SACW | 17 Oct 2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  17 October,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Human security in Bangladesh (Zafar Sobhan)
[2] Bangladesh / Pakistan:  Professor Anisuzzaman 
of Dhaka University talks about literature and 
secularism in Bangladesh and identifies ground 
for a struggle alongside Pakistani intellectuals
[3] The sectarian conflict is an unpleasant 
reality in today's Pakistan (Arif Jamal )
[4] India: Nailing RSS (D R Goyal)
[5] India: "CBFC, Kher etc." Press Release by 
Campaign Against Censorship / Films For Freedom
+ Report "Documentary producers' associations welcome sacking of Anupam Kher"
[6] India: Confessions were forced in Dec. 13 Case (Nirmalangshu Mukherji)
[7] Upcoming film screening : 'DESI: South Asians in New York '


--------------

[1]


The Daily Star
October 17, 2004
  	 
HUMAN SECURITY IN BANGLADESH
Zafar Sobhan

These days security seems to be the burning issue 
on everybody's lips. In the aftermath of the 8/21 
grenade attack and other bomb blasts and arms 
hauls that remain unresolved, no one could 
seriously argue that the question of security is 
not of paramount concern in Bangladesh today.

Nor do I wish to downplay the importance of 
traditional security concerns, which remain 
crucial to the well-being of the nation. But 
today I would like to focus on a subject that I 
feel is equally critical but that has been more 
or less ignored within the debate on security as 
a whole.

This is the subject of human security and what we 
can do to counter threats to human security in 
Bangladesh.

The concept of human security was developed as a 
means to try to broaden the conventional security 
agenda. Before the concept of human security 
gained currency, traditional security concerns 
addressed military threats to the state -- 
security threats envisaged efforts to destabilise 
or overthrow a government or political system.

Gradually the idea gained acceptance that a state 
can face many kinds of threats to its security 
that are not military. The acknowledgement of 
non-traditional security thus expanded the scope 
of security concerns to encompass concepts such 
as food security or energy security or 
environmental security -- the idea being that 
insecurity in any of these arenas could be as 
much of a threat to a nation's security as a 
traditional military threat. But the focus -- or 
referent -- of such security threats remained the 
state.

The concept of human security was developed 
alongside a recognition of the fact that it is 
the security of the individual more than that of 
the state that should be of pre-eminent concern 
to policy-makers and the administration.

The policy focus is now more on the security and 
safety of the individual and not on either 
traditional or non-traditional security threats 
to the state -- and it is in this light that I 
believe Bangladesh's security concerns must be 
addressed. It is important to keep in mind that 
shifting the emphasis from the state to the 
individual in no way diminishes the importance of 
traditional concepts of security -- traditional 
security threats to the state also count as 
threats to human security as ultimately it is the 
individual who suffers the most.

So what do we mean by human security? There have 
been many definitions coined over the years -- 
some more expansive than others -- but most have 
concentrated on freedom from fear and freedom 
from want. There has often been some tension 
between the West -- which has focused more on 
freedom from fear -- and Asia -- which has 
focused more on freedom from want -- but it seems 
to me that human security must encompass both 
these freedoms, and that for many human security 
threats it is neither possible nor helpful to 
deconstruct them into either one or the other.

Human security is perhaps best defined as freedom 
from violence (either man-made or natural), a 
state that does not oppress its own people, and 
conditions within which the means of livelihood 
can be earned. This is what we mean when we speak 
of human security and these are the indexes 
according to which we need to measure human 
security in Bangladesh.

Human insecurity is indivisible. It is not 
possible to be secure in one of the three ways 
outlined above if you are not safe in the other 
two ways. If a person is not safe from threats of 
violence then this diminishes or negates his or 
her ability to earn a living. Freedom from 
violence and state oppression is meaningless in 
the absence of means of livelihood, and if one's 
security is threatened by the state then one's 
freedom from violence or freedom to earn a living 
cannot be secured with any certainty.

Human security threats can also evolve into 
threats to the state due to their suddenness, 
scale, or severity. A good example of this is 
HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, which began as a 
public health problem, but has reached such a 
scale that it constitutes a legitimate security 
threat to the entire region. The destitution and 
parentlessness caused by the disease have 
decimated local populations, and apart from the 
massive strain put on health-care resources and 
facilities, the shrinking of the work-force and 
near collapse of institutions and law and order 
have threatened the continued functioning of the 
affected states.

One human security threat can also evolve into 
another due to linkages between the two, which 
can eventually threaten the state as a whole. 
Environmental threats such as floods are a good 
example of this. Floods can cause massive 
hardship for people in flood-hit communities or 
countries -- as happened recently in Bangladesh 
-- and this can lead to large scale migration 
that in turn creates a whole host of difficulties 
in the area to which the flood-affected people 
converge.

