India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario
By EMILY EAKIN
Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions,`` is a dry work of historiography buttressed by a 24-page bibliography and hundreds of footnotes citing ancient Sanskrit texts. It`s the sort of book, in other words, that typically is read by a handful of specialists and winds up forgotten on a library shelf.
But when its author, Dwijendra Narayan Jha, a historian at the University of Delhi, tried to publish the book in India a year ago, he unleashed a furor of a kind not seen there since 1989, when the release of ``Satanic Verses,`` Salman Rushdie`s novel satirizing Islam, provoked rioting and earned him a fatwa from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
As Mr. Jha`s book was going to press last August, excerpts were posted on the Internet and picked up by newspapers. Within days the book had been canceled by Mr. Jha`s academic publisher, burned outside his home by religious activists and — after a second publisher tried to print it — banned by a Hyderabad civil court. A spokesman for the World Hindu Council called it ``sheer blasphemy.`` A former member of Parliament petitioned the government for Mr. Jha`s arrest. Anonymous callers made death threats. And for 10 months Mr. Jha was obliged to travel to and from campus under police escort.
After months of legal wrangling, Mr. Jha`s lawyers succeeded in having the ban lifted this spring. And now his book has been published in Britain and the United States by Verso, with a new preface and a more provocative title: ``The Myth of the Holy Cow.`` But though copies have been shipped to India, few bookstores there are likely to stock it.
His offense? To say what scholars have long known to be true: early Hindus ate beef.
Mr. Jha says his book has become a casualty of the culture wars that have plagued India since the hard-line Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took office five years ago. ``The battle lines are drawn very clearly,`` he said. ``On one side of the barricade are the ideas of cultural pluralism, rationality and democratic values. On the other side are Hindu fundamentalism and cultural nationalism.``
Under this government, scholars and journalists say, history books have been rewritten and occasionally censored. Two years ago, for example, a multivolume project on the history of Indian independence sponsored by the Indian Council of Historical Research was scuttled by government officials who apparently deemed its scope too liberal.
In a telephone interview from his home in New Delhi, Mr. Jha said, ``The prohibition on beef-eating has been made a mark of Hindu identity, but this is historically not true.``
Anyone who has tried to navigate India`s cow-choked streets knows the special status conferred on the beast by Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of the population. Gandhi referred to the cow as ``our mother,`` calling cattle protection ``the central fact of Hinduism.`` And in several Indian states killing a cow is against the law.
But while cow veneration and vegetarianism may be the hallmarks of Hinduism today, Mr. Jha compiles copious evidence that this has hardly always been the case. Citing sources ranging from the ancient sacred scriptures, the Vedas (circa 1000 B.C.), to Sanskrit epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (200 B.C to A.D. 200) as well as data from archaeological digs, Mr. Jha contends that ``the `holiness` of the cow is a myth and that its flesh was very much a part of the early Indian nonvegetarian food regimen and dietary traditions.``
Not only were oxen and other animals offered as sacrifices to the Vedic gods, he writes, they were routinely eaten by mere mortals as well.
One religious text declares meat to be quite simply ``the best kind of food,`` while another captures Yajnavalkya, a revered Vedic sage who lived around 500 B.C., confessing to a particular weakness for beef. ``Some people do not eat cow meat,`` he is quoted as saying. ``I do so, provided it`s tender.``
Meanwhile, the Mahabharata recounts the story of King Rantiveda, who earned his renown by slaughtering 2,000 cows a day in his royal kitchens and distributing beef along with grain to apparently grateful Brahmins, the Hindu priests.
Even the Buddha, on record as opposing animal killing for either food or sacrifice, was apparently not above the occasional carnivorous nibble. Mr. Jha cites passages from early Buddhist texts suggesting not only that the Buddha ate meat but that a meal of contaminated pork may ultimately have been what did him in. (Mr. Jha dismisses a dissenting interpretation that the offending food was not pork but mushroom.)
None of this, scholars say, is news. In a recent review in The Times Literary Supplement, Wendy Doniger, a professor of the history of religion at the University of Chicago, called Mr. Jha`s book ``a dry, straight academic survey . . . proving what every scholar of India has known for well over a century.``
``This is not `Satanic Verses,` `` Ms. Doniger added in a telephone interview. ``This is just a relatively intelligent, academic book. It doesn`t depict Hindus as horrible people.``
Indeed, until the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power, said Michael Witzel, a professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, much of the history Mr. Jha records was taught in Indian schools.
``It`s very much a reality of the culture here in India that scholars have to face harassment and intimidation,`` said Sukumar Muralidharan, the Delhi bureau chief for Frontline, a biweekly news magazine. ``The Hindu nationalist lobby is trying to force a kind of polarization in terms of a singular cultural inheritance on one side and all the rest on the other side. And their idea of the inheritance is very much their own construct, not a full reading of history.``
In this context, even food has become politicized as Hindu nationalists use their vegetarianism to distinguish themselves from the nation`s beef-eating and implicitly immoral Muslim minority.
Mr. Jha`s book, Ms. Doniger wrote in her review, ``contradicts the party line, which is that we Hindus have always been here in India and have Never Eaten Cow; those Muslims have come in, and Kill and Eat Cows, and therefore must be destroyed.``
From a scholarly point of view, she said, what`s shocking about ancient Indian history is not that some people ate meat but that some did not: ``Since the human species is by nature carnivorous, what is surprising is that there ever were vegetarians.``
Beginning around A.D. 500, Mr. Jha writes, killing cows became increasingly taboo — according to the religious texts, a sinful practice associated with the lowest social order, the untouchables. In part, he speculates, the change in official attitude may have coincided with the explosion of agriculture. The cow, on whose strength (for plowing), dung (for fuel) and milk the community depended, was just too valuable to slaughter.
Other scholars, however, say the taboo probably owed more to factors increasingly integral to Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist thought: the belief in reincarnation, which blurred the lines between humans and animals, and the doctrine of ahimsa, or nonviolence.
``The feeling that people have about killing animals and taking lives, that`s the basis of it,`` Ms. Doniger said. ``Obviously, people were feeling guilty. Anytime you eat beef, that meant someone had slaughtered a cow.``
Mr. Witzel says that the word cow was frequently a metaphor in Vedic texts, most notably for the poetry composed by Brahmin priests. When one Vedic poet writes, ``don`t kill the innocent cow,`` he really means ``don`t make bad poetry,`` Mr. Witzel said. Ultimately, he speculated, both figurative and literal connotations may have contributed to the prohibition on cow slaughter. ``As soon as you identify cow with poetry, you cannot do anything to that cow. Step by step, this becomes concretized.``
Of course, these are just the kind of explanations likely to infuriate Hindus who are determined to have the cow`s sacred status enshrined in Indian law.
``Only two days ago, I saw the news that they are trying to get the cow declared a national animal,`` lamented Mr. Jha, a Hindu who says he is a vegetarian purely for health reasons. ``In Delhi, cows should best be treated as a safety hazard. You cannot drive safely for the cows that stray around.``
Posted by
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Aug 17, 2002 07:17 pm
Holy Cow a Myth? An Indian Finds the Kick Is RealBy EMILY EAKIN
Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions,`` is a dry work of historiography buttressed by a 24-page bibliography and hundreds of footnotes citing ancient Sanskrit texts. It`s the sort of book, in other words, that typically is read by a handful of specialists and winds up forgotten on a library shelf.
But when its author, Dwijendra Narayan Jha, a historian at the University of Delhi, tried to publish the book in India a year ago, he unleashed a furor of a kind not seen there since 1989, when the release of ``Satanic Verses,`` Salman Rushdie`s novel satirizing Islam, provoked rioting and earned him a fatwa from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
As Mr. Jha`s book was going to press last August, excerpts were posted on the Internet and picked up by newspapers. Within days the book had been canceled by Mr. Jha`s academic publisher, burned outside his home by religious activists and — after a second publisher tried to print it — banned by a Hyderabad civil court. A spokesman for the World Hindu Council called it ``sheer blasphemy.`` A former member of Parliament petitioned the government for Mr. Jha`s arrest. Anonymous callers made death threats. And for 10 months Mr. Jha was obliged to travel to and from campus under police escort.
After months of legal wrangling, Mr. Jha`s lawyers succeeded in having the ban lifted this spring. And now his book has been published in Britain and the United States by Verso, with a new preface and a more provocative title: ``The Myth of the Holy Cow.`` But though copies have been shipped to India, few bookstores there are likely to stock it.
His offense? To say what scholars have long known to be true: early Hindus ate beef.
Mr. Jha says his book has become a casualty of the culture wars that have plagued India since the hard-line Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took office five years ago. ``The battle lines are drawn very clearly,`` he said. ``On one side of the barricade are the ideas of cultural pluralism, rationality and democratic values. On the other side are Hindu fundamentalism and cultural nationalism.``
Under this government, scholars and journalists say, history books have been rewritten and occasionally censored. Two years ago, for example, a multivolume project on the history of Indian independence sponsored by the Indian Council of Historical Research was scuttled by government officials who apparently deemed its scope too liberal.
In a telephone interview from his home in New Delhi, Mr. Jha said, ``The prohibition on beef-eating has been made a mark of Hindu identity, but this is historically not true.``
Anyone who has tried to navigate India`s cow-choked streets knows the special status conferred on the beast by Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of the population. Gandhi referred to the cow as ``our mother,`` calling cattle protection ``the central fact of Hinduism.`` And in several Indian states killing a cow is against the law.
But while cow veneration and vegetarianism may be the hallmarks of Hinduism today, Mr. Jha compiles copious evidence that this has hardly always been the case. Citing sources ranging from the ancient sacred scriptures, the Vedas (circa 1000 B.C.), to Sanskrit epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (200 B.C to A.D. 200) as well as data from archaeological digs, Mr. Jha contends that ``the `holiness` of the cow is a myth and that its flesh was very much a part of the early Indian nonvegetarian food regimen and dietary traditions.``
Not only were oxen and other animals offered as sacrifices to the Vedic gods, he writes, they were routinely eaten by mere mortals as well.
One religious text declares meat to be quite simply ``the best kind of food,`` while another captures Yajnavalkya, a revered Vedic sage who lived around 500 B.C., confessing to a particular weakness for beef. ``Some people do not eat cow meat,`` he is quoted as saying. ``I do so, provided it`s tender.``
Meanwhile, the Mahabharata recounts the story of King Rantiveda, who earned his renown by slaughtering 2,000 cows a day in his royal kitchens and distributing beef along with grain to apparently grateful Brahmins, the Hindu priests.
Even the Buddha, on record as opposing animal killing for either food or sacrifice, was apparently not above the occasional carnivorous nibble. Mr. Jha cites passages from early Buddhist texts suggesting not only that the Buddha ate meat but that a meal of contaminated pork may ultimately have been what did him in. (Mr. Jha dismisses a dissenting interpretation that the offending food was not pork but mushroom.)
None of this, scholars say, is news. In a recent review in The Times Literary Supplement, Wendy Doniger, a professor of the history of religion at the University of Chicago, called Mr. Jha`s book ``a dry, straight academic survey . . . proving what every scholar of India has known for well over a century.``
``This is not `Satanic Verses,` `` Ms. Doniger added in a telephone interview. ``This is just a relatively intelligent, academic book. It doesn`t depict Hindus as horrible people.``
Indeed, until the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power, said Michael Witzel, a professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, much of the history Mr. Jha records was taught in Indian schools.
``It`s very much a reality of the culture here in India that scholars have to face harassment and intimidation,`` said Sukumar Muralidharan, the Delhi bureau chief for Frontline, a biweekly news magazine. ``The Hindu nationalist lobby is trying to force a kind of polarization in terms of a singular cultural inheritance on one side and all the rest on the other side. And their idea of the inheritance is very much their own construct, not a full reading of history.``
In this context, even food has become politicized as Hindu nationalists use their vegetarianism to distinguish themselves from the nation`s beef-eating and implicitly immoral Muslim minority.
Mr. Jha`s book, Ms. Doniger wrote in her review, ``contradicts the party line, which is that we Hindus have always been here in India and have Never Eaten Cow; those Muslims have come in, and Kill and Eat Cows, and therefore must be destroyed.``
From a scholarly point of view, she said, what`s shocking about ancient Indian history is not that some people ate meat but that some did not: ``Since the human species is by nature carnivorous, what is surprising is that there ever were vegetarians.``
Beginning around A.D. 500, Mr. Jha writes, killing cows became increasingly taboo — according to the religious texts, a sinful practice associated with the lowest social order, the untouchables. In part, he speculates, the change in official attitude may have coincided with the explosion of agriculture. The cow, on whose strength (for plowing), dung (for fuel) and milk the community depended, was just too valuable to slaughter.
Other scholars, however, say the taboo probably owed more to factors increasingly integral to Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist thought: the belief in reincarnation, which blurred the lines between humans and animals, and the doctrine of ahimsa, or nonviolence.
