[Reader-list] Fwd: Mumbai under assault: Arundhati Roy, P. Hoodbhoy, A. Patwardhan, Hari Sharma

[Nagraj Adve]

I think there is a certain kind of essentializing in the that statement of
Hoodbhoy. The killings in VT railway station were untargetted and random but
much less attention has been given to them for obvious class biases that
have much discussed.
This equating of the Mumbai attack - horrific and condemnable as it is -
with an attack on the nation - the latest to do so was Sachin Tendulkar - is
so unnecessary and problematic. What is the nation, and who comprises it?
Direct violence is an attack sure, but what about silent processes at work
in an everyday sense? For instance, what about the millions of people who
have been pushed into poverty and malnutrition by rising food prices in
recent months? Is that not an attack on the nation? What about the higher
prices because business and elites want to divert land from basic food to
biofuels so cars can continue running. Is that not an attack? The monumental
crisis that agriculture has been pushed into - of which the 1.8 lakh
suicides that Sainath wroite about a few days ago is merely a reflection -
that is not an attack is it?

This isn't directed at you Taraprakash, just venting my spleen. But we just
need to puncture this dominant discourse of 'nation' and bring people back
to the focus.
Naga


On 17/12/2008, taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for forwarding the piece by Mr. Hoodbhoy. The other pieces have been
> circulated on the list several times already. I think Hoodbhoy
> unintentionally ignores high number of Hindus who were killed in the attack
> when he says following about Mumbai attacks: "The goal was to kill
> foreigners, particularly Jews and Americans, although Muslims were also
> collateral casualties."
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nagraj Adve" <nagraj.adve at gmail.com>
> To: "Sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 4:57 AM
> Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Mumbai under assault: Arundhati Roy, P.
> Hoodbhoy,A. Patwardhan, Hari Sharma
>
>
>  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: SANSAD <sansad at sansad.org>
>> Date: 17 Dec 2008 08:22
>> Subject: Mumbai under assault: Arundhati Roy, P. Hoodbhoy, A. Patwardhan,
>> Hari Sharma
>> To: List Suppressed <Recipient>
>>
>> Dear friends:
>>
>>
>> The Mumbai dust has not settled yet. National jingoism and war cries are
>> keeping it afloat and churning. Sonia Gandhi has promised tougher
>> anti-terrorism laws, as if that would eliminate the underlying causes of
>> terrorism. The RSS Chief is calling for nuking Pakistan; and maybe, a
>> Third
>> World War, to "cleanse the world of evil".
>>
>>
>> But other voices are also coming in large measures, from around the world
>> and from both sides of the India-Pakistan divide.
>>
>>
>> We forward to you, first, a piece by Arundhati Roy, "The Monster in the
>> Mirror". There are phrases and labels in it I disagree with, but it is,
>> once
>> again, a charateristic Arundhati Roy piece. Profoundly perceptive,
>> passionate, concerned and alarmed. Its poetry gives body to its prose.
>> Thank
>> you, Arundhati.
>>
>>
>> The second piece is from the other side of the border. the noted Nuclear
>> Physicist, the peace activist, the never-tiring good voice of the people
>> of
>> Pakistan, Parvez Hoodbhoy.
>>
>>
>> Then, there is a piece by the celebrated film-maker Anand Patwardhan.
>> Times
>> of India refused to publish this excellent article; that's all the more
>> reason for us to disseminate it.
>>
>>
>> And finally, there is a link for a podcast of a radio interview I had
>> locally in Vancouver, on December 6, the anniversary of the Babri Masjid
>> demolition.
>>
>>
>> hari sharma
>> for SANSAD
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 1/4
>> *The monster in the mirror*
>>
>>                               *The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed
>> 'India's 9/11', and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including
>> an
>> attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with
>> justice,
>> or face civil war*.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  -                         [image: static.guim.co.uk/7F9E2D96.jpg]
>>  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/arundhati-roy>
>>
>>
>>  -
>>                                          Arundhati
>> Roy<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/arundhati-roy>
>>
>>  - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Saturday 13 December 2008
>>  00.01 GMT
>>  - Article history<
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/12/mumbai-arundhati-roy#history-byline
>> >
>>
>>
>>                                                       [image:
>> static.guim.co.uk/1216CB21.jpg]
>>
>>
>>
>> Azam Amir Kasab, the face of the Mumbai attacks. Photograph: Reuters
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai
>> raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us
>> that
>> we were watching "India's 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an
>> old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines,
>> even
>> though we know it's all been said and done before.
>>
>>
>> As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned
>> Pakistan
>> that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal
>> information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in
>> Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's
>> 9/11.
>>
>>
>> But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan
>> and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick
>> through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that
>> we
>> can arrive at our own conclusions.
>>
>>
>> It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir
>> supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote,
>> while
>> the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like
>> war-torn
>> Kupwara - one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.
>>
>>
>> The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist
>> attacks
>> on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi,
>> Guwahati,
>> Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of
>> ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right
>> about
>> the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all
>> Indian
>> nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong
>> in
>> this country.
>>
>>
>> If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary
>> people
>> too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a
>> public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich.
>> They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however,
>> was
>> transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering
>> barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies
>> and
>> crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish
>> centre.
