INN Digest - Mar 24
Uma Ramamurthy
Today's News Topics:
Sen. Pressler criticizes Clinton Administration
India warns of arms race over Pakistan's arsenal
India says status of Kashmir non-negotiable
Ten people killed in Kashmir violence
Kashmiris greet first Red Cross team with strike
Pakistan honours dead British soldier for revolt
Overseas bankers, fund managers bullish on India
Report says India heading for double-digit inflation
Pakistani President sees threat from India
British Company to supply gas in Bombay
Bombay serial bombing trial set to begin - Judge
Indian State for extending ban on Lanka rebels
Beijing says Indian Tibet Conference `anti-China'
Indian Minister vows to fight inflation
`Jurassic Park' dubbed in Hindi for India
Teenage lovers hacked to death over caste differences
Experts, lawmakers cite Asian Nations for forced prostitution
God in heaven, not in Government
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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 18:56:10 -0500 (EST)
From: "Sukhjinder S Bajwa" <ba...@asd.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Sen. Pressler criticizes Clinton administration
#1 SEN. PRESSLER CRITICIZES CLINTON ADMINISTRATION
By DAVID BRISCOE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The author of a law that led to a cutoff in U.S. aid
to Pakistan said a proposed one-time exemption allowing the delivery of
F-16 fighter jets would give Pakistan vehicles to carry nuclear bombs.
Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., criticized the Clinton administration
Wednesday for proposing to temporarily lift a ban of aid to Pakistan
imposed under the so-called Pressler amendment, which allows sanctions
against countries with nuclear weapons programs.
The administration hopes to get Pakistan to put a lid on its nuclear
weapons program in exchange for delivery of the planes.
Pressler said the plan, which would complete the sale of F-16 fighter
planes Pakistan has already bought, appears to be an effort to help F-16
manufacturers at the expense of nonproliferation.
"It seems passing strange to me that if the administration is going to
offer something, some exemption, it wouldn't be some area of aid or
something or this sort rather than the F-16s," he said.
"Somebody has been very determined to get the F-16s delivered, whether
it's the state of Texas or General Dynamics or Lockheed or whoever,"
Pressler said, adding that the planes would increase the arms race in South
Asia.
"The whole thing seems out of context with things you stand for in
nonproliferation," the senator told Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Talbott defended the proposal.
"Gutting either the Pressler amendment or our nonproliferation agenda is
exactly the opposite of what the administration has in mind here," Talbott
said.
"Our intention here would be to use the leverage that we have because of
your amendment in order to try to achieve a verifiable cap on Pakistan's
nuclear weapons material production, in return for which we would seek
approval by Congress for some relief for Pakistan from some legislative
sanctions."
If Pakistan accepts the deal, the administration proposes to ask
Congress to allow completion of F-16 deal which has been held up since
1990, when Pakistan first failed to gain a presidential certification that
it was not producing nuclear weapons.
Talbott is travelling to both Pakistan and India next month and will
discuss the issue with both countries, officials said. Pakistan and India,
longtime rivals, both have advanced nuclear programs.
#2 INDIA WARNS OF ARMS RACE OVER PAKISTAN'S ARSENAL
NEW DELHI, March 23 (Reuter) - India, accusing its arch-foe Pakistan of
acquiring a threatening military arsenal, warned on Wednesday of a renewed
arms race in South Asia.
An Indian defence ministry annual report also expressed concern over
alleged plans by Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia to acquire more missles.
"Both the quantity and level of sophistication of the arms acquired by
Pakistan go far beyond its legitimate needs and can give rise to an arms
race in the sub-continent, to the economic detriment of both India and
Pakistan," the report said.
"We would also need to take note of the reported proliferation of
missiles in our neighbourhood, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran," it
said.
Indian officials said New Delhi had conveyed its concerns to visiting
U.S. State Department official Robin Raphel.
Washington has been pressing India and Pakistan, both capable of
building nuclear bombs, to hold talks to try to ease tensions.
The two countries have fought three wars since they won independence
from Britain in 1947. Two of the conflicts have been over the disputed
Indian-controlled state of Kashmir.
Indian defence officials say they are concerned by a recent U.S. offer
to resume a stalled deal to supply F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan.
Washington says the offer was part of its new initiative to help
promote security in South Asia, which could include controls on nuclear
weapons.
