Awaaz - South Asia Watch News
News and information provided in conjunction with South Asia Citizens Wire and other sources
Posts do not necessarily reflect the views of Awaaz
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Posted by: Awaaz / 10/04/2003 04:16:51 PMWomen
Dawn 28 September 2003
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
The majority of the politicians who form what is known, in parliament, as the opposition, toothless but corrupt, endlessly seeking power and pelf, capable in their immobility of desk-thumping with remarkable stamina but incapable of mobility such as protest marches, have now come up with a new form of protest - lolling around on roadsides observing a 'token hunger strike'. What is it? A couple of hours' deprivation of puris, halwa, nihari and lassi? Is this all they can do while among the people of the country who they represent distress multiplies? On an average of every second day - with no exaggeration - we read a news item in the press reporting a murder, or murders, committed under the vicious immoral practice known to us as karo-kari, which translates falsely and dishonourably into the term 'honour killings'. On September 9, a press report in The Nation, which should have been unbelievable but which we know is not, told us that in the past eight months 631 victims of these convenient 'honour killings', six of them minors, were ritualistically butchered, some hacked to pieces. Almost all of the crimes have gone unpunished. The number of such killings is statistically steadily increasing by the year, as the perception of what constitutes 'honour' widens. The flimsiest of suspicions, such as a rumour spread in a village, or in one extreme case, a man's dream of his wife's adultery, is enough to provoke lethal violence. Women are not even given a chance to clear up possible misunderstandings. Tradition decrees only one method to restore honour - to kill the allegedly offending woman. Standards of honour and chastity are not equally applied to men and women in Pakistan, though the honour code applies to both equally. In surveys conducted in the NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh, men were found going unpunished for 'illicit relationships' whereas women were killed on the merest rumour of 'impropriety.' The sheer scale of the phenomenon in Pakistan makes it a case apart. Originally, this disgraceful and disgusting practice was a Baloch and Pashtoon tribal custom that during the past couple of decades, thanks to the malign influence of President General Ziaul Haq and his brand of expedient religiosity, has become common practice in the province of Sindh, and has even spread into Punjab. The Sindhi districts of Jacobabad, Ghotki and Larkana top the bill for the number of reported killings. Crimes of honour were pre-Islamic practices. They have no real basis in religion but are encouraged by the rise of religious fundamentalism and in this patriarchal society women, helpless under the law and under social mores, are naturally the prime victims. The problem of widespread impunity is essentially cultural and social. Crimes of honour are an archaic custom deep-rooted in tribal societies of this country that expediently stick firmly to their antediluvian roots. After writing briefly last week on the plight of a newly married couple of Pano Aquil whose marriage was not to the liking of the 'elders' of their tribes (among them Sardar Ali Gohar Maher and Sardar Khalid Ahmad Lund), and who, under threat of death, were in hiding anticipating that a jirga would impose on them the karo-kari death penalty, an e-mail came over the air waves from Sassui Palijo, an MPA of the honourable Sindh assembly. She rightly termed the practice, 'a cancer in our society', and sadly but truly wrote that "just because there are women in parliament does not mean that drastic changes will occur because there is no rule of law and even government ministers openly support anti-women laws such as honour killings and the jirga system. Sindh's cabinet minister Manzoor Panwhar supported and justified honour killings and said that the perpetrators of honour killings should be given more relief. When I tried to condemn him and raised the point in the house, our speaker, Muzaffar Shah, warned me six times and would not let me speak." What else should she expect from the spineless and the flip-flopppers? What hope can there be? Another e-mail came from Zulfikar Halepoto. His contention: "Cases of karo-kari will not be stopped unless the state immediately bans the jirga system, the prime protector of the karo-kari tradition .... the government and state machinery are natural allies of the feudals and the feudals are the upholders of karo-kari." Then on September 23 came news from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan with details of another couple in hiding after being condemned to karo-kari killing. Doctor Amnat Solangi and Dr Ghulam Mustapha Solangi of district Nosheroferoz married last November, against the wishes of the family of Amnat. Her brother organized a jirga, Rs.20 lakhs were demanded and the return of the woman was called for and rejected. The karo-kari death sentence still stands, the couple remains in hiding, and the HRCP has taken up their case in the court of the Nosheroferoz district and sessions judge pleading that he restrict the violent relatives from "carrying out any illegal overt act against the couple." From the Amnesty International Report for 2003, in the section on Pakistan, under the heading 'Women's rights' it is written: "Women and girls continued to be subjected to abuses in the home, the community and in the custody of the state. Impunity for such abuses persisted. Hundreds of women were killed in so-called 'honour killings'. Some private initiatives were announced. For instance, the head of the Leghari tribe said in March (2002) that 'honour' crimes would no longer be permitted. However, the state did not take any action to ban the practice or to ensure that the perpetrators were held to account." Nor apparently did the head of the Leghari tribe. An earlier Amnesty Report, of September 1999, whilst on the subject, relates how Nadir Magsi who was known to have provided refuge to many women and couples had settled one elopement incident of his tribe. The couple was to be traced and killed, and the girl sought protection from Magsi. A jirga was held, the woman's family crying out for the death of the boy. Magsi argued against killing and suggested a payment of two lakh rupees to the woman's family, with the return of the woman, and a guarantee that the boy would live. The comment made on the incident: "... most sardars are loath to introduce change in the fear of losing their hold on tribal society. The winds of change which come with education, economic development and exposure to the outside world have not been allowed to blow in the regions inhabited by the tribes of Pakistan." Fine. But then came the comic bit, from well-meaning Amnesty International so abysmally unaware of the realities of this Republic: "However, tribal leaders familiar with the Constitution of Pakistan and statutory law practised in parliamentary debate should use their influence in society to introduce the rights and freedoms they swear to uphold as parliamentarians into a society bound by tradition." We now have another president general, who holds vastly different views of how life should be lived in this Republic from these of his predecessor in office, and on whom great hopes were pinned when he took over in October 1999. A man of liberal thought, who claims adherence to the principles outlined and formulated for the country by its founder, he was expected to act swiftly and decisively in the interests of law and order and human rights, with particular emphasis on the horrors and sufferings to which women of the less privileged class are subjected. He has so far failed to deliver. While speaking this week in New York, Gen Musharraf said that his writ did not extend to the tribal areas, to FATA. But does it not extend to the entire settled areas of Pakistan? When he looks into the Pano Aquil incident should he not swiftly remove the involved sardars of Sindh from the positions of power with which he has endowed them? What sort of Ataturk has the general turned out to be? As for the unfortunate couple from Pano Aquil, some considerate caring police officers and others have helped and for the time being they are beyond the reach of the obscurantist graduate sardars and their henchmen.To those Pakistanis who live abroad and send me e-mails informing me that their bodies may be far from the homeland but their souls are very much here, my advice to them is to quickly retrieve their souls. If they wish to aid the helpless abused women of this blighted nation, they can contact the brave volunteer women of the Aurat Foundation (aurat@khi.compol.net), who are far more active and effective than is our government or our assemblies, and send them money to further strengthen their organization.