Human security threats cannot typically be 
localised or contained and this is why, left 
unchecked, they almost always metastasize into 
threats to national security. Who among us would 
argue that floods do not have the potential to 
threaten national security every bit as much as 
bombs and grenades do?

The question is, of course, who bears 
responsibility for securing us from these threats 
to human security and what we, as individuals, 
can do to secure ourselves.

Bangladesh is a relatively young country that is 
still developing both economically and 
politically. Many if not most of our democratic 
institutions have not been fully developed and 
concepts such as citizenship or civil society are 
still in their infancy. It is for these reasons 
that I believe the lion's share of responsibility 
for human security must fall to the state.

When we shift the focus from traditional security 
to human security, we are shifting the answer to 
the question "whose security?" but not to the 
question "whose responsibility?" The focus may 
now be on the security of the individual, but the 
responsibility must remain the state's.

If Bangladesh were more developed -- economically 
and politically -- and if we had a better 
developed sense of civil society -- then perhaps 
the state could take a back-seat role and leave 
it to the people to safeguard their own security. 
But this is not the case in Bangladesh. In 
addition, when the state -- through its action 
and inaction -- is either directly or indirectly 
the cause of much of the human insecurity in the 
country, then it stands to reason that no human 
security solution which does not contemplate a 
leading role for the state will be effective.

This is not to say that civil society has no role 
or that civil society in Bangladesh has not been 
astonishingly productive when it comes to 
safeguarding our human security and performing 
functions which should be the state's 
responsibility.

It is civil society which must hold the state 
accountable for its failures, it is civil society 
which must organise, mobilise, and educate the 
public, and influence, pressure, and educate 
policy-makers. It is civil society that must 
expend its energies to reform the state because 
left to itself the state will never do so.

But ultimately the responsibility for 
safeguarding human security must lie with the 
state, and in Bangladesh, this responsibility 
remains unfulfilled.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.

______



[2]

The News on Sunday [Pakistan]
October 17, 2004

interview
'WE HAVE A COMMON CAUSE'

Professor Anisuzzaman of Dhaka University talks 
about literature and secularism in Bangladesh and 
identifies ground for a struggle alongside 
Pakistani intellectuals

By Zaman Khan

"We conceived Bangladesh as a secular, democratic 
and socialist country. But soon after, to our 
misfortune, we had a military rule. Not once but 
twice in a short period of time. It was then that 
the secular character of the constitution was 
distorted," said Professor Anisuzzaman speaking 
to TNS on the sidelines of a conference in 
Colombo recently.

A reputed teacher of Bengali literature, 
Anisuzzaman taught at Dhaka University from where 
he retired last year. He has also taught in some 
prestigious universities of Europe and America.

Anisuzzaman was born in Calcutta in 1937, and his 
family moved to East Pakistan in 1947. He did his 
doctorate in Dhaka, and was one of the many 
Bengalis who crossed over into India in 1971-- 
becoming a refugee a second time. He came back 
after the creation of Bangladesh.

Professor Anisuzzaman is currently associated 
with a couple of journals -- an English-language 
art journal and a Bengali literary monthly.

The 1946 Hindu Muslim riots in Bengal left an 
indelible mark on the mind of a young Anisuzzaman 
and he became a committed secularist. But the 
situation in his country makes him sad: "We are 
not striving for a just society now. We have 
become a captive to market economy. In the last 
three years we have seen that the religious and 
ethnic minorities in Bangladesh have been very 
badly treated. There is a systematic campaign 
against the Ahmadis and also in the background an 
impending campaign against Shias. All this makes 
me very sad because we thought that a free 
Bangladesh would also be free from this sort of 
sectarianism and obstructionism."

One of his earliest memories he has are that of 
'Asian Writers Conference' held in Delhi in 
December 1956. He attended as the youngest member 
of the Pakistani delegation from East Pakistan. 
The delegation was headed by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

When the constitution of Bangladesh was being 
made, Anisuzzaman was given the responsibility to 
look at it from the perspective of language 
(Bengali). Later on, in one of its judgements, 
the Supreme Court of Bangladesh held that at the 
time of interpretation, Bengali version of the 
constitution should be consulted as the final 
version.

Professor Anisuzzaman is a keen reader of Bengali 
literature: "Bengal produced great writers like 
Rabindranath Tagore and Qazi Nazrul Islam. Even 
today, we have produced quite a number of 
significant writers who have combined their art 
work with their social responsibility. I would 
say that a reasonably good literature is being 
produced in Bangladesh, all of this in not world 
class but some of it is. For example Waliullah's 
first novel which was first published in 1948 was 
translated into English and French and was 
received very well. If you can make a selection 
of some of Suleman's poems, perhaps it can come 
up to the world standards."

