South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch No. 2699 - January 17, 2011
From: sacw.net
[1] Pakistan: The naked emperors (Sikander Amani)
- Military operations in FATA not against Taliban
(i) Plight of FR Peshawar IDPs (Farhat Taj)
(ii) The Taliban strike back (Express Tribune)
[2] Bangladesh : Malik-speak- demonisation and denial (Rahnuma Ahmed)
[3] India Hindutva Terror Exposed:
(i) Aseemananda’s Confession (Edit., EPW)
(ii) Swami, Sangh and Terror Links (Ram Puniyani)
[4] India: UP khap bans jeans for girls
[5] In India and Pakistan, British era laws on sedition and blasphemy are
meant to muzzle dissent (Anil Nair)
---------
[1] Pakistan:
Daily Times, 17 January 2011
The naked emperors
by Sikander Amani
What matters for the religious right is obviously not the rightfulness or
justice of its cause, be it substantial or procedural, it is naked power. And
there are few things like the blasphemy law to give the appearance of power
The aftermath of Salmaan Taseer’s shooting is so very depressing. In a sense,
it mirrors the aftermath of the Arizona shooting in the US, where a young man
killed six people and injured 14 others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle
Giffords. In both cases, we see the more progressive elements of the country
embark on massive soul-searching. In the US, a vast debate on the role of the
Tea Party’s extreme rhetoric in inciting violence has been launched. In
Pakistan, many have written and spoken in defence both of Taseer and the values
he stood for; many have revisited recent history to understand the causes of
such violence, the betrayal of Jinnah’s dream, the ever damaging legacy of
Ziaul Haq, the ambiguities of the subsequent governments towards extremists,
and the cowardice of the current government in tackling them. Many are
pondering about what went wrong, and how to change the course of a country
seemingly running at full speed towards complete failure.
Conservatives have been far more discreet. Remorse? Soul-search? Regrets? Pfft.
Not in the least. In the US, Sarah Palin once again distinguished herself by
her uncouth and disgraceful speech where, surprise, surprise, she managed to
portray herself as the victim. In Pakistan, it is far worse (as everything
always is: floods are worse, earthquakes are worse, terrorist attacks are
worse...Pakistan excels at doing everything in excess). Not only does the
religious right not feel any remorse for its role in creating a space of
violence against minorities and dissenters, it actually seems to enjoy calling
for murder and issuing fatwas (edicts) left, right and centre. Everyone agrees
Salmaan Taseer was not a blasphemer; but he defended a person accused of
blasphemy, so by association he deserves to die. And beware! Anyone who defends
the one who defended the blasphemer is also at risk now; and by extension,
anyone who defends the one who defends the one who defends. The beauty of this
regression to infinity is that you ensure the continued supply of traitors to
Islam needed for the religious right to keep its fake momentum going. (Oh and
by the way: for all those self-appointed defenders of Islam who revel in
sending me hate-filled and venomous e-mails, please spare your religion the
indignity, and me, the annoyance of your bloodthirsty threats.) The conflation
of the blasphemer, the defender of the blasphemer, the defender of the defender
suits the religious right well, as it knows that it holds, in blasphemy, its
only trump card. This is also why it keeps organising demonstration after
demonstration on it, even though this most cowardly government has by now
repeatedly stated that no, it would not touch a hair of the blasphemy law,
despite its evident injustice. The most recent demonstration, purportedly
against the Pope’s statement, just shows the vacuity of their cause, and the
instrumentalisation of blasphemy itself (notwithstanding the fact that if one
were to demonstrate every time the Pope comes up with some controversial
statement, we would be perpetually on the streets). So we can trust them to
find an endless source of alleged threats to the Pakistani blasphemy law. The
religious right also conveniently omits to explain how one man, Mumtaz Qadri,
is allowed (under any type of law — human or divine) to single-handedly decide
who deserves to die or not. If any Muslim in entitled to judge any other
Muslim’s right to live, coexistence might become a rather, ahem, dicey affair.
But why dwell on these trivial requirements of justice: why dwell on the
natural and Islamic imperative of justice; why dwell on the inherent
impossibility for one man to unilaterally decide another should die. What
matters for the religious right is obviously not the rightfulness or justice of
its cause, be it substantial or procedural, it is naked power. And there are
few things like the blasphemy law to give the appearance of power. Nothing like
it to mobilise people on the streets; it is easy, it is cheap, and it comes at
the expense of dispensable minorities. The blasphemy law is a corrupt
politician’s dream: an easy tool with which to threaten, mobilise, energise his
base constituency, without lifting a finger to fulfil more substantial needs of
the population, such as criminal or social justice, or economic inequality,
which are incidentally no less important in Islam. Why choose the hard way when
the cheap one works so well, snigger our frantic mullahs.
