From rustam at cseindia.org Mon Apr 1 14:42:26 2002 From: rustam at cseindia.org (rustam) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 14:42:26 +530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Fwd] Edward Said on Israel/Palestine Message-ID: <5C24559F9@cseindia.org> Subject: Edward Said on Israel/Palestine Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 14:44:47 -0500 (EST) March 24 - March 30, 2002 What Price Oslo? By Edward Said The television images on Al-Jazeera have been burningly clear. There is a kind of Palestinian heroism in evidence there that makes this the story of our time. An entire army, navy, and air force supplied munificently and unconditionally by the United States have been wreaking destruction on the 18 per cent of the West Bank and 60 per cent of Gaza afforded Palestinians after ten years of negotiations with Israel and the US. Palestinian hospitals, schools, refugee camps and civilian residences have been at the receiving end of a merciless, criminal assault by Israeli troops huddled inside their helicopter gun-ships, F-16's and Merkavas, and still the poorly armed resistance fighters take on this preposterously more powerful force undaunted and unyielding. In the US, CNN and newspapers like The New York Times fail, to their discredit, to ever mention that "the violence" is uneven and that there aren't two sides involved here, but only one state turning all its great power against a stateless, repeatedly refugeed, and dispossessed people, bereft of arms and real leadership, with the aim of destroying this people, "dealing them a terrible blow" as the war criminal who leads Israel shamelessly put it. As an index of how deranged Sharon has become, I might quote here what he said to Ha'aretz on 5 March: "The PA is behind the terror, it's all terror. Arafat is behind the terror. Our pressure is aimed at ending the terror. Don't expect Arafat to act against the terror. We have to cause them heavy casualties and then they'll know they can't keep using terror and win political achievements." Besides symptomatically revealing the workings of an obsessed mind bent on destruction and sheer, adulterated hatred, Sharon's words indicate the failures of reason and criticism loosed on the world since last September. Yes, there was a terrorist outrage, but there's more to the world than terror. There is politics, and struggle, and history, and injustice, and resistance and yes, state terror as well. With scarcely a peep from the American professorate or intelligentsia, we have all succumbed to the promiscuous misuse of language and sense, by which everything we don't like has become terror and what we do is pure and simple good -- fighting terror, no matter how much wealth, and lives, and destruction is involved. Swept away are all the Enlightenment precepts by which we attempt to educate our students and our-fellow citizens, replaced by a disproportionate orgy of vindictiveness and self-righteous wrath of the kind that only the wealthy and the powerful, it would seem, have the right to use and act upon. No wonder then that a fourth-rate thug like Sharon feels entitled (by emulation and derivation) to do what he does when in the greatest democracy on earth, laws, constitutional rights, writs of habeas corpus and reason itself are consigned to the rubbish bin in the pursuit of terror and terrorism. As educators and as citizens, we have failed in our mission by allowing ourselves to be bamboozled in this way, without so much as an organised public discussion about a defence budget that has shot up to $400 billion while 40 million people remain without health insurance. Israelis, Arabs and Americans are told that love of country requires such expenditures and such destruction because a good cause is at stake. Nonsense. What is at stake are material interests that keep rulers in power, corporations making profits, people in a state of manufactured consent, just so long as they don't get up one morning and start to think about where, in this mad technologised rush to bomb and kill, we are going. Israel is now waging a war against civilians, pure and simple, although you will never hear it put that way in the US. This is a racist war, and in its strategy and tactics, a colonial one as well. People are being killed and made to suffer disproportionately because they are not Jews. What an irony! Yet CNN never refers to "occupied" territories (always rather to "violence in Israel" as if the main battlefields are the concert halls and cafes of Tel Aviv and not in fact the ghettoes and besieged refugee camps of Palestine that have already been surrounded by 150 illegal Israeli settlements). For the past ten years, the great fraud of Oslo was foisted on the world by the US, with hardly an awareness that only 18 per cent of the West Bank were given up, and 60 per cent of Gaza. No one knows geography and it's better not to know, since the reality on the ground is so astonishing, considering the verbal hoopla and self-congratulation. And that pseudo-pundit -- the insufferably conceited Thomas Friedman -- still has the gall to say that "Arab TV" shows one- sided pictures, as if "Arab TV" should be showing things from Israel's point-of-view the way CNN does, with "Mid-East violence" the catch-all word for the ethnic cleansing that Israel is wreaking on the Palestinians in their ghettoes and camps. Has Friedman (or CNN for that matter) ever tried to point out the difference between an attacking army fighting a colonial war on the territory of the people it has occupied for 35 years, and the people defending themselves against that butchery? Of course not, for indeed why should Friedman ever bother to say honestly that there is no Palestinian occupation, there are no Palestinian F- 16's, no Apache helicopters, no gunboats, no Merkava tanks, in short, no Palestinian occupation of Israel. So much for Friedman's credentials as an honest commentator and reporter who has utterly failed, in unadorned terms, to explain the US view or to understand the Arab and Palestinian cause. Can he not see that he and his writings are part of the problem, that in their maundering self-justifications and the dishonesty in which he shows no sign of the self-criticism he keeps hectoringly expecting of others, he actually aggravates the ignorance and the misperceptions rather than reducing them? Poor journalist and educator, he. The picture you get here is that Israelis are battling for their lives instead of for their settlements and military bases on the occupied lands of Palestine. No maps have been run for months in the American media. On 8 March, hitherto the bloodiest day for Palestinians of the 16-month Intifada, CNN's main evening news specified the death of 40 "people" and failed even to mention the death of several Red Crescent workers killed while their ambulances were prevented by Israeli tanks from getting to the wounded. Just "people," and no pictures of the hell they've been living in this the 35th year of military occupation. Tul Karm is undergoing a siege of sieges with 24 hour curfews, electricity and water cut-off, systematic round-ups and the removal of 800young men, the wanton smashing of refugee houses, wholesale destruction of property (and I'm not speaking of nightclubs or sports facilities but of shacks and lean-tos that furnished twice displaced refugees with hovels for bare subsistence) and limitless cases of sadistic cruelty to unarmed and undefended civilians who are pushed and beaten and left to bleed to death, women allowed to give birth to stillborn babies while they wait needlessly at Israeli road-blocks, old men made to strip and take off their shoes and walk barefoot for a gum-chewing 18-year-old waving around an M-16 that my taxes have paid for. Bethlehem, its town center and university destroyed, flattened at 5,000 feet by valiant Israeli bombers swooshing in with their marvelous F-16's which I've paid for too. Balata camp, Aida and Dheheisheh and Azza Camps, the tiny villages of Khadr and Husam, all battered into rubble without even a mention by the US press, whose New York editors so obviously have no problems with it, with a few exceptions here and there. The uncounted dead and wounded, the unburied and unassisted, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of lives maimed, distorted, catastrophically marked by wantonly caused suffering, all of it ordered at a safe distance from the action in leafy, calm West Jerusalem by men for whom the West Bank and Gaza are distant rat holes filled with insects and rodents that must be "subdued" and driven out, taught a lesson in the accepted jargon of Israel's superb military. On Tuesday, in the biggest attack of all, Ramallah has been invaded and is being ravaged by 140 Israeli tanks, thus completing Israel's re-conquest of the already- occupied Palestinian territories. The Palestinian people are paying the heavy, heavy unconscionable price of Oslo, which after 10 years of negotiating left them with bits of land lacking coherence and continuity, security institutions designed to assure their subservience to Israel, and a life that impoverished them so that the Jewish state could thrive and prosper. In vain during those 10 years did some of us warn that the distance between the US-Israeli language of peace and the appalling realities on the ground was never bridged, never even intended to be bridged. Words and phrases like "peace process" and "terrorism" took hold without reference to any real referent. Land confiscations were either overlooked or referred to as "bilateral negotiations" that were taking place between a state consolidating its hold on territory it wanted at all costs, and a mediocre set of uninformed negotiators whom it took four years to acquire, much less use, a reliable map of the land they were negotiating over. The worst misrepresentation of all is that in the 54 years since 1948, never has a narrative of Palestinian heroism and suffering been allowed to emerge. We are all depicted as violent fanatic extremists who are little more than the terrorists that George Bush and his cabal have imposed on the consciousness of a stunned and systematically misinformed population, aided and uncritically abetted by an entire army of commentators and media stars -- the Blitzers, Zahns, Lehrers, Rathers, Brokaws, Russerts, and their ilk. The Israeli lobby is scarcely needed with such faithful disciples trailing happily in its ranks. But now that the Saudi peace proposal has become the point of discussion and of hope, it is necessary, I think, to put it in its real, as opposed to its supposed, context. First of all, this is the re-cycled Reagan plan of 1982, the Fahd Plan of 1983, the Madrid plan of 1991, and so on: in other words, it follows a series of plans many times put forward which in the end both Israel and the US have not only refused to implement, but have actively torpedoed. The way I see it, the only negotiations worth having should be on the phases of a total Israeli withdrawal and not, as was the case with Oslo, bargaining over what pieces of land Israel was willing very grudgingly to give up. There's been too much Palestinian blood spilled, too much Israeli contempt and racist violence dispensed for any serious return to Oslo-style negotiations brokered by that most biased of honest brokers, the United States. Everyone is aware, however, that the old Palestinian negotiators haven't given up on their dreams and illusions, and that meetings have been occurring throughout the raids and bombings. But I would argue that due weight be given to decades of Palestinian suffering and the real human costs of Israel's destructive policies before any negotiations accord undue status to Israeli governments that have trampled on Palestinian rights the way they have demolished our houses and killed our people. Any Arab-Israeli negotiations that do not factor in history -- and for this task a team of historians, economists, and geographers with a conscience are needed -- are not worth having, just as Palestinians must now elect a new set of negotiators and representatives in the hope of salvaging something from the present calamity. In short, in whatever meetings that now occur between Israeli and Palestinian representatives, the gravity of Israeli depredations against our people has to be given attention and not simply brushed aside as so much past history. Oslo, in effect, pardoned the occupation, excusing it for all the buildings and lives destroyed over the first 25 years of occupation. After so much further suffering, Israel cannot be excused and allowed to walk away from the table with not even a rhetorical demand that it needs to atone for what it did. I will be told that politics is about what is possible, not about what is desired, and that we should be grateful to get even a small Israeli pullback. I disagree strongly. Negotiations can only be about when the total withdrawal will take place, not what percentage Israel is willing to concede. A conqueror and a vandal cannot concede anything: he must simply return what he's taken and pay for the abuses that are his responsibility to bear, just as Saddam Hussein should and did pay for his occupation of Kuwait. We are still a considerable distance from that goal, although in the meantime the extraordinary unbowed bravery of all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has in effect politically and morally defeated Sharon, who will lose his seat in the not too distant future. But, that in two decades his armies can invade Arab cities at will, killing and sowing destruction without so much as a collective Arab peep speaks reams for the Arab world's leaders. Lastly, what the various Arab rulers who are so delicately silent now while Palestine is being raped on TV think they are doing, I don't know, but I can imagine that deepin their souls they must feel no small amount of shame and disgrace. Powerless militarily, politically, economically and above all morally, they have little credibility and no real standing, except as obedient pawns on the American-Israeli chessboard. Perhaps they feel they are playing a waiting game. Perhaps. But they (like Arafat and his men) haven't learned the power of systematically disseminated information as a way of protecting their people from the onslaughts of those who consider all Arabs militant, extremist, terrorist fanatics. The good news is that the time for that sort of irresponsible and contemptible behavior is very short. Will the new generation do any better? It is for a whole new attitude toward secular education to decide the answer, whether collectively we go down again to disorganisation, corruption and mediocrity or whether at last we can become a nation. **************************************************************** * NOTE CHANGE IN OUR EMAIL ADDRESS: PLEASE NOTE IT AS FOLLOWS * **************************************************************** CENTRE FOR SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT ( CSE ) 41, TUGHLAKABAD INSTITUTIONAL AREA, NEW DELHI- 110 062 TELE: 608 1110, 608 1124 608 3394, 608 6399 FAX : 91-11-608 5879 VISIT US AT: http://www.cseindia.org Email: rustam at cseindia.org **************************************************************** From joy at sarai.net Tue Apr 2 15:14:01 2002 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy Chatterjee) Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:14:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ASPARTAME - THE SILENT KILLER Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020402151339.00a23ec0@mail.sarai.net> ASPARTAME - THE SILENT KILLER ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Ron Harder 2002 There is an epidemic across North America today of Multiple Sclerosis and Lupus. Most people do not understand why this epidemic is happening, and they do not know why these diseases are so rampant. I would like to share with you the main reason we are having this very serious problem. Many people today use artificial sweeteners in their tea or coffee. They do this because the ads they see on TV tell them that sugar is bad for their health. This is absolutely true. Sugar is toxic to us, but, what most people use as a replacement for sugar is much more deadly. I am talking about Aspartame. It is the cause of the epidemic that was mentioned above. Aspartame is an extremely toxic chemical that is produced by a chemical company called Monsanto. Aspartame is being marketed around the world as a sugar substitute and is found in all diet soft drinks, such as Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi. It is also found in artificial sweeteners such as NutraSweet, Equal, and Spoonful; and it is used in many other products as a sugar replacement. Aspartame is marketed as a diet product, but it is not a diet product at all. In fact, it will cause you to GAIN weight because it makes you crave carbohydrates. Causing you to gain weight is only a very small part of what Aspartame does. Aspartame is a toxic chemical that changes the brain's chemistry. It can and does cause severe seizures. This chemical changes the dopamine level in the brain, and it is particularly deadly for anyone suffering from Parkinson's disease. Aspartame is extremely poisonous, and here is why. One of the toxic ingredients of Aspartame is wood alcohol. When the temperature of Aspartame exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in the Aspartame is converted to formaldehyde, and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. Formaldehyde is grouped in the same class of poisons as Cyanide and Arsenic - which are very deadly toxins. The only difference is... Formaldehyde kills quietly, and it takes a little longer. And, in the process of killing people, it causes all kinds of neurological problems. There are 92 documented symptoms of Aspartame Poisoning leading to coma and death. The majority of these symptoms are neurological, because the Aspartame attacks and destroys the nervous system. Some of the symptoms of Aspartame Poisoning are covered below. One of these symptoms is Lupus, which has become almost as rampant as Multiple Sclerosis, especially with Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers. When someone develops Lupus as a result of using Aspartame, they usually do not know that the Aspartame is the culprit. They then continue to use Aspartame, which aggravates the Lupus to such a degree that it sometimes becomes life threatening. When people finally get off the Aspartame, the severity of the Lupus decreases. It is generally believed that once you develop Lupus, you will have it for the rest of your life, but this is not so. Lupus can be defeated with some very special treatment. Aspartame Poisoning is also very often diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis. The methanol toxicity mimics Multiple Sclerosis, and therefore, people are being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when in fact they do not have it. Multiple Sclerosis is not a death sentence, where Methanol Toxicity usually is. When those who suffer from Aspartame Poisoning stop using Aspartame, most of the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis disappear. There are many cases where someone's vision has returned, and even their hearing has returned. We have a very serious problem here. More and more people who are heavy Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers are being diagnosed with MS. This also applies to other diseases. If you are using Aspartame and you suffer from Fibromyalgia symptoms such as spasms, shooting pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss, you probably do not have Fibromyalgia, you very likely have Aspartame Poisoning. At the Conference of the American College of Physicians, doctors admitted that they did not know the cause of the epidemic in MS and Lupus. It is believed that the phenylalanine in the Aspartame breaks down the seizure threshold and depletes Serotonin, which causes manic depression, panic attacks, rage, and violence. According to the Conference of the American College of Physicians, "We are talking about a plague of neurological diseases caused by this deadly poison". Aspartame is especially deadly for diabetics. All physicians know what wood alcohol will do to a diabetic. There are many cases where physicians believe they have a patient with etinopathy, when in fact, the problem is caused by Aspartame. The Aspartame keeps the blood sugar level out of control, causing many patients to go into a coma. Unfortunately, many diabetics who have used Aspartame have died. There are many recorded cases where diabetics have switched from Saccharin to an spartame product, and many of these people have eventually gone into a coma. Their physicians could not get the blood sugar levels under control. Thus, the patients suffered acute memory loss, and eventually coma and death. Two prominent Doctors, Dr. Blaylock and Dr. H. J. Roberts, have written books on spartame Poisoning. Dr. Blaylock's book is entitled: "EXCITOTOXINS: THE TASTE THAT KILLS". Dr. H.J. Roberts, diabetic specialist and world expert on Aspartame Poisoning, has written a book entitled "DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE". Dr. Roberts realized what was happening when Aspartame was first marketed and used. He said that his diabetic patients who used Aspartame presented memory loss, confusion, and severe vision loss". The methanol in the Aspartame converts to Formaldehyde in the retina of the eye, and causes people to go blind. Memory loss is due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are neurotoxic without the other amino acids found in protein. Thus it goes past the blood brain barrier and deteriorates the neurons of the brain. Dr. Roberts tells how Aspartame Poisoning is escalating Alzheimer's disease. Women of 30 years of age are being admitted that have developed Alzheimer's disease as a result of using Aspartame. Aspartame Disease is partially the cause of what is behind some of the mystery of the Desert Storm health problems (Gulf War Syndrome). The burning tongue and other problems discussed in over 60 cases can be directly related to the consumption of an Aspartame product. Several thousand pallets of diet drinks were shipped to the Desert Storm troops. (Remember that heat can liberate the methanol from the Aspartame at 86 degrees F). These diet drinks sat on pallets in the 120-degree F. Arabian sun for weeks at a time. The service men and women drank them all day long, and all of their symptoms are identical to Aspartame Poisoning. According to Dr. Roberts, another serious problem is that consuming Aspartame during pregnancy can cause birth defects. When the Aspartame attacks the nervous system it does not allow the unborn child to develop properly. Aspartame consumption has also been shown to lead to cancer. In the original lab tests on Aspartame, animals that were given Aspartame developed brain tumors. The phenylalanine breaks down into DXP, which is a brain tumor agent. How serious is this Aspartame Poisoning? A mother who had a child on NutraSweet was told to get her child off the product. The child was having grand mal seizures every day. The mother spoke to her doctor, who called the ADA, who told the doctor not to take the child off the NutraSweet. They are still trying to convince the mother that the Aspartame is causing the seizures. Every time you take a grand mal seizure victim off of Aspartame, the seizures stop. Here is the major problem. Congressional Hearings were held when Aspartame was originally approved for use in 100 different products. Since that initial hearing, there have been two more hearings to try to ban this product, but to no avail. The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep pockets. This list of 100 has now expanded to where there are over 5,000 products containing this chemical, and the patent has expired. Also, Aspartame is now available in over 90 countries around the world. There is a bit of hope. Stevia, a sweet herb which helps in the metabolism of sugar, and which is proving to be ideal for diabetics, has now been approved as a dietary supplement by the F.D.A. For years, the F.D.A. had outlawed this sweet food because of their loyalty to Monsanto. I assure you that MONSANTO, the creator of Aspartame, knows exactly how deadly their product is. They fund the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association, Congress, and the Conference of the American College of Physicians. They have the contacts and the power to keep their product on the market. Public health means nothing to these people, it's all about making money. Senator Howard Hetzenbaum wrote a bill that would have warned all pregnant mothers and children of the dangers of Aspartame. The bill would also have instituted independent studies on the problems existing in the population (seizures, changes in brain chemistry, changes in neurological and behavioral symptoms). It was killed by the powerful drug and chemical lobbies, letting loose the hounds of disease and death. We ask that you help to get the word out about Aspartame. Print this article and distribute it to everyone you know. There are a lot of people out there who must be warned, PLEASE let them know this information. You might want to print it out, hand it to your friends, or fax it to people who are not online. Young people drink a lot of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, and because of this, they are the most susceptible to Aspartame Poisoning. Please let your children know about the toxins in these drinks. A large number of adults use Nutrasweet, Equal, or Spoonful. They also need to be warned of the dangers in those products. And, very importantly, do not consume anything that has Aspartame in it. If it says "Sugar Free" on the label, you know that it contains Aspartame. DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT. One other thing, and this is for your own benefit. Go to the Search Engine "Google" and do a search using the search word "Aspartame". You will be surprised by what you will find. From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Tue Apr 2 22:57:16 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (Sagnik Chakravartty) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 09:27:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Who would get news from this part of the world? - Posted by Mridul to The Sentinel Message Board(Assam) Message-ID: <20020402172716.9854.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> Who would get news from this part............... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ The Sentinel Message Board ] [ FAQ ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by Mridul on March 30, 2002 at 09:20:33: who would get news from this part of the world. A border area between Assam and Arunachal pradesh , 9 Km from the town of Margherita in Assam , This area is covered with jungle and mountains and why ofcourch a safe heaven for this new curse on the human kind "Terrorists". So this filthy animals(NSCN} has come down to the small villages around this place and has started terrorising the people. The other day the Circle officer of one of the village "Kongsha"was brutelly murdered in the day light. So who would take actions and rescue this innocent people from the wild beasts ? The government! u might be Jocking........................ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Ups: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post a Followup Name: E-Mail: Subject: Comments: : who would get news from this part of the world. A border area between Assam and Arunachal pradesh , 9 Km from the town of Margherita in Assam , This area is covered with jungle and mountains and why ofcourch a safe heaven for this new curse on the human kind "Terrorists". So this filthy animals(NSCN} has come down to the small villages around this place and has started terrorising the people. The other day the Circle officer of one of the village "Kongsha"was brutelly murdered in the day light. : So who would take actions and rescue this innocent people from the wild beasts ? : The government! u might be Jocking........................ Optional Link URL: Link Title: Optional Image URL: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ The Sentinel Message Board ] [ FAQ ] [Home] [Ajir Asom] [The Sentinel(Hindi)] [Samay Prabah] [Dondmusa] [Regional] [National] [International] [Train Timmings] [Flight Information] [Classified] [Sunday Sentinel] [Saturday Fare] [Sports] [Archives] [Feedback] [About Us] Copyright � 2001 Omega Printers and Publisher, Guwahati. Site developed by , M.D.Road, Guwahati, Assam __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Tue Apr 2 23:18:57 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (Sagnik Chakravartty) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 09:48:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Peace through Media - A posting which appeared in The Sentinel , Assam Message Board Message-ID: <20020402174857.64649.qmail@web20305.mail.yahoo.com> Peace through Media -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ The Sentinel Message Board ] [ FAQ ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by mar atsongchanger on May 04, 2001 at 15:59:26: Assam need peace;not of blood stient peace Assam need our leaders;killing is not solution. Can Sentinel readers call for a Peace Campaign. Peace through Media.Think about it. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Wed Apr 3 12:36:59 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 02:06:59 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] a symbolic step Message-ID: > > I have just sent a letter to Middle East > decision-makers calling on them to de-escalate > the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. > > Please join me by going to the Progressive > Portal Web site and sending a letter of your > own -- it takes only a minute: > http://www.progressiveportal.org/letters/global/palestinians/ > after you send the letter they will give you a list of the people it is being sent to. long list. z.rizvi _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Wed Apr 3 13:45:59 2002 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 00:15:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Sketches of Palestine Message-ID: <20020403081559.8813.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Sometimes I wish I could tell stories through a comic book, like Joe Sacco. A page of a comic is a couple of panels of pictures, each worth a thousand words. Easier said than done. When I came across his comic series called Palestine, the first thing I did was give up on my drawing classes. I was living in Portland, Oregon, which was my first and only experience of living in the northwest of the United States. It was also my first and only experience of living in a city where the news of the world seemed delusional. The news from Europe, Asia and Africa, of Bosnia, Israel and Rwanda, which made headlines that year, seemed irrelevant in that city with the best coffee, chocolate cakes, the largest park of any city in the world (Portland has a rainforest for a park!), the oldest naturopathic medicine teaching institute in the US, and bakeries set up by ex-lawyers who have fled living in Chicago and New York. In that city, where it seemed modern problems had solutions that were staring me in the face I came across Palestine. Joe Sacco, born in Malta, living in Portland, spent two months living, writing and drawing in the Occupied Territories in the winter of 1991-2, the time of the first intifada. Presently, 10 years later, his nine comic book series have come out in one volume (www.fantagraphics.com), with an introductory essay by Edward Said. Joe shows his journey through his drawings. He begins from living in Jerusalem and taking taxis spending afternoons in Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus. In Jerusalem he meets a young Jewish-American who is in Israel to discover his roots, in Nablus he draws a crowd of curious onlookers and among them someone rolls up his sleeve to show a live ammunition bullet wound, someone else has on his hairline the scar made by a plastic bullet. Whenever Joe encounters the intifada: a demonstration, stone throwing, jeeps of soldiers pulling in he jumps into a taxi and exits the scene. By the evening, he lets off steam in a nightclub in the New City in Jerusalem. This is Joe at the beginning of his journey. The realities of the Occupation pile up around him. He visits a hospital, where the bullet injuries for the morning�"are only four", and a female doctor tells him a story of soldiers following ambulances in, entering the emergency room and interrogating the wounded. As he hears stories of a demolished home, or the cutting down of olive trees by soldiers, the stories of the living conditions of the inmates of the prison Ansar Three (built to deal with the intifada overflow) he draws the people who are telling these stories, their homes where he is listening to them, along with the story he is hearing. When Joe begins to live with people in refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza he arrives at his most memorable images. Of Jabalia refugee camp the unpaved alleys, the corrugated asbestos roofs held down by bricks, the mud inside the homes, the watch towers of the soldiers, the roadblocks are my first images of the living conditions of the Palestinians. The last time I have seen similar images are of Soweto and other townships under the South African apartheid regime. The book ends with an event that Joe witnessed, and he tells it thus in the boxes that accompany the images:�"a group of Israeli soldiers stopped a Palestinian youth of 12 or 13. The soldiers took cover under an awning and they made the boy remove his keffiyeh and pointed to where he should stand�- in the rain. Perhaps for the boy it was one of dozens of humiliations, bad enough in his personal scheme of things, but no worse than others he's experienced. I'd come for the occupation, and I found what I'd come to find, and here it was again, and something else, too... The boy stood there and answered their questions, and what choice did he have? But what was he thinking? Was it, one day it will be a better world and these soldiers and I will greet each other as neighbours? Or was it simply: one day, ONE DAY! And beyond the particular abuses of this time and place, beyond the really big questions�- the status of Jerusalem, the future of the settlements, the return of the refugees, et cetera�- which must be raised and then hurdled if there ever is to be peace here, is something else�- a boy standing in the rain and what is he thinking? And if I'd guessed before I got here, and found with little astonishment once I'd arrived, what can happen to someone who thinks he has all the power, what of this�- what becomes of someone when he believes to have none?" You should see the five panels of illustrations that go with this. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From bhrigu at sarai.net Fri Apr 5 04:23:31 2002 From: bhrigu at sarai.net (Bhrigu) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 04:23:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Israel executes... Message-ID: <02040504233103.00965@janta7.sarai.kit> Israel executes Arafat's elite guards Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Ramallah Sunday March 31, 2002 The Observer The ambulancemen were carrying the first body out of the Cairo-Amman bank in the centre of Ramallah when I came across them. His knees were doubled up in rigor mortis. One of the legs of his green parachute jumpsuit had been burned through to the skin by a round fired at such close quarters that the muzzle flash had ignited the fabric. A gaping wound was visible in his chest - also apparently from a burst of fire from close range. What killed him, however, was the gunshot to his temple. A few minutes later, the paramedics brought the second body, that of a young man, also in Yasser Arafat's elite guard unit, Force 17. Someone had taken off his boots, revealing his blue socks. The wounds that he had obviously been clutching when he died were also to his upper body. But what must have killed him, like his colleague, was a shot fired at close range to his temple that had demolished the back of his head. The third body was of an older man, in his forties, grey-haired with a moustache. Someone had pulled his parachute suit above his head to hide the wound. When the stretcher-bearers put him down, the covering was pulled back. The wound was to the head. What happened on the third floor of the Cairo-Amman bank at midnight on Friday during Israel's occupation of the Palestinian city of Ramallah can only be surmised. But in the few minutes after Israeli soldiers stormed the Palestinian position, five men were wounded and five men were put to death by the Israelis, each with a single coup de grace administered to the head or throat. Maher Shalabi, bureau chief of Abu Dhabi television in Ramallah, was in his office in the same building when he heard several bursts of heavy shooting on the floors below. 'I heard heavy shooting; maybe it was an exchange of fire. But I believe this was an execution.' Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian negotiator, added: 'They were executed in cold blood. This is a clear example of the collective execution policy adopted by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people.' According to local residents, the dead men were part of a large group of Palestinian policemen who had taken shelter in the building, which also houses the offices of the British council, when the Israeli army entered Ramallah. The men had taken shelter in the foyer area on the third floor next to a dentist's surgery. Yesterday bullet holes spattered the walls and the floor was flecked with blood. On one wall were large splashes of blood. Elsewhere several bloody trails had been marked along the floor where someone had pulled the bodies towards the lift. An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers entered the building after Palestinians opened fire from inside and threw a grenade at the force outside. The coups des graces administered for these five men are a metaphor for what the Israeli incursion is hoping to achieve inside Ramallah. By isolating Arafat within his headquarters, Sharon hopes to decapitate the Palestinian Authority. Yesterday, inside Arafat's compound, it was clear that, for all the claims of Ariel Sharon, Arafat was neither under threat nor under arrest. Arafat, simply, was surrounded by the Israelis. As we approached the compound we could see the tanks and armoured personnel carriers ringing his sprawl of offices and barracks. On every side were soldiers taking positions and aiming their weapons. Approaching closer the Israeli army tried to prevent us following a delegation from the Palestinian solidarity movement into the compound, led by José Bové, the French farmers leader and anti-globalisation protester. In a surreal touch Bové and his colleagues had marched through the ruins of the town, even as fighting continued. With hands above their heads, and carrying palm fronds as Easter symbols of peace, they approached Arafat's compound with two columns of heavily armed Israeli infantry jogging the last few hundred metres behind. Seeing Bové, who had marched through the town with a small group of fellow protesters bearing a tray of medicines for those still injured inside Arafat's compound, the soldiers relented and let us enter with him and approach the offices where Arafat was holed up. Crossing a large car park we could see a three-storey block, its walls splattered with tank fire, two windows blackened by fire with sheets hanging where the occupants had tried to escape the flames. I followed Bové to the entrance to the offices where Arafat was hiding but was grabbed from behind by an Israeli soldier and pulled away. Arafat may not be a prisoner but it is the Israelis who choose who goes to see the Palestinian chairman. On every corner yesterday stood Israeli tanks. The devastation that these tanks have wrought inside the Palestinians' most attractive city has to be seen to be believed. Roads have been dynamited or torn up by tanks. Buildings are burned and shattered. Everywhere there is rubble, spent ammunition and broken glass. A little later, I met Hossam Sharkawi and Mohamed Awad, two senior officials in the Palestinian Red Crescent who I had met before. Sharkawi, a co-ordinator for emergency services, told me the Israelis had arrested five of his drivers. 'They have them blindfolded and handcuffed. I cannot understand what the Israelis are thinking. They also used one of our ambulances today as a human shield. They sandwiched it inside a convoy.' Sharkawi was able to reveal something of life inside Arafat's compound. 'We know there are injured inside,' he said. 'But they have been blocking ambulances entering to give treatment.' How many injured he could not say. 'All that we hear is that there may be between 50 and 100 people trapped with Arafat inside the building, without food, or water or any electricity and no telephone communication.' He shook his head and walked away.   From boud1 at wp.pl Wed Apr 3 18:24:36 2002 From: boud1 at wp.pl (boud) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 14:54:36 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Reader-list] jerusalem.indymedia.org In-Reply-To: <02040504233103.00965@janta7.sarai.kit> Message-ID: Sorry if someone already posted this, but there's an Indymedia site in Palestine, run by Palestinians - hence the name (they chose it) - but with an international support network: http://jerusalem.indymedia.org From boud1 at wp.pl Thu Apr 4 03:46:35 2002 From: boud1 at wp.pl (boud) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 00:16:35 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Reader-list] unsubscribing... :( Message-ID: Hi everyone, Just a "see-you-later" note (not a real goodbye) to say that reader-list really has some great stuff, but I'm going to have to unsubscribe because I'm overloaded with interesting info - it's not that there's anything wrong with the list. In fact it's because there's too much that is *right* with the list ;), which means I cannot stop myself from reading it and occasionally answering! And hence spreading myself too thin... Please remember that if anyone is interested in Indymedia in India (in addition to those people already active), I think that Sarai could provide a lot of support for many things, but there are also many specific organising and coordinating tools to network with each other which are more in the role of Indymedia itself, such as the mailing list: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-india/ Interested people should browse (read semi-randomly) through the archives of that list, and the documents at: http://newimc.indymedia.org even if you are happy to use the existing india.indymedia.org site. Indymedia is supposed to be based on grassroots people's collectives, and the web sites are just one part of this. Best wishes boud PS: Since there are probably some sociology type people on this list ;), if you are interested in analysing the sociology of spam, you could subscribe to the following Indymedia mailing list: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/spamtrap/ and you will receive loads full of spam with (hopefully) no real messages. If you're on a GNU/Linux type system you could use commands like grep, awk, uniq, wc to quantiatively analyse word or pattern frequencies and get a few dozen decent publications in scholarly journals. It's like studying garbage in archeology - it could reveal a lot about today's global electronic society... From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Fri Apr 5 02:58:40 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 16:28:40 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] MARCH FOR A FREE PALESTINE Message-ID: march this saturday. ------------ MARCH FOR A FREE PALESTINE ACROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE called by the Palestine Activist Forum PROTEST THE ISRAELI SIEGE OF PALESTINE Gather at Borough Hall in Brooklyn subway #2, 3, 4, 5 to Borough Hall, N, R to Court Street F, A, C to Jay street. SATURDAY APRIL 6 @1 PM MARCH @ 2PM to CITY HALL PARK demand: immediate withdrawl from the west bank towns end of the occupation end us aid to israel for more information email :pafny at yahoo.com 718 404 3902 ext 9562 --------------- on a personal note, i will be there filming and want to open it up to people who would like to narrate something (you dont have to be there)...i will be web streaming the footage off several sites (jebeesh, is this a possibility off the sarai site?)....its a way to not feel so god damn helpless. you can contact me through email or by fone 718 875 1225. many thanks, zehra. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Apr 5 04:12:01 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 23:42:01 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] WLUML statement on the current situation in Palestine/Israel Message-ID: 4 April 2002 The international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) is well placed to identify extreme Right political projects hidden under religious/ethnic agendas and their devastating effects on progressive forces at large and on women in particular. The present escalation in Palestine/Israel is not due to a conflict between religious and ethnic communities. Clearly, it is the result of the coming to power in Israel of extreme Right forces mercilessly bent on implementing a colonial project. Unfortunately, its brutality sparked off the hijacking of the legitimate protest and struggle of the Palestinians by extreme right fundamentalist forces within them. We know from experience that the rise of such forces will inevitably work against the interests of people, especially minorities and women in Palestine. We here pay tribute to the progressive people in Israel who have for decades now struggled against the colonial project of their successive governments and today continue to do so under such violent and dangerous circumstances. We pay tribute to Israeli women and men who have refused to participate as soldiers in the war against the Palestinian people. We pay tribute to those who demonstrate daily against occupation of Palestinian land, be it by creating new settlements, by evictions, by destruction of properties or by military occupation. We pay tribute to those who physically joined, as human shields, the Palestinian villages attacked by the Israeli army, the Palestinian plantations of orange trees and olive trees that were pinpointed for destruction by the Israeli army. We especially pay tribute to the Women in Black anti war movement and to all the women organizations that have consciously and stubbornly attempted and succeeded in bridging the divide between Jews and Arabs. We fully support their struggle and share their analysis of the fascist nature of the present government of Israel. We also pay tribute to all those from Arab countries who have struggled for a just peace in the region without falling into the arms of fascist fundamentalists, without adopting hatred and racism as rallying elements of their struggle. We pay tribute to all those who fight fundamentalist fascism from within their own contexts. We pay tribute to all those who have recently met with their fellows in peace making within Israel, confronting the accusation of betrayal for doing so and bearing with the following threats they suffer. We pay tribute to all those Palestinians women and men who, under such a deluge of fire from the Israeli government and army, maintain their human and political links with Israeli progressive and anti war forces in the hope of building a durable and just political settlement. We pay tribute to all those who, in Europe and especially in France these days, confront the rise of anti-Semitic racism - i.e. racism against "Jews" as well as racism against "Arabs" or "Muslims"- and the terrorist acts of destruction that are now taking place against synagogues or shops owned by French Jews. We pay tribute to the Muslim religious authorities and ordinary immigrants from North Africa who have arrived at the scene of these barbarities to show their solidarity and speak up against racism. We call on international media to - at last - give visibility to progressive forces within Israel and within Palestine who offer the only viable alternative to the war in the region. In order to immediately stop the bloodshed, we call upon the UN Security Council to take extraordinary but necessary measures, including steps to enforce an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal from Palestinian cities and send UN peacekeeping troops to Palestine/Israel. We call on the Security Council to force the Israeli government to immediately implement past UN resolutions that it has systematically disregarded. By failing to act decisively, the UN Security Council becomes an ally in the massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli government. We demand that the women and men from Israel and from Palestine who have actually worked hand in hand towards a just peace during the past decades of conflict be the ones to be called to the negotiation table. No other group can bring peace to the region. ------------ The petition below will help the lawyers in Belgium who are suing Ariel Sharon for war crimes. http://www.petitiononline.com/warcrime They need 1,000,000 signatures. Please sign and forward the petition to all your contacts. ------------- Email: wluml at wluml.org WWW: www.wluml.org From akurien at wellesley.edu Fri Apr 5 02:22:02 2002 From: akurien at wellesley.edu (Anna J. Kurien) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 15:52:02 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] A Peaceful Response Message-ID: South Asian American Arts and Theatre, Wellesley Association for South Asian Cultures, Harvard South Asian Association, & presents A P E A C E F U L R E S P O N S E A theatre event dedicated to the victims of the recent communal violence in Gujarat, India The performance will include: GRAVE AFFAIRS A stage adaptation of John Mathew's BBC award-winning radio play that offers a light-hearted look at a religious imbroglio set in a fictitious village in the Indian state of Kerala. A collaboration between Wellesley and Harvard students. (See end of e-mail for brief synopsis). RESPONSE WAGON A series of dramatized readings in response to the events in Gujarat. Wellesley College students perform works of well-known South Asian writers. Saturday, April 6th, 2002 12:00 noon – 2:00pm Jewett Auditorium WELLESLEY COLLEGE Free Admission *Co-sponsored by Darshana (Wellesley's Hindu Student Organization) Directions: http://www.wellesley.edu/Admin/travel.html Campus Map: http://www.wellesley.edu/CampusMaps/ For more information, contact Anna at akurien at wellesley.edu or Vandana at vreddy at wellesley.edu **************************** SYNOPSIS of GRAVE AFFAIRS ‘Grave Affairs’ is set in Kerala, a tiny state tucked away in the south-west of India, the inhabitants of which are called Keralites, or Malayalees (Malayalam being the local language). With a majority of the state’s population (50%) professing Hinduism, followed by a fairly considerable Muslim (28%) and Christian (22%) strengths, the religious factor often treads the tightrope of delicate politesse. “Grave Affairs,” however, pitches the ‘majority’ representative, Kuttappan Nair, the common caretaker for two cemeteries, into the yawning gap dividing the predominant Muslim and Christian communities in Mattoor, a fictitious village in Kerala. A piquant situation arising out of the discovery of a long concealed Christian grave in the Muslim sector of the graveyard threatens to blow up into a full scale religious brawl, until Kuttappan, quite uncharacteristically, decides to step in. From announcements-request at sarai.net Fri Apr 5 10:47:43 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 07:17:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #30 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200204050517.HAA25939@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. JavaMuseum - new competition - call for artists (NewMediaArtProjectNetwork) --__--__-- Message: 1 Reply-To: "NewMediaArtProjectNetwork" From: "NewMediaArtProjectNetwork" To: Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 22:54:48 +0200 Organization: NewMediaArtProjectNetwork Subject: [Announcements] JavaMuseum - new competition - call for artists (Please forward this 'Call' to all who might be interested ************************************ 2002 JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art www.javamuseum.org is happy to launch the '2nd of JAVA' series http://www.javamuseum.org/2002/2nd/2nd_of_java_series.htm ************************************************* The successful start in 2001 with '1st of Java series' will be continued in 2002 with the '2nd of Java series'entitled 'Fundamental Patterns-Peripheral Basics', consisting of a bundel of events connected to art and Internet. *Call for artists 1. Competition and show 'Fundamental Patterns-Peripheral Basics' **Call for artists 2. Feature: Actual Positions of Italian NetArt ***3. JavaArtist of the Year 2002 Award ****4. Additional Features to be announced during the year. Find more details on http://www.javamuseum.org/2002/2nd/2nd_of_java_series.htm ************************************************** Deadline 31 May 2002 No entry fee! 1. Call for Artists for this year competition of JavaMuseum entitled '2nd of Java - Fundamental Patterns - Peripheral Basics' What are the fundamental patterns of contemporary living and art, what kind of peripheral basics are defining them? What are the fundamental patterns of the virtual environment of Internet? Mere simulation? Or rather something profoundly new? In which way changed patterns and the peripheral basics from physical to virtual level? How do they influence sensual and intellectual perception ? Since there is much space for any interpretation, the categories set up for this competitions are intentional vague and flexible, any possible approach is welcome! The categories are: ImageBasix, works in which the image component is dominating ScriptBasix, works in which the script component is dominating SoundBasix, works in which the sound component is dominating. The submission form and more details can be accessed via startpage of JavaMuseum www.javamuseum.org or http://www.javamuseum.org/2002/2nd/2nd_of_java_series.htm or fill out this following form Name, Firstname Email URL Title of work URL of work Category Year of Origin Used technology Description of work (max 300 words, may be also attached as .txt or .doc file) Artist's biography/CV (max 300 words. may be also attached as .txt or .doc file) 1 still image for each submitted work ( max 800x600 pixels - .jpg or gif) Cut and paste this form and send it together the the non-compressed attachements the2nd at javamuseum.org Deadline 31 May 2002 Preselection until 30 June 2002 Final selection until 31 July 2002 Opening of the Show: 1st week of September 2002 and publication of the 2002 Award winners. ***************************************************************** Deadline 31 May 2002 No entry fee! 2. Call for Artists originating from Italy or with residency in Italy for Online-Feature "Actual positions of Italian NetArt" The project is intending to initiate a most complete collection of Italian net.artists and net.projects Up to three works (URLs) may be submitted All submissions will be included. There is no restriction concerning used technology, subject or content. Deadline: 31 May 2002 The "Feature" will go online in June 2002 and will run until the end of 2nd of Java series. Afterwards it will remain for permanent online as an art resource. Updates and later additions will be always welcome in order to stay most actual. For submitting an art work please use the submission form. Find more details and submission form on http://www.javamuseum.org/2002/2nd/2nd_of_java_series.htm or fill out this following form Name, Firstname Email URL Title of work URL of work Year of Origin Used technology Artistic statement (max 300 words, may be also attached as .txt or .doc file) Artist's biography/CV (max 300 words, may be also attached as .txt or .doc file) 1 still image for each submitted work (max 800x600 pixels - .jpg or gif) Cut and paste this form and send it together with the non-compressed attachements to italyfeature at javamuseum.org Artists participating in this feature are invited to submit also the 2nd of Java Competition, described above. ************************************************************************** 3. JavaArtists of the Year Award The 'JavaArtist of the Year Award' had been initiated by JavaMuseum in 2001 in order to honor outstanding artists working with New Media technologies, and encourage the use of Internet technologies as media for artistic working. It is an honorary Award, not connected with a physical prize. The awarded artist(s), however will be invited to present their working in an online solo-show on JavaMuseum which remains for permanent as an art recource on JavaMuseum server. Award Procedure It is not possible for an artist to make an application for being included in the award procedure, nor can external instances make any proposal. An independant rotating jury system is selecting and nominating from the artists participating in the competition, as well as from others, who do not participate, and determine the winners from the nominees. The Award has been given in 2001 for the first time: To three exceptional young female net.artists of international reputation, they are: Mary Ann Breeze (Australia), Jody Zellen (USA) and Tiia Johansson (Estonia). See also the solo shows of the 2001 Award winners and the show of the last years competitions finalists on www.javamuseum.org Best regards and much success, Wilfried Agricola de Cologne info at javamuseum.org www.javamuseum.org JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art (JAVA = Joint Advanced Virtual Affairs) --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From safar1957 at yahoo.com Fri Apr 5 12:02:28 2002 From: safar1957 at yahoo.com (Mukul Mangalik) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 22:32:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [beena] under siege in ramallah.. what we need//Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramal Message-ID: <20020405063228.90050.qmail@web14108.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020404/e10b6fcb/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "bsarwar1" Subject: [beena] under siege in ramallah.. what we need//Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramal Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 10:39:20 -0000 Size: 18027 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020404/e10b6fcb/attachment.mht From rmazumdar at mantraonline.com Sat Apr 6 00:56:35 2002 From: rmazumdar at mantraonline.com (Ranjani Mazumdar) Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 14:26:35 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Robert Fisk on Bush's speech! Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020405142623.009f3c40@pop1.del.mantraonline.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020405/50eab58d/attachment.html From crajan at tellus.org Sat Apr 6 01:39:11 2002 From: crajan at tellus.org (Chella Rajan) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 15:09:11 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] "Just war" signature campaign and Said's response Message-ID: <318DBF7DC1AF4C438DD390A8745B0BC01602C8@dsl092-081-002.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net> Some of you may have seen the sanctimonious signature campaign supporting the war against terrorism by a prominent group of scholars inspired by Michael Walzer's notion of a "just war" http://www.propositionsonline.com/html/fighting_for.html (Walzer is a signatory). This is Edward Said's response, which appeared recently in Al-Ahram: Thoughts about America Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 Feb. - 6 March 2002 Issue No.575 I don't know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel that he or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United States at this moment provides us with an especially unpleasant experience of alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted hostility. For despite the occasional official statements saying that Islam and Muslims and Arabs are not enemies of the United States, everything else about the current situation argues the exact opposite. Hundreds of young Arab and Muslim men have been picked up for questioning and, in far too many cases, detained by the police or the FBI. Anyone with an Arab or Muslim name is usually made to stand aside for special attention during airport security checks. There have been many reported instances of discriminatory behaviour against Arabs, so that speaking Arabic or even reading an Arabic document in public is likely to draw unwelcome attention. And of course, the media have run far too many "experts" and "commentators" on terrorism, Islam, and the Arabs whose endlessly repetitious and reductive line is so hostile and so misrepresents our history, society and culture that the media itself has become little more than an arm of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, as now seems to be the case with the projected attack to "end" Iraq. There are US forces already in several countries with important Muslim populations like the Philippines and Somalia, the buildup against Iraq continues, and Israel prolongs its sadistic collective punishment of the Palestinian people, all with what seems like great public approval in the United States. While true in some respects, this is quite misleading. America is more than what Bush and Rumsfeld and the others say it is. I have come to deeply resent the notion that I must accept the picture of America as being involved in a "just war" against something unilaterally labeled as terrorism by Bush and his advisers, a war that has assigned us the role of either silent witnesses or defensive immigrants who should be grateful to be allowed residence in the US. The historical realities are different: America is an immigrant republic and has always been one. It is a nation of laws passed not by God but by its citizens. Except for the mostly exterminated native Americans, the original Indians, everyone who now lives here as an American citizen originally came to these shores as an immigrant from somewhere else, even Bush and Rumsfeld. The Constitution does not provide for different levels of Americanness, nor for approved or disapproved forms of "American behaviour," including things that have come to be called "un-" or "anti- American" statements or attitudes. That is the invention of American Taliban who want to regulate speech and behaviour in ways that remind one eerily of the unregretted former rulers of Afghanistan. And even if Mr Bush insists on the importance of religion in America, he is not authorised to enforce such views on the citizenry or to speak for everyone when he makes proclamations in China and elsewhere about God and America and himself. The Constitution expressly separates church and state. ... A week ago I was stunned when a European friend asked me what I thought of a declaration by 60 American intellectuals that was published in all the major French, German, Italian and other continental papers but which did not appear in the US at all, except on the Internet where few people took notice of it. This declaration took the form of a pompous sermon about the American war against evil and terrorism being "just" and in keeping with American values, as defined by these self-appointed interpreters of our country. Paid for and sponsored by something called the Institute for American Values, whose main (and financially well- endowed) aim is to propagate ideas in favour of families, "fathering" and "mothering," and God, the declaration was signed by Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, Daniel Patrick Moynihan among many others, but basically written by a conservative feminist academic, Jean Bethke Elshtain. Its main arguments about a "just" war were inspired by Professor Michael Walzer, a supposed socialist who is allied with the pro-Israel lobby in this country, and whose role is to justify everything Israel does by recourse to vaguely leftist principles. In signing this declaration, Walzer has given up all pretension to leftism and, like Sharon, allies himself with an interpretation (and a questionable one at that) of America as a righteous warrior against terror and evil, the more to make it appear that Israel and the US are similar countries with similar aims. Nothing could be further from the truth, since Israel is not the state of its citizens but of all the Jewish people, while the US is most assuredly only the state of its citizens. Moreover, Walzer never has the courage to state boldly that in supporting Israel he is supporting a state structured by ethno-religious principles, which (with typical hypocrisy) he would oppose in the United States if this country were declared to be white and Christian. Walzer's inconsistencies and hypocrisies aside, the document is really addressed to "our Muslim brethren" who are supposed to understand that America's war is not against Islam but against those who oppose all sorts of principles, which it would be hard to disagree with. Who could oppose the principle that all human beings are equal, that killing in the name of God is a bad thing, that freedom of conscience is excellent, and that "the basic subject of society is the human person, and the legitimate role of government is to protect and help to foster the conditions for human flourishing"? In what follows, however, America turns out to be the aggrieved party and, even though some of its mistakes in policy are acknowledged very briefly (and without mentioning anything specific in detail), it is depicted as hewing to principles unique to the United States, such as that all people possess inherent moral dignity and status, that universal moral truths exist and are available to everyone, or that civility is important where there is disagreement, and that freedom of conscience and religion are a reflection of basic human dignity and are universally recognised. Fine. For although the authors of this sermon say it is often the case that such great principles are contravened, no sustained attempt is made to say where and when those contraventions actually occur (as they do all the time), or whether they have been more contravened than followed, or anything as concrete as that. Yet in a long footnote, Walzer and his colleagues set forth a list of how many American "murders" have occurred at Muslim and Arab hands, including those of the Marines in Beirut in 1983, as well as other military combatants. Somehow making a list of that kind is worth making for these militant defenders of America, whereas the murder of Arabs and Muslims -- including the hundreds of thousands killed with American weapons by Israel with US support, or the hundreds of thousands killed by US- maintained sanctions against the innocent civilian population of Iraq -- need be neither mentioned nor tabulated. What sort of dignity is there in humiliating Palestinians by Israel, with American complicity and even cooperation, and where is the nobility and moral conscience of saying nothing as Palestinian children are killed, millions besieged, and millions more kept as stateless refugees? Or for that matter, the millions killed in Vietnam, Columbia, Turkey, and Indonesia with American support and acquiescence? All in all, this declaration of principles and complaint addressed by American intellectuals to their Muslim brethren seems like neither a statement of real conscience nor of true intellectual criticism against the arrogant use of power, but rather is the opening salvo in a new cold war declared by the US in full ironic cooperation, it would seem, with those Islamists who have argued that "our" war is with the West and with America. Speaking as someone with a claim on America and the Arabs, I find this sort of hijacking rhetoric profoundly objectionable. While it pretends to the elucidation of principles and the declaration of values, it is in fact exactly the opposite, an exercise in not knowing, in blinding readers with a patriotic rhetoric that encourages ignorance as it overrides real politics, real history, and real moral issues. Despite its vulgar trafficking in great "principles and values," it does none of that, except to wave them around in a bullying way designed to cow foreign readers into submission. I have a feeling that this document wasn't published here for two reasons: one is that it would be so severely criticised by American readers that it would be laughed out of court and two, that it was designed as part of a recently announced, extremely well-funded Pentagon scheme to put out propaganda as part of the war effort, and therefore intended for foreign consumption. Whatever the case, the publication of "What are American Values?" augurs a new and degraded era in the production of intellectual discourse. For when the intellectuals of the most powerful country in the history of the world align themselves so flagrantly with that power, pressing that power's case instead of urging restraint, reflection, genuine communication and understanding, we are back to the bad old days of the intellectual war against communism, which we now know brought far too many compromises, collaborations and fabrications on the part of intellectuals and artists who should have played an altogether different role. Subsidised and underwritten by the government (the CIA especially, which went as far as providing for the subvention of magazines like Encounter, underwrote scholarly research, travel and concerts as well as artistic exhibitions), those militantly unreflective and uncritical intellectuals and artists in the 1950s and 1960s brought to the whole notion of intellectual honesty and complicity a new and disastrous dimension. For along with that effort went also the domestic campaign to stifle debate, intimidate critics, and restrict thought. For many Americans, like myself, this is a shameful episode in our history, and we must be on our guard against and resist its return. http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/575/op2.htm From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Apr 6 05:59:25 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 01:29:25 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] The world just watches - IHT Message-ID: The International Herald Tribune April 5, 2002 The world just watches By Neta Golan For the international peace observers currently holed up within Yasser Arafat's presidential compound - myself among them - it is not Israeli actions but the inaction of the international community that has most shocked us. Inside the pock-marked building surrounded by Israeli tanks and snipers, there is one question on everyone's minds: How many international laws does Israel need to break before the United Nations demands a full and immediate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank? The list of violations is reaching unprecedented levels, even for a conflict with a long history of ugly behavior on both sides. Collective punishment is illegal under international law, but Israel has now escalated from interrupting food shipments to shutting off water to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, endangering the lives of 120,000 people. The shelling of Palestinian civilian structures such as power plants, schools and sewage facilities is occurring at an alarming rate. Unarmed civilians are being killed daily. There are also growing reports of Israeli troops raiding hospitals and firing on ambulances and journalists. These are grave breaches of international conventions. Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The Boston Globe, was shot on Sunday as he walked away from an interview in our building. The area, under full Israeli control, was quiet and there was no crossfire. Shadid was wearing the required signs on his back and front indicating that he was with the official press. Soon after he arrived at a hospital, Israeli troops raided it with machine guns drawn. When he was subsequently transferred for further medical treatment, his ambulance came under fire from Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint. Israel is making a mockery of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the founding document of international human rights law, and by its tacit acceptance, the United Nations is severely eroding its credibility in the region and beyond. Those of us inside the presidential compound need help desperately - but not half as much as those on the outside who are facing the full brunt of the mass round-ups and house-to-house raids. The situation cannot deteriorate much further. Medical supplies have run out. Food is scarce. Pressure from abroad is essential. The presence of international "human shields" throughout the occupied territories has been very important in limiting the indiscriminate nature of Israeli military actions. Nothing short of a UN demand for a full withdrawal to the 1967 UN recognized borders, however, will succeed in restoring calm and opening the way for peace negotiations. Simply pulling the troops out of the recently invaded regions will not suffice. In the compound we are left wondering, not without fear, whether the international community will allow the permanent expansion of the already illegal occupation and the exile if not assassination of the Palestinian leader. Neta Golan, an Israeli, is among the 40 international peace observers occupying Yasser Arafat's besieged office. This comment, which she wrote with Ian Urbina, an associate editor of the Washington-based magazine Middle East Report, was contributed to the International Herald Tribune. From rmazumdar at mantraonline.com Mon Apr 8 03:08:11 2002 From: rmazumdar at mantraonline.com (Ranjani Mazumdar) Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 17:38:11 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] More from Robert Fisk Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020407173131.009f6460@pop1.del.mantraonline.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020407/5bbca2b0/attachment.html From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Mon Apr 8 10:35:59 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 22:05:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] life in Ramallah Message-ID: <20020408050559.12281.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com> >From: Nada Al-Nashif [mailto:nada.al-nashif at undp.org] >Sent: 04 April 2002 08:04 >To: Omarlatifa at aol.com; Gabriele Accascina; James Lemoyne; Robert Piper; >y at pobox.com; Sousou, Ramez; MCGiddens at aol.com; >sabi.kanaan at capitalprograms.com >Subject: Fw: "Alive from Ramallah", day 5 of the siege, > > >I don't know why this particular message, but I think it's of the more >poignant out of all the incredible testimonials being circulated these days, >as the re-occupation continues ... > >Nada Al-Nashif >Deputy Resident Representative >UNDP-Beirut, Lebanon >tel. (961-1) 989 617/600 >----- Original Message ----- >From: Ramla Khalidi-Beyhum >To: ramla.khalidi-beyhum at undp.org.lb > >Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 2:03 PM >Subject: FW: "Alive from Ramallah", day 5 of the siege, > >Message from a classmate of mine living in Ramallah. > >-----Original Message----- >From: Adila Laodi-Hanieh [mailto:adilalaidi at yahoo.com] >Sent: Tue, April 02, 2002 6:56 PM >To: manis at link.net >Subject: "Alive from Ramallah", day 5 of the siege, > > > >Dear all: > >I am the director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah, >writing you from home, under siege. This is the 3rd message i write you to >give a sense of what we are living under & to hopefully provide material for >publication/broadcast. > >Please find below the chilling testimony in English of the arrest of the >father of one of the children whose testimonies we sent you a few days ago. >It was transcribed in Arabic by Ms. Manal Issa, the Sakakini Center's >Administrative & Finance Officer, & translated into English. She also has >scanned a number of drawings of children under siege. Please contact her >(issamanal at yahoo.com) for the Arabic version of the testimony & copies of >the drawings we hope you can publish. > >Monday April 1st, 2002 : I was arrested yesterday with a number of young >men. Our hands were tied & we were blindfolded. We were taken to an open >space where it was very cold and the rain was pouring. We sat on the ground >hands tied, blindfolded & heads bent. We were detained like that for 13 >continuous hours in the same position. They would beat us brutally, yell at >us and urinate on our heads. The blows were coming from all sides, on our >faces and genitalia. One of us was taken away, we asked about him after a >while & were told he had been taken home. After midnight our heads were >covered with bags and we were told to go home. The soldiers confiscated our >IDs and said they would kill us all, but three by three. They said they had >already killed a number of us and would finish the rest in the coming days. >The man who had been taken away is a 17 year old neighbor of mine who has a >brain tumor. After we returned home, we were told he had spent the whole >night under torture, as the neighbors had heard his screams and cries for >help. In the morning, we found his naked dead body in the street mutilated, >his head pierced, and his heart riddled with bullets. They still have my ID. >I know they will come & get me. What I fear is not death, but that I will >die in cold blood, without being able to do anything. >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >------------------------------------- > >Other day to day news to round up the image of what we are living: Ramallah >woke up at 4am today with the non stop 2 hour long pounding by helicopter & >tank of the headquarters of the Preventive Security headquarters in the >adjacent Beitunia Road (off from Ramallah's industrial zone). That complex >housing a hotel, a restaurant and day care center had 400 people inside it >at the time of the bombing. We do not know how many casualties there are >since ambulances were prevented from entering. > >There was more shelling yesterday evening in different parts of the town, >including the breaking into, & destruction of part of the Qassaba >cinematheque & theater in downtown Ramallah. This theater which was home to >an extraordinary evening last Thursday night of poetry and music and dance >with Mahmoud Darwish, Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka & Jose Saramago & other >writers on a solidarity mission with Palestine.. More information on this >destruction can be obtained by calling the theater director, Mr. George >Ibrahim, at: 00 972 52 617 819 or 00 970 59 200 640. > >A 2 hour break in the curfew was announced today by the Israelis, this is a >bad sign as it means the siege will last a long time. People who went out >described a scene of desolation: Tanks at every cross roads closing access >to major roads, trees and electricity poles broken, traffic lights broken, >scores of destroyed cars, most roads' asphalt is dug out, making the roads >unusable. All this destruction in a few hours of the proud achievements of >the Ramallah municipality in the last 4 years. The municipality itslef >having been occupied also on Saturday. During the 2 hour break, the call to >prayer -Adhan- was heard for the first time in five days from Mosques' >minarets.. > >People in downtown Ramallah-ElBireh continue to be suffering the most from >lack of electricity and water. My brother in-law i wrote you about was into >his 5th day without electricity & phone. The break allowed him to leave on >foot & walk to my mother in law's home where they will live at 8 to a 3 >bedroom apartment for God knows how long.. My neighbor's relatives are >suffering the same fate, with the added trauma of having a teenage son >arrested by the Israelis on Friday in their mass arrests & with no news of >his whereabouts. So far about 700 young Palestinian have been arrested in >these racist & senseless mass arrests in the Ramallah-Bireh metro area >alone. > >Health wise, garbage goes uncollected. More importantly, tanks fired on the >building of the Medical Relief Organization where a number of Italian peace >activists are barricaded there in solidarity, & on the doorstep of which the >corpse of an executed Palestinian man was thrown yesterday. The 28 bodies of >killed Palestinian that had been piling up at the Ramallah hospital morgue, >were buried today in the hospital's courtyard, as Israelis did not allow the >bodies to be returned by ambulance to their families & receive proper burial >for the last 5 days.. More information can be obtained from the Ramallah >hospital by calling 00 970 or 972 298 22 20. > >In my neighborhood, a group of Israeli soldiers went into a number of homes >yesterday, & searched them room by room. In one home, they stole $2500 in >cash & lacerated with a knife all the living broom's sofas.. > >In conclusion, these are the sociocidal facts, & small traumas of daily life >under siege. As you see, this is a sample of the the daily lot of big and >small crimes committed against a small segment of the Palestinian >population. A fraction of these crimes committed against any other people >would have elicited condemnation & foreign intervention. But our plight is a >war of perceptions and images. We are portrayed as fighting the heirs of >Anne Franck, while in fact we are being turned into the decimated native >americans of the digital age. > >We are grateful to the generous individuals & private and non governmental >organizations who are petitioning their governments & media & who get our >message out. Please please, try to use these emails in letters to officials >in the US or to the media for publication, not for us, but in the name of >our shared humanity. We thank you & hope to hear of your efforts, Adila >Laidi. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >-------The Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre is located in Ramallah in a >renovated traditional mansion, it focuses its work in three fields: >Nurturing & developing the visual arts, organizing projects on Palestinian >cultural identity & narrative, & holding regular public events such as: Art >exhibits, concerts, literary events, film screenings, lectures, & children's >activities. The Sakakini is a non-governmental & non-profit organization >founded in 1996. Http://www.sakakini.org. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From jamie.dow at pobox.com Mon Apr 8 14:09:44 2002 From: jamie.dow at pobox.com (Jamie Dow) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 09:39:44 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Cynicism, Justice, Intervention & American Values Message-ID: Jamie1 StationeryI find myself very grateful to those with the historical perspective to cast grave doubt on the US's motives for even the slightest change of policy towards Israel and the Palestinians. I am less sure than Robert Fisk that the change is insignificant and miniscule, but agree that it is essentially self-motivated. I am grateful to those with the facts at their fingertips, and to numerous recent contributions to this list, that have given us reasons to see through the rhetoric to the grim underbelly of the axes of power and influence that result in the kind of pronouncements that we have seen from the American President in the last few days. But I am doubtful about a view that is constantly cynical about the actions of nation states. The view I mean is one that refuses to see any action of any state or head of state as either recommending a just course of action, or of recommending a course of action because it is just. This kind of cynicism might be true (although I personally believe it is false). But even if it is true, it is not useful. There are 2 sorts of ways in which we may criticise the action of an individual or nation state. These are: (i) on grounds of what motivated the action. "You are a bad agent, because you did x for selfish reasons". (ii) on grounds of whether the thing done was right or wrong. "That was a terrible thing to do: look what misery it's caused..." Cynicism attacks MOTIVE. (i.e. (i)) What we need is critique of ACTIONS (i.e. (ii)). In order to have a decent and profound critique of the US and of Israel, we need to be saying what is wrong about their actions. Critique of motives is not enough - one reason for this is that our account of motives is so easily prey to our theory of what will count as a plausible motive, and for many of us, it just isn't plausible to see our nations acting for reasons of justice, and so our very theory of states' motivations is giving us ex hypothesi a monotone whine about how self-interestedly a nation is behaving, and how empty its rhetoric is. But another reason why critique of motives is inadequate, is that if someone is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, then while we might well wish for them to undergo a character transformation, we don't wish for them to change their behaviour. And whilst there is perhaps some plausibility to the idea that nations of necessity ALWAYS act for self-interested reasons, there is no plausibility to the notion that nations of necessity ALWAYS act utterly unjustly. Even if you thought that nations always happen to act unjustly, it would be hard to give a reason for believing that they do so of necessity - i.e. for believing that it would actually be impossible for a nation to stumble across the right path every now and again! By contrast, if we have an idea about what we think the right thing is for Israel and the US to do, then we will have a basis for a critique of their actions. I personally believe that this is what is required. And what is available. The UN resolutions 242 and 338 flesh out an agreement about what Israel should do, and about the actions the US (as other nations) should in sist upon their doing. The idea of military activities against one's own citizens is unjust in a nation state. The assassination of individuals by a nation's security forces without the established justice procedures is unjust. It is right for Israel to be seeking a resolution to the underlying territory dispute. It is right for Israel to seek purely police and judicial approaches to their internal security. It is wrong for the agreed arrangements for the Palestinian peoples living and well-being to be flouted by the settlement programme. For starters, these seem to me to be simple yet true and significant statements about what it is right for Israel and the US to do. If the US or Israel stumbles (with whatever motivation) onto these policies, they will be doing the right thing. Not that they have yet done so. But there seems more of a glimmer of this happening than has been the case ever in the past. Some are unhappy with the notion of moral truths presupposed in the above, and prefer to talk about consensus, or "American Values". This is genuinely tricky, as is being shown by the debate within the US about what content is to be given to this notion. Even supposing there was unanimity, it is not obvious why anyone should adopt the results of such a consensus. It might simply be immoral. Edward Said's piece seemed to hover between denying that American Values entail a pro-Israel stance, and by conceding that they do but rejecting these American Values as immoral. Withouth a notion of moral truth, you have no standpoint. Vice versa is also true: as soon as you have a standpoint, you are asserting some things to be moral truths. Until you have the notion of a moral truth, you remain unable to give anyone a reason to act in the way you see to be just. I personally think that the US has a very significant role to play in world politics and in conflicts like that in Israel / Palestine at the present. I don't think that their foreign policy should be laissez-faire. If you are drowning and I refuse to throw you the lifeline I have in my hand, I bear the responsibility for letting you die. For the US to sit on the sidelines of world politics refusing to take a view would be equally heinous. It looked as though precisely this was being ushered in by the advent of George Bush to the White House, and it has been a pleasant surprise to see this expectation proved false. What is required is not less engagement but more. But engagement in a way that includes performing those actions which justice demands and supports. Our critique demands the same level of engagement. Moral engagement is about the detail of the specific situations in which actions will need to be carried out. In order to equip ourselves with a profound critique, I believe we need to do better than trawl the internet for information about donors and corrupt motives. We need to do more than crank the handle of our theory of motivation and watch the predictable sausage of cynicism come out. We need instead to come to a view about how nation states should act in the circumstances in which they find themselves. And in many cases, this will involve the difficult business of specifying in our criticisms what alternative course of action would have brought forth our approval. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020408/60431b7f/attachment.html From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Mon Apr 8 15:50:10 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 03:20:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Chomsky on Palestine Message-ID: <20020408102010.64294.qmail@web14601.mail.yahoo.com> >Interview with Chomsky >April 2, 2002 > >Z: Is there a qualitative change in what's happening now? > >I think there is a qualitative change. The goal of the Oslo process was >accurately described in 1998 by Israeli academic Shlomo Ben-Ami just >before he joined the Barak government, going on to become Barak's chief >negotiator at Camp David in summer 2000. Ben-Ami observed that "in >practice, the Oslo agreements were founded on a neo-colonialist basis, >on a life of dependence of one on the other forever." With these goals, >the Clinton-Rabin-Peres agreements were designed to impose on the >Palestinians "almost total dependence on Israel," creating "an extended >colonial situation," which is expected to be the "permanent basis" for >"a situation of dependence." The function of the Palestinian Authority >(PA) was to control the domestic population of the Israeli-run >neocolonial dependency. That is the way the process unfolded, step by >step, including the Camp David suggestions. The Clinton-Barak stand >(left vague and unambiguous) was hailed here as "remarkable" and >"magnanimous," but a look at the facts made it clear that it was -- as >commonly described in Israel -- a Bantustan proposal; that is presumably >the reason why maps were carefully avoided in the US mainstream. It is >true that Clinton-Barak advanced a few steps towards a Bantustan-style >settlement of the kind that South Africa instituted in the darkest days >of Apartheid. Just prior to Camp David, West Bank Palestinians were >confined to over 200 scattered areas, and Clinton-Barak did propose an >improvement: consolidation to three cantons, under Israeli control, >virtually separated from one another and from the fourth canton, a small >area of East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life and of >communications in the region. And of course separated from Gaza, where >the outcome was left unclear. > >But now that plan has apparently been shelved in favor of demolition of >the PA. That means destruction of the institutions of the potential >Bantustan that was planned by Clinton and his Israeli partners; in the >last few days, even a human rights center. The Palestinian figures who >were designated to be the counterpart of the Black leaders of the >Bantustans are also under attack, though not killed, presumably because >of the international consequences. The prominent Israeli scholar Ze'ev >Sternhell writes that the government "is no longer ashamed to speak of >war when what they are really engaged in is colonial policing, which >recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighborhoods of >the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era." This new policy is >a regression below the Bantustan model of South Africa 40 years ago to >which Clinton-Rabin-Peres-Barak and their associates aspired in the Oslo >"peace process." > >None of this will come as a surprise to those who have been reading >critical analyses for the past 10 years, including plenty of material >posted regularly on Znet, reviewing developments as they proceeded. > >Exactly how the Israeli leadership intends to implement these programs >is unclear -- to them too, I presume. > >It is convenient in the US, and the West, to blame Israel and >particularly Sharon, but that is unfair and hardly honest. Many of >Sharon's worst atrocities were carried out under Labor governments. >Peres comes close to Sharon as a war criminal. Furthermore, the prime >responsibility lies in Washington, and has for 30 years. That is true of >the general diplomatic framework, and also of particular actions. Israel >can act within the limits established by the master in Washington, >rarely beyond. > > >Z: What's the meaning of Friday's Security Council Resolution? > >The primary issue was whether there would be a demand for immediate >Israeli withdrawal from Ramallah and other Palestinian areas that the >Israeli army had entered in the current offensive, or at least a >deadline for such withdrawal. The US position evidently prevailed: there >is only a vague call for "withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian >cities," no time frame specified. The Resolution therefore accords with >the official US stand, largely reiterated in the press: Israel is under >attack and has the right of self-defense, but shouldn't go too far in >punishing Palestinians, at least too visibly. The facts -- hardly >controversial -- are quite different. Palestinians have been trying to >survive under Israeli military occupation, now in its 35th year. It has >been harsh and brutal throughout, thanks to decisive US military and >economic support, and diplomatic protection, including the barring of >the long-standing international consensus on a peaceful political >settlement. There is no symmetry in this confrontation, not the >slightest, and to frame it in terms of Israeli self-defense goes beyond >even standard forms of distortion in the interests of power. The >harshest condemnations of Palestinian terror, which are proper and have >been for over 30 years, leave these basic facts unchanged. > >In scrupulously evading the central immediate issues, the Friday >Resolution is similar to the Security Council Resolution of March 12, >which elicited much surprise and favorable notice because it not only >was not vetoed by the US, in the usual pattern, but was actually >initiated by Washington. The Resolution called for a "vision" of a >Palestinian state. It therefore did not rise to the level of South >Africa 40 years ago when the Apartheid regime did not merely announce a >"vision" but actually established Black-run states that were at least as >viable and legitimate as what the US and Israel had been planning for >the occupied territories. > >Z: What is the U.S. up to now? What U.S. interests are at stake at this >juncture? > >The US is a global power. What happens in Israel-Palestine is a >sidelight. There are many factors entering into US policies. Chief among >them in this region of the world is control over the world's major >energy resources. The US-Israel alliance took shape in that context. By >1958, the National Security Council concluded that a "logical corollary" >of opposition to growing Arab nationalism "would be to support Israel as >the only strong pro-Western power left in the Middle East." That is an >exaggeration, but an affirmation of the general strategic analysis, >which identified indigenous nationalism as the primary threat (as >elsewhere in the Third World); typically called "Communist," though it >is commonly recognized in the internal record that this is a term of >propaganda and that Cold War issues were often marginal, as in the >crucial year of 1958. The alliance became firm in 1967, when Israel >performed an important service for US power by destroying the main >forces of secular Arab nationalism, considered a very serious threat to >US domination of the Gulf region. So matters continued, after the >collapse of the USSR as well. By now the US-Israel-Turkey alliance is a >centerpiece of US strategy, and Israel is virtually a US military base, >also closely integrated with the militarized US high-tech economy. > >Within that persistent framework, the US naturally supports Israeli >repression of the Palestinians and integration of the occupied >territories, including the neocolonial project outlined by Ben-Ami, >though specific policy choices have to be made depending on >circumstances. Right now, Bush planners continue to block steps towards >diplomatic settlement, or even reduction of violence; that is the >meaning, for example, of their veto of the Dec. 15 2001 Security Council >Resolution calling for steps towards implementing the US Mitchell plan >and introduction of international monitors to supervise the reduction of >violence. For similar reasons, the US boycotted the Dec. 5 international >meetings in Geneva (including the EU, even Britain) which reaffirmed >that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the occupied territories, >so that critically important US-Israeli actions there are "grave >breaches" of the Convention - war crimes, in simple terms - as the >Geneva declaration elaborated. That merely reaffirmed the Security >Council Resolution of October 2000 (US abstaining), which held once >again that the Convention applied to the occupied territories. That had >been the official US position as well, stated formally, for example, by >George Bush I when he was UN Ambassador. The US regularly abstains or >boycotts in such cases, not wanting to take a public stand in opposition >to core principles of international law, particularly in the light of >the circumstances under which the Conventions were enacted: to >criminalize formally the atrocities of the Nazis, including their >actions in the territories they occupied. The media and intellectual >culture generally cooperate by their own "boycott" of these unwelcome >facts: in particular, the fact that as a High Contracting Party, the US >government is legally obligated by solemn treaty to punish violators of >the Conventions, including its own political leadership. > >That's only a small sample. Meanwhile the flow of arms and economic >support for maintaining the occupation by force and terror and extending >settlements continues without any pause. > > >Z: What's your opinion of the Arab summit? > >The Arab summit led to general acceptance of the Saudi Arabian plan, >which reiterated the basic principles of the long-standing international >consensus: Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories in the >context of a general peace agreement that would guarantee the right of >every state in the region, including Israel and a new Palestinian State, >to peace and security within recognized borders (the basic wording of UN >242, amplified to include a Palestinian state). There is nothing new >about this. These are the basic terms of the Security Council resolution >of January 1976 backed by virtually the entire world, including the >leading Arab states, the PLO, Europe, the Soviet bloc, the non-aligned >countries -- in fact, everyone who mattered. It was opposed by Israel >and vetoed by the US, thereby vetoed from history. Subsequent and >similar initiatives from the Arab states, the PLO, and Western Europe >were blocked by the US, continuing to the present. That includes the >1981 Fahd plan. That record too has been effectively vetoed from >history, for the usual reasons. > >US rejectionism in fact goes back 5 years earlier, to February 1971, >when President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty in >return for Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, not even bringing >up Palestinian national rights or the fate of the other occupied >territories. Israel's Labor government recognized this as a genuine >peace offer, but decided to reject it, intending to extend its >settlements to northeastern Sinai; that it soon did, with extreme >brutality, the immediate cause for the 1973 war. The plan for the >Palestinians under military occupation was described frankly to his >Cabinet colleagues by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labor leaders more >sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. Israel should make it clear that >"we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever >wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads." Following >that recommendation, the guiding principle of the occupation has been >incessant and degrading humiliation, along with torture, terror, >destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of >basic resources, crucially water. > >Sadat's 1971offer conformed to official US policy, but Kissinger >succeeded in instituting his preference for what he called "stalemate": >no negotiations, only force. Jordanian peace offers were also dismissed. >Since that time, official US policy has kept to the international >consensus on withdrawal (until Clinton, who effectively rescinded UN >resolutions and considerations of international law); but in practice, >policy has followed the Kissinger guidelines, accepting negotiations >only when compelled to do so, as Kissinger was after the near-debacle of >the 1973 war for which he shares major responsibility, and under the >conditions that Ben-Ami articulated. > >Official doctrine instructs us to focus attention on the Arab summit, as >if the Arab states and the PLO are the problem, in particular, their >intention to drive Israel into the sea. Coverage presents the basic >problem as vacillation, reservations, and qualifications in the Arab >world. There is little that one can say in favor of the Arab states and >the PLO, but these claims are simply untrue, as a look at the record >quickly reveals. > >The more serious press recognized that the Saudi plan largely reiterated >the Saudi Fahd Plan of 1981, claiming that that initiative was >undermined by Arab refusal to accept the existence of Israel. The facts >are again quite different. The 1981 plan was undermined by an Israeli >reaction that even its mainstream press condemned as "hysterical," >backed by the US. That includes Shimon Peres and other alleged doves, >who warned that acceptance of the Fahd plan would "threaten Israel's >very existence." An indication of the hysteria is the reaction of >Israel's President Haim Herzog, also considered a dove. He charged that >the "real author" of the Fahd plan was the PLO, and that it was even >more extreme than the January 1976 Security Council resolution that was >"prepared by" the PLO, at the time when he was Israel's UN Ambassador. >These claims can hardly be true, but they are an indication of the >desperate fear of a political settlement on the part of Israeli doves, >backed throughout by the US. The basic problem then, as now, traces back >to Washington, which has persistently backed Israel's rejection of a >political settlement in terms of the broad international consensus, >reiterated in essentials in the current Saudi proposals. > >Until such elementary facts as these are permitted to enter into >discussion, displacing the standard misrepresentation and deceit, >discussion is mostly beside the point. And we should not be drawn into >it -- for example, by implicitly accepting the assumption that >developments at the Arab summit are a critical problem. They have >significance, of course, but it is secondary. The primary problems are >right here, and it is our responsibility to face them and deal with >them, not to displace them to others. > > >Michael Albert >Z Magazine / ZNet >sysop at zmag.org >www.zmag.org __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From prajaf at vsnl.com Sat Apr 6 11:15:31 2002 From: prajaf at vsnl.com (Yazad Jal) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 11:15:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Israel-Palestine: The Hard Truth Message-ID: <008701c1dd2e$471b7360$e43fc7cb@vsnl.net.in> The Hard Truth April 3, 2002 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN A terrible disaster is in the making in the Middle East. What Osama bin Laden failed to achieve on Sept. 11 is now being unleashed by the Israeli-Palestinian war in the West Bank: a clash of civilizations. In the wake of repeated suicide bombings, it is no surprise that the Israeli Army has gone on the offensive in the West Bank. Any other nation would have done the same. But Ariel Sharon's operation will succeed only if it is designed to make the Israeli-occupied territories safe for Israel to leave as soon as possible. Israel's goal must be a withdrawal from these areas captured in the 1967 war; otherwise it will never know a day's peace, and it will undermine every legitimate U.S. effort to fight terrorism around the globe. What I fear, though, is that Mr. Sharon wants to get rid of Mr. Arafat in order to keep Israeli West Bank settlements, not to create the conditions for them to be withdrawn. President Bush needs to be careful that America doesn't get sucked into something very dangerous here. Mr. Bush has rightly condemned Palestinian suicide bombing as beyond the pale, but he is not making clear that Israel's war against this terrorism has to be accompanied by a real plan for getting out of the territories. Why? Because President Bush, like all the other key players, doesn't want to face the central dilemma in this conflict - which is that while Israel must get out of the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians cannot, at this moment, be trusted to run those territories on their own, without making them a base of future operations against Israel. That means some outside power has to come in to secure the borders, and the only trusted powers would be the U.S. or NATO. Palestinians who use suicide bombers to blow up Israelis at a Passover meal and then declare "Just end the occupation and everything will be fine" are not believable. No Israeli in his right mind would trust Yasir Arafat, who has used suicide bombers when it suited his purposes, not to do the same thing if he got the West Bank back and some of his people started demanding Tel Aviv. "The only solution is a new U.N. mandate for U.S. and NATO troops to supervise the gradual emergence of a Palestinian state - after a phased Israeli withdrawal - and then to control its borders," says the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen. People say that U.S. troops there would be shot at like U.S. troops in Beirut. I disagree. U.S. troops that are the midwife of a Palestinian state and supervise a return of Muslim sovereignty over the holy mosques in Jerusalem would be the key to solving all the contradictions of U.S. policy in the Middle East, not new targets. The Arab leaders don't want to face this hard fact either, because most are illegitimate, unelected autocrats who are afraid of ever speaking the truth in public to the Palestinians. The Arab leaders are as disingenuous as Mr. Sharon; he says ending "terrorism" alone will bring peace to the occupied territories, and the Arab leaders say ending "the occupation" alone will end all terrorism. Like Mr. Sharon, the Arab leaders need to face facts - that while the occupation needs to end, they independently need to address issues like suicide terrorism in the name of Islam. As Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, courageously just declared about suicide bombing: "Bitter and angry though we may be, we must demonstrate to the world that Muslims are rational people when fighting for our rights, and do not resort to acts of terror." If Arab leaders have only the moral courage to draw lines around Israel's behavior, but no moral courage to decry the utterly corrupt and inept Palestinian leadership, or the depravity of suicide bombers in the name of Islam, then we're going nowhere. The other people who have not wanted to face facts are the feckless American Jewish leaders, fundamentalist Christians and neoconservatives who together have helped make it impossible for anyone in the U.S. administration to talk seriously about halting Israeli settlement-building without being accused of being anti-Israel. Their collaboration has helped prolong a colonial Israeli occupation that now threatens the entire Zionist enterprise. So there you have it. Either leaders of good will get together and acknowledge that Israel can't stay in the territories but can't just pick up and leave, without a U.S.-NATO force helping Palestinians oversee their state, or Osama wins - and the war of civilizations will be coming to a theater near you. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/opinion/03FRIE.html?ex=1018897014&ei=1&en= b97af7259c1d7ca0 From tarunksaint at sify.com Mon Apr 8 23:17:04 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 23:17:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] poem Message-ID: <002b01c1df25$6c3b63a0$8451d6d2@default> All, This may be of interest. Cheers, Tarun > >To my father > > > >August 14th 1947. Firozepur, Punjab. > >You- > >eighteen years old > >sit alone and wait > >for news of your parents > >When they arrive days later > >my grandfather, grandmother, and her brother > >offer no explanation, no report, no narrative > >of how > >they ended up alive in a train from Lahore, Pakistan > >Their arrival simply becomes a fact > >--a fact > >that even the children--my brother and I > >learn never to question > > > >November 1st 1984, Delhi > >You wait again. > >This time > >with your parents, my mother, my brother, and I > >murdering mobs parade the streets > >announcing their arrival by rattling street lights > >My grandfather sitting in front of the house > >reads the newspaper, pretending oblivion > >The neighbors demand he go inside > >"I left once," he says, > >"where am I to go now?" > >You- > >I know, are afraid > >But refuse to remove your turban or cut your hair-- > >as some neighbors and so-called friends suggest > >You, who would not enter a temple > >mock religion and even God > >Say that you are a teacher > >And do not wish to teach submission to fascism > > > >September 11, 2001--to date. Delhi, India and Carbondale, U.S.A > >You wait there > >And I-here > >My brother who is visiting me > >Finds again that wearing a turban invites the name "terrorist" > >And, just as in 1984, he wants to be on the street > >I wait here > >for news of American bombs on Afghanistan > >while the successors of Gandhi's assassins > >rule his birthplace > >drowning in blood the hopes of 1947 > >sowing land mines into the line your parents had crossed > >but one they would not let cross their hearts > > > >Years later in 1972 > >my grandmother would visit that border again > >pick up a handful of dirt and call it "home" > >my brother and I would joke > >that our grandmother created nations wherever she went > >born in Burma she was twice a refugee > >once in Pakistan, then India > > > >Children know > >that if not this history there would be another > > > >But if not for > >those who labor to make this children's belief come true > >the only drops > >to fall on this desolate drought-stricken earth would be blood > >Today- > >as I imagine you eighteen years old > >I long to take your hands into my grown hands > >And walk into refugee camps where children still get born > > > > > >Jyotsna Kapur > >Assistant Professor > >Cinema and Photography > >Southern Illinois University > >Carbondale, IL 62901-6610 > >ph (off): 618.453-1470 > >home: 618.529-4086 > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020408/8ae67555/attachment.html From tarunksaint at sify.com Mon Apr 8 23:29:36 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 23:29:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] title of poem Message-ID: <004201c1df27$2d1a4720$8451d6d2@default> All, The title of the poem by Jyotsna Kapur (posted earlier) is For Papa. I'd like to acknowledge Viren for forwarding this moving poem. Cheers, Tarun -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020408/b9a35514/attachment.html From henk at waag.org Tue Apr 9 12:52:25 2002 From: henk at waag.org (henk at waag.org) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 09:22:25 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] language :: software :: art Message-ID: <20020409092225.B2050@pienenhenk.xs4all.nl> Hi All, Found some rather interresting articles about language :: software today: A unified theory of software evolution: Salon has a nice article today on Meir Lehman 's work on how software evolves and is developed. Lehman's investigation of the IBM OS/360 development process became the foundation for Brooks' Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." He is hopeful that his work will make software development less of an art and more of an engineering science." http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/04/08/lehman/print.html The second article is from Larry Wall, the Perl-wierdo, whom i like to see a responce from to this first article :-) "When I started writing Perl, I'd actually been steeped in enough postmodernism to know that that's what I wanted to do. Or rather, that I wanted to do something that would turn out to be postmodern, because you can't actually do something postmodern, you can only really do something cool that turns out to be postmodern. Hmm. Do I really believe that? I dunno. Maybe. Sometimes. You may actually find this difficult to believe, but I didn't actually set out to write a postmodern talk. I was just going to talk about how Perl is postmodern. But it just kind of happened. So you get to see all the ductwork. http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html And finally (if perl doesn't look like language-art to you), there's The Shakespeare Programming Language: http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/report/shakespeare/ grtz, henk -- Henk Buursen System Engineer Waag Society / for old and new media Nieuwmarkt 4 1012 CR Amsterdam / The Netherlands Tel. +31 20 557 98 98 Fax. +31 20 557 98 80 Mail. henk at waag.org URL. http://www.waag.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020409/d2892248/attachment.bin From announcements-request at sarai.net Tue Apr 9 10:29:43 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 06:59:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #31 - 2 msgs Message-ID: <200204090459.GAA19698@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. 13.4.2002: Gender and Space (Mumbai Study Group) 2. 13.4.2002: CORRECTION (Mumbai Study Group) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 19:23:33 +0530 To: Recipient List Suppressed:; From: Mumbai Study Group Subject: [Announcements] 13.4.2002: Gender and Space 13.4.2002: Gender and Space
Dear Friends:
In our next meeting, we invite you to a presentation by SHILPA PHADKE on "Gender and Space in Mumbai". This presentation interrogates the exclusion of women from public space. It does this through an examination of the public-private divide and the image of the "public woman" as potentially criminal. It dwells at length on the ways in which architecture and urban planning reinforce existing hierarchies of access to space and power and the structural and symbolic violences that women are subject to in public space. It also explores the "market" as a potential site for the subversive entry of women into public space.

