Defaming as a profession, to doing down businesses and communities...

S Gurumurthy

Is it time to audit Non-Government Organisations, the NGOs, as they are popularly known? They claim more credibility than elected governments. More importance than nations. More durability than families. More relevance than communities.

The word NGO, coined in the West, is deceptive. At least here, it includes Gandhi Peace Foundation to Sankara Mutt to professional social outfits seeking foreign funds. For most NGOs, being so is as much, if not more, a profession as a mission. Most of them have a global agenda. Are driven by it. Are also funded globally. Many nations even fear them as the latest weapons of the West against the Rest. They can even bring down governments. Such is their power. What can ordinary mortals do if such NGOs target them? Here is a story of a hard working community in the small town of Sivakasi struggling for survival against globally funded NGO agenda.

They suffered for long. Business down. Reputation gone. All pleas fell on deaf ears. Governments turned mute. Politicians shied away. The media eulogised the NGOs. Desperate, they did what no businessman does except as the last resort _ approach the court. The court did respond, and issued a warrant of arrest against a culprit, a minority religious head. But with Andipatti poll only days away, the police would not arrest him obviously.

Dead-ended everywhere, they took to streets. Last Tuesday, February 19, the entire town of Sivakasi and surrounding areas observed a total bandh. Thousands were on the roads. Then woke up a section of the media, to little-known facts. Sivakasi's case is this: a motivated campaign by NGOs is on against them.

Sivakasi's main business is fireworks, match units and printing press. Its annual business is over Rs 1000 crores. Half of it is from sale of fireworks. This is where the NGOs hit them. They allege child labour in Sivakasi fireworks and match units. The basic facts about Sivakasi clearly contradict the charges. This small town has as many as 42 educational institutions. This includes three arts colleges, a women's college, an engineering college, two polytechnics and one pharmaceutical college. About 39,000 students, almost equal number of boys and girls, are on their rolls. Who built this huge educational infrastructure? Not the government. The fireworks owners. If children were their human resource why would they build schools for them? Also colleges. They have enough money to send their children to any place in India or abroad for studies.

Not just that. The government has declared Virudhunagar district in which Sivakasi falls as 100% literate. How can that go with child labour? It is not all. `Child labour in Sivakasi is a myth, a 15-year-old story'. Not the fireworks owners, the District Collector says so. Just three months back. He discloses that in Virudhunagar district in which Sivakasi falls, from four lakh households 2.24 lakh children attend schools. Some of course do not. But lack of awareness, not child labour, is the reason for that, he asserts. The number of those bunking schools, he says, is less than 9%, even though the people below poverty line is between 36% and 40%. He said so in public. The very media, of course only the Tamil media, reported him. More evidence exists, if needed.

Why then the charge of child labour? See how the facts unfold.

Unfailingly, every year a month before Deepavali the campaign against Sivakasi starts. Not in Sivakasi or thereabouts. Many NGOs, most of them funded from abroad, begin massive campaigns to boycott fireworks during Deepavali. Cite child labour as the justification. Use emotive slogans like ``Is it the glitter of the fireworks or the shrieks of the dying children?'' to drive home the message. Assemble school children in thousands and make them take oath against use of firecrackers. Advocate celebrating Deepavali with, interestingly, candles, not traditional lamps.

The campaigners are highly articulate. Media savvy. Know the media and how to use it. The charmed media takes them at their face value. Covers their rallies extensively. Blindly repeats the campaigner's charges. The victims, the Sivakasi people, who work more and talk less, are not media savvy. Their inarticulate voice is just silenced by the high voltage campaign of the NGOs. The result, Sivakasi is defamed and condemned unheard as an economy built on the blood of children. The lay to the expert, including the courts, are led by the campaign. The NGOs' campaign has virtually settled that Sivakasi means child labour. Some of them have even called for the prosecution of government officials who have contradicted them. See their capacity to terrorise.

What is their motive? Why do they suppress the facts? Why such shrill campaign? Even on the child labour issue, why only target Sivakasi? The answers are indeed uncomfortable.

Here is where the identity behind the campaigning NGOs becomes relevant. The campaigning NGOs, say the Sivakasi people, are mostly Christians. The Missionary schools deploy their captive children to campaign against fire crackers. This is what shuts the mouth of the otherwise wide-mouthed media. This is what blinds the politicians who otherwise sniff around for issues. This is why the state authority disappears.

