Indo-Asian News Service

The work of India’s greatest filmmaker and one of cinema’s greatest auteurs, Satyajit Ray, will be showcased in a special series by the prestigious Film Society of Lincoln Centre in New York April 15-30.

Featuring over 20 films, with six in new 35 mm prints from the Academy Film Archive, “First Light: Satyajit Ray from the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy” concentrates on what is roughly the first half of Ray’s career, when he broke out internationally as an important new voice in world cinema.

“A Ray film invites you in, but also demands that you accept it on its own terms,” says Richard Pena, the Film Society’s director of programming. “And those who open themselves to Ray’s method are in for some of the richest experiences the cinema has to offer.”

The recent spike of interest in India – from its propitious emergence as a major economic power to the worldwide success of “Slumdog Millionaire” – makes this an especially apt moment to witness and celebrate Ray’s accomplishments, said the society.

Ray won the Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement at the 1991 Academy Awards, “for his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures and for his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world”.

“First Light” opens April 15 with the film that put him on the cinematic map, “Pather Panchali” (1955), which Pauline Kael wrote was “beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love”.

With a brilliant soundtrack by Ravi Shankar, to which Wes Anderson paid tribute by using it in “The Darjeeling Limited” along with music from many other Ray films, “Pather Panchali” (Song of the Road) is the first part of the “Apu Trilogy” following a boy’s adventures in a remote Bengal village.

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By Jerry White

The current auto crisis follows decades of plant closings and mass layoffs that transformed Detroit into the poorest major city in America. The rise of the Motor City was synonymous with US industrial preeminence, as well as the improvements in living standards won by the auto workers in mass struggles. The collapse of the Motor City is perhaps the poignant symbol of the historic decline of American capitalism, its turn to financial speculation, and the unrelenting assault on the working class.

See the pictures

By Alexa Oleshi

BEIJING — China has 32 million more young men than young women _ a gender gap that could lead to increasing crime _ because parents facing strict birth limits abort female fetuses to have a son, a study released Friday said.
The imbalance is expected to steadily worsen among people of childbearing age over the next two decades and could trigger a slew of social problems, including a possible spike in crime by young men unable to find female partners, said an author of the report published in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.
“If you’ve got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes,” said Therese Hesketh, a lecturer at the Centre for International Health and Development at University College London. She did not specify what kinds of crimes.
The study said analysis of China’s 2005 census data extrapolated that males under age 20 exceeded their female counterparts by a whopping 32 million.
The study found that China has 119 male births for every 100 girls, compared with 107 to 100 for industrialized countries.
“Nothing can be done now to prevent this imminent generation of excess men,” said the report by Hesketh and two professors from eastern China’s Zhejiang province.
The study found that the biggest boy-girl gaps are in the 1 to 4-year-old group _ meaning that China will have to grapple with the effects of that imbalance when those children reach reproductive age in 15 to 20 years.
China imposed strict birth controls in the 1970s to limit growth of its huge population, noting that resources, especially land, were increasingly strained and that changes were needed in its new push to modernize. The government says the controls have prevented an additional 400 million births in the world’s most populous country of 1.3 billion.
But families, especially rural ones, cling to traditional preferences for a male heir, and infanticide of baby girls became a problem. In response, some parts of China allow couples to have a second child if the first is a girl.
The prevalence of sonograms in recent years has allowed parents to learn the gender of their fetus about 20 weeks into pregnancy, Hesketh said, leading to a rise in abortions based on sex. Abortion is legal and widely available.
China bans tests to determine the fetus’ gender for non-medical reasons but they are still commonly done, mainly by underground private clinics in the countryside.
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By Royston Chan
CHENGDU, China

Ran Yusheng, a 91-year-old bra maker, makes a bra at the small balcony outside his old apartment home in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu March 31, 2009. REUTERS/Aly Song

(Reuters) – A 91-year-old Chinese tailor is determined to continue making customized bras for his clients despite his advanced age and outdated designs.
“My sons and my daughter-in-law all tell me to stop working,” said Ran Yusheng at his stall in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
“But my customers say if I stop, where will they be able to buy such bras? They wouldn’t buy those bras from other stores.”
Ran and his wife ran a busy bra shop in the heart of the city’s commercial capital in the 1940s, but today all that remains of his business is a small balcony outside his apartment.
Bags of cotton cloth, two pairs of scissors and a sewing machine line the small workspace.
Born in 1918 in Suining in Sichuan province, Ran was sent to the provincial capital Chengdu by his father at the age of 15, where he started as an apprentice to a tailor.

(Editing by David Fox)
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By B. R. Gowani

Sexual frustration?
Lusty-exhibition of power?
Terrorization to thwart disobedience?

