India ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: L'Inde

C.R .Shridhar

The Ruling elite of our nation is in the grip of delusions of grandeur. The GDP growth rate of 8% is trotted out as a sign that India is on the threshold of becoming an economic superpower. A bright future awaits India with its revitalized economic policy of liberalization, privatization and an open door policy of attracting foreign capital. A new animal energy is infusing corporate India, which is headed for gigantic growth propelled by innovation and its ability to create anything from nanoparticles to giant rockets. It appears that India's tryst with destiny is unstoppable.

To the less gullible, the picture appears less rosy as India is in the throes of a shocking agrarian crisis fuelled by falling returns from agriculture coupled with debt and crop failure. More disturbing is the violence that the State inflicts on its citizens through encounter killings, police torture and custodial deaths.

Though the Left party has questioned the gains of the new economic policy formulated by the UPA government, there appears to be very little concern about gross human rights violations, which occur throughout the country. While there have been impassioned debates for the Washington consensus favouring MNC's in the media, there has been at best a token concern for the marginalized poor facing police brutality on a day to day basis. There is deafening silence in our media about the fact that though India has signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), there has been no ratification on the pretext that existing laws have adequate provisions to prevent torture, in addition to constitutional safeguards.

Respect for human rights is the sine qua non of any civilized society and the disrespect for human rights is inimical to civil liberties granted to its citizens by the state. By this standard, the Indian State lamentably fails and is a cause for concern for those who value civil liberties. The prevalence of torture and other human rights violations occurs both in communist and non-communist states in India. Both the states of West Bengal and Kerala have witnessed police brutality even with the Left parties in power.

The Amnesty International in its report dated 10-08-2001 about torture in West Bengal observed, "Police are being urged to use whatever means necessary to deal with crime and are often allowed to use torture as a substitute for investigations, while action is rarely taken against the perpetrators. This system of policing is having little if any impact on crime." CPI (M) leader Benoy Konar, defending police brutality once said, "It must be viewed whether police is carrying out torture with a correct aim or an incorrect aim...In a class divided society, the police has the duty of carrying out repression.... You [journalists] have the pen in your hands, the police has the stick." Hence, it would be a mistake to view human rights abuse from an ideological perspective.

The wide prevalence of encounter deaths or extra-judicial killings at the hands of the police has been documented by human rights organizations and remains a part of our dark history in post independent India. A study conducted by the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network noted that encounter killings were not isolated incidents but occurred throughout India. They are part of a "deliberate and conscious state administrative practice" for which successive Indian governments must bear responsibility. Indeed, successive Indian governments have adopted a de facto policy sanctioning extra-judicial killings by members of the police forces, army and security personnel.

The most horrific examples include the operations against Naxalite movements in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and the operations against Punjab extremists. Tamil Nadu and Kerala committed the excesses of encounter killing during the days of Emergency. The Vimadlal Commission took the lid off so-called encounters in Andhra Pradesh during the mid-1970s. Uttar Pradesh is noted for it's encounter deaths and this has assumed alarming proportions in recent times. The paramilitary operations in Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur and Assam cause grave concern as human rights activists report wide spread instances of encounter killings, rape and torture of militant suspects.

The complicity of State and Central governments in encounter killings could be gleaned by the fact that they do not vigorously conduct prosecution of the guilty nor is the investigation thorough to bring the guilty to book. The National Human Rights Commission has not proved very effective in checking encounter killings, as it's recommendations are not implemented by the State and Central governments. The guidelines issued by the NHRC in matters regarding encounter killings are rarely followed. The long delays in courts in prosecuting the guilty police personnel creates a climate of impunity for such crimes to flourish. The governments also reward policemen or paramilitary personnel, which actually encourage encounter killing. The compensation paid to the surviving members of the victims murdered by the police personnel remains a pittance.

The use of torture and third degree methods against suspects in police lockups remains standard operating procedure in post-Independence India. Human Rights organizations note that torture is used against secessionist groups, against suspects belonging to the poorer sections of our society for extracting confessions and bribes and also used as extra-legal punishment (teach you a lesson).

In areas such as Jammu & Kashmir, there exist a number of detention cells where militant suspects are beaten and electric torture is meted out as routine punishment and to extract confessions or information. The methods of torture vary. For instance, in Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab (particularly in areas where the Punjab police or Punjab paramilitary units operate) dislocation of ball and socket of the suspect appears to be the preferred mode of torture. Sometimes the choice is more eclectic with a judicious combination of aeroplane treatment (tying the hands of the suspect behind his back and suspending him over a beam, leading to shoulder dislocation), electric torture with cattle prod and roller treatment (crushing the muscles of the suspect with a wooden log being rolled on his leg). Of course, beating of suspects with belts and lathis is standard fare in most police lockups. Human Rights groups have recorded cases involving rape and sexual humiliation of woman suspects.

While the reported cases of custodial deaths are increasing in India, statistics are difficult to come by, as there is government apathy to transparency. However, on 12th May 2006, The Indian Evidence (Amendment) Bill, 2006 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha with a view to curb custodial deaths. The amendment provides the presumption that when a suspect dies in police custody it is presumed that the police have caused the death and the onus of proof rests on the policemen to prove their innocence. While the amendment is certainly a welcome change in official attitude towards custodial deaths, it remains to be seen whether it would be effectively implemented in the courts.

Human Rights activists have also warned against Anti-terrorism and security laws in India as facilitating human right abuse by primarily targeting lower castes and minority communities. The security laws abuse specially targeted groups by prolonging detention without trial and by inflicting torture, which is responsible for custodial deaths. On September 25, 2006, the Committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association released a report, Anti-Terrorism and Security Laws in India, calling on the Indian government to limit its application of anti-terrorism laws. The report notes "Attentiveness to these human rights concerns is not simply a moral and legal imperative, but also a crucial strategic imperative. As the Supreme Court of India has recognized, 'terrorism often thrives where human rights are violated' and 'The lack of hope for justice provides breeding grounds for terrorism.'"

The report chillingly concludes that the sweeping powers given to the authority in such enactments as TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act], POTA [Prevention of Terrorism Act], and UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act], were used predominantly not to prosecute and punish actual terrorists, but rather as a tool that enabled pervasive use of preventive detention and a variety of abuses by the police, including extortion and torture. Another unpopular act called the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has been sharply criticized for its 'oppression and high-handedness' by the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee and has asked for the scrapping of this draconian law. This act (AFPSA) was the rallying point of widespread protests in Manipur and in other parts of North East as it offered immunity to the army personnel guilty of indiscriminately killing innocent people.

Legislation to eradicate torture, encounter killings and custodial deaths may be effective up to a point and may decrease human rights abuse marginally. But laws need the backing of robust public opinion to be fully effective. Here, Sunshine India is seriously flawed. The middle class and the upper class seem to be totally self-absorbed in greed creed and its consumerist pretensions. Moreover, there is wide acceptance of 'tough police tactics' by the middle and upper classes. The issues of liberalism, values for a just and humane society do not resonate well with this class. Instead there is, in the words of Praful Bidwai, a social commentator, "growing illiberalism and intolerance... lack of moral clarity among large sections of middle class on issues of justice, fairness, pluralism, secularism and other constitutional values, leave alone compassion for the underprivileged."

With public opinion fragmented, human rights violations would continue unchecked with the brunt of abuse borne by the marginalized poor. A prospect, which we must admit, bodes ill for our Republic.

DesiCritics.ORG

An Urgent Appeal for Action : Free Hebal Abel Koloy !

On October 26, 2006 at around 9.30am, Mr. Hebal Abel Koloy, Chairman of Borok People's Human Rights Organisation – BPHRO – (an organisation fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples of Tripura against all forms of state terror), Tripura, India, was asked by the police of Jirania police station of West Tripura district, to accompany them to the Jirania police station and later was taken to Manu police station, Dhalai district. He accompanied them and was detained there till 8 a.m. (27 October, 2006) without any reasons. By 8.30 a.m. of October 27, 2006 he was declared arrested. The Manu police registered a case against him [Case no.37/06, U/S 396/353/307/IPC and 27 of the Arms Act and 120(B)] under the Indian Penal Code.

On October 27, 2006 Hebal Koloy was produced in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kailashar and the Manu police station appealed to the court for 10 days remand in the police custody. However, the court granted allowed custody for 3 days – i.e. October 27-30, 2006. On October 30, 2006 he was produced in the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kailashar and the court found no evidence of charges brought against him by the police but in spite of his being proved innocent was not given bail and was sent to the Kailashar Jail, Kailashar district for 3 more days.

It is pertinent to mention here that Mr. Koloy is the principal of Khumpui Academy which is run by the Tripura Tribal Areas District Council. His official residence was ransacked in search operations that were carried out on October 28, 2006 from 3.00 -3.50 p.m. But no incriminating documents were found there. On October 29, 2006 a search operation was carried out from 11.15 a.m. to 12 noon in the office premises of the BPHRO, located in the Place Compound, Agartala, Tripura and in the search operation nothing illegal was recovered according to the police's own version. They seized identity card forms (which are issued to all the members of the BPHRO), donors' registrar book, membership fee book and other organisational document.