The proposal will be a focus of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott's trip next month to India and Pakistan.
The Indian defence ministry report expressed concern at the weapons
plans of other neighbours.
"China signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, but broke the
year-long global unofficial moratorium on nuclear testing by detonating an
explosion in October, 1993," it said.
"This is part of China's attempt at further upgrading its nuclear
capability."
The report also accused China and Pakistan of supplying arms to other
neighbours.
"Pakistan's enhanced military cooperation with Sri Lanka in recent
years extends to the fields of intelligence, military hardware supplies and
training.
"China has in recent years provided Sri Lanka with weapons which have
enhanced the fire power and mobility of the Sri Lankan armed forces."
"Sino-Myanmar (China-Burma) relations...in the field of military
cooperation, continued to grow," the report said.
"We are systematically continuing efforts to forge close bilateral
defence relations with the United States and other western powers.
"Joint naval exercises have been carried out with the navies of
Russia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand," it said.
#3 INDIA SAYS STATUS OF KASHMIR NON-NEGOTIABLE
NEW DELHI, March 23 (UPI) -- India on Wednesday told a visiting U.S.
State Department official the status of Kashmir is non-negotiable,
describing the disputed Himalayan valley as an "integral part" of India.
In a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin
Raphel, Indian Interior Minister S.B. Chavan said certain statements
emanating from Washington had "impacted adversely" on the situation in
troubled Kashmir, Foreign Ministry spokesman Shiv Mukherjee said.
Raphel sparked a major political storm in India when she was quoted as
saying in Washington that the United States did not "recognize the
instrument of accession as meaning that Kashmir is forever an integral part
of India."
Control of Kashmir, a strategic Himalayan region in south-central Asia,
is divided among India, Pakistan and China. A long-simmering Muslim
separatist movement in Indian Kashmir flared into an open rebellion in
early 1990.
Mukherjee said Chavan stressed that Kashmir is an "integral part" of
India and that New Delhi would not back down on the issue.
The spokesman said Raphel told Chavan the primary objective of her
five-day visit to India was to clear up "misunderstandings" that had been
created. Raphel said she shared the goal of improving relations between the
United States and India, the spokesman said.
Mukherjee said Raphel welcomed India's decision to allow international
human rights organizations and diplomats to visit Kashmir and the
neighboring province of Jammu.
The Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Raphel stressed the United
States would continue to urge Pakistan not to aid terrorists operating in
India and to resolve disagreements with India on the Kashmir issue.
India has accused Pakistan of waging a "proxy war" against it by
training and arming Islamic extremists, a charge Pakistan denies.
Raphel's talks in New Delhi will be followed by the visit of U.S. Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who will be in India April 6- 8.
Despite the irritants in U.S.-Indian political relations, economic ties
between the two countries have shown a steady increase. The United States
remains India's largest trading partner.
#4 TEN PEOPLE KILLED IN KASHMIR VIOLENCE
SRINAGAR, India, March 23 (Reuter) - Ten people have been killed in
India's troubled northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, five of them in a
battle between Moslem separatists and troops, the Press Trust of India said
on Wednesday.
The news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that
guerrillas hiding in a village in the frontier district of Kupwara opened
fire at soldiers who were engaged in search operations.
The spokesman said the troops returned fire, killing five separatists.
The agency said a Border Security Force soldier and another person
were killed in a clash between separatists and troops in Srinagar on
Tuesday. It said three bodies were recovered from different places across
the state.
It said militants set fire to the house of a former state minister and
a leader of the National Conference party, Abdul Gani Veeri, at Bejbehara
south of Kashmir. Nobody was living in the house at the time.
More than 15,000 people have been killed in a four-year revolt against
Indian rule of the region, its only state with a Moslem majority.
#5 KASHMIRIS GREET FIRST RED CROSS TEAM WITH STRIKE
SRINAGAR, India, March 23 (Reuter) - The first Red Cross team to visit
India's Jammu and Kashmir state was welcomed by thousands of
slogan-shouting demonstrators on Wednesday and some people staged a strike,
their leaders said.
A four-member team from the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) held rare talks with pro-independence groups fighting Indian rule in
the Himalayan region.
