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Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Posted by: Awaaz / 9/23/2003 02:41:20 PMThe Hindu, September 17, 2003, Editorial
Justice done
THE CONVICTION OF Rabindra Kumar Pal - - better known by the assumed name of Dara Singh - and 12 others for the gruesome murder of the Australian missionary, Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons in Orissa, is indeed a cause for satisfaction. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), to which the case was entrusted, deserves much credit. Staines and his two little boys, Phillip and Timothy, perished after the jeep in which they spent the night of January 22, 1999, was set on fire. This grisly act, described by President K.R. Narayanan as belonging to the "world's inventory of black deeds," was a challenge posed to the administration as much as to civil society. The sequence of events in the few months after the murder caused some apprehension over the course of the investigation. A team of Central Ministers visited Manoharpur soon after the killings and held that there was an international conspiracy behind the killings. This was after the local police had named Dara Singh as an accused in the crime. He was well known in the region. His name figured in police records; he was engaged in campaigns, sometimes violent, for cow protection and the prevention of religious conversions. The remarks by the Central Ministers were widely interpreted as an attempt to scuttle the investigation. To make matters worse, Dara Singh was arrested only in February 2000, more than a year after the crime. That the CBI, to which the case was handed over at a later stage, could present legally sustainable evidence against 13 of the 14 persons accused of the murder is a real feather in its cap.
The Staines murder had another implication. It appeared that the murderous attack was very much part of a vicious sectarian campaign against missionaries on the same lines witnessed in parts of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh with a large tribal population. While the Enquiry Commission headed by a Supreme Court Judge, Justice D.P. Wadhwa, did not find evidence to establish any links between Dara Singh and the Bajrang Dal, the police records in Keonjhar told a different story. D.R. Karthikeyan, in his capacity as Director General of the National Human Rights Commission, held that Dara Singh was a "sympathiser" of the Bajrang Dal. Further, an investigation team appointed by the Wadhwa Commission found that Dara Singh was "an activist/supporter of the Bajrang Dal;'' it added, however, that there was no "documentary evidence to prove that he [was] a member or office-bearer." For all the evidence, the Commission absolved the Bajrang Dal of any role in the killings. All this seemed to inject partisan politics into the investigation and prosecution of the brutal crime.
The killing of Graham Staines and his two boys by religious fanatics became an international issue, adversely affecting India's secular and democratic image. Questions were raised about the establishment's commitment to the rule of law. The Manoharpur killings were not an isolated incident. There were subsequent incidents of targeted violence in other villages in the region. All this produced a sense of insecurity among missionaries and the people who went along with them in the tribal tracts of Orissa. In the wake of the tragedy, the resilience shown by Gladys Staines was heroic and wonderful. She took up the work of her husband among poor tribal folk afflicted with leprosy. She repeatedly said she had forgiven the murderers of her husband and their two boys, demonstrating a nobility of spirit and constructiveness that was her own principled answer to the politics of hate. The CBI's labours, resulting in the trial court convictions, have helped refurbish the image of India as a land of justice.
ENDS.
OneWorld South Asia 16 September 2003
Move to Repeal Anti-Women Law Triggers Controversy in Pakistan Ahmed Raza http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/68164/1/
ENDS.
South Asia Citizens Web | 15 September 2003
Complaint and Draft Petition seeking investigation against Dr. Pravin Togadia to the Medical Council of India by Manisha Gupte, Amar Jesani, N. Sarojini and Sanjay Nagral
A complaint was filed by over 50 doctors under the Medico Friend Circle against Dr. Praveen Togadia in the Medical Council of India to get his license to practice medicine revoked for his indulgence and involvement in hate propaganda and violence. http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/new/MFCnote062003.html
ENDS.
Frontline: Volume 20 - Issue 19, September 13 - 26, 2003
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2019/stories/20030926004002300.htm
The saffron strategy in Maharashtra
LYLA BAVADAM
The August 25 blasts have given the Shiv Sena-BJP combine a pretext to promote its communal agenda and poll strategy through maha artis, while the State government watches in silence. IF the Opposition parties in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena (S.S.) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), did not have a cogent election strategy for the forthcoming State Assembly polls, then the twin blasts in Mumbai on August 25 have certainly provided them with a peg. Ever since the blasts, the S.S.-BJP combine has swung into action, attacking the ruling Democratic Front (D.F.) on every count and seizing the opportunity to foment communal tensions. The first indication of this came with Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani's perfunctory visit to the blast sites. Addressing the press and the public in the Zaveri Bazar area, dominated by the Gujarati community, he had no hesitation in pointing a finger at Pakistan and saying that "our neighbour" is not doing enough to control terrorism. As proof of its sincerity in controlling terrorism, Advani said Pakistan must hand over the 20 terrorists, including those wanted in connection with the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai. Instead of its usual knee-jerk reaction of calling a bandh, the Shiv Sena showed a surprising degree of circumspection when its leader Bal Thackeray agreed to the State government's appeal not to call a bandh. "We cannot have serial bandhs in response to serial blasts," he said. Instead, the Sena and the BJP led a silent march, with black bands tied around the participants' mouths, from the Gateway of India to Mantralaya, the State Secretariat. Banners carried by the protesters, who included Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Bannerjee, called for a dismissal of the State government. However, it was just a matter of time before the S.S.-BJP decided to use the blasts as an aggressive introduction to their unofficial poll campaign. The 10-day-long Ganpati festival, which began on August 31, has been co-opted for the S.S.-BJP's political campaign. Many of the 3,000-plus mandals in the city make a clear political statement, often with heavy communal undertones. Two Ganpati mandals in the Andheri-Marol region of Mumbai are replicas of the Gateway of India explosion - (complete with a taxi and dummies to represent victims) and the Zaveri Bazar blast (the replica has a mural depicting the scene of brutality). Other mandals have chosen equally provocative themes representing other blasts in the city as well as the Akshardham temple massacre in Gujarat. Amidst all this, there is one example of cross-border harmony. The Arthur Road mandal has chosen to use Noor Fatima, the Pakistani girl who underwent heart surgery in Bangalore, as an example of hope for the festive season. Despite its initial reluctance, the Sena has chosen to join the BJP in its maha artis. According to the newly elected State BJP president Gopinath Munde, maha artis will be held all over the State to "focus attention on the Sushilkumar Shinde-Chhagan Bhujbal government that has failed in its primary task of providing security to the people". On the second day of the Ganpati festival, September 1, the SS-BJP used a maha arti in the northern suburb of Chembur to rekindle their alliance as well as to launch a campaign against the D.F. government. The function, which came exactly a week after the twin blasts, was led by Munde and senior Shiv Sena leader Subhash Desai. A frenzied crowd of at least 3,000, mostly Sainiks and BJP supporters, greeted the two leaders who arrived together. The maha arti soon turned into a political rally with party flags outnumbering diyas, and BJP Member of Parliament Kirit Somaiya egging on the crowd with anti-terrorist slogan-shouting. Other leaders who attended the supposedly religious ceremony were city BJP president Vijay Girkar and a sprinkling of local Sena and BJP MLAs. The political aspect of the maha arti became even more evident when Munde and Desai moved to an improvised dais that overshadowed the Ganpati idol, and appealed to the crowd not to rely on "the incompetent government, the incompetent Chief Minister (Sushilkumar Shinde) and his incompetent deputy (Chhagan Bhujbal)." The official purpose of the maha artis, according to the organisers, is to rally people against terrorism. "It is a maha arti that everyone is invited to - Muslims, Christians, Dalits. It is for the people of Mumbai," said Munde. Both the Sena and the BJP have repeatedly said that the maha artis are not meant to intimidate the Muslim community, as had been the case after the serial bomb blasts of 1993 when this form of worship was invented by the saffron parties and used both as a political tool and as a tool of intimidation and Hindutvawadi aggression. The reason given in 1993 for the maha artis was that they were meant to draw the attention of the authorities to the traffic problems caused by Muslims attending namaz in mosques spilling out onto the roads. Ironically, the present-day maha artis disrupt traffic but they are portrayed as integral to a traditional form of worship. The S.S.-BJP's immediate goal is the fall of the D.F. government. Indeed, both the parties need the support of the Muslim community and cannot afford to alienate it prior to the polls. Even if they fail to win over Muslim voters, they at least hope to turn them against the D.F. alliance, especially the Congress(I). However, speeches made at the Chembur maha arti, an unusual feature, indicate something else. "Why do we have the blasts in Mumbai when the riots happened in Gujarat?" asked Desai rhetorically of the crowd. "It's because we have a weak government and Gujarat does not. The Narendra Modi government knows how to deal with terrorists while the Bhujbal government doesn't." The subtle threat in that statement shows that the Sena is for the moment a wolf in sheep's clothing. In pursuance of its pre-poll strategy, the Shiv Sena had initially planned to use the Ganpati festival as a launch pad for its "Mee Mumbaikar" campaign. The campaign plans included themes such as education, health, sanitation and greening of the city, all with a view to inculcate a sense of pride and belonging in Mumbaikars. A brainchild of Uddhav Thackeray, the Sena's new working chief, it was ostensibly meant to revive the social consciousness that `Lokmanya' Tilak had injected into the Ganpati festival when he made it a public celebration. In the aftermath of the August 25 blasts, the themes remain the same but the emphasis has drastically changed from one promoting the idea of being a proud citizen of Mumbai to an aggressive assertion of Hinduism. THE blasts have exposed the `wheels within wheels' situation of politics. Old political friendships and enmities have come to the fore. Bhujbal, who is also the State Home Minister, continues to be the Sena's most hated man for his defection from the party years ago. So, even though Shinde is the Chief Minister, it is Bhujbal who comes under fire for the intelligence failure in anticipating the blasts. (Besides, Shinde and Thackeray are known to have a longstanding friendship.) Never one to miss an opportunity to hit out at his former partyman, Thackeray said, "No one wants to work under Bhujbal because he heads the most corrupt department (police) in the State." Immediately after the blasts, Shiv Sena leader and former Chief Minister Narayan Rane called for President's Rule, while Munde expressed his lack of faith in Bhujbal and the Mumbai Police and called for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry. Intra-party tension has also surfaced, with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) members calling for the replacement of Bhujbal. NCP President Sharad Pawar has been under considerable pressure from the Maratha lobby, which has always resented the priority Pawar has given to Bhujbal. It is unlikely that Pawar will oblige it and divest Bhujbal of the Home Department. Despite being a strong supporter of the NCP president, Bhujbal maintains excellent relations with the State Congress. He also has a large number of supporters who would follow him should he choose to defect to the Congress. THERE is no doubt that the blasts have highlighted two failings of the D.F. government. The first is its inability to prevent the S.S.-BJP from carrying on an aggressive Hindutva campaign. Industrialist Rahul Bajaj has referred to this `inability' of the government as its inclination to appease the majority community. Unable to prevent the S.S.-BJP combine's provocative actions, the D.F. government has been left with no option but to ignore the maha artis. Secondly, the blasts have highlighted how political interference has weakened the Mumbai Police. And Bhujbal has been blamed for this weakening. "Posts are available for a price," said a police source. "There are too many problems. Nothing moves without political patronage. It has killed the professionalism in the force. Good officers have been sidelined and many have opted to quit. Some are so disillusioned that they are emigrating." Highlighting the inadequacies of the Mumbai Police after the blasts, the source said, "The most efficient police force cannot prevent terrorist activity, but there certainly could have been a better network of information. What would have happened if the taxi driver had not survived the Gateway blast? What leads would the police have worked on?" Groups working to promote communal harmony have expressed apprehension about both the D.F.'s seeming inability to stop the saffron agenda as well as the politicisation of the police. But until their fears are taken seriously, the Ganpati mandals and the law-keepers remain at the disposal of political agendas.
