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SPECIAL REPORT From B L Kak NEW DELHI: Will Pakistan again be left to clear the debris once the Americans are done with Afghanistan and depart? Pakistan’s real nightmare......more Delhi
to host first NEW DELHI, Oct 16: The first competitive film and television festival dedicated to Indian films on environment.......more Advocates’
Welfare NEW DELHI, Oct 16: The Advocates’ Welfare Fund Act, 2001, providing several innovative social security measures for lawyers, shall come into effect from......more Secret
debates end JAIPUR, Oct 16: An apparently recharged Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) cadre has returned home in Rajasthan after two days of secret debate ...more |
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SC orders probe into NEW DELHI, Oct 16: Taking a serious view of the mob invasion of the historic Taj Mahal at Agra on Sunday, allegedly by the Bharatiya Yuva Janata Party (BYJP) activists, the Supreme Court today asked the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Government and the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to investigate the incident and ........more India
to receive TU-22 NEW DELHI, Oct 16: India will receive on lease from Russia four TU-22 bombers, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and the two countries will sign an agreement in this regard next month.....more Bengal
revolutionary NEW DELHI, Oct 16: ‘Gandhi is wrong. His method may improve villages but will not win us our freedom.’ Powerful words indeed coming from the revolutionary Surya Sen, and spoken with the fire and confidence of youth, but echoing the grim debate that has raged in Indian academic circles for very long......more |
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From B L Kak NEW DELHI: Will Pakistan again be left to clear the debris once the Americans are done with Afghanistan and depart? Pakistan’s real nightmare, it can be safely said, concerns the Afghan war’s aftermath. Pakistan, while serving as the frontline State from 1979 to 1989, helped engineer an American triumph in the last battle of the Cold War. But with the mission accomplished, the USA left in an unseemly hurry. Mr Mushahid Hussain, who was Pakistan’s Information Minister from 1997 to 1999, has now come out with a set of undisputed facts. Fact number one: Refugees, a sprawling culture of Kalashnikovs, narcotics, sectarian terrorism, were the unwelcome gifts of the last Pakistani-American effort in Afghanistan. Fact number two: More than 60 per cent of Pakistanis have opposed involvement in the war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Fact number three: Pakistan President and military ruler, Gen. Parvez Musharraf’s grip on his own armed forces has been called into question. Fact number four: With a weak economy and a polarised citizenry, Pakistan spread itself thin, simultaneously seeking to preserve its security, promote an isolated Afghan regime and protect Pakistan’s long-standing claim on Kashmir. With the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, Gen. Musharraf’s predicament is to separate the war on terrorism from any perception of supporting an attack against fellow Muslims. Fact number five highlighted by Pakistan’s former Information Minister: The backlash from the religious right was expected. Most of the Taliban leaders had studied at seminaries in Pakistan. They share an ideological affinity with many Pakistani clerics, and an ethnic bond with Pakistan’s 20 million Pashtuns. Fact number six: The biggest anti-American demonstrations have taken place in Peshawar and Quetta. These cities, capitals of the provinces where most of Pakistan’s Pashtuns reside, also have the largest concentration of Afghan refugees, who number about 2.2 million. Pakistan’s aversion to the Northern Alliance is rooted in this demographic reality, since the alliance is made up of non-Pashtun groups. According to Mr Mushahid Hussian, sceptics in Fen. Musharraf’s own military constituency see an American pattern of shifting alliances, short memories and a pronounced American tendency to forget its friends when it tires of them. "Hence, in this campaign against terrorism, the prospects for Pakistan are as hazardous as those for Afghanistan", he has stated. Mr Mushahid Hussain has recalled that the 1990 sanctions successfully proposed by Senator Larry Pressler-intended to prevent Pakistan from acquiring a nuclear capability-were the parting kick. Gen. Musharraf hopes, as do most Pakistanis, that America’s rediscovery of Pakistan will be different, resulting in a resilient relationship. Mr Hussain cannot be faulted for his argument that Pakistan’s change of direction needs sustained international support it the country is to be an effective defender of Muslim moderation. The American-led coalition, Mr Hussain has also argued, can