But the ICRC, allowed into Kashmir for the first time by the Indian
government to provide humanitarian relief, has maintained it was not
interested in politics.
"We do not want to be involved with any politics," Mianrad Studer, the
ICRC's Delhi-based official, told Reuters recently after India allowed the
group to visit Kashmir.
"Our mandate is clearly to provide humanitarian relief. We do not have
the same approach as human rights groups," he said.
Residents in Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, observed a
strike called by Moslem militants, paralysing traffic and forcing the
closure of shops and government offices.
Approval for the tour followed India's decision to allow four European
ambassadors to visit Kashmir last month and meet militant organisations.
India does not allow human rights groups to visit Kashmir where its
security forces, battling a four-year-old separatist uprising, are
frequently accused of human rights violations.
In the southern city of Anantnag, residents marched to protest over
the alleged rape of two women by members of the Indian security forces.
India denies charges of rape and torture of militants and their
families by Indian security forces, calling them propaganda, but New Delhi
says some incidents have occurred and that the guilty have been punished.
Indian troops are battling separatist violence by Moslem rebels in the
Himalayan region where, police and hospital sources say, over 16,000 people
have been killed so far.
#6 PAKISTAN HONOURS DEAD BRITISH SOLDIER FOR REVOLT
ISLAMABAD, March 23 (Reuter) - Pakistan honoured a dead British soldier
on Wednesday for joining a 1947 revolt in Kashmir that prevented the
disputed Himalayan region's Gilgit province from ceding to India.
Late Major William Alexander Brown's wife, Margaret Brown, received
the Sitar-i-Pakistan (star of Pakistan) award from President Farooq Ahmad
Khan Leghari for what Islamabad terms her husband's gallantry and
"outstanding service to Pakistan."
"It's really quite wonderful," the widow said after receiving the
award on Pakistan's national day.
Major Brown, from Melrose in the Scottish Borders, was Commanding
Officer of the Gilgit Scouts, a 600-strong force which patrolled Gilgit
area bordering China in 1947.
When the British withdrew from the province, Kashmir's Hindu Maharaja
of the Dogra dynasty, Hari Singh, decided to accede his predominantly
Moslem state to India.
Brown, then 24, placed the Hindu governor in custody, cut
communications and held Gilgit for 16 days before handing it to Pakistan,
who raised its flag there on November 3, 1947.
Brown's action won him hero-status in Pakistan but infuriated
Mountbatten, India's last British Governor-General.
Brown wrote: "My actions seemed to possess all the ingredients of high
treason. Yet I knew in my mind that I had done what was right." Brown died
in 1984 aged 61.
The award comes amid tense relations between Pakistan and India over a
four-year-old Moslem revolt in the two-thirds of Kashmir under Indian rule.
Pakistan rules the remaining third of the region, over which the two
countries have fought two of their three wars since becoming independent of
Britain in 1947.
#7 OVERSEAS BANKERS, FUND MANAGERS BULLISH ON INDIA
By Jeremy Clift
NEW DELHI, March 23 (Reuter) - Foreign merchant bankers and fund
managers are bullish on India, saying economic reforms are attracting a
surge of investment and spurring growth.
"There's a dramatic surge of interest in India," Christopher Reeves,
chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe Ltd, told a two-day conference on India's
economy.
About 1,000 overseas and Indian investment bankers, stock brokers and
company heads took part in the conference which ended on Wednesday.
"India is in a stage of lift-off," said Paul Zuckerman, director of
investment bankers S.G. Warburg & Co Ltd.
"The Indian economy has changed gears and the world is now looking at
us with interest," T.M. Vakil, chairperson of the Export-Import Bank of
India, told the conference organised by Euromoney magazine.
Merchant bankers said India's economic reforms, launched in mid-1991,
were attracting considerable international interest as decades-old
socialist controls were dismantled and the country integrated with the
international trading system.
Reeves said India's domestic market of 200 million middle-class
consumers out of a population of 890 million represented enormous
potential.
Fund managers said the country had a developed stock market, a robust
political system and large natural resources, even though bureaucratic
controls continued in some cases to stifle enterprise and corruption was
widespread.
"India has a good legal framework, far stronger than Eastern Europe,"
said Zuckerman.
