Beygairat Brigade and Other Similar Music Groups in Pakistan

Worldwide, the prevailing opinion on how best to counter terrorists in Pakistan is to smoke them out from their hideouts and annihilate them while perhaps simultaneously imparting to its corrupt ruling class a few basic lessons in the grammar of governance. A refreshing alternative, though, may be the one spawned by a clutch of music groups in the country—satirical lyrics lampooning the powerful, set to drums and guitar, triggering guffaws of self-recognition all around. It’s providing a startling kind of comic release to the ordinary Pakistani, wallowing in misery as he is, perhaps even inspiring him to take that irreverence to the next logical step.

The tradition of satirical songs and resistance poetry is as old as the nation but nothing in the past quite matches the effervescence Pakistanis seeing now. An ample illustration is the sudden rise of Beygairat Brigade (Shameless Brigade) to international prominence. The band comprises Ali Aftab Saeed on vocals, Daniyal Malik on percussions and 15-year-old Hamza Malik on guitar. Their pungent Aalu Anday (Potatoes and Eggs) song went viral within days of being uploaded on YouTube in mid-October. So cutting was the satire, the Pakistani establishment has now even blocked access to sites featuring the music video.

Aalu Anday| Beygairat Brigade
My mum cooked potatoes and eggs
I don’t wanna have them 
I will eat chicken with pita bread even if lentils are more expensive than chicken
The Kojaks (baldies) are hanging onto kites, 
In Khan’s darkness the Chief Justice is 
the only light
With such a hullaballoo about the extension, 
the Chief has gone into hibernation
Where Qadri is treated like a royal
Where Ajmal Kasab is a hero
Where the Mullah escaped in a veil 
Abdus Salam is a forgotten tale
White sugar is sold in black here
Political macaws have hit the jackpot
Why take Blackwater’s tension?
Here the attacks are carried out from within
However you roll out the dough, 
The roti will always stay smaller than the stove
Here dacoits keep killing people freely, 
What to talk of police’s hanky-panky?

Band member Ali Saeed says they knew the song “will hit and it will hit hard. Until an hour before we launched the video on the internet, we were discussing the consequences, the expectations and above all whether it was worth the risk.” For teenager Hamza, the catchy tune was of paramount importance: “I heard the tune before I heard the lyrics and liked it so much that I wanted to do it.” Just about every aspect of the Aalu Anday music video drips with sarcasm, from the name of the group and the insouciant lyrics right down to the telling placards they hold up as they perform. Explains Daniyal, “What we couldn’t say in the song itself, we said it through the placards and like the lyrics of the song, we wrote many and discarded lots of them. Aalu Anday is the metaphor for what we have been handed down…our social norms…and related to it is what is happening in the country.”

Baygairat Brigade, is an aside onPakistan’s ultra-nationalists and conservatives, sometimes derisively referred to as the Ghairat (Honour) Brigade. “The name is a pun to counter the Ghairat Brigade or moral police who have tremendous influence on traditional Pakistani society,” says Saeed. “The band’s name pokes fun at political gurus who make money, literally, by analysing news…those who do not have any self-respect. We have many flag-bearers of honour/self-respect inPakistan, so someone had to hold up the beygairati ka jhanda. We thought why not us.”

Evidently inspired by R.D. Burman’s inimitable groove, the music video shows the three dressed in school uniforms, a la AC/DC, carrying lunchboxes containing food they clearly don’t like—potatoes and eggs. They lament the fact that their mothers only feed them these two bland staples when all they want is chicken. They want a change in the menu, a not-so-subtle reference to the popular desire for a transformation in the society.

Of course, to truly appreciate the song, you have to be well-versed in the political discourse ofPakistan, its idioms and its nicknames for politicians. So when the Brigade sings “the Kojaks (bald ones) are hanging on to kites”, it’s a reference to the Sharif brothers who have failed for too long to provide good governance in Punjab and whose grip on power is now as fragile as a kite’s thread. Leading the criticism against the Sharifs is Imran Khan but the song takes a swipe at the ex-cricketer as well (‘Tehreek-e-Insaaf = Good-looking Jamaat-e-Islami’), saying he’s banking on Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to dismiss Zardari and the army to appoint him as president. Says a wary Saeed, “Imran’s impeccably smooth public meeting in Lahore was an obvious indication of that.”

The Brigade doesn’t even spare army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, belittled in the song as the Chief who’s gone into hibernation ever since he secured a tenure extension. The most cutting comments are reserved for the militant Islamists who have gained in influence amid spiralling violence. When a line refers to the mullah escaping in a veil, it’s an unmistakable allusion to Maulana Abdul Aziz, the man who used to lead the prayers in Islamabad’s Lal Masjid and was arrested as he tried to escape under a veil after the security forces laid siege to the mosque in July ’07. And the line, Qadri is treated like a royal, is an allusion to the feting of Syed Mumtaz Qadri for assassinating Punjab governor Salman Taseer in January ’11.

Then, of course, there’s that quip: the nation treats Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving perpetrator of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, as a hero, but has forgotten Abdul Salam, who was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979. And though not explicitly spelt out, a Pakistani is bound to notice that Salam was ignored because he belonged to the Ahmadi sect, which many here consider non-Islamic. Radical Sunni groups have already issued threats for they construe the song’s ‘interpretation’ as a conspiracy to defame them. Saeed counters that “Kasab and Qadri were people with weapons while Abdus Salam was somebody who pursued scientific research all his life. This is a bizarre phenomenon… people with weapons are praised while intellectuals are ignored”.

Critics fault the Brigade for sparing President Zardari, who has through his tenure courted much disrepute. The fans, though, dismiss this charge, saying the placards on display in the music video are no less critical of Zardari’s PPP. The free-wheeling placards are indeed hilarious, imparting to the textual satire some added chutzpah. Sample these: ‘Nawaz Sharif bye-bye, Papa Kayani no likey you’; ‘Free Judiciary = PPP hanged’; ‘The mullahs plus military = Zia-ul Haq’. In an allusion toAmerica’s financial aid toPakistan, a placard declares, ‘Your money + my pocket = we are still enemies’. And, to top it all, as the music fades out, yet another banner announces, ‘This video is sponsored by the Zionists. Like this video if you want a bullet through my head.’

The Brigade’s in-your-face lyrics and their sheer gumption has got praise from even the international press, the New York Times going so far as to call it a rare voice of Pakistan’s embattled liberals. The Aalu Andaysong has the fizz of suppressed feelings finding a release, an apogee of the phenomenon that harnesses socio-political ferment to the pop music genre to reach out to the masses. And they are not the only ones breaking the shackles. Months before the Brigade stormed the Net, stand-up comedian Saad Haroon wrote Burka Woman and sang it to the tune of Pretty Woman. The song questions the relevance of the veil in the modern world, with lines like “Burka woman devoid of sin/Burka woman, my desi penguin”. It’s already earned Haroon innumerable death threats.