ENDS.
The Hindustan Times [India] September 18, 2003
Judging genocide
by Praful Bidwai
As the public awaits the Supreme Court judgment in the Best Bakery case with bated breath, we are fast approaching the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the Nazis' infamous pogrom of Jews after a German diplomat's assassination in Paris. The comparison is not hyperbolic. Last year's butchery in Gujarat was 200 times greater in scale and much more bestial than Kristallnacht - the prelude to the gassing of 6 million Jews.
The Supreme Court's pronouncements last Friday - including its unsparing admonishment of Narendra Modi, its description of his government's appeal as an "eyewash", and its declaration that "we have no faith in [Gujarat's] prosecution or government" - have raised hopes that it will take extraordinary steps to do justice to the victims of Gujarat.
Those hopes were buoyed by the judgment convicting the Bajrang Dal activist/supporter Dara Singh for the gruesome burning alive of Graham Staines and his two children. That this followed two eyewash attempts, the first by a central ministers' group and the other by the Wadhwa inquiry, affirms the citizen's faith in the possibility of justice in India.
If Staines' murder belonged, as President Narayanan put it, to the "world's inventory of black deeds", the post-Godhra killing of 2,000 Muslims opened a disgraceful new book of horrors - unprecedented globally for a half-century, except perhaps in Rwanda and Bosnia. Special international tribunals are now trying those genocidal crimes.
The post-February 27 Gujarat violence was unique in independent India. Never before did a state government collude so openly with communal thugs, rapists and murderers to target one religious group. (Indeed, it planned and organised some of the violence.) And never before did central functionaries, including the prime minister, so persistently shield the guilty by advancing the repugnant logic of "action-reaction" and citing non-existent "security threats".
There could be two opinions on whether the thoroughly condemnable Godhra episode was spontaneous or organised. (Evidence supports the first view.) But this is emphatically untrue of the planned, premeditated, systematic, violence that followed. In that danse macabre, thousands were torched or speared to death by frenzied anti-Muslim mobs. Horrific sexual violence was unleashed. Property worth hundreds of crores was destroyed/looted. Lakhs became refugees in ethnic cleansing in vast areas.
Crimes Against Humanity, the report of the Concerned Citizens' Tribunal, comprising eminent jurists and scholars, documents this after examining 2,094 statements and 1,500 witnesses. The pattern of violence shows the selective targeting of Muslims, inhuman forms of brutality, military precision and planning, the key role of the RSS, the BJP and the VHP-Bajrang office-bearers, use of Hindu religious symbols and complicity and participation of policemen and bureaucrats. This was planned, sustained and prolonged through hate-speech, intimidation and terror.
The defining characteristic of this violence was that Muslims were targeted simply because they were Muslims. The attackers' main slogans were: "Kill, burn, destroy their society, finish them off..." This highlights the genocidal nature of the violence.
Article II of the International Convention on Genocide, 1948, defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" like: "(a) killing [its] members; (b) causing [them] serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions... calculated to bring about its physical destruction...; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring [its] children... to another group".
Gujarat unambiguously fits the definition. The violence involved the (partial) physical destruction of a community; economic destruction; sexual assault as an instrument of domination and terror inspired by "dark obsessions" with destroying women's sexual organs; sabotage of relief and rehabilitation; and the publicly declared intention to liquidate, mentally harm, humiliate and subjugate Muslims.
India is a signatory to the convention. This casts on it a duty to punish those responsible for genocide through a competent legal forum. This could be best done by creating a special independent national tribunal for hate-crimes and genocide. The Supreme Court must go beyond the specifics of the Best Bakery case to create this tribunal, composed of personnel selected by the Chief Justice of India, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Put in perspective, Best Bakery involved the killing of 14 people. Gulberg was much bigger (70), as was Naroda-Patiya (200).
Justice for Gujarat entails going beyond even these discreet cases. Its genocidal hate-crimes must be seen in their totality, not just as this or that case of murder, arson, rape or psychological subjugation. This means that there must be fresh investigation, re-framing of (wrongly dropped) charges, and re-trial.
Equally relevant are some related issues. Gujarat witnessed a fundamental, total, prolonged breakdown of the rule of law and the Constitution, in which the Centre became complicit. It refused to defend fundamental rights, or investigate or criticise the barbaric violence. Vajpayee first vaguely, mildly, criticised Modi, but soon started blaming the victims. Fanciful conspiracies were concocted to link Godhra to al-Qaeda and demonise Muslims. This continues. All 240 people charged under POTA in Gujarat are Muslims.
Because the Gujarat case is extraordinary, the court is called upon to do extraordinary things, the more because the government failed, and because the state administration has little integrity or autonomy to conduct a fair trial. This entails the creation of new, independent investigation and prosecution agencies which take their directions from the Supreme Court. The trials must take place primarily outside Gujarat.
It is equally imperative to extend the prosecution to the links between the pogrom and the hate-speech which became part of Modi's electioneering - a clear case for invoking Section 153 of the IPC. These organic links concern the political use of hate-speech.
That still leaves a huge problem: How to ensure that witnesses survive Gujarat's vitiated climate and are not terrorised into changing their testimony? (Even Ehsan Jaffrey's widow was intimidated by Sangh parivar goons this week). This can only happen if there is serious, humane, rehabilitation and adequate protection for the victims through a comprehensive supportive infrastructure. The Gujarat government cannot be trusted to provide this.
The infrastructure should have come into being 18 months ago, but the governments of the day failed. In particular, the Centre refused to apply Article 356 and impose President's Rule when a constitutional breakdown was manifest. Thus, even the processes of recording and registering crimes, listing witnesses, collecting evidence, etc., got corrupted.
To rectify this, the Supreme Court must step into an area which is not its classical, normal, domain - simply because the ends of justice cannot be met in any other way. The court is empowered to do "complete justice in any cause or matter" before it by Article 142.
This might seem onerous. But there is no alternative to a comprehensive sui generis process of creating a national tribunal, and independent agencies for investigation and prosecution. We have failed far too often to bring the perpetrators of hate-crimes to book - to the point that the government's lawyer last week cited that failure as an excuse for condoning the Gujarat genocide! India cannot afford a culture of impunity for grave human rights violations and hate-crimes. That will make a cruel mockery of our democracy. Democracy is an empty shell without fundamental rights, norms of public accountability, representative institutions and the rule of law.
Letting the Gujarat culprits get away and papering over the gravity of what happened would be the surest way of destroying the constitutional edifice of governance - indeed, this society. The Supreme Court must not disappoint the public.
ENDS.
The Telegraph [India] September 17, 2003
Digging in the dark - The ASI report on Ayodhya negates one of the constitutive principles of archaeology
by Tapati Guha-Thakurta
The author is professor of history, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta The protests had rung out more than a decade ago. Ever since the miraculous archaeological "discoveries" of S.P. Gupta and B.B. Lal of 1990 armed the Vishwa Hindu Parishad with its most powerful body of "evidence" about the remains of a Hindu temple beneath the Babri Masjid, professional historians and archaeologists have cried themselves hoarse over the flagrant abuse of their disciplines at Ayodhya. The very form of the presentation of the Ramjanmabhumi demand, as a historically testifiable thesis, made "proof" a central issue in the controversy - the key endangered element, to be saved and retrieved. D. Mandal's tract, Ayodhya: Archaeology After Demolition (1993), stands to date as the most convincing challenge to the temple "evidence". Mandal, a field archaeologist, exposed the complete violation of the science of stratigraphy in the digging of trenches and in the analysis of the excavated artifacts at Ayodhya. He showed how the random mixing of post-depositional debris with properly stratified finds and a confusion of artifactual sequences automatically denuded this entire corpus of material of any status as "data".
If there was one fundamental point that emerged from this archaeological debate of the early Nineties, it was the impossibility of anything like "incontrovertible evidence" in archaeology; also, the impossibility of unearthing clues about any single or distinct pre-mosque structure beneath the layers of debris of the demolished masjid at the site. That this point has been of no import at all is today up for all to see.
