December 5, 2004

Violence, Law & Women’s Rights in South Asia
Edited by Savitri Goonesekere
Sage Publications, B-42, Panchsheel Enclave,
Post Box 4109, New
Delhi-110017, India
Tel: 91-11-2649 1290-7 Email: marketing@indiasage.com
Website: www.indiasage.com
ISBN 0-7619-9797-0
352pp. Indian Rs300

This is a book on violence against women. After an overview of the legal systems in the South Asian region and their relevance to women it contains country studies. The countries covered are India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

It is paradoxical that all these countries in the region which have such a high incidence of violence against women have signed and ratified the key multilateral treaties pertaining to women’s rights, namely, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). They are further bound by two other international policy documents, namely; Beijing + 5 document and the Beijing Platform for Action. These treaties commit their signatories to uphold the rights of women. But many of these countries have signed these treaties on the condition that their provisions to become effective will have to be incorporated into the law of the land.

The various chapters dealing with individual countries highlight the main issues concerning women in the contest of violence against women. In India the laws are archaic and patriarchal. The law on rape and dowry violence have not been amended since the Indian Penal Code was introduced in 1860.

Hina Jilani and Eman M. Ahmed in the chapter on Pakistan identify the forms of violence faced by women as honour killings, death by burning, rape, enforced prostitution, domestic violence, wife beating, nose cutting, acid throwing, violence in police custody and forced and child marriages. Women are treated as the property of men and their fundamental rights are blatantly violated.

Shyamala Gomez and Mario Gomez write about the problems in Sri Lanka. These include, as identified by the authors, rape, sexual abuse, incest, cruelty to children, domestic violence, sexual harassment and murder. The authors have looked at the flaws in the legal procedures faced by women victims of violence.

The studies in the book confirm the failed legal system in the region. But as the editor of the book says, the recognition of failure can act as a catalyst for change. That is what this book is designed to do. — Akhtar Naveed Syed

Another Voice: Thirty-Five Poems
By Muzaffar A. Ghaffar
Ferozsons, 60 Shahrah-i-Quaid-i-Azam, Lahore
Tel: (042) 630 1196-8. 277 Peshawar Road, Rawalpindi
Tel: (051) 556 3503. Mehran Heights, Main Clifton Road, Karachi. Tel: (021) 583 0467 UAN 111-62-62-62
76pp. Price not listed

Sad to say, much written in the name of poetry never rises above that level which feet and wheels traverse — to wit, the pedestrian. Whether or not it contains a certain originality, it still remains below the troposphere as a dirigible wrongly guided.

But read on. Yes, there are poets and poets but this one is for real, his work containing a remarkable degree of artistic worth. Muzaffar A. Ghaffar’s metaphors besides being beautiful and original are both provocative and evocative. His verses seem to be born of a deep life experience, a love and close observation of nature, and an understanding of English and indigenous literature and culture.

Concerning poetry itself, he describes the poet’s incisive, creative vision, and the risks in going as far as one can and then some while creating images. He writes: “They all sit around in circles-/rhythm, thoughts, words/ with carving knives/ pens with plumes/ and the penchant for making love/ at the edge of a precipice...”. Other themes reveal: “an edge to the quiet here/ which descends like stalactites of majesty”, and “I never wore sandpaper as a cloak...”.

Social comment reminiscent of W.H. Auden’s “The dog beneath the skin” appears in the long poem “Goodbye dad”, progressing through innocuous childhood memories of Dad to soldier dads, to the eternal social problems fathered by wars, to the hard-pressed Japanese salary man dad, then on through the destructive influences of television, cyber technology and test-tube procreation to the point where “over-harrowed dad is his own epitaph”.

“Myland — 1996 (and on ...)” is a political saga featuring those “pecking birds old and new,/ who gorged with impunity/ storing the land’s labours, its destiny,/ in squeaky-clean Swiss vaults”, and “dead siblings and mansions in alien sanctuaries...”.

