A day of two resignations
THIS year Martyrs Day held special significance. Prime Minister Vajpayee promised the nation that his government would fully protect the minorities. Home Minister Advani attacked the negative streak in the Hindutva practice as an ugly aberration.

Funding education
UNION Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi raised a number of pertinent issues while inaugurating the Asian Regional Conference on “Learning the treasure within” in Delhi the other day. His detractors must have been disappointed because he did not give them the opportunity to accuse him of trying to push the “Bharatiya Janata Party’s hidden agenda” or trying to “saffronise education”.

CHINA'S SUCCESSES & FAILURES
by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
INDIA and China are so often compared to the former’s detriment that it comes as a surprise to learn that we may not be so badly off after all. True, China gets a lot more investment funds from abroad, and the visual appearance of its coastal cities has changed dramatically. But if India is an old tonga plodding on, China is rather like a sleek-looking racing car with a patched up engine and little sustaining power running out of fuel as it cuts corners and jumps potholes, now stalling, now accelerating, in its bid to be there first.

Succession time in Jordan
by Syed Nooruzzaman
THE king is always right, as they say. But in the case of King Hussein of Jordan one can also be sure that he knows when to take the right decision. His recent announcement replacing his brother Hassan by son Abdullah as the Crown Prince of the Hashemite kingdom came at a time when doubts were being expressed about the ability of the would-be king to maintain stability in the country.

Bullying lawyers is silencing justice
by Anupam Gupta
THE January 23 incident at Patiala — when a leading High Court lawyer was badgered, intimidated and pushed around in the district courts for the “sin” of pleading for the defence in the Sarita case — a small but serious incident, bodes ill for freedom and democracy in India.

Gruesome start to “Visit India Year”
by Humra Quraishi
THINGS seem to be definitely moving along ironical patterns. ‘Visit India Year 1999’ was kicked off to a start the very day the burnt bodies of the Australian missionary Graham Steins and his two minor sons were being lowered in the deep Indian soil of rural Orissa.

Memories of missionaries
by Anjali Majumdar
THE first white man, Ewart Grogan, to trek from the Cape to Cairo — this was at the turn of the century — speaks of an encounter with a missionary thus: Sailing up river to Katunga (with him and his companion) was an over-earnest missionary whom (he describes bluntly) as a Bible-flaunting, prayer-moaning, evangelical madman in a state of charity-seeking destitution. (The Man from the Cape by Norman Wymer).

75 Years Ago

New wireless stations
for India
Government’s decision
IT is understood, says the Pioneer, that the Government of India have under consideration the terms under which they propose to call for tenders for the erection of wireless stations in this country as a part of the Imperial chain.

A day of two resignations

THIS year Martyrs Day held special significance. Prime Minister Vajpayee promised the nation that his government would fully protect the minorities. Home Minister Advani attacked the negative streak in the Hindutva practice as an ugly aberration. Mr Madan Lal Khurana resigned signalling the widening rift in the Sangh Parivar. Mr Bal Thackeray pulled the plug on Mr Manohar Joshi’s tenure as Chief Minister. While the nation listlessly paid tributes to the victims of communal hatred, political compulsions claimed two more victims, both highly placed. While Mr Joshi will quickly fade into history and oblivion, Mr Khurana will remain in public eye for quite some time. He is not the type to resign himself to his situation without a fight. Remember the stink he raised when he was denied the post of Delhi Chief Minister after a court cleared him of the hawala charges. He quit as a BJP vice-president and exiled himself to Mussoorie, before the leadership managed to mollify him.

That was a flea bite compared to the nasty sting of being hounded out by RSS hardliners. It was known that Mr Khurana was chaffing at the obstructionist utterances of several old and tale comers to the parivar and the Rambo posture they struck before television cameras. The fat was on the fire at Bangalore when he lashed out at a section of the Sangh Parivar, which earned him a curt shut-up order from the party president and a demand for his ouster from two very senior leaders of the parent organisation. It was against this background that Mr Khurana tendered his resignation on January 7, indicating that he was in a mood to fight. And the opportunity came when an Australian missionary was brutally killed in Orissa. He dashed off his now famous “fell the head in shame” letter, demanding that the party should do something to “atone for” it. Now he has, by getting eased out of the Cabinet!

