Silent Genocide

In stampless envelopes, without an address
Dead letters at the post office are we
- Zareef Ahmed Zareef, contemporary Kashmiri poet

What do the people of Indian-controlled Kashmir want?

It’s a question as old as you want it to be, but one that it is alive today, six decades after the decolonisation of the Indian subcontinent left Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan, clearly suggesting that Kashmiris themselves have not even been asked. Or been offered a credible mechanism to determine their collective will.

Kashmiris are getting tired of having their voices ignored

Instead, the general experience in Kashmir has been that of a repressed subject population ruled by a coercive and militarised governing structure, mainly constituting a client political class cultivated by New Delhi, and which therefore cannot represent the dominant Kashmiri aspiration of an end to Indian rule.

One of the manifestations of that aspiration is a deep yearning among the people of Kashmir for freedom. For a social, political and moral order that is free from suspicion, from invasive state surveillance and the constant threat of incarceration and violent death. Attributes that stem from Indian military dominance of the disputed region.

Partition

Since the partition of the Indian subcontinent that aspiration has not remained unchanged. In the aftermath of decolonisation, and right up to the late 1980s, the yearning for freedom in Kashmir, in the main, meant being a part of Pakistan. But a significant educated political class has all along espoused an independent state of Jammu and Kashmir, free from both the rival claims of the two neighbouring countries.

The past two decades saw the political movement inside Kashmir transformed, from an armed militancy to intifada-style array of stone throwing street demonstrations – but accompanied within Kashmir by a consistent assessment of what freedom means for its people. The long experience of being a “part” of India, and a new understanding of the Pakistani state, has apparently led to a desire to be free from both.

Kashmir has a centuries-long history of struggle against rulers from outside the Himalayan region, the last being its subjugation by the Dogra rulers from the Punjab who had bought the people and their land from the British colonial authorities in 1846 with the Treaty of Amritsar.

When the British left the subcontinent in 1947, the people of Kashmir believed their moment in history had also arrived. But freedom from Dogra autocracy was soon to be replaced with India and Pakistan, both claiming the territory, and, after fighting a war over it that same year, dividing it between themselves. The Kashmiri nation, which had rallied against the Dogra regime for decades, often alongside the Indian freedom movement, was left wounded and undermined.

Resistance to the Indian rule of Kashmir has also transformed during the past six decades. After a brief five-year period of relative self-rule ended in 1952, the client Kashmiri ruling class ensured the political arm-twisting of those political groups who – in accordance with the principles of partition – wanted Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan. It paved the way for Al Fateh, an embryonic armed movement for freedom from India, but this was neutralised at an early stage during the 1970s.

This latest phase of the Kashmiri struggle to find its own place in the world turned militant in 1989, when thousands of Kashmiri Muslims – backed by Pakistan – took to arms against Indian rule. This phase also signalled the miserable failure of a several decades-long Indian attempt at emotionally integrating Kashmir with New Delhi. They fought for freedom from being misrepresented, and with the aspirations of a future outside Indian sovereignty.

Up until decolonisation of the Indian subcontinent, Kashmir’s culture, language, economy, identity, religious and social order had been a continuum of major influences from western India – now Pakistan – from central Asia, and further afield, even from Persia. That immense civilisational backyard had significantly informed the Kashmiri people’s worldview. But now Kashmir was amputated from that body and another dimension of spiritual suffering was added for its isolated inhabitants.

For generations, Kashmiris had journeyed for trade and spiritual gratification to the fabled Central Asian cities of Bukhara, Tashkent, Samarkand and Lhasa. All that suddenly came to an end. Kashmiris are struggling today in the hope of a chance to restore the nation to the world that had historically nurtured its identity and soul.

For the people, taking to arms meant a sharp surge in militarism by India, making Kashmir the world’s most militarised zone. That armed conflict has – so far – left 70,000 people violently killed and an unending saga of humiliation, disappeared young men, orphans, widows – and silence from the outside world.

Two decades later, the armed rebellion has received a crushing blow, but the extreme militarisation of Kashmir remains unchanged. Official estimates suggest 627,000 Indian armed forces personnel, protected with impunity laws, are deployed to control an acutely alienated population of a little more than ten million.

Strategy for independence

To regain self-rule, Kashmiri resistance groups had tried the electoral route that the Indian constitution held out, despite a long history of a lack of credibility of that process. Elections held ostensibly for administrative purposes had always been interpreted by New Delhi as repeated referendums in its favour. But all that changed in 1987 when elections to the state legislature were massively rigged in favour of the expressly pro-India parties. For many of those who later picked up arms, and others who would be called “separatists”, that election meant the end of constitutionally permissible ways to determine political destiny, and marked the beginning of an armed uprising.