They also took the computer belonging to Mohan Debbarma (General Secretary of BPHRO) which was being used for the office of the organization as they do not have any computer of their own.

Hebal Koloy has been an active member of the human rights fraternity in Northeast India . He has presented cases of human rights violations against the indigenous peoples of Tripura at the 22nd session of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 2003 and has also ceaselessly appealed for justice and transparency in Northeast India. We are convinced that his detention is meant to silence the voice of oppressed indigenous people of Tripura and is part of a larger campaign waged by the state to malign and obstruct people's movements working for justice and dignity of indigenous peoples. We are also convinced that as long as he is police custody he is danger of losing his life. Such events are not uncommon in Northeast India's gloomy world of human rights violations and complicity of the organs of the state in these violations.


Yours truly,

Arup Jyoti Das

On behalf of North East Peoples' Initiative (NEPI)

4, Dwaraka Path, Oil Pipe Line
Hatigaon Road, Dispur
Guwahati-781006

Ph: 0361-2222019 (o), 098641-39312 (m)

E-mail: nepinitiatives@gmail.com


Official brief on the Arrest of Mr. Hebal Koloy , Oct 29, (PTI)

Human rights activist arrested for involvement in ambush

Agartala, Oct 29: Prominent human rights activist Hebal Abel Koloy has been arrested for alleged involvement in an ambush on Tripura State Rifles personnel at Sindhukumarapara in Dhalai district, police said today.

Officials said they had definite proof about the involvement of Koloy, the principal of a school, in insurgency and this would be placed before court in course of time.

Police detained Koloy, chairman of the Borok People's Human Rights Organisation, last Thursday from near his school, Khwumpui Academy, at Khwumulung, 30 km from here. He was taken to Dhalai district for interrogation in connection with the ambush carried out by militants on Thursday.

He was arrested yesterday and later produced before the Kamalpur SDJM's court, which remanded him to police custody for three days.

Police said Koloy met some insurgents in Dhalai district on October 22 and allegedly hatched the plan for the ambush on TSR personnel, who were assigned to protect employees of the North Eastern Frontier Railway laying railway tracks to connect Agaala with the rest of the country.

Koloy visited different places in Southeast Asia in his capacity as a rights activist and met different anti-India agencies for collection of funds, they alleged.

Related reference on the web

Experiences on Autonomy in East and North East:

A Report on the Third Civil Society Dialogue on Human Rights and Peace

By Sanjoy Borbara, Kolkata- 2003

By Ravikiran Shinde

31 October, 2006,Countercurrents.org

To,
Rajdeep Sardesai,
Editor-in-Chief,
CNN-IBN and IBN 7

Dear Rajdeep,

Do not get surprised by this open letter written by one of your million viewers. Yes, I know it is established Journalists like you who normally write open letters to celebrities. But then two gigantic and yet contrasting incidents that took place in last few weeks made me go for this exercise. I chose you since you are the latest and perhaps youngest of the Media tycoons. But then, this letter equally applies to others in the same business.

1. 2 Oct 2006: The Golden Jubilee of conversion to Buddhism at Nagpur.

2. 29 Sep 2006: The gruesome rape and killing of four Dalits in Bhandara, Maharashtra.

Both events that took place in Vidharbha, Maharashtra were very critical to the entire Dalit-Buddhist movement in India. While the former was a cause of major celebrations for Dalits and Buddhists, the latter was a terrible shock to them. However, they both exposed the grossly biased "Global Age" News medium like yours. Here is how.

1. Ignoring the DhammaChakra

Every year Dalits and Buddhists gather at Nagpur to remember 14th Oct 1956. They number anywhere from 800,000 to 10,00,000. According to solar calendar, this is the day when Dr Ambedkar led the biggest conversion sans bloodshed or allurement in the history of the world. On that day alone, around 500,000 Dalits had converted to Buddhism leaving behind the cobwebs of caste ridden Hindu society.

But this year, an estimated 2 Million, yes, a whopping 20, 00,000 people gathered from across the world to mark the 50th year of Dhamma Chakra Pravartan din on 2nd October! According to local reports, some 200,000 Buddhist Bhikkhus (Monks) wearing saffron clothes, forming a 6 Km long chain took the procession turning the entire orange city into saffron and blue. The Celebrations lasted for more than a week.

Now, for an Indian media- that is always looking for something sensational- that's a huge gathering, isn't it? And how many white collar Journalists holding Handy Cams from the leading electronic media turn up, including your own? None! Reason? Ignorance? No.It is what I call an absolute boycott!

Like the Upper caste villagers boycott Dalits in Villages, their caste Hindu counterparts in the media boycott almost everything that is related to Dalits. Otherwise, which news channel in the world would ignore such a huge gathering, repeatedly? Annual gathering of around a million people on 6th December at Chaityabhoomi, Mumbai - where Dr Ambedkar's last rights were performed - is also never reported. Since the people who gather at these two places are Dalits, Adivasis and Buddhists, they get blocked. But a Hindu festivals like Ganesh festival or Kumbh Mela gets not only full coverage by the Media but discussions and special features running for hours. As I write, your website www.ibnlive.com opens with a Happy Diwali page.

2. Ghatkopar, Seoni, Jajjhar, Kherlanji..the shame continues!

On Sep 29, in one of the most gruesome and dreadful incidents of Dalit atrocities, Bhaiyyalal Bhootmange, a Dalit-Buddhist farmer in Kherlanji (Bhandara, Maharashtra) witnessed his wife Surekha (44), daughter Priyanka (18), sons, Roshan, 23, and Sudhir, 21 being killed by the Landlords in front of the villagers. Worst, the mother and daughter were first paraded naked; gang raped, and then sticks were pushed into their private parts. The sons were stabbed repeatedly and their private parts mutilated. And what was their fault? Surekha had dared to fight for getting back a portion of their farm, which was grabbed by the landlords.

The local police and doctors completely covered up this incident but the Ambedkarites made sure the news of this cruelty spread like wild fire amid the Golden Jubilee celebrations. DNA (Daily News and Analysis) was the only English daily that published this news and that too after 18 days! Seeing the hue and cry, not among media but the people, some VIP politicians including Dy. CM R.R. Patil visited this place after weeks and made some arrest drama and suspension of local police officers. But knowing the history of the Maharashtra government's handling of Ramabai Case (Killing of 10 Dalits by Police in Mumbai in 1997), I do not believe the culprits will be brought to book.

Just see the scale of atrocities against Dalits. India's National Crime Records Bureau working under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Home affairs has reported that in the year 2005 alone, 26,127 crimes were committed against SC/ST's including 1172 rape against Dalit women and 669 cases of Murder (Reference: http://ncrb.nic.in). To summarise, every day, while three Dalit women are raped and two Dalits are murdered, two Dalit homes get torched. If you add to this the thousands of unreported cases, the picture is abysmally inconceivable!

And how does the News media, including your own medium, react to the above facts and figures? While a soft atrocity news like "Dalit Entry banned in Hindu Temples" gets a little space once in a while, graver issues like daily rape and massacre of Dalits constituting about 1/4th of India's population are literally ignored. As if this section of population means nothing to you. Why no news channel, ever holds any discussions on "How to stop atrocities on Dalits"? If this is not Media's discrimination based on caste, what else it is? You, the news medium, is as responsible for these inhuman crimes as the Kheranjali oppressors by just being selective and dishonest.

Such is the intensity of this inhuman caste-killing in Bhandara that the world media took the cognizance of it. Some western Human Rights based organizations like ACJP (Ambedkar Center for Justice and Peace) who take up atrocity cases in India are going to publish a detailed report on this case soon. And your continued blockage of such incidents will not only expose your bias but also raise question on your ethics and compatibility.

What a Shame, Rajdeep! Having shown a balanced opinion on the OBC quota issue by highlighting the pro-reservation side too, you had us believe that you were going to be a moral and diversified media face. But now it is clearer that such tactics were aimed at merely adding some extra spice for your politics loving class. I had always believed in power of the Media but I am realizing now that if it is run by an upper caste establishment then it is not more than a 'Money-Machine'. And this is where the now famous proverbial label "Manuwadi" fits best.

If you feel you have been at fault, then better be late than never. Cover the Kherlanji case and its legal proceedings. Awake the people on the gruesome caste realities in India. Telecast a half and hour program dedicated specially to Dalit atrocities every week. Send your stylist English speaking field reporters to the remotest part where Dalits are suffering and order them to cover unbiased news and help the due process of Justice. Will you?

Remember Media is one of strongest pillars of democracy. Strengthen it.

Only then you would be doing your true duty! And then Dalits would forgive you, since they believe in Buddha's teaching of forgiveness.

There is still time, Rajdeep!

With Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness),

Ravikiran Shinde

Nalini Taneja, People's Democracy, October 29, 2006

THE CHANDRAPUR INCIDENTS

WE are witnessing today a pragmatic collaboration of forces that defend ‘moral’ policing in the name of protecting ‘Indian’ culture, justify trampling on democratic rights of citizens on grounds of suppressing ‘naxalism’ in thought and deed, and prevent circulation of books and performances because they ‘hurt sentiments’.

There is a need to unravel this pragmatic collaboration, and see it for what it is: how it serves ruling class interests in general and the politics of the two major ruling class parties in particular.

‘Moral’ policing, attacks on ‘undesirable’ books, performances, and persons as well, is part of this collaboration and is aimed directly at those who represent popular interest, particularly the working class and the peasantry. The automatic branding of all kinds of people engaged in democratic activism as naxalites, and by definition criminals, is also part of the counter activism of the Indian state and its shift in the ‘right’ direction to accommodate the pro-imperialistic policies and alignments, anti-people measures, and the politics of neo-liberalism. The attacks on minority rights and secular expression are part and parcel of this shift to the Right.

WHAT HAPPENED AT CHANDRAPUR

The recent incidents in Chandrapur involving arbitrary confiscation of books from the Daanish Books stall at the Chandrapur Book Fair and the subsequent illegal detention, harassment and interrogation of Ms Sunita Kumari by the Chandrapur police must be looked at in this context.

Ms Sunita Kumari is owner of Daanish Books, a reputable publishing house of progressive literature and a member of the Independent Publishers Group (IPG). The bookstall was at Deekshabhoomi, as part of the book fair being held to commemorate the golden jubilee of Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism.

On October 15, a contingent of 70 armed policemen surrounded the Daanish stall for over three hours; made a list of some 200 books which they found ‘objectionable’ and ‘anti-national’; but after intervention of superintendent of police, Mr Ravindra Kadam, seized 41 titles. Later, after registering an offence under the dreaded Illegal Activities Prevention Act against her, Sunita Kumari was questioned for over 14 hours by the Chandrapur police. Along with her, Vijay Vairagade, a local social activist, and his 17-year-old son were also questioned. Sunita was allowed to go after her 3-day ordeal on the condition that she will have to present herself as and when police wanted her. This was only after protests at the local as well as national and international level, and a final intervention by Brinda Karat, who phoned the home secretary of Maharashtra and demanded immediate stop to her harassment.

‘DANGEROUS’ BOOKS (!)

It may be noted that none of the books seized by the police --- among them those written by Clara Zetkin, Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara, Baburam Bhattarai, Li Onesto, Anand Swarup Varma, Vaskar Nandy, Jai Prakash Narayan—is banned or declared offensive by any state agency. They are books which are publicly available everywhere, and which civil society in any country with secular ideals should justly be proud of.

As an e-mail circulated by Daanish Books elaborates: "The books seized by the police for containing dangerous , anti state material include books like Marathi translation of the Thoughts of Bhagat Singh, Ramdeen Ka Sapna by B D Sharma, Jati Vyavastha: Bhartiya Kranti Ki Khasiyat by Vaskar Nandy, Monarchy Vs Democracy by Baburam Bhattarai, Nepali Samargaatha: Maowadi Janyuddha ka Aankhon Dekha Vivaran (the Hindi edition of eminent American Journalist Li Onesto’s celebrated book Dispatches from the People’s War in Nepal, translated by Anand Swarup Varma), Daliton par Badhati Jyadatiya aur Unka Krantikari Jawab, Chhapamar Yudhha by Che Guevara and books on Marxism-Leninism and people’s struggles." In short, these are books critical of monarchy and the caste system, those promoting revolutionary thought and action, and even those of Bhagat Singh. Needless to say, many of these books would be available at many other stalls as well.

The police raid clearly smacks of arbitrariness, barbarism and is a denial of the right to free speech and the propagation of ideas. In no democratic country can the police usurp the right to decide what will be read or published by people, and the fact that the police of Chandrapur has got away with it without any censure from the political leadership in the state of Maharashtra or from the officialdom is a cause for major worry. The incident obviously raises pertinent questions about our rights vis a vis the State, as an individual citizen of a ‘free country’, as publishers and finally as readers.

It also causes huge worry on account of the manner in which a secular activist could be whisked away, illegally confined and interrogated simply by being branded a ‘naxalite’, as if after that the State did not require to give any explanation or be accountable to the individual concerned or be obliged to give information under the RTI Act; that all this could be done without registering a case or FIR, in POTA like fashion.

PLAY BANNED

Similarly, the performance of a Hindi play, ‘Cotton 56, Polyester 84’, dealing with the history of Mumbai mills was forcibly stopped in Nagpur and the theatre group harassed. The play was stopped by the police on technical grounds citing “improper licensing” as the reason. Ramu Ramanathan, the playwright, told at a press conference that the troupe was followed by two armoured police vehicles and plainclothes policemen who also tore down posters announcing the play in the city. The Nagpur police commissioner did not meet the theatre group. The theatre group has also clarified that the play has been cleared by the censors and has already been performed over 30 times in Maharashtra and even in Bangalore. Clearly the contents of the play have not been found palatable by the Indian state, although its agencies have not been able to find anything in it to be able to formally ban it. The actors included famous names from the stage, Nagesh Bhonsale and Charusheela Sable.

Vigilantism by the right wing groups is common in BJP ruled states and those where they have a strong presence: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Orissa. In all these states tacit or open support is being provided to them by the state agencies.

LACK OF DEMARCATION FROM SHIV SENA

In Maharashtra the Shiv Sena has a clear history of suppressing democratic and secular expressions, including the burning of books, forcing a ban on books of history, especially those critical of Shivaji, and ransacking of research libraries on grounds that their staff has collaborated with scholars who project “anti-India” or anti-Maharashtra views. As in Gujarat, the Congress and the NCP in Maharashtra have not been able to demarcate themselves from the BJP and the Shiv Sena, and many of the police actions abetting or actively supporting right wing Hindutva groups have taken place during times when there has been a Congress-NCP government in power in the state. When they have not been in power its leaders have not dared to question or oppose Shiv Sena actions or the Hindutva reading of Indian or for that matter Maharashtrian culture. They have been complicit in creating and maintaining a hegemony for the forces of Hindutva, in creating adverse conditions for Muslims, in the unequal trajectories of the judicial inquiries into Bombay blasts and the Bombay riots against Muslims, in ensuring that while the Bombay blasts accused are dealt with firmly, those found guilty in the Bombay riots against Muslims go scot free.

While the Maharashtra police ignore all leads pointing to violence on the part of Hindutva forces, it is more than usually active in suppressing secular-democratic expression by trade unionists, writers, theatre persons, writers and artists, including our most well known artist, M F Hussain. There is never an apology or sense of accountability on the part of the bourgeois political parties or the officialdom presided over by them, leave alone protection against harassment.

CURTAILMENT OF RIGHT TO FIGHT

Characterising these disruptive actions as ‘moral policing’ somehow gives the impression that all this is simply a matter of culture, linked with long-term educational efforts and to be settled through the battle in the realm of ideas alone. It also gives the impression that our society is becoming revivalist and conservative, and that given this thrust towards conservatism, for whatever reasons, such incidents involving ‘some sections’ of people are bound to take place.

Such a valuation ignores the links of such ‘backwardness’ with a modernity that is intrinsic to right wing politics and economic projects, and shies from naming and blaming the networks and organisations that perpetrate violence and endanger democracy, minority rights and the livelihood of those they choose.

All this not only spells danger to the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to read, write, publish and perform, but is a serious curtailment of the right to work for a better society. It involves infringement of the right to propagate ideas and to organise, and it curtails political activity and participation in the workings of democracy. There is a need, therefore, to also be alert to the dismissal of such denial of political rights as simply the work of fringe elements. There is a need to be aware that these ‘fringe’ elements are quite mainstream today, and have the might of the state behind them. The UPA government at the centre has, on its part, been unable to guarantee democracy or even impartiality; there are too many ruling class threads that bind it to the politics of the BJP and its Parivar. The centre has not collapsed in India; it has simply shifted Right.

Yoginder Sikand

Bias against Muslims is deeply-rooted in large sections of the Hindu-owned media in India, even in influential sections of the English press that prides itself in its claim of being ‘secular’ and ‘progressive’. Two ongoing controversies—the Vande Mataram affair and the Malegaon bomb blasts—suffice to confirm this argument.

Some weeks ago, Indian newspapers were awash with reports about Muslims protesting against the suggestion that all children studying in schools be forced to sing the Vande Mataram song, which, numerous Hindu-owned newspapers, television channels and politicians declared, was India’s ‘national song’. Refusal to sing this song, they claimed, was a thoroughly ‘un-patriotic’ act, suggesting, thereby, that Muslims, by definition, were ‘anti-national’. Consequently, Muslims were forced, as they often are, to prove their patriotic credentials, and the overall result of this sordid controversy was to only further reinforce deeply-rooted anti-Muslim feelings among many non-Muslim Indians.