Burka Woman| Saad Haroon

Burka woman, in your black sheet
Burka woman, with your sexy feet
Burka woman
My love for you it grows
Every time I see your toes…
Burka woman, I love you still
Come on and give me a thrill
Show me your left nostril
Burka woman, don’t act estranged
Burka woman, it’s all arranged
Don’t you know I came to see your daddy-ee
I can’t find you, turn on the light
Don’t be scared baby, it’s our wedding night
Burka woman, devoid of sin
Burka woman, my desi penguin
Burka woman

Yet the songwriters are pressing ahead. In June this year, Ali Azmat, who used to sing for the band Junoon, released a Punjabi song, Bum Phata, kadi Lahore, Karachitae kadi FATA (A bomb goes off, sometimes inLahore, sometimes inKarachiand sometimes in FATA). Its lyrics juxtapose the menace of terrorism with the economic woes of people through lines like, “A bomb just burst/ There’s no oil, sugar or flour here.”

Bum Phata| Ali Azmat

Bum bum phata bum bum bum phata
Lahore karachi aur kabhi FATA
Here life is as fragile as a kite on a thread
Here is neither oil, nor sugar nor flour
Finish up the meat on your plate and 
don’t be offended
Come to me Raja, Chaudhry, Mian, Khwaja
Give me electricity and water
Don’t tell me stories
Don’t tell me of a king or queen, 
assure me of longevity

This year also saw three leading pop singers—Abrarul Haq, Shahzaman and Jawad Khalon—coming together to sing Ki Karan Daio (What are you doing), the anthem at Imran’s mammoth rally.

It’s funny how, when other avenues of popular discourse seemingly dry up, dissent finds its most concentrated form: the protest song. But it’s not as if the prevailing culture of violence and misgovernance has overnight inspired writers to pen satirical songs, a conclusion writers, particularly those of foreign origin, have reached. The sweeping popularity of the Brigade, aided by the catalytic effect of the Net, crossed over because it was a time of intense focus onPakistanin the West, but it draws on an old music culture that thrived on irreverence. As Rafay Mahmood, a Karachi-based journalist who writes on showbiz, says, “Look back to the ’90s to find a number of such bold songs and videos.

The 1995 video of Chief Sahab by Sajjad Ali allegedly targeted a certain ethno-political party and its workers. It is rumoured that in retaliation MQM workers abducted Ali and shaved his head…following which the singer leftPakistanfor good. But the event was never reported anywhere. Ali, who now lives inDubai, maintains in all his interviews that he left the country for personal reasons.”

Again, in 1996, Salman Ahmed and Ali Azmat of Junoon released a song, Ehtesab (Accountability), that was overtly political. Benazir Bhutto was the PM then. The video included footage of a polo horse dining at a luxury hotel, an obvious dig at the thoroughbreds her husband had. The song was subsequently banned inPakistan.
Kismat Apnay Haath Mein| ShahzadRoy

I am allergic to bullshit, 
Don’t commit atrocity or we will leave the alley
A few people have buggered the entire community
Take your destiny in your own hands
Those unlucky speak in unison
We have taken our destiny in our own hands
Don’t commit atrocity or we will leave the alley
At least you should have taken permission 
before buggering us.

In 2008, popstar Shehzad Roy courted controversy with his music video, Kismat Apne Haath Mein (Fate Lies in One’s Own Hands), in which a couple of prisoners, dressed in the Guantanamo Bay prison uniforms, conspire to escape from custody. One of them evades the death sentence because of load-shedding, but as soon as he leaves the jail precincts he is hit by a drone missile. The upshot: his escape as well as death was scripted by a white foreign agent (read the US).

Now another refreshingly different music group is Laal, which began to set the radical poetry of the late Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib to music. In 2009, it released the video ofUmeed-e-Sahar (Hoping for sunrise), which shows a traffic jam due to vip movements onKarachi’s Chundrigarh road. Caught in the jam is an ambulance ferrying a patient in critical condition. A man tries to clear a passage for the ambulance but he is beaten severely, provoking other waiting drivers to block the Chundrigarh road and stop the vip convoy. A tit-for-tat that should have resonance across the subcontinent. The ambulance, ultimately, does manage to leave for the hospital.

Laal is unabashedly leftist in its ideology. Lead vocalist Taimur Rahman says the group doesn’t play music to earn money, but to support various causes. He accuses the Pakistani musician of not doing enough to give back to the society: “Why not? We need to bring a positive change in Pakistan.” About his ideological orientation, Rahman says, “I believe in progressive thoughts…in communism, socialism, leftist thinking and feminism and that’s why we sing Faiz and Habib Jalib.” As you may have guessed, Laal is a no-no for local TV channels.

Despite the radical history of music in Pakistan, the Beygairat Brigade has given a shot to the lampooning genre. The fledgling group’s rising popularity has prompted political parties to seek them out to make music for their campaigns. All such requests have been turned down till now, though the group isn’t averse to political outfits playing their music in any pro-democracy campaign. Says stand-up comedian and culture critic Sami Shah, “Beygairat Brigade provides a counter-narrative to conservative notions of politics, history and society, advocated by the televangelists, conspiracy theorists and the right-wing electronic media. What better and more effective way to do this than by using satire and pop music.”

Film director Shoaib Mansoor credits the Brigade for bringing Pakistanis face-to-face with their moral credentials, as well as for providing mass appeal to the genre of satirical songs. But Mansoor points out, “While they are part of a Pakistani tradition where singers and satirists ridicule and castigate politicians in their music and lyrics, the ones before them could only reach out to a national audience…and that too to a small elite. Thanks to modern technology, the talented Beygairat Brigade has achieved a huge global audience.”

They are indeed a Pakistani version of Bob Dylan, minus perhaps the poetic imagery and drawl. They are not lacking in punch, though, and they have thrown open a window to a world in which boatmen row down rivers of blood, and everyone else is trying to retain some sanity.

Did Jigna Vora Get J.Dey Killed with Help of Chota Rajan?

Jigna Vora, a woman journalist, has been arrested and charged under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA).

Vora, 38, deputy bureau chief of The Asian Age, was arrested on November 25 in connection with the murder of veteran crime reporter J. Dey on June 11 this year.

Ten people, including sharpshooter Rohit Thankkapan alias Satish Kalia, have been arrested so far, most of them owing allegiance to underworld fugitive don Rajendra Nikhalje, better known as Chhota Rajan.

Jigna, a familiar figure on the courts and crime reporting circuits in Bombay, was picked up from her mother’s house in Ghatkopar and charged with IPC sections 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 3 (common intention), read with the Indian Arms Act sections 3, 25 and 27, in addition to MCOCA sections 3(1), 3(2) and 3(4). This makes it difficult for Jigna to be discharged even if the MCOCA sections are dropped later.

According to the police case against her, Jigna had passed on details about Dey’s address, the registration number of his motorbike—which he was riding at the time he was shot—and other information to Rajan via phone and e-mail. Based on Rajan’s conversations with a few of the other accused—during which he regretted ordering the shooting and mentioned Jigna as the one who had poisoned him against Dey—the police say she had brought to Rajan’s notice some of Dey’s stories early this year that were supposedly against the don’s interests.

Vora had sparred with Dey over exclusive access to underworld source and Rajan aide, Farid Tanasha, who himself was shot dead last year. Dey had a number of good sources in the Rajan gang, including access to the don himself.

“The arrest is not an indication of her guilt,” says Bombay police commissioner. However, a section of the police believe she is the link to help establish the motive behind the crime.

