BUDDHISM IN PRE CHRISTIAN EUROPE

The history of Buddhism in the Western world goes back to a period before the Christian era. First there were those contacts and inter-cultural influences which gave Buddhism a hearing in the world into which Christianity was born and developed. Secondly, there were outstanding scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who presented Buddhism to the Western world through editions and translations of Buddhist scriptures and their research. Finally, certain misrepresentations of Buddhism which persist in the minds of Westerners need to be removed and a brief positive account of what Buddhism has to offer to our modern world presented.

The Buddha lived in India in the sixth century B.C. The first historical and important confrontation between the classical East and the classical West took place in the fourth century B.C. when Alexander the Great invaded India. He was no ordinary soldier. As a pupil of Aristotle, he deeply appreciated cultural values, and in his expedition was a large number of scholars and artists for cultural exchanges. It is reasonable to suppose that the knowledge of Indian culture these Greek intellectuals and artists took back to their country included some acquaintance with Buddhism. As a result of this meeting of East and West, diplomatic relations were established and maintained between several Greek rulers and India's Court of Pataliputra (modern Patna), the capital of the Maurya Empire.

In the third century B.C., the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka of India, sometimes described as the Buddhist Constantine, in three of his Edicts (Rock Edicts II, V and XIII), engraved on rocks and still extant, declared that he had established a ministry of religious affairs (called Dharma-mahamatra) to spread the Dharma and to promote moral and religious life among the people, and that he had sent successful 'Missions of Piety' to some Greek territories in addition to various parts of his own empire. He mentions by name five Greek kings to whom these missions were sent. They have been identified as Antiochus II of Syria (261-246 B.C.), Ptolemy II of Egypt (285-247 B.C.), Antigonas Gonatas of Macedonia (276-246 B.C.), Magas of Cyrene (300-258 B.C.) and Alexander of Epirus (272-258 B.C.). There can be no reasonable doubt that Asoka's envoys' or 'missionaries' (Duta) spread a knowledge of Buddhism in these Greek territories, where Judaism was already known.

A few years ago an Edict of Asoka in both Greek and Aramaic languages was discovered in Afghanistan. (It is interesting to note that Aramaic was the language of Christ.) Very recently another Edict in Greek only, not as yet published, was discovered in the same country. The contents of these Edicts are more or less the same as those of Asoka's 'Edicts of Dharma' (Dharmalipi) discovered in India. It is now believed that almost all Asoka's Indian Edicts were published simultaneously in Greek too for the benefit of Greek speaking peoples.

'The Questions of Milinda' (The Milinda-panha), the well-known Buddhist text in Pali language written about the first century after Christ (A.C.), reports a discussion on some important Buddhist doctrinal problems between a king named Milinda and the Buddhist scholar-saint Nagasena. This king has been identified as the Greek king Menandros, who ruled over the north?western part of India in the first century B.C.

' The Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka' (The Mahavamsa), written in the fifth century A.C., but based on earlier material, says that in the first century B.C. a delegation of Buddhist monks from the Greek city of Alexandria (Yona-nagara-Alasanda), led by the Greek Elder Dhammarakkhita the Great, attended the inauguration ceremony of the Great Stupa (now called Ruvanvali-saya), at Anurdhapura in Sri Lanka. Whether this refers to Alexandria in Egypt or some other Alexandria, it was a Greek city where an important Buddhist community existed.

Clement of Alexandria, one of the 'early Church fathers', in the closing decade of the second century A.C., says that among the 'barbarians' whose philosophy came to Greece were 'those who obey the precepts of Buddha'.

Numerous scattered references like these indicate the existence of Buddhism in the West in those early days. There should be no doubt as to the Buddhist influence on the Greek world and on early Christianity. The Christian monastery itself seems to have been influenced by the Buddhist monachism. It is well-known that Buddhists were the first in history to establish and organize cenobitic monasteries. Yet, curiously, no documents pertaining to Buddhism in the West in those early days are to be found today. One wonders whether they were destroyed by nature or perished at the hand of narrow?minded fanaticism. The influence of Buddhism and Indian thought on Western culture especially during those formative Christian centuries would provide serious students with numerous subjects of research.

