[Reader-list] Arundhati Roy in Karachi

Wed May 13 13:48:31 IST 2009

Dear Shuddha,

While the Malegaon blast case may be the tip of the iceberg there has been
no study at all to verify the size of that iceberg.  It is one thing to
infiltrate the ranks surreptitiously and quite another to openly recruit in
the name of religion.  More to the point, the Indian Army condemned
Purohit's involvement and distanced itself from him, just as it has
condemned and distanced itself from instances where jawans from J&K had
cooperated with the LeT.  As such, it is pure hyperbole to compare
instance(s?) of RSS infiltration to the systematic and open program of
Islamization that the Pakistani Army  has undergone  since General Zia's
regime in the 1970s. This is well-documented by numerous scholars and
journalists.  

In the 60's (Yahya Khan's time) the army recruited from Jamat Islami cadre,
in the 71 War the Muktibahini was described as Kafir, while Pakistani
soldiers were called Mujahideen by their own officers.  Even today the
Military Academy indoctrinates its officers in-training to fight a
'Hindu-Bania-Kafir' India invoking the traditions of its own Punjabi-Pashtun
'martial races.'  In fact, Islamic studies is very much part of the
curriculum of the Pakistan Military Academy.

More to the point is the way the Pakistani military has traditionally played
footsie with fundamentalist forces in the most blatant manner to legitimize
its own rule.  Whenever the military has been in power those forces have
grown and supported sundry dictators; conversely, whenever Pakistan has had
half a chance to exercise its franchise the power of fundamentalist forces
has diminished.   There is simply no parallel to the way the Indian Army
operates.  I would also like to point out a few tragic episodes that have to
do with certain upright, professional Pakistani soldiers and their run-ins
with the Mullah-military complex: General Durrani who was Pakistan's NSA and
a distinguished soldier found himself jobless after he advocated a moderate
line vis-à-vis India and General Alvi (Naipaul's brother in-law,
incidentally) found himself quite dead, murdered mysteriously last year.

And what can I possibly say of the greatest irony when the Taliban took over
Swat?  A Pakistani friend called in great despair.  The ANP was being
accused of surrendering but they could do nothing because the Army and
police refused to extend protection, therefore they appealed that the Nizam
e Adl be implemented.  It was their only hope for survival.  And when Mullah
Sufi Mohammad triumphantly entered Swat to do the 'deal' he lead the prayers
while the brigadier of the local garrison stood five paces behind...

> From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net>
> Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 12:08:57 +0530
> To: Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com>
> Cc: "reader-list at sarai.net list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Arundhati Roy in Karachi
> 
> Dear All,

The statement attributed to Ms. Roy comes from a reporters summary
> in  
the Dawn newspaper of her interactions at the Karachi Womens Action
> 
Forum meeting. While its exact contents do need to be verified, the  
fact
> that there is a synergy between the broader Hindutva  
'Parivar' (Family) and
> sections of the armed forces in India (just as  
there is between Islamists
> and broad sections of the military  
estabishment in Pakistan, which the
> report does refer to) should not  
in itself be seen as surprising.

Perhaps
> memories are short, but the 'Abhinav Bharat' episode and the  
Malegaon Blast
> case, in which a serving miiitary intelligence officer  
Col. S.P. Purohit is
> one of the accused (and whose involvement in the  
attack on the Samjhauta
> Train to Pakistan is also under  
invesitgation) is an indication of the fact
> that contact between  
sections of the armed forces and the Hindutva 'Parivar'
> is not  
exactly a figure of fancy. As of now, the murky realities of the
> 
Malegaon case suggests that we only know the tip of an iceberg.

And finally,
> is there a problem in spelling a person's name as it  
should be spelled, or
> has Pawan Durani been somehow rendered  
incapable of such a simple task? Have
> we come to such a pass that  
along with everything else, this list will now
> also have to undertake  
the burden of conducting object lessons in
> orthography and spelling?

regards,

Shuddha

On 13-May-09, at 11:27 AM,
> Pawan Durani wrote:

