Ten Days in Modi's Constituency

Culmination of Eight Months of Save Democracy Campaign in Gujarat

by Shabnam Hashmi, December 22, 2007

In December 2006 a colleague of mine and I started a journey from the Dangs in South Gujarat and traveled to Kutch covering on the way almost all the districts. The mission was simple: to meet civil society groups and friends and ask them to join hands to defeat the communal forces in the coming elections. Many of whom we met thought we were crazy and Modi was invincible and the opposition too weak. Many of these were old Gandhians, who felt absolutely betrayed by the only alternative that existed in the state and felt dismayed at the communalization of the opposition itself.

Our intention initially was to put up a resistance at the ground level irrespective of what the opposition looked like. For us it was clear that the results were very crucial and they will have an impact on the future politics of this country.

During the eight long months that the Anhad team of young volunteers worked round the clock, the most interesting and challenging were the last ten days in Modi's own constituency.

Anhad during its almost a year long 'Save Democracy Campaign' covered 630 villages ( Three Youth Aman Karwans traveled across 25 districts covering 4-5 villages everyday, performing, singing, holding public meetings, screening films and distributing leaflets exposing the myth of Vibrant Gujarat, one lakh copies of the preamble of the Indian constitution were distributed , thousands of people signed the pledge to uphold the values of the constitution), organized three major Youth Conventions attended by thousands of young people, the process involved selection of delegates through a debate competition, then training the selected ones into public speech and sensitizing them to all basic political and social issues, Anhad organized the first public screening of Parzania, organized innumerable demonstrations, seminars, workshops in various parts of Gujarat, produced innumerable kinds of leaflets dealing with issues of democracy and exposing the myth of Developed Gujarat,
various posters, organized various music concerts and cultural evenings, culminating the Gujarat level programme with a motorcycle rally by 25 youth covering 22 district headquarters addressing media conferences and holding rallies and distributing leaflets. All these efforts were supported by over 20 Gujarat based organizations, networks and fellow activists and friends.

We conducted a small survey on December 1 and 2nd in Maninagar, Modi's constituency and the immediate response was to move into the constituency for the last 10 days of the campaign.

The decision was not easy because even though the earlier campaigns were also not risk free (and during these campaigns the activists were attacked in three different locations) but for the Maninagar campaign I wanted everyone's opinion and consent.

I explained to everyone that we could be attacked, injured, arrested at any time during these ten days. All the young Anhad activists emboldened by the success of the campaign across Gujarat were too enthusiastic to plunge into action.

We immediately left for Mani Nagar-Sanjay Sharma, Chandu Patel and Iin search of an office. I did not want to operate from Anhad's Ahmedabad office as it was half an away from Maninagar and we wanted to be there all the time. After a day's search we found an office near the Bhairav Nath Mandir, a small shop, enough to accommodate ten mattresses at night. Immediately computers, tables, banners, stationary etc were shifted and we started working for the launch of the campaign. We decided to start our work with the release of an appeal to women to defeat the forces of hatred as the atmosphere of hatred had engulfed the whole society and worst hit were women with the crime rate going up everyday against them. The appeal was signed by ten women and we organized a small launch ..Opened an exhibition on the status of women, released the appeal, Mallika Sarabhai, Ila Pathak, Sheba George and Sofiya Khan came and spoke at the meeting. We released a CD of peace songs sung by children from across India. The launch was attended by almost 500 people from around our office and covered well in the media.

We printed one lakh copies of a special leaflet for the citizens of Mani Nagar exposing the myth of development. The ten days that we spent there our young volunteers reached out to 80,000 households directly distributing the leaflet, talking to people, sharing with them their sorrows and conditions.

We were shocked to see the condition of Mani Nagar. Mani Nagar has five wards: Maninagar, Amraiwadi, Hatkeshwar, Bagh-e-Firdous and Khokhra. Total voters in Maninagar are 3,28,000. The conditions under which the poor live is no different from the worst slums that the reader might have visited. A Chief Minister who boasts of the highest development in his state can not provide the basic necessities of life like toilet and water to the people of his own constituency is shameful.

On December 8th, 2007 we decided to organize a youth meeting and a cultural evening at Dakshini Chawk. This place is the BJP stronghold within Maninagar and doing a programme against Modi in Dakshini was unheard of.

Sachin Pandya, Sanjay Sharma and I went to Dakshini Chawk around 11.10am to instruct the decorator and the sound engineer to start the arrangements for the evening programme.

As we stood there waiting for the decorator a white Maruti 800 arrived, there was a BJP scarf tied to the mirror inside. Our few posters were on notice boards at Dakshini Chawk and hundreds of leaflets had been distributed for the programme on the evening before. A man, who we were later informed was Parag Naik, came out from the car, very aggressively moved towards Sanjay took a leaflet, tore it off and threw it on the ground. I told him gently that it was easier to tear than to join. He moved towards me menacingly and started shouting, using extremely filthy and abusive language and threatening to repeat what was done to women in 2002. It was clear to us that we had to leave immediately from the spot.

