South Asia Citizens Wire | October 29, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2314
[1] USA: A Country Ruled by Faith (Garry Wills) [2] Pakistan - Karachi: A city for the rich (Zubeida Mustafa) Who owns the allotted islands? (Naseer Memon) [3] Bangladesh-India: Illegal but licit (Itty Abraham) [4] India: The Scar On The Moon (Saba Naqvi Bhaumik) [5] Terrorism: Hour of The Assassins (Sumanta Banerjee) [6] Terrorism: Facts versus Myths (Ram Puniyani) [7] India: Call For Action: Support Sharmila, Repeal AFSPA, Restore Right to Life [8] Books / Events: (i) Religion, caste, and State by P. Radhakrishnan (ii) Taliban's War on Women by Minakshi Das (iii) Play performance -Reading Chernobyl (Delhi, 30 October) (iv) Seminar by Gananath Obeyesekere: Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky: Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment Discourse in the Theosophy Movement (Princeton, 30 October) ____ [1] New York Review of Books November 16, 2006 A COUNTRY RULED BY FAITH by Garry Wills The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government-until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present. George W. Bush was not only born-again, like Jimmy Carter. His religious conversion came late, and took place in the political setting of Billy Graham's ministry to the powerful. He was converted during a stroll with Graham on his father's Kennebunkport compound. It is true that Dwight Eisenhower was guided to baptism by Graham. But Eisenhower was a famous and formed man, the principal military figure of World War II, the leader of NATO, the president of Columbia University-his change in religious orientation was just an addition to many prior achievements. Bush's conversion at a comparatively young stage in his life was a wrenching away from mainly wasted years. He joined a Bible study culture in Texas that was unlike anything Eisenhower bought into. Bush was a saved alcoholic-and here, too, he had no predecessor in the White House. Ulysses Grant conquered the bottle, but not with the help of Jesus. Other presidents were evangelicals. Three of them belonged to the Disciples of Christ-James Garfield, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan. But none of the three- nor any of the other forty-two presidents preceding Bush (including his father)-would have answered a campaign debate question as he did. Asked who was his favorite philosopher, he said "Jesus Christ." And why? "Because he changed my heart." Over and over, when he said anything good about someone else-including Vladimir Putin-he said it was because "he has a good heart," which is evangelical-speak (as in "condoms cannot change your heart"). Bush talks evangelical talk as no other president has, including Jimmy Carter, who also talked the language of the secular Enlightenment culture that evangelists despise. Bush told various evangelical groups that he felt God had called him to run for president in 2000: "I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."[1] Bush promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services, which he called "compassionate conservatism." He went beyond that to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science. He could deliver on his promises because he stocked the agencies handling all these problems, in large degree, with born-again Christians of his own variety. The evangelicals had complained for years that they were not able to affect policy because liberals left over from previous administrations were in all the health and education and social service bureaus, at the operational level. They had specific people they objected to, and they had specific people with whom to replace them, and Karl Rove helped them do just that. It is common knowledge that the Republican White House and Congress let "K Street" lobbyists have a say in the drafting of economic legislation, and on the personnel assigned to carry it out, in matters like oil production, pharmaceutical regulation, medical insurance, and corporate taxes. It is less known that for social services, evangelical organizations were given the same right to draft bills and install the officials who implement them. Karl Rove had cultivated the extensive network of religious right organizations, and they were consulted at every step of the way as the administration set up its policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence programs, creationism, and other matters that concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals' resentments under previous presidents, including Republicans like Reagan and the first Bush, were now being addressed. [. . .] . http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19590 _____ [2] Dawn October 28, 2006 (i) A city for the rich (ii) Who owns the allotted islands? o o o (i) A CITY FOR THE RICH by Zubeida Mustafa "WHEN the Diamond City comes up on Bundal (Bhundaarh in Sindhi) island all the rich of Karachi will move in there and the poor will be left behind. We will then not even get drinking water," observes Ahmad (not his real name) with profound wisdom. Ahmad has been in the fishing trade for decades. He studied up to grade four in Ibrahim Hyderi village before joining his father in his boat trips to learn the maritime skills. He now knows the Indus delta and its various creeks, where he plies his hired motor launch, like the back of his sea-worn hands. The