Mr Khurana has promised to keep talking to the press, meaning that he will continue his verbal skirmish with the hawks in the parivar. That poses an acute dilemma for the party. He is no pushover, even if he is not a shrewd politician like Mr Shankarsinh Vaghela. He is virtually the builder of the BJP in the Capital and, as Mr Saheb Singh Verma found, he enjoys the staunch loyalty of his followers. BJP president Kushabhau Thakre has made it plain that the former Minister is guilty of indiscipline which the BJP always puts down with a heavy hand. But to expel him would signal the success of the conservatives and a setback to the moderates. That, in turn, will reverberate across the allies and provoke another bout of recrimination. It is all pretty awkward for a party which is still struggling to present a credible image and put together a cohesive programme. An implosion of the kind that the expulsion of Mr Khurana will trigger is precisely what the doctor has ordered against.

Funding education

UNION Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi raised a number of pertinent issues while inaugurating the Asian Regional Conference on “Learning the treasure within” in Delhi the other day. His detractors must have been disappointed because he did not give them the opportunity to accuse him of trying to push the “Bharatiya Janata Party’s hidden agenda” or trying to “saffronise education”. Last year, they had created a rumpus at the State Education Ministers Conference by objecting to the signing of “Saraswati vandana” which only helped turn a non-issue into a major national controversy. Of course, at the Asian Regional Conference no one was invited from the Sangh Parivar to make a special presentation on the theme of education. It was a business-like session. Even if some of the suggestions made by Dr Joshi are accepted, there is no reason why India should not be able to shed the label of educational backwardness within a reasonable time-frame. He said that education was not a matter of choice but a necessity and called for higher investment in the sector. The emphasis on expanding the base of education for achieving balanced economic growth as enunciated by Bharat Ratna and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen may have prompted the HRD Minister to present the case for higher investment in education with greater clarity. There was no reference to the need for rewriting history or restructuring the entire system of education to represent the Indian ethos.

A major reason why Dr Joshi spoke like an educationist, which he is, and not like a hardcore member of the BJP, was that the conference has been jointly organised by the Department of Education, the NCERT and the Indira Gandhi Open University for discussing the recommendations of the Delor Commission besides examining the situation in India and the Asian region. The Report of Jacques Delor, who headed the International Commission on Education for the 21st century was recently presented to UNESCO and endorsed by the Commonwealth Heads of Government during meetings in 1994 and 1995. It is an attempt to help the education sector to meet the challenges the new millennium is likely to throw up. Dr Joshi described the Delor report as an “imaginatively creative document on education rather than just a scenario-building exercise” and supported the recommendation that every nation should earmark 6 per cent of its GNP for education. The Kothari Commission had made a similar recommendation three years ago but its view was ignored by the government. He said the ideal thing would be to go in for a critical examination of the Commission’s recommendations on private and social financing and added that “beyond the minimum threshold of development both basic and higher education have to be supported by the state”. The Delor Commission has recommended that children should be made to acquire knowledge of the scientific method in some appropriate form so that they can become “friends of science for life”. Dr Joshi, who is himself a student of physics, rightly emphasised that teaching of science or scientific theories was not enough if it failed to develop a positive outlook to science as a way of life among students. Whether the announcement that the Centre was exploring the possibility of increasing funding opportunities for education would be reflected in the Union Budget to be presented next month remains to be seen.

CHINA'S SUCCESSES & FAILURES
There is a lot to learn for India
by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

INDIA and China are so often compared to the former’s detriment that it comes as a surprise to learn that we may not be so badly off after all. True, China gets a lot more investment funds from abroad, and the visual appearance of its coastal cities has changed dramatically. But if India is an old tonga plodding on, China is rather like a sleek-looking racing car with a patched up engine and little sustaining power running out of fuel as it cuts corners and jumps potholes, now stalling, now accelerating, in its bid to be there first. Even the road on which it careers recklessly is unsafe: bridges and dykes have collapsed amidst complaints about poor construction and contractors who bribe their way, while subsistence forced the closure last month of a $ 46 million highway in Yunnan.