It is unfair to blame Christians as a whole or Christianity as such. But definitely some enthusiastic evangelists are responsible. They see a chance to spread their faith through the child labour issue. So call for boycotting fire crackers and promoting candles, instead of lamps, during Deepavali. In the process, they have made Sivakasi synonymous with child labour.

Also financial stakes are high. An instance. The International Programme for Elimination of Child Labour has made available Rs 4 crores for studying an integrated approach to child labour in Sivakasi and Tirupur. But for claims of child labour, such funds would dry up. So the need to insist that it exists. Asserting it exists is a potential revenue stream.

What is the answer? Unless an NGO declares from where it gets its funds, it should not be heard. The source of its funds will decide its credibility.

Then, the real issue is NGOs' role in Indian economy. Whether it is the carpet Industry in Rajasthan or UP, or the knitwear units of Tirupur, or the fireworks of Sivakasi, the NGOs are around. In the world of business seen as war, NGOs, many unknowingly, become instruments in the hands of foreign economic forces. They use their clout as a moral force to weaken national economies. To benefit foreign forces invariably funding them. In most cases they do end up as lobbyists, though some may really not be.

Nevertheless NGOs do have the right to say what they want to. But they should admit they get money for their work. They are an interested party. But the status the NGOs seek and in fact, enjoy is high. As an arbiter, a judge, a disinterested witness. The distortion in public discourse is that the NGOs are taken as disinterested parties. Once they are taken for what they are, their view will be taken to be what it is worth.

The apprehensions about NGOs are global. Many believe that some of them are used by the West even to split societies and break up nations. It is unfortunate that all NGOs, the genuine and the spurious, the service-minded and the lobbyist claim to be the same. Are treated alike, respected alike, in India. All for lack of information.

Only the patriotic and vigilant public can scan and separate the genuine from the spurious. Otherwise we will allow professional NGOs to defame with respect and destroy with impunity businesses and peoples in this country. They have very nearly done down Sivakasi. Will such a thing happen in China whether they use child labour or prison labour? It will not. Let us think why it happens here.

“Every Indian should sing Vande Mataram” says K.S. Sudarshan

RSS Sarsanghachalak Shri K.S. Sudarshan has said that Vande Mataram is not a contentious issue and every patriotic citizen of the country should sing it with full respect on September 7 to mark the centenary celebrations of the national song. He was talking to mediapersons after releasing a book, Samarasata ke Sutra, in New Delhi on August 30.

He said singing Vande Mataram should be compulsory in all schools and academic institutions and Indians irrespective of their religion or faith should have no objection to reciting the national song. Replying to a question about the protest from some people to the recitation of the national song, he said: “Those who do not have faith in Bharatmata have no right to live in the country.” Terming the whole controversy as a dangerous sign, he said such controversies led to the partition of the country in 1947 and cannot be allowed again. “The current bout of controversies is the manifestation of a wider conspiracy. The nation was bifurcated in similar situations in 1947,” he added.

The book-release function was jointly organised by Sewa Bharati, Delhi, and Akhil Bharatiya Navyuvak Dalit Utthan Sangh at Hindi Bhavan. The book has been edited by Shri Ramesh Patange and Shri Tarun Vijay, editor of Panchjanya. Shri Premchand Goel, Akhil Bharatiya Sewa Pramukh of RSS was also present on the occasion.

The Sarsanghachalak stressed the need to bring harmony among all castes and said the Sangh is preparing the people who understand the pain and grief of every person of the society. He underlined the need to abolish the conventions, which develop problems in smooth functioning of the society and prevent people from coming together. “Such conventions may be relevant during a particular phase of time and under certain circumstances. But today most of them have no significance. Hence, they should be abolished,” he said.

He further said the Sangh has resolved to establish harmony in the society during the birth-centenary year of Shri Guruji, the second Sarsanghachalak. He stated that efforts are being made to spread the message of social harmony all over the country.