"Today in China you may not find the same security, the same
assurances, that are provided by the legal system in India," said Aditya
Birla, chairman of Grasim Industries Ltd, one of the country's largest
private-sector companies.
The economy is picking up after a severe balance of payments crisis in
mid-1991 forced the government to initiate a bold liberalisation programme
that has opened up an economy which for four decades strived more for
self-reliance than modernisation and competing internationally.
The opening of the country's 22 stock markets to foreign institutional
investors in September 1992 resulted in $1.5 billion in foreign funds
flowing into the bourses.
Overseas investors have also bought $2.7 billion of Indian overseas
equity and Eurobond issues since the first was launched in 1992. More than
40 more issues worth $4 billion are in the pipeline, fund managers say.
While the rise in U.S. interest rates might slightly dampen interest
in Indian equities listed abroad, Reeves said he did not think it would
staunch the flow of funds into emerging markets, particularly India.
Because the Indian market has been closed to overseas investors for so
long, most overseas funds were underweight in Indian stocks, bankers said.
Government speakers at the conference, including Finance Minister
Manmohan Singh, stressed that the reforms were irreversible.
In a keynote address on Tuesday, Singh tried to address concerns among
some investors that the government risked a renewed bout of inflation
because of a sharp rise in the country's fiscal deficit.
"Inflationary expectations will not be allowed to gain further
strength," he said.
He said the government was determined to keep a strict vigil on
spending.
In a review of the economy, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on
Wednesday warned that Indian inflation could creep back into double digits
from its present level of around nine percent.
#8 REPORT SAYS INDIA HEADING FOR DOUBLE-DIGIT INFLATION
By NEELAM JAIN
NEW DELHI, March 23 (UPI) -- The annual inflation rate this year is on
the threshold of reaching into the double digits, warned a report issued
Wednesday by India's federal bank.
The Reserve Bank of India report expressed concern about a sustained
rise in the inflation rate, noting that the Wholesale Price Index for all
commodities increased by 8.2 percent in 1993-94 compared to 6.7 percent in
the corresponding period of the previous year.
The 8.2 percent inflation rate put out by the Finance Ministry in the
last week of January was revised to 9.1 percent in the first week of March.
Experts said that even the revised rate is an underestimation because
the latest calculations are provisional estimates that tend to 1.5 percent
under the actual inflation rate.
India's Opposition parties have criticized the government's annual
budget presented to the Parliament in February as inflationary, but the
government claimed the inflation rate would not exceed the then level of 8
percent.
The budget proposals produced and increase in the price of most
commodities.
Additional increases are expected when the budget proposals take effect
in April and could push the inflation rate above 10 percent.
The higher-than-anticipated deficit for the current year could increase
inflationary pressures. The deficit is expected to be 7.3 percent of the
Gross Domestic Product at the end of March compared to the 4.7 percent that
had been predicted.
Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, however, said the nation's food stocks
and foreign exchange reserves of $13 billion could offset price
fluctuations
#9 PAKISTANI PRESIDENT SEES THREAT FROM INDIA
By ANWAR IQBAL
ISLAMABAD, Mach 23 (UPI) -- Pakistan has no choice but to strengthen its
defenses against possible threats from neighboring India, President Farooq
Leghari said Wednesday.
Leghari, addresssing the joint services parade on Pakistan Day, said
Pakistan improving relations with India is not possible until the two
resolve a longstanding dispute over the Himalayan valley of Kashmir.
The parade is an annual event marking the movement begun in 1940 by
Muslims seeking a separate homeland. Seven years later, the British
colonial government partitioned the Indian subcontinent and created
Pakistan.
"We have exemplary relations with China and excellent relations with
other neighbors except India. The relations can't improve unless India
grants the right of self-determination to the people of Kashmir," Legari
said in his presidential address, which traditionally sets official policy
for the remainder of the year.
"Unfortunataely, India does not realize the importance of settling this
dispute," said Leghari, referring to the Kashmir dispute that has prompted
two wars between India and Pakistan since 1947.
"Pakistan supports the Kashmiri demand for self-determination,
guaranteed by a U.N. resolution and will continue to do so," Leghari said.
Pakistan contorls about 35 percent of Kashmir, India about 45 percent
and China 20 percent.
A long simmering Muslim separatist movement in Indian Kashmir flared
into an open rebellion in early 1990. Since then, more than 3,000 people
have been killed by official accounts.