In a famous tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen tells the
story of two weavers who promise an Emperor the finest, most elegant and
sophisticated suit of clothes. It is to be made in the finest fabric, so
delicate and unique that it is invisible to anyone unfit for his position,
“hopelessly stupid”, or incompetent. The Emperor does not see the clothes, but
out of fear of appearing stupid he pretends he does, as do his ministers. When
the weavers-swindlers claim to have finished the suit, they dress the Emperor,
who then proudly marches off, stark naked, in a public procession before his
subjects.
Though they are thankfully no emperors, the mullahs who spend their time
dishing out fatwas and threats in every direction are very much like the naked
Emperor: they have nothing. No political legitimacy, no concern for justice,
nothing but a flimsy, self-proclaimed theological authority, no electorate, and
please, let us not forget that they have lost dismally at every single
democratic election held in Pakistan — but the invisible clothes of threats and
imprecations against blasphemers (and assimilated) is efficient in keeping
everyone, at least in the government, terrified. As the government gapes in
awe, like the stricken ministers of the Emperor whose vanity prevents them from
admitting that he is naked, the religious right marches off vainly through the
streets of Lahore or Karachi. But let not their threats of violence fool
anyone: they are actually naked.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at
sikander.am...@gmail.com
o o o
Daily Times
January 15, 2011
Plight of FR Peshawar IDPs
by Farhat Taj
To the people of FATA, one thing has been established beyond doubt: the
military operations in FATA have never been meant for the elimination of the
Taliban and al Qaeda in the area. The aim is to displace the local people to
vacate the area for the Taliban who carry forward the agenda of strategic depth
Frontier Region Peshawar, commonly known as FR Peshawar, is located towards the
south of Peshawar and is part of FATA. The military operations in Bora and
Pastawana areas in FR Peshawar in 2010 displaced thousands of people. On May
30, 2010, Daily Times reported that the displaced people have been waiting to
get internally displaced persons (IDPs) status for the last two months. The
report quoted some of the displaced people requesting the government to grant
them IDP status at the earliest so that they become entitled to relief from aid
organisations. These people have fled empty-handed from their homes and have
been living in pathetic conditions in Peshawar and Nowshera. Many have gone to
Karachi and many others went to live in the former Afghan refugee camp called
Shamshato.
These people have not been given IDP status by the government of Pakistan even
after the passage of about seven months. They continue to live in pathetic
conditions in rented houses or with relatives without any relief from the
authorities or aid organisations. Most of the children who attended schools in
FR Peshawar have no opportunity to go to schools in the areas of their current
residence due to the poverty of their parents. The displaced people have no
health facilities. Many of them have no access to clean drinking water. They
have been constantly approaching the authorities, but to no avail. Moreover,
the media of Pakistan, it seems, has forgotten these people.
These people could not go back to their native areas due to the poor security
situation. They complain that the military operations have failed to eliminate
the Taliban. Within days after the first military operation in FR Peshawar, the
Taliban, the majority of whom was non-local, came back to the area. They
occupied the houses left by the displaced people. Many of them brought their
families with them to FR Peshawar. Moreover, the Taliban have killed the
leading tribal leaders of the area, like Malik Kala Khan and Malik Akbar Khan.
They have also kidnapped another noted tribal leader, Malik Musa Khan.
It is pertinent to mention that Bora and Pastawana in FR Peshawar are on the
border of village Adeyzai in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The tribal jirga in Adeyzai
has made an anti-Taliban lashkar in response to the activities of the Taliban
in FR Peshawar and Darra Adam Khel. The assassinated leader of this lashkar,
Haji Abdul Malik, told me in an interview prior to his assassination that there
were heavily armed Taliban, only 25 in number, in Pastawana. He said that he
had been pleading with the authorities to eliminate them or let his lashkar’s
men do the job. He complained that the authorities showed no interest in taking
on those 25 Taliban and also stopped his lashkar’s men from eliminating them.
The Taliban in Pastawana were the ones who sent a suicide bomber who killed
Haji Malik in November 2009. Haji Malik would have been alive today and
Pastawana free of the Taliban, if only the authorities had appropriately
responded to his pleading.
To the people of FATA, one thing has been established beyond doubt: the
military operations in FATA have never been meant for the elimination of the
Taliban and al Qaeda in the area. This has never been the objective of even the
military high command. The aim is to displace the local people to vacate the
area for the Taliban who carry forward the agenda of strategic depth or to
mislead wider society in Pakistan and the world at large that there is a
people-backed militancy in FATA led by the Taliban who are the people of FATA.