The heavy cost of two decades of this war, and the post 9/11 global “war on terror” have also forced Kashmiris to re-assess their strategy to avoid being branded as “terrorists”. The armed rebellion has for the most part today metamorphosised into mass anti-India street protests, which, since 2008, challenges Indian rule in ways that are more acceptable internationally. But, like the harsh military response to armed militancy and the resultant militarised scenario, the government’s response to street protests has been brutal. Two years before Tahrir Square, Kashmir had its own “million-man-march” against Indian rule. Government forces killed 60 unarmed protesters during the mass rally.

In 2010, during anti-India stone throwing street protests against Indian rule, government action added more than 100 youths to the body count in Kashmir. Enraged Kashmiri people responded by memorialising their loss, struggle and sacrifice – forcing New Delhi to change its approach, if only superficially.

Deeply resented by Kashmiris, the invasive presence of the incredibly high concentration of armed forces among them now seeks acceptance among the population as coercive partners for their future within India. The army and other federal paramilitary forces have started a new “hearts and minds” campaign in the hope of winning acceptability among the Kashmiri youth at the forefront of the new movement for freedom. It clearly indicates the absence of any intention to demilitarise Kashmir, even as it is becoming increasingly unbearable for everyone – except those among the pro-India political elite.

Harsh Indian rule

For the immediate future, Kashmiris want an end to a situation that in the Indian perspective necessitates draconian laws such as the Public Safety Act (PSA) and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to keep its hold over the Kashmiri people. Under the PSA, described by Amnesty International as a “lawless law”, a political dissenter can be jailed for up to two years without formal charges or a trial. Hundreds of protesters arrested on charges of throwing stones at government forces have also been slapped with PSA charges. The law is wantonly used as a revolving door to keep dissenting voices “out of circulation”.

The AFSPA, on the other hand, grants sweeping powers and impunity to the federal armed forces deployed in Kashmir in their hundreds of thousands. Its provisions allow armed forces personnel to arrest or kill people and destroy private property on the mere suspicion that of actions against the state.

Armed forces’ personnel accused of grave human rights violations such as custodial killings of civilians and rape cannot be tried in civilian courts unless specifically permitted by New Delhi. Human rights defenders and police themselves have established hundreds of such cases prima facie against army and paramilitary forces’ personnel, but not a single prosecution has been possible since 1990 – for want of the mandatory sanction from New Delhi.

But demands for demilitarising Kashmir and the repeal of laws such as AFSPA have started coming from within Indian civil society as well. The Indian army has declined to operate in Kashmir without the cover of AFSPA by calling the impunity law its “holy book”.

With the bitter national memory of loss and humiliation caused by the militarisation of Kashmir, New Delhi is unlikely to succeed in attempts to normalise this extreme situation.

Meanwhile, Kashmiris are feeling ever more politically choked after the mass upsurge of the summer of 2010 – which was followed by a massive security crackdown, large scale arrests of protesters and resistance leaders alike from across the region – including some who are charged with protesting on Facebook.

The renewed stifling conditions have pushed the new generation of youth to force open new spaces amid the enforced “surface calm” which prevails now, after three years of mass protests against Indian rule and retaliatory killings by government forces. They have begun representing themselves by writing about their condition using the internet and social media such as Facebook and Youtube to reach out to a wider world. However, there is yet no sign of any significant change visible on the horizon.

Status quo

When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently hoped that “Pakistan will leave Kashmir alone” he also revealed the Indian state’s will to maintain the status quo, in the face of a decades-old mass movement for the right to self-determination in the part India holds in the disputed region.

In the autumn of 2010, New Delhi also appointed three interlocutors to engage “all shades of political opinion” in Kashmir. They lack credibility in Kashmir, as the main resistance leadership continues to refuse to meet them – mainly because the interlocutors are working for a political solution to the issue of Kashmir within the Indian Constitution.

An approach to resolve the dispute without the participation of Kashmiri resistance leadership presents a cul-de-sac. The region remains a keg of bitter and unforgiving memory, likened by many observers now to a live bomb – connected to a fuse that is already lit. The military establishment is constantly trying to lengthen the fuse.

Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers recently resumed a bilateral dialogue, but nothing more than enhancing a few existing Kashmir-specific confidence-building measures between the nuclear-armed rivals was achieved. The Kashmiri demand of inclusion in that dialogue process has again been ignored.

While people in Kashmir are waiting for the two countries to agree to end their political and existential uncertainty, they continue a lonely journey – pushing for, and hoping to win, a chance to decide their own future.

Diplomacy, or just 2 guys watching cricket?

Leaders to meet as India and Pakistan play, but what they’ll discuss is a mystery

With careful diplomatic scripting, India and Pakistan began talking again this week. Officials from both countries convened in New Delhi to discuss security issues and pave the way for future meetings between more powerful officials. The talks were billed as baby steps, a modest restarting of a critical but stalled diplomatic dialogue.

Then, unexpectedly, a cricket match intervened – and almost overnight, the scope of the dialogue has suddenly changed.

