Muslim Problem, Hindu Solutions: Sid Harth

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Rethinking Islam
Friday, July 24, 2009

Advani: we want India to be a secular country in which all citizens
are equal. Hindutva should be equated to Bharatiyata.

Interview
12 Jul 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

I have never seen so much despair in people: Advani
By N. Ram, editor, The Hindu

"Nuclear deal is not an issue of the people"; BJP opposed to
"surrender of strategic autonomy"

EMPHATIC: BJP leader L.K. Advani answers The Hindu's questions on the
nuclear deal, the political crisis, and other key issues at his
residence in New Delhi on Wednesday.

NEW DELHI: "My own feeling all along has been that the nuclear deal is
not an issue of the people" but "the whole thing has been dragging on
in a manner as to make even the common man feel that the government is
not concerned with anything else. The common man, particularly
agonised by prices and his day-to-day life, feels: 'What kind of
government is this, which seems so obsessed with one agreement that
nothing else seems to matter to it?' "

This is the assessment of Lal Krishna Advani, the formidable Leader of
the Opposition and the man who will be the next Prime Minister should
the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance trump the Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance in the 15th general election, whenever it comes.
The 80-year-old BJP leader and former Deputy Prime Minister was
responding to questions on the politics of the nuclear deal, the
current political crisis, and various political and ideological issues
in an in-depth interview given to The Hindu at his residence on
Wednesday.

Elaborating on the implications of the nuclear deal, he observed that
"after all, the proposal is, 'We are short of energy sources and
nuclear energy will provide us the wherewithal — after 25 years!' And
that too a small percentage of our requirements. It is welcome,
whatever it is. But it is not crucial, it is not vital for the
people."

Expressing relief over the inauguration of "a new chapter" in national
politics, Mr. Advani noted that this chapter would "depend very much"
on whether the government would be able to survive the vote of
confidence that is expected to be taken in the Lok Sabha later this
month. "Today it seems it's a close contest, at least on the face of
it," he observed, making it clear he would not speculate on the
outcome.

Asked if the Congress and the UPA could improve their political stock
in the event of the Manmohan Singh government surviving the confidence
vote, he responded: "What improvement can come about at this point of
time? It's the fag end."

Asked for a realistic assessment of the political prospects of the BJP
and the NDA at this juncture, Mr. Advani answered: "In a country like
ours, such a large electorate, so many States to bear in mind, it's
never easy, particularly when you don't know when the elections are
going to be held — in November or some time next year? — to be precise
or even close to precision insofar as the outcome of an election is
concerned. But I've seen elections right from '52, every election I've
seen. I have never seen so much despair in the people and so much
disillusionment in the people with an incumbent government as with the
present government."

He asserted that "there was a feeling of buoyancy" during the six
years of NDA rule but in the last four years "there has been a feeling
of despair."

He mentioned that when BJP supporters expressed concern over
"inheriting a very difficult situation, in the field of economy as
well as in the field of foreign policy and several other fields," his
response was that all these problems had to be tackled but the real
challenge was to "recreate hope."

Mr. Advani strongly reiterated the basis of the BJP's opposition to
the nuclear deal, which was different from that of the Communist
parties. "Our objection," he explained, "has not been to the strategic
relationship, which 123 may involve. We are opposed to the 123
agreement because it is also preceded by the Hyde Act ... in the name
of energy autonomy, you are surrendering our strategic autonomy."

The Leader of the Opposition sharply criticised the Manmohan Singh
government for the way it went about developing the nuclear deal. It
refused to have a parliamentary committee examine all the issues,
contending that "no committee could be formed in respect of a proposed
international agreement." Then it formed a UPA-Left committee, which
dragged on for many months and led nowhere. "It's a very curious way
of running the government," Mr. Advani remarked.

In this context, Mr. Advani elaborated on one of his ideas, which was
to have Indian legal experts examine whether India's own Atomic Energy
Act could be amended "in such a way as to insulate India from the
consequences of the Hyde Act."

Asked how the BJP would go about "renegotiating" a done deal if it
came to power, the opposition party's top leader indicated that the
track would be exploring the option of "having our own law, which
insulates us from the consequences of the Hyde Act."

http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/11/stories/2008071158160100.htm

"In the name of energy autonomy, you are surrendering our strategic
autonomy"

N. Ram

N. Ram interviews top BJP leader L.K. Advani on the present political
crisis, the nuclear deal, election prospects, and other key issues.
The one-hour indepth interview was conducted at the residence of the
Leader of the Opposition on Wednesday.

Advaniji, how do you see the present political situation in the
country, with the Left withdrawing support and the Samajwadi Party
being drafted in to make up the numbers along with smaller players?

It is surprising that this kind of final outcome should have taken so
long. In fact, I will recall the first statement in this regard, which
made everyone who follows political events feel that this alliance
between the Left and the Congress could not continue for long. This
was when the Prime Minister told The Telegraph correspondent, and
perhaps consciously, that so far as the deal was concerned, the
government had decided to finalise it. It was non-negotiable. And so
if the Left parties didn't like it, they were free to do what they
wanted. I was told by those related to that interview that he wanted
it to be published very prominently.

At least I assumed that this was very calculated and either they had
decided, 'All right, we'll go to the people on this issue,' or they
had made alternative arrangements to continue in the government.
Because 61 members is not a small figure. When you have two major
partners in the government taking up positions of this kind, I said,
'This is the starting point.' Apart from the discussions held in both
Houses of Parliament on this issue several times where it appeared
that there was a wide gulf in the thinking. But even then, all the
while, the replies given by the Prime Minister were of a nature that
made Parliament feel, even we who were opposed to it for different
reasons, that they would not agree to what America wanted, and that
the assurances given in Parliament would be taken due care of either
by America itself or if it did not do it, the deal would not go
through in its present form.

I think it was some time in August 2007 that this exchange took place,
the Prime Minister's statement and the reply from the other side, in
which Prakash Karat's statements had been as resolute — I won't use
any other word. And it seemed that it was the end.

'Close contest'

Unfortunately since then, the whole thing has been dragging on in a
manner as to make even the common man feel that the government is not
concerned with anything else. It's concerned only with this and it is
not able to make any progress. This is apart from the other factors,
namely prices, the condition of the farmers, the repeated assaults on
internal security either by the terrorists or by the naxalites, or
even what's happening around us, which often indicates a failure of
foreign policy — numerous failed states around us, the happenings in
Nepal …The common man, particularly agonised by prices and his day-to-
day life, feels: 'What kind of government is this, which seems so
obsessed with one agreement that nothing else seems to matter with
it!' This is one main reason why the people have been getting more and
more disillusioned with the government.

And the aam aadmi, who doesn't go into the nuances … and for many in
the country perhaps this is something esoteric, asks: 'What is this
deal, about which they are quarrelling so much?' So when it came
yesterday, I said: 'At least, it'll be a new chapter now.' That
chapter will depend very much on whether they are able to survive the
vote of confidence that is going to be taken in Parliament. Today it
seems it's a close contest, at least on the face of it. And
particularly if the reports about the Samajwadi Party are correct.
Some say it is five, some say it is eight, I don't know.

Are you satisfied with the government opting for a vote of confidence
ahead of going to the IAEA Board of Governors, a demand that the BJP
made first?

Yesterday, immediately after our meeting here, where we gave an
official reaction on behalf of the party, I had a lecture. There I
said, 'I welcome it. I demanded it and I'm told they propose to have a
special session soon and move a vote of confidence, seeking the
approval of the Lok Sabha. Manmohan Singh said on the plane itself:
'I'll see to it that all parliamentary norms are observed.' I said in
this situation that's the parliamentary norm. Because the government
had been formed on the basis of the support extended to it by these 61
members of the Left parties, who have withdrawn their support. Whether
others' support will be forthcoming or not is a subsequent matter. It
has to be tested on the floor of the House.

Possibilities

If the government fails to win the vote, an early general election is
certain. If it makes it through, as it evidently expects to do, what
will the political scenario look like? Will it strengthen the stock of
the Con gress party and the UPA ahead of the 15th general election?
That's the big question.

Suppose, for instance (as it is said), they propose to convene a
special session of the Lok Sabha on the 21st of July. If they win a
vote of confidence, the situation continues to be what it is today.
Then the option is before them of holding an early general election or
holding it in 2009. It's their choice. But if they lose this
confidence vote, I'm sure they will resign. The President will ask
them to continue until alternative arrangements can be made, which
means until the elections are held and another government comes in.

The situation today is that if the Central government asks the
Election Commission to prepare for the Lok Sabha election, the
Election Commission, as I can see it, is sure to tell them that by
November so many State Assembly elections are due. So the Lok Sabha
election can be held along with them. That would be what seems
natural. These are the two possibilities, unless the Election
Commission wants to advance one or some of those Assembly elections.
The States due to go to the polls are Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, and Mizoram. It should not be
difficult to hold these Assembly elections together and link up the
Lok Sabha elections with them.

But during this period, however short or long it is, do you see the
Congress and the UPA improving their political stock?
What improvement can come about at this point of time? It's the fag
end. Everyone — the government as well as the opposition as well as
the Communist parties — will all be engaged in preparing for the
elections. And a government which has lost a vote of confidence in the
House would have no choice for taking any new initiatives. That's a
parliamentary convention.

You have listed the key issues before the people, as you see them. At
a time of 13 per cent inflation, how will implementing the nuclear
deal play with the electorate?

My own feeling all along has been that the nuclear deal is not an
issue of the people. After all, the proposal is, 'We are short of
energy sources and nuclear energy will provide us the wherewithal —
after 25 years!' And that too a small percentage of our requirements.
It is welcome, whatever it is. But it is not crucial, it is not vital
for the people.

We were against it but we reiterate that our opposition to this deal
has been different from that of the Communist parties. The Communist
parties feel — they may not have spelt it out that way, but I found an
article in your newspaper that is quite clear on that — that we are
accepting their [the United States's] supremacy over us by becoming
part of their strategic alliance. It's not merely the 123 agreement by
itself. We are opposed to the 123 agreement because it is also
preceded by the Hyde Act. We do not agree with the government's stand
that 'the Hyde Act has nothing to do with us, we are governed only by
the 123 agreement.' Whenever they have made a statement of this kind,
it has been immediately rebutted by the American spokesman.

Therefore, our objection has been not to the strategic relationship,
which 123 may involve. Our objection has been to the Hyde Act, which
imposes a constraint on our strategic options in the nuclear field.
Furthermore, I would say, it was during our period, when we were in
government — we did not start the nuclear deal, as is often said — but
we did start the process of strategic relationship. I for one — it was
not my Ministry at all — but I said several times that India and the
USA are the two major democracies of the world — one the strongest,
the other the largest. It would be in the interest of the world, of
these two countries themselves, if there is a relationship beyond
merely friendship. If you call it a 'strategic relationship,' it is
fine. It should be there.

So we are not against any strategic relationship with the USA. In
fact, I would feel that the Communist parties, after all that has
happened, also should be able to get out of that mindset. After all,
during that entire period of the Cold War, we also were never very
favourable to the USA. Because at that time, their relationship was
entirely with Pakistan. They were hostile to us. In a way, it is
America which has made even the Congress government change Pandit
Nehru's approach of utilising nuclear energy only for peaceful
purposes. That was a consistent policy followed by India not only when
it was under the Congress regime of Pandit Nehru but even when it came
to Morarji Desai, in whose government we also were there. (Vajpayee
was there, I was there.) Before going to the U.N. once, when he was to
make a speech about nuclear weapons, he categorically said, 'India
will never go in for nuclear weapons.' Categorical. He read it out to
us deliberately, because he knew ours was the only party in the
country which had been advocating that course of action.

So it was America which during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 sent its
nuclear fleet here. It was this which prompted Indira Gandhi to go in
for Pokhran-I in '74. She did Pokhran-I in '74; we completed the
process in '98. In between, efforts were made but somehow they were
not completed. Preparations were made but they were not executed. I
don't want to go into all that. Once [former President R.]
Venkataraman, in a book release function, publicly complimented
Vajyapee-ji for what he had done, saying 'When I was Defence Minister,
this was planned but somehow we could not go forward with it. I
compliment you for completing it.'

I am referring to all this because there is that basic difference
between what happened in our time [and the rest]. And yet our
relations with America — yes, they imposed sanctions on us. I cannot
forget that Pokhran-II was criticised not only by the Leftists but
even by Dr. Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha. He severely criticised
us. 'Why have you done it?' There was a very sharp exchange between my
colleague K.R. Malkani, Editor of The Organiser, who was a BJP member
of the Rajya Sabha, and Manmohan Singh. He said he did not buy the
argument that the economic sanctions would not hurt India, 'You do not
understand what will happen to the country's economy by what you have
done!' Malkani said, 'Nothing will happen. You wait and watch.'
Actually nothing happened. One by one, all those restrictions were
lifted. In fact, today some of those restrictions imposed after '74
may be continuing but not those imposed after '98.

Basically I feel, for a long time America has been wanting to make
every non-nuclear country part of the non-proliferation regime, by
having them sign the NPT. Even Pandit Nehru or Morarji Desai, who were
not in favour of making India a nuclear weapon state, said: 'We are
not going to sign any Treaty which binds us now.'

Our complaint about this [deal] is that in the name of energy
autonomy, you are surrendering our strategic autonomy. This is what we
oppose.

One criticism of your stand is that there is an underlying continuity
of nuclear policy between 1998 and now. In the sense Prime Minister
Vajpayee made a number of policy commitments, for example on joining
the CTBT a nd the unilateral moratorium on nuclear explosive testing,
and this was continued through the Jaswant-Talbott talks.

I know that. When any country by itself says something, there is no
restriction or a change in policy. And secondly, even the argument
given now, that in any case there will be economic sanctions, that is
always there. But economic sanctions coming, as they came in '98 or as
they came in '74, were not because we violated any law or violated any
agreement or any international commitment. This would be a violation
of an international commitment. If we sign this agreement, we accept
the Hyde Act. At one stage, therefore, what I had suggested was this —
if they discussed it at length with us, we might have suggested it. I
said, 'All right, after all the Hyde Act is a domestic law of America.
Let our legal experts consider whether India's own Atomic Energy Act
can be amended in a way as to insulate India from the consequences of
the Hyde Act. Let's examine that.'

One of my biggest complaints about this government, and Dr. Manmohan
Singh personally, has been that if they were really so serious about
it that they have brought their own government to the brink on this
basis, what was the difficulty in accepting our suggestion that 'this
matter has been discussed thrice in Parliament after you signed that
joint statement with President Bush; and numerous misgivings, numerous
questions have been raised. You have answered many of them very
categorically: "If this does not happen, then the deal will not take
place."

Let a parliamentary committee examine all that and then make the
suggestion to you. If they had done that, we would have made this
suggestion there. We would have offered other suggestions also.
Instead of that, first they said that no committee could be formed in
respect of a proposed international agreement. And then they formed a
committee with the Left. A UPA-Left committee was formed, which again
and again … even today Prakash Karat was quoting that: 'This is what
they have said, this is what they have said.' It's a very curious way
of running the government and a very curious way of implementing
something you think is very important.

One last question on this particular issue. I think the BJP's position
is, should you come into government, as is distinctly possible, after
the 15th general election, you will renegotiate the deal. You said
that about WTO earlier. Is it feasible, is it practicable to
renegotiate this agreement, assuming it goes through?

If it is not practicable, if America says, 'No, we are not going to
renegotiate,' we will naturally deal with the situation as it is
there. But the objective is there. Sometimes people say, 'You do not
agree with this agreement. So will you rescind it, scrap it?' I would
like to tell them that if the major objection to this is that it
brings us into a strategic relationship with America, that's not our
objection. A strategic relationship with America, as I have said, was
first talked about when we were there. The objection is particularly
to the Hyde Act. So our objective of renegotiation would be: Is it
feasible to reword this agreement or to do something? The option of
having our own domestic law, which insulates us from the consequences
of the Hyde Act, is always open. This is what we would examine.

(Part II of the interview will follow.)

http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/11/stories/2008071155691100.htm

"Coalition dharma means whatever is agreed upon in a common minimum
programme should be implemented"

Top BJP leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani
answers N. Ram's questions on the BJP's electoral prospects; lessons
learnt from 2004; coalition governance; Ayodhya; Gujarat 2002; his
reputation as a hardliner; the intra-parivar controversy over his
Jinnah remarks in Pakistan; the explosive Amarnath Shrine land affair;
combating terrorism; and the contemporary meaning of Hindutva. This is
the concluding part of an in-depth interview given toThe Hinduat the
residence of the Leader of the Opposition in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The first part was published on July 11.

L.K. Advani: 'Somehow, I have acquired an image' of a hardliner.

Advaniji, you are not known to exaggerate the political prospects of
your own party or formation. What is your realistic assessment of the
political prospects of the BJP and the NDA at this juncture?

In a country like ours, so large, such a large electorate, so many
States to bear in mind, it is never easy, particularly when you don't
know when the elections are going to be held — in November or some
time next year? — to be precise or even close to precision insofar as
the outcome of an election is concerned. But I've seen elections right
from '52 till today, every election I've seen. I have never seen so
much despair in the people and so much disillusionment in the people
with an incumbent government as with the present government.

In fact, people have been asking me, 'If NDA comes to power tomorrow,
we will be inheriting a very difficult situation, in the field of
economy as well as in the field of foreign policy and several other
fields … the problems of agriculture.' But as I said to some of my
colleagues yesterday: 'All these have to be tackled. But much more
than that, during the six years of NDA rule there was a feeling of
buoyancy. The development of the infrastructure; the highways built
up; numerous facilities, like the kisan credit card and all that, were
given to the farmers. And happily, the growth in the field of IT came
at that time. Telephones, which were a real headache for us for
decades; I have been in Parliament from 1970 and I know that one of
the biggest complaints from the constituency was 'Telephone mil sakta
hai kya, telephone mil sakta hai kya? [can you help us get a
telephone?]' And suddenly these mobile phones and all that came.

Of course it's technology development but it came at that time. We
managed the IT development and the communications in a manner that
gave great satisfaction to the people. I wish our plans for the
interlinking of rivers also had made some progress. We set up a
committee. Now all these things had made the country buoyant, the
people buoyant. The feeling was that the country was moving forward.
Unfortunately in the last four years, there has been a feeling of
despair. So I said to my colleagues that the first task is to be able
to do things in the first two years itself which recreate hope — that
now things are happening and the country will move forward.

Lessons from 2004?

As the next Prime Minister should the NDA or the BJP-led coalition win
the next general election, you surely know that the outcome of the
last one was a political upset. Virtually no one I knew — other than
Sharad Pawar, who once gave me a fairly accurate prediction — expected
that. What is the lesson you have learnt from the last experience, in
particular the campaign that highlighted the "India Shining" theme?

[The lesson from] the last experience is: 'Don't be overconfident. And
do not neglect your own constituency.' I'm not referring to the
individual constituency, I'm talking of the party's constituency.

It was neglected?

Yes, they did feel neglected. We did not neglect them. And very often
that has been a continuing process of education for my own
constituency also in these years. But if you have a coalition
government, then the limitations imposed by a coalition also should be
borne in mind. They should not be disregarded, not only by the party
or those who are in power but also by its constituency.

May I tell you this has been a contrast — talking about the nuclear
issue. In our case, among the distinctive features that the BJP
incorporated in its [2004 election] manifesto, which were not there in
the manifesto of any of our allies, one was that the BJP was in favour
of making India a nuclear weapons state. Therefore, we would develop a
nuclear deterrent of our own. No other alliance partner of ours had
this in its manifesto. So when we were preparing our common minimum
programme, we discussed with them all these things. And it was only
when they accepted it, all of them, including the AIADMK and the Akali
Dal and all of them who were with us, that we incorporated it in the
common minimum programme, which we described as the National Agenda of
Governance.

Our other distinctive features, they would not agree to. We did not
press them at all — except subsequently at one stage when they agreed
that if a temple can be built at Ayodhya, either by a court verdict or
by agreement between the two communities, it should go through. It was
much later. But in the National Agenda of Governance, only one point,
namely: 'Yes, we should go in for Pokhran.' Pokhran was not
[specifically] mentioned, but nuclear deterrent. And the credit goes
to Vajpayee-ji that on the 19th of March 1998 he was sworn in and
within less than two months, on the 11th of May, 1998, we had Pokhran-
II.

And in contrast — the Communists have a point, the Left parties when
they complain, 'Was this in the Congress manifesto? Was this in the
Common Minimum Programme? It wasn't there,' so they have a point …

Nor the 'strategic alliance.'

Therefore our coalition functioned very well. And today one of the
points that we are going to hammer home to the electorate is: 'You
just compare the functioning of these coalitions — one the NDA, the
other the UPA — and see the contrast!'

On the backburner?

Now this brings me to the other issues you referred to — the issue of
the Ram temple, Article 370, and the Uniform Civil Code. They were
kept on the back burner during NDA rule.

I won't call it the back burner. I don't call it the back burner. If
we were to have a government of our own and we don't do it, then it's
on the back burner. But when a coalition is formed of several parties
who do not agree, then whatever is agreed upon has to be implemented.
I remember that this is what I said the first time even to V.P. Singh
when he became Prime Minister, with our outside support. I as
president of the party wrote him a long letter, in which I said that
'In my manifesto and your manifesto, the Janata Dal manifesto, there
are many common points. I hope — 'even though I'm supporting you from
outside, without my support your government cannot be formed' — I hope
that while carrying out your programmes, you will keep in mind that
the issues that are common to both should be implemented, freedom of
information, this, that, there were several things. But if there is
any issue on which there is a difference of opinion, we would be free
to withdraw support. And that's what happened actually.

Yes. This could be repeated because in the next test, your allies
could do quite strongly in some States, you will have formidable
allies ...

Therefore, coalition dharma. The first and foremost guideline should
be: whatever is agreed upon in the common minimum programme should be
done.

Hindutva hardliner?

Now this question you must have been asked in many forms. Mr.
Vajpayee, who was once described by Mr. Karunanidhi as 'the right man
in the wrong party,' was reputed for taking along coalition partners
of different ideological hues. You have a reputation for being a
hardliner on core Hindutva issues. That's the perception. Is that a
valid differentiation? Why don't you let us into your innermost
thoughts on this question?

Anyone who calls my party a 'wrong party,' you cannot expect me to
agree with him in his assessment. No one — not Vajpayee-ji — would
agree with him. But I can tell you that, in my experience, what
surprised me was my experience in Pakistan. Even today people coming
from Pakistan to Delhi, meeting everyone, whosoever has invited them,
they invariably ask: 'Can we not meet Advani?' Anyone who goes to
Pakistan will find that the impression about Advani in Pakistan, where
this [the perception of him being a hardliner] should have been the
maximum, [is quite different]. So it only means that somehow I have
acquired an image. So many people have contributed to it, not only
adversaries but others also. I don't mind it that way.

Remarks on Jinnah of August 1947

In fact, this brings me to your celebrated remarks in Pakistan, of
which The Hindu did quite a bit of editorial coverage …

Yes, you wrote an editorial. I greatly appreciate all that you wrote
that time…

… about your remarks on Muhammad Ali Jinnah's secular vision of August
1947.

Yes and surprisingly before going to Pakistan, I made a longish speech
here — just on this lawn outside, releasing a book on Pakistan — where
I quoted exactly what Jinnah had said in his first speech in the
Constituent Assembly. Because I had just then come from Kolkata where
Swami Ranganadananda had reminded me of that speech. Nothing happened
at that time. I was Deputy Prime Minister at that time.

That was misconstrued and even targeted within your camp.

I know that.

How did you respond to that?

I don't blame them. It was not targeted. It was misunderstood. There
was no deliberate criticism of it.

How did you cope with that period? Must have been difficult for you.

I felt… Prannoy Roy interviewed me on NDTV and I told him: 'I did feel
distressed about the reaction in my party but my greater distress was
that my party lost an opportunity.' When in six days whatever I said
or did there [in Pakistan] was able to change the totally wrong and
negative image that the party had. I wish the party had followed it
up, built on that.

Gujarat 2002

What happened in Gujarat in 2002 was a very serious matter. You were
in government. At the least it was one of the issues on which people
might have judged the BJP adversely in the 14th general election. What
is your feeling now about what happened in Gujarat in 2002, this huge
loss of life, this genocide?

There was no genocide. Genocide is a word that should not be lightly
used. But in India there have been riots and riots — and sometimes
riots far worse than those that took place in Gujarat in 2002. In
fact, in the capital itself, I have been witness to what was not a
riot — because not a single Hindu was killed when 3500 Sikhs were
killed, in 1984. It's sad. It's tragic. It should not happen. It is to
be condemned. So also in Gujarat I condemned it, everyone condemned
it. Whether it was Godhra or the post-Godhra riots, all were
condemnable. But that doesn't mean that you blame whosoever is at the
helm of affairs for 'genocide' and what not. And the only Chief
Minister in the country who has distinguished himself by his
performance also being pursued in a manner, so viciously, as to have
him denied a visa in America, which has never happened before with any
Chief Minister of the country! This is not fair. And therefore I did
defend Narendra Modi.

Amarnath land controversy

Now on the Amarnath shrine land issue, the issue of the GO which
perhaps was misconstrued. But the campaign on both sides raised
communal tensions. Had you been in the central government, how would
you have handled this in the first instance? A sensitive issue was
clearly mishandled when we don't need more trouble in Jammu &
Kashmir.

I wish the Chief Minister's advice had been respected. I went to
Amarnath on the 20th of June, just two days after the yatra started. I
spoke to the shrine executives who told me all that had been going on.
And I spoke to many of the pilgrims. There were thousands there, at
the shrine itself and all along the way. Spoke to many. Almost
everyone was telling me that 'Whatever assistance we have got, help we
have got, we have got it from the Army, not from the State
officers.'

Because the PDP's attitude was hostile. They were critical even of the
Chief Minister at that time. The Chief Minister also was unhappy about
it. I have been several times to Vaishnavodevi [in Jammu] where a
similar shrine has been created. And there similar facilities and land
allotment have also been made to enable the pilgrims to feel happy.
Today those who are used to going on pilgrimages often come back from
Vaishnavodevi with a comment: 'Why cannot all the places in the
country which are places of pilgrimage be run in the same manner as
Vaishnavodevi is being run?'

The shrine in Amarnath is also, like the Vaishanavodevi Shrine,
created by a resolution of the Assembly. Here that shrine is created
and then when the government thinks of giving all the facilities —
temporary facilities, toilets, this, that, resting places, lighting,
etc. — there is such an uproar!

Instead of correcting it and telling the PDP that 'You are wrong,' the
authorities succumbed and succumbed in a manner as to lose even the
stewardship of the government, lose the government. What kind of
attitude is this? There is no reason, no justification, no explanation
— except that it is a very glaring example of what I have always
described as pseudo-secularism. 'That may be a Hindu shrine, all
right, do with it what you want. But this is in a Muslim locality,
where the bulk of the people are Muslims. Therefore you cannot have
land here.' Because — of course, those are the extremists and
fundamentalists — who said: 'There is a demographic design, to change
the population.' So absurd.

I wish the Government of India had realised that the consequences of
this can be very serious, if you condone it.

Combating terrorism

On the issue of terrorism, what's the difference between your handling
of it and the present government's?

My handling was not confined to merely following up an event. After an
incident occurs, investigate, apprehend the culprits, punish them. It
was a continuing process. During NDA regime, the terrorist threat was
very serious and therefore the IB agencies and the other agencies
dealing with terrorists were told to carry out continuing and vigorous
search for the ISI modules, wherever they are. And apprehend them,
destroy them. That process went on continuously. Nearly every year, a
large number of modules were destroyed. That process stopped. And even
when events occur, the investigations have been of such a nature that
till today so many incidents have occurred which I can list out and
there has not been a single case in which people have been charge-
sheeted, what to say of punished.

Hindutva as cultural nationalism

The last question: on Hindutva. You have written a great deal on it in
terms of 'cultural nationalism.' You have been charged with
majoritarianism and worse. In response to the contemporary situation,
what is your summation of Hindutva?

Majoritarianism is a word coined: it can be applied to America, it can
be applied to every democracy. But the fact is that in India political
parties, after Partition, came to the conclusion that even though
India has been divided on the basis of Hindu and Muslim, we would like
it to be a successful democracy. So let us run the government, run the
country through this process of elections and vote.

In the process, however, some people discovered that Hindus are not a
homogeneous community: they are divided into castes, they are divided
into languages, and their identity is more related to that caste or
language than to the fact that they are Hindus. In the case of
Muslims, it's different. In that case, it is the religious identity
which is predominant. Therefore, if you want to get votes, you try to
mobilise vote banks — casteist, linguistic vote banks in the case of
the Hindus, religious vote banks in the case of the Muslims or the
Christians. That is the reason why all this came in.

So far as we are concerned, we have held that … it was my first party
general secretary, Deendayal Upadhyaya [1916-1968], who taught us that
in India, Hinduism is not the name of a religion. It's more of a
national connotation. I was just reading an old book by that famous
historian of philosophy, Will Durant. It was banned by the Britishers.
Because it was Will Durant's The Case for India [Simon and Schuster,
New York, 1930], an excellent book about how the Britishers tortured
India, what they did here. But in that he again and again uses the
word 'Hindu.' 'I have not consulted any Hindu while writing this,'
meaning I have not consulted any Indian. For him, Hindu and Indian are
totally synonymous.

I was telling you about Deendayal Upadhyaya, who has been the greatest
influence on me, in terms of conduct as well as in terms of my
thinking. He said: 'In independent India, we want India to be a
secular country in which all citizens are equal. Hindutva should be
equated to Bharatiyata. Bharatiyat is a Hindu. Indianness and Hindutva
are synonymous. Don't make a distinction between the two. It should
mean nationalism essentially.' Therefore it is that I grew up with
cultural nationalism.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/12/stories/2008071255311100.htm

Posted by SultanShahin at 2:04 AM

...and I am Sid Harth

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Govt rethinks PM’s Pakistan initiative

Saroj Nagi, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, July 24, 2009

First Published: 00:28 IST(24/7/2009)
Last Updated: 01:26 IST(24/7/2009)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bold new initiative towards Pakistan
looks set to crash even before it has taken off.

A week after, Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani
agreed upon a joint statement which sought to delink terrorism from
the composite dialogue between the two countries, his own party and
other members of his government are questioning the sagacity of the
step.

Opposition members had already castigated the joint statement earlier,
claiming it was a sellout.

On Thursday, the Congress party simply refused to discuss the subject.
“Go and ask the government,” said spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi.

The government was just as ambiguous.

“The joint statement is a diplomatic paper that is given to the
press,” said Shashi Tharoor, minister of state for external affairs.
“It is not a legal paper. Ultimately what matters is not the
perception of the words on paper, but the conduct of the government.”

“The joint statement is not legally binding,” said Shivshanker Menon,
foreign secretary, while speaking to officers at the National Defence
College.

“We have said that India cannot go for a composite dialogue with
Pakistan, until and unless we have absolute assurances and we have
seen credible action from Pakistan,” Tharoor added.

In Parliament, most of the Congress members maintained a studied
silence when the opposition attacked the joint statement.

They are said to be particularly upset over the reference to
Balochistan in it.

Sonia Gandhi has been consulting party leaders on dealing with the
issue. Singh is believed to have explained the joint statement to her.

In sharp contrast to the current silence, the party and president
Sonia Gandhi had backed the prime minister with full force when he
decided to proceed with civil nuclear deal with the US in early 2008.
This time, the party is more anxious to insulate itself from adverse
public reaction ahead of an election season. Three states including
Maharashtra will go to elections in a few months.

“It’s all very well for the people to say that somehow India’s
interest compromised by few words on a piece of paper that is not a
legal document. It is a diplomatic paper that is released to the press
- different from the legal papers,” said Tharoor.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

July 21, 2009 • 10:10 am

A new Center Right Think Tank – Parts 1 & 2

Reproducing a proposal for a Center Right think tank by Rajesh Jain
and Amit Malviya from Friends of BJP on what they call the “new India
Policy Foundation” – Parts 1 & 2.

Inviting the Offstumped Community to further the debate on this
proposal here and on the Friends of BJP blog.

One of the ideas that a group of us have been thinking is the creation
of a centre-right policy foundation / think thank. Amit Malviya and I,
with help from a few others, have put a concept note on the idea. We
would be keen to get your feedback on this.

The Problem

India since Independence has seen politics of convenience, one that is
driven by individual preferences and often catering to compulsions of
electoral politics. In the process, public policy-making and delivery
are severely compromised. It is ironical that the Congress party has
at its convenience oscillated from opposing Socialism to being a
strong proponent of it and then embracing free markets when driven by
compulsion. The Party has straddled these positions all in a matter of
a few decades. Likewise, the BJP when in power, neither emerged as
Right of Centre nor did it espouse the cause of Swadeshi. Popular
perception is that the two major national parties have little to
distinguish their economic policies and are often accused of being
opportunistic and short sighted when it comes to policy related
matters.

As a result, it is no secret that India as a nation has not realised
its potential even after six decades of Independence. Our agriculture
is in dismal state, internal security is compromised with alarming
impunity, manufacturing sector is not robust enough to employ the vast
semi skilled work force, education is highly regulated, health
services are woefully insufficient and infrastructure is grossly
inadequate. A nation of over a billion people is ruled by absolute
adhocism. We are invariably held hostage to one of the pressure groups
operating to services the narrow interest of its subjects.

In essence, India suffers from a lack of critical thinking on several
key issues of national importance. The thinking that goes on happens
within the confines of government – the civil service and the
cabinet. There is almost a complete absence of groups outside the
formal establishment who develop new policy ideas and actively engage
with policy makers to see the ideas through.

It is this state of affairs that has prompted the idea of creating a
Foundation which will work towards creating a better future for India.

The Solution

There is a cross section of society who believes that there is space
for new thinking beyond being wedded to socialist ideals. The Group
believes that there is scope for new ideas with a right-of-centre
thrust, on a range of economic and social issues in the country. This
group is coming together to create a new think tank – the New India
Policy Foundation — that will provide cutting edge research on a range
of economic and social issues.

The Foundation will propose, educate and engage with policy makers
(elected representatives and members of bureaucracy) with the
objective of guiding public policy, legislation and delivery, and
influencing public opinion. Its support in matters of policy and
governance will be driven by India’s long-term requirement and not
short-term opportunism. The Foundation will be guided by the
principles of liberal democracy, free enterprise (keeping in mind the
interests of wider sections of society), social inclusion, robust
defence policy and nationalism and will deliver India-oriented
research.

The Foundation will analyse ongoing programmes and make suggestions
for new policies that can be taken up by policy makers across party
lines. Even as the Foundation expects that it is likely to have a
right-of-centre thrust in its work, the Foundation will take a well
researched and reasoned position on issues affecting India, rather
than being driven purely by any economic or social ideology. The
Foundation will be supported by a wide range of actors such as grant
making foundations, the corporate sector, and individuals.

Similar parallels can be found with Heritage Foundation and Centre for
American Progress, which support the Republican and Democratic Parties
in the US, respectively.

A new Center Right Think Tank – Parts 3 & 4

Continuing the debate on the proposal from Rajesh Jain and Amit
Malviya of Friends of BJP for a new Center Right Think Tank called the
new India Policy Foundation. (Parts 1 & 2).

The Objectives and Activities

The two main objectives of the Foundation are:

Research and propose new policy alternatives to address pressing
national issues.
Disseminate the work of the Foundation widely, especially with a view
to directly impacting the course and content of national policy.
The Foundation will take up a number of activities:

Undertake research studies on existing policies of the government,
both at the central and state level, with a view to examining the
impact of such policies, and suggest alternative approaches where such
policies are not delivering in the desired manner.
Initiate studies to propose new policies over and above what
governments might have so far considered. This is expected to address
the problem of short term thinking that is often prevalent in
governments, at the cost of long term strategic planning.
Hold consultations, seminars, closed door sessions with policy makers,
conferences on important national issues to stimulate debate and guide
the policy process. Engage with formal (TV shows / appearances etc)
and informal media for large scale dissemination and outreach.
Engage with and convene meetings with key policy makers (MPs / MLAs &
beauracracy) and opinion leaders to shape national policy.
The Foundation expects to demonstrate tangible results within the
first few years of its operation. The Foundation will try and forge
links with like-minded individuals and institutions globally.

The Differentiation

The Foundation will be different from existing think tanks in at least
two different ways: (a) It will focus on developing policy ideas for
practical real-life issues, rather than engage in mere theoretical
pursuits, and (b) Engaging with policy makers and opinion leaders will
be an integral part of its mandate, and it will be judged by the
direct impact it will make in shaping the policy discourse in the
country.

This Foundation will institutionalise the process of public policy
research and intervention outside of the Government machinery. It will
do so by employing and engaging the best minds under one umbrella,
aggregating valuable information and ideas relevant for India,
initiating debates in the intelligentsia and civil society and
influencing the collective conscious of legislators and bureaucrats.
It will be intellectually best in class and a constructive source of
inputs on all important areas of legislation and policy making. It
will aim to become the fountain head of all policy research and
decision making in this country.

It will distinguish itself from other Think Tanks by its “result-
oriented” (outcome focused) approach to policy intervention. The
effectiveness of its output will be measured in a scientific manner
and employee benefits will be linked to it. It will only have a
guiding philosophy, and will have no pre-defined political
affiliation. It will be accountable to its trustees and the country

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Musings of 1084

In memory of Bradhi, Nandhini and Sujatha of Mahaswetha Devi’s ‘Mother
of 1084′
India is a bigger Terrorist than LTTE!

with 11 comments

Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN puts the question with visible annoyment
to Advocate Prasad from Chennai.

Why do you need to get on the streets? Why Muthukumar, an activist who
self-immolated on last Thursday needs to be called a Martyr? After all
Srilankan Tamil issue is their internal problem and LTTE is a
Terrorist organization.
Correspondent of CNN-IBN finishes her footage from chennai with these
lines.

Every Political party of Tamilnadu is trying to outperform each other
by using the self-immolation of the youth.
Two days before Cho.Ramaswamy, a well-known Brahminic scoundrel was
interviewed and he poured his venom.

I would certainly recommend the Indian Govt to ask for extradition of
LTTE Chief Prabakaran. But beyond request we should not pursue it as
bringing Prabakaran to Indian soil will whip up passions.
Passions! The next day Muthukamar showed the world what’s meant by
Passion and how no one needs to ‘whip’ it up. Well read gentlemen,
Intellectuals and decent English-speaking north indians may not accept
this. They may use their favorite term to describe Madrasis,
“emotional fools”. Well, when Rajeev Goswami set himself ablaze for
the noble cause of safegaurding upper class interests against Mandal
Commission implementation, the entire North was on flames. He is still
considered a Martyr.

But Muthukumar, an ordinary youth who has written a historical letter
before the extreme step, shouldn’t even be called a Martyr. Muthukumar
exposes the collaboration of the Indian State with Rajapakse in word
and deed with painful lines. He has written the ignored agony of the
Eelam Tamils and puts in short. “Even if for argument sake, if we
accept LTTE is to punished, Neither Sinhala Govt nor the Indian State
has any moral right to punish them. “

Why the north is so silent on the Indian arms support to Srilanka? DSU
Unit of JNU was the only voice that spoke against the tide, from the
North. When Rajdeep says on one hand that Srilankan Tamil issue is
their internal problem how can he say in the same breath that LTTE is
a terrorist organization? will it not amount to interfering their
internal issue?

CNN-IBN, ‘The Hindu’ and all sundry Brahminical news media of India
shed tears about the plight of Gaza in the hands of Zionist State
Terrorism. They literally pounce upon Pakistan for supporting
Terrorist organizations that turmoil India. All fair, but when it
comes to their own State, the so-called land of Ahimsa supporting
Srilanka in a brutal genocide, they will keep quiet. Is the pain of
Eelam Tamils is lesser than Gaza people? why this blatant hypocrisy?

It is because they act according to the interests of the Indian State
which is in turn acting to the interests of Comprador-Capitalists
Tata, Ambani, Mital etc., who all have business ventures running in
Srilanka. India is the prime culprit for the ruin of the island
country. From 1983, the intelligence agencies corrupted the militant
movements of Srilanka and it tried its best to enforce its might as a
regional superpower with a one sided Thimpu Pact. Tamils rejected the
pact and faced the wrath of Indian masters who sent IPKF which
massacred, raped and left unforgettable scars in the mind and body of
Eelam Tamils. In the recent round of full scale war, India has lended
all political and military support including supplying Radars, arms,
ammunition and experts to the Fonseko’s monsters. Why North is not
speaking out on this ‘Intervention’? Leave the mainstream boot
lickers, why even the secular intelligentsia which is in forefront for
palestine and kashmir is also silent? Is it because they too think
it’s a matter of Tamil sentiment?

Eelam Tamils are a separate nationality with distinct culture and
history though they speak Tamil which is similar only in grammar to
the Tamil spoken by Tamilnadu. Hence it’s a just nationality struggle
for self-determination like palestine and Kashmir and due to the
heinous role of Indian State, it becomes the duty of every man and
woman of this country to fight against this crime which takes place
with the help of our political and bureaucratic masters. As Puthiya
Kalacharam, a Tamil magazine of People’s Art and Literary Association
[PALA] puts it,

The ultimate intention of the Indian ruling classes is to morally
weaken the nationality struggles in India by crushing the Eelam
struggle.
May the Brahminical forces of Tamilnadu and power brokers of North
delight on the brutal victory of Rajapakse, the fight for self-
determination right of Eelam Tamils will not cease without achieving
the goal as Neither it started with Tigers nor will it die with
Tigers.

P.S: PALA and its associate organizations conducted a Massive
agitation on January 26 at Chennai, ya, on the very Republic day of
this Democratic Socialist Republic, exposing the collaborationist
nature of Indian State . The Video of the short but razor sharp speech
of Comrade Marudhaiyan, Secretary, PALA is given below. The
photographs can be viewed here.

Video Courtesy: Vinavu

Written by me1084

January 30, 2009 at 6:19 pm

Posted in Politics
11 Responses

Tamils should re-think their identity. Tamils say first I am Indian
then only a Tamilian. This should be changed. First I am a Tamilian
then only an Indian. When Babar Masjid is demolished Muslims in Tamil
Nadu voiced against the demolition. If the same Babar Masjid is
demolished in Tamil Nadu no Muslims from North will care. Because we
are Tamilians. When Muslims are killed in Gujarat Muslims in Tamil
Nadu condemened it and voiced against Narendra Modi. Imagine if
Muslims are killed in Tamil Nadu no Muslims from North India will
care. Because we are Tamilians. The same is for Hindu and Christians.
If Hindus are killed in Tamil Nadu are killed no Hindu’s from north
india will care. Because we are Tamilians. BJP or RSS will never care.
So Tamils all around the world should say First they are Tamilians
then only Indians. Dear TAMIL HINDUS, TAMIL MUSLIMS, TAMIL CHRISTIANS
unite first as Tamilians. We can achive a lot.
vasanthakumar

February 1, 2009 at 2:45 pm

It is also worth pondering what Israels Mossad is doing in Sri Lanka.
Aswell as the powerful zionist financiers of Europe and America. The
rabbit hole is much deeper than many think. It is a global conspiracy
to eliminate Tamils.
ugk

February 5, 2009 at 4:30 pm

india does not holding anything that requires for the shake of the
country. its sameside goal in srilanka proved this, no tamilian will
call india as his country.tamilian or any other indian who is sufering
in other parts of the world have to care for themeselves.india will
fight for foriegn people who died in india because they want
dollers!!! not care for anything other than money.
dravidan

February 26, 2009 at 7:53 am

People here are talking as though all the collective problems are
becoz of India,India is made of people ,and people are
tamilians ,telugu ,north;If India interferes its called hegomony ,if
it wont it is called that India wont care for tamilians in
Srilanka,,Lets first say What u people want??Even if we speak its
wrong and even if we wont speak also its wrong,,Already India is
facing many terrorist attacks ,it has its own probelms,,India is not a
super power like America to show hegemony??I think u people only r
thinking that India is a regional power while we Indians Wont even
think that we r Powerful,
soumya

February 28, 2009 at 2:05 pm

What rubbish. To me, I am an Indian first, and a Kannadiga next. You
Tamils are an emotionally charged lot. Unable to bear the victory of
the valiant Sri Lankan army, which has blown to smithereens the claims
of invincibility of the LTTE, you are on a witch-hunt against a
country that has fed you for centuries. Almost all the Colombo based
Tamils are kallathonis who escaped to Sri Lanka for economic reasons,
Can you deny this? Tamils in Jaffna, who have been there for a very
long time, are the greatest opportunists. Thanks to this problem, all
the Jaffna Tamils landed in economically advanced countries and helped
nurture their pet tiger project and save the tiger project. Now they
are crying, weeping, gnashing their teeth in agony, because the
Sinhalese have destroyed their unreasonable project, and proved that
their army, under the command of Gotabhaya and Fonseka, is the best
combat-ready force in the world. We in India should congratulate Sri
Lanka.
Purushothaman

March 14, 2009 at 1:52 am

to all the indians who hasn’t got the crux of the post…

I quote from the post to clarify our perspective.

Eelam Tamils are a separate nationality with distinct culture and
history though they speak Tamil which is similar only in grammar.
Hence it’s a just nationality struggle for self-determination like
palestine and Kashmir and due to the heinous role of Indian State, it
becomes the duty of every man and woman of this country to fight
against this crime which takes place with the help of our political
and bureacratic masters.
Neither We buy the argument of umbilical relationship between Tamils
of Tamilnadu and Tamils of Srilanka nor we unconditionally support
LTTE. It is for the people of Eelam to decide their future and who can
lead them. Hence we approach and support the nationality struggle of
Eelam Tamils as we support the self-determination struggles of
Kashmir, Manipur and Palestine and not because of any tamil
sentiment.

@soumya,Purushothaman

If Indians can actively help Sinhalese to crush Tamilians, what’s
wrong in Pakistan supporting Jihadis?
me1084

March 16, 2009 at 6:18 am

I haven’t read your posts completely, but happened read parts of this
post and post on Arundhati. You should know this Arundhati is yet
another `leftist’ hypocrite who has one theory for Palestine, one for
Kashmir and completely opposite for eelam. When the writers of TN
organised a fast against the genocide in ceylon, Arundhati refused to
participate. She is in no way different from N. Ram and Cho.
ரோஸாவசந்த்

March 16, 2009 at 4:20 pm

I am not sure of the info Rosa Vasanth. pls cite me if you have any
source.
me1084

March 17, 2009 at 10:56 am

Well – to purushothaman and whom so ever it is who take things wrongly
about whats happening in Sri lanka… -
You said tamilans migrated to srilanka for economic reasons ?

Who are sinhalese then ? are they not the inhabitants from Bihar ? are
they originated as adam and eve from the land of Sri lanka ? PLEASE
READ THE HISTORY PROPERLY DONT POST A COMMENT WHICH WOULD GET EVERY
TAMIL SUPPORTER ANGRY PLEASE.

MORE IMPORTANTLY , THIS CRISIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR 30 YEARS … FOR
ONE MOMENT THINK IF YOUR RELATIVES WERE THERE IN SRI LANKA AT THE
CRISIS HAPPENING PLACE, IF THEY WERE SUFFERRING THE ILL TREATMENTS
(NOT JUSTICE BASED WAR) IF A SMALL KID OR A WOMAN WAS MISTREATED ?
THEN WILL YOU SPEAK THAT SRI LANKAN ARMY AND GOVERNMENT IS GOOD ? AND
WILL U ADD THAT INDIA SHOULD SUPPORT SRI LANKA ?

“AVAN AVANUKU VANDHA DHAANDA THERIYUM VALI”.
Dan

April 2, 2009 at 3:29 am

[...] India is a bigger Terrorist than LTTE! [...]
Laatho ke Bhooth! « Musings of 1084

April 10, 2009 at 2:13 pm

@ Rosa Vasanth
Roy could not come to chennai due to some death happened in her house.
And Roy made it clear that she does not know completetly the srilanka
issue and she voiced her opinion against the atrocities happening
there. But Is it wise to expect people like roy/chomsky should talk
all the atrocities happenings under the sun? What is the role of media
in taking this issue to northern and other parts of india? or Why the
so called activisits/ “thug” rhetoric politicians in TN not discussing
this issue with other regional parties in india? What is the
contribution of the so called “Metropolitan Intellectuals”(MI) like
Tamizavan not only on this issue or any other issue? Why MI’s suddenly
attacking people like roy who has contributed in terms of
intellectually/physically in so many issues than these “seat warmers”.
Also, suddenly people ( Intellectuals!!!!) in TN started supporting
Jaya on her recent srilanka “dramatic” stand point. What is her (jaya)
secret of over night change of point of view? On this issue why only 2
binary discourses? (1) For srilanka (2) For LTTE… We need to have
third dialogue without positioning ourselves in either of these 2
binaries. Then only a resonable discourse/dialogue is possible..

[bademiyansubhanallah]

India Today Better Stick to Sex Surveys
Posted by Sandeep on Friday, July 24, 2009 at 2:09 AM.

Here’s one of the secular media templates on writing opinion pieces
about the BJP:

1.As elections draw near, run a smear campaign. Insinuate that a BJP
win looks bleak due to blah blah blah blah.
2.If it wins, yell murder and suddenly “discover” sstories of this or
that lobby, defections, and how in large regions of the state, the
Hindu vote was aggressively mobilized, etc.
3.A few months down the line, say the BJP government is riddled with
internal dissession.
4.If #3 doesn’t work, fall back on the trusted trump card: RSS, VHP,
new Hindutva laboratory (for everything else there’s Gujarat and
Modi), and how minorities feel unsafe… (aside: I could work in the
secular media and retire rich and early).
These are thoroughly predictable because their banality is so
transparent. However, once in a while there’s an article that so
completely abandons even a pretence of neutrality that it necessitates
VIP treatment. I was mildly surprised that a thoroughly despicable
piece appeared in India Today, which used to carry some decent pieces
till just a few years ago. The tone, tenor, and content of the piece
is so vile that we don’t know where or how to begin dissecting it.

That the secular brigade is visibly upset at BJP’s near-total control
of Karnataka’s politics isn’t new. But India Today’s hatchet job could
have exhibited some class at least in the order of the scantily-clad,
designed-to-titillate models on their pages. The piece begins directly
with insinuations. Sample this:

After the BJP won 19 seats in the state and became the largest
contributor to the party’s Lok Sabha kitty, Karnataka has replaced
Gujarat as the BJP’s showpiece state. In the days since, the ruling
party in Karnataka—the first and only full-fledged BJP Government in
power in south India—has embarked boldly on the party’s Hindutva
agenda without being weighed down by the compulsions of coalition
allies, as happened in the shortlived first BJP government in November
2007.

Does the author, Stephen David, impute absolute ignorance to his
readers? None of this is true. If anything, Yeddyurappa is weighed
down by several problems: a simmering rebellion from within, and
forget being a showpiece of whatever, he’s unable to get development
going at a blazing pace, like Narendra Modi continues to do.

For the record, the 34-member ministry has a token Muslim and a social
scientist, but none from the Christian community.

A classic, you do you’re dead, you don’t you’re dead. If the
government had no Muslim or Christian member, this same Stephen
would’ve yelled minority discrimination! at the top of his lungs. But
now that Mumtaz Ali Khan is included, he becomes a mere token Muslim.
Nice.

…state Home Minister V.S. Acharya, Law and Parliamentary Affairs
Minister Suresh Kumar and Animal Husbandry Minister Revunaik Belamagi
brainstormed to enact a law to ban cow slaughter to be passed in the
Assembly…If this move—aimed at beef-eating minority communities…

The words underlined need no further comment as to the mental make up
of this Stephen David. Cow protection somehow becomes an insult to the
minorities. Elsewhere in the article, this nauseous eminence says

The Hindu-Muslim group clash in Kyathamaranahalli had bobbed its head
in April and was renewed last week over several reasons including the
sight of a very provocative object at a mosque.

Take one guess at what that very provocative object could be. No, I
didn’t say it was a pig. According to Stephen David, we would ensure
communal harmony if we slaughtered a large number of cows as per a
predetermined schedule (how about 100 cows a week?) in full view of
the minorities. Further,

In a day of blood-letting, three people were knifed to death while a
BJP youth wing chief in Mysore, assaulted by miscreants, battled for
life in a hospital.

From “Hindu-Muslim group clash,” the BJP leader is assaulted by a
religionless “miscreant” who mysteriously emerged from the earth.
Stephen David strains to maintain communal harmony even in the choice
of his words. Nice.

But word choice is the least of the problems. This article is guilty
of at least the following:

•Pathetic ignorance of the situation in Karnataka
•If the author indeed knows the situation accurately but has written
what he has written, he is openly lying
•Insinuation, as noted earlier
•Unabashed bias against Hindu organizations and the BJP
Here’s the “evidence” he gives to “conclude” that the BJP government
is dangerous.

The riots in Kyatmaranahalli in Mysore: Among other things, a “certain
community” in April, desecrated a Ganesha temple and broke several
idols of Hindu Gods in a Muslim-majority area. No prizes for guessing
that an ex-Congress Minister who coincidentally is a Muslim, is the
MLA of that locality. To be fair, the government’s response was swift.
Till date, the area is heavily policed and almost cordoned off to
public. The media is still refused entry. I suppose there’s no relief
in sight to their itch for mischief. Besides, it dishes out articles
like this without studying the complete situation.

Conversions: Stephen David completely hides the real threat of
conversions and the insult to Hindu Gods at the hands of the Sons of
Christ. Search this blog for plentiful information on the subject.
Something as trivial as the release of Da Vinci Code is deemed fit to
pass through Virgin Mary Sonia Gandhi’s scissors first but describing
Hindu saints and Gods in colourful epithets like sons of whores,
prostitutes, and adulterers is just business as usual. And so, Stephen
David he treads the familiar and filthy path of the Mangalore Pub
Attack as the One Explanation. What’s more amazing is this assertion:

The presence of prominent Hindutva mutts, Pejawar and Adamar, in the
Mangalore region has heightened the belief of Hindu groups firming
their grip on the party.

Make no mistake that “Hindutva” is used pejoratively. Does this
ignoramus even know what these Mutts stand for or their record of
actually ensuring communal harmony? But, truthfully, Hindu Mutts today
are–sadly–largely impotent. Far from whipping up violent passions,
they are unable to propagate spirituality and Sanatana Dharma the way
they should, or defend it with the same zeal their centuries-past
predecessors did. The Sringeri Mutt of today is a completely different
entity from what it was under say, Sage Vidyaranya. But no, Stephen
David calls them “Hindutva” and he’s published in India Today and so
it’s gospel truth (pun unintended).

What’s even funnier–and misleading–is he quotes the Constitution…well,
he actually quotes an Archbishop who quotes the Constitution:

Bangalore Archbishop Bernard Moras says the bill will violate the
fundamental right of freedom of conscience and freedom to profess,
practise and propagate religion under Article 25 of the Constitution.
The bill, which was supposed to curb religious conversions made by
“force”, “fraud” or “allurement”, Christian leaders point out, has
been misused to arrest them on fabricated charges.

Let’s forgive the Father for we think he is interpreting the Indian
Constitution thinking it’s the Bible. Let’s read the full text of
Article 25:

Article 25. (1). Subject to public order, morality and health and to
the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to
freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and
propagate religion.

The key words here: profess, practise and propagate religion.
Narrowing this down to that one important keyword, propagate.
Propagate is not synonymous with convert. Do I need to elaborate any
further? Besides, these Men and Women of Christ have left behind ample
evidence to prove that the ways of God are indeed mysterious: at
times, He smiles and cajoles and gives food, and at other times, He
threatens, punishes, and even comes out with blazing guns (ask our
poor brothers and sisters in the North East). All part of religious
freedom. No?

Everything is Hindutva: But nothing deters Stephen David’s quest of
attaining the overlordship in the world of idiocy. In his zeal, he
begins to brand everything as Hindutva: preventing cow slaughter,
Yoga, moral education, Art of Living, Sanskrit (of course!), and
midday meals for poor schoolgoing children. Incidentally, has Stephen
David read what Article 51 A (g) of the Indian Constitution? It does
provide protection for cows and a clause to ban cow slaughter
throughout India. Also, Stephen “Ignoramus” David seems to have done
shoddy research on Akshaya Patra. Here’s a tidbit:

Akshaya Patra’s kitchens are specially designed by engineers to
leverage technology. The largest kitchen, located in Hubli-Dharwad,
can prepare hot, nutritious meals for 185,000 students in less than
five hours. The organization sources its food stocks from local
markets, thereby reducing costs associated with transportation and
food spoilage while supporting the local economy. An AC Nielsen Impact
Study of the program showed an improvement in school enrollment,
dropout rates and classroom performance. Akshaya Patra is a great
example of what can be accomplished when the public sector, private
sector and civic society collaborate—a cost effective, scalable
solution with high quality service delivery.

In a letter, Akshaya Patra was heralded by President Barack Obama as
“an imaginative approach that has the potential to serve as a model
for other countries.” Akshaya Patra has been recognized by the Limca
Book of World Records and was the winner of the 2008 CNBC-TV India
Business Leader of the Year Award. In 2007, Harvard Business School
developed a case study for its MBA curriculum on Akshaya Patra’s model
for precise time management.

More surprise. Akshaya Patra also extends its services outside
Karnataka in the following cities among others: Vrindavan, Puri,
Hyderabad and Vizag. These cities are in states where non-BJP
governments rule. And crikey! Obama has endorsed Akshaya Patra. Now,
let’s see what conclusion we arrive at using Stephen David’s
Principles of Logic: Mayawati, Samuel Rajashekhar Reddy, and Barack
Obama are actually dreaded, closet Hindutvawaadis (shudderrrr!), and
Harvard Business School is secretly funded by Bajrang Dal.

What’s next: Karnataka’s waters now show a saffron tinge, its forests
are now coloured with a suspicious hue of orange, and the government’s
infrastructure projects are designed with a Hindutva agenda so that if
a bridge collapses, it’ll fall only on the heads of Minorities?

I mean, is this guy for real? At the least, he could’ve done some
decent, basic homework. If he is a journalist, I don’t pity India
Today’s over reliance on Sex Surveys to sell copies.

Tch tch.

Tags: Anti-BJP, BJP, BJP Government in Karnataka, Commentary, Hindu
Dharma, Hindu Institutions, Hindu Mutts, Hinduism, Hindutva, India,
India Today, India Today Sinks to a New Low, Indian Philosophy,
Karnataka, Politics, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame, Sanatana Dharma,
Secularism, Stephen David, Stephen David School of Logic

8 Comments on “India Today Better Stick to Sex Surveys”

ramji says:

Hats off to you Sandeep, fanatstic reply to this idiot. I will be
sending this article to this slime, hope he has the decency to
respond . India today , I believe, is owned by NDTV

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 7:42 AM.

Ghostwriter says:

Sandeep
This is only the tip of the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The Chindu
(or Xindu – take your pick) has been running these ‘exposes’ in the
past few days.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/24/stories/2009072454020400.htm
The case against ISKCON is that they showed a girl with a begging bowl
in their adverts. Fine that is in poor taste – but these worthies do
not protest when they show beggars in White Tiger – or that biggest
beggar showcase of all – Slumdog Millionaire! In fact, they were so
proud of it that they literally owned up to it. Remember “Jai Ho”
Oscar Fernandes and his pals?
It is indeed sad to see the BJP not hit back at the Congress in the
Karnataka parliament!

What are the real audience and objectives of these demands for
investigations? This may help us understand.
http://www.thehindu.com/2009/05/13/stories/2009051357300300.htm
http://www.thehindu.com/2009/05/26/stories/2009052659180300.htm
http://www.thehindu.com/2009/05/06/stories/2009050652000300.htm

Interesting that these ‘oppressed’ folks are part of that most
enlightened and progressive organization – the CITU. These are the
usual Commie worthies – ‘demanding’ rights, wages, and job security –
everything under the sun. Of course - delivering nothing in exchange.

In short – these people fattened-off government outlay in mid-day meal
schemes. Now that ISKCON is delivering better, cleaner and more
nutritious meals (at a cheaper rate mind you) – their revolutionary
fervor has been aroused!

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 7:56 AM.

Raghavendra says:

We have quite often blasted these bastards, but until there is change
in Hindu character I won’t anything happening.

We have to change, mainly our attitude, Hindutva should become our
nationalism, only then we can save this nation. Hinduism not of BJP ,
but of Shivaji.

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 9:33 AM.

Arjun says:

Apart from the justice that you’ve to his piece. The Article 25 was
given it’s true meaning by Supreme Court of India. In 1977, a landmark
judgement of SC on Article 25 had left the Christian community, more
so, the Conversion Community crying. It defied that: ‘Propagating
one’s faith was NOT an absolute right’ and had to be determined by
Morality. Words to notice here are: ‘Absolute Right’. Mr David and his
Archobishop and can do a better job than cribbing about Indian
Constitution.

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 11:50 AM.

Psudo says:

Good work Sandeep. Your analysis and comentary is as intresting as
always.

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 12:06 PM.

Sanjay says:

The ownership patter of India Today changed about three years ago,
with a Western investor picking up stake. Since then, the magazine has
taken to anti-BJP, anti-Hindu agenda. It is the White Christians which
are controlling the strings of India Today now. The magazine has
literally gone to the dogs. Many Christians have been recruited in the
editorial deptt. for exactly this kind of reporting.

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 12:11 PM.

ego says:

Excellent fisk-job Sandeep.

This Stephen guy seems to be good at stringing arbit words together to
come up interesting terms. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when
I read “Hindutva Mutts”. Highlights the seriousness with which he must
have conducted his research to come up with something like this.

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 2:05 PM.

Hema says:

Hi sandeep
This article is real worthy stuff.
Just a little more on the subject of ISKCON

Iskcon/Akshaya Patra never show children with begging bowls. What they
do showcase however is the plight of millions of children on the
streets who could do with a better life through education. They make a
plea to contribute towards the cause of providing ‘access to
education’ to the poor child. When pictures and films are shown to
prospects ( corporates and individuals ) the whole big picture is laid
out there …a picture that aims to inform and sensitize. This ‘girl
with a bowl’ is so hilarious!
Akshaya Patra is a damn fine example of a well run private public
partnership. Its the same old story : yeh log khud tho kuch karenge
nahi, dusron ko karne nahi denge!

The national subsidy(average) received by Akshaya Patra from the
various governments is around 50% of the cost of a meal. For the rest,
they depend on donations. Why does’nt the program provide meals that
is costed within the subsidy received?
Hey stephen! try a bit of pure journalism will you?
Visit one of the centralized hi technology kitchens, have that
nutrition packed meal, visit the government school, …and when you see
those children waiting with their plates for the Akshaya patra van to
arrive…you would have found all your answers!

hema
PS: i worked with the Akshaya Patra Foundation.

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 3:05 PM.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

It’s as Old as Islam
Posted by Sandeep on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 2:50 AM.

Thanks to a private message by a regular reader, I get to read this
Slimes report. When I investigated a trifle more, I got to read this.
According to the Slimes report dated 3 Jul 2009, Nitin Raut,
Maharashtra Minister of state for home (rural) is supposed to have
directed the CID to

…investigate love affairs that have resulted in marriages between
Hindu girls and Muslim boys. CID has been told to check whether Muslim
boys are enticing Hindu girls as part of a ‘conspiracy’. Minister of
state for home (rural) Nitin Raut had announced this in the assembly
on the last day of Maharashtra’s budget session a fortnight back.

The Slimes then carried the report verbatim on Mumbai Slimes. When I
last checked–before uploading this post–it hasn’t retracted the story.
But then Nitin Raut has retracted his statement.

The reports saying the Maharashtra Government has given an order to
the Criminal Investigation Agency (CID) to check whether Muslim boys
are enticing Hindu girls into love affairs and then marrying them as
part of a larger conspiracy have no substance, said Nitin Raut
Minister of State for Home (Rural).

Readers of this blog know how I absolutely adore the Slimes. However,
knowing its record of pamphleteering for a certain secular party, we
can safely conclude that its non-retraction is reasonable proof that
Nitin Raut made that statement but denied it later.

The temptation to rile against politicians and media especially of the
secular hue is both easy to succumb to and perhaps the most obvious
thing to do. Which is where we miss the trees for the forest. In this
case, it’s easy to miss the real issue that the Slimes and/or Raut
raises: Muslim men enticing young Hindu women to elope and/or marry
with a view to increasing numbers on the Muslim side. Thus, what Raut
or Slimes said or didn’t say or allegedly said or allegedly not said
is secondary if not immaterial. The fact that this issue was
considered serious enough to be raised on the floor of the Assembly
should be the focus here.

This issue isn’t restricted to Maharashtra alone. Over the past few
months, Hindu girls have been kidnapped and/or raped and killed by
Muslim men in coastal Karnataka, a fact that the secular media has
carefully suppressed. Varun Gandhi’s constituency, Pilbhit is also
witness to atrocities by Muslims on Hindu women. And these are mere
tidbits that found light of the day. And these are mere parts of a
strategy probably as old as Islam. And it can be reasonably fall under
the bracket of the Taqiyya doctrine, which sanctions the use of guile,
deceit, fraud, and similar techniques in situations where Muslims are
minorities. In fact, in February last year, Mullahs in UK openly
exhorted Muslim men to seduce Sikh girls into Islam. Needless, the
reason for such calls is quite obvious if we as much as glance into
the status of women under Islam never mind the exalted dignity that
wearing the Burqa confers on women.

But then this is nothing new. The long, sorry, and blood-soaked
history of Islam on the Indian soil gives us bountiful examples of how
sackloads of Hindu women were carted away for enjoyment, slavery, and
for use as baby factories. Neither were Hindu princesses and queens
spared. “Secular” Akbar’s harem had plenty of Hindu wives who begot
Muslim progeny.

Point this out in today’s time, and you’re instantly branded. Agreed
that marriage is a personal choice between two individuals
irrespective of religion. But why insist on conversion as a
precondition? But then, in the present case, this isn’t even about
choice: in some of the cases mentioned above, it is open force, much
like a medieval Sultan’s soldiers.

However, our famous liberals and self-anointed intellectuals always
see with one eye. But they are what they are: they don’t pretend even
to be politically correct, they are openly biased. But then, ordinary,
educated Hindus suffer from an extreme form of political correctness,
which is increasingly proving dangerous. The trait of being
politically correct as a form of social nicety is rapidly giving way
to helplessly accepting any kind of abuse.

Tags: Commentary, Congress Party, Conversion, History, India, Indian
Politics, Islam, Islam Watch, Luring Hindu Women, Maharashtra Minister
Nitin Raut, Nitin Raut, Politics, Pseudosecularism, Pseudosecularism
Hall of Shame, Secularism, Society & Culture, Taqiyya
13 Comments on “It’s as Old as Islam”

Arjun says:

The point here is not just about TOI or Raut; The CID head here in
Mumbai simply stated: ‘How exactly do we start the investigation? We
haven’t been given any instructions on the same.’ Secondly, Raut had
already stated this twice(?), that he has indeed ordered the inquiry.
What I don’t really understand is: even if the investigation is done.
What reccomendations will come with? How do you take on this issue?
The special marriage act is on the side of the couples, adults, of
course! Does anyone remember Ali Sina? His website has a section
named: ‘Confessions of a former Islamist’. Not surprisingly, its the
same. Let’s face it: The biggest enemies of Hindus today are Hindus(?)
themselves. You can’t help people who themselves want to go into the
gas chambers. For their ‘Final Solution.’

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 5:12 AM.

menon says:

This sounds like an X-files case. Seriously.

How hare brained are you right now, Sandeep to believe such rubbish?

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 9:03 AM.

Raghavendra says:

Story of Islamic horror goes beyond Tera-bytes, how to stop this
menace?

War! both on physical and intellectual levels is the only way out. At
physical plane keep Pakistan army busy and at Intellectual level use
the razor as sharp as Our Sita ram Goel’s to cut the throat of
seculars.

As Sandeep pointed, there is no need to be politically correct as long
you speak the truth.

Discuss openly with people around and speak truth without any
hesitation,spread awareness about danger.

We have to wake up to the clear and present danger.

You may call me an “Alarmist” but bell is ringing since 6th century
AD,if you are not hearing, you are deaf.

-Raghu

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 10:15 AM.

S says:

“menon says:

This sounds like an X-files case. Seriously.

How hare brained are you right now, Sandeep to believe such rubbish?

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 9:03 AM. ”

And what kind of an idiot you are, Mr. Menon, for not knowing the
bloody history and the present of Islam ?

http://historyofjihad.org

http://thereligionofpeace.com

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 10:21 AM.

Desigyrl says:

@ Menon,

You are too ignorant to be posting. Please get a dose of history, and
not the marxist kind, read Indian history and you will be shocked to
learn of the murderous trail of Islam. Start with Koenraad Elst’s
website.

http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/negaind/index.htm

Good luck.

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 6:12 PM.

JK says:

Sometime back there was a report from Kerala on similar activity
called Love Jihad and it invited the attention of the Special Branch.
Later there was no news about it.

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 10:52 PM.

Arjun says:

A little update on the news, IE comes out with An Op-ed today. The
whole issue has been hijacked completely. By branding the BJP Mla has
been rubbished by his alleged references questioning the patriotism of
Indian Muslims. Sandeep, do you plan to follow up with similar
stories? There are a few which media chose to ignore. I can post the
links if its of any need.

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 12:10 AM.

Sandeep says:

Arjun,

Like I said, that’s an old trick by the secular media. Not worth
following it up. There’s a pattern to such pieces. All it needs is for
you to read up 20 “secular” editorials. You can make up one of your
own. It’s that easy.

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 12:43 AM.

Raghavendra says:

A note on seculars….

My colleague often keeps telling me about aligning to BOSSES, it
reminds me of seculars, if you wants know why seculars are the way
they are right now, its because of alignment.

Politicians align themselves to their vote bank, seculars who enjoy
govt comforts aligns to political bosses.

Its all about vote bank,its not that seculars have eternal enmity on
Hindus, its mostly business and to some extent amount fear.

If you create vote bank they will on your side.

I categorize the people as follows..

Secular - One how hate Hindus.

Secular Hindu - One who proclaims that all religion stands for peace
(Like our Shri Shri Ravi Shankar)

Hindu(Communal) - One speaks truth, and strip the falsehood where ever
it exists (Like Sita ram goel, SL Byraapa ect… )

-Raghu

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 4:22 PM.

S B says:

Hi Sandeep,
Can across this wonderful article called the hoax of Vasudaiva
Kutumbakam:

http://voi.org/sourced/bharatendu.com/thehoaxcalledvasudhaivakutumbakam-1:hitopadesha.html

The Hitopadesha stories are quite illustrative ! Our ancestors were
far wiser than we imagine !

As far as the Islamic strategy goes, I had heard this one earlier but
refused to believe it then. After all, who would be perverted enough
to lure girls only so that one’s religion expands. But then again, I
underestimated Islam yet again (like all Hindu idiots).

I had heard a case from someone I know about a girl who was married to
a Muslim (love marriage !). The boy, after insisting that the girl
convert to Islam after marriage, after a few months, wanted to marry
the girl’s sister.

I have no words to describe this wonderful culture originating from
Arabia also known as Islam.

Posted on July 10, 2009 at 9:12 AM.

S B says:

Came across this nice site:

http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/research/ctID.8/ctrend.asp

Posted on July 13, 2009 at 10:59 PM.

Palahalli says:

SB- In Islam it’s virtous to work for Allah’s glory. Muslims do the
moral thing when they help expand their religion.

Islam needs to be defeated and contained, not reformed;for in the eyes
of the Muslim, Islam is perfection not perversion.

Posted on July 14, 2009 at 12:30 AM.

anup says:

20 July 2009: Monday 12:10-13:30

Title: “We Are The Mujahidin Armed with Pens”: The Da’wa Movement of
Forum Lingkar Pena among Muslim Youth in Contemporary Indonesia

Najib Kailani, Southeast Asian Social Studies Gajah Mada University

This paper investigates the phenomenon of contemporary Indonesian
Muslim youth who have developed an Islamic (popular) cultural movement
through an organization called ‘Forum Lingkar Pena’ (Lingkar Pena
Forum). This organization was founded by some Tarbiyah campus
activists in 1997 at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. The primary
purpose of the organization is to prepare young writers to propagate
Islam using popular cultural ways such as short stories, comics and
novels. Their main focus is disseminating a popular or trendy version
of Islam among teenagers. They are most concerned about Islamic youth.
They circulate their ideas and works among school students through
religious institutions called Rohis (Kerohanian Islam). This study
attempts to explore the contemporary Muslim youth movement in
Indonesia which is occurring at a time when globalization is at its
strongest.

Posted on July 14, 2009 at 4:39 PM.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Secular Burqa
Posted by Sandeep on Friday, June 26, 2009 at 7:54 PM.

Let me pick up from where BarbarIndian’s superbly acid post left off.
He points to this Slimes of India piece that dwells on the Supreme
Dignity that a Burqa confers on women. Extracts from that piece
follow.

Many Indian Muslim women in cities and small towns can barely veil
their disgust over French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s comments on
From the college lecturer in Mumbai to the young married woman in
Bihar’s Munger to the student in Lucknow — all say the burqa is an
article of faith, a pillar of support….In a world where sexual-crime
is rampant, the burqa denotes comfort, security and allows a woman her
dignity, they say. Daughter of Nawab Jafar Mir Abdullah of Lucknow’s
royal family, 26-year-old Mahruq, who is pursuing her BEd feels safer
wearing a burqa to public places like Nakhaas, a crowded locality. “I
feel protected from eve-teasers and anti-social elements as they don’t
get to see me or my body,” she says.

“A covered body sends out a positive signal that says no sexual
mischief will be tolerated,” says Moonisa Bushra Abedi, professor of
nuclear physics in Maharashtra College in Mumbai…The need for modesty
is pointedly made out in the Quran, say these women, and a chador is
perfectly in order. They scoff at Sarkozy who had said that the burqa
is not a religious sign but a sign of subservience.”Any Muslim woman
who is close to her Quran will embrace the burqa,” says Tabassum.

Full marks to Slimes for picking up the cudgels on behalf of a certain
community (ssh!) almost immediately on cue. Barely three days after
Sarkozy committed the blasphemy of condemning the Burqa, comes the
Slimes’ mighty rejoinder. Of course, this rejoinder will please the
sections that need to be perpetually pleased, not to mention a secular
party that will be smiling benevolently at its ever-reliable media
mouthpiece.

Yet again, this piece offers us a study into the tactics the secular
media employs to brainwash an already overly-dumbed down Indian
public. Note the words I’ve underlined. Gather real (or seemingly-
real) but severely personal opinions from authority figures (real or
otherwise)–descendant of a Nawab, a nuclear physics professor–and pass
them off as the final word on Burqa. The intent is quite obvious:
create the impression of legitimacy in readers’ minds if they as much
as harbour any negative impression about the Burqa.

But the story reverses on the Hindu side. Picture this: a Hindu
organization chastises some Hindu women for not dressing up to meet
the need for modesty. Important Note: I’m using the same language
sanctified by this Slimes article. This piece would make front-page
news the very next day and…well, you know the drill by now. The same
Slimes would spin the incident using these well-chosen terms:

•Moral policing rears its ugly head again
•Freedom of women endangered by Hindu fundamentalists
•Women are not safe anymore
•Hindu fanatics taking us back to regressive times
•<Add your own creative spin here>
But no, no one, not even the head of a state gets away with
“insulting” anything remotely…err…green (or is it black in this
case?). So the Slimes language goes thus:

Many Indian Muslim women in cities and small towns can barely veil
their disgust

Further, the Slimes also suddenly wakes up to the fact that we live in
a world “where sexual-crime is rampant.” But unwittingly, it reveals
what it tries hard to conceal. The reasoning behind imposing the
Burqa, which it quotes with such gusto is but an echo of Islamic
impositions.

“Any Muslim woman who is close to her Quran will embrace the burqa,”
says Tabassum.

For Muslims, modesty in dressing is not left to individual discretion.
Women are urged to ‘protect themselves from evil elements’, says
professor Hashia. A woman’s behaviour is her message, their scriptures
say. “It is not easy to separate a Muslim woman from burqa,” says
Tabassum.

Isn’t the mention of “evil elements” quite interesting? I leave it to
your intelligence to discern the mindset that lays down such reasoning
to “protect” women. It is exactly the same mindset that harassed
Taslima Nasrin among other things. It is also the same mindset that
sanctions female genital mutilation (a Google search reveals
interesting results).

The Slimes is basically trying very hard to showcase for us the
amazing personal freedom that women enjoy under Islam’s merciful
umbrella. Perhaps it has hasn’t heard about a certain Samira Bellil.
Here’s a sample of the said amazing personal freedom she enjoyed.

As a teenager Bellil rebelled against the traditional constraints of
her community and wanted to live freely as a young French woman.

Samira was first gang-raped when she was 14, by a gang led by someone
she knew. They beat her viciously and raped her all night. A month
later, one of the most violent attackers in the gang followed her and
dragged her off a train by her hair, while other passengers looked the
other way. She was then brutally raped by him again….Bellil’s parents,
who believed they were shamed by her presence, expelled her from her
house. “People outside the community don’t know,” Bellil has written.
“And everyone in the community knows, but they won’t say anything….The
word tournante is a French adjective meaning “turning”. It is used as
a slang term to mean a gang rape.

The typical scenario that takes place is that the targeted young woman
is drawn or lured into a secluded area where she is brutalized and
repeatedly raped by groups of men who take turns raping her. The
victim is usually insulted for behaving in a Westernized manner.

Also, perhaps the Slimes doesn’t know that entire blogs are dedicated
to condemn everything the Burqa stands for.

Postscript: Where is the the Pink Panties Brigade raising their
unstinted support for supporting the right of women to wear Burqas–
pink or otherwise?

154 Comments on “Secular Burqa”

harish says:

CC,
If you dont have the patience that’s your problem.
I am only asking you to quantify freedom of expression. What comes
under the gambit of it? What doesnt? Who decides it?
And you blame me for the confusion. Why dont you clear the air about
what i have been asking there would be no confusion is it?

>>“Just look @ the kind of obscene protests they do. Men wearing bras over T-shirts. Disgusting.”
This is where you got me wrong. When i was talking their protest, I
didn’t mean to reprimand their protest. I was talking of the means
they were using to protest. Means are as important as cause isn’t it?
Can you prove to me that men wearing bras is harmless to the society?
Could they have chosen other means? I think the statement of mine is
quite clear, which shows my reservations to the kind of protest. If
you don’t have the patience to understand what i mean, I am sorry I
can’t really help.

I am sure the transsexuals also would be yearning for equality. In the
name of equality how would you deal with it if they expose their
private parts in public during protest. This is exactly what they do
in the trains rite.

From your words it looks like, if i was fighting for equality i could
choose any means of protests even shitting in public. Correct me if I
am wrong.

Do we want to legalize suicide as well? After all its one’s own life.
Does it come under the purview of Individual freedom that you are
talking of?

Posted on July 12, 2009 at 9:22 AM.

carvaka says:

Well if it is Islamic then it is secular in India; I though everyone
knew that!

Posted on July 20, 2009 at 10:36 AM.

carvaka says:

interestingly all the comments about homosexuality is like bestiality
is taken from Christian arguments against it.

Some Indians cannot let go of the colonial mentality even while
pretending to make up their own arguments. I suppose that is also
‘authentically’ Indian.

Posted on July 20, 2009 at 10:54 AM.

Palahalli says:

Carvaka - I’m presuming your referring to my arguments.

If so, I’d like to hear your arguments; also presumably
“authentically” Indian, FOR equal rights for sexual minorities.

Posted on July 20, 2009 at 12:45 PM.

[Sid Harth]

How Islam is Enforced
Posted by Sandeep on Monday, June 22, 2009 at 1:26 AM.

The latest evidence.

The Bandra police has filed a case against Bollywood star Shah Rukh
Khan for allegedly making comments about Prophet Mohammad but the
actor said it is a writing error and not a thought or view that he
believes in.

“We have registered an FIR against Shah Rukh Khan after we received an
application from an advocate who alleged that the actor made some
statements hurting the sentiments of Muslims….The complaint was
registered against Shah Rukh and the publisher of the magazine in
which the purported remarks were published.

Complainant Khalid Babu Querishi alleged that in the July issue of the
‘Time and Style’ magazine, Shah Rukh had used objectionable language
against the Prophet which is unacceptable,”….

What did Shahrukh actually say? Here, in his own words, from Time and
Style:

[Interviewer] The most impressive figure in history, according to you?
There are lots of them, some negative ones like Hitler. On the other
hand there are nice ones like Napoleon, Winston Churchill and if I can
call it history, then Prophet Mohammed and from recent times - Nelson
Mandela. And also Gandhiji and Mother Teresa who are equally
impressive.

That was enough to get the Islam-in-Danger bogey all worked up. You
need to assign opposite meanings to the words Shahrukh Khan has used
to take offence. If anything, he has spoken with polite deference to
Mohammad. And this as an extremely passing statement in the entire
interview in a magazine catering to the severely dumbed-down. But the
Islam-in-Danger brigade’s threat worked. As always.

Shahrukh was almost instantly on his knees.

…the actor…said that there is no more important figure in history than
Prophet Mohammad. “Being a Muslim and standing up for the tenets of
Islam is my most important agenda,” he said.

Meanwhile, none of our liberals have given this the serious treatment
it deserves but I am boxing with air. And because I say this, I’m
branded a Muslim-hater, communal, fanatic, and all the other nice
designer labels.

And no Pink Panties (TM) to support poor Shahrukh Khan.

23 Comments on “How Islam is Enforced”

Ghostwriter says:

I am actually amused and delighted to see a Disney-Islamist (there is
no other word to describe SRK) get tangled up with the real thing. If
memory serves me right - he refused to touch Lata Mangeshkars’ feet,
not because he wanted to assert that as an individual right
(understandable enough), but because he said it was against Islam i.e.
the only way he will sow he is a good Muslim is by not bowing down.
Add the absolute silliness this guy gets upto in the movies and all I
can sya is - it could not have happened to a more deserving guy!!

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 2:03 AM.

m says:

I say it’s time for the BJP to come out in support of SRK on this
issue [as a fine example of what they mean by pseudo secularism].

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 2:05 AM.

Bhavananda says:

SRK wasn’t at his knees after the controversy. He’s been like that
(closet Islamist) for a very long time. Just watch the number of times
he, or for that matter any other islamist, uses the word inshallah and
you can estimate the propensity to wage jihad in him. And his
frequency has only increased over the years.

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 3:31 AM.

Ot says:

SRK is a vastly overrated actor anyways. There is no comparison
between him and BigB. The latter is truly talented while our Disney
Islamist (I like that, GhostWriter) prospered because of good looks
aiding his better-than-mediocre talent. Incidentally, he is one of the
contributors to Tehalka’s founding fund. Scratch these contributors
and you’ll find either a commie loonie or an Islamist.

Reminds me also of the times when MF Hussain and Shabana Azmi earned
the wrath of Islamists. It’s pretty interesting to see how some
educated Muslims, despite having advanced the cause of Islam in their
own way working around the constraints of their secular-liberal
posturing, are still demanded to conform to Islamist principles in
toto. There is no relaxation of rules for them (which would make
tactical sense because they can then fool non-Muslims that much more)
despite the service they are rendering to the quam.

More important: why was a case registered at all? Why can’t the
citizen of a secular state believe that a religious figure is no more
or no less important than other religious or historical figures? Fact
of the matter is that a part of India is already a fascist society
where thought policing is rampant, and is enforced even using Indian
state machinery! Most Hindus are ignorant of this fact because by
virtue of being Hindus they don’t inhabit this dark world of
censorship. (Read the book on Fatwas by Shourie).

Commie loons argue that citizens should not be compelled to respect
all religions. I agree with that stand, but of course, the reason that
our loon advances it has nothing whatsoever to do with upholding free
thinking. He wants to uphold Islamists’ (and commies’ and
proselytizers’) right to denigrate the faiths they oppose. Point out
the intrinsically fundamentalist/fascist nature of the faiths that the
loon favors, with the aid of facts and examples like the above, and he
begins to froth at the mouth. That’s an irony. The chap insists that
people be allowed, for _reasons of faith_ (ie, because their own faith
demands them to do so) to disrespect other faiths; but that faiths
should not be disrespected for _logical_ and _rational_ reasons; for
what the nature of beliefs is, and for what their behavior on the
ground is. (I recently had fun with one such character on Swapanda’s
blog; I suspect he’s the same who frequents yours as well

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 1:22 PM.