Relevant and salacious details of her custodial interrogation were being fed to the Bombay media all week: that she had four mobiles; that she had spoken with Rajan about a dozen times immediately prior to and after Dey’s murder; that she had been called by arrested accused Paulson Joseph to his flat from where she spoke to Rajan; the allegedly threatening SMS she sent Dey and so on.

Jigna’s lawyer Girish Kulkarni argued the case against her was “totally vague because the police didn’t know what exact role she played”. How then can she be charged under MCOCA, he asked. “Is she conspirator or abettor of the crime?” Her family and employers have stood by her, suggesting she was framed.

Speaking with underworld dons and sources is par for the course for reporters on the crime beat; besides, why would Rajan depend on her for Dey’s details when he has a gang of committed goons, ask a section of Mumbai journalists. Too many questions persist: why did she flip-flop in her statements; why did she not come clean on Joseph getting her to talk to Rajan all these months; why, if indeed, did she speak to Rajan a number of times if it was not for a story she was doing. But the most troubling question is: did she become a victim of possessing too much information on the underworld, the police and the nexus between them, information that she did not reveal as a journalist but information that threatens either the gang or the police or both?

Baby Born to Muslim Girl After Affair Ordered to be Given for Adoption

A baby born to a Muslim mother after an affair must be adopted to prevent the child becoming the victim of an honour killing, the Court of Appeal in England has ruled.

The baby’s mother, who is not married, was so ‘terrified’ of how her family would react to her affair with a married man and becoming pregnant that she ran away from home.

She then concealed her pregnancy by wearing loose clothes and travelling to the other side of town for her antenatal care.

Lord Justice Munby and Mrs Justice Black, along with Lord Justice Kitchin said that the child must be adopted

As soon as the baby – known only as Q – was born the mother gave her up for adoption.

Upholding a High Court decision, three judges ruled that Q’s father could not have his daughter to live with him because of the risk the baby’s maternal grandfather would track her down.

Instead, Q, who is now a year old, will be adopted.

The baby’s maternal grandmother had told police that if her husband found out about the child ‘he would consider himself honour-bound to kill the child, the mother, the grandmother herself and the grandmother’s other children’.

Lord Justice Munby, Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Kitchin said in a joint ruling that the child was at risk if she was not adopted.

They said if the grandfather discovered the affair ‘it would be a matter of intense almost unimaginable shame to him and his family’.

The couple who are adopting the child had been looking after her since December 2010.

They are also Muslim and from the same country as the mother, but from a different community.

The judges imposed unusually wide reporting restrictions banning the publication of all names and locations linked to the case because of the continuing dangers faced by mother and child.

The baby’s father – a married man known as F – had launched an appeal against the decision made by Mrs Justice Parker in the High Court last July.

She found there would be ‘a very significant risk of two and two being put together’ if the child went to live with its father because the baby was quite obviously not his wife’s child.

The appeal court judges ruled: ‘In the particular circumstances of this case, the judge rightly regarded the risk of physical harm to Q and M (her mother) as being of major importance.’

The court heard that although both the baby’s mother and father were Muslim, there was a ‘profound cultural difference’ between them.

Upholding Mrs Justice Parker’s decision to make an adoption order, the appeal judges said: ‘The mother’s evidence, supported as it was by her actions, and the evidence of (the father) and an experienced police officer, drove the judge to conclude that refusal of the order would carry with it a significant risk of physical harm. ‘In our judgment this conclusion cannot be criticised.’

The adopting couple, Mr and Mrs A, were ‘loving and devoted adopters to whom Q has formed a deep attachment’.

The couple were Muslims who had taken advice from their imam that they could adopt Q.

The judge had rightly concluded that under Islamic law and tradition ‘there would be no long-term harmful consequence in adoption’.

Conservative Republicans View Shariah as a Mortal Threat to America

Long before he announced his presidential run this year, Newt Gingrich had become the most prominent American politician to embrace an alarming premise: that Shariah, or Islamic law, poses a threat to the United States as grave as or graver than terrorism.

“I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in theUnited Statesand in the world as we know it,” Mr. Gingrich said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute inWashingtonin July 2010 devoted to what he suggested were the hidden dangers of Islamic radicalism. “I think it’s that straightforward and that real.”

Mr. Gingrich was articulating a much-disputed thesis in vogue with some conservative thinkers but roundly rejected by many American Muslims, scholars of Islam and counterterrorism officials. The anti-Shariah theorists say that just as communism posed an ideological and moral threat to America separate from the menace of Soviet missiles, so today radical Islamists are working to impose Shariah in a “stealth jihad” that is no less dangerous than the violent jihad of Al Qaeda.

“Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence,” Mr. Gingrich said in the speech. “But in fact they’re both engaged in jihad, and they’re both seeking to impose the same end state, which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of Shariah.”

Echoing some Republicans in Congress, Mr. Gingrich blasted the Obama administration’s policy of declining to label terrorism carried out in the name of militant Islam as “Islamic” or “jihadist.” Administration officials say such labels can imply religious justification for a distortion of doctrine that most Muslims abhor, thus smearing an entire faith.

But to Mr. Gingrich, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, the administration’s language smacks of the willful blindness of an earlier era. “The left’s refusal to tell the truth about the Islamist threat is a natural parallel to the 70-year pattern of left-wing intellectuals refusing to tell the truth about communism and the Soviet Union,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Shariah (literally, “the path to the watering place”) is a central concept in Islam. It is God’s law, as derived from the Koran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad, and has far wider application than secular law. It is popularly associated with its most extreme application in societies like Afghanistan under the Taliban, including chopping off a hand as punishment for thievery.

But it has always been subject to interpretation by religious authorities, so its application has varied over time and geography, said Bernard G. Weiss, professor emeritus at the University of Utah and an authority on Islamic law.

“In the hands of terrorists, Shariah can be developed into a highly threatening, militant notion,” Professor Weiss said. “In the hands of a contemporary Muslim thinker writing in the journal Religion and Law, Shariah becomes an essentially pacifist notion.”

The Arab Spring has set off a lively political and scholarly debate over the growing power of Islamists in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. But those are all overwhelmingly Muslim countries. The idea that Shariah poses a danger in the United States, where the census pegs Muslims as less than 1 percent of the population, strikes many scholars as quixotic.

Even within that 1 percent, most American Muslims have no enthusiasm for replacing federal and state law with Shariah, as some conservatives fear, let alone adopting such ancient prescriptions as stoning for adulterers, said Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, who spent a year traveling the United States and interviewing Muslims for his 2010 book “Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam.”

The notion of a threat from Shariah to the United States “takes your breath away, it’s so absurd,” Dr. Ahmed said. He sees political demagoguery in the anti-Shariah campaign, which fueled rallies against mosques in the last two years from Manhattan to Tennessee.

All of the Republican presidential candidates have been asked about the supposed threat from Shariah. Representative Michele Bachmann told the conservative Family Research Council in a November speech that Shariah “must be resisted across theUnited States,” endorsing moves by several states to prohibit judges from considering Shariah.

Mitt Romney said in a June debate: “We’re not going to have Shariah law applied inU.S. courts. That’s never going to happen.” He immediately added, “People of all faiths are welcome in this country.”

