PM ensured it is still advantage India

PM ensured it is still advantage India

RAW: An Instrument of Indian Imperialism « Pak Alert Press

RAW: An Instrument of Indian Imperialism « Pak Alert Press

Genesis of jihadis by Manjur Ejaz

Genesis of jihadis

When Jesus met Buddha - The Boston Globe

When Jesus met Buddha - The Boston Globe

9 Is Not 11 : outlookindia.com - Arundhati Roy

9 Is Not 11 : outlookindia.com
Magazine| Dec 22, 2008

essay: terror in mumbai

9 Is Not 11

(And November isn't September)

ARUNDHATI ROY

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before. As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the 'Bad Guys' he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on 'terrorist camps' in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11. But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions. It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara—one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts. The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously means something's going very badly wrong in this country. If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre. We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically, one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said 'Hungry, kya?' (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh in West Bengal; in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities. That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is. There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially 'Islamist' terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself. The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolster the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy, and believes that jehad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he has said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy." And, "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir." But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire...we hacked, burned, set on fire...we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it.... I have just one last wish...let me be sentenced to death.... I don't care if I'm hanged...just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs of these people stay.... I will finish them off...let a few more of them die...at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die." And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or Our Nationhood Defined by M.S. Golwalkar 'Guruji', who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening." Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here...a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by." Of course, Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two-and-a-half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps. All these years, Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which many believe is a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Toiba. He continued to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the UN imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure, putting Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and continues to live the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, has recently said, "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, current Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers. And if that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry. So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always. In this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people—Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India—left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992, Hindu mobs exhorted by L.K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the Centre. The US War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance, and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu Nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent, and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba is from Shimla (India) and L.K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan). In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2006 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the Government of India announced that it has 'incontrovertible' evidence that the Lashkar-e-Toiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the 'Indian Mujahideen'. Two Indian nationals—Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Calcutta in West Bengal—have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks. So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot-soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation-state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible. In circumstances like these, air strikes to 'take out' terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not 'take out' the terrorists. And neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.) Afghan revenge: America’s debris, our headache Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jehad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Having wired up these Frankenstein's monsters and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently re-made. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India. If at this point India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of 'non-state actors' with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents. On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at 'ground zero' kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights, we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation. While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality.Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. (The US and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV. The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill—and be killed—mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth. Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the stand-off, the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say 'Nothing can justify terrorism', what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them. Gujarat ’02: The elephant in the room One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself 'Imran Babar'. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the 'terror e-mails' that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?" "We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him. If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in its calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of—and often even the aim of—terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of 'martyrs' irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV.Even as the Mumbai terrorists were being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of their action was magnified a thousand-fold by TV broadcasts. Forgotten man: Former PM V.P. Singh’s death passed without a mention Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minister V.P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of upper-caste Hindus, pass without a mention. We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous 'Why They Hate Us' speech. His analysis of why "religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim", hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from. Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of 'pickings' is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way. Dangerous, stupid television flash cards like the Police are Good, Politicians are Bad/ Chief Executives are Good, Chief Ministers are Bad/ Army is Good, Government is Bad/ India is Good, Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria. Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that the business of terrorism is a hall of mirrors in which victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.) It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S.A.R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Shaukat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence.The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgement, the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. " Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked Indian Parliament were and who they worked for. More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial 'encounter' at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many 'encounter specialists', known and rewarded for having summarily executed several 'terrorists'. There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and L.K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a 'Braveheart' and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was 'suicidal' and calling them 'anti-national'. Of course, there has been no inquiry. Only days after the Batla House event, another story about 'terrorists' surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to the court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2 kg of RDX and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as 'terrorists' who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges. This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher, Sadhvi Pragya; a self-styled godman, Swami Dayanand Pande; and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organisations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". L.K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble-rousing speeches to huge gatherings, in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women. On November 25, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high-profile VHP chief Praveen Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation. While the Sangh parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television channel, has stepped up to the plate.He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job. So according to a man aspiring to be India's next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake 'encounters'. This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being 'encountered' by our encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist. How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colours, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American economy and, who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents (including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror? Homeland security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than a hundred and fifty million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India? Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than two per cent. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want. What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet. The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says 'Justice', the other 'Civil War'. There's no third sign and

Sarfraz Manzoor on the Mumbai terror attacks and partition of India and Pakistan | Comment is free | The Guardian

Sarfraz Manzoor on the Mumbai terror attacks and partition of India and Pakistan | Comment is free | The Guardian

Amil Khan: Lashkar-e-Taiba have borrowed al-Qaida's techniques to set India against Pakistan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Amil Khan: Lashkar-e-Taiba have borrowed al-Qaida's techniques to set India against Pakistan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

MAHATMA GANDHI AND MUMBAI TERROR ATTACK by Md. Yussouff, Retired Prof. IIT Kanpur

MAHATMA GANDHI AND MUMBAI TERROR ATTACK

Mohammed Yussouff, Retired Professor from IIT, Kanpur

The Indian Nation has been traumatized by the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

It is clear by now that these attacks using mercenaries have been organized by people who want war between India and Pakistan. One option for India is to go down that path, attack Pakistan and may be totally destroy it once for all. But what does India gain from it. Revenge? Sure! Peace of mind? Hardly! Will Islam disappear from the face of the earth? No, because Pakistan is not Islam. Will everyone in the world convert to Hindu religion? Perhaps not! After Mahabharata, did Hindus live in peace? No, the Hindu kings were fighting each other. A similar situation exists for Muslims. They are as fragmented as Hindus. Whatever happens to Kashmir, the Muslims will never be united!