Ashok Kumar says:

Oh, don’t shed your tears for poor SRK, atleast not so soon.
Being a ruthless greed machine SRK is, how can we rule out that this
is not some gimmick to generate curiosity factor for his upcoming film
‘My Name is Khan” which no doubt seems going to whitewash Islam and
paint muslims as victim. By the way he plays a retard in that.
Besides he made lots of investment in Dubai. He was some special guest
during the opening ceremony of some lavish hotel during 2009 new year
ceremony. So we can never know whether he is a closet islamist or not.
So lets wait and watch whether this is some publicity gimmick OR some
slip-of-tongue mistake by SRK. As expected our sickular media
downplayed the story. It means despite the sensational and catchy
appeal of the story, our sickular media struck to its muslim-
appeasement stance.

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 2:22 PM.

Palahalli says:

What’s sensible and a way to look at it -

Ok, so SRK was actually being appreciative of Mohammed but got booked
anyways because he was set alongside other good mortals. This did not
make Mohammed exclusive and per Islam, no one compares with Mohammed.

In my opinion, the police did the right thing in booking the case
against SRK. As a Muslim, this fellow should have known better than to
equalize Mohammed’s stature. The next time round one must wish that
the Muslim litigants do an aberrant full Islamic honor and not just
file some silly case. That’s also as per their penal rule.

As for us Hindus, let’s not expect Muslims to act and react like we
do. They are not like us and don’t think like us.

Let’s allow Muslims in this country to live fully, as Islam requires
them to. Let there be no half measures.

I’m not at all being sarcastic. This is the way it will work and
anything other than this will be a rotten deal for Hindus in India. So
let no Hindu attract Muslim opprobrium by denying Islam to them.

One may ask what happens to the Hindus when Islam impedes their lives?
Well, Hindus are not Muslims and are not governed by Islamic tenets
and so are not required to subscribe to its rules. Eg - If MF Hussain
paints nude Gods and Goddesses without the express approval of
responsible Hindu authority, then Hindus retain the right to paint
Mohammed and his Allah in equally insulting fashion. There then cannot
be any sanction against Hindus because they are not Muslims, and they
paint as Hindus do or would.

One may speak of conversions. Do conversions of any sort occur where
Hindus are strong? No. The reasoning is like this – Islam and
Christianity asks its followers to convert. Hinduism does not have
such a system of evangelism. If a system does not convert, this only
means that the system was never used to the idea of losing or gaining
adherents from or to its “fold”. This means conversions are against
what Hinduism believes in. Any conversion from Hinduism to any
religion into which any Hindu cannot freely walk into or out of, at
will, will be illegal. Muslims and Christians cannot convert Hindus
but can convert each other freely.

This manner of thought and action follows its own logic.

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 3:32 PM.

Prasanna says:

OT

Great analysis

I am tempted to compile all your though provoking comments that you
leave on various blogs and release a book .

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 8:11 PM.

Ot says:

Prasanna, thanks for the kind words. Trust me, the admiration is
mutually shared.

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 10:43 PM.

Krishna says:

“Let’s allow Muslims in this country to live fully, as Islam requires
them to. Let there be no half measures.”

Really?? That will mean unrestricted killings of Hindus, as the Quran
is very harsh when dealing with pagans.

Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve
fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends
of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak. Quran 4:76

Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do
they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow
the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book,
until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are
in a state of subjection. Quran 9:29

He it is Who sent His Messenger with the guidance and the true
religion that He may make it prevail over all the religions; and Allah
is enough for a witness. Quran 48:28

I could go on and on, especially about “what the right hand possesses”
- which include sex slaves of nonMuslims origin, as mentioned in the
Quran and Hadiths. Translated to modern Indian times that means Hindu
sex slaves/harems.

“One may speak of conversions. Do conversions of any sort occur where
Hindus are strong? No. The reasoning is like this – Islam and
Christianity asks its followers to convert. Hinduism does not have
such a system of evangelism. If a system does not convert, this only
means that the system was never used to the idea of losing or gaining
adherents from or to its “fold”. This means conversions are against
what Hinduism believes in. Any conversion from Hinduism to any
religion into which any Hindu cannot freely walk into or out of, at
will, will be illegal. Muslims and Christians cannot convert Hindus
but can convert each other freel”

As for the latter half of this paragraph - maybe, but practically
speaking it does not work that way, so the Hindus will have to start
doing *some* conversion, although since the Hindu has no world
conquering agenda. The Christists and Muslims have the burden of
trying to convert the world, and thus have - especially in the case of
the christists - become overextended, and they will pay dearly for it
(well at least the christists will; the muslims will pay dearly from
their lack of a non-Quranic education)

As to the first part of this paragraph, while it is true that in the
Sanatana Dharma there is no calling for conversion since the
“religion” is not a restrictive one like Islam or Christianity, there
are also no laws *against* conversion into the fluid Sanatana Dharma.
We may convert, we may not convert. Now is the time to do the latter
because it will help the Dharma expand - but there is no need for
overextension.

Posted on June 23, 2009 at 4:19 AM.

Palahalli says:

Krishna,

All that you say wrt to innate Islamic aggression against Hindus is
true.

My response would be; This is the consequence of tolerating Islam in
this country. How can Hindus hope to restrict or negate Islam’s
influence without political power? Hindu society itself acts on
impulse. That’s also why we see scattered resistance. So, why not
allow Islam to destroy itself through self-perpetuation? It cannot
hope to undermine Hindu society. But it can certainly anger Hindu
society enough. Think about it.

On conversion, the truth is we are not a converting religion.
Exceptions apart, it is not in our psyche. But we can use our heads in
order to take the wind out of Islam and Christianity. We need not get
into a game we cannot win. Let’s play the game we can surely win. The
recent Hindu-Christian dialogue has shown a way. We must use these
summits to make the Church and such, sweat. Let’s talk about these
more and give more publicity.

Posted on June 23, 2009 at 5:15 PM.

Krishna says:

“My response would be; This is the consequence of tolerating Islam in
this country. How can Hindus hope to restrict or negate Islam’s
influence without political power? Hindu society itself acts on
impulse. That’s also why we see scattered resistance. So, why not
allow Islam to destroy itself through self-perpetuation? It cannot
hope to undermine Hindu society. But it can certainly anger Hindu
society enough. Think about it.”

Islam will undoubtedly destroy itself when given freedom to do so, as
in Pakistan - the problem is when the Muslims are significant
minorities in Kaffir countries, such as India, they become more
focused and unified in their objective to convert or kill the
Polytheist. I agree, it is better to let the enemy destroy itself, but
that is more applicable to Pakistan. In India, what needs to happen is
a nullification of the power of the Mullah, Madrassas and Mosques.
Along with that, conversions.

Or the Hindus can simply out-reproduce the Muslims, as that is the key
element to the Islamic march.

“On conversion, the truth is we are not a converting religion.
Exceptions apart, it is not in our psyche. But we can use our heads in
order to take the wind out of Islam and Christianity. We need not get
into a game we cannot win. Let’s play the game we can surely win. The
recent Hindu-Christian dialogue has shown a way. We must use these
summits to make the Church and such, sweat. Let’s talk about these
more and give more publicity.”

Are you serious? Do you think dialogue is enough with the Christians?
These are fanatics we are dealing with, who strongly believe the
Heathens need saving; they will not give up until they either self-
destruct or are defeated. Fortunately there is some help on the way as
the economic might of the West is about to be destroyed (self-
destruction in action). The key is to gain control over the Church’s
economic leverage, such as their ability to buy up property. If it
cannot be done through legal channels then alternative means are not
out of the question. Of course intellectual activity (including simple
things such as the Church’s disturbing pedophilia) against the limited
Christist ideology is importance, but intellect without action does
not yield much result.

Again, I have not said conversion is to be the be all and end all of
the Hindu strategy, but I have no problems with it. And the main point
I was making is that there is no real injunction against it, even
though there is nothing in favor of it either, within the scripture.

Posted on June 24, 2009 at 5:20 AM.

Krishna says:

Had to share this Quranic gem

Certainly you will find the most violent of people in enmity for those
who believe (to be) the Jews and those who are polytheists, and you
will certainly find the nearest in friendship to those who believe (to
be) those who say: We are Christians; this is because there are
priests and monks among them and because they do not behave proudly.
Quran 5:82

-It says it right there folks! Muslms are to align with the Christians
over the Jews and Hindus. I cannot believe I never came across this
verse before.

Posted on June 24, 2009 at 7:00 AM.

Palahalli says:

Krishna, I am merely relating to our current and medium term
realities. Some would even say long term. All of that which you feel
Hindus should do, they can do with political power. Not otherwise.

What Hindus can do today and before they gain power is to ensure non-
Muslims see the fullest extent of Islam’s mischief. This cannot be
done by Secular laws ruling over us. What Secular laws succeed in
doing is to hide the true nature of society’s dynamic. Hindus can make
use of the corrupt Secular ways of our polity in order to allow Islam
to really rule over Muslims. If excitable Muslims get to Hindus, then
we know that we deal with such situations with appropriate brutality.
All this can be accomplished without political power.

For instance, under Islamic penal code, SRK would be dead by now. Or
at the very least lashed miserably. Today there is a an impotent
police case and a half hearted fatwa. Certainly not situations that
Islam or Muslims can claim to be happy with.

Yes, I think dialogue more in the nature of stripping the wolf’s sheep
cloth than to resolve irresolvable issues. Dialogue as projection of
power. This is the game the Church will be beaten at. An apt analogy
is getting Al Capone on Tax than on murder. You need Hindu society’s
muscle with Islam and Hindu society’s brain with the Church.

I caution against wishing for the demise of the West. Even if the West
falls, they fall to Islam and not to any benevolent system. The Church
has enough resources to last it many generations. Let’s be smart about
grabbing them where it hurts most and matters more.

Posted on June 24, 2009 at 4:29 PM.

Krishna says:

“Hindus can make use of the corrupt Secular ways of our polity in
order to allow Islam to really rule over Muslims. If excitable Muslims
get to Hindus, then we know that we deal with such situations with
appropriate brutality. All this can be accomplished without political
power.”

1. I understand your point, but you are forgetting two things. The
first, though not as important in itself because it goes along with
the reaction you state the Hindus will have, is that allowing literal
Islamic law would mean the enactment of Jaziya etc, Hindu sex slaves,
slaughter of Kaffirs all supported legally. But the next point is the
important one - the Islamic principle of Taqiyah, dissimulation.
Muslims know that they cannot all of a sudden thrust True Islam on the
Hindus, so they will pretend, for awhile, until they get enough
numbers, that Islam is “peaceful” and “tolerant”. They do this because
that is a useful tactic to shield the unbelievers from the true nature
of the beast. Therefore the MUSLIMS will probably not wish for the
True Islam to fully govern Muslims, at least not yet.

2. Again, dialogue is not enough, even with the Church. Have you seen
the recent news that Christians in Assam are forcibly converting
Hindus? Spreading information to other Hindus as to the true nature of
the Christians is more important than dialogue, because the Christians
will believe the Hindus need to be converted irrespective of how good
the Hindu argument is - the Christians are fanatics, lest we forget.

As for the demise of the West, whether I wish for it or not, it is
here. The Church’s resources are primarily economic, and irrespective
of how much money they take in their coffers, the key is the value of
their money - foreign currency - within in India. At some point, the
values of the Dollar, Euro, Sterling (this one in particular is
already happenning) will plummet, decreasing the leverage the Church
has in India. That is where the Chinese and Arabs controlling the debt
of the West comes into play (even though those two do benefit from the
current system as well). The other church resource, ownership of
Indian land, is a little trickier, and at this moment in time I cannot
hypothesize one method or another to break this situation.

Another thing to do is to simply find a way to funnel Church money
into Hindu causes, although this would require much ingenuity.

Posted on June 30, 2009 at 3:57 AM.

Krishna says:

Also, speaking of the Church’s resources - understand that they will
have to spend more of their resources on their own whites from now on,
as there will be a lot more Westerners impoverished as a result of
this current economic depression.

Posted on June 30, 2009 at 4:03 AM.

Palahalli says:

Krishna, I have a few observations on your note -

Taxes like jazia are imposed on conquered or subject people. Islam,
naturally cannot impose a (really) punitive tax on people it cannot
subject to to its Shar’ia. That is why some features of Islam are
sustaining of itself and others are ruling of its subject people who
are un-believers. In our case Hindus cannot be taxed the jazia simply
because it does not fall under the “ruling” category.

Similarly with sex-slaves and such.

When I speak of Islam ruling Muslims in India I speak of Shar’ia. To
be fair, their methods of propaganda do not involve denial of Shar’ia
and its inherent barbarism. It only involves stressing a little less.
This quasi-disguise will vanish when non-Muslims see Islam in action
for Muslims.

I remember my uncle talking about an “open-air” be-heading ground in
Saudi Arabia way back in the 80s. He was repulsed by it. But in India
he is back to being the “live and let live Hindu”. That’s the
difference.

On dialogue with the Church, naturally I am not talking about just
dialogue. You seem to have misunderstood my purpose of dialogue.
Dialogue between opposing groups initially will be like testing
waters. Testing each others endurance and will. Then it will be
pushing advantage depending upon how much the other has weakened. We
know Hindus have made themselves weak in this area. The Church uses
this weapon to its advantage with devastating effect. This is also
what it uses to convince its Western money bags that Hindus need
Christ. We must defeat the Church in this area. When I say “defeat the
Church” I do not mean convincing them of our righteousness. They won’t
be. I mean making open the dialogue to the public and shedding the
Church’s disguise. This also depends upon who we send as our
delegates. As far as Assam like events are concerned, what are Hindus
doing about it today? When they don’t have that kind of dialogue yet?
Our muscle with the Church is not working because these people are not
rash. We must use our minds.

After the dialogue, let the Church relegate themselves to forcible
conversion and come out into the open.

On the West and India, all I want to say is that India is not a water-
well, inure to conditions in other parts of the world. More-over self-
preservation will pull back Church monies into the West. This is my
point. The Church has been and is now openly and finally acting at
cross-purposes to Western interests. It is not in the interest of the
(real and not immigrant) West to self-destruct at the alter of a so
called “kingdom of God”. The Church in the West will have to take on
it’s initial role of the same preservation of Western civilization
that once inspired Constantine to take to the Church.

You seem to see the point of Islam becoming supreme at the cost of
Western weakness. China too. How are these alternatives better than
what the West or it’s Christianity, was to India and Hindus? If they
are not better then my submission is they are a thousand fold worse.
What should be Hindu strategy here?

Awaiting your thoughts.

Posted on June 30, 2009 at 9:18 AM.

krishna says:

“On the West and India, all I want to say is that India is not a water-
well, inure to conditions in other parts of the world. More-over self-
preservation will pull back Church monies into the West. This is my
point. The Church has been and is now openly and finally acting at
cross-purposes to Western interests. It is not in the interest of the
(real and not immigrant) West to self-destruct at the alter of a so
called “kingdom of God”. The Church in the West will have to take on
it’s initial role of the same preservation of Western civilization
that once inspired Constantine to take to the Church.”

Thats exactly my point - hence less church money will be sent to
India, given us a bit of a breather. Still irrespective of how much
money they bring back to the West, it will be wasted. Right a lot of
money spent in the West is sent into the equivalent of black holes -
it is wasted permanently. The Church will not be immune to these
capital traps - namely, the Christian citizens who have lost concept
of the value of money.

“You seem to see the point of Islam becoming supreme at the cost of
Western weakness. China too. How are these alternatives better than
what the West or it’s Christianity, was to India and Hindus? If they
are not better then my submission is they are a thousand fold worse.
What should be Hindu strategy here?”

The Hindu strategy should be to play each enemy off the other. Islam,
Christism, China, Self-hating Hindus all should be gamed in
appropriate proportion, which may mean somewhat more focus on Islam
but not that much more than on Christism.

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 6:07 AM.

Palahalli says:

“The Hindu strategy should be to play each enemy off the other. Islam,
Christism, China, Self-hating Hindus all should be gamed in
appropriate proportion, which may mean somewhat more focus on Islam
but not that much more than on Christism.”

- Are Hindus strong enough today? If not how much time will it take to
be strong enough to facilitate this kind of “co-ordination”?

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 4:56 PM.

krishna says:

“Are Hindus strong enough today? If not how much time will it take to
be strong enough to facilitate this kind of “co-ordination”?”

Hindu’s are strong enough, and have always been, because no weak
country could have survived a 1000 year onslaught the way we did.
Imagine if the same wave upon wave of invasions entered Saudi Arabia -
it would barely survive more than one week.

The questions are of organizations, awareness, and the capacity to
become more aggressive. The key here is to take advantages of obvious
divisions between the enemies, which are presenting themselves on a
daily basis if one were to simply peruse the headlines. From there,
not THAT much needs to be done, perhaps a slight nudge here and there
will be enough.

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 7:43 PM.

Palahalli says:

Krishna - You speak of two different kinds of strength.

The way I understand them, these are Societal/Social and Political
(Military-Economic)

I will readily concede that our society is strong. Is very resilient
and is capable of withstanding and even rebuffing social aggressions.

With this, please consider the following fact - It is not Hindu
political power that is driving this resistance.

It may be argued that political power is unimportant here. True to a
great extent but if we are to remain unaffected by fall-out from the
various wars of attrition that are being carried out now and those
that will be in future, we certainly require political power. It is
this power that will drive our security (Military) as well as
prosperity (Economic) aims. This will also lend much needed logistical
help to strengthen our Society.

But this is all in the long term.

For the short term, we must look at allies.

Posted on July 9, 2009 at 8:03 PM.

krishna says:

The Christists are not our allies at heart - only a weak man will make
that argument or seek such creatures as friends (unless he intends to
double-cross them). The Christists seek the same goal for India that
the Muslims do. Of course, practical considerations are necessary.

Posted on July 12, 2009 at 12:50 AM.

Palahalli says:

Yes, I’m talking about practical considerations.

Posted on July 12, 2009 at 8:34 AM.

larissa says:

First of all SRK is the most annoying Indian actor! I get irritated
every time I see him (usually at an Indian restuarant). Can’t
understand why he is so famous.
Hindus are not united and divided which is why anyone can take
advantage of their weakness…I doubt they have learned from their
history…I blame it all on them…Others only take advantage when you are
weak yourself.
India will continue to limp along with the amount of population it has…
but will India again be an impressive country ever, I mean noticeable
not because it has such a large population but because it contributes
to civilization in a significant way?
The Hindu revival in places like Gujrat makes one optimistic…such
things usually come with economic prosperity.

Posted on July 12, 2009 at 9:07 AM.

[Sid Harth]

Mahesh Bhatt to shoot Hindu-Muslim love story in Lahore

Subhash K. Jha
July 28th, 2009

MUMBAI - Raj Kumar Santoshi may have moved Lahore in his adaptation
of the play “Jis Lahore Nahin Dekhya Woh Jamiya Nahin” to Hyderabad,
but filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is all set to shoot an entire Bollywood
film - a Hindu-Muslim love story - in Pakistan’s cultural capital.

The romance saga will star Pakistani singing sensation Noumad opposite
an Indian girl who’s still to be finalised. The untitled film will be
directed by Mohit Suri who had earlier made “Awaarapan” - a small
portion of which was shot in Lahore.

“It is a pre-partition ‘Titanic’. It’s a story of intense love between
two culturally-crossed individuals during times of abject hatred. It’s
the story of a Muslim boy who saves the Hindu girl from his own people
and gives up his life in protecting her,” Bhatt told IANS.

“We’re introducing a new star from Pakistan and a completely new girl
from Bharat (India). The Pakistani boy is Noumad, a singing sensation
in his country,” said the filmmaker who has worked with quite a few
Pakistani artists, including actress Meera in “Zeher”.

This would be the first Bollywood film to be shot entirely in
Pakistan.

“We’ll, of course, shoot the entire film in Lahore since that’s where
the film is located. We’ll be using their infrastructure and work
force. The cultural secretary and the governor of Punjab have extended
whole-hearted support to our film,” said Bhatt.

The director feels Pakistan can become a leading location for
Bollywood.

“But first we must shed this Pak-phobia. It took me five years to
create friendship across the border before we at Vishesh Films began
to collaborate with Pakistan to make films. Such things cannot happen
overnight.

“I feel other filmmakers who shoot Pakistan-located films in India
aren’t trying hard enough. They must be more open in their interaction
across the border. To touch your dreams, you need to stretch more than
just your hands,” he said.

The shooting of Bhatt’s ambitious India-Pakistan venture is set to
start early next year.

(Subhash K. Jha can be contacted at jha...@gmail.com)

[ranjit_...@yahoo.com]

On Jul 28, 12:08 pm, Sid Harth <sharth...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mahesh Bhatt to shoot Hindu-Muslim love story in Lahore
>
> Subhash K. Jha
>  July 28th, 2009
>
>  MUMBAI - Raj Kumar Santoshi may have moved Lahore in his adaptation
> of the play “Jis Lahore Nahin Dekhya Woh Jamiya Nahin” to Hyderabad,
> but filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is all set to shoot an entire Bollywood
> film - a Hindu-Muslim love story - in Pakistan’s cultural capital.
>
> The romance saga will star Pakistani singing sensation Noumad opposite
> an Indian girl who’s still to be finalised. The untitled film will be
> directed by Mohit Suri who had earlier made “Awaarapan” - a small
> portion of which was shot in Lahore.
>
> “It is a pre-partition ‘Titanic’. It’s a story of intense love between
> two culturally-crossed individuals during times of abject hatred. It’s
> the story of a Muslim boy who saves the Hindu girl from his own people
> and gives up his life in protecting her,” Bhatt told IANS.

How about if it were to be a movie on a Hindu boy protecting a Muslim
girl from her people. Would it then be possible to shoot it in
Pakistan?

> (Subhash K. Jha can be contacted at jhas...@gmail.com)

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Wednesday, July 29, 2009
After ‘BAD’ now ‘BADMAN’ theory : IM may attack Mumbai now.

The e-mail sent by the Indian Mujahideen before the bomb blasts in New
Delhi on Saturday is quite similar in its tone and language with the
group’s previous two e-mails. In Saturday’s mail dated ‘12 Ramadan,
1429 AH’ the Indian Mujahideen has demanded ‘Vacate the land of Babri
as soon as you can.’

The e-mail says, ‘Your oppression will always be revenged Inshallah
though after years to come. Never assume that we have forgotten the
demolition of Babri Masjid and by Allah we can never forget it! It is
that grave mistake of yours which will make you taste humiliation for
generations to come. Babri Masjid was and will remain to be our
glorious self esteem and Inshallah, we will prove it to you a hornet’s
nest in which you have immersed your bare hand, unaware of the pain to
come.’

The e-mail complains about what it describes as the media’s biased
reporting about the recent anti-Christian violence in Orissa and about
the weak and insufficient media coverage of the bomb blasts in Kanpur
in which two Bajrang Dal activists died.

It mocks the Gujarat police investigation of the Ahmedabad blasts and
claims that Uttar Pradesh Abu Bashir is innocent of the crime.

The e-mail hints indirectly that the group may also resort to
abduction and ransom.

It threatens ‘disastrous consequences of the injustice and oppression
inflicted upon the Muslims all over the country.’

It says, ‘With this message, we once again declare that our intense,
accurate and successive attacks like the one you will see exactly 5
minutes from now, Inshallah, will continue to punish you even before
your earlier wounds have healed.’

It declares it planted nine bombs in the capital.

The e-mail targets the police and its investigation against the
Students Islamic Movement of India. It names the police of Gujarat,
Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, ttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka.

The e-mail describes the police investigation in these states as ‘the
never ending hostile hatred in your hearts against Islam and its
people.’

The individuals behind the e-mail appear to be well informed about the
Indian police. It names some Gujarat police officers and predictably
Gujarat and Maharashtra’s political leaders, but it also claims that,
‘We are aware of your recent night raids at Ansarnagar, Mograpada, in
Andheri (northwest Mumbai) and the harrassment and trouble you created
there for the Muslims.’

The e-mail notes how in 2006, ‘in Nanded, there was a bomb blast in
the house of an RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) activist where two
RSS activists went to Hell. After that in March 2008, there were bomb
blasts at two places in Tamil Nadu. This time also VHP (Vishwa Hindu
Parishad) activists were arrested by the Tamil Nadu police who
confessed that ‘Yes. We were involved’, claims the e-mail.

The e-mail says the RSS is against ‘Muslims, Dalits and Christians’.
The Indian Muhajideen has also vowed to fight for injustice and pain
inflicted on Kashmiri Muslims during the Amarnath Yatra [Images]
crisis. The Sangh Parivar is not its only target. The e-mail also
targets the Congress party.

‘The Central Congress Government which pretends to be the well wisher
of Muslim interests has always treacherously hurt them and used them
to come in power since Independence,’ the e-mail notes. ‘It is this
double-faced attitude of the Congress that has secured its vote bank,
and still allowed it to silently commit one of the most heinous crimes
against the Muslim nation ever witnessed by history — the demolition
of Babri Masjid.’

The e-mail claims ‘We have carried out this attack in the memory of
two most eminent Mujahids of India: Sayyed Ahmed Shaheed and Shah
Ismail Shaheed (may Allah bestow His Mercy upon them) who had raised
the glorious banner of Jihad against the disbelievers in this very
city of Delhi.’

Lastly, the e-mail warns ‘remember, it is not at all difficult for us
to attack you in states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh
[Images], Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala.’

[bademiyansubhanallah]

2003 Mumbai blasts: Prosecution demands death sentence

Posted: Tuesday , Aug 04, 2009 at 1706 hrs

Mumbai:
Sentencing in 2003 Mumbai blast case today.

Raw visa dealBandh Culture In BengalRacism Alive and Well in USSingle
Her and single Him A special POTA court on Tuesday deferred till
August 6 its ruling on the quantum of sentence to be awarded to three
convicts in the 2003 serial bomb blasts case after the prosecution
demanded the death penalty saying the accused were responsible for
killing 54 persons and injuring 244 others.

Among the convicts, a married couple, Hanif Sayed Anees and his wife
Fahmida, asked for lenient punishment while another convict Arshat
Ansari said he was not guilty of the crime and the verdict was not
acceptable to him.

The trio were held guilty of planting two bombs that exploded at the
Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar on August 25, 2003, claiming 52
lives and injuring 244. They had also planted a bomb on July 28, 2003
in a municipal bus in suburban Ghatkopar which killed two persons.
This is for the first time a couple have been found guilty of terror
acts under POTA.

When judge M R Puranik asked the convicts what they had to say, Ansari
replied, "Mujhe manzoor nahin hai (the verdict is not acceptable to
me)". Fahmida said, "I have not done anything. Ek aurat ko atankwadi
tehrarahe ho. Meri bachi bhi lawaris hai (You are treating a woman as
terrorist. My child has become an orphan)."

Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said the trio had carried out
designs of the Laskhar-e-Toiba to create terror in India by carrying
out explosions in various places in Mumbai. It was the rarest of the
rare case and they should be given death penalty.

Citing Supreme Court judgments to demand the death penalty, prosecutor
Nikam argued that the convicts were exceptionally cruel and had total
disregard for human lives. Fahimida, although a woman, participated in
the crime willingly and no one had compelled her to assist her husband
in terrorist acts.

But defence lawyer Sudeep Pasbola said Fahmida came from the lower
strata of society and had children to look after. She came from a
traditional Muslim family where males dominate. Fahmida had merely
followed her husband in the crime as she had no choice. She deserves
lesser punishment, he argued.

Lawyer Wahab Khan argued that Hanif did not have criminal antecedents.
He had gone to Dubai to earn a living but was lured into a conspiracy
by Pakistani nationals after he was shown CDs of atrocities on
Muslims. He sought a life sentence for Hanif.

According to the prosecution, LeT had used a family for the first time
to trigger bomb blasts in Mumbai. LeT's role was bared by an accused-
turned-approver who told the court that the conspiracy meeting was
held in Dubai. LeT activists had come from Pakistan to attend the
meeting, the approver said. The motive behind the blasts was to seek
vengeance for the atrocities meted against the minority community
during the Godhra carnage in Gujarat in 2002.

On August 25, 2003, two bombs placed in taxis exploded at the Gateway
of India and Zaveri Bazaar in South Mumbai. Hanif, Nasir and Ansari
made bombs at the former's Andheri house. Nasir, a resident of
Hyderabad, was killed by police after the blasts in an encounter.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Rethinking Islam

Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Muslim Press must introspect, give voice to Muslim revulsion against
SIMI terrorism

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad
13 Sep 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Muslim Press must introspect, give voice to Muslim revulsion against
SIMI terrorism

Despite serious efforts made by secular, progressive Muslims concerned
with SIMI's radicalism recently, the Muslim Press refuses to
introspect and take a clear stand on the issue. It is claimed that
there is no evidence against SIMI's terrorism and the police version
cannot be taken seriously. We all know how difficult it is for
evidence "beyond a shadow of doubt" to come by. Even the best-equipped
police forces in the world are seldom able to collect such evidence.
One can even argue as some people do that even the United States with
all its resources has not been able to provide clinching against Osama
bin Laden and Al-Qaeda for the evil perpetrated against it on 9/11.
But there can at least be no doubt that SIMI has a terrorist ideology.
Is it right for Muslim intellectuals, journalists, clerics, therefore,
to keep quiet and thus support a terrorist ideology and terrorist
ideologues, even if they believe that there is still no evidence
against their terrorist acts and thus they cannot be branded
terrorists?

NewAgeIslam.com presents below a short collection of articles by Javed
Anand, Yoginder Sikand, Praveen Swami, Sultan Shahin, etc. that would
leave no doubt in the minds of any objective reader that SIMI has at
the very least been pursuing a terrorist ideology for quite some time
now. It's time Muslim Press engaged in serious introspection and
correctly reflected the revulsion Muslim community feels against
serial terrorist acts possibly perpetrated by people in its own midst.
Some mosques have already started expressing this revulsion and asking
Muslims to inform authorities about the people among them who may be
engaged in such nefarious activities. It's time the Press also started
at least condemning SIMI's terrorist ideology and exhorting Muslims to
help the authorities foil any terrorist plans they may suspect of.
It's only an aware populace and a united one that can save the country
from terrorism.

URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=727

Truth Has Two Faces: SIMI's radicalism is of deep concern for Indian
Muslims

By Javed Anand

Co-editor, Communalism Combat
Saturday, 13 September 2008

FILM-MAKER, OUTSPOKEN citizen with a conscience, and friend, Mahesh
Bhatt has a way with words. This is what I learnt from him two years
ago when we found ourselves holding two ends of a common problem: "You
know, I have learnt from experience that it is not always the case
that opposite a truth stands an untruth. Sometimes it can be one truth
face-to-face with another."

TEHELKA's exposé of our intelligence agencies vis-à-vis SIMI hit the
newsstands on August 16. As luck would have it, my article on SIMI too
appeared in The Indian Express the same morning. Later the same day,
the Gujarat police claimed to have made a major "breakthrough" in the
Ahmedabad blasts case in July. It not only claimed to have uncovered
clinching evidence against SIMI activists in the Ahmedabad case, but
also indicated that the same outfit was also involved in the earlier
blasts in Bangalore and Jaipur.

This conjunction of coincidences lent extra charge and meaning to both
TEHELKA's exposé and my article. A war of positions — so, whose side
are you on? — is now raging in cyber space, a plethora of e-mail
networks and sections of the Urdu media. While the TEHELKA report is
being gleefully reproduced, to some of my detractors I am now a "so-
called secularist". The unkindest so far is the 'Editor's Cut' by
Shoma Chaudhury in TEHELKA of September 6.

But first things first: My huge compliments and a hundred salaams to
Ajit Sahi and TEHELKA for holding a mirror before the mainstream
media, offering yet another outstanding example of courageous
journalism. Sahi's detailed report, case-by-case, is a highly
credible, damning account of the questionable conduct — shocking
inefficiency, callousness or rank anti-Muslim prejudice? — of our
intelligence agencies. Evidently, Judge Gita Mittal of the Delhi High
Court who headed the special tribunal was of the same opinion. Why
else would she slam the ban order in such transparent disgust?

The Supreme Court was quick to stay the ban on SIMI presumably on the
basis of fresh evidence produced before it. What the apex court
decides in due course remains to be seen. But for now, the
investigating agencies must answer TEHELKA's charge that scores of
Muslims and their family members from across the country were
subjected to midnight knocks, illegal detention, humiliating beatings,
torture and jail: all on false charges and without a shred of
evidence.

To this, I would add the charge I made in my article. Secular India
practices discriminatory justice for which only one explanation is
possible: anti-Muslim bias. Why else are the Bajrang Dal and other
Hindu extremist outfits not under the antiterrorism scanner? In the
last two years activists of these outfits have literally been caught
red-handed, holding or accidentally blown up by "Hindu bombs" in
several towns of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and MP. After the recent
Kanpur blasts, add UP to the list. Why also the deafening silence of
the state in response to Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray's call for
Hindu fidayeen (suicide bombers)? If this is not shameful double
standard, what else is?

Having said that, I also have something else to say. Had I written my
piece after reading TEHELKA's expose, I would have started my piece
with huge compliments to Sahi and TEHELKA as I do now. But I would
have proceeded to say all that I did in my article of August 16. And
ended with deep regret that Sahi's otherwise excellent investigation
was sadly, and particularly from the Indian Muslims' point of view,
dangerously incomplete.

To begin with, both keep collapsing two separate issues into one. In
the process I am accused of something that, if anything, they are
guilty of. Are we talking of a court of law, whether a tribunal
examining the legitimacy of a ban, or a trial in a court? If yes, it
goes without saying that due process and the rule of law must be the
only criteria for arriving at a judgment. No one, neither SIMI nor
Bajrang Dal, neither Narendra Modi nor Bal Thackeray, can or should be
banned or pronounced guilty without a fair trial.

FOR WHATEVER it is worth, the prime concern of the journal that I have
been co-editing for the last 15 years — Communalism Combat — and the
organisation that has been fighting for justice since the genocide in
Gujarat in 2002 and of which I happen to be one of the founding
trustees — Citizens for Justice and Peace — can be summed up in the
words: equality before law, equal protection of law, rule of law, due
process, justice for all. Again, for what it is worth, I have seen
myself as a human rights defender for threedozen years. In all
humility then, while one lives and learns, I don't really need lessons
in basics. But as far as I am concerned, what I have said above is no
different in substance from what I wrote in The Indian Express: you
can't ban or pronounce SIMI guilty of terrorism without proper
evidence and due process. It is not for nothing that I am so full of
praise for Sahi and TEHELKA.

That takes us to the second issue. We are talking now of the 'court'
of public opinion where you and I pass 'judgments' of a different kind
all the time. Surely, it does not need extraordinary imagination or
intellect to appreciate that the rules of the game here are different?
Have we not 'judged' the Congress Party and the Delhi police 'guilty'
of the carnage of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and rightly so? Have we not
pronounced Bal Thackeray guilty of the pogrom against Muslims in
Mumbai in 1992-93? And do we not hold Narendra Modi responsible for
state-sponsoring the genocidal killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002?

Why, then, does TEHELKA continue to fight shy, constantly prevaricate
when it comes to 'judging' SIMI in the 'court' of public opinion? Why
is Sahi molly-coddling the "SIMI brave-hearts" in his piece, Terror
has two faces? Why Chaudhury's helpless lament: "It is impossible to
entirely know what SIMI's ideology was or has evolved into…."?

"It may perhaps never be known for sure what SIMI's character and
activities before the ban was — or what it has been since, for that
matter," writes Sahi. Really? An hour's Google search, a little walk
outside the halls where the tribunal sat in different cities, could
have taken Sahi to the conclusion that enough about SIMI is already
known. There is SIMI and there are the investigating agencies in
Sahi's account. Because, a third party, the Indian Muslim is missing,
the story effectively ends up making SIMI synonymous with Muslims. The
very thought horrifies me.

"Scholarly Internet sites holding forth on the organisation do nothing
more than parrot the charge of the intelligence agencies," says Sahi.
He surely couldn't be talking of Irfan Ahmed, an anthropologist from
the University of Amsterdam, who, beginning in October 2001 spent a
lot of time in India talking to people from the Jamaat-e-Islami and
SIMI as part of his PhD research? Or of Yoginder Sikand, who lives in
India and who has spent long years researching and writing high
quality books, papers and numerous articles on Indian Muslims, their
institutions and organisations? Both are easily accessible, in cyber
space.

In a significant paper titled, Erosion of Secularism, Explosion of
Jihad: Explaining Islamist Radicalisation in India, available on the
Internet, Ahmed wrote: "SIMI's radicalisation unfolded in direct
response to the rise of virulent Hindu nationalism or 'Hindutva'… As
the assault on secularism by Hindutva — culminating in the demolition
of the Babri mosque and accompanied with large-scale violence against
Muslims — grew fiercer, so did SIMI's call for jihad."

And here are a few quotes from his article, The SIMI story, written in
2006: "As Hindu militancy increased in stridency, taking an ever-
increasing toll of Muslim lives, the SIMI adopted an even more hard-
line position, calling for Muslims to avenge the death of their co-
religionists by following in the footsteps of the 11th century Mahmud
Ghaznavi, who led several attacks into India and is said to have
destroyed many Hindu temples. SIMI activists put up posters in several
towns appealing to God to send down another Mahmud to take revenge for
attacks on Muslims and their places of worship..." What is obvious is
that the radicalism of groups like SIMI, on the one hand, and Hindu
fascist groups, on the other, feed on each other, both speaking the
language of hatred.

At a poignant moment, Sahi writes: "As I interviewed countless Muslims
so weathered, I couldn't but ask myself, 'What if this was me? What if
it was my brother, my father in jail?'" My deepest respect for the
sentiment embedded in this statement. My great fear however, is that
in today's India, while Sahi, his father and brother are reasonably
safe, someone with a Muslim tag is not. The latter, therefore, had
better beware of the SIMI label. It's a label that claims to speak for
him, its a label that can unfairly damn him, his brother or father.

Chaudhury worries over the fact that my article would reinforce the
already existing "general English-speaking middle-class consensus on
such issues". I would urge both Choudhury and Sahi to ponder a moment
over the fears of Indian Muslims. To quote Sikand again, "Muslim
organisations… realised, as never before, that the aggressive
confrontationist stance of groups like the SIMI could hardly serve the
community. Rather, it had only made their situation as a beleaguered
minority even more precarious."

"Bigdi hai bahut baat, banaye nahi banti/Ab ghar ko baghair aag lagaye
nahi banti" (The situation is so bad; no solution is in sight/What
else can one do, except set one's own house on fire). Words from the
inimitable Mirza Ghalib, penned in a different time, a different age.
So apt, when we talk of SIMI today.

Notwithstanding how Chaudhury quotes me, for me, too, the credentials
of the investigating agencies are highly suspect. So pending a verdict
from the courts, we have no means of knowing whether SIMI is already
walking its talk: armed jihad and martyrdom. But… let the English-
speaking middle-class make what it will of my article. My prime
concern is the Indian Muslim, whose already-tortured existence is
rendered even more precarious by SIMI's self-destructive, pan-Islamic
hallucination. My concern is the conspiracy of silence vis-à-vis SIMI
of Muslim religious leaders and the Urdu press. It's a concern I share
with millions of Muslims across the country. What a pity that even
TEHELKA, a journal I hold in high esteem, does not know they exist.

(Anand is General Secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy)

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 37, Dated Sept 20, 2008

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main40.asp?filename=Ne200908TruthHasTwoFaces.asp

Communalism Combat Cover Story October 2001

Why be shy about SIMI?

The objection to the selective ban on SIMI may be valid. But Muslim
religious and political leaders cannot run away from the question why
never in the nearly 25-year-old history of SIMI, have they spoken out
publicly against an organisation that is a declared enemy of
'democracy, socialism, nationalism and polytheism'.

BY JAVED ANAND

Most Muslim religious and political leaders from India have condemned
the September 11 terrorist attack on the US as "un–Islamic" but there
is a widely held perception among non-Muslims that the public
pronouncements notwithstanding, Osama bin Laden is a "hero" for a very
large number of Muslims, whether globally or in India. The near
universal protest of Muslim religious and political leaders against
the September 26 decision of the government of India to ban the
Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), has, if anything,
reinforced that feeling even among many secular non–Muslims.

On the face of it, this seems really unfair to India's Muslims. For,
after all, hasn't their objection — if SIMI is banned, why not the
Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva outfit all too 'similar' to the former in its
aims, objectives and activity — also been voiced by Mulayam Singh
Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party,
communist parties and, lately, even Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist
Congress Party, apart from any number of human rights groups.

But the moulvi sahibs and the siyasi netas among Muslims cannot wish
away the problem.

The politicians' objection to the ban against SIMI has largely to do
with politics (both Mulayam and Mayawati have their eyes on Muslim
voters in the coming UP elections, just as the BJP–led government's
selective ban on SIMI has more to do with its wanting a communal
polarisation on poll eve than with SIMI's alleged link with
international terrorist outfits). Human rights groups protest has
primarily to do with their objection, in principle, to the banning of
any organisation so long as it does not cross constitutional bounds.
Besides, there is the additional and legitimate concern over the
implications of this singling out of SIMI (as against a simultaneous
ban on the Bajrang Dal) for a religious minority that is already
feeling battered and bruised. (See the accompanying piece by Teesta
Setalvad).

The objection to the selective ban on SIMI may be valid. But Muslims
religious and political leaders cannot run away from the question why
never in the nearly 25–year–old history of SIMI, have they spoken out
publicly against an organisation that is a declared enemy of
'democracy, secularism, nationalism and polytheism'.

For at least 10 years now, SIMI has been pasting stickers in large
numbers in Muslim shops and homes, a thick red 'NO' splashed across
the words, DEMOCRACY, NATIONALISM, SECULARISM, POLYTHEISM'. 'ONLY
ALLAH!' exclaims SIMI's punch line on the same sticker. The sticker
leaves no doubt that for SIMI, any one who subscribes to the
principles of democracy, secularism and nationalism, or believes in
peaceful co–existence with polytheists, is not a Muslim, a follower of
Islam.

You only have to visit SIMI's website, to be greeted by the following
message on its homepage: 'Jihad our path', Shahadat our desire.' This
is followed by the stern message for Muslims who are comfortable
'Living under an un-Islamic order' and a surah (Al-Nisa: 97) is quoted
from the Quran: 'Such men (read Muslims) will find their abode in
Hell. What an evil refuge'.

The commentary on the above surah that follows reads: "Those people
who had willingly submitted to living under an un-Islamic order would
be called to account by God and would be asked: If a certain territory
was under the dominance of rebels against God, so that it had become
impossible to follow His Law, why did you continue to live there? Why
did you not migrate to a land where it was possible to follow the law
of God?"

In other words, an organisation that has had an impressive growth
among India's Muslims is teaching its youth that any idea of living in
peace with Hindus and other non–Muslims in a secular–democratic India
('un–Islamic order') is a sure passport to Allah's hell!

Very many Muslims in India and elsewhere will quote the saying of
Prophet Mohammed that the 'struggle against self for self-improvement'
is the highest form of jihad. But you have to be a fool to imagine
that that is what jihad means for SIMI. Bear in mind that for this
outfit, Osama bin Laden is "not a terrorist" and Kashmir is not an
"integral part of India" and the picture is as clear as should be.

Around December 6, 2000 (the eighth anniversary of the demolition of
Babri Masjid), SIMI plastered coloured posters in Muslim pockets
throughout the country, praying to Allah to send another Mahmud Ghazni
down to India. Whatever historians might think of Ghazni, SIMI is
without any shred of doubt praying for a new destroyer of temples to
be dropped over India!

While announcing its ban on SIMI, the Union government has claimed,
among other things, that SIMI is linked to extremists and terrorists
who are enemies of India. Given Hindutva's dubious agenda, Union home
minister LK Advani's motives in the selective ban on SIMI are
understandably suspect. But what about the fact that the Congress
governments of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra had asked the Centre to
ban SIMI and Bajrang Dal simultaneously?

But Advani's motives and evidence before the government apart, should
anyone with even a cursory familiarity with the origin, worldview and
activities of SIMI be in the least surprised if it turns out that SIMI
has strong links with Islamic extremists?

As Sajid Rashid, editor of the Hindi eveninger Hamara Mahanagar
published from Mumbai, pointed out in a recent searching and scorching
column, SIMI was created by Jamaat–e–Islami (Hind) to carry out its
work among students and youth. What does the Jamaat–e–Islami stand
for? Sajid Rashid: "the core belief of the organization revolves
around the proposition that Muslims should propagate Islam throughout
the world and struggle to establish the Kingdom of Allah globally. The
Pakistani and the Kashmiri wings of the Jamaat–e–Islami are fully
committed to conduct such a jihad to meet their objective".

What about the Indian wing of the Jamaat? "The Jamaat–e–Islami (Hind)
is non–committal on the jihad question, and claims to be against
violence," writes Rashid. How is it that Jamaat India resembles its
Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi counterparts in every respect
except on the jihad imperative? One view says that the circumstances
of India compel the Jamaat wing here to adopt a different tactical
position.

Interestingly, those convinced of the Indian Jamaat's bonafide
distaste for extremist tendencies, point out that it is for this
reason that over 10 years ago it snapped its relations with SIMI and
created a new outfit – Students of Islamic Organisation (SIO). But the
opponents of the Jamaat among Muslims ask why the Jamaat is content
keeping the SIO as purely a paper organisation and point to the
surprisingly cordial and fraternal equation that obtains between the
rivals (SIMI and SIO) at the ground level. The Jamaat in Pakistan, as
is well known is the ideological parent of all kinds of Islamic
terrorist outfits in Pakistan, including the Taliban. The detractors
of the Jamaat (Hind) claim that having given birth to SIMI, whose
perspectives and programmes increasingly resemble that of Muslim
extremist outfits in Pakistan, the public posture of "ideological
difference" between the Jamaat and SIMI is merely meant to hoodwink
the Indian state and public.

Within India and globally, too, an as yet small group of Muslims have
started going backwards tracing the lineage of the Jamaat–e–Islami to
the Deoband school (in India) that is rooted in the not more than 250–
years–old rigid, and orthodox Wahhabi sect, and forward to claim that
today's 'Islamic terrorists' are nothing but the most extreme version
of Wahabbism.

Within days of the attack on America, the British Muslim, Hamza Yusuf
(see his interview earlier in this issue) had declared, from the lawns
of the White House soon after a meeting with President Bush: "Islam
was hijacked on that September 11 2001, on that plane as an innocent
victim". But, others like the American Muslim Nuh Ha Mim Keller are
arguing that in fact Islam got hijacked nearly 250 years ago. To
recall Keller's piece (see earlier in this issue): "Muslims have
nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to hide, and should simply tell
people what their scholars and religious leaders have always said:
first, that the Wahhabi sect has nothing to do with orthodox Islam,
for its lack of tolerance is a perversion of traditional values; and
second, that killing civilians is wrong and immoral".

Every culture, every religion, every society has its lunatic fringe.
Indian Muslims can no more be blamed for the SIMI types in their midst
than Hindus held responsible for the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena. But as
Ziauddin Sardar puts it in his piece (see earlier in this issue): "All
good and concerned Muslims are implicated in the unchecked rise of
fanaticism in Muslim societies. We have given free reign to fascism
within our midst, and failed to denounce fanatics who distort the most
sacred concepts of our faith".

It will not do for Indian Muslims to speak out against the ban on
SIMI. Fairly or otherwise, the entire community will get implicated if
Muslims fail to denounce the fanatics and the 'fascism' in our
midst.'

http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2001/oct01/cover7.htm

The SIMI Story

By Yoginder Sikand

15 July, 2006

Countercurrents.org

The identity of those behind the bomb blasts that shook Mumbai
recently remains unclear. Some claim Hindutva terrorists were
responsible, while others suspect the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit
Lashkar-i Tayyeba or the banned Students Islamic Movement of India
(SIM) or a combination of both. In the meanwhile, scores of suspected
SIMI activists have been detained by the police.

Whether or not the SIMI was behind the blasts will be known only
after a fair and impartial investigation. Yet, the fact remains that
groups like the SIMI, although representing a tiny fringe of the
varied landscape of Islam in India, do pose a grave threat not only to
the country as a whole but, equally, to the Indian Muslims as well. In
a sense a response to growing Hindu fascism and deadly anti-Muslim
pogroms, SIMI-style radical Islamism helps feed Hindutva forces,
leading to further communal polarization, with all the consequences
that this has for the country's welfare and that of the Muslims
themslves, already a beleaguered and marginalized minority. In the
wake of the Mumbai blasts and the allegations of SIMI involvement,
many Indian Muslims are now wakening up to the need to denounce not
just Hindutva chauvinism but similar Muslim groups, such as the SIMI,
as well that speak the language of conflict, hatred, violence

and revenge.

Established in 1977 and banned by the Government of India in 2001,
the SIMI's vision of Islam derives from the voluminous writings of the
Islamist ideologue, Sayyed Abul 'Ala Maududi, founder of the Jama'at-i
Islami. For Maududi, as for the SIMI, the mission of the Prophet
Muhammad is seen principally as having been the struggle to establish
true monotheism or tauhid. This is taken to mean not just the worship
of the one God but also, and equally importantly, the rule of the one
God. Political power, in other words, is seen as central to the
Islamic mission. All man-made systems of law are condemned as 'false',
even Satanic, and Muslims are reminded that unless they actively
struggle to be ruled in accordance with the shari'ah their commitment
to and faith in Islam is not complete and remains suspect. Struggling
to establish the Islamic state, the Caliphate or khilafah seen as a
duty binding on all Muslims, and one that the Muslims of India,
despite being in a minority, must abide by. Muslims who are
'comfortable living under an un-Islamic order' are warned that they
shall be consigned, rather uncharitably, to Hell.

In the absence of the khilafah, the SIMI believes that Muslims
cannot lead their lives fully in accordance with Islam. The khilafah
is seen as a divinely ordained order and also as the only solution to
the many problems of not just the Muslims alone but of all humankind.
It is envisaged as a pan-Islamic polity, for all Muslims are said to
belong to the same nation (qaum, millat). Islam, in the SIMI's
interpretation, does not recognize any national differences, and all
Muslims are brothers to each other. Hence, they must be ruled by a
single khalifa. Nationalism is seen as a false 'idol', and one devised
by the non-Muslim 'enemies of the faith' to divide the Muslims and
thereby weaken them. National, as well as racial, regional, linguistic
and sectarian identities are seen as a sign of 'ignorance' (jahiliya),
which is vehemently opposed to Islam, and represent major hurdles in
the path of establishing the rule of a single khalifa over all
Muslims.

In line with the general Islamist understanding, the SIMI sees
Islam as a 'complete programme', providing detailed instructions on
all matters, from the most intimately personal to collective affairs
such as the state and international relations. Thus, secularism, even
in the form of state neutrality vis-à-vis religion or the separation
of religion and state, is seen as inherently anti-Islamic, for to
choose not to be ruled by God's laws is a sign of rebelliousness
against Him. Likewise, democracy is also condemned, for to be ruled by
man-made laws instead of the shari'ah is tantamount to the
unforgivable sin of shirk or associating partners with God. All
ideologies and religions other than Islam are condemned as false and
sinful (taghuti) and their adherents as 'rebels against God'. All non-
Muslims are branded together as kafirs, and no distinction is made
among them. Muslims are exhorted to give up the ways of the
'unbelievers' and to inculcate an unrelenting hostility to 'un-
Islamic' culture and to fully abide by the path of the Prophet.
Because the 'enemies of God' are expected to show stiff resistance to
Islam, violent jihad is to be waged, if need be, against those who put
hurdles in the path of the struggle for establishing the khilafah.
Islam thus comes to be seen as a militaristic political programme.

This understanding of Islam and the SIMI's methods of realizing
its vision of the Islamic polity make no room for the particular
context in which the SIMI operates, where Muslims are a relatively
small and insecure minority. It is as if to contextualize the faith
and that demands that it makes upon the faithful would be tantamount
to cowardice, hypocrisy or deviation from Islam or even amount to
apostasy. The fact that to actively and openly struggle for the
establishment of an Islamic polity in the Indian context would
certainly invite stiff opposition from other communities is
recognized, but the trials and tribulations that this would mean for
Muslims are, it is insisted, to be welcomed as a true test of their
faith and commitment and to have always been the lot of the true
believers, from the Prophet's time onwards. As Shahid Badr Falahi,
President of the SIMI, once put it, 'The Qur'an itself says that the
kafirs will naturally oppose the Muslims. If through any of our
actions the kafirs are agitated this itself is a proof that what we
are doing is right [.] We have deliberately adopted the policy of the
Prophet in this regard. If this drives the enemies of Islam to anger
we cannot help it'. An unflagging commitment to a combative and
extreme understanding of the faith is thus seen as a sign of
faithfulness to the Prophet, and for activists of the SIMI this is
indeed a major source of the movement's appeal, faced as they are with
a sense of being completely besieged.

The SIMI was floated by the Jama'at-i Islami Hind in the late
1970s. Although it was intended to work among Muslim students to
create among them what it saw as 'Islamic consciousness' and to engage
in peaceful missionary work among non-Muslim students, a succession of
events occurred immediately after the founding of the organization
that forced it to take an increasingly hard-line position. The young
SIMI activists seem to have relished controversy and sensationalism,
seeing it as an opportunity to present their vision of Islam as the
ideal 'solution'. Being free of the control of the more moderate and
experienced older leaders of the Jama'at, whom they saw as effete and
too moderate, the young leaders of the SIMI drifted in the direction
of a growing radicalism. In 1979, less than two years after the SIMI
was established, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Ayatollah
Khomeini toppled the Shah of Iran and in Pakistan, the military
dictator Zia ul-Haq set about imposing Islamic criminal laws by force.
The

SIMI voiced its opposition to the Soviet invasion, welcomed the
Iranian revolution, seeing it as the first step in the eventual global
revival of Islam, and wholeheartedly supported Zia's 'Islamization'
policy. Gradually, as a result of events abroad and the consciousness
of Muslims being an increasingly threatened community in India, the
SIMI's rhetoric grew combative and vitriolic, insisting that Islam
alone was the 'solution' to the problems of not just the Muslims of
India but of all Indians as such and, indeed, of the whole world.

This growing radicalization of the SIMI was not looked upon
favourably by top leaders of the Jama'at, who had been working to
present a moderate image of their organization, seeking to dialogue
with people of other faiths and to promote democracy and secularism in
the face of the rapid growth of militantly anti-Muslim Hindu
organizations. Jama'at leaders demanded that the SIMI work under the
Jama'at's over-all command, but the SIMI refused. Accordingly, in
1982, the SIMI separated from the Jama'at, which then revived its own
students' wing, the Students Islamic Organisation. Yet, both the
Jama'at as well as the SIMI continued to share a commitment to a
common vision, as developed by Maududi, differing only on the question
of the precise tactics and strategy needed in the Indian context to
bring Maududi's vision to fruition. Following its separation from the
Jama'at, the SIMI expanded considerably, setting up branches in
various parts of India. It published several periodicals in different
languages and formed its own publishing company to propagate its
message of 'Islamic Revolution'. By 2000, the SIMI had some 400 full-
time workers or Ansars and 20,000 sypmathizers or Ikhwans, in addition
to a cell for young children aged between 7 and 11, called the Shahin
Force. It also established a special wing to work among madrasa
students and 'ulama, the Tahrik Tulaba-i 'Arabia. Most of its
activists and members belonged to lower-middle and middle-class
families living in towns and cities. It appealed to a class of Muslim
students that saw themselves as, in some sense, deprived, for whom its
message of the 'superiority' of Islam over the 'decadent' and
'immoral' West and 'polytheist' Hindus struck a welcome chord.

The SIMI's evolution from the 1980s onwards was dictated almost
entirely by events taking place in India and in the wider world, these
being interpreted as attacks directed against Islam and Muslims by the
'enemies' of the faith. Inevitably, then, the SIMI was driven to an
increasing radicalism that won it support among a small number Muslims
in India who saw themselves as increasingly beleaguered, victims of
both Hindu chauvinism and the Indian state that was seen as
representing essentially 'upper' caste Hindu interests. The SIMI
organized protest demonstrations against attacks on Muslims, both in
India and elsewhere, which provided it publicity as well as
possibilities for new recruits. It sought to intervene in and generate
public support for its stand on other issues of major concern to the
Indian Muslims, such as efforts to do away with the separate Muslim
Personal Law, moves to dilute the Muslim character of the Aligarh
Muslim University, and the Hinduisation of textbooks in government-run
schools. Its activists were also involved in relief work among Muslims
affected in anti-Muslim violence, which helped bolster the image of
the organization as being seriously committed to the rights of the
Muslims. It also provided other services such as libraries and free
coaching classes for Muslim students from poor families.

The SIMI sought to propagate its message through mass contact
programmes, lectures, seminars and rallies as well as through its
abundant literature, mainly the writings of Maududi himself. A regular
feature was its special week-long campaigns aimed at creating an
awareness of the Islamic 'solution', in which, inevitably, the
intention was to 'prove' that Islam alone had the solution to all
problems afflicting humankind. Thus, for instance, in 1982, the SIMI
organized an 'Anti-Immorality' week, in the course of which 'social
evils and general immorality' were condemned and 'immoral' literature
was publicly burned. In 1983 the Kerala unit of the organization held
a special 'Anti-Capitalism' week, in which it was sought to be
stressed that the 'Islamic economic system' alone could provide
genuine social justice. In an effort to win the support of 'low' caste
Dalits in its attacks on Hinduism, in 1994 the SIMI organized the
'Anti-Varna Vyavastha' week all over India, in the course of which,
through public lectures and the distribution of leaflets and posters,
it was stressed that the salvation of the Dalits lay in conversion to
Islam, demanding, rather simplistically, for an 'immediate end to the
caste system'.

Although a forceful champion of what it called 'Islamic
Revolution' ever since its inception, the SIMI witnessed a further
radicalization of its rhetoric from the 1990s, until, by 2000, the
organization was proclaiming the need for Muslims to engage in armed
jihad in India. The radicalization of the SIMI since the 1990s must be
seen in the context of, and as a response to, the growth of Hindu
militancy, particularly in the north Indian states of Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh where the SIMI also had a noticeable presence. The destruction
of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the subsequent massacres of Muslims in
various parts of India proved to be a major watershed in the history
of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. While some Muslims now insisted
that the only way forward for the Muslims was to work together with
Hindus to isolate both Hindu as well as Muslim militant groups, some
fringe others, such as the SIMI, stressed that the time had now come
for Muslims to wage jihad against the Indian state or the Hindus, as,
it argued, their lives and their faith were now under grave threat. As
Shahid Badr Falahi, the President of the SIMI, asserted, the Muslims
and Islam were now being targeted by Hindu militants in league with
agencies of the state. Hence, he declared, 'It is high time that
Muslims organize themselves and stand up to defend the community'.

By early 1991, the SIMI had begun mobilizing Muslims to struggle
against Hindu militants, censuring Muslim leaders who advised
restraint or dialogue. In February 1991 the SIMI organized the 'Babri
Masjid' day all over India, holding demonstrations against the efforts
of Hindu militants to destroy the disputed mosque in Ayodhya. SIMI
leaders issued appeals to the Muslims to 'stop thinking in defensive
terms' on the question of the mosque and the growing wave of attacks
on Muslims. Its rhetorical opposition to the campaign led by Hindu
groups to destroy the mosque made for an increasing popularity of the
SIMI, and indeed it was only after the SIMI took up the issue of the
mosque, organizing meetings in various parts of the country to oppose
the Hindu militants' campaign, that it really emerged as a significant
force to be reckoned with, albeit in small pockets, having hitherto
been restricted largely to a few towns of Uttar Pradesh. Carrying on
with its campaign to generate mass support for its position on the
mosque, in September 2001 it organized a large conference at Mumbai,
attended by some 25,000 students from various parts of India. At the
conference it was stressed that the time had now come for Muslims to
'turn to Allah', to engage in 'missionary work' (da'wat) and to launch
jihad.

Following the destruction of the Babri mosque and the subsequent
massacre of Muslims in large parts of India, the SIMI concluded that
there was no hope for Muslims in seeking to dialogue with Hindus or
the government because, in its view, both had turned irrevocably
hostile against them. In a letter sent to various Muslim leaders and
'ulama, a top SIMI leader, 'Abdul 'Aziz Salafi, insisted that the
Muslims should make it clear to the government of India as well as to
Hindu militants that the Muslims 'would now refuse to sit low'. He
insisted that Muslims could no longer trust various 'secular' parties
to guarantee their rights and that they should now 'establish their
own political identity'. Four years later, the SIMI spelled out
precisely what it had in mind. In a statement issued in 1996 it
declared that since democracy and secularism had failed to protect the
rights of the Muslims, there was no alternative left for the Muslims
but to struggle for the establishment of the khilafah. It appealed to
non-Muslims to recognize that nationalism and westernization were not
the solution to the manifold problems facing the country, the only
answer to which, it argued, was what it called the Islamic political
order. It insisted that with the establishment of the khilafah, all
racial, linguistic, caste and communal antagonisms would automatically
be resolved and true equality and justice established. The break from
the Jama'at's policy of gradualism was thus made irrevocable and
complete.

As Hindu militancy increased in stridency, taking an ever-
increasing toll of Muslim lives, the SIMI adopted an even more hard-
line position, calling for Muslims to avenge the death of their co-
religionists by following in the footsteps of the eleventh century
Mahmud Ghaznavi, who led several attacks into India and is said to
have destroyed many Hindu temples. SIMI activists put up posters in
several towns appealing to God to send down another Mahmud to take
revenge for attacks on Muslims and their places of worship. In 1993,
the arrest of a Sikh militant is said, at least so Indian sources
claimed, to have revealed a 'Pakistani conspiracy' to unite Sikh and
Kashmiri Muslim activists along with SIMI members to allegedly 'create
disorder in India'. By this time the SIMI was alleged to have
developed links with Islamist militants in Kashmir. It is said to have
distributed posters and audio cassettes extolling the militants, and
exhorting the Indian Muslims to follow in their path. In 2000 the
arrest of a Chinese Muslim from Xinjiang and his SIMI accomplice at
the border between West Bengal and Bangladesh is said to have provided
the Indian police vital information on the SIMI's contacts with
Islamist groups in western China struggling for independence. Indian
authorities also alleged that the SIMI had established links with
Osama bin Laden. In the wake of the attack on the World Trade Centre
in New York in September, 2001, SIMI activists organised
demonstrations at several places in India, castigating America as an
'enemy of Islam' and 'an agent of Satan', and lionizing Osama as a
'true mujahid' and a 'hero fighting the non-believers'. Posters
hailing Osama and supporting the Taliban, including extolling the
Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, were put up in several
towns, and Muslims were exhorted to 'trample over infidels'.

Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and
emboldened by the Western concern about Islamist militancy, on 27
September, 2001 the Government of India declared the SIMI a banned
organization under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. In
the wake of the ban, the government arrested most of the top leaders
of the SIMI, along with scores of its activists, closed all its
offices, froze its banks accounts and seized all its assets. The two-
year ban was notified by the Union Home Ministry after the governments
of the states of Uttar Pradesh,

Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh pushed for its proscription in the
wake of allegations of the organization's involvement in incidents of
inter-communal strife. The ban was sought to be justified on four
counts. Firstly, the SIMI's alleged links with militant Islamist
groups in Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistani secret services agency,
the Inter-Services Intelligence. Secondly, its alleged links with pan-
Islamist militant organizations and its agenda of working for the
establishment of a 'global Islamic order'. Thirdly, its role in
promoting inter-communal rivalry, hurting the religious sentiments of
people of other faiths and allegations of its involvement in violent
incidents.

Lastly, its involvement in allegedly working to destabilise the
country, promoting secessionism and denying the basis of the Indian
Constitution through its virulent opposition to nationalism, democracy
and secularism. SIMI leaders rebutted all these charges, insisting
that they had always abided by peaceful and democratic methods and
that their work had all along been limited only to 'character
building'. Its President, Shahid Badr Falahi, insisted that the SIMI
was totally opposed to 'any violent or terrorist activities'. Muslim
and even some secular and leftist organizations were quick to protest
the government decision,branding it as partisan and blatantly anti-
Muslim. It was pointed out that the government had no firm evidence of
the SIMI's involvement in violent incidents. The ban was said to be
yet further confirmation of the government's anti-Muslim policy and it
was argued that if the government were really serious about tackling
terrorism it should have also banned Hindu terrorist groups, which
have a long history of involvement in anti-Muslim and anti-Christian
violence. It was alleged that the government's move was motivated by
political compulsions, in order to present itself as defender of the
Hindus. That the government chose to ignore these criticisms was a
clear indication that in the war against terrorism a consistent policy
of double standards would be adopted. The message that was conveyed
was that the government had different yardsticks to deal with Hindu
and Muslim militants, the former treated as nationalists' and ardent
patriots and the latter as 'enemies of the nation.

For Muslim organizations this came as little surprise, and
although feeble protests were made, it was realized, as never before,
that the aggressive confrontationist stance of groups like the SIMI
could hardly serve the community. Rather, it had only made their
situation as a beleaguered minority even more precarious. As to
whether or not the SIMI was actually behind the recent Mumbai blasts
it is too early to say. In the absence of clear evidence it would be
unwise to rush to any conclusion. Yet, what is obvious is that the
radicalism of Islamist groups like the SIMI, on the one hand, and
Hindu fascist groups, on the other, feed on each other, both speaking
the language of hatred. A consistent mass struggle against both forms
of terrorism, Muslim and Hindu, and insisting that the state take
vigorous action against both, is the only way to ensure that the
recent events in Mumbai are not repeated.

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/comm-sikand150706.htm

SIMI and the cult of the Kalashnikov

By Praveen Swami

Wednesday, Nov 28, 2007

India's largest Islamist movement emerged in a toxic landscape
suffused with communal hatred.

"Mohammad is our commander; the Quran our constitution; and martyrdom
our one desire," ran the principal slogan of the Students Islamic
Movement of India.

Although it was proscribed in 2001, the outlawed organisation remains
the largest platform for radical Islamists in India. Last week's
serial bombings in Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi, the evidence so far
available suggests, were organised by networks raised from SIMI's
ranks. So, too, were at least half a dozen recent attacks in States as
far apart as Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and
Rajasthan.

Despite SIMI's emergence as one of the principal threats to India's
internal security, neither the history nor objectives of its cult of
the Kalashnikov is well understood.

Like many other South Asian Islamist movements, SIMI's genesis lies in
the Jamaat-e-Islami. Established in 1941 by the influential Islamist
ideologue Syed Abu Ala Maududi, the Jamaat-e-Islami went on to emerge
as a major political party in Pakistan, fighting for the creation of a
Shariah-governed state.

In India, however, the Jamaat gradually transformed itself into a
cultural organisation committed to propagating neoconservative Islam
amongst Muslims. It set up networks of schools and study circles,
devoted to combating growing post-independence influence of communism
and socialism. A student wing, the Students Islamic Organisation, was
set up in 1956, with its headquarters at Aligarh. As Muslims in north
India were battered by communal violence, the Jamaat moved away from
Maududi's hostility to secularism. It began arguing that the secular
state needed to be defended as the sole alternative was a Hindu-
communalist regime.

SIMI was formed in April 1977, as an effort to revitalise the SIO.
Building on the SIO's networks in Uttar Pradesh, SIMI reached out to
Jamaat-linked Muslim students' groups in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal,
Bihar and Kerala. From the outset, SIMI made clear its belief that the
practice of Islam was essentially a political project. In the long
term, SIMI sought to re-establish the caliphate, without which it felt
the practice of Islam would remain incomplete. Muslims comfortable
living in secular societies, its pamphlets warned, were headed to
hell.

Winds from the west gave this ideology an increasingly hard edge. Its
leadership was drawn to the Islamist regime of General Mohammad Zia-ul-
Haq in Pakistan. SIMI threw its weight behind the United States-backed
mujahideen fighting the Soviet Union and the socialist regime in
Afghanistan, and the forces of Sunni reaction in West Asia. "SIMI's
rhetoric," scholar Yoginder Sikand has recorded, "grew combative and
vitriolic, insisting that Islam alone was the solution to the problems
of not just the Muslims of India, but of all Indians and, indeed, of
the whole world."

Alarmed at this course of action, elements of the Jamaat leadership
sought to distance themselves from SIMI. Others in the Jamaat,
incensed at what they saw as the organisation's betrayal of Maududi's
authentic Islamism, resisted the moderates. In 1982, the Jamaat
formally distanced itself from SIMI, but both organisations in
practice retained a cordial relationship.

Part of the reason for SIMI's spectacular growth after 1982 lay in the
support it gained from Islamists in West Asia, notably the Kuwait-
based World Association of Muslim Youth and the Saudi Arabia-funded
International Islamic Federation of Student Organisation. Generous
funding from West Asia helped it establish a welter of magazines —
Islamic Movement in Urdu, Hindi and English, Iqra in Gujarati,
Rupantar in Bengali, Sedi Malar in Tamil and Vivekam in Malayalam —
that propagated the idea of an Islamic revolution. SIMI also set up a
special wing, the Tehreek Tulba e-Arabiya, to build networks among
madrasa students, as well as the Shaheen Force, which targeted
children.

Much of SIMI's time was spent on persuading its recruits that Islam
alone offered solutions to the challenges of the modern life. In 1982,
for example, it organised an anti-immorality week, where supposedly
obscene literature was burned. A year later, in an effort to compete
with the left in Kerala, SIMI held an anti-capitalism week — but held
out Islam, rather than socialism, as the solution. SIMI also worked
extensively with victims of communal violence, and provided
educational services for poor Muslims.

SIMI's polemic appealed to the growing class of lower-middle class and
middle-class urban men who felt cheated of their share of the growing
economic opportunities opening up in India. Hit by communal bias and
educational backwardness, this class of disenfranchised youth was
drawn to SIMI's attacks on Hindu polytheism and western decadence. The
organisation's claims that there could be no justice for Muslims in
any system other than a Shariah-based order resonated with communities
battered by decades of communal violence, often backed by the Indian
state. As Sikand perceptively noted, the organisation provided "its
supporters a sense of power and agency which they were denied in their
actual lives." By 2001, SIMI had over 400 Ansar, or full-time workers,
and 20,000 Ikhwan, or volunteers.

It wasn't until 1991, though, that SIMI began its turn towards terror.
Soon after the tragic events of December 6, 1992, and the pogroms
which followed it, SIMI president Shahid Badr Falahi demanded that
"Muslims organise themselves and stand up to defend the community."
Another SIMI leader, Abdul Aziz Salafi, demanded action to show that
Muslims "would now refuse to sit low."

What that meant in practice was self evident to some SIMI members. On
the first anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, SIMI-
linked Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives Jalees Ansari, Mohammad Azam Ghauri,
Abdul Karim 'Tunda' and Mohammad Tufail Husaini — the last now wanted
for his possible role in the November 23 serial bombings in Uttar
Pradesh — carried out a series of reprisal terror strikes across
India. Their organisation, the Mujahideen Islam e-Hind, is thought to
have been a precursor to the Indian Mujahideen, which claimed
responsibility for last week's attacks.

Growing numbers of SIMI members followed in their footsteps, making
their way to the Lashkar, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat ul-Jihad-e-
Islami training camps, but SIMI leaders continued to insist their
organisation itself had nothing to do with terrorism. Its polemic,
however, became increasingly bitter. In a 1996 statement, SIMI
declared that since democracy and secularism had failed to protect
Muslims, the sole option was to struggle for the caliphate. Soon
after, it put up posters calling on Muslims to follow the path of the
eleventh-century conqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, and appealed to god to
send down a latter-day avatar to avenge the destruction of mosques in
India.

By the time of SIMI's 1999 Aurangabad convention, the ground-level
manifestations of this ugly polemic were only too evident. Many of the
speeches delivered by delegates were frankly inflammatory. "Islam is
our nation, not India," thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad, one of
over a dozen SIMI-linked Lashkar operatives arrested in 2005 for
smuggling in military-grade explosives and assault rifles for a
planned series of attacks in Gujarat. Among those listening to the
speech was 1993 bomber Azam Ghauri who, by the accounts of some of
those present, was offered the leadership of SIMI.

When 25,000 SIMI delegates met in Mumbai in 2001, at what was to be
its last public convention, the organisation for the first time called
on its supporters to turn to jihad. Soon after the convention, Al
Qaeda carried out its bombings of New York and Washington, D.C. SIMI
activists organised demonstrations in support of Al Qaeda chief Osama
bin Laden, hailing him as a "true mujahid," and celebrating the
demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan.

No idle polemic

It was by now clear this was no idle polemic. Just eight months
earlier, eight SIMI workers had been arrested for attempting to bomb
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's headquarters in Nagpur.
Investigators discovered they had trained with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
in Pakistan. Soon after, evidence surfaced on SIMI cadres' links with
Uighur secessionists in China, and Islamists in Bangladesh.

Writing in 2001, in an article published just after the convention,
the commentator Javed Anand recalled seeing stickers pasted "in large
numbers in Muslim shops and homes, a thick red 'NO' splashed across
the words DEMOCRACY, NATIONALISM, POLYTHEISM. 'ONLY ALLAH!' exclaims
SIMI's punch-line."

By the time SIMI was proscribed, it had become clear even to the most
obtuse these slogans were being drawn in blood with Kalashnikovs and
RDX.

Proscription, though, has done little to disrupt SIMI's networks.
Several key leaders succeeded in escaping ill-planned police sweeps
against the organisation, and continued to work out of camps in
Bangladesh and Pakistan. Some States flatly refused to cooperate with
police action against SIMI, pointing to the Union Government's failure
to act against Hindu fundamentalist groups involved in violence, like
the Bajrang Dal.

As early as 2002, SIMI operatives Sayeed Shah Raza and Amil Pervez
were arrested in Kolkata with large supplies of explosives. In 2003,
Intelligence Online reported that as many as 350 Indians working in
West Asia had been recruited by SIMI sympathisers to fight the United
States. SIMI's name again featured in investigations of the 2006
serial bombings in Mumbai, when key suspects, notably Rahil Ahmad
Sheikh, turned out to have had past links with the organisation. In
Uttar Pradesh, too, SIMI linkages were thrown up in investigations of
the 2005 serial bombings — just as they have been in the course of the
most recent attacks.

Fighting SIMI, it is clear, will take more than arrest warrants and
intelligence work: a coherent strategy to clean up the toxic political
landscape from which it arose is desperately needed.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/28/stories/2007112854431000.htm

Sorry Safdar Nagori, you are just a megalomaniac-turned-terrorist, not
a Mujahid by any reckoning

By Sultan Shahin, editor, NewAgeIslam.com

In his confession statement, former and now detained chief of the so-
called Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) is reported to have
said: "it is not when an individual is harmed, but when an entire
community finds itself collectively persecuted that the cry for jihad
is given. If nothing works then one is forced to revolt, take to
arms."

One doesn't need a degree in Psychology to see that this is the
language of a demented megalomaniac, a sort of Hitlerian, Fascist
personality, which doesn't care a fig about what his actions are going
to mean to the humanity or what he claims to identify with and
represent, i.e. "his community"'. Too much of a megalomaniac, in his
psychopathological delusions of grandeur, he apparently doesn't have
the humility – taught so repeatedly by Islam's Holy Book and Prophet's
traditions - to ask himself: "Who has given me the authority to decide
that my community is persecuted and we have no option but to take up
arms against the state and the country's secular democratic
constitution, that too, a constitution that gives us more rights –
including the right to organise our personal life in accordance with
our religious laws - than that of any other non-Muslim majority
country in the world including all the democracies in the West."

We cannot, of course, expect this infantile narcissist, to have the
analytical powers to see that we Muslims in India are freer to live
our life and practise our religion than not only those in the Western
democracies, but even in Muslim countries like Turkey and so-called
Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. It is nobody's
case that Muslims have no problems in India. Who doesn't? Don't Hindus
have problems? Fewer government jobs for Muslims, as the Sachar
Commission says? Yes, but who instituted the Sachar Commission? And,
then, aren't people in private businesses, even small-time businesses,
better-off than government servants? Communal killings? Yes, but who
fights on our behalf, to secure for us justice? Police harassment?
Well, have you forgotten poor Arushi's parents and a host of other
victims of police misconduct, indeed general bureaucratic nonchalance,
incompetence and worse? Of course, we have a host of problems and each
one of us has complaints with virtually every one in the
administration. But we all have those problems, not Muslims alone. And
the only way out is that we all get together and seek to sort our
problems in a civilised manner.

Is it my case, then, that Muslims have no minority-specific problems?
No, that is not what I am trying to say. Minorities and weaker
sections all over the world have specific problems. Don't the
religious minorities in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and
indeed even in western democracies have problems specific to them?
They all do. Indeed, weaker sex in our own families too suffers from
discrimination and even persecution sometimes. But do we, as a
community, care a fig what happens to minorities in Saudi Arabia,
Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh, all countries run by Muslims and
calling themselves Islamic states? Not to speak of religious
minorities, even Muslim sectarian minorities or ethnic minorities or
any other weaker sections are not safe in any of these countries and
have hardly any constitutional rights to be able to fight for the
redressal of their grievances.

Can religious minorities even so much as build their worship places in
Saudi Arabia, a country which is the birth place of Islam and whose
ruler calls himself the custodian of Islam's two holiest places?
Nagori and others of his ilk talk of Jihad. But do they know what
Jihad is all about? Have they even read or understood the Holy Quran?
Let me take some of your time and educate them a little. When God
allowed Muslims to fight in the way of Allah, thirteen years after the
advent of Islam, He had the grace to explain why this was being done,
as so far the Muslims in Mecca had just been asked to practice
patience and perseverance in the face of intense persecution on
account of just their faith. This explanation has several points and I
have dealt with them in other articles, but the relevant point for us
now is the following.

Allah said, as recorded in the Quran (22.40):

If Allah did not check one set of people by means of another there
would surely have been pulled down temples, churches, synagogues and
mosques in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant
measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid His (cause); for
verily Allah is Full of Strength, Exalted in Might (Able to enforce
His Will).

Well-known and perhaps the most universally respected exegesist and
commentator and translator of the Holy Quran Yusuf Ali explains:

This was the first occasion on which fighting-in self-defence-was
permitted (22.39). To allow a righteous people to fight against a
ferocious and mischief-loving people was fully justified. But the
justification was far greater here, when the little Muslim community
was not only fighting for its own existence against the Makkan
Quraish, but for the very existence of the Faith in the One True God.
They had as much right to be in Makkah and worship in the Ka'ba as the
other Quraish; yet they were exiled for their Faith. It affected not
the faith of one peculiar people. The principle involved was that of
all worship, Jewish or Christian as well as Muslim, and of all
foundations built for pious uses. (22.40)

So clearly, Muslims were allowed Jihad in the sense of Qital --
fighting with arms as against struggling against one's own ego and
society, etc. in an ideological sense, the primary sense of Jihad --
not just to defend Islam and their own survival as a religious
community, but mainly to defend religious freedom per se, the
religious freedom of all peoples regardless of their religion. Now
does this not make it our duty to fight for the religious rights of
religious minorities in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and
other Muslim countries first before talking about religious freedom in
India and other secular democracies?
But have we ever demanded the rights of Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc.
to be allowed to build their religious places in Saudi Arabia and have
them protected in other Muslim countries? I must have very high hopes
from my community, too high hopes perhaps, even to be asking this
question. One frail lady – well, not so frail really – Taslima Nasreen
talked, just talked and wrote about the mistreatment of religious
minorities in Bangladesh. She should have become our hero; she was
doing what we should have been doing, but no she becomes a hate figure
for us. We don't even want our country to grant her the permission to
live in here in exile, hounded out as she has been from this so-called
Muslim country of her birth. We want to hound her out of here too. Our
elected representatives throw rotten eggs on her person, or worse, try
to harm her physically. We take no action; don't even oppose this
vandalism and feel no shame in calling ourselves Muslims. Do we even
know what it means to be a Muslim?

I sometimes wonder how many of Muslims, among those who seem to have
so many complaints and grievances in India, would like to go and live
in a so-called Islamic country? Would Shabana Azmi, for instance, want
to go and live in a somewhat liberal Pakistan, not to speak of the
nations of complete darkness and pre-Islamic Jahiliya like Saudi
Arabia and Iran? I am perhaps being unfair to drag someone like Ms
Azmi in this discussion. She has every right in our country to make
the kind of complaints she did and pass observations of the kind she
did, except that she chose a very wrong time to do that. The present
time is not the time for sensible people like her to come out and make
statements that seem to buttress the arguments of the likes of Safdar
Nagori.

But in a sense her complaints also reveal the freedom that Muslims
enjoy in this country. Have you heard a prominent Pakistani Hindu
complaining? Well, do you know of any prominent Pakistani Hindu? We
did hear of a Hindu having been elevated to the position of a chief
justice of Pakistan Supreme Court recently. And that was great and
unexpected and very pleasant news. But can you imagine a Hindu citizen
of Pakistan ever becoming the president of the country, even if that
were just a ceremonial position? In fact, that will perhaps be
constitutionally impossible.

So, Safdar Nagori, and the likes of you, I want to tell you, that yes,
we have problems, like the rest of India, indeed the rest of humanity,
and we are trying to sort them out in our own bungling ways. We know
there are no short cuts, ever, anywhere, in anything we humans
undertake. You want to proclaim and establish an Islamic state and an
Islamic caliphate. But you must be nuts, really. Which Islam are you
talking about? Can you tell me, please? Saudi Islam, which has
destroyed all our beloved shrines and signs of even the Prophet's and
Sahaba-e-Karam's and Khulafae's Rashedeen's very existence? Or
Pakistani Islam, which doesn't even allow Muslims feeling safe in
going to a mosque to pray, where devout Muslim mothers have started
restraining their children from going to mosques to pray as they can't
be sure that they will come back alive? Wahhabi Islam, surely, that
must be what you mean, but now there are so many strains of Wahhabi
Islam itself. Pray which Islam do you mean, when you say Islam, and
can you be sure that even if your particular version of Islam is
victorious it will not split and cause further bloodshed in the cause
of a new version of Islam?

Dear Nagori, do please consider the possibility that you are nuts and
leave us alone. But I must have too high hopes from you, as I have
from my community. Could we have asked Hitler and Mussolini to act
with sense? Hardly. So, we, the members of the larger society, which
wants to live in peace and prosper and solve its problems in its own
lazy way, have no option but to keep you and your colleagues and
followers under restraint. Some innocents also will suffer in the
process, as perhaps some already have. But the responsibility for that
rests squarely with you, and the likes of Ahmad Bukhari who want to
make political capital out of this, are doing no service to the
community they claim to serve. There are times when at least
temporarily, even the political opportunists and time-servers should
suspend their normal activities and keep quiet in the larger interests
of the society.

The author can be reached at edi...@NewAgeIslam.com

Exclusive to Rediff.com: SIMI chief's shocking revelations

Vicky Nanjappa in Bengaluru

August 21, 2008 23:56 IST

From a moderate start to a dreaded terror outfit, the Students Islamic
Movement of India has come a long way.

Though the theories attached to the shift in stance by SIMI are
relatively old, Safdar Nagori, the most prominent face of the banned
outfit, said in his confession statement before the Madhya Pradesh
police that SIMI had decided to intensify operations in India in 2001
after it had been banned by the then National Democratic Alliance
government.

Nagori in his confession statement admitted that he and his men had
undertaken a massive recruitment drive. In the process, they recruited
several youth to the outfit following which training was imparted to
each of them. He said that the idea was to transform SIMI into a
militant outfit.

The confession is very much on the lines of the interview given by
Nagori prior to the outfit's ban.

In the interview, he said it is not when an individual is harmed, but
when an entire community finds itself collectively persecuted that the
cry for jihad is given. If nothing works then one is forced to revolt,
take to arms.

Nagori said that he was an extremist and not a fundamentalist and his
actions were never on the basis of religion.

"I was pained and angered by the atrocities against Muslims worldwide
and the turning point was the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the
Gujarat riots only made matters worse," he said.

Giving details about the training programme, Nagori said that nearly
25,000 SIMI activists met in Mumbai in 2001 and this was the first
time that the call for jihad was given.

The meeting also hailed Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden as a true
warrior. Prior to Nagori's arrest, there were 400 active SIMI members
known as the Ansars and 20,000 Ikhwans who were ordinary members.

The training programme for SIMI began in Jammu and Kashmir. They
trained along with the Hizbul Mujahideen. Following this, the selected
cadres were assigned to major terror operations in the country.

Further, he also gave information regarding a training camp in Choral,
Madhya Pradesh. He confessed that the training camp in Choral was
unique and was used to train different classes of militants for
different kinds of operations.

Nagori also spoke at length about the manner in which the SIMI split
into two groups, thanks to differences of opinion. He said during his
interrogation that the main reason for the split was due to
ideological differences between his faction and the Misba-ul-Islam
faction.

While the Islam faction wanted the SIMI to have a more moderate
approach, Nagori pressed for a more aggressive view. Nagori made the
same claim during his narco-analysis which was conducted in Bengaluru
recently.

He said that SIMI did give it a try to sort out the differences and
they met at Ujjain. Nagori found that he had a majority of the members
supporting him. This is when he decided to breakaway and carry forward
the outfit with his ideology.

