Editorial
In the aftermath of the recent terror attacks on Mumbai, Almost Island has decided to offer its editorial space in this new issue to Nandita Haksar. Haksar is a leading human rights lawyer who has set many precedents in human rights law. Most recently she is known for defending two of the accused in the 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, S.A.R. Geelani and Mohammad Afzal.
Costs of Political Illiteracy: Random thoughts on the Mumbai attacks
Amitabh Bachchan was so frightened after hearing of the Mumbai attacks that he loaded his licensed pistol and slept with it under his pillow. He also felt the need to share his fear and wrote about it on his blog. A few days later he carried his pistol on a flight and the license he produced was not for the pistol in his pocket. Was he allowed to carry an unlicensed pistol into the airplane? Was it loaded?
If Shah Rukh Khan had been caught carrying an unlicensed pistol into the plane would the official reaction have been the same? He was also frightened by the Mumbai attacks. He looked self-conscious as he explained on national television that Islam does not justify violence. He said there is a difference between the Islam of Allah and the Islam of the mullahs.
Why did Amitabh Bachchan not have to explain that the Shiv Sena and the Hindutva forces did not represent the teachings of the Rig Veda, Tulsi Das or the Gita?
Why do Shabhana Azmi and Javed Akhtar have to explain the tenets of their religion when there are bomb blasts by Islamic militants but Kareena Kapoor and Ajay Devgan do not have to give any explanations when the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad indulge in violence?
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The emotions of upper middle class Indians have rarely been so visible. They normally show restraint and control – essential for exercise of power. In any tragedy, natural disaster or accident, it is invariably the lower classes, the poor, the politically disempowered, who are shown expressing their grief, their anger, their despair.
This time the victims of terrorism were not faces that could be forgotten easily. This time the victims included the elite themselves. They personally faced the terrifying feeling of being trapped. They themselves heard the screams, felt the silence imposed by dread, the gunshots and grenades bursting in the carpeted corridors of the Taj. And they experienced the utter helplessness of not being able to save their loved ones from death. Many saw the charred remains of family and friends. Those who ultimately walked out of the hotels in which they were trapped will never forget the smell of blood and decaying bodies.
The ruling classes suddenly realized what it means when their life and lifestyles are threatened. All the anger, fear and emotion seemed to have ultimately become focused on the attack on the Taj Hotel. The lasting image of the attack on Mumbai will be the fire raging from a window of that hotel.
Suddenly the Taj hotel had become a symbol of India. The Taj, we were told, symbolizes our freedom struggle, our values and our ideals. The attack on this seven star hotel is being looked upon as an attack on the culture and civilization of our country. It is as if the hotel is even more important a symbol than our Parliament which was attacked in 2001. The Taj is the symbol of Indian enterprise, of modern Indian hospitality, its efficiency, and for one editor of a national daily, “The Taj is like an old friend or a member of the family...it is home.”
The editor praised the level of service at the Taj and by way of illustration recounted how a waiter had stopped a British guest from pouring out a bottle of vintage champagne in the wrong glass even in the midst of the mayhem.
By calling the Taj Hotel a symbol of anti-British struggle we have insulted the memory of our freedom fighters. It is true that Jamshedji Tata built the Taj in response to the humiliation of being turned out of a hotel because he was an Indian. But it was the reaction of a wealthy man humiliated, not a contribution to the anti-imperialist liberation struggle for the freedom of India from British rule.
While Gandhiji had made the spinning wheel a symbol of the freedom movement and wore only khad, the Taj was the first to import American fans, German elevators, and it set up the first licensed bar, discotheque and cabaret.
Since independence, the Tatas have embodied and symbolized the coming together of big business and Hindutva forces: currently there is a close relationship between Hindutva and the Tatas, with the latter moving to Gujarat on Narendra Modi’s invitation. Similar forces of history had helped in the rise of fascism and the destruction of the idea of human rights just sixty decades ago.
The question that keeps agitating me is whether the terrorists who attacked the Taj and the Oberoi chose these targets because they were symbols of an opulent culture in the era of globalization? What were the reactions of the men who attacked the hotel to aromas in the kitchen, to the festivities in the restaurants, the smell of expensive perfume and aftershave lotions in the bathrooms, the luxurious furnishing of the bedrooms and exquisite furniture in the grand lobby?