A clear analysis of the situation is necessary before taking action. Look at the past, the present and the future. Before looking at the past, let us ask a few simple questions. Can one billion people be defeated by ten terrorists with heinous designs? Let us remember one physically frail man who stood against the mighty British Empire with no weapons in his hand? Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Indian nation, won by the power of his ideas and ideals. But he was defeated by the rise of communalism. At the time of independence and soon afterwards, the Indian nation ignored him and ultimately killed him. The virulent communalism brought his demise. The payback has been coming in various stages and the Mumbai attack of 2008 can also be viewed as just another one of them.

Gandhiji was against communalism and partition of the country. He was against hatred and violence. His ways influenced many great leaders of the world. But Indian politicians soon started to deviate from the path shown by him. He opposed the creation of the monstrous entity called Pakistan which was based on religion. Only a few other countries including Israel are similarly formed and face many contradictions and difficulties due to their inherently absurd foundations. For example, Israel is trying to define who is Jewish?

Pakistan does not know who is a real Muslim? Muslims are fighting and killing Muslims inside Pakistan. Yet the struggle for Kashmir continues and they want Kashmiri Muslims in the mix.

Had Indians accepted Gandiji’s ideas of religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence, a whole lot of problems in the Indian sub-continent could have been avoided. This is not to say that other problems like corruption, poverty, exploitation etc. would have gone away. But two nuclear armed neighbors coming to near war situations is by far the greatest threat to the subcontinent.

If religion is not at the root of this problem, then the only other reason is military occupation and suppression. With Chandrayaan in orbit and all the scientific advances and globalization, India has reached a stage where Gandhian ideas of tolerance and peaceful co-existence can be implemented from a position of strength. If you follow that path, the present situation offers a wonderful opportunity to defeat terrorism and correct the grave mistake of the past.

Let India, Pakistan and perhaps Bangladesh recombine into a single entity with distributed power base like the European Union. In that case, only the Union government will have defense and finance and rest of the states will have a lot of autonomy. The nuclear arms will be controlled by the union government and the Western nations do not have to worry about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Gandhiji’s dream was a multi religious, multiethnic, free and prosperous united India. The present situation gives the possibility of uniting the Indian subcontinent of Gandhiji’s dream.

A lot of work must be done to achieve this dream. First step has to be the mass mobilization for unity. The religious fanatics must be neutralized by proper media blitz and education. Open debates and proper mobilization of the public opinion are essential as starting points of such a “revolution” in the subcontinent. Many people will say that it is impossible. Similar reservations were present during Gandhiji’s time. But in the fast developing world, regimes are changing under public pressure. Once people have a will, it is possible to bring about change. So, why not try it out?

Tehelka - on VP Singh

Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine

Your Money - It May Be Time to Think About Buying a House - NYTimes.com

Your Money - It May Be Time to Think About Buying a House - NYTimes.com

The Hindu : Front Page : Photos of 8 slain terrorists released

The Hindu : Front Page : Photos of 8 slain terrorists released

The Times of India Op Ed - M J. Akbar

Two-nation theory has bred practice of hatred-Special Report-Sunday TOI-Opinion-The Times of India

Making Sense of Mumbai—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

Making Sense of Mumbai—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

The Game Changer - World - The Sydney Morning Herald -smh.com.au

The Game Changer - World - smh.com.au

The Game Changer

December 6, 2008

Pakistani Islamists hope the Mumbai massacre will tame Barack Obama and diminish Indian influence, writes Christopher Kremmer.

Whoever planned the Mumbai massacre - and it was planned, funded and executed by some group in Pakistan - the murders of at least 188 people and paralysis of India's largest city were intended to change geopolitics.

Topping the shortlist of suspects are al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Pakistan Government and intelligence and security services, or rogue elements within those services working with Islamist extremists. But what would anyone in Pakistan stand to gain from a terrorist plot so easily traced to that country? And why has Pakistani culpability met with such a muted response from India and the West?

Pakistan is one of those countries - Israel another - for which a benign foreign policy environment is seen as essential to national survival. The stunted offspring of the Partition of the British Raj, Pakistan is doomed to live in India's shadow.

During the Cold War - in which Pakistan sided unreservedly with the United States, while India played footsie with the Soviets - Islamabad's existential fear of its neighbour was balanced by the confidence that only a friendly White House can give. But since the red menace evaporated and the West became a target of South Asia-based terrorists, Pakistan is less secure. The West's embrace of India as an economic and strategic balance to China has exacerbated Pakistan's insecurity.

The American alliance provided Pakistan with some immunity against India. Islamabad's politically-dominant army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) used or worked closely with a variety of extremists bent on fuelling secessionist violence in parts of India, including Punjab and Kashmir. America even turned a blind eye to Pakistan's covert nuclear program from the 1970s until the early 1990s, when America's victory in Afghanistan led powerful figures in Washington to believe they did not need Pakistan any more, and economic and military aid was cut off.

Fast forward to September 2001 when al-Qaeda and the Taliban attacked the US. Having backed the Taliban in Afghanistan and worked hand in glove with armed Islamists in the 1999 Kargil invasion of Indian-controlled Kashmir, Pakistan was caught hand in cookie jar. Only when General Pervez Musharraf agreed to join the so-called War On Terror did America forgive its sins.