``The feeling that people have about killing animals and taking lives, that`s the basis of it,`` Ms. Doniger said. ``Obviously, people were feeling guilty. Anytime you eat beef, that meant someone had slaughtered a cow.``
Mr. Witzel says that the word cow was frequently a metaphor in Vedic texts, most notably for the poetry composed by Brahmin priests. When one Vedic poet writes, ``don`t kill the innocent cow,`` he really means ``don`t make bad poetry,`` Mr. Witzel said. Ultimately, he speculated, both figurative and literal connotations may have contributed to the prohibition on cow slaughter. ``As soon as you identify cow with poetry, you cannot do anything to that cow. Step by step, this becomes concretized.``
Of course, these are just the kind of explanations likely to infuriate Hindus who are determined to have the cow`s sacred status enshrined in Indian law.
``Only two days ago, I saw the news that they are trying to get the cow declared a national animal,`` lamented Mr. Jha, a Hindu who says he is a vegetarian purely for health reasons. ``In Delhi, cows should best be treated as a safety hazard. You cannot drive safely for the cows that stray around.``
Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India
Kolkata, Aug 16. (PTI): Nobel Laureate Prof Amartya Sen today said poor basic education and undernourishment of children were the worst evils of Indian society posing major hurdles to the all round progress of the country.
``India`s position in the field of literacy and basic education among Asian countries is shameful ... child undernourishment in the country is more severe than that of sub Saharan Africa,`` Sen said at a press conference here.
Stating that ``there is nothing as regressive for the progress of Indian economy and society as lack of basic education and regular undernourishment of children,`` the noted economist stressed for reforms in these sectors.
Speaking on the occasion of the release of `The Pratichi Education Report` prepared by the Pratichi (India) Trust formed by him after winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, Sen expressed concern at the high incidence of dropout and absenteeism as also class division among students of primary schools in West Bengal.
The Trust, in its report on the status of basic education in the state, criticised the teaching community for neglecting their profession for political engagements, particularly in rural areas.
Asked about the private tuition ban by the state government, Sen said ``the issue is not banning private tuition, but to remove the necessity for it for students.``
Posted by
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Aug 17, 2002 03:11 am
Amartya Sen lists evils of India Kolkata, Aug 16. (PTI): Nobel Laureate Prof Amartya Sen today said poor basic education and undernourishment of children were the worst evils of Indian society posing major hurdles to the all round progress of the country.
``India`s position in the field of literacy and basic education among Asian countries is shameful ... child undernourishment in the country is more severe than that of sub Saharan Africa,`` Sen said at a press conference here.
Stating that ``there is nothing as regressive for the progress of Indian economy and society as lack of basic education and regular undernourishment of children,`` the noted economist stressed for reforms in these sectors.
Speaking on the occasion of the release of `The Pratichi Education Report` prepared by the Pratichi (India) Trust formed by him after winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, Sen expressed concern at the high incidence of dropout and absenteeism as also class division among students of primary schools in West Bengal.
The Trust, in its report on the status of basic education in the state, criticised the teaching community for neglecting their profession for political engagements, particularly in rural areas.
Asked about the private tuition ban by the state government, Sen said ``the issue is not banning private tuition, but to remove the necessity for it for students.``
Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India
http://www.utne.com/bPractSeeker.tmpl?command=search&db=dArticle.db&eqheadlinedata=The%20Islamic%20Gandhi
The world needs to know about Abdul Ghaffar Khan
By Amitabh Pal , The Progressive
Discuss Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the Spirit forum in Café Utne`s: cafe.utne.com
It’s tragic that India and Pakistan are almost constantly in a state of conflict and are now facing off against each other with nuclear weapons. It’s also ironic, since both countries can claim pacifist pioneers. India has Gandhi, as most everyone knows. But few people know a contemporary of Gandhi’s, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a proponent of nonviolence and social change who lived in Pakistan.
Born and raised in what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, Khan (affectionately known as the ``Frontier Gandhi``) was a devout practitioner of nonviolence and social reform who spread his ideals throughout the region. Eluding at least two assassination attempts and surviving three decades in prison, Khan remained committed to nonviolence to the day he died in 1988 at the age of 98.
``For today’s children and the world, my thoughts are that only if they accept nonviolence can they escape destruction, with all this talk of the atom bomb, and live a life of peace,`` Khan told an interviewer in 1985. ``If this doesn’t happen, then the world will be in ruins.``
Khan was a Pashtun, a major ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan known for its fierce resistance to outside rule. After fighting the British for decades, they took on the Soviets, who tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Pashtuns then gave rise to the Taliban, who overran the country and welcomed Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in the 1990s.
As a young man Ghaffar Khan took a different path, starting a school for Pashtun children and espousing a belief in the futility of violence. Under the influence of a social reformer named Haji Abdul Wahid Sahib, Khan began contacting other progressive Muslim leaders in India, and together they created a nonviolent movement called the Khudai Khidmatgar—the servants of God—in 1929. This movement, which eventually attracted more than 100,000 Pashtuns, was dedicated to reform and to ending British rule over a then-undivided India (including present-day Pakistan).
Khan’s calls for social change, more equitable land distribution, women’s rights, and religious harmony threatened some religious leaders and large landowners. But he toured incessantly, traveling 25 miles in a day, going from village to village, speaking about social reform and staging dramas depicting the value of nonviolence.
The British, who deeply distrusted the Pashtuns and viewed Khan’s movement as a ruse, treated him and his movement with a barbarity that they rarely inflicted on nonviolent resisters in India. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, the British tortured Khan’s followers, destroyed their homes and fields, and even massacred them. Khan himself spent 15 of these years in prison, often in solitary confinement. But once converted to nonviolence, these Pashtuns refused to abandon peaceful resistance even in the face of severe repression.
WHEN INDIA GAINED its independence in 1947, Pakistan, which was largely Muslim, was partitioned off as a separate republic. With his commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity, Khan was firmly opposed to the split, arguing that Pashtun rights would be better respected in a large, decentralized, united India than in a smaller, more centralized Pakistan. After the 1947 split, he started campaigning for a separate Pashtun region—to be called Pashtunistan—which gave Pakistani authorities a chance to accuse him of anti-national activities. Some of his followers were killed and jailed, and Khan himself was imprisoned again for more than a decade. The Pakistan government banned the Khidmatgar movement and razed its headquarters, but Khan continued his work.
Khan’s movement had ``first of all, a religious basis,`` writes Joan V. Bondurant, a scholar of nonviolence, in Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton University Press, 1988). Along with its social and political objectives, ``the Khudai Khidmatgar pledged themselves to nonviolence not only as a policy, but as a creed, a way of life.`` That a Pashtun and a Muslim might believe in nonviolence was not surprising, Khan insisted, nor was the doctrine new to Islam; love, peace, and even female equality were virtues espoused as far back as the Prophet Muhammad himself. If men oppressed women, Khan said, they did so in violation of the Koran.
Though motivated by a vision of Islam as a moral code with pacifism at its center, Khan’s movement was nonsectarian. When Hindus and Sikhs were attacked in the provincial capital of Peshawar, 10,000 Khidmatgar members helped protect their lives and property. And when riots broke out in the east-central Indian state of Bihar in 1946 and 1947, Khan toured with Gandhi to bring about peace.
So why is Khan almost unknown today? For one thing, because of his differences with the Pakistani authorities, his name does not appear in official Pakistani history. Hence, he is little known in Pakistan outside the North West Frontier area. If he is recognized at all, it is as a Pashtun nationalist rather than as a proponent of nonviolence and social reform. And in India, he is known primarily as an adjunct of Gandhi, despite the fact that Khan created his movement before coming in contact with Gandhi.
This shouldn’t keep us from recognizing the remarkable journey taken by Khan and his fellow Pashtuns—a community to which the Taliban has recently given a terrible name. Khan has a lot to offer, not least to the leaders of India and Pakistan.
-- Amitabh Pal
The Progressive
Amitabh Pal is editor of the Progressive Media Project, an affiliate of The Progressive magazine. Reprinted from The Progressive (February 2002). Subscriptions: $32/yr. (12 issues) from Box 421, Mt. Morris, IL 61054.
Posted by
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Aug 15, 2002 09:16 pm
The Islamic Gandhihttp://www.utne.com/bPractSeeker.tmpl?command=search&db=dArticle.db&eqheadlinedata=The%20Islamic%20Gandhi
The world needs to know about Abdul Ghaffar Khan
By Amitabh Pal , The Progressive
Discuss Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the Spirit forum in Café Utne`s: cafe.utne.com
It’s tragic that India and Pakistan are almost constantly in a state of conflict and are now facing off against each other with nuclear weapons. It’s also ironic, since both countries can claim pacifist pioneers. India has Gandhi, as most everyone knows. But few people know a contemporary of Gandhi’s, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a proponent of nonviolence and social change who lived in Pakistan.
Born and raised in what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, Khan (affectionately known as the ``Frontier Gandhi``) was a devout practitioner of nonviolence and social reform who spread his ideals throughout the region. Eluding at least two assassination attempts and surviving three decades in prison, Khan remained committed to nonviolence to the day he died in 1988 at the age of 98.
``For today’s children and the world, my thoughts are that only if they accept nonviolence can they escape destruction, with all this talk of the atom bomb, and live a life of peace,`` Khan told an interviewer in 1985. ``If this doesn’t happen, then the world will be in ruins.``
Khan was a Pashtun, a major ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan known for its fierce resistance to outside rule. After fighting the British for decades, they took on the Soviets, who tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Pashtuns then gave rise to the Taliban, who overran the country and welcomed Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in the 1990s.
As a young man Ghaffar Khan took a different path, starting a school for Pashtun children and espousing a belief in the futility of violence. Under the influence of a social reformer named Haji Abdul Wahid Sahib, Khan began contacting other progressive Muslim leaders in India, and together they created a nonviolent movement called the Khudai Khidmatgar—the servants of God—in 1929. This movement, which eventually attracted more than 100,000 Pashtuns, was dedicated to reform and to ending British rule over a then-undivided India (including present-day Pakistan).
Khan’s calls for social change, more equitable land distribution, women’s rights, and religious harmony threatened some religious leaders and large landowners. But he toured incessantly, traveling 25 miles in a day, going from village to village, speaking about social reform and staging dramas depicting the value of nonviolence.
The British, who deeply distrusted the Pashtuns and viewed Khan’s movement as a ruse, treated him and his movement with a barbarity that they rarely inflicted on nonviolent resisters in India. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, the British tortured Khan’s followers, destroyed their homes and fields, and even massacred them. Khan himself spent 15 of these years in prison, often in solitary confinement. But once converted to nonviolence, these Pashtuns refused to abandon peaceful resistance even in the face of severe repression.
WHEN INDIA GAINED its independence in 1947, Pakistan, which was largely Muslim, was partitioned off as a separate republic. With his commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity, Khan was firmly opposed to the split, arguing that Pashtun rights would be better respected in a large, decentralized, united India than in a smaller, more centralized Pakistan. After the 1947 split, he started campaigning for a separate Pashtun region—to be called Pashtunistan—which gave Pakistani authorities a chance to accuse him of anti-national activities. Some of his followers were killed and jailed, and Khan himself was imprisoned again for more than a decade. The Pakistan government banned the Khidmatgar movement and razed its headquarters, but Khan continued his work.
Khan’s movement had ``first of all, a religious basis,`` writes Joan V. Bondurant, a scholar of nonviolence, in Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton University Press, 1988). Along with its social and political objectives, ``the Khudai Khidmatgar pledged themselves to nonviolence not only as a policy, but as a creed, a way of life.`` That a Pashtun and a Muslim might believe in nonviolence was not surprising, Khan insisted, nor was the doctrine new to Islam; love, peace, and even female equality were virtues espoused as far back as the Prophet Muhammad himself. If men oppressed women, Khan said, they did so in violation of the Koran.
Though motivated by a vision of Islam as a moral code with pacifism at its center, Khan’s movement was nonsectarian. When Hindus and Sikhs were attacked in the provincial capital of Peshawar, 10,000 Khidmatgar members helped protect their lives and property. And when riots broke out in the east-central Indian state of Bihar in 1946 and 1947, Khan toured with Gandhi to bring about peace.
So why is Khan almost unknown today? For one thing, because of his differences with the Pakistani authorities, his name does not appear in official Pakistani history. Hence, he is little known in Pakistan outside the North West Frontier area. If he is recognized at all, it is as a Pashtun nationalist rather than as a proponent of nonviolence and social reform. And in India, he is known primarily as an adjunct of Gandhi, despite the fact that Khan created his movement before coming in contact with Gandhi.
This shouldn’t keep us from recognizing the remarkable journey taken by Khan and his fellow Pashtuns—a community to which the Taliban has recently given a terrible name. Khan has a lot to offer, not least to the leaders of India and Pakistan.
-- Amitabh Pal
The Progressive
Amitabh Pal is editor of the Progressive Media Project, an affiliate of The Progressive magazine. Reprinted from The Progressive (February 2002). Subscriptions: $32/yr. (12 issues) from Box 421, Mt. Morris, IL 61054.
Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India
August 12, 2002
PBS
Ray Suarez talks with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman about his overseas reporting trip to the island nation of Sri Lanka and the Indian cities Bangalore and New Delhi.
RAY SUAREZ: This trip took Tom Friedman to the island nation of Sri Lanka and the Indian cities of Bangalore and New Delhi.
