Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Einstein


Albert Einstein:Political Profile of a Radical Scientist 
-- Ish Mishra --


"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils (the evils of the capitalism), through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system, which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts the production according to the needs of the community, would distribute the work among all those able to work and would guarantee livelihood to every man, woman and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of glorification of power and success in our present society." -- -Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?”1

The year 2005 marks the centennial of the publication of 5 of Einstein’s major scientific papers that took the world of the classical physics by shock and surprise. The new research by the young scientist questioned the absolute concept of the motion and acceleration with the special theory of relativity. It authentically challenged the reigning Newtonian paradigm and its notions of the absoluteness and finality of the mechanical laws and the truth; inaugurated a new epoch in the history of scientific knowledge; laid the foundations of the future paradigm of analyses in the study of Physics. With the publication of these papers, Einstein added new dimensions to the Quantum theory. The contributions of the other two pillars of the Quantum physics -- Max Planc and Neils Bohr – are related with the quantum nature of the matter but they treated the light as electromagnetic wave within the paradigm of classical physics. Einstein, in his first paper itself, propounded the quantum theory of light that traveled as energy packets, with enormous velocity. In 1917 he demonstrated that just like the particles of the matter, light particles too have energy and momentum. For Einstein, the scientific knowledge was not just a matter of theoretical concern but the “attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought”. The Scientific knowledge is the means of scientific vision and temperament to scientifically comprehend the world and make it better and beautiful. Science is not an end in itself but the “scientific method furnishes the means to realize the goals” of the progress in the cause of humanity2. “Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem--in my opinion—to characterize our age. If we desire sincerely and passionately the safety, the welfare, and the free development of the talents of all men, we shall not be in want of means to reach such a state. Even if a small part of mankind strives for such goals, their superiority will prove itself in the long run.”3

2005 also marks the 50th year of Einstein’s death and the 60th year of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the tragic catastrophe caused by the little boy and the fat man of Truman’s US government to mark its emergence as world power after the Second world war was almost already over. An anti-war activist since student days, Einstein, the epoch making scientist, was deeply perturbed with the catastrophe caused by the destructive application of the scientific knowledge. In the aftermath of the war, in a message to the intellectuals, he regretted the fate of the scientists in the existing state of affairs. “We scientists, whose destination has been to help in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose foe which they were invented”. He appealed to the intellectuals of the world, “to build spiritual and scientific bridges linking the nations” and “to overcome the horrible obstacles of national frontiers”. In the same message he observed that “rational thinking does not suffice to solve the problems of our social life. Penetrating research and keen scientific work have often had tragic implications for mankind, producing on the one hand, inventions which liberated man from exhausting physical labour making his life easier and richer; but on the other hand, introducing a grave restlessness into his life, making him a slave of his technological environment and - most catastrophic of all - creating the means of his own mass destruction.”4

The Scientific knowledge of energy generation by the chain reaction caused by atomic fission, and its application in making atomic weapons has become the fact of the life. Hence, in order to avoid another catastrophic war of unprecedented destructive intensity, Einstein proposed the creation of a democratic, supranational government, as over-all in-charge of world’s all the security and military affairs, arms and ammunition and more importantly of the world’s atomic energy. “There is only one path of peace and security: the path of a supranational organization. One-sided armament on national basis only heightens the general uncertainty and confusion without being an effective protection.”4a The idea of a democratic world government despite its practical and theoretical lacunae owing to the intricacies of the capitalist political economy and the dangers of its becoming an imperialist tool like many economic and political world organizations, shows Einstein’s well-intended intense desire fir world peace and cooperation. Pointing to the supranational character of scientific knowledge, he envisaged a significant role of scientists and intellectuals in it. Dedicated to the supranational security, this world organization would free the national governments from military responsibilities, military secrets and the fear of war. The supranational army would consist of the armed forces personnel from the member countries and would strive for the world peace. ”The tensions of the increasingly likelihood of war in a world based on sovereignty would be replaced by the relaxation of growing confidence in peace”. And “the representatives to a supranational organization – assembly and council – must be elected by the people in each member country through a secret ballot. These representatives must represent the people rather than any government – which would enhance the pacific nature of the organization.”5

It is well known that Einstein was an epoch making physicist, what is less known and underplayed by the mainstream media is, his radical socio-political ideas and activism. In fact, he escaped persecution for his anti-war, anti-racist and egalitarian political ideas and activities -- in Germany during and after the First World War and in USA during the Second World War and the subsequent mid-century ‘red scare’ of the cold war-- due to his international celebrity status. Few other scientists, his fellow travelers in the campaign against jingoism and war, were not as fortunate. Rosenbergs case is well known. On the well-orchestrated and trumped up charges of being ‘Soviet agents’ and passing on the ‘scientific secrets’, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had to die on the sing-sing electric chairs” on June 1953, despite frantic efforts of Einstein and other democratic minded scientists, artists and radical political activists6.

During his academic tours of the European countries and the America, apart from lecturing on quantum physics and the theory of relativity in simple language, he also pleaded for the mass education in science to emancipate people from superstitions, mysticism, and religious-racial bigotry. He shared with the audience his concerns and anxieties regarding the weapons of the mass destruction, particularly the nuclear weapons and appealed for peace, freedom and equality so that the enormous human creative potentialities could be realized. Through out his life, Einstein used all the scientific and public forums, the worldwide network of his acquaintances and his celebrity status to campaign for peace, disarmament and socialism. He stressed upon the need of social ethics in the field of science. In An Open letter to the Society for Social Responsibility in Science published in 1950, he wrote that the institutions unless supported by “the sense of responsibility” are “ in a moral sense impotent”. And “In our times scientists and engineers carry particular moral responsibility, because the development of the military means of mass destruction is within their sphere of activity. I feel therefore, that the formation of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science satisfies a true need….”6a. All that attracted public attention towards these issues and also the attention of the Gestapo and the FBI7.

This article seeks to present a brief political profile of the radical scientist in terms his views and activism on various political and socio-economic issues facing the world.

Born in a well-to-do secular German Jewish family in 1879, from the childhood itself, Albert Einstein had a scientific bent of mind and the will and desires to scientifically explore and comprehend the world. During the last decade of the 19th century, the Europe witnessed two contrasting political trends – of sectarian jingoism and the imperialist expansion on the one hand, that culminated in the First World War, and the revolutionary socialist internationalism on the other. The young Albert sympathized with the later, and abhorred the military mentality; sectarian, chauvinist and racist ideologies and mobilizations. At the age of 16 he renounced his German citizenship and moved to Switzerland in 1895, in order to escape the compulsory military services and to pursue his education at Zurich’s Polytechnic in an atmosphere relatively free from anti-Semitism, pervading the German and Austrian campuses at the time. Zurich, in those days, was a ‘hide out’ for the Russian and German ‘under-ground’ revolutionaries. Einstein spent much time at the Odeon CafĂ©, “a hangout for Russian radicals” including Leon Trotsky and Lenin. There he was introduced with the scientific ideas of socialism as he spent much time at the Cafe and participated in the “coffee shop’s intoxicating political debates” even at the cost of missing the classes8.

After his Ph.D., unable to find an academic job, Einstein joined as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office in Berne in 1902. The tedious nature of the job could not deter the young scientist from venturing into the new researches and inventions. While working there he published his first five, epoch making, research papers in 1905,on the photo-electric effect, which demonstrated the quantum nature of the light and propounded the special theory of relativity that quashed the established, Newtonian paradigm of the classical physics. The famous equation of the modern physics, E=mc2 was the theme of his fourth paper, which established the law of equivalence between mass and energy. In this equation E is the kinetic energy generated by the mass m and the c is the velocity of light in the space (approximately 300,000 KM/second). This invention not only revolutionized the study oh the theoretical physics but also opened the new avenues of generating enormous energy. Accordingly if one gram of matter is completely converted into energy, the energy thus obtained shall be equivalent to 2.4x107 units of electrical energy, sufficient to take care of the energy needs of an average households for 4000 years. Einstein did not get carried away by the universal and the ubiquitous acceptance of the quantum theory and insistence by Boer and other physicist regarding its being the ultimate, and carried on his search of newer possibilities. In June 1933, in his Herbert Spencer lecture at Oxford, he said, “I attach only a transitory importance to this interpretation (quantum theory). I still believe in the possibility of a model of reality – that is to say, of a theory, which represents the things, themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence”8a. He went ahead working on the Unified Field Theory, hoping to answer the questions, unanswered by quantum theory. Debates aroused by Einstein’s theories gave him an early celebrity status and in 1914, he was offered and accepted a full professorship in Berlin. Fred Jerome opines that the offer was probably a result of competition between German, British, French and American Universities to attract scientific and technological talent to enhance their imperial interests9.

The First wold war broke out immediately after his joining the post. Prior to the war, ideologically, he aligned himself with the Second (Socialist) International which and considered the war as imperialist. Einstein was a sympathizer of the German Social Democrats, who were part of the Socialist International, but as soon as the war broke out, like their counterparts in other countries, they too, joined their national government’s war efforts with the cries of jingoistic nationalism. They tore apart the socialist internationalism and anti-war instance of the yesteryears. Einstein opposed to the war and the military mentality and disillusioned with the Social Democrats, aligned himself with the party’s minority (the communists) who saw the war as a reflection of the internal contradictions of the ruling classes of the belligerents. Max Planc and over 100 other Scientists signed a jingoistic Manifesto to the Civilized world, “endorsing Germany’s war aims in a language that prefigured the Nazi rants a generation later”. Einstein and only three other scientists in a reply to it condemned the behavior of these scientists as shameful. The letter was suppressed at that time. “At least one of the signatories was jailed”. Einstein’s “power of newly acquired celebrity” not only protected him but also allowed him “to speak out when others couldn’t”. In 1917 Einstein propounded the laws of radiation on the basis of the quantum nature of the light. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics on his work on photoelectric effect. Einstein’s vocal presence became more visible to the people in general, and the advocates of anti-Semitism and national chauvinism in particualr.10

He continued to speak out in the devastated aftermath of the war that was followed by the fall of seven other European monarchies along with the fall of Kaiser Wilhelm, the Prussian monarch. They were replaced, for the moment, by liberal and socialist regimes. He was with his liberal and radical colleagues and students in the war time opposition and joined them in their post war resistance to “the burgeoning revanchist militarism that would quickly morph into Nazism”. The day Kaiser abdicated, Einstein posted a sign on his classroom’s door that read: “CLASS CANCELLED – REVOLUTION”11.

Einstein’s public visibility and his outspoken political views made him popular with the peace loving, democratic and radical intellectuals, students and activists, but it also made him the focus of the growing virulent anti-Semitism, particularly after receiving the Nobel prize. The right wing politicians as well as many fellow German scientists denounced his theory of relativity as a “Jewish perversion”, but undeterred by these criticisms and condemnations, Einstein’s presence became more visible in the scientific as well as in the cultural and political life of the Weimer Republic. In 1920s, in the wake of the rising tides of racist and jingoist violence and ultra-nationalism in Germany, Einstein became more vocal in politically opposing these obscurantist and reactionary ideologies and their socio-political manifestations. He supported the cause of European unity and aligned with the organizations involved in helping the Jews against growing anti-Semitic violence. He regarded “class distinction as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force” and never looked upon “the ease and happiness as ends in themselves”. For him, “the ideals” which lighted his way and “time after time” gave him “new courage to face life cheerfully”, had been “Kindness, Beauty and the Truth”. He noted that “without the sense of kinship with the men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally attainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, the life would have seemed to me empty”. Einstein was quite averse to the very idea of the war, which he considered as “the worst outcrop of herd life” and proposed that “this plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed”. He “passionately” hated the “heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism”. He believed that “this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of people not been systematically corrupted by political and commercial interests acting through the schools and the press”12. In his opinion, “In two weeks the sheep-like masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed for the sake of sordid ends of a few interested parties”13. His egalitarian vision led him to oppose the fee hikes confronting the poorer students and “routinely offered after-hours physics classes”14.

As the economic and political crises gripped the Europe, Einstein used the platforms of scientific conferences to air his political views and concerns. As Jerome notes, “He had no problems, discussing relativity at a university lecture in the morning, and, on that same evening, urging the young people to refuse military service”15. By the end of 1920s, jingoism and anti-Semitism were at the peak, thanks to Social Democrats’ non-dialectical approach towards socialism and nationalism, aversion to communists and their inability to comprehend the fraudulent facade of Hitler’s National Socialism. The constitutional bourgeois rule was making way for the extra-constitutional bourgeois rule of Hitler’s National Socialist Party on the pattern of Mussolini’s Fascist rule in Italy. Hitler’s Nazi campaign was gaining ground riding on the pervasive anti-Semitic feelings and the ideological constructs of Racial superiority of Aryans, i.e. Germans whose “racial purity” had to be regained by “purging the country of the Semitic Races i.e. Jews”16.