But controllers of Pakistan's security services always regarded that as a mere tactical retreat. Since the time of an earlier military ruler, the late General Zia ul-Haq, the country's ruling elite retained a barely concealed contempt for an American superpower that spent hundreds of billions of dollars buying their friendship. They were confident the West would eventually see the wisdom of subcontracting to Pakistan the messy business of South Asia security. The lavish and misplaced lauding of Musharraf as a hero in the War on Terror illustrated the tendency. But this year, Pakistan's confidence in its ability to set the terms of engagement was badly shaken. American strikes went ahead on al-Qaeda and Taliban forces based in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas despite Islamabad's vociferous protests. Meanwhile, India revived its diplomatic influence in an Afghanistan long regarded by Islamabad as an unofficial province of Pakistan. Adding to hardline alarm has been the vocal adventurism of Pakistan's new president - Asif Ali Zadari, widower of former leader Benazir Bhutto.

He recently pledged to shake up the ISI and uttered the ultimate apostasy by declaring Pakistan had nothing to fear from India and should have warm relations with New Delhi.

The Mumbai attack was designed to wreck rapprochement with India and replace it with military crisis. The same strategy underpinned the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament - an attempt to murder the entire Indian government.

The key suspects for Mumbai all want the US to halt military strikes on Pakistani soil. They want to undermine Western resolve to stay in Afghanistan, thereby facilitating Pakistani suzerainty there. The strike on Mumbai was meticulously planned and expensive, with the foot soldiers getting the sort of specialist training usually restricted to commandos. Above all, it was exquisitely timed to tame two new presidents.

Pakistan's Zardari will find it difficult to pursue his peace and domestic reform agenda in the face of rising tensions with India. And Barack Obama finds his country plunged into another looming crisis in South Asia, one tailor-made to circumscribe his options so that his policy ultimately serves a Pakistan wedded to a chaotic and bloody status quo.

No sooner had India blamed Pakistan than Pakistan threatened to shift to the Indian border military forces fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda - a threat guaranteed to send shivers down the Washington spine.

Panic, of course, is the wrong reaction, as is naivety. Nothing moves in Pakistan without ISI knowledge. The Mumbai massacre could not have been set in train in Pakistan without assistance of the security and intelligence establishment, past or present.

It has taken Pakistan decades to become the sovereign equivalent of a suicide bomber: "Do what we say or we'll blow ourselves up - and take everyone else with us!" Who would call the bluff? Nobody wants to see self-immolation of a country of 170 million people with nuclear weapons.

As always, India will be expected to swallow pain and turn a blind eye to the escape of the back room perpetrators. The more strident New Delhi's reaction, the more it suits the planners of this outrage. But the bitter pill of restraint will be made more palatable for India if it results in closer diplomatic, military and intelligence co-operation aimed at containing the Pakistan problem.

Events like Mumbai are rarely the work of wounded idealists. They are cynical acts of mass murder designed to achieve specific political outcomes. There is method in this madness, but also desperation.

Pakistani extremists - in and out of uniform - want to scare us out of the region and hold hostage to Pakistan indulgence our improving relations with India.

By staying the course, by building a stronger, better targeted international military presence in Afghanistan, by deepening our economic and security ties with India, and by working patiently and methodically to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism in South Asia, we deny the massacre architects their most heartfelt desire, and best serve the security of millions of decent people everywhere, including our own.

Christopher Kremmer, author of four books on modern Asia, is a scholar with the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney.

Devadasis - What are they?

http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/Jharkhand/message/4790
In a village in southern India a child has just been born. A group of women gather round the cradle, wishing the baby a life full of riches, rubies and pearls.

"You're lucky the child is a boy," the women tell the mother. In this society girls are valued far less.

The women are all devadasis, literally slaves of the goddess.

As children their parents gave them to serve Yellama - the goddess of fertility. Her cult is thousands of years old, her followers spread across southern India.

At the temple to Yellama in Saundatti women dance and praise the goddess.

The practice of dedicating young girls as devadasis has been outlawed for over 50 years, but still it happens.

Anti-slavery campaigners estimate that there are at least 25,000 devadasis in the state of Karnataka alone.

Sexual slavery

"Being devadasis means we are slaves of the goddess. We have to visit this temple. We wear necklaces of pearls to show we are bound to Yellama. We give blessings and perform her rituals," says Imla, a devadasi in her 40s who is swathed in a pink and yellow sari.

When girls dedicated to Yellama reach puberty they are forced to sacrifice their virginity to an older man. What follows is a life of sexual slavery, they become sanctified prostitutes.

The money devadasis earn goes straight to their parents who often act as pimps for their daughters.

Goddess Yellama's cult is thousands of years old

"My parents didn't have any sons, so there was nobody to earn the family a living," says Imla.

"Instead they turned me into a whore. I don't even remember when I started because I was so young. My parents thought at least they'd get some money from me."

Once girls are dedicated the course of their lives is decided. They can never marry, never have a family life.

In a town nearby we found Shoba who is just 20 and has been a devadasi prostitute for seven years.

Shoba showed me her brothel, a single room she shares with her parents.

She comes from a long line of devadasis. Her grandmother was one, her sister is too.

Shoba remembers how, when she was 13 her parents dressed her as if for marriage. They auctioned her virginity to the highest bidder.

Tough life

"When the first man arrived I thought he was going to marry me," Shoba recalls, "but he slept with me and then never came back. I realised this was now my trade. Every night I was sold to whoever paid the most."

Life here on the dry, harsh Deccan plateau has always been tough, especially for girls, who are often seen as a burden for poor families, expensive to marry off.

Recent years have been marked by droughts and crop failures.

Campaigners say there are 25,000 devadasis in Karnataka state alone

The goddess of fertility is seen as a powerful force. Many believe that giving girls to Yellama will bring good fortune on a family.