SHILPA PHADKE is a sociologist and an Associate of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), Mumbai. She has been a researcher with the Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation, Mumbai, and has lectured at the Nirmala Niketan School of Social Work, Mumbai, and at St Xavier's College, Mumbai. She completed her B.A. from St Xavier's College in 1993, her M.A. from SNDT Women's University in 1995, both in Sociology, and her MPhil in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University in 1997. As a pedagogue, she has designed and co-ordinated several discussion groups, a lecture series and a film-festival. She has been involved in a number of research projects including an examination of the role of NGOs in enhancing community participation in the Government of Maharashtra's Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation programme in the districts of Latur and Osmanabad in 1995; and an audience feedback study for the documentary film A Woman's Place in 2000. She has published in the area of population policies, and has written for the popular press, including Internet magazines. Her areas of concern include demography and population policies, feminist legal studies, gender and the politics of space, sexuality and the body, cultural and media studies, and development issues in the context of globalization. Her current interests are in pedagogy and outreach to school and college students, and in exploring the gendered dimensions of public space in Mumbai.

Architect and cultural activist NEERA ADARKAR will also address this session and present her work on the gendered aspects of public and private spaces in Mumbai.

This session will be on SATURDAY 14 APRIL 2002, at 10.00 A.M., on the SECOND FLOOR, Rachna Sansad, 278, Shankar Ghanekar Marg, Prabhadevi, Mumbai, next to Ravindra Natya Mandir. Phone: 4301024, 4310807, 4229969; Station: Elphinstone Road (Western Railway); BEST Bus: 35, 88, 151, 161, 162, 171, 355, 357, 363, to Ravindra Natya Mandir, 91 Ltd, 305 Ltd, A1 and A4 to Prabhadevi.


ANNOUNCEMENTS

With effect after the upcoming session, Shekhar Krishnan, Joint Convenor of the Mumbai Study Group since its inception in September 2000, will be permanently resigning as Convenor. He will be handing responsibility for the management of the Group to the other Convenors, Arvind Adarkar, Pankaj Joshi and Darryl D'Monte. Shekhar is leaving the Group to spend more time pursuing his research and writing, and  his continuing work as Coordinator of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) in Mumbai. He wishes to express his gratitude to the Academy of Architecture, and to the other Convenors for their support and assistance over the past two years. He looks forward to attending future sessions of the Group and continuing to participate in its activities.

Also following this session, the Mumbai Study Group will take a long holiday, until the next session on Saturday 22 June, in order to take stock of the past year's activities, and schedule new presentations in coming months. Any suggestions for future sessions should be directed to one of the three Convenors (see below). At the request of Mayank Bhatt, his presentation to the Group, previously scheduled for 27 April 2002 on "Food Security in Mumbai and Thane: A Study of the Rationing Kruti Samiti", has been cancelled.


ABOUT the MUMBAI STUDY GROUP

The MUMBAI STUDY GROUP meets on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month, at the Rachana Sansad, Prabhadevi, Mumbai, at 10.00 A.M. Our conversations continue through the support extended by Shri Pradip Amberkar, Principal of the Academy of Architecture, and Prof S.H. Wandrekar, Trustee of the Rachana Sansad.
Conceived as an inclusive and non-partisan forum to foster dialogue on urban issues, we have since September 2000 held conversations about various historical, political, cultural, social and spatial aspects of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Our discussions are open and public, no previous membership or affiliation is required. We encourage the participation of urban researchers and practitioners, experts and non-experts, researchers and students, and all individuals, groups and associations in Mumbai to join our conversations about the the city.The format we have evolved is to host individual presentations or panel discussions in various fields of urban theory and practice, and have a moderated and focussed discussion from our many practical and professional perspectives: whether as architects or planners, lawyers or journalists, artists or film-makers, academics or activists.Through such a forum, we hope to foster an open community of urban citizens, which clearly situates Mumbai in the theories and practices of urbanism globally.


