.
Fires of prejudice
What was once a Hindu-Muslim hiatus has now become the confrontation between India and Pakistan which is laced with nuclear missiles. Partition has failed to solve the basic problem of communal bias.
I see the same fires of prejudice burning in the two countries. Misinformation, misunderstanding or misinterpretation of religion is grist to the hatred mill which is working all the time.
The common man wants to bury the hatchet while keeping his identity intact. But fundamentalists on either side sabotage even the most altruistic initiative to span the distance between the two.
It is strange that the Pakistan government should want to take credit for its campaign against prejudice when the history it teaches in schools and colleges is partisan and begins with the advent of Muslim rule in India.
What about the civilisation of Mohenjodaro and Taxila? They do not figure anywhere because they are related to Hinduism. This is how bias is sown. Revising history books should be one step to judge how serious President General Pervez Musharraf is about fostering secularism and Jinnah's legacy.
People-to-people contact has busted the walls of prejudice and suspicion to some extent. Religious parties wield great influence and they run state governments in the North Western Frontier Province on their own and in Baluchistan with the support of Musharraf.
Even otherwise, he has a close understanding with the religious elements which first approved of his presidency and now give empty threats that they will not tolerate his uniform beyond December 31.
The process of people meeting from the different fields in India and Pakistan has diluted religious fanaticism. But when Musharraf says: "I am giving bilateralism a final chance in Kashmir" and when Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh declares "all is not well", the atmosphere becomes heavy.
It means that the two governments are beginning to build a case to restrict the contact.
This necessitates the implementation of decisions reached on some of the confidence building measures. Another round of composite talks that has begun now should see to it. Kashmir is a symptom. The disease is bias.
Our priority should be to establish secularism on both sides. India has been lucky because leaders even after Nehru made no compromise with communalism.
The BJP which did was ousted lock, stock and barrel. In Pakistan no leader after Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan has pursued secularism. The result is that ideologically the two countries stand poles apart.
Musharraf says he is fighting fundamentalists. But he is also seeking their assistance for political purposes. His other problem is the jihadi elements in the military. In truth, fundamentalists in both the countries are vitiating the atmosphere and stoking the fires of prejudice. The eruption in India is met with eruption in Pakistan.
The demolition of Babri masjid is one example. What happened in its wake in Pakistan was equally vindictive when practically all the Hindu temples were damaged in retaliation.
Relations between New Delhi and Islamabad will not improve until fundamentalists are out of the reckoning. If Kashmir is the be-all and end-all for Pakistan, it can be solved only up to the point which has the support of the BJP.
True, former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee deserves all the credit for having set the ball rolling in January this year. Yet how far he would have conceded to Pakistan would never be known. The Manmohan Singh government, I am sure, must be keeping the BJP in the picture behind the scenes. But the stage of assessing how far it is willing to concede on Kashmir is yet to come.
What people on both sides should meanwhile do is to deepen contacts at every level so as to make it difficult for the governments to impose restrictions even when they want to. People should not be dependent on their whims.
In fact, they should be debating the South Asian economic zone, from Afghanistan to Myanmar, to push relations beyond nationalities, borders and religions. It is a pity that the persons who rule the region are pygmies, not visionaries.
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[4]
The Hindu - Dec 19, 2004 Magazine
IN CONVERSATION
Forgotten themes
R. CHAMPAKALAKSHMI talks to historian Romila Thapar.
Romila Thapar ... "Historical writing is not a free-for-all in which anyone can claim to be writing history."
Professor Romila Thapar was recently in Chennai at the invitation of the Prakriti Foundation, known to bring to the city the best among scholars and artists for an enlightened audience. She gave two lectures at the Museum Theatre on two unusual but important themes - "Perceiving the Forests: Early India" and " Somanatha: The many Voices of a History". They made Thapar's lectures almost dramatic in their presentation with a rich artistic background to the stage, but the scholar performer had members of the audience glued to their seats with her highly academic and lucid presentation, which needed no setting or backdrop.