Media projection and coverage of the Vande Mataram controversy was cleverly contrived to put Muslims in the dock and to defend a certain vision of Indian nationalism that is framed in ‘upper’ caste Brahminical Hindu terms, in which Muslims, Dalits and other non-’upper’ caste Hindu communities have little or no space for their identities, aspirations and interests. Few ‘mainstream’ Indian papers cared to mention crucial facts of the history of the controversial song. The Vande Mataram is part of a novel, the Anandmath, which reeks of anti-Muslim hatred and is the rallying cry of Brahminical Hinduism that is premised on an unrelenting hatred of Muslims. The was the novel written by Bankim Chandra Chatterji, a late nineteenth century Bengali Brahmin, a major cult figure in Hindu ‘nationalist’ circles.

The crux of the novel is an ardent appeal to Hindus to rally against and slaughter Muslims and drive them out of India. The Vande Mataram, sung as a war-cry to rouse Hindu mobs against Muslims, exhorts Hindus to do all this for the sake of the Mother—India deified as the Brahminical goddess Kali or Durga. Curiously enough for a song that is projected by its advocates as the emblem of Indian nationalism, the novel ends with the hero welcoming the British take-over of India. ‘Now the British have arrived’, the hero exclaims with ill-concealed glee, ‘and our wealth and lives will be safe’. ‘The subjects [Hindus] would be happy in the English kingdom’, he goes on, ‘[…] [so] refrain from waging war with the Englishmen […] Your mission has been successful—you have performed [sic.] well-being of the Mother—the English reign has been established’. Now that the Muslims have been killed and driven out and their place has been taken by the British, the hero concludes, the Hindus should accept the British as their ‘ally’.

Hardly the stuff that one would expect from a song that is bandied about as the herald of Indian nationalism and anti-imperialism. Even more curious in this regard is the fact, which the ‘mainstream’ media probably has deliberately sought to conceal, that Bankim Chandra Chatterji was hardly the ardent ‘nationalist’ that he is made out to be. In 1858 he was appointed to the post of Deputy Magistrate by the British, the first Indian to enjoy that dubious distinction in the immediate aftermath of the failed Indian Revolt of 1857. When he retired from that post he was conferred with the titles of Rai Bahadur and Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire by the British, an ‘honour’ reserved, of course, only for pro-British toadies.

From the very start, when Brahminical revivalists in the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha began insisting that the Vande Mataram must be made India’s national song, Muslims and other non-Hindu communities angrily protested. There was no reason, they argued, why non-Hindus should be forced to worship a Hindu deity, even if in the form of ‘Mother India’, suggesting that the equation of Indian nationalism with Brahminical Hinduism was aimed at excluding non-Hindus from the definition of the ‘national mainstream’. The Muslim argument, which has been repeated ad nauseum and highlighted in the Urdu press in the course of the recent controversy, is that the novel of which the song forms a part is clearly anti-Muslim and, furthermore, the Vande Mataram’s appeal to prostrate before to and worship the Mother, in the form of Durga incarnated in the guise of India, is forbidden in Islam, a fair enough point that any non-Hindu would make.

However, in the heat and din of the recent controversy, the ‘mainstream’ Indian media, some notable exceptions aside, shamelessly shed all pretensions of ‘secularism’ and made it out to be that by refusing to sing the song Muslims were demonstrating that they had no love for India and that they were ‘anti-national’. The point of how a mere song could be the test of Indian nationalism, the issue of the political context of the song, the clearly anti-Muslim thrust of the Anandmath and Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s own collaboration with the British, were all carefully glossed over. Nor did the ‘mainstream’ media raise the obvious point that forcible extraction of demonstrations of ‘patriotism’ by Muslims unwilling to sing the song were pointless and completely farcical. And the fact that the mounting insecurity and threats to their life, property and identity that many Indian Muslims face today at the hands of the votaries of the Vande Mataram, a situation that is hardly conducive to promote passionate demonstration of love for the country, was completely lost on the ‘mainstream’ media, which was awash with stories of Muslims singing or not singing the song.

It is not that both the Congress, votary of ‘soft’ Hindutva, the hardcore Hindutva lobby and the ‘mainstream’ media were unaware of the fact that appealing to or forcing all Indian school-going children, including Muslims, to sing the song would be stiffly opposed by most Muslims, for there has been a long history of Muslim opposition to this. In fact, it appears that it was hardly the intention of the ardent advocates of the song to promote patriotism by advising that all school-children sing it. Rather, it seems obvious that the brouhaha about the song was simply yet another stick for Hindutva fascists to beat Muslims with, to force them to accept their diktats and to terrorise them with threats of being expelled from India simply because of their refusal to sing a song that even most Hindus do not know and which fewer Hindus know the meaning of, being in highly Sanskritised Bengali. But this, of course, was a point that few ‘mainstream’ newspapers refused to point out, thus clearly revealing their underlying anti-Muslim bias and the fact that their perception of Indian nationalism is firmly within the framework of Brahminical Hinduism.

Another glaring instance of clear anti-Muslim prejudice in large sections of the ‘mainstream’ Indian media is the coverage of the recent blasts outside a mosque in Malegaon that claimed almost forty Muslim lives. While the Mumbai train blasts this July hogged the headlines for days, the Malegaon tragedy has received relatively little attention, probably because the victims in this case are Muslims. The identity of the perpetrators of the Mumbai train blasts is yet to be ascertained, but police, intelligence agencies and the media are insistent on what they claim, was an ‘Islamist terrorist’ hand. Consequently, hundreds of Muslims were arrested in the aftermath of the blasts. The contrast with the Malegaon blasts could not have been more striking. While it is entirely plausible that they could have been the handiwork of Hindutva activists and while the likelihood of Muslims being behind them extremely remote, if not impossible, the media is awash with stories that argue the unlikely thesis of a hidden ‘radical Islamist’ or Pakistani ISI hand behind the blasts and the theory that they could have been the fallout of intra-Muslim sectarian rivalries. It is as if Hindus could never commit such an act of terror, the hundreds of anti-Muslim pogroms in India which thousands of people have lost their lives in recent decades notwithstanding.

That probably explains why it is that, in contrast to the massive wave of arrests and harassment of Muslims in the wake of the Mumbai train blasts, the police have not deemed it necessary to arrest or question rabidly anti-Muslim Hindutva activists, who may possibly have been behind the blasts, on any significant scale in Malegaon and thereabouts. Nor is the ‘mainstream’ media demanding this. Instead, the Malegaon blasts appear to be fast disappearing from the screens and pages of the ‘mainstream’ media, being replaced now with stories about the court cases relating to the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai in which some Muslims are said to have been involved. Even here the reporting is obviously biased and skewed, for few newspapers have cared to view these blasts, as they should be, in the backdrop of the widespread anti-Muslim violence in large parts of India just a year before in the wake of the destruction of the Babri Masjid, in which thousands of Muslims were slaughtered in cold blood by Hindu mobs. Needless to say, the non-Muslim Indian media, by and large, is supremely unconcerned about justice to the families of the several hundred Muslims slain by Hindu gangsters in league with the elements in the police and the administration in Mumbai itself just weeks prior to the serial blasts and which must have provoked the perpetrators of the blasts to do what they did. Nor is the media talking about justice for the almost three thousand hapless Muslim victims of the state-sponsored massacre in Gujarat in 2002 and their relatives, and the victims of innumerable other such bouts of bloody anti-Muslim violence that do not seem to deserve any more than passing mention, if at all, on television screens and in obscure corners of some odd newspaper.

So much, then, for the ‘secular’, ‘patriotic’ pretensions of the Indian ‘mainstream’ media.

The author works with the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and moderates an online discussion group called South Asian Leftists Dialoguing With Religion
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saldwr/

Gujarat 2006 is deadlier than 2002. Because Hindutva has manufactured a new DNA beyond the Indian Constitution

Prashant Jha, Ahmedabad, Hard News Media

Short, stocky, and balding, Babubhai Rajabhai Patel can pass off as a normal, middle-class trader. Only, he isn't one. Babu Bajrangi, as Patel likes to be called, says he runs an NGO, Navchetan Sangathan. Sitting in his 'office' in Ajanta Ellora Complex in Naroda in Ahemdabad, Bajrangi is surrounded by images of RSS ideologues KS Hedgewar and Guru Golwalkar, a map of Akhand Bharat, and his own photographs, with politicians or in public meetings.

Bajrangi claims to be a social worker. "I rescue Hindu women who are lured by Muslims. I hate such marriages." As soon as Bajrangi gets to know of any such union, he kidnaps and sends the girl back home; and beats up the Muslim boy. "It's fun. Only last week, we made one such man eat his own shit thrice," he says. Bajrangi's operation is ruthless and effective. He claims to have 'saved' 725 Hindu women this way. And what about the law? "What I do is illegal, but it is moral. And anyway, the government is ours."

