palashbiswas

Was Vande Matram Written By Bankim at All, Anothre Controversy
Palash Biswas
(Pl Publish and send a copy. PalashcBiswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, Phone: 91-33-25659551)

The people all over in this subcontinent is well aware about the controversy involving Vandemataram, Ananda Matha, the novel and the Sahitya Samrat Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya. A writer like Sukomal sen traces the history of Hindu Nationality in Vandemataram and Bankim Chandra. Latest controversy began with the declaration of centenary celebration of Vandemataram. But a new controversy is created by the most circulated Bengali daily from Kolkata, Ananda Bazar patrika which published an edit article by a prominent critic and Bankim specialist, Amitra Sudan Bandopadhyaya with the title Vandemataram ki Bankim Chandreri Lekha on 7 th November, 2006. Amitra Babu has based his logic on this fact that the sanskrit six lines are published in the novel under qutation marks which makes it doubtful whether Bankim wrote the controversial song at all.The article was not unnoticed and the pandora`s box was open. Eminent economist Dr Ashok Sen joined the issue. While Ashok Babu noticed the difference of language in the song as its first six lines are written in sanskrita and remaing part in Bengali. He raises the question whethere anyone else might have written those original lines. Secondly, he emphasises to go in depth in the circumstances in which Congress leaders and Rabindra Nath Tagore made it a national song. Dr sen wonders why saptakoti santan and dwisapta koti bahu phrases in the poem were changed as trinshkoti Santan and dwisapta koti bahu to make the worshipped devi as Bharatmata.
Amitra Sudan raises the difference in language point but he he emphasises on this point that being published in Anandmath in 1882, how the song became so popular within two years for its consideration as a national song in 1885 while hardly only two thousand copies of the novel were published in different editions in between.

Musically speaking it seems that Indians will never forget this lyric even after another 125 years. This is clearly seen with the new compositions and renderings. From R N Tagore to A R Rahman and beyond, numerous tunes have been composed and no other song in Independent India has received so much attention. This is probably because we Indians do not consider this as the national song or Anthem. We treat it as the song of our culture, a ‘Prateek’ or living symbol. In Hindu culture, the mother is considered a God, and worshipping the mother through songs is an age-old tradition. Vande Mataram is one such song, which describes the motherland.
The secretary of Nahati sahitya Parishad, Abhaya Charan De also wrote a letter along with dr sen which were published in Ananda Bazar on 22nd November,2006. De edfended thet only Bankim has written the song quoting differnt sources. He wrote as Bankim used poetry in his novels in qutation marks though always written by him,this question is irrelevent.

On 23 rd November ,some other letters were also published in the paper. One of the writer claimed that originally the first six lines were composed by Bhudev Bandopadhyay of chinsura in pure sanskrita and bankim got a copy of the script from his house .Later Bankim modified the poem with his original Bengali lines and publeshed it.

It was doubted from the beginning that the song was origianlly written by some Sannyasee Vidrohee in sanskrita as the Novel Anandmath deals with the historical plot of Sadhus and Fakir`s revolt in Bengal in 1765 around and the Bengal feminine of 1770 around. It should be noted that that the hindu sadhus and fakirs were fighting against East India company together. Majnu Sah, a muslim fakir was the most prominent leader of the revolt who csurvived the crush and led peasants`s revolts in Bihar and Bengal following. While Bankim deals with mainly the Hindu leaders like Bhavanand, Bhavanee Thakur and Devi Chaudhurani. Bankimalso wrote in favour of Bengali muslims in his mag Banga Darshan, in which Anandamath was published as a serial. The peasants of Bengal have been mostly dalits and muslims. Again he wrote an article as a review on a work by Meer Musharraf Hussain and emphasised on the languge based nationality movement of Hindus and Muslims. As we know it happend with Bhasha andolan and later with the creation of independent Bangladesh.

Here , the mendatory question arises who transformed Bankim, the spokesman of Bangla nationality into the origin of Hindu nationality in India? As it is alleged that the controversy involving the national song of congress party alienated the muslims from the struggle for freedom and later it inspired the two nation theory and partition of India. If Bankim has not written at all the poem , what remains?

Anandbazar published a letter written by Dr dinesh chandra singha, a former deputy registrar of Calcutta University on 23 rd November. Dr Singha wrote that the Tagores were involved in Hindu mela. as the original song Vandemataram was written much before Anandamath and sung by Tagore ladies in the Hindu Mela, its popularity should not be doudeted.

As a simple student of literature of the subcontinent I see the Indian nationality hypothesis first in Bharat Tirth poem written by Rabindra Nath Tagore and included in Geetanjali. It is also noteworthy that in the Calcutta convention of Congress the leaders first declined to allow the song Vande Mataram to be sung as some parts of the poem deals with idol worshipping and objectionable to other communities. Then as song was sung which was written by a prominent poet of the time Hem Chandra Bandopadhyaya. The Sanskrit first six lines were included in this song.

For me, I am not an expert on literature at all. But I have been always a committed reader and I read all prominent Bankim works including Anandmath in my childhood. I had chances to meet some freedom fighters , too. I noted that the indian nationlity is identified with the slogan only, not with the entire song as sangh Parivar emphasises on. It is why the muslim revolutionaries also sacrificed their lives saying vande Mataram.

It is my personal experience that a prominent leader no less than the three times Chief minister of united UP, the present chief minister of Uttarakhand and the former finance minister of India , Narayan Dutta Tiwari begins and ends his speech with Vande Mataram always. It shows the congress culture which is essentially a caste hindu party from the beginning. I have no doubt that Congress used Bankim and his Vandemataram to creat a hindu nationality. Contrarily, Rabindra Nath was much more interested in Indian nationality. He defined and detailed the merger of different nationalitities in single Indian nationality in his poem Bharat Tirth which he begins with a first striking line with phrases like manav mahasagar. He desribed how many currents merged with the oceon and evry nationality, indigineous or foriegn Arya , Anarya, Dravid, Mongol, Pathan, Shaka ,Hun, Kushan all merged in a single body. Tagore is the man who converted the Bangamata into Bharat mata. Yes, Bankim meant Bangamata as there was no concept of Bharat mata and he meant greater Bengal consisting of Bristish Bengal Presidency while he wrote.

Tagore was a philospher with western knowledge with indian spritualinputs. He noted the rise of different nationalities in the west. Thus, he created his bharat tirtha and trasnformed sapta koti into trinshkoti, Dwisaptakoti into dwitrishkoti in vandemataram and played a key role to make Vande Matram a ntional song. Pdt jawahar lal Nehru and Rabindranath agrred that muslims were against idol worshipping part of the poem. Thus, they edited the poem with surgical precision to make it national song. what happened later, is a complete history, as castehindu party Congress used the song to raise Hindu Nationality which has been captuered by sangha Parivar with Ramjanma bhoomi movement and destruction of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

It should be remembered that Pandit Nehru of course gave the final verdict. In a meeting of the Constitution Committee held on 24th January 1950, President Dr Rajendra Prasad announced that Jana Gana Mana would be the National Anthem of independent India and Vande Mataram would be the National song with same status as the Anthem. With this decision, all efforts at providing new tunes ended and the recordings made up to that time have now become important documents and part of our cultural heritage. It is clear wshat ND tiwari does with the Bengali audiances in Uttarakhand to strenghten vote abnk, congerss and Sangh leaders have been doing in India, and on the other hand the muslim leaders encashed the circumstances of the windfall and whirlwind following. even the globalisation has made vandemataram a commercial package. Due to the massive success of this album, the same group launched another album Vande Mataram - 2 in 1999, with a music score by Ranjit Barot, son of yesteryear's famous dancer Sitaradevi. This album includes a reissued version of Lata Mangeshkar’s Vande Mataram from the 1952 film Anandmath. The lyricist Mehboob wrote another lyric for Lata Mangeshkar (for the leading line, "Sujjalam, Suffalam, Malayyaj Sheetalam, Sasyya Shyyamalam Maataram") words easily borrowed - or marrowed? - from the sacred song of national pride. The remainder of the lyric, as before, is different and Lataji has sung wonderfully to the same old Anandmath tune for "Maa Tujhe Salam, Maa Tujhe Pranam." The lyricist appears to have conjoined the words "Salam" and "Pranam," though there is a world of difference between the two. In the same album Shubha Mudgal has sung the familiar Vande Mataram in a pop idiom, whereas Kausiki Chakravarty sings it like a lullaby.

In what way a creative writer should be held responsible? Bankimchandra was among the first batch of graduates from Calcutta University. Soon after he had securred his BA, he was appointed as Deputy Magistrate, and eventually became a Deputy Collector. In his work, he had ready access to old papers and gazettes, and came across the documents related to the mutiny of Sanyasis (saints) in Dhaka, North Bengal, Nepal, Tarai, Dinajpur, Rangpur, and Purniya during the period from 1763 to 1780. He decided to write a novel, Anandmath, based on the heroic deeds of these sanyasis. In his youth, he had witnessed the unsuccessful mutiny of 1857. Around 1870, the British rulers were trying hard to force their anthem, God Save the Queen, on Indians. This made a deep impact on Bankimchandra’s sensitive mind, and he wrote Bande Mataram in one sitting, in a mood that must be called transcendental. He wrote the song as a prayer in which the nation 'Bharat' was described as 'The Mother'. The song was later included in his novel Anandmath, which was published serially in his magazine Bangdarshan during 1880-1882. The song was heavily criticized by his friends, and also by his daughter, for the words were difficult to pronounce, and the song comprised of a mixture of Bengali and Sanskrit words. He argued that he wrote it spontaneously to express his emotions and thoughts without caring for its future. However, like a prophet, he said, "I may not live to see its popularity, but this song will be sung by every Indian like a Ved Mantra." And that is exactly what happened after the partition of Bengal in 1905.

The Vandematarm policy becam exposed once again whent the Union Human Resource Minister Arjun singh requested that all the concerning authorities of the States should be directed to celebrate Vandemataram centenary on September 7, triggering a controversy. Even Congress-ruled states made the singing optional after protests by Muslim groups. Bjp ruled states, however celebrated the false centinary with much more pomp and pride. Sangh Parivar mad an issue of it and further launched a misinformation campaaign making doubtful the muslim integrity and its patriotism. Strange enoough so called U.P. Government led by prominent seculr politician Mulaym singh Yadav, on its behalf, directed the Secretaries of the Departments of Primary, Secondary, Higher, Information and Technical Education to take necessary action in this regard.On the other hand, In a virtual snub to Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, the Congress said on Sunday, 10 th september that it was wrong to say that September 7 was the date when Vande Mataram was accepted as the national song 100 years ago. With the Bharatiya Janata Party attacking Congress chief Sonia Gandhi for not participating in an event to mark the 'centenary' of the song last week, the party said the date chosen for the celebrations was historically incorrect and it did not 'want to make it a historic date'. Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi told reporters that Shashi Bhushan, a former party MP who came up with the idea of commemorating the song's centenary on September 7, had admitted to media that he had made a mistake.

Arjun Singh, while citing the brief history of Vande Mataram, said that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote the song in 1876 and Sri Rabindranath Tagore recited it for the first time during the Congress session at Bombay in 1896. It was during the movement against the Partition of Bengal (Bang Bhang Andolan) in the year 1905 that 'Vande Mataram' became the battle song in the fight against imperialism. It was adopted as a National Song at the Varanasi session of AICC on September 7, 1905.

We all know that Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838-94) wrote his famous song Bande Mataram at his residence in Kantalpada, in Naihati village, which is just a few miles away from Calcutta. The song is now 125 years old. It is probably the only Indian song that is still widely popular all over India, and musicians still want to sing it again and again, and keep composing new tunes for it. During this year of celebrations, a book in Marathi, Vande Mataram: Ek Shodh by Mr Milind Sabnis, was published in Pune. This is a carefully researched monograph, which should be translated into Hindi and English soon. This year, an edited Hindi version of Bankimchandra’s novel, Anandmath was published in Mumbai. A few audio/video albums featuring Bande Mataram have been released in the last five years. "The Society of Indian Record Collectors," a Mumbai-based organization, has traced about one hundred different versions of Vande Mataram recorded over the last hundred years. These versions vary from the voices of Rabindranath Tagore to that of A R Rahman. Based on available recordings, an attempt has been made to note the musical aspects of this evergreen song.

The song Vande Mataram is now 125 years old, and has now entered the 21st century. In 1975, while celebrating its centenary, a conference was organized at Banaras in which books, monographs and proceedings devoted to the song were published. In 2000, the Vande Mataram Shatkottar Rajat Jayanti Samiti of Pune published a Marathi book on the song. The Society of Indian Record Collectors found over 100 recorded versions of the song and presented over 20 illustrated listening sessions to audience of various age groups in Maharashtra.

As usual, no political party (including the Indian National Congress) took any note of these activities. Hard-liners with slogans like "Garva Se Kaho...." and/or "Is Desh Men Rahana Hoga To Vande Mataram Kahana Hoga" did not seem to know about this event. Even Bengalis have failed to notice these activities, probably because of the last fifity years of communist rule in Bengal. The Rashtriya Aghadi Government announced the formation of a committee that would attend to issues concerning the song and its future but nothing has come of it since.

Composed by Bankim Chandra, the song Vandemataram appears in the Bengali novel Anand Math. The English translation of Vande Mataram rendered by Shree Aurobindo, is considered to be the "official" and best. According to Bhavan's book, Vande Mataram by Moni Bagchee (pg. 66),
"Bankin Chandra composed the song in an inspired moment, Rabindranath sang it by setting a tune to it and it was left to the genius of Aurobindo to interpret the deeper meaning of the song out of which India received the philosophy of new Nationalism."

Here is the entire song. Only first two stanza of this song are considered to be national song. (Did you know that even Jana Gana Mana...is much longer, and that only first two stanzas are recognized as National Anthem) In fact, I find some of the later stanza much more powerful and inspirational. Please note, only translation is by Shree Aurobindo.
Entire Text of Vande Mataram
Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
When the sword flesh out in the seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee I call Mother and Lord!
Though who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foeman drove
Back from plain and Sea
And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Though art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nervs the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,
Dark of hue O candid-fair

In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Lovilest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!

The inspiration:
Historians like Jadunath Sarkar, R.C. Majumdar and literary critics have generally held that Ananda Math was a product of Bankimchandra’s imagination.
The seeds of Bankimchandra’s anti-British sentiments were sown in Berhampore, the district headquarters of Murshidabad district where he was posted as a Deputy Magistrate [he was the first Bengali to be offered a job in the civil service after he graduated with grace marks in Bengali, his examiner having been none other than Iswarchandra Vidyasagar who did not give him pass marks!]. It was the 15th of December 1873 when Bankimchandra was, as usual, crossing the Barrack Square field opposite the Collectorate in his palanquin while some Englishmen were playing cricket. Suddenly one Lt. Colonel Duffin stopped the palanquin with some abusive remarks and insisted that it should be taken out of the field. When Bankim refused to abandon his customary route, Duffin apparently forced him to alight from the palanquin and pushed him violently (as reported in the Amrita Bazar Patrika of 8.1.1974). Witnesses to the incident included the Raja of Lalgola Jogindranarain Roy, Durgashankar Bhattacharji of Berhampur, Judge Bacebridge, Reverend Barlow, Principal Robert Hand and some others. Furious at the insult, Bankimchandra filed a criminal case against the Colonel, with the Lalgola Raja, Durgashankar Bhattacharji and Hand cited as witnesses. Duffin had to get a lawyer from Krishnagar in Nadia district, as no one in Berhampore was willing to appear for him, while all the local lawyers had signed vakalatnamas for Bankimchandra.

On 12th January 1874 the Magistrate, Mr. Winter, summoned Duffin and had just begun to question him when Judge Bacebridge entered and requested a few words in his chamber. After a little while they called in Bankimchandra and Duffin. Apparently they told Bankimchandra that Duffin had not recognized that Bankim was a Deputy Magistrate and regretted the incident. They requested Bankimchandra to withdraw the case. This he was not prepared to do and after much persuasion agreed, provided Duffin offered a formal apology in open court. Reluctantly, Duffin agreed. Winter took his chair in the court thereafter and in his presence, before a packed court, Lt. Col. Duffin offered an unconditional apology to Bankimchandra. The Amrita Bazar Patrika of 15.1.1874 reports: “It appears that the colonel and the Babu were perfect strangers to each other and he did not know who he was when he affronted him. On being informed afterwards of the position of the Babu, Col. Duffin expressed deep contrition and a desire to apologise. The apology was made in due form in open court where about a thousand spectators, native and Europeans, were assembled.”

Almost immediately thereafter we find Bankimchandra taking three months leave. After this incident there must have been considerable resentment in the Berhampore Cantonment among the British militia and, apprehending bodily harm, Rao Jogindranarain Roy took Bankimchandra away to stay with him in Lalgola.

In Lalgola the Guru of the raja’s family was Pandit Kali Brahma Bhattacharya who practised tantrik sadhana. Kishanchand Bhakat has obtained an excerpt of seven slokas from a book in the family of Kali Brahma Bhattacharya whose rhythm, sense and even some words bear an uncanny resemblance to Bankim’s song. It is most probable that Bankimchandra took the first few lines of his immortal “Bande Mataram” (up to ripudalabarining) from here because in the first edition of the novel in Banga Darshan (Chaitra 1287, pp. 555-556), these lines are given within quotation marks and the spelling is most ungrammatically retained as “matarang”. Bankim faced considerable criticism on this account from Haraprasad Shastri, Rajkrishna Muhopadhyay, and others. In the later editions he removed the quotation marks and changed the spelling to the proper Sanskrit “mataram”, wiping out all trace of the borrowing.

There is an image of Kali in the Lalgola palace temple that is unique. Its four hands are bereft of any weapon. The two lower hands are folded in front (karabadhha), the palm of one covered by that of the other, just as a prisoner’s hands are shackled. From behind, the image is shackled to the wall with numerous iron chains. Kali is black, of terrifying mien, naked, a serpent between her feet, and Shiva a supine corpse before her. This represented to Bankim what Bhaarat, the Mother, had become:

“The Brahmacharin said,
‘Look on the Mother as she now is.’
Mohendra said in fear, ‘It is Kali.’

‘Yes, Kali enveloped in darkness, full of blackness and gloom. She is stripped of all, therefore naked. Today the whole country is a burial ground, therefore is the Mother garlanded with skulls. Her own God she tramples under her feet. Alas my Mother!’” (Sri Aurobindo’s translation, 1909).

It is extremely significant that on either side of this unusual Kali we find Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Kartik and Ganesh, who are never represented with this goddess. It is in this Kali that Bankim envisioned Mother as she will be and that is why he wrote, “tvam hi durga dashapraharana dharini, Thou, indeed, art Durga, ten-armed, weapon-wielding”. It is this temple that is the source of Bankimchandra’s ‘Monastery of Bliss’.

To reach this temple a tunnel existed, whose vestiges are still visible, from another temple that is now in ruins and covered up with jungle. This ruined edifice was the Jagaddhatri temple that Bankim would have seen and described in his novel thus:

“Jagaddhatri, Protrectress of the world, wonderful, perfect, rich with every ornament…the Mother as she was…She trampled under foot the elephant of the forest and all wild beasts, and in the haunt of the wild beasts she erected her lotus throne. She was covered with every ornament, full of laughter and beauty. She was in hue like the young sun, splendid with all opulence and empire…The Brahmacharin then showed him a dark underground passage…In a dark room in the bowels of the earth an insufficient light entered from some unperceived outlet. By that faint light he saw an image of Kali.” (ibid.)

A little to the east is another temple in which the image of goddess Durga was worshipped by Kali Brahma Bhattacharya—“Mother as she will be”:

“The ascetic…began to ascend another underground passage…In a wide temple built in stone of marble they saw a beautifully fashioned image of the ten-armed Goddess made in gold, laughing and radiant in the light of the early sun…Her ten arms are extended towards the ten regions and they bear many a force imaged in her manifold weapons; her enemies are trampled under her feet and the lion on which her foot rests is busy destroying the foe…on her right Lakshmi as Prosperity, on her left Speech, giver of learning and science, Kartikeya with her as Strength, Ganesh as Success.”

In the tenth chapter of Ananda Math there is an elaborate description of an extremely opulent building housing a dazzling image of four-armed Vishnu with two huge demons, beheaded, lying in front, Lakshmi garlanded with lotuses on the left with flowing hair, as though terrified, and on the right Sarasvati with book and musical instrument, surrounded with incarnate raga-raginis and on his lap one lovelier than either goddess, more opulent and more majestic: the Mother. The dynastic deity of the Lalgola Raja family was Vishnu and the image was worshipped inside the huge palace. Underground chambers can still be seen here and it is possible that the Kali icon was originally housed in one of these, reached through the tunnels.

A little further on is the ruin of an ancient Buddhist Vihara where the Buddhist goddess Kalkali was worshipped. The stream that flows by is named after her, and is mentioned in the novel. In chapter 5 of the novel he describes this “great monastery engirt with ruined masses of stones. Archaeologists would tell us that this was formerly a monastic retreat of the Buddhists and afterwards became a Hindu monastery.” This is where Kalyani first sees the noble, white-bodied, white-haired, white-bearded, white-robed ascetic. Is Kali Brahma Bhattacharya the inspiration for this figure?

To the north of the palace, through what was then a dense forest, one reaches the confluence of Kalkali, Padma and Bhairav rivers known as “Sati-maar thaan (sthaan, place)”. Here, under a massive banyan tree, groups of Bir and Shri sects of violent Tantriks used to meet. Kali Brahma used to tutor them in opposing British rule to free the shackled Mother. One tunnel from the Kali temple goes straight to the Kalkali river, whose banks were dotted with a number of small temples in which these tantriks used to take shelter. It is said that in this Kali temple Bankim witnessed a very old tantrik offering a red hibiscus to the goddess, shouting “Jaya ma danujdalani, bande bandini matarang”. Is it mere coincidence that if “bandini” is dropped from this tantrik’s exclamation we get exactly Bankim’s “bande matarang”?

Bhakat hazards a guess that this may have occurred on the full moon night of Maagh, 1280 B.S. (Jan-Feb 1874) when the death anniversary of Rao Ramshankar Roy used to be observed in the Lalgola family. This occasion occurred very soon after the court case in Berhampur and Bankimchandra’s taking leave. On this anniversary, sadhus from Benares used to arrive at this Kali temple. Repeatedly Bankim refers to “Maghi purnima” in the novel.

The inspiration Bankim received from all this is reflected first in his essay “Aamaar Durgotsab” (1874).

In the same area we find the Raghunath temple with icons of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Hanuman, Radha and Krishna, with 51 Shiva lingas and 34 Saalgraams. It is said that these were kept here from the time of the Sanyasi Revolt of 1772-73. Bhakat points out that near the Lalgola zamindari was the estate of Rani Bhawani of Natore who used to distribute food freely to the ascetics and was therefore renowned as goddess Annapurna herself. Her patronage extended right up to Benares. In 1772-3 Warren Hastings, the Governor General, forfeited a large portion of the Rani’s estate. This lead to stoppage of the supplies to the Sanyasis. The famine that followed in Bengal fanned the flames and the Sanyasis attacked the British. Led by the tantrik Mahant Ramdas of Dinajpur’s Kanchan Mashida monastery, they deposited the icons of their deities with Rao Atmaram Roy, the Lalgola zamindar, and left on their mission.

Bhakat has identified Bankimchandra’s “Padachinnha” village with Dewan Sarai village which tallies with all the data in the novel: north to south beside Padachinnha the earthern embankment built by the Nawab runs through “to Murshidabad, Cossimbazar or Calcutta” where Kalyani urges Mohendra to go and also mentions “town” which could be a reference to “nagar/Rajnagar” in Birbhum which can also be reached by this embankment. (chapter 1 of Ananda Math). On either side of the embankment there used to be dense forest, and at the confluence, at Basumati (located in Nashipur, now washed into the river was a burning ghat frequented by Bhojpuri Tantriks. All the temples mentioned in the novel are also here, as also the tunnels, the Vishnu temple, Kalkali river. Bhojpuri speaking looters and sepoys feature in the novel who tally with the fact of such people having been brought into Lalgola by the zamindar to act as sepoys and servants. Bhakat himself is a scion of such a family of staff-wielding guards and servants. They used to live in the “Deshwali” area in the jungle adjacent the palace on the banks of the Kalkali and Padma with surnames like Mishra, Pande, Rai and used to receive initiation in tantric worship from Kali Brahma. The guru was addressed as “maharaj”.

Bhakat proposes that Satyananda of the novel is none other than Kali Brahma Bhattacharya; that Dhirananda is based on the court-poet and priest of Lalgola, Trailokyanath Smritibhushan; that Bhabananda is based on the character of Raja Jogindranarain Roy (himself a tantric sadhak), who stood by Bankim and helped him get away from the wrath of the British militia; that Jibananda reflects much of Bankim himself. Bankim would have lived in the first floor room that still exists in the Kali temple courtyard. In the ground floor room lived Dr. Parry who had spent nearly Rs.10,000 in 1873 to make a medical library for the Lalgola palace. He is said to have worshipped Kali and could be the original for the physician in the novel who is loyal to the British.

On the basis of these findings, it can now be asserted that Ananda Math was not just a figment of the novelist’s imagination, but was rooted in a personal insult suffered by Bankimchandra and in the experiences he had in Lalgola as a guest of Rao Jogindranarain Roy.

But a fascinating puzzle remains. Before the images of the Mother are shown, there is reference to worshipping the country itself as Mother, quoting the Sanskrit half-sloka, janani janmabhumisca svargadapi gariyasi. Where did Bankim get this from? Considerable research by me has failed to pinpoint where it occurs. Several Tamil and Malayali Sanskritists recite it with aplomb and attribute it to Rama who is supposed to have responded in these words to Lakshmana when requested to stay on in Lanka, the city-of-gold, instead of returning to Ayodhya. Robert Goldman, the translator of the critical text of the epic, informs that it occurs in some version in the Yuddhakanda as follows:

api svarnamayi lanka na me laksmana rocate /
janani janmabhumis casvargadapi gariyasi //

Unfortunately, neither the Valmiki Ramayana, nor the Adhyatma and Ananda Ramayanas, nor the version in the Mahabharata feature the sloka. So it remains a puzzle like the panchakanya sloka.

Beginning of the century - The song remained in the novel Anandmath until it was sung by Rabindranath Tagore at Beadon Square in the 1896 convention of the Indian National Congress. It soon became part of a tradition after that, and even today Congress conventions, and sessions of the Loksabha and the Vidhansabha begin with the recitation of the first stanza of Bande Mataram. In 1905, large crowd gathered at a town hall in Calcutta to protest against the partition of Bengal, and someone from the crowd shouted Bande Mataram. It became a very popular slogan.

Pl note, this story sent earlier is modified and edited.

The Madhumati Across the Border Which Flows in Me
Palash Biswas
( Pl publish and send a copy. Contact: PalashcBiswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, gosto Kanan, sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551-r)
She was the Madhumati for us all. She was my grandmother Shantidevi who never forgot the river left behind flowing by her village Kumordanga under Beleshwar PS, Narail sub Division under Jassore district. Narail is now a district in independent Bangladesh. The freedom struggle for Bangladesh was intense while she died in 1970 more than thousand miles away in Basantipur, a remote village near Pant Nagar university under the district of Nainital in UP undivided.. Now Basantipur is situated in Udham Singh Nagar District in Uttarakhand.
I was a schoolboy when she died aged eighty. I remember the day as me and my cusin subhash were in the school Zila Parishad Uchchtar Madhyamic Vidyalay Dineshpur. Father reached the school to get us home from our classrooms. He was crying. Though we loved our grandmother very much but I did not see any logic to mourn for an ailing old woman. I perhaps laughed at a point becuse the mourning and its pathos somewhat aesthetically amused me. Father was irritated to note that and warned me , one day I might weep. Well, in June,2001 when my younger brother informed me about the demise of my father and his last wish to be cremated beside his lifelong friends , I could not help it and broke down. It was full thirty one years late to realise the impact of losing parents for ever.
My grand mother left East Bengal just after partition and travelling refugee camps in Bengal and Orrissa, at last resettled with her family in Basantipur. Even breathing last she never forgot the river. We could feel the waves and tides of the river Madhumati as long as she survived. Though we had no great river around .The migration was a burning curse and she kept burning and I even as a small child could experience well the heat and smoke very well.

I remember the death of my grand mother as before this, I became adult suddenly as a student of class eight. I led the highschool agitation in demand of questionpaper in Bengali for Bengali language. The questionpaper in the halfyearly examinations was in devnagrai. We had nothing against Hindi as it had become the spontaneous medium for our communication in the mini India of Himalayan Terai where Bengali and Sikh refugees, Raisikhs, Punjabi and Marwaries, Deshi and Purbia, Buksha and Tharu people lived side by side in the newly established inhabitation with a siezable population of Kumauni and Garwalies. Specially we felt at home with the Hill People as their culture seemed to be very intimate to us.Politically and socially we enjoyed the strong support from the Hills without which we could not have sustained ourselves in an atmosphere dominated by the musclepower of big farmers and land mafia in Terai. Dineshpur Highschool had a history of struggle for mother tongue. Earlier in sixties there had been a strike and in our time, I got baton. Father was a part of the school management and an associate of District Board Chairman Shyam Lal Verma.He had very good relation with the principal KL Sah. Though Mr Sah had been very affectionate to me I felt it my duty to fight. Noone else was responsible for this but my father. He used to come Kolkata every year to fetch Bengali classics. I had to read and recite aloud Bengali edits written by no less than an editor,vivekanand Mukhopadhyay, his poems, Tagore and Nazrulpoetry, even Madhusudan Dutta. I had read Bishade-Sindhu of Mir Musharraf Hussain as well as classics of Bankim and Sharat in my childhood. It all worked against the liberal turned politics of a former communist father.The procession came out of the school and I was leading from the front. Father came from the opposite direction,the bazar on cycle.He stopped and slaped me asking,` Ke bolechhhe tomaya strike korte? (Who suggested you for the strike?) Grand mother supported father even while during the strike father disowned me as I was reluctant to compromise. As the strike ended, Grand Ma fell ill and died.
From that date Father learnt to treat me as an adult individual and never interfered in my activities. In my life , he never scolded me once again though we had very sharp differences in many matters and politics divided us vertically. I was involved in naxalite activities in the seventies.Father was niether scared of nor tried to restrain. Although he continued to put forward his opinion which he never missed.In turn, I used to help him in documentation and it was a great help for me to develop myself as a writer and journalist for whom Father had always a special respect. When I began my career as a journalist he always suggested to adjust with the sytem and make way for my expression. Now, I realize he was much more modern than me.

Madhumati River is atributary of the Padma (Ganges) River, flowing through southwestern Bangladesh. It leaves the Padma just north of Kushtia and flows 190 miles (306 km) southeast before turning south across the Sundarbans to empty into the Bay of Bengal. In its upper course it is called the Garai. It leaves the Madhumati River (there called the Baleswar) northeast of Khulna city and flows 110 miles (177 km) south past Chalna and Mungla through the Sundarbans to the Bay of Bengal. In its upper course it is called the Atharabanki
The river Madhumati is gradually losing navigability owing to emergence of shoals, it is learnt.
Shantidevi had three sons Anil,Pulin and Sudhir and two daughters Shreemati and sarala. Shreemati settled with her family in north 24 Parganas and her only son Nitai Pada Sarkar who is a reputed businessman in Kankinar Jagdal area. Sarala was a widow and used to live with us. She eloped with someone when I was only four or five years old. Father was liberal enough to take it easy but grandma was shocked.

We had a joint family. My father Pulin Biswas was a committed social activist and Uncle Sudhir was a medical practitioner. Hence her eldest son Anil used to look after the home and agriculture.He was a musician.Father went to riothit Assam in 1960.While he returned he sent my uncle Sudhir there as he was a doctor. The refugees in assam even in the latest generation remember them , I realised when I visited the refugee colonies in burfak in Marigaon district of assam in 2003.

My youngest aunt ( kakima) remained at home. She was like a friend to me as my eldest cusin Meera got married in 1961.Aunt Ushadevi and Eldest aunt (jethima) Hemlata looked after me as I was the eldest boy in the family. Not only in the family or in the village, I got special treatment all over Terai as I used to accompany father evrywhere.Father was elected the vice president of terai vikas nigam in sixties.Before this he defeated prominent Sikh leader Sardar Bhagat Singh.
Later, I felt the same love everywhere in the Himalayan zone , Uttarakhand to Manipur. It is an achievement I may boast. I was never close to my mother and she never had a space. Zethima belonged to the Harichand Guruchand family and she had the culture of Gopalganj on the bank of Madhumati. Thus, the river always seemed to flow within me. Whenever I fly over Bangladesh to reach a plac in the North East, I peep through the window to invent the river . I have not touched the land of my anchestors but the roots always speak. Even when I see a Taslima Nasreen, a Salam Azad or read Shamsur, Ilius, selina, Abu Bakar, Kabeer, Azad, Goon, Saha and the lot of them or read about the stance taken by the Intellegentia Bangladesh in Favour of democracy, freedom,soveriegnity and secularism , I feel a relationship. I am exicited to know that Narail happens to be a part of Tagore Zamidari and declassed, converted Tagores still inhabit the land forlorn.Later I read the great fight in Jassore sector and on the bank of river Madhumati in the freedom struggle of 1971. Now I feel what inspired my poor father to visit the forbidden land so often. I may realize why my grandma and her generation, the partition victims of 1947 could not forget the rivers, the fields, the jungles, the boats, the fruits and the harvest.

My grand mother never used to bathe with water artificial. She needed flowing water as she had in Madhumati.Anytime she would get irritated and curse the partition which threw her in a desert where no river passes by. She would spend most of her time busy with cattle on the bank of a rivulet near the village. We had so many of them around us as the intense Jungle of terai was just colonised. The jungle sustaind itself near Lalkuan and Gularbhoj. I came to know this only when my father was facing trial for Dhimri Block Peasants revolt of 1958. I heard about this when a policeman came on cycle and reached the land settlement cooperative village committee president Mandar Babu`s home, where I was playing with his son my bossom friend Krishna, to lacate and serve court summon to my father. Father was away and I learnt at that very moment about Dhimri Block, the revolt , the event and the arrest of my father with thousands others. But he was the leader and his hand was broken in the Rudrapur police station. Father and his Kisan Sabha comrades faced the trial for ten years in various courts including High Court allahabad. I was also present in a hearing in Nainital colectriate and they lost the case. They were arrested and released on bail. I felt no difference .It was in 1963 when I visited the hillsatation and was spellbound by the beauty.

We were a lot of children in our home. Me, my real and cusin brothers and sisters had to be taught by a resident teacher Abani Kaku and a music master Brajen Babu. When Abani Kaku returned home in west Bengal, we Had Jeeban Mama and Radhikada from nearby Shaktifarm Bengali Area where they had no school.
We had to cross the rivulet to go to the school in the nearby village Chittaranjan Pur. Officially, it was a girls` school where all children from the area were admitted. Madam christie used to live in a vacated quarter by Kundus who could not bear the migration and fled Bengal in 1960.We used to go to the school with Madam christie in a procession. It was alright in winter and summer but in the rainy season while the rivulet flooded, we had to cross it boarding on large pans meant for making sugercakes Gur with sugar cane juice near Arjun Pur, the Risikh Punjabi village where we used to visit for lanagar and mattha often.They used to offer full lota chai and tandoori chapati everytime and were very affectionate to me. The children were our friends and the older ones were the guardians alike.The school had to shift in arjunpur every rain seasons as they had the boatlike pans. Soon madam Chriestie was transferred.As my eldest cusin Meeradi and her friends were married meanwhile, it was no more safe for us kids to cross the rivulets. Madam had a relationship with the primary teacher a frailbody kumauni Brahmin Pitambar Pant in the primary school Haridaspur, one KM away from our village on the Jafarpur-Dineshpur Road. Madam got us transferred to Haridaspur enmasse.We had not any pucca road. It was very difficult to cross the mud and water but we had to bear till 1983-84 when at last we got a link road. Now my village has got roads from every direction and we have roads to reach our fields, too.It was so pathetic in past as after my marriage the bride refused to get down from the Zeep when it was entrapped in mud. Freedom fighter and Father`s most intimate friend Ramjee Tripathi, who got rehabiliated in Fulsinga near Rudrapur as a freedom fighter, owned this Zeep. We had another freedom fighter in Basant kumar Bannerjee from the famous Banaras Bannerjee family who was rehabiliated in Khanpur number One.Basant Babu`s brother was hanged in freedom struggle. These people survive no more, but they had a great impact on my childhood.I read Aaami Subhash Bolchhi by Shailesh De as the book was from the library of Bannerjee uncle. Ramjee Tripathi fought the Loksabha Election from Nainital against KC Pant in 1967. Pant won that election with thumping majority, though we supported Roy. I accompanied him in his election campaign and he used to take me very seriously. Even in 1977, he was with me and against my father who supported Mrs Indira Gandhi.

My granmother could not know the death of all those revulets, trees around as she died in seventy and Hripura Dam was built in Gularbhoj, some six miles upstream. We had enough fish for daily protien and enough water for our fields. Father opted for electric tubewells and Tiwari helped in the electrification. Tiwari as a finnance minister of Uttar Pradesh inaugruated electricty in our village and I refuged to write the welcome address as I was dead against Congress and its leaders including Tiwari and Pant. This prompted me to join Chipko and Uttarakhand movement in UP and Jharkhand movement in Bihar later.

Grand Ma was full of sweet memories which she shared with us. Later,Prabhabati Devi, the mother of my aunt (Jethima) joined her in the family after the riots of 1964. Jethima Hemlata was her only child. She belonged to the famous Harichan Guruchand Family. The son of Guruchand Thakur, Pramatho Nath Thakur ,who was elected MP on Congress ticket from Barasat deafting legendary dalit leader Jogendra Nath Mandal visited her sister, our didima in our village.
The two old ladies were engaged with the rustic East Bengal culture. Orakandi, the centre of Matua Dharma was the home of Didima. Orakandi is situated under Gopalganj Subdivision, the home of Banga Bandhu Mujib, in Faridpur District. Gopalganj later became an independent district.
Folk poets like Vijay sarkar, Nishikant, Rasik, Rajen were discussed often. Some of them visited us, too. Grandma told us the stories of Ramayan and Mahabharat. She was very superstitious and I was very scientific as I had been influenced my doctor uncle who had been a technical wizard. We always made jokes of superstiotions. I refused to do Pranam to the brahmins and Purohits in childhood and for this I had been thrashed often. In fact the Bengali,English and Hindi literature made me an athiest who was in no mood to compromise. But I had to accompani Grandma whenever she visited a quack OJHA, KAVIRAJ,etc. I used to dishounour them openly and criticized their profession and said them that they were btrayers. Those rustic people in return loved me much.How strange it was.

We celebrated Gasi, the cultivation festival in the winter on Sankranti.The cattle were worshipped. The old ladies organised the mela of Tennath for the health of our cattle. They also dictated to worship the evilpowers ghosts in our fields for our safety.
Basantipur always have been, in fact, a name of a great joint family of East Bengal refugees from Jassore, Khulna and Barishal. There were different caste, creed,culture and dilects. We have two Brahmin and a kayastha families among us. But we felt no discrimination. These people crossed the border and clubbed together and sustained the club in refugee camps and got the resettlement colony in Terai after the first mass movement in Terai in 1956 . The village was formed and they named it on my mother`s name. All festival were common. We had a Sarbajaneen Durga Puja only In Dineshpur Bajar, the centre place of all 36 Bengali refugee colonies. There used to be a weekly Hat on Satureday.Dineshpur got a Junior Highschool which is now a government inter College, a primary health centre, a post office and an industrial trainig institute ITI with trades like electrical, fitter, welding, sewing,etc.

We children had the previllege to eat anywhere , sleep anywhere and play anywhere in the village as every home seemed to be a common property. We never felt any scarcity of love, passion,joy and sentiments. Those were abound.
All the old people were very nostalgic. They had fresh wounds which continued to bleed life long. They wept for the lost homeland. It was very cold in winter and very hot in summer contrary to the average climate and weather in East Bengal. Food habits were different. We learnt to eat bread only in mid sixties with the import of PL 480. But the revulets were full of water and fishes used to swim in. At that time the sikhs and punjabies did not eat fish neither the local population liked it. The Bengalies were the masters of all the revulets and fishing. There was enough wood for cooking.We needed only clothing and Kerosine from the market.With emphasise on education we needed stationary and books, too.We had to study Bengali and English with mendatory Hindi. We had a Bengali school and a Jatra, folkdrama party. Basantipur is still famous in Uttarakhand for its folk activities. It celebrates the main function of Netaji jayanti in the district on every 23rd January.
Every one from the first generation believed that India would be united once again as they felt the partition was political which meant nothing to them.But we had nothing to do with as we never knew any part of Bengal while we all were born and brought up in Uttarakhand. We always had an Uttarakhandi identity and we had been proud of it. But we identified ourselves with the heritage of Bengal as the same time. The actual problem was that of alienation.

Even my father never accepted the border. He never used a passport or visa and crossed the border anytime as if it was nonexistant for him.He was arrested in Dhaka while participating a Bhasha andolan procession. He was once again arrested in 1971 when he demanded the merger of two Bengals as he felt it was the only solution of complex refugee problems.
Our village was constituted in 1956 along with two other villages Udai Nagar and panchanan pur. Other villages in dineshpur area were set upin 1952-54.
Narayan Dutta Tiwari won his first election in 1952 as a Praja Socialist Party candiadate defeating congress nominee Shyam Lal Verma from Haldwani assembly seat. Pandit Nehru campaigned for Verma in futile.

Tiwari first visited Lakhipur refugee colony in 1954 and since then he became the protagonist among Bengali refugees. He used to know everyone in this area by name. After the failure of Dhimri Block movement and because the CPI general secretary PC Joshi disowned the movement, Bengali refugees shifted their loyality to congress along with ND Tiwari who won the next assembly election fromKashipur in 1962 as a congress Nominee. Bengali population remained his mobile votebank in Kashipur and Haldwani. KC Pant won the Loksabha seat from Nainital. We had family relationship with both Tiwari and Pant. Though our village was deprived of voting rights. They voted in 1967 and it was against Tiwari. Tiwari lost the election for which he began his campaign from our home. PSP leader Ram Dutt Joshi defeated him.The brother of Shaheed-e-Ajam Sardar bhahat singh Rajendra sandhu also tried his luck fro kashipur seat in 1969 on Janasangh Ticket. As Atal bihari Vajpayee was the President of the party and he promised my father that the party would take up rfugee issue,we supported Sandhu. THe mother of the Shaheed eazam came to our village and we were thrilled to see her face to face. We felt the warmth of the struggle for freedom.

We had a Kachhari Ghar with four varandahs which was full of music, jatra, folk, social and political activities . Tea and food for everyone was ready all the time, even late in the night and in the dusk. It was my home. Kachharighar was our guest house. While the joint family disintegrated, at first this social centre degenerated. Gassi has not been celebrated after the demise of Grand Ma. We had festivals like doal, the Bengali Holi and Gajan, worshipping of Lord Shiva. All these public festivals merged in Durga and Kali puja disintegrated. Really, we are uprooted from tradition, culture and history. We the unfortuanate lot. We heard so much about Bhatiyali as SD Burman sang on Vividh Bharati stimulating the nostalgia of my people. They were excited with Baulgan, Bhab Gaan and zaaree Gaan. Bhawaiya was in their blood. Ashtak gaan was a yearly affair.

I was very irritated whenever these people used to go back in remiminicsence. I used to ask why they left.I wonder why they lost their land just to avoid conversion while they have no trace of their culture. I treated Bangla nationality movement in East Bengal as it denied religion and preferred mother tongue as unifing spirit. And We have lost our mother tongue.
Now I know all about the partition saga and continued persecution of minorities in east Bengal. I sympathise with the flow of migrant people. Now I realise how they overcome the calamity, an infinite tragedy haunting millions lifelong.

When I read about Pottery of Lohagara upazilas in Narail district is on the verge
extinction due to the popularity of plastic made home appliances, it was a reminiscent of Grandma nostalgia once again.Once, the villagers of the upazila used to make use of earthen made domestic devices for their daily necessary. The potters made pitchers, plates, pots and other household devices by their traditional hand made machines set in a particular room of their houses. The potters were locally called as Paal.
The potters were of Hindu community. Their main source of income were making household devices with soil and selling these to the village people.The villagers used to buy their necessaries from the potters in exchange of different crops produced in their fields as most of the families in those days were fully depended on agriculture.
The potters came to the villages by carrying pottery
In a bamboo made basket on head and used to attract the attention of the villagers by calling- “Rakhben Hari Patil, Thile…”
This call of the potters was familiar to the villagers.
In those days most of the potter families were well-off as the demand of soil made household devices in the villages even in the towns were very much popular. It is mentionable that the plastic made household devices were not available and was costly.
On the other hand, the household devices made by silver and other costly materials were out of the buying capacity of the village people. As a result, the villagers used it.
According to sources, a great number of pal (potter) families had been living in the different areas of the three upazila in the district for years as the water ways of the river Madhumati, Nabaganga, Chitra was convenient to bring their produces to another places. On the other hand a lot of Hindu families were living in the different areas of the district.

A good number `of pal families lived in Mohajon, Kumardanga, Doulatpur, Itna, Korfa, Laxmipasha, Lohagara villages in the district. Most of the villages are situated on the bank of the river Madhumati. In those days, it was a common sight to the local people that the boats full of earth made household devices were plying in the rivers.
But now the scenario has changed a lot. These types of boats are rarely seen in these rivers as popularity of plastic made household devices replaced the soil made devices. A large number of pal families have already left the country and who are living here have changed their professions.