We came back in the afternoon and with the help of friends who stood guard started the work. While the work was on ,Sanjay and I had to go back to office to finish some last minute arrangements. After sometime the PI (in Gujarat PI is like SHO of a police station) came and asked Sachin about the programme and while he explained the PI said:, ' agar koye lafda hua to sabko dekh loonga'. Sachin objected and said that we had the permission both from the Special Branch as well as from the corporation. He repeated,'ek ek ko band kar doonga'.

The programme went off well, a strong pro democracy programme asking people to defeat the forces of hatred. Mallika Sarabhai's group performed, she spoke, Digant Oza spoke, Gauhar Raza recited a poem, young speakers Manoj Sharma, Manisha Trivedi, Dev Desai, Sachin Pandya spoke, Sanjay Sharma and Keshu Bhai sang movement songs. There was stone throwing which we overlooked. After the programme the whole BJP gang surrounded us, shouting and abusing, we managed to leave, leaving all our exhibitions and banners at the venue. The choice was between getting physically attacked or leaving the stuff behind. Later the decorator charged us for a number of broken and missing chairs.

I filed a complaint against Parag Naik to the Police Commissioner next day for the morning incident. I asked in my complain if this can happen to a member of the National Integration Council , then what must be the condition of an ordinary person, who dares to dissent?. Nothing happened to him.

Our door to door campaign continued. Every morning three teams of 8-10 volunteers left and delivered the leaflets at doorsteps. In the evening everyone together went to the major crossings distributing a second leaflet. Late evenings were spent in organizing small corner meetings.

We sought permission to organize two more public meetings on 10th and 12th. The permission was not denied but it never came till well past the meeting timings so that we could not hold the meetings.

We asked for a permission to take out a rally on 13th. It was denied on the pretext that it will disturb law and order situation in Maninagar.

On 13th we organized a corner meeting at Hatkeshwar circle, sang secular, democratic songs, distributed roses to people and asked ten questions related to Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom struggle and the winners were given the Video CDs of Lage Raho Munnabhai. It was a great success. We then moved to the next circle and did a similar programme near the Khokhra circle.

While we were singing a song, suddenly Parag Naik appeared again. Parag Naik and his BJP goons again attacked us near Khokhra ciclethis time manhandling one of our fellow woman activist they physically attacked, hit her on the chest, twisted her arm, caught her by the neck and threatened to tear her clothes, forcibly took away her camera and took out the memory card, kicked at a panel with Gandhi's photograph and a quotation, threw away the roses which we were distributing, use highly objectionable and abusive language. As we tried to leave we were surrounded in smaller groups. A media photographer from a major English daily was bashed up and his roll taken out.

We faxed a complaint to the Police Commissioner. The media photographer decided not to file a complain. I reported the matter to his paper -well known English daily. They did not deem it fit to report.

On 14th morning three of our young activists Paresh Desai, Dharmendra Rathore and Sanjay Raval were inserting leaflets in the newspapers at 3am when they were surrounded by Parag Naik and his goons again, BJP goons called the called police and illegally detained all three of them, impounded the Anhad vehicle and the leaflets. They were released only after 13 hours. A FIR was registered against Anhad under for illegally distributing the leaflets!

The details of the all the attacks were faxed to the media. We organized a Dharna on 14th at the Police Commissioner's office and gave him a memorandum. Parag Naik kept on moving freely and even the day we sat on a dharna outside commissioner's office he came and parked his car behind our vehicle to show that he is above law.

Next morning all Gujarati newspapers reported: 'three Anhad activists were arrested for distributing illegal leaflets and a case has been registered against Anhad. A Delhi vehicle belonging to the organization has also been impounded. Anhad is a Delhi based organization headed by Shabnam Hashmi' . (As all the activists were Gujarati and 'Hindu' it was important for the media to establish a non-Gujarati and a 'Muslim' connection. )

The English media refused to report. When one paper did after I spoke to the editor it printed the police version.

A DCP came to the office after Police Commissioner's intervention, recorded my statement refused to record anything beyond the 8th incident as it was not under his purview. Nothing has moved after that.

On 16th December we again spent the day in Maninagar. Modi reached Mani Nagar around lunch time, perhaps first time in five years, went to 16 different localities in 4 hours asking people to vote for him.

Today a very well respected journalist has written an article on how even the police are not with Modi and RSS has deserted him and poor Modi is fighting the battle all alone. Where is he alone? The police, the local administration, the industrialists, the local media and even a major chunk of the national media stand with him.

The people who are not with him are: the poor and the marginalized; the activists, the social reformers, artists, film makers, writers, poets, intellectuals, people who still believe in the dream that we saw in 1947, people who will give their lives to save the values of the Indian Constitution.

Those who are eulogizing Modi and not taking any chances just in case he comes back have totally forgotten the power of the poor, illiterate and marginalized citizens of this country. They have forgotten that people of India have rejected authoritarian rule many times in this country.