Ghaffar, termed a gifted translator, is currently preparing a series entitled Masterpieces of Punjabi Sufi Poetry. Yes, by all means Mr Ghaffar, give us all that you have! — Noor Jehan Mecklai

Creative Child Advocacy: Global Perspective
Edited by Ved Kumari and Susan L. Brooks age Publications, B-42, Panchsheel Enclave,
Post Box 4109, New Delhi-110017, India
Tel: 91-11-2649 1290-7. Email: marketing@indiasage.com Website: www.indiasage.com
ISBN 0-7619-3241-0
347pp. Price not listed

The book under review is a concerted effort of leading child advocates that include not only lawyers but social workers and law teachers to make the world hear the voices of the voiceless — children who have been abused, tortured, kidnapped and killed, not only in the privacy of their homes but also in the community, by criminal groups and even at the hands of state agencies. “The focus of the book is not simply the description of challenging situations or the unmet needs of the children in specific countries, but also examples of positive solutions and successful initiatives on behalf of the children and youth,” write the editors.

The contributors belonging to various parts of the world, from Pakistan, Kenya, China to the UK and USA — to name just a few — have shared their experiences, their creative expertise, with a goal to sustain the efforts achieved during the last decade by different international organizations.

The book has been organized in four parts according to the theme of the projects undertaken by the contributors. Part one is about the use of judicial process and legal advocacy to improve the outcome for children. The contributors suggest various approaches from teaming the efforts of solicitors and social workers to gaining support of the courts and founding of law firms that represent the interests of children.

Part two focuses on child sexual abuse, child abduction and kinship care. The contributors have described legislative strategies and social movements in their respective countries.

The emphasis in part three is on community education and street strategies. In order to combat the tendency of dating violence among the youth a curriculum was devised by and for the students. It was also emphasized to re-educate the community to realize the need to understand the meaning of abuse.

Part four discusses the integrated strategies. Two of the contributors in this section are from India and Pakistan. The focus is on the elimination of child labour in India and juvenile justice system in Pakistan. Arshad Mehmood from Pakistan dwells upon the efforts being made by SPARC (Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Children), an NGO in Pakistan, to improve the living conditions for children in custodial institutions, as well as bringing about legal reforms and their implementation.

In short, the book documents the success stories and ongoing efforts made by different organizations all over the world. The book, a product of the efforts of the Global Alliance for Justice Education, contains valuable information. People engaged in child welfare activities, law advocates, sociologists, teachers and students engaged in social disciplines will find the book beneficial. — Syeda Saleha

The Plague Race: A Tale of Fear, Science and Heroism
By Edward Marriott Picador
ISBN 0330483188
288pp. £14.99

In 1894 Hong Kong became the crucible for the third global pandemic of bubonic plague. Just as Pasteur was pioneering rabies inoculation in Paris, tens of thousands were still to die from a disease made even more terrifying by the absence of certainty, not only about how to treat it, but even of the method of its transmission.

Professor Shibasaburo Kitsato, a celebrated Japanese bacteriologist, was summoned to Hong Kong by colonial satraps. At the same time Dr Alexander Yersin, a former assistant to Pasteur, arrived too. Edward Marriott’s gripping book is about a competition between the two scientists to identify the cause of the plague.

Kitasato was feted by the colonial administrators, and soon announced — triumphantly, but wrongly — that he had solved the mystery. It was almost 50 years before it emerged that Yersin, working in a hut built from straw — Hong Kong’s administrators refused to provide him with a laboratory — had correctly identified how plague is transmitted.

This beautifully written investigation furnishes parallels with the Aids pandemic of 100 years later. Prejudice, bureaucratic idiocy and the vanity of scientists delayed a proper global response to HIV for a decade. Marriott’s discourse encompasses empire, science and discovery as well as prejudice.

Well-housed colonial officials attributed the Hong Kong outbreak to “other” ranks and “other” colours, as if the sordid ghettoes in which the first victims lived were secondary causes at most. And no better evidence exists of still-prevalent prejudices about bubonic plague than the fact that it is endemic in the US even though it is often still characterized whimsily as a “third world” disease.

The book’s one inadequacy is that a fictionalized account of plague in India in 1994 seems unnecessary. There must exist sufficient primary sources to have engineered as painstakingly accurate a reconstruction as Marriott managed in Hong Kong. But this is a minor failing.

Marriott’s writing is distinctly different from the meretricious prose now wrapped around popularized travel or science. He benefits from a novelist’s capacity to capture mood and image, but always steps away from a storyteller’s indulgence of inexactitude. The Plague Race is part history, part thesis, part thriller. As an investigation, it is all entrancing. It kept me awake, enraptured, until four in the morning. — Ben Summerskill (Dawn/Observer News Service)

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