Bangladesh slammed for persecution of Hindus , wrote Aziz Haniffafrom Washington, DC on November 02, 2006 and the bleeding touched me once again. She wrote:`The US Commission on International Religion Freedom slammed Bangladesh for continuing persecution of minority Hindus. It also urged the Bush administration to get Dhaka to ensure protection of religious freedom and minority rights before the next national elections in January.

In a new report titled 'Policy Focus on Bangladesh', released on Capitol Hill last week, the USCIRF, an independent, bipartisan federal agency funded by the US Congress, said that since its last election, 'Bangladesh has experienced growing violence by religious extremists, intensifying concerns expressed by the countries religious minorities'.

It noted that 'Hindus are particularly vulnerable in a period of rising violence and extremism, whether motivated by religious, political or criminal factors, or some combination'.

The commission, includes one South Asian American, former New York solicitor general Preeta Bansal, now an attorney with the New York-headquartered Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher and From.

'The position of Hindus has multiple disadvantages: perceived identification with India, an alleged preference for one of Bangladesh's two major political parties, and religious beliefs abhorred by Muslim fundamentalists', it noted.

The report said that in many instances, 'such violence appears aimed at encouraging Hindus to flee in order to seize their property in what is a desperately land-poor country'.

It recalled that during and immediately after Bangladesh's Parliamentary election in October 2001, 'there were numerous reports of illegal land seizures, arson, extortion, sexual assault, and intimidation of religious minority group members, particularly Hindus'.

The report, drawn up after commission members, including Bansal, visited Bangladesh, said that 'minority group representatives and human rights groups with whom the commission met ascribed these attacks to armed militant groups or to partisans of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

'As Hindus and other non-Muslims are popularly perceived to favor the Awami League, intimidating Hindu voters was viewed as a way to help to the BNP and its Islamic allies in the elections', it stated.

The Commission warned the lack of accountability for crimes reported against minority groups in the previous election promoted an atmosphere of impunity and for a renewal of violence against Hindus and other non-Muslims in the upcoming election.It said that during meetings with the commission, Hindus said they feared political manipulation of voter registration process that could have them excluded from voter rolls. They said government representatives administering the process overlooked minority neighborhoods.

'Hindu leaders with whom the commission met also described problems their children faced in gaining access to religious education in their own religion, as is supposed to be the case in Bangladesh's public education system', the report said.The commission urged the Bush administration to 'face up to the seriousness of the threat facing Bangladesh and to lead the international community in monitoring the January 2007 elections'.

It also called on Washington to urge Dhaka to prevent anti-minority violence during the election and to encourage the Bangladesh government to address religious extremism and violence.

The Hindu American Foundation applauded the report and commended the commission on the recommendations it submitted to the administration. The commission had invited the HAF as a respondent at a meeting it convened on Capital Hill to coincide with the report's release.Ishani Chowdhury, HAF's executive director, told rediff.com the commission's policy brief reiterates the foundation's concern about the situation of the minority Hindus in Bangladesh.
She said the commission's report was in concert with the HAF's detailed report on human rights violations in Bangladesh against minority Hindus.’
Torture Against Press In Bangladesh Continues , and the journalists represents well the spirit
FromNew York, U.S.A,Ripan Kumar Biswas,Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com has written:

`Torture against journalists in Bangladesh is still going in full swing during the present “Interim Government.” It is very hard to find an end to the climate of impunity and to bring to justice the perpetrators of violence and harassment directed towards journalists.

Even on November 19, 2006, the electoral commission banned access to journalists who went to a preparatory session for the next general elections. No grounds were given. A similar ban had been imposed the previous week too.The interim government’s job is to create the conditions for free elections which should obviously include guarantees of security and freedom for the press but it is hardly to see the press freedom in Bangladesh.

The European parliament has stressed out this very clearly and has requested President Iajuddin Ahmed to take active measures to protect journalists.”

Ripan Kumar Biswas was an intern at The Seoul Times and a freelance writer based in New York.

I know all about the fight of friends like Taslima Nasreen, whose return to Bangladesh is impossible and Salam Azad , the writer of Ethenic Cleansing in exile. Even in Left ruled Bengal Taslima has to face Fatwa. Not only this, the district Magistrate of Midnapore prohibited her to read her poetry there. The latest news came from siliguri Bookfair where Taslima was invited to inaugruate. But Muslim fundamentals came on steerts and organizers of the book fair cancelled the invitation. It is good that the writers in North Bengal are enough vocal against this compromise. A very eminent writer Bhagirath Mishra is leading the protest. But in Kolkata , where the ban on Dwikhandito was supported by left alligned intellectuals including the Sahitya Academy Vice President Sunil Gangopadhyay, calm prevails. No poet dared to go to Midnapur to defy the DM order. They say that no one is more progressive, more democratic, more secular and this is an example only. The myth has to be broken.
Whereas in Bangladesh the story of resistance under islamic rule is quite different.Kalayan Bannerjee, a Satkhira, Bangladesh based corresponded for Dainik Prothom Alo, has been received death threat by local BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) convenor and former lawmaker Habibul Islam Habib on November 24, 2006. There was a news item published by Mr. Bannerjee in The Prothom Alo in its November 23 issue under headlined “Three sensational murders may change election result of 4-party alliance in Satkhira-1 constituency” which goes directly against Mr. Habib as he is an aspirant for alliance ticket from the satkhira-1 constituency in the coming election.

It is reported that Couple of days before, Subrata Deb Roy Sanjay was beaten badly and his home was ransacked by Hazi Mujib, a businessman who supports the last ruling party. He is a reporter from Sylhet, Bangladesh for the dailies Dainik Khabor and Sylheter Dak.

Ripan has a detailed story to tell. On November 16, 2006, four journalists, named, Niamul Kabir Sajal of Dainik Prothom Alo, Babul Hossain of Dainik Janakantha, Mir Golam Mostafa of Dainik Shamokal and a photo reporter Nuruzzaman were attacked and beaten by local militiamen when they went to a village in the north of Dhaka. They were there to investigate a report of threats against members of the Ahmadiyah religious minority.

And the story continues on.

Tuhinul Islam Tuhin, the correspondent of the daily Ittefaq at the University of Rajshahi, near Dhaka, received a death threat on November 17, 2006 because of a report he wrote about the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student movement that supports the Awami League. The student movement’s leader, Ibrahim Hossain Moon, had also threatened Tuhin the previous day.

Hasibur Rahman Bilu, reporter of the Daily Star, Radio Today and radio Deutsche Welle, in Bogra, north of Dhaka, was beaten recently with bamboo canes by militants belonging to a student organization linked to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Though he got serious leg injuries, he asked to be discharged for fear of fresh reprisals.

Photographer Shafiqul Islam Shafiq of the Focus Bangla photo news agency, who has reportedly been tortured since his arrest by an elite home affairs ministry unit on October 28, 2006 in Shikdari Bazar, in the northwestern Rajshahi region, on unfounded allegations of links with extremist movements.

In addition, journalists in Bangladesh can’t write freely about the Jamaat without facing death threats or assassination attempts. After getting deadly alert from London based mighty news media “The Guardian” and Tokyo based “The Japan Times,” now Seoul based “The Korean Times” has mentioned of possible attacks by a terrorist group against the people in Bangladesh.

Especially on October 28, 2006, a total of 15 media personnel were injured by police or demonstrators during protests in Dhaka, Rajshahi, and Mohonganj.

According to different news media, in 2006 three journalists were killed and at least 95 others attacked, and fifty five press correspondents were the targets of intimidation because of articles considered to be ‘non Islamic’.

The Madhumati Across the Border Which Flows in Me
Palash Biswas
( Pl publish and send a copy. Contact: PalashcBiswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, gosto Kanan, sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551-r)
She was the Madhumati for us all. She was my grandmother Shantidevi who never forget the river left behind flowing by her village Kumordanga under Narail sub Division under Jassore district. Narail is now a district in independent Bangladesh. The freedom struggle for Bangladesh was intense while she died in 1970 more than thousand miles away in Basantipur, a remote village near pant Nagar university under the district of Nainital in U undivided.. Now Basantipur is in the Udham Singh Nagar District in uttarakhand. I was a schoolboy when she died aged eighty. I remember the day as I and my cusin subhash were in the school Zila Parishad Uchchtarvidyalay Dineshpur. Father reached the school to get us from our classroom. He was crying. Though we loved our grandmother very much but we did not see any logik to mourn for an ailing old woman. I perhaps laughed at apoint becuse the mourning and its pathos somewhat aesthetically amused me. Father was irritated to note that and warned me , onday I might weep. Well, when my younger brother informed me about the demise of my father and his last wish to be cremated nesides his lifelong friends , I could not help it and broke down. It was full thirty one years later to realise the impact of losing parents for ever.My grand mother left East Bengal just after partition and travelling refugee camps in Bengal and Orrissa, at last resettled with her family in Basantipur. Even breathing last she never forget the river. We could feel the waves and tides of the river Madhumati as long as she survived. Though we had no great river around us.The migration was a burning curse for her life long. she kept burning and I as a small child could experience well the heat and smoke very well.

I remember the death of my grand mother as before this, I became adult suddenly as a student of class eight. I led the highschool agitation in demand of questiopaper in bengali for Bengali language. The questionpaper in the half yearly examination was in devnagrai script. We had nothing against Hindi as it had become the spontaneous medium for our communication in the mini India of Himalayan Terai where Bengali and Sikh refugees, Raisikhs, Punjabi and Marwaries, Deshi and Purbia, Buksha and Tharu people lived side by side in the newly established inhabitation with a siezable population of Kumauni and garwalies. Specially we felt at home with the Hill People as their culture seemed to be very intimate to us.Politically and socially we enjoyed the strong support from the Hills without which we could not have sustained ourselves in an atmosphere dominated by the musclepower of big farmers and land mafia in Terai. But Dineshpur Highschool had a history of struggle for the right of mother tongue. Earlier in sixties there had been a strike and later in our time, I had the baton. Father was a part of the school management and a n associate of District Board Chairman Shyam Lal Verma.He had very good relation with the principal KL Sah. Though Mr Sah had been very affectionate to me I felt it my duty to fight for our mother tongue. And no one else was responsible for this but my father. He used to come Kolkata every year to fetch Bengali classics for me. I had to read and recite aloud Bengali edits by no less than an editor of Basumati,vivekanand Mukhopadhyay, his poems, Tagore and Nazrulpoetry, even Madhusudan Dutta. I had read Bishade Sindhu of Mir Musharraf Hussain as well as classics of Bankim and sharat in my childhood. It all worked against the liberal turned politics of a former communist.The procession came out of the school and I was leading from the front. father came from the opposite direction,the bazar on cycle.He stopped and slaped me asking,` Ke bolechhe tomaya strike korte? (Who suggested you the for the strike?) Grand mother supporte my father even when during the strike father disowned me as I was reluctant to compromise and continued the strike. After the strike ended, Grand Ma fell ill and at last died.
From that date of the strike Father learnt to treat me as an adult individual and never interfered in my activities. In my life , he never scolded me once again though we had very sharp differences in many matters and politics divided us vertically. I was involved in naxalite activities in the seventies.Father was niether scared nor he tried to restrain me. Although he continued to put forward his thinking.In turn, I used to help him in documentation and it was a great help for me to develop myself as a writer and journalist, for whom Father had always a special respect. When I began my career as a journalist he always suggested to adjust with the sytem and make way for my expression. Now, I realize he was much more modern than me.

Madhumati River is atributary of the Padma (Ganges) River, flowing through southwestern Bangladesh. It leaves the Padma just north of Kushtia and flows 190 miles (306 km) southeast before turning south across the Sundarbans to empty into the Bay of Bengal. In its upper course it is called the Garai. It leaves the Madhumati River (there called the Baleswar) northeast of Khulna city and flows 110 miles (177 km) south past Chalna and Mungla through the Sundarbans to the Bay of Bengal. In its upper course it is called the Atharabanki
The river Madhumati is gradually losing navigability owing to emergence of shoals, it is learnt.
Shantidevi had three sons Anil,Pulin and Sudhir and two daughters Shreemati and sarala. Shreemati settled with her family in north 24 Parganas and her only son Nitai Pada Sarkar is a reputed businessman in Kankinar Jagdal area. Saral was a widow and used to live with us. She eloped with someone when I was only four or five years old. Father was liberal enough to take it easy but grand ma was shocked.

We had a joint family. My father Pulin Biswas was a committed social activist and Uncle sudhir was a medical practitioner. Hence her eldest son Anil used to look after the home and agriculture.Father went to riothit Assam in 1960.While he returned he sent my uncle sudhir there as he was a doctor. The refugees in assam even in the latest generation remember them , I realised when I visited the refugee colonies in burfak in Marigaon district of assam in 2003.

My youngest aunt ( kakima) remained at home. She was like a friend to me as my eldest cusin Meera got married in 1961.Aunt Usha devi and Eldest aunt (jethima) looked after me as I was the eldest boy in the family. Not only in the family or in the village, I got special treatment all over terai as I used to accompany father evrywhere.Later, I felt the same love everywhere in the Himalayan zone , Uttarakhand to Manipur. It is an achievement i may boast. I was never close to my mother and she never had a space. Zethima belonged to the Harichand guruchand family and she had the culture of gopalganj on the bank of Madhumati. Thus, the river always seemed to flow within me. Whenever i fly over Bangladesh to reach a plac in the North East I peep through the window to invent the river Madhumati. I have not touched the land of my anchestors in my life but the roots always speak for them.Even when I see a Taslima Nasreen, a Salam Azad or read Shamsur, Ilius, selina, Abu Bakar, Kabeer, Azad, Goon, Saha and the lot of themor read about the stance taken by the Intellegentia Bangladesh in Favour of democracy, freedom,soveriegnity and secularism , I feel a relationship. I am exicited to know that Narail happens to be a part of Tagore Zamidari and declassed and converted Tagores still inhabit the land forlorn.Later I read the great fight in Jassore sector and on the bank of river Madhumati in the freedom struggle of 1971. Now I feel what inspired my poor father to visit the forbidden land so often. I may realize why my grandma and her generation, the partition victims of 1947 could not forget the rivers, the fields, the jungles, the boats, the fruits and the harvest.

My grand mother never used to bathe with water artificial. She needed flowing water as she had in Madhumati.Anytime she would get irritated and curse the partition which threw her in a desert where no river passes by. She would spend most of her time busy with cattle on the bank of a rivulet near the village. We have so many of them around us as the intense Jungle of terai was just colonised. The jungle sustaind itself near lalkuan and gularbhoj. I came to know about this when my father was facing trial for Dhimri Block Peasants revolt of 1958. I heard about this when a policeman came on cycle and reached the land settlement cooperative village committee president to lacate and serve court summon to my father. He was away and I learnt at that very moment about the event and the arrest of my father. His hand was broken in the Rudrapur police station . Father and his Kisan sabha comrades faced the trial for ten years in various courts including High Court allahabad. I was also present in a hearing in Nainital colectriate and they lost the case. They were released on bail. I felt no difference .It was in 1963 when I visited the hillsatation and was spellbound by the beauty.

We were a lot of children in our home. Me, my real and cusin brothers and sister had to be taught by a resident teacher Abani Kaku and a music master Brajen babu. When Abani Kaku returned home in west Bengal we Had Jeeban Mama and Radhikada. We had to cross the river to go to the scholl in the nearby village Chittaranjan Pur. Officially it was a girl school where all children from the area were admitted. Madam christie used to live in a vacated quarter by Kundus who could not bear the migration and fled Bengal in 1960.We used to go to the school with Madam christie in a procession. It was alright in winter and summer but in the rainy season while the rivulet flooded we had to cross the river on large pans meant for making suger cakes Gur with sugar cane juice near Arjun Pur, the Risikh Punjabi village where we used to visit for lanagar often. Soon madam Chriestie was transferred. As my cusin Meeradi and her friends were married meanwhile,it was no more safe for we kids to cross the rivulets. Madam Chriestie had a relationship with the primary teacher Pitambar Pant in the primary school haridaspur, one KMaway fro our village on the Jafarpur Dineshpur Road. Madam got us transferred to Haridaspur enmasse.We had not any pucca road. It was very difficult to cross the mud and water but we had to bear till 1983-84 when at last we got a link road. After my marriage the bride refused to get down from the Zeep when it was entrapped in mud. Freedom fighter and Father`s most intin=mate friend Ramjee Roy, who got rehabiliated in Fulsinga near rudrapur as a freedom fighter, owned this Zeep. We had another freedom fighter in Basant kumar Bannerjee from the famous Banaras Bannerjee family who was rehabiliated in Khanpur number One. These people survive no more. but they had a great impact on my childhood. Ramjee Roy fought the Loksabha Election from Nainital against KC Pant in 1967. Pant won that election with thumping majority, though we supported Roy. I accompanied him in his election campaign and he used to take me very seriously. Even in 1977 he was with me and against my father who supported Mrs Indira Gandhi.

My granmother could not know the death of all those revulets, trees around as she died in seventy and Hripura Dam was built in Gularbhoj, some six miles upstream. We had enough fish for dail protien and enough water for our fields. Father opted for electric tubwells and Tiwari helped in electrification. Tiwari as a finnance minister of Uttar Pradesh inaugruated electricty in our village and I refuged to write the welcome address as I was dead against congress and its leaders including Tiwari and Pant. This prompted me to join Chipko and Uttarakhand movement in UP and Jharkhand movement in bihar later.

Grand Ma was full of sweet memories which she shared with us. Later,Prabhabati Devi, the mother of my aunt (Jethima) joined her in the family after the riots of 1964. Jethima Hemlata was her only child. She belonged to the famous Harichan Guruchand Family. The son of Guruchand Thakur, Pramatho Nath Thakur who was elected MP from Barasat deafting legendary dalit leader Jogendra Nath Mandal visited her sister, our didima in our village. The two old ladies were engaged with the rustic East Bengal culture. Orakandi, the centre of Matu Dharam was the home of Didima. Orakandi is situated under Gopalganj Subdivision, the home of Banga Bandhu Mujib, in Faridpur District. gopalganj later became an independent district. Folk poets like Vijay sarkar, Nishikant, Rasik, Rajen were discussed often. Some of them visited us, too. Grandma told us the stories of Ramayan and Mahabharat. She was very superstitious and I was very scientific as I had been influenced my doctor uncle who had been a technical wizard. We always made jokes of superstiotions. I refused to do Pranam to the brahmins and Purohit in childhood and for this I had been thrashed often. In fact the Bengali,English and Hindi literature made me an athiest who was in no mood to compromise. But I had to accompani Grandma whenever she visited a quack OJHA, KAVIRAJ, etc.I used to dishounour them openly and criticized their profession and said them that they were btrayers. Those rustic people in return loved me much .How strange it was.

We celebrated Gasi, the cultivation festival in the winter on Sankranti.The cattle were worshipped. The old ladies organised the mela of Tennath for the health of cattle. They also dictated to worship the evilpowers ghosts in our fields. Basantipur is, in fact, a name of a great joint family of East Bengal refugees from Jassore, Khulna and Barishal. There were different caste, creed,culture and dilects. We have two Brahmin and a kayasthafamilies among us. but we felt no discrimination. These people crossed the border and clubbed together and sustained the club in refugee camps and got the resettlement colony in terai after the first mass movement in Terai in 1956 . The village formed and they named it on my mother`s name. All festival were common. We had a sarbajaneen Durga Puja only In Dineshpur Bajar, the centre place of all 36 Bengal refugee colonies. There used to be a weekly Hat on satureday.dineshpur got a Junior Highschool which is now a government inter College, a primary health centre, a post office and an industrial trainig institute ITI with trades like electrical, fitter, welding, sewing,etc.

We children had the previllege to eat anywhere , sleep anywhere and play anywhere in the village as every home seemed to be a common property. We never felt any scarcity of love, passion,joy and sentiments. Those were abound. All the old people were very nostalgic. They had fresh wounds which continued to bleed life long. They wept for the lost homeland. It was very cold in winter and very hot in summer contrary to the average climate and weather in East Bengal. Food habits were different. We learnt to eat bread only in mid sixties with the import of PL 40. But the revulets were full of water and fishes used to swim in. At taht time the sikhs and punjabies did not eat fish neither the local population liked it. The Bengalies were the masters of all the revulets and fishing. There was enough wood for cooking.We needed only clothing and Kerosine from the market.With emphasise on education we needed stationary and books, too.We had to study Bengali and English with mendatory Hindi. We had a Bengali school and a Jtara, folkdrama party.Basantipur is still famousin Uttarakhand for its folk activities. It celebrates the main function of Netaji jayanti in the district on every 23rd January. Every one believed that India would be united once again as they felt the partition was political which meant nothing to them.

Even my father never accepted the border. He never used a passport or visa and crossed the border anytime as if it was nonexistant for him.He was arrested in Dhaka while participating a Bhasha andolan procession. He was once again arrested in 1971 when he demanded the merger of two Bengals as he felt it was the only solution of refugee problems. Our village was constituted in 1956 along with two other villages Udai Nagar and panchanan pur. Other villages in dineshpur area were set upin 1952-54. Narayan Dutta Tiwari won his first election in 1952 as a Praja socialist Party candiadate defeating congress nominee Shyam Lal Verma from Haldwani assembly seat. Pandit Nehru campaigned for verma in futile.

Tiwari first visited Lakhipur refugee colony in 1954 and since then he became the protagonist among Bengali refugees. He used to know everyone in this area by name. After the failure of Dhimri Block movement and because the CPI general secretary PC Joshi disowned the movement, Bengali refugees shifted their loyality to congress along with ND Tiwari who won the next assembly election fromKashipur in 1962 as a congress Nominee. Bengali population remained his mobile votebank in Kashipur and Haldwani. KC Pant won the Loksabha seat from Nainital. We had family relationship with both Tiwari and Pant. Our village was deprived of voting rights. They voted in 1967 and it was against Tiwari. Tiwari lost the election for which he began his campaign from our home. The brother of Shaheed-e-Ajam Sardar bhahat singh Rajendra sandhu also tried his luck fro kashipur seat in 1969 on Jnasangh Ticket. As Atal bihari Vajpayee was the President of the party and he promised my father that the party would take up rfugee issue,we supported Sandhu. THe mothre of the Shaheed came to our village and we were thrilled to see her face to face. We felt the warmth of the struggle for freedom.

We had a Kachhari Ghar with four varandahs which was full of music, jatra, folk, social and political activities . It was our guest house. While the joint family disintegrated, at first this social centre degenerated. Gassi has not been celebrated after the demise of Grand Ma. We had festivals like doal, the Bengali Holi and Gajan, worshipping og Lord Shiva. All these public festivals merged in Durga and Kali puja disintegrated. Really we are uprooted from tradition, culture and history. We the unfortuanate lot. We heard so much about Bhatiyali as SD burman sang on Vividh Bharati stimulatng the nostalgia of my people. They were excited with Baulgan, Bhab Gaan and zaaree Gaan. Bhawaiya was in their blood. Ashtak agn was a yearly affair.

I was very irritated whenever these peopleused to go back in remiminicsence. I used to ask why they left.I wonder why they lost their land just to avoid conversion while they have no trace of their culture. I treated Bangla nationality movement in East Bengal as it denied religion and preferred mother tongue as unifing spirit. And We have lost our mother tongue.
Now I know all about the partition saga and continued persecution of minorities in east Bengal. I sympathise with the flow of migrant people. Now I realise how they overcome the calamity, an infinite tragedy haunting millions lifelong.

When I read about Pottery of Lohagara upazilas in Narail district is on the verge extinction due to the popularity of plastic made home appliances, it was a reminiscent of Grandma nostalgia once again.Once, the villagers of the upazila used to make use of earthen made domestic devices for their daily necessary. The potters made pitchers, plates, pots and other household devices by their traditional hand made machines set in a particular room of their houses. The potters were locally called as Paal.
The potters were of Hindu community. Their main source of income were making household devices with soil and selling these to the village people.The villagers used to buy their necessaries from the potters in exchange of different crops produced in their fields as most of the families in those days were fully depended on agriculture.
The potters came to the villages by carrying pottery
In a bamboo made basket on head and used to attract the attention of the villagers by calling- “Rakhben Hari Patil, Thile…”
This call of the potters was familiar to the villagers.
In those days most of the potter families were well-off as the demand of soil made household devices in the villages even in the towns were very much popular. It is mentionable that the plastic made household devices were not available and was costly.
On the other hand, the household devices made by silver and other costly materials were out of the buying capacity of the village people. As a result, the villagers used it.
According to sources, a great number of pal (potter) families had been living in the different areas of the three upazila in the district for years as the water ways of the river Madhumati, Nabaganga, Chitra was convenient to bring their produces to another places. On the other hand a lot of Hindu families were living in the different areas of the district.

A good number `of pal families lived in Mohajon, Kumardanga, Doulatpur, Itna, Korfa, Laxmipasha, Lohagara villages in the district. Most of the villages are situated on the bank of the river Madhumati. In those days, it was a common sight to the local people that the boats full of earth made household devices were plying in the rivers.
But now the scenario has changed a lot. These types of boats are rarely seen in these rivers as popularity of plastic made household devices replaced the soil made devices. A large number of pal families have already left the country and who are living here have changed their professions.

Bangladesh slammed for persecution of Hindus , wrote Aziz Haniffafrom Washington, DC on November 02, 2006 and the bleeding touched me once again. She wrote:`The US Commission on International Religion Freedom slammed Bangladesh for continuing persecution of minority Hindus. It also urged the Bush administration to get Dhaka to ensure protection of religious freedom and minority rights before the next national elections in January.

In a new report titled 'Policy Focus on Bangladesh', released on Capitol Hill last week, the USCIRF, an independent, bipartisan federal agency funded by the US Congress, said that since its last election, 'Bangladesh has experienced growing violence by religious extremists, intensifying concerns expressed by the countries religious minorities'.

It noted that 'Hindus are particularly vulnerable in a period of rising violence and extremism, whether motivated by religious, political or criminal factors, or some combination'.

The commission, includes one South Asian American, former New York solicitor general Preeta Bansal, now an attorney with the New York-headquartered Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher and From.

'The position of Hindus has multiple disadvantages: perceived identification with India, an alleged preference for one of Bangladesh's two major political parties, and religious beliefs abhorred by Muslim fundamentalists', it noted.

The report said that in many instances, 'such violence appears aimed at encouraging Hindus to flee in order to seize their property in what is a desperately land-poor country'.

It recalled that during and immediately after Bangladesh's Parliamentary election in October 2001, 'there were numerous reports of illegal land seizures, arson, extortion, sexual assault, and intimidation of religious minority group members, particularly Hindus'.

The report, drawn up after commission members, including Bansal, visited Bangladesh, said that 'minority group representatives and human rights groups with whom the commission met ascribed these attacks to armed militant groups or to partisans of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

'As Hindus and other non-Muslims are popularly perceived to favor the Awami League, intimidating Hindu voters was viewed as a way to help to the BNP and its Islamic allies in the elections', it stated.

The Commission warned the lack of accountability for crimes reported against minority groups in the previous election promoted an atmosphere of impunity and for a renewal of violence against Hindus and other non-Muslims in the upcoming election.It said that during meetings with the commission, Hindus said they feared political manipulation of voter registration process that could have them excluded from voter rolls. They said government representatives administering the process overlooked minority neighborhoods.

'Hindu leaders with whom the commission met also described problems their children faced in gaining access to religious education in their own religion, as is supposed to be the case in Bangladesh's public education system', the report said.The commission urged the Bush administration to 'face up to the seriousness of the threat facing Bangladesh and to lead the international community in monitoring the January 2007 elections'.

It also called on Washington to urge Dhaka to prevent anti-minority violence during the election and to encourage the Bangladesh government to address religious extremism and violence.

The Hindu American Foundation applauded the report and commended the commission on the recommendations it submitted to the administration. The commission had invited the HAF as a respondent at a meeting it convened on Capital Hill to coincide with the report's release.Ishani Chowdhury, HAF's executive director, told rediff.com the commission's policy brief reiterates the foundation's concern about the situation of the minority Hindus in Bangladesh.
She said the commission's report was in concert with the HAF's detailed report on human rights violations in Bangladesh against minority Hindus.’
Torture Against Press In Bangladesh Continues , and the journalists represents well the spirit
FromNew York, U.S.A,Ripan Kumar Biswas,Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com has written:

`Torture against journalists in Bangladesh is still going in full swing during the present “Interim Government.” It is very hard to find an end to the climate of impunity and to bring to justice the perpetrators of violence and harassment directed towards journalists.

Even on November 19, 2006, the electoral commission banned access to journalists who went to a preparatory session for the next general elections. No grounds were given. A similar ban had been imposed the previous week too.The interim government’s job is to create the conditions for free elections which should obviously include guarantees of security and freedom for the press but it is hardly to see the press freedom in Bangladesh.

The European parliament has stressed out this very clearly and has requested President Iajuddin Ahmed to take active measures to protect journalists.”

Ripan Kumar Biswas was an intern at The Seoul Times and a freelance writer based in New York.

I know all about the fight of friends like Taslima Nasreen, whose return to Bangladesh is impossible and Salam Azad , the writer of Ethenic Cleansing in exile. Even in Left ruled Bengal Taslima has to face Fatwa. Not only this, the district Magistrate of Midnapore prohibited her to read her poetry there. The latest news came from siliguri Bookfair where Taslima was invited to inaugruate. But Muslim fundamentals came on steerts and organizers of the book fair cancelled the invitation. It is good that the writers in North Bengal are enough vocal against this compromise. A very eminent writer Bhagirath Mishra is leading the protest. But in Kolkata , where the ban on Dwikhandito was supported by left alligned intellectuals including the Sahitya Academy Vice President Sunil Gangopadhyay, calm prevails. No poet dared to go to Midnapur to defy the DM order. They say that no one is more progressive, more democratic, more secular and this is an example only. The myth has to be broken.
Whereas in Bangladesh the story of resistance under islamic rule is quite different.Kalayan Bannerjee, a Satkhira, Bangladesh based corresponded for Dainik Prothom Alo, has been received death threat by local BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) convenor and former lawmaker Habibul Islam Habib on November 24, 2006. There was a news item published by Mr. Bannerjee in The Prothom Alo in its November 23 issue under headlined “Three sensational murders may change election result of 4-party alliance in Satkhira-1 constituency” which goes directly against Mr. Habib as he is an aspirant for alliance ticket from the satkhira-1 constituency in the coming election.

It is reported that Couple of days before, Subrata Deb Roy Sanjay was beaten badly and his home was ransacked by Hazi Mujib, a businessman who supports the last ruling party. He is a reporter from Sylhet, Bangladesh for the dailies Dainik Khabor and Sylheter Dak.

Ripan has a detailed story to tell. On November 16, 2006, four journalists, named, Niamul Kabir Sajal of Dainik Prothom Alo, Babul Hossain of Dainik Janakantha, Mir Golam Mostafa of Dainik Shamokal and a photo reporter Nuruzzaman were attacked and beaten by local militiamen when they went to a village in the north of Dhaka. They were there to investigate a report of threats against members of the Ahmadiyah religious minority.

And the story continues on.

Tuhinul Islam Tuhin, the correspondent of the daily Ittefaq at the University of Rajshahi, near Dhaka, received a death threat on November 17, 2006 because of a report he wrote about the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student movement that supports the Awami League. The student movement’s leader, Ibrahim Hossain Moon, had also threatened Tuhin the previous day.

Hasibur Rahman Bilu, reporter of the Daily Star, Radio Today and radio Deutsche Welle, in Bogra, north of Dhaka, was beaten recently with bamboo canes by militants belonging to a student organization linked to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Though he got serious leg injuries, he asked to be discharged for fear of fresh reprisals.

Photographer Shafiqul Islam Shafiq of the Focus Bangla photo news agency, who has reportedly been tortured since his arrest by an elite home affairs ministry unit on October 28, 2006 in Shikdari Bazar, in the northwestern Rajshahi region, on unfounded allegations of links with extremist movements.

In addition, journalists in Bangladesh can’t write freely about the Jamaat without facing death threats or assassination attempts. After getting deadly alert from London based mighty news media “The Guardian” and Tokyo based “The Japan Times,” now Seoul based “The Korean Times” has mentioned of possible attacks by a terrorist group against the people in Bangladesh.

Especially on October 28, 2006, a total of 15 media personnel were injured by police or demonstrators during protests in Dhaka, Rajshahi, and Mohonganj.

According to different news media, in 2006 three journalists were killed and at least 95 others attacked, and fifty five press correspondents were the targets of intimidation because of articles considered to be ‘non Islamic’. In the course of the year more than seventy journalists have been forced to flee from Bangladesh.

Nonetheless, journalists in Bangladesh always stand high to perform their professional tasks. No need to mention about the 2002 International Press Freedom Award winner journalist Mr. Tipu Sultan who stands top for his high profiled professionalism.

Jute Industry Saga, A Story of AN Infinite Grave Yard In Bengal
Palash Biswas
(Pl Publish and send a copy. Contact: PalashcBiswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551)

We had not seen any Jute Mill during my childhood in a resettled refugee colony, Basantipur in the district of Nainital, Uttar Pradesh. But the Bengali peasants migrated from erswhile East bengal used to grow Jute in their fields. We knew the production marketed was meant for the jute mills in West Bengal and Bihar. I came to West Bengal in June 1973 having appeared in Up Board`s High school Exams. My all relatives settled in different districts of West Bengal as the were able to transfer their property. I visited places in 24 Parganas, Nadia, burdwan and Kolkata. My father Pulin Babu was very keen to get me introduced to his kith and keen whom I met for the first time. Here I invented the Jute Industry in the Manchestor of India, accross The Great Gangas flowing besides Kolkata. All mills were running at the time. All suburban cities near Kolkata were flooded with people coming from UP and Bihar to work in Jute Mills. They had settled in Bengal generation after generation.
When I began my career as a journalist from Dhanbad , Bihar in 1980 , My eldest cusin Nitai Pada Sarkar, my aunt`s (pisima) only son had set up a Jute go down in his village Keuati on a side of kalyani Highway. I was a regular visitor to this place and witnessed the seasonal activities. At that time also the jute mills were running. In 1981, there was some problem about payment and my brother was in deep trouble as he had to pay the peasants in differents districts of Bengal. But the industry seemed to be running.
Now the scenerio is quite changed .All six major jute mills nationalised by Mrs Indira gandhi in seventies and run by National Jute Manufacturer Corporation of india(NJMC) have been closed. The central government has declared VRS for all employees and it paid all the staff, about fourteen thousands of them with zero production. All Jute mills accross Hugli seem to close down but some privete ones.
NJMC Ltd. is a wholly owned undertaking of Govt. Of India. The NJMC involved in the activities of modernization and renovation of jute mills under it. I witnessed my cusin shifting his business as Jute was no more a profit game. He had dozens of seasonal workers coming from malda and Murshidabad to collect Jute and load it for the Jute mills. No one comes these days and the go down has been left on leese. Nitai Da began Hatchery, Fishery and Nursery. Now he has emerged as a prominent business man withut jute in this area.

A PALL of gloom shrouds the industrial scenario in West Bengal. At the time of nationalisation, production of the mills under NJMC was around 1.10 lakh tonnes per annum which went up 1.33 lakh tonnes in 1985-86. But, there has been a steep decline in production during the last three years. THE Textile Ministry's move to seek alternative routes to the closure of the functioning but unviable six jute mills under the National Jute Mills Corporation (NJMC) is prompted by making it a test case for future tackling of sickness in industries run by the Government, besides protecting the interests of workers. Official sources told Business Line here that it is also the first case where the Government had acted with tact even at the incipient sign of sickness before these units become permanently crippled by endemic sickness.

NJMC was incorporated in 1980 and out of the six mills under its umbrella, five are located in and around Kolkata and one at Katihar, Bihar. NJMC is the only public sector undertaking engaged in jute goods manufacture. The undertakings of the six jute mills, viz., National, Kinnison, Khardah, Alexandra, Union and RBHM, the management of which were earlier taken over by the Government under the Industries (Development & Regulation) Act, 1951, were nationalised and vested in NJMC. These mills produced traditional jute goods such as hessian, sacking, jute twine and also jute carpet backing cloth (CBC).
The production in these mills has been adversely affected due to non-supply of raw jute and other inputs as the Government of India has curtailed budgetary support for this purpose, resulting in increase in its losses. The workers and staff are not getting their wages and salaries in time. The statutory liabilities of this corporation as on 1-1-2001 are as follows: provident fund and pension dues approximately Rs. 55.64 crore, ESI dues Rs.17.63 crore, tax dues Rs. 1.16 crore, salary and wage dues Rs.17.51 crore (wages of three fortnights due to the workers and salaries for two months due to officers and staff), and gratuity dues of about Rs. 5.94 crore to 702 workers. The Union Ministry of Textiles has declared before the BIFR, at its hearing on 27th June, that they were relinquishing their control and responsibility over NJMC, thereby paving the way for closure in near future.The jute barons have not deposited their PF and ESI contribution and a large number of retired workers have been deprived of their gratuity. Total PF, ESI and gratuity arrears till December 12, 2000 were Rs. 144.7 crore, 86.78 crore and 100 crore respectively.

Besides NJMC, the JCI functions as the official agency in implementing Govt. policy of providing minimum support to the jute growers and to serve as a stabilizing agency in the raw jute sector. In order to justify its functions, the JCI is involved in :
Stabilization of raw jute prices through sale of stocks procured at MSP
Establishing BIS standards for raw jute grading
Import of raw jute to supplement the domestic requirement in the industry
Marketing of diversified jute product, through a sales emporium at Calcutta.

Still we see the basic production system in West Bengal devasted and the Manchestor of India has become literally a graveyard infinite. Once upon a time Barrackpur- shyam bazartrunk road , popularly known as BT Road used to be full of joyful activities by the workers of the Jute mill around night and day. Now the BT Road is deserted . Closed industries were transferred to Promoters and we have several housing colonies accross the BT road.

I have a friend Ram Bihari rsiding in Kinnison Jute mill campus in Titagargh. His Father Ram Prakash was a Jamadar, head of Durabans in the mill. He came froma village situated near Arrah under district Bhojpur in Bihar. Late Ramprakash worked in the mill for 40 years and retired at the age of 58. He expired this year in his village. Rambihari and his family has to shift else where. His grand father Ram Pravesh also worked in alexendra Jute Mill. We have Hind poet Gopal Prasad who is a mazdoor in Kankinara Jute mill and lives in the Mazoor line. His family including his wife is also a jute mazdoor. Gopal Prasad has got published some of his poetry books. From his three tier home , he publishes a little magazine ERA for years. He has also a rich stock of old little mags. I have visted his house with my wife years back. At that time the mill was on production.
This time me and my wife Sabita have a chance to visit a closed jute mill campus and the experience is horrible. Beside Kinnison , a private Jute mill Kelvin is running . The siren and the sound of machin in action haunt the unemployed unprecarious workers of the past. Their suffering may not be tolerated.

Many of Ram bihari`s relatives worked in the mill. Large number of people from Bihar, UP, Orrissa, tamil Nadu, andhra and Nepal came and worked in the mill. The mill stopped production from 2003 and is paying all three thousand employees with zero production. The workers come to the millgate six O`clock for attendence. Some eighty durbans and night guards have some work in the mill. General Manager Mr Roy and Personnel manager Hasan sarkar live in the campus whisch is deserted by other officers who have shifted themselves in private houses. Mazdoor lines are still flooded with people.

Meanwhile, salary and wages payments for the 20,000 employees of NJMC, whose total accumulated loss is Rs 2,900 crore, have become irregular. The helpless lot gets the payment in four-six months gap arbitrarily.
Jute industry: Out of 73 jute mills in the country 59 are in West Bengal, providing employment to 2,00,000 workers directly, and approximately 40 lakh jute growers are also dependent on this industry. Of these 59 mills, 5 mills are run by National Jute Manufacturing Corporation (NMJC) Limited and one by the Government of West Bengal. Of late, this industry has been witnessing widespread workers’ unrest against the most barbaric repression of the jute barons. Lockout was declared in 17 mills and only 10 have been reopened. Out of these ten, in some mills, the management forced the unions to agree to very adverse terms and conditions to lift the lockout. Again, in some mills, wages were reduced for all categories of workers.The entire jute industry is undergoing a structural change. Restructuring and reorganizing the jute industry is the strategic aim of the jute barons. By dismantling the existing wage structure and recomposing the existing workforce, the jute barons are engaging a large number of new workers with very low wages sans statutory benefits like PF, ESI, gratuity etc. The three-decade old pattern of workers composition, viz. permanent, special badli and badli, achieved after numerous struggles is fast eroding and the innumerable day-labourers called ‘vouchers’ are emerging as the main component of the workforce and they are becoming the determining factor in both production and movement. The emergence of this highly backward, almost medieval, production relation coupled with drastic reduction in man-machine ratio is the source of all movements in recent times.

It is a pathetic scene to witness. All Buildings have been deserted. The club, the library, the honey point, Garage all are neglected memory of a golden past. The health centre is still run.
A deserted jetty is hanging in the mid Ganga with a giant crane. A RLY line is traced from the mill to the jetty. I visited the jetty under dim light of setting sun. Once upon a time ships were loaded with products complete in the millfor marketing. Now the broken jetty symbolises the broken backbone of the workers and the Jute industry itself. There I saw a little Nepali girl Sarasawti aged eleven sitting alone. She seems to be deprived of her dreams. Her parents also reside in the campus. Her Father Tarendra Bahadur is a duraban.

I slept with some other in the library in an open field with some others. they are just waiting VRS. The morning is engaged with the disciples of Baba Ramdev. Bhim Bahadur leads the yoga exercise there.
The distraught and disillusioned workers allege that trade unions affiliated to both the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Congress work in collusion with the management leaving them to fend for themselves. Sabita could not sleep in the night as bugs attacked her vehemently. what bugs have attacked the Jute Industry , we wonder.

Unable to bear the grinding poverty, several mill workers have left for their villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The rest somehow eke out a hand-to-mouth living and complain that despite repeated representations, the State Government has hardly initiated any step to unlock the close factories.

The belt brings out a story of "missed opportunities" and a "graveyard" of promises, the workers say.
Had this pragmatic thinking to stem the rot even as it begins to set gripped the authorities in the case of the National Textile Corporation (NTC) a decade ago, the dithering and the costly delay in finding a turnaround strategy to the 120-odd NTC mills most of which turned chronically sick and escalating the burden of the exchequer would have been obviated, the sources added.

The jute mills in the district North 24 Parganas, which actually form the hub of industrial activity in the belt, are hamstrung by bickerings among several trade unions, each trying to outdo the other at the alter of the interests of the workers, it is alleged. At least eight jute mills, including Prabartak Jute Mill, Gouripur Jute Mill, Reliance Jute Mill, Agarpara Jute Mill, Titagarh Jute Mill and Kelvin Jute Mill in the district remain closed, while the work in the mills under the National Jute Mill Corporation (NJMC) has almost come to a grinding halt.

The woe of the Left Front was compounded when the Baranagar jute mill, which was closed for several months before reopening, witnessed an acute labour problem leading to the ghastly killing of two senior officials and a worker. Besides the jute mills, several cotton mills, including the Bangalakshmi cotton mill, Annapurna cotton mill and Mahalakshmi cotton mill remained closed. The once thriving Titagarh jute mill is still in the dark, while the Tyre Corporation of India’s Kankinara unit is almost in shambles.

THE Union Ministry of Textiles decided to close down all six mills of National Jute Manufactures Corporation (NJMC) Ltd, warned representatives of trade union wings of the workers and officers of the organisation. But niether left front, nor the state government could take any initiative to stall the closure. The State Government would offer to run these mills given the financial implications, though they said that workers' co-operatives might come forward to run them. At that time, addressing a press conference in Kolkata, Gurudas Dasgupta of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) said that the Ministry's decision had already been conveyed to the Board for Financial and Industrial Reconstruction (BIFR). "In the last BIFR hearing on the revival of the NJMC, a senior officer of the Ministry informed the Bench that the Government wishes to close down all six mills of NJMC," Mr Dasgupta said. Dasgupta said the Union Government "gave false hopes and assurances" to employees of the company for over a decade that it was eager to revive the ailing public sector jute company. "It is sad that even before the BIFR could take a decision on the revival of NJMC, the Union Government has taken such an unfair decision," he added.He further alleged that the NJMC management has failed to pay the statutory dues of the workers. The company has not paid the workers wages for the last four months. Dearness allowance (DA) is due since November 2001. As on date, total outstanding provident fund and ESI (employees state insurance) dues are Rs 131 crore and Rs 25 crore respectively.

Five out of six NJMC mills are located in West Bengal and one in Bihar. At present, the Alexandra and National jute mills are closed. For the year ended March 31, 2003, NJMC reported a loss of Rs 81 crore but the officers failed to give the total accumulated loss of NJMC. Electricity has been disconnected and water supply to Alexandra and National jute mills has been discontinued. "Instead of trying to solve the company's problems, the management is trying to vacate the corporate head office in the name of cost control. The motive behind such move is purely for personal gains of a few senior executives," the officers alleged. It may be noted that the present management of NJMC has initiated "job-conversion" activities in two of the NJMC units, namely Kinnison and Kardah jute mills whereby private organisations are allowed to outsource jute goods orders from the NJMC units. Cotrarily, Trade union leaders allege that the terms of the last tripartite agreement signed between the workers, the West Bengal Government and the NJMC management were not being implemented.