After a silence of many centuries, the West began to hear of Buddhism again about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Christian missionaries who went from Europe to the East sent back reports which understandably were biased and misleading, full of prejudgements and misunderstandings. But the valuable contributions made by some Christian missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ought not to be forgotten.

The serious study of Buddhism began in the West in the early nineteenth century. If what follows should seem to be no more than a bead?roll of the names of those to whom the Western world today owes its knowledge of the Buddha and his teaching, attention has to be drawn to those who founded the study of Buddhism in faculties and universities all over the world.

A summary of the nineteenth century advance in Western studies of Buddhism must begin with the German philosopher Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who awakened an interest among Western philosophers and intellectuals through his references to Buddhism which he greatly admired. But the credit for initiating the systematic and scientific study of Buddhism goes to the French Orientalist Eugene Burnouf (1801-1852) with the publication in 1826 of his pioneer work Essai sur le Pali, in collaboration with the German scholar Lassen. (Among his other works should be mentioned L'Introduction d I'Histoire du Bouddhisme indien (1844) and his translation of the well-known Mahayana Buddhist Sanskrit sutra called Saddharma-pundarika (1852).) Among Burnouf's eminent pupils was the German Indologist Max Miiller. One may consider Burnouf as the father of Buddhist studies in the West.

Devyani's Curse

 

The despicable treatment of Devyani Khobragade, Indian Deputy Consul general in New York, should be another wake up call for India and talk-circuit liberals. If you do not have the means to project power effectively, the world will walk all over you. It is good that India is in a mood to retaliate, but it is important for us to persist with it long after this is over. Moreover, we should equip ourselves with more laws to target foreign countries that use their domestic laws to blackmail or humiliate us. We should not take such affronts lying down anymore.

In a limited sense, the transgressions of US minimum wages law by Khobragade will draw the usual Indian liberal nonsense: if we are in contravention of their law, we are the guilty party. Worse, some of us will also express sneaking admiration for the US's ability to enforce its own law, as opposed to our own inability - or systemic unwillingness - to enforce ours. Not only is this a naïve view, but bull. Hear what Khobragade had to say about her arrest, and judge for yourself if this is the right way to deal with a brech of minimum wages law. The Indian Express, quoting from her email to colleagues, has this Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer saying this about her horrifying experience. “I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, hold up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity.”

Our general assumption that the US law enforcers are merely doing their duty is rubbish. If alleged violation of US visa laws by Infosys can be settled with a fine, why couldn't the US have done so for Khobragade? Or is a woman diplomat fair game for US law enforcers? Indians are the most gullible goops in the world when it comes to discerning the difference between an honest effort to implement the law and using laws to project power and blackmail other countries. The American government is the most sophisticated legally illegal enterprise in the world when it comes to dealing with people from other countries. And Americans are one of the most sophisticated bigots in the world.
There are two reasons why we are so bad at recognising this: one is because we are very poor readers of real intent as we have not studied the west on our terms.

The second reason is even worse: we are the most compromised individuals when it comes to America. Every bureaucrat and politician and media hack sends his or her children to America or Europe to study, or is given high paying jobs in US multinationals. Thus, many of them would have received favours from the American establishment. So when it comes to standing up to America to defend our own interests, our worthies are unable to take a strong view on what is right for our country.

There is also a third reason: we are simply too self-absorbed and willing to forget and move on in the pursuit of narrow, short-term personal interest. The Americans will go to the ends of the earth to pursue Osama bin Laden or even their own Islamic terrorists for 10 years. We will forget Hafiz Saeed five years after 26/11. The Americans will not let us forget 2002 – not because they care about the Muslims they themselves ostracise in their own country, but because it is a useful stick to hold over someone who could be our next PM.