Speaking at the function, noted Marathi poet and founder of Dalit Panthers, Shri Namdev Dhasal said though he is not a member of any RSS organisation, he supports the work done by the Samarasata Manch in Maharashtra. Samarasata Manch is an RSS-associated organisation working for brining harmony in the society. “If the Sangh really wants to work for social harmony, it is not untouchable for me, no matter I have to face criticism from my own people for it,” he added. He further said he is an experimentalist and does not fear of any criticism or opposition from his leftist friends. He said Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains are very much part and parcel of the Hindu society and those who treat them separate commit an unpardonable offence. He stated that Hinduism has greater flexibility and it is a broad religion. He said if the country remains divided into castes and sub-castes it has no future. He remarked that the work of social transformation could not be done through politics or power.

Baba Prakash Shah, Valmiki saint from Gannaur, Haryana, said Valmiki and Ravidas worked for the humanity and all Hindus should celebrate their birth anniversaries. “If only one section of the society celebrates their anniversaries, it will continue to develop the feeling of separation among them. We should understand that all the rishis, munis and saints of this country belong to all of us and not to any particular section. “If you are the true follower of Rama and Krishna, imbibe their teachings,” he added. Baba Prakash Shah also presented gangajali to all the distinguished guests who shared the dais.

Introducing the book, Shri Ramesh Patange said various steps are being taken today by various people in the country to uplift the downtrodden sections of the society and also to bring all communities together. He said the book provides information about all such activities. He said harmony should be visible in practical conduct. Shri Tarun Vijay termed discrimination on the basis of caste as inhuman. Shri Deepak Rathi, president of Delhi Sewa Bharati, proposed a vote of thanks.

Bismillah Khan personified cultural oneness...

There is a delicious irony in the Congress-led UPA government declaring national mourning for Varanasi icon Bismillah Khan on the very day that Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh issued a directive making the recitation of Vande Mataram optional in educational institutions on September 7, the centenary of its adoption.

Consider how the venerable Ustad took the ritual gangasnaan daily with his mentor, Ali Baksh ‘Vilayati’ Khan, and played the shehnai at the Kashi Vishwanath Temple every morning. Consider that the Ustad shunned the creation of Pakistan and the two-nation theory amidst unprecedented communal upheavals in northern India and performed at the ramparts of Red Fort on the very first Independence Day celebrations.

Ustad Bismillah Khan was one of those rare talents who personified and lived the cultural and civilizational unity and glory of India. It was not just that he took the simple shehnai to a pinnacle on the crowded pantheon of Hindustani classical music, but that his music transcended the limitations of faith. He loved the soil of Varanasi; his favourite raga was Shivranjani; he most cherished the holy waters of the Ganga. Music and the Vishwanath Mandir offered “divine unity,” he considered himself a devout Muslim though a staunch devotee of Ma Saraswati.

The Divine Mother Kali has been less fortunate in receiving cross-religious affiliations. Ever since Bankim Chandra penned the song that became the rallying cry of all revolutionary freedom fighters, Muslim clergy, possibly inspired by British officials, have expressed reservations about respecting the motherland as a divine entity. Organised opposition from the ulema denied Vande Mataram the status of national anthem, and even the uneasy compromise regarding the ‘national song’ has not been free of glitches. Though the Muslim community has contributed some of independent India’s most gallant officers and soldiers, and Muslim politicians have no reservations about expressing loyalty to the Constitution and national flag, and community as a whole has not been able to transcend ulema diktat.

The result is that generations of Muslim children are being raised to disrespect Vande Mataram. For, this is what the Congress exemption to the Muslim community from reciting the song in educational institutions on the centenary of its adoption, amounts to. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi’s protestation that the party is proud of the national song rings hollow, because it has endorsed the scandalous circular issued by the HRD Ministry in this regard.

That is why Firangi Mahal cleric, Maulana Khalid Rasheed, was not challenged when he declared Vande Mataram was un-Islamic and asked the community to shun it. Nor was the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari. With Congress party eager to woo Muslims for next year’s Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, a principled stand on a song that galvanized a generation of freedom fighters to make untold sacrifices was too much to expect.

The BJP has done well to query Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the status of the national song with the UPA government. The party has rightly pointed out that all opposition to the recital of the national song is rooted in the two-nation theory that continues to be overtly and covertly promoted by Muslim fundamentalists. Vande Mataram is about Indian nationalism; rejection of the song has obvious connotations.