Tom, let`s start in Sri Lanka. When it made the American newscasts or newspaper pages at all, it was usually a story of a terrible terrorism problem or a long civil war. Is that still the headline today?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, it`s not. That`s actually the good news, Ray. We forget that suicide terrorism which began in the Middle East, was actually perfected in Sri Lanka by the Tamil Tiger separatist movement trying for a Tamil country in Sri Lanka. When I say perfected it, they really perfected it. They killed about 1,500 people through suicide terrorism. They actually filmed many of their suicide killings, including the killing of Rajiv Gandhi; their sort of cult leader, Mr. Brabakaran, would have dinner the night before suicides with his bombers, and they really made this a devastating, devastating tool of warfare.
Fortunately though, last December they agreed on a cease-fire and things have calmed down there enormously. It`s still just a cease-fire. There is no peace yet. There is no final peace yet. Everyone is quite nervous. There is an air of optimism, an air that something is over. The mandate of heaven has been taken away from the gunmen and from the government army and people really want this thing over.
RAY SUAREZ: How did they break the cycle? There would be a spate of these terror killings or an advance by the guerrilla army, then a counteroffensive by the national army, the state army of Sri Lanka and went back and forth like that for many years. What made them finally --
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Many things. Part of it was just a sheer stalemate. The government recognized the only way to stop suicide bombings is if the Tamil Tigers did it themselves. They had no military means to do it. How do you stop people who want to kill themselves? We have the same problem in the Middle East. And the Tamils realized they could not even hold their ethnic capital, Joffna in Northeast Sri Lanka. So there was clearly a stalemate on the ground.
One of the biggest things that happened was 9/11. Basically, the combination of September 11 and the whole delegitimatization globally of this idea of suicide bombing and at the same time the fact that the United States, India, Australia and Canada had named the Tamil tigers as a terrorist group, and that`s something that really alienated the Tamil Diaspora in India, in North America, and in Europe, which had been the main funders of the Tigers. These are middle class entrepreneurial professional people. They said wait a minute, if that`s what this movement is about, we are going to take a step back here, which they did. They withdrew the funding. And that really forced the Tigers to the negotiating table.
RAY SUAREZ: Next you went on to Bangalore -- and Bangalore, again, not a place on a lot of Americans radar screens but maybe we should speak of it in the same breath as we do San Jose.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, we are a lot more connected to Bangalore than people realize. If you lose your luggage on British Air or Swissair, the person who answers the phone to track it down is in Bangalore. If you have got a problem with your Dell computer, the person on the other end of the phone you`re talking to is an Indian in Bangalore.
Bangalore is India`s Silicon Valley. And it`s a remarkable place. I mean, you know, I have kind of Friedman`s rule of motor scooters, and that is when you go to a developing country and you see a lot of motorcycles around, that`s like the best sign possible, because what it is a sign of is kind of young, lower middle class people who have left the countryside, come to the city and found jobs. And they found jobs enough to give up the bicycle and buy a motor scooter. And Bangalore is full of motor scooters.
The city produces about 40,000 young tech grads every year from different engineering and computer schools, all of whom get absorbed in this Silicon Valley there that is really providing the research and the backroom capability for a lot of American corporations from Bangalore, from the campuses of companies called Wipro and Infosys and Mindtree, they`re actually running the inventory, the accounts receivable, the payroll, a lot of the human resources for big American companies.
RAY SUAREZ: Like?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Like GE, GE Capital, like the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, like Sony, like Reebok, like American Express. And you go to their campuses, I mean you go to the Infosys campus, you walk in, and the first thing you see is a little par 3 hole. Then you see beautiful manicured lawns, a food court with TGI Fridays and Domino`s Pizza, an incredible exercise hall and building after building. And they literally point out that`s the GE back room over there, that`s American Express`s backroom over there. You have 300 people working these buildings; they work on 24-hour cycles. And they`re now the backroom of these companies.
So the old days when we thought of India as maybe what they call doing software coolies, writing very, sort of basic software code, they are gradually moving up the food chain to really appropriate using their minds, all of the backroom functions of major American companies, leaving the American companies, the front end, to focus on marketing and sort of primary design, you know close to their marketplace.
But even now you`ve got Indian companies sending people from India now to the American company to even, you know, take up more and more of that business. But what that means is that the intimacy with which we are integrated with India and India with us is far, far greater than ever before.
RAY SUAREZ: But this new thing must have been under threat during the time when the State Department was saying to Americans, well maybe you shouldn`t go to India, at the time when our newspapers were full of, as the bible says, war and rumors of war.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It`s true. I was out with some Indian industrialists one afternoon and the first thing they said to me-- I got kind of bombarded from this the minute I walked into Bangalore - was -- what exactly was the U.S. Government, the State Department and the U.S. Embassy and New Delhi up to when they issued a travel warning on May 31, warning, you know, Americans, basically to get out of India because a war with Pakistan was likely? There wasn`t going to be a war here. Nuclear war? Why, are you crazy, man, as one Indian business said to me. We`re talking about nuclear weapons! Are you crazy? When you`re down in Bangalore, you do get this sense there that nuclear war was actually quite far away.
Nevertheless, they really got, I would say, an introduction, and most importantly, the aging Indian Hindu national leaders in New Delhi, I think, got an introduction that they really-- of something they didn`t really grasp fully before and that is just how intimately India is connected to the United States and the world and that just the rumor of war can have a huge impact on the Indian economy.
One thing that struck me when I was there, Ray, I was staying at a big tourist hotel in Bangalore and in New Delhi -- no tourists around at all. I believe I was the only American in the Imperial Hotel when I was there in New Delhi. So just the rumor of war has had a huge impact on the Indian economy, and that`s why ever since that State Department travel warning, if you notice, the Indian government has zipped it up. There is no more talk about nukes, no more talk about war. And, in fairness to the Indians, this is a problem for them, because there is a real asymmetry between India and Pakistan.
India has this really high-tech economy now - I mean at the far end. It also has a huge low tech agricultural-- 70 percent of Indians, let`s remember, still live in the countryside in villages but at the cutting edge, it has got this high-tech economy connected to the world. It`s a country that really is hard wired basically to take advantage educationally, culturally, in terms of democracy and secularism, really to take advantage of the 21st century. But it has got a neighbor that`s really been failing at modernization, failing at democracy. And they are very vulnerable to Pakistan now because any threat of war from Pakistan can really create real problems and havoc for India.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, you know, when you travel to Silicon Valley, they talk about what people in Washington, like they are really far away and on a different planet. When you went from Bangalore to New Delhi, was there a similar kind of shift?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. You get to New Delhi and you do again feel like you`re in the capital, you`re away from the entrepreneurial heartbeat of the country. And everyone is really just focused on Pakistan, and the gentleman who you just had a segment on, President Musharraf of India.
And what always strikes me when I`m in New Delhi is that Indians talk about Musharraf exactly the way Israelis talk about Yasser Arafat. It is kind of you can`t possibly trust this guy. You know, don`t you realize he is a terrorist, et cetera, et cetera. I`m sure-- listen, this is a country whose parliament, let us not forget, was attacked - you know -- by pro-Pakistani militants just this last year. So even paranoids have enemies and India has real enemies here that they have to and legitimately worry about. But you do feel in New Delhi that people have been talking to themselves there a lot there. There is an obsession with Pakistan that strikes me as a little bit out of order in that India is such a big country-
RAY SUAREZ: But New Delhi is a lot closer than Bangalore.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely - no question -- it is closer but it always strikes me about India that it could and should-- it`s got a lot to be proud of. It`s managed to maintain a democracy in this teeming multiethnic, multilingual society for lo these 50 odd years and it is really actually very impressive. One of the things that strikes me is that the Indians should be more self-confident than they are, more self-confident vis-à-vis Pakistan -- more self-confident vis-à-vis the United States. There is a lot of worry about the U.S.-India relationship.
You really feel when you`re there, Ray, talking to people, how young this relationship is, how during all the years of the Cold War, we were really alienated from each other when in fact our two countries have an enormous amount in common - I mean, you know, basically multiethnic, multiracial democracies built around a high degree of federalism and Lord knows we have differences as well but we have a lot in common with India today.
RAY SUAREZ: Multiethnic, multiracial democracy but at the same time there were religious riots in India over the past year between Muslims and Hindus. The government of Atal Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist government, has moved more toward the tendency with the elevation of Lau Krishna Avani to more influence within the government. Aren`t there sort of competing forces for India`s attention that way?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Definitely. But let`s look what happened. There were riots between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat earlier this year in February. 60 odd Hindus were killed, maybe 600 to a thousand Muslims. It was terrible, pogrom really instigated by the Hindu nationalists in Gujarat. What happened? What happened? Nothing happened. That violence not only did not spread around Gujarat, it didn`t spread anywhere else in India. I think that`s a very, very positive sign. And that`s a sign that people in the rest of India not only are their cultural ties that`s still bind Hindus and Muslims in villages. There has been a lot of mixing of faiths and whatnot. But most importantly, it`s about democracy, that`s about free markets, that`s about people with something better to do.
RAY SUAREZ: Tom Friedman, thanks for coming by.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: A pleasure, thank you
Posted by
cutandpaste
Aug 13, 2002 07:27 pm
TOM`S JOURNALAugust 12, 2002
PBS
Ray Suarez talks with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman about his overseas reporting trip to the island nation of Sri Lanka and the Indian cities Bangalore and New Delhi.
RAY SUAREZ: This trip took Tom Friedman to the island nation of Sri Lanka and the Indian cities of Bangalore and New Delhi.
Tom, let`s start in Sri Lanka. When it made the American newscasts or newspaper pages at all, it was usually a story of a terrible terrorism problem or a long civil war. Is that still the headline today?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, it`s not. That`s actually the good news, Ray. We forget that suicide terrorism which began in the Middle East, was actually perfected in Sri Lanka by the Tamil Tiger separatist movement trying for a Tamil country in Sri Lanka. When I say perfected it, they really perfected it. They killed about 1,500 people through suicide terrorism. They actually filmed many of their suicide killings, including the killing of Rajiv Gandhi; their sort of cult leader, Mr. Brabakaran, would have dinner the night before suicides with his bombers, and they really made this a devastating, devastating tool of warfare.
Fortunately though, last December they agreed on a cease-fire and things have calmed down there enormously. It`s still just a cease-fire. There is no peace yet. There is no final peace yet. Everyone is quite nervous. There is an air of optimism, an air that something is over. The mandate of heaven has been taken away from the gunmen and from the government army and people really want this thing over.
RAY SUAREZ: How did they break the cycle? There would be a spate of these terror killings or an advance by the guerrilla army, then a counteroffensive by the national army, the state army of Sri Lanka and went back and forth like that for many years. What made them finally --
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Many things. Part of it was just a sheer stalemate. The government recognized the only way to stop suicide bombings is if the Tamil Tigers did it themselves. They had no military means to do it. How do you stop people who want to kill themselves? We have the same problem in the Middle East. And the Tamils realized they could not even hold their ethnic capital, Joffna in Northeast Sri Lanka. So there was clearly a stalemate on the ground.
One of the biggest things that happened was 9/11. Basically, the combination of September 11 and the whole delegitimatization globally of this idea of suicide bombing and at the same time the fact that the United States, India, Australia and Canada had named the Tamil tigers as a terrorist group, and that`s something that really alienated the Tamil Diaspora in India, in North America, and in Europe, which had been the main funders of the Tigers. These are middle class entrepreneurial professional people. They said wait a minute, if that`s what this movement is about, we are going to take a step back here, which they did. They withdrew the funding. And that really forced the Tigers to the negotiating table.
RAY SUAREZ: Next you went on to Bangalore -- and Bangalore, again, not a place on a lot of Americans radar screens but maybe we should speak of it in the same breath as we do San Jose.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, we are a lot more connected to Bangalore than people realize. If you lose your luggage on British Air or Swissair, the person who answers the phone to track it down is in Bangalore. If you have got a problem with your Dell computer, the person on the other end of the phone you`re talking to is an Indian in Bangalore.
Bangalore is India`s Silicon Valley. And it`s a remarkable place. I mean, you know, I have kind of Friedman`s rule of motor scooters, and that is when you go to a developing country and you see a lot of motorcycles around, that`s like the best sign possible, because what it is a sign of is kind of young, lower middle class people who have left the countryside, come to the city and found jobs. And they found jobs enough to give up the bicycle and buy a motor scooter. And Bangalore is full of motor scooters.
The city produces about 40,000 young tech grads every year from different engineering and computer schools, all of whom get absorbed in this Silicon Valley there that is really providing the research and the backroom capability for a lot of American corporations from Bangalore, from the campuses of companies called Wipro and Infosys and Mindtree, they`re actually running the inventory, the accounts receivable, the payroll, a lot of the human resources for big American companies.
RAY SUAREZ: Like?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Like GE, GE Capital, like the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, like Sony, like Reebok, like American Express. And you go to their campuses, I mean you go to the Infosys campus, you walk in, and the first thing you see is a little par 3 hole. Then you see beautiful manicured lawns, a food court with TGI Fridays and Domino`s Pizza, an incredible exercise hall and building after building. And they literally point out that`s the GE back room over there, that`s American Express`s backroom over there. You have 300 people working these buildings; they work on 24-hour cycles. And they`re now the backroom of these companies.
So the old days when we thought of India as maybe what they call doing software coolies, writing very, sort of basic software code, they are gradually moving up the food chain to really appropriate using their minds, all of the backroom functions of major American companies, leaving the American companies, the front end, to focus on marketing and sort of primary design, you know close to their marketplace.