There is also another counter-intuitive reason why we are unable to see American bad faith: America does not use its laws to harass its own citizens, while we do the exact opposite. Thus we are willing to stretch the argument and believe that America must be using its laws fairly against the rest of the world. What absolute rot. The truth is American agencies have sophisticated ways of using their laws against foreigners to defend their interests. Their laws may oppose torture, so they will use Guantanamo Bay to for torture and waterboarding against prisoners. President Obama vowed to shut it down, but Guantanamo is still around. Even if it is shut, they will ask allies in brutal Africa or Thailand to do their dirty work.

Americans are forbidden by their own laws to indulge is assassinations abroad, but Obama has converted the CIA into a killing machine. Two years ago, they killed one of their own nationals – Anwar al-Awlaki, for example - because of his alleged terror links (not proven in a court of law). The Americans regularly use drones against civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and South Yemen on the plea that one among them may be a terrorist. To have plausible deniability, they even use private surveillance and security agencies as surrogate CIA agents. (Read Mark Mazzetti's eyeopening book, The Way of the Knife, to get a glimpse into this). Their freedom of religion laws will be used against the one country which actually allows everyone to practice and propagate his religion (India), but top allies like Saudi Arabia will get a free pass on this law. America will swear by free markets to lobby for Wal-mart, but will not recognise freedom for labour movement. Is free enterprise only about the movement of capital and not other factors of production? The Americans practice sophisticated racism. Thus they will use a Preet Bharara to target Khobragade (or Rajat Gupta or Raj Rajaratnam) so that it looks like Indian-Americans are implementing the law, and hence not racist, but the same laws will not be used to humiliate the Hispanics or Afro-Americans or the Saudis or American icons like the late Steve Jobs or to convict Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton.

Americans, despite paying very little of the UN bill, will not allow US soldiers to serve under generals of another nation, and Americans accused of war crimes cannot be tried anywhere else but in holier-than-thou US of A. I can go on and on, but we must focus on the one issue I still left unaddressed: what do the Americans gain by targeting Khobragade? Or, for that matter, by denying Narendra Modi a visa, especially since Americans have always extolled business friendly politicians everywhere? Modi ought to have been their natural ally? In the Khobragade case, my guess is that the US government and arrogant Preet Bharara miscalculated on how India will respond. They thought there will be the usual diplomatic muttering under the breath and then business as usual. Moreover, the US can always count on compromised bureaucrats and corrupt politicians to abandon their own diplomat. But two things conspired to stiffen Indian spines. One, the IFS officers' body is not going to see one of their own humiliated thus. And two, Narendra Modi is another reason. The UPA has hanged Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab to undercut Modi’s hard appeal, and Modi is due in Mumbai on 22 December. Khobragade is Mumbai's child and her father was a city bureaucrat before retirement. One can imagine how Modi would have damned the UPA for cowardice when he addresses Mumbai crowds. Which brings me to the last motive: why deny Modi a visa if you know he could well be the next PM? The US would never do this to a Saudi King, a Pakistani General or a Vladimir Putin or a Mossad agent, or a Chinese official, no matter what kind of atrocities they may have committed in their own countries.

The answer is simple: the earlier visa denial was driven by the need to pander to the domestic evangelical organisations which were baying for Modi’s blood. Evangelicals believe that Modi may act against their conversions agenda. The second reason is future leverage. The Americans want to use the visa as a bargaining chip in case Modi is the next PM, even though they hope he won’t become the PM. They fear that he will play hardball – exactly what the US does always. The US fears its own kind more than weak-kneed Indians politicians. It is critical that India should not close the chapter on the Khobragade affair for a few conciliatory noises. We have to bare our fangs and show some muscle. The chances are the US will do a deal and extract concessions from the UPA government to let Khobragade off the hook. And the Indian side will bow to this blackmail and claim their hard stance has paid off and declare victory. I hope this story does not play out. There are times when we have to show we are Indians, and this is one of those times. The only right response to the Khobragade insult is to treat Americans the same way they treat our kind: catch hold of a technical violator of Indian law, do some handcuffing and "cavity searches" on some of the men arrested, and then bargain about Khobragade. At the very least, we should target Preet Bharara for humiliating an Indian diplomat and make sure he never enters this country again.

