An Equal Reaction

Essay

The social engineering of Gujarat

The ongoing violence and its broadening social and geographical base in the state is a consequence of the political recasting of social identities.

by Hemant Babu

The winter moon had already risen over the Taranga hills, when a group of men and women stopped our vehicle on the road from Ambaji to Baroda in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The women were dressed in brightly coloured half sarees, worn in the typically western Indian tribal style. A man in the front was carrying a photograph of Hanuman, the monkey god and lieutenant of the Hindu deity Ram. The light of the full moon bathed the hills on both sides of the road, and the exchange that followed was as pleasant as the surroundings.

?Donate some money,? said a woman from the group. In the tribal districts of Gujarat it is customary to stop passing vehicles and collect money around the time of Holi and other festivals that western Indian tribals celebrate. Only, this was not the month of Holi, or of any other festivity. Queried about the purpose of the collection they replied, ?We are collecting money for the bhajan mandali? (the collective singing of hymns celebrating deities). The bright red image of Hanuman that they carried was most certainly not native to their original spiritual repertoire. Neither was the idea of the bhajan mandali, which is a characteristically Hindu institution. The image and the ritual had come from somewhere else. This was in early 1993 when several parts of India, including Gujarat, were burning in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. But, the violence had not yet touched the tribal belts of Gujarat.

A month ago, in the aftermath of the Godhra incident and the subsequent riots, a friend, who sports a vandyke beard, was accosted on the same road by a group of men who live on the gentle slopes of the Taranga hills. But, there was nothing gentle about these men. Armed to the teeth, they snatched his wallet and then grilled him about his religion. He was allowed to proceed unmolested only after he furnished proof of his Hindu bona fides. Newspapers the next morning reported the killing of Muslim highway travellers, who were perhaps fleeing the riots.

An end to the violence of the last two months is not in sight, and, the end of it will not be the last of it either. The first incident of 1993 was not the starting point of a process that culminated in this second incident, almost a decade later. Both events and all that happened in the interim are merely stages in the acceleration and amplification of a process that has been in the making for some decades. In Gujarat, where it is today imprudent to wear a beard and a misfortune to be a Muslim, a pervasive communalisation has been cultivated even among communities marginalised by Hindu society. The participation of tribals in the brutal enterprise of Hindutva is an index of this communalisation. The collection for the bhajan mandali was only the more benign aspect of a development whose logical intent was the killings on the road from Ambaji to Baroda and elsewhere.

The arrival of Hanuman in the Gujarat hills has a cultural and political significance. It is also a mytho-logical metaphor for the arrival of tribals in the militia of Hindutva. The military prominence of Hanuman and his army in the epic, Ramayan, has been understood to signify the martial services rendered by some forest dwellers for a Hindu purpose of the remote past. Likewise, the adoption of Hindu symbols and rituals by the tribals of Gujarat suggests their subordinated absorption, as a regiment of foot soldiers detailed by the Hinduised polity to kill on command its ?enemy? of the moment. And as in the mythology, all they get in real terms is an honourable mention for services rendered. In both the myth and the current reality (a distinction that often has no meaning in the recent politics of India), the labours of the aboriginal under-class are directed towards the almost exclusive benefit of the caste-Hindu leadership that commandeers it.

?Normalcy? in a normal state

Both the violence and its expanding social base have been commented on at length. What is forgotten in all the rhetoric for and against the politics that engineered it is the historical-political context in which this engineering took place. The context may not be the direct cause of the psyche that produces such extreme forms of violence but it nevertheless merits description, if only because it may help identify and explain the direct cause, besides dispelling misconceptions about both Gujarat and the riots that seem to have found purchase in the media.

Ever since the outbreak of violence, there have been frequent expressions of surprise that such events could ever happen in the ?land of Gandhi?, in a state that is the most industrialised after Maharashtra, in a society with such a ?strong mercantile mentality?, and in a polity that has seen such ?stable governments?. These vaunted attributes are not a necessary impediment to organised violence and in any case this is not the first, worst or longest riot recorded in the state. In fact, any or all of these factors could cohabit with or even produce such violence. Perhaps the idea of riots in Gujarat will be less bewildering if it is kept in mind that during a riot organised under an extremely stable government with resources garnered from industrial and mercantile sources among others, the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, no less, shut its gates and turned its back on Muslims fleeing certain death. If the political process can so easily erode the historical legacy of ahimsa in the ashram in which the concept was elaborated, optimistic assumptions about the restraining influence of Gandhi, commerce and industry do not place Gujarat under a special compulsion to be less violent than any other state in India?s degenerating polity. As Achyut Yagnik, the well-known social worker and researcher from Ahmedabad, notes: ?Gujarat is as normal as any other state.?

A sign of this normalcy is the number of incidents of communal violence in the state as recorded officially. Judicial commissions of inquiry, the Justice Reddy Commission and the Justice VS Dave Commission, were instituted after two major riots, of 1969 and 1985 respectively. Both commissions referred in some detail to Gujarat?s history of communal violence. The Justice Dave Commission traced the history of communal violence in Ahmedabad as far back as 1714 when a bloody riot was sparked off during the Holi celebrations. The city then was still under Mughal control. Subsequent riots broke out in 1715, 1716 and 1750. The Marathas, who succeeded the Mughals in Gujarat, were described by the Commission as being ?instrumental in creating a riot in Ahmedabad? after the city was occupied by them.

Hindu-Muslim violence continued in the centuries that followed, with the pace and intensity picking up in the second half of the twentieth century. When communal riots broke out in 1941, curfew had to be imposed for over two-and-a-half months. The Justice Reddy Commission identified as many as 2938 instances of communal violence in the state between 1960 and 1969, that is, an average of approximately three riots every four days during this ten-year period. It is perhaps more than just a coincidence that this was the period when the Jan Sangh, the first overtly political front of the Rashtrya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), and the organisational precursor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which by all accounts is responsible for sustaining the current riots, became active in the state. During this period, riots began to spread over a much wider geographical area of the sate, affecting towns like Veraval, Junagadh, Patan, Godhra, Palanpur, Anjar, Dalkhania, Kodinar and Deesa, all of which have been hit by the ongoing violence.

Immunity of social conscience

Violence of the communal variety staged in urban and semi-urban venues, besides rural violence directed against agricultural labourers, particularly dalits, was thus as routine an aspect of Gujarat as it is of most other states in the country. But violence of a different, more systematic and sustained order was inaugurated in 1969. The Hindu-Muslim riots of that year mark a major break with the hitherto prevalent pattern of steady if unspectacular social conflict. More than two years of hectic Muslim and Hindu fundamentalist activity preceded the outbreak of these riots. Communal violence in the state acquired a more organised form against the backdrop of the India-Pakistan war of 1965. The Jana Sangh stepped up the level of patriotic mobilisation and secured a toe-hold among the urban middle class. This mobilisation cashed in on the shelling of the area near the Dwarka temple in Gujarat by the Pakistan Navy, and the death of the incumbent Congress chief minister of the state, Balwantrai Mehta, when his plane was brought down by the Pakistan air force.

Muslim mobilisation too was simultaneously taking place. The Jamiyet-Ulema-e-Hind tried to rally Muslim support, perhaps with the tacit consent of the Congress Party, which was then going through a phase of organisational and political crisis. In June 1968, the national convention of the Jamiyet was organised in Ahmedabad. Though it professed to be a nationalist organisation which supported the Congress, the convention showed very clearly that the Jamiyet was drifting towards communal politics. Its firebrand leaders, Maulana Asad Maad and Yunus Salim delivered provocative speeches. A booklet called The communal riots and the harm that they have done to the country and Hindu religion, authored by the president of the Jamiyet, Maulana Aqualak Husain, was circulated during the convention. The booklet gave grossly exaggerated accounts of atrocities on Muslims in communal riots elsewhere in the country. This spurt of Islamic activity prompted the Jan Sangh to found the Hindu Dharma Raksha Samiti. It also brought the RSS chief MS Golwalkar to the city. At a rally in Ahmedabad in December 1968 Golwalkar attacked Muslims as invaders who the country could not tolerate for too long. The idea of Muslims as invaders has been repeatedly used by Hindu fundamentalists to a point where it has become the received wisdom, all cogent arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. The riots that ensued in 1969 left some 1500 people dead.

A riot of this magnitude, unprecedented in both scale and duration, had a foundational significance for the politics of the state and the techniques of mobilisation and orchestration that increasingly came into use. The discrete and scattered violence of the preceding period can be presumed to be manifestations of everyday class, caste and community struggles arising from socio-economic conflicts of a more or less local nature. To that extent, their individual histories and repercussions were confined to the respective localities of incidence. The 1969 riots had the critical mass that lent it state- and nation-wide visibility and gave it a prominent place in the historical inventory of community grievances. This riot could now be invoked at will, not just in Gujarat but wherever else tension had to be engineered. In effect, this was the first explicit politicisation of both communalism and public violence in the state.