But what comes as a real eye-opener is the way the science and the profession of archaeology have once again allowed themselves to be dragged into the renewed farce of providing "hard proof" that a 10th or 11th Hindu temple existed immediately beneath the floor levels of the demolished mosque. That such "scientific" and "indisputable" evidence should now come after five months of excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India and in the form of a 574 page report submitted to the Allahabad High Court on August 22, 2003, comes as the greatest irony. It finally drives home the utter futility of all the scholarly criticisms and exhortations of the past two decades, and its invocation of objective knowledge.
Truth and facts died an ignoble death at Ayodhya long ago. Yet, the search for newer and newer "evidence" continues to drive the politics of the site. Thus new scientific "facts" about a sprawling multi-pillared temple structure beneath the Babri site can still be nonchalantly offered by a professional body like the ASI, to a gullible public and a jubilant Hindu right-wing, to be used as the best moral tool to disinherit the Sunni Waqf board of its rightful proprietorship of the land. And a clearly political agenda of a hunt for an imaginary temple can take on the scientific trappings of an excavation and a voluminous site report, this time with a token adherence to the tenets of stratigraphy.
This hot document, the ASI report, apparently in the public domain, remains tantalizingly out of reach. So, we are up to our ears with the latest reports on the "proof" of a massive 50x30 metre walled structure just beneath the surface mosque floor, of some 50 pillar bases that stand in full alignment with this structure, of terracotta figurines, lotus motif carvings and fragments of an amalaka, and most tellingly, of a circular sanctum-like depression at the centre of the disputed site, just beneath the make-shift shrine of Ram Lalla.
The media has also picked up the barrage of criticisms against these findings, brought up by the team of independent archaeological observers like Suraj Bhan, R.C. Thakran, Supriya Verma, Mohammed Abid and Irfan Habib. We are told of their counter-readings of the excavated mound as a rich habitation rather than a religious site till possibly the early medieval period, and of the existence thereafter of a distinctly Islamic structure of the early Sultanate period, as indicated most clearly by the presence of the lime-surkhi floor (a technique brought in by Muslim builders) and vast deposits of glazed tile ware.
If this ancient city site has yielded important evidence of settlements from the Northern Black Polished Ware and later Kushana and Gupta era, its richest archeological data pertain nonetheless to this early medieval Sultanate period. And these archaeologists have stuck out their necks to argue that if anything was razed, expanded and appropriated in the building of the Babri Masjid, it was a prior mosque structure. These finds, they allege, have been deliberately suppressed or distorted in the ASI report in its determination to discover only a destroyed temple at the site.
The quest for infallible underground evidence has only ended in a mammoth spectre of public misinformation. The independent or Left professionals, who were mobilized as representatives of the Sunni Waqf board and the all-India Muslim personal law board to adjudicate on the correctness and scientificity of the excavations at Ayodhya are now left in the greatest bind. They have on them the terrible onus of having to fight the "proof" of temple remains with an armoury of counter-proof or lack of proof.
The kind of faith that the Muslim parties have vested in the truth and objectivity of archaeological evidence is quite pathetic. They have thus allowed themselves to dance to the tune of the VHP; they were persuaded by leaders like Zafrayab Jeelani to agree to the digging of the Muslim graveyard site in the precincts even as excavation was disallowed beneath the crucial spot of the makeshift Ram shrine; and they have depended on the intervening powers of this team of selected archaeologists to set the "facts" right in their favour.
Throughout the months of the excavation, these visiting archaeologists had been continually handing in to the Allahabad court their observations and objections (including their objections to what they were not allowed to see or handle). Now they are faced with the unenviable responsibility of having to supplant the volume and intricacies of the ASI report at court with an equally formidable counter-document that can prove the falsities and fabrications of this excavation data.
More than at any other time, the public today is in dire need of being informed about the basics of standard excavation procedure, about the norms of digging, classifying and reporting, and about the regularity with which artifacts like terracotta statues, pottery, tiles or architectural carvings crop up in all such multi-cultural structural mounds, without begetting any conclusions about the existence of either temples or mosques. Only then would the aberrations in what occurred at Ayodhya from the middle of March this year be clear.
Why, we must ask, were trenches laid out only in accordance with the highly questionable Indo-Japanese ground penetrating radar survey? Why was the crucial epicentre of the site occupied by the Ram shrine left undisturbed, with worship continuing in the midst of an excavated site? Why were trenches dug with little consideration for natural lighting, with pink and saffron shamianas further blocking out that light? One could well say that a temple had been "found" here, even as the excavation began, well before any report was submitted. A temple was the only demand at the site - from everyone, whether they be sadhus, security personnel or court officials.
A renowned archaeologist has applauded the fact that, for the first time in Indian history, a full excavation has been conducted under the control of the judiciary, pushing the ASI into submitting this more-and-more rare product of a site report. But what credibility rests today with a body that has allowed its professional practice to be dictated by the archaeological illiteracy of political parties and the court, that could be jolted out of its notorious inertia about completing and publishing reports only under the political stranglehold of staging a made-to-order dig and a trussed-up report?
But there is of course a much larger accusation to be made here about the politics of archaeology at Ayodhya. To have permitted itself to be embroiled in this pointless exercise of authentication and refutation of underground evidence has been, in my opinion, the greatest undoing of the discipline. After all, what difference does it make even if temple remains do exist at the site, even if one assumes that portions of a temple were razed and assimilated within the medieval mosque?
This basic point needed to be made, and made most forcefully, by historians and archaeologists. As lawyers are pointing out, proof of a prior temple cannot alter the terms of the property dispute: it cannot take away the hard fact testified by revenue records that for centuries now, this mosque site was a waqf property. More important, the past "crime" of the destruction of a 10th-century temple by Babur's general, Mir Baqi, cannot by any means justify the far-greater modern-day crime of the razing of a 16th-century mosque.
For that negates one of archaeology's fundamental constitutive principles - the protection and conservation of historical monuments, established through a series of statutes in colonial and independent India. It goes against the grain of all its intricate knowledges of several other such temple-remains beneath mosques or vestiges of Buddhist and Jain establishments beneath Hindu religious edifices throughout India. It renders illegitimate, by the same logic (say the logic of appropriating a Buddhist site), several of the country's most revered temples in the custody of the ASI.
Historical retribution and repossession becomes the most dangerous of arguments for the country's vast architectural inheritance. If there was a single secular principle that the government and the archaeological profession should have established at Ayodhya, it was that the Babri Masjid had to be protected as a historical structure. The progressive infiltration of the mosque since its first forcible occupation by the Bairagis sadhus of the Hanumangarhi temple in the 1850s - from the construction of the Ram Chabutra within the compound to entry of idols, pujaris and worshippers - have underlined the urgency of this need for over a century now.
There were many critical moments when such a law could and should have intervened - when, for instance, during the communal riots at Ayodhya in 1934, one of the domes of the masjid was destroyed and had to be renovated by the government; or when on the night of December 22-23, 1949, the Ram idols were planted inside and the property had to be locked and attached by court order; or even as late as the Eighties when, following the "opening of the locks", the unrestricted access of Hindu worshippers and the sangh parivar's mounting Ramjanmabhoomi campaign made the destruction of the mosque an imminent danger. The "disputed property" needed to be more categorically claimed as an archaeological protected monument.
To have failed in this cardinal task, and then to have entered the battle for proof and counter-proof about the historicity of the site as Ramjanmabhoomi and the presence of the conjectured temple, were to have given the game over fully to the masters of Hindutva. There is little left to be salvaged now. Having first lost portions of the courtyard, then the rights of worship and eventually the entire masjid, the Muslim litigants are fast on the path of forfeiting their last rights on the property. To hope that the rule of law can still prevail to retain for the disinherited this symbolic land, or to ask that this emptied excavated mound be now preserved as a prime ancient and medieval archaeological site is like crying in the dark.
ENDS.
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 12:00:08 +0530
You are aware of the widespread reports that dozens of members of the minority community have been illegally detained for several days.
SPRAT has arranged a meeting at Jyoti Sangh, Relief Road, Ahmedabad, at 9:30 PM on Wednesday 17th Sept, 03 specially for the residents of Dariapur, Kalupur and Shahpur on Law and Citizens. Friends of the Fraternity like Justice Rawani [retd], Mr Girish Patel, Dr Mukul Sinha etc will be joining as a mark of solidarity with people detained illegally for days on end. Centre for Social Justice has graciously supplied book and pamphlet on citizen's rights at law. The pamphlet will be duplicated and circulated.
Earlier the police had denied permission for a public meeting at Dariapur, in writing. Hence this meeting in an auditorium.
If need be a Citizens' Tribunal will be set up to hear the testimonies of the relatives of illegally detained persons in camera and to issue its findings publicly. Also, working with other organizations, other public pressure programmes including a mass dharna will be organized, as discussed at a joint NGO meeting recently.
We must exercise all our democratic privileges to uphold the citizen's rights. Your support is solicited.
With fraternal regards
Sameer Pradhan Asst Vice President
SPRAT [Society for the Promotion of Rational Thinking]
SF-8, Rajnagar Complex, Narayan Nagar Road, Paldi, AHMEDABAD 380 007
Tel: +79-663 46 55 /66 /77 Fax: +79-661 20 49 Web:
ENDS.
Editorial, The News International [Pakistan], September 19, 2003
NCSW recommendation
The recommendation by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) for the repeal of the Hudood Ordinance leaves little doubt about the discriminatory nature of the set of Islamic laws that were promulgated by the late dictator Gen Ziaul Haq and enacted a year later. A part of his drive to Islamise the polity, coinciding with the beginning of United States-sponsored Jihad in Afghanistan, the enactment of the Islamic laws helped Zia establish his religious credentials and in return woo the support of the clergy for the Jihad against the Soviets, direly needed at the time. But in the longer run, the ordinance and several other legislative measures by the Zia regime strengthened the orthodoxy in the country, squeezing space for secular, liberal and democratic ideas. The Hudood Ordinance, controversial since the day one for its potential abuses more than uses, has left a legacy of violation of the rights, particularly of women, defaming Pakistan over its human rights records.
