Forgive an outsider and staunch atheist like myself who, on reading the recent French press comments relating to Ilhem Moussaid the hijab-wearing NPA candidate in Avignon, gets the impression that something is rotten in French political culture.
Let’s take the debate at face-value. A young Muslim woman joins the NPA [New Anti-Capitalist Party]. She obviously agrees with its program that defends abortion, contraception, etc, i.e. a woman’s right to choose. She is then told that despite this she does not have the right to choose what she wears on her head. It’s astonishing. There is no Koranic injunction involved. The book
says: "Draw their (women's) veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty", which can be interpreted in several ways but is disregarded most blatantly by hijab-wearing Egyptian women I see in Cairo and Karachi wearing tight jeans and T-shirts that contradicted the spirit of the Koranic message.
Patriarchal traditions, cultural habits and identity are what is at stake here and they vary from generation to generation. Pushing people back into a ghetto never helps.
I grew up in a Communist family in Lahore. My mother never wore a veil. She set up a feminist group in the Fifties that worked with working class women in the poorest quarter of the city. Half of them covered their heads in public. It did not affect their activism in the slightest. Similar stories can be told of women in different parts of the world, Muslim and non-Muslim. The Algerian women who fought in the resistance against French republican colonialism did so as anti-imperialists. Some were partially veiled, others not. It did not affect the way they fought or the methods used by the French to torture them. Perhaps the torturers should have been more brutal to the hijabed freedom-fighters to help integrate their progeny better in the Republican tradition.
In 1968-9, the Pakistani students, workers, clerks and women (including prostitutes) fought for three months against a military dictatorship and won: the only victory of those years. The religious groups backed the military. They were isolated and defeated, but many of the women students who fought with us wore the hijab and chanted militant slogans against the Jamaat-i-Islami. Should we have told them they couldn’t participate unless they took off their head-cover? Personally, I would have preferred that for purely aesthetic reasons, but it made nil difference to our struggle.
The anger against Ilhem and the NPA is completely misplaced. The real state of the world leaves the defenders of the Republic completely unaffected: the million dead of Iraq, the continuing siege of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, the killing of innocents in Afghanistan, the US drone attacks in Pakistan, the brutal exploitation of Haiti, etc. Why is this the case?
Several years ago I noticed that French protests against the Iraq war were muted compared to the rest of Western Europe. I don’t accept that this was due to Chirac’s opposition to the war [after all de Gaulle had opposed the Vietnam war even more strongly], but to Islamophobia: an increasing intolerance of the Other in French society, reminiscent of the attitude towards Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The conformism of that period explains the popularity of Vichy during the early years of the war.
Islamophobes and anti-Semites share a great deal in common.
Cultural or ‘civilizational’ differences are highlighted to sanction immigrant communities in Europe. The narratives are multiple. No universalist response is possible. Immigrants and the countries to which they migrate are different to each other.
Take the United States for a start. This is a territory peopled by migrants, many of whom were Protestant fundamentalists, from the seventeenth century onwards and which has depended on migrations ever since.
In most of Western Europe the first large wave of migrants were from the former colonies of the European powers. In Britain, the migrants were from the Caribbean Islands and South Asia, in France from the Maghreb. Without abandoning their identities, they integrated in different ways and on different levels. The South Asians, principally peasants and a sprinkling of workers, were not treated well by the trades-unions. Despite this, South Asian migrant workers led some of the most memorable struggles for unionization.
The Indians in particular came from a highly politicized culture where Communism was strong and they brought this experience with them to Britain (like the New York taxi drivers today). The Pakistanis were less political and tended towards networking groups reflecting clan loyalties in their villages or cities of origin. The British governments encouraged religion by pleading for mullahs to arrive so that the migrants could be kept away from the racial currents in the working class during the 1960s and 1970s.
In France, there was forced integration. Each citizen was taught that s/he had the same rights, something that was patently not the case. It is material needs and a desire to live better that fuel the rage, not spiritual beliefs. During the eruption of the banlieus in 2005, Sarkozy, then Minister of Interior, like the ultras in Stendhal’s novels, talked of ‘savages.’ I have often pointed out to the discomfiture of even some leftists that the kids who rioted had integrated well by internalizing the best French traditions: 1789, 1793,1848, 1871, 1968. When oppression became unbearable the young built barricades and attacked property. Deprivation, not disbelief, was the root of their anger.
How many Western citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers undoubtedly took humanity forward by recognizing no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: "Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes." Hume: "The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words." There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the Islamophobic ravings in sections of the global media.
Marx famously wrote of religion as the ‘opium of the people’, but the sentence that followed is forgotten. Religion was also ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’ and this partially explains the rise of religiosity in every community since the collapse of Communism. Compare the young Normaliens trooping in to say Mass today to the horror of their parents. My women friends in the Muslim world complain bitterly when their daughters wear the hijab as a protest against familial norms. It was always thus.
A tribute read at the 75thbirthday party of Hari Sharma, 15 November 2009.
Hari and I were born in the British colony of India, he on the other side of eastern Punjab where the Hindi-Urdu linguistic community begins and I in the southern Siraiki-speaking belt of Punjab; the land now divided into India and Pakistan. We went to school when the raj was still intact and the Second World War, started by the imperialist powers, was still raging. The Punjabi youth were being enticed to join the British Indian Army with musical chants of “bharti ho ja rey recruit.” But we never knew each other until decades later when from different routes we ended up in North America in the 1960s at a time when the winds of change were blowing strong and turbulent.