Poetry, he thinks, has been a productive area in 
Bengali literature and he counts the names of 
Jaswanti, Shamsul Khan, Al Mamoon and others. 
Novel has touched the popularity of poetry in 
Bangladesh. "Syed Waliullah was the first to 
introduce the 'stream of consciousness' theme in 
our novels. Then Abu Ishaq wrote very realistic 
novels with countryside as the background. 
Shaukat Usman who has been writing since before 
the partition continued with his novels of social 
reality. Shaeedullah Qaiser, based his novels 
both in the countryside and cities like Calcutta 
and Dhaka and it represents the Bengal of modern 
Muslim middle class and its psyche. The prolific 
and popular Humayun Ahmed is among the new crop 
of novelists," he said.

One of Humayun's first novels '1971' was about a 
village where the Pakistan army committed 
atrocities. His last novel published this year 
also on war of liberation. "It is a comparatively 
voluminous book because he usually writes shorter 
novel. It portrays not only about atrocities but 
goes deep into the human psyche and the emotions 
of the people bringing out different sentiments 
and reactions in times of crisis. In some cases 
there is unexpected heroism, in other cases there 
is fear. He has done very well. His novel '1971' 
has been translated into English and made into a 
movie," said Professor Anisuzzaman.

After Bangladesh's creation, playwrights have 
produced original plays and also good 
adaptations, mainly of European originals. "From 
1972 onwards, we have had a people's theatre or 
group theatre. These are amateur artists but 
fully devoted. They have done very well," he 
said. Among playwrights he mentions the names of 
Abdullah Almamoon and Saleemuddin. Munir Chaudhry 
and Syed Ali Hasan he rates as good critics and 
Badruddin Omar, Sirajuzzaman Chaudhry and 
Jalil-ur-Rehman Siddique as worthy essayists.

Professor Anisuzzaman does not rate Tasleema 
Nasreen as a very good novelist: "Persecution of 
religious minorities is a very strong theme for a 
novel, but she could not do justice to it. Her 
treatment was not good. Her poetry is good and so 
are the literary columns she has contributed to 
Bengali journals. She has since devoted herself 
to writing autobiographical narratives, which 
have also become a centre of controversy."

Professor Anisuzzaman, however, says that Nasreen 
has the courage to write what she believes in, 
being "a feminist of sorts writing against male 
domination and against very oppressive society." 
And he thinks the circumstance in which she was 
forced to leave the country was very unfortunate. 
"Even if one does not agree with one's writings, 
one cannot deny one's right to live. One must 
defend her/his right to life," he said.

Pakistani literature does not find an audience in 
Bangladesh because there are very few translators 
who can translate from Urdu. "I don't think even 
they can translate any contemporary Pakistani 
literature and as for English translations, the 
readers do not receive much," he said. "Faiz has 
been translated into Bengali since 1950s. Faiz is 
very well known."

About the role of Pakistani writers in 1971, he 
said: "There was an information gap on both 
sides. We know that it was problem for the 
writers from Pakistan to respond to facts. There 
were general expectations that writers, artists, 
intellectuals would rise in protest. But we think 
that still we have common problems to fight 
against and a common cause."

Professor Anisuzzaman thinks that the situation 
is very bad in Bangladesh with particular 
reference to minorities. "If those belonging to a 
minority group call themselves Muslims, as do the 
Ahmadis, who are we to declare them non-Muslims?" 
he asked.

And the hope for the revival of secularism in 
Bangladesh is fading. "Secular forces came to 
power again in 1996 but they did not revive 
secularism. At the moment the possibility is 
remote because anti-secular forces are united and 
the secular forces are not. This revival can 
happen if there is a large coalition of secular 
force. For example the recent incident of attack 
on Hasina has united secular forces," he 
concluded.

______



[3]

News on Sunday, October 17, 2004

Now, more intense
THE SECTARIAN CONFLICT IS AN UNPLEASANT REALITY IN TODAY'S PAKISTAN.

It cannot be overcome with administrative 
measures alone -- most of which have been 
cosmetic so far

By Arif Jamal

The current wave of sectarian violence shows that 
the government has failed to curb the activities 
of the banned jihadi and sectarian groups with 
strict administrative measures.

The first ten days of October have been 
particularly bloody. The month of October started 
with a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Sialkot 
on October 1. More than 30 Shia worshippers died 
in the attack. The attack was followed by a car 
bomb at the Millat-i-Islamia (formerly 
Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan) convention on the 
occasion of the first death anniversary of 
Maulana Azam Tariq on October 7 in Multan. More 
than 40 participants died in the explosion.

Two days later, unknown gunmen killed Mufti 
Mohammad Jamil Khan and Maulana Nazeer Taunsavi, 
two leaders of the Almi Majlis Khatme Nabuwat, in 
Karachi. Next day, an unrecognised person carried 
out a suicide attack in a Shia mosque in Lahore. 
The assassin blew himself up and the guards when 
they intercepted him. At least four people 
including the attacker died.