It is not the first time that a government panel has recommended repeal of the Hudood Ordnance. In fact, a high-level commission headed by a sitting Supreme Court judge had made a similar proposal during the second stint of the Pakistan People's Party in power, but the then government, facing a host of establishment-sponsored destabilisation moves, did not want to open another front by ruffling the feathers of the clergy. But this time the government, although non-committal on the issue so far, will have to think twice before disregarding the NCSW proposal, for the fact that the commission is statutory in nature and was established under a presidential ordinance in July 2000 to protect and promote the women's rights and interests. Therefore, the commission's recommendations have an added significance and the government will have to give good reason to act otherwise.
Understandably, the NCSW advice provoked the religious parties into declaring their opposition to the repeal, in line with their policy of confrontation on any effort that they conceive as an encroachment on their turf. They disagree with the notion that the Hudood Ordinance is discriminatory and believe that the problem lies in the way it is implemented. On the other hand, the rights groups simply call the statute as an impediment in the women's way to seek justice for crimes as heinous as rape. They say that the conditions for providing witnesses to prove a crime are so tough that a victim herself becomes an accused. But all these issues can be best debated in the parliament, rather than being sorted out elsewhere.
However, amid the existing political scenario with growing amity between the religious parties and the government and their near agreement on the military-backed political order, political expediency of the power elites may once again get a preference over women's rights. That NCSW's recommendation would be the first victim of such an agreement may not be surprising. The government will do well by presenting the NCSW proposal before the parliament for a debate. If it is to be rejected, let the parliament do it by vote. It will at least clear the positions of various political parties over the issue, making future choices for the people easier.
ENDS.
The Christian Science Monitor [USA], September 19, 2003
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Missionaries tread warily in India The conviction Monday of an evangelist's killers does not ease fears among Christians and minorities.
NEW DELHI - Like many Christian evangelists in India, the Rev. Richard Howell welcomed Monday's conviction of 13 radical Hindus involved in the murder of an Australian missionary family.
In 1999, Graham Staines and his two young sons were burned alive in their station wagon in the countryside of Orissa by a mob angry over Mr. Staines's aggressive evangelism in this Hindu- majority state. But despite justice in one case, Mr. Howell says he and his followers cannot rest easy. Since Staines's murder, the number of attacks on Christians and other minorities has actually increased, he says, and the number of laws restricting religious practice has gathered pace across the country. These laws are being pushed by India's pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party that holds power in many states and controls the central government. "There are attacks practically every week, maybe not resulting in death, but still, violent attacks," Howell says. "They [the BJP] have created an atmosphere where minorities do feel insecure." Far more than a mere murder trial, the Graham Staines case rapidly became a cause célèbre for human rights groups, secular Indians, and missionaries. At stake, these groups said, was nothing less than modern India's founding principle of secularism that favors no one religion but protects all. Conservative Hindu analysts retort that the murders, while horrible, were a predictable reaction to secularism run rampant, fortifying the rights of India's minorities to the detriment of the Hindu majority and its culture. It's this very debate - between secularism and Hindu nationalism - that remains the driving force of Indian politics today and seems destined to keep India's many religious groups at odds for years to come. "We are seeing a broad attempt to stifle religious minorities and their constitutional rights," says Prakash Louis, director of the secular Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, which provides health and education services to India's lower-caste and tribal communities. Mr. Louis decries the passage of anticonversion laws in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, and other laws that restrict cultural or religious practices, such as the slaughter of cows or the eating of beef.
"There is a fascist tendency toward authoritarianism in this country, and it is not just the BJP or the Sangh Parivar [a coalition of Hindu groups]," says Louis, noting that Congress Party politicians also have spoken in favor of such laws. "Today, they say you have no right to convert. Tomorrow, you have no right to worship in certain places, like the Babri Masjid."
Backdrop of violence
The Babri Masjid, built 500 years ago, was torn down by a mob of Hindu activists in 1992, an act that set off riots nationwide that killed thousands. A special court in Lucknow is expected to announce Friday whether it will file charges against several top BJP politicians, including current Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, for instigating the Babri Masjid destruction. Citing the Babri Masjid case and the Gujarat riots of 2002, which followed the torching of a train-car full of Hindus by a mob of Muslims, Hindus argue that the violent riots of the past decade are the result of pent-up anger by the Hindu community after hundreds of years of provocations by a series of invaders, first the Muslim Moguls and later the British Christians. In his influential book, "Harvesting Our Souls," Arun Shourie writes that India's minorities take actions that provoke India's Hindu majority. "The conversion of even an individual causes grave disruption," writes Mr. Shourie, who now serves as India's minister for disinvestment of state-owned industries. "His family is torn apart. Tensions erupt in the community.... The individual is led to not just repudiate but denounce gods and rituals in which he has grown up."
Targeting the poor
Shourie also notes that while Christians make up a small percentage of the population, perhaps 2.1 percent in the most recent census, they are focusing on India's poorest, least-educated population, especially the Dalit community, who once were called "untouchables." By some estimates, Dalits and other lower-caste Hindus make up more than 40 percent of the population here in India. With financial backing from churches in the world's richest nations, Shourie and other Hindu intellectuals argue, Western churches can shift the balance of religion in India forever. A 1999 visit by Pope John Paul II made many Hindus suspicious, especially his statement to attending bishops, "The heart of the Church in Asia will be restless until the whole of Asia finds its rest in the peace of Christ, the risen Lord."
(A spokesman for Shourie said the minister is on an official trip to Germany, and could not be reached for an interview.) Christian missionaries counter that their work among Dalits provides social and spiritual uplift to a community that was mistreated by upper-caste Hindus for centuries. But what is certain nearly five years after the murder of Staines is that Christian missionaries are becoming more careful about how they do their work. Instead of talking of conversion, for instance, they speak of "spreading the word of God." Ashish Lal, pastor of a small evangelical community in New Delhi, says, "The government is slowly tightening a noose across the country, especially against Christians." But every Sunday, he goes out into the streets in Christian neighborhoods and preaches from the Bible. "Christianity is conversion," says Mr. Lal, a self-described End-Time Believer, or one who believes that the Apocalypse is imminent. "It brings peace to a Christian to let people know of Christ."
New unrest But back in the state of Orissa, police officials are once again worried that one man's conversion could be the beginning of communal violence. This week in the Mayurbhanj district, police were deployed in a protective cordon around a new Baptist church being built by a man who converted to Christianity three years ago. According to press reports, Baidhara Bindhani and his fellow convert Sudarshan Das began construction of a church on Mr. Bindhani's own land a few weeks ago. The construction project set off a riot by Hindu neighbors, 500 of whom reportedly marched to the site, stole the building materials, and then forced Bindhani and Mr. Das to drink water mixed with cow dung for the "purification" of their souls.
ENDS.
Financial Times [UK] September 18 2003
Bellicose Indian courts in face-off with state
By Edward Luce in New Delhi
The political future of L.K. Advani, India's ambitious deputy prime minister, could be drastically altered on Friday when a junior court rules on whether he can be tried for conspiring to demolish a mosque in the holy town of Ayodhya 11 years ago. If the ruling, repeatedly adjourned over minor technicalities, goes against Mr Advani, it may force his resignation and that of others including M.M. Joshi, minister of education, in the Hindu nationalist-led coalition government. The mosque, which Hindu radicals said was built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, was demolished by a mob in December 1992, triggering bloody communal riots across India. Mr Advani, who is also India's home minister, was then an opposition politician. "Deep down there must be doubt whether a junior court would take such a momentous step, but you can never rule it out," said A.G. Noorani, a lawyer and journalist based in Mumbai. "It would throw India into political turmoil." But India's judges are no strangers to political controversy. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upset New Delhi's privatisation programme when it said that the sale of two state oil companies could only go ahead with parliamentary approval. Arun Shourie, India's minister for disinvestment, described the ruling as a "deep setback". More dramatically, India's Supreme Court will, also on Friday, cross-question the head of the civil service and chief of police of the state of Gujarat. The state government has been under the court's attack for its alleged failure to ensure justice for the victims of last year's communal riots, which killed up to 2,000 Muslims. The state government appealed after a case, in which 21 Hindu men were accused of burning 14 Muslims to death in the riots, was dismissed because 37 of the 43 witnesses withdrew their evidence. But many believed the government's action was meant to stop the trial from being moved to another state. In an unusually harsh statement, the Supreme Court last week described the state government's appeal as a "complete eyewash". The court will decide whether to move this and other cases outside of Gujarat to ensure neutrality. Not one person has yet been convicted but the court's withering criticism of Gujarat state has restored hope to some of the victims. "The judge's words have been like a beacon of light," said J.S. Bandukwala, an academic and a Muslim based in Gujarat, who narrowly escaped death when his house was burned during the riots. "One by one we have watched every institution of state, including the police, the civil service and the Gujarati media, close ranks. The Supreme Court has greatly restored our faith in India." Many other groups in India feel the same way. Over the past 15 years, India's hitherto conservative judiciary system has become the most effective check on India's often corrupt and inept political system. Under the rubric of "public interest litigation", courts have permitted individuals with no direct connection to an issue to file petitions against the failure of the government or bureaucracy to implement its own laws. In other words, anyone can petition the courts to take action on anything. "As they say, even a postcard from prison is enough to stimulate the court's interest," said G.D. Patnaik, a retired chief justice. Judges have variously imposed clean fuel standards on New Delhi, ordered prisons to improve sanitation, restored land rights to tribal Indians and insisted the government provide clean drinking water. A number of politicians have sought - in vain - to curtail the use of PIL cases but India's new era of judicial activism has largely proved popular with an electorate that is increasingly disenchanted with its politicians. "India's constitution is like the five senses," said George Verghese, professor at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. "When one is lost, the others get sharper. The judiciary is making up for the loss of political sense and bureaucratic sense." However, in the two unusually incendiary and political cases the court will be dealing with on Friday, some suspect the judges will not want to go too far to provoke a powerful government. "As an English judge once said: 'Public interest litigation is an unruly horse that must be tamed'," said Leela Seth, a former judge.