Nagori also spoke about his idea of recruiting more educated youth
into the outfit. He said that persons from an IT background were
preferred and in this regard a technical cell was also started. He
said the idea of recruiting persons from an IT background was because
these persons could remain low key and they were excellent planners.

Nagori also mentioned about the Shaheen Force, an all-woman wing of
SIMI. He explained during his confession and narco-analysis that women
could convince their children easily to take the SIMI route and hence
he had decided to float this wing.

He felt that women could help boost the membership of SIMI

In interview with Ajit Sahi of "SIMI fictions" fame

Ajit Sahi, a journalist with the weekly Tehelka, recently created a
storm with his investigation of cases of scores of innocent Muslims
languishing in jails falsely accused by the police of being members of
the outlawed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and of being
behind a string of bomb blasts and other terror acts across India.

In a series of articles recently published in Tehelka he has exposed
the lies of the police and argues that this is part of a premeditated
campaign to wrongly implicate and harass Muslim youths and demonise
the Muslim community. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks
about his investigations and startling revelations.

Q: What made you take up the issue of SIMI activists and those accused
of being associated with the banned group?

A: For some years now, the Indian media has been awash with stories
about the SIMI being allegedly behind a spate of bomb blasts across
India. It's like SIMI here, SIMI there, SIMI everywhere. I have been
working with Tehelka for just six months now but I have been a
journalist for over two decades, starting with the Indian Express ,
and that has taught me to distrust the stories put out by the police,
by the administration, by the government. Governments lie, and this is
irrespective of whether they are formally democratic or dictatorial.
It's in their DNA, as it were. So, when the police continued coming
out with stories about SIMI activists being involved in all these bomb
blasts, my first, instinctual response was to smell a rat. I knew
these stories had to be questioned because what the media was
reporting was essentially based on what was being dished out by the
police and the intelligence agencies.

So, the first thing I did was to contact a Delhi-based lawyer who was
defending SIMI in the courts. From him I got the basic facts of the
case, of the various charges of the government against SIMI. The
government banned SIMI on what it said were urgent grounds, but these
were only vague allegations, not on any solid proof. To take one
bizarre instance: The background note accompanying the ban
notification on SIMI says that one of the reasons for the ban is that
among SIMI's stated purposes is the propagation of Islam! How can that
be cited as a ground for banning an organisation? Surely, the
Constitution of India provides every religious group, including
Muslims, the right to propagate its faith.

The situation is really Kafkaesque. The law has it that the ban on any
banned organisation can be challenged in a tribunal but then, it adds,
only an office-bearer or member of the said banned organisation can do
so. But the same law says that a member of a banned organisation can
be liable for up to three years' imprisonment! So, then, how can the
ban be at all contested? This struck me as bizarre, and so I decided
to go further into the issue, particularly since almost all other
media persons were simply toeing the government's and the police's
line. And my investigations showed that scores of innocent Muslim
youth have been picked up by the police and wrongly accused of being
terrorists. This menacing trend continues unabated.

Q: So, then, what did you do next?

A: I travelled along with the members of the Tribunal dealing with the
ban on SIMI, and from the end of May till the middle of July this year
I visited numerous places, including Trivandrum, Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Chennai, Udaipur, Bhopal, Aurangabad, and Mumbai—places which the
Tribunal was visiting. In addition, I went on my own to Bhiwandi and
Ahmedabad, and met a number of former SIMI activists. Meeting people
in all these places and going deeper into the facts of the case, I
realised that scores of innocent Muslims were being wrongly and
grossly unfairly framed by the police and the state apparatus for
being allegedly behind various bomb blasts. Under Indian law, you are
presumed innocent until you are proven guilty, but this principle has
been completely violated in the case of these people, in the case of
hundreds of innocent Muslims who have been picked up by the police and
tortured by them and forced to make false confessions. In not a single
case has it so far been conclusively proven that SIMI activists have
been involved in terrorist offences. There is no merit in any of these
cases.

As I said, I discovered to my horror that the charges against these
innocent Muslim youth were based on confessions before the police, and
we all know how these confessions are made. There is routine torture
of the most barbaric kind, forcing the detainees to admit to the false
accusations against them. According to the Indian Evidence Act,
enacted by the British over a hundred years ago, no confession given
to the police can be even presented to the court, let alone be used as
evidence. The British knew that the police would resort to torture to
force people to confess to crimes they had not committed and so made
this law to prevent this sort of thing. But this is precisely what is
happening in these cases. No other proof is being presented. According
to the law, only confession made before a magistrate can be accepted,
but in these cases months go by without the accused being presented
before the courts, during which they are routinely tortured by the
police and generally falsely implicated.

Q: How do you see this wave of arrests of Muslim youth across the
country? How do you explain it?

A: Obviously the intention is to further reinforce hatred against
Muslims, to justify the denial to the community of its dignity, of its
right to exist with respect.

Q: Who, then, do you think the real culprits are?

A: Look at the record of the past fifty years. The police have killed
scores of innocent people, wrongly branding them as terrorists.

Q: What you say about many of the implicated Muslim youth, including
some former SIMI activists and members, might be true. But, surely,
you would agree, the SIMI's pan-Islamist ideology, its call for a
global Caliphate, its radical rhetoric and so on, are problematic, to
say the least?

A: The Constitution of India allows for groups to be pan-Islamic, pan-
Christian or pan-Hindu or whatever. That itself is not a criminal
offence. I am a Hindu. I believe that the Gita is a divine revelation,
and I regard it as superior to the Indian Constitution, which is a
human creation. Am I not within my rights to say that what I believe
to be God's word is superior to man's word? Can you send me to jail
for that? The same holds true for Muslims or others. I believe that
Hindus and Muslims are the eyes of India, without either of them India
will die. Much though the Indian elites want a homogenised India
created in their image, India will die the day that happens. I'll
never become a Muslim myself. I'll die a Hindu. But, still, it is my
belief as a Hindu that Hindus and Muslims are equally my brethren. As
a Hindu, I believe that my religion, my dharma, commands me to stand
by the truth, by my Muslim brethren against whom vicious canards are
being spread and who are being unfairly targeted by the police and the
state as 'terrorists'.

I am not a social activist. I am just a simple journalist. Doing these
investigations into the SIMI affair and exposing the heaps of lies of
the police and the state about the blasts and the arrested persons has
made me feel purposeful as never before. I am 42 now, and so far I
have been chasing money and highly-paid jobs. But now, after going
through all this in the course of the investigations I have been doing
into charges against innocent Muslims, I have more clarity as to my
purpose in life.

Q: And what is that?

A: It's the purpose that every decent journalist should have: to
investigate the truth. I have to speak out the truth and expose the
lies that the government and its agents are so blatantly spreading.

Q: As you rightly point out, literally hundreds of Muslims are being
wrongly branded as terrorists and arrested indiscriminately across the
country for terror acts that might actually have been done by other
agencies or groups. In such a situation, what hope is there for
justice?

A: Things have become so bad now that even hope from the courts seems
unlikely. Many judges are extremely communal and heavily prejudiced
against Muslims. I don't think we can expect anything from the
judiciary. There's this magistrate in Bangalore whom I interviewed who
says that because one person who was nabbed had a dollar on him he has
international links! Can you imagine!? It is easy to wake up a
sleeping person, but almost impossible to do that to someone who is
awake. Going by how things presently are, I don't think Muslims can
expect justice from the government or the police either.

At this critical juncture, I think it is vital that Muslims do not
lose courage. I think the only way is to stand up against this wave of
oppression and engage in non-violent resistance against oppression.
History shows that the oppressed have always stood up to injustice and
Muslims will, and must, do that, in solidarity with people of other
faiths, like myself, who are extremely concerned about what's
happening.

Ajit Sahi can be contacted on aj...@tehelka.com. Ajit Sahi's articles
on the SIMI issue can be accessed on the Tehelka website www.tehelka.com

Link: http://www.tehelka.com/home/20080816/

URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=727

[Sid Harth]

2003 Mumbai twin blasts: A chronology

Posted: Thursday , Aug 06, 2009 at 1325 hrs

Mumbai:

Following is the chronology of the 2003 twin blasts at Gateway of
India and Zaveri Bazaar:

August 25, 2003: Blasts at Zaveri Bazaar and Gateway of India in south
Mumbai. 52 killed and 244 injured.

August 31, 2003: Three accused Ashrat Ansari (32), Hanif Sayed (46)
and wife Fahmida Sayed (43) arrested.

October 1, 2003: Two more accused, Mohammed Ansari Ladoowala and
Mohammed Hasan Batterywala, held.

October 2, 2003: Another accused Zaheer Patel (name changed as he
later became approver in case) arrested.

February 5, 2004: Chargesheet filed against six accused in the case in
Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) court.

May 5, 2004: Patel declared approver and pardoned by POTA court.

June 20, 2004: Charges framed by court against five accused.

September 2, 2004: Trial commences.

December 2008: Ladoowala and Batterywala discharged from case after
Supreme Court upholds POTA review committee report.

July 27, 2009 : Ashrat Ansari, Hanif Sayed and wife Fahmida convicted
by special POTA court.

August 4, 2009: Prosecution seeks death penalty for accused.

August 6, 2009: Ashrat Ansari, Hanif Sayed and wife Fahmida awarded
death penalty by court.

[Sid Harth]

After Dalits, Paswan Turns his Attention to Muslims
Patna: August 5, 2009

Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) president Ram Vilas Paswan, after his
weeklong canard against the Nitish government ranging from his
objection to the use of the word 'mahadalit' to his threat of a
bloodbath on the streets of Bihar, on Wednesday was busy wooing the
minority community by demanding a 10% reservation for the backward
Muslims in the state.

Paswan, during his party's minority cell convention at the S. K.
Memorial Hall, lashed out at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for adopting
'anti-minority policies'.

"So far all we have seen from this government is lip service to the
Muslim community. If Nitish Kumar is so concerned about the Muslims,
he should implement the recommendations made in the Rangnath Mishra
Commission report and provide 10% reservation in jobs to the backward
Muslims in Bihar," Paswan, a known government baiter, said.

The LJP chief further demanded carrying over the fund meant for the
welfare of the Muslims to next year in the event the government failed
to utilize it in the current year.

Taking a direct shot at the Chief Minister with a clear intent to
reach the Muslim voters, Paswan said that Kumar, in order to gain
Muslim votes in Bihar in the last Lok Sabha elections, maintained a
safe distance from Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a known
pariah in the minority community, but as soon as the elections were
over in the state, he embraced Modi when he shared the stage with him
in Ludhiana.

"Muslims in Bihar must not forget this in the next state Assembly
elections," Paswan forewarned.

[Sid Harth]

August 07, 2009

Cultural nationalism is not anti-Muslim

Excerpts from a speech by Leader of the Opposition L K Advani
[ Images ] at the launch of the Urdu edition of his autobiography 'My
Country My Life' in New Delhi [ Images ].
India is a nation of rich diversities. Linguistic diversity is a very
unique and proud feature of our national identity. There is simply no
other country in the world that has accorded the status of 'scheduled
language' to 22 languages as India has done in the Eighth Schedule of
its Constitution. As far as dialects in India are concerned, their
number may well run into thousands.

The languages we speak may be different. But we are nevertheless one
people and one nation. There is a poem by the great Tamil poet
Subramaniam Bharati, in which, paying tribute to Mother India, he says
that her 33 crore children -- which was India's population then --
speak in 18 different tongues, but they all voice the same sentiment:
Unity.

Urdu occupies a special place in India's linguistic bouquet, charming
everybody with its hues and spreading its aroma far and wide. It is
not confined to any particular state or region. Just as Hindi is
spoken or at least understood in most parts of the country, the same
is true of Urdu also.

Cultural Nationalism is not anti-Muslim

Is cultural nationalism a religious concept? No. Is it anti-Islam and
anti-Muslim? No.

Cultural nationalism holds that India's national identity is defined
by its unifying and integrating culture, which transcends its
religious and other diversities. This is not something I learnt from
books.

I was born and grew up in an environment of cultural nationalism. In
the first phase of my book ['My Country, My Life], which deals with
the first 20 years of my life that I spent in Sindh, I have described
how the social and cultural ethos of Sindh was informed by a
remarkable harmony and peaceful coexistence between Hindus and
Muslims.

This was primarily due to two factors: the Sindhi language and the
propagation of religious tolerance by both Hindu spiritual leaders and
Muslim Sufi saints. All the great Hindu and Muslim poets and saints
communicated their inspiring ideals through Sindhi.

I have illustrated in my book the best traditions of Sindhiyat by
referring to the teachings of Shah Abdul Latif 'Bhitai', who is
universally regarded as the greatest Sindhi poet of all times. He
composed poems in praise of Rama. I have also referred to Sachal
Sarmast, who described himself as a 'Jogi' and advocated brotherhood
among Hindus and Muslims under one single benevolent God.

I have described how the Sufi tradition is deeply ingrained, even
today, in my wife Kamla's family. Her mother was a devoted follower of
the famous Sufi saint, Sain Qutab Shah, whose dargah in Hyderabad she
regularly visited. She used to sing Sufi kalaams, gurbani and songs
about Ram and Krishna with equal piety.

My wife's sister Sarla and her husband visit Pakistan almost every
year to pay obeisance at the dargah of Sain Nasir Faqir, another
widely respected Sufi saint.

Kamla would never miss having darshan of Sain Noor Husain Shah, the
post-Partition custodian of Sain Qutab Shah's dargah, whenever he
visited India. Indeed, when I went to Pakistan in 2005, Sain Noor
Husain Shah, who was in Dubai [ Images ] at the time, specially flew
down to Karachi to bless my family.

As even Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has acknowledged in his 'Discovery of
India', the Indian civilisation -- indeed, the very name 'India' --
owes its origin to the great Sindhu River. Let me recall an
interesting incident, which I have quoted from a book by Bhagwan S
Gidwani, one of the greatest Sindhi historians. He writes:

'In my student days, at Sadhbela, a famous Hindu temple, at Sukkur in
Sindh, I saw Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. He was at a langar, the community
meal. Recently, a South Indian friend questioned me: How come, no one
asked Bhutto, why he was there? For us, it was not too uncommon in
Sindh to see Hindus in dargahs and Muslims at Hindu holy places.'

Talking about langars, let me mention that Kamla and I organised
Akhand Paath of the Guru Granth Sahib, followed by langar, at our
house in 2006. Pratibha, our daughter, sang 'Satnam Wahe Guru' on that
day. I invited Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh [ Images ] for the
function and he was gracious enough to accept my invitation.

I am mentioning this here -- and I have mentioned it in the book too
-- because reading of the Guru Granth Sahib and going to gurdwaras was
a common practice among Hindus in Sindh.

Hence, Cultural Nationalism is about recognising, accepting and
feeling proud about the shared cultural heritage of India.

I therefore take this occasion to appeal to my Muslim compatriots:
Understand cultural nationalism in the right perspective. The tragic
Partition of India in 1947, on the basis of the spurious 'Two Nations'
theory, created problems in Hindu-Muslim relations in India, besides
engendering problems in the relations between India and Pakistan. It
is time to remove prejudices and rebuild unity based on our common
cultural heritage.

Ayodhya: Amicable settlement needed

There is a related issue which forms a major section in my book, and
that is the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya. I am pleased that
Urdu readers will be able to read my detailed description of the
Ayodhya movement and come to their own conclusions [in the Urdu
edition of Advani's autobiography 'My Country, My Life.']

Over two decades have passed since the Ayodhya issue surfaced on the
national scene. A lot of things have happened during this period. I
would like to reiterate today what I have emphatically mentioned in my
book. The best and the most enduring solution to a sensitive issue
like this is to arrive at an amicable settlement through dialogue
between leaders of the Hindu and Muslim communities.

I would also like to reiterate another belief of mine: Nothing can
contribute to Hindu-Muslim harmony better than a positive gesture by
the Muslim community on this emotional issue close to the hearts of
millions of Hindus.

Oppose vote bank politics, shun minorityism, work for riot-free India

Let me use this occasion to affirm that my party is firmly committed
to secularism as conceived by our Constitution-makers. We chose to
support and join the Ayodhya movement only because of the prevailing
atmosphere of pseudo-secularism. If secularism had not been perverted
to subserve the interests of vote-bank politics, I am sure the course
of the Ayodhya movement would have been significantly different.

I wish to make another appeal to my Muslim brethren. 'Vote-bank
politics has not helped you. It has helped its practitioners, but not
you. It has kept a large section of your community backward,
economically and educationally, as the Sachar report has shown. Do not
allow yourself to be used by certain political parties for their own
narrow ends. Do not allow yourself to be forever typecast as a
'minority,' because it breeds a mentality that sees minorities as
being different from the majority. This minority-majority division is
harming India's emotional unity and India's all-round progress.
Genuine secularism is that which believes in justice for all, and
discrimination against none.'

Dealing with Pakistan: How the UPA government has reduced the NDA
government's two-pronged approach to a one-pronged approach

Another important section of my autobiography deals with India's
strained relations with Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan in some ways forms
one of the running themes in my book, right from the time of the blood-
soaked division of our Motherland.

Many subjects are covered under this theme -- the genesis and
worsening of the Kashmir [ Images ] problem; the four wars with
Pakistan (1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999); the appearance of Pak-sponsored
cross-border terrorism as a form of proxy war; the efforts of the
Vajpayee government to improve bilateral relations; my own role as
India's home minister and deputy prime minister in the NDA government;
and my visit to Pakistan in 2005.

I have always believed in a two-pronged approach to dealing with
Pakistan: Sincerely pursue normalisation of Indo-Pak relations but
make absolutely no compromise on the issue of cross-border terrorism.

This is the approach the NDA government followed. We successfully
repulsed the Pakistani aggression in the Kargil [ Images ] War in
1999. Nevertheless, we invited President Musharraf for talks in Agra
[ Images ]. When he refused to acknowledge the problem of cross-border
terrorism and instead described the terrorist activities in Jammu &
Kashmir as 'freedom struggle,' we made him go back empty-handed.

Our sustained pressure and deft diplomacy resulted in a major victory
for India. For the first time, Pakistan committed itself, in a joint
statement issued in Islamabad [ Images ] in 2004 after a meeting
between Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee [ Images ] and President Musharraf,
against the use of any Pakistani or Pak-controlled territory for
terrorist activities aimed against India.

It is sad to note that the UPA government has changed India's policy
towards Pakistan from a two-pronged approach to a single-pronged
approach -- namely, normalisation of relations with Pakistan at any
cost, even at the cost of continued export of terrorism from Pakistan.

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has been less than honest in
explaining to the nation why he agreed to the obnoxious joint
statement issued after his meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Mr
Yusuf Gilani, in Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt [ Images ] last month. The
joint statement, as has now been widely accepted in India, contains
two of the worst blunders committed in India's diplomatic history.

Firstly, it delinks or de-brackets the bilateral dialogue process from
Pakistani government's action to stop terrorist attacks on India.
Secondly, it tacitly holds India guilty of fomenting trouble in
Baluchistan.

Nothing that the prime minister has said so far in Parliament by way
of an explanation has convinced the Indian people. They have seen
verbal gymnastics on the part of ministers and Congress leaders to
defend the prime minister's indefensible action in Egypt. The
government should either admit that it committed a mistake and promise
to erase that mistake, or it should come clean on what it has in mind
with regard to normalisation of relations with Pakistan.

It is doing neither. As a result, people have come to believe that
'Daal mein kuch kaala hai' -- something fishy is going on behind the
scenes.

It is deeply troubling to see that, even as Mr Gilani keeps heaping
praise on our prime minister, the Pakistani establishment is doing
everything possible to subvert the process of prosecuting and
punishing the culprits behind the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai
[ Images ].

There is a widespread suspicion that, despite all the denials by the
prime minister and his colleagues, the joint statement in Sharm-el-
Sheikh is a curtain-raiser to the UPA government's surrender to
Pakistan on the Kashmir issue under external pressure.

The government seems inclined to 'settle' the Kashmir issue in blatant
violation of the unanimous resolution by both Houses of the Indian
Parliament in 1995. The country must be vigilant about this.

L K Advani

[Sid Harth]

Thursday, August 06, 2009

At last, Advani gets an Urdu publisher for his autobiography

At last, LK Advani's autobiography has been published in Urdu. He
wanted to appear in print much before the elections.

But Advani couldn't get an Urdu publisher then. Most were reluctant to
associate themselves with the book. Personally I feel the reason is
that majority of Urdu publishers are now in business just because of
sale of religious books, which are still sold in large numbers, rather
than literature or other books--they might have feared reaction by
associating themselves to Advani.

Delhi-based Urdu daily Hindustan Express extensively covered the
event. It says that when a prominent Muslim leader of BJP tried hard
to convince a well-known Urdu publisher, he agreed but on the
condition that the name of the publication house would not be printed
in the book. Naturally, the idea was dropped because it was thought
that if a book is published without publisher's name and address, it
would look undignified.

Telugu, Hindu and English editions of the book had been released
during the ad blitz projecting him as Prime Minister. The aim was to
reach out to Muslims but it couldn't happen. Now the book--Mera Watan,
Meri Zindagi [My Country, My Life] has finally been released.

Speaking on the occasion Advani himself said that though the book has
been translated in many languages, the Urdu edition has been the most
important one and close to his heart. He also spoke on 'secularim',
'Hindu-Muslim harmon' and a lot.

Journalists MJ Akbar, Aziz Burney, Poet Chandrabhan Khayal, Maulana
Wahiduddin Khan, Najma Heptullah, Rajnath Singh and editor of Akhbar-e-
Mashriq Waseemul Haq were present. At the function, Rajnath Singh,
said that expressed his love for Urdu.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan presided over the function. Aziz Burney lauded
the book and said that it resembled with Maulana Azad's writings,
reports Hindustan Express. Large number of Shia and Sunni scholars
attended the event at FICCI auditorium. [Photo courtesy Hindustan
Express]

[Sid Harth]

Friday, March 23, 2007

Indian Muslims are away from extremist influences because...

[At IndianMuslims.in, Sharique has written 'Why Indian Muslims are
away from terrorism' , my comment could not be posted, apparently due
to some technical reason despite scores of attempts in separate
sittings & I being a member of the group blog. I used different
connections, browsers & all sorts of ways but..Now I am posting it
here...]

Though there may be injustice to some extent* and often a feeling of
persecution, but the nature of our democracy is such that it allows a
person or group to give vent to their feelings publicly.

Gujarat carnage aside, it is mainly the failure of Muslim leadership
to raise real issues concerning Muslims. Otherwise the Hindu leaders
and parties in even states like Tamil Nadu which have barely 5% Muslim
votes, have championed the cause of minority and it is not just votes
or appeasement alone, which prompts them to do it.

In society, politics, media, there are non-Muslims who speak for
Muslims. Otherwise, which group has not faced injustice! * The status
of Dalits in Indian society is yet to improve much and tribal populace
has suffered most from the apathetic administration. But that's the
general problem of a bureaucracy, which is corrupt and insensitive.
Muslims do have a much better social status despite their poor
financial state.

In Sports, Films, Arts and especially Indian traditional music, Muslim
representation is more than their percentage. This shows that
complaint of'bias' and 'communalism' doesn't hold much water. Of
course, it is a casteist society so there is bound to be a feeling of
discrimination experienced by each section, but Indian society is a
much better evolved society with an interaction of Hindus and Muslims
for over a millennium.

In this democracy you can shout from the rooftop that you have faced
bias at any office or any official of any rank has been guilty of
partiality. There are a range of commissions where you can complain
and media channels and a press that is absolutely free to give your
story and tell them your grievances.

And government jobs are not everything. We are lucky to have a great
advantage in free media, where if nothing, at least if you are angry,
your letter to editor can get published after a few rounds to the
office. I mean, dil ka Ghubaar nikalne ke kaii raste maujuud haiN.

If percent of Muslims is not too high in government jobs, there are
all other avenues and business. Just an incident, whatever people may
term Mulayam Singh Yadav (a majority of politicians and also public
servants are guilty of corruption and nepotism) but he dared to fire
at the Kar Sewaks.

In the late 80s and early 90s, the Mandir movement was so fierce that
despite any amount of lure for Muslim vote no government could have
risked that. He did and it kept the faith of many Muslims in the
inherent secular nature of this country and the fact that somebody
stood for Me and the Mosque despite all odds. And there are always
voices of dissent against any totalitarian regime. May be these are
some of the reasons.

I think extremism can't come to Indian Muslims because of our
democracy that may not be perfect but is still the best in the world
in many respects. Our Supreme Court is a great institution and we
ought to be proud of it. Yes, Gujarat became a fasicst state but
hopefully it would prove to be the last such pogrom. New laws against
communal violence and riots are on the cards. Compensation for riot
victims and justice will also come steadily.

When you see Harsh Mander, a brilliant person, resigning from IAS just
because he was shaken by Gujarat riots, and forming Aman Biradari or
Teesta Setalvad fighting for victims of riots, your trust in the
values of this country and society enhances tremendously. I don't
think there is any cause for Muslims to get infected by any extremism.

If people in failed Muslim countries where even organising
demonstrations and rallies is banned or even writing a blog can be
dangerous, get extremist I understand but not in India. Here you can
be a Muslim of any sect, organise a rally or demo, stage a protest,
climb up a tower in Delhi to demand 'that India should help Saddam',
as a person had done, and what not. Remember the huge rallies on
Caricature Controversy when lakhs poured on streets in India, whether
rightly or wrongly, but can they come out in most countries in Gulf?
That's why, I guess, a resounding No from Indian Muslims to any form
of extremism. Aap logoN ka kyaa khayaal hai?

[Sid Harth]

Ghettoes Reserved For Muslims?

By Farzana Versey

09 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org

As an Indian Muslim I might like to state that there ought not to be
reservations, because Muslims have traditionally been a convenient
vote-bank (and not just for politicians, but for anyone wanting to
make a 'liberal' point). The result is that they are accused of
purportedly suffering from a victim syndrome only because others are
weeping over their freshly-dug graves.

Watch how everyone is flinging figures in our faces from the Sachar
Committee Report on the current status of social, economic and
educational condition of Indian Muslims. This has only led to further
stereotyping.

Television tends to reduce everything to the lowest common
denominator. It was therefore a bit disconcerting to watch Madhu
Kishwar talk about how Muslims are not backward because most weavers
and craftsmen come from the community. What really does this mean?
That they should remain in those jobs? What value is placed on such
professions?

They are crassly exploited, as anyone in such work is. The kaarigars
barely get any money, and all the zardozi that you see on designer
wear gives them a pittance in return.

The apathy towards their plight and destiny was revealed during the
riots in Mumbai in 1992-93 when most of them had left, that is if they
weren't affected physically. A small tour of the areas would show that
many of the migrants to the city had lost their sustenance. So, how
does their talent really help them?

Instead of salivating over the statistics that say there are more
illiterates among the Muslims than even the scheduled castes and
tribes, it might be prudent to ask whether reservations can solve the
social problem. Would it not result in further alienating the
community into a 'super-appeased' slot?

The fact is that the point about ghettoisation is brought in time and
again. "The problem is Muslims are ghettoised," is the refrain.

It is time to take a reality check on this. A ghetto is a group of
people that gets together due to some common identity, be it religion,
occupation, social affiliation. The Communists formed their communes
and it was considered perfectly legitimate. The elite form theirs and
again no one raises an eyebrow.

Let me give you a personal example and it is a fairly recent one. We
had been looking for an apartment due to some renovation work that was
to be undertaken at our present residence. This is in what is a
cosmopolitan and elite neighbourhood. I called up an estate agency. It
had a business-like sounding name.

The gentleman who I was giving the specifications to stopped me mid-
way. "Ma'am, don't mind, but what community are you from?" I had given
my first name.

"How is that important?" I asked.

"See, are you Muslim? I am Muslim too," he said by way of
reassurance.

"Does that make a difference?"

"I am sorry to say this but there are problems. The apartment you want
to see is not possible. I can show you some others."

As it turned out, the choices, even for the so-called elite in a city
like Mumbai, are limited. The deal was Muslim will sell to Muslim.
Some builders may not directly tell you, but there are sudden
retractions. Therefore, a Muslim builder who sells his property to
everyone has become the only hope for Muslims.

It suddenly struck me: would it also not be easy to target such
habitats far more easily?

For one accustomed to living with people of all communities, I was
completely disoriented by the thought that suddenly one would be
surrounded by people one had nothing in common with except a flimsy
religious identity.

This may be seen as the luxury of multiculturalism that some of us can
afford, but what about the ostentatiousness of pennant-waving that has
become a part of posh communities in equal measure?

One has heard of instances about how the Malabar Hill-Napeansea road
belt (the most prized and pricey areas of Mumbai) are being take over
by the Jain-Marwari business families. Old Parsi bungalows are being
bought just to ensure that the particular part of the city is left
pure for a group of people.

Christians too have begun to form their own buildings, so do Parsis
and Gujaratis and Sikhs. But these are not called ghettoes.

Why, then, must Muslim-populated areas be deemed ghettoes?

What is wrong with madrassas? Some commentators are declaiming that
Muslims must be taken out of madrassas and be given 'mainstream
education', whatever that means. It is completely forgotten that
madrassas are merely religious-run educational outfits, not religious-
indoctrinating institutions. Religious education is imparted in
educational institutions run by all communities. And wasn't it the BJP
government that wanted astrology as a part of the curriculum?

Where jobs are concerned, all Muslims need is equal opportunities;
perhaps co-operative movements at the grassroots level could ensure
that.

The more educated will have to stand together with the rest; there is
no doubt a sense of alienation and discrimination. It reveals the
malaise that besets our society.

Names, like rabbits from magicians' hats, are taken out from the world
of cricket, cinema, and business to showcase how Muslims are
'accepted'. That is not the idea. There is no question about anyone
accepting another who is accomplished. But not everyone has a head
start.

It would be foolish to remove religious leaders at this juncture from
the process of upward mobility. The reason being that they need to be
co-opted as they too are a part of the community; besides, where are
the liberal Muslim voices that have been talking about the veil and
Islamic terrorism?

It is disturbing to find that even on a subject that concerns Muslims,
the commentators are either the more rabid Islamic faces or
intellectuals from the majority community, which once again reaffirms
a stereotype: WE are tolerant lot; We have no problems if Muslims are
given a bit of the share of the pie.

Reservations are far less patronising than this sort of colonisation
of the Muslim mind. Be it sops or sympathy, the message is the same.
Muslims need to become a part of the mainstream. The idea that they
'need to', emphasises what ought to be disabused: That they aren't.

The mainstream in contemporary India is not a stagnant pool of
historical rights and wrongs. Therefore, no one community can define
it or circumscribe it for others. It is time for everyone to get out
of the ghettoes of their minds.

(Farzana Versey can be reached at kaagha...@gmail.com)

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Rethinking Islam

This Blog Linked From Here The Web
This Blog

Linked From Here

The Web

Thursday, August 6, 2009
Mob terror is equal, if not worse than bomb terror
Current affairs
03 Oct 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Mob terror is equal, if not worse than bomb terror

By Gyaneshwar Dayal

October 2, 2008

The ominous head of communalism is once again peeping out from the
closet, jeopardizing the identity and idea of India. In the last few
weeks reports of attacks on Christians are pouring in mainly from
Orissa and Karnataka. The allegations of the State government not
doing enough to stop the vandalism have instilled a sense of fear
among the minorities. To make things worse, what Central government
seems to be doing is just issuing advisories to the state governments.
The fear psychosis has thus gripped the minorities. To further malign
the country's image, the reports of Muslim intimidation in the name of
hunting terrorists have further demoralized the minority in the
country.

As attacks continue so does the bad press for India worldwide; the
reports of Hindu India prevailing upon the minority of Christians and
Muslims abound. Neither the victimization of Muslims or for that
matter Christians is new to this country, what is new is however, the
scale and precise administration of these attacks.

They are military-like operations, carried out with clinical precision
and brutality, with no discrimination – sparing no one, not even women
and children. The objective of polarization of the majority against
minorities is thus achieved. These attacks, when they happen in
Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states, are nothing short of government-
sponsored terrorism, while in other places it is sheer 'mobocracy',
butchering the people who do not have enough safeguards not even state
machinery.

The reason sited for the desecration of churches and attacking the
nuns is not new either. The issue of 'forced conversions' of lower
caste Hindus to Catholicism is reason enough to go on a rampage. Any
single case of forced conversion is yet to be proved in the any court
of law. Not denying the fact that Christian missionaries do have a
sizable presence in the remote areas of Orissa where even government
infrastructure is non-existent, many people do convert to Christianity
out of conviction or to get better deals from missionaries – not
reason enough to go charging on Christians as the "sole defenders of
the Hindu faith" are doing.

But as world media suggests resurgence of Hindu India, that India
which is all exclusive, intolerant, laced with bigotry and chauvinism
to the hilt or is it sheer compulsion of the socio-political matrix of
the country. Thanks to Hindu fundamentalists who are at work, Hindu
fundamentals are under the scanner. Has the ancient civilization with
a long track record of tolerance and assimilation suddenly become
incognito fundamentalist?

The two states from which the vandalism was most prominent are
ironically (?) BJP ruled states, the party which has been almost in
shock after losing the last general elections. It almost refused to
come to terms that it was out of power and overwhelming majority of
Hindus had voted it out of power, whose cause it thought it
espoused.

BJP was a shambles after elections, when came the Narendra Modi
rejoinder, which party grabbed as great model to seize power. Modi's
repeat victory in Gujarat convinced the BJP stalwarts and the Sangh
Pariwar that it was the model to emulate in the rest of the country if
the party was to smother the caste and class identities in the country
and form a monolith of a divergent culture. Minority bashing does get
good harvest of votes as Narender Modi showed, and if backed by good
economy eventually gets people to accept the ruler despite initial
hitch. The Gujarat model has become a showcase for replication in
Hindutva laboratories all over the country.

With polls round the corner, it is do or die for the BJP and its
allies. They want power at any cost if they are to survive as a
political party in reckoning. The infighting and arrogance displayed
by the BJP leaders in the last four years convinced them they were
difficult to manage when out of power. The short but sweet taste of
power made them reckless and spoiled the cadre of the "cadre based
party". And to be fair to them their chances are bright given the way
UPA is tearing itself apart and losing its standing in the eyes of
people. The runaway inflation and a mix of confused policy initiatives
are leading people to look elsewhere.

So it is the time to harness the Hindu votes and minority persecution
is a must if that has to happen. It is the time to target either
Christians or Muslims that will take them to Parliament. The BJP knows
that its rivals are wobbly, so the opportune time to strike is now.
And this time it is Christians - as simple as that - no fundamentals
required, no ideology employed, sheer calculus of Election arithmetic.

Unfortunately the other minority right now is being taken care of by
the media itself. As the gory images of blood bathed victims are
flashed in our drawing rooms along with Muslim names and faces
responsible, the atmosphere of hate and mistrust is getting even more
pronounced with every terrorist attack.

Muslims feeling cornered, are raising their voice and majority of
people in cities having access to cable TV and newspaper feel they are
unjustified in clamoring clemency for the terrorists realizing little
that they are not asking leniency for terrorists, they are asking for
stopping their own victimization, by the state and its able machinery
which has a good history of concocting good stories. From Arushi
murder case to Nithari Killings, police credibility is always under
question.

As the terrorist blow the social fabric of the country to pieces,
media does its bit by overplaying the Muslim names flashing them hour
after hour, the Muslims feel insecure of their place in the society
and in an emotionally charged atmosphere it becomes difficult to
reason with the reasonable and not so reasonable people. The public
perception thus gives the state extra leverage to trample human and
civil rights.

In its report of a tribunal on 'atrocities committed against
minorities' in the name of fighting terrorism, a large number of young
Muslims are being victimized by police on the charge of being involved
in terrorist acts across the country. Such cases are rampant in
Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.

In most of the cases, in gross violation of the law, the persons
picked up are not shown to be arrested by the police until many days
after their arrest. Their families are also not informed about their
arrest. In many cases, they have been tortured in police custody and
made to 'confess' and sign blank papers, the report said, adding that
the police has often been humiliating Muslim détentes on the ground of
their religion.

While all this happens and the union government makes up its mind to
stop it, come up with a law and political will, we can all hang our
heads in shame. Mob terror is equal, if not worse than bomb terror.

Courtesy: South Asian Free Press

Posted by SultanShahin at 9:33 PM

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Pak not serious about curbing terror activities: Rajnath

Posted: Friday , Aug 07, 2009 at 1156 hrs

New Delhi:
'Whether it is secretary-level discussions or beginning of CBMs, they
should not happen until India is completely satisfied of Pak’s
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Her and single Him Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath
Singh has said that Pakistan's ban on Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) along with
25 religious and other groups should have happened a long time back.

Singh wondered whether Pakistan was serious about the ban. "All the
militant organizations that the Pakistan Government has claimed to ban
have been operating for a long time. If they had to be banned, it
should have happened a long time back. Now, it is to be seen whether
it is a mere gimmick or they are serious about it. It will be known in
future," Singh said on the sidelines of BJP's national working
committee meeting.

Singh also said that peace talks with Pakistan should only begin when
India is satisfied with its action to curb terrorism.

"Recently, the Prime Minister said secretary level discussions will
begin between India and Pakistan. I opined that whether it is
secretary-level discussions or beginning of Confidence Building
Measures, they should not happen until India is completely satisfied
that the Pakistan Government is serious about stopping militant
organizations operating from Pakistan territory," Singh said.

The Government of Pakistan on Wednesday banned 25 religious and other
organisations, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), Jaish-e-Mohammed
(JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

India has been demanding action for a long time against the JuD, LeT
and JeM, which it blames for carrying out several attacks on Indian
soil, including the Mumbai terror attacks and the 2001 assault on the
Indian Parliament.

The Pakistani Government has linked a majority of the outlawed groups
to terrorist attacks and suicide bombings in Pakistan.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

It’s final, BJP `Chintan Baithak’ to take place on Aug.19

August 7th, 2009 SindhToday

New Delhi, Aug.7 (ANI): More than three months after its poll debacle,
the BJP’s plan for holding a ‘Chintan Baithak’ or assessment-cum
introspection exercise, will finally take place on August 19.

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of senior party
leaders at the residence of Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani. It was
decided that top BJP and RSS leaders will discuss the reasons which
led to their electoral debacle during the three-day conclave in
Shimla.

The ‘Chintan Baithak’ was earlier slated to take place in Mumbai, the
capital of the assembly election bound state of Maharashtra.

The venue was shifted to Shimla reportedly over fears that a ‘Chintan
Baithak’ in Mumbai could generate a lot of negative perception about
the party.

There were many contradictions within the party over the holding of
the ‘Chintan Biathak’. Party sources say this was the main reason
behind the delay.

But all differences are ironed out.

Downplaying the delay over the holding of the ‘Chintan Baithak’, BJP
president Rajnath Singh told ANI that the meeting was scheduled for
August 17, but with the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, presiding
over a Chief Ministers’ meeting in Delhi on that day and bye-elections
being held on the 18th, it was deemed appropriate to hold the Shimla
conclave on the 19th. It may be recalled that Singh was initially not
in favour of having a ‘Chintan Baithak’ in the first place.

It is expected that the ‘Chintan Baithak’ will set the course for the
future. The issue of leadership could also be touched upon. (ANI)

[NF]

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Sunday, August 9, 2009
Taliban’s Spiritual Fathers Denounce Terror. Could Taliban Be Next?

Islamic World News
21 Nov 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Taliban's Spiritual Fathers Denounce Terror. Could Taliban Be Next?

2. Qaeda scorns Obama with racial slur

3. New enrolment rules will benefit thousands of Madrasa students in
India

4 The President-Elect Barack Obama and India by Martha Nussbaum

Taliban's Spiritual Fathers Denounce Terror. Could Taliban Be Next?

By Jeffrey Donovan, Abubakar Siddique

What would happen if the Taliban's spiritual fathers denounced
terrorism? That, in effect, is what has taken place in Deoband, the
northern Indian hometown of the austere form of Sunni Islam followed
by the Taliban.

In May, Darul Uloom Deoband Madrasah, located north of New Dehli,
issued an unprecedented fatwa, or religious decree, against terrorism.
Earlier this month, 4,000 senior Indian ulema and muftis -- Muslim
clerics with the authority to interpret Islamic law -- backed the
fatwa in a mass gathering in the city of Hyderabad.

Now, the Deobandi political leader in India has told RFE/RL that the
next step is to gather Muslim leaders from across South Asia,
including the Taliban, to discuss endorsing the anti-terror decree.

It looks set to be a hot debate.

"The killing of innocents or atrocities against them is terrorism,"
Maulana Mahmood Madani, general-secretary of Jamiat Ulama-i Hind
(JUH), the conservative political party founded by Darul Uloom
Deoband, told RFE/RL in explaining the May 31 fatwa. "That is how
terrorism is defined."

Strong Stand

The fatwa was issued in a strictly Indian context. In recent years,
amid a series of terrorist attacks, India's 150 million-strong Muslim
community has come under strong criticism from majority Hindus.
Stigmatized as terrorists, Indian Muslims have been seeking to take a
strong stand to dissociate them from violence -- and the fatwa is the
latest, if perhaps the most vocal, contribution to that effort.

But given Deobandi influence on Muslims across the subcontinent, the
fatwa is seen as having a potentially significant regional impact.

Darul Uloom Deoband was formed about 150 years ago as a spiritual
resistance movement to British rule. Over the years, its austere form
of Sunni Islam, which harkens back to the early days of the faith,
spread across northern India and what is now Pakistan. Thousands of
madrasahs propagating its teachings cropped up across the region,
including along the Afghan-Pakistan border. It is here that many
Taliban, including leader Mullah Omar, received their schooling.

With their teachers now coming out against terrorism, will the Taliban
in Pakistan or Afghanistan follow suit? Madani is unsure. But he wants
senior clerics from the eight member states of South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to come together to debate whether to
endorse the Deobandi decree.

"I don't know what [the Taliban and clerics who support them] will
say," Madani said. "But my intention is that this issue must be
debated. I am trying to bring together the ulema and muftis from all
SAARC countries in India. Then I will request them to endorse this
decree."

Critical Stage

The Deobandi efforts come at a critical stage of the Afghan conflict,
which has spilled over into the bordering tribal regions of Pakistan
with militants also striking targets in and around Islamabad. In
October, Saudi King Abdullah hosted allies of the Taliban and Afghan
government for a religious dinner in Mecca. That meeting fueled talk
that Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants a peace deal with the Taliban
-- provided they accept the Afghan constitution and renounce ties to
Al-Qaeda.

On November 16, Karzai offered to provide safe passage to Omar and
other Taliban leaders to take part in any peace talks. Taliban sources
said they were considering a response.

Late last month, Pakistani and Afghan politicians and tribal leaders
met for two days of talks in Islamabad. Their so-called "mini jirga"
reiterated the desire of both countries to combat extremism and
terrorism, and extended an olive branch to militants willing to lay
down their arms.

The jirga process, which is continuing, is a positive development,
according to Maulana Syedul Aarifeen, who heads a major Deobandi
Madrasah in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's restive Northwest Frontier
Province.

In the 1980s, Aarifeen's late father -- Maulana Rahat Gul -- was
instrumental in bringing together ulema to issue a fatwa declaring the
fight against Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers as jihad. But Araifeen
now wants an end to nearly three decades of war in the region. He
tells RFE/RL the jirga between Pakistan and Afghanistan is the best
forum to bring an end to the Taliban insurgencies in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan.

"This jirga should be held among Muslims," Aarifeen said, "because
Allah and his Prophet [Muhammad] said that when two Muslims have
differences among themselves, you should seek rapprochement among them
though consultation. And this process is called jirga in Pashto
[language]. Now we see that there are differences among Muslims, who
were united before. Now, the jirga is a good forum for us to unite
again."

Parallel Track

Alongside the jirga process, the Deobandi effort amounts to a parallel
track on the theological front.

Francesco Zannini, an Italian author and expert on South Asian Islam,
says the Deobandi fatwa appears aimed at condemning Al-Qaeda-style
tactics -- atrocities against civilians -- while clearly leaving
intact the Koranic concept of jihad, which among other things
legitimizes defending Muslims against aggression.

"I believe it's a big step forward in the sense that the Deobands are
now promoting in some way a movement that goes against what Al-Qaeda
is doing. This is a positive point," said Zannini, a professor at
Rome's Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies. "But, at
the same time, I would say that it does not attack classic
fundamentalism but rather only condemns its most extremist aspects. In
my opinion, the Taliban could very well end up backing it."

The Deobandi fatwa comes amid other recent developments in Muslim
countries that have condemned terrorism and embraced tolerance.

Saudi King Abdullah has led ongoing efforts to promote inter-religious
peace and tolerance, including a United Nations meeting last week in
New York. Earlier this month, Catholic leaders, including Pope
Benedict XVI and representatives of Islam's major schools of thought,
signed a statement after three days of talks at the Vatican pledging
to combat violence waged in the name of religion.

Zannini, who took part in the Vatican talks, says it all adds up to a
trend: "I believe at this point we find ourselves faced with what is,
essentially, the great Islamic middle class that has grown tired of
this confrontation. As a result, it has begun to do something about
it."

Perhaps the most dramatic shift within radical Islam came last May,
when Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, the Egyptian ideological father of Al-
Qaeda, published a major condemnation of the tactics used by Osama bin
Laden's terror network.

"We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of
Islam do," al-Fadl wrote.n RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed
to this report.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/Talibans_Spiritual_Fathers_Denounce_Terror_Could_Taliban_Be_Next/1350341.html

Qaeda scorns Obama with racial slur

Nov 19, 2008, By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's deputy leader accused Barack Obama
of betraying his race and his father's Muslim heritage on Wednesday
and urged more attacks, as the group tried to counter the incoming
U.S. president's global popularity.

Osama bin Laden's second-in-command Ayman al Zawahri attacked Obama as
a "house Negro," a racially-charged term used by 1960s black American
Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe black slaves loyal to white
masters.

"You represent the direct opposite of honorable black Americans
like ... Malcolm X," Zawahri said in an 11-minute recording publicized
on the Internet on Wednesday. It was al Qaeda's first high-level
commentary on Obama's election on November 4. Bin Laden could also
release a message on Obama within the next two weeks or so, one
analyst said.

Zawahri criticized Obama's support for Israel and plans to send more
U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where he said they were destined to fail.
He urged Islamist fighters to keep striking a "criminal" United States
until it withdraws from Muslim lands.

The recording was distributed on a videotape that carried pictures of
Obama at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and Malcom X, flanking Zawahri
in the center.

U.S. officials and analysts, alert for signs of an attack in the
period leading up to the transfer of presidential power on January 20,
said there was no sign of an imminent threat.

They cast Zawahri's message as an attempt to shift al Qaeda's focus
from U.S. President George W. Bush and maintain an enmity against the
United States among its supporters.

"They're faced with what is by any accounting a change in this
country," said one U.S. counterterrorism official who asked not to be
identified.

OBAMA BRINGING CHANGE

"The way they're dealing with the change represented by the election
of an African American as president of the United States is to insist
that nothing has changed," he said.

Obama's transition office declined to comment.

His election was greeted with broad hope in the Middle East, where
U.S. relations with Arabic countries were deeply strained under Bush.

Daniel Benjamin, a counterterrorism official under former President
Bill Clinton, said Obama's election on a platform of breaking with
Bush policies was a boost to American "soft power," or nonmilitary
international influence.

"I think they (al Qaeda) are deeply threatened by the fact there is a
new American president and that he has come to office saying he wants
to have a more constructive relationship with the one billion Muslims
in the world."

Zawahri, he said, "feels like he has a competitor for the hearts and
minds."

Zawahri referred to Obama's Kenyan father, who was raised Muslim but
became an atheist. Obama is a Christian. "You were born to a Muslim
father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the
Muslims," Zawahri said.

The Malcolm X reference probably reflects the influence of American-
born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, believed to be close to Zawahri,
said a U.S. terrorism monitor who goes by the pseudonym Laura
Mansfield.

Zawahri has employed the "house Negro" insult before; when in 2007 he
used it to label Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her
predecessor, Colin Powell, who are both black.

"And in you and in Colin Powell, Rice and your likes, the words of
Malcolm X ... concerning 'House Negroes' are confirmed," Zawahri said
in the message released on Wednesday.

His spoken remarks could also be translated as "house slaves," but al
Qaeda's accompanying English translation, distributed by the
IntelCenter Web monitor, used "house Negroes."

Mansfield said it typically takes bin Laden, deep in hiding, longer
than Zawahri to produce a statement reacting to events and relay it to
an outlet. But it would not be a surprise if he released one soon, she
said.

(Additional reporting by Inal Ersan and Firouz Sedarat in Dubai)

(Editing by David Storey)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSTRE4AI47X20081119

New rules will benefit thousands of Madrasa students in India

19 November 2008

New Delhi: A significant move by the National Institute of Open
Schooling (NIOS) will benefit students who pass out from small
madrasas and maktabs to get enrolled for Secondary course of NIOS.
Under the new rule the notification for which was issued this Monday,
any one can enrol in a Secondary course level on the basis of a self-
certificate eliminating the need to show their previous academic work.

The notification issued by NIOS secretary D. S. Bist states that any
learner has to just state that "I have studied enough to be able to
pursue Secondary level course." This eliminates the need for having
any formal school education and therefore a school-leaving certificate
is also not required. The notification specifically clarifies that the
new provision "will also be applicable for those learners who wish to
enrol themselves in Secondary course of NIOS through Madarsas."

In an earlier notification issued in June of this year, NIOS stopped
insisting on madrasas and maktabs being registered society or be
affiliated/recognized by any Board. It also accredited all Madrasas
and Darul Ulooms which are recognized by other institutions.

Established in 1989 and initially known as National Open School, NIOS
provides for educational needs of out of school children, drop-outs
and those who do not have easy access to school facilities.

NIOS's Secondary Course is equivalent to the Xth standard. Students
are required to successfully complete a minimum of five subjects to
get the certification. Subjects offered at this level are Mathematics,
Science, Social Science, Economics, Business Studies, Home Science,
Word Processing, and Typewriting in English, Hindi, and Urdu. Many
language courses are also offered including in English, Hindi, and
Urdu.

Students who successfully complete Secondary course are eligible to
enroll in Senior Secondary which is equivalent to XIIth standard.

Link: http://www.nos.org/ Source:
http://www.twocircles.net/2008nov18/easier_open_school_enrollment_rules_will_benefit_thousands_madrasa_students.html

The President-Elect Barack Obama and India

November 19, 2008 - 4:40pm.

By Martha Nussbaum

President-elect Barack Obama will face many challenges in foreign
policy, but forging a productive relationship with India will be high
on that list. President Clinton took a keen interest in India, and,
especially, in issues of rural development. He visited rural
development projects with his usual zest and curiosity, taking a
particularly keen interest in the situation of women. After his
Presidency, Clinton has continued his work on issues of poverty and
development. He was also virtually the only major international leader
to stand up right after the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 and publicly
condemn the perpetrators.

President Bush, by contrast, focused his efforts on the nuclear deal,
more or less neglecting issues of poverty and development. One bright
spot in the generally dismal record of his dealings with India,
however, was the decision to deny a visa to Narendra Modi, who had
been invited to lecture here by a group of Non-Resident Indians
(NRI's). The State Department cited his role in the Gujarat pogrom as
its reason for denying him a diplomatic visa and revoking his tourist
visa. This courageous stance in favor of human rights and against the
perpetrators of genocide was surprising but highly welome to the large
number of U. S.-based scholars of India who had petitioned the State
Department in this matter.

What course will President Obama choose? Will he, like Clinton, focus
on poverty, quality of life, gender equality, and an end to the
politics of hate? Or will he follow the lead of the NRI community,
focusing on entrepreneurship and nuclear partnership? Much discussion,
this week, has focused on Obama's appointment of Sonal Shah to his
transition team. I shall not add to the growing volume of commentary
on Shah's links to the VHP-A, since she has already issued one
statement condeming the politics of hate, and will soon be invited to
clarify her position further. Shah personally is involved with only
the VHP-A's relief efforts. There is room for concern, however, that
someone with such close ties to an organization that has been
complicit in terrorist activities against Muslims and Christians
should hold such a prominent place. The whole issue deserves the
further clarification that it will receive.

Instead of pursuing that question further, however, I should like to
focus on a letter written by then-candidate Obama to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, dated September 23, 2008, and published in India
Abroad, the October 10 issue. I address these remarks to my former
University of Chicago Law School colleague in the spirit of the type
of respectful yet searching criticism that I know he will recognize as
a hallmark of our faculty workshops and discussions.

The Obama letter has three slightly disturbing characteristics.

First, the letter gives lengthy praise to the nuclear deal, without
acknowledging the widespread debate about the wisdom of that deal in
both nations. Perhaps, however, this silence simply reflects
politeness: Obama is surely aware that Singh has been an enthusiastic
backer of the deal, risking much political capital in the process.

Second, the letter speaks of future cooperation that will "tap the
creativity and dynamism of our entrepreneurs, engineers and
scientists," particularly in the area of alternative energy sources,
but never mentions a future partnership in the effort to eradicate
poverty and illiteracy. This silence, unlike the first, cannot be
explained by politeness, since Singh has devoted a great deal of
attention to issues of rural poverty, and it is plausible to think
that he could have gotten a lot further had he had more help from
abroad.

Third, and most disturbing, the letter commiserates with Singh for the
Delhi bomb blasts, but makes no mention of Gujarat or Orissa. Obama
offers Singh:

"my condolences on the painful losses your citizens have suffered in
the recent string of terrorist assaults. As I have said publicly, I
deplore and condemn the vicious attacks perpetrated in New Delhi
earlier this month, and on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7. The
death and destruction is reprehensible, and you and your nation have
my deepest sympathy. These cowardly acts of mass murder are a stark
reminder that India suffers from the scourge of terrorism on a scale
few other nations can imagine."

Obama's use of the word "terrorism" to describe acts thought to be
perpetrated by Muslims, while not using that same word for acts
perpetrated by Hindus, is ominous. Muslims suffer greatly in India, as
elsewhere, from the stereotype of the violent Muslim, and both justice
and truth demand that we all do what we can to undermine these
stereotypes, bringing the guilty of all religions to justice, and
protecting the innocent. (The recent refusals of local bar
associations in India to defend Muslims accused of complicity in
terrorism, under threat of violence, shows that the rule of law itself
hangs in the balance.) Particularly odd is Obama's omission of events
in Orissa, which were and are ongoing. His phrase "the scourge of
terrorism" is virtually Bushian in its suggestion that terrorism is a
single thing (presumably Muslim) and that many nations suffer from
that single thing. (Note that it is not even true that most world
terrorism is caused by Muslims. Our University of Chicago colleague
Robert Pape's careful quantitative study of terrorism worldwide
concludes that the Tamil Tigers, a secular political organization, are
the bloodiest in the world. Moreover, Pape argues convincingly that
even when religion is used as a screen for terror; the real motives
are most often political, having to do with local conflicts.)

Obama's letter was written during a campaign. Perhaps it reflects
awareness of the priorities of NRI's who were working hard in that
campaign. At this point, however, he can start with a clean slate and
decide how to order his priorities regarding India. Let us hope that,
like Bill Clinton, he will give the center of his attention to issues
of human development (poverty, gender equality, education, health),
and that, when discussing the issue of religious violence, he will
study carefully the violence in Gujarat and Orissa, learn all he can
about the organizations of the Sangh Parivar, and adopt a policy that
denounces religious violence in all its forms. To mention one
immediate issue, it would be a disaster for global justice if Obama,
as President, were to heed the demands of the diaspora community to
grant Narendra Modi a visa -- especially since the Tehelka expose has
made so clear the cooperation of the government of the state of
Gujarat in those horrendous acts of violence.

President Obama has repeatedly shown a deeply felt commitment to the
eradication of a politics based upon hate. Can we have confidence that
he will carry that commitment into his relationship with India, even
when the demands of powerful leaders of the NRI community make that
difficult? I certainly hope so.

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of
Law and Ethics at The University of Chicago, and the author of The
Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future. This
article first published on www.3quarksdaily.com/

Source: http://www.twocircles.net/2008nov19/president_elect_and_india.html

--http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1004

Posted by SultanShahin at 11:41 AM

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Gujarat govt refuses to contribute for minority students
Abid Suhail, TNN 10 August 2009, 04:34am IST

The Gujarat government has refused to contribute its share to the
scholarships awarded to the minority community students, according to
Union
minister for minority affairs Salman Khurshid. Talking to newsmen, he
disclosed that all other states had agreed to the proposal. He said
the scheme was being launched in 90 districts of the country,
registering the presence of 20 per cent and more minorities or more
than five lakh of them. Most of these districts, he added, were in UP,
Assam, Bihar and West Bengal. He said a meeting of MPs of different
parties held in that connection emphasised that greater attention
should be paid on literacy of minority community. Khurshid also said a
sum of Rs 990 crore had been allotted for different other schemes to
better the economic lot of the community. (Rashtriya Sahara 8/8).

Polygamy: Polygamy, says the Law Commission, is against the spirit of
Islam and the general impression that the Muslim personal law in India
allows it, is wrong. The Commission, headed by Justice AR Laxmanan,
and having Dr. Tahir Mahmood and BA Agarwal as members, has in
unanimous report submitted to the Union government, said while
polygamy is banned in Turkey, in Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq,
Morocco and Bangladesh, the practice is under the control of
administration or judiciary. Besides, says the commission, polygamy is
not common among Indian Muslims and those practising it are looked
down upon outside their families. However, the commission has not
recommended any change in the law because of the sensitivity of the
issue. (Qaumi Khabren 8/8).

Chinese Muslims: A middle in Aag (7/8) has demanded the Indian
government to take steps to prevent atrocities on Chinese Muslims.
Columnist K Vikram Rao claims that Pakistan is not taking any step in
this regard due to its close ties with China, but wants India to do
that. Rao said Vajpayee was a great critic of Chinese while in
Opposition, but the situation changed after he became the PM. The
Chinese Muslims, he says, want permission to offer Juma prayers in
mosques and right to undertake Haj pilgrimage even to those below 50.

Navodaya Vidyalayas: The Union government has restored the teaching of
Urdu in Navodaya schools of UP and asked the commissioner of these
schools to explain as to under whose orders this change had been
introduced. Meanwhile, the order to commission teachers to teach
Tamil, Telgu, Oriya and Punjabi has been cancelled and the principals
of the schools concerned have been told to arrange their return to
their homes. (Sahafat 8/8).

Urdu's Fragrance: BJP leader LK Advani has said the fragrance of Urdu
is unparalleled and it is a complete language. Speaking on the
occasion of the release of Urdu translation of his autobiography, Mera
Watan, Meri Zindagi, Advani added Hindi and Urdu were the most widely
spoken languages of the country. The chief guest of the function,
columnist MJ Akbar regretted that the language was orphaned after the
country's independence and hoped that the situation would change.
Speaking on the occasion, BJP president Rajnath Singh said his party
was opposed to dividing the country on the basis of caste and creed,
but did not favour reservation on the basis of religion.

[Sid Harth]

Emraan Hashmi case: Intellectuals must protect India from
communalization
Submitted by admin4 on 10 August 2009 - 5:43pm. Articles Indian
Muslim
By Jasim Mohammad,

According to a shocking news, noted actor Emraan Hashmi has been
denied NOC by Nibana Cooperative Housing Society. Emraan Hashmi wanted
to purchase a flat in the building which was his legitimate right.
Consequently, famous film director Mahesh Bhatt and Emraan Hashmi
jointly held a press conference and revealed their pain. Instead of
setting the wrongs done to Emraan, Maharashtra police slapped cases
under different sections of Indian Penal Code against Emraan Hashmi
and Mahesh Bhatt without realizing larger issues involved.

This is not the first incident in which a Muslim citizen has been
denied his right of purchasing property within Indian territory. There
are numerious such cases, some have been reported and some have been
buried. Sometime back, Shabana Azmi had also made such complaint.
Leaving aside Emraan Hashmi episode, the issue must be discussed
intellectually.

When India attained freedom, large number of Muslims decided to stay
back. Those who remained in India are satisfied that their decision
was right. No doubt Muslims are far better in India than Pakistan but
since last two decades, a sort of degeneration into our socio-politico
atmosphere has taken place. Advani’s Rathyatra [1990] left blood trail
in the way and demolition of Babri Mosque [1992] and inaction by the
government further bolstered Hindutva elements. Veer Sawarkar’s
Hindutva philosophy derived from European fascism has taken over our
Constitutional secularism. The reason is that our policy makers and
politicians failed to translate constitutional secularism into ground
level realities. They allowed religious places to come up on public
lands and went on to either overlook or allow communal forces to take
ground. Administrative aloofness from fascist tendencies to take root
resulted in Gujarat genocide of Muslims [2002]. But we have not
learned any lesson and even today are tolerating communal activities
of some organizations.

When our forefathers were busy in debating constitution, one question
which was looming over their head was: how to satisfy aspirations of
all sections of the Indian society. Constituent Assembly debates
indicate in very clear terms that they had desire to develop a
cohesive and scientific society within India. Hence, they enacted
special laws for the tribal and deprived classes on one hand and
inserted special Articles in the constitution for the minorities on
the other. Their intention was completely in the direction of evolving
a peaceful sustainable Indian citizenry without any bias. But our
politicians of later years could not govern the nation on the lines
decided by constitution framers.

A very large section of the majority community is still secular. If I
say that Mahesh Bhatt represents that section, it will be no wrong but
unfortunately the governments, even those governments which are formed
by secular political parties fail to appreciate individual efforts of
secularizing Indian society. A new trend is emerging and emerging fast
in which secular parties make alliances with communal forces just for
government formation. It is a very dangerous trend because communal
forces sometimes form the government on the shoulder of secular forces
and then implement their hidden agenda. It is this modus operandi by
which BJP has succeeded in saffronising administrative machinery of
the country. History will record that the credit of this trend goes to
George Farnandes. BJP was treated as untouchable before George
Farnandes aligned with it. Slowly other such smaller outfits also
joined the race of sharing power on the cost of diluting their secular
identity. It is high time when political parties should clear cut
declare their stand either on Right, centre or left. If they do not do
so, it is the responsibility of our intellectuals to expose their
greed of power before masses.

What is most painful is that when Emraan Hashmi made allegations of
bias, right or wrong, Maharashtra government should have sought
explanation from the concerned society. Instead of safeguarding the
rights of citizens, the govt. did just the opposite and slapped cases
which has further encouraged communal elements to pursue biased
approach.

Why all this being happened? I would like to draw the attention of
concerned people to the fact that as may as 28 reports of different
inquiry commissions including Sri Krishna Commission are lying under
dust. It was the Maharashtra govt. which had appointed sri Krishna
commission amid much fanfare but failed to implement its
recommendation which has clearly held responsible many communal
politicians and police officers for the well planned post-Babri Maslid
demolition riots. Why did the govt. with all its resources shy away
from booking culprits?

We must ponder over another issue. Since a very long time, the
government has allowed Saraswati Shishu Mandir [RSS schools] to impart
education to children as per their own curriculum. Due to these
schools, today we have youths whose minds have been completely
polluted and communalized. There is no effort on the part of the
secularists to de-communalize them. If we fail still in channelising
our energies in that direction, I am afraid that demographic changes
within Indian cities and even villages will divide whole India into
Hindu and Muslim India. The development will not be in the larger
interest of the country because forces hostile to India will try to
exploit the situation.

We all are Indians. We are all committed to safeguarding this nation
and its heritage. It is our national duty to spread message of peace
and secularism and to counter communal forces by every mean. If the
government is not acting, if the politicians are failing and if our
administration is shying away, it is the duty of silent but effective
secularists to come out openly and oppose every move of the
communalists within the frame of democracy and law. The highest values
of all religions are humanism and to create a society based on
justice. It is time we woke up and also made people aware of
communalism with hidden politico-economic agenda. Survival of all
sections of Indian citizenry is foremost condition of survival and
developments of the nation.

(The writer is Research Scholar of Aligarh Muslim University. He can
be contacted at jas...@gmail.com)

[Sid Harth]

I know religious profiling works both ways: Emraan Hashmi
Submitted by admin4 on 10 August 2009 - 1:55pm.
By Subhash K. Jha, IANS,

Mumbai : As he awaits the verdict of State Minorities Commission (SMC)
on his complaint against a south Mumbai housing society, Bollywood
star Emraan Hashmi says he know religious profiling is practised by
people in more than one community. Emraan has complained he was not
allowed to buy a house in the society because he is a Muslim.

"The problem of being denied property on grounds of religion is
prevalent all over the country. Now so many Muslims have come forward
claiming the same. And mind you, I know religious profiling works both
ways.

"I know of Muslim colonies where Hindus are not allowed to stay. I
spoke out as a segregated citizen, not a Muslim.I want all
discrimination in property allotment to go. Otherwise why do we call
ourselves a democracy?" Emraan told IANS.

The actor alleged he was denied permission to buy a house in the
upmarket Pali Hill area of Mumbai because he was Muslim. Pali Hill's
Nibbana Cooperative Society, he said, refused to give him a 'no-
objection certificate'. He filed a complaint with the SMC, demanding
action against the society members. The society reportedly has mostly
Hindus and a couple of Catholic families.

There were more developments in the case Sunday, when a Mumbai
resident accused Emraan and film director Mahesh Bhatt of "fomenting
communal tensions to gain cheap publicity". The two had held a press
conference to highlight the complaint.

Emraan has been forced to beef up his security.

"He moves around with a lot of securitymen. It's a precautionary
measure. His house is looking like a fortress," said a source close to
the actor.

"The complaint doesn't deter Emraan at all. It's an age-old ploy to
silence you. No one can accuse Emraan of inciting communal disharmony.
Religious discrimination in buying and renting property has been going
on a very long time. No one talked about it openly. It's a sensitive
issue."

Office-bearers of the housing society have been changing their
statements repeatedly.

"They said he was kept out because he was serial kisser," the source
said. "For some reason they also made up an absurd allegation that
Emraan's parents barged into the office of the property dealers.
Emraan's parents had taken a proper appointment and gone and they were
treated badly. They were told the housing society people were busy.

"Emraan was enraged because his parents were badly treated. Emraan had
earlier bought an apartment in 2007 in Pali Hill. But there was no
such problem. This was his first real encounter with discrimination."

Now the man from whom Emraan wanted to buy the house has backed out.

"The prospective property seller now says he doesn't want to sell. But
for Emraan it is no longer about personal hurt. He's standing up for
an issue. People have accused him of doing this to gain publicity. Let
them say what they like. Emraan doesn't care what the cynics say,"
said a friend of the actor.

Asked why the actor had received so little support from the film
fraternity, the friend said: "He wasn't expecting any real support.
Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi have spoken on it. Also, Saif Ali Khan.
Emraan is prepared to take the issue to its logical conclusion. He
hopes people will no longer keep quiet about being denied property in
spite of being law-abiding citizens and paying taxes."

The actor is currently busy shooting for Ekta Kapoor's "Once Upon A
Time".

[Sid Harth]

'Miscommunication by agent led to actor housing dispute'
Bharati Dubey, TNN 11 August 2009, 03:07am IST

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra State Minorities' Commission has resolved the
Emraan Hashmi case by making a scapegoat of his realty agent.

The commission concluded that a miscommunication created by the estate
agent gave rise to the dispute. The panel heard both parties-Hashmi
and housing society-though the person found "guilty'' was not called
for the hearing. On July 30, Hashmi had complained that members of
Nibbana, a housing society in Pali Hill, had refused to give him an
NOC even after he paid Rs 1 lakh for a flat.

Commission vice-chairman Abraham Mathai said, "Both parties resolved
their problems. The society secretary, J P Chatri, assured us that
they would welcome Hashmi if D N Suvarna or anyone else sold him a
flat.'' The agent, Jagjit Arora, said he was happy that the row was
over but added he "was not told about the hearing''.

Hashmi told TOI that he stood by what he had said earlier. "That's
exactly what I told the panel,'' he said. "Now, if it wants to resolve
the issue peacefully, peace is what I want.''

[Sid Harth]

http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1048

[Sid Harth]

Rethinking Islam

Monday, August 10, 2009

Radical Islamism & Jihad
03 Dec 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Will we allow mainstream Islam to turn into a moderate fringe, while
extremists take centre-stage?

I was also ashamed to tell them (my children) that the terrorists were
Muslims and came from a country that was created in the name of Islam.
…It's all very well for us to say Islam has nothing to do with
extremism and terrorism. We can go on deluding ourselves that these
psychopaths do not represent us. However, the world finds it hard to
accept this line of argument as it sees the extremists increasingly
assert themselves and take the centre-stage while mainstream Islam
turns into a moderate fringe, writes Aijaz Zaka Syed.

Also: Pakistanis, You left us in 1947, Now leave us alone!

By A.M.Jamsheed Bahsa

And 'Enough is enough' by FARAH KHAN ALI

URL for this page: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1041

--------------------

No place to hide

Will we allow mainstream Islam to turn into a moderate fringe, while
extremists take centre-stage?

By Aijaz Zaka Syed

December 01, 2008

Watching the terror nightmare unfold in Mumbai over the past three
days on TV, my children have repeatedly asked me: "Who are these
terrorists and why are they doing this?" And every time I wished I
could offer them a convincing answer. I was clueless why these people
had taken over Mumbai and were targeting people who had nothing to do
with them. I was also ashamed to tell them that the terrorists were
Muslims and came from a country that was created in the name of
Islam.

At work, while my colleagues went about covering the madness in Mumbai
and laying out pages with the images of the Taj Hotel with its Islamic
arches and domes go up in smoke, I find it hard to look at them in the
eye.

This happens all the time. Every time innocents are targeted in the
name of Islam around the world, one can't face one's non-Muslim
friends and colleagues. A distraught friend who has devoted her life
to speaking and fighting on behalf of Arabs and Muslims wrote: "I've
had it with the Arabs and Muslims and Islamic militancy. Forgive me
but I am throwing in the towel." I couldn't write back to her. She
grew up in Mumbai and is upset. She went on to say: "The Muslims and
Islam have a problem and only they can solve it. If they do not, the
whole world will turn against them."

If this is how our most loyal friends feel, imagine the sentiments and
reactions of the rest of the world. Can you blame the world if it's
turning against Muslims? What do you expect when not a day passes
without the name of our faith being dragged through the mud by fellow
believers around the world?

I know that Muslim leaders, including those in the highest echelons of
power, have lately started speaking out against the extremists. The
Darul Uloom Deoband in India, one of the oldest and most respected
centres of learning in the Muslim world, issued a fatwa against
terrorism at a large gathering of Islamic scholars in June. Last
month, nearly 5,000 scholars backed the edict at a huge congregation
in Hyderabad. The Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), and Saudi
Arabia have, of late, been vehement in condemning these repulsive
acts of violence targeting innocents. But clearly, we need to do more
to be heard.

The great irony of the Mumbai attacks is the killing of ATS chief
Hemant Karkare, a brave officer trying to establish the link between
Hindu extremists and the Malegaon blasts. He was killed outside the
Cama hospital on Wednesday night. Obviously, some Muslims do not know
their friends from their enemies.

It's all very well for us to say Islam has nothing to do with
extremism and terrorism. We can go on deluding ourselves that these
psychopaths do not represent us. However, the world finds it hard to
accept this line of argument as it sees the extremists increasingly
assert themselves and take the centre-stage while mainstream Islam
turns into a moderate fringe.

Aijaz Syed is Opinion Editor, Khaleej Times

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=ca0ddccc-f725-4957-91c7-5ba0f568b371

----

Pakistanis, You left us in 1947, Now leave us alone!

By A.M.Jamsheed Bahsa

The Mumbai terror attack has no doubt shocked the nation. It was an
attack on Mumbai, an attack on India. It is a matter of concern for
all of us Indians. But the community that has to be concerned most is
that of the Muslims of India, because those who came and attacked the
financial capital on the fateful day of 26/11 were bearing Muslim
names and had come from the so-called Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

It is a different thing that the Muslims would disown them as
practising Muslims, for they were sporting guns and ammunition and
above all they were wining and dining, and who knows, womanising,
something not expected from hard-core religious elements. To a common
man they were just Muslim mercenaries on a mission to cause maximum
damage as per the directions of their mentors sitting across the
border. They did exactly that and vanished from this world, a fate
they deserved most. Then what next? Pakistanis may try to put a brave
face but they cannot deny that these evil men were their countrymen,
born, brought up and trained by a terrorist organisation in their
country for this day.

The Indian Muslims, particularly our Urdu Press should behave
responsibly. It is no time for a blame game. It is no time for
concoction of a theory of conspiracy alleging complicity of the
saffron brigade. It may be best left to the investigating agencies to
unravel the real players behind this sordid drama. The whole of India
and every Indian is angry. Not for the loss of life and destruction
caused alone, but for the attitude of the politicians and helplessness
of the government of the day. The people's ire would be shown
elsewhere in the next ballot, but the mood is one of action, a firm
action, a decisive message that should go across the borders and the
steps that should be taken to secure the nation and insulate it from
future attacks. Yesterday it was through land, today it was through
sea and who knows tomorrow it may be through air. All these vulnerable
places have to be protected and secured for we should allow no
incursions into our land from any side. These steps are vital for the
future of this country. The prime concern of the citizen today is how
safe and secure we are in our own country. This is the general feeling
and mood of the countrymen.

Like me, many such Indian Muslims are equally angry and frustrated and
unable to understand why disaster after disaster is staring at them
all the time. What's wrong with our community and why are we in such a
position of feeling like strangers and alien in our own land. We have
been living here for centuries and also after we were ditched by the
greatest villain of the century, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Company, who
partitioned India in the name of two-nation theory. Don't the Muslims
of today feel angry at them for they were responsible for our present
state of affairs? They left us, and still they are not leaving us
alone to deal with our problems ourselves. Who are they to interfere
in our internal matters? Muslims should come out in open and tell the
people of Pakistan or any element fighting in the name of Islam to
keep off from our problems and mind their own business.

Govt of India did the right thing in issuing a demarche, a strongly
worded message to Pakistan, to do something tangible to wipe out the
remnants of terror outfits from their soil and hand over all those
listed wanted criminals that are enjoying the hospitality of the
Pakistani people at the cost of Indians, including the infamous Don
Dawood Ibrahim, the kingpin of 1993 Bombay Blasts and whose complicity
in 26/11 terror attack can also not be ruled out. President Zardari,
came on his knees virtually pleading with India to spare Pakistan and
not to punish her as retaliation for the act of a few disgruntled
elements. The same voice of concern and anguish came from Premier
Gilani and his Foreign Minister recently touring Indian. Mere words
would not do, Mr. Zardari and Company, show it in action and deeds
alone would gain confidence of the people of India.

Indians demands firm action in one voice and would not tolerate any
more attacks on them. Muslims of India are solidly behind the
Government and the people of this great country. It is said wise men
do not do desperate things in desperate times. It would be wise for
Indians to act with restraint. This is the call from across the globe
as like us the enemy across the borders too is armed with nuclear
arsenals. Any emotive action at this stage would not be acceptable to
the world at large either. The world is not prepared to go through a
nuclear holocaust. It calls for sober thinking and actions. Pakistan
was told in strongest terms that it should act and cooperate with
India to solve the terror plot besides curbing the activities of the
terror groups that are freely moving in the country. The same
sentiments were echoed by US Secretary of State, Condolisa Rice, who
is travelling to India shortly, specifically to offer us American
support.

It is incumbent on the Muslim intelligentsia and the Urdu Press in
particular that they do not inflame passions in any way. Instead, they
should send a clear cut message to all the Muslims that India is our
country, where we have to live and die. We are Indians and Muslims and
there is no distinction between these two. Our prosperity and well
being lie here and nowhere else. If we have any problems or
grievances, it is for us to try to resolve them in a democratic
manner. No one from outside need interfere. We the Muslims of India
constitute the biggest Muslim population of the world after Indonesia.
Though we are leaderless for the time being , we are resilient enough
to sort out our own problems without outside interference as we have
been doing in the last 61 years.

The Muslim Press whether it is Urdu Press or any other vernacular
managed by Muslims, has a duty of guiding its people in this hour of
crisis. Muslims are at a crossroad with no guide in sight. The
educated Muslim class should rise up to spread the message of love,
compassion and brotherhood. We need to reassure the nation. The bullet
of the insane terrorists did not distinguish between Muslims and
others. Among those who got killed were a fair number of innocent
Muslims too, over 40 at the last count among the 179 dead according to
the latest official figures. It was a pathetic description when a
bearded Muslim was narrating the ghastly incident at a TV programme,
"We, the People" telecast by 24x7 News channel, how six of his family
members were brutally killed on the spot while he was away to fetch a
water bottle. His voice was chocking, eyes welled up with tears,
unable to describe how he would live along with the orphans. This
tugged at the hearts of one and all participating in the debate. The
silence in the hall was eerie and mood sombre. We could feel the mood
of the participants in the debate. Those who were watching too could
not control their emotions. Our eyes too welled up, some hid their
faces with their hands, and a few were seen fighting their tears. One
could immediately feel as if our own family members were killed there.
Imagine how the family of 195 people who were killed would be feeling
at the loss of their near and dear ones. Think again of the sacrifice
made by our great son of India Karkare, ATS Chief, and five others of
his team, who laid down their lives performing the sacred duty of this
great nation. This was the tragedy that unfolded on 26/11. My heart
goes out to all those families who are grieving over the loss of their
dear ones.

Our nation is great and so are our people. The spirit is high and
India will certainly bounce back. Mumbai's cosmopolitan spirit is
springing back to normalcy, with business as usual. But the incident
has left a deep scar on the psyche of the people. Let's all allow our
investigating team the time and peace to probe while people keep a
tight vigil in their respective places. Till such time, do not lend
ears to rumours. It is our ardent duty to guard our unity in diversity
with life. Jai Hind.

A.M.Jamsheed Basha is a Chennai-based columnist

------

'Enough is enough'

By FARAH KHAN ALI

2 Dec 2008, 0000 hrs IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Potpourri/Enough_is_enough/articleshow/3780120.cms

I am angry, frustrated, upset and emotionally distraught with the
terror attack that struck our city and nation on the night of 26th
November 2008. How dare this happen to us, how dare these people be
allowed to enter our land with arms and ammunition without the
government taking any responsibility for this major catastrophe....

I was in Dubai the night the terror struck and was sitting next to an
Arab woman while watching the news. She was cursing Osama Bin Laden
and saying that how dare he call himself a Muslim because no religion
allows you to kill another human being. She was angry with him for
allowing the world to believe that Islam preaches hate and that due to
the fanaticism propagated by him, people wanted to believe that terror
had a religion.

Namely Islam... I even got a message by sms from my friend Mrs
Sharmila Thackeray saying that, 'All those who had lost their lives
while saving this city are Marathis and that MNS workers are busy
donating blood and helping police for rescue operations.' At first I
was shocked then angry as I had just heard the news that my close
friend Ashish Chaudhary had lost his sister and brother-in-law. I sent
her back a message telling her to get a life as in times like this one
does not care from where you come from, it is a humanitarian loss. I
could not believe that at time like this Raj Thackeray and his wife
were trying to promote party politics. I also know that after she
reads this she may never talk to me again but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I am
not going to take this lying down anymore and not show my outburst to
these politicians because a member of my family or I know them
personally...

Kudos to Mrs Hemant Karkare, the widow of an exceptional office who
died in the field of duty, when she refused to take any compensation
from Narendra Modi... I doubt either of these politicians would be
brave enough to put their lives ahead of their countrymen. Why should
we spend so much money providing Z level security for politicians
who... divide our country with their inflammatory speeches?

Frankly in a country of ONE BILLION people we do not have ONE person
who can truly be called our 'LEADER'... As a citizen of India I do not
want to waste my vote voting for a government that does not care, and
one that makes promises only at the time of the elections. I... urge
the people of India not to cast their votes for any party until they
pledge their own lives to protect the citizens of this country at
whatever cost...

Jai Hind."

FARAH KHAN ALI

URL for this page: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1041

Posted by SultanShahin at 2:57 PM

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Hashmi's U-turn, blames miscommunication for controversy
Posted: Monday , Aug 10, 2009 at 1610 hrs
Mumbai:

In a U-turn, actor Emraan Hashmi, who had alleged that he was denied a
flat by a housing society because he was Muslim, claimed there was no
discrimination against him and the controversy arose because of a
"miscommunication".

"The dispute between me and the members of Nibbana housing society has
been resolved. The society had not discriminated against me. There had
been a miscommunication," Hashmi, who had sparked a furore with his
allegation of religious profiling, told reporters after a hearing on
his

complaint at the State Minorities Commission.

Hashmi's lawyer Majeed Memon said that a broker Jagjit Arora had told
the actor that the society had refused to sell the flat as Hashmi was
a Muslim.

"The secretary of the society today told Emraan that they had not
discriminated against the actor and that if anyone in the building
wants to sell their flat then Emraan can buy it," Memon said.

Secretary J P Chatri told the Commission that "they would not refuse
the actor on religious grounds as there are several other Muslims
residing in the building," the lawyer said.

The owner of the flat D U Suvarna, who was also present during the
hearing, said he would be more than happy to sell the flat to the
actor who is like a "son" to him.

"I have not decided on what I will do with my flat. But if I decide to
sell the flat then my first choice would be Hashmi," Suvarna said.

On July 31, the actor approached the Minorities

Commission accusing the housing society in posh Pali Hill of religious
profiling by refusing a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to him to
purchase a flat in the society.

The society houses film and television actors including well known
villain Prem Chopra.

"The issue has been blown out of proportion by the media. It was a
miscommunication and has been resolved after all the parties sat
across the table," Naseem Siddiqui, Chairman of the Minorities
Commission said.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

Rethinking Islam

Monday, August 10, 2009

Destroy Lashkar Camps: Why Indian Muslims are an existential threat to
Pakistan?

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad
04 Dec 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

We have no way of knowing precisely what message US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice is carrying from India to Pakistan. Like millions of
Indians, I hope, the government has made it clear that now that we
have incontrovertible evidence against Lashkar-e-Tayyaba's involvement
in the recent terrorist attack on India, we will ourselves take steps
to destroy the terrorist camps in POK as well as Islamist Markaz Ad-
Dawa-wal-Irshad brainwashing camps at Muridke and elsewhere unless
Pakistan takes concrete action against these criminals and destroys
their camps for good.

There are suggestions that the response be internationalised. But let
not such suggestions merely confuse, obfuscate and delay the response.
If there is one phrase the world has heard from Indians of all hues
repeated again and again and again, throughout last week, it is:
Enough is Enough!

We, the Muslims of India, have particular reason to demand that these
dens of evil be closed down and destroyed. There is not the slightest
reason to doubt the known fact now that these Pakistani terrorist
organisations are particularly after the destruction of the Muslim
community in India. [See the article below.] The very idea of Indian
Muslims living peacefully and marching towards prosperity strikes at
the very root of Pakistan's existential philosophy. The very existence
of a prosperous Muslim community in India destroys the Two-Nation
Theory on which the state of Pakistan is based. The very fact that
Muslims in India not only live peacefully among themselves but also in
harmony with a variety of other religious, linguistic, ethnic
communities while Muslims in Pakistan are deeply divided among
themselves and constantly at each others' throats is a profoundly
destabilising factor for the very existence of Pakistan. That
Pakistan's Muslim Sindhis, Baluchis, Pathans, Saraikis, and indeed
Mohajirs would love to join the Indian mainstream, given half a
chance, cannot possibly be lost on the Pakistani establishment that
has spawned these terrorist organisations to further its dubious
strategic imperatives.

We the Muslims of India, by our very existence, more so on account of
our peaceful and prosperous existence, are an existential threat to
Pakistan. And not just to its terrorists, which are in any case a part
of the establishment. We can't help it. There is nothing we can do
about it. That is why it is in our particular interest, in the
interest of Muslims of India, that these terrorist camps are destroyed
and the criminals who have wreaked so much havoc on our land are
brought to justice.

For more concrete evidence and background information on Lashkar-e-
Tayyaba, read on….

Sultan Shahin, editor, NewAgeIslam.com

**************

Lies of the Lashkar

By Yoginder Sikand

Not possessing a television set myself, it was only just now that was
I able to listen to the recording, hosted on the Internet, of a
conversation which took place some days ago between a terrorist holed
up at Nariman House in Mumbai and calling himself 'Imran Babar' and
reporters of the India TV channel. (<http://uk.youtube.com/watch?
v=QhO6rynb1C8)

It is plainly evident from the conversation that the terrorist was a
Pakistani, most likely a Punjabi. This obvious from his accent and the
sort of Urdu he speaks. One can easily make out that he had been
carefully tutored by his mentors who masterminded the deadly terror
assault on Mumbai to intersperse his hate-driven harangue with some
Hindi words (shanti, parivar etc.) and to use Urdu words in the
typical Hindi way (jabardasti, instead of zabardasti, etc.) so as to
give the misleading impression that he and the other terrorists with
him were Indian Muslims, not Pakistanis. The terrorists claimed to
belong to the 'Deccan', in India, but it is obvious that this was not
at all the case. There can be no doubt that these Pakistani terrorists
were trained to lie that they were Indian Muslims who were allegedly
resorting to terror in revenge for the atrocities committed on Muslims
in India.