For Mr. Gingrich, concern about Shariah has been a far more prominent theme. He and his wife, Callista, produced and narrated a 2010 film on the threat from radical Islam, “Americaat Risk,” that discusses the danger of both terrorism and Shariah against a lurid background of terrorist bombings, bloody victims, wailing sirens and chanting Muslim crowds. (Mrs. Gingrich does say, at one point, “This is not a battle with the majority of Muslims, who are peaceful.”)

One Muslim activist who is shown in the film calling for “separation of mosque and state,” Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, said he appreciated Mr. Gingrich’s support in an ideological contest with large Muslim advocacy groups in the United States that he believes have an Islamist slant.

But Dr. Jasser, a Phoenix physician and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said non-Muslims like Mr. Gingrich were not the most effective advocates for what he believes is really a debate within Islam.

“Unfortunately, as long as a non-Muslim opens the discussion, whether it’s Gingrich or someone else, it’s going to hit a brick wall in the Muslim community,” Dr. Jasser said.

Mohamed Elibiary, a Muslim and an adviser to law enforcement agencies inTexasand to the Department of Homeland Security, is a conservative Republican who said he once idolized Mr. Gingrich. He said he no longer did.

He said the anti-Shariah campaign in theUnited Stateswas “propaganda for jihadists,” offering fuel for the idea of a titanic clash of faiths. Those who truly want to protect American values should talk to Muslims, he said, not demonize them.

“There are plenty of American Muslim patriots who will defend American freedoms,” Mr Elibiary said. “But you can’t be anti-Islam and find those allies.”

 

Benazir Was Colluding with Musharraf as She Appreciated the American Pressure on Him

by Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq

Professor Amin Mughal, in his remarkable paper, After Benazir Bhutto: Some reflections, read at a meet organised by the Campaign against Martial Law, Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS,London commented:

“I confess, in the least uncharitable terms, that I was never fond of Benazir Bhutto. In fact, I was inimical to her politics. In death, however, she has redeemed herself. In the imagination of the masses she has acquired a mystical significance that is destined to be a never-ending source of inspiration in their struggles ahead. Most authentic martyrs in history were reluctant to die. All of them were, however, prepared to accept death. Benazir went further. Her detractors have accused her of being foolhardy. That is not true. She only embraced what she had in the last days of her life come to perceive to be her destiny. Hers was an act of courage steeled in deliberation and schooled in the imagination. It matters who killed her, but what matters more is that she knew she would be gunned down. Had she escaped death that day, the suicide bombers would have done her in sooner than later. Yet, she decided to take the risk. Again, it matters whether she died of the gun wound or was later levered down into death. But what matters more is that she was there, facing a possible killer. She did not flinch”.  

This is perhaps the best tribute to Benazir Bhutto till today.

The act of great courage demonstrated by Benazir Bhutto praised by Amin Mughal and many others has changed the entire political scene of Pakistan for the worst. For resisting the agenda of forces of obscurantism—working on the dictates of neo-colonial masters—she lost her life. Her removal from the political scene paved the way for theUnited Statesto get rid of General Musharraf and install some elements more keen and willing to implement their agenda. Few analysts and scholars have tried to view her assassination from this perspective.

In her last book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy & the West, she “tried to trace the roots, causes, and potential solutions to the crisis within the Muslim world and the crisis between the Muslim World and the West”. Benazir, in this work has unveiled the agenda of neo-colonialists and the obscurantists. She has quoted extensively from the Quran to prove that Islam is a religion of peace, but it has been brutally abused by a handful of extremists throughout the Muslim history to create chaos and disorder. She traced the factors behind militant Islam and exposed the colonial and neo-colonial forces behind it. These views must have hit hard and annoyed the forces that want to keep the Muslim World in dark ages for their nefarious designs. They used their proxy—Islamic militants—to get rid of her.

In the wake of her brutal and ruthless assassination—still shrouded in mystery—there was great euphoria among Pakistani liberals over the presumed ‘return to democracy’. Dr  Sachithanandam Sathananthan, a Visiting Research Scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University School of International Studies, in his paper, The Great Game Continues, noted with concern that “they are yet to discover ‘Late Neo-colonialism’.  He argues that removal of Benazir and thereafter, easily maneuvered victory for Zardari in the presidential election “brought to ahigh pointthe tortuous process of regime change inPakistan. Anyone who has followed the ‘colour revolutions’ that installed pro-American rulers in Georgia (Rose Revolution, 2003),Ukraine(Orange Revolution, 2004) andKyrgyzstan(Tulip Revolution, 2005) could surely not have missed the tell tale signs”.

The theory propounded by Dr. Sachithanandam got credence in the wake of events took place after the assassination of Benazir. It was rightly highlighted by Dr. Sachithanandam that “the earliest foreboding surfaced in the backroom manoeuvres by theUSand British intelligence services to engineer panic about the security ofPakistan’s nuclear assets. It was a repeat of the duplicitous hysteria they generated over non-existent weapons of mass destruction thatIraqallegedly possessed. A carefully worded article, co-authored by former State Department officials Richard L. Armitage and Kara L. Bue, signalled the shift inUS policy. After formally acknowledging the then President Musharraf’s many achievements, the authors continued: ‘much remains to be accomplished, particularly in terms of democratization.Pakistan must…eliminate the home-grown jihadists…And…it must prove itself a reliable partner on technology transfer and nuclear non-proliferation.’ And the denouement: ‘We believe General Musharraf…deserves our attention and support, no matter how frustrated we become at the pace of political change and the failure to eliminate Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.’ Translation: Musharraf has to go”.

It was ‘Washington’s renewed interest’ in Zardari and Rehman Malik and not Benazir that forced Musharraf—once a close ally of Bush—to offer firm opposition to US Late Neo-colonialism to ravage Pakistan. According to Dr. Sachithanandam, “politically challenged Pakistani liberals — a motley crowd that includes members of human rights and civil liberties organisations, journalists, analysts, lawyers and assorted professionals — are utterly incapable of comprehending the geo-strategic context in which Musharraf maneuvered to defend Pakistan’s interest”. So they slandered him an ‘American puppet’, alleging he caved in to US pressure and withdrew support to the Afghan Taliban regime in the wake of 9/11 although in fact “he removed one excuse for the Bush Administration to ‘bomb Pakistan into stone age’, as a senior State Department official had threatened”.

In view of above, it is understandable why Benazir decided to join hands with Musharraf to resist US Late Neo-colonialism. American discomfort with Musharraf’s government was palpable by late 2003, after he dodged committing Pakistani troops to prop up the Anglo-American invasion ofIraq. When he offered to cooperate under the auspices of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), naïve Pakistani media and analysts lunged for his jugular, condemning him once again for succumbing to US demands. But in fact he nimbly sidestepped American demands: he calculated that diverse ideological stances of the 57 Muslim member-counties would not allow the OIC to jointly initiate such controversial action and thereforePakistan’s participation could not arise, which proved correct.

Benazir was fully aware of the fact that Bush Administration had been becoming increasingly hostile to Musharraf’s determination to prioritise Pakistan’s interests when steering the ship of the state through the choppy waters of the unfolding New Great Game, which the West — led by the US — has been manoeuvring to contain growing Russian and Chinese influences in Central and West Asia. She decided to work with Musharraf, precisely for resisting this agenda of Pakistan-hostile forces. She became the prime target of these forces and was hence eliminated.