islands Ahmad was referring to have been in the news for sometimes now. It has been reported that Port Qasim Authority has signed an agreement with Emaar, the Dubai-based construction company, to develop Bundal and the adjoining Buddo (Dingi in local parlance) island into an exclusive area for a diplomatic enclave, an offshore financial district, hotels, recreational spots, water sports and a five star residential area. According to reports the Governor of Sind, members of the local government and the Board of Revenue are working on the plan. To obtain the Port Qasim Authority's point of view I put in a number of calls but was told that only the chairman is authorized to speak to the press. The rear admiral was locked in a meeting every time I tried to reach him and he never returned my call. Ahmad took us on a cruise of the islands in the Phitti Creek, one of the 17 major creeks of the shrinking Indus delta which still, along with five others, receives fresh water from the river. The remaining are now fed only by the salty waters of the Arabian Sea. A trip to Bundal and Buddo was most rewarding and exploded quite a few myths being propagated by supporters of the island project. They are not exactly as they are being described - uninhabited and deserted, and of no use to any one. Buddo which is about 20 minutes launch ride away from Ibrahim Hyderi is lush green and has a rich mangrove plantation. There were camels grazing there and Ahmad informed me that the animals swim from the nearby coast and are brought here to allow them to have their fill. Wildlife is in abundance as the pictures we took testify to. It took us another 20 minutes to reach Bundal, the largest island in the delta, eight km in length and four km in width. It emerges as a solid block of mangroves as you approach it from the north. But further south the mangroves thin out and sand dunes take their place pointing to the wave erosion taking place there. As the launch moves on there emerges a shrine - that of the loisare held after Eid every year. The changes in the fresh water courses in this area - many man-made - have not been good for the mangroves. The ravages inflicted by human development have been worse. From 263,000 hectares in 1977 the mangroves covered area has shrunk to a mere 80,000 hectares in 2002. The sea weaving through the inlets in the islands, the greenery, the wildlife and the clear blue sky converge to present scenic beauty untouched by human hands. But for how long? When Emaar enters the scene and fortifies these islands as claimed by the Port Qasim Authority, the first casualty would be the ecology of the area. Land would be reclaimed from the sea, as is already being done off the DHA coast, and a bridge 1.5 km in length would link Bundal with the mainland. The mangroves will obviously have to go. The wildlife would migrate when its natural habitat is disturbed. These changes will mean the end of the breeding grounds for the fish, shrimps and green turtles. The fisher folk, the real stakeholders in the area, have been deeply upset. They feel the noose tightening round their neck. They can anticipate the fate that awaits them. When the PAF base at Korangi Creek came up they were shooed away and asked to keep a distance from the shore. Then the Marina and Creek Clubs made more areas out of bound for them. The new city will take away their historical rights to vital resources, namely, water, air and biodiversity, which the Indian activist Vandana Shiva refers to as the 'common spaces'. Conventionally these cannot be privatised and are held in perpetuity as the common property of a community. Not so when 12,000 acres are handed over for development. Bundal is also used by the fishermen as a transit point when they venture out to the high seas for fishing. We saw some temporary shelters and families camped there. They were drying their catch of fish and mending their nets. We could have disembarked there but jumping off the launch to a smaller boat to reach the shore didn't appear to be a very inviting exercise. The five children who had accompanied us with our seven-man crew nimbly made it to the shore. They have virtually lived on the boats I was told, as they are too poor to go to school. Nearly 4,000 fishing boats make a trip every day near the Bundal coast. The Fisher folk Forum fears their routes will be disturbed. Even today, the deep water channel has narrowed down due to the changes that have taken place. With more land reclamation, the construction of a bridge and deforestation, the depth and width of the navigation channels will be affected. Given these implications, the debate on jurisdiction - the federal or the Sindh government's - seems to detract from the real issue. That is the need to preserve the ecology of the area, as any environment impact assessment would confirm. Land use will ignore social and environmental considerations. Worst of all the project will be undertaken for the rich without consulting the stakeholders who also happen to be poor. The class divide will widen further. Ahmad understands this too well. Hence his plaintive query, "Can't you stop the new city?". o o o (ii) WHO OWNS THE ALLOTTED ISLANDS? By Naseer Memon LAST month, the federal government allotted, through the Port Qasim Authority (PQA), the Bundal and Buddo islands located off the Karachi coast to a UAE-based real estate giant Emaar. This company