At one point the terrorists fired a few shots towards the media. What made them angry about the reporting? They were watching television from the hotel. Did they also see that although the news channels were reporting on their attack, the entertainment channels continued to broadcast programmes selling dreams of a magical world of travels to foreign lands, the art of cooking Italian dishes, and what a European man has in his wardrobe. Is the Islamic militant’s hatred of Western civilization really that incomprehensible even if the alternatives they offer are hardly any better?
If the terrorists did indeed choose Taj and Oberoi as targets because they were political symbols then why did they target the poor on the streets and railway stations? Did they distinguish between the Indian people and Indian State?
And how did the commandos feel when they went into the hotel? These men, the heroes of those days, must have taken in the magnificence of the Taj and perhaps wondered what it was like to live in such luxury, when none of them could afford to have even one meal in any of its restaurants?
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The media dubbed the 26/11 attack the Indian 9/11. They demanded that India exercise the right to hot pursuit and invade Pakistan just as the United States had invaded Afghanistan. The Indians who gathered at the massive rally at the Gateway of India carrying tri-coloured flags also demanded revenge, violence and war.
It seemed that no one remembered that the people in the United States and Europe had reacted very differently after the attack on the World Trade Center. They had come out in millions, stood out in the cold, braving rain to protest against their government’s preparations for war, occupation or invasion. One million people had come out in New York alone.
In the United States people did not demand revenge. Instead they asked: why do people hate us so much that they want to attack us? Surveys carried out by Americans recorded the unprecedented levels of anti-American feeling among the Muslims in the wake of the war against terror. The Gallup Centre for Muslim Studies, New York carried out the largest survey of Muslims in 2007 and discovered that it was the wealthy and educated Muslims who were even more anti-American.
The survey revealed that the greatest anti-American feeling was recorded in Saudi Arabia, and after that, Pakistan. In contrast, a 2005 Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed that India was the only country aside from the USA where people expressed confidence in President Bush.
Could this difference between Indian and Pakistani attitudes to USA have something to do with the terrorist attack on Mumbai?
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Television journalist Barkha Dutt writes that in “some ways, we do know why they hate us. Our multi-religious, multi-ethnic nation-state defies the petty logic of any dogma. In our very existence we virtually dare fanatics who define themselves by narrow identities. We are held together as a nation-state by profound and cultural intangibles (our democracy, our music, our cricket, our love for chaos and opinion) that are befuddling to those who make a living out of manufacturing enemies.” (Hindustan Times, December 13, 2008)
I wonder who was defining themselves by “narrow identities” and who was manufacturing enemies? There is not a state in India which is not torn by “ethnic” conflict and in most this conflict is complicated by religious communal divide.
In the North East of India with seven states (eight if you count Sikkim) there are movements for self-determination with demands for autonomy to secession in every state. In the 1950s only the Nagas organized themselves to demand independence; today almost every single community there--the Karbis, Zomis, Kukis, Bodos and Assamese-- are engaged in armed resistance to achieve their goals of greater autonomy or full sovereignty. What is perhaps less known is that there are now more than 20 armed Islamic militant groups in the North East.
In every state where there is a strong movement for national self-determination the movement is divided along religious lines. And in almost all cases the Indian State has promoted and used religion to undermine the nationality movement. It has used Muslim fundamentalists to break the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front; fomented Hindu- Christian riots in Bodo areas; Bhindranwale against Punjabi nationalism, the Baptist church against the Naga National Movement.
In addition there is growing anti-Muslim and anti-Christian prejudice all over the country. There is no state which has not witnessed the targeting of Muslims and Christians, from Karnataka and Kerala in the South to Goa and Gujarat in the West and Orissa and West Bengal in the east to the nation’s capital.
And that doesn’t include the divide along caste and class lines that has torn the fabric of Indian democracy. But then what have all these divisions got to do with the Mumbai attacks?
The answer in one word: alienation. It is alienation from Indian polity and a lack of faith in the Indian State’s ability to respond to peoples’ democratic aspirations. The most important lesson we need to learn is to look inwards, to introspect and ask ourselves why Indian democracy and Indian secularism has not been able to address the genuine grievances and political aspirations of millions and millions of people, especially our 150 million Muslim citizens.