But even now you`ve got Indian companies sending people from India now to the American company to even, you know, take up more and more of that business. But what that means is that the intimacy with which we are integrated with India and India with us is far, far greater than ever before.
RAY SUAREZ: But this new thing must have been under threat during the time when the State Department was saying to Americans, well maybe you shouldn`t go to India, at the time when our newspapers were full of, as the bible says, war and rumors of war.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It`s true. I was out with some Indian industrialists one afternoon and the first thing they said to me-- I got kind of bombarded from this the minute I walked into Bangalore - was -- what exactly was the U.S. Government, the State Department and the U.S. Embassy and New Delhi up to when they issued a travel warning on May 31, warning, you know, Americans, basically to get out of India because a war with Pakistan was likely? There wasn`t going to be a war here. Nuclear war? Why, are you crazy, man, as one Indian business said to me. We`re talking about nuclear weapons! Are you crazy? When you`re down in Bangalore, you do get this sense there that nuclear war was actually quite far away.
Nevertheless, they really got, I would say, an introduction, and most importantly, the aging Indian Hindu national leaders in New Delhi, I think, got an introduction that they really-- of something they didn`t really grasp fully before and that is just how intimately India is connected to the United States and the world and that just the rumor of war can have a huge impact on the Indian economy.
One thing that struck me when I was there, Ray, I was staying at a big tourist hotel in Bangalore and in New Delhi -- no tourists around at all. I believe I was the only American in the Imperial Hotel when I was there in New Delhi. So just the rumor of war has had a huge impact on the Indian economy, and that`s why ever since that State Department travel warning, if you notice, the Indian government has zipped it up. There is no more talk about nukes, no more talk about war. And, in fairness to the Indians, this is a problem for them, because there is a real asymmetry between India and Pakistan.
India has this really high-tech economy now - I mean at the far end. It also has a huge low tech agricultural-- 70 percent of Indians, let`s remember, still live in the countryside in villages but at the cutting edge, it has got this high-tech economy connected to the world. It`s a country that really is hard wired basically to take advantage educationally, culturally, in terms of democracy and secularism, really to take advantage of the 21st century. But it has got a neighbor that`s really been failing at modernization, failing at democracy. And they are very vulnerable to Pakistan now because any threat of war from Pakistan can really create real problems and havoc for India.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, you know, when you travel to Silicon Valley, they talk about what people in Washington, like they are really far away and on a different planet. When you went from Bangalore to New Delhi, was there a similar kind of shift?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. You get to New Delhi and you do again feel like you`re in the capital, you`re away from the entrepreneurial heartbeat of the country. And everyone is really just focused on Pakistan, and the gentleman who you just had a segment on, President Musharraf of India.
And what always strikes me when I`m in New Delhi is that Indians talk about Musharraf exactly the way Israelis talk about Yasser Arafat. It is kind of you can`t possibly trust this guy. You know, don`t you realize he is a terrorist, et cetera, et cetera. I`m sure-- listen, this is a country whose parliament, let us not forget, was attacked - you know -- by pro-Pakistani militants just this last year. So even paranoids have enemies and India has real enemies here that they have to and legitimately worry about. But you do feel in New Delhi that people have been talking to themselves there a lot there. There is an obsession with Pakistan that strikes me as a little bit out of order in that India is such a big country-
RAY SUAREZ: But New Delhi is a lot closer than Bangalore.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely - no question -- it is closer but it always strikes me about India that it could and should-- it`s got a lot to be proud of. It`s managed to maintain a democracy in this teeming multiethnic, multilingual society for lo these 50 odd years and it is really actually very impressive. One of the things that strikes me is that the Indians should be more self-confident than they are, more self-confident vis-à-vis Pakistan -- more self-confident vis-à-vis the United States. There is a lot of worry about the U.S.-India relationship.
You really feel when you`re there, Ray, talking to people, how young this relationship is, how during all the years of the Cold War, we were really alienated from each other when in fact our two countries have an enormous amount in common - I mean, you know, basically multiethnic, multiracial democracies built around a high degree of federalism and Lord knows we have differences as well but we have a lot in common with India today.
RAY SUAREZ: Multiethnic, multiracial democracy but at the same time there were religious riots in India over the past year between Muslims and Hindus. The government of Atal Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist government, has moved more toward the tendency with the elevation of Lau Krishna Avani to more influence within the government. Aren`t there sort of competing forces for India`s attention that way?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Definitely. But let`s look what happened. There were riots between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat earlier this year in February. 60 odd Hindus were killed, maybe 600 to a thousand Muslims. It was terrible, pogrom really instigated by the Hindu nationalists in Gujarat. What happened? What happened? Nothing happened. That violence not only did not spread around Gujarat, it didn`t spread anywhere else in India. I think that`s a very, very positive sign. And that`s a sign that people in the rest of India not only are their cultural ties that`s still bind Hindus and Muslims in villages. There has been a lot of mixing of faiths and whatnot. But most importantly, it`s about democracy, that`s about free markets, that`s about people with something better to do.
RAY SUAREZ: Tom Friedman, thanks for coming by.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: A pleasure, thank you
India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
ANGALORE, India — Two months ago India and Pakistan appeared headed for a nuclear war. Colin Powell, the U.S. secretary of state and a former general, played a key role in talking the two parties back from the brink. But here in India, I`ve discovered that there was another new, and fascinating, set of pressures that restrained the Indian government and made nuclear war, from its side, unthinkable. Quite simply, India`s huge software and information technology industry, which has emerged over the last decade and made India the back-room and research hub of many of the world`s largest corporations, essentially told the nationalist Indian government to cool it. And the government here got the message and has sought to de-escalate ever since. That`s right — in the crunch, it was the influence of General Electric, not General Powell, that did the trick.
This story starts with the fact that, thanks to the Internet and satellites, India has been able to connect its millions of educated, English-speaking, low-wage, tech-savvy young people to the world`s largest corporations. They live in India, but they design and run the software and systems that now support the world`s biggest companies, earning India an unprecedented $60 billion in foreign reserves — which doubled in just the last three years. But this has made the world more dependent on India, and India on the world, than ever before.
If you lose your luggage on British Airways, the techies who track it down are here in India. If your Dell computer has a problem, the techie who walks you through it is in Bangalore, India`s Silicon Valley. Ernst & Young may be doing your company`s tax returns here with Indian accountants. Indian software giants in Bangalore, like Wipro, Infosys and MindTree, now manage back-room operations — accounting, inventory management, billing, accounts receivable, payrolls, credit card approvals — for global firms like Nortel Networks, Reebok, Sony, American Express, HSBC and GE Capital.
You go to the Bangalore campuses of these Indian companies and they point out: ``That`s G.E.`s back room over here. That`s American Express`s back office over there.`` G.E.`s biggest research center outside the U.S. is in Bangalore, with 1,700 Indian engineers and scientists. The brain chip for every Nokia cellphone is designed in Bangalore. Renting a car from Avis online? It`s managed here.
So it was no wonder that when the State Department issued a travel advisory on May 31 warning Americans to leave India because the war prospects had risen to ``serious levels,`` all these global firms who had moved their back rooms to Bangalore went nuts.
``That day,`` said Vivek Paul, vice chairman of Wipro, ``I had a C.I.O. [chief information officer] from one of our big American clients send me an e-mail saying: `I am now spending a lot of time looking for alternative sources to India. I don`t think you want me doing that, and I don`t want to be doing it.` I immediately forwarded his letter to the Indian ambassador in Washington and told him to get it to the right person.``
No wonder. For many global companies, ``the main heart of their business is now supported here,`` said N. Krishnakumar, president of MindTree. ``It can cause chaos if there is a disruption.`` While not trying to meddle in foreign affairs, he added, ``what we explained to our government, through the Confederation of Indian Industry, is that providing a stable, predictable operating environment is now the key to India`s development.``
This was a real education for India`s elderly leaders in New Delhi, but, officials conceded, they got the message: loose talk about war or nukes could be disastrous for India. This was reinforced by another new lobby: the information technology ministers who now exist in every Indian state to drum up business.
``We don`t get involved in politics,`` said Vivek Kulkarni, the information technology secretary for Bangalore, ``but we did bring to the government`s attention the problems the Indian I.T. industry might face if there were a war. . . . Ten years ago [a lobby of I.T. ministers] never existed.``
To be sure, none of this guarantees there will be no war. Tomorrow, Pakistani militants could easily do something so outrageous and provocative that India would have to retaliate. But it does guarantee that India`s leaders will now think 10 times about how they respond, and if war is inevitable, that India will pay 10 times the price it would have paid a decade ago.
In the meantime, this cease-fire is brought to you by G.E. — and all its friends here in Bangalore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/opinion/11FRIE.html
Posted by
cutandpaste
Aug 12, 2002 10:24 am
India, Pakistan and G.E.By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
ANGALORE, India — Two months ago India and Pakistan appeared headed for a nuclear war. Colin Powell, the U.S. secretary of state and a former general, played a key role in talking the two parties back from the brink. But here in India, I`ve discovered that there was another new, and fascinating, set of pressures that restrained the Indian government and made nuclear war, from its side, unthinkable. Quite simply, India`s huge software and information technology industry, which has emerged over the last decade and made India the back-room and research hub of many of the world`s largest corporations, essentially told the nationalist Indian government to cool it. And the government here got the message and has sought to de-escalate ever since. That`s right — in the crunch, it was the influence of General Electric, not General Powell, that did the trick.
This story starts with the fact that, thanks to the Internet and satellites, India has been able to connect its millions of educated, English-speaking, low-wage, tech-savvy young people to the world`s largest corporations. They live in India, but they design and run the software and systems that now support the world`s biggest companies, earning India an unprecedented $60 billion in foreign reserves — which doubled in just the last three years. But this has made the world more dependent on India, and India on the world, than ever before.
If you lose your luggage on British Airways, the techies who track it down are here in India. If your Dell computer has a problem, the techie who walks you through it is in Bangalore, India`s Silicon Valley. Ernst & Young may be doing your company`s tax returns here with Indian accountants. Indian software giants in Bangalore, like Wipro, Infosys and MindTree, now manage back-room operations — accounting, inventory management, billing, accounts receivable, payrolls, credit card approvals — for global firms like Nortel Networks, Reebok, Sony, American Express, HSBC and GE Capital.
You go to the Bangalore campuses of these Indian companies and they point out: ``That`s G.E.`s back room over here. That`s American Express`s back office over there.`` G.E.`s biggest research center outside the U.S. is in Bangalore, with 1,700 Indian engineers and scientists. The brain chip for every Nokia cellphone is designed in Bangalore. Renting a car from Avis online? It`s managed here.
So it was no wonder that when the State Department issued a travel advisory on May 31 warning Americans to leave India because the war prospects had risen to ``serious levels,`` all these global firms who had moved their back rooms to Bangalore went nuts.
``That day,`` said Vivek Paul, vice chairman of Wipro, ``I had a C.I.O. [chief information officer] from one of our big American clients send me an e-mail saying: `I am now spending a lot of time looking for alternative sources to India. I don`t think you want me doing that, and I don`t want to be doing it.` I immediately forwarded his letter to the Indian ambassador in Washington and told him to get it to the right person.``
No wonder. For many global companies, ``the main heart of their business is now supported here,`` said N. Krishnakumar, president of MindTree. ``It can cause chaos if there is a disruption.`` While not trying to meddle in foreign affairs, he added, ``what we explained to our government, through the Confederation of Indian Industry, is that providing a stable, predictable operating environment is now the key to India`s development.``
This was a real education for India`s elderly leaders in New Delhi, but, officials conceded, they got the message: loose talk about war or nukes could be disastrous for India. This was reinforced by another new lobby: the information technology ministers who now exist in every Indian state to drum up business.
``We don`t get involved in politics,`` said Vivek Kulkarni, the information technology secretary for Bangalore, ``but we did bring to the government`s attention the problems the Indian I.T. industry might face if there were a war. . . . Ten years ago [a lobby of I.T. ministers] never existed.``
To be sure, none of this guarantees there will be no war. Tomorrow, Pakistani militants could easily do something so outrageous and provocative that India would have to retaliate. But it does guarantee that India`s leaders will now think 10 times about how they respond, and if war is inevitable, that India will pay 10 times the price it would have paid a decade ago.
In the meantime, this cease-fire is brought to you by G.E. — and all its friends here in Bangalore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/opinion/11FRIE.html
The Sanjay Dutt Tapes
Thu Aug 8,10:07 PM ET
By Bryan Pearson
NEW DELHI (Variety) - The producer of India`s most expensive movie -- out on bail awaiting trial for attempted murder -- has sought police protection after receiving fresh extortion threats from the underworld, police said Thursday.
Film financier Bharat Shah complained that ``the mob`` had been calling him ever since ``Devdas`` became one of Bollywood`s few box office hits this year.
Among those making the calls, he told a Bombay radio show Thursday, was underworld kingpin Abu Salem. ``They want to talk about `Devdas` with me,`` Shah said
Pradip Shinde, the head of Bombay`s police anti-extortion unit, said Shah has filed a complaint with his office but has not yet received any security.