Those who complain that India is flooded with contraband should also remember that 20 per cent of China’s imports are illegal, smuggled goods being valued last year at a conservative $ 30 billion. Oil smuggling between China and Hong Kong has gone up sharply. The indications are of political collusion, the case of the country’s biggest tobacco company being typical. Its head for 17 years, a man called Chu Shijian, would earmark cigarettes for export and then smuggle them back to avoid heavy duties. That way, he salted away an illicit $ 3.5 million, for which he has now been sent to prison for life. But his crimes came to light only when his political sponsors in Yunnan province, who received a handsome cut, fell from grace. Two extenuating factors: Chu’s monthly salary was only $ 250 while duties are high, cars being subject to a 200 per cent levy.

That episode reveals much of what is wrong about a country that has so far dazzled the world with its appealing maxims — bo luan fan zheng or bringing order out of chaos and gai ge kai fang or reform and open up — and its promise of attractive yields on investment. Collusion between ethnic Chinese outside the mainland and the Americans is largely responsible for the success of this propaganda. Unconditional support for whatever Beijing says and does is a modern variant of ancestor worship for the rich and influential 40 million Chinese who have prospered overseas, in Hong Kong (now part of China), Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and the USA. Being flooded with cheap Chinese imports, the USA (which previously saw China as a prized strategic partner in its campaign against the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union) now hopes that exports to a market of 1.2 billion consumers will bridge the trade deficit of more than $ 50 billion in China’s favour.

But the Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation’s $ 4.07 billion debt ($ 1.4 billion to banks in Hong Kong alone), the $ 2.94 billion owed by a subsidiary of Guangdong Enterprises, and the $ 391 million owed by Guangnan Holdings (at least 50 per cent more than expected) have sent nervous tremors through the world financial community. The revelation that state-owned enterprises owe more than $ 12 billion, and several crippled companies are on the brink of bankruptcy, has forced bankers and investors to take a hard look at real life. They too realise that economic stumbling accounts for the harshness with which Mr Jiang Zemin is clamping down on the mildest forms of dissent, invoking the need for order and stability to justify harsh prison and labour camp sentences and forcing into exile democracy activists who want only another political party in the one-party communist state. Claims of a 7.8 per cent growth rate, $ 140 billion foreign exchange reserves, and of foreign trade growing at 15.6 per cent may have to be re-examined with even Mr Zhu Rongji, the Premier, admitting that figures are not reliable because ground-level reporting is bogus.

Previously, foreigners blinked at a certain lack of scruple in the expectation of high profits. There have been complaints of lessees being turned out when a newcomer offered more money and of more than one party being assigned a contract to explore for oil in the same area. In one notorious instance, the Chinese set up their own industrial park, to which investment and infrastructure were diverted, right next to a similar park in which a foreign investor had sunk an estimated $ 30 billion. Investors might be less indulgent after Beijing’s bland announcement that foreign lenders must take their turn with domestic creditors. Citibank, ABN-AMRO and other foreign lenders, who are owed more than a billion dollars, are said to be deeply disappointed. The British department store, Marks and Spencer, is pulling out altogether.

Actually, foreigners always made less money than the Chinese. Also though impressive in absolute terms, non-Chinese investment was never more than a small percentage of the total. The real money poured in from the diaspora in Asia and the USA with non-Chinese foreign investment limited to under $ 9 billion annually. Even that might go down. One analyst says that “investors no longer trust the so-called guaranteed earnings of China assets and just want to be free of them.” Others warn that credit will dry up because past aggressive borrowing led to investment in speculative property and stocks, and both have accumulated huge unrealised losses.

The losses of state-owned enterprises rose by 36 per cent in the first 11 months of 1998, and many of China’s 242 trust and investment corporations have piled up dangerously high debts as a result of years of reckless investment. The official figure of 15 million workers retrenched last year with another six million due to be sacked during 1999, and of 50 million people below the poverty line, must be only the tip of the iceberg. More than 60 million itinerant labourers are on the road at any given time, and hundreds of millions probably languish without jobs in the vast tracts outside the designated high growth areas.