As we move away from a monocivilisational world of Western domination of world history to a multicivilisational world, our minds must begin retooling themselves. We have to develop the capability of carrying competing, if not contradictory, narratives and understand that both may be correct, even if they contradict each other. We will have to learn to shed black and white judgements in favour of multi-hued, complex assessments.

A perfect example of equally correct but contradictory narratives is provided by the case of Devyani Khobragade, an Indian consular officer arrested by US authorities on December 12. In American eyes, it is a clear, black and white case. She had signed an agreement to pay her domestic help, Sangeeta Richard, $9.75 an hour. Instead she paid her only $3.31 an hour. As Khobragade had violated US laws, it was both legal and legitimate for the US attorney, Preet Bharara, to have her arrested and charged. Reflecting mainstream American opinion, The New York Times editorialised that “India’s overwrought reaction to the arrest of one of its diplomats in the United States is unworthy of a democratic government”.

This American narrative has a point. Khobragade has her rights. So does Sangeeta Richard, the employee. Richard was clearly the underdog in this exercise (even though by being employed in America, her wages increased 25-fold). Indeed, the traditional American concern for the underdog is one of the strongest aspects of American society. So is the egalitarian spirit of American society, which has gone much further than any other human society in removing and eradicating all traces of feudal culture. In my first book on America and the world (entitled Beyond the Age of Innocence), I praised the American doormen who would look me in the eyes and treat an ambassador like me as an equal, and not act in a submissive manner like any Asian doorman would.

Shekhar Gupta has waxed eloquent on the egalitarian virtues of American society. He noted that barely within a year of leaving office as deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott had to scramble for a taxi in New Delhi like any other commoner. More amusingly, he told the story of a famous Indian film actress who refused to marry and settle down in America because Indians in America refused to allow her to cut a supermarket queue, even after they had recognised her. The good news for our world is that this American egalitarian spirit is gradually infecting other societies, including Asian societies, and therefore making them less feudal.

Ironically, however, even as this American spirit of egalitarianism infects the world, American government officials continue to insist on feudal-type privileges while serving in other countries. It is normal for American diplomats to receive diplomatic immunity. Rather abnormally, the American government expects that even its non-diplomats should receive immunity. In some cases, they have literally, not metaphorically, gotten away with murder. Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, was whisked away from the Pakistani judicial system after shooting and killing two Pakistani citizens. In the ancient days, only feudal lords stood above the laws of the land. Today, American government employees also enjoy feudal immunities overseas (even though most of them are law-abiding citizens while working overseas).

Sadly, few Americans are aware that the American government practices double standards in the application of laws. It allows no foreign government officials, including a powerful person like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund, any immunity from American laws. Yet it expects its government officials to be — in theory and in practice — immune from other countries’ legal courts. Whenever any US government official faces the threat of prosecution in a foreign legal court, he or she is quietly whisked away, as few governments can withstand bilateral pressure from the US government. Since many Americans are puzzled by the Indian outrage, they should know that Indian society was deeply shocked that a senior Indian official was subject to a strip search. This created a deep sense of cultural outrage, similar to the outrage that Americans would feel if a black citizen is called a “nigger” today. Any Westerner who cannot understand this analogy will be unable to absorb a multi-civilisational perspective.

All governments in the world are aware of this schizophrenic attitude of the US government (which, I must stress, reflects the views of the US Congress). On one hand, the US government is second to none in defending the rule of law at home. On the other hand, the US government is second to none in defending immunity for its officials from all foreign legal courts and judicial procedures.