>>
>>
>> We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's
>> absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary
>> Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving
>> obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in,
>> the
>> gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and
>> the
>> staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the
>> inner
>> pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said
>> "Hungry,* kya*?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm
>> sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India
>> ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't* that* war. That
>> one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks
>> of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara;
>> in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa,
>> Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic
>> cities.
>>
>>
>> That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal
>> with
>> the one that is.
>>
>>
>> There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the
>> contemporary
>> discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who
>> see
>> terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge
>> that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with
>> the
>> world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics.
>> Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or
>> even
>> try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.
>>
>>
>> Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism,
>> it
>> exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to
>> see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in
>> harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.
>>
>>
>> The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the
>> Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam,
>> certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide
>> bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be
>> waged until Islam,* his* Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said
>> are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut
>> them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."
>>
>>
>> And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a
>> tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the
>> Hindus,
>> just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."
>>
>>
>> But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of
>> Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was
>> one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on
>> camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire
>> Š
>> we hacked, burned, set on fire Š we believe in setting them on fire
>> because
>> these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it Š I have
>> just
>> one last wish Š let me be sentenced to death Š I don't care if I'm hanged
>> ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field
>> day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred
>> thousand]
>> of these people stay ... I will finish them off Š let a few more of them
>> die
>> ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."
>>
>>
>> And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya
>> Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar,
>> who
>> became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when
>> Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the
>> Hindu
>> Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The
>> Race
>> Spirit has been awakening."
>> Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the
>> world by her purging the country of the Semitic races - the Jews. Race
>> pride
>> at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in
>> Hindustan to learn and profit by."
>>
>>
>> (Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu
>> right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in
>> Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence
>> which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from
>> their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)
>>
>>
>> All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in
>> Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front
>> organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys
>> for
>> his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the
>> UN
>> imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government
>> succumbed
>> to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu
>> Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man
>> in
>> Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the
>> Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief
>> minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was
>> re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate
>> houses, Reliance and Tata.
>>
>>
>> Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said:
>> "Modi
>> is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the
>> rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS
>> has
>> 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers
>> preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi,
>> but
>> also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition
>> LK
>> Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and
>> intelligence officers.
>>
>>
>> If that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we
>> should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations
>> within
>> India preaching their own narrow bigotry.
>>
>>
>> So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick
>> Side
>> B. We need context. Always.
>>
>>
>> In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe
>> Line,
>> which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts,
>> villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was
>> drawn
>> virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition
>> triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest
>> migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million
>> people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new* kind* of
>> India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
>>
>>
>> Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain,
>> hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered
>> muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a
>> close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left
>> Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a
>> nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of
>> the
>> Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt,
>> violent
>> military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand
>> declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent
>> undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since
>> the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea
>> of India even before it was born.
>>
>>
>> By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs
>> exhorted
>> by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP
>> was
>> in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails.
>> It
>> allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and
>> then
>> present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This
>> happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international
>> finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the
>> media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong.
>> That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.
>>
>>
>> This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the
>> subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that
>> Hafiz
>> Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the
>> Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).
>>
>>
>> In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002
>> burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta
>> Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible"
>> evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the
>> Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime
>> accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar
>> operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen.
>> Two
>> Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working
>> for
>> the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in
>> West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.
>>
>>
>> So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.
>> Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated
>> global
>> network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover
>> intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both
>> sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries
>> simultaneously.
>> In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike
>> and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much
>> like
>> trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost
>> impossible.
>>
>>
>> In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may
>> take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists.
>> Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try
>> not
>> to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of
>> neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups,
>> were trained by the Indian army.)
>>
>>
>> Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally first
>> in
>> its war in* support* of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war*
>> against*them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these
>> contradictions, is
>> careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad
>> against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI
>> to
>> nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having
>> wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US
>> expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.
>>
>>
>> Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland
>> on
>> September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now
>> the
>> debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders.
>> Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding
>> over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training
>> camps,
>> the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or
>> should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their
>> ire
>> rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if
>> not more than it does on India.
>>
>>
>> If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the
>> whole
>> region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed
>> Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before.
>> If
>> Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state
>> actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as
>> neighbours.
>> It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to
>> replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country
>> by*inviting
>> * the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our
>> extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has
>> agents.
>>
>>
>> On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way
>> for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home
>> front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or
>> most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international
>> ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up
>> an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights
>> we
>> watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns
>> and
>> gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National
>> Security
>> Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered
>> nation.
>>
>>
>> While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in
>> railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class,
>> caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security
>> forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations,
>> in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole
>> buildings
>> are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don't
>> hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on
>> wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was
>> different.
>> And it was on TV.
>>
>>
>> The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill - and be killed -
>> mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something
>> different
>> from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people
>> have
>> grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The
>> gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television
>> magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds,
>> not
>> minutes, what that's worth.
>>
>>
>> Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the
>> chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the
>> terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their
>> purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before
>> they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we
>> say
>> "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can
>> justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life,
>> because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care
>> nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea
>> what
>> to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died,
>> they've
>> journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.