As I recall those days from the vantage point of a visiting academic in a university town of the U.S. Midwest the majority of black, Afro-American, people trapped in the poverty-stricken ghettos of big cities were up in arms protesting
racial and economic discrimination. Riots, burning inner cities, and police shootings were the scenes brought daily on the TV screens in American homes when families assembled for evening meals. At the same time the young people in general were in revolt against the Vietnam War. The rampant destruction of a poor Asian country, its bombed-out villages, its terrified refugees, the wounded bodies of its people scorched with napalm were catalyzing another movement for change which was fast becoming global in scope.
In this political environment was born in the mid 1960s the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) from within the American Asian Studies Association. It was through this Committee and its publications that Hari and I later got acquainted. In Hari’s words, “CCAS members were organizing free universities, teach-ins, panels at academic conferences; holding classes on modern China, on Asian revolutions, on national liberation movements, on imperialism. They were building links with revolutionary forces in Asia.”1
Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
Hari is well known in North America and Asia as an activist in many community-based organizations, but my focus in writing this note is on the contributions he has made to the understanding of Asia through the CCAS and its periodical, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, later renamed Critical Asian Studies. As one of the original members of CCAS Hari has remained consistently committed to its Statement of Purpose: “to develop a humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront such problems as poverty, oppression and imperialism.”
Hari has confronted the problems of poverty, oppression, and imperialism, particularly in South Asia, with his skillful and forthright manner, which at times has earned him the ire of Indian authorities and shallow patriots. A superb example of his talent is the famous photographic collection in which he has captured on camera a series of particular images of life in India. A sample of this collection was first published in America as a photographic essay in the BCAS issue of April-June 1977. A barefoot, coy girl of Orissa with deep and soft eyes clutching a corner of her tattered sari to her mouth, neatly dressed and sombre faced pedestrians of Calcutta passing by a beggar with her forehead on the pavement, three young women planting rice seedlings in the paddy fields of Tamil Nadu, a police officer on the railway tracks aiming his gun at the crowd of striking workers, and many more fragments of “the universe that is India” were incorporated in his essay in a bold and perceptive narrative, which is Hari’s unique style, “in the hope that one day the particulars will merge to change the nature and destiny of the universe.”
After the mid 1970s the grassroots movements for change and efforts to build a humane and knowledgeable world order began to dissipate. The antiwar movement in North America, based on insufficient understanding of the nature and mechanisms of capitalism and imperialism, began to fold. In academia new fads of postmodernism, post-Marxism, and so forth began to disorient the minds of those interested in the study of war and peace, poverty and exploitation in this world. Even within the community of scholars brought together in the CCAS network occasional debates began to erupt on the interpretation of post–Vietnam War events, the emergence of a market economy in China after Mao Zedong, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of neo-liberalism.
One such internal debate was touched off in the pages of BCAS concerning the fiscal and economic programs imposed by the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the poor countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A key participant in the debate argued that the lack of development in these countries and the growing gap between the rich and poor was a result of their internal “statist bureaucratic” structures and not the external factor of WB/IMF interventions. In his rejoinder Hari challenged the fallacy of drawing a line between the internal and external causes of economic backwardness. He pointed out that modern-day imperialism, with the WB and IMF as its global agencies, was internalized in the economic and political structures of semi-colonial neo-colonial societies. It was “tied to the industrial bourgeoisie, banking capital, landlord and kulak lobbies, contractors and builders, state bureaucracies, military command, cultural elites, intelligentsia.” The nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were also aiding this internalization, as many of them were “created by imperialism.”2
The WB and IMF were there to “serve the capitalist-imperialist system: (1) by facilitating capital accumulation, and (2) by mediating at times of capitalist crises.” Their agenda should not be confused, said Hari, with any pretence of seeking the welfare of people. The insistence by the WB/IMF on balancing government budgets “has meant cutting funds for education, health, child care, family support, unemployment insurance, job security.” And Hari, the activist, was not going to leave the debate just at that. He went on to add that, “People are marching, shouting, fighting. Those of us who live in these more developed societies, including concerned Asian scholars, have to join in these struggles—provided we care for the people, provided we are opposed to the capitalist-imperialist agenda, provided we also care for the people of Asia.”3
In 1998 when India and Pakistan test-exploded their nuclear bombs, the half-a-century–old hostility that had characterized relations between the two sibling states acquired a new and alarming dimension. Hari and I were asked to guest edit a special issue of BCAS on the implications of these nuclear explosions, “The South Asian Bomb: Reality and Illusion.”4
Writing editorially, Hari commented that to begin with the nuclearization of the military arsenals of India and Pakistan “was bound to accelerate the unconscionably wasteful arms race the two countries had been engaged in, while doggedly hugging the bottom rung of the human development index.”5
The tests took place when both the countries were being governed by right-wing, ultranationalist political parties. A.B. Vajpayee was leading India at the head of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with the support of all the Hindutava forces, and Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of dictator Zia was wooing the Islamist parties and seeking to make himself Amirul Momineen, the chief of the righteous believers, through a constitutional amendment. Without mincing any words Hari eloquently expressed the extraordinary risk in this coincidence: “Nuclear bombs, as such, are bad because they are tools of ultimate terror, of ultimate destruction. They are worse—in fact unpardonable—if their acquisition involves deployment of scarce resources that could have been better used to provide the basic needs of the citizenry.… Nuclear bombs are absolute disaster if they are acquired by socio-political forces with a fascist agenda as is clearly the case with the saffron clad marching soldiers of Hindutava or the Islamic mujahhedeen of Pakistan.”6
There were of course spuriously soothing words coming from certain quarters that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the two mutually hostile South Asian states would act as a deterrence to engage in any future wars—the MAD theory etc. — and therefore contribute to a greater sense of security among their peoples. To this Hari responded that the “scientific-military establishments of two of the world’s poorest countries are operating with the same perverted logic, impervious to what this type of thinking did to the security and integrity of the Soviet Union, once a superpower of formidable economic and military stature.” In hindsight it is quite clear that since the nuclear tests, giving India and Pakistan the status of nuclear powers, the security situation in the two countries has continuously and dramatically deteriorated. They have fought one more major war in 1999 with heavy loss of life on both sides in Kargil on the Kashmir line of control and others on their international borders have been barely averted. Neither have they refrained from adding one wasteful set of destructive weapons after another to their arsenals at the expense of providing any kind of security, physical or economic, to their people.