When India and Pakistan meet Wednesday afternoon for a semifinal match in cricket’s World Cup, the prime ministers of both countries will be seated together in the stands. Now, the question is what exactly they will talk about and whether a breakthrough is possible between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

The surprise development is the latest gambit on Pakistan by the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh. Last weekend, when it became clear that both countries had advanced to the semifinal, Mr. Singh issued a surprise invitation to his Pakistani counterpart, Yousaf Raza Gilani, to join him for the match in the Indian city of Mohali. Mr. Gilani eventually accepted. (Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, declined an invitation.)

For the Indian subcontinent, where few things stir public passions more than cricket and politics, the twinning of such a high-stakes cricket match with such high-stakes diplomacy has created an irresistible spectacle. An enormous audience, possibly in the hundreds of millions, is expected to watch the match on television, while India has ordered a massive security clampdown in Mohali, including a no-flight zone over the city, to protect against terrorism.

Mr. Singh’s invitation is another example of how he has repeatedly tried to advance diplomacy with Pakistan, even when some members of his own Indian National Congress party have resisted. In New Delhi, Mr. Singh’s overture has drawn a mixed reaction; some analysts have praised his determination to push forward, while others have expressed skepticism, seeing the meeting as something of a political stunt that risks undermining the lower-level talks that began this week.

”It has caught everybody by surprise,” said Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst in New Delhi. ”In diplomacy, you have to do the preparatory work first if you want to have a result. This sounds like an impulsive move.”

Harish Khare, a spokesman for Mr. Singh, described the invitation as a ”spur of the moment” decision made after it became clear that the two countries would meet in the semifinals. He said there is no specific agenda, nor any structured dialogue; rather, he said, the meeting is an opportunity to build trust, enjoy the match and have ”an exchange of ideas.”

”The prime minister just said, ‘Come along,”’ Mr. Khare said. ”Of course, there will be some talk. But it is not a summit meeting. And it will not interfere with the ongoing dialogue.”

The unsettled relationship between India and Pakistan lies beneath many of the festering problems in south Asia. The two countries have a decades-old dispute over Kashmir and a host of other conflicts. Diplomatic progress was shattered in 2008, when Pakistani-based militants conducted terror attacks in Mumbai that killed at least 163 people. The United States has long prodded both countries toward negotiations in hopes that defused tensions, especially over Kashmir, would encourage the Pakistani military to shift resources away from India toward fighting terror groups inside Pakistan.

The initial step in this latest resumption of dialogue was supposed to be the meetings that began Monday in New Delhi. The Pakistani interior secretary, Qamar Zaman, met with the Indian home secretary, G.K. Pillai, to discuss the Mumbai attacks and other security issues. (On Tuesday, the two said in a joint statement that Pakistan had agreed to a visit by an Indian judicial commission investigating the attacks, The Associated Press reported.)

But these meetings were quickly upstaged by Mr. Singh’s cricket overture.

Analysts note that ”cricket diplomacy” has been tried in the past, with mixed results. In 1987, Pakistan’s then-president, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, attended an India-Pakistan match, but relations soon deteriorated. More recently, in 2005, Mr. Singh invited then-President Pervez Musharraf to an India-Pakistan match in New Delhi, ushering in a period of secret back-channel talks that almost culminated in a breakthrough deal on Kashmir.

Now, though, many analysts say the political situation is far different. Both Mr. Gilani and Mr. Singh are politically wounded at home; Indian analysts argue that Mr. Gilani is actually far less politically powerful than Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Meanwhile, Mr. Singh has been battered by allegations of corruption leveled against his government.

Yet the cricket invitation does seem to have enhanced a feeling of good will on both sides. Pakistan announced the early release of a longtime Indian prisoner – if, admittedly, by only a few months.

”You will see relations become more friendly and cordial, even outside the cricket grounds,” predicted Abid Saeed, the press counselor for the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. He said a delegation of about 50 ministers and officials was traveling with Mr. Gilani to the match.

C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, applauded Mr. Singh’s gambit, noting that for all the diplomacy and highly structured meetings by lower-level officials over the decades, progress is usually only made when the top leaders are directly engaged. Mr. Mohan said that if the cricket diplomacy results in warmer relations, Mr. Singh should visit Pakistan as his next bold gesture.

”Right or wrong, India’s Pakistan policy has always been driven by the gut instincts of the prime ministers rather than the carefully crafted approaches by the diplomatists,” Mr. Mohan wrote Tuesday in The Indian Express, a leading English-language newspaper. ”If the mood at Mohali turns out to be good, Dr. Singh and Gilani might help give the dialogue at the bureaucratic level a much needed boost.”

Occupied Kashmir under literary spotlight

By Beatrice Le Bohec

JAIPUR, India – Asia’s biggest literary festival, in India’s “pink city” Jaipur, has given pride of place to troubled Indian Kashmir, whose literature has been marked by more than two decades of rebel violence.