Most importantly, the riots of 1969 took Gujarati society past the psychological threshold of normally tolerable public violence, and this not just of the communal variety. Once the barrier to the use of violence in inter-party conflicts was crossed, its repeated use acquired a tacit legitimacy as the social conscience became gradually more immune to the incremental doses of it that the polity administered. The two instances of extended public ferocity that Gujarat witnessed after these riots, the 1974 Nav Nirman movement, launched by the opposition parties to oust the Congress state government, and the 1981 riots against public policy designed to benefit lower castes, involved a high level of violence, including in the latter instance, the burning alive of dalits. Both these instances of extra-parliamentary ?politics? were remarkably successful in their objectives. Violent street politics had made an impressive debut in Gujarat and presented itself as a model worth investing in and emulating.

Making of a pattern

There were two aspects to these agitations that had long-term social and institutional consequences. One was the induction of middle class youths into a form of politics not normally associated with them. The other was the emergence of the incipient social and financial networks that sustain prolonged violence. The issues involved in both the 1974 movement and the 1981 riots, though they affected a much larger segment of the population, were articulated most vigorously by the middle class through its traditional channels. But the urgency of the objective, particularly in reversing affirmative state action in favour of the lower castes, caused dissent to spill out of the traditional channels. Middle class, upper caste youths played a leading role in the anti-reservation riots, and the focus of conflict here belonged solely to the matrix of Hindu social relations and its hierarchies of caste. A middle class, consisting predominantly of caste Hindus who saw themselves as the true repositories of merit, was defending its privileged access to professional education and government service. The high level of violence was justified as a legitimate expression of thwarted merit and one more barrier to muscular Hindu middle class street politics was crossed. The BJP was active in the 1981 riots as were its professional front organisations, notably the university and secondary school teachers associations. The classroom, the family and many other institutions which crucially shape social and political values had succumbed to the pressures of protecting the elite monopoly of state privileges and public resources.

The 1981 riots were replayed in a more drastic form in the 1985 anti-reservation movement. In many ways, this sequel marked the beginning of a new phase. Although it partook of features of all the antecedent riots, it also had a novel dimension. The roots of Gujarat?s radical communalism can be detected here. Methodical violence from now on became a more regular instrument and expression of electoral politics, recurring with increasing frequency and refinement of technique and exhibiting remarkable similarities of character. Soon after it commenced, the riot of 1985 was annexed to the exigencies of the BJP?s political constituency-building drill. The seemingly undirected ?riot from below? was given a purposeful leadership by the present dispensation in the state, notably the current Chief Minister Narendra Modi, acting then in his capacity as a senior functionary of the RSS. By 1985, the Hindutva cadres had acquired considerable experience in disruptive politics, many of its leaders having participated in the ?81 agitation.

The BJP?s active influence on the 1985 agitation explains many of its more curious features. The riots began on 19 March, the day after the newly-elected Congress government assumed office, and was directed against a policy measure declared more than two months prior. In January, the Congress government had announced an increase in the quota of jobs in government and seats in public educational institutions reserved for backward castes. The riots lasted six months, much after the policy had been revoked by the government. The fact that a riot could start two months after the cause that provoked it, and end as suddenly as it started, points to a high level of coordination by an existing command structure. It cannot be a mere accident that the violence extended beyond Ahmedabad to smaller towns and villages, particularly in those areas where the BJP had acquired influence, notably in central Gujarat and some tribal belts. South Gujarat, which had previously been unaffected, now found itself on the riot map of the state. The social base of the violence expanded to include gangsters, bootleggers and professional killers. Various reports of the period quote doctors who described the stab wounds they attended to as the work of trained hands. The agitation finally degenerated to a point where sections of the state constabulary abandoned their uniforms and relin-quished their responsibilities to join the riots.

The beginnings of social engineering

But there is another compelling aspect of this riot that overshadows all others. The 1981 riots sharpened the conflict within the ?Hindu? community, between the upper and lower castes, the victims being primarily dalits. By contrast the 1985 agitation, though initially directed against caste-based affirmative action, transformed itself very quickly into a gratuitous attack on the Muslim community, which had nothing to do with the reservation policy of the government. In the final reckoning, an extended riot led by upper caste Hindus that succeeded in revoking a policy that benefited lower caste Hindus eventually managed to inscribe itself into the social memory as one more gory episode in the deteriorating history of Hindu-Muslim relations. Perhaps the danger to a conceptual and potential ?Hindu? unity from a conflict internal to the community was being minimised by quietly diverting the focus of the agitation. If its similarities with the Sangh Parivar?s current modus operandi are anything to go by, then the 1985 riot was the real crucible of Hindutva politics in Gujarat. A kingpin of that agitation is the kingpin of the current spate of pogroms; the only difference is that today he officially rules the political roost with a popular mandate of 55 percent.

There are many crude calculations in the social engineering formulas of the RSS, but the last 15 years have proved that, given a polity degenerating in the appropriate manner, these calculations can yield the desired outcome. From 1990 on, Gujarat has witnessed riot after riot, varied in scale, but similar in character and equal in significance for the BJP?s rise to political power. The late 1980s witnessed an escalation in the tempo of the Ayodhya movement and this furnished the climate for the orchestration of events that would culminate in the party?s emphatic electoral victory in 1995.

The pattern of the first riot of 1990 is interesting, though not necessarily symptomatic. LK Advani?s rath yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh came in the immediate aftermath of widespread and violent upper caste agitations across north India against the affirmative action principles in favour of backward castes, adopted at the national level by the United Front in New Delhi. These agitations had intensified socio-economic conflict between upper and lower castes at a time when the plural constituency of a potential Hindutva was being assembled through the politicisation of Hindu symbols and myths. This was the period when imagined grievances, culled from an imagined history, were being assiduously broadcast, accompanied by the shrill denigration of parties which allegedly indulged Muslim treachery. The rath yatra did manage to rally large numbers, particularly from the lower castes, and the arrest of Advani en route to Ayodhya provoked riots in many states, including Gujarat.

Gujarat again witnessed riots in 1992 when the disputed Babri Masjid at Ayodhya was razed to the ground a few hours after kar sevaks stormed the monument. Surat experienced intermittent disturbances over a six-month period. In 1993, more riots followed, after the blasts in Bombay, allegedly masterminded by the Muslim underworld. Perhaps these riots were attempts at forging a Hindu unity that, on the face of it, seemed impossible. Whatever the intention, there is no denying that the rath yatra precipitated a political crisis in which the existing intra- and inter-party equations began to break down. And, there is no getting away from the fact that, though not uniformly successful across India, the BJP from the 1991 general elections has secured more than 50 percent of the votes cast in the state. Remarkably, for three years following its assumption of office in Gujarat in 1995, the state was free from communal riots. The BJP was clearly living up to its boast of ensuring a riot-free administration, prompting critics to cite this as proof of the party?s monopoly of organised public violence. At any rate, this peaceful interim was part of the established pattern of violence erupting and subsiding according to the clearly discernable designs of politics. The inference, therefore, that violence had become a crucial raw material of electoral politics controlled by a cartel is unavoidable.

New tribe of kar sevaks

The brief interlude of social peace came to an end in 1998, with the attacks on Christian missionaries and establishments in the Dangs, a forested tribal belt on the southern edge of Gujarat bordering Maharashtra. This was a new theatre of conflict in terms of both the region and community involved. This was the first instance of organised violence after the BJP came to power and the context once again is instructive. Cracks had developed in the carefully crafted socio-economic balance in the BJP soon after it came to power in the state. Hindutva once again confronted a crisis of caste. An influential segment of backward castes in the BJP legislature party had revolted against its upper caste leadership, on the lines of what was subsequently to happen in the Uttar Pradesh unit too. Social engineering had failed in the face of an old caste conflict and a substitute social group had to be found to take the place of the departing backward castes. Tribals make up 14 percent of the states population. Christians, who are largely concentrated in the tribal districts, add up to less than 1 percent of Gujarat?s population. Even in the Dangs, they do not exceed 5 percent.

On the night of 25 December, under the auspices of an RSS front organisation called the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM), churches, educational institutions and houses were attacked in Ahwa, Subir, Jamlapada, Gadvi, Divan Temrun, Madagkhadi and Padalkhadi. Over the next four days attacks spread to other tribal areas in Bharuch, Surat and Vyara districts of south Gujarat. This orchestration of violence by the HJM had been preceded by a decade-and-a-half of patient mobilisation by another RSS front organisation, the Samajik Samrasta Manch, founded in 1983 to assimilate those segments of society marginalised by Brahmanic Hinduism. Whatever else the RSS fronts have been doing, it is clear that within four years of those attacks, tribals from both north and south Gujarat have been recruited in large numbers as kar sevaks for both the construction of the Ram temple and the destruction of the Muslim community.

The similarities between the broad context of the riots is striking. Any crisis internal to Hindutva inevitably leads to violence against well-defined ?enemies?. If the 1998 violence was necessitated by the social crisis of Gujarati Hindutva, the present and continuing violence comes on the heels of a comprehensive political rout of the BJP across several states in India. Gujarat is its last bastion, and reports and analysis in the media indicated that defeat stared the party in the forthcoming elections in the state. The prominence of tribal participation is the common element between 1998 and the ongoing violence. Perhaps, in the social engineering calculus of the RSS, a fresh massacre of the old enemy by new recruits will add to the prowess of Hindutva, enrich its folklore, expand its social base and thereby forestall a defeat in the nursery of its politics. A tribal population of 14 percent is electorally significant enough to justify the slaughter of several hundred Muslims.