> I am surprised ....."RSS has inflitrated the Indian  
>
> Army" ........What are the basis on which such a general statement  
> is made
> by Aran-Dhat-Tri-Ki-Roy ?
>
> Pawan
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 8:07 AM,
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta  
> <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> The Delhi
> based writer Arundhati Roy has recently been in Karachi,
> Pakistan at the
> invitation of civil society organizations and womens
> rights groups. Here are
> two reports from Dawn, a Karachi based daily,
> about meetings she attended
> (with an organization titled 'Womens
> Action Forum') and interactions she
> had. I hope that they will be of
> interest to people on the list.
>
>
> regards,
>
> Shuddha
> ------------------------------
> 1.
>
> Arundhati Roy
> and the WAF
> By Zubeida Mustafa
> Wednesday, 13 May, 2009
>
> http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/
>
> pakistan/11-arundhati-roy-and-the-waf--02
>
> WOMEN to reclaim public spaces:
> a programme of defiance and
> resistance.¹ That is how the Women¹s Action
> Forum defined the meeting
> it held last Friday to mobilise public opinion
> against extremism.
>
> Although WAF¹s concern to protect the space women have
> created in the
> public mainstream has been on its agenda for some time, this
> goal has
> acquired urgency in the wake of the events in Swat. The
> Nizam-i-Adl
> Regulation in Malakand Division has brought people face to face
> with
> the ugly reality of the Talibanisation phenomenon in the rural
>
> backwaters as well as in modern urban centres.
>
> The Karachi meeting was
> well-attended by WAF¹s standards. It is not
> easy to mobilise women for any
> cause in this city of multiple
> identities. The metropolis has a diversity of
> populations, cultures,
> languages and economic interests posing a challenge
> to bring women
> together on a single platform. Learning from its experience
> of the
> lawyers¹ movement that had succeeded in uniting the extreme right
> and
> centrist political parties and the professionals on a single-point
>
> agenda for two years, WAF also decided to make Talibanisation and
> women the
> focal issue.
>
> That strategy paid off. Women had already been galvanised by
> the
> video showing the flogging of a teenaged girl in Swat that activist
>
> Samar Minallah courageously brought to the world media¹s attention,
> invoking
> in the process the wrath of the Taliban whose fatwa declared
> her as wajibul
> qatl. The oppression of women is an issue that cuts
> across classes to touch
> every female raw nerve. Whether it is the
> smartly turned-out high-society
> woman or the working woman who slaves
> all day long to feed an army of
> children and a drug-addict husband or
> even the heavily veiled orthodox
> woman, each type, with few
> exceptions, has expressed her horror at the
> flogging incident.
>
> Hence on this occasion WAF managed to bring a diverse
> crowd together
>  the activists reaching out to the grassroots such as Amar
> Sindhu
> from Sindh University Hyderabad, Parveen Rahman from the Orangi
> Pilot
> Project and Sadiqa Salahuddin whose Indus Resource Centre runs
>
> schools in the interior of Sindh, as well as the elites sitting side
> by side
> with the three van-loads of women from Neelum Colony who
> clean the homes of
> the rich and will be starting their adult literacy
> classes from next week,
> courtesy Shabina¹s Garage School.
>
> The variety of speakers focusing on the
> theme of women¹s oppression
> by the Taliban found a responsive audience. But
> the question that
> made many ponder was: what next? Can this interest be
> sustained? If
> they had not already started probing for answers, the
> thought-
> provoking speech by Arundhati Roy, the renowned Indian writer and
>
> activist, did the trick. Coming from New Delhi on a solidarity
> mission to
> WAF¹s meeting. Roy raised four issues:
>
>  What do we mean by the Taliban
> and what gave birth to them?
>
>  Define your own space and do not surrender
> it.
>
>  Don¹t allow yourself to be forced into making choices of the with
>
> us or against us¹ type.
>
>  Don¹t be selective in your injustices.
>
> These
> should provide food for thought for those struggling against
> oppression.
> Without being specific, Roy exhorted her audience to look
> into the
> structures and systems that lead to a situation of such
> extreme oppression,
> some of which is rooted in the class conflict.
> She believes one has to take
> a total view¹ of the matter, which she
> admitted she had come to Pakistan to
> understand.
>
> The fact is that we live in a largely grey area where the
> lines are
> not sharply drawn. There is a lot of overlapping between issues
>
> touching gender, class, ethnicity, culture, political power and
> economic
> gains. It is this reality one has to recognise and see how
> the
> contradictions can be addressed. The demand to take sides
> unambiguously,
> expressed so vividly in the days following 9/11 by
> George Bush as You are