In recent years, the Jaipur festival has become the literary event not to be missed in India

Muslim-majority Kashmir has a rich literary tradition dating back to the 14th century, but few outside readers are familiar with its beauty because little has been translated.

But now a growing number of Kashmiri works are appearing in English as reader interest in a region beset by a separatist insurgency since 1989 is growing, festival organisers said.

Invited to appear at the five-day Jaipur Literary Festival, which began on Friday and is billed by organisers as the biggest in Asia, poet Naseem Shafaie read her work to a mainly English-speaking audience at a seminar.

Her translator Neerja Mattoo then took the floor to render the rhythm and words of Shafaie’s verse in English.

Shafaie’s haunting poetry evokes the pain she felt when her husband, a journalist, was the victim of an attack, and the distress of dispatching her son to New Delhi to keep him safe from the unrest in Kashmir.

Shafaie is the first woman to have published a book of poems in Kashmiri, entitled “Open Windows”.

“I see a growing interest in Kashmir because of the political situation. People want to read to learn,” Shafaie said through her translator.

The insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir has claimed more than 47,000 lives, and the presence of hundreds of thousands of security forces in one of the most militarised regions in the world has fuelled the anger of residents, especially among jobless youth.

Last summer more than 100 people were shot dead by security forces during a wave of demonstrations triggered when a teenager was killed by a police tear gas bullet.

The Himalayan region is held in part by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan but claimed in full by both.

“In Kashmir, politics is inseparable from everyday life. No family was spared by the violence,” said Indian journalist Rahul Pandita, who originally hailed from the area and has reported in conflict zones such as Iraq.

“But it takes time for problems to find a place in the local literature, and it takes even more time for them to be translated into English.”

Kashmiri literature translated into English will develop in the next five years, he predicted, especially as “poetic expression grows in certain forms of misfortune.”

Mattoo, who has translated three books of Kashmiri short stories and poetry into English, said there were limits on the number of English versions that can can appear because of a simple lack of translators.

In recent years, the Jaipur festival, which began in 2006 with a handful of authors and participants, has become the literary event not to be missed in India.

More than 200 authors were invited this year and organisers expect more than 50,000 people to attend the event, which offers discussions, readings and concerts in the scenic setting of a 19th-century hotel in Jaipur known as the “Pink City” because of its rose-coloured buildings.

US And India Are Exploiting Mumbai

AHMED QURAISHI

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-Two year later, no one has probed the international aspect of the planning for the Mumbai attacks. Both India and the United States are focused only on the alleged Pakistani part in the attacks. The Pakistani part is limited. The international dimension of the planning and preparations for the attacks is vast and full of leads that have been deliberately suppressed by the Indian and US governments.

India is focused on settling political scores with Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. The United States insists on becoming a party to the Mumbai probe and is using Lashkar’s's name to peddle conspiracy theories about LeT’s ‘global ambitions’ to sustain pressure on Pakistan on the Afghan front and rid India of one of its most formidable Kashmiri foes.

India is yet to convict the lone surviving attacker, Ajmal Kassab. New Delhi is yet to reveal crucial parts of its own probe, especially any information on the backgrounds and identities of the ten terrorists who carried out an impressive attack against India on Indian soil with near impunity.

By delaying the conviction of Kassab for two years, India has lost the credibility of its case and weakened its allegations against Pakistan. The only reason there’s no conviction is because there’s no evidence. And as time passes, more information emerges about the international aspects of this crime. The new information further weakens India’s ‘get-Pakistan’ campaign.

That’s good news for Pakistan. But there’s a whole bundle of trouble for Pakistan that has developed since 2008. It would be useful for the Pakistanis to start a counterattack on the diplomatic and media fronts:

1. India has used the attacks as cover to settle scores with Kashmiri and pro-Kashmir groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba [LeT]. These groups have given India’s military a bloody nose in Kashmir in the 21 years since the start of the armed struggle by Kashmiris against Indian occupation. These groups are naturally based in Pakistan due to a large number of Pakistanis being of Kashmiri heritage and because of Kashmir’s geographical contiguity with Pakistan. India has used the attacks to advocate Israel-style limited aerial strikes inside Pakistan against the offices of the Kashmiri and pro-Kashmir groups. Perpetrators of Mumbai attacks must be punished, but India and its enthusiasts in Washington must not be allowed to use this as a pretext to suppress legitimate Kashmiri freedom activism.