Though still vocal against obscurantism, Military mentality and the war phobia at home, but the atmosphere in Germany was so vitiated and virulent that free scientific research and political articulation had become a difficult proposition. Einstein found himself more and more looking abroad for congenial platforms for his scientific and political expressions. He lectured in Britain, the Netherlands and other parts of the Europe and, from 1930 on, annually as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. Nazis seized the power on January 30,1933 and Nazi zealots confiscated Einstein’s house and property in Berlin belongings, along with the capture and the seizure of the properties of other prominent and not-so prominent Jews. In the public book burning organized by Hitler’s propaganda minister, Goebbels, Einstein’s works featured prominently. Einstein was on a speaking tour of Netherlands at the time. Large cash bounty was offered for his murder in Nazi newspapers, following which he had to complete his lecture-tour in the Netherlands under the protection of security guards. He resigned from the Prussian the Prussian Academy of Sciences and declared, thought, “As long as I have any choice, I will only stay in a country where political liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail. Political liberty implies the freedom to express one’s political opinions orally and in writing; tolerance implies respect for any and every individual opinion.” And at that time, these conditions did not obtained in Germany distempered by Nazis. He hoped that “the healthy conditions will soon supervene in Germany”16a. He was accused of anti-patriotism by the Academy for deploring “Germany’s lapse into the barbarism of long passed ages” and of being used by “the enemies of not merely the present government but of the whole German people”. Einstein in his reply wrote that such a testimony “would have been equivalent to a repudiation of all those notions of justice and liberty for which I have stood all my life. Such testimony, would not be as you put it, a good word for the German people; on the contrary, it would only have helped the cause of those who are seeking to undermine the ideas and principles which have won for German people a place of honor in the civilized world.”16b.

That year, when at the California Institute of Technology for his annual lectures, he along with his family decided not to return to Berlin, and accepted a lifetime job offer from the Institute for Advanced studies, Princeton, New Jersey. He was granted American citizenship in 1940. There, his major scientific concern was the United Field Theory, an attempt to demonstrate that electromagnetic waves and the gravity were manifestation of a single phenomenon, which remained his life-long scientific concern and “remains one that continues to animate contemporary physics and cosmology”17.

He continued his political activities even in his new country with his political concerns focussed on the dangers of Nazism and fascism. Exodus of Jews from Germany and east-European countries was a matter of serious concern. Using his celebrity status and supported by many other European intellectuals, he appealed to the Franklin D.Roosevelt government to allow the refugees to migrate to US, but this time the power of his celebrity status failed to get the desired result. Einstein did not oppose only Nazism and Fascism but was opposed to any system that attempts to make inroads on human liberty in the name of the Reason of State18. During the Spanish civil war, he supported the anti – Franco forces and criticized the stand of phony “neutrality” embargo by US, French and British governments, effectively denying the needed ammunitions to Republican troops while Nazi forces bombed the Spanish villages. Einstein participated in the rallies and demonstrations organized to demand the lifting of the blockade and to protest against the imposition of the fascist regime. “Nearly 3000 American volunteers of Abraham Lincoln Brigade defied their government to fight with the republic with Einstein an early and zealous supporter”19.

On the request of the physicist Szilard, a refugee co-victim of Nazi atrocities, Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1939, about the German advances in the field of nuclear research. But due to governmental fear of his radicalism and his own reluctance, he had no role in the Manhattan project launched with the stated goal of creating atomic deterrent. After the war, Einstein’s strong protests and criticisms of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well known. In a newspaper interview he “blamed the atomic bombing of Japan on President Truman’s anti Soviet foreign policy”. And the interview was added in the FBI file. It is also well known that Manhattan project scientists had well debated the repercussions of the use of the atomic bomb and many of them including Openheimer had strongly opposed the use of the bomb. Fearing a nuclear arms race between the USA and the USSR, many of them founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (ECAS) under the chairmanship of Einstein. In that role Einstein unsuccessfully tried to impress upon the US administration to remove the atomic development from the military and to place it under international control and described Truman’s foreign policy as reflection of the US imperialist ambitions – Pan Americana – the anti-Soviet expansionism. Despite the rebuff from the US administration, the ECA’s anti-nuclear message made international headlines and evoked significant public response all over the world20.

The post-war period in the US witnessed the racist attacks on the Afro-Americans, their segregation, lynching and other manifestations of inhuman and brutal; manifestations of imperialist white supremacy. The pre-war promises of equality for the mobilization of the people were forgotten. The army remained segregated, the schools remained segregated. Lynching of non-white minorities by the right wing white hoodlums had become a commonplace thing. The racial discrimination in all the walks of the life was obvious. Access to housing, jobs and the University itself were routinely denied to African-Americans. The anti-racist activists and peace agitators were firmly dealt with. Einstein, having witnessed the racial frenzy and mob-violence in Germany, put everything on his disposal to oppose racial discrimination and was actively involved in anti-racist protests. As a long time anti racist activist, he reacted against every outrage, through public meetings, radio talks and newspapers. Addressing the students and the faculty at Lincoln University, a historically black institution, Einstein observed, “The social outlook of Americans, their sense of equality and human dignity is limited to men of white skins. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me”21. In the aftermath of the war, in the face of nationwide wave of lynching he joined the American Crusade to End Lynching as co-chair with legendary Paul Robeson. In his letter to President Truman, delivered by Paul Robeson, he demanded the prosecution of lynchers and passage of anti-lynching law. He agreed with Robeson, who told Truman that if the government would not protect the blacks they would have to do so themselves. Truman, of course, didn’t like and tolerate the idea. The meeting broke down leading to the accentuated racist violence and more determined resistance that would transform into civil rights movement in a few years time.

In 1948 presidential elections, he along with Paul Robeson and other progressive scientists, artists and intellectuals actively campaigned for the new Progressive Party candidate, former Vice President Henry Wallace. The new party formed by the left wing of Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition included radicals, socialists and communists and called for international control of nuclear weapons. Einstein and Paul Robeson went ahead with their joint campaign in the south despite the violent attacks and refused to appear before a segregated audience. But the specter of communism was haunting the America. And as a result of anti Soviet jingoism and Truman’s belated promises of welfare programs led to the fall of the Wallace movement and unfortunately for America and the world, Truman got reelected. This accelerated the cold war phobia and the corresponding ideological repression. Few radical supporters of the party including Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, blamed it on the party’s failure to go beyond the New Deal liberalism and advocated for explicit socialist stand on questions like public ownership of basic industries. They were subjected to all kinds of restrictions on their intellectual freedom and movement. Paul Robeson had to bear the brunt of challenging the racist ideology of white supremacy overtly-covertly patronized and promoted by Truman’s establishment, during the ‘red scare days’. He was denied his basic civil rights – right to income, concert-venues, and the right to travel. He was virtually reduced to a non-person in his own home. In 1952 Einstein, in an act of according him public honor, Einstein invited him and his accompanist Lloyd Brown for lunch and they spent a long afternoon discussing music politics and other issues of mutual interest. Earlier in 1937 when Marion Anderson, an Afro-American performer after giving a “critically acclaimed concert” was denied lodging at the segregated inn, Einstein instantly invited her to stay at his house. Ever since whenever she sang in New Jersey, she would be his guest.22

Anti-Semitic discrimination and violence faced by the Jews of eastern and central Europe, had been Einstein’s consistent political concern that intensified after the Nazi genocide. As early as 1921 Einstein visited US to raise funds for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine, for the threatened European Jewish community but distinguished himself from the Zionists. He wanted that the “oppressive nationalism must be conquered” and envisaged a Jewish homeland in Palestine on the basis of peaceful cooperation between peoples who are at home in the country”, and that there should be no “majorisation of one group by the other”. Einstein was opposed to the idea of the aggressive Zionism, the way he was opposed to Nazi anti-Semitism and the racial repression in the USA. He could rose above the ethnic “limitations” and felt that jingoist Zionism “will have only undesirable results” 23. After the war, the victorious allies were not willing to absorb even a part of the displaced European Jews and the state of Israel was created in the Palestine. Einstein applauded the achievement of a homeland for the displaced community but was not happy the way it was created. In 1949 in a radio broadcast he regretted not achieving the goal of “ an undivided Palestine in 24which Jews and Arabs would live as equals, free, in peace.” In the same broadcast he appealed to the Jews of the Israel to crate a community on the ethical ideals of “peace, based on understanding and self-restraint, and not on violence”24. Given his consistent stand against militarism, racial discrimination, war and subjugation of one people by others, had he been alive, would certainly have disapproved Israel’s subjugation and oppression of Palestinians, particularly since 1967.

The issues related with the intellectual freedom and civil liberties threatened by Omni-present American state with its manipulated anticommunist frenzy and jingoistic anti Soviet phobia –“red scare”-- occupied major portion of his political activism, in the post war period. He was quite perturbed by the ‘red hunting’ along with the repression of Afro-Americans in the US in the name of patriotism and felt that “honest people” in the US “constitute a hopeless minority”. In 1953, in reply to a letter from an innovative, radical schoolteacher, William Frauenglass, who had been fired for his refusal to discuss his politics and names before a senate investigating committee, Einstein appealed to all the intellectuals “to refuge to testify… If enough people are ready to take this grave step, they will be successful. If not then the intellectuals deserve nothing better than slavery which is intended for them.” The letter was a national front-page news. Many tall intellectuals including Bertrand Russell supported Einstein’s views. Many young Americans took the “advice from Dr. Einstein”25.

Resistance to “red-hunting” found an authentic supporter in Einstein and started being more articulate and vocal. Many young people started refusing to testify and by 1960 breaking committee hearings. These acts of civil disobedience inspired by Einstein preluded the civil rights movements of 1960s under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. Earlier in 1951, Einstein and Paul Robeson sponsored a dinner and rally to raise funds fir the defense of W.E.Du Bois, who was indicted on the trumped-up charge of “being a Soviet agent”. In 1953, the case of Rosenbergs – Julius and Ethel—Einstein’s intervention and his letters to media and to the President Truman, attracted popular, international support. He wrote to the trial judge that scientific evidence against them, even if accurate, did not reveal any vital secret. Failing to get a positive response he wrote to the President about it. But the Truman’s government was not moved. And they had to die. His 75th birthday was celebrated as an occasion for a conference on civil liberties organized by the Emergency Civil liberties Committee (ECLC). The ECLC had been formed in response to the failure of the American Civil Liberties Union to defend he communists and take on the questions raised by the Rosenberg case. The conference attended by many luminaries from various fields launched the ECLC “on a forty-six years trajectory defending freedom of expression, the rights of labor, and multi-faceted campaigns for civil liberties”. -Days before his death on April 18, 1955, Einstein jointly signed what came to be known as The Einstein–Russell Manifesto that posed practical political choice between humanism and universal death, in the wake of invention of the weapons of mass destruction. “There lies before us, if we choose continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we can not forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.” 26

This sketchy and incomplete profile of the great scientist and political activist has not his views on religion, religion and sciences, role of mass education in science and social ethics in fighting against myths, obscurantism and mysticism often used by the reactionary forces in all ages. Also not discussed here are his understanding and vision of socialism and the views on human rights and philosophy of science. Its incompleteness shall be further aggravated without a brief discussion on his lifelong commitment to pacifism, world order and. After the Hiroshima-Nagasaki catastrophe, Einstein wrote, “The release of the atomic bomb has not created a new problem. It has made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one… So long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable…. What has been changed is the destructiveness of war.” He wanted the “secret of the bomb should be committed to a world government, and the United States should immediately announce its readiness to give it to the world government”26. Einstein feared the atomic race among the big powers of the world, which came true in his lifetime itself, as by the mid-fifties USSR, Britain, France and China had already developed and tested atomic weapons. According to his own admission his part in the development of atomic energy “quite indirect”. He did not “foresee its release” so soon. With his invention of the laws of equilibrium between mass and energy, he had said “that it was theoretically possible” and that it “it became practical through accidental discovery of chain reactions”. He was opposed to the idea of managing the atomic science on the pattern of commercial corporations and pleaded that the US, till then the sole atomic power, must outlaw the bomb. As we know The US did not heed his advice and went ahead testing many more bombs. He wrote, “To keep a stockpile of atomic bombs without promising not to initiate its use is exploiting the possession of the bomb for political ends” and that he opined was “hardly pardonable”. That is Einstein pleaded for the creation of a supranational government with no military secrets, as “if a sufficient number of the governments pool heir strengths they can take this risk, for their security will be greatly increased. And it could be done with greater assurance because of the decrease of fear, suspicion, and distrust that will result.” 27