ENDS.
The Hindu, September 20, 2003, Editorial
http://www.hindu.com/2003/09/20/stories/2003092000631000.htm
Reprieve and resignation
IT IS NOT fully clear yet why the special court in Rae Bareli discharged the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, in the Ayodhya case when it framed charges against the Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, and six other Sangh Parivar heavyweights. The Central Bureau of Investigation's charge-sheet against the eight leaders centred on a meeting they held in Ayodhya on the morning of December 6 1992, a few hours before the Babri Masjid was demolished. The eight were accused of making inflammatory speeches, which the CBI felt attracted sections in the Indian Penal Code that relate to wanton provocation, promotion of enmity, public mischief and unlawful assembly. In Mr. Advani's case, the Rae Bareli court seems to have been persuaded by the divergence in statements by witnesses to conclude that the evidence against the Deputy Prime Minister was diluted. It remains to be examined why the charges against Mr. Advani alone remained at the level of "suspicion" while those levelled against the seven others were strong enough to make out a prime facie case.
The answer to this question will become apparent when the Rae Bareli court's 130-page order is closely scrutinised. Meanwhile, it is important to remember that in the context of the shameful destruction of the Babri mosque, this case - even if it may cost Mr. Joshi his ministerial post - is the lesser or more limited one. The main case against the eight leaders is that they were part of a criminal conspiracy to demolish the mosque for which charges were framed as early as 1997. It is only because of a technical or procedural flaw that the conspiracy case against Mr. Advani, Mr. Joshi and others got derailed; a CBI appeal which seeks to rope the eight Sangh Parivar leaders back into the conspiracy case is pending with the Allahabad High Court. In other words, in the context of the larger legal background of the Babri Masjid/Ayodhya cases, Mr. Advani's `reprieve' in the Rae Bareli special court is not as noteworthy or momentous as some Sangh Parivar loyalists would like us to believe. Similarly, it is difficult to see how Mr. Joshi's resignation can be touted as an act based on principle. After all, Mr. Joshi had no compunctions about assuming ministerial office in 1998 although charges were framed against him in the Babri Masjid demolition case a year earlier.
Mr. Joshi's declaration that he would resign if not discharged came one day before the Rae Bareli court was due to frame charges on the basis of the CBI's charge-sheet. If it was totally unexpected, it is because the Bharatiya Janata Party's position all along has been that the Ayodhya cases were "politically motivated" and that those accused need not resign from their ministerial posts merely because they are charge-sheeted. Given this, Mr. Joshi's sudden declaration was viewed as a ploy to capture the high moral ground and to force Mr. Advani, who Mr. Joshi regards as his main rival within the BJP, to do likewise. If this is true, then the HRD Minister's stratagem did not work with the Rae Bareli court arriving at the unexpected decision to discharge Mr. Advani but frame charges against him and the other accused. The BJP spokesman has claimed that there was no need for Mr. Joshi to have resigned, but the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, should not be influenced by such counsel, which tacitly implies that the resignation should not be accepted. Allowing those with criminal charges against them to occupy ministerial office would undermine the very principles on which the edifice of parliamentary democracy is built. He must let Mr. Joshi go.
ENDS.
The Hindustan Times, September 19, 2003
Editorial
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/200903/detEDI01.shtml,
Vandals to the dock
The instigators of the vandalism which brought down the Babri masjid are finally facing the legal consequences of their act.
However, of the two who had set out from Mathura and Varanasi to be present in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, along with the other kar sevaks, only one - Murli Manohar Joshi - has been framed by the special court in Rae Bareli. The other, LK Advani, has been let off, presumably because the evidence presented by the CBI to the court was not convincing enough. Despite the Centre's denial in Parliament that it had exerted any influence on the CBI in the matter, the reprieve is bound to give rise to a fresh controversy. This is all the more so because Mr Advani might have had to resign if he had been served with a charge-sheet.
Mr Joshi's decision to resign clearly reflects a principled stand. It has been argued on behalf of the BJP that no such move is necessary since the Ramjanmabhoomi movement which led to the demolition of the mosque was political in nature. The claim is an absurd one, not least because it is an admission of the fact that politics, rather than religion, was the guiding force behind the agitation contrary to what the BJP is in the habit of saying. But the main point is that an act of criminal conspiracy involving the demolition of an ancient monument protected by law is exactly that, irrespective of the motivation. Hence, those responsible cannot take shelter behind political or religious shields.
It isn't only Mr Joshi who now has long court battles ahead of him. Uma Bharti, her party's chief ministerial candidate in Madhya Pradesh, has also fallen foul of the law, along with several others. To many of the kar sevaks who have already been framed, the court's decision is a judicious one because the leaders of the agitation should pay the same price as the foot soldiers. Although it has taken more than a decade for the blow to fall on those who can now be considered guilty of that shameful act, the decision has to be welcomed since it has shown that those who break the law cannot expect to live in peace.
ENDS.
Deccan Hearld [India] September 19, 2003
Sangh Parivar bars play on untouchability as 'anti-Hindu'
DH News Service BHOPAL, Sept 18
Submitting to pressure mounted by Sangh Parivar outfits, the Madhya Pradesh government has forbade well-known theatre personality Habib Tanvir from staging the controversial play "Ponga Pandit" during his government-sponsored tour of the state. Now, Mr Tanvir's theatre troupe will only stage Asghar Wajahat's "Jisne Lahore nahi dehkya, woh janmaya hi nahi" during the tour.
Mr Tanvir resumed his tour from Jabalpur on Wednesday. "Ponga Pandit" was not staged, but the show still faced aggressive slogan-shouting from VHP-Bajrang Dal workers. Only a heavy police bandobast could prevent them from disrupting the show.
Mr Tanvir, in his statewide tour sponsored by the state government's Culture department, was to stage two plays: "Ponga Pandit" and "Lahore"---the former a scathing attack on the practice of untouchability and the latter on Muslim communalism. However, VHP-Bajrang Dal workers did not allow the shows to take place at Hoshangabad and Gwalior declaring that "Ponga Pandit" was anti-Hindu. Mr Tanvir's explanation that "Ponga Pandit" was a folk play, being staged in villages of MP and Chhattisgarh for the last half-a-century fell on deaf ears. "Let him stage a play about social evils among Muslims. Then he will learn a valuable lesson", said the leader of the Opposition in the state assembly Babulal Gaur.
The BJP made it clear that it would not allow staging of the play at any place in the state. A protest march of intellectuals and writers to the BJP headquarters faced stoning from party cadres.
Chief minister Digvijay Singh made proper noises. "This is an attack on the freedom of expression. We won't allow anyone to take the law into their hands", he declared.
But the government quietly asked Mr Tanvir to withdraw the drama. "We didn't want trouble. We didn't want to put Mr Tanvir's security into jeopardy", said an official of the Culture department.
ENDS.
Newsline Pakistan
Film: Lambs to the Slaughter
Swara- A Bridge over Troubled Water is a sensitive portrayal of the inhuman custom of swara in which Pakhtun girls are given away in marriage to make amends for crimes committed by men.
By Tehmina Ahmed
Swara, a documentary written and directed by anthropologist Samar Minallah, is a deeply disturbing account of one of the traditional customs still prevailing among the Pakhtuns of the Frontier province.
The code of the Pakhtuns, Pakhtunwali, has connotations of courage and chivalry in popular understanding. While it glorifies male notions of honour, it brings nothing but misery to women, as researchers such as Minallah have pointed out in their writing.
With Swara, Minallah takes to a different medium. While the film conveys the message in no uncertain terms, it is plain to see that the transition from one medium to the other is far from smooth. The film is text-heavy and one sees the editor struggling with the job of matching visual material to the commentary. As a result, there is a fair amount of repetition of visual material and, at times, the visual and audio fail to relate.
That said, Minallah has done an excellent job of putting the dilemma of the Pakhtun woman across, in her own words. In the custom of Swara, disputes arising from incidents where a man is killed in a confrontation are settled by presenting a girl to the aggrieved family as compensation for the loss of life. The decision is taken by an all-male jirga, which does not consult the girl or any female member of the family on the question.
This situation results in what is described as nikah bil jibr by a judge of the Federal Shariat Court interviewed by Minallah. The girl is sent, often against her will, to a hostile family, where she lives in disgrace, paying for the sins of the men of her family. The marriage takes place with no ceremony, and the girl is not allowed to participate in any festive occasions in her new family. Mothers pray that their daughters should die before they leave their homes, because this is truly a fate worse than death.
Minallah has a poignant image of a man leading his little girl across to a jirga to offer her up for swara. The image is repeated several times and it is as chilling the last time as when it first appears. Although the aggrieved family is asked to wait until the girl reaches puberty, often even this wish is not respected, and the girl is taken away to be wed to a man who is old enough to be her father, and who usually has another wife.
Victims of swara appear in the documentary to speak first-hand of their experience. Gul Bibi, who was not willing to go through swara, was married to an old man against her will. Noreena has been given away in swara and her mother complains that she was forced to agree to the arrangement at gunpoint. Noreena, who should be enjoying what she has left of her childhood, suffers from depression. Another woman who was given away in swara runs away from home, only to be tracked down. She has to earn 100,000 rupees through hard labour and give them to the aggrieved family. Only then is she let off the hook.