The Mehsud tribesmen of South Waziristan informed that there have been 17 small
and big operations in their area and not even a single Taliban commander or
foot-soldier has been killed in these operations. On the other hand, the Mehsud
tribesmen have repeatedly become IDPs in these operations. Such fake military
operations may be in the ‘interest’ of the state as defined by the intelligence
agencies of Pakistan. This, however, has left the people of FATA in the most
inhumane conditions. The people of Bora and Pastawana are an example of this.
They have been abandoned by the state, which has not even recognised them as
IDPs despite their displacement months ago.
The Bora and Pastawana IDPs request the UN secretary general, and authorities
in the Red Cross, World Food Programme, UNICEF and other national and
international aid organisations to request the government, on their behalf, to
register them as IDPs so that they become entitled to relief help provided by
the aid agencies.
The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently
writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban
o o o
The Express Tribune, December 9, 2010
The Taliban strike back
Kohat is only nominally under Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's administrative control
despite the fact that it is an important Pakistan Air Force base.
After the announcement by the Pakistan Army that neighbouring South Waziristan
was cleared of the Taliban and that in Orakzai 85 per cent of the area was
likewise cleared, a bloody response from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
in the shape of a suicide bombing in Kohat has shaken the country. A boy, with
10 kg of explosives tied to his body, killed 18 and injured 32 persons from
among the families going to Orakzai.
Almost at the same time, teachers of a school have been abducted in
neighbouring Hangu, also a ‘settled’ district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Earlier,
two suicide bombers killed scores of elders gathered at the headquarters of the
political agent of Mohmand Agency. The agency abuts on the provincial boundary
and was once considered relatively peaceful but subject to inroads from an old
Harkatul Mujahideen, Umar Khalid, who was once used as a ‘freedom fighter’ by
Pakistan in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Kohat is around 60 kilometres south of Peshawar, accessible by the Kohat Pass.
In 1901, the population was 217,865, showing an increase of 11 per cent in the
decade. By 1998 (the time Pakistan conducted its most recent census) it had
swelled to 1.4 million. It has a Hindko-speaking Paracha community, closely
allied to the madrassas of Javed Ibrahim Paracha, the so-called ‘al Qaeda
lawyer’ with links to Lal Masjid in Islamabad. He was once a PML-N MNA and a
JUI candidate but is now a defender of al Qaeda men arrested in Pakistan and
has named his son Osama. Kohat is only nominally under Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s
administrative controle, despite the fact that it is an important Pakistan Air
Force base. The people there live under the twin administration of the
Pakistani state and the Taliban, who are said to rule at night.
The same thing can be said about Hangu, where the Taliban exercise a lot of
authority and complicate the city’s sectarian map. The sectarian distribution
of Kohat has assisted in the leaning of some fanatics to allegiance to the
Taliban who do not hesitate to target the Shia community in the entire region,
up to Kurram Agency. The current leader of the Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud,
earned his notoriety as a killer of the Shia. Kohat city also has a monument to
the first batch of al Qaeda prisoners — mostly Chechen — who were brought here
as prisoners but were killed in an encounter with the Pakistan Army.
To give a glimpse of how Kohat is left at the mercy of the Taliban and the
sectarian divide existing there, one will have to hark back to an interview
Javed Ibrahim Paracha gave to a television channel on September 12, 2003.
According to him: “After 9/11, Bulgarian and Chechen mujahideen fled from
Afghanistan and came down to the Tribal Areas from where they came to Kohat
where already 27 Arab mujahideen were in jail. They were the offspring of the
Sahaba (companions of the Prophet — pbuh) and were Ahle Bait (from the family
of the Prophet — pbuh).”
After the al Qaeda men were killed, according to him, their blood began to
smell like perfume and was collected by the people of Kohat in bottles. Paracha
then organised a jirga which built a monument to the ‘martyrs’ who had been
killed.
It is in this environment that Pakistan has to fight the Taliban. The
Kohat-Hangu region is close to Orakzai Agency where the army is in the process
of concluding a praiseworthy operation, with the Taliban on the run. The latest
attack — as pointed out by the army spokesman — is an indication of the
discomfiture the terrorists are experiencing.
In the coming days, more trouble could be in the offing because of Muharram,
when the martyrdom of Imam Hussain is remembered and observed. Already the Shia
community of Kohat has had to give up the celebration of Nauruz — a traditional
festival — and now might be exposed to more suicide bombings by the Taliban on
the run in neighbouring tribal agencies. There is no doubt that the problem of
terrorism will be tackled in the long run but, at this point in time, Kohat
remains vulnerable because the writ of the state there is weak, if not
occasionally non-existent.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2010.