In response to An Open Letter: Dr. Einstein’s Mistaken Notions on his suggestion of a popularly elected world organization, Einstein, in order to prevent the catastrophic national wars, underlined the need of a supranational government accountable to the international community. He shared the views of the Russian intellectuals “that a socialist economy possesses advantages…” and that “economic power in all widely industrialized countries has become concentrated in the hands of relatively few. These people in capitalist countries, do not need to account for their actions to the public as a whole; they must do so in socialist countries in which they are civil servants similar to those who exercise political power.” He added, “No doubt, the day will come when all nations will be grateful to Russia for having demonstrated, for the first time, by vigorous action the practical possibility of planned economy in spite of exceedingly great difficulties.”28 He blamed the “anarchy of capitalist society Einstein was aware of the dangers of bureaucratization involved in the socialist regime based on the planned economy. “A planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by complete enslavement of individuals. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”29

Einstein was a radical and egalitarian from his student days and remained so all his life. Last years of his life was devoted to campaign for the disarmament, world peace and civil rights and to find jobs for the victims of racial discrimination and “red hunting” using his network of acquaintances. He remained committed to the ideals of socialism and democracy and considered the de-bureaucratized socialism as the “only one way to eliminate the “grave evils” of capitalism.30 The real homage to this radical scientist shall be by heeding his advice on disarmament and outlawing the weapons of mass destruction. “We must build spiritual and scientific bridges linking the nations of the world. We must overcome the horrible obstacles of national frontiers…The time is terribly short. We must act now if we are to act at all.”31

The SEZ

Political Economy of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in India
Ish Mishra

Introduction
Capitalism with the innate attribute of mad rush to unceasing accumulation, is a bastard system in the sense that it mans at opposite to what it says. It appropriated political power and established it self with the slogans of, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and its theoreticians – Adam Smith &Co. – explained the historical progress as an “inadvertent consequence” of “profit seeking activities” by individuals, organized and harmonized by the “invisible” hands of the market . But the very existence and the growth of capitalism depends upon the principles contrary to its declared ones as it is the matter of common historical sense that profit can not be sought and maximized by democratic principles of equality, liberty and fraternity but just opposite to that -- by maximum exploitation, manipulation and repression. It began its journey with the declared mission of civilizing the world and disposed the peasantry in its own land; plundered the riches and the resources of the rest of the world; conducted programs of the people; grabbed their land and resources; exterminated or enslaved them. It invades and devastates Afghanistan in the name of the “war on terrorism” – an abstract enemy – while it seeks to control and regulate the extraction and passage of the Natural oil and gas resources of Central Asia. It invades and occupies Iraq in the name of the destruction of non-existent WMD – Weapons of Mass destructions – as is open secret, to control and monopolize the Oil resources of the gulf but declares to be on the mission of democratizing it. Similarly when the local agents of global Capital declare to establish Special Economic Zone (SEZ), it means Special Exploitation/Expropriation Zones, regulated by, probably, the invisible hands of the market. Adam Smith’s invisible hands, which he advertently or inadvertently tried to hide, were clearly visible to Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, the activist intellectuals, who did not seek just to “interpret” the world” but also to “change” it. The SEZ kind of developments can be better understood in the context of innate character of Capital to increasingly and unceasingly accumulate and expand and the proposed SEZs are the latest, easiest and cheapest instrument of accumulation and expansion. Over 160 years ago, Marx and Engels wrote in their celebrated pamphlet, the communist Manifesto: “The need of constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the glob. It must nestle everywhere, settle every where, and establish connections everywhere.”

The issue of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in India, as the new mantra of India’s future rise as a potential economic power along with China has become the focal concern and the focus of discussions in political and intellectual circles, particularly after the incidents of forced eviction of peasants and subsequent peasant movements against the expropriation of agricultural land, which have been generally under reported in the media. The Nandigram, that has become the hall-mark and the reference point for such anti-land grab movements, which has witnessed a mayhem since the West Bengal Government’s forcible acquisition of agricultural land. Death of 14 protesters and injury to hundreds in police firing aided and abetted by CPI (M)’s lumpen brigade on the14th March 2007 on the orders of the Marxist Chief Minister, Buddha Deb Bhattacharya, committed to the “development of West Bengal”, has deepened the debate. The violence unleashed by the state power and the armed lumpen brigade of CPI (M) – comparable to private armies in the neighboring state in Bihar

In 1965 the first Export Processing Zone (EPZ) was started at Kandla, Gujarat. So far there are only 14 EPZs in India. Very little is heard about their contributions to promoting Indian economy so far, except for the wage slavery for workers there and the riches made by a few out of them. Now with WTO calling for opening up trade in all its forms and extending liberalization in all fields including the land, a policy was introduced on the” fool’s day” (April 1) in 2000 by the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) led NDA government of for setting up of Special Economic Zones – SEZs – as foreign territories, in the country with a view “to provide an internationally competitive and hassle free environment for exports. Units may be set up in SEZ for manufacture of goods and rendering of services. All the import/export operations of the SEZ units will be on self-certification basis. The units in the Zone have to be a net foreign exchange earner but they shall not be subjected to any pre-determined value addition or minimum export performance requirements. Sales in the Domestic Tariff Area by SEZ units shall be subject to payment of full Custom Duty and import policy in force. Further Offshore banking units may be set up in the SEZs. The policy provides for setting up of SEZs in the public, private, joint sector or by the State Governments. It was also envisaged that some of the existing Export Processing Zones would be converted into Special Economic Zones. Accordingly, the Government has converted Export Processing Zones located at Kandla and Surat (Gujarat), Cochin (Kerala), Santa Cruz (Mumbai-Maharashtra), Falta (West Bengal), Madras (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Noida (Uttar Pradesh) into a Special Economic Zones. In addition, 3 new Special Economic Zones approved for establishment at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Manikanchan – Salt Lake (Kolkata) and Jaipur have since commenced operations .

In 2005 general elections parties and faces in the government changed but not the policies. Montek Singh Ahluwalia has been a common agent of influencing India’s Political Economy in favor of imperialist globalization during the regimes of various hues since 1991. The Commerce Minister Kamalnath announced to start almost 650 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) by 2007 with a target to touch a record 1,000 in few years and a bill for SEZs -- Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, 2005 -- was moved in the Parliament in early 2005. It was passed unanimously in both houses of parliament within two days and got signed by the president in a few days. It was expected that such a bill which is going to affect the future of agriculture and of those dependant upon it for their livelihood, the whole rural sector, land use, employment generation, urbanization and the pace of its expansion and other aspects of the social fabric, would be properly deliberated and debated. However, the fact that both houses passed it within two days of its presentation shows the “convergence” of interests among all the parliamentary parties on the issue and has compelled democracy-loving, sensitive Indians to introspect upon this perturbing matter..


Imperialism is not a policy matter of or aberration in capitalist development but innate in it, only the form changes. Capitalism that began with primitive accumulation by expropriation of agricultural land, proletarinization of peasantry and colonial plunder, traces its theoretical roots of liberalism in European Renaissance. With neo-liberalism, the history has taken a full turn and capitalist development has resorted to expropriation of agricultural land for industrial/commercial/real estate/SEZ purposes with the help of the governments that follow the dictates of displaces the peasants from their land who swell the ranks of surplus labor power. In the present neo-liberal phase of capitalism, SEZs are the cheapest and surest tool of imperialism.

European Renaissance was not the “rebirth” of classical antiquity. “Rebirth” is a myth. It was not the rebirth but the reconstruction of the society with the nostalgic memory of the classical antiquity, according to the needs of the new social forces that had matured in the womb of decaying feudalism. It announced the emergence of a new era which witnessed the emergence of a new species of hero – the hero of finance struggling to get money making included in the circle of virtues, even if on the periphery. This new hero proved to be very smart. In less than 150 years time it became the hero and moved from periphery to centre. The 17th century ideologue of this hero, John Locke declared in unambiguous and categorical terms, “governance is a serious matter; it can be entrusted with only those who have already proved their worth by amassing sufficient wealth.” Their demand for freedom and equality was interpreted as universal equality and liberty and which eventually led to universal franchise and territorial-national universal citizenship and establishment of representative democracies, dictatorship of proletariat and their reversal into capitalism. This paper seeks to look into the political economy of SEZ as a technique of the latest stage of the imperialist capitalism and the erosions of citizenship rights of people working in and outside these “foreign territories”. The details of fiscal & revenue implications due to various tax and tariff exemptions, subsidies and other incentives to SEZs constitute the subject matter of separate discussions. The country-wide intensification and radicalization of the popular resistance against the land grab by the state for SEZ estate is also the subject matter of separate discussion.



The Context:
The villagers apprehend the death toll in Police firing to be much higher than the official claim. It continues to be in news with unearthing of many charred bodies from the area, reports of many missing persons, rapes and tortures and its pervasive countrywide opposition that forced the West Bengal government to withdraw the notification of acquisitions of agricultural land there for the notorious Indonesian MNC, Salim Group and seek for the alternative site for the proposed chemical hub and the Central Government to hastily constitute an empowered Group of Ministers (eGoM) to suggest revisions in the SEZ provisions. The recommendation of the eGoM have suggested some superficial changes notable among them being reduction in the minimum and maximum area for a SEZ and removal of the role of states in land acquisition, which has been opposed by the CPI(M) ideologues. Reports of many fact finding teams and the reactions of CPI (M) leaders have been well publicized and are matters of separate debates. But the claim of CPI (M) leaders that the opposition to land acquisition is “handiwork of reactionary forces aided and abetted by TNC, BJP, Congress and the Naxals reflects the political bankruptcy of a party in power for three decades. According to Sumit Chakrabarty, the editor of The Mainstream, who was a member of the fact finding team, BJP, YNC or Congress had negligible support base in the area and the Naxal groups were almost absent. For a long time the area has been a strong hold of CPI and the CPI (M). Majority of activists in the movement are former CPI (M) and CPI cadres and supporters . The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI (M)] led left front government despite opposition by some of the constituents of the front, has expressed its determination to go ahead with the plan of creating the SEZs at any cost. As is clear from the on-going protests, their radicalization and wide ranging support from various sections, like the peasants’ of Kalinganagar the peasants of Nandigram also are determined to hold on to their stand of “no-displacement” any cost. In fact there have been stiff resistances against the land acquisition all over the country that remain under reported in the media . The gravity of the seriousness and the genuineness of the issues involved at Nandigram generated tremendous and pervasive support cutting across various social cross-sections, political parties, civil society organizations, democratic rights groups and intellectuals all over the country in general and in West Bengal in particular. There are reports of dissentions and confusion among the rank and file of the party. Many eminent leftist intellectuals including the prominent economist Ashok Mitra came out openly in support of Nandigram peasants. Uproars were witnessed in the West Bengal Assembly as well as in the Parliament on the issue. And the CPI (M) leaders had to take a hundred and eighty degree turn and were compelled to announce the withdrawal of the land acquisition notification, though reluctantly . Now the leaders of CPI(M) are pointing out many lacunas and inadequacies in the SEZ Act, one fails to understand the hurry to begin the land acquisition for Salim Group without redressal of its objections? Dumping the opponents to its anti people policies by the CPI (M) leadership as reactionaries and Maoists reminds of Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian regime to brand all the political opposition as CIA conspiracy or a Naxal plot, against which the CPI(M) had joined hands with the RSS.

Who is Salim?
Salim is God-son of the Indonesian dictator General Suharto who usurped power in 1965 from the elected President Sukarno and put him under house arrest and massacred over a million communist activists in one of the most gruesome carnages besides thousands been left to die in unpopulated islands of the archipelago turned into prisons and their bodies thrown into the sea. In his three decades of rule he opened the country for imperialist loot and in collaboration with MNCs himself looted the country’s wealth and turned his son Salim into a mafia king and his company into an MNC. When the Indonesian people eventually overthrew Suharto regime Salim, who had important role in killing thousands of communists along with his criminal gangs, fled the country. The army with elements loyal to Suharto protected his wealth and companies. When Sukarnoputri became President he was caught and was in jail for some time. But with the appropriation of political powers by military Generals through a farcical election, he was releaser and his company flourished with investments in many countries and an office in Kolkata enjoying the most favored MNC status accorded by the CPI (M) leadership. The reasons for out-of-way favor by a “communist” chief minister to a murder of communists needs to be investigated.