is to develop a modern city on this land with an investment of $43 billion over the next 13-16 years. The ownership of the islands is disputed as the Sindh government claims that they were not included in the area leased to the PQA for port related operations. However Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz declared (on Oct 14) during his visit to assumed owners besides the PQA including the Defence Housing Authority, Pakistan Navy and the Sindh government. Sadly the historical claim to ownership of the islands of the poor fishermen is not recognised. The City District Government of Karachi (CDGK) has also laid to the islands and according to reports appearing in this newspaper (Oct 8) it signed an MoU with four entrepreneurs (including a firm from Thailand) for establishing an IT infrastructural project. This envisaged the 'Karachi Technology Island City' to be set up on a 300-acre piece of land, opposite the creek of Karachi. At the MoU signing ceremony, the City Nazim at the time, Naimatullah Khan, had assured the signatories that the city government was ready to provide land and other infrastructural facilities for the project but federal minister for science and technology, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, who was the chief guest on the occasion, apparently understood the implications of the ownership issue and urged all the stakeholders to be clear about giving a legal shape to the project. PQA has been a major player in the race for occupying the islands. At one stage it was considering the Bundal island as one of the potential sites for setting up a terminal for liquid natural gas (LNG) and a consortium of leading Japanese and Korean companies had expressed interest in setting up an LNG terminal at Bundal island in response to an Expression of Interest (EOI) issued by PQA. This sparked a strong reaction from the Sindh government which challenged the ownership of the area. At one stage the Port Qasim Auhtority had also allotted 2,700 acres of land to Pakistan Navy, without any authorisation. Although Pakistan Navy later shifted the facility to Ormara for which the land was acquired though it still lays claim over the Bundal island. The Defence Housing Authorityreportedly approached General Musharraf in 2001 to get this land to develop a theme park. The Chief Executive's secretariat sent a letter to the government of Sindh, which stated, "while approving the concept of developing Bundal and Khipranwala islands, the Chief Executive directed that first the status of ownership of these islands be determined by DHA asking comments from the government, the ministry of communications, PQA and Pakistan Navy." However the project requiring an investment of 69 million dollars could not take off as the Sindh government took a strong stand on the ownership of the island. The EDO (Revenue) of Karachi through a letter sent on Sept 6, 2001 reported, "the ownership of these islands vests in the provincial government. In the past the government of Sindh has made allotments to DHA and PQA but these islands have not been allotted." The Sindh government continued to claim the ownership of the islands. In a meeting held at Sindh Governor's House on Feb 23, 2006 the Senior Member Board of Revenue said that the islands are the property of the government of Sindh. According to him, when PQA was established, its area of operation was defined, which does not include the Bundal island. The Senior Minister (Excise and Taxation) also endorsed this point of view and said that Bundal island has never been allotted to PQA. Legal perspective The provincial law department is also of the view that the land allotted by the federal government was the property of the provincial government. According to the law secretary Syed Ghulam Nabi Shah, under Sindh Land Revenue Code (Repealed) all lands, the bed of the sea, harbours, creeks below the high-water mark etc. were the property of the provincial government. Similarly, Section 50 of the Sindh Revenue Act, 1967, also upholds the same right of the provincial government. The Sindh High Court has also given a judgment in favour of the provincial government in a dispute with the DHA about the latter's claim to 250 acres of reclaimed land near the seashore of Clifton beach. Barrister Zamir Ghumro says the federal government does not possess any land in any province and all land within the jurisdiction of any province belongs to the province only. However the federal government can approach the provincial government for acquiring land for a specific purpose. But this will not change the ownership status of the land. In this context PQA cannot be the owner of the island, since it acquired the area from Sindh province for port related activities only. A letter of the law department, dated Sept 9, 2000 explains the legal position: "Under Article 172 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973, the land reclaimed through natural or artificial process located in the province of Sindh vests in the government of Sindh. This view gets support from the observations made by Mr. Justice Shabbir Ahmed, Honorable Judge of the High Court of Sindh, while deciding the injunction application by the government of Sindh in suit No 778 filed by the government of Sindh." According to Section 50 of the Land Revenue Act of 1967 any forest or quarry or any unclaimed, unoccupied, deserted or waste