The positions that Hari takes on various issues are based on his profound knowledge of social history combined with his conviction that a better more humane world order is possible. He has written much on the rise of social systems and movements that have brought us to where we are today and on how we can change the insecurity and oppression around us. I will try to present some of his thinking in this respect, again from his work with the community of scholars associated with BCAS, now renamed Critical Asian Studies (CAS).
Chinese Revolution
In a roundtable of articles published originally in CAS, entitled China’s Economic Transformation, Hari wrote an introduction in which some of his seminal ideas on imperialism, capitalism, Marxism, the historical socialist project, and the significance of the Chinese Revolution fall together in a remarkably cohesive formulation.7 The Chinese Revolution of 1949, which the imperialists of the world and some Western intellectuals now tend to dismiss as an “aberration,” something that “was doomed to failure,” in Hari’s view was the “outcome of a prolonged and sustained effort by a vast multitude of Chinese people under the leadership of a Communist Party, to do away with imperialism and its local props (feudalism and comprador capitalism) and to lay down the foundations of building a socialist society.”
As such the Chinese Revolution remains “an important landmark on the long worldwide emancipatory project, which began precisely a hundred years earlier with the 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party.” The Manifesto itself was a milestone that signified the “beginning of the proletarian class consciousness.” It was commissioned by an international association of workers, the Communist League, to form “a detailed theoretical and practical programme for them,” and was first published as a 23-page pamphlet in February 1848 without the names of the authors, Marx and Engels.
When the Chinese Revolution happened it “elated and inspired working people and toiling masses all over the world. It did so especially in formerly (and in places still) colonized peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America for whom the Chinese Revolution also provided a model, a distinctively ‘Chinese path’—with its focus on peasantry with a multi-class alliance, with protracted people’s war.…” In Nepal for example the end of the monarchy and inauguration of a democratic set-up would be hard to contemplate without the prolonged people’s war led by the Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist (CPNM), although much has yet to be accomplished.
In China itself discontent with the so-called capitalist reforms is mounting. The present regime is worried about the “resurgence of socialist thinkers critical of the lurch toward capitalism.”With the present deep crisis of global capitalism, the conditions of life and work for the Chinese masses have greatly deteriorated and protests by the working class are escalating. What might eventually come out of these protests and revived ideological debates is uncertain.
But in Hari’s view what “is certain is the fact that the Global Emancipatory Project is still on, in China as elsewhere, and will certainly remain so for a long time to come. There have been setbacks; these may happen in the future too. But a century and a half is not that long a period to undo a history of class domination, going back thousands of years .…”
This is a very important point that Hari makes. The history of the system we have inherited, in which class domination, gender inequality, organized violence or warfare, alienation from our species being and from our natural environment is deeply rooted, indeed goes back thousands of years. It is pre-biblical to say the least. Hari is very right in saying that a century and a half is not enough to undo this system.
This time perspective on societal change is also the secret of Hari’s abiding conviction that a better, more humane, world is possible. Every setback on the path of struggle to achieve that goal is a temporary setback. As he says in the context of China, “It is our task to learn the positive and negative lessons from the Chinese experience and carry on with the urgent task of fighting and defeating imperialism and its hold, wherever we live, and lend support to the struggles for national liberation and for socialism wherever they take place.”
The conviction that is present in Hari’s social scientific thought is also the intuitive faith of South Asia’s leading Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I would like to end this brief note on Hari’s valiant effort to keep the community of Concerned Asian Scholars on the right track by quoting a few lines from a poem by Faiz, which incidentally turned out to be the song of the day in the streets of Kathmandu when Nepal’s 240-year-old monarchy was abolished in 2007.
We shall see ham dekheen gay,
Certainly we, too, shall see lazim hai ke ham bhi dekheen gay
the day that has been promised to us woh din jis ka wada heiy
that what is written on the tablet of time jo loh-e azal pey likha hai
When high mountains of tyranny and oppression Jab zulm-o -sitam key koh-giraN
shall blow away like cotton flakes roi ki tarah ur jaiN gay
When crowns will be tossed jab taj uchaley jaiN gay aur takt
and thrones demolished giray jaiN gay
When God’s creation, the people, will rule jab raj karey gi khalk-e-khuda
who I am, too, and joe maiN bhi hooN
so you are our tum bhi ho
When a cheer will rise, I am the Truth Jab Nara uthey ga anal-haq ka
who I am, too, and joe maiN bhi hooN
so you are aur tum bhi ho
References
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 27 (4), October–December 1995.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 31 (2), April– June 1999.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Critical Perspectives on China’s Economic Transformation. Introduction by Hari P. Sharma. Delhi: Daanish Books, 2007.
Celebrating Life in Struggle: A Tribute to Hari Sharma, edited by Chinmoy Banerjee and Harinder Mahil.