CONTACT US
We invite all urban researchers, practitioners, students, and other interested individuals to join us in our fortnightly conversations, and suggest topics for presentation and discussion. For any more information, kindly contact one of the Convenors of the Mumbai Study Group: ARVIND ADARKAR, Architect, Researcher and Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, Phone 2051834, <adarkars at vsnl.com>; DARRYL D'MONTE, Journalist and Writer, 6427088 <darryl at vsnl.com>; SHEKHAR KRISHNAN, Coordinator-Associate, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research (PUKAR), 4142843, <kshekhar at bol.net.in>; PANKAJ JOSHI, Conservation Architect, Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, and PUKAR Associate, 8230625, <pjarch at vsnl.com>.
--__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 00:04:23 +0530 To: Recipient List Suppressed:; From: Mumbai Study Group Subject: [Announcements] 13.4.2002: CORRECTION Dear Friends: The date given in the contents of the last e-mail was wrong. Shilpa Phadke and Neera Adarkar's presentation on "Gender and Space in Mumbai" will be on SATURDAY 13 APRIL 2002, not on 14 April 2002, as given in the invitation. It will be at 10.00 A.M., on the SECOND FLOOR, Rachna Sansad, 278, Shankar Ghanekar Marg, Prabhadevi, Mumbai, next to Ravindra Natya Mandir. Phone: 4301024, 4310807, 4229969; Station: Elphinstone Road (Western Railway); BEST Bus: 35, 88, 151, 161, 162, 171, 355, 357, 363, to Ravindra Natya Mandir, 91 Ltd, 305 Ltd, A1 and A4 to Prabhadevi. Thanks to Radhika Ramasubban for pointing out the error! Regards, Shekhar Krishnan, Arvind Adarkar, Darryl D'Monte and Pankaj Joshi Convenors, Mumbai Study Group --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From tarunksaint at sify.com Tue Apr 9 23:26:29 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 23:26:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] report- cova effort at conflict-resolution Message-ID: <004201c1dff1$2cc4ec60$115ed6d2@default> All, inspiring write-up; rare these days. Cheers, Tarun HOW COVA PREVENTED RIOTS IN HYDERABAD ON MARCH 15 ----- DECCAN CHRONICLE March 16, 2002 Women win over agitated youth with filial determination Hyderabad, March 15: They proved wrong the common definition of women as the "weaker sex". A small group of women, determined to win the agitated Muslim youth with their "motherly affection", formed a human chain to prevent the possible confrontation between the youth and police at Mecca Masjid on Friday. Trained to face the risk of attack from the highly charged groups on both sides, these volunteers of Cova, a non-governmental organisation, succeeded in ensuring peace during the Friday prayers. Assisted by their male counterparts and a few activists of Human Rights Forum and local peace committees, the women volunteers, mostly clad in burkhas, were seen persuading the youth to remain peaceful and leave the area. "Maar lage to bhi hum yahan se hatne wale nahin. Hum yeh sochke aye hain ki hum gadbad nahi hone denge (We won't budge even if we are beaten. We've come here to ensure that there is no trouble)" Noorjahan, a middle-aged volunteer of Cova said even as the slogan shouting youth attempted to surge towards Charminar from the masjid. At one stage, police squads armed with batons did their best to break the human chain and proceed towards the youth, who intensified the slogan shouting and resorted to mild stone throwing. "Please don't go. Please maintain restrain," the women volunteers pleaded with the police. They cautioned that situation would turn worse if the police lose temper. A group of policemen, led by additional DCP (task force) Mohd Iqbal, forced his way to the mob breaking the human chain. But, they were left with no option but come back as the volunteers did not allow them to surge forward. "It is totally their success," city police commissioner M V Krishna Rao said acknowledging the effective role played by peace committee members and women volunteers, in particular. He said the incident proved that peace committees could help in bringing a change. Several old people were also seen pursuading the youth to leave the place without creating any trouble. Banners were also put on display on the fence of Mecca Masjid appealing to people not to spoil the sanctity of the place of worship. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020409/1eb92774/attachment.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Wed Apr 10 00:36:40 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 20:06:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: poem Message-ID: <20020409190640.8900.qmail@web8102.in.yahoo.com> All, have a ball. beers, pp For Zappa Moonlight, I dight Moonlight I fight. It white, it rose, That rhyme with prose. Moonglow, so no Moonglow, what fo? It seem so bent. It sentiment. Moonscape big train, Moonscape brain drain. From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Wed Apr 10 00:37:35 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2002 15:07:35 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] international solidarity movt. Message-ID: these guys basically act as human shields...its very very cool work... info on how to get in touch with them is on the bottom ....probably also on the indymedia site. -zehra ------------------------- >World Bank to West Bank >The movement written off after September 11 is demonstrating its worth in >Palestine >George Monbiot >Tuesday April 9, 2002 >The Guardian >Two sets of human shields are in use in the West Bank. The first is less >than willing. The Israeli army, like some of the terrorist groups it has >fought, has been taking hostages. Its soldiers have been propelling >Palestinian civilians through the doors of suspect buildings, so that the >gunmen they might harbour have to kill them first if they want to fight >back. >The second set of human shields has deliberately placed itself in the line >of fire. Since the army's offensive in the West Bank began, hundreds of >Israeli peace campaigners and foreign activists have been seeking to put >themselves in its way. At great personal risk, members of the International >Solidarity Movement have sought to protect civilians by making hostages of >themselves. It is a display of extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice. It >is also the latest incarnation of a movement which just months ago was left >for dead. >The movement to which many of the peace activists risking their lives in >Ramallah and Bethlehem belong has no name. Some people have called it an >anti-globalisation or anti-corporate or anti-capitalist campaign. Others >prefer to emphasise its positive agenda, calling it a democracy or >internationalist movement. But, because they have always put practice first >and theory second, its members have proved impossible to categorise. >Whenever it appears to have assumed an identity outsiders believe they can >grasp, it morphs into something else. It is driven by a new, responsive >politics, informed not by ideology but by need. >After September 11, this nameless thing appeared to vanish as swiftly as it >had emerged. The huge demonstrations planned for the end of September >against the World Bank and IMF in Washington became a small and rather >timorous march for peace. Most US activists, cowed by the new McCarthyism >which has dominated American discourse since the attack on New York, kept >their heads down. Commentators dismissed the movement as a passing fad >which >had rippled through the world's youth, as widespread and as insubstantial >as >Diet Coke or the Nike swoosh. >But those who dismissed it had failed to grasp either the seriousness of >its >intent or the breadth of its support. The television cameras always focused >on a few hundred young men dressed in black and running riot, intercut >occasionally with the wider carnival of protest. But they seldom permitted >its participants to explain the sense of purpose which propelled them. So >most outsiders failed to see that the commitment of many of the people >involved in these protests is non-negotiable. The movement is no more >likely >to go away than the governments and corporations it confronts. Its survival >is assured by its ability to become whatever it needs to be. >Last month 250,000 protesters trav elled to Barcelona to contest the >assault >on employment laws and the public sector being led by Tony Blair, Silvio >Berlusconi and Jose Maria Aznar. This month some of them moved to >Palestine. >Among those in the British contingent are people who have helped to run >campaigns against corporate power, genetic engineering and climate change. >They were joined this week by members of the Italian organisation Ya Basta, >which helped to coordinate the protests in Genoa. For the movement which >came of age in Seattle, the World Bank and the West Bank belong to the same >political territory. >If the protesters simply shifted as a mob from one location to another, >their efforts would be worse than useless. But one of the key lessons this >rapidly maturing movement has learned is that protest is effective only if >it builds on the efforts of specialists. Like most of the Earth's people, >the foreigners on the West Bank became visible when they began to bleed >(five British campaigners were injured last week by the Israeli army's >illegal fragmentation bullets), but some outsiders have been working there >for decades. New arrivals join long-established networks and do what they >are told. Among the bullets and the bulldozers, the movement is discovering >a courage long suspected but seldom tried. >Protesters have moved into the homes of people threatened with bombardment >by the Israeli army, ensuring that the soldiers cannot attack Palestinians >without attacking foreigners too. They have been sitting in the ambulances >taking sick or injured people to hospital, in the hope of speeding their >passage through Israeli checkpoints and preventing the soldiers from >beating >up the occupants. They have been trying to run convoys of food and medicine >into neighbourhoods deprived of supplies; and seeking to encourage both >sides to lay down their arms in favour of non-violent solutions. They are >becoming, in other words, a sort of grassroots United Nations, trying with >their puny resources to keep the promises their governments have broken. >Perhaps most importantly, the peace campaigners are the only foreign >witnesses in some places to the atrocities being committed. Using >alternative news networks such as Indymedia and Allsorts, they have been >able to draw attention to events most journalists have missed. >They have seen how Palestinians, told by the Israeli army that the curfew >had been lifted, have been either shot dead when they stepped outside or >seized and used as human shields. They have witnessed the sacking of homes >and the deliberate destruction of people's food supplies. They have seen >ambulances and aid trucks being stopped and crushed. On March 28 one peace >protester watched Israeli soldiers in jeeps hunting women and children who >were fleeing across the fields on the outskirts of Ramallah, trying to >shoot >them down in cold blood. And, by becoming the story themselves, as they are >beaten and shot, the foreigners have brought it home to people who were >dismissive of the murder and maiming of indigenous civilians. >The movement's arrival on the West Bank is an organic development of its >activities elsewhere. For years it has been contesting the destructive >foreign policies of the world's most powerful governments, and the >corresponding failures of the multilateral institutions to contain them. >Rather than echo the thunderous but effete demand of commentators on both >sides of the Atlantic that Yasser Arafat (a man currently unable to use a >flushing toilet) should stamp out the terror in the Middle East, the >campaigners are, as ever, addressing those who wield real power: Israel and >the governments who supply the money and weaponry which permit it to occupy >the West Bank. The movement has always been a pragmatic one, as ready to >protest against Burma's treatment of its tribal people or China's >dispossession of the Tibetans as the IMF's handling of Argentina. In >Palestine, as elsewhere, it is seeking to place itself between power and >those whom power afflicts. >Everyone else is demanding that somebody should do something about the >conflict in the Middle East. The peace campaigners are doing it. >� www.monbiot.com >Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 > _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Wed Apr 10 01:01:56 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 20:31:56 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fables of Easop, no 31 Message-ID: <20020409193156.84140.qmail@web8101.in.yahoo.com> Dear Readers, Please enjoy Easop's Fable no 31: A wolf which had been made leader of the other wolves established a law that each of them should put into a pool everything he caught in the chase and share it equally with all the rest, so that they should not be driven by hunger to eat one another. But an ass came forward and, shaking his mane, said, "Out of the mind of the wolf has come a noble thought. But how is it, wolf, that you yourself laid up in your den the quarry you took yesterday? Put it in the common store and share it." This exposure shamed the wolf into annuling his laws. Moral: The very men who pretend to legislate justly do not themselves abide by the laws which they enact and administer. This is the text of fable no 31, copied verbatim from "Fables of Easop", translated by S A Handford. The book is part of "The Penguin Classics" edited by E V Rieu (L34). It was first published in 1954, reprinted 1956, 1961. The particular edition I have is the 1961 edition. I know that because someone has penned, in ink, the figures 1961 on the first page of the book. The interesting thing is that the Title of this fable is "A Communist Dictator". [Certainly, a title not given by Easop] I read this fable today. It strikes me that the fable should be re-named: From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Apr 10 05:25:25 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 00:55:25 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Holy lies - Pankaj Mishra Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,678320,00.html The Guardian, Saturday April 6, 2002 Holy lies A holy site in the small Indian town of Ayodhya has become the focus of communal strife between Hindu nationalists and Muslims - hundreds have been killed in the past two months. At stake is the plan, backed by rabble-rousing politicians, to build a temple in place of a ruined mosque. Behind it, Pankaj Mishra uncovers a saga of falsified history, opportunistic abbots and a spurious legacy of the British Raj Ayodhya is the city of Ram, the most virtuous and austere of Hindu gods. To travel there from Benares - across a wintry north Indian landscape of mustard-bright fields, hectic roadside bazaars and lonely columns of smoke - is to move between two very different Hindu myths, or visions of life. Shiva, the god of perpetual destruction and creation, rules Benares, where temple compounds conceal internet cafes and children fly kites next to open funeral pyres by the river. But the city's aggressive affluence and chaos feel far away in Ayodhya, which is small and drab, its alleys full of the dust of the surrounding fields. The peasants carrying unwieldy bundles bring to mind the pilgrims of medieval Indian miniature paintings; and, sitting by the Saryu river at dusk, as the devout tenderly set afloat tiny lamps in the slow-moving water, one feels the endurance and continuity of Hindu India. After this vision of eternal Hinduism, the mosques and Moghul buildings of Ayodhya come as a surprise. Most are in ruins - especially the older ones built during the 16th and 17th centuries, when Ayodhya was the administrative centre of one of the Moghul empire's major provinces, Awadh. All but two were destroyed as recently as December 6 1992, the day, epochal now in India's history, when a crowd led by politicians from the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), or Indian People's Party, demolished a mosque they claimed the 16th-century Moghul emperor Babur had built as an act of contempt on the site of the god Ram's birthplace. Memories of that demolition, and the subsequent anti-Muslim pogroms, have been reawakened in the past two months after a Muslim crowd in Gujarat burned alive 58 Hindu activists on a train. The activists were returning from Ayodhya, where they had participated in preliminary rituals for building a new Ram temple, which BJP leaders, who now run the government in Delhi, had vowed to build on the site of Babur's mosque. Hindu militants in Gujarat retaliated by killing more than 600 Muslims. With Hindu passions so aroused, the construction of the new temple seems more, not less, likely. As for the mosques destroyed in 1992, they are unlikely ever to be restored. The Muslim presence in the town seems at an end for the first time in eight centuries. That was the impression I got even in January, a full month before the anti-Muslim rage exploded, when I visited Digambar Akhara, the straw-littered compound of the militant Sadhu sect presided over by Ramchandra Paramhans, who in 1949 initiated the legal battle to reclaim Babur's mosque, or Babri Masjid, for the Hindu community. The sect, Paramhans told me, was established four centuries ago to fight Muslim invaders who had ravaged India since the 10th century, and erected mosques over temples in the holy cities of Ayodhya, Benares and Mathura. It had been involved, he said, in 76 wars for possession of the site of the Ayodhya mosque, during which more than 200,000 Hindus had been martyred. Paramhans, who is now more than 90 years old, exuberantly directed the demolition squad in 1992, and now heads the trust in charge of the temple's construction. When we spoke, he expected up to a million Hindu volunteers to reach Ayodhya by March 15, defy a Supreme Court ban on construction at the site, and present a fait accompli to the world in the form of a semi-constructed temple. Two bodyguards watched nervously as he told me of his plans; other armed men stood around the wall of the compound. The security seemed excessive in this exclusively Hindu environment but, as Paramhans said, caressing the tufts of white hair on the tip of his nose, the year before he'd been attacked by home-made bombs delivered by what he called "Muslim terrorists". "Before we take on Pakistani terrorists," he added, "we have to take care of the offspring Babur left behind in India - these 130 million Muslims of India have to be shown their place." This message was briskly conveyed to the Muslims of Gujarat by Paramhans' associates, leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, a sister organisation of the BJP. According to reports from Gujarat, Hindu militants incited, and in some cases organised, the killing of more than 600 Muslims during four hectic days in late February and early March. The chief minister of Gujarat, a hardline BJP leader, quoted the English scientist Newton while defending his government's inability or unwillingness to stop the massacres: "Every action," he said, "has an equal and opposite reaction." The reaction wasn't equal, though - the final tally of Muslim dead may exceed 1,000 - but it did display a high degree of administrative efficiency, as was also evident during the anti-Muslim pogroms in Bombay in 1992-93, when members of the Hindu extremist group, the Shiv Sena, went around mixed localities with electoral lists of Muslim homes. In Gujarat's cities last month, middle-class Hindu men drove up in new Japanese cars - the emblems of India's globalised economy - to cart off the loot from Muslim shops and businesses. These rich young Hindus in Benetton T-shirts and Nike sneakers seemed unlikely combatants in what Paramhans told me was a holy war against the traitorous 12% of India's population - both wealth and education separated them from the unemployed, listless young small-town Hindus I met in Ayodhya, one of whom is a local convenor of the Bajrang Dal, the stormtroopers of the Hindu nationalists. What they shared, however, was a particular worldview, outlined most clearly by students at Saraswati Shishu Mandir, a primary school in Benares, one of 15,000 such institutions run by the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS), or Association of National Volunteers, the parent group of Hindu nationalism from which have emerged almost all the leaders of the BJP, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal. The themes of morning assembly were manliness and patriotism. In the gloomy hall, portraits of militant Hindu freedom fighters mingled with such signboarded exhortations as, "Give me blood and I'll give you freedom", and "Say with pride that you are a Hindu". For an hour, boys and girls marched in front of a stage, where a plaster of Paris statue of Mother India stood astride a map of south Asia, chanting about the perfidy of Pakistan, of Muslim invaders and of the gloriousness of India's past. Most of the students came from middle-class areas of Benares. Their bare, thin limbs shook with their passion and efforts to memorise arcane Sanskrit words. The principal watched serenely. He told me that Joshi-ji, the education minister, was making sure that new history textbooks carried to every school in the country the message of Hindu pride and Muslim cruelty. It is a message that resonates at a level of caste and class privilege, flourishing in a society where deprivation is always close at hand. An out of work upper-caste advertising executive I met in Benares seemed to be speaking of his own insecurities when he said, after some talk of the latest iMac, "Man, I am scared of these Mozzies. We are a secular, modern nation, but we let them run these madrasas [religious schools], we let them breed like rabbits and one day they are going to outstrip the Hindu population, and will they then treat us as well as we treat them?" The Muslims, of course, have a different view of how they've been treated. In Madanpura, Benares's Muslim district, I met Najam, a scholar of Urdu and Persian literature. He is in his 30s, and grew up during some of the worst anti-Muslim violence of post-independence India - in the 1992 slaughter, he saw Hindu policemen beat his doctor to death with rifle butts. "I don't think the Muslims are angry any more," he said. "There is no point. The people who demolished the mosque at Ayodhya are now senior ministers. We know we will always be suspected of disloyalty, no matter what we say or do. Our madrasas will always be seen as producing fanatics and terrorists. There is no one ready to listen to us, and so we keep silent. We expect nothing from the government and political parties. We now depend on the goodwill of the Hindus we live with, and all that we hope for is survival with a bit of dignity." Hindu devotees throng the Viswanath temple in Benares, but few, if any, Muslims dare negotiate a way through the armed police and sandbagged positions to the adjacent Gyanvapi mosque, one of two that the Hindu nationalists have threatened to destroy. It is not easy for an outsider to grasp the Muslim's sense of isolation here. There was little in my own background that could have prepared me to understand the complicated history behind it - being Brahmins with little money, we saw the Muslims as another threat to our aspirations for security and dignity. My sisters attended a RSS-run primary school, where pupils were indoctrinated into disfiguring images of Muslim rulers in their textbooks. At my English medium school, we were encouraged to think of ourselves as secular, modern citizens of India, and regard religion as something one outgrew. So when, in the 1970s and 1980s, I heard about Hindu-Muslim riots, or the insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, it seemed to me that religion-based identities were the cause of most conflict and violence in India. The word used in newspapers and academic analyses was "communalism", which was described as the antithesis of the kind of secularism advocated by the founding fathers of India, Gandhi and Nehru, and also of Hinduism itself, which was held to be innately tolerant and secular. I spent several months in Benares in the late 1980s, unaware that this ancient pilgrimage centre of Hindus was also a holy city for Muslims - unaware, too, of the 17th-century Sufi shrine just behind the tea shack where I often spent my mornings. It was one of many in the city that both Hindus and Muslims visited, a legacy of the flowering of Sufi culture in medieval north India. Only this year I discovered from Najam that one of the great Shia philosophers of Persia had sought refuge at the court of a Hindu ruler of Benares in the 18th century. And it was after returning from my trip to Ayodhya that I read that Ram's primacy in this pilgrimage centre was relatively recent - for much of the medieval period, Ayodhya was the home of the much older sect of Shaivites, or Shiva-worshippers (Ram is one of many incarnations of Vishnu, one of the gods in the Hindu trinity, in which Shiva is the most important); that many of Ayodhya's temples and sects devoted to Ram had actually emerged under the patronage of the Shia Muslims who ruled Awadh in the early 18th century. Paramhans had been quick to offer me a history full of temple-destroying Muslims and brave Hindu nationalists. But his own militant sect had been originally formed to fight not Muslims but Shiva-worshipping Hindus; and it had been favoured in that long and bloody conflict by the Muslim Nawabs. The Nawabs, whose administration and army were staffed by Hindus, kept a careful distance from Hindu-Muslim conflicts. One of the first such conflicts in Ayodhya came in 1855, when some Muslims accused Hindus of illegally constructing a temple over a mosque and militant Hindu sadhus (mendicants) massacred 75 Muslims. The then Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, a distinguished poet and composer, refused to support the Muslim claim, explaining, "We are devoted to love; do not know of religion. So what if it is Kaaba or a house of idols?" Wajid Ali Shah, who was denounced as effeminate and inept and deposed a year later by British imperialists, was the last great exponent of the Indo-Persian culture that emerged in Awadh towards the end of the Moghul empire. India was then one of the great centres of the Islamic world, along with the Ottoman and Safavid empires. In India, Islam had lost some of its Arabian and Persian distinctiveness, and had blended with older cultures. Its legacy is still preserved - amid the squalor of a hundred small Indian towns, in the grace and elegance of Najam's Urdu, in numerous songs and dances that accompany festivals, in the subtle cuisines of north India - but one could continue to think of it, as I did, as something without a history or tradition. The Indo-Islamic is an embarrassment to the idea of India maintained by the modernising Hindu elite for the past 50 years. That idea first emerged in the early 19th century, as the British consolidated their hold over India and found new allies among upper-caste Hindus. As elsewhere in their empire, the British encountered the stiffest resistance from Muslim rulers. So they tended to demonise the Muslims as fanatics and tyrants, and presented the British conquest as at least partly a humanitarian intervention on behalf of a once-great Hindu nation. Most of these British views of India were useful fictions at best - the Turks, Afghans, central Asians and Persians, who together with upper-caste Hindu elites had ruled a variety of Indian states for more than eight centuries, were more than plunderers and zealots. The bewildering diversity of people who inhabited India before the arrival of the Muslims in the 11th century hardly formed a community, much less a nation; and the word "Hinduism" barely hinted at the almost infinite number of folk and elite cultures, religious sects and philosophical traditions found in India. But these novel British ideas were received well by upper-caste Hindus, who had previously worked with Muslim rulers and began to see opportunities in the new imperial order. British discoveries of India's classical sculpture, painting and literature had given them a fresh, invigorating sense of the pre-Islamic past; they found flattering and useful British Orientalist notions of India that identified Brahmanical scriptures and principles of tolerance as the core of Hinduism. In this view, practices such as widow-burning became proof of the degradation Hinduism had suffered under Muslim rule, and the cruelties of caste became an unfortunate consequence of their tyranny. A wide range of Hindu thinkers, social reformers and politicians began to see imperial rule, with all its social reforms and scientific advances, as a preparation for self-rule. Some denounced British imperialism as exploitative, but even they welcomed the redeeming modernity it brought and, above all, the European idea of nation - of a cohesive community with a common history, culture, values and sense of purpose - that for many other colonised peoples appeared a way of duplicating the success of the all-conquering west. Muslim leaders, on the other hand, were slow to participate in the civilising mission of imperialism; they saw little place for themselves in the nation envisaged by the Hindu elite. British imperialists followed their own strategies of divide and rule: the decision to partition Bengal in 1905 and to have separate electorates for Muslims reinforced the sense among upwardly mobile Indians that they belonged to distinct communities defined by religion. It is true that Gandhi and Nehru worked hard to attract low-caste Hindus and Muslims - they wanted to give a mass base and wider legitimacy to the political movement for self-rule under the leadership of the Congress party - but Gandhi's use of popular Hindu symbols, which made him a Mahatma, or sage, among Hindu masses, caused many Muslims to distrust him. Also, many Congress leaders shared the views of such upper-caste ideologues as Veer Savarkar and Guru Golwalkar. These men saw India as essentially the sacred indigenous nation of Hindus which had been divided and emasculated by Muslim invaders, and that could only be revived by uniting its diverse population, recovering ancient Hindu traditions, and weeding out corrupting influences from central Asia and Arabia. This meant forcing Muslims to give up their traditional allegiances and embrace the so-called "Hindu ethos", or Hindutva, of India - an ethos that was, ironically, imagined into being with the help of British Orientalist discoveries of India's past. The idea of Hindutva included an admiration for Mussolini's fascism and Hitler's Germany, which, as Guru Golwalkar wrote in the Hindu nationalist bible, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1938), expressed "race pride at its highest" by purging the Jews. It inspired the Brahmin founders of the RSS in 1925, and comforted many upper-caste Hindus who felt threatened by Gandhi's emphasis on a federal, socially egalitarian India. It was the rise of the Hindu dominated nation that Gandhi was accused of obstructing by his assassin, a Brahmin member of the RSS. By the 1940s, the feudal and professional Muslim elite had grown extremely wary of the Hindu nationalist strain within the Congress. After many failed attempts at political rapprochement, they finally arrived at the demand for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. The demand expressed the Muslim fear of being reduced to a perpetual minority in a Hindu majority state, and was, initially, a desire for a more federal polity for post-colonial India. But the Congress leaders chose to partition off the Muslim-majority provinces in the west and east, rather than share the centralised power of the colonial state that was their great inheritance from the British. This led to the violent transfer of millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims across hastily-drawn, artificial borders. Massacres, rapes and kidnappings further hardened sectarian feelings: the RSS, which was temporarily banned after Gandhi's assassination, found its most dedicated workers among middle-class Hindu refugees from Pakistan, among them the current home minister, Lal Krishna Advani, who was born in Karachi and joined the RSS as early as 1942. The RSS floated a new party and entered electoral politics in independent India in 1951 with the renewed promise of a Hindu nation; and although it worked for much of the next three decades under the gigantic shadow of the Congress party, its sudden popularity in the 1980s now seems part of the great disaster of the Partition, which locked the new nation states of India and Pakistan into stances of mutual hostility. In Pakistan, a shared faith failed to reconfigure the diverse regional and linguistic communities into a new nation. This was proved when the Bengali-speaking population of East Pakistan seceded, with Indian help, to form Bangladesh in 1971. The ideology of secularism, backed by the prestige and example of Nehru, seems to have had a more successful run in India, which after Partition had, among its vast population, almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. In reality, India's Muslims lost much of their educated elite to Pakistan, and since 1947 they have been a depressed minority. They continue to lack effective spokespersons, despite, or perhaps because of, a tokenist presence at the highest levels of government. Politically, they are significant only at election time, when they form a solid vote for Hindu politicians who promise to protect them from discrimination and violence. Urdu, the language the Muslim presence in India had created - which is barely distinguishable from spoken Hindi - was an early victim of attempts to institute a Sanskritised Hindi as the national language. Secularism, the separation of religion from politics, was always going to be difficult to impose on a country where religion has long shaped political and cultural identities. But it was a useful basis upon which the Delhi government could, in the name of modernity and progress, establish its authority over a poor, chaotically fractious country. However, when Sikh and Muslim minorities in Punjab and Kashmir challenged the great arbitrary power of the government, Nehru's heirs - his daughter, Indira, and grandson, Rajiv - were quick to discard even the rhetoric of secularism and to turn Hindu majoritarianism into the official ideology of the Congress-run administration. The uprisings in Punjab and then in Kashmir were represented by the government and the middle-class media as fundamentalist and terrorist assaults on a secular, democratic state. In fact, although tainted by association with Pakistan and religious fanaticism, the Sikhs and Kashmiri Muslims were expressing a long-simmering discontent with an anti-federalist state: a state that had retained most of the power of the old colonial dispensation, and often used it more brutally than the British ever had. The uprisings were part of a larger crisis common in post-colonial states: the failure of a corrupt, self-serving political and bureaucratic elite to ensure social and economic justice for those it had claimed to represent in its anti-colonial battles. By the 1980s, the Congress party was in decline. It kept raising the bogey of national unity and external enemies, but the disturbances in Kashmir and Punjab only gave more substance to the Hindu nationalist allegation that the Congress had turned India into a "soft state" where Kashmiri Muslims could blithely conspire with Pakistan against Mother India. And, with the pseudo-socialist economy close to bankruptcy, the nationalists saw a chance to find new voters among upper-caste Hindus. Like the National Socialists in Germany in the early 1930s, they offered not so much clear economic policies as fantasies of national rebirth and power. In 1984, the VHP announced a national campaign to rebuild the grand temple at Ayodhya that they claimed the first Moghul emperor Babur had destroyed. The mosque that replaced it, they said, was a symbol of national shame; removing it and rebuilding the temple was a matter of national honour. Both history and archaeology were travestied in this account of the fall and rise of the eternal Hindu nation. There was no evidence that Babur had ever been to Ayodhya, or that this restless, melancholic conqueror from Samarkand, a connoisseur of architecture, could have built an ugly mosque over an existing Ram temple. Ram himself isn't known to recorded history - the cult of Ram-worship arrived in north India as late as the 10th century AD, and no persuasive evidence exists that a Ram temple ever stood on the site. But the myths were useful in shoring up the narrative of Muslim cruelty and contempt. They found their keenest audience at first among wealthy expatriate Hindus in the UK and US, who bankrolled a movement that, in upholding a strong, self-assertive Hinduism, seemed to allay their sense of inferiority induced by western images of India as miserably poor. In India itself, deeper anxieties made many upper-caste Hindus turn to the BJP. In 1990, the government, which was then headed by defectors from the Congress party, decided to implement a longstanding proposal to reserve government jobs for poor, "backward-caste" Hindus. Upper-caste Hindus were enraged. The BJP saw the plan for affirmative action as potentially destructive of its old plan of persuading lower-caste groups to accept a paternalistic, upper-caste leadership in a united Hindu front against Muslims. Later that year, the leader of the BJP, LK Advani, decided to lead a ritual procession on a faux-chariot - actually a Chevrolet - from Gujarat to Ayodhya, where he intended to start the construction of the Ram temple. The previous year, the BJP had passed an official resolution demanding that the temple be built on the exact spot where Babur's mosque now stood. Advani had then said, "I am sure it will translate into votes." Appropriately, he began his journey to Ayodhya from the temple in Somnath, Gujarat, which was looted by a Turk conqueror in the 11th century AD and which had been lavishly rebuilt in the early 1950s. Rapturous Hindu activists waited by the roadside to apply ritual marks of blood on his forehead. This was not just play-acting: more than 500 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in the rioting that accompanied Advani's progress across India. Hindu policemen were indifferent, as they were last month in Gujarat, and sometimes even joined in. It is strange to look back now and see how little known the controversy in Ayodhya was only two decades ago. Local Hindus first staked a claim on the mosque in the mid-19th century, and were allowed by British officials to worship on a platform outside the building. In 1949, two years after independence, a Hindu civil servant working together with local abbots surreptitiously placed idols of Ram inside the mosque. The story that Lord Ram himself had appeared to install the idols inside the mosque quickly spread. Local Muslims protested. Nehru sensed that nothing less than India's secular identity was threatened. He ordered the mosque to be locked and sacked the district official, who promptly joined the Hindu nationalists. But the idols were not removed, and Muslims gradually gave up offering namaz, or prayers, at the mosque. In the following three decades, the courts were clogged with Hindu and Muslim claims on the site. In 1984, the VHP began a campaign to unlock the mosque. In 1986, a local judge allowed the Hindus to worship inside. A year later, Muslims held their largest protest demonstration since independence in Delhi. Before then, Babur's mosque had primarily been of concern to a small circle of litigious, property-hungry abbots in Ayodhya. Religion was always a fiercely competitive business here: the abbots fought hard for a share of the donations from the millions of poor pilgrims, and, more recently, from wealthy Indians in the US and UK; they were also notorious for murder and pillage - the bomb attack on Paramhans, which he blamed on Muslim terrorists, was probably the work of rival abbots. But as the movement to build the temple intensified, entrepreneurs of religiosity such as Paramhans were repackaged by nationalist politicians as sages and saints, while Ram himself evolved from the benign, almost feminine, calendar-art divinity of my childhood to the vengeful Rambo of Hindu nationalist posters. The myths multiplied when, in October 1990, Advani's procession was stopped and police in Ayodhya fired upon a crowd of Hindus attempting to assault the mosque. The largest circulation Hindi paper in north India spoke of "indiscriminate police firing" and "hundreds of dead devotees", and then reduced the death toll the next day to 32. These rumours and exaggerations, part of a slick propaganda campaign, helped the BJP win the elections in four north Indian states in 1991. The mosque seemed doomed - then, in December 1992, a crowd of mostly upper-caste Hindus armed with shovels, crowbars, pickaxes, sometimes only bare hands, demolished Babur's mosque, and the police simply watched from a distance. One of the more vocal Hindu nationalist politicians, Uma Bharati, who is now a senior minister in the central Indian government, urged on the crowd, shouting, "Give one more push and break the Babri Masjid." The president of the VHP announced the dawn of a "Hindu rebellion". That evening, a crowd rampaged through the town, killing 13 Muslims, including children, and destroying scores of mosques, shrines and Muslim-owned shops and homes. Protests and riots erupted across India. Altogether 2,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed. Three months after the massacres, Muslim gangsters retaliated with bomb attacks that killed more than 300 civilians. In Delhi, the elderly Congress prime minister, Narasimha Rao, napped through the demolition. The next day he dismissed the BJP governments, banned the RSS and its sister organisations, and promised to rebuild the mosque. The leaders of the BJP tried to distance themselves from the demolition, saying it was a spontaneous act of frustration, provoked by the government's anti-Hindu policies. But the Central Bureau of Investigation concluded that senior BJP leaders had planned the demolition well in advance. As for the anti-Muslim violence, Advani claimed in an article in The Times of India that it would not have taken place had Muslims identified themselves with Hindutva: a sentiment echoed after the recent riots in Gujarat. Six years after the demolition, the BJP, benefiting from India's first-past-the-post electoral system, became the dominant party in the ruling National Democratic Alliance in Delhi. Despite being forced to share power with more secular parties, BJP's ideological fervour seems undiminished, if as yet unfulfilled. Responding to a question about the Ram temple two years ago, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee told expatriate Indians in New York that he needed a clear two-thirds majority in parliament in order to "build the India of our dreams". Certainly, the Hindu nationalists have tried hard to whip up Hindu passions. In their first few months in power, they conducted nuclear tests, explicitly aiming them against Pakistan, which responded with its own tests. The VHP and Bajrang Dal, which distributed radioactive earth from the nuclear tests site as sacred offerings, were responsible for an unprecedented series of mob attacks on Christians across India. About half of these occurred in Gujarat, but Advani claimed that there was "no law and order problem in Gujarat", and shared the dais at a meeting of Hindu nationalists with the new chief of the RSS, KS Sudarshan, who asked Christians and Muslims to return to their "Hindu roots". Sudarshan also attacked secular intellectuals as "that class of bastards which tries to implant an alien culture in their land" and spoke of "an epic war between Hindus and anti-Hindus". Barely a week after the VHP's plans to start construction of the Ram temple caused some of the worst violence in India since independence, the BJP-led government asked the Supreme Court to allow VHP leaders to perform rituals at the site of the mosque on March 15 - an appeal wisely rejected. Even so, the temple in Ayodhya seems inevitable. You reach Ramjanmabhoomi (Ram's birthplace), as it is now called, through a maze of narrow, barricaded paths. Armed men loom up abruptly with metal detectors and perform brisk body-searches. These are members of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), notorious for its pogroms of Muslims in north Indian towns. The men look mean for the cameras. Pictures of the site have not been allowed by the government for the past decade. A canvas canopy protects a platform built above the rubble of the mosque, on which stand the idols draped in garlands and sequinned cloth. A priest sits below the platform, briskly dispensing prasad - tiny sugary balls - and squirreling away the soiled and wrinkled rupee notes tentatively offered by peasant pilgrims. As I groped for small change, a PAC inspector wandered over, asked if I was a journalist from Delhi, and attempted a little history. He told me that Lord Ram had placed the idols inside the mosque in 1949; it was his wish that a temple be built on his birthplace. My companion, a resident of Benares, challenged this account, saying that the idols had been placed there by the then district official. The inspector did not defend his story; he only smiled and replied that this proved that the official was a true Hindu. Many such "true Hindus" looked the other way while the temple was slowly prefabricated. In a vast shed near the Ramjanmabhoomi lie stacks of carved stone pillars. Here, you can buy promotional liter-ature - The Blood-Soaked History Of Ayodhya and Ayodhya: An Answer To Terrorism And Fundamentalism are the bestselling titles - and admire a miniature glass-cased model of the temple. The labour is cheap - £2 a day for craftsmen - but the temple, whose architect previously designed the Swaminarayan temple in Neasden, north London, seems to have come out of a garish fantasy of marble and gold. The impatience of abbots such as Paramhans is understandable. Offerings at the temple are likely to run into millions of dollars annually; much has already arrived from donors in India and abroad. No one knows where most of it has gone - rumours point to new buildings in Ayodhya and elsewhere, including some owned by Paramhans, who is moved to rage if you raise the possibility of Muslim opposition to the temple. "There are only two places Muslims can go to," he shouted, echoing a popular slogan of the early 1990s, "Pakistan or Kabristan [graveyard]." As for the mosque - which appears now in memory as a melancholy symbol of a besieged secularism - there seems little doubt that it will never be rebuilt. It has fallen victim not just to the ideologues but to less perceptible changes in India's general mood in the past decade. The talk of social justice, the official culture of frugality, the appeal, however rhetorical, to traditions of tolerance and dialogue - all these seem to belong to the past, to the early decades of idealism and delusion. A decade of pro-globalisation policies has created a new, aggressive middle class whose concerns now dominate public life. This aspiring class replaced expatriate Indians as the BJP's primary constituency - referring to them in a recent cover story, India Today spoke of the "return of the militant Hindu". This powerful Hindu minority supports the insidious campaign against madrasas, and the more brutal assertion of state power in Kashmir. It demands a nuclear attack on Pakistan; aspires to superpower status, and fervently courts the US as a political, economic and military ally. It is of this new India that Gujarat provided a glimpse last month, as young Hindus carted off looted digital cameras and DVD players in their new Japanese cars. It is of this India that Ayodhya presents both a miniature image and a sinister portent, with its syncretic past now irrevocably falsified, its mosques destroyed, its minorities suppressed: an Ayodhya where well-placed local abbots helped by politicians wait for lucrative connections to the global economy, and prove, along with much else, the profound modernity of religious nationalism. · Pankaj Mishra is author of The Romantics (Picador). -- From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Wed Apr 10 10:47:15 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 22:17:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Said on tactics for Palestine Message-ID: <20020410051715.28527.qmail@web14610.mail.yahoo.com> > >Thinking ahead: After survival, what happens? > >By Edward Said > > > >Anyone with any connection at all to Palestine is today in a state of > >stunned outrage and shock. While almost a repeat of what happened in > >1982, Israel's current all-out colonial assault on the Palestinian > >people (with George Bush's astoundingly ignorant and grotesque support) > >is indeed worse than Sharon's two previous mass forays in 1971 and 1982 > >against the Palestinian people. The political and moral climate today is > >a good deal cruder and reductive, the media's destructive role (which > >has played the part almost entirely of singling out Palestinian suicide > >attacks and isolating them from their context in Israel's 35-year > >illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories) greater in favouring > >the Israeli view of things, the US's power more unchallenged, the war > >against terrorism has more completely taken over the global agenda and, > >so far as the Arab environment is concerned, there is greater > >incoherence and fragmentation than ever before. > > > >Sharon's homicidal instincts have been enhanced (if that's the right > >word) by all of the above, and magnified to boot. This in effect means > >that he can do more damage with more impunity than before, although he > >is also more deeply undermined than before in all his efforts as well as > >in his entire career by the failure that comes with single-minded > >negation and hate, which in the end nourish neither political nor even > >military success. Conflicts between peoples such as this contain more > >elements than can be eliminated by tanks and air power, and a war > >against unarmed civilians -- no matter how many times Sharon lumberingly > >and mindlessly trumpets his stupid mantras about terror -- can never > >bring a really lasting political result of the sort his dreams tells him > >he can have. Palestinians will not go away. Besides, Sharon will almost > >certainly end up disgraced and rejected by his people. He has no plan, > >except to destroy everything about Palestine and the Palestinians. Even > >in his enraged fixation on Arafat and terror, he is failing to do much > >more than raise the man's prestige while essentially drawing attention > >to the blind monomania of his own position. > > > >In the end he is Israel's problem to deal with. For us, our main > >consideration now is morally to do everything in our power to make > >certain that despite the enormous suffering and destruction imposed on > >us by a criminal war, we must go on. When a renowned and respected > >retired politician like Zbigniew Brzezinski says explicitly on national > >television that Israel has been behaving like the white supremacist > >regime of apartheid South Africa, one can be certain that he is not > >alone in this view, and that an increasing number of Americans and > >others are slowly growing not only disenchanted but also disgusted with > >Israel as a hugely expensive and draining ward of the United States, > >costing far too much, increasing American isolation, and seriously > >damaging the country's reputation with its allies and its citizens. The > >question is what, in this most difficult of moments, can we rationally > >learn about the present crisis that we need to include in our plans for > >the future? > > > >What I have to say now is highly selective, but it is the modest fruit > >of many years working on behalf of the Palestinian cause as someone who > >is from both Arab and Western worlds. I neither know nor can say > >everything, but here are some of the handful of thoughts I can > >contribute at this very difficult hour. Each of the four points that > >follow here is related to the other. > > > >1) For better or for worse, Palestine is not just an Arab and Islamic > >cause, it is important to many different, contradictory and yet > >intersecting worlds. To work for Palestine is necessarily to be aware of > >these many dimensions and constantly to educate oneself in them. For > >that we need a highly educated, vigilant and sophisticated leadership > >and democratic support for it. Above all we must, as Mandela never tired > >of saying about his struggle, be aware that Palestine is one of the > >great moral causes of our time. Therefore, we need to treat it as such. > >It's not a matter of trade, or bartering negotiations, or making a > >career. It is a just cause which should allow Palestinians to capture > >the high moral ground and keep it. > > > >2) There are different kinds of power, military of course being the most > >obvious. What has enabled Israel to do what it has been doing to the > >Palestinians for the past 54 years is the result of a carefully and > >scientifically planned campaign to validate Israeli actions and, > >simultaneously, devalue and efface Palestinian actions. This is not just > >a matter of maintaining a powerful military but of organising opinion, > >especially in the United States and Western Europe, and is a power > >derived from slow, methodical work where Israel's position is seen as > >one to be easily identified with, whereas the Palestinians are thought > >of as Israel's enemies, hence repugnant, dangerous, against "us." Since > >the end of the Cold War, Europe has faded into near-insignificance so > >far as the organisation of opinion, images, and thought are concerned. > >America (outside of Palestine itself) is the main arena of battle. We > >have simply never learned the importance of systematically organising > >our political work in this country on a mass level, so that for instance > >the average American will not immediately think of "terrorism" when the > >word "Palestinian" is pronounced. That kind of work quite literally > >protects whatever gains we might have made through on-the-ground > >resistance to Israel's occupation. What has enabled Israel to deal with > >us with impunity, therefore, has been that we are unprotected by any > >body of opinion that would deter Sharon from practicing his war crimes > >and saying that what he has done is to fight terrorism. Given the > >immense diffusionary, insistent, and repetitive power of the images > >broadcast by CNN, for example, in which the phrase "suicide bomb" is > >numbingly repeated a hundred times an hour for the American consumer and > >tax-payer, it is the grossest negligence not to have had a team of > >people like Hanan Ashrawi, Leila Shahid, Ghassan Khatib, Afif Safie -- > >to mention just a few -- sitting in Washington ready to go on CNN or any > >of the other channels just to tell the Palestinian story, provide > >context and understanding, give us a moral and narrative presence with > >positive, rather than merely negative, value. We need a future > >leadership that understands this as one of the basic lessons of modern > >politics in an age of electronic communication. Not to have understood > >this is part of the tragedy of today. > > > >3) There is simply no use operating politically and responsibly in a > >world dominated by one superpower without a profound familiarity and > >knowledge of that superpower -- America, its history, its institutions, > >its currents and counter-currents, its politics and culture; and, above > >all, a perfect working knowledge of its language. To hear our spokesmen, > >as well as the other Arabs, saying the most ridiculous things about > >America, throwing themselves on its mercy, cursing it in one breath, > >asking for its help in another, all in miserably inadequate fractured > >English, shows a state of such primitive incompetence as to make one > >cry. America is not monolithic. We have friends and we have possible > >friends. We can cultivate, mobilise, and use our communities and their > >affiliated communities here as an integral part of our politics of > >liberation, just as the South Africans did, or as the Algerians did in > >France during their struggle for liberation. Planning, discipline, > >coordination. We have not at all understood the politics of > >non-violence. Moreover, neither have we understood the power of trying > >to address Israelis directly, the way the ANC addressed the white South > >Africans, as part of a politics of inclusion and mutual respect. > >Coexistence is our answer to Israeli exclusivism and belligerence. This > >is not conceding: it is creating solidarity, and therefore isolating the > >exclusivists, the racists, the fundamentalists. > > > >4) The most important lesson of all for us to understand about ourselves > >is manifest in the terrible tragedies of what Israel is now doing in the > >occupied territories. The fact is that we are a people and a society, > >and despite Israel's ferocious attack against the PA, our society still > >functions. We are a people because we have a functioning society which > >goes on - and has gone on for the past 54 years -- despite every sort of > >abuse, every cruel turn of history, every misfortune we have suffered, > >every tragedy we have gone through as a people. Our greatest victory > >over Israel is that people like Sharon and his kind do not have the > >capacity to see that, and this is why they are doomed despite their > >great power and their awful, inhuman cruelty. We have surmounted the > >tragedies and memories of our past, whereas such Israelis as Sharon have > >not. He will go to his grave only as an Arab-killer, and a failed > >politician who brought more unrest and insecurity to his people. It must > >surely be the legacy of a leader that he should leave something behind > >upon which future generations will build. Sharon, Mofaz, and all the > >others associated with them in this bullying, sadistic campaign of death > >and carnage will have left nothing except gravestones. Negation breeds > >negation. > > > >As Palestinians, I think we can say that we left a vision and a society > >that has survived every attempt to kill it. And that is something. It is > >for the generation of my children and yours, to go on from there, > >critically, rationally, with hope and forbearance. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From tarunksaint at sify.com Wed Apr 10 13:24:07 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 13:24:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] re; comments on "poem" Message-ID: <001401c1e065$e08de980$ab50d6d2@default> List moderator, others, The obnoxious comments directed at a person who is not a recipient of this list (the author of the poem "For Papa') are unacceptable to me as a contributor to this list. The person concerned cannot respond to the ugly and motivated innuendo directed at her; nor did she engage in the egregious posturing and self-promotion that has been on display on this list for some time (the poem was forwarded by me). The smutty tone and quasi-pornographic drift of this contributor's previous postings, with their pretentious attempts to display familiarity with serious academic debates renders his attack suspect in any case. To me, as a member of the academic community, and a teacher, this kind of personalised slander, with its peeping tom overtones, represents the worst sort of tendency in the university, and by extension this community. If the list is to be hijacked by such puny and frustrated intellects, so be it. The least one expects is an apology-- in the meantime, I withdraw myself from the Sarai list. Regards, Tarun K. Saint Department of English , Hindu College -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020410/6dd2bd67/attachment.html From monica at sarai.net Wed Apr 10 18:24:12 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 18:24:12 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Posting guidelines Message-ID: Dear All As we all know, this is not a moderated list. And as I have written before, and as i am sure all of you already appreciate, we have to have a sense of collective responsibility to maintaining an atmosphere of "freedom of speech", keeping in mind that there is no gratuitous dismissal of what other people write and believe, especially as in the recent event where the person cannot respond to the mail as she is not a list member. However, i would request members to have a discussion, and not leave the list! That way no issues will get sorted out at all... I have collected a short list of things to keep in mind while we all post. These are a collation of guidelines from other lists (and they from others...) - but importantly they serve those lists well. I hope it is the case here as well. best Monica List-Admin ==> Posting Guidelines <== 1> A good post provides a point of view which encourages other listmembers to respond. Most of all, posts should be interesting to read in some way even outside the context of a discussion thread. "Would I forward my post to someone outside of reader-list?" is a good question to ask before sending it to the list. If you want to i) clarify your position ("I didn't mean that, I meant this"), ii) express agreement/disagreement ("I agree with X, but not Y"), or iii) correct minor factual detail ("Actually, that show was at x, not the y") without extending the discussion, consider replying to the original sender off-list. 2> A good post highlights *your* perspective. If you want to forward an article by someone else or a URL which may be of interest to the list, take some time to set some starting points for discussion. Why do you find this interesting? What are the likely implications for other members? If you just want to provide an informational post about an upcoming event or a resource which may be of interest, send it to announcements at sarai.net 3> A good post shows respect. There are real people on the other end of list messages. If you're disagreeing with someone's argument, remember to acknowledge parts you do agree with. If someone's post offends you, sit on it for a day before hitting reply. 4> A good post is generous. Concentrate on being supportive and expansive. Open conversations up rather than shut them down. You get out of reader-list what you put in. Spend some time engaging with people on list, and you'll find them much more likely to do the same when you start new conversations. 5> A good post? - opinion pieces, journalistic articles, discussion questions, essays, short academic papers, reviews, a sprinkling of fiction even - and of course responses to these posts. 6> The following kinds of posts are not suited: * Announcements (send to announcements at sarai.net) * Flames * Unannotated URLs/forwarded articles * Promotional material Reader-list is an unmoderated list, so we rely on subscribers following these guidelines to keep the list dynamic and active. The facilitators may send reminders to anyone not following the guidelines. Posters who repeatedly ignore these guidelines and reminders may be removed from the list. 7> Most of all, enjoy yourself! The Reader-list has been a fantastic forum for the exchange of ideas, and it continues to grow in size and diversity. But it can only do so while new members come in and contribute. -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Thu Apr 11 02:03:19 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 21:33:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, Tarun and Others Message-ID: <20020410203319.54089.qmail@web8103.in.yahoo.com> Dear Tarun, and all, I like the way you refer to me as a "puny and frustrated intellect". You are right. I an puny (I "merely" possess a computer). I am frustrated. Which enjoyer-in-knowledge teaching in a college in India is not? Are you not frustrated? Would you not grab an opportunity to teach at some college in Illinois, USA, if you got the chance? I wouldn't. That's because I couldn't. I do not possess your kind of knowledge into things. I, too, teach in a college. Most of my energies go into teaching first- and second-generation learners English Grammar and conversation, so that their dreams of getting "good" jobs get fulfilled. It's difficult to handle clauses, active-passive Voice, and Zizek, in one day. [I actually prefer Dudek (the Liverpool goalkeeper)]. Out of these frustrated enjoyers-in-knowledge turned lecturers-by-employment, some manage to find a hobby-horse, and so get out of their frustration. Others, like me, are still searching. At least you concede that I possess an "intellect". Thank you. Coming from a Hindu college teacher, that's the best compliment anyone from Delhi's academic community could have paid me. There obviously exists a discourse from within which serious, unfrustrated, unpuny, academics like you produce your statements. I want to say "dominant" discourse, but you already know that my "familiarity" with "serious academic debates", and hence concepts, are "suspect". My "attempts" to "display familiarity with serious academic debates" become "suspect" only when you wish to speak within a pre-ordained (you would say: continuously changing, or, eminently inflected) universe of discourse. You obviously believe that there exists only some ways of saying things; I want to test a belief I have: can we say the same things in other ways, completely different ways. The "obnoxious comments" are a way to see if satire (however badly or incompetently rendered) can co-exist, within the dominant discourse of the "serious" academic community, as a form of anarchic knowledge that can say the same things in a different way. So also "this contributor's previous postings". I have always suspected that Global aeducated Indians are not friendly to satire. You are familiar with genres, with the demands of "form " and "genre". Yet you do not recognise satire when you read it (like a literary reviewer in an Indian weekly magazine would, you call it "personalised slander"). Your outrage confirms my suspicion. If intelligent people like you react to satire (however bad) like this, how will I ever publish anything? Nobody who writes on the Internet is a "person". One is only an identity. One merely takes a position, a stance. I wish you had commented more on the textual stance of "my" postings, rather than commenting on "me". "You" know "me". Don't use that knowledge to comment on "me". That's bad politics. Comment on what "I" post. Discuss its merits. Instead of saying "smutty tone and quasi-pornographic drift", I wish you had discussed the poems. They may be bad. That's because I may be a bad (trying to be) satirist. But discuss the material, not the intention of the author (oops! more "egregious posturing and self-promotion"). Instead of being outraged, you could look into the political rationality of conversing in as many languages as possible, in as many ways as possible. Especially on the Internet. Please check out other lists, like rhizome.org. There, people abuse each other more openly, without neo-conservativist fear (Oops! Some more "self-promotion"!). I don't understand what you mean by "peeping tom overtones". Am I too close to you? The sarai reader's list has not been "hijacked" by me. I am not a terrorist. Please don't unsubscribe. That's a loss to the list. The list needs intellectuals like you to be a "contributor". Your (correctly) high-moral threat to unsubscribe to the List makes me want to unsubscribe. Why are you taking this stance? It is I who posted the "ugly and motivated innuendo". So I should unsubscribe. The list doesn't need "the worst sort of tendency" that I obviously represent. I say again: please, please don't unsubscribe. Please, please don't blackmail the List. Kick me on my ass, if you want to. I'll come to Hindu College to receive the kick in person, if you want me to. But please leave the list out of this. You are from Hindu College, a venerable institution. Although Ania Loomba and Suvir Kaul fled from there, because they felt "puny" and "frustrated", you possess a lot of cultural authority in Delhi by being a teacher in Hindu College. Therefore, I apologise to you. In the future, I might write a book that might come to you for review. I bow to you with folded hands. I beseech you to forgive me for my (incorrect) turds of discourse. In the same vein I apologise to all readers, outraged or not. You cannot see my folded hands. But believe me, they are now folded, in a way I never have publicly ever folded them before. They are obscenely folded. Namashkar. ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From slumbug at rediffmail.com Thu Apr 11 04:59:09 2002 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 10 Apr 2002 23:29:09 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Dirty Ditty/Saint Pandey de Sarai Message-ID: <20020410232909.28907.qmail@mailweb13.rediffmail.com> Sisters and Brothers and Mothers and Fathers and Aunts and Uncles and Teachers and many more . And my friends in love and hate . I am amazed at the egos on this list. Such bright people, anyday I would like to be free people like you. And, now you guys close off? I have been a lurker almost all through the time I have been a member of this list, a very short time too. But, Sarai has been known for some time, I heard about it, read printouts of discussions, and heard so much of your cafeteria and the way lives are getting changed. I am sure you work in a really fascinating space, some place out of the blue, where I would like to be there with you. I have always used the list as a source of information, to learn what bright people do, what they think of, what they will do to change our lives. I suppose a guy like me always looks for the guru, the sant, a sort of salvation-master who will bring me out of the gloom into joy. I never felt the need to write, but today I feel I do, hey really, I do. I am upset with the guru. The list administrator has probably never been under such pressure before, I presume, since she never sent us a mail like the one she has done today (4/10/2002 6.24 PM). And why may that be? Since a little boy (sorry, ‘puny and frustrated intellectual’) has written a dirty little ditty? [Remember your nursery rhymes?] I have a few questions, ‘doubts’ as we were taught in school and college. [Before examination week/month, during the last day of class the teacher would ask if we had ‘doubts’. Never had one. Never learned anything, not at least in college filled with ‘puny and frustrated intellectuals’] I address my queries to specific individuals, but I hope we all talk, at least some of you will with me, so that my ‘doubts’ as to what really constitutes freedom, the civil society (the papers are full of it), the ‘limits’ of free speech and so much more could get a little clarified. Professor Saint, I do agree that little piece by Mr Pandey (a pandy, cal, [probably one of the many, now with literary aspirations] and attempts to engage with the poet Jyotsna Kapur, and uses a lot of hard terms which I do not understand and I have to buy a special dictionary for them. Maybe you can explain them, or rather he should. He does seem derogatory, and the poet is not there to defend herself, which you do ably, and very rightly. What right do we have as individuals to presume such familiarity? Sir, when you say that somebody has been engaging “in the egregious posturing and self-promotion that has been on display on this list for some time”, I presume you have been referring to the same smutty poet, Mr Pandey. I understand very well why you say that his ditty is smutty and semi-pornographic, because so many of us have pornographic dreams all (actually) all the time, at least once in a lifetime. I also read that our pornographic poet has displayed “pretentious attempts to display familiarity with serious academic debates” and that this “renders his attack suspect in any case” However, you seem not to have told us how his familiarity with academic debates is at default? Is it not an innuendo in itself? Correct me if I am wrong. I have one request of you Sir, and I maybe echoing Monica, you must not withdraw from the list. Such slander will only get fodder if not crushed completely. One can always get this guy off the list, but he can bring out his dirty ditties elsewhere. So, Sir, dialogue. You are a teacher, Sir. I would also like to know what constitutes the university, how it extends into the community, and who are the ‘worst sort of elements’ in the university. So Mr Pandey is in the university? So, there are actually a lot of people in the university who write with a ‘smutty tone’ and ‘quasi-pornographic drift’? Monica, your posting as list administrator is that of a tired being. You seem to be tired of us. It is an unmoderated list. But, now, we have to notify what is the good and the bad. I do not understand. How does o ‘puny intellectual’ shake up a huge “intellectual’ community, throw us into disarray? Then, this writer of dirty ditties is a revolutionary? I think it is valid to think of these questions? So, do I find the guru in him? So, we close off, we worry about that lick of flame burning us all. Hellfire? Is Code No 6 a threat? [6> The following kinds of posts are not suited: * Announcements (send to announcements at sarai.net) * Flames * Unannotated URLs/forwarded articles * Promotional material Reader-list is an unmoderated list, so we rely on subscribers following these guidelines to keep the list dynamic and active. The facilitators may send reminders to anyone not following the guidelines. Posters who repeatedly ignore these guidelines and reminders may be removed from the list.] I have a funny fear that lot of people who know each other on the list are settling personal scores. Sarai can always organize a wrestling championship, no, rather a cockfight or dogfight like in those Westerns. No, rather the Roman arena, with gladiators. Oooh! Wow. And yes, none of us have actually discussed some of the points that Mr Pandey has raised. Not all of it is jargon, you know. Anyway, I am tired too, it is late, I will try to sleep. I do not need a guru, I am not asking for salvation. All I am saying, come my beloved friends, let us chat, have fun. Can we, we the people, in love and hate get hijacked by one puny intellectual? So, let us follow Code 7: [7> Most of all, enjoy yourself! The Reader-list has been a fantastic forum for the exchange of ideas, and it continues to grow in size and diversity. But it can only do so while new members come in and contribute.] Let me know, Neel From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Apr 11 08:54:16 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 04:24:16 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Breyten Breytenbach : An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon Message-ID: The Nation (New York) COMMENT | Special Report An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon by Breyten Breytenbach Paris, April 7, 2002 Sir, You don't know me. There's no reason why you should and little cause for you to listen to what somebody like myself may have to say. I don't imagine you have time to pay attention to views that do not correspond to your own. In fact, I'm convinced that you do not listen to anybody who doesn't say what you wish to hear. Should it interest you, I'm a writer born in South Africa now living and working abroad. For some time back there I also grew up among a "chosen people" who behaved as Herrenvolk--as all those who believe themselves singularized by suffering or entrusted with a special mission from God. I apologize if my comparative allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts because of the echoes from a recent past when, in Europe, so many Jews were the victims of a purported "final solution." But how else is one to attempt describing the comportment of your armies when one is flooded by the horror of what you're doing? These rough equivalences don't come lightly. As a writer I'm deeply apprised of the need to keep the words uncluttered of any urge to rouse easy emotions. This is what facile comparisons do--they nullify understanding the complexity of the observed phenomena by a rush of outrage heating the throat and staining the adversary with the vomit of borrowed or vicarious condemnation. Apartheid was not Nazism, though to say so was a striking slogan. And the policies now perpetrated by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people should not be equated with Apartheid. Each one of these processes and systems is evil enough to merit a thorough description of its own historical singularity. And yet... There are similarities and differences: This blind competition, on both sides, to be recognized as more-victim-than-thou; cloaking atrocities in the "divine" right to self-defense; the shameless manipulation of perceptions and the mendacious lying; the concomitant brutalization of your own society; the disdain shown for the humanity of the Palestinians--indeed, denying even the most elementary humane treatment to a terrified and trapped civilian population... It is all only too familiar. The underlying assumptions informing your actions are racist. As was the case with the South African regime, the preferred methods by which you hope to subjugate the enemy consist of force and bloodshed and humiliation. Cynically, you think you can get away with this as long as you play up to the supposed vital interests of the United States. I don't think you really care a Jaffa fig for America's interests. You probably despise them for being blinded by their own material crassness and their ignorance of the world. True, your used-car-salesman doppelgänger, Netanyahu, deploys this craft of crude propaganda more openly, as if he were a dirty finger tweaking the clitoris of a swooning American public opinion. But you too, by opportunistically echoing the semantically challenged American President (and putting words in his mouth), who describes every "other" as a terrorist, have shown that you take the rest of the world for fools. Surely, not all of us agree that the highest good in the world is America's greed for cheap oil, and that we should hence be expected to adhere to the inviolability of corrupt regimes in the region! There is a more pernicious red herring that needs to be smelled out forthwith. It is blatantly averred, again and again, that any criticism of Israel's policies is an expression of anti-Semitism. With that assertion the argument is supposed to be closed and sealed. Of course, I reject this attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying the grounds for debate. No amount of suffering--be it of the Tutsis, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Vietnamese, the Bosnians or the Palestinians--can confer immunity from criticism. (And, to put it sadly, no amount of persecution would seem to vaccinate people against perpetrating the same practices they suffered from.) No appeal to the incitement or supposed promises of some Holy Land edicted by One God can condone the exactions carried out by an invading and occupying army-- or, for that matter, the cold-blooded massacres of innocents ordered by fanatic warlords in the name of resistance. No reference to some ostensibly sacrosanct "Greater Israel" can camouflage the fact that your settlements are armed colonies built on land shamelessly stolen from the Palestinians, festering there as shards in their flesh, or snipers' nests, intended to thwart and annul any possibility of Palestinian statehood. There can be no way to peace through the annihilation of the other, just as there is no paradise for the "martyr." I find this "anti-Semitism" allegation utterly deplorable, especially coming from Jewish intellectuals who so often constitute the reasonable, rational and creative backbone of Western societies. Why should we be subjected to this special pleading, or look the other way when it is Israel committing crimes? Is what's sauce for the goose then, in some Yahweh-inspired way, not sauce for the gander? No, General Sharon, past injustices suffered cannot justify or excuse your present fascist actions. A viable state cannot be built on the expulsion of another people who have as much claim to that territory as you have. Might is not right. In the long run, your immoral and shortsighted (and finally stupid) policies will furthermore weaken Israel's legitimacy as a state. Recently, I had the opportunity of visiting the territories for the first time. (And yes, I'm afraid they can reasonably be described as resembling bantustans--for only too often are they reminiscent of the ghettos and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa.) I only glimpsed Israel briefly, upon entering and then later leaving after spending a night in the opulent but dismally deserted David Intercontinental Hotel of Tel Aviv. You may say my view is fatally one-sided. Perhaps. Though one is always within sight of Israeli demarcation lines, checkpoints, tanks and armed outposts in the West Bank. I wondered, are your two peoples really all that different? You are of a similarly diverse mix of cultures and origins, you are all of you diaspora people, you are equally intelligent and quick-witted and excitable. You may well be brave in similar fashions. On both sides there are creative minds of exceptional integrity at work. On both sides, also, there are an extraordinary number of self-serving, power-hungry individuals, fanatics with their spirits obfuscated by this God-nonsense. Or using that as a pretext. As provocateur--cold-blooded and cruel--you stand out among your peers. In your dogged but ill-considered attempts to subvert previous agreements and to scupper the possibility of peace--except for the peace of the graveyard and of exile, premised on the "total transfer" or "disappearance" of the Palestinian entity--you are bringing turmoil to the region. This you probably planned for. It remains to be seen whether the growling of your principals in Washington will inflect your campaign of calculated terror and wanton destruction--or whether it is but a smokescreen behind which to better align the "free world's" war on "terrorism." And for the domination of resources and a global control of markets and cheap oil and "democracy." The few days I spent there, with the delegation of the International Parliament of Writers, left me with a mixed bag of strong but conflicting impressions. How small Palestine is! How inextricably linked your peoples are. The stones everywhere. The topography of names familiar from the Bible. The beautiful light. The attempts to make the place look like Switzerland by planting out-of-place conifers. The inhospitality of the land, except for lush coastal plains. How abysmally sad the villages are, reminding one of the lifeless and apathetic towns of East Germany. The green lights in the mosques and all the unfinished habitations. The ugliness of the architecture everywhere--the ubiquitous light-gray limestone building blocks. The inanity of your occupation--all those lit-up detour roads built for the exclusive use of settlers and Israeli citizens. The surly pettiness of your controls at checkpoints, having little to do with security and everything with the primitive urge to humiliate, frustrate, harass and drive to insane rage an occupied population. The extreme youth of your soldiers, and sadly they are so obviously well-cultivated boys and girls. The ruthless rapaciousness with which you destroy the possible Palestinian economy and steal their goods. The ancient revenge--bulldozing houses, destroying olive groves. The equally primitive sight of armed positions under camouflage netting and Israeli flags in commandeered houses. Your vaunted "democratic" media lying to your own people, denying the war crimes carried out by your troops. The Berlin walls around your settlements in Gaza (and behind them university extensions, research institutes, American-linked hotels, golf courses), and then the rubble of destroyed Palestinian quarters looking now like Ground Zero. The way little kids looked us straight in the eye, apparently uncowed, but then we were told that they're probably all traumatized not only by the hovering dogs of your gunships and your prehistoric tanks and your men in uniform shooting at everything that moves, but by all the hyperactive adults around them. The old kerchiefed women in some refugee camp screaming that you, Sharon, will never make them move, that they chased away your soldiers "like dogs." Proffering abuse, also, at the spineless Arab states and the cowardice of their own Palestinian Authority. The ebullience of the intellectuals and artists under siege in Ramallah--arguing, laughing at their own plight. How they all say, "We don't want to be heroes, we don't want to be victims, we just want to lead normal lives." Their wry despair. Mahmoud Darwish: "There is too much history and too many prophets in this small land." The visit to Abu Ammar, Yasir Arafat, a holed fox, his waxed yellow hands clinging to the empty clichés of "a peace of the brave" and "the conscience of the international community." A bourgeois lady lamenting the desecration of the Palestinian landscape. And a human rights lawyer claiming: "We are grateful to Sharon for two things--he united all the Palestinian factions and he took away every option except to resist." Later on, the same haunted man, chain-smoking and with the sweat of death already on him, remarked bitterly that repression has penetrated the skin of the people, and that now they have nothing else to defend themselves with except their skins. Thus the human bombs. For these will be my contrasted conclusions: You have not broken the spirit of the Palestinian people. Quite the contrary--they are now more resolute than ever to build a state; it doesn't matter how much you bully them. They saw the renewed onslaught coming, they knew you were but playing footsy with General Zinni--probably in agreement with Dick Cheney. They also know that, since you have now made them stronger, you must strike harder and deeper, because you are caught in a conundrum of your own making. Like Bush in his crusade against the infidel and the disobedient, you have to accelerate your distention of international public ethics and flaunt common sense even more, and throw good moral money after bad political assessments. They know that nothing they can do will appease you, short of turning turtle. They fear you will have to compound this crime against humanity which you are committing at present, that you may indeed break their hopes for a secular, modern and democratic state responsible to its population, and bring forth the devil among them. They also know that this will profoundly divide and weaken Israel. But you don't care, do you ? This is the pity and the horror. The pity and the horror. -- From Neel Thu Apr 11 08:30:13 2002 From: Neel (Neel) Date: 11 Apr 2002 03:00:13 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Reposting Dirty Ditty/Saint Pandey de Sarai Message-ID: <20020411030013.4906.qmail@mailweb18.rediffmail.com> Dear All, My previous posting a few hours back has come up on the list but with some text missing. Therefore, I felt the need to repost. I am sorry for spamming, if that is the right lingo. Regards, Neel Sisters and Brothers and Mothers and Fathers and Aunts and Uncles and Teachers and many more . And my friends in love and hate . I am amazed at the egos on this list. Such bright people, anyday I would like to be free people like you. And, now you guys close off? I have been a lurker almost all through the time I have been a member of this list, a very short time too. But, Sarai has been known for some time, I heard about it, read printouts of discussions, and heard so much of your cafeteria and the way lives are getting changed. I am sure you work in a really fascinating space, some place out of the blue, where I would like to be there with you. I have always used the list as a source of information, to learn what bright people do, what they think of, what they will do to change our lives. I suppose a guy like me always looks for the guru, the sant, a sort of salvation-master who will bring me out of the gloom into joy. I never felt the need to write, but today I feel I do, hey really, I do. I am upset with the guru. The list administrator has probably never been under such pressure before, I presume, since she never sent us a mail like the one she has done today (4/10/2002 6.24 PM). And why may that be? Since a little boy (sorry, ‘puny and frustrated intellectual’) has written a dirty little ditty? [Remember your nursery rhymes?] I have a few questions, ‘doubts’ as we were taught in school and college. [Before examination week/month, during the last day of class the teacher would ask if we had ‘doubts’. Never had one. Never learned anything, not at least in college filled with ‘puny and frustrated intellectuals’] I address my queries to specific individuals, but I hope we all talk, at least some of you will with me, so that my ‘doubts’ as to what really constit ‘limits’ of free speech and so much more could get a little clarified. Professor Saint, I do agree that little piece by Mr Pandey (a pandy, the Bengal Army?), starting with ball and beers tries to be satirical, [probably one of the many, now with literary aspirations] and attempts to engage with the poet Jyotsna Kapur, and uses a lot of hard terms which I do not understand and I have to buy a special dictionary for them. Maybe you can explain them, or rather he should. He does seem derogatory, and the poet is not there to defend herself, which you do ably, and very rightly. What right do we have as individuals to presume such familiarity? Sir, when you say that somebody has been engaging “in the egregious posturing and self-promotion that has been on display on this list for some time”, I presume you have been referring to the same smutty poet, Mr Pandey. I understand very well why you say that his ditty is smutty and semi-pornographic, because so many of us have pornographic dreams all (actually) all the time, at least once in a lifetime. I also read that our pornographic poet has displayed “pretentious attempts to display familiarity with serious academic debates” and that this “renders his attack suspect in any case” However, you seem not to have told us how his familiarity with academic debates is at default? Is it not an innuendo in itself? Correct me if I am wrong. I have one request of you Sir, and I maybe echoing Monica, you must not withdraw from the list. Such slander will only get fodder if not crushed completely. One can always get this guy off the list, but he can bring out his dirty ditties elsewhere. So, Sir, dialogue. You are a teacher, Sir. I would also like to know what constitutes the university, how it extends into the community, and who are the ‘worst sort of elements’ in the university. So Mr Pandey is in the university? So, there are actually a lot of people in the university who write with a ‘smutty tone’ and ‘quasi-pornographic drift’? Moni eem to be tired of us. It is an unmoderated list. But, now, we have to notify what is the good and the bad. I do not understand. How does one ‘puny intellectual’ shake up a huge “intellectual’ community, throw us into disarray? Then, this writer of dirty ditties is a revolutionary? I think it is valid to think of these questions? So, do I find the guru in him? So, we close off, we worry about that lick of flame burning us all. Hellfire? Is Code No 6 a threat? [6> The following kinds of posts are not suited: * Announcements (send to announcements at sarai.net) * Flames * Unannotated URLs/forwarded articles * Promotional material Reader-list is an unmoderated list, so we rely on subscribers following these guidelines to keep the list dynamic and active. The facilitators may send reminders to anyone not following the guidelines. Posters who repeatedly ignore these guidelines and reminders may be removed from the list.] I have a funny fear that lot of people who know each other on the list are settling personal scores. Sarai can always organize a wrestling championship, no, rather a cockfight or dogfight like in those Westerns. No, rather the Roman arena, with gladiators. Oooh! Wow. And yes, none of us have actually discussed some of the points that Mr Pandey has raised. Not all of it is jargon, you know. Anyway, I am tired too, it is late, I will try to sleep. I do not need a guru, I am not asking for salvation. All I am saying, come my beloved friends, let us chat, have fun. Can we, we the people, in love and hate get hijacked by one puny intellectual? So, let us follow Code 7: [7> Most of all, enjoy yourself! The Reader-list has been a fantastic forum for the exchange of ideas, and it continues to grow in size and diversity. But it can only do so while new members come in and contribute.] Let me know, Neel From Neel Thu Apr 11 09:24:22 2002 From: Neel (Neel) Date: 11 Apr 2002 03:54:22 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Reposting Dirt Ditty/ saint Pandey de Sarai Message-ID: <20020411035422.6514.qmail@mailweb19.rediffmail.com> Dear All, I am reposting my earlier comments since there seems to be errors in the text coming on the list. Sorry for spamming, if that is the right lingo. Regards, neel Sisters and Brothers and Mothers and Fathers and Aunts and Uncles and Teachers and many more . And my friends in love and hate . I am amazed at the egos on this list. Such bright people, anyday I would like to be free people like you. And, now you guys close off? I have been a lurker almost all through the time I have been a member of this list, a very short time too. But, Sarai has been known for some time, I heard about it, read printouts of discussions, and heard so much of your cafeteria and the way lives are getting changed. I am sure you work in a really fascinating space, some place out of the blue, where I would like to be there with you. I have always used the list as a source of information, to learn what bright people do, what they think of, what they will do to change our lives. I suppose a guy like me always looks for the guru, the sant, a sort of salvation-master who will bring me out of the gloom into joy. I never felt the need to write, but today I feel I do, hey really, I do. I am upset with the guru. The list administrator has probably never been under such pressure before, I presume, since she never sent us a mail like the one she has done today (4/10/2002 6.24 PM). And why may that be? Since a little boy (sorry, ‘puny and frustrated intellectual’) has written a dirty little ditty? [Remember your nursery rhymes?] I have a few questions, ‘doubts’ as we were taught in school and college. [Before examination week/month, during the last day of class the teacher would ask if we had ‘doubts’. Never had one. Never learned anything, not at least in college filled with ‘puny and frustrated intellectuals’] I address my queries to specific individuals, but I hope we all talk, at least some of you will with me, so that my ‘doubts’ as to what really constitutes freedom, the civil society (th much more could get a little clarified. Professor Saint, I do agree that little piece by Mr Pandey (a pandy, the Bengal Army?), starting with ball and beers tries to be satirical, [probably one of the many, now with literary aspirations] and attempts to engage with the poet Jyotsna Kapur, and uses a lot of hard terms which I do not understand and I have to buy a special dictionary for them. Maybe you can explain them, or rather he should. He does seem derogatory, and the poet is not there to defend herself, which you do ably, and very rightly. What right do we have as individuals to presume such familiarity? Sir, when you say that somebody has been engaging “in the egregious posturing and self-promotion that has been on display on this list for some time”, I presume you have been referring to the same smutty poet, Mr Pandey. I understand very well why you say that his ditty is smutty and semi-pornographic, because so many of us have pornographic dreams all (actually) all the time, at least once in a lifetime. I also read that our pornographic poet has displayed “pretentious attempts to display familiarity with serious academic debates” and that this “renders his attack suspect in any case” However, you seem not to have told us how his familiarity with academic debates is at default? Is it not an innuendo in itself? Correct me if I am wrong. I have one request of you Sir, and I maybe echoing Monica, you must not withdraw from the list. Such slander will only get fodder if not crushed completely. One can always get this guy off the list, but he can bring out his dirty ditties elsewhere. So, Sir, dialogue. You are a teacher, Sir. I would also like to know what constitutes the university, how it extends into the community, and who are the ‘worst sort of elements’ in the university. So Mr Pandey is in the university? So, there are actually a lot of people in the university who write with a ‘smutty tone’ and ‘quasi-pornographic drift’? Monica, your posting as list administ or is that of a tired being. You seem to be tired of us. It is an unmoderated list. But, now, we have to notify what is the good and the bad. I do not understand. How does one ‘puny intellectual’ shake up a huge “intellectual’ community, throw us into disarray? Then, this writer of dirty ditties is a revolutionary? I think it is valid to think of these questions? So, do I find the guru in him? So, we close off, we worry about that lick of flame burning us all. Hellfire? Is Code No 6 a threat? [6> The following kinds of posts are not suited: * Announcements (send to announcements at sarai.net) * Flames * Unannotated URLs/forwarded articles * Promotional material Reader-list is an unmoderated list, so we rely on subscribers following these guidelines to keep the list dynamic and active. The facilitators may send reminders to anyone not following the guidelines. Posters who repeatedly ignore these guidelines and reminders may be removed from the list.] I have a funny fear that lot of people who know each other on the list are settling personal scores. Sarai can always organize a wrestling championship, no, rather a cockfight or dogfight like in those Westerns. No, rather the Roman arena, with gladiators. Oooh! Wow. And yes, none of us have actually discussed some of the points that Mr Pandey has raised. Not all of it is jargon, you know. Anyway, I am tired too, it is late, I will try to sleep. I do not need a guru, I am not asking for salvation. All I am saying, come my beloved friends, let us chat, have fun. Can we, we the people, in love and hate get hijacked by one puny intellectual? So, let us follow Code 7: [7> Most of all, enjoy yourself! The Reader-list has been a fantastic forum for the exchange of ideas, and it continues to grow in size and diversity. But it can only do so while new members come in and contribute.] Let me know, Neel From jhasadan at hotmail.com Thu Apr 11 11:52:49 2002 From: jhasadan at hotmail.com (jha sadan) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 11:52:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics & Poetics of Visual Representations Message-ID: Dear Friends, We are doing a project on the visual representational spaces of Delhi. This is a brief note and an excerpt from our field notes. Your comments and suggestions will be of great help for us to see the field in better and more disturbing ways. Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics and Poetics of Visual Representations (Delhi) Thematic Areas covered Although, at this stage of our research, it is bit difficult to classify and categorise pictorial spaces which we have covered yet a brief list of them is important: Advertisements in the forms of hoardings of shops and other similar market forces. Here, we have tried to capture the complexities of different kinds which are products as well as producers of relationship between agencies of �globalization� and �traditional culture�. However, it needs to keep in mind that both these words/concepts are used here very loosely. These advertisements lead us to those processes in and through which local symbolic spaces work hand in hand with standard symbolic spaces. Multiple use of certain spaces: During the field work we have come across many once upon a time government hoardings, hoardings of road signs and walls which are used as locations to put posters and for writing different messages. The very use of these spaces as standard place as recognised places are interesting. If you remember, one of our meetings, you had suggested abut few such spaces( notice boards, information boards of art galleries etc.) Posters and Hoardings depicting Pahalwans and their culture. These are again abundant and offer interesting semiotic readings. The location of these hoardings quite interestingly pose several questions on the socio-cultural dynamics of a city. From the perspective of semiotics, for example, many of these pahalwan posters present Hanumanji as the fatherly ideal figure but Hanumanji is devoid of all his insignias and symbols. His gada has been taken over by pahalwans and Hanumanji is shown only as showing the figures of Ram and Sita. There may be various ways of entering into this semiotic field but this is not a place to go into the details of it. Advertisements of local sex doctors, hakims, faith heelers, astrologers etc. An extremely rich field and a very problematic one. One of the most troublesome aspect of this field is its vastness and its fluid character in terms of their cultural belongingness. This is the category where, the mobility of the city culture can be seen at it�s best. Wall writings putting common man at the center. These kinds of writings range from warnings( gadhe ke put yahan mat mut) to the following social message: Yadi IAS wa IPS adhikari nihswarth bhav se maatra betan par nirvar hokar desh ki seva karain to desh maatra ek maah main hi sudhar jaiga.�Srinath graam+ post, Nadini, Zila- Mirzapur. Uttar Pradesh.> (If IAS officers discharge theire duties in honest and selfless manner , the state of the country would improve in just one month. --Srinath. Village+post-Nadini, Zila- Mirzapur. Uttar Pradesh) Pictorial Spaces circulating myths. Although all kinds of spaces create their own myths and operate in various mythic structures but even we get down from the couch wagon of Roland Barthes and move to Lajpat Roy market of Delhi, we get stickers telling the whole story of a temple. Religious and moral messages. Here, we would like to mention a case of an old lady living(?)/ working(her wrok is defined here, primarily from our vantage point, and not as her own occupational engagement) in the area of Shakti Nagar. In this area, we find walls written all over with religious slogans. We have come to know about the author, this lady, and planning to interview her if possible. This wall writing has a potential to provide a very rich field, to explore various constructs of psycho-religious discourses of the city Dalit Spaces. Pictures of Guru Ravidas at street side cobblers� shop is a good example and offers interesting reading. There are various other spaces and lot of examples but now I would like to mention some of the unexplored areas which we are planning to cover and which we feel extremely difficult. These are classroom desks (we have not been getting entry into schools, In the university, due to exams, desks have been removed yet we are trying to get to this space;) Monumental spaces (this we will cover in next few weeks) and most important among difficult spaces is the graffities of public urinals and toilets( we are trying our best to document this space). Our field work covers the following areas: East Delhi: Yamuna Vihar, Chand Bagh, Bhajan Pura, Dayal Pur, Karawal Nagar, Jagat Puri, Lakshmi Nagar, Shakar Pur, Ganesh Nagar, Sita Puri, Pqatparganj and Pandav Nagar. West Delhi Mahavir Enclave, Sadh Nagar, Mangla Puri, Palam, Raj Nagar, Uttam Nagar, Mangol Puri and Vikash Puri. North Delhi Inderlok, Shakti nagar, Jahangir Puri, Azadpur Gaon, Azad pur, Kabel Park, Majlish Park Camp,, Model Town, Kamla Nagar, Vijay Nagar, Azad Market, Sadar Bazar, Jhandewalan, Idgah Road, Malka Ganj, Ridge area, Karol Bagh, Darya Ganj and ther area near ISBT. South Delhi South Extension, Houz Khas, Yusuf Sarai and Green Park. This is not an exhaustive list of the areas covered during the field work neither it is to say that all the areas mentioned above are documented exhaustively (keeping in mind the horizontal coverage this word, documentation demands). This is just to give you an idea of the geography of our field work. We selected these areas both on the basis of certain predetermined notions and also due to the proximity of these areas with our own locations of stay and daily movements. In the coming weeks, we are planning to revisit these areas. We would also like to expand the field little further. In coming weeks, the focus will be more on recovering comparative field experiences at different geographical locations. ------------------------ Recovering Experiences We are obsessed with the idea of recovering our own experiences during the course of field work. We would like to share an excerpt of field diary. 10 December 2001 � This is my first day, when I am traveling with a preconceived notion that in densely populated area I will get dense forest of advertisements. � Classification of advertisements: i. advertisements of newly inhabited middle class areas. ii. gallion ke advertisements iii. advertisements of lower middle class. Advertisements of main road and advertisements of lower class colonies( J.J.colonies, lower class government staff colonies etc.) differ substantially. In lower class areas pictorial spaces dominate while in the middle class or upper class market areas or residential areas written messages acquire dominant place. After initial hesitations, I have started taking pictures, even on the crowded streets. People are looking at me with amusements. They look at me taking pictures of those advertisements which they see every day. These are pictures, they are quite accustomed to see. It is a matter of surprise for them that some body is taking picture of these ordinary spaces. The first picture that I am taking is of Baba Kurwan Shah tantrik. This poster, I have seen at various places in the 'trans-Yamuna' area. Every where, posters have been posted in very dense manner so that you should not miss it just because of its small size. Secondly, because of short time span of paper posters, it is necessary that maximum number of people read it in a minimum time period. I move ahead and now I am in Yamuna Vihar area. Here, on the school sign- board, I find a picture of a boy. In the background there is a clear blue sky and green grass. This is just opposite to the low light and narrow space of the inside of the school. Behind this locality is Suhas Nagar./ I am standing at a painter�s shop. The name of the shop is �Tanha�. Painter has tried his best to paint this emotion. One can easily be tempted to call it a self portrait of the painter. The painter is standing there and he is happy by seeing me taking the picture of his signboard. He says, �kyon bhai sahib! Achhi lagi! Andar aur bhi hai. I say, � nahi main bahar ki hi picture leta hun"(no, I take pictures that are outside). � aap picture kyon le rahe ho?"(why do you take pictures?) �study ke liye�(for research) �� I am taking picture of Shivam Public School in Bhajan pura for its background. Here the school gate directly opens at the street but in the picture, there is a long field with green grass and in the picture you enter into the school only after crossing this long green field. Now, I am at the Kamal Sari Palace. Here is a picture of a lady sitting in a deep red sari. With a grace there is an emotion of ownership on the face of the lady. This signboard is inviting as if, please come inside, maalkin. Now I am in Chand Pura. This is a kingdom of flees. They are in lakhs sitting atop the signboard. I am taking picture of a sign board. 20-30 of them are there even on this board. I ask the reason for this number. Nobody gives satisfactory reason.� Bagal main nala hai.� Purani wasti hai�. One has even said, �musalmano ki wasti hai�. I get a board in which loan scheme to open your own work and for self-employment is mentioned and its been said to contact Saif clinic. Saif clinic is a dental clinic. You will find many such advertisements in the market which will put you in surprise by their combination of purposes. Gulawati wale pahalwan hazi majid and farid pahalwan repair broken bones and sell langots (loin cloth)of pahalwans. The message of the picture shows that breaking of bones is hardly a matter of concern for pahalwans and they hardly pay any heed to this. They can work on it quite easily and they can do it in tassaliwaksh manner. Apart from this another angle to the message is also that you are yourself responsible for your own body and must not treat it in passive way. This offers itself as an alternative option to costly allopathic treatment. On the Sign-board of Kalua pahalwan merathwale, the word, merathwale has been hidden by sticking a paper over it. At the end I take two pictures of Diwakar painter. Hope you would like it. The resistance posed during the course of the field work by owners of (these representational spaces) shops and local people is another interesting area which I would discuss next time. Please send your comments and suggestions Thanking You. Prabhas Ranjan. Sadan Jha _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From pankaj at sarai.net Thu Apr 11 12:14:38 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 12:14:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] M$ packs up hailstorm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200204110649.IAA09455@mail.waag.org> Hi, Microsoft has quietly shelved a consumer information service that was once planned as the centerpiece of the company's foray into the market for tightly linked Web services. The service, originally code-named Hailstorm and later renamed My Services, was to be the clearest example of the company's ambitious .Net strategy. It was intended to permit an individual to keep an online persona independent of his or her desktop computer, supposedly safely stored as part of a vast data repository where there could be easy access to it from any point on the Internet. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/technology/11NET.html - Pankaj From shuddha at sarai.net Thu Apr 11 13:55:42 2002 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 13:55:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] On Free Speech Message-ID: <02041113554201.01226@sweety.sarai.kit> Dear all on the Readers List, I have been following with some interest the textual duel between the learned professors Pandey and Saint, and find myself in sympathy with Neel (or is it Slumbug) who says, "but I hope we all talk, at least some of you will with me, so that my ‘doubts’ as to what really constitutes freedom, the civil society... much more could get a little clarified. " And I am totally in agreement with Monica who has pointed out that free speech brings with itself its own set of responsibilites. Although I have found the learned Professor Pandey's tone a tad strident on occasion, I do not agree that a statement that some may consider offensive is sufficient reason for anyone to be asked to leave or lapse into silence. A caveat, it is equally important, as Monica has pointed out, that we take the task of writing seriously, and do not make any flippantly personal remarks, especially about people who are not in a position to respond because they are not on the list... There have been earlier debats, or hints of a debate, on speech, silence, and the valuation of speech. I remember , in the wake of my posting in the first week of March on Arundhati Roy's conviction for contempt of court, Pradip Saha asking whether free speech was more important than access to water, and Joy Chatterjee asking about the value of silence. Later, when the silence on the list prompted Gayatri Chatterjee to ask us all to reflect on why we were silence, the same questions returned again. Clearly, March is the month for thinking about Free Speech. And so, I have tried to summarize some of my thoughts about what it means to speak freely. This is in the form of an essay that is to be published elsewhere, but I would like to post this for all your responses and I hope, freely offered criticisms. It is kind of long, so please be patient and read till the end. Cheers Shuddha _____________________________________________________________ On the Freedom to Speak the Things that Cannot be Said Easily Shuddhabrata Sengupta I would like to speak of a few things that cannot be said easily. A society that proscribes and censors audio-visual and written material, bans books and publications, that blocks television channels, removes works of art from galleries, prohibits or limits free broadcasting on radio, that rubber stamps maps and atlases and sends writers to prison for their writing, even if for a day, is not a free society. A society that has laws that provide for the interception of private communications, that can send people to jail for distributing or reproducing cultural materials without thought of pecuniary gain, that guarantees no effective privacy for individuals through sophisticated mechanisms of surveillance and at the same time veils the actions of the state and of corporations behind the impregnable curtains of official secrecy, is not a free society. A society that criminalizes the right to remain silent, even as it confers on to confessions extracted in police custody the status of evidence in law on the pretext of fighting terrorism, is not a free society. A society that polices spaces where people exchange news or communicate with each other in their personal capacities, that allows for the planting of officially sanctioned dis-information in the media, that blurs the line between editorials, public relations and propaganda, that rewrites history to suit a sectarian agenda, that conducts raids on libraries and schools to find if there are objectionable and pirated materials available, that requires dramatic performances to have prior police permission, and that places informers in institutions of higher learning to watch what people say or read or watch or listen to, is not a free society. A society that needs to generate endless justifications for restrictions on the freedom of speech and the right to information in the name of national security, the war against terrorism, public order, decency or morality, is not a free society. Such a society treats its members as if they were all children, or imbeciles, or both. It confers on to a select few, an elite, immense powers to determine what may or may not be viewed, read, or said. It effectively curtails the entire domain of cultural and intellectual life by placing around it a plethora of restrictions, and encourages artists and intellectuals to succumb to the temptation of seeking the patronage of wealth and power as the sole means of pursuing their vocations. It then ratifies all this with regular and manipulated electoral excercises, which lends to an effective authoritarianism the benign cloak of popular legitimacy. In such societies, riots, mobilization for war, the minute dissection of what women should or should not wear, and of the honour and the dignity of the nation take precedence over the pressing concerns of everyday existence. In such societies, the 'sentiments of communities' or of the 'nation', are worth more than human life. Such societies hedge on ratifying international conventions on land mines and torture, because no one really talks about land mines and torture. In such societies, the engineering of dams, the radiation levels in nuclear power plants and uranium mines, and the arcana of the public food distribution system remain state secrets, even when people are displaced by dams, get cancer from radiation and die of starvation. In such societies, environmental activists, laid-off, or striking workers, civil libertarians and average, ordinary citizens get accustomed to preventive detention, harassment, surveillance, torture, and disappearances. Does any of this sound even remotely familiar? The above description would work for a large number of countries in the world today, it would of course have worked for the ex-Soviet Union from the 1930s until its demise, and for many respectable Latin American military dictatorships, but it is equally applicable (in large measure) to, the leaders and the motley led in the current international coalition against terror. In its entirety, the above description is applicable to the current state of social, political and cultural discourse in the Republic of India. We are not living in a free society. A battery of laws, (from the first amendment to the Indian Constitution restricting freedom of expression as read in Article 19 on the grounds of public order onwards) and a variety of constitutional and extra-constitutional arrangements, as well as the routine methods of operation of state and powerful non-state actors on the ground have ensured that, at least from the first years of the republic till today, with the emergency, the NSA-ESMA-TADA-AFSPA1 regime of Rajiv Gandhi and the current POTA2 led assault on civil liberties as the key high points of repression, we have ceased to remain a free society. Consequently, the sooner we give up the illusion that we are the citizens of the worlds largest democracy, and realize that we are in fact living through an undeclared emergency at least of similar proportions to what we faced between 1975 and 77, the better we will be able to deal with the realities that face us today. I say this not to encourage a paranoiac 'big brother is watching you' sensibility to take hold of our public imagination, but only to argue for a realistic and pragmatic appraisal of what it means to live in a society that has ceased to be free but continues to live under the illusion that it is so. If we are able to equip ourselves with this realism, we may also be better equipped to deal with the responsibilities of what the actual conditions of liberty might entail. If you read this in print you might say that we are still the kind of society that permits ideas of this nature to be freely published and circulated. And that this alone is evidence of the fact that we are still animated by a the spirit of free expression and enquiry. But, it is one thing for the occasional essay on free speech to be published in a journal, and quite another for speech to be free. In writing this essay I am merely talking about the pre-conditions of liberty itself, not excercising it per-se. Had I written a text that advocated the dissolution of lets say, the armed forces of the Indian Republic, or investigated and exposed matters that lay veiled within the cloak of secrecy that surrounds the nuclear weapons capabilities that lie now at the heart of the Indian state, or even discussed openly a couple of the more unsavoury of the operations of our internal and external intelligence agencies, or questioned the premises that underpin the entity called the nation state, it would have been very doubtful as to whether such a piece of writing would have found easy publication. I am doing none of the above and it is not my intention to do any of the above. All I am doing is to explore, in a sense in the abstract, what we mean by liberty. I am not, 'taking liberties' with matters that we have grown accustomed to hold beyond question. I am not, in this text, being seditious, or subversive, I am just wondering aloud about what makes for the fact that no one ever is, in our contemporary social and cultural context. This is perhaps why, although our newspapers and television channels are full of the din of what passes for criticisms of the government and of politics at large, of corruption, communalism and human rights abuses, there is at the same time, at the heart of the beast that is the media, a profound, foundational and consensual silence on basic issues, like the nature of the state, the sources of its power, and the character of property relations that underwrites it. When, if ever was the last time you ever heard or read anyone in an Indian context, in a newspaper, or anywhere in the media say the following (and let me here give you a brief and eclectic checklist of ideas that I have seldom seen expressed) ''that the juridical monopoly of violence that the state enjoys is a bulwark of the property relations that govern society, or that the armed forces, police and paramilitary wings of the state are instruments of class rule, and should be abolished, or that access to housing, unemployment benefits, public transport and high quality & free medical care should not be seen as privileges but as rights, or that any industrial processes that generate toxic emissions should be prohibited, or that workers and employees should be able to govern themselves and administer their productive capacities through directly elected councils, or that capital punishment should be abolished, or that there should be no visa restrictions, or that it should be legal to burn any national flag or icon of executive authority as a symbol of protest against perceived injustice and abuses of power, or that anyone should have the freedom to maintain and operate a radio transmitter for purposes of broadcasting his or her views, or that cars should be abolished to make way for better, cleaner and more efficient public transport systems, or that if there are laws that pertain to proprietorial control of what were once held as commons - forests, seeds, squatters rights, songs, stories and culture, then these should be challenged in practice, and if that requires civil disobedience of the existing legal regimes of copyrights, patents and land acquisition laws, then that is necessary to do so in order to protect the shrinking space of the commons in our society, or that atheists, agnostics and heretics also have sensitivities that may on occasion be hurt by overt public assertions of aggressive and invasive religiosity, or that all public spaces and utilities should be accessible to disabled people and that all workplaces should have creches for working mothers, or that the codes of censorship that proscribe the depiction of full frontal nudity in films in India need to be broken in order to give full expression to particular artistic visions, or that safe contraceptive devices should be freely available in high schools, colleges, prisons and public places, or even that sexual minorities - gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans gendered individuals should have explicit legal and social guarantees protecting their liberties and choice of lifestyles, instead of being criminalized or discriminated against in public life, or that the possession and use of naturally occurring substances such as cannabis for recreational and medicinal use should not be criminalized.'' Such ideas (from the broadly political to the narrowly personal) would no doubt be considered un-reasonable and marginal, and with good reason, because their advocates may at present be small minorities, with little power to translate their considered opinions into general public discourse. It is not that their advocates do not exist in our society or that they are by nature reticent. Nor are these opinions irrelevant; in fact they touch upon very fundamental aspects of the realities that we all encounter in our day to day lives. It is just that the conservative consensus that dominates intellectual and cultural life in this country today ensures that such voices do not get a hearing. The knowledge that such voices do not get a hearing, and that the mandarins who control the media are such that they will not rock the stagnant and comfortable consensus of cultural life also ensures an insidious form of self-censorship. Why say what you feel when you know it will not be heard. Why say what you feel when you know that you may lose your job, or never be able to say anything again, once you say what you feel. But the true test of a free society lies in whether or not it makes room in its cultural and intellectual life for the un-popular, the un-reasonable, the marginal and the 'difficult to swallow' kind of opinion or idea. Therein lies the difference between the first amendment to the constitution in the United States (which to the discomfort of successive American administrations, including the current one, has been successful in protecting the rights of American citizens to free speech) and the first amendment to the Indian constitution (which by adding the clauses of 'public order, unity and integrity of the state, and relations with friendly states' to the already existing, 'decency and morality', as grounds for reasonable restrictions on the right to free speech and expression, laid the foundations for an apparatus of repression and a climate of at times overt, but mainly insidious censorship. Qualified free speech cannot be free speech, and restrictions, especially when imposed by fiat are nothing more than restrictions. Today, the illusion that we are the worlds largest democracy actually permits the blasé indifference that we have towards the cancer of a burgeoning national security state, and a corporatization of the intellect that is committed to the creation of a climate in which people will think twice before they ask any questions, or speak their minds. Parallel to this is a tightening regime of intellectual property rights that seeks to parcel the entire domain of culture into proprietary fragments, with little room for creative appropriation of generally available cultural materials. We must be grateful for small mercies while we can, such as the fact that the work of say someone like Rabindranath Tagore has at last escaped the prison of the copyright law and is a denizen of the public domain again, and is now free to be used for all sorts of good, bad and indifferent forms of interpretation and re-appropriation. But were someone like Tagore alive today, he would find his creative energies considerably curtailed, not only by a right wing cultural agenda that would frown upon his syncretist and free thinking biases, but also by a copyright regime that would be quite harsh with his tendency towards the liberal re-appropriation of existing cultural materials. A substantial chunk of the music of what is called ''Rabindra Sangeet'', for instance could, (were it to be composed today, with the same openness that it entails to the re-purposing of existing musical material) open the doors for extensive litigation under existing copyright law. The project of free speech, and of free cultural expression in general stands imperiled, precariously perched between the scrutiny of the censor board and the fiats of the copyright junta. But what of ideas and expressions that any reasonable person would find repugnant? Does free speech mean that these too should be aired and easily available to the general public. I am afraid it does, with a significant caveat. Anything that involves coercion in its making should be open to restrictions on the grounds that the generation of the work involves a violation of liberty. This would mean that specifically, pornography that photographically depicts children is a violation of a child's right not to have to be the object of adult sexual attention. Similarly any work of art,or any form of representation that involves (in its production) people being made to do things that they have not consented to, is open to challenge on the grounds that its making is dependent on the loss of liberty of those it depicts. And should a person say that a work violates their sense of privacy, or their liberty, or has reasonable grounds on which to claim that they have been defamed through libel, then it could be argued that the work reaching the public domain would involve injury and damage to their person that cannot be mitigated by the benefits accruing to society from the public exposure of the work. On these, and on these grounds alone would I hesitantly countenance restrictions on expression. But in the final instance, the only guarantee that the effects of anything that one may consider morally repugnant can be countered, lies in the existence of a climate of free debate, in which such works, ideas, or representations can be encountered, challenged and criticised openly by other ideas and expressions. Material that may be considered offensive will circulate no matter how rigidly it is proscribed, and it will circulate in conditions of secrecy and anonymity, un-challenged and un-criticized, thereby actually retaining a far greater propensity to impact upon the consciousness of those who have no resources at hand with which to be able to be think and respond critically towards their content. Those liberals who plead that we as a society are not 'mature enough' to have, for instance, the freedom of all to transmit radio signals because, 'fascist and communal forces' will vitiate the already tense environment with hate speech, abdicate their own responsibilities to enhance their own communicative capacity to create arguments that can counter hate speech. As a result, hate speech and communal propaganda circulates quite easily, with successfully alternating degrees of surreptitiousness and blatant openness in our society. Those Indian feminists (by no means all feminists) who call for bans on certain kinds of films or other visual materials because they degrade women through depictions of a sexual nature make a similar mistake. By refusing to engage with the task of generating and supporting an eroticism that affirms women and their agency as subjects they ensure that the vast majority of representations of women that circulate in popular culture are in fact anti-women. Similarly, the claims of secular intellectuals to be avid votaries of openness in culture rings hollow when they apply double standards about what can and cannot be censored. While the re-writing of history text books to suit the agenda of Hindu fundamentalists is no doubt a matter that deserves protest and condemnation, such condemnation, when it comes from those who were comatose when the Indian state was the first to ban Salman Rushdie's “''Satanic Verses'' to appease bigots who happenned to be Muslims cannot but smack of a certain degree of hypocrisy. Freedom of speech cannot be parceled out in degrees, it cannot be more for some and less for others. It either exists in totality, as the guarantee that the most despised or marginal or outlandish opinion can get a hearing so that people can make up their own minds about what to believe, or agree or disagree with, or it does not exist. There cannot be ambiguities or a middle ground, in so far as liberty is concerned. To think that there can is to assume that people are content with half truths, or deserve no better than what their masters, (or 'betters') want them to hear or say. If even a minority of opinions or expressions are censored, leaving room for a large margin in which people can openly disagree on the basis of some consensual foundations, we still do not fulfill the criteria of what it means to be a free society. This is because it is precisely the point of view that may be marginal today, which may be dismissed as irrelevant, unpopular, bizarre or alien that needs the space to let itself be heard, so that it may be recognized for what it is worth, if it has any merit in the first place. In fact, freedom of speech and expression, and its necessary corollary, the right to information, in their total and absolute sense, must not be seen as privileges that an elite can garner for itself, and which can be compromised or jettisoned for the benefit of society at large, but need to be recognised as the very basis for the assertion of any basic claims to justice and liberty that the vast sections of the population who have little or no access to the mechanisms of power can make. An elite can afford a climate of repression, because it has the power to say or do, or see what it wants in any case. Madam Mao for instance, was fond of seeing precisely the kind of films that she had banned in China on the grounds of moral degeneracy. It is also well known that the cardinals who maintained the index of proscribed works in the Vatican were for centuries the most erudite connoisseurs of all manner of forbidden writing, ranging from the strictly pornographic to radical philosophical and political tracts, and forbidden scientific texts that challenged the cosmology of the church. An elite can afford a culture of secrecy and repression because it wishes that many of its own operations, particularly those that involve large magnitudes of power with very severe consequences for the general population, be veiled from public scrutiny. It is those who have little or no power who stand to gain from a culture of transparency and openness in public life. This is also why freedom of speech is intimately connected to publicly available access to knowledge and information. Any restriction on the public availability of information is also simultaneously an attack on free speech. The state, which hides behind the Official Secrets Act, and the proposed, toothless Freedom of Information Bill, with its labyrinthine non-disclosure conditions, is a major culprit in this regard. Why for instance, details of defence purchases and other military matters should not be public knowledge is easy to understand. Simply because this one fact would expose the vicious grip that an emerging and homegrown military-industrial complex has over public policy. But why should we have to pretend to ourselves that a law that stipulates that we have the constitutional right to know anything provided it occurred more than twenty five years ago, and that it is not something that involves knowledge about any aspect of the functioning of the security and intelligence organs of the state, even more than twenty five years ago. But the state is by no means the only shackle on free speech and information freedom Copyright laws in their present form maintain the fiction of something called intellectual property as a means of restricting free access to cultural material, by preventing its free reproducibility through a regime of harsh punitive measures. In effect this ensures that ideas and expressions remain imprisoned behind the barricades of high costs that benefit neither authors, nor their public but serve instead to protect the interests of the corporations that control intellectual and cultural production. The state is only too happy to have this additional instrument of effective censorship, as a means of controlling what can be expressed in society. If you are poor, a member of a minority group, disenfranchised, or disadvantaged in any way by the way society functions, then the liberty to speak your mind, and to communicate your views, or to listen to or read what others others might have to say, may be the only means at hand for you to be able to begin to effect any change at all on the conditions of your powerlessness. Those who argue that free speech is something that one can afford once everyone has had a decent meal, or has access to clean drinking water, or basic amenities like housing, a clean environment and education, or fair wages and equitable industrial relations miss the point. Free speech is precisely the means by which the demands for all those things can be effectively articulated, not only to those in power, but also by the powerless to themselves and to those who can be their potential allies in the everyday struggles to wrest a life for all that guarantees liberty and dignity. The state and other organs of power do not give us any of these things as gifts out of benevolence. They have to be fought for and maintained on a daily basis, the only way that we can do this is by being vigilant in terms of knowing how power operates, (which means access to information) and to communicate both the necessity of these conditions as absolute pre-requisites of social existence, and to debate strategies by which they may be achieved. In the present world it is inconceivable that those who are powerless can defeat power by the force of arms, because they will never be able to match arsenals that include weapons of mass destruction, nor should they desire to do so. The only thing they can do is to wear the edifice of the legitimacy of power down by repeated, relentless argument, and by choosing to remain silent about anything that can make them vulnerable to the machine of power. This means that in order to even think of achieving the basic necessities of life for all in a dignified and equitable form, it is necessary to insist that the freedom to speak, to know, and to be free of the fear of surveillance be won and protected. To infringe upon these liberties under any circumstances is a guarantee that the apparatus of power remains unchallenged. A society that protects privilege at the cost of justice cannot be a democracy. Perhaps it is time for us to think about what we want our society to be, and to begin speaking of a few things that cannot be said easily. From tarunksaint at sify.com Thu Apr 11 13:09:58 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 13:09:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: guidelines References: <004301c1dff1$2e03d500$115ed6d2@default> Message-ID: <000201c1e12c$37534820$f55ed6d2@default> Hi there, Thanks for posting the guidelines. I guess some of them apply to this former contributor as well! I received an unsigned communication from pp, with the header 'sorry'. I read through it with disappointment, since one had hoped better sense would prevail. Indeed, there is no recognition at all of the ethical principles at stake as regards the the core issue-- attribution of motives and slander directed at someone not able to defend herself in this public forum. The form the purported 'satire' took was vicious and ugly, unwarranted by anything in the original posting, which was my first in this forum. Indeed, the commentators' failure to understand the complexity of the experiential situation of Punjabi migrant families affected by Partition, then further afflicted by the 1984 riots and recently Sept. 11, is doubly distressing, given his admitted location in academia. The facile reduction of the statement made in the poem For Papa to petty issues of tenure politics demonstrates a lack of insight and empathy, compounded by the impertinent use of the author's first name, and sly insinuations which accompanied this direct address (Know thyself, as the adage has it, vis-a-vis the question of authorial intention). Anarchy without responsibility, as another contributor has put it, is simply unacceptable. This impertinence has been on display before, vis-a-vis the posting about UGC rules, which effectively silenced the person concerned, and more recently in the context of discussion of the silence on Gujarat. Furthermore, by attributing motives to senior academics who spent many years in Delhi university before making the difficult decision to shift to the USA, pp repeats his earlier mistake, and shows a lamentable ignorance of their background and training (one of the academics referred to spent long and difficult years at Khalsa, not Hindu College, and has earned his present positon by any reckoning through outstanding scholarship). It seems indignation may have its functions after all, if it allows for the unmasking of the sender of such occasional poison-pen messages on this list. Resentment and jealousy have their outlets, and it is this along with the disturbing alacrity to leap down others' throats that cyberspace facilitates that prompts my decision to remain unsubscribed. There are certain norms one believes in, and if others think otherwise and condone the abuse of a woman author not on this list, well, I beg to differ. No justification in the name of satire will do; literary criticism is about making the distinction between puerile infantilism and honed articulations backed up by thought processes which are open to evaluation and assessment. I retract my statement about 'puny and frustrated intellects', as a polemical expression written while angry. I certainly have no intention in either reviewing pp's books to come, nor continuing what has degenerated into a slanging match. Finally, I would appreciate your sharing this message with the list. The list has contributed to my understanding of various issues, and I wish it well. I hope this thread can be satisfactorily resolved. This will be my last communication on the subject. Enough said. Regards, Tarun From monica at sarai.net Thu Apr 11 15:19:13 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 15:19:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] on gujarat and sovereignty Message-ID: Below is an article taken from the archives of Outlook India magazine, written as an opinion piece by Raja Menon, an ex-navy person, and generally considered quite 'hawkish' on nuclear and defence issues. In this piece on the events of Gujarat, however, he is saying significant things - as is obvious from the header to the essay...Please pay attention to the writing on the internal mechanism of the system that went into the events of Gujarat. best Monica ----------------------------- Dossiers Of Genocide (http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020408&fname=Column+Raja+Menon+%28F%29&sid=1) The colluding administrators should have the fear of an international, public trial. Genocide can't hide behind sovereignty. RAJA MENON In the winter of 1983, some of us in the Navy were posted to Kiel, Germany (then East), a city known as the home of the German U-boat fleet in the last war. As the cold weather closed in from the north we vacationed southwards and inevitably landed up at Belsen, the northern-most site of the concentration camps in the German homeland. It is unnecessary to reiterate the horrors of the place, but what I found most curious was: how did the Brown Shirts and the SS know where to look in each city to find the Jews? The answer is that in Germany-as in every other continental country-each family is registered with the municipal authorities, called the Ordnungs Amt. This office is kept informed whenever a family shifts residence. Originally designed to improve municipal administration and population statistics, these records became the source of information on Jewish families, who were then concentrated in a camp. It appears that well before the Godhra outrage, Hindu fundamentalist outfits were similarly extracting municipal records, employment exchange registers, telephone-bill addresses, electoral rolls and even a public relations firm's business list to compile a dossier of Muslim residential addresses. Could this be true? There is little doubt that the state police and the IB are fully aware whether these allegations are either true or false. If they are true, there is no question that both the Gujarat government and the Union home ministry also knew the first steps towards replicating the 'Night of the Long Knives' by the Brown Shirts had begun in Gujarat. The IB's reporting chain leads it to the home secretary. There is also no reason why such information should be kept classified and denied to the people, unless the Union agency is part of the conspiracy-which takes me back to Belsen. People leave Belsen in cold shocked rage. This rage is often seen in the erratic driving of cars coming out of Belsen. Every person has his private vision of horror. My preoccupation was what were the thousands of people, who knew about the plans to eliminate the Jews, thinking? Today we know that they buried their heads in the sand, ostrich-like, and didn't want to ask questions-why were the SS collecting lists of Jewish addresses? Or why were so many Jews disembarking from cattle wagons and what was being burnt behind the barbed wire that gave rise to a sickly smell each night? Didn't thousands of people in Ahmedabad know whether Muslim addresses were being collected? Didn't, at least, dozens of good, sound, secular-minded IB officers know? Will they speak up? Because if they don't, what will eventually happen is that the Union home ministry will perhaps single-handedly break up this country. Since large numbers of educated people have expressed their feelings in the press and said that Godhra and the post-Godhra 'riots' were two sides of the same coin, it is necessary to point out the extreme dissimilarities. To us in the military, the definition of a riot is clear. It's created by mobs, which are large masses of men with no discriminating impulses. This is the reason why when the time comes to open fire, the killing of one or two leaders causes the mob to panic and disperse. Collecting lists of intended victims identified on the basis of religion, carrying LPG cylinders to cut open safes of Muslim business houses and training people to create LPG explosions without blowing themselves up are clear indications of premeditated genocide. Establishing that is absolutely necessary for the arguments which follow. Genocide can rarely be investigated by state organs, because they have complicity in the killing process. The government should know this better than anyone else, since India was one of the prime movers of the Convention on Genocide enacted by the General Assembly in 1948.What the convention attempted to state was that the sovereignty of states committing genocide could be trampled upon, if that is the only way in which the people can be protected from the state. Can a judicial commission instituted by the Gujarat government indict itself for genocide? Hardly likely. In the outpouring of revulsion against the killings, most of the ire has been directed against the politicians and the Hindu fundamentalist organisations. If the intention is to prevent the recurrence of such a carnage, this ire is misplaced. The target should be the servants of the Gujarat government whose inaction amounted to complicity. There have been any number of large-scale communal riots in India in the past 150 years. The Indian government machinery that deals with riots is time-tested and robust. But it collapsed in Gujarat because the bureaucrats and the police conspired with the politicians. Barbaric mobs and venal politicians are part of the Indian scene, but the first act of rehabilitation is to threaten the errant government servants with worse consequences than what the Gujarati politician is capable of inflicting. That can only happen through threats of a public international trial. The Gujarat government servants' misconduct is no different from that of the two Rwandan nuns being tried in Belgium for complicity in genocide-they refused sanctuary to fugitives who were later massacred. Rwandan sovereignty was superseded to bring the nuns to trial, although their guilt seems less than that of the station house officer, Naroda police station. (Raja Menon, a former naval officer, writes on strategic affairs.) -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Apr 11 16:51:11 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:51:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics & Poetics of Visual Representations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <02041116511107.00820@pinki.sarai.kit> Thanks Sadan for posting your tentative formulations from your ongoing research. Hope you get some response. Within this context i will like to draw the attention of the readers to a law that is now in force in Delhi. (extended to Delhi after 13th December!). It will bring in a tremendous change to the everyday, fluid, liminal visual landscape of the city. Unfortunately this law has no sense of everday `poetics` of the city! The wet Bengal Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 1976 (as extended to the National Capital Territory of Delhi) 2. (aa) "defacement" includes impairing or interfering with the appearance beauty, damaging, distinguishing, spoiling or injuring in any other way whatsoever, and the word "deface" shall be construed accordingly; (b) "property" includes any building , hut, structure, wall, tree, fence, post, pole or any other creation; (c) "writing" includes decoration, lettering, ornamentation, etc., produced by stencil. 