Of course, Chinese living standards have improved as a result of the reforms Deng Xiaoping launched in 1978. Of course, there is no alternative to engaging with a potentially formidable, unpredictable, nuclear-armed power. “If we treat China as an enemy now, we are likely to guarantee ourselves an enemy,” warns Prof Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard’s John Kennedy School of Government. China’s own historical complexes, including both grievances and a conviction of its global centrality, are additional factors that argue for interaction at all levels. But it must not be forgotten either that the Chinese are demonstrating in the Spratly Islands, as they did earlier in Tibet, Aksai-Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, that they are not squeamish about using force.

Far from feeling smug satisfaction at China’s troubles, India should learn from its successes and failures. China’s military strength, concentration on economic goals, its bold strategies and appeal to the loyalty of emigrants are all to be emulated. What we must avoid is the get-rich-quick mentality and the disregard of integrity that are responsible for most of China’s present difficulties.

(Formerly Editor of The Statesman, the writer is an editorial consultant to The Straits Times in Singapore).

Succession time in Jordan
by Syed Nooruzzaman

THE king is always right, as they say. But in the case of King Hussein of Jordan one can also be sure that he knows when to take the right decision. His recent announcement replacing his brother Hassan by son Abdullah as the Crown Prince of the Hashemite kingdom came at a time when doubts were being expressed about the ability of the would-be king to maintain stability in the country. It was generally believed that Prince Hassan, an intellectual and a loner, would fail to provide the kind of leadership required to control a society riddled with contradictions.

These calculations were being made when King Hussein, suffering from cancer, was in the USA for treatment. He came back at the end of January after six months of medication to fly again to the clinic at Minnesota where he had been getting his treatment. During his brief stay in Amman, the Jordanian capital, he gave a new twist to the speculation about the future course of events in Jordan. Now the questions being asked are: when King Hussein (62) finally leaves the scene, will Crown Prince Abdullah succeed in controlling Jordan's Bedu tribes, who have a powerful network of their own? Will he be able to safeguard the interests of the people of Palestinian origin, who constitute the majority of the population? King Hussein handled the two key problems with the deftness of an expert administrator. That he also remained a major source of American influence in West Asia is a different matter.

Crown Prince Abdullah (36), who is the eldest of the king's 11 sons, is a brigadier in the country's army. He is totally new to the job assigned to him. However, there is an advantage in his lack of experience. He cannot be associated with the weaknesses pointed out in the case of his uncle. If the circumstances put him in the place of the king immediately, there is every likelihood of his getting support from all quarters because of the element of sympathy. This factor would have been missing if King Hussein's brother had succeeded him.

If there is any problem Crown Prince Abdullah may face, it is because his mother was a British — Tony Gardiner, later renamed Princess Mona — though this is a remote possibility. Otherwise, the succession is going to be a smooth affair. The new Crown Prince is well-versed in military matters, having received his training at Sandhurst, UK. Later he studied international politics at Oxford, graduating from there in 1984.

This is not to say that King Hussein's brother, who had been seen till now as the future king, had no plus points. Prince Hassan (51), who has been stripped of the title "Crown Prince", has been functioning as heir to the throne since 1965. He was given this responsibility with the introduction of a change in the Jordanian constitution. All these years the king and the masses had all praise for him. Having been educated at Oxford, he has been admired for his knowledge of Hebrew. His special interest in Hebrew has enabled him to maintain good contacts with the leading lights of Israel. He has been rated as a highly intelligent person. He is different from King Hussein in the sense that he lacks the natural acumen to play manipulative politics. This has great significance in Jordan. However, the major reason for the change in King Hussein's choice is believed to be the truth that Prince Abdullah is his son. It is natural to be overpowered by filial feelings.

Those who have been watching the West Asian scene would remember that King Hussein, who came to power in 1953, had initially decreed his son Abdullah to be his successor. But that was in 1963 when his dear son was an infant — just three years old. There was great dislike for Princess Mona, Prince Abdullah's mother, in the family and this factor forced the monarch to amend the constitution to make way for his brother's nomination as heir to the throne. Since then 36 years have elapsed. The factors then relevant have ceased to exist.

