All posts by SANSAD

Rally for peace on the subcontinent

SANSAD Events

Together for Peace

Sunday, March 3, 4.00 pm – 6.00 pm
Holland Park (corner of King George Blvd and 100th Avenue), Surrey

Stop nationalist hysteria and warmongering in India and Pakistan. Stand up for solidarity and friendship across borders.

India and Pakistan are once again in the grip of nationalist frenzy with dangerous acts and rhetoric of mutual hostility. The sad killing of a large number of Indian soldiers in Kashmir by a suicide bomber has generated trans-border air strikes leading to the risk of military escalation. Kashmiri students and traders in India have come under attack. Media and political interests are stoking nationalist hysteria. Voices of reason are drowned by thugs and trolls. This has spread into the diaspora.

The people of Pakistan and India are one people with a shared history of millennia. There is no border in our cultures and religions. The political border created with the enormous bloodshed of partition has sadly been solidified into a wall with continuing mutual hostility, militarism, nationalist historiography, and demonization. These destructive and anti-people forces must be challenged. We must affirm the common interest of our peoples for peace, friendship, and freedom of movement and exchange.

We call for an immediate end to the acts and rhetoric of hostility between India and Pakistan. We commend the Pakistan government’s return of the captured Indian pilot as the opening of a move toward peace. We call for the resumption of the initiative toward peace embodied in the Kartarpur Corridor. We call on the governments of India and Pakistan to commit themselves to resolving all problems through dialogue. We call on the peoples of Pakistan and India and our people in diaspora to overcome the hostilities rooted in the violence of national division. We have a common interest in peace, social justice, and sustainable development that benefits all our people.

Organized by Committee of Progressive Pakistani Canadians (CPPC) and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), www.sansad.org
Contact: Shahzad, 604-613-0375; Chin, 604-421-6752

Stop nationalist war hysteria

South Asia Bulletin

(INSAF BULLETIN, March 2019)
EDITORIAL: PULWAMA POSTURINGS
Vinod Mubayi
In a time of hyper-nationalism, reason and rational thinking go out the window to be replaced by chest thumping, calls for surgical strikes and revenge. The Pulwama episode reveals these features in gory detail. Indian TV anchors screaming like demented hyenas smelling blood if a guest dares to offer the mildest critique of the Government’s policies in Kashmir.

Lynch mobs roaming the streets in many states outside Kashmir threatening and intimidating students of Kashmiri origin and forcing them out of their schools, colleges and hostels. At the outset, the attack on the soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force claimed to have been planned and perpetrated by the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group based in Pakistan needs to be condemned unreservedly. We mourn the deaths of the CRPF personnel, victims of the suicide bombing. They came from all over India to serve in what is unfortunately regarded by most of the population of the Kashmir Valley as an occupation army. There is little point in hiding this basic fact.
In an area where an occupation army simply does not have support among the majority of the population it is difficult to prevent such attacks as has been the experience of different armies in various countries over the last 50-60 years. Charges have been made that there was advance intelligence about an attack that was not heeded or the authorities failed to implement measures that would have prevented the car of the suicide bomber from traveling on the road at the same time as the military transport vehicles. Such charges can and should be investigated but they cannot elide the fact that Kashmiri Muslims who constitute over 90% of the Valley’s population regard the Indian Army and paramilitaries as alien and celebrate those who attack it as heroes.

The 19-year old boy Adil Ahmed Dar who perished in the suicide attack may have been instigated and trained by Pakistani handlers but he was himself a local Indian Kashmiri lad. His willingness to sacrifice his life and the fact that there are many others likely to imitate him testify to the depth of alienation among Kashmiri youth and the difficulty of preventing such attacks by military force alone. However, it is more the behavior and response of the Indian political class, especially the BJP rulers and their trolls led by the 56-inch chest thumper Modi, which needs to be scrutinized. Lynch mobs target Kashmiri students and traders living in different states and the Prime Minister is silent or evasive.

Are these attacks condoled by the highest echelons of the BJP leadership intended to win the “hearts and minds” of the Kashmiri youth? Education Minister Javadekar denies any harassment of Kashmiri students while a headline in the next column of the newspaper contradicts him directly. Kashmir is often referred to by the same leaders as the “atoot ang” (unbreakable part) of India. But the Kashmiri people it seems are not included; they are regarded merely as terrorists and saboteurs.