____
[2] Bangladesh:
New Age (Bangladesh)
17 January 2011
LIVING WAGES FOR GARMENT WORKERS
Malik-speak: demonisation and denial
by Rahnuma Ahmed
I DON’T think anyone gets taken in by what they say. No, not any longer. Not
unexpected, for, after all, how long can one spin the same old story and I
DON'T think anyone gets taken in by what they say. No, not any longer.
Not unexpected, for, after all, how long can one spin the same old story and
expect people to fall for it? Day after day. Year after year.
Even prime minister Sheikh Hasina had sounded exasperated. Factory owners, she
said, give garment workers 'not only insufficient but also inhuman' wages.
Coming from someone who heads a government which, as Shahidullah Chowdhury,
president, Bangladesh Trade Union Centre, points out, is 'essentially biased'
towards protecting and promoting the interests of the rich (like all previous
governments in Bangladesh), her comment is quite revealing.
Industry leaders, of course, had a fit. Labour unions had demanded 5-6,000
taka, owners grudgingly agreed to 3,000 taka. Far below living wages. But as
Annisul Huq, former head of the BGMEA (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and
Exporters Association), a factory owner whose clients include H&M and Wal-Mart,
ruefully told the New York Times, 'If it's 5,000 taka, I would close all my
factories.' He added, 'Even if it's 3,000 taka, lots of factories will close
within three or four months' (July 16, 2010).
One cannot, of course, deny that the government needs to take measures to
strengthen Bangladesh's most successful manufacturing industry which accounts
for 80 per cent of annual export earnings. For one, it needs to ensure
uninterrupted power supply. Abdus Salam Murshedy, the head of BGMEA, in an
attempt to convince workers to accept 1,969 taka as wages said last June, 'We
have been reeling under acute gas and power crisis, which has affected our
productivity.'
Second, it also needs to takes measures to bring down escalating food prices,
as food inflation matters most to minimum wage garment workers. In May last
year, rice prices went up by between 18 per cent and 32 per cent, according to
the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh. But in defiance of Bangladesh labour
laws which dictate that wages should be reassessed and adjusted every three
years, recent wage increases were awarded after 2006. After spilling blood.
They have been dubbed 'malnutrition' wages by some, 'poverty' wages by others.
The acute shortage of electricity, insists BD Rahmatullah, former director
general of the Power Cell (ministry of power, energy and mineral resources), is
a 'manufactured' crisis. As a former insider, he should know; further, no one
from the energy ministry has contested his allegation. One cannot help but ask,
why would a government electorally committed to increasing and stabilising
power generation, manufacture a crisis, much to the detriment of people's, and
industrial interests? WikiLeaks leaked Dhaka US Embassy cables incline me to
suggest that the manufactured crisis is possibly aimed at rallying public
support for awarding oil, gas and coal contracts to foreign companies (People's
resistance to global capital, govt collaboration is vindicated, New Age,
January 3).
As for the food crisis, according to the Election Manifesto of Bangladesh Awami
League-2008, 'commodity prices increased by 100 to 200 percent' during the BNP
Jamaat alliance rule (2001-2007), the 'infamous Hawa Bhaban' under the
'leadership of the son of the [former] Prime Minister [Khaleda Zia]' patronised
'criminal syndicates'. All true, but although the ruling party has changed,
although Hawa Bhaban which ran a 'parallel government' no longer exists, food
syndicates still do. Fourteen months after taking power, finance minister AMA
Muhith declared, a 'cartel or syndicate of traders' is responsible for price
hikes of essentials including rice, that the government was 'seeking ways and
means to stabilise the market' (February 2010). Six months later, it seems the
government had stopped seeking ways and means, for as Muhith stated, government
attempts to break up the syndicate had failed (August 12, 2010).
It is obvious that the 'rich' interests which the Awami League government
protects and promotes extend not only to the garment sector but also to oil,
gas, coal and food. That the government is committed to serving the interests
of global and local capital. Not those of the majority. Not those who voted it
to power.