Why the Pakistan-based terror outfit behind the attacks would do this
needs no explanation. The aim of the attacks was probably to
destabilise India, fuel Hindu-Muslim violence, instigate Muslims to
take to terror in response to attacks by Hindus and then drown India
in flames. This, indeed, is precisely what several Pakistan-based self-
styled Islamist groups have been consistently plotting to do for
decades, although, mercifully, by and large, the Indian Muslims have
refused to fall into their trap. It is to the credit of the Indian
Muslims that, barring some stray exceptions, they have consistently
opposed all forms of terror, including that committed in the name of
Islam, despite the growing menace of Hindutva-driven fascist terror
across India, sometimes abetted by the state, of which they are the
principal and worst-hit victims.

The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba has never made any bones about its dastardly
plans of destabilising and destroying India. It has gone to the
ridiculous extent of claiming that it will not rest till the 'Islamic'
flag is hoisted atop the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi and till
India is absorbed into what it calls in its lunacy 'Greater Pakistan'.
In order to gain theological legitimacy for its deadly project it even
claims that the Prophet Muhammad is said to have declared that Muslims
who participate in a war with India would be saved from the fires of
hell. There can be no doubt that this sort of horrendous misuse and
deliberate distortion of Islam by the Lashkar has played a major role
in attracting vast numbers of would-be terrorists in Pakistan to its
fold who are fed with the poisonous propaganda that by participating
in what it calls a holy war against India they would win a ticket to
heaven.

The Pakistani state, it must be noted, has taken no action whatsoever
against this heinous propaganda, and elements of the ISI are said to
be in cahoots with the Lashkar and other such hate-driven self-styled
Islamist groups in the country. In the wake of the Mumbai attacks, and
when asked what action Pakistan had taken against the Lashkar, the
Pakistani President hurriedly shrugged off the question by claiming
that the Lashkar had been 'banned'. If that is indeed the case—which
it is obviously not—then how does Mr. Zardari explain the fact that,
as the Lashkar's official Urdu website itself announces, on the 29th
of November the Lashkar's supremo Hafiz Muhammad Saeed addressed what
it termed a 'mammoth' convention at 'New Saeedabad' (a locality named
after him?), organized by the Sindh unit of the Markaz Dawat ul-Irshad
(the 'religious' and political wing of the Lashkar). It was held, of
all places, in the premises of the local Government Degree College.
The Lashkar's website is replete with news about the whirlwind tours
of Saeed and his cronies across the country, delivering rabble-rousing
speeches, thundering against India and non-Muslims in general. And the
outfit, Mr. Zardari wants us to believe, is 'banned'.

Having been writing on Indian Muslim issues for years now, I can say
with some confidence that the general Indian Muslim is completely fed
up and fiercely opposed to the gross misuse of Islam by the Pakistani
state and Pakistan-based self-styled Islamist outfits. Deep down
inside, most of them lament the very creation of Pakistan, based on
the discredited 'two nation' theory, for it has left them permanently
helpless in the face of Hindutva aggression. They know full well that,
despite its bombastic claims, Pakistan is far being from the 'Islamic
state' it claims to be—with its problems of poverty, illiteracy,
mounting inequalities, endemic violence, and lawlessness, its corrupt
American puppet politicians who have reduced Islam to a plaything to
be employed for their own purposes, and so on. They face the brunt of
mounting Islamophobia stirred up by Hindutva fascist forces that play
upon Pakistan's dubious Kashmir policy and the heinous crimes of
Pakistan-based self-styled Islamist radicals to whip up violently anti-
Muslim sentiments in India. The general Indian Muslim's undisguised
disgust of the terror in the name of Islam that groups like the
Lashkar are seeking to spearhead is amply evident in the news that is
pouring in of Muslims across the country roundly denouncing the Mumbai
attacks and even insisting that the dreaded terrorists not be allowed
to be buried on Indian soil.

India's Muslims need to be seen as a potential asset, rather than a
liability, in the struggle against terrorism. Scores of Indian ulema
or Islamic clerics are now openly castigating all forms of terror,
organizing mass rallies and even issuing fatwas to get the message
across. The Indian state and civil society urgently needs to realize
that hounding the Indian Muslims, instead of seeking to listen to
their voices and concerns and genuinely dialoguing with them, can only
play into the hands of outfits of groups like the Lashkar. The fact
that Hindutva terror and Islamist terror only feed on each other must
also be urgently acknowledged. Our very future as a country crucially
depends on all communities, particularly Hindus and Muslims,
presenting a joint front to work together for peace and security. That
would be a fitting reply to both Hindutva and radical Islamist forces,
whose very existence is based on the frighteningly Manichaean notion
of perpetual antagonism between Hindus and Muslims.

Backgrounders:

LeT emerging as Qaida's successor

6 Jul 2005, 0156 hrs IST,

Indrani Bagchi & M Saleem Pandit, TNN

NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR: Tuesday's Ayodhya attack is a deadly reminder of
Lashkar-e-Taiba's core ideology — it goes well beyond opposing

India's sovereignty in J&K. According to the South Asia Terrorism
Portal, the Lashkar's agenda, as outlined in a pamphlet titled, 'Why
Are We Waging Jihad', includes the restoration of Islamic rule over
all parts of India.

The terrorist group started out as a wholly owned subsidiary of ISI,
Pakistan's intelligence outfit. But over the years it has grown beyond
its creator and is now regarded by many terrorism analysts as the
successor to Al-Qaida — not as a monolithic organisation, but as a
loosely constructed federation.

It propagates a narrow Islamist fundamentalism that is uncomfortably
close to Saudi Wahhabism. It wants to unite all Muslim majority
regions in countries that surround Pakistan.

Hence its presence in Afghanistan, J&K, Chechnya and other parts of
Central Asia.

The outfit has a history of executing precision attacks outside J&K,
the most prominent being its suspected role in the December 13, 2001
attack on Parliament and the 2002 strike on the Akshardham temple in
Gandhinagar.

Security sources say LeT had planned a similar in Ayodhya in 2002, but
it fell apart after the militants entrusted with the task were killed
in an encounter in Tughlaqabad.

BSF's senior intelligence officer .K Srinivasan, believes LeT
operatives are also active in UP and Gujurat besides being spread
across Jammu and Kashmir. Srinivasan, who has

been involved in anti-militancy operations in Jammu and Kashmir since
2000, told TOI that Lashskar's involvement in the Ayodhya attack
cannot be ruled out given its track record.

Shahzad Ahmad alias Abu Shamas ofPakistan is the supreme operational
commander of the outfit in Jammu and Kashmir. Shahzad resides in
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir but has a representative, Dr Zaan, stationed
in Bandipora, North Kashmir, acting as operational commander these
days, Srinivasan said.

The UN took the ultimate step in May of banning the LeT and all its
sister concerns for its links with Al-Qaida, through UN Resolution
1267 under which all states are obliged to freeze its assets, prevent
its entry into or transit through their territories.

The fact that this is yet to find ground in LeT's home base, Pakistan,
has not escaped notice.

Formed in 1990 in the Kunar province of Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-
Toiba is the military wing of the Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad, an
Islamic fundamentalist organisation of the Ahle-Hadith sect in
Pakistan. Its first presence in J&K was recorded in 1993 when 12
Pakistani and Afghan mercenaries infiltrated across the LoC.

However, after being banned by the US and at different times,
Pakistan, the LeT has been reorganised into two supposedly exclusive
bodies — one devoted to preaching of Islam under Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
and the other to carry on its violent campaign under the leadership of
Kashmiri scholar Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri.

Compared to other ultra outfits in J&K, LeT has attracted attention
for two reasons: its well planned and executed attacks on security
forces and for the dramatic killings of non-Muslim civilians. In fact,
it is generally noted that LeT cadres prefer death to arrest, pointing
to a high degree of motivation.

*****

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba ('Army of the Pure')

Formation

Formed in 1990 in the Kunar province of Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-
Tayyaba (also known as Jama'at-ud-Da'awa) is based in Muridke near
Lahore in Pakistan and is headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

Its first presence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was recorded in 1993
when 12 Pakistani and Afghan mercenaries infiltrated across the Line
of Control (LoC) in tandem with the Islami Inquilabi Mahaz, a
terrorist outfit then active in the Poonch district of J&K.

1. Proscription

The LeT is outlawed in India under the Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Act.

It was included in the Terrorist Exclusion List by the US Government
on December 5, 2001. The US administration designated the Lashkar-e-
Tayyaba as a FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) on December 26,
2001. It is also a banned organization in Britain since March 30,
2001.

The group was proscribed by the United Nations in May 2005.

The military regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf banned the Lashkar-e-
Tayyaba in Pakistan on January 12, 2002.

2. Objectives/Ideology

The LeT's professed ideology goes beyond merely challenging India's
sovereignty over the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The Lashkar's
'agenda', as outlined in a pamphlet titled Why are we waging jihad
includes the restoration of Islamic rule over all parts of India.
Further, the outfit seeks to bring about a union of all Muslim
majority regions in countries that surround Pakistan. Towards that
end, it is active in J&K, Chechnya and other parts of Central Asia.

Hafiz Saeed, a scholar of Islam, has said that the purpose of Jihad is
to carry out a sustained struggle for the dominance of Islam in the
entire world and to eliminate the evil forces and the ignorant. He
considers India, Israel and US to be his prime enemies and has
threatened to launch Fidayeen (suicide squad) attacks on American
interests too.

The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba does not believe in democracy and nationalism.
According to its ideology, it is the duty of every 'Momin' to protect
and defend the interests of Muslims all over the world where Muslims
are under the rule of non-Muslim in the democratic system. It has,
thus chosen the path of Jihad as the suited means to achieve its goal.
Cadres are drawn from the Wahabi school of thought.

Jihad, Hafiz Saeed said during the All Pakistan Ulema Convention held
on July 17, 2003, at Lahore, is the only way Pakistan can move towards
dignity and prosperity.

The LeT has consistently advocated the use of force and vowed that it
would plant the 'flag of Islam' in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi.

3. Leadership and Command Structure

The outfit's headquarters (200 acres) is located at Muridke, 30 kms
from Lahore, which was built with contributions and donations from the
Middle East, with Saudi Arabia being the biggest benefactor.

The headquarters houses a Madrassa (seminary), a hospital, a market, a
large residential area for 'scholars' and faculty members, a fish farm
and agricultural tracts. The LeT also reportedly operates 16 Islamic
institutions, 135 secondary schools, an ambulance service, mobile
clinics, blood banks and several seminaries across Pakistan.

LeT publishes its views and opinion through its Website (http://
www.jamatuddawa.org/), an Urdu monthly journal, Al-Dawa, which has a
circulation of 80,000, and an Urdu weekly, Gazwa. It also publishes
Voice of Islam, an English monthly, and Al-Rabat - monthly in Arabic,
Mujala-e-Tulba - Urdu monthly for students, Jehad Times - Urdu Weekly.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is the Amir (chief) of Lashkar-e-Toiba. While
Yahiya Mujahid serves as the spokesman of the outfit, Maulana Abdul
Wahid is one of the senior leaders. Abdullah Muntazer is the
'Spokesman for International Media' and editor of the outfit's
Website. Saeed's son Talha reportedly looks after the LeT activity at
its base camp in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
Saeed's son-in-law, Khalid Waleed, is reportedly part of the LeT
office in Lahore.

According to a November 2005 report of Rediff, the LeT leadership
consisted of: Hafiz Mohammed Saeed (Supreme Commander); Zia-Ur-Rehman
Lakhvi alias Chachaji (Supreme Commander, Kashmir); A. B. Rahman-Ur-
Dakhil (Deputy Supreme Commander); Abdullah Shehzad alias Abu Anas
alias Shamas (Chief Operations Commander, Valley); Abdul Hassan alias
MY (Central Division Commander); Kari Saif-Ul-Rahman (North Division
Commander); Kari Saif-Ul-Islam (Deputy Commander); Masood alias
Mahmood (Area Commander, Sopore); Hyder-e-Krar alias CI (Deputy
Commander, Bandipora); Usman Bhai alias Saif-Ul-Islam (Deputy
Commander, Lolab); Abdul Nawaz (Deputy Commander, Sogam); Abu Rafi
(Deputy Divisional Commander, Baramulla); Abdul Nawaz (Deputy
Commander, Handwara); Abu Museb alias Saifulla (Deputy Commander,
Budgam);

Its cadres are organised at district levels with 'district commanders'
in charge. Within Pakistan, the outfit has a network of training camps
and branch offices, which undertake recruitment and collection of
finances.

It comprises cadres mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan and a
sprinkling of militants from Sudan, Bahrain, Central Asia, Turkey and
Libya. Funded, armed and trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISl, the external intelligence agency of Pakistan), it has presently
a little over 750 cadres (this number keeps changing) in Jammu and
Kashmir (a vast majority of the foreign mercenaries operating in the
Valley).

The policy making apex body consists of Amir (chief), Naib Amir
(deputy chief) Finance chief etc. At the field level, it has Chief
Commander, Divisional Commander, District Commander, Battalion
Commander and down below on army pattern.

4. Area of Operation

While the primary area of operations of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is Jammu
and Kashmir, the outfit has carried out attacks in other parts of
India, including in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Varanasi,
Kolkata, Gujarat, etc. It reportedly has cells in many cities/towns
outside Jammu and Kashmir.

The LeT has been able to network with several Islamist extremist
organizations across India, especially in J&K, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat. LeT is actively engaged in
subversive activities in the States of Maharashtra, West Bengal,
Bihar, Hyderabad, Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh at the instance of
ISI to expand the frontier of violence outside J&K by subverting
fringe elements. Of all the Pakistan-based terrorist groups, the LeT
is the only group with support bases across India.

The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba has training camps spread across Pakistan and
Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). Its camps, recruitment centres/
offices are spread across the length and breadth of Pakistan and PoK
in Muzaffarabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi,
Multan, Quetta, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gilgit (in the Northern Area of
PoK), etc. LeT reportedly has 2,200 offices across Pakistan.

The LeT allegedly carried out the terrorist attack at the Indian
Institute of Science campus in Bangalore on December 28, 2005, in
which one person was killed; Earlier, on October 29, 2005, it
engineered the serial explosions in New Delhi killing at least 62
persons; It is also suspected to have carried out the Varanasi attack
on March 7, 2006 in which 21 civilians died and 62 others were
injured; Three suspected LeT terrorists were shot dead during an
abortive attempt to storm the headquarters of Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu organization, at Nagpur in Maharashtra
on June 1, 2006; The LeT, according to Mumbai Police, carried out the
7/11 serial bombings in Mumbai in which at least 200 people were
killed.

Arrests made during March-April 2004 near Baghdad brought to light
links between the LeT and Islamist groups fighting the United States
military in Iraq. In March - and possibly even earlier - United States
forces detained Pakistani national Dilshad Ahmad and four others in
Baghdad. Ahmad, a long-time Lashkar operative from the Bahawalpur area
of the province of Punjab in Pakistan, had played a key role in the
Lashkar's trans-Line of Control (LoC) operations, serving between 1997
and 2001 as the organisation's commander for the forward camps from
where infiltrating groups of terrorists are launched into Jammu and
Kashmir with Pakistani military support. Ahmad is believed to have
made at least six secret visits to Lashkar groups operating in J&K
during this period.

5. Training and Operational Strategies

The outfit provides training to both militant cadres and the Ulema
(religious scholars). Its militant cadres are given two months
training in the handling of AK series rifles, LMGs, pistols, rocket
launchers and hand grenades. It also provides a 21-day training
programme called Daura-e-Aam and a three months specialized training
programme called Daura-e-Khas.

The Ulema are provided with a 42-days course. At the time of
induction, the young recruits are made to go through a fresher course
called Bait-ur-Rizwan.

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is credited for having initiated the strategy of
Fidayeen (suicide squad) attacks in J&K. It has formed two sub-groups
called 'Jaan-e-Fidai' and 'Ibn-e-Tayamiah'. While the first group
consists of highly motivated terrorists, the second comprises
terrorists suffering from incurable diseases.

Compared to other terrorist outfits in J&K, the LeT has commanded
significant attention primarily due to two reasons. First, for its
well planned and executed attacks on security force (SF) targets and
secondly, for the massacres of non-Muslim civilians. After the Kargil
war of May-July 1999, (when Pakistani troops and mercenaries,
including those of the Lashkar, were forced to withdraw from peaks on
the Indian side of the Line of Control - LoC), the outfit launched its
Fidayeen strategy whereby small groups (2-5 members) of Lashkar cadres
would storm a security force camp or base. In another frequently used
strategy, groups of Lashkar cadres, dressed in SF fatigues, would
arrive at remote hill villages, round up Hindu or Sikh civilians, and
massacre them. These two strategies have been designed to achieve
maximum publicity and extract public allegiance, mainly out of fear.
On December 8, 2001, two LeT suicide squad cadres managed to penetrate
inside a SF convoy and opened fire killing one soldier. They were able
to generate adequate confusion to escape from the convoy after the
attack but were later killed in an encounter with another SF unit.

6. Links

It is closely linked to the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Taliban
and al Qaeda.

India's National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan said on August 11,
2006, that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is part of the "al
Qaeda compact" and is "as big as and omnipotent" as the international
terror network. "The Lashkar today has emerged as a very major force.
It has connectivity with west Asia, Europe....Actually there was an
LeT module broken in Virginia and some people were picked up. It is as
big as and omnipotent as al Qaeda in every sense of the term," he told
a private news channel. Asked how significant the al Qaeda connection
was in India, Narayanan said LeT was the "most visible manifestation"
of the al Qaeda in India.

LeT has an extensive network that run across Pakistan and India with
branches in Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Bangladesh and South East
Asia.

The outfit collects donations from the Pakistani community in the
Persian Gulf and United Kingdom, Islamic Non-Governmental
Organisations, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. It receives
considerable financial, material and other forms of assistance from
the Pakistan government, routed primarily through the ISI. The ISI is
the main source of LeT's funding. Saudi Arabia also provides funds.

The LeT maintains ties to various religious/military groups around the
world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya
primarily through the al Qaeda fraternal network.

The LeT has also been part of the Bosnian campaign against the Serbs.

It has allegedly set up sleeper cells in the U.S. and Australia,
trained terrorists from other countries and has entered new theatres
of Jihad like Iraq.

The group has links with many international Islamist terrorist groups
like the Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen of Egypt and other Arab groups.

LeT has a unit in Germany and also receives help from the Al
Muhajiraun, supporter of Sharia Group, (Abu Hamza Masari- of Mosque
Finsbury Park, North London) and its annual convention is regularly
attended by fraternal bodies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain,
Oman, Kosovo, Bangladesh, Myanmar, USA, Palestine, Bosnia,
Philippines, Jordan, Chechnya, etc.

It also has links with the International Sikh Youth Federation
(Lakhbir Singh Rode).

7. Links

The outfit collects donations from the Pakistani community in the
Persian Gulf and United Kingdom, Islamic Non-Governmental
Organisations, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. It receives
considerable financial, material and other forms of assistance from
the Pakistan government, routed primarily through the ISI. The ISI is
the main source of LeT's funding. Funds also come from some sources in
Saudi Arabia.

Finances are also generated through Hawala transaction and through
infiltrating groups and other conduits.

According to Mohammad Omar Rana, the expenditure on its militia alone
is around 35 crores of rupees per annum.

8. Weaponry

AK series rifles, LMG/HMG's, Hand Grenades, Rockets, Pistols, Mortars,
Anti-tank mines, Anti personnel mines, Anti Aircraft Gun, Remote
Control Device, explosive devices and sophisticated communication
system.

Source: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/terrorist_outfits/lashkar_e_toiba.htm

http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1042

Posted by SultanShahin at 2:58 PM

[Sid Harth]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/minorities-have-played-a-vital-role-in-the-creation-and-then-development-of-pakistan-minister-bhatti/

August 12, 2009...10:41 am

“Minorities have played a vital role in the creation and then
development of Pakistan,” Minister Bhatti
Jump to Comments

By Aamir Latif, IOL Correspondent KARACHI –

Only three days to its 62nd birthday, Pakistan is celebrating on
Tuesday, August 11, Minorities Day, a move many see as part of the
South Asian Muslim country’s efforts to polish its image after a
recent bloody attack on Christians. “The decision has been taken not
only to show solidarity with all minorities, including Christians, who
are the equal citizens of Pakistan, but also to highlight their role
in the creation and development of the country,” Federal Minister for
Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti told IslamOnline.net.

Different programs, including rallies, seminars and conferences have
been chalked out by the government and NGOs to express solidarity with
minorities nationwide. Jammat-e-Islami, the country’s largest
religious party, is going to hold an interfaith dialogue, which will
be attended by Muslim, Christian, and Hindu leaders, to promote
interfaith harmony. “Minorities have played a vital role in the
creation and then development of Pakistan,” insists Bhatti, a
Christian. “And they are proud of their services.” Christians make up
3 percent of Pakistan’s 170 million population, followed by Hindus who
make up 2 percent. A majority of Christians, who are mainly involved
in education, health and sanitary sectors, resides in Punjab, the
country’s most populous and richest province. Hindus, mostly involved
in businesses, are considered much richer than Christians and mostly
live in the southern Sindh province, the second largest province.

“We have decided to observe this day on August 11 because it has a
special significance,” said Minister Bhatti. “On that day in 1947, the
founder of the nation (Mohammad Ali Jinnah), while addressing the
first constituent assembly of Pakistan, announced that no Pakistani
would be discriminated against on the basis of religion, sect, race,
caste or creed,” recalled the minister. “They all will be equal
Pakistanis.” Messages “I never felt myself vulnerable here. This is my
own country, where my forefathers were born and are buried,” Vijay, a
Christian, told IOL. Bhatti, also a central leader of the ruling
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), asserted that the Minorities Day will
send several messages. “This will give a message to the perpetrators
and masterminds of Gojra incident, that there is no place for
religious hatred in Pakistan.” Six Christians were killed last week by
a violent mob over a reported desecration of the Quran. “The
government will fully protect the lives and properties of minorities,
and will not allow any group or individual to use religious sentiments
to hurt them.”

The minister said dedicating a special day for minorities also
promotes the image of Pakistan. “By observing this day, we want to
give a clear message to the world that the Pakistani society is based
on religious harmony, social justice, and human equality.” Though
shaken by the Gojra incident, members of religious minorities
generally feel protected and comfortable with their Muslim countrymen.
“It was, no doubt, a horrible incident, but I would say it was the act
of some sick individuals,” Vijay Dravid, who works as a sanitary
worker at a local club, told IOL. “It is a matter of satisfaction for
us that the majority of Muslims, including religious scholars, not
merely condemned that attack but also helped the victims.” Vijay and
his family live with seven Muslim neighbors, who too are employees of
the same club. “I never felt myself vulnerable here. This is my own
country, where my forefathers were born and are buried.”

Amr Lal, who works as a peon at a local firm, agrees. “Hundreds of
Muslims were killed in Indian Gujrat a few years back, but not even a
single Hindu was killed in Pakistan,” he said referring to the killing
of some 2000 Muslims, many hacked and burned to death, by Hindu
extremists a few years ago. “Being a Hindu, I remember the last anti-
Hindu violence in Pakistan in 1992, following the demolition of Babri
Mosque in India,” recalled Lal. “Since that, there has been no
violence against Hindus.” Lal, however, calls for more development
funds and scholarships for minorities. “We don’t have access to
quality education, though most of the prestigious schools and colleges
have been set up by Hindus and Christians before partition (in 1947).
Therefore, the government should provide more educational facilities
to the minorities.”

[Sid Harth]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/5448/August 12,
2009...11:19 am

We are Sorry Mr. Jinnah

By Adil Najam (Courtesy All Things Pakistan)

Today is August 11. Sixty-two years ago, on this day, Mohammed Ali
Jinnah, Founder of Pakistan, made one of the most important speeches
of his – and of Pakistan’s – life. A speech in which he laid out – in
the most unambiguous terms – his vision for Pakistan and the rationale
for that vision. In this speech Mr. Jinnah laid out a detailed case
for his argument and famously proclaimed: …in course of time Hindus
would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in
the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each
individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the [Pakistan].
Read full text and a detailed analysis of the speech here.

Today is August 11. Barely ten days ago in Gojra, in Mr. Jinnah’s
Pakistan, over 50 houses belonging to Pakistani Christians were burnt
down by a mob and at least half a dozen Pakistani Christians were
murdered for still unproven charges under a draconian law neither
whose intent nor whose vigilante implementation Mr. Jinnah could ever
have tolerated. Today is August 11. Our government has declared today
to be ‘Minorities Day,’ but neither our government nor we as a people
are willing to repeal the draconian laws that enable the bigots
amongst us to persecute the vulnerable and the marginalized amongst
us. Today is August 11. Today, once again, we will shower platitudes
on Mr. Jinnah’s vision of a tolerant Pakistan and then conveniently
ignore that vision. A Pakistan for all Pakistanis, irrespective of, as
he would say, “caste and creed.” A Pakistan where neither Mr. Jinnah’s
vision nor our Pakistaniat would be high-jacked by the sanctimonious
custodians of righteousness, the self-styled gate-keepers of morality,
and the arrogant arbiters of patriotism.

We are sorry, Mr. Jinnah. We are sorry that we have not been able to
actualize the Pakistan of your vision. At least, not yet. Cursed by
the very intolerance that you had warned us of, we have not only
failed to bridge the divisions that existed already, we have worked
hard to create new divisions. We have not only failed the minorities
that were, we have created new ones by legislating exclusion. We are
sorry, Mr. Jinnah. We are sorry for being so drunk in intolerance that
we made ourselves the arbiters of who was Muslim enough to be Muslim,
or Pakistani enough to be Pakistani. We are sorry, Mr. Jinnah. We are
sorry not only for the Gojra that happened ten days ago. We are sorry
for the Gojra that happens every day in the Pakistan you created.

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/my-country-too/

August 12, 2009...10:19 am
My Country Too

By Abhijay Patel

Pakistan’s religious minorities have shared equal status with majority
Muslims and allocation of special funds by the present government
bespeaks of its resolve to minorities uplift.Living with native
communities, the minorities enjoyed all kind of freedom and ensured on
their part that they contribute to socio-economic development and
prosperity of the country.To live with this spirit, the minority
communities and the government would renew their commitment for a
prosperous Pakistan when they will observe the Minorities’ Day on
August 11.

In line with the vision of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
minorities articularly, Christians have been playing vital role in
country’s progress.

One can also not forget their active role in creation of Pakistan and
extending full support to the Muslim League and Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad
Ali Jinnah.

“We took pride in our role to create Pakistan and its our national
duty to continue working for its solidarity and integrity,” said
Karamat Gill, a retired government official.

Pakistani minorities have lived in complete peace and harmony with
their Muslim brethren despite scattered incidents by vested interests
and enemies of the state to create a rift among them.

The tragic incident in Gojra is a stark reminder of such nefarious
designs when some anti-state elements created disharmony by killing
Christians and burning their properties in the name of desecration of
the Holy Quran.

The government has already ordered a high-level inquiry to probe the
incident and has expressed its resolve to bring to justice the people
behind the gory incident.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani visited Gojra and announced Rs. 100
million for the rehabilitation of the affected people.

While demanding punishment for the culprits, the Christian community
remains committed to avoid recurrence of such unfortunate incidents,
also reiterating to promote harmony, following the footsteps of
Christian leaders who fought along their Muslims colleagues for an
independent Pakistan.

This reminds us of Dewan Bahadur S P Sangha who played a pivotal role
in making Christians to vote for Muslim League. There were certain
areas in the undivided India where Hindus would have gained majority
vote had the Christians not voted for the Muslim League Party. After
Independence of Pakistan, Sangha made the first Urdu movie “Teri Yaad
Main” (In your memory).

Christians served Pakistan in different areas and also laid down their
lives fighting for the country as army personnel. Hats off to brave
Christians like Squadron Leader Peter Christie who embraced “shahadat”
in the Pakistan-India war in 1971.

Cecil Chaudhry is another brave Pakistan Air Force pilot who fought
for the country in 1971 war and currently is the Principal of St.
Mary’s Academy, a prestigious Christian institution in Rawalpindi that
has produced many notable persons for the country.

Former Chief Justice A. R. Cornelius stands as a distinguished figure,
when it comes to the judicial history of Pakistan and there are many
others who will be long remembered for their immense contribution in
the field of health and education.

While the government has acknowledged the contribution of Christians
in the development and progress of Pakistan, still there are many who
have been ignored and not duly honored.

“Streets and roads have been named after many martyrs, though none yet
has been named after any Christians hero like Peter Chrisite, who laid
down his life for the country,” said Dr. David John, a prominent
Christian leader in Rawalpindi.

But, there had been several good news for minorities in recent years
like annulment of separate electorate and re-introduction of joint
electorate system for minorities, to help them bring into mainstream.

Allocation of five percent jobs quota for minorities by the present
government has fulfilled their long-standing demand.

Christian community has hailed this decision and the contribution of
Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, with hopes that the decision
is implemented in letter and spirit.

“We hope that President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza
Gilani will take personal interest to ensure that the decision of five
percent quota for minorities is implemented in letter and spirit,” Dr.
John said.

Dr John also demanded to introduce job quota at provincial level and
said, it would help promote inter-faith harmony.

The minority communities appreciate all these measures though they are
apprehensive of the blasphemy law as they describe it a discriminatory
law towards minorities.

They refer to various incidents where blasphemy cases were framed but
the sentence has never been carried out as convictions have always
been overturned by higher courts for lack of evidence.

However, these leaders were worried about killing of minority members
by mob in the name of blasphemy. “This should be stopped to further
promote the present harmony among followers of all religions and
provide them space to fearlessly contribute towards nation building.”

[Sid Harth]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Govt-society-must-keep-watch-on-communal-groups-PM/articleshow/4886703.cms

Govt, society must keep watch on communal groups: PM
IANS 12 August 2009, 10:40pm IST

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said the
government and civil society groups must keep an eye on and protest
against those who
resort to violence in the name of religion to spread disharmony.

"I believe that both the government and civil society groups must
continuously watch and raise our voice against groups and individuals
who use violence in the name of religion," the prime minister said at
a function to present the Kabir Puraskar and National Communal Harmony
Awards for the years 2007 and 2008.

The awards were given away by President Pratibha Patil.

Manmohan Singh said: "No religion sanctions violence. No religion
preaches hatred. No religion endorses animosity towards another human
being. Those who use religious symbols and forums to talk of violence,
sectarianism and discord cannot be said to be true spokesperson of
their respective religion."

Those present at the awards function included Vice-President Hamid
Ansari, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani
and Minister of State for Home Ajay Maken.

Ram Puniyani and Dominic Emmanuel were given the National Communal
Harmony Awards in the individual category while Setu Charitable Trust
and Anjuman Sari-e-Gul Faroshan got it under the organisations
category. The Kabir Puraskar awardees were Khalifa Gufran, Abdul Gani
Abdullabhai Qureshi and Ghulam Ahmad Bhat.

The National Communal Harmony Award honours outstanding contribution
of individuals and organisations to the cause of communal harmony,
promotion of secular values and national integration.

The Kabir Puraskar recognises physical or moral courage and humanity
exhibited by members of one community in saving the life and property
of members of another community.

The prime minister said: "We also know that all societies, including
ours, have to contend with such preachers of disharmony and
disagreement. That is why it is all the more important to recognize
and applaud those like today's distinguished award winners."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lashkar-threat-for-Azad-Bhagwat/articleshow/4886991.cms

Lashkar threat for Azad, Bhagwat

PTI 12 August 2009, 10:32pm IST

NEW DELHI: With intelligence agencies giving inputs that Union Health
Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat could be the
target of
Lashker-e-Toiba, the Centre has asked all states to take special
security precautions when the two leading figures visit their region.

Home Ministry sources said the Centre has informed that Azad, a former
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, and Bhagwat are in the hit list of
the Pakistan-based terror outfit and they could be targeted by the
militants anywhere in the country.

Both Azad and Bhagwat enjoy Z-plus security with the former being
accorded with the elite Black Cat commando protection with bullet-
proof car.

The Centre told the states that proper sensitisation should be carried
out when Azad and Bhagwat visit.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Heavy-security-in-Kandhamal-for-VHP-leaders-death-anniversary/articleshow/4886635.cms

Heavy security in Kandhamal for VHP leader's death anniversary
PTI 12 August 2009, 09:31pm IST

PHULBANI (Orissa): Over 2,000 security personnel were deployed on
Wednesday in riot-scarred Kandhamal on the eve of the first death
anniversary of
VHP leader Laxamananda Saraswati whose killing had sparked a communal
frenzy in the Maoist-infested Orissa district last year.

Sangh Parivar outfits like the VHP and RSS have decided to observe it
as 'Sacrifice Day'. "Religious functions were being organised at two
ashrams at Jalespeta and Chakapada on the occasion," VHP state
secretary Gouri Kumar Rath said, adding the programmes will be
peaceful.

Director General of Police (DGP) Manmohan Praharaj, who along with
senior police officers reviewed situation in the communally-fragile
Kandhamal, told reporters that as many as 52 platoons (30 personnel)
of security personnel were deployed across the district.

Besides one company of CRPF jawans, nine platoons of personnel
belonging to Orissa Special Striking Force (OSSF) comprising ex-army
men and an equal number of jawans of India Reserve Battalion (IRB), 18
platoons of special police officers (SPOs) and jawans of Orissa
Special Armed Police (OSAP) were also deployed.

"Nine units of ODRAF (Orissa disaster rapid action force) members were
also deployed in Kandhamal for clearing road blockades if the
miscreants fell trees on road," the DGP said.

The VHP leader and four others were gunned down allegedly by Maoists
on Janmastami last year sparking widespread communal violence in
Kandhamal and other parts of Orissa.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/No-change-in-stand-of-party-on-Jinnah-BJP/articleshow/4886560.cms

No change in stand of party on Jinnah: BJP
PTI 12 August 2009, 08:20pm IST

NEW DELHI: BJP on Wednesday said it has not changed its stand on
Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah and continues to reject his two-
nation
theory.

"There is no news of change in BJP's resolution adopted on June 10,
2005," party spokesman Prakash Javadekar told reporters here.

He was asked whether he thought Jinnah was in favour of Hindu-Muslim
unity against the backdrop of BJP leader Jaswant Singh's forthcoming
book -- "Jinnah: India-Partition- Independence" reportedly holding
Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru more responsible for the Partition.

When Javadekar was asked about the contents of the book relating to
Jinnah, he said he has so far not read it.

The BJP resolution on Jinnah was adopted in 2005 against the backdrop
of L K Advani's visit to Pakistan and his comments appreciating the
founder of Pakistan which triggered a controversy.

The resolution said: "BJP reiterates that whatever may have been
Jinnah's vision of Pakistan, the state that he founded is theocratic
and non-secular; the very idea of Hindus and Muslims being two
separate nations is repugnant to the BJP."

According to the resolution, the BJP has "always condemned the
division of India on communal lines and continues to steadfastly
reject the two-nation theory championed by Jinnah and endorsed by the
British colonists..."

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2009/08/14/news0708.htm

Habib Tanvir: Citizen of the world
Sudhanva Deshpande

(From previous issue)

Mitti ki Gaadi, his Chhattisgarhi adaptation of Sudrak's Sanskrit
classic, was done in 1977; Bahadur Kalarin, an oral rural Oedipal
tale, followed soon after. Shajapur ki Shantibai (Brecht's Good Person
of Schetzuan), with the incomparable Fidabai in the lead, was done in
1978; and Lala Shohratrai (Moliere's Bourgeois Gentleman) in 1981.

In other words, by about the mid-1970s, Habib Tanvir had already
evolved his distinctive idiom of modern theatre, and subsequent years
basically saw him elaborating this idiom, refining it, polishing it,
rather than evolving a new form. Those who came to watch and love his
theatre after this time tended to take this idiom, his style, for
granted. It can, therefore, be quite easily forgotten that it took him
14 long years, from 1958 to 1972, to come to it.

FROM RURAL TRADITIONS

On Habib Tanvir's theatre, it is quite common to hear two views. One
sees a development of the IPTA legacy in him, the other sees him as a
practitioner of "folk" theatre. Both are incorrect. IPTA sought to
build an all-India network of revolutionary cultural groups in close
association with the communist movement. Habib Tanvir, after his early
years with IPTA, never again did that kind of work. Certainly in his
theatre practice there was not a whiff of IPTA: while IPTA used "folk"
forms essentially as carriers of revolutionary ideology to the masses,
Habib Tanvir fashioned a popular modern theatre, borrowing elements
from rural dramatic traditions that have been more often than not
utopic rather than revolutionary.

Habib Tanvir got his first set of six rural actors in 1958. He did
several plays between then and 1972, but most were, as he put it,
"failures". These failures led him to wonder why the rural actors are
fabulous when they do Nacha in their own setting? What makes them
stilted and trite when they act in his plays?

He identified two main faults: "mother tongue and freedom of
movement". "[I realised], after many years, that I was trying to apply
my English training on the village actors - move diagonally, stand,
speak, take this position, take that position. I had to unlearn it
all. I saw that they couldn't even tell right from left on the stage
and had no line sense. And I'd go on shouting: 'Don't you know the
difference between the hand you eat with and the one you wash with?'

". . . I realised that those who were for years responding to an
audience like this [without bothering about whether the audience was
on one side, or three, or four, or whether some of them were sitting
on the stage] could never try to unlearn all this and rigidly follow
the rules of movement and that was one reason why Thakur Ram, a great
actor [one of the 1958 six] wasn't able to be natural. Another reason
was the matrubhasha - he wasn't speaking in his mother tongue, so it
jarred on my ears, because he was speaking bad Hindi and not
Chhattisgarhi, in which he was fluent, which was so sweet. This
realisation took me years - naive of me, but still it took me years.
Once I realised it I used Chhattisgarhi and I improvised, allowed them
the freedom and then came pouncing down upon them to crystallise the
movement - there you stay. And they began to learn. That quite simply
was the method I learnt."

That was the method all right, but it was to be used to channelise the
rural actor's energy to tell modern stories. His dramaturgy and
stagecraft are also modern. His Kamdev ka Apna, Basant Ritu ka Sapna
(Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream) is played on a bare stage,
the only element of set being a hand-held, beautifully embroidered
half-curtain which sometimes reveals, sometimes hides, and sometimes
becomes a backdrop to, the action. With its simplicity, its directness
and minimalism, Habib Tanvir's theatre would have been considered
avant-garde had it not been so popular, and so funny.

If you talk to his actors, they all, without exception, make the
distinction between Nacha, where they originally trained, and
"theatre", that is, Habib Tanvir's theatre. His is a theatre of modern
sensibilities, of modern concerns. Besides his own plays, look at the
range of dramatists he has tackled. The ancient Sanskrit writers
Sudrak, Bhasa, Visakhadatta and Bhavabhuti; European classics by
Shakespeare, Moliere and Goldoni; modern masters Brecht, Garcia Lorca,
Gogol and Gorky, and even Wilde; and Indian writers Rabindranath
Tagore, Sisir Das, Asghar Wajahat, Shankar Shesh, Safdar Hashmi and
Rahul Varma. He has adapted stories by Premchand, Stefan Zweig and
Vijaydan Detha for the stage, besides adapting oral tales from
Chhattisgarh. The stories he tells are the stories of our times, told
with the simplicity and directness and energy of the rural performing
traditions.

Habib Tanvir, then, was a citizen of the world, borrowing, reading,
soaking up influences indiscriminately, but he became, through a long,
hard, creative struggle, a resident of Chhattisgarh. Chhattisgarh is
the prism that refracted his creative expression. He was writing his
autobiography, Ek Matmaili Chadariya - a life woven with multiple
threads, a life the dusty colour of earth. He was a Midas turned
upside-down: whatever he touched lost its sheen, it became rough and
turned to Chhattisgarhi. As Brecht once put it: "True art becomes poor
with the masses and grows rich with the masses."

This is the man the Hindu Right has hounded since the early 1990s. To
argue, as the Hindu Right did, that Habib Tanvir is anti-Hindu and, by
extension, anti-Indian, is of course a reflection not on the man and
his work, but on the depraved, pea-sized world view of his attackers.

Yet Habib Tanvir was no revolutionary. He, along with a large number
of intellectuals and artists close to the Communist Party of India
(CPI), flirted for a while with the Congress (I) in the 1970s. He
campaigned for the party in the 1971 elections with a play called
Indira Loksabha. In what some saw as a return of the favour, he was
nominated to the Rajya Sabha the following year, and, to the dismay of
those to the left of the CPI, he did not resign his seat when the
Emergency was declared in 1975. It is only later, in the 1980s, that
he became, in private conversations at least, more critical of the
Congress.

Habib Tanvir was an enemy of parochialism, of bigotry, of
fundamentalism, and of the kind of development that crushes the poor.
If Ponga Pandit critiques the caste system, superstition and
priestcraft in the lively, robust manner that Habib Tanvir has
perfected, the other play that he has been extensively performing
attacks Muslim fundamentalism: Asghar Wajahat's Jis Lahore Nai Dekhya
Voh Janmya hi Nai, the story of a Hindu woman left behind in Lahore
after Partition. His last production, Raj Rakt, based on Tagore's
Visarjan, is also a critique of superstition. An earlier play, Moteram
ka Satyagraha, based on a Premchand story and written in collaboration
with Safdar Hashmi, is a humorous look at what happens when religion
starts meddling with politics.

In the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December
1992, he produced for a Delhi group Sisir Kumar Das's Baagh, an
allegory on the communal tiger on the prowl. In 1999, he wrote and
directed for Jana Natya Manch Ek Aurat Hypatia Bhi Thee, on the fourth
century A.D. woman mathematician from Alexandria, who was lynched on
the streets by Christian bigots. Sadak, a short play, is a comic
critique of "development" that ravages villagers, tribal people, their
land and their culture. Hirma ki Amar Kahani is a more profound look
at what development has meant for tribal people.

An early short children's play, Gadhe, is a rip-roaring take-off on
the education system that produces asses. His production of Rahul
Verma's Zahareeli Hawa is a fictional recreation of the Bhopal gas
tragedy. Then there is Dekh Rahe Hain Nain, perhaps his most refined
play philosophically, the story of a king's futile quest for a calling
that will harm no other being.

This, then, was Habib Tanvir, a man who represents two great
traditions of Indian theatre - the tradition of the actor-director-
playwright-manager and the tradition of an active involvement, from
the Left, in larger social and political causes. The first tradition
is now extinct with Habib Tanvir's death. The second tradition happily
survives, and some of the credit for this must go to Habib Tanvir
himself, for showing the way. o

(Sudhanva Deshpande has co-directed, along with Sanjay Maharishi,
'Gaon ke naon Theatre, mor naon Habib', a documentary film on Habib
Tanvir and Naya Theatre.)

[Sid Harth]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aia5WI8A1_dI

Pakistan Hopeful of Reviving India Peace Talks, Gilani Says

By Khalid Qayum

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said
he’s hopeful of resuming stalled peace talks with India, following a
meeting with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh last month.

“Pakistan wants peaceful relations with all countries, particularly
with its neighbors,” Gilani said in his independence day speech in
Islamabad today. Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state that believes
in peaceful co-existence, the prime minister said.

India broke off talks with Pakistan that are aimed at averting a
fourth war between the nuclear-armed neighbors after last November’s
raid on Mumbai by 10 gunmen killed 166 people. Pakistan has arrested
members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group over the attack, though
Singh’s government says this isn’t sufficient and wants to put them on
trial in India.

In their July 16 meeting in Egypt, Singh and Gilani said that action
on terrorism should not be linked to the wider peace process.

India has said progress on resuming wide-ranging talks on key issues
like the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir depends on Pakistan
taking credible action to punish those responsible for the Mumbai
carnage and dismantle groups who launch attacks on India.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said it is trying people
responsible for the Mumbai attack in the country’s court.

The south Asian neighbors have fought three wars since independence
from Britain in 1947.

Gilani in his speech said terrorism and extremism poses the biggest
challenge to the nation.

Pakistan will defeat Taliban militants, and the military operation in
northwest Swat valley reflects the government’s determination to end
terrorism, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at
kqa...@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 14, 2009 02:06 EDT

[Sid Harth]

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-pm-gilani-felicitates-nation-independence-day-qs-07

PM Gilani felicitates nation on Independence Day

Friday, 14 Aug, 2009 | 02:07 PM PST |

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani waves during the flag hoisting
ceremony in Islamabad on August 14, 2009, to mark the country’s
Independence Day. — Photo by AFP Pakistan

We are against terrorism, not religion, says Kayani AUDIO SLIDESHOW

Pakistani women rise up ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
on Friday participated in the flag hoisting ceremony in Islamabad to
mark the country’s Independence Day.

Gilani vowed to win the war against terrorism as Pakistan celebrated
its 62nd anniversary of independence with prayers, a national minute
of silence and low-key festivities.

Gilani later addressed a gathering during the Independence Day
ceremony celebrations in Islamabad.

Earlier, on the eve of Independence Day, the Prime Minister extended
his warmest felicitations and best wishes to all Pakistanis.

In his message, the Prime Minister said 14th August marks the
culmination of a long driven struggle the Muslims of subcontinent had
launched to protect their separate identity, to strengthen their
society, to flourish their own culture in the broader perspective of
their religious ideals and practices and to augment their own vibrant
economy.

He said the day reminds us of the gigantic challenges the people of
Pakistan had so willingly and wilfully taken up 62 years ago.

The nation had rendered unprecedented sacrifices to achieve the goal
of political independence and ideological freedom, he said.

The day of August 14 symbolises the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who inspired the nation to achieve what looked an
insurmountable task, he added.

This year, he said the Independence Day celebration is still of
greater significance as we have been able to rekindle the light of
democracy in Pakistan in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of
the nation. The process of revival of democracy could not have
successfully completed without the active participation of the people.

Gilani said the country and the people are confronting a serious
challenge posed by terrorists and militants. However, it is heartening
to note that the entire nation has stood up against these elements.

The objective of the people's government is to strengthen the country
and to make it prosperous, he said, adding that this is the basis of
our different programmes designed for the welfare of Pakistanis. To
achieve this objective, we are focusing on addressing and solving
every problem, he added.

‘On this day of rejoicing, let us pay homage to our leaders of the
independence movement who struggled with great courage and
perseverance to win us a country of our own. Because of their
sacrifices today, we are enjoying the fruits of freedom. It is surely
an occasion for immense gratitude. It is the day for renewing our
pledge to the country’, he said.

‘On this happy occasion, I wish to extend my warmest felicitations and
best wishes to my Pakistani brothers and sisters at home as well as
those living abroad,’ he concluded.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/16-is-gojra-our-godhra-hs-04

Is Gojra our Godhra? By Murtaza Razvi

Friday, 14 Aug, 2009 | 08:29 AM PST |

A lot of what is wrong today stems from the rhetoric of our
rulers and their lack of action. — Photo by Reuters Pakistan

This Independence Day our heads hang in shame once again. The
ideologues who later sat down to chronicle the birth pangs of Pakistan
mixed a good measure of indoctrination and self-righteousness as they
retrospectively defined the rationale for the creation of this
country.

Eliminating communal violence, for one, became the rallying cry of the
Pakistan Movement in its final months, which sought to safeguard
India’s minority Muslims’ rights against the majority community. Had
Pakistan treated its minorities with dignity, we wouldn’t be ashamed
today.

Though violence targeting minorities is not the norm here, the
survivors of such violence will tell you it marks the end of their
lives as bona fide, full citizens of the state. This is because,
besides widespread social discrimination, the state by enacting laws
that readily work as tools of oppression against minorities has been a
partner in crime.

What happened earlier this month to the Christian Almas Hameed’s
family in a Punjab town, Gojra, mirrored the brutal burning alive of a
Muslim baker’s family in India’s Gujarat state in 2002 at the hands of
a charged-up anti-Muslim mob. Six of Hameed’s family members, mostly
women and children, were burnt alive by enraged fanatics who were
allegedly egged on to punish Christians for desecrating the Quran by a
PML-N leader.

The Indian Gujarat baker had to suffer death and destruction for the
alleged burning by Muslims of a train packed with Hindu pilgrims at
the Godhra station, miles away. Likewise, Hameed’s family bore the
wrath of a Muslim mob for the alleged desecration of the Quran by some
Christians in a nearby village. Punjab’s ruling party has responded by
just suspending the membership of Qadeer Awan, a local president of
the PML-N, who the party admitted was behind the anti-Christian
violence. The spokesman said the PML-N was ‘embarrassed’ at his
conduct. And only that.

Will the brave, new, independent judiciary take note of and express
its displeasure with the Hudood Ordinances, the Law of Evidence and
the blasphemy laws that incriminate innocent minority members before
any verdict is pronounced? Will the killers of Gojra ever be brought
to justice? Will the PML-N lead a long march on Islamabad of the
wronged minorities as victims of systematic brutality against them?
Not a chance.

It’s not just the Taliban who have their sympathies elsewhere; the so-
called and perceived enlightened, educated and clean-shaven
politicians who keep mum on issues of discrimination against a sizable
section of society do the country no service either. But as the rights
activist Asma Jahangir aptly pointed out in an interview with the BBC,
'It is not just political parties. There are radicalised individuals
and supporters of militant groups within the judiciary, the education
system, the bureaucracy and the police....'

At 62, Pakistan is a study of what has gone wrong with a state that
started out as a dream for a large section of pre-independence India’s
minorities. It can be argued today that the Muslim minority that
started the new country proved itself inept at handling its own
affairs — as even the initial years showed. In the new Muslim-majority
country, we created political and ethnic minorities as the new bêtes-
noire where none had existed before.

The Bengali majority was politically treated as a minority by denying
it due representation in state institutions. Even as that long, sordid
chapter came to an end with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the
travails of Sindhis, Pakhtuns and Baloch nationalists have continued.
So who today is a Pakistani first and a Sindhi, Baloch, Pakhtun or a
Punjabi next? The answer is scathing, and we all know it.

A lot of what is wrong today stems from the rhetoric of our rulers —
make no distinction between the elected and the dictatorial — their
lack of action when it is needed and the textbooks we teach our
children from.

Madressah educationaside, a pumped-up majoritarian religiosity seeps
through the textbooks in subjects like social studies, language
teaching and even handwriting exercises, linking Pakistani identity
with a religious one. Pakistan Studies books take the cake with their
anti non-Muslim sentiment. There is little at variance in the content
and the narrow-minded thrust of textbooks taught in the public and the
so-called elite English-medium schools today.

This systematic social engineering is based on a post-Jinnah, trumped-
up ideology, which in the words of the Quaid-i-Azam himself would have
served its purpose as soon as Pakistan was achieved when he declared
before the first Constituent Assembly that every Pakistani thenceforth
was an equal citizen of the state.

The historic speech, which defined the contours of the state that
should have emerged from the 1940s’ struggle by Indian Muslims for
political equality, used to be part of the university syllabus. Not
anymore; because the state subsequently did the exact opposite by
enacting laws that discriminate against minorities.

More Gojras, and the like, cannot be prevented unless they are
actively taken up for prevention. Pakistan’s minorities will remain on
the wrong side of the state, and a people fed on a dangerously
communal rhetoric that has been reshaping the soul of the state as it
were. A nation’s need for repeated reassurance is a malady. It cannot
be treated by putting down all that it perceives as being alien.
Exclusion of any one group, or sets of religious and ethnic
minorities, only breeds contempt, at best a forced conformity.

Only inclusive societies can realise the promise of achieving their
collective aspirations. This, in our case, was equal opportunity for
all citizens regardless of their caste, creed, gender or faith — the
very fault-lines we have religiously drawn and maintained to divide
ourselves along. A fragmented, motley crowd hardly makes a nation.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/16-gojra-and-education-hs-05

Gojra and education By Zubeida Mustafa
Wednesday, 12 Aug, 2009 | 09:35 AM PST |

A man returns to find his house destroyed in Gojra. —Reuters
Media Gallery

The future of Pakistan celebrates its past AUDIO SLIDESHOW

Pakistani women rise up Talking to a Dawn panel several years ago,
Asghar Ali Engineer, head of the Centre for Study of Society and
Secularism, Mumbai, had commented that every communal riot in India
that he had investigated was found to be rooted in economic factors.

Invariably the majority community attacking a minority wanted to
undermine it to gain an unfair economic advantage. But the whole
incident was garbed in communal terms.

We will not know the underlying reasons for the horrendous event in
Gojra until the episode is investigated from that point of view.
HRCP’s findings confirm that the violence was premeditated as is
tradionally the pattern in cases of seemingly mindless killings. But
there is usually a method to the madness. That within the span of a
few hours seven Christians should have been consumed literally by
fires born of communal hatred and 70 or so of their homes burnt down
is most telling.

What, however, also emerges from the terrible events in Gojra — and
also Sangla Hill in 2005 and Shantinagar in 1997 — is how very easy it
is for the perpetrators of such crimes to incite people in the name of
religion. Thus they can veil their ulterior motives by making an
incident appear as an emotional reaction in the face of a provocation,
that could well have been concocted.

It is worrying that popular passions can be inflamed at the drop of a
hat. A rational mindset and the ability to reason created by good
education can go a long way towards developing interfaith harmony,
tolerance and understanding of other religions. The week Gojra
happened, this paper carried another report that seemingly had no
relevance to the tragedy that followed. But the connection between the
two was not lost on those who have observed closely the obscurantist
proclivity in our national psyche and its close link with the
education we impart to our children.

It was reported that the Pakistan Coalition for Education, a network
of civil society organisations and individuals, had expressed its
strong disapproval of the government’s failure to expedite the
announcement of the new education policy that has been in the works
for several years.

A visibly upset Kamleshwer Lohana, PCE’s member from Sindh, had
remarked cynically, ‘The education policy is not a priority for the
present government. This policy will be applicable only to the poor
people — those who are dependent on government educational
institutions.’ Since the elite control the government they are not
concerned.

This is exactly how Javed Hassan Aly, the author of the 2007 White
Paper on education also felt. He added, ‘The government, presently
under clouds of public scrutiny, is shy of tackling what it may
consider contentious issues. The elite and the for-profit private
sector are happy with the status quo which allows them to entrench
themselves more securely.’ Why should they want a new policy?

Now it seems the delay had an added reason behind it. A revised policy
has now been posted on the ministry of education’s website and is to
be presented to the cabinet. Compare the draft rejected by the cabinet
earlier and the present document. You will discover a new chapter
titled ‘Islamic Education: Duty of the Society and the State’.

The earlier draft had recognised explicitly the need for educational
interventions to be based on the core value of Islam as identified by
the constitution’s chapter on principles of state policy. Apparently
that was not found to be adequate. Four extra pages now spell out in
detail the Islamic contents of the prescribed courses when earlier a
paragraph had sufficed to capture the Islamic spirit to be injected
into education in Pakistan.

The emphasis on religion in the new draft is overly exaggerated. It is
a forewarning that we can expect to see more of the earlier approach
that has been responsible for creating the mindset that resulted in
Gojra. Numerous surveys have confirmed that. In fact, it is now
conceded that the curricula and textbooks in the regular school system
have caused more pervasive damage than the madressahs have, given the
small numbers which attend them.

The policy draft with specific reference to NEP 1998-2010 speaks of an
‘integrated education system in which Islamic values, principles and
objectives are reflected in the syllabuses of all the disciplines in
general’. It would be pertinent to recall here that NEP 1998-2010
spoke of evolving ‘an integrated system of national education by
bringing deeni madaris and modern schools closer to each stream in
curriculum and the contents of education’. This was to be achieved by
introducing Nazira Quran as a compulsory component.

How all this translates into practice for the religious minorities is
evident from the eye-opening observations made by Prof Anjum Paul,
chairman Pakistan Minorities Teachers Association, on the biases
against his community. He analysed 12 Urdu language textbooks for
class I-XII, and ‘found 235 chapters and poems out of 409 having a
strong Islamic orientation’.

He identifies the biases and discrimination against the religious
minorities of Pakistan in textbooks, educational institutions and
admission processes. Take the case of Muslim students being awarded 20
marks for nazra (reciting the Quran by heart). This makes it difficult
for the minorities to compete for seats in higher education.

Even the textbooks for ethics (a subject introduced a few years ago in
lieu of Islamiat for religious minorities) are written by Muslims who
obviously cannot identify with the teachings of other religions
resulting in bias against Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians and
others. This has failed to create social and inter-faith harmony, Prof
Paul says. Recently compulsory training courses for teachers in
subjects including qirat were announced. The PMTA regards this as
discrimination against teachers from minority communities.

We may repeat ad nauseam the Quaid’s proclamation on ‘religion or
caste or creed’ having nothing to do with the ‘business of the state’,
but if we continue to have education policies that preach religious
hatred, many more Gojras can be expected.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/06-us-panel-says-india-fails-to-protect-minorities-rs-02

US panel says India fails to protect minorities
Thursday, 13 Aug, 2009 | 06:17 PM PST |

Former Gujarat state minister Maya Kodnani, center wearing yellow
sari, accused of leading mobs that attacked Muslims during some of the
country's worst religious riots, comes out of a Metropolitan court in
Ahmadabad. -AP File Photo World

UN report slams violation of Indian minorities’ rights

NEW DELHI: A US panel on religious freedoms has placed India on its
watch list of countries where such freedoms are at risk, noting that
there has been a 'disturbing increase' in violence against minorities
in the South Asian country.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent
congressionally mandated panel that provides recommendations to the
government, said in a statement Wednesday that India's response to
attacks on Christians in the eastern state of Orissa in 2008 and
against Muslims in western Gujarat state in 2002 was 'largely
inadequate.'

The panel had recommended that India be placed on the more serious
'countries of particular concern' list after the 2002 riots, but it
was removed in 2005.

In Orissa's Kandhamal district, widespread trouble began in late
August last year after the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a
hard-line Hindu leader who advocated that Christian converts return to
Hinduism.

Police blamed local Maoist guerrillas for the killing, but Hindu
militants quickly turned on local Christians and the rampages left at
least 40 people dead, thousands homeless and dozen of churches
destroyed.

In Gujarat about 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed when
Hindu mobs rampaged through Muslim neighborhoods, towns and villages
in the state from February to April 2002.

The riots were triggered by a fire that killed 60 passengers on a
train packed with Hindu pilgrims.
The religious violence was among India's worst since its independence
from Britain in 1947.

The Gujarat state government is controlled by Hindu nationalists of
the Bharatiya Janata Party who have been accused of not doing enough
to stop the violence and at times stoking it. Officials there,
however, said they did everything they could to quell the rioting.

'In both Orissa and Gujarat, court convictions have been infrequent,
perpetrators rarely brought to justice and thousands of people remain
displaced,' the statement said. There was no immediate response from
the Indian government.

Countries are placed on the watch list or the more serious 'countries
of particular concern' list because their governments either
discriminate against people for religious reasons or are unwilling or
unable to stop religious violence by their citizens.

The other countries currently on the list are Afghanistan, Belarus,
Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, the Russian Federation, Somalia,
Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

The statement added that the panel issues its annual report on
religious freedom in May and this year's India chapter was delayed
because the Indian government refused to give visas to panel members. -
AP

[Sid Harth]

http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com/2009/08/babri-masjid-dispute-finding-solution.html

Rethinking Islam

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Babri masjid dispute: Finding a solution

Islam and Politics
10 Feb 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

That any temple built at Ayodhya will have been built on the blood of
so many innocent lives, and by imperilling so many moral and
constitutional principles, ought to be a matter of shame for most
Hindus who care about Ram. This is an issue on which there is unlikely
to be any settlement that appears just, and there are no guarantees
that even a settlement will lay many of the murderous edges of Indian
politics to rest. But it will take a divisive issue off the agenda and
potentially transform our politics. There is no option other than to
try. As a society we long gave up on justice. At the present
conjuncture, we can only hope that we will at least opt for prudence.
-- Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Through the 20-minute documentary – Bone of Contention — by Saurabh
Pandey, not just this but also Ayodhya's inhabitants desire to come
out of the viciousness of past stands out remarkably.... One message
that comes out loud from the film is that an amicable solution to the
mandir-masjid problem can be found by the people of Ayodhya, given the
fact that there is no 'outside' interference. -- Abid Shah

URL: http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1185

Here We Go Ram Again

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Posted: Feb 09, 2009 at 1545 hrs IST

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/here-we-go-ram-again/421168/0

It is election season. And so Ayodhya has to return as a subject of
discussion. The crisis continues to signify a breakdown of our legal
and constitutional arrangements. The demolition of the Babri Masjid
was an act of constitutional usurpation for which there have been no
real apologies. Now the alliance between Kalyan Singh and Mulyam Singh
is a reminder of just how meaningless the so called secular-non
secular divide has become in Indian politics. Most members of any
single political party could easily belong to any other; the Congress
may have gone after Narendra Modi in Gujarat, but had no compunction
in giving tickets to so many former members of the BJP. And it is
still something of a travesty that while we worry about other forms of
communal consolidation, we do not worry about open consolidation and
flexing of caste power, especially amongst already-powerful groups
like the OBCs. What does this say about our democracy?

If Ayodhya is about religion, it is about religion in its most sordid
sense. The Indian legal system has, for four decades, been unable to
decisively lay the dispute to rest. In the process of adjudication and
procrastination it has relied on so many legal non-sequitors that no
one is sure what the grounds of any verdict are going to be. A
political movement spearheaded by the BJP took the Ayodhya movement to
new emotive heights, and often left its mark of violence on hundreds
of innocent citizens. The Congress first opened up the issue to
compensate for its own myopic interpretations of secularism and is
still not sure where it stands. There is an assortment of groups, from
the VHP to the Babri Masjid Action Committee, whose claims to
represent their respective communities are, at best, dubious. Finally,
there is the democratic voter at large. It is difficult to gauge the
real depth of feeling on this issue, but one thing is clear: while a
significant minority is passionate about building a Mandir, and a tiny
minority passionate about stopping it, most are too fed up to care.
"Let's get on with it," is probably the dominant political sentiment.
With these protagonists can there be any real solution?

In some ways it is understandable why the Ayodhya issue has political
uses. It gave most political parties their symbolic identity. Take
away the issue and one of the central faultlines in Indian politics
simply falls away. Which is why everybody will ensure that there is
never a political settlement; which is why everyone has an interest in
keeping the issue alive. Given the realities of Indian politics, a
dogmatic insistence on a legal solution is simply moral laziness, the
privileged preserve of those who do not have to face violent rampages.
As much as some of us loath the idea that on the Ayodhya issue, even
an inch should be conceded to the BJP, we should recognize the fact
that our institutions and our high-minded legalism does not protect
those Muslims on behalf of whose interests we pretend to speak. The
law often does not protect innocent citizens, the law is not a
political answer to Hindutva, and the law is not a substitute for an
enduring political settlement.

That any temple built at Ayodhya will have been built on the blood of
so many innocent lives, and by imperilling so many moral and
constitutional principles, ought to be a matter of shame for most
Hindus who care about Ram. This is an issue on which there is unlikely
to be any settlement that appears just, and there are no guarantees
that even a settlement will lay many of the murderous edges of Indian
politics to rest. But it will take a divisive issue off the agenda and
potentially transform our politics. There is no option other than to
try. As a society we long gave up on justice. At the present
conjuncture, we can only hope that we will at least opt for prudence.

URL: http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1185

Ayodhya Revisited

Abid Shah

A-decade-and-half after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Saurabh
Pandey's short documentary, 'Bone of Contention', exposes how
'outsiders' instigated frenzy

http://www.combatlaw.org/information.php?article_id=961&issue_id=34

Once trapped in one of history's worst frenzies, Ayodhya is indeed a
victim of a time warp. So a-decade-and-half after the demolition of
the Babri Masjid, a group of young film makers led by Saurabh Pandey
try to take a look beneath this warp that has generally been missed
amid high decibel battle cries that emanated from the newsmen's
dateline called Ayodhya.

Now removed from the media glare, it bemoans today the fact that once
it did let history give way to histrionics. Through the 20-minute
documentary – Bone of Contention — by Pandey, not just this but also
Ayodhya's inhabitants desire to come out of the viciousness of past
stands out remarkably.

A political activist, Raju Shastri admits before the camera how he
walked out of the BJP with no regrets when he saw relentless assaults
being made at what used to be the citadel of a faith, no matter whose
faith it was. "It weighed upon me till I quit the party," he remarks.

This is reiterated by several local voices cutting across all
distinctions and divides and including bald, bare-chested and thread-
wearing, spartan parishioners as also those donning skull and boat
caps and sporting long bushy beards. The common refrain is that
"outsiders instigated frenzy, created divide, instilled fright and
went on to pawn faith for the sake of power and position, trampling
the very ethos that Ayodhya stood for since yore."

Yet the pallbearers of rival positions are very much holding old
battle posts in Ayodhya as steadfastly as the decades gone by
signifying strife and struggle for power. Ram Vilas Vedanti and
Mohammad Hashim Ansari may be the lone voices on behalf of the large
communities they claim to represent, yet they try to make up against
the reconciliatory spirit now sweeping Ayodhya through their high-
pitched, strident assertions.

Ayodhya's people are dismissive when asked about what turned
neighbours and fellow-dwellers of the city into virtual strangers, how
things went out of hand and how the mosque got razed. Most of them try
to look the other way, their faces fall and their voices get hushed
when posed with such uncomfortable questions. It seems that the
citizens of Ayodhya have fallen in their own eyes because of the
sordid misdeeds of others.

Pandey couches his work in the revelry of the last Holi where Hindus
and Muslims revel together unmindful of the bitterness that emanated
from what was called a disputed site and what has now been turned into
a fortress. The Holi conviviality is so strong as if it is tying to
leave behind the bitterness of the past.

The question that arises is whether this could lead to a better future
for the people of Ayodhya as also the rest of the country. Given the
unstated, silent and yet yearned for, a similar desire comes through
unmistakably by the bonhomie shown in the film during Holi. It is
where the film ends without adding much on its own except a postscript
put by Pandey and his team that longs for the return of the good old
times of Ayodhya when it used to be calm and tranquil in keeping with
the rows of temples that line the banks of the gurgling Sarju.

One message that comes out loud from the film is that an amicable
solution to the mandir-masjid problem can be found by the people of
Ayodhya, given the fact that there is no 'outside' interference.

URL: http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1185

Posted by SultanShahin at 9:51 PM

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/pakistaniat-the-crisis-of-identity/

Pakistaniat : The Crisis of Identity
Bradistan Calling

What can I give to Pakistan as a present on its 62nd Birthday, What
else than an article on its chequered history and identity. Bertrand
Russell famously said,” There are three great civilisations in East
i.e. India, China and Islam”. Pakistan is blessed to be located at the
crossroads of all these great civilisations. In my humble opinion this
is the biggest strength of Pakistani identity.

Celebrating the T20 victory in Bradfor,I left my intellectual hat at
home and donned the green flag to go on the street and celebrate with
the Bradistan boyz and girlz, not that I consider myself a “flag
waving nationalist”. My loyalties might be a bit shaky but I would
never dream of waving a tricolour of Republic of India. It is a
different story when it comes to patriotic movies like “Baghat Singh”
or “Mother India”, my eyes fill with tears of pride.

I don’t follow Pakistan cricket team fanatically; I am well past my
youth days of 1992 world cup victory. I still remember how the
Pakistanis, all over the world, spontaneously came out on the streets
singing dancing, waving their flags, congratulating and hugging
strangers. It was similar story this time as well and all major
motorways in and out of Bradford were blocked, there were long queues
in front of sweet shops and police had to restrain some hot-headed
youth who insist on sitting on the roofs of their cars while waving
the flags, girls with Pakistanis T-shirts with loud anthems on their
car stereos. These scenes were repeated across Bradford, Birmingham,
Manchester and London. Obviously the rightwing mullah brigade (made
in Saudi Arabian clone factory) does not like Pakistanis singing and
dancing on the street in sinful jubilation.

In itself winning a minor or major sports tournament cannot, by any
stretch of imagination, be termed a national achievement. Do we really
go over the top in our celebrations? probably yes, but the Pakistanis
from the Jackson Heights in New York city to the Afro-Baluch slums of
Lyari in Karachi and from Chinese border in the north to the deserts
of Punjab and Sindh felt a real sense of excitement after continuous
bad news of terrorist attacks, lack of electricity, breakdown of
governance and the economic and social crises in Pakistan.

Foreign governments and research analysts continuously rank Pakistan
in the category of at risk of becoming a failed state. These analyses
are probably too far fetched if not completely inaccurate. Pakistan is
facing a Population explosion of 180 million people, but Pakistan is
also bursting with energy and talent. Pakistani scientists, doctors
and professors are among the best in the world. It would probably be
irresponsible to rank Pakistan with countries like Afghanistan,
Somalia, Iraq, Sudan or Zimbabwe.

Pakistan is fighting a war for its survival against the Islamic
terrorists. Pakistan was envisaged as a country for Muslims by liberal
Muslim elite of India, not an Islamic theocracy. Pakistan, at its
birth, had the vitality and diversity of a multiethnic multilingual
and multi cultural country. Unfortunately rightwing pan-Islamic
ideologues like Maududi, To- fail Mohammed and their protégé Islamist
dictator Zia conspired to sell the soul of Pakistan to the devilish
terrorist from Middle East.

Despite its religious and cultural pluralism, Pakistan suffers an
identity crisis. The founder of Pakistan Mr. Jinnah articulated his
vision for the constitutional rights of all citizens irrespective of
their religion, race or background, in a speech to legislative
assembly on the eve of independence. But the Islamists want to turn
Pakistan into a colonial outpost of puritanical Saudi Arabia. Even
Baluch separatists are more democratic and secular than the so called
champions of “two nation Hindu-Muslim ideology” of Pakistan.

Recently Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has tried to link the Pakistani
identity to Indus Valley Civilisation, which prospered the areas of
current Pakistan 5000 years ago. But can a vision from past heal the
fault lines in the current Pakistani identity, possible but highly
unlikely.

Pakistan is a reality which the sceptics of partition of India cannot
simply wish away. Pakistani identity is a fluid and dynamic paradigm
and religion alone cannot provide the basis of a modern nation state.
The Islamist tried to wipe out the colourful mosaic of songs and
culture through imposition of their mono-chrome Islamic culture on TV,
newspapers, magazines, painters and performing arts.

World famous Pakistani historian and anthropologist late Ahmed H. Dani
described, Pakistan’s landscape and culture as many countries rolled
into one; Northern Areas are Central Asian Switzerland , Frontier is
Afghani, Punjab and upper Sindh are North Indian and Baluchistan and
lower Sindh are Middle Eastern. Up until 2004, Pakistan used to have
half a million European and American tourists every year.

The Himalayan valleys in Northern Areas, The Kite Runner festival of
“Basant” in the ancient and walled inner city of Lahore(capital of
North Indian culture), cultural and religious tourism for Sikh and
Hindu pilgrims are still as good as any in the world. Pakistan has to
showcase the Indus Valley and Ghandhara Buddhist civilizations, Basant
festival, performing arts festival, truck art, chicken-Tikka Masaala
Mughal cuisine, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh pilgrimage places to new
markets.Festivals at Shiv Mandir in Katas Raj and Kali Mandir in
Hinglaj Balouchistan can bring Non-resident Indians(sikhs especially)
NRIs from Europe and America. Its high time Indians are allowed free
access to Pakistani destinations.

In today’s Pakistan, despite the terrorism the media is free but there
are certain “red lines”, which no one dares to cross. Pakistan
national broadcasters TV and radio try to revive the art and culture
through works of great writers and thinkers like Faiz, Faraz, Parveen
shaker,S H Manto, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi,Ibn Insha and painters like
Guljee ,Sadqeen and A R Chughtai. Recently International bestsellers
of Pakistani writers have made waves in media. Arguably, the art and
the literature are limited to the elite. Unfortunately, the local
languages and culture is in decline due to global satellite TV
entertainment.

Sufi Islam (with its colourful religious ceremonies) has inspired
singers like Nusrat Fateh Ali, Junoon and Shafqat Amanat Ali to
project a soft image of Pakistan to world wide audiences. Sufi saints’
folklore and romantic folktales of Heer-Ranja(Punjab), Sassi-Pannu
(Baluch), Saiful –Maluk(Kashmir/Hazara) and Umer-Marvi (Sindh) inspire
and bond Pakistani masses together.

English socialite, Jewish Heiress Jemima Khan, recalled listening to
the Sufi Rahat Nusrat Fateh singing classic poet Ghalib at heritage
Haveli (mansion) of the grandson of poet philosopher Dr. Iqbal , a
stone-throw away from “Royal street” (the infamous dancing girls’
street) and “Food street” Lahore, in the company of thespian legends,
among them Indian Muslim Naseer-uddin shah(who co-incidentally played
the role of Ghalib in biographical movie) . The write-up captures the
contradictions and beauty of Pakistani identity.

Pakistan’s biggest export to its eastern neighbour, India is culture
in form of Poetry, Pop music, Sufi Qawali and its TV dramas. Indians
consider Pakistanis as a custodian of Mughal Muslim tradition of
undivided India, Urdu Bhasha is the lingua franca of Bollywood movies.

Cricket is the passion, entertainment and pastime of the working,
lower middle class Pakistanis. For the masses the pride and joy of
winning a world championship was immeasurable. The cricketers become
overnight heroes of the Pakistani nation. Pakistani cricketers (as a
team), barring the two “Jehovah’s Muslims” Yousaf(a Christian
apostate) and Inzimam(ex-clubbing fanatic turned Islamist), are the
new poster boys for modernity, liberal lifestyle and international
success, the fast bowler “Rawalpindi express” Shoaib Akhter is more
(in)famous for his night-clubbing and binge drinking than for his
cricketing talents. Even the neighbouring Afghanistan has caught the
cricket fever, despite the game being banned by the puritanical
Taliban in mid 90s.

We should not let chauvinistic nationalism blind us from the shame of
military blunders and human rights violations but Pakistani society
still has the vitality to rise again from ashes after every major
crisis and disaster. In Struggle for democracy in 1980s, floods of
1992, earthquake in 2005, judicial movement in 2007 and refugee crisis
in Swat valley and fight against Islamic terrorism, Pakistanis unite
and open their arms for their less fortunate brothers and sisters. 99%
of the Pakistanis are not the isolationist fanatics, that world media
and the Islamists portray them to be. Pakistanis have a new found
confidence that they can compete with the best in the world despite
all difficulties.

Three of the current cricketing heroes namely Yunus Khan, Shahid
Afridi and Umer Gul are ethnic Pushtun and come from North West
Frontier, an area battling the Islamist terrorist. Cricketing success
has shown the youth of Pakistan a new way. Back on the streets of
Bradistan even the English, Indian Gujarati and Bosnian Muslims joined
in the chants of “Boom Boom Afridi”, and I said the future is bright
the future is green.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/happy-independence-day-jinnah-the-founding-father-of-pakistan/

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/eqbal-ahmad-on-quaid-i-azam-m-a-jinnah/

September 17, 2008...5:51 am
Eqbal Ahmad on Quaid-i-Azam, M A Jinnah

Yasser Latif Hamdani

I am posting these three articles on Jinnah and Pakistan movement by
the late Eqbal Ahmad.

I Pakistan’s Endangered History
[Dawn, 4 June 1995]

It is a great privilege for me to be speaking on this very unique
occasion. It is rare among us Pakistanis to honour the Quaid-i-Azam
beyond rhetoric, and in a substantive way. Professor Zaidi deserves
our gratitude for compiling two volumes of the Jinnah Papers. These
are but the tip of Mr. Jinnah’s fragmented archieves, for these 3,000-
plus pages cover only four months and ten days of his eventful life,
from Feb 20, 1947, to June 30. A total of 50 volumes are projected in
this series to be published by the Quaid-i-Azam Papers Project.

I know Professor Zaidi to be a driven man who has devoted more than
three decades of his life to gathering, restoring, compiling, and
editing this national treasure. I am sure that you will join me in
wishing him the good health he needs to complete this truly noble
mission. I know that his spirit and dedication will not wilt as long
as his body holds out. So may you live long, and remain immersed for
years to come in the life and times of Pakistan’s founding father.

Professor Sahib, as a historian and archivist you have reached the
fulfillment of a life-long dream. You have rescued from dire neglect
and the dungeons of dictatorship the private papers of Mr. Jinnah. You
have been persistent in getting them preserved, catalogued, and
published. And today you have the unique pleasure of seeing two of
your former students – one at the helm of the state and the other a
humble teacher – speak at the launching of the volumes you have
compiled. Few historians and fewer teachers can hope to achieve more
in lifetime. Our heartiest thanks and congratulations to you.

But before I make a final bow to a man’s remarkable accomplishment, I
should underline that it is shared with a woman. During the months
that became years Parveen Zaidi patiently bore the burnt of professor
Zaidi’s highly articulated frustrations with Pakistan’s versatile foot
draggers. And she actually helped with the difficult task of restoring
and preserving the decayed archives. In the process, she became
Pakistan’s first and so far only internationally recognised restorer
of manuscripts. Her services have since been sought by international
organisations such as UNESCO and governments as far apart as Turkey,
Iran, and Malaysia. During the decades of toil with these papers she
nursed the good professor through – two heart operations, and shared
with him the very tragic loss of the younger of their two sons. I hope
you all join me in offering them both our heartfelt thanks and deepest
sympathies.

I should say a word about the quest for excellence and our people’s
response to it. Sadly, there is paucity of excellence in this country.
It was not always so in the land of Mohammed Iqbal, Mohammed Ali
Jinnah, Saadat Hasan Manto, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and Professor Abdus Salam
whom we have all but formally banished from our midst. Hence ordinary
citizens are wistfully engaged when they notice someone striving for
excellence with a sense of purpose other than getting rich. And they
support the endeavour with an enthusiasm that defies expectation. Men
like Abdul Sattar Edhi and Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan will testify to this
gratifying phenomenon of civil society in Pakistan.

I recall how anxious professor Zaidi had been about finding the people
who could help him in organising, collating, and editing the enormous
piles of the Quaid-i-Azam’s papers. “This is back-breaking work Eqbal,
and it requires perseverance and skill”, I recall Professor Zaidi
worrying aloud soon after he had returned to Pakistan three years ago,
“I can teach the skill but where shall I find the people with
discipline of work and the will to persist? “Well, they appeared, men
and women, young and old, determined to help, eager to learn. Learn
they did, and help they gave with dogged determination. In the end the
Jinnah Papers is as much their achievement as it is Professor and Mrs.
Zaidi’s. They are here in this hall deserving of our warmest hand of
appreciation.

Therein lies an insight which I should underline for the benefit of
this and the future leadership of Pakistan: The heart of this country,
its people, is clean like spring water, solid as rock, and poetic in
its yearning for goodness, justice and enlightenment. Mohammed Ali
Jinnah’s greatness lay in sensing this simple truth. He led them with
unassailable integrity along a path that promised economic justice,
liberation from a constricting past, and an enlightened future. They
followed with enthusiasm and dedication, without fear or misgiving,
and conferred upon this unlikely barrister the historic honour of
becoming the founder of an important state. It is a tragic fact that
since his passing this great people, like the Quaid’s material
legacies, has suffered from negligence and breach of faith.

One price, and by no means the greatest, of this neglect is that
neither Mr. Jinnah, nor the movement he led has been accorded serious
scholarly attention. Of the four biographies so far published on him,
only one, by Stanley Wolpert has scholarly merit and views its subject
in the larger context of colonial and nationalist politics. And apart
from Dr. Saleem Ahmed’s book which covers the years 1906-1921, no
serious work has been done on the Muslim League and the Pakistan
movement.

Archives are the memory bank of a nation; and works of history
articulate that memory in organised, meaningful ways. It is truly
tragic that our archives suffer from neglect and fragmentation, and
historians are nearly extinct in Pakistan. To make matters worse, we
are bringing up ill-informed generations who are being taught in
schools poisonous and ideologically loaded distortions as history. An
early exposure to this phenomenon was provided in a pioneering essay
entitled “Rewriting the History of Pakistan” by Pervez Amirali
Hoodbhoy and Abdul Hameed Nayyar which appears in ‘Islam, Politics and
the State’, edited by Air Marshal Asghar Khan. A greater service was
rendered later by Professor K.K. Aziz’s ‘ The Murder of History in
Pakistan.’

The process of polluting the sources of knowledge in this country had
begun earlier; it climaxed in the dictatorship of Ziaul Haq who
obviously perceived educational institutions as an important
instrument of consolidating his tyranny in the name of Islam and an
invention labeled the “Ideology of Pakistan”. The General declared as
compulsory the teaching of Pakistan Studies in degree colleges,
including engineering and medical institutions. The rewriting of
history proceeded then on a grand scale. The University Grants
Commission issued a directive informing prospective textbook writers
that the aim of the new course is to “induce pride for the nation’s
past, enthusiasm for the present (sic), and unshakable faith in the
stability and longevity of Pakistan”. Lest this leaves some ambiguity,
therefore room for accommodating some canons of historiography,
authors were given the following guidelines:

“To demonstrate that the basis of Pakistan is not to be found in
racial, linguistic or geographical factors, but, rather, in the shared
experience of a common religion. To get students to know and
appreciate the Ideology of Pakistan, and to popularise it with
slogans. To guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan – the
creation of a complete Islamised state.”

I do not know of any country’s educational system that so explicitly
subordinates knowledge to politics. Teaching and writing of history,
always in jeopardy in Pakistan, has now passed from historians to
hacks. They have invented a history that historians, of whom only a
handful are left in Pakistan, shall not recognise. The Quaid-i-Azam
was among their first victims: he underwent a metamorphosis becoming a
man of orthodox religious views who sought the creation of a
theocratic state and the Ulema, who with rare exceptions had opposed
Jinnah and the Pakistan movement, emerged as heroes and founding
fathers of Pakistan. The Jinnah Papers are rebuke and reminder of the
distortions to which our history has been subjected. They also ensure
that future historians shall have easy access to the real Jinnah and
the movement he led.

Professor Zaidi has ideas on how to preserve and consolidate our
sorely neglected and fragmented archives. I beg for a national effort
to review and revise the curricula and textbooks of history and
Pakistan Studies in our schools. To no do so is to condemn future
Pakistani generations to ignorance and obscurantism.

Jinnah, in a Class of His Own
[Dawn, 11 June 1995]

Mohammad Ali Jinnah is an enigma of modern history. His aristocratic
English lifestyle, Victorian manners, and secular outlook rendered him
a most unlikely leader of India’s Muslims. Yet, he led them to
separate statehood, creating history and, in Saad R. Khairi’s apt
phrase, ‘altering geography’.

Several scholars, among them H.M. Seervai, Aisha Jalal and Saad R.
Khairi, help explain his shift from Indian nationalism to Muslim
separatism but the mystery of Jinnah’s appeal remains. After all,
neither Muslim nationalism nor the idea of Pakistan originated with
him; he embraced them somewhat reluctantly.

There is another way of viewing the matter. In the twentieth century,
two extraordinary personalities competed for the leadership of Indian
Muslims. They were Abul Kalam Azad and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. As a point
of departure in comprehending the aspirations of Muslims in India, we
might review their biographical profiles.

The contrasts in their family background, education, culture, and
styles of leadership were remarkable. Azad’s ancestors belonged since
Emperor Babar’s time to the Persian and Urdu-speaking Muslim
aristocracy of India. His great-grandfather was one of the last Ruknul
Mudarrasin, a position roughly analogous to today’s ‘minister of
education’, in Mughal India. After the War of 1857 his family migrated
to Madina where it intermingled with the Sharifain aristocracy. Azad’s
mother was a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed Zaher Watri, in his time
Madina’s best known ‘Alim’. His father Maulana Khair al-Din gained
much fame in the Muslim world for his ten-volume work on Islam, and
for his central role in the restoration of Nahr Zubeida, Makkah’s main
source of water. Among Indian Muslims who were still wistful over a
lost empire, and reeling from the excesses of British colonisation, it
is hard to envision a family with better credentials than Abul Kalam
Azad’s.

Abul Kalam was a most worthy scion of an extraordinary family with
roots deep in the duality—Indian and pan-Islamic—to which South Asia’s
Muslims have been historically linked both psychologically and
culturally. Born in Makkah, he was fluent in Arabic, at ease in
Persian, and a most gifted writer of Urdu prose. He was deeply
immersed in the mystical tradition of Islam. As early as 1919 he wrote
on Sarmad Shaheed and the grand dichotomy between state and civil
society in Islam. His later commentaries on the Holy Qura’an are still
regarded as among the best in the world.