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) Statute came into force on July 1, 2002, the US government undertook a massive campaign to get over a hundred foreign governments to sign what have been called “article 98 agreements” or “bilateral immunity agreements (BIAs)”. These agreements stipulate that these countries would not send US citizens to the ICC. Similarly, the US Congress has developed a long-standing practice of extra-territorial application of its domestic laws on other countries and their citizens. But it is extremely reluctant to allow the extra-territorial application of other countries’ laws on its own territory.

This schizophrenic attitude of the US government explains why virtually every other government in the world was quietly cheering on the Indian government as it insisted on total reciprocity in the treatment of Indian and American officials. Few governments in the world have the geopolitical heft or the moral legitimacy to look the American government in the eye and demand such absolute reciprocity. India does. Hence, even India’s biggest detractor in the world, Pakistan, is quietly cheering on India. They hoped that India would finally succeed in persuading the US government to accept a level playing field in dealing with other countries.

The Indian government’s success in persuading the American government to allow Khobragade to return home and not face charges in an American court will therefore be cheered all around the world. Most countries realise that they would not have had the weight to shift the US government. India is one of the few who could do so. And in doing so, India has also enhanced the rights and standing of other foreign diplomats on American territory.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, India may have actually done America a favour. Why? The former American president, Bill Clinton, has wisely counselled his fellow citizens to prepare for a world “that we would like to live in when we’re no longer the military political economic superpower in the world”. His wise advice indicates how the two contradicting narratives can come together: Americans should work hard to create binding international law regimes that would apply equally to American and non-American officials and citizens. In the final analysis, a level playing field in this area would demonstrate that the American egalitarian spirit is influencing international law too.

American egalitarian spirit, by americans for americans, funnelled by evangelists, ensure that their racist minds remain ever sharp as ever.  They shall brook no insult from the blacks, browns, or the yellows.  The blacks, browns, and yellows have to take everything lying down.  The blacks, browns, and yellows have to bend their laws to accomodate the Americans.  The blacks, browns, and yellows will have to pander to the demands of the Americans.  This is why no Indian Christian organisation came to the help of Devyani Khobragade, a dalit, even though Indian Christian organisations never lose a chance to shout from the rooftops as being the saviour of dalits.  This is at a time when Indian Christian organisations have bent their backs and played fiddle to save Italian Marines who shot dead Indian Christian fishermen in the seas off the coast of Kerala or to let off Frenchmen who were caught redhanded trying to espionage near Kochi Naval Base using sophisticated imaging equipments fitted in their private yatch.  There are umpteen number of instances when Indian Christian organisations have come to the rescue of missionaries who have stayed back illegally and done illegal activities here.  Indian Christian organisations would never want to rub against the shoulders of their American masters ever.  Even sex-tainted Indian Christian minsters get access to the Pope and Indian Christian organisations have lobbying groups in the US that are far influential than of the Indian Govt, yet they chose not to even mutter for Devyani Khobragade.  Quite surprisingly the maid who accused Devyani is an Indian Christian, Sandra Richards, who and her family will now get American citizenship.  The US embassy had paid for the air tickets for three family members of the absconding maid of senior Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade when they were "evacuated" from here to New York last week, it emerged today.  The tickets for the maid's husband Philip Richard and their two children- Jennifer and Jatin- were issued by the official travel agency of the US embassy, sources said.  The tickets were exempt from service tax of 4.50 percent as per the norm for diplomatic missions.  The maid's family flew by Air India on December 10, two days before Khobragade was arrested on a charge of paying her maid--Sangeeta Richard--less then the minimum wages under the US law.

Devyani and her Christian Maid Sandra Richards

Another eye opener as to what Dailts really mean to Christians.

Uncontacted tribes: the threats

Cattle ranchers

Cattle ranching has destroyed nearly all the Akuntsu’s land.

Of all the tribal peoples wiped out for standing in the way of ‘progress’, few are as poignant as the Akuntsu. Their fate is all the more tragic for being so recent.

No-one speaks their language, so the precise details of what happened to them may never be known. But when agents of Brazil’s Indian affairs department FUNAI contacted them in 1995, they found that the cattle ranchers who had taken over the Indians’ land had massacred almost all the tribe, and bulldozed their houses to try to cover up the massacre.