It should also be obvious that the rich of one sector collude with the rich of
another. At a reception in May 2008, accorded by the Chittagong Chamber of
Commerce and Industry and the BGMEA to the newly-elected office-bearers of
FBCCI, the apex chamber body, the newly-elected FBCCI president Annisul Huq and
other business people urged the government to take immediate steps for
exploring coal and gas to overcome the energy crisis, to put an end to the
debate on the coal policy, to go for open-pit coal mining (The Daily Star, May
3, 2008). Environmental activists say, the latter will lead to the forcible
eviction of not 1,30,000 people as the government commissioned report claims,
but ten times more, that it will wreck the environment. But those at the
Chittagong reception seemed to shrug off these concerns, affected people could
'easily be rehabilitated'.
'We are not blood-suckers,' he said excitedly, a young garment factory owner,
whose name I'm afraid I couldn't catch, he was on a talk show on a private TV
channel, it was midway through, this was nearly 3 weeks ago. All this talk of
'capitalism' and 'exploitation' portrays us in a bad light. I refuse to listen
to all this. I'll walk out right now, he said, jerking his head toward what was
presumably the studio door. While MM Akash, professor of economics, Dhaka
University, sat silently grinning, while the anchor of the programme
desperately tried to restore peace, I sat open-mouthed at the TV screen. Huh,
and I'd thought all our drama queens belonged to parliament.
Over the last few weeks, I have had the fortune to watch two other live TV
programmes graced by factory owners. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry
when I heard AK Azad, president of the FBCCI, chairman of the Ha-Meem Group,
fifth largest clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh, a big supplier of readymade
garments for Gap, whose That's It Sportswear at Ashulia caught fire last
December leading to the death of 23 workers, insist that safety measures were
meticulously followed in his factories. There were regular fire drills but
since they were 'merely' drills with no real fires, it had been difficult to
foresee and prevent the deaths. Where on earth are real fires lit during drills?
And yes, both Azad, and later, in another TV programme, Anwar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury
Parvez, former BGMEA president, owner of Evince Group, insisted (seemingly
speaking from the same script), the new wage structure is being followed in
their factories, in all other factories that they know of, to say otherwise is
a smear campaign, out to malign the industry. They spoke in a voice of
benevolence, their workers were happy, contented, well-looked after. Parvez got
a bit carried away, I never fail to address them as my children, I call them
baba, ma, but he quickly fell silent when the anchor interjected, 'but, how
does that affect the wages paid?'
Factory owners' self-construction as benevolent, kind, concerned and caring, as
is evident from the discourse of BGMEA leaders, reminds me of colonial
discourses since workers are simultaneously constructed as passive and
backward, who are easily amenable to being 'incited' and 'instigated', who turn
'violent', go 'berserk', on a 'rampage', who vandalise, loot and destroy. They
need to be pacified, and to do so, an industrial police force has been
established (October 2010). To maintain 'law and order' in the export
processing zones, said the prime minister, to help maintain 'smooth and
uninterrupted productions' at mills and factories.
Even though leaders admit at times that there may be a few bad apples among the
owners who give the industry a bad name, as a collective, they authoritatively
claim to represent the nation's interest, for it is they who are taking the
nation forward, who have strengthened the national economy. The garment
industry is a national resource, they say, but in contemporary business speak,
as Lucy Kellaway writes, ownership is the biggest lie of all. Using the
'national good' as a rhetorical device covers 'private advantage', simply using
the word 'nation' does not make one 'nationalists' (David Burrow).
Genuine worker grievances-rising from meagre wages, by all accounts, far short
of living costs, and 'notoriously' bad safety records-are covered up by
speeches, both by factory owners and political leaders, who point fingers at
'foreign' forces bent on sabotaging the nation's progress, at vested quarters
attempting to spread anarchy, at creating terror. Foreign, one must note, are
both good and bad, the good ones are those that the owners are aligned to,
foreign buyers, foreign investors, while the baddies are international labour
rights and human rights organisations with whom local and national groups
network to fight against grave injustices toward Bangladesh's garment workers,
who have the privilege of receiving the lowest wages in the highest earning
industrial sector. The only industrial sector in Bangladesh which, since its
inception, has been wracked by labour unrest, one which often enough spills out
into city streets, whether in Dhaka, or Chittagong or Narayanganj, which
disrupts public life, causes death and injury to members of the public (on
December 12, 2010, a rickshaw driver was killed when police fired at
demonstrating workers in Chittagong EPZ), and severe financial losses (cars set
alight, buses torched).
But BGMEA enjoys the blessings of prime ministers both past and present. During
her first tenure as prime minister, Sheikh Hasina had inaugurated the
construction of the BGMEA Bhaban in November 1998. After completion, in October
2006, the building was inaugurated by then prime minister, Khaleda Zia.