>>
>>
>> One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the
>> attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity
>> of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things
>> contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other
>> bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the
>> demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims
>> in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded,"
>> the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you
>> surrender?"
>>
>>
>> "We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better
>> to
>> live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to
>> change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.
>>
>>
>> If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it
>> matter
>> to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their
>> action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim
>> community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism
>> is
>> a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the
>> Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as
>> collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the* aim*
>> of
>> terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden
>> faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists
>> need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist
>> terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof
>> of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism
>> is
>> not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be
>> a
>> catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself,
>> a
>> tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and
>> symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its
>> acts
>> of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV
>> anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a
>> thousandfold by TV broadcasts.
>>
>>
>> Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in
>> India
>> at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room:
>> Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had
>> retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war
>> against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes
>> unless
>> their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain
>> unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and
>> each
>> state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death
>> of
>> former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and
>> villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.
>>
>>
>> We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood
>> film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why
>> they
>> hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and
>> Muslim
>> hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and
>> an
>> indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the
>> terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more
>> than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after
>> 9/11?
>> Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.
>>
>>
>> Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just
>> begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite,
>> goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and
>> leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians,* all*
>> politicians,
>> glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police
>> state.
>> It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of
>> democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The
>> era
>> of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and
>> democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
>>
>>
>> Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good
>> Politicians
>> are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good
>> Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about
>> by
>> TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost
>> uncontrollable hysteria.
>>
>>
>> Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when
>> people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism,
>> victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding
>> that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last
>> 20
>> years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still
>> learning.
>> (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look
>> as
>> though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)
>>
>>
>> It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions
>> began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed
>> how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how
>> evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been
>> criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the
>> courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the
>> man
>> whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third,
>> Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was
>> then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court
>> upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In
>> its
>> judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal
>> belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly,
>> "The
>> collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital
>> punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know
>> who
>> the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they
>> worked
>> for.
>>
>>
>> More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial
>> "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell
>> of
>> the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat
>> under
>> seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible
>> for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant
>> commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the
>> parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of
>> India's many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having
>> summarily
>> executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special
>> Cell
>> from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local
>> community
>> to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers,
>> academics
>> and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident.
>> In
>> response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a
>> "Braveheart"
>> and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had
>> dared
>> to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and
>> calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.
>>
>>
>> Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists"
>> surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI
>> said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the
>> Batla
>> House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent
>> men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and
>> two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to
>> Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent
>> years
>> in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been
>> similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.
>>
>>
>> This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism
>> Squad
>> (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a
>> Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande
>> and
>> Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested
>> belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist
>> group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned
>> the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he
>> was
>> part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be
>> terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and
>> made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the
>> ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.
>>
>>
>> On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the
>> high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon
>> blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare
>> was
>> killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever
>> he
>> is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to
>> be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.
>>
>>
>> While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision
>> over
>> whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police,
>> Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the
>> plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who
>> have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My
>> name
>> and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up
>> several
>> times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab
>> Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati
>> Roy<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/arundhatiroy>and Prashant
>> Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you
>> are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged
>> and
>> as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well
>> as
>> threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a
>> journalist
>> his or her job.
>>
>>
>> So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and
>> another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have
>> no
>> right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a
>> shadowy
>> history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake
>> "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of
>> custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International
>> Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture
>> chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being
>> "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line
>> between
>> the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.
>>
>>
>> How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of
>> all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them?
>> There
>> are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as
>> the
>> United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since
>> 9/11.
>> However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse.
>> If
>> the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing
>> its
>> true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The
>> US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United
>> States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed
>> greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps
>> eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed
>> Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of
>> this
>> one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American
>> soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of
>> terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests
>> in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George
>> Bush,
>> the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just
>> internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that
>> the
>> United States is winning the war on terror?
>>
>>
>> Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few
>> countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But
>> even
>> if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours* cannot* be
>> secured
>> or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of
>> homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning
>> out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir
>> and
>> a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million
>> Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall,
>> whose
>> young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose
>> hope
>> and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole
>> world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three
>> days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir
>> valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?
>>
>>
>> Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not
>> meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like.
>> That's
>> why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of
>> putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and
>> eventually
>> letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly
>> likely
>> to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to
>> death. It's what they* want*.
>>
>>
>> What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades
>> of
>> quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.
>>
>>
>> The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to
>> look
>> at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One
>> sign
>> says Justice, the other Civil War. There's no third sign and there's no
>> going back. Choose.
>> ******************
>> 2/4
>>
>>
>> (This interview of Pervez Hoodbhoy was conducted by Cristina Otten for
>> FOCUS. It may be found on-line in German at:
>> http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/tid-12856/pakistan-die-menschen-s
>> ind-blind-vor-hass_aid_355157.html
>> A more readable pdf version is also attached.)
>>
>>
>> THE MUMBAI MASSACRE AND PAKISTAN'S NEW NIGHTMARES
>>
>> CO: Tensions between Pakistan and India have been growing after the Mumbai
>> attacks. Are we close to a military escalation?