2. There is no evidence so far linking LeT and other Kashmiri or pro-Kashmir groups to Mumbai attacks. India’s case is built on two threads. One is the person presented by the Indian police as the lone surviving terrorist. If the Indian version of interrogations is to be believed, Ajmal Kassab is supposed to have provided an insider account of alleged Pakistani/Kashmiri/LeT involvement. Experts know that young operatives in such terror cases are often low-level pawns with little knowledge about the real organizers and planners. Knowing this, it is easy to see how this suspect can’t provide useful info beyond a certain point, which is his immediate involvement with the group that carried out the attacks. And even here, it is worth exploring why Indian interrogators failed to extract and release any information about the other 10 attackers: their identities, names, places of origin, etc. The second thread on which India’s case is built is the Internet. There’s a lot of confusing material on voice-over-Internet and cell phone communications passing through third-country telecom networks. This involves several countries beyond Pakistan and India. This makes Mumbai attacks a truly multinational crime and suggests possibilities for the involvement of criminal and intelligence cells in those third countries. This evidence contradicts India’s position that all investigation be focused on Pakistan and pro-Kashmir groups.

3. The CIA-FBI angle: What confirms the point above is evidence that a longtime FBI agent, a half-Pakistani named David Headley, was a longtime CIA recruit and was planted close to LeT and other pro-Kashmir activists in Pakistan. Islamabad has smartly refrained from commenting on his case. The Indian government has its own suspicions but it too won’t probe the Americans too hard on them beyond occasional murmurs. Headley’s entry into the probe and the circustances in which his cover was blown further weakens the Indian case in any impartial judicial review.

4. The US is exploiting Mumbai attacks more than the Indians. Washington is making itself party to the case simply because one or two Americans became targets of circumstance. This is fascinating because an Australian priest and his two underage kids were burned alive in 1999 and Australia never pursued the case. Nor did any of the American Christian organizations that today lead the campaign for demonizing Islam in support of US war objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

5. This fall, Washington has come out with incredible and fantastical theories about a threat to US and Europe from LeT. In some cases US officials have put LeT ahead of al-Qaeda as a bigger threat. US officials have also tailored new threats to suit LeT’s Mumbai-related profile. This was done by, for example, the choice of words, insisting that Europe is facing the possibility of ‘Mumbai-style attacks.’ US officials have also theorized that LeT suddenly has ‘global ambitions’. None of these American presentations and conspiracy theories comes with evidence. The LeT and other Kashmiri groups were created because of massive Indian military atrocities in Kashmir, including rapes and Serbian-style mass graves. Victims of these events have produced motivated cadres out to seek revenge. They are focused on Kashmir and India’s role in this tragedy. These groups and their activists don’t have global ambitions.

6. It is US policy now that Pakistan relinquish its historic claim to Indian occupied Kashmir. If Pakistan complies, it won’t have any reason to object to a major Indian role in Afghanistan in support of the United States and as part of a common Indian-Pakistani-American-NATO front hedging China, Iran and Russia.

The one crucial recommendation that Pakistan’s political and intelligence officials must consider before it is too late is this:

Declare firmly and clearly that Pakistan will not and cannot be held responsible for terror attacks in third countries carried out by the citizens of those countries. David Headley is American. So is Faisal Shahzad, and the Germans alleged by CIA to have traveled to the Pakistani tribal belt through Afghanistan and are planning ‘Mumbai-style’ attacks in Europe cannot be a Pakistani responsibility.

Alleged future attacks are being linked to the Pakistani tribal belt to help Washington push Pakistan into a new war in that region against Pakistan’s Pashtun. Making such claims has become easy for the US and British governments without any counter narrative from the Pakistani government.

Pakistan should stop India and the United States from exploiting Mumbai. And the best way to do this is to demand a wider probe into the entire aspects of the Mumbai carnage and not limit the investigations to alleged Pakistani connections, which are weak and circumstantial at best.

‘18 Pak soldiers missing in Indian jails’

ISLAMABAD: Bitter memories of the 1965 and 1971 wars with India were revisited in the Senate on Tuesday when Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi made a shocking disclosure in writing that 18 personnel of the Pakistan Army captured in the two wars had gone missing in Indian jails.

Talking to The News after the Senate session, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said Pakistan had already shared a list of its 18 missing soldiers with New Delhi. The soldiers were arrested during 1965 and 1971 wars and were believed to be still in the Indian jails.

This is for the first time that the Foreign Office made a confession in writing before the upper house during the Question-Hour that apart from 920 Pakistanis detained in Indian jails, 18 Pakistani soldiers were part of the list of those missing in Indian jails. The foreign minister did not give the required detail about their names and ranks. Qureshi told the house that a total of 920 Pakistanis were detained in Indian jails out of whom 770 were civilians, 132 fishermen and 18 missing defence personnel.

