Author: Krishen Kak
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 11, 2003
On March 20, 2002, The Times of
India published \'Hindustan Hamara\' by Harsh Mander, IAS. This article
purported to be Mr Mander\'s on-the-spot investigation of the communal
violence in Gujarat. In substantially the same form, carrying titles such
as \'Cry, the Beloved Country\' and \'Reflections on the Gujarat Massacre\',
this article had been making the rounds of the web, and Mr Mander began
hitting headlines all over the world. Anguished by the post-Godhra violence
in Gujarat, his conscience did not permit him to remain in the IAS and,
in a blaze of public glory, he resigned from it. The secular English-language
media lionised him as a man with a conscience and courage; Mr Mander drew
national and international attention and he garnered funds and awards,
including the Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award, for his commitment to secularism
and national integration. And, if the report has it correctly, many in
his IAS biradari in the Government extended their covert support.
Nevertheless, especially for an
IAS officer, there were curious aspects of that article that raised disturbing
questions of fact, of communal bias, and of moral integrity. These questions
raised publicly met with either silence or ad hominem invective. But they
did not go away, and after Mr Mander\'s BBC November 22, 2002, HardTalk
interview by Tim Sebastian, and the involvement of India\'s National Campaign
for People\'s Right to Information (NCPRI), of which Mr Mander is a representative,
some answers have emerged.
Mr Mander joined the IAS in 1980,
was allotted to the Madhya Pradesh cadre, and subsequently to Chhattisgarh.
In 1999, he was posted on a highly lucrative deputation to the British
charity ActionAid (AA) as its country director for India. The Indian Government
decided to recall Mr Mander soon after his deputation but he stalled the
move, and continues to represent AA India. The myths listed below, among
others, were brought to the attention of AA/ its trustee Barbara Harriss
and other trustees/ the UK Charity Commission (UKCC)/ the British High
Commission/ NCPRI/ Mander himself. The reality has emerged from the responses
- or absence of response - of these agencies and individuals, and from
Mr Mander\'s own admissions in the BBC interview.
Myth 1: ActionAid believes in and
practices honesty and transparency, and does not have a religious bias.
Reality: The reality of AA\'s integrity
emerges from a careful reading of an independent assessment made of it
in 1999. A remark was made for India, but applies as well to it internationally:
\"Both ends of the spectrum are lied to, neither the donors nor the children
are told the whole truth.\" Further, AA India was under official investigation
in India for a covert communal agenda in its work here; the investigation
being dropped after Mr Mander joined it. In the BBC interview Mr Mander
quite clearly accepted that the focus of their relief work is Muslim victims
only. There is an AA Pakistan and an AA Bangladesh, both of which remain
completely silent about the genocide of the Hindus there. Why? Is AA internationally
vocal only against the Hindus? And why does the UKCC choose to remain silent?
Myth 2: ActionAid does not involve
itself in politics.
Reality: In the BBC interview, Mr
Mander declared himself under no obligation to obey the law to which AA
is subject regarding criticism of a government or its policies, and he
affirmed the politics of his Gujarat enterprise. Mr Mander and AA India
have been cosying up to the Congress party. There has been no criticism
of communal violence in which the Congress could be implicated, for example,
the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, with its Newtonian defence by then Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi; the massive Bangladeshi Muslim illegal immigration under
Congress aegis into Assam, and consequent communal violence; the ongoing
\"ethnic cleansing\" by Muslims of Pandits in Kashmir; and, of course,
Godhra, ignored by Mr Mander because relieving Hindu victims does not suit
the Mander-ActionAid semitic agenda for India. AA does not respond to the
charge that the the Congress Government of Chhattisgarh sanctioned about
Rs 3 crore to ActionAid while Mr Mander was still of that cadre. Nor to
the charge of Britain\'s special interest in the Chhattisgarh area, an
interest revealed as far back as 1956 in the Niyogi Committee Report. Ms
Harriss, as a British trustee of ActionAid, in a trip arranged by ActionAid,
wrote \'A Note on Destitution\', focusing on Chhattisgarh, as a Paper for
the Dissemination Workshop of the NCAER/QEH/DfID Project on Poverty: Alternative
Realities, NCAER, New Delhi, April, 2002. Dissemination to whom and where?
QEH and DfID are British. Ms Harriss and AA remain silent on the charge
that DfID, which is British Government, had given about Rs 1.5 crore to
ActionAid, and that was why the British High Commission here chose not
to respond to a formal representation made to it about AA\'s functioning
in India. Mr Mander, in an international forum in the US, supported Ms
Sonia Gandhi\'s eligibility to \"rule India\". He was, as said earlier,
rewarded the Sadbhavana Award, which he accepted.
Myth 3: The TOI article was written
by Mr Mander in his personal capacity. This is the stand taken by both
AA and the UK Charity Commission.
Reality: The article identifies
Mr Mander as \"a serving IAS officer on deputation to ActionAid India\".