Poor and the marginalized do not have to see the development on television screens and news paper pages, they live and experience it. According to the latest NSS Report on "Household Borrowing and Repayment, around 21 % of rural population in Gujarat spend less than Rs.12 per day to survive and around five percent population manages with even below Rs. 9 per day.

Modi is losing and his government is going. But his political defeat in elections is only the first step. The struggle to reclaim the hearts and the minds of the people is much more difficult. Will you join us ?

'Sabse Khatarnak Hota Hai Murda Shanti se Bhar Jana

Na Hona Tadap Ke Sab Sahan Kar Jana

Sabse Khatarnak Hota Hai Hamare Sapnon Ka Mar Jana'

Taslima Nasrin: Let Her Be

Times of India, 22 Dec 2007

In response to demands from a few religious fundamentalists, India's democratic and secular government has placed a writer of international repute under virtual house arrest. Shorn of all cant, that is what the Centre's treatment of Taslima Nasreen amounts to. She was forced into exile from her native Bangladesh because of the books she had written. Now it looks as if the UPA government is about to repeat the same gesture by placing intolerable restrictions on her stay in India.

She is living under guard in an undisclosed location. She will not be allowed to come out in public or meet people, including her friends. Without quite saying so, the government is clearly sending her a message that she isn't welcome in India and ought to leave. Earlier, she was turfed out of West Bengal by the state government. It's not quite clear who's ahead in the competition to pander to fundamentalist opinion, the Centre or the West Bengal government. Earlier, Left Front chairman Biman Bose had said that Taslima should leave Kolkata if her stay disturbed the peace, but had to retract the statement later. Now external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee echoes Bose by asking whether it is "desirable" to keep her in Kolkata if that "amounts to killing 10 people". In other words, if somebody says or writes something and somebody else gets sufficiently provoked to kill 10 people, then it is not the killer's but the writer's fault.

That is an astounding statement for the foreign minister of a liberal democratic state to make. The Greek philosopher Plato thought that artists were dangerous people and exiled them from his ideal Republic. But such views can hardly be reconciled with modern democracy, which survives on tolerance. Demo-cracy also accords a valuable place to the arts, where boundaries are pushed and new thinking becomes possible. Taslima's views on women's rights may seem threatening from the point of view of patriarchal codes governing society. That would explain why the animus towards her is not confined to Muslim conservatives, but includes Congress and Left luminaries.

The ministry of external affairs must think through the implications of what it is doing. If it forces Taslima out of the country, India will be placed on the same platform as Bangladesh, which is close to becoming a failed state. At a time when India's image is ascendant in world affairs the official guardians of that image must not act like weaklings who cave in to every illiberal or fundamentalist threat to this republic's constitutional values.

Will the Gujarat model of communal divide and rule be replicated at the national level ?

Indian Express
December 21, 2007

Is Gujarat the New India?
Pamela Philipose

The politics of polarisation, practised so successfully in the state, cannot be replicated at the national level


In this pregnant moment — after the final vote in the Gujarat assembly has been cast and before the first vote is counted — let’s pluck out one of those compelling questions currently circulating in the ether. Can the politics of communal polarisation practised successfully in Gujarat be replicated in the country? There is the argument that Modi’s model of governance has a certain resonance in the New, Resurgent India, which is impatient with the burdens of the past, and its legacy of poverty, backwardness and encrusted Nehruvian values. Gujarat, with its ‘winning’ combination of muscular cultural nationalism and unstoppable China-like economic growth, offers the citizens of New India a passport out of Old India. There are some — for the moment confined largely to those sympathetic to the Sangh Parivar — who even argue that the country cannot do better than acquire a PM like Narendra Modi; and the BJP, if it wishes to re-capture power at the Centre, couldn’t do better than embrace hardline Hindutva.

There is, of course, no denying that the consolidation of what can be broadly termed ‘sustainable Hindutva’ has been achieved in Gujarat. The fact that the BJP has been able to account for more than 40 per cent of the votes over three consecutive elections — 1995, 1998 and 2002 — underlines this. There cannot also be any doubt about its impressive economic achievements: according to the Gujarat government, it recorded a growth rate of 12.7 per cent in 2006-07 and 26 per cent of total bank finance was in Gujarat in 2006-07, according to RBI figures. The Gujarat Model could appear compelling indeed, especially when bathed in the neon-lit effulgence provided by its spinmeisters.

But Gujarat is not, and cannot be, India and Narendra Modi’s future ascendancy to prime-ministership is a political pipe dream. First, we need to clarify that Gujarat’s ‘growth’ — on which Modi has put his personal imprimatur — actually dates back a thousand years in a region that has been at the intersection of innumerable trade routes. Gujarat’s economic history is bound to its geographical location both as a border region and a maritime one. Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, in their book The Shaping of Modern

Gujarat, observe, “For almost a thousand years now, merchant communities — Hindus, Jains, Muslims, and later, Parsis — not only dominated the economic sphere but also wielded influence in Gujarati society and power in political affairs.” Much before they had their own state, Gujarati traders played a decisive role in creating Bombay’s share bazar. Once the state of Gujarat came into being, it saw both the Green and White revolutions. Today, Gujarat calls itself a ‘mini China’; in the early eighties, it was considered a ‘mini Japan’ — both claims of course coming at great environmental cost, but that’s another story. Between 1993 and 2000 — before Modi represented Gandhinagar — Gujarat’s manufacturing grew by 94 per cent. So we can safely assume that regardless of which party controls it, Gujarat will remain a high growth state. Those who argue that India’s future economic well-being would need a Modi are merely turning on the lights.