>>
>> PH: In spite of vociferous demands by the Indian public, Prime Minister
>> Manmohan Singh's government has withstood the pressure to conduct
>> cross-border strikes into Pakistan. Correspondingly, in spite of the
>> bitter criticism by Islamic parties, Pakistan's government has moved
>> against the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), the jihadist organization that is
>> almost certainly behind the attacks. ÝFor now, the tension has eased
>> somewhat but another attack could push India over the fence.
>>
>> CO: What makes the LeT so different from other militant groups? Is
>> Pakistan really moving against it?
>>
>> PH: LeT, one of the largest militant groups in Pakistan, was established
>> over 15 years ago. It had the full support of the Pakistani military and
>> Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) for over a decade because it focussed
>> upon fighting Indian rule in Muslim Kashmir. Today it is one of the very
>> few extremist groups left that does not attack the Pakistani army and
>> state; in contrast almost all others have turned into fierce enemies. We
>> now hear that a few members of LeT, who were named by India, have been
>> arrested. Time will tell whether this was a serious move, or if this was a
>> ruse to ease the enormous pressure against Pakistan. If serious, then the
>> Army and ISI will have earned the bitter enmity of yet another former
>> ally. They are afraid of a repeat of their experience with
>> Jaish-e-Muhammad, a formerly supported Islamic militant group that now is
>> responsible for extreme brutalities against of Pakistani soldiers captured
>> in FATA, including torture and decapitations. It's a nightmarish situation
>> for the Pakistan Army. Ý
>>
>> CO: How have Pakistanis reacted to the Mumbai massacre?
>>
>> PH: The initial reaction was of sympathy. I did not see any celebrations,
>> contrary to those that I saw after 911. But then, as the Indian TV
>>
>> channels started accusing Pakistan and demanding that it be bombed in
>> retaliation, the reaction turned to that of anger and flat denial -
>> Pakistanis did not want to accept that this attack was done by Pakistanis
>> or had been launched from Pakistani soil. Subsequently one saw amazing
>> mental gymnastics. Popular TV anchors, and their guests, invoked far-out
>> conspiracy theories. Years ago, some of the same anchors had confidently
>> claimed that Kathmandu-Delhi Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814) had been
>> hijacked by RAW to malign Pakistan. They had also ridiculed the notion
>> that Pakistan was involved in the Kargil invasion. Now, pointing to the
>> RSS hand in the Samjhota Express bombing, they are alternately ascribing
>> the Mumbai attacks to radical Hindus, or to Jews and Americans. It is sad
>> to see intelligent persons losing their marbles. Ý
>>
>> CO: Pakistan has always stressed that it will deliver the first nuclear
>> strike if it feels threatened by India? Do you see any signs on the
>>
>> Pakistani sign to carry out its threat?
>>
>> PH: About a week before the Mumbai massacre, President Asif Ali Zardari
>> had given the assurance that Pakistan would not use nuclear weapons first.
>> India had announced a no first use policy almost ten years ago. But
>> Zardari is not taken seriously by the Pakistani generals who actually
>> control the Bomb, and the Indian NFU declaration is frankly of no
>> consequence. Cross-border raids by India could well ignite a conventional
>> war. If that happens, all bets are off and it could escalate without
>> warning into a nuclear conflict. For many years US defence strategists,
>> belonging to various think tanks and war colleges, have been simulating
>> conflicts between Pakistan and India. They say that a conventional war
>> will almost certainly lead to a nuclear conclusion. Fear of nuclear
>> weapons has made deterrence work. More accurately, deterrence has worked
>> only thus far.ÝNo guarantees can be given for the future.
>>
>> CO: Why did the assassins choose India instead of committing attacks
>> against Western allies in Afghanistan?
>>
>> PH: LeT is based around Lahore, which is on the Pakistan-India border, in
>> a town called Muridke. This has a huge militant training and charity
>> complex. LeT's membership is mostly Punjabi, which makes it linguistically
>> and culturally quite unsuited for fighting in Afghanistan. You could say
>> that LeT is an India-specific, Kashmir-specific group. Indeed, over the
>> years it has had many military successes in Kashmir against Indian forces.
>> But LeT, like other militant groups in Pakistan, sees a nexus between
>> Indians, Americans, and Israelis. Hence they are all seen as enemies and
>> fair game. Ý
>>
>> CO: What did the Mumbai terrorists want?
>>
>> PH: No demands were made and all hostages were killed. So the purpose of
>> the attack was never formally declared. On the other hand, the stated
>> goals of LeT and similar organizations based in Pakistan leave little
>> doubt. The attack clearly sought to hurt India's economy and its newly
>> acquired reputation as an economic powerhouse, and to create a climate of
>> war between India and Pakistan. If Pakistan moves its troops towards the
>> eastern border the pressure on the Pakistani Taliban in FATA, which is
>> close to the western border, would be lessened.  Still another reason
>> would be to encourage pogroms against Muslims in India. This would swell
>> the ranks of the extremists,Ýand also have the added benefit of
>> destabilizing both the Pakistani and Indian states. Finally, the attack
>> was a means of releasing hatred against non-Muslims. Ý
>>
>> CO: What differences and parallels do you see between the Mumbai attacks
>> and the attack in the in Marriott Hotel in Islamabad?