India repeatedly has accused Pakistan of training and arming the
Kashmiri guerrillas. Pakistan denies the charge.
"Despite economic hardships and pressures from some outside powers, we
will continue to build up our defense because we know that economic
progress is not possible without a strong defense," Leghari said at the
parade, at which Pakistan displayed sophisticated weaponry in its defense
arsenal.
"We will continue to seek help from our friends to boost our defense
production," Leghari said.
#10 BRITISH COMPANY TO SUPPLY GAS IN BOMBAY
NEW DELHI, March 22 (UPI) -- British Gas will supply natural gas to
users in western Indian city of Bombay as part of a $39.89 million joint
venture with the Gas Authority of India Ltd., an Indian government
spokesman announced Tuesday.
The spokesman said a decision for the joint venture by the two companies
was taken during Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's meeting with
his British counterpart John Major in London in the second week of March.
The gas is to be piped to Bombay from offshore and supplied to 600, 000
domestic, commercial and industrial users in the city, the spokesman said.
The approval for the project was given at a cabinet meeting of the Rao
government Tuesday.
About 1.5 million cubic meters of gas will be available for the project,
the spokesman said.
Pursuing a radical program of economic liberalization, Rao's government
is gradually opening key areas -- including mining, oil and power -- to
foreign investment.
One of the largest state-owned enterprises was partially privatized by
turning the Oil and Natural Gas Commission from a government agency into a
corporation.
#11 BOMBAY SERIAL BOMBING TRIAL SET TO BEGIN - JUDGE
BOMBAY, March 22 (Reuter) - Bombay's biggest-ever trial can finally get
underway after a prison room was enlarged to accommodate the 145 people
charged over a serial bombing that killed 260 people a year ago, a court
was told on Tuesday.
Trial judge Jayendra Narayan Patel said in a report to the Bombay High
Court that the room was now big enough to hold the accused.
The group will be accompanied by 60 lawyers to the trial at the Arthur
Road jail in the city, India's commercial capital.
The government has been criticised for delaying the trial, held up by
defending lawyer T.H. Sardar's petition charging that a fair hearing could
not be conducted unless the room was made bigger.
"Legal experts are shocked that the trial has yet to begin. They feel
that given the nature of the offence, things should have moved much
faster," Bombay's Independent daily has said.
Thirteen bombs exploded across Bombay on March 12, 1993, in an attack
police believe was to avenge the riots that had broken out in India in
December, 1992, and January, 1993.
Over 2,000 people, mainly Moslems, died in the riots, sparked by the
destruction of a Moslem shrine in the northern town of Ayodhya by Hindu
zealots who believed it stood on the birthplace of the deity Rama.
Papers documenting the charges ran to 9,392 pages for each accused,
and were dragged into court in sacks for a preliminary hearing that
reflects a cross-section of Bombay's celebrities.
Among the accused, film star Sanjay Dutt is out on bail, and Dawood
Ibrahim, accused by the police of running a multi-million dollar crime
empire in Bombay, is among 44 who have fled India.
#12 INDIAN STATE FOR EXTENDING BAN ON LANKA REBELS
(Eds: one name Jayalalitha is correct)
MADRAS, March 22 (Reuter) - The south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, once
a haven for Sri Lanka's separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),
said on Tuesday it wanted a ban on the organisation in India extended for
two more years.
"The ban on the LTTE expires in May this year and we want it to be
extended by two more years. But despite our repeated pleas there has been
no response from the central government," Chief Minister Jayalalitha told
the state assembly.
She denied allegations, made by her political rivals including the
Congress party of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, that she was not keen
to stop the LTTE, accused of plotting the 1991 assassination of former
prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
India banned the LTTE, the largest and the most dangerous of Sri
Lanka's Tamil separatist groups, earlier this year after its leaders were
accused of plotting the assassination.
Prosecutors say Gandhi was blown up by a Tamil woman suicide bomber at
an election rally in Tamil Nadu.
The LTTE denied any involvement, but its leader, Velupillai
Prabhakaran, is facing trial in absentia in a Tamil Nadu court, accused of
plotting the murder.