Secularism and silence

Clearly then, from the mid-1980s political violence in Gujarat had become more organised and more numer-ous, had increasingly begun to manufacture its own provocations, and was directed at minorities, particularly Muslims. This last development coincided with the BJP?s Hindutva agendas in a period when the party was systematically cultivating overarching Hindu nationalist sentiments. In 1985, the Congress party was at the peak of its electoral strength, enjoying the support of 55 percent of the electorate. By the 1991 general elections, the BJP had secured 55 percent of the vote and in 1995 rode to power in the state with an overwhelming majority. In this violent ten-year period the Congress Party, which ruled the state for most of the past four decades, had crumbled and out of the ruins of the existing polity the BJP had emerged triumphant.

There seems to be a prima facie correlation between the violent politics of the state and the BJP?s rise to power. Numerous studies, by the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, by the sociologist Ghanshyam Shah, the historian Jan Breman, the political scientist Atul Kohli and many others, have chronicled some of the micro-level processes in the party?s rise to power. But there has not been any real synthesis of explanation, based on these studies, that describes the precise mechanics at a state-wide level. Perhaps, that exercise is precluded by a lack of uniformity, and even an organic unity, in the strategies of the RSS and its offspring. The intricacies of refabricating a complex socio-economic demography may well require multiple, even mutually contradictory, local strategies within an overall climate of communal strife.

But even if there are not too many identifiable and overt statewide strategies, barring of course the assault on minorities, the BJP?s success has been statewide and not all of it can be attributed to just the ingenuity of the party?s political techniques. After all, identical experiments by the BJP in other states have not fetched the same dividends. It would seem therefore that conditions specific to Gujarat?s history, society and politics have facilitated the cultivation of Hindutva politics. These specific circumstances may help penetrate the air of inscrutability that surrounds the BJP?s covert strategies and successes, if only by questioning many well-meaning but untenable secular-ist assumptions about Gujarat and the riots, which actually impede an understanding of Hindutva?s politics in the state.

In the secular intelligentsia?s description of the gory events of the last two months, communal violence is the handiwork of a violent minority of fundamentalists. In this view, the secular majority is silent and can only watch helplessly as the state administration actively abets the Hindutva lumpens. This is not an entirely accurate description of the reality. True, there are many who have actually gone to the aid of the victims and prevented more unspeakable brutalities than have been committed. It is also true that there are many localities where irreproachable community relations, fostered by shared concerns of a more fundamental and material variety, have ensured that provocateurs have been unable to incite murderous passions. But it is equally true that there are many others who silently approve of the carnage. The violent minority and silent majority of Gujarat do not constitute separate and distinct social fragments. The silence of a sizeable part of the silent majority is not the speechless shock of numbed bystanders. It is the conspiratorial silence of willing spectators, remote witnesses to a Roman holiday, whose public silence is a private roar of approval that is clearly audible to the architects of the violence. There are those who cannot speak and those who will not speak.

How else are we to explain the seeming paradoxes of the riots in Ahmedabad? We have seen educated girls and boys from middle and upper middle class families who do not actually participate in the killings but follow in the wake to loot Muslim establishments. We have seen couples on two wheelers bring home consumer durables scavenged from the debris of retail outlets. The cell-phone wielding rioters are not isolated elements who have taken control in a social vacuum. They roam about so brazenly because they know they have a silent social mandate. This is the clear conspiracy of silence among many of the so-called silent majority and it has many manifestations ? the son of a bureaucrat who gets away with murder, a government official who demands bribe, the worker who looks at unions as an instrument of personal gain, the trader who cheats at one go the marginal producer and the small consumer. We have seen the faces of this silent majority at various places. Sometimes they are at a safe distance behind the rioting mob, sometimes they are in the air-conditioned cabins of newspaper offices. They are always there where it matters and they are always silent when it matters. We have seen them outside Gujarat too, in 1984 in Delhi when Sikhs were being butchered, in the 1992 Bombay riots, in the Dangs, in Orissa, in Madhya Pradesh, in Uttar Pradesh and many other places too numerous to be listed. And now we are told that the VHP in Ahmedabad has a team of 50 lawyers who will, without payment, legally defend the Hindutva rioters. Secular optimism should not blind us to the reality of communalism?s expanded social base.

Anatomy of a Hindu state

Gujarat is a visibly Hinduised state today, and not just because of the 55 percent that voted the BJP. Even if that 55 percent were to vote in other ways, the ideology of Hindutva that has sunk roots will continue to pervade society. What this means in effect is that even if the Congress were to return to power, it will have to mould itself more openly to the agendas of Hindu politics. In fact, it is more than likely that the state Congress unit has itself already been Hinduised. Reportedly, Congress-run municipalities have extended infrastruc-tural and other assistance to the rioters, particularly in destroying evidence of demolitions. Even casual observers of politics have noted that the Gujarat Congress has been less than tepid in its response to the riots, being more keen to defend Sonia Gandhi?s credentials than to protect Muslim lives. The state administration has been so extensively contaminated that even if a Congress government were to allow some residual secular instinct to surface, it is unlikely to get much support from the bureaucracy. This is the most impressive achievement of fundamentalist politics ? that it has recast even the opposition in its own image.

Some traces of how a caste-divided state can achieve an overarching Hindu unity, even if only briefly and at extraordinary moments of stress, are to be found in aspects of the state?s social, political and demographic history. Gujarat came into existence in 1960 after the States Reorganisation Act of 1957, which carved out states on a linguistic basis. Two broad regions ? mainland and peninsular Gujarat ? make up the territory of the state. Peninsular Gujarat consists of Kutch and Kathiawad, now known as Saurashtra. Prior to Indian independence, numerous kingdoms, principalities, and jagirs dotted the territorial landscape of present-day Gujarat. Saurashtra alone had 499 political units. Kutch was a princely state while parts of mainland Gujarat were directly administered British territory incorporated into the Bombay Presidency. In 1948, all these units were consolidated and Kutch, Saurashtra and the mainland were added to Bombay state in 1956, where they stayed until 1960 when, through linguistic division, the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were created.

This territorial consolidation gave the future politics of Gujarat several institutions, forms, values and characteristics that made it easier for Hindutva to take hold. Among the more useful heritages was the myth of the Somnath Temple. The temple complex is located in the port town of Veraval on the southern coast of Saurashtra just a little below Porbandar, were Gandhi was born. The myth of Somnath left Gandhi untouched. But it excited many others who formed the cream of the Congress leadership in Gujarat, mainly because in AD 1026, Mahmud of Ghazni (in Afghanistan) raided the temple of Somnath and broke the idol. The temple was situated inside a fortress in which wealth accumulated from the brisk maritime trade of ancient and medieval Saurashtra was stored. Before Mahmud?s raid, this amassed wealth had attracted the notice of many other rulers, some of whom, like the Chudasama, Ahiras and Yadhavas, had attempted to make off with it. But the attack of the Mahmud from Ghazni has been singled out for special attention and presented as proof of Muslim insolence.

Eminent historians like Romila Thapar have argued very eloquently against simplified narratives of the Somnath raid. But the matter long ago passed from the hands of professional historians and into the arsenal of practised politicians such as Rajendra Prasad, the president of India in the 1950s, Vallabhai Patel, the first union home minister, and KM Munshi, a senior minister in successive union cabinets. Among the Congress leadership, Somnath was a Gujarati preoccupation. It was only the objections of Jawaharlal Nehru and some of his secular colleagues that prevented the repair of the temple under state auspices, but that did not stop the president of India from participating in the ceremonies of the privately funded restoration.

Somnath was the Gujarat Congress Party?s gift to Hindutva and is an early example of the politicisation of temple related trauma. Such is the pedigree of the Somnath myth, and the extent of its popularity in Gujarat, that it was absorbed and given prominence in the politics of the Ayodhya myth. Thus it was that the rath yatra that symbolised the spiritual conquest of India by vaishnavite Hinduism began its journey from this shaivite monument.

Shackles of faith and caste

The appeal of such religious themes is not difficult to understand in a society permeated with strong orthodox vaishnavite traditions. The absence of a serious bhakti movement in Gujarat?s history is perhaps a reflection of and reason for this potent institutional vaishnavism. Mythological religiosity has been an integral part of Gujarat society and continues to be fostered by bardic performances. Kathakars, who recite stories from the Ramayan, have an important role in collective social life and in recent years have been active in the BJP?s political cause. According to Ghanshyam Shah, in the 1991 elections kathakars like Morari Bapu were involved in the party?s campaign and ?attracted a cross-section of society both in urban and rural areas?.

Mass politics right from the Gandhian phase has been unable or unwilling to break the shackles of this public religiosity. In fact, as the historian David Hardiman points out, Gandhi and his followers were themselves not above using the idioms of caste and religion in political mobilisation. As early as 1920, Gandhi was to appeal to fellow members of his bania caste to, as good ?vaishnavites?, abstain from courts and schools run by the British government, whose rule he likened to ravanraj. Patel, likewise, played on caste traditions, and laid stress on themes like kshatriya martial virtues. It is not surprising at all that Gandhi should have harped on ramrajya as a political ideal. Vaishnav, kshatriya, ravanraj, ramrajya, all popular currency in the BJP?s rhetoric, have a long and respectable history in the mass politics of Gujarat. The state did not really witness the emergence of a politics that seriously tried to purge the public arena of its religious inflections.