The working of NJMC for revival of sick jute Mills is best expressed in the following episode:

THE cash-rich Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation (MMTC) refused tender documents by the ailing National Jute Manufacturing Corporation (NJMC) which is currently with the BIFR. Following the refusal, MMTC has approached the Ministry of Textiles to organise a tripartite meeting between NJMC, MMTC and the Ministry.
Since MMTC bagged a substantial order for exporting hessian and sackings, it wanted to get the job done by three mills under NJMC -- National Jute Mill, Kinnission Jute Mill and Kharda Jute Mill. MMTC's plan was to provide raw jute to the three NJMC mills which, in turn, would convert them into hessian and sackings for sale to its overseas buyers. When NJMC came out with an advertisement seeking such conversion jobs, MMTC not only expressed interest but its officials approached NJMC for talks. But nothing concrete emerged from the discussions. NJMC refused to provide MMTC with any information about procedural details, modus operandi and related issues during the oral discussions, an official said.

The MMTC Director, Mr B.B.L. Madhukar, in a letter dated June 25, 2001, to the Textiles Secretary, a copy of which is available with Business Line, has said that ``the officials from our Calcutta office were in touch with the officials of NJMC but nothing concrete could emerge from their discussions. Meanwhile, NJMC issued advertisements calling for offers in respect of National, Kinnission and Kharda jute mills and accordingly MMTC conveyed its interest in-principle and requested to inform procedural formalities, modus operandi and other related issues.'' The letter further informs the Textiles Secretary that ``we have not received any response so far from NJMC. We bring to your kind notice that MMTC, being a PSU, is trying to find out via-media under which raw jute can be supplied to NJMC for converting the same into hessian and sacking so that a sick unit can even become a profitable unit over a period of time.''
And the attitude of the govt. of India is reflectedthus:Sunday, February 19, 2006Textile, clothing industry to grow to USD85 bn by 2010

New Delhi, Aug 12, 2006: Indian textile and clothing industry is expected to grow to USD 85 billion by 2010 and would require an investment of a whopping Rs 1,40,000 crore, the Lok Sabha was informed today. The sector is also expected to generate 12 million jobs mainly for semi-skilled and unskilled labour, Textiles Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela said in a written reply to a query. He said this industry is poised to face new challenges with the abolition of quotas.
Following the government's approval to a textile ministry's proposal to offer VRS to prune the manpower of national jute manufacturing corporation (NJMC) about 6,505 employees of the six jute mills under NJMC have been given VRS, the minister said.Among the steps taken by the government to boost the exports of processed fabrics and other value added items were the introduction of technology fund upgradation scheme (TFUS), a credit linked subsidy scheme of 10 per cent under TFUS in addition to the existing five per cent interest reimbursement.

AITUC protested on 22nd Feb, 2002, the decision to sell off 6 NJMC mills.

The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) has expressed shock and surprise over the Central Government's decision to sell off six mills owned by the National Jute Mills Corporation (NJMC). While protesting against the decision, which was disclosed by the Secretary, Textiles Ministry, to a representatives of the union during a meeting at Kolkata, the AITUC said the sale was being effected in a ``most unscrupulous way and at a much lower price than the actual value of the mills''. In a statement, the AITUC general secretary, Gurudas Dasgupta, said although the NJMC management had itself submitted to the BIFR that the current valuation of its land was around Rs. 310 crores, the mills are being sold away to private parties at a mere Rs. 27 crores.
"We are not against the concept of job-conversion but we certainly oppose the way it is currently being done in NJMC. According to our estimates, the faulty job-conversion activities in NJMC will force it to incur an additional loss of Rs 13.5 crore every year," Mr Dasgupta said.

Production from these six units, which was 77,583 tonnes in 1996-97, came down progressively to touch 46,605 tonnes in 1999-2000 and further down in 2001. The operating loss incurred by these units went up from Rs 91.83 crore to Rs 126 crore (projected) in 2000-01, even as the budgetary support given to these units for maintenance and salary disbursement amounts to an average of Rs 96 crore per annum during the last two years. These units have permanent employees numbering 11,000.

The sources said that even though NJMC was referred to BIFR since August 1992, it held on February 23, 2001, that NJMC was unlikely to make its networth positive within a plausible time, while coping with all its financial commitments. BIFR, accordingly, directed that a show-cause notice be issued to the holding company for its winding up. As BIFR set a deadline of June 27, 2001, for a public notice to be issued for any objections/suggestion on its ruling, the Government resolved that in the event of BIFR passing a winding up order the interest of workers would be seriously hurt. Hence, a mill-wise viability study was made and the preliminary results revealed that three mills out of six are viable, that too in the private sector.

However, the Government has decided that attempts should be undertaken to revive all the six mills of NJMC and hence at a Union Cabinet meeting on June 26, 2001, it was decided to offer alternatives to closure so that BIFR would not proceed with the winding up operations. Accordingly, the Cabinet approved that the Government would make a plea to BIFR to offer these mills to workers' co-operatives in the first instance. In case no response is received, offers would be made to State Governments, public sector undertakings and the private sector with the rider that employment of permanent workers would be protected and whoever bids must run these mills at least for 10 years. The sources made it clear that if a particular unit or units is not transferred, the interest of the workers would be protected by giving them a voluntary retirement scheme as per DPE guidelines and the units closed under the ID Act before any liquidation of NJMC is ordered.

THE Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) criticised the Union Government on its decision to go ahead with the disinvestment plans of National Jute Manufactures Corporation (NJMC) Ltd. Industrial Investment Bank of India (IIBI), was yet to submit a rehabilitation package as advised by BIFR.
The Board had also asked the different parties to the case to submit reports on the socio-economic impact of NJMC disinvestment in West Bengal and Bihar. The matter is likely to be heard again in August.

Industry sources say that IIBI has already shortlisted three bidders out of the 13 applicants for the six units of the ailing NJMC. The three companies are Ambica Multifibres Ltd, Hastings Jute Mills Ltd and Cheviot Jute Mills Ltd. While Mr Avanti Kankaria owns Ambica Multifibres, Hastings Jute Mills belongs to Mr Sanjay Kajaria. Cheviot belongs to Mr H.V Kanoria. Ambica Multifibres has bid for three NJMC units, namely, National, Kinnison and the Bihar-based RBHM Jute Mill. For the National jute mill, it is said to have quoted a price of Rs 23 crore against the reserve price of Rs 20.72 crore. The prices for Kinnison and RBHM are said to be Rs 16.50 crore and Rs 3.38 crore respectively. Hastings' price quotations for Alexandra and Union jute mills are Rs 7.14 crore and Rs 8.90 crore respectively. Cheviot has quoted Rs 14.11 crore for the Kardah unit.The total price quotation for NJMC units stands at Rs 73.03 crore and industry sources aver that this was higher than the reserve price fixed by the Union Government. According to the disinvestment norms, the successful bidders will not be allowed to retrench workers, and the Government will take care of the provident fund dues.

About Jute
Jute is a rainy season crop, sown from March to May according to rainfall and type of land. It is harvested from June to September depending upon whether the sowings are early or late.

Climate and Soils
Jute requires a warm and humid climate with temperature between 24° C to 37° C. Constant rain or water-logging is harmful. The new gray alluvial soil of good depth, receiving salt from annual floods, is best for jute. Flow ever jute is grown widely in sandy loams and clay loams.

Sowing of jute
Sowing of jute in midlands and high lands starts with showers in March or April and continues till early June in the western part of the jute belt. Compost or firm yard manure, Phosphorus and Potash, Nitrogen fertilizers are used as a fertilizer. Interculturing is essential in the early stage. Pasts are also require for plant protection.

Harvesting
Jute is harvested any time between 120 days to 150 days when the flowers have been shed, early harvesting gives good healthy fibers. The plant from 8 to 12 feet high are cut with stickles at or close the ground level. In flooded land, plants are up rooted. The harvested plants are left in field for 3 days for the leaves to shed.The stems are then made up into bundles for steeping in water. Steeping is carried out immediately after

NATIONAL JUTE MANUFACTURES CORPORATION LIMITED (NJMC), Kolkata

Background
National Jute Manufactures Corporation Limited (NJMC) was incorporated in 1980. There are six nationalised Jute Mills under its management of which five are located in and around Calcutta and one at Katihar, Bihar. NJMC is the only Public Sector Undertaking engaged in Jute goods manufacture. The Undertakings of the six Jute Mills viz. National, Kinnison, Khardah, Alexandra, Union and RBHM, the management of which were earlier taken over by the Govt. under the Industries (Development & Regulation) Act 1951 were nationalised and vested in NJMC. The Mills produce traditional Jute goods like Hessian, Sacking, Jute Twine and also Jute Carpet Backing Cloth (CBC).

Production, Productivity & Performance
At the time of Nationalisation production of the mills under NJMC was around 1.10 Lac tons per annum which went up to 1.33 Lac tons in the year 1985-86. There is however, a decline in production during the last 3 years. The present trend of production, productivity & performance is tabulated above at Table 12.1.

Reference to BIFR
In view of continuous cash loss and complete erosion of net worth, NJMC was referred to the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) on 11th Aug., 1992. BIFR has directed the Operating Agency (IIBI) to prepare a Unitwise viability.

Infrastructure
Currently JCI is operating through 171 purchase centers situated in 7 jute growing States, namely, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tripura. In order to increase its market coverage JCI during the current season approached to the Apex Cooperative Societies of the jute growing States to participate in the MSP operation in raw jute/mesta through their centers. In response to this, 40 cooperative centres in West Bengal and 5 cooperative centres in Bihar are acting as agents of JCI in procuring raw jute during the current season (2000-01) under MSP operation. Apart from this attempts were made to utilize the village level service societies to procure raw jute directly from the growers and to deliver the same to the nearest JCI/Cooperative centers. By this arrangement 5 village level service societies are procuring raw jute in Assam.

WORKERS of 59 jute mills in West Bengal, led by 15 trade unions including the Bengal Chatkal Mazdoor Union (BCMU), went on an indefinite strike on December 29 to press their legitimate demands. They were faced with inhuman practices followed by the jute mill owners and the latter’s refusal to accede to the workers’ agreed demands.

The jute industry is an important industry in West Bengal and for the nation’s economy. There are about two and a half crore people directly or indirectly dependent on this industry, including 50 lakh farmers and six lakh workers. In the 1960s, India was the largest producer and exporter of jute products in the world, with substantial contributions to foreign exchange. But the indifferent central policies since the 1970s onwards, the mill owners’ greed for unreasonable profits, the neglect of machinery and equipment, and their open loot like activities led to an unprecedented crisis at the end of the century. Now the exports stand at only 10 per cent. Even then, this industry earns foreign exchange worth Rs 600 crore every year.

There are 72 chatkals (jute mills) in India, with West Bengal accounting for 59. About 7 or 8 are currently closed. During the last few years, production has increased despite the closure of mills. The industry in Bengal produced about 15.69 lakh tonnes of jute products in 1999; in 2002 this sore to 15.86 lakh tonnes. Out of this, 15 lakh tonnes were utilised for making the bags for sugar and grains packaging. The rest was exported or used for other purposes.

THE CENTRE’S OFFENSIVE

But the BJP led central government had been encouraging synthetic bags at the expense of jute and the central textile ministry has been attempting to amend the Jute Packaging Material Act 1987 that stipulated compulsory use of jute for packaging purposes. And this despite the fact that the use of synthetic bags for packaging fertilisers and food grains is globally banned. The World Health Organisation and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, had stressed that packaging food grains in synthetic materials is not conducive for people’s health. A committee of scientists too has clearly stated that sugar, tea and coffee must be packaged in jute bags only. Cement bags must also be made of jute. Despite this, jute bags are utilised for packaging only 20 to 25 per cent of the food grains and fertilisers. The central government has tried to scrap the Jute Packaging Material Act 1987 under the pressure of plastic manufacturers. About a year earlier, a ministerial committee had recommended that jute packaging for sugar and food grains be reduced to 75 or 60 per cent. In accordance with this, the Vajpayee government slashed the quota of jute for the packaging of these items from 100 to 80-75 per cent. In 2003-04, this would further be slashed to 50-60 per cent. The central government is clearly making efforts to stop the use of jute in cement and urea packaging.

The Left Front government of West Bengal has made determined interventions in this matter. After the stay given by the High Court, the central government appealed to the Supreme Court to allow it to scrap the Jute Packaging Material Act. The political motives of the central government are clear: it is eager to attack the workers and industry in West Bengal because, if it is successful in this task, it can pave the way for the economic decline in West Bengal.

While attacking the jute workers, the central government’s effort will also take away the livelihood of jute growers. Raw jute is purchased at a support price. About 75 lakh bales of raw jute were produced in West Bengal in 2002-03. But the Jute Corporation of India purchased only 20 lakh bales. The farmers had perforce to sell the rest at lower rates. The government rate was Rs 950 per tonne but, as the JCI did not purchase at this price, growers had to sell it through brokers who purchased it at Rs 600 per tonne.

It seems the central government is not worried about the future of the jute industry. This is evident from the condition of the NJMC jute mills. As stated earlier, there are of 59 jute mills in West Bengal. Five out of these are run by the central government and, among them, the Alexander Jute Mill and Union North Mill have stopped production. Their workers and employees have not been paid salaries for six months. The central offensive on the 20,000 workers and employees of the NJMC continues. The central government owes to the workers and employees of these mills Rs 22.44 crore as ESI, Rs 75.70 crore as PL and Rs 50 crore as gratuity.

MILLS OWNERS’ OFFENSIVE

At the same time, the lockouts and work suspension by mill owners have also caused immense harm to the workers. According to the available official figures, lockouts accounted for 72.90 per cent of the mandays lost in the industry while strikes accounted for only 6.20 per cent. The respective figures were 58.40 and 20.72 per cent in 2000, 79.40 and 4.40 per cent in 2001, and 60.83 and 10.0 per cent in 2002. These figures clearly prove that lockouts claimed more mandays than strikes.
In the 1990s, the mill owners and the central government sharpened their offensive on 2.5 lakh workers. The workers had to determinedly oppose these attacks through agitation. The mill owners an

Leftist Hypocricy: Dual Policy On SEZ, Land Acquision and Nuclear Deal
Palash Biswas
(Pl Publish and send a copy. Contact: PalashcBiswas, c/o Mrs Arati Roy, GostoKanan, Sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551)
Bengal site bags first nuclear nod and Land acquisition challenge lies ahead. CPIM leaders eslewhere in the country are vocal enough to resist land acqisition and in fact, the party is actively involved in peasants movemnt everywhere out of Bengal. The party demands law amendment to protect peasant interests in special zone areas. But Bengal capitalist leftist poet chief minister Buddhadev Bhattachary has declared that he is ready to give away one fourth of Bengal land. Haldia is already a SEZ. North Bengal gets another one. On May 31, the state cabinet gave the nod for acquisition of 36,325 acre of land for various projects. With more proposals coming in, the figure has now crossed 70,000 acre.
North and 24 parganas have been victimised for capitalist development. Howrah is given to Salem and Barasat has to be handed over to him for Barasat Roychowk Express way. Singur situated in Hugli has become the epicentre of resistance and now residents of Haripur, which is part of East Midnapore district, are already protesting.In addition, the land-use board is preparing a map with inputs from the agriculture, land and land reforms, commerce and industries and urban development departments, which will give a clear picture of the nature of land under every mouza. This will give the government a blueprint for industrialisation . West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) is also planning to acquire land in three backward districts Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore.

Meanwhile, About 4,000 families in Majlapur, Rangmalapur, Samraibari and Mankaraipur villages fear eviction. Villagers had prevented the committee from visiting the site last week. Land acquisition — for a nuclear plant or otherwise — is a sensitive issue in Bengal.

“There is a thriving fish-drying industry in Haripur. Where will our fishermen dry their fish? That is the only source of income for the villagers,” said Sandip Singha, secretary of the local fishermen’s body.

On Nov. 19 Bengal moved a step closer to finding a place on the country’s nuclear map after the central site selection committee said it would recommend Haripur in Contai, about 200 km from here, as a location for the eastern region’s first nuclear power plant.
Despite stiff opposition from some quarters, the first nuclear power plant in West Bengal may just come up in Midnapore East or so says the chief minister.
“The state needs a nuclear power plant and will certainly get it,” Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said today. “A 12-member site selection team of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd visited the state and selected Haripur in Midnapore East as site for the plant. Unfortunately, misinformation of supposed damage caused to flora and fauna from plant emissions have been spread by detractors among the masses, so we need to raise public awareness about the matter.”

Another deadly and stupid act from the present CM will cropple the the already fragile environment of WB. If the existing power plants are managed properly by the staff we do not need an 1000 mw extra.

The eminent writer Mahashweta Devi with her agressive writing has come out openly against the victimisation of peasants in Bengal . She is the spokesperson of nonalligned minority Bengali intellegentia. While the media,electronic as well as print, stand united with cpim and its chief minister. The octogenerian hero of Tebhaga and land reforms in Bengal, former Chief minister Jyoti Basu has objections. Subhash Chakrabarti speaks out. Front partners put on notes of dissent . Who do cares? Hypocrite CPIM politboureau putting aside ideology and general ethics supports Buddha blindly.
Thus , a nuclear plant in Haripur is the next phase of Industrialisation of communist Bengal.
If a plant comes up in Bengal, it could be of 6,000-10,000 mw capacity, officials said.
It will need at least six atomic reactors of the capacity of producing 1650 megawatt each. The laft is against Indo Us nuclear deal and considers it against national interests. But Bengal Chief Minister looks forward to the signing of President Bush on the Indo US nuclear Deal law to enable him importing the wanted reactors for the Haripur Nuclear plant.

Selling out land lying with civic bodies would hardly meet the huge demand of land for industry. With industrial proposals coming to West Bengal thick and fast, over 70,000 acres of land needs to be acquired in the coming days. Though several thousand acres of land are lying unused in the districts either as fallow land, or in industrial estates and growth centres acquired and developed by the government industrialists hardly want to go to these places. Land reforms commissioner Sukumar Das says, "It is not reasonable to ask industrialists to set up industries in remote areas without infrastructure. We are trying to find out areas where non-agricultural land is lying unused and where infrastructure might be developed."

“We have found that Haripur has good potential for setting up a nuclear plant,” committee chairman S.K. Jain said after meeting chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings today. Jain is also chairman of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India.

The chief minister said the committee liked Haripur the most, but added: “We have to convince people about the need for the plant and that there is nothing to fear. We need it urgently in Bengal.”
Besides Bengal, the 12- member committee has visited Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.There are 16 nuclear power plants in India at present that have the capacity of producing 4,000 MW of power. Six more plants, capable of producing 3,000 MW, are in an advanced stage of construction and the government has sanctioned eight others. The committee, in its report, will recommend at least four to five sites, including the one in West Bengal, where nuclear power plants, with the capacity of producing 1,000 megawatt to 1,500 MW of nuclear power, can be built. The other sites are in Gujarat, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
In fact, members of the team of selectors set out for the site in Haripur on Friday but were forced to back out in the face of stiff opposition from locals led by Trinamul Congress MLA of south Contai Mr Subhendu Adhikary. More than 150 villagers blocked roads near Juneput and demonstrated against building of the plant. They alleged that the plant would be detrimental to fishing and agriculture, chief occupations of the local population.
Site selection committee chairman Mr SK Jain said the state government offered them seven sites along the coast but they found only two of them, Haripur and Mandarmuni, both in Midnapore East, suitable for construction of the nuclear power plant. Of these, it was decided that Haripur is the best spot. “We need an area of two square kilometres for the plant and another 1.6 km encircling it in all directions which will be the buffer zone. We will place our reports on our findings before the Union government in December,” Mr Jain said.

“We are scouting for sites for nuclear power plants in coastal areas as part of the Centre’s policy. Haripur was selected as a ‘candidate site’,” an official of Nuclear Power Corporation said underplaying people`s resistance.

“A study will now have to be carried out to ensure the proposed plant would not be set up on declared forest land and would not disturb marine fauna. Also, it has to be found out whether the nearest port at Haldia has the capacity to handle heavy machinery and equipment. Last but not the least, how many families would have to be compensated.”

Once this is done, a report will be sent to the Atomic Energy Commission for approval and then to the PMO. “The PMO will take the final decision in consultation with the state government,” the official said.

Farmers protest against cop pickets

KOLKATA, Nov. 19Statesman News Service) Farmers opposing land acquisition in Singur today took out a rally against deployment of policemen in five camps, accusing them of “terrorising” villagers under the “influence of CPI-M leaders” to stop them from sowing potatoes.
Anticipating trouble from agitating farmers, the district authorities have thrown a strong security cover in Singur by deploying more than 800 policemen at five “strategic points” while they fence 997 acres. Farmers allege lack of consent on their part.
More than 7,000 farmers including 800 women took out a procession from Bajemelia hospital grounds under the banner of Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC) this evening demanding “immediate withdrawal” of police from Bajemelia, Chagalveri, Khaserveri and Joymollah villages. They also organised sit-ins before the police pickets.
The procession ended at Khaserveri where SCJRC’s convener Mr Becharam Manna addressed the gathering. Supporters of political outfits like CPI-ML, SUCI and CPI-ML New Democracy and members of Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) also attended.

Left to seek changes in SEZ Act in winter session

The Left will push for amendments in the Special Economic Zones Act during the winter session of Parliament, to put a ban on acquisition of farm land and revise the criteria for processing area and tax benefits for the developers. "We have suggested some changes in the SEZ Act to the government. Hopefully, we will have enough support to amend the Act in the winter session of Parliament," CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat said.

The winter session has begun on November 22.

Karat said Left parties, in a note last month, had asked the UPA government to review the SEZ Act and amend it in line with their suggestions.

"We have identified three main areas - restriction on acquisition of farm land, change in processing area within the zones and a relook at tax exemptions," he said.

APACED Vietnam and We Predestined Asians Deculturalised
Palash Biswas
( Please publish and inform, if possible, send a copy. Contact: PalashcBiswas, c/o Mrs Arti Roy, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone:0091-33-25659551)
Vietnam is APACED and we asians are predestined deculturalised, alredy defeated and surrendered contribute to enhance American interest in name of War against Terrosim, reconstruction after fullfledged destuction as we see in Afganistan and Iraq. What next, no one may fortell which country is going the next target but everyone is ready to cooperate the aggressors.The rough water of past has become smoother and thus, on November18, 2006, in Hanoi itself, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said so casually,`North Korea and Myanmar should follow Vietnam's example in joining the international community and opening their economies to the rest of the world.’ On to Vietnam, Bush Hears Echoes of 1968 in Iraq 2006. But Ms Rice, seems to be in honeymoon mood with the people who ousted the Amerika out of their contry before some three decades. in a speech to business executives attending an annual Asia-Pacific economic conference, praised Vietnam for its success in reforming its economy and "overcoming the past" in seeking closer ties with the United States.Washington would like to work with North Korea and Myanmar, also known as Burma, but can't until their governments choose to abide by international norms, she said.She accused the two governments of rejecting cooperation and "isolating their countries from the prosperity of the region.""Nothing will be better for the people of those countries than their integration into an international community that I can assure you would welcome them, too, to a future of hope and prosperity," she said.

US topgeared its attack against Asian Giant China which has already adopted open market economy. The great walls of the forbidden land have opened up , but the communists of China have taken enough care to sustain its indigineous production systemwhich is devastated elswhere including Indian subcontinent. The oil war is not limited within the bloody borders of middleeast but the wings of freedom and soveriegnity of all Asian country have become soaked with oil. As the resources are sold out. Manpower victimised and purchaing power has become a must for biotic sustenance. Water, Air, River, Hills, Glaciers, Oceon, nothing spared. Corporate Imperialism has taken over Asia which have leadrs at the helms directly recieving guidelines fro White House, Pentagon and World Bank.

US interests have to be protected anywhere any timein this galaxy. US is free to use its airstrike and marine musclepower. UN has become an instrument to safeguardAmerican interests and its protagonist ally Israel. Cold War finished and US has no challange from any part of this world. Spacewar experiments and atomic race to nuclear war are the games have to be played in Asia.

APECED Hanoi in Vietnam is nothing but a bleeding symbol of declassified, deculturalized , colonised Asia in Future. Divided we stand and destined to be an Iran or a Seria which have to replace US forces to protect the mechanism of post modern corporate imperialist reconstruction and restructure.

Leaders attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit posed for a family photo wearing traditional Vietnamese clothes, known as the "ao dai", in Hanoi on Sunday. (Reuters)HANOI -- Eager to set the stage for further economic growth, Pacific Rim leaders on Sunday demanded a fresh start for moribund global free-trade talks and condemned terrorism and other threats to security.

What hanoi thinks today, we may not know amid western TV clippings of capitalist development all over. People busy to handle consumer goods have been shown. Heavy vehicler traffick highlighted in Hanoi does not present any glimpse of History. A protracted military conflict (1954-1975) between the Communist forces of North Vietnam supported by China and the Soviet Union and the non-Communist forces of South Vietnam supported by the United States.
Afganistan and Iraq are experiencing the US military might which was well defeated by Vietnam in a mrathan run. The Hanoi people may have seen the bloodbath live in middleeast. Even when President Bush was discussing North Korea, the next target with asia- pacific leaders acknowledging Vietnam as new Asian Tiger,on Sunday, November 19, 2006 Gaza Citywitnessed
Hundreds of Palestinians formed a human shield around the home of a militant to prevent an Israeli airstrike on the building.People flocked to the home of Mohammedweil Baroud after he received a warning from the army late yesterday giving him 30 minutes to leave the house.
Barhoud is a commander in the Popular Resistance Committees in the northern town of Beit Lahiya who is charge of firing homemade rockets at Israel. Crowds of people stood on the rooftop and in the yard of the home.Israel routinely orders occupants out of homes ahead of airstrikes on suspected weapons-storage facilities, saying it wants to avoid casualties. The incident in Beit Lahiya was the first time Palestinians have tried to prevent such an airstrike.
The crowd chanted anti-Israel and anti-American slogans, and people said they were prepared to give their lives to protect the home. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) : U.S. President George W. Bush discussed North Korea over the past two days with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and Russian President Vladimir Putin.President Bush, visiting a country that forced the United States into a humiliating withdrawal three decades ago, declared Friday that Vietnam’s transition to a modern, growing economy gave him hope about what could be rebuilt from the ruins of Iraq. But he added that the lesson he drew from the bitter American experience here was that “we’ll succeed unless we quit.”
Asia-Pacific leaders called for ``concrete and effective steps'' toward resuming six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, as efforts to bring the isolated nation back to the table trumped stalled trade talks. The 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum today concluded a two-day leaders' summit in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. APEC accounts for more than half of the global economy, and includes China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S., which last held collective talks with North Korea about its nuclear program in 2005. The main consensus reached at APEC was that the next round of six-nation talks, which may be held in Beijing as soon as next month, must yield concrete results or, as South Korea warned Nov. 16, the credibility of the process could be ``shattered.'' The leaders also urged a revival of the so-called Doha trade talks, which were suspended in July.

APEC is committed to finding ``a peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue,'' APEC Chairman Nguyen Minh Triet, president of Vietnam, said in a statement.

Seeing APECED Vietnam from Kolkata base, situated in a state of India, West Bengal where the elected communist led left front rule, is quite an experience. This Bengal once upon a time chanted enmasse TOMAR NAAM AAMAR NAAM VIETNAAM, YOUR NAME MY NAME VIETNAM. Even today we see infinite protest rally against US imperialism whenever there is a fresh newsbreak of us agression. Without a fight like Vietnam this communist ruled state of India has surrendered to capitalism and forien investment is welcome here to annihilate the peasantry which has the history of TEBHGA movement. This left front came to power with much hyped land reforms.

Thus I witnessed my West Bengal amid the capital of APACED Vietnam and was shocked to imagine the future. The hero of communist annihilation in Indonesaia is welcome for industrilisation in Bengal. The CM is ready to open entire Bengal for special economic zones while the left protests violently land aquisition in other states. Ideology is sidelined to welcome multinationals.
Red is turning purple and yellow.

What a bloody reality is this. We knew the butcher of Vietnam Henry Kissinger who got Nobel peace prize for butchery in Asia and now we see Bush got his pic taken in front of Ho Chi Ming. Perhaps next Hanoi Bush will take one in front of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Hitler. This draft dodging frat boy still thinks the Vietnam War is a good idea and killing another 60,000 Americans would be acceptable. Of course it'd be acceptable for him since he was hiding in Alabama at the time. There were a lot of lessons to be taken from the Vietnam War. But how many agree with the one George Bush identified during his first visit to the nation, words to the effect of “stay the course”? Reflecting on the changes since the war and the fall of Saigon, Bush talked of history’s long march and emphasized the time it can take for an “ideology of freedom” to “overcome an ideology of hate.” He added: “We’ll succeed, unless we quit.”Until now, when asked what he had learned from Vietnam, Mr. Bush has almost reflexively reached for the same line: That he does not micromanage his generals, the way Mr. Johnson did. It is a response drawn from conservative orthodoxy about what went wrong in Vietnam, underlying an argument that had the generals been allowed to fight their way, the United States might have won.
"If the leaders of North Korea and Burma were to follow the example of Vietnam, if they make the strategic choice and take the necessary steps to join the international community, it will open a new path of peace and opportunity," Rice said. Well, niether Bush nor Rice mentioned India or West Bengal but Indian pro imperialist, pro capitalist corporate media highlighted the passing of Indo US nuclear deal by democrate controled new senat with such a mood as it has triumphed the America. Shame. shame Shame.

I was very young in 1966 , a samll schoolboy living in a remote village situated in Nainital. Since my father Pulin Biswas was a staunch social Activis and All India refugee leader who led peasants revolt in terai in 1958, I was lucky enough to have the interest and outlook to follow happenings worldwide. Indosino war, Indo Pak war had taken place already and we were charged. From Kolkata we used to get Bengali news paper Basumati and we knew well what happened in Kolkata . Vietnam war and the followed thunder of Spring made me mature much before time. As a small student I was overjoyed to read all about the student`s invovement in anti war movement in United States of America which climaxed with the ouster of Kissinger and Johnson duo. Here entered Richard Nixon. The cold war intensified. I remeber all those days when I had been proud to be a Bengali boy who supported Vietnam.

We all realised even in those days of Non Alligned Movement which exists no more that
to some degree the Vietnam War was a "proxy war," one of several that erupted during the Cold War period that followed the conclusion of the Second World War and decolonization. These wars usually grew from localized conflicts that expanded to include the U.S. and its Western allies on one side and the Soviet Union and/or the People's Republic of China on the other. The Korean Conflict, for example, was another such war. Proxy wars occurred because the major players - especially the U.S. and the Soviet Union - were unwilling to engage each other directly due to the threat of escalation into a nuclear exchange.The Vietnam War was a military conflict in which communist forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, (also known as the Vi?t C?ng, "Victor Charlie" or "Charlie" for short, "VC" or "Cong") fought the anti-communist forces of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) and its allies — most notably the United States (U.S.) — in a successful effort to unify Vietnam into a single independent, communist state.It is also known as the Vietnam Conflict, the Second Indochina War and, in the U.S. colloquially, as Vietnam, The Nam or simply Nam. Vietnamese communists often referred to it as the American War or Kháng chi?n ch?ng M? (the Resistance War Against America).

So Vietnam is changed as cahnged is our West Bengal. Thousands of Vietnamese lined the streets of Ho Chi Minh City to greet Bush on his arrival on Sunday night from Hanoi, many waving, some cheering, almost all smiling, with children watching from atop their parents' shoulders.In Hanoi, Bush held separate talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin, two key players in international efforts to get North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and prevent Iran from developing one.

The chief cause of the war was the failure of Vietnamese nationalists, in the form of the Viet Minh, to gain control of southern Vietnam both during and after their struggle for independence from France in the First Indochina War of 1946-1954.Allies of the Vietnamese communists included the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. South Vietnam's main anti-communist allies were the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Zealand. The U.S. in particular, deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam. U.S. military advisors first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisors assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and the last left the country in 1973.At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. U.S. aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both logistical networks and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to enemy combatants.

The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war claimed perhaps 2-2.5 million Southeast Asian lives, a large number of whom were civilians.

HANOI, Vietnam, Friday, Nov. 17 — During the presidential campaign in 2000, George W. Bush, who served out the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard, was asked whether he ever considered volunteering to fight when he graduated from Yale in 1968.In Hanoi on Thursday, a shop owner showed portraits of President Bush that are to be presented to him when he arrives in Vietnam on Friday. “Did I think about going to the Army post and saying ‘Send me to Vietnam?’ ” Mr. Bush asked, describing his own outlook in 1968. “Not really. I wanted to fly, and that was the adventure I was seeking.”

Thirty-eight years later, at age 60, Mr. Bush finally arrived in Vietnam Friday morning. His motorcade sped into the city past roads that Americans once bombed, at the start of a 72-hour visit linked to an annual Asian summit meeting that the Communist government in Vietnam is playing host to for the first time. In private, some White House officials concede it is spectacularly poor timing. Just as Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968, Mr. Bush has ousted his longtime defense secretary and nominated a realist with “fresh eyes” to replace him. Just like President Johnson in 1968, he is conducting a broad rethinking of strategy, and is hearing options he does not like.

These developments are quite relevent in this case.
Meanwhile,Pakistan and Britain have decided to set up a joint working group to deal with counter-terrorism and related measures.The mechanism will be much on the lines of the anti-terror mechanism Islamabad recently agreed upon with India.The information was provided in a joint statement issued at the end of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Pakistan on Sunday.

Monday, November 20, 2006 (Washington):

Without additional troops to ensure victory in Iraq, the US could find itself more vulnerable to terrorist attacks at home, Republican Senator John McCain said.Newly empowered Democrats pressed their case for a phased withdrawal of American forces. They hoped a blue-ribbon advisory panel would propose a way ahead for Iraq, while making clear the US military mission shouldn't last indefinitely.

McCain, a front-running Republican hopeful for the 2008 presidential elections, said the US must send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize Iraq or face more attacks, in the region and possibly on American soil."I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic," McCain said. "It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened."

casualties surge in Iraq attacks

Sunday, November 19, 2006 (Baghdad):
A roadside bomb and two car bombs exploded one after another near a bus station in southeastern Baghdad, killing 11 civilians and wounding 51.Casualties were taken to the al-Kindi Teaching Hospital in Baghdad's Nahda neighbourhood, and the Ibn al-Nafis Teaching Hospital in central Baghdad.
Attacks by suspected insurgents in other areas of Iraq killed 30 people and wounded 58, raising the country's death toll to 52 by midday on Sunday.Also on Sunday, demonstrations continued in Sunni cities nationwide and politicians and clerics issued harsh condemnations, some calling for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to resign.

n Saturday in the northern town of Beiji more than one thousand people marched through the streets to demand that the arrest warrant against Sheik Harith al-Dhari, the Sunnis' most influential leader, be withdrawn.

Iraq's Shiite-led government has deeply undercut its vow to work toward sectarian reconciliation with a series of recent measures, causing Sunni Muslim politicians to threaten to leave the government and quit parliament.Sunnis charge the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is not serious about disbanding Shiite militias.

Monday, November 20, 2006 (Lashkar Gah):
British Prime Minister Tony Blair met soldiers engaged in fierce combat against a resurgent Taliban in the country's restive southern Helmand province on Monday.It was ahead of his talks in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.Blair paid tribute to the courage of troops at a brief breakfast visit to Camp Bastion -- Britain's main southern base -- close to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

It marked the British leader's first return to Afghanistan since 2002 and came before his first-ever visit into Kabul's city centre, where he was expected to offer backing to Karzai's fledgling government.

Blair met dozens of the 1,800 troops based at Camp Bastion and was shown hardware including an Apache attack helicopter being used to combat Taliban fighters. "Here in this extraordinary desert is where the future of world security in the early 21st century is going to be played out," he said.

Student Vietnam War Veterans Speak

In 1969, the Review dedicated several of its issues to dealing with one of the most pressing worldwide issues of the time: the Vietnam War. Two years previous, protests on Oberlin’s campus had catapulted the college into a new era of uproar, complete with police response of fire hoses and nightsticks. In this issue, the Review took a more measured approach that analyzed the many diverse aspects of the war. This article looks at one veteran’s perspective.
—The News Team

Two veterans of Vietnam, now students at the College, spoke Wednesday at a Moratorium Day forum. Junior Chip Hedler and senior Richard Hallmark talked to a group of about 80 students about Vietnam and its effects on soldiers, the Vietnamese and the U.S.

Mr. Hedler, who served as a medic, prefaced his comment with two sentiments, first, that one soldier does not see much because the immediate is always so crucial, and second that communication was difficult for him when he first returned. “I had a lot in my head,” he said, “but at college speak with three and four syllable words. They don’t do that in the army.”

He added that although there is much anti-war sentiment here, not many students really wanted to listen to him. One reaction he heard over and over again when he was introduced to others was, “Wow! How was it?” He commented it is impossible to answer such a question.

Much of Mr. Hedler’s talk dealt with the poor planning behind the military action in Vietnam. An example of the futility of much action was the job that was given to his unit. They were assigned to put in a pipeline above ground along a highway. Each night the Viet Cong put a hole in one piece of pipe and made the entire pipeline useless. Each day the Americans would repair the pipe, and each night the Viet Cong would destroy it.

Maha Bahu Brahmaputra and Indian Subcontinent Face Ecological Attack This Time
Palash Biswas
(contact: Palash Biswas, c/o Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 70010, India. Phone : 033-25659551.)

China and we India have many things in common. We have mutual relationship of thousands years. Nostalgia is the silk route, in memory of which the Nathu La Pass is open today. Chinese leader Zintao will be visiting India very soon and the red carpet is ready. But the warring mood has not disappeared as yet. We had a border disput in 1962 which turned in full fledged war , well documented in a book Himalayan Blunder. We the Himalayan students track the story and history in our college days. We enjoyed the film by Vijaanand Goldie, Haqikat and read all available printed matter in sixties and seventies. china claimed NEFA and now it claims Arunachal just before it`s topmost leader`s Delhi visit despite the opening of much hyped Nathu La.

The things don`t stop here only, as we know that according to media reports, China is planning to divert 200 billion cubic metres of water to feed the Yellow River in an attempt at easing acute water shortage in Shaanxi, Hebel, Beijing and Tianjin.The 2,906 km long Brahmaputra is one of Asia’s largest rivers that traverse its first stretch of 1,625 km in Tibet, the next 918 km in India and the remaining 363 km through neighbouring Bangladesh before converging into the Bay of Bengal.While China has denied reports that it is planning to divert waters of Brahmaputra river to its Yellow river to feed the parched northern regions, India proposes to engage China on this issue in a serious manner.One of India's biggest water resources, the Brahmaputra may soon lose its ferocity.India and Bangladesh will also remain at the mercy of China, which could withhold water for power generation and irrigation during the dry season and release water during the flood season with catastrophic consequencesfor eastern South Asia. Taking into view that it is impossible to divert the mighty Brahmputra conventionally, China is planning to accomplish this project "with nuclear explosives". The Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics in Beijing has recommended this peaceful use of a nuclear device, said a London-based science journal. Since the region isan earthquake-prone zone, India's Disaster Relief Committee Chairman Sam
Kannappan has asked the government to talk seriously with China tosecure the future of millions in India.

Of course at the moment, China is downplaying its plans."Whenever we do it we will discuss it with India, but as of now we are not considering it seriously. It was floated by a private person and is not high on the agenda," said Sun Yuxi, Chinese ambassador.

India too is keeping its plans under wraps until the time China unveils its own. But sources tell NDTV India's plan is good enough to undo most of the damage the Chinese dam will do.

At the moment, 500 BCM of water flows through the Brahmaputra. With China intercepting 300 BCM, India will get only 200 BCM.But by harnessing the 30 tributaries, India can get another 150 BCM. So, even after the Chinese dam comes up, India will still have about 450 BCM of water, just 50 BCM less than now.

More than border disputes, the relations between the two growing economies in the next decade will be dictated by water and trade.The Brahmaputra issue is the first indication of that.

But anticipating the situation, India has a counter project. The Water Resources Ministry plans to harness the Brahmaputra's tributaries that rise in India to make up for the deficit the dam in China is expected to cause.It comprises more than two dozen big and small dams on over 30 tributaries connected with an intricate canal system.

"I am sure that China will pursue the project to meet its requirement. It has been discussed at several levels between the two countries."The issue had figured in the last two visits of the heads of state. The best way for India and China would be a cooperative mechanism," said Monoranjan Mohanty, China expert, Institute of China Studies.

Any person well aware of the geopolitics of south asia must know how relevent is brahmaputra for the biotic sustenance of the people in this subcontinent. It is not only the lifeline flowing accross China, India and Bangladesh, but its flow holds together our greatest mangrove forest, The Sundervanas, which protects us from cyclone - sunami like calamities. It is strange that the ruling left front in West Bengal underplays the issue. The communists lead the front government here who were divided in many parties and factions as followup of the 1962 war.The river is the lifeline for a vast majorty of the people in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Bangladesh - most of them depend on the river for irrigating their agricultural fields, fishing and transportation of goods.Agriculture forms the backbone of the economies in both Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with nearly 80 per cent of the 27 million people in the two states eking out a living through agriculture.
This project would definitely have cascading effect in the northeast of India and could lead to natural calamities. For South Asia and more particularly for India, the enormity of the scheme and its closeness to the Indian border cannot be ignored. It is not only the sheer size of the project, which has to be considered, but also the fact that, if accomplished, it will have ominous consequences for millions of people downstream. It is in this context that a panel discussion was organised by the Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, to shed some light on the political, social, economic, environmental fallout of such a project on India, Bangladesh besides the issue of livelihood of millions in these two countries.

China is claiming Arunachal Pradesh, rich in varied flora and fauna, is the home of a large number of tribes of different socio-economic and religious pattern. These are Buddhist tribes, Vaishnavite tribes and others with their own distinctive ways of life, living side by side in perfect communal harmony and peace. Studded with hills and valleys and comprising frontier divisions of Kemeng, Tirap, Subansiri, Lohit and Siang, Arunachal is predominantly rural and pastoral. About 94 per cent of its total population of 6,31,839 live in 3,257 villages. About 62 per cent of its area is under forest cover. Government of India, in a diplomaitic move, just emphasised that Arunachal is a nonseparable part of Indian teroterry. But the lefitists pose to be soft as they were in 1962.

My father Pulin Kumar Biswas, popularly known as Pulin Babu had been a communist leader who led the peasants` uprise in Naintal Terai, Dhimri Block in 1958. In 1960, as a communist leader he visited riot torn Assam and worked to sustain communal harmony and helped the administration in relief and rescue operations. He was an all India refugee leader fighting for the citizenship, reservation, mother tongue, human and civil rights for East Bengal dalit refugees. He stayed in Kamrup, Gualpara, Nagao, karimpur and other riothit areas. Later he sent his RMP brother , my uncle Dr Sudhir Biswas to the refugee remote colonies in Assam. My uncle expired in 1994 and father succumbed ailing and suffering from cancer in 2001.

Thus, when I got an opportunity to visit Asssma back to back my visit in Tripura in December 2002, I went to Guahati during Baishakhi Bihu in January 2003. There I enjoyed Brahmputra festival on the Brahmaputra beach. I was staying by riverside in the circuit house with Anil Sarkar, education, sc welfare, information and culture minister of Tripura, who was the chief guest in the festival and in his speech he decalred that Bihu will be a compulsory subject in all tripura schools. It was a rare occasion. We started the day with a visit to the riverside fish Market where big Chital fishes were being sold on large scale. Day and night, we were recieved with so many invitations full of delicious ahmia dishes. I had an opportunity to address poets,writers and intellectual in Guahtai, just after my arrival as the flight was very late. I had to dash from Bardoloi Airport to the progrramme directly. I was acquainted with Bihu Guru Prafulla Goagoi and Bihu Empress Mausumi saikia in Neermahal Utsav in tripura and we met again. I was present in their Baishakhi Bihu Progrramme in Malegaon. Later , they came over to Kolkata with their team to perform in Keutia, the home of Lok Kavi Vijay Sarkar and in the Lokutsav held in Netaji Indoor Stadium in February, 2003.

I was lucky to visit Guahati and around during a Bihu festival and there were artist friends like Prafulla and Mausumi., well reputed in entire north east. It was a rare occassion for me to interact with ahmia nationality. Bihu is the most important festival of Assam; equally popular both among tribal and non-tribal population of the State. It is celebrated three times every year both by men and women. Of these three, Baisakh Bihu is of the greatest significance. It is observed during first week of the Indian New Year. The other two Kartika and Megha Bihu come in autumn equinox and winter solstice respectively. On these occasions, after early morning ablutions, the people visit each other exhausting sweets, gifts and good wishes; worship the cows and other cattle and then follows in the evening the seasons of dance and music in groups called the Husari. They collect in the open and begin at slow tempo in a circle. One of the participants sings the refrain and the rest follow him in a chorus. Gradually the tempo increases leading to a crescendo. The musical accompaniment includes the drum (dhol), the cymbals (tala), the bamboo clappers (tokka), the paupa (buffalo horn) and flutes.

In fact, being a part of nationality movement in uttaranchal, I supported full hearted ly the AGP AASU movement against foriegners. But my father who was a refugee leader, was against this and he was afraid that one day, all resettled refugees would be termed Bangladeshi and be driven out from India. We in Uttaranchal and UP, always had a very good relationship with the locals. Til this date, the laocals all over India protect partition victims. Thus, I held the view that the Assamese people are quite justified to uphold the ahomima identy. As a himalayan state , we Uttarakhandies are well aware of the colonial attitude of New delhi towards entire North East.

