Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
NEW YEAR GREETINGS!
INDO-PAK RELATIONS AFTER MUMBAI MASSACRE: BACK TO SQUARE ONE?
Vinod Mubayi
As the refreshing breeze of normalization of relations between India and Pakistan had started to blow across the two countries, forces hostile to peace and sanity staged the Mumbai terrorist attack to renew hostility; this has placed additional burden on civil society and India-Pakistan friendship organizations to work even more vigorously to foil the designs of hawks on both sides of the border.
A CALL FOR SANITY
(Editorial: Economic & Political Weekly, India, December 6, 2008)
A catastrophe awaits if the government takes military action against Pakistan.
UNITING IN THE FACE OF TERROR
Ram Puniyani
Big tragedies like the Mumbai terrorist attack pose big questions and confusion. While there is a good chance that terrorists came from Pakistan, they came into being because of the US attempt to push Soviet Union-backed regime from Afghanistan. These terrorists are also a headache for Pakistan. Who is responsible and what should be done needs sober mind and not jingoism.
TERROR: THE AFTERMATH
Anand Patwardhan
The attack on Mumbai is over. After the numbing sorrow comes the blame game and the solutions. Loud voices amplified by saturation TV: Why don’t we amend our Constitution to create new anti-terror laws? Why don’t we arm our police with AK 47s? Why don’t we do what Israel did after Munich or the USA did after 9/11 and hot pursue the enemy? Solutions that will lead us further into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on reaction, polarization, militarization and the thirst for revenge.
MUMBAI FOR PEACE: SAY NO TO TERROR AND WAR! SAY NO TO VIOLENCE!
Dolphy D’souza
Thousands of Mumbaikars hold hands for peace and harmony.
INDIA’S UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES PREVENTION ACT (UAPA): THE RETURN OF POTA & TADA
Rajeev Dhavan
It seems as if the government of India was waiting for an opportunity like the Mumbai mayhem to come up with laws that could prove more dangerous than acts of terrorism by non-state organizations. The December 2008 INSAF Bulletin warned against this possibility. Now it is here; an expert lawyer provides his analysis. After months in pre-trial detention under brutal investigation, the police will extract even untruths. The Bill casts a shadow on all of us. It is founded on the principle that everyone is suspicious or a suspect, with no fine distinction between the two. We are creating a suspicious state to empower suspicious officials and citizenry to act suspiciously against any supposed suspect. This Bill goes further than TADA or POTA in its creation of a suspicious state. India must fight terrorism, but the last thing India wants to be is a terrorist anti-terrorist state.
HINDUTVA FASCISTS DICTATE CIVIC LIFE NO MATTER WHO IS IN POWER
Daya Varma
There are two parties contending to rule India, the Indian National Congress (Congress) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Democratic forces have reservations about the present Congress-led government and the Congress Party in general; however, most of them would prefer Congress rather than BJP to form the central government in 2009. Perhaps it does matter which is the ruling party but unfortunately only minimally so.
MUMBAI REKINDLES DEBATE ABOUT MUSLIMS, THEIR BEARD AND SO ON
Jawed Naqvi
Beard become a source of suspicion, the name becomes a proof. One of the many ways the prejudice against Muslims with adverse socio-political consequences is almost becoming a norm.
IN INDIA, MUSLIMS MARK A SOMBER EID: CELEBRATIONS SUBDUED AFTER MUMBAI SIEGE
Emily Wax
When I first heard of subdued festivity at Eid, I thought it is worse than Mumbai terror. Over 150 million citizens of India feel threatened and respond to this threat in their own way (Daya Varma).
NEPAL: LAND COMMISSION CHIEF SAYS HE WILL PROVIDE LAND TO LANDLESS
Land to the landless is not the same thing as land to the tiller but it is something in the right direction.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF NEPAL (MAOIST) DECIDES TO FORGE REPUBLICAN FRONT
Kathmandu (Xinhua, December 15, 2008)
Instead of going ahead with a People’s Republic like in China, the Nepal Maoists have opted for some kind of Federal Republic, which would accommodate other parties as well.
HEAR HER OUT – A SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN’S AID (SAWA) EVENT.
Kiran Omar
On December 6, 1989, fourteen women students of the University of Montreal Polytechnic were murdered by a lone gunman. Since then some form of commemoration of this tragic event to highlight violence against women is held every year in Montreal. In the following article Kiran Omar deals with the a panel discussion about the important question of violence against women.
OBAMA PRESIDENCY AND SOME QUESTION MARKS
Aijaz Ahmad
Will he be forced to scrap the trajectory he has been following and re-make himself into a latter-day FDR (Roosevelt), as many are hoping?
SIGN OF SYSTEMIC CRISIS: US COMPANIES TOO BIG TO FAIL BUT FAILING
Arum Kumar
Till early 2008 it was believed that certain economic entities are too big to fail, hence safe. Companies like, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch and Citibank each with assets running into hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars were supposed to be in this category. Their turnover was larger than the GDP of most countries in the world. Each one of them has failed since August 2008 and has been bailed out by the US government or bought over by other companies. General Motors, another giant, has been pleading for help.
DEMANDING RELEASE OF LENIN KUMAR AND ABHAYA SAHOO IN ORISSA
Orissa government supported by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) not only allowed the massacre of Christians but suppresses dissenting voices including by imprisonment. Here is a story of two men arbitrarily arrested and the struggle to get them released.
IK SHUKLAJI MEMORIAL MEETING IN DELHI
Friends of Professor Indukant Shukla (lovingly called Shuklaji) gathered to remember him at the Gandhi Peace Foundation auditorium on December 20th. Shuklaji was a great rebel thinker, writer and activist who breathed his last on September 17, 2008, in California (USA). Shuklaji was born in 1927.
CONDOLENCE FOR DR. YASHPAL CHHIBBAR
K.G. Kannabiran
I am deeply shocked to hear of the said demise this morning of my dear friend and colleague in the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Dr. Yashpal Chhibbar, after a brief illness.
McGILL UNIVERSITY (CANADA) STATEMENT ON MUMBAI ATTACK
Two members of McGill University, Prof Michael Moss and graduate Elizabeth Russel died in Mumbai terror.
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