The CPI (M) ideologues aided an abetted by its propaganda brigade are justifying the governmental decision in the name of he law and order, using Marxist and Leninist jargons, creating the confusion of the contexts by juxtaposing of 19th century England and early 20th century Russia over 21st century India. Probably for such Marxists of his time Marx had pejoratively said that “thank God! I am not a Marxist”. The ongoing debate in Marxism since the time of Marx himself on the peasants’ question has been documented by Himanshu Roy in his book Peasant in Marxism . History never repeats itself. As a philosopher of the Greek antiquity had rightly said that every thing in the world is in continuous state of change and flux and that the only constant is the change itself. History does not repeat itself, it only echoes. The creation of “foreign territories” within the country under the SEZ Act 2005 echoes the creation of fortified enclaves in the costal regions by various – French, Dutch and English East India Companies – in the costal regions of the country. It appears that history has taken a full circle. But much water has flown down the Bay of Bengal. Capitalism and innately linked imperialism has made multiple advances since then. Then under the leadership of English ruling classes the imperialism was on the “civilizing mission” in the “savage world”. Now the savages have probably been civilized and the “savage world” has become the “third world”. Now Imperialism under the leadership of American ruling classes is on “developing” the “undeveloped” and “developing worlds” and in its latest avatar of globalization has become so powerful that now there is no need of any Lord Clive, all the Sujauddaulas have turned into Mir Zafars.

Facts and Figures

The first SEZ was set up in Ireland around 1940

More than 130 countries now have SEZs/FTZ (Free Trade Zones)s or similar bodies

There are approximately 400 SEZs in the world presently

Today’ concept of SEZ is derived from 1980s Chinese models. Chinese SEZs have the largest area, volume of transaction and employment.

China has a total of 6 SEZs

India has already approved 265 with many more in the offing with an eventual target of over 1000






What is happening under this project is the biggest land grab since 1947. The draconian Land Acquisition Act, 1894 is utilized for this land grab. At present for the already sanctioned SEZs a total of 125,000 hectares of prime agricultural land are being acquired. The next phase involves almost same area. In Punjab where almost entire area is irrigated and under d even violating the SEZ Act double crop or more, land is being acquired despite the growing resistance against the displacement even violating the SEZ Act. Against this already farmers are agitating in Barnala and Amritsar. In Himachal Pradesh about 35,000 hectares in Kangra Valley is planned for an SEZ. In Jhajjar in Haryana near Delhi, 10,000 hectares of double cropped land, larger than Gurgaon, is taken over for SEZ. In Mangalore, Karnataka, 2200 hectares of double and triple cropped land is being taken over for setting up SEZ. In Orissa at Gopalpur land was originally acquired by state government for a paltry sum and handed over to Tata for a steel plant. But the plant did not come up and farmers wanted the land back. There Tata is building SEZ. 1600 hectares handed over to POSCO to build a steel plant is also converted into SEZ. The pattern of land acquisition for the SEZ boom is almost similar all over the country .
The Chinese Experience:
Though Kamalnath repeats about China’s SEZs, he is resorting to Goebelian methods. So far in China only six SEZs are set up—Shenzhen, Shantou, Xiamen, Zhuhai, Hainan and Pudong. These are all built in public sector and mostly in waste lands. Though under reported, yet that too did not go unopposed. These export centered Special Economic Zones were established by brutally suppressing the peasants’ protracted massive resistance with more intensity than the suppression of students’ movement for socialist freedom in 1989. Chinese students’ movement, which coincided with the bi-centenary of the French Revolution in chronological terms, though subject matter of a separate discussion, was essentially a resurgence of the “hundred flowers” principle of the Cultural Revolution . Major protests and opposition against the working conditions in these SEZs are still taking place.
China's phenomenal growth has been attributed to its single minded (or mindless) pursuit of export driven SEZ policies and the success story has driven Indian think tank towards this mad rush. It is true that export-driven policy for economic growth has helped China touch record growth figures creating the bourgeois illusion of Wealth of Nation [Adam Smith]. But the fall out is more alarming as along with increasing unemployment, the income gap is widening and rapidly approaching the levels of some Latin American countries. As per the recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China's Gini coefficient – a measure of income distribution where zero means perfect equality and 1 is maximum inequality – touched 0.496 in the year 2006 where figure for India is 0.33, for US is 0.41 and for Brazil is 0.54. And even the rural-urban income divide is staggering .The annual income of city dwellers in China is around US $1,000, which is more than three times that of their rural counterparts . The massive unemployment, widespread corruption and crime in China’s ruling establishments have been intimate companions and part and parcel of China’s rise as Economic Giant through liberalization and privatization. To compete with the capitalist countries in the world market on their terms, Chinese leadership began to dismantle the systems of state ownership and socialist values immediately after the Mao’s death beginning with the campaign against The Guilty Four. Post Mao CPC leadership’s choice for capitalist path anticipated the demands of corporate led globalization and also anticipated the advocacy of capitalist growth by veteran CPI (M) leader Jyoti Basu who was the Chief Minister of West Bengal for over two and a half decades and incidentally is a father of a capitalist son. In the Chinese Path of Development, even the CPI (M) General Secretary, Prakash Karat can seek justifications for his comical utterances terming the left intellectuals opposed to Nandigram kind of development as Norodniks. A conversation with a scholar of Chinese Studies who visited China during the period of Cultural Revolution and again in last decade of the last century, summed up the changes in following words: “Earlier there were no sky- scrappers and no slums, now there are both”. The slums are the logical corollary of sky-scrappers. The revolutionary achievements of socialist reconstruction of society through socialistic reconstruction and Cultural Revolution of Mao era, instead of being consolidated, were frittered away for the vested interest and lack of vision of the post-Mao CPC leadership.
China began the process of attracting foreign capital in the 1980s by implementing a series of measures and policies with the sole purpose of achieving rapid economic growth at any cost and consequently paid heavy price in terms of interest of the Chinese people in general and the cause of socialism for human emancipation. The mindless pursuit of growth has lowered the efficiency and effectiveness of economic policies, besides the irreparable ideological losses, huge resource wastage and devastating environmental and ecological implications.
The Chinese experience offers a valuable lesson for India. Chinese path to land grab exercise has not been smooth and “voluntary”. It has pauperized the millions of its rural population. China has to feed 22 percent of the world's population on only 7 percent of land. it can not afford to embark on such an aggressive pursuit of land garb. In July 2005, according to Chinese Minister Li Xuju quoted in the People’s Daily, China's countryside had over 26.1 million people living in absolute poverty . During 1996-2005, "development" caused diversion of more than 21 percent of arable land to non-agricultural uses, chiefly highways, industries and SEZs. Per capita land holding now stands at a meager 0.094 hectares. In short span of time from 1992 to 2005, twenty million farmers were laid off agriculture due to land acquisition. The rampant protests against land acquisition were brutally crushed, especially in the provinces of Guangdong (south), Sichuan, Hebei (north), and Henan. Guangdong has been worst affected. In 2004, the government admitted to 74,000 riots in the countryside . Environmental devastations are irreparable. Shenzhen, Chinese dream model of economic growth, after growing at a phenomenal rate of around 28 percent for the last 25 years, is now paying a huge cost in terms of environment destruction, soaring crime rate and exploitation of its working class, mainly migrants. Foreign investors were lured to Shenzhen by cheap land, compliant labor laws and lax or ineffective environmental rules. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Program designated Shenzhen as a 'global environmental hotspot', meaning a region that had suffered rapid environmental destruction. According to a report, China consumed 4.3 times as much coal and electricity as the United States and 11.5 times as much as Japan to generate each US$1 worth of GNP. More than 50,000 disputes over environmental pollution occurred in 2005, and 97.1 percent of all environmental mishaps involved the release of pollution. Water contamination made up 50.6 percent of the total accidents. Almost 40 percent of environmental accidents involved air pollution. The accidents collectively caused up to 105 million Yuan (about 13.1 million U.S. dollars) in direct economic losses. "This environmental problem has become one of the main factors that affect national safety and social stability," according to Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Around 20 per cent of the population lives in severely polluted areas and 70 percent of the rivers and lakes are in a grim situation. Around 60 per cent of companies that have set up industries in the country violate emission rules