Perhaps that is the reason that Bajrangi, chief accused in the Naroda Patiya murder case (during the Gujarat carnage), is out on the streets and not behind bars. "People say I killed 123 people," says Bajrangi with a grin. Did you? "How does it matter? They were Muslims – bloody Pakistanis. They had to die. They are dead."

“The government is ours.” Few will doubt Bajrangi's claim. Not Muslims for sure, for they know Bajrangi might be more extremist than most, but he represents a mindset that is widespread: the mindset of the Gandhinagar government’s ministers. The mindset of several Hindus, from the waiter to the auto-driver and the middle-class, across Gujarat.

The discourse among Muslims has a striking unity. There is no one who speaks for us. This is not our government. This is their rule — Hindu rule. What do we do? As an elder in Shah Alam, a Muslim area in Ahmedabad, puts it, "Our crime is we pray to Allah."

The emotions of Muslims across Gujarat revolves around alienation, helplessness, and anger. Understandably so, large sections of the Hindu society, led on by the BJP government, ensure that Muslims remain second-class citizens.

And that is the story of Gujarat 2006. A tale of a society that is sharply polarised and prejudices about the 'other' deeply entrenched, and a state that happily engineers everyday hatred. In its wake, lies a community that lives in fear. The Gujarat of today is in some senses more dangerous than the Gujarat of 2002. For here, the violence is invisible. It operates systematically, as well as subtly, at the establishment and social level.

The truth is, the Gujarat government has seceded from the Indian Constitution. It did so in 2002, when the state sponsored mass violence against Muslims. And contrary to what many think, it has consistently done so and flaunted it since then. It has tried to completely subvert the process of justice for 2002 victims, from distorting FIRs and ensuring faulty investigation, to letting the accused get away free. With office-bearers of the Sangh Parivar affiliates doubling up as public prosecutors, it is little surprise that only 13 out of the 345 cases decided so far have resulted in convictions.

Even as it fulfils its promise that no harm should come the way of rioters, the government continues its campaign to harass innocent Muslims. The fact that the UPA government in Delhi did not ban the draconian legislation, Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), retrospectively has meant that those charged under that law in Gujarat before 2004 remain in jail. This effectively means that the secular UPA government, backed by the Left, is playing Narendra Modi’s game.

Maulana Omarji's house is, ironically, on the Station Road in Godhra. But he doesn't live there. Along with others accused of hatching the conspiracy and burning the train compartment at the Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002, he stays some distance away – in Sabarmati Jail in Ahmedabad. Omarji was arrested one year after the incident took place – a period in which he was active in organising relief camps for Muslims, and petitioning national leaders who came visiting about the injustice meted out to minorities in the state. Clearly, someone powerful did not like that. A well-respected man and community leader against whom there is no evidence, Maulana Omarji is charged with POTA.

His young and articulate son, Saeed, is quite frustrated. "What is the fault of Muslims in India? I am so angry with the system here, including the judiciary." Everything is stacked up against Muslims in India, feels Saeed. "I am an Indian and will never be disloyal to my country. But I feel our parents and grandparents made a mistake by staying on here. We should have gone to Pakistan." It is a striking comment, revealing the manner in which a fascist state is pushing people into a corner.

Half-an-hour from Godhra lies Kalol -- a site of major violence in 2002. This reporter met Mukhtar Mohammad at the Kalol police station. Active in organising relief camps, Mukhtar has been working to get justice for the victims. Something that did not go down too well with the state authorities. Framed under, what by all accounts, is a false ‘rape case’, he is stuck making rounds of police stations and magistrates and has to spend occasional nights, and at times, extended periods in jail. He says, "They want to break any kind of leadership that emerges among the Muslims, especially those who are moderate, and want to fight politically, constitutionally and legally."

Indeed, there is a pattern in which the Gujarat government is acting against Muslims. The Hindutva forces have no problems if the influence of the Muslim conservative religious organisations increases because it helps strengthen their stereotypes about Muslims. What they do not want is an articulate, liberal voice among Muslims that speaks the language of democratic rights and claims equal citizenship.

The regime targets innocent Muslims not just by framing false cases. Discrimination is spread across all realms. Juhapura is the largest Muslim ghetto in Ahmedabad with more than 300,000 people. Yet, it has no bank, state transport buses take a detour to avoid crossing through it, and there are no public parks or libraries. OBC communities among the Muslims in Gujarat find it difficult to get certain certificates. The saffronisation of the bureaucracy and local power structures, points out scholar Achyut Yagnik, has meant that panchayats, co-operatives, agrarian produce markets and government schemes have become sites for discrimination against Muslims.

What is more alarming is the fact that this discrimination has larger social sanction. There is pride about the 2002 toofan among many Hindus – we taught them a lesson, crushed; the world should learn how to deal with miyas from us, are oft-heard remarks. And the increasing distance between the two communities, both in the minds and physically, has not helped matters.

Most cities and towns in Gujarat are completely divided into Hindu and Muslim areas; a street corner, a divider in the middle of the road, a wall, or just a turn acting as borders. If it was difficult for a Muslim to find a house in Hindu areas before the killings, it is impossible now.

Sophia Khan is a well-known woman activist in Ahmedabad. Her office was in Narayanpura, an upmarket Hindu area. A month ago, when neighbours in her office complex got to know of her faith, they asked her to vacate immediately. Putting up a fight was no use in the face of constant harassment. She has now shifted to Juhapura. "My house is in a Muslim area. My office is now in a Muslim area. My Hindu employee is being pressurised by her family to resign, because they don't like her coming to a Muslim area. And my work revolves around Muslim women. This is how they want to push an entire community into a corner," says Khan.

The segregation has spread to other realms as well, leading to absence of contact and interaction between the two communities and breeding stereotypes and intolerance. The most visible realm is the fewer number of mixed schools in Ahmedabad which have a fair number of Hindus and Muslims. Discrimination on religious lines, coupled with the desire of parents to send children to schools where there are 'more of our people' has further boosted this trend. Pankaj Chandra, professor at Indian Institute of Management, is worried. Brought up in the composite Ganga-Jamuni culture of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, he says, "My children may graduate from school without knowing a single Muslim. Imagine how easy it will be to build stereotypes then."

When this reporter, with his long, unkempt beard, walked into an elite government colony in Ahmedabad to meet a senior official, three kids parked their bicycles right in front. One screamed aloud, “Terrorist.” Why? “Because you are a Musalman,” he responded. So? “All Muslims are terrorists. My father is a judge. He will call you terrorist in court.” Really? “Yes. And get out of here. This is a Hindu area.” Sauyajya is 12-year-old and has not met a single Muslim in his life. No one knows how many Sauyajyas are in the making in Gujarat.


The writer is Assistant Editor, Himal Southasian, Kathmandu.

By Raja Swamy

Raja Swamy is in the doctoral program in Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in studying the impact of neoliberalism in India with a focus on the political economy of natural disasters. A shorter version of this article appeared on Siliconeer Magazine.

After thirty-four days of relentless aerial bombardment and a ground invasion, Israel's brutal assault on Lebanon's civilian population has come to a halt, at least temporarily. As the dust from the rubble of Lebanon's ruined cities, villages, and infrastructure settles, and as bodies of victims are recovered and buried, and the human losses mourned by the people of Lebanon, serious questions are being raised about India's increasingly cozy relationship with Israel. The Indian government cannot continue to expand military and economic ties with Israel and still expect to be untarnished by this association in the eyes of the world. More than a thousand Lebanese were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombardment, the vast majority of them civilians. At the height of the Israeli assaults in early August, at least 45% of the dead were children. Approximately a million had been forced to leave their homes from an entire swathe of the country which Israel unilaterally and illegally declared its zone of operations, a virtual free-fire zone.

Waging a brutal and unrestrained war with the aid of U.S.-supplied weapons, Israel rained destruction upon civilians unable to defend themselves or even flee. Israeli bombs destroyed 97 roads, 75 bridges, 4 airports, 7 seaports, 8000 residential dwellings, 5 hospitals, 14 factories, 27 petrol stations, 9 army barracks.1 As each outrage shocked the world, the Israeli government with the overt and tacit support of its U.S. patrons announced further escalations and intensified this all-out war targeting the civilian population. As expected, the U.S. government stalled U.N. efforts towards a ceasefire and hastened the delivery of advanced munitions to Israel -- the undisguised goal was to give Israel "time" to "do the job" of "destroying" Hezbollah, the Lebanese national resistance, a task that has now come to naught, leaving the movement basking in the light of unprecedented popularity throughout the Arab world and beyond. Israel has to date recklessly cultivated a reputation for being immune to international law or humanitarian norms, and its outrages continue to be condoned as "self-defense" under an umbrella of impunity afforded by the protective embrace of the U.S. government. Image 1, a map made available by Samidoun, a Lebanese grassroots coalition, provides a glimpse of the extent of destruction carried out by Israel.2

India, the Israeli Arms Industry's Prized Market

It is commendable that the Indian government, albeit "under pressure from the Left parties," condemned the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and called for an "immediate and unconditional ceasefire." However, the recent pattern of collaboration between the Indian and Israeli military and political establishments renders such condemnations and calls quite meaningless. Moreover, this official expression of concern came weeks into the bombardment, specifically in response to the brutal massacre of about 60 civilians, a majority of them children and women, in the city of Qana, which only ten years ago was the site of another horrendously similar Israeli atrocity. Statements and official pronunciations aside, what deserves greater public scrutiny is the pattern of relationships developed by India's political elites with the Israeli state and military over the period of the last decade. Business Week reported in 2005 that India became Israel's largest importer of weapons the previous year, accounting for about half of the $3.6 billion worth of weapons exported by that country.3 Not coincidentally, that year also proved to be the second best recorded year for the Israeli weapons industry, making Israel the 5th largest weapons exporter in the world and accounting for about 10 percent of the world's weapons trade. Obviously, the Israeli armaments industry values India as a major new market for its weapons and as such has much to gain from maintaining and deepening the appetite for arms by the Indian state.