That apart, Gujarat itself has a social composition that does not approximate India’s. Not only does it have a higher percentage of upper caste population, it has lower Muslim representation. At the all-India level, Muslims represent 13.4 per cent of the population, while they constitute 9.1 per cent of Gujarat’s population. This combination of a higher upper caste/lower Muslim presence makes Gujarat unique (in UP, for instance a higher upper caste presence is accompanied by a significant Muslim presence), and makes it easier for Gujarati politicians across party lines to practise the politics of communal polarisation, something that is considerably more difficult to do at the national level.

Now let’s look at how the BJP had gained ascendancy in the late nineties. At least two broad phenomena helped power it to Raisina Hill. First, the historic decline of the Congress. But the 2004 General Election, which saw the Congress win 145 seats — as opposed to the 114 it had won in the 1999 polls — indicates that the Congress’s downward spiral has hit a pause. At the national level today, the Congress appears far more convincing as a political force than it had in the second half of the nineties even as the BJP has lost the potent appeal of unfulfilled promise that it seemed to embody in the 1998 general election. Some within the Sangh Parivar would argue that this is precisely why the BJP needs to return to hardline Hindutva as represented by personalities such as the Modi of today, and the L.K. Advani of the early nineties.

Which brings us to the second phenomenon that brought the party to power at the Centre: the increasingly forgotten moderation of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The combination of Advani, with his hardline politics, and Vajpayee with his more fuzzy appeal, did the trick. Neither leader could have achieved power on his own terms. L.K. Advani knows this well. That is why as PM-in-waiting he tries to be both hardliner and moderate by turns.

Christophe Jaffrelot has argued that if the BJP wishes to remain an all-India party, it needs to do at least four things: one, stick to its moderate line, given the compulsions of its allies; two, be generous with its regional allies in terms of seat adjustments and portfolios; three, ensure the allies continue to consider the Congress as its rival to power, and not the BJP; four, rein in the political ambitions of its own cadre in these states. Modi, who having presided over the 2002 post-Godhra progrom in Gujarat and who went on to win an election on the passions it had unleashed; Modi, who has never lost an opportunity to brandish his Hindutva credentials — as he did on Wednesday at the National Development Council by attacking the PM’s plan for minorities — is not the man to achieve such a sync. Advani has at least stated publicly that the day that saw Babri Masjid demolished was the saddest day of his life; Modi has not deigned to do even this vis-à-vis the 2002 pogrom.

If Modi wins on Sunday, there will be many who will proclaim him the country’s future prime minister. Their words needs to be seen against the complex realities of a country called India.

pamela.philipose@expressindia.com

Hate speech and the law

Frontline, Dec. 22, 2007-Jan. 04, 2008

V. Venkatesan

THE Model Code of Conduct for the Guidance of Political Parties and the Candidates, enforced by the Election Commission at the time of elections, bars candidates from aggravating existing differences or creating mutual hatred or causing tension between different religious communities. It also lays down that there shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing votes. The E.C., which monitors violations of the code during elections, has the authority to seek explanations from the accused and impose punishments.

The campaign speech of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at Mangrol in Surat district on December 4 led the E.C. to assume that he was prima facie guilty of violating the code, and therefore, to issue notice to him to explain his conduct. Modi replied to the E.C. on December 9 and partly denied the charges.

The portion of Modi’s speech, which was deemed to be offensive by the E.C., was, as translated by the Commission, as follows:

Modi: “Congressmen say that Modi is indulging in encounter, telling that Modi has killed Sohrabuddin. Friends from Congress, you have a government at the Centre, if you have the guts send Modi to [the] gallows. You tell me what to do with Sohrabuddin.”

From Crowd: not very clear (“Kill him, Kill him”)

Modi: “Sohrabuddin, from whose possession a large cache of AK 47 rifles were found, same Sohrabuddin whom police of four States were looking for, Sohrabuddin who attacks police, Sohrabuddin who maintains connections with Pakistan, who raises eyes on Gujarat, then what will my police do? Should they [the Gujarat Police] go to take permission from Soniaben?”

In his reply to the Commission, Modi pointed out that his speech, had to be read entirely in its context. It was a political response to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s earlier reference to those who rule Gujarat as Mout ke saudagar (merchants of death). He denied that he had justified the encounter killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in November 2005.

The Supreme Court is monitoring the investigation of the killing by the Gujarat Police. The State government had informed the court that it was a fake encounter and it would punish those guilty of killing Sohrabuddin.