ENDS.
[30 September 2003]
Verdict From Rae Bareli: Compounding communal injustice
By Praful Bidwai
It is a measure of the grave crisis of India's justice delivery system that it has failed even to charge, leave alone punish, all the perpetrators of an event which shook us all-the cataclysmic demolition of the Babri mosque 11 years ago. The very recording of offences against the accused started on a wrong footing, with the first information report being wantonly split into two. The Central Bureau of Investigation then became complicit in illegitimately dropping the important charge of conspiracy. The Uttar Pradesh government named a subordinate "special court" under magistrate V. K. Singh in small-town Rae Bareli to try the now-weakened case. This court made a mockery of justice on September 19 when it framed charges against seven persons, including Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati, etc, but discharged Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. Mr Advani spearheaded, planned and ideologically inspired the militant, intimidatory, anti-mosque agitation.
As this is written, a week after the verdict, Mr Singh's order is still not publicly available. Until October 10, he won't disclose precisely what charges are framed against Mr Advani's seven co-accused. But they certainly won't contain the all-important charge of criminal conspiracy, nor offences under Sections 295 and 295A of the IPC (defiling places of worship and indulging in acts intended to outrage religious feelings). It is even more outrageous that Mr Advani-the most important leader of the anti-Babri movement in the late 1980s, who conducted the infamous Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra in 1990, and played a pivotal role in the events and strategies leading to December 6-has been let off. Even he says he can't comprehend this! Apparently, magistrate Singh followed the argument that the CBI cited two conflicting testimonies, one of which claimed that Mr Advani tried to calm down the restive crowd (while the other said he did nothing to restrain firebrand leaders like Uma Bharati and Ritambhara, with whom he shared the dais).
In giving Mr Advani the "benefit of the doubt", Mr Singh, strangely, cited the Supreme Court's ruling in the 1979 Praful Kumar Samal case: if the scales of evidence against the accused during a trial are "even", then that is a ground for acquittal. But this rationale can come into play only at the end of a trial, not before it, while framing charges. It makes no sense that a person against whom there is prima facie evidence should be simply let off without trial.
Magistrate Singh's major error of judgment compounds the weakening, and devious manipulation, of the whole litigation by the CBI. The CBI is not an independent agency. It reports directly to Mr A.B. Vajpayee (earlier, it came under Home). The Bureau was clearly "persuaded" into suppressing and distorting the evidence in its possession. One's worst suspicions about such manipulation are confirmed by the fact that the CBI was represented by senior lawyer S.S. Gandhi, known to be extremely close to Law Minister Arun Jaitley. It would be rewarding to trace Mr Gandhi's movements and actions in the crucial weeks prior to the September 19 verdict.
The CBI's coloured version of Mr Advani's innocence contrasts sharply with countless independent accounts which carry overwhelming evidence of Mr Advani's pivotal role in the processes and events that led to the demolition, including the December 6 happenings. Perhaps the most authoritative of these are the two 1993 reports of The Citizens' Tribunal on Ayodhya, comprised of Justices O. Chinappa Reddy, D.A. Desai and D.S. Tewatia. These show that Mr Advani was central to the build-up to the events of December 1992, including numerous kar sevas, his rath yatra and various strategy meetings. The intention to raze the mosque was repeatedly, unambiguously stressed during these. The rath yatra's main purpose was to kindle "Hindu pride" and "avenge history's wrongs"-of "conquest and humiliation" of the Hindus-by destroying the Babri. The yatra's slogans were provocative: "there are only two places for Muslims-Pakistan or kabristan (graveyard))".
The Citizens' Tribunal inquiry commission recorded eyewitnesses who say the mobilisation for December 6 was launched by the BJP-VHP-Bajrang Dal in Ayodhya on November 29. By December 3, 150,000 kar sevaks had gathered there. On December 5, Mr Advani addressed a public meeting in Lucknow and was to go to Varanasi, reaching Ayodhya/Faizabad the next day. But he altered his plans so as to reach Faizabad to join an all-important closed-door meeting at Mr Vinay Katiyar's house, where detailed nuts-and-bolts plans for December 6 were finalised. Among those present were the RSS' H.V. Seshadri and K.S. Sudarshan, the VHP's Ashok Singhal, Vinay Katiyar and Acharya Dharmendra, the Shiv Sena's Moreshwar Save, and the BJP's Pramod Mahajan. Meanwhile, a rehearsal of the demolition took place the same day near the Babri mosque.