978-81-89654-82-5 (Hb) $19.75
November 2009. 231pp.
www.daanishbooks.com/products/
“Hari Sharma’s life is an appropriate focus for a celebration of life spent in struggle, bringing together people who have worked through their life for a world free of imperialist domination, militarism, state oppression, and class, caste and gender oppression. This book offers a tribute to Hari Sharma’s work among people in North America and India. Not merely a retrospective celebration, it indicates directions for struggle today. It also offers an album of photos and poems by Hari Sharma that unveil the life of India, routinely covered by daily indifference and latterly by the shine of globalization.”
Life and Times of Shanta Toofani: Story of a Survivor—narrated by Shanta Toofani and synthesised by Dimple (Amreen) Oberoi Vahali, Diamond Oberoi Vahali; Daanish Books, New Delhi; price Rs 195; pages 285. The book encapsulates the narratives of life of an unknown person yet someone whose experiences and activities we all would like to hear and learn from: Shanta Toofani. Written in the form of an open-eyed account by the authors, the direct voice of Shanta Toofani in various chapters adds a certain degree of vividness to the account. It is a simple life lived in a complex way—yet in its essence it is a life lived to the fullest. This is what this narration brings to us.
Shanta Toofani, as a child, learned the meaning of life with her mother passing away, later with the second mother killing herself, or separation with sister during migration from Burma to India with her father. In all these tales, there is a deep pathos which can be summed up as ‘exiled at multiple levels’, ‘repressed psyche’. (page 9)
The first part of the book has an interesting narration from the personalistic angle with Shanta Toofani talking about how she perceives inspiration as coming from spirituality, about gratitude for nature. A pertinent note in this connection is her thought: “compassion is value of dharma, and charity is friend of dharma”. (page 34) In this very segment, we can hear tones of marginalised existence in the hierarchical brahminical societal set-up, where she seems to be re-negotiating her identity at her own terms as she takes up cudgels over being dubbed as ‘achhut’—the child of a mother who was not a brahmin.
These writungs also bring to light the saga of this lady who never attended educational institutions in a formal way yet could read between the lines of the present-day hedonistic educational scenario making people more self-centred and weaning them away from contributing towards society. (page 68) She even had a Marxist bent of mind towards society where in absence of economic equality, accessiblity to resources for all come at an unequal plane. (page 69) The paternalistic emotions of care and nurture are heard as she opposes the way children suffer when parents split up due to the rising pressures of life. (page 72)
The part of the book pertaining to her experiences while travelling in buses brings out the kind of things which all of us hear—the public transport being devoid of emphathy for old people, people making noise in buses, eve-teasing. These are some issues which she points towards as she dared to raise her voice against them. Such instances occur in our everyday existence; so empathy is the state of mind while going through this segment.
Struggle, deprivation, yet determination to trust the inevitable destiny were yardsticks to shape Shanta’s childhood. With marriage happening at the age of 17, life did not change much. With the death of one son and the other son disapproving of his mother in later years she went through poignant times. But she bore all such adversities with commendable fortitude.
Moving away from personal insight and leaping towards her activism, part III captures her social and political interventions. We hear the voice of the subaltern who fights to get her due. She comes forward here as a Durga who is battling at various ends—educating slum children by her association with Ankur, selfless concern to get money for a lady’s burnt house, standing up for the rights of jhuggi jhopri dwellers at MCD meetings, AIDS bhadbhav andolan, nirman mazdoor panchayat sangam. These instances are like threads of an interwoven fabric of life. How being exiled at the level of a mother, sister, wife, daughter, she overcame the trauma to give back good to the life without sitting back and sulking over her destiny. In this struggle within, she was an epitome of compassion to others around her.
To sum up, a beautiful narrative to be read and pondered over. It may not have found space in mainstream discourse involved in covering flamboyant events; the publishers thus deserve credit for putting up an effort in producing the book. It has in store a lesson for all of us, who in some way or other are victimised. Where Shanta Toofani comes to our rescue is where she tells us that we need to battle our way out of this process of victimisation, we need to give our life a larger meaning beyond the self basing ourselves on honesty, courage and conviction.
Irom Sharmila has been on a fast unto death for nine years, demanding a repeal of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
In response to the killing of ten innocent people at Malom village near Imphal in November 2000, one among many such atrocities – Irom Sharmila began an indefinite hunger strike demanding repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which empowers military and paramilitary personnel to arrest, shoot, even kill, anyone on the grounds of mere suspicion. The government arrested her and force-fed her through nasal tubes. She has been released and re-arrested innumerable times since, then, but has stood by her demand, steadfastly refusing to eat until the Act is repealed.
Irom Shramila Aur Manipuri Janta Ki Sahas Yatra is hard- hitting account of ordinary people caught between the crossfire of security forces and militants. This book depicts a lively and poignant tale of a beautiful but violence affected state –its history, people’s struggles and women’s movements in pursuance of peace, justice and dignified living.
Deepti Priya Mehrotra has a PhD in Political Science and post- doctoral thesis in philosophy. She is actively associated with various social organizations and has an enduring interest in people’s movements, feminist peace building and creative education. Presently, she teaches part time in Delhi University and Ambedkar University, and is associated with an organisation called Sampurna that works on children’s literature and curriculum books.
Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, believed that a lie repeated several times over would soon acquire the legitimacy of truth. The Delhi Police has surpassed Goebbels’ strategy. By deluging the press and the public with one lie after another, it hopes that the truth will never be extricated.
Who killed Inspector Sharma?