land or any spontaneous produce or other accessory interest in land belonging to no landowners, it shall be presumed to belong to the government. Article 172 (1) of the constitution also supports the point of view of the Sindh government. It says, "any property which has no rightful owner shall, if located in a province, vests in the government of that province and in every other case, in the federal government." It is strange that no one from the local communities has ever been consulted to ascertain the historical rights of fishermen, who have lived and worked in the area long before the country came on the world map. _____ [3] IIAS Newsletter 42 | Autumn 2006 underworlds & borderlands 42 ILLEGAL BUT LICIT by Itty Abraham A housewife in Kolkata buys bhindi (okra) from her neigh-bourhood vegetable seller for her child's dinner. In doing so, she may have participated in an illegal activity. Depending on how far back we want to go, the chain of illegality can be said to have begun with the Bangladeshi farmer who planted the vegetable six months earlier. Or it may be more sensible to start with the social 'commodity chain' of women who transport bundles of vegetables by foot and ferry in the early hours of every morning across the hundreds of legal and unmarked bor-der-crossing points from Bangladesh into India. Crossing with-out papers or passports, they sometimes bribe border guards to let them pass. This is when the first 'crime' takes place. The 'criminals' include both the vegetable seller and the state border representative. Once in India, some women sell their produce to intermediaries in border villages and return to their homes in Bangladesh. Others board crowded passenger trains to Kolkata and sell their produce at the city's wholesale vegetable market. Then they return home, sometimes stop-ping to purchase goods with a high resale value in Bangla-desh and other household items. They reach Bangladesh that evening, sometimes bribing border guards again, depending on the tacit, socially sanctioned norms that govern this illicit flow. Before they arrive home, they may have stopped in a bor-der village to meet relatives, drink tea and chat with friends, and to help arrange marriages for young men and women. >From the city vegetable mandi (market), mini-wholesal-ers and retailers fan out into the city's neighbourhoods, sometimes selling directly to consumers who may include undocumented Bangladeshi maids working in middle class households, who sometimes resell the produce at a slight mark-up to neighbourhood shops. This is where the second 'crime' takes place. Clearly no taxes are paid on Bangla-deshi okra: the 'criminals' include the (Indian) vegetable sellers and her (possibly undocumented) consumers. This is micro-business, comparable to micro-credit in scale, and it is not without its dangers. Women, especially those travelling long distances alone, risk conducting business without guarantees of safety or reliability. Credit is rare, as this is almost entirely a cash business, making them vul-nerable on their return: they may be caught up in random police sweeps or threatened by goondas (thugs). What pro-tects them is the ubiquity of their behaviour and the well-known social rules that govern their international travel and transactions. Illicit flows Illicit movement across national borders takes place world-wide on a daily basis. Operating in the conceptual and empirical gap between these illicit activities and the means of describing and understanding them, the research project Illegal but Licit (see p.3) does not seek to condone or justify the undocumented crossing of national borders or the wilful breaking of municipal laws. Our aim, rather, is to understand and analyse the linked chain of social activities that violate one or another country's laws. Furthermore, we seek to do so with-out recourse to the state's languages of (il)legality or national (in)security. To attempt this is to encroach on the domains of a number of disciplines, including sociology, international rela-tions, economics, geography, migration and border studies. All of these fields offer some insights, yet none is complete in itself. In other words, the subject of enquiry and our analytic approach lie at the margins of national boundaries and disci-plinary fields. There are, we believe, considerable rewards for occupying this interstitial position, not least of them being a better understanding of some of the most commonplace human activities today. What this imagined journey above describes when we consid-er the tens of thousands of people involved is the vast scale of the daily movement of goods and people, cash and commodi-ties that the city of Kolkata barely acknowledges and yet could hardly do without. This combination of unwitting dependence and structured invisibility under conditions of transnational illegality is characteristic of what we have termed 'illicit flows'. Other examples that make the same point abound. The US Border Patrol, driving along the most militarised and high-tech-defended border in the world, must allow hundreds of undocumented Mexican and other migrants to enter the US every day - or else the price of daily wage labour rises and Cal-ifornia's powerful farm lobby starts to complain. In Jakarta's enormous Pramuka bird and pet market, hundreds of illegally trapped birds and animals are openly on sale. And sales are