Coming as it does so close on the heels of the Mumbai serial bomb blasts which took over 200 lives and wounded over 700 persons, and the discovery of a large network of terrorist sleeper cells in all major cities, the obdurate stance of the Muslim community does not bode well for the country. It shows that a new wave of pan-Islamic fervour is sweeping the orthodox sections of the community, which have the power to turn the masses away from nationalism. Thus, the nation is not merely humiliated by the refusal of Muslims to sing the national song, it may be in danger of another attempt at territorial secession. In this connection, the frustrated anger of BJP leaders Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Vijay Kumar Malhotra, that those opposed to reciting Vande Mataram should migrate to the country of their choice, should be read as a warning bell for the Republic.

It is too much to expect the likes of Begum Teesta Setalvad to come forward and meet Muslim fundamentalists head-on on this issue. No worthwhile Muslim activist will lend his voice to the national song, certainly not any of the big-wigs who strode the national stage bad-mouthing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, for the post-Godhra riots, and stayed safely indoors when Mumbai bled. The Muslim ulemma are clearly giving a political signal in favour of the Muslim terrorism networks ripping civil society apart, and no amount of gloss by the secular media will succeed in erasing the negative image that Muslims have acquired in the popular mind for such acts of omission and commission.

That is why, though his last journey was probably the best attended in Varanasi’s recent history, with shopkeepers and traders voluntarily downing shutters as a mark of respect, it was a lonely Bismillah Khan who travelled from Harha Sarai to the Fatman shamshaan bhumi. Even as the nation mourned the passing of one of her greatest sons, his own community rejected the love, unity and inclusive embrace of his shehnai. The spiritual legacy of the maestro was thus buried with his bones.

Sister Sonia, he wanted a total ban on conversions!

“The Congress party's views on this are well known,” Sonia says. ‘This’ means laws banning forcible religious conversions. She goes on: “They are enactments passed by state legislatures where the Congress is in opposition.” She adds, “The Congress party has opposed (them) strongly in the assembly and through demonstrations.” She made these profound remarks in a letter she wrote to Dr John Dayal. Who is he? He has a respectable visiting card, as member of the National Integration Council. But he has other visiting cards too like President of All India Catholic Union, Secretary General of All India Christian Council, President of United Christian Action, and Member of Justice and Peace commission Archdiocese of Delhi.

But these cards do not exhaust his definition. In the assessment of a responsible Christian scholar, PN Benjamin, who runs the Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue, “John Dayal opens his mouth and wields his pen only to spew venom on the Hindu community.” This completes his profile. He had written to Sonia complaining about the laws banning religious conversions in different states. To which she replied implying that the BJP is the author of anti-conversion laws.

But is that - that is, it is the BJP, not the Congress, which passed the anti-conversion laws and the Congress had actually opposed them - a fact? Only a novice in political history post freedom would say something like what Sonia says. On the contrary, it was the Congress Party, which had still some traces of the Mahatma Gandhi left in it, that had passed the anti-conversion laws.

That Congress, which still had some respect for the Mahatma, took his words on religious conversions seriously. Mahatma Gandhi had written extensively against conversions by Christians. He wrote, “I hold that proselytisation under the cloak of human work is unhealthy to say the least.” This was in Young India on April 23, 1931. Later, he went one step further and wrote, “If I had the power to legislate, I should stop all proselytisation work” (Young India 5.11.1935). He told the missionaries, “He is ashamed of them” (Young India 8.8.1925), disputed their claim that theirs “is the only true religion” (Harijan 3.6.1937), warned that “conversion should not mean denationalisation” (8.8.1925), and pointed out that it means just that, as many converts are “ashamed of their birth” and of their ancestry (20.8.1925).

Gandhiji's ideas were still influencing the Congress when the Madhya Pradesh government constituted the Neogi Committee to study missionary activities in tribal areas. This was in 1954. S.K George, ‘a devout Christian and a nationalist belonging to the oldest church in India - the Syrian Christian Church' was a member of the Committee. The Committee exposed the massive, fraudulent conversions of tribal people and recommended that a law be enacted to ban such fraudulent practices. The MP government, led by the Congress Party, enacted the Neogi-recommended law banning conversions in the year 1968. The Orissa government, again a Congress-led government, did so even earlier in 1967. And Arunachal Pradesh under the central rule of the government headed by another Gandhi, unrelated to the Mahatma, Indira Gandhi, also passed a similar law.