My Father was in direct contact with Mrs Indira Gandhi during her comeback trial in erly eighties. The Bengali refugees were staunch supporters of Mrs Gandhi for her role in the creation of Bangladesh, a homeland for Bengali the language and Bangla nationality. Thoghyforcibly cutt off from history and geography, the Bengali refugges were very happy for Indian intervention to end military pakistani rule in their erstwhile home. They supported Mrs Gandhi and her party until nineties. As a student leader I was against Emergency and was fighting against it. Thus, differences with my father deepened and at a point he openly abandondoned me in 1977. I did not go home to fetch my books while I was appearing in Ba final exams.

Father was a committed refugee leader and knew that only Mrs Gandhi and congress would support refugees in North India. His lifelong personal relationship with leaders like ND Tiwari and KC Pant convinced him thus. But I was aware that Tiwari and Pant were using refugees as Vote Bank. My father called a refugee convention in Dineshpur, then under Nainital District and invited Narendra singh, then a minister in Up cabinet and other Congress leaders to discuss the situation arising as fall out of Assam Movement. I was just married. It was May, 1983. We had returned from Honeymoon. My wife Sabita was also there in the convention. Heated exchanges followed between Narendra Singh and all congress leaders as I supported the Assma students. I was in Dhanbad then and we were fighting Press Bill introduced by congress government led by Dr Jagnnath Mishra, the CM Bihar. So I became very irritated and walked out of the convention with my supporters. Sabita hitched to come with me she hung there as her fther in law had sold two acre land to organize the convention to protect his people from future dangers. I did not care as I had seen his all activities of sacrices for refugee causes.

I was astonished to know about the undercurrents of brahmaputra. I remebered all those days. The days while my uncle returned to Nainital village with a radio set, on which the news of Indo- Sino War broke.

The north-east India, popularly known as the "Land of Seven Sisters", is characterized by simple and exotic tribals, lofty mountains, lush valleys, dense forests teeming with varied flora and fauna, fascinating scenery and pastoral life amidst isolated splendour. Ethnically, the area, very rich and varied in dance and music, presents a complex pattern of large tribal population. The multi-layered and intricate cultural design makes difficult if not impossible the classification and categorization of the hill and tribal folk comprising over seventy-five percent of the total population of the area.Assam, remote, exotic and an extravaganza of landscape scenery, lies in the extreme north-east corner of India. Assam is bounded in the north by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, in the east by Nagaland and Manipur, in the south by Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya, and in the west by Bangladesh and West Bengal. Drained by the mightly River Brahmputra and a network of its tributaries, Assam presents a vast canvass of varied tropical flora and fauna including the last of that endangered species, the one horned Indian rhino, sprawling tea carpets, lofty hills, deep valleys and a simple but spectacular tribal life. Lying at the foothills of the Himalaya, the abode of gods, Assam is linked to the rest of India by an isthmus winding its way between Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Assam is a land where clouds float at your feet, hills emerge from its bosom and soar high like a chorus, and panorma changes with unbelievable frequency. It is here that one feels the freshness of the very first dawn of creation and has the ecstasy of almost touching the sweet dreams with his fingers. Far from the madding crowd, it is altogether another world, a walking reverie you are traveling through.

The Tibetans consider the area around the Great Bend, one of the last pristine regions of the world, the home of the Goddess Dorjee Pagmo, Tibet's Protecting Deity. They believe this site, locally known as Pemakö, is the sacred realm often referred to in their scriptures: a last hidden Shangrila.

The massive diversion of the river to China's northwest would have even more devastating consequences. North India and Bangladesh would be starved of their life line. Nutrient-rich sediments that enrich the soil of these regions would be held back in the reservoir instead of reaching the river's delta. Millions would be affected. A water war could ensue.

Another aspect to be considered is once a project is on the drawing board in China, it has to be executed. Whatever the consequences, the leaders in Beijing do not like to lose face.
The scheme has three segments: the eastern, central and western routes. The third is the trickiest; it is the one which should make India and Bangladesh nervous. The southern part of the western route envisages the diversion of the Yarlung Tsangpo which will have an immense bearing on the lives of millions in the sub-continent. Originating from a glacier near Mount Kailash, it is the largest river on the Tibetan plateau and the highest on earth. It runs 2,057 kilometers in Tibet before flowing into India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra. One of its interesting characteristics is a sharp U turn (known as the Great Bend) near the Indian border. It has been discovered recently that the river's gorge forms the longest and deepest canyon in the world. It is in the Great Bend that China is planning one of the most important projects of the diversion scheme. There are two parts: One is the construction of the world's largest hydroelectric plant on the Great Bend dwarfing all other similar projects (it will generate 40,000 megawatts, more than twice the electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam); the second is the diversion of the waters of the Tsangpo which will be pumped northward across hundreds of kilometers of mountainous region to China's northwestern provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu.
Panel of experts at the discussion included Mr. Claude Arpi, Writer and Expert on India-Tibet-China who has been following the Brahmaputra issue for several years; Prof. V Subramanian of the School of Environmental Sciences, JNU; Mr. Gopal Krishna, Convener, Water Watch and Mr. Himanshu Thakkar, Coordinator, South Asia Network of River Dams and People.

As compiled by Meenakshi Iyer,Friday, November 17, 2006 (New Delhi):Some of the grave consequences of blasting of the Himalayan terrain at the point where Brahmaputra makes a sharp downward bend towards India (The Great Bend), include:

• India and Bangladesh would be at the mercy of China for adequate release of water during the dry season, and for protection from floods during the rainy season

• Unpredictable impact on the geologically young Himalayan ranges and the adverse tilting of ecological balance.

• Precipitation in Assam and Bangladesh is very high (80 per cent) between June to September and low (20 per cent) during the remaining eight months.

It is likely that China could withhold water for power generation and irrigation during the dry season and release water during the flood season with catastrophic consequences for eastern South Asia.

• Nutrient-rich sediments that enrich the soil of these regions would be held back in the reservoir instead of reaching the river's delta.

• Possibility of earthquakes because of the impounding of large quantities of water in reservoirs in mountain valleys and also because The Great Bend is located in a highly earthquake prone area.

• China itself may face serious problems of water-logging if the waters of the Brahmaputra are blocked from flowing into the ocean.

wo of the most acute problems China faces today are food and water. These two issues are closely linked and, if not solved, are bound to have grave social and political consequences for the country.The leadership in Beijing has proclaimed 'China can feed itself in the next century,' but the fact that the problem is often discussed at the highest level of the Chinese hierarchy shows it is not solved. The new emperors are not sure where the solution lies or even if there is a solution.

A few years ago, Lester Brown, the famous agronomist, advanced a theory: With the growth in China's population (predicted to reach 1.6 billion in 2045) and the increase in industrial development, arable lands reduce rapidly while the needs of population increase simultaneously. With water becoming a rare commodity and agriculture needing more water to sustain production, China has a problem. Moreover, the blue gold is not equally distributed in the Middle Kingdom. Brown's World Watch Institute explains: 'Hydrologically, there are two Chinas -- the humid south, which includes the Yangtze River basin and everything south of it, and the north, which includes all the country north of the Yangtze basin. The south, with 700 million people, has one third of the nation's cropland and four fifths of its water. The north, with 550 million people, has two thirds of the cropland and one fifth of the water. The water per hectare of cropland in the north is one eighth that of the south.'

The fact that the Chinese government published a White Paper titled 'The Grain Issue in China' shows the issue's vital importance for Beijing's leadership.

This led Chinese experts to look around for water. The answer was not far. The Tibetan plateau is the principal watershed in Asia and the source of its 10 major rivers, including the Brahmaputra (or Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet), the Sutlej and the Indus. About 90% of the Tibetan rivers' runoff flows downstream to China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The idea to divert the waters from the South to the North was born.

For South Asia and more particularly for India, the enormity of the scheme and its closeness to the Indian border cannot be ignored. It is not only the sheer size of the project which has to be considered, but the fact that, if accomplished, it will have ominous consequences for millions of people downstream. Ismail Serageldin, a former senior vice-president of the World Bank, once wrote: 'The next World War will be over water.' China's green light for the project could indeed be considered a declaration of war by South Asia.

The project was first reported in Scientific American in June 1996. This article giving credence to the Chinese plans stated: 'Recently some Chinese engineers proposed diverting water into this arid area [Gobi Desert] from the mighty Brahmaputra River, which skirts China's southern border before dipping into India and Bangladesh. Such a feat would be impossible with conventional methods, engineers stated at a meeting held last December at the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics in Beijing. But they added, "we can certainly accomplish this project" with nuclear explosives.'

The Journal continued: 'This statement is just one of the many lately in which Chinese technologists and officials have touted the potential of nuclear blasts for carrying out non-military goals.'

One of the reasons for China's refusal to ratify the CTBT could be the desire to keep open the option of experimenting with what is called PNE (Peaceful Nuclear Explosion).

In January 1998, the German television channel ZDF presented a feature on the Yarlung Tsangpo project in a program titled Die Welt [The World]. Its chief planner Professor Chen Chuanyu described the plan to drill a 15 km (9.3 miles) tunnel through the Himalayas to divert the water before the U turn and direct it to the other end of the bend. This would shorten the approximately 3,000 meters altitude drop, from 200 km to just 15 km. He explained that the hydropower potential could be used to pump water to Northwest China over 800 km away.

An complicating aspect is that this area had never been visited by outsiders. The difficult access to this unexplored region must have been one of the greatest obstacles for the engineers in Beijing. At the end of the 1990s, the Chinese government decided to permit foreigners to explore the Grand Canyon. A National Geographic expedition, with ultra sophisticated materials and highly professional rafters, made the first discoveries. The opening of this area to adventure tourism was certainly the first step to find an approach route to the dam site.

In recent years, the Chinese have been more discreet about the project although a few reports have continued to come in. The correspondent of The Telegraph in Beijing wrote in October 2000: 'Chinese leaders are drawing up plans to use nuclear explosions, in breach of the international test-ban treaty, to blast a tunnel through the Himalayas for the world's biggest hydroelectric plant.'

The construction of this multi-billion dollar project is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2009. The consequences of a huge storage dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo and the diversion of the waters to northwestern China are multiple and far reaching for Tibet, India and Bangladesh. Most importantly, this project represents a direct threat to the people living downstream.

Let us first look at the dam.

India and Bangladesh would be at the mercy of China for adequate release of water during the dry season, and for protection from floods during the rainy season. India knows from its internal problems how difficult it is to solve a water dispute. When it comes to a transboundary question (where the boundary is not even agreed upon), it seems practically impossible to find a workable understanding. Precipitation in North India (particularly Assam) and Bangladesh is very high (80%) during the four monsoon months (between June to September) and low (20%) during the remaining eight months. China, for her own interests, could withhold water for power generation and irrigation during the dry season and release water during the flood season with catastrophic consequences for eastern South Asia.

An event in June 2000 could be a small illustration of what may happen on a much bigger scale if the Tsangpo project is completed. At that time, the breach of a natural dam in Tibet led to severe floods and left over a hundred people dead or missing in Arunachal Pradesh. Obviously areas downstream in Arunachal or Assam are extremely vulnerable to what takes place upstream in Tibet.

Iftikhar Gilani wrote in his article, `China's move to divert Tibetan rivers upsets India's plan (TDT)’, published in` THE DAILY TIMES’,4 November 2003:

NEW DELHI: China's move to divert Tibetan rivers has upset India's grandiose plans of interlinking its rivers. Experts now believe that China's not raking up its claims on eastern states of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's recent Bejing visit could be a diplomatic diversion to hide a far more serious matter for India.

India has planned to link 30 rivers at a cost of Rs 5,600 billion by2012. A task force, headed by former minister Suresh Prabhu has alreadycompleted the feasibility report on six links.

The Tibetan plateau is the principal watershed in Asia and the source of
its 10 major rivers, including the Brahmaputra (or Yarlung Tsangpo inTibet), the Sutlej and the Indus. About 90 per cent of the Tibetan rivers' runoff flows downstream to India, Bangladesh Nepal and Pakistan. India's major concerns are the diversion of the Brahmputra, which will =
make Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's mega project redundant.Coinciding with Mr Vajpayee's visit, a team of experts was studying toconstruct a major hydropower project on the Brahmputra River in theTibet Autonomous Region.

Mr Vajpayee's critics here draw parallels between his visit to Lahore in1999 and to Beijing in 2003. "It is almost the same, when Mr Vajpayee was signing the Lahore Declaration, Pakistanis were digging trenches in Kargil. Now, when he was dancing in Beijing over China's reportedly =
giving up its claim on Sikkim, Chinese were drawing plans to put Indiain the doldrums," they say. Experts argue China's move not onlythreatened the environment but also national security. If Beijing goes ahead with the Brahmputra project, it would practically mean a declaration of war against India, they believe.

Originating from a glacier near Kailash, the Brahmputra is the largest river on the Tibetan plateau and the highest on earth. It runs 2,057kilometres in Tibet before flowing into India. It has been discoveredrecently that the river's gorge forms the longest and the deepest canyon =
in the world. China plans to construct the world's largest hydroelectric
plant at the Great Bend to generate 40,000 megawatts. Also the diverted water will be pumped northward across hundreds of kilometres of mountainous region to China's arid northwestern provinces, Xinjiang andGansu (Gobi desert).

NK Pant writes in `TRAGEDY OF TIBET’:

One wonders why has the world at large been a mute witness to the ruthless butchery of Tibet's docile population at the hands of theChinese Communists for so long? Why was the extreme agony and profoundmisfortune of innocent inhabitants of the Shangri-La sidelined when =
Mao's monstrous red army overran the tranquil land in 1950 forcing itsspiritual and temporal ruler Dalai Lama and thousands of his subjects to flee the country and take shelter in friendly India? Why did the myopicleadership in New Delhi at that time quietly acquiesced to Beijing's =
military assault on the unique serenity of the Himalayan plateau justifiably called roof of the world? History will perhaps have toprovide difficult answers to the foregoing questions when the future generations come across the description in their history books telling them that once upon a time in not so distant past, there was a country called Tibet inhabited by meek and mild people.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) now views the culturally and historically distinct region as integral part of the Communist country.Ever since the Communist China brutally occupied Tibet, it hasvigorously formulated and implemented a cleverly visualized plan of swamping the Tibetan culture with the very aim of obliterating its identity. The PRC has left no stone unturned during its more than half a century's iron fisted rule, in forcing repressive and tyrant local governments on the hapless people and fostering grave human rights climate in the region. It is now learnt that Tibetans will become a minority in their own land of birth in the next few years as swarms of =
ethnic Chinese immigrants from the mainland move in to take part in a new official drive to develop the region's economy. A Chinese officialwas recently quoted as saying that infusion of investment and influx of skilled labour to Lhasa and elsewhere will bring unprecedented prosperity and stability to the remote Himalayan region.

According to Pant,India, in fact, committed a grave historical blunder in 1950 when the triumphant red army menacingly marched into Lhasa in 1950. Strangely,British India had maintained military outposts in Tibet but the rulers of free India clearly lacking strategic vision and basking under the false glow of non-alignment decided to dismantle them in 1954. New Delhi should have opposed tooth and nail these belligerent developments in its northern Himalayan neighbourhood but it quietly bowed to Beijing's military occupation of Tibet recognizing the region as Chinese territory. For this grave lapse, we had to pay a heavy price as the PRC followed the invasion of Tibet by laying claims to large chunks ofIndian territory and finally in 1962, massive columns of red army from their bases in Tibet launched an all out attack on our Himalayan borders which were till then considered impregnable. The wily communists now donning business suits, thus invented a complicated border problem withIndia and till date continue to evade its settlement despite holding numerous meetings with Indian External Affairs Ministry officials during the last couple of years.

''Asia's Coming Water Wars''
Water is increasingly emerging as a scarce commodity, fueled by population pressures, intensive irrigation, and erratic weather patterns brought on by global warming. According to the International Water Management Institute, by 2025 one-third of the world's population will lack access to water. Developing countries bear the brunt of water shortages given the lack of clean drinking water and adequate sanitation in these states, which has been exacerbated by rapid development, population pressures and significant rural-to-urban migration. Developing countries are also the most likely to face water-related conflict, given the lack of cooperative management mechanisms between developing states on managing shared water resources.

In the 21st century, however, Asia may emerge as the new focal point of water-related conflict given the rapid growth of the region, which is likely to put pressure on water resources, coupled with the concentration of long-standing internal and inter-state tensions, which can act as a spark for turning water-related disputes into full-scale conflicts. South Asia's water tensions include the Indo-Pakistan dispute over the Wular Barrage, Indo-Bangladesh water dispute over the Farakka Barrage and the Indo-Nepal dispute over the Mahakali River Treaty.

Furthermore, all three regions are plagued by long-standing historical animosities and internal instabilities and water disputes serve to focus these tensions. The fact that these river systems run through multiple countries -- notably the Aral Sea, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Mekong Rivers are each shared by at least five states -- creates the potential for regional conflict over water.

Beijing has been slow in sharing information on its river-diverting projects along the Upper Mekong Basin. While China claims to support multilateralism, it has refused to join the four-country Mekong River Commission (M.R.C.) comprising Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, although both Myanmar and China are Dialogue Partners. The M.R.C. was established in 1995 as the successor to the 1957 Mekong Committee (Committee for Coordination of Investigations of the Lower Meko

Next Time Dhaka
Palash Biswas
(Plpublish and send a copy . Contact: Palash Chandra Biswas, c/o Mrs Arati Roy, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India.Phone: 033-25659551.)
In Palta, about 25 KM away from Kolkata a seminar was organised last sunday by Guruchand Sena. More than four hundred delegates from all over were the participants. The focus was on refugee problems along with minority persecution in Bangladesh.Refugee leaders, socialactivists, human right activists and intellectuals pledged to be united in the tradition of language, culture and history. They discussed the Phistine exodus in this context and emphasised that we must not forget our identity and roots as well.Next time Jerusalam was the slogan for philistine refugees for almost three thousand years whenever they met in exile, so it should be the slogan next time Dhaka. Other prominent refugee group in India, the sikhs and punjabies migrated fromwest Punjab may never forget their roots as they have a title as a prefix with the name of their village. Fifty years are nothing on the scale of human civilisattion and history, but the very second generation of east Bengal refugees have lost their history, culture,mother language and identity overall. Even they don`t know where their anchestors belong. Thus, the slogan next time Dhaka was passed with consensus. The seminar witnessed the screening of films made by Shahriar Kabir on Minority Persecution.

Dr JC Haldar , aphysician and refugee leader conducted the seminar with inputs intermittently. He explained the problems and details.

Most sensetional was the speech of Dr Mohit Roy, the convenor of CAAMB, kolkata. Dr Roy demnded voting rights for the refugees in exile in Bangladesh elections. He elaborated the systematic demographic changes in Bengal and the impact. He demanded dual citizenship for all Bengali refugees as there was no actual population transfer as decided creating two dominions India and Pakistan. Only the Hindus were driven out. They hang on. But biotically their sustenance became impossible day by day.The systematic ethinic cleansing drove out them from Bangladesh.And the refugee influx continues. Thus, the refugees must be given the Indian citizenship as they are partition victims. And they should be given dual citizenship to hold on Bangladeshi citizenship as they were driven out of the country by the persecution machinery against their will.

The seminar passed a resolution which demands immidiate stop in deportation drive of partition victim East Bengal refugees. It demands an amendment in the latest version of citizen amendment act which declares all refugees migrating after july 1948, Bangladesh infiltrators. It demands that all partition victims must be granted Indian Citizenship without any discrimination,delay and cutt off year limitation.The resolution also condemns minority persecution in Bangladesh,ethnic cleansing of Hindus, christians and in particular, chakmas in Chittagong. It demnds prosecutions of the miscreants involved in antiminority riots and atrocities including Banskhali genocide. The resolution demands autonomous areas for all minorities in Bangladesh to protect them and check further influx of refugees from Bangladesh.

All India Refugee Front executive President, a bjp leader who contested assembly election on party ticket , objects sharply the sand and statement of CAAMB and its convenor Mohit Roy. He also contended that All India Refugee Front leaders including Dr Jagadish Haldar who is the organising secretary of the front did not care to invite or inform the organisation. He told me on telephone that refugees want Indian citizenship, not refugee status and according to him refugees have nothing to do with dhaka and Bangladesh. He agreed that the refugee influx must be stopped and for this persecution of minorities in Bangladesh should be stopped. But the demand for voting right in Bangladesh elections and the slogan, next time Dhaka are highly abjectionable, he said. According to Thakur internationalisation of the issue won`t help the refugees from East Bengal. He also against the quotations from history. He told that what Dr Vidhan Roy did, this analysis has to do nothing with refugee problem. according to him West Bengal Left Front government is blackmailing the refugees for decades. In last elections deletion of lacs of voters from the voters list actually helped the left front. As the refugees enmasse supported and voted left front.
Thakur alleged that CAAMB is executing a caste hindu plan to drive out dalit Bengali refugees to Bangladesh. In reaction Dr Haldar refuted the charges when contacted and said that mass forum discussions should be welcome for the mobilisation of masses to solve the refugee problems. He alleged that the refugee leaders are involved in Kolkata based politics and are disinterested to work on grassroot level.

Caamb stand is also not welcome in Bangldesh. The media and a section of Bangladesh intellegentia allege that neither CAAMB nor its convenor has any brespect to Bangdesh`s separate identity, sovereignity and freedom.

Not only the rightist refugee leaders but also the cpim alligned refugee leaders have reacted sharply on Palta seminar.Dr Nitish Biswas also thing this section of refugee leaders are diluting and misleading the movement. Without the merger of two Bengals , there is no way to claim dhaka meet, which is quite impossible and unethicle. Ratneswar Sarkar, a former cpi leader also says that nothing less than citizenship of India is accepatable to refugees. He dismisses CAAMB demand.

Neverthe less Dr Haldar and dr sen stand by their statement.

The resolution passed in the seminar, demands immediate withdrwal of the controversial Shatru sampatti Arpit aain.
The resolutions applauds the role played by Bangldesh media and intellegentia to protect and highlight the causes of minorities in Bangladesh. It also emphasises to restore secular democracy in Bangladesh replacing the Jamat- Bnp version of pro pakistani Islamic Rule.
With full respect to Bangladesh as a nation, democracy and sovereign state, the resolution demands deployment of impartial UN observers in Bangladesh elections as every election follows severe minority persecution. The resolution demanded restoration of all minority worshiping places including Ramnna Kalibadi which are either damaged orcaptured.
Dr Jagadish Chandra Haldar presided the seminar. I was also invited to address the selected audiance which included delegates from Kolkata, North and South 24 pargans, Burdwan and Birbhoom,Hoogli and medinipur, Nadia , etc. I highlighted the problems faced by refugees all over India and the detachment of the Bengali ruling Classes. I also felt the greatest need of documentation as after sixty years of partion no transparent,impartial documentation of the calamity, government policy, correspondance and the first person version from the partition victims are not available.
A former SDO Radhamohan Biswas analysed the techniclities for legal and constitutional changes demanded. ACJP human Right activist MS Jyoti came from Nagpur and assured to raise the issue on international forums. Rakhal Roy and Shaktipada Biswas from Vigyan o Juktivadi samiti, Sunil Biswas, Secretary, All India Refugee front, Ravindra Nath Dutt and Gopal Saha from Indian Nationalist Forum, Dr Birat Bairagya, a teacher of Matua sahity in Kalayani Universty, Prafulla Chandra Malungi, president Guruchand Sena, Arvind Biswas, general secretary GuruChand Sena, PK roy, former President of BSP, WB committee all spoke against minority persecution accross the border and supported the resolution.

Please read this item to know more about CAAMB KOlkta:

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
CIVIL SOCIETY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND MINORITIES IN BANGLADESH
Supported by
Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (Chapters outside Bangladesh )
22-23 January, 2005, Kolkata
Dear Friend,
Ethnic cleansing of minorities, especially of Hindus, from formerly East Pakistan and later Bangladesh, is going for last five decades. Bangladesh has been made an Islamic State by amending the Constitution. After the General Elections in 2001, empowered by their ascendancy Islamic fundamentalists have intensified the atrocities on the minorities. Hundreds of women have been raped. Minorities are leaving the country everyday. Secular voices are being banished from the country.

Worse still is the silence in West Bengal, which has witnessed this mass of uprooted people. In West Bengal most of the intelligentsia have not only remained silent themselves but tried to keep others silent on this issue of gravest and continued violation of human rights of their people. The continuing mass migration of the Hindu refugees and the subsequent flow of Muslim infiltrators have already affected demography, economy, culture and environment here. It is an all-encompassing problem which is now destroying West Bengal.

CAAMB (Campaign Against Atrocities on Minorities in Bangladesh) is an agglomeration of some conscientious persons in Kolkata and around. We have come together on the issue of atrocities on minorities in Bangladesh after the recent spate of violence there. CAAMB is trying to unveil the truth so that the people of West Bengal at least will start to think, and subsequently act on this issue.

A number of branches of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) and some other organisations are working in Bangladesh and all over the world to upheld the rights of the minorities there. CAAMB has joined with them to strengthen the issue. CAAMB believes the people of West Bengal have a special moral and ethical responsibility to help their brothers and sisters in Bangladesh. To highlight all these issues CAAMB with support from Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (of UK, USA & Europe) has planned to organise an International Conference on 22-23 January at Kolkata.

The International Conference will be attended by eminent people and activists from abroad and from different parts of India. The Conference will have exhibitions and film shows. We want to make it a big event to awake the people of West Bengal from their slumber of 50 years.

WE WANT YOUR FULL COOPERATION. PLEASE INFORM OTHERS WHO CAN HELP US. SEND YOUR SUGGESTION. SPONSOR SOME ACTIVITIES OF THE CONFERENCE. ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO START A NEW CHAPTER IN WEST BENGAL.

Phone: +919831456930; +91332416 1534; Email: caambkolkata@hotmail.com

http://users.cjb.net/caambkolkata/ConferenceIntroduction.htm
Little Hope of Electoral Reforms before the Elections

Minority persecution is again imminent in Bangaldesh as the whole nation is in turmoil once again. The demonstarions, blockades and mass movement against Ruling combination, all have teh impact on the minorities in negetive sense.

Dr. Anand KumarBangladesh writes in his article, `Developments in the Run up to Elections’:
Long before the elections were due in Bangladesh, both the major political parties in the country have been preparing for it in their own way. The main opposition party Awami League has been drawing the attention of the people towards the failure of the government in governing the country. They have also pointed out the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the country as a threat to its democracy. The ruling alliance on the other hand has been making changes in the administrative set up of the country so that it can have a favourable dispensation during the elections. They have also been looking for new allies who can boost their chances of coming back to power.

The Awami League led fourteen-party opposition group has been demanding electoral reforms since July 2005 through street protests. It says that the ruling coalition will manipulate the present caretaker government system of conducting elections in Bangladesh. To hold a free and fair election in the country it has been demanding certain changes in the Caretaker government system and the Election Commission. With this objective they suggested a set of reform proposals. These proposals were initially rejected by the government but later adopting a softer stance they asked the opposition to place them in parliament.

These proposals were placed in parliament by the Leader of Opposition Sheikh Hasina on February 12. In response to that the Bangladesh prime minister had proposed in parliament on February 28 that it will form a committee, comprising members of the ruling BNP and the main opposition AL. This committee was to discuss reform proposals and devise a fair procedure to ensure holding of free and fair elections. But it appears that the government really never meant it.

The BNP secretary general on March 20 sent a letter to the AL secretary general inviting the main opposition party to join a committee to discuss the reform agenda. But when the BNP announced the names of the ruling alliance representatives in the committee it also included names of Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote leaders. The AL-led opposition coalition through a letter to the BNP secretary general in early May sharply reacted to the inclusion of two Islamist leaders in the committee and refused to sit with them for a dialogue. The process of negotiation has been suspended since then.

The intention of the ruling coalition became further clear when in an interview on August 3, prime minister and BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's eldest son Tarique Rahman, who is the senior joint secretary general of the BNP and de facto leader of the party, ruled out the possibility of acceptance of the AL-led coalition proposals for reforms in the caretaker government (CTG) and the Election Commission (EC). He said that three general elections had been held peacefully, fairly, and impartially under the existing CTG system. Hence there was no need for reforms. He also suggested that if the opposition were serious about reforms in the CTG and the EC, they could include those reform proposals in their election manifesto for the forthcoming general election and can implement in case they were voted to power. He also wondered why the Awami League did not carry out those reforms during their tenure. Prime Minister herself in a number of her recent meetings stated that she did not find any reason for a dialogue with the opposition over the issue of political reforms.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 (Dhaka):

The 14-party alliance in Bangladesh led by Sheikh Hasina's Awami League has for the moment suspended a nationwide blockade aimed at forcing the removal of the country's election officials over allegations of political bias.

The four-day blockade had brought national production and exports to a standstill and the decision follows urgent appeals from business leaders.

There have been several incidents of violence.

A series of small bomb blasts in Dhaka overnight wounded eight people.

At least 30 people were injured in fresh clashes on Wednesday between Awami League activists and those of its bitter rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by begum Khaleda Zia.

As election approaches it appears that the much talked about electoral reforms have been sidelined by the latest politics of expanding electoral alliances. There is very little chance of these reforms being introduced during the tenure of the four-party alliance government. Neither the government nor the Election Commission (EC) seems to be in a hurry at this moment to bring reforms in the EC and electoral laws.

Political analysts in Bangladesh believe that the issue of expanding electoral alliance will dominate the political discussion in the country in the coming days especially after the announcement of HM Ershad to join the four-party ruling alliance by September while the tenure of the government is set to expire in October.

Not just refugees, but social workers, politicians, even government officials from West Bengal have claimed that the Union government discriminated between the displaced persons in the East and the West following Partition. Presented below is a ‘Report of a Tour of Inspection of some of the Refugee Homes in north-western India prepared by well-known social workers of West Bengal. This eyewitness account as well as comparative analysis points to the discrimination practiced.

THROUGH the kindness of the central Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, a body of non-official women social workers of West Bengal were able to visit several homes and training centres for refugees women and children in the states of East Punjab, Pepsu and Delhi, and make a detailed study of the steps taken to rehabilitate them in those states under the guidance of the Government of India. The experience was valuable as affording a yardstick with which to measure the steps taken in West Bengal to tackle similar problems in this side of India and suggesting what further liberalisation of the measures of relief are necessary so that the displaced women and children of West Bengal may at least march in step with their sisters from West Punjab and Sind. We cordially thank Shri Meher Chand Khanna and his ministry for the opportunity thus given and the officials of all the organisations we visited for sparing no pains to make our visit as comfortable and instructive as possible. In the following paragraphs we propose to state briefly what we saw and learnt.
The itinerary:

The first batch of social workers including Sm. Bina Das, Sm. Sudha Sen and Sm. Sheila Davar accompanied by Sm Suniti Pakrashi, Dy Director of Women’s Rehabilitation in West Bengal left Calcutta on 19 March 1955, and reached Dehra Doon on the 21st morning. The second batch consisting of Sm. Ashoka Gupta and Sm. Amar Kumari Varma left on the following day and joined them at Jullundur on the morning of the 22nd. The accompanying chart shows the places visited, the name and nature of the institutions inspected and the date of the visit.

Foreign Relations, Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Documents on South Asia, 1969-1972
Released by the Office of the Historian
December 12, 197...001
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. HENRY A. KISSINGER
THE WHITE HOUSE
Subject: India-Pakistan: Refugee Problems
The attached contingency study on refugee and resettlement problems in the context of the Indo-Pakistan fighting is forwarded. in response to the request made at the December 6 WASAG meeting. Except where indicated otherwise, the planning assumption is complete Indian/ Bangla Desh control of East Pakistan,

Theodore L. Eliot, Jr. Executive Secretary
INDIA-PAKISTAN: REFUGEE PROBLEMS
THE PROBLEM
The actual and potential refugee problem in South Asia must be viewed from various points --• humanitarian, political, economic and managerial. This paper assumes the overriding importance of the humanitarian aspect; it does not need to be greatly elaborated. The economic and managerial aspects are technical questions that we raise but cannot answer fully; we lack too much information and our view of the future is too cloudy. Some of these are being addressed in more detail by other papers under preparation in response to the WASAG request. We attempt, however, to flag the most important kinds of problems that we will face.

The political aspect presents problems about which we can make better guesses and which are perhaps more amenable to immediate action. Thus the principal thrust of the paper is in the political area.

There are four classes of refugees/ displaced persons who will probably require assistance on an international basis following the termination of hostilities.
1. Up to 10 million refugees from East Pakistan who are now in India.
2. Over 600,000 non-Bengali Muslims in East Pakistan who may want to move to West Pakistan, as well as West Pakistani government officials and military in the East.
3. Some 50-100,000 Bengalis living in West Pakistan, most of whom will almost certainly wish to return to East Pakistan.
4. An undetermined number of persons who are being displaced by the fighting within East Pakistan.

The Refugees in India
Nearly ten million* refugees fled from East Pakistan to India in the period since last March. Of these, nearly 3 million are outside refugee camps; an undetermined number of them have merged into the Indian economy and society and may never be heard of again. Of the remainder, who are in camps, about two million are Muslims, the rest Hindus.

The Bengali refugees are both an effect and a cause of the present situation. India found the burden of refugees economically and politically intolerable and has made
*These are Indian figures. Pakistan claims only two million.
their return to Pakistan a sine qua non of a settlement. Yet even with a settlement, the problem will persist on two levels:
-- repatriating and rehabilitating the returnees, and
-- dealing with refugees who do not want to or are not allowed to return.

Some of the refugees have reportedly already begun to return. We assume that nearly all the approximately two million Muslims will return to Bangla Desh. Resettlement will cause some problems but should be of manageable proportions.

A number of the Hindu refugees will also want to return -- we cannot estimate the proportion. Even assuming that the Bangla Desh government is willing to accept them, they will pose more difficult resettlement problems than will the Muslims. They are less likely to have friends -or family to receive them (whole villages have tended to flee en masse).

Many Hindus, however, will not want to return -- this will be particularly true of those with skills and education but also for many at the bottom of the social scale. This will pose a major problem for the Indian government. New Delhi wants desperately to get rid of these refugees and has built much of its international position on this. At the same time, however, the GOI may be loath to repatriate them forcefully for both domestic and international political reasons. The Bangla Desh government will presumably welcome returning Muslims. They may be less enthusiastic about the Hindus. Should the Bangla Desh government resist full repatriation, New Delhi will doubtless feel compelled to bring strong pressure to bear.

The problem may not be as bleak as suggested above. Much will depend on the circumstances in East Pakistan when fighting stops and the incentives to return that can be offered. A Bangla Desh spokesman has said that his government will welcome all returnees. Should Bangla Desh prove reluctant, India has various levers it can use ranging from economic negotiations to foot--dragging in withdrawing its troops. Still, we must bear in mind that the return of the refugees could create major problems of international concern.

Dealing with those Hindus who remain in India and are accepted by the Indian government will be primarily an economic problem but also one with political import. . Much depends on the numbers involved. If only a few hundred thousand have to be absorbed, the problem will not be great. Should, however, India be faced with many millions of permanent refugees the adjustment will be hard. Keeping these people in camps is distasteful to all concerned but integration into the Indian economy and society will be most difficult. Many refugees have no marketable skill, land is not available, settlement. outside of Bengali-speaking areas of India will be undesirable on cultural grounds, and there will be strong resistance from the Indian public.

Lacking any idea of the dimensions of the problem we are not able to foresee how it can be dealt with. If the numbers involved are large, India will convincingly argue that it should not hear the entire cost of resettlement. The international community will want to avoid another Palestine-type situation. The role that we will want or be able to play in helping will be affected by the state of our relations with India if and when the problem becomes acute. Sympathetic concern with India's problems could, however, be of some help in rebuilding our relationship with India.
In summary, then, problems can arise:
(1) Resettling those refugees who return and are accepted; this is manageable but will obviously increase in difficulty and cost as numbers increase.
(2) Persuading unwilling Hindus to return to East. Bengal. This will cause problems for India and could be of international concern, since the Indians may be fairly forceful in "persuading" the refugees to return.
(3) Persuading the Bangla Desh government to accept the Hindu refugees. Although this will be primarily a problem between Dacca and New Delhi, it, too, may have international ramifications.
(4) Resettling such refugees as remain in India. This will become primarily an Indian responsibility, but the international community will be expected to help. The Biharis

The Bihari community has never been completely at ease in East Pakistan and has tended to identify with the West Pakistani government. In the recent unrest, a number of Biharis have sided with Islamabad and participated in actions against the Bengali population. Even if this participation was in fact small, many Bengalis are no doubt thirsting for revenge (and have often loosed violence against Biharis when the opportunity arose.)

Much of the entrepreneurial skill in East Pakistan is in the non-Bengali community. Bangla Desh will need these people's skills but many of them will not want to *Technically, "Bihar's" are non-Bengali Muslims who fled to East Pakistan from present--day India (especially the state of Bihar) following partition in 1947. There are an estimated 600,000 of these in East Bengal now. The term is also used in a broader sense to include all non-Bengali Muslims in East Bengal --- an additional 1-1.5 million. Of these a fairly small number has close ties to West Pakistan. The remainder are reasonablv well intetergrated into East Bengal. stay. We cannot at this time estimate with confidence whether an anti-Bihari program will be launched in West Bengal, nor how many Biharis and other non-Bengalis would want to leave. Thus far, Biharis in areas conquered by Indian/ Muslim forces have reportedly fared well. In prudence, however, we must plan for a situation in which bloodshed could be widespread and several hundred thousand people would have to be evacuated quickly and under pressure.

Aside from the difficulty of finding adequate shipping, it may be extremely difficult to get potential evacuees to ports and into ships. Both transportation and law and order in the countryside may be chaotic and make it difficult to get evacuees to assembly points (although we understand that the Biharis and others likely to leave are generally located in the towns and cities). The withdrawing units of the Pakistani army may not be able to protect them enroute or even once they are gathered at embarkation points. Even if the Indian Army elements in East Pakistan cooperate in protecting the Biharis, as they have said they will, their capability to do so will be limited. Furthermore, the port facilities may be so badly damaged that expeditious loading will be impossible. A final problem would arise if the evacuation were to take place while the Indians still maintained their blockade of West Pakistan and refused to allow the refugee ships to enter Karachi.

It is not at all certain where the 600,000 Biharis can go. They would not be welcome in India (where they lived before 1947) and their welcome in West Pakistan would be questionable. Given these facts in addition to the tremendous logistic problem involved in moving the Biharis, it is clearly desirable that they remain in East Bengal if that is at all possible. Calming anti-Bihari sentiment in Bengal and providing assurances that will be credible to the Biharis will be extremely difficult but must be attempted. In this regard, even while planning for the worst contingencies and keeping-the paramount humani- tarian concern at the fore, we will want to avoid creating either in South Asia or at the UN an atmosphere that will stimulate Bihari expectations of evacuation or international expectations that this is inevitable.
The problems arising are these:

(1) Reducing the chances of a mass slaughter of Biharis, thus reducing the need for immediate evacuation.

(2) If hasty evacuation is required, protecting the lives of those awaiting evacuation and moving them to West Pakistan as quickly as possible. In practical terms this will mostly have to be done by sea; the numbers will be too large for air evacuation and movement by land across India is problematical. Special problems may arise because of damage to or inaccessibility of port facilities.

(A Related Problem: The Pakistani Army and Officials in East Bengal)

Some 70,000 West Pakistani military were in East Pakistan as of early December. In addition there were some thousands of West Pakistani officials. Many of both categories had families with them in the East. These will all clearly have to be evacuated and will present somewhat similar problems to that posed by a Bihari evacuation. These would be better organized, however, and more centrally located, assuming that the army is able to fall back in an orderly manner to a port area. Also, the Pakistan government will exert greater effort to extricate them. Above all, the army will be better able to establish a perimeter and defend. itself while awaiting withdrawal, if not protected by a formal cease-fire. Evacuation will be a problem, however, and. the Pakistani Government might make a special effort to have the US assist.

Bengalis in West Pakistan
The bulk of the 60,000 Bengalis in West Pakistan will probably want to return to Bang la Desh. Most of them have roots in the East; will have families there to receive them; and for the most part have needed skills. Most will probably not be welcome in West Pakistan.
Significant difficulties may arise, however, in the event of anti-Bengali bitterness among the West Pakistan population that could lead to killings of Bengalis. Also,
the Islamabad government might see the Bengalis as hostages for the safety of its forces and supporters in the East.
The problems are thus:
(1) Ensuring the safety of the Bengalis in West

(2) Transporting them back to Bangla Desh; this could be done in part by sea and in part by land across India, which will regard the Bengalis benevolently (in contrast to the Biharis).

Displaced Persons in the East
We have no way of knowing how many people will be displaced from their homes by the fighting and will need
to be resettled. In general, though, we expect that these '. battle refugees will not have fled far from their homes and will return on their own when the fighting passes them by. There will certainly be major requirements for rehabilitation because of destruction caused by the fighting. There is no significant reabsorption or political problem for this group of people, but the economic costs could be substantial.
The problem therefore is
(1) Getting the people back to their homes where necessary and rehabilitating them --- which is part of the large rehabilitation problem that the new government will face throughout its country.

The Humanitarian Problem During the Fighting
There is an additional related problem -- the protection of civilian lives and prisoners of war during the fighting.
Innocent people inevitably get killed during the fighting; there are poorly. disciplined armed bands, on both sides of the conflict that have been guilty of atrocities; and soldiers on both sides have real fears of reprisal if they are taken prisoner.
There is thus a need to
(1) Limit: unnecessary killing by all parties concerned by dampening the atmosphere of hatred and revenge even while fighting is going on, and
(2) Encourage adherence by all parties to the Geneva Convention.

THE US INTEREST
The United States has several interests in the refugee problem:
-- Prevention of loss of life and facilitation of repatriation and resettlement.
-- Using its assistance in dealing with the refugee question to further its basic goals of (a) reestablishing peace and security in South Asia and (b) building good relations with the governments involved -- India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh.
-- Preventing the institutionalization of a South Asia refugee problem on the Palestinian model.
-- Not becoming saddled with a disproportionate share of the expense and effort involved in moving and resettling refugees.

RESPONSES
The refugee problem will have to be dealt with at three levels:
-- by the governments directly involved -- India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh;
-- by the international community; primarily the. UN but also perhaps the

Next Time Dhaka
Palash Biswas
(Plpublish and send a copy . Contact: Palash Chandra Biswas, c/o Mrs Arati Roy, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India.Phone: 033-25659551.)
In Palta, about 25 KM away from Kolkata a seminar was organised last sunday by Guruchand Sena. More than four hundred delegates from all over were the participants. The focus was on refugee problems along with minority persecution in Bangladesh.Refugee leaders, socialactivists, human right activists and intellectuals pledged to be united in the tradition of language, culture and history. They discussed the Phistine exodus in this context and emphasised that we must not forget our identity and roots as well.Next time Jerusalam was the slogan for philistine refugees for almost three thousand years whenever they met in exile, so it should be the slogan next time Dhaka. Other prominent refugee group in India, the sikhs and punjabies migrated fromwest Punjab may never forget their roots as they have a title as a prefix with the name of their village. Fifty years are nothing on the scale of human civilisattion and history, but the very second generation of east Bengal refugees have lost their history, culture,mother language and identity overall. Even they don`t know where their anchestors belong. Thus, the slogan next time Dhaka was passed with consensus. The seminar witnessed the screening of films made by Shahriar Kabir on Minority Persecution.

Dr JC Haldar , aphysician and refugee leader conducted the seminar with inputs intermittently. He explained the problems and details.

Most sensetional was the speech of Dr Mohit Roy, the convenor of CAAMB, kolkata. Dr Roy demnded voting rights for the refugees in exile in Bangladesh elections. He elaborated the systematic demographic changes in Bengal and the impact. He demanded dual citizenship for all Bengali refugees as there was no actual population transfer as decided creating two dominions India and Pakistan. Only the Hindus were driven out. They hang on. But biotically their sustenance became impossible day by day.The systematic ethinic cleansing drove out them from Bangladesh.And the refugee influx continues. Thus, the refugees must be given the Indian citizenship as they are partition victims. And they should be given dual citizenship to hold on Bangladeshi citizenship as they were driven out of the country by the persecution machinery against their will.

The seminar passed a resolution which demands immidiate stop in deportation drive of partition victim East Bengal refugees. It demands an amendment in the latest version of citizen amendment act which declares all refugees migrating after july 1948, Bangladesh infiltrators. It demands that all partition victims must be granted Indian Citizenship without any discrimination,delay and cutt off year limitation.The resolution also condemns minority persecution in Bangladesh,ethnic cleansing of Hindus, christians and in particular, chakmas in Chittagong. It demnds prosecutions of the miscreants involved in antiminority riots and atrocities including Banskhali genocide. The resolution demands autonomous areas for all minorities in Bangladesh to protect them and check further influx of refugees from Bangladesh.