The fresh disclosures at the government level might revive the hopes of families of the missing soldiers in Indian jails. Pakistani soldiers may not be alone facing this kind of sorry fate in the Indian jails. In 2006, a group of desperate Indian women had visited the Pakistani jails after the then president Pervez Musharraf, as part of confidence building measures between the two countries, had given them a special permission to locate the Indian soldiers reported to be missing in the Pakistani jails. The Indian women, mostly blood relatives of the missing Indian soldiers, were allowed to visit the Pakistani jails, meet all foreign prisoners and identify their blood relatives, if any. These Indian women had built pressure on their own government to raise the issue of missing Indian soldiers in Pakistani jails after reportedly, one of the detained Indian soldiers during the 1971 war, had written a letter to his relatives in India from a Pakistani jail, informing them he, along with several other soldiers, were still alive.

But, despite this extraordinary act of human gesture shown by the then leadership of Pakistan, the group of Indian women had returned empty-handed, quite disappointed as they could not trace a single soldier detained in Pakistani jails.

Indian athletes to lose on home advantage: CGF CEO Mike Hooper

THE TIMES OF INDIA

NEW DELHI: Delay in the completion of the Commonwealth Games venues will rob the Indian athletes of the vital home advantage, Commonwealth Games Federation CEO Mike Hooper said on Thursday.

Hooper, who visited the Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium, venue for Games’ opening and closing ceremonies, said that players are losing out on getting a hang of the stadiums and that will hurt India’s medal prospects.

“They are going to lose on vital home advantage. They should have been given access earlier. Their medal prospect will get affected,” Hooper said.

“Venue handovers have been missed on various occasions and that’s not a new thing. But I’ll say, don’t look back, look ahead. It’s time to put our foot right. It’s time to look ahead,” said Hooper.

Delhi had promised that most facilities for the Games would be completed by the end of last year. That deadline was extended to March 31 and then to June 30.

Three pivotal projects – the main Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, the aquatic complex and the athletes’ village – all missed the June deadline.

On the issue of a young swimmer Priyanka Banerjee tripping on a loose grill and hurting herself at a Test event at the Talkatora stadium, now called S P Mukherjee stadium, Hooper said such incidents need to be redressed immediately.

“I heard that a swimmer hurt her ankle. You need to look into all those things. Correct it,” he said.

The Test event, National Federation Cup, was held to demonstrate that the swimming complex was Games-ready.

Hooper, however, refused to react on the Central Vigilance Committee report which pointed at rampant corruption in the construction of stadiums.

“I have no idea about that. I heard that CVC is looking into it. It’s not a matter with CGF,” he said.

The CVC report cites instances of corrupt practices in awarding stadium construction contracts to companies. The report clearly points at rampant corruption in the contracts.

On the remodelled Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium, which is holding a three-day Asian Athletics meet, Hooper said, “It’s an impressive venue with lot of improvement made in 6-8 weeks. It’s going well.”

India important, Pakistan indispensable in Afghanistan: US

Thaindian News

New Delhi, (IANS) The US Wednesday said while India had a very important role in Afghanistan through its development programmes, the action against terrorism in the war-ravaged nation will not succeed without the aid of Pakistan.

“We have strongly welcomed the important role that India has played through its various reconstruction and development projects,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake said in a webchat from Washington, relayed through the state department website.

With respect to Pakistan’s role, he said they had an indispensable part in Afghanistan.

“We will not be able to succeed without the active support of friends in Pakistan,” he said.

Blake said Pakistan was taking steps to tackle terrorists, especially in Swat and Waziristan, as it was in its interest to do so.

“It is easy to forget that Pakistan is the country which has suffered the most from terrorism,” he said.

Answering a question, Blake said it was aware that the Maoist violence was one of the “primary threats facing India”.

“At this time, the Indian government has not made any request but we are ready to entertain any requests given our fast growing cooperation in this (counter-terrorism) sector,” he said.

The US official’s remarks on India come on the eve of the first India-US ministerial level strategic dialogue led by Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

India actually lost Kargil war: Gen Pal

* Indian general says what his country gained from war has not been consolidated

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: An Indian general, who commanded troops during 1999 Kargil war, on Sunday broke his 11-year silence to say that India actually lost the war in strategic terms.

Lieutenant-General (r) Kishan Pal, the then head of Srinagar-based 15 Corps, told a private channel that he did not speak because he was never convinced about this war.

“We did gain some tactical victories, we regained the territories, but lost 587 precious lives. I consider this loss of war because whatever we gained from the war has not been consolidated, either politically or diplomatically. It has not been consolidated militarily,” he said, when was asked for his assessment of the conflict 11 years later.

Gen Pal was recently in a controversy involving the battle performance report of one of his juniors, Brigadier Devinder Singh. An armed forces tribunal has indicted Pal for showing bias against Brigadier Singh; former 70 infantry brigade commander, and belittled his achievements in the war besides falsifying accounts of battles during the Kargil operations.

Meanwhile, a Chandigarh-based former army major has also come out with a revelation that his inputs on Kargil ‘intrusion’, sent to his seniors as early as January-February 1999, were ignored and he was asked to stop sending such reports in writing.