3. Penalty for defacement of property - (1) Whoever defaces any property in public view by writing or marking with ink, chalk, paint or any other material, except for the purpose of indicating the memo and address of the owner or occupier of such property, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees or with both. --------------------- Think of all the imprisonment - but think then of the revenue loss for the state! (..) Hope a poetic understanding of spaces will be more powerful than the `technocratic` and `stainless` understanding of space. Anyway marking of city spaces is now massively getting contained and each mark will cost. Either you guy your legality or then buy your punishment. best Jeebesh From jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com Thu Apr 11 20:26:17 2002 From: jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 20:26:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To Sir(S) with Thoughts Message-ID: Dear Readers, It has been fun reading my two teachers growl and gnaw and smack. Pratap taught me when I did my B.A. in the Jamia Millia Islamia. Tarun taught me when I was doing my M.A. in Delhi University. Both are teachers of English both working in Delhi, in these two universities. Both have been immensely kind to me over the years and tried to help me in my tortured attempts at turning 'intellectual'. Pratap, who has a penchant for the ribald seems to have overstepped when he quotes Jyotsna Kapur who has never been on the list. However, I hardly think that he has been attempting to be smutty or semi-pornographic. At least, some of the stuff we read with the two Professors in college were much worse. Anyway, I do not see why we should get too obsessed about pornography. Is there some personal rancour between the two gentlemen? If you have, do not wash your dirty linen in public. Sort it out, as Neel/ Slumbug says through a dogfight, cockfight, or the gladiator arena, whatever! We need to engage with the issues raised and I agree with Neel here when he says that none seem to have raised some of the issues that Pratap has tried to talk about. One of the issues with which I have empathy is the question of English: "Take some classes in India. Why don't you come back to India and teach children some English? They need it, to get good jobs." A look at the British Council and (countless other ELT vendors) all over the city is all that you need to realise the necessity of the language for jobs. The British Council has actually relegated its books to a corner and replaced it all with neon and machines to vend knowledge and the language. A supreme gift to our city. All you need to to do is to take the phone and call countless reception desks at the city. All you need to do is to walk into Barista, Nirula's, Ansals Plaza, a media house, the office of your ISP provider, call centre's, resource centres, knowledge centres like the British Council, why almost all over. You will hear the same twang. When you close your eyes, all you hear is hundreds of James and Sarah's talking to you. And you also sense the desperation when at times the veneer cracks, when there is a breakdown of this artificial speech. I am not belittling these people. These people hold jobs, all need jobs. As I said, I studied in two universities, in two 'Department(s) of English'. When I moved to the University of Delhi, I realised the sheer differences and the presumtous arrogance of many University students. It mainly came from being able to articulate the language better. Mind you, there was also always a group of students in class at DU who were in the same boat. They were not so good with English and would sit away from the majority of the class. How do you understand your professor who is expounding at length on the myriad intricacies of philosophy, culture and theory when the bhasa itself eludes you? Nevertheless, when you pass out of college, you have an M.A. in English [Literature]. Both Professors have taught General English class (classes held for students who are weak in the language, but attended by all). I have attended the like. I would like the Professors to tell the list readers what they and their students do there. I too 'am totally in agreement with Monica who has pointed out that free speech brings with itself its own set of responsibilites' and also with many of the issues that Suddha has raised (I hope to be able to respond in separate postings). However, I also take notice of Neel's worry about 'closing off'. I would probably reframe it. Maybe, Sarai space is also getting a little bureaucratised. Or, maybe, they have been forced to start making rules. It does happen. I remember there was some problem between the Rhizome and Spectre people? A few committed individuals attempt at opening out space for others and one hopes it grows into a movement, and Sarai has. However, it has its pitfalls. There's always a chance of overstuffing. The blue swing door that takes you into the wonder-world of the Sarai media lab has a yellow stick-on label which mentions that one should not just barge in, or something to that effect. There was a time when anybody could just swing in. But, then what does one do if all the hangers-on takes over workspace. Work suffers, and one has to draw the line. So, where does one draw the line? Why no 'flames'? Lastly, Tarun, I respect the fact that your latest posting will be your last on the current debate. However, I, and I believe, other members of this community hope that you will keep posting otherwise and remain with us. And, honestly, I think that we should all attempt to get away, from what I term as a 'seige mentality'. There are more important things at hand than 'us'. Regards, Jyoti Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri K 2125 C R Park (II Floor) N Delhi 110019 From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Fri Apr 12 02:14:19 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 21:44:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] My Dear Ego Message-ID: <20020411204419.63039.qmail@web8104.in.yahoo.com> Dear All, My dear ego has no bones to pick with any other ego. Because, it has had no opportunity to have "security" problems. In other words, I can laugh, since there is nothing to be afraid, or afeared, or possessive, or defensive about. I can laugh at... . I can be laughed at. We can laugh about. We should laugh at each other. Various postings have undercut everything I, or Prof Saint, have "thundered" at (apparently) each other. Thank you. Laugh at us, List people. It is immaterial to me whether there exists an Ego-hassle between Prof Tarun of Hindu College and Prof Pratap of Jamia. The point is, you must laugh at us, at our posturings. That's the correct way. My agenda in writing into the List is a single one. I want to talk about things in a particular way. Namely, satire. i want to find out if satire can replace effete sentimentalism as a mode of knowledge, if it is worth replacing effete sentimentalsim with satire (and not humour, or irony) as a way of looking at the world and talking about it. Satire is a more honest way of talking about things, I think. The object of satire is nothing less than reality itself (the world out there, the historically determined web/matrix of phenomena constantly re/created, re/searched, the pathologies that grip people), nothing less than a knowledge of this reality-in-process. Satire proves that reality is a put-together, put-together by labour. Satire "works upon" attitudes, mindsets, mentalities by trying to "work" them "up". If humans make their own world, then satire points to those features of this "making" where "making" intersects "unmaking". It points to where the "made" can be "unmade". Just because you can hold a grain of rice in your hand does not mean the grain hasn't been produced. So also satire. It must present itself as a fashion, as fashionable, as a form that is about the fashions of making, and unmaking. Satire is also enlightenment. In satire, people are equal because they possess the capacity to laugh. People therefore understand reality via laughter. Laughter is a form of knowledge. It can always be repressed as irreverence, but can never be relegated to irrelevance. In a more extreme version (called Menippean satire), all people are equal because they shit, piss and eat, and are primarily bothered about the various orifices that make up their body, and "rational" selves. On the List, "I" am an orientation. A Menippean orientation. Don't reduce this orientation to "me". "I" take responsibility for what "I" write on the List. There can be no satire without ethics. Rabelais (my guru) was a monk, for G..'s sake! What "I" like about satire is that it asks the satirist to lay his/her cards on the table. On the List, "I" have always done that. Can you people read and comment on the poems I wrote and sent into the list? ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Fri Apr 12 02:38:09 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 22:08:09 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] On Free Speech In-Reply-To: <02041113554201.01226@sweety.sarai.kit> Message-ID: <20020411210809.91655.qmail@web8102.in.yahoo.com> Dear all, vis-a-vis Shuddha's usual brilliant insights, what about laughter? In his schema for free speech, there is no place for even a snigger. Is laughter a responsible...what? emotion? reaction? cause? effect? Laughter is a responsible...what? The problem, that Shuddha's write-up eminently displays, is that laughter is considered to be outside the realm of "talk". It is considered an onomatopoeic experience. As such, it is a rhetorical experience. It is merely a rhetorical, and by extension, a not-meta-physical experience. Laughter is a perception that exists outside the supreme centre of Perception: the "mind". One "dissolves" in laughter. One "breaks out" in laughter. One "helplessly" laughs. One "uncontrollably" laughs. Laughter exists outside "free speech". "Speech", however "free", cannot by its nature countenance laughter, for laughter signals a different perceptual regime. A different perceptual regime, not a less responsible one. Is this why it is difficult to write satire? pp --- Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote: > Dear all on the Readers List, > > I have been following with some interest the textual > duel between the learned > professors Pandey and Saint, and find myself in > sympathy with Neel (or is it > Slumbug) who says, > > "but I hope we all talk, at least some of you will > with me, so that my > ‘doubts’ as to what really constitutes freedom, the > civil society... > much more could get a little clarified. " > > And I am totally in agreement with Monica who has > pointed out that free > speech brings with itself its own set of > responsibilites. > > Although I have found the learned Professor > Pandey's tone a tad strident on > occasion, I do not agree that a statement that some > may consider offensive is > sufficient reason for anyone to be asked to leave or > lapse into silence. A > caveat, it is equally important, as Monica has > pointed out, that we take the > task of writing seriously, and do not make any > flippantly personal remarks, > especially about people who are not in a position to > respond because they are > not on the list... > > There have been earlier debats, or hints of a > debate, on speech, silence, and > the valuation of speech. I remember , in the wake of > my posting in the first > week of March on Arundhati Roy's conviction for > contempt of court, Pradip > Saha asking whether free speech was more important > than access to water, and > Joy Chatterjee asking about the value of silence. > Later, when the silence on > the list prompted Gayatri Chatterjee to ask us all > to reflect on why we were > silence, the same questions returned again. > > Clearly, March is the month for thinking about Free > Speech. > > And so, I have tried to summarize some of my > thoughts about what it means to > speak freely. This is in the form of an essay that > is to be published > elsewhere, but I would like to post this for all > your responses and I hope, > freely offered criticisms. It is kind of long, so > please be patient and read > till the end. > > Cheers > > Shuddha > _____________________________________________________________ > On the Freedom to Speak the Things that Cannot be > Said Easily > Shuddhabrata Sengupta > > I would like to speak of a few things that cannot be > said easily. > > A society that proscribes and censors audio-visual > and written material, bans > books and publications, that blocks television > channels, removes works of art > from galleries, prohibits or limits free > broadcasting on radio, that rubber > stamps maps and atlases and sends writers to prison > for their writing, even > if for a day, is not a free society. > > A society that has laws that provide for the > interception of private > communications, that can send people to jail for > distributing or reproducing > cultural materials without thought of pecuniary > gain, that guarantees no > effective privacy for individuals through > sophisticated mechanisms of > surveillance and at the same time veils the actions > of the state and of > corporations behind the impregnable curtains of > official secrecy, is not a > free society. > > A society that criminalizes the right to remain > silent, even as it confers on > to confessions extracted in police custody the > status of evidence in law on > the pretext of fighting terrorism, is not a free > society. > > A society that polices spaces where people exchange > news or communicate with > each other in their personal capacities, that allows > for the planting of > officially sanctioned dis-information in the media, > that blurs the line > between editorials, public relations and propaganda, > that rewrites history to > suit a sectarian agenda, that conducts raids on > libraries and schools to find > if there are objectionable and pirated materials > available, that requires > dramatic performances to have prior police > permission, and that places > informers in institutions of higher learning to > watch what people say or > read or watch or listen to, is not a free society. > > A society that needs to generate endless > justifications for restrictions on > the freedom of speech and the right to information > in the name of national > security, the war against terrorism, public order, > decency or morality, is > not a free society. > > Such a society treats its members as if they were > all children, or imbeciles, > or both. It confers on to a select few, an elite, > immense powers to determine > what may or may not be viewed, read, or said. It > effectively curtails the > entire domain of cultural and intellectual life by > placing around it a > plethora of restrictions, and encourages artists and > intellectuals to succumb > to the temptation of seeking the patronage of wealth > and power as the sole > means of pursuing their vocations. It then ratifies > all this with regular and > manipulated electoral excercises, which lends to an > effective > authoritarianism the benign cloak of popular > legitimacy. > > In such societies, riots, mobilization for war, the > minute dissection of what > women should or should not wear, and of the honour > and the dignity of the > nation take precedence over the pressing concerns of > everyday existence. In > such societies, the 'sentiments of communities' or > of the 'nation', are > worth more than human life. Such societies hedge on > ratifying international > conventions on land mines and torture, because no > one really talks about land > mines and torture. In such societies, the > engineering of dams, the radiation > levels in nuclear power plants and uranium mines, > and the arcana of the > public food distribution system remain state > secrets, even when people are > displaced by dams, get cancer from radiation and die > of starvation. In such > societies, environmental activists, laid-off, or > striking workers, civil > libertarians and average, ordinary citizens get > accustomed to preventive > detention, harassment, surveillance, torture, and > disappearances. > > Does any of this sound even remotely familiar? > > The above description would work for a large number > of countries in the world > today, it would of course have worked for the > ex-Soviet Union from the 1930s > until its demise, and for many respectable Latin > American military > dictatorships, but it is equally applicable (in > large measure) to, the > leaders and the motley led in the current > international coalition against > terror. In its entirety, the above description is > applicable to the current > state of social, political and cultural discourse in > the Republic of India. > > We are not living in a free society. A battery of > laws, (from the first > amendment to the Indian Constitution restricting > freedom of expression as > read in Article 19 on the grounds of public order > onwards) and a variety of > constitutional and extra-constitutional > arrangements, as well as the routine > methods of operation of state and powerful non-state > actors on the ground > === message truncated === ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Fri Apr 12 03:49:53 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 23:19:53 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Slander Match, 2nd innings In-Reply-To: <000201c1e12c$37534820$f55ed6d2@default> Message-ID: <20020411221953.45193.qmail@web8103.in.yahoo.com> Hey Tarun, You say you received "an unsigned communication from pp". What the hell does that mean? Either the "communication" is "unsigned" or it is from "pp". What are you saying, yaar? The core issue is NOT "attribution of motives and slander directed at someone not able to defend herself in this public forum". Don't turn a technicality into a core issue. YOU posted the poem. So YOU are also part of the textual web of the poem. I responded to YOUR posting. The core issue is the insistent excoriation of the Partition question among the global eaducated Indian community. This community keeps the Partition alive. It stokes the fires of an incitement towards "rift". It utilises a spiral into the abyss of an unresolved "rift" (the Partition question) to constantly reproduce that "rift" via the tropes of nostalgia and memory. Why keep a "rift" alive, Tarun? Should we keep alive "the complexity of the experiential > situation of Punjabi migrant families affected by > Partition, then further afflicted by the 1984 riots and recently Sept. 11" (please notice the sentimentality of this sentence), or should we jettison the Partition as Logos of being "Indian" and try and find new ways of being "Hindustani"? The poem you posted made me mad. Such a nostalgic piece of prose. It assumes that if Gujarat happens, there should be silence. It belongs to a discourse within which the VHP president, delivering a speech at MIT, eloquently quotes the Gita to prove that what happened in Gujarat was a just reaction to Godhra. What is more important, Sept 11 or Gujarat? Difficult question, even I don't know the answer to that. A VHP president can appropriate the nostalgia of the poem and utilise it to create more rift. The poem is an extension of that "ethnic" ethic. What then is the use of such nostalgia? What purpose does this memory serve? I think that NRIs are as responsible for propping up a fascist political formation in India, and so holding civil society to ransom, as are the VHP and the Bajrang Dal (who only promise poor village and slum youths of a complete future). Hence the "vicious and ugly" "satire". Is this "anarchy without responsibility"? The "facile reduction of the statement made in the poem For Papa to petty issues of tenure politics" is a generic demand. Recognise that, please. That's a standard satiric strategy, applied. That's "mock-heroic" discourse. Remember Pope? Don't be "disappointed". That makes you morally superior. You have no right to be disappointed. Get angry, man! Yes, Suvir ran away from Khalsa, and not HIndu. My mistake (don't be hyperbolic and say: "lamentable ignorance of their background and training"). But he did run away. Because he couldn't do what he wanted to, over here, within Indian academia. You have completely misread that portion of my posting, or have chosen to do so ("Furthermore, by attributing motives to senior academics who spent many years in Delhi university before making the difficult decision to shift to the USA"...). Stop being so uptight, man! What is this crap about "attributing motives to senior academics" and so on and so forth? They went abroad because they couldn't stay here, they felt "puny" and "frustrated". I am not blaming them. Why are you defending them? Who are you to be defensive about them? What are you defending? DU? Tarun, I don't need to be "unmasked". Please. Don't make me a more complicated person than I am. And if I wanted to "leap down others' throats" (do you mean you?), I would have done it in a different way. I didn't want to leap down Jyotsna's throat (poor Illinois lamb). I did want to leap down the throat of the poem (if you can call it that -- if this is what Indian-American academics consider a poem to be, then sad scene, man! You and I could write any tripe and be published!), and rip it apart. Tarun, please re-join the list. Just because I have assholic opinions doesn't mean the entire List has assholic opinins. Why are you blackmailing the List? I don't understand this. It seems as if the List is "guilty" for posting my postings, and so the List should be punished. As I said, kick my ass. Don't withdraw from the list. yours with a wink, pp --- tarunksaint wrote: > Hi there, > Thanks for posting the guidelines. I guess some of > them apply to this former > contributor as well! > > I received an unsigned communication from pp, with > the header 'sorry'. I > read through it with disappointment, since one had > hoped better sense would > prevail. Indeed, there is no recognition at all of > the ethical principles at > stake as regards the the core issue-- attribution of > motives and slander > directed at someone not able to defend herself in > this public forum. The > form the purported 'satire' took was vicious and > ugly, unwarranted by > anything in the original posting, which was my first > in this forum. Indeed, > the commentators' failure to understand the > complexity of the experiential > situation of Punjabi migrant families affected by > Partition, then further > afflicted by the 1984 riots and recently Sept. 11, > is doubly distressing, > given his admitted location in academia. The facile > reduction of the > statement made in the poem For Papa to petty issues > of tenure politics > demonstrates a lack of insight and empathy, > compounded by the impertinent > use of the author's first name, and sly insinuations > which accompanied this > direct address (Know thyself, as the adage has it, > vis-a-vis the question of > authorial intention). Anarchy without > responsibility, as another contributor > has put it, is simply unacceptable. > > This impertinence has been on display before, > vis-a-vis the posting about > UGC rules, which effectively silenced the person > concerned, and more > recently in the context of discussion of the silence > on Gujarat. > Furthermore, by attributing motives to senior > academics who spent many years > in Delhi university before making the difficult > decision to shift to the > USA, pp repeats his earlier mistake, and shows a > lamentable ignorance of > their background and training (one of the academics > referred to spent long > and difficult years at Khalsa, not Hindu College, > and has earned his present > positon by any reckoning through outstanding > scholarship). It seems > indignation may have its functions after all, if it > allows for the unmasking > of the sender of such occasional poison-pen messages > on this list. > > Resentment and jealousy have their outlets, and it > is this along with the > disturbing alacrity to leap down others' throats > that cyberspace facilitates > that prompts my decision to remain unsubscribed. > There are certain norms one > believes in, and if others think otherwise and > condone the abuse of a woman > author not on this list, well, I beg to differ. No > justification in the name > of satire will do; literary criticism is about > making the distinction > between puerile infantilism and honed articulations > backed up by thought > processes which are open to evaluation and > assessment. > > I retract my statement about 'puny and frustrated > intellects', as a > polemical expression written while angry. I > certainly have no intention in > either reviewing pp's books to come, nor continuing > what has degenerated > into a slanging match. > Finally, I would appreciate your sharing this > message with the list. The > list has contributed to my understanding of various > issues, and I wish it > well. I hope this thread can be satisfactorily > resolved. This will be my > last communication on the subject. > Enough said. > > Regards, > Tarun > > > _________________________________________ > 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. > List archive: ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Apr 12 05:20:25 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 00:50:25 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for a National Campaign For Defence of the Indian Constitution Message-ID: PUNISH THE GUILTY OF GUJARAT GENOCIDE Call for a National Campaign For Defence of the Indian Constitution NB : This statement is being circulated as a contribution to the ongoing public discussion on the current events. The recent events in Gujarat demonstrate without a shadow of doubt that a section of the Indian ruling establishment is generating communal conflict and undermining the Indian Constitution. It includes political leaders, officials and extra-constitutional centres of power such as the RSS and its fronts. The symptoms of this creeping coup d'etat against the Indian Constitution are as follows: 1./ Mob violence and barbarity have been legitimised by high executives of the State. After the heinous and reprehensible attack on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra, that led to the death of 57 Hindu rail passengers, the entire Muslim community of Gujarat was held responsible for the actions of a few. The brutal killings of innocent men, women and children was sought to be justified in the name of the fascist doctrine of collective guilt, the doctrinal basis of Hitlerism. 2./ Revenge and retaliation have been made instruments of state policy. In Gujarat, armed gangs owing allegiance to the ruling party and its parent body, the RSS, have been given free rein by the state Chief Minister to indulge in crimes against humanity without any fear of the law. The police were neutralised by orders from elected authorities who are under oath to protect and implement the Constitution. By failing to acknowledge this fact the Union Government has sought to legitimise officials who have violated their oath of office. The VHP attack on the legislative assembly in Bhubhaneshwar demonstrates yet again the confidence displayed by criminal elements with political links to the Union Government. This government, that claims to be in the forefront of the so-called war against terrorism, is itself guilty of harbouring terrorists and promoting their activities in the name of so-called Hindu nationalism. The preaching and practice of collective guilt in India (and in other countries of South Asia), require that the crime of genocide be incorporated into the criminal justice system. Political assassination is no less a crime when its victims are ordinary Indian citizens. 3./ Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees to every Indian, the right to life and liberty unless deprived of them by due process of law. Events in Gujarat since February 27, 2002, demonstrate that state officials unilaterally and illegally withdrew these protections from a section of Indian citizens. Similar malicious misuse of the state machinery took place during the massacre of Sikh citizens in 1984. (The fact that the Indian Parliament can meet in joint session to pass draconian laws, but has not yet condoled the mass murder of Sikh citizens in 1984, is a matter of shame for Indian democracy). Such events are part of the same process and demonstrate the same truth - that certain criminal elements in the body politic function as if they were above the reach of the law. This is a blatant violation of the oaths of office taken by elected state officials. 4./ By acts of deliberate deception, (such as the recent arguments in favour of the VHP by Attorney General and the acceptance of the so-called Ramshila in Ayodhya by a state official), the Union government is supporting the unilateral claim of the RSS and VHP that they represent all Hindus. By so doing, the swayamsevaks in high office are undermining the authority of Parliament, which has been elected by millions of citizens, including a large proportion of Hindus. A PARALLEL SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATION IS BEING FORCED UPON THE INDIAN PEOPLE. This must be rejected as a violation of the Indian Constitution. We reiterate that the RSS-VHP do not represent all Hindus, nor do the Muslim Personal Law Board and Babri Masjid Action Committee represent all Muslims. 5./ The systematic and violent humiliation of one or other section of the Indian population by the highest State authorities will tear our society apart, brutalise the social ethos, destroy the economy and polarise the people towards extremist ideologies.Today, tens of thousands of Gujarati Muslims are living in anguish and fear, housed in refugee camps, with no guarantee of personal security or rehabilitation. The relentless use of communal hatred and violence by the Indian ruling elite has converted the dream of national independence into a nightmare for ordinary Indians. Our rulers have progressed from the hiring of criminals to the propagation of brutality and criminality as a means of obtaining power. This process will result in nothing less than the fragmentation of the Indian Union and the demolition of Indian democracy. 6./ We would like to recognise that there are honest and conscientious officials in the bureaucracy and police who have honoured their professional obligations and striven to defend the right to life and liberty of the citizens. We acknowledge their commitment, and condemn the Gujarat government for transferring those police officers who did their best to prevent bloodshed. In the words of the NHRC Chairman, Justice J S Varma, we call upon all state officials "not to seek permission to perform their duty under the law". 7./ Communal violence in other countries of the region is no less vicious. From time to time, Hindus, Christians and Ahmadiyas in Pakistan, Hindus and Hill Tribes in Bangladesh, and Tamils in Sri Lanka have been made targets of hatred and violence. These campaigns are also fascist in nature, and serve to exacerbate communal tensions in India. In the light of the close inter-linkages between various types of communal and chauvinist politics in all these countries, it is necessary that determined efforts be made towards cooperation amongst democrats across all frontiers in South Asia. We unequivocally denounce and reject all forms of communal hatred and violence, whether this is done in the name of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs or any other identity. In the light of the above, we believe that: The Indian Constitution is being deliberately undermined by those sworn to protect it Democracy is being misused for the purpose of destroying democratic institutions; the secular and pluralist tradition is being undermined by cultural policing and intellectual censorship Mob violence enjoys the tacit or open support of certain high state officials and political leaders The culture of violence and bloodshed is being propagated ideologically as a 'nationalist' virtue Civil society in India is being rapidly converted into a war-zone; and Indian citizens are faced with nothing less than a constitutional breakdown, heralded by a section of their political leadership In the face of this alarming situation, WE HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO LAUNCH A PROLONGED AND NON-VIOLENT SATYAGRAHA TO DEFEND THE LETTER AND SPIRIT OF THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION. To this end, we call upon all peace-loving and democratic citizens to unite in a Coalition For the Defence of the Indian Constitution. (name to be decided by consensus). The first step in this direction can be the arrangement of regional conventions. This process could culminate in a national convention later in 2002. The convention should construct a platform unifying all democratic forces on a consensual programme for resisting fascism and defending democracy. We suggest the following principles for such a convention: 1./ The Convention should be a gathering of concerned individuals rather than of representatives of parties and groups. (This will not prejudice their right to remain members of any parties or groups). 2./ The Convention will address the grave crisis outlined above and strive to mobilise a sustained and organised campaign to protect democratic institutions, pluralist values and constitutional liberties 3./ The entire process will be funded only by individual contributions in cash or kind Among the demands that the convention can consider are the following : That sworn testimonies of eye-witnesses and officials be placed before judicial authorities of unimpeachable impartiality, that executive and criminal culpability for the Gujarat events be established, and the guilty punished. That hateful communal propaganda of all varieties be stopped forthwith, that the VHP and Bajrang Dal.be prosecuted under Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code. That a joint session of Parliament be convened to condemn and condole the death of innocents in Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro in 1984, Gujarat in 2002, and all communal killings in general Signatories (in alphabetical order) Dilip Simeon Dunu Roy Harsh Kapoor Jairus Banaji Purushottam Agrawal Rohini Hensman [11 April 2002] Join us and sign online: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ptggg/petition.html From ranita at sarai.net Fri Apr 12 12:27:23 2002 From: ranita at sarai.net (Ranita Chatterjee) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 12:27:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] From Ramallah Message-ID: <02041212272307.00967@saumya.sarai.kit> On April 8th, 2002 at 1p.m., the curfew was lifted in Ramallah for the second time in 11 days, and for a period of 4 hours. It gave some a chance to hunt for bread and eggs, and others to quickly survey the damage to their institutions, since in the previous lifting of the curfew people could barely concentrate on hunting for but not finding bread. But once locked up again, a slow realization came about... wonder what they did inside the buildings they broke into. With gradual reports of plunder, stealing and breaking emerging, you can imagine that many began to worry, then fear a much worse realization: destruction of the institutional and cultural infrastructure of Palestinian life. This realization, alas, is now being confirmed. For many, much of their laborious work in institution building has been ruined. Although we do not know the level and extent of this type of destruction, eyewitness reports indicate that it is all- encompassing. No doubt, it will take months to assess the extent of this damage, once we emerge out of the current circumstances. And clearly, being under curfew and with mere phone contacts, we only know of some cases, those that we happen to have access to or pertain to people we know. Here is what we know so far: 1. Radio and television stations: Not only did the Israeli army occupy most of the local radio and television stations early on, but they used one of the stations at least, WATAN, to air pornographic films. That day, probably on the second day of this onslaught, I turned on the television to see Watan Television Station's couragous reporting of what is happening around us. I was shocked by a pornographic film instead. Called everybody and everyone, as did everybody else who saw that. And it took I think two days for this to stop...just think of children watching in the midst of all that is happening around them. And then we began to hear reports of what has taken place at al-Quds University's Educational Television, which normally broadcasts educational materials, but since the beginning of this state of affairs, had begun airing cartoons for children and short films on first aid and trauma management, as well as phone numbers and addresses to use for emergency purposes in these trying times. According to the technical director of this station and another filmmaker friend, the army occupied the station and held two staff operators for many hours before they were released. When the curfew was lifted on April 5th, he tried his best to get into the station, but was not allowed in by the army. On the way back, his worst fears were magnified: al-Nasr TV, Manara, Ajyal, and Angham radio station owners all reported the same horror. They were able to get into their stations and found all the equipment on the floor, totally and irreparably damaged. Microphones, tapes, CD's, monitors, mixers etc. all spread and smashed into shambles. Even Radio Love and Peace studios, ironically, were found totally destroyed, apparently using highly effective sledgehammers or something of this sort! 2. Non-governmental organizations working on economic and social development research, policy and human rights a. Al-Haq, HDIP and MATTIN: these are three non-governmental organizations specializing in human rights, health research and policy and economic research development respectively. They are situated in one building. The first report I received was from al-Haq, indicating that they had stormed their office as well as that of HDIP, and that they had arrested one of their workers. Later on, we realized via MATTIN researchers that all three institutions were opened up, forming a big dormitory, and that the army was using the entire area as a barracks. On the second curfew lifting I went downtown and peeped through streets and building to see, as you cannot get close, only to realize that the building is surrounded with barbed wires and tanks, totally inaccessible even for people to inspect the damage in there, and leaving you with a horrific imagination of what could have happened inside, as the Israeli army is still using the offices as a downtown station. We suspect that the damage must be great, or total, based on reports of what happened in radio and television stations as well as people's homes when they are stormed. b. UPMRC . First, the Youth Center, housing a computer laboratory as well as other equipment and materials that are intended to help youth in these trying times. On Sunday the 31st of March the Israeli army stormed the center. They detonated the door and went in. They broke all the internal doors, and destroyed some of the computers, we do not know how many. We have no idea to date if they stole anything or not. Then, the UPMRC Optometry Center: the centre was stormed probably also on the same day. Again the door was detonated, and even the internal walls were destroyed, and everything was broken, computers, microscopes, and all of the diagnostic equipment was smashed and on the floor. The Israeli army also took with them the main records computer. There is nothing there that is operational. And, the UPMRC Technical Aids for the Disabled Centre: stormed on the first of April. Stormed by exploding one of the walls, as they could not open the main door, tried to detonate the door but did not succeed. All computers were broken and down on the floor, glass broken, even parts of walls were down. And finally, UPMRC'c main emergency medical center, first shelled by tanks, with shells landing inside one of rooms, carving out the first wall into the second room, and then again the second wall into the third room. Then they stormed the building and destroyed all the equipment there, computers, photocopier etc. The Israeli army also detonated the doors of other NGO's located in the building, such as the Mandela Institute, as well a private dental clinic and computer company located in the same building. One office, belonging to a private lawyer was partially burned down. All equipment in these offices were destroyed. c. Al-Mawrid Teacher Development Center in the Arizona Building in the heart of downtown Ramallah: this center was directly hit by a missile or bomb, which landed in through the window and caused a fire, which has led to the total destruction of the premises. d. Muwatin, the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy, located on Irsal Street, was not spared either. Apparently, the neighbor first reported that the army stormed into these offices and stayed there for about three hours. One door was completely blown off, and the other badly damaged. By the second curfew lifting, on April 9th, a quick visit revealed destruction, and paper everywhere on floors, books on floors. There was no time however to assess whether anything was stolen nor the extent of the damage. We also hear that PARC ( Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee) and the Hydrology Group offices were also stormed but I do not yet know the details. 3. Public Institutions: we have not begun to realize the extent of the damage in this sector , but some reports are indicative. On April 4th, the Ministry of Education issued an appeal to the world community indicating that on April 3rd, more than 30 Israeli tanks made a forceful entry into the Ministry headquarters in Ramallah , demolishing the main gate and the main doors, although employees there were willing to give them the keys to open the doors instead. The employees were then captured and forced to sit under heavy rain for six hours, then released. When the soldiers left at around 9 p.m that evening, the employees went back to horrifying damage: the Ministry's computer net servers were stolen, along with many floppy disks, CD's, files, dossiers, and all sorts of other documents. In the finance office, the main coffer lock was detonated, damaging all papers, including vouchers, promissory notes, cash and check box. The general examination central office doors were all detonated and destroyed, all iron cupboards as well, many of which containing very important educational documents. All records were taken or destroyed, even records of official transcripts that have been laboriously developed over years, and making it impossible now to issue or certify student documents and transcripts. Even the storage rooms were invaded, with computers, televisions and video sets and other valuable teaching aids taken away, all with worth estimated as in millions of dollars. Apparently, the piles of rubble on the floor made for a terrifying scene. This list is by no means exhaustive, and has been compiled from reports I have received from friends and colleagues in the institutions concerned. The whole truth will take some time to emerge. This unbelievable destruction can only indicate that this unilateral war is not merely about security, but is mainly directed against annihilating everything Palestinian. From joy at sarai.net Fri Apr 12 15:38:13 2002 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy Chatterjee) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 15:38:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics & Poetics of Visual Representations In-Reply-To: <02041116511107.00820@pinki.sarai.kit> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020412150431.009f5d30@mail.sarai.net> Walls are mostly private, so I don't think there is any crime for some one to prevent his/her wall to be defaced according to his/her freedom of understanding of art and poetics. But this doesn't mean that no one can do any thing on the walls. In fact, in spite of the law, even today India's one of the most creative wall writings and drawings can be seen in Calcutta! Best Joy At 04:51 PM 4/11/02 +0530, you wrote: >Thanks Sadan for posting your tentative formulations from your ongoing >research. Hope you get some response. > >Within this context i will like to draw the attention of the readers to a law >that is now in force in Delhi. (extended to Delhi after 13th December!). It >will bring in a tremendous change to the everyday, fluid, liminal visual >landscape of the city. Unfortunately this law has no sense of everday >`poetics` of the city! > >The wet Bengal Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 1976 (as extended to >the National Capital Territory of Delhi) > >2. (aa) "defacement" includes impairing or interfering with the appearance >beauty, damaging, distinguishing, spoiling or injuring in any other way >whatsoever, and the word "deface" shall be construed accordingly; > >(b) "property" includes any building , hut, structure, wall, tree, fence, >post, pole or any other creation; > >(c) "writing" includes decoration, lettering, ornamentation, etc., produced >by stencil. > >3. Penalty for defacement of property - (1) Whoever defaces any property in >public view by writing or marking with ink, chalk, paint or any other >material, except for the purpose of indicating the memo and address of the >owner or occupier of such property, shall be punishable with imprisonment for >a term which may extend to six months or with fine which may extend to one >thousand rupees or with both. >--------------------- >Think of all the imprisonment - but think then of the revenue loss for the >state! (..) > >Hope a poetic understanding of spaces will be more powerful than the >`technocratic` and `stainless` understanding of space. Anyway marking of city >spaces is now massively getting contained and each mark will cost. Either you >guy your legality or then buy your punishment. > >best >Jeebesh > > > > >_________________________________________ 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. >List archive: From yazad_acl at yahoo.com Fri Apr 12 14:50:44 2002 From: yazad_acl at yahoo.com (Yazad Jal) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 02:20:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Lack of objectivity on Israel-Palestine Message-ID: <20020412092044.4687.qmail@web14809.mail.yahoo.com> The Sarai Reader List seems to have only a one-sided (or one Said) view of the Israel Palestine issue. I am sending across two articles that I hope starts a real debate. This excerpt is eye opening! "Israel has given birth to an Arab citizenry inside Israel of more than one million people. This way you won't have to wonder how it is that, as Israeli citizens, Arabs have more rights, privileges and opportunities than the citizens of any Arab state in the Middle East. Unlike their Arab brothers and sisters, Arab citizens in Israel vote in free elections and are themselves elected to the Israeli parliament. In other words, the only place where Arabs know democracy and a high standard of living is in a Jewish nation." (from Glazov's article) Yazad Jal Bombay __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From yazad_acl at yahoo.com Fri Apr 12 14:57:37 2002 From: yazad_acl at yahoo.com (Yazad Jal) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 02:27:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Ten Tips on How to Be an Arafat Apologist Message-ID: <20020412092737.55228.qmail@web14802.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/glazov/2002/glazov04-11-02.htm Ten Tips on How to Be an Arafat Apologist FrontPageMagazine.com | April 11, 2002 By: Jamie Glazov WITH ALL OF THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that has now confirmed, beyond any reasonable doubt, Arafat�s terrorist connections and duplicitous behavior vis-�-vis Israel, it has become impossible for Arafat�s apologists to make any legitimate excuses for their hero. I know a number of academics and writers that have become extremely depressed because of this situation. Having based their entire lives and professional careers on blaming Israel for any and every sparrow that fell from the sky, they have now lost the will to live. I feel sorry for these pathetic people. I have decided to come forward to help the individuals who want to continue championing Yasser Arafat but simply don�t know how. Seeing that I have dedicated most of my adult life to observing and dissecting the psychotic mindset that it takes to blame Israel for the conflict in Palestine, I know exactly what it takes to be an Arafat supporter. Even in these difficult times, I can teach an individual how to effectively defend Arafat and the Palestinian Authority �- even if the entire charade is filled with specious nonsense and lies. I have created ten tips on how to be an Arafat apologist. They come with an easy to follow step-by-step guide. All you have to do is fertilize your personal dedication to anti-Semitism and then simply allow yourself to become as delusional as humanly possible. The video infomercial for these tips should be coming out next month on television stations across the United States. Meanwhile, here is the basic outline for all those Jew-haters who have dedicated their lives to blaming Israel for every Arab terrorist act but thought that doing so was no longer possible: Tip #1 � Imagine that the Palestinians are fighting for a homeland that was taken away from them by the evil Jews. That�s right. The foundation to becoming and remaining a faithful pro-Arafat enthusiast is to intoxicate yourself with the belief that the Palestinians actually once owned a homeland that was, in turn, stolen by the greedy and parasitic Jews. While trying to convince yourself of this fantasy, ignore the historical fact that the Palestine Mandate was never a nation, let alone even a political entity of any kind. It was a "mandate" that was created by the British from the remnants of the Turkish Empire after World War I. 10% of it was given to the Jews and 90% was given to the Palestinian Arabs. The key here is that you should never worry about where 90% of Palestine actually is. Just obsess with the miniscule tiny bit of land that the Israelis "occupy" now. It�s not important that this land was never officially "owned" by anyone in the first place. You should also never reflect on whether all of your rage and hatred on this issue is proportional to the fact that Israel consists of 1% of the land in the Middle East. Just get really angry that Israel is on territory that you think should be given to the Palestinians. And because you think this, then it automatically makes it right and historically correct. You should never wonder how your moral indignation on this issue fits with your complete indifference to the fact that Jordan occupies 80% of the land that made up the original Palestine Mandate. So if you really cared about the Palestinians, you would obviously be focusing your energy on protesting the crime being perpetrated by the Jordanians against the Palestinians. But the key here is that, well, deep down, you don�t really care about the Palestinians -� and neither should you. You must never admit this, but the Palestinians are only there for you to cynically exploit as pawns in your contributory effort to finish off what Adolph Hitler started. That�s right. You know what I�m talking about. And even the Palestinians are in on this with you. I mean, think about it: if the Palestinians themselves really cared about getting a homeland, don�t you think that they would be screaming about -- and fighting for -- the land that Jordan occupies? Don�t you think it is somewhat curious that Jordan has never, even for a second, been the target of a Palestine liberation movement? Don�t you think it is a little bit curious that, in 1948, the Palestinian Arabs rejected an international resolution that would have established a Palestinian state, and instead focused all of their energies on destroying the new Jewish state? You�re starting to get the picture now, right? So be a smart and clever Arafat apologist. The overall objective of your life should be facilitating the killing of Jews and destroying the state of Israel. The last thing you should be doing is worrying about the Palestinians. At the same time, however, in terms of what you actually say in public, you must always discuss the Middle East "problem" on the assumption that you are agonizing over the Palestinians� plight and how their entire "homeland" somehow lies in tiny little Israel. It is also a very good idea that you always refer to the myth of how the Jews "stole" the Palestinian "homeland" in passing, because then it makes its reality appear to be a given. You can�t believe how effective this ploy can be, especially in the midst of people who know nothing about Middle East history. So believe in yourself and just do it! Tip #2 � Never question the cause of Palestinian terror. Every time that a Palestinian blows himself up along with innocent Jewish civilians, including babies in carriages, you should shake your head in despair and say things like, "That poor Palestinian. But he simply had no choice. The Israelis have pushed his people beyond their means." You should always say things like this with a tone that implies that the "Israeli occupation" is the most oppressive reality in the world. Say things like, "The Israelis are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them." Follow this up with sentences like, "The Jews have obviously forced the Palestinians into terrorism." When you mouth these slogans, make sure to have a serious and sincere look on your face, otherwise the asininity of what you are saying might become more easily discernable. Maintaining a sober facial expression can be made easier if you convince yourself that the wars of 1973 and 1967 are irrelevant to the subject at hand. Before Israel was attacked in 1973, it occupied less of the land that is now in dispute, and before 1967, it occupied none of it. In other words, the Arab terror that was unleashed against Israel in 1967 had nothing to do with the Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip because the "occupation" did not exist. From yazad_acl at yahoo.com Fri Apr 12 14:59:05 2002 From: yazad_acl at yahoo.com (Yazad Jal) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 02:29:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Other "Suicide Bombers" Message-ID: <20020412092905.94142.qmail@web14803.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/ponte/2002/ponte04-12-02.htm The Other "Suicide Bombers" By: Lowell Ponte FrontPageMagazine.com | April 12, 2002 IN CHESS, THE BEST PLAYERS ARE ABLE to think ahead, recognizing the consequences that their next move could have 10, 20 or 30 moves later. Both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict urgently need to consult with the geopolitical equivalent of such chess grandmasters. The apparent goal of Palestinian extremists, for example, is to push Israel into the sea and take back 100 percent of its land. We can infer this because Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat 95 percent of everything the Palestinian leader demanded, but an uncompromising Arafat rejected this and re-ignited Intifada violence against the Jewish state. What are the chances of Palestinians and the Arab nations winning by such violent tactics and all-or-nothing strategy? Zero, a chess master ought to tell them, and here is why. If pushed to the sea�s edge, millions of Israelis would indeed flee to nations such as the United States wise enough to welcome those with their talents and intelligence. But millions of Israelis would remain, and in a last-ditch stand they would fight to the death. This happened almost 2,000 years ago atop Masada, the Dead Sea mountaintop fortress where Jews took their own lives (technically not by suicide, but killed by a few who by lot had been picked to carry this sin) rather than surrender to Roman soldiers. Today Israeli paratroopers and other soldiers go to this fortress and take an oath: "Masada shall not fall again." Psychologists describe the determination never to surrender of many Israelis as the "Masada Complex." These remaining Jews, if pushed to the brink of annihilation, could and perhaps would take steps that would make today�s Palestinian "suicide bombers" look trivial by comparison. If Israel loses, neither the Palestinians nor any unfriendly nation within 2,000 miles would "win." Israel could take them all down with it. Israel could turn the entire Middle East into a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground. Israel could blast fertility out of the Fertile Crescent and leave the barren region clicking hot for hundreds of years. This might not be Biblical Armageddon, but it would be a reasonable facsimile. At its Dimona 150-Megawatt heavy-water nuclear reactor, Israel for more than three decades has been creating and reprocessing Plutonium. Israel on July 13, 1998, acknowledged that it has "built a nuclear option not in order to have a Hiroshima but an Oslo [Peace Accord]." Most defense analysts estimate the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at up to 200, and one calculates that the Jewish State might possess up to 400 such weapons. Israel might also have manufactured a small number of H-bombs, thermonuclear explosives. Israel has many delivery systems for these nuclear weapons. To mention only a few: 50 or so home-made Jericho-2 missiles reportedly can deliver a 2,200 pound payload to targets at least 900 miles away. Israel has been developing a Jericho-3 missile using space rocket Shavit technologies that can strike 2,900 miles away with the same 2,200 pound nuclear payload. Israel already, according to MSNBC, possesses "25 nuclear capable F-15Es [and] about 80 older F-4 Phantoms." To understand what this means, an F-15E or Israel�s variant F-15I has a ferry range of up to 3,450 miles without refueling and can carry a payload weighing 23,000 pounds. The aging F-4E (not to mention Israel�s F-4/2000s) has a ferry range of about 1,550 miles and can carry a 16,000-pound payload. Combat capability calculations are not based on the ferry range of aircraft, which replaces some weapon payload with extra fuel tanks. We instead assume that pilots fly out to a target and need fuel to return. But Israeli Kamikazis flying a one-way doomsday mission can expend all their fuel to reach a target. They could reach targets 80-90 percent of ferry range away with a compact nuclear weapon. Israel also can use FAST packs and other techniques to boost potential range, speed or payload. In such a doomsday scenario, in fact, almost any of Israel�s hundreds and hundreds of aircraft could be used to deliver nuclear weapons if pilots were willing to become martyrs for their Jewish faith or nation. Americans come from a big country. Those who have never visited the Middle East usually fail to understand its smaller scale. To envision the above doomsday scenario, consider some distances. From announcements-request at sarai.net Fri Apr 12 10:30:47 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 07:00:47 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #32 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200204120500.HAA30608@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. 13.4.2002: Gender and Space (Mumbai Study Group) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 09:34:43 +0530 To: Recipient List Suppressed:; From: Mumbai Study Group Subject: [Announcements] 13.4.2002: Gender and Space 13.4.2002: Gender and Space
Dear Friends:
In our next meeting, we invite you to a presentation by SHILPA PHADKE and NEERA ADARKAR on "Gender and Space in Mumbai".