Shahzad Ahmed (not ‘urf Pappu’ as he has never borne that name), the most recent prize catch of the Delhi Police is being charged with the murder of Inspector Sharma. Till now, we had been told that it were the two slain boys, Atif Ameen and Md. Sajid, whose fire had killed Inspector Sharma. Indeed, the NHRC report attempts to establish this at great length. According to “sources” quoted in the press, Shahzad fired from a .32 revolver (Zee news, Feb 07, TOI 07). Now according to the NHRC report, the cartridge cases recovered from the site of the ‘encounter’ matched the .30 pistols, W2 and W3, which the police claimed were found in flat 108, L-18, Batla House. Two mutilated bullets recovered from the bullet proof jacket of a police man, according to the NHRC were fired from W3. It may be repeated here again that no seizure list was prepared in the presence of any independent witness, as is procedurally required, so the claim that W2 and W3 and the corresponding bullets and cartridge belonged to Atif and Sajid is just that—a claim. No unaccounted for bullets and cartridge cases have been mentioned by either the police or the NHRC.
So what happened to the cartridge cases of the .32 pistol used by Shahzad? Did the bullets and cartridge cases disappear in thin air, just as Shahzad and Junaid supposedly did?
The Great Escape?
According to the police version, reproduced faithfully in the press, Shahzad and Junaid escaped from the building L-18 while the encounter was on. It has been repeatedly pointed out by civil rights activists that the building only has one exit point through the staircase which is covered by a heavy iron grill. In the stories that have appeared in the press and also repeated by the NHRC report, this is sought to be explained by the presence of two separate doors to the flat 108.
However, had the NHRC or reporters bothered to inspect the site, it would have been clear that these two gates are adjacent to each other. A police party standing at the landing of the 4th floor facing flat 108 would face both the doors simultaneously as both doors actually open in the same landing. In the bizarre reconstruction of events according to the police, first, Shahzad and Junaid supposedly opened the second door to the landing, where the police party was, and then ran down the stairs screaming that they were residents (TOI report, 05 Feb). Now, according to the statement of Karnail Singh, Joint Commissioner of Police, Special Cell, Delhi there was a “back-up team, headed by ACP Sanjeev Kumar Yadav …which immediately rushed to the flat in order to rescue the team members and apprehend the militants holed inside the flat.”(NHRC report).
Now suppose, there were two militants who had fired upon the police and were running down the stairs, surely, they must still have wielded the pistols (.32??), and regardless of their protestations that they were residents, ACP Yadav’s team, which by the police’s own admission rushed upstairs immediately, should have apprehended them, or at least attempted to overpower them. And surely, the crowd of people, which the police claimed had collected around the building, hearing the firing, would have sighted two young men, pistols in hand running down the stairs. But all we have is police claims and custodial confessions of Shahzad (which remember are not admissible in court) that he and Junaid fired and fled the spot miraculously.
But wait, it gets more twisted. According to a news report, Shahzad and Junaid, after making good their escape, walked to the bus stop and took a bus to Badarpur. In the evening, Shahzad and Junaid boarded a train to Mumbai without realizing where it was headed…” (Indian Express, Feb 04). Imagine, a fleeing terrorist waiting at the bus stop for the right route number bus to arrive! In other stories, the duo traveled to Aligarh (some say by train, others insist they took a bus) but there is no consensus on their travel itinerary. According to TOI on Feb 05) from Aligarh, the two went to Lucknow and thence to Azamgarh, where Junaid parted ways with Shahzad. In another report in the same paper, this was the route: Aligarh, Bulandshehar, Lucknow, Khalispur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Mumbai (where the two separated). (TOI, Feb 07)
So did they take a train out to Mumbai or a bus (or again train) to Aligarh? At the very least, the Delhi Police must try and be consistent in its leaks to the press.
The Pilot Theory Crash lands
As early as January 6, there started to appear reports in the television media (Headlines Today/ Aajtak) that a 9/11 type of attack had been planned by the IM to be conducted by Shahzad Ahmad who had ostensibly received a flying license at an institute in Bangalore. This was attributed to information contained in a confidential communiqué of the Intelligence agencies.
Following Shahzad’s arrest, there was frenzied reporting about his commercial pilot license. But now it turns out that he had never enrolled in a flying institute. One may not choose to believe Shahzad’s mother when she denies he never received any flying training, but the Uttar Pradesh Addl DG (law and order), Brij Lal also refuted the allegation that Shahzad was a pilot (Mail Today, Feb 06). All reports of the aerial module of IM and Shahzad’s key position in this supposed module are based of course on unnamed sources in the police.
Why were the Intelligence agencies so keen to propagate the falsehood of his flying skills?
Manisha Sethi, Adil Mehdi, Ahmed Sohaib, Ghazi Shahnawaz, Tanweer Fazal, Arshad Alam, Sanghamitra Misra, Amabarien Al qadar, Haris ul Haq, Azra Razak, Farah Farooqi, Anwar Alam
France: New Anti-Capitalist Party defends democratic right to wear hijab
NPA candidate Ilham Moussaïd.
By Olivier Besancenot, translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (MRZine)
February 3, 2010 -- Le Figaro caricatured my words regarding the candidacy of Ilham Moussaïd, who is on our list in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regional elections. After a serious and complex debate, the Vaucluse chapter of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) made a choice to include on its feminist, anti-capitalist and internationalist lists an NPA member who believes in wearing a headscarf on account of her religious convictions.
Our party welcomes youth, the unemployed, the precarious, workers of all backgrounds who find their values reflected in the party. Faith is a matter of personal choice that does not create any obstacle to participation in our struggle so long as members sincerely share the secular, feminist and anti-capitalist fundamental principles of our party.
I therefore simply said to Le Figaro: "Ilham is evidence that one can be a member of the NPA and wear a headscarf."
The NPA is a party that fights against any form of oppression and exclusion. A debate on liberation and the place of religion -- and all its forms of expression -- exists within the NPA, in view of its next congress.