Yes, all of the above

These screams are not only
Of Chand Bibi

(The teenage girl who was flogged publicly on suspicion of having an affair)

These are the screams of multitudes of other victims also

Violence against whom didn’t get splashed
Across world newspapers and TV screens

And of those who are
Blown up in mosques
Gunned down on streets
Stoned to death
Disfigured with acid
And
…

Pakistan is gradually losing its territory, its sovereignty
To jahils, ignorants
They are intolerant of
Entertainment
Minorities
Tolerance
Civility
Humanity
Lesbians
Women
Arts
Gays
Almost all of life …

Punished these jahils must be;
Not, however, with violence;
First, snatch away the Qur’an
From this rotten progeny, of
The even more rotten parents
(US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan)
And replace that book
With the knowledge of
The World as a Mosaic:
Embracing the plurality of
Peoples, Ideas, and Cultures
(In large print, so that
Even the weak-eyed could read)

Traditions
Goddesses
Gods
Customs
Prophets
Religions
All pale in front of
Human dignity and human life
Nothing is more important

Tolerance is the key to human survival
Nature is the living example of pluralism
Multiculturalism brings the world alive

Five times a day
The founder of Pakistan
M. A. Jinnah’s first speech
To the Constituent Assembly*
Delivered on August 11, 1947
should be read and memorized

* speech given below

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

The first President of Constitutional Assembly (11th Aug 1947)

Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly
of Pakistan on 11th August, 1947

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I cordially thank you with the utmost sincerity, for the honor you have conferred upon me –the greatest honor that is possible for this Sovereign Assembly to confer-by electing me as your first President. I also thank those leaders who have spoken in appreciation of my services and their personal references to me. I sincerely hope that with your support and your cooperation we shall make this Constituent Assembly an example to the world. The Constituent Assembly has got two main functions to perform. The first is the very onerous and responsible task of framing our future Constitution of Pakistan and the second of functioning as a full and complete Sovereign body as the Federal Legislature of Pakistan. We have to do the best we can in adopting a provincial constitution for the Federal Legislature of Pakistan. You know really that not only we ourselves are wondering but, I think, the whole world is wondering at this unprecedented cyclone revolution which has brought about the plan of creating and establishing two independent Sovereign Dominions in this sub-continent. As it is, it has been unprecedented; there is no parallel in the history of the world. This mighty sub-continent with all kinds of inhabitants has been brought under a plan which is titanic, unknown, and unparalleled. And what is very important with regard to it is that we have achieved it peacefully and by means of an evolution of the greatest possible character.

Dealing with our first function in this Assembly, I cannot make any well-considered pronouncement at this moment, but I shall say a few things as they occur to me. The first and the foremost thing that I would like to emphasize is this –remember that you are now a Sovereign Legislative body and you have got all the powers. It, therefore, places on you the gravest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions. The first observation that I would like to make is this: You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a Government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State.
The second thing that occurs to me is this: One of the biggest curses from which India is suffering –I do not say that other countries are free from it, but, I think, our condition is much worse –is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison. We must put that down with an iron hand and I hope that you will take adequate measures as soon as it is possible for this Assembly to do so.

Black marketing is another curse. Well, I know that black-marketers are frequently caught and punished. Judicial sentences are passed or sometimes fines only are imposed. Now you have to tackle this monster which today is a colossal crime against society, in our distressed conditions, when we constantly face shortage of food and other essential commodities of life. A citizen who does black-marketing commits, I think, a greater crime than the biggest and most grievous of crimes. These black-marketers are really knowing, intelligent and ordinarily responsible people, and when they indulge in black-marketing, I think they ought to be very severely punished, because they undermine the entire system of control and regulation of food-stuffs and essential commodities, and cause wholesale starvation and want and even death.

The next thing that strikes me is this: Here again it is a legacy which has been passed on to us. Along with many other things, good and bad, has arrived this great evil —the evil of nepotism and jobbery. This evil must be crushed relentlessly. I want to make it quite clear that I shall never tolerate any kind of jobbery, nepotism or any influence directly or indirectly brought to bear upon me. Wherever I will find that such a practice is in vogue, or is continuing anywhere, low or high, I shall certainly not countenance it.

I know there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Much has been said against it, but now that it has been accepted, it is the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it and honorably act according to the agreement which is now final and binding on all. But you must remember, as I have said, that this mighty resolution that has taken place is unprecedented. One can quite understand the feeling that exists between the two communities wherever one community is in majority and the other is in minority. But the question is, whether, it was possible or practicable to act otherwise than what has been done. A division had to take place. On both sides, in Hindustan and Pakistan, there are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it, but in my judgment there was no other solution and I am sure future history will record its verdict in favor of it. And what is more it will be proved by actual experience as we go on that that was the only solution of India’s constitutional problem. Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster. Maybe that view is correct; may be it is not; that remains to be seen. All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people and especially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.