``Devdas,`` produced at a cost of 500 million rupees ($10.2 million), has done better than expected both in India and Britain, where there is a large expat Indian population.
Last week the police produced audiotapes taken from phone taps as evidence in Shah`s trial. They say the tapes prove a link between Bollywood and the underworld that stretches far beyond extortion -- to film financing, the awarding of parts and even distribution of the finished product.
Shah is just one of many Bollywood figures who have complained of extortion threats; some now have their own bodyguards.
Bombay court bans publication of taped conversation between alleged mafia figures, Bollywood film personalities
Wed Jul 31,10:09 PM ET
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer
BOMBAY, India - Friendly chats a suspected mafia boss allegedly had with popular ``Bollywood`` movie figures have become a hot item for TV talk shows, Internet sites and front-page headlines across India.
So hot that a Bombay court banned the Indian media from further publishing the taped conversations in which threats are made against film figures who refuse to meet mafia demands, and code names — such as Baldy, Fatty and Naked Strongman — are used to gossip about ``Bollywood`` stars.
The conversations became public last week after a police wiretap was played in open court during the trial of Bharat Shah, Bollywood`s biggest film financier.
Defense lawyers argued distribution of conversation transcripts were prejudicing the case, and on Wednesday, Special Court Judge A.P. Bhangale barred further publication of the tapes.
The wiretap is one of 71 tapes now in court custody that have stirred up old rumors and police allegations that the mob controls the world`s most prolific film industry, known as ``Bollywood.``
Shah was arrested last year and charged with hatching a conspiracy with Chotta Shakeel, a suspected mob boss who lives in Pakistan and Dubai, to target film actors. He was released on bail in April and the case against him continues in the Bombay special court.
Shakeel is on a list of 20 terror suspects India has sought from Pakistan. The Bombay police claim they taped Shakeel`s conversations with actor Sanjay Dutt, financier Harish Sugandh and directors Mahesh Manjrekar and Sanjay Gupta.
Indian newspapers and television stations this week have carried transcripts of conversations between Shakeel and leading Bombay celebrities that in parts sound even more theatrical than cheesy Hindi-movie dialogue.
Shakeel, in one transcript made available to The Associated Press, says he likes to frighten only those who challenge him. Otherwise he prefers love, not war.
Defense lawyers complained the trial was being prejudiced by the publicity. ``The conversations have yet to be proved and the identity of the people conducting the conversations has yet to be proved,`` Shah`s lawyer Srikanth Shivpude said Wednesday. ``Internet sites are inviting comments and panel discussions are being held on television about the tapes.``
Shah has denied mafia links and says he has been framed.
``Why should I take money from the underworld?`` Shah told the AP when he was charged last year.
Authorities are confident the charges will stick.
``He (Shah) was aiding and abetting unlawful activities. He was associated with known heads of crime,`` Rohini Salian, the chief public prosecutor, told the AP.
Filmmakers often have complained that criminals force top actors to work in movies they finance in Bollywood, where more than 800 films are produced each year.
Authorities say the organized crime network demands repayment at high interest rates from producers and directors if the movies are flops.
The phone tap records show ``the extent to which the underworld has taken control of the film industry,`` said Judge A.B. Palkar of the Bombay High Court, after he denied Shah bail last year.
Palkar said the tapes reveal how ``how contract killers are employed, how bombs are exploded and how innocent people are killed for nonpayment of ransom.``
The case began in December 2000 with the arrest of film producer Nazim Rizvi, whose film ``Chori Chori, Chupke Chupke`` (Secretly, Quietly) was financed by Shah.
Rizvi was arrested on charges of extortion, links with Shakeel and the attempted murder of film producer Rakesh Roshan in January 2000. Roshan suffered bullet wounds to his arm in the attempt on his life.
Police submitted a dozen tapes which they said showed Rizvi, who is still in jail, giving Shakeel details of the production and release of the films.
Authorities said Shakeel instructed Rizvi to threaten well-known film producer Rakesh Roshan and his son Hrithik Roshan, who is Bollywood`s latest megastar, to agree to act in a film.
``Rizvi and Shakeel had entered into a criminal conspiracy and had plans to attack other film personalities,`` a police statement said.
Mahesh Bhatt, one of India`s top filmmakers, told the AP in an interview earlier this year that the mafia was ``openly, nakedly, blatantly opposing stars and terrorizing people. There is powerlessness in the industry.``
Posted by
cutandpaste
Aug 12, 2002 10:24 am
Threats Scare Bollywood ProducerThu Aug 8,10:07 PM ET
By Bryan Pearson
NEW DELHI (Variety) - The producer of India`s most expensive movie -- out on bail awaiting trial for attempted murder -- has sought police protection after receiving fresh extortion threats from the underworld, police said Thursday.
Film financier Bharat Shah complained that ``the mob`` had been calling him ever since ``Devdas`` became one of Bollywood`s few box office hits this year.
Among those making the calls, he told a Bombay radio show Thursday, was underworld kingpin Abu Salem. ``They want to talk about `Devdas` with me,`` Shah said
Pradip Shinde, the head of Bombay`s police anti-extortion unit, said Shah has filed a complaint with his office but has not yet received any security.
``Devdas,`` produced at a cost of 500 million rupees ($10.2 million), has done better than expected both in India and Britain, where there is a large expat Indian population.
Last week the police produced audiotapes taken from phone taps as evidence in Shah`s trial. They say the tapes prove a link between Bollywood and the underworld that stretches far beyond extortion -- to film financing, the awarding of parts and even distribution of the finished product.
Shah is just one of many Bollywood figures who have complained of extortion threats; some now have their own bodyguards.
Bombay court bans publication of taped conversation between alleged mafia figures, Bollywood film personalities
Wed Jul 31,10:09 PM ET
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer
BOMBAY, India - Friendly chats a suspected mafia boss allegedly had with popular ``Bollywood`` movie figures have become a hot item for TV talk shows, Internet sites and front-page headlines across India.
So hot that a Bombay court banned the Indian media from further publishing the taped conversations in which threats are made against film figures who refuse to meet mafia demands, and code names — such as Baldy, Fatty and Naked Strongman — are used to gossip about ``Bollywood`` stars.
The conversations became public last week after a police wiretap was played in open court during the trial of Bharat Shah, Bollywood`s biggest film financier.
Defense lawyers argued distribution of conversation transcripts were prejudicing the case, and on Wednesday, Special Court Judge A.P. Bhangale barred further publication of the tapes.
The wiretap is one of 71 tapes now in court custody that have stirred up old rumors and police allegations that the mob controls the world`s most prolific film industry, known as ``Bollywood.``
Shah was arrested last year and charged with hatching a conspiracy with Chotta Shakeel, a suspected mob boss who lives in Pakistan and Dubai, to target film actors. He was released on bail in April and the case against him continues in the Bombay special court.
Shakeel is on a list of 20 terror suspects India has sought from Pakistan. The Bombay police claim they taped Shakeel`s conversations with actor Sanjay Dutt, financier Harish Sugandh and directors Mahesh Manjrekar and Sanjay Gupta.
Indian newspapers and television stations this week have carried transcripts of conversations between Shakeel and leading Bombay celebrities that in parts sound even more theatrical than cheesy Hindi-movie dialogue.
Shakeel, in one transcript made available to The Associated Press, says he likes to frighten only those who challenge him. Otherwise he prefers love, not war.
Defense lawyers complained the trial was being prejudiced by the publicity. ``The conversations have yet to be proved and the identity of the people conducting the conversations has yet to be proved,`` Shah`s lawyer Srikanth Shivpude said Wednesday. ``Internet sites are inviting comments and panel discussions are being held on television about the tapes.``
Shah has denied mafia links and says he has been framed.
``Why should I take money from the underworld?`` Shah told the AP when he was charged last year.
Authorities are confident the charges will stick.
``He (Shah) was aiding and abetting unlawful activities. He was associated with known heads of crime,`` Rohini Salian, the chief public prosecutor, told the AP.
Filmmakers often have complained that criminals force top actors to work in movies they finance in Bollywood, where more than 800 films are produced each year.
Authorities say the organized crime network demands repayment at high interest rates from producers and directors if the movies are flops.
The phone tap records show ``the extent to which the underworld has taken control of the film industry,`` said Judge A.B. Palkar of the Bombay High Court, after he denied Shah bail last year.
Palkar said the tapes reveal how ``how contract killers are employed, how bombs are exploded and how innocent people are killed for nonpayment of ransom.``
The case began in December 2000 with the arrest of film producer Nazim Rizvi, whose film ``Chori Chori, Chupke Chupke`` (Secretly, Quietly) was financed by Shah.
Rizvi was arrested on charges of extortion, links with Shakeel and the attempted murder of film producer Rakesh Roshan in January 2000. Roshan suffered bullet wounds to his arm in the attempt on his life.
Police submitted a dozen tapes which they said showed Rizvi, who is still in jail, giving Shakeel details of the production and release of the films.
Authorities said Shakeel instructed Rizvi to threaten well-known film producer Rakesh Roshan and his son Hrithik Roshan, who is Bollywood`s latest megastar, to agree to act in a film.
``Rizvi and Shakeel had entered into a criminal conspiracy and had plans to attack other film personalities,`` a police statement said.
Mahesh Bhatt, one of India`s top filmmakers, told the AP in an interview earlier this year that the mafia was ``openly, nakedly, blatantly opposing stars and terrorizing people. There is powerlessness in the industry.``
The Sanjay Dutt Tapes
Posted by
cutandpaste
Aug 8, 2002 04:27 pm
NPR`s Eric Weiner reports on India`s film industry - the largest in the world. ``Bollywood`` produces hundreds of schmaltzy musicals every year. So far, the audience has been limited to India and the diaspora. But now Bollywood is making its mark on the world stage, with an Oscar nominee, critically acclaimed films and a new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Some Western actors are even showing up in Bombay, hoping to get their big break.
Blasphemy Law: An Academic Investigation
Wed Jul 31,11:54 PM ET
By STEVE STRUNSKY, Associated Press Writer
NEWARK, New Jersey - A man accused in the fatal stabbing of his pregnant wife and her mother and sister in an apparent religious dispute was taken into custody, authorities said.
The family is from Guyana, on the northern coast of South America.
Alim Hassan, 31, was arrested Wednesday trying to enter Canada from Buffalo, New York, on a bus after an anonymous caller Tuesday night warned he was headed to Toronto, said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio.
A fugitive warrant issued by the prosecutor`s office indicated Hassan had fought with his wife over his desire that she convert to Islam, said Buffalo Police Lt. Larry Baehre. The victims were Hindu, he said.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police turned Hassan over to U.S. authorities. He appeared in a Buffalo courtroom Wednesday and agreed to be brought to New Jersey Thursday to be charged, DeFazio said.
Prosecutors say Hassan stabbed his wife, 29-year-old Marlyn Hassan; her sister, Sharon Yassim, 30; and his mother-in-law, Bernadette Seajatan, 49. The victims were found in the Jersey City home they shared with their husbands and Yassim`s two sons.
The boys, ages 3 and 6, discovered the bodies after the three men had left the house Tuesday morning.
DeFazio said Alim Hassan is not a U.S. citizen. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Kerry Gill said Hassan was in the country legally, but would not elaborate.
Posted by
cutandpaste
Aug 7, 2002 03:58 pm
Man arrested in deaths of wife, in-laws; arrest warrant cites dispute over Islam Wed Jul 31,11:54 PM ET
By STEVE STRUNSKY, Associated Press Writer
NEWARK, New Jersey - A man accused in the fatal stabbing of his pregnant wife and her mother and sister in an apparent religious dispute was taken into custody, authorities said.
The family is from Guyana, on the northern coast of South America.
Alim Hassan, 31, was arrested Wednesday trying to enter Canada from Buffalo, New York, on a bus after an anonymous caller Tuesday night warned he was headed to Toronto, said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio.
A fugitive warrant issued by the prosecutor`s office indicated Hassan had fought with his wife over his desire that she convert to Islam, said Buffalo Police Lt. Larry Baehre. The victims were Hindu, he said.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police turned Hassan over to U.S. authorities. He appeared in a Buffalo courtroom Wednesday and agreed to be brought to New Jersey Thursday to be charged, DeFazio said.
Prosecutors say Hassan stabbed his wife, 29-year-old Marlyn Hassan; her sister, Sharon Yassim, 30; and his mother-in-law, Bernadette Seajatan, 49. The victims were found in the Jersey City home they shared with their husbands and Yassim`s two sons.
The boys, ages 3 and 6, discovered the bodies after the three men had left the house Tuesday morning.
DeFazio said Alim Hassan is not a U.S. citizen. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Kerry Gill said Hassan was in the country legally, but would not elaborate.
Shadowlines (Part I)
By Robert Fisk in Islamabad
21 July 2002
The FBI is becoming almost as distrustful of its Pakistani counterpart as the CIA is of the warlords across the border in Afghanistan.
During the trial of journalist Daniel Pearl`s murderers – which ended with the conviction of the British public schoolboy Omar Sheikh – one small but disturbing fact never made its way into the headlines: that one of the co-accused was a former Pakistani police officer. The final testimony of the trial – released only yesterday morning – must owe something to his evidence.