All India Refugee Front executive President, a bjp leader who contested assembly election on party ticket , objects sharply the sand and statement of CAAMB and its convenor Mohit Roy. He also contended that All India Refugee Front leaders including Dr Jagadish Haldar who is the organising secretary of the front did not care to invite or inform the organisation. He told me on telephone that refugees want Indian citizenship, not refugee status and according to him refugees have nothing to do with dhaka and Bangladesh. He agreed that the refugee influx must be stopped and for this persecution of minorities in Bangladesh should be stopped. But the demand for voting right in Bangladesh elections and the slogan, next time Dhaka are highly abjectionable, he said. According to Thakur internationalisation of the issue won`t help the refugees from East Bengal. He also against the quotations from history. He told that what Dr Vidhan Roy did, this analysis has to do nothing with refugee problem. according to him West Bengal Left Front government is blackmailing the refugees for decades. In last elections deletion of lacs of voters from the voters list actually helped the left front. As the refugees enmasse supported and voted left front.
Thakur alleged that CAAMB is executing a caste hindu plan to drive out dalit Bengali refugees to Bangladesh. In reaction Dr Haldar refuted the charges when contacted and said that mass forum discussions should be welcome for the mobilisation of masses to solve the refugee problems. He alleged that the refugee leaders are involved in Kolkata based politics and are disinterested to work on grassroot level.

Caamb stand is also not welcome in Bangldesh. The media and a section of Bangladesh intellegentia allege that neither CAAMB nor its convenor has any brespect to Bangdesh`s separate identity, sovereignity and freedom.

Not only the rightist refugee leaders but also the cpim alligned refugee leaders have reacted sharply on Palta seminar.Dr Nitish Biswas also thing this section of refugee leaders are diluting and misleading the movement. Without the merger of two Bengals , there is no way to claim dhaka meet, which is quite impossible and unethicle. Ratneswar Sarkar, a former cpi leader also says that nothing less than citizenship of India is accepatable to refugees. He dismisses CAAMB demand.

Neverthe less Dr Haldar and dr sen stand by their statement.

The resolution passed in the seminar, demands immediate withdrwal of the controversial Shatru sampatti Arpit aain.
The resolutions applauds the role played by Bangldesh media and intellegentia to protect and highlight the causes of minorities in Bangladesh. It also emphasises to restore secular democracy in Bangladesh replacing the Jamat- Bnp version of pro pakistani Islamic Rule.
With full respect to Bangladesh as a nation, democracy and sovereign state, the resolution demands deployment of impartial UN observers in Bangladesh elections as every election follows severe minority persecution. The resolution demanded restoration of all minority worshiping places including Ramnna Kalibadi which are either damaged orcaptured.
Dr Jagadish Chandra Haldar presided the seminar. I was also invited to address the selected audiance which included delegates from Kolkata, North and South 24 pargans, Burdwan and Birbhoom,Hoogli and medinipur, Nadia , etc. I highlighted the problems faced by refugees all over India and the detachment of the Bengali ruling Classes. I also felt the greatest need of documentation as after sixty years of partion no transparent,impartial documentation of the calamity, government policy, correspondance and the first person version from the partition victims are not available.
A former SDO Radhamohan Biswas analysed the techniclities for legal and constitutional changes demanded. ACJP human Right activist MS Jyoti came from Nagpur and assured to raise the issue on international forums. Rakhal Roy and Shaktipada Biswas from Vigyan o Juktivadi samiti, Sunil Biswas, Secretary, All India Refugee front, Ravindra Nath Dutt and Gopal Saha from Indian Nationalist Forum, Dr Birat Bairagya, a teacher of Matua sahity in Kalayani Universty, Prafulla Chandra Malungi, president Guruchand Sena, Arvind Biswas, general secretary GuruChand Sena, PK roy, former President of BSP, WB committee all spoke against minority persecution accross the border and supported the resolution.

Please read this item to know more about CAAMB KOlkta:

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
CIVIL SOCIETY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND MINORITIES IN BANGLADESH
Supported by
Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (Chapters outside Bangladesh )
22-23 January, 2005, Kolkata
Dear Friend,
Ethnic cleansing of minorities, especially of Hindus, from formerly East Pakistan and later Bangladesh, is going for last five decades. Bangladesh has been made an Islamic State by amending the Constitution. After the General Elections in 2001, empowered by their ascendancy Islamic fundamentalists have intensified the atrocities on the minorities. Hundreds of women have been raped. Minorities are leaving the country everyday. Secular voices are being banished from the country.

Worse still is the silence in West Bengal, which has witnessed this mass of uprooted people. In West Bengal most of the intelligentsia have not only remained silent themselves but tried to keep others silent on this issue of gravest and continued violation of human rights of their people. The continuing mass migration of the Hindu refugees and the subsequent flow of Muslim infiltrators have already affected demography, economy, culture and environment here. It is an all-encompassing problem which is now destroying West Bengal.

CAAMB (Campaign Against Atrocities on Minorities in Bangladesh) is an agglomeration of some conscientious persons in Kolkata and around. We have come together on the issue of atrocities on minorities in Bangladesh after the recent spate of violence there. CAAMB is trying to unveil the truth so that the people of West Bengal at least will start to think, and subsequently act on this issue.

A number of branches of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) and some other organisations are working in Bangladesh and all over the world to upheld the rights of the minorities there. CAAMB has joined with them to strengthen the issue. CAAMB believes the people of West Bengal have a special moral and ethical responsibility to help their brothers and sisters in Bangladesh. To highlight all these issues CAAMB with support from Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (of UK, USA & Europe) has planned to organise an International Conference on 22-23 January at Kolkata.

The International Conference will be attended by eminent people and activists from abroad and from different parts of India. The Conference will have exhibitions and film shows. We want to make it a big event to awake the people of West Bengal from their slumber of 50 years.

WE WANT YOUR FULL COOPERATION. PLEASE INFORM OTHERS WHO CAN HELP US. SEND YOUR SUGGESTION. SPONSOR SOME ACTIVITIES OF THE CONFERENCE. ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO START A NEW CHAPTER IN WEST BENGAL.

Phone: +919831456930; +91332416 1534; Email: caambkolkata@hotmail.com

http://users.cjb.net/caambkolkata/ConferenceIntroduction.htm
Little Hope of Electoral Reforms before the Elections

Minority persecution is again imminent in Bangaldesh as the whole nation is in turmoil once again. The demonstarions, blockades and mass movement against Ruling combination, all have teh impact on the minorities in negetive sense.

Dr. Anand KumarBangladesh writes in his article, `Developments in the Run up to Elections’:
Long before the elections were due in Bangladesh, both the major political parties in the country have been preparing for it in their own way. The main opposition party Awami League has been drawing the attention of the people towards the failure of the government in governing the country. They have also pointed out the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the country as a threat to its democracy. The ruling alliance on the other hand has been making changes in the administrative set up of the country so that it can have a favourable dispensation during the elections. They have also been looking for new allies who can boost their chances of coming back to power.

The Awami League led fourteen-party opposition group has been demanding electoral reforms since July 2005 through street protests. It says that the ruling coalition will manipulate the present caretaker government system of conducting elections in Bangladesh. To hold a free and fair election in the country it has been demanding certain changes in the Caretaker government system and the Election Commission. With this objective they suggested a set of reform proposals. These proposals were initially rejected by the government but later adopting a softer stance they asked the opposition to place them in parliament.

These proposals were placed in parliament by the Leader of Opposition Sheikh Hasina on February 12. In response to that the Bangladesh prime minister had proposed in parliament on February 28 that it will form a committee, comprising members of the ruling BNP and the main opposition AL. This committee was to discuss reform proposals and devise a fair procedure to ensure holding of free and fair elections. But it appears that the government really never meant it.

The BNP secretary general on March 20 sent a letter to the AL secretary general inviting the main opposition party to join a committee to discuss the reform agenda. But when the BNP announced the names of the ruling alliance representatives in the committee it also included names of Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote leaders. The AL-led opposition coalition through a letter to the BNP secretary general in early May sharply reacted to the inclusion of two Islamist leaders in the committee and refused to sit with them for a dialogue. The process of negotiation has been suspended since then.

The intention of the ruling coalition became further clear when in an interview on August 3, prime minister and BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's eldest son Tarique Rahman, who is the senior joint secretary general of the BNP and de facto leader of the party, ruled out the possibility of acceptance of the AL-led coalition proposals for reforms in the caretaker government (CTG) and the Election Commission (EC). He said that three general elections had been held peacefully, fairly, and impartially under the existing CTG system. Hence there was no need for reforms. He also suggested that if the opposition were serious about reforms in the CTG and the EC, they could include those reform proposals in their election manifesto for the forthcoming general election and can implement in case they were voted to power. He also wondered why the Awami League did not carry out those reforms during their tenure. Prime Minister herself in a number of her recent meetings stated that she did not find any reason for a dialogue with the opposition over the issue of political reforms.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 (Dhaka):

The 14-party alliance in Bangladesh led by Sheikh Hasina's Awami League has for the moment suspended a nationwide blockade aimed at forcing the removal of the country's election officials over allegations of political bias.

The four-day blockade had brought national production and exports to a standstill and the decision follows urgent appeals from business leaders.

There have been several incidents of violence.

A series of small bomb blasts in Dhaka overnight wounded eight people.

At least 30 people were injured in fresh clashes on Wednesday between Awami League activists and those of its bitter rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by begum Khaleda Zia.

As election approaches it appears that the much talked about electoral reforms have been sidelined by the latest politics of expanding electoral alliances. There is very little chance of these reforms being introduced during the tenure of the four-party alliance government. Neither the government nor the Election Commission (EC) seems to be in a hurry at this moment to bring reforms in the EC and electoral laws.

Political analysts in Bangladesh believe that the issue of expanding electoral alliance will dominate the political discussion in the country in the coming days especially after the announcement of HM Ershad to join the four-party ruling alliance by September while the tenure of the government is set to expire in October.

Not just refugees, but social workers, politicians, even government officials from West Bengal have claimed that the Union government discriminated between the displaced persons in the East and the West following Partition. Presented below is a ‘Report of a Tour of Inspection of some of the Refugee Homes in north-western India prepared by well-known social workers of West Bengal. This eyewitness account as well as comparative analysis points to the discrimination practiced.

THROUGH the kindness of the central Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, a body of non-official women social workers of West Bengal were able to visit several homes and training centres for refugees women and children in the states of East Punjab, Pepsu and Delhi, and make a detailed study of the steps taken to rehabilitate them in those states under the guidance of the Government of India. The experience was valuable as affording a yardstick with which to measure the steps taken in West Bengal to tackle similar problems in this side of India and suggesting what further liberalisation of the measures of relief are necessary so that the displaced women and children of West Bengal may at least march in step with their sisters from West Punjab and Sind. We cordially thank Shri Meher Chand Khanna and his ministry for the opportunity thus given and the officials of all the organisations we visited for sparing no pains to make our visit as comfortable and instructive as possible. In the following paragraphs we propose to state briefly what we saw and learnt.
The itinerary:

The first batch of social workers including Sm. Bina Das, Sm. Sudha Sen and Sm. Sheila Davar accompanied by Sm Suniti Pakrashi, Dy Director of Women’s Rehabilitation in West Bengal left Calcutta on 19 March 1955, and reached Dehra Doon on the 21st morning. The second batch consisting of Sm. Ashoka Gupta and Sm. Amar Kumari Varma left on the following day and joined them at Jullundur on the morning of the 22nd. The accompanying chart shows the places visited, the name and nature of the institutions inspected and the date of the visit.

Foreign Relations, Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Documents on South Asia, 1969-1972
Released by the Office of the Historian
December 12, 197...001
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. HENRY A. KISSINGER
THE WHITE HOUSE
Subject: India-Pakistan: Refugee Problems
The attached contingency study on refugee and resettlement problems in the context of the Indo-Pakistan fighting is forwarded. in response to the request made at the December 6 WASAG meeting. Except where indicated otherwise, the planning assumption is complete Indian/ Bangla Desh control of East Pakistan,

Theodore L. Eliot, Jr. Executive Secretary
INDIA-PAKISTAN: REFUGEE PROBLEMS
THE PROBLEM
The actual and potential refugee problem in South Asia must be viewed from various points --• humanitarian, political, economic and managerial. This paper assumes the overriding importance of the humanitarian aspect; it does not need to be greatly elaborated. The economic and managerial aspects are technical questions that we raise but cannot answer fully; we lack too much information and our view of the future is too cloudy. Some of these are being addressed in more detail by other papers under preparation in response to the WASAG request. We attempt, however, to flag the most important kinds of problems that we will face.

The political aspect presents problems about which we can make better guesses and which are perhaps more amenable to immediate action. Thus the principal thrust of the paper is in the political area.

There are four classes of refugees/ displaced persons who will probably require assistance on an international basis following the termination of hostilities.
1. Up to 10 million refugees from East Pakistan who are now in India.
2. Over 600,000 non-Bengali Muslims in East Pakistan who may want to move to West Pakistan, as well as West Pakistani government officials and military in the East.
3. Some 50-100,000 Bengalis living in West Pakistan, most of whom will almost certainly wish to return to East Pakistan.
4. An undetermined number of persons who are being displaced by the fighting within East Pakistan.

The Refugees in India
Nearly ten million* refugees fled from East Pakistan to India in the period since last March. Of these, nearly 3 million are outside refugee camps; an undetermined number of them have merged into the Indian economy and society and may never be heard of again. Of the remainder, who are in camps, about two million are Muslims, the rest Hindus.

The Bengali refugees are both an effect and a cause of the present situation. India found the burden of refugees economically and politically intolerable and has made
*These are Indian figures. Pakistan claims only two million.
their return to Pakistan a sine qua non of a settlement. Yet even with a settlement, the problem will persist on two levels:
-- repatriating and rehabilitating the returnees, and
-- dealing with refugees who do not want to or are not allowed to return.

Some of the refugees have reportedly already begun to return. We assume that nearly all the approximately two million Muslims will return to Bangla Desh. Resettlement will cause some problems but should be of manageable proportions.

A number of the Hindu refugees will also want to return -- we cannot estimate the proportion. Even assuming that the Bangla Desh government is willing to accept them, they will pose more difficult resettlement problems than will the Muslims. They are less likely to have friends -or family to receive them (whole villages have tended to flee en masse).

Many Hindus, however, will not want to return -- this will be particularly true of those with skills and education but also for many at the bottom of the social scale. This will pose a major problem for the Indian government. New Delhi wants desperately to get rid of these refugees and has built much of its international position on this. At the same time, however, the GOI may be loath to repatriate them forcefully for both domestic and international political reasons. The Bangla Desh government will presumably welcome returning Muslims. They may be less enthusiastic about the Hindus. Should the Bangla Desh government resist full repatriation, New Delhi will doubtless feel compelled to bring strong pressure to bear.

The problem may not be as bleak as suggested above. Much will depend on the circumstances in East Pakistan when fighting stops and the incentives to return that can be offered. A Bangla Desh spokesman has said that his government will welcome all returnees. Should Bangla Desh prove reluctant, India has various levers it can use ranging from economic negotiations to foot--dragging in withdrawing its troops. Still, we must bear in mind that the return of the refugees could create major problems of international concern.

Dealing with those Hindus who remain in India and are accepted by the Indian government will be primarily an economic problem but also one with political import. . Much depends on the numbers involved. If only a few hundred thousand have to be absorbed, the problem will not be great. Should, however, India be faced with many millions of permanent refugees the adjustment will be hard. Keeping these people in camps is distasteful to all concerned but integration into the Indian economy and society will be most difficult. Many refugees have no marketable skill, land is not available, settlement. outside of Bengali-speaking areas of India will be undesirable on cultural grounds, and there will be strong resistance from the Indian public.

Lacking any idea of the dimensions of the problem we are not able to foresee how it can be dealt with. If the numbers involved are large, India will convincingly argue that it should not hear the entire cost of resettlement. The international community will want to avoid another Palestine-type situation. The role that we will want or be able to play in helping will be affected by the state of our relations with India if and when the problem becomes acute. Sympathetic concern with India's problems could, however, be of some help in rebuilding our relationship with India.
In summary, then, problems can arise:
(1) Resettling those refugees who return and are accepted; this is manageable but will obviously increase in difficulty and cost as numbers increase.
(2) Persuading unwilling Hindus to return to East. Bengal. This will cause problems for India and could be of international concern, since the Indians may be fairly forceful in "persuading" the refugees to return.
(3) Persuading the Bangla Desh government to accept the Hindu refugees. Although this will be primarily a problem between Dacca and New Delhi, it, too, may have international ramifications.
(4) Resettling such refugees as remain in India. This will become primarily an Indian responsibility, but the international community will be expected to help. The Biharis

The Bihari community has never been completely at ease in East Pakistan and has tended to identify with the West Pakistani government. In the recent unrest, a number of Biharis have sided with Islamabad and participated in actions against the Bengali population. Even if this participation was in fact small, many Bengalis are no doubt thirsting for revenge (and have often loosed violence against Biharis when the opportunity arose.)

Much of the entrepreneurial skill in East Pakistan is in the non-Bengali community. Bangla Desh will need these people's skills but many of them will not want to *Technically, "Bihar's" are non-Bengali Muslims who fled to East Pakistan from present--day India (especially the state of Bihar) following partition in 1947. There are an estimated 600,000 of these in East Bengal now. The term is also used in a broader sense to include all non-Bengali Muslims in East Bengal --- an additional 1-1.5 million. Of these a fairly small number has close ties to West Pakistan. The remainder are reasonablv well intetergrated into East Bengal. stay. We cannot at this time estimate with confidence whether an anti-Bihari program will be launched in West Bengal, nor how many Biharis and other non-Bengalis would want to leave. Thus far, Biharis in areas conquered by Indian/ Muslim forces have reportedly fared well. In prudence, however, we must plan for a situation in which bloodshed could be widespread and several hundred thousand people would have to be evacuated quickly and under pressure.

Aside from the difficulty of finding adequate shipping, it may be extremely difficult to get potential evacuees to ports and into ships. Both transportation and law and order in the countryside may be chaotic and make it difficult to get evacuees to assembly points (although we understand that the Biharis and others likely to leave are generally located in the towns and cities). The withdrawing units of the Pakistani army may not be able to protect them enroute or even once they are gathered at embarkation points. Even if the Indian Army elements in East Pakistan cooperate in protecting the Biharis, as they have said they will, their capability to do so will be limited. Furthermore, the port facilities may be so badly damaged that expeditious loading will be impossible. A final problem would arise if the evacuation were to take place while the Indians still maintained their blockade of West Pakistan and refused to allow the refugee ships to enter Karachi.

It is not at all certain where the 600,000 Biharis can go. They would not be welcome in India (where they lived before 1947) and their welcome in West Pakistan would be questionable. Given these facts in addition to the tremendous logistic problem involved in moving the Biharis, it is clearly desirable that they remain in East Bengal if that is at all possible. Calming anti-Bihari sentiment in Bengal and providing assurances that will be credible to the Biharis will be extremely difficult but must be attempted. In this regard, even while planning for the worst contingencies and keeping-the paramount humani- tarian concern at the fore, we will want to avoid creating either in South Asia or at the UN an atmosphere that will stimulate Bihari expectations of evacuation or international expectations that this is inevitable.
The problems arising are these:

(1) Reducing the chances of a mass slaughter of Biharis, thus reducing the need for immediate evacuation.

(2) If hasty evacuation is required, protecting the lives of those awaiting evacuation and moving them to West Pakistan as quickly as possible. In practical terms this will mostly have to be done by sea; the numbers will be too large for air evacuation and movement by land across India is problematical. Special problems may arise because of damage to or inaccessibility of port facilities.

(A Related Problem: The Pakistani Army and Officials in East Bengal)

Some 70,000 West Pakistani military were in East Pakistan as of early December. In addition there were some thousands of West Pakistani officials. Many of both categories had families with them in the East. These will all clearly have to be evacuated and will present somewhat similar problems to that posed by a Bihari evacuation. These would be better organized, however, and more centrally located, assuming that the army is able to fall back in an orderly manner to a port area. Also, the Pakistan government will exert greater effort to extricate them. Above all, the army will be better able to establish a perimeter and defend. itself while awaiting withdrawal, if not protected by a formal cease-fire. Evacuation will be a problem, however, and. the Pakistani Government might make a special effort to have the US assist.

Bengalis in West Pakistan
The bulk of the 60,000 Bengalis in West Pakistan will probably want to return to Bang la Desh. Most of them have roots in the East; will have families there to receive them; and for the most part have needed skills. Most will probably not be welcome in West Pakistan.
Significant difficulties may arise, however, in the event of anti-Bengali bitterness among the West Pakistan population that could lead to killings of Bengalis. Also,
the Islamabad government might see the Bengalis as hostages for the safety of its forces and supporters in the East.
The problems are thus:
(1) Ensuring the safety of the Bengalis in West

(2) Transporting them back to Bangla Desh; this could be done in part by sea and in part by land across India, which will regard the Bengalis benevolently (in contrast to the Biharis).

Displaced Persons in the East
We have no way of knowing how many people will be displaced from their homes by the fighting and will need
to be resettled. In general, though, we expect that these '. battle refugees will not have fled far from their homes and will return on their own when the fighting passes them by. There will certainly be major requirements for rehabilitation because of destruction caused by the fighting. There is no significant reabsorption or political problem for this group of people, but the economic costs could be substantial.
The problem therefore is
(1) Getting the people back to their homes where necessary and rehabilitating them --- which is part of the large rehabilitation problem that the new government will face throughout its country.

The Humanitarian Problem During the Fighting
There is an additional related problem -- the protection of civilian lives and prisoners of war during the fighting.
Innocent people inevitably get killed during the fighting; there are poorly. disciplined armed bands, on both sides of the conflict that have been guilty of atrocities; and soldiers on both sides have real fears of reprisal if they are taken prisoner.
There is thus a need to
(1) Limit: unnecessary killing by all parties concerned by dampening the atmosphere of hatred and revenge even while fighting is going on, and
(2) Encourage adherence by all parties to the Geneva Convention.

THE US INTEREST
The United States has several interests in the refugee problem:
-- Prevention of loss of life and facilitation of repatriation and resettlement.
-- Using its assistance in dealing with the refugee question to further its basic goals of (a) reestablishing peace and security in South Asia and (b) building good relations with the governments involved -- India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh.
-- Preventing the institutionalization of a South Asia refugee problem on the Palestinian model.
-- Not becoming saddled with a disproportionate share of the expense and effort involved in moving and resettling refugees.

RESPONSES
The refugee problem will have to be dealt with at three levels:
-- by the governments directly involved -- India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh;
-- by the international community; primarily the. UN but also perhaps the

With Lalan Fakir Border withers Away
Palash Biswas
(Plpublish and send a copy.Contact: Palash chandra Biswas, c/o Mrs arati Roy, gosto Kanan, sodepur, kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 033-25659551(r)
In Lalantirtha, Bhimpur-Aasan Nagar Kadamkhali situated near Majdiaya rly station in the district of Nadia, West Bengal,India begins the Lalan Mela from the rising sun tomorrow. It will go on until 17 th November. This Baul musical event is an opportunity for the music lovers of the country to take a taste of the hundreds of year-old folk songs of Bengal. West Bengal Lalan Academy organizes the event evry year and emergence of the great baul dilutes the border. It happens when Lalan Mela starts anywhere accross the border.

Anyone is welcome.Just inform Jatin Chandra roy. His mobile number is 9434553557. He has a landphone to be contacted: 03473-274026.

Communal harmony is the name of the saga which is represented well by Indian Sants and Sufies like Kabir, Dadu, Raheem, Ravidas and Lalan himself. Lalan mela is also organised in Bangladesh. Pabna and Kushtiya melas are famous enough.Even the Jaidev kenduli mela near Shanti Niketan and sati Maayer Mela in Kalyani also represents the Baul Saga.Sanskrit poet the Great Jaidev is considered the original Baul who used desi rythm and alankar in Sanskrit poetry for the first time. The last classic sanskrit poet introduced human love in poetry. Baul songs are all about human love.
Lalan Shah, one of the greatest mystic poets of this sub-continent was born in the year 1774 in the village Harishpur, under the present District of Jhenaidah in Bangladesh. Ultimately through many ups and downs of life, varied experiences and devotional pursuits, he settled in Seuria, a village near the present district headquarters of Kushtia. There was a time when Muslim sufimendicants covered almost all the areas of the then Bengal and many of their memories have now been turned to sacred legend. As for example, Shah Sultan Rumi, Hajrat Shah Jalal, Shah Sultan Makka, Shah Sultan Mahishwar, Khan Jehen Ali, Shah Ismail Gazi, Shah Makdum, Hajrat Jalal Uddin Tabreji and many of their followers can be mentioned.

Lalan Academy is supported by the government of West Bengal. Shaheed Smarak Committee high profile intellectuals are behind this event. But two names specially deserves mention. Dr Shubhendu Maiti is considered a specialist in folk songs and he is trying to put all folk available in hard disc in the Lalan academy premises. Jatindra Nath Roy is a very respected teacher across the border.He resides in Bahirgachhi near bagula and He is the president of Lalan Mela samiti. Top artists and intellectuals along with thousands of guests from Bangladesh are expected to come over.
BBC broadcasted a piece on Lalan Shah, the famous Baul poet of Bengal United who had been nomi­nated by someone as the Best Bengali of all times and a recorded interview with the nominator was also broadcast by BBC.

Mohammad Abdullah, USA writesin his article published on bangladesh web titled`Rabindranath Tagore – The Poet And The Man An Analytical Perspective’:

Tagore’s controversy on Lalan Shah (Lalan Fakir) or the aforementioned Persian poets is a kind of illusion to the general readers. Through his great and unchallenged quality craftsmanship Tagore created works and presented them so marvellously that it seemed to be very original, and thereby he did surpass all other writers in Bengali literature of his time and writers to come even until the present day. He had no parallel in Bengali language that could graft words or phrases or use adjectives or verbs or synonyms so appropriately. Indeed he gave a new format and style in the Bengali language. He used many new words of foreign origin in Bengali including their spellings. Also new way to spell several Bengali words had been introduced by him. His way of using words and their spellings are now a kind of norm in Bengali literature.

Overall, Tagore’s expression was new, very graceful, and quite enchanting considering the time-space-era when he started writing in Bengali. It was the time when Bengali was still a developing language and was just getting a solid format with direct help and involvement of many European scholars. In this context it is worthwhile to mention that Sir Drinkwater Bethune (circa 1865) encouraged Michael Modhusudan Dutt (1824 – 1873) after reading “Captive Ladie” to contribute in his mother language rather than spending time on founding English literature. Nevertheless, this was the beginning of the foundation of the Bengali language concerning several directions of literature.’

Whenever you visit any part of Bengal accross the border you may coincide to meet aboul anywhere in a train compartment, on a station or stop, marketpalce, Hat, Mela or in a simple village.The sweet melody of his voice catering a devotional type or a folk based song, mostly pensive in mood or though seemingly joyful in its outer fabric, actually sad in its inner ambience, is made sweeter and more melodious by the occasional sounds from a stringed instrument.
Look he has in his right hand a one-stringed improvised instrument which they call ‘EKTARA’ literally meaning an instrument having only one string. He has also another one-stringed instrument in his left hand known as ‘Gupijantra’ which, when played with the help of a polished piece of coconut shell, scoops up an uncommon, never heard before sound, peculiar to hear isolated but suitable when played as an accompaniment, mainly a filler or interlude music for his song. No, he can not play the ‘Ektara’ and his ‘Gupijantra’ simultaneously as the later instrument demands employment of his both hands when played. But wonder of wonders! Look! Like a one-man orchestra, he is taking access to yet another instrument when he is not using his ‘Gupijantra’. This is a small sized drum type instrument, an indigenous version of a locally made percussion, the size of your palm, held in his left hand and slung with a string from his shoulder. Surely, he is playing this together with his ‘Ektara’ simultaneously, to provide occasional beats to one of his fast paced songs.

It was interesting to learn that to resist the oppression of Zamindars of the Thakur Privar, the Tagores, Lalan Shah organized his poor followers and raised his voice of protest against the pow­erful landlords. More interestingly, it was claimed that Tagore's family engaged armed thugs to deal with Lalan Shah and his followers. If this is true then the information broadcast by BBC opens wide, the doors to unknown chapters in the lives of Lalan Shah and Rabin-dranath Tagore.
You may not have heard the name of Kangal Harinath Majumdar who used to publish his Gram varta from Kushtia. He published details of the incidents of atrocties met by the peaants in Tagore Zamindari. It is quite a controversial topic and we find Tagore writing Rashiar Chithi, Rather Rashi and Chandalika, too. Tagore wrote in support of dalits and peasants as well. So we have to be very careful. But it is not quite unfair that Tagore owed his version of spiritualism to Bauls and sufis of Bengal,specially to Lalan fakir. Tagore declarede himself a baul. His great poetry Gitanjali which got him Nobel Prize, is also influenced by Lalan Fakir.
From the autobiographical book written by the later Mr P.A. Nazir a legendary civil servant of Bangladesh who was sacked by Yahya Khan, we learn how Tagore's son treated Lalan Shah as a beggar and how the great Baul reacted. We also learn about later relations that developed between Lalan and Rabindra Nath Tagore. But the latest information broad­cast by BBC is of much more sig­nificance.

Some people strongly believe that Tagore has annexed many lyrics from Lalan Shah (1773? - 1889), the great mystic of medieval undivided Bengal and put them into new format for which he was a great original master. To collect Lalan’s unwritten poems Tagore conducted rampant search by making payments to the poor peasants, mostly Muslims, across the former district of Kushtia and adjoining areas. This only happened after the demise of Lalan while Tagore became Zamindar of the same district almost at the same time.

It is well known a fact and well documented.Poet Rabindranath Tagore in his Hebart Lecture in London (1933) first applauded Lalan Shah as a mystic poet who discovered 'soul' and the meaning of 'man'. Tagore said that I discovered that 'man' from the songs of Lalan who said that "(ai manushe ase se mon....) "....) the 'man' is within yourself where are you searching Him (Folkore, II, Calcutta, 1961).
Tagore through his Estate-Assistant Bamacharan Chakravarty managed to copy nearly 150 songs from his akhra (residing place) Seuria from which only a few songs were published in the monthly Probashi as 'Haramoni' in 1920. Soon after, search for similar songs were undertaken by various collectors including Md. Mansur Uddin. 'Haramoni' (1932) the preface of which was written by Tagore said that here, in these songs, Hindus and Muslims have been united under the same sky------ there is no barrier of caste or creed...'
Tagore wrote that it is a fact that I infused the tune of Baul (Lalan) in many of my songs and dramas. Dusan Zbavitel, a Czeck Folklorist wrote that 'it is my firm belief that if Tagore had not stayed in the countryside (Selaidah), he would not have become, what he was as a man or a poet. Now the scholars are discovering the Baul-motifs in his songs, dramas and poems, which needs elaborate discussion (Folklore, II, Calcutta, vol. 14,1961).

Baul is not just one of the many things unique to Bengal. This wandering music cult has a special place in the history of world music. The word "Baul" has its etymological origin in the Sanskrit words "Vatula" (madcap), or "Vyakula" (restless) and used for someone who is "possessed" or "crazy". Bauls live like a community, and their main occupation is the propagation of Baul music. But they are the most non-communal of all communities: They have no religion, for they only believe in the religion of music, brotherhood and peace. Predominantly a Hindu movement, the Baul philosophy weaves together different Islamic and Buddhist strains as well.The theme that Bauls deal with in their lyrics is mostly philosophical in the form of allegories on the state of disconnect between the earthly soul and the spiritual world. Often they philosophize on love and the many-splendoured bonds of the heart, subtly revealing the mystery of life, the laws of nature, the decree of destiny and the ultimate union with the divine.

Originally, the Bauls were nonconformist, who rejected the traditional social norms to form a distinct sect that upheld music as their religion. "Baul" is also the name given to the genre of folk music developed by this creative cult. It's easy to identify a Baul singer from his uncut, often coiled hair, saffron robe (alkhalla), necklace of beads made of basil (tulsi) stems, and of course the single-stringed guitar (ektara). Music is their only source of sustenance: They live on whatever they are offered by villagers in return, and travel from place to place, as it were, on a vehicle of ecstasy. Bauls croon from their hearts and pour out their feelings and emotions in their songs. But they never bother to write down their songs. Theirs is essentially an oral tradition, and it is said of Lalan Fakir (1774 -1890), the greatest of all Bauls, that he continued to compose and sing songs for decades without ever stopping to correct them or put them on paper. It was only after his death that people thought of collecting and compiling his rich repertoire.

Baul Gadgets
Bauls use a variety of indigenous musical instruments to embellish their compositions. The "ektara", a one-stringed drone instrument, is the common instrument of a Baul singer. It is the carved from the epicarp of a gourd, and made of bamboo and goatskin. Other commonly used musical paraphernalia include "dotara", a multi-stringed instrument made of the wood of a jackfruit or neem tree; "dugi", a small hand-held earthen drum; leather instruments like "dhol", "khol" and "goba"; chime tools like "ghungur", "nupur"; small cymbals called "kartal" and "mandira", and the bamboo flute.

Baul Country
Originally, the district of Birbhum in West Bengal was the seat of all Baul activity. Later the Baul domain stretched to Tripura in the north, Bangladesh in the east, parts of Bihar and Orissa in the west and south respectively. In Bangladesh, the districts of Chittagong, Sylhet, Mymensingh and Tangyl are famous for Bauls. Bauls from far off places come to participate in the Kenduli Mela and the Pous Mela - the two most important fairs held in West Bengal for Baul music. It's hard to think of Bengali culture sans the Bauls. They're not only an intrinsic part of Bengal's music, they're in the mud and air of this land, they're in the mind and blood of it's people. The spirit of the Bauls is the spirit of Bengal - ever-flowing in its society and culture, literature and art, religion and spirituality.

Tagore & the Baul Tradition
Bengal's greatest poet the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote about the Bauls: "One day I chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baul sect of Bengal...What struck me in this simple song was a religious expression that was neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarefied transcendentalism. At the same time it was alive with an emotional sincerity, it spoke of an intense yearning of the heart for the divine, which is in man and not in the temple or scriptures, in images or symbols... I sought to understand them through their songs, which is their only form of worship."

The mysticism of Lalon songs largely remains unrevealed and unexplored till date. This is so because Lalon's songs, which are countless, were passed on orally through his disciples and were mostly unwritten. Only a limited number of songs that could be preserved were later transcribed by his followers.Fakir Lalon Shah (1774-1890), the most illustrious Baul poet of Bengal, was born in Chapra, Kushtia. It is said that when Tagore came to Shilaidaha of Kushtia to look after his zamindari, he invited Lalon to his place. The Baul songs of Lalon with its simplistic tune and in-depth philosophical lyric had a profound impact on Tagore. Later, Tagore used the style extensively in his Baul trends and even termed Lalon as Kabbya Lakkhi. Tagore took the initiative and published some of the songs in the monthly Prabasi of Kolkata.Baul is a mystical cult with a spiritual discipline relating to philosophical thoughts. The inner meaning of Lalon songs caters for peace and tranquility, and is akin to Sufism calling for the purity of soul. It highlights the intricate relation between the body and the soul. Baul songs glorify humanity. Although spiritual, the style and words testify the Bauls' inherently secular beat. Lalon's life, however, remains shrouded in mystery. Professor Mansuruddin, a scholar of folklore, writes that Lalon was Hindu by birth. Some say he was called Lalon Chandro Rai, while others say he was called Lalon Chandro Das. His mother was known as Padmabati Devi.Once, Lalon had been to Bahrampur in Murshidabad. On his way back, he was seriously ill with smallpox. His accomplices thought him to be dead and abandoned him in a critical condition. Destiny took Lalon to a nearby village where a Muslim family of a weaver community saved him and took care till he recovered fully. Here he met Shiraj Sai, the spiritual guide of the family. His preaching left a permanent mark on Lalon.After Lalon recovered from illness he went back to his village only to be humiliated by his own community for taking shelter amongst Muslim family. This was the turning point in Lalon's life. He felt terribly shocked and let down and took refuge in a nearby jungle in Souria. From then on he devoted himself to meditation and sought for divine mercy and salvation. Later, Lalon set up an akhda at Chheuriya, where he lived with his wife and a few disciples.Lalon was a humanist who completely rejected all distinctions of caste and creed. Lalon wrote songs on Guru or the spiritual guide, the central idea depicting that emancipation of the soul is not possible without guidance. The song Shob loke koi Lalon ki jaat shongsharey indicates his strong belief in humanity. His songs were a unique example of ascetics, mysticism and divinity.After he passed away on the 17th of October 1890, at Chheuriya, at the age of 116, he was laid to rest at the place of his meditation.
The old Bengal lyric tradition of which the oldest extent was found in the Charya-poems of the Siddas. Natha mendicants attended in the post-Muslim times to the Baul songs on one hand and the Vaishnava-padas songs of Vaishnavas on the other. With a dash of Islamic spirit these became, Muslim Baul songs which are heard from Muslim Bauls over Bengal"…
Lalan Shah was a Baul as well as a mystic mendicant whose allegiance could be discovered in the sophistic ideals. The subject and motifs of his devotional songs are varied, he gathered these reference from his precepts as well as of his own experiences, while traversing the long-stretched devotional path-a-path paved by both the Islamic theology and the continental traditions mentioned earlier. Lalon, a powerful and gifted instrument, it may be safely said, echoed the voice of the eternity, eternal pangs of human soul with the fullest devotion, sincerity and ecstasy. There was not a single Baul throughout the country who was not influenced by Lalon or his songs. He composed thousands of mystic songs- which were not only sung and recited but were also responsible for uplifting the eternal human pangs, which bleed with the sorrow and pathos of human destiny.You are Allah, the preserver, and the protector.
You can make the floating sink and the sinking you can bring ashore You touch me with your hand and I call out your name. You made the Prophet Noah cool the fury of the flood;And then in compassion you made the flood to recede.Have pity on me, the mighty Lord, of the Universe."Where is the key of the devotional knowledge? Lalon replied:The key to my door is held by others I cannot open the door and see the treasure.Gold lies piled up in my room, But the transaction is made by another;I am gravel-blind and cannot see him.If one day I can reach the watch-man,He will give me charge of the door.I cannot say I know him not,And I follow the path of depravity.Oh, mind, this key-holder,is the jewel of a manSays Lalon, I got the treasurebut was unaware of its value.Where lies this mystery of human soul? Where from I came and where shall I go? Lalon's answer:How does the strange birdflit in and out of the cage,If I could catch the birdI would put it under the fetters of my heart.The cage has eight cells and nine doors.With laten opening here and there,Above is the main Hall with a mirror chamber O my mind, you are enamoured of the cage; little knowing that the cage is made of raw bamboo, and may any day fall apartSay Lalon, forcing the cage open the bird flitted away, no one knows where.
Lalon died in 1890, and his mortal remains rest in Seuria, now the holy pilgrimage of Bauls and the lovers of Bauls songs. Amazing is this that he was born on 1st Kartik and died on the same date.(Dr. Ashraf Siddique, The Independent, October 30, 2003)

Baul music has a very rich Bengali heritage. Bauls are traditionally mystic singers. Their songs are intricately woven into the rich and diverse cultural history of Bengal and its lifestyle. Though neglected for some time, there has been a renewed interest in the sounds of these traditional songs among the new generation for sometime now. Young people have presented them to the masses again with a little bit of fusion with modern beats and sounds. Experiments on folks with modern instruments resulting in fusion sounds have been growing in popularity as alternative music.
Baul- The Folk Music of Bengal

Baul is one of the few widely known and appreciated types of folk music in Bengal. Baul is not only a kind of music, it is basically a Bengali religious sect. The members of the sect are themselves called Bauls, and the songs they sing are named for them, Baul-gAn (Baul songs). It has been suggested that, etymologically, the word derives from Sanskrit word "Vatula" means "affected by the wind disease, mad". On the other hand, it might be derived from Sanskrit word "Vyakula" means "restless, disordered".

The Baul costume consists of a half-dhoti and an alkhalla ( saffron robes). Another noticeable identifying signs of Baul is their hair style. They don't cut their hair, so a manner has been devised for coiling it neatly atop the head in a bun. They also wear a kind of necklace made of beads formed from the stems of the basil plant (tulsi).

Among the three B'sof Bengali folk music - Baul, Bhaoyaiya and Bhatiyali- Baul is distinguished from the others textually as religious music. The texts of bhatiyali and bhaiyaiya, though they may concern of Radha and Krishna, are mainly about the problems of love in separation or unrequited love. In Baul-gan, however, though songs of similar nature occur, they are thought of as allegories on the state of separation existing between the souls of men and the spiritual ground.

The instruments, extensively used by the Bauls are Gopiyantro, khamak, dotara, ghungur, nupur and duggi. Gopiyantro, often called "ektara" means one string and that is the most popular instrument for a Baul singer. The ghungur or nupur are always used in conjunction with gopiyantro or khamak. The baul singers also use "dotara" ( two strings) as their paraphernalia. Kartal/mandira and premjuri are used as the adjunct idiophones by the singers.

Some exponents of Baul music

Lalon Phakir(1774-1890) is the most famous Baul of all ages. The attitude of the Bauls regarding caste has been nicely put by him, "What form does caste have ? I have never seen it, brother, with these eyes of mine!"

Purno Chandra Das is the most widely known Baul today. Like Purno, his father, the late Naboni Das Khepa, was the best-known Baul of his generation. From his early childhood, Purno travelled widely with his father, learning his songs and performing with him. At age seven he won a gold medal for his singing at a music conference at Jaipur, the pink city of India. Although Purno Das has become widely popular as an entertainer, he is criticized both by his peers and by some of the urban elites for his lifestyle and for having transplanted Baul-gan to new performance context.

Another exponent of this area is Yotin Das Baul. He is originally from the Dinajpur area of North Bengal but he spends much of his time on the road, performing at various village festivals. His manner of performance is more sedate and mellifluous. That's why he is not that famous as he deserves on the basis of his repertoire and musical competence.

Sonatan Das Thakur Baul, another Baul artist was born at Khulna, Bangladesh. Sanatan is particularly appreciated for his attractive dancing which, like his singing, has more conscious artistry about it than that of most Bauls. He is one of the few Bauls who is occasionally asked to perform on All India Radio Calcutta.

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Bauls of Bengal

‘Moner katha jodi bujhte pare, keno piriti karo na’ – it isn’t a sermon or an official statement or even a famous one-liner. It is the first line of a typical Bengali ‘Baul’ song. No discussion on Bengali folk culture would be complete without giving due importance to the Baul tradition. No one exactly knows how this tradition started, but that Baul song is very much a part and parcel of Bengali folk tradition is something which is very difficult to deny.

Baul singers are almost a community by themselves. They may be Hindus or Muslims, but once they take to Baul culture, they refer to themselves as a ‘Baul’ as if to signify that they are a separate community by themselves dedicated to the spreading of the message of peace, brotherhood and goodwill through their songs. The dialect of the song is essentially local. Hence, if becomes a trifle difficult for the urban folks to understand the nuances of the language. In olden days, when sources of entertainment were scarce in rural Bengal, Baul singers had a field day moving from village to village attired in saffron clothes with an ‘ektara’ in their hand. No wonder Rabindranath said ‘Gramchhara oi ranga matir path’. Baul singers narrated various folk tales, mythological tales and contemporary problem through their songs. Since, they sing in the language of the village folks, their song always have a ready appeal. Most of the Baul singers earned their livelihood through singing songs. Baul singers used to get not only cash money but also foodgrains and other items as a ark of appreciation for their songs. As sources of entertainment were scarce, they used to entertain people throughout the year.

Tradition entails that Baul singers should live like a community. They may own land or work as agricultural labourer but their prime occupation would be the propagation of Baul music. No matter whether a Baul is Hindu or a Muslim, they must stay together and strive for the propagation of the song. Baul singers normally have no religion. Most of them worship Makali, because, for them, Ma Kali is a source of inspiration. One of the greatest Baul of all time Lalan Fakir, was a Muslim. But he is known to posterity not as a Muslim, but as a Baul whose songs still mesmerize many in this modern time. Baul singers, can till date, be safely said, to be the most pure forms of non-communal human beings on earth. Most of their song preaches love and universal brotherhood. Hence, the high-pitched voice of a Baul singing with an ‘ektara’ in his hand is the symbol of the spirit of Bengal.

The ‘Rarh’ village or so the districts of Birbhum are called was once a home to many Baul singers. Through the equivalent of Baul song exists in other parts of India as well, the particular term ‘Baul’ can be applied only to singers hailing from Bengal or Greater Bengal, if we put it that way, that is from Tripura, Bangladesh, East Bihar and Northern Orissa. The Baul singers of Bangladesh, has a very vibrant tradition of participating in the ‘Bhasha Andolan’ of Bangladesh. Bangla Baul singers are known for their depth of voice and variety of their themes. The Baul songs from Chittagong, Sylhet, Mymensingh, reflect only the message of love and brotherhood, but also the message of nationalism as well.

Two important fairs are held in West Bengal to showcase the Baul talents of Bengal – the Kenduli Mela and the Pous Mela. In both these fairs Bauls from for off places come to participate.

Of late, the onslaught of commercialisation and cable TV creating a lot of problems for the Baul singers. Interest is waning as village folks are becoming more interested in watching the surging top-softs of Mamta Kulkarni and the like. Now we see malnourished Baul singers joining the fairs and singing on top of their voices. The under – nourished Baul singers really mock at the rich tradition that was. People, not originally hailing from Baul culture, are taking to Baul music and culture are, in most cases, vitiating the purity of Baul. These people, more often than not, abuse the easy lifestyle and indulge in immoral practises. Is the golden days over? One is really hoping to see the coming of another ‘Nabanidas Naul or Purna Das Baul.