> with us or against us,¹ can create a dilemma
> for people when negotiating
> these grey areas.
>
> Roy¹s advice to avoid being with us or against us¹ has
> implications
> she didn¹t elucidate. In times when action is needed and a
> position
> has to be taken  even if verbally  inaction or neutrality
>
> unwittingly props up the status quo. If the status quo has been
> created by
> inimical forces ostensibly now fighting their self-created
> Frankenstein,
> where does one go?
>
> The practical approach would be to prioritise
> strategies that can be
> adapted to changing circumstances. And what should
> these be? Here Roy
> has a point when she says that one cannot be selective in
> the
> justices one espouses and the injustices one denounces. In this
>
> context Pakistanis find themselves trapped between the devil and the
> deep
> sea. Attempting to rectify a problem here and another there
> really doesn¹t
> help because our entire state structure is colonial,
> as a booklet titled
> Making Pakistan a Tenable State points out.
>
> Produced by 17 intellectuals,
> with Dr Mubashir Hasan as the driving
> force, the book describes the state
> structure as being based on the
> concentration of political and
> administrative power in the steel
> frame of the civil services under the
> protection of the armed forces.
> The structure could be defined as
> feudal-military-bureaucratic.¹
>
> The problem is systemic. In a state ruled
> by a government of the
> elites, by the elites, for the elites¹ it is
> inevitable that it is
> authoritarian and exploitative. Change can come when
> there is
> mobilisation of the people for change. When WAF mobilises women
> to
> fight against injustices it prepares them to also fight for change.
> The
> need is to empower them and instill confidence in them.
>
> Two women I have
> written about who are fighting for change come from
> the poorest of the poor
> and theirs is not a feminist agenda. They are
> fighting to have a roof above
> their heads. One is the wife of Walidad
> from Muhammad Essa Khaskheli who
> came all the way to Karachi in the
> heat of summer to save her goth from
> being snapped up by a feudal in
> the neighbourhood.
>
> The other is Parveen
> whose one-room mansion¹ in a katchi abadi of
> Clifton is now under threat of
> demolition. She is resisting the
> exploitative system that cannot provide
> shelter to the poor.
> Initially she hesitated  was it proper¹ for a woman
> to protest she
> had asked me. When encouraged she decided it was. These are
> women on
> the way to empowerment and that is WAF¹s agenda.
>
>  2.
>
> I¹m
> here to understand what you mean by Taliban¹
> by Salman Siddiqui
> Friday, 08
> May, 2009
> 
> http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/
>
> pakistan/arundhati-roy-sal-02
>
> Is there a threat of Talibanisation
> engulfing the entire region?
>
> I think it has already engulfed our region. I
> think there¹s a need
> for a very clear thinking (on this issue of
> Talibanisation). In
> India, there are two kinds of terrorism: one is Islamic
> terrorism and
> the other Maoist terrorism. But this term terrorism, we must
> ask,
> what do they mean by it.
>
> In Pakistan, I¹m here to understand what
> they mean by this term. When
> we say we must fight the Taliban or must defeat
> them, what does it
> mean? I¹m here to understand what you mean when you say
> Taliban. Do
> you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it
> that
> is being fought? That needs to be clarified.
>
> I think both needs to
> be fought. But if it¹s an ideology it has to be
> fought differently, while if
> it¹s a person with a gun then it has to
> be fought differently. We know from
> the history of the war on terror
> that a military strategy is only making
> matters worse all over the
> world. The war on terror has made the world a
> more dangerous place.
> In India, they have been fighting insurgencies
> military since 1947
> and it has become a more dangerous place.
>
> Swat and
> the Taliban boy
>
> It is very important for me to understand what exactly is
> going in
> Swat. How did it start? A Taliban boy asked me why women can¹t be
>
> like plastic bags and banned. The point is that the plastic bag was
> made in
> a factory but so was the boy. He was made in a factory that
> is producing
> this kind of mind(set). (The question is) who owns that
> factory, who funds
> it? Unless we deal with that factory, dealing with
> the boy doesn¹t help
> us.
>
> Water is the main issue
>
> One danger in Pakistan is that we talk
> about the threat of Taliban so
> much that other important issues lose focus.
> In my view, the problem
> of water in the world will become the most important
> problem.  I
> think big dams are economically unviable, environmentally
>
> unsustainable and politically undemocratic. They are a way of taking
> away a
> river from the poor and giving it to the rich. Like in India,
> there¹s an
> issue of SEZs (Special Economic Zones), whereby the land
> of the people are
> given to corporations. But the bigger problem is