Therefore, the E.C. viewed Modi’s attempt to link Sohrabuddin to terrorism (when his government itself had earlier admitted in the Supreme Court that he was not a terrorist) as an effort to aggravate existing differences, or create mutual hatred or cause tensions between different communities.

In his reply, however, Modi did not give a specific reply to the allegation that his speech was in direct contrast to his government’s stand that Sohrabuddin was not a terrorist, and that he had covertly sought to exploit Sohrabuddin’s religion for political ends. Although Modi did not name Sohrabuddin’s religion, it was implicit and obvious in his speech, even if he had just referred to Sohrabuddin’s links to terrorism. Modi’s reply appeared to accuse the E.C. of seeking to restrict his freedom to campaign and reply to the political charges his adversaries made against him. He also sought to make a subtle distinction between encounters (which he believed are not bad) and fake encounters, even though such a distinction has no legal basis.

The speech, therefore, created grave misgivings not only at the Commission, but among those who had been assisting the Supreme Court in its monitoring of the Gujarat police’s investigation into the killing. The Gujarat government’s counsel, K.T.S. Tulsi, quit his brief in protest against Modi not taking him into confidence before branding Sohrabuddin a terrorist. The State government soon replaced him with another senior counsel to represent it in this case.

Rather than reject Modi’s aggressive reply to its notice, and hold him guilty of violating the Model Code of Conduct, the E.C. vacillated, and referred his reply to its legal cell for examination. Meanwhile, it issued a similar notice to Sonia Gandhi for allegedly making the offensive remark against Modi during her campaign. The E.C. also issued similar notices to Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh for using the expression “Hindu terrorists in Gujarat”, and to BJP leader V.K. Malhotra for accusing Sonia Gandhi of being a Hindu-hater.

It is in this context that the Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and Dalveer Bhandari issued a contempt notice to Modi for his offensive speech at Mangrol. It required a day-long hearing and heated exchanges between the counsels for the parties to convince the Bench that Modi needed to be served a notice on the contempt application moved by Sohrabuddin’s brother, Rubabuddin Sheikh.

The Additional Solicitor-General, Gopal Subramaniam, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, agreed: “Modi’s speech is prima facie a complete interference with the process of justice. To make such a statement in a matter pending in this court is nothing but contempt.” The court found force in the argument that Modi’s speech has created a surcharged atmosphere making it difficult to hold a free and fair trial in the case.

In a desperate move to stop the Bench from issuing notice to Modi, his counsel asked the Bench to ignore the emotional and political rhetoric of Modi and keep away from the political realm as Modi had not referred to the pending case at all in his speech. The Bench, however, was not convinced, and sought Modi’s reply to the contempt notice by the last week of January 2008. The Bench also decided to consider lyricist Javed Akthar’s plea that Modi be booked for exhorting the people to resort to violence, when it resumes hearing next month.

Although observers believed that the Bench’s notice to Modi would influence the ongoing campaign in Gujarat, it goes to the credit of the Bench that it confined itself only to the gravity of the charge against Modi, uninfluenced by extraneous electoral considerations of political rivals in the State.

Madhya Pradesh: VHP plots army of state employed priests

The Telegraph
December 18 , 2007

VHP plots army of priests
RASHEED KIDWAI
on a new mission?

Bhopal, Dec. 17: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has offered to raise an army of 100,000 priests to serve the Hindutva cause in Madhya Pradesh, where the ruling BJP lost two bypolls last week.

But for this, the VHP wants an overhaul of the management of temples in the state.

Madhya Pradesh has over 12,000 state-run temples where priests receive Rs 300-1,000 a month as honorarium from the exchequer.

A similar monthly stipend is given to maulvis and muezzins in state-funded madarsas. A state-run madarsa board looks after the day-to-day functioning of the Islamic schools.

While some priests come from Sanskrit/religious schools in pilgrim towns like Varanasi and Ujjain, most belong to families of pujaris that have served the temples for decades. The shrines are run by trusts whose members are drawn from the community. District collectors head the trusts but usually do not intervene in the day-to-day functioning.

The VHP said it wants the collector replaced by a member of the community close to the Sangh parivar. With their own man at the helm, it plans to recruit priests who will do more than just conduct religious ceremonies.

Its offer to the Shivraj Singh Chauhan government said that most priests now have little knowledge about the Hindutva cause. An opportunity of awakening and channelling “energy” at the grassroots is being wasted, the VHP said, and advised the BJP to “utilise” priests more productively.

Earlier this year, Chauhan had attempted to streamline the functioning of temples and audit their funds, a move that did not go down well with some cash-rich trusts. The chief minister had called a meeting of temple trustees and priests that was attended by about 1,000 people from 48 districts. Ujjain’s Mahakal, Datia’s Pethambara Peeth, Mahiar’s Sharda Peeth and Omkareshwar’s Jyotirlinga temple were represented.

Chauhan had told the gathering he wanted the cash-rich temple trusts to run professionally on the lines of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, which has several endowment schemes. He also announced setting up a monitoring mechanism and temple committees.