The two lectures were highly illuminating and were marked by the historiographical advance of recent scholarship, which has revolutionised our understanding of the nature of the discipline and our vision of the past. What was of interest to the audience was that they demonstrated the kind of historiographical changes that have taken place in both the handling of new themes and in the re-interpretation of existing theories. The first lecture on the forest was undoubtedly a new theme and the subject of the forest in history may have been puzzling to some, but the intention of the lecture was not only to show that such non-conventional subjects are relevant to the study of history but also to narrate changes that have taken place during a long span of time - Fifth Century B.C. to Seventh Century A.D. The choice of the theme is noteworthy. It indicates the importance to historians today of themes that had been neglected in the past or not even recognised as important in historical processes which would extend to societies such as pastoralists and forest dwellers and their contribution to mainstream history, and also those who had been at the lower end of society or had been marginalised.
Professor R. Champakalakshmi spoke to Professor Thapar on the significance of the choice of themes.
R. CHAMPAKALAKSHMI
HOW important is the study of the forest for the present, especially in India?
ROMILA THAPAR
Its relevance to the present is in the form of two aspects. One is the varied symbolism of the forest in Indian literature and culture, which has not really been investigated or fully explored, e.g., in the epics, exile is into the forest and the forest becomes a central space for the activities of the heroes. The question of why the forest was chosen relates to the early views in some North Indian texts, of the dichotomy between the forest and the settlement (aranya and grama or vana and kshetra). The interface between the two concepts is played out in many later texts. The second is the attitude of our present day society to the forest. There is a tendency to almost ignore the centrality of the forest and the people who live in it because their culture and living pattern is regarded as different if not inferior.
Has this attitude always existed?
Attitudes to the forest have changed in time and space. In some texts there was a dichotomy posed between the settlement and the forest. The forest was initially regarded as an unfamiliar space, a wilderness hosting people whose culture was alien. Sometimes the descriptions of such people are projected as realistic as in the description of, for example, the Nishada and Sabara, although even this supposed realism becomes a stereotype. At the other end the question may be asked as to whether the references to the Rakshasa, the Preta and the Daitya, demons and ghosts of various kinds could have been a reference to the alien people of the forest. Demonising the "other" is sometimes a technique to justify holding such people in contempt and even attacking them.
Was the relationship between the settlement and the forest always a contested relationship?
No. This was not always the case. There are other texts in which the relationship is depicted as distinct but harmonious or symbiotic, as in the Tinai ecologies of the Tamil Sangam texts, a concept that is just beginning to acquire importance in environmental history and needs to be discussed further. There is also the romanticising of the forest, as for example in the plays of Kalidasa. The forest is symbolic of nature and although there is some tension between the settlement and the forest, the forest is not a wilderness or an unknown place and is not associated with evil. In fact these changes in attitudes come about in different kinds of societies in different periods.
If the subject is relevant today, then what was the attitude of the state to the forest in the early past?
ORIENTAL SCENERY/TIMELESS BOOKS 1998
One major difference between the depiction of the forest in creative literature and the concern of state policy is the example of Kautilya's Arthasasatra. The forest here is a resource from which the state derived revenue. The products of the forest such as timber, gemstones and elephants contribute to revenue as also does the clearing of the forest and converting the land to cultivation. From mid-first millennium A.D. onwards, the state increasingly made grants of land to religious authorities and institutions and to a lesser extent to those who served the state. Where such grants were of waste land or in the forested area they entailed the conversion of forest land to cultivation. Doubtless such activities would in some areas have been resisted by those who habitually derived their livelihood from the forest.
Where the relationship was not confrontational, what form could it have taken?
This is actually a very important area which has been discussed by social scientists working on recent history in relation to the conversion of non-caste groups to castes. It is one aspect of what some sociologists have referred to as the process of change from jana to jati. This process can be recognised in some sources of the early period but needs more detailed investigation. The argument that is sometimes made is that when caste society comes into juxtaposition with the peoples of the forest, there is a process of what might be called osmosis, where the conversion of the forest people to caste can take place, although frequently they continue to observe their kinship patterns, customary laws and religious beliefs and practices. As has often been stated by historians working on the history of religion, new forms of deities and new rituals were possibly contributed through this osmosis. The osmosis could be an end product of confrontation or of juxtaposition, depending on the particular circumstances.