As is to be expected, orthodox faith and values were nurtured within the bounds of an entrenched caste system. The mass politics that emerged in Gujarat could not escape the dynamics of caste and so chose by and large to be confined within it. Although caste divisions did not fully coincide with class divisions in the state, socio-economic power was predominantly in the hands of a few castes, i.e. patidars, brahmins and baniyas ? and to a much lesser extent the kshatriyas. Caste associations, some of them active in party politics, are a common feature of Gujarat?s public life. They include the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabha and the Gujarat Kshatriya Sangh, the Patidar Yuvak Mandal, the Khedut Sangh and the Khedut Samaj, which are basically patidar organi-sations, the Prajapati Mandal and numerous others. These caste associations, besides undertaking welfare measures, function also as lobby groups seeking to influence politics in addition to manoeuvring for control of resources. Of these organised castes, the most powerful are the patidars, who in much of the state practically control the rural economy. Brahmins and baniyas, though insignificant as a proportion of the population, are economically and politically powerful by virtue of their dominance in professional services, industry and trade.

The politics of Gujarat has been based on the alliance between castes. The Congress party?s near monopoly of power was based on a patidar-brahmin-baniya leadership that brought together under a broad umbrella the dalit, tribal and Muslim electorate. The weak opposition in the state in the early period, the Swatantra Party, was primarily a kshatriya enterprise, allied to the leadership of dissenting patidar groups. Through the 1960s, the state legislature was dominated by a highly organised Congress party well-versed in the practice of an accommodative politics that did not fundamentally affect the socio-economic structure. As an efficient organisation that functioned both as a civic institution and a political machine, it perfected the technique of herding a large electoral constituency without altering the overall status quo. The patidars, brahmins and baniyas continued to dominate the economy while the dalits, tribals and Muslims continued to vote the Congress.

The moment of accommodation

In 1969, by the time the Swatantra Party was beginning to make inroads into the state legislature, the Indian National Congress experienced a nationwide split. The two groups that emerged were the Congress (Organisation), which inherited the party?s organisation, and Congress (Requisition), which had Indira Gandhi and a large part of the influential ?left-lean-ing? leadership of the parent party. A new political alli-ance slowly emerged, with the Swatantra Party and the Congress (O), both with orthodox social and economic programmes, align-ing with the Jan Sangh, which had no real policy to offer other than Hindu Rashtra. The split in the Congress is that moment when the public accommodation of Hindutva politics by the larger polity begins. The existing caste-political equations also began to break down. The two numeri-cally significant castes that were politically influential, the patidars and the kshatriyas became internally divided along political lines.

Over time, both the Swatantra Party and the Congress (O) disappeared, having merged, along with the Jan Sangh, into the Janata Party during the period of unstable politics that followed the split in the Congress. With the political opposition uniting against it and itself lacking any real organisation to combat the trend, the Congress, under Indira Gandhi, adopted a populist economic and political course. While that helped secure a wide base for the party at the electoral level, the lack of an organisation meant that the Congress was unable to deal with the growing forms of extra-parliamentary agitations that commenced with the Nav Nirman Movement of 1974. That movement unseated the Congress government and brought the combined opposition, including the Jan Sangh, to power. Hindu politics had tasted office for the first time in the country in the company of like-minded organisations.

The Congress returned to power after the Emergency of Indira Gandhi, once again without any real organisational structure, but with an infusion of new lumpen cadres. The caste-leadership of the post-Emergency Congress changed hands as the kshatriyas became more dominant. A peculiar aspect of kshatriya politics in Gujarat is that in the course of political mobilisation it redefined itself to include a large backward caste component, notably the kolis. This was to be of some significance in the nature of Congress politics, which in turn influenced to some extent the rise of Hindu politics. By the 1980s the Congress social alliance was based on what has come to be called the KHAM formula, ie an alliance of kshatriyas, harijans (dalits), adivasis (tribals) and Muslims. (see page 24) Through the period that the Congress held power this was the combination that gave Gujarat its gov-ernments. And through the period that these gov-ernments were in power the patidars, baniyas and brahmins continued to control the economy and some crucial nodes of the public sphere, such as the various levels of the state administration. And when the Congress, as part of its ?welfare populism? went through the motions of announ-cing measures that would benefit its socially and economically mar-ginalised constituency, the real managers of the economy and the public arena drifted towards an opposition that was gradually being dominated by

the BJP.

This was the period that the agitational politics mounted by social groups increasingly backed by the BJP, left the Congress governments in a state of political crisis. Organisational weakness obstructed substantive civic response on the part of the Congress to these agitations against benefits directed towards backward castes. As a consequence, the government simply retracted its policy measures. Welfare populism antagonised the elite. Its retraction and failure disillusioned the dispossessed. The Congress could not herd its own constituency. That constituency was now available to be politically recruited, at a time when the flavour of Hindutva was being systematically imparted to the society and polity by the hydra-headed Sangh Parivar, through its numerous organisations.

The Gujarat polity had been in an organisational vacuum from the time of the Congress split till the rise of the BJP. The seeming stability of Gujarati politics was to a large measure based on a stable sub-stratum of caste networks. That stable network which enabled the Congress Party to recruit its caste base also enabled the BJP to recruit its constituency. Welfare populism had given way to spiritual populism, the crucial difference being the latter?s level of organisational capacity. The BJP, through the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, had created a dense complex of agitprop organisations that could engage in sectional caste-specific propoganda and simultaneously season it with the larger Hindutva ideology of the caste-Hindu leadership of the RSS and the BJP. The process by which a tribal population of 14 percent is conscripted into Hindutva?s ranks also renders an 8 percent Muslim population completely dis-pensable to an electoral politics many of whose rules have been redrafted by a vaishnavite orthodoxy. When reluctant Hindus become majoritarian enthusiasts, minorities too large to be ignored and too small to make a difference have no place under the protective umbrella of competitive politics.

In the 50 years after Indian independence, Gujarat has been transformed. It has been the laboratory of Gandhian politics, of civic institutions, the cooperative movement and the Hindutva campaign. It has become more urbanised, more industrial, has seen more social mobil-ity, and become more prosperous. It has also seen the re-emergence of an organised mass politics. The earlier phase of that organised politics, under the Congress, consciously divided the polity of the state along caste lines. The second phase, under the BJP, consciously divided the polity along communal lines. A state predominantly of Hindus had become a state predominantly of Hindutva. In 50 years a ?Hindu unity? had been engineered in a caste-divided state, and Muslim life had become as dispensable as the Muslim vote. The map of Gujarat in 1947 and the map in 1991 tell a chilling story. The price, paid and yet to be paid, cannot be counted.

Just wanted to outline the state of humanity in our beloved subcontinent!!!

MUSLIM WOMEN BRUTALIZED IN INDIA`S GUJARAT - REPORT

By Sugita Katyal, Reuters, 4/18/2002

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The day after 59 people were burnt alive in a train

in India`s western state of Gujarat last month, a screaming mob chased

Sultani Sheikh and her family with sticks, swords and cans of kerosene in

their hands.

``My clothes were stripped and I was left stark naked. One by one the men

raped me,`` Sultani, a Muslim woman from Delol village told a panel

examining the impact on Muslim women of the country`s worst religious

bloodshed in a decade.

``I lost count after three,`` a report by the panel quotes her as saying.

``All the while I could hear my son crying.``

According to the report by a coalition of women`s groups, many Muslim

females suffered the most ``bestial forms of sexual violence`` including

rape, insertion of objects into their bodies and burning in the violence.

More than 750 people, most of them belonging to India`s minority Muslim

population, have died in a wave of reprisal killings and communal clashes

in Gujarat since a Muslim mob torched the train carrying Hindu activists in

Godhra.

The six-member team of women`s activists spoke to hundreds of witnesses and

survivors of the religious mayhem to prepare the report, entitled ``How has

the Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women: The Survivors Speak.``

``Many of the women who were raped were then burnt to death,`` Malini Ghose,

a member of the team, told Reuters on Thursday.

But survivors and witnesses had horrific tales to tell the panel.

Saira Banu, living in a refugee camp in Ahmedabad, Gujarat`s main city

which bore the brunt of the violence, says a group of men cut open her

nine-month pregnant relative`s stomach, took out her fetus with a sword and

threw it into a blazing fire.

Medina Mustafa Sheikh, another refugee in an Ahmedabad camp, says she heard

her young daughter screaming for help as a group of men raped her in a

maize field where her family had hidden to escape a bloodthirsty mob of 500

people.

``My daughter was screaming in pain asking the men to leave her alone. My

mind was seething with fear and fury. I could do nothing to help my

daughter from being assaulted sexually and tortured to death,`` Medina told

the women`s panel.

``My daughter was like a flower, still to see life...the monsters tore my

beloved daughter to pieces,`` she said.

Activists working at a relief camp in Ahmedabad said many women arrived

naked at the camp.

One woman was brought to the camp unconscious, bleeding profusely, her body

covered with bites and marks and relief workers dressing her wounds said

they had to removed pieces of wood that had been pushed up her vagina...