#13 BEIJING SAYS INDIAN TIBET CONFERENCE `ANTI-CHINA'
BEIJING, March 22 (Reuter) - Beijing on Tuesday accused some members of
India's parliament of "colluding with the international anti-China force"
by hosting a conference on Tibet last week.
The Foreign Ministry said the World Parliamentarians Conference on
Tibet, which ended in New Delhi on Sunday calling on the world to support
the exiled Dalai Lama, was "anti-China clamour" that should have been
stopped by the government.
"(It) was initiated by a small number of Indian parliamentarians in
collusion with the international anti-China force," a ministry spokesman
told the official Xinhua news agency.
"They openly trumpeted for 'liberation of Tibet' on the ground that
there were human rights problems in Tibet. This anti-China act and gross
interference in China's internal affairs has aroused great indignation of
the whole Chinese people including the Tibetan compatriots.
"We sternly condemn the anti-China clamours made at the meeting. We
deeply deplore that such anti-China political activities had not been
forestalled on the territory of India," he said.
Representatives from 52 countries attended the conference, which
opened amid charges that Indian government authorities had attempted to
scuttle the meeting by denying visas to some participants.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, has lived in India since an
unsuccessful uprising against Chinese rule forced him to flee his homeland
in 1959.
#14 INDIAN MINISTER VOWS TO FIGHT INFLATION
By Jeremy Clift
NEW DELHI, March 22 (Reuter) - Indian Finance Minister Manmohan Singh
said on Tuesday that inflation would not be allowed to gain further
strength.
"This challenge will be met," he said, speaking about worries that
inflation could creep back up to double digits.
"Inflationary expectations will not be allowed to gain further
strength," Singh added in a speech at the opening of a two-day conference
on the Indian economy, organised in New Delhi by Euromoney magazine.
The annual inflation rate rose to 9.05 percent in the week ended March
5, crossing the nine-percent mark for the first time in 69 weeks.
The inflation rate began falling from a high of almost 17 percent in
August 1991 after the government initiated a series of economic reforms in
July that year.
The annual rate at the end of the 1992/93 fiscal year ending in March
1993 was seven percent against 12.8 at the end of the 1991/92 year.
Singh said India now had foreign exchange reserves of more than $17
billion and food grain stocks of almost 23 million tonnes. The exchange
reserves were equivalent to seven months of imports.
He said if necessary the government would use the foreign exchange to
import supplies of essential commodities to stabilise prices.
Last week the government allowed sugar imports to check rising prices
because domestic production was expected to fall by 200,000 tonnes in the
crop year ending in September.
Singh also said the government would strictly control its own
spending.
He said the first phase of India's three-year-old reform programme was
almost complete.
The budget for fiscal 1994/95 was designed to stimulate growth,
restructure taxation and integrate the economy with the global trading
system, he said.
Singh said the reforms had given the country new confidence and Indian
industry, protected for almost five decades, had to learn to compete
internationally.
"Indian industry has to shed its inferiority complex. I believe Indian
industry is fully capable of meeting the global challenge."
In the current year, India will bring in $2 billion in foreign direct
and portfolio investments in addition to $3 to $3.5 billion raised on the
Euroissue market by Indian companies.
The compared with slightly more than $500 million in total foreign
investment in fiscal 1992/93.
#15 `JURASSIC PARK' DUBBED IN HINDI FOR INDIA
NEW DELHI, March 22 (Reuter) - The dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park," Steven
Spielberg's international blockbuster, will soon be hissing and roaring for
speakers of India's main language Hindi, the Times of India said on
Tuesday.
The Hindi version of the film which became one of the biggest-ever
box-office successes will be released in Indian cinemas on April 15, it
said.
The English version of the Paramount production will open
simultaneously in New Delhi.
Uday Kaushik, Paramount's distributor for India, told the newspaper
the film studio wanted to capture the huge Indian audience that has not
responded to quality Hollywood films.
Most such films arrived late and in only a few cities, but last year
the government eased the rules on importing foreign films.
Jacinto Fernandes, Paramount's marketing manager, told the newspaper
the Hindi version had been dubbed in Bombay, India's own Hollywood which
produces more than 400 films a year.
Many more U.S. film companies are likely to follow Paramount and dub
their releases in Hindi if the Jurassic experiment proves successful,
Fernandes said.