The hypocrisy practiced at this level has persisted for many decades, with thousands of deaths and disappearances of protestors, the maiming and blinding by pellet guns of children who come out on the streets in protest, and other atrocities by India’s military and paramilitary forces.

The last five years of the Modi regime have been the most horrific. Saner elements in the Indian polity, including recently retired Army Generals have admitted that dialogue among the three stakeholders, India, Pakistan, and the people of Kashmir is the only path forward that has a chance of addressing this issue. But the current BJP leadership seems to be least interested in dialogue that it interprets as weakness. The hesitant forward steps to dialogue initiated by Vajpayee and later by Manmohan Singh are history now. Instead the talk is of surgical and not-so-surgical strikes and war with Pakistan that carries with it the danger of a nuclear holocaust among neighbors armed with nuclear weapons.

Admiral Ramdas, former head of the Indian Navy and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, has warned in a letter to the President of India that “it is imperative that the situation should not be allowed to escalate into greater hostilities which it might not always be possible to contain.” But is Modi and the BJP/RSS leadership with elections only a couple of months away listening?

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Appeal to drop charges against Anand Teltumbde

Solidarity Links

To:
Hon. Chrystia Freeland
Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada
chrystia.freeland@parl.gc.ca

Re: Appeal to Drop All Charges against Dr. Anand Teltumbde

Madam:

We wish to bring to your notice a series of arrests of intellectuals and activists in India within a growing environment of violence against expressions of dissent, such as the murder of several intellectuals and the journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh in 2017. The latest target of this suppression of dissent is Dr. Anand Teltumbde, a scholar we had invited to Canada to lecture at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University
Dr Anand Teltumbde, an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, Executive Director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Ex-MD & CEO of Petronet India, former Professor of Business Management at IIT-Kharagpur, currently Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics in Goa Institute of Management, author of 26 books, columnist in the premier social studies journal in India, Economic and Political Weekly, writer of innumerable articles, a noted scholar of caste-class and public policy issues, public intellectual and human rights activist faces imminent arrest as a so-called ‘Urban Naxalite’ (or Maoist) under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The charges against him are patently fabricated. People arrested under this act face years of incarceration without trial.
Dr. Teltumbde recently has introduced a post-graduate course in Big Data Analytics in Goa that is the first of its kind in India. As a member of the Dalit community born in humble circumstances, Dr. Teltumbde has always stood in support of the struggles of the underprivileged and has been a guiding force in the movement for accessible education in India.
Dr. Teltumbde has travelled extensively to lecture on Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit struggle. It was in order to give such lectures that he was invited by the Dr. Ambedkar Memorial Lecture Committee, comprising the Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University; Department of Asian Studies, Centre for India and South Asia Research, and the Robert H. N. Ho and Family Foundation Program in Buddhism and Contemporary Society at the University of British Columbia; Chetna Association of Canada; and the Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation for South Asian Advancement, to deliver the Dr. Ambedkar Memorial Lecture in Vancouver and Surrey in 2016. This was followed by lectures in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal.

Dr. Teltumbde’s home in Goa was raided in his absence without any notice by the Poona Police on August 28, 2018. At the same time in simultaneous raids in several cities, the homes of others, including a priest, were similarly raided and five writers, lawyers, civil-rights activists, and an octogenarian poet, were arrested and continue to be incarcerated. Before this, in June 2018, five other individuals, including academics, lawyers, and civil and democratic rights activists, were arrested and also remain incarcerated.

These raids and arrests follow from the organization of a peaceful public meeting on 31st December 2017, co-organized by retired Supreme Court Justice P. B. Sawant and retired justice B. G. Kolshe Patil of the Bombay High Court, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Last Anglo-Maratha battle, which took place at Bhima-Koregaon, Maharashtra, India, where large numbers of Dalit soldiers were martyred. The public meeting drew attention to the communal and casteist policies of the BJP.
Dr. Teltumbde was invited to a planning meeting for this public meeting but, in the end, attended neither the planning meeting nor the public meeting. The charge against the others arrested and that facing Dr. Teltumbde is that they collaborated with Maoists and that the public meeting was funded by Maoists. For these charges there is not a shred of credible evidence. The police have also concocted a conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister implicating these dissident intellectuals and defenders of human rights. The people already in jail on charges similar to those against Dr. Teltumbde are: Arun Ferreira, Gautham Navlakha, Mahesh Raut, Shoma Sen, Rona Wilson, Sudha Bharadwaj, Sudhir Dhawale, Surendra Gadling, Varavara Rao, and Vernon Gonsalves.