Jordan— the only country in the region with a constitutional monarchy, even if the king wields total power— is not endowed with abundant natural resources. Yet it has been playing a crucial role in West Asian politics, particularly in the struggle for the Palestinian homeland. King Hussein has been greatly instrumental in the resolution of disputes between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Crown Prince Abdullah has to prove that during his rein Jordan will continue to play that special role in the region.

Memories of missionaries
by Anjali Majumdar

THE first white man, Ewart Grogan, to trek from the Cape to Cairo — this was at the turn of the century — speaks of an encounter with a missionary thus: Sailing up river to Katunga (with him and his companion) was an over-earnest missionary whom (he describes bluntly) as a Bible-flaunting, prayer-moaning, evangelical madman in a state of charity-seeking destitution. (The Man from the Cape by Norman Wymer).

Some weeks later the explorers floundered across the swamps to the French mission station at Kayambi where they received lavish hospitality from the Peres Blancs, a French order. The author continues: The Bible-flaunting madman had left Grogan with such a poor opinion of missionaries that he felt a certain scepticism upon meeting the French priests. He was pleased to find them very open and free from cant. Nevertheless he doubted whether they were setting about their task in the right way. Were they, in their enthusiasm to convert the Negores to Christianity, neglecting the first essential of improving their living standards?

He wondered whether they were exaggerating grievances and sowing, rather than removing, the seeds of discontent? He couldn’t understand why they had chosen that spot to build such a splendid building, surrounded by huts and fruit gardens because the area for miles around was practically uninhabited. Subsequent visits to British and German mission stations confirmed that they were doing much excellent work, but seemed to have no sense of native psychology. “Sixty years in Africa have done little to modify his opinion.”

My first contact with missionaries was in Jalandhar with the Campbells, an American family, one in a long line of Presbyterians in North India. At my father’s death when I was four, it was they who took my mother, brother and myself away from the trauma and agony to the sweet air of Landour, near Mussoorie.

They were a rambunctious family with several children. The atmosphere was open house. The children’s gaily painted toy wagons, finger-painting equipment and sacks of popcorn were the most thrilling things we had yet seen, and they were shared in a generous and genuine free-for-all. Their father had done such yeoman service during the floods in the Punjab using his own boat that the government put him in charge of a fleet of boats to meet future eventualities.

Later, in Loreto Convent in Darjeeling I was singularly fortunate in spending the formative years of my life under the influence of Irish nuns and Canadian Jesuits. Strange as it may seem of those living a cloistered life, these men and women knew more about the world than many learn in a lifetime. They taught us many things which “the touch of life has turned to truth.”

And here, to finish with, is Dr Coleman of the Church Missionary Society in Iran in the fifties. The buildings and equipment were old and inadequate. He saw at least 60 out patients each day, performed three or four operations, and did the rounds of 50 beds. Besides this, he was responsible for the training of nurses — there were only 200 trained nurses in the whole country — and for all the office work.

Tim Slessor in his book First Overland continues: I think that the public’s idea of a missionary as a tall, gaunt man with a white topee, determined ideas about hell fire, a Bible under his arm, and a portable halo on his head would amuse no one more than Dr Coleman. I was reminded of him on reading of the horrific death of Graham Steines who worked with lepers in Orissa.

Bullying lawyers is silencing justice
by Anupam Gupta

THE January 23 incident at Patiala — when a leading High Court lawyer was badgered, intimidated and pushed around in the district courts for the “sin” of pleading for the defence in the Sarita case — a small but serious incident, bodes ill for freedom and democracy in India.

“In the judicial process,” said US Supreme Court Judge, Robert H. Jackson in 1951, “the judge and the advocate complement each other, for, as Thoreau said, it takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and the other to hear.”

That judges, who not only hear but decide, and whose word regardless of error is law, should sometimes forget this fundamental function and importance of the legal profession, is understandable. But that it should be forgotten by the profession itself and that, carried away by the passion of their clients, lawyers should undermine their own right and authority to appear and act in court is unpardonable.

Nor is the right of an accused to be defended by counsel a right that he enjoys by grace. Of either the Bar or the Bench. A long and bitter struggle underlay the establishment of this right in England, from where it travelled overseas to America, on the one hand, and to India on the other. An English trial in the 17th century, wrote the Supreme Court in 1966 (in State of Madhya Pradesh versus Shobharam), a trial without counsel for the defence, was but “an altercation between the accused and the prosecutor and his witnesses.”