By Tony Todd
February 3, 2010 -- French 24 -- The veil issue has shown its face in French politics once again, after radical anti-capitalist fringe party the NPA revealed that one of its candidates in forthcoming regional elections wears an Islamic headscarf.
A candidate for a radical French anti-capitalist party in the forthcoming regional elections wears a headscarf as a token of her Islamic faith, something that has raised eyebrows in this rigidly secular society.
All the more so because the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party), led by Trotskyist postman Olivier Besancenot, is a party that generates headlines for its extreme left-wing position on issues including militant secularism.
“A woman can be a feminist, can uphold secular values and wear a [Islamic] headscarf at the same time,” he told the newspaper.
The veiled meanings of a very French issue
Wearing a headscarf – as well as the wearing of other religious symbols such as crucifixes – is strictly prohibited in French public institutions such as schools.
And a cross-party parliamentary commission last month came up with a list of recommendations for a law to ban wearing the full face veil (niqab) in public places such as hospitals and on public transport.
It is a very French issue. Islamic headscarfs in France are all referred to as “voile” – meaning veil – whether or not they cover the face.
The French public dislikes veils because they are seen as the embodiment of male domination over women, as well as symbols of religious attachment in a country that clings fiercely to the principle of the separation of church and state.
But veils and headscarves are also an overt reminder that France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, something that makes the (often Christian) right wing uncomfortable.
Radical pragmatism of a fringe party
Making headway in the country’s deprived suburbs, notable for their large Muslim immigrant populations, could pay political dividends for the NPA, which is very much a fringe party.
The “banlieues”, Besancenot told Le Figaro, are “deserts where social associations, unions and political activity barely flourish”.
They are also places where women, some of whom wear Islamic veils, are starting to carry the torch for the NPA’s brand of militant anti-capitalist Trotskyism.
In a statement, the party said the choice to put Moussaid forward as a candidate had come after “a serious and complex debate”.
“[Moussaid] is a militant feminist, anti-capitalist and internationalist who happens to wear a headscarf for religious reasons”, the statement continues. “The NPA welcomes young people, the unemployed and wage-earners of all walks of life who hold our ideals dear. Religious faith is a private matter that should in no way be an obstacle to the NPA’s fight for its fundamental principles of secularism, feminism and anti-capitalism.”
Susan Price, a Socialist Alliance (Australia) member, argues that feminists and socialists should oppose state-enforced bans on women wearing hijab, or Muslim headscarves.
In December 2003, more than 3000 protesters hit the streets of Paris in opposition to the plan to introduce a law in France to ban the wearing of the headscarf and “other ostentatious religious symbols” in French state schools.
Tens of thousands then rallied across the world on January 18, as part of an international day of protest against the ban. The bill is to be put before the French cabinet on January 29, before an opening debate in the National Assembly on February 3.
Pressure is mounting for a “no” vote — or at least abstention — by the major parties on the bill.
Union opposition
The French trade union movement is divided on the issue. According to a December article written by Luc Bronner and Martine Laronche in Le Monde, the United Trade Union Federation (FSU), which represents 45% of teachers in France, is hostile to the introduction of such a law, but believes if introduced, it must address the contradictions in French secular society.
Snuipp-FSU, which covers the majority of the primary schoolteachers, has not taken a formal vote on opposing the ban. But its general secretary Nicole Geneix declared the union hostile to the law, as is Sgen-CFDT (the French Democratic Confederation of Labour’s affiliated teacher union) which covers 11.4% of teachers.
Other union federations covering teachers have come out in favour of the ban, including UNSA-Education (affiliated to the National Confederation of Independent Unions, covering 14.4% of teachers) and the Union Confederation of National Education (CSEN), which represents 6.1% of teachers. The Workers’ Force, which represents 7.1 % of teachers, declared in favour of a very partial revision to the legislation.
The debate hit the headlines after two teenage women were expelled from a high school for wearing headscarves. This follows other such exclusions over the last two years in France. According to Reuters, on a visit to Tunisia in December 2003, French President Jacques Chirac commented to pupils at the French High School that he saw “something aggressive” in the wearing of traditional Muslim veils.
The Stasi Commission, given the task of looking into the possibility of a ban by Chirac, recommended that “oversized crosses” and the Jewish kippa should be banned along with hijab.
Agence France Presse reported on January 21 that education minister Luc Ferry (who drew up the text of the law), told the National Assembly's social affairs committee on January 20, that Sikhs could be persuaded to wear “invisible nets” on their heads instead of turbans.
Ferry then went even further: “One can invent religious signs from mere hairiness. When a beard is transformed into a religious symbol it will fall under the law. Creativity is infinite in the matter.”
However, although the law may affect many in France badly, its main intention is the social regulation and control of young Muslims, who bear the brunt of the neoliberal government’s racist attacks.
The law has majority support amongst the French public (figures range from 57-70% in polls) and has even drawn strong endorsement from feminists and mainstream women’s organisations and media. Elle magazine carried a public appeal to Chirac to introduce a ban on what it termed a “visible symbol of the submission of women”. The appeal has been signed by several high profile French women.
The revolutionary left has responded in different ways. The Revolutionary Communist League's (LCR) Rouge newspaper carried a cover page calling for “Neither the discriminatory law nor the oppressive veil”. Lutte Ouvrier (LO) supports the ban.
The main arguments to justify the ban in France have centred on defence of secularism and women’s rights.
Secularism?
Secularism has a deep historical basis in the founding of the French Republic. The official separation of church and state was achieved in 1905. State regulation of religious dress and behaviour, however, has a less clear history. In 1937, under the Popular Front government formed against the threat of fascism, schools were instructed to keep religious symbols out.