Does this not suggest that it is entirely ahistorical to maintain that Indian tradition goes back to a single source and is monolithic? What you are suggesting is that there has to be a study of the multiplicity of sources and contexts that went into the making of Indian religious tradition.
Yes. I agree entirely.
For environmental history, your approach would seem to be a preliminary but necessary step towards further analysis of past attitudes to environment, man-nature relationship and ecological changes.
Yes. It is. One hopes that such subjects are taken up and analysed further.
Taking the lecture on Somanatha, it was in many ways a demonstration of a methodologically significant analysis of one of the most challenging of historical events - the raid of Mahmud of Ghazni on Somanatha in A.D. 1026. What is of value in this analysis is that the sources have all been well known to all historians in the past but their inter-relationships have not been probed and the event has been repeatedly misrepresented and abused for political ends. Your re-appraisal of a wide range of sources (six categories), situating them in their historical contexts reveals varied perspectives, diverse and even contradictory perceptions even in a single category of sources viz., the Turko-Persian chronicles and narratives, in projecting the raid as a crusade and Mahmud as a champion of Islam, the ideal Islamic ruler who founded Muslim rule in India, which is historically an inaccurate statement. You rightly attribute it to the erroneous periodisation of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British, which made it into a national event, as also the languages of their major sources viz., Sanskrit, Persian (especially for the Medieval period) and English, ignoring all other contemporary and later sources in other languages of other regions, particularly the contemporary Sanskrit inscriptions and Jain biographies and chronicles, apart from trade and mutually supportive agreements between traders and local big men regarding land and property for religious purposes. The colonial interpretations, which made it a national event, constructed the memory of a trauma among the Hindus, depicting Muslims as uniformly tyrannical and oppressive causing a deep Hindu-Muslim divide. Thus an event which had a restricted local significance and a political motive was blown out of proportion and constructed as the social memory of a traumatic national disaster. Equally important is the fact that what comes through in the lecture is the centrality of the context of the sources to the historian. The method followed in this lecture reveals the need to see the interface between various sources and not rely uncritically on just one category. What made you turn to the range of sources that others had not done so far?
If one is studying the history of an event or a location, one inevitably has to consider all the sources and their many voices. Unfortunately in the past, priority was given to the Turko-Persian chronicles, without considering a comparative study with Sanskrit sources and the Jain chronicles of the same period, the Rajput epics and popular traditions of the Nathpanthis and the Tantric texts, all of which have a relevance to the history of Somanatha and thereby a perception or otherwise of Mahmud's raids.
Essentially this was an event that concerned a specific region, i.e. Gujarat and parts of North India and there appears to be no awareness of such an event in other regions and other sources of that period. What was a local event was projected as a national event and a traumatic one at that. Why was a local event projected as a national event?
The absence of reference to the raid of Mahmud in other sources other than the Turko-Persian chronicles remains an enigma. The wider coverage was initially in the Turko-Persian chronicles. But it was after the colonial endorsement of the event that the larger dimension came into the picture. This was then taken up by some sections among the Indian nationalists who treated it as a national event.
If you are using such a wide range of sources, can there be a single criterion for assessing their reliability?
The evaluation of the reliability of each category of sources is crucial because each has what would today be called an ideological context. These contexts have to be recognised as different from one another. Court chronicles, whether of the Sultanate or of the Chaulukya (Solankis of Gujarat) court carry their own biases as do the statements of traders and of popular preachers or for that matter the use made of Indian history as part of colonial policy as much as subsequently by religious nationalism.
Would you then say that this historiographical advance makes it imperative that historians realise that history is as rigorous a discipline as any other science and that teaching and research have to be constantly updated, both in content and methodology? And that students are made aware of the importance of multiple and diverse perspectives of historical processes and events, which cannot have a mono-causal explanation?