An altercation was precisely what occurred in Patiala on January 23, though outside the courtroom. And with the counsel for the accused turned into an accused himself.

You are making a mountain out of a molehill, you will say, it was an isolated incident, a chance eruption, there is no need to blow it up. But I see in it the shadow, and not so faint, of the same dark intolerance as is sweeping the country today. An intolerance that turns every contest into a war, every competitor into an enemy. And conducts all debate in the fiery language of destruction. I see in it the seed of a great and dangerous disruption.

The Sarita case arises out of a prosecution under Section 295-A of the Indian Penal Code, a prosecution still at the stage of police investigation. A reputed Hindi fortnightly published from Delhi, Sarita carried in its May, 1998, issue an article on the Hindu religion that aroused the wrath of an adherent in Rajpura town.

Written with a pen dipped in sarcasm, the article dwells on the themes of sanyam (restraint), saadgi, tyaag and sadhna, besides the scriptural treatment of women.

Brought on the statute book in 1927, Section 295-A is the Indian counterpart of the British offence of blasphemous libel. With one material, and salutary, difference.

Blasphemy, as held by the House of Lords in Lemon’s case (1979), is an offence of strict liability requiring no proof of intention. Section 295-A, on the other hand, demands proof not only of intention per se but of “deliberate and malicious intention” to outrage religious feelings.

The section, said the Supreme Court in Ramji Lal’s case (1957), faced with a challenge to its constitutional validity, does not penalise “any and every act of insult” to religion. It penalises only that “aggravated form of insult” which is perpetrated with deliberate and malicious intention. Thus understood, it held, there is no possibility of the section being applied for purposes not sanctioned by the Constitution.

A little more than a 100 years earlier, the draftsmen of the Indian Penal Code had gone even further. Headed by Sir Barnes Peacock, later Chief Justice Barnes Peacock of the Calcutta High Court, the Select Committee of the Governor-General’s Legislative Council — which revised Macaulay’s original draft of the IPC — explained why it had added the word “malicious” to the words “with deliberate intention” in Section 295-A. “... we were impressed” by the argument (it said) that an insult to a religion “might be inflicted in good faith by a writer, with the object of facilitating some measure of social reform, by administering such a shock” to its followers as would compel them to take notice.

Despite, then, that the offence is far easier to prove in England than in India, it is interesting to note that there has been only one prosecution for blasphemy in England in the last 75 years. The case of Whitehouse versus Lemon referred to above.

“The Christian faith no longer relies upon the law of blasphemy,” the British government stated in 1989, “preferring to recognise that the strength of their own belief is the best armour against mockers and blasphemers.” And in 1990, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared in favour of abolishing the law altogether.

Whichever way they decide, the fate of the publishers of Sarita will be decided by the courts in due course of time. No less important than the outcome, however, is the freedom which society affords to parties and their counsel to represent their views in court, however unorthodox they may be.

If the rule of law is to be maintained in this country, if the courts are to remain open and if the ethic of free and dispassionate debate in the courtroom is to survive, what happened at Patiala on January 23 must never be allowed to happen again.

Gruesome start to “Visit India Year”

by Humra Quraishi

THINGS seem to be definitely moving along ironical patterns. ‘Visit India Year 1999’ was kicked off to a start the very day the burnt bodies of the Australian missionary Graham Steins and his two minor sons were being lowered in the deep Indian soil of rural Orissa. And just hours before Bihar’s tableau passed by at Rajpath on Republic Day amidst the background commentary that this very state housed” the Nalanda University ... the ancient seat of learning. Knowledge is light, it leads us to the right path of life and truth” life was getting brutally snapped out of hapless Dalits in the confines of this very state. And just as Union I & B Minister Pramod Mahajan talked about DD’s credibility, the evening and night news bulletins of DD pulled off shots of villagers telling Navin Patnaik that the mob that set to fire Graham Steins and sons had raised “Jai Bajrangbali” slogans just before the attack (this specific shot was definitely shown in the afternoon news bulletins). No little surprise for this bit of editing, for even before an enquiry committee report could be submitted or before he could conduct an on the spot survey the country’s Home Minister had given a clean chit to the Bajrang Dal.