The VHP now wants the chief minister to opt for an advisory body attached to each temple instead of a monitoring mechanism.

While there has been no reaction yet to the proposal from temple trusts, sources said they would bitterly oppose the VHP. Since priesthood is often hereditary, those running the temples now would not like to lose jobs, land and their elevated position in society to VHP-backed recruits.

The Opposition Congress too has a big stake in the matter as most non-VHP affiliated temple trusts have some sort of functional ties with the main party.

With less than a year to go for elections, the political battle lines in this state famous for its pilgrim centres are being drawn in temples.

Court rejects CBI’s clean chit to Jagdish Tytler in 1984 riots case

The Hindu, 19 Dec 2007

NEW DELHI: A court here on Tuesday rejected the CBI closure report in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler and directed the agency to further investigate the case.

Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Sanjeev Jain directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to file a report on January 16 next.

The court was hearing a petition by the “November-84 Carnage Justice Committee,” which alleged that the CBI had not probed the conspiracy angle properly.

In September, the CBI filed the closure report saying it could not find any evidence against Mr. Tytler and that a witness in the case, Jasbir Singh, was untraceable.

With counsel for the riot victims filing the petition, the court issued notice to the CBI on October 4.

Subsequently, Mr. Singh, through his counsel, told the court that he was ready to testify, and also furnished his U.S. address and contact numbers.

However, Mr. Singh expressed his inability to come to India.

But the CBI said it wanted him to be physically present in the court for recording his statement and cross-examination.

Killing of three

The case against Mr. Tytler, in which the CBI sought to give him a clean chit, was registered in 2005 in connection with the killing of three persons of a Sikh family by a mob in North Delhi on November 1, 1984. It is alleged that he Mr. Tytler incited the mob.

KABIR & SACHAR

Frontline, Dec. 22, 2007-Jan. 04, 2008
A.G. NOORANI

Had Humayun Kabir’s voice been heard, nearly half a century ago, there would have been no need to set up the Sachar Committee.

“THE ideological motivation and the political spirit of this development in the advanced countries is concisely formulated by a distant observer, Prof. Humayun Kabir… I am quoting the Indian philosopher and administrator Prof. Humayun Kabir who on many points has attained a more succinct formulation of some of our general experiences in north western Europe than most of our own writers,” Gunnar Myrdal wrote in The International Economy (1956). Kabir showed early promise. A contemporary at Oxford, the journalist D.F. Karaba wrote “… But the power behind us all was Humayun Kabir… one of the greatest products of modern Oxford… I remember Kabir that night at the Majlis dinner. Seldom have I seen any one speak with such sincerity… It was the soul of India that was pouring out of the mouth of Humayun Kabir – the soul of the new India, my India, his India, the India of those like us, who are young and unafraid” (I Go West, London; 1938).

Twenty years later as a member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet, Humayun Kabir took an initiative that exposes the rank dishonesty of those who describe the Sachar Committee’s Report and the Government of India’s efforts to implement its recommendations as “appeasement of Muslims”. Had Kabir’s voice been heard, nearly half a century ago, there would have been no need to set up the Sachar Committee.

The hypocrisy of its critics is astounding. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had no qualms about addressing the “All India Convention of Muslim Women” organised by the Mahila Morcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on October 4, 1998. He had not even words of sympathy for Muslim women raped, widowed or orphaned in Gujarat in 2002, let alone help. On the contrary, soon after Narendra Modi’s pogrom, Vajpayee roundly blamed the Muslims at his infamous speech in Goa. The Statesma n noted, the next day, that “the meeting [Vajpayee’s] could be described as the beginning of the BJP’s attempt to woo the minorities in the wake of the forthcoming Assembly elections in Delhi”. This, from a party that denounces “vote banks”.

But what Vajpayee told the audience was offensive to a degree. It was an elaborate profession of friendship with Pakistan. Why did he single out a Muslim audience for this claim? His tacit assumption was clear – Muslims are pro-Pakistan. To secure their votes, he would pander to this sentiment. It is another matter that the assumption is false and libellous of Muslims. But it exposes “the best and the brightest” of the BJP as viciously communal.

There is, however, another aspect to this – the Sarkari Musalman. None of the Muslim members of the P.V. Narasimha Rao Cabinet had the courage and decency to resign in protest at the demolition of the Babri Masjid, to which he was privy by conscious default. Arjun Singh spoke up before and after the crime. The Muslim members had nowhere else to go.

Therein lies the significance of Humayun Kabir, who was respected by Jawaharlal Nehru and was a confidant of Maulana Azad. He was highly educated. He did not live off politics. He saw no conflict between his loyalty to the country and his concern for his community. Even on sensitive issues such as Kashmir and relations with Pakistan, he put forth his own viewpoint.

