Chapter 3
1. Roger Cohen (2007). ‘The New L-Word: Neocon’ in The New York Times. 10 April. Blogger Matthew Yglesias defines neocons as people who ‘believe that America should coercively dominate the world through military force’; ‘believe in a dogmatic form of American exceptionalism’; and ‘favour the creation of a U.S.-dominated “universal empire”’. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04cohen.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Accessed 6 October 2007.
2. R. Shunmugasundaram in Can POTO Achieve what TADA could not? quotes the opinion of one of the dissenting judges: ‘There is a basic difference between the approach of a police officer and a judicial officer. A judicial officer is trained and tuned to reach the final goal by a fair procedure. The basic of a civilised jurisprudence is that the procedure by which a person is sent behind the bars should be fair, honest and just. A police officer is trained to achieve the result irrespective of the means and method which is employed to achieve it. So long as the goal is achieved the means are irrelevant and this philosophy does not change by hierarchy of the officer.’ http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/op/2002/01/01/stories/2002010100150100.htm. Accessed October 5, 2007.
3. Bhaskar Ghose, a former bureaucrat and active commentator, ridicules excessive concern with security in states of the Northeast. (Always only a corner of India, Frontline, 21 October 2005), but even liberal columnists eschew direct criticism of defense forces.
4. Madhur Singh asked rhetorically in Time Magazine, ‘Does India’s Media Go Too Far?’ Perhaps it does, but not where it should—in reporting human rights and exposing abuses. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1661070,00.html. Accessed 6 October 2007.
5. Stratfor—a strategic studies think-tank—chose to call the event A wake-up call in Maldives and highlighted the involvement of FBI in investigations even though no US national was involved in the attack. http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=296041. Accessed 6 October 2007.
6. This issue is widely discussed at blogs and discussion forums but less so in the traditional media. An introductory overview by Anwar Syed, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US, is available at www.dawn.com/2006/07/16/op.htm. Accessed 6 October 2007.
7. ‘What do you call an election when there are such doubts over the legality of the winning candidate that no official results can be announced? A Pakistani one, is the answer: on Saturday October 6th—after months of popular protests and constitutional confusion—Pakistani law-makers finally re-elected General Pervez Musharraf to be the country’s president; or maybe they didn’t.’ smirked The Economist in its web edition on the day results were announced. It cast doubt over the independence of the judiciary too. http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9926669. Accessed 10 October 2007.
8. The Report also indicts LTTE for ‘political killings, abductions, extortion and suicide bombings and suppression of dissent’. http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=4896. Accessed 7 October 2007.
9. In an editorial comment on disappearances in Sri Lanka, Himal Southasian blamed the government and LTTE for large number of people who apparently vanish in thin air without any trace. The commentary was appropriately titled: Not my fault. That’s the position of both parties to the violent conflicts. Himal Southasian, September, 2007, Vol 20 No 9, p. 7.
10. Discussed by Ali Haider and Len Pullin in Public Management Morality and the Employment Relationship in the Westminster style of Cabinet Government: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Empirical Study with Special Reference to Australia in The Indian Journal of Public Administration, Vol XLVII No 4, October–December 2001.
11. ‘General Musharraf may have said in recent weeks that he is “nobody’s poodle”, but there is no question that the judiciary is his poodle—or that of whichever general happens to be in power at the time.’ writes Baseer Naveed of the Asian Human Rights Commission in a scathing indictment of judiciary in Pakistan. http://www.rghr.net/mainfile.php/0825/1130/. Accessed 8 October 2007.
12. The issue is neither unique, nor new. Winston Churchill is believed to have said in the House of Commons: ‘The courts hold justly a high, and I think, unequalled pre-eminence in the respect of the world in criminal cases, and in civil cases between man and man, no doubt, they deserve and command the respect and admiration of all classes of the community, but where class issues are involved, it is impossible to pretend that the courts command the same degree of general confidence. On the contrary, they do not, and a very large number of our population has been led to the opinion that they are, unconsciously, no doubt, biased.’ Quoted by Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer in ‘The Majesty of the Judiciary’. http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/03/12/THE-MAJESTY-OFTHE-JUDICIARY/. Accessed 8 October 2007.