Since the 1970s, the Israeli armaments industry has had to adopt an aggressive export-orientation since the country's own military only procures about a third of its output. Israel has a sordid history of supplying weapons and training to notorious dictatorships, including South Africa's apartheid regime, Nicaragua's Somoza, Pinochet in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines, Duvalier in Haiti, Mobutu in Zaire, dictatorships in Guatemala, Argentina, and scores of other African, Asian and South American countries where unpopular regimes utilized Israeli weapons, training and advice to ruthlessly suppress their populations through the 1970s and 80s. Weapons sales also became the "motor driving Israel's foreign policy" during this period, as economic crises required bouts of intensified lobbying by Israeli arms merchants dispatched to dozens of countries to coax and cajole assorted defense ministries into purchasing Israeli weapons. Israeli foreign policy thus has a track record of being closely tied to the interests of its weapons industries, exemplified and facilitated by the interlocking relationships between elites in the highest echelons of the political structure, the military establishment, and arms industries, who together comprise the "security establishment lobby." The close relationship between Israel's foreign policy and the aggressive export-orientation of its arms industry is summed up in the following statement by Aharon Klieman, who wrote: "Arms transfers are a dual-purpose political-security tool, essential for Israel's security position, and an unavoidable critical component of foreign policy. Consequently, Israel's diplomacy of arms exports is a kind of extension of Israel's general approach to foreign affairs."4

By the late 1980s, Israeli weapons exports as a proportion of total industrial output rose to between 30 and 40 percent, from 31 percent in 1975 and 14 percent in 1967.5 Today at least 25 percent of Israel's annual exports are armaments.6 It is in the light of this nexus of weapons export orientation and militaristic foreign policy that the new Indo-Israeli relationship becomes clear at one level. The new relationship developed since 1992 is not immune to the same logic driving Israeli foreign policy dominant since the 1970s -- that of aggressively expanding markets abroad for its armaments industries and maintaining a military-centered approach to international relations consistent with the goals of the ongoing occupation of Palestine, as well as expansionist goals and related forays into Lebanon, and other neighboring countries. On the Indian side, both wings of the ruling class, tethered as they are to dreams of "great power" status, support the expansion of this relationship by subscribing to a hawkish attitude towards resolving international disputes, particularly with Pakistan, a posture that conveniently demands unrestrained military spending. Every visit by a delegation of Israeli officials either preceded or followed the cementing of ties involving the purchase of weapons or the training and/or expansion of cooperation between Israeli armaments interests and their Indian counterparts (see Table 1). There were also reports, in 2003, of the Israeli defense establishment dispatching "scores of agents" to persuade the Indian armed forces into buying weapons.7

Betraying the Anti-colonial Legacy = Betraying the Indian People

Such an unhealthy relationship built on the consumption of Israeli weapons necessitates the alienation and betrayal of broader friendships and historical ties that the people of India share with the people of the Arab world, particularly those in the countries and occupied lands bearing the brunt of aggressive Israeli militarism and allied U.S. aggression. Just as India stood on the right side of history in the case of apartheid South Africa, so should its present leaders take on the historic responsibility of aligning India with the forces of justice, equality, and peace -- in support of the human rights and the right to self-determination of the people of Palestine and Lebanon. In the first three decades after independence, successive governments sought to project India as a country dedicated to decolonization. This posture offered the basis for the principled foreign policy of the Nehruvian state which drew its own legitimacy from the tumultuous anti-colonial struggle that brought about independence for the subcontinent in the late 1940s. Israel was reluctantly recognized as a state only as late as 1950, and no formal ties were established for almost four decades, in tacit recognition of the rights of Palestinians brutally dispersed to facilitate Israel's creation. In 1975, India voted at the United Nations in favor of the resolution equating the ideology of Zionism with racism. India was also the first non-Arab state to recognize the PLO, welcoming a Palestinian embassy in New Delhi by 1988. In early 1992, anticipating the rapidly changing situation following the end of the cold war, and in the context of efforts by some Arab states to renegotiate relations with Israel (at the behest of the U.S.), another Congress government decided to establish formal ties with the state of Israel. In the decade following this normalization of ties, successive governments of both the centrist Congress and the right-wing BJP, irrespective of party ideology, have rapidly forged extensive military, economic, and political relationships.

Significantly, the shift within the Indian ruling classes from the official position of non-alignment and state-centered economic development towards the Washington Consensus8 facilitated and encouraged this changed attitude towards Israel. The Washington Consensus, perhaps best exemplified by India's subscription to the IMF's structural adjustment program of the early 1990s necessitated adherence to a U.S.-centered economic (and hence political) agenda emphasizing privatization of state assets, liberalization of trade, and the globalization of economic activities. Into this new arena of free-market fundamentalism entered the political maelstrom of Hindutva -- which launched an assault on the secular, pluralistic pretensions of the post-independence state and openly advocated the further disenfranchisement and marginalization of India's largely working-class Muslim population. Ideologically, the India's ruling classes' fantasies of "great power," "emerging superpower," etc. justified their growing servility to U.S. designs in the region, and opened the floodgates on unrestrained spending on weapons. Spending on social services and investment in crucial areas like agriculture and industry plummeted, as per the diktat of the neoliberal program. It is in this context of neoliberal restructuring and adherence to the Washington Consensus that the current trends in visibly expanded Indo-Israeli military and political relations emerged through the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century.

Military Political

1996


* Israeli President Ezer Weizman's visit to India at the head of a 24-member business delegation.9

1998


* Indian Army Chief-of-Staff Gen V N Malik's visit to Israel.10

1999


* Ordnance and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) supplied to aid India in the Kargil war with Pakistan

* Suspicions of secret nuclear cooperation

* Indian Deputy PM and Home Minister L.K. Advani's visit to Israel

* Indian President Abdul Kalam visited to Israel 18 months prior to Pokhran nuclear tests.

2000


* Jane's Defense Weekly reported in June that Israeli security officers regularly visited Kashmir.

* Israeli submarines test-fired nuclear-capable missiles off the coast of Sri Lanka (see Footnote 5)

* Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh visited to Israel11

2001


* Joint defense cooperation group established. The JWG meets every year alternately in New Delhi and Tel Aviv to solidify defense deals, military ties, and coordination of security and intelligence relationships.

* Deal for purchase of Israeli Phalcon (Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems) cleared after years of being stalled.

* Deals to upgrade artillery with Israeli firm Soltan

* August 14, 2001: "Israeli intelligence agencies have been intensifying their relations with India security apparatus and are now understood to be heavily involved in helping New Delhi combat Islamic militants in the disputed province of Kashmir." -- Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor, August 14, 2001

* "It was an ironic coincidence that Brajesh Mishra was closeted in his office in New Delhi on September 11, 2001 with his Israeli counterpart Major General Uzi Dayan and engaged in what was dubbed a "joint security strategy dialogue" when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred."12

2002


* Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's visit to India. Peres had visited India "three times in the past twelve months."13

* Indian Minister of Communication & Parliamentary Affairs Pramod Mahajan visited to Israel

2003


* $20 million agreement with Israeli Military Industries for assault rifles, sniper rifles, night vision equipment, laser range finding and targeting equipment.

* Israel to train four new special forces battalions in "irregular warfare" in Kashmir.

* Israeli defense industry has dispatched "scores of agents" to pursue sales to the Indian armed forces.

* September: Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's visit to India, hosted by the BJP led NDA government. At the height of a brutal Israeli suppression of the Palestinian population, with Sharon's international reputation as a ruthless enemy of Palestinians, this cynical display of Indo-Israeli bonhomie by the NDA government was intended to help rehabilitate him and to settle defense deals.

* Israeli Minister of Science & Technology Eliezer Sandberg's visit to India, signing of an MoU with ISRO

2004


* $1.1 billion deal on Phalcon concluded.