Some Features of SEZs in India
• SEZ for gems & jewelry, IT-ITES-BPOs and bio-technology would require a minimum 10 hectare of built-up area. (Later notifications said that the land-area may be reduced to 40,000 square meter or 4 hectare in special cases). Multi-product SEZs must have an area of 1,000 hectare, while multi-services and sector specific SEZs should have a minimum area of 100 hectare. (1 hectare = 2.5 acres, approximately).
• Only in India, the task of developing SEZs is totally transferred to private hands. In other countries these tasks, in most of the cases, were performed by the government itself.
• The processing area in SEZs would be mere 35%`! In the remaining 65% housing projects, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, amusement centers, multiplexes, malls, playgrounds, golf courses can be built!
• SEZ will be a duty-free enclave and considered foreign territory within the state. If you buy goods from an SEZ, you have to pay import duties. Example: Reliance industries set up a new refinery in Jamnagar (Gujarat) that “could end up ‘exporting’ bulk of its output in India” .
• Generally, the government will provide land to private companies that develop SEZs. Thus, SEZ developers will have access to precious land at throwaway prices (with the help of government muscle), cleansed of all title and litigation issues.
• There will be no elected local government/civic authorities. A development commissioner will govern it.
• So lucrative are the tax-holidays & other concessions offers in these SEZs that there are strong possibilities of older units to relocate in the SEZs to avail the bonanza. Even Rahul Bajaj one of the leading industrialists has publicly expressed such apprehensions.
• There are 6,500 companies located in 47 Software Technology Parks (STPs) all over India enjoying fabulous tax-breaks and are making super-profits from export-earnings. Now Nasscom, the national association of the software companies want SEZ status for these STPs! The craze may be explained from the following facts: “So much so, that of the 237 proposals given final clearance so far, 148 (i.e., 62%) are for setting up IT SEZs. Further, of the 160-odd proposals given in-principle nod, about half are from this sector.”
• In these SEZs all the units/enterprises will be declared as ‘public utilities’ where existing labor laws do not act. Among other drawbacks, SEZs will not be subject to any town planning or supervision by the municipality, thus negating the 75th Amendment of the Constitution which ensures people’s participation in local government.
• What is most worrying in the SEZ Act is Section 49, which empowers the government to exempt any or all SEZs from the operation of any central law through a notification. It puts SEZs, theoretically at least, outside the pale of the Constitution.
• After all, the world over, SEZs are set up precisely so that they can avoid the rigidity of domestic laws and rely on smoother functioning without bureaucratic hassles. The rub here is that the SEZs are being developed by the private sector. India is, perhaps, the only country to have promoted private SEZs — or at least in such numbers. Fuelling the popular distrust is the speed at which the zones are being approved by the Ministry of Commerce. Around 20-40 on an average are being cleared every other week, bringing the tally so far to 263, plus another 169 that have got in-principle approval .
• And, there is also the Godzilla factor — the sheer size of some SEZs. Although these are small by global standards, some have the making of a mega enterprise. Reliance Industries’ twin block in Mumbai is scheduled to cover 14,000 hectares or 140 sq. km. This may be just a third of China’s Shenzhen economic zone (326 sq. km), but large enough to throw up some discomfiting questions in the Indian context. For reference, Jamshedpur, the steel city run by the Tatas, is just 64 sq. km and Chandigarh’s real estate, including its rural periphery, adds up to just 112 sq. km. More to the point, Reliance expects to house one million residents and play host to two million others who would commute daily to their SEZs.
• The question, therefore, is what happens when large SEZs eventually become townships whose population could run into millions. There is, to start with, the constitutional tenability of private monopolies running local government for sizable cluster of the urban population without being elected. Would the SEZs thus, turn into sovereign states like the British East India Company in 18th-19th centuries, accountable to none? Or, would there be some checks and balances?
• What the law lays down is an SEZ Development Authority (SDA) headed by the developer’s representative and run by a development commissioner (DC) appointed by the state government — a super bureaucrat vested with enormous powers. Since SEZs are being designated industrial townships by the status, the DC would work independently with no municipality or the third rung of governance to oversee his functioning.
• All functions undertaken by the civic authorities and some of those provided by the state government (water supply, tax collection, law and order) would devolve on the SDA. Several states have laid down detailed norms for the SDA. From providing birth and death certificates, maintaining cremation/burial grounds (all municipal functions listed in 12th Schedule of the Constitution) to laying out public streets, building bridges and culverts, and fighting epidemics, everything lies in SDA’s jurisdiction. The Act does not spell out provisions of penalties for dereliction of duties. Unlike Municipalities
• Unlike municipality, the developer is not obliged to provide services to all the inhabitants in “his territory” and there is no mechanism for the redressal of their rights to basic amenities. In fact given the profit centered development, it is doubtful whether the corporate developers would be able to or interested in providing such services?
• There are other pertinent and disturbing issues regarding governance and citizenship rights such as law and order and judicial process. For external security, as is being done in various states, irrespective of the color of the ruling party/coalition, the respective states shall provide the Police protection but the internal security shall be absolutely the prerogative of the developer. The SEZs shall also be provided with a separate fast track judicial system to save the foreign investors from any inconvenience. The government of India shall decide the location of designated courts – inside or outside SEZs.
Concessions and Incentives for the SEZ Enterprises
I am not a student of economics or financial management, so do not understand the jargons and intricacies of budgetary provisions, fiscal/non-fiscal revenue system but a glance through the provisions of Subsidies/Incentives to SEZ Enterprises is astonishing.
Non-fiscal Incentives/Concessions
• Exemption from industrial licensing for manufacture of items reserved for Small Scale Industries (SSI).
• 100 per cent FDI investment through automatic route to manufacturing SEZ units. Facility to realize and repatriate export proceeds within 12 months and no cap on foreign investment for SSI reserved items.
• “Write-off” of unrealized export bills up to 5%.
• No License is required for imports, including second hand machineries.
• Profits allowed to be repatriated freely without any dividend balancing requirement.
• Full freedom for subcontracting, including subcontracting abroad.
• The area incorporated in the proposed SEZ is free from environmental restrictions.
• Water, electricity and other services would be provided as required and the units would be given full exemption in electricity duty and tax on sale of electricity for self generated and purchased power. They shall also be allowed to allow generation, transmission and distribution of power within the Special Economic Zones.
• Single point clearance system and minimum inspections requirement under State Laws/Rules would be provided. For units inside the Zone, the powers under the Industrial Dispute Act and other related Labor Acts would be delegated to the Development Commissioner and that the units will be declared as a Public Utility Service under Industrial Dispute Act.
Fiscal Incentives
• 100 per cent income tax exemption for a block of five years, 50 per cent tax exemption for two years and up to 50 per cent of the profits ploughed back for next 3 years. Supplies from Domestic Trade Area to SEZ to be treated as export.
• 100 per cent Income-tax exemption for 3 years & 50 per cent for 2 years for off-shore banking units.
• Exemption from Central Excise duty on procurement of capital goods, raw materials, and consumable spares, etc., from the domestic market.
• Reimbursement of Central Sales Tax paid on domestic purchases.
• SEZ units may import duty free, all their requirements of capital goods, raw materials, consumables, spares, packing materials, office equipment etc. for implementation of their project in the Zone without any license or specific approval.
• Exemption from service Tax to SEZ units.
• Exemption from State sales tax, octroi, mandi tax, turnover tax and any other duty/cess or levies on the supply of goods from Domestic Tariff Area to SEZ units.
• Enhanced limit of Rs 2.4 crores per annum allowed for managerial remuneration.
Subsidies/Incentives Given to SEZ Developers
• Developer of an SEZ may import or procure goods without payment of duty for development, operation and maintenance of the SEZ.
• Income-tax exemption for a block of 10 years in 15 years at the option of the Developer.
• Exemption from Service Tax.
• Investment made by individuals etc. in SEZ developing companies eligible for exemption under Section 88 of the Income Tax.
• 100% FDI allowed for (a) townships with residential, educational and recreational facilities on a case to case basis, (b) franchise for basic telephone service in SEZ.
• Duty free import/domestic procurement of goods for development, operation and maintenance of SEZs.
• Developer may transfer infrastructure facilities for operation and maintenance.
• Generation, transmission and distribution of power in SEZs allowed.
• Full freedom in allocation of space and built up area to approved SEZ units on commercial basis.
• Authorized to provide and maintain services like water, electricity, security, restaurants and recreation centers on commercial lines.
• The area incorporated in the proposed SEZ is free from environmental restrictions.
• The water, electricity and other services would be provided by the government as required.
There are more dramatic examples of SEZs being granted most favored nation status. Environmental clearance is one. State governments are promising developers and their clients a quick, trouble-free process by exempting industries from the environmental impact assessment (EIA). This is normally a cumbersome exercise, but essential for understanding how to minimize the adverse impact of development on the environment. Now, some states have decreed that environmental approval will be given by the development commissioner of the SEZs in consultation with an officer of the state pollution control board posted in the zone .
Land Grab under SEZs
The Act says that the Central Govt., the State Govt. or any individual can singly or jointly establish a SEZ. The minimum area for various types of SEZ is provided for in the ‘SEZ’ rules. But there are no rules governing the maximum area. There is no ceiling on the maximum size or area of an ‘SEZ’, nor any indication of the maximum number of SEZs in the country. The Act provides that an SEZ can be established for export oriented production: export oriented production of services: free trade & warehousing. The SEZ rules clearly prescribe the minimum amount of land to be provided for, for various types of SEZs. However, under the Act, the developer is not required to specify which of the above purposes that particular SEZ is for, while making the proposal. Another joke is that when the Central or State Government forwards the proposal of any person, as a “developer” to the Approval Committee the Act does not require that the land upon which the SEZ is to be constructed be in the possession of the developer. The Act only requires the developer to identify the area. The present provisions also provide that if the developer does not have enough land in his possession to reach the minimum limit for the SEZ then the Central Government can still grant approval to more than one developer for the same SEZ. This means that at one level the mere “identification” of the land suffices, whereas at another place it is required that the land is actually in possession. Further, the law does not specify in the rules prescribed for SEZs what is the minimum area of land required to be with the developer (either in the form of ‘identification’ or in the form of actual possession) at the time of making his proposal. The law is also silent about what exactly has been done by the developer or is required to be done by him when he makes the ‘identification’ of the land. In fact, the Act ought to have imposed a condition that the necessary land (or at least some minimum area) must be in the possession of the developer when he makes the proposal for an ‘SEZ’ since the “identification” of the land is a vague and hazy concept or category. . Under the Land Acquisition Act 1894, the Government is at liberty to compulsorily acquire land from the land-owner for any ‘public purpose’ but whether the establishment a SEZ can be called a ‘public purpose’? The developer who puts forward the proposal for an SEZ is only the acquirer of the land and the provider of basic services and utilities to industrialist on this acquired land. Further, there is no assurance that even these services or utilities will be provided by the developer since the Act allows him to take any other person or corporation as a ‘co-developer’ for this purpose.
Manipulation of Acquired Land
The developer will only give land to the industrialists on hire for the above purposes in the SEZ that he proposes. The benefits of the basic services and utilities to be provided in the SEZ area will only be available to the industries and businesses operating there. The vast masses will receive no benefits at all since an ID card is required to even enter an SEZ. When the state governments are acquiring land for SEZs on the basis of their being for a ‘public purpose’ the relationship between an SEZ and ‘public purpose’ is not direct but remote. Hence, issuing notices under the Land Acquisition Act for acquiring land for private development — and that too without specifying in the said notices as to for whom and for what purpose the said land is to be acquired — when the relationship between the idea of an SEZ and public purpose is remote at best — is clearly illegal.
Connected to this is yet another fundamental question. What if a certain developer acquires some land for an SEZ but no industrialists come forward to put up industries in that SEZ? The SEZ Act does not say anything about what use the land is to be put to or in what manner it is to be put, in such an extreme case. It is clear that the developer who has bought the land or taken it on installments will not allow any other person to enjoy that land in any manner whatsoever. In this situation, what will be the future of that land? The Act imposes a condition that at least 35% (now 25%) of the land should be used as the “processing area”. Supposing that sufficient industries producing goods and services do not come forward to take up the land in a particular ‘SEZ’, there is no guiding principle in the Act as to how the surplus land should be used by the developer. This is yet another result of the fact that the relationship between SEZs and ‘public purpose’ is not direct but remote.
Contradiction between SEZ and Non-SEZ Areas
A new contradiction is going to be created in the country between industries within an SEZ and industries outside SEZs. Due to the various tax concessions given to industries in an SEZ naturally, their competitiveness will be greater than other industries functioning all over the country. Thus in competitive market conditions – both nationally and internationally – industries functioning outside of SEZs will find it difficult to survive and will naturally be clamoring for their relocation within SEZs. There is thus the danger that the already existing unevenness of industries and businesses based upon regions and zones, will grow even stronger. As a result it is obvious that the problems that we face today due to regional disparity will take on an even more aggressive form. Basically, we have to seriously consider whether the creation of a distinct geographical entity is essential if the aim is to increase exports and to increase India’s share in the world market by encouraging exports. Why then should the Government not give the same tax concessions to export oriented units functioning anywhere in the country, which are given to industries in an SEZ?
The Employment and Labor Laws:
One of the biggest casualties of SEZ is the procedure of employment and labor laws and is subject matter of separate discussion. However a glance at the issue is necessary. As the units in the SEZs are to be export oriented, hence their first priority is to maintain the competitiveness of their goods at what they consider to be a high level. The competitiveness of their prices increases by keeping down the cost of production of their goods and services. Hence it is to be expected that units within an SEZ will use labor-saving, capital-intensive technology to bring down their costs of production. The issue of whether labor laws are applicable in an SEZ or not will be besides the point if these units decide to take a stand of employing workers and staff only on a contract basis since most labor laws do not apply to contract labor at all. Hence, in practice, the provision to make labor laws applicable to units in SEZs has little meaning. We must therefore be circumspect about the claims of the media that we are losing out on a chance for a large-scale employment generation or that the opposition to the conception of SEZ is significantly narrowing the path of employment generation down. The same media which emphasizes the massive loss of jobs due to the opposition to SEZ never publishes the figures of how many peasants have been turned into destitutes due to the acquisition by the Government of agricultural land.
Peasantry Devastated:
Devastation of peasantry and dangers to the country’s food security are again the subjects of separate discussions. No doubt the Government will give some compensation to the peasants whose lands will be taken away. But who can pay for the efforts that human beings has invested in making the land cultivable? We must not forget that the loss of cultivable land does not come under any head of compensation.
SEZ as Foreign Colonies
The SEZ, deemed to be “foreign territory” would badly hamper the citizenship rights of the Indian people within their own country, depriving them of their fundamental rights imbued upon them by the Constitution. The most controversial issue concerns the provision of identity cards to those who want to enter an SEZ those who live there or the workers who work there. We can understand the condition of producing and ID card when entering the premises or building of a private company. However, the imposition of an ID card to visit a whole geographical area is clearly a violation of the fundamental right to the freedom of movement guaranteed to every citizen of India under the Constitution. This provision of the SEZ Act is clearly unconstitutional. Even before independence we had removed the need of ID cards to enter establishments. Now, in independent India, to enforce it for entering and moving around on a part of the country, is surely a new form of colonialism. This too is a matter of separate discussion.
Next problem arises in case if no industrialist shows any interest in starting the new unit, in such extreme conditions land will be kept unused. Then what is the fate of this land? The rules say that developer must use 35% areas for processing .If the 35 % also is not utilized? If manufacturers or the service sector does not show any interest? In that situation how developer is going to develop the land? In such situation there are no guidelines for the use of land. The relation between new established SEZs and public service sector is unclear or remote. This is the indicator of this realty. As regards to acquiring the land for SEZ , nothing is mentioned in SEZ Act. This issue
Opposition to SEZ
I would not go into the details of the anti-SEZ movements, protests and discussions going on all over the country that also is subject matter of a separate discussion. Heroic struggle of the Nandigram peasants and its brutal suppression by a government is well known. The victory of Nandigram movement, though short term and temporary needing consolidation, has become inspiration for the anti-displacement movements in India. On the first anniversary of the martyrdoms of 13 peasant protesters, killed on 2nd January in Police firing while resisting the land grab by the government for Tata’s, thousands of people of various social groups from across the country, across the political spectrum and anti-displacement movements showed solidarity with the heroic struggle of Kalinganagar peasants and vowed to link all the anti displacement movements with the anti-SEZ movement. The Kalinganagar and Nandigram have become inspirations to all the anti-displacement movements.
So the message is laud and clear. Mushrooming of SEZs will not deliver the desired goal of “export promotion” but would make a heavy dent on the India’s ex-chequer and people’s democratic rights as Indian citizen. The ruling class parties of India instead of looking into the pro-people models of development without or with minimum displacement are acting as the agents of the imperialist globalization. In the inconclusive conclusion, we find that SEZ Act is a short circuit into people’s rights. Millions displaced people shall be turned into destitute and the “foreign territories” is a cheap and effective tool of corporate led imperialist globalization. Hence those who are concerned with human dignity and national sovereignty must oppose the SEZ and support and/or join the movement against displacements by the people all over India and debate over the alternative models of development in place of displacement oriented development.