It also means they don't have to save for a dowry, and the daughter becomes a bread-winner.

We found Shoba's mother Satyavati tending to her field of sunflowers. Sacrificing their daughter's life has enriched Shoba's parents.

"Someone had to continue the tradition. It had to be my daughters," she shrugs.

"Because Shoba earns so much money she has been able to build us a house, and she bought these fields. So what's the big deal?"

Secret ceremonies

Despite campaigns by India's national and state governments, the system of devadasis endures.

The number of young girls being dedicated is declining. But now the ceremonies happen in secret, so it is impossible to know exact numbers.

I asked Shoba why she doesn't just give up being a devadasi, and leave it behind?

"I can't get out of the system, even if I say I'm not a devadasi any more nobody will come forward to marry me," she says.

"I keep telling other people not to make their daughters devadasis, you are abused, it's a horrible life."

So it's a life that Shoba will never escape from. Women already dedicated cannot be freed.

The power of belief is still so strong here that she will always be a devadasi, enslaved.

http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/Jharkhand/message/4792 A note by K. Santhaa Reddy
Member, National Commission for Women, NEW DELHI, in response.

We Indians are very contradictory people

We Indians are very contradictory people

'Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price' by M. J. Akbar

'Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price'

YouTube - President Ahmadinejad meeting with Jewish leaders Sep 2007 (- KOLA KULI ?)

YouTube - President Ahmadinejad meeting with Jewish leaders Sep 2007

'There were more than just 10 members'

'There were more than just 10 members'

Hope Amidst Ruins : outlookindia.com Smruti Koppikar

Hope Amidst Ruins : outlookindia.com

Hope Amidst Ruins

In the rubble of the hundreds of lives lost and maimed, of the iconic buildings burnt, of the incompetence of the processes and institutions we trusted, however cynically, there's hope. And that's the cliché of Nov 2008.

Smruti Koppikar

| e-mail | one page format | feedback: send - read |

From my diary.
Nov 29, 2008:

I did not lose any family or friends in the horrific attacks, yet I have lost.

I feel violated, hurt and very angry.

But I am not alone.

Who amongst us does not feel violated and hurt and angry?

Who amongst us has been able to douse our rage of the last few days?

Who amongst us can forget the 60-hour-long attack, the flames, the bodies, the grief of relatives and friends?

Who amongst us has not come out of our de-sensitised shell, transfixed by the sheer enormity of the tragedy and the utter incompetence of people we trusted our lives with?

Who amongst us has not shed a tear?

Who amongst us today believes that we will return home in one piece every night after work or after dinner?

Who amongst us is not praying, or at least hoping, that there will be a difference?

And, who amongst us is not willing to go out and do something, anything, that will make that difference possible?

There is so much outrage, so much anger, so much disgust amongst people like you and me, I am surprised there haven't been reactive incidents.

On Friday night, 48 hours to the attack and still counting, I was prepared to hear that someone like us had lobbed a home-made grenade at the chief minister's bungalow, or that of some politician who took an oath of office, on the Constitution of India, to protect her people.

Or that someone who professes to be a Hindu, under the garb of being an ultra-nationalist Indian, had gone hunting for his Muslim neighbour whom he equated with Pakistan

Or that there was a growing clamour for an all-out war with Pakistan.

Or that outrage took demonic forms and pitted Indian against Indian.

That none of this has transpired, so far, means that this time we behaved with incredible maturity at a time of great distress.

It means that we see the possibility of directing their anger and passion into something constructive.

There is now no doubt that the glorious and celebrated spirit of Mumbai, an inexplicable mix of commerce and attitude, was not in its soporific dance on Day 1 after an attack, as it has been on every single occasion in the past.

March 1993, Dec 2002, Jan 2003, August 2003, July 2005, July 2006.

And several instances of violence, or the threats of violence, in between.

The spirit of Mumbai was always a cliché that those outside Mumbai chose to describe the no-nonsense attitude and the demands of a commercial system.

Mumbaikars simply put their heads down, subjugated their fears to their roles as cogs in the commerce wheel, and resumed the rhythm of life.

Not because we wanted to, but because we had to, because that was the only way we knew.

No one asked us if we wanted to retreat and nurse our wounds. No one asked how we could be so resilient, or even if we wanted to be resilient.

The resilience, that spirit, dissipated sometime in those 60 hours.

Mumbaikars chose to retreat.

It's a welcome change because people elsewhere will take note, and cease to pretend that nothing major happened.

As an Indian, as a shaken Mumbaikar, as a trying-to-be-dispassionate journalist, I am hoping that constructive change, or changes, will gradually begin to take shape over the next few weeks and months.

It's important that we do not stop being angry or hurt. You or me or anyone else.

And, it's important that we do not dissipate these emotions by fulminating in our drawing rooms and online chat rooms.

Sign all the petitions for peace, light all the candles possible, march in all the demonstrations that will be, hold up placards and banners, but safe-keep the emotions.

These are our strengths now, these are the driving forces, these are the tools to effect the changes we wish to see.

In the rubble of the hundreds of lives lost and maimed, of the iconic buildings burnt, of the incompetence of the processes and institutions we trusted, however cynically, there's hope.

And that's the cliché of Nov 2008. Hope amidst ruins

My hope is that the anger and the hurt will be channelised as they ought to be.

To bring individual losses on a collective platform and demand fundamental changes in the way we are governed.

My confidence, despite everything loaded against it, is that the Idea of India -- the idea of Mumbai -- has taken a physical blow but will not disintegrate or change to suit the designs that our friends or enemies may have.

I remember many lines from many pages but one sticks in the head.