* Ehud Olmert (now Israeli PM)'s visit to India, first as Industry, Trade and Employment Minister, then as Deputy Prime Minister.14, 15

* Indian Minister of Commerce & Industry Mr. Arun Jaitly's visit to Israel as head of the Indian delegation to the Joint Economic Committee.

2005


* 50 Heron Drones (spy UAVs) to be sold to India by Israel Aircraft Industries

* Visits to Israel by Kumari Sejla (Minister of State for Rural Development), Kapil Sibal (Minister of State for Science and Technology), Kamal Nath (Minister of State for Commerce and Industries), Sharad Pawar (Union Minister for Agriculture).

2006


* National Security Advisor of Israel, Maj.Gen.(Retd.) Giora Eiland visits India to hold talks with his counterpart Mr. M.K. Narayanan under the framework of the "Indo-Israel National Security Council dialogue."16

Congress-BJP: Same Love Affair with Israel

As opposition party in 2003, the Congress Party had vociferously protested when the BJP's L.K. Advani and National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra proclaimed an emerging "strategic relationship" between the India and Israel. Jaipal Reddy, spokesperson for the Congress, was reported to have said: "Obsession with Israel on the part of the coalition government is strange and perverse . . . when Israel is facing international isolation. It shows the intellectual insolvency of the government."17 Noting that the relationship between India and Israel "qualitatively differed" from that between India and the U.S., Reddy asserted that the two countries were separated by "ideological dissonance" as the Congress Party position towards the Palestinians was diametrically opposed to that of the Israelis. "There has to be a minimum ideological similarity for a strategic partnership."

Barely a year after assuming office, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the Congress Party agreed to continue expanding collaboration with Israel's military industries after the third "Joint Working Group" meetings between defense and security bigwigs from both countries concluded in 2004.18 On the table were expanded purchases of Israeli armaments by India, including 50 Heron spy drones (UAVs), and an agreement to hold joint air-force exercises involving U.S.-built Israeli F 16s and Russian-built Indian Sukhoi Su-30Mk1s. These deals were signed with much fanfare by the UPA government led by the very same Congress Party that once invoked its commitments to Palestinian rights, to Indo-Arab relations, and to its supposed adherence to principled foreign policy. If the past NDA government led by the Hindu right BJP ratcheted up relations with Israel on account of its perceptions of an "anti-terror" (read anti-Muslim) axis between India, Israel, and the U.S., the Congress-led UPA government has maintained a steady intensification of ties between India and Israel while incredibly claiming that its commitment to all things principled in foreign policy remain untouched.

Notably, Indo-Israeli ties have expanded under the UPA to include a host of non-military economic relations as well. By 2002 Israel's non-military trade with India had grown to more than 6 times what it used to be in 1992 (1.27 billion as compared to $202 million).19 A host of Indian cabinet ministers visited Israel in 2004, including the minister for Rural Development, Commerce & Industry, Agriculture, and Science & Technology. It is noteworthy that in a country reeling under the impact of a decade of neoliberal prescriptions, with millions of agricultural producers facing starvation and thousands taking their own lives, our leaders refuse to recognize the "intellectual insolvency" of collaboration with an Israeli state built upon the doctrine of racial exclusion, unending war, and expansionist aggression. Regardless of how much non-military ties have expanded between the two countries, Israel is India's second largest seller of armaments after Russia. It is a disturbing truth today that India's dominant political elites, with little variance across party-lines, display an unswerving dedication to developing India as a market for Israeli armaments industries.

Indo-Israeli Ties as Part of the Wider Anti-people Policies Pursued by the Indian Ruling Class

Supporters of this relationship argue that the current Indo-Israeli bonhomie is mutually beneficial and that ethical questions ought to be subordinate to the demands of pragmatism in international affairs since India's security needs they argue, demand reliable sources of advanced armaments. The pragmatism argument fails the test of reason if subjected to scrutiny: is it pragmatic to aid and abet the destruction of much of the third world through the development of close military relations with an expansionist state that serves as the surrogate of the U.S. imperial power? Is it pragmatic to alienate the vast majority of humanity in the process of feeding the arms dealers of a renegade country and sucking up to its imperial patron? It has been argued that India's emerging relationship with Israel is intimately tied to its increasingly subservient relationship with the U.S. Meanwhile, Israel's close relationship to the U.S. imperial power and its hold on U.S. foreign policy in West Asia has often raised questions about the tail wagging the dog. Despite the obviously Orwellian implications of the claim that this relationship between India, Israel, and the U.S. can be seen as an "alliance of democracies," it is not far-fetched to assume that the Indian ruling elites see their country increasingly as a regional surrogate for a U.S.-led agenda. In this view, the role of Israel as a "friend" supplying arms serves the purpose of cementing such an assumed alliance.

Great power illusions aside, the obvious material interests at play in this process ought to render all such assumptions nothing more than fantasies of delusional elites. Or in a perhaps more insidious sense, such assumptions merely represent the rhetorical language used to justify the diversion of resources away from the real needs of the Indian people, into the deep pockets of arms-sellers feeding off fear, insecurity, and increasingly, bouts of high-tech savagery against populations. And what about security? What are the security-needs of India's people? Weapons purchases do not even begin to address the urgent issues of security from hunger, deprivation, disease, disasters, rampant inequality, oppressive traditions, unemployment, and the like. And why should India's so-called "security" needs, divorced as they are from the real needs of India's people, be sought at the cost of the human rights of Palestinian, Lebanese, or other populations brutalized and oppressed by our new "friends?" Wrenching the term "security" from its use in the one-dimensional sense of military security (and its linear logic of buying more advanced weapons) can help rescue the issue of real human security from the paranoiac pronouncements of professional fear-mongers in the elite establishment and their assorted mouthpieces in the media.

It is incumbent upon all peace-loving people in the world, particularly Indians and people of Indian origin, to demand that the Indian state's leaders reassess the deepening relationship with Israel. India is Israel's second-largest trading partner in Asia after China. This means Israeli industries are dependant upon India's markets. India's dependence on Israeli markets, however, is negligible: exports to Israel from India topped $800 million in 2002, while Indian exports to the UAE rose to $ 3 billion in the same year. Leveraging this power to rein in the rampaging policies of the Israeli state would be a sign of maturity and goodwill by a country that traces its own heritage to the anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century. However, this cannot happen while the projection of India as an open market for Israeli armaments continues to be the reigning priority of India's political elites. Defense ties with Israel must be cut immediately or at the very least curtailed drastically in order to send a strong signal to the Israeli state that it cannot continue massacres of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians without costs to its long-term economic well-being.

Moreover, it is about time the Indian state re-evaluated its priorities: there is much more of a need for state spending on dealing with the dangerously underestimated agrarian crisis, related rural investment, urban and rural healthcare, primary and secondary education, disaster preparedness and management, among a host of other pressing needs that cannot be met so long as huge portions of the state coffer is funneled to international weapons dealers. Every rupee spent on Phalcons, Herons, and Baraks will not only increase the militarization of the subcontinent, thereby endangering the entire population, but also continue to be siphoned away from generating jobs, providing food, medicines, schools, and sustaining livelihoods for millions of India's people. What is happening under the present dispensation is that farmers are being told they have to fend for themselves as subsidies are cut and cheap imports flood the markets rendering producers vulnerable enough to increasingly resort to suicide in the face of deprivation, while Israeli arms merchants are being told that they have free access to the largesse of the Indian state since presumably billions of dollars spent on bombs and guns are more important for the Indian people! The choice really is between Israeli weapons and Indian livelihoods as much as it is between Israeli bombs and Arab lives.

Additionally, the collaboration with Israel on the so-called issue of "terrorism" ought to be carefully scrutinized. What Israel is doing in occupied Palestine and currently in Lebanon is collective punishment, proscribed by the Geneva Convention and grossly in violation against international laws governing the inter-state system after 1945. Israel's leaders perceive every Palestinian man, woman, and child as a legitimate target for physical liquidation, if not subjugation, through the force of arms. In the current aggression against Lebanon, Israeli leaders have repeatedly referred to Lebanese civilians as indistinguishable from Hezbollah and have carried out indiscriminate attacks against civilians under the pretext of fighting "terrorists." Why should India continue participation in any "Joint Working Group" with Israel on the issue of "terrorism" when this term is used openly by the leadership of that country as a code word to refer to every Palestinian and Lebanese individual? There are already historical and contemporary precedents for such official attitudes in the bloody excesses by the armed state, including paramilitaries and police forces in Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Manipur, and Andhra Pradesh, where critics and opponents of the government's policies ended up labeled as "terrorists" and were frequently targeted for physical violence. Since the advent of Hindutva's grip on the Indian elite imagination, Muslims have been frequently targeted and collectively impugned as "terrorists" even as genocidal state-sponsored violence against Muslims in Gujarat has not resulted in any punitive actions against responsible Hindutva organizations. Has the Indian state already begun emulating its new friend in more ways than it would like to admit? It would be a stretch to suggest that India has learned all these awful things from Israel, but it does not inspire much confidence to know that India's leaders are busy building a regime of collaboration on "terrorism" with Israel, a state that so blatantly uses the term to justify its militaristic brutality against civilians in Palestine and Lebanon. Such collaboration helps expand the reach of undemocratic regimes of impunity enjoyed by the ruling interests in the Indian state, and works against the general interests of the people, particularly those already rendered vulnerable by existing inequalities in access to physical security, legal rights and protections under the law.