It revealed, for example, that Mr Pearl made two escape attempts from his captors and that it was this which prompted them to murder him. Three Yemenis were brought in to perform his throat-cutting. But all we know of the ex-cop is that – even at the time of his arrest – he was still working for the Pakistan Special Branch.
Pakistan`s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful state institution which helped arm Afghan fighters against the Soviets and then supported the Taliban, was supposedly reformed once the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, joined President George Bush`s ``war on terrorism``.
Few in Pakistan believe it. There are rumours, for example, that intelligence officers helped to hide three al-Qa`ida members after a gun battle in a village in Waziristan, in the border tribal territories on 25 June in which 10 soldiers were killed. US agents in Pakistan suspect that several of their raids on remote villages in Waziristan were betrayed to al-Qa`ida operatives in advance. Since then, both the FBI and the Pakistan army have preferred not to inform local police officers of their activities.
Although authorities in Islamabad insist that US forces cannot operate alone inside Pakistani territory, recent reports suggest the contrary. Last week, for example, three Pakistani tribesmen were apparently picked up by US troops from the border town of Angoor Adda and flown across the frontier to the US base at Birmal in Afghanistan. It also appears that American forces have been using their old Afghan device of handing out wads of cash in return for local tribal loyalty.
If Pakistan can deny America is waging an undercover war on its territory, it is far more difficult to conceal the involvement of a police Rangers inspector, Waseem Akhtar, in the conspiracy to murder General Musharraf during his visit to Karachi on 26 April. And there is evidence that the explosives to be used in the failed attack were subsequently employed in the suicide bombing of the US con- sulate in Karachi on 14 June.
Because of the past co-operation between the Taliban – and by extension al-Qa`ida and Pakistan`s intelligence services – many Pakistan Special Branch and Field Security Wing officers are working blind, forced to build up entirely new files on militants who remain well known to elements of the ISI. Only patient police work in Karachi, for instance, uncovered hitherto unknown connections between Islamist and secular groups, leading to a series of arrests.
All in all, the civil police and the Americans might learn more by talking to the ISI. But no one is sure for whom their individual members work.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=316895
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 22, 2002 07:10 pm
US wary of Pakistan intelligence services` links to al-Qa`idaBy Robert Fisk in Islamabad
21 July 2002
The FBI is becoming almost as distrustful of its Pakistani counterpart as the CIA is of the warlords across the border in Afghanistan.
During the trial of journalist Daniel Pearl`s murderers – which ended with the conviction of the British public schoolboy Omar Sheikh – one small but disturbing fact never made its way into the headlines: that one of the co-accused was a former Pakistani police officer. The final testimony of the trial – released only yesterday morning – must owe something to his evidence.
It revealed, for example, that Mr Pearl made two escape attempts from his captors and that it was this which prompted them to murder him. Three Yemenis were brought in to perform his throat-cutting. But all we know of the ex-cop is that – even at the time of his arrest – he was still working for the Pakistan Special Branch.
Pakistan`s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful state institution which helped arm Afghan fighters against the Soviets and then supported the Taliban, was supposedly reformed once the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, joined President George Bush`s ``war on terrorism``.
Few in Pakistan believe it. There are rumours, for example, that intelligence officers helped to hide three al-Qa`ida members after a gun battle in a village in Waziristan, in the border tribal territories on 25 June in which 10 soldiers were killed. US agents in Pakistan suspect that several of their raids on remote villages in Waziristan were betrayed to al-Qa`ida operatives in advance. Since then, both the FBI and the Pakistan army have preferred not to inform local police officers of their activities.
Although authorities in Islamabad insist that US forces cannot operate alone inside Pakistani territory, recent reports suggest the contrary. Last week, for example, three Pakistani tribesmen were apparently picked up by US troops from the border town of Angoor Adda and flown across the frontier to the US base at Birmal in Afghanistan. It also appears that American forces have been using their old Afghan device of handing out wads of cash in return for local tribal loyalty.
If Pakistan can deny America is waging an undercover war on its territory, it is far more difficult to conceal the involvement of a police Rangers inspector, Waseem Akhtar, in the conspiracy to murder General Musharraf during his visit to Karachi on 26 April. And there is evidence that the explosives to be used in the failed attack were subsequently employed in the suicide bombing of the US con- sulate in Karachi on 14 June.
Because of the past co-operation between the Taliban – and by extension al-Qa`ida and Pakistan`s intelligence services – many Pakistan Special Branch and Field Security Wing officers are working blind, forced to build up entirely new files on militants who remain well known to elements of the ISI. Only patient police work in Karachi, for instance, uncovered hitherto unknown connections between Islamist and secular groups, leading to a series of arrests.
All in all, the civil police and the Americans might learn more by talking to the ISI. But no one is sure for whom their individual members work.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=316895
How Not to Reform Universities
Fallacy of the basic idea
The two-nation theory is used as a form of social control by Pakistan’s elite.
http://www.himalmag.com/2002/july/perspective.htm
PERSPECTIVE
Fallacy of the basic idea
The two-nation theory is used as a form of social control by Pakistan’s elite.
by Aasim Akhtar
The `Islamic` general
The single most important event in Pakistani his tory is the secession of the eastern wing and the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. Yet, the imperative sentiment behind Pakistani nationhood remains the two-nation theory. The interest groups that comprise the Pakistani state are entirely reliant on this theory to justify the security paradigm that underlies decision-making, and allocation of resources. And yet, the single most important event in Pakistani history remains strangely peripheral and misunderstood, misrepresented as it is by the elite. To understand the concept of Pakistanhood that has been propagated over our 55-year history is to understand the political economy of this country.
All state structures that are fundamentally undemocratic rely on means of social control, whether they are coercive or subtle. This social control is usually founded on a basic idea, on a singular ideology that permeates all aspects of life. In Pakistan’s case, this ideology in its essence asserts that Muslims are unable to co-exist with Hindus. Created as a home for the Muslims of the Subcontinent, Pakistan today teeters on the brink of political bankruptcy. It is described by a ravaged economy, all-consuming societal ills, and a political culture that resembles a modern-day monarchy.
The assumption that Muslims were inherently a single nation separate from the nation of Hindus, India, was proven false by the events of 1971, when it became apparent that the Bengali identity was dearer to those who lived in East Pakistan than the Muslim identity. Today, there still are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. And, have we forgotten that there are still over a hundred thousand Biharis in refugee camps in Bangladesh that the Pakistani state refuses to accept? Still, the two-nation theory continues to inform Pakistan’s polity in a profound way, by providing the energy for its Kashmir preoccupation: Kashmir continues to irk because it is symbolises a failure to fulfil the two-nation dream. The fallacy of the two-nation theory has been proven time and again, its contra-dictions undermining its credibility, but the tragedy for Pakistan is that the theory continues to be employed by the elite to perpetuate a system that has clearly failed to cater to even the basic needs of its citizens. The fact that the majority of Pakistanis still subscribe to this theory underlines how powerful a means of social control it is.
The Pakistani body politic was dysfunctional from the word go. At the time of partition, the Pakistani military was a marginal actor. Neither was the religious clergy a major player in the politics of the new nation; in fact, the Jamaat-e-Islami had been opposed to the break up of India. The Hindu intelligentsia and entrepreneurial class from entire regions, including the Siraiki belt and Sindh, had packed up and crossed the new border to India. At that stage then, it was the landed elite that had emerged as the most influential lobby within the Pakistan movement which held the reins of power. The rest was an unnatural amalgamation of different interest groups aspiring to state power. And from the outset, the Kashmir dispute defined the national psyche.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah is often quoted as having said that religion should not interfere in the affairs of the state. He is said to have asserted on numerous occasions that Pakistan would be a secular state, albeit with a Muslim majority. However, he also made it very clear that Kashmir was Pakistan’s “jugular” and the new nation was incomplete without it. Jawaharlal Nehru was similarly uncompromising, promising on the one hand to give Kashmiris the right to decide their own future, and on the other, initiating the militari-sation of the area by sending thousands of troops to fortify its frontiers. At the very outset, the leaders of the freedom movement made the Kashmir issue content-ious, and this has since weighed heavily on the entire region. A mentality that Kashmir must be made part of the country has dominated the public discourse in Pakistan, and as such, has given the military and the religious right an easy excuse to propagate their destructive ideologies. Meanwhile in India, the establishment continues to mandate gross violations of human rights in Kashmir, claiming it is a secular, democratic state at the same time.
The inordinate amounts of money spent on defence, the extraordinary and unnatural rise of the religious right in the last 25 years, and the degeneration of political parties in Pakistan all have something to do with the security paradigm of the state. Essentially, it is the threat perception from a bigger and stronger India (and therefore, the argument goes, the ten times as many Hindus on that side of the border who thirst for Muslim blood) that gives license to the establishment to accord special privileges to itself in the name of protecting Pakistan and its Muslim population. The rise of the religious right (and the proliferation of jehadi elements) and the thwarting of the political process are, then, outcomes of the inordinate power that the military establishment exercises. These trends have been reinforced by the whims of the United States both during the Cold War, and now.
Pakistan reached a critical point when General Zia- ul Haq took over the country in 1977. A year later, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and as the definitive conflict of the Cold War shaped up, Pakistan emerged as western capitalism’s point man on the Subcontinent. It is now common knowledge that the US supported the Afghan mujahideen and the many splinter jehadi groups that have since become the US’s primary enemy in the “war on terror”. Nevertheless, then it was the Islamisation of the country that made it possible for General Zia to pro-pagate the notion of jehad against communist Russia.
This process of Islamisation had actually begun with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Having come to power on the slogan of Islamic socialism, Bhutto proceeded to oversee the writing of the 1973 constitution in which Ahmadis were infamously declared non-Muslims. In 1974, the “peace-ful” nuclear test carried out by India provided impetus for a new wave of hysteria in Pakistan. Bhutto launch-ed the Pakistani nuclear programme, with the slogan ghaas khaenge (“we will eat grass” if we have to but we will make the bomb) to emphasise his commitment to the creation of an Islamic bomb. Once the need to combat the perceived Indian threat was re-established as the primary policy concern of the state, it was less important for Mr Bhutto to make good his populist election promises of roti, kapra, makan (food, clothing and shelter) than it was to stand toe to toe with India.
In many ways, Bhutto’s tenure was dominated by efforts to banish the disaster of 1971 from Pakistan’s collective memory. The nationalist movement had proved that not only did the Bengalis not have any allegiance to the Kashmir cause but that they also disputed the special privileges accorded to an army that was almost exclusively based in the western wing. Indeed, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman consistently and accurately alleged that East Pakistan’s export earnings from jute were being used to fund the army and an industrial complex in West Pakistan rather than to cater to the needs of the eastern wing.
So the security paradigm emerged with renewed vigour after General Zia came to power, courtesy the Afghan war. Along with it came the shocks that split the nation along religious, sectarian, and ethnic lines. The promulgation of “Islamic” laws such as the Hudood Ordinance which openly discriminate against women in cases of sexual abuse, the formation of the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM) that disturbed the delicate ethnic balance in Karachi and fomented unrest, and the explosion of sectarian conflict, all took place during the Zia era. The de-politicisation of society was accompanied by the politicisation of the intelligence agencies. Political parties remained sidelined for almost a decade. By the time elections took place in 1988 by virtue of Zia-ul Haq’s mysterious death, state and society had been transformed.
The fallout of 12 years of unstable democracy was an intensification of the influence of the security apparatus in the affairs of the state. It is now common knowledge that Pakistan-based jehadis were at the forefront of the militarised resistance in Kashmir. As such, therefore, Kashmir policy dominated national politics through the 1990s and the military establishment in the post-Zia era has never released its stranglehold on power to any meaningful extent. Development expenditure fell from a high of 7.6 percent of GDP in 1991-92 to 2.8 percent in 2000-01. Meanwhile, ex-penditure on defence and debt ser-vicing was equivalent to 88 percent of total tax revenue in 1991 and increased to over 90 percent of total tax revenue in 2000.
The stranglehold that the military establishment has on resource allocation is at least partly due to the fact that it has such a massive influence on the political process. The intelligence agencies that had been made all-powerful during the covert US operation in Afghanistan in the Cold War era have maintained their grip on Pakistani politics. Meanwhile parochial sectarian, ethnic and jehadi groups have injected a new terror into Pakistani society. Unfortunately, these forces are not accountable to anyone – they have no insti-tutional history, and whether they flourish or wither away is a decision over which the Pakistani public has no control.
While the aftermath of 11 September has inadvertently led to the exposure of this nexus, it has not changed the way the Pakistani state is structured or the essential power dynamics that exist within Pakistani society. In fact, the military’s domination has been cemented over the past few months. All civilian agencies in the country are now headed by retired or serving army officials. Two out of four provincial governors are retired generals. Three federal ministers are retired army men. The list could go on. (See Himal, June 2002.)
Many political parties have been co-opted into this undemocratic system, which is a reflection not only of the degeneration of politics in the country, but also of the fact that political parties do not expect to ever exercise authority independent of the army’s wishes. Ultimately, the established political elite is aware that challenging the military’s consumption of a disproportionate share of the budget, or the fact that army men are given special privileges, offices, and rights, will only lead to its own demise. Of course there is the small matter of political parties being unrepresentative and self-interested. Groups with vested interests such as the landed elite, an industrial class which derives its competitive edge through state-sanctioned cronyism, and the civil bureaucracy, have all at one time or the other allied themselves with the military establishment to serve their own needs and wants. To invigorate political process in Pakistan the nature of the state will have to be fundamentally altered.