On December 6, Messrs Advani and Joshi arrived at the site at 10:30 a.m. Mr Advani, among others, addressed the kar sevaks. His speech was inflammatory. Meanwhile, some kar sevaks had breached the security cordon and were in a highly excited state. At 11:30 a.m., Ms Uma Bharati made a particularly fiery speech, including slogans "tel lagao Dabar ka, Naam mitao Babar ka", "Katue kate jayenge Ram-Ram chillayenge", etc. At 11:45 a.m., Mr Advani announced, "We don't need bulldozers to pull down the mosque"-in other words, do it manually. The assault began. Mr Advani ensured that the destruction would be completed without Central intervention. At 3:15 p.m., he urged kar sevaks "to block all entry points to Ayodhya to prevent Central forces from enteringŠ"
These events were videographed and photographed by numerous journalists, by Indian and foreign TV channels, and above all, by the Intelligence Bureau, which reportedly has nine hours of video-audio tapes. (Curiously, the CBI told the special court that the official tapes contained no speeches-a lie contradicted by numerous eyewitnesses). However, the sangh parivar's disinformation campaign claims that Mr Advani did his best to restrain the kar sevas. According to it, none of the eight accused should have been charged. The demolition, we are told, was an act caused by some mysterious, unknown and unknowable force-and not a clearly identifiable human agency including BJP-VHP-RSS-Bajrang Dal-Shiv Sena top leaders.
Advani & Co. revelled in the destruction of the Babri mosque, and hugged one another in exultation. (Ms Uma Bharati even rode on Mr Joshi's back in joy. Ms Bharati, Ms Ritambhara and certain well-known pro-BJP Bengali journalists formed a circle, holding arms in sheer rapture).
The BJP rode to political power at the Centre on the anti-Babri movement. The very least its leaders can do is face trial, and declare either that they stand by their role, or that they regret it and apologise. However, cowardice is a strong sangh characteristic. This was demonstrated during the Emergency, when RSS chief Deoras wrote a letter of apology to Indira Gandhi. Earlier, when the RSS was banned after Gandhi's assassination, thousands of its members quickly stopped participating in its activities and claimed they were never associated with it!
The Rae Bareli order has highlighted and widened rifts in the parivar, including the Joshi-Advani rivalry. The Advani group tried to "fix" and isolate Mr Joshi. He was kept away from its strategy meetings. He in turn has tried to outwit Mr Advani and embarrass BJP leaders by presenting himself as both more courageous and more loyal to the sangh and the temple agenda. Should a legal appeal against the Rae Bareli order go against Mr Advani, he too will be compelled to resign. This would put the parivar in dilemma. Its position is that no minister need resign when charged with "political" offences, as distinct from "corruption". This position is misbegotten. The mosque demolition was a far greater offence against the Indian public and Constitution than monetary corruption.
Meanwhile, various sangh organs and agencies are offering Mr Joshi contradictory advice, and alternately berating him and (falsely) flattering him. Mr Advani has invited the disdain of the VHP, which accuses him of lacking courage. As for Mr Vajpayee, he has shrewdly played his own game. He has repeatedly said Mr Joshi need not have resigned. But not once during his trip abroad did he say he was rejecting the resignation, as he instantly did in other cases-e.g. Mr Nitish Kumar's. None of this has enhanced the moral stature of any of the BJP's leaders.
This is the right moment to expose the sangh parivar's duplicity, and put it on the mat legally and politically by producing weighty evidence to counter the CBI version and appealing against magistrate Singh's order. The secular parties must all get active on this. (Strangely, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has decided not to appeal against the order-on the ground that "I am a firm believer in the judiciary and of the view that the court verdict on Ayodhya should be acceptable to all Š" This raises uncomfortable questions about his intentions). We can't shirk the task of bringing the guilty of the Ayodhya demolition to book or of deterring hate-crimes. At stake, above all, is the citizen's faith in the possibility of justice in this society. If this is destroyed, we will have nothing but chaos, disorder, hatred, revenge and violence.-end-
ENDS.
Multiculturalism Alive In India
By Barnita Bagchi
www.countercurrents.org
When I was small, in winter we would sometimes go to my father's ancestral village in Murshidabad, a northern, Muslim-majority district of West Bengal in India. I remember sugar-cane juice drunk in front of 'Hazarduari', the thousandwindowed nineteenth-century Nawabi edifice, and rides in bullock carts. I also remember, in my father's village, playing on the ruins of the fancifully-named Buddhist 'Raktamrittikavihara', to dig up which a budding archaeologist cousin of mine had gone to the village, only to be delighted with the pickles and 'murki' (sweet puffed rice) that she was plied with regularly by our aunt.
Unselfconsciously, my sister and I accepted what I now realise was a strikingly multicultural Indian heritage from my father's side of the family. A universalist, atheist intellectual, he draws the strengths of his conviction from having been brought up in a Muslim-majority agrarian village, as the son of a Brahmin who earned a living by being a small landholding farmer, and, as a subsidiary, by having low-caste disciples or 'yajmans', many derived from the 'goala' or dairy caste. My grandfather did not read or speak Sanskrit. His religion was intensely rooted in the vernacular, in the world of the Bengali 'krittibasi ramayana', and the oral 'panchalis'. He lived in an agrarian economy where cash exchange hardly figured. He was a practical farmer, struggling with the upkeep and maintenance of a large extended family, in no way ending with his own immediate one. He felt no affinity with neo-Hindu revivalism, and was immensely relieved when his son chose to leave, after rebelling against constrictive dogma, a famous educational institution run by such neo-revivalist missionaries, foregoing its lucrative scholarship. My grandfather feared that such institutions tried to create ascetics or 'sanyasis', whereas his own model of the religious was intensely rooted in the quotidian world where one responsibly accepted the yoke of 'sansar', our mundane world.
