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	Of Riots and Minority Rights in India by J. Sri Raman Truthout - Perspective India   16 August 2005   The past few days have brought back memories of the assassinations of two Prime Ministers of India. Even more searing, however, has been the accompanying and acutely painful reminder of unsettled issues of minority rights in this multi-religious, multi-ethnic country.   On August 8 came a belated reminder of questions that should have been settled within a reasonable time after the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. The report of the latest in a long series of commissions of inquiry into the post-assassination anti-Sikh riots was tabled in India's parliament over two decades after the bloody event.   Indira had fallen to the bullet of Sikh guards at her residence. The ensuing attacks on the minority Sikh community, especially in New Delhi but also across the country, left thousands dead and many more thousands homeless and helpless. The carnage lasted three days, conspicuously without any official hindrance.   The wounds left by the violence may have begun to heal over the recent period. The Justice G.T. Nanavati commission's report, released to the public six months after its submission to the government, has now reopened the wounds.   May 21, 1991, saw the gruesome assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's son. A female suicide bomber succeeded in blowing him to bits. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who had once enjoyed official hospitality and sanctuary in India, were blamed for the crime, though they have continued to deny their involvement to this day.   Memories of the LTTE and Indian politics centered on it, especially in Tamil Nadu, the state closest to Sri Lanka, returned with the assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka's foreign minister of Tamil origin on August 12 night. The LTTE have again been blamed for the crime, reminiscent of the Fredrick Forsyth's "Day of the Jackal," though they have again denied their involvement.   This assassination, however, has caused fewer ripples in Tamil Nadu than some may have expected. The Tigers, it is true, enjoy some sympathy in political sections subscribing to the idea of a pan-Tamil identity. The virtual silence from such political parties on the post-assassination issue, however, has been eloquent. Some of these parties, part of the ruling federal coalition, have preferred to speak in almost the same voice as New Delhi. Some other parties, more stridently pro-LTTE at other times, have opted for silence as supporters of the federal coalition.   They can afford to do so because the entire affair does not really involve any issue of an Indian minority's rights. This is not the case with the revived issue of anti-Sikh riots that has rocked Parliament and spilled over to the streets.   I remember being driven 21 years ago in a newspaper's car with my wife and our months-old daughter from a riot-hit part of New Delhi to a safer haven. Howling mobs armed with broken bottles and other weapons lined our way on both sides, and we had to stop several times to let the avengers look for turbaned and bearded Sikhs inside the vehicle before letting us proceed.   Striking to us, above all, was the utter absence of any police or paramilitary personnel all along the route. This was also the most visible (or invisible?) feature of the sanguinary 72 hours, to most other observers as well. Yet the Nanavati report found no evidence of political higher-ups' involvement in the orchestrated orgy. Little wonder that the report elicited as angry a reaction as the riots themselves did.   Initially, the government made it worse with its "action taken report" (ATR). It actually turned out to be a report of action not taken, even on the very few and feeble recommendations of further investigations into charges against a handful of local luminaries of the Congress Party heading the federal coalition.   Subsequently, the government made amends of sorts, with an apology to the aggrieved community as well as to the entire nation from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the promise of further investigations. It is not these steps, however, that restrained the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from a relentlessly furious pursuit of the issue.   The profound irony of the far-right BJP's feigned indignation over the issue, in fact, was not lost upon either the political observers or the public. There were severe limits to which the party could press on, in the light of its record in power in Delhi. It only needed a gentle reminder about Gujarat to nudge the party into a more guarded and less militant mood.   The police might have been invisible on the riot-torn Delhi streets, but it was present in strength to help the anti-Muslim rioters along in all the affected parts of Gujarat. The police participation in the three-month-long carnage, which took a toll of about 3,000 lives, made it a pogrom. It made senior police officer Harsh Mander put in his papers and launch a protest movement against the politics of massacre.   Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who presided over the pogrom, stays put in his office to this day. The national leadership of the BJP has never deemed it necessary to demand his resignation.   True, the Prime Minister's apology - or the Congress Party's sometime ago - offers no substitute for long-overdue action to find the culprits behind the anti-Sikh riots and punish them. What deserves note, however, is that the BJP has never apologized for Gujarat. Modi and national leaders of the party have, in fact, repeatedly asserted their pride over the riots. The party made its elation over the carnage its electoral plank in Gujarat and, at one point, even threatened to "repeat Gujarat" elsewhere.   The political-ideological differences between the Congress and the BJP, however, spell poor comfort not only to the endangered minorities but even more to all defenders of minority rights as an essential ingredient of democracy.   (A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to Truthout).