The current wave of sectarian violence appears to 
be the continuation of the 20-year old conflict 
with all its brutality. General Ziaul Haq's 
support to the jihadi and sectarian groups, which 
supported his military rule at home during the 
Afghan jihad has created unmanageable monsters. 
The creators no longer appear in control of the 
situation.

The sectarian groups used to carry out sectarian 
violence on the pattern of non-sectarian violence 
in the country before the 9/11 attacks in the 
United States. The sectarian violence became 
intense and brutal after the jihadis had to leave 
Afghanistan after the US attack. The sectarian 
terrorists started using suicide attacks to 
perpetuate sectarian violence in Pakistan in the 
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York and 
Washington. Suicide attacks were unknown in 
Pakistan in the pre-9/11 period and were largely 
associated with the al-Qaeda network. Although 
the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups never used them in 
Pakistan.

A new mode of violence has been introduced during 
the current wave of sectarian conflict: a car 
bomb. It is for the first time that the 
terrorists have used a car bomb in Pakistan. In 
the past, they once used motorcycle bomb in the 
mid-1990s against the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan 
leaders. If past is any guide, they are likely to 
used this mode of violence more frequently in the 
future.

The government first tried to explain the suicide 
attack on the Shia mosque in terms of a reaction 
to the death of Amjad Farooqi, who was allegedly 
involved in the suicide attacks on General Pervez 
Musharraf in December 2003, in an encounter with 
security agencies in the town of Nawabshah a few 
days earlier. Farooqi was allegedly involved in 
the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl 
also. Thus he was a most wanted terrorist. Later, 
when the attacks and suicide attacks became 
frequent and intense, the government took some 
administrative measures by banning the ijtimas of 
the already banned groups. Currently, the 
security agencies are also arresting real or 
potential terrorists from the banned jihadi and 
sectarian groups.

The intense sectarian conflict has once again 
shown that the government has miserably failed to 
stop the banned groups from functioning under 
different names. All the banned jihadi and 
sectarian groups have been functioning under 
different names without much difficulty since 
General Musharraf banned them on 12 January 2002. 
So far, the administration has hardly taken any 
measures to implement the ban except arresting 
and later releasing some of the cadres of these 
groups. The police start arresting some of the 
cadres of these groups every time there is an 
escalation in the sectarian conflict. They are 
mostly released after the sectarian violence 
subsides.

The organisational infrastructures of the banned 
groups, which now function under new names, have 
mostly remained intact. They have mostly the same 
office bearers. None of them has gone underground 
after the January 12 ban. There are two 
exceptions though -- both Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and 
Sipah-i-Mohammad remain underground. Other banned 
groups are still operating mostly out of their 
old office premises. Some of them have shifted to 
new premises. They are still bringing out the 
same periodical publications, mostly under the 
old names. They are discreetly raising funds and 
holding ijtimas without any fear.

The administrative measures to implement the ban 
have mostly been cosmetic. The huge rally on the 
occasion of the first death anniversary of 
Maulana Azam Tariq in Multan is one such example. 
This was first shown when Maulana Azam Tariq 
contested and won the general elections in 2002 
despite a ban on his party. Later, he also had 
the unique honour of helping former Prime 
Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali to win the prime 
ministerial race with his vote.

The government has tried to make a scapegoat out 
of the nazim of Multan for allowing the 
Millat-i-Islamia to hold its convention on the 
first death anniversary of Maulana Azam Tariq. 
The nazim must have given the permission to the 
Millat-i-Islamia in view of the fact that the 
dead leader of the party was a member of the 
incumbent National Assembly and the party was 
freely functioning in the country. The 
Millat-i-Islamia ran a publicity campaign 
throughout the country before the convention but 
the government did not move to ban the 
convention. The banned groups have not stopped 
holding public rallies under new names even after 
another ban on their rallies. They rarely seek 
permission from the local administration.

The sectarian conflict and violence is an 
unpleasant reality in today's Pakistan. The other 
reality is that it is becoming more and more 
intense. Yet another reality is that the 
administrative measures have so far failed to 
eliminate this threat. Unless the government 
accepts these realities, it cannot remove the 
threat of sectarian violence. The problem of 
sectarianism cannot be overcome with 
administrative measures alone while the state is 
in an alliance with some of them. The government 
needs a very strong political will to eliminate 
the threat of sectarianism.


______


[4]

sify.com
Friday, 08 October , 2004, 20:32

NAILING RSS
By D R Goyal

Inside information by a former RSS swayamsewak 
proves that the militantly anti-secularist 
organisation was directly complicit in planning 
one of the most heinous assassinations in human 
history.