This is the origin and history of anti-conversion laws in India. So these laws owe their origin in Mahatma Gandhi's wish. He actually wanted a ban on all religious conversions. These laws fall far short of his wish. But she would not know that Gandhiji wanted a total, not partial, ban on conversions. She would not know that it was the Congress in which Gandhi's views were respected which passed these laws first. One can also dismiss her ignorance of the history of a country she is totally unfamiliar as natural. But the tragedy is that, by design, not by accident, this nation itself has kept its people and polity so ignorant of the views of that Gandhi that many today think that this Gandhi's views are also that Gandhi's views!

His statues in lakhs are all over the country from small village panchayat offices to Parliament. Roads running to hundreds of thousands of miles bear his name in every small town. His name is alive through his statues and roads but his ideas are nowhere. That is why the later Gandhis saw the political gain in appropriating his name but rejecting his ideas. Just like the name Gandhi is all over but his ideas are nowhere, the name Congress is all over but Gandhi's ideas are nowhere in the Congress. So, while Mahatma Gandhi had commended a ban on conversions, the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi is opposing even a ban on fraudulent conversions. The difference between the two Congresses is as much as the difference between the two Gandhis - today's Sonia Gandhi and yesterday's Mahatma Gandhi.

India should oppose DRM: Richard Stallman

India should not enact a Digital Rights Management (DRM) law, Richard M. Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU Project said. He was speaking at the Fourth International Conference on GPL v3 held at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, on August 23rd, 2006. He commented that the people who implement DRM, which he called the "Digital Restrictions Management", should be in prison if the government is really of the people, by the people and for the people. This law actually restricts the freedom of the people. A company that uses the restrictions in producing its DVD will give the format it uses to create the DVD only to a company that promises to protect that restriction. The law has been enacted in the S and the European Union has given a direction in favour of DRM. Now the government of India is contemplating modifying its laws to incorporate DRM. The time given for the public to register their comments on the law was short and was insufficient for anyone to give a comprehensive response. That time itself is now over. It is important that the public take this issue and try to convince the government that what they are planning to do goes against the interests of the people and protects only the interest of the large companies. He went on to say that the Free Software licences like the GNU General Public Licence can do only a little to protect users from these laws.

The conference was organised by the Free Software Foundation of India, and the Free Software Users Group, Bangalore, in association with the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, to discuss the draft of the new version of the General Public Licence (GPL), GPL v3. Stallman explained why a new version became necessary. He said that revisions become necessary when problems with the existing licence became clear, and when new circumstances threatened the freedom that Free Software promised its users.

As an example of the new circumstances, he mentioned the DRM law and the example of a program called Tivo. Tivo is a device that records television programmes for the user to watch at another convenient time. This is a combination of software and hardware. The software is based on the GNU/Linux operating system, which is Free Software. All Free Software gives its users the freedom to modify the software to
suit their purpose, and thus this software also gives the freedom to its users. But the hardware is designed to reject any software that is not one of the versions that is designed to run on it. Thus, though the user has the freedom to modify the software, it becomes meaningless because then it cannot be used. In other words, though the software is Free, the freedom becomes meaningless. The present GPL is not violated, though the freedom is, in practice, useless. The new version became necessary because of such circumstances.

Prof. Eben Moglen, Professor at the Columbia University , Legal Advisor to the Free Software Foundation, and one of the important contributors to the new draft, said that protecting the licence from violations is not an easy job, and involves considerable work from a trained advocate. He said that a legal expert will be engaged in India if many violations of the GPL are found here. Referring to the problem related to some circuits used in wireless networking, he said that there has been serious problems from Japan, which has declared that any programmer who releases software for wireless circuits under any licence that makes its source code available, will be arrested next time the person lands in Japan.

The conference will continue on 24th August, when two panels will discuss the relevance of Free Software for software businesses and in
Education. The draft of GPLv3 can be read at http://gplv3.fsf.org/ and the detailed programme of the conference can be seen at http://gplv3.gnu.org.in/Conference/Schedule. Some photographs of the event are available at -- http://gnu.org.in/media/gplv3-conf-pics/index.html