Major Manish Bhatnagar, who participated in the Kargil war, said not only were his inputs ignored, later, when a full-scale conflict broke out, he was court martialled on another pretext and made to leave the army.

He said he had informed his senior officers about the heavy presence of hostile forces and had also apprised them of the large number of bunkers and occupation of vital points by them during his posting. “Later, when the strength of ‘intruders’ was found to be more than the perceptions of the top generals – resulting in mass causalities of soldiers – officers like me were persecuted to hide their wrongs,’” Bhatnagar said.

Maoist sabotage may have caused train derailment: Indian Railways

Maoists blasted rail tracks in West Midnapore district of West Bengal in the wee hours today, derailing 13 coaches of a Mumbai-bound express train, five of which were hit by a goods train, leaving 65 dead and 104 others injured, the second attack on civilians by Naxals this month. The blast occurred at 1.30am when the Howrah-Kurla Lokmanya Tilak Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express was running between Khemasoli and Sardiya stations, about 135km from Jhargram, South Eastern Railway (SER) officials said. It then came into the path of another train coming in the opposite direction. West Bengal Home Secretary Samar Ghosh said that 65 people were killed in the incident. The number of dead was expected to rise after the incident early on Friday. More than 200 passengers have been injured.

Rescue workers gather at the scene of the train mishap in West Bengal, early Friday. Maoists blasted rail tracks in West Midnapore district, derailing the Gyaneshwari Express’s 13 coaches, five of which were hit by a goods train, leaving 20 dead.

“We suspect it is a case of sabotage. The driver (of the passenger train) has reported to have heard a large sound. There was definite tinkering with the tracks,” member railway board Vivek Sahai told reporters in New Delhi. The sleeping passengers were killed when a goods train rammed into four bogies of the Gyaneshwari Express that jumped rails at 1:30 am on Friday morning allegedly after fish plates were removed and portions of tracks cut out deep inside Maoist-dominated West Midnapore district of West Bengal. Twenty-six of the bodies were extricated from the mangled coaches of the train after the 13 coaches derailed with five toppling over an adjacent track, additional superintendent of police, Jhargram, Mukesh Kumar said.

“We had issued a red alert,” he said. Sahai said the deaths were mainly caused by the goods train hitting the three derailed coachs of the Howrah-Kurla Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express. “There have been earlier cases of sabotage but never of this scale,” the railway board member said.

Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee who reached the spot said a high level inquiry has been ordered. “We condemn the incident. According to the information from Railways and administration, a bomb blast occurred triggering the incident. I shall write to the Union Home Minister to conduct an enquiry,” said Railway minister Mamata Banerjee at the accident site. The blast occurred when the train was running between Khemasoli and Sardiya stations, about 135 km from Kolkata, South Eastern Railway officials said. 13 bogies including the engine of the Gyaneshwari Express that had left Howrah and was heading for Kurla jumped the rails. A goods train that was coming from the opposite direction crashed on to four of the derailed bogies. As a result, the goods train was itself derailed.

Four bogies (S4, S5, S6, S7) were smashed as relief workers desperately tried to cut through the mangled structures and bring out dead bodies. Bodies were dangling from the wreckage as the relief workers struggled with gas cutters to reach for any possible survivors. The train was full of sleeping passengers, about 70 in each bogie, and no one was sure about the number of casualties. Rail authorities initially claimed that an explosion in the rail tracks have triggered the incident. But police officials, after preliminary survey, indicated more than a foot of tracks were cut out and fish plates were removed.

“We are not yet sure of the Maoist hand at this moment, though it can’t be ruled out either,” said divisional railway manager Anil Handa. “Law and order is a state subject and these are highly sensitive areas. Rajdhani Express was detained in this area last year. The Maoists are observing Kala Divash (Black Day) between May 28 and May 31 here,” said the railway minister. The rebels have called for observance of a “black week” from Friday to Wednesday in the five states, including West Bengal, where they wield considerable influence. But officials say it is too early to say if the Maoists are to blame. She claimed that a pilot engine passed through this route last night but didn’t specify how long before the incident the patrolling took place. This is the second Maoist attack on civilians this month. Naxals had blown up a civilian bus in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh on May 17, killing at least 36 people, including 12 Special Police Officers. SER PRO Soumitra Majumdar said the train had 24 coaches. After the explosion, 13 including 10 sleeper coaches, derailed of which five were hit by the goods train coming on the opposite track.

Maoist rebels have in recent months stepped up attacks in response to a government security push to flush them out of their jungle bases. They have attacked police, government buildings and infrastructure such as railway stations. Earlier this month they blew up a bus in the state of Chhattisgarh, killing 35 people. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the insurgency as India’s biggest internal security challenge. This is a region where Maoists tried to disrupt trains on at least three occasions between October 27, 2009 and May 20, 2010. The incident happened between Sardiha and Khemashuli near Jhargram in West Midnapore at 1:30 on Friday morning and the combined forces arrived after the accident. Relief workers were rushed before dawn. The injured were taken to a hospital in Kharagpur. The next of kin of those dead will be given a compensation of Rs 5 lakh each and the injured will be given Rs 1 lakh each.