The Sachar Committee, appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, documented the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India, and the extent of discrimination against this community. It was a step in the right direction but the step was not followed up by the State.
In my understanding the most important issue raised by the Sachar Committee was the issue of the Wakf properties. The Wakf is a permanent dedication of movable or immovable properties for religious, pious or charitable purposes as recognized by Muslim Law. They deal with the religious, social and economic life of Muslims. They support mosques and dargahs and many of them support schools, colleges, hospitals and other institutions meant for social welfare. The Wakf properties all over India, are worth at least Rs 1.2 lakh crores, and this could generate a minimum return of Rs.12,000 crores per annum. With these funds the Muslim community could build educational institutions and deal with many social and economic problems.
In Hyderabad there were the beginnings of a movement for the restoration of Wakf properties and people had been mobilized within the old city but just as the movement was at its peak the bomb blast at Mecca Masjid occurred and public attention was diverted. A senior journalist from the newspaper Siasat told me that he believes that the bomb blast was organized for precisely that purpose.
No political party has taken up the issue of Muslim alienation seriously enough to understand the depths of the despair, the anger and the growing resentment in the community, especially among the youth. The Muslims have to face the hatred and prejudice of Hindu right wing groups and their sympathizers; they also have to face insults by well meaning Hindu liberals who hide their Islamophobia by dividing Muslims into good Muslims and bad Muslims or “moderate” Muslims and “extremist” Muslims.
This massive alienation of the Muslims certainly creates a fertile ground for the rise of a militant political Islamic movement which offers dignity and self respect to a community whose pride has been deeply wounded.
In order to address the problem of the alienation of the Muslim community we have to first of all acknowledge the problem. But Indian Hindus are not a people given to much introspection despite their rich heritage of meditation and yoga which tries to teach us to know ourselves.
We have not even begun to have serious debates except within small academic circles, on the nature of multi-culturalism that we want; and on what secular culture really means. Even more important, what kind of democracy should we be working for?
The Mumbai attacks could have been a starting point in questioning some of our political assumptions.
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If there is any community to which I belong, it is the human rights community. That is why I was quite excited when Amnesty International asked me to host a talk show on “No Hiding place for Torture”. I noticed that my talk show was to be held at the Alliance Francaise while the other events were being held at the Islamic Cultural Centre. When I enquired why that was I was told by the AI representative that it was Eid on that day so less people would come and so they had thought it would be better to have the talk show in a smaller auditorium.
I asked why AI was holding an event on Eid. My objections were the following:
Holding a major human rights event on Eid was a violation of a basic principle of multi- cultural polity. Would AI in UK hold such a festival during Christmas weekend? Would AI in India even think of holding it during Diwali, or Holi or even Janamashtami? I explained that many of us had protested against holding the annual women’s conference during Christmas week on similar grounds. Besides several organizers and speakers were Muslims.
I also noticed that the majority of the speakers were Muslims and the focus seemed to be more on the human rights violations committed by the Muslim community than the violence that the community was being subjected to all over the world. Amnesty International had been accused during the cold war era of being prejudiced against the Soviet Union and the communists. It had not even adopted Nelson Mandela as a prisoner of conscience because he refused to make a statement against the legitimacy of armed resistance. But Amnesty International prided itself on its “objectivity”.
The problem is not only with Amnesty International. Human rights discourse has been hijacked by Americans to justify their imperialist goals. Ever since Nixon made it an arm of its foreign policy, human rights discourse had been used to take up human rights selectively for a political agenda.
The so called war against terror is primarily not against Muslims and the United States has no problem in having an alliance with Saudi Arabia even though it is a well documented fact that Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding, arming and providing ideological support to Islamic fundamentalist organizations from the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US (the 9/11 commission) released on July 23, 2004 describes Saudi Arabia as a “problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism”. The Commission found that Al Qaeda raised money directly from individuals and through charities with significant Saudi Government sponsorship. The Commission also recorded the fact that the US Government has been unsuccessful in gaining access to a senior Al Qaeda financial operative detained by Saudi Arabia in 1997.