Top Biography Website

Recommended by USA Today

http://www.Top-Biography.com

serves up a compelling smorgasbord of life stories, offering extensive studies on everyone from Napoleon to Bill Gates, all with eye-catching art, chronologies, quotations, screensavers and more.

SPEAKING TREE

Dharma was Killed In Gujarat

K N Subramanyan

[ THURSDAY, APRIL 04, 2002 1:45:44 AM ]



hough the term Hindu is not of indigenous origin, I am proud to consider myself a Hindu. That pride has been deeply hurt by what others using that label have done in Gujarat.

What they did was typically un-Hindu, even anti-Hindu. What distinguishes the Hindu culture, philosophy and outlook on life from all other religions, faiths and civilisational traditions? In Hinduism alone you are able to say ‘‘Brahmasmi’’ (I am God) and to your neighbour, ‘‘Tattvamasi’’ (You are the truth).

How can people who stabbed, burnt and killed their neighbours call themselves Hindus? Alienated from the Hindu tradition and rejecting its finest thoughts, harbouring a deep sense of inferiority towards the semitic religions, attempting to imitate and organise themselves on dogmatic structures, giving up the free and inquiring ways of Hindu philosophy and thought, these detractors have launched a campaign to destroy the spirit of the Hindu way of life.

These anti-Hindus call themselves Hindus but in spirit and thought they belong to the dogmas of the dark ages.

Hindu tradition is based not on acceptance of particular gods, dogmas, revelations and religious structures but on reverence for Dharma which is the rule of law and the ethics of the age. In the Hindu way of life there are no God- or Prophet-given laws. Dharma is not immutable but is liable to change to be in consonance with changing times — hence, the concept of yuga dharma.

Today’s ethics, formulated by the constitution, is secularism — that is the yuga dharma. Violators of it cannot be considered Hindus; they can only be looked upon as enemies of the Hindu way of life.

The true Hindu way of life is in danger today but not from those who follow other religions. It is threatened by those who want to imitate others and abandon its essence, because they have misinterpreted it through the prism of dogmatic faiths.

For those who assert ‘‘Brahmasmi’’ and ‘‘Tattvamasi’’, it does not matter if the temple at the birthplace of Rama comes up a few years or a few decades later, if it comes up at all.

Why is Rama the most popular of all the nine avatars? Because he was a Maryada Purusha, who practised Eka Patni Vrata, gave Ram Rajya (good governance) and defended Dharma (rule of law). Rama cannot be venerated by those who transgress Dharma by killing innocents.

A way of life which highlights the birth and death cycle, allows one the freedom to worship God in any form or not to worship at all, proclaims the cosmic universality with its Advaita cannot be reconciled with the killing of innocents.

Dharma was killed in Gujarat.

The rulers who failed to protect the innocent citizens are guilty of adharma and if Rama had been alive he would have used his ‘Gandiva’ against the ‘asura’ rulers of Gujarat.

The Hindu way of life will survive because it is the natural, free, inquiring way. The reverence for life, which is the essence of birth and death cycle, the worship of Ishta devatas and the ability to see God in all things living and non- living has to be restored.

The temptation to imitate others by trying to straitjacket the free Hindu way of life into structural frameworks must be resisted. Dharma — the rule of law — must be restored. Ram Rajya — good governance — should be established and nourished.

The Hindu way of life is not the same as accepting an organised religion. Therefore, this way of life can be propagated, cherished and practised without having to come into conflict with other religions. Comparing the Hindu way of life with other religions is like comparing apples and oranges.

The Hindu way of life is the essence of secularism. Its thought processes and philosophical reflections are meant to be observed privately; in public,Dharma, the rule of law, has to be respected.

Rsecently the prime minister referred to two kinds of Hinduism — one of Vivekananda and the other of the self-styled ‘‘Hindu’’ extremists. The latter is in the same class as the extremist clergy of religions. There is no difference between those Hindu extremists and the fundamentalist clergy of semitic religions. Part of the problem has been that the Hindu way of life has not been explained to our children as a secular way of life and that it is not the practising of a religion as understood elsewhere in the world.

India`s national shame continues:

Five burnt to death in Ahmedabad

http://headlines.sify.com/773news3.html

Rediff.com april 2, 2002

``A resident of Cambay squarely laid the blame for

riots in his ancient city on gambling syndicates. He

told rediff.com, ``Some businessmen in my circle

had offered us a bet before Holi [March 29] on the

possibility of riots in Cambay. These satodias

(betting syndicates) were offering us odds of

1:1.5.`` Thus, if you bet Rs 10 on riots breaking out

on a stipulated day, you stood to get back Rs 15.`` <

BR>



JinheN naaz hai Hind per voh kahan haiN?
<

p>

Dost, for your reading pleasure:

An inequitous proposal

A proposed Bill on the removal of ceiling on

monthly maintenance payable to wives and other

dependents as laid down in Section 125 of the

CrPC leaves Muslim women out of its purview. <

BR>

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI in New Delhi

IN a move that could benefit women faced with the

prospect of divorce and possible destitution, the

Union Law Ministry has decided to introduce a Bill

that would seek to amend Section 125 of the Code

of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The amendment

would remove the existing ceiling of Rs.500 on the

monthly maintenance payable for such women,

and for dependents such as parents and children.

The ceiling was fixed in 1955 and retained in

CrPC, 1973. The amendment would also seek to

expedite the grant of interim maintenance.

An increase in maintenance has been a long-

standing demand of women`s movements and

was articulated as early as in 1974 - in the

Committee on the Status of Women in India report.

The CSWI report, ``Towards Equality``, stated: ``The

inclusion of the right to maintenance in the

Criminal Procedure Code has the great advantage

of making the remedy both speedy and cheap. The

underlying principle is to prevent vagrancy, which

usually leads to commission of crimes. From this

point of view, it seems unjustified to limit the total

amount of maintenance for all dependent persons

to Rs.500.``

Amendments to provisions in four acts, namely,

Section 36 of the Indian Divorce Act, 1869, Section

24 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and Section 39

of the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act 1936 and

Section 39 of the Special Marriages Act, will be

made so that applications to the court for interim

maintenance are disposed of within 60 days of

their filing.

However, once again there is silence on the issue

of payment of maintenance to Muslim women. The

Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce)

Act, 1986 that became law in the wake of the Shah

Bano judgment, had stirred a debate over its

adequacy with regard to payment of maintenance

for Muslim women. The Supreme Court in Mohd

Ahmad Khan v Shah Bano Begam and others held

that if a divorced woman is able to maintain

herself, the husband`s liability ceases with the

expiry of the period of iddat (three menstrual

courses after the date of divoce, that is, roughly

three months), but if she is unable to maintain

herself after the period, she is entitled to have

recourse to Section 125 CrPC. This decision led to

a controversy and in order to dilute the judgment in

the Shah Bano case, the Muslim Women`s Bill,

later to become the Muslim Women (Protection of

Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, was passed.

Women`s organisations are critical of the Act. They

are opposed to it primarily because it denies

Muslim women the option of exercising their rights

under the provisions of secular legislation, which

the CrPC is.

Women`s groups and secular-minded people

hold the view that it is unfair to continue to deprive

Muslim women the benefits of the secular

provisions of the Acts. The first time around, the

Muslim Women`s Act had deprived Muslim

women, on grounds of religion, of the rights under

Section 125 CrPC. The Act was seen as violative of

the principle of equality before law. According to

``Judgment Call``, a document published by Majlis,

a legal advocacy centre based in Mumbai, the Act

provided two sets of remedies depending upon

the jurisdiction of the High Court. While in some

States she was entitled to a fair and reasonable

provision, in addition to maintenance during the

iddat period, in others her right to maintenance

was confined to the iddat period. The 1986 Act has

been challenged in the Supreme Court. The All

India Muslim Personal Law Board (AMPLB) has,

however, defended it.

Given the circumstances under which the Act

came into being and the mixed support it received

from members of the Muslim community as well

as organisations of women and advocacy groups,

it was evident that the issue would be resurrected.

In fact the debate over a uniform civil code, reforms

in personal laws and the applicability of secular

legislation to everybody never really died down.

When minority politics and issues took firm shape

in the 1990s following the demolition of the Babri

Masjid, the issue of providing for fair maintenance

to divorced Muslim women was put on the

backburner.

The Centre for Women`s Develop-ment Studies

(CWSD), while welcoming the removal of the

ceiling on maintenance and other legal reforms,

regretted the continued exclusion of Muslim

women from ``benefits under a law that they had

enjoyed since 1898, particularly when these

amendments are contemplated to be extended to

the Hindu, Parsi, Indian Divorce and Special

Marriages Acts.`` The Joint Women`s Programme

(JWP) and the Muslim Women`s Forum wanted the

benefits to be extended to Muslim women. JWP

secretary Jyotsana Chat-terjee said that the

organisation would make a representation to the

Law Minister on this issue. The All India

Democratic Women`s Association has held that

while the space for secular legislation should be

expanded, existing personal laws should undergo

reforms so as to become more gender- just. Indu

Agnihotri of AIDWA recalled that a private

member`s bill in the Lok Sabha, moved some

years ago by Sushila Gopalan of the Communist

Party of India (Marxist), had sought the removal of

the ceiling on maintenance.