help in various ways-by providing economic relief, particularly a debt srite-off, to help stabilise Pakistan, by brokering a compromise with India over Kashmir and by holding Gen. Musharraf to his promise of elections. Another senior Pakistani politician, Mr Mubashir Hasan, is of the view that the threat to South Asia is far greater than the problems between India and Pakistan. He has placed himself on record as saying: "The intensity of confrontation for the economic and political control of the world on the one side and opposition manifesting partly in the form of terrorism on the other is far too dangerous to be ignored". Me Hasan, who has called for immediate resumption of talks between India and Pakistan at the "top level", says that the Kashmir issue is no longer insoluble. "There is scope between two extreme positions. The Indian Government has felt in recent years that all is not well with Kashmir. My solution is that Indian and Pakistani armies should stay in their respective parts of Kashmir for defence of the border with China. For the rest of the State, both armies should withdraw. India and Pakistan should enter into a treaty not to prepare for war or wage war in Kashmir". Mr Mubashir Hasan, who was the Finance Minister in Mr ZA Bhutto’s Government between 1971 and 1974, expressed himself strongly against Ms Benazir Bhutto. Mr Hasan was quoted as having emphasized in an interview: "Benazir Bhutto has no business to comment on the situation in Pakistan. She is a thief and she was tried". |
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Delhi to host first Indian competitive filmfest on ecology NEW DELHI, Oct 16: The first competitive film and television festival dedicated to Indian films on environment and wildlife, Vatavaran 2002, is to be held in the capital early next year to encourage filmmakers to devote greater attention to this subject. To be held on February 16 and 17, 2002, the festival is being organised by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) and a total of nine awards in three categories together with a scroll and trophy will be given. The categories are documentaries, television programmes and public service messages. In each category, three awards - golden, silver and bronze, carrying Rs one lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 -will be given, according to CMS Director P N Vasanti. The entries are restricted to those films and video programmes produced by Indian filmmakers highlighting issues regarding Indian Environmental and Wildlife Conservation after 1995. Vatavaran 2002 will bring together the environment and wildlife filmmakers on a common forum and select outstanding films/videos/TV programmes pertaining to environment and wildlife conservation. The festival aims to create awareness and consequently a concern for environmental and wildlife conservation. The Jury for Vatavaran 2002 includes noted critic Aruna Vasudev, filmmaker Rajiv Mehrotra, Dr R K Pachauri and other well known personalities in the media and environment fields. Ms Sharmila Tagore or Mr Khushwant Singh are expected to chair the jury. The Environment and Forests Ministry is supporting Vatavaran 2002, which will tie up with regional television channels for exclusive telecasts, according to festival coordinator Alka Tomar. The steering committee of Vatavaran 2002, which met on October five, includes eminent personalities like Ms Aruna Vasudev, Mr Kiran Karnik, Dr R K Pachauri, Ms Urmila Gupta, Mr Rajiv Desai, Mr Rajiv Kher, Mr Deepak Gupta, Mr Kumar Tikku, Ms P N Vasanti and Mr Ashok Ogra. (UNI) |
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Advocates’ Welfare Fund Act from November 1 NEW DELHI, Oct 16: The Advocates’ Welfare Fund Act, 2001, providing several innovative social security measures for lawyers, shall come into effect from November 1. The Act has already been notified by the Government after President K R Narayanan gave his assent to it, Delhi Bar Council chairman K C Mittal told reporters here. The Act, passed by Parliament in the Monsoon session, envisages grant of ex-gratia payment to a member from the fund, in case of his hospitalisation or involving in major surgical operation or if he/she is suffering from leprosy, tuberculosis, paralysis, cancer, unsoundness of mind, from such other serious disease or disability. Terming the Act as "a historic step towards the welfare and betterment of advocates’ fraternity", Mittal expressed gratitude to the Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley for getting it passed. Mittal said in order to generate corpus for the welfare fund "we have requested senior advocates to contribute and we are very encouraged from their response." Senior advocates F S Nariman and KK Venugopal has promised Rs 3 lakh and Rs 2 lakh respectively while several other senior advocates have also promised to contribute Rs one lakh