Despite these facts the Unites States has not called for a war on Saudi Arabia even though its human rights record is abysmal and women there have been denied basic human rights.
The Unites States has neither talked about Saudi Arabia being an axis of evil nor has it openly put pressure on the country to improve its human rights record the way it orchestrated the Tibetan protests against China or the way it is pressurizing Pakistan today.
However, the target of human rights violations in this war against terror is primarily the Muslim community, and this so- called war seeks to criminalize the entire community by demonizing them. The human rights community, by taking up cases selectively, has contributed to the process.
The human rights community can no longer claim to be part of a movement because it has become a human rights industry. Human rights activists are no longer politically committed men and women with a vision for a world based on a just order. Instead the so called activist is a paid employee of large organizations with agendas set by the very powers responsible for the human rights violations of millions of people.
Since the human rights movement has been marginalized Muslims all over the world have formed their own human rights organizations and this has only served to undermine the potential of the human rights movement to uphold secular, pluralistic and democratic values.
Can we rescue human rights from the corporate world and give it new meaning, purpose and content? Can it become an effective weapon to fight against the human rights violations being committed in the age of terror?
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We also need to understand what terrorism is. There are two kinds of terrorism: terrorism of the state and terrorism of the non-state actor. We also need to understand that it is not so easy to separate the two.
The foundation for the war against terror was laid way back in 1968 when the United States started keeping statistics on international terrorist incidents. Two years later it announced its counter-terrorism policy: no concession to terrorists; isolate terrorist states; work for international co-operation to fight terrorism. In the 1970s the United States began using metal detectors at airports and started fortification of its embassies and passing anti- terrorist laws.
In 1972 the UN General Assembly named terrorism as a major concern but failed to define “terrorism”. By 1976 the US State Department organized a major conference on terrorism and created an office of Ambassador at large for counter-terrorism in charge of public diplomacy whose function was to “generate greater global understanding of the threat of terrorism and efforts to resist it.”
In 1977 the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism was passed. But the word “terrorism” was used only in its preamble, not in the main body of the Convention.
Twenty years later the international community still did not agree on a definition of “terrorism” and the UN Secretary General drew attention to the Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism. Now the focus was on the need to fight terrorism without defining it.
There were parallel developments in the field of academics in the USA. More than 50 think tanks were set up to sponsor “experts” on terrorism and the media started using the term “rogue states”. A media survey showed that while in 1990 the term was used only 20 times, in 2000 there were 5,000 citations. The stage was set: a new enemy of American democracy had been carefully manufactured: the Islamic terrorist. The old enemy, the communist, was dead.
There is evidence that the US intelligence agencies have created their own terrorist organizations and terrorist warnings to galvanize public opinion in support of the war against terror.
We need to look at these facts closely because we do not really know who has been responsible for the many bomb blasts in our country. It was only recently acknowledged that many of them were carried out by Hindu fascist groups.
Many people felt that the targeting of Hemant Karkare, the Chief of the anti-terrorist squad, was the work of Hindu fascists who had been threatening him because his investigations had started revealing their dirty politics. It is significant that his widow refused to accept money offered by Narendra Modi.
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Our fear of terrorism has blinded us to the terror which is far more widespread and insidious, even though it is not visible. It blinds us to the fact that state terrorism is still the more deadly and many more millions have to endure that terrorism than terrorism by non- state actors.
In the attack on the World Trade Centre not more than 5,000 people were killed but the US invasion of Afghanistan and its subsequent occupation of Iraq has caused much more death, destruction and suffering, most of it invisible.
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimate that 655,000 more people died in Iraq since the occupation in March 2003. There are 500 unexpected violent deaths per day in that country – nothing compared to the deaths and injured in the attacks by non-state actors. It has been calculated that the US occupation has forced 60,000 Iraqis to leave their homes and country every month and there are now four million displaced Iraqis in the world.
When the World Trade Centre was attacked, the New Internationalist, in its issue of November 2001, published a table entitled “Enduring Terrors” in which they pointed out that 24,000 people died of hunger on 11 September 2001, and 6020 people were killed by diarrhea on the same day. I would add that half a million people die of tuberculosis in India every year even though tuberculosis is a curable disease.
