South Asia Citizens Web

Full programme details of an upcoming symposium being organised by Communalism Combat, Sahmat, Social Scientist in New Delhi from the 6th to the 8th of December 2010

Violence has become a permanent feature of everyday life in Pakistan. The country is flush with arms. From small pistols to Kalashnikovs to hand grenades to rocket launchers – anything and everything is available in this country’s arms bazaar. It was the military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq who introduced this country to gun culture, when he aligned with the Americans to battle the Russians in Afghanistan. Weapons intended for the jihadis found their way into the market and there was no way of checking this proliferation.

As women’s groups, child rights groups, sexual rights groups, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer rights groups and other progressive groups, academicians and concerned individuals, we are shocked by the repeated incidents of sexual assault on women from the North East in the capital of India in recent months.
We also affirm the right of all women to dress, behave and live in a manner they desire, without their basic right to security being violated. We demand that the Delhi government take appropriate measures to address and curb sexual assault on women, and in particular women from the North East who have been particularly targeted in the recent past.

The situation in Balochistan today is exactly similar to the Chilean and Argentinean ‘dirty wars’ of the 70s and 80s. The only difference is that there the generals conducted them while here, theoretically, parliamentary democracy is supreme. The atrocities in Balochistan are just as bad as Indian atrocities in Kashmir or Israeli atrocities in Palestine. While those are vehemently condemned here, the silence on this dirty war is truly deafening.

Over the past twenty years or so the politicization of religion has made considerable headway in India but it has not overwhelmed secular politics. Nonetheless, the Hindu right has demonstrated an enormous capacity to mobilize women. Hindu women’s activism provides a compelling example of the instrumentalization of female constituencies in the service of the political goals of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. The most important issue is not the growth of religious politics per se, but the inordinate play of identity politics in public life which has resulted in paradoxes such as the protection of conservatism among Muslims. This is the effect of a secularism that envisages state intervention in the affairs of the majority religion, but endorses strict non-intervention in minority religions, thus paradoxically empowering religious conservatives in the name of secularism.