The security paradigm and the accompanying forms of social control that allow the military to continue its domination of state and society are intact. Textbooks used in schools propagate untruths about the atrocities of the independence movement; they also promote intolerance toward religious minorities. State-run television and radio spew out long propaganda programmes highlighting India’s evil designs and the need for combat-ready armed forces and modern weapons to repel Indian aggression. PTV often shows a short programme called Kashmir File after its 9 pm Khabarnama, showcasing graphic footage of Kashmiris being abused by Indian soldiers, calling for their freedom from oppression. As an example of how such condi-tioning begets itself, newspapers covering, say, a natural disaster in India will phrase headlines almost as if the disaster were divine punishment: “Heat wave kills 300 Indians”.
Nevertheless, cracks are emerging. The military establishment has been forced to re-evaluate its role in facilitating conflicts on its western and north-eastern borders. The most recent stand-off with India seems to have been averted, and US pressure has seen Pakistan acknowledge, and make moves to arrest, “cross-border infiltration”. Still, one feels that so long as it is US persuasions that compel the army to make a retreat, any retreat is only temporary.
Nation-states peripheral to the global system such as Pakistan have almost completely surrendered sovereignty in crucial affairs, and so perhaps even a US-imposed change could negate the original US-created extremist threat. But US interests do not include forcing a fundamental reorientation of Pakistan’s state ideology. The US military-industrial complex reaps many profits from Pakistan’s hunger for military technology and infrastructure, and very much wants to maintain its market share in South Asia.
Any genuine change in Pakistan must be organic and based on public recognition within Pakistan that the prevailing state ideology is untenable. Only once this happens will there be any fundamental compulsion for the military to retreat to the barracks. So far political parties have failed to play the role of challenger to the state, public frustration is ever on the rise, poverty is rampant and growing, and post-referendum, resent-ment towards the army is widespread. There is talk now about how much the conflict over Kashmir has cost Pakistan and its people. And there are livelihood movements that are beginning to come into direct conflict with the state.
As the latest budget is released, Pakistani policy-makers are once again hard put to explain away the low growth and the poor level of poverty-related expenditure. They point to a 14 percent increase in defence spending over the past year by way of excuse. They will continue to do so until the global hegemon, international financial institutions or some other influential actor challenges their policies and the wisdom of the imperatives that guide them. The Pakistani people can hardly afford to entrust their destinies and the destiny of their political culture to a verifiably fickle international community. If anything is to really change, the will to reshape the Pakistani state must be generated by the Pakistani people themselves.
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 11, 2002 04:33 am
According to this author the two nation theory proved wrong. He feels India should not have been partitioned on the basis of religion.Fallacy of the basic idea
The two-nation theory is used as a form of social control by Pakistan’s elite.
http://www.himalmag.com/2002/july/perspective.htm
PERSPECTIVE
Fallacy of the basic idea
The two-nation theory is used as a form of social control by Pakistan’s elite.
by Aasim Akhtar
The `Islamic` general
The single most important event in Pakistani his tory is the secession of the eastern wing and the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. Yet, the imperative sentiment behind Pakistani nationhood remains the two-nation theory. The interest groups that comprise the Pakistani state are entirely reliant on this theory to justify the security paradigm that underlies decision-making, and allocation of resources. And yet, the single most important event in Pakistani history remains strangely peripheral and misunderstood, misrepresented as it is by the elite. To understand the concept of Pakistanhood that has been propagated over our 55-year history is to understand the political economy of this country.
All state structures that are fundamentally undemocratic rely on means of social control, whether they are coercive or subtle. This social control is usually founded on a basic idea, on a singular ideology that permeates all aspects of life. In Pakistan’s case, this ideology in its essence asserts that Muslims are unable to co-exist with Hindus. Created as a home for the Muslims of the Subcontinent, Pakistan today teeters on the brink of political bankruptcy. It is described by a ravaged economy, all-consuming societal ills, and a political culture that resembles a modern-day monarchy.
The assumption that Muslims were inherently a single nation separate from the nation of Hindus, India, was proven false by the events of 1971, when it became apparent that the Bengali identity was dearer to those who lived in East Pakistan than the Muslim identity. Today, there still are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. And, have we forgotten that there are still over a hundred thousand Biharis in refugee camps in Bangladesh that the Pakistani state refuses to accept? Still, the two-nation theory continues to inform Pakistan’s polity in a profound way, by providing the energy for its Kashmir preoccupation: Kashmir continues to irk because it is symbolises a failure to fulfil the two-nation dream. The fallacy of the two-nation theory has been proven time and again, its contra-dictions undermining its credibility, but the tragedy for Pakistan is that the theory continues to be employed by the elite to perpetuate a system that has clearly failed to cater to even the basic needs of its citizens. The fact that the majority of Pakistanis still subscribe to this theory underlines how powerful a means of social control it is.
The Pakistani body politic was dysfunctional from the word go. At the time of partition, the Pakistani military was a marginal actor. Neither was the religious clergy a major player in the politics of the new nation; in fact, the Jamaat-e-Islami had been opposed to the break up of India. The Hindu intelligentsia and entrepreneurial class from entire regions, including the Siraiki belt and Sindh, had packed up and crossed the new border to India. At that stage then, it was the landed elite that had emerged as the most influential lobby within the Pakistan movement which held the reins of power. The rest was an unnatural amalgamation of different interest groups aspiring to state power. And from the outset, the Kashmir dispute defined the national psyche.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah is often quoted as having said that religion should not interfere in the affairs of the state. He is said to have asserted on numerous occasions that Pakistan would be a secular state, albeit with a Muslim majority. However, he also made it very clear that Kashmir was Pakistan’s “jugular” and the new nation was incomplete without it. Jawaharlal Nehru was similarly uncompromising, promising on the one hand to give Kashmiris the right to decide their own future, and on the other, initiating the militari-sation of the area by sending thousands of troops to fortify its frontiers. At the very outset, the leaders of the freedom movement made the Kashmir issue content-ious, and this has since weighed heavily on the entire region. A mentality that Kashmir must be made part of the country has dominated the public discourse in Pakistan, and as such, has given the military and the religious right an easy excuse to propagate their destructive ideologies. Meanwhile in India, the establishment continues to mandate gross violations of human rights in Kashmir, claiming it is a secular, democratic state at the same time.
The inordinate amounts of money spent on defence, the extraordinary and unnatural rise of the religious right in the last 25 years, and the degeneration of political parties in Pakistan all have something to do with the security paradigm of the state. Essentially, it is the threat perception from a bigger and stronger India (and therefore, the argument goes, the ten times as many Hindus on that side of the border who thirst for Muslim blood) that gives license to the establishment to accord special privileges to itself in the name of protecting Pakistan and its Muslim population. The rise of the religious right (and the proliferation of jehadi elements) and the thwarting of the political process are, then, outcomes of the inordinate power that the military establishment exercises. These trends have been reinforced by the whims of the United States both during the Cold War, and now.
Pakistan reached a critical point when General Zia- ul Haq took over the country in 1977. A year later, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and as the definitive conflict of the Cold War shaped up, Pakistan emerged as western capitalism’s point man on the Subcontinent. It is now common knowledge that the US supported the Afghan mujahideen and the many splinter jehadi groups that have since become the US’s primary enemy in the “war on terror”. Nevertheless, then it was the Islamisation of the country that made it possible for General Zia to pro-pagate the notion of jehad against communist Russia.
This process of Islamisation had actually begun with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Having come to power on the slogan of Islamic socialism, Bhutto proceeded to oversee the writing of the 1973 constitution in which Ahmadis were infamously declared non-Muslims. In 1974, the “peace-ful” nuclear test carried out by India provided impetus for a new wave of hysteria in Pakistan. Bhutto launch-ed the Pakistani nuclear programme, with the slogan ghaas khaenge (“we will eat grass” if we have to but we will make the bomb) to emphasise his commitment to the creation of an Islamic bomb. Once the need to combat the perceived Indian threat was re-established as the primary policy concern of the state, it was less important for Mr Bhutto to make good his populist election promises of roti, kapra, makan (food, clothing and shelter) than it was to stand toe to toe with India.
In many ways, Bhutto’s tenure was dominated by efforts to banish the disaster of 1971 from Pakistan’s collective memory. The nationalist movement had proved that not only did the Bengalis not have any allegiance to the Kashmir cause but that they also disputed the special privileges accorded to an army that was almost exclusively based in the western wing. Indeed, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman consistently and accurately alleged that East Pakistan’s export earnings from jute were being used to fund the army and an industrial complex in West Pakistan rather than to cater to the needs of the eastern wing.
So the security paradigm emerged with renewed vigour after General Zia came to power, courtesy the Afghan war. Along with it came the shocks that split the nation along religious, sectarian, and ethnic lines. The promulgation of “Islamic” laws such as the Hudood Ordinance which openly discriminate against women in cases of sexual abuse, the formation of the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM) that disturbed the delicate ethnic balance in Karachi and fomented unrest, and the explosion of sectarian conflict, all took place during the Zia era. The de-politicisation of society was accompanied by the politicisation of the intelligence agencies. Political parties remained sidelined for almost a decade. By the time elections took place in 1988 by virtue of Zia-ul Haq’s mysterious death, state and society had been transformed.
The fallout of 12 years of unstable democracy was an intensification of the influence of the security apparatus in the affairs of the state. It is now common knowledge that Pakistan-based jehadis were at the forefront of the militarised resistance in Kashmir. As such, therefore, Kashmir policy dominated national politics through the 1990s and the military establishment in the post-Zia era has never released its stranglehold on power to any meaningful extent. Development expenditure fell from a high of 7.6 percent of GDP in 1991-92 to 2.8 percent in 2000-01. Meanwhile, ex-penditure on defence and debt ser-vicing was equivalent to 88 percent of total tax revenue in 1991 and increased to over 90 percent of total tax revenue in 2000.
The stranglehold that the military establishment has on resource allocation is at least partly due to the fact that it has such a massive influence on the political process. The intelligence agencies that had been made all-powerful during the covert US operation in Afghanistan in the Cold War era have maintained their grip on Pakistani politics. Meanwhile parochial sectarian, ethnic and jehadi groups have injected a new terror into Pakistani society. Unfortunately, these forces are not accountable to anyone – they have no insti-tutional history, and whether they flourish or wither away is a decision over which the Pakistani public has no control.
While the aftermath of 11 September has inadvertently led to the exposure of this nexus, it has not changed the way the Pakistani state is structured or the essential power dynamics that exist within Pakistani society. In fact, the military’s domination has been cemented over the past few months. All civilian agencies in the country are now headed by retired or serving army officials. Two out of four provincial governors are retired generals. Three federal ministers are retired army men. The list could go on. (See Himal, June 2002.)
Many political parties have been co-opted into this undemocratic system, which is a reflection not only of the degeneration of politics in the country, but also of the fact that political parties do not expect to ever exercise authority independent of the army’s wishes. Ultimately, the established political elite is aware that challenging the military’s consumption of a disproportionate share of the budget, or the fact that army men are given special privileges, offices, and rights, will only lead to its own demise. Of course there is the small matter of political parties being unrepresentative and self-interested. Groups with vested interests such as the landed elite, an industrial class which derives its competitive edge through state-sanctioned cronyism, and the civil bureaucracy, have all at one time or the other allied themselves with the military establishment to serve their own needs and wants. To invigorate political process in Pakistan the nature of the state will have to be fundamentally altered.
The security paradigm and the accompanying forms of social control that allow the military to continue its domination of state and society are intact. Textbooks used in schools propagate untruths about the atrocities of the independence movement; they also promote intolerance toward religious minorities. State-run television and radio spew out long propaganda programmes highlighting India’s evil designs and the need for combat-ready armed forces and modern weapons to repel Indian aggression. PTV often shows a short programme called Kashmir File after its 9 pm Khabarnama, showcasing graphic footage of Kashmiris being abused by Indian soldiers, calling for their freedom from oppression. As an example of how such condi-tioning begets itself, newspapers covering, say, a natural disaster in India will phrase headlines almost as if the disaster were divine punishment: “Heat wave kills 300 Indians”.
Nevertheless, cracks are emerging. The military establishment has been forced to re-evaluate its role in facilitating conflicts on its western and north-eastern borders. The most recent stand-off with India seems to have been averted, and US pressure has seen Pakistan acknowledge, and make moves to arrest, “cross-border infiltration”. Still, one feels that so long as it is US persuasions that compel the army to make a retreat, any retreat is only temporary.
Nation-states peripheral to the global system such as Pakistan have almost completely surrendered sovereignty in crucial affairs, and so perhaps even a US-imposed change could negate the original US-created extremist threat. But US interests do not include forcing a fundamental reorientation of Pakistan’s state ideology. The US military-industrial complex reaps many profits from Pakistan’s hunger for military technology and infrastructure, and very much wants to maintain its market share in South Asia.