“Who is your master among the mufassareen?” I asked the late Maulana
Kausar Niazi some years ago. “Abul Kalam” he replied reflexively. Al-
Hilal, the magazine Azad founded in 1912, at age 22, marked the
beginning of serious, mass circulation Urdu journalism. With its
successor al-Balgah, it remains a milestone in the development of Urdu
as a popular vehicle of political and social discourse. Azad was a
spellbinding speaker and, like Jinnah, an ardent nationalist. In 1923,
at age 35, he was the youngest man to be elected president of the
Indian National Congress, a record Nehru will break later. An
overwhelming majority of India’s Ulema supported him.

The man we shall later revere as the Quaid-i-Azam was a contemporary
of Azad, and a most unlikely contender for Muslim leadership. He was
born in 1876; Azad in 1890. But beyond the proximity of age, the two
stood in sharp contrast to each other. While Azad’s aristocratic roots
lay in the Muslim heartland of UP and Bengal, Jinnah was born to a
middle class business family in the port town of Hindu-dominated
Karachi. At age 21 he moved to England, thence to Bombay, the modern
gateway to British India. Unlike Azad who belonged to the majority
Sunni denomination of Islam, Jinnah came from the minority Shi’a
community. He was the prototypical westernized Indian, tutored at
Lincoln’s Inn, tailored at Saville Row, in his youth a Shakepearian
actor, a constitutionalist barrister in the Anglo-Saxon tradition,
married to a Parsi woman. More at home in English than his native
Gujrati, Jinnah spoke little Urdu which he would later designate as
Pakistan’s official language, knew neither Persian nor Arabic, and had
only the rudimentary knowledge of Islam which is common to western
educated Muslims. He was anathema to an overwhelming majority of the
Ulema of the subcontinent, including so grand a figure as Maulana
Husain Ahmed Madani and such ideologue as Abul Ala Maudoodi.

Mr. Jinnah made little effort to overcome his obvious handicaps.
Unlike Barrister M.K. Gandhi with whom Jinnah shared similarities of
language, class, and education, and who donned the Mahatma’s home spun
dhoti, Jinnah stuck to his western ways and pin-stripe suits. He bowed
but rarely to populist symbols, appearing only occasionally at
political ralies, and shunning the display of emotion in public.
Reasoned arguments and cold logic were the hallmark of Jinnah’s
discourse. He spoke at political rallies as though he were addressing
a courtroom, or a conference of lawyers. This is not the populist
style anywhere, least of all in South Asia. Yet, in less that a decade
of his return from London in 1935, he had eclipsed his political foes
no less than colleagues in the Muslim League, and successfully
established himself and the League as the sole spokesman of India’s
Muslims. In the elections of 1937 the Muslim League barely survived as
a minor political party; in 1940 it set Pakistan as its goal. Barely
seven years later the new state was born.

In the Introduction to this first volume of Jinnah papers Professor
Zaidi has asked this central question: “What then turned Jinnah into
the embodiment of Muslim hopes and aspirations?” One answer, admirably
documented by Saad Khairi and H.M. Seervai, is that the leadership of
the Indian National Congress allowed Jinnah no alternative even though
he constantly probed for one. But a deeper explanation offered in
Professor Zaidi’s Introduction worth quoting: “What distinguished
Jinnah from his great contemporaries is that he was quite self-
consciously a modern man – one who valued, above all, reason,
discipline, organisation, and economy. Jinnah differed from other
Muslim Leaders in so far as he was uncompromisingly committed to
substance rather than symbol, reason rather than emotion, modernity
rather than tradition.”

But how could this apparently modern figure so powerfully appeal to a
people laden with tradition and religious inertia? I should summarise
Professor Zaidi’s answer to this question: Jinnah’s peculiar appeal
worked because collectively Indian Muslims had an instinctive if
inarticulate grasp of recent history. “It was a community conscious of
its declining condition, and it had experienced the ineffectiveness of
old remedies. After all, neither the revivalist prescriptions of Shah
Waliullah, nor the fiery war cries of Syed Ahmed Shahid, nor the
flamboyant, though confused, demarche of the Khilafat movement – with
which Abdul Kalam Azad had become associated and from which Jinnah
kept a pronounced distance – provided relief from the ills which
afflicted Muslim society in India. Restorationist alternatives had
nearly exhausted when Jinnah re-entered the second act of contemporary
Muslim tragedy in India. On their part, leaders of the Indian National
Congress were so overcome with hubris that they refused to open viable
political doors to this wounded and bewildered people.

Significantly, by then the modernist view of the causes of Muslim
decline and of the remedies it required, especially as articulated by
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his ideological successors, including Iqbal,
had seeped into the consciousness of the Muslim intelligentsia. There
was to this phenomenon also a pan-Islamic context: In the 1930s the
Muslim world as a whole had entered what Albert Hourani has described
as the Liberal Age when Muslim nationalism grew exponentially on the
premises of modernism and reform. Mr Jinnah returned from England in
1935 to find himself swept to the crest of this wave.

In the four decades that have followed his passing, Pakistan has moved
precipitously away from the country its founding father had
envisioned, and the people had created at costs beyond counting. The
two volumes of Jinnah Papers and the archives from which they are
drawn do not tell the story of the cowardice and betrayals which
followed the Quaid-i-Azam. What they do tell us is who he was, how he
waged a difficult and deeply painful struggle for statehood, the
vision he nourished, and the hopes he had for this country. I would
like to recall him and remind us in passing of what we have done with
his legacy. I am sorry if in the process I cause some discomfort to
some of you readers.

The Betrayed Promise
[Dawn, 18 June 1995]

Before I recall Mr. Jinnah and the aspirations which inspired the
subcontinent’s Muslims to seek separate statehood, it is relevant to
underline the price nations pay when the values and expectations on
which a state is founded are systematically betrayed.

Since Plato’s time political theorists have acknowledged the
centrality of legitimacy in the consolidation and continuity of
states. Legitimacy refers not to the popularity of a government or
given institutions thereof; rather it entails the title to authority
which a system of power enjoys among citizens. A subjective attribute,
legitimacy issues forth largely from objective factors—the values
which shape state or government policies, predominance of the rule of
law and prevalence of distributive justice in society and, above all,
the degree of coincidence between promise and fufilment in terms of
the rights of citizenship. It is for the lack of these attributes that
Pakistan has been suffering from a growing crisis of legitimacy. The
separation of East Pakistan was but the most dramatic outcome of this
crisis. At the heart of this crisis has been our collective failure to
resolve the central issue of the nature of the Pakistani state, and
the sources of laws which govern it.

During the decade which preceded India’s partition politics of the
Congress no less than the Muslim League had become greatly laden with
the language of religion and communal symbols. Mr. Jinnah too partook
of it, most prominently when he enunciated the two-nation theory. Yet,
two facts stood out: one was that the Ulema in their overwhelming
majority opposed him and he made scant effort to placate them. The
other was that he remained uncompromisingly opposed to theocracy.
Thus, in the year of communal frenzy, and high point of religious
fervour—1946 he said: “What are we fighting for? What are we aiming
at? It is not theocracy, not for a theocratic state. Religion is dear
to us. All the wordly goods are nothing when we talk of religion. But
there are other things which are very vital—our social life and our
economic life, and without political power how can you defend your
faith and your economic life.” Need I explain the relevance of this
passage in these tormented times of blasphemy laws, Hudood and Qisas
ordinances, and Shariat Bills?

Jinnah did invoke Islamic ideals often as informing the policies and
practices of the state and its governments. Always, this was to
emphasise the congruence of democracy, social justice, and rule of law
to Islamic values. Thus to the Sibi Darbar in 1948, he said: Let us
lay the foundations of our democracy on the basis of truly Islamic
ideals and principles. Our Almighty has taught is that our decisions
in the affairs of the state shall be guided by discussion and
consultations.” And again, “Islam and its ideals have taught us
democracy. It has taught equality of man, justice and fairplay to
every body. In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic
state, to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-
Muslims – Hindus, Christians, and Parsis – but they are all
Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any
other citizens as any other citizens and will play their rightful part
in the affairs of Pakistan.”

This is a sort of pledge given to all citizens, has been honoured in
the breach. In less than three decades we had four ‘minorities’, each
a little less Pakistani than the so-called Muslim majority. During
this year alone Christian citizens had to take asylums abroad because
even after a court had acquitted them of blasphemy charges, their
safety was not assured; an Ahmadi was beaten to death inside a
government building, and scores languish in prisons without trial. If
he were to appear in my dream how shall I convey our shame to the lean
old man whose life and work we celebrate year with much fanfare and
enthusiasm.

Or hear him on the question of women: “It is a crime against humanity
that our women are confined within the four walls of their home like
prisoners. Women are our companions and you should take them out with
you to work shoulder to shoulder in all spheres of life.” I have not
asked but Professor Zaidi may have been in the audience that day in
1944 when the Quaid spoke thus to students at Aligarh University. Four
decades later a dictator promulgated in this country the Zina and
Hadood Ordinances. Among their contributions to national progress is
that one law provides a licence of sorts to actual and potential
rapists, and the other reduces the worth of a woman’s witness to half
of a man’s. So far three elected governments have failed to remove
this stain on our society and the state.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah had been anxious from the outset over the
persistence of sectarian and exclusionary tendencies in our social and
political life. In speech after speech, he warned of their menace to
society and beseeched: “…For God’s sake give up this provincialism.
Provincialism has been one of the great curses, and so is
sectarianism, Shia, Sunni, etc…. You should live, act and think in
terms that your country is Pakistan and you are Pakistani.” As I read
this I wondered if he might have foreseen that the country he founded
shall break up from an excess of sectarian practices by those in
power, his successors shall engage in creating minorities, upholders
of law shall dark, citizen in streets, offices, and mosques, and
terrorist factions shall be allies of the state!

Civilizations are built on the rule of law as are states and nations.
There is ample evidence that the Quaid-i-Azam die not lose sight of
this civic principle even in the darkest hours of 1947. He made no
distinction of class, ethnicity and religion when it came to the
enforcement of law in defence of people and society. There is a rare
note of admiration in Lord Louis Mountbattan’s confidential memo of
June 24, 1947, to Evan Jenkins: “I talked to Jinnah last nigh and he
begged me to be utterly ruthless in suppressing trouble in Lahore and
Amritsar. He said ‘I don’t care whether you shoot Muslims or not, it
has got to be stopped.’/*TN/” The death count mounts these days in the
civil war born of sectarianism, terror and crime. Tragically,
politicians and governments are so enmeshed as part of the problem
that they can-not be even a small part of the solution.

Who then is responsible? And where do we go from here? Frankly, we
have no one to blame but ourselves—me and you who are in this hall—
members of all of the national intelligentsia. I am tempted one last
time to quote Jinnah: “Corruption is a curse in India, and amongst the
Muslims especially in the so-called educated and intelligentsia.
Unfortunately, it is this class that is selfish, and morally and
intellectually corrupt.”

This straightforward estimation encapsules our ultimate failure. It
has been a failure of conscience not intelligence, of will not
comprehension, of courage not imagination. We could read a long length
of time the writing on Bengali walls. But we read in selfish silence
with an indifference seeped in self-absorption. Acquiescence prevailed
as the Pakistani establishment dealt blow after blow at our body
politics, made a mockery of citizenship rights, turn murder and mayhem
into a mission, and finally surrendered to a conquering adversary. A
simple insight is alien to us: that power is prone to excesses,
corruption, and miscalculations; that it is moderated only by a
dissenting and assertive civicl society, and that critical mass is
constituted, at all except the revolutionary moment, by the
intelligentsia. Inertia is ever immune to experience. So horrors
follow upon horror. And so we survey every day the killing fields of
Karachi as we did those of Dhaka and Noakhali. This must end. It will
not until our complicity comes to an end and our silence is broken.

POSTSCRIPT: Learned people have argued that the roots of the confusion
which underlie Pakistan’s crisis of ideology and statehood lie in its
formative experience. Thus commenting on my last article in this
space, Dr Akbar Naqvi, (Dawn, June 15, 1995. “Letters To the Editor”)
argues that it is not true that the Muslim masses instinctively chose
progress and democracy against theocracy, because the 1946 election,
which was a referendum for Pakistan, was won on the cry of Islam in
danger.” He writes further on that: “The Dilemma of two horns, one
represented by the liberal and the other by Ulema was Mr. Jinnah’s
contribution to Pakistan. He needed it as an ambiguity which served
well to make Pakistan a popular cause.” Most historians would regard
his argument about the 1946 election as much too moot. After all, the
election served to confirm rather than to create broad-based Muslim
support for the League. Also, to the best of my knowledge the Quaid
never himself used the ‘Islam in danger’ slogan. Dr Naqvi’s more
analytical argument over “Mr. Jinnah’s contribution” is, nevertheless,
worthy of reflection and debate which I hope shall be joined by
others.

(Note: This is the last of three articles adapted from an address at
the launching of Jinnah Papers, edited by Dr Z.H. Zaidi)

7 Comments
Filed under History, Jinnah
Tags: History, Jinnah, leaders, leadership, Pakistan, Quaid

7 Comments
Imran
September 18, 2008 at 4:30 am
Sadly, the country is handed over to Mullahs: the real rulers of
Pkakistan.

James
September 18, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Most historians would regard his argument about the 1946 election as
much too moot. After all, the election served to confirm rather than
to create broad-based Muslim support for the League. Also, to the best
of my knowledge the Quaid never himself used the ‘Islam in danger’
slogan.

YLH
September 20, 2008 at 9:17 pm
That is a perfect rebuttal to those who try to put “Islam in danger”
words in Jinnah’s mouth.

The 1946 elections confirmed League’s broadbased support and therefore
the argument that it created that support through resorting to “islam
in danger” is just plain inaccurate.

YLH
September 27, 2008 at 4:36 pm
How sad that our self styled leftists on this website have ignored
these articles by Eqbal Ahmad.

hunainsaani
September 28, 2008 at 4:03 pm
On February 21, 1948, in an address to the officers and men of the 5th
Heavy Ack Ack and 6th Light @YLH
Would you plz
Explain……?????
1.Islamic democracy….where this antique exist???
2.Islamic Socail Justice…????
3.For all the readers,Could You explain Jinnah’s View of Religion?????
Plz
4.And your View of Religion?????

Ack Ack Regiments in Malir, Karachi, he said:

You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of
Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood
in your own native soil. With faith, discipline and selfless devotion
to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.

hunainsaani
September 28, 2008 at 4:05 pm
On February 21, 1948, in an address to the officers and men of the 5th
Heavy Ack Ack and 6th Light

Ack Ack Regiments in Malir, Karachi, Jinnah said:

You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of
Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood
in your own native soil. With faith, discipline and selfless devotion
to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.

YLH
September 29, 2008 at 3:03 am
Once again… I have discussed and explained this issue in detail….

Let me quote Eqbal Ahmad above:

Jinnah did invoke Islamic ideals often as informing the policies and
practices of the state and its governments. Always, this was to
emphasise the congruence of democracy, social justice, and rule of law
to Islamic values.

Does it not occur to you that Jinnah was calling the secular
constitution of 1935 an “Islamic democracy”?

Jinnah believed that modern governance was Islamic and that Mullah
propaganda against modern governance was mis-directed.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://twocircles.net/2009aug14/nehru_jinah_and_partition.html

Nehru, Jinah and partition
Submitted by admin4 on 14 August 2009 - 5:00pm. ArticlesIndian
MuslimMuslim World News
By Asghar Ali Engineer,

Mr. Jaswant Singh, a senior BJP leader from Rajasthan has written a
book on Jinnah which is expected to be published shortly. He has,
according to a news item on NDTV, called Jinnah a secular person and
thrown responsibility for partition on Nehru. Earlier Mr. L. K. Advani
had also described Jinnah as secular while visiting Jinnah’s mausoleum
in Karachi and paid heavy price for it as RSS asked him to resign as
president of BJP. And now Jaswant Singh, a fairly independent minded
leader has called Jinnah a secular person.

No doubt Jinnah is a highly controversial figure. He is greatly
admired and is father of the nation in Pakistan. He is often referred
to as Baba-e-Qaum by Pakistanis. But he is hated by many in India and
is considered mainly responsible for creation of Pakistan and hence a
villain of the peace. Such extremes can never adequately define a
person, let alone being understood adequately.

The motives for describing Jinnah as secular by two top BJP leaders
may be different but there is an element of truth in what they say.
Shri Advani was speaking as a politician during his visit and may be
he tried to peace his hosts in Pakistan. Mr. Jaswant Singh is under no
such obligation and is speaking as a scholar as he is known to be of
fairly independent mind and may not be much concerned about what RSS
and BJP leaders might think.

It is not only in India that Jinnah is subject to different
interpretations, some hating him as breaker of India and some
absolving him of total responsibility for partition. Jinnah is subject
to different interpretation in Pakistan itself some moderate and
liberal Muslims describing him as secular and often quoting his speech
in the Constituent Assembly as a proof of his secularism. The
conservatives and orthodox Muslims, on the other hand, projecting him
as believer in two nation theory and true Muslim who created Pakistan
for Islam and Muslims.

We have the same problem with Mahatma Gandhi in our own country. Some
Dalit and RSS leaders hate him again for different reasons. Dalits
hate him as an upper caste Hindu leader who upheld the concept of
caste, if not of untouchability. And RSS leaders hate him, though
publicly they may not take such position for obvious reasons. They
hate him as they consider Gandhi as betrayer of Hindu cause and
supporter of Muslims. They even indulge in propaganda that Gandhiji is
responsible for partition of the country.

Many people hold Nehru as responsible for partition and among those
who hold Nehru as responsible there are all types of people – secular
as well as communal. The question arises who is really responsible? We
Indians and Pakistanis while holding our own leaders as responsible we
have completely exonerated the British rulers of their responsibility
for partition.

Though secular elements at times do refer to the role of the British,
communal forces in both the countries have completely absolved
British. In RSS propaganda main culprits are Muslims led by Jinnah
whereas in Pakistani propaganda it is Hindus led by Gandhi who are
mainly responsible for partition. If one studies the complex
developments carefully in mid-fifties it is difficult to fix total
responsibility on any one person or one party. Different actors played
different role adding up to partition of the country.

First let us see the role of Jinnah since he is at the centre-stage of
partition. Before this we also have to look at him whether he was
secular or communal. It must be noted that we cannot go by western
definition of secular and communal. We have accepted these terms in
our own sense and in our own context. Gandhiji was secular despite
being highly religious in his attitude. Nehru, of course, was secular
more in western than in Indian sense.

Similarly Jinnah was also secular more in western sense. Both Nehru
and Jinnah never were religious as Gandhi and Maulana Azad were. Nehru
was closer to Jinnah than to Gandhiji and Maulana Azad was closer to
Gandhiji than to Jinnah. Maulana Azad also was deeply a religious
person like Gandhiji though he was more liberal in religious matters
than Gandhiji.

Jinnah was thoroughly westernized person right from his younger days.
He never had any religious training. He did not observe any Islamic
taboos like liquor and pork. He never observed religious rituals. He
even disagreed with Gandhiji about involving Ulama in politics and he
opposed Gandhiji taking up Khilafat question. He believed in
separation of politics from religion. He was described as Muslim
Gokhale by friends. Gokhale was liberal and so was Jinnah.

Jinnah was certainly secular in this sense. He until 1935 described
himself as Indian first and then Muslim. And, until 1937 he had never
thought of partition even in his dreams. He even entered into an
informal understanding with the congress in 1937 elections in U.P. His
differences with Indian National Congress had begun from 1928 onwards
when his demands were rejected by the Nehru committee set up by the
Congress to solve communal problem. He had even ridiculed the concept
of Pakistan initially propounded by Rahmat Ali, a Cambridge University
student.

The two nation theory was deeply flawed and Jinnah had formulated it
as a sort of political revenge on the Congress leaders like Nehru who
refused to take two Muslim League nominees in the U.P. cabinet after
Muslim league lost 1937 elections and Nehru was responsible for this.
Maulana Azad tried to persuade Nehru to take the two nominees but
unfortunately Nehru did not budge. Some scholars suggest that Rafi
Ahmed Kidwai, an influential Congress leader from U.P. prompted Nehru.
Whatever the reason political it was unwise not to take two Muslim
league nominees. Maulana Azad has pointed this out and has criticized
Nehru on this count in his political biography India Wins Freedom.

For Jinnah it was outright betrayal and he decisively turned against
Congress and gradually it led Jinnah to propounding two nation theory.
Thus two nation theory was a politically contingent proposition rather
than any religiously grounded proposition. Had Nehru shown little
political sagacity this theory would not have come into existence at
all. And in no sense of the word Jinnah ever wanted to establish an
Islamic state in Pakistan. Jinnah would not have even approved of
Pakistan having Islam as an official religion. That was not his bent
of mind. If one goes by Jinnah’s speech in the Pakistan Constituent
Assembly it is doubtful if he wanted even a Muslim state, let alone an
Islamic state. He was all for a secular state in Pakistan.

Then if we call Jinnah communal in what sense can he be described as
one? Or can he be? In those days when we were fighting for freedom of
our country communalism was not opposite of secularism, but of
nationalism. Anyone who was anti-national was described as communal.
Thus if at all Jinnah could be described communal it is in this sense.
And as pointed out above, Jinnah opted for partition not as a part of
his conviction but as a result of political contingency.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was responsible in a way as he was not very
happy with the Cabinet Mission Plan as it would have resulted in weak
centre as except defence, foreign policy and communication all
residuary powers would have rested with the federating states. Both
Nehru and Sardar Patel were not happy with this scheme. And as Azad
has pointed out in his book Nehru, on being elected as president of
the congress in 1946, gave a statement that Cabinet Mission Plan could
be, if necessary, changed. This infuriated Jinnah as Muslim League had
also accepted the Plan and a composite Government was formed after
1946 fall elections.

This finally drove Jinnah to accept nothing less than partition. The
greatest culprit was British rulers as they also wanted India divided
so that they could easily establish intelligence and military base in
Pakistan to stem the tide of revolution which by then had become a
certainty in China. Nehru Government would have never allowed such
bases in United India. Lord Mount Batten got Nehru, through his wife
Advina to endorse the partition plan.

Thus it would be seen that apart from Jinnah the British and Nehru
were also responsible for partition of the country. In my opinion the
greatest responsibility of partition lay on the British shoulder. They
cleverly maneuvered the complex situation in a way to make partition a
reality. Partition, as Maulana Azad also pointed out, was neither in
the interest of India nor in the interest of Muslims themselves.

The ultimate result of partition is that Muslims of Indian sub-
continent stand divided into three units and Kashmir problem is also
result of this tragedy. And both the countries are spending billions
of rupees on their armies and now such powerful interests have
developed in keeping conflict between the two countries alive that all
efforts for talks fail. Now the only solution is in confederation of
nations of South Asia, with no visa and common currency.

If European countries could form a viable union despite the fact that
they were at each others throats until late forties why can’t we in
South Asia?

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.twocircles.net/2009aug12/call_second_freedom_struggle.html

A call for second freedom struggle
Submitted by admin4 on 12 August 2009 - 7:09pm. ArticlesIndian Muslim
By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

15th August is the celebration of an independent India. Schools,
colleges, and government offices mark the day by parades, speeches,
and unfurling of the Tricolours. For children it is a holiday and a
day when they get lots of candies. It has been 62 years since we
gained independence from the British and this month we should
contemplate what we have achieved and where we as a nation want to
go.

India is proud of its democracy and collectively Indian voters have
always made the right choice. Recent Lok Sabha elections yet again
proves that Indian public is very mature when it comes to exercising
its democratic rights. India has also made lot of progress in the
economic front. This prosperity is visible in the way we dress, eat,
and live. Modern gadgets have changed our lives and we do not lag
behind the world leaders in adopting latest technological
advancements.

We should be proud of our journey as a nation since 1947, though there
have been many shameful incidents along the way. As we start playing a
bigger role on the world stage we have to look inwards and see how
strong we as a nation are.

Problems that we inherited middle of the last century still persist
with us today. We still have problems of illiteracy, poverty,
corruption, bureaucratic redtapism, law & order breakdown, etc. We
have also failed in improving our society as various social evils like
casteism, communalism, dowry deaths, child marriages still exist, laws
notwithstanding.

What we need as a nation is a road map developed with consensus. A
road map to where we want to be as a nation. A collective goal for all
of us, a future that everyone has a stake in, a target that everyone
aspires towards. We all have to buy this idea of India which will be
beneficial to all Indians regardless of religion, caste, language, or
region. India that provides free & quality education to all its
children in a language of their choice, provides jobs to those who are
willing to work, improves law & order machinery so that the weakest
amongst us can seek justice without fear, improves administration so
that it breaks from its colonial mind-sets and understand that it is
here to serve people and not the political party in power. A system
that is transparent and with built-in accountability is the only way
to ensure that it will be responsive to the needs of a big and diverse
country like India.

How can this ambitious goal be achieved? For this we have to go back
to about a hundred years ago and take lessons from India’s freedom
movement. We need visionary leaders of this century. Leaders like Ali
Brothers, Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, BR Ambedkar, Jawahar Lal
Nehru. Movement is led by big leaders but it also need grass root
level leaders who can go door to door and explain the importance of
the movement. Importance of Urdu journalism in stroking the fires of
freedom movement can not be underestimated. Media in India now is more
widespread and reaches a large proportion of population, they need to
join in this second freedom struggle to educate and motivate Indians.

This movement should work with the government but should be
independent of it, so that it can monitor the administration and make
it responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people.

We as individuals have to understand the duties and responsibilities
of being a citizen. It is correct to petition and protest when
government fails in its duties but it is also important that we hold
on to our end of this arrangement by fulfilling the duties expected of
us as a citizen of a country. We have to follow the law all times, we
have to take care of fellow human beings, we have to see how our
actions are affecting others and correct our behaviour if it is
harmful to the community and the country.

.call for second freedom struggle
Submitted by gopi thomas (not verified) on 12 August 2009 - 8:23pm.
While the society has progressed, and abject poverty has been
eliminated, we still have many more miles to go.

This is a journey; no destination is final; aspirtions cange as a
country and peope progress.

However, by naming it a "second freedom struggle", we are putting the
blame on others; or even worse, indicating that we have to be free
from our own leaders or our democracy. This is dangerous.

What we need is a movement; a grass roots movement, focused on
development, focused on our people, eliminating bureaucracy, enforcing
transparency, ensuring equal opportunity -- a vigilant and committed
society. Make it a "jana sakti" movement; not a freedom struggle.
People are free. And many have benefited from this freedom . However,
many citizens are not aware of their freedom and choice. This
organization will educate people, be vigilant about politicians and
administrators trampling on rights.

I will not focus on caste and religion etc. People growing up in metro
areas are already beyond these. Intercaste and inter-religious
marriages (except with Mslims for their own religious rules) and dates
are happening.

Focus on development - education, trade, skills development, health,
womens issues, holding elected representatives accountable etc

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2009/08/for-us-body-india-is-same-as-somalia.html

August 15, 2009

For US body, India is same as Somalia and Afghanistan

http://www.rediff.com/news/2009/aug/13us-body-places-india-on-watch-list.htm

Obviously incensed after being denied visas to visit India, the US
Commission on International Religious Freedom -- a US Congress-
mandated body that monitors religious freedoms and rights worldwide
and then provides independent policy recommendations to the President,
Secretary of State and the Congress -- has released it 2009 country
report on India, which it had earlier held back and placed India on
its "Watch List".

The reason it says : "The government's largely inadequate response to
protecting religious minorities".

The other countries currently on USCIRF's Watch List are Afghanistan,
Belarus, Cuba, Egypt [ Images ], Indonesia, Laos, the Russian

Federation, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

It said, "India earned the Watch List designation due to the
disturbing increase in communal violence against religious minorities
-- specifically Christians in Orissa in 2008 and Muslims in Gujarat in
2002 -- and the largely inadequate response from the Indian government
to protect the rights of religious minorities."

A country that is designated on the USCIRF Watch List requires "close
monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious
freedom engaged in or tolerated by the government".

The newly minted chair of USCIRF, Leonard Leo, making his debut in
presiding over the first Watch List designation of his tenure, said,
"It is extremely disappointing that India, which has a multitude of
religious communities, has done so little to protect and bring justice
to its religious minorities under siege."

He said that USCIRF's India chapter had been "released this week to
mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the anti-Christian
violence in Orissa."

It recalled that last year in Orissa, the murder of Swami Saraswati by
Maoist rebels in Kadhamal had sparked "a prolonged and destructive
campaign targeting Christians in Orissa, resulting in attacks against
churches and individuals."

"These attacks largely were carried out by individuals associated with
Hindu national groups, and resulted in at least 40 deaths and the
destruction of hundreds of homes and dozens on churches," the USCIRF
said, and added, "tens of thousands were displaced and today many
still remain in refugee camps, afraid to return home."

Leo argued that "India's democratic institutions charged with
upholding the rule of law, most notably state and central judiciaries
and police, have emerged as unwilling or unable to seek redress for
victims of the violence."

He said it was incumbent upon India to do much more to "ensure future
violence does not occur and that perpetrators are held accountable."

The USCIRF said that while the India country report had been released
to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the start of the anti-
Christian violence in Orissa, the state and central judiciaries and
police, had also not brought the perpetrators of the Gujarat violence
to justice.

It noted that "during the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, India's
National Human Rights Commission found that the Indian government not
only failed to prevent the attacks against religious minorities, but
that state and local officials aided and participated in the
violence."

"In both Orissa and Gujarat, court convictions have been infrequent,

perpetrators rarely brought to justice, and thousands of people
remains displaced," the USCIRF said.

The report said the "deficiencies in investigating and prosecuting
cases have resulted in a culture of impunity that gives members of
vulnerable minority communities few assurances of their safety,
particularly in areas with a history of communal violence, and little
hope of perpetrator accountability."

The report calls on the Obama [ Images ] Administration to urge the
government of India to "take new measures to promote communal harmony,
protect religious minorities, and prevent communal violence by calling
on all parties and religious or social organization to publicly
denounced violence against and harassment of religious minorities,
women, and low-caste members, and to acknowledge that such violence
constitutes a crime under Indian law".

The USCIRF issues its annual reports on religious freedom each May,
but this year the India chapter was delayed because the USCIRF had
requested to visit India this summer, and there was an expectation by
the Commission's leadership that a delegation would visit India before
the elections. But weeks went by and after the elections when New
Delhi [ Images ] declined to accede to the visa requests, the USCIRF
decided to go ahead and issue its India report.

In fact, last month, reacting angrily to being denied the visas, a
USCIRF official, who did not want to be identified, told rediff.com,
that since it was definitive that a Commission delegation would not be
afforded the opportunity to visit India, the report that had been held
back would be released in a few weeks, as soon as the annual
changeover of its leadership occurs with Leo taking over from Felice D
Gaer.

The official told rediff.com at the time, that the Commission had
wanted to visit "not just Gujarat and Orissa, but also Mumbai
[ Images ] and Delhi, and we had planned to have meetings with
government officials to discussion the situation (of religious freedom
and rights)."

"Of one particular interest was the judiciary system -- how come some
of the perpetrators of some of these acts of violence against Muslims
and Christians and others as well have not been prosecuted," he said.
"Why is the judicial system in the world's largest democracy not
providing justice and some sort of redress for these victims."

Regretting the denial of visas, the USCIRF said the intent of the
Commissioners visit to India was "to discussion religious freedom
conditions with officials, religious leaders, civil society activists
and others in the world's largest democracy."

It pointed out that "as a US government body, visits by the Commission
must have official status," and hence "USCIRF obtained US State
Department support, made travel arrangements, and requested meetings
with a variety of officials."

Despite the imprimatur of the US State Department, it complained, "the
Indian government did not issue the USCIRF delegation visas," it said.

It explained that the "aim of the long-requested trip was to discuss
religion freedom conditions in India, home to a multitude of religious
communities that have historically co-existed."

It said since, "India has experienced an increase in communal violence
against religious communities in recent years." the agenda of the
USCIRF Commissioners were " to discuss the Indian government responses
to this, and its development of preventive strategies at the local and
national levels."

"According to information before USCIRF, the Indian justice system has
prosecuted only a handful of persons responsible for communal violence
and related abuses since the mid 1980s," it said.

USCIRF officials said the denial became clear when New Delhi had not
offered alternative dates for a visit, and recalled that the USCIRF
had first tried to obtain visas for India in 2001.

"This would have been the Commission's first visit to India," it said,
and added, now with the denial of visas to the USCIRF, "India joins
Cuba as the only other nation to have refused all USCIRF requests to
visit."

At the time the official told rediff.com that the statement by lumping
India with Cuba was not trying to insult India, but only stating a
fact.

"We are not comparing India to Cuba -- there is a huge difference. But
the fact of the matter is, there are only two places we have not been
allowed in."

"I mean, we have applied to other places and been told, No, but
eventually we got in," the official said, and noted, "Vietnam is an
example. Sometimes we get in and sometimes we don't. But these are the
only two places, we've applied and never got in."

Outgoing Commission chair Gaer, said of the denial of visas that, "We
are particularly disappointed by the new Indian government's refusal
to facilitate and official US delegation to discuss religious freedom
issues and government measures to counter communal violence, which has
a religious component."

She said "our Commission has visited China, Russia [ Images ], Saudi
Arabia, and over 20 other countries," but lamented that "India, a
close ally of the United States, has been unique among democracies in
delaying and denying USCIRF's ability to visit."

She said, "We wanted to hear from all sectors of Indian society, and
allow these diverse perspectives to shape our report."

The official at the time that the report on India will now rely on
what the USCIRF has heard from religious and human rights groups in
India and others, now that "we cannot depend on first hand, on the
ground report that we had hoped to bring out."

"Basically, we wanted to comment on India after we've been there and
done interviews and done some investigation and looked around. Of
course, we have people on the ground that are reporting to us, and
obviously there are other reports as well out there that we are using,
and we are gathering information in every way we can. But it would
have been better if we had first-hand information so that it would
have been an authentic USCIRF report," the official said.

A month before the Indian election, this same official had denied that
the Indian government had invited the USCIRF, which some newspapers
speculated was a political maneuver by the Manmohan Singh [ Images ]
government to have the USCIRF visit Gujarat and embarrass the BJP-led
government of Narendra Modi [ Images ], who was leading the charge
against the Congress Party.

At the time the official said of these reports, "We were all kind of
surprised because they hadn't been so far as we knew (an invitation)
and we had applied two weeks ago."

In 2002, the USCIRF recommended to the State Department that India be
designated a 'Country of Particular Concern' following events in
Gujarat that resulted in an estimated 2,000 deaths. Although India was
removed from the CPC list in 2005, the USCIRF has continued to
monitor, report and comment publicly on events in India, including
last year's violence in Orissa, attacks in Mumbai, and other events.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, warning against the visit of a
USCIRF delegation to India, had said, such a trip would be an irony
since it would signal that while President Obama "is trying to build
and repair relationships with all the nations of the world,
particularly the Islamic world ruled by kings and dictators, it does
not care if its relationship with a peaceful, democratic nation is
jeopardized."

It said a visit to India by the USCIRF would be "incomprehensible an
that India "as "the largest functioning democracy in the world with an
independent judiciary, a statutorily constituted Human Rights
Commission, and independent press and other supporting organizations,
would appear to be quite capable of taking care of the religious
freedoms and human rights of its citizens."

The VHP-USA said, "India not only offers freedom of religion under its
constitution, but does not discriminate based on religion," and
obviously taking a swipe at Pakistan, added, "Similar freedoms are not
available in neighboring countries."

Aziz Haniffa in Washington,DC

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://deshgujarat.com/2009/08/15/muslims-attack-jamnashtami-procession-in-ahmedabad/

Muslims attack Janmashtami procession in Ahmedabad

Muslims attack Janmashtami procession in Ahmedabad
By our correspondent

Ahmedabad, DeshGujarat, 15 August, 2009

Police lobbed five tear gas shells to disperse the Muslim mobs who
were pelting stones over minority Hindu population in Ahmedabad’s
Muslim dominated Shahpur area on Saturday evening.

The trouble started when Muslims attacked a Janmashtami procession
that was passing near a Muslim place of worship and then started
pelting stones over Hindus who are in minority in this area. After
Hindus reacted to this, Muslim mobs started pelting stones from all
the directions in Nagorivad area. Around three to four persons
received minor injuries during the clashes.

The situation was brought under control and heavy police deployment
has been arranged.

It should be mentioned here that Shahpur area was originally a Hindu
dominated locality of Ahmedabad. But thanks to Muslim mafias, and
property riots sponsored by them, Hindus had to sell their properties
and ultimately the whole area started becoming Muslim dominated. Last
year, Muslims had burnt a Hindu temple in Shahpur area.

Feedbacks Received to “Muslims attack Janmashtami procession in
Ahmedabad”

sunny(london--uk) Says:

August 15th, 2009 at 7:29 pm

we all hindu teach this people good lesson

Inquilab Says:

August 15th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Hindus have nothing to fear. We have the mighty will of Sh.Narendra
Modi to uphold the secular credentials of Hinduism. Our
constitutionally transparent laws and justice will take care of these
violence mongers.

History has shown that whenever Hindus remain firm in their resolve to
hold onto their property, there is no chance for the criminal elements
to overcome us. I wish and pray that Hindus living in Shahpur area be
given full protection of the police force to conduct their religious
practices without any unprovoked threats. Our police force needs to be
reminded of their Kshatriya blood of RAnA PratAp and RAni LakshmibAi
running in their veins for protecting the innocent people.
Hindus should remain calm and knock the doors of our law and justice
for any injury they had to face.

They should hold a vigil regularly. The police needs to set up
guptachar seva for finding out the elements instigating these Muslim
to their self-destruction and arrest them under charges of sedation by
taking into confidence all minority commission by proving their acts.
Next time our Hindu carry out a procession through a Muslim
neighborhood, there has to be complete CCTV footage. That is the least
we Hindus should do, based on this incidence. But there is no point in
running around or mass migration like Kashmiri Pandits. It leads to
further worsening of situation.

Perhaps these violent elements are pumped by the Congress party
machinery. We need to expose this nexus between Congress party and
rioters given a bad history of riots in the Congress misrule. The
Congress and their rioters Muslims need to be taught that violence
does not pay. And only an upright police administration can teach
these desperado bent-dog-tail Muslim mafias a solid lesson.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25011&Itemid=66

BJP is incomplete without Muslims: Shivraj Singh Chauhan

By Khabrein.Info Correspondent,

Bhopal, Aug 16, 2009: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh
Chauhan said in a program that the BJP is incomplete without Muslims.
He said that the party does not differentiate between Hindus and
Muslims on religious ground.

Sushma Swaraj, a senior BJP leader while speaking on the occasion said
that Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is not anti-Muslim party but this
party is against those who spread hatred and divide society. The
Minority Morcha of the party is the ambassador of Sadbhavna Mission
among Muslims. She was speaking at the concluding session of the
seminar of working committee of Minority Morcha.

She said that the Muslims should be nationalist and should be proud of
being Indian Muslims. Urdu is the language of this country and you
should speak this language without any hesitation.

She said the party workers should go among Muslims. Go there even if
they don’t welcome you, Shushma said. The worker should say the
Muslims that the party is not against the Muslims; the party is
against those thinking who refuses Vande Mataram.

Giving the example of six year tenure of Shivraj Singh Chauhan in
Madhya Pradesh Shushma said that there was no any discrimination
against Muslims. If the Muslims have any problem with the BJP
Government they should said, it will be solved as soon as possible.

Sivraj Singh Chauhan, chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh said that the
BJP is incomplete without Muslims. The party like Congress has never
differentiated between Hindu and Muslims on the basis of religion. He
assured that the safety of every citizen will be ensured in the BJP
Government. There will be no any difference between poor and rich. He
appealed the party workers to go among Muslims, solve their confusion
and win their hearts.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.ptinews.com/news/232678_Separatists-slam-PM-for-his-remarks

Separatists slam PM for his remarks

STAFF WRITER 21:10 HRS IST

Srinagar, Aug 16 (PTI) Separatists today described Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's remarks that the recent elections in Jammu and
Kashmir had showed that the separatist ideology had no place in the
state as "unrealistic and ridiculous".

Singh's remarks were in line with the traditional rigid Indian policy
towards the Kashmir problem, said a spokesman of the hardline faction
of the Hurriyat Conference, headed by detained Syed Ali Shah Geelani,
here.

"The remarks are ridiculous and unrealistic," he said slamming the
Prime Minister.

Addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the
Independence Day yesterday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said people
of the state had participated vigorously in both the elections
(assembly and parliamentary).

"This is a proof that there is no place for separatist thought in
Jammu and Kashmir," he had said.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Debate/Do-something-substantial-for-minorities/articleshow/4760403.cms

Do something substantial for minorities

10 Jul 2009, 0233 hrs IST,

In the budget, Pranab Mukerjee made provisions for minority welfare
and for opening two campuses of Aligarh Muslim University in
Malappuram and Asghar Ali Engineer, Centre for Study of Society &
Secularism
Murshidabad. Well, it is a welcome move, given that something is
better than nothing.

However, the amount provided for matric and post-matric scholarships
is a mere trickle, given the Muslim population in India — about 150
million.

For the past sixty years hardly anything was done for Muslims who are
equal to Dalits in backwardness, and now according to the Sachar
Committee data, are trailing behind them. Earlier Congress governments
hardly did anything to pull Muslims out of their backwardness though
they kept on voting for the Congress. What is more regrettable is that
Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh who also depended on Muslim votes, were
equally guilty.

The real measure of democracy is what it does for the most
marginalised sections. Mahatma Gandhi also said the real test of
development would be the benefit that accrues to the last man in
society. Seen in that perspective, all central as well as state
governments have failed to do anything worthwhile for minorities.

Indira Gandhi had appointed the Gopal Singh High Committee in the
early eighties which preceded the Sachar Committee. However that
committee’s report was not even tabled in Parliament. And shockingly
enough V P Singh who became PM during the end of the eighties had not
even heard of it!

The irony is that even for such symbolic acts, the BJP immediately
screams ‘appeasement of Muslims’! And most of the middle classes
swallow this ‘appeasement’ theory. This is also one of the factors in
discouraging the Congress government from going beyond symbolism in
doing something substantial for the minorities, especially Muslims.

However, this election has shown that Congress must emerge from the
fear of BJP propaganda and its anti-minorityism as masses of Indian
people have clearly rejected communalism, at least of the extremist
variety.

The Centre should boldly come out with a substantial programme for
uplift of the Muslim masses. That is the government’s democratic
duty.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Its-not-just-tokenism-but-a-sham/articleshow/4760398.cms

It's not just tokenism, but a sham

10 Jul 2009, 0231 hrs IST,

Welfare of minorities (a euphemism mostly used to describe Muslims in
the country) is not just tokenism, but a sham. Parties that have shown
great GVL Narasimha Rao, Political Analyst & Member, BJP
alacrity in galvanising minorities into vote banks have done little to
promote their welfare. No wonder, a sizeable section of minorities
continue to remain poor both in terms of income poverty and capability
poverty.

Shockingly, the Sachar Committee report which studied backwardness
among Muslims had found that the employment opportunities for Muslims
were the least in West Bengal, a state ruled for the past three
decades by the champions of ultra secularism — the Marxists.

Minorities are a key and integral part of our society and they live in
perfect harmony with other communities all over the country. They
ought to be treated as equals and treating them as a separate bloc may
serve the parochial interests of political parties but has the
potential to cause grievous harm to the society by creating a chasm
between communities.

One great quality of the people of this country is that they do not
discriminate people on the basis of their religion. Stalwarts like
Abdul Kalam are respected by people all over the country; sports stars
like Sania Mirza, Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan and film stars like
Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan have achieved stardom and are adored by
the whole nation and not just by Muslims.

Why, we even have a prime minister in Dr Manmohan Singh hailing from
the minority Sikh community who has just been re-elected with a bigger
mandate. What more do you need to show that Indian people are truly
secular?

India being a secular nation and Indians being truly secular, religion
should not be the basis for peddling any state sponsored welfare.
There are many poor and deprived sections among the minority as well
as majority communities. They all deserve support and encouragement
from the governments for their uplift.

The very idea of the UPA government forming a separate ministry for
minority (read Muslims) affairs is an act of tokenism and the ministry
deserves to be scrapped.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.livemint.com/2009/08/05211137/The-economics-of-prejudice.html

The economics of prejudiceDiscrimination is wrong not only because it
is illegal, but also because it does not make any economic senseHere,
There, Everywhere
Salil Tripathi

Emraan Hashmi says he cannot buy the flat of his choice in Mumbai
because he is a Muslim. Nibbana, the housing society at the centre of
this storm, has strongly disputed his assertion, saying the society is
yet to decide, and by rushing to the media, Hashmi is using his
celebrity to force the society’s hand. Hashmi is serious: He has
already complained to Maharashtra’s minority rights commission, which
has promised to investigate.

Hashmi’s pride is hurt, but more importantly, he has the right to buy
a house. The seller has the right to decide whether or not to sell to
him. But what if the decision is based on prejudice? How can law aid
in forcing us to shed prejudice?

Discrimination is wrong not only because there may be laws against it,
and not just because it would be politically incorrect, but also
because it does not make any economic sense. A seller is better off
selling his property to the highest bidder, not one speaking his
language or practising his faith.

And yet, because real estate laws are so arcane in India, and because
tenants have so many rights, landlords prefer to deal with their own
kind. That also influences real estate ownership transactions. You
trust only your kind, so you deal only with them. Result: self-
selected ghettos.

It is not an urban legend that there are owners who will not let their
apartments to single women. Others rule out meat eaters or those who
might serve alcohol. There are colonies in Mumbai with only Parsi
residents. To own an apartment at Patrakar Nagar or Sahitya Sahawas in
Bandra, you need to be a journalist or an author. Hashmi won’t be able
to buy a flat there, either.

Given that, some might see in Hashmi’s outburst an attempt to play the
minority card when he brings up his faith—such an allegation is nearly
impossible to refute. But, of course, there is such discrimination.
Shabana Azmi’s is not the only such case.

It is hard to prove such discrimination, because the legal obligation
not to discriminate applies to the state, not to private actors. This
is because individual freedoms matter: Nobody should be forced to sell
her property only to a specific buyer. And given that the transaction
is between two individuals, it is fair to ask what role the
cooperative society has in this, if the dues are properly paid.

And yet we do discriminate—when we hire one candidate over another,
offer tenancy to one person over another, sell our flat to one person
over the next.

This is not unique to Mumbai: In New York, the co-op board can decide
who can rent or buy, and who cannot. They can do so because the US
constitutional amendments outlaw federal discrimination; private lives
are a different matter. Employment is one significant exception there
that India should learn from.

If housing societies can frame rules about who can buy, can they make
rules about who cannot buy? What if such exclusions are fuelled by
prejudice, keeping out particular castes or faiths?

Singapore does it differently. There, the state does not want communal
ghettos. So it requires that the ethnic composition in the flats it
builds must be proportional—broadly—to the general population.
Singapore can do it, being a city-state where four out of five
Singaporeans live in government-built housing. But it is neither
practical nor desirable to replicate such regimentation because it
would violate an individual’s right to stay where he wants to, and
another’s right to rent out property to whoever he wants.

But what if there is a persistent pattern to keep out some people?
Can, or should, the state intervene (as it has warned businesses it
would) unless the private sector increases hiring from scheduled
castes and tribes? Companies have made a strong case of merit—which
information technology firms convincingly make—until you find some
companies in other sectors that routinely recruit candidates related
to senior management, or belonging to the same caste or faith.
Evidence from South Africa showed discrimination was wrong from an
economic perspective—besides being illegal and abhorrent. But bigots
are not rational.

States keen to eliminate prejudice may want to intervene in cases of
discrimination among private individuals. But look at our matrimonial
ads—how can anti-discrimination laws be enforced while respecting
individual freedom? That is the tough conundrum.

One possibility is that practices which are in the public sphere or
for a public purpose, which specifically exclude certain groups—faith,
ethnicity, gender, caste, language, disabilities or sexual orientation—
should be outlawed. But there should be no requirement that practices
must always include all groups.

The state has absolute—and higher—responsibility. Individuals can’t be
forced to be inclusive. But in excluding someone if they apply
extraneous considerations, then some enforcement is necessary.

Complex, but so is life.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome
at sa...@livemint.com

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/no-burqa-or-headscarf-mangalore-college-tells-students/99490-3.html

Mangalore college tells students not to wear burqa

Deepa Balakrishnan / CNN-IBN

Published on Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 07:56,
Updated on Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 10:02 in India section

NOT RIGHT: Sri Venkataramana Swamy College says the prospectus
mentions the ban.

Burqas are 'not welcome' in France, says Sarkozy Student commits
suicide, college denies ragging FTN: Ban on burqa, violation of
women's rightsTop Headlines

August 17, 2009

Bangalore: In Mangalore a college has asked girl students to shun the
burqa (veil) and headscarf.

Aysha Asmin, a 17-year-old student, has not been attending college for
the past 10 days as the first year B. Com student was allegedly asked
by her college authorities not to wear a headscarf.

"At the time I joined they never told us about any such rule. Suddenly
two days back they said not to wear a burqa or a headscarf. Other
Muslim students don't wear it, but that is their choice. I feel I
should wear it as it's my faith," says Aysha.

Ayesha's family says the college gave the diktat to her last week.
This diktat by the government-run Sri Venkataramana Swamy College has
the Muslim community up in arms.

"I have given a complaint to the Vice-Chancellor. I won't stop this
fight until I get justice. I will take this protest forward. I will
complain to the Chief Minister if need be," says Ayesha's father
Mohammed.

Students' Islamic Organisation President Abdul Jalal, too, says they
will protest against the order and even go to the courts.

"This is not a college run by the Bajrang Dal or Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS). It is a government-aided college. We will question such
rules and will take the fight to the courts," Jalal adds.

But college authorities maintain they are abiding by rules

"These rules are mentioned in our college prospectus. It was clear
from the beginning," points out college Principal Dr Seetharamayya.

But the college prospectus makes no mention of any such ban. Ayesha
now says she would like to leave the Sri Venkataramana Swamy College
and get a seat elsewhere.

But as admissions are no longer open, that avenue is also closed to
her.

(With inputs from Abbas Kinya)

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.metransparent.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=8038&lang=en

Manmohan Singh playing to the gallery to appease domestic audience
Amir Mir

Wednesday 19 August 2009

LAHORE: While Pakistan government has castigated Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh’s statement that "possible terrorist attacks in India
were being planned on the Pakistani soil", most analysts believe that
the Indian premier is actually playing to the gallery to appease the
Indian audience under domestic pressure.

According to Abdul Basit, the Pakistani foreign office spokesman in
Islamabad, while taking a serious notice of the Indian Prime
Minister’s accusations, Deputy High Commissioner of India was called
to the Foreign Office by Director General (South Asia) and conveyed
that these remarks warranted serious and prompt attention of the
Indian authorities as these could simmer fresh tensions between India
and Pakistan. Basit said that Islamabad has once again called on New
Delhi to share information on terrorism following Manmohan’s remarks
that credible information existed about Pakistan-based terrorist
groups planning new attacks in his country. He said the Pakistan would
like to extend its fullest cooperation to pre-empt any act of terror
because terrorism is a common enemy and Pakistan has itself been a
victim of terrorism.

However, independent analysts here believe that such wild accusations
by the Indian Prime minister were actually coming under mounting
pressure of the BJP-led opposition in the parliament and that too at a
critical juncture which can damage the efforts for normalisation of
relations between the two nuclear armed neighbours. According to a
senior Pakistani journalist and the host of a political talk show,
Syed Talat Hussain, the statement by Singh is indirect declaration of
war. Elaborating his point, he said that the prime minister has
accused Pakistan of the Mumbai terrorist attacks meaning now India can
retaliate to this. He termed the statement as ill-timed and a step in
the wrong direction, adding that India should have waited for
Islamabad’s response after providing evidence on the Mumbai attacks.

Giving his reaction, the Pakistani information minister Qamar Zaman
Kaira said Pakistan that Dr Manmohan’s remarks were a serious blow to
Pakistan’s efforts for helping India in the ongoing investigation of
the Mumbai terror attacks and cooperation on other issues. “The timing
of the statement suggests that it was an election ploy by the Congress
through which they can gain sympathy votes. The Indian attitude is
highly regrettable and instead of resolving the problem, India was
appreciating those forces which have destabilised the peace process
between the two countries. He reminded that at Sharm El Sheikh,
Manmohan and Gilani had agreed that the two countries would share real
time, credible and actionable information on any future terrorist
threats.

Giving his reaction, Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi
said: “I would like to request the Indian government with due respect
to share all available intelligence information that they have
regarding the activities of the Pakistan-based jehadi groups and for
our part we stand ready to cooperate fully in pre-empting any act of
terror”. He was of the view that terrorism could only be combated by
serious, constant and realistic cooperation. Meanwhile, a leading
Pakistani English daily The News carried Dr Manmohan Singh’s statement
and Pakistan’s reaction under headline “Singh is King of accusations”,
in an obvious reference to Indian movie “Singh is King” that is being
shown in 16 cinema halls of Pakistan.

amir.m...@gmail.com

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article8897.ece

JAIPUR, August 25, 2009

Still no scholarship for minority students in Rajasthan
Special Correspondent

The Hindu :Muslim girls eligible for the pre-matric scholarships for
minority communities studying at a school in Jaipur on Monday.

Photo: Rohit Jain Paras

The Union Government’s ambitious scheme for providing scholarships to
students belonging to minority communities may not achieve its
objectives in Rajasthan for the second year in a row because of
shrinking time-frame, lack of publicity and alleged bureaucratic
indifference.

Against the revised targets allotted for the pre-matriculation, post-
matriculation and merit-cum-means scholarships of the Union Minority
Affairs Ministry during 2009-10 in the desert State, only 25 per cent
of the deserving students submitted their applications till August 15,
which was fixed as the last date without any broad-based
consultation.

Notwithstanding the release of a negligible number of scholarships
during the previous year, the State Government has failed to put in
place an effective monitoring mechanism to ensure that the benefits of
scholarships reach the targeted groups. There is no nodal agency in
the State even for distribution of application forms.

The State unit of the All India Milli Council has taken up the issue
with the Centre and demanded that the State Government – which has
been assigned the task of processing the applications – be instructed
to extend the last date by at least two months and launch an awareness
drive to apprise the minority communities of the scheme’s salient
features.

“The entire purpose of the scheme introduced after the tabling of the
Rajinder Sachar Committee’s report will be defeated if its
implementation is not ensured at the ground level. The deserving
children will be deprived of the benefit in the limited time-frame,”
Milli Council State general secretary Abdul Qayoom Akhtar told The
Hindu here.

Following a four-fold increase in the allocation of targets to the
State, the number of scholarships sanctioned to Rajasthan during
2009-10 is 66,110 for pre-matric students against 18,150 in 2008-09,
and 21,035 for post-matric students against 5,259 in 2008-09. The
allotment for merit-cum-means scholarships, which totalled 882 in
2008-09, is yet to be issued for the current year.

The State Government received about Rs.6 crore from the Centre for
disbursement under the scheme during 2008-09, while it was supposed to
contribute 25 per cent of the amount in the pre-matric category alone.
About 5.50 lakh Muslim and other minority students pursuing education
in the State-run and private institutions, including madrasas applied
for scholarship.

Mr. Akhtar pointed out that the previous BJP regime in the State did
not evince any interest in executing the scheme and it was left to the
Congress – which was elected to power in Rajasthan towards the end of
the financial year – to take some action to release the funds. Despite
extending the last date till February 28 this year, very few
scholarships could be issued.

During the current financial year the application forms were not
available till the first week of this month. The State Government
fixed the last date for submission of applications as August 15, which
was a national holiday, while there was confusion about the
Directorate of Education or the Department of Social Justice and
Empowerment processing the applications.

Mr. Akhtar said bureaucratic apathy, communal mind-set of the ground
level staff and lack of awareness among the minority communities were
holding back the release of scholarships in the State: “A major
portion of this year’s allocation will remain unutilised with only 25
per cent of the deserving students applying so far.”

In a memorandum submitted to Union Minister of State for Minority
Affairs Salman Khursheed, the Milli Council has demanded that besides
extension of time for applying, the number of scholarships sanctioned
for Rajasthan be enhanced to 2 lakh in view of the minorities’
backwardness here. This would also cover the gap of lesser allotment
and release during 2008-09.

Mr. Akhtar – a leading tax consultant here in Jaipur – also sought the
Union Ministry’s intervention for revision of the scheme’s norms to
bring it on par with the scholarships for students belonging to
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, which are fully Centrally-sponsored and
available throughout the year.

[Sid Harth]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/hyderabad/Burqa-ban-rocks-Hyderabad-college/articleshow/4947050.cms

Burqa 'ban' rocks Hyderabad college

TNN 29 August 2009, 08:30am IST

HYDERABAD: Trouble erupted in Muslim dominated Mehdipatnam after burqa-
clad young girl students held a massive agitation outside Vani College
(Junior and Degree) on Friday morning after the college principal, Y
Annapurna, allegedly asked students not to wear burqa to class and
shut the college gates on them.

The agitation soon degenerated into a stone pelting session with male
students fron neigbouring colleges and parents of the girls joining
in. The situation came under control only after the police - called in
by the college management - resorted to a lathi charge.

The agitation came a day after a dharna by the students on Thursday
protesting against what was termed by them as “the failure of the
college management to react to the abduction of a girl student” from
the institution earlier this week. The college management had looked
the other way as they perceived that the girl had eloped with her
boyfriend. In the event, the girl had returned by evening.

On Friday morning, the students charged that the principal had been
berating them for wearing burqa for over a week saying that it did not
comply with the uniform (salwar kameez) worn by other students. But
the immediate trigger for the Friday trouble was the refusal of the
principal to allow entry to late coming students, which soon
degenerated into an argument about burqa, the month of Ramzaan and
other matters like ‘promiscuity’ of girls.

“About 300 local youth joined the protesting girls and when police
asked them to leave the place, some of them pelted stones at the
police and college building,’’ deputy commissioner of police C Ravi
Varma said. Eye witnesses said that male students of Gowtham Junior
and Narayana Junior College who have their friends studying in Vani
College joined in and started the bedlam.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/City/Mumbai/More-the-marrier-1-man-14-wives/articleshow/4938656.cms

More the marrier: 1 man, 14 wives

V Narayan, TNN 27 August 2009, 12:42am IST

MUMBAI: You may find it difficult to live a double life but a Mumbai
man has been living 14 different lives - with 14 different wives -
over the last couple of years.

The police arrested the 40-year-old man, who used to be an engineer
with Air India, on August 18 for marrying 14 women in the last two-and-
a-half years. Police officials said Tushar Waghmare alias Tushar Bapat
was sacked from his job soon after that.

Five official complaints have been registered so far against Waghmare.
The nine other victims were not coming forward to lodge complaints as
they feared for their reputation, officials said.

Investigators said Waghmare registered his profile with a marriage
portal and mentioned that he had divorced his wife in 2006. He
mentioned on his profile that he was looking for working Brahmin women
who could be divorcees or widows.

Officials said he ``took care'' of all 14 wives, including one from
Nagar, though - in the end - it was they who looked after him after he
had exhausted his monthly salary of Rs 70,000. Three of the women
Waghmare married were architects or engineers, police officials said,
and the others were homemakers.

Waghmare used to visit profiles of girls on marriage portals and would
fix appointments with their parents at one of his rented apartments in
Lokhandwala or Jogheshwari. ``None of the women or their parents ever
thought of doing a background check on him as they would be impressed
with his job profile,'' deputy commissioner of police R M Vhatkar told
TOI.

Vhatkar said Waghmare would spend at least three consecutive days with
each of his wives and then tell them that he had to travel to other
states to attend official meetings; this way, he managed to spend time
with all his 14 wives.

Senior inspector Vijay Raut said: ``Waghmare married the victims after
showing a bogus divorce letter written on stamp paper that was signed
and had a notary's stamp. We managed to get hold of five different
marriage photographs of Waghmare.'' Interestingly, there are a couple
of faces that are common to every one of the five pictures; one them
would pretend to be Waghmare's father and the other would pose as his
uncle.

Inspector Shivaji Phadtare said: ``Waghmare started marrying women one
after the other since his first wife divorced him in 2006. Waghmare
changed his surname to Bapat (a Brahmin surname) so that he could
marry Brahmin girls.''

Waghmare was finally caught after he married a 29-year-old architect
in Mulund on August 11; she was a divorcee and had a son, officials
said, and added they were surprised by Waghmare's increasing audacity.
He was living with one of his other wives when the architect's parents
came to visit him at his Lokhandwala home and he just sent her to the
market for a couple of hours.

However, three days after they returned from honeymoon in Lonavala,
this last of wives told Waghmare that her employers had asked her to
go to Delhi on an assignment. ``I was shocked when Waghmare replied
that I could take my own time and could return whenever I wanted to.
What shocked me even more was when he told me he would not mind at all
if I had extramarital affairs. This prompted me to go to his
Lokhandwala flat on August 16, when I met a 29-year-old woman who
claimed that Waghmare married her in April 2009,'' the victim
mentioned in her complaint.

Investigators said they had received a letter from Air India, saying
they were conducting a departmental inquiry against Waghmare for
sexually harassing AI women employees since 2006. He has been remanded
in police custody till August 29.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://twocircles.net/2009aug30/general_elections_bihar_paradise_lost_muslims.html

General Elections in Bihar – A Paradise Lost For Muslims
Submitted by admin4 on 31 August 2009 - 9:50am.
By Moin Moon Khan,

A few years ago, an NRI of the BJP orientation told me that he did not
hate Muslims. To corroborate his point, he said his family driver in
Bihar is a Muslim. I told him that he would hate his Muslim driver if
his son developed a business and hired a Hindu as his driver. He was
shocked at my tart rejoinder, looking for words, or maybe weapons, to
silence me.

The member of the Overseas Friends of BJP could not silence my
conscience at that time, but his party certainly hushed up the entire
Muslim community in Bihar in recently concluded general elections by
deploying the secular face of Nitish Kumar, who used the Munh-pe-Ram-
Ram-and- baghal-mein-churhee policy of playing secularism on the face
while riding on the hateful BJP’s chariot (rath).

It is no secret that BJP wants Muslims to be permanently downtrodden,
oppressed, and demoralized. When it comes to Muslims, BJP wants to
play the role of a benevolent king, by exhibiting its empathy and
doling out its condescending favors.

While news reports are showering rose petals on the concept of social
engineering crafted by the Janata Dal (United) in the 2009 general
elections, nobody is shedding tears on the devastating loss of
political clout of Muslims in Bihar.

News stories have not highlighted the fact that Bihar, which has 15-20
percent Muslim voters, was able to elect only three Members of
Parliament – Mohammad Asrarul Haque, INC, from Kishanganj; Dr. Monazir
Hassan, JD (U), from Begusarai; and Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, BJP, from
Bhagalpur.

The embarrassment gets further disgusting when you notice that the
only Muslim who got elected on the BJP ticket would come from Bihar.

Under the aegis of Nitish’s politics of camouflage, all the Muslim
candidates lost elections in constituencies where Muslim population
was around 15 percent or more – Madhubani, Darbhanga, Siwan,
Sitamarhi, etc. Kishanganj was the only exception. Madhubhani and
Darbhanga had two UPA’s cabinet ministers – Dr. Shakeel Ahmed and Ali
Ashraf Fatmi, and both were defeated by the BJP candidates – Hukum Deo
Narayan Yadav and Kirti Azad respectively.

From Bihar, there were three Muslims who held prominent cabinet
portfolios and several lower positions in the previous UPA government.
Now, there might be one, and may be none at all.

While Muslims registered deficit, other communities got overwhelming
surplus: Rajputs got nine MPs; seven Yadavs entered into the
Parliament; and six Dalits filled the reserved seats. Six Bhumihars
along with three members of the Extremely Backward Castes group made
to the hall of fame. The Brahmin, Kayashtha and Kurmi also got one
berth each.

The loss of Muslims’ slide can be attributed to the schizophrenic
profiles of the JD (U), which is part of the NDA, which unabashedly
declared its prime ministerial choice in favor of Lal Krishna Advani,
the Rath Yatra avatar or monster (pick your favorite) and Babri
Mosque’s demolisher, and for NDA’s crown prince, Narendra Modi, who
massacred Muslims in Godhra and won the Gujarat assembly election as
arrogantly as Israeli premiers come out victorious by killing
Palestinians.

It is intriguing to note that during the entire election period,
Nitish Kumar kept strategic distance from Narendra Modi, by not
allowing him to come to Bihar for any campaigning, though the purveyor
of the Hindutva message did tour Jharkhand and other neighboring
states. Only after the election was closed in Bihar, Nitish came close
to the shadow of Modi in Ludhiana.

Very shrewdly, Nitish created a shroud against Varun Gandhi’s
provocative statements and BJP’s incendiary goal of constructing Ram
Mandir at the site of the demolished Babri Mosque. While keeping
Hindutva’s hawks at bay, Nitish was trying to throw small dough to
Muslim minions in terms of positions on various state boards. However,
Nitish did not give generous number of tickets to Muslim candidates.

Nitish was certainly successful in hoodwinking Muslims of Bihar by
proclaiming himself as their savior, like a butcher proclaiming
himself to be a vegetarian. In fact, Nitish has been a facilitator for
the Sangh Parivar in the same way as George Fernandes coalesced the
Hindutva fraternity in its glorious days.

But flaying only Nitish for its Machiavellian strategies will be
completely unfair. All the other parties in Bihar have been doing more
or less the same thing. For the debacle of the Muslim political
empowerment in 2009, RJD and LJP are equally responsible.

Ram Vilas Paswan, whose power base in Bihar is as fake as his black
hair color, should not have demanded for 17 seats, leaving no choice
to RJD but to take away all the seats except four to leave for the
Congress. The RJD acted like a traitor against the Congress Party.
Lalu Prasad enjoyed all the bells and whistles of the central
government’s power for five years, but when it came to work together
during the election time, he used the most rustic, bucolic, boorish,
and pastoral, charwaha like, tactics to blackmail the Congress Party.
On the other hand, local Congress leadership showed complete lack of
political skills but to play the puppies – bark on the RJD and wag
tails in front of the Congress high command.

The three musketeers - RJD, LJP, and Congress - are equally
responsible for throwing the flesh of Muslims into the BJP’s den (BJP
won 12 seats), where obviously, JD (U) was guarding the hideout (the
latter won 20 seats).

In Bihar, Muslims failed, and failed miserably. Although democracy, a
rule by ballot count, prevailed in Bihar, the democratic values got
perished. No taxation without representation is one of the tenets of
democracy too.

(The author is a Chicago-based community activist and can be reached
at moonkh...@gmail.com)

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://twocircles.net/2009aug30/development_minorities_maharashtra_assessment.html

Development of minorities in Maharashtra: An assessment
Submitted by admin4 on 30 August 2009 - 4:29pm. ArticlesIndian Muslim
By Aamir Edresy,

The achievements for 15% targets under various National level schemes
earmarked for minorities are not satisfactory in the State. The remedy
could be done by enhancing opportunities for the minorities in
national flagship programs like ICDS, SSA, IAY, SGRY and JNNURM.

To meet the target it is necessary on the part of the government to
enhance opportunities for minorities under Education, Integrated Child
Development Services (ICDS) schemes through Anganwadi Centres;
improving their access to school education through Sarva Shikshan
Abhiyan (SSA), Quality Improvement of Madarsa Education, establishment
of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBVs); Equitable share in
economic activities and Employment for the poor like Swarnjayanti Gram
Swarojgar Yojna (SGSY), Sawarnjayanti Shahari Rojgar Yojna (SJSRY),
Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojna (SGRY); Upgradation of skills through
technical training, like establishment of new ITIs ; Enhanced credit
support for economic activities from banks; Improving the condition of
living of minorities by providing equitable share in rural housing
scheme, Indira Awaas Yojna (IAY); Improvement in conditions of slums
inhabited by minority communities through Integrated Housing & Slum
Development Program (IHSDP) and Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban
Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

These are the national flagship programs with very huge budget e.g.,
for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) which is being implemented in
partnership with States(60:40), Local Bodies and the community ; Rs.
13,100 crore were provided in 2008-09 for SSA. Its 15% means Rs. 1965
crore must be utilized for minorities at national level and
approximately Rs. 196 crore in Maharashtra exclusively under SSA
benefiting minorities.

Special measures to improve access to credit has been directed by RBI.
Public Sector banks have to set up lending to minorities from 9% to
15% during 2007-2010. Ministry of Minority Affairs claims the
improvement in recruitment of minorities from 6.95 % in 2006-07 to
8.65% in 2007-08 in Central Ministries/Departments. State Government
who is recruiting 55 thousand police staff during 2004-09, although
minority representatives are included in the selection panels, but
percentage of Muslims is hardly more than 2-3%. In MPSC appointments
(2006-07) for class I/II posts, just three Muslims were appointed out
of 416 selections.

Central Government sponsored Free Coaching and allied scheme for
minorities is very poorly implemented in the Maharashtra State. In the
years 2006-07 and 2007-08, no coaching centers from Maharashtra were
approved, where as in 2008-09, five coaching centers have been
selected to coach 980 minority candidates for MHT-CET, AIEEE, IIT,
BPO, retail marketing, sales Mktg/Mgt programs. Rs. 1.16 crore were
granted. All the centers approved are very infamous.
Most surprisingly only one institute named M/s Educare Pvt. Ltd. 317,
Corporate Centre, Nirmal Life Style, LBS Road, Mulund (W), Mumbai has
been granted Rs.86.035 lakh grant to coach 730 students for CA-CPT,
MHT-CET, IIT, AIEEE, BPO, Retail Mgt, Sales Mktg. & Mgt. Now, results
for these exams are declared, what is the performance of minority
students who got coaching from this center is the matter of search.

Maharashtra State Government claims itself as the first State in the
country to establish a separate department for minorities. Perhaps,
its authorities didn’t know West Bengal has established Minority
Welfare Department in 1996, A.P., U.P., M.P., Tamil Nadu States have
separate departments for minority welfare since years back, even
Bihar’s BJP Government has Minority Department. Moreover, State
Government in its 100 important decisions in last four years, records
that, “Alpasankhyankana Dilasa……!” what a mercy !

In Maharashtra, four districts Parbhani, Hingoli, Washim and Buldhana
are identified by Central Government as Minority Concentrated
Districts for Multisectoral Development Program during XI Plan
(2007-12). But unfortunately no project/development program has been
approved for these districts up to the end of March’ 2009, while Rs.
270.82 crore has been approved for 47 such districts of the other
States. (Achievements of Ministry of Minority Affairs, Govt. of India
uploaded on www.minorityaffairs.gov.in )

For over all development of minorities in the State, following are the
suggestions/demands for effective implementation of existing welfare
schemes and requirement of new schemes/projects.
1. A provision of Rs. 167.62 crore was made for the year 2008-2009 to
implement various welfare schemes for minorities while Rs. 2,332 crore
were allocated for Social Justice i.e. SC & ST's welfare. The State
annual plan for 2009-10 has been fixed at Rs.26,000 crore which
include Rs. 2,652 crore for social justice ( more than 10% of the
total ) while just Rs. 210.31 crore for minorities ( less than 1% of
the total ).

On one hand, Justice Sachar Committee's findings reveals that Muslims
are far backward than SC & STs and Government claims implementation of
Sachar Committee's recommendations, but on the other hand, for the
welfare of minorities, State Government is allocating just 8-10 % of
the funds allocated for SC & STs.
Is it the concerted action for the welfare of minorities involving
them in the social development for inclusive growth?

Hence, the funds for development of minorities must be increased to
Rs. 2600 crore at par with the funds for SC & STs. Even additional
funds must be provided to fulfill their backlog.

2. The affirmative constitutional policy of reservation has
successfully transformed the lives of SCs & STs and they are getting
100 % weightage for their population in education, services and
development schemes.

Hence, it is strongly urged to adopt the time tested affirmative
action of 15% reservation for minorities consisting of 10% for
Muslims.

A constitutional Commission to study muslims social, economical,
educational status in the state is to be urgently formed and official
data from NSSO,NUEPA,HRD ministry, etc must be considered for
declaring reservation to minorities as suggested by Justice Ranganath
Mishra Commission.

3. Recently, in the budget presented on 4th June' 2009, State
Government has announced an amount of Rs. 32 crore for scholarships to
professional minority students. 36,800 scholarships for pre-matric
minority students and 16,000 post matric scholarships by the Central
Government for the year 2009-10.

It do not cater the needs of a large number of poor needy minority
students. Hence, the number of scholarships must be increased upto ten
times specially for pre-matric and post-matric students by considering
the number of applications received in last year.

4. The application process for these scholarships must be simplified
and it must be declared in June/July at the start of academic year.
The pre-requirement of Declaration of religion, Income Certificate and
A/c Number must be scrapped. These documents must be collected by
selected students only.
5. Complete 100 % reimbursement of Tuition Fee for minority students
must be declared at par with SC & STs.

6. Encouragement allowance to the parents whose wards are in class V
to VII to improve their attendance in the schools must be increased
from Rs. 2/- per day to Rs. 10/- per day.

7. Minority Schools and Junior Colleges must be provided the grants
for computer lab, Science, Maths and language laboratories, libraries.
The amount for infrastructure development must be increased from Rs. 2
lakh per school to Rs. 5 lakh.
8. Grants for development of minority dominated areas must also need
to be increased at least to ten times of existing Rs. 18.85 crore
( 2008-09 )
9. Providing free uniforms, free bicycles to minority students must be
increased by considering the requirement.

10. Job Oriented Training Programs for minority students with a budget
of Rs. 4.66 crore is very insufficient. At least twenty times increase
in the amount for this scheme is required. Andhra Pradesh Government's
Jawahar Knowledge Centre's Model can be helpful for our State. In
Andhra Pradesh 1.70 lakh students got jobs through those centers in
aviation, Railways, Defence, Banking, Finance, Insurance, Transport,
Automobile, Petroleum, Dairy, Food Processing, Construction,
Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Sectors.
11. As declared by former C.M., on August 18, 2008, proposed 16
Residential Schools across the State, 10 Girls Hostels for Minorities
must be established and started immediately.

12. State Government is planning to establish 21 Model Schools for
Tribal Community Students in 2009-10, in the same way at least 30
Model Schools (Residential Schools, proposed by MHRD, Govt. of India)
must be established exclusively for minorities.
13. Urdu Libraries and Computer Training Centres must be established
by the State Government in each Minority dominated Taluka/
Municipality and Corporation.
14. The budget of Urdu Academy must be increased from Rs. 50 lakh to
50 crore.

Study material in Urdu for IV, VII, National Means Cum Merit
Scholarships for VIII, Maharashtra Talent Search Scholarship Exams,
clerical grade, competitive exams, MHT-CET, AIEEE, IIT exams must be
developed and published by the State Urdu Academy.

The proposed single Text Books at Junior College for Arts, Science and
Commerce students must be translated in Urdu and published by the
State Urdu Academy. Best Urdu Schools at District level, Divisional
Board level and State level must be provided with special grants.

Construction of Urdu Ghar, Urdu literary centers, Urdu Mela, such
activities for promotion of Urdu language must be organized.

Urdu must be declared as second official language of Maharashtra and
all competitive exams like MPSC, clerical grade, for police
recruitment must be conducted in Urdu.

All the vacancies in Urdu Medium Z.P. High Schools, Corporations,
Municipalities must be filled up in the time bound manner. SSA must be
implemented effectively for minorities by including all Urdu medium
primary schools and madarsas.

All the non granted Urdu medium schools and Junior colleges must be
considered for releasing the grants on priority basis.

15. Boys and Girls separate Hostels must be established for minorities
at each University place of Maharashtra ( at 15-16 places ).

16. At least 20 Marathi Medium, 20 English Medium and 5 Military
Schools on grant-in-aid basis must be approved by the State Government
as Residential / Day-Boarding Schools under Public Private Partnership
Scheme.

17. At least 20 new ITIs in Urdu Medium must be recognised on grant-in-
Aid basis. And at least 20 Second shift ITIs in Urdu/Marathi medium
must be started in Govt/ Aided ITIs exclusively for minorities.

18. At least 10 new polytechnics in Urdu Medium (with affiliation from
Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad) and 10 new
polytechnics in English Medium must be started by the State Government
for minorities.

These can be started as Second Shift Polytechnics using same
infrastructure of Govt/Semi Government Polytechnics as suggested by
National Knowledge Commission and A.I.C.T.E.
19. 20 D.Ed., 10 B.Ed and 5 M.Ed. colleges in Urdu medium must be
started on Grant-in-aid basis at those places where Urdu medium
colleges are not existing.
20. At least 20 new Engineering colleges, 10 new Pharmacy, 4 Medical
(M.B.B.S.), 10 Management, 5 Hotel Management institutes must be
started/recognised by the State Government in Second Shift exclusively
for minorities or Independent Institutes under Public Private
Partnership (PPP) as suggested by Planning Commission.
21. To increase the present gross enrolment ratio of Muslims in Higher
Education from 8.27% to Hindu's 24.28% and Christian's 25.19%, new
Degree colleges, Evening Colleges, Girls Colleges for Muslims must be
started on grant-in-aid basis.

Minority Educational Managements / Trusts must be encouraged to
establish Higher Educational / Research Institutes, Private
Universities and Professional Colleges. Other barriers such as land
requirement, built up space, fixed deposit are needed to be lowered to
realistic levels in order to facilitate the opening of new colleges by
Muslim Managements.

22. State Government must provide land to the proposed campus of
Aligarh Muslim University at Pune and Maulana Azad National Urdu
University at Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nanded, Amravati.

23. Madarsa pass outs must be admitted in formal Degree programs of
State Universities at par with equivalence given by Delhi University,
Aligarh Muslim University.

24. State Government must sponsor at least 200 minority candidates to
study abroad as it awards scholarships to SC/STs for same purpose.

25. State Government must conduct Pilot Training Program, Hotel
Management and Catering Technology courses for Minority students with
full sponsorship as it has conducted for SC/STs.

26. Competitive Examination Coaching Centres for Minority students
must be started in each district (instead of divisional level) where
minority students must be coached for Banking Services, Railway
Services, Defence Services, MPSC, UPSC, NET/SET exams.

27. Separate batches for minority students must be run at the State
Government's well known reputed SIAC, Mumbai, Nagpur, Aurangabad and
Kolhapur ; YASHDA's Dr. Ambedkar Competitive Exam Coaching Centre,
Pune and Chintamanrao Deshmukh Institute, Thane Corporation for
competitive exam preparation.

28. Talent Minority Students must be identified at their graduation
first year level by conducting State level Scholarship Exam and they
must be selected for guidance purpose, so that desired results /
selections in MPSC/UPSC could be achieved.

29. Exclusive separate batches for minority students must be conducted
at State Government's Defence/Military Services Pre-exam Coaching
Institute, Aurangabad so that Muslim's ratio in Police and Defence/
Military can be improved.

30. Presently State Minority Commission runs 3 schemes (2008-09) ;

(1) Civil Services Pre-Exam Coaching Centre, at Divisional level.

(2) Police Recruitment Pre-Exam Training Scheme at 25 Districts.

(3) Marathi Foundation Classes at Urdu Medium High Schools.

These schemes are non-productive, non-benfitting to the minorities due
to their poor implementation and lack of funds. They must be brought
under direct control of Ministry of Minority Welfare, Government of
Maharashtra.

31. Secondly, under Central Government Sponsored Free Coaching &
Allied Scheme, very unknown private coaching centers are being
sponsored which do not produce any remarkable results. Therefore,
those private renowned coaching institutes which have very good
results in IIT, IIM's CAT, AIEEE, MHT-CET,GRE, GMAT, UPSC, MPSC, CA,
ICWA, CFA exams must be selected, or minority students studying in
well reputed institutes must be awarded the coaching fee and
scholarships.

32. Minority students studying job oriented P.G. Diplomas in Finance/
Business Management, Retail Management, Bio-informatics, Chem-
informatics, Bio-technology, Animation, etc. from private institutes
must be granted with complete tuition fees and scholarships.
33. State Government has taken a decision to construct 5 lakh
tenements in metropolitan region to provide temporary shelter to poor
and needy people of the city on leave and license basis. Among which
75 thousand tenements must be constructed for minorities.

34. In Maharashtra, where 1.14 lakh units have been completed at the
end of March 2009 during 2008-2009 and 44,811 units were in progress
under Indira Awas Yojna (IAY) of which 15% must be for minorities
means number of beneficiaries belonging to minorities must be 17,100
for completed units and 6,721 for units in progress. An expenditure of
Rs. 480.93 crore has been incurred upto March 2009, of which Rs. 72.13
crore must be utilized for minorities.

Under this scheme target for the year 2009-10 is constructions of
2,24,323 dwelling units. An out lay of Rs. 216.62 crore has been
proposed for this purpose. Hence 33,648 units must be targeted for
minorities in Maharashtra.
35. Under JNNURM, started by Central Government, till now 85 projects
amounting to Rs 12,204 crore have been approved for the State of
Maharashtra. Out of this Rs. 2,016 crore have been released by Central
Government to the State Government. From this amount, the projects of
315.9 crores must be benefiting to minorities ( 15% target ).

36. The State Government has decided to waive off Khavti loan of
9,65,265 Tribal families, amounting to Rs. 184.41 crore during current
year 2009-10. Further State Government has also waived off loans of
other State Finance Corporations like Mahatma Phule Arthik Vikas Maha
Mandal, but it didn't waived off the loans of Maulana Azad
Alpsankhyank Arthik Vikas Mahamandal which has released just Rs. 34.04
crore as loans to 16,056 beneficiaries.

Hence, it is strongly demanded to waive off loans given to minorities
as it has been done for beneficiaries of other State Finance
Corporations.

For effective time bound implementation of minority welfare schemes,
following are the suggestions to be worked out at State level and
local level by the Government and Non-Government Organizations.

1. Administrative set up of District Minority Welfare Officer, at each
district Head Quarter is essential at par with District Social Welfare
Officer by the State Government. (A.P. and U.P. model can be referred
in this regard)
2. For empowerment of Minorities, a State level “Minorities Welfare
Action Committee” must be constituted.
3. For mass awareness of the schemes up to root level, programs must
be organized at each taluqa/minority populated areas.

4. In depth study of implementation of each and every scheme,
practical difficulties observed during its implementation, number of
deserved applicants, all such aspects must be considered to review the
existing schemes to cater the needs of a large number of minorities.

(Courtesy: Indian Dalit Muslims Voice)

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://twocircles.net/2009aug29/fake_encounter.html

A fake encounter
Submitted by admin4 on 30 August 2009 - 11:02am. ArticlesCrime/
TerrorismIndian Muslim
By Dr Sandeep Pandey, SR Darapuri, Aridamanjit Singh,

There are reasons to believe that the killing of two alleged Pakistani
terrorists by NOIDA police and UP ATS in the early hours (2:15 am) of
Republic Day, 26th January, 2009, was a fake encounter and that these
two killed are probably the same Kashmiri youth who are mentioned in
the account ‘A Conscience Encountered’ reproduced below which had
exposed a planned encounter in October, 2008, in Lucknow. It is
possible that these two youth had become a liability for the police
and therefore were eliminated. Reasons that this encounter appears to
be fake are:

(1) The Pakistani identity is not conclusively established. The names
given out by police and ATS are Abu Ismail and Farooq. One passport
recovered from them is in the name of Ali Ahmad. Farooq has made a
dying declaration that he and Ismail are Pakistani nationals. The
police are yet to name a terror outfit to which the two belonged. The
DIG Meerut claimed that the terrorists also had two identity cards in
the name of students of two Indian institutions. (Two Kashmiri youth
who were to be encountered in October were kept in Meerut – see the
following account).

(2) Two AK-47 were recovered from the terrorists which were not used
in self defence even when police used fire. (These guns are probably
the same as ones bought for the planned October encounter in Lucknow –
see the following account).

(3) There are conflicting claims about chase before the terrorists
were shot dead. ATS claims that terrorists were chased from the Amity
University check post, 6 km from Sector 97 in NOIDA whereas the NOIDA
police claims that they were chased for 25 kms from Lal Kuan in
Ghaziabad that would have crossed at least 5 police posts on the way.
None of the police posts intervened.

(4) Sector 97 in NOIDA has also been the site of two other recent
encounters.

(5) The terrorists had stopped at a NOIDA tea stall to ask for
directions from a man, who coincidentally was a police informer.

(6) The Gypsy used by police in the encounter had a few number plates
lying inside which were seen immediately after the encounter. The
Gypsy has since gone missing.

(7) There is one bullet hole on the windshield of the Gypsy which
could not have been caused by the AK-47s, the only firearm recovered
from the terrorists, whereas there are no bullet marks on the Maruti
800 used by the terrorists.

(8) The credibility of the operation was questioned immediately on
following two days by two national dailies.