Why have we never had rallies and demonstrations about deaths due to tuberculosis? How many of the people protesting against Pakistan, demanding that Ajmal Amir Qasab, the one man captured during the Mumbai terror attacks, be hanged, know that an Indian doctor, Binayak Sen, who has spent all his life fighting for the right to health of the rural poor, stands accused of being a terrorist and has been in jail in Raipur for almost two years. Apart from the fact that he has been unjustly imprisoned, his patients have been deprived of all medical assistance since the State does not reach their villages.
The point is that the terror that people have of diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria is as real as the fear people have of being attacked by terrorists. Why is the terror of a family trapped inside a seven star hotel more visible and not the terror of the family who see the first sign of a killer disease? Millions of people live in fear of death, by war, starvation or disease, but their very real fear is not acknowledged, written about or made visible. The war against terror is based on creating fear of only one kind of violence, that of non-state actors.
The Indian state is using the war against terrorism to stop all legitimate dissent, protest and criticism of its policies. Anyone who raises awkward political questions is dubbed a terrorist and he can be arrested, tortured and detained. Go to any jail and you will meet these people, victims of state terror.
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Should we not ask why these men attacked us? What were their motivations, their emotions and the reasons that compelled them to go on this suicide mission? If we demonize them to the point that we lose the power of our own reason and ability to understand their motives we can never secure our country.
The terrorists attacking the two hotels asked the guests to identify themselves and they targeted citizens from the USA, UK and Israel. Does that not reflect something of their political motives? Was their anger against our country because it is moving closer to America and to Israel?
If we ask Qasab why his companions asked people to identify themselves and they targeted citizens from UK, USA and Israel he would tell us about how the three states were responsible for the massive death and destruction of his people – the Muslims living in West Asia. He would have deep empathy for the Bosnians, Chechens, Kashmiris, Palestinians and Iraqis. He would certainly know about the Gujarat genocide even if he does not know of the anti-Muslim violence in Hashimpura in 1985.
The attack on Nariman House makes sense only if it is seen as an attack on Zionists, not as an attack on Jews. We were told Israeli soldiers came to recoup there and in the aftermath of the grotesque killing of the rabbi and his wife we can see how that particular incident has been blown up. The two year old orphaned child, Moshe has been called the face of the Mumbai attacks. Israel has even announced that the little toddler’s nanny would be given Israel’s highest award.
Israeli intelligence agencies along with British and American ones have joined in the investigation. This all makes it quite clear that India is moving away from her old commitment to Third world liberation struggles to supporting the imperialists.
Of course I would be asked whether I thought of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) as an anti- imperialist liberation movement. I would answer it was certainly an anti-American movement and it was a product of the war against terrorism unleashed by the Americans. The goal of the LeT is to establish an Islamic state. However impractical the goal may seem, however repugnant its methods to achieve it may be, the attack on Mumbai is of course a criminal act, it may even be called waging war against the Indian State but it is none the less a political crime. And therefore the ultimate solution can only be political, not military.
Perhaps the question reflects the confusion between trying to understand a person, a political viewpoint or ideology and supporting the person, ideology of politics. I would like to talk to Qasab and try and understand his emotions, motives and political understanding and even his theological justifications. I believe that by demonizing Qasab and his kind we deprive ourselves of the possibility of understanding our opponents.
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A journalist from Mint phoned to ask whether I would defend Qasab like I had defended the accused in the Parliament attack case. I told her that as a human rights lawyer I think that Qasab has a right to be defended by a counsel of his choice.
I can imagine people asking how Qasab could be defended. What would be the arguments, what would be the strategy and legal defence. Here I do not wish to go into the whole complex legal question of how terrorists caught in the midst of an attack are to be treated or to be defended. These complex issues have been dealt with in two books on the trial of Salim Hamdan, the driver of Osama bin Laden. Salim Hamdan was captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and later transferred to the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. A Naval officer, Lt Comdr Charles Swift assisted by Neal Katyal defended Salim Hamdan and the US Supreme Court ruled against trials by special military tribunals.
Anyone interested in the legal aspects of the war against terror could read: The Challenge Hamdan v Rumsfeld, Jonathan Mahler, Farrar Straus Giroux, and Benjamin Wittes, Law and The Long War, The future of justice in the age of terror, Penguin.
