Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Human Rights

    Oh dear, another ‘community’ has been attacked and defamed and had its human rights abused. Will this kind of thing never end? This time it was an art exhibition that attacked and defamed the Hindu community and abused its human rights. But the Hindu community didn’t take this attacking and abusing lying down – or at least, the group ‘Hindu Human Rights’ didn’t. Bless their hearts.

    So we are fully aware of, respect and uphold British laws and traditions, which protect the rights of the Hindu community to protest when attacked and defamed.

    That’s a sly one. Yes, of course, British laws and traditions protect the rights of anyone to protest when attacked and defamed, or any other time; British laws and traditions protect rights to protest in general. But the way that’s phrased makes it look (if you read hastily) as if British laws and traditions protect specifically the rights of ‘the Hindu community’ specifically to protest ‘when attacked and defamed’, which is more dubious; it also makes it look, perhaps even if you don’t read hastily, as if ‘the Hindu community’ had in fact been ‘attacked and defamed’, which is highly dubious. It is highly dubious to consider an exhibition of paintings that includes some paintings of naked Hindu deities an exercise in attacking and defaming ‘the Hindu community’. Highly dubious, but also highly popular and highly effective. If you’re religious, just announce that anything that gets up your nose is an attack on and defamation of your ‘community’ and everyone for miles around will turn pale and clammy with anguish, and put a stop to whatever nose-upgetting item is at issue.

    We have campaigned for years for these values and freedoms to be granted to the Hindu communities which are persecuted in many parts of the world…As anyone can see from our website and publications, we exist to highlight the abuses of the human rights of Hindus going on in many parts of the world.

    By…shutting down art exhibitions? By protesting naked deities in art exhibitions? Because…naked deities in art exhibitions are abuses of human rights? Well, yes; that probably is exactly what Ranbir Singh thinks; that is the way this line is going. Remember that cardinal last month who said exactly that? About the DaVinci Code? “This is one of the fundamental human rights – that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected,” said Cardinal Arinze.” A nice modest humble claim, that we all have to respect everyone else’s religious beliefs and (as if that weren’t enough) religious founders as well. Walls creeping ever closer.

  • Re-Open the M F Husain Exhibition

    Awaaz – South Asia Watch urges Asia House, London to re-open the exhibition of the work of renowned Indian artist, MF Husain. Awaaz condemns the forced closure of the exhibition following violence, harassment and intimidation by fundamentalists claiming to represent the views of British Hindus. The fundamentalists who vandalised the paintings reflect the authoritarian ideologies and tactics of militant Hindu Right groups in India.

    In India, organisations such as the extremely violent Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other organizations linked to the fascist-inspired Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) [1], have repeatedly attacked MF Husain and other artists, filmmakers, intellectuals and cultural practitioners. In 1998, Hindu Right groups attacked and ransacked Husain’s Bombay home, one of several such attacks on the artist and his work. Hindu Right groups have regularly attempted to undermine the freedom of thought and expression enshrined in the Indian constitution and reflected in the vibrancy of Indian culture.

    In Hindu traditions there is an extensive history of wide and diverse representations of the sacred deities, including nude, erotic and other depictions. Hinduism has never possessed a concept of censorship or blasphemy of the kind that authoritarian groups wish to promote. A key reason the exhibition is being attacked is because MF Husain is a Muslim. Groups involved have used religious claims to mask a political agenda that owes to the Hindu Right, an agenda which has caused considerable violence and misery in India since the 1980s.

    Hindu Right groups in Britain have previously used tactics of intimidation to attempt to prevent films on the 2002 Gujarat carnage being shown in London. Contrary to any Hindu tradition, they have also appointed themselves to police in an authoritarian way the representation of Hindu deities and icons in the UK.

    The Hindu Forum of Britain and Hindu Human Rights accuse Asia House of not ‘consulting’ with them before putting up the exhibition. But they are not democratically-elected representatives of Hindu populations or opinion in the UK and represent little beyond their limited and chauvinistic political agendas. The Hindu Forum of Britain has actively supported or defended the RSS’s UK projects as well as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The Hindu Forum of Britain has attempted to present these as ordinary religious organizations, whereas they are in fact political organizations of the Hindu Right.