Himalayan Realities and Untouchable Tripura
Palash Biswas
( Please publish and send acopy to me.contact: Palash Biswas, gosto Kanan, sodepur, kolkata, India. Phone: 033-25659551.)

I always look forward to northeast as I feel that the entire Himalayan Zone is destined in the same ways. I belong to Nainital and had been associated with the environment Chipko in seventies spanning all my college days. I witnessed the burning of Naintal Club in 1977 by the violent mob protesting auction of Jungles. Without caring man and nature the government of India having the habitual heirarchy of precedent Britsh colonisers, plays the globanized development card anywhere. Jungles are the most vital resource of the Himalayas which sustains this part of the earth for time infinite. Cutting Jungles in Himalayan range has changed the weather cycle and the glaciers are warmed up.It means floods and mass destructions in plains while it uproots the himalayan people all over. Tehri Dam ticks as an atom bomb disturbing the sacred flow of the great Ganges. Age old Tehri submerged in tehri Dam and we the hill people were dumb audiance with bleeding heart. This bleeding unites us, the himalayans in India which is unfortunately not realised at all. not to comment anything on the detached relationship with Northeast , we see the Himachal people facing same fate just living on tourism without connectivity are so detached. Nowhere in this Great Himalayan Zone, people may dialogue accross on vertical lines. An imaginary lie hangs on with rainbow colours and we feel joy aesthetically unare of the impact of the disunity among us. We may not stand united on any issue. It is the real tragedy. Thus, all Himalayan people Kashmir to the entire northeast via Uttaranchal, Himachal and sikkim suffer so much. We got an Uttarakhand and the northeast so many states, A Gorkha Hill council, an autonamous Bodo self governement body, but nothing changed.

We Uttarakhandies, Himachalwasi and the sikkim people are considerd peaceful people who may not ever be a force of resistance aganaist the syastem while all of the Indian Northeast is marked by identity-related insurgencies, targeted against the ‘Centre’ in New Delhi, or the state government, or against neighbouring or cohabiting communities with whom there is either historical or newfound ire. With only Mizoram today serving as a newfound haven of peace in a progressively violent Northeast, it would have been surprising if Tripura had not been dragged into this cauldron of violence. And so it has been, the only difference being that the state’s peculiar situation has made it easy for the insurgents to convert themselves quickly into bandits.
I visited Manipur in 2001 and since then I miss no opertunity to visit North East. My next destination was Tripura, where I went as a Chief Guest to inaugruate Dalit Sahity sammelan. Mind you, The great Bengal is divided in every sense, geographically,demgraphically, histricaly,culturally and finally religiously. This partition is a catastrophy unprecedented in the history as the blood went off humanity in the East as well as the West. The greatest population transfer took place and a homeland for Indian Muslims , a soveriegn state named Pakistan was born with the greatest experience of bloodbath. About eighteen million people were uprooted from thier anchestoral homes. Murders, gang rapes and arson at will, and the exodus has become a conscious unconscious memory in our mind all over this subcontinent. We bear a heredity of hatred,civil war, war, nuclear race, destructed production system, disbalanced eco system, broken society, polity and economy.

The partition of India victimised the undeclasses most. The dalits were uprooted from their base areas in East Bengal and became refugees only to be detected as Bangladeshi Infiltrators after six decades. People lost lives, property,mothertongue, culture, history, geography, livelihood and identity.Existence is now cahllanged with eviction and deportation notices. All resettled refugees fro erstwhile East Bengal are deprived of citizenship, civil and human rights. They are deprived of the right to talk and learn mother language and the constitutional reservation which came into existence as Ambedkar was elected to the Constitution assembly by the dalit People of India. In 1971, Pakistan was dismembered. Bengali nationality and bangla Bhasha got a homeland at last with another bloodbath. The rfugee influx from the eastern part of the Indian border never stopped as the population transfer had been always one sided and minority persecution even intesified with an upserge of Hindutva and destruction of Babri Masjid.

Tragically, Tripura never appears to be in the scene which lost its connectivity with rest of India and the traditional demography dominated by tribals. Tripura lost its identity and the rest of India has no feeling. We rose stunned while hearing Nelli Massacre or similar incidents took place during last several decades. But the focus is always elsewhere. Tripra never gets the sole attention and it is always clubbed with others and we all are , and even the northeast people including great ahmias are habitual to this tradition.The Partition unleashed a wave of migration from East Pakistan to Tripura and other states on its borders. Though the indigenous tribes-people in the state had not enjoyed a decisive majority like in the neighbouring Chittagong Hill Tracts or the Mizo hills, they did account for up to 60 percent of the total population. In the first three decades after Partition, the indigenous people were reduced to below 30 percent of the state’s population, a situation which left them completely marginalised in both self-perception and reality. This land alienation it is which has fuelled the violent insurgency that has eaten into the vitals of this once vibrant state.
At 10,039 square kilometres, Tripura is northeast India’s smallest state. But this was not always so. The Manikya rulers controlled much of East Bengal’s Comilla region during medieval times, and later Maharaj Bijoy Manikya is said to have had the rein from the hills all the way west to present-day Dhaka. With royal patronage, tolerance and multiculturalism flourished in an area otherwise divided by ethnicity and religion. As late as the year 2000, readers of the Agartala-based daily Tripura Observer voted Maharaja Bir Bikram as ‘Tripura’s Man of the Millennium’ in preference to those who have led the state since the end of the royal order.

In fact, Tripura has become another Bengal apart the two separated and divided parts we know. It is an untouchable Bengal. But I must say, despite the tension ,the violence and political extremism, Tripura is an example of peaceful coexistence of so many nationalities. Even after the advent of the British, when the Tripura kingdom was restricted to its present hill confines, Bengalis and indigenous tribes-people lived in peace. No riots, not even sporadic ethnic clashes were ever reported between Bengali settlers and the original populace of princely Tripura. If the Manikyas welcomed Bengali professionals or peasants to modernise their administration or increase their land revenue through the spread of settled wet-rice agriculture, they also created a tribal reserve, which, in many ways, is the precursor of today’s Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council.

But the fact remains,while the Bengalis who arrived were accustomed to sharp class differences in their erstwhile homeland, East Bengal, the tribes-people of Tripura were not. At an individual level, the indigenous people lost lands mostly to Bengalis, rich or poor. Nevertheless, studies made by the Law Research Institute in Guwahati in certain areas of Tripura show the huge land loss suffered by the tribes-people at the hands of the Bengali settlers.
A land-locked and Bangladesh-locked state that is far from even the Northeastern consciousness of the rest of India, Tripura and its people have been left to sort out their own problems. With a flick of a pencil, the border-demarcating Cyril Radcliffe managed to remove this region from its economic lifeline and make it the state that is the remotest from the centre of India. This might potentially even have been something of an advantage, but Tripura’s particular history of indigenousness and in-migration, as well as the fractured nature of its local identities, has nurtured a soil that is fertile for political violence. Without a strong intelligentsia and civil society of its own, and neglected by the rest of the Northeast and India, the political violence soon degenerated into banditry. And that is what the people of Tripura suffer today.

I was honoured to inaugruate The Dalit Sahitya sammelan which was held in Ravindra Bhavan, ancestral home of Indian Music legend Sachin Dev Burman. Sachin Karta is a tripuri by birth and actuall a royal scion. He had his contribution to globanise the Bengali folk with his earthen north east aesthetic sense and light classical music. Here comes the copulsory question of identity of Tripura, as the world knows Sachin dev burman as a Bengali which he is not. Bengalies have gained at the loss of Tripuri identity. We all know that Moonmoon Sen,the daughter of another living legend of Indian cinema, was married to tripura Royals. But niether Moonmoon , nor her celebrete daughters Raima and Ria feel any pride to be a part of Tripuri Identity. They use the maternal, kuleen Bengali title Sen. But Deb barma is in no means a less Kuleen.

Bengli caste Hindu administrative economic and political dominance on other nationalities in every state of Northeast has created the present situation. The ruling classes enjoy thier position, no ULFA, no MNF, no TNV may change this equation. But always the underclasses speaking Bengali, Hindi, marwari and even punjabi are targetted all over.

New Delhi reamins in New delhi and Kolkata remains in Kolkata.

North east and Tripura in particular may not change this. Like west Bengal Tripura is also ruled by Left Front. It claims peace with intermittent incidents. But the Bengali population in Tripura consists of migrated dalit refeugees from the northern part of Bangladesh as Chittagang, Noakhali,rangpur, Cumilla, Dacca, etc. They write and speak in Bengali. There are so many poets and creative writers. But their works don not make a part of Bengali literature and that is considered Dalit Sahitya. Then education, culture, sc welfare and information minister Anil sarkar which ministries have been curtailed by this time limiting his base in sc welfare and culture only, is a very powerful poet and he leads the Dalit sahitya Movement in Tripura.

I stayed in the house of gopal mani Das,a profeessor and the president of Dalit Sahitya Sanstha in Tripura. They have made an Ambedkar Bhavan in Agartala which does not exist in Kolkata or anywhere in West Bengal. Babu Rehman, a music teacher in Jahangeer nagar University of Dacca was staying with me. It was a rare occassion for me to discuss different partners of bengali nationlit and Himalayan people simantaneously. I won`t forget this experience life long.

According to the state’s Finance Minister, Badal Chowdhury, the weapon consignments arrive in the districts of Dholai, South Tripura and North Tripura, from where they are transported further inland. The NLFT and ATTF, with camps and hideouts in Bangladesh, clearly play a key role in this gun-running activity. Agartala’s authorities claim to have submitted a report to New Delhi some time ago documenting 21 NLFT and eight ATTF base camps in Bangladesh, most of them located in the Sylhet and Chittagong districts.

I visited the tribal area of Belunia , most effected by extremism. The finance minister Badal chowdhari was the host. I also went to Melaghar and saw the Neer Mahal Utsav. Here is the place and back in Jaipur on way to Belunia, Kaviguru Ravindra Nath Tagore wrote some of his masterpieces including Rajshri and Visarjan. While I saw Sepahijala ,a vergin lake I felt just spellbound. So Matabari is another must visit spot. In Belonia and nearby , I saw the archeological heritage of Tripura. The government of Tripura may not provide proper security arrangment and there is no connegtivity, so all chances for Tripura tourism go abegging.

The tribals of Tripura feel cheated of their land, and the hurt to the psyche is deep.
By 1981, only 43 percent of the tribal workforce were cultivators and 24 percent were agricultural labourers. On the map, Tripura is the stubborn little thumb of territory that juts sharply into Bangladesh, nestled uneasily between the Chittagong Hills Tracts to the south, Comilla to the west and Sylhet to the north. A princely state that acceded to the Indian Union on 15 October 1949, Tripura became a Union Territory in November 1956 and a full-fledged state in January 1972. The reason Tripura entered its violent societal tailspin, so dramatic even against the backdrop of the generally insurgency-ridden Northeast, is its particular mix of history, demography and modern-day political evolution.

By decommissioning a dam, reclaiming the land underwater, and distributing it to the landless tribals, a unique effort would be made to undo historical wrongs. The present ethnic conflict that pits the Bengali settlers against the indigenous tribes-people in Tripura has much to do with the large scale land alienation of tribals. The problem did not emerge as long as the tribals had enough land and the Bengali population was limited to certain urban or semi-urban pockets or rural areas around the capital. That changed with Independence and the merger of princely Tripura into the Indian Union. A state which in 1951 had a population of 6.5 lakh saw an influx between 1947 and 1971, of six lakh Bengalis displaced from East Pakistan. It is not difficult to gauge the enormous population pressure thus created. During this period the state government primarily resettled the refugees on land under different schemes, some enabling the refugees to settle down with financial assistance and some just helping them to buy land.

Meanwhile incidentally I hit a website called Himal and decided to write up what I feel about my tripura visit. On Himal several articles are very relevent. Some studies are quite relevent. A study reveals :`One has to go to Teliamura, once a small village but now a vital road junction connecting west, north and south Tripura. Gunomoni Sardar is grandfather of the Indigenous National Party of Tripura (INPT) leader Debabrata Koloi and former Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) military-wing chief, Chuni Koloi. He used to own almost seventy percent of the lands in Teliamura. In 30 years, his descendants have hardly got a few hectares left for themselves by the side of the Tripura Road Transport Corporation (TRTC) bus stand on the Assam-Agartala Road.

Under the Congress administration, some Bengali refugee leaders even set up ‘land cooperatives’ like the Swasti Samity in north Tripura. These cooperatives violated the Tribal Reserves regulations, taking over large swathes of land, a process that was legitimised by conniving bureaucrats. The Communist Party mobilised the tribesmen and even took the matter to courts to secure a favourable verdict that was not honoured by the bureaucracy. Angry at such collusion, and frustrated by the lack of institutional support to undo the damage, many tribal youth took to the jungles. The first significant underground group in post-merger Tripura was born — the Sengkrak or ‘clenched fist’.

The Sengkrak movement, as the first manifestation of overt ethnic militancy, started in 1967 as a direct fallout of the large scale loss of land, abetted by the state. The ruling Congress government backed the occupation of tribal lands in the Deo valley by Bengali settlers grouped under the Swasti Samity, while the Reang tribesmen organised themselves into a militant group to hit back at the new Bengali settlers. Official records suggest 2558 families were ousted from the Gumti project area – these were families who could produce land deeds and were officially owners of the land. ‘

Studies reaveal that the tribal insurgents of the National Liberation Front of Tripura, or the NLFT, have not banned tree felling, as has been done by some rebel groups in the Northeast such as the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDF. Instead, NLFT has encouraged it. In large parts of the Gumti valley upstream of Tirthamukh, tribal villagers report that the insurgents have allowed loggers to operate freely so long as they made their payments. In fact, relatives of some insurgent leaders were in the business, entering partnership deals with the Bengali-owned saw mills of Amarpur, Udaipur and Sonamura. Thus, the tribal insurgents who had capitalised on the community’s anger at the large scale displacement in Gumti were now collaborating with the most exploitative sgments of the settler society. The present ethnic conflict that pits the Bengali settlers against the indigenous tribes-people in Tripura has much to do with the large scale land alienation of tribals because land is seen not only as the prime economic resource in a rather backward pre-capitalist agrarian society like Tripura but also as the symbol of the ‘ethnic space’.
Tribal insurgency in Tripura, now largely criminalised, must be fought relentlessly. The tribal population must be reminded that the insurgents never address grassroots development issues such as land. Till now, they have focused only on power-sharing or resorted to mafia-style extortions. The insurgents have not sought strategies for the empowerment of the tribal peasantry. In one stroke, decommissioning the dam would change the face of Tripura and hold out hope for many communities and regions elsewhere on India and Southasia.

Anindita Dasgupta writes, `Political violence in the rest of India and the Indian Northeast pales in comparison to the apolitical mayhem that is part of daily life in Tripura. In the last four years, the state has suffered a higher proportion of civilian casualties than Kashmir has.

Kashmir receives a lot of coverage in the Indian and international press for its insurgency and state action resulting in civilian casualties. Indeed, Kashmir’s sorrow is like an everlasting wound on the Indian psyche. And yet there is another corner of South Asia which is even more sad, violent, and neglected. The place is Tripura, in the Indian Northeast.Civilian casualties in Tripura from insurgency related incidents far outnumber those in Kashmir. One senior Indian bureaucrat informed the national press late last year that over 900 civilians had been killed in as many as 87 militant attacks in Tripura over the last four years. During the same period, 477 civilians had died in 40 incidents in Kashmir. It comes as a startling bit of information that this little state known for its rolling hills, orange crop and for being practically surrounded by Bangladesh is really the most violent corner of India.

In the Northeast, where militancies with various levels of commitment to violence as means to an end proliferate, the Tripura insurgents manage to shock and chill for the nonchalance with which they commit crimes against the innocent and unarmed. Nowhere in the entire region, from Assam to Nagaland, is there such a thin line which separates the insurgent from the criminal. And what makes the Tripura rebels far more dangerous is their access to sophisticated arms, fed by a cross-border gun-running network. Besides, they enjoy the patronage of the local political parties, which have developed a stake in the insurgency. Unlike lay criminals, the violence practiced by these militants is more indiscriminate and cold-blooded, and it is this raw brutality that makes Tripura’s experience stand apart from the other Northeast insurgencies. For all practical purposes, it can be said that the insur-gents of Tripura have decla-red a war on the people – an unequal war in which no man, woman or child, whether ‘tribal’ or Bengali, is spared.’

Anindita writes,`The fighting has by now affected nearly the entire rural hinterland of the tiny state, where some 30 odd militancies are active. However, two outfits carry out most of the attacks, abductions and killings. The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), a tribal group, controls virtually all of the Tripura Tribal Autonomous District Council (TTADC) area, which covers almost two-thirds of the state’s territory. Its rival, the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), has undisputed writ over a smaller patch in the state’s northeast area contiguous with Bangladesh. Several retaliatory rag-tag armies, such as the United Bengali Liberation Force (UBLF) and the Amra Bangali, had also managed to keep the levels of violence high, but they have by now petered out after much-hyped beginnings. However, other less organised but more criminal groups also operate in the state, sometimes kidnapping victims in order to ‘sell’ them to the more political outfits. There is a Left Front government in place in Tripura, of course, but its presence is felt only in the capital, Agartala. No one with a political identity or balance in the bank is keen to move out of Agartala for fear of being abducted or killed.

Ostensibly, the ATTF’s main political demand is the deportation of all non-tribals settled in Tripura since 1951, while the NLFT’s is a “free holy land of Tripura”, which is to be achieved after secession from India. On the ground, however, the two groups are locked in a schizophrenic contest involving money, political patronage and control over territory. While the NLFT and ATTF would thus seem to have complementary goals, however, it is fighting between these two groups that is one of the main reasons for the inordinantly high casualties in the war in Tripura. Innocents, as well as combatants, get caught in the crossfire.

Anindita elaborates an You should read the rest of her article as follows
Tripura’s indigenous population, divided among 19 distinct tribes, forms a socially and economically deprived community which has traditionally depended on jhum (shifting) cultivation in the forest tracts. Following Partition, most hill-based tribes found themselves rapidly marginalised as a result of the homesteading by the culturally dominant Bengali-speakers. The indigenous people lost their unquestioned traditional entitlement to land as aggressive settlers moved in. With the locals unable to make quick adjustments in lifestyle or adapt to the evolving institutional circumstances, the latter were also quick to take advantage of modern-day occupations in civil service and commerce. The ‘establishment’ in Agartala thus rapidly became Bengali-ised, including the state administration, academia, and business, all of this fueling a deep feeling of alienation among the tribal population. In fact, the leaders of the Assam Movement of 1979-85 used the example of the marginalisation of the indigenous people of Tripura to justify their own campaign against Bengali ‘outsiders’.

Recognising this process of marginalisation, the tribal leadership began to apply pressure on the Indian state through the Tripura Upajati Juba Samity (TUJS), a committee formed in June 1967. The charter of the TUJS, set out in the face of strident protests by the Bengalis, sought tribal autonomy through a series of demands which included an autonomous district council for the tribal people; restoration of alienated tribal lands; extension of the “Inner Line” regulations to Tripura to discourage access to all and sundry from the Indian ‘mainland’; and introduction of Kokborok, the indi-genous language, with the use of Roman script as the medium of instruction for tribal students.

Feeling that their demands were going unfilled, and with the continuing arrival of settlers, in the late 1970s the tribal groups began to engage in violent guerilla attacks against the Bengali settlers and the government they believed to be abetting the in-migration. A disturbing element of the tribal reaction, however, was that in parts it took the form of ethnic cleansing. Altogether over 2000 persons were killed and more than 20,000 houses burnt to the ground in the May Riots of 1979 and the June Riots of 1980. Almost all the victims were Bengali. To the insurgents, ethnically targeted violence seemed to hold the promise of changing the demographic facts on the ground which stood in the way of the formation of an autonomous district council in Tripura, a state within a state.There were others, besides the Bengalis, who fell victim once the riots of 1979 and 1980 had released the genie of violence out of the bottle. A number of tribal leaders themselves fell prey to internal feuds and conspiracies. Security personnel, including those from the army, police and the Border Security Force, also died in large numbers. Before long, the non-tribal Bengalis also organised to carry out retaliatory killings. Frequent engagements between the tribal guerrillas and the Bengali fighters became common.

In 1979, in an attempt to take the edge off tribal insurgency, the state government proposed an autonomous district council in accordance with the relevant provisions in the Indian Constitution. The Tripura Tribal Autonomous District Council Act, envisaged under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, was meant to give the tribal population of Tripura more political and economic powers at the grassroots level. However, this move elicited loud protests from the ethnic Bengalis, some of whom had already floated armed groups such as the UBLF and Amra Bangali. It was not until 1985 that the TTADC Act came into force, with a few modifications.

Volunteers to tigers

The Assam Movement’s twin themes of indigenous people’s rights and the need to oust ‘foreigners’ seemed to have touched a chord in Tripura. The indigenous leadership was dissatisfied with the offer of an autonomous district, and the first demand for a separate state for tribals in Tripura was made by the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV), the armed wing of the TUJS. The exclusionist ideologues demanded the deportation of all post-1951 settlers after which Tripura could become a truly ‘tribal’ state – and began to successfully mobilise followers.

Under the leadership of Bijoy Kumar Hrankhwal, the TNV remained the prime sponsor of this sons-of-the-soil campaign in its early years. Its target was the Agartala government’s cultural and employment policies, seen to flagrantly favour ethnic Bengalis. As the state government groped to tackle the problem, the TNV widened its contacts across the region, streamlined its supply routes, and established itself in forest sanctuaries to continue the fight. Links were made with the Mizo National Front, which was fighting the Indian ‘occupational government’ in nearby Mizoram. In fact the MNF was active in helping set up the TNV’s small guerilla army with training and armaments.

Tripura militants line up for duty
A dramatic change came with the signing of the Mizo Accord between the Indian government and the MNF leader Laldenga, in 1985. This robbed the TNV of its chief patron and by August 1988 the TNV too had signed a tripartite memorandum of settlement with the Union Government and the State Government. The centerpiece of the agreement, on the basis of which the TNV, including its leader Hrangkhwal, came above ground, was the restoration of alienated tribal lands. However the Agartala government did not fulfil its obligations under the agreement, and return of tribal lands became the tinder which continued to feed the flames of insurgency in the state.With an unsatisfactory accord that did not tackle the roots of the tribal dissatisfaction, and with the TNV being perceived to have been bought over, before long there was a mushrooming of other militant outfits, most significant among them being the All Tripura Tiger Force. What was most notable about the growing militancy was the absence of an all-encompassing vision or convergence of political goals, and there was little coordination between the groups operating. The only common element became the scramble for money and material gain, plus the easy access to sophisticated arms flowing easily across the borders of a state nearly completely surrounded by a porous international frontier. The availability of lethal small arms, in fact, became the deciding factor for the ease with which various small ethnic groups turned to militancy. Over the years, political strength came to be equated with the ability to incite violence, and unhindered gun-running only aided Tripura’s decline into the abyss.

The level of violence, the targeting of civilians as well as the internecine fighting, were all fueled in part because the many different tribal groups did not have an umbrella organisation or unified programme. “The political aim of Tripura’s insurgency is hazy and confusing,” wrote noted Tripura scholar Mahadev Chakravarty of Tripura University in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly. “Some groups aimed at establishing swadhin or independent Tripura with sovereign power or a group of tribal states of North East confederacy with Tripura as one of the so-called Seven Sisters; others to dislodge by any means the so-called ‘Refugee Government’ or ‘Colonial Government’ of the state or to divide the state between tribals and non-tribals with the TTADC as the main center of the tribal state.”

Bengali Refugee Problem: Dr Jagadish Haldar Invites you to discuss
Palash Biswas
(Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India. Phone: 033-25659551)
Come Sunday, 12 th November. A seminar waits you which is organized by Guruchand Sena Central committee in Shanti Ngar highshool, Palta, a suburban station near Kolkata.You may have heared about Bangasena which demands land from Bangladesh in accordance with the refugee ratio. CAAMB (Campaign Against Atrocities on Minorities in Bangladesh) is also active to highlight the cases of persecution of minorities in Bangladesh. We read so many things in Mayer Dak published from Kolkata. We sometimes visit the website of Human Rights Comission For Bangladesh Minorities which quotes Bangla media reports to highlight all the incidents involving Bangladesh minorities.Now it is the turn of Guruchand sena. The agenda for the seminar includes to important issues . First: Minority Persecution in Bangladesh and second: The Citizenship Amendment Bill 2003 and the following law.The speakers are well distingushed including a former aditional cabinet secretary in government of India Bibhuti Bhushan Nandi, a retired Major General KK Gangopadhyaya and the convenor of CAAMB.

Dr Jagadish Haldar invites you all to join the seminar which begins on 10 AM sharp. Dr Haldar is a very committed refugee leader residing in Palta. He is very active and involved in mobilisation of refugees in West Bengal. Dr Jagadish Haldar, Dr Birat Bairagya, Dr Pushpa Bairagya, Dr Pushpa Roy and the organizors of the seminar condemn the deportation drive launched by government of India armed with the new Citizenship Act. At the same time they emphasize to stop the refugee influx immediately for which the persecution of Bangladesh minorities must stop.

Meanwhile in assam student bodies inspect Bangla border to detect illegal ifiltrators cotrary to the AGP demand to grant citizenship to all Hindu Refugees crossing the Border.According to print and electronic media a team comprising members of the North East Students Organisation (NESO), All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Tripura Students Federation today inspected the Indo-Bangladesh border near Tripura and expressed their resentment over the open and unprotected border. NESO president Dr Samujjal Bhattacharya, Tripura Students’ Federation president Upendra Devbarma and AASU president Shankar Prasad Roy during their visit saw that the border remained open except in some areas where barbed wire fencing has started.

The team said that the Union Government has simply failed in protecting the Indo-Bangladesh border. As a result, the porous borders have encouraged countless Bangladeshis to enter the country. Unless the border was sealed then the consequences of it would be terrible, the three organizations warned.
Citizenship amendment Bill 2003 which was passed and the law is enforced to evict all refugees crossing the border after 16th December , 1971.
On behalf of 20 million East bengal refugees coming over to India in
different dates and phases since 1947 partition and riots over there
awaiting citizenship and rehabilitation and even minimum human rights
including that of matribhasha and reservation, in different states of India,
submitted herewith some views and suggestions.
Views and comments
1. That is evident from the statement of object and reasons of the bill
given by Shri Lk Adwani, home minister of India that the bill has been
mooted with the main object of preventing grant of Indian Citizenshipto
illegal migrants; grant of dual citizenship to foreigners of Indian origin
and compulsary registration with issue of National identity card for all
citizens of India.
2.That it appears from the insertion illegal migrant in the bill that the
central govt. wants to make all types of illegal migrants including East
Bengal Refugees of minority communities in india, who have mostly been
compelled to come clandesinely , inelligible for registration as Citizenof
india U/S 5(1)(A)/5(1)(C)of the citizenship act, 1955 and therefore liable
to be adopted to their counties of origin.
By inserting the word illegalmigrant in section 5 of the existing
citizenship act, 1955,an abortiveattempthas perhaps been madeby the centre
to validate the questionable executive order n.26011/16/71- 1c dt.
29.11.1971 issued by ministry of home affairsafter the creation of
BanglaDesh in 1971. the said circular suddenly withheld, bannedgrant of
citizenship and refugee benefits to all East bengal refugees of minority
communities coming from Bangladesh.
The said circularwas issued immorally, illegally, in breach of trust/pledge
and in violation of fundamental rightsof minorites of Bangladesh/ Pakistan
to come over to india and enjoy the fruits of independence gauaranted bythe
partition and independence documents. It is also violation of international
laws for refugees and the un charter on rights of refugees.
3. that the proposal for compulsary registration of all citizens and issues
of National Identity Card to them with a view to screening out and
identifyingthe foreignersin india is a lofty idea and can be made meaningful
and workable only when Bangladesh/ Pakistani refugees of minority communites
are simultaneously granted National Identity Cards.
Suggetions
Special provisions should be made to safeguard the rigths as well as the
citizenship of those refugees who are resettled all over India after
partition.
The flaw of refugees should be chequed immidiately. and until the atrocities
agnaist minorities beyond border stop it is next to impossible.
Specific provisionbe made in the bill for Bangladeshi/pakistani refugees of
minority communities staying in India continuously for registration as
migrants. So the tortured ones may be saved.
All refugees rehabiliated all over india must be registered as Indian
citizens s they hold permanent addresses and property, ration card and other documents.

Gyanesh Kudaisya wrote in his article `DIVIDED LANDSCAPES, FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES: EAST BENGAL REFUGEES AND THEIR REHABILITATION IN INDIA, 1947–79’:The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was followed by the forced uprooting of an estimated 18 million people. This paper focuses on the predicament of the minority communities in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) who were uprooted and forced to seek shelter in the Indian province of West Bengal. It considers the responses of Indian federal and provincial governments to the challenge of refugee rehabilitation. A study is made of the Dandakaranya scheme which was undertaken after 1958 to resettle the refugees by colonising forest land: the project was sited in a peninsular region marked by plateaus and hill ranges which the refugees, originally from the riverine and deltaic landscape of Bengal, found hard to accept. Despite substantial official rehabilitation efforts, the refugees demanded to be resettled back in their "natural habitat" of Indian Bengal. However, this was resisted by the state. Notwithstanding this opposition, a large number of East Bengal refugees moved back into regions which formed a part of erstwhile undivided Bengal where, without any government aid and planning, they colonised lands and created their own habitats. Many preferred to become squatters in the slums that sprawled in and around Calcutta. The complex interplay of identity and landscape, of dependence and self-help, that informed the choices which the refugees made in rebuilding their lives is analysed in the paper.

Balbir K. Punj writes in his write up `Deluge from Bangladesh’:A recent statement in Parliament by the Union home minister on Bangladeshi infiltration, and a news report in an otherwise "secular" Hindi daily about the growing clout of illegal Bangladeshi resettlers in Kishanganj parliamentary constituency of Bihar have once more underscored the danger Indian civilisation faces, and the ostrich-like response of the political leadership to this demographic invasion.

Home minister Shivraj Patil, while speaking in Rajya Sabha on August 23, said that the Indian state could not distinguish between Hindu and Muslim illegal immigrants from Bangladesh as "refugees" and "infiltrators" respectively. Next day, there was another news item tucked inside the pages of the Hindi daily Navbharat Times (Aug. 24) about the decisive influence of Bangladeshi Muslims, resettled in Kishanganj, on electoral politics. Kishanganj, the sole Muslim majority district of Bihar, is almost adjacent to Bangladesh. Muslims form around 67 per cent of the district's population.

According to Navbharat Times, an unchecked influx of Bangladeshi infiltrators in the post-1971 period has changed the demographic character of the district. Bangladeshi Muslims are called "Sirsabadi" whereas local Muslims are called "Surjapuri." Muslims who have come from other parts of Bihar and UP are called "Paschimi" (western) Muslims. The strategy of the political parties is either to divide the Muslim vote or unify it according to need. A network of madrasas mushrooming all over the district is bedevilling the intelligence agencies.

A Bangladeshi Muslim who resettles in Kishanganj, uses a land grab technique, and invites several of his relatives and friends from Bangladesh. Kishanganj is part of the slender "chicken neck" that links the Northeast with the rest of India. What if this slender land route is choked and air bases in the Northeast blown up with explosives under some sinister plan by the ISI?

Now let's come to the home minister's inability to distinguish between infiltrators and refugees on religious lines. The suggestion had come from Pramod Mahajan in consonance with the BJP's long established views on the subject. Here is a simple and historic logic for such a distinction being made. Independent India developed a "secular" polity and never declared itself a Hindu state. But Pakistan that included East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, proclaimed itself an Islamic Republic. Pakistan, in principle, was created as a homeland for all Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. The residual India was meant for non-Muslims. All Muslim League leaders, between 1940 and 1946, had called for redrawing the demographic map of India through exchange of population on communal lines. However, this plan was never implemented.

So, though India was not a constitutionally Hindu country it was incumbent upon India to shelter any persecuted non-Muslim - Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Christian in Pakistan - or a non-Muslim willing to migrate to partitioned India. Similarly, it was incumbent upon Pakistan to accommodate any Muslim from the Indian subcontinent, either persecuted or willing to migrate. Pakistan (then West Pakistan), with its few weeks of partition, annihilated and expelled its Hindus and Sikhs who comprised around one-fifth of its population. But a large chunk of Hindus stayed back in East Pakistan only to be ejected in trickles and torrents from 1947 till date. A large number of Muslims continued to stay in West Bengal (now 25 per cent) none of whom had to migrate to East Pakistan after 1950.

In Israel, which was established within one year of India's independence, a Law of Return was promulgated in 1950 that grants every Jew, wherever he or she may be, the right to come to Israel as an oleh or aliya (a Jew immigrating to Israel), and become an Israeli citizen. Till East Pakistan existed, a Hindu could simply walk over to India especially West Bengal or Tripura, by citing communal insecurity as a reason and become an Indian. His or her educational qualifications would be valid in India at par Pakistan. All this changed with the Indira-Mujib Agreement (1972) and Treaty (1974).

When Mujib-ur-Rehman, the founder father of Bangladesh, declared Bangladesh to be a secular and democratic country, it was assumed that no Hindu, Buddhist or Christian would have reason to flee to India due to communal discrimination and persecution. But he was killed in an Army coup on August 15, 1974. The new military dictator, Zia-ur-Rehman, converted Bangladesh into a de facto Islamic state. Later, in 1988, President Mohammed Ershad officially dropped the word "secular" from Bangladesh's Constitution.

Today, Bangladesh can be aptly described as a vast concentration camp for Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. Their demographic share in Bangladesh's population has steadily plummeted. However, India never restored provisions for Hindu refugees as before 1972. India could at least go back to a pre-1971 situation when Bangladesh has de facto and de jure reneged from its commitment to secularism. '

Women as victims
In the case of minority communities under attack in the present state of Bangladesh, minority women are especially targeted. In the cases reviewed above we have seen how women have been specially victimized and terrorized. Civilian populations are using the tactics of an army during conflict. Rape or even the fear of rape has created general terror whereby whole villages reportedly flee their houses. During a war where it is women, children and old people who are left to tend the households after the men go to war, this tactic has been used time and again to break the morale fabric of a society and to get rid of the last vestiges of civil society. In the post-election violence in Bangladesh against the Hindu minorities and the in the Mahalcchari incident of CHT as well women were terrorized so that they left their homes unguarded leaving it to be looted through the night by the miscreants. It has been thought that this would break their economic backbone so that they would have to sell off their lands very cheaply to the dominant community. One wonders in such cases how such militaristic thinking seemed to have pervaded even the dominant political trends in society!
Organizer published an article in March 05, 2006. written by Basudeb Pal. He wrote in this article `West Bengal warned of globalisation of jehad ‘:
Two-day-long second international conference of Campaign Against Atrocities on Minorities of Bangladesh (CAAM ended with three important declarations on February 12, 2006. The conference was held at Ballygan Siksha Sadan’s Khemka auditorium in Kolkata.

General Shankar Roy Chowdhury (Retd.) and Rosaline Costa, a renowned human rights activist from Bangladesh inaugurated the conference on February 11, lighting the traditional lamp.

In his inaugural address, General Chowdhury warned the people of West Bengal as well as of India to become alert of the threats of globalisation of jehad and the changed-demographic situation of the bordering districts of this state. He pointed out that according to the last census report (2001), along the 20 to 25 kilometers of the Indian side of West Bengal the Hindus have become minority. “The fact that How miserably the minorities of Bangladesh are living there in an inhuman condition is very significant for us. Although the creation of Bangladesh could be made possible because of the sacrifice of the thousands of Indian jawans. Not a single Islamic state then wanted the rise of Bangladesh. Now we must not keep aloof from the happenings Bangladesh. We can take a lesson from Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, who says, ‘We are providing political help to the freedom fighters in Jammu & Kashmir only’. We must also help those who are fighting in Bangladesh for the human rights of the Hindus, Christians and Buddhists, said Gen. Chowdhury .

In his presidential address, Prof. Sunand Sanyal (Retd.) said: “He is fighter under the banner ‘Gan-Mukti Parishad’ for demanding the valuable voting right of the citizens of West Bengal with the cadres of the ruling parties.” He ridiculed the love of the left for the Muslims.

Advocate Rana Dasgupta, Rosaline Costa and Advocate Rabindra Ghosh vividly described the true story of inhuman torture, rape, gang-rape of the women of Hindus, Christians and Buddhists including minor girls, incidents of forcibly conversion to Islam, etc. Shri Costa also said they are bound to compromise to recover a girl of minority community from those who have raped her. There is no human right for the minorities in Bangladesh. He further said there are more than eighty thousands madrasas producing jehadis in large number in Bangladesh. Dr Ajay Roy, a leader of Hindu-Buddha-Christian Unity Council and a freedom fighter, who had taken part in the freedom movement of Bangladesh, said they wanted to fight for true freedom of every citizen in Bangladesh. He blamed the Bangladesh government for telling a complete lie at every international platform that there is a complete harmony and all the minority communities are exercising their rights fully. He himself heard that in a seminar in London from the High Commissioner of Bangladesh there, he added.

The two writers of Kolkata- Esha Dey and Maitreye Chattopadhay-strongly criticised the so-called intelligentia and media of West Bengal for not highlighting the true incidents of cruelty said that happened in Bangladesh everyday. She said the ‘secular’ brigade came out to street when riots occurred in Gujarat and America attacked Iraq but they maintain studied silence when the minorities are cruelly tortured in Bangladesh.

Esha Dey said that both Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim-majority states and ruled by the Muslims but India being a Hindu-majority country is ruling in favour of the minorities (Muslims).

Achinta Gupta conducted the convention and poet Kamlesh Sen offered vote of thanks. Many speakers from New York (Pabitra Chowdhury, Nicoleus Sikdar), Sisir Mazumdar (London), Aloke Chowdhury (Canada), Arunjyoti Barua (Switzerland) spoke on the occasion.

Mohit Roy, convener of CAAMB’s Kolkata chapter, read the declarations.

(The author can be contacted at 27/1B, Bidhan Sarani Kolkata-700 006.)

Bangldesh prespective is different, it may be understood. This article shows the Bangladeshi outlook on thi issue:
Crossfire War: South Asia Theatre; Calcutta Conspiracy: No Sovereignty for Bangladesh? - Mohammad Zainal Abedin
Filed under: Night Watch Information Service— willard @ 7:43 pm
Night Watch Team: DHAKA - It is very astonishing and pitiful that a foreign national dared to speak against the sovereignty, separate identity and existence of Bangladesh in the very presence of a Bangladeshi, who claims himself a vanguard of the spirit of independence. One Indian national Sriti Kumar Sarkar, addressing a discussion meeting in Calcutta of India on October 1, made an insane comment saying that Bangladesh does not need to have a separate existence or sovereignty.

According to his prescription, the prosperity that will take place in this region, (probably he referred to India), will automatically develop this part of the world, which is now known as Bangladesh. What a strange and audacious argument it is! The Bangladeshi national, Shahriar Kabir, who was present at the discussion meeting held at the Calcutta Academy of Fine Arts did not protest the utterance of Sriti Kumar Sarkar, a teacher of Kolaynee University of West Bengal.

Silence of Shahriar Kabir proved that he clandestinely supported and welcomed the prescription of Sritir Kumar. When this report was published in a section of Bangladeshi dailies, the vanguards of the spirit of independence Awami League and its associates did not react or protest. This silence also indicates to the acceptance of the comment of Sarkar.

A Calcutta-based RAW-(Research and Analysis Wing, Indian Intelligence) sponsored organisation ‘Campaign Against the Atrocities on Minority in Bangladesh’ (CAAM failed to conceal its anti-Bangladesh bias. The very name of this organisation indicates its aims and objectives. This organisation arranged the so-called discussion meeting in Calcutta attended by 35 to 40 persons, including one Bangladeshi - Shahriar Kabir, an infamous India-tilted element.

The topic of the discussion was: Demography, Infiltration and the Minority of Bangladesh: Some Questions. Among others CAAMB convenor Muhit Roy, Director of Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relation Bimol Pramanik, Prof. of Kalayani University Sriti Kumar Sarkar, Poet Amaylesh Sen, Prof. Joyanta Roy and Shahriar Kabir of Bangladesh addressed the discussion meeting.

Sriti Kumar Sarkar in his speech said, Bangladesh does not need sovereignty and separate existence for the overall development of South Asia. He prescribed that the prosperity that will take place in this region, (probably he referred to India), will automatically develop this part of the world, which is now known as Bangladesh. This means, Sriti Kumar prefers to wither away Bangladesh. He did not directly suggest that Bangladesh should merge with India.

But his cowardice utterance indicates so. If Bangladesh loses its sovereignty and separate existence its territory and people cannot jump to the sky. They will remain on earth, not as citizens of an independent country, but as the slaves of India. What a nonsensical and stupidity a university professor could utter! I have no language to condemn him and his utterance. I feel pity for his narrowness and communal hatred.

This type of utterance is equivalent to declaring war against the country. This irresponsible and utopian utterance pains and hurts the patriotic forces of Bangladesh. The continual process of repeating anti-Bangladesh campaign virtually uncovers the depth of the hatred of the communal Hindus against the Muslims. Hindus cannot tolerate the existence of a separate country for the Bangalee Muslims.

To keep the Muslims under their feet, Hindus revolted against the partition of Bengal in 1905, because the partition went, according to then Hindu elites and intellectuals, in favour of Muslim interest. In 1947, when the Muslims wanted to have undivided independent Bengal, out of India and Pakistan, with its capital in Calcutta, the Hindus strongly opposed it, as such arrangement, according to them would have gone in favour of the Muslims. So they opted to divide Bengal into two, so that the portion that would go to Pakistan could return to the fold of India soon.

India’s assistance in the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, did not originate from their sense of humanity for the warring people of Bangladesh, but to dismember Pakistan, to weaken the Muslim power in the subcontinent and finally merge them to ‘greater Bharat, what Nehru termed it ‘Awakhand Bharat’. Indian leaders though that dismemberment of Pakistan would lead to the accession of Bangladesh to India.

Despite relentless conspiracy that did not happen yet, Bangladesh rather gradually emerges as a strong state and poses to get out of Indian influence. Indians feel envious at the prosperity of the Muslims whether they are Bangladeshi or Pakistanis. It is beyond their blueprint. They never dreamt that the Bengalee Muslims should have an independent and sovereign country their own.

The high-rise building in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh, its flag that flies in Calcutta and elsewhere in the world, the long queues of cars and vehicles in our cities, high living standard, growing per-capita income, above all, educated and trained patriotic manpower, etc. pain the Hindus. The Hindus suffer from mental agony seeing the prosperity of the Muslims of British East Bengal, who were supposed to remain as their tenants, slaves and agricultural labourers. They design to pull us to that dark era.

To reach to that goal India leaves no stone unturned to disturb and squeeze Bangladesh. For this reason, the Hindus vehemently opposed the partition of India and creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims. After 59 years of the partition of the subcontinent, the Hindus still feel pity not for getting the Muslims as their maidservants, and farm workers. Hindus did not hesitate to express their agony in public.

Hindu leaders belonging to the Jatiya Puja Udjapan Committee in a meeting held at Dhakeshari Mandir on August 20, 2004, publicly said that is was a pity for them that no Muslim is available to work in the houses of the Hindus. Muslims do not want to work in the houses of the Hindus. According to them it is a very unfortunate change and it started since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.

I think no more explanation is needed why so-called professor Sriti Kumar Sarkar felt that Bangladesh does not need separate existence and sovereignty. The Hindus sitll work to make the Muslims their slaves. Sriti Kumar expressed that dream in other way. One would get zero logic why the Indians contemptuously comment on Bangladesh frequently. Only a fool may believe that Bangladesh could be a threat to India. But the Indian leaders shamelessly brand Bangladesh as their dangerous foe.

It is to be mentioned that Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister, was busy in holding meetings with the Indian ministers in New Delhi while Sriti Kumar made his anti-Bangladesh utterance. It is strange that she did also not protest the most objectionable utterance of the Indian national. She reached Calcutta from New Delhi on the following day, October 2, when the Indian dallies carried this report.
HRCBM in Brief
HRCBM is a worldwide campaigning movement dedicated to protecting the human rights of people in Bangladesh. In particular, we work for minorities in Bangladesh. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct, and to bring offenders to justice.
We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable. We demand government and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law. We follow the guideline enshrined in UDHR, International Bill of Rights and other standards. In general we are working to end xenophobia, human rights abuse, racial discrimination, civil resentment, brutality and oppression against minorities in Bangladesh.

Mission Statement
We are a human rights organization and has no political interest of any sorts, however we will oppose any government law that discriminate minorities including 8th amendment of Bangladesh constitution and vested property act. Racial discrimination and xenophobia in Bangladesh must be ended and any offender who has committed human rights abuse against minorities should be prosecuted. We will pursue our activities through worldwide campaign and followed by appeal to government of Bangladesh and world leaders to end human rights abuses in Bangladesh.

The Human Rights Tribune publishes fair and balanced news reports as well as provides the platform for Quarterly reports of HRCBM. It also includes independent investigative and news reports of human rights abuses against the people of Bangladesh in general and minorities in particular. The newspaper wants to create a new era in the field of journalism depicting the plights of the destitute and their plea for justice.

Our reputation for timely, reliable disclosures has made us an essential source of information for anyone concerned with human rights in Bangladesh. The news, articles, special and investigative reports you will find here each describe human rights violations, detail the causes, and provide recommendations for how to end the abuses. Through field investigations and an extensive network of sources in Bangladesh, the Human Rights Tribune is the leading source of news and repository for Bangladesh.