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There are now just five surviving Akuntsu. When they die, the tribe will become extinct.
© Fiona Watson/Survival

 

Just five Akuntsu survive. One of the men, Pupak, has lead shot still buried in his back, and mimes the gunmen who pursued him on horseback. He and his small band of survivors now live alone in a fragment of forest – all that remains of their land, and their people.

Disease

Introduced diseases are the biggest killer of isolated tribal people, who have not developed immunity to viruses such as influenza, measles and chicken pox that most other societies have been in contact with for hundreds of years.

In Peru, more than 50% of the previously-uncontacted Nahua tribe were wiped out following oil exploration on their land in the early 1980s, and the same tragedy engulfed the Murunahua in the mid-1990s after being forcibly contacted by illegal mahogany loggers.

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Jorge lost an eye during first contact
© Survival

 

One of the Murunahua survivors, Jorge, who lost an eye during first contact, told a Survival researcher, ‘The disease came when the loggers made contact with us, although we didn’t know what a cold was then. The disease killed us. Half of us died. My aunt died, my nephew died. Half of my people died.’

Missionaries

Christian missionaries, who have been making first contact with tribes for five hundred years, are still trying to do so today. Often believing that the tribes are ‘primitive’ and living pitiful lives ‘in the dark’, the missionaries’ ultimate aim is to convert them to Christianity – at whatever cost to the tribal peoples’ own health and wishes.

In Peru, just a few years ago, evangelical Protestant missionaries built a village in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon with the aim of making contact with an uncontacted tribe living in that region. They succeeded in making contact with four people: one man and three women. The man, known as Hipa, told a Survival researcher about first contact: ‘I was eating peanuts when I heard the missionaries coming in a motor-boat. When I heard the motor-boat’s engine running, I said to myself, ‘What’s happening? A motor-boat! People are coming!’ When we saw them, we went and hid deeper in the undergrowth. The missionaries called, ‘Come out! Come out!’

Members of the New Tribes Mission, a fundamentalist missionary organisation based in the US, carried out a clandestine mission to make contact with the Zo’é of Brazil to convert them to Christianity. Between 1982 and 1985 the missionaries flew over the Zo’é’s villages dropping gifts. They then built a mission station only several days’ walk from the Indians’ villages. Following their first real contact in 1987, 45 Zo’é died from epidemics of flu, malaria and respiratory diseases transmitted by the missionaries.

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The Zo'é's population is now increasing
© Survival

 

The New Tribes Mission was totally unprepared and did not provide proper medical care to the Zo’é. Their policy to sedentarise the Zo’é around the mission meant disease spread rapidly, and the Indians’ diet suffered because the game they hunted became scarce due to the concentration of Indians in one area. As the Zo’é’s health suffered, they began to lose their self-sufficiency, and became dependent on the missionaries for everything. In response, the government expelled the missionaries in 1991. Since the Zo’é have been left in peace and now receive proper medical care, their population is increasing.

Colonists

The Awá are one of the few remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in Brazil. Their home is in the devastated forests of the eastern Amazon. Today they are hemmed in by massive agro-industrial projects, cattle ranches and colonist settlements. To’o, an Awá man, explains how colonisation is destroying their land and way of life:

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Awá men hunting in the forest.
© Fiona Watson/Survival

‘If the Awá Indians have to leave their land, it will be very difficult. We can’t live anywhere else because here there are forest fruits and wild animals. We couldn’t survive without forest because we don’t know how to live like white people who can survive in deforested areas. For years we have been fleeing up these rivers, with the whites chasing us, cutting down all our forest.
‘In the old days there were lots of howler monkeys and deer but today there’s very little left, because the forest has been chopped down. The colonists round here make things difficult for us because they hunt game too.
‘We are getting cornered as the whites close in on us. They’re always advancing, and now they are on top of us. We are always fleeing. We love the forest because we were born here and we know how to live off the forest. We don’t know about agriculture and commerce and we can’t speak Portuguese. We depend on the forest. Without the forest we’ll be gone, we’ll be extinct.
‘Every day as the white population by our reserve increases so do diseases like malaria and flu, and we have to share the game with the settlers. They have guns, so they kill more game than us. We are very worried about the lack of game and being able to feed our children in the future.’

