[antiwar-van] (van) Feb 26: Intervention, Religious Fanaticism, and Fascism in South Asia

[harsha at resist.ca]

On the 4th anniversary of the Gujarat Massacre, the South Asian Network
for Secularism and Democracy presents a Free Public Forum

    "Intervention, Religious Fanaticism, and Fascism in South Asia"
                           Sunday Feb 26 @ 2-5 pm
            SFU Harbour Center, 515 West Hastings, Room 1900


Four years ago, on February 28, 2002, the entire State of Gujarat in
western India was engulfed in a highly organized and state-backed
genocidal masscre of Muslims. Over three thousand innocent citizens of
India were slaughtered by organized fanatics, many women were gang-raped
and chopped into pieces, and over a hundred thousand became refugees in
their own land. Gujarat was declared a 'Laboratory of Hindu Rashtra' and
the same political party and its Chief Minister Narendra Modi are still
ruling the State.

In Pakistan, 40,000 Pakistani military personnel are stationed in
Baluchistan, where hundreds of Baluchis and scores of Pakistani
soldiers have already been killed in a region of immense strategic
importance where US and Chinese interests are likely to collide. More
recently, the area has been used by the US to manage its "war on terror"
in Afghanistan and would likely be used in the event a full-scale invasion
is contemplated in Iran.

Two panelists, including special guest Angana Chatterjee, will discuss the
current situation in Gujurat and the spread of Hindutva forces to other
states in India. A third panelist will discuss the current situation of
Balochistan in Pakistan and the implications for US strategic interests.

- "Violent Gods: Hindu Supremacy in India's Present" by Dr. Angana
Chatterjee, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropolgy at the
California Institute of Integral Studies. She has published extensively on
globalization, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism (See for example,
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9485) Most recently
she was a co-Convener of the Indian People's Tribunal on Hindu
Majoritarianism in Orissa.

- "The Gujarat Genocide and Other 'Gujarats' in the Making" by Dr. Hari
Sharma, Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University recently returned
from an extensive fact-finding visit from India.

- "The  Baluchistan Question in Pakistan" by Imran Munir, Senior reporter
for a National english daily newspaper in Pakistan and currently a PhD
candidate at SFU.


For more information, contact SANSAD at (604)420-2972 or sharma at sfu.ca

Organized with the support of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
and the Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University.