>>
>> PH: They were quite dissimilar in how they were executed. The Mumbai
>> attacks were extremely intricate, used GPS and voice-over-internet
>> protocols for communication purposes, involved extensive military
>> training, and probably required planning over a period of a year. The goal
>> was to kill foreigners, particularly Jews and Americans, although Muslims
>> were also collateral casualties. On the other hand, the Marriot bombing in
>> Islamabad was a relatively simple affair involving a single dump-truck
>>
>> with a suicide bomber, and its victims were principally Muslims. The basic
>> purpose, however, was similar - to destabilize the Pakistani state, take
>> revenge on the US (2 of the 58 killed were US marines), and raise the cost
>> of war in Afghanistan and FATA.
>>
>> CO: In the West experts talk about a new dimension of terror in India. Do
>> you also see tight connections between Lashkar-e-TaibaÝ and al-Qaida?
>>
>> PH:  One is naturally tempted to guess a nexus between LeT and Al-Qaida.
>> Of course, they do share similar goals. But in the world that extremists
>> inhabit, mere similarity is insufficient - it has to be much closer than
>> that because small ideological differences are amplified out of
>> proportion. As yet there is no proof of joint operations or cooperation.
>> So presently this is no more than a plausible hypothesis.
>>
>> CO: What role does Kashmir play in the current conflict?
>>
>> PH: Since 1987, Kashmir has been in a state of upheaval. Fraudulent
>>
>> elections conducted by India led to widespread resentment, followed by a
>> horrifically bloody crackdown by Indian security forces. Pakistan's army
>> saw opportunity in this, and waged a covert war in Kashmir using jihadists
>> to "bleed India with a thousand cuts". The United Jihad Council, which
>> oversees the activities of an estimated 22 Pakistan-based organizations,
>> acts outside of the domain of the Pakistani state but it has had active
>> support from the countryís army and intelligence agencies. The Kargil
>> conflict in 1999 brought matters to a head when General Musharraf
>> initiated a war with the assistance of jihadist forces. This inflicted
>> severe damage on Indian forces but Pakistan was ultimately forced to
>> withdraw. Jihadists subsequently celebrated General Musharraf as a hero,
>> and vilified Nawaz Sharif for a cowardly surrender.
>>
>> CO: In January 2002, General Musharraf had declared that no groups on
>> Pakistani territory would be permitted to launch cross-border attacks. Was
>> this promise fulfilled?
>>
>> PH: Subsequently there indeed was a decline in cross-border infiltrations,
>> and some lessening of the covert support given by Pakistani agencies. But
>> this was far from zero and they maintained a strong presence. On a
>> personal note: soon after the terrible October 8, 2005 earthquake, I had
>> gone to various areas of Azad Kashmir for relief work. There I found the
>> Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Sipah-i-Sahaba, and other banned
>> jihadist organizations operating openly and freely using military-style
>> six-wheeled vehicles, as well as displaying their weapons. Their relief
>> efforts were far better organized than that of the Pakistan army and, in
>> fact, they were pulling injured soldiers out of the rubble. When I
>> mentioned this fact to General Musharraf a few months later at a Kashmir
>> peace conference, he was very angry at me for discussing a tabooed
>> subject.
>>
>> CO: On the one hand, we have radical extremists in Pakistan who want to
>> bring strict Islamic law into force and demonize the West. On the other
>> hand, however, the government presents itself as a friend and ally of the
>> United States. Could you please describe this antagonism and explain where
>> it originates from? What does this tell us about the growth of extremism
>> in Pakistan?
>>
>> PH: Radical extremism is the illegitimate offspring of a union between the
>> United States under Ronald Reagan, and Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq.
>> Twenty five years ago, the two countries had joined up to harness Islamic
>> fighters for expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan. The US was quite
>> happy to see radical Islam spreading because it served its goal at the
>> time. Simultaneously, Pakistan saw a major social transformation under
>> General Zia. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory,
>> floggings were carried out publicly, punishments were meted out to those
>> who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for university academic posts
>> required that the candidate demonstrate knowledge of Islamic teachings,
>> and jihad was declared essential for every Muslim. But today the
>> government is in open conflict with the radicals. It has to deal with a
>> spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state -
>>
>> as yet in some amorphous and diffuse form - is more popular today than
>> ever before as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing
>> state. Even though the government and military in Pakistan are allied
>> formally to the US, the people are strongly against the US.
>>
>> CO: What parts of the Pakistani society support al-Qaida and Osama bin
>> Laden?
>>
>> PH: Baluchistan and Sind are far less supportive than Punjab or the NWFP.
>> The amazing fact is that parts of Pakistan's upper class - which is very
>> Westernized but also very anti-Western - also support the Islamists. I
>> find it tragic that there is no uproar in the country when Taliban suicide
>> bombers target mosques, funerals, hospitals, girls schools, and slaughter
>> policemen and soldiers. People have become so anti-American that it has
>> blinded them to these atrocities. Even the Pakistani left is thoroughly
>> confused and mistakes the Taliban as anti-imperialist fighters.
>>
>>
>> CO: And where do you stand on this matter? Do you see anything that the
>> Islamists have to offer?