#16 TEENAGE LOVERS HACKED TO DEATH OVER CASTE DIFFERENCES
NEW DELHI, March 23 (March 23) UPI - Two teenage lovers in a north Indian
village were hacked to death by relatives who did not approve of the affair
because the boyfriend was from a lower caste than his girlfriend. The
killing reportedly had the approval of the village.
#17 EXPERTS, LAWMAKERS CITE ASIAN NATIONS FOR FORCED PROSTITUTION
WASHINGTON (MARCH 23) DPA - U.S. lawmakers and human rights activists said
Tuesday that hundreds of thousands of women and children are forced into
prostitution worldwide and that the problem is most serious in eight Asian
nations.
The countries cited in testimony before a House of Representatives
Foreign Affairs subcommittee were Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Taiwan.
Congressman Joseph Kennedy said although the exact number of women and
children engaged in prostitution in those countries was not known,
children's advocates estimate as many as 40,000 girls in the Philippines,
800,000 in Thailand, 70,000 in Taiwan and 400,000 in India and 30,000
(mostly boys) in Sri Lanka were involved in the sex trade.
"In Thai brothels, 20,000 Burmese women and children are held as virtual
slaves ..." said Tom Lantos, chairman of the subcommittee on International
Security, International Organisations and Human Rights.
"This trafficking in human beings takes place with the complicity of
Thai police and border officials. The military dictgatorship in Burma not
only allows, but profits from this brutalisation of its most defenceless
citizens."
The Embassy of Thailand in Washington later responded to Lantos'
statement by reiterating the government's policy to"eliminate child
prostitution completely and unequivocally".
Philippine Embassy spokesman Jose Ebro noted his government takes the
issue seriously and has "moved aggressively" against it.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 07:59:28 -0600 (CST)
From: ramp...@ukraine.corp.mot.com
Subject: God in heaven, not in government
#18 GOD IN HEAVEN, NOT IN GOVERNMENT
The Economist
March 19, 1994
DELHI
A year ago it seemed that militant Hinduism of the kind espoused by the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was an idea whose time had come. But a
Supreme Court judgement on March 11th suggests that its time may have
gone: religious militants may never again be able to come to power, at
either state or national level.
After Hindu fanatics demolished the mosque at Ayodhya in December 1992,
Narasimha Rao, the prime minister, dismissed BJP governments in four
states and imposed direct rule from the centre. The legality of these
actions was questioned, and the High Court in one state struck down the
government's dismissal. The Supreme Court has now reversed that ruling,
holding that secularism is a basic feature of the Indian constitution,
and that any state government breaking the principle of secularism can
be sacked by the central government.
This could change the contours of Indian politics. In state elections
last autumn, the BJP toned down its strident Hinduism, and lost three
of the four states. Hardliners in the party have since been arguing
that the BJP needs to revive the religious issue if it is to regain its
momentum in the two years before an election is due. The Supreme Court
ruling has put paid to that idea.
Moderates within the BJP, including L.K.Advani, the party president,
have been strengthened by the court verdict. They will still seek to
use Hindu nationalism as a vote-getter, but without launching campaigns
explicitly directed against Muslims. There is a good chance, then, that
Indian politics will become more peaceable than it has been in the past
few years.
Yet some confusion about the judgement remains. How secular is secular?
Can the rulers in Delhi sack any state government which insists that
religion and politics are inseparable? That might include the Sikh
party, the Akali Dal, which has often run Punjab in the past; whoever
wins any future election in the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir; and
the Indian Union Muslim League, which has often been part of ruling
coalitions in Kerala.
At the same time as bolstering secularism, the Supreme Court has
greatly reduced the power of the central government to sack state
governments at will. This power has been used more that 100 time since
1947. The Supreme Court has decided that such dismissals are subject to
judicial review, and declared invalid the central rule declared in
Nagaland in 1989, Karnataka in 1989 and Meghalaya in 1991.
In future the central government will need a recommendation from the
governor of the state and the agreement of both houses of Parliament to
dismiss a state government, and the courts will be able to revive
dissolved assemblies. So the verdict is sobering not only for the BJP
but also for the Congress party, which usually runs central government
and has misused its power there for decades. For other Indians it
should be encouraging, for it constrains the politicians whose excesses
have pushed India towards violence and disorder.
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