To me there is a more basic question: Is it possible for Qasab to get justice at all after the kind of media reporting and the Pakistan bashing and war mongering by Indian television?
The courts and the law are not capable of delivering real justice. At best they can deliver legal justice which seldom incorporates real justice. It is in the very nature of court proceedings that they cannot take into consideration the political and historical context of the crime.
The danger is that the anger born of fear and our desire for revenge may be assuaged by hanging Qasab but it may prevent us from understanding why we have become vulnerable to such attacks.
The reason why it is important that Qasab get the best possible legal defence is not only to protect the rights of Qasab but to protect our criminal justice system, which is integral to our democracy, from being permanently damaged.
Already the Mumbai attack has been used to justify arming the state with more powers, greater surveillance of citizens and a greater role for intelligence agents, so undermining the core principles of good governance: accountability and transparency.
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Seven years ago I had organized a campaign for the defence of two Kashmiri Muslim men, S.A.R. Geelani and Mohammed Afzal, who were accused of attacking the Indian Parliament. I spent four years of my life trying to understand the motives of the two men. I listened and read. I tried to enter their world and tried to see my country, my beliefs, my political assumptions from their point of view. In the process of trying to understand their emotions I was compelled to question my own emotions, my assumptions and my political beliefs. I wrote about this experience in a book which was published in 2007, Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal, Patriotism in Time of Terror.
I wrote the book in the form of nine personal letters, each letter dealing with a specific aspect of the case and campaign. I also dealt with the political questions that I faced relating to religion, nationalism, secularism and socialism.
The book was received warmly in the Muslim world. It was released in London by Moazzam Begg, a Briton who was detained at Guantanamo. As a result the campaign against the death penalty for Afzal got a new impetus and the London-based South Asia Solidarity got nearly 50 British MPs to sign an early day motion on the issue. Pakistan’s Dawn voted my book as the best book of the year. An Urdu newspaper brought out from Birmingham carried a three part review of my book and I met the person who reviewed it, he was an ideologue of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. He told me that the Pakistani Government had stopped the paper from publishing one part of the review.
In India there were no reviews in the mainstream national newspapers or journals with the exception of Frontline where the review was confined to the letter written to Upendra Baxi, professor of law at Warwick College in the U.K., in which I had focused on the legal aspects of the case. One reviewer of a national daily said they could not review my book because the paper did not agree with my views.
There were long reviews in Mainstream and Seminar but no one even mentioned the issue of the nationality question in Kashmir or the letter written to my history teacher and the ideologue of the Congress Party brand of secularism, Prof Bipan Chandra. The chapter is entitled “Challenging Secular Fundamentalism”. Here I have argued on the basis of my experience doing this campaign that secularism has been used as a weapon for national security rather than for deepening political democracy.
There was a third reaction. It was from a section of liberal Hindus who told me that the book was very disturbing and they found it very difficult to read and face the questions I have raised.
Many people could not understand what I was really trying to argue in the book and they thought I was somehow justifying the attack on the Indian Parliament because I had some empathy with Islamic political movements. Some Muslim friends thought I was ready to convert to Islam.
The truth was that it was the first time I came face to face with Islamists. Till then I had only had interaction with people who were culturally Muslim but committed to secular or liberal ideology. It gave me an opportunity to read about the history of the movement, the theology and debates within the Islamic organizations. I heard the whole of the Quran, read as much as possible and tried to understand the world view of the people who were so deeply committed to their cause that they were willing to lay down their lives for it.
I do not agree with Geelani’s ideology even though I spent four years fighting for justice for him. I did not and do not agree with his political world view shaped by Maudoodi, Syed Qutub and other ideologues of the Islamic movements. Nor do I agree with his recent attempts to make alliances with Khalistani organizations, Kerala’s National Development Front, (I believe this is a truly Muslim communal organization) and a section of the Maoists.
I also do not agree with Mohammad Afzal’s pan Islamic ideology although I have a deep empathy with his and other Kashmiris who have their loyalty and commitment to the idea of an independent Kashmir, free from oppression of Pakistan and repression by India. I have written this in my book and will not repeat those arguments which have compelled me to support the cause of Kashmiri nationalism.