The cultural worlds and material practices of men like my grandfather demonstrate how many different, conflicting kinds of multicultural elite, as much as heterogeneous subalterns, have shaped the history of Bengal. Neither the preachings of the Ramakrishna Mission, nor the genteel squabbles of the metropolitan 'bhadralok' or bourgeosie made an impact on my grandfather. He had his own devoted brand of 'vaishnavism,' (a pacifist sub-sect of Hinduism), ate fish, but not meat or eggs or onions, according to the quirky tenets of Bengali vegetarianism, and spent most of his time worrying about whether enough rice or 'dal' would be produced on the land to feed the burgeoning kin, from cousins-in-law to first cousins.
The eroded red earth of Murshidabad has its own unforgettable gaunt harshness, and in the 'pahari' or hilly area in our village, far down below flows the Bhagirathi, leaving wistful memories of a time when, before it moved away, it actually fed the village. When I was in Murshidabad last year, conducting field interviews on girls' education, my grandmother remembered that a single well in the low area on the trough of the upland had been the only source of water in the village, and she remembered in particular a woman servant, fond stories about whom have been handed down to us, who struggled in the rainy seasons to cart water up slippery, muddy, near-impossible terrain. The Brahmin widow, with her own memories of hours of arduous work feeding and managing a bustling, teeming household (including the 'munish', or the landless labourers), clearly felt great affection and solidarity with the loved and exploited household labour.
Why invoke these memories now? For me, Murshidabad became a vivid, living reality, and could not be relegated any more to the cupboard of memories, last year. I had recently returned to India and joined a research institute for development studies, after finishing a doctorate from Cambridge. Eager to do fieldbased work from a universalist, cosmopolitan perspective, I found that Murshidabad's combination of low female literacy and multicultural amity made it a good choice, together with the contours of a feminist journey of revisiting and rediscovering. I was going to interview ten to fourteen year olds on the narratives and aspirations of their education.
Something happened, though, between planning and making the trip. That was Gujarat, Godhra, and post-Godhra: riot, carnage, and pogrom. Friends from a courageous, tireless activist non-governmental organization focusing on multicultural initiatives, Majlis, requested volunteers to go and do relief work there. Terrified, I went, and found a whole lot of other young, braver people, among them a Catholic filmmaker originally from Goa, now from Delhi, who came to Gujarat just as readily as he went to work in Kashmiri Pandit camps. Yes, such Indians do exist today, and are living testaments to the compassion, sensitivity, and vibrancy of the unsectarian Indian multifaith ethos that the religious fundamentalists are seeking to deny the existence of. The children of Daryah Khan 'gummat' (camp) in Ahmedabad made my palms ache with their eagerness to shake and hold hands with me, and the ache remains as a testament to the cordiality and humanity of the violence-affected human beings, and the near-absolute sense of inadequacy I was left with. Meanwhile, even now advocates from the aforementioned activist organization are patiently, painfully, camping out in Ahmedabad so that for the quasi-legal records of the Human Rights Commission, the truth remains recorded for posterity.
The trip to Murshidabad brought new life and recovery after trauma. Here, girls of all faiths cycle about freely. At the 'bolan' festivals, people of all beliefs sing, bringing to life the rich folk syncretism that is part of the ethos of the place. Some of the beautiful Nawabi buildings are being refurbished, and in all the 'bags' or gardens, there is peace. There is endemic poverty, beyond imagining. But Reena, Phulsura, Moushumi, Hawa, and the other girls I spoke to about their education all had powerful aspirations. Those aspirations are thwarted by a host of deterrents, including the growing menace of dowry, lack of grassroots-disseminated information about government schemes for women's empowerment and education, and the powerful increase of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalisms with a huge array of funds that appear by magic. It is a fragile peace, and vigilance is required in maintaining it. And such peace vigilantes are there in legions, such as the Hindu teachers I interviewed in a 99% Muslim village, and those villagers themselves, who are working together to create a beautiful school, with its own proud library, or the young Muslim woman Reena, struggling through college by making 'beedis', who trawls the Hindu 'padas' taking stock of village welfare measures such as the public latrines.
In my father's Muslim-majority village, villagers are requesting help in setting up a high school for girls. Perhaps this would be sited somewhere near the medieval Buddhist 'vihara', and the girls would be taught perhaps by a woman such as the present teacher of the primary school, a Hindu, whose journey back every day to her home in the nearest town is an unpredictable adventure on the backs of lorries.
And yes, my grandfather was a non-Sanskrit-knowing farming Brahmin who lived all his life working competently and peacefully with Muslims and lower castes, his son is a universalist atheist, and his granddaughter went back to record rich narratives of girls' education in the poverty and multicultural richness of her ancestors' district. My young Catholic filmmaker comrade has millions more such active, peaceloving fellow-Indians. Let the religious-political fanatics take heed.
Dr Barnita Bagchi, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, General Vaidya Marg, Goregaon E, Bombay 400065 India [...] Web-page: http://www.igidr.ac.in/~barnita
The author is a feminist academic at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
ENDS.
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 18:30:13 +0530
From: Sama
Dear Friends,
Medico Friend Circle has lodged a compliant with the Medical Council of India (MCI) against Dr. Pravin Togadia on 24.06.03. The complaint has been lodged as a follow-up of MFC's fact-finding investigation in Gujarat and last year's Annual Meet. It is our submission that Dr. Pravin Togadia, who is registered with the Council, has committed misconduct as defined under the Sections 1.1.1 & 1.1.2 and 5.1 & 6.6 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics), and has breached general Medical Ethics, for which he deserves to be acted against and punished. He is also guilty of violating Sections 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code (see attached).