"When you're running down my country, man, you're walking on the fighting side of me"

Friends say fightback is a negative term, but it need not be.

This is indeed a fightback, but it has to be a peaceful, passionate, consistent and constructive one.

Because Mumbai matters.

Because India matters.

MUMBAI REKINDLES DEBATE ABOUT MUSLIMS, THEIR BEARD AND SO ON by Jawed Naqvi

Dawn
December 1, 2008

MUMBAI REKINDLES DEBATE ABOUT MUSLIMS, THEIR BEARD AND SO ON

By Jawed Naqvi

WHAT else could one do to cope with relentless grief? So I joined an impromptu candlelight vigil held by a dozen friends at India Gate, where we paid our silent tribute to the fallen brave of Mumbai. Scores of men, women and children were visiting there anyway, eating ice creams or buying dinky toys. They were ordinary citizens having a holiday due to the Delhi assembly elections. Some of them also joined us in lighting candles.

There was no speech, no slogan, just a silent tribute. I grabbed the balloons from a boy vending them and gave him a candle to light. He hesitated, not believing that he was being urged to join the nation’s grief. Later he said thank you. I am not sure if it was relief at being returned the balloons or for being given a candle to light along with a class of people for many of whom he was no more than a pest. Two other boys in tattered sweaters were walking around the colonial war memorial selling hot coffee. I gave them candles too as I looked after their steaming kettles.

I handed out candles to a group of evidently upper class women. A friend, a woman journalist who doesn’t normally have patience with communal gossip, overheard their conversation. She whispered to me that the women were suspicious of me. She thought it had something to do with my beard and the Afghan cap I wear on cold evenings. Only when I introduced myself and declared that India needed a dictator did they look relaxed. I said Narendra Modi was my hero, even though he sports a different kind of beard. This was a ploy that works when there’s no scope for serious discussion. The women said the country needed Modi as prime minister. I endorsed the view so that they could sleep peacefully that night. We parted on this cordial note.

On the way back, my friend and I discussed how beards had become particularly suspect since the advent of Osama bin Laden. And here, the Mumbai terrorists who themselves were probably clean-shaven pub-crawling college kids, had deepened mistrust that was not just rooted in facial hair. They had succeeded in their mission to drive a deeper wedge among Indians as evident at India Gate.

It didn’t seem to matter to the women that the Jewish rabbi who was killed in Mumbai with his wife also sported a beard. It was irrelevant that Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the revered icon of the RSS wore a mullah-like beard as did the troika of Marx, Engels and Lenin. If anything Hitler and Stalin were always neatly shaved. But that’s not the point. Today in India it has become difficult to say exactly where and how prejudices are given shape such as the kind the women exuded.

The next day, on Sunday, I attended Sabina Sehgal Saikai’s simple funeral at an electric crematorium near the Nizamuddin Aulia’s shrine. She was charred when they found her in the bombed out room at the Taj Mahal Hotel from where one of her last messages from her mobile phone, as she hid under the bed, said: “They have entered my bathroom.” Why the terrorists bombed her room is not known. But it is fair to surmise that reckless TV journalists gave her location to them with the TRP-linked live coverage. Sabina was a journalist at Times of India and we shared a common interest in Indian classical music. She learnt singing from an Ustaad of the Dagar family. The funeral brought many of her friends together. They ranged from the left to the right of the political spectrum. But she was a singularly liberal intellectual who joined causes such as the defence of artist M.F. Husain against religious fanatics.

Given the range of her friends and the grief Sabina left them with, the funeral became a platform to exchange the dominant theme of the occasion: What was to be done? Film actress Nandita Das was among the mourners that broke into a dozen groups or more, each more worried than the other about what was happening to India. Nandita has just made a film about the social isolation of Muslims in Gujarat. She told me some of her close friends had wondered why she was sympathetic to Muslims, and one of them even asked if she had a Muslim boyfriend. What I know is that she has a Gujarati mother.

Let me share a bit of an email Nandita sent to her friends the day before the funeral. It said: “It hadn’t hit me hard enough till Thursday morning…I have to say, it had very little effect on me. My predictable response was, not again...more people will die, more fear, more prejudice and more hatred. But at some level the response was instant and cerebral. But this morning when I got up things felt different. Got a message from an unknown no: “See what your friends have done.” Strangely a close friend of mine got a similar message last night, but from an acquaintance. Just because Firaaq, my film, deals with how Muslims ‘also’ get affected by violence, the terrorists are supposed to be my friends!

“Today a common young Muslim man around town is probably the most vulnerable. I got many messages from my Muslim friends who feel the need to condemn it more than anyone else, who feel the need to prove their national allegiance in every possible way. They are begging to be not clubbed with the terrorists, a fear not unfounded. Then of course there were tons of messages from well-wishers across the world who asked about me and my loved ones’ safety. I too did the same. And strangely that was when tears started rolling down my cheek, almost involuntarily. Guess the thought that if our loved ones were fine, it’s all ok, seemed like a bizarre way to feel. When will our souls ache when anyone is hurt, even those that we have never seen and will never see? The more I wrote back in sms’s and emails that I was ok, the more miserable I was feeling.”

Nandita’s torment may not be unrelated to the way our democracy has evolved. Here you are an unprecedented terror attack by any global standards, which begins with the elections in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and ends with polls in Congress-ruled Delhi. The outcome will not be known till next week. The BJP doesn’t need Muslim votes but it doesn’t want the Congress to benefit from this indifference either. So it mounts pressure on the Congress, accusing it of being soft on terror (forgetting that it was the BJP government that had freed the man who went on to kill Daniel Pearl).