Since then events show and prove that under the “chosen” leadership,Pakistanwould side with US and Britain. Benazir became victim of this Great Game in which her own party stalwarts betrayed her.  Hers has been a legacy of continuous struggle. Pakistanis need to continue her legacy of resisting the ongoing Great Game of US Late Neo-colonialism—controlling South Asian region through the bogey of Islamic militants and Hindu extremism with the ultimate aim of containingChinaand getting hold of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals.

Man Punches Nurse When She Lifted His Wife’s Veil

A Muslim man in France has been jailed after he punched a nurse who tried to remove his wife’s veil during childbirth.

Nassim Mimoune, 24, had already been expelled from the delivery room for branding the midwife a ‘rapist’ as she carried out an intimate examination of his wife.

But just as he spotted the nurse, through a window, taking off his wife’s burqa while the woman prepared to give birth, the man smashed open the locked door. He hit the woman in the face, demanding she replace the full Islamic veil.

After his wife gave birth to a baby boy, Mimoune was ejected from the hospital building by security guards in Marseille. He was later arrested for assault.

A judge in the southern French port jailed Mimoune for six months while saying: “Your religious values are not superior to the laws of the republic.”

20 Girls Raped & Filmed & Later Blackmailed by the Guesthouse in Peshawar

The busting of a gang, members of which belonged to respectable families but were involved in rape and blackmailing of young boys and girls, was made possible when a female student of the University of  Peshawar approached the local police following her rape and blackmailing by the management of a guesthouse on the University Road.

Police busted the gang involved in the rape and blackmailing of over 20 young girls from respectable and notable families who mistakenly landed at the guesthouse located on the University Road in the jurisdiction of the Tehkal Police Station. The gang also used to lure males through five female prostitutes and blackmail them after making their films through a hidden camera fixed in the doors.
A police official said a female student of the University of Peshawar approached the authorities of the capital city police and narrated her ordeal. She said she went to the guesthouse along with a male friend last week when she found her university hostel closed.

“The girl admitted that she was late and after finding no place, the two decided to stay at the guesthouse,” the official said. The official added that the boy had to run away when the management of the guesthouse threatened to hand him over to police as he didn’t have any legitimate reason to stay with the girl.

He was told that the management would return the female to her family. In his presence, the guesthouse managers arranged for her a taxi to take her home.

However, the girl told the police that after boarding the taxi she was brought to the same guesthouse as the taxi driver too was a member of the gang. She recalled that later one Khalil not only assaulted her at the guesthouse but also filmed the entire episode.

The girl was allowed to go the next morning, but was told to come to the guesthouse whenever she was called. Otherwise, she was threatened that the film would be circulated all over the city.

The victim after finding no other way to get the criminals fixed decided to approach the police. She also provided all the proofs she had against the gang.

“We have arrested the management of the guesthouse as well as the five prostitutes. The films have also been seized,” Superintendent of Police (SP-Cantonment) Mian Saeed Ahmed said.

He added that a case had been registered against the gang under Sections 371 A, B, 294, 4PO and 9C of the Pakistan Penal Code. The official said that all the managers and owner of the guesthouses in University Town have been called for a meeting where they would have to clarify that they were not involved in such activities. “I have made it clear that they would not be spared if such a thing happened to anyone in future,” said the SP Cantonment.

“The female student who approached us may have committed a mistake but what happened to her is shocking. The culprits need to be punished for ruining the lives of the youth from respectable families,” said Mian Saeed.

There have been reports since long that many guesthouses, hotels and rest houses in the city were not only being used as brothels but those staying there were later blackmailed through hidden cameras installed in different parts of the rooms. A number of such videos were later circulated through cellular phones and are available with the dealers of mobile phones sets.

Where is Bhanwari Devi, the Rajasthani Nurse?

Bhanwari Devi, a nurse said to have been in sexual relationships with some Rajasthan politicians, has disappeared mysteriously and nobody can find any trace of her.

Bhanwari was making stealthily videos of herself in compromising positions with ministers and other powerful figures to blackmail them. Investigators believe this is what led to her disappearance.

Mahipal Maderna, a minister who is seen with her in one of the videos that has surfaced, has had to resign. The whole affair, sleazy and scandalous as it is, did make for news.

P7, a Rajasthan news channel launched some six months ago, was perhaps the first to broadcast footage (on November 10) of Maderna and Bhanwari together. It is said to have paid a hefty amount to procure the footage.

Newspapers and magazines did not lag behind. They presented the affair in graphic detail, steamy headlines and all, making up for what they could not do in print by uploading the videos on their websites. No one waited for the opinion of forensic experts, who are yet to authenticate the footage. Instead of portraying it to evoke anger against the decay of morals and ethos, they cared only about the political aspect. They were voyeurs, violating all norms of dignity. The coverage initially portrayed Bhanwari as a victim; later, she was branded a blackmailer.

 

Prostitution Continues to Thrive in Heera Mandi

During the daytime, Heera Mandi just another street inLahore, with shops selling cheap shoes, hats, jewellery and other trinkets. But when the sun and the shutters go down, very different wares go on sale.

At night, as the grand and beautiful Badshahi Mosque looms in the backdrop, men bustle up and down the dusty street, peering through doorways which are shielded only by flimsy, dirty curtains. Amid the rowdy banter, the faint sound of bangles and ghungro can be heard tinkling to the beat of the tabla and the strum of the sitar. In other corners, you can hear feet thudding to lurid Lollywood beats. Inside the cloying scent of the agarbattis mixes with the stench of stale sweat.

As the sun sets, the women start getting ready for the long night that awaits them. Peeling off their shalwar kameezes, they squeeze themselves into tight-fitting clothes. Breasts bulging and stomachs protruding, they pile on layers of make up: powder and foundation to conceal their dark skin, rouge to heighten colour and eye shadow to adorn their eyes. Those trafficked from the Northern areas ofPakistanbear a fairer complexion, which automatically increases their worth in the market, explains Nadeem*, one of the local pimps in the district.

Nadeem claims that these girls come to him either of their own accord or are sold to him by their families.

“My family has been in this business for years,” he claims. “My father was a pimp, as was his father and all his other brothers.” He is in his mid-forties, with dark, beady eyes and flared nostrils that give his face a hawk-like appearance. He has a receding hairline and he scratches his over-grown belly every few minutes as he responds to queries, drawing attention to the big, jewelled rings on his sausage-like fingers. He laughs often, a deep guttural sound which gets amplified with every second as his paunch shakes to its rhythm.

According to Nadeem, his wife is in charge of taking care of his ‘employees’ and maintaining order within them. He happily narrates what he perceives as the good fortune of his wife at not having had any girls, and expresses no grief at the memory of the one that died as an infant. He proudly names all his three sons — Yaqoob, Abeer and Muzaffar — who help him in looking after his business.

“Regrets?” he asks, “Why should I feel regret or have any compunctions regarding my profession? It’s a bustling business and I am just catering to people’s needs. Isn’t it better that they come here instead of going out and raping unwilling women?”

I press him about the willingness of women who must surely have to endure horrid atrocities at some point or the other, and he answers with another question, “Would you rather they have their arms cut off or acid thrown in their faces and made to beg on the streets?”