>>
>> PH: The people of Pakistan need and deserve everything that people
>> everywhere else want. This means food, jobs, houses to live in, a system
>> of justice and governance, and protection of life and property. Equally,
>> people need freedom of worship and thought, education for both males and
>> females, and protection of their freedom as summarized in the Universal
>> Declaration of Human Rights. These are everybody's primary needs. After
>> this - a distinct second - come matters that deal with national
>> sovereignty, foreign policy, various global issues, etc. Frankly, I cannot
>> see Pakistanís Islamists offering anything positive. They are against
>> population planning, educating females, tolerating other sects or
>> religions, etc. They neither know the outside world, nor want to know it.
>> All they know - and know well - is how to make war. Fortunately, as their
>> rout in the recent elections showed, most Pakistanis do not want to live
>> under their narrow doctrines and belief system.
>>
>> CO: President Asif AliÝ Zardari promised to hunt terrorists and to destroy
>> terror camps in Pakistan? But his affirmations seem to be halfhearted.
>> Can't he do more or doesn't he want do more?
>>
>> PH: It is not up to him to do more. The real power lies with the Pakistan
>> Army, which is still undecided as to who the real enemy is. The Army has
>> lost nearly two thousand soldiers in battles with extremists. But it still
>> cannot convince itself that they constitute an existentialist threat to
>> Pakistan. One can understand this reluctance. Over the years, officers and
>> soldiers were recruited into the Army on the basis that they were
>> defenders of Islam and would always fight India. Instead they now have to
>> fight forces that claim to be even better defenders of Islam. Worse, they
>> are no longer being called upon to fight India, which is what they were
>> trained for. So there is confusion and demoralization, and practically
>> zero public understanding or support. Therefore, Pakistani soldiers are
>> not fighting well at all in FATA. Many have surrendered without a fight.
>>
>> CO: Do you support the government's war against extremists?
>>
>> PH: This is the first time in my life that I feel the Army should be
>> supported, but only to the extent that it fights the extremists without
>> killing innocents. Unfortunately, the Army's current tactic is to flatten
>> villages suspected of harbouring terrorists. The collateral damage is huge
>> and completely unacceptable.
>>
>> CO: Pakistan has armed and financed the Taliban after the US invasion of
>> Afghanistan. The CIA pays Pakistan to arrest al-Qaeda operatives, but
>> Pakistan uses the money to fund the Taliban resurgence in northwest
>> Pakistan. Any changes under the new president?
>>
>> PH: It will take time - and perhaps still more suffering - to kick an old
>> habit. Even though the Army is being literally slaughtered by the Taliban,
>> it continues to make a distinction between the "good" and "bad" Taliban.
>> The good ones are, by definition, those who attack only US/Nato or Indian
>> interests in Afghanistan, but do not attack the Pakistan Army. The good
>> ones are seen as essential for having a friendly Afghanistan when, as will
>>
>> surely happen some day, the Americans withdraw. Among the good Taliban are
>> jihadist leaders such as Jalaludin Haqqani. On the other hand, Baitullah
>> Mehsud or Maulana Fazlullah, are considered bad Taliban because they
>> attack the Army and the state. Interestingly, Army inspired propaganda
>> paints the bad Taliban as Indian agents - which is quite ridiculous. This
>> false differentiation is the real reason for the Army's ambivalence and
>> inability to deal effectively with the Taliban menace.
>>
>> CO: Pakistan is a nuclear state. Should we fear that one day the Taliban
>> or al-Qaida could get access to the nuclear arsenal?
>>
>> PH: I am more worried about extremists having access to nuclear materials,
>> particularly highly enriched uranium, rather than a completed weapon.
>> Because of secrecy requirements, it is very difficult for outsiders to
>> monitor the output of uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing plants.
>>
>> Interestingly, we are seeing a shift away from nuclear weapons in the
>> West. The unusability of nuclear weapons by national states is being
>> recognized even by mainstream politicians in the US and Europe because
>> nuclear weapons now no longer guarantee the monopoly of power. This makes
>> possible the ultimate de-legitimization of nuclear weapons, and hence
>> winding down of fissile material production globally. This may be our best
>> long-term hope of countering the nuclear terrorist threat, whether by
>> Al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. Meanwhile, in the short term, great
>> care must be given to watching over suspicious nuclear activities.
>>
>> CO: What should India do and what is your forecast for the region?
>>
>> PH: India should not attack Pakistan. This would be counter-productive in
>> every possible way. Even if it wins a war, it will be a pyrrhic victory.
>> On the other hand, a small attack can be no more than a pin-prick. This
>> would do more harm than good because it will unite the army and the
>> jihadists who, at this juncture in history, are in serious confrontation
>> with each other. Worse, even a small attack could lead to large response,
>> and then escalate out of control. Nuclear armed countries simply cannot
>> afford skirmishes. I think India's demand for action against jihadist
>> groups is entirely legitimate, but this must be done by Pakistan, which is
>> susceptible to international pressure. To get rid of militants and
>> extremists - whether Muslim or Hindu - is in the best interests of both
>> Pakistan and India.
>>
>> CO: Will Pakistani extremists win or can the West still bring about a
>> rebound?