The first part of the presentation, on "Gender and Space", will interrogate the exclusion of women from public space through an examination of the public-private divide, and the image of the "public woman" as potentially criminal. It will dwell at length on the ways in which architecture and urban planning reinforce existing hierarchies of access to space and power, and the structural and symbolic violences that women are subject to in public space. The first presentation will also explore the "market" as a potential site for the subversive entry of women into public space.

The second part of the presentation, on "Gender and the Built Environment", will explore a gendered perspective on the relationship of women to built environment. It will examine how the existing power relations and social relations in class, patriarchy and culture affect women's access to housing, and to the city at large, and how these relations in turn affect the shaping of the built environment. The issue of women and built environment cannot be seen in isolation. The issue has to be linked to the deteriorating urban situation in the pro-capitalist and pro-globalization development policies of the state,  that further push the already peripheral sections of the urban population beyond the margins. These policies affect men and women differently, because in addition to class forces, women are also affected by  patriarchal forces. The spatial needs of women are different from that of men, and often cut across classes and cultures. What is the critical framework for reviewing the existing planning norms/policies? How can these concerns reflect in the planning policy?

SHILPA PHADKE is a sociologist and an Associate of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), Mumbai. She has been a researcher with the Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation, Mumbai, and has lectured at the Nirmala Niketan School of Social Work, Mumbai, and at St Xavier's College, Mumbai. She completed her B.A. from St Xavier's College in 1993, her M.A. from SNDT Women's University in 1995, both in Sociology, and her MPhil in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University in 1997. She has published in the area of population policies, and has written for the popular press, including Internet magazines. Her areas of concern include demography and population policies, feminist legal studies, gender and the politics of space, sexuality and the body, cultural and media studies, and development issues in the context of globalization.

NEERA ADARKAR is an architect, writer, and cultural activist. She is involved with several groups and movements in Mumbai, including Majlis and the Girangaon Bachao Andolan.

This session will be on SATURDAY 13 APRIL 2002, at 10.00 A.M., on the SECOND FLOOR, Rachna Sansad, 278, Shankar Ghanekar Marg, Prabhadevi, Mumbai, next to Ravindra Natya Mandir. Phone: 4301024, 4310807, 4229969; Station: Elphinstone Road (Western Railway); BEST Bus: 35, 88, 151, 161, 162, 171, 355, 357, 363, to Ravindra Natya Mandir, 91 Ltd, 305 Ltd, A1 and A4 to Prabhadevi.


ANNOUNCEMENTS

With effect after the upcoming session, Shekhar Krishnan, Joint Convenor of the Mumbai Study Group since its inception in September 2000, will be permanently resigning as Convenor. He will be handing responsibility for the management of the Group to the other Convenors, Arvind Adarkar, Pankaj Joshi and Darryl D'Monte. Shekhar is leaving the Group to spend more time pursuing his research and writing, and  his continuing work as Coordinator of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) in Mumbai. He wishes to express his gratitude to the Academy of Architecture, and to the other Convenors for their support and assistance over the past two years. He looks forward to attending future sessions of the Group and continuing to participate in its activities.

Also following this session, the Mumbai Study Group will take a long holiday, until the next session on Saturday 22 June, in order to take stock of the past year's activities, and schedule new presentations in coming months. Any suggestions for future sessions should be directed to one of the three Convenors (see below). At the request of Mayank Bhatt, his presentation to the Group, previously scheduled for 27 April 2002 on "Food Security in Mumbai and Thane: A Study of the Rationing Kruti Samiti", has been cancelled.


ABOUT the MUMBAI STUDY GROUP

The MUMBAI STUDY GROUP meets on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month, at the Rachana Sansad, Prabhadevi, Mumbai, at 10.00 A.M. Our conversations continue through the support extended by Shri Pradip Amberkar, Principal of the Academy of Architecture, and Prof S.H. Wandrekar, Trustee of the Rachana Sansad.
Conceived as an inclusive and non-partisan forum to foster dialogue on urban issues, we have since September 2000 held conversations about various historical, political, cultural, social and spatial aspects of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Our discussions are open and public, no previous membership or affiliation is required. We encourage the participation of urban researchers and practitioners, experts and non-experts, researchers and students, and all individuals, groups and associations in Mumbai to join our conversations about the the city.The format we have evolved is to host individual presentations or panel discussions in various fields of urban theory and practice, and have a moderated and focussed discussion from our many practical and professional perspectives: whether as architects or planners, lawyers or journalists, artists or film-makers, academics or activists.Through such a forum, we hope to foster an open community of urban citizens, which clearly situates Mumbai in the theories and practices of urbanism globally.