The film is an indictment of a primitive society where only the law of the jungle seems to prevail. Telling the story is the first step towards a movement for change and Minallah minces no words in telling it the way it is.
ENDS.
The Daily Times, September 21, 2003
EDITORIAL: Reform blasphemy law
The blasphemy law is back in the news. At a press conference in Lahore, leaders of the Majlis-e-Ulema Pakistan and the Badshahi Mosque Khateeb Maualana Abdul Khabeer have stated that a blasphemy case should be thoroughly investigated before the registration of a case. They made this statement with reference to a case being investigated by the police in Lahore. A few days ago a complaint had been registered with the police that a local plastic footwear business had manufactured shoes with a design that somehow resembled the Arabic name of Allah. Prior to this complaint, photocopied images of the shoe had been distributed in a footwear market at the Bhatti gate. However, investigations by the police revealed that the charges levelled against the accused had been initiated by a group of blackmailers who had been extorting money from the company owners Munir Ahmed and Azeem Ahmed for some time by threatening to accuse them of blasphemy. When the owners finally refused to give them more money, they carried out the threat and registered the case with the police. Fortunately, however, this time preliminary investigation proved the innocence of the accused. However, the incident highlights yet again the misuse of the blasphemy law, which for once has been so acknowledged by some religious circles. The religious leaders mentioned above were brought into the loop by the police to judge whether the shoe design was actually blasphemous or not; they made the statement absolving the accused in response to a question during the press conference. Though this is an unusual admission on the part of the clergy, who are averse to any change in the law, critics of the blasphemy law have been pointing out for years that the law is open to abuse and is manipulated by people to register false cases against rivals and adversaries. Once a person is accused of blasphemy, the stigma of the accusation and the fact that the burden of proof lies on the accused makes the chances of an acquittal bleak. It has also been pointed out time and again that there is considerable pressure on junior judges to give a verdict against the accused. In fact, a short while after General Pervez Musharraf took over power, he suggested making a procedural change in the registration of blasphemy cases so that some care was taken before the accused was hauled up. But he backed down as the religious groups in the country threatened to take to the streets and the issue was buried once again. However, the misuse has continued. In recent times, the case of the sub-editor of Frontier Post who was sentenced to death for blasphemy has already been in the public eye locally and internationally. The sentence was blasted quite vocally because it condemned an addict to death, who at the most was guilty of negligence in allowing the printing of an unsuitable letter. The shoe company case, even though it ended well once again, highlights an issue that needs the immediate attention of state and society for the sake of those who fall victim to it and the bad press it earns Pakistan internationally. If the government cannot repeal the law, the least it can do is introduce the changes it had suggested earlier. Perhaps this time around the conservative clergy can see reason and assist the government rather than hinder its efforts. *
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MODI REGIME DOES NOT NEED A WOMEN'S & HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONS !
Commentary
by Batuk Vora
[September 20, 2003, Ahmedabad]
Nine nights of dance, fun and frolic's raucous festival in front of the idols of Goddesses is due soon gripping the people all around in Gujarat. So called 'Hindu Hriday Samrat' Narendra Modi and his officials are also bracing for a mega-event to host their expected number of around 100,000 NRI and foreign investor guests during the festival. Purpose is to synchronize and celebrate their own 'vibrant Gujarat' programme to attract foreign capital in a much down-turned economy of the state.
But various sections of people feel bereft of a humane regime, while expressing their ire on different issues through marches and demonstrations. For the first time in history, perhaps, entire minority community recently observed a total Bandh in Ahmedabad against arbitrary arrests of not just alleged terrorist accomplices but also some prestigious Muslim businessmen under POTA by the police, creating a reign of terror among this community.
Much more angry with the Modi administration here is the mass of farmers, who are waging a long-drawn agitation against heavy mark-up of electricity charges. They are worked up because of a violent police attempt to suppress this agitation recently at Vadodara. One farmer died after police beating. They are at present marching in thousands on foot from South Gujarat town of Dandi to reach Sabarmati Ashram by Oct. 2, reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhiís march in the 20ís on the same route.
Look at the students of universities. They are talking aloud to resume their old 'Navnirman' movement to oust the Modi regime, as they did in 1974 kicking out the then chief minister Chiman Patel. Students at the Gujarat University are burning the effigies of their Vice-chancellor demanding reduction in increased fees. Professors and teachers of various colleges of the same university are out on the streets against the education departmentís ìcallous attitudeî in not implementing their earlier assurance on demands. Teachers and students have actually joined hands against the government shouting such slogans as 'We reject work-to-rule only for the teachers, but why is there no rule for Modi government?'
All the fire directed against Modi hardly makes any difference to him. But their time seems to be running out, looking at a crushing defeat at the hands of the Congress in the last weekís by-elections on 112 seats of municipal and panchayat bodies, winning only two seats. Their way of governance, which many critics here call neo-fascist perpetrating a wide divide between Hindus and Muslims engineered by them since the bloody days of carnage in 2002. This is despite the caustic remarks passed recently by the Supreme Court asking Modi to quit if he couldnít facilitate justice to the victims of carnage. Modi has chosen to remain silent on this. If it was in his power, he would have lambasted the chief justice also as a a 'hypocrite secularist.'
Leave alone a secular, but so far as the Gujaratís dire need for a humane and democratic governance is concerned, two issues draw much criticism here: state governmentís failure to form a womenís commission and equally its refusal to form a human rights commission, proposal for which is pending since BJP came to power five years back.
Even a deaf and dumb would realize how much a womenís commission was needed in the state looking at the report of atrocities on women. There were 262 rapes. 697 kidnapping, 269 murders, 35 deaths on account of dowry and to cap it all ñ some 1,799 suicides by women in 2001!
It was declared by the government that the ënewly to be formedí womenís commission would work under social justice department. Later they formed a separate office of women and childrenís welfare but no chairman or members of the commission were appointed. The government even issued an ordinance for such a formation but it never was followed up by actual formation of commission!! Only woman minister in Modi cabinet, education minister Anandi Patel, later told the media that ìour government was new and many other appointments were yet to be filled up in public sector institutions also.
State government was reminded by various womenís organizations two years back that Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamilnadu and such other states had already formed their own commissions but why not in Gujarat?
Most shocking fact happening in the state was an increase in child-marriages. There were 17 such marriages registered in police record of 1998, but it became 26 in 1999. Cases of mental tortures on women registered were 2989 in 1998, which rose to 3365 in 1999.
Another even more shocking is the incidence of fetus death has brought Gujarat as number two all over the country in decreased number of girl child per a thousand births- 878 girls for 1000 boys! Clearly, the age old practice of killing girls before they are born or even after they are born in a few cases is still prevalent here, with slogans of 'new bright Hindutva' dominating the socio-cultural landscape.
So far as the formation of human rights commission is concerned, the state government has simply stayed any action on this score. Some officials say in hush-hush tones that the chief minister is not able to find out a pliable chairman for the same and that is the reason, while some other sources assert that the ruling BJP is afraid of being trapped once they form such a commission, which could be flooded with complaints from various sections of society- from Dalit victims of atrocities to members of minority community who have been continuously making noise against human right violations by the ruling party and its police. THE END
ENDS.