brisk: according to one estimate the average trader sells their stock in two weeks, which would mean 40,000 wild birds are sold to local customers every month. The penalties for illegally capturing and trading in protected species are severe but are of little effect. To point to these or other examples is not to argue that the world is full of criminals, but that we have not yet begun to appreciate the extent to which formal illegality surrounds us in the course of our daily lives. It should further be noted that people involved in criminality of this order do not consider themselves criminals. Of course it could be said, what crimi-nal does? But the point here is that neither the 'criminal' nor the consumer of the illegal commodity acknowledges the stig-ma of criminality in their transactions; they are more likely to point to the difficulty of separating crime from licit activity, and, by extension, perpetrators from victims. The more sophisticated among them will point to the exist-ence of legally sanctioned spaces where what can only be called criminal behaviour flourishes: the tax havens of the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein and the Channel Islands, or the maritime 'flags of convenience' offered by countries like Liberia and Panama, whose sole purpose is to give ship-ping companies a legal way of avoiding regulations. What makes those sites of non-'criminality' different from slip-ping across the border between Burma and Thailand to work below minimum wage or buying smuggled Bollywood DVDs in Karachi markets? What we are pointing to is more than a sharp contrast between social mores of acceptable behaviour and the state's own terms of defining the difference between legitimate and illegitimate activity; it is also the difficulty of doing so consistently and without recourse to circular rea-soning. The underground and the borderland A simple matrix (above) can go beyond the contrast between socially acceptable forms of criminality, or 'licit', and legally banned forms of activity, which the state calls 'illegal'. It is useful to think of the social spaces that emerge from this sim-ple contrast of two idealised forms of authority, one emanat-ing from the state, the other from society, producing the terms legal/illegal and licit/illicit, respectively. The left diagonal boxes (A) and (D) are end-points of a contin-uum, representing spaces privileged by liberal political theory. (D) represents a space where neither social nor political rules matter: it is nothing but a 'state of nature' where individual might and illegitimate force rules the day. For the original social contract theorists, and for contemporary writers like John Rawls, societies seek to move from such 'nasty and brut-ish' places to (A), which represents the ideal political space where social norms and political rules mesh seamlessly and are indistinguishable. Far more interesting (and realistic), however, are the spaces represented by (B) and (C). Consider in particular (B), the 'underground' space produced by the intersection of 'ille-gal' and 'licit'. The underground represents social zones of interaction that, though banned by formal political author-ity, are nonetheless sanctioned and supported by prevailing social mores. Among the many sites that can fit this descrip-tion are physical locations such as gay bathhouses, brothels, gambling dens, pornographic video parlours, certain kinds of social clubs and coffee houses, and virtual locations such as chat-rooms and private list-servers. This space may also be represented by mobility, as in the chain of writers, translators, copiers and readers who circulated samizdat literature in the Soviet Union. What marks these spaces as distinct entities are the conditions of entry because, as Igor Kopytoff puts it, 'consumers...must first purchase access to the transaction.' In other words, these are spaces that may exist in plain view, but in order to get access to their offerings an additional resource, usually information, is needed. This resource may be coded in ethnic, political, religious, linguistic, social, sexual or class terms; the effect is to produce what we call the 'underground', a space that is set apart from everyday life by these socially produced and enforced barriers to entry, and where the writ of formal law is suspended. Also typical of cell B is the 'borderland'. If the underground is characterised by a temporary dominance of private social orders over the legal order, the borderland is a zone where pri-vately produced social order and formal political rules are in a constant state of uncertainty and conflict. As numerous stud-ies of borderlands have shown, these regions are character-ised by a complex interplay of power and authority. For those living in the borderland, it is a zone unto itself, neither wholly subject to the laws of states nor completely independent of them. Their autonomous practices make border residents and their cross-border cultures a zone of suspicion and surveil-lance; the visibility of the military and border forces an index of official anxiety. Yet the militarised border seeks not only to protect the nation from external forces, but to control those already 'inside'. What the Indian political scientist Ranabir Samaddar calls a 'nationalist lament' emanates among border security forces because, as they put it, 'people here do not have the feelings of