Date: 13 Dec 2003 Source: Times of India Author: Rashmee Z Ahmed URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articlesho...
LONDON: Gujarat remains an "ongoing genocidal project" largely funded by the saffron pound through a growing network of increasingly innocent-sounding, small, UK-based Hindutva organisations, a new report has warned the British government. The report, written and researched by nine women jurists and academics across six countries, was launched here on Saturday just days after Britain's charities watchdog threw up its hands in despair at being denied Indian visas to "investigate the activities of the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh and Sewa International". HSS and Sewa have always denied allegations of misusing charitable donations to fund communal violence in India. Amrit Wilson, spokesman for South Asia Solidarity, a British anti-communalism group, told Times News Network that the new 240-page report would be sent to British foreign secretary Jack Straw next week. The report has, what is claimed to be hundreds of cases of first-hand evidence and testimony. Wilson said: "Stopping the British funding of the Gujarat violence is important, but it is all a political decision and the UK government has to decide whether it wants to make it". Observers acknowledged the new report, launched under the banner of a name India already knows, the International Initiative for Gujarat (IIJ), would certainly pile the pressure on the British government But some critics said the report said nothing that had not already been discussed threadbare. The study, Threatened Existence, claims that Gujarat remains a violent, deeply-divided and communally-charged state even 18 months after India's worst outbreak of religious violence. "The genocidal project continues in different and frightening forms with long-term consequences on the lives of all members of the Muslim community particularly women," it alleges. And in what's described as the first attempt to collate the "centrality" and extent of "sexual violence" against minority community women, the report alleges that it continues till today and is part of the "agenda of Hindutva... and a strategy". The IIJ is a team of women that includes French-Algerian feminist and gay rights campaigner in Muslim countries, Anissa H�lie; German historian Gabriela Mischkowski, American law professor Rhonda Copelon, British Israeli sociologist Nira Yuval-Davis, Sri Lankan human rights activist Sunila Abeysekara and Mumbai-based gender justice campaigner Vahida Nainar. |