He is not allowed to reveal the list of his clientele but smiles slyly and states that people from all social strata visit his girls and claims many of his clients are people who are well-known and educated.

“My girls are of the highest calibre. But I do have different rates for girls, depending on their age and physical appearance. In any case, they all know how to perform their jobs extremely well,” he says, while cleaning the dirt under his nail with his teeth. “The virgins, obviously, bring in the highest income, although they are not put on the market immediately. It’s a business and one needs to handle it in a shrewd manner to ensure optimum profit.

There is a special night when all the virgins make their debut as dancers. They then continue to dance every night for a couple of weeks. People regularly come to watch these tempting, untouched treats, and pick their favourite. In the end, whoever bids the highest, gets the girl he wants.”

He introduces his most recent employee: Nazuk. Her name means ‘delicate’ in Urdu but it hardly does justice to her withering, cadaverous frame. She is not simply delicate, but weak, desolate and completely lost. Her hollow cheekbones make her eyes look larger than they are and her dark circles give her a haggard look. Her nose has a distinct dent right at the bridge, but the eye is drawn to the large hoop she wears in her nostril with a gold chain extending to her ear. Her lips are thin and tightly clenched — perhaps formed that way from years of repressed anger and pain. Her long, frizzy hair reaches the end of her spine. She wears a long, flowing skirt with a bra-like top that glitters unceremoniously in the red and blue lights.  Multitudes of bangles bedeck her arms going up to her elbow, and when she walks, the trinkets around her ankles jingle noisily.

When she speaks, her voice is timid and her dialect distinctly different from the locals of the area. Her pimp leaves to give us privacy and to allow her to speak freely, but hovers within earshot. Nazuk appears to be in her twenties, but cannot recall her exact age and explains that she is from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. She is a mother of six, she tells me, and her eldest daughter is eleven years old.

“I studied in school till the eighth grade, but when I got married my husband did not allow me to study further,” she explains.

Four times her age, an alcoholic and drug addict, her husband got Nazuk when her father pawned her over to him in exchange for clearing his debt.

“He beat me daily and made life a nightmare for me. He wanted me to work and earn money to feed the children,” she continues in a monotone. “It was hard for me to work because I kept getting pregnant. When I was seven months pregnant with my last child, he decided to leave me. I begged him to stay and did everything he asked but that was not enough.”

Having given birth to her last child two months ago, she recently turned to prostitution. “It is hard for me to find a job because I have no qualifications and the ones that I could’ve gotten offered such meagre pay that I would not have been able to feed six hungry mouths.”

Nazuk’s uncle suggested this profession to her and allows her six children to live at his place as long as Nazuk keeps giving him part of her income. In just two months, Nazuk has been forced to indulge in various sexually deviant acts and subjected to sadistic beatings, being gagged, humiliated and gang raped by four men at a time. There are wounds and burn marks all over her body.

“It is not a job I want to do. But I have gotten numb to it all. My uncle has an agreement with my pimp and if I break it, there will be dire consequences. I do feel like ripping the skin off my body after every job, but I live in peace knowing that my daughters will not have to go through any of this since this will help me earn enough money to make sure they never have to endure what I have to endure.”

Nadeem’s employees are not just women. “I cater to everyone’s needs and guarantee satisfaction in every way possible,” he explains with a smile. “Once you see what my boys and girls have to offer, you will keep coming back.”

Not pleased with Nazuk’s narration of her life story, he presents Riaz*, eager to prove that the ‘majority’ of his employees are very happy with their lives.

“I started in this profession when I was 11,” says the clean-shaven boy, punctuating his sentence with a wink. He’s wearing a black shirt with red embroidery and a pair of jeans so tight they seem to be sewed on. He speaks in a low, mellifluous voice and keeps running his hand through his light-coloured hair, which flops to the corner of his eyes. Riaz is one of the many teenage boys who provide services to homosexual clients. He starts his business in the afternoon and the dealing reaches its peak in the evening.

Riaz was a victim of sexual abuse at an early age. When he was in the third grade, a neighbour lured him to his house by offering to give him his pet bird and then sexually abused him. As the youngster narrates his tale, he puffs on his hashish cigarette ‘to lessen his tension’. “I did not know what he was going to do,” he says in a childish voice, wrinkling his forehead.

Though he was not given the bird, he got Rs10 for sweets. The man, a taxi driver by profession, then started sexually abusing him on a regular basis. When Riaz tried to stop him, the man threatened him. “He told me that if I disobeyed him he would tell my father about what had happened, who in turn would have killed me,” recalls the boy with a laugh. He lets out a stream of pungent smoke from his mouth, and goes on with his story. The taxi-driver, a married man, made him popular in his crowd. “Every time they (the driver and his friends) used me, I got Rs20 to Rs40 as a reward,” the fair-skinned boy reveals. “Gradually I started enjoying it.”

At the age of 13, he had in effect been turned into a male prostitute, and would hire himself out for the whole night. Riaz had a good idea of the price he could fetch and, before he knew it, he would not pass a single day without selling sex. At the age of 17, his parents, disgusted with his behaviour, threw him out of their house and he sought refuge with Nadeem and his clan. He was happy with the knowledge that he was not only getting sexual satisfaction but also money. “It seems liked the ideal job!” he says with a giddy laugh.

Going back home was never an option and he does not want to do so, even if he is given the choice. “I am satisfied with my present profession,” he declares. His customers can be as young as 23 or as old as 65, and half of them are married. “Before going off with a customer, we smoke hash or opium which heightens the pleasure,” he claims with a smile.

As the night grows darker, the streets appear to become more crowded, and Nadeem, Nazuk and Riaz take their leave. For them, the day has just begun.

*Names have been changed

 

Female Circumcision, Also Referred to as Female Genital Mutilation Thrives Among Bohris

A Cutting Tradition
Dawoodi Bohra Muslims are Ismaili Shias and trace their origins to the region in and around Egypt, from where they might have adopted the practice besides other local customs.

In certain cafés close to medical colleges in Pakistan, and within the institutions themselves, students studying gynaecology speak of some unexpected sights they have seen.

“Recently, we examined a woman who complained of pain in her genital region. We were shocked to see when we examined her that she had suffered some mutilation of her private parts. I have read about these practices but I didn’t know they took place here,” Zeba Khan, a 4th year medical student, said.

Though female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) takes place, the practice is hidden, hardly ever spoken of, barely known about. Pakistan, for instance, is considered to be “free” [ http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_circ.htm ] of FGM/C, like a number of other Muslim majority countries in the region. Indeed, this view is widely held. “No such thing happens here,” Saadia Ahmed, a gynaecologist, said.

But there is evidence which suggests this widely held view may be inaccurate.

“I can still remember when it happened,” Zehra Ali, 22, said. She said soon after her eighth birthday, her mother “gave me a big bowl of ice-cream” and then led her to a spare bedroom where an elderly woman spoke to her kindly, had her lie down on the bed and do “a terrible” thing. Zehra says a small part of her clitoris was quickly snipped off, that she felt “some pain” but mainly a strong sense of being “violated”. She said the episode, which she “never forgot”, causes her problems “now that I am married” and that she needed counselling before she was willing to consent to sex, “for psychological not physical reasons”.