    We urge Asia House not to give in to the bullying and intimidation tactics of Hindu fundamentalists and to reinstate the exhibition of works by one of the subcontinent’s most acclaimed artists. Asia House must reject the intolerance, narrow-mindedness and political interests of the Hindu Right. By re-opening the exhibition, Asia House will genuinely honour the rich and diverse traditions of expression arising from Hinduism and from India.

    Note

    1. The RSS was created in the 1920s as a semi-paramilitary movement and its origins were inspired by Italian Fascism and German Nazism. The assassin of M.K. Gandhi was a former RSS member. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is the RSS’s religious front and has been repeatedly indicted for acts of violence and hatred in India over several decades. The ideology of the RSS and its vast network of organizations is Hindutva, an intolerant worldview of Hindu supremacy, anti-minority hatred and an exclusive ‘Hindu nation’. The RSS and VHP have an extensive network of branches in the UK, organised through the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) and the VHP UK. The National Hindu Students Forum, which has opposed the exhibition, is also very closely associated with the HSS.

    For further Information contact: Awaaz Secretariat on: (+44) 020 8843 2333 or email contact@awaazsaw.org

    Awaaz – South Asia watch is a UK based South Asian secular network committed to challenging all forms of religious hatred and intolerance. Awaaz – South Asia Watch is a project of The Monitoring Group.

  • WHO Calls FGM a Form of Torture

    ‘By medicalising it, we will be endorsing this practice,’ Joy Phumaphi of WHO told the BBC.

  • WHO Press Release on FGM Study

    ‘FGM is a practice steeped in culture and tradition but it should not be allowed to carry on.’

  • WHO Fact Sheet on Female Genital Mutilation

    Number of girls and women who have undergone FGM is estimated at between 100 and 140 million.

  • Full Report on WHO Study on FGM

    Women with FGM significantly more likely than those without FGM to have adverse obstetric outcomes.

  • The Devil Did It, Bishop Explains

    ‘When the Lord is doing something important the Devil is at work.’ That explains a lot.

  • Hindu Human Rights Sends Letter to Guardian

    British laws and traditions protect the rights of the Hindu community to protest when attacked and defamed.

  • South Asia Scholars Write to Guardian

    Condemn forced closure of exhibition after ‘harassment by groups claiming to represent Hindus.’

  • South Asia Watch on Closure of Exhibition

    Long list of scholars sign protest at closure of Husain exhibition.

  • Well, Gravediggers Are Pleased

    Bad. ‘Uganda was a beacon of hope in Africa’s struggle against HIV, but the Christian right’s grip on US policy is undermining this effort with fatal consequences, reports Oliver Duff from Kampala.’

    Aids activists and development officials point to the 130,000 Ugandans infected with HIV last year alone – up from 70,000 in 2002 – and say the recent obsession with abstinence is handicapping the country’s once-successful fight against the virus. Health workers see the fingerprints of America’s Christian right all over the chastity message and believe the Bush administration is using its financial might to bully them into accepting evangelical ideology at the expense of public health…Uganda receives more US money than ever…But that cash comes with conditions: in a gesture to the Christian right in the US, at least one-third of all prevention money must go to “abstinence-only” projects…Critics counting each new infection in field clinics say this has dangerously skewed Uganda’s previous “balanced” approach which seemed to be working.

    Working, yes, but at the price of allowing some people to go with condoms instead of abstinence, and that’s dirty. It’s better to make the dirty people be dead and only the clean people live. Except that gets tricky, because you can get people who are faithful (one of the items in Uganda’s ABC – abstinence, be faithful, condoms) but are infected by their partners; that usually means women being infected, because male to female transmission is much easier. And then there are the children they have, and the children they leave orphans, some of whom are forced to become prostitutes to survive, and quickly get Aids and die themselves. But maybe it’s worth it, to keep from allowing condoms to appear on billboards and remind everyone of sex? Maybe not.