The 15-story structure, standing tall, is illegal, having been built on land
that is government-owned, without approval from Rajuk, the city development
authority, land which had been set aside for the Begunbari-Hatirjheel
integrated development project. Having been built on land filling that was a
part of the Hatirjheel lake, in gross violation of two laws, including the
Environment and Wetland Protection Act 2000, it is said to be the main reason
for chronic and severe water-logging in Dhaka city. Urban experts, academicians
and environmentalists have repeatedly called on the government to demolish the
BGMEA building because it is right in the middle of the canal, it 'defies the
law in the heart of the city,' it inspires others to violate the law (Abdullah
Abu Sayeed).
BGMEA's vice-president Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin's response, the government must
decide which is more important, the lake or the BGMEA, rests on the language of
power. That of environmentalists, as do those of garment workers and their
leaders, speak of justice. The law requires Rajuk to go ahead and demolish the
building without waiting for a political decision, says noted environmentalist
and director of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association Rezwana Hasan.
'If law is subject to politics, justice can never be ensured.'
I myself don't understand what all the fuss is about. If the affected people of
Phulbari can 'easily be rehabilitated', surely, so can the BGMEA headquarters?
Maybe it is time BGMEA leaders and members learnt to live by the law, not to
bend it to serve their own sweet will. It is only then that their claims of
being committed to 'national interests' will be honoured by the public.
____
[3] India:
(i)
The Economic and Political Weekly, January 15, 2011
Editorial
ASEEMANANDA’S CONFESSION
The links of the RSS to terror stand exposed, as does the incompetence and
complicity of the Indian state.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the confession made by Swami
Aseemananda relating to the planning and execution of the bomb blasts in
Malegaon (2006 and 2008), on the Samjhauta Express (2006), and in Mecca Masjid
(2007) and Ajmer Sharif (2007). What is even more significant is that
Aseemananda’s confession was made voluntarily before a magis- trate, after he
was kept away from the police, in judicial custody for two days, to ensure that
it was not being made under duress. Aseemananda is no ordinary person. He is a
Rashtriya Swayam- sevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak, head of the RSS-affiliated
Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Gujarat and he runs a religious centre in the Dangs
district of Gujarat. He is powerful enough to have Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi visit him and share the dais with him on frequent occasions.
In his confession, Aseemananda has laid bare the entire con- spiracy, and he
has named the people involved. His sudden decision to confess voluntarily is
melodramatic, and somewhat suspicious. This swami apparently met, in a
Hyderabad jail, one among the young boys who were arrested by the police after
the Mecca Masjid blast and tortured. This young boy, Abdul Kaleem, im- pressed
Aseemananda so much with his behaviour and kindness, that when he came to know
that Kaleem spent a year and a half in jail and suffered police
“interrogation”, he wanted to repent and thus came his confession. Whatever be
the reason, Aseemananda has detailed in a sworn testimony to a magistrate the
entire working of RSS-inspired Hindutva terrorism in India. Such a confession
before a magistrate has weight in the court of law, but more importantly it
gives the investigating authorities the full picture of the entire conspiracy,
its execution and the people involved. It, therefore, makes it that much easier
for them to find the substantiating evi- dence to charge sheet all those
involved and obtain convictions. In sum, Aseemananda’s confession has shown
that a large number of terror strikes in India have been the handiwork of
Hindutva terror- ists who have close organisational and ideological links with
the RSS and its front, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The jigsaw puzzle, which was
being slowly pieced together by the police of different states, after the
stellar investigative work of Hemant Karkare and his team in Maharashtra, has
suddenly all fallen into place thanks to this five-hour confession. However, it
is hardly a certainty that this confession will lead to convictions and
punishment of the guilty. Far less probable is that there will be any serious
action against the RSS and its “parivar”, which have now, once again, been
shown to be dangerously violent and a threat to the republic. In their actions
following each of these cases of terror, most of the police and the other
investigative agencies have shown themselves to be thoroughly incompetent,
politically compromised and infiltrated by the personnel and ideologies of this
very Hindutva brigade.
In each of the cases, where now evidence has been found of the involvement of
Hindutva groups, the police had instinctively arrested Muslims and put out
elaborate stories about Islamic terrorist groups planning and executing these
attacks. Hundreds of young men were arrested, tortured into giving false
“confes- sions” and hauled up in courts, which in turn happily carried on with
this charade. (The media has emerged no less honourably; it was ever ready to
swallow police theories of Islamic funda- mentalists from Bangladesh to
Pakistan as masterminds and painted grand theories of syncretic Islam being
threatened by these extremists.) Now that we have Aseemananda’s confession,
reading those police accounts of how Islamic terrorists executed these attacks
shows the extent of the incompetence and duplicity of our men in khaki. To
expect them, as an institution, to take the prosecution to a successful
conclusion is perhaps asking for too much. In addition to all its innate
failings, the law and order machinery may not even receive sufficient political
backing from the government, as it takes on India’s principal opposition
party’s paterfamilias, the RSS.