Bohra community
Zehra belongs to the Bohra community, a sect of the majority Muslim population which numbers some 100,000, according to official figures, and is based mainly in Sindh. The Bohras are among the few communities practising FGM/C in Pakistan.

Other groups which carry out the mutilation are groups with African or Arab origins, such as the ethnic Sheedi community [ http://www.sanalist.org/sana/newsite/pdfs/Sheedi%20Community%20of%20Sindh.pdf ]
] which numbers several thousand, came to the country originally as slaves during the 19th and 20th centuries, and is based primarily in Sindh. There has been little research on the practice among these groups.

Zehra believes that even today at least 50-60 percent of Bohra women undergo circumcision, involving usually a symbolic snipping of the clitoris. “In the past there was more mutilation, and I think 80-90 percent of women suffered it. More awareness has helped reduce the practice,” she said.

“I have seen females who have suffered `khatna’ as female circumcision is called. Sometimes there is merely a symbolic snipping of some skin, but in some women – especially those who are not so young, there is somewhat more extensive cutting,” said a midwife (she preferred anonymity) in the Tando Muhammad Khan District of Sindh, who has attended to Sheedi women. She said she herself did not perform circumcisions.

According to the WHO, FGM/C “includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons”. [ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/ ] It says an estimated 100-140 million girls and women worldwide are living with FGM/C, 92 million of them in Africa.

“Symbolic” cutting
Shershah Syed, a former president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who devotes his practice to serving deprived women, told the media [ http://www.newslinemagazine.com/2011/08/the-dark-side-of-custom/ ] he had come across cases in urban Pakistan where women have undergone the procedure.

“In Pakistan, with growing awareness of the effects of FGM/C, they are now doing it merely symbolically, with only a bit of skin being removed. But even so, I find it to be in clear violation of human rights. There is absolutely no scientific evidence supporting any medical benefit of the procedure. In fact, it can lead to health complications,” said Syed.

The WHO lists the string of complications that can arise from the procedure, including repeated infections, cysts, infertility, higher childbirth complications and the need for repeated surgeries.

“In our community, this practice has taken place for generations. The girls nowadays have it done in sterile conditions. It is rarely spoken of. It is just something the women know about and do,” said Raazia, 60, a member of the Bohra community and a grandmother. She says her granddaughters “will be safely circumcized.”

“The impact is not just on health, it is psychological too. Such practices leave deep scars, and inPakistan these have not been studied at all, because so little is known about the mutilation of women in this way,” said Aliya Rizvi, a psychologist.

In India, most of the community lives in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan inIndiaand inKarachiinPakistan. Population: 10 lakh inIndia. Are prosperous traders and well educated.

Most Bohras are under the control of the clergy, headed by the Syedna. Those who question the clergy’s authority find themselves excommunicated.

Bohra girls undergo genital mutilation when they are seven years old. It is a clandestine ritual unlike male circumcision that is publicly celebrated. No other Muslim sect inIndiaobserves this ritual.

The hood of the clitoris is cut off. This is followed by application of an antiseptic and an indigenous medicine called abeer that cools.

The crude mutilation of the clitoris exposes the nerve endings and is meant to discourage
masturbation and limit possibility of sexual pleasure from clitoral stimulation

The procedure is called khatna, it is carried out by select elderly women of the community and often without medical supervision, using just a razor

Little details are available of the extent of this practice, given the secrecy. There are claims, though, that some choose to go to hospitals to get it done.

Justified in the name of community traditions and religious sanction. Critics, however, say there is no mention of it in the Quran.

Online forums like Rage of Bohri Women are encouraging women of the community to speak up.

Khatna is a tradition the Bohras trace back to their origins in Africa, one they continue with because they see this as an attempt to stay true to their faith.

However, most Bohra women and men even today would rather keep this practice a secret rather than question a custom that is now universally seen as a gross violation of a woman’s body.

“There has to be zero tolerance for something downright degrading like this,” says Tasleem. “One can argue that there are certain health benefits to male circumcision, but for women there is nothing but pain. In fact, it’s pure gender bias because it’s meant to suppress a girl’s sexual desire (see info box). You don’t really castrate a man, do you? He can go on raping, that’s fine, but a woman must be under control.”

Tasleem herself was lucky to have had parents who spared her the pain and indignity, something her daughter can also thank Tasleem for. Very few Bohras have signed up so far for Tasleem’s campaign; most who have are non-Bohra Muslims and Hindus. It is an uphill task, for it’s not just conservative women who force circumcision on their daughters but, in at least one instance according to Tasleem, even a liberal woman based in Dubai, who even as she sends her daughter to an international school chose to bring her to Mumbai to be circumcised.

When contacted, Quresh Ragib, who handles public relations at the high priest’s office, flatly refused to discuss Tasleem’s petition. “I am not interested in discussing this non-issue. The real reason behind this petition is propaganda. They are just using you like tissue paper,” he said.

But even as some within the community may find the ritual abhorrent, they continue to perpetuate khatna because it guarantees support from the Bohra clergy and members. As one Bohra father put it to Outlook, many parents who choose not to circumcise their girls fear being excommunicated from a community that is closely knit under the influence of its clergy, which supports the practice but doesn’t enforce it directly. Not following traditions, like female circumcision, can also preclude important milestones in the life of a Bohra girl, like misaaq (initiation ceremony into adulthood) and exclusion even after death by not being allowed burial at a communal graveyard. “Who wants to take up a fight with the community?” he asks. “We just lie each time somebody asks us if we have got our two daughters circumcised.”

There seems to be no religious sanction for khatna. “It has nothing to do with Islam,” says Asghar Ali Engineer, “as the Quran doesn’t mention it. There may be some controversy about its mention in the Hadith but the fact is that it is an attempt to suppress sexuality so that women do not go astray.” One invalidated theory supports the idea that the Bohras, who are essentially a trading community and would travel often on long voyages, adopted this practice to prevent their women from having extra-marital affairs in their absence.

Another prominent Bohra Muslim and a noted social activist, J.S. Bandukwala, said that the practice stopped in his family with his mother. “The family felt it was not needed at all. It’s not mentioned in the Quran and even leads to unhealthy consequences.”

Indeed, more than just an abuse of women’s rights, khatna can also cause medical complications if executed in unhygienic conditions or by an untrained pair of hands wielding the blade. Bano, who is researching abuse of women in south Rajasthan for a project sanctioned by the University Grants Commission, is documenting actual instances where female circumcision did go horribly wrong. This includes a case where a Bohra girl had to be hospitalised inUdaipura few years back because she had bled excessively after suffering a cut deeper than what was intended. It reminded Bano of the time her childhood friend went through the same trauma.

Because it still tends to get done secretly, even Bano has little idea if conditions have improved at all. “One does not really know if the dais use the same kind of razor blade as in my time, if the blade is new or is it sterilised,” she says. In a paper titled ‘All for Izzat’ that she wrote in 1991, Rehana Ghadially, a retired professor from IIT-Bombay and who suffered the indignity herself, profiled a 75-year-old woman who used a “rusted barber’s razor duly blessed by the clergy” and a small stone to sharpen her razor. But even if it is medically supervised and hygienic these days, it doesn’t make the rationale for female circumcision any more acceptable.