Dawn, 21 September 2003 Education
Misogynist readings By Omar R. Quraishi
Most of the textbooks formulated by the curriculum wing of the ministry of education and prescribed by the provincial textbook boards are not known for their quality or content. Replete with typographical errors, historical and factual inaccuracies and downright bad language, they hardly, if ever, engage students. Quite a bit has been written about this aspect concerning textbooks in Pakistan. However, bad as they are in terms that they hardly play any substantial role in opening the minds of the students who use them, the texts reinforce the strongly patriarchal (some would say even misogynist) strain that runs through much of Pakistani society. Women are usually shown in textbooks in subservient and highly traditional roles, and students given the impression that the women are worthy of respect most when they adhere to their traditional roles of mother/housewife or home-maker. That this has happened at a time when women seem to be making their presence felt in the white-collar workplace, and in fields as prominent as the media, just goes to show the level of mediocrity and myopia found among those who write and produce textbooks in Pakistan. In fact, according to researchers Aamna Mattu and Neelam Hussain, much of this gender bias and stereotyping found in textbooks today has its roots in the 1959 Report of the Commission on National Education (Gender Biases and Stereotypes in School Texts). Upon a random analysis (random because this would make the conclusions drawn from the survey more representative and hence more credible) of textbooks prescribed by the Punjab Textbook Board (the researchers said that for reasons of space only English textbooks for classes VII to X were anaylzed), they came to the following conclusions: 1. That those who make the textbooks feel statements and pronouncements by government officials and others in positions of authority regarding women's rights and ending gender discrimination are "purely rhetorical and need not be taken seriously". 2. That "patriarchal percepts of femininity and masculinity are so deeply rooted" that they prevent even those involved in educational policymaking and planning to look at their own attitudes towards such issues with any degree of self-reflection. 3. That those who write such textbooks fail to see the connection with the negative images and stereotypical representation of women in their texts and the impact these representation have on the perceptions of people in society. Either that, or despite knowing this to be clearly the case, they willfully portray women in roles that perpetuate such negative stereotypes, thereby inadvertently showing their own bias against women. The report of the 1959 commission stressed the formulation of "national character" and according to the researchers reinforced the existing class divisions and gender bias in society. What is even more disturbing is that 44 years have passed since this report was drawn up and in that time no one in any government or education ministry has bothered to revise it or re-examine it. The result is that many of its conclusions - thoroughly obsolete, outdated and if fact retrogressive - continue to dictate the education curriculum. The report makes some rather controversial assertions. One is that certain individuals in society are "naturally more talented, intelligent and capable of abstract and conceptual thinking and creativity, while others are naturally more prone to mechanical rule following". Now, some people would say that perhaps this isn't entirely all that untrue but the 1959 report links this divergent natural abilities with people's occupations and their place in the economy. It says that those who perform "manual, concrete and lower order tasks which do not require much thinking or conceptualization, but are based on repetitive actions, rote memorization and constant drill or practice" cannot be talented, creative or capable of intelligent discourse. This illogical and patronizing approach is found in the report's view of female education. As Mattu and Hussain point out, "clear-cut gender roles are emphasized". Women should acquire those skills which will "ensure domestic bliss" and these are needle work, home craft, embroidery and (in the report's own words) "other suitable work of an artistic kind". These kinds of images showed up repeatedly in the textbooks that were analyzed. Clearly, the reference to women pursuing embroidery or other home-based work implies that women from upper-income backgrounds are being talked about since those from poor backgrounds in the rural areas would be too busy working in the fields while their counterparts in the cities would be employed as domestic servants. The development and eventual establishment of home economics colleges in Pakistan during the 1960s is seen by the researchers as a way of the traditionalists conceding - but only cosmetically - to the demands of the more progressive elements of society. Quite rightly, it is pointed out that the evolution of home economics colleges allowed the demand for girls' education to be satisfied but in a way that those who now came forward to acquire education did so within boundaries set by essentially a patriarchal state. In describing the aims of this subject, the 1959 report said that it would "provide a young woman with the knowledge and skills and attitudes that will help her to be a more intelligent and effective wife and mother and improve the health, happiness and general well-being of her family". (But what about her own health, happiness and general well-being?) Now, to the representations of women in today's textbooks, especially English books for classes VII to X. One book for class VII students had a lesson 'Family Relations'. As can be expected from the title of this lesson, its primary objective is to tell students the role played by each member in a family unit. After marriage a woman's is identified only by reference to her husband (which in fact happens all the time, to the extent that sometimes people don't even know the woman's actual name). The researchers fault such lessons on several counts. Firstly, they teach female students that the only role for them later in life worthy of emulation is to become a mother. Now, there is nothing wrong in advocating that per se but to present that as the only viable option for a woman to acquire and command respect is not only ethically wrong it is empirically untrue. Those who write such lessons for textbooks also perhaps forget that the prefix 'Mrs.' is not really used anymore, the preference now being 'Ms.', and this is now the norm in most workplaces and means of communication. 'Family Relations' was found to be highly boring, repetitious and, as is the case with so many English textbooks, had bad English and grammar. Unfortunately, the education ministry's curriculum wings seems to have not realized that using a sermonizing and lecturing approach to students, couched in repetitious and badly worded sentences, is not the best of ways to engage young students towards learning. This is not to say that one is advocating that a story on family relationships should take the other extreme and condone, say, children rebelling against their parents. However, it does not have to be in the form of a boring sermon and could instead highlight the responsibility, understanding, warmth, friendship and poignancy that is a part of family life. Another story, 'Going on Holiday' is analyzed. It too has its share of bad grammar and ends up reinforcing gender stereotypes. The decision to go on holiday is made by the husband, and his wife is only too happy to go along, and ends up making tea for everyone. The brother engages in a plausibly positive activity like flying a kite but his sister "whinges, complains and makes silly requests". References to women who did well in history, other than Fatima Jinnah, are few. Even normal activities like swimming or working as an air stewardess seems to be reserved, the researchers say, only for women who are non-Pakistani and non-Muslim. This is because most of the textbooks had names like Mary or Mrs Brown for someone who could swim or who worked as an airhostess. This subconsciously implies that Pakistani girls (a) should not be expected to know how to swim and (b) should not really aspire to work as airhostesses. Even cursory references to men and women seem to follow a strictly stereoptypical/gender-biased pattern. For example, men are usually referred to in active or heroic roles while women are always portrayed as submissive and accepting of whatever the man, or society, tells her. Men work in factories, men fight as soldiers, while women wash clothes, make tea or comb their hair. This, Mattu and Hussain point out, conveniently ignores the fact that men can also comb their hair, wash their own clothes and have been known to make tea. Other than, as some detractors might say, sounding academic and a bit too nit-pickish, Aamna Mattu and Neelum Hussain make an important point in their conclusion. Such textbooks perpetuate the negative image of women in Pakistani society and play a larger than generally perceived role in the discrimination and bias that they face in their daily lives. The male and the female students who are exposed to them both grow up thinking that the "men alone have the right and the capacity for decision-making not only for themselves" but also for women. And this is why violence, coercion and arbitrary use of force is so rampant in Pakistani society against women, especially those women who try to break out from the traditional mould prescribed for them by society. Such textbooks only reinforce commonly held views that women should not venture out of the house alone or should not sit on the roof of their homes and talk to a male neighbour or to a male acquaintance walking by in the street (both of which have often been cited as valid motives for murdering daughters, sisters or even mothers by men involved in so-called honour-killings). One way of doing away with such retrogressive and archaic thinking would be if the ministry of education took the initiative to rewrite primary and secondary school textbooks to remove their deep-seated gender biases. This is crucial because what individuals learn and read early on in life, especially in school, usually leaves a lasting impression.
ENDS.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/220903/detIDE01.shtml The Hindustan Times [India] September 22, 2003 Batting for the BJP Amulya Ganguli
For several years now, the BBC's Mark Tully has provided indirect support to the BJP's Hindutva cause. His contention, as reiterated in a new TV documentary, Hindu Nation, is that secularism is unsuitable for India. The reason: it is a doctrine which keeps religion out of public life, an attempt which is bound to fail - and has failed - in a country as "deeply religious" as India. Hence, the Congress's decline and the BJP's rise.
The first flaw in this thesis is how does one distinguish between a deeply religious and a less religious country and then claim that secularism will only succeed in the latter? Second, the Congress did not fail because it espoused secularism. It failed because the party's name had become synonymous with corruption. Its long years in power had made the party rotten inside. Nothing showed the degeneration better than the identification in the public mind of the ubiquitous Gandhi cap worn by Congressmen with blackmarketeers.
If, of all the parties, the BJP has been able to cash in on the tarnishing of the Congress's image, it is, first, because of the Sangh parivar's organisational spread, which enabled the party to use the services of the RSS, the VHP and other fraternal units in its campaign. Second, the BJP was quite uninhibited in its exploitation of communal sentiments to sway public opinion. It has not even been averse to using riots to win votes, as Gujarat has shown.
However, at the national level, its present strength in the Lok Sabha is probably the highest it will ever get. All indications are that it will not reach this figure of 182 in the 2004 election. It is clear, then, that the BJP's use of religion in a "deeply religious" country hasn't been a runaway success.
The reason why the BJP has fallen well short of a majority in Parliament is the nature of an average Indian's religious feelings. Unlike the West, especially Europe, where overt religiosity is on the decline - an aspect of life which may have distorted Tully's thinking - an Indian is almost aggressively religious in the matter of visiting temples or mosques or churches or gurdwaras.
The BJP made the mistake, however, of interpreting such religious sentiments in communal terms. The party believed that if you are a religious-minded Hindu, you will be anti-Muslim as well. The BJP also tried to buttress this mistaken belief by demonising the Muslims by blaming their ancestors for breaking temples and the present generation for terrorism.
But the innate tolerance of the Hindus, as also the respect with which they regard all religions, have frustrated the BJP's pernicious efforts. Tully vaguely acknowledges this when he pleads for tolerance in public life, but he has been a victim of the other trap of mistaking a Hindu's reverence for his own religion as animosity for the religions of others.
Misperception is not his only failing. His belief that a highly religious country cannot afford secularism is fundamentally flawed. What he is saying is that such a country can only have a theocratic government. What he ignores is that secularism - the separation of church and State - is as fundamental a tenet of modern governance as the 'one man, one vote' rule. Without secularism, every democracy will become a victim of endless strife because no country is mono-religious.
To say that secularism is unsuitable for a religious-minded country is like saying, like Ayub Khan, that democracy is unsuitable for a hot country. If Tully's argument is accepted, then it was wrong for the US authorities to have removed the granite block with the Ten Commandments inscribed on it from the premises of the Alabama Supreme Court because the "deeply religious" people of Alabama were against its removal.
But a secular State could not allow the block to remain on government property. It could be installed in a private park or a private home or a private institution. But the government could not have anything to do with it because it represented one religion in a country of many faiths. Hence the absence of devotional music on the audio-visual media in India which Tully bemoans.
The separation of church and State is an even greater necessity in India than in the US because India is a country with 4,635 communities, 325 languages and 24 scripts.
It is the birthplace of four major religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism - not to mention the animistic cults of tribals, and is home to Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. If devotional music is to be played on radio and television, even one-line hymns will take up a good part of the morning unless only bhajans are sung, as the BJP will want.
It is the height of absurdity, therefore, to claim that secularism is unsuitable for India - and blame Nehru for it, as Gurcharan Das of India Unbound fame does in the documentary. It is Nehru's and Gandhi's insistence on secularism and pluralism which has saved India. If they had followed the Sangh parivar's prescription of cultural nationalism - one country, one people, one culture - where culture means the Hindu way of life, India would have been torn apart.
We can see what would have happened if India followed such sectarian policies from the events in our neighbourhood. Pakistan broke up because its dominant western wing tried to impose Urdu on East Pakistan, which the Bengalis resisted. Even the oneness of their religion could not save the Pakistanis from the split. Sri Lanka is embroiled in a civil war because of the majoritarian policies followed by the Sinhalas who tried to foist their language and religion (Buddhism) on the Tamil-speaking Hindus of the north. Even the fraternity of Hinduism and Buddhism did not prevent the rupture.
All over the world, from the Balkans to Northern Ireland to the African continent, sectarian policies in the form of establishing the primacy of a religion or a race or a language have led to bloodshed. In India, the wisdom of Gandhi and Nehru, and in South Africa of Nelson Mandela, have ensured that their countries will remain united. And the basis of that unity is what Mandela said on the occasion of his becoming the president of a multiracial South Africa: "Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will experience the oppression of one by another."