[Reference: ‘New Encounter in an Old Bottle’ by Neha Dixit, ‘Tehelka’,
14 February, 2009, Vol. 6, Issue 6, p. 23-24]

Dr Sandeep Pandey, SR Darapuri (9415164845) and Aridamanjit Singh
(9466283343)

Dr Sandeep Pandey: Noted social activist, President of People’s Union
for Human Rights (PUHR) and Magsaysay Awardee (2002)

SR Darapuri: Inspector General (IG) Police (retd) and Vice President
of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), UP

Aridamanjit Singh: Deputy Commandant (retd), Border Security Force
(BSF)

A conscience encountered
I’ve often been blamed by friends and colleagues for not keeping
secrets to myself. It has been my practice to share information with
people whenever I feel my conscience burdened. From my experience I
can say that whenever I’ve, under such circumstances, shared the
truth, it may have put some people in inconvenient positions but in
the long run it proved to be right thing to do. But, I must confess,
I’ve never encountered something as big as this. Till now it has been
only very personal things or at the most matters dealing with my
friends or colleagues. But the information I possess now is of
societal and national significance. I’m revealing it because it can
save two lives. I’m quite aware, that in the process, I’m raising a
finger at the departments concerned with internal and external
security of the country and can possibly attract some punitive action
too. But when I weighed the pros and cons of this I was convinced that
if by revealing this information lives of two youth can be saved then
I must do it. I must take the risk.

The UP Police in a planned joint operation with the army is likely to
kill two Kashmiri youth (obviously Muslim), already picked up and in
their custody somewhere in Meerut , in an ‘encounter’ with these
‘dreaded terrorists.’ The drama would be enacted in the Lucknow
cantonment area, the most plausible location for an anti-national to
be encountered in. Two AK-47 guns, already bought from Nepal and
brought through the Bahraich route, would be shown to have been
recovered from these ‘terrorists.’ Very high level police officials
and Colonels of the Army are involved in planning this Jamia Nagar
encounter equivalent of UP level operation. An encounter specialist,
posted at the Cantonment Police Station till recently, has been chosen
to implement the design. Recently, UP police has been presented in
poor light because of contradictory (and competitive) claims made by
Delhi and Mumbai police for having arrested terrorists which they
claim were responsible for bomb blast incidents in UP. The question
raised then is who are the people the UP police has arrested earlier
who are being claimed to be responsible for these same incidents. UP
police doesn’t want to remain behind in the game of bravery now being
played by police elsewhere. They are anxious to demonstrate that they
too can carry out high profile encounter operations like the one at
Jamia Nagar in Delhi . It is a different matter that civil society
groups and some media have questioned the bona fides of the Jamia
Nagar operation itself and the credibility of the government is at
stake.

The objective of the above operation is to bring laurels to UP police.
The operation would be justified in the name of national interest. UP
is under pressure because it has been projected as the breeding ground
for terrorist. The UP police wants to show that it is doing its part
in countering terrorism.

If this is true then nothing can be more shameful. Most of the
newspaper reading citizens would go along with the police version and
not question it in the national interest if such an operation takes
place. However, I’ve decided that my commitment to my nation is in
ensuring justice to its citizens or at least questioning what is not
just. Killing of innocent citizens in such operations or incidents
like hunger deaths and farmer suicides are all government’s
responsibility and no such incident can be pardoned.

However, if what I’ve written above is totally based on imagination
run wild and doesn’t have an iota of truth in it then I’ll be most
relieved person, because I shudder to think that responsible
government institutions could be engaged in such gross things. I
obviously apologize to the police and army for having questioned their
integrity. But the fact of the matter is that police has lost so much
credibility in this country that I thought it fit to bring out the
matter in open for the sake of two Kashmiri youth. We hope that not
only they will not be ‘encountered’ but no innocent will be subjected
to such a fate, ever.

[Dr Sandeep Pandey is a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee (2002) for emergent
leadership, member of National Presidium, People's Politics Front
(PPF), heads the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) and
did his PhD from University of California, Berkeley, USA. He taught at
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur before devoting his life
to strengthening people's movements in early 1990s. He can be
contacted at: ashaa...@yahoo.com. Website: www.citizen-news.org]

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.twocircles.net/2009aug28/mrs_badar_sayeed_fearless_leader.html

Mrs. Badar Sayeed: A fearless leader
Submitted by admin on 28 August 2009 - 7:00pm. ArticlesFeaturesIndia
PoliticsIndian MuslimWomen
By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

Politics is not a dirty word for her. In fact she enjoys being a
politician. Mrs. Badar Sayeed, who represents Triplicane constituency
in Tamil Nadu Legislative Assemby, always wanted to be part of the
decision making process of the country and politics gives her that
opportunity.

She credits Jayalalitha, her schoolmate and leader of All India Anna
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) for her entering the electoral
politics. But it was not just the friendship that got her the ticket
to the seat, Sayeed had worked hard to earn the respect that she gets
now.

After finishing her BA in Economics from University of Madras in 1966,
she lived in the USA and Canada for few years then returned to India
and decided to hit the books. In 1982, she got a degree in Law and
started practicing.

She is a practicing senior lawyer and her legal career has coincided
with her activism and she has used her training in law to champion the
causes that are dear to her. A fearless leader, she is not scared to
speak her mind on controversial topics. When the Indian Muslim
community were up in arms against Supreme Court judgment on Shahbano
and forced the government to enact a law that will eventually overturn
the judgement, Badar Sayeed organized a signature campaign against the
bill.

Over the years, she has argued against polygamy, triple-talaq, and
asked for increased access of women to the mosques. She takes social
work very seriously and helped establish ROSHINI, an NGO devoted to
women issues and children. She is also a founder member of Movement
for Empowerment of Muslim Indians (MOEMIN) and a patron of SAAYA which
is a network of Muslim Women’s Association.

Her formal entry to the politics came as a result of her being made
the Chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Minorities Commission. In 2002, she
was made the Chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Wakf Board, first woman to
hold that position. There she computerized the wakf board record,
launched their website and improved many schemes of the Board.

In 2004, she contested Lok Sabha election on AIADMK from Chennai South
seat. Though she won the largest number of votes by any AIADMK
candidate but she still lost the election. But her excellent
performance convinced the party to put her as the candidate for the
assembly election and this time she won from Triplicane, a first for
her party from that constituency.

Though she loves being in politics, she acknowledges that politics is
tough for women and especially a Muslim woman. But she is a fighter
and has achieved success though her hard work and determination.

But her success has not let her forget her Muslim roots. Though she
represent all the people of her constituency but she takes every
opportunity to help Muslims. To those Muslims in the position of
authority reluctant to help fellow Muslims for the fear that they will
be called communal, she says, if you don't help your own community,
who will?

She has no sympathy for Muslims who have victimhood mentality. She has
simple message for the Muslims of India- “get up from your slumber.”
She acknowledges that there is some discrimination in the system but
still if the community is determined there is no one that can stop
them for getting their due rights.

Link:

http://www.badersayeed.com/

.Victimhood mentality

Submitted by Ali Naqi Desnavi (not verified) on 30 August 2009 -
8:03pm.

Muslims are the most resilent among Indian communities. You can not
take away the victimhood mentality from any societies unless the
justice is done with those who have suffered due to one the other
reasons. Those who have suffered in Uphar Cinema fire and any other
incidences can't forsake victimhood mentality so soon unless justice
is done and diginity is restored.

Ali Naqi Desnavi

reply.What she has done so gr8

Submitted by Kashif (not verified) on 29 August 2009 - 2:56pm.

What she has done so gr8

Already a member of a highly previledged class , she remained there
thru out her life.

She is making her own Political career by going against the Community
Consensus on every issue , just to get the cheap popularity.

If she is against the polygamy , she should remove the ayat of Surah
Nisa which allows polygamy.

These small human minds will never understand the wisdom of Allah he
has given in his Law.

reply.Mrs Sayeed/What a breath of fresh air!

Submitted by gopi thomas (not verified) on 29 August 2009 - 2:40am.

"She has no sympathy for Muslims who ahve victimhood mentality. She
has simple message for the Muslism "get up from your slumber". She
acknowledges that there is some discrimination but if the community is
determined theer is no one that can stop them for getting their due
rights"

What a breath of fresh air to come from a leader of Muslim origin! I
just wish other leaders clutch to this wagon instead of the constant
harping and whininga nd compalining and do nothing!

Now because she campaigned for the Shahbano bill against the "muslim
opposition" she may not be considered a good Muslim. Plus she wears
silk sarees. Plus that she is an AIDMK leader and not one of those
jama-it-kiz-khan or Muslim Mujahuddin or whatever....

The more leaders like Mrs Sayeed, the more better for Muslims and
India!

...and Iam Sid Harth

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/City/Mysore/Dasara-is-fetival-of-Hindus-Muslims-Minister/articleshow/4951921.cms

Dasara is fetival of Hindus, Muslims: Minister
TNN 30 August 2009, 09:56pm IST

MYSORE: The official order designating Dasara as Naada Habba (the
festival of the land) is helping minister for Waqfs and minority
welfare Mumtaz Ali Khan to promote it as a secular festival.

"The flagship festival of Karnataka is a secular event. Dasara is not
the festival of Hindus alone, but of all. The religious minorities
should take part," the minister said on Sunday.

A year after the government order was issued designating Dasara as the
Naada Habba, the Dasara officials are moving in to include other
communities in the festivities. This season, the illumination sub-
committee has included places of worship of Muslims and Christians for
lighting and the cultural panel is hosting cultural events by students
from Urdu schools. The minister welcomed the initiative saying Dasara
should be celebrated by all. "It is our festival."

He told reporters: "Muslims should be part of Hindu festivals like
Ganesha Chaurthi. It is not un-Islamic. Hindu leaders should
reciprocate by being part of Muslim festivals."

The minister visited the families of three persons who were killed in
the recent communal violence. He is now considering to get them jobs
at minority institutions. He is also seeking to provide free education
to the children of the violence victims. He said banning groups like
the Popular Front of India, accused of inciting violence, will not
help. Be it Hindu or Muslim groups, banning of such bodies have failed
earlier as the extremist elements find other ways to act, he said.

[Sid Harth]

http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com/2009/09/happy-and-gay-in-pakistan.html

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
'Happy and Gay' in Pakistan?

India’s opposition BJP expels top leader for praising Pakistan founder
Jinnah

Afghanistan elections despite Taliban terror

Attacks Bloody Afghan Vote Preparations

Fight for spoils splits Taliban

Pakistan attack is ‘an affront to God and Islam’

Secular France Piqued by Muslim Bathing Attire

Human Rights Report On Murders of Gays in Iraq

Islamic Society of Woodbury gets approval from Council

Canadian officials feared backlash to film on Islam

Dutch sack Muslim scholar over Iran government ties

India: Muslim Student Leaves College over Headscarf Row

Germany: Muslims with psychological problems face problems

Muslims must unite for Islam's saviour: Iran

Music in Muslim Spain by Salik Malik

Bosnia: Muslim spiritual leader urges more Sharia law

Victorian terrorist Kent helped make jihadist video

The Challenge of Muslim Immigration by Gary Rosenblatt

Compiled by Aman Quadri

URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1664

-----------------

'Happy and Gay' in Pakistan?

Pakistani Laws Condemn Homosexuality, but Some People Are Willing to
Discuss Their Sexuality Openly

It wasn't until she was 16 years old, when she'd left her Pashtun
family in Peshawar for an elite school where the teachers were nuns,
that Minot realized she was gay.

Pakistan Gay/Lesbians

In this file photo, Women in burqa wait in line at a repatriation
centre in Peshawar, located in the North West Frontier Province on
April 30, 2009.

(Adrees Latif/Reuters)

"I found out when I dated my literature teacher [a nun]," she said. "I
got an A."

It is virtually unheard of in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for a
lesbian to be willing to discuss her sexuality openly, especially a
lesbian who is also Pashtun. The Taliban, who are overwhelmingly
Pashtun and were born in Pakistan's northwest tribal areas near
Peshawar, have pushed walls of bricks on top of gay Afghans.

But Minot, now 42, who asked that only her nickname be used because of
societal stigma, sat recently in jeans and a T-shirt in the Pakistani
city of Lahore, confidently talking about her sexuality, her
girlfriends and her attempts to be with men.

"I have been with men, two men," she said. "But that was to get the
confusion out of my mind. Since then," she said, pausing, "happy and
gay."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7391234&page=1

---------

India’s main opposition BJP expels its ex-foreign minister for
praising Jinnah

SHIMLA | AUG 19, 2009

The ghost of Mohammed Ali Jinnah came back to haunt the BJP again.

Two days after release of his book Jinnah-India, Partition,
Independence in Delhi, which was boycotted by BJP leaders, the 71-year-
old former union minister, who had held key portfolios at the centre,
was expelled from the party severing his 30-year association with it.
The MP from Darjeeling, who was in his hotel room, not far away from
the venue of BJP's brainstorming session of the top brass, was first
told not to attend the chintan baithak and was later told over
telephone that he had been expelled from the primary membership of the
BJP by party President Rajnath Singh.
The decision was taken by the BJP Parliamentary Board in the opening
session of the 3-day session that overshadowed the chintan baithak
that was to discuss the state of affairs in the organisation in the
wake of the Lok Sabha debacle and internal bickerings that have marred
its image of late.
This is the second occasion on which the party has taken a tough stand
against those praising Jinnah against the Sangh Parivar line.

L K Advani was forced to quit as BJP President after his infamous trip
in 2005 to Pakistan where he praised Jinnah.

Jaswant Singh, who has never been a member of the RSS, was a union
minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and had held the portfolios of
External Affairs, Finance and Defence, was virtually declared a
persona non grata when the entire BJP top brass and other leaders kept
away from the function on Monday in the capital for the release of his
book.
Singh, who had served with the Territorial Army, was elected to Lok
Sabha from Darjeeling in West Bengal with the support of Gorkhaland
outfit.
That things were not well with Jaswant Singh was clear this morning
when he did not stir out of his hotel even after the brainstorming
session began in Peterhof, the venue of the session.
His aides kept saying that he was not well and was resting.

Earlier, Jaswant Singh had been in the news when he had circulated a
note strongly critical of leaders seen as "responsible" for the Lok
Sabha defeat being rewarded with positions in the Parliamentary
Party.

He was then considered to be a dissident along with leaders like
Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie.

He was reportedly upset with the appointment of Arun Jaitley as the
leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha and of Sushma Swaraj as the
Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha

However, the party had sought to de-link him from the other dissidents
by nominating him as the Chairman of the prestigious Public Accounts
Committee of Parliament.

'He has been expelled'

BJP President Rajnath Singh, who had yesterday issued a statement
totally distancing the party from Jaswant Singh's book , announced the
party decision to the media.
"I had issued a statement yesterday that the party fully dissociates
itself from the contents of the book. Today I put up the matter before
the Parliamentary Board which decided to end his primary membership.
"So he has been expelled. From now onwards he will not be a member of
any body of the party or be an office bearer," he said on the
expulsion of the 71-year-old party veteran.
Rajnath Singh further said that he had told Jaswant Singh yesterday
not to come to Shimla for participating in the chintan baithak.
Jaswant Singh has been having an uneasy relationship with the party
leadership, particularly since the Lok Sabha elections on which he had
circulated a note demanding a thorough discussion on the debacle.

'No Sin against the party or the country'

Reacting to the party decision, a visibly emotional Jaswant Singh said
he had been "thrown out of a house in which he lived for 30 years" for
committing no no "sin" against the party or the country.

"30 years of my political life with BJP to end on this note has
saddened me and on grounds of writing a book," he said.
However, he maintained, "I am convinced that I have committed no no
sin. None whatsover against India or the party," he said adding he had
no no regrets about writing the book that led to his expulsion.

To a question about his expulsion for writing the book on Jinnah but
at the same time Advani continuing in positions after his infamous
trip to Pakistan hailing Jinnah, Singh said "you please ask this
question to Advani."
Asked if his expulsion was a result of a succession war or petty
quarrels in the party, Singh said "I don't know if there is a
succession war. It is something the party should decide because I am
no longer in a position to talk about internal affairs of the party."
Singh said he was never a member of RSS and it was for BJP to consider
the "wise counsel" of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who had talked of the
need for younger leadership in BJP.
He said Rajnath Singh called him this morning and told him not to come
to the brainstorming session because "tempers are running high".
Jaswant Singh said there ought not to be selectivity on dissent and
discussion. "There are members in the party who feel there is a great
deal of selectivity," he said.
About the book, he said he has been punished even before it was read
fully. "The day we stop reading, writing, thinking and reflecting we
will be a poorer nation. More so for a political organisation if it
stops reading, writing and thinking. We are entering a very very dark
alley," he said.
On the book, he said Hamid Haroon, Editor-in-Chief of Pakistan daily
Dawn, who had attended the book launch, had said it would set Pakistan
on fire but actually it was troubling India. © Copyright PTI.

---------

Afghanistan elections despite Taliban terror threats

19 Aug, 2009

Special thanks to Sergeant 1st Class Michael J. Carden, United States
Army, for the information submitted to the National Association of
Chiefs of Police's Terrorism Committee.

When Afghans go to the polls to cast their votes on Thursday, August
20, they'll see Afghans providing their own security, not US or NATO
forces, according to Sergeant Michael Carden of the American Forces
Press Service.

Carden provided a video news conference today from Kabul with
Australia's Brigadier General Damien Cantwell, chief of the election
task force for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. The
conference stressed that the Afghan security forces are completely in
charge of planning and implementing security efforts for the
elections.

"Afghan security forces have committed themselves fully across the
country with the intent to provide all they can within their resource
limitations in terms of manpower and other capabilities to ensure that
the best possible security picture is able to be presented to the
community," Gen. Cantwell said.

Full Report At:http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-
Examiner~y2009m8d19-Afghanistan-elections-to-move-forward-despite-
Taliban-terror-threats

---------

Attacks Bloody Afghan Vote Preparations

18 Aug, 2009

KABUL Only two days to the landmark presidential and provincial
council elections, Taliban fighters struck in different parts of
Afghanistan on Tuesday, August 19, killing election personnel, US
soldiers and civilians. "Taliban ambushed the provincial candidate and
he was killed," Khalil Aminzada, the police chief in the remote
northern province of Jawzjan, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Abdul Rahim, one of 72 candidates standing for the provincial council,
was shot dead in a the province, which is relatively sheltered from
Taliban who focus their attacks in the south and east.

At least three other provincial candidates, from a field of more than
3,000, have been killed ahead of Thursday s election day.

About 17 million registered voters are due to select 420 provincial
councillors in 34 provinces and a new president.

Incumbent West-backed Hamid Karzai, in powers since shortly after the
2001 US-led invasion, is the frontrunner but could be forced into a
run-off against his popular former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Taliban, ousted by the Americans from power eight years ago, has been
leading a guerrilla war against the US-led and government troops, with
violence now at record highs.

It fighters have threatened to attack the 223-million-dollar election,
warning voters to stay away from the polls.

Full Report At: http://islamonline.com/news/articles/2/Attacks_Bloody_Afghan_Vote_Preparations.html

---------

Fight for spoils splits Taliban

19 Aug, 2009

PESHAWAR: As various militant groups fight it out to inherit about two
billion rupees in cash and weaponry left behind by Baitullah Mehsud,
government and security officials say it will take the Tehrik-i-
Taliban Pakistan a considerable time to rebuild and recover from a
shocking blow to its leadership.

‘The cracks within the TTP are all too visible. In classical counter-
insurgency terms, the fissures within the TTP conglomerate suggest
that their decline has started. We are over the hump,’ a senior
security official with considerable experience in counter-terrorism
told Dawn.

‘There is a struggle for the leadership and this would include the
struggle for power, territory, stature and resources,’ a senior
military official said.

And signs of fissures within the TTP are all too evident, these
officials said. The TTP has not been able to choose a new leader.
Indeed, different accounts speak of a shootout at a shura meeting in
Makeen soon after Baitullah’s death to choose his successor, between
Waliur Rehman and Hakeemullah, two top aides of the slain militant
commander.

Subsequently, two militant groups clashed in the Orakzai tribal region
followed by an ambush of a group of militants associated with Wana-
based Maulvi Nazir in the Mehsud-dominated region in South Waziristan.

‘The TTP will not be the TTP it was. Their time is up. We feel that
the threat to national security is receding,’ a cautious military
official said.

Formed in Dec 2007, the TTP has been able to accumulate resources and
strength at such a lightning speed that it baffled and stunned the
national security apparatus that eventually declared its leader a
national enemy after trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to rope him in
through flawed peace deals.

Full report at:http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-
library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/08-Fight-for-spoils-splits-
Taliban-ts-06

---------

Pakistan attack is ‘an affront to God and Islam’

By: George Conger. 18 Aug, 2009

The recent attack on the Christian village of Gojra in Pakistan must
be denounced by all Christians and Muslims as an affront to God, the
C-1 World Dialogue group of religious leaders has declared.

Pakistan attack is ‘an affront to God and Islam’

On Aug 9, the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres and the
Grand Mufti of Egypt Dr Ali Gomaa released a statement on behalf of
the interfaith group saying “murder, arson and theft committed in the
name of God is both a crime and sacrilege.”

The “perpetrators of this attack” had committed crimes “not only
against Christians but against Pakistan and beyond even that, against
the honour and dignity of Islam,” they said.

They called for the government to bring the killers to justice and to
provide “security and protection for all religious minorities.” “False
rumours” of the desecration of a Koran “were used to inflame those who
launched the attack,” they said.

“It is important that what is sacred in religion should not be
abused, but it is also vital that there is proper protection from
false and malicious allegations and such formal protections as this
may require. We call upon all pastors and imams in every mosque and
church to speak out against these deeds and to spread the true message
of cooperation harmony and peace,” the C-1 World Dialogue group said.

They urged all religious leaders to teach “the message of tolerance
and cooperation so that we can overcome differences and together build
a more secure future for all.”

Full report at:http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?
NewsID=4897

---------

Secular France Piqued by Muslim Bathing Attire

By Martin Barilla 18 Aug, 2009

A woman in France, a convert to Islam, was turned away from a public
pool for wearing a burkini: the Muslim answer to the more liberal
bikini.

The debate over Muslim attitudes regarding clothing, especially for
women, took another turn in France when on August 1 a woman was
refused admission to a public swimming pool in a Parisian suburb. The
citizen identified as “Carole” had previously frequented the pool but
was this time turned back by administrators who decided that her
bathing costume, which some call "a burkini," was not acceptable.

In a country famed for its topless beaches and sun-loving bathers,
Carole was turned away for wearing a garment that revealed nothing but
her face, hands, and feet, much in the tradition of Muslim countries
such as Iran and Saudi Arabia that impose strict dress codes on women.

Having been previously allowed to bathe at the pool in her aquatic
hijab, Carole went to the nearest police station to file a complaint
that she had been subjected to illegal “segregation.” Said the convert
to Islam, “I understand that it is something that may come as a
surprise, but what bothers me the most is that they would have me
believe that it is a political problem.” Carole is planning to file
suit against the the town of Emerainville, which operates the pool.

One of the pool administrators gave assurances that “under no
circumstances” should the affair be understood as a “political or
religious matter” but instead a matter of “hygiene.” As for using
other services provided by the community, such as the public library,
the same administrator said that Carole is welcome to wear a veil
there. He also admitted that there had been an error in previously
allowing the Muslim woman to swim in her burkini.

Full Report At: http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11518&pageid=24&pagename=Society

---------

Human Rights Report On Murders Of Gays In Iraq

By Steve Inskeep 18 Aug, 2009

Possibly having run out of other people to kill for the moment, Iraq's
Shiite militias are turning on gay men. That's the conclusion of a
Human Rights Watch report out this week.

The report is painful to read. It begins with the words of an Iraqi
man describing the abduction, murder, and mutilation of his partner --
and it's not clear from the description if the three events happened
in that order. Like many HRW reports it appears to be based on the
specific, detailed accounts of survivors and eyewitnesses.
Homosexuality in Iraq is so thoroughly submerged that according to the
report there is not even a commonly accepted term for it, no Iraqi
equivalent of "gay." Nevertheless it has become a major focus for
Iraqi militiamen, who have waged a "killing campaign" to eliminate
what some consider it a social disease brought by the American army.

For anyone who may be tempted to think that HRW is just superimposing
Western values on a Muslim country, the report goes on to allege that
murders are disallowed under the tenets of Islam. The authors of the
HRW report took the trouble to look up Islamic law on the subject.
Muslim jurisprudence, they write, "considers homosexual conduct
between men a crime," punishable by anything ranging from a warning to
death.

Yet it would appear that even a conservative reading of Islam offers
some safeguards for people suspected of violating religious dictates.
There must be substantial evidence for their behavior. There are even
more requirements before a serious punishment can be imposed. A false
allegation can lead to punishment for the accuser.

It is hard to believe that a man whose body was thrown in the garbage
received the due process to which he was entitled even under religious
law. And it goes without saying that he received no protection at all
from the actual civil authorities in Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/recommended_reading_human_righ.html

---------

Islamic Society of Woodbury gets approval from Council

By: Hank Long 18 Aug, 2009

Organizers for the center needed to seek a conditional-use permit
because the property is zoned for industrial park use.

The city has approved a number of conditional-use permits to other
tenants in the Crossroads Commerce Center including Spirit of Life
Church, Executive Automotive and K-9 Connection.

Representatives for the Islamic Society of Woodbury said they plan to
open this fall. The organization will function as a community
gathering place and worship center.

Tags: islamic society of woodbury, conditional use permit, local news,
woodbury, city, council

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---------

Canadian officials feared backlash to film on Islam: reports

By Stewart Bell 18 Aug, 2009

Canadian security officials closely monitored last year's release of a
Dutch film about Islam, fearing it could spark violent protests,
documents released under the Access to Information Act show.

The National Post has obtained copies of seven intelligence reports,
circulated by Ottawa last year, that warn of a possible backlash
against the documentary Fitna and Danish cartoons of the Muslim
prophet Muhammad.

"There are concerns that reprinting of the cartoons and the release of
the movie could provoke the kind of violent reaction which occurred
within some Muslim communities overseas when the cartoons were
originally published," one of the reports says.

The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, the federal agency that wrote
the reports, typically tracks terrorist threats, but the documents
show that during four months in 2008 its focus turned to cartoons and
movies and whether they would incite Muslims to violence.

More than 100 died in 2006 during worldwide protests by Muslims angry
about the Muhammad cartoons. The issue has resurfaced after Yale
University Press said it would not include the images in a forthcoming
book, The Cartoons That Shook the World, due to fears of violence.

Full report at:http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1906383

---------

Dutch sack Muslim scholar over Iran government ties

18 Aug, 2009

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch city of Rotterdam and its university
have fired Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan as an adviser to the
city over his involvement with groups that detractors say hurt his
role as an expert on integration issues.

Ramadan is a visiting professor of theology at Erasmus University in
Rotterdam, the Netherlands' second-largest city.

Rotterdam's mayor is Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim who was formerly junior
minister for social affairs and who has vowed to ease tensions between
the city's native Dutch and a growing immigrant population.

Ramadan was criticized after media reported last week he was hosting a
weekly television show on broadcaster Press TV, which Rotterdam says
is financed by the Iran government.

"Although there is no doubt about the personal effort of Tariq
Ramadan, both boards (of the city and the university) find this
indirect relation with this repressive regime or even to be associated
with it, not acceptable," the city of Rotterdam said

in a statement, published on its website on Tuesday.

Full report at:http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/
idINIndia-41827920090818

---------

India: Muslim Student Leaves College over Headscarf Row

The Huffington Post 18 Aug, 2009

A Muslim girl who was asked by her college near Mangalore, India, to
stop wearing her headscarf to class due to classmates' complaints has
left her studies as a result, NDTV reports.

The Mangalore College has defended its request, saying it did so not
on the basis of any personal issues but because they wish to quell
tensions between Muslim and Hindu students.

The college principal said, "It is one rule for all students. She is
the only one not following the rule."

There have been an increasing number of reports about Hindus and
Muslims being asked not to speak to one another or to eat together in
restaurants, NDTV reports.

Confrontations between Muslim and non-Muslims revolving around
traditional Muslim dress have been surfacing in recent weeks.

A Paris pool refused entry to a Muslim woman recently for showing up
in a burqini, swimwear resembling a wetsuit which covers the body from
head to toe and incorporates a hood. She had been previously admitted
to the same pool but on the latter occasion was told she could not
enter unless wearing traditional swimming attire.

Earlier this summer, young pregnant Muslim woman Marwa al-Sherbini was
stabbed to death in a German courtroom by a man who had previously
called her a "terrorist" and tried to take her headscarf.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/18/india-muslim-student-leav_n_262151.html

---------

Germany: Muslims with psychological problems face additional
difficulties

Islam in Europe 17 Aug, 2009

Psychological illness among Muslims is regarded as a special problem.
Many doctors do not know how to deal with the situation, while
treatment concepts and patient-focused services are lacking in
Germany. By Cigdem Akyol

Yilmaz A. is 60 years old and came with his wife to the Ruhr region of
Germany from eastern Turkey some 36 years ago. Mr A., who's Kurdish,
worked as a welder. The couple had three daughters, and lived quietly
in the middle of the Ruhr – his only link to his home country being a
satellite dish so that he could watch Turkish television.

His family isn't particularly religious. Neither his wife not his
daughters wears a headscarf. Mr A. never goes to the mosque,
preferring instead the tearoom. Ten years ago, he lost his job and did
not look for a new one. He began to lose himself in thought and his
psychological state became unbalanced.

Mr A. says that, for a long time, he didn't know what was wrong with
him. Neither did his doctors. Only later did a psychiatrist recognize
his symptoms as being those of clinical depression and, since then, he
has been taking the anti-depressant drug Fluoxetin.

Lack of interest in the needs of the Muslims

Mr A. is just one of 15 million migrants living in Germany. Among them
are some 3.5 million persons of Muslim faith, who have turned Islam
into Germany's second largest religious community. For far too long,
the majority society has not interested itself in the life led by "the
foreigners" apart from their work in the coal mines and on the
construction sites.

Full report at:http://europenews.dk/en/node/25400

---------

Muslims must unite for Islam's savior: Iran

19 Aug, 2009

Dubai, August 19: The spokesman of Iran's Supreme Leader called on
neighboring countries to

mobilize their forces in preparation for the coming of the savior of
Islam and to unite with the Islamic Republic in paving the way for his
arrival, an Iranian news agency reported Sunday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's spokesman, Ali Saeedi, said countries like
Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan should gather together
all their forces in order to make drastic changes to prepare for the
coming of al-Mahdi al-Montazar, Arabic for "the awaited guided one."

" Since the armed forces are commanded by the Supreme Leader, they are
thus obeying the orders of the Awaited Mahdi "
Ali Saeedi, Iran rep.

"We still have a long way to go in order to achieve this. We have to
train honest forces that can stop the obstacles that may hinder the
coming of the Mahdi like the United States and Israel," Saeedi said in
statement posted by the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA).

Saeedi also said that the supreme leader of Iran is the direct
representative of the Mahdi and that obeying him is like obeying the
"guided one," who is the prophesized savior of Islam.

Ali Saeedi

"Since the armed forces are commanded by the Supreme Leader, they are
thus obeying the orders of the awaited Mahdi," Saeedi said, adding
"the Revolutionary Guards and the armed forces in Iran hold religious
authority to prepare for the appearance of the Mahdi."

The Mahdi is believed by Muslims to be arriving before Judgment Day to
rid the world of injustice. Although present in both major Islamic
schools of thought, the Mahdi is more prominent in the Shiite doctrine
than the Sunni one.

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/muslims-must-unite-islams-savior-iran

---------

Music in Muslim Spain

By Salik Malik 19 Aug, 2009

It is widely thought that music is forbidden in Islam. Scholars cite
hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, that certain types of
music distract from worship, and that music is a source of temptation
that leads to committing other excesses and sins. Others cite hadith
showing that the Prophet Muhammad did permit singing, as long as the
purpose of the song itself is beneficial, and the words used in the
song fall within the range of permitted speech.

For example, songs that are neither defamatory nor incite to sin, that
are sung to accompany work or stir the audience to remembrance and
unity are permitted. According to this interpretation, Islamic
practice recognizes the elemental human affinity for rhythmic speech
and melody. There is also wide agreement that use of the drum to
enhance and lead the rhythm of song is permitted.

Music offers an interesting example of the intersections and
differences between religious beliefs and culture in Muslim societies.
Whatever religious scholars may have said about musical expression,
every cultural and ethnic group now counted among the Muslims of the
world has its musical traditions and expressions.

These traditions have been adapted to Islamic ideals, incorporating
spiritual ideas and celebrating Islamic themes. They have become part
of Islamic rites of passage and events such as marriages, births, and
festivals. Many groups have brought their native musical instruments
into the culture and retained them, as well as passing them on to
others. Drums and other rhythm instruments, plucked and bowed stringed
instruments, and horns and flutes, are found among the musical
traditions and folk arts of Muslim peoples. The common thread of the
art of the human voice runs through in Arabic and other languages such
as Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and hundreds of other Asian, African, and
European languages.

Full report at:http://www.daily.pk/music-in-muslim-spain-9161/

---------

Bosnia: Muslim spiritual leader urges more Sharia law

17 Aug, 2009

Sarajevo, (AKI) – Bosnia’s Muslim spiritual leader, Reiss-ul-Ulema
Mustafa Ceric, has drawn strong criticism from moderate Muslims and
from Bosnian Serbs, after he called for Islamic Sharia law to be
incorporated into the Bosnian constitution.

Ceric made the controversial suggestion when he conducted Bosnia's
first Sharia mass wedding on Saturday in the central city of Zenica.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi reportedly paid for the weddings for the
20 couples and some 500 guests.

“In this exceptional place, in the exceptional city of Zenica, we are
witnessing a magnificent event,” Ceric said. “I hope this is only the
beginning and that we will have many such occasions in the years to
come,” he added.

Ceric is no stranger to controversy, and his pronouncements often
trigger a heated reaction.

In May, while visiting a Muslim community in Serbia’s Muslim-majority
Sandzak region bordering Montenegro, Ceric said "no force could
separate" Muslims in Serbia from those in Bosnia, which he has
described as a homeland for Muslims.

Strict Sharia law drastically reduces the rights of women, allows
polygamy for men, forbids marrying non-Muslims and sanctions cruel
penalties including stoning.

Full Report At: http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=3.0.3666977693

---------

Victorian terrorist Kent helped make jihadist video

By Milanda Rout 19 Aug, 2009

A VICTORIAN terrorist helped create an "unapologetic propaganda"
Islamic jihad video featuring sermons from Osama bin Laden, tributes
to martyrs and a graphic image of a dead young extremist.

Prosecutors told the Victorian Supreme Court plea hearing for Shane
Kent that the video glorified the role of Muslim jihads and encouraged
viewers to kill in the name of Islam and was placed on a website
supporting al-Qa'ida.

The video, which was played to the court for the first time yesterday,
had opening scenes of calming cascading water with the logo of
extremist publisher At-Tibyan -- two AK-47 rifles crossed over the
Koran -- before a tribute montage of "household names of terrorism".

According to prosecutors, the video was uploaded on the At-Tibyan
website which "purported virtues and justification for jihad actions
as practised by al-Qa'ida" and its seven-minute introduction was
created by Kent.

The 32-year-old pleaded guilty last month to one count of being a
member of a terrorist organisation and one reduced count of recklessly
making a document -- the video -- connected with preparing a terrorist
act. He was on the verge of a retrial after a jury last year was
unable to reach a verdict on whether he belonged to a Melbourne terror
cell.

Prosecutor Lesley Taylor told the court that Kent had a background in
computers and had created the cascading water effect in the
introduction of the video as well as the montage of martyrdom, which
featured images of what the video called "martyred scholars" or
"imprisoned scholars" with comments like, "we hope you have an
eternally peaceful life".

Full report at:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/
0,25197,25950447-2702,00.html

---------

The Challenge Of Muslim Immigration

by Gary Rosenblatt

The only thing surprising about the decision last week of a
distinguished Ivy League university press to, in effect, censor a key
element of a book about censorship is how predictable the result was.

The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” by Jytte Klausen, a
Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University, deals with
the deadly controversy that erupted in 2006 after a Danish newspaper
printed 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a satirical way.
Muslims in the Mideast and Africa staged violent acts of protest,
incensed over what they considered to be a blasphemous act, since
Islam forbids images of the prophet. More than 200 people died as a
result.

Fearful of causing further violence, Yale University Press, the book’s
publisher, consulted with two dozen experts on Islam and
counterterrorism as to whether or not the cartoons that set off the
riots should be reproduced in the book. The unanimous response was
“no,” and extended to other depictions of Muhammad, including a
drawing for a children’s book, that were to be included.

One of the experts who was consulted, Ibrahim Gambari, special adviser
to the secretary general of the United Nations and former foreign
minister of Nigeria, asserted: “You can count on violence if any
illustration of the prophet is published. It will cause riots, I
predict, from Indonesia to Nigeria.”

How sad that we have come to this stage of cowering fear and self-
censorship in the face of fundamentalist bullies. And that’s in the
U.S., a country far less subject to Islamic fundamentalism than the
European continent, and from Yale, whose university motto is the
Hebrew “urim v’tumim,” meaning “light and truth.”

Some academics here like Reza Aslan, who writes on Islam, called the
move by Yale University Press “frankly, idiotic” and beyond “academic
cowardice.” But the fact is that outspoken critics of Islamic
extremism have been murdered — most notably, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van
Gogh, who was stabbed by a young Muslim man for making a film critical
of how Islamic women are treated — or threatened with death, like
Ayaan Hirsi, the Somali-born Dutch feminist and politician who fled to
America.

Full report at: http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c52_a16540/Editorial__Opinion/Gary_Rosenblatt.html

URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1664

Posted by SultanShahin at 7:06 PM

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402900.html

A Major Indian Artist Offends Hindus, and Galleries Turn Fearful

By Rama Lakshmi

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

NEW DELHI -- In the heady celebration of the boom in India's
contemporary art market in recent years, an iconic artist has been
conspicuous by his absence. Maqbool Fida Husain is hailed by many as
India's Picasso, and the 94-year-old artist's paintings are coveted at
international auctions, but galleries back home are afraid to show his
works.

His paintings have drawn the wrath of hard-line Hindus who are
incensed that some depict Hindu goddesses in the nude.

Angry protests, hundreds of court cases and arrest warrants drove the
Muslim artist to exile in Dubai three years ago. And for the second
year in a row, Husain's paintings were not displayed at India's
biggest art extravaganza, which closed Saturday in New Delhi,
triggering a renewed debate about creative freedom and religious
sensitivities in this fractious Hindu-majority secular nation.

"M.F. Husain has become the symbol of freedom of expression in India
today. Intolerance is on the rise, and displaying Husain in India is
seen to be unsafe," said K. Bikram Singh, author of an illustrated
biography of Husain. "We say we are a multi-religious, multi-cultural
society. But our secular values are hollow."

The organizers of the India Art Summit said it was too risky to
display Husain's works without police protection against Hindu groups
that have vowed to destroy them.

"We are not censoring Husain. The problem with displaying his works
has been around for some time. We are victims, too," said Neha Kirpal,
associate director of the art fair.

The religious outrage over the nude paintings of Hindu goddesses,
which came to light in the 1990s, is not unlike the anger in the
United States that followed the 1989 exhibition of a photo of a urine-
soaked crucifix by Andres Serrano. Since then, some Hindu groups have
carried on a sustained campaign to attack auctions and exhibitions of
his works and even of his reprints. His effigies have been burned on
the streets and art galleries now tuck his works away from the public
eye. Hundreds of police complaints and court cases are pending against
Husain.

In 2007, a southern Indian state announced an award for Husain, but
quickly canceled the ceremony when Hindu activists threatened not to
allow Husain to step on Indian soil. Instead, a state official flew to
Dubai to hand Husain the award.

This month, members of the Hindu Public Awakening Organization in the
western beach resort of Goa sent a memorandum to the state museum
directing them to take down his art.

The flamboyant, Ferrari-driving artist, who liked to show up at elite
Indian clubs barefoot, divides his time between Dubai and London now.
His large body of work runs into several thousand pieces and includes
a series on the British colonial Raj, Hindu epics, Mother Teresa,
Bollywood cinema and horses. His bold brushstrokes and vibrant colors
hark back to his very early days of struggle when he lived on the
pavements and painted cinema billboards, known as hoardings, for a
living.

Last year, his painting "Battle of Ganga and Jamuna" sold for
$1,609,000 at a Christie's auction.

"It is shameful that the art dealers and galleries that became rich on
M.F. Husain for years are so cowardly today," said Sadanand Menon, an
independent cultural critic. "The so-called 'friends of Husain' hold
tributes occasionally. But the art community, students, writers and
the academia are largely silent on this issue."

Husain recently said in London that he was "dreaming all the time to
return to India," reported the Press Trust of India. But his return
looks increasingly difficult.

"M.F. Husain is an absconder under Indian law. If he believes he has
not sinned, he should come back and face the anger of the Hindus,"
said Surendra Jain, spokesperson of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu
Council). "He repeatedly insults our faith. We have a right to be
angry. He paints his own mother fully clothed, but paints Hindu
goddesses naked? It cannot be tolerated in the name of artistic
freedom."

An ongoing exhibition of paintings by Pranava Prakash in New Delhi
shows Husain in the nude, with the provocative title "Your Turn."

A new exhibition by contemporary artist Ravi Gossain opened Thursday
as a tribute to his "art guru" Husain. He said Husain may have
committed a few mistakes when he named the nudes after Hindu goddesses
but his place in the Indian art canon is unquestionable.

"Husain is the engine that drives Indian art globally. You can box him
for painting nude goddesses. But his life, his art is too big," said
Gossain. "The hate will not survive, and a few paintings will not
bring down our great Hindu culture."

[Sid Harth]

http://www.ptinews.com/news/266680_Idgah-Maidan-dispute-returns-to-Supreme-Court

Idgah Maidan dispute returns to Supreme Court

STAFF WRITER 20:8 HRS IST

Hubli, Sep 5 (PTI) The Idgah Maidan dispute will be referred back to
the Supreme Court with the representatives of Hindus and Muslim
communities failing to arrive at an amicable solution to the row
within the deadline set by the apex court that ended today.

The third and final round of parleys between leaders of both the
communities held by Hubli-Dhawad Municipal Corporation Commissioner P
S Vastrad on the directive of the Supreme Court today failed to yield
any solution.

While Hindus want the maidan, which has been at the centre of frequent
communal tensions particularly during the Ramzan and also during the
Independence and Republic Day functions, to be barricaded, Muslims
have opposed it.

Vastrad told reporters that both groups stuck to their stand, which
has been recorded and would be submitted to the apex Court. Two
meetings were held last month to hammer out a compromise formula.

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Debate/Do-something-substantial-for-minorities/articleshow/4760403.cms

Do something substantial for minorities

10 Jul 2009, 0233 hrs IST,

Print EMail Discuss Share Save Comment Text:

...and I am Sid harth

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Its-not-just-tokenism-but-a-sham/articleshow/4760398.cms

...and I am Sid Harth

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Sachar-report-is-Sibals-Bible-in-HRD/articleshow/4606546.cms

Sachar report is Sibal's Bible in HRD

2 Jun 2009, 0516 hrs IST, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: On his second day in office, human resource development
minister Kapil Sibal turned his attention to efforts to improve the
educational status of Muslims. Large sections of Muslims backed
Congress’ election projects in states like Uttar Pradesh and West
Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls.

In a meeting that lasted nearly an hour, Mr Sibal reviewed efforts
made by the ministry and the state of educational facilities that
Muslims can access. In this crucial sector, the minister will not be
straying too far from his predecessor, Arjun Singh.

The HRD minister's urgency to implement measures to improve the
educational status of Muslims is indicative of the top priority being
accorded to consolidating the Muslim support. The minister is in
favour of setting up a large number of residential schools for girls —
Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya — in minority concentrated districts.
This, Mr Sibal hopes, will increase the penetration of education among
Muslim girl children.

With the Sachar Committee emerging as an important agenda for the UPA
government, Mr Sibal would be pleased that his ministry is on the
right track. There has been an increase in the rate of enrollment of
Muslims at the primary and upper primary levels over the last year.

The enrollment at primary level has increased from 9.4% in 2007-08 to
10.49% in 2008-09. At upper primary level, it increased from 7.5% to
8.54%. The rate of out-of-school children among Muslims has dropped
from 9.97% to 3.43% in recent years.

There are, however, areas of concern as well. Against the target to
appoint 21,945 sanctioned teachers in schools in minority concentrated
areas, only 6,972 could be recruited by December 31, 2008. The
government has been falling behind on its target of setting up new
primary schools in minority concentrated districts as well.

It was to set up 4,404 new primary schools in the minority
concentrated under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and some 3,000 schools
were actually constructed by December 31 last year.

Other areas where the HRD ministry has not been able to implement the
Sachar panel's recommendation relates to scrutinising school textbooks
for communal content. A national textbook council had been proposed to
undertake this task, but it is yet to get off the drawing board.

On the higher education, the ministry is likely to push the UGC to
link financial allocations for institutions to the diversity in their
student population.

While the policy framework vis-a-vis education of Muslims is largely
defined by the Sachar Committee and the Prime Minsiter's 15-point
programme, the minister is keen on pushing for greater budgetary
allocation for this segment as well.

A senior HRD ministry official said that the minister will push for
adequate budgetary allocation for madarsa modernisation and Urdu
Promotion Council. Even so, Mr Sibal does not want to make
participation in the madarsa modernisation programme compulsory. "It
has to be voluntary", the official said.

The government is implementing Rs 325 crore madarsa modernisation
scheme, and in the last fiscal Rs 12 crore was released to the Urdu
Promotion Council.

Setting up a central madarsa board continues to be on the ministry's
agenda. Final steps would be taken only when there is consensus. The
idea of a central madarsa board has been a contentious affair, with
strong views both for and against.

Despite Mr Arjun Singh's keenness to set up such a board, and many
rounds of consultation not withstanding, the central madarsa board
failed to get off the drawing board. It is expected that the ministry
will review its position on the Equal Opportunity Commission, the HRD
had not lent its support to setting up such a commission on grounds of
duplication of efforts.

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Sachar-pitches-for-yet-another-quota/articleshow/660478.cms

Sachar pitches for yet another quota

1 Dec 2006, 0108 hrs IST, TNN

NEW DELHI: The Rajinder Sachar commission report, tabled in Parliament
on Thursday, has suggested that reservation be given to the most
deprived sections among Muslims through the creation of a new category
called most backward classes (MBCs).

It recommended the constitution of an Equal Opportunity Commission
(EOC) and called for new nomination procedures to increase the
participation of minorities in (political) governance structures at
the grassroots.

The committee, which looked into the relative deprivation of Muslims
as compared to other socio-religious groups (SRCs), suggested that
eligibility for entrance tests, such as those for defence, civil
services and banking examinations, be extended to candidates with
degrees from madrassas. It called for the linking of madrassas with
higher secondary school boards and sought “flexibility” to allow
madrassa graduates to move to mainstream education. It also noted that
the government would have to set up schools where madrassas were not
available, and suggested that a process of evaluating the content of
school textbooks be institutionalised.

The committee recommended promoting priority sector lending among
Muslims and sought policy initiatives to improve the participation of
minorities, especially Muslims, in the business of commercial banks.
It has also called for a policy to enhance the participation of
minorities in the micro-credit schemes of Nabard. It has pointed out
that all the 58 districts with more than 25% of Muslim population need
to be brought under the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme.

The committee called for a “more rational delimitation procedure” that
does not reserve constituencies with high minority population for SCs
— to improve the political participation of the community. It said
that of the 543 Lok Sabha members, only 33 are Muslims. “A mere
material change will not bring about true empowerment of minorities,”
the report said. “Given the power of numbers in a democratic polity,
based on universal franchise, minorities in India lack effective
agency and political importance,” it added.

Observing that only a “very small” proportion of government and public
sector employees are Muslims, that too concentrated at lower
positions, the panel recommended that minority persons could be made
to sit on interview panels.

According to the report, Muslims formed a mere 4.9% of the total
number of government employees (88,44,669). Muslims representation in
security agencies stood at 3.2% of the total of 18,79,134 personnel.
It did not specify whether armed forces were included in the tally. It
also recommended the creation of a National Data Bank (NDB) where all
relevant data for various SRCs could be maintained.

In a section termed ‘linking incentives to diversities’, the committee
said grants can be given to those educational institutions those are
able to have higher diversity and sustain it. The panel also
recommended incentives for private sector to encourage diversity in
the workforce, and for builders for coming up with housing complexes
with diverse resident populations. The Equal Opportunity Commission
(EOC), to look into the grievances of deprived groups, has a precedent
in the UK Race Relations Act 1976, the panel pointed out.

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/UPA-faces-another-quota-riddle/articleshow/462833.cms

UPA faces another quota riddle

18 Nov 2006, 0026 hrs IST, TNN

NEW DELHI: The Sachar committee report — which talks of a ‘legal
basis’ for equal opportunity, while suggesting measures for improving
the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in the country — is likely to
lend ammunition to the demand for a Muslim quota even as the Congress
and the UPA government remain undecided on how to tackle the
expectation politically.

The party, which is yet to recover from the OBC quota hangover, is now
faced with the prospect of being heckled into submission, as before,
by its own quota enthusiasts.

Rajinder Sachar committee’s report, which was presented to Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday, suggested that Muslims be given
more opportunities for higher participation in governance, that
Madrasas be brought into the mainstream to facilitate their alignment
with other educational institutions and that Muslims be given more
access to bank credit.

While steering clear of recommending any sort of quota — something
that would have turned the government’s dilemma into a full-blown
crisis — it has, however, left a big enough window for the quota
advocates in the UPA such as LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, RJD chief
Laloo Yadav and Congress minister AR Antulay to press their case.

The Congress itself could be seen as having joined this pro-quota
group given its first reaction to Mr Antulay’s and senior leader
Veerappa Moily’s statements on the Muslim quota issue. The party had
unearthed its ’04 election manifesto to appear supportive of the two
leaders’ call for inclusion of Dalit Muslims and Christians in the SC/
ST reserved category and for bringing Muslims into the OBC mainstream
respectively.

This backing has now built-up expectations that the Congress will
support the demand for a quota for the disadvantaged in the Muslim
community. Given the constitutional and political impediments in the
path of such a demand, the Congress stands to lose most if it is
forced to back its words with actions. This is so because the party’s
actual stand on the issue is not yet final and the BJP has already
made known its opposition to such a quota.

Sections within the Congress are against another set of reservations
post the OBC-quota episode and this group includes several general
secretaries as well as the party’s minority affairs department. This
Congress cell has distanced itself from the concept of caste
stratification among Muslims. “There can be no ‘Dalit Muslims’, or
‘Thakur Muslims’ or ‘Brahmin Muslims’.

Those who have converted to Islam become just Muslims. Of course there
are stratifications based on class and socio-economic status. Those
who fall at the lower end of this divide must be given some form of
encouragement to better their lot.... like providing monetary aid for
higher education or loans for self-employment,” Congress minority
department chairman Imran Kidwai said.

He added that the Constitution itself did not make provisions for
reservations on the basis of religion or even caste. The department is
set to meet very soon to discuss the Sachar committee report and even
a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting is on the cards.

Given that the Sachar committee has put out data showing how poorly
the Muslim community has fared post-independence, a period dominated
by Congress rule, it is also likely to herald the start of another
blame game within the party.

While Sachar committee was set up at the behest of prime minister
Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Congress leaders
are wondering whose idea was it to include such a measure in the
party’s ’04 election manifesto. And there is talk of Arjun Singh yet
again in the air.

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/T-K-Arun/The-Muslim-question/articleshow/733273.cms

The Muslim question?

7 Dec 2006, 0042 hrs IST, T K Arun, TNN

Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point, however, is
to change it, said Marx. Justice Sachar has played philosopher with
regard to India’s Muslims. His report validates the general impression
that Muslims are, for the most part, a backward, subaltern group. So
what is to be done?

A quota for the Muslims, say some. Are quotas the answer? We already
have the experience of five and a half decades of quotas for the
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. While politicians will not tire
of making a big noise for quotas in Parliament, on the ground, do
people at large have any faith that quotas will deliver them out of
backwardness? The recent outbursts of Dalit anger in response to the
killing of Dalits in Khairlanji and desecration of an Ambedkar statue,
are answer enough.

Sure, no community would object to having a quota for itself.
Especially when it sees quotas being distributed to various others.
But the degree of gratitude that a group would feel towards the quota
provider would depend on the presumed utility of quotas. On this
count, the benefit of bestowing a quota on any particular group would
be outweighed, by far, by the animosity from others whose
opportunities might be restricted by new quotas.

If quotas offer no solution, what would? Any realistic answer would
have to build on some idea as to what accounts for the general
backwardness of Muslims.

Is it bias against the community, by the state and society? It is very
easy to conclude as much, but that would be too facile. It is not just
Muslims who have failed to harvest the fruits of post-Independence
development in any significant measure. One fourth of India’s 593
districts are today officially classified as Naxalite affected. A
level of mass discontent that can sustain armed rebellion across one-
fourth the country’s administrative divisions surely spells state
failure towards more than just Muslims. The reality is that the state
has a bias towards the elite and failed the rest.

Granted, there are factors specific to the failure of each deprived
community to secure its own place in the sun. To focus on these
specificities, to the exclusion of the overwhelming commonalities in
their collective failure, would be a gross mistake. Such a strategy
would pit community against community, abort collective emancipation
and limit the achievements of the elites as well (through crime and
systemic dysfunctionality, for example).

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Banks-double-lending-to-minorities-in-Bengal/articleshow/4679054.cms

Banks double lending to minorities in Bengal

20 Jun 2009, 0742 hrs IST, Atmadip Ray, ET Bureau

KOLKATA: Even as the Sachar Committee report highlighted the poor
state of the minority community in West Bengal, the banking sector has
something to show off in terms of lending to minorities in the state.
Banks have more than doubled their lending to minorities, mostly
Muslims, during 2008-09. Lending to minorities comes under banks’
priority sector compulsions.

A senior banker pointed out that a focus on formation of self-help
groups (SHGs), involving women in the minority communities, has helped
in this achievement. The state has over 5.76 lakh SHGs which has
access to bank credit. However, no stats are readily available on how
many of these have involved minority women.

As on March 31, 2009, banks’ collective credit outstandings to
minorities stood at Rs 7,486 crore, compared with Rs 3,452 crore a
year ago. This is 14.5% of their total priority sector advances, which
was at Rs 51,560 crore (Rs 43,746 crore). The state has eight
districts with concentrated minority population. These are Howrah,
Kolkata, Burdwan, Nadia, South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Malda,
Murshidabad, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, Coochbehar and
Birbhum.

Banks’ credit disbursement to SC and ST has also grown sizably to Rs
1,050 crore (Rs 738 crore). This is merely 6.67% of the total priority
sector advances.

Banks have discussed this progress threadbare at a state-level
bankers’ committee (SLBC) meeting on Friday. They have noted that
despite the slow pace of economic growth in 2008-09, banks in the
state managed to meet 99% of their annual lending target.

Banks, including the major ones like State Bank of India, Uco Bank,
Allahabad Bank and United Bank of India, have collectively disbursed
Rs 15,672 crore, which is close to 99% of the annual target of Rs
15,8060 crore fixed for 2008-09. Banks cumulative disbursement was 16%
more than what they disbursed in the preceding fiscal.

Banks credit deposit (CD) ratio, however, fell to 64% after the fiscal
to March 31, 2009, compared to 65% a year ago. This is because the
deposit growth (26%) outpaced credit growth (24%) in the state by two
percentage points. Incidentally, the CD ratio was 66% a couple of
years back.

Sector-wise, banks have collectively disbursed Rs 6,207 crore to
agriculture and allied services, and Rs 2,978 crore to the small and
medium scale industries, both reflecting 93% of the respective annual
targets. Banks have also lent Rs 3,218 crore, more than the targeted
Rs 2,472 crore in the non-priority sectors.

[Sid Harth]

http://communalism.blogspot.com/2009/09/debate-on-preventing-bigamy-via.html

September 13, 2009
The debate on preventing bigamy via conversion to Islam must focus on
gender justice.

The Economic and Political Weekly
August 29, 2009

Editorial

Bigamy and religion

The debate on preventing bigamy via conversion to Islam must focus on
gender justice.

Suggestions of changes in personal laws usually result in the
religious element getting undue publicity and attention while the core
issue of gender justice gets sidelined. The reaction to the 227th
report of the Law Commission of India,
“Preventing Bigamy via Conversion to Islam – A Proposal for Giving
Statutory Effect to Supreme Court Rulings”, which was presented to the
Ministry of Law and Justice this month, has been no different.

Taking suo motu cognisance of the “unhealthy and immoral practice” by
men whose “personal law does not allow bigamy of converting to Islam
in order to contract a second marriage” and two recent, highly-
publicised cases of bigamy, the commission suggested that the Supreme
Court’s rulings in the Sarla Mudgal vs
Union of India (1995) and the Lily Thomas vs Union of India (2000)
cases be incorporated into the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) of 1955.

Women’s organisations taking up the cases of the first wives find that
evidence of the second marriage is difficult (most of them are
performed secretly or by token rituals like exchange of garlands in a
temple) to come upon for criminal prosecution, for the courts demand
hard proof. Though Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) punishes
bigamous husbands, if convicted, to a fine or seven years of
imprisonment, or both, being a non-cognisable offence (except in
Andhra Pradesh), it is ineffective. The Law Commission too endorses
this when it says that the law related to monogamy under the HMA is
full of serious shortcomings and loopholes, and combined with its
provisions related to marriage rites, provides in-built devices (the
foremost being conversion to Islam) for an easy avoidance of all the
consequences of its violation, while the non-cognisable IPC provisions
force “aggrieved first wives of all communities to silently suffer the
miseries”.

It has thus recommended that a new section be inserted in the HMA to
the effect that a married person governed by it cannot marry again
even after changing religion unless the first marriage is dissolved or
declared null and void in accordance with law, and if such a marriage
is contracted, it will be of no legal effect, and attract application
of Sections 494 and 495 of the IPC. The commission has recommended
that similar provisions be inserted in the Christian Marriage Act
1872, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act 1936 and the Dissolution of
Muslim Marriages Act (DMMA) of 1939. In respect of the latter, it has
been suggested that the proviso to Section 4 of the DMMA, saying that
this would not apply to a married woman who was originally a non-
Muslim if she reverts to her original faith, be deleted. Further,
certain provisions should be added to the Special Marriage Act 1954
and offences relating to bigamy under the IPC sections should be made
cognisable by necessary amendment of the Criminal Procedure Code
(CrPC).

Sadly, instead of these recommendations being debated widely, it is
the commission’s statements on the Islamic view of bigamy that have
become the focus of attention. (The plight of the first wives of all
communities, many of whom are “deserted” and have to fend for
themselves and the children with or without paltry maintenance, quite
apart from the social humiliation they and the children are subjected
to, has been ignored.) These statements have managed to antagonise
three sections of Muslim society. The orthodox elements are angered by
what they see as “interference” in their personal law. Muslim women
feel that the commission is only looking at the plight of the Hindu
first wives and not Muslim women similarly situated. And, Muslim
intellectuals feel that the report should make strong recommendations
against bigamy for all communities without getting unduly side-tracked
by religious sensitivities.

The statement, “Although we fully agree with the fact that traditional
understanding of the Muslim law on bigamy is gravely faulty and
conflicts with the true Islamic law in letter and spirit, to keep our
recommendations away from any unhealthy controversy we are not
recommending any change in this regard in Muslim law” has angered
influential Muslim bodies, notably the Darul Uloom of Deoband and the
All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

They have pointed out that Islam allows up to four marriages, albeit
under stringent conditions, and it is wrong to say that it is against
the letter and spirit of Islam. The Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board
has asked for “control over the system” since the strict rules on
bigamy are not being followed.

The commission’s full-time member Tahir Mahmood was forced to clarify
that the Muslim law on bigamy or the state of bigamy among Indian
Muslims was not at all the issue before the Commission and that the
true nature of Muslim law on bigamy, which insists on equal treatment
of co-wives and does not allow forsaking the first one without
divorce, was explained only in the context of incorporating the apex
court’s rulings in the HMA.

Notwithstanding the controversy, the commission’s suggestions pertain
to an area that has long been ignored and where reform is needed. It
is time to focus on gender equality and justice and demand
implementation of the Law Commission’s recommendations.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/26211837/The-decline-of-Urdu-and-the-ri.html

Posted: Thu, Mar 26 2009. 10:51 PM IST
Columns

The decline of Urdu and the rise of Khans

The Islamicate types borrowed from a medieval and early modern past --
court culture, cultivation, Muslims as the bearers of aristocratic
tradition -- no longer fit the sociology of the present

High Windows | Mukul Kesavan

The clutch of Khans that makes up the A-list of Hindi film heroes is
sometimes cited as proof that Muslims flourish in mainstream cinema
today, but Mumbai’s film industry has always been home to Muslim
talent: actors, directors, scriptwriters, dialogue writers, lyricists,
you name it. And the Muslim “contribution” to Hindi cinema isn’t
limited to its personnel; the very nature of Hindi cinema, its
metaphors, its rhetoric have been constituted by cultural forms
associated with Muslims.

The Hindi film is actually the Urdu film. Do a census of Hindi film
titles from Mughal-e-Azam to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and you’ll find
that the vast majority of them draw on the Persian lexicon that
distinguishes Urdu from its Sanskritized cousin, Hindi. The lyrics and
dialogue of “Hindi” movies are even more dependent on Urdu’s
Persianate idiom. This is partly because that idiom is better equipped
to supply sonorous words for inflated emotions than Hindi is. It’s
possible to render the keywords of Hindi film dialogue such as dil,
khoon aur kismat as hriday, rakt evam bhagya, but this is unlikely to
happen. The courtroom scene, a hardy staple of the traditional Hindi
film, is unimaginable in Hindi; how would the lawyer summon the
eyewitness, the chashmadeed gawah, and how would the judge deliver
himself of that noble exoneration, ba-izzat bari?

A romanticized ideal of nawabi Avadh, seen as a symbol of both
cultivation and decline, provided Hindi cinema with many of its
metaphors and stock characters. Thus, the debauched rentier in Sahib,
Biwi aur Ghulam or Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar might figure in stories
located in Bengal, but the archetype of aristocratic decadence on
which he is based is derived from the nawabi ayyashi made famous by
the Islamicate elite of Avadh.

Similarly, the vamp in Hindi films has bloodlines that reach in two
different directions: She’s both the Hollywood moll and the courtesan-
tawaif of north India’s Muslim court culture. Even the vamp’s dance
routines are a cross between the cabaret and the mujra. In short, the
Hindi film industry wasn’t just rich with Muslim talent, it was deeply
coloured by what (for want of a better term) we shall call a Muslim
culture.

Also Read Mukul’s earlier Lounge columns

This relationship between Islamicate culture (if Islamicate is
understood to refer to the cultural practices associated with Muslims,
as opposed to ideas derived from Islam) and Hindi cinema has changed
over the last 30-odd years. Paradoxically, at the moment when the
Khans dominate the Hindi film industry, the Hindi film has begun to
draw less frequently upon the Islamicate resources that used to be its
stock in trade.

This change in Hindi cinema was prefigured by changes in the real
world. It became impossible to sustain aristocratic Muslim archetypes
in a country where the Muslims you were likely to meet were
increasingly plebeian. The Islamicate types borrowed from a medieval
and early modern past—court culture, cultivation, Muslims as the
bearers of aristocratic tradition—no longer fit the sociology of the
present.

The Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report, tabled in Parliament in
2006, demonstrated that the Muslim community was, by many crucial
measures, more backward than Dalits. But this only formally confirmed
the intuition that Indian film-makers already had about the Muslim
community.

In the early 1980s, Manmohan Desai would say in interviews that one of
the reasons he made the sort of films he did, with Amitabh Bachchan
playing the angry young man and with a sympathetic Muslim character
somewhere in the cast, was because a significant part of his “repeat
audience”, the people who made the film a hit by seeing it over and
over again, were young, unemployed Muslim men.

Not only do Muslim characters in Hindi films increasingly represent
Muslims as poor, they also represent this Muslim underclass as part of
a criminal milieu. In Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool, the Macbeth story is
set in Mumbai’s Muslim gangland. Pankaj Kapoor and Irrfan Khan play
the don and his consigliere and with Tabu as Lady Macbeth, they bring
to life a specifically Muslim underworld. Irrfan Khan makes this
wicked lumpen Muslim real.

A year later, in 2004, Irrfan Khan reprised his role as Muslim
ganglord when he played Yusuf Pathan in Aan: Men At Work. M.J. Akbar,
author and journalist, once observed half-jokingly that Haji Mastan,
the smuggler, was an icon for Indian Muslims because he represented an
alternative form of social mobility. He showed that there was a path
out of poverty, even if it was a left-handed one. In a confrontation
with Akshay Kumar (who plays the honest policeman) in Aan, Irrfan Khan
makes this wicked prole Muslim real.

In contemporary Hindi cinema, a Muslim character can’t be a middle-
class Everyman. After the resurgence of majoritarian politics at the
turn of the century and the “war on terror” post-9/11, Muslim
characters in Hindi films have come to occupy a charged space: They’re
either victims or perpetrators (I can think of one film with a Muslim
protagonist who is neither victim nor perpetrator: Iqbal, a film about
a cricket-mad boy). So Aamir Khan in Fanaa is a terrorist while Shah
Rukh Khan in Chak De! is a Muslim victim, a sportsman with a career
ruined by the unfounded suspicion that he had thrown a hockey match
against Pakistan.

In Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle follows this trend by turning the
central character into a Muslim, Jamal Malik. In the book the
protagonist is a boy of uncertain religious provenance: Ram Mohammad
Thomas. Boyle uses both parts of the contemporary Muslim stereotype:
In Slumdog, Muslims are victims and perpetrators. The character of Dev
Patel is a victim while Javed, the Muslim gang lord who employs his
criminal brother, Salim, is a perpetrator.

It is a fine Indian irony that at the very moment that Hindi cinema
has begun to squeeze Muslim characters into these confining
pigeonholes, the Muslim men who define stardom in our cinema, Aamir,
Shah Rukh, Salman, Saif and Farhan, play with increasing flair and
success the Hindu Everyman, variously called Vicky, Raj, Ajay, Vijay
and Karan.

Mukul Kesavan teaches social history at Jamia Millia Islamia, New
Delhi, and is the author, most recently, of The Ugliness of the Indian
Male and Other Propositions.

Write to Mukul at highw...@livemint.com

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.livemint.com/articles/2007/08/11000523/60-Years-The-Report-Card.html

Posted: Sat, Aug 11 2007. 1:58 AM IST
Columns

60 Years: The Report Card

Yes, there is poverty and there is Kashmir, our biggest failures. But
there is reason for modest cheer. For one, thank god we no longer have
a national culture

Mukul Kesavan

A report card on a billion people over 60 years is a daft thing to
attempt but if you think of it as a kind of stocktaking, it begins to
seem more sensible. In India’s case, the need to take stock is
connected to our anxieties about the country’s future. Those of us who
aren’t stockbrokers or economists and can’t write sagely about bears
and bulls and bubbles should still make an effort to assess the
republic’s past. Can Do Better isn’t enough: we know India can. The
question is, has it done well enough through these 60 years for us to
hope that it Will Do Better?

One of the advantages of being a citizen of a “developing” country is
that optimism, unfashionable in the uber-developed West (because
progress from a high baseline is hard to discern), is a feasible state
of mind here. There are two things that the Indian state has handled
exceptionally badly, which I shall come to, but those apart, the short
history of the republic has gone better than anyone could have
imagined in 1947.

Among the taken-for-granted achievements of the republican state is
that it presides over a country that is unified and stable, and whose
stability is founded on a time-tested addiction to voting. Indian
democracy has so often been used as an alibi for the country’s
failures by India’s boosters that people tend to roll their eyes when
this claim to political virtue is entered, but you only have to look
at Indonesia (the secession of East Timor), Pakistan (the corruption
of military rule) and Sri Lanka (majoritarianism and civil war) to
know that a stable democracy is a good reason to touch wood and
celebrate.

When the members of India’s Constituent Assembly insisted on universal
adult franchise for the world’s poorest electorate, they bet the house
on democracy against very long odds…and won. We, their descendants,
should celebrate their high-risk gamble without apology or self-
consciousness. Add to this the endorsement of affirmative action and
the relatively peaceful integration of princely India’s kingdoms, and
you have political foresight and achievement on an epochal scale.

But the political achievement of the republic doesn’t stop here. The
Nehruvian state’s claim to democratic originality is based upon the
pluralism that it made integral to the country’s political culture.
After Partition, Indian secularism started life as a kind of chivalry,
with the country’s Muslim minority cast as the damsel in distress.
This republican determination to reassure Indian Muslims that they
were full citizens of the new nation, despite the land of the pure
that their co-religionists had established next door, was challenged
by majoritarian parties and majoritarian violence, but it survived.

It survived not as chivalry but as pragmatism, as the only way of
doing political business and surviving as a nation in a dizzyingly
varied subcontinent. If we think of politics as retail trade, the
secularism made by the Nehruvian Congress was stocked by Harrods while
the canny coalition-building that won UP for Mayawati was mass-market
pluralism sold by Wal-Mart. The two are related: The political ground
for Mayawati’s alliances was prepared by the Nehruvian Congress’s
rhetorical but deeply felt commitment to a pluralist politics. What
this illustrates is the important fact that there is no ideological
blueprint for being secular in India; to be secular in India basically
means extemporizing ways of keeping Indian politics pluralist.

It is customary to celebrate Indian democracy while simultaneously
lamenting the decline in its political culture and institutions. It’s
important to argue back against this nostalgic position. Most of the
institutions that keep India’s democracy ticking have NOT decayed.
They’ve become better. The Election Commission is now an institution
that enjoys enormous credibility. It is feared by political hucksters
and evildoers in the way in which the IRS is feared by tax-dodgers in
America. It conducts elections with creativity and independence and is
widely regarded in the world of electoral democracies as an exemplary
organization that conducts first-rate elections.

That the Election Commission should enjoy this reputation after a
period in the republic’s life where elections were discredited by
malpractice is proof of the fact that things in India can get worse
and then get radically better.

Culturally, there isn’t (thank god) a “national culture” in place, but
there’s a confidence amongst the citizens of the republic that being
“Indian” is easy. The film industries that dot every part of the
country are vulgarly healthy, our upmarket discos play bhangra, our
haute couture is hideous but popular, our art has invented a market
for itself, our television industry proliferates and Indian audiences
remain relatively indifferent to foreign programming.

Our newspapers continue to expand and prosper and compete: Unlike
America, where the newspaper readership of whole cities is virtually
owned by single papers—The Washington Post, The New York Times, The
Los Angeles Times, etc. Our writers are better paid now, their books
better produced and their publishing houses more entrepreneurial.
Which Indian writer would be nostalgic for the bad old days when being
published meant Hind Pocket Books or Jaico?

Intellectually and academically, India has a sense of self that
Pakistan or Malaysia or Indonesia don’t. Academic publishing for an
Indian market has struck roots and while its quality is variable, it
has the great merit of creating a body of work that examines aspects
of Indian society and history that might be of little interest to
foreign readers but are vitally important for us.

This is more important than it seems. Places, whether cities or
countries, aren’t rich or interesting in themselves: They are made
rich and interesting when they are chronicled, described, analysed and
put into stories. It’s the old thing about a tree falling in a forest
and no one noticing. When Pradeep Krishen writes a book on the trees
of New Delhi, the trees of New Delhi become available to the
intelligent lay reader. When Time Out sets up shop in Mumbai and New
Delhi and begins to systematically list and survey and sample its
cultural life, that life becomes real to the reading public who
otherwise wouldn’t have had the information to be a part of it.

So our successes give us reason for optimism. Our failures point the
way to what needs to be done. For the purposes of precis, the
republic’s largest failures can be boiled down to a) poverty and b)
Kashmir. Under the head of poverty, we can group the state’s near-
criminal default in the areas of primary education and public health.

Arguably, one of the preconditions for alleviating poverty, economic
growth, has been met by the economic expansion of the past 15 years,
but this market-driven boom has brought no corresponding commitment
from the state to use the tax revenues from a growing economy to fund
a welfare net for the country’s poorest. The statist dogmatism that,
for decades, crippled the country’s economy seems to have been
replaced by another derivative orthodoxy: A near-religious belief in
the wisdom of unregulated market forces.

Kashmir isn’t just an unreconciled borderland: It challenges the
credibility of India’s pluralism, which is its reason for being. We
can argue about the rights and wrongs of Kashmir, point to Pakistani
provocation and jehadist violence, but the violence the state has used
to crush insurgent Kashmiri Muslims and the death toll that has
mounted over the years does the republic no credit.

Still, we’ve got to the new century, bruised at the borders, but still
a secular democracy, getting better rather than getting worse. That
we’ve travelled this road with a billion people on board has to be
cause for modest celebration.

Mukul Kesavan is an author and professor at the Jamia Millia Islamia,
New Delhi. His latest book is Men in White: A Book on Cricket

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/08/06220218/When-the-headscarf-becomes-a-d.html

Posted: Thu, Aug 6 2009. 10:02 PM IST
Columns

When the headscarf becomes a death sentence

The building consensus against Muslims in Europe is legitimized by the
notion that European modernity has to be defended against a medieval
religion and its violent adherents

High Windows | Mukul Kesavan

Last Monday my morning newspaper carried pictures of an Egyptian
girl, Nour el-Sherbini, who had just won the World Junior Squash
Championship in Chennai. Her name reminded me of another young
Egyptian sportswoman, Marwa el-Sherbini, once Egypt’s handball
champion, who was killed in a German courtroom on 1 July.

Veiled: Marwa, a former handball champion, with her husband, a
lecturer. Francois Guillot / AFP

Professionally, Marwa was a pharmacist. Her husband was a lecturer who
moved from Egypt to Germany to do his doctorate in genetics at the Max
Planck Institute in Dresden. Marwa had a son, Mustafa, and at the time
of her murder, she was pregnant.

The events that led to her murder began with a playground dispute. She
became involved in a dispute with Alex W., a Russian immigrant of
ethnic German descent, about whose turn it was to use the swing: his
niece’s or her son’s. The argument became ugly when he tried to pull
off her headscarf and called her a terrorist and an Islamist whore. He
was fined by a district court but his defence that people like Marwa
were less than human and therefore couldn’t really be insulted, was so
provocative that the public prosecutor pressed for more severe
punishment.

In the subsequent trial Alex W. walked across the courtroom and
stabbed Marwa 18 times as her three-year-old son watched. When her
husband ran to her defence, he suffered stab wounds and was shot in
the leg by a policeman who mistook him for the assailant. Marwa and
her unborn child died in the courtroom; her husband’s condition
remains critical.

Also Read Mukul’s previous Lounge columns

The German newspapers that did mention the murder, did so on their
back pages and confined themselves to reporting that a woman had been
killed in a courtroom over a playground dispute. There was concern
expressed about security in German courtrooms but no mention of the
racist context of the murder. It was only when her burial provoked
outraged demonstrations in Alexandria, that a handful of news providers
—the Guardian, AP, the Huffington Post—gave the story some play. Even
today, if you google Marwa el-Sherbini, you get pages and pages of
websites in the Arab and Muslim world; for all the interest shown by
the European and American media or the German government, the murder
might never have happened.

Kamran Pasha, a writer and film-maker, explained this silence in the
online site, the Huffington Post:

“The fact that Europeans have chosen to ignore the brutal murder of a
woman, whose only crime was that she covered her head with a piece of
cloth, reveals the real issues beneath the burqa debate. It is
ultimately not about women’s rights, but about power over immigrants…
Marwa represented the future of Europe’s Muslim immigrants—empowered,
educated and strong. And she was butchered like an animal for having
the audacity to dress differently. The fact that her death has not
been a source of European soul-searching suggests that some truths are
too painful to face.”

The building consensus against Muslims in Europe is legitimized by the
notion that European modernity has to be defended against a medieval
religion and its violent adherents. Since racism and religious bigotry
aren’t respectable any more, white Europe is now defended in the name
of the Enlightenment. Muslims and their faith are unwelcome intrusions
because they don’t conform to rationality, to democracy, to science
and most of all because they deny the West’s greatest modern
achievement, the emancipation of women.

Marwa el-Sherbini in her life and her death shames the modern Western
Islamophobe into a temporary silence because she doesn’t fit this
narrative. She and her husband were paid-up members of the high church
of modern science. Her hijab hadn’t inhibited her athleticism or her
ability to make her way in the world. And she was lovely to look at.
That last quality isn’t irrelevant: People being what they are,
aesthetic horror at the destruction of beauty magnifies the moral
revulsion against murder.

It’s a mistake to see her murder as an isolated crime perpetrated by a
maladjusted lunatic. It occurred days after Nicolas Sarkozy, the
President of France, called for a ban on the burqa. Sarkozy had
targeted the burqa, the full veil that obscures the face, not the
hijab that covers a Muslim woman’s hair, but Germany has shown how
easy it is to slide from banning the one to proscribing the other.
According to German law, four out of 16 of its states have the right
to ban teachers and government employees from wearing Muslim
headscarves in the workplace.

More broadly, mainstream Western journalists, authors and public
intellectuals have queued up to stigmatize the Muslim presence in
Europe. This is Mark Steyn, in America Alone: “In a democratic age,
you can’t buck demography—except through civil war. The Serbs figured
that out, as other Continentals will in the years ahead: If you cannot
outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that
Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire
continent.”

If you think this blithe prescription of genocide makes Steyn part of
the lunatic fringe, think again. Christopher Hitchens, perhaps the
best known public intellectual in America, wrote an appreciative
review of the book, congratulating Steyn on saying the unsayable. This
week has seen admiring reviews in The New York Times of two books
written by respectable American intellectuals, that make the case
against appeasing Muslims and warn that the West will be swamped by
busily breeding aliens: Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the
Revolution in Europe and Bruce Bawer’s Surrender: Appeasing Islam,
Sacrificing Freedom.

The moral of Marwa’s murder is that the Western hysteria around
veiling is not about the emancipation of Muslim women; it’s about
Europe’s visceral intolerance for visible difference. The veil has
become a symbol for an unassimilable minority, an alibi for the
dislike that large numbers of Europeans feel for labouring “guests” of
a different colour and faith who’ve outlived their usefulness and
their welcome.

Mukul Kesavan, a professor of social history at Jamia Millia Islamia,
New Delhi, is the author of The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other
Such Propositions.

Write to Mukul at highw...@livemint.com

...and I am Sid Harth

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.ptinews.com/news/289442_Hurriyat-welcomes-migrant-Kashmiri-pandits--Geelani

Hurriyat welcomes migrant Kashmiri pandits: Geelani
STAFF WRITER 18:19 HRS IST

Srinagar, Sept 18 (PTI) Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah
Geelani today said his amalgam will extend warm welcome to migrant
Kashmiri pandits, if they wish to return back to their roots in the
valley.

"We will welcome your return to Kashmir and consider you as part and
parcel of our society," chairman of the hardline faction of Hurriyat
Conference Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is under house arrest since
September 9 at his Hyderpora residence here, told a delegation of
Kashmiri pandits.

The delegation comprising Som Nath Kandi, Parai Lal, Ratan Lal and
Nanaji Wattal, were part of a group of migrant pandits, which had come
to their native place in Kupwara called on the ailing leader after
seeking permission from the police, Hurriyat spokesman Ayaz Akbar said
after the meeting.

Quoting Geelani, Akbar said there should be no pre-conditions for the
return of pandits to their homes.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=48&contentid=200909112009091119005260987ea4e4f&sectxslt=&pageno=1

Terror will not help Muslims, ‘Dr Bomb’ says

Dr Jalees Ansari, now in Ajmer Jail for masterminding several blasts,
writes in Urdu daily that death and destruction serve no purpose

By Anand Holla
Posted On Friday, September 11, 2009 at 07:00:52 PM

File photo of Ansari being escorted out of Sessions Court in 1994

Endless violence unleashed by terrorists seems to have touched the
heart of ‘Dr Bomb’ Jalees Ansari, himself the mastermind of around 60
blasts across the country in the early nineties. Ansari, 52, now
serving a rigorous life term in Ajmer Jail, has written a two-part
article in the Urdu Times about the futility of terrorism and how it
contradicts the very essence of Islam.

After over 15 years in jail, Ansari now feels that Muslims can’t rule
the world using terror as a weapon. “If we Muslims say that we want
the good of humanity, while on the other hand blasts occur on trains,
public places and temples, and innocents are killed, then who will
even listen to the correct things we say?” he writes in the mainstream
Urdu newspaper. “Can anybody justify the 26/11 terror attacks? Has any
Muslim in the world benefited out of 26/11? No, because this militancy
will only harm Muslims. We should strictly follow the Quran and the
prophet’s teachings, and all misunderstanding about Islam will
disappear.”

Ansari, an MBBS from Mumbai University, was deemed the ‘father of
terror’ in Mumbai for training teams that carried out blasts in
several cities. In his first outspoken response since his arrest in
January, 1994, he dwells on the consequences of Islamic terrorism in
articles headlined ‘Ek dehshatgard doctor ki aap beeti’. He talks
about the three main triggers of ‘Muslim terrorism’-Jammu & Kashmir
dispute, communal riots and Babri Masjid.

Ansari was arrested in January 1994, along with his three brothers,
who were discharged after nine months. Ansari says that even after
that, blasts kept happening across India. This got him thinking-on one
hand, Hindus were being killed in blasts at Ayodhya, Akshardham
temple, Raghunath temple, Sankatmochan temple, etc, while on the
other, Muslims were dying in blasts at Delhi’s Jama Masjid,
Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Jalna, Parbhani, Jalgaon, and
Ajmer Dargah. The battery of blasts in the recent past-from the
Parliament attack to 7/11 train blasts to 26/11 attacks-brought about
a transformation in him. “These continuous, destructive, terrorist
acts forced me to seriously think, what will all these terror acts
take us? How will such militancy help Muslims to attain their goals
which the almighty has sent them to do?” he questions.

Recounting his first brush with the ‘anti-Muslim feeling’ while he was
a student at Mumbai University between 1976-82, he writes, “Some
Marathi teachers and students would talk strange things about Islam. I
felt that a deep conspiracy was being hatched to make Muslims second
class citizens, so that they would remain backward socially,
financially and politically.”

He recalls participating in relief work for Bhiwandi riot victims in
the 1980s, and only shedding tears for their trauma. “At that time, I
selected some youngsters and trained them in martial arts and stick-
wielding. Our aim was to defend ourselves during riots. We didn’t want
to form any armed organised group, as we were afraid that once armed,
we would ourselves become evil and inflict damage on others.”

Calling himself ‘aaraamdil’ (soft-hearted), Ansari blames both the
Congress and the BJP for creating the Babri Masjid issue and
exploiting it to garner Hindu votes. He says fanaticism crept into his
soul with the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992. “That
scene of demolition, no proud Muslim can forget till he breathes his
last,” says Ansari, calling it the birth of Muslim militancy.

He points out that though innocent Hindus also suffered in the 1992-93
Mumbai riots, Muslims suffered maximum losses with even the police
stacked up against them. “I have personal experience of the police’s
one-sided role. During these riots, lakhs of Muslims were forced to
live in relief camps, while Hindus didn’t face such problems. I
couldn’t tolerate such insult and sadness. I decided to embrace
militancy. I knew that the basic character of militancy would not
bring justice, but I thought that for every role, some emotions are
also involved. Aur is tarah ek doctor terrorist ban gaya,” Ansari
rues.

Dr Jalees Ansari

According to Ansari, today’s Muslims shouldn’t be depressed with the
‘anti-Muslim’ atmosphere. “Aaj ke daur ki Muslim dehshatgardi daawat
ke kaam main badi rukaavat hai, jisey door karna bahut zaroori hai
(Today’s Islamic terrorism prevents others from listening to the
correct things we say, which must be stopped),” Ansari says. He quotes
the holy Quran to state that god sent Muslims to do good things on
earth, look after others, restrain them from doing wrong, and believe
in the almighty.

“Maine dehshatgardi se tauba kar lee hai (I have quit terrorism),”
proclaims Ansari, “If thousands of terrorists quit terrorism like me,
will it come to an end? I don’t think so. Terrorism is a symptom, not
the real disease. In the name of Jihad, terrorism is growing.”

Donning the cloak of a Muslim scholar, Ansari says, “Every Muslim must
understand that the Godhra train burning episode was not right. We
must follow our educated, sincere and honest leaders and scholars, and
listen to them. We must be wary of those who provoke our emotions.
Education should be our top priority, after which we must become
strong financially and politically.”

Interestingly, Ansari has avoided any reference to his role in the
blasts, perhaps because his appeal against conviction is pending
before the SC.

About Jalees Ansari

Following the Babri Masjid demolition, Dr Jalees Ansari had
masterminded and executed at least 60 blasts across India, mostly low-
intensity ones.

Although he has been in jail since Jan 13, 1994, cops believe his
aides have executed several blasts across India over the years.