    “Because of the US, our government now says Abstain and Be faithful only,” says Dr Katamba. “So people stop trusting our advice. They think we were lying about how condoms can stop Aids. Confusion is deadly.” And so it is proving to be: the number of infections is again rising, after years of decline…The trusted and influential first lady, Janet Museveni, is a born-again Christian. She has publicly equated condom use with theft and murder and said that Aids is God’s way of punishing immoral behaviour.

    Aids is God’s way of punishing immoral behaviour in men by infecting their wives and leaving their children orphans. Interesting view of punishment, isn’t it.

    People on both sides of the argument agree that Washington is prolonging tens of thousands of Ugandans’ lives through treatment – and that abstinence is crucial. “The evangelicals are absolutely right: abstinence is the best way of preventing the spread of HIV/Aids,” says Sigurd Illing, the EU ambassador to Uganda. “But some people aren’t receptive. We need an end to this bedevilling of condoms by people who take a high moralistic stance and don’t care about the impact that this has on reality.”

    Ah yes, reality. Now where have we heard about that before…

    “Saying ‘abstain’ is not realistic.” Nor is saying “Be faithful” at present, given the widespread and accepted male infidelity in Uganda that results in one infected person spreading the virus quickly…Constance Namuyiga, a 28-year-old mother of three young children, found out she was HIV-positive two years ago. “Men think they own us here,” she says…Not everyone is sad about the escalating epidemic. In a roadside timber yard near Kampala’s Mulago Hospital, coffin makers report that business has never been better.

    Oh, good, that’s cheering.

  • On Robert Irwin on Orientalism

    Said makes charges, Irwin demands evidence.

  • On James Buchan on Adam Smith

    Few economic theorists’ views have been embraced by both Karl Marx and Margaret Thatcher.

  • Weaker UN Statement on AIDS Feared

    Some want to downplay links between HIV infection, gender inequality and violence against women.

  • Abstinence-only Policy Hurts AIDS Fight in Uganda

    ‘The number of infections is again rising, after years of decline.’

  • Happiness and Multiculturalism

    Commission for Racial Equality has done work looking at the effect of diversity on well-being.

  • Geekiness Not Just for Men

    Oh look, here’s Catherine Bennett confirming much of what Lucy and I said in But What About? the other day – on the ‘why aren’t there more women writing blogs and editing websites and doing Euston-type things?’ question. It’s not, as I pointed out, because they’re not allowed. One reason I offered was that a lot of them think, stupidly, that it’s a childish guyish geeky thing to do, and that they’re better than that. Now here’s Catherine Bennett doing just what I was talking about:

    A couple of months ago, an American robin, Turdus migratorius, made it across the Atlantic. News reports showed a long row of birdwatchers, waiting, with the utmost patience, by a garden wall in Peckham, London. Almost all of them were men. I wondered, at the time, if this – minus binoculars – is what a reception party of bloggers would look like. Now, thanks to the drafters of the Euston Manifesto, a pub-born project that has just launched as a real-life political alliance, the question has been answered. It is, indeed, what a reception party of bloggers would look like.

    Good for them – the patient watchers. That’s not a bad or a stupid thing to do; it’s not bad or stupid to be interested in birds; what is the sneer for? I bet Bennett wouldn’t sneer that way at women who watch ‘Neighbours’ of an afternoon – she’d think that was elitist, she’d be embarrassed to sneer (I’m betting – I don’t know for a fact), but to sneer at people watching for a bird with binoculars is fair game. Why is that? As it happens, the most passionate birders I know are women; one of them goes on trips to Africa and Brazil to watch birds; and she knows a lot more women birders than I do. But even if that weren’t the case, it might be that women were missing something of value by not themselves watching birds, as opposed to being more grown-up and sensible by ignoring birds. Bennett is claiming (apparently without realizing it) that women are better than men because they have narrower interests. They have better sense than to watch birds or mess around with blogs or politics. Well – I respectfully disagree. And guess what – I’m a woman.

  • Archive

    The Interrogations Archive

    The Archive

  • NATFHE Backs Boycott of Israeli Academics

    A boycott of Israeli Jewish academics and no one else in the world seems dubious.

  • AUT Statement on NATFHE Vote

    Free expression, open debate and unhampered dialogue are prerequisites of academic freedom.