On September 2nd, MCI requested the Maharashtra Medical Council to look into the matter, which is surprising. Further, in the Mid Day of September 19, Dr. P C Kesavankutty Nayar, acting president of the MCI, stated in an interview, "We have not received it. If we do, we will act immediately." (Revoke rabid Togadia's licence: Medicos, by Kavita Krishnan) [ http://web.mid-day.com/news/city/2003/september/64239.htm ]
Given the history of the MCI in India, it is unlikely that any serious investigation in the doctor's participation in violence and hate campaign will be carried out unless a strong public pressure is applied. We would like all of you to come forward and send your signatures, so that we can strengthen the campaign. This strength is very important as only a few people speaking on behalf of MFC will not suffice. The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) also has taken up the issue for mass mobilization. JSA has also provided the platform for MFC to hand over the complaint formally to NHRC.
We have attached a draft of the signature petition. Please sign the petition and send it to MCI with a copy to the Medico Friend Circle. Please feel free to change or add to the draft if you feel it necessary and send it to the MCI on your letterheads.
The contacts of MCI are as follows: Fax: +91 11 23236604 Emails: mci@del3.vsnl.net.in, contact@mciindia.org
Alternatively, if you agree to be a signatory, send us your name, organisation (if any) and address. We will add a list of all the names under the petition and send it to MCI.
In Solidarity, Sarojini and Amar Jesani On behalf of MFC
For more details please contact: (a) Manisha Gupte - Managing Trustee, Medico Friend Circle - masum@vsnl.com (b) N.B. Sarojini, Convenor, Medico Friend Circle - samasaro@vsnl.com (c) Amar Jesani - jesani@vsnl.com (d) Sanjay Nagral: nagral@vsnl.com (e) Anant Phadke: amolp@pn3.vsnl.net.in ____________
Visit MFC at http://www.mfcindia.org
SAMA J-59, Saket, 2nd Floor, New Delhi 110017
ENDS.
TEXT OF DRAFT PETITION
To, The President, Medical Council of India, Firoz Shah Kotla Road, New Delhi 110002.
Dear Sir/Madame,
We have come to know that the Medico Friend Circle and over 50 medical doctors have filed a complaint to the Medical Council of India stating that Dr. Pravin Togadia has harmed the dignity and honour of medical profession; and violated some other guidelines of the Code of Medical Ethics of the Medical Council. This complaint, as we have come to know about, is using the media and other reports to point at his participation in the campaign of hate against the Muslims, advocacy of violence, instigation of mobs to indulge in violence, threatening health professionals providing care to Muslim patients, asking them to discriminate on religious lines, and so on.
We do not know whether the allegations contained in this complaint before you are true, but we do believe that they very serious allegations of misconduct against a doctor because if found to be true, then people's trust in and the credibility of the Medical Profession and the Medical Council of India would be shaken. Only an immediate, impartial and efficient national level investigation by the Medical Council of India could prove or disprove the truthfulness of allegations.
Therefore, we strongly feel, and urge you to: (a) To undertake immediate and thorough investigations in the press reports and the allegations contained in the said complaint; (b) To ensure that such investigation is done by a national independent authority consisting eminent and ethical doctors and citizens;
We hope that needful will be done at the earliest.
Thanking you.
ENDS.
Justice in a secular society
By Rajeev Dhavan
The Hindu, Oct 03, 2003
http://www.hindu.com/2003/10/03/stories/2003100301481000.htm
Confronted with communal terrorism from within, India's justice system is in danger of losing its secular soul.
JUSTICE IN a secular society can be neither blind nor blindfolded. The slovenly breakdown of India's legal system has produced amazing ironies. After the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Government of India hired the American `India' expert, Marc Galanter, to file an affidavit in New York that India's civil justice system could not deliver justice to the victims. Subsequent events have made this startlingly amazing confession mild by comparison.
In 2000-01, Nadeem who took refuge in London from being tried in the Gulshan Kumar murder case almost succeeded in convincing the British courts that a Muslim could not get justice in India. He escaped extradition because the case against him was not credible. On July 15, 2003, Abu Salem who was wanted in the Bombay blast cases of 1992 pleaded before a Portuguese court that he would be victimised by Indian courts because he belonged to the minority community. If this plea succeeds - as it nearly did in Nadeem's case - India's criminal system will suffer yet another shameful reprimand.
On September 13, 2003, a dramatic confrontation was reported. B.N. Kirpal, former Chief Justice of India, offered expert testimony for a Japanese company that its case should be heard in New York and not New Delhi. On the other side was A.M. Ahmadi, another former CJI, who refuted Mr. Kirpal's depressing but accurate prediction that the case in India would take 20 years, to counter predict that a case in Delhi would take one year. The former CJIs sparred with each other in a foreign jurisdiction to denigrate or defend India's justice system.
Earlier in 2000-01, S.P. Bharucha, another former CJI, made an oft-quoted remark that 20 per cent of the Indian judiciary (that is 1 in every 5 judges) was corrupt. In response all kinds of solutions have been offered: fast track courts, summary procedures, draconian anti-terrorist legislation like POTA and the Malimath Committee proposals for adopting a brand new criminal justice system. While we grope for a solution, the justice system declines in credibility to produce strange dichotomies. Its Supreme Court and some High Courts enjoy an enviable international reputation for imagination and courage. The rest of the justice system lapses into disrepair.
What are we to make of all this? Is the system just over-burdened? Does the answer lie in pumping in more resources? Or in restyling procedures? This is what successive Governments, Law Commissions or specialist committees say. But while more resources and more courts may change things a bit, there are new challenges, which pose threats that go to the root of governance.
There are very severe indictments that India's justice system is class-based, communal, anti-women, anti-Dalits and the oppressed. Cases of Dalit and tribal oppression are on the rise. Violence against women goes unpunished. The minorities are scared that they will not only not get justice, but will also be brutalised. Beyond equality before the law lies equality of treatment and an equality of expectation.
A multi-cultural secular state needs to view justice in terms of the confidence it inspires. Following the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the crisis of confidence in India's justice system has deepened - all the more so after reviews of the working of the anti-terrorist legislation (TADA and POTA) have shown that these measures were wilfully used against the minorities.