That the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) is a 
past-master at lying brazenly to defend its 
conspiratorial past has been proved by its 
repeated denial of any association or 
responsibility for the crime of having supported, 
in either form or intent, the killing of Mahatma 
Gandhi. Its good fortune - and the nation's 
misfortune - is that the Bharatiya Janata Party 
(BJP), an RSS affiliate, is suffering from such 
amnesia, or complacency, that when the issue is 
even lightly touched on by one of its senior 
leaders, the bulk of the party prefers to 
dissociate itself from the issue, thus allowing 
the outfit to mislead the public by loud 
protestations and by threatening to file a 
defamation suit. I am not sure that this is not 
an empty threat - there is so much evidence that 
proves that Nathuram Godse was actively 
associated with the organisation and was inspired 
to do the dirty deed by the ideology that gave 
birth to the RSS. The organisation's lies have 
been nailed by no less a person than Nathuram's 
own brother, Gopal Godse.

In an interview to Frontline magazine (January 
28, 1994), he said, "All the brothers were in the 
RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You 
can say we grew up in RSS rather than in our 
home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had 
become a baudhik karyavah (intellectual teacher) 
in the RSS. He had said in his statement that he 
had left RSS. He said this because Golwalkar and 
the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder 
of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS."

When confronted with Advani's claim that Nathuram 
had nothing to do with RSS, he replied that he 
had countered Advani by saying, "It is cowardice 
to say that. You can say that RSS did not pass a 
resolution saying 'go and assassinate Gandhi'."

Apart from denying his association with Nathuram, 
the outfit has been using the time-tested 
technique of all liars. Selective quotations from 
the correspondence of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel 
are cited to suggest that the then home minister 
did not believe that the RSS had committed the 
crime. Patel's letter had been addressed to Nehru 
in February 1948. But in a letter to RSS founder, 
Dr Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, written in July that 
year, when more facts were probably unearthed, he 
squarely blamed the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, 
saying, "AsŠthe case relating to Gandhiji's 
murder is sub judice I would not like to say 
anything about the participation of these two 
organisations, but our reports do confirm that, 
as a result of the activities of these two 
bodies, particularly by the former (i.e., RSS), 
an atmosphere was created in the country in which 
such a ghastly tragedy became possible."

He went on to write, "The activities of the RSS 
constituted a clear threat to the existence of 
the Government and the state."

Neither this letter nor one from Patel to Madhav 
Sadashiv Golwalkar himself, in which the ban on 
the RSS was justified, is talked about. Golwalkar 
was told that the speeches of the RSS men "were 
full of communal poison. It was not necessary to 
spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and 
organise for their protection. As a final result 
of the poison, the country had to suffer the 
sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji." In 
the same letter, Patel pointed out that popular 
opposition to the RSS turned serious "when the 
RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets 
after Gandhiji's death".

Rather than being penitent, asserting that it was 
not the RSS but Nathuram, on his own, who had 
fired the shots, is like saying that it wasn't 
Nathuram but a pistol that had killed Gandhi. 
After all, the man who risks his life to take 
somebody else's is motivated by ideas; in this 
case, Nathuram had imbibed them from the RSS. 
Nathuram was the instrument of that ideology, 
just as the pistol was Nathuram's instrument. It 
should, therefore, be examined whether RSS 
training could have inspired his intense hatred 
against Gandhi.

Godse's strongest claim to innocence is based on 
the court judgment, which had held only Godse 
guilty and not any organisation. That was because 
the Indian Penal Code then in force had no 
provision for proceeding against organisations 
spreading hatred. The lacuna was removed in 1972 
through an amendment. Therefore, a court 
judgement based on the old IPC should not be 
treated as a valid alibi.

Vinayak Damodar "Veer" Savarkar had been arrested 
and punished not because he had killed Curzon 
Wylie, but because he had incited and inspired 
the killer, Madan Lal Dhingra. British law did 
not suffer from the handicap that the IPC did, 
particularly because there is enough evidence.

In this regard, I find my own experience 
significant. I had become an RSS activist as a 
teenager way back in 1940-41 as a reaction to the 
Muslim League's Pakistan resolution. The Congress 
had no children's wing and for the nascent 
political consciousness of a teenager, the RSS 
provided the only expression.

The intellectual food that I had got till 1948 
was such that I was averse to seeing Gandhi's 
face. I was then working in a Hindi daily, Milap, 
and was assigned the duty to report Gandhi's 
speeches at the prayer meetings. Instead of going 
to Birla House, I would report his speech with 
the aid of the radio broadcast. The only day I 
decided to go to a prayer meeting was the day 
Madan Lal Pahwa hurled a bomb, which missed its 
target. I had gone because the RSS crowd was 
circulating the news that something of high 
importance was expected to occur.