	A Troubled World seen from a Swedish Idyll by Michael Vatikiotis International Herald Tribune Sweden   10 August, 2005. Tallberg, Sweden.   Take a good number of responsible adults in professional and political positions, put them together in charming log-cabin hotels strewn along an idyllic Swedish lakefront and what do you get? A recipe for global disaster.   Much of the world's elite - business leaders, international bureaucrats, politicians, representatives from nongovernmental organizations and the like - appears to be gripped by anxiety over the state of global affairs. Judging from the talk at the 25th Tallberg Forum, a gathering of some of the world's leading thinkers, no one has confidence in global rules and institutions, which it is widely believed the United States has undermined. Globalization is no longer embraced as a promise but regarded as a threat.   A degree of anxiety is perhaps to be expected with the American adventure in Iraq going so badly and European integration seemingly stalled. Hovering like a ghostly trapeze artist near the top of the circus tent in which the forum's discussions took place, threatening to swoop down and mess up everything, was the specter of Islamic extremism. At one point, when asked what was so hard about bringing Turkey into the European Union, Marek Belka, the normally articulate prime minister of Poland, was reduced to muttering about differences over principles. He meant religion.   The other specter haunting proceedings was that of a diminished system of global government. "Multilateral cooperation is at a cross roads," suggested the incoming UN General Assembly president, Jan Eliasson. Top UN officials like Shashi Tharoor, under secretary general for public affairs, bravely presented the United Nations as on the brink of reform and renewal. But even he admitted that half the civil wars the United Nations ended restarted after the peacekeepers have left.   Participants, who numbered about 400, worried that the United Nations was heavy on process and light on representation. The idea of involving a better representation of society was chewed over; so was the notion of a broadened club of leaders, a G-20 instead of a G-8, where heads of state can discuss weighty issues and give better guidance to the United Nations. But as delegates - mostly from Europe, with sizable contingents from Africa and China, and a smattering of liberal North Americans - winced when they learned that John Bolton was appointed Washington's envoy to the United Nations, the futility of some of these idealistic notions was apparent.   Here was the scariest of all the issues chewed over the pickled herring and fresh salmon: What if the United States is no longer a benign force for good? The Europeans vented some of their frustrations. Robert Cooper from the Council of the European Union declared that a second center of power would help "keep the United States honest." There were the usual calls for Washington to sign up to treaties that the rest of the world has agreed do help keep us all honest. An American participant countered that the United States is moving away from global institutions that no longer serve its interests.   What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago we were basking in the legacy of Pax Americana; the Cold War was won and free markets reigned supreme. Globalization was hailed as the new way of life in which everyone was promised the benefits.   Today much of the world still feels left out and alienated from this dream. European integration was blasted at the forum as being an elitist paradigm. It was pointed out that the same number of people remain mired in poverty today as there were in 1970. For all the talk about globalization, more than three billion people, or about half the world's population, still live without the benefits of technology, observed Ashok Khosla, an Indian entrepreneur involved in development work.   And yet, the human race is optimistic by nature. No one doubted that the United Nations will find a way to adapt; no one believes the United States can live for long without the rules and institutions embodied by the world body, and ultimately, as Tharoor politely observed, "The world is not trying to cut the United States down to size."   In fact, the leaders at this year's forum were more inclined to blame the world's ills on the way the news media interpret events than on any real shortcomings in the institutions of global government that they preside over. "We are exposed to more opinion than at any time in our history," declared Prince Hassan bin-Talal of Jordan. "We have info-taintment, info-terror. I would like to see some info-wisdom."   (Michael Vatikiotis is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.)
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