Just as I passionately disagree with my clients’ ideology I passionately am committed to my own beliefs and ideology. My beliefs do not allow me to let people be framed, tortured, illegally detained, imprisoned, killed or hanged without any evidence or without a fair trial.
It does not serve the cause of Indian democracy to ban the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) without producing any evidence before the tribunal. That is why the High Court Judge Geeta Mittal held the ban illegal. The ban on SIMI has been used by political forces to create an atmosphere of fear built on Islamophobia. And in contrast the very real evidence against Hindutva organizations such as the Bajrang Dal is sought to be suppressed and the organization is allowed to function.
Besides, the two organizations cannot so easily be equated. The Bajrang Dal targets people belonging to minority communities, preaches hatred and justifies violence. SIMI does not preach hatred. They dream of spreading the message of Islam and establishing an Islamic State.Theydonotpreachhateorjustifyviolence. OneoftheproblemsisthatIslamic movements in India have not produced any coherent social-economic or political vision based on political analysis. And Maududi’s social-economic understanding is extremely reactionary, justifying inequalities between rich and poor, suppression of women’s rights, and it embodies a vision of society in which the there is very little political democracy.
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The group of young journalists reporting their first terror attack showed some courage and grit but no sense of history or politics. They exposed the bankruptcy of their politics rather than informing the viewer of the significance of the events unfolding before their eyes.
But how can we blame them when at least eighteen universities across the country have stopped offering history courses. There may be more. In school history is taught in a way that students can answer all questions in a simple yes and no. Even the Ministry of External Affairs has closed down its history centre.
Terrorism is a political problem. It has to be understood politically. One survey documented 109 legal definitions of the word terrorism. The international community cannot agree on a definition of terrorism because the problem is political and not legal.
The Convention of the Organization of the Islamic Conference on Combating International Terrorism in its 26th session in 1999 adopted a comprehensive definition of terrorism:
“Terrorism means any act of violence or threat thereof notwithstanding its motives or intentions perpetuated to carry out an individual or collective criminal plan with the aim of terrorizing people or threatening to harm them or imperiling their lives, honour, freedoms, security or rights or exposing the environment or any facility or public or private property to hazards or occupying or seizing them, or endangering a national resource, or international facilities, or threatening the stability, territorial integrity, political unity or sovereignty of independent states.”
This definition was not acceptable to the West because the Convention included another Article which stated:
“Peoples’ struggle including armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism, and hegemony, aimed at liberation and self-determination in accordance with the principles of international law shall not be considered a terrorist crime.”
Would the attack in Mumbai be considered under the first comprehensive definition of terrorism or would it come under the exception. To answer this question we need to know the facts about who attacked us and why. But the investigation agencies have not even told us whether they have asked Qasab this question. By calling him the “butcher of Mumbai” we will not get any closer to knowing the truth.
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On the days that the media was reporting on the aftermath of the terror attacks there was another series of events which did not get serious media attention. In New Delhi, the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, and the Ministry of External Affairs, along with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in collaboration with the league of Arab States organized an India-Arab Forum Cultural Festival from December 2 to December 7, 2008.
Every evening there were magnificent dances and music from Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Qatar, Yemen, Jordan and Morocco. The auditorium was full every single evening and every evening we got a feast of colour, design, and rhythms which were different from ours and yet there was something familiar. There were moments when this similarity, our shared past, and our historical ties came to the fore and then when memories were revived the audience jumped to their feet to give standing ovations.
There were three moments. The first was when the Egyptian dancers produced a pole with a flag on it: one side was the Egyptian flag and the other our tri-colour. The audience burst into applause. The second was when Iraqi students studying in Delhi, presented a dance and although they were not professionals they got the longest applause. And the third moment was when the Palestinians played their music and the audience stood up, and Indians and Arabs sang their national song. Then the singer from Qatar shouted out a slogan “Jai Hind, Jai Arabia, Jai, Jai, Jai.”
I was transported to the 1970s, the time India, along with Egypt, led the non-alignment movement and third world solidarity could be felt in the hearts of ordinary people.
But what has this got to do with the Mumbai attack? Everything. When we were united against imperialism we were safe. When we betrayed the Palestinians and moved closer to America and Israel in pursuit of world power we exposed ourselves to attacks.