In February 2004, Ansari was sentenced by Ajmer TADA court to life
imprisonment for executing a series of train blasts across India.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=59&contentid=2009073020090730031558515dff51f48&sectxslt=&pageno=1

Revisiting secularism basics

A panel discussion on secularism suggests ‘Sarvadharma Samabhav’,
where Hindus forget memories of historical wrongs and Muslims reform
and modernise their society, is best suited to India

By Pravin Sheth
Posted On Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 03:15:58 AM

Issues like secularism, integration and security have seized our
public discourse and proved divisive for the Indian nation. A workshop
organised by Sadbhavna Forum addressed by Professor Bhikhu Parekh with
Dr Gunvant Shah and Prakash Shah as the discussing panel proved
rewarding in this matter. Some salient points discussed could be
encapsulated here.

Parekh’s observations almost changed the prevailing discourse about
making of a harmonious society. After positing the choice as related
to the concepts of justice and identity, and emergence of the secular
state, he showed how secularism in 2009 has to be different from
secularism as understood and followed in 1947. Quoting Charles Taylor,
he emphasised the imperatives of ‘Rethinking Secularism’. Giving
examples of Germany of 1939, France and Rwanda, Bhikhubhai showed how,
if the host society is not enough accommodative, the ethnic migrants
such as the Jews, in spite of their important contribution to Germany
could not be integrated, and rather suffer genocidal experi-ence. At
the same time, immigrants in Britain and the US could get integrated
by their propensity to respect the host country’s political and law-
making institutions and Constitution.

He said that the Commission of Racial Equality, of which he is the
chairperson, exhorted the state to provide for an impartial army,
police and civil service that will make all minorities feel like “this
is my state”. Another prerequisite for making of a harmonious society
is to avoid residential and public separation so that religious/ethnic
communities share a common experience and cultural empa-thy. Again, we
must have a strong civil society and a large middle space where,
Hindus and Muslim communities are supportive of each other.

The most intractable problem, he stated, was that of forgetting
“historical memories” of perceived wrongs that Hindu community
nurtures about another community, eg, Muslims have destroyed our
temples time and again. “How to take the sting out of such poisonous
memories?” He cited the exemplary case of the Commission of Truth and
Rec-onciliation carried out under Nelson Mandela who, reminding one of
Gandhi, forgot his 27-year jail experience in the white regime, and
showed ‘a wise passage of amnesia’.

Confession by culprits of religious/ethnic carnage will disarm the
victims who nurse bad feeling against the aggressors. Perpetrators of
the ghastly Godhra train incident and the brutal communal carnage
thereafter (Falia, Godhra and Modi government) can draw a leaf out of
such a model of encouraging forgiveness and reconciliation.
Mercifully, those seeking to perpetuate the memory of Ram Janma Bhoomi
were marginalised in 2009 parliamentary poll. Ethno-religious problem
is not an intractable problem as the resolution of the Sikh problem
(1990s) has demonstrated. But it’s a rather complex problem in case of
the Muslim minority. This was well brought out in the workshop with a
note of hope. Bhikhubhai wondered if exclusive professional colleges
for Muslims for the community’s development could contribute to a
exclusive worldview in the young generation. Absence of moderate
leadership also should worry this minority.

Gunvantbhai said, “You can’t have freedom from religion,” as Nehru’s
western model implied. “We must have freedom of religion.” He asserted
that Gandhi’s concept of ‘Sarvadharma Samabhav’ is suited to Indian
secularism.

Referring to Gujarat carnage 2002, Prakashbhai rightly exhorted
‘course correction’ for those responsible for it.

A sort of consensus developed: Secularism must be liberated from
politics; politics of Hindutva and of vote-bank, both be scrupulously
shunned; process of reform is an imperative for the Islamic society
and the Gandhian model of sarvadharna sam/sad-bhava should guide
India’s secularism.

Are groups positioned at different points of ideo-political spectrum
open and resilient enough to revisit their frozen and rigid view-
points?

One of the city’s most eminent political analysts, Pravin Sheth
dissects the twists and turns of policy in Gujarat

[Sid Harth]

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3227834&page=0

18/09/2009Narendra Modi’s new anti-terror mantra: 111 QRTs

In another move to toughen the drive against terrorists, Gujarat plans
to set up 111 anti-terror Quick Response Teams (QRTs). The teams would
be armed to their teeth with state of the art hi-tech weapons, night
vision equipment and even armoured vehicles. Working round the clock
in three shifts 365 days, the QRTs will be deployed in every nook and
corner of the State.

Gujarat has now sent the proposal to the Centre for approval. If
approved, Gujarat will be the first state to have such high level of
security, sources said.

The salient features of the QRTs:

Will comprise highly trained men from the Anti-Terrorist Assault
Squads (ATAS).

Highly mobile, teams will always remain very close to sensitive areas
and targets.

The teams will be shuffled often and their positions will keep
changing so that the surprise element is maintained.

Each fighter operator will have a semi-automatic pistol as a personal
side arm, three submachine guns and two assault rifles.

Team will have tactical features like red dot self-powered optical
sighting systems, three-point tactical slings, full coverage body
armour tactical vests, helmets of very high protection level.

Gas masks, fire retardant gear, gloves, eyewear and tactical boots.

111 QRTs: 78 in the districts; 12 in Ahmedabad; 6 in Vadodara; 6 in
Surat; 3 in Rajkot; 3 in Western Railway (Vadodara); 3 in State
Control Room (Gandhinagar).

The Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state Anti Terrorist Squad
(ATS) will brief monitoring and coordinating QRTs.

Each QRT will have six commandos and will be headed by a Sub-Inspector
with a Head Constable as second-in-command.

Three constables will be "fighter operators" while the sixth member --
a constable driver -- will also be "combatised".

The state police also plan to provide armoured vehicles with NIJ Level
III protection to all QRTs.

"Special QRTs with modern weaponry and well-trained commandos to
combat terrorism may be in place by the end of this financial year,"
Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Sudhir Sinha was
quoted in the Indian Express.

Source: India Syndicate

Average rating: from 109 users

-10 of 52

PUSHKARAJ #1

18 September 2009 00:57:17

will the QRTs be deployed during riots... i wonder....

KGGupta#2

18 September 2009 01:06:38

India should learn something from Gujarat. If one can't do it then
don't stop them to do it by putting false excuses.

Alevoor#3

18 September 2009 01:07:27

Sounds luke Modi has scripted a hit Hollywood movie. Hope it comes
true.

http://www.healthgenie.org/

jehangir cama#4

18 September 2009 01:09:48

Thank God there is someone who has the time to think of the common
mans security and not just empty promises like after 26/11 by the
central Govt Yes we are happy that we live in a state that thinks of
these things One only hopes that the training and quality of these
personnel will not be sacrificed at the altar of reservations and
quotas etc but will be purely based on merit and fitness and training
The guy at the top of this organisation also should be selection based
on his qualification to raise such an outfit and not merely on
seniority in the force or on political consideration and personal
pressure Maybe initially help from foreign organisations such as the
FBI or the MI5 maybe sought Whether we like it or not they have the
expertise far more than we have and it should be looked upon as a
matter of collaboration exactly as in the case of industrial or
commercial arrangement We are sitting on a powder keg and the sooner
we take precautions the happier we will all feel More power to you Mr
Modi

Kaushalpujara #5

18 September 2009 01:13:24

Ohh my god...What modi is trying to do??

The "Secularists" of this "secular country" will be worried for their
terrorist brothers & sister across the border...in Pakistan..

H K Virupakshappa#6

18 September 2009 01:31:55

Hope, other states will also get into state of alert like Gujarat
before another strike happens. No voting politics please, terrorism
has no sympathy for any religion except blind folded killing using
name of religion

Congratulations Modi, hope PC is observing and take some leaf out of
it

notocheat#7

18 September 2009 01:39:24

This is an example that should be followed at the national level.

Hard Target #8

18 September 2009 01:44:37

I hope Modi is really serious about it and not just wishful. If
implemented it would be really great to have such a force in our
country. It seems straight from a hollywood thriller.

Well, what India needs is to have great protectionist measures like
these rather than blaming Pakistan like fools and hopeless people for
every attack on India.

If successful it can be implemented all over India.

Terrorists are smart. We need to be smarter!!

NEW GUJARATI #9

18 September 2009 01:50:39

1.Human rights commission persons must along with this team and
reporter of NDTV is also travel with this team.

2.Fighter must ask them (reporter of NDTV and human right personals)
when terrorist shoot to common people, whether we shoot to terrorist
or not ?

3.Gujarat and Central government run by NDTV and human rights
commission.

Saveindians #10

18 September 2009 01:53:03

Modiji, is just trying to get another public attention. If present
present anti terror squad had handful of false killings to its credit,
the number will only increase to 111.

Still we fail to learn how developed countries have approached the
security using CCTV and technology. Make entire Gujarat under CCTV and
latest tracking systems. Make systems to weedout Chinese non-IEM
phones and show good example to rest to India.

Or else Modiji will still will have to depend/beg with his unfriendly
USA to give clues.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-to-get-special-anti-terror-force-by-March-end/H1-Article1-391462.aspx

Army's anti-terror Force by March-end: Chidambaram

March 20, 2009

First Published: 21:07 IST(20/3/2009)
Last Updated: 17:37 IST(10/4/2009)

The Army's Special Forces to fight terror will be in place here by
this month-end with a six-fold increase in its strength to nearly 600
personnel, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said today.

"The Special Forces will be strengthened in two phases. In the first
phase, approximately 250 persons of all ranks and in the second phase
another 250 persons will reach Bengaluru," Chidambaram told reporters
here. The concept of Special Forces was mooted after the 26/11 terror
attacks in Mumbai.

Chidambaram said by the end of this month "we will have approximately
600 persons of all ranks of Special Forces Batallion at Bengaluru".

The Home Minister was on a day's visit to the Army's Special Forces
Unit, set-up in the city, having 100 personnel from all ranks, who can
be deployed at a very short notice. The Home Minister, during his
address to the conference of Chief Ministers of Internal Security in
January this year, had said that in addition to setting up NSG hubs in
four metros, trained anti-terror force units will be set up by the
defence forces.

As per the plan, Bangalore is being covered by the Army and the
Special Forces are stationed with Territorial Army Batallion in Benson
town but eventually they would be moved to a new location in Hebbai.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=310&page=7

September 27, 2009

Thinking Aloud

These are days of history made to order
By Dr Jay Dubashi

To say that it was not Jinnah who was responsible for the division of
India amidst the massacres of millions of Indians, mostly Hindus, is
like saying that Hitler was not responsible for the murders of Jews.
Hitler can very well say that he did not murder a single Jew, for he
himself never went near the concentration camps where the killings
were oganised. So can Jinnah, as he lived atop Malabar Hill in Bombay
and perhaps never visited the killing fields of Calcutta and Lahore,
where millions of innocent people were slaughtered in cold blood.

History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce. We are
now in the midst of the tragedy, but soon shall be overtaken by farce.
But the men who are going to be hit have no idea who are behind the
show and are pulling the strings.

History, as I said, repeats itself. When Shivaji Maharaj-he was not a
Chhatrapati yet; that came later-visited Agra at the invitation of
Aurangzeb, he did not receive the kind of royal treatment he expected,
particularly at his first meeting with the Moghul supremo in his
court, and he almost walked out of the court after refusing to do
kurnisat, that is kissing the ground in front of the throne, as was
the custom.

Shivaji said that unlike the other Sardars in the court, he was not in
the pay of Aurangzeb, nor had he come to ask any favours. He had come
all the way from Deccan, a thousand kilometres away, as a king in his
own right, just like Aurangzeb himself, and not like Mirza Jai Singh
of Jaipur, who was his (Aurangzeb’s) employee, and who was responsible
for bringing him (Shivaji) to Agra, and he, that is Mirza Jai Singh,
could do all the kissing he wanted.

Shivaji said so openly in the court and so loudly that Aurangzeb asked
what the ruckus was about. Shivaji was then asked to await his turn in
the durbar, but he was not happy about waiting, and asked who was the
man standing ahead of him? He was told that he was Jaswant Singh of
Jodhpur, who, like the Mirza, was also in the pay of Aurangzeb, and
had once been sent south to capture Shivaji.

"What?" said Shivaji, "you are making me stand here behind this
despicable fugitive from my country? A man who ran away during the
battle with my army, with his tail between the legs and is now waiting
to fall at the feet of the emperor?"

"I am not going to stand in line behind this man," Shivaji said and
walked out with his small son, Sambhaji, something that had never
happened in Moghul history before.

Three hundred and fifty years after Shivaji, the world may have
changed, but in the feudal thinking, things remain the same. Instead
of paying "kurnisat" to Aurangzeb of Hindustan, they write books on
Mohammed Ali Jinnah of Pakistan, the new emperor, and prostrate
themselves before him. They sing his praises and, in a show of
perversity that takes your breath away. They run down Indian leaders,
exactly as they did in the days of Aurangzeb when they fought Shivaji
and had him nearly killed in Agra to please the ‘great’ Moghul.
History is repeating itself once again, as it always does, but this
time it is doing so with unbelievable vengeance.

To say that it was not Jinnah who was responsible for the division of
India amidst the massacres of millions of Indians, mostly Hindus, is
like saying that Hitler was not responsible for the murders of Jews.
Hitler can very well say that he did not murder a single Jew, for he
himself never went near the concentration camps where the killings
were organised. So can Jinnah, as he lived atop Malabar Hill in Bombay
and perhaps never visited the killing fields of Calcutta and Lahore,
where millions of innocent people were slaughtered in cold blood. No,
Jinnah never asked for Pakistan, for according to this strange book,
Jinnah was a nationalist and also a gentleman to his Saville Row tips.
What perhaps endears him to retired army officers, who later take to
politics and write books is that he had biscuits for tea in the
afternoon and smoked chiroots after dinner, just like army officers
from Darjeeling!

He was also, says the book, a great man, who achieved what he set out
to achieve, meaning Pakistan, over the corpses of ten million Indians.
So Hitler was a great man too, and so was Jinnah’s ancestor, Chengiz
Khan. They all achieved what they sought to achieve, which, to some
people, is a mark of greatness. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, not to mention
Taimurlang and Chengiz Khan, were all great people but not Gandhi or
Nehru or Patel, because these men achieved what they did without
killing a soul.

One of these days, somebody will get a bright idea and will write a
book accusing Nehru and Patel of having a hand in the killings of
thousands of Hindus in Lahore and Calcutta, to ‘prove’ that it was not
Jinnah who organised the riots and the killings but these two
gentlemen from the Congress, who were so thirsty for power that they
conspired with the Muslim League to trigger the riots and let loose a
flood of killings.

This is exactly what Hitler and Goebbels had done before marching into
countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland and taking them over, that
is, accusing the governments of these countries of conspiring to kill
Germans in their countries, though not a single German had been
killed. However, they showed pictures of bogus killings to umbrella-
toting Neville Chamberlain of England, who was so shocked that he
signed on the dotted line. Nehru and Patel-the book would argue-so
eager for power, like Hitler, had a hand in the killings and scared
the British into handing over power to them. Jinnah was the innocent
party and had no hand in the bloodbath, for was he a gentleman-and a
great nationalist-and wouldn’t hurt a fly.

These are days of history made to order. You can write anything and
get away with it. How many books have there been on John F Kennedy and
who killed him, though the official commission said there was no
conspiracy? But the men and women who wrote books on him have minted
millions, laughing all the way to the bank.

If a dog bites man, that is no news. If a man bites dog, that makes
big headlines. If you say that Jinnah was responsible for the killings-
and for Pakistan-that is no news, for even a child knows that. But if
you say that Nehru and Patel were great killers, that is big news-and
big money. And there are people who will do anything to keep their
bank accounts topped up, especially if you have expensive habits, and
the bank manager is after you.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=310&page=38

September 27, 2009

Media Watch

Reporting on Islamic subversions

On August 31, the Kerala paper Malayala Manorama carried an extensive
report on how a Pakistan-based terrorist outfit has been planning,
abetting and financing the enticing of college girls from different
communities to become cannon fodder for its programmes in India.

No one would ever charge the Kerala paper Malayala Manorama with
communalism. And no one would charge The Indian Express either. On
August 31, the Kerala paper carried an extensive report on how a
Pakistan-based terrorist outfit has been planning, abetting and
financing the enticing of college girls from different communities to
become cannon fodder for its programmes in India.

A summary of that report was published in The Indian Express on
September 4. It is revealing and, what is worse, terrifying. But how
are Malayali girls fooled? The modus operandi is astounding. Muslim
boys in Kerala are employed by the terror organisation very
selectively. The youngsters have to be handsome and dashing and
persuasive. They are provided with expensive clothing, hard cash and
motorbikes. Their job is to move in groups, select their prey
carefully and methodically, entice the girls chosen on the promise of
marriage and a wonderful life abroad.

Step two is as follows: "After days of pretended love-making, the
girls begin to believe that they have got their ‘Prince Charming’.
They elope. Then a marriage is registered before a notary and after
that the girl is whisked from place to place. The victim begins to
believe that she has to undergo all this to evade her parents who
would be searching for her. No outside contact is allowed to the
victim. All the time she is subject to propaganda videos that eulogise
terrorism, jihad and the ultimate victory of Islam."

It would seem that all over India as many as 4,000 girls have been
recruited as potential terror hands and suicide bombers. And nobody
ever gave the matter any thought. Now the Malayala Manorama has
exposed it all. Except The Indian Express, nobody else seems to have
picked up the story. The report would soon be forgotten. But doesn’t
it carry a moral? And shouldn’t all newspapers carry forward the story
of the missing girls by doing state-wise research of "missing girls"?
And how much is being spent for terror in India?

The Free Press Journal (March 4) carried a story that said that the
government has begun processes on a war footing to trace the source of
at least Rs 2,000 crore detected in over 200 bank accounts during the
current year. But where did that money originate? Nobody knows, but
the ‘investment’ was reportedly routed through countries like Bahamas,
Mauritius, Cooks Island and the Gulf countries. Isn’t there scope for
some real investigations? What is our media afraid of?

But once in a while the media does carry a story that is heart-
warming. Thus, The Hitavada (August 14) wrote about a British teacher,
a headmaster of a school in London who believes that "linguistically,
Sanskrit is the most perfect language on earth" and "understanding the
Sanskrit grammar through Panini will give an understanding of grammar
of all languages in the world"! That is an interesting observation.
According to David Boddy, the headmaster of St James Independent
School for Senior Boys, who once was Director of Press and Public
Relations for the British Conservative Party and Political Press
Secretary to the Right Hon. Margaret Thatcher during her first two
successful election campaigns, his school "is a school of difference
because it is developed on the strong foundation of ‘Philosophy of
Oneness’ or ‘Advaita Siddhanta’." It is not often that one gets to
read a story like this.

Good news is no news. Bad news, especially about the English media,
continues to make news, but what is often left out is a follow-up. The
Times of India, for instance, carried a story as long ago as April 7,
that the New York Times is threatening to shut down Boston Globe,
which it bought way back in 1993 for a record $ 1.1 billion. At the
time, Boston Globe was considered one of America’s "most acclaimed and
profitable newspaper". But now it seems that the paper is losing
heavily and the New York Times has incurred a debt of over a billion
dollars. In the United States, the craze is now for online news. The
growing fear is that if Boston Globe, famous for its reportage, can
lose circulation, what about smaller, less distinguished papers?

Technology is killing the print media in the United States, but
apparently this is getting to be common all over the West. India is
currently carrying on as if there are no changes in the offing but one
never knows how long this situations will last. Does one know that The
Times of India Online is the world’s number one daily website?
According to the latest figures from internet marketing research
company ComScore, timesofindia.com with 159 million page views in May
2009 was way ahead of the New York Times, Sun, Washington Post, Daily
Mail and USA Today. Surprisingly, The Times of India has been the
world’s largest-selling English language broadsheet newspaper in the
world but now it has also become the world’s number one English
newspaper across formats-broadsheet, compact, Berliner and online.

According to the Times Group Managing Director Vineet Jain, the
internet penetration is growing at the rate of about 30 per cent
annually. That is substantially large a percentage and if one has to
keep up with it, its trustworthiness has to literally increase
exponentially. If this happens it will be raising India’s own
trustworthiness, apart from that of the Times Group, a matter for all
to be proud of. The important think to remember is that India can do
it. But then, shouldn’t other Indian media websites strive to do
better? What one website can do, surely another can?

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com/2009/09/understanding-contemporary-india.html

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Understanding contemporary India through Mahabharat’s moral dilemmas

Spiritual Meditations
20 Sep 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Understanding contemporary India through Mahabharat's moral dilemmas

After spending six years continuously with the epic, I have learned
that the Mahabharata is about the way we deceive ourselves, how we are
false to others, how we oppress fellow human beings, and how deeply
unjust we are in our day to day lives. But is this moral blindness an
intractable human condition, or can we change it? Some of our misery
is the result of the way the state also treats us, and can we re-
design our institutions to have a more accountable government? I have
sought answers to these questions in the epic's elusive concept of
dharma, and my own search for how we ought to live has been this
book's motivating force.

The Mahabharata is unique in engaging with the world of politics.
India's philosophical traditions have tended to devalue the realm of
human action, which deals with the world of 'appearances' not of
reality. Indeed, a central episode in the epic dramatises the choice
between moral purity and human action. King Yudhishthira feels guilty
after the war for 'having killed those who ought not to be killed.' He
feels trapped between the contradictory pulls of ruling a state and of
being good, and wants to leave the world to become a non-violent
ascetic. -- Gurcharan Das

The Immorality of Silence

Remorse and Rahul Gandhi

Yudhishthira and Narendra Modi

URL of this page: http://newageislam.net/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1771

--------------

Welcome to Hastinapur- The Mahabharata's timeless appeal

On the subtle art of dharma

Gurcharan Das

What blacken our days are the insistent reminders of governance
failure, hanging over us like Delhi's smog. What kind of answers can
be found in the Mahabharata, which is obsessed with questions of right
and wrong?

In the spring of 2002 I decided to take an academic holiday. My wife
thought it a strange resolve. She was familiar with our usual
holidays, when we armed ourselves with hats and blue guides and green
guides and trudged up and down over piles of temple stones in places
like Khajuraho and Angkor Wat. As she moved to get up from her chair,
I explained that I had studied the great books of the West during
college but I had never read the Indian classics. The closest I had
come was to take Daniel Ingalls' Sanskrit classes at Harvard as an
undergraduate. Now, 40 years later, I yearned to go back and read the
texts of classical India, if not in the original, at least with a
scholar of Sanskrit nearby. My wife gave me a sceptical look, and
after a pause, she said, 'It's a little late in the day for a mid-life
crisis, isn't it?'

In the 1990s I travelled widely across the country and from these
travels emerged a book, India Unbound. In it I wrote about India's
economic rise and concluded that it was increasingly possible to
believe that for the first time in history Indians would emerge from a
struggle against want into an age when the large majority would be at
ease.

Prosperity has indeed begun to spread across India. Happiness, alas,
has not. What blacken our days are the insistent reminders of
governance failure, hanging over us like Delhi's smog. I am not only
thinking of corruption in its usual sense — of a politician who is
caught taking a bribe. My anguish comes from something else—from a
recent national survey that found that one out of four teachers in a
government primary school is absent and one out of four is not
teaching. Another study found that two out of five doctors do not show
up at state primary health centres and that 69 per cent of the
medicines are stolen. A cycle rickshaw driver in Kanpur routinely pays
a sixth of his daily earnings in bribes to the police. A farmer in an
Indian village cannot hope to get a clear title to his land without
the humiliation of bribing a revenue official. One out of five members
of the Indian parliament elected in 2004 had criminal charges against
him; one in eighteen had been accused of murder or rape.

I wondered if the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, held any answers.
The epic is obsessed with questions of dharma, of right and wrong — it
analyses human failures constantly. Unlike the Greek epics, where the
hero does something wrong and gets on with it, the action stops in the
Mahabharata until every character has weighed in from every possible
moral angle. Would I be able to recover a meaningful ideal of civic
virtue from India's foundational text?

In the end my wife turned out to be a good sport, and so in the autumn
of 2002 we found ourselves at the University of Chicago. I was an
implausible student — a husband, a father of two grown up boys, and a
taxpayer with considerably less hair than his peers. Benares would
have been the conventional choice, but I did not want to escape into
'our great classical past.' Sanskrit pundits, I feared, would not have
approved of my desire to 'interrogate' the texts. It was a stray
remark of the poet, A.K. Ramanujan, which finally pushed me to
Chicago. "If you don't experience eternity at Benares," he said, "you
will at Regenstein." He was referring to the Regenstein Library with
its fabulous collection of South Asian texts and its array of great
Sanskrit scholars.

Can we change it?

After spending six years continuously with the epic, I have learned
that the Mahabharata is about the way we deceive ourselves, how we are
false to others, how we oppress fellow human beings, and how deeply
unjust we are in our day to day lives. But is this moral blindness an
intractable human condition, or can we change it? Some of our misery
is the result of the way the state also treats us, and can we re-
design our institutions to have a more accountable government? I have
sought answers to these questions in the epic's elusive concept of
dharma, and my own search for how we ought to live has been this
book's motivating force.

The Mahabharata is unique in engaging with the world of politics.
India's philosophical traditions have tended to devalue the realm of
human action, which deals with the world of 'appearances' not of
reality. Indeed, a central episode in the epic dramatises the choice
between moral purity and human action. King Yudhishthira feels guilty
after the war for 'having killed those who ought not to be killed.' He
feels trapped between the contradictory pulls of ruling a state and of
being good, and wants to leave the world to become a non-violent
ascetic.

To avert a crisis of the throne, the dying Bhishma, tries to dissuade
him, teaching him that the dharma of a political leader cannot be
moral perfection. The Mahabharata is thus suspicious of ideology. It
rejects the idealistic, pacifist position of the earlier Yudhishthira
as well as Duryodhana's amoral view. Its own position veers towards
the pragmatic evolutionary principle of reciprocal altruism: adopt a
friendly face to the world but do not allow yourself to be exploited.
Turning the other cheek often sends a wrong signal. An upright
statesman must learn to be prudent and a follow a middle path.
Politics is an arena of force, and a king must wield the danda, 'rod
of force', when required.

(This article is a specially prepared word excerpt from The Difficulty
of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma, by Gurcharan Das, Allen
Lane/Penguin, 2009, pp 434.)

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/18/stories/2009091853371100.htm

----

Welcome to Hastinapur: The Mahabharata's timeless appeal

The Difficulty of Being Good: On The Subtle Art of Dharma

Gurcharan Das

Allen Lane

Rs 699

September 11, 2009

As in the case of Gurcharan Das, it was my grandmother who introduced
me to the Mahabharata in my childhood. Das returned to the epic later
on in life and as his lucidly written book The Difficulty of Being
Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma shows, the author has used it as a
base to understand the present, including the nature of capitalism.

Classics like the Mahabharata, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid have
a timeless appeal. But one should guard against reading too much into
their relevance to understand our times. The late Robert Fagles, whose
translations of the above-mentioned books by Homer and Virgil became
bestsellers, was asked by a reporter after the US invaded Iraq in
2003, "Is there a Rumsfeld in The Iliad?" Fagles replied: "Not that I
know of, but isn't one enough?"

On the face of it, to expect the Mahabharata to shed light on the
global economic crisis appears a bit of a stretch. The Mahabharata
believes that human beings are flawed, making our world full of
unevenness, rendering us vulnerable to nasty surprises.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/Mahabharata.jpg

Peter Brook's production of 'The Mahabharata', a film made in 1989

Each of the major heroes has their failings. Dhritarashtra is blind to
his eldest son's faults. Duryodhana's monumental envy is the driving
force of calamity in the epic. Arjuna despairs over killing his
kinsmen. The virtuous Yudhishthira has a weakness for gambling. The
flaws of epic heroes show how difficult it is to be good in a world of
moral haziness.

This tale of a family in crisis is a metaphor, in Das's book, for the
economic upheavals that have engulfed the world. Capitalism may be a
mode of production but it also shapes the nature of social relations
between human beings who buy and sell goods in the market.

There are similar parallels throughout the book. Investment bankers on
Wall Street suffered from similar moral infirmities as the heroes in
the Mahabharata; they exposed the flaws in the global capitalist
system. Duryodhana's envy and greed that makes him want to annex the
Pandavas' kingdom is in tune with what big fishes do to smaller ones.

In other words, the narrative fleshes out through a tale of sibling
rivalry the brutal competition of 'interests and passions' that is the
characteristic of a 'free market'.

Are lessons from the Mahabharata enough to save capitalism? Das,
certainly, thinks that a healthy dose of Dharma may restore trust in
the system. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that this epic, like
all classics, enriches one's concept of Man. The Mahabharata is seven
times as long as The Iliad and The Odyssey combined but it has not
been translated in as many languages. It has had no Fagles. Das's book
(even though it is not really a translation) will certainly make it
accessible to a whole new generation.

N Chandra Mohan is an economic and business commentator

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News/booksreviews/Welcome-to-Hastinapur/Article1-452840.aspx

---

Books Excerpt

The Difficulty Of Being Wise

Gurcharan Das pans an ancient epic to retrieve lessons for today

Gurcharan Das

An Indian Morality Play

Duryodhana had many flaws but the most dangerous one was envy. He
could not stand to see the Pandavas succeed and his envy is the
driving force of the Mahabharata—driving it to war, death and
destruction....

The sort of envy evinced by Duryodhana was not unfamiliar to me when I
was growing up in Simla. My mother had a great and unrequited desire
to be a part of Simla's fashionable society. She envied those who
belonged to 'the club', the glamorous Amateur Dramatic Club. She must
have transmitted this to me, for I grew up with an acute concern over
my position in society, comparing myself to those who had things that
I did not possess, boys who were more attractive to girls than I was,
and especially those who made it to the school cricket team....

In 2007, Anil Ambani was the fifth-richest person in the world
according to the Forbes list of billionaires, but he was consumed with
a Duryodhana-like envy for his more accomplished older brother,
Mukesh, who was placed a notch higher on the list. Each brother had
his Shakuni, who was happy to rig a game of dice in order to win the
prize and destroy the other brother. Sibling rivalry within India's
wealthiest family was the longest-running soap opera in the country,
having mesmerised millions for the past four years. It mattered to the
nation because the enterprises of the two brothers accounted for three
per cent of India's GDP, 10 per cent of government tax revenues and 14
per cent of India's exports. Millions of shareholders worried if their
epic fight might devastate their life-long savings. I saw in this
corporate and family feud a morality play and I wondered if the
Mahabharata could shed some light.

Anil's envy of Mukesh is as dangerous as Duryodhana's. He cannot bear
the fact that his brother has more fame than him.

The first scene of the play opens in Mumbai's Kabutarkhana in 1964.
The Ambani children are growing up in a single room in a fifth floor
walk-up 'chawl' along with six members of their family. Their father,
Dhirubhai Ambani, has just set himself up as a trader in synthetic
yarn in the Pydhonie market. The son of a modest schoolteacher from a
village near Porbunder in Gujarat, Dhirubhai has returned from Aden
with Rs 15,000 in capital. He discovers that the demand for nylon and
polyester fabrics is monumental whereas supply is scarce because of
rigid government controls on production and imports. This is due to
India's socialist, command economy, created by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Businesses have to contend with dozens of controls in this period,
which Indians wryly call 'Licence raj'. Dhirubhai takes great risks
and soon corners government licences in the black market, and begins
to make large monopoly profits. His competitors cry 'foul'; his
critics call him 'corrupt'. He understands what Leftist politicians do
not—polyester is destined to become a fabric for the poor whereas they
tax and control it as though it was a luxury of the rich. Hence, the
mismatch between demand and supply and a black market.

Act Two: Dhirubhai ploughs his profits from trading into a
technologically advanced factory to make synthetic textiles, which is
up and running in record time thanks to his proximity to prime
minister Indira Gandhi's secretary. The village boy soon becomes a
master gamesman of the Licence raj, manipulating a decaying and
corrupt regime of controls to his advantage. He integrates backwards
to create an outstanding petrochemicals company, which first makes the
raw material for the textiles—polyester fibre—and then basic polymers
and chemicals, until he reaches the magic raw material, petroleum.

By now his sons are grown up. They are back from business school in
America, and have plunged into his company, Reliance, which is growing
at a scorching pace. Opponents predict its fall after the economic
reforms in the 1990s, but Reliance continues to expand and it is soon
India's largest company instead. It builds the world's largest oil
refinery in the shortest time, thanks to the project management skills
of Mukesh. Next, the company begins to explore for oil and gas. As
luck will have it, Reliance makes the biggest petroleum find in the
world in a decade—a mountain of gas off the shore of Andhra Pradesh.
It is monumental and holds the promise of easing the import burden of
a fast-growing, energy-starved nation. From the 'prince of polyester',
Dhirubhai has become the undisputed king of industrial India.

In '07, India had a Bhishma-like person on the throne. But he deferred
to his party's choice of Pratibha Patil as President.

Act Three opens in 2002 when the 'king' is dead. Three-and-a-half
million middle-class shareholders (the largest in any enterprise in
the world), who have become rich beyond their dreams, mourn his death.
He leaves behind two highly accomplished sons, and power passes to the
older, more sober Mukesh. The younger, flamboyant Anil marries a film
star, Tina Munim, a girl with a past. He loves glamour and cultivates
powerful politicians, and this does not go down well with the serious,
older brother. Mukesh tries to marginalise his brother, but Anil
retaliates. Filled with monumental envy for 'the new king', he
launches an attack on his brother. In the fight, governance failures
are revealed for the first time (about the family's shareholding and
the ownership structure of their new telecom venture). The stock
plunges and the country watches in fear at the unfolding of an awesome
tragedy. Finally, their mother—an anguished, Kunti-like figure caught
in the middle—intervenes and splits the kingdom like Dhritarashtra.
Three years later, both have prospered beyond their dreams and the
value of the empire of each brother is more than double of the
undivided kingdom.

The Ambani saga raises troubling moral questions. It is a classic rags-
to-riches story—the ascent of a simple village boy who against all
odds created a world-class, globally-competitive enterprise that has
brought enormous prosperity to millions. But it is also a tale of
deceit, bribery and the manipulation of a decaying and corrupt Licence
raj. Ambani's defenders argue that since his enterprises brought so
much good to society, what is the harm if he manipulated an evil
system and bribed politicians and bureaucrats? The government itself
realised it and has been dismantling the system since 1991. But
Ambani's opponents counter, saying that it is never justified to break
a law. Ends cannot justify the means. Other defenders believe that the
uncertain business world is full of danger and surprise, and a certain
amount of deception is necessary for business success.

Anil's envy of Mukesh is as dangerous as Duryodhana's. He cannot bear
the fact that his brother has far more power and fame than he does. He
burns inside each time the media extols Mukesh's awesome managerial
skills. Had the mother not intervened, the rivalry might have hurtled
over the top towards a Kurukshetra-like war, which might have
destroyed the whole enterprise, and with it the lives of millions of
people. The drama is by no means over. In 2009, Mukesh had moved up to
being the third-richest person in the world while Anil had slid to
being number seven. There continued to be a huge amount of bad blood
and dozens of court cases were pending between the two brothers.

But envy had certainly driven Anil to perform to great heights, and
the value of the enterprises of each brother was far greater than if
they had kept united. Dharma draws a fine line between the positive
and negatives sides of competition, and it is easily crossed as we
have seen recently in the global financial crisis in 2008. Competition
did put great pressure on investment bankers, rating agencies and
other players to bend the rules of decent conduct in the market for US
housing mortgages. But when they justified their acts as rational
behaviour based on the healthy competition, they slipped into the
arena of self-deception. To meet the relentless demand of the
bottomline and the incentive of a huge but unseemly bonus, many senior
executives compromised their character.

The Immorality of Silence

Draupadi's question (on the dharma of a king) also brought home to me
the immorality of silence. Vidura accuses the nobles, kings, and the
wise elders—all the less-than-mad-Kauravas—who stand by silently as
Draupadi is dragged by her hair before their eyes. When honest persons
fail in their duty to speak up, they 'wound' dharma, and they ought to
be punished according to the sage Kashyapa. In answer to her heart-
rending appeal, Bhishma ought to have leaped up and felled Dusshasana
to the ground instead of arguing over legal intricacies.

A similar conspiracy of silence diminished the office of the President
of India in the summer of 2007. The official candidate for the office
was a woman Congress Party leader, Pratibha Patil, against whom there
were extensive charges that were widely reported in the press. She had
started a cooperative bank in Maharashtra whose licence was cancelled
by the Reserve Bank. Her bank had given 'illegal loans' to her
relatives that exceeded the bank's share capital. It had also given a
loan to her sugar mill which was never repaid. The bank waived these
loans, and (it was) this which drove it into liquidation.... Six of
the top 10 defaulters in Pratibha Patil's bank were linked to her
relatives.

In July 2007, the nation had a Bhishma-like person of unquestionable
integrity in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. But he remained largely
silent, deferring to his party's choice of the presidential candidate.
In passing, he called it 'mudslinging' by the Opposition, and the
nation believed him. In any case, the Congress Party had the votes and
Pratibha Patil dethroned perhaps the most upright and popular
president in Indian history. After that, the charges were never
investigated.

Draupadi's example is an inspiration to free citizens in all
democracies. Her question about the dharma of the king should embolden
citizens to question the dharma of public officials, especially when
they confront the pervasive governance failures around them. These
failures are commonplace and they range from sending troops to fight
unnecessary wars in places like Iraq or the absence of school-teachers
in government schools in India. They test the moral fabric of society.
When there is no other recourse, citizens must be prepared to follow
the Pandavas and wage a Kurukshetra-like war on the corrupt.

Remorse and Rahul Gandhi

When the Kurukshetra war comes to an end, it becomes clear that the
theme of the Mahabharata is not war, but peace. We have been so
mesmerised by the heroic and valorous deeds at Kurukshetra, recounted
in the battle books of the epic, that it is only during the sorrowful
'bath of tears' of the widows of Hastinapur that we begin to confront
the other side of war. Yudhishthira is left with a hollow sense of
victory....

Revolted by the violence against all human feeling, Yudhishthira
becomes a disillusioned pessimist. Yudhishthira expresses remorse and
he repents. The irony is that many Indians have a low opinion of him.
'Dharmaputra Yudhishthira' is a derogatory epithet. While Arjuna is a
brave and valiant warrior, remorseful Yudhishthira is considered weak
and indecisive. The contempt for Yudhishthira says something about
contemporary society. What we need is more remorse, not less, but it
is somehow considered unmanly....

When Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's candidate for prime minister, was
assassinated in December 2007, what struck me most was the singular
lack of remorse in that country. There was plenty of grief, even some
regret, but no remorse. When I raised the question of Pakistan's lack
of remorse in one of my columns, Rahul Gandhi sent me an e-mail, which
I think is worth quoting, for he connects remorse with democracy:
"Remorse comes when you are able to feel the suffering of fellow human
beings to an extent where the suffering becomes your own. To feel
deeply human suffering you have to internally accept that all humans
are equal and see them as humans and not as a particular group. Once
you make this leap, democracy is the only system you can believe in.
(India's) leaders in the freedom struggle were able to look beyond
divisions and see the human being (including the British). Because of
this, they were able to feel the pain of people. The outcome was
democracy and remorse for your fellow human being. Pakistan's founders
(probably as a result of their fears) were unable to see beyond
divisions, and hence, the outcome was an unstable, undemocratic
remorseless system...."

Rahul Gandhi believes that remorse is more likely to be expressed in
democratic societies. But even in democracies it is usually absent. It
is extraordinary—there was no remorse among investment bankers on Wall
Street after they had tipped the global economy into a recession in
2008. They were not contrite that their actions had resulted in
millions of job losses around the world. They still expected bonuses
to be paid whether their company had lost or made money. It is as if
they felt they had a god-given right to earn more than ordinary human
beings. To be fair, a few investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, did
show restraint, but the majority behaved like the French aristocracy
just before the French Revolution. The Economist, a consistent
supporter of the free market, asked, "What will it take for bankers to
show a little remorse?"

Yudhishthira and Narendra Modi

Yudhishthira does not pursue the path of retributive justice but of
forgiveness. Even though he knows that Dhritarashtra had partly been
the cause of war, he does not hold trials of war criminals. He must
have realised that punishing his uncle would not have healed the
Pandavas' wounds nor helped to restore political community. He uses
the word kshama, 'forgiveness', several times, just as he had used it
earlier in an attempt to cool down Draupadi's anger in the forest.
Kshama has connotations of forbearance and forgiveness.

While forgiveness suggests a degree of 'self-righteousness',
forbearance points one in the direction of the classical virtue of
magnanimity. The magnanimous person is forward-looking and does not
suffer from the 'victimisation' complex of the forgiving person.
Seventeenth-century painters celebrated Alexander the Great's
magnanimity after defeating courageous Indian king Puru (Porus) of the
Punjab. The magnanimity of the victor towards the defeated has also
been codified in the Geneva Convention. Yudhishthira's actions make it
easier for the reconstruction of the fractured community of
Hastinapura.

Many liberals today, however, would be sceptical of Yudhishthira's
policy of reconciliation. They would argue that reconciliation in a
political community comes through political participation, which is
supposed to heal relationships and restore communal solidarity.
Excessive emphasis on social harmony and communal solidarity might
actually compromise the legitimate rights of individuals, such as the
right to reparations. Hence, former American secretary of state
Madeleine Albright always stressed 'first justice, then peace' during
the war in Yugoslavia. She believed that retribution had to precede
healing, and legal accountability for the past regime's offences was
necessary for restoring communal trust....

The opposite example is South Africa's oft-quoted success with
reconciliation. It shows that the "extension of forgiveness,
repentance, and reconciliation to whole nations is one of the great
innovations in statecraft of our time...."

More recently in India, Professor J.S. Bandukwala asked Muslims to
forgive the 2002 killings in Gujarat. Those who presided over the
killings were elected to power and their complicity was confirmed on
camera by an expose in Tehelka magazine in 2007. But, Prof Bandukwala
argued, "Forgiveness will release Muslims from the trauma of the past.
It may also touch the conscience of Hindus, since the crimes were
committed by a few fanatics in the name of Ram. Most important, it may
give Gujarat a chance to close the tragic chapter of 2002 and move
on...."

My first reaction to his proposal was: "No, the guilty must be
punished." But after chief minister Narendra Modi was re-elected with
a thumping majority, I wondered if it was not a great opportunity for
him to make a magnanimous gesture like Yudhishthira in order to heal
the state's wounds and lay to rest the ghosts of 2002. I felt that
forgiveness might actually work better than retributive justice. I
suggested in one of my columns if it was worth trying Professor
Bandukwala's idea.

I got some hate mail from both sides. Those who believed in legal
accountability disagreed with me vehemently, arguing that healing and
communal trust would only be restored in Gujarat once the guilty were
punished and the victims' right to reparations fulfilled. The admirers
of Modi, on the other hand, were outraged; they felt that it was they
who were owed forgiveness for the torching of the train in Godhra.
Nevertheless, I followed up my article with a suggestion that the
hugely popular chief minister, with a big electoral majority, would
gain a great deal of goodwill if he set up a 'truth and reconciliation
commission' (as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu had done in South
Africa) and follow it up with a plan to rehabilitate victims on both
sides. This might end a tragic chapter.

Source: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?261410

URL of this page: http://newageislam.net/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1771

Posted by SultanShahin at 2:13 PM

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/rhythm-of-soul/

September 22, 2009...7:34 pm
Rhythm of Soul

Source: RAO DILSHAD HUSSAIN and AREEBA IMTIAZ talk to Sain Zahoor
Ahmed about Sufi music and his mission

Sufi music has its root in different genres of music like qawali,
kafi, sufiana qalams and many other regional genre of similar
cultures. Sufi music started in the sub-continent by the great saint
Hazrat Amir Khusru in the 13th century. Since then sufi music is being
followed by composers and musicians of the subcontinent. Initially it
was used for the sole purpose of spreading the Islamic norms and
values.

Sufi music also highlights the teachings of the sufi saints like Baba
Bulleh Shah, Baba Farid, Mohamad Bukhsh and Shah Hussain etc. Sufi
singing is considered to be a symbol of love and affection. It gives
the message of peace and harmony. Now sufi music has a huge following
around the world.

Many Pakistani Sufi musicians including Abida Perveen, Sain Zahoor,
Sher Miandad Khan, Iqbal Baho and Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan have
been performing across the world. Sain Zahoor Ahmad has become one of
the Pakistan’s leading Sufi vocalists. He has acquired international
recognition in the recent years.

He has performed for Radio Pakistan and PTV. His contribution to the
field of Sufi music is enormous. He is amongst those musicians who
strived to promote the idea of mysticism. He is a natural born sufi
singer. He performs with beautifully adorned ‘Ektara’ while wearing
long embroidered Kurta, tightly bound customary turban and Ghungroos
(anklet bells).

Pakistani leading Sufi vocalist Sain Zahoor Ahmed while talking to
Sunday plus in an exclusive interview said, “I am associated with
music when I was just five years old. I was born in Depalpur Tehsil’s
Chuk No 47-D of Okara District in the province of Punjab. Basically I
belong to rural family, my forefathers used to cultivate the lands.
They could not imagine that a child brought up in rural area would
emerge as a musician”.

“At the age of five, I dreamt of a hand rising up from a grave that
directed me towards a shrine. I saw the same dream every night for
three years. It made me restless and I could not sleep at night. Once
in a month of Ramazan I came across mystically and spiritually well
reputed person Ustad Ronaq Ali who lived at a shrine and used to play
with Ektara. He had a magical voice. He used to sing ‘Uth ghafil raat
jay Damrhi aay, Aaj kol na veer ta aamrhi aay, aaykho raat judayaan
lamrhi aay, parh la ilaha illallah. Ustad Ronaq Ali was my first music
master and he tried to educate me and at least I learnt to play
Ektara. I used to play Ektara at the midnight hour while reciting ‘la
ilaha illalla’, he said.

“The dream was actually an invitation that put me on the right track
and all my intentions were diverted towards spirituality and Sufi
singing. I left my home at the age of ten and began roaming the Sufi
Shrines to find out the particular tomb that I had been dreaming about
it in past. My quest ended in Uch Sharif. I was passing through the
shrine where a massage was conveyed to me that Khalifa Sab or Shah Sab
wanted to meet me. When I kept pace on Mazar I realized that it was
the same tomb I saw in my dream. It was a mysterious coincidence in my
life. It was venerable Gillani Syed Bahar Hussain Shah’s shrine who
was grandfather of dignified Khalifa Syed Niaz Hussain. This Darga’s
respected Khalifa addressed me in these words ‘Taynu asi bulaaya aay,
tu kithe bajda aay’. There, I took oath of allegiance (ba’at) and
became the disciple of Syed Niaz Hussain Shah” Sain Said. Sain Zahoor
stayed there for three months to serve his ‘Pir-o-Murshid’. He started
singing sufi kalam there. Then, Syed Niaz allowed him to go back to
sing sufi kalams. Also he can visit shrine whenever he want.
Afterward, he had been regular visiting that Dargah. “Prior to death,
my Murshid advised me. Due to long journey, if it is difficult for you
to come here, then you can visit to Baba Bulleh Shah’s tomb in Kasoor,
we are basically from the lineage of Hazrat Baba Bulleh Shah” Sain
Zahoor Said.

Sain Zahoor has been performing in streets, shrines and sufi music
festivals as well for more than forty years but he got fame and
recognition in the last few years. Once leading TV and Radio anchor
Dildar Pervaiz Bhatti saw him performing at the tomb of Hazrat Madho
Lal Hussain. A thought originated in his mind that it was not an
ordinary voice, Sain’s mesmerizing and heart touching voice got round
so many persons including Dildar and immediately Dildar invited him to
perform for PTV station. Sain Zahoor said “Sincere efforts and support
of Dildar Bhatti helped me a lot and introduced me to the music
industry”.

“Thirty five years ago, when I went to PTV to perform for the first
time, my performance was recorded and played on PTV and the audience
enjoyed that performance a lot. At that time, Dildar Bhatti awarded me
with a cash of Rs. 250. I was also invited by Naeem Bokhari for his
talk show studio two.

Sain Zahoor studied music under the guidance of honorable Musicians
Ustad Ronaq Ali, Sain Marna and Taj Naseem Aqse. Sain Marna conferred
me the contract of three strings Ektara. The wording of rags is ‘Tan
tan wajda eik tara, eik taray vich raag hazara, wakh wakh aang her her
sur nyara, tan tan wajda eik tara, eik taray di zarb hayati, zarb
kilyan tay zarb barbaati…’

“Syed Wajid Ali Shah urged Hayat Ahmed Khan (founder of APMC) to
listen to me. Hayat Ahmad appreciated me and gave Rs. 500 as a reward.
He asked me to learn more about music. Hayat Khan hired different
musicians for me. I spent ten years to learn how to sing and play
musical instruments. Sain Zahoor learnt music under the guidance of
musicians like Ustad Ronaq Ali, Sain Marna and Taj Naseem Aqse who was
a film producer. I was taught how to recite Sufi kalam. I learnt three
raags Behrvi, Pahari and Jog”, he said.

In 1989, he participated in the All Pakistan Music Conference. His
melodic voice cast a spell over the audience. He emerged as a
distinguished artiste and frequently started performing on TV channels
and musical programmes. He performed in live concerts across the
globe. He has been a regular feature in Lahore’s World Performing Art
Festival organised by Rafee Peer Theater Workshop.

Sain Zahoor, a top-notch musician is now recognised known all over the
world. He has also been nominated for BBC world music award for his
performance in world folk music festival and he was awarded the ‘best
BBC voice of the year 2006’. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen
are also the recipient of this award.

“I devoted my heart and soul to music. I toured extensively across the
globe to perform in Live shows. I have toured USA, Canada, UAE, Dubai,
Norway, Europe, Denmark, Brussels, Belgium, Brazil, England, China,
Japan, India, Britain, Malaysia and South Africa. I have also
performed numerous times in India. With the grace of Allah I was
appreciated by the audience all over the world”, Sain said.

Though he is illiterate and cannot read and write yet he is wise
enough to create his own symbols to read out the lyrics. In order to
memorise lyrics, he developed his own language of symbols. He draws
dolls and sketches and interprets them with their postures. Zahoor has
a good memory as he could remember some of the rare songs from the
ancient tradition of Punjabi Sufi culture.

He is reasonably cultured and knowledgeable. He speaks dulcet Punjabi.
He is a true dervaish and his way of speaking is quite philosophical.
He is loving and pretty generous, also gifted with humbleness. “Anyone
who recites Wali’s Kalam is superb”, he stated.

He is a man of high dignity and respect for adages, his speech is
gentle and punctuated by ‘Kalam’ of great Sufi Saint. When asked to
give a message to the younger generation Sain Zahoor recited a poem of
Baba Bulleh Shah, “Parrh Parrh Aalim Faazil Hoya, Kaddi Apney Aap noo
Parrheya hi nahin, Jaa Jaa Warda Mandir Maseetaan, Kaddi Mun Apney
Vich tun Wareya ee Nahin, Ainwayn Roz Shaitaan dey naal Larda, Kaddi
Nafs Apney Naal Lardeya ee nahin, Bulleh Shah Aasmaanin Uddiyaan
Phardaa, Jaidha Ghar Baitha Ohnun Phardeya ee Nahin. Mar wai kasma
mar, na mray kasam(Anger) tai na wassay ghar, ginday kasam na milay
doi. A man can never achieve the heights of ecstasy without embracing
Allah’s will or slaying his NAFS”.

As a Sufi musician, his major concern is spirituality and mysticism.
He always sings Sufi poets like Hazrat Mian Muhammad Bakhash, Hazrat
Baba Bulleh Shah, Khawaja Ghulam Fareed, Baba Fareed Ganj Shakar,
Waris Shah, Hazrat Sultan Bahu and Mullah Shah Badakhshi. He sings
with deepest feelings. His voice touches the heart and becomes the
rhythm of the soul. His passionate voice stimulates ones mind to
contemplate Allah. In 2007, he produced a sound track to a widely
known and esteemed Pakistani movie Khuda ke Liye. His song ‘Allah Ho’
for the movie ‘Kuda Ke Liye’ was greatly admired by the music lovers.

Eight albums of Sain Zahoor have been released so far. Allah Allah bol
bandya, Terey Ishq Nachaya, Ishq Bullay nau nachaway, Mai jana joge de
naal and Mian Muhammad Baksh are the most popular and pleasant music
tracks of Sain Zahoor. He is also working for his two upcoming musical
albums. Nowadays, he is in Thailand to perform in live concerts.

Interestingly, Sain Zahoor has been performing across the globe and
received numerous awards but unfortunately Pakistani government has
not yet acknowledged the services of this unique artiste. He deserves
‘Pride of Performance’ for his lifelong contribution to folk and sufi
music.

1 Comment

PMA
September 22, 2009 at 9:59 pm

RR: I did not want you to miss Sain Zahoor’s tribute to Dildar Pervaiz
Bhatti. Please read on:

Once leading TV and Radio anchor Dildar Pervaiz Bhatti saw him
performing at the tomb of Hazrat Madho Lal Hussain. A thought
originated in his mind that it was not an ordinary voice. Sain’s
mesmerizing and heart touching voice got round so many persons
including Dildar and immediately Dildar invited him to perform for PTV
station.

Sain Zahoor said “Sincere efforts and support of Dildar Bhatti helped
me a lot and introduced me to the music industry”.

“Thirty five years ago, when I went to PTV to perform for the first
time, my performance was recorded and played on PTV and the audience
enjoyed that performance a lot. At that time, Dildar Bhatti awarded me
with a cash of Rs. 250.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/poem-the-flour-deaths/

September 17, 2009...8:43 pm
Poem: The Flour Deaths

Do we need?
The Prime Minister House
The President’s palace
The great old parliament
The Muppets of our bureaucracy
The old feudal lords,
And the thousands acres
The old hands of dictators
And the warmth of lies
From the leaders of our present

Do we need?
The ruins of our existence
From one crisis to another
In the land enriched in its soil
From the fertile plains of Indus
To the rivers of the north
The old seasons of harvest
In the mockery of our times
From the creation of promise
To the hardened crimes of our elite

Do we need?
The remembrance of our times
From the questions of the youth
To the analysts of the past
The words in abundance
The absence of action and work
Delivered for the benefits of our hearts
The rotten souls and their dreams

Do we need?
The education and our health
The dream of our existence
Or the reliance on the west,
From its mercenaries to its aids
The disease, inhabited in our land
The crisis of the times, our lives engulfed

Do we need?
The question on their lips
The hatred in their hearts
As they died in the stampede
Of our failures and demise!

Kashkin

6 Comments

kirannazish
September 17, 2009 at 8:49 pm

It can be sung. Thanks for this post.

Mustafa
September 17, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Great post!! Well written kashkin

kashkin

September 17, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Thanks!

Poem: The Flour Deaths « Pak Tea House China Best Tea
September 18, 2009 at 12:53 am

[...] Poem: The Flour Deaths « Pak Tea House By admin | category: tea
house | tags: bureaucracy, great-old, muppets, old-feudal, [...]

The Daily Reviewer

September 18, 2009 at 11:31 am
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at The Daily Reviewer. We compiled an exclusive list of the Top 100
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Joyce Ramay
September 18, 2009 at 7:20 pm

When I read of the deaths of people struggling to get flour, I
recalled one Eid when my late husband, Haneef Ramay, and I went to the
people living in tents along the railway tracks to distribute treats
to the children. They swarmed around us, the big kids shoving aside
the small ones. My husband spoke to them in his stentorian voice
saying, “We must all learn that the smallest and weakest among us must
come first. No one will get anything until you line up and let your
smallest brothers and sisters form in the front of the line. There
will be something for all of you.” To our amazement, the children all
giggled, the older kids directed their younger ones to the front, and
then took their places at the rear.

Afterwards, a man who had been attracted by the crowd came forward and
told my husband, “Sir, I have heard you give speeches for more that
thirty years, but that was the best one you ever gave.”

Haneef had been a Pak Tea House regular in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and
later went on to help found PPP, and held positions as Chief Minister,
Finance Minister and Assembly Speaker, and Senator. Please thank
Kashkin for his wonderful poetry.

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/poem-the-stars-are-so-distant/

September 16, 2009...4:20 am
Poem: The Stars Are So Distant

There remains a mystery to our questions
Of who we are and where we belong
Of all our quests and questions,
The miracles we perform through science
Through words of literature and philosophy
Through years of humanity and its demise
As we ponder in silence and as we reach out
There remains a spectacle, far from our wisdom
The mankind only to serve, the purpose
Of the creation and of our Creator
How we live and serve, how we kill and maim
In the name of humanity, in the name of religion
The stars are so distant, never will we know
In this lifetime, only our souls, travelers of light
To experience, through moments of infinity
The stars are so distant, as the mist draws its curtains!

Kashkin

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/mera-sahib-saadat-hassan-mantos-classic/

September 16, 2009...2:36 pm
Mera Sahib – Saadat Hassan Manto’s Classic

Saadat Hassan Manto wrote this classic in the early 1950s in Lahore.
The translation here is by writer who writes under the num de plume
“Godot”

“It happened in 1937. The Muslim League was in its juvenility. I, too,
was a young man. I wanted to do something. Anything. Besides, I was
healthy and strong, and wanted to engage in a rumble. I wanted to look
for trouble and pick fights. I was at an age when one longs to do
somethingBy something, I mean to say, if not a great adventure than
something!

“After this brief intro I return to the time when Ghalib was young.
Don’t know if he ever participated in any political movements or not,
but Yours Truly was a very active member of the Muslim League. Ghazi
Corps was comprised of youths like me, and I was a sincere member of
it. I stress ‘sincere’ because in those days I had nothing else. “It
was in those times that Mohammad Ali Jinnah came to Delhi. The Muslims
took out a huge and a wonderful procession in his honor. Obviously,
Ghazi Corps participated in this procession with full vigor. Our
leader was Anwar Qureshi sahib. He was a strong young man who has been
given an honor of, and is now known as, ‘Poet of Pakistan’. Our Corps’
youths were singing an anthem written by him. I don’t know if we sang
in tune with each other or not, the only thing I remember is nobody
cared about singing in synch. “This historical procession started from
Delhi’s historical Jamia Masjid and, roaring, passed through Chandni
Chowk, Lal Kewan, Hoz Qazi, and Chawri Bazar and ended at its
destination, meaning at the Muslim League office. In this historical
procession people yelled “Quaid-e-Azam,” which was considered illegal,
for Mohammad Ali Jinnah. A six-horse coach was provided for him. All
members of Muslim League were there in this procession. There were
lots of cars, motorcycles, bi-cycles and camels. But it was
exceedingly well organized. Quaid-e-Azam, who by nature was a very
civil and organized person, seemed very pleased to see such civility.

“I caught many of his glimpses. I don’t know my reaction the first
time I saw him. Now, when I think about it and analyze it I conclude
that, because sincerity is colorless, my reaction too was colorless.
At that time if someone had pointed me to any man and had said ‘there
is your Quaid-e-Azam,’ my adoration would have believed him. But when
I saw him many times there in that crowd of people and cars, my ego
was hurt: my Leader and so skinny…such a weakling! Ghalib has said: He
comes to my house God blesses / Sometimes I look at him and sometimes
I look at my house.

“It was his kindness and God’s blessing that he came to our house. I
swear to God when I saw him and his frail body and then my strong
physique, I wished either I contract or he expands. In the heart of my
heart, to keep him safe from evil eye, I had prayed for him and his
feeble body. The wounds he had inflicted were a common topic among his
enemies. “Circumstances change. Situation arose such that the art bug
that was sleeping in me started to crawl. I felt like testing my
kismet in Bombay in that field. I was attracted to drama ever since I
was a kid. I figured maybe there I could show off my skills. Now, on
one hand a desire to work for the nation and on the other, acting! A
man is weirdly contradictory!

“I arrived in Bombay. In those days Imperial Film Company was at the
top. It was difficult to get in, but somehow I got in. I worked as an
extra for eight anas a day, and used to dream that I will be a top
movie star one day. With God’s blessings, I am very talkative. I am
not a very pleasant talker, but I am not that unpleasant either. Urdu
is my mother tongue, a language the stars of Imperial Films did not
know. Urdu helped me out more so in Bombay than it did in Delhi.
Almost all the stars there had me read and write letters in response
to those that came to them in Urdu. All this reading and writing for
them did not help me, though. I was an extra and remained an extra.
“During this time I became friends with Buddhan, the very special
driver of Saith Ardesher Irani, the owner of Imperial Film Company.
Buddhan paid back my friendship with him by teaching me to drive a car
in his free time. But his free times were brief, and I was always
scared of the Saith lest he finds it out. I never really became a
skillful driver. Without Buddhan I could drive the Buick on an alif-
like straight road. My knowledge about the parts of the car, however,
remained zero.

“I was obsessed with acting. But that was in my head. My heart still
belonged to the Muslim League and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. At
Imperial Film Company, on the Kennedy Bridge, in the Bhindi Bazar, on
the Mohammad Ali Road, and at the Play House, we used to have a
discussion, with groups of mostly Muslims, about the behavior of the
Congress. Everyone at Imperial knew that I was a Muslim Leaguey and
adored Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. But it was a time when Hindus
did not try to kill anyone who uttered the word “Quaid-e-Azam.”
Pakistan was not yet on the horizon. I think when people at Imperial
Film Company heard me praise Quaid-e-Azam they thought he was a film
star and I was a fan of his. That is why one day the biggest film hero
D. Blemoria said to me, ‘hey, here’s your Jinnah sahib,’ while moving
Times of India towards me. I thought there was a picture of him in the
newspaper. But I didn’t see it. So I said, ‘why, bhaiya, where is his
picture?’ Blemoria’s John Gilbert style thin mustache expanded with a
grin, ‘no photo woto, this is an advertisement.’ I asked,
‘Advertisement? What kind of advertisement?’ Blemoria took the paper
back and showed me a long column and said, ‘Mr. Jinnah needs a motor
mechanic who can take charge of his garage.’ I saw the ad where
Blemoria finger was resting and said ‘Oh!’ as if I read the whole ad.
The truth is I knew as much English as Blemoria knew Urdu. “As I
already told you, my driving was limited to driving a car on an alif-
like straight road. I knew nothing about the mechanism of the car. Why
does the engine start when you press the self, if some had asked me
that question I would have said that because it is the law of motors;
and why it sometimes doesn’t start, then I would have said that is
also the law of motors and human intelligence has nothing to do with
it! “You’d be surprised to know that I noted down the address of
Jinnah sahib I took from Blemoria and decided to go there the next
morning. I neither thought nor expected to get the job. I just wanted
to see him in his residence from up close. Therefore, taking my
sincerity as a diploma, I arrived at his beautiful mansion, located
near the Pleasant Road, on the Malabar Hill. Outside was a Pathan
guard. He was wearing an enormous shalwar and a silk turban, was very
clean, strong, and intimidating. His appearance made me very happy. I
felt strangely satisfied that there was not much difference in his and
my biceps, maybe of half-an-inch or so. “There were many candidates.
They were all standing with their credentials under their arms. I
joined them. The funny thing was, forget about the credentials, I
didn’t even have a simple driving license. My heart was beating hard
just thinking I am about to meet Quaid-e-Azam any moment. I was still
thinking about my heartbeat when Quaid-e-Azam appeared in the porch.
Everybody turned attention. I moved to the side. With him was his tall
and skinny sister whose pictures I had seen in many newspapers and
magazines. On the side was his respectful assistant.

“Jinnah sahib fitted his one-glass round eyeglass on his eye and
started to scrutinize the candidates. When his eye turned to me, I
moved back further. Immediately his piercing voice was loudly heard,
but I only heard “You.” I knew that much English. It meant “Tum.” But
who was that “Tum” that he addressed? I thought it was the guy next to
me, so nudging him I said, ‘I think he’s calling you.’ The guy asked
hopefully, ‘me, sahib?’ Quaid-e-Azam said again, ‘No. Tum.’ His skinny
but iron-like strong finger was pointing at me. My whole body
trembled, ‘Ji, ji, me?’ ‘Yes.’ This three-knot-three bullet ripped
through my heart and brain. My throat, which used to yell “Quaid-e-
Azam,” was completely dry. I couldn’t say anything. But when he took
off his monocle and said “All right,” I felt I might have said
something that he heard, or he understood my feelings and said “All
right” just to save me from further torture. He turned around and said
something to his very handsome and healthy secretary and went inside
with his sister. Totally confused, as I hurried to get out of there
his assistant called me and said that the Sahib wants me present at
ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I couldn’t ask the assistant why the
Sahib wanted me; I couldn’t tell him that I was not at all capable and
not qualified for the job for which Qaid-e-Azam put out an ad. The
assistant went inside and I returned home.

“I was there again at ten the next morning. When informed I was there,
the handsome and very well dressed secretary came out and, to my
surprise, told me that the Sahib had selected me and wants me to take
charge of the garage immediately. When I heard this I felt like
spilling my guts and tell him that Quaid-e-Azam had misunderstood
Yours Truly, and that I showed-up just to have a little fun; why are
you putting this garage responsibility on these incompetent shoulders.
But I don’t know why I couldn’t say all that. As a result, I was
immediately given that responsibility and the keys were handed to me.
There were four cars of different makes, and I only knew how to drive
Saith Ardesher Irani’s Buick, and on an alif-like straight road at
that. There were many turns to get to Malabar Hill, and Azad was going
to carry not only his own self in the car. God knows how many
different places for important work he had to carry this Leader to
whom belonged lakhs of Muslims lives. “I thought of dropping the keys
and running away; run straight to my house, pick up my stuff, and
catch the first train to Delhi. But I didn’t think this was the right
thing to do. I figured tell the truth to Jinnah sahib, apologize to
him, and return to the place where I really belonged. But trust me,
sir, I did not get a chance to do this for the next six months.”

“How so?” I asked. Mohammad Hanif Azad continued, “Listen to this now.
The very next day I was ordered to bring the car. Those things that
fly at times like these, almost flew. I decided that the moment the
Sahib comes, I’d say salam to him, return the keys, and fall at his
feet. But it couldn’t happen. When he came to the porch, I was so
intimidated by him that the incompetent me couldn’t utter a word.
Besides, Fatima sahiba was with him. To fall into someone’s feet in
the presence of a woman, Manto sahib, was too much.” I saw bashfulness
in Azad’s big eyes and smiled, “khair, what happened then?” “What
happened then, Manto sahib, is that Yours Truly had to start the car.
It was a new Packard. I started the car with the name of Allah, and
took it out of the mansion very cleanly. When I got to the bottom of
the Malabar Hill near the red light at the corner…you know what a red
light is, right?” “Yes, yes,” I shook my head affirmatively.

“Well, sahib, that became a problem. Master Buddhan had told me to
just press the breaks and everything should be alright. In confusion I
hit the break with such clumsiness that the car stopped with a sudden
jolt. The cigar fell off Qaid-e-Azam’s hands. Fatima Jinnah jumped
forward two balisht and started cursing at me. A deep fear seeped
through my entire body. My whole body started to tremble. I felt
dizzy. Qaid-e-Azam picked up his cigar and said something in English,
which probably meant ‘lets go back.’ I obeyed the order. He asked for
a new car and a driver and left for where ever he had to go. I did not
get to serve him for the next six months after that incident.”

“To serve him like that?” I asked, grinning. Azad also smiled. “Yes.
You figure the Sahib would not give me another chance. There were
other drivers. They served him. The assistant told the drivers the
night before the car and the driver that were needed the next day. If
I’d asked him about me he couldn’t give me a satisfactory answer. I
found out later what was in Sahib’s mind. No one could say anything
about him with any certainty, nor could ask him about such matters. He
spoke only when he had to, and listened only when he needed to. That’s
why, although being so close to him, I could not find out why he kept
me like a useless car part.” “It’s possible that he forgot about you,”
I said to Azad.

A huge laughter came out of Azad’s throat, “No, sir, no. The Sahib
never forgot anything even if he wanted to. He knew very well that
Azad is breaking free bread. And, Manto sahib, when Azad breaks bread
they are not little bread. Look at this built.” I looked at Azad. I
don’t know what he was like in ‘37 or ’38, but I saw a well built and
a strong man sitting in front of me. You must have known him as an
actor. Before the Division he worked in many films in Bombay. With his
other actor friends he is barely making a living in Lahore these days.

I found out last year from a friend of mine that this big-eyes, dark-
skinned, well-built actor was a driver to Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali
Jinnah for some time. I had been, therefore, eyeing him ever since.
Whenever I met him, I brought up the topic of his Master and collected
his stories in my head. With an intention to write this essay, when I
listened to his stories yesterday, I saw a very interesting angle to
Quaid-e-Azam’s life. What had struck Mohammad Hanif Azad most was that
his Master liked physical strength. Just as Allama Iqbal liked those
things that were tall and majestic, Quaid-e-Azam liked strong things.
That’s why when he picked his servants, their health and physical
strength was the first thing he noticed. In those days, of which
Mohammad Hanif Azad talked about, Quaid-e-Azam’s secretary was a very
handsome man. All of his drivers had exemplary physical built. The
guards for his mansion were also selected based on physical strength.

What could be an explanation for this other than that,
psychologically, although Late Jinnah was physically very weak but
extremely strong from inside, he did not want to associate himself
that was weak and feeble. When a person really likes something, he
takes care of it real well. Quaid-e-Azam made sure all his well-built
servants dressed very well. His Pathan chowkidar was ordered to dress
his ethnic dress. Azad was not a Punjabi, but was at times asked to
wear a Punjabi turban. This headgear is quite impressive and one looks
very impressive in it. Quaid-e-Azam seemed very pleased by it and used
to award Azad whenever he put one on. If one thinks about it, Jinnah
being so conscious of his own frail body was his very strength of his
strong and powerful life. That was evident in the way he walked,
talked, ate, and thought. Mohammad Hanif Azad told me that Quaid-e-
Azam ate very little. “He ate so little I wondered how he is alive. If
I were forced to eat that little my fat would’ve started to melt the
next day. Despite him eating so little, four or five chickens were
cooked every day. But he used to eat only a very small cup of a
chick’s soup. Fruits were delivered everyday, and lots of it; but all
of it used to wind up in the servants’ bellies. Every night after the
dinner, the Sahib would check the list of grocery and give me a one-
hundred-rupee bill for the next day’s dinner.”

“One hundred rupees everyday?” I asked Azad. “Yes, sir, exactly one
hundred rupees. And the Sahib never asked what happened to it.
Whatever remained of it got divided among the servants. Sometimes
thirty rupees remained, sometimes forty, and sometimes even sixty or
seventy. He must have known that we kept the remainder, but he never
asked for it. However, Miss Jinnah was very clever. She used to get
mad at us and say we all are thieves. But the way the Sahib treated us
we used to think of his things as our own. So we kept quiet when she
would lose her temper at us. At times like that the Sahib would say to
her sister, ‘It is all right, it is all right,’ and that would be the
end of it. But once “It is all right” did not end it. Miss Jinnah
kicked the cooks out, not one but both cooks. Quaid-e-Azam had two
cooks at the same time, one was an expert in Hindustani food and the
other in English food. Usually the Hindustani cook was a waste and did
not do anything. He got to cook maybe once in months. Once in a blue
moon he would get an order to cook, but Quaid-e-Azam did not really
care about that food. “When both cooks got kicked out,” said Azad,
“the Sahib did not say anything. He did not interfere in his sister’s
affairs. So he started eating out in restaurants. During this time we
had a ball.

We would take the car out for hours, hang out, come back and tell them
we could not find a cook. Finally, both cooked were asked to come back
by Miss Jinnah.” If a man does not eat much, he either hates those who
eat a lot, or feels very happy to see others eat a lot. Quaid-e-Azam
ate very little but he was very happy to see others eat a lot. That’s
the reason he used to hand out one hundred rupees everyday and forget
about it. It doesn’t mean he was a spendthrift. Mohammad Hanif Azad
recounts an interesting incident. “One evening in 1939, by the Warli
Beach, I was driving the white Packard very slowly with the Sahib in
it. The low waves were touching the shore gently. It was a beautiful
but slightly chilly evening. The Sahib was in a really good mood. I
took advantage of it and started talking about Eid. He knew
immediately what I was after. I saw in the rear view mirror he took
his never-separating cigar out of his mouth and, his thin lips
smiling, said in a broken Urdu, ‘Well, well, you suddenly have become
a Muslim, try to be a little bit Hindu also.”

Four days earlier Quaid-e-Azam had turned Azad into a Muslim, meaning
that he had given him two hundred rupees as an award. That‘s why he
advised Azad to become a little bit Hindu. But that did not affect
Azad. In this Eid Azad came to the film producer Syed Murtaza Jilani
to affirm his Musalmani when I saw him and further interviewed him for
this story. Quaid-e-Azam’s private life is a mystery and will remain
so forever. That is the general feeling. But I think his private life
was so mixed-up with his political life that he had practically no
private life left. His wife had passed away long time ago and his
daughter married a Parsi against his wishes. Mohammad Hanif Azad told
me, “The Sahib was in a great shock because of it. He wished his
daughter had married a Muslim; the skin color or the ethnic background
did not matter to him. His daughter argued that if he could marry to
whom ever he wanted, how come he does not grant her the same freedom.”

Quaid-e-Azam had married the daughter of a very influential Parsi man.
Everyone knows that. But very few people know the Parsi man was very
unhappy about it and sought revenge. Some think he conspired to have
Qaid-e-Azam’s daughter marry a Parsi. When I talked to Azad about it
he said, “Only Allah knows. I only know that this was the second
biggest shock to him after his wife’s death. He was greatly affected
when he found out that his daughter married a Parsi. His face was a
mirror of his feelings, and reaction to even a simple event could be
seen on his face. A simple furrow in his eyebrow could become very
scary. What must have gone through his heart, only the Late One could
tell. What I found out from the outside sources is that he was very
disturbed. He did not meet anyone for fifteen days. He must have
smoked hundreds of cigars, and must have paced hundreds of miles in
his own room. “He walked a lot when he was in deep thoughts. In the
dead of the night he would pace back and forth on the hard and
spotless floor for hours. In calculated steps, from here to there, and
there to here, in the measured distance, his white and black, black
and white, or white and brown shoes used to make a strange tick tick
sound as if a clock is telling the news about its life in a consistent
manner.

Quaid-e-Azam loved his shoes, perhaps because they were always at his
feet and moved according to him. “After fifteen days of constant
mental and spiritual disturbance, he suddenly re-emerged. There was no
sign of shock on his face any longer, although the sadness had left a
slight wound in his neck. But it was still straight and stiff. It did
not mean, however, that he had forgotten the shock.” When Azad started
to talk about this aspect of Qaid-e-Azam’s life a second time, I
asked, “How do you know he had not forgotten that shock?” Azad
answered, “Nothing in a house can be hidden from the servants.
Sometimes the Sahib would order to open a trunk. In this ship-like
trunk were many clothes, of his late wife and of that disobedient
daughter when she was a little girl. When those clothes were taken
out, the Sahib would look at them with an intense quietness. Then a
sudden sadness would cover his thin and very clean face. He would
quietly say ‘It is all right, it is all right,’ take off his monocle
and, wiping it, would walk away. According to Mohammad Hanif Azad,
“Quaid-e-Azam had three sisters: Fatima Jinnah, Rehmat Jinnah, and I
don’t remember the name of the third one who lived in Dongri. At
Jopati Corner, near Chinnai Motor Works, lived Rehmat Jinnah. Her
husband was employed somewhere. Their income was very modest.

Every month the Sahib would give me a sealed envelope that had money
in it. He would also give me a parcel that perhaps contained clothes
and things. I used to deliver these to Rehmat Jinnah. Miss Fatima
Jinnah and the Sahib would pay visit there every once in a while. The
sister who lived at Dongri was married. All I know about her is that
she was well off and did not need anyone’s help. He had a brother. The
Sahib would help him out routinely, but he was not allowed in the
Sahib’s house. “I had seen this brother of Quaid-e-Azam in Bombay. One
evening, in a bar, I saw a man, who looked like Quaid-e-Azam, ordering
half rum. The same feature, the same backcombed hair, almost the same
white striped hair. When I inquired about him I found out that he is
the brother of Mr Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Ahmed Ali. I kept looking at
him. Sipping it slowly, he finished that half a glass of rum in a
royal manner.

It cost one rupee, which he paid as if he is paying a huge amount.
From his attitude it appeared as if he is sitting at a bar in Taj
Mehal Hotel, not in a flimsy and a cheap one. There was a gathering of
Muslims just before the historic meeting between Gandhi and Jinnah. I
had a number of friends at that gathering. They told me that Jinnah
was on the platform giving a speech in his typical style, and far, at
a distance, his brother Ahmed Ali, wearing his monocle, was standing
in such a way as if he was chewing his brother’s words.

“Billiards was the only indoor game Quaid-e-Azam liked. He would order
to open the billiards room when sometimes he felt like playing the
game. Although every room was cleaned every day, the servants made
sure the special room he ordered to open was very clean and everything
in it was set properly before he walked in. Because I played the game
a little, I was allowed in that room. Twelve balls would be presented
to him, he would select and the game would begin. Miss Fatima Jinnah
would stand nearby. The Sahib would light up a cigar, press it between
his lips, and would analyze the position of the ball he was going to
hit. He would spend many minutes in his analysis. With this angle.
With that angle. He would weigh the cue in his hands and move his bony
fingers on it as if it were a sarangi, mumble something, and take a
position; but if another angle come to his mind, he would stop, think,
make sure, hit the ball with the cue, and if successful, would look at
his sister with a conquering smile. “In the game of politics, Quaid-e-
Azam was as careful. He would never decide immediately. He would
analyze and scrutinize each problem as if it were a billiard ball. He
would move his cue to hit only if he was certain. Before he struck, he
would weigh his prey with his eyes carefully. He would consider all
angles. He would select the weapon according to the size of his
opponent. He was not a hunter who would pick up a gun and just shoot.
He would make sure not to miss. He would know his prey’s every
possible weakness before he aimed.”

According to Azad, “Qaid-e-Azam stayed away from the people who came
by just to meet him. He hated useless and senseless talk; but only
those talks that mattered, and even that had to be very precise and
concise, in both what he had to say and hear. That’s why only a few
people were allowed in his special room. There was only one sofa
inside the room with a small side table on which he would drop the
ashes of his cigar. Across the sofa were two showcases. He kept those
Qurans in them that were given to him by his fans. That room contained
his personal papers as well, where they were kept safely. He would
spend most of his time in that room. There was no table there. If a
person was asked in that room, he would stay at the door, listen, and
walk out backwards. The empty side of the sofa had his papers all over
it. If he wanted to write a letter, he would have the steno come in
and take dictation. His tone had certain harshness. When he spoke one
felt as if he was putting emphasis on those words that did not need
emphasis.” Judging from Azad’s testimonies, it seems the psychological
reason for his harshness was his physical weakness. His life was more
like a smooth pond, but he lived a life of a storm.

Some people say that it was his inner strength that had him live for
that long, that is, his awareness of his own physical weakness.
According to Azad, the Late Bahadur Yar Jung was among Quaid-e-Azam’s
best friends. “It was only him with whom he was so frank. Whenever he
came to visit, both men would talk about the country and politics like
true best friends. At that time, Quaid-e-Azam would separate his outer
shell from his inner self. He was the only one with whom the Sahib was
so frank and open. One felt as if they were childhood buddies. When
they talked to each other, one could hear the loud laughter coming out
of the closed doors. Other than Bahadur Yar Jung, other Muslim League
leaders, such as Raja Mahmud Abad, I. I. Chundrigarh, Maulana Zahid
Husain, Nawabzadah Liaquat Ali Khan, Nawab Ismail, and Ali Imam sahib
used to pay visit. But the Sahib dealt with them in a professional
manner, not in a frank way reserved for Bahadur Yar Jung.”

“Khan Liaquat Ali Khan must have visited quite often,” I said to Azad.
Said Azad, “Yes, the Sahib treated him as if he were Sahib’s best
student. And the Khan sahib listened to him very carefully, obeyed,
and carried his orders. When he was asked to pay visit, sometimes he
would ask me, ‘Hey, Azad, how’s Sahib’s mood today?’ I would tell him
how his mood was. If the Sahib were not in his good mood, every wall
in the mansion would know it. “Quaid-e-Azam took great care in his
servants’ character and personal behavior. Just as he hated bodily
dirt and smell, he hated bad behavior and character. He liked his
assistant very much, but was very irritated when he found out that the
assistant was having an affair with an employed girl. He could not
tolerate this irritation for long. The assistant was asked to see him,
and was fired. But after firing him, the Sahib started treating him as
a friend.” Tells Azad, “Once I came home at two in the morning after
having some fun. Those were the days when young blood feels certain
pleasure for doing bad things. I thought the Sahib would not know
about me coming in so late. But somehow he did. He called me in the
next day and said in English, ‘You are developing a bad character.’
Then he said in a broken Urdu, ‘Well, we’ll have you married.’ So,
when he went to Bombay from Delhi for a conference, I was married per
his instructions. Although I am just a Shaikh, I am fortunate that
only because of him I was married in a Sadat Family. The girl’s family
accepted me because Azad was a servant of Qaid-e-Azam.”

I suddenly asked Azad a question, “Ever heard Quaid-e-Azam say I am
sorry?” Azad moved his fat neck in negation, “No. Never.” Then he
smiled, “If by an accident he uttered the words “I am Sorry,” I’m
certain he would’ve erased those words from the dictionary forever.” I
think this spontaneous response of Azad sums up the entire character
of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Mohammad Hanif Azad is alive, in
this Pakistan given to him by his Quaid-e-Azam. And now, on the map of
this world, this Pakistan is struggling to stay alive with the
leadership of Jinnah’s best student, Khan Liaquat Ali Khan. In this
free country, outside the doors of Punjab Art Pictures, near the paan
store, Azad sits on a broken cot and waits for his Master. He also
prays for a better time when he would get his salary in time.

He is even ready to be a Hindu, as his Master once told him, provided
he gets that chance back. He was very worried when I talked to him
about Quaid-e-Azam’s life. He did not have money even for a paan.

When I started to make small talk to relieve him from his worries, he
sighed and said, “Sahib has died. I wish I had gone on that journey
with him. It would be his open white Packard. I would be at the wheel.
I would drive the car very slowly to his final destination. His frail
body could not tolerate jolts, you know. I’ve heard, Allah knows right
or wrong, that when the airplane with him on landed in Karachi, the
engine of the ambulance that took him to the Government House was not
in good condition. It stopped after going only a short distance. My
Sahib must have been so annoyed.”

Azad’s big eyes were full of tears.

Courtesy Chowk.com

140 Comments

Filed under Pakistan

140 Comments

Junaid
September 16, 2009 at 3:20 pm

Why was Jinnah so upset when his daughter married a parsi?

Wasn’t he a secularist? A questions some one the secularist supporters
of Jinnah need to answer.

Majumdar
September 16, 2009 at 3:27 pm

Junaid,

He was upset quite all right but not so much with NWadia being a Parsi
but being a person of a bad character.

It has been suggested of course that the rickety ambulance was
deliberately sent by LAK to ensure the Qaid’s premature death.

Regards

Bloody Civilian
September 16, 2009 at 4:45 pm
majumdar,

here’s a counter context to the suggestion about LAK: the limousine he
took the guard of honour in alongside mountbatten, on 14 august, had
also burst in to flames moments after the dignitaries had stepped out.
unlike delhi which was an established capital/centre, karachi was a
bit of a backwater. even the transfer of the less than adequate assets
took a long time.

Bloody Civilian
September 16, 2009 at 4:50 pm

… i believe the open top limo belonged to some local parsi friend of
MAJ’s

YLH
September 16, 2009 at 5:32 pm

Junaid,

Assuming that it is true – and not what Majumdar says- how does it
affect his secularism?

Does this mean all Parsis are non-secular – because they ex-
communicate all women who marry out of the faith? On the contrary
Parsis are perfect secularists.

What about Nehru and his objection to Feroze (Gandhi originally Khan
it is said)? Does that make Nehru less of a secularist? How about
Gandhi’s objections to his son’s conversion to Islam? Does any of this
mean that they were opposed to separation of Church and State?

I don’t think anyone who understands the word secularism in its right
context would not raise such a weird question.

Mustafa
September 17, 2009 at 1:27 am

hey guyz i am not sure if this is true but i heard that Quaid E Azam’s
grandson or something is living in very poor conditions and nobody is
helping him or asking him how he is doing

adnan
September 17, 2009 at 2:21 am

@YLH if i could take the liberty..as i understood Junaid is trying to
make a comparison between Quaid’s Muslim identity vs. a secularist
one.
i.e. why would he object if it werent for religious reason’s or as
MAJUMDAR said bcoz of the bad character of NWadia.

adnan
September 17, 2009 at 2:23 am

RE Mera Sahib!!

anyplace to get Urdu versions from?