The Congress as a party and the government under its dispen- sation have, at
best, been indecisive in their approach to Hindutva violence. Congress
administrations have been known for their ambivalent and often complicit
behaviour when dealing with RSS-inspired anti-Muslim violence, whether it was
in Ahmedabad in 1969, Hyderabad in 1978, Meerut in 1987, or the post-Babri
masjid demolition riots in Mumbai, Surat and other places. Lastly, it should be
remembered that in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, it was the police under
Congress or coalition administrations which arrested and tortured innocent men
whose only crime was their religion. Given such a track record, it is but
obvious that suspicions will remain about the ability of the present
governments, both at the centre and in states like Rajasthan, Maharashtra and
Andhra Pradesh, to successfully prosecute those named by Aseemananda and,
further, to investigate the actual involvement of the RSS and its affiliates in
these terror acts.
Within a month of Aseemananda’s confession, the usual play-acting has started.
The RSS and its affiliate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have denied the
charges and attacked the Central Bureau of Investigation for playing Congress
politics. They have claimed that the Congress is using this to divert at-
tention from corruption and inflation. The media in its stilted attempt to
balance the story has downplayed the culpability of the RSS. In any case, this
is not the first time that the RSS has been exposed for its violent, communal
and destructive politics, and given its deep penetration of social and
political institutions, it has managed to come out of such situations in the
past too. This battle against the RSS and the world view it represents has to
be won politically. Aseemananda’s confession will hopefully
disabuse many of those who have come to view the RSS, through its electoral
affiliate – the BJP – as a legitimate organisation and expose once again its
true character. If popular political pres- sure, combined with media scrutiny
and civil society activism, can be sustained, there is a possibility that those
guilty of the present round of terror acts may be punished. This itself will be
a major achievement.
Finally, we must now ask Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which is the “biggest
internal security threat” to the idea of India. Is Maoism, as he often says, a
basic threat to India, or, on the basis of the mass of evidence of right wing
extremist involvement in terror, can it be Hindutva? Perhaps Congress Party
General Secretary Rahul Gandhi shows greater awareness of the reality.
(ii)
SWAMI, SANGH AND TERROR LINKS
by Ram Puniyani
Investigating acts of terrorism have multiple complex issues as things are
mired in secrecy. To add to the problem is the mindset of investigating
authorities and those in power.
FULL Text at:
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2011/01/swami-sangh-and-bomb.html
_____
[4] India:
The Times of India
UP KHAP BANS JEANS FOR GIRLS
PTI, Jan 17, 2011, 12.45am IST
MUZAFFARNAGAR (UP): A khap panchayat (caste council) banned girls from wearing
jeans. Village elders blamed the attire for provoking eve-teasing and
encouraging young couples to elope.
The khap panchayat led by Battisa Khap Council head Baba Suraj in Bhenswal
village passed the diktat which claimed that wearing jeans had a "bad effect"
on young women and eve-teasing incidents had increased due to their
objectionable clothes".
The panchayat also formed a five-member committee of women to implement the ban
in the village. Earlier, caste councils or kangaroo courts, which have been
accused of supporting "honour killings", had banned the use of mobile phones by
unmarried girls in the district. They used the same argument, saying the phones
encouraged women to step out of the home.
On November 14, all khap panchayats from Shoram village in Muzaffarnagar had
assembled to oppose same gotra (sub-caste) marriages and demanded the
government amend the Hindu Marriage Act to enforce a ban.
The government is drafting a legislation dealing specifically with killings
ordered by khap panchayats.
_____
[5] Pakistan and India:
Bangalore Mirror, January 16, 2011
IN BOTH COUNTRIES, IT’S THE LINE OF CONTROL
In India and Pakistan, British era laws on sedition and blasphemy are meant to
muzzle dissent
by Anil Nair
Intolerance is on the rise in the Indian subcontinent. That’s hardly
surprising. What is frightening, however, is that the murder of Salman Taseer
in Pakistan and the sentencing of Binayak Sen in India are basically of the
same kind and differs only in degrees. What is condemned as ‘blasphemy’ in
Pakistan and used as an instrument to get rid of sober and cultivated voices,
is called ‘sedition’ here and used to the same effect.