nationalism so that they would point out or tell us who the outsiders are.' The difficulty of distinguish-ing insider from outsider produces confusion in the minds of state forces that can no longer tell where they themselves are located. This uncertainty is a product of the interplay of the licit and the illegal, an effect produced by the coincidence of the geographic and political limits of the state. In summary, this project seeks to draw attention to the inter-twined nature of the legal and the illegal - the illicit - in many cross-border activities, emphasising the conceptual and prac-tical difficulty of establishing fixed criteria for identifying one or another activity as 'criminal'. Its ultimate goal is to help analyse the effects of illicit flows on spaces that are produced by the intersection of legitimate social and political author-ity, and to do so without (circular) recourse to the state's own categories of legitimate and legal. We developed this frame-work in order to help advance the study of the varieties of everyday social behaviour that break laws and cross national borders, but which in our view do not constitute 'criminal behaviour' as conventionally understood. Nowadays, when so much activity is described by the all-encompassing term of international terrorism, it is important that scholars do not unwittingly endorse and participate in the fulfilment of pow-erful state interests without due reflection and concern for human rights. [BOX] FORM OF AUTHORITY LEGAL ILLEGAL LICIT Ideal state (A) Underworld / borderland (B) ILLICIT Crony capitalism / failed state (C) Anarchy (D) [PHOTO] Border crossing at Tachilek, northern Thailand. Here, at the heart of the Golden Triangle, legal and illegal flows of goods and people intermingle with little regard for official state borders. Willem van Schendel [PHOTO] A Bangladeshi border guard refuses entry to people rounded up in India and deported to the border on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. Shibshankar Chatterjee _____ [4] Outlook Nov 06, 2006 THE SCAR ON THE MOON Imrana may well be seen as a symbol of all that is wrong about Islam as seen to be practised in India today. by Saba Naqvi Bhaumik The general confusion over the sighting of the Id moon could be a metaphor for the state of the Muslim community in India. And Imrana, the faceless, burqa-clad woman famously raped by her father-in-law over a year ago, may well be seen as a symbol of all that is wrong about Islam as seen to be practised in India today. All religions, from Judaism to Christianity where Eve was no more than Adam's rib, to Hindu social customs such as the sati and widow maltreatment, can be charged with discriminating against half the human race. But modernity put limits on the anti-women position one could take in public life in many parts of the world. Indeed, the Indian subcontinent went on to produce an impressive list of women leaders much before Maggie Thatcher emerged in the West. That is why one of the great mysteries of our times is why the Indian state and establishment confer legitimacy to a bunch of self-seeking career mullahs and maulanas whose singular purpose seems to be to increase their stake on so-called "Muslim issues"? Especially when these amount to little more than preserving a patriarchal order and denying women their basic rights. The stances such Muslim 'leaders' take are frighteningly medieval, but the irony is we play along, to protect 'minority rights'. Take the Imrana case. When the scandal broke, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board first sent a fact-finding team that concluded that no rape had taken place. The idea was clearly to protect the virtue of the good male, her father-in-law. But when Imrana did not play along, the law board hemmed and hawed while clerics tried to pressure her by declaring it was no longer feasible for her to live with her husband, the father of her children. Now that the fast-track court set up by the UP government has sentenced the father-in-law to 10 years imprisonment, the men at the helm of Muslim affairs are annoyed. Rehana Adib, a Saharanpur-based social activist who's in constant touch with Imrana, told Outlook that the judgement has brought her no relief. Indeed, the pressure is again being mounted on her husband to leave Imrana. Maulana Abdul Hameed Naumani, of the powerful Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind which controls the Deoband network of madrassas, has no doubt Imrana must pay for her father-in-law's lust. "The fatwa that says she must separate from her husband is correct," he says. "It is a matter of correct interpretation of Islam." And then there's the law board that's cleverly chosen to support the clerics while pretending to pay lip service to the law. They had gone ballistic on the Shah Bano case, but on Imrana they're being deliberately vague. Their position can be summed up thus: it is a matter of religious interpretation; it is up to Imrana and her family to decide; we represent so many schools of Islam that we don't want to take a stand. Sociologist Imtiaz Ahmad does not mince his words: "Let's not fool ourselves about the law board. They are there to uphold the power of the clerics. That is why they exist." The logical conclusion of this argument is overwhelmingly depressing. Most of the individuals occupying the so-called Muslim public space don't really care