Secularism and pluralism go hand in hand. If a multicultural society such as India's is to survive, the government has to abide by secular principles so that no religion is given pride of place. All religions will have equal status. This was Nehru's single-most important contribution to make India survive the trauma of partition, carried out on the basis of religion. If the RSS types had been in positions of power at the time, India's fate would have been something like Rwanda's, with our own Hutus and Tutsis trying to exterminate one another.
ENDS.
Editorial , The Hindustan Times, September 22, 2003
The truth is out
The culpability of the Narendra Modi government is being exposed with every new revelation before the Supreme Court in the Best Bakery case.
The latest is the police admission that they acted deaf and dumb when the witnesses were being intimidated - or 'won over' by the accused, as the state's director-general of police has told the apex court. The phrase is interesting, for it suggests a victory for the accused, who were none other than the criminal elements who burnt down the bakery, killing 14 people. And this 'victory' of the criminals would not have been possible but for the tacit police acquiescence in the brow-beating of the hapless victims.
The police's dubious role has also been revealed by the DGP's confession that the police commissioner of Vadodara had told him about how the witnesses were being 'won over', but neither of the two officials took any step to protect them. This failure is all the more reprehensible because the police authorities had assured the National Human Rights Commission about providing such protection. It is not difficult to understand why the police remained silent spectators while the witnesses were being threatened. As a commentator, who is a Gujarati, has recently written, the state is currently being held hostage by criminal elements owing allegiance to the Sangh parivar.
After these revelations, it is now easier to believe in the allegations made at the time of the riots that the police were told by their political bosses not to be too energetic in controlling the outbreak. Just as they turned a blind eye to the intimidation of the witnesses, they were also immune to the pleas of the victims during the riots. With each passing day, therefore, the complicity of the Modi government in the pogrom is becoming clear. But for the institutional probes, such as those conducted by the NHRC and the judiciary, the state government would not have been brought to book for its disgraceful acts of omission and commission. There is still a long way to go to bring justice to the victims, especially when the Modi administration has been acting as a stumbling block. But at least a beginning has been made.
ENDS.
Posted by: Awaaz / 9/23/2003 02:19:05 PM
Nuremberg International Human Rights Award
Award Ceremony
September 14, 2003 in Nuremberg Opera House
Words of Thanks by the Prizewinner Ibn Abdur Rehman (I A Rehman)
I do not have words to adequately express my gratitude to the great city of Nuremberg, especially to the Lord Mayor, Dr Hesselmann and his colleagues at its office of human rights and the jury of its highly valued International Award for Peace and Human Rights for honouring me with the 2003 Award. This award is in fact a recogntion of the selfless struggle for human rights by a large number of people in Pakistan. I have had the privilege of working with many of them at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and in India-Pakistan or South Asian forums for peace. And I stand here as one of them, no better than any other.
I am also overwhelmed by the generosity of the people of Nuremberg. The popular enthusiasm evident at this grand peace table is more than a measure of your hospitality; it speaks volumes for the investment you have made in the service of humankind. Nuremberg has had many claims as the center of historic developments but its present image as a champion of peace and human rights is undoubtedly the most enviable and most enduring. Each and every resident of this city should be proud of this marvelous accomplishment.
Many present here might have listened to stirring addresses full of wisdom and rich in commitment from my predecessors at this table. I will not try to compete with them. Coming as I do from a country which is mentioned more in dispatches on terrorism and conflict than in reports on enterprise for peace and where human rights are mentioned mostly in accounts of their denial to ordinary citizens I will only mention some of the concerns we in Pakistan have.
We the inheritors of the Indus Valley Civilisation are an ancient people, with a record of many achievements in distant past. Unfortunately, the management of our relatively young state does not figure on the credit chart. Throughout the 56 years since Pakistan came into being the people have been engaged in a struggle, highlighted by a mass upheaval every 10 years or so, to realize their aspirations for a democratic dispensation. This struggle is going on even today.
The ideal of democratic self-determination is of fundamental importance to our people because without it Pakistan cannot peak in a voice that is at the same time authentic and legitimate. The absence of genuinely democratic institutions undermines Pakistan's capacity to respect the call of peace and human rights both. Allow me to say that neither the Pakistani people's need of democracy nor their commitment to it has been fully appreciated by the developed world, which has tended to endorse dictators for narrow considerations. One sometimes hears that in view of some deficiencies in their make-up or their lack of requisites of a democratic order, the people of Pakistan, and for that matter similarly placed societies, should expect no better than rule by military cabals and their self-serving surrogates. Such suggestions are not justified by the history of many communities' progress towards self-realisation. Besides, they reinforce the division of humankind into those who are qualified to enjoy democracy, peace and human rights and those who may fend themselves as best as they can off authoritarianism, bloody conflicts and abuse of basic rights. The very concept of universality of basic human entitlements is undermined. I should therefore stress the need for viewing the Pakistani people's striving for democracy as a matter of international concern.
In a country where authoritarianism has been the rule and short-lived democratic facades an exception, references to human rights appear somewhat unrealistic. In terms of human rights indicators our problems are legion. Women do not enjoy their basic rights, even those sanctioned by law, and violence against them is rampant. We have child labour, though this problem is now attracting more attention than before. There is discrimination against national and religious minorities. The basic rights of the working people are being curtailed. Civil and political rights are under strain and a large number of people suffer denial of liberty and torture every year. The factors contributing to this situation include, besides absence of democracy, gaps and deficiencies in the national charter of fundamental rights, decline in the judiciary's independence, non-adherence to international human rights instruments and indifference to treaties that have been ratified, religious orientation of the state, feudalism, and the state's tendency to ignore the civil society and its undisguised hostility towards political parties and NGOs. On the positive side, human rights standards can no longer be publicly disowned by the government, the people have learnt to articulate their grievances, and quite a few organizations are engaged in advocacy. Peace is on the agenda of many of them. They see little prospect of an early breakthrough but they are sustained by their faith and their optimism.
Many of you perhaps share the concern felt in several parts of the world about the nexus between international terrorism and the so- called fundamentalists in Pakistan. True, there are extremists and militants in our country, perhaps more than our due share of the world population of zealots, but they do not account for the entire society, nor even a majority. They pose a greater threat to their own society than the outside world. While the existence and doings of these cancerous elements are fully covered by the international media, the outside world gets to know little of the other strands that make up the Pakistan mainstream. There are parties and groups that view democracy as a secular ideal.
There are women organizations whose fight for basic human dignity and equity the successive regimes have failed to suppress. The lawyers have been battling for rule of law and independence of the judiciary. Trade unions are resisting encroachments on their traditionally recognized rights. Peasant groups are up in arms for their right to land. There are people, however small their number, that have denounced nuclear tests, refused to prefer guns to bread, and protested against terrorist attacks on the Indian people. These groups have the capacity to marginalize the fundamentalists who owe their visibility and share of public space to their interdependence with authoritarian regimes, civil as well as military. All they ask for is a global environment inspired by universal and fair-minded respect for human values of civilized existence.
For, the dynamics of Pakistan society, or in other developing countries, cannot remain uninfluenced by trends on the global scene. The vast population of the countries that emerged from colonial domination after the Second World War has not received a fair deal from the advanced nations. Much of the uneasiness in these countries is due to the dissipation of initiatives such as the Brandt Commission, the Stockholm Social Charter and the North-South dialogues. The have-nots of the world are obviously uncomfortable with a status quo that condemns them to growing impoverishment and denial of social progress. They are seriously scared of new international regimes that treat their concerns with indifference, if not contempt.
The gap between the world's under-privileged and the powerful rich has widened over the past couple of years not only in material terms but also in respect of perceptions of peace and justice. A great deal of the effort to create a world of peace and harmony made since the 1940s is threatened with reversal. If powerful countries can get away with their unilateral decisions on war and peace and bypass the United Nations, the incitement to less mature regimes to keep fighting among themselves is obvious. If the killing of innocent civilians can be justified as collateral damage , if prisoners of war can be denied their rights under the Geneva Conventions, if the right to rebel against injustice can be suppressed, then the whole world is being diverted away from the ideals of peace and human rights.
I have taken the liberty of making these submissions because the deprived sections of humankind expect forward-looking states, such as today's Germany, to defend the universality of the right to peace and human rights and pull their weight in addressing the causes that lead people in poor countries to suicidal despair. They have to ensure that the new socio-political-economic world order offers equity and justice to all peoples of various hues and dispositions. That is the only way to secure peace and human rights.
It is, however, illogical and unfair to put the entire responsibility for keeping the world on a sane course on advanced and rich countries. South Asia's problems, for instance, lie in the main in Pakistani and Indian pathological obsession with politics of hostility. These two neighbours have caused each other huge losses in wars and during long years of preparations for war. Their fondness for nuclear weapons has created a spectre of horrendous devastation. The pursuit of such mutually destructive policies has contributed to the rise of monsters of hate, caused deviations from democracy and fuelled communal strife.
The cost is invariably paid by the poor and the vulnerable. Fortunately enlightened sections of civil society in both states are out in the field and braving the risks of struggling for peace and amity. Hope rests with them and they deserve a salute.
For that reason I thank Nuremberg for bringing me together with a distinguished Indian, my very dear and adorable friend Teesta Setalvad, who has faced hazards and challenges that fortune has spared me. I look upon this partnership as symbolic of the common destiny of the people of India and Pakistan, a destiny within their reach if they are released of bondage to forces that thrive on ignorance and prejudice and pave the way to power with decapitated bodies of the innocent. I hope neither Teesta Setalvad nor I will forget the responsibility this coming together places on us.
And I bow to your generosity and kindness. Thank you.
ENDS.
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