Fifty-two years later, in 1989, the French Council of State ruled that “the wearing … of signs by which …[students] intend to express their membership of a religion is not by itself incompatible with the principle of secularity.”
This remained the case until 1994, when schools were advised by the education minister that they could ban “ostentatious religious symbols”. In 1996, the Council of State again ruled that the school ban transgressed the principle of freedom of expression.
The uselessness of trying to impose secularism by banning individual religious expression in public institutions such as schools is proven by the experience of Turkey.
In 1999, Turkey banned headscarves in schools, universities and public offices on the grounds that they symbolised a politicised form of Islam. Three-hundred teachers who refused to follow the new policy were fired. An MP who wore a headscarf was expelled from parliament.
Turkey’s tradition of secularism dates back to the 1920s. Mustapha Kemal, also known as Ataturk, pursued a program of ``Westernisation”. Sharia (Islamic law) was abolished in 1926 and Islam was removed from the constitution as Turkey's official religion in 1928. Kemal championed legal equality for women, introducing a range of progressive reforms. However, secularism was forcibly imposed, crudely elevating Western dress, music and etiquette.
Islamic forces campaigned against the 1999 ban by condemning the violation of their democratic rights. Alongside popular resentment at the repressive enforcement of “secular” policy, a deep resentment of the arrogance of the corrupt “secular” elite propelled the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) into government in the November 3 general election.
One of the AKP's first pledges was to lift the ban on headscarves, although four years later the ban is still in place in universities, higher education and Islamic colleges. It has resulted in three women involved in the 1999 campaign being repeatedly arrested since then and then jailed this year in Istanbul.
Turkey's experience reinforces the point that separation of church and state is about allowing for freedom of thought — not outlawing religious behaviour in the name of secularism.
Defence of religious freedom is fundamental for the progressive movement. Monopolising religious ideas is one way that the ruling class can seek to justify oppression, and entrench its rule.
In 1905, at the time of the democratic revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin wrote in Novaya Zhizn, that religion must be declared a private affair as far as the state is concerned. “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he or she pleases, or no religion whatsoever… Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable.”
Feminism?
Some argue that to allow the wearing of hijab undermines the cause of those young women who are fighting against being forced to wear the veil.
Many women, Muslim and non-Muslim, have criticised the pressure placed upon women to cover their hair, bodies and sometimes faces, in the name of honouring a god. Feminist writers such as Fatima Mernissi, have pointed out the connection between women’s isolation from public life and the wearing of the veil.
But the veil and headscarf are not the source of women's oppression and inferior social status. Simply banning women from wearing symbolic clothing will not change their status or the underlying pressures upon them. For real equality, women must win economic independence and the ability to make a full range of choices about the way they live their lives.
First World governments have gone on a racist frenzy since 9/11, seeking to persuade First World populations that Muslims are opposed to freedoms and rights these governments falsely claim are enshrined in Judeo-Christian societies. This makes it even more vital for socialists to put forward alternative ways of combating sexism, rather than calling on governments to regulate religious practice.
It is not surprising that France’s right-wing government has launched this offensive while the revolutionary left is making gains. The wedge-politics of racism has always been used to divide the working class, which in France pulled off spectacular rolling strikes against the government in 2003.
The current attack must also be seen as part of a continuum of racist policies which go back to the mid-1990s and the “Fortress Europe” policies of the major European capitalist governments, particularly (but not limited to) Germany and France.
The policies of “Fortress Europe” were an attempt by bourgeois parties to appeal to the support base of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s right-wing National Front (FN). During the mid 1990s, FN-controlled local councils sought to censor library collections and ban the serving of hilal and kosher meals for Muslim and Jewish school students. Many of those policies have since been co-opted by the ruling elite.
The ban on the hijab should be opposed. The best way to fight sexism, like racism, is to encourage women to fight to defend their rights through collective action of the oppressed. It is such collective action, between muslims and non-Muslims, that Chirac is trying to avoid.
Veiling the issue: sexism, racism and religion
In December 2003, more than 3000 protesters hit the streets of Paris in opposition to the plan to introduce a law in France to ban the wearing of the headscarf and “other ostentatious religious symbols” in French state schools.
Tens of thousands then rallied across the world on January 18, as part of an international day of protest against the ban. The bill is to be put before the French cabinet on January 29, before an opening debate in the National Assembly on February 3.
Pressure is mounting for a “no” vote — or at least abstention — by the major parties on the bill.
Union opposition
The French trade union movement is divided on the issue. According to a December article written by Luc Bronner and Martine Laronche in Le Monde, the United Trade Union Federation (FSU), which represents 45% of teachers in France, is hostile to the introduction of such a law, but believes if introduced, it must address the contradictions in French secular society.Snuipp-FSU, which covers the majority of the primary schoolteachers, has not taken a formal vote on opposing the ban. But its general secretary Nicole Geneix declared the union hostile to the law, as is Sgen-CFDT (the French Democratic Confederation of Labour’s affiliated teacher union) which covers 11.4% of teachers.
Other union federations covering teachers have come out in favour of the ban, including UNSA-Education (affiliated to the National Confederation of Independent Unions, covering 14.4% of teachers) and the Union Confederation of National Education (CSEN), which represents 6.1% of teachers. The Workers’ Force, which represents 7.1 % of teachers, declared in favour of a very partial revision to the legislation.
The debate hit the headlines after two teenage women were expelled from a high school for wearing headscarves. This follows other such exclusions over the last two years in France. According to Reuters, on a visit to Tunisia in December 2003, French President Jacques Chirac commented to pupils at the French High School that he saw “something aggressive” in the wearing of traditional Muslim veils.