But not so the others who have come together to hold a march here in the Capital on January 30 morning, reminding our people of our secular status. Addressing a well attended Press conference at the Women’s Press Club Rajinder Sacchar, Kuldip Nayyar, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, John Dayal and several others lashed out at the communal ongoings in the country: “Instead of condemning these attacks the Prime Minister has sought to legitimise them by talking of a ‘national debate on conversions’ and refusing to hold the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena, Hindu Jagran Manch responsible for these incidents... criminal attacks on minorities have to be dealt with by the law of the land and not through motivated ‘national debates’. We want a debate on real issues like untouchability, poverty, unemployment and not on manufactured issues....” And though former Prime Minister VP Singh did not attend this Press conference but sent his detailed statement: ...“These incidents have marred the secular image of India abroad and at home have instilled fear and insecurity in the minds of the minorities ... so far as conversions are concerned it is a matter of one’s individual faith. It should be pondered as to why very few conversions take place in the upper Hindu strata even though there is poverty in these sections...” And members of the UCFHR fact finding team which had earlier this month (from January 1 to 6) visited five different places in Gujarat (Dangs, Baroda, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Gandhinagar) came up with some very glaring facts esp vis a vis the incidents at Dangs: “The mobs were working to a pattern from December 25 to 31, 1998. Many of them were mobile, riding in tempos and in one case in a forest jeep. They were also very well informed of the location of the churches and of the homes of Christian families. This is not surprising. Throughout the autumn the local administration, including the civil and police and forest authorities have been trying to survey the Christian presence in the district. This survey still continues. While in the first phase no explanation was forthcoming from the government exercise the collector claimed that the second survey was to identify the churches and families in order to protect them. The police refused to register complaints by Christian missionaries. The police on the other hand went out of its way to ensure that there were counter complaints by the aggressors and the leaders of the mob. The Collector and Police Superintendent (Dangs) have not been able to explain that even after 30 major cases of violence the number of the aggressors arrested is so small compared to the number of Christian arrested ....” It is detailed and painful report pinpointing the faulting police and civil officers. That’s why I call it painful, for going through this report it gets so very obvious that these acts of violence took place with the full knowledge and in certain cases support of the district administration.

Australian High Commission

And when I got in touch with the First Secretary in the Australian High Commission for the latest reaction of the Australian government to the murder of missionary Steins and his sons she said. “We will be issuing a statement only after the results of the enquiries set up by the National Human Rights Commission and National Minorities Commission come through. And also when the proceedings of the criminal investigation and the terms of reference of the Judicial enquiry are declared.”

Will the Australian High Commission conduct its own enquiry into that incident?

“No, but our senior counsellor who had gone for the funeral of Steins and his sons spoke to the people of the area and gathered details”.

To the query whether this incident and the other related incidents of violence against Christians would adversely affect the trade and tourist flow from Australia she said it was a little premature to know whether these will be affected and to what extent. And to my next query whether these murders were picked up by the Australian media she said “Oh, yes that news was picked up in a big way...”

President’s reception

The January 26 reception hosted by the First Lady and the President of India on the lawns of Rashtrapati Bhavan was as usual very well attended. It would be impossible to mention the names of the who’s who to be seen there for all possible VIPs you can think of were there. Present and queuing for tea and snacks.

Heritage glories

Pick up the tableaux background material for this year’s Republic Day and you wouldn’t be surprised to know that states which are going through turmoil came up with their heritage stories. Yes, the states of Gujarat, Orissa, Bihar, Assam resorted to their heritage glories.

75 YEARS AGO

New wireless stations for India
Government’s decision

IT is understood, says the Pioneer, that the Government of India have under consideration the terms under which they propose to call for tenders for the erection of wireless stations in this country as a part of the Imperial chain.

The decision on the subject is expected to be shortly announced; also that the Statute Law Revision Committee will shortly take in hand the consolidation of the Criminal Tribes Act, 1911.

The Committee has also under consideration the consolidation of laws relating to trusts which in India is in an indefinite state.