High credit is due to Jawaharlal Nehru, who valued his independence and insights. How many Indian Cabinets since could have boasted of members of comparable quality? Two of his books deserve mention – Minorities in a Democracy (1968), dedicated to “Rajaji, to whom we owe so much”; and Muslim Politics (1906-47) and Other Essays (1969), dedicated to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Both were published by Firna K.L. Mukhopadhyay of Kolkata. But it is not only the sordid Sarkari Musalman but also the no less sordid parasitical “leaders” of the community whom Kabir’s personality and endeavours expose as charlatans, particularly the ones who, for selfish reasons, pursued a confrontationist course and helped the Sangh Parivar foul the atmosphere. The Babri Masjid and the Shah Bano case revealed their intellectual and moral bankruptcy.

Unlike this lot, Kabir was cultured, erudite and, above all, honest. His record bears recalling today, especially in the context of the Sachar report.

Of all the institutions named in his memory, none offers Jawaharlal Nehru a greater and more fitting tribute than the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library at Teen Murti House in New Delhi. Among the papers in its custody are files containing the Humayun Kabir papers. The writer would like to pay a tribute to this fine institution and also to acknowledge a debt of gratitude for allowing access to the papers and furnishing copies of them. This article draws on that treasure.

The context was the All India Congress Committee’s (AICC’s) concern over the lot of the minorities. Its Minority Committee held two particularly important meetings on September 9 and 13, 1957. Kabir was one of its members. The question of inducting into the services “an adequate number of qualified persons belonging to minority communities was discussed in detail”, the minutes record. The committee suggested submission of returns by the Central and State governments as also public sector units showing “the position (a) before independence, (b) after independence for every year up to 15.8.1957, and thence (c) for every quarter”.

Home Minister G.B. Pant forwarded to Kabir, on January 10, 1958, an article by Syed Iqbal Ali Shah, a noted academic from Meerut, on “Integration of Muslims in Indian body politic”. The writer, Kabir noted, had only “posed the problem without suggesting any measures for dealing with it”. Kabir had by then taken up the matter with Nehru and Azad. In his reply to Pant, on January 29, he mentioned that they felt it was “a matter which was primarily the concern of the Home Ministry”. Kabir forwarded to him “A Note on the Minorities Problem” dated January 30, 1958, copies of which he sent to the Prime Minister and to the Congress president U.N. Dhebar.

He noted that a feeling had “developed among some sections of the minorities that they are not getting an adequate share in services, trade and commerce and representative bodies at various levels”. He recalled the deliberations of the AICC’s Minorities Sub-Committee. There were problems in recruitment to higher posts by holding competitive examinations. But for a large number of appointments in the lower ranks of the Military, the Railways, the Police, the Postal Services and similar departments, appointments are made without any competitive examinations. There was the same sense of grievance in respect of industry, trade and commerce. Licence-permit raj held sway then. The minorities felt “that they have not received their adequate share in the issue of such licences and permits in the last ten years”. Nor had they been properly represented in the legislatures and, indeed, “even within the Congress organisation”.

The real solution was “a long term” one, namely education, which would improve the economic development of the minorities. Here, again, problems confront the minorities, especially in regard to admission to medical, engineering and other technical institutions. “If necessary, seats in engineering, medical and technical colleges can be reserved for such minorities for a period of ten years so that without becoming a drag they can become effective and creative members of the nation.”

He suggested inter alia “annual returns showing the number of persons from among the minorities appointed in different categories of public services” since Independence; similar returns with regard to permits and licences in industry, trade and commerce. The Central government as well as the Congress should “keep under constant review” the representation of the different minorities in the legislatures, in local bodies as well as in the Congress organisation.
Nehru’s suggestions

Nehru wrote a letter to the Chief Ministers on this subject on March 26, 1958. (Letters to Chief Ministers 1947-1964; volume 5, 1958-1964; pages 34-37) It bears quotation in extenso because of its relevance to the present situation. Communalism held sway, he regretted. But he drew a distinction which is very relevant today with the BJP’s espousal of Hindutva. “We have also, let us be frank about it, communalism not only in the minority but very much so in the majority. The chief difference is that in the majority it puts on the garb of nationalism and democracy. But that is a false democracy” (page 35; emphasis added throughout). No wonder the Sangh Parivar hates Nehru.The Prime Minister made concrete suggestions. “I shall not refer here to many matters which affect the minorities. I want to lay stress on one particular aspect. This relates to services. In our present conditions in India, recruitment to the services plays a very important part in producing a sense of satisfaction or the reverse in the minds of the minority groups. I have sometimes called for figures of recruitment and these have been very unsatisfactory insofar as the minorities are concerned.

“When I have asked for an explanation, I have been told that recruitment was made by examinations and it is nobody’s fault if people did not pass the tests. That is not a good enough explanation. Firstly, there is a tendency for the minority group not to appear for these examinations in sufficient numbers because they imagine that things are weighted against them. Secondly, subjects and tests for the examinations also come in their way. For instance, in the Hindi-speaking areas especially, Hindi is a compulsory subject and the type of Hindi required is high-flown and difficult. Many people who know simple Hindi quite well cannot easily pass that difficult test. This applies often to Muslims in the Hindi-speaking areas. They know the Urdu version of Hindi and they learn Devanagari etc. and try hard to improve their knowledge of the language. But this is no easy matter after a certain age. The result often is that while they are quite good in other subjects, they fail in Hindi. This is unfair and bad for the minority as well as for the State which loses sometimes good people and gets secondraters.