A newspaper declared on Sunday that the government had been finally jolted from its sleep. How did the newspaper know? The evidence was there for all to see, it said. The government had put back on the table the hanging of Afzal Guru, the Kashmiri convict, sentenced to die for plotting to blow up the 2001 parliament, it says. Will that go an inch in curbing terrorism? The killers of Mumbai seemed quite prepared to die. Guru himself wants to be hanged. So what’s the logic in hastening his death ahead of others who have been languishing on the death row for much longer than him? Some years ago they had hanged Maqbool Butt who became a Kashmiri hero. You can’t have vendetta or prejudice for state policy. It’s a mercy that the women at India Gate are not running the government. Or aren’t they?

INDIA/PAKISTAN: Pleas For Sanity as Sabres Rattle Over Mumbai Mayhem by Beena Sarwar

INDIA/PAKISTAN: Pleas For Sanity as Sabres Rattle Over Mumbai Mayhem

Inter Press Service,
December 1, 2008

INDIA/PAKISTAN: PLEAS FOR SANITY AS SABRES RATTLE OVER MUMBAI MAYHEM

by Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Dec 1 (IPS) - The pattern is all too familiar. Every time India and Pakistan head towards dialogue and detente, something explosive happens that pushes peace to the backburner and drags them back to the familiar old tense relationship, worsened by sabre-rattling war cries from both sides.

The relationship between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours has been marked by tentative ups and plunging downs, particularly over the past decade. This decade is also marked by increasingly vocal voices for peace on both sides of the border who openly criticise their countries’ political and security establishments.

The fallout from the Mumbai mayhem is no different, if all the more ominous for having taken place in the midst of the global ‘war on terror’ with its ‘us versus them’ rhetoric that has contributed to escalated violence around the world and pushed fence-sitters onto one or other side.

On Wednesday a ten-man squad of Islamist warriors armed with assault rifles and hand grenades landed in the port city Mumbai and, after going on shooting spree, seized control of two of its finest luxury hotels and a Jewish centre. By the time commandos neutralised the attackers and lifted the sieges Friday, 200 people lay dead —including 22 foreign hostages.

Pakistan and India are part of the Indian sub-continent. They share a landmass, mountain ranges, rivers and seas, ancient cultures, history, languages and religions. Yet they have fought three wars since gaining independence from the British in 1947, after the bloody partition of the sub-continent into two countries — largely Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan.

The fourth major conflict between the two countries was the Kargil conflict of 1999 that the political leadership on both sides referred to as a ‘war-like situation’. The nuclear threat that underlined this situation drew the world’s attention to India-Pakistan relations, and the festering issue of the disputed state of Kashmir, as never before.

A year earlier, India and Pakistan’s nuclear tests of May 1998 had plunged the region into an unprecedented state of tension. The governments celebrated their nuclear capability, feeding rivalry, jingoism and nationalism on both sides that the media played up. There was far less coverage of those who condemned the tests and the governments’ encouragement of reactionary forces that equated religion with nationhood.

Those who protested were swimming against the tide, labelled as traitors and anti-nationals, and ‘agents’ of the other country, like Islamabad-based physicist A.H. Nayyar who has been active in the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy since the organisation was launched in 1995.

As Nayyar and pro-peace activists addressed a press conference condemning the nuclearisation of the region, charged-up young men who supported Pakistan’s nuclear tests physically attacked them with chairs.

Now, expressing his shock at the "mindless, horrible event" in Mumbai, he told IPS: "There are people in both countries who don’t like efforts towards rapprochement. They take the first opportunity to start blowing the bugles of war and instigate hostility."

The nuclear tests were followed by the historic Lahore Declaration of Feb. 1999, when Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif invited his Indian counterpart A. B. Vajpayee to Lahore.

Two months later, the Kargil conflict dashed all hopes for rapprochement as it transpired that while the governments talked peace, infiltrators from Pakistan were busy grabbing positions in Kargil on the Indian-administered side of the disputed state of Kashmir.

Sharif denied knowledge of the operation, but his army chief Pervez Musharraf insisted that Sharif had been briefed. It took the intervention of then U.S. president Bill Clinton to de-escalate the tension and comple the Pakistani army into making the infiltrators withdraw by July 1999, pulling the countries back from the brink of a nuclear war.

In October, Musharraf ousted Sharif in a military coup. The present composite dialogue process began in 2004 during the Musharraf regime, but India is now dealing with a democratically elected government for the first time in a decade, note observers. They also point out that it is for the first time that a Pakistani government appears to be genuinely attempting to undo the damage done by past policies.

These policies, linked to Washington’s need to pull down the former Soviet Union and drive the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, nurtured religious extremism and armed militancy. Later, these armed, indoctrinated forces, supported by the Pakistani establishment, fuelled the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir and led to the worst sectarian violence in Pakistan.

The third phase came after ‘9/11’ when Pakistan officially rejected these ‘Islamic warriors’.

As the Pakistan government now tries to formulate new security paradigms while also combating the terror menace at home, it needs support, say observers. "For the first time, it feels like we are at war," says a Karachi-based analyst asking not to be named. "Under Musharraf, it was a game to show the Americans that we are taking action but actually continuing to nurture some militant elements against India."

"With the threat of global communism gone, and the need for Middle East energy primary, America suddenly recognises India as an ally against Islamism, and Pakistan becomes a buffer to be squeezed relentlessly," commented Vithal Rajan in Hyderabad, India who works with several civil society organizations. "The Indian government in relief at winning American friendship has fallen in with this ploy, further distancing itself from the fledgling democracy of Pakistan, and leaving no real solution in sight."