Who relies on our reporting?

Concerned Individuals: demand information on abuses around the world to ensure that human rights play a major role in government policy.

The Press: reporters, columnists, broadcasters and editors worldwide rely on these reports and frequently cite them in their work.

Citizens' Organizations: church groups, relief organizations and humanitarian agencies use and act upon the timely data and analysis in these reports.

Policymakers: receive a detailed briefing on conditions from the eyewitnesses, experts, local government officials, opposition leaders, scholars, church officials, lawyers and human rights monitors interviewed in these reports.

The Academic Community: increasingly focuses on the impact of human rights abuses on economic development, environmental degradation, famine, conflict and other global problems. These reports are a rich source of firsthand information for scholars and students.

Libraries: research, academic, special and public libraries subscribe to these reports, to meet the growing demand for their unique information and to preserve the record of human rights history.

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14 Views Bangladesh: Policy Focus- United States Commission on Internation Religious Freedom
Bangladesh has experienced an upsurge in violence by religious extremists and, as a result, growing concerns expressed by the ountry’s religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists. Read the complete publication at http://hrcbmdfw.org/files/22/hr_reports/entry474.asp...
10-30-2006, 8:58 PM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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11 Views Mother, Daughter violated in Barisal
A women of the Hindu community and her daughter were violated by some hoodlums in their shanty House at Alamdi village in Uzirpur Upazilla of Barisal district recently. ...
10-29-2006, 11:59 AM by Administrator to Barisal Division News

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28 Views Bangladesh: Report of Repression against Bangladesh Minorities for the month of October 2006 from national dailies
News update for the month of October, 2006 in Bangladesh through 21st October 2006 Jamat activists carry attack on the Puja mandop (pavilion) in Shamnagar Upazila of Satkhira district: Six injured and one arrested (The Daily Prothom Alo, 03rd October...
10-29-2006, 11:47 AM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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4 Views Investigative Report of HRCBM-Dhaka on the incident of desecration of Durga Mandir and Kali Mandir and continuous repression on Minority Hindu families at Hatbaligaon, Tongibari P.S. District- Munshiganj
Investigative Report of Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities-Dhaka on the incident of desecration of Durga Mandir and Kali Mandir and continuous repression on Minority Hindu families at Hatbaligaon, Tongibari P.S. District- Munshiganj (Investigation...
10-29-2006, 11:15 AM by Administrator to Dhaka Division News

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13 Views Bangladeshi President Iajuddin Ahmed has been sworn in as head of an interim government after the main political parties failed to agree a candidate.
Reacting to the appointment, Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina said she expected Mr Ahmed to implement electoral reform proposals submitted by the party. "He has to prove himself as a neutral person," she told reporters. The BBC's Waliur Rahman in Dhaka...
10-29-2006, 10:55 AM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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11 Views President sworn in as chief of caretaker govt
President Iajuddin Ahmed last night assumed the office of chief adviser to the non-party caretaker government in addition to his presidential responsibilities as "major political parties failed to reach a consensus on an acceptable person for the post"...
10-29-2006, 10:52 AM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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12 Views Hasan 'unwilling' to be caretaker chief
In a dramatic development late last night, former chief justice KM Hasan has indicated his reluctance to take oath as chief adviser to the caretaker government, a source close to Hasan said....
10-28-2006, 10:30 AM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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13 Views Bangladesh pledge on power shift
There have already been sporadic outbreaks of violence, but the BBC's Roland Buerk in Dhaka says many people fear this is the calm before the storm. ...
10-28-2006, 10:27 AM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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13 Views Bangladesh power shift postponed
The swearing-in ceremony of a caretaker administration in Bangladesh has been postponed amid street clashes between government and opposition supporters. ...
10-28-2006, 10:23 AM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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27 Views Human Rights Conference on Bangladesh Minorities
Press Release Hindu American Foundation Addresses Human Rights Conference on Bangladesh Minorities http://www.hinduamericanfoundation.org/media_press_release_bangladesh_ros.htm NEW YORK (Mar. 18, 2006) - A member of the Hindu American...
10-07-2006, 9:32 AM by sarbhadharme to Bangladesh

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68 Views Bangladesh: Report of Repression against Bangladesh Minorities for the month of August 2006 from national dailies
Bangladesh: Report of Repression against Bangladesh Minorities for the month of August 2006 from national dailies....
10-05-2006, 9:33 PM by Administrator to Bangladesh

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Repeat Vietnam: Ambushed and Alive Amerika
Palash Biswas
(Please publish and send a copy. conatct: Palash Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. phone: 033-25659551.Residence.)
Wardesigner Rumsfeld resigned after the people`s verdict against Iraq war expressed well in the midterm elections and Democrates managed majority in House of Representative and Senate. Former CIA Director Robert Gates would replace Donald H Rumsfeld as defence secretary.What a CIA director may do to defend the American intersts , we have to understand. Gates led the CIA, under then-President George H W Bush, from November 1991 to January 1993.
The election debacle may not be seen as a sudden wave of Good Inspiration as Bush Senior and Bush Junior both enjoyed maximum support of americans while they sent troops to Irag defying rest of the world. In Vietnam also, the opposition came very late. While American Ego is hurt defending national interestas and recieving stiff opposition from the other end, Americanism sees through the much neglected humanitarian ground. It happened once again.

Now that Democrats are in control of the House, the world will be watching how that will impact George Bush's foreign policy, particularly in Iraq. Resignation of Rumsfeld is an indication. Perhaps, someday, we have to see the screaming headlines that Rumsfeld gets a Nobel Peace as the Butcher of Vietnam Henry Kissinger got. The resignation of US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday was seen as a positive move to some in the US military and their families.Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), an organisation of over 3,100 military families who are opposed to the war in Iraq, welcomed Rumsfeld's resignation.According to newsagency reports,the Wastes arrived in Washington with other MFSO members to deliver a petition to the Pentagon.MFSO expects more than 30 military families from California, Colorado, Missouri, New Jersey and other areas around the US to gather in Washington later on Thursday.The families plan to take the petitions calling for an end to troop extensions, stop-loss orders, involuntary re-calls, multiple deployments, and other aspects of the "back door draft," to the Pentagon. They're also demanding that all troops be brought home.

Philip Waste said he approved of Rumsfeld's resignation, but thought it was too little too late."If he had resigned four years ago, we may have hundreds of more live soldiers. I think his policies in Iraq and Bush's policies in Iraq are flawed. I think we should bring the troops home now."

But resignation of a Kissinger or a rumsfeld and the ouster of A Johnson or Bush have not to deal anything with the decline of American Imperialism, which is a must to save mankind on this earth.
As the United States went to war in 1965, a few voices were raised in dissent. Within the Johnson administration, Undersecretary of State George Ball warned that the South Vietnamese government was a functional nonentity and simply could not be sustained by the United States, even with a major effort. Antiwar protest groups formed on many of the nation's campuses; in June, the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society decided to make the war its principal target. But major dissent would not begin until 1966 or later. By and large in 1965, Americans supported the administration's claim that it was fighting to stop communism in Southeast Asia, or people simply shrugged and went about their daily lives, unaware that this gradually escalating war would tear American society apart.
President Bush owned the responsibility of this defeat and accepted the heat and dust of Iraq war is the cause. Dead bodies from the warzone has eclipsed the declared war against terrorism. Al Kaeda and Its head Osama Bid Laden are at large as yet. Death penalty against former Iraqi president, which is once again a cold blooded murder, has not helped the president as it was expressed. Meanwhile, in Nicaragua Ortego returns to power once again and it makes a trio withfidel Castro in Quba and President Chavez in Venejuala. Latin america is challanging Superpower America on doorsteps. It is not an easy time for American interest and the declared policy of Americanism is to defend american interests anywhere in this globe and beyond. The atomic and transe war machinery with a supreme power of a turminator and Rambo is not tested well as Iraq as well as Vietnam were not at per with American military science and humanity. The other superpower , the Soviet Union exists no more . Thnks Gorbachev. China is never interested beyond its interests in Asia. Thus, America is posed as unchallangeable which it is not. Americanism may not accept this hypothesis. So a Vietnam and an Iraq failure has an aftermath as it is reflected in the midterm elections. Bush indicates to reconsider Iraq policy adding that resignation of Rums field is not concerned at all. but mind you, California`s Republican governor and former hollywood Actor Swarzcoff retains his seat sustaing himself as he alienated himself from the responsibility of Iraq policy.

For India, it is very peculiar situation,unprecedented. As the ruling classes here follow the dictates of President Bush who is in real trouble after these elections. The much hyped Nuclear deal seems to be endangered. Prime minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh, Vice president of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahloovalia and the finance Minister P chidambaram, all in all and the opposition, left as well as right, seem to be Americanized and specifically Republicanized in Bush Age. The Democrats have gained control of the US House of Representatives after 12 years. In an election that evoked unprecedented interest all over the world, Democrats have picked up more than the 15 seats they needed to get a majority in the House. Among other notable results were Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible Democrat candidate for presidential election in 2008, retaining her Senate seat from New York; Arnold Schwarzenegger getting re-elected as California governor; and Republican Bobby Jindal winning a second term in Louisiana. It is sure that Bush has to be evicted from White house in next Presidential elections, and most probably we have to welcome a democrate there. But the experience of eviction of President Johnson caused by the anti Vietnam War is not so good. The world faced the Wtergate famous American President in ronald Regan, who intensified the cold war. Regan and Carter were the men who tried to dislodge Fidel Castro again and again. Even , a president like soft imaged John Kennedy sent troops to Cuba. All these presidents, who had a better image, contributed well to design and define American interests and Americanism.
America is supreme and it heads the global government. Not only world market, polities and economies worldwide have to surrender. Which is well coplied by leaders like India and Pkaistan over decades except one Mrs Indira Gandhi, who challanged american supremacy during Bangladesh crisis. Seventh Fleet could not stop the eviction of Pak military rulers from East Bengal. Amarericanism decides every thing with least care for the world opinion. It defends shamelessly the Israel attacks on Arab World with its Veto power in United Nations Security council. Both Verrsions Of Bush sent troops to Iraq violating world opinion and even, the United nations. It attacked Afganistan sending off the missiles across the Indian sky and no Indian leader had the courage to oppose this violation of the country. For afganistan and Iraq war and war against terrorism American forces use the soilof Pakistan freely and Mia Mussaraf has not to say anything. Pakistan does not want to be an Iran, an Afganistan or an Iraq, it may be understood. But , these two nieghbours have engaged theselves in a nuclear race to enhance the American interests. And the new defence minister of India , a Brahmin from Left Ruled West Bengal seems to be much more interestd to defend the controversial Nuclear deal in the changed scenerio without considering our own national interests. Bravo.

With increasing public disaffection towards the war in Iraq — 60 per cent of voters are opposed to the Iraq war — it is likely that the Democrat-controlled House will up the pressure on Bush to go for a phased withdrawal of US troops. The Times of India edit published on 9th Nov. considers the Indian destiny very well:

`What is the take out of a Democrat-controlled House for India? There has already been plenty of speculation on the fate of the Indo-US nuclear deal.

It is unlikely that when the US Congress convenes for a lame duck session after the polls it will take up the nuclear issue.

This will, of course, delay the nuclear accord. If the deal is not approved in November, the entire process of ratifying the deal by both Houses will have to be gone through once again.

But there is no reason to believe that the deal is dead. There is bipartisan support for the agreement as the thumping approval in the House of Representatives showed.

New Delhi will just have to be patient and keep lobbying in Capitol Hill for an early passage of the Bill on the nuclear deal.

The delay will, however, be an embarrassment for the UPA government which has trumpeted the nuclear accord as one of its most significant achievements.

But, in the long run, the upswing in Indo-US relations won't be affected as both Democrats and Republicans are firmly committed to better ties with New Delhi.’

This edit reflects the sentiments of Ruling classes in India.
Well, it may prove a great relief to Mukherjee as the Indo-US nuclear deal appears to be on course after the Democrats beat US President George W Bush's party in the Congress elections.
Speaking after the loss, President Bush said that getting the India-US nuclear deal through the Senate next week was a priority."I'm trying to get the Indian (nuclear) deal done," he said.
More importantly, there's a positive gesture from some key Democrat lawmakers on the nuclear deal.They have said they are ready to support the Bush administration on the bill that will allow the nuclear deal to go through.

Joe Biden, a top Democrat on the Senate's Foreign Affairs Panel, said he hoped the nuclear deal bill would be considered when Congress meets next week."It would take at least a day's worth of debate, no more than two, to settle the Bill in the Senate. With the deal receiving bipartisan support, it will be cleared with a very large vote," said Joe Biden, Senate Foreign Affairs Panel.

Earlier today, US Ambassador to India David C Mulford echoed the same sentiment. He said there was every intention to get the Indo-US nuclear deal legislation through next week.

While the House of Representatives approved the draft bill in July, a vote on the deal has been stuck in the Senate for the last two sessions. It is widely hoped that the Senate will schedule a vote now in the Lame Duck session held after the elections, to wind up pending legislative business.Once a vote is cast in the Senate, both the House and the Senate need to hold a conference to come up with a common draft Bill, upon which the President can sign his assent.

But even though the deal has received strong bipartisan support throughout, some key opponents, who have argued that the deal undermines global non-proliferation efforts, have been among the Democrats.Having gained control of the US Congress riding an anti-Bush wave, the question now is whether the Democrats will sign on what is widely seen as a Republican foreign policy initiative, in this final session of the current Congress.

The government of India escaped to condemn death penalty to Saddam Hussain despite the pressure of India`s Sunni population. Not only votebank policy, it is fact Saddam hussain happens the only person who consistently supported India`s stance on Kashmir contrary to other muslim leaders of this world. He had never been as dogmatic as Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh experiences tell.The Hindus, Sikhs and other India origin minorities never faced persecution in Iraq in Saddam period. He was the man who supplied oil to India on reasonable price.All these facts and the humanatarian and judicial factors show that India should take a stand in this case.It did not even knowing and being well aware of the expected aftermath in American Elections. While the war partners of america, France and Italy opposed death penalty to sddam Hussain.
Meanwhile India fears terrorist attack in reaction of Saddam episode. A high alert has been sounded at all airports across the country, particularly those in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, following threats of a possible terror attack by Al-Qaida.A high alert has been sounded at all airports in the country, particularly those in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, following threats of a possible terror attack by Al-Qaida. The security alert was issued on Thursday morning after the Director of Trichy Airport in Tamil Nadu received an anonymous letter warning of an attack by Al-Qaida at airports or on aircraft in South India.

The letter said about 10 Al-Qaida terrorists will break the security cordon and carry out attacks at airports. The airports that are placed on high alert are Chennai, Kochi, Trichy, Thiruvananthapuram and Coimbatore. The Civil Aviation Ministry has taken up the matter seriously and held a series of meetings with officials of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, Home Ministry and CISF for reviewing the situation. All necessary security measures have been put in place at all the airports to thwart any attack, official sources saidin New delhi.

Andrew J. Rotter wrote in his article, `The Causes of the Vietnam War’
`Most American wars have obvious starting points or precipitating causes: the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the capture of Fort Sumter in 1861, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, for example. But there was no fixed beginning for the U.S. war in Vietnam. The United States entered that war incrementally, in a series of steps between 1950 and 1965. In May 1950, President Harry S. Truman authorized a modest program of economic and military aid to the French, who were fighting to retain control of their Indochina colony, including Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam. When the Vietnamese Nationalist (and Communist-led) Vietminh army defeated French forces at Dienbienphu in 1954, the French were compelled to accede to the creation of a Communist Vietnam north of the 17th parallel while leaving a non-Communist entity south of that line. The United States refused to accept the arrangement. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower undertook instead to build a nation from the spurious political entity that was South Vietnam by fabricating a government there, taking over control from the French, dispatching military advisers to train a South Vietnamese army, and unleashing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct psychological warfare against the North.

President John F. Kennedy rounded another turning point in early 1961, when he secretly sent 400 Special Operations Forces-trained (Green Beret) soldiers to teach the South Vietnamese how to fight what was called counterinsurgency war against Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, there were more than 16,000 U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam, and more than 100 Americans had been killed. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, committed the United States most fully to the war. In August 1964, he secured from Congress a functional (not actual) declaration of war: the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Then, in February and March 1965, Johnson authorized the sustained bombing, by U.S. aircraft, of targets north of the 17th parallel, and on 8 March dispatched 3,500 Marines to South Vietnam. Legal declaration or no, the United States was now at war.

The multiple starting dates for the war complicate efforts to describe the causes of U.S. entry. The United States became involved in the war for a number of reasons, and these evolved and shifted over time. Primarily, every American president regarded the enemy in Vietnam--the Vietminh; its 1960s successor, the National Liberation Front (NLF); and the government of North Vietnam, led by *Ho Chi Minh--as agents of global communism. U.S. policymakers, and most Americans, regarded communism as the antithesis of all they held dear. Communists scorned democracy, violated human rights, pursued military aggression, and created closed state economies that barely traded with capitalist countries. Americans compared communism to a contagious disease. If it took hold in one nation, U.S. policymakers expected contiguous nations to fall to communism, too, as if nations were dominoes lined up on end. In 1949, when the Communist Party came to power in China, Washington feared that Vietnam would become the next Asian domino. That was one reason for Truman's 1950 decision to give aid to the French who were fighting the Vietminh,

Truman also hoped that assisting the French in Vietnam would help to shore up the developed, non-Communist nations, whose fates were in surprising ways tied to the preservation of Vietnam and, given the domino theory, all of Southeast Asia. Free world dominion over the region would provide markets for Japan, rebuilding with American help after the Pacific War. U.S. involvement in Vietnam reassured the British, who linked their postwar recovery to the revival of the rubber and tin industries in their colony of Malaya, one of Vietnam's neighbors. And with U.S. aid, the French could concentrate on economic recovery at home, and could hope ultimately to recall their Indochina officer corps to oversee the rearmament of West Germany, a Cold War measure deemed essential by the Americans. These ambitions formed a second set of reasons why the United States became involved in Vietnam.

As presidents committed the United States to conflict bit by bit, many of these ambitions were forgotten. Instead, inertia developed against withdrawing from Vietnam. Washington believed that U.S. withdrawal would result in a Communist victory--Eisenhower acknowledged that, had elections been held as scheduled in Vietnam in 1956, "Ho Chi Minh would have won 80% of the vote"--and no U.S. president wanted to lose a country to communism. Democrats in particular, like Kennedy and Johnson, feared a right-wing backlash should they give up the fight; they remembered vividly the accusatory tone of the Republicans' 1950 question, "Who lost China?" The commitment to Vietnam itself, passed from administration to administration, took on validity aside from any rational basis it might once have had. Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all gave their word that the United States would stand by its South Vietnamese allies. If the United States abandoned the South Vietnamese, its word would be regarded as unreliable by other governments, friendly or not. So U.S. credibility seemed at stake.

Along with the larger structural and ideological causes of the war in Vietnam, the experience, personality, and temperament of each president played a role in deepening the U.S. commitment. Dwight Eisenhower restrained U.S. involvement because, having commanded troops in battle, he doubted the United States could fight a land war in Southeast Asia. The youthful John Kennedy, on the other hand, felt he had to prove his resolve to the American people and his Communist adversaries, especially in the aftermath of several foreign policy blunders early in his administration. Lyndon Johnson saw the Vietnam War as a test of his mettle, as a Southerner and as a man. He exhorted his soldiers to "nail the coonskin to the wall" in Vietnam, likening victory to a successful hunting expedition.

When Johnson began bombing North Vietnam and sent the Marines to South Vietnam in early 1965, he had every intention of fighting a limited war. He and his advisers worried that too lavish a use of U.S. firepower might prompt the Chinese to enter the conflict. It was not expected that the North Vietnamese and the NLF would hold out long against the American military. And yet U.S. policymakers never managed to fit military strategy to U.S. goals in Vietnam. Massive bombing had little effect against a decentralized economy like North Vietnam's. Kennedy had favored counterinsurgency warfare in the South Vietnamese countryside, and Johnson endorsed this strategy, but the political side of counterinsurgeny--the effort to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese peasantry-- was at best underdeveloped and probably doomed. Presidents proved reluctant to mobilize American society to the extent the generals thought necessary to defeat the enemy.’

Apathy Agnaist Refugees and Outsiders in North East
Palash Biswas
(contact” Plash Biswas, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India. Phone: 033-25659551)

Assam Gana Parishad demanded to grant citizenship to all Hindu migrants from Bangladesh and erstwhile East Bengal just before the last Assembly elections in Assam. After the elections , the scenerio changed. The northeast peace talks is without peace. Ulfa is again on its definite route of violence. You have noted well the incidents targetting Hindi speaking area with bombblast in Guahati. Another incident occured , which is much more remarkable that Punjabis have been attacked. Until this incident Punjabies were never attacked in Assam. Hindi speaking, Bengalis and Marwaries have been the target. Foriegners are changing the demography is an old allegation which we also hear in Left ruled West Bengal. This misinformation campaign pose to be agnaist minorities, but always an action is taken agnaist dalits as we have seen in Uttaranchal, Delhi, Maharashtra and Orrissa. AGP said nothing after the elections. As RSS always demands that Bangla muslims should be ousted and Hindus should be treated as refugees and should be granted citizenship. In fact it is BJP government which introduced the citizenship amendment bill 2003. Again it is a bjp government in Uttaranchal which denied citizenship of Bengali resettled refugees of fifties.In Orrissa , where the Noakhali victims face prosecution, a BJP- Bjd combine is in power.
Hence , no one should be afraid to know that a fresh drive against all nonasssamese is on in Assam. No non assames is going to be allowed to live in assam as ULFA is active once again and Agp and AASU do speak the language dictated by ULFA. Cong govt.ledby Tarun Gogoi can nnot help it.
But what about influx of illegal migrants from, the assamese point of view is as follows:
Bangladesh into Assam and West Bengal? Ever since the
defeat suffered by Pakistan at the
hands of Indian forces in 1971 resulting into the
formation of separate State of Bangladesh, Pakistan
has been on the lookout for avenging its defeat. Now
it has formed a nefarious nexus with the Government of
Bangladesh to ensure regular infiltration of the
illegal Bangladeshi immigrants into India. These poor
Bangladeshi immigrants are not only changing the
demography of border States like Assam and West Bengal
but can be lured to indulge in anti-social and
terrorist activities by the promise of money. Once,
the border States of Assam and West Bengal become
Muslim majority States, Bangladesh would lay its claim
to these two States for forming a greater Bangladesh
which would result into cutting of North Eastern
States from India which may then become independent
States. We must take this sinister design of Pakistan
and Bangladesh to divide and weaken India seriously
and Government should take immediate steps to throw
out the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

Mizo move to check influx

In a bid to check the influx of
> illegal migrants into the state, the Mizoram
> government has decided to step up its drive to
> identify and deport Myanmarese and Bangladeshi
> infiltrators from tribal areas.
> A senior state official said last night
> that following a series of high-level meetings of
> state officials, the government has decided to ask
> the administration of eight border districts to take
> remedial measures, which he said would be executed
> in phases, to tackle infiltration.
> The official said the state government
> was worried that Bangladeshis sneak across the
> border, first seek shelter in the Barak Valley
> districts and then move to Mizoram to eke out a
> living as small-time traders and migrant labourers.
> Retention of inner line permits issued
> under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873
> is one among a slew of other measures introduced to
> check the illegal entry of migrants into the state.
> Mizoram chief minister and president of
> the ruling Mizo National Front Zoramthanga had
> categorically ruled out on October 18 the scrapping
> of the inner-line regulations.
> The other measures include imposition of
> the Inter-state Migrant Workmen Actand Contract
> Labour Act for regulating the flow of arrival of
> migrant labourers, fencing along the Indo-Bangladesh
> and Indo-Myanmar borders and maintaining vigil along
> the porous border.
> The new labour laws under the twin acts
> will make registration of non-Mizo labourers,
> working as construction workers and domestic helps,
> mandatory.
> The validity of the work permit would
> depend on the specified period of their stay in the
> state as mentioned in the inner-line permit.
> A source stated that recently a
> high-level meeting, attended by Union home minister
> Shivraj Patil, former DoNER minister P. R. Kyndiah
> and Union home secretary V.K. Duggal in New Delhi,
> discussed the use of barbed-wire fences along the
> Mizoram border.
> The additional secretary of the Union
> home ministry (border management) R.R. Sirohi
> recently visited Mizoram for an on-the-spot
> inspection of the international borders. He asked
> the Mizoram government to start work on border
> fencing in a phased manner.
> While the number of illegal
> Burmese Mizos inhabiting Mizoram has been estimated
> at 70,000, it also suspected that over 20,000
> unauthorised non-Mizos, a majority of them
> Bangladeshis, have managed to settle in the remote
> parts of the state.

Trouble again in Orrissa.

Meanwhile,in Orrissa the refugees are in trouble once again.fishermen coast guard demands identity cards for bengali fishermen kendrapara, nov 3 (pti) faced with difficulty in identifying bangladeshis trespassing into indian waters for fishing, the coast guard has asked authorities in orissa to issue identity cards to bengali-speaking fishermen in the state. The issue was raised by coast guard officials at a recent meeting with their counterparts from the state forest and fisheries department to discuss a joint turtle protection exercise ahead of the nesting season of the olive ridley sea turtles, official sources said. They pointed out that as bangladeshi infiltrators on trawlers had a striking similarity with local bengali-speaking fishermen, it was difficult to identify them. ‘‘We requested the fisheries personnel to ensure that crew-members on fishing vessels are provided with valid identity cards,’’ said a source. It should be mandatory that no person is allowed to fish along the coast from dhamra to devi river mouth without a valid vessel permit and identity card issued by the fisheries department, the sources said. ‘‘Often crew-members of intercepted fishing vessels are found to speak bengali. There is little to differentiate between a bangladeshi and a bengali-speaking indian on the basis of physical features and spoken language,’’ a source said.

Half of the population have been shifted elsewhere due
to partition and so called development. Hightech
cities, special economic zone, shopping mall and
housing complexes have to desttle many more.
The government and policymakers seem to be interested
in the health of sensex. False growth rate and false
statics have become the economy of our country.The
polity and politics tend to destroy indigineous
production system.The country is being vertically divided in Haves and
Have nots. Until and unless, the refugees from East Bengal, the dalits, tribals and minorities as well as the new refugees created by globalisation, lockout, disinvestment, special economic zone, hightech cities, urbanisation and so called developent do stand united and resist, this persecution of underclasses continues. No help.
This issue must be discussed and a resistance force
has to be mobilised.
Palash Biswas
> Do we need a Ministry for Rehabilitation
> We are enclosing a view point which needs a public
> debate.We appreciate if this issue could be debated
> to mobilize public opinion on the same.
> Indumathi Rao
> Former member National commission for persons with
> Disabilities, India
> Regional Adviser
> CBR NETWORK(South Asia)
> 134,1st Block,6th Main BSK III Stage,Bangalore
> -560085
> Phone-91-80- 26724273, 26724221
> E mail-cbrnet@ airtelbroadband. in
> Website:www. cbrnetwork. org.in
>
> A view point
> Do we need a Ministry for Rehabilitation?
>
> Disability issues are arbitrarily clubbed into
> “social justice and empowerment” which covers a
> gamut of issues concerning scheduled caste,
> scheduled tribes minorities, senior citizens which
> amounts to addressing the needs of more than 70% of
> the population. Consequently, people with
> disabilities comprising about 3% of the population
> receive lukewarm attention. Governments follow a
> political tradition while forming ministries based
> on the commercial viability rather than focusing on
> human rights. For example, we have ministers for
> fishery, textile; but we sadly lack a state level
> minister for issues concerning people with
> disabilities. For any ministry to be effective,
> separate state ministers are required to address the
> issues of millions of people with disabilities in
> India.
>
>
>
> There are innumerable policies and declarations
> India has signed. Biwako millennium framework,
> Salamanca declarations, UN standard rules, UNESCAP
> declarations and so on. Disability ACT that was
> passed in the winter session of the Indian
> parliament in the year 1995 also promised a better
> life to people with disabilities. There is a lot of
> talk in the air, but not everything at the
> grassroots is fair.
>
>
>
> While core national interests in diverse domains
> like defense, commerce, nuclear, finance, petroleum
> or HRD are determined by the relevant departments or
> ministries, the Ministry of Social Justice and
> empowerment only acts as a coordination agency.
> Though disability is a state subject as per Indian
> constitution, the situation at the state level is
> only a poor reflection of what is happening at the
> center.
>
> Rehabilitation is a term used for restoration of
> functions and living conditions .A broader
> perspective of rehabilitation is necessary in
> developing countries. In India the number of people
> who need temporary or permanent rehabilitation
> services is around 200 million people. (3-4% of
> population are people with disabilities and 8-10%
> are senior citizens who need some form of
> rehabilitation support and others who need
> rehabilitation) . The word “others” gives a real
> picture of the rehabilitation need in India. People
> need rehabilitation when natural disaster strikes
> (Tsunami), post-war, terrorist attacks, ageing,
> illness and so on. To this list we need to add
> people who are born with disabilities, those who
> acquire disabilities because of epidemics, people
> who become disabled because of accidents, people who
> become disabled because of occupational hazards
> (Bhopal gas tragedy has left thousands of people
> disabled and even to this date children are born
> with brain damages).
>
> Government needs to have a separate ministry for
> rehabilitation as mere remedial measures during the
> crisis is expensive. For example when Tsunami struck
> there was no policy, strategy or resources for
> rehabilitation.
> Similarly, unscientific and impractical
> rehabilitation policies hardly help. Fore eg. a
> child who has hearing loss is eligible to get
> hearing free of cost only once in their life time.
> If they lose the hearing aid or break they have to
> live without one for the rest of their life. People
> who require wheelchairs are given tricycle! Wheel
> chair is a personal mobility aid whereas a tricycle
> is for children to play!
>
>
>
> Lack of understanding and unwillingness to learn on
> the part of the governments show she lack of concern
> to understand the real needs of people with
> disabilities. Welfare or charity based approached
> see people with disabilities as useless parasites to
> the society and need charitable measures. Whereas a
> development approach sees them as valuable members
> of society. Similarly, unspecific cut off points to
> define disability also needs serious attention. If
> you have lost one eye you are not disabled, you need
> to wait to lose both to become eligible for any
> rehabilitation benefit from the government!
> Rehabilitation support when a person has still one
> eye functioning, or low vision, or moderate hearing
> loss, or moderate mental retardation can help a
> person to become independent if some support is
> available to them.
>
>
> Today for Rehabilitation we have no exclusive
> minister or Secretary but a joint secretary heads in
> the ministry. The ministers and secretary do not
> have even the basic data on the situation of people
> with disabilities in India. They may have some
> quantitative data such as census figures but
> qualitative data base in not available at all. For
> example how many people are employed? How many women
> with disabilities have gainful jobs? How many of
> them live with families? How many children have no
> access to education? How well children who have
> access to education are learning? The list is
> endless in reality. Policies cannot be planned
> sitting in AC rooms without qualitative data. The
> official website says majority of rehabilitation
> services providers are NGOs. NGOs are happy to read
> this statement; but rehabilitation should be a
> government responsibility. Grant in Aid to NGOs is
> not the panacea to address issues concerning
> disability; neither centrally supported programmes
> such as District rehabilitation centers are the
> answer as they are fully funded by the central
> government without states contribution although
> disability is a state subject in the Indian
> constitutions. In a federal system unless and until
> state governments set up rehabilitation services
> through private and public partnerships( not grant in
> aid), the problem of lack of basic rehabilitation
> services will continue. There is a need for better
> trust and transparency while working with NGOs. Out
> of NGOs who provides rehabilitation strokes only a
> handful get financial support. This support is also
> given on the basis of Grant in Aid with no
> commitment form the government for the sustenance of
> services. Grant in Aid is like a lottery for most of
> the NGOs on which they cannot plan rehabilitation
> services. Government may stop grants any time with
> or without giving reasons, but NGOs are accountable
> to the community. This often makes us wonder about
> the lack of policies and programmes in the
> government to develop sustainable rehabilitation
> services to ALL person with disabilities in India.
> Economic issues are yet to acquire importance in
> rehabilitation policy, especially in the post UN
> Decade for Persons with Disabilities period. When
> economics overrides charity approaches these issues
> need to be politically packaged by an MFR which NGOs
> are unauthorized to do. For instance when Maneka
> Gandhi was minister for SJEM she said NGOs will be
> given grants only for a period of five years after
> that they must be self-sustaining. When NDA
> government was in poer they set up a National
> commission for persons with Disability which was
> support to work independently. But within three
> months when congress came into power the first thing
> that happened was closing this commission!! .The
> concepy of having a independent commission was
> aborted in the womb itself!
>

Death Penalty, Saddam hussain and Humanity
Palash Biswas
(Contact: C/o Mrs arti Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 033-25659551)
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death in Baghdad by hanging after being found guilty of crimes against humanity.Saddam was president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, when his Sunni-dominated government was deposed by a US-led invasion.Iraq war protagonists the United States and Britain have led the applause after justice was meted out to Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein may not executed by hanging until the start of next year, as there is no time limit set for the appeals process, the chief investigative judge Raed Juhi said today.Mr Juhi said:"There is no specific time limit for the appeals process. But after they have made their decision, the punishment must be implemented within 30 days." President Jalal Talabani has said he will refuse to sign a death penalty, but would delegate that job to one of his deputies. The old Iraqi law gave the president of Iraq the authority to commute a death sentence, but in this case that provision is made redundant by an article in the special law established for the tribunal, which says "no authority, including the president of the republic, may grant a pardon or mitigate the punishment issued by the court." But before any sentence is carried out, the convicted men - and indeed the prosecution - have the right to lodge an appeal against the verdict, the notification of which must be made within 15 days.Even if an appeal has not been lodged, if the court has issued a sentence of death or life imprisonment, then it must send a file on the case to the Court of Cassation, within 10 days of the judgment, for review.

The world has to witness more dramas and more screaming headlines and sensational newsbreaks in coming months , it appears.If saddam should be hanged for hundreds of shite people, how many times Bush has to be hanged for invading Iraq telling lies that the Iraq has nuclear war heads.

Respected lawyers give their views on the outcome of the Saddam trial. Experts say that the trial is full of flaws and bias. The world is divided on this issue. Even the Muslims residing in Indian subcontinent are divided. Dr subodh Chandra Roy argues that death penalty itself is illegal and that is a cold blooded murder. American Imperialism is opposed worldwide , even in America. The Americans themselves compare the Iraq crisis with Vietnam War. The White House called the verdict handed down to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Sunday a good day for Iraqis and evidence of an independent judiciary in Iraq.“It’s a good day for the Iraqi people,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said in a brief statement. At this juncture Indian polty is in deep trouble as UPA partner Left has demanded that the government of India should intervene to stop hanging of Saddam Hussain, while the government categarily declined.

The decision to execute Saddam is outrageous. The verdict is rigged, the trial is a farce. We want the UPA government to categorically condemn this assassination - Prakash Karat, General Secretary, CPI(M) .Ruling Left Front in west Bengal has delared detailed progrramme to oppose the verdict. Kolkata has to witness a massive left protest rally on 16 th November.

There was a mixed reaction from Muslims across India on the death sentence awarded on Sunday to Saddam Hussein with some denouncing the verdict terming it as unfair, while others saying the former Iraqi president deserved the punishment.Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari said the verdict was planned much earlier and was announced by a puppet tribunal of the United States."We denounce the verdict which was planned by the invader (the United States). The judgement has been announced by a puppet tribunal of the US," he said."Instead of Saddam Hussein, Bush should have been put on trial for his crimes in Iraq where more than seven lakh people have been killed since US-led forces invaded the country," Bukhari said.A member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Qasim Rasool Ilyas termed the trial of the deposed leader as unfair.

When the judge announced the sentence, Saddam appeared shaken.However he soon recovered and shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" [God is greatest] and "Long live the nation!"

Saddam was found guilty by the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday for ordering the killing of 178 Shia civilians in the town of Dujail in 1982.The court said that he and his fellow defendants had ordered the villagers' murder after members of Dawa, a Shia political party, tried to kill Saddam in Dujail in 1982.Saddam's sentence will be automatically appealed and reviewed by a panel of appeal judges, who will decide whether or not to allow a retrial.If the judgement stands, however, Saddam must be executed within 30 days of the appeals panel delivering its verdict, the chief prosecutor has said.

Saddam, 69 said that he wants to be executed by firing squad. However Iraqi law states that he will be executed by hanging.Al-Dulaimi, Saddam's lawyer, told AP his client called on Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and called on them to refrain from taking revenge on U.S. invaders."His message to the Iraqi people was 'pardon and do not take revenge on the invading nations and their people'," al-Dulaimi said, quoting Saddam. "The president also asked his countrymen to 'unify in the face of sectarian strife.'"

The completion of the Dujail trial does not mean that Saddam's days as a defendant are over. He and six other former Baath party officials, including Chemical Ali, are also on trial on charges of genocide relating to the killing of at least 50,000 people during the notorious Anfal operation against the Kurds in 1988. Dujail was chosen as the first and most straightforward of a dozen dossiers being prepared for trial by the Iraqi High Tribunal. In addition to the Anfal, they include the gassing of Kurds in Halabja, the invasion and occupation of Kuwait, the suppression of the 1991 Shia uprising, the draining of the southern marshes, the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Persians from Iraq to Iran, and the unlawful killing of political opponents.Senior Shia government figures in particular have said they want to see Saddam Hussein and others stand trial for the brutal quelling of the 1991 Shia rebellion.

Amnesty International deplores the decision of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT) to impose the death sentence on Saddam Hussein and two of his seven co-accused after a trial which was deeply flawed and unfair. The former Iraqi dictator was sentenced today in connection with the killing of 148 people from al-Dujail village after an attempt to assassinate him there in 1982. The trial, which began in October 2005 almost two years after Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces, ended last July. The verdict was originally due to be announced on 16 October but was delayed because the court said it needed more time to review testimony.

The case is now expected to go for appeal before the SICT's Cassation Panel following which, if the verdict were to be upheld, those sentenced to death are to be executed within 30 days.

Amnesty International will now follow closely the appeal stage, where the evidence as well as the application of the law can be reviewed, and the SICT has therefore an opportunity to redress the flaws of the previous proceedings. However, given the grave nature of these flaws, and the fact that many of them continue to afflict the current trial before the SICT, Amnesty International urges the Iraqi government to seriously consider other options. These could include adding international judges to the tribunal, or referring the case to an international tribunal -- an option indicated by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention last September.

Dr Subodh Chandra Roy writes this mail
E-mail: drscroy@vsnl.com
The study reveals a shocking fact: No death sentence can ever be executed without violating provisions of law. Before executing Mr. Suddam Hussain let this point be resolved first.

With full responsibility I call upon anyone having a mind of reson to discard the contention of my book. It is high and appropriate time that the whole world takes notice of this vital information and act accordingly.
My cellphone no. 09830431430.
Please read immediately:
"Death Sentence : A Legal Contradiction"
Royal Publishers,513, Kamalalaya Centre,156A, Lenin Sarani,Calcutta-700013.West Bengal,
India.Telephone: (033) 3022 9657,

The final court session and verdict today were fast, direct and clear, but not clear at all.In less than 10 minutes, Saddam Hussein was told he was guilty of crimes against humanity, but never exactly how or why.Was it the witness testimony that proved Saddam's guilt?

Was it Saddam’s own acceptance in court of overall responsibility for the draconian punishment his regime carried out of the villagers of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt in the town? Was it documents the prosecution said Saddam signed ordering the deaths of Dujail residents that ultimately swayed the judges? We still do not know.

The full verdict, a document of several hundred pages, explaining how and why today’s judgment was reached was not released. U.S. officials said it should be ready by Thursday. So why issue the verdict today? U.S. court advisors told reporters today it was delayed mainly for technical reasons. All insist the verdict was not politically timed and that it was an Iraqi decision; there is no reason to doubt their word.

The furthest the chief judge went today to explain why Saddam was sentenced to death was to say Saddam was found guilty of Article 12 A, through Article 15 B, of the Iraqi High Criminal Court Law (the tribunal trying Saddam's constitution). All that means, examining at the law, is that Saddam was guilty of "willful murder" because he had "ordered, solicited or induced the commission of such a crime, which in fact occurs or is attempted." Saddam Hussein was found guilty of ordering murders. Who he murdered, how, when and what proved his guilt, we are told, will be explained on Thursday.

It was not sufficient for the International Center for Transitional Justice, an NGO that has been monitoring the trial since the beginning. In a statement tonight the group said, "Today's verdicts were delivered in a 40-minute session that gave little indication of the judgment's detail and reasoning."

On the “Today” Show this morning Michael Scharf, one of the leading experts on the Saddam trial, said the Dujail case was easy to prove and that his guilt was clear. I believe Scharf is correct. There was an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982 and the Iraqi dictator oversaw a massive revenge campaign, even awarding medals to some of his henchmen for punishing his enemies and their families and neighbors. But the lack of clarity today adds fuels to critics who say Saddam's trial was politically motivated and that the verdict was rushed to meet American political deadlines -- the very accusation Saddam Hussein's lawyer made today.

"This trial should have been a major contribution towards establishing justice and the rule of law in Iraq, and in ensuring truth and accountability for the massive human rights violations perpetrated by Saddam Hussein’s rule," said Malcolm Smart, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme. "In practice, it has been a shabby affair, marred by serious flaws that call into question the capacity of the tribunal, as currently established, to administer justice fairly, in conformity with international standards."

In particular, political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court, causing the first presiding judge to resign and blocking the appointment of another, and the court failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses and defence lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course of the trial. Saddam Hussein was also denied access to legal counsel for the first year after his arrest, and complaints by his lawyers throughout the trial relating to the proceedings do not appear to have been adequately answered by the tribunal.

"Every accused has a right to a fair trial, whatever the magnitude of the charge against them. This plain fact was routinely ignored through the decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. His overthrow opened the opportunity to restore this basic right and, at the same time, to ensure, fairly, accountability for the crimes of the past. It is an opportunity missed," said Malcolm Smart, "and made worse by the imposition of the death penalty."

Saddam Hussein is currently being tried by the SICT, together with six others, on separate charges arising from the so-called Anfal campaign, when thousands of people belonging to Iraq's Kurdish minority were subject to mass killings, torture and other gross abuses in 1988.
Much has been said for and against death penalty from time immemorial. But one vital question has never been asked: Can death penalty be lawfully executed anywhere in the world? This question has been dealt with in details in the following book, recently published by Royal Publishers and authored by me, citing various judicial decisions and provisions of substantive laws.
Ken Hurwitz, an international lawyer with the US-based Human Rights Firstwrites in
'Guardian Unlimited ‘,London:

"I think it is difficult to see there has been a fair trial when we have defence lawers and judges threatened and murdered and behind the scenes it is apparent that this is a product of the Green Zone, the US occupation forces. It may be there was a fair trial but it is very difficult to see one way or the other because of the armed conflict and lack of security and overwhelming control of a foreign power. It is unfortunate that the decision was made to go ahead recklessly with the trial under the circumstances that prevailed. It has been widely reported that access [by Saddam] to lawyers was made extremely difficult and an overwhelming number of documents were given to the defence at the last minute for review, making it almost impossible. The appearance of justice is undermined, even if justice is being done. In an international trial of this importance, the appearance of justice is as important as the reality."

Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London and a barrister at Matrix Chambers:
"It was right that Saddam Hussein should be prosecuted for international crimes. But if not done properly there were bound to be questions about the legitimacy of the process. It was a mistake to proceed then with an exclusively Iraqi tribunal rather than an internationalised effort. So was the decision not to prosecute for some of his actions, including the use of chemical weapons against Iran and the invasion of Kuwait. Missed opportunities, a much diminished legitimacy."

Sonia Sceat an Australian international lawyer, and associate fellow on international law at the London-based foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House:

"Although there have been irregularities in the conduct of the trial - there is no doubt about this - much hinges on the tribunal's treatment of the evidence put before it, and the quality of its reasoning. The dramatic images we have seen, in particular the sensational exchanges between the defence and the judges, are selective. And observers have confirmed that in between there has been much in the way of a proper process. Enormous amounts of evidence, much of it very compelling, have been presented to the tribunal.

"The real problem lies in the dire security situation which has formed the backdrop of this trial. Acute concerns about the security implications of the trial have pushed leading political figures to meddle in the process, in the hope that a speedy resolution and the execution of Saddam will undermine the insurgency. The chief judge in this trial resigned in January, citing unbearable political pressure, and in the last couple of weeks, the Iraqi prime minister has confidently announced that Saddam will soon be put to death. This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the political interference that has occurred.

"Many critics have objected from the beginning that the tribunal is illegitimate. Under the laws of war, occupying powers are not permitted to establish extraordinary courts, and of course this tribunal was established during the US occupation, albeit by the Iraqi governing council. Within a few days of the trial commencing, the Iraqi parliament passed a new law to reconstitute it as a bona fide Iraqi institution. The defence has continued to challenge its legitimacy but for practical purposes at least, the argument has become academic."