>>
>> PH: It's a grim situation but not irreversible. The invasion of Iraq, and
>> US imperial policies over the last decades, created a hatred for Americans
>> that ultimately translated into support for all who fight them. Most
>> Pakistanis do not approve of the Taliban's fundamental and primitivist
>> social agenda. But, by virtue of fighting the Americans, popular sentiment
>> is still with them. So, reducing anti-Americanism is the key. One hopes
>> that Barack Obama will be able to undo some of the harm his country did to
>> Pakistan. Let's see. But basically it is for Pakistanis - not Indians or
>> anybody else - to fight it out. We Pakistanis have to realize that this is
>> a war for our very existence as a civilized nation. Western support for
>> Pakistan must be very judicious and not too overt. Similarly, isolating
>> Pakistan, or inflicting harsh punitive measures, could easily backfire.
>> The Taliban and allied extremists have a real chance of winning in
>> Pakistan.  The state is already crumbling in places and it could
>> disintegrate quite rapidly, leaving the fanatics in charge. One cannot
>> think of a bigger disaster for Pakistan.
>>
>> -------------
>>
>> ****************
>> 3/4
>> *An article written by Anand Patwardhan which was rejected by the Times of
>> India:*
>>
>> *Terror: The Aftermath*
>> *Anand PAtwardhan.
>>
>> *The attack on Mumbai is over. After the numbing sorrow comes the blame
>> game
>> and the solutions. Loud voices amplified by saturation TV: Why don't we
>> amend our Constitution to create new anti-terror laws? Why don't we arm
>> our
>> police with AK 47s? Why don't we do what Israel did after Munich or the
>> USA
>> did after 9/11 and hot pursue the enemy? Solutions that will lead us
>> further
>> into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on
>> reaction, polarization, militarization and the thirst for revenge.
>>
>> The External Terror
>> Those who invoke America need only to analyze if its actions after 9/11
>> increased or decreased global terror. It invaded oil-rich Iraq fully
>> knowing
>> that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, killing over 200,000 Iraqis
>> citizens
>> but allowing a cornered Bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. It recruited
>> global support for Islamic militancy, which began to be seen as a just
>> resistance against American mass murder. Which begs the question of who
>> created Bin Laden in the first place, armed the madarsas of Pakistan and
>> rejuvenated the concept of Islamic jehad? Israel played its own role in
>> stoking the fires of jehad. The very creation of Israel in 1948 robbed
>> Palestinians of their land, an act that Mahatma Gandhi to his credit
>> deplored at the time as an unjust way to redress the wrongs done to Jews
>> during the Holocaust. What followed has been a slow and continuing attack
>> on
>> the Palestinian nation. At first Palestinian resistance was led by secular
>> forces represented by Yasser Arafat but as these were successfully
>> undermined, Islamic forces took over the mantle. The first, largely
>> non-violent Intifada was crushed, a second more violent one replaced it
>> and
>> when all else failed, human bombs appeared.
>>
>> Thirty years ago when I first went abroad there were two countries my
>> Indian
>> passport forbade me to visit. One was racist South Africa. The other was
>> Israel. We were non-aligned and stood for disarmament and world peace.
>> Today
>> Israel and America are our biggest military allies. Is it surprising that
>> we
>> are on the jehadi hit list? Israel, America and other prosperous countries
>> can to an extent protect themselves against the determined jehadi, but can
>> India put an impenetrable shield over itself? Remember that when attackers
>> are on a suicide mission, the strongest shields have crumbled. New York
>> was
>> laid low not with nuclear weapons but with a pair of box cutters. India is
>> for many reasons a quintessentially soft target. Our huge population, vast
>> landmass and coastline are impossible to protect. The rich may build new
>> barricades. The Taj and the Oberoi can be made safer. So can our airports
>> and planes. Can our railway stations and trains, bus stops, busses,
>> markets
>> and lanes do the same?
>>
>> The Terror Within
>> The threat of terror in India does not come exclusively from the outside.
>> Apart from being hugely populated by the poor India is also a country
>> divided, not just between rich and poor, but by religion, caste and
>> language. This internal divide is as potent a breeding ground for terror
>> as
>> jehadi camps abroad. Nor is jehad the copyright of one religion alone. It
>> can be argued that international causes apart, India has jehadis that are
>> fully home grown. Perhaps the earliest famous one was Nathuram Godse who
>> acting at the behest of his mentor Vinayak Savarkar (still referred to as
>> "Veer" or "brave" although he refused to own up to his role in the
>> conspiracy), murdered Mahatma Gandhi for the crime of championing Muslims.
>>
>> Jump forward to 6th December, 1992, the day Hindu fanatics demolished the
>> Babri Mosque setting into motion a chain of events that still wreaks havoc
>> today. From the Bombay riots of 1992 to the bomb blasts of 1993, the
>> Gujarat
>> pogroms of 2002 and hundreds of smaller deadly events, the last 16 years
>> have been the bloodiest since Partition. Action has been followed by
>> reaction in an endless cycle of escalating retribution. At the core on the
>> Hindu side of terror are organizations that openly admire Adolph Hitler,
>> nursing the hate of historic wrongs inflicted by Muslims. Ironically these
>> votaries of Hitler remain friends and admirers of Israel.
>>
>> On the Muslim side of terror are scores of disaffected youth, many of whom
>> have seen their families tortured and killed in more recent pogroms.