I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community –because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis, and so on –will vanish. Indeed, if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence for this we would have been free people a long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any region or caste or creed –that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation.

Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state.

Well, gentlemen, I do not wish to take up any more of your time and thank you again for the honor you have done to me. I shall always be guided by the principles of justice and fair-play without any, as is put in the political language, prejudice or ill-will, in other words, partiality or favoritism. My guiding principle will be justice and complete impartiality, and I am sure that with your support and co-operation, I can look forward to Pakistan becoming one of the greatest Nations of the world.

I have received a message from the United States of America addressed to me. lt reads:
I have the honor to communicate to you, in Your Excellency’s capacity as President of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, the following message which I have just received from the Secretary of State of the United States.

“On the occasion of the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly for Pakistan, I extend to you and to members of the Assembly, the best wishes of the Government and the people of the United States for the successful conclusion of the great work you are about to undertake.”

Pakistan Zindabad

Jinnah

Pakistan’s top judge has called for a court hearing into the public flogging of a teenage girl, which was captured on video and shown around the world.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has ordered police and government officials from the north-western Swat Valley to bring the girl to court next week.
The film shows apparent Taleban members holding her down and hitting her with a strap as she cries out in pain.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned the incident as “shameful”.
Local sources said the girl had been accused of illicit relations with a man and that the flogging took place about a month and a half ago.
Since then, the provincial government in the North West Frontier Province agreed to implement Sharia law as part of a peace deal with militants there.
A press release quoted Chief Justice Chaudhry – who was only recently restored to office – as saying the action was a cruel violation of fundamental rights that gave Pakistan a bad name.

Forced to marry
The language in the video is of the Swati dialect of Pashto, says the BBC’s Abdul Hai Kakar.
The burka-clad woman is heard crying throughout the two-minute flogging and at one point swears on her father that she will not do it again.
Relatives of the man involved in the incident told the BBC he had gone to the house of the girl in the village of Kala Kalay to do repairs as an electrician, but militants accused him of having a relationship with her.
They dragged him from the house and flogged him before punishing the girl, his relatives said.
The Taleban made the girl’s brother hold her down during the flogging, they said.
After the incident, the Taleban forced the couple to marry and instructed the man not to divorce his wife. His relatives say he has been left mentally scarred.
The incident happened weeks before the new Sharia courts began to be introduced in Swat.

Militants ‘still in control’
Prime Minister Gilani said he strongly condemned the “shameful” incident in a statement issued by his office.
Mr Gilani said it was contrary to Islamic principles, which teach Muslims to treat women politely and gently.
He said the government believed in the rights of women and would continue to take every measure to protect their rights.
The Sharia system was agreed in Swat to try to stop the Taleban from imposing their harsh brand of justice, the BBC’s Islamabad correspondent Barbara Plett says.
Previously they had beheaded dissidents and killed women accused of un-Islamic behaviour.
That seems to have significantly decreased after the Taleban leader officially accepted the Islamic courts.
However, it is not clear whether this new justice system will replace Taleban rule in practice.
The courts seem to be operating with some effect in Swat’s main city of Mingora but not in outlying rural areas.
There witnesses say the militants continue to exercise control, if not as brutally as before.
BBC
(Submitted by Alkarim Amarsi)

Watch barbarians flogging a teenage girlWatch another longer video of flogging of men and the teenage girl

Taliban Spokesman Muslim Khan Talks to GEO TV

By A. G. Noorani

THERE is an aspect to L.K. Advani’s comments on Jinnah at Karachi which has been overlooked. A month or so earlier, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the rabid Jamaat-e-Islami leader of Pakistan, had denounced Jinnah’s famous presidential speech to Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947. Advani’s praise and quotation from the speech has boosted the morale of Pakistan’s secularists who always cited it.

The speech has been quoted in bits and pieces; never analysed as a whole. Nor for that matter the entire and considerable corpus of Jinnah’s record from 1906 to 1948. There is no single complete series of his Collected Works. One such effort ended in 1931. Historians in India, Pakistan and abroad propound fanciful theories from their own standpoints; never mind the record. The speech was neither an act of contrition or repentance nor a reflection of two Jinnahs. He had unwisely used the poisonous two-nation theory to promote under the slogan of Pakistan, his real objective – a power-sharing accord. Gandhi, Nehru and Patel sabotaged the Cabinet Mission’s Plan of May 16, 1946, for United India which was done in complicity with Stafford Cripps (vide “Cripps and India’s Partition”, Frontline, August 2, 2002).