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Awá men travel down a road cut by loggers.
© Uirá Garcia/Survival

Loggers

Many areas inhabited by uncontacted tribes are being invaded illegally by loggers. Their presence often brings them into contact with the tribal people; many have died from diseases introduced by the loggers, or even been killed by them.

In Peru the situation is especially grave. Areas inhabited by uncontacted Indians are also home to some of the world’s last commercially-viable mahogany stands, and illegal loggers, taking advantage of the lack of any effective state control, have been plundering these areas at will.

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Logging in Madre de Dios, south-east Peru.
© FENAMAD

 

The Murunahua were decimated by contact with loggers and, if nothing is done to stop the invasions, the same fate awaits the Mashco-Piro tribe. ‘The loggers arrived and they drove the Mashco-Piro further upriver, towards the headwaters,’ said one indigenous man who has seen the Mashco-Piro more than once. ‘The loggers have seen them on the beaches, their camps, their footprints. The loggers always want to kill them and they have done.’

Roads

In 1970 the Panará people of Brazil numbered between 350 and 400 people, and lived in five villages, which were laid out with complex geometric designs and surrounded by huge gardens.

A major highway was bulldozed through their land in the early 1970s. It quickly proved disastrous. Road builders enticed Indians out of the forest with alcohol and prostituted some women. Soon waves of epidemics swept through the tribe and 186 Panará died. In an emergency operation, the survivors were airlifted to the Xingu Park, where yet more died. Soon there were only 69 Panará left. More than four fifths of the tribe had been killed in just eight years.

Aké, a Panará leader who survived, recalls this time: ‘We were in the village and everybody began to die. Some people went in to the forest and more died there. We were ill and weak and couldn’t even bury our dead. They just lay rotting on the ground. The vultures ate everything.’

Between 1994 and 1996 the surviving Panará managed to return to the part of their land where there was still forest. In a historic move they sued the Brazilian government for the appalling conditions it had inflicted on them. In October 1997, a judge found the Brazilian state guilty of causing ‘death and cultural harm’ to the Panará people and ordered the state to pay the tribe US$540,000 in compensation.

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A Jarawa woman and boy by the side of the Andamans Trunk Road
© Salomé

The Jarawa tribe of the Andaman islands saw their land split in two when the islands administration built a highway through their territory. It is now the principal road through the islands. There is not only a constant stream of settlers travelling in buses and taxis, but the road acts as a conduit for tourists, and for poachers targeting the Jarawa’s reserve (which, unlike the rest of the islands, is still covered in rainforest). Jarawa children are often seen by the side of the road, and there is some evidence of the sexual exploitation of Jarawa women.

After a long battle, India’s supreme court ordered the local government to close the road, ruling its construction was illegal and endangering the Jarawa’s lives. The islands’ government has defied the court, and kept the road open.

SAS advised 1984 Amritsar raid

Revealed: SAS advised 1984 Amritsar raid

Thatcher sent SAS to advise Indira Gandhi on Indian army plans “for the removal of dissident Sikhs from the Golden Temple” months before disastrous raid on Amritsar, top secret UK file reveals.

Phil Miller, 13/01/2014 00:30,

(updated at 18:30 with download of National Archives file available here … PREM 19-1273_Binder)

When Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984, it was a decision that would lead to her assassination. The assault on the Sikh holy site to evict separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, involving tanks and helicopters, incurred heavy civilian casualties. Outraged Sikhs in Britain responded with a huge demonstration in Hyde Park, and thousands more sought refuge in the UK as the violence in Delhi and the Punjab escalated, in what some call India’s Sikh genocide.