13. A. G. Noorani (2000) in ‘Courts and contempt powers: A case for a new approach in India to the law of contempt’, Frontline Vol. 17, Issue 08, 15–28 April. Noorani also notes selective use of contempt powers, ‘But Union Law Minister P. Shiv Shankar was let off despite his defamatory remarks against the Supreme Court specifically. “The Supreme Court composed of the elements from the elite class had their unconcealed sympathy for the haves; i.e., the zamindars” and “anti-social elements, i.e. FERA violators, bride burners and a whole horde of reactionaries have found their haven in the Supreme Court” (P. N. Duda vs. P. Shiv Shanker, AIR 1988 S.C. 1208).’ http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1708/17081010.htm. Accessed 8 October 2007.
14. Chhetriya Patrakar in Mediafile, Himal Southasian, October–November 2007, Vol 20 No 10/11, p. 100
15. Dr Ram Krishna Timalsena provides introductory text on PIL from Nepali perspective in Public Interest Litigation and the Protection of Human Rights in Nepal. http://www.interights.org/doc/WS2_Timalsena.doc (accessed 9 October 2007) while judicial activism is discussed in The Hon Justice Michael Kirby’s Bar Association of India lecture 1997. http://www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/kirbyj/kirbyj_indialt.htm. Accessed 9 October 2007.
16. Mollica Dastider (2007), Understanding Nepal: Muslims in Plural Societies, Har-Anand Publications, New Delhi. Attributed to Permanent Court of International Justice. p. 27. The word differ has been italicized to emphasize its many dimensions of difference, differentiation, discrimination and, arguably, sometimes even disdain as in, “Oh, but ‘they’ are different from ‘us’.
17. A review of the rights of minorities in Southasia finds unsatisfactory condition almost everywhere in the region. A realistic assessment of ground realities in Southasian countries is compiled in a report edited by Meghna Guhathakurta Including the Excluded: Rights of Minorities in South Asia, South Asians for Human Rights, Colombo, 2006.
18. A concise description of differences between the concept of rule of law and rule by law is available at http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/5-043000/what_is_rule_of_law.htm. Accessed 8 October 2007.
19. There are several instances of expedient laws in Pakistan such as Legal Framework Order, National Accountability Bureau laws and the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). NRO was opposed vociferously by civil society (http://www.dawn.com/2007/10/10/nat2.htm) but defended by government equally stoutly (http://www.dawn.com/2007/10/10/nat3.htm); both websites accessed on 11 October 2007.
(a) In Nepal, ‘Whoever we may be, we are all Nepalis’ is a politically correct expression, used by the power elite, that hides the fact that Nepalis of non-Nepali ethnicity have to prove their ‘Nepalipan’ at every step in order to be considered a Nepali. Nepaliya and Nepaliyata—terms that can be used to identify ‘political Nepali’ rather than mere ethnic ones—are yet to gain currency.
(b) http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/principles/what.htm has a more comprehensive list of characteristics of democracy.
(c) According to universal principles of democracy, Nepal has never been one. Even the Constitution of Kingdom of Nepal merely put the kingdom on the road to democracy—it has no provision for federal structure, and it fails to bring Royal Nepal Army unequivocally under civilian control.
(d) A more traditional discussion about majority-minority relationship is available at (accessed on 1 June 2005): http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/principles/majority.htm; http://www.safhr.org/minority_SA.htm; http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2002072700051000.ht.../&prd=th; and http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print?file=2002090300020200.ht.../&prd=op
(e) During Panchayat, prominent minority persons were chosen from Madhesi, Janjati and Newar communities to parade them as symbols of tolerant ‘Nepalipan’. However, they were often powerless to do anything for the community they ostensibly represented.
(f) Fascists prosecuted its minorities, Nazism eliminated them, Soviets and Chinese suppressed them, and Pol Pot executed whoever dissented. It’s unlikely that Nepal’s Maobadis would be any different if their dictatorship of the proletariat were to be established.
(g) http://www.fairvote.org/library/history/flores/conclusion.htm (downloaded: 19 January 2005)