Writing about Vietnam in his book "My American Journey," Gen. Colin Powell made it abundantly clear that U.S. policymakers had almost no understanding of what they had gotten themselves into. Woodward makes the same point about President Bush and his advisers, and in excruciating detail. Vietnam was a quagmire; so is Iraq.But after Vietnam, if you listen to people such as Powell, we weren't supposed to find ourselves in such a mess ever again.Powell wrote that officers of his generation vowed that when it was their turn to call the shots, they would not bow to self-censorship or uncritical acceptance of groupthink. Powell said that the career captains, majors and lieutenant colonels seasoned in the Vietnam War would, when they became generals, talk straight to their political superiors, including the secretary of defense and the president.No more halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support, Powell declared. When they got their stars, his generation of officers would make good on that promise to themselves, the civilian leadership and the country, Powell said. To do otherwise would mean the sacrifices of Vietnam were in vain.

Well, they got their chance with Iraq.

As "State of Denial" reveals in accounts so embarrassing you want to look away, key military brass in the Pentagon and on the ground in Iraq who knew things were going badly would not, when given the opportunity, stand up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Worse still, they wouldn't even stand up for their own opinions. Finding themselves face to face with President Bush, senior officers put their careers first and kept up the pretense that the war was going well, just as their predecessors had done 40 years ago.

Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card "put it on the generals -- Myers and Pace in the Pentagon, Abizaid and Casey in Iraq," Woodward wrote. "If they had come forward and said to the president 'It's not worth it' or 'The mission can't be accomplished,' Card was certain the president would have said, 'I'm not going to ask another kid to sacrifice for it,' " wrote Woodward.

AToday's war, though fought without a draft, still allows the healthy sons and daughters of Washington's powerful to stay home and leave the fighting to others. Ivy League enrollment hasn't taken a hit since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. So much for the notion that all Americans owe equal allegiance to their country. As was the case with Vietnam, a small fraction of Americans still carry the burden of war in Iraq.
There is, however, one aspect of today's war that sets it light-years apart from Vietnam: the abdication of congressional responsibility.

The Republican-led Congress has given President Bush a blank check on the war. With few exceptions, for the past three years GOP House and Senate leaders have shown little interest in learning how the war has been going or what Bush has been doing, as measured by congressional oversight. It's almost inconceivable that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as Woodward reported, had to clamor for nearly a year to get Condoleezza Rice to testify about Iraq. That the Senate's premier committee for national foreign policy debates could allow itself to be so humiliated speaks volumes about congressional obeisance to the Bush White House.

Vietnam was debated in Congress after an aroused public helped lawmakers find their voices and courage. Today, Iraq is debated on talk shows, on editorial pages and at rallies -- everywhere but in the halls of the pliant Republican Congress. Unfortunately, this particular difference only underscores the erosion of our honored system of checks and balances.

Meanwhile, in Iraq the improvised explosive devices and the suicide bombers keep taking their toll, and sectarian violence rages on -- even as the campaigning president keeps sugarcoating the situation like mad

Eleven-month trial

Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, former head of the Iraqi secret police, and Awad Hamed Al-Bander, Saddam's chief judge were also sentenced to death by hanging by the court.Saddam's eleven-month trial was marked by theatrics by both his defence council and by Saddam and his seven co-defendents.Taha Yassin Ramdan, the former Iraqi vice president was sentenced to life in prison.The court also sentenced three of Saddam co-defendent to 15 years in prison for their part in the Dujail killing and acquitted one minor Baath party official.

Lawyer ejected

Ramsey Clark, Saddam's most outspoken American defender and a former US attorney general, was thrown out of the trial on Sunday and accused of insulting the people of Iraq. Clark, a member of Saddam's defence team and a strident critic of the conduct of his trial at the Iraqi HighTribunal, attended the start of the session but was ejected before Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging.

"Get him out of the hall. He came from America to ridicule the Iraqi people and ridicule the court," Judge Raud Abdel Rahman said. "A bad arrow returns to the chest of its shooter."

After the hearing, chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi told reporters that the court would file a complaint against Clark with the American bar association, and also accused him of contempt.

Since Saddam's arrest, Clark has strenuously argued that the trial constitutes victor's justice and is an abuse of legal principles.

It remains unclear whether any of the outstanding cases will make it to court, or whether Saddam will be around to see them. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi told reporters that the Anfal trial now in progress for Saddam and others alleged role in gassing and killing Kurds would continue while the appeals process is underway. But if the appellate judges uphold the death sentence, the Anfal proceedings and other cases would be halted and Saddam hanged.
Saddam's trial had from the outset appeared to reflect the turmoil and violence in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

One of Saddam's lawyers was assassinated the day after the trial's opening session last year. Two more were later assassinated and a fourth fled the country. In January, chief judge Rizgar Amin, a Kurd, resigned after complaints by Shiite politicians that he had failed to keep control of court proceedings. He, in turn, complained of political interference in the trial. Abdul-Rahman, another Kurd, replaced Amin. Hearings were frequently disrupted by outbursts from Saddam and Ibrahim, with the two raging against what they said was the illegitimacy of the court, their ill treatment in the U.S.-run facility where they are being held and the lack of protection for their lawyers.

The defense lawyers contributed to the chaos in the courtroom by staging several boycotts

The ruling Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, on the other hand, condemned the death sentence on Saddam, recalling the help the deposed Iraqi leader gave to the Palestinian people.
Highly popular in the Palestinian territories, Saddam gave money to the families of people killed by Israeli forces and relatives of suicide bombers when the intifada, or uprising, broke out in September 2000.

QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer writes from BAGHDAD: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites poured into the streets of the capital to rejoice at the death sentence for Saddam Hussein, but the former dictator's fellow Sunnis paraded through his hometown chanting, "We will avenge you Saddam."

Both Saddam and the Shiite prime minister who has sought his execution called on their countrymen on Sunday to end the sectarian violence that has pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war, but the starkly differing reactions to the verdict and sentence throughout the country — though largely peaceful on Sunday — stoked fears that worse was to come.

In Sadr City, the Shiite stronghold of northeast Baghdad, youths took to the streets dancing and singing, despite a curfew declared for Sunday over the most restive parts of the country."Execute Saddam," they chanted. Many carried posters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric whose Mahdi Army militia effectively runs the district."This is an unprecedented feeling of happiness," said 35-year-old Abu Sinan. "The verdict declares that Saddam is paying the price for murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis," he said.

Police said at least three people, including a two-year-old child, were killed and eight wounded in clashes between gunmen and Iraqi police in Baghdad's dominantly Sunni Azamiyah district. Residents said rockets and mortars began falling on the area beginning Saturday night and blamed Mahdi Army fighters.

"This is the fate of all those who violated the sanctity of the citizens and shed the honest blood. This is the disgraceful end to the person who brought ordeals, pains and reckless wars to this country," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a television address to the nation following the verdict."I say to all deluded remnants of the previous regime: The period of Saddam and his party is gone as did other dictators' like Mussolini and Hitler," said al-Maliki, who was forced into exile during Saddam's rule.

In Tikrit, deep in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad where support for Saddam runs hand-in-hand with deep distrust of Iraq's new Shiite-dominated government, gunshots rang out from rooftops and street corners as Saddam addressed the court. Sunni insurgents with AK-47s and heavy machine guns paraded in scores of vehicles in defiance of the curfew. A crowd about 1,000, including some policemen and many people holding aloft pictures of Saddam, chanted: "We will avenge you Saddam."

"The violence will only rise in the area after the hanging of Saddam, but the Americans care nothing about spilled Iraqi blood," said Mohammed Abbas, a 60-year-old retired teacher. "We are tribal people ... when any ordinary member of our tribe is killed, we will kill one from the enemy tribe, to say nothing of an important person like Saddam," Abbas said.

The U.S. military announced the deaths Saturday of a soldier in fighting in western Baghdad and a Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7, who died from non-hostile causes Saturday in Anbar province. At least 13 U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month.

Celebrations were heady but mostly peaceful throughout the predominantly Shiite south, where Saddam's elite Republican Guard massacred thousands during a failed uprising in 1991. A line of cars festooned with plastic flowers wound through the streets of the holy city of Najaf, and crowds burned portraits of Saddam and his family. Salih Mahdi said Saddam's sentencing would help heal the loss of his brother Ali, who was 22 when he was arrested in Saddam's 1982 crackdown on the Dawa party, then an underground opposition and now linked to the prime minister. Ali Mahdi has not been seen since.

Mahdi, a retired civil servant, cursed Saddam and sobbed, saying: "You are cruel and cowardly and it was our misfortune that you ruled and terrorized us."

Celebratory gunfire also rang out in Kurdish neighborhoods across the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where 40-year-old Khatab Ahmed sat on a mattress in his living room to watch the trial coverage with his wife and six children.

"Thank God I lived to see the day when the criminals received their punishment," said Ahmed, a taxi driver.

Children Sacrificed in Cadre Raj of Capitalist Development
Palash Biswas
(Pl Publish immediately to lodge a protest on part of ajournalist. Contactalash Biswas, C/o Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata -700110, India.Phone: 033-2569551 Res.)
Extending cadre raj to media - electronic and print, even Hindi Akhbaar, the ruling left front maintains the escape route very well in progressive West Bengal. Suryakanta Mishra seems to be a must in the health ministery of Capitalist Development CM of West Bengal Buddhadev Bhattacharya. As he is untouched by the heat and dust whatever may be the climate , weather and environment. Buddhadev defends this man , though winning the seventh Assembelly elections he resuffled the entire education ministery sacking heavywieghts like Satya Sadhan Chakrabarti and Kanti Biswas. Though Mishra had been projected as the second man in command in the last ministery, this palce has been taken by Nirupam Sen, the industry minister. Perhaps Buddhadev may be somewhat sypathetic with his health minister. The chaos in the health ministery already struck by dud blood kit sacandal inflicting lacs of citizens with infection including HIV positive, seems to prolong as 23 infants die in Kolkata hospital between Thursday and Saturday.Twelve of them were less than a month old. The only silver lining was the marked change in the state government’s attitude. This health minister deserves immediate sacking without any notice.The deaths come close on the heels of the multi-crore medical kit scandal that has put thousands of lives in jeopardy. sparking protests by political partiesmean nothing for Buddhadev as he has the landslide election success to console himself and the cadres are trained to manage things very well. All protests die silent death as the waves in the bay of Bengal.
In a grim reminder of infant deaths that made national headlines in late 2002 after 12 children died in a day at Kolkata's BC Roy Hospital - the State's only referral unit for infectious diseases - 23 children have died in the same infirmary sources conceded on Saturday. Thus, the left front government sacrifices innocent children as it is quite unable to clean the rot in staterun hospitols in West Bengal. Once again the cadre raj is the deciding factor .No one dares to identify the guilty as the left unions would stall the entire health sector which is not as important as the IT sector is considered by The CM. It is Bengal, the once upon land of Royal Bengal Tigers, which is tolerating this popular as you go like game with public health. You may not utter a single word criticising the system anywhere in any government run health centre or hospitol. Lest you may be mishandled if you are lucky enough otherwise would be thrashed upto buttom to learn the progressive ways of left run cooperative democracy. PG hospitol, NRS, Kolkata Medical College, RG kar hospitols have become the terrorzone where the pelpless poor have to go as they may not afford the bills of private hospitols and nursing homes. Scores die daily and no action is taken. Hence the super of BC Roy hospitolis quite justified while he says it is a normal matter. Off course it is quite normal and one should not be upset.
I belong to Uttaranchal. I worked in Bihar,Jharkhand and UP also. Nowhere I saw such large scale death of children nor I, at least know any other incident out of Bengal.
Well, it is third time. BC Roy Hospitol made us known how the childre opt for death as they see no future in this part of the earth.
2002, 2005 and now in 2006. We may expect the occurance being repeated anywhere, anytime.
Sorry, multistory multiplexes, shopping malls, flyovers, infrastructures, health cities ,urban housing, disinvestment and capitalist development in all are on top agenda. The condition of the health sector may encourage much more investment in health sector as the public is losing faith in goverment hospitols.

While already under pressure from the Opposition and the Left Front partners over the medical kit scandal Dr Surjya Kanta Mishra, Health Minster refused to comment. Hospital Superintendent MK Chatterjee said "though the children died of some kind of infection such incidents are not unnatural." The Superintendent, however, said the authorities were looking into the cause of deaths. The chief minister rushed to the hospitol with the mic health and held meeting with the staff. The chief minister, too, seemed aware that facilities for neo-natal care were inadequate in the state.Hospital officials said the chief minister asked authorities to provide the best medical care to ailing infants and prevent the spread of infection.

To a question, Chatterjee said he was not aware of any inquiry ordered into the deaths by the state government.Once again , the formal pressrelease would be on top priority. The state government , thus, ensures that no child should die in a hospitol, not enmasse. Got Relieved.

In 2002 (when 31 babies died), its indifference, bordering on callousness, had invited widespread criticism. On Saturday, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra rushed to the hospital to take stock of the situation. On Thursday, nine babies — mostly less than a month old — died at the hospital.

A day later, there were eight more deaths, taking the toll to 17 — the highest at the hospital within a 48-hour period since 2002. Five more babies died on Saturday.

The normal death rate at the hospital is two to three in a day. Despite the usual scepticism about the deaths — the authorities blame birth-related causes — a probe was started then by health secretary Kalyan Bagchi and director (medical education) Jayashri Mitra.

"Almost 60% of the infants who died were born prematurely and grossly underweight — between 650 gm and 1.5 kg. It is very difficult to save such infants. The rest came to the hospital with severe infections," said M K Chatterjee, the hospital’s vice-principalcum-superintendent.

The other babies were suffering from acute meningitis, encephalitis and septecemia. "A year-old child came to the hospital gasping.

He had meningitis and was referred by the Kalyani hospital. We tried to save him but couldn’t," said Chatterjee. He claimed there was an increase in the number of critical cases.

"With so many critical cases, there can be a rise in mortality." The bereaved parents dismissed the claim, alleging that doctors had largely remained absent. "My son has been admitted here with dengue for two days. I haven’t yet seen a doctor. The nurses have been attending on him," said Indu Ram. mother of Gobindo Ram.

Added Diamond Harbour resident Sabir Hussain: "My son was admitted on Thursday. We had to plead with the authorities to get a bed, but he had to share a cot with three other children. Despite being critical, there was no special arrangement for him."

A scuffle erupted on Sunday between police and Trinamool Congress and Youth Congress workers who tried to force their way into the hospital to protest the deaths.

Some of protestors tried to climb the hospital's main gate. They also burnt an effigy of State Health Minister Surya Kanta Mishra. A strong police picket was posted at the hospital.

Chatterjee said a representation was given to him by the Congress on the deaths.

Little has changed: 18 children die in 96 hours at BC Roy hospital , a telegraph story

Calcutta, Sept. 20,2002: The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Even as Writers’ Buildings was claiming to have identified the lacunae that led to the multiple deaths at B.C. Roy Memorial Hospital for Children earlier this month, the hospital was — again — recording too many deaths for comfort.

On Tuesday, eight children died; on Wednesday, the number dropped to two; on Thursday, again, the figure shot up to five, and sources put Friday’s number at three, making the state’s only referral hospital for children the venue for 18 deaths in 96 hours.

Hospital principal Meena Basak — one of the many changes the government rang in was appointing a principal and removing hospital superintendent Anup Mandal —refused to either admit or deny the figures. “Everything will be said at Writers’ Buildings by my superiors,” said Basak, wiser after seeing Mandal transferred for speaking out. The Telegraph has a complete list of the 15 deaths that occurred between Tuesday and Thursday, including names of the children’s parents and the diseases responsible for their deaths.

Hospital officials say nothing much has changed despite the high-profile “probe”, the “action taken” and the clampdown on information. Doctors, especially medical officers who are now being forced to work in the indoor wards after treating patients at the outpatients’ departments, today recorded their anger against the “abnormal workload” on them.

Medical Service Centre spokesperson Ashok Samanta said the government’s report did nothing except make “scapegoats” of doctors and hospital staff. “Nothing much has been done to remove the administrative lacunae except some transfers that are cosmetic,” he added.

A visit to the hospital today revealed that the 19- or 20-bed free wards (nos. 6, 8 and 13) still had more babies than they could accommodate; ward no. 6 had about 25, ward no. 8 had 40 and ward no. 13 had around 30.

“The wards are being repaired one by one and, therefore, even the comparatively few children have to share beds,” an official explained.

Among the changes the hospital has witnessed after chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s visit there a fortnight ago are installation of telephone intercom lines in every ward. A portable X-ray, gathering dust before Bhattacharjee’s visit, has been brought out but — with only two technicians taking the entire load (indoor, outdoor and emergency) — things are much the same.

This week’s deaths, say doctors at the hospital, are greater cause for anxiety because of the “worryingly lopsided ratio” between the number of patients and the number of deaths.

For example, the day eight babies died (from 7 am on Tuesday to 7 am on Wednesday), only 165 children were being treated in the indoor wards; the patient-to-death ratio, therefore, stands at an alarming 20:1. On Thursday, when five babies died, the number being treated at the hospital was around 150, making for a somewhat less worrying ratio of 30:1, doctors said.

“By contrast, the number of deaths over which the media went to town in the first week of this month don’t account for much as the number of patients then was exactly double the present figure that hovers between 150 and 170,” a health department official explained.

SD Music: Classic Aesthetics Of Folk
Palash Biswas
(contact: Palash Biswas,c/o Mrs Arati Roy, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 033-25659551)

He used to say, "Bhatiali aspect of the music that means something special to me...".

He used to say,"... instead of placing a song in an unwanted position it should be removed entirely...."

Suno Mere Bandhu Re' seems to be a much more haunting tune from old gold which portrays Indian people`s rustic philosophy of illusion and reality. The spritualism premdominent in Indian subcontinent eductae the people, suffering from day to day struggle for survival, the pathos arownd tand the atrocities thrust upon, to take life easy as everything is considered Maya and some almighty is there always to help you. The moments of joy and sorrow are identified with the waves of singing river. Legendary Mugician sachin Dev Burman got the tune better than any one else. He may not be a bengali by birth, butthe globalisation of Bengali folk song would have been incomplete without his mighty and sensitive contribution. Sachin Dev Barman, scion of the royal family of Tripura, was a failed tennis player. No matter, he had a superior passion. Gifted with a rich lilting voice, a slight nasal twang adding to its allure, his music took the Bengali middle class by storm in the Thirties and Forties of the last century. His fort was juxtaposition of Bengali folk with Hindustani light classical and the 78 rpm discs he rendered were collector`s items in that era. Sachin Dev Burman’s songs continue to reverberate through the corridors of time and haunt us in our moods and moments of ecstasy or melancholy. If we can introduce his matchless songs to the young generation and explain to them the nuances in his tune, as we understand and enjoy them as music lovers, we shall continue to pay our homage to the maestro.

The S.D.Burman song never sounded dated because it was too simple to be affected by changes in trends or passing fads. And simple art that resonates with everyone is always what a classic is about, for it is actually the most difficult to create!

His noble lineage is reflected in the grace of his musical creations spanning a period of 43 years until his death in Bombay in 1975. The spirit of the baul is what gives force and validity to Sachin Dev Burman’s songs. The minstrel-like quality which emerges from his voice, husky and forever that of an ageing man, with that slight tinge of the nasal about it, is evocative of the historical Bengali ambience. If you have heard puthi songs and if you have sat through pala gaan evening after misty evening, you will have cause to plumb the depths in Burman. Tradition was important to him. His music necessarily sprang, vapour-like, from the warm earth and took nourishment from the smells and colours around it. In ‘malakhani chhilo haate jhore tobu jhorhe na’, in ‘ki kori aami ki kori / boney agun mone phagun’, it is the primeval landscape, home to poetry and beautiful seasons, that reveals itself through its insistent silences.

The musical giant, the big Dada of them all, SD Barman, passed away on October 31, 1975.But he plays his tune eternal whereever the river flows in this subcontinent. Sachin Dev proved that age is no impediment for creativity. He was the only great composer who remained in great demand till the end of his life, unlike his contemporaries who gradually faded away. In 1975, the musician slipped into a coma, which led to his death on October 31.

S D Burman's period, according to his fans is considered a 'golden age'.

When sked in an interview, `Which section of our folk music appeals more to you?’, the great sachin karta answered,`Bengali folk music is a big thing, you know that perhaps. It is the Bhatiali aspect of the music that means something special to me. But then, you can never quite leave out one for the other. The Baul ang also has serious appeal. If you talk of shades then you may quite reasonably reach out for many different ‘angs’ or aspects within our folk music tradition. As for myself I have always tried to see this music from as many perspectives as I have found possible. ‘

Do you have any personal definition for your kind of bhatiali? And Dada replied,` I would like to propose my definition. But I am sure it would not seriously alter the general definition. Bhatiali is an earthy music. It is rooted to the soil where it sprouts from. Thus Bhatiali of a particular area has it’s local gift and colours. Bhatiali is also the song of the rivers. The sound patterns of Bhatiali, its colour contrasts, its pathos and it’s mirth reminds you of the rivers of Bengal as many of the poems of Tagore do. Besides all these Bhatiali is also about love whether of the common peasants or of Radha and Krishna. Thus it’s mood can vary from light romanticisms to philosophic melancholy. But it never aspires to the philosophy of the Baul kind.’

He draws a line between Baul and Bhatiali as Mainly by the theme. Ofcourse when the theme changes the mood and the expression are also altered. The Baul chiefly attempts to narrate a philosophy. The bhatiali attempts to depict a mood which may at times be philosophical. More often than not Bhatiali treats in so many ways a very human feeling, a wishful thinking, a simple and sensuous state of mind. Take for instance this Baul lyric: Ami Bandhu Premagune pora. Ami morle jalasne re tora…… or even better Chintaram darogababu korle jalatan….. Now the first lyric tells of a lover’s sorrows which can also be interpreted philosophically. The second lyric is out and out philosophical stated in terms of an allegory. Compared to this the teenaged bride’s yearning to the return to her father’s place in the bhatiali piece.’

Burman was born in 'Comilla Rajbari' at 'Chortha (Thakurpukur)' on October 2, 1906. The music maestro was popularly known as 'Sachin Karta'- 'Karta' is the title of respect for the Tripura Royal family members. SD Burman spent most of his life in his Comilla house where he composed and sang many of his famous songs before moving to Kolkata in 1937 and then to Mumbai in 1942.

Critics are of the opinion that his ‘film compositions were often influenced by his huge repertory of folk-tunes from the Bengali Bhatiali, Sari and Dhamail traditions of the North East. As a singer, his thin but powerful, accented voice was often used as a bardic commentary: e.g. the Wahan kaun hai tera musafir in Guide, Safal hogi teri aradhana in the hit Rajesh Khanna movie Aradhana. He wrote an autobiography: Sargamer Nikhad.’
One biographer writes: ‘His famous compositions in the film Aradhana, Guide, Amar Prem etc. are very prolific yet soul touching. His regal and intoxicating voice sounds as if a very harmonious instrument is being played. His compositions had a unique sense of spiritual ‘nirvana’. His simple yet soul touching use of instruments is nothing short of meditative trance. The few songs he ever sang are timeless, intoxicating and ever fresh, each carrying a deeper meaning of life. Each song he composed, directed or sang himself fathoms one’s personal triumphs and tragedies. Lots of other singers have come and gone but nobody touches the soul so deeply than Sachin ‘Da’, as he was affectionately called. He truly was The Inimitable.’

During October,2006, in Agartala, the capital of Indian state tripura,fans and followers of India's legendry playback singer S.D.Burman held his centenary celebrations at the Rabindra Centenary Hall, his house .Born in the royal family of Tripura, Burman began his musical journey by learning classical music from his father, noted sitarist and Dhrupad singer Nabadwipchandra Dev Burman. He later continued his training under Ustad Badal Khan and Bhismadev Chattopadhaya.

Burman da or elder brother as he was lovingly called by all, had a great fan following. It was his unforgettable stamp on their mind that fascinated his fans from Tripura and West Bengal and many from the neighbouring country Bangladesh to the three-day long celebration. They sang popular songs in Bengali and Hindi languages composed by the great maestro.

Maharaja Bir Chandra Manik’ Bahadur of Tripura was a great connoisseur of music and he promoted dance and music through music festivals during his time on the occasion of Holi, Jhulan Yatra and Rash Purnima. It is believed that the great Kaviguru Rabindra Nath Tagore, after visiting the State, had not only spoken highly, of the rich musical heritage of Tripura but is also known to have acknowledged Raj Bir Chandra Manik’s contribution in this field. Jadu Bhatta, who was the famous exponent of the’ ‘Marga Geet’, performed at the court of Raja Bir Chandra. In contemporary times, the famous father - son duo of Sachin Dev Barman and Rahul Dev Barman has helped show the world the musical acumen, and versatility that Tripura can ‘throw up. Tripura, from tjme bygone, has also a seat of rich classical dance & music ‘but at the same time the repertoire of songs and dances for which tribal Tripura is known for, is maintained. It is this blend of rich variety that makes the dance arid music of Tripura so unique.

Strangely enough, West Bengal seems to be a mere audience to see pass away the centtenaries of those like Jogendra Nath Mandal, Ram Kinkar and even Sachin dev Burman as they don`t belong to the ruling class, niether they match the ruling interests.
Anil Sarkar, the poet and minister of culture says it is quite unfortunate that the Bengalies have forgot Sachin Karta.

Not only Bengal, Bollywood and Mumbai, also seem to be quite detached.

S D Burman's music was an eclectic mix of various musical forms. His primary and most favourite influence remained Bengali folk music. His early years were spent amidst the rolling hills and the lush mountain valleys of the North-East. The rich musical tradition of this region left an indelible mark on the young Sachin. Years later he wrote that his art drew heavy inspiration from the outdoors of Tripura, where he spent his childhood.He had a special liking for Baul and Bhatiyali folk forms of Bengal. He himself was an accomplished Bhatiyali (the song of the boatman) singer and came into prominence in the Hindi music scene with his memorable rendition of a Bhatiyali adaptation -- 'Dheere se jaana bagiyan mein re bhanwra'. His rendition is said to have mesmerized Jaidev so much that he sought him out to become his assistant!

In addition to folk music, Rabindra Sangeet and light classical forms like the thumri formed his building blocks. Burmanda also had a very unique sense of rhythm. Melody and rhythm blended in perfect harmony to make his compositions extremely captivating. Sachin Dev Burman is a legendary composer and singer of the subcontinent. The soft-faced, bespectacled maestro in starched white dhoti-kurta remained popular with both discerning filmmakers and the general public for decades because his melody-soaked compositions, while rewardingly rooted in Indian folk and light classical music, always remained easy to hum. His fondness for paan and quaint Hindi pronunciations (most notably 'moosafir' in the Guide song (Wahan kaun hai tera) made him an all time favourite.However, he had to wage a long struggle in the Mumbai film industry to gain acceptance as a composer. In fact, he had virtually decided to return to Kolkata disillusioned as he was by the materialism in Mumbai, but was persuaded to stay back by actor Ashok Kumar.

Burman also promoted other singers. Manna Dey's career flowered after he sang Upar gagan vishal for Burman in Mashaal. Hemant Kumar's earliest Hindi success is Yeh raat yeh chaandni from Jaal. And Kishore Kumar had his first hit courtesy Qusoor aapka, huzoor aapka in AVM's Vyjayanthimala vehicle Bahaar. Sachin was also responsible along with OP Nayyar into shaping Asha Bhonsle as a singer of repute.The temporary fall-out with Lata, benefitted Asha tremendously, because the composer now lavished his best on her (Kaali ghata chhaye, Achchaji main haari). Not one to meekly follow trends, Burman did only six films between 1965 and 1969. Even when the orchestration fever raged in the 1960s, Burman stuck to soft songs that relied on vocals like Mehbooba teri tasveer or Raat akeli hai.

Noted Film Critic Ritu Chanda writes, `A look into Sachinda's almost 40-year career (including his stint in Calcutta) shows us that Sachinda's biggest quality was to change with time. From the classical inspired '30s and '40s where he held his own amongst stalwarts like Saigal, to the pop and jazz inspired '70s, Dada was always in with the times. Variety and versatility were his keywords. He would consciously strive to be different. Each tune was crafted with care, love and enthusiasm. He would forever experiment. One of his earliest experiments was taking a song written as a ghazal and tuning it into a club song. Yes, we are talking about 'Tadbeer se bigdi hui'. With such stupendous success with his first experiment, Dada Burman had tasted blood. After that he never gave up on this trait. He would vary tempo, orchestration, vocals etc. to give each song a unique feel...

Another very notable characteristic Sachinda had was the ability to think laterally. He could take the same set of notes and create completely different songs. As was his nature he was the happiest composing effervescent songs. He had a special way with duets. He brought about a special chemistry between the singers as is apparent in duets like 'Chod do aanchal' or 'Aankhon mein kya ji'. ..

He teamed with Majrooh Sultanpuri to create some memorable duets. Majrooh Saab recalls how Dada Burman initially was opposed to duets because he felt they had no market. However, after some convincing he went with "Muzru's" (that's what he called him) idea and the result was the extremely coquettish 'Chod do aanchal zamaana kya kahega' . And yes, by the way, the 'ah' in the beginning was added by Burmanda himself!’

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes inhis article `The baul in Sachin Dev Burman’:
There was the pastoral about the tenor of Sachin Dev Burman’s songs. When you hear him sing ‘door kono porobashe tumi choila jaiba re bondhu re kobe aiba re’ it is the image of Bengal in all its rusticity that wells up in your imagination. For Burman, music was a constant effort to stay rooted to heritage. There was not about him the urge to borrow from outside, to go for an assimilation of musical forms as it were. But there resided in him a poetic soul that spotted the lyrical all across the country he belonged to. You cannot, in that broad sense of the meaning, wrench him away from his moorings, which is when you find yourself wondering at the calm, almost resigned cadences of ‘biroho boro bhalo laage’. Placidity in the soul and placidity in nature is all. Separation from the beloved is a destructive happenstance, but in Burman rises the urge to let go. You can almost hear Tennyson speaking of loving and losing rather than not loving at all. The English poet and the Bengali song maker are of course worlds apart in their intellectual dimensions, but of the shared human characteristics of their emotions there is little doubt.
When we deal with Burman, we deal fundamentally with a modern man. The unmistakable strains of Indian musical tradition run through his songs, eventually to throw up poetry that is pleasing to the senses. Try humming ‘tumi eshe chhile porshu kaal keno aasho ni / tumi ki amaye bondhu kaal bhalo basho ni’. A sensation almost bordering on desire courses through you. Romance, you realise, could not be better expressed other than through this song. And yet there are the various strands of romance that Sachin Dev Burman experiments with. The pretty saucy ‘shoite pari na bola mon niye chhinimini shoibo na’ harks back to love in a time of purity, when men of passion truly worshipped the ground their women walked on. Love acquires an intensity, an irresistible form, through such rapid heavings of the heart as ‘banshi shune aar kaj nai shey jey dakatia banshi’. Imagine the silence of the night pierced by the sudden and shockingly sweet tones of the flute. What enchanting sounds are these? What lovers can then resist from running to each other, the glitter of the low hanging stars speeding them along? In that song emerges the quintessential Burman. Music was the discipline he never let slip, even when he composed for the Hindi movies produced in Bombay. Burman will forever be remembered for that mesmerising Mohammad Rafi number lipsed by Dev Anand in Guide —- ‘tere mere sapnay ab eik hi rang hain / wo jahan bhi le jaayen rahen / hum sang hain’. And if you have had occasion to listen to another Rafi number, ‘hum bekhudi mein tum ko pukaare chale gaye’, you might as well recall that Burman had simply transplanted the music from his earlier Bengali song, ‘ghoom bhulechhi nijhum nishithe jege thaki / ar amari moto jaage neerhe duti pakhi.
If you were now to dwell on the versatility in Burman, you would find the canvas an endless patchwork of ideas. The imagery of his songs, the laid back manner of the pleas and complaints to the beloved, keep throwing up sparks of varied hue. In ‘tumi je giyaccho bokulo bichhano pothe’ a sense of sadness, dripping and deepening, comes through. No one does it better than Burman. Even when others try the same song, you cannot but fall back on Burman’s rendering of it. He raises gloom to new heights. Observe that perennially haunting number, ‘tumi ar nei shey tumi / jani na jani na kemon emon hoi’. It is the plaintive heart reaching almost bursting point in the disappointed lover. And therein is love reinforced through the very act of its termination. In ‘mono dilo na bodhu / mono nilo je shudhu / aami ke niye thaki’, the pattern sustains itself. Does the song remind you of the Geeta Dutt number, ‘jaane kya tum ne kahi / jaane kya maine suni / baat kuch banhi gayi’? Burman did not quite wade into composing music for Hindi songs the way Hemanta Mukherjee was to do. Even so, when he did emerge with compositions for Hindi songs, he let everyone know that he had not strayed from the classical traditions he had always upheld. Songs such as ‘sun mere bandhu re’, ‘kahe ko roye sapna hogi teri aradhana’ and ‘musafir jaayega kahan’ have been cited not merely for the richness of musical tone but for their steadfast adherence to Indian musical background as well.’

Shahnoor Wahid writes in his article`The king of melody’:
`If you are one among the fast vanishing class of music lovers who grew up listening to timeless songs….songs that were not cacophonously noisy, songs that put you to sleep and not gave you insomnia, then you must have loved to listen to….. ‘Jaltey hai jiskey liye…tere akhokey diey…dhundlaiahu ohi geet mei tere liye….’ Did not the tender, romantic, melodious song, every time you heard it in your youthful days caress the edges of your soul!! Does not the song take you on a trip to the realm of nostalgia as your hear it today? No doubt only Talat Mahmud, with his inimitable silky-soft voice could do full justice to the composition. And S D Burman knew it while composing songs for the award winning film Sujata! This song no doubt has transcended all boundaries, all borders, all hearts and all souls across the continents to become one of the greatest Hindi compositions of all time.
Sachin Dev Burman was also known for his tunes that were full of cadence and tempo. One biographer called them ‘folksy-romantic-frolicking songs’. Even today, many would start to tap and hum at the mention of … ‘Saiyan dilme anare, mujhe leke janare…chamchama cham cham..’ a song from the 1951 film Bahar.
Much later, we were lucky enough to watch the film Solva Saal in Dhaka in the late sixties. As youngsters, after that film, we became fans of Dev Anand and unabashedly fell in love with the extremely beautiful Wahida Rehman. Who can forget the legendary scene and the song from the film? The scene unfolds inside a moving train. Wahida Rehman is sitting on a front seat with her fiancé and Dev Anand is lying low on one seat behind her with his head on the lap of Sunder, the sidekick. Suddenly Dev Anand had that characteristic twinkle in his eyes, and when he had the twinkle along with an impish grin that meant mischief of the highest order was about to manifest. And it came sooner than expected. He got up and began to sing… ‘Hai aapna dil to awara najaney kispe aayega…’ with the conspicuously striking mouthorgan piece to provide the interlude music. That scene and this particular song perhaps was fifty per cent of the film Solva Saal (1958), and it became evident when young men and women and Dev imitators flocked to see the film again and again for this scene. For years, throughout the sixties and seventies, young men in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh sang this song day in and day out.
Who else but Sachin Dev Burman could come up with so romantic and melodious a tune that caught the mood of the scene and the smiling persona of Dev so well? The beautiful song was sung by Hemant Kumar (Mukherjee). Another favourite song of the same film is…. ‘Yevi koi ruthneka mousam hai diwaney…’ a very lyrical song sung in the film by Wahida Rehman. The playback singer was perhaps late Geeta Dutt. Song lovers who are familiar with Sachin Dev’s style and sense of melody will easily recognise the touch of the maestro in the tune.
Years later, young men of the sub-continent dolefully sang …. ‘Janeyo kaise logothe jinke pyar ko pyar mila…’ a fascinatingly soul-touching number from Guru Dutt film Pyasa, sung by Hemant Kumar. In fact, many of such high quality songs took the crowd to the cinema halls again and again in those days when cheap cassettes or CDs were not there.’

Sachin Dev Burman: A Biography
(1906-75)
Source: 'Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema', British Film Institute, 1999
(By Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen)

Music director born in Tripura. Classical training by his father, sitarist and Dhrupad singer Nabadwipchandra Dev Burman; later with ustad Badal Khan and Bhishmadev Chattopadhyay. Early work for radio was based on East bengali and North eastern folk-music.

In early 30s made a reputation in bengal as singer of folk and light classical music, e.g. at the Allahabad Sangeet Sammelan (Music Conference) in 1935. First record was of a Nazrul Islam composition, leading to a long and productive releationship with the writer/composer. Film debut singing for Pankaj Mullick in Atorthy's Yahudi Ki Ladki (1933) but the songs were scrapped and re-sung by Pahadi Sanyal.

First film as singer: Tinkari Chakraborthy's Sanjher Pidim (1935); also acted in Dhiren ganguli's Bidrohi (1935). Music director from 1939 onwards in Calcutta. Moved to Bombay (1944) and worked at Filmistan (Eight Days, Shabnam), Navketan (Afsar, Taxi Driver, Funtoosh, Guide) and for Guru Dutt (Baazi, Jaal, Pyaasa, Kagaz ke Phool). Remained Dev Anand's key composer for several years (Paying Guest, Tere Ghar ke Saamne, Jewel Thief, Prem Pujari). Also worked on films for Bimal Roy (Devdas, Sujata, Bandini).

Film compositions often influenced by his huge repertory of folk-tunes from the Bengali Bhatiali, Sari and Dhamail traditions of the North East. As a singer, his thin but powerful, accented voice was often used as a bardic commentary: e.g. the Wahan kaun hai tera musafir in Guide, Safal hogi teri aradhana in the hit Rajesh Khanna movie Aradhana. Wrote an autobiography: Sargamer Nikhad.

Burman Dada was the youngest of Nabadip Chandra Dev Burman's five sons (and four daughters). Nabadip Chandra was the direct heir to the kingdom of Tripura when "palace politics" forced him to stay aside. An adept in playing the sitar apart from excelling in drupad singing and sculpting, it was he and his fourth son Lt. Col. Kiran Kumar, who gave Burman Dada the inspiration to delve into music. Burman Dada's childhood gurus were two helping hands, the old Madhav who would sing passages from the Ramayana and the young Anwar his “sparring” partner in angling who would sing the Bhatialis (a type of Bangla folk song) with a "Dotara" (a folk stringed instrument).

Dada had his formal education in Comilla from where he passed his Matriculation (1920) and Intermediate (1922) examinations. After completing his B.A from Comilla Victoria College (1924) he left for Kolkata for his M.A. in English. But music was his destiny. He chose the legendry KC Dey (Manna Dey's uncle) as his first guru in Kolkata. The great exponents of classical music of the time notably Ustad Badal Khan, Ustad Allauddin Khan and Ustad Bishwadev Chatterjee were also to become his teachers. He first sang for All India Radio Kolkata around 1926/27 and cut his first disc as a singer cum composer in 1932. The H 11, 78 rpm disc from Hindoostan record which had a semi classical number on one side and a folk based song on the other was a super hit. A 'star' was born to give a new shape to the art of singing and composing, so much so, that he surpassed his contemporaries and exponents of Tagore songs, to become the highest paid singer when Bombay finally roped him in 1944.

Prior to his departure for Bombay, Burman Dada composed for a number of Bengali plays and films. His first film composition was in 1937 for "Rajgee". However, success as a composer of film songs did not quite come because of his style of music. His musical life in Kolkata was therefore more focused to the intellectuals and connoisseurs of music. No wonder his fans ranged from musical giants like Dilip Kumar Roy, Nazrul Islam, Dhurjyoti Prasad Mukherjee and then on to the next generation like Ravi Shankar, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Salil Chowdhury, Tapan Sinha etc.

On stage, Dada performed with Ustads like Abdul Karim Khan, Ustad Fayyaz Khan, Girija Shankar Chakrabarty in major musical conferences in Allahabad and Kolkata. It is now a matter of history that Burman Dada was also an excellent flute and tabla player besides being an outstanding sportsman (specially tennis, football, volleybal) which he had to sacrifice for his first love -- music.

Dada married Meera, an accomplished singer cum dancer in 1938. Rahul Dev Burman aka Pancham was born the next year. Dada continued singing Bangla songs on a regular basis until 1971 when poor health forced him to retire. His Bangla songs continue to be a bench mark in the art of singing. Many of these songs were turned to film hits e.g. "Hum bekhudi mein tumko',"Pholon ke rang se", "Khai hai re humne kasam", "Tere bin soone", "Mehbooba tere tasvir", "Sach kahti hai duniya", "Neend chooraye", " Jaane kya tune kahi", "Pawane diwani " to mention a few.

Bombay had been calling Burman Dada for long, but Dada always preferred Kolkata. However, in 1944 at the request of Sasadhar Mukherjee of Filmistan, Burman finally decided to go with two films in hand Shikari ("Har din hain naya raat") and "Aath Din"("Ummed bhara panchi"). It is very likely that Dada chose to go to Bombay, as two of his best friends, Ajoy Bhattacharya, the lyricist and Himagsu Dutta, the composer had passed away.

But Bombay was no cake walk. Despite the musical success of Shikari and Aath Din and later on Do Bhai ("Mera Sundar sapna beet gaya"), Vidya ("Bahe na kabhi nain se neer",Shabnam ("Yeh duniya roop ki choor"), Dada was still not considered a force. Frustrated, Burman decided to pack up for Kolkata. It was at this point Ashok Kumar put his foot down. "Compose the music for Mashaal and then you are free". Dada took up the baton again. Mashaal was a super hit. The song " Upar gagan vishal", became a rage. It also launched Manna Dey in a new fold. The rest is history.

Bahar ("Qusoor aap ka"), Naujawan ("Dil ka dard na jane"), Buzdil ("Rote rote guzar gayi"), Baazi ("Aaj ki raat piya"), Taxi Driver ("Dil jale to jale"), Jaal ("Chori Chori meri gali"), Devdas ("Jise tu kabool"), House No 44("Phaili huyi hain"), Munimjee ("Jeevan Ke safar mein"), Funtoosh ("Woh dekhen to unki"), Nau Do Gyarah ("Ankhon mein kya ji"),Paying Guest ("Chand phir nikla"),Pyaasa ("Jaane kya tune kahi "), Kala Paani ("Hum bekhudi mein), Solva Saal ("Yeh bhi koi ruthne ka"),Kagaz Ke Phool ("Waqt ne kiya kya"), Sujata ("Kali ghata chhaye"), Bombai Ka Babu ( " chal ri sajni"), Kala Bazaar ("Khoya khoya chand"),Dr. Vidya ("Pawan Diwaani"), Meri surat teri aanhken (Tere bin soone"), Bandini ("Mera gora ang"), Benazir ("Husn ki baharen liye"), Kaise Kahoon ("Man mohan man mein ho tumhi") Guide("Mose chal kiye jaye")), Jewel Thief ("Roola ke gaya), Aradhana ("Roop tera mastana, Talaash ("Tere naina"), Prem Pujari ("Shokiyon mein ghola jaye"), Gambler ("Mera man tera pyaasa"), Tere Mere Sapney ( "Mera aantar ek mandir") Sharmili ("Megha Chaya aadhi raat"), Abhiman ("Piya bina piya bina"), Mili ("Badi sooni sooni hai") are all "Dada" compositions. The same list of movies can be repeated a few more times with a different set of songs, as Dada till date, has the maximum number of hit songs per film.

Dada struck a balance with most poets/lyricists including Kaifi Azmi (Kagaz Ke Phool), Sahir Ludhianvi (Pyaasa), Majrooh Sultanpuri (Nau Do Gyarah), Shailendra (Guide), Hasrat Jaipuri (Ziddi), Neeraj (Prem Pujari), Shakil Badayuni (Kaise Kahoon), Anand Bakshi(Aradhana). He reigned supreme throughout his Bombay career with his wide range of compositions working with top of the line film makers like Dev Anand (he was a father figure at Navketan), Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Shakti Samanta, Promod Chakraborty, NC Sippy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee etc. Be it a classical number or one with a folksy touch, or a cabaret piece, Dada excelled in all to become the most versatile composer of his time. As a class singer himself, Dada knew the weaknesses of all great singers and therefore could draw the best out of them; as such he gave turning points to the careers of Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Geeta Dutt, Asha Bhonsle, and Suman Kalyanpur. His music was sometimes art and sometimes craft.

The hallmark of Burman dada's composition was a simple tune with a simple orchestra thereby emphasizing more on its melodic content. He never took many assignments at a time. He knew his limitations?. When the theme of a film was not suited to his composing range, he would recommend his colleagues to the producers, as he did for " Madhumati(Salil Chowdhury), Shiv Bhakti (?) (Chitragupta) etc. He never depended on any particular artist and kept changing his singers in accordance with his/her voice quality. He tolerated no "nonsense" with his music and as a hard core professional,never allowed any of his assistants (Madan Mohan, Jaidev, Pancham, N Dutta, Meera) to make "his music". He would always have his last say before a product was out. A perfectionist and a hard taskmaster, he recorded a song only after sufficient rehearsals. Also, he would postpone recording until his requirements were met. Classic examples have been the postponement of the recording of "Nache mora manwa magan tikta dhighi dhighi" in Meri Surat Teri Aakhen until the arrival of Pandit Samta Prasad from Beneras or the drum from Sikkim for "Honto pe aisi baath" in Jewel Thief.

There was a time in Bombay when the lyrics were set to tune by the music directors. Dada changed the theory. The tune first, the lyrics later. Today nine out of ten songs are composed in this manner. Also for every song sequence Dada had many alternative tunes thus giving the producers a wide choice. Dada believed that the best judge of his music were the inmates of a house including the servants.

A low profile man, Dada had a profound sense of humour and wit he exposed only to his close ones. The innumerable duets he composed will give a reflection of this part of his nature. Despite his royal background, Dada led a life of aus