We, the undersigned, appeal to the Government of India in the name of justice, democratic freedom, and the rule of law that the charges against Dr. Teltumbde be dropped unconditionally and that the ten human rights activists currently in jail be released immediately and unconditionally and appeal to the Government of Canada in the name of its championship of human rights urgently to take up this issue with the Government of India.

Signed:
The Organizing Committee for the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Memorial Lecture (SFU/UBC):

Chinmoy Banerjee (Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation)
Ajay Bhardwaj (University of British Columbia)
Jai Birdi (Chetna Association of Canada)
Samir Gandesha (Simon Fraser University)
Harinder Mahil (Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation)
Jessica Main (University of British Columbia)
Anne Murphy (University of British Columbia)
Sara Shneiderman (University of British Columbia)

Other Canadian organizations and trade union:

India Civil Watch Canada (ICW Canada)
South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD)
CERAS Montreal
Democracy, Equality and Secularism in South Asia Winnipeg (DESSA)
Punjabi Literary and Cultural Association Winnipeg
Unifor Canada

SANSAD Events


Edward Said and Palestine
Book launch: “Culture and Resistance” by Edward Said and David Barsamian
Saturday, February 23
2.00 pm -4.00 pm
Room 7000 SFU Harbor Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

The late Edward Said left an indelible mark on post-colonial studies with his book, “Orientalism” and taught generations to recognize the West’s constructions of its “other,” particularly in the Middle East and the Islamic world. As a Palestinian intellectual Said brought his anti-colonial critique to bear on what he called “The Question of Palestine,” revealing Zionism as a colonial ideology and the Western liberal support of this as a part of its colonial heritage. He was one of the first to publicly criticize the Oslo Accords and said one month after the signing of Oslo in 1993 that it was “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles”. This forum looks at Said’s legacy in the context of the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Moderator: Joanne Naiman
Main Speaker: David Barsamian
Panelists: Hanna Kawas, Adel Iskandar, Sana Janjua

David Barsamian is an investigative journalist, broadcaster and author. He is the founder and director of Alternative Radio, which is in its 33rd year. He has interviewed and written books with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Richard Wolff, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. His latest with Noam Chomsky is Global Discontents. His book with Edward Said, Culture & Resistance, which had been out of print is just reissued with a new introduction by David. He is a winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its Top Ten Media Heroes. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. He has collaborated with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet in events in New York, London, and Vienna. He was deported from India in 2011 because of his work on human rights abuses in Kashmir. He reports on people’s struggles across North America and the rest of the world.

David Barsamian will speak on Edward Said and the Middle East.

Adel Iskandar is an Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. He is the author, co-author, and editor of several works including “Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution” (AUCP/OUP); “Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism” (Basic Books); “Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation” (University of California Press); “Mediating the Arab Uprisings” (Tadween Publishing); and “Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring” (Palgrave Macmillan). Iskandar’s work deals with media, identity and politics; and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. Iskandar’s engaged participatory research includes supporting knowledge production through scholarly digital publishing such as “Jadaliyya” and academic podcasting such as “Status.”

Adel Iskandar will speak on Said’s critique of Orientalism and Nativism and his positioning as a secular humanist in exile.

Hanna Kawas is a Palestinian born in Bethlehem, Palestine. He is a writer and activist and has spent all of his adult life working for Palestinian national and human rights, as well as supporting liberation movements all over the world. Hanna is the chairperson of Canada Palestine Association, which was established in 1980, and is also the co-host of Voice of Palestine. He is currently active with BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish that has launched multiple campaigns.

Hanna Kawas will speak on the current situation of the Palestinians.

Sana Janjua writes poems. She is going to read three poems: one from Neruda’s Isla Negra, one from Darwish, and one from Faiz. All three speak to the experience of exile, memory of violence, and the condition of the refugees drawing connection to the global crisis of internally displaced peoples, and forced migration(s) across borders.

Joanne Naiman is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has been involved over the years in a variety of activist organizations, including the anti-apartheid movement as well as support for public education in Ontario. Since moving to Vancouver in 2008 she has been an active member of Independent Jewish Voices.

Organized by South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), Canada Palestine Association, Independent Jewish Voices, and Committee of Progressive Pakistani Canadians (CPPC) with support from Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation and the Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University.

Contacts: Chin: cbanerjee@telus.net; Hanna: hkawas@msn.com