A similar motivation impelled me to proceed in 
that direction on January 30, but before I could 
enter Birla House, I found people running and 
screaming that Gandhi had been killed. I ran back 
and entered the bungalow of Dr N B Khare, the 
prime minister of Alwar state who was then a 
member of the Constituent Assembly: I was aware 
of his sympathies for the RSS.

My experience is corroborated by the experience 
of another disillusioned swayamsewak who had 
written a letter to Sardar Patel after the 
assassination and which has been referred to by 
Gandhiji's private secretary Pyarelal in his 
book, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, and quoted 
by Justice J L Kapoor, who reviewed the case in 
1966. In that letter, the swayamsewak had asked 
"members of the RSS at some places to tune in the 
radio sets on the fateful Friday for the 'good 
news'."

Pyarelal has also mentioned an aborted attempt at 
assassination by these people in Poona in order 
to punish Gandhi for his campaign against 
untouchability. He said, "Their plans this time 
were far more systematic and thorough and 
included such refinements as conditioning the 
mind of youth for their prospective task by 
making them wear, as part of their training, 
photos of Congress leaders like Pandit Nehru and 
others, besides Gandhiji, inside their shoes, and 
using the same for target practice with fire-arms 
etc."

What kind of intellectual diet were the 
swayamsewaks fed? It is there in Bunch of 
Thoughts, a compilation of Golwalkar's 
ruminations, officially published in 1966. To 
give a comprehensive idea, one has to quote at 
length, especially to avoid being accused of the 
selectivity which the RSS itself indulges in. 
Accusing the Gandhi-Nehru leadership of "Muslim 
appeasement" in order to achieve Hindu-Muslim 
unity, he says, "The Hindu was asked to ignore, 
even submit meekly to the vandalism and 
atrocities of Muslims. In effect, he was told: 
Forget all that the Muslims have done in the past 
and all that they are now doing to you. If your 
worshipping in the temple, your taking out gods 
in procession in the streets irritates the 
Muslims don't do it. If they carry away your 
wives and daughters, let them. Do not obstruct 
them.

"Once a notable Hindu personality of those days, 
in a largely attended public meeting, declared: 
'There is no swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unityŠIn 
other words, the Hindu was told that he was 
imbecile, that he had no spirit, no stamina to 
stand on his own legs and fight for the 
independence of his motherland and all this had 
to be injected into him in the form of Muslim 
blood. What a shame, what a misfortune that our 
own leaders should have come forward to knock out 
the indomitable faith in ourselves and destroy 
our spirit of self-confidence and self-reliance, 
which is the very life-breath of a people! Those 
who declared 'No swaraj without Hindu-Muslim 
unity' have thus perpetrated the greatest treason 
to our society. They have committed the most 
heinous crime of killing the life-spirit of a 
great nation."

It is not difficult to imagine the effect of such 
propaganda on listeners who treat Golwalkar's 
words as no less than divine. Although Gandhiji's 
name has been included in the pratah-smarn 
(morning prayer), the attitude, in practice, 
remains unaltered. An editorial in 1961 in the 
Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece, commented that 
Gandhi's assassination was the result of anger 
caused by his insistence on stopping anti-Muslim 
killings and paying RS 55 crore to Pakistan as 
that new nation's post-Partition due share of the 
treasury. More recently, former RSS chief 
Rajendra Singh said that Godse's opposition to 
Gandhi was not wrong, only that his method was 
not right. The entire Sangh Parivar is still 
adamant on its refusal to accept Gandhi as the 
"Father of the Nation."

In 1948, they physically killed Gandhi. Since 
then, they have been systematically trying to 
kill his moral-political legacy, recent evidence 
of which was shamelessly brandished in Gandhi's 
home state of Gujarat under the dispensation of 
the brutal Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is 
being treated as a sacred cow by the RSS 
establishment. But metahistory will eventually 
prove the RSS in the wrong and complicit in one 
of the most heinous assassinations in human 
history.

Courtesy: Hardnews Syndication Service

______



[5]


[October 16, 2004]

PRESS RELEASE
CAMPAIGN AGAINST CENSORSHIP / FILMS FOR FREEDOM [India]

The last few days have seen much heat generated 
by the removal of Anupam Kher as Chairman of the 
CBFC.

The Campaign Against Censorship/Films for Freedom 
would like to draw attention to the fact that the 
Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in the 
last few years had become a political tool in the 
hands of the BJP and its allies to stifle dissent 
and prevent the right of film makers to reach out 
to the public with stories of critical importance.

The real issue before us is the urgent need to 
review the Censorship laws under the 
Cinematograph Act as well as the functioning of 
the CBFC to prevent political parties and their 
appointees from harassing and attacking film 
makers who could be politically opposed to their 
ideology.