Any genuine change in Pakistan must be organic and based on public recognition within Pakistan that the prevailing state ideology is untenable. Only once this happens will there be any fundamental compulsion for the military to retreat to the barracks. So far political parties have failed to play the role of challenger to the state, public frustration is ever on the rise, poverty is rampant and growing, and post-referendum, resent-ment towards the army is widespread. There is talk now about how much the conflict over Kashmir has cost Pakistan and its people. And there are livelihood movements that are beginning to come into direct conflict with the state.
As the latest budget is released, Pakistani policy-makers are once again hard put to explain away the low growth and the poor level of poverty-related expenditure. They point to a 14 percent increase in defence spending over the past year by way of excuse. They will continue to do so until the global hegemon, international financial institutions or some other influential actor challenges their policies and the wisdom of the imperatives that guide them. The Pakistani people can hardly afford to entrust their destinies and the destiny of their political culture to a verifiably fickle international community. If anything is to really change, the will to reshape the Pakistani state must be generated by the Pakistani people themselves.
How Not to Reform Universities
Check the MQM web site for details
http://www.petitiononline.com/PAK47/petition.html
http://www.mqm.org/English-News/Jun-2002/news020629.htm
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 11, 2002 04:33 am
MQM followers write a petition to Divide Pakistan.Check the MQM web site for details
http://www.petitiononline.com/PAK47/petition.html
http://www.mqm.org/English-News/Jun-2002/news020629.htm
Shadowlines (Part I)
By Kuldip Nayar
No school bus stops here to pick up children. No postman comes here to deliver letters by name. It is no longer on the beat of the media. Rioting makes news, not the absence of it; relief or rehabilitation is a mundane story. Even after four months of carnage, thousands of victims in Gujarat have no home, no hearth and no work.
Refugee camps, where they took shelter when their houses were destroyed or burnt in broad daylight, are being shut. Some have tried to go back to the places where they lived to rebuild their tenements - and lives. But the hostile neighbourhood has forced them to return. They cannot stay on where they are today - in unhygienic conditions. The government says that its ``work`` is over. What are the states for if they cannot look after the people who are ruined by the government`s failure to protect them?
The victims have no place to go. They feel helpless and abandoned. Yet the prime minister had promised them ample compensation and quick rehabilitation. They have received some money as a grant. But it is too small to be considered compensation and too meagre to help them make a beginning.
Are they victims of prejudice or politics or both? They have come to believe that they are the sacrificial lambs state Chief Minister Narendra Modi used to polarise society. On this premise he seems determined to go to the polls in September or October, six months ahead of schedule. The BJP, his party, expects to reap the harvest from the poisonous seeds Modi has sown.
``If it is a question of vote, please disfranchise us,`` many inmates of refugee camps say. This is probably the strongest denunciation of a system, which claims to be democratic and secular. Muslims constitute 10 to 12 per cent of the electorate in Gujarat. Still the BJP insists on playing the Hindu card.
The elections are some months away. The problem of victims is immediate: how do they pick up the thread and from where? They would like to go back to the shops they had and to the houses where they and their forefathers lived. But many in the majority community do not want it. The administration could help but quite a bit of it is contaminated. And at the helm of affairs is Modi who is far from repentant. His new antic is to open a school of ahimsa (non-violence)!
To turn the tide flowing in favour of the Congress was the task entrusted to him when he was sent to Ahmedabad from Delhi where he was the BJP`s general secretary. Being an RSS pracharak (publicist), he had learnt only one lesson: how to play on the imaginary fears of Hindus against Muslims to communalize society. He would have created a Godhra train incident if it had not happened. The tragedy is that some Muslims played into his hands. Modi probably knows that the Gujaratis would one day realize what harm he has done to their economy - and their image. But that will take time. At present, he wants to cash in on the atmosphere of prejudice, suspicion and fear he has built.
This can be well imagined from a letter that a Muslim gentleman has written to me: ``Not long ago, I would walk up to the nearby post office to send my letters and pick up fresh fruits and vegetables on my way back. I liked the leisurely talk with the Hindu vendors. Now my servant does all that. I am afraid to go out even in a car. I prefer to stay at home. But that is not life.``
Many Muslims have begun to migrate to other states. Some of them, who had come from UP in the wake of the Babri masjid`s demolition, have gone back. But the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is trying to spoil the atmosphere by reneging on its earlier promise. It has refused to accept even the court`s verdict on the mandir-masjid controversy. The prime minister`s statement that the BJP had never deviated from the mandir agenda had created confusion. But the BJP`s reiteration to honour the court`s decision has saved the situation.
So have the NGOs working in Gujarat. They are the only rays of hope in an otherwise murky scenario. All of them are Hindus. They have been looking after the refugee camps from day one. Hindus have contributed lakhs of rupees and some of their organizations have adopted the Muslim villages, razed to the ground during the riots. Indeed, all this has given the victims a feeling that they are part of the Indian nation.
Yet Hindu fundamentalists have not relented in any way. They had planned a series of rath yatras in the next few days. The Muslims had responded positively when they cancelled the Muharram ceremonies. But the sponsors of rath yatras were adamant. It took the National Human Rights Commission`s strong statement to make them come down from their resolve. Former Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan also appealed to the prime minister to stop the yatras. Such pleas hardly matter to a party that is out to divide the nation.
New BJP chief Venkiah Naidu is going still further. He said the other day on a TV network that he would ask the BJP ministers to spread the party`s message. He does not realize the implications of the statement. External affairs minister, finance minister or, for that matter, any other minister is that of the country. True, he belongs to a party but in a notional sense only. Otherwise, it will be mixing politics with the state. Venkiah Naidu`s emotional burst clouds his vision.
The BJP chief should have taken a leaf out of America`s contemporary history. Both the Senate and the Congress unanimously passed a resolution to condemn `bigotry and violence` against Sikh American citizens in the wake of the terrorist attack on September 11. The resolution was co-sponsored by 39 Senators and 131 Congressmen and signed by President Bush to make it a law. The resolution regrets that many Sikhs ``who are easily recognizable by their turbans and beards, which are required by their faith, have suffered both verbal and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger`` after the September 11 attacks.
An American who killed a Sikh soon after the attacks was prosecuted and executed within a few months. But in India, where 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone, the culprits have not been found till today, even after 18 years. Nor has parliament passed any resolution to condemn the large-scale murder. We have had a plethora of commissions to find out who were the guilty. One commission is still sitting in New Delhi.
The ``ethnic cleansing`` in Gujarat looks like meeting the same fate. The commission appointed to find out the guilty is yet to begin its work in right earnest. The senior member, Justice Nanavati, is busy with the commission on the Sikhs` massacre. That the BJP appointed him is not a coincidence. In the commission on Sikhs` massacre he is to pinpoint the Congress responsibility. In the Gujarat case, he will be finding out the culpability of the BJP. Quite a feat!
The Congress government never allowed the truth about the Sikh massacre to come out. The BJP will see to it that the truth about Gujarat remains hidden. The party has already given a clean chit to Modi. India`s tragedy is that convenience has the better of the rule of law. Politics and crime have become the two sides of the same coin. Where is justice? Or is there anything called justice?
The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 7, 2002 09:40 pm
Gujarat: where is justice?By Kuldip Nayar
No school bus stops here to pick up children. No postman comes here to deliver letters by name. It is no longer on the beat of the media. Rioting makes news, not the absence of it; relief or rehabilitation is a mundane story. Even after four months of carnage, thousands of victims in Gujarat have no home, no hearth and no work.
Refugee camps, where they took shelter when their houses were destroyed or burnt in broad daylight, are being shut. Some have tried to go back to the places where they lived to rebuild their tenements - and lives. But the hostile neighbourhood has forced them to return. They cannot stay on where they are today - in unhygienic conditions. The government says that its ``work`` is over. What are the states for if they cannot look after the people who are ruined by the government`s failure to protect them?
The victims have no place to go. They feel helpless and abandoned. Yet the prime minister had promised them ample compensation and quick rehabilitation. They have received some money as a grant. But it is too small to be considered compensation and too meagre to help them make a beginning.
Are they victims of prejudice or politics or both? They have come to believe that they are the sacrificial lambs state Chief Minister Narendra Modi used to polarise society. On this premise he seems determined to go to the polls in September or October, six months ahead of schedule. The BJP, his party, expects to reap the harvest from the poisonous seeds Modi has sown.
``If it is a question of vote, please disfranchise us,`` many inmates of refugee camps say. This is probably the strongest denunciation of a system, which claims to be democratic and secular. Muslims constitute 10 to 12 per cent of the electorate in Gujarat. Still the BJP insists on playing the Hindu card.
The elections are some months away. The problem of victims is immediate: how do they pick up the thread and from where? They would like to go back to the shops they had and to the houses where they and their forefathers lived. But many in the majority community do not want it. The administration could help but quite a bit of it is contaminated. And at the helm of affairs is Modi who is far from repentant. His new antic is to open a school of ahimsa (non-violence)!
To turn the tide flowing in favour of the Congress was the task entrusted to him when he was sent to Ahmedabad from Delhi where he was the BJP`s general secretary. Being an RSS pracharak (publicist), he had learnt only one lesson: how to play on the imaginary fears of Hindus against Muslims to communalize society. He would have created a Godhra train incident if it had not happened. The tragedy is that some Muslims played into his hands. Modi probably knows that the Gujaratis would one day realize what harm he has done to their economy - and their image. But that will take time. At present, he wants to cash in on the atmosphere of prejudice, suspicion and fear he has built.
This can be well imagined from a letter that a Muslim gentleman has written to me: ``Not long ago, I would walk up to the nearby post office to send my letters and pick up fresh fruits and vegetables on my way back. I liked the leisurely talk with the Hindu vendors. Now my servant does all that. I am afraid to go out even in a car. I prefer to stay at home. But that is not life.``
Many Muslims have begun to migrate to other states. Some of them, who had come from UP in the wake of the Babri masjid`s demolition, have gone back. But the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is trying to spoil the atmosphere by reneging on its earlier promise. It has refused to accept even the court`s verdict on the mandir-masjid controversy. The prime minister`s statement that the BJP had never deviated from the mandir agenda had created confusion. But the BJP`s reiteration to honour the court`s decision has saved the situation.
So have the NGOs working in Gujarat. They are the only rays of hope in an otherwise murky scenario. All of them are Hindus. They have been looking after the refugee camps from day one. Hindus have contributed lakhs of rupees and some of their organizations have adopted the Muslim villages, razed to the ground during the riots. Indeed, all this has given the victims a feeling that they are part of the Indian nation.
Yet Hindu fundamentalists have not relented in any way. They had planned a series of rath yatras in the next few days. The Muslims had responded positively when they cancelled the Muharram ceremonies. But the sponsors of rath yatras were adamant. It took the National Human Rights Commission`s strong statement to make them come down from their resolve. Former Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan also appealed to the prime minister to stop the yatras. Such pleas hardly matter to a party that is out to divide the nation.
New BJP chief Venkiah Naidu is going still further. He said the other day on a TV network that he would ask the BJP ministers to spread the party`s message. He does not realize the implications of the statement. External affairs minister, finance minister or, for that matter, any other minister is that of the country. True, he belongs to a party but in a notional sense only. Otherwise, it will be mixing politics with the state. Venkiah Naidu`s emotional burst clouds his vision.
The BJP chief should have taken a leaf out of America`s contemporary history. Both the Senate and the Congress unanimously passed a resolution to condemn `bigotry and violence` against Sikh American citizens in the wake of the terrorist attack on September 11. The resolution was co-sponsored by 39 Senators and 131 Congressmen and signed by President Bush to make it a law. The resolution regrets that many Sikhs ``who are easily recognizable by their turbans and beards, which are required by their faith, have suffered both verbal and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger`` after the September 11 attacks.
An American who killed a Sikh soon after the attacks was prosecuted and executed within a few months. But in India, where 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone, the culprits have not been found till today, even after 18 years. Nor has parliament passed any resolution to condemn the large-scale murder. We have had a plethora of commissions to find out who were the guilty. One commission is still sitting in New Delhi.
The ``ethnic cleansing`` in Gujarat looks like meeting the same fate. The commission appointed to find out the guilty is yet to begin its work in right earnest. The senior member, Justice Nanavati, is busy with the commission on the Sikhs` massacre. That the BJP appointed him is not a coincidence. In the commission on Sikhs` massacre he is to pinpoint the Congress responsibility. In the Gujarat case, he will be finding out the culpability of the BJP. Quite a feat!
The Congress government never allowed the truth about the Sikh massacre to come out. The BJP will see to it that the truth about Gujarat remains hidden. The party has already given a clean chit to Modi. India`s tragedy is that convenience has the better of the rule of law. Politics and crime have become the two sides of the same coin. Where is justice? Or is there anything called justice?
The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.
Of Errant Politicians And The Kashmir Cause
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 4, 2002 01:30 pm
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
Kashmir Fatigue
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 4, 2002 01:30 pm
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
Dissing Ideologies
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
Posted by
cutandpaste
Jul 4, 2002 01:30 pm
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
The Perfect Murder
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
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cutandpaste
Jul 4, 2002 01:30 pm
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
Until now, the US has consistently respected India`s adamant refusal of third-party mediation on its core dispute with Pakistan over the divided state of Kashmir. But having sweated through the latest and most intense bout of nuclear brinksmanship, the US and its allies are quietly revising their long-held position.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1025534365666&p=1012571727282
- cutandpaste
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