As you know, we have all been arguing for many years now that the writing of history has to be based on what historians now call "the Historical Method". Stated briefly this requires ensuring the reliability of the evidence that is used (and this requires wind-ranging training in handling sources), the critical analyses of the evidence, assessing the priorities among multiple causes and the logical basis of the historical arguments that follow. Historical writing is not a free-for-all in which anyone can claim to be writing history. The use of the Historical method has primacy in historical writing.
Yes, it is a rigorous discipline. It is the same with the more intellectually challenging writing in all subjects. It is this kind of change that encourages advances in knowledge.
The advances are also dependent, as you rightly say, on constantly updating the content and methodology of the discipline. In the case of history, an awareness of the method and the changes also come through historiography - that is, the history of ideas relating to historical explanation. Inevitably this becomes a component of historical method.
R. Champakalakshmi is former professor of history, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
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[5]
UPDATE 36: DEMONSTRATION FOR EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE (21 DECEMBER)
Dear friends,
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill 2004 was cleared by the Cabinet on 15 December, but the relief was shortlived. Indeed this "employment guarantee" Bill has been diluted beyond recognition. Aside from the sabotage mentioned in earlier updates, it is now learnt that the latest version of the Bill restricts both the employment guarantee and the unemployment allowance to "poor" households (read BPL households). This amounts to a neat last-minute spiking of the Act, which was meant to be based on universal entitlement and self-selection. In the light of these developments, the demonstration on 21 December in Delhi (see below) will be not just a display of banners but also a protest against this sabotage.
We are trying to keep track of the latest developments and post as much information as possible on the campaign website (www.righttofoodindia.org), in the "Employment Guarantee" section. The "official" version of the Bill is still under wraps, but it is expected to be tabled in Parliament sometime during the next 2-3 days. As soon as the official version is available the website will be updated again.
DISPLAY OF BANNERS ON 21 DECEMBER
As mentioned in earlier updates, a massive signature campaign has been taking place all over the country during the last few weeks. Signatures demanding the immediate adoption of a full-fledged Employment Guarantee Act have been collected on large banners, which are now on their way to Delhi. The public display of banners - about 3,000 of them - will be taking place at Jantar Mantar (Parliament Street) on 21 December. We shall be assembling from 10 am onwards and the demonstration will start at 11 am.
Approximately 1000 participants, representing more than 200 organisations, are expected from various parts of the country. There will be a reception team at Jantar Mantar from 8 am onwards to assist participants coming from outside Delhi. If you are bringing banners, please reach Jantar Mantar well before 10 am (the sooner the better), as the arrangement of banners is likely to be a major task.
Participants are requested to help with stitching small sized banners (less than 5m wide) on either side so that they can be supported by a stick for display. Longer banners are expected to be erected on trees, railings and other available spaces. Since we have to erect a large number of banners in quick time, it would be of help if participants can tie their banners with a "sutli" and keep them ready for display. Efforts are on to erect as many banners as possible, if required by extending it up to Connaught Place.
The display of banners at Jantar Mantar will end at 2 pm. From there we shall go to 4 Ashoka Road (about 1 km from Jantar Mantar) for a follow-up cultural programme and informal meeting. This will also be an opportunity to discuss further mobilisation for a full-fledged Employment Guarantee Act during the next few months.
If you require any help or information at any time please contact Navjyoti (9811087811), Annie (9811553633), Somanathan (9810994611), Subhash (9810810365), or Vivek (3091 7116, 9350530150).
FOLLOW-UP MEETING ON 22 DECEMBER
A follow-up meeting will be held on 22 December, from 10 am to 1 pm, to review the situation and plan further activities. This meeting is likely to take place at the Indian Social Institute (Lodi Road), but the venue remains to be confirmed. The agenda will be decided collectively on 21 December itself. The contact persons listed above will be able to provide confirmed details of this meeting on 21 December.