“Long ago, the Congress Working Committee, dealing with the question of all India public examinations, laid down a rule that while these examinations may in future be conducted in Hindi, English or the regional language, a compulsory paper on Hindi should not be included as this would obviously be unfair to the non-Hindi speaking people. After the person has passed the examinations, Hindi or any other regional language should be learnt and, if necessary, an examination could be held in it at a later stage. This was I think a fair provision….

“Hindi, as used now, is becoming more and more an artificial language far removed from common speech. In our Parliament here questions are often answered in Hindi, drafted no doubt by bright young men fresh from the schools. Most Hindi-knowing people even do not understand these answers and there is frequently a hubbub in the House when these answers are read out. Something very radical has to be done about this if the growth of Hindi is not to be checked.

“I would beg your attention to this question of recruitment for services. I would suggest to you to examine why the present methods come in the way of members of the minority communities appearing [for] these examinations or passing them. I know bright young men who have failed when persons not nearly as good as they are, have passed.

“Then there is the question of recruitment to the Police, Army, the Railways, Postal Services and many minor services where no examinations are necessary. This requires particular attention because here it is easy for partiality to creep in.

“I would request you to have charts prepared showing how the system of recruiting for these various services by examination or otherwise is working. There might be quarterly charts and I would be grateful if you could send me these charts every three months. I have referred to the services because the state is directly concerned with them. But this applies in a different way to trade and industry and commerce, to our Corporations in the public sector.”

On May 7, 1958, the Government of India sent a letter to the Chief Secretaries of all the States to provide information in an attached pro forma “in respect of employment of members of the minority communities in each of the State services”. So, the idea is nearly half a century old.Kabir prepared “A Further Note on Minorities” dated August 4, 1958, elaborating on the points made in the earlier note. The special measures “must be self-liquidating over a number of years”. They must not be perpetuated. He gave a good rule of the thumb for assessing backwardness – “any class which is not adequately represented in these [public] services is educationally and, therefore, also socially and economically backward”. Hence, the need for statistics. The same rule applied to annual income-tax returns. “When these surveys have been completed, communities which are under-represented in the services should be declared to be socially and educationally backward classes of citizens.” In regard to States, the population figures of the State would be relevant.

“In the case of State services, a community which is defined as backward in the above terms should be given similar protection by reserving a proportionate number of seats in the higher State services.” At the Centre as well as in the States, reservation of seats should not last beyond a generation – 25 years.

Simultaneously the long-term remedy – improved educational facilities – should be pursued. Kabir analysed the provisions of the Constitution, particularly Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 32(4), to establish that his suggestions were constitutionally valid. He also cited Articles 338 (3) and 340. This Note was sent to the Prime Minister as well as the Union Home Minister on August 6, 1958.

The AICC, however, set up a National Integration Committee of which, surprisingly, Kabir was not a member. Its report was published on May 23, 1961, with an Introduction by Congress president Indira Gandhi. It opined: “No proportions can or should be fixed for minorities but it would be worthwhile to examine the present position and take steps to expand opportunities where expansion is justified” – a quaint phraseology for under-representation. It mentioned public services. “The position seems to have deteriorated.” Private enterprises could also help. “There is no dearth of suitable candidates.” It made an important assertion: “Where the administration is efficient, rioting, loot and arson do not take place. Where there is a breach of peace, the responsibility for it should be fixed and appropriate action taken.”
Personal law

Unlike the Sarkari Musalmans and his counterpart, the communal parasitical Muslim “leaders”, Humayun Kabir also turned the search light inwards. In a letter to Nehru, dated July 8, 1963, he reported the proceedings at a meeting of 16 eminent Muslims at Vice-President Zakir Hussain’s house. They met to discuss “reform of the Muslim personal law”.

He wrote: “Dr. Zakir Hussain and I explained that in view of the changed circumstances, it was inevitable that some modifications should be made in even personal law, but there was no and could not be any intention of going against any religious principle.” The participants differed sharply. A majority agreed that a committee should be appointed with two terms of reference: “(a) Collection of information about recent changes in Muslim Personal Law in other countries with their justification and (b) An enquiry into differences in Muslim Personal Law in different States of India.”

No government would appoint such a committee. But there is nothing to prevent Muslim activists from appointing such a committee comprising not only lawyers but also activists and persons in various walks of life. An informed, documented report would go a long way to expose the bogus Muslim Personal Law Board. Muslims’ problems and grievances remain as they are. The calibre of Muslim politicians and of the discourse concerning Muslims have declined steeply.

The Sarkari Musalman and his partner, the parasitical communal leader, have personally prospered. But there is a ray of hope. Outside the political arena, Muslims are coming to the fore in various walks of endeavour. They are well educated, informed, articulate and assertive. With their healthy contempt for the Sarkaris and the parasites, they should be able to put both out of business.