OPINION

Jinnah’s speech was a crie de coeur. He had not changed his outlook. In 1919 he gave evidence before the Joint Select Committee of the British Parliament on the Government of India Bill. His answers to questions by one of its members, Major Ormsby-Gore, bear recalling today.

Q: You said you spoke from the point of view of India. You speak really as an Indian nationalist? – I do.
Q: Holding that view, do you contemplate the early disappearance of separate communal representation of the Mohammedan community? – I think so.
Q: That is to say, at the earliest possible moment you wish to do away in political life with any distinction between Mohammedans and Hindus? – Yes. Nothing will please me more than when that day comes.
Q: I am only referring to them, of course? – And therefore that is why I really hope and expect that the day is not very far distant when these separate electorates will disappear.

JINNAH was then a member of the Congress, a president of the Muslim League, and architect, along with Tilak, of the Pact between the two bodies at their sessions in Lucknow in 1916.

It was the same Jinnah who famously declared on August 11, 1947: “Now, if we want to make this great state of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.”

He did not stop there. What is little recalled is that he proceeded to put intra-Muslim differences on a par with Hindu-Muslim differences: “I cannot emphasise it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities – the Hindu community and the Muslim community because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis, and so on – will vanish. Indeed, if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if had happened nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this.”

Jinnah’s reference to “a nation of 400 million” rather than the “Muslim nation of 100 million” implied rejection of the two-nation theory. He concluded: “Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”

These extracts read together reveal that the man’s outlook on nationalism and secularism had not changed since 1919. It was an extempore speech. Few care to study it carefully. He said that their first duty was “to maintain law and order”; that is, protect minorities. The next duty? Combat “bribery and corruption. That really is a poison. We must put that down with an iron hand”. Thirdly, “black-marketing is another curse”. Fourthly, “the evil of nepotism and jobbery. This evil must be crushed relentlessly.”

It was after these four points that he went on to dilate, first, on the partition and, next, on secularism: “I know there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal.” He was reaching out to them. He then went on to say the things quoted above. It was straight from his heart: “I cannot make any well-considered pronouncement, at this moment.”

He made another pronouncement in 1925, which provides a clue. When discussing the Indian Finance Bill (1925), he stated on the Legislative Assembly floor: “I Sir, stand here with a clear conscience and I say that I am a nationalist first, a nationalist second and nationalist last… I once more appeal to this House. Whether you are a Mussalman or a Hindu, for God’s sake do not import the discussion of communal matters into this House, and degrade this Assembly, which we desire should become a real National Parliament. Set an example to the outside world and our people.”

Few people have cared to study Jinnah’s pronouncements on secularism as a whole. One of the few is Dr. Awajeet Jawed. Her father Dr. Balwant Singh was a Congressman and freedom-fighter. Jawed’s book Secular and Nationalist Jinnah is based on solid research (Kitab Publishing House, Jhandewalan, New Delhi; pages 318, Rs. 400).

How many know that Jinnah was once president of the Postal Union, which had 70,000 members, or that the Governor of Bombay, George Lloyd, included his name in a list of eight for deportation to Myanmar?
His vision of Pakistan was of a democratic secular state based on the rule of law. Cordial relations with India were crucial for its fulfilment. He told the communist lawyer, A.S.R. Chari, who then represented Daily Worker (London, October 5, 1944): “We will say `hands off India’ to all outsiders.” Eric Streiff of New Zurcher Zeitung was told (March 11, 1948) that the paramount interests of India and Pakistan demanded that they “should coordinate for the purpose of playing their part in international affairs… and jointly… defend their frontiers… but this depends entirely on whether Pakistan and India can resolve their own differences.”

He had a curious notion of an India which comprised two member states – Pakistan and “Hindustan”. He angrily wrote to Mountbatten on August 26: “It is a pity that for some mysterious reason Hindustan have adopted the word `India’ which is certainly misleading and is intended to create confusion.”

If Jinnah, the partitionist, had a latent sense of an India above the two states, Jawaharlal Nehru, the ardent Unionist, not only contributed to the collapse of the 1946 plan but adopted a policy that would congeal the partition: Congress leaders demonised him systematically. So did Indian academics and the press. Jinnah yet awaits a fair assessment, warts and all. That must include his own mistakes and grave lapses as well. The Congress spurned him in 1937-39. But he went overboard and did much harm by his miscalculations. Indians and Pakistanis must reflect on all aspects of his life, not selectively as they do.

By any test Mohammed Ali Jinnah was a truly great man. In personal integrity this tragic figure had no peers. His political record from 1906 to 1939 reveals a spirit of conciliation and statesmanship, which Congress leaders did not reciprocate. Indians must begin to acknowledge his greatness and the grave injustice the Congress leaders did to him. Pakistanis must begin to acknowledge the ones he did not only to himself but to the infant state he founded.

Frontline