about the community's fate. The dismal socio-economic indicators the Sachar commission report on Muslims describes will be discussed in seminars and edit pages. Our bearded denizens claiming to be guardians of the community are just interested in guarding their turfs and indulging in some "votebank" negotiations. A law board membership (lifelong) here, an MLA ticket there, an invitation to a meeting with a PM who must seem to be engaging with the largest minority group in this age of growing domestic terror. What's worse perhaps is that our secular guilt makes us complicit in the career graphs of such individuals.What does the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat have to do with a media-hogging mullah in UP? Perhaps nothing. But some of my well-meaning secular friends believe it's better to keep mum about warts in the Muslim community since it's the target of the BJP/RSS and the pivot around which Hindutva politics moves. I disagree. The crooks must not be allowed to use victimhood as a shield. There is a difference when I as a Muslim woman interact with the patriarchal mullahs. They may make some hearts bleed with their tales of discrimination but I have only distaste for men who check out my religious credentials. I have far greater respect for Anwar, my driver, who tried his best to make the most of the two moons that the mullahs of India sighted. He took his mandatory Id holiday, then appeared the next day with a hopeful expression-madam your mullahs (Shias) are celebrating Id today; perhaps I should say my prayers again. I smiled at Anwar's enterprise and told him that on some days I transformed into a Sunni. The moon sighting too is another case of clerical moonshine. Technology now allows us to predict the moon's appearance with minute precision. But the clerics insist they see with their own perfect eyes. Which vision gets clouded when it comes to Imrana. In her, they see a woman who's worthless compared to the man who raped her. _____ [5] Economic and Political Weekly October 14, 2006 4329 HOUR OF THE ASSASSINS Terrorism rears its head whenever a society suffering from great inner political confusion and social disintegration reaches a cul-de-sac, where certain aggrieved sections of the people find that the democratic business of political change becomes an impossibility, and when the socialist and secular forces break faith with these disgruntled and desperate masses by failing to provide an alternative leadership. Tragically, governments have in turn put in place a state of permanent emergency through a slew of draconian laws, and created a monolithic monster that controls every activity of individuals - from street demonstrations to air travel. by Sumanta Banerjee . . . and now when we are retreating into the silence of our past ambivalence. . .Now is the hour of the assassins! - Arthur Rimbaud, 'Matinee d'ivresse' in Illuminations (1872). As the death toll rises in Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Assam, Mumbai and Malegaon, the atrophied conscience and paralysed will-power of the Left and other democratic forces are opening the doors of civil society to an authoritarian world order. The forces behind both terrorism and state repression need each other as accomplices to tie everybody in a bloody circle. Both create false alibis to garner public support for their respective causes, and both share an identical goal - power with a capital P that holds down the people in total subjugation. In the near future, both the repressive state and its terrorist opponents may come to a Yalta-type agreement on a territorial division of power-sharing, which will allow the hitherto-designated "terrorists" to run their own governments in territories that are under their occupation. They will be incorporated into the institution of the state that will legitimise their old methods of extortion, subordination and terrorisation. [. . .]. http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=10&filename=10656&filetype=pdf _____ [6] www.sacw.net 28 October 2006 TERRORISM: FACTS VERSUS MYTHS by Ram Puniyani http://sacw.insaf.net/free/TerrorismFvM.pdf _____ [7] CALL FOR ACTION: 6 YEARS OF HUNGER STRIKE SUPPORT SHARMILA, REPEAL AFSPA, RESTORE RIGHT TO LIFE Dear friends, During the last few decades, the people of Manipur have witnessed severe repression with the implementation of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (1958). Under this law, the security forces have: * The power to arrest and enter property without warrant * The power to shoot, arrest, and kill at the mere hint of suspicious activity, even without the lives of members of the security force being at imminent risk * Immunity against legal action. The implementation of this law has led to brutal rape, arbitrary detentions, “disappearances”, killings, and loot are being actively used by security forces to terrorize and subordinate local communities in the name of counter-insurgency. The implementation of this draconian law AFSPA has challenged not only the democratic norms of Manipur, but also of the entire freedom loving people in India for allowing such blatant repression to take place. Recently the recommendations of the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee on Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 formed in November 2004 has commented that ''....the Act....has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high