each, Mittal said adding "by the end of the year we hope to create a corpus fund of Rs one crore." The fund also provides for obtaining group insurance on the members’ lives as also medical and educational facilities for the members of the fund and their dependents, Mittal said adding a member can also avail of the fund for purchase of books. The Act makes it compulsory for every member enrolled with the state bar councils to become a member of the fund. It also provides for the registration of bar association and advocates association with the state bar councils. Mittal said at present 16 states including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir are already operating such funds under state Acts. They can either adopt the Central Act or continue with their own, he said. Ten per cent of the annual subscription to the fund would go towards construction and maintenance of common facilities for the members of the fund practising in the subordinate courts, the chairman said. Besides, the member will have to pay annual membership charges of Rs. 50, he said. It also provides for payment of a specified amount in case of cessation of practice i.e removal of an advocate’s name from the state roll, Mittal said. The Act gives residuary powers to the Trust Committee to provide funds for any other purpose for such other benefit as may be prescribed. Under section 4 of the Act, the Trust Committee can hold an enquiry before passing the orders for grant of money depending upon the facts and circumstances of each individual case, Mittal said. On contribution to the fund, he said the Act provides for affixing of a stamp of Rs 5 on every vakalatnama to be filed in district/subordinate courts and a stamp of Rs 10 on every vakalatnama to be filed in a high court, a Tribunal or other authority of the Supreme Court. Mittal said the Delhi Bar Council has approached the Central Government for getting the stamps printed for being made available to the advocates in time.(PTI) |
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Bengal revolutionary Surya
Sen comes NEW DELHI, Oct 16: ‘Gandhi is wrong. His method may improve villages but will not win us our freedom.’ Powerful words indeed coming from the revolutionary Surya Sen, and spoken with the fire and confidence of youth, but echoing the grim debate that has raged in Indian academic circles for very long. Ideological differences between the extremists and moderates was one aspect of ‘Aazaadi Ne Jab Dastak Di’, a play based on Manini Chatterjee’s ‘Do and Die’ reliving the Chittagong uprising of 1930. It portrays events leading to the raid on the armouries at Chittagong, the using of those weapons against British soldiers in the gun-battle at Jalalabad hill and the subsequent capture and execution of Surya Sen. The play is being staged in the capital by the Jana Natya Manch which uses its mobile theatre Safdar Rangmanch to stage productions in different places. Revolutionary extremism was reorganised in Bengal after 1922. There was large-scale propaganda in the press as also underground activities. Surya had participated in the non-cooperation movement and taught at a national school in a Chittagong village, hence the Acronym Masterda. In 1929, he was the secretary of the Chittagong District Congress Committee. Masterda gathers around himself a band of revolutionary youth including Anant Singh, Ganesh Ghosh, Chakravarty and Loknath Paul. The last mentioned, according to a character in the play, even looks like an englishman and is therefore useful in deception. They plan to organise an armed rebellion to demonstrate that british rule could be challenged that way too. In order to equip themselves, they raid armouries. The assault commences at 2200 hrs on April 18, 1930 — good friday — and is undertaken in the name of the Indian Republican Army. The telephone, telegraph and the railway communication systems between Chittagong and the rest of bengal are disrupted. Six youth led by ghosh capture the police armoury shouting "Inquilab Zindabad". Another group takes the auxiliary force armoury but to their dismay the British have kept only guns there sans the cartridges. The revolutionary band takes up positions on Jalalabad hill and on April 22 are surrounded by hundreds of British soldiers. Masterda and his men put up a heroic resistance. Alas, as their rifles blaze, a British machine-gun unit manages to find a vantage point at a higher level than the revolutionaries, and unleashes a barrage. Ten of Surya’s men are riddled with bullets and two more die later. Masterda survives and decides to launch guerilla action. Despite severe repression, the revolutionaries carry on for nearly three more years because of support by villagers, most of them Muslim. Surya is finally arrested on February 16, 1933, tried and hanged. The play also manages to raise other questions. One of the women in Surya’s