In 2003, we witness remarkable contrasts, which present the `communal' crisis confronting justice. At the end of June 2003, the judgment in the Best Bakery case produced the worst of justice. The judgment is a tour de force of strange insights wholly out of place in a criminal case. The National Human Rights Commission had to take the case to the Supreme Court because the Gujarat Government failed to move on incontrovertible indications that the Muslim witnesses were threatened into submission.
In the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice, V.N. Khare, was forcefully forthright in exposing the rotten state of affairs. Tenaciously getting to the truth, he condemned the Gujarat Government for its inaction asking it to quit if it could not govern fairly. On September 19, 2003, the Chief Justice went further to record the statement of the State's Director-General of Police that the Best Bakery casewitnesses had been "won over" to expose the worst endemic tendencies in which communal injustice in India is enmeshed. What the Supreme Court proceedings have done is to restore confidence that the Indian justice system has the capacity to correct itself in communal cases of a failure of justice.
As if to reinforce the confidence, on September 22, 2003, a trial court in Orissa sentenced Dara Singh to death and 12 persons to life imprisonment for the murder of Graham Staines and his children in 1999. I do not support the death penalty. But the death penalty in this case was consistent with the Supreme Court's principle that it can be imposed in the "rarest of rare" case of extreme depravity. But what astounds is Dara Singh's decision that he will not appeal, and face the gallows to become a "martyr" in the cause of communal killing. He does so on the confident assumption that there are many who regard his cowardly killing as an act of `Hindu' heroism. Behind the face of `secular' justice lurks a frightening monster, which exalts communalism as an act of grace.
The third major recent case is that of the Babri Masjid demolition, in which several BJP leaders were charged by the Rae Bareli court for various offences connected with the destruction of the mosque in 1992. But the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, was let off because of some evidence that he might have tried to restrain the miscreants. But surely this was a matter for trial. Mr. Advani was on the same terrace as the others. Having arrived there after several provocative `rath yatras' (celebratory processions), his segregation into innocence required a probe through a trial. But instead of representing the triumph of secular justice, the case was twisted into political controversy. The Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, treated the destruction of the mosque as a political case concerned with public order offences. Murli Manohar Joshi resigned from the ministerial post but with equivocal party political results. Mr. Joshi's judicial appeal threatened Mr. Advani by claiming similarities with the latter. What should have been an occasion for reinforcing secular justice was converted by the BJP in power and its other supporters into a tamasha (spectacle).
It seems amazing that those who rule India seem to make a virtue of communal atrocity. Surely, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) should appeal Mr. Advani's case to obviate the charge that political pressure has elevated India's Deputy Prime Minister above the law. Even more ironical is Mr. Advani's, Mr. Joshi's and others' plea of innocence of a crime they make political capital of. Surely they should declare that they had nothing to do with the destruction of the Masjid, and that they disapprove of the destruction and support making amends by re-building the mosque. But the BJP White Paper on Ayodhya (1993) gives a truer picture of the hate underlying this wanton act. What do we make of a system of governance in which the top leaders who run India take a silent pride in communal destruction, treat - as Mr. Jaitley does - the 1992 event, which shattered peoples' faith in Indian secularism, as a public order problem and are unable to publicly apologise for this act while they profess their innocence.
Poor management, delays and insufficient resources are not the only things wrong with India's system. There is something more that robs the system of its credibility and legitimacy. There is a declining faith in India's justice system on the part of the minorities and the deprived. When the system succeeds in delivering secular justice, it is mocked at by politicians in positions of power. When the system fails, it shocks to undermine peoples' faith. If India is to stay together, it cannot be a random communal democracy unbounded by the rule of law. Confronted with communal terrorism from within, India's justice system is in danger of losing its secular soul.
ENDS.
New Muslim secular group formed
The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?msid=213431
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[THURSDAY, OCTOBER 02, 2003 10:00:48 PM ]
MUMBAI: Gandhi Jayanti this year will witness the formation of a new national body - Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD).
The members of the new body include educationists, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, journalists, artistes, and women activists from Pune, Kolhapur, Kolkata, Bhopal, Allahabad, Patna and elsewhere in the country.
Among the issues that the MSD will look at will be the growing religious intolerance, the Ayodhya issue, culture policing, the Uniform Civil Code, state subsidy for Haj and population control.
ENDS.
Delhi Newsline October 01, 2003
'84 riot victims put Best foot forward Sreelatha Menon New Delhi, September 30: Encouraged by the National Human Rights Commission's successful intervention in the Best Bakery case which led Supreme Court to give the victims new hope, families of the 1984 Sikh riots victims are planning to take the same route. The over 5000 families in the seven resettlement camps in the Capital are approaching the NHRC with an appeal to speak for them.
The President of the 1984 riot victims camps, Atma Singh, said that nearly two decades after the riots which killed over 3000 people, not a single accused has been brought to book. These camps include the ones at Tilak Vihar, Sangam Park, Raghuvir Nagar, Madipur, Jahangirpuri, Garhi and Rohini Sector 16.
The memorandum to be submitted says the way NHRC dealt with the Best Bakery case has given them hope that minorities can get justice. Hence, they wished NHRC would take up their case now.
It is being pointed out that the Delhi Government never went in appeal or sought review of judgements of lower courts in any higher court when the accused were let off one after another, Singh said. In Delhi as in Gujarat, both the accused and people in high positions who instigated the riots were given state protection, he alleged.
''We have attached a list of hundreds of victims who have been marked untraceable by Delhi Police in courts and whose cases have been closed. We will appeal to the commission to take up this list and reopen their cases to get them justice,'' Singh said.
He said the memorandum pointed out that despite thousands of deaths in Delhi in 1984, neither was a single FIR filed, nor any MLC or post-mortem done.
The memorandum names then Home Minister Narasimha Rao and Lieutenant-Governor T N Gavai for ''not trying to stop the riots'', Atma Singh said.