Mumbai was still burning when Rajan wrote to civil society activists in Pakistan and India on Nov. 28 urging them not to "just be reactive like the popular press" but take a more thoughtful view of the situation.

Angry condemnations "lead us nowhere; political demands (may) make vote-catching politicians rethink strategies, but these might remain ineffectual. (We) should create space… to think things out in the long term…

"...[Lal Krishna] Advani has called this attack in Mumbai by a few terrorists as ‘a war.’ This is dangerous stuff and nonsense. A war is fought between sovereign countries, not between the police and criminals. It is in India’s interest and in Pakistan’s interest to have stable, progressive governments."

Advani, who is opposition leader in Indian parliament and represents the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has repeatedly accused the ruling Congress party, which professes to be secular, of allowing India to turn into a ‘soft state’ in the face of a series of deadly bombings in Indian cities, this year, that have been attributed to Islamist groups.

Pakistan’s new civilian government has, however, been making attempts to step out of the familiar well-worn grooves, note observers. President Asif Ali Zardari, for example, has signalled major policy shifts by terming the militants in Kashmir as "terrorists", stating that India is not Pakistan’s enemy, and then declaring that Pakistan had adopted a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons.

Participating via satellite link in the prestigious ‘Leadership Summit’ conducted by India’s prestigious ‘Hindustan Times’ newspaper, on Nov. 22, four days before the attack on Mumbai, Zardari quoted his late wife Benazir Bhutto to say that there is a ‘’little bit of India in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistan in every Indian’’. Bhutto was assassinated by suicide bombers, last year, while on election campaign.

The religious right in Pakistan — and its supporters within the establishment — is clearly unhappy at Zardari’s peace overtures towards India. Militants involved in fighting the state on Pakistan’s north-west border have announced a stepping up of efforts to assassinate Pakistan’s political leadership.

Pakistan and India’s fights against extremism "will founder if fought alone," noted the young Britain-based Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid in a recent op-ed in the Guardian, London, warning that India’s rush to implicate Pakistan is a "dangerous mistake". "The impulse to implicate Pakistan is of course understandable: the past is replete with examples of Pakistani and Indian intelligence agencies working to destabilise the historical enemy across the border."

Many analysts believe it is too soon to pin the blame on anyone. "To take on the government of a country of 1.2 billion just like that is unbelievably stupid," says Nayyar in Islamabad, referring to the handful of youngsters who held Mumbai hostage for three days. "If it is the work of a fringe group then it is very alarming that the states are getting worked up to this extent.

"But if the perpetrators were part of an organised group, then it is also very alarming. We need to sit down and do our homework all over again and see how such groups can be contained, or we will all perish."

Beyond India and Pakistan, the global activist group Avaaz.org is launching a message calling for unity following the attacks in Mumbai, to be published in newspapers across India and Pakistan and delivered to political leaders within one week.

"The message is that these tactics have failed and we are more united than ever. And we are determined to work together to stop violent extremism, and call on our political and religious leaders to so the same. If these attacks cause us to turn on each other in hatred and conflict, the terrorists will have won."

Telegraph: Why there is no oust-outsiders movement in Calcutta

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081123/jsp/calcutta/story_10148584.jsp