outfit writes to him asking why women are not included in the Republican Army? Though Masterda says a woman’s emotional responses might endanger his operations, his views change as the play progresses and, towards the end, he even makes a woman — Pritilata Waddekar — lead the raid on the railway institute at Paharatali. The role of the frail, unpretentious and transparently-sincere Masterda was played by Brijender Singh. Two police constables —played by Naresh and Ashok — provide some excellent comic relief. The props used were limited to benches on stage and improvised bamboo sticks that served as rifles. The stage itself was on the lawns of a bunglow in Talkatora Road. This mobile theatre would move later this week to other venues including the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus here. The two-hour-long drama was penned by Brijesh Sharma and Sudhanva Deshpande and directed by the latter. (UNI) |
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Afghan orphans lie in hospital after US raids JALALABAD (AFGHANISTAN), Oct 15: Three tiny children lie alone in hospital cots. No relatives sit with them to comfort them, to help doctors change their dressings. Four-year-old Gul Khan, Rehmat Bibi, who is three, and Jehang Bibi, just 18 months old, are orphans, said doctors at the Sihad-i-Amma public health centre in the eastern Afghan city, Jalalabad. Their families were wiped out in what the ruling Taliban say were two waves of US bombing attacks which flattened their mud-and-stone homes in the poor and remote village of Khorum and killed up to 200 people. The little trio are among the youngest survivors from Khorum, doctors said. Nurses at the crowded 450-bed hospital say they have treated 17 injured from the raid last Wednesday night. Taliban officials lifted a ban on foreign nationals to show reporters the destruction of the village and the casualties of what they say was an American attack. His father cradles 18-month-old Azizullah Khan in his arms. The baby has a head injury. His three siblings and his mother were killed in Khoram, the father said. "We were all asleep when the bombs fell," he said quietly. "My children have been killed, I have nothing. My house has been destroyed." Nearby, one-year-old Ali Khan doesn’t know that both his legs are broken. His father, Misha Khan, says the baby boy is all that remains of his family of four children. His wife too was killed as they slept, he said. Officials say 160 bodies have already been pulled from the rubble. Villagers from neighbouring hamlets scrambled around looking for more on Sunday when a group of reporters accompanied by Taliban officials toured the area from Pakistan. Washington has so far not commented on the report, although Pentagon officials have said at least one bomb missed its target, but that was near Kabul, since air raids in pursuit of Saudi-born fugitive Osama Bin Laden began on October 7. Reporters saw only a dozen or so freshly dug graves that officials said included the bodies of children killed in the raid. It was not clear what had happened to the other bodies officials said they had recovered: Muslims generally strictly observe Koranic requirements that the dead are buried before the next sunset. Mohammad Wali, who is seven, said he was from Khorum and he too was unclear about what had happened. "I was asleep and I don’t know when the bomb fell," said the little boy, dressed in a torn and faded shirt and lying in the hospital with his eyes bandaged. "I woke and I saw all my family were killed and the house was destroyed," he said. "I don’t know who brought me here." Mohammad Wali, unlike the three other orphans, at least has a relative who sat by his bed and stroked him gently. Not all the casualties whom the Taliban say came from khorum were children. In the women’s ward lay jan warrow, recovering from head injuries. Does she know her two sons were killed? Nearby is Turbakai. She married just two months ago but while her in-laws were killed, her husband survived and sat beside her as nurses cared for wounds to an arm and leg. Abdul Sattar, the hospital’s Nursing Director, told reporters that 17 injured from Khorum had been treated in the hospital. Those numbers could not be independently verified. But the shortages of equipment in the hospital were obvious. "We are very short of surgical equipment, medicines and blood," Sattar said. "And we are running short of beds." Another young patient arrived in the children’s ward late on Saturday. Hazrat Bilal’s father Lala Gul said the youngster was injured when a bomb landed near their home in the Majiburrabad district of Jalalabad. "When this bomb fell, we panicked and left the house and rushed to the hospital," he said. "I don’t know what is our mistake," he said. "Why are we being targeted? we are innocent people." (REUTERS) |
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