AIDWA in a statement welcomed the Law

Ministry`s initiative and suggested that the law be

strengthened by providing that, in the event of

conflicting claims about a husband`s income, the

wife`s statement should be accepted and the onus

would be on the husband to disprove it. It

suggested changes in the disqualifying norms for

receiving maintenance.

Regretting the exclusion of Muslim women from

the purview of the proposed amendments, Sona

Khan, a Supreme Court advocate, questioned the

constitutionality of the 1986 Act. One of the

advocates who appeared in the Shah Bano case,

she told Frontline that the denial to Muslim women

of benefits available to other divorced women

under secular provisions was discriminatory. She

maintained that Section 127 (3) (b) CrPC ensured

that if a woman received any relief after divorce,

under any customary or personal law, ``she shall

not be entitled to the benefit of seeking

maintenance under Section 125.`` Khan claimed

that the dower or mehr (a consideration for

entering into the contract of marriage and payable

by the husband) that the Muslim woman had a

right to receive either at the time of marriage or

anytime later, has been unfairly equated with the

right to maintenance under Section 125. The Shah

Bano judgment had interpreted and justified the

secular provisions by using the provisions under

personal and customary law, and according to

Khan the judgment is law even today as it has not

been overruled by the Supreme Court. Even the

dower, Khan held, was most of the time waived by

the wife on the first night of marriage.

DEFENDING the Muslim Women`s Act, 1986 is

the AIMPLB. Hasina Hashia, member of the

AIMPLB and an associate professor in Jamia Millia

Islamia university, is categorical that Muslim

women are not entitled to maintenance beyond the

iddat period and that Section 125 CrPC cannot

apply to them. Section 5 of the 1986 Act lays down

that only if the divorced woman and her former

husband exercise their option to be governed by

Sections 125 to 128 of the CrPC will their case be

considered under it.

Hashia told Frontline that accepting maintenance

beyond the iddat period was haraam (illegitimate)

under the Shariat as all relationship between a

man and his wife would have ceased. After that

she could be supported either by her relatives or

the Wakf Board. She said that the AIMPLB was

demanding a lower ceiling for maintenance for

Muslim women and that if a lump sum could be

decided depending upon the income of the man, it

would not go beyond the tenets of Muslim

personal law. The concept of Mata (a parting gift to

serve a social purpose) as espoused by some

sections of the Muslim intelligentsia could be

explored. The Board is yet to have a final opinion

on this concept, which finds mention in the Koran.



All solutions, Hashia maintained, are to be found

within the parameters of the Shariat. She

recommended the setting up of Dar-ul-Qaza or

Islamic courts to resolve disputes of all kinds. <

BR>

Sabiha Hussain of the CWDS, who has done a

considerable amount of work relating to issues of

Muslim women, said frivolous excuses were often

given for divorcing Muslim women. She quoted a

study conducted during 1998-99 involving 10

Muslim women

from a mixed socio-economic background in

Bihar. Some had been divorced for not cooking

what they had been asked to cook, yet others were

divorced for not possessing good looks and so on.

Some of them did not get maintenance even for

the iddat period and at the time of divorce, no

witnesses were present. Only two got back their

mehr after three months of the divorce.

A seminar in May organised by the CWDS and the

Majlis on the issue of maintenance rights of

Muslim women debated the provisions of the

Muslim Women`s Act, 1986 vis-a-vis benefits

under Section 125 CrPC. While some like Flavia

Agnes of the Majlis felt that a fresh look at the Act

was necessary, others felt that the Act needed to

be interpreted in such a way as to make it more

gender-just given the Indian social realities. The

seminar, which witnessed divergent views, finally

recommended that personal laws of all

communities be strengthened in order to make

them more gender-just and to weed out gender

discrimination; that the Muslim

Women`s Act, 1986 be strengthened to uphold

positive and gender-just interpretations and that

the ceiling on the amount of maintenance payable

under Section 125 CrPC be removed.

The issue of maintenance for Muslim women has

to go beyond any political considerations and it is

the executive`s responsibility to ensure that no

community is discriminated against in the

formulation of a legislation. The silence on the

issue of Section 125 CrPC vis-a-vis Muslim

women`s maintenance points to the fact that

considerations other than respecting the personal

laws of a community have been at play. It reflects

the government reluctance to open what it sees as

a veritable Pandora`s box. What is surprising is

that it does not seem to care much about the

sentiments of the minorities while dealing with

other issues concerning them.

re: rsridar

{{Agreed. ABV either has to reassert himself or

leave BJP and join secular forces to fight the

fundamentalism overtaking the country. He is the

right man in a wrong party. The nation needs him

not his party.}}

the nation does not need ABV...the nation needs

someone with a lot more charisma, and the ability

and energy to get things done...a well-educated

businessman/businesswoman, or an intellectually

gifted professor, etc. ... we need someone with a

high IQ and charisma to save the country....ABV is

not that person....

National Human Rights Commission of India, Recommendations on Gujarat Report

http://www.nhrc.nic.in/whatsnew.htm#gr

re:Reply #: 389

sadna,

Agreed. ABV either has to reassert himself or leave BJP and join secular forces to fight the fundamentalism overtaking the country. He is the right man in a wrong party. The nation needs him not his party.

Sridhar

Dost-Mittar:

I was able to dig the following up:

Rajiv`s govt. passed the `The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 that became law in the wake of the Shah Bano judgment`

Details are at http://www.flonnet.com/fl1814/18140890.htm

Human Rights Panel Slams Gujarat Over Riots

http://in.news.yahoo.com/020401/64/1k8nv.html

Re: dost-mittar

I do not remember the legislative acrobatics that Rajiv pulled in the Shah Bano case, and I had requested the Chowk community to perhaps dig up the details for our benefit.

#385 shammi

Excellent point. When even people like us who should know better are confused as to what happened when, the unlettered majority could easily be convinced that muslim vote bank and the trilateral commission run the country...

re: nag/shah/12-head

{So is Saddam great magician with T.V. & large banners worshiping him ..what you call that ?}

...fcuknut, why don`t you go to iraq and defend him?...

shammi #385:

``IMHO, the Shah Bano case did not result in any constitutional amendment. Rajiv`s government passed a law. Perhaps, someone on Chowk can give all the details.``

You are right. The law passed was the ironically named ``Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986``.

``In any case, constitutional amendments are easy when there is a single party rule (as was the case for the first 40 years after independence). Since the late 80s, amendments have become virtually impossible.``

In case you are still referring to Rajiv Gandhi`s govt in the late 80s, his govt of 1984-89 had the largest majority in India`s electoral history, mainly due to the sympathy vote after Indira Gandhi`s assassination. BJP, you may recall, won just two seats, with Vajpayee among the losers.

Only since early 90s have not only constitutional amendments become near impossible, but even passing of laws, as the govt of the day does not have majority in Rajya Sabha. POTA is a case in point which failed in RS. As did the move to dismiss Rabri Devi`s govt in Bihar which failed in RS too.

Reply Aakar:

Geez I can`t believe I typed ``Ramkrishna`` instead of Srikrishna... apne hee payr pe kulhaadi maar diyaa...now I will withdraw silently into a corner and crack Bong jokes with my fellow Mumbaikars.....

No seriosuly, thanks for your post. It`s nice when people you only know through newspaper columns become real :))

I`m too tired to go into the pro-thackeray anti-Thackeray thing again.... suffice to say I don`t ``admire`` theguy or his ideals OK?

Regds,

AB

re: semipreciousme # 391

``what more could you ask for?…``

Thoda sa taste, madam!

Is that too much to ask?

Re: dost-mittar

``...You are forgetting that the Congress was returned in 1984 with a massive majority...``

No, I am not. I was simply pointing out that Rajiv did not amend the Constitution, he simply passed a law. He also did not tamper with fundamental rights.

Dawood Ibrahim granted Pakistani citizenship



NEW DELHI: India can never hope to get Dawood Ibrahim back. Not anymore. For, even as India was making renewed requests to Pakistan (even using the US) to deport the 20 criminals, Dawood Ibrahim was granted Pakistani citizenship a month ago.

His aide, Chhota Shakeel, and Tiger Memon have also been granted citizenship by the Pakistani authorities. All the three figure on top of the ‘list of 20’ submitted by India, asking for their deportation from Pakistan.

This information has been received by Central intelligence agencies as well as the intelligence wing of the Mumbai Police, separately. After their reports were submitted to the home ministry, the MHA’s own team is further investigating the matter to double-check it. Latest reports say Dawood and Shakeel were spotted in Peshawar.

Before he became a Pakistani national, Dawood had been in possession of 10 passports. Eight of these were issued from Mumbai and two of the latest ones from Pakistan. His passport numbered ‘‘G-866537’’ was issued from Rawalpindi on 12.8.91, in the name of Shaikh Dawood Hassan.

He also possessed another one in his real name issued from Pakistan in 1992.

According to intelligence reports, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar’s new name as a Pakistani citizen is Iqbal Seth (alias Amir Saheb). Haji Mohammed is Chhota Shakeel’s new identity as a Pakistani national. And Tiger Memon is now known as Ahmed Jamail.