CONTACT US
We invite all urban researchers, practitioners, students, and other interested individuals to join us in our fortnightly conversations, and suggest topics for presentation and discussion. For any more information, kindly contact one of the Convenors of the Mumbai Study Group: ARVIND ADARKAR, Architect, Researcher and Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, Phone 2051834, <adarkars at vsnl.com>; DARRYL D'MONTE, Journalist and Writer, 6427088 <darryl at vsnl.com>; SHEKHAR KRISHNAN, Coordinator-Associate, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research (PUKAR), 4142843, <kshekhar at bol.net.in>; PANKAJ JOSHI, Conservation Architect, Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, and PUKAR Associate, 8230625, <pjarch at vsnl.com>.
--__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From tarunksaint at sify.com Fri Apr 12 19:52:59 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 19:52:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Re: References: <004301c1dff1$2e03d500$115ed6d2@default> Message-ID: <001801c1e22d$8d2e1de0$6d50d6d2@default> List administrator, others, Kindly convey my disinclination to receive unsolicited mail at my personal address to pp. I have already expressed my desire to discontinue this unedifying 'dialogue'. We put up our addresses taking full responsibility for what we post-- does this give anyone a right to direct crude gestures at another (which if made in person would receive an appropriate response), or violate another contributor's privacy and personal space? Will this serve as an encouragement to contribute in future to the many silent witnesses to what has become a distasteful online spectacle? On the subject of the Partition, and the poem-- well, a discussion might have been possible which could have enriched this forum. But not in the face of motivated and crass misrepresentations of this kind, which reduce a complex reality to 'holes' and 'rifts'. Research on the subject of Partition literature is a little more sophisticated than that. It has taken years for the psychic numbness that refugees experienced to give way to a new kind of communication between generations that the poem alludes to. Sentimentality my foot! This about shades of emotion which require some experiential grounding to appreciate in detail, perhaps, but at the very least sensitivity and emotional intelligence. There is a growing literature on the experience of those doubly affected, as in the case of Sikh refugees in 1984. Dilip Simeon was one of the first to highlight the genocidal aspects of the 1984 pogrom. Instead of an acknowledgement of the courage of survivors who remained, and were often forced to take a stand against fascism, as the father the poem is dedicated to does, in the face of discrimination and collective amnesia, we have this vulgar rant about appropriations by the VHP of such anger and grief. Nonsense-- it is the refusal to allow for such voices to be heard which has generated the situation in which new refugee camps as in Gujarat have now appeared. The hostility towards NRIs and compensatory strut and swagger on display are familiar coordinates of a certain kind of mofussil bhadrolok mind-set; the kunji-style account of satire a predictable cover-up for a lack of ability to write satire well. There is a context in which effective satire becomes meaningful; an implicit yardstick, or set of indices which allow for the nuanced point to be conveyed. When everything is fair game, no point emerges whatsoever-- rather, the vacuity of an aspirant to satirehood whose every dig mirrors back his own inadequacies and ineptitude. Yes, cyberspace also brings us the freedom to endure mediocrity, to field ad nauseam the Grub Street hacks of our time (note the continued pleas for recognition of some sort-- read my poems, says he, read my satire, says he-- sure signs of the novelist on the make these days). What is most comical is the recourse to political correctness-- we can be rude, we can disregard conventions, and scholarly etiquette, the sub-text seems to run, because we are not from the privileged colleges, because we have read theories of the carnivalesque, and Rabelais, because we are anti-Hindutva. The tone of abjection, grovelling (kick my ass, says he, reminiscent of the famed colonial cringe of yore) suddenly shifts into belligerence and stridency (such as that of the local colony goon, with his well-known repertoire of obscene gestures) when threatened. Radicalism of this desi variety has simply become a pretext for third-rate writing, and lumpen behaviour. I'd like to let the list know that I do not know pp beyond the most superficial of acquaintance-- nor do I wish to. Each to his own. One hopes that one's privacy and right to a dignified silence will be respected in future. This extends as well to former teachers whose names have been bandied about freely on this forum, in flagrant disregard of earlier reminders. Indeed, both academics tried their level best to stay on, one at D.U. , the other at J.N.U., but were faced with the same frog in the well syndrome that we find here on the Sarai list. (I can croak louder than you! I'm the best!). Neither 'fled' India-- a term I would dissuade any upstarts from using to thier face in direct conversation. One's shelf-life in the academic world is likely to short indeed, with such an attitude, though one might get away with it for a while in the laissez-faire moral economy of this list. This basic courtesy is observed on numerous lists across the world, to which both home-grown patriots and NRIs subscribe, all of which emphasise the need for netiquette. May this list move on, as I plan to, to more worthy concerns. I repost the poem for those joining the 'discussion' late. regards, Tarun For Papa To my father > > > >August 14th 1947. Firozepur, Punjab. > >You- > >eighteen years old > >sit alone and wait > >for news of your parents > >When they arrive days later > >my grandfather, grandmother, and her brother > >offer no explanation, no report, no narrative > >of how > >they ended up alive in a train from Lahore, Pakistan > >Their arrival simply becomes a fact > >--a fact > >that even the children--my brother and I > >learn never to question > > > >November 1st 1984, Delhi > >You wait again. > >This time > >with your parents, my mother, my brother, and I > >murdering mobs parade the streets > >announcing their arrival by rattling street lights > >My grandfather sitting in front of the house > >reads the newspaper, pretending oblivion > >The neighbors demand he go inside > >"I left once," he says, > >"where am I to go now?" > >You- > >I know, are afraid > >But refuse to remove your turban or cut your hair-- > >as some neighbors and so-called friends suggest > >You, who would not enter a temple > >mock religion and even God > >Say that you are a teacher > >And do not wish to teach submission to fascism > > > >September 11, 2001--to date. Delhi, India and Carbondale, U.S.A > >You wait there > >And I-here > >My brother who is visiting me > >Finds again that wearing a turban invites the name "terrorist" > >And, just as in 1984, he wants to be on the street > >I wait here > >for news of American bombs on Afghanistan > >while the successors of Gandhi's assassins > >rule his birthplace > >drowning in blood the hopes of 1947 > >sowing land mines into the line your parents had crossed > >but one they would not let cross their hearts > > > >Years later in 1972 > >my grandmother would visit that border again > >pick up a handful of dirt and call it "home" > >my brother and I would joke > >that our grandmother created nations wherever she went > >born in Burma she was twice a refugee > >once in Pakistan, then India > > > >Children know > >that if not this history there would be another > > > >But if not for > >those who labor to make this children's belief come true > >the only drops > >to fall on this desolate drought-stricken earth would be blood > >Today- > >as I imagine you eighteen years old > >I long to take your hands into my grown hands > >And walk into refugee camps where children still get born > > > > From ravis at sarai.net Sat Apr 13 02:05:45 2002 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 20:35:45 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] report from palestine Message-ID: <200204122036.WAA10885@mail.waag.org> Refugees flee camp with reports of Israeli abuses Suzanne Goldenberg in Jenin Friday April 12, 2002 The Guardian An exodus was under way yesterday from the refugee camp that endured the bloodiest battle of Israel's military offensive, with Palestinians bearing horrifying accounts of a systematic campaign of destruction and abuse. Hundreds of Palestinians fled the camp yesterday, an empty, smoking ruin resounding to bursts of Israeli machine gun fire. They left behind entire neighbourhoods flattened to make way for Israeli armour. Some of the wrecking missions were launched while women and children were inside their homes. The operation began with rocketing from helicopter gunships and bulldozers moved in to finish the job. They also told of the use of human shields for Israeli army patrols, and the random strafing of heavily populated civilian areas, killing elderly women and young boys and girls. Those fleeing were dirty, exhausted and desperately hungry. Doctors in Jenin say 15 babies were sick after their mothers fed them powdered milk and sewage run-off from streets where bodies were left to rot for days. A few also claimed to have witnessed a summary execution and the dumping of the dead - at least 150 Palestinians were killed in the camp by the Israeli army count - into mass graves. The stories of executions and disposal of the dead could not be verified as the Israeli army has encircled the camp with tanks, and shot at, or arrested, journalists approaching the area. The Guardian was among a handful of newspapers whose reporters managed to enter the town yesterday. But the accounts of the massive destruction of civilian homes, and of the firing on civilians, could be confirmed as they also occurred in the town of Jenin, suggesting a widespread and systematic pattern of human rights abuses that is only now beginning to emerge. Ali Mustafa Abu Siria, 43, an Arabic teacher, was carried to hospital on a ladder - nursing a gunshot wound to the left knee that had gone untreated for four days. Doctors said it was badly infected. He was injured while serving as a human shield for an Israeli army patrol, who led him out of his home handcuffed and at gunpoint on Friday. He was forced to walk ahead of the troops - and the army sniffer dogs - as they underwent the perilous business of house-to-house searches, hunting down Palestinian militants and weapons caches. Mr Abu Siria was shot at the 12th house. "As soon as I knocked on the door, a bullet was fired at me, he said. He believes he was shot by a second Israeli army patrol, which was on the first floor of a neighbouring house. "The two groups of soldiers started screaming at each other," he said. "Then they left me. I started dragging myself on the ground until I reached the house of a neighbour. The army did not do anything for me." A similar picture of a widespread disregard for civilian casualties by the Israeli army is also emerging in Jenin city. Doctors at al-Razi hospital said a man bled to death on its doorstep after soldiers prevented medics from retrieving his body. A burst of machine-gun fire from a helicopter gunship in a residential neighbourhood of Jenin on Wednesday killed a young man, who was outside charging up his mobile phone on a car battery, and injured Rina Zaid, 15, in the chest. All but one ambulance driver from Jenin's general hospital has been arrested by the Israeli army, so her family ripped a door off its hinges and carried her to hospital on foot. At dusk last night, the refugee camp was hit by 10 explosions in the space of an hour - a parting act of destruction as the Israeli army "mops up" what it calls an infrastructure of terror operating from inside. A new wave of refugees streamed out of the camp - including many children - scavenging for food. A few hours earlier, Riyad Ghalib Damaj, 28, a produce seller, also smuggled himself out with a group of women and children fleeing the camp, taking advantage of a brief lifting of the curfew in Jenin. "There are no houses left in the refugee camp; there is only a highway. There are countless numbers of houses destroyed. If you saw them you would go crazy," he said. "So many rockets were fired on our house from helicopters because three soldiers were killed nearby, and there are only two families left in the neighbourhood." -- Sarai Media Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054 India Phone: 91-11-3951190; Fax 91-11-2943450 www.sarai.net From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Sat Apr 13 12:45:56 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 08:15:56 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics & Poetics of Visual Representations In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020413071556.49894.qmail@web8101.in.yahoo.com> With respect to your wish to "capture the complexities of different kinds which are products as well as producers of relationship between agencies of ‘globalization’ and ‘traditional culture’", you could look into T-shirt messages and jean-tags. T-shirts and jeans perhaps exemplify the "mobile" city culture you talk about in your posting. What is even more interesting, they are always "worn" -- they turn the body itself into a site for a message (this body may deliberately or despite itself become such a site). Via T-shirts and jeans, one could even think of the body-as-space, and the agency of the city in turning/enforcing the body into a site for visual consumption/representation. T-shirts have a heirarchy of their own. Where you buy your T-shirts is also an indication of who buys what kind of T-shirt. For instance, "Tommy Hilfiger" is found in Janpath, too. In Karol Bagh, and also in Khan Market and South-Ex. But so is "Tomy Hillfigger". jean-tags (the brand-name of a jean, usually placed on or above the back-pocket) are completely fascinating. There are the "standard" brand-names, but there are also countless "non-standard" non-brand names, like "Tuff". Of course, you might have to peer at a few backsides, but that only makes fieldwork more interesting! --- jha sadan wrote: > Dear Friends, > > We are doing a project on the visual > representational spaces of Delhi. > This is a brief note and an excerpt from our field > notes. Your comments and > suggestions will be of great help for us to see the > field in better and more > disturbing ways. > > Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics and Poetics of Visual > Representations (Delhi) > > Thematic Areas covered > > Although, at this stage of our research, it is bit > difficult to classify and > categorise pictorial spaces which we have covered > yet a brief list of them > is important: > > Advertisements in the forms of hoardings of shops > and other similar market > forces. Here, we have tried to capture the > complexities of different kinds > which are products as well as producers of > relationship between agencies of > ‘globalization’ and ‘traditional culture’. However, > it needs to keep in mind > that both these words/concepts are used here very > loosely. These > advertisements lead us to those processes in and > through which local > symbolic spaces work hand in hand with standard > symbolic spaces. > > Multiple use of certain spaces: During the field > work we have come across > many once upon a time government hoardings, > hoardings of road signs and > walls which are used as locations to put posters and > for writing different > messages. The very use of these spaces as standard > place as recognised > places are interesting. If you remember, one of our > meetings, you had > suggested abut few such spaces( notice boards, > information boards of art > galleries etc.) > > Posters and Hoardings depicting Pahalwans and their > culture. These are again > abundant and offer interesting semiotic readings. > The location of these > hoardings quite interestingly pose several questions > on the socio-cultural > dynamics of a city. From the perspective of > semiotics, for example, many of > these pahalwan posters present Hanumanji as the > fatherly ideal figure but > Hanumanji is devoid of all his insignias and > symbols. His gada has been > taken over by pahalwans and Hanumanji is shown only > as showing the figures > of Ram and Sita. There may be various ways of > entering into this semiotic > field but this is not a place to go into the details > of it. > > Advertisements of local sex doctors, hakims, faith > heelers, astrologers etc. > An extremely rich field and a very problematic one. > One of the most > troublesome aspect of this field is its vastness and > its fluid character in > terms of their cultural belongingness. This is the > category where, the > mobility of the city culture can be seen at it’s > best. > > Wall writings putting common man at the center. > These kinds of writings > range from warnings( gadhe ke put yahan mat mut) to > the following social > message: > > Yadi IAS wa IPS adhikari nihswarth bhav se maatra > betan par nirvar hokar > desh ki seva karain to desh maatra ek maah main hi > sudhar jaiga.—Srinath > graam+ post, Nadini, Zila- Mirzapur. Uttar Pradesh.> > (If IAS officers > discharge theire duties in honest and selfless > manner , the state of the > country would improve in just one month. --Srinath. > Village+post-Nadini, > Zila- Mirzapur. Uttar Pradesh) > > Pictorial Spaces circulating myths. Although all > kinds of spaces create > their own myths and operate in various mythic > structures but even we get > down from the couch wagon of Roland Barthes and move > to Lajpat Roy market of > Delhi, we get stickers telling the whole story of a > temple. > > Religious and moral messages. Here, we would like > to mention a case of an > old lady living(?)/ working(her wrok is defined > here, primarily from our > vantage point, and not as her own occupational > engagement) in the area of > Shakti Nagar. In this area, we find walls written > all over with religious > slogans. We have come to know about the author, this > lady, and planning to > interview her if possible. This wall writing has a > potential to provide a > very rich field, to explore various constructs of > psycho-religious > discourses of the city > > Dalit Spaces. Pictures of Guru Ravidas at street > side cobblers’ shop is a > good example and offers interesting reading. > > There are various other spaces and lot of examples > but now I would like to > mention some of the unexplored areas which we are > planning to cover and > which we feel extremely difficult. These are > classroom desks (we have not > been getting entry into schools, In the university, > due to exams, desks have > been removed yet we are trying to get to this > space;) Monumental spaces > (this we will cover in next few weeks) and most > important among difficult > spaces is the graffities of public urinals and > toilets( we are trying our > best to document this space). > > Our field work covers the following areas: > > East Delhi: > Yamuna Vihar, Chand Bagh, Bhajan Pura, Dayal Pur, > Karawal Nagar, Jagat Puri, > Lakshmi Nagar, Shakar Pur, Ganesh Nagar, Sita Puri, > Pqatparganj and Pandav > Nagar. > > West Delhi > Mahavir Enclave, Sadh Nagar, Mangla Puri, Palam, Raj > Nagar, Uttam Nagar, > Mangol Puri and Vikash Puri. > > North Delhi > Inderlok, Shakti nagar, Jahangir Puri, Azadpur Gaon, > Azad pur, Kabel Park, > Majlish Park Camp,, Model Town, Kamla Nagar, Vijay > Nagar, Azad Market, Sadar > Bazar, Jhandewalan, Idgah Road, Malka Ganj, Ridge > area, Karol Bagh, Darya > Ganj and ther area near ISBT. > > South Delhi > South Extension, Houz Khas, Yusuf Sarai and Green > Park. > > This is not an exhaustive list of the areas covered > during the field work > neither it is to say that all the areas mentioned > above are documented > exhaustively (keeping in mind the horizontal > coverage this word, > documentation demands). This is just to give you an > idea of the geography of > our field work. We selected these areas both on the > basis of certain > predetermined notions and also due to the proximity > of these areas with our > own locations of stay and daily movements. > > In the coming weeks, we are planning to revisit > these areas. We would also > like to expand the field little further. In coming > weeks, the focus will be > more on recovering comparative field experiences at > different geographical > locations. > > ------------------------ > Recovering Experiences > > We are obsessed with the idea of recovering our own > experiences during the > course of field work. We would like to share an > excerpt of field diary. > > 10 December 2001 > === message truncated === ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Sat Apr 13 13:11:33 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 08:41:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Let's talk Partition In-Reply-To: <001801c1e22d$8d2e1de0$6d50d6d2@default> Message-ID: <20020413074133.5555.qmail@web8104.in.yahoo.com> Dear Professor, Every slanging match has words of wisdom in it. You said: "On the subject of the Partition, and the poem-- well, a discussion might have been possible which could have enriched this forum." Light at the end of the tunnel! Let's have a discussion on the subject of the Partition. Since you have edited a book on the subject, you could moderate the discussion, or even begin it. Of course, research on this subject is a matter of sophistication. It is complex subject. Most importantly, it can and will throw light upon Gujarat. I wish to understand how Gujarat could have happened, and is still happening (and 1992, and 1984...). I believe (it is an unresearched belief) that it all began with the subject of the Partition. Although K K Dyson's book on the memoirs of British men and women shows that they were completely captivated by this "HIndu-Muslim" rioting (countless anxieties about Muharram processions coinciding with Holi celebration, as happened this year), let us use the "partition question" as a convenient starting point. Michel Foucault was once asked to comment on the Gulag. He said he didn't know if he could talk about "the Gulag", but he certainly knew about "the Gulag question". Similarly, some of us do not know "the Partition". But we are interested in "the Partition question" (what you call "the subject of the Partition) You said: "It has taken years for the psychic numbness that refugees experienced to give way to a new kind of > communication between generations that the poem > alludes to" What causes a "numb" population to bring the BJP into power, thus allowing them to contest the national elections as a fully-fledged party? Isn't Delhi considered a BJP stronghold (even after this year's municipal election)? And Maharashtra a Sena stronghold? How is it that the very spaces where "the Partition" was experienced are those where a fascist political formation can come into being, can re-emerge? It is perhaps crass to turn "the Partition" into an occasion for comedy. But then, the Partition (like the Holocaust) has not been rendered as tragedy, either. What are the protective fantasies surrounding the subject of the partition? wanting to know more, pp --- tarunksaint wrote: > List administrator, others, > Kindly convey my disinclination to receive > unsolicited mail at my personal > address to pp. I have already expressed my desire to > discontinue this > unedifying 'dialogue'. We put up our addresses > taking full responsibility > for what > we post-- does this give anyone a right to direct > crude gestures at another > (which if > made in person would receive an appropriate > response), or violate another > contributor's privacy and personal space? Will this > serve as an > encouragement to contribute in future to the many > silent witnesses to what > has become a distasteful online spectacle? > > On the subject of the Partition, and the poem-- > well, a discussion might > have been possible which could have enriched this > forum. But not in the > face of motivated and crass misrepresentations of > this kind, which reduce a > complex reality to 'holes' and 'rifts'. Research on > the subject of Partition > literature is a little more sophisticated than that. > It has taken years for > the psychic numbness that refugees experienced to > give way to a new kind of > communication between generations that the poem > alludes to. Sentimentality > my foot! This about shades of emotion which require > some experiential > grounding to appreciate in detail, perhaps, but at > the very least > sensitivity and emotional intelligence. There is a > growing literature on the > experience of those doubly affected, as in the case > of Sikh refugees in > 1984. Dilip Simeon was one of the first to highlight > the genocidal aspects > of the 1984 pogrom. Instead of an acknowledgement of > the courage of > survivors who remained, and were often forced to > take a stand against > fascism, as the father the poem is dedicated to > does, in the face of > discrimination and collective amnesia, we have this > vulgar rant about > appropriations by the VHP of such anger and grief. > Nonsense-- it is the > refusal to allow for such voices to be heard which > has generated the > situation in which new refugee camps as in Gujarat > have now appeared. > > The hostility towards NRIs and compensatory strut > and swagger on > display are familiar coordinates of a certain kind > of mofussil bhadrolok > mind-set; the > kunji-style account of satire a predictable cover-up > for a lack of ability > to write satire well. There is a context in which > effective satire becomes > meaningful; an implicit yardstick, or set of indices > which allow for the > nuanced point to be conveyed. When everything is > fair game, no point emerges > whatsoever-- rather, the vacuity of an aspirant to > satirehood whose every > dig mirrors back his own inadequacies and > ineptitude. > > > Yes, cyberspace also brings us the freedom to endure > mediocrity, to field ad nauseam the Grub Street > hacks of our time (note the > continued pleas for recognition of some sort-- read > my poems, says he, read > my satire, says he-- sure signs of the novelist on > the make these days). > What is most comical is the recourse to political > correctness-- we can be rude, we can disregard > conventions, and scholarly > etiquette, the sub-text seems to run, because we are > not from the privileged > colleges, because we have read theories of the > carnivalesque, and Rabelais, > because we are > anti-Hindutva. The tone of abjection, grovelling > (kick my ass, says he, > reminiscent of the famed colonial cringe of yore) > suddenly shifts into belligerence and stridency > (such as that of the local > colony goon, with his well-known repertoire of > obscene gestures) when > threatened. Radicalism > of this desi variety has simply become a pretext for > third-rate writing, and > lumpen behaviour. > > I'd like to let the list know that I do not know pp > beyond the most > superficial of acquaintance-- nor do I wish to. Each > to his own. > > One hopes that one's privacy and right to a > dignified silence will be > respected in future. This extends as well to former > teachers whose names > have been bandied about freely on this forum, in > flagrant disregard of > earlier reminders. Indeed, both academics tried > their level best to stay on, > one at D.U. , the other at J.N.U., but were faced > with the same frog in the > well syndrome that we find here on the Sarai list. > (I can croak louder than > you! I'm the best!). Neither 'fled' India-- a term I > would dissuade any > upstarts from using to thier face in direct > conversation. One's shelf-life > in the academic world is likely to short indeed, > with such an attitude, > though one might get away with it for a while in the > laissez-faire moral > economy of this list. > > This basic courtesy is observed on numerous lists > across the world, to which > both home-grown patriots and NRIs subscribe, all of > which emphasise the need > for netiquette. May this list move on, as I plan to, > to more worthy > concerns. > I repost the poem for those joining the 'discussion' > late. > > regards, > Tarun > > > For Papa > To my father > > > > > >August 14th 1947. Firozepur, Punjab. > > >You- > > >eighteen years old > > >sit alone and wait > > >for news of your parents > > >When they arrive days later > > >my grandfather, grandmother, and her brother > > >offer no explanation, no report, no narrative > > >of how > > >they ended up alive in a train from Lahore, > Pakistan > > >Their arrival simply becomes a fact > > >--a fact > > >that even the children--my brother and I > > >learn never to question > > > > > >November 1st 1984, Delhi > > >You wait again. > > >This time > > >with your parents, my mother, my brother, and I > > >murdering mobs parade the streets > > >announcing their arrival by rattling street > lights > > >My grandfather sitting in front of the house > > >reads the newspaper, pretending oblivion > > >The neighbors demand he go inside > > >"I left once," he says, > > >"where am I to go now?" > > >You- > > >I know, are afraid > > >But refuse to remove your turban or cut your > hair-- > > >as some neighbors and so-called friends suggest > > >You, who would not enter a temple > > >mock religion and even God > > >Say that you are a teacher > > >And do not wish to teach submission to fascism > > > > > >September 11, 2001--to date. Delhi, India and > Carbondale, U.S.A > > >You wait there > > >And I-here > > >My brother who is visiting me > > >Finds again that wearing a turban invites the > name "terrorist" > > >And, just as in 1984, he wants to be on the > street > > >I wait here > > >for news of American bombs on Afghanistan > > >while the successors of Gandhi's assassins > > >rule his birthplace > > >drowning in blood the hopes of 1947 > > >sowing land mines into the line your parents had > crossed > === message truncated === ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From fishfilms at mantraonline.com Sat Apr 13 01:49:59 2002 From: fishfilms at mantraonline.com (nishit saran) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 01:49:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] In-Reply-To: <001801c1e22d$8d2e1de0$6d50d6d2@default> Message-ID: On 12/4/02 7:52 PM, tarunksaint at tarunksaint at sify.com wrote: > Will this serve as an > encouragement to contribute in future to the many silent witnesses to what > has become a distasteful online spectacle? Hello all, I am totally a lurker and I have been a lurker all my list-life... Because I am quite nervous that contributing to this list will expose me to the most vitriolic kind of criticism, thanks to the "prove yourself and then speak" kind of pressures that this list seems to exert... (a list that, after all, is not comprised solely of university professors or PhDs)... Pressures that have received their final confirmation for me, courtesy Professor Saint's most recent contribution... Dear Professor Saint, Words like distasteful, crass, sophisticated, vulgar, nonsense, goon, lumpen, dignified, rude, third-rate, and so on ( to sample from your email), all make me feel like I am in Madame Verdurin's salon; like I need class credentials (understood of course, chez Verdurin, as intellectual credentials) to speak at all. And that makes me pat myself on the back from being a lurker. Dignified? Goon? Lumpen? These are your criteria against argument, sir? Sounds more like a case of not letting 'browns' into the building... purely making an analogy. If this list is not to remain an old boys-and-girls network (which is not to say that the list must have 'expansionist' plans)... If this list aims to encourage fresh voices to put in fresh inputs... Then one must allow the 'distasteful' (who are, after all, those who haven't yet mastered someone's particular markers of taste) to speak. I mean, what is the real risk? Don't you think that anyone who has bothered to subscribe to the list has some care for matters intellectual... that anyone who just wanted to spread smut would fare better on Indiatimes Chat? Some of us (and unfortunate we might be for that reason) might share the same views as PP. But when we voice them, if we are going to be accused in all thes elitist terms instead of being responded to, then we might as well not write at all. A banal point, I agree, but from my perspective, a valid one. (And, before I myself am accused of class/intellectual pretension because I alluded to Mme Verdurin, let me state for those who have not read Proust - and not reading Proust, I shall hope, no more disqualifies one than having read and liked Rabelais - Mme Verdurin had a rather sad though, in the end, successful salon made of 'intellectuals' who were disgruntled with the more - in her opinion - bland tastes of the 'best society.') PP should be allowed to satirize - and satirize distastefully and vulgarly and 'lumpenly' and 'goonly' - for the simple reason that: not all might possess the refinement that you seemingly do, sir, nor might care to. After all, one man's basic courtesy is another man's foppishness. (Some would call it basic courtesy, we know, to refer to ambassadors as Your Excellency, but their passports would just call them Mr. or Ms.) "Can there be no absolute basic min-ee-mum courtesy?" you ask then, frustrated with moral relativism when it applies to netiquette but perhaps not when it applies to grander things? (What was that about a laissez-faire moral economy?) I think not, sir, none more than the base effort of joining the list. Unless the rules of joining the list themselves changed. Unless there was a committee that reviewed your application to the list. Again I ask you, sir: who will extend perversity to such an abstracted level - contributing to a list like this one, and simply being malicious without earnestly feeling that they had something important to say? And if netiquette itself must be relativist... (Spend some time in a Boston gay chatroom and follow it up with a Delhi one, sir, and you shall see that indeed it must)... Then, what if, what if...? What if someone says anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim or (God forbid) homophobic things here tomorrow? Or produces madness, such as a whole posting of four letter words? Oh well, la dee da. It's not the end of the world, plus I am sure that the event will spur enough effective discourse from all quarters for there to be no further argument. It's just a matter of reading and believing and writing and connecting to your ISP after all. No children have been hurt in the typing of this posting. Yes, I too should not make a big deal of your writing. You, too, should be 'allowed' to use your 'vulgar' and 'third-rate' and 'lumpen' and 'goon.' Of course you should - it's certainly not the end of MY world. All I am trying to explain is why you confirm my faith in lurking. And, if everything I am saying merely signifies to you that I myself am as distasteful and vulgar and lumpen and goonish as PP... in that case, sir, I want to ask you: just because I am these things, should I not be allowed to speak? "Not at all," you say, "Speak all you want. But I will not 'dignify' you with a response." Charming, I say. Very Madame Verdurin. Don't respond, sir, that's fine. But at least don't DO respond and then CLAIM that it is beneath your dignity to respond. Even Mme Verdurin would disapprove of that. - Nishit Saran - - - From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Apr 13 14:32:35 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 14:32:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To Sir(S) with Thoughts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <02041314323500.00594@pinki.sarai.kit> On Thursday 11 April 2002 08:26, Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri wrote: > We need to engage with the issues raised and I agree with Neel here when he > says that none seem to have raised some of the issues that Pratap has tried > to talk about. One of the issues with which I have empathy is the question > of English: A few days back i stumbled into a chance conversation with two young boys (class 12th) from what they call "Dilli Chhe". The conversation drifted towards english and the ability to speak the language. Understanding was not such a problem because " we seem to understand the english Discovery channel". - Then what is the problem? "The main problem is we cannot talk with fellow Indians in English, foreigners are something else", Why "Well you see Indians evaluate (tolte hain) you when you speak to them in English, that makes us completely speechless. you feel you are lower (neecha) type (ka log) people. You are looked differently if you speak English differently...." but how it is different with foreigners? " well they speak the language to communicate or to ask or to talk, they are very happy that you can understand them, so we speak very freely with them. No hesitation, it all comes..." Truly, After a friend of mine from Switzerland joined in, they started talking freely with him in English. No problem! I am left wondering, what does this say about `looking through English` culture. Any comments, pp, jyoti, Neel.? best Jeebesh From joy at sarai.net Sat Apr 13 18:20:10 2002 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy Chatterjee) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 18:20:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To Sir(S) with Thoughts In-Reply-To: <02041314323500.00594@pinki.sarai.kit> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020413174446.009f98a0@mail.sarai.net> I had my college education in very ordinary and unpopular art college. There students used to come mostly from lower middle class families. They are first generation migrate from villages. Few of them actually could not speak anything better than harianwi. When for the first time we went to see an exhibition in Triveni Kala Sangam, they were hasitating to enter the gallery. Gallery didn't have any costly ticket, in fact it is a open gallery. They were scared by the cultural ambiance of the space. The problem doesn't lie in the language. But culture which is associated with English language in our country is largely elitist and some time arrogant. McDonalds in not costly, but definitely elitist! West looks like the possession of certain class. Best Joy From monica at sarai.net Sat Apr 13 18:28:14 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 18:28:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] biotech and cement Message-ID: Hi There are few pleasures in being list administrator - mostly its a lot of "clerical" work. But sometimes, there are wonderful moments. Today I discarded submissions to the list which were by a firm that was trying to make a sales pitch. That happens often (not to forget the great nigerian scam, which continues to spam). However, what was intriguing was the top section of the email. In selling their cement anti-aging processes, they used biotech as the metaphor. It is interesting to reflect upon the gradual 'naturalization' of that which till recently seemed technologically impossible, and which is still - for many - open to challenge. Anway, here's the excerpt: Dear Sirs, Please spare some of your valuable time to read this letter. We can assure you, your life will not be the same again. We are living in an era of Genetic Engineering. Within a decade, if a man dies at the age of 100, it will be considered as a pre-mature death. We have the tools in our hands to reverse the aging process. We in BBR Microdite Waterproofing Co.have the tools & technology of Micro Civil Engineering in our hands to reverse the aging of Concrete & Cement Structures . We simply do not make tall & false claims. We prove our claims by teaching you to Prove it Yourself. best Monica -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From hansathap1 at hotmail.com Sat Apr 13 14:38:51 2002 From: hansathap1 at hotmail.com (hansa thapliyal) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 14:38:51 Subject: Fwd: Re: [Reader-list] Sahar Ke Nishan: Politics & Poetics of Visual Representations Message-ID: on jean tags, some sharing we are working on a project collecting stories about growing up as- suburbanites to delhi? the sideys? the chotta college wallahs? one of the stories we have is about how these young guys used to roam the galli goochas trying to get themselves labelled t shirts etcetra made to order by the darzies of badarpur- the lable makers in particular would be most diappointed by the boring labels they were asked to copy- wrangler- lee etcetra- they would rather present their kareegari, according to our storytellers- byt neatly making out colourful signs like- gas cylinders, and the like! _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From lachlan at london.com Sun Apr 14 01:11:31 2002 From: lachlan at london.com (Lachlan Brown) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 14:41:31 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #473 - 6 msgs Message-ID: <20020413194132.84618.qmail@iname.com> Hello, I wondered whether there was an archive of the Sarai list. There are some very strong correspondances here with issues discussed on other lists. I get the digest but would like to look at the way debate(s) have developed over time. Very Best, Lachlan Brown Toronto -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup From gchat at vsnl.net Sun Apr 14 09:59:38 2002 From: gchat at vsnl.net (Gayatri Chatterjee) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 09:59:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Speech problems? May be we should sing? Message-ID: <001c01c1e36d$107618c0$4750c5cb@vsnl.net.in> Speech problems? May be we should sing? No harm in telling a story we all know - stories can be told over and over again (and errors do not matter). Once a certain Muslim ruler of Luckhnow wanted to provide his people with jobs and meals during a period of terrible drought. So he embarked upon building a Mashjid complex; those who worked on that site were provided a meal in the afternoon. The cooks could not procure raw material for any kind of course meal and put in gigantic vessels whatever was available of - rice, meat, vegetables, roots, greens, spices. And thus they conjured up meal-in-a-pot of the day. This is supposed to be the origin of biryani. The Nawab got a whiff of the potion that was cooked that day, introduced that mode of cooking in the royal kitchen - and la voila! I can only produce such hotchpotch stuff - biryani or kichri/ khichuri/ kedgeree. One can call it the witches' brew -- whatever! Actually, I had begun something on the following date. 20/3/02 Dear Shveta Sarda, I am sorry I did not get back to you earlier. Firstly, I did not want to talk too much and too soon; secondly, I wanted to go in other directions -- other than what had sparked off all this -- other than, but not separate from them. So I am replying to you as I also reply to Jeebesh's call for looking into the nature(s) of list-based communication, for questioning through this list what the nature of shared experiences would be, as conducted in this virtual space and for predicting what unpredictable encounters could do through internet interactions. I want to look into the question whether internet-interactions are democratic; but already know I will not be able to arrive at that, for such thought are beyond my ken. But I also know, now, if I falter, someone else will pick it up and carry on, from where I fail. Dear Jeebesh, I start with what Shveta brought in: fragmented thoughts; insufficient communication, feelings of disappointment and irritation such communications can arouse. I start with communication as unpleasant experience (like retching on one another); communication resembling 'immature childhood' acts. I put that under quotes, for I am reluctant to describe childhood acts as immature. I did bring in terms like immaturity and adulthood in my last posting to Shuddha. They were solely in the context of the age that comes after childhood (which of course can end at any point in one's life, abruptly or gradually -- but those are finer points). Let us start from some a priori - that we are not, cannot afford to be very immature or innocent. We must have arrived at some level of 'adulthood' if are raising these questions and finally trying to formulate what kind of civil society we want. If we fail there, we must at least know what kind of a list this is - this virtual space and all other spaces this is virtually linked to. Shveta, let us say your letter is a reaction to my letter - which it is. Let us say, your letter also raises the question what communications does or can do at such moments. The next step would be to accommodate all such actions and reactions, all such questionings under this one virtual roof and see what such an assembling does. 28/3/02 I had stopped, as events toppled after events and I felt extremely foolish and small in front of such events and felt it would not be right to write anything that is to go public. Should one be foolish in public? Why not? Particularly when such things are happening. Yes, I think one could be that, foolish - or vulgar or crazy or mad or whatever. One does not have to be wise and civil or the like. And if one is not all that all the while, why should the exchanges be of any one kind. The exchanges in this list can go any one way, all the way, all the many ways..any ways..many ways. Perhaps Pratap was taking us some important direction with his 'bad poems'. Perhaps he stopped for others did not join in - which is a pity. No doubt, the poem was bad; but that was no reason to stop. It perhaps would be equally bad to write 'good' poetry right now. Incidentally, I cannot write poetry -- bad or good. But I ask myself: what does it mean when at moments like these Gayatri Chatterjee sits and creates well-formed letters? How come, her notes are not fragmented? Why am I not retching? Particular kinds of literature come out during war times. They are often funny, bawdy vulgar, or satirical and morbid - almost always they are 'politically incorrect'. Wartime jokes abound in cities that have seen repeated political turmoil. I am reminded of jokes from Dhaka. When I repeated them to Bansi Kaul (theatre personality), he had said Bhopal is one such place where each muhalla has specific brands of jokes. And there are tonga-wallah jokes - from drivers of horse-carriages that even now operate as cabs. Kaul has made it his business to adopt humour as his modus operandi. He calls his stuff -- theatre of humour; he goes around gathering jokes. So, he has a repertoire of 'election jokes'. I think this list needs all of us to write in whichever way we are capable of - at that moment. Let us not ask 'what is the point' as Shveta's friend had. The point is to, while within the list, build up the list. The aim is to build up the solidarity, the vocabulary and the understanding to understand speech-acts floating in a virtual space. That might not be easy. 11/04/'02 I had written the above before the affair of amit-Pratap-shali Pandey (with joining Saint-Tarun-Kumar, Slum-bug - and others). I do not know any of them. But, does it matter that I know what Sengupta, Bagchi and Nerula look like? 14/04/'02 I am thinking of a very good rule of conduct in some bygone days, but something I have witnessed as it was on its way out. One had to reply to a poem only by another. So, if an insult was meted out through a poem, then the one thus verbally abused had no other way out but to write a poem. Pratap, why don't you write your thoughts in more 'bad' poems and let everyone reply through poems. The only condition should be they must be equally bad - or worse. May be, even that will not solve the problem, that people are getting hurt and are hurting one another(s). In those the days the injurious poems were sung out. Whatever might have been the verse, the melodies were always very good. Singers were employed, if the versifier could not sing. I once witnessed something quite impressive. Two teams were to quarrel with each other -- on invitation and commission. The organizer gave them the topic (my father and so I know the team leaders did not know the topics beforehand) and half an hour to prepare themselves). The topic was 'a quarrel between Shiva and Parvati'. I still kind of remember the woman lead of one of the teams (playing Parvati). 15/04/'02 Wow! I think something is going to emerge on this list. The precarious period perhaps is setting itself right. Let us not be so impatient; let us act, observe and freak out (and not jump to conclusions). 'Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be!' From announcements-request at sarai.net Sun Apr 14 10:58:39 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 07:28:39 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #33 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200204140528.HAA14711@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. TEZPUR UNIVERSITY - Admission Notification (Sagnik Chakravartty) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: 14 Apr 2002 04:12:55 -0000 From: "Sagnik Chakravartty" Reply-To: "Sagnik Chakravartty" To: announcements at sarai.net Subject: [Announcements] TEZPUR UNIVERSITY - Admission Notification TEZPUR UNIVERSITY NAPAAM :: TEZPUR::784028,Assam Admission Notification Applications are invited from graduates of any discipline for admission into Master's programme in Mass Communication and Journalism, 2002-2003. Sale of application forms will be from 23-4-2002 and the last date for submission of application forms to the Head Department of Mass Communication and Journalism is 17-05-2002.For further details please log on to http://www.tezu.ernet.in Academic Registrar. --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Sun Apr 14 15:06:15 2002 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Kanti Kumar) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 15:06:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] A lesson in history Message-ID: Dear Friends, Here is a mail from a friend of mine that I should share with you all. Thought it would add to discussion on this forum. Thanks. Kanti Kumar A Lesson in History By Ajit Sahi My mother once asked me - why is Indian history so bitter towards the British Raj when the English have given us so much, whereas it doesn't feel insulted by the centuries of Muslim rule that was so virulently >anti-Hindu? > My mother is an innocent layperson but I have heard even historians make the same comment. Obviously, such a line of thinking is influenced by a very systematic campaign by the Hindu rightwing to fudge history - but to expose that calumny is not the purpose of this mail. Today is April 13, 2002, the anniversary of the dastardly attack by General Dyer on the Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919 that epitomised the British attitude towards its slave that was India. The way the British killed Indians that day at Amritsar - and repeated such acts throughout their rule before and afterwards - no Muslim ruler EVER treated the people of this land. The following extract answers why Indian history needs to remember British rule as one of the darkest period in the existence of this country: EXCERPTED FROM Michael Edwardes' "British India 1172 to 1947": In 1919, serious rioting broke out in the Punjab. At Amritsar on 10 April, two nationalist leaders were arrested and deported. A large crowd attempted to enter the European cantonment. They were turned away and began rioting in the city. Order was restored by the military, under one General Dyer, and all public meetings and assemblies were declared illegal. Nevertheless, on 13 April a meeting gathered in a large, enclosed space known as the Jallianwalla Bagh. When he heard of this, General Dyer went personally to the spot with ninety Gurkhas and Baluchi soldiers and two armoured cars with which he blocked the only exit. Then, without warning, he ordered his men to open fire on the densely packed crowd. On his own admission, they fired 1,605 rounds before he withdrew, ordering the armoured cars to remain and prevent anyone from entering or leaving the Bagh. Official figures gave 379 dead and 1,200 wounded. Dyer's action was approved by the provincial government. The following day, a mob rioting and burning at another spot was bombed and machine-gunned from the air. On 15 April martial law was declared and not lifted until 9 June. During this period, Indians were forced to crawl on all fours past the spot where a woman missionary had been attacked, and, according to the report of the Hunter commission which enquired into the disturbances, public floggings were ordered for such offences as 'the contravention of the curfew order, failure to salaam to a commissioned officer, for disrespect to a European, for taking a commandeered car without leave, or refusal to sell milk, and for similar contraventions'. The Hunter commission of enquiry was set up in October 1919 with four British and four Indian members. Three of the British were members of the civil service, and the Indians were men of moderate opinion. All criticised the actions of General Dyer - but in such mild phrases as 'unfortunate' and 'injudicious'. The Indian belief that the old repressive attitude was being revived was reinforced by General Dyer's own testimony to the commission, for he made it clear that he had gone down to the Jallianwalla Bagh with the intention of setting a ferocious example to the rest of India. 'I fired,' he said, 'and continued to fire until the crowd dispersed, and I consider this is the least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce if I was to justify my action. If more troops had been at hand, the casualties would have been greater in proportion. It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of view not only on those who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab'. Though the government of India vehemently dissociated itself from such a policy of intimidation, Dyer was expressing the general attitude of many of the civil and military in India. Dyer was removed from his command, but his actions (and presumably his motives) were supported by a large section of the British press as well as by members of parliament and others. A sum of 26,000 pounds was subscribed as a testimonial for this gallant British soldier. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.343 / Virus Database: 190 - Release Date: 3/22/02 From jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com Sun Apr 14 17:18:11 2002 From: jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 17:18:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To Sir(S) with Thoughts In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020413174446.009f98a0@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: The culture that is associated with the English language in India is certainly elitist. But, then, different groups have become elitist and English still remains with them. In colonial India English was taken as a route to jobs, entry into spaces of the powers that be, a kind of emancipation which opened out many spaces but locked away many; rather, the English speaking classes seem to have locked themselves into neo-conservative rooms from where there was no escape, not that they wanted to! So, our 'brown-sahibs', the 'baboo' class enjoyed a remarkable degree of comfort and priveleges while they worked for the Raj. Then these sahibs seemed to ebb away over the next many years after 1947, and it was often lamented in certain circles that a kind of civility would never be seen again. Aside: [At this point, my friend from Bangladesh, Istiaq Chisti who watches and reads as I write has this to say: the Muslims who had been rulers of the Indian sub-continent and were already ebbing away as the westerners came in did not take up English as quickly as the Hindu baboo classes and thus were not emanicpated. He also added that the present day necessity for English as a language-for-jobs has come about because of the overwhelming influence of the US post-World War. ???] As far as I can say, Istiaq's comment on Americanization as far as the influence of Hollywood, 'the land of plenty/ land of happiness' mantra and emigration of many peoples to the US goes; people certainly look towards the US and its English as the right key. At least in Delhi, where i live, I have seen a lot many kids emulate the Cartoon Network or Hollywood movie twang, and all my Barista's attempt the same. BUT, did they die away, or were they replaced with similar people, similiar governmental structures, and ways of life. The progeny of these individuals still held onto power and were joined by others to whom independence allowed access. However, they had to emulate the past masters in so many ways and a bureaucratic behemoth and culture grew, flourished like the rich green moss on a rained-on parapet. They also learned English. Privately funded 'english-medium' schools kept mushrooming (and do so now), many with the prefix of 'Saint' attached to them [Christian missionary schools and colleges have always been in demand, even by sections who love push the idea that conversion by the church fathers is very very bad], many with the suffix of a 'public-school' [if not a boarding school in the hills, certainly a look-alike in your own backyard in the muggy, polluted city] - and all so that the SON and the daughter learn English. So, is it just 'all'? And, so, you had a system back in my home state of West Bengal, where they were trying to strengthen the mother-tongue, Bengali, a huge system of state schools where teaching in the English language started from Class 6. While, the Saints and the Publics were busily trying to learn the language; they always had to speak in English in school and theoretically on play-field and listen to BBC English Language cassettes to get the right tone, and were told that there was a Queen's English to learn. Never met the Queen, do not know if there is one! So, Jeebesh quotes the friend "Well you see Indians evaluate (tolte hain) you when you speak to them in English, that makes us completely speechless. you feel you are lower (neecha) type (ka log) people. You are looked differently if you speak English differently...." And then one has heard of our ministers and others who push the National Language, Hindi but send their children to Saints and Publics. It seems to me that a knowledge of spoken English (in the 'right tone') becomes a kind of ACCESS CODE to all kinds of benefits of metropolitan society. So, I would tend to agree with Joy when he says that it is a cultural issue and the question of language seems to be intricately linked to it. English, as a language is certainly not a problem. But, it still seems that a knowledge of English does open doors. If I could make a guess, our schools system is woefully inadequate to ensure even literacy for all children. Then we have the disparate system of state schools and private elite schools. A lot of the students attending state schools can never afford the private ones, and even if one could, there are so many ways the schools sieve students since seats are limited. If a certain kind of spoken English was not an access key, why would there be a mushrooming of ELT centres? From hansathap1 at hotmail.com Mon Apr 15 03:54:24 2002 From: hansathap1 at hotmail.com (hansa thapliyal) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 03:54:24 Subject: [Reader-list] seed grant report Message-ID: we are, two of us, vipin and hansa, working on a project collecting, on audio, stories about the growing up of a bunch of boys in a suburb of delhi- these are areas- ghaziabad, sahibabad, that are mapwise, situated in UP(as policemen never tire of teliing you to haul you up for very many things- "yeh u.p. hai, dilli nahin") but the life of these areas, through jobs, through aspiration, even through this stated difference, is very linked with delhi. on other sides is the village- where some of their parents migrated from- . the boys and a girl, now all adults, belong to different castes- gujjars, jaats, brahmains, some are "service class" children, some belong to rural elite families. their stories reflect the experience of growing up in this context, conscious of the village city difference, not completely belonging to either. the stories are invariably comic(no other mode of story telling is entertained by the group). the strokes are broad, characters are often personas(that they adhere to studiously when in the group)their particular contexts are given form in this method of storyteliing and everything, fathers, households, families, the village, the city, jobs- are lampooned-it is a mode where all events in their lives, as long as they are part of the gang is made into group entertainement. the criticism of the self finds a funny tangent in bitching- endlessly and relentlessly adding every detail in each others life to make it expressive of the personas that have been created around them. nostalgia is of course also a part of it, a ferocious re re retelling of the way they were- when they were younger, more energetic, more free to be iconoclastic? but the story telling continues somewhere in the present too. Like in a sprawling soap- characters that were left behind are encountered, and knit in somewhere again. new characters, often from the city and so eventually still outsiders, enter in and out of their lives and their stories. despite everything so far, a core group of them remain situated in the suburb, somewhere very much with each other. we have collected conversations and stories on some 45 hours of tape. there are stories of cricket matches- played endlessly in the sahibabad sun, or competing with city teams in delhi. there are stories of shrewd money making in school that are also stories about second hand clothes markets in delhi. there are stories of schools- stories with moods of oppression, of hated teachers and smart subversive kids, of the endless question of english, there are stoires about relatives from the village- and how they are viewed in these contexts- how they provided them with a foil to the creation of middleclassness that was happening in that suburb. and somewhere how these other contexts stay with them, despite all the advances into the city- shape them and their way of looking at the world there are stories about fathers and sons and disappointment and violence. and conversations where you can hear the characters as voices, the parent, the son, the engagements with and cruelties to each other. and change- the stories of poor schools told in the confines of a car travelling confidently into the city- the beeps of mobiles, the conversations on mobiles, the shifts in language. the problems we are faced with are about boundaries- it is one thing to tell- very idiomatic, evocative and 'telling' stories to a friend and the friend of a friend, and another to transmit them to the public at large, as they are- knowing the presence of a recorder while you are with friends is different from recognising eventually the formal nature and the onesidedness of recordings. we need to joust with the business of not treating them completely as subject and pinning them down. so far with our work we get the feeling some robust form of fiction is required eventually. we are hoping to create for ourselves, with this grant, the grounds or different stages(the noun) for the fiction. any suggestions on form would be very welcome. as our presentation, we hope to give a soundscape still, but supplemented with a good amount of writing that will chart that shift into fiction. _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From tripta at sarai.net Wed Apr 17 18:11:35 2002 From: tripta at sarai.net (Tripta) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 18:11:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] city notes01 Message-ID: <02041718113503.00867@janta7.sarai.kit> Dear all, the following is the first of the diariy entry about the city of the city of me and the city. city and me. on insistence and encouragement from some friends i am posting it and will be doing so regularly. criticism comments continuations are welcome. cheers tripta ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First bike ride to north campus. Second love. loss of innocence gain of momentum... and ad mist all this we stopped at roadside paan walla to smoke. fear of being seen smoking by someone known bothered me then. but the strategic location of the paan walla in a corner away from the main road gave me the confidence to do something i would rather not be known for. then. the hot summer evening. the hesitant cigarette puffs. the tensed conversation. lost in more than i could handle i imagined myself to be somewhere else. somewhere new. somewhere where no would know me. just then reality check happened. with a jerk. someone from behind pulled my arm quite forcefully. fears and apprehensions of being caught, of being known came in way of my reflexes and it was after a few seconds, i turned around. my arm was still under the grip. sitting on a rickshaw was a man of 25-27 suffering from epilepsy. this was worse than what i had imagined. i had seen epilepsy from very close quarters and was one of the things which made feel. how, i never been able to articulate. but it was the only real thing i felt. at least then. i did not attempt to free my hand. i held his. and for another half hour i engaged in conversation with him and his sister. spoke about the medication. spoke of icecreams. candies and candles. fear of darkness and threat of light. he had to leave. so did i. at that moment i wanted to ask for his address and i hope that so did he. but before i could say anything he said, `phir milenge. yahin kahin.' around the corner. at the street. at the corner. around the street. and as he said that i started crying. those were not the tears which have been forming and accumulating...they are the ones which just flood. and for another 10 minutes i just held his hand and cried. for me. for him. for the hurt anger angst anxiety guilt identity existence oblivion. at that time i failed to comprehend why? the issues about space, city, space in the city, anonymity, crowds did not bother me then. i just wanted my space. my corner where i could have my world. i had found my corner. IN the city. coming from a small town where no corner, no street, no house, no life is not under the big bother gaze. i felt rejuvenated. i had got beyond that gaze. In the City. but lately i am feeling it again. the gaze. and somehow i prefer the earlier one. at least i could turn around and could look into the eyes which were looking at me. now i don't know who is? it could be anyone someone or everyone. since then, which was years ago, i have smoked many more cigarettes, i have loved and left many but have lost my corner. In the city. From ravikant at sarai.net Mon Apr 15 17:34:45 2002 From: ravikant at sarai.net (Ravikant) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 17:34:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Who's afraid of 'Partition'? Message-ID: <02041517344501.06594@jadu.sarai.kit> Dear All, I find PP's take on Partition unacceptable. It is as one-sided as some of the representations of Partition in Hindi literature. I have in mind Kamaleshwar's recently published novel "Kitne Pakistan' in which Partition becomes one of many tragedies the world(!) has witnessed in its recorded history. The event in this manner of recall gets 'de-historicized'. PP's point about what can Partition tell us about Gujrat is well taken in that restricted sense. However, It seems to me that he goes overboard with his dislike for any kind of memory related to Partition. To collapse all kinds of memories of Partition is to commit the same fallacy as he accuses the poem of committing. Its also like putting all NRIs in one basket. Let me elaborate. The Panchajanya, the RSS mouthpiece, in a recent issue focused on Prtition, traced roots of terrorism - Islamic, what else - to Partition. In their discourse and Musharraf's, Kashmir remains the unfinished agenda of Partition. There is however a larger investment of people - writers, poets and NRI academics included - in talking about Partition. The efflorescence of scholarly material on Partition is actually a result of the sudden offshoot of violence in 1980s in Asian societies. But it is significant that people who talked earlier about it were not the rightwingers so much as the secularists - with a few exceptions like the novelist Gurudutt. Some of the members would recall the violent protests launched by Knickers to 'Tamas' the serial, when it was shown the first time. Those who have seen it would recall the pointed exhortation by the makers of the serial to remember, because 'Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it'. In Tamas and in the story-collections such as "Partition ZArii hai' or "Kitne Toba Tek Singh" Partition becomes the lesson people - 'here' or 'there' - should have learnt. Although in this recall also there is a chance of 'ahistorical' representation, that is not all. So, what PP calls nostalgia and a site/device of excoriation can also be seen as a critique of existence, of continued and painful vivisection that is permanently etched. And of Nationalism and identity politics of the worst kind. One of the reasons Gujrat happened and keeps happening-let me also speak of Gujrat as a metaphor- is that there are not enough readers of this literature, not enough students exposed to the learned Profs. like Saint and Pandey, and not too many people to take these scholarly histories to people, who have a different, 'natural' and 'naturalised' take on Partition. In other words, secular propaganda is no match to communal hardwork at shakhas, etc. In conclusion, to argue that talking about partition is also to incite rift is like Swapan Dasgupta accusing an historian - now an NRI one! - of inducing fragmentation because he wrote about Bhagalpur riots in an EPW article. Sorry members, the mail became rather long, but this is one more proof, monica, that the lurkers actually read the postings! Cheers, ravikant From bharatich at hotmail.com Mon Apr 15 20:09:43 2002 From: bharatich at hotmail.com (Bharati) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 20:09:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ragpickers march Message-ID: Friends, New Delhi's ragpickers and small kabaris are constantly harrassed by the police in a number of ways. Three of them were also badly beaten up recently, and an internal enquiry in on in this matter. Using the incident as an entry point into the issue of good governance and of safe recycling, ragpickers and small kabaris built up a charter of demands and marched to meet the (Deputy COmmissioner of Police) DCP, asking for greater acountability from the police of several police stations. THe SHO, Connaught Place, V.S. Pundhir, who has constantly advocated that ragpickers need to be reformed and disciplined through beatings was also there, and he was livid at the march. He has in the past suggested that the few ragpickers who are drug addicts must be cured by puttingthem into jail, where hard work and the "atmosphere" will cure them. Here are the details of the march. CITY'S RAGPICKERS DEMAND GOOD GOVERNANCE FROM DELHI POLICE. On April 13th, ie, yesterday,over 150 ragpickers went on a peace-walk with a charter of demands for safer recycling and working conditions to the DCP, New Delhi, Mr. Mukesh Meena. They demanded that both beatings as well as petty abuse must be eliminated, in order for them to work better and be able to recycle the waste of the city in a less hazardous way. The demands included the following : 1.No beating under any circumstances. 2.Ragpickers of this network (identified by an I-Card) will stop to discuss problems, if requested. 3.No burning of bags of waste. 4.No turning bags of waste upside down on roads. 5.No removing of air from cycle-tubes. 6.No free and forced cleaning of police stations. Such work will only be done against payment. 7.Anyone taken away by the police can only be taken to the police station. 8.Checking of kabaris shops (of kabaris in the network) to be done only along with persons of the community nearby. 9.Fixed timings for checking kabaris shops. 10.No demand for bribes. 11.Respect the Identity Card worn by them. On their part. part, they have decided to : 1.Co-operate with the police as a community and through various group leaders. 2.Print and use forms for purchase of items like fans, coolers etc. formally sold to them, to the extent possible, to prove their origins and avoid being harassed as thieves. This will be on a trial basis. 3.Help the police to evolve a code to distinguish between stolen and other goods. 4.Themselves control activities of their group. 5.Complaints may be put forth to the entire group during our meetings on Sundays, after prior discussion. Additionally, they also demanded: 1.A monthly meeting with the SHO in our area of work and residence.(list can be furnished). 2.A monthly meeting with the DCP, New Delhi. 3.A system to redress grievances in each police station. The DCP has shown interest in these requests and is expected to set up a monthly meeting for community dealings with the ragpickers. Individual problems are expected to be solved through a dialogue , again initiated by the DCP's office, first through the local Police Station and later, if unresolved, through higher officials through a process of dialogue. The first two cases in this context are already underway.Systems to address grievances are expected to be put into place shortly. The ragpickers are hopeful that the actual beat officials and others who deal with them daily will also be adequately informed about the decisions of the officials, in order for them to be able to implement them. Their behaviour will be monitored by the ragpickers in the coming months. The background lies in an incident on the 25 th of March this year. Three ragpickers working and living in and around Connaught Place were picked up close to midnight by the Connaught Place Police Station Staff and taken to an isolated beat box near Super Bazaar. Here, they were badly beaten upby 7 or 8 persons, many not in uniform. The charge was one of a battery missing from the beat box. Subsequently, with the facilitation of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, which works with a wide network of ragpickers and kabaris inNew Delhi, a formal complaint was made to the DCP. Subsequently, an enquiry within the vigilance branch of the Delhi Police was initiated. Since then, these ragpickers have been harassed and cajoled at various times by police personnel, including those who were involved in beating them and who continue to roam around freely in the area. This was only one incident of many that routinely occur in the live of a ragpicker. While all the recycling of the city is done by ragpickers and small kabaris, the city authorities scarcely offer us any protection. If anything, protection has to be bought through bribes. Now, as part of a wider network actively working towards organizing itself and creating less dangerous working conditions, ragpickers and kabaris of this network and Chintan, have made a charter of safety and good governance to the Police. For other details, contact : Bharati Chaturvedi Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group Tel : 3381627 and 4314478. -- This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. Please revert to adila at actionaidindia.org for any clarifications or comments -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020415/9dba62aa/attachment.html From tarunksaint at sify.com Mon Apr 15 20:55:47 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 20:55:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] provocation et al Message-ID: <000401c1e494$bda3b5c0$3a5ed6d2@default> Dear list, I'm glad the provocation did stir up the list. So there may be a pedagogical value after all to literary criticism! Partition, Proust, English in India and a whole host of concerns which emanate from Sarai's first literary spat. However I'm still far from satisfied with the proceedings, which are somewhat too unstructured for my liking. I wholeheartedly support the suggestion as regards a discussion, even if not moderated, on a specific subject, or set of subjects. On many discussion lists across the globe, to be differentiated from chat rooms, certain themes are chosen (sometimes by the list members themselves) which become the focus for a discussion in which both the experts and specialists and as well as laypersons may contribute. And who's to say that the experts must have the last word? Sarai has the benefit of being next-door to CSDS, where there is an ongoing project on partition and the recovery of survivors' memories. Perhaps we could begin with an exploration of various aspects of the partition experience and its impact on collective psychology as well as individual psychology. This could be extended to include a discussion including criticism of partition stories and novels-- perhaps even poetry. We might even consider the possibility of a reading list which would feature both Saadat Hasan Manto and more recent practitioners, including PP of course (oops, there I go again!). This could be the first in series which might feature invited guest contributors, on subjects ranging from ELT (on which much research has taken place), to gay writing and contemporary communalism/ fascism. These repostings from other lists/magazines are so dreary, after all, and deny this list its originality. Sarai needs to work towards a ratio of fifty to sixty percent discussion/commentary to allay the anxieties/insecurities of those bedazzled by big names. Saran misunderstands much of what the debate centred on. It is easy to shoot down straw men from the vantage point he assumes, which is equally value- laden in its assumptions. The vaunted relativism he may wish to celebrate in theory is difficult to practice, as his own decontextualization of my critique of PPism demonstrates. PP himself has understood the source of my difficulty. It is precisely the near impossibility of accommodating the magnitude of distress and suffering that catastrophic events elicit in language, in forms like tragedy or comedy. Attempts to do so often end up trivialising the torment of the survivor, unless attempted by very skilful hands. One might argue that the tragicomic tone in Manto, particularly, emerges as a worthy negotiation with historical trauma. And perhaps only fragments a la Siyah Hashye and Khol Do can encapsulate the disturbing abyss of psychic experience unleashed by the partition itself. It is surprising that there should be no mention in Saran's long harangue of the core issues which I sought to raise, which I have explored at greater length in print form, as PP generously acknowledges. As a filmmaker I would have imagined that issues relating to memory and perception and the representation of the partition would be impossible to ignore. Pankaj Butalia's Moksh touched upon the impact of Partition trauma on the second generation in a moving fashion, which can be sharply differentiated from the crowd-pulling jingoism of Gadar. I grant the film-maker his right to vend his product in the marketplace of ideas, but I also hold to my judgement of Gadar as a cheap manipulation of traumatic memories and a prostitution of Partition suffering. The point being made, perhaps with too much vehemence, was as regards the need for care in both one's expression, and in evaluation and interpretation. Sophistry and debating tricks are no-one's monopoly . Dragging words out of their context to build your case is hardly sound logic-- though it might help in grandstanding, in travestying your opponent's case, and in skewering Professor S., that malicious hate-figure, whose ghost we may now lay to rest once and for all, amen. Saran completely misses my point about the laissez faire moral economy; does he really think that contemporary late capitalism, with its ideologies, has no impact on the universe of this list? Relativism of this sort cannot rationalise the trashing of offlist individuals. This is certainly as much a matter of double standards as proclaiming your allegiance to an oh-so-sophisticated genteel milieu, in which Proustian allusions come tripping off the tongue, and simultaneously holding a brief for (presumably) unwashed hordes, now crowding this virtual salon. Come off the high horse, those with the skill to type, will do so in whichever way they please, regardless of censorial/editorial interventions (depending how you interpret it). One mustn't carry these grad-school analogies too far, after all, the brown sahibs are a bit of an anachronism/cliche these days anyhow. To me this sort of relativism is unacceptable, as unacceptable as the mealy-mouthed platitudes of the Hindutva hypocrites, just before they invent a new way of using gas cylinders to blast down Muslim homes in Ahmedabad. No, sir, you must carry the burden of your argument to its conclusion (offline) before I'm convinced. Meanwhile, This is just me , Tarun (certainly not yet a prof.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020415/cd5d11e3/attachment.html From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Mon Apr 15 22:11:48 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 09:41:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Re: In-Reply-To: <02041517344501.06594@jadu.sarai.kit> Message-ID: <20020415164148.45541.qmail@web14609.mail.yahoo.com> a lot of interesting reflections on memory, poetry and, to use a word that has become generic, holocaust. i have not been on the list much recently and have spent an evening catching up. to return to the starting point - a poem posted by professor Saint - i think that not becoming blackmailed by the existence of true human suffering into surrendering one's critical standing ground is actually a crucial issue to which ribald resistance might be an extremely important response. when it becomes impossible to criticise a representation of suffering without being accused of denying the suffering, one has to ask: In the name of what is this silencing happening? people can suffer very much but write bad poetry. more importantly, they can suffer very much but their suffering, in the public domain, be part of a wider political formation which is very different from the original suffering, perhaps to the extent of being morally repugnant. to make either of these points is not to deny the suffering, even though voices of great moral authority assure you that it is so. i'm obviously thinking in part of the jewish holocaust. the governments of the victorious nations decided in 1945 that the 'labour camps' (as they were then referred to, since belsen, rather than auschwitz, was the archetypal camp, largely due to a government sponsored travelling photo exhibition) were to be shown to the people not as the specific tragedy of the jews (etc) but of the universal reminder of what facism would have done to the world. the jewish element was actively suppressed. without taking into account the trauma, aphasia and shame that brought that silence down to the individual level. the jewish campaign to 'reclaim' the holocaust has been stunningly successful, from the Eichmann trial of 1961 throug a major US TV series in 1973 to a contemporary plethora of stone and celluloid representations. it has succeeded to the extent that showing any kind of discomfort with the reclaimed history is met by wariness and often hostility in otherwise liberal american society today. one language only is permissible to talk about the holocaust - epic tragedy (with the conspicuous and somewhat curious exception of roberto benigni's 'la vita e bella') - and with this regime comes a silencing of all critique of how the memory is politically mobilised (and since benigni's film avoided the political entirely, perhaps that explains how it could 'play' with the holocaust). i think that such powerful social censorship goes a long way to explain the way in which the various silences of the US press on Israel can sustain their legitimacy. this is the sacralisation of a particular memory, a particular version of history, which has built into it a moral dismissal of those who disagree. it generates complex and viciously enacted aesthetic rules for the memorialisation of the original suffering (such as could be seen in the furious debate in the jewish community over 'schindler's list', which broke one of the primary rules: you do not show the death chambers). and it links everything together so that you cannot criticise any part of it without being found guilty of dismissing the whole. i find the back-and-forth on this list and the frequent invocation of moral categories in surprising contexts extremely interesting in this context. R PS Am highly impressed by the infinitesimal gradations of 'in' and 'out of' this list that exist... CC boxes seem to be like the purgatorial waiting chamber between being in and being totally cast out... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Tue Apr 16 02:14:35 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 21:44:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Gujarat as an act of the imagination Message-ID: <20020415204435.18093.qmail@web8105.in.yahoo.com> Gujarat is also an act of the imagination. What is happening in Gujarat is also a 'systematic erasure of references', a way of erasing all presence of s/he designated as Other, all the signs that signify the presence of this properly constructed Other. "Kalyan, April 11. Kalyan remained tense today, with attacks on muslim businesses and establishments continuing through last night. Even as victims of Tuesday's violence continued their night vigils, Muslims of localities like Doodh Naka also spent sleepless nights. Muslim garages were burnt, shops broken into and trucks and rickshaws overpowered in the night's retaliation." (Fresh violence keeps Kalyan on edge, night vigil on, Indian Express, April 12, 2002, p 4) The systematic erasure of references is perhaps most immediately visible in the destruction of property (property: the first material sign of being present). But there are other levels, too, at which this riotous imagination works. The crude bomb of sorts that gets dropped on a house is also a proposition, a kind of imperative-declarative sentence, an imposition of a cultural syntax. A fireball tears through the roof and burns everything inside: "My house is empty." This is also a feeling of being scripted upon. A bullet tears through two closed doors in a ground floor and lodges itself in an underarm. Pool of blood, death. A victory for a social semiotic, imagination expressed as reality. There's physical erasure/evacuation of the Other. Then there's juridical/administrative erasure/evacuation of the Other. Its purpose is to ensure that physical erasure/evacuation is possible. In a posting made on this List on April 11 (an article Monica posted), Raja Menon wrote: "It appears that well before the Godhra outrage, Hindu fundamentalist outfits were extracting municipal records, employment exchange registers, telephone-bill addresses, electoral rolls and even a public relations firm's business list to compile a dossier of Muslim residential addresses. Could this be true? There is little doubt that the state police and the IB are fully aware whether these allegations are either true or false. If they are true, there is no question that both the Gujarat government and the Union home ministry also knew the first steps towards replicating the 'Night of the Long Knives' by the Brown Shirts had begun in Gujarat. The IB's reporting chain leads it to the home secretary. There is also no reason why such information should be kept classified and denied to the people, unless the Union agency is part of the conspiracy" [end of quote from posting] But the Other also has to be imaginatively erased. This requires a metaphysics. Indeed, it requires a Grand Theory, a Grand Theory of Everything. So that there can be a "power-over" the Other. Sangh camps taught my students to hate: teacher. This is the headline of an April 11 article in the Indian Express (Express Newsline, p 2), written by Prarthana Gahilote. The article says: "Gujarat had it coming. The riots were inevitable. A communal distrust had been building up for some time. Parents had been insisting on discipline. They were sending their children to summer camps. Not for excursion but to "sakha" camps where they were supposed to imbibe "Hindutva" values and discipline themselves. The idea was to steel young minds against all kinds of modernisation and the "supposed corruption of Indian values". What it has resulted in is, however, a different story. A battery of young people who today are rioting, killing, looting and supposedly avenging the wrongs that history inflicted upon their ancestors. For Shubha Vaidya (name changed) these young minds are more than a case study. Many rioters were her students at the M S University, Vadodara. Vaidya, who taught Arts at the University from 1999 to 2001, helplessly saw her students attend many such camps. Today, a little scared for her life (she doesn't want to be named), she wishes she had spoken more to her students and dissuaded them from attending the camps. For the saddest part of this entire exercise remained: Students themselves could not explain what they got out of these classes at the camps. "It was more of a done thing. Well educated middle class parents insisted that summer holidays were used to attend the Sangh camps," Vaidya, who witnessed the violence in Gujarat in 1992, says. "It is perhaps because of this that the Godhra backlash continues. Even in 1992 the situation wasn't as bad. Today the state is sitting on the mouth of a volcano," she says. Vaidya, who now lives in Delhi, recalls that many university students were forced by their parents to attend the camps and learn "wielding lathis and activities conforming to the Sangh Parivar's philosophy. Initially, one did not bother but it started looking ugly when lawyers, painters, architects and engineers would talk about drastic steps to alter historical wrongs," Vaidya says. [end of quote from article] Gujarat is also an act of the imagination. An imagination that belongs to a culture soaked in what may be called "everyday life fascism". Was Partition also an unresolved attempt to come to grips with such an imagination? Is Partition also an act of a similar (not identical) imagination? Is it that the Partition testifies to the presence of such an imagination? If so, what is it about everyday life fascism that refuses to "go away"? How does everyday life fascism manage to insist that it is not merely a return of the repressed (a negativity), but is actually a return to the drawing board from which an entire reality can be made? Let us try and trace the contours of this imagination. How it is configured. Through what "moments" it passes, inflecting as it tumbles through the cultural unconscious. And tumbles out now and again. Let us "begin" with Partition and "end" with Gujarat, or should we "begin" with Gujarat and "end" with the Partition. Certainly, it seems to me, "the Partition question" and "everyday life fascism" are intricately connected. Wanting to know more, pp ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From tarunksaint at sify.com Tue Apr 16 04:53:29 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 04:53:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] correction- karvan Message-ID: <000c01c1e4d4$8e870ea0$c05ed6d2@default> Sorry, folks, in my last posting I referred to Pankaj Butalia's film on Partition affected families-- the title of the film was Karvan, not Moksh, of course, which was his first film. Perhaps its time for a retrospective of Pankaj's films at Sarai-- Monica, Ravi? Rgds, Tarun -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020416/2b854b76/attachment.html From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue Apr 16 06:59:36 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 21:29:36 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] quote Message-ID: something caught my eye in an article by vijay prakash in couterpunch some days back... i'll paste here.... sarai walouN kay deedar kay liye. "Meanwhile, [palestinian] children stuck within homes, afraid that they will be the next martyrs in the crossfire, memorize the poems of Mahmoud Darwish: I saw nothing but a scaffold With one single rope for two million necks I see armed cities of paper that bristle With kings and khaki " z.rizvi _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Tue Apr 16 11:31:30 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 23:01:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] provocation et al In-Reply-To: <000401c1e494$bda3b5c0$3a5ed6d2@default> Message-ID: <20020416060130.28142.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com> further to what i wrote yesterday, just wanted to expand comments in response to last posting: > It is > precisely the near impossibility of accommodating > the magnitude of distress and suffering that > catastrophic events elicit in language, in forms > like tragedy or comedy. Attempts to do so often end > up trivialising the torment of the survivor, unless > attempted by very skilful hands. One might argue > that the tragicomic tone in Manto, particularly, > emerges as a worthy negotiation with historical > trauma. And perhaps only fragments a la Siyah Hashye > and Khol Do can encapsulate the disturbing abyss of > psychic experience unleashed by the partition > itself. [...] > Pankaj Butalia's Moksh touched upon the > impact of Partition trauma on the second generation > in a moving fashion, which can be sharply > differentiated from the crowd-pulling jingoism of > Gadar. I grant the film-maker his right to vend his > product in the marketplace of ideas, but I also hold > to my judgement of Gadar as a cheap manipulation of > traumatic memories and a prostitution of Partition > suffering. what i was trying to hint at in my last mail was that such debates about what the 'proper' representational form is for tragedies of this sort carry with them a politics that needs questioning. the reason for this is that the question itself implies that the meaning of the suffering has become fixed. it has become fixed 'beyond' or 'before' articulation, and the role of the artist (etc) is to find those few modes of articulation that can live up to the role of speaking that prediscursive tragedy. the modes that pass the test - to return to similar debates about the holocaust - are characterised by: extreme intellectual seriousness on the part of the artist (and usually a historical claim to involvement in the tragedy) the tropes of high art, and an energetic distancing from everything that is everyday or commercial a plainness of representation, without excessive melodrama or aestheticisation a focus, where possible, on the authentic voices of victims as the only people truly qualified to speak a reverent silence on the part of commentators in and outside the artwork a language of epic memorialisation to explain the purpose of the work - 'Let us not forget', 'Lest it happen again' etc etc there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these things. i haven't seen either of the films you mention but i'm sure i would share your preference for Karvan over Gadar. it's just that, as I said in my last posting, there is a distinct similarity between such debates about how to represent tragedy and many different religious debates about how to represent God, and this 'sacralisation' needs to be probed a little bit. there is of course no representation of Partition that can go beyond its nature as mere representation, no representation that is 'ultimately' faithful. so what is the purpose of, and the basis for, the elaboration of an aesthetic matrix which will help distinguish the 'authentic' representations from those which are merely a 'prostitution' of the original suffering? some random reflections in response to this question: 1) when we put into place a set of rules that are designed to protect a historical event from over-articulation, when we implicitly place that event 'before' language and seek to control which great masters of language be solely allowed to gesture, whisperingly, towards its unarticulability, we are forbidding the majority from speaking about it. this imposed silence may seem like reverence, but it is also censorship. 2) this struggle against the 'quotidianisation' of such events by building holy walls around their articulation is an attempt to rescue them from their continuities with the rest of life and to enshrine them as unique and unforgettable. there are really pernicious consequences of this when we are talking about something as long ago as Partition. firstly those that see themselves as the heirs of the tragedy feel that they have a unique cause, a holy memory to defend, a tragic-heroic role in history that is immune to critique and that need not always justify itself. secondly, this has exactly the opposite effect of that which is so often stated: "We remember so that no one need go through this again." this justification of the memorialisation of a *specific* past through reference to a *generally* better future is usually disingenuous. it actually amounts to a *fixation* with the specific history, a constant psychological circling in on it. the outward, cosmopolitan movement rarely comes. 3) the selection of which events can mobilise the energies of the intellectuals, artists, politicians and community leaders who jointly turn a historical event into a 'holocaust' is a precarious process. to me it always seems as if eligible candidates lend themselves well to the forms of high art: clashes of enormous, primordial forces, the questioning of the ultimate value - or pointlessness - of human life, the interplay of the grand concerns of kings and rulers and the effects in the lives of ordinary people swept up therein, epic characters whose concern is the making and meaning of history, a stage strewn with the slain over which sobre survivors make serious resolutions about the future, and of course a continuity of some sort with urgent contemporary political agendas, without which the whole point would be moot. the bhuj earthquake would not make a holocaust because there is not enough meaning in a shaking of the ground. more significantly the systematic killing of women in dowry deaths across the country, which meets several of the criteria (deaths systematically engineered by people of extreme evil on victims who have done nothing to deserve them, affecting very large numbers of people) is unlikely to be called a holocaust because it does not erupt manfully into the forum of political rule, it does not divert the course of history. in sum i don't think that the search for an adequate memorialisation of the suffering of people affected by Partition is a simple question of mimesis in which representers and their representations may be selected or rejeced on the basis of their serious moral dedication to the original, authentic moment. i think the act of selecting *this* event over others, and the launching of a quasi-theological debate over what the rules of representation will be link into far less naive structures. i've just noted some ideas here which seem to be connected; they don't all arise from previous postings. R __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From heus at xs4all.nl Mon Apr 15 18:57:07 2002 From: heus at xs4all.nl (Steef Heus) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 15:27:07 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] FW: Tell your friends Message-ID: Hi, just to inform you about the latest Oxfam initiative on fair trade. Steef > -----Original Message----- > From: info at maketradefair.org [mailto:info at maketradefair.org] > Sent: maandag 15 april 2002 15:20 > To: heus at xs4all.nl > Subject: Tell your friends > > > > Dear Supporter, > > Thank you for adding your voice to the Big Noise to Make Trade Fair. > > If we can make the biggest noise in history then we can change the unfair > rules of world trade. So please get your friends, family, and colleagues > to join you in the Big Noise - just personalise and forward the message > below. > > If you haven't already, you can also help by emailing one of six world > leaders who will be attending the Earth Summit in Johannesburg this > August - a key opportunity to bring the injustice of global trade to the > world's attention. We've made it really easy to do - it won't take you a > minute. Just go to 'Act Now' at www.maketradefair.com > > Remember to bookmark www.maketradefair.com, so that the latest news on the > campaign - and the actions you can take - is at hand whenever you want it. > > Take action. Spread the word. Make Trade Fair. > > Thank you very much, > > Jeremy Hobbs > Executive Director, Oxfam International > > PS. If you chose the opt-in button when you registered, we'll send you > regular email updates on the campaign, and the impact that your actions > are making. In the meantime, check www.maketradefair.com for the latest > news. > > --------------- COPY, PERSONALISE & FORWARD THE TEXT BELOW --------------- > Subject: Help make trade fair > > We have the potential to end poverty for millions. Only your voice is > missing. > > World trade could end poverty for millions of people, but instead it's > actually widening the gap between rich and poor. > > Oxfam has launched an international campaign to Make Trade Fair. If we can > make the biggest noise in history - with voices from every part of the > world - we can change the unfair rules of world trade. > > So join me in the Big Noise to Make Trade Fair at www.maketradefair.com > > From fishfilms at mantraonline.com Tue Apr 16 01:20:27 2002 From: fishfilms at mantraonline.com (nishit saran) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 01:20:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] provocation et al In-Reply-To: <000401c1e494$bda3b5c0$3a5ed6d2@default> Message-ID: Hello everyone. If anyone has the time and the patience to explain Tarunji's last mail to me, I shall be most grateful. I didn't get it. I apologize. I know I should shut up if I didn't get it, for - obviously - it is unfair to bash people for using jargon, when one is really not sure whether THEY are using jargon or ONE is being plain stupid. I had no 'big' issues with Tarunji's take on 'experiential suffering' or on 'discrediting people who are offlist'. I am frankly unresolved on both counts. My thoughts on THAT... Is one now not allowed to discredit George Bush or Yasser Arafat or the BJP just because they are not on the list? Or are we just talking about people who 'might have been' on the Reader list and are not? Is it a matter of public figures alone? Then, if one shares someone's poem on the list, does that not make it public domain enough to be criticized? About experiential suffering, I am undecided as well... One can't quantify it, right, so then if I write a really BAD poem (in anyone's book... say, a 'vulgar' one or a 'third-rate' one) about how I didn't get laid night, and it really kills me, do you have no right to say it's a shitty poem just coz I profess pain? Yeah, but can one compare the trauma of Partition to the suckiness of not getting laid? Of course not. But what about Partition to Holocaust, or Partition to Bhopal Gas or Partition to caste murder or Partition to losing my parents? How does one draw the line? Death? Can one not say anything parodic about death? Is it enough for a someone to say 'I suffer' to make any artistic expression of that suffering beyond the pale of criticism? I didn't like XYZ partition film ... I thought it sucked. Like Tarunji thought Gadar sucked. Fine. So, PP thought the poem sucked. Not fine suddenly? What if I produce thirty older people who were really moved by Gadar, and who claim that it was really true to what they experienced and it was cathartic for them? Are we just going to dismiss those people as lumpen goons? Or theorize them away as brainwashed? Anyway, as I say, I am unresolved. Unsure. And before I get any comments about trivializing 'experiential suffering' - I lost two uncles to the Partition. My mom was born 9 days after Independence, in riot-torn Punjab after my grandparents fled from Pakistan being spat on and shot at on the way. They couldn't find milk for mommy. And I lost two uncles. I am allowed to trivialize my OWN 'suffering' right? Or, are you going to tell me now that I need to feel MORE suffering? Anyways, I'm still undecided. My big problem I can't make a case for censorship on the basis of hurt sentiments. I can't make a case for hurting sentiments either. Which is why the exchange has been interesting. But my posting was not about these things. I don't KNOW what I feel about these things. No, my posting was about 'why I feel like lurking'... why I think elitist terms like Tarunji's freak me out. (Oh, and I knew my reference to Proust would be slammed. In spite of my caveat. Aaargh.) All I want to say is... dude, what does all this mean (and sorry if I am 'grandstanding' again): > As a filmmaker I would have imagined that issues relating to memory and perception and the representation of the partition would be impossible to ignore. Huh? What does my being a filmmaker have anything to do with this? Why do I have to bring in memory and perception and the representation of the Partition when all I am talking about is why I don't like terms like 'vulgar' and 'third rate' and 'goon' and 'lumpen'? And, since you're so defensive about the 'offlist' ... did I mention anywhere on the list that I was a filmmaker? > One mustn¹t carry these grad-school analogies too far, after all, the brown sahibs are a bit of an anachronism/cliche these days anyhow. Grad school analogies? As in "Pah! Grad school! Grow up, son!"...? I didn't even GO to grad school. Now, you've really made me feel small. I am sorry if my knowledge and, God forbid, my analogies are too anachronistic. Will keep that in mind if I ever dare to disagree with Tarunji again. Again, I get the sense of being put in place, having my credentials questioned and so on... 'Go back into your corner and lurk, boy!" Enough said on my part. Sorry if this was a waste of time for all of you. I must grant you, Tarunji... You have, for better or worse, got me out of my lurking shell. Oh, also, for some strange (and tragic) reason, I only happen to write to this list when I am a tad drunk? Maybe it's about being uninhibited or something? I'm sure it shows. Is that against the rules? (Too lumpen perchance?) Do let me know. - Nishit Saran From shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in Sun Apr 14 08:41:51 2002 From: shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in (shohini) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 08:41:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] INDIAN MUSLIMS FOR PEACE Message-ID: <000001c1e4ec$b047e100$67cbc5cb@shohini> The following posting is from INDIAN MUSLIMS FOR PEACE. Dear friends Looking at today's newspapers, you (assuming that you are an Indian Muslim) must have realized that you are a Jehadi, according to the Prime Minister Mr. Vajpai. Look at some of his comments in yesterday's BJP meet at Goa: "Wherever there are Muslims, they do not want to live with others (who practise different faiths). Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating fear and terror in the minds of others.'' ''No one should challenge us about India's secularism and no one should teach us about tolerance...We were secular even in the early days when Muslims and Christians were not here. We have allowed them to do their prayers and follow their religion. No one should teach us about secularism.'' Earlier, in the RSS meet in Bangalore, they have already told the muslims to beg the hindus for their favour and goodwill etc. for survival. The point is that all these comments and speaches are giving a very wrong message to the people at large, and since not very many muslims are speaking up against them, things are getting worse. How long can we sit and tolerate being dubbed the Jihadis whereas most Indian muslims wish to live in this country peacefully. Shouldn't we stand up and talk to the prime minister and the BJP govt. directly and ask for explaination. We request all of you to please come for a rally of Indian Muslims who want peace, that we are planning in the near future in Delhi - to take a memorandum of protest against what his govt. is doing. Please keep in touch for a final date for this rally. And kindly visit this website for more details. Also send us contact details and emails of Indian muslims who want a peaceful livelihood in India. The site is: http://indianmuslim.sphosting.com/ Kindly give your suggestions, and forward this mail to more interested people. Yousuf Saeed, M. Naim, Sabia Khan and others Indian Muslims for Peace http://indianmuslim.sphosting -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020414/4b38d444/attachment.html From announcements-request at sarai.net Tue Apr 16 10:28:42 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 06:58:42 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #34 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200204160458.GAA01329@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Gujarat Report (Ranita Chatterjee) --__--__-- Message: 1 From: Ranita Chatterjee To: announcements at sarai.net Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 12:05:33 +0530 Subject: [Announcements] Gujarat Report A fact finding mission comprising Syeda Hameed, Malini Ghosh, Ruth = Manorama,Mari Thaekekara, Sheba George and Farah Naqvi visited Gujarat = on the Gujarat carnage and its affect on Muslim women . This took place = in the last week of March, 2002=20 The Report of this mission will be released at the Press Club on April = 16, 2002 at 3 p.m. Do try and make it. Monisha Behal / Ben North East Network. --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From monica at sarai.net Tue Apr 16 15:08:37 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 15:08:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] another quote... Message-ID: Dont ask me why exactly i think its an interesting quote at this moment, but i somehow feel it might be :-) "Philosophy has made no progress? If somebody scratches where it itches, does that count as progress? If not, does that mean it wasn't an authentic scratch? Not an authentic itch? Couldn't this response to the stimulus go on for quite a long time until a remedy for itching is found?" Wittgenstein best Monica -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From saumya at sarai.net Tue Apr 16 15:47:29 2002 From: saumya at sarai.net (Saumya Gupta) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 10:17:29 GMT Subject: [Reader-list] The notion of an academic public domain Message-ID: <20020416.10172900@legal.sarai.kit> The idea of creating a web-based academic resource has been in the air for a while at sarai. We invite you to start a discussion towards realising the concept... ------------------- It seems there is a crisis staring the academic community in India in its face. The government resources for higher education especially for the humanities and social sciences streams - are progressively drying up, and no alternative sources of funds have been created or even creatively thought about. The response of the best academic institutions to the paucity of governmental allocations has been unalloyed lament, along with slashing of research grants, cutting of faculty positions, and grossly limiting library and archival resources by limiting book grants and closing subscriptions to academic journals and periodicals. Privatise or perish is the mantra. And since the former is not really a choice for 'unproductive' disciplines like humanities, the prospects look quite grim. The results of this resource and creativity crunch are equally obvious: less students register for the humanities and social sciences courses, and those that do grapple with their research in deficient and inefficient university libraries, highly restrictive and expensive specialized libraries and government resources centers. The teaching faculty with scholarly initiative has to simultaneously struggle with a heavy teaching workload as college managements increasingly cut down on study leave for academic research. That there is no dearth of academic talent - teachers, researchers, students committed to take the academic world out of this malaise -is equally evident. However, long dependence on governmental funds and planning and disciplinary/institutional restrictions form huge barriers in the formation of independent, interdisciplinary reflection and action about the condition of academia in social sciences. To give an easy example, most of the colleges have got additional funds from their management boards for computerization, which in most places has meant buying computers, without any thought about the use of information technology for greater awareness about, and access to academic resources, digitization of resources, greater integration of information technology in research and teaching etc. The need is to get this community of scholars, researchers, teachers, students to interact with each other and also with other crucial nodes of academia - the archivists, the librarians and the publishing houses, and to create and activate a public engaged in social science and humanities knowledge production that will be the creator, collector, curator and consumer of digitized academic resources. A dialogue between everyday pedagogy and specialized research should be set in motion, to develop synergies between those working in the field, and in classrooms, to discuss the application of detailed historical work to undergraduate syllabi. An online Bulletin board can be conceived, which will serve as a one-stop info gateway providing information about events, seminars, workshops, new books and research. Simple things such as sharing academic calendars/ plans/problems can be easily sorted out using the this bulletin board, or through an email list dedicated to the academic community. Sarai would like to facilitate an attempt of this kind. But such an endeavour can only work through the cooperation of those working in and/or interested in academia. Your responses on this list will be a great way to start thinking more concretely about this. Please post your responses to the project idea on the Reader list or to write to Saumya Gupta (saumya at sarai.net) best saumya -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020416/4bf47036/attachment.html From monica at sarai.net Tue Apr 16 18:08:35 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 18:08:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] gujarat today: first person account Message-ID: Dear All I have brought this from another list. But it needs to be read, and as the writer - Shabnam Hashmi - writes at the bottom, the silence needs to be broken. Monica ------------------------------ Date: 15 Apr 2002 16:49:21 -0000 From: "shankar chandra" Subject: Re: Fw: 17 April PROTEST MARCH this was written by Shabnam Hashmi, the wife of film-maker Gauhar Raza who was shooting a film in gujrat. please circulate it to as many people as you can to show that we can, that we will unite in protest against fascism. let us break the silence. shankar. >Gauhar bhai, jab mera beta akele bahar jata hai, main use nazar bhar >ke dekh leta hoon, he said as we were leaving. The atmosphere was >very tense, we knew it was not safe on the roads but we couldn't tear >away ourselves from him. Educated, refined, sensitiveŠ > >He talked to us for over two hours. He broke down a number of times, >apologised and started crying again. His house was not burnt, no life >was lost in his family. And no one asked him if he was alive, not >even close friendsŠ > >The city is full of traffic. An old acquaintance tells me normalcy is >returning. > >Gauhar is recording at the studio in a market place, my 15 year old >son, Sahir, has run out of film rolls, we go to a shop and buy rolls. >We see the cameraman, going towards the car. Sahir asks me : where is >abbu? In the middle of the returned normalcy the shopkeeper loudly >repeats the word Abbu. I ask Sahir to run to the car and I run >upstairs to see if Gauhar is still in the studio. He has left. By the >time I climb down, the shopkeeper is talking to someone on the phone. >I hear clearly, "the boy said abbu, must be Muslims". I run to the >car, Gauhar is standing outside; I push him inside and tell the >driver to immediately start. > >Two Muslim kids are not so lucky. They dare to come to CG Road to eat >at a fast food joint. Surrounded and beaten up, they somehow escape >leaving the car behind. > >They have defied the VHP's ten commandments, which asks all Hindutva >followers not to buy anything from a Muslim shopkeeper and not to >sell anything from their shop to such elements! > >Yes, normalcy has returned to Modi's Gujarat. > >Mujib bhai informs us that there are 10,200 people in the Aman Chowk Camp. > >His eyes are absolutely expression less and defocused, he is not >looking at us but stares somewhere in the distance-they removed all >her clothes and raped my aunt, my nani tried to save her, they >chopped her hands and then burnt them aliveŠhe is only seven and is >from Naroda Patiya. > >There used be regular RSS shakhas in their village-they were from Mehsana. > >The commotion had started around 11 in the morningŠThe RSS in their >khakhis, the Bajrang Dal members were going on scooters to other >surrounding villagesŠand finally the mob arrived, leaving behind >tales of brutalities and barbarism > >I am suddenly feeling very uncomfortableŠmy sandles are full of black >sootŠ I begin to cry, I can visualise the bookrack where hundreds of >books must have been before they were turned into sootŠ. This is an >advocate's houseŠ > >The next house is Justice Divecha's; his wife shows Gauhar the burnt >clock, which is still showing the time of the attack. There is >nothing in these two houses, not even memories. We see the remains of >the citizen's award on the wall, a few patrol bombs. > >The next house is half burnt, the goons have spared the lower >portions of the walls, they have obviously used gas hereŠ > >Naroda Patia, Gomtipur, Chartoda Kabristan camp, DariapurŠeverywhere >the same stories, one more horrendous than the previous one. > >We hid all the children in a room, first the police fired and then >they gave a green signal to the mob, the looting, killing, torching >of houses, gang rape began, the police realised that someone had >hidden the children in a house, they break the wall and hurl a tear >gas shell insideŠ > >Vajpayee ji, you have the courage to show your face to these people. >Or will you just write another meaningless verse and get it endorsed >by Š > >Ahsan Jaffery had dared to campaign against Modi during the >by-electionŠ The message is clear, the goons, beat him up, hack his >body into three parts, carry his head in the colony, urinate on his >dead body and then burn him. > >The NDA must keep quite, Paswan ji would loose his minister ship, >Naidu has closed his eyes, they are true Gandhi followers-bura mat >dekho, bura mat sunoŠ > >Father is very angryŠhe shows us an official press note, released by >Naushir Dwedi, PS to the Health Minister of Gujarat. The press >release terming the following organisations as terrorist outfits >accuses the Citizen's Initiative, St. Xaviers's Social Society and >others of defaming Gujarat internationally. > >We are about to leave from another relief camp when we meet two >doctors. They meet us very cordially and the one of them takes out >pen and paper. He wants to know where have we come from, needs our >addresses as the govt. has instructed him to keep a record of >everyone who enters the camp. Another survey? > >We are sitting with a very close friend, every peace attempt has been >attackedŠ. Peace dharna at IIM, the Gandhi ashram meeting, the peace >hoardings, there is hopelessness, despair, He tells us our only hope >now is solidarity from other states, if you don't mobilise support >then we are doomedŠ > >He is leaving for his meeting, I shout after him-I will come back >soon, he returns hugs me tightly and runs away, I know he is crying... > >Every time we get down from our car to shoot, Father Cedric reminds >my son that his name is Siddharth, his father's name is Ramesh, don't >say abbuŠ > >We named him Sahir, after the great poet > >We are doing out last interview with an extremely enlightened >professor, direct descendant of Wali Gujrati > >We had a meeting of progressive writes and Majrooh Sultanpuri, Majaz, >Sahir Ludhyanwi, Josh and many more came from all over India. Josh >sahab wanted to visit Wali's tomb first, I took him thereŠ Wali was >the father of the Urdu language > >The professor is now 70+, a fighter all his lifeŠ. He has lost all >hope, his grand children are playing outside, they are not going to >schoolŠ > >Wali's tomb has been raised to the ground, we are shooting the tarred >road. Father has seen enough activity on the road to caution me to >call Gauhar and Sahir, we have to leave immediately > >We pick up our luggage and are about to leaveŠ. Suddenly this friend >says she wants us to see something Š I had hoped all these weeks, >after reading Harsh Mander's article that he was wrong on at least >one account, but all my hopes were shattered. The young lady has >brought photographs, photographs of not one pregnant woman but seven >different charred bodies, the unborn child, still clinging to the >split stomachŠI am totally shatteredŠ > >I have to go back. > >I imagine I am telling my friend-I will come back again and not >alone. If they are not letting you speak, we will come and speak. > >Will you join me in breaking the silence? -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From vidyashah at hotmail.com Tue Apr 16 14:15:00 2002 From: vidyashah at hotmail.com (vidya shah) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:15:00 Subject: [Reader-list] Invitation to film Message-ID: I am screening my film titled "Architecture in India - Ahmedabad" at the IIC main auditorium on 17th April, Wednesday at 6.30 pm.. There will be a small introduction by Dr. Jyotindra Jain. The documentary is on architecture of Ahmedabad, the people who live in it and the socio-cultural aspects related to the city structure and contemporary situation. Hope to see you on 17th at India International Centre, 40 max Mueller Marg, New Delhi-3 Parthiv Shah _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From tarunksaint at sify.com Tue Apr 16 21:31:28 2002 From: tarunksaint at sify.com (tarunksaint) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 21:31:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Partition and holocaust Message-ID: <001501c1e560$28fee8a0$d750d6d2@default> hello all, I'm sure the list administrator smiled today. Such a rich exchange of views, and some first-rate writing to boot. This is what reader lists should be like. It's nice to be reclaimed from purgatory! Some interesting insights based on the comparison of the partition and the Holocaust in Rana's posting. The questions he raises are apt and require a more elaborate response than is perhaps possible in this posting. However, on the specific point as regards representation of the partition in literature, one can hazard a few ideas in response. On the contrary, rather than just silence, as Alok Rai has pointed out, the partition generated a whole host of narratives in the early phase which in Manto's phrase, (in Khuda ki kasam) saturated the senses of the readers. Salacious stories about the violation and disfigurement of women in particular and about violence in general circulated widely, and drew on the repertoire engendered by communal violence in previous decades. it was this sort of writing that writers like Manto began to engage with, and ironise. Alok Rai calls this writing 'a pornography of violence'. it was thus easier for conventional moralists perhaps to classify Manto the way they did, given the lurid outpourings then prevalent in both communities, perhaps more visible amongst Hindus and Sikhs on this side of the Radcliffe line. the variant of psychic numbness in the case of this experience was thus a little different from that of the Jewish survivors or the hibakusha, after the atom bomb exploded in Hiroshima. In the instance of the holocaust, the imperative to bring to justice to the perpetrators lent an urgent moral dimension to the narratives about the worst excesses of fascism (one could think of Resnais' Night and Fog as an early instance of documentation of the genocidal machine in the aftermath, and recently Eichmann in Jerusalem, screened here at the Documenta event, as an attempt to grapple with the banality of evil which Arendt has eloquently written about). it is also true that 'the Holocaust industry' ( the title of Finkelstein's book on this subject) has exerted a pernicious influence on public opinion on the middle east in the U. S., and on American foreign policy, but that's a debate which has received a fair share of attention. Imperatives of nation building, in the case of south Asia, led to a strange dichotomy arising, in which public proclamations of secular nationalism were accompanied by a denial of the atrocities and revenge killings, the pogroms and abductions, even as the killers went scot-free. Meanwhile, narratives about the other community continued to be in motion, like a blight on the imagination. It would be absurd to argue for just one kind of writing about partition in a prescriptive sense. That may be a matter of personal predilection as well . But there are political implications to the way in which there has been a recent resurrection of the tropes and set pieces, the stereotypes and images of that phase. This has been the case in the vernacular press, in the realm of propaganda videos, and writing in languages such as Hindi as Ravi Kant has pointed out. the metaphor of partition has never had such resonance, on both sides of the border. The comparison made as regards the sacralisation of the Holocaust thus does not really apply in this case. it is as if the Eichmann trial never happened, as if the Nazi party were able to reinvent itself in an acceptable way, and then get on with business as usual. No taboo has been left unspared in terms of the scrutiny and close study which followed the fascist era. Here, the internal violence of honour killings, and the systematic decimation in the external sphere across North India is just beginning to come to the fore. Anders Hansen has actually termed that violence in the public domain a variant of genocide, even though state involvement was restricted to becoming a passive witness. The writing on the subject of the partition at its worst has been cloying and nostalgic; at its best it has allowed for a reexamination of the partition metaphor from a variety of angles, especially so in the context of recent episodes of communal violence. The fascism of the everyday has a history to it, certainly, unless we are to ascribe a primordialist irrationality to the people at large. And one looks forward to writing that breaks up the myths of naïve nationalism, that redefines the rules of representation . The bleak and unsparing ironies of Abdullah Hussein in The Weary Generations, or the surrealist tone and black humour (predicated on a reworking of Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist mythologies) in some of Intizar Hussain's stories are examples of this. I only wish that film-makers were as imaginative, given the reach of the medium (yes, Karvan did have its share of problems as well!) . More anon, Rgds, Tarun -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020416/575c03ac/attachment.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Wed Apr 17 01:20:52 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 20:50:52 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] english: a Rant Message-ID: <20020416195052.70071.qmail@web8102.in.yahoo.com> Dear all, One should rant about english. I am not too sure why. Being a General English teacher, one who is in the midst of the politics of english in India, my experience has taught me that we could really be barking up the completely wrong tree when (a) we dismiss english as the coloniser's language; (b) we celebrate, inadvertently, its links to an expert culture (that's too easy a reading of english; this reading, especially in its variant of being "class-specific" fits too easily with the harangue of Indian politicians, viz Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav, to name two across time-space); and when (c) we offer some other language as THE solution to the "language problem" in India, or even 15 languages (the history of such decisions has to be re-examined) I once asked students in my class to write an essay: General English: necessity or burden? The compositions I got are instructive. I will post them (still typing them in!) Meanwhile here is a "rant" on english in english ("on english in english": this is the best "excuse", some think; I have begun to think this is the worst kind of reactionism): There are two kinds of beings in India. Engcans and engcants. Engcans are those who make it, engcants are those who can’t. The government of the state, the governments of the states as well as the government of the Union the states comprise in India, should begin to actively consider the importance of english to the lives of the human beings that together make up the totality of voters that time and again vote the states, and the State, in other words the Indian Union, into being. For in all these states, in the State and therefore in the Indian Union there exist some people who know english, who possess a knowledge of english and actively use this knowledge to make their lives better. In every state in the State that is otherwise known as the Indian Union there are people who are born into a condition that is inseparable from the inculcation of english, these people who are born into families that know english and are born of parents who know english because english was inseparable from their lives as well start to inculcate english throughout their lives and actively using this knowledge are able to find for themselves the best route to prosperity and hence happiness. Outwardly such people are prosperous and so inwardly these people are at peace, in India people are not inwardly at peace unless outwardly they are prosperous, unless people in India are outwardly obviously prosperous they are just not happy. And only some, actually, very few in India are happy, and this simply because they have access to english. And can articulate in it. Yet what the governments do in all the states that together somehow comprise the Indian Union, what even the Union government does is to make sure that the majority of its voters do not get to articulate in english. An educational system is deployed to keep the majority of the population out of the Indian human requirement of knowing english, on the one hand a vast "public" school system is kept in place to train some, a few, to articulate in english, and on the other a larger number of government schools are created to keep out the truth that arrival and articulation in english are twin tracks. While some are allowed to keep on track, many more are thrown by politicians of all hues and intentions off track. This can be incontrovertibly proved. One day a guy turned up in the room I and my fellow riftline-dancers by employment sit, he’s from a small town in Bijnore district, he's come to clarify a point of grammar. It is known that in the genitive case, he said, ‘she’ is rendered as ‘hers’. Thus, he said, we have a sentence like ‘This book is hers’. Sitting opposite my fellow riftline-dancer with intense involvement he further said that whereas it was possible to make a sentence he had just made, it was not possible to say a sentence like ‘This book is his’. He was from a small town, he said, not from a place where a university like the one I uphold the system in exists, and in this small town which everybody studies in and then leaves, his brother had studied in the college and left to go to Dilli for a job, he had come to visit his brother, he said, and decided to use the occasion to clarify a confusion, as he put it, for the last two months he had been arguing with his little sister’s tutor on this point, that when changing a sentence like ‘He said to him, “This book is yours” ’ to its Indirect or Reported form, as he put it, we could not say ‘He said to him that book was his’.It was not possible, he said. I totally jolted out of my usual stupor, as you keep sitting in your departmentally accorded chair it is best in order to survive to go into a stupor, I awakened asked him how he could say that. This man looked at me and told me that in the grammar book he had consulted published by some University in India as a textbook his sister and her tutor also used, in this textbook, he said, under the column for the genitive case, and in the row ‘he’ was written, against the ‘he’, as he put it, there was no ‘his’. So how could one say ‘He told him that book was his’? He would be grateful, he would be indebted, as he characterised his attitude, if we who were teachers in a big university where the english was learnt, as he put it, could clear his confusion, as he put it. I for some reason I still cannot fathom I got utterly irritated with him and snapped open with the key I have been given by the department the shelf, the second shelf of a departmentally accorded cupboard, I have been departmentally accorded. From the departmentally accorded shelf that is just to the left of the departmentally accorded chair I have been given, I dragged out my bag, snapped it open, and took out Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage. Opening Swan to the relevant page (I knew the page, I had recently read it while preparing for the General English classes on the grammar of the transformation of sentences from Direct Speech to Indirect or Reported Speech, this in itself is a travesty I am performing, instead of following the official textbook to class whose idea of grammar has long been rendered obsolete I take Michael Swan’s book to the class, I tell students who... but enough) I showed him that it was possible to use ‘his’ in the genitive case and so construct the sentence form he found unconstructible. The man was utterly convinced. Totally convinced, he asked my permission, could he have the permission, as he put it, to take down the name of the book I had just then shown him, so that he could go to a Dilli bookshop and buy that book to take back to his town, Dilli is a megapolis, he said, and in a megapolis good colleges are, he knew, he said, he knew instinctively, as he put it, he would get the answer to his question there. He would buy that book and give it to his little sister’s tutor, he would give it to Vermaji, Vermaji had done his MA from the college in town and had not left, he had gone into teaching english, he would show Vermaji that the form ‘his’ existed and his little sister would learn the correct english, his sister would now learn the correct english, as he put it. That guy was saying many things. I didn’t hear. My head was swimming. I could’nt believe that such human beings existed in India any longer who thought for two months on a question of grammar. That there’d be somebody who could actually have such faith in the space of employment I was systematically upholding to the bone as to actually visit system-upholders by employment and ask them to clarify a matter of grammatical form. Thinking this and in the midst of my incredulity and an absolutely alien feeling of soaring joy, I heard him say how the book would improve his little sister’s english and rudely interrputed him. Breaking into his words, I very arrogantly told him that he was making a big mistake. In India, all Indians want to know english. But then, in some strange way or as they pass through an unequal educational system, the majority of Indians come to believe that knowing english means learning english grammar. The heavily weighted educational system in India does this, most who pass through this system somehow come to believe that to know english one must learn english grammar. And so force the next generation to learn english grammar instead of english. “You want your little sister to know english?” I asked him. He nodded enthusiastically. “Then buy books for her, story books, books on history, books that will help her understand how the world is,” I told him. I told him then that when he used the word ‘english’ he meant ‘articulation in english’ and not english grammar, which he thought ‘english’ meant. Grammar comes later, first it is the language, I told him. He nodded slowly. My fellow syllabus-imparter here took up the argument. I stopped, and then stopped listening to him. I distinctly remember I sat and thought through this man about his little sister, another engcant in the making, I thought with horror. You want to imagine in english, in my mind I imagined I was speaking to him, and you imagine that grammar is the means. Crazy. Stop. Don’t make an engcant. Instead of a human being, your sister will become a grammatical being. The dramah of grammah leads to the death of many. I tell you, everybody in India wants to know english, and are actively prevented from doing so. I now realise this clearly. I also now realise I am an active producer of engcants. Engcants are produced by me carrying attendance register, official textbook, attendance pen to class. With chalk I draw out the riftline in class, reducing a space of conversation to a place of engcant-production. Eyes on the blackboard. Grammar is being taught. I actively prevent the production of engcans, thereby actively supervising the maintenance of the riftline between engcants and engcans. I now realise that being a buffer has turned me into a duffer, for only a duffer produces riftlines in the lifeworld. yours, pp ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From announcements-request at sarai.net Thu Apr 18 10:15:35 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 06:45:35 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #35 - 6 msgs Message-ID: <200204180445.GAA22693@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Admission Notification of Courses of Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya(MCRP (Sagnik Chakravartty) 2. Admission Form of MCRPV (Sagnik Chakravartty) 3. Film Screening (Sagnik Chakravartty) 4. M A in Mass Communication and Journalism Course in Tezpur University (Sagnik Chakravartty) 5. FW: H-Gender-MidEast: CfP: SEPHIS: Labour Migration in an Earlier Phase of Global Restructuring (Ravi Vasudevan) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: 17 Apr 2002 12:41:01 -0000 From: "Sagnik Chakravartty" Reply-To: "Sagnik Chakravartty" To: announcements at sarai.net Cc: ranita at sarai.net Subject: [Announcements] Admission Notification of Courses of Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya(MCRP MAKHANLAL CHATURVEDI RASHTRIYA PATRAKARITA VISHWAVIDYALAYA (MCRPV) ADMISSION NOTICE-2002 University Teaching Department Bhopal Campus Name of the Programme Duration Eligibility Seats Centre for Journalism Studies Master of Journalism (MJ) One Year Any Graduate 25 P.G. Diploma in Applied Translation, (PGDAT) One year Any Graduate 20 P.G. Diploma in Creative Writing,(PGDCW) One year Any Graduate 20 Centre for Mass Communication Studies M.A. in Mass Communication Two years Any Graduate 20 Centre for Public Relations,Advertising & Management Studies M.A. in Advertising &Public Relations Two years Any Graduate 25 M.A. in Multimedia & Commercial Arts Two years Any Graduate 25 P.G. Diploma in Public Relations One year Any Graduate 20 P.G. Diploma in Multi Media One year Any Graduate 20 P.G. Diploma in Commercial Arts One year Any Graduate 20 Centre for Library & Information Science Studies Master of Library & Information Science (M.L.I.S.) (Digital Networking) One year BLIS/BLib 25 P.G. Diploma in Library Automation One year BLIS/BLib 20 Centre for Audio- Visual Studies M.A. in Broadcast Journalism Two years Any Graduate 25 P.G. Diploma in Video Production One years Any Graduate 20 Centre for Computer Science and Application Studies Master of Computer Applications (M.C.A.) Three years Graduation with Maths at 10+2 level 40 Master of Science in Information Technology[M.Sc.(IT)] Two years BE-Computer, BCA, BIT, BSc (IT), PGDCA 60 Bachelor of Computer application (B.C.A.) Three years 10+2 60 For Noida Campus Master of Journalism (MJ) Two years Any Graduate 25 M. A. in Broadcast Journalism Two years Any Graduate 25 Bachelor of Journalism (BJ) Three years 10+2 25 M. A. in Advertising &Public Relations Two years Any Graduate 25 Two seats in each computer course are reserved for NRI or NRI sponsored candidates. Instructions: Selection shall be made on the basis of Entrance Test to be held on 9 June 2002 at the following Centers- Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubneshwar, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kolkotta, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi , Patna, Raipur, Ranchi, Shimla Trivandram. The University reserve the rights to Add or Cancel the Examination Centre depending upon the no. of applicants. Reservation for SC/ST/OBC candidates shall be as per rules. 3% reservation for persons with disabilities. Candidates appearing in their eligibility examination may also apply but they would be required to submit proof of having passed that examination latest by 15/8/2002 failing which they will not be admitted. Candidates may apply for appearing in the Entrance Test, in the following format along with 2 passport size photographs and Demand Draft of Rs. 250 drawn in favour of the "Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vihawadilaya" payable at Bhopal so as to reach the office latest by 31st May 2002. Candidate may apply for any number of courses in the same format but he/she will have to give the preference clearly. Click Here for Admission Application Form. --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: 17 Apr 2002 12:40:25 -0000 From: "Sagnik Chakravartty" Reply-To: "Sagnik Chakravartty" To: announcements at sarai.net Cc: ranita at sarai.net Subject: [Announcements] Admission Form of MCRPV Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya P.O. No. RSN-560, E-8, Trilochan Nagar, Shahpura, Bhopal-462039. Phone : 0755-725559, 294903 Fax : 561970 Application for Admission 2002 Application for Admission at (Please ayour Choice) Bhopal Noida Fix your self Attessted Photograph here 1. Course(s) Applied for 1.____________________ 2.______________________ 3_____________________ 4.______________________ 2. Name (in block letters) ______________________________________________ 3. Father's Name ______________________________________________ 4. Mother's name ______________________________________________ Staple your Photograph here 5. Date of Birth ______________________________________________ 6. Address with PINCode and Phone Number ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ 7. Educational Qualification (Attached certified copies of marksheets) S.No Exam.Passed+2 & Onwards Year Board/Univarsity Main Subject Division 8. Exam Centre Preference (Name of the City) 1. ______________ 2.______________ 3. _____________ 9. Category SC/ ST/ OBC/ General/ NRI /Disabled __________________________________________________ 10.Bank Name, DD No., Amount. & Date __________________________________________________ Date Signature of Applicant -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- General Instructions 1. Selection : Selection shall be made on the basis of All India Entrance Test to be held on 9 June 2002 at the following Examination Centers* : 1. Ahmedabad 2. Bangalore 3. Bhopal 4. Bhubneshwar 5. Chandigarh 6. Dehradun 7. Guwahati 8. Hyderabad 9. Jaipur 10. Jammu 11. Kolkotta 12. Lucknow 13. Mumbai 14. Nagpur 15. New Delhi 16. Patna 17. Raipur 18. Ranchi 19. Shimla 20.Trivandram * The University reserve the rights to Add or Cancel the Examination Centre depending upon the no. of applicants. 2. Reservation : Reservation for SC/ST/OBC candidates shall be as per rules. 3% reservation for persons with disabilities. 3. Eligibility : Candidates appearing in their eligibility examination may also apply but they would be required to submit proof of having passed that examination latest by 15/8/2002 failing which they will not be admitted. 4 Candidates may apply for appearing in the Entrance Test, in the format given above along with 2 passport size photographs and Demand Draft of Rs. 250 drawn in favour of the "Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya" payable at Bhopal so as to reach the office latest by 31th May 2002. 5. Candidate may apply for any number of courses in the same format but he/she will have to give the preference clearly. --__--__-- Message: 3 Date: 17 Apr 2002 13:03:34 -0000 From: "Sagnik Chakravartty" Reply-To: "Sagnik Chakravartty" To: announcements at sarai.net Subject: [Announcements] Film Screening FILM CLUB India International Centre Additional screening: On Friday, 19th April at 6.30 pm PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WITH A MAN IN THE BACKGROUND (Spain) (102 min; 1996; 35 mm; English sub-titles) Director: Manane Rodriguez When Cristina, a 35 =96 year =96 old lawyer, comes to the conclusion that love is a source of permanent pain, tears and obsessions, she constructs a perfect protection around herself. She has a profession that she likes and is good at; a house that she loves and rules; a steady lover to entertain her in her free time whom she can leave whenever the time comes=85 but, one day she falls in love and the first chinks in her armour begin to show (Collaboration: Embassy of Spain) Film Club members are requested to please show their membership cards at the gates. Entry for these screenings is restricted to members of the IIC Film Club Please note: Single Membership - Entry valid for 1 person Double Membership - Entry valid for 2 persons Associate Membership- Entry valid for 2 persons L.S.Tochhawng Assistant Programme Officer 40, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi 110003 Telephone: 461 9431 Fax: 462 7751 --__--__-- Message: 4 Date: 17 Apr 2002 14:02:37 -0000 From: "Sagnik Chakravartty" Reply-To: "Sagnik Chakravartty" To: announcements at sarai.net Cc: ranita at sarai.net Subject: [Announcements] M A in Mass Communication and Journalism Course in Tezpur University TEZPUR UNIVERSITY NAPAAM::TEZPUR::784028, Assam Admission Notification :: 2002-2003 Applications are invited from eligible candidates for admission into Master of Mass Communication and Journalism Programme. Eligibility : i) Candidates with a bachelor's degree in any discipline from a recognised Indian/Foreign University. ii) Candidates who are appearing or have appeared in the qualifying exam in 2002 can also appear at the admission test. How to apply :Application forms together with prospectus may be obtained from any of the following places.(A) The Academic Section by paying Rs. 250/- (Rupees Two Hundred Fifty) only in cash or by Bank Draft. OR by sending a request together with a self-addressed unstamped envelope of size 27cm x 23cm superscribed " Admission MCJ, 2002 " accompanied by a Bank Draft for Rs. 300/-(Rupees Three Hundred) only, (B) Main branches of SBI at Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur, Bongaigaon, Silchar, Shillong, Imphal, Itanagar, Aizwal, Agartala and at Panbazar branch of SBI, Guwahati by paying Rs. 260/-(Rupees Two Hundred Sixty) only (C) Law College, Tezpur by paying Rs. 250/-(Rupees Two Hundred Fifty) only in cash or by bank draft (D)) web-site (http://www.tezu.ernet.in.) Application forms downloaded from the web-site will have to be submitted alongwith a Bank Draft of Rs.250/- (Rupees Two Hundred and Fifty) only. Bank Draft should be drawn in favour of the Registrar, Tezpur University payable at Tezpur. Sale of Prospectus and Application form by the Academic Section, Tezpur University and Law College, Tezpur 23-04-2002 to 17-05-2002 Postal sale of Prospectus and Application form 23-04-2002 to 06-05-2002 Sale of Prospectus and Application format SBI branches mentioned above 01-05-2002 to 10-05-2002 Application form can be downloaded from the web-site from 23-04-2002 Application forms complete in all respects should reach the Head, Deptt. of Mass Communication and Journalism, Tezpur University on or before 17-05-2002. Application received after the expiry of the last date will be rejected. The University will not bear any responsibility for any postal delay. Sd/-Academic Registrar --__--__-- Message: 5 Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 19:46:00 -0700 To: announcements at sarai.net From: Ravi Vasudevan Subject: [Announcements] FW: H-Gender-MidEast: CfP: SEPHIS: Labour Migration in an Earlier Phase of Global Restructuring >From: abraham >To: "'raviv at sarai.net'" >Subject: FW: H-Gender-MidEast: CfP: SEPHIS: Labour Migration in an Earlier > Phase of Global Restructuring >Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 18:25:23 -0400 >X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) >X-AntiVirus: scanned for viruses by AMaViS 0.2.1 (http://amavis.org/) > > > >Can you forward? >thanks >i >-----Original Message----- >From: shami >To: Anh Nga Longva (E-mail); Annelies Moors (E-mail); abraham >Sent: 4/10/02 6:15 PM >Subject: FW: H-Gender-MidEast: CfP: SEPHIS: Labour Migration in an Earlier >Phase of Global Restructuring > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Martina Rieker [mailto:mrieker at aucegypt.edu] >Sent: Wed, April 10, 2002 5:16 PM >To: H-GENDER-MIDEAST at H-NET.MSU.EDU >Subject: H-Gender-MidEast: CfP: SEPHIS: Labour Migration in an Earlier >Phase of Global Restructuring > > >Labour Migration in an Earlier Phase of Global Restructuring >Call for papers >A SEPHIS Workshop in Xiamen (P.R. of China) >10-12 December 2002 > > > >Migration of labour is a prominent feature of the latest round of global >restructuring, reflecting ongoing changes in the international division >of >work. The sharp increase in mobility has given rise to increased control >by >state agencies. Towards the end of the 20th century, the number of >labour-sending and labour-receiving countries has increased, and >currently >at >least 150 million people live outside their countries of origin. As the >World >Bank has pointed out, today's migrants increasingly come from poor >countries >and their stay in the host countries is becoming shorter. More than half >the >global flow of migrants is now between developing countries. > >The large-scale movement of workers over short and long distances is >anything >but a new phenomenon. The intercontinental trek always seems to have >drawn >more attention than the flow of labour within regional or national >settings, >although the latter is likely to have been even more massive. Labour >migration >has resulted in ethnically specified diversity and the articulation of >important new cultural identities. For example, societies in the >Caribbean >and >in Latin America (e.g. the Guyanas, Cuba and Brazil) owe their very >existence >to immigration from other parts of the world, especially Africa and >Asia. On >the other hand, it is well known that there are regions that have >exported >large contingents of labour to faraway destinations for many generations >(e.g. >the Hakkas of South China and the Biharis of the Gangetic plain in >India). > >This Sephis workshop focuses on the social history of labour migration >taking >place from the 1850s to the end of the 20th century. The basic idea in >concentrating on these temporal boundaries is that the work-related >migration >that took place during the colonial period signalled fundamental shifts >in >the >global economy, transforming the relationship between capital and labour >outside the metropolitan zone and in a way that was till then beyond the >reach >of market and state. Today, there is an urgent need for a better >comparative >understanding of the historical links between this colonial migration >and >the >postcolonial trajectories of culturally pluriform societies and states >in >the >South. > >The immobility long ascribed to precolonial and pre-industrial economies >is >deeply misconceived and actually inspired by notions held by colonial >policy >makers. These economies were not stagnant at all but should be defined >as >frontier societies shaped by a political configuration in which >territoriality >was not the organising principle for the exercise of power. Regular >labour >migration did occur, and even to remote destinations, by peoples reputed >to >be >'without history'. However, it is also our contention that a new >mobility >pattern emerged around the middle of the 19th century when, within the >framework of colonial rule, industrial capitalism began to develop in >sectors >previously rather peripheral to state power. Plantations and mines were >opened >up and these gave rise to the large-scale mobilisation of 'coolie >labour'; >industrialism came to these (semi-) colonised societies as a rural >rather >than >as an urban phenomenon. > >A local work force was either not available or was unwilling to become >engaged >in the new enterprises. Moreover, for reasons of control, employers were >distinctly in favour of recruitment from far away. At the same time, >breakthroughs in transport technology resulted in a reduction of travel >time >and travel cost. Coal-based steam made travel (both by rail and by ship) >less >prone to seasonal variation. A complex infrastructure of roads, railway >lines, >ports and other public works developed (together with sites of >inspection >and >surveillance, including cantonments and prisons) to facilitate the >movement >of >migrants and subsequently that of the commodities they produced. >Constructing >and maintaining this complex infrastructure was in itself a laborious >task >which required an enormous reservoir of navvies, very often immigrants >themselves. > >The workshop concentrates on the nature of the migratory process. We >invite >paper proposals that treat the following themes historically: >* the identities of migrant workers and their different professions and >trades; >* the modalities of recruitment and passage, and the maintenance of >'home' >links. > >Identities. Most migrants who were transformed into industrial wage >labourers >are thought to have originated from a land-poor or landless milieu, to >have >been engaged in coolie labour in mines and plantations, and to have been >young >and predominantly male. We would like the papers to examine these >assumptions >critically. Papers may also consider to what extent such migrant >identities >and gendered cultural constructs of migrants impinged on cultural >diversities >in postcolonial societies. > >We especially invite papers dealing with migrants who remained >self-employed >as artisans, shopkeepers and petty traders or who qualified for clerical >positions in the government apparatus. Their migration was in many cases >not >regulated or registered but came about by relying on social networks and >support from migrant 'bridgeheads' already established in the country of >arrival: Chinese in Southeast Asia, Armenians in South Asia, Indians in >East >Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Arabs in Southeast Asia, Chinese in the >Caribbean and Central America, and so on. What were their motives for >migration? Were they fleeing poverty or cash taxation, or did they have >other >motives? > >Recruitment and passage. In today's international migration, recruitment >agencies play a crucial role. These can be legal or illegal, and >recruitment >can be based on various forms and institutions of compulsion and force >('human >trafficking'). But how were recruitment and transport arranged in the >earlier >period? What (colonial) state policies informed recruitment drives, and >how >did these interact with the activities of commercial recruitment >agencies? >States intervened by appointing 'protectors' to deal with malpractices >in >recruitment and transport but they also intervened as active parties in >disciplining migrant labour. How did migrants make use of recruitment >agencies >and state migration policies? Under which circumstances did they >mobilise to >resist and protest? What links did they maintain with their 'home' >societies? > >The workshop is especially well placed to explore comparatively how our >findings for the colonial period relate to current debates about labour >migration, human trafficking, and diasporic communities in the early >21st >century. The present global movement of labour builds in significant >ways on >the patterns and relationships established during that earlier phase of >global >restructuring. > >Authors are invited to submit a one page paper proposal indicating the >scope, >nature and approach of their intended papers and Academic CV (maximum of >3 >pages). Such proposals in English must reach the SEPHIS Secretariat by >15th >June 2002. Final drafts of satisfactory papers are due by 1st November >2002 > >Conference papers in languages other than English must be submitted by >1st >October 2002 to allow enough time for English translations as the >language >of >the conference is English. > Ravi Vasudevan The Sarai Programme Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-110054 India Tel. 395-1190, 394-2119, 396-0040 Fax. 394-3450 --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From joy at sarai.net Thu Apr 18 12:40:54 2002 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy Chatterjee) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 12:40:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] english: a Rant In-Reply-To: <20020416195052.70071.qmail@web8102.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020418121028.00a65ea0@mail.sarai.net> Dear All, In the context of discusion about English and elite, I found the following article very interesting. What fascinates me the way Mr. Balbir Punj has cleverly isolated the elitist leadership of VHP and constructs english usage as elite and religious faith as non elite practice. If we look back at the history of religion in Indian sub continent, there had always been a hierarchy of god and goddesses. Upper cast hindus used to hate gods of the lower caste. Worshiping such god was supposed to be derogatory act by brahmins, one could become out caste by such act. So hindu religion by itself is not a homogenous classless practice. In the present world of populist politics, complexity of religion has been hidden under the rhetoric of elitism and non elitism. And what disturbing is hindu brand and other politicians trying to capitalise on the segregation and discrimination in social exposure (education, culture and other social practices) created by whole elite society whether english speaking or not. Best Joy Children of lesser gods Balbir K Punj http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/180402/detide01.asp Looking back on the incidents of last month, two contrasting images stand out in my mind. First, Arundhati Roy smilingly accepting flowers after spending 24 hours in Tihar Jail in a contempt case. Second, innumerable armed policemen stalking the streets of Ayodhya to ensure the VHP's compliance with the Supreme Court order. While the 'goddess of small things' received honours, the children of lesser gods, innocent Ram sewaks were lampooned and turned into monsters by the elite, the media and the 'secularists'. Thanks to the demonisation of Ram sewaks, a Muslim mob felt enraged enough at Godhra to set ablaze 58 innocent people returning by Sabarmati Express from Ayodhya, which ultimately led to communal riots all over Gujarat. From the rousing reception Roy received on her release, and the spate of articles and discussions on various channels that followed, it appeared that the lady had spent a lifetime behind bars for a great national cause. Interestingly, those who feted Arundhati Roy for her 'great sacrifice' (a symbolic imprisonment of 24 hours), cried hoarse to coerce the establishment to use the entire might of the Indian State to ensure that the VHP did not have its 'symbolic puja' for a day on a piece of land in contravention of any court orders. Finally, they had their way following the March 13 Supreme Court order. But those rejoicing the 'victory of secularism' or 'the court rising above Ram' are not doing so out of any deference to the judiciary. Their track record is replete with instances of upturning court verdicts, of silencing all dissent by sending the opposition to jail, and subverting judgments to suit their ideological preferences or sectional interests. Nationalisation of banks, abolition of privy purses, the Shah Bano case, quota for SC/ST in promotions in government services are some such instances. Court orders were overturned through constitutional amendments. Remember the unseating of Indira Gandhi by the Allahabad High Court and how the law was changed under the dark cover of Emergency to circumvent the judgment and legitimise her election. It was Indira Gandhi in 1975. Today, it's Arundhati Roy. In the same vein, the 'liberal and progressive' legal experts and commentators ganged up in no time in Roy's defence and termed the Supreme Court judgment convicting Roy as "highly illiberal". They saw in her conviction the 'misuse' of the criminal contempt provision, portending a threat to the freedom of expression and of the press. But what about the Ram sewaks? Trains and buses were stopped miles away from Ayodhya forcing them to trudge along long distances to reach the holy city. On the way, they were searched, roughed up and in several cases sent back unceremoniously. Scores of monkeys and cows starved to death in Ayodhya with no pilgrims to feed them. Leave alone protests from either human rights activists or animal lovers, the administration was continuously accused of not being ruthless enough with the Ram sewaks. Mark the difference. When it is between Roy and the court, she is the victim. When it is between the Ram sewaks and the judiciary, the Ram sewaks are the villains! What happened in the Supreme Court on March 13 left me perplexed. Let us have a quick recall of the dispute. Mir Baqi demolished a temple and built a mosque out of its rubble to humiliate the vanquished Hindus. Hindus have been struggling to regain for the last 400 years what they consider to be the birthplace of Lord Rama. In December 1992, a section of Hindus lost their patience and demolished the structure. Subsequently, the Narasimha Rao government acquired the adjoining land totalling 67 acres, most of it from Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas/VHP. All that the VHP wanted to do on March 15 was to perform a symbolic puja for a few hours on a small part of that 'undisputed' land which it owned and the government now holds as trustee. The 'secular brigade' saw the VHP puja plans as a grave threat to the Constitution and majesty of the law. Thanks to the hype created by the elite and the media, the commitment of the establishment to civil society became directly proportional to the extent it trampled upon the civil liberties of unarmed Ram sewaks. Following the March 13 order, Hindus who have been fighting to reclaim the Ramjanmabhoomi site for the last four centuries have now no right to offer even symbolic prayers for a day on a piece of land which had belonged to them till the government acquired the land about a decade back. All this in a country where multifarious social and religious activities (including namaaz, particularly on Fridays) are allowed on public lands without any questions asked. Mark that Muslims had never claimed this piece of 'undisputed' land. 'Undisputed' was one of the adjectives the Supreme Court's Constitution Bench had used repeatedly for this land in its judgment delivered on October 24, 1994. The bench had classified the land adjacent to the 'disputed land' as 'undisputed' only because the Hindus had challenged the acquisition of this acquired land. It was only the government which had contested the challenge by the Hindus. The Muslims never challenged it. Earlier, the dispute was confined to 2.77 acres, and now thanks to the Supreme Court order, it now extends to the entire 67 acres. In fact, the 1994 judgment is a law declared by the Supreme Court under Article 141 of the Constitution and binds all courts including all smaller benches of the Supreme Court. Could such a binding judgment be rendered ineffective by a subsequent court order by a smaller bench? And why does the elite treat Arundhati Roy and Ram sewaks so differently? Maybe it is the PLU (People Like Us) syndrome. Roy is a noted writer of English fiction and comes from an elite background. The elite can easily identify itself with her. Most Ram sewaks, on the other hand, are rustic, lack articulation, knowledge of English and exposure to a western way of life that Roy shares with the ruling class. The Ram sewaks normally come from a class which carries on with its mundane existence without any rancour thanks to its unstinting devotion to the Indian traditions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Most of them fear the law and have deep respect for their faith. The elite generally manipulates the law and has faith in none including in itself. Does this explain such paradoxes and their impact on society and how this will all end? From what I understand, I can only quote here Martin Luther King Jr's celebrated statement, which the civil rights activist wrote from Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Can we treat the likes of Arundhati Roy and Ram sewaks so differently and yet survive as a civil society? If so, for how long? From reyhanchaudhuri at id.eth.net Fri Apr 19 01:17:42 2002 From: reyhanchaudhuri at id.eth.net (Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 01:17:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To Sir(S) with Thoughts References: Message-ID: <003901c1e711$e8a25ea0$519909ca@P> Dear Mr.J.Chaudhuri, I read with great interest your inbox droppings.This is because (at the cost of sounding unpatriotic to some) I strongly feel in many ways English may be the language if not the only language that can save us.It is already you shall agree,well on it's way to becoming language of the world if not the cyberscape; However I beg to disagree with your friend from Bangladesh Mr.Chisti about Muslims not taking to the angrezi bhasha with the same fervour.There was an equally large proportion babucized among Muslims(I have a monstrously large matriarchal ancestral clan to vouch for that ).However during partition most of them if not nearly all, chose to or were preforced to (depends on the way you look at it) drive through the desert into the new country.It is common knowledge they became the new intellegentisia and began to run or manage key corners of education,public works,economic corporations.The white collar working class created a new, hardly snobbish elite, where the only remaining elite had been the feudal landowners and the military m