''We have pinned our hopes on Justice J S Anand and we have also told him that the pensions and jobs promised to the victims' families were not given. We have mentioned that the Ahuja Commission report in 1985 had identified 2773 persons as victims. But the government of Delhi does not recognise this list.
ENDS.
"Promise of India" campaign for Communal Harmony
Promise of India is a coalition of US-based Indian non-profit organizations who have come together to strengthen the democratic, secular, and pluralistic fabric of Indian society. The campaign will be officially launched on this day and information about the various programs to be organized by the coalition will be announced. Representatives from the sponsoring organizations will be present to sign the Promise of India Appeal, an urgent call to the people and the government of India to restore communal harmony.
When: Saturday, October 4th, 2003, 2 PM - 4 PM
Where: India Community Center, 555 Los Coches St., Milpitas, CA www.IndiaCC.org
Who : Sponsored by AID, AIF, ASHA, CAC, ICA, ICC, PrajaNet and TiE. Additional sponsors will join in the coming weeks.
Contact: Raju Rajagopal 510-559-1049 This event is free.
More info at
ENDS.
Posted by: Awaaz / 10/04/2003 04:02:18 PM
http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=925
FULL REPORT at
http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/asia/afghanistan_southasia/reports/A400925_20032003.pdf
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The resurgence of the religious parties in the October 2002 elections portends ill for Pakistan's political, cultural and social stability. For the first time in the country's history, an alliance of six major religious parties – the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) – has won power in two provinces, vowing to Islamise state and society through Taliban-like policies. The MMA based its electoral campaign on Islam and anti-U.S. slogans, targeting President Pervez Musharraf's pro-U.S. policies and pledging the enforcement of Sharia law. It now runs the government in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), bordering on Afghanistan, and shares power in Baluchistan.
The MMA's zeal might encourage the supporters of its component parties to take up arms against U.S. forces in Afghanistan or their Afghan allies. Pakistani military and paramilitary troops on the border should be able to contain such a threat. More significantly, however, the rise of religious parties threatens to undermine civil liberties, freedom of expression, legal reforms and religious tolerance in Pakistan. In particular, the situation of women and minorities may become more difficult in the two provinces under MMA control.
The MMA program runs counter to President Musharraf's pledges of reform. Having taken power in October 1999, Musharraf promised to end religious extremism and promote moderate Islam – a program that would have been a revolution of sorts. His decision to join the international coalition against terrorism after 11 September 2001 did bolster his image as a reformist and secular ruler. But the general has opted to follow the path of his military predecessors, forging alliances of convenience with religious organisations to counter secular political adversaries.
The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, the largest parties in the MMA, have maintained close ties with the military for decades. Musharraf's aversion to the mainstream political parties led by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and the military's declared intent to keep those two former prime ministers out of power presented the MMA with an open political field. As a result, religious parties have gained political clout, and religion is again at the heart of debates on legislation and public policy.
The MMA's political domain is as yet restricted to two out of four provincial governments. It has chosen not to join the ruling pro-military Muslim League – Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q) – at the centre, and has adopted a confrontational stance in the National Assembly. However, the alliance shares power with the PML-Q in Baluchistan. This strategy helps it promote an anti-American agenda while avoiding direct confrontation with the military's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Aware that foreign and defence policy is the military’s preserve, the MMA restricts its opposition to the generals to rhetoric. Its goal, in any case, is not to confront the military but to consolidate its political gains.
By assisting the military's electoral manoeuvres, including formation of suitable governments in the centre and the provinces, the MMA has obtained major concessions, such as the release from jail of party workers and the dropping of several prosecutions. In the NWFP and Baluchistan, Islamisation is now official policy. Initial steps, such as a ban on music in public, attacks on cable television operators, and police action against video shops are signs of what lies ahead as the MMA implements its program.
Though MMA leaders have tried to allay worries that their governments might adopt Taliban-style policies, their actions show preference for strict religious rule. The MMA agenda includes an end to co-education, a first step towards the total segregation of women in public life, and the addition of more Islamic texts to school and college curricula. The MMA plans to screen and register NGOs in the NWFP and Baluchistan. Moral policing by the student wings of its parties in NWFP and Baluchistan educational institutions enjoys official backing. Similar trends are visible elsewhere in public life.
It remains to be seen how much room the MMA will be given to apply its version of Sharia law in the two provinces. The MMA stresses that implementation will remain within constitutional confines. Although the constitution is Islamic, the form and substance of Islamisation is determined by the centre, and federal legislation has primacy. The provinces are dependent on Islamabad's financial assistance. Moreover, Musharraf's constitutional amendments empower him to override parliament.
If history is a guide, however, the MMA could succeed with its Islamisation agenda. Many Islamic provisions are already part of the legal system, enacted by previous military governments. Since the military takeover in 1999, the government has demonstrated neither will nor intent to pursue domestic policies opposed by the mullahs, such as madrasa regulation or changes in discriminatory Islamic laws. Although the MMA sits with the opposition in the National Assembly, it has assured the government of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali that it will not help dislodge Musharraf's political order. In return, the government might just decide to reward the MMA by tolerating Islamisation in the NWFP and Baluchistan.
The mullahs' usefulness for the military goes beyond domestic politics. The perpetual threat of war with India over Kashmir, a conflict coloured in religious hues, also brings the MMA and the military together. The more Musharraf searches for domestic legitimacy, the more he plays up the Indian threat. The mullahs are more than willing to support the military's policies in Kashmir.
The domestic implications of Musharraf's unwillingness to transfer power are far reaching. The President's constitutional and political distortions have put a fragile federation under immense stress. In the absence of checks on the military's political powers, ethnic tensions are rising, particularly in Sindh and Baluchistan where there is strong resentment of the Punjabi-dominated military. There is also anger there at Musharraf's efforts to empower religious parties at the expense of their moderate, secular counterparts with an ethnic or regional base.