Dawood now holds a bank account in Karachi, in the name of Iqbal Seth. He is trying to shift all his movable property, spread over other cities in Pakistan, into this account in Karachi, the reports say.

An Intelligence Bureau (IB) report submitted to the government last week says, both Dawood and Chhota Shakeel have been recently allowed to take up residence in Islamabad by Pakistani authorities and have been allowed to call their assistants, Fahim and Nasser Charasi, to Islamabad. In fact, it is also learnt, that the two have been allowed access to satellite phones.

However, they can use the phones to call their associates in any other country but not in India.

Does India now have any hope of getting it’s most wanted back? Former additional solicitor general Abhishek Singhvi says, ‘‘Ultimately, extradition depends on the domestic legislation of the host/sending country. Some legislations have an exception in favour of domestic citizens whereby such citizens might not be extradited. In case there is no such bar, extradition is possible.’’

Eventually, he feels, ‘‘extradition depends not so much on a treaty or a statute, but on the vibes between the host country and the requesting country. Countries with not-so-good relations, inordinately prolong the extradition process despite a treaty. The only remedy in such cases can be international pressure,’’ he adds.

prem:

“But celery?! Is that thing edible?”

….edibleshedible aside, it’s very good for you…full of water and minerals and practically tasteless…what more could you ask for?…

Sadna, Rsridhar

I think that writing poems won`t cut it anymore. The country needs a businesslike response, not an emotive appeal.

rsridhar #387
‘I’m scared of the truth, friendless among my own’

This is Vajpayee in Nainital reciting his poem, live and on the record. Was it the Prime Minister or the poet?

http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020331/top4.html

Sharat Chandra, the Bengali writer had a great concept which his heroines used, in order to move the idiot passive males who were his `heros` from point a to another point b in the story.

The concept was `adhikaar`. Time for Prime Minister Vajpayee to be reminded by Indians of his `adhikaar`.

re: Reply #: 379

Prem,

Thanks for your post.

I am sorry. I just latched on to Nasah`s post. I find hindu fundamentalism as deplorable as Islamic one. However, i was compelled to answer Nasah`s post because he was factually incorrect (at least i believe so)when he says Buddhists in North were decimated by the Hindus.

That is not how the 2 religions reacted to one another. For a thousand years, India was mostly a Buddhist country (except pockets of Hinduism in deep South). Still, there was no persecution of Hindus by Buddhists and vice versa. Huns and later Arab invasion was responsible for decline of Buddhism in north. Hindu resurgence in South has much to do with Adi Shankara and other teachers. There is no evidence of any physical liquidation of Buddhists by Hindus. Buddha is worshipped as one of pantheon of Gods by Hindus. Buddha Purnima is celebrated as a national holiday in India.

I believe i had answered similar accusations by nasah in the past. What is it with some Pakistanis who want to believe that Buddhism could not have lost to the Vedic religion except by violence. There is something called assimilation, a trait most Islamists are not familiar with. Hinduism assimilated much of Buddhist thoughts. There was no need (or attempt) to physically liquidate the religion. Buddhism was not cosidered alien. There is a story of a Pandya king who was influenced by Buddhists but his wife was a Shaivite. She invites the young Shaivite devotee GyanaSambhandar who converts the king to his viewpoint. Debates between Hindus and Buddhists were common and each vied with one another for royal patronage. First Kushan king Kanisha was a buddhist but his son Vasudeva became a hindu. Until someone in chowk comes up with some substantive evidence that some hindu king did persecute buddhists for religious beliefs, i will hold on to my belief for the time being.

Sridhhar

re:Reply #: 378

tvarad,

The popular saying ``Nero fiddled while Rome was burning`` is apt for Mr Vajpayee, India`s P.M. He is penning poems while Gujarat and rest of the country is burning.

Gujarat seems to be a cursed place. First plague, then earthquake and now this riot. This, in the land of Gandhi. One would think that Gujaratis, who presumably know Gandhiji more than anyone else, would be more peaceloving than the rest of Indians. Not so. BJP and its cadres seem to have successfully sowed seeds of hatred in that area of the country. While the country is torn by religious hatred, our (literally)weak kneed P.M has done very little to punish perpetrators of the Godhra carnage. That present day nazi LKA is still at the helms. Nothing has changed as far as BJP is concerned while thousands of innocent people have been killed by their partymen in Gujarat. If this demon is not vanquished, it will torment India for years to come. Only the people can do this. I hope BJP is thrown into the dustbin of history where it rightfully belongs.

Sridhar

re: soysauce + msg

{{Hindu tolerance being legendary, there`s very little chance of it being questioned. We hindus need to ask ourselves if our tolerance is not just a myth.}}

hindu tolerance breaks down when confronted with in-your-face religions and people who put religion before nation....you are right, hindu religion does not tolerate that very well...

IMHO, the Shah Bano case did not result in any constitutional amendment. Rajiv`s government passed a law. Perhaps, someone on Chowk can give all the details.

In any case, constitutional amendments are easy when there is a single party rule (as was the case for the first 40 years after independence). Since the late 80s, amendments have become virtually impossible.

#373 ZAT

Hindu tolerance being legendary, there`s very little chance of it being questioned. We hindus need to ask ourselves if our tolerance is not just a myth.

The rest of your post went by me because i don`t understand gujarati. Sorry.

#368 nasah

Hasanji, i couldn`t tell you about hindus versus buddhists in n.india. The only redeeming feature of the event i cited is that it made it into a poem and is taught to students in TN.

Prem to rsridhar

``Did I read too much defensiveness in your reply to nasah?``

Good question, Prem miaN, good question:)

sridhar mian -- ``my`` religion is ``your`` religion -- not much different:)

(blowing off steam from another site)
Does anyone else notice the ironies related to the Shah Bano case?

The legislation passed to overturn the Shah Bano judgement is cited by Hindutva-votaries as assertion of `pseudo-` as opposed to `true` secularism saying `it made Hindus feel like second class citizens because Muslims get to have their own laws, etc`

The first irony is `Hindutva` has been cited as the remedy for `pseudo` secularism. Is Hindutva being touted as the true secularism, can a person like Ms Bhosle answer this?? If not why the negative term pseudo? And will the truly secular stand up and organise please??

The second irony is, first `second class citizen` Hindu men were able to act pseudo and pass a legislation to deny divorced Muslim women a decent maintanence from their husbands.

Then this legislation is used as excuse for some other `second class status` Hindu men to go around raping and murdering Muslim women in Gujarat. Other `second class status` educated Hindu men often enjoying the fruits their second class status bought them in Western countries, continue to defend these actions as `natural`.

And in the final cruel ironic twist, these men term Lord Ram the protector of the weak as their hero, while(I can bet) having no scruples demanding dowries from their own spouses or enjoying the benefit of civil laws which make it very difficult for their wives to divorce them without mutual consent. After all, do you see these men burning people for demanding dowry or for subscribing to the Hindu marriage law??

Proves that politics can be used as pretence to solve problems, a pretence which the criminally-credulous public accepts even though these problems are actually being blatantly aggravated.

re: Zafar Al-Talib # 373

Brilliant. It is critically important that two things happen simultaneously: (1) people communicate honestly, and (2) nobody is made to feel they have to carry the entire burden for tackling any issue. Else, communication breaks down. Everyone suffers.

re: sridhar # 337

Did I read too much defensiveness in your reply to nasah? After all, nasah has never defended, let alone promoted, any kind of violence.

Sure, you may wish to counter soy`s assertions, or question their relevance, but why adopt an accusatory tone against nasah of all people?!

If many Muslims have gone the wrong way that doesnt mean that many Hindus haven`t, or haven`t before.

If you`re as sick as I am of these religious louts and their political masters who snack on the entrails of innocent people and add to the miseries of their already wretched lives, read on. It takes courage to speak up against them (especially a corporate house), since these goddamned politicians maintain control by the threat of harrassment and closure if businesses don`t fall in line. Hope more influential people come forward and draw a line in the sand.

India Inc. speaks up: ‘If govt can’t protect lives, it should go’

Which kind of govt allows killings of women, children?...Home Minister, even the Prime Minister should take their share of blame: HDFC chairman DEV CHATTERJEE

MUMBAI, MARCH 28: The chairman of India’s leading housing finance firm, HDFC, Deepak Parekh, isn’t known for losing his cool. But today he’s bitter and angry, not at the economic downturn or a bad budget or falling interest rates which mean bad news for his company. But because of Gujarat and the way the government—both at the state and the Centre—have handled the violence.

‘‘What is a government elected for?’’ asks Parekh, speaking exclusively to The Indian Express. ‘‘If they can’t protect innocent lives... then they should go. Which kind of government allows the killing of women and children?’’



‘‘Riots have damaged India’s reputation more than anything that’s affected Pakistan. Do we always need to sabotage our chances of growth and international goodwill?’’





Incidentally, Parekh has been entrusted with several key responsibilities in the past by successive governments including devising a restructuring plan for UTI. Today, as the first corporate leader to speak his mind on the carnage in Gujarat, Parekh says the Central government must be blamed equally for letting the situation go out of hand.