handedness'' and ''...it is equally necessary to ensure that where they (Armed Forces of India) knowingly abuse or misuse their powers, they must be held accountable....'', Protesting against AFSPA, Irom Sharmila Chanu, the young poet from Manipur has been on an indefinite hunger fast for many years. On November 2, 2006, the hunger strike of Sharmila Irom is going to complete six years. She is being forcefully nasal-fed in AIIMS, Delhi, by the authorities. She has only one demand: the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (1958) from Manipur. This year 2006 happens to be the 100th year of the non-violent and peaceful protest form`Satyagraha' initiated by Mahatma Gandhi. But in the land of Gandhi this is the first time in Indian history somebody has gone through a hunger strike for six years. The struggle of Sharmila Irom is generating moral and social support and solidarity from all over. Protest actions and solidarity actions are being planned in Trivandrum, Trichur, Kottayam, New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Manipur. We, the following organisations extend full support to the struggle of Sharmila Irom and peoples oppressed by AFSPA. We call all democratic organisations to extend your support by joining these protests and initiating solidarity actions wherever possible in your area. ANHAD National Alliance of Peoples Movements (NAPM) Theeradesa Mahila Vedi, Kerala Global Alternate Information Applications(GAIA), Kerala Visual Search, Bangalore Samvedan Cultural Programme (Ahmedabad) Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), New Delhi KRITI, New Delhi PEACE, New Delhi Centre for Contemporary Studies & Research, Lucknow & many others (Please send reports and protest stills of your actions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that these actions can be publicised. For more information on the issue please visit: http://www.manipurfreedom.org) _____ [10] ANNOUNCEMENTS: PUBLICATIONS AND EVENTS: (i) Religion, caste, and State by P. Radhakrishnan Religion, caste, and State are key words in understanding India's failure to mature into a full-blooded democracy. There is all-round failure of Indian State, in particular its executive and legislative wings. Judiciary still retains some credibility. Millions of Indians still look to it for succour. But given its lackadaisical style of functioning, and slow grind, it has also belied people's expectations. The pernicious nexus of religion with politics and the mindless use of it as purveyor of communal hate are matters of grave concern. The BJP's Hindutva politics still remains the most abominable form of use of religion in politics. The cascading effects of globalisation on religion have not received much attention in the media and in scholarly works. There are other issues as well relating to globalisation and religion such as the continuing use of religion to peddle superstitions, obscurantism and irrationality, and international terrorism both state-sponsored and religion-centred. The use of caste in politics, and the depravity and depredations of India's political class reflecting the aberrations and absurdities of caste-based politics continue to undermine and slow down India's transformation into a full-blooded democracy. The State's failure to see the education system in perspective and strengthen it from primary to tertiary levels, and the entry of private entrepreneurs into the education sector in a big way have already driven the system haywire. The recent decision of introducing reservation in higher education is likely to add to the problems of Indian education and to the confusion and frustration of the youth across the entire social spectrum. Such and several other important issues which are indeed of nation's concern have been discussed in the book. P. Radhakrishnan is a Senior Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. His research experience spans nearly three decades. He has published widely. His books and monographs include "Peasant Struggles, Land Reforms, and Social Change: Malabar 1836-1982"; "Progress Towards Education for All: The Case of Tamil Nadu"; and "The Perfidies of Power: India in the New Millennium". <>http://www.rawatbooks.com/ShowDetails.ASP?BookID=1795 ___ (ii) Taliban's War on Women: Live Experiences of Afghan Women in Transit on Ethnicity and their Identity by Dr. Minakshi Das http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/asiaResearchCentre/pdf/WorkingPaper/ARCWP13MinakishiDasApr2006.pdf ___ (iii) Play performance -Reading Chernobyl by Mr Parnab Mukherjee Venue: Delhi School of Social Work Opp Shankar Hall Near Mall Road bus stop 3, University Road Delhi-7 30th Oct at 3:30 p.m ____ (iv) South Asia Seminar - Spotlight Event Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky: Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment Discourse in the Theosophy Movement Gananath Obeyesekere Princeton University October 30, 2006 12:00 PM Charles Nelson Prothro Theater, HRC 1st Floor Highlight lecture in South Asia Seminar series. Presentation by Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton University. A reception precedes this talk at 3:00pm. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. _______________________________________________ SACW mailing list [email protected] http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net