The Stasi Commission, given the task of looking into the possibility of a ban by Chirac, recommended that “oversized crosses” and the Jewish kippa should be banned along with hijab.
Agence France Presse reported on January 21 that education minister Luc Ferry (who drew up the text of the law), told the National Assembly's social affairs committee on January 20, that Sikhs could be persuaded to wear “invisible nets” on their heads instead of turbans.
Ferry then went even further: “One can invent religious signs from mere hairiness. When a beard is transformed into a religious symbol it will fall under the law. Creativity is infinite in the matter.”
However, although the law may affect many in France badly, its main intention is the social regulation and control of young Muslims, who bear the brunt of the neoliberal government’s racist attacks.
The law has majority support amongst the French public (figures range from 57-70% in polls) and has even drawn strong endorsement from feminists and mainstream women’s organisations and media.
Elle magazine carried a public appeal to Chirac to introduce a ban on what it termed a “visible symbol of the submission of women”. The appeal has been signed by several high profile French women.
The revolutionary left has responded in different ways. The Revolutionary Communist League's (LCR) Rouge newspaper carried a cover page calling for “Neither the discriminatory law nor the oppressive veil”. Lutte Ouvrier (LO) supports the ban.
The main arguments to justify the ban in France have centred on defence of secularism and women’s rights.
Secularism?
Secularism has a deep historical basis in the founding of the French Republic. The official separation of church and state was achieved in 1905. State regulation of religious dress and behaviour, however, has a less clear history. In 1937, under the Popular Front government formed against the threat of fascism, schools were instructed to keep religious symbols out.Fifty-two years later, in 1989, the French Council of State ruled that “the wearing … of signs by which …[students] intend to express their membership of a religion is not by itself incompatible with the principle of secularity.”
This remained the case until 1994, when schools were advised by the education minister that they could ban “ostentatious religious symbols”. In 1996, the Council of State again ruled that the school ban transgressed the principle of freedom of expression.
The uselessness of trying to impose secularism by banning individual religious expression in public institutions such as schools is proven by the experience of Turkey.
In 1999, Turkey banned headscarves in schools, universities and public offices on the grounds that they symbolised a politicised form of Islam. Three-hundred teachers who refused to follow the new policy were fired. An MP who wore a headscarf was expelled from parliament.
Turkey’s tradition of secularism dates back to the 1920s. Mustapha Kemal, also known as Ataturk, pursued a program of ``Westernisation”. Sharia (Islamic law) was abolished in 1926 and Islam was removed from the constitution as Turkey's official religion in 1928. Kemal championed legal equality for women, introducing a range of progressive reforms. However, secularism was forcibly imposed, crudely elevating Western dress, music and etiquette.
Islamic forces campaigned against the 1999 ban by condemning the violation of their democratic rights. Alongside popular resentment at the repressive enforcement of “secular” policy, a deep resentment of the arrogance of the corrupt “secular” elite propelled the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) into government in the November 3 general election.
One of the AKP's first pledges was to lift the ban on headscarves, although four years later the ban is still in place in universities, higher education and Islamic colleges. It has resulted in three women involved in the 1999 campaign being repeatedly arrested since then and then jailed this year in Istanbul.
Turkey's experience reinforces the point that separation of church and state is about allowing for freedom of thought — not outlawing religious behaviour in the name of secularism.
Defence of religious freedom is fundamental for the progressive movement. Monopolising religious ideas is one way that the ruling class can seek to justify oppression, and entrench its rule.
In 1905, at the time of the democratic revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin wrote in Novaya Zhizn, that religion must be declared a private affair as far as the state is concerned. “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he or she pleases, or no religion whatsoever… Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable.”
Feminism?
Some argue that to allow the wearing of hijab undermines the cause of those young women who are fighting against being forced to wear the veil.Many women, Muslim and non-Muslim, have criticised the pressure placed upon women to cover their hair, bodies and sometimes faces, in the name of honouring a god. Feminist writers such as Fatima Mernissi, have pointed out the connection between women’s isolation from public life and the wearing of the veil.
But the veil and headscarf are not the source of women's oppression and inferior social status. Simply banning women from wearing symbolic clothing will not change their status or the underlying pressures upon them. For real equality, women must win economic independence and the ability to make a full range of choices about the way they live their lives.
First World governments have gone on a racist frenzy since 9/11, seeking to persuade First World populations that Muslims are opposed to freedoms and rights these governments falsely claim are enshrined in Judeo-Christian societies. This makes it even more vital for socialists to put forward alternative ways of combating sexism, rather than calling on governments to regulate religious practice.
It is not surprising that France’s right-wing government has launched this offensive while the revolutionary left is making gains. The wedge-politics of racism has always been used to divide the working class, which in France pulled off spectacular rolling strikes against the government in 2003.
The current attack must also be seen as part of a continuum of racist policies which go back to the mid-1990s and the “Fortress Europe” policies of the major European capitalist governments, particularly (but not limited to) Germany and France.
The policies of “Fortress Europe” were an attempt by bourgeois parties to appeal to the support base of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s right-wing National Front (FN). During the mid 1990s, FN-controlled local councils sought to censor library collections and ban the serving of hilal and kosher meals for Muslim and Jewish school students. Many of those policies have since been co-opted by the ruling elite.
The ban on the hijab should be opposed. The best way to fight sexism, like racism, is to encourage women to fight to defend their rights through collective action of the oppressed. It is such collective action, between muslims and non-Muslims, that Chirac is trying to avoid.
From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.
See also "The veil and religious freedom" at http://www.greenleft.org.au/2002/520/27002