While moderate sections of Pakistani society are being marginalised, religious parties and their causes are flourishing. The military follows pro-U.S. policies but the compulsions of domestic legitimacy have resulted in an alliance of expediency with the religious sector. As a result of the military's unwillingness to extricate itself from domestic politics, the religious right, jihad and Islamisation are again acceptable currency in political life, threatening regional peace and fundamental political, economic and social rights of Pakistanis.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Government of Pakistan:
1. Revise the Legal Framework Order 2002 and other amendments made by the Musharraf administration to remove restrictions on fundamental freedoms, including limits on the freedoms of assembly and expression and participation in government.
2. Revoke constitutional amendments that discriminate on the basis of religion and sex.
3. Revise Islamic laws that undermine rights of minorities and women by:
(a) amending the Hudood ordinances, including those on evidence and payment of compensation for murder, to restore the legal rights of women; and
(b) tightening procedures for bringing blasphemy prosecutions.
4. Prevent MMA provincial governments from pursuing policies that violate basic constitutional rights by:
(a) using the constitutional powers of the federal government to override any provincial legislation that restricts women's participation in public life, or denies them education and employment opportunities;
(b) refusing to sanction proposed changes in the educational system or textbooks at the provincial level that are inconsistent with national policy; and
(c) using federal law enforcement agencies to protect NGOs and their personnel.
5. Channel no federal grants and aid money to educational, health and employment projects specifically designed for promoting segregation or other religious causes.
6. Devise and implement legislation to institutionalise an ad hoc ban on jihadi organisations and curb activities aimed at recruitment, fundraising and publication of jihad literature.
7. Implement existing anti-terrorism laws to disarm and disband private militias.
8. Devise new legislation and implement existing anti-terrorism laws to:
(a) counter MMA governments' intentions to relax arms licensing regulations; and
(b) implement federal restrictions on the possession and public display of weapons across the board.
9. Regulate madrasas and mosques so as to end their use for the promotion and propagation of extremist political and militant ideologies.
10. Seek parliamentary action to widen the membership of the Council of Islamic Ideology to include the full range of Muslim opinion, including moderate scholars, lawyers, academics, women's organisations and financial experts.
11. Curtail the mandate and scope of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and substantially limit it to public service issues, including the haj and other pilgrimages.
To the International Community:
12. Monitor and assess, pursuant to the UN Security Council's anti-terrorism resolutions, the Musharraf government's compliance with obligatory domestic reforms to:
(a) curb religious extremism and militancy;
(b) reform the education sector; and
(c) enforce strict anti-terrorism financing laws.
13. Condition aid to Pakistan upon fulfilment of its commitments under international law to protect women and minorities against legal, political and social discrimination.
14. Encourage domestic reforms by:
(a) funding secular educational projects through international financial institutions and bilateral aid agreements;
(b) extending financial support to development NGOs that deliver health, education and social services in the NWFP and Baluchistan; and
(c) providing economic and political support, through UN agencies and bilateral funding, for democratic development programs in the NWFP and Baluchistan.
15. Monitor the cooperation of Pakistani military, paramilitary and intelligence forces in preventing jihadis from moving across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and into Kashmir.
Islamabad/Brussels, 20 March 2003
ENDS.
Back to top of page
About Awaaz
Projects and Campaigns
Latest News
Press and Media Reports
Resources and Links
Contact Awaaz
Supporting Organizations
Frequently Asked Questions
Archives
12/26/1999 - 01/01/2000 05/18/2003 - 05/24/2003 06/01/2003 - 06/07/2003 06/08/2003 - 06/14/2003 06/15/2003 - 06/21/2003 06/22/2003 - 06/28/2003 06/29/2003 - 07/05/2003 07/06/2003 - 07/12/2003 08/10/2003 - 08/16/2003 08/17/2003 - 08/23/2003 08/24/2003 - 08/30/2003 08/31/2003 - 09/06/2003 09/14/2003 - 09/20/2003 09/21/2003 - 09/27/2003 09/28/2003 - 10/04/2003 11/09/2003 - 11/15/2003 11/23/2003 - 11/29/2003 12/07/2003 - 12/13/2003 01/04/2004 - 01/10/2004 02/29/2004 - 03/06/2004 04/04/2004 - 04/10/2004 06/27/2004 - 07/03/2004 07/18/2004 - 07/24/2004 07/25/2004 - 07/31/2004 08/08/2004 - 08/14/2004 08/15/2004 - 08/21/2004 09/05/2004 - 09/11/2004 09/19/2004 - 09/25/2004 09/26/2004 - 10/02/2004 10/17/2004 - 10/23/2004 10/24/2004 - 10/30/2004 11/14/2004 - 11/20/2004 11/21/2004 - 11/27/2004 11/28/2004 - 12/04/2004 12/05/2004 - 12/11/2004 12/12/2004 - 12/18/2004 12/19/2004 - 12/25/2004 01/02/2005 - 01/08/2005 01/09/2005 - 01/15/2005 01/16/2005 - 01/22/2005 01/23/2005 - 01/29/2005 01/30/2005 - 02/05/2005 06/05/2005 - 06/11/2005 06/12/2005 - 06/18/2005 07/03/2005 - 07/09/2005 07/10/2005 - 07/16/2005 07/17/2005 - 07/23/2005 07/24/2005 - 07/30/2005 07/31/2005 - 08/06/2005 08/07/2005 - 08/13/2005 02/05/2006 - 02/11/2006 03/19/2006 - 03/25/2006 04/16/2006 - 04/22/2006 04/23/2006 - 04/29/2006 04/30/2006 - 05/06/2006 05/07/2006 - 05/13/2006 05/14/2006 - 05/20/2006 05/21/2006 - 05/27/2006 05/28/2006 - 06/03/2006