The practice finds mention in a 2009 cable on the Bohra community from the US Consulate in Bombay. Detailing an interaction between six Bohra women and consulate representatives, the women reportedly “affirmed that female circumcision was practised in their community, ordained and supported by the Syedna’s decrees”.

Terming the practice “medieval”, the cable (among those made public by Wikileaks) adds that they “acknowledged that for males, the circumcision is for health reasons and that for women the procedure is to curb sexual desire and prevent wives from straying from their husbands”. Neelam Gorhe, a women’s rights advocate and member of the Maharashtra legislative council, is cited in the cable as someone who has come across such cases.

When contacted, Gorhe, also a gynaecologist, did affirm she knew women from “certain western states and a certain section of the society whose clitorises—and not just their tips—had been completely removed.”

According to her, the first step in trying to deal with this practice is to acknowledge that it actually happens.

“Rather than ban this with force, this has to go along with social transformation and be carried out in a manner that’s participatory and democratic,” she says. Tasleem’s petition, whether successful or not at this stage, may just provide the chance to begin a conversation on the subject.

 One Professor’s Horrible Experience

One Zenab Bano, a retired political science professor inUdaipur, recounts the horror of a day, although 53 years ago, when she was subjected to the agony. Barely seven years old then, she was told to go with her friend and her grandmother to a function for children at the end of which she would get a gift. “Before I realised what was happening, there was this woman pulling down my undergarment,” she says. “I had no idea what she was doing. It hurt a lot and I cried.” What Bano describes is the female circumcision ritual called khatna that most Bohra Muslim girls inIndiahad to go through then. And which is still a rite of passage for many even today.

What happened to Bano was never openly talked about within her household. “Whenever I asked my mother about it, she would say it’s nothing and that it’s done to all,” she says. The efforts of a 42-year-old Bohra woman from Mumbai, however, may finally bring the taboo subject to light, despite the cold indifference of orthodox members. Tasleem (who doesn’t want to reveal her surname), the mother of a 19-year-old girl, launched an online petition this October to try and get Bohra high priest Mohammed Burhanuddin to put an end to this archaic ritual. She sent her campaign material, including a large cardboard blade embossed with a photograph of a wailing girl being circumcised, to Burhanuddin’s office, but got no response. This campaign has now been picked up by Indian Muslim Observer, a website dedicated to Muslim affairs, for broader dissemination amongst other Muslims. According to Tasleem, khatna is still widely practised. “It still happens among rich, poor, the middle class,” she says. “I’d say 90 per cent still practise it.” Bohra reformist and scholar Asghar Ali Engineer too acknowledges that female circumcision is still very much prevalent. “But it would be difficult to ascertain the scale as it is a very hush-hush affair. In big cities like Bombay, it is done is hospitals right after birth and in smaller towns it is done around the age of six.”

Three Sisters Recall Their Cruel Circumcision

The three Ranalvi sisters—Ummul (50), Tasleema (49) and Masooma (45)—are among the courageous few who speak openly about the morbidity of being forced into circumcision when they were children. “You can’t imagine how it felt to have a part of your body violated, one that is so private, so gentle, so tender,” says Ummul. “It was very traumatic, very painful.”

Like other Bohra girls, they too weren’t told what exactly was going to happen to them. “It was a time when parents did not even know how to prepare their daughters. They just took you to somebody’s house and had it done,” Ummul tells us.

Recalling the horror, youngest sister Masooma too says the first sense of foreboding came when—like her sisters before—she too found herself in a dark, little room in central Mumbai. “It was a very scary experience. I was mortified,” she recollects.

It didn’t help that the sisters had a very progressive father. “My father was a rebel who had no fear of being excommunicated. Had he known about this, he would have completely stopped it. My mother was pressured into it by her in-laws,” says Masooma.

In a paper on the subject, retired IIT-Bombay professor Rehana Ghadially says that Bohra girls are circumcised around age seven as they are considered innocent enough not to understand what is happening to them but at the same time mature enough to continue the tradition if they have a daughter. “Being a child, they just coaxed you into it and by the time you understood, you had lost the opportunity,” says Ummul.

Looking back, the Ranalvi sisters also recall how the circumcision happened in a crude and unhygienic manner with just a blade and no medical supervision. “I’m told the practice has evolved somewhat, that the women are more trained and professional,” says Ummul. The three sisters themselves have gone on to marry non-Bohras. They have also spared their daughters the nightmare they themselves went through.

The sisters are also determined to lend their support to any campaign against female circumcision. They wonder why something so cruel should persist today. “It curtails a woman’s response,” says Tasleema. “Why subjugate her? There is no advantage for women. It has to be banned. But it won’t help if only those cut off from the community, who do not have to any more live in Bohra ghettos, speak up.”

While its proponents think it has religious and cultural sanction, those opposing it argue that it does not even find a mention in the Quran. This is besides the fact that it is extremely painful and is mainly an attempt to suppress the sexual desires of a woman to ensure that she remains loyal to her husband.

Several people signed up to the online petition asking Bohra high priest Mohammed Burhanuddin to have the practice stopped by issuing a fatwa against it. The signatories include Bohras too, which is despite the fact that few have so far dared to speak up openly inside the community on this subject.

One of them, Fardeen Bunglowala, a Dawoodi Bohra who runs an embroidery business in Mumbai and is one of the signatories, says, “It isn’t Islamic at all but cultural. The main thing to do now is to generate awareness about it and start talking about it. This way social pressure can be built up to influence the higher-ups in the community.” Other prominent signatories include filmmaker and writer Shama Zaidi and scriptwriter Anjum Rajabali.

Even writer-cum-activist Taslima Nasreen has expressed outrage on learning that female circumcision is practised inIndia. “I was a bit proud of the Indian subcontinent because FGM was not practised here. I’m shocked now. Such a heinous crime against humanity!” is how she reacted on Twitter. “The patriarchal world is so scared of women’s sexuality! It mutilates girls’ genitals, it forces women to wear chastity belts and burqas,” she added.

But can getting the government to intervene and pass a law banning this practice help? Shabnam Hashmi, who works for minority rights, feels passing a law isn’t that easy. “Look at what happened with Shah Bano when the courts in 1986 ordered she be given a paltry sum as maintenance. The entire conservative community opposed it. And this is nowhere close to the practice of FGM,” she says. “A law has to come after a certain level of awareness has been built up and this has to begin with women from within the community standing up against this humiliating ritual.”

While some have suggested petitioning the courts, Tasleem, who has launched the campaign, thinks winning over the Bohra cleric is the best way to end genital mutilation of Bohra girls. “People obey him unquestioningly. If he forbids this act, no one will dare go against his will. In fact, many carry this out thinking he wants it when he actually doesn’t enforce it,” she says. “This is a pre-Christ ritual fromAfrica, which, surprisingly, a progressive sect like the Bohras are still following. Abolishing it will hurt no one. It will save a lot of little girls from brutal pain and it will enhance the image of the whole community in the world’s eyes.” Even in Africa, certain governments, such as those ofSenegalandMali, have banned the practice following sustained campaigning. And the clergy in neighbouringMauritaniaplayed a proactive role in outlawing FGM. Will the local Bohra clergy too heed the voices of reason?