Bongs and others

Why there is no oust-outsiders movement in Calcutta

When Raj Thackeray thunders “Marathi manasa jaga ho (Wake up Marathis)”, Mumbai burns and butchers. And India shakes. When Aamra Bangali called “Bangali jago”, it was greeted with the riposte: “Kancha ghum bhangaiben na” (Do not disturb, our sleep is still light)”. Or, perhaps more tellingly, “Halum” (the tiger’s roar), from the cheeky Bengali who thought too much fuss was being made of waking up. Calcutta and Mumbai share the feature of hosting a large number of migrants, but the eastern metropolis has never been riven in half by a movement like what Thackeray senior and junior have unleashed on the western tip. “If someone tries to create this kind of trouble here, the people will drive him out of the city and throw him into the Bay of Bengal,” says Barry O’Brien, quizmaster and MLA, with a laugh. It’s not just the high migrant population that Calcutta shares with Mumbai. Like the Marathi, the Bengali has no place at the high table of business. The money in Calcutta is in the hands of Marwaris and Gujaratis — and has been so traditionally. Unlike Mumbai, however, Calcutta is very much an economically depressed city where opportunities are few and the competition that much harder. That should be an additional ground for a movement like Amra Bangali to strike roots in. Or for politicians of other parties to water, just as the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s outfit do in Mumbai by treating Raj with kid gloves for fear of losing Marathi votes. Why is it then that Calcutta, with possibly more reasons for turning inward and intolerant, and Bengal have not produced a Bal or Raj Thackeray clone? “Calcutta has a lot of practice in living with people from various communities. It was the capital of British India and was always looked upon as the gateway to the East. Historically, it has attracted people from various backgrounds in search of a living. And the situation hasn’t changed in the 20th century,” says Abhijit Gupta, who teaches English at Jadavpur University. If Calcutta is seen as the gateway to the East, Mumbai is the Gateway to India. Mumbai’s cosmopolitanism is perhaps greater than any other Indian city’s — and it has a history longer than any other’s. More people have, and do so every day, set out for Mumbai in search of a living than they do for Calcutta. But Calcutta has its benefits. “The city is so open. No one ever called us Bhaiya even when we arrived here. This city has made me what I am today,” says stage actress and director Usha Ganguli. True. But Bengalis still call Marwaris Meros and Maarus, Oriyas Ures and BiharisKhottas. And all the people of the world outside Bengal “non-Bengalis”. Us and the rest. The rest are funny Does the key to Calcutta’s tolerance reside in this bubble of superiority? Some argue that there is no ill will in this posturing. “We may call a Marwari a Mero, but it’s done in jest,” says writer Nabarun Bhattacharya. Many have faith in the nature of Bengali culture. “Bangaliana hasn’t developed by excluding other cultures. Our conception of the other is perhaps not that strong. It cannot be turned into hatred. Even as we make fun of a Khotta or an Ure, it looks more like an instance of humour based on a deep-seated sense of difference. Using this as humour and using it as a basis for antagonism are two completely different things,” says sociologist Prasanta Roy. The argument is that it’s difficult to feel malice towards someone who’s the butt of your jokes. They’re inferior and, therefore, not fit to be the object of your anger or frustration. Does it explain the surprise so-called outsiders express when confronted with the question: do you feel threatened in Calcutta? “I have heard people from outside complain of the traffic and other things, but never of being made to feel like an outsider. The city grows on you,” says Jimmy Tangree, a radio professional. It’s the city of preference for that very vulnerable community: Kashmiris, who feel unsafe in almost all of India outside their beautiful valley. Abid, who’s been in Calcutta for 15 years, has a shop on Free School Street where he sells Kashmiri shawls. “I can’t speak Bengali, but I can understand it very well. I have a business in Delhi too, but I prefer Calcutta. It’s not easy for Kashmiris to live in any part of the country. But Calcutta is so nice — my parents are also at ease when I’m here,” he says. When a Kashmiri sells Kashmiri shawls in Calcutta, he’s not usurping a Bengali’s position and denying him of a livelihood opportunity. In other words, he has a competitive advantage that is difficult for a Bengali to achieve. Isn’t it expected of Sudam Pyne, a driver in a private firm, to be resentful of his Bihari and UP-ite fellow workers who may be occupying a position his brother or cousin could take? Silent disdain “Why would I resent them? These people have come so far from their homes and work so hard,” says Pyne. Does that mean that the Bengali is completely tolerant? Of course not. Filmmaker and artist Devashish Makhija, whose family came to Calcutta from Pakistan and who is more than often not mistaken for a Bengali whose correctly spelt surname should be Mukherjee, remembers the silent disdain the Bengalis would direct at the Marwari boys at school. “They would form separate groups for football and I would shuttle between the two groups.” The cultural divide was there to be exploited to suit political motives but was not. “One reason the Aamra Bangali movement did not find acceptance was the presence of well-established political parties. The Communist movement was there since the 20s and many of the founding fathers of the Indian National Congress were Bengali. Thus they were firmly rooted and offered a secure, viable political option. Aamra Bangali’s level of small (narrow-minded) politics just did not have any political space to occupy,” says Roy. In Calcutta and its outskirts, it was often the migrant Bihari jute mill worker who became a Communist convert earlier than the Bengali babu. The so-called urban underclass — that is Bal and Raj Thackeray’s Marathi army in Mumbai — was not only not always Bengali but had been integrated into mainline politics, irrespective of cultural/language differences. The Congress, though its influence among the working class was undermined by the Communists fairly early in Bengal, has never behaved like a party of Bengalis. Both the main parties, and later Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress, have desisted from taking the path of wounded regionalism. When they did — during much of Jyoti Basu’s time in power — it was more a cry of economic discrimination aimed at Delhi rather than an attack on the migrant population in Bengal. “The fact that there is a socialist party in power has helped,” says interior designer Ajay Issar. “Raj Thackeray’s politics wouldn’t survive in Bengal, where inclusive politics involving migrants is a better strategy, as the CPM has proved time and again by using the refugee community from Bangladesh. Vote banks in Bengal are formed along the lines of poverty,” he adds. Even along the lines of affluence there were never any cracks. Although a majority of the business is owned by “non-Bengalis”, there has never been any organised political move to turn this into an “oust-so-and-so” movement. If businessmen earlier backed the Congress, now they have split loyalties. The Bengali may feel jealous of the moneyed Marwari and the gilded Gujarati — and may even be as communal as anyone else — but at a subterranean level, he hasn’t been able to find a political mouthpiece. Pankaj Parekh, a Gujarati jeweller who was born and brought up in Calcutta, says: “It (businesses) offers good job openings to the Bengalis and the Bengalis realise and accept that.” Not being “money-minded”, which used to be the equivalent of “business-minded”, was — but no longer is — considered a mark of the Bengali’s “cultured, intellectual” self. Roy, the sociologist, argues: “The son-of-the-soil movement finds acceptance in Maharashtra because it is manipulating the sentiments of the working class. This is the class that is economically vulnerable, facing what it perceives as a tangible threat and is thus easily motivated. Bengalis are not that easy to motivate.” He should probably have added that the urban Bengali, who doesn’t aspire to working-class status anyway; is hard to motivate along parochial lines. The CPM or Mamata has never found motivation a problem. But both have brought people out in the streets for political reasons, however disruptive. Which is why not only did the Aamra Bangali effort fail but even celebrity author Sunil Ganguly’s suggestion to write billboards and signs in Bengali found little support, unlike in such “cosmopolitan” cities as Bangalore, not to speak of Hyderabad. So if you don’t have Raj Thackeray here, thank Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee. Nanos may come and go, but “non-Bengali” Ratan Tata is welcome to set up residence here if Raj Thackeray makes things too hot for him in Mumbai. And this time, there won’t be any disputes, we can assure him. Let’s say halum to that, in greeting.

POULOMI BANERJEE AND MALINI BANERJEE