‘‘With due respect, I think the Home Minister and even the Prime Minister should take their share of blame. It’s a national failure,’’ he says. ‘‘Everyone knows Godhra is a volatile city. The carnage had tell-tale signs of external links. The state government should have investigated those involved instead of letting VHP go out of hand. They could have taken help from international investigating agencies instead of killing innoncent people,’’ he says.

The carnage after Godhra has hit business sentiments badly, he says. In fact, he says he’s witnessing first-person how badly the Gujarat riots have hit India’s largest business community — the Gujaratis.

Hopping from one board meeting to another, he is only getting bad news. ‘‘Can you believe that sales of many manufacturing companies have collapsed in Gujarat in the crucial fiscal-end month of March due to riots?’’

Over the last 25 years Parekh made a financial powerhouse of HDFC offering home loans, to insurance and mutual funds and roped in international partners like Standard Life. Today, he’s not sure what the future holds. ‘‘As very few people are coming out due to curfew, our home loan and other businesses are obviously hit,’’ Parekh says.

‘‘I belong to Gujarat. I’ve lived there and it pains me to read in international as well as our papers that Gujaratis are barbaric and indulging in genocide.’’

‘‘Riots have damaged India’s reputation more in the international forum than what is happening in Pakistan. Do we need to always sabotage our own chances of growth and international goodwill?’’ Parekh says now it’s up to corporate India to step out and pitch in.

‘‘Indian corporates must come out in re-building Gujarat. The way we have done after Bhuj earthquake. We can open community centres, build burnt-down houses and educate children who have been orphaned. We at HDFC will certainly do our bit,’’ he says.

Among other plans, Parekh prescribes that the non-governmental organisations must be roped in to help minority families re-build their lives. ‘‘Indians have always been peace-loving people. It’s only due to politics that the nation has been divided. May the doctrine of live and let live prevail,’’ he says.

re:Reply #: 368

nasah,

Your religion is at a stage when it has to find ways of finding wider acceptance among non-mulsims who think there is something terribly wrong with your religion (note my word ``think``). As one white nurse i work with put it succinctly, ``Islam seems to be stuck in a time warp``. I am only amused that, things being so bad with your religios Zealots (so many of you guys are willing to kill innocent people in the name of God; look at Hamas, Hizbollah etc), you find time to discuss if Hindus really massacred Buddhists or not. Is Soysauce a historian? Why do you not do some real research and find out for yourself what exactly happened. I have often discussed this issue at length in the past. Even if Hindus did massacre, what of it? It is all a part of history. Wake up guys and smell the SH!T. It has islamic terrorism written all over it. Read the articles coming out of your dailies as to how innocent muslims in US are paying a price for follies of a few fundoos. You should be discussing this and not what hindus did (or did not do)to the Buddhists.

Sridhar

Re: Mushy`s betrayal?

Guys,

I had always suspected Mushy of being a dubious person. He is shrewd, conniving. He seems to have taken US for a ride. At least Jim Hoagland seems to think so in ``Washington Post``. The Url:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28654-2002Mar27.html

The last para in this article is interesting and i quote:

``False allies are often more troublesome for America than declared enemies. The moral and diplomatic drift on Pakistan now strongly resembles the failure of the first Bush administration on Iraq in the late 1980s. Saddam Hussein`s threats to incinerate Israel and invade Kuwait were explained away by State Department experts as rhetoric. Iraq was seen as too important to confront -- or even to describe its actions truthfully. The second Bush administration is on the road to making exactly the same mistake with Pakistan.``

Sridhar

nasah saab

bilkul :)

Reply Prem, Soysauce 366 (er, I think)

Hindus won`t become tolerant untill they recognise their intolerance. Ditto for Muslims. Ditto for anybody. So...the intolerant need to realise that they are before they can deal with it. I`m not comfortable putting a religion to it, but:

It`s much easier to do that if you feel ``the others`` are also doing it - makes one less defensive, certainly less vulnerable to be blamed (especially as the discourse of the intolerant - see how it goes on Chowk if you don`t believe me - always includes hurling abuse about intolerance and hatefulness at the ``other side``).

I see it happening like this:

Scene: a school auditorium. The ``I am An Intolerant Fascist`` twelve step group has just met. Mr and Mrs Hindutva are piling some of the excellent free samosas and green chutney on their plate, when Mr and Mrs Islamicjihad show up with plates AND napkins.

Mr H (to his wife): See Sarla, you forgot to get napkins. Abh mere naye suit ka kya hoga? (pouts)

Mrs H: Buss, main apne intolerance ke bare mein ithni gahri soch men thhee, ke...

Mrs I: (to Mrs H) Hello jee...I couldn`t help overhearing...dekhiye, we have some spare napkins, why don`t you...

Mrs H: Thank you, thank you. (Pauses, slightly embarrased.) Tho....aap bhi intolerant hain, kya?

Mrs I: Jee, Jee (to Mr I) Look dulling, yeh bhi hamare jaise intolerant hain.

(Smiles all round.)

Mr I: Hello, hello, great pleasure.

(They all get samosas and sit down happily discussing their prejudices and the latest Pinkyfeld episode on Z-TV)

Mrs I:``Nahin, kasam khathi hun...Mullah Mendacity ne...``

Mrs H:``Hau jee hau...``

Mr H: (to Mr I) ``Vaisai, I never watch it, but Sarla kahthi hai ke...``

Mr I:``No, no, me neither, too busy at work...but, actually, voh Auntyji hai, na, absolutely like my chachi in Peshawar...``



Or have I gotten the wrong idea here? Prem - can we package restaraunt as some sort of 12-step headquarters...I think more profit...Shankar bhai ko aap daavath deejiye.

http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/rashid.cfm
AsiaSource Interview with Ahmed Rashid, March 21 2002

``...Q:Pakistan`s support seems to have been critical to the Taliban, not least because Pakistan wanted to use Afghanistan as a base to train militants for Kashmir. There are many things that point to continuing sympathy with the Taliban within the Pakistan security and intelligence community, despite the regime`s formal backing of the war: the removal of top ISI and military generals directly before the American military operation, the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, and most recently, the attack on the church in the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad. How much sympathy do you think there is in Pakistan`s military and intelligence establishment for the Taliban? Given these lasting sympathies, how reliable a coalition partner is the Musharraf regime in the so-called war against terrorism?


Unfortunately, the Musharraf regime has not carried out the promised crackdown on these militant groups that it had pledged to do after his January 12th speech. The 2,000 militants who were caught have all been freed, none of them have been charged with anything, and the leadership is now free.

Out of the extremist groups who were banned, hardly anyone has been caught and certainly no one has been charged for the sectarian killings these groups were involved in (several of which have occurred following September 11th). So we are seeing a very weak response: the performance of Musharraf does not match the rhetoric of Musharraf. This is clearly exacerbating the situation.

There is still support among some sections of the military for the Taliban. But more important than that, there is a very powerful group of retired and serving intelligence officers who have, over the last 20 years, built up very effective grids with each other and with militant groups, and are fuelling these extremist groups even now. Nothing has been done to stop them, especially the retired officers, who are giving simply outrageous statements which are undermining Musharraf`s attempts to crack down on these groups. But the army refuses to discipline these generals; there are very senior retired generals from the Pakistan army who are making scandalous remarks which are fuelling extremist sentiment in the country and confirming the impression that there are anti-Western grids within the military.


Q:But do you think the Americans are aware of this? And if they are, what are they doing about it?


Unfortunately the new American relationship with Pakistan has become too dependent on one man too quickly. I think Musharraf`s visit to Pakistan last month demonstrated that; there was lots of praise for Musharraf but nothing was said about Pakistan (no word about the need for institutional building in Pakistan, no praise for the Pakistani people who have been supporting the crackdown on extremism, etc.). Unfortunately the relationship has been dominated by dependence on one man.

We have seen this before in American foreign policy: with people like the Shah of Iran, for instance, and even now, in Central Asia, with Karimov in Uzbekistan. It is much easier for the Americans to deal with one man but this is not an effective policy. These countries need institution-building procedures which will of necessity go beyond dependence on one man. We are not seeing that process; it almost appears as though the American administration is having a love affair with Musharraf but has no time for Pakistan, the country, or its people. ...``

Dear AnNy:

Aap ka gossa sur ankhon per. I am sorry I was not aware of your family tragedy in Gujarat.

Considering that -- my post was very rude for the occasion -- my repeat apology for hurting your feelings AnNy -- you`re NOT times 10 -- ``backward`` -- in fact you`re very progressive -- I make sure to read your erudite posts -- every one of them.

If it is any CONSOLATION to you -- ``meri baari kub ki achuki hai`` -- in `47.

So please maan jaiye -- thoraa gossa theek hai --zeyada gossaa na kareiN -- maaf ker deiN.

Bhai tahmed saheb is TOO NICE to give me epistaxis -- but tee bhai saheb at times does act a little WEIRD -- I will have to agree with madani miaN -- on that.

Soo -- friends again?

Anoop miaN vs Ashok miaN

Here is my unsolicited unbiased judgment on your -- Kolkata vs Mumbai fight.

What one satayajeet ray`s is to one thousand bollywood`s -- one kolkata kommie is to one thousands mumbai (SS) marathas

Viva la kolkata

Dear Soysauce:

You w