There was another lesson. The culture we saw and participated in represented the vibrant traditions rooted in cultures and civilizations which the Islamic fundamentalists want to wipe out. They want to ban colour, films, designs, music and culture itself. The festival asserted a solidarity and the language was a secular language of culture.
And there was another lesson. Perhaps the most important. Our shared history taught us that when our secularism was shallow, elitist and not democratic it led to a reaction – and that reaction has been the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It is our failure.
Who is this us? We have to define that.
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If globalization is trying to build one homogenous world culture then the resistance will be from another attempt to build a homogenous world culture.
The Western states spend billions of dollars to produce this so called globalized culture in which 53 billion dollars were spent in the USA on cosmetics alone; 5,138 billion on armaments and 79 billion dollars on perfumes in the West. We need only 59 billion dollars to ensure water and basic hygiene for all. (Human Development Report, 1997)
A reaction to this vulgarity is perhaps the puritanical Islam of the Islamic movements resisting imperialism and American domination.
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The problem before us is to react sensibly, with reason and political understanding to this attack on Mumbai. The repercussions of this act on our country are very serious: there is a danger of a war; there is a danger of a civil war; there is a danger of suppression of our human rights on a massive scale and the rise of a fascist, authoritarian state.
As far as human rights are concerned let us understand the context in which violations occur. If we are to go by any standards, in scale, in barbarity or in their senselessness we would say that the human rights violations committed by states far outweighs those committed by any non-state actor singly or together.
The human rights violations on the largest scale have been committed by imperialists through the domination of the western industrialized states over the third world. This domination is seen in the unfair terms of trade imposed through the mechanism of the World Trade Organisation, the control of media and culture by transnational corporations and the unjust political power balance. And the Islamic movements are a reaction to this injustice.
The second cause of human rights violations is the domination of one class over another. The rising rate of poverty and growing gap between the rich and poor within each nation leads to massive suffering and injustice.
The third cause of human rights violations is patriarchy, the oppression of one sex over another leading to gender discrimination and oppression.
The fourth cause of human rights violations is the oppression by one race/caste over another.
The fifth cause of human rights violations is the domination of the majority (whether religious, national or ethnic) over the minority.
The international human rights community has taken up human rights violations within third world states refusing to acknowledge the role of imperialism, colonialism or globalization. Furthermore, they have also been guilty of focusing on human rights violations in those political contexts that suits their political stand.
In fact human rights discourse has become an instrument of American foreign policy and the discourse itself has become debased. With the war against terror the standards that were achieved both nationally in India and internationally have been substantially lowered. Now with the Mumbai attack the ruling elite are crying out for wiping out the gains of two decades of the human rights movement.
The State will take the opportunity to arm itself with more authoritarian powers which will be used to crush every form of dissent. After all the war against terror takes away our attention from the terrorism of imperialism which has wiped out millions of jobs, destroyed cultures and forced millions of farmers to commit suicide.
What kind of world do we live in where our culture forces us to spend more money on cosmetics, pet foods and guns than on basic amenities like food, clothes and shelter?
By torturing Qasab and extracting confessions, humiliating our neighbouring country, and hanging Afzal we will not be any nearer to achieving peace and prosperity. More draconian laws, denial of civil liberties and the greater role of intelligence agencies will bring us closer to fascism and end of the Indian dream of democracy and secularism.
Nandita Haksar was a journalist before her involvement in the women's rights movement forced her to take to law. For the past twenty-five years she has worked as a human rights lawyer, campaigner and writer. She has set many precedents in human rights and refugees law. She has taken up cases in the courts in India as well as appearing before international courts and committees. She has evolved and taught courses on human rights in various universities.
Haksar's publications include: Demystification of Law for Women (1986); the book has been translated into regional languages and extensively used by women's groups for spreading legal literacy; Nagaland File: A Question of Human Rights. The book first exposed the human rights violations being committed by the Indian security forces in the North East of India; Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal: Patriotism in the Time of Terror (2007) in which she writes about her experience of defending two Kashmiri Muslims accused of attacking the Indian Parliament, and Rogue Agent: How India's Military Intelligence Betrayed the Burmese Resistance (forthcoming, Penguin 2009).