>> Christians too have fallen victim to recent Hindutva terror but as yet not
>> formed the mechanisms for revenge. Dalits despite centuries of caste
>> oppression, have not yet retaliated in violence although a small fraction
>> is
>> being drawn into an armed struggle waged by Naxalites.
>>
>> It is clear that no amount of spending on defense, no amount of patrolling
>> the high seas, no amount of increasing the military and police and
>> equipping
>> them with the latest weaponry can end the cycle of violence or place India
>> under a bubble of safety. Just as nuclear India did not lead to more
>> safety,
>> but only to a nuclear Pakistan, no amount of homeland security can save
>> us.
>> And inviting Israel's Mossad and America's CIA/FBI to the security table
>> is
>> like giving the anti-virus contract to those who spread the virus in the
>> first place. It can only make us more of a target for the next determined
>> jehadi attack.
>>
>> Policing, Justice and the Media
>> As for draconian anti-terror laws, they too only breed terror as for the
>> most part they are implemented by a State machinery that has imbibed
>> majoritarian values. So in Modi's Gujarat after the ethnic cleansing of
>> Muslims in 2002, despite scores of confessions to rape and murder captured
>> on hidden camera, virtually no Hindu extremists were punished while
>> thousands of Muslims rotted in jail under draconian laws. The same
>> happened
>> in Bombay despite the Shiv Sena being found guilty by the Justice
>> Shrikrishna Commission. Under pressure a few cases were finally brought to
>> trial but all escaped with the lightest of knuckle raps. In stark contrast
>> many Muslims accused in the 1993 bomb blasts were given death sentences.
>>
>> The bulk of our media, policing and judicial systems swallows the canard
>> that Muslims are by nature violent. Removing democratic safeguards
>> guaranteed by the Constitution can only make this worse. Every act of
>> wrongful imprisonment and torture that then follows is likely to turn
>> innocents into material for future terrorists to draw upon. Already the
>> double standards are visible. While the Students Islamic Movement of India
>> is banned, Hindutva outfits like the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and
>> the
>> Shiv Sena remain legal entities. The leader of the MNS, Raj Thackeray
>> recently openly spread such hatred that several north Indians were killed
>> by
>> lynch mobs. Amongst these were the Dube brothers, doctors from Kalyan who
>> treated the poor for a grand fee of Rs.10 per patient. Raj Thackeray like
>> his uncle Bal before him, remains free after issuing public threats that
>> Bombay would burn if anyone had the guts to arrest him. Modi remains free
>> despite the pogroms of Gujarat. Congress party murderers of Sikhs in 1984
>> remain free. Justice in India is clearly not there for all. Increasing the
>> powers of the police cannot solve this problem. Only honest and unbiased
>> implementation of laws that exist, can.
>>
>> It is a tragedy of the highest proportions that one such honest policeman,
>> Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the
>> thread of Hindutva terror was himself gunned down, perhaps by Muslim
>> terror.
>> It is reported that Col. Purohit and fellow Hindutva conspirators now in
>> judicial custody, celebrated the news of Karkare's death. Until Karkare
>> took
>> charge, the Malegaon bomb blasts in which Muslims were killed and the
>> Samjhauta Express blasts in which Pakistani visitors to India were killed
>> were being blamed on Muslims. Karkare exposed a hitherto unknown Hindutva
>> outfit as masterminding a series of killer blasts across the country. For
>> his pains Karkare came under vicious attack not just from militant
>> Hindutva
>> but from the mainstream BJP. He was under tremendous pressure to prove his
>> patriotism. Was it this that led this senior officer to don helmet and
>> ill-fitting bullet proof vest and rush into battle with a pistol? Or was
>> it
>> just his natural instinct, the same courage that had led him against all
>> odds, to expose Hindutva terror?
>>
>> Whatever it was, it only underlines the fact that jehadis of all kinds are
>> actually allies of each other. So Bin Laden served George Bush and
>> vice-versa. So Islamic and Hindutva jehadis have served each other for
>> years. Do they care who dies? Of the 200 people killed in the last few
>> days
>> by Islamic jehadis, a high number were Muslims. Many were waiting to board
>> trains to celebrate Eid in their hometowns in UP and Bihar, when their
>> co-religionists gunned them down. Shockingly the media has not commented
>> on
>> this, nor focused on the tragedy at the railway station, choosing to
>> concentrate on tragedies that befell the well-to-do. And it is the media
>> that is leading the charge to turn us into a war-mongering police state
>> where we may lead lives with an illusion of safety, but with the certainty
>> of joylessness.
>>
>> I am not arguing that we do not need efficient security at public places
>> and
>> at vulnerable sites. But real security will only come when it is
>> accompanied
>> by real justice, when the principles of democracy are implemented in every
>> part of the country, when the legitimate grievances of people are not
>> crushed, when the arms race is replaced by a race for decency and
>> humanity,
>> when our children grow up in an atmosphere where religious faith is put to
>> the test of reason. Until such time we will remain at the mercy of
>> "patriots" and zealots.
>>
>>
>> *************
>> 4/4
>> Mordecai Briemberg of Vancouver-based People's Radio talks with Hari
>> Sharma
>>
>>
>> http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/understanding-assault-mumbai
>> _________________________________________
>> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
>> Critiques & Collaborations
>> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
>> subscribe in the subject header.
>> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
>> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>>
>
>