In conclusion, it would be in India's best interests to sever military ties with Israel immediately -- on ethical and political grounds, but also pragmatic and security grounds. India should not have anything to do with an openly expansionist state that has relegated the very meaning of the term democracy to irrelevance by its adherence to the ideology and practice of racism, state terrorism, and unrelenting brute force against the peoples of the lands it covets. India should not seek to purchase weapons of destruction from such a state, especially when these purchases are made at the expense of the needs of its own population, and when the increasing stockpiles of such weapons increase the collective vulnerability and insecurity of the entire population. India should cease collaborating with a state that relegates, with impunity, entire populations to the category of expendable human beings to be subjugated, their lands and resources stolen from them and in case of the slightest forms of resistance their bodies destroyed by advanced weapons. No country calling itself a democracy can continue to do so if its leaders see it fit to embrace a state like Israel even while the cries of human beings crushed by that aggressive expansionist state tear at the collective conscience of our humanity. Alienating the rest of the world in the pursuit of some sense of power, however real or illusory that may be, is not pragmatic, if pragmatism is to be seen as the means by which the best interests of the people of India are to be served. It is time for India to wrench itself free from Israel's deadly embrace. Perhaps when Israel abandons its current trajectory, the issue of friendship can and ought to be revisited in earnest, but until then the Indian government ought to bid the Israeli government and its armed establishment a sincere goodbye.

1 July 2006 War on Lebanon Blog -- figures compiled from Lebanese media. The blog provides daily updates by volunteers working with refugees and victims of the war. Updates on the lives of refugee children coming to terms with trauma and loss are particularly notable and have been featured on the Guardian's website.

2 Samidoun: "SAMIDOUN is a grassroots coalition that aims to work in a democratic and participatory atmosphere. The coalition is multi-confessional and diverse in terms of nationality. The coalition is also diverse in its composition in terms of supporting organizations, from student groups, to the gay and lesbian center, to arts and film production collectives, to small political parties, to environmental groups. But the bulk of the work is through young volunteers from all over the country, some of whom are refugees themselves" (Samidoun, "Who We Are").

3 "A Banner Year for Israeli Arms Exports," Business Week, 7 March 2005.

4 Aharon Klieman, A Double-Edged Sword. Israeli Defence Exports in the 1990's, qtd. in Oren Persico, "Arms unto the Nations," Globes Online (an Israeli business daily), 5 May 2003.

5 Jane Hunter, "Israeli Foreign Policy: Weapons Manufacturing Industry," Israeli Foreign Policy, South End Press, 1987.

6 Persico, op. cit.

7 Rahul Bedi, "Moving Closer to Israel," Frontline 20.4, 15 - 28 February 2003. See, also, P.R. Kumaraswamy, "Indo-Israeli Ties: The Post-Arafat Shift," Power and Interest News Report, 9 March 2005.

8 The Washington Consensus refers to the minimum range of economic policies aggressively advocated by the U.S. through Washington-based institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. The "consensus" sought to enforce neoliberal prescriptions on countries of the third world in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and centered on privatization of state assets, liberalization of trade, deregulation of markets, and the withdrawal of the state from its social responsibilities manifest most obviously in the enforcement of drastic budget cuts in social spending advocated by supporters of this "consensus." The "consensus" essentially sought to force countries of the third world to reorient and subordinate their economic activities under the umbrella of U.S. led global capitalist interests. See "Unraveling the Washington Consensus, An Interview with Joseph Stiglitz," Multinational Monitor 21.4, April 2000.

9 Subhash Kapila, "India-Israel Relations: The Imperatives for Enhanced Strategic Cooperation," South Asia Analysis Group, Paper No 131, 1 August 2000.

10 Dominic Coldwell, "Still in the Closet, Barely," Al Ahram Weekly Online 449, 30 September - 6 October 1999.

11 "Jaswant's Israel Visit to Focus on Terrorism," The Times of India, 1 November 2000.

12 Ninan Koshy, "US Plays Matchmaker to India, Israel," Asia Times Online, 10 June 2003.

13 "High-level Visits," Frontline 19.2, 19 January - 1 February 2002.

14 "India Congratulates Olmert As Israel PM," Israel News Agency, 13 May 2006.

15 "Ehud Positive on Indo-Israel Ties," The Tribune, 28 November 2004.

16 "Bilateral Relations: Historical Overview," Israel Diplomatic Network, Embassy of Israel, New Delhi, July 2006.

17 Sultan Shahin, "India's Startling Change of Axis," Asia Times Online, 13 May 2003.

18 "India and Israel to Further Strengthen Military Ties: Report," Outlook India, 19 January 2005. See, also, "Israel to Sell 50 Heron UAV's to India," India Defence, 11 August 2005.

19 Harsh V. Pant, "India-Israel Partnership: Convergence and Constraints," The Middle East Review of International Affairs 8.4, December 2004. See, also, "India-Israel Economic and Commercial Relations," Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.


http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/swamy300806.html

The official version of events raises scores of doubts. The team wanted simple clarifications from the Commissioner of Police, Nagpur and approached him continuously for five days. That the Commossioner persistently declined to meet the team and answer these simple queries, reveal his unwillingness and/or his inability to answer these questions.

It also suggests that he chose to hide certain facts. And this leads the team to question the veracity of the Commissioner of Police's narration of the encounter. The Cock and bull story of the encounter thus compels the team to infer that the encounter appears to be fake and requires, in the interest of the nation, a fair probing.

Constituent member organizations:

People's Union for Civil Liberties,

Nagpur Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights,

Mumbai Dharma Nirapeksh Nagarik Manch, Nagpur

Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee,

Hyderabad Indian Association of People's Lawyers Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti

List of Members

Head of the Team, Justice B G Kolse Patil, Rtd Judge of Mumbai High Court, Convenor, Dr Suresh Khairnar,
Members Dr Anand Teltumde, CPDR, Mumbai; Adv. P Suresh Kumar, Andra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, Hyderabad; Mr Ahmed Latif Khan, Civil Liberty Monitoring Committee, Hyderabad; Dr D John Chelladurai, India Peace Centre, Nagpur; Mr Nagesh Choudhury, Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti, Nagpur; Mr Arvind Ghosh, PUCL, Nagpur; Adv. Anil Kale, Indian Assn of People's Lawyers; Adv. Surendra Gadling, Indian Assn of People's Lawyers; Mr Gaffar Shakir, Dharma Nirapeksha Nagarik Manch, Nagpur; Mr Ashish K Ghosh, PUCL, Nagpur; Mr Arvind Deshmukh, Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti, Nagpur; Mr T V Kathane, Nagpur, Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti,Nagpur; Adv. Anand Gajbhiye, IAPL, Nagpur

Introduction

The nation awoke on June 01, 2006 hearing the shocking news of an attempted attack on the RSS headquarters building. It was a respite that the news of police foiling the attempt too came along.

The news of attempted attack on the Head Quarters of the RSS reportedly by fidayeens of a Pak based terrorist group, sent a spine chilling fear in the minds of millions of peace loving people in the country. We all know very well, the potential of such a happening to ignite a trail of tragic clashes among the communities. The peace loving masses heaved a sigh of relief as the leaders of every community promptly condemned the heinous act and appealed to the masses to maintain peace, and peace did prevail. In the next twenty four hours quite a lot of information, almost all the information pertaining to the attackers had been published obviously supplied by the police department to the media.

The narrative of the whole encounter as reported on June 02, 2006, instead of clearing the mystery of the attackers, unfortunately confounded the citizens all the more. The reports were conflicting and left innumerable questions on ground zero situation unanswered.

The foiled attempt and the appreciable tranquility maintained by the masses were a great relief. However the deadly weapon and ammunition with which the 'fidayeens' (as told by the Commissioner of Police) appeared, and the ease with which the police claimed to have liquidated them, suggested that the Police team had a 'cake walk' over the deadly terrorists. The very next day a section of the media aired their doubt over the whole happening (as reported by the Police Commissioner), most of them quoting wide sections of the national community, including senior leaders.

The peace loving social activists and campaigners for communal harmony based in Nagpur were at first relieved by the success of the police over the terrorists. However the confounding report that appeared in the media and the doubts aired by masses and leaders prompted them to read between the lines. Particularly, the 'Islamic' terrorist attempting to attack RSS Head Quarters has a larger implication. It has the potential to push the nation into a communal strife. Scuh a thing should not be allowed to happen in any manner, orchestrated by any group. The confounding report of the 'encounter' therefore requires an honest study.

The above stated social organizations, hence constituted a fact finding team comprised of the above mentioned activists. The team is