Mr Mander himself never stated it was written in his personal capacity
nor, though asked, was AA publicly prepared to say so. AA, and Mr Mander
through the NCPRI, were specifically asked whether any ActionAid resources
or facilities enabled the writing of that article but neither AA nor he
nor the NCPRI responded. There can be no doubt that AA facilities and resources
enabled this rankly communal article, that AA lied to the UKCC, and that
the UKCC preferred to accept that lie at face value. Why?
Myth 4: Mr Mander left the IAS because
of an anguished conscience.
Reality: Even a cursory survey of
the English-language media shows how Mr Mander has played this to the hilt.
The truth is that, two years before leaving, he had already circulated
through AA a letter declaring his primary loyalty to AA and not to the
IAS, his willingness to leave the IAS for AA, and pointing out the advantage
to AA\'s agenda of his IAS connection. Mr Mander was asked about this through
the NCPRI but neither responded. He did not leave because he managed to
get his recall dropped, and so could continue in the IAS till he completed
pensionable service. This advantage to AA is apparent in the dropping of
the investigation and the Congress encouragement to AA, about all which
AA and Ms Harriss were asked but would not answer.
(Krishen Kak was with the IAS. The
concluding part of this article will appear Monday January 13)
========================
Title: Conspiracy
of Silence - II
Author: Krishan Kak
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 13, 2003
Myth 5: Mr Mander \"resigned\" from
the IAS.
Reality: To \"resign\" is a sharp
breaking-away, usually over a moral issue and often at considerable personal
cost and sacrifice. Rightly, the person resigning is compensated with public
glory. In an interview to The Week, April 21, 2002, Mander claimed \"resignation\"
for himself. Again, even a cursory survey of the English-language media
shows how it lauded his action, yet he would not tell the truth even when
to his face he was praised for this action. The truth is that he had not
resigned but had applied for early retirement. This is not a semantic or
technical quibble. Under Government rules, there is a difference to Mr
Mander between getting nothing (if he had resigned) and up to a million
rupees (if he had retired) - and he knew this but preferred to keep it
quiet, fostering the public impression of a great career sacrifice.
Myth 6: Mr Mander is a worker against
social injustice.
Reality: In the BBC interview Mr
Mander made it clear he considered himself and AA above the law. Even where
Mr Mander as a Government employee was concerned, there is a rule that
bars for two years post-retirement commercial employment without official
permission. The intention is that the retiring employee doesn\'t arrange
his job with an organisation he is obliged before he retires. ActionAid
gives Mr Mander in foreign currency a salary (and perks) comparable to
an MNC salary in India, and 50 times that of their lowest-paid Indian employee
(this is social justice!), and clearly he had reciprocated by using the
IAS to oblige ActionAid. The Government accepted his retirement application
with the stipulation that he leave ActionAid. Mr Mander refused, claiming
his employment is not commercial.
Myth 7: Mr Mander in that TOI article,
and subsequently, claimed that only Muslims and Muslim organisations had
gone to help the Muslim victims.
Reality: This is a vicious canard
that slanders Gujarat \"mainstream (read \"Hindu\") society\". The Times
of India itself wrote of non-Muslims engaged in rescue work. But the damage
had been done.
Myth 8: Mr Mander in the TOI article
castigated the entire State administration for its failure to protect the
Muslims. He didn\'t allow a single exception.
Reality: Another vicious canard
that slanders all officers. India Today wrote of officers who had done
their duty and Mr Mander himself began to backtrack in subsequent media
statements. But the damage had again been done.
Myth 9: Mr Mander in that article
and in media statements unequivocally identified the State government has
having systematically planned and executed the post-Godhra violence.
Reality: Mr Tim Sebastian in the
BBC interview repeatedly asked Mander for his evidence of his charge, but
he fumbled and equivocated, and it was amply clear that, when he published
that article, he had no evidence to substantiate his claim. But, once more,
the damage had been done. There is a good deal more that is going on. The
UK Charity Commission is the monitoring agency for British charities. It
is busy examining allegedly Hindu links of other India-focused charities
but in AA\'s case, a country director publicly admits a pro-Muslim political
and religious bias in the charity\'s work in India and the Commission chooses
to hear no evil. It takes the patently false position that The Times of
India article was written by Mr Mander privately. ActionAid\'s only response
was one sentence parroting the UKCC line. Its trustee, Ms Barbara Harriss,
took basically the same position, all were sent more data, and all retreated
into silence.
Mr Mander remained in silence, though
the charges went to him and all over AA. The NCPRI was approached, which
attempted to evade the issue and then retreated into silence, clearly not
willing to apply to its own representative the standard of public responsibility
that it demands of others. The TOI article was in April 2002 made the subject
of a detailed complaint to the Press Council of India, showing violation
after violation of the Council\'s guidelines on the reporting of communal
violence. Six reminders later there is only silence from the Council. Much
of this data had been brought to the attention of the Cabinet Secretary,
and of the Personnel and Home Ministries. Silence.
The picture that emerges from an
unemotional examination of such realities is of political and communal
partisanship, of specious majority-minority distinctions, and of vilification
of a government and its officials. As the Mander model illustrates, this
was by shrewd, calculating, self-seeking manipulators, hypocritically using
a national tragedy for self-promotion, sheltered by a foreign patron with
its communally divisive agenda for India.
(The article is concluded)