More than 140 SEZ’s have been planned in country. In Santa Cruz (Maharashtra), Cochin (Kerala), Kandla and Surat (Gujarat), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Falta (West Bengal) and Nodia (Uttar Pradesh), at Indore ( Madhya Pradesh ) Positra (Gujarat), Navi Mumbai and Kopata (Maharashtra), Nanguneri (Tamil Nadu), Kulpi and Salt Lake (West Bengal), Paradeep and Gopalpur (Orissa), Bhadohi, Kanpur, Moradabad and Greater Noida (U.P.), Vishakhapatnam and Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh), Vallarpadam/Puthuvypeen (Kerala) Hassan ( Karnataka), Jaipur and Jodhpur ( Rajasthan) on the basis of proposals received from the State Governments.

FARMERS STRIFE AGAINST LAND ACQUISITION UNDER RELIANCE SEZ FOR GREATER MUMBAI

On June 22, a few Mumbai-based Marathi newspapers carried the news of the demonstrations of hundreds of farmers against the land acquisition by the state government for the Reliance Company for a 10,120 hectare Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The farmers in the obscure Pen tehsil in Raigad district Maharashtra took a strong protest rally of almost 4000 farmers against Reliance SEZ on 21st, that curbed by police lathi charge on the rally which was a response of stone throwing by some miscreants and damaging the property. Later it was found that, that was not done by the protesting farmers.

“The Reliance Company managed to create disturbance in the peaceful meeting of hundereds of farmers and our process of presenting objections to the Land Acquisition notices to the officials. The company is nervous about the growing resistance by the farmers for usurping their productive land and therefore trying to use the police to crush the movement" told Arun Shivkar, of Pen Panchkroshi Sheti Bachao Samiti (Pen area Committee for save the farmland).

The villagers now know fully well they are pitted against the formidable adversary – the giant Reliance, which has just obtained 25,000 hectares land for its own SEZ in Haryana, already took the governments in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra and even the so called the Left wing government of W. Bengal. It is spreading its wings in textiles, power, contract farming, medicinal herbs, sugar industries and retail stores. They realize that the Company has enormous sway over the political, bureaucratic establishment and the media. This company has been given the largest SEZ in the 45 villages in Pen-Panvel-Uran area, in the name of the activities like manufacturing, trading, services, processing, logistics, repackaging, warehousing etc.

"There is no question of increased compensation for the land – we just do not want to give our land to the Reliance," that was the spirit of the meeting held on June 24-25, hosted by the Samiti and the NCAS, at Bardawadi near Pen. The meeting, attended by various organizations in Konkan region along with the representatives of NAPM, People's Political Front (PPF), and Shoshit Jan Andolan resolved to intensify and widen the struggle against the SEZ, by involving the affected people in other parts of Maharashtra and India. A detailed campaign against the Reliance's money power and the SEZs as a whole was planned-

1. A week long Padyatra to show resistance to the proposed foreign autonomous territory in farmers land
2. A daylong hunger protest and rally with meeting with various officials
3. Lobbying with state and national groups and with political party representatives

The people's movements from various parts of the country under the aegis of the NAPM, in the recently held Bangalore convention, have decided to take up the issue of the SEZ and mobilize the nationwide resistance to the creation of the SEZ. The organizations made it clear that the issue at the stake was not only the lands and rights of the affected farmers and other villagers, but the larger canvas of the way the political economy of the nation is being usurped by the corporate interests with the connivance of the political and bureaucratic elite. They resolved to protect the natural resources of the communities – land, water, forest, sea-coast; oppose the violation of the laws and regulations and the sovereignty of the people.

This is one of the 27 approved SEZs in the state out of 53 proposed, both by the private parties (13) and the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC, 11). There are other 17 SEZs that are to be given approval (11 private and 7 MIDC). These SEZs are part of the more than 140 SEZs that are earmarked in almost all the parts of the country. With this one stroke of SEZ Act, the corporate powers have cornered exemptions from almost every tax, while getting the services of water supply, electricity, usurping the natural resources, distorting the constitutional sovereignty of the people.










According to the Union government's handout, the SEZ is a specifically delineated duty free enclave and shall be deemed to be foreign territory for the purpose of trade operations, duties and tariffs. In 2000 the Government of India formulated the SEZ policy and in 2005 the SEZ Act was made. It came into force from February 10, 2006


Some Specific Features of SEZ-
 The SEZ should have a minimum area of 1000 hectares and at least 35 % of the area is to be earmarked for developing industrial area for setting up of processing units.
 Minimum area of 1000 hectares will not be applicable to product specific and
 100% FDI allowed for:
(a) townships with residential, educational and recreational facilities on a case to case basis,
(b) franchise for basic telephone service in SEZ.
 Income Tax benefit under (80 IA) to developers for any block of 10 years in 15 years.
 Duty free import/domestic procurement of goods for development, operation and maintenance of SEZs
 Exemption from Service Tax /CST.
 Income of infrastructure capital fund/co. from investment in SEZ exempt from Income Tax
 Investment made by individuals etc in a SEZ co also eligible for exemption u/s 88 of IT Act
 Generation, transmission and distribution of power in SEZs allowed
 Full freedom in allocation of space and built up area to approved SEZ units on commercial basis.
Authorised to provide and maintain service like water, electricity, security, restaurants and recreation centres


FARMERS PROTEST IN RAJGURUNAGAR AGAINST MIDC SUPPORTED BHARAT FORGE

In only Pune district more than seven SEZ has been approved out of 27 in Maharashtra. These are mainly private sectors zones and the developers are varied e.g. Syntel International, Serum Institute, Mahindra Realty, Bharat Forge, City Parks, Raheja Coroporation, Hiranandani and Xansa India, etc.

One of this is Bharat Forge limited, for which the land would be acquired from 16 villages like Gulani, Wafgaon, Wakalwadi, Warude, Gadakwadi, Chaudharwadi, Chinchbaigaon, Jaulake Budruk, Jarewadi, Kanesar, Pur, Gosasi, Nimgaon, Retwadi, Jaulake Khurd, Dhore Bhamburwadi and Pabal.

The 7,500 hectares agriculture and non-agriculture land has been identified by MIDC. On which most of the land is under cultivation by Maratha, other backward and Adivasi communities. Their major crops are potato, onion, sorghum, jowar, rice, flowers and pulses. Village youths are engaged into agriculture and allied industries by running their own businesses like poultry, milk collection, pig raring and Shahamrug farm. Nevertheless, people’s livelihood is dependent on farming activities dependent on monsoon rain and irrigation by well. Their demand for water, drinking and irrigation, from the Chas-Kaman Scheme, is pending for a decade unheard by the same government which has proposed land acquisition today for Bharat Forge. Electricity for irrigation is a far distant dream for people of Gulani, the largest village among all proposed for land acquisition.

There has been a drinking water scheme which is about 35 crore’s investment but due to the lack of maintenance it is not in use. Even though this area comes under the Bhima River basin and surrounded by small watersheds, Dhimbhe Dam, Kukadi and Chaskaman Irrigation scheme.

On this background to oppose SEZ project farmers and local people’s representatives have constituted a Khed Taluka Purva Vibhag MIDC Virodhi Kruti Samiti (Anti Land Acquisition Committee from East Khed-Wafgaon and Gulani Village) under the chairmanship of Mr. Rajusheth Jawalekar, Wafgaon. Many people have been involved in this committee like Kisanrao Garde, Sudamrao Karale, Dadasaheb Rode, Sitabai Ranpise, Bhalchandra Rode, Kaluram Pingale, Balasaheb Sutar, Ashok Jare, Santosh Karale etc. All these people are Sarpanch and member of Grampanchayat and Taluka Panchayat. Their larger aim is to stop the land acquisition and cancel the SEZ resolution, which is disturbing their socio-economic and cultural life.

Their previous experience of earlier projects has made them wise enough to oppose this SEZ project because ‘once one looses the land, it looses the bargaining power’, as this had happened incase of previous projects e.g. Chakan International Airport project. On 11th July, 2006 more than four thousand people gathered to protest (Morcha) against Bharat Forge SEZ at Rajgurunagar-Khed Tehsil Office. They submitted a memorandum to tehsildar Vijaya Pangarkar demanding that MIDC-SEZ should be cancelled. Their major demands were
1. Water for drinking and irrigation, support to the agriculture-allied activities and support to small business.
2. Complete the work of drinking water scheme and Gulani percolation tank at the earliest.
3. Save the agriculture land from the MIDC and SEZ project.

The farmers have warned to government officers that they will fight against SEZ unless and until it gets stopped the survey and entire project, the Gram Sabha’s have passed resolutions to this effect. They would rather increase the agriculture production qualitative and quantitative for exports if government provides only waters to them.

The State and the terror

Azamgarh: The Terror of “Anti-terrorism”

Ish Mishra
The word encounter became famous in India for the first time when hundreds of young boys and girls began disappearing in West Bengal in the late sixties and early seventies and subsequently killed in “fierce encounters”. With the forces of Hindutva gaining political ascendance, encounter has become a political tool to create fascist-communal polarisation of the Indian society.

Recent “encounter” took place in the vicinity of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia in which a Police Inspector having record of many encounters and two teenage students, branded as terrorists, were shot dead and two others “were successful in escaping”, this is another matter that there was no scope to escape from the building surrounded by armed Special Cell

The Objective
This exercise is a follow up of our fact-finding into Jamia Nagar encounter, following which began the witch hunting of Muslim youth from Azamgarh as terror suspect by various security agencies and its media-projection as the “nursery of terrorism”. We seek to enquire into the myth and reality of tertiary relationship between terrorism, place and the religion and also into fear and anguish pervading the area through an on-the-spot study of the place and people through interaction with common people selected at random, testimonies of the members of the affected families and neighbors and interviews with Superintendent of Police and the District Magistrate of Azamgarh. We could meet the DM but the SP was busy with Mela arrangement. So we could talk to SP only on telephone. In Azamgarh city, we interacted with and interviewed Dr Iftikhar Ahmad (Principal Shibli National Post-Graduate College), Dr Javed Akhtar (whose house had been raided by police), Mr Ehshan Ahmad and his wife (parents of Zeeshan, arrested from Vedeocon Tower in Delhi), teachers of the Shibli College, school teachers, local journalists, civil rights activists, professionals and common people.

In villages of Sanjarpur and Saraimir described as ‘nursery of terror’ we interacted with and interviewed the family members of Atif and Sajid, killed in Jamia Nagar encounters and family members of the boys arrested from Saraimir, Lucknow and Delhi apart from responsible residents and common people.

The context
While prescribing numerous measures to check the revolution in tyrannies, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, underlines religion and war, as the most efficient. Modern rulers have combined the two. They have constructed an abstract enemy – – and have linked it to a religion, Islam. Echoing their Master’s voice, the Indian ruling class parties and their ideological apparatuses began to suspect every Muslim as a potential terrorist, notwithstanding the exposures about Hindutva forces having armed training camps, bomb making workshops and conducting blasts. Bereft of vision and ideas, with the “success story” of Gujarat in mind, the RSS outfits began to create the ground for communal mobilisation in the light of forthcoming general elections. In the states of Orissa and Karnataka, where Christians could not be projected as “terrorists”, they are being haunted and harassed in the name of conversion.

The democratic groups, including ours, getting alarmed with the news of the apparently dubious “encounter” in Jamia Nagar on 19th September, conducted a fact finding on 21st September 2008 and released the report in a press conference on 26th September 2008.

Following the Jamia Nagar “encounter” and media projection of Azamgarh as the “nursery” of terrorism echoing the (one of the various RSS outfits) chief and BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Mahanta Adityanath, and raids were conducted in Azamgarh city and the villages of Sanjarpur and Saraimir. Janhastakshep and PUDR decided to send fact-finding teams to Azamgarh as the follow up to the Jamia Nagar fact-finding. We were joined in Azamgarh by Mahtab of APCHR and Dr Abdul Salam of NCHR from Kerala who were on independent fact-finding mission. PUHR’s Vinod Yadav an advocate from Azamgarh also joined in. At the time of writing of this report, UP Police has arrested Mr. Yadav and another PUHR activist on superfluous charges IPC 419 and 420, warning the people not to question the police action.