This is not a hyperbolic statement. The primitive nature of the Aasia Bibi case
which culminated in Taseer’s killing and the equally primitive manner in which
the public there - at least large and vocal sections of it - glorified it comes
from some dark and dangerous place, something as inexplicable and ominous as
the amygdala or the reptilian part of the human brain. In contrast, Sen’s
sentencing seems more like a momentary loss of sanity on the part of the Indian
state. Yet, the relatively less violent nature of the Indian state’s response
to dissent, and to perceived or imagined threats to its sovereignty, shouldn’t
blind us to its more methodical and institutionalised, and thus arguably more
dangerous, nature.
When the establishment here – and this includes the political class and the
judiciary – didn’t hesitate to slap sedition charges on Sen because he
allegedly colluded with Maoists, what it was attacking was not Naxalism but the
very possibility of strongly and consistently voicing any idea that differed
radically from the middleclass mainstream’s Idea of India. What this Idea of
India in effect prohibits is a whole range of actions and alternative ideas –
from a more equitable redistribution of resources across regions and classes to
punishing those actually guilty and culpable for the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat. In
terms of the hegemony it claims and enforces, the Indian state thus is hardly
different from the non-state actors in Pakistan. The Pakistani case appears far
more reprehensible only because of the theological elements and, with the bad
name that religion already enjoys, that was only to be expected.
Interestingly, sacrilege (and blasphemy) and sedition and are closely
connected. Even more interestingly, sacrilege though cast in a religious garb
was originally intended for secular reasons, whereas sedition though in
apparent secular garb possesses a religious core. The main definition of
sacrilege and blasphemy is that the name of the lord should not be taken in
vain. Obviously the motive was to enforce the idea of the sacrosanct, of what
could be said and who had the right to say it but, equally, it was concerned
with the far more profound and secular notions about language and rationality,
of the need to be thoughtful and measured and to rise above profanity and sheer
garrulousness, what the French scholar Alain Cabantous in Blasphemy: Impious
Speech in the West from the 17th to the 19th Century vividly describes as “the
diarrhea of the mouth”.
Sedition, in contrast, continues to press on merely with the idea of the
sacrosanct, except that the nature of authority has changed from religious to
political, from church to state. Colonialism, whose entire rationality was
based on a captive audience, consolidated this idea of the sacrosanct. And we
in modern-day India have strengthened it even more, beholden as we are with our
British legacy. It’s not just that the letter of the sedition law - Section
124A of the Penal Code - which proclaims that “Whoever, by words, either spoken
or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or
attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excited or attempts to excite
disaffection towards the Government established by law in India, shall be
punished with imprisonment for life …” is archaic.
Our mindset itself continues to be deeply colonial. Arundhati Roy, for
instance, has said some outspoken things about Kashmir but, as she also rightly
pointed out, she was merely repeating what Jawaharlal Nehru himself and other
luminaries have said many times. Why is it that Roy becomes treasonous and
Nehru doesn’t? It is because we continue to privilege hierarchy over
rationality, the authorized voice over the unauthorized one – hence Nehru is an
oracle but Roy a mere subversive.
It is no different in Pakistan, even though on the outside nothing seems more
antithetical than Islamism and British colonialism. Salman Taseer was as much a
believer as Mumtaz Hussain Qadri his bodyguard-turned-assassin, though unlike
the latter he didn’t have a blackened callous in the middle of his forehead,
worn like a scar and acquired by bringing his head to the ground in supposedly
pious genuflection a prescribed number of times each day, day in and day out.
What Taseer had instead was real faith in god and the prophet (holy be his
name), which is why he was not going to feel challenged or insecure by what
Aasia Bibi did. Bibi, a Christian woman, in Pakistan’s Punjab province who when
pressured by certain zealots tried to renounce her faith, retorted that whereas
Jesus died on the cross for the sake of humanity what had their god done for
them?
Rather than be offended, Taseer would have, much like Asra Nomani does in her
piece in The Daily Beast, appreciated the irony of the situation: Of how the
Sisters of Loretto that Bibi worked for, and the Vatican to which it is
affiliated, by virtue of being archaic patriarchal institutions themselves can
hardly claim the moral high ground. But the point, as Nomani writes, and for
which Taseer paid with his life, is to see the larger picture and to go beyond
one’s co-religionists and the colonial legacy to fight the common enemy –
ignorance, bigotry, a wrong understanding of what is sacred.
Finally, whether it is India or Pakistan, sedition or sacrilege, what is at
stake is the enlightened notion of knowing how each one of us is different but
never preventing that from reaching out to those who are different from us, and
to try and bridge the chasm, however big that might be.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. An offshoot of South Asia Citizens Web:
www.sacw.net/
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