Mr. Anupam Kher led one of the most repressive 
censorship regimes of recent times . Under the 
short one year tenure of Anupam Kher as Chairman, 
the CBFC already mired in controversy, has gone 
through one of its darkest periods. The targeting 
of films that dealt with the Gujarat massacres of 
2002, which the previous government had in 
particular a vested interest in stopping, exposed 
the partisan, authoritarian, and irresponsible 
use of the powers given to the CBFC. Mr. Kher and 
other officials of CBFC were directly responsible 
for the harassment faced by Rakesh Sharma (dir. 
of Final Solution). Final Solution went through a 
bizarre process of preview by CBFC. To begin with 
it was not even being accepted for preview on 
various pretexts; then it was denied a 
certificate for public exhibition with Mr. Kher 
making statements to the media defending the 
denial of certification and asserting that the 
film could not be publicly exhibited. The film 
was finally reviewed under immense public 
pressure and a certificate with no cuts was 
granted and now Mr. Kher claims it was his 
intervention that got the film a certificate! 
There are many other films that are still stuck 
with the CBFC.

The process began when the Regional Panels of the 
CBFC were stacked with political appointees with 
direct political links to the party in power (and 
mostly with no connection/interest in cinema). 
There was harassment of filmmakers at the censor 
board, and eventually the unprecedented step of 
the CBFC taking an aggressive and proactive stand 
in stopping screenings of "uncensored" films, 
often in collusion with right-wing political 
fronts. All of this happened with the knowledge 
of Shri Kher, if not at his behest. Mr. Kher was 
personally involved in attempting to disrupt the 
Films For Freedom festival in Bangalore earlier 
this year. He was aided in this attempt by 
members of the Hindu Jagran Manch who also 
claimed to be members of the regional board of 
the CBFC.

We also condemn the political censorship being 
imposed by Prasar Bharati on film-maker Prakash 
Jhas' recent film on Jayaprakash Narain 
(especially regarding those sections in the film 
that have critical references to the Emergency 
that was imposed by the Congress government). 
This clearly reiterates our belief that important 
public institutions like the CBFC and Prasar 
Bharati have been stripped of their independence 
and continue to be  used by political parties to 
simply further their narrow agendas.

To ensure freedom of expression and to strengthen 
democratic institutions there is therefore an 
urgent need to totally review the censorship laws 
under the Cinematograph Act as well as the 
functioning of the CBFC.

The Campaign against Censorship calls on all film 
makers, journalists, members of the media, 
democratic institutions and human rights 
organisations to join us in our demand to review 
and change the Cinematograph Act and all 
censorship laws and to create a  certification 
mechanism that is based on the principles of 
freedom of expression and justice, and which 
prevents political, moral and cultural policing 
of the media by all governments and political 
parties.


For further information (in Delhi) contact:
Amar Kanwar: 98102 16088 / 26516088;
Rahul Roy: 98103 95589 / 26515161;
Saba Dewan: 26515161/9810395589;
Shohini Ghosh: 98180 88378 / 22720703;
Sanjay Kak: 98112 29952 / 26893893;
Ranjani Mazumdar: 98180 89519 / 22723764


  o o o

[See also a related news report ]

http://news.newkerala.com/

Documentary producers' associations welcome sacking of Anupam Kher:

[India News]: Mumbai, Oct 16 : The controversy 
over removal of Anupam Kher as chairman of 
Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) took a 
new turn today, with two documentary producers' 
bodies welcoming the move and one of them 
admitting it had lodged its protest against the 
actor with the centre.
Ironically, the discontent over Anupam was voiced 
at a meeting organised by the film fraternity to 
garner support against the sacking of Kher, who 
they claim was victimised, citing irrelevant 
political connections.
Indian Documentary Producers' Association and 
Vikalp, representative bodies of short 
film-makers in the country, said they welcomed 
the move as the actor has misused the powers of 
the Censor Board and "harassed the film 
fratenity".
"Removal of CBFC chairman Anupam Kher and Censor 
Board Organisation's regional officer in Mumbai, 
is necessary but not sufficient step," 
documentary film-maker and Vikalp member Anand 
Patwardhan told reporters here.
Vikalp, along with Campaign Against 
Censorship/Films for Freedom (CAC/FFF), "welcomes 
the removal of non-liberal, pro- active Censor 
Board officials as a step towards redressing the 
regressive role played by CBFC in stifling all 
political dissent", Patwardhan read out from a 
statement.
The statement was signed by members of the Vikalp 
and CAC/FFF, including Rakesh Sharma, Sanjiv Shah 
and Anjali Monteiro among others.
Sharma's film `Final Solution', a documentary on 
Godhra carnage was alleged to have been delayed 
by Kher by not providing a certificate and also 
by not permitting to show the film in the country.