Why Are Hindu Honor Killings Rising in India?

By Madhur Singh

For three weeks now, a morbid murder story has been playing out in the Indian media. Nirupama Pathak, 22, a New Delhi-based journalist, was allegedly murdered by her own mother. Her crime? She had wanted to marry a fellow journalist who belongs to a lower caste – and she was pregnant. On a trip home to make a final effort to convince her family, Nirupama texted her boyfriend that she was being held captive, locked up in a bathroom. On April 29, she was found dead. The family claimed Nirupama had killed herself, and lodged a case against her boyfriend for rape and abetting suicide. But when the postmortem results revealed Nirupama had been asphyxiated, the police arrested her mother, Sudha Pathak.

Police escort Sudha Pathak, left, the mother of Nirupama Pathak, inside a police station in Koderma, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, on May 3, 2010

The case is now headed to court, which will disentangle the web of allegations and counterallegations. Meanwhile, it has thrust the issue of honor killings to the center of public debate. Though Western readers associate the term more with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan than with 21st century India, honor killings are shockingly frequent in villages in the northern and northwestern parts of the country, where those daring to cross the barriers of caste are made to pay with their lives. Mostly, these cases are confined to the inside pages of newspapers, but the Nirupama case – in urban, educated, middle-class India – has hit the front pages.

Activists say dozens of people, both women and men, are killed for “honor” every year, falling victim to the deeply entrenched caste system, which dictates an individual’s social standing based on the caste they are born into. The majority of these killings take place in the agrarian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where land ownership and caste go hand in hand and an honor culture thrives by maintaining caste and gender hierarchies. “The upper castes fiercely guard their hold over land and power in the community,” says Ranbir Singh, a Haryana-based sociologist currently a consultant with the Haryana Institute of Rural Development. “They are able to mobilize young, educated but unemployed, mostly unmarried men, who are all fired up to shore up their self-esteem.” (From TIME’s archives: India and the politics of prejudice.)

Perceived caste transgressions are severely punished. In a recent case in a Haryana village, an 18-year-old Dalit girl and her father were allegedly burned alive by upper-caste Jat men following an argument over a dog. Women, since they have property rights, are a threat if not kept under a vicelike grip. It is no surprise that Haryana, one of India’s wealthiest states with a largely farm-based economy, has the highest rate of selectively aborting female fetuses, a practice that has skewed the demographics so much that there are only 861 women for 1,000 men. Young men are forced to purchase brides from other states. The statistics on honor killings are also the worst there: groups called khaps run kangaroo courts that routinely issue fatwa-like orders for the execution of those who have offended caste boundaries.

The situation is aggravated by modernity, as more and more young people want to marry for love instead of family or caste considerations. Khaps violently oppose both marriages between upper-caste women and lower-caste men and those within sub-castes and villages deemed to share kinship ties. The khap itself, long a locus of power for the land-owning Jat community, is being rendered irrelevant by economic change, increasingly egalitarian democratic politics and population movement – hence, say observes, this brutal attempt to re-establish its prerogatives. “Due to their declining status, they are trying to assert their existence by taking the law in their own hands,” explains Prem Chowdhry, senior academic fellow at the New Delhi-based Indian Council of Historical Research.

A month before Nirupama’s death, a court in Haryana sentenced five people to death for killing a couple belonging to the same village and gotra, or caste-based clan (village elders had deemed them brother and sister). Manoj Banwala, 23, and Babli, 19, of Karoran village in Haryana, had married against the wishes of the bride’s family on April 7, 2007. Urged on by the khap, the village had turned against Banwala’s family, forcing the couple to flee to a nearby city, where they were killed two months later on order from the khap. A police investigation found that police assigned to protect the couple had actually passed on information to the assailants. When the court pronounced the punishment, the khaps launched protests and demanded that the government introduce changes in the Hindu marriage law to ban marriages within the same gotra.

Astonishingly, prominent politicians from both the ruling Congress party and the opposition have come out in support of the khaps’ demand. With city and village elections due shortly, political parties see this as an easy ploy to lure votes, caste being a handy instrument of statecraft. Even as the Nirupama case was burning, the government announced that caste data would be collected as part of the census – the first time since 1931 – to get exact caste statistics, ostensibly to implement meaningful affirmative-action plans for underprivileged castes. But the move has many opponents, who believe it will only perpetuate a political culture that takes advantage of caste divisions. “It is the cynicism of politicians that they’ve made caste a tool for political mobilization,” says New Delhi-based analyst Amulya Ganguli. “The khaps’ growing clout and the killings of hapless couples show how dangerous this renewed emphasis can be.”