FLAWS OF THE EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE BILL 2004
By way of update on the flaws of the Employment Guarantee Bill to be tabled in Parliament in a few days, we copy below the relevant portion of a recent "communique" on this from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), issued soon after the Cabinet meeting on 15 December.
From "Communist Party of India (Marxist)"
Date: Sat Dec 18, 2004 11:19 am Subject: Polit Bureau Communique
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) met on December 17 and 18, 2004 at New Delhi. It has issued the following statement:
...
Employment Guarantee Act
The bill to enact a rural employment guarantee Act has been introduced in parliament. This is to fulfill a commitment made in the Common Minimum Programme. However, it is unfortunate that the present bill represents a dilution of the provision made in the CMP. Instead of providing for a hundred days minimum work for one adult in every rural household, the bill seeks to target "poor households" whereby only those who are below poverty line (BPL) beneficiaries can avail of the scheme. There is no provision for payment of the statutory minimum wage decreed by the state governments. Nor is there any time period prescribed for extending the coverage of the act to the whole country.
There is no provision for ensuring employment of women in the scheme either through the nature of the work specified or by providing that 40 per cent of the jobs should go to women.
There is also no provision for the Centre providing hundred per cent of the funding and the states have to bear a share of the burden.
All these defects need to be removed if the National Employment Guarantee Act has to serve the needs of minimum employment for a vast section of the people in the rural areas.
The Polit Bureau expects the UPA government to rectify these defects in the process of the parliamentary discussions so that a more comprehensive and effective legislation can be adopted.
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[6] ANNOUNCEMENTS
(i)
Invitation
Lecture by Prof. Theodore Wright on "U.S. Intervention in South Asia and the Middle East"
Date: 21st December (Tuesday)
Venue: Board Room, Near VC's office, Jamia Hamdard (Hamdard University), New Delhi
Time: 3 pm.
o o o o
(ii)
Promise of India
Speaking Up for Peace and Communal Harmony Seeking Common Ground on Education, Development, and Social Justice
Cordially Invites You to its Second Annual Conference
'Making Peace with Diversity and Development'
Organized by a Global Community of Indians Rededicating Themselves to a Democratic, Secular, Pluralistic, and United India
'Globalization and the Human Imagination'
Keynote Address by Dr. Shashi Tharoor,
Author and U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Communications & Public Information,
followed by
a public debate/dialogue, with distinguished community leaders and audience participation, on the two critical issues dominating the news:
Globalization/Rural Development and Secularism/Communal Harmony
Venue: National Center for Performing Arts, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai Monday, January 10, 2005, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Program
Breakfast & Registration 8:00 a.m. Program Commences at 9:00 a.m. Welcome and Introduction to Promise of India Keynote Address by Dr. Shashi Tharoor
Theme One: Growth Rates or Livelihoods?
Globalization with a Human Face: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality
Rural Development: The Bumpy Road from Budgets to Panchayats
The Bottom of the Pyramid: Communities in Distress, or Markets for Fair & Lovely?
With Prof. Ramachandra Guha, Dr. Syeda Hameed, Madhu Kishwar, Ganesh Natarajan, Medha Patkar, and Stan Thekaekara.
Moderated by Prof. Babu Mathew, ActionAid
Theme Two: Secularism - Elusive Ideal or A Ground Reality?
Past Wrongs, Future Rights: What Agitates the Fence Sitters? Re-Re-Writing History: Quick Fix or Opportunity to De-Politicize Education? Curbing Hate Speech: More Laws and Censorship, or Public Education and Action?
With Javed Akhtar, Maulana Madani, Rajiv Malhotra, Renuka Narayanan, Nitya Ramakrishnan, Dr. Mallika Sarabhai, and Rev. Valson Thampu. Moderated by Prof. Rajeev Bhargava, Delhi University
You may register for this conference on line by going to
https://www.PromiseOfIndia.Org/conference.cfm or by sending an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hosted by: Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), Mumbai www.yuvaindia.org
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