Top secret Whitehall correspondence now reveals that British special forces advised Indian leaders on retaking Amritsar, despite acknowledging privately that “an operation by the Indian authorities at the Golden Temple could, in the first instance, exacerbate the communal violence in the Punjab”. In a remarkable series of letters, buried among the New Year releases at the National Archives in Kew, south west London, I discovered the gamble that Thatcher’s administration took with the volatile situation in India and the diaspora.

Letter on Sikh Community dated 23 February 1984. Credit: Phil Miller

A letter dated 23^rd February 1984, titled ‘Sikh Community’, noted “The Home Secretary will have seen press reports of communal violence in the Punjab. The Foreign Secretary wishes him to be made aware of some background which could increase the possibility of repercussions among the Sikh communities in this country”. 

The ‘background’ in question was the covert role of an elite British military adviser in India.

“The Indian authorities recently sought British advice over a plan to remove Sikh extremists from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The Foreign Secretary decided to respond favourably to the Indian request and, with the Prime Minister’s agreement, an SAD [sic] officer has visited India and drawn up a plan which has been approved by Mrs Gandhi. The Foreign Secretary believes that the Indian Government may put the plan into operation shortly”.

The file stops short of detailing this “plan”, so it is not clear how similar this was to Operation Blue Star, the code name for the eventual assault in June. However, three other letters in this chain (between Thatcher’s private secretary Robin Butler and his counterpart at the Foreign Office) have been weeded out of the file and remain classified. The file stops in March 1984, and the next part of the folio is still unavailable, obscuring more details about the months leading up to the raid.

However, in a crucial letter, the Foreign Secretary’s Principal Private Secretary, Brian Fall, explains to his opposite number at the Home Office, Hugh Taylor, how a raid on the Temple might:

“increase tension in the Indian community here, particularly if knowledge of the SAS involvement were to become public. We have impressed upon the Indians the need for security; and knowledge of the SAS officer’s visit and of his plan has been tightly held both in India and in London. The Foreign Secretary would be grateful if the contents of this letter could be strictly limited to those who need to consider the possible domestic implications”.

Only four copies of the letter (stamped ‘Top Secret and Personal’) were made, and circulated to principal private secretaries at Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence, to keep the operation under wraps. Despite these precautions, SAS involvement was rumoured in a Sunday Times article written by  Anne Mary Weaver shortly after the raid in June. This new evidence provides conclusive proof that British Special Forces were involved with planning a raid on the Temple. It also starkly reveals the risks involved with Thatcher’s covert foreign policy for events in India and Britain. The majority of letters in the file relate to Thatcher’s involvement in negotiating British arms sales to India.

This letter dated 6th February 1984 proves Margaret Thatcher  was briefed on the advice given to Indian officials. Credit: Phil Miller

Sikh activist Jagdeesh Singh, of the 1984 Genocide Coalition, argues “These documents now confirm the depth of this murderous collusion. June 1984 resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, disappearances and wider devastation. It was 9-11 many, many times over. It was India’s war on the Sikh nation. The above documents amount to explosive evidence of British government participation in this mammoth crime against humanity, and confirmation of what we suspected all along.”

Jagdeesh Singh said “2014 is the 30^th anniversary of the horrific 1984 genocide, during which 100,000 Sikhs were killed by the Indian state, as part of a two-pronged and two-phased genocidal onslaught in Panjaab and Dheli on the Sikh population. The Indian government launched a direct, vicious war on Panjaab in June 1984. 250,000 troops invaded and occupied Panjaab. Over 1-6^th June 1984, they bombarded the Sikh national shrine of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, with tanks and helicopter gunships. 8,000 Sikh men, women and children were viciously killed, their bodies stripped of clothing and belongings and then they were cremated en-mass. The entirety of Panjaab was closed off from the world and turned into a mammoth concentration camp, as Indian soldiers went through its entire 50,000 plus villages – arresting, torturing, killing and raping.” 

from:  http://stopdeportations.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/revealed-sas-advised-1984-amritsar-raid/