______



[6]

SACW |  Oct. 17, 2004

INDIA: CONFESSIONS WERE FORCED IN DEC. 13 CASE
by Nirmalangshu Mukherji *

In his submission before the Supreme Court in the 
Parliament attack case, the senior counsel Mr. 
Shanti Bhusan argued on Thursday that the 
confessions made by the accused Mohammad Afzal 
and Shaukat Hussain Guru were extracted from them 
by the Special Cell of the Delhi police under 
torture. Afzal and Shaukat were given death 
sentences by the High Court in its judgment of 29 
October, 2003. Their confessions formed a crucial 
evidence against them. In fact, Afzal's 
confessional statement is the only evidence for 
the identity of the terrorists who died in the 
attack, the names of organizations they belonged 
to, the hatching of the conspiracy from Pakistan, 
and the details of arms and ammunition brought 
from Kashmir.

The appeal against the High Court judgment by the 
defence is currently being heard by Justice Reddy 
and Justice Naolekar at the Supreme Court. On the 
fifth day of his submissions in defence of 
Shaukat Hussain Guru, Mr. Shanti Bhusan focused 
mostly on the validity of the confessions. He 
pointed out that the disclosure statement of the 
accused recorded by the police on 16 December 
2001 soon after their arrest already contained 
all the details of the official confession made 
later under POTA on 21 December 2001. If the 
disclosure statements were voluntarily made, they 
clearly showed that the accused were eager to 
confess to their alleged crime. Hence the accused 
could have been produced before a judicial 
magistrate on the 17th itself for a recording of 
the confession under the Criminal Procedure Code. 
Instead of taking this course, the police waited 
till the 19th when the POTA clauses were 
officially introduced in the case, and the 
confessions were recorded befor a police officer 
on 21 December. This suggests that the police 
wanted to use the convenience of POTA, and avoid 
the safegurds against forced confessions provided 
in the Code. So the possibility that both the 
disclosure statements and the confessions were 
extracted under torture can not be ruled out.

Mr. Shanti Bhusan also pointed out that the 
Deputy Commissioner of Police, who was empowered 
to record the confessions, gave a written order 
to his subordinate Assistant Commisioner of 
Police to produce the accused before the DCP at 
11.30 A.M. on 21 December 2001. As such, Mohammad 
Afzal, Shaukat Guru and SAR Geelani were produced 
at the appointed time. However, Geelani refused 
to make a confessional statement, and his 
statement to this effect was recorded by 11.55 
A.M. Then, instead of producing the next accused 
before the DCP for the confessions, they were 
taken away and brought back over three hours 
later when the recording of Shaukat's confession 
started at 3.30 P.M.; recording of Afzal's 
confession started at 7.30 P.M. The only 
explanation, according to Shanti Bhusan, is that, 
after Geelani refused to confess, the other two 
accused were subjected to further torture so that 
they fell in line before the recordings were 
resumed.

In view of these and other infirmities in the 
said confessions, and the long series of legal 
pronouncements that discouraged the use of 
confessions before the police, the bench asked if 
there was an explanation as to why such a 
confession was allowed under POTA. Interestingly, 
the bench itself reflected that this method could 
be needed only in those exceptional 
circumstances, such as operations in remote 
areas, in which a judicial magistrate may not be 
easily available. The case under discussion, in 
contrast, was handled in New Delhi.

Earlier, Mr. Shanti Bhusan had already pointed 
out that many individual statements in these 
confessions were in contradiction with other 
evidence produced by the prosecution. Mr. Shanti 
Bhusan's submission will resume on 26 October 
after the autumn recess.

(* Department of Philosophy, Delhi University)


______


[7]

  Malcolm X Library proudly presents:

DESI: South Asians in New York
Monday, October 18, 2004  6:00-8:00 pm

This documentary film is a groundbreaking 
tribute to the diversity and  dynamism of South 
Asians living in New York  City and the U.S. A 
Hindi word  meaning "countryman" or "people of 
the soil,"  desi refers to a broad, 
multicultural spectrum of South Asians- 
Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis,  Sri Lankans, 
Nepalese and others-who have  become an integral 
part of many  regions in the United States 
including  California. Illustrating the growing 
sense of shared identity here in America, 
Pakistani and Indian cab drivers  are seen 
uniting in a New York taxi strike as  nuclear 
tests explode on their  native subcontinent, 
threatening the outbreak  of war.

Directed by Allen  Glazeb & Shebana Coelho, 58 minutes, 2000, USA

Dr. Huma Ahmed-Ghosh of the Women's Studies  Dept 
at San Diego State  University will facilitate a 
post screening  discussion after the film.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at:  bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

Sister initiatives :
South Asia Counter Information Project :  snipurl.com/sacip
South Asians Against Nukes: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org
Communalism Watch: communalism.blogspot.com/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.