The Place and the People:
Azamgarh, one of the backward districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, maligned as by communalised media and vested interests, lies in the fertile plains of Ganga-Ghaghra Doab. Having no industry, university or Engineering/Medical Colleges, main economic activity is agriculture. Few towns of the district, once known for their exemplary crafts are being pushed into oblivion by the market forces of the The young boys and girls seeking higher education and professional trainings go out to other cities -- Lucknow, Varanasi, Aligarh and Delhi being the favorite destinations. Remittances by people working in various parts of the world, is the other major source income apart from agriculture and crafts, particularly the handloom. Azamgarh town was established by Azamat Shah, son of a landed Rajput convert in the peninsular landscape craved by the river Tons.

In 1857, the city held an important strategic position in Kunwar Singh’s campaign. After the suppression of the armed peasants’ revolution with the help of most of the Indian moneyed and feudal classes – the princes, kinglets and Zamindars –, thousands of rebel soldiers and the peasant revolutionaries were publicly killed and hanged with the trees in the orchards and the forests.

In 1883, prior to the formation of the Indian National Congress, Shibli Nomani, a nationalist scholar, started an academy for the modern, nationalist education. During freedom movement, Shibli National College, which is celebrating 125th year of its foundation, was one of the prominent centres of nationalist activities in the eastern UP and hence was special target of British. Many leaders of the freedom movement, including Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru used to visit the college to hold meetings and consultations. During and in the aftermath of the independence and partition of the country, despite the pervasive communal frenzy and massacres, Azamgarh remained almost untouched by communal violence. In the post independence electoral polity, before the trend of caste based mobilisation got strong footing in the electoral politics, the district had been bastion of Communist and Socialist Parties. Due to composite culture and the composition of the district, the Hindutva forces could hardly make any electoral presence even during the communal euphoria in the aftermath of the Advani’s most publicised Rath Yatra preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

The Hindu-Muslim population in the city is almost evenly divided, though the average Muslim population in the district is 12-14 percent. Despite sizeable Muslim population Azamgarh did not have any history of any kind of communal violence and was a model of India’s composite culture thriving in peace and harmony. It boasts of its luminaries like Shibli Nomani, Ayodhya Singh Hariaudh, Rahul Sankrityayan, Kaifi Azmi and many others. Thus Azamgarh does not fit into the “innate bigot” Islamic attribute orchestrated by the imperialism and echoed by its local agents. This was an irritant for the Indian ruling classes and hence the model had to be destroyed. The image of the “terrorist” transformed from Madarsa-educated bearded young man with round cap or Arabic head scarf to modern educated and clean shaven youngmen could not be tolerated by forces inimical to Muslims.

The villages in news with tag of terror – Sanjarpur, Saraimir and Binapara – the Muslim majority villages too have been untouched with any kind of serious communal tension or strife. Globalised use of capital has been seeking cheap local labour which was provided by some of the Muslims of Azamgarh who have been going to Malaysia, gulf and other places to escape poverty at home. The remittances made by them were used for educating their children and improving living standards by building pucca houses in villages. Most of them went out to work as skilled/unskilled labourers and realised the importance of education for a dignified life and hence made good education to their children as their priority. Aligarh and Jamia became their favorite destinations.

So Azamgarh Muslim story is this that a little globalised labours that canalized earnings for local development. This should not have been treated like a crime by the state that abdicated its responsibility by putting hindrances in collecting remittances through regular banking channels. The hawala operators got an opportunity to step in after this. Yet most Muslims kept their money in the nationalised banks which is capital contribution, supplementing cash and contributing to the growth of the economy of the country. Local people did admit that some boys might be involved into Hawala operations so they should be tried for that and not arrested or killed in the name of fighting “terrorism”. The Muslim youth and their parents are living under the constant fear of arrest and death, having lost faith in the law and order machinery.

The antecedents
Azamgarh with a sizable Muslim population – educated and well-to-do – does not fit into the “ghettoised, uneducated” stereotype propagated by the self-claimed mainstream. The consistent communal harmony, depicting India’s composite culture, has been an irritant to the forces depending upon communal mobilisation with hatred and animosity by demonising minorities in the name of conversion or “terrorism”. During the BJP rule in the state, attempts began to pollute the social atmosphere of the city by attacking its composite culture and its symbol, Shibli National College, became the first victim.

· In 2000, the U.P. government under BJP made some premeditated attack on Shibli National (Post Graduate) College, which competes with the premier academic institutions of the country. In the entire region it is the only college with a girl’s hostel – Kaifi Azmi Girls Hostel – sponsored by the actress and social activist, Sabana Azami.
On the Republic Day, that year when all the programmes in the college conducted in accordance with the schedule issued by state government through district administration were concluded with the recitation of the national anthem, a group of students claiming to be members of ABVP – the student front of the RSS – tried to force the college administration to restart the function and organise the recitation of Vande Matram. They threatened the Principal, Dr Iftikhar Ahmad of dire consequences and left to come back again to vandalise the college, manhandle few employees raising provocative slogans and vandalised Muslim shops. The police arrested the shopkeepers whose shops were ransacked and looted, on the instance of Rangnath Mishra, home minister in the BJP government. Under the instruction of Mishra, the principal and a senior professor of the college were arrested on the fabricated charges of sedition etc. They were subsequently released on bail. A team of Janhastakshep had gone there and had found in its report the BJP government of UP and the ABVP guilty of anti-national activities like minority bashing and fueling the communal tension. The High Court of UP had unequivocally criticised the act of the local administration. It is to be noted that few of the so-called terrorists have studied in this college and few others have studied in Jyotiniketan a reputed convent school. Owing to fairly high standards of teaching, Shibli College and Jyotiniketan are most sought after institutions in the area.
· In 2005 students’ union election in the Shibli College, ABVP tried to disrupt the elections and in the ensuing feud, one student was killed. ABVP and Bajrang Dal damaged houses and vehicles of many prominent Muslims of the town.
· In the recently held by election in Azamgarh parliamentary constituency on seat falling vacant due the disqualification of the then BSP MP, Ramakant Yadav, a criminal-turned-politician who is said to have conducted and/or committed many murders for property and contract-tenders including that of a Dalit junior engineer. At the time of this murder in the late eighties, he was a BSP MLA and saved himself by defecting to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s party, then Chief Minster of U.P. Ever since he has been MLA or MP from SP and BSP alternatively. After being expelled from BSP, he was adopted by erstwhile staunch enemy, BJP, and was fielded as its candidate in the by-election and lost at the hands of BSP candidate, Akbar Ahmad Dumpy. In his election meeting Ramakant Yadav would unfailing repeat the slogan – (U.P. would become Gujarat and Azamgarh would make the beginning).
· In the wake of blasts in Gujarat and Rajasthan, Abu Basher was arrested from Binapara by cordoning the whole village but to the surprise of local people, his arrest was shown at Lucknow, raising the suspicion on the motives of the police.
· On September 7, 2008, Adityanath, the BJP MP from Gorakhpur, notoriously known for rousing communal tension and animosity in Gorakhpur and elsewhere, announced to hold an “anti-terrorist” rally in DAV College in Azamgarh. In collusion with District and Police authorities the motorcade caravan of the notorious Mahanta consisting of mostly outsiders, instead of driving through permitted roads leading to DAV College, took a zigzag path passing through congested Muslim localities, including which was further congested due to Ramzan shopping. Rallyists on motorcycles and jeeps were shouting provocative and abusive slogans. According to Rajitram Yadav, who happened to be there on that unfortunate day, miscreants in two jeeps stopped and continued raising provocative slogans when people pelted stones and skirmishes began, the only communal violence witnessed by the town in which one life was lost. People blame the Police and district administration for allowing the procession through the area. In the rally also attended, Adityanath declared, “Azamgarh is nursery of terrorism” that was echoed by media and the police. The Superintendent of Police was suspended for allowing the miscreants to flare up communal tension.

Testimonies
· Dr Javed Akhtar is one of the most famous and popular orthopedics of the district; treats the patients on a token fee of Rs.10-20 and free of cost to the widows of policemen. He due to his stature and popularity among the people across the religious affiliation. The Police raid at his house in the wee hours of 23rd September 2008 reminded him of at random raids by American soldiers in the houses in Libya in 1980s where he then worked. He came back to India 18 years ago and decided to practice in his own hometown and was offered a place by a (Mr Rai) in his Medical store. When he built his own clinic and medical Store, to return the favour, Dr. Javed gave the medical store to free of rent or commission. Eleven in his staff of thirteen are non-Muslims. Saddened by the disappearance of his young son, Asadullah, Dr. Javed Akhtar, state committee member of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a member of the Medical Council, convener of the Peace committee meeting attended by the doctors, advocates, principals of the colleges and the DIG, DM and SP of the town, feels anguished and agonised on being asked to prove his non-communal credentials. Recently he had been awarded by Mubaraknagar municipality for his work in the field of communal harmony.

His son Asadullah after completing four years degree in pharmacy from the Integral University, Lucknow, had gone to appear in the entrance examination for pharmacy management in Jamia Hamdard and had stayed at L-18, Batala House in May-June 2008, as he knew the boys living there. Ever since he had been in Azamgarh till his sudden disappearance on 19th September 2008, after his photo was flashed on IBN 7 TV Channel. Dr Javed has lodged complaints regarding this with the local Police Station and sent registered letters to the SP, DIG and IG of Police regarding this. He questions government’s intention in not constituting an inquiry into it. He had been on the hit list of Hindutva forces for quite sometime. In 2005, though no one from his family was involved in the Shibli College Students Union Elections his car was smashed and stones were pelted at his clinic, though miscreants were chased away by the people.

In the wee hours of September 23, 2008, as soon as he opened the only door of the house after hearing the wild knocks, recalled Dr Javed, “40-50 Police men in uniform and plain clothes entered the house and spread all over. They took away my wife’s mobile phone, photo album and admit card of Asad without any seizure memo.” The Police picked up his two other sons and a nephew from the house. Dr Javed also accompanied them. They took them to police line and from there to Kotwali. According to him, the official’s of Delhi Special Cell were asking futile questions, like whether they have girl friends, what they think about Narendra Modi and so on.

Dr Javed is worried about his missing son who on the 19th afternoon left home for the Friday prayer and ever since family has no news about him. Dr Javed wants his son back; criticises the media for baselessly demonising the Azamgarh; showing faith in the judiciary, wants justice for all the boys whether killed, or arrested in the name of fighting terrorism in accordance with the law of the land. Dr Javed is perturbed at the communalisation of the security forces, “…they asked about the numbers of Muslim names in my son’s mobile not of Asad’s non-Muslim friends – Bhupendra, Ankur…………….” On the basis of what ever he knows about some of the boys killed and arrested, he does not believe that these young students can be terrorists and questions the authenticity and legality of police action and media propaganda. “How can 17-year-old Sajid be a terrorist? He had gone to Delhi just one month ago or so to seek admission in XI class in Jamia Secondary School. As you can see in the photograph published in Sahara (Urdu), 9 bullets have been pumped into his head, some of them vertically.” Police have not given the copies of post mortem report to the relatives of the deceased.

· Ehssan Ahmad, a commerce lecturer in Shibli Inter College, father of Zeesahan Ahmad, who surrendered in the office of the and about whom the Special Cell had claimed to have captured “the absconding terrorist” is in a state of shock, disbelief and despair. He and his wife are patients of high blood pressure and his other son is mentally retarded. After seeing the news of “encounter” of his two room mates and arrest of one and his name being flashed on news channels on September 19, 2008, Zeeshan called up his parents at 3.30 pm and his mother, a scool teacher, advised him that he should surrender and he did so after giving interview to which conspicuously did not air his interview. The parents of Zeeshan have not yet been officially informed about his arrest. Subsequently after recovering from the shock, Mr. Ehshan Ahmad came to Delhi to meet his son before he was taken to Gujarat along with four others. He last visited Azamgarh on August 14, 2008 to attend the marriage of his cousin and left on August 17.