> that there are making dams
> and giving water to the industries. This
> way the people who live in villages
> by the streams and rivers have no
> water for themselves. So building dams is
> one of the most
> ecologically destructive things that you can do.
>
> Fight
> over Siachen glacier
>
> There are thousands of Pakistani and Indian soldiers
> deployed on the
> Siachen glacier. Both of our countries are spending billions
> of
> dollars on high altitude warfare and weapons. The whole of the
> Siachen
> glacier is sort of an icy monument to human folly. Each day
> it is being
> filled with ice axes, old boots, tents and so on.
> Meanwhile, that
> battlefield is melting. Siachen glacier is about half
> its size now. It¹s not
> melting because the Indian and Pakistani
> soldiers are on it. But it¹s
> because people somewhere on the other
> side of the world are leading a good
> life.in countries that call
> themselves democracies that believe in human
> rights and free speech.
> Their economies depend on selling weapons to both of
> us. Now, when
> that glacier melts, there will be floods first, then there
> will be a
> drought and then we¹ll have even more reasons to fight. We¹ll
> buy
> more weapons from those democracies and in this way human beings will
>
> prove themselves to be the stupidest animals on earth.
>
> Money and the
> Indian elections
>
> Whatever system of government you have, whether it is a
> military
> dictatorship or a democracy, and you have that for a long time,
>
> eventually big money manages to subvert it. That has begun to happen
> even in
> a democracy (like India). For example, political parties need
> a lot of
> publicity, but the media is also run by corporate money. If
> you look at the
> big political parties like the Congress and the BJP,
> you see how much money
> is being put out just in their advertising
> budgets. Now where does all that
> come from?
>
> RSS and the Indian establishment
>
> The RSS has infiltrated
> everything to a great extent. In India, we
> have 120-150 million Muslims and
> it¹s considered a minorityIt¹s
> impossible to not belong to a minority of
> some sort in India. Caste
> or ethnicity or religion or whatever, in some way
> everyone belongs to
> a minority. The fights that many of us are waging
> against the RSS and
> against the BJP are to say that we live in a society
> which
> accommodates everybody. Everybody doesn¹t have to love everybody,
> but
> everybody has to be accommodated.  The RSS has infiltrated the
>
> (Indian) army as much as various kinds of Wahabism or other kinds of
>
> religious ideology have infiltrated the ISI or the armed forces in
> Pakistan.
> They are human beings like everyone else and they too get
> influenced.
>
>
> Indian media and sensationalizing of news coming out from Pakistan
>
> I think
> the media in both countries play this game. Whenever
> something happens here,
> they hype it up there, while when something
> happens there, they hype the
> news here. We say that we live in times
> of an information revolution and
> free press, but even then nobody
> gets to know the complete picture
>
> The
> Pakistani media is a little different from the Indian media. They
> stand on a
> slightly different foundation. But both share the problem
> of a lack of
> accountabilityThe trouble in India is that 90 per cent
> of their revenue
> comes from the corporate sectorthere¹s increasing
> privatization and
> corporatization of governance, education, health,
> infrastructure and water
> management. So in India you see an open
> criticism of governance, but very
> rarely criticism of corporations.
> It¹s a structural problem. It¹s not about
> good people or bad people.
> It¹s just that you can¹t expect a company to work
> against itself.
> This is a very serious issue which needs to be sorted
> out.
>
> Is the Indian army a sacred cow?
>
> The Indian army is quite a
> sacred cow especially on TV and Bollywood.
> But at the same time if you talk
> to the people in the Indian army,
> they say that they feel that the media is
> very critical of them. I
> don¹t share that view. I think it is a sacred cow.
> People are willing
> to give them a lot of leeway.
>
> Women and their fight
> for justice
>
> When women fight for justice, we must fight for every kind of
> justice
> We must fight for justice for men and justice for children.
> Because
> if you fight for one kind of justice and you tolerate another,
> then
> it¹s a pretty hollow fight. You may not be able to fight every
>
> battle, but you should be able to put yourself on the line and say I
> believe
> this.
>
>
>
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> The Sarai Programme at CSDS
> Raqs Media
> Collective
> shuddha at sarai.net
> www.sarai.net
>
> www.raqsmediacollective.net
>
>
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Shuddhabrata
> Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media
> Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net

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