Zeeshan passed his class XII from Jytoti Niketan, one of the two most sought after convent schools in Azamgarh with fairly good score and graduated in Commerce from Zakir Hussain College of University of Delhi. Currently he is doing management from IIPM, New Delhi. When the “encounter” was taking place in his flat, he was writing his final examination at the institute. Since December 2007, he has been working with the Monarch International Company. His laptop confiscated by the Special Cell without giving any seizure memo was provided to him by the company. Like other boys from the district detained in Delhi, Lucknow and elsewhere, his parents received a phone call on the eve of Id with doctored confession and praise for his captors from a “restricted” number. It should be noted that relatives of all the boys got the phone calls with exactly verbatim content. Both the teacher parents are suffering from acute blood pressure with another disabled son to look after, they are in a fix. They don’t know what to do. Fear and humiliation has virtually killed them.
· Mohammad Amin’s house in Saraimir presented a gloomy look. Mohammad Amin father of Atif Amin killed in L-18 Batala House “encounter” works in Dubai to remit some money back home for a better education and living of his family in Saraimir. Mohammad Amin, after more than three weeks of the news of the death of son with expressionless stoned face, is unable to believe it and cannot accept that his son could be a terrorist. He was hardly in a position to talk, yet at our insistence answered the questions in a choked voice. Atif, born in Sanjarpur passed his class X from a school in nearby Binapara and Intermediate from Shibli Inter College. He went to seek admission in Engineering in Jamia, could not clear the entrance examination and did B.Sc. (Tech) from Manipal’s Delhi Centre at South Extension. This year he had got admission in MA in Human Rights in Jamia. He had visited home in March 2008 to meet his ailing sister. His elder brother lives in Shahin Bag near Jamia Nagar and works in a media house. According to Mohammad Amin till the evening of September 18, 2008, Atif would visit his brother Aqib every evning for Iftar (Ramzan food). He had phoned home that he would come on September 25 for celebrating Id and the Id never came in his life.

In the night of 19th-20th September, the Personnel of Delhi Special cell came to search the house with the Police of many local Police Satiations. They searched the house and took the bank passbook of Atif. “I was not in my senses I don’t know what all they took away, they have taken away my very dear son. Atif could have been anything but a criminal or a terrorist. I want justice for detained boys and plead with media and people to stop demonising Azamgarh, Saraimir and Sanjarpur”.
· Shadab Ahmad father of Mohammad Saif the “terrorist” arrested from L-18, Batala House is worried about his other son, Dr Shahnawaz who after doing his internship from Balrmpur Hospital had been working in Meo hospital Lucknow. After September 19, 2008 he started getting so many calls from Delhi Special Cell and other unknown number that he switched off his mobile and is untraceable ever since. Saif after graduating from Shibli College did his MA in History from Poorvanchal University, Jaunpur in 2008. In the InfoTech age, he wanted to achieve some expertise in computer and went to Delhi to try his luck on July 9, 2008 fell ill and came back to Sanjarpur within 10 days. As people on that side of the country, rather all over the country, think that Delhi has better institutions and opportunities, so, rush to Delhi. Saif too wanted to try his luck and went to Delhi again on August 9, 2008. As he already knew some of the boys living in L-18, he shared the accommodation with them. Shadab Ahmad is quite anxious about the other Sajid sharing the accommodation with Arif, Saif, Sajid and Zeeshan. Nothing is known about his whereabouts. The Delhi crime cell people came in the night of September 19 with a contingent of the local police, they searched the house as they were doing it with any and every house they wanted to. They took with them an old diary and some photographs without giving any seizure memo. Saif’s parents also received doctored phone calls by him from a “restricted” number telling verbatim the same things as Zeeshan that his captors are very good and they treat him well, … and that he had committed the crime. Shadab and people around him cannot believe that a shy village boy like Saif who had been in Delhi just for over a month before being apprehended as an accomplice of the “terror mastermind”
· Munshi Yadav runs a shop in Sanjarpur for over past 26 years. His son is District Magistrate in Pithoragarh. When confronted with the questions of “nursery of terrorism”, he asked the counter question that if police are correct then why they showed the arrest of Abu Basher from Lucknow when they arrested him from Binapara after laying the virtual siege of the village. They arrested two boys from Saraimir and showed their arrest at Barabanki, where there had been blasts in the court premises. Munshi Yadav, a member of the peace committee formed by the district administration, proudly tells the absence of any communal tension in the area and accuses the media for demonising Azamgarh and Sanjarpur. As he knew most of the boys his conscience cannot believe that these well behaved educated boys can to any thing of the sort they are being charged with.
· Prof. Iqbal Ahmad is e retired professor of Psychology in Shibli College. As most of the boys alleged to be terrorists belong to the same village or its vicinity, he knows most of them and vouched for their innocence and strongly rejects the allegation as in his opinion, most of them have been studious intelligent boys seeking top and make a respectable place for themselves through a nice employment. These villages have high education rate both among the boys as well as girls, Seventy to eighty percent. People have high remittance income from all over the world and as verified by the other people in the meeting – Hindus and Muslims both – this has been going on since independence. Villages we visited have mostly pucca houses. These villages boast of having produced many doctors, engineers, academicians, administrators, judges, journalists and entrepreneurs. Prof Iqbal was reminded of the emergency days seeing scores of policemen searching each and every house for over half an hour each. They did not find any thing incriminating. The Police men asked a widow, “How do you support the education of your sons?”. She has land and is recipient of family pension. Arif was attending coaching of Medical entrance examination in Lucknow from where he was arrested for his involvement in “terrorism”. Khalid, studying is Jamia Hamdard is untraceable since September 19 for fear of “encounter” or arrest. The Police took away a torch, couple of children’s watches and few CDs of films without any receipt.
Salman was one two of the 2 boys picked from Saraimir. The Police took away the album of his sister’s marriage and threatened the family members of defaming them and they would not be able to marry the daughters of the family.

Abu Talib, working in Mumbai was picked up by Police on September 22, 2008 and was tortured. His brother Abu Rashid, on being informed that he was wanted by Mumbai Police, started for Mumbai on 24th September 2008 but nothing is known about him, he did not reach Mumbai. They brought Talib to Azamgarh and left him to search for his brother. Since then Talib is in the village and works at a general store.

Family members of Arif and Salman got the similar doctored confessional calls, almost verbatim as Saif, Zeeshan and others.
· Wasiuddin, an advocate in Azamgarh knows Zeeshan very well as the classmate of his younger son. He vouched for the innocence of Zeeshan as a decent boy good and sincere in studies. Police went to search for Khalid from the nearby Kharewan village and under terror and fear all boys with Khalid name in the village have disappeared. Indian Mujahideen, according to him is a fake organisation and its origin and purpose should be thoroughly probed by some impartial agency, police are party to it so can’t not be trusted. When angry residents protested against media and one of them threw a stone that hit the SP’s car, false cases were concocted by the Police, against 13 boys, three of them were arrested from the Saraimir, though the police promised to withdraw cases and release the boys by Id, but did not keep its promise. Remaining 10 of the charge sheeted have disappeared for fear of arrest and torture.
· Mohammad Arshad, brother of 17 year “encountered” “terrorist”, looks like a lost man. He works in Saudi Arabia. He came to Delhi with the news of his brother, whom he wanted to see as a pilot, being killed in an “encounter” as a “dreaded terrorist”. He was in such a state of shock and disbelief that was not able to reconcile with what had already happened. His mother was still in a state of trauma and was not shown the picture of dead Sajid, published in Sahara (Urdu). Arshad seemed to be at loss of words, except repeating that his brother cannot be a terrorist. He and others present there ask one question, if Sajid was killed in the encounter, why all the bullets pierced his head and few vertically?
· Mohd Quraysh, father of Sajid, other than one killed in L-18 Batala House, the fifth occupant of the flat, who has been missing, was not available for interview. His neighbors told that after finishing school from the village in 2003, he went to Mumbai in 2004 and worked in a jewelry company till December 2007, where he had bank account and Pan Card. He came back home on December 18, 2007. On July 9, 2008, he went to Delhi to do a course in jewelry designing that was to begin in October 2008. In the meanwhile he joined, along with Saif and Sajid (killed) a local coaching center in Batala house for English speaking course. Ever since the “encounter” on September 19, his family members and villagers have no idea about him.
· G.S. Priyadarshi, the District Magistrate of Azamgarh, a young Commerce graduate from Delhi’s Shri Ram College of Commerce, was generally skeptical of all the uncomfortable questions pertaining law and order, harassment of minorities and permission to Adityanath to arouse communal frenzy, nevertheless he accepted that there were irregularities in handling the affairs that is why the DIG and the Dy Commissioner have been suspended and the DM and the SP transferred.
· Harmandir Pandey, a schoolteacher, is an old CPI stalwart, with nostalgic memories of hey days when Azamgarh used to be a bastion of socialists and communists. Proud of the composite culture and the history of the communal harmony in the district in general and in the city in particular, accuses the media and the police along with the “fascist forces” of the Hindutva for communalising the district and maligning its image. The innocent people are being targeted. He is pained at the incidence of creating trouble in the Shibli National College and arrest of Dr Iftikhar Ahmad at the instance of the then Home Minister in BJP government and again a minister in the BSP government. The raids at the houses of the prominent people like Dr Javed Akhtar and Dr Fakhre Alam, according to Mr Pandey is calculated design to malign the image of Azamgarh. He thinks that the way things are moving, all the talk of terrorism and demonisation of Azamgarh is aimed at distracting people from the main issues of socio-economic concern. In his observation, the Jamia encounter was a fake one like many fake encounters in Gujarat and Maharashtra, as he knew couple of boys and holds a very positive opinion about them. “For the first time, Azamgarh witnessed a minor communal tension aroused and designed by the Hindutva forces led by the Adityanath, the BJP MP and the criminal-politician Rmakant Yadav, the defeated BJP candidate in the Lok Sabha By-election.” He wants an impartial judicial enquiry into the whole episode and the culprits to be booked under the law. He thinks that the security forces instead of acting arbitrarily act according to the law of the land. He is critical of the media, which has acted in an irresponsible manner giving the impression of it as being the police media.
· Dr. Iftikhar Ahmad, Principal of Shibli College is not so much pained with the humiliation at the instance of Hindutva Forces as at the possibility of the destruction of historically established communal harmony and peace in the city and the district by the minority bashing of the Hindutva forces all over the country in general and in Azamgarh in particular. He has been the main target of the Hindutva forces for a long time, not as an individual but as the Principal of the College symbolising Azamgarh’s long secular tradition, defying the stereotypes by the ideologues of the “Clash of the Civilizations” and their local agents. He cannot forget being humiliated by the BJP government which interned him under the fabricated charges of sedition. He is more worried about the state of events indicating fascist style of communal polarisation in the country.

In this episode he smacks a foul game from the very beginning starting with a arrest of Abu Bashar, “the master mind” whose acquaintance with the boys living in L-18 Batala House led to the links of other “master minds” – Atif and Sajid – killed by Police. According to him, Abu Basher belongs to a poor family from Binapara whose mother is from Sanjarpur. In his Delhi visit to explore the opportunity of some employment, he had stayed with his village boys at L-18. He was teaching in a school in Hyderabad run by one of his acquaintances, came home to see his hospitalised father. Owing to the poverty, the other people from the community had to arrange the food for his father in the hospital. Bashar, according to him, is mentally unstable and physically very weak, harbours the illusion of being a leader and indulges into loose talks. He questions the intentions of the police that arrested Bashar from Binapara and showed his arrest from Lucknow. He considers the police story as fabricated and boys killed in the “encounter” were innocent. He wants a judicial probe in the whole matter and stoppage of torture on the arrested boys. He is pained at the role of media that acted in a much partisan manner. The impossibility of justice faced by Muslims of Azamgarh is borne out amid incessant attacks by media. The demonisation of Azamgarh should also be challenged through a writ in the courts. The boys enthusiastic for modern and higher education have been demoralised. The students who are studying in Lucknow, Delhi, Aligarh and elsewhere are afraid to go back to their institutions. Many students have switched off their phones and are untraceable. People are afraid of talking openly. Its Nazi kind of exercise of creating hatred and an artificial enemy within. The Muslims of Azamgarh are living under the terror of “anti terrorist squad” (ATS). At the end of long conversation, he prays that good senses should prevail so that secular and democratic ethos of the country can be preserved.

The SP could not be contacted in person; on Phone he said “every thing in the district was normal.”

In our two days visit of Azamgarh and Saraimir and Sanjarpur, we talked to many other people all of them concurred that there had been no communal tension and rift in area prior to the Hindutva attack on its composite culture through Adityanath. The minor tension generated in the wake of BJP’s provocative rally proved to be short-lived. All of them are critical of the administration and media for demonising Azamgarh, and want that all this must stop and the people of Azamgarh should be left to regain the peace and harmony, that is to restore the original balance.