Hayyer
September 17, 2009 at 2:45 am

Jinnah’s grandson is an Mumbai billionaire. You are probably thinking
of one of Jinnah’s agnates through a cousin of Jinnah called Aslam who
is reported to be destitute.

YLH
September 17, 2009 at 6:10 am

Adnan,

I have already answered that. See the Parsi example. Assuming it was
for religious reasons, that does affect one’s views on whether the
state should be separate from church and there should equality
regardless of religion caste or creed.

Secularism and irreligiousity are not the same thing. Only in Pakistan
secularism is translated as “la-deeniyat”.

AZW
September 17, 2009 at 7:53 am

Nice read.

Junaid:

You need to understand the word secularism a bit better. Secularism
stands for equal rights for every human afforded by the “state”,
regardless of their caste or creed.

I have another comment here. As much as I revere Jinnah, I am curious
about Azad’s comment that Jinnah never said I am sorry once. Now a guy
working for Jinnah may not have an audience to Jinnah at all times;
but does this little detail imply lack of humility at Jinnah’s part?

Or is humility indeed a virtue?

yasserlatifhamdani
September 17, 2009 at 7:58 am

“the limousine he took the guard of honour in alongside mountbatten,
on 14 august, had also burst in to flames moments after the
dignitaries had stepped out.”

Is this true?

By the way one L K Advani was the principal accused of the plot to
assassinate Jinnah in 1947.

D_a_n
September 17, 2009 at 12:11 pm

@ YLH….

thanks for the following gem:

‘Secularism and irreligiousity are not the same thing. Only in
Pakistan secularism is translated as “la-deeniyat” ‘

About time someone defined the blindingly obvious!

Junaid
September 17, 2009 at 12:48 pm

You need to understand the word secularism a bit better. Secularism
stands for equal rights for every human afforded by the “state”,
regardless of their caste or creed.

@AZW

Thanks for that. It makes things clearer. So a person can be a good
Muslim and advocate for equal rights of the citizens of his state. I
guess this is not possible given by nature of Islam towards non-
Muslims.

Which is why I think Jinnah made a big mistake.

D_a_n
September 17, 2009 at 2:35 pm

@ Junaid…

‘I guess this is not possible given by nature of Islam towards non-
Muslims.’

Utter tosh!

adnan
September 17, 2009 at 3:46 pm

Somehow i’m getting the feeling that this discussion is moving towards
the unfortunate or fortunate question of reason of being of Pakistan.
I say unfortunate since it’s been more than 60 yrs and we are still
discussing this question/fortunate may be coz people are inquisitive!!
but how how long this stays healthily inquisitive or mutates into a
‘Spanish Inquisition’ is a question of time.
For me there are no doubts it was for Islam….
But when someone asks i simply ask myself ‘What would a common person
of Pakistan Movement would have thought? Why was a commoner struggling
for a separate country for Muslims? What was that Pakistan ka matlab
kia LA ILAHA ILALLAH? How could Pakistan be a Laboratory of Islam if
Islam were not to be tested(though i disagree with testing term; i
take it as a simile) in it?

All this as Junaid said Islam has a rather different approach towards
Non-Muslims, i wouldnt say harsh or ugly, but certainly not Equal to a
Muslim citizen!!

yasserlatifhamdani
September 17, 2009 at 3:52 pm

Pakistan ka matlab kiya la illah ilallah was never raised during the
Pakistan movement… and certainly never by Jinnah himself.

The questions you ask yourself are misdirected. The commoner did not
vote for the impressive list of Maulanas… but chose to vote for Jinnah
instead whose westernized lifestyle were well known and were well
popularized.

Read Jaswant Singh’s book. You’ll see why Pakistan happened.

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adnan
September 17, 2009 at 10:08 pm

and now i should judge quaid by Jaswant Singh’s Book..he is the
authority now…wow!!
commoners didnt understand Quaid’s English either…but took it in
context of the contemporary newspapers which interpreted for them….or
when Allama Iqbal favored Quaid, the same guy who doesnt stop short
from ‘neel k saahil say lay ker tabkhaak e kashgar’.
as far as Pakistan ka matlab kia la ilaha ilallah, its a widespread
belief that it was a pakistan movement slogan.. so if u wanna refute
it..refute it with evidence!!(ask ten people from the streets of
pakistan)
But lets put aside the above arguments and then think.. i would say if
it werent for Islam creation of Pakistan was a big mistake…No, but a
stupendous one!!…if a commoner was suffering from so much low self-
confidence…and was so impressed by that Victorian style of manner or
culture…he should not have asked for self ruling… Who could be better
than the Gora saab himself…
and gora saab has indeed left some glorious examples…. we would have
thrived under the british as honkong, singapore etc did.and in some
way u can say australia, Canada as well….

Or if wanted a secular state why did the sin of dividing Historical
India…as the modern day Indians claim….(for the economic benefit of
Muslims? very pathetic….)

adnan
September 17, 2009 at 10:23 pm

ohh my goodness..now i realise this is a useless debate on this
forum….
there has already been a great duel on this topic in this exact forum
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/remembering-bhutto-historyclergy-and-pakistan/

…so if that couldnt persuade people …i dont think my bickering would!

kabir
September 17, 2009 at 11:04 pm

Completely agree with Junaid.

bonobashi
September 17, 2009 at 11:07 pm

@adnan

I am sure that you were making valid and important points, but what
were these? You did mention in one of your last comprehensible
sentences that commoners didnt understand Quaid’s English either, and
so on. If that is a criterion for being the national leader, please
step up and take your rightful position.

1. According to you, if something is not understood, it is sufficient
to read about its interpretation in the newspapers.

This is the guiding fallacy of news in most parts of the world, and
the reason why western nations pay so much attention to managing the
press. It is very pleasing to note your attempts at global convergence
of views. Bushie Baba would be proud of you.

2. About Pakistan ka matlab kya….: I understand that you have in
effect claimed that due to the numbers of people believing it to be
true, it is no longer important whether or not it is true, what is
important is that a large number of people believe it to be so.

Fascinating; are you truly adnan, and a Pakistani? I would have
suspected otherwise, perhaps a Suresh Prabhu, or an Om Prakash
Sharma.

The argument you have used is precisely the one used by the Sangh
Parivar to justify the destruction of the Babri Masjid on the grounds
that it was built precisely on the temple marking Sri Ramachandra’s
place of birth; to argue that there was in fact a real bridge, built
by squirrels and other little furry beasts, at the personal behest of
Sri Ramachandra himself, to enable him and his vanar army to cross
over into Sri Lanka and settle scores with Ravana; also by their
supporter the Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram to establish the date of
the philosopher and reformer Shankara at some fancy date like 4,000
years ago (or was it 40,000? I have not updated myself in recent years
and don’t know the current state of predictability and prediction).

You are in good company, aren’t you?

3. I would like a guide, preferably a graphic one, indicating where
each sentence object is, and where the subject is, for your (I think)
fourth paragraph. As an alternative, I propose to save it up for
Sunday, as the comics and the puzzles have fallen off sadly these
days.

There is a possibility that you will not oblige, n’est ce pas? Let’s
try on our own, anyway.

But lets put aside the above arguments and then think.. i would say if
it werent for Islam creation of Pakistan was a big mistake…No, but a
stupendous one!!…if a commoner was suffering from so much low self-
confidence…and was so impressed by that Victorian style of manner or
culture…he should not have asked for self ruling… Who could be better
than the Gora saab himself…
and gora saab has indeed left some glorious examples…. we would have
thrived under the british as honkong, singapore etc did.and in some
way u can say australia, Canada as well….

Orgasmic stuff!

Argument 1: If it weren’t for Islam, creation of Pakistan was a big
mistake.

OK, so far so good. If you are under the impression that you are
supporting Islam in this manner, it isn’t a very good advertisement
for the creation of Pakistan (for a full understanding of what I just
said, please re-read your last sentence).

Supporting premise (a):
if a commoner was suffering from so much low self-confidence…

Hmmm.

Which commoner is this?
How did you divine the fact that he suffered from low self-confidence?
I am sure you don’t meet many such in the course of your day.
Had you met him?
Did he confide in you?
Did he write a book (you were asking for proof, I seem to remember,
about Pakistan ka matlab kya)?
Do you know the name (of the book)?
The publisher?
Do you like brown rice? (that last has nothing to do with the very
valuable points you have raised, which we will no doubt get to hear
about once the proper interceptor is born, but I thought some
nutritional market research would not go amiss).

Supporting premise (b):
and was so impressed by that Victorian style of manner or culture…he
should not have asked for self ruling…

Some more Hmmm.

I just finished teaching a Communications course; mind if I dip into
your exercise book for their problems? There’s 90 marks in that, so
think how your English will live on even after you, in the minds and
souls of 180 students.

[sigh] Back to mundane stuff. I hate these interruptions.

The Victorian age ended in – what was it? very early in 1901, I think
– so whom were you referring to, as being impressed by ‘that’ (which?)
Victorian style of manner or culture?

With such a rich surfeit of information in front of us, all of it, I
am sure, capable of comprehension by normal human beings (those with
nine less heads than Ravana), I dare not put to you any further
questions: there is always the horrific thought that you might find
answers.

kabir
September 17, 2009 at 11:07 pm

@ Adnan,

You’re right. If Jinnah really wanted a secular state, there was no
need to divide India. Which is what leads me to think he advocated TNT
so that he could get his share of political power which he perhaps
would not have gotten in united India.

There’s a difference between demanding constitutional safeguards as a
minority and being willing to break your country if you don’t get
them.

bonobashi
September 18, 2009 at 12:46 am

@kabir

Obviously none of the preceding discussion, on other threads, for
example, has made the slightest impression on you. There’s a
difference between rock-ribbed integrity, shown in an unwillingness to
compromise, and being obtuse.

Let me run through the old, old story just once again;

1. that Jinnah wanted a secular state, which seems quite evident from
his utterings in his Congress phase, in his Muslim League phase and
after independence, in the brief time that he was allowed, is not
disproved by his wanting a different secular state, outside India,
because the historical evidence is that he never wanted it to be
outside India.

2. Until as late as 1946, he was fighting with a single-minded passion
for a ‘free’ area for the Muslims of India, preferably in the Muslim-
majority areas of the north-west and the east; in fact, he had
suggested that there be two such, still part of India, with the rest
of India constituting the third portion.

3. This was the central theme of his political programme until the
fateful days of July 1946, when the Cabinet Mission seemingly got an
agreement both from the Muslim League and the Congress for just such a
proposal.

4. Nehru, within a couple of days of this seeming consensus having
been achieved, announced that the Congress would recognise no bars on
the members of the Constituent Assembly, which was to be set up to
determine the future constitution of the country, still the undivided
country.

5. This obviously meant that the consensus was in fact no consensus,
and that the Congress had in effect announced that they were agreeable
at that point of time, in July 1946, but did not consider themselves
to be bound by that during the proceedings of the Constituent
Assembly.

6. Jinnah had snapped out a terse reply when questioned about his plan
B, and found to his disbelief that the Congress had actually boxed him
in, by refusing the plan that the Cabinet Mission had proposed, for
three distinct entities to be formed of British India, to be linked by
a few very vital central services. This plan B that he never expected
to have to take up, was partition.

7. It is clear that the preceding experience of working with the
Muslim League in coalition governments had made the Congress
leadership bitter about the Muslim League, and its leader, Jinnah.

8. Perhaps for this reason, that of frustration with their experience,
and of consequent unwillingness to work with the League in future; or
perhaps because of a suspected personal antipathy to Jinnah on the
part of Nehru, the Congress preferred partition to working together.

9. There is a host of evidence that this partition was not what Jinnah
had wanted, and the result was not the Pakistan he wanted, merely that
it was the Pakistan that he hoped against hope would keep in place in
spite of its manifest disadvantages.

I hope this helps. Please do try not to introduce repetitive and
completely exhausted topics into the discussions. Courtesy demands
that you do your homework before putting finger to key.

Bloody Civilian
September 18, 2009 at 1:51 am

YLH

re. the limo… the engine caught fire minutes after jinnah and
mountbatten had got off and walked away. i’m afraid i’ve completely
forgotten the origin of the story right now. i’ll try and dig it up.

D_a_n
September 18, 2009 at 2:35 am

@ Adnan

you produced the following nonsense:

‘All this as Junaid said Islam has a rather different approach towards
Non-Muslims, i wouldnt say harsh or ugly, but certainly not Equal to a
Muslim citizen!!’

fortunately numerous periods of Islamic history,especially when we
were at our peak are available to refute you and make you look like a
complete buffoon.

Now run back to your dr. Israr day care and quit stinking up this
forum. There are plenty of other places for you to spread yourhslf
truths and rubbish…you are a discredit to my deen and to your country.

D_a_n
September 18, 2009 at 2:39 am

@ kabir

Hun araam aei??

PS: your agreement with junaid is further proof of your self loathing.
You will agree with just about anything with thinking it through just
to make it fit your world view.

Junaid
September 18, 2009 at 5:32 am

The dilemma on this forum is itself a clear representation of the
cheap mentality of the Muslim Indian elite.

The Muslim Indian elite of pre-partition would quickly wear Islam on
their sleeves to justify the creation of another country for “safe
guarding” the interests of the community.

However, once the country is created, the elite quickly starting
fiddling the flute of secularism.

@D_A_N

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

The numerous periods of Islamic history you speak of are periods in
which Muslim rulers ruled but not necessarily using the Islam as the
source of their governance. For example Akbar etc.

So using those numerous periods in fact only weakens your own
argument.

D_a_n
September 18, 2009 at 6:05 am

@ junaid

oh really now?? And ofcourse I couldn’t really have been thinking of
anyone other than Akbar mind reader that you are.

Strong words? Weak cause? I suppose blanket statements born out if
personal issues or shades of ignorance make for stuff Nobel prized are
made off right?

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 6:06 am

Bonobashi,

Thank you for making those points. But about Kabir- he is not the kind
who has humility to accept that he might be wrong about something.

Junaid,

Unfortunately what you say doesn’t make any sense.

You should read Hamza Alavi’s “Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and
Identity”… It speaks of the Salariat (petty bourgeoisie) as being the
real impulse being the Pakistan movement. Hamza Alavi himself was
probably the leading Marxist historian and an authority.

The issue was that Jinnah atleast after having failed to convince his
Congress colleagues to concede residuary powers and reserved seats and
having failed to convince his Muslim co-religionists to give up
separate electorates thought that having two federations – one Muslim
majority and one Hindu majority (an idea that was already floating
around)- which would then come together as one confederation of India
or the model that EU later adopted. The whole thing was based on a
very reasonable legal assertion (which came out of the fact that there
were two Indias to begin with a. British b. Princely and a question of
how to bring these in a federation was discussed through out the 1930s
– Jinnah had advocating dissolving all of them at that time) that a
unitary center was a British creation.

If secularism is equality of citizenship, religious freedom, religion
as personal faith etc, Jinnah had maintained these to be fundamentals
of the new state through out the Pakistan movement.

Also may I suggest- as per your comments to Dan- that all your
comments are quite bitter. Perhaps a little more understanding and a
little more reading would do wonders.

Do read H M Seervai’s “Partition of India: Legend and Reality”. He was
not from the imaginary “muslim elite” that “created” Pakistan.

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 6:11 am

PS. The difference between rock rubbed integrity marked by an
unwillingness to compromise as opposed to being obtuse – I wish all of
us would know that difference, self included, and there would be
better discussions

Btw- Junaid mian : Bonobashi is not the Muslim elite here either. I do
hope you read his comments.

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 6:13 am

Erratum: That smiley is too cheery … I was going for a sadder more
sober smile.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:13 am

Bonoboshi,

I am aware of all the points you are making. Do not assume I am
ignorant, it’s condescending, and I refuse to accept condescending
behavior from anyone, not from YLH and not from you.

I accept everything you have said, but if Jinnah had truely wanted a
secular state he would never have propogated the divisive and
exclusionary Two Nation Theory. Hindus and Muslims were not two
“nations”. Everyone was Indian. There was no reason to propogate this
theory, unless it was a political ploy. That is all I’m saying.

There was never, and will never be, an excuse for vivisecting India.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:21 am

YLH:

I “don’t have humilty to accept when I’m wrong”? The pot is calling
the kettle black.

By the way, some googling shows how you were completely put in your
place over at Chapati Mystery. The commenter was right. Your attitude
towards Jinnah borders on hagiography– Jinnah is your khuda and rasul.
By insulting Gandhiji, you think you are doing Jinnah a service. You
are not an objective intellectual, and your pretense to be such is
beyond absurd.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 8:23 am

Dear Kabir,

Let me make it very clear. You are not only ignorant, but you are
incapable of logical thought, reason or ability to argue coherently.
Had it not been for the circumstances of your birth, you might as well
have been right next to another “K”, Kasab i.e. Amir Ajmal Kasab…

I had this opinion of you from the first day you interacted here. But
these gentlemen that you are now accusing of being condescending
towards you were the ones hellbent on giving you the benefit of
doubt.

Now either you “accept” everything Bonobashi has said or you “accept”
what you say subsequently. You can’t accept both at the same time.

As for your other post – about objectivity etc I did not claim. Nor
did I insult your precious Gandhiji here except point out the obvious
criticisms that everyone including Jaswant Singh and even Gandhi’s own
grandson accept. You have yet to show me through any coherent logical
argument how I am wrong.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:36 am

YLH:

I am posting a letter I wrote to you (it was intended for the other
thread, but I can’t comment there for some reason). It says what I
have to say in the fullest manner possible:

I may not be up on all the intricacies of the TNT, but I know that it
was used to divide rather than unite Indians. That is all I need to
know about it and that is why I can never support it. I cannot be in
favor of ideas that divide human beings from each other.

You say that it is ironic that I sing bhajans and yet I say that
“religious differences” don’t matter to me. Let me clarify that I do
not sing bhajans as a form of worship (though those that do so are
perfectly entitled to this). I sing them because they are an important
part of Hindustani Classical Music as well as some of the most
beautiful poetry written in the South Asian tradition—just take the
bhajans of Meerabai for example. I also sing Shabads and have won
prizes in several competitions, yet this does not make me a Sikh. I am
neither a practicing Muslim nor a “hindu wannabe” (unless in your
eyes, anyone who sings bhajans automatically becomes Hindu). If the
“hindu wannabe” quip is related to my name “Mohan”, this is the name
my parents gave me, in honor of none other than Mohandas Gandhi. My
brother is named Jawahar after Nehru.

As bonoboshi pointed out above, your attitude towards Jinnah borders
on hagiography. In your eyes, Jinnah can do no wrong. This is all I am
protesting against. Jinnah was a man and a politician just like
Gandhiji or Nehru. For the record, I do think Gandhiji made a mistake
in greeting Jinnah as “minority Muslim” and not as a fellow Gujrati
and Indian. But Gandhiji was only human, not god. That is my whole
point.

Anyway, I am tired of this debate. You and I have both made our
arguments, in the midst of a regrettable shouting match, and it seems
there is no chance of us meeting in the middle. So, for my part, I am
moving on.

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 8:52 am

Dear Kabir,

You’ve made no points. The points you make are established Indian
Nationalist mythology. Nothing else. What is worse is that it is also
Pakistani nationalist mythology as well (except that they view
positively what you view negatively). The truth is that the only time
TNT was used to “divide” instead of unite was when the Congress
cynically asked for Punjab and Bengal to be divided. According to
Majumdar it was a good thing.

Had you read Bonobashi’s points you would not be going in circles like
a twit. While I do not deny being a partisan of Jinnah… a Shia-ti-
Jinnah if you wish, can you point out where Bonobashi says that about
my “hagiography”. My admiration and defence of the man is based on
fact. It is not that I don’t accept criticism of him… indeed I have
criticised him myself but I reject the criticism you put up because
your criticism is based on a lack of knowledge, a lack of ability to
argue coherently and logically and as you admitted yourself – just
plain “emotion”.

And thanks for pointing out what your parents motivations were in
naming you what they did. Let me also say that in my view…
psychologically, these motivations cannot be described as “secular” in
the least. Now I think one can have a fuller picture of where you are
coming from. Like I said… had not been for the circumstances of your
birth you might well have been Kasab instead of Kabir given the little
thought you put in to strongly held positions.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 9:02 am

Bonoboshi mentioned that your views of Jinnah border on hagiography
over on the “masters of mutilation” thread:

the quote is: “Please give this unrelenting hagiography a break. Many
of us admire him; there is a growing wave of realisation of his
sterling worth; but to insist that it was he, in all seasons, and for
all issues the only one that counted, and the rest didn’t, reduces him
to figures of ridicule. That is really not called for.”

What’s not “secular” about someone naming their kids after two great
heroes of the Indian independence movement: Gandhiji and Panditji?
My parents wanted us to have South Asian and not Arab/Islamic names.
Our cultural heritage is South Asian and not Arab. You may disagree,
but these were thought through political positions, not arbitrary
decisions.

Namaste.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 9:07 am

“The truth is that the only time TNT was used to “divide” instead of
unite was when the Congress cynically asked for Punjab and Bengal to
be divided”

And this time counts for nothing? I would say it was the most crucial
time– this invocation of TNT resulting in millions fleeing their homes
and becoming refugees in the country meant for their particular
religion. My nana’s family was derailed by having to leave Amritsar,
and my dadi’s family was derailed from having to leave Agra, and
having to leave all their paintings, musicial instruments, etc behind.
See why I am so passionately opposed to TNT?

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 9:11 am

Kabir mian,

So you had to go all the way to the other thread to get the quote. You
said “above”. But that was in a context and that context has been
debated.

How about you begin to respond to Bonobashi’s points above instead of
wasting your time trying to associate with me positions that I don’t
hold? I have already divulged a bit on the great “independence”
struggle on the other board.
What your parents named you is of no consequence to me or this
discussion (you are only putting it up to earn brownie points now that
even Indians are beginning to call you out on your ignorance).

Frankly I am not sure that Arab etc debate has anything to do with it.
Your “namaste” is noted. Had I been from your ilk of fake
“secularists” I would have responded with a “namaste” or “sat sri
kaal”. But the question is have you ever seen me say “assalamualaikum”
or “salaam” either?

That is the difference between you and me… I am neither Turk Peshori
nor a Hindu… you are trying to be both.

Good Day, Ciao and Adios.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 9:38 am

And just to emphasize that point… this article was originally
published in the Dawn and is by a truly secular Indian Muslim … I
reproduce the relevant part here:

“In Lutyens’ Delhi the hub of India’s power dynamic the circus of
feasts will see robed clerics from diverse Islamic clusters getting
invited to the prime minister’s house to break bread.Government
ministers party leaders MPs power peddlers middlemen in a nutshell
everyone who lives by the 13 per cent Muslim vote in India or those
who need to flaunt their secularism will take turns to rustle up an
appetising Ramazan menu.Of course only a minority of India’s 150
million Muslims are mullahs and so a few of the less pious variety
would also be given a slot in the meandering queue to rub shoulders
with the high and mighty.

Had Jinnah had his way there would be no need for the pathetic lottery
of Ramazan invitations.There would be no need for the Justice Sachchar
Committee set up to investigate why Indian Muslims continue to be
economically and socially backward six decades after independence from
colonialism.In other words had there been no partition there would not
be a need for communally driven dinner invitations even though they
are usually claimed to strengthen secularism.Indians would be less
self consciously tolerant and eating or not eating with each other of
their free will in an India that Jinnah had dreamt of.Jaswant Singh
has been penalised for implicitly asserting this.

As a matter of fact Justice Sachchar offered remedies that reminded me
of the crisis once faced by the International Committee of the Red
Cross when its representatives visited prisons in the Himalayan
kingdom of Bhutan.They recommended hot water baths for the inmates
which startled the jail warden who hadn’t had the luxury of one in a
fortnight himself.There are of course no hard and fast rules in
this.Political power does not flow from the numerical superiority of a
community over another.The partition of 1947 wrote this in blood.As a
maverick college friend remarked in capitalism man exploits man and in
socialism it was the other way round.”

http://pakistanherald.com/Articles/Going-Jinnahand8217s-way-1918

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 9:45 am

“And this time counts for nothing? ”

But you and your brother are named after those who insisted on using
the TNT in such a fashion…. as per your own admission. You keep
abusing TNT and declaring that you are “passionately” against it …

Would it be fair then to abuse Hinduism because it was used by L K
Advani and the BJP to demolish Babri Masjid?

bonobashi
September 18, 2009 at 9:47 am

@Kabir

I want to say something at this point. Most of what you have argued is
based on emotion, not on fact. I quite understand that some of these
emotions are important in themselves, it is just that the atmosphere
here is heavily biased towards academic analysis. In these
discussions, it is a sine qua non to be well-versed in the basic
grammar and syntax; you must be on the same page. It becomes difficult
to interact with you because in doing so, judging from the exchanges
you have had with others, the matter becomes a sort of two sets of
people talking past each other, instead of to each other.

If you were to go into a headbangers’ ball and start singing Pete
Seeger numbers, I doubt that you would last very long.

That is more or less the situation here. You are using a language and
a vocabulary which are alien, even inimical to the purposes and
objectives of the analytical posts like this one. There are of course
others which are an intriguing amalgam of emotion and logic, and
nobody stops you from spreading out on those posts. As a pointer, hunt
out Bradistan Calling and his posts. Kinkminos is heady stuff, but it
may be wiser to wait a bit to savour his full offering.

You are free to ignore this completely.

Do not mistake this post. If people barge into these discussions, the
logical ones, the fact-based ones, there is so much damage caused that
there is a genuine case for employing bouncers. There has been some
’self-appointment’ recently; you venture into these without homework
done at your mortal peril.

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 10:49 am

Yasser mian,

indeed I have criticised him myself

Good Lord, you have actually criticised the J-man!!! Btw, what was the
point of criticism, if I may ask?

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 11:00 am

Heck… you even acknowledged it. Yeh kiya majumdar mian…

Well I criticised him for his ill-thought references to Islamic
principles of equality, fraternity and justice… while I feel – with a
lot of justification- that he was saying that the principles of
equality fraternity and justice which are universal secular principles
are compatible with Islam… his use of Islamic vocabulary- ambiguous as
it might have been – seems to have given the Islamists who hated him
and his idea of an inclusive secular Pakistan a way out.

I have also criticised him for emulating Gandhi’s methods on July 29,
1946 … by giving a call for civil disobedience i.e. Direct Action…
which was used against him ultimately and even though the British knew
the real story (Lord Wavell’s letter to Pethick Lawrence) they still
used it to force Jinnah to back down on 5:5:4 formula as well as his
demand that as per the CMP declaration the British ought to have made
the interim government without the Congress given Congress’ dubious
interpretation of the groupings clause.

I have also criticized him for appointing Ch. Muhammad Ali as the
“Cabinet Sec” … the latter censored Jinnah’s 11th August speech… and I
have criticized him for not writing a constitution and foisting it on
the constituent assembly instead of letting those fools deliberate.

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 11:24 am

Yasser,

his ill-thought references to Islamic principles

Curiously enuff I was about to write a mail to you on this based on
some stuff which was brought to my notice by some Islamist gentlemen I
respect very much.

One was a speech in Peshawar in 1946 about Pakistan being an Islamic
laboratory and the other his speech (one of his last ones) at the
opening of the SBP in Aug 1948.

Hopefully I shud be able to write in later on the 3 criticisms you
have levelled against Jinnah sahib and a couple of more of my own
later this day.

Regards

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 11:28 am

Also – the most poignant criticism of Jinnah should lie with his
acceptance of the June 3rd plan which only a day earlier he had
returned to Mountbatten as “your plan not mine”.

When MB had threatened him, he had replied “what must be must be”.

What happened then on June 3rd that he accepted such a crappy
mutilation as his Pakistan?

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 12:14 pm

The speech to the state bank refers to Islamic social justice … and as
such is problematic.

The laboratory wali speech is what I criticise mostly because it lends
itself to such dubious interpretation. What did he mean. He certainly
did not mean what the islamists want it to mean… And he was hardly
talking about the state and its legal system… He was talking about the
society, about Iqbalian idealism of Ijtehad etc- of reform and
rejuvenation of Islamic civilization.

But can one really blame the Mullah types for twisting it (after all
even the Congress twisted a far more straightforward “grouping” clause
to its advantage)? This is the great failure of Jinnah- Pakistan has
become the laboratory not of Islamic reform but of Islamic terror- not
of Islamic modernity but of Islamic orthodoxy thanks to Bhutto and
General Zia…the lab itself is on fire.

None of this ofcourse can in the least be argued as being the vision
that Jinnah gave. Jinnah’s vision for constitution and state as father
of the nation is that which he gave to the constituent assembly which
has no reference to Islam and is completely unambiguous.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 12:19 pm

@ YLH:

“Good day, Ciao, and Adios”– wow someone is a brown sahib wannabe.

I think you have a very confused idea of secularism. Using Namaste or
Salaam doesn’t make one into a Hindu or a Muslim. They are both
greetings that essentially mean the same thing– and it’s a good thing
in any case. Saying to someone “I bow to the divine in you” or “peace
be with you” are positive things– I don’t see why people have to
obsess about them.

@ bonoboshi,

With all due respect, you will note that on any thread I have
participated on I have always made logical, intellectual and non-
personal arguements, unless provoked by YLH, who has resorted to
attacking my father, my weight, my life choices, etc. So if you are
(justifiably) criticising me for giving in to emotion, please be non-
partial and criticise him as well for forgetting the rules of debate
and resorting to personal attacks.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 12:24 pm

YLH, my parents did not name my brother and I after Gandhiji and Nehru
because of their use of the TNT but because they were great heroes of
the Indian independence movement.

Incidently, even Jinnah’s father had a regular Gujrati name. It was
only because Jinnah was born in Karachi, and the kids in Karachi had
really obviously Muslim names that his parents named him Mohammad Ali
(this is referred to in Jaswant’s book).

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 12:56 pm

Also, say a Pakistani person really admires Nelson Mandela and his
fight against apartheid in South Africa. If this person then names his
son “Nelson” it doesn’t mean the kid is trying to be South African and
not Pakistani.

Logically, the same principle applies to a “Pakistani” kid named
Mohan. One can admire Gandhiji without being a “traitor” to Jinnah.
One can criticize and be against TNT, without being against Jinnah as
a person.

Is this so hard to understand?

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 1:08 pm

Yasser mian,

the most poignant criticism of Jinnah should lie with his acceptance
of the June 3rd plan

What exactly cud he have done about it? What were the alternative
courses of action, if any? And what wud have been the likely outcome?
If you can shed some light on this.

IMHO, he cud have done nothing else save enter United India on INC’s
terms and I will explain why?

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 1:12 pm

Kabir mian…

Think logically…

What does any of what you’ve written corresponds to the debate? Jinnah
was born Mahomedalli Jinnahbhai (not Muhammad Ali as you put it) like
a good Ismaili gujurati boy… it might come as a surprise to you but
Jinnah’s family use to this day Hindu Family Law as per Khoja
tradition. Having read both Jinnah’s life extensively and having read
the Succession Act of 1925, I didn’t need to read Jaswant Singh’s book
to know all this by the way but you can find it there as well.

Do you think I have a preference for Arab names? I am not even going
to answer such a preposterous presumption. Those who know me know that
I prefer Russian names..

As for namaste … salaam etc… I just don’t use it any religion-specific
greetings. I have no desire for wishing peace upon anyone or I sure as
hell don’t wanna bow down to the “divine” in you. I do use Khuda Hafiz
but that is only because recently the trend has become Allah Hafiz in
the subcontinent. Otherwise I am not possessed of any such desire
either.

“wow someone is a brown sahib wannabe”

What do you mean wannabe? I am simply someone who doesn’t have time to
be “ethnic” and sing “bhajjans” or say “Salaam/namaste” and other
incidental cultural hang-ups etc etc. If that makes me a brown sahib
then so be it. But there is no wannabe category unlike you.

“Confused idea of secularism”

Why? Because I don’t think running around calling yourself Mohan and
singing Bhajjans and buying wholesale the Indian Nationalist mythology
doesn’t make you secular?

I think you know who really has a confused idea of secularism… someone
who thinks that by ending his post on “Namaste” or “salaam” he becomes
secular…

What next? “Ishwar Allah tero naam” is a secular song?

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 1:21 pm

Yasser:

Ok, you’re not a brown sahib wannabe, you’re just a brown sahib. But I
am not a “hindu wannabe” either. I’m just myself and I’m very
comfortable in my own skin. I don’t “run around calling myself Mohan
in order to be secular”. I call myself Mohan simply because that is
the name my mother gave me. She officially changed it to Kabir only
because she was told that “Mohan” was not going to fly in the Islamic
Republic and she gave in to pressure. Even then she picked Kabir for a
reason– because it is a name common to both Hindus and Muslims, and
she wanted to make a point.

There is a still a note of condescension in your post “I don’t have
time to run around singing bhajans and being ethnic”. Is being ethnic
a contempible thing? No one’s saying you have to do it, but it is a
valid way of living one’s life.

And yes “Ishwar Allah tero naam” is a secular song, in the sense that
the philosophy behind it is that it doesn’t matter whether you call
god Ishwar, Allah, Ram, whatever– it’s still the same god. Like you
said in another context, secularism doesn’t necessarily mean
irreligiousness.

P.S. I too prefer Russian names (particularly Dmitri) and my family
insists on the use of “Khuda Hafiz” vs. “Allah Hafiz”. So you see, we
actually have quite a bit in common:)

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 1:21 pm

“What exactly cud he have done about it?”

Jinnah could’ve told MB and Nehru to take a hike on the morning of
June 3rd.

“What were the alternative courses of action, if any?”

he should have made contact with the half naked fakir and his Mullah
sidekick telling them that they needed to grow up and take a clear
stance … Furthermore, he should have re-entered into negotiations with
the Sikh leadership and should have used the draft of June 3rd plan to
scare the shit out of them… this way he could make a broadbased
alliance with the rest of minorities and then non-cooperate with the
Congress … in every possible way. The League was already in the
interim government … and had already taught Congress a lesson.

“And what wud have been the likely outcome? If you can shed some light
on this.”

The negotiations would have re-opened. Congress would have to
ultimately accept the grouping clause….

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 1:30 pm

“Is being ethnic a contempible thing?”

Yes- especially when you clearly a mummy daddy burger family kind
trying to take it up as a fad or to be congratulated for “Slumdog
Millionaire”.

“And yes “Ishwar Allah tero naam” is a secular song, in the sense that
the philosophy behind it is that it doesn’t matter whether you call
god Ishwar, Allah, Ram, whatever”

WRONG! God itself is a non-secular concept – which doesn’t mean a
believer can’t be secular but when expresses this belief in politics
it becomes non-secular. Even if this song had been as benign as you
say it was… it would still be non-secular. However… the second verse
makes it not just non-secular but positively majoritarian
communalist.

“– it’s still the same god.”

I can’t comment on fictitious characters.

“Like you said in another context, secularism doesn’t necessarily mean
irreligiousness.”

Once again… your reading comprehension comes in the way. What I did
say was that secularism does not equate to irreligiousity … which
basically meant that a person can be religious in personal life but so
long as he doesn’t go about bringing his belief between him and his
public tasks he is secular. I did not mean – in the least- that such
crass attempt at superficial unity as “ishwar allah tero naam” is a
secular song. It is NOT.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 1:32 pm

Saying Ishwar Allah tero naam is a secular song is like saying
“Intelligent Design” is a scientific theory.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 1:36 pm

“And the reason I insist on saying Khuda Hafiz is entirely different
from what I can imagine is your reason”

My reason is that I don’t want to be exclusionary and I’m making a
point against Islamization and Sunnification. “Khuda” includes more
people, while “Allah” is specifically Islamic. Is that different from
your reason?

I agree with you that secularism means a person can be a believer in
his or her personal life but it shouldn’t make a difference in the
public sphere. But I disagree that “superficial attempts at unity”
aren’t important as well.

“You are a mummy daddy burger type”. I’m trying to patch up our
differences, why do still insist on being insulting? And no, I have
not taken up being “ethnic” as a fad. I have always been raised to be
very proud of my culture– of Urdu, shalwar kameez, Hindustani
classical music, ghazals, desi khana, etc. Please, it’s not a fad,
it’s a huge part of who I am. It’s why I want to pursue South Asian
Studies at a higher level, it’s why I engage on Indian and Pakistani
blogs as opposed to American one’s. You don’t know me well enough to
make such a judgement.

Regards

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 1:40 pm

“I can’t comment on fictitious characters”– well that’s what we
English and Drama types do all the time, we talk and debate about
Othello and Iago, Romeo and Hamlet, as if they were real people:) I do
agree with you that the god of the Bible and the Koran is a literary
character though, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hold meaning in
people’s lives.

That remark reminded me of Pervez Hoodbhoy, who is a dear family
friend, and who’s daughter recently commented to me over dinner that
“abba is a secular fundamentalist”, I guess the description applies
equally well to you:)

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 1:50 pm

‘“Khuda” includes more people, while “Allah” is specifically Islamic.
Is that different from your reason? ‘

Yes. My reason is simply that it was in usage for centuries and even
the most puritan Mullah said Khuda Hafiz. Now suddenly … Muslims all
over South Asia have decided against it… thus inventing “Allah Hafiz”…
for example I don’t have a problem with people using “Allah Bailly” or
“Rub Rakha” or the Bosnian “Ilahi imanat”… or even the “fe-iman-
allah”… so it is really not about including and excluding people since
I think a “Good bye” or a “farewell” or a “Ciao” are much better and
appropriate expressions for parting of ways.

Now I have to work… so I’ll talk to you later.

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 1:52 pm

Yasser,

he should have made contact with the half naked fakir and his Mullah
sidekick … The League was already in the interim government … and had
already taught Congress a lesson.

You don’t notice the contradiction. AIML-INC friction in the Govt had
convinced JLN and SVP that it was time to ask AIML and the Muslim
provinces to take a hike. Had the half-naked fakir and his Mullah
sidekick tried to object, the Pandit and the Sardar wud have each
taken a danda and shoved up it up their a***es. Like they did to Kiran
Roy and Sarat Bose.

Furthermore, he should have re-entered into negotiations with the Sikh
leadership, and should have used the draft of June 3rd plan to scare
the shit out of them

Bhaijan, the Sardarjis are far more intelligent than you give credit
for, certainly far more than the East Bong Hindoo a-holes. And they
had a truly visionary and patriotic leader in Master Tara Singh. They
knew pretty much what Muslim Raj meant and had already decided what
was needed to be done.

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 2:16 pm

Like Jinnah pointed out in a different context … no part of the Empire
could be kicked out involuntarily.

I think Jinnah was tired and dying… had he been two years younger, he
would have gone back to the drawing board and he would have won.

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 2:25 pm

Yasser,

Assuming Jinnah sahib was younger. Still he wud have been left with
only two options-

1. Accept the motheaten Pakistan.

2. Join United India on INC’s (read JLN-SVP duo)terms and conditions
with the distant hope that he wud be able to cobble together a grand
anti-INC coalition.

And if you think #2 was a valid option, do let me point out I can only
tell you that AIML wudnt have been spoilt for allies. Master Tara
Singh had openly declared war on AIML and do read up on BRA’s magnum
opus and the comments he made about AIML’s top leadership and even
Muslims in general (they wud make some khaki chaddis blush). OTOH, INC
wud have gone fishing for allies among the AIML waters.

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 2:38 pm

There was a third option… The option to force Congress to agree on the
Groupings clause.

It would have required moral courage on part of the British… and
perhaps that was what was lacking for Mountbatten.

Perhaps had Wavell n0t been fired in Feb.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 2:39 pm

PS: BRA also said Jinnah was the right man to lead a minorities
coalition.

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 2:48 pm

YLH,

The option to force Congress to agree on the Groupings clause.

Neither side cud have been forced to agree on anything. INC cudn’t
have been forced to accpet grouping no more than AIML cud have been
forced to accept a United India on INC’s terms and conditions. In any
case, the moment the Brits wud have left, INC wud have denounced the
CMP-46 and declared that grouping was no longer acceptable to it. This
is precisely the reason MAJ (pbuh) realised that June 3 plan was the
best that AIML cud have.

BRA also said Jinnah was the right man to lead a minorities coalition.

I also suggest you read Chapter 11 of BRA’s book which is available on
the Net.

By 1946 he was more or less of the view that India was better off
without its Muslims. That Partition along with partition of Bengal and
Punjab was the best thing. Possibly with a complete exchange of
population (something which even the Hindutvists never insisted upon)

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 2:54 pm

Well… in so far as the first part is concerned…. I don’t think the
Congress could have forced the League and the Muslim majority
provinces to leave… just like the League could not be forced to accept
United India on INC’s terms.

Things would have led to an impasse. What was so wrong with the
groupings clause… don’t you think INC would have backed off from the
brink of civil war? Or do you think they were convinced they could
defeat the Muslim majority provinces.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 3:08 pm

Yasser,

Regarding the question of greetings. Even “goodbye” which you prefer
is a shortened and much contracted form of “god be with you”, thus not
substantively very different from “khuda hafiz”.

karun4
September 18, 2009 at 3:11 pm

@kabir

There are only two types of mind in this world:

the greek mind ( cold calculated and rational)
the indian mind ( mystical contradictory(often truth lies in
contradiction) and intuitive)

there is no meeting point for them.

So stop arguing and be at peace. I appreciate your ethos and your
character. Keep up the good work!!!

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 3:16 pm

@ karun,

I guess one could say I have the Indian mind:). I take it as a
compliment:). We should chat off of PTH sometime.

karun4
September 18, 2009 at 3:23 pm

sure yes indeed you have a beautiful indian mind.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 3:32 pm

Kabir…

Did you read this article over on your own website?

http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/jinnah-nehru-and-the-ironies-of-history/

Not so much as why… but just as a record… this article is brilliant. I
don’t know who wrote it… but perhaps if you were to apply your mind to
your own website instead of fighting with me you’d grow up a little.

Stop chatting with people like Karun4. Karun Varun whats the
difference…

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 3:34 pm

Also the origin of Goodbye might be in God be with you… but Good was
later substituted for God.

But now that you’ve enlightened me on that … I’ll use “so long”.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 3:36 pm

And for the record I’d prefer the Greek mind over an Indian one any
day …. based on Karun 4’s Definition …an Indian mind is clearly a
nutcase and nothing else.

Even the great Ramanujan was a Greek by that postulation.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 3:38 pm

Yasser,

That article you are complimenting was written by my father, Mir Anjum
Altaf, who goes by the name “South Asian”. Perhaps you want to tell
him how brilliant you found his article?

I have no problem with Karun. One can never have too many friends, it
doesn’t mean you have to agree on everything:)

Yeah I guess “goodbye” is out then… “so long” “farwell” “auf
widershen” are all good though… now I’m thinking of the sound of music

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 3:42 pm

@ Karun,

what’s the best way to get in touch with you? Facebook?

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 3:46 pm

@ Yasser,

To quote from the “brilliant” article:

“Did Jinnah never see that there was a world outside the courtroom,
that the forces that had been unleashed by the politics of separation
would never allow the situation to go back to what it was, no matter
what he wished or desired? It seems not.”

This is essentially the question I’ve been asking, though not in the
best way. How could a secularist like Jinnah not realize what damage
invoking TNT would do? If he did realize the damage, why did he
continue to invoke “the politics of seperation?”

Regards

yasserlatifhamdani
September 18, 2009 at 3:58 pm

Well I took that as a question that needed answering… but you would
know better… in any event much of that question I have answered above.
The TNT that he invoked was not separatist.

Let me quote some excerpts:

Two remarkable statements made around the time of the partition of
British India continue to intrigue me:

Here is Mohammad Ali Jinnah, addressing the Constituent Assembly of
Pakistan in August 1947:

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go
to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of
Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has
nothing to do with the business of the State.

And here is Jawaharlal Nehru, writing to Chief Ministers of provinces
in India in October 1947, pointing out that there remained, within
India,

a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even
if they want, go anywhere else. That is a basic fact about which there
can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and
whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there,
we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must
give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.

How can we read these two statements given the history of which they
were a part?

What intrigues me about them is the following:

Here was Jinnah, who had spent the previous twenty years arguing that
Muslims and Hindus were separate nations, so completely different from
each other that they could not live together. And here he was, on the
creation of the country based on that logic of difference, saying all
of you can now live together as equal citizens with equal rights.

And here was Nehru, who had spent the same period of time arguing the
secular perspective that everyone was an equal citizen regardless of
religion or ethnicity, still thinking in terms of minorities as
special groups who needed to be dealt with in a civilized manner and
given the rights of citizens.

I would have expected Jinnah to say something along these lines: I
know it is going to be very difficult but we must now find a way to
live together. And I would have expected Nehru to send out an
unequivocal signal: We are all Indians now; there are no more
majorities and minorities here

….I would argue that Jinnah’s innate values were secular. He belonged
to a minority trading community from Gujarat where getting along with
others was essential to survival and success. It is clear that Jinnah
could never have believed from the outset that Hindus and Muslims were
so intrinsically different that they could not live together. Had that
been the case he could not have been the leading ambassador of Hindu-
Muslim unity till the 1920s.

It was something in the politics of the situation that must have
convinced him that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in a
constitutional arrangement in British India that would be acceptable
to both communities. Based on that conviction (here we are not
concerned whether that conviction was right or wrong) he fought his
case and won. And once he won, and walked out of the courtroom,
metaphorically speaking, the political imperatives for him disappeared
and he became the secular Jinnah that he always was

But we can now push this psychological analysis further and note the
complexity of the interplay between the beliefs inherited at birth and
the convictions that are inculcated and sustained through intellectual
endeavor…..

Without the political imperatives that changed Jinnah’s beliefs, his
descendants are avowedly secular. And without the intellectual rigor
that characterized Nehru, his descendants are slipping back towards
prejudice.

That something was the failure of Congress to accomodate other points
of view in 1927-1930, 1937-1938 and 1946…

Your repetitive denunciation of the TNT as some how you can change
history makes it harder for you to understand this it seems.

A small correction: By the way Jinnah first used the word “nation” for
Muslims in 1940. It is therefore wrong to say that he was of this view
for the “last 20 years”.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 5:08 pm

Yasser:

I realize that it was the politics of the situation that led to
Partition. I always said that Congress and the British had a role in
events as well. I’m not some rabid Jinnah-hater, even if in the heat
of the moment I came across as such.

I don’t think I can change history (how can I, a small person like
myself?). The TNT just gets to me in a visceral sense. I can’t stand
any ideas which divide people on the basis of religion, caste,
ethnicity, whatever. I wish Jinnah hadn’t felt compelled to use such
rhetoric. After people had been divided along communal lines, how did
he reasonably expect India/Pakistan to have a friendly relationship
with each other? That’s why dad’s article is called “the ironies of
history”.

Regards

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 5:17 pm

Now we are getting somewhere. Read my position carefully:

it is not that I am in love with divisive rhetoric but my view is that
once it was accepted that there was a Hindu community and a Muslim
community the journey from community to nation was merely linguistic …
with certain constitutional implication.

The self identification as Hindu and Muslim started happening some
time before Jinnah’s and Gandhi’s time. And for Jinnah – the
realization that he was a minority Muslim was almost entirely thanks
to Gandhi.

So TNT itself is not the divisive idea – infact it sought to bring
together through a form of consociationalism that which was already
divided.
So your zeal is misdirected.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 5:30 pm

I know that self-identification as Muslim and Hindu occured before
Jinnah and Gandhi. As my dad has argued on his blog, it began with the
introduction of seperate electorates and the competition for political
resources.

Maybe i just expected better from Jinnah than invoking a theory which
could even potentially be divisive and exclusionary. I’m not fond of
Gandhiji’s khilafat movement, but I admire his strategies of civil
disobedience such as the Salt March. What strikes me as ironic though
is if Jinnah faulted Gandhiji for introducing religion into politics,
why did he turn around and start mixing the two himself?

aiimsonian 09
September 18, 2009 at 5:50 pm

kabir, you are cool, man!

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 5:55 pm

Thanks aiimsonian:)

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 6:49 pm

Let me attempt an critique of the great man. I will first begin with
the four charges that YLH had laid at MAJ (pbuh)’s door.

#1 Emphasising the Islamic ideology in his campaign esp in 1940-47

His speech at Peshawar ’46 (Islamic laboratory) and his speech at SBP
opening ceremony among others can be used to suggest that he was in
favour of an Islamic model. And yet there are indicators to the
contrary too. His 8/11 speech may yet be explained by Islamists as
something that is something that is not necessarily in contravention
of Islamic ideals. But there is no explaining the fact that when some
senior Leaguers led by Mahmudabad tried to pass a resolution that wud
have bound AIML to an Islamic state he used his influence to have that
resolution scuppered which led to the said gentleman quitting the
League.

So did he want as Islamic state or did he not?

While we can’t really answer that question based on evidence alone
there are two things that need to be kept in mind.

One, that the Muslims of India were not really a homogenous people, in
fact the Indus Valley Mussalman, the Hindustani Musalman and the
Bengali Mussalman had completely different POVs and there was no
option but to invoke Islam to keep the three strands in one party.

Two, that he never foresaw that Islam cud be hijacked by cavemen to
enslave non-Muslims as well as Muslims. Just like Gandhiji’s
supporters do not see Ram Rajya as a theocratic state to oppress non-
Hindoos.

Verdict: At the net level, the invocations to Islam during 1940-47,
although inevitable, were not in the best interest of Indian Muslims.

#2 Direct Action Day

This cannot really be faulted in as far as that you can’t really call
mass action an evil thing as Bono da has pointed out. In any case, MAJ
resorted to DA only after trying out more constitutional methods for
40 years. Besides, DAD was not meant to be a call to arms, although
the speeches and utterances of some of the second tier Leaguers and
the conduct of Suharwardy as Bengal CM leave a lot to be desired.

Verdict: In short MAJ cant really be blamed for DAD, although he can
be blamed for failing to maintain discipline down the ranks.

#3 Ch Muhammad Ali and delayed Constitution of Pakistan

Dunno much about the Choudhari dude so can’t comment. As far as the
Constt of Pakistan was concerned, let’s not forget that India with far
superior intellectual resources too over 2 years to frame a Constt.
And let us not forget Pakistan’s crazy geography and demography. As to
how MAJ possibly cud have framed a Constt in 1 year of which for half
he was practically in “ek paon kabr mein” mode is beyond me. Besides,
Constts have to be adopted by free will it cannot be imposed from
above.

Verdict: Not guilty

#4 Accepting the June 3 Plan

As I have argued earlier, there was nothing that MAJ cud have done
about it. Maybe Yasser can join me in a set of “What ifs”

Now my two cribs.

#1 The Princely States fiasco

Unfortunately this has already been discussed threadbare on another
topic and the positions of all the principal combatants on PTH is
already clear. There is no point in ukharoing gade murdey.

#2 The Sikandar- Jinnah Pact

MAJ and AIML did become the Sole Spokesman for Muslims at the Centre
but there was a huge price to be paid- handing over the Punjab League
to the feudals incl a large chunk of ex-Unionists. And ultimately it
was the Punjabi feudal not Murdoodi (who was possibly a tool of the
competing factions of the Punjab League) who destroyed Jinnah’s
Pakistan.

But again one may argue that this was a necessary evil- without taking
the Punjabi feudal-pir class there was no way AIML wud have gained
Punjab and there wud have been no Pakistan either.

Regards

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 6:51 pm

Well if you’ve gotten to these questions you should read more and you
will find the answers yourself.

aiimsonian/koschan/karun (one person mind you) is not worth your time.
So stop getting inflated.

Read Bonobashi’s post. Apply your mind to it. Forget me – I have never
hidden my partisanship… My objectives for debate are entirely
subjective though I always remain factual. Read a balanced view –
you’ll learn from it.

koschan
September 18, 2009 at 7:05 pm

arre, i am not karun……….i am aiimsonian, koschan and different opinion
because my different pcs have different nicknames.

koschan
September 18, 2009 at 7:07 pm

aiimsonian/koschan/karun (one person mind you) is not worth your time.
———————————–
So condescending!!!!In any case, i also dont have much time to waste.I
should get back to my books.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 7:12 pm

Yasser,

I’m not getting inflated. People are nice to me and I’m nice to them
back. I would love to have more friends in Delhi that’s all:)

Koschan, contact me off of PTH. My email is my name “kabir altaf” (one
word) at hotmail.

Hayyer
September 18, 2009 at 7:31 pm

“Furthermore, he should have re-entered into negotiations with the
Sikh leadership, and should have used the draft of June 3rd plan to
scare the shit out of them”
Reminds me of that old joke; a group of Khalistanis got together to
brainstorm on how to achieve their goal. One bright spark came up with
an idea. ‘Lets declare war on America’ he suggested. Then after we
lose they’ll be forced to aid us as they always aid the countries
they’ve defeated. This splendid notion was almost carried, till one
delegate remarked woefully, ‘That is all very well, but what happens
if we win.’

On that speculative note let me ask something equally speculative.We
have discussed on PTH often enough how Congress could have eventually
obtained, a la Noorani, what it now has, and Pakistan and Bangladesh
to boot in a confederation, if it had accepted the CMP-But suppose
Jinnah had reverted to his old argument of the 14 points or even the
formula that the Agha Khan suggested at the second round table
conference which Gandhi approved but could not carry with his
colleagues.

Yes it would have been a tectonic shift from the politics of the last
ten years, and the Muslim masses may have felt let down but it would
have been attainable.

AZW
September 18, 2009 at 7:44 pm

This is a fascinating discussion Majumdar and Yasser.

It is quite difficult for us to imagine in the waning months of 2009,
what Jinnah was facing in the turbulent years of 1946 and1947. The
fallacy that comes up again and again against Jinnah in carving up the
India always ignores the obstinate behaviour of Indian National
Congress and its leadership. I believe in the prior years, we were too
close to the atrocious events post partition and scholarly research
was conveniently replaced by emotional and religious themed slogans.
This was tragically true, especially in Pakistan, where the religious
right simply could not get around the idea of Muslim Nationalism.

Since 1980s, we have trickles of dispassionate analysis of the events
preceding partition, and I believe it is a matter of time before this
trickle turns into a torrent. Two factors will greatly help this
transition:

1) In Pakistan, where religion was always experimented with the state
by religious minded leaders, as well as so called leftist leaders, the
experiment has predictably gone horribly wrong. After having front row
seats to the Taliban debacle and the carnage this group and its more
mainstream, allies, Pakistanis are beginning to do something that was
never practiced at a grand scale before: an honest introspection. Pak
Tea House is not a liberal outlier that seeks to discuss the folly of
mixing religion with the Pakistani state. Various mainstream
electronic and print media have started airing views more openly that
were a minority voice in the wilderness before

2) In India, the economic prosperity has increasingly made clear to
their leadership that political and geographical uncertainty is the
biggest obstacle to the economic growth going forward. A destabilized
Pakistan is overwhelmingly against Indian interests. Coupled with the
economic growth is the latitude now afforded to an average Indian
where nationalistic dogmas do not overwhelm him or her as say 30 years
ago

Kabir:

May I suggest something here: More often than not, people sit back and
pass verdicts on historical figures based on the convictions embedded
in their minds since their childhood, or through drawing room
conversations. Jinnah is not an infallible historical figure. And no
one is saying that the Two Nation Theory should not be critically
discussed. However before passing judgement on him, read of the
situation that Jinnah faced 62 years back. Read Ayesha Jalal’s The
Sole Spokesman, read Seervai’s Partition of India; Legend and Reality,
or Alex Von Tunzelman’s “The Indian Summer”. Heck, read Majumdar’s
arguments in this thread to get even the tiniest sense of the
complexity of leading the disparate union of the entity in India that
we call “Indian Muslims”.

History happens not be design. History is a reaction to events. Was
United India a better option? If Indian National Congress had not been
jolted out of its heavy handed ways it showed since 1937, India may
have been a violent and fractured nation. I give full credit to Nehru
for putting India on a secular roadway; however his actions before the
partition, and his handiwork in Kashmir problem continues to haunt us
still.

Rather than keep passing judgements, analyze history, appreciate it as
a nuanced sequence of events and work to make the future history a
much better read. No one here thinks Jinnah was beyond reproach.
However his personal integrity and his leadership skills in leading
the “Indian Muslim” make me appreciate him a lot more as I grow
older.

Why I appreciate Majumdar, Bono Bashis, YLH, Bloody Civilian, Raza and
so many more people here is not because I know them personally. It is
because they rise above their creeds and environments to look
dispassionately at the history, realize the mistakes, and go against
the conventional wisdom and the prevalent thinking to advocate a
society that will not have the prejudices that tore us apart, and keep
widening the gulf between us.

Regards,

Adnann

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 7:52 pm

Adnann, I agree with you. I have read scholarly sources. I took a
course at LUMS called “Literature of Conflict” which was all about
Partition. Additionally I took a course exploring the anthropology of
ethnicity and nationalism. I have also made my way though Jaswant
Singh’s entire 600 page book. So I’m not speaking out of ignorance.
Yes, I let YLH rile me up and make me emotional– I take full
responsibility for that. But you must keep in mind that he attacked my
person, my family, my career, etc… all of which is outside the norms
of reasoned debate.

My disagreement with YLH is only that I feel is sort of an apologist
for Jinnah. I agree with you that all politicians are falliable and
all are human.

Regards

Kabir

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 7:59 pm

Kabir,

My disagreement with YLH is only that I feel is sort of an apologist
for Jinnah.

Yasser has at least laid four serious charges against MAJ (pbuh) by my
reckoning at least.

Regards

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:05 pm

What is this pbuh thing? Jinnah was not the prophet Muhammad– i think
pbuh is only meant to be used for prophets.

Turning a politician into a prophet is what I call being an apologist.
Our do you also put pbuh after Nehru and Gandhiji’s names?

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 8:07 pm

Kabir bhai,

First of all I am not a Muslim so I am not bound to use pbuh only for
those whom Muslims deign this honour.

Btw, if Moses who liberated a handful of Yahoods can be called pbuh
why not Jinnah sahib who liberated 65 million Muslims.

Regards

Majumdar
September 18, 2009 at 8:08 pm

No sir I dont put pbuh behind Gandhi or Nehru- in fact I call them by
the vilest of names on chowk but not here as this is a bhadralok
forum.

Regards

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Majumdar,

You too are a Jinnah apologist then, having turned him into a prophet.
I can’t argue with you people.

Jinnah, Nehru, and Gandhiji were all people, not prophets or gods.
They should be judged as such.

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:12 pm

Btw, Gandhiji was the father of the Indian nation, I don’t understand
how you– an Indian– can call him bad names.

I am not fond of Jinnah, but I don’t call him foul names, either.

Namaste

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 8:24 pm

Dear Majumdar,

Just to qualify – Jinnah was quite clear about the kind of state he
wanted. However by using Islamic vocabulary- few and far between- he
gave the Mullahs a way to pull the rug from under him.

Jinnah’s idea of statehood was :

1. Rule of law

2. Equality of citizenship

3. Freedom of religion and conscience.

4. Sovereignty resting with the people.

5. Religion as personal faith of an individual and state’s
impartiality towards it.

6. No bars on the basis of religion, caste or any other distinction.

This was a constant. However by making these statements (the Islamic
principles etc) few and far between – a total of a dozen references
spread over 7 years – Jinnah himself inadvertently dug a grave for his
secular vision.

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 8:29 pm

Kabir mian,

You are a rather strange fellow…

Do you think it is rational to distinguish between the prophets and
other human beings?

Have you only recently learned the word “apologist”?

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Yasser:

My dear, I have actually known the word “apologist” for a very long
time.

Btw, I don’t believe in prophets, I just don’t believe in giving
politicians exalted status

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 8:43 pm

On the issue of princely states- Jinnah’s position was a
constitutional one (without going into Kashmir which we’ve discussed).
It was Jinnah who had suggested absorption of Princely States into
British India at the roundtable conferences…had that proposal been
accepted there would have been no issue to begin with.

Sikandar-Jinnah Pact was absolutely necessary to give Jinnah
representative capacity. Infact many would argue that it was the joint
Muslim League communist move against the Khizer govt on the basis of
communist thesis of the right of determination of “muslim
nationalities” that partitioned Punjab.

I think it was the post 1946 Unionist defection to the League that
changed the character of the Muslim League from a salariat petty
bourgeoisie party to a feudal dominated party in Punjab.

YLH
September 18, 2009 at 8:52 pm

Kabir,

You do have an Indian mind as per the definition given by Karun.

Unfortunately it is not meant as a compliment. Neither to you nor to
the word “Indian”…apologies to Majumdar, Bonobashi and others.

There is no reason to discuss anything any further when almost
everyone has failed to reason with you.

I thank everyone for trying to make this fellow see some light.

Hayyer
September 18, 2009 at 9:23 pm

Kabir:
Father of the Nation is a term that the Indian Government gave Gandhi.
It is not written in law and therefore not binding on Indians.

Gandhi’s greatness lies in his eccentricities. He was attempting
something novel in a twentieth century world. He was trying to fashion
modern government, incorporating his own version of religion and
politics as an essential component of economic and administrative
theory. ‘I am truly a Mahatma’ he exclaimed to one of his nieces a few
days before he died.

Jinnah, a truly enlightened modern leader was driven into what he
eventually did by the obfuscation of Gandhi and the obtuseness of
Nehru. Nehru what ever his achievements after 1947 certainly turned a
deaf ear to Muslims as long as Jinnah was speaking for them. He did
call the AIML a communal body forgetting that the Congress had long
accommodated communal view points of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus.

After putting Congress on the defensive in the forties Jinnah had it
in his power to compromise on terms that would have been acceptable to
him a decade ago, but by then he was in an understanding with the
British.

When they no longer needed him they cut bait and ran and he was stuck
with an attitude that led to a moth eaten Pakistan.

I agree with the core of your belief however. There is a South Asian
identity, variegated though it is. Even the Pathans while involved
with central Asia and Iran have had their fingers in the Indian pie
for as long as anyone can remember. All of North India’s history at
the very least is tied up one way or another with Pathans. Large
numbers of North Indian Muslims have ethnic connections to the
Pathans. That is not going to disappear.

It is the contention of some that there is no India, that it is a
geographical expression and so forth. The country does exist, it is
politically speaking, older than Pakistan by at least 100 years. The
Indian identity is probably more amorphous than the Pakistani one, but
I imagine, less tenuous.
Modern India has much to thank Nehru for; secularism, democracy and
the rule of law (arbitrary as it is), but all Indians do not see
themselves as acolytes of Nehru and Gandhi. Most of us are quite happy
with our regional identities about which Nehru was confused and which
led to the mess on Kashmir. Gandhi of course was not above using his
Gujratiness to woo Jinnah when he felt he needed to.
I have visited your site. It is refreshing in its inclusiveness. We
have our Ganpat Rams as you have yours. Don’t let them discourage you.

koschan
September 18, 2009 at 9:50 pm

Jinnah, a truly enlightened modern leader was driven into what he
eventually did by the obfuscation of Gandhi and the obtuseness of
Nehru. Nehru what ever his achievements after 1947 certainly turned a
deaf ear to Muslims as long as Jinnah was speaking for them.
————————————
hayyer, you really need to read mani shankar ’s review of jaswant
singh’s.
People such as you, majumdar and jaswant singh seem to have a huge
personal grudge against nehru and gandhiji. Gandhiji is the father of
nation for me and for most of the indians , irrespective of your
biased opinion.He may have introduced religion into politics but his
religiosity was benedictory ,inclusive and certainly not
fundamentalist.He quoted equally well from koran and bible as he did
from geeta and the atheist’s guide to salvation.Did he not save
thousands of lives in kolkata during the midnight hr?
from an oxfordian like you, i expect a more nuanced interpretation of
gandhiji’s actions.Kritgan…………..

koschan
September 18, 2009 at 10:02 pm

hayyer , 2 ‘koschans’
if gandhiji had as many faults as you want us to believe , why do the
Nobel Committe members regret that they did not give the NP to
gandhiji in 1948 or before?How do you compare His Holiness the Dalai
Lama to jinnah and gandhiji?

kabir
September 18, 2009 at 10:26 pm

Yasser,

What did I say? Just that I don’t believe politicans should be treated
like prophets or gods. What is there in that to fill you with bile? I
quite enjoy people’s attempts to make me “see the light” as if I’m
some poor heathen that needs to be converted, so do go ahead if you
please:)

Hayyer:
I agree with you. All I have been trying to say is that there is a
“South Asian” identity and it is valid. No disrespect to anyone who
wishes to call themselves Pakistani or whatever.

By the way, TSAI is not my blog, but my father’s:)

Kabir

bonobashi
September 18, 2009 at 10:36 pm

@koschan

Nobody needs to read anybody’s review of anybody else’s book; the
facts are clear before us, and while there is every justification for
listening to someone else’s point of view, or for reading a well-
written piece in spite of disagreeing with it in essence, we don’t
need the prosthetics (that’s a medical term, and you will come across
it very soon, if you stop wasting your time on PTH and attend to your
studies) provided by a Congress ‘apologist’ (Kabir, please tell me
where to send you your royalty payment).

I sincerely wish, really, truly wish that you would stop reacting from
your glands and hormones and instead start reacting from your gray
matter.

I don’t think Hayyer has a grudge against anybody; it isn’t apparent
from his writing, and it is a mystery where you got that impression.
If you have read Majumdar, you will have noticed, unless you are quite
dense, that he has a sharp mind, perhaps the sharpest next to YLH, but
is also handicapped by a sense of humour, which among other side-
effects doesn’t allow him to take himself seriously. What sort of
grudge do you think he’ll bear? Nothing very weighty, I should
imagine. Not being as well acquainted with Jaswant Singh as you seem
to be (you Delhi people have all the luck), I can’t comment on your
third anti-hero.

There is not much proof that people are reacting from a sense of
having been wronged, or from a vindictive mind-set. I don’t see the
grudges; maybe they’ve been flying around and never came to earth.

We have to deal with your heart-on-the-sleeves emotions, however;
specifically your formulation that Gandhi happens to be father of the
nation to you and to most other Indians, irrespective of the biased
opinion of this coterie that you have just named.

This sort of turbo-charged emotion is always suspect, I think; genuine
emotion would not be so demonstrative and oriented towards display.
But on the other hand, let us assume that Gandhi is our common beloved
father of the nation.

Would you go on from this premise to say that he was unblemished, in
all respects? Assume for a moment that you are given two knowledge of
history tablets tomorrow morning, and they work with instant speed.
Assume that you become aware of, say a marginal number of things that
Gandhi did sinfully, or negligently. Would you still proceed to defend
G in so robust a manner, or rather, in as unquestioning a manner as
before? If you would not, please take out a piece of paper, and figure
out how you and those you have just pilloried differ from each other.

bonobashi
September 18, 2009 at 10:50 pm

@YLH

Yasser, with your permission, I shall break into poetry: the
successive vast blows struck by our Sir Galahad have now brought my
already enfeebled and rapidly aging mind to its knees. Prose will no
longer contain my emotions; poetry it is then:

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way
With blossom’d furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skill’d to rule,
The village master taught his little school;
A man severe he was, and stern to view,
I knew him well, and every truant knew;
Well had the boding tremblers learn’d to trace
The days disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laugh’d with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he:
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Convey’d the dismal tidings when he frown’d:
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
The village all declar’d how much he knew;
‘Twas certain he could write, and cipher too:
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And e’en the story ran that he could gauge.
In arguing too, the parson own’d his skill…………

and here I shall beg leave to depart, and leave it as an exercise to
you, gentle reader, to complete these lines. They are obviously, from
their polish and styled elegance, not mine.

koschan
September 18, 2009 at 10:55 pm

OK, Bonobashi
1. Its been three years since i have heard the term prosthetics .

2.i am not overreacting but sometimes when gandhibashing and
nehrubashing gets supramaximal at pth, i cannot prevent myself from
defending them.I stand by my observation that Hayyer and majumdars are
two of the most unrelenting cynics i have come across.

3. Yes, i havealmost wasted seven hrs on the net today (meri chuttiyan
chal rahi hain).Seven precious hrs………seven hrs that have been
uselessly spent. seven hrs that i could have devoted to ganong’s
physiology.Big mistake.

karun
September 18, 2009 at 11:30 pm

Raza Uncle : SOS

things spinning out of control. Pls take charge….

Hayyer
September 18, 2009 at 11:40 pm

Koschan:
Did it occur to you that the Congress is cleverer than the BJP.
Jaswant Singh’s book could have devastated the Congress. Instead, the
BJP committed hara-kiri and the Congress quietly smirks.

Mani Shankar Iyer is a disgrace, an ex communist from Cambridge, a fan
of China in the 62 war transformed into a Rajiv Gandhi groupie on a
Doon School connection, and then a votary of Panchayati Raj of which
he had little understanding. He is a leading sycophant of the Nehru
family and you expect his reviews of a book criticizing Nehru to be be
authentic?

Mani Shanker Iyer is out of favour these days. He may be seeking re-
entry into the inner circles by hack reviews. His brother Swaminathan
Iyer is the more authentic writer.

Hayyer
September 19, 2009 at 12:01 am

Opinion is free. There is no law against admiring Gandhi just as there
is none against criticizing him. Father of the nation? Nothing that he
did brought about the nation.

When Jinnah wrote to him in 1938 asking for his intercession against
the obduracy of people like Nehru, his reply was ….”I wish I could do
something but I am utterly helpless…….I see no daylight out of the
impenetrable darkness, and in such distress I cry to God for light”
How evasive!

But in 1944 Gandhi could take the trouble to go to Bombay and spend
two weeks trying to return Jinnah to the path of the 30s.

The reason the British left is that they just could not hold on after
the war. They lacked the troops, the resources the will. Before the
war they were thought they would stay for the forseeable future.

The Quit India movement is what enabled Jinnah and the League in the
absence of the Congress to build up their organization. It was
Gandhi’s doing, (though not Nehru’s). Gandhi was afraid of Bose who
had allied himself with the Axis powers and travelled to Germany.
Gandhi thought he could retain the initiative that way. Instead he
paved the way for partition.

The father of the nation is the Indian Constitution. Little of Gandhi
fortunately is to be found there.

I am not an ‘Oxfordian’ by the way, though I did spend an academic
year at that University as a visiting fellow.

Hayyer
September 19, 2009 at 12:04 am

Erratum, last line fourth para. “Before the war they thought they
would stay for the foreseeable future”.

bonobashi
September 19, 2009 at 7:03 am

@YLH

I’ve been fulminating about Karun’s idiotic remark about Greek and
Indian minds since he wrote it.

This is arrant rubbish. We are not a nation of Lobsang Rampas. There
is not a single theme in public or private life which justifies
Karun’s comment. It is not clear where he’s coming from.

It doesn’t feel insulting when you refer to this classification of
minds – classification of minds!!! – because the whole thing,
referring to Karun’s original comment, constitutes my first WTF moment
on PTH.

YLH
September 19, 2009 at 8:10 am

Dear Bonobashi,

Given that India produced so many “greek” minds, I don’t think it is a
fair classification either. Besides Indian here would denote the
erstwhile British/Mughal conceptions of the entire subcontinent… One
could say that the classification that is being referred to as the
“Indian” brain/mind may loosely apply to many many many Pakistanis.

Junaid
September 19, 2009 at 11:38 am

Also, say a Pakistani person really admires Nelson Mandela and his
fight against apartheid in South Africa. If this person then names his
son “Nelson” it doesn’t mean the kid is trying to be South African and
not Pakistani.

Logically, the same principle applies to a “Pakistani” kid named
Mohan. One can admire Gandhiji without being a “traitor” to Jinnah.
One can criticize and be against TNT, without being against Jinnah as
a person.

Is this so hard to understand?

Great words Kabir.

You have very well worded what I was trying to put forward.

kabir
September 19, 2009 at 12:08 pm

Thanks Junaid, I try, though it is an up-hill battle.

D_a_n
September 19, 2009 at 12:24 pm

@kabir

the worlds tiniest violin is playing just for you….(sniffle)

yasserlatifhamdani
September 19, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Only now do I understand the classic saying “khawajay ka gawah
tattoo”.

Gentlemen – Kabir and Junaid- you are fighting ghosts that don’t exist
on this website.

All both of you have done so far is make strawman fallacies unrelated
to the
arguments at hand.

Grow up.

Bloody Civilian
September 20, 2009 at 3:15 am

unad hum jins ba hum jins parwaaz

kabir

oops! that’s persian.. there goes my claim to be indian!

from claiming pathans are not indian, i see you’ve flipped and flopped
till you have gone a full 180deg. starting from the ‘divisive’
exclusion of pathans from india.. i see you now consider them indian.
indeed you claim the whole of pakistan to be culturally indian. i
presume you consider pathans to be part of pakistan.. till you say
otherwise. you even consider PMA to be ‘ethnically indian’.. without
bothering to find out whether he indeed is a non-pathan. so your
‘argument’ continues to evolve, albeit as per chaos theory.

it may or may not have occurred to you that hardly any one here has
attacked you for your views or had any problem whatsoever with your
right to hold any view when it comes to your own identity. what might
not have occurred to you either is that many here, some indians
included, do not believe that claiming pakistani identity precludes
one from claiming the indian one. rejecting pakistani idenity is not a
pre-requisite. it’s just a right which you are free to exercise. as
for the india v south asia debate… even PMA has made it clear that he
does not deny pakistan’s east… he just emphasises that there also is a
west.

other than that, you have been accusing pakistanis of talibanism,
religiosity and being under the illusion that they are arabs. which
one of the regulars here at PTH do you accuse of any of that? wouldn’t
these blanket accusation from high above be better directed at some
other blogs.. rather than PTH? yet, isn’ tit ironic that you’ve been
lapping up praise from those pakistanis who have – post after post
here – proven that they are much of all that you cite as reasons to
reject pakistani identity for yourself. while the indian counterpart
has been the kind who have stated that they look forward to war with
pakistan.

those debating you here are not as interested in opinions as they are
in facts and analyses. the objection here has been to you stating
views, ad nauseum and not with brevity, without feeling the need to
back them up with any facts… let alone a coherent and consistent
argument. your indian-pathan ‘argument’ has been a depressing case
study. while you ignore challenges to your facts, when you have quoted
something which is simply not true, as per your own convenience.

so you claimed 8 out of 37 years to be “most of” faiz’s life. you
conveniently ignored the challenge. you have told us many times that
you are “fighting” for your right to define your own identity.
wonderful. but as they say in yours and mine beloved punjab: “such
bolna adhhi larrai ae”

or you can use this post too as nothing more than an excuse to merrily
carry on with your monologue pretending to be a dialogue.

regards

Bloody Civilian
September 20, 2009 at 3:43 am

btw, the reverse also is true of course, ie. claiming indian (the
present day nation state) identity does not preclude any one from
their ‘pakistani’ heritage or even identity. but identity of course is
a personal choice, while heritage is a fact – whether historical,
cultural or (typically) both.

it might come as a surprise to you, but those trying, in vain, to have
a (healthy) debate with you also believe their human identity to be
the most important of them all. all other identities are less
important. why i say “in vain”, i’ve already explained in my previous
post. what you and YLH engaged in for a good number of consecutive
posts was, for all its entertainment value, not a (healthy) debate. so
i’m not talking of that.

you are called kabir for a thoughtful reason, you say. i’m sure he was
and is popular not just for his ideas. there was more to it than just
his views and opinions, repeated ad nauseum.

returning to identities other than insaniyat… as shah hussain put it

naa’o'n hussainoo
qaum jullaha…
….. jo main haa
so main haa

bonobashi
September 20, 2009 at 5:08 am

@Bloody Civilian

I was waiting for a reaction, any reaction from Kabir to write to him
somewhat in your fashion. ‘Somewhat’ because you have put matters with
such felicity that I can’t see where to take away a word, or indeed,
where to add a word.

Thank you for expressing my feelings so well; I am sure these are the
feelings of many others also.

Your comment also invokes the spirit of this blog so, so well. RR
could pay you and use your words as an introduction.

kabir
September 20, 2009 at 6:47 am

BC:

No one has attacked me for my views? Where have you been man? YLH has
called me “self loathing”, implied i’m a “traitor” to the Pakistani
cause, derisively referred to me as a “bhajan singer” as if that is a
contempible identity and that is all I am (I’m not a great lawyer but
a poor performing artist). You don’t expect me to defend myself
against that?

My argument has always been consistant. I have the right to call
myself Hindustani without anyone deciding that I’m “self loathing” or
a traitor. The rest of you are free to call yourselves Pakistanis or
greater timbuktooans, I really don’t care. PMA sahib is free to deny
that the term “South Asia” exists, despite it’s recognized use as a
concept in academia and the real world.

As for the “indian vs. pathan” argument, you are taking it out of
context. I am no one to decide people’s national identity for them,
but national identity and ethnic identity are not necessarily the
same. As I wrote to YLH on the other thread, I don’t relate to Pathans
simply because I haven’t spent time in NWFP and don’t speak their
language. By contrast, I’ve spent a lot of time in Punjab, understand
Punjabi, like Punjabi poetry, Punjabi khana, etc. It’s a reflection on
me and not on some inalienable truth.

Sorry about the “most” of Faiz’s life, but 8 years in prison or exile
is still pretty significant. I stand by my point that Pakistan wasn’t
much good for Faiz sahab.

Regards

Bloody Civilian
September 21, 2009 at 5:00 am

bonobashi

someone like me can only learn from PTH.

i hope we can establish a dialogue with our friend kabir and develop
the discussion with him on his interesting views and ideas.

Bloody Civilian
September 21, 2009 at 5:06 am

bhai kabir

No one has attacked me for my views?

do argue that YLH is hardly “hardly anyone”.. if you wish, but kindly
do not misread/misquote me. and do go ahead, regardless, and tell me/
us what YLH did or did not do.. but please do acknowledge the fact
that i’ve clearly and more than once excluded your debate with YLH
from those trying “in vain”. otherwise, we just end up talking across
each other rather than to each other… yet again.

As for the “indian vs. pathan” argument, you are taking it out of
context

now had you deigned to respond to rather than ignore my questions
about the puktunwalist bacha khan or your fictitious contemporary
kabir mohan khan of peshawar… perhaps i, and several others who have
stated their bewliderment, would not have ‘taken it out of context’.

The rest of you are free to call yourselves Pakistanis or greater
timbuktooans

… but not hindustanis? not unless we forfeit pakistaniat?

you claim identity to be subjective, and to be a personal choice. but
then you bring in mr tharoor as evidence in support of your
‘argument’… with his ‘legal definition’ of indian identity. don’t you
see that mr tharoor’s criterion is at least irrelevant to your claim,
and largely redundant (who in south asia does not have grandparents
born in united india??), if not actually going against the very grain
of your claim? how is yours a consistent argument then? how does a
subjective, personal choice involve having to petition the high court
in delhi?

you claim that you do not relate to the pakistani identity (whatever
that is, as you keep reminding us) nor the islamic identity.. and then
you bring in, rather unnecessarily, IMHO, the fact that you are
irritated by having to explain to people that you’re not an islamic
fundo or worse…. so you choose to say that you’re indian ‘which, in
any case, is not a lie’. why confuse the more fundamental issue??

the difference between identity and stereotyping is that the former is
your own definition of your identity, as per right, where there is
virtually no right or wrong definition, while the latter is other
people’s (wrong) definition of your identity. when other people do not
have a right to define your identity for you. now correcting/attacking
a stereotype is something anyone, even a third party, could (and
perhaps should) do.

as for faiz, any time in jail and exile is significant indeed. but so
are the 29 years he spent in pakistan.. including time serving his
country and his people. spending time in jail and having to go in to
self-imposed exile does not mean that faiz, of all people, would agree
with you that his country was no good for him. just to quote an
example.. what is it that has kept aung san suu kyi under continuing
house arrest, away from her family, for a significant part of her life
other than a small bunch of thugs and her love for her country and her
people?

regards

Bloody Civilian
September 21, 2009 at 5:15 am

correction:

“but so are the 29 years he spent in pakistan..”… as a free citizen

kabir
September 21, 2009 at 6:32 am

BC:

1) Not just YLH, but also D_a_n accused me on being “self loathing”
which I find extremely condescending. Bonoboshi proceeded to inform me
of facts which I already know, which is also condescending. Why do you
people think that the facts demand that a person can only think a
certain way? Facts are open to interpretation, and I interpret them
differently than some people here, because I can never be pro the
creation of Pakistan, or accept the use of religious rhetroic or TNT.
I think the creation of a country for “Muslims” was by far the
stupidist most ridiculous thing on the planet. The fact that Bharat
had to be vivisected to get it just makes it worse.

2) You people are free to call yourselves “pakistanis”, greater
timbuktooans, or hindustanis, whatever you want— no skin of my back.

3) It’s not my job to constantly correct stereotypes. I never want to
talk about Taliban, Islamic fundemantlism, or in fact Islam of any
kind ever again. Those are not issues I’m interested in. I’m content
to focus on my ethnic, rather than “national” identity, sing my
bhajans and khayals, and discuss larger South Asian, “Hindustani”
issues as opposed to muslim issues. I’m only interested in “Pakistan”
because it forms part of South Asia, and events here influence events
in Bharat– such as the terrorism that Pak loves to export. I also have
family that lives here, and of course, I care about them. But
politically, and ideologically, I don’t and can never identify with an
“Islamic Republic”

Regards

kabir
September 21, 2009 at 6:36 am

Also, I care about the people of “Pakistan”, the poor, innocent, non
mullahs who are “muslims” but not bothered by what anyone else is. I
was talking to my driver about this recently and i said to him that we
are all actually Indian and there is no difference between Lahoris or
Amritaris and it is horrible the way a line was drawn dividing our
Punjab. He agreed with me totally. It’s ironic that a village boy who
hasn’t even finished high school has more sense than some of you more
“educated” Pakistanis.

kabir
September 21, 2009 at 6:38 am

Erratum: Amritsaris

yasserlatifhamdani
September 21, 2009 at 10:23 am

“I was talking to my driver recently”

We’ve gone through this discussion many times. I am not going to
repeat what Jinnah said and how partition of Punjab was not our idea.
Such arguments are too fine for the philistines like yourself.

Thanks for quoting your driver as a trump card. I’d rather not quote
the famous Ghalib-mango joke because I fear compulsions of another
kind at play … I can well understand how your driver might be willing
to agree with you…

Now that we have that out of the way… may I please request that you
address Bloody Civilian’s comments?

yasserlatifhamdani
September 21, 2009 at 10:24 am
or Bonobashi’s… for that matter.

PMA
September 21, 2009 at 10:24 am
BC: No I am not MIA. I have followed this thread from the start. I
have not said anything because I have nothing new to say. I have taken
a position on the use of various geographic terms because of their
descriptive limitations vis-a-vis Pakistan. I am in realization of the
evolution of the terms such as ‘Hind’, ‘Sub-continent’, Pak-o-Hind,
and now ‘South Asia’. In true sense non of these terms strictly donate
a precise political entity like a country or a continent does. These
are roughly defined regional descriptions first used by the
academicians and politicos and then adopted by commons without much
realization. I am not sure if Kabir himself understands his own
interpretation of the terms ‘South Asia’ and ‘India’. Therefore it has
been difficult and frustrating to have a meaningful discussion with
him on this subject. About YLH. Well, he thinks that the arbitrarily
drawn Durand line is the western limit of ‘South Asia’. He often
refers to Jinnah’s Pakistan not realizing that the internal dynamics
of post 1971 Pakistan are not same as Jinnah’s Pakistan of 1947.

Before independence the commonly used term was ‘Indian Sub-continent’.
Where is western boundary of this ‘Sub-continent’? The boundary set by
the British or the boundary set by the Mughals? If so then which
boundary? That of 1947, 1879, 1707 0r 1524? It is obvious that there
could be no universal agreement on that. After 1947 the term ‘Pak-o-
Hind’ was in use. Then after 1971 it became ‘South Asia’. There are
those in Pakistan located west of Indus who do not consider their
areas as ‘India’ or ‘South Asia’. Then in the interest of being
inclusive and developing a common Pakistani identity why not to drop
the use of such vague terms? In the environment of current provincial
and regional dissatisfaction, why not to adapt a national narrative
more closely representing the entire nation? This is something for all
Pakistanis to think about.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 21, 2009 at 10:26 am
Bloody civilian,

This little twit (kabir) doesn’t even have the capacity to understand
what you’ve written.

Well argued sir. It is an irony that this fool keeps going in circles
thinking that he is “rebutting” you. He is re-butt-butt-buttin out of
himself.

yasserlatifhamdani
September 21, 2009 at 10:36 am
PMA,

To me “geography” is as imagined an idea as a “nation”. This is why I
don’t agree or disagree with your view on South-Central Asia … to me a
legal nation state and legally defined national identity and national
origin – like Modern Pakistan or Modern India- is the basic building
block.

Here my only concern has been the foolishness shown by Kabir… who by
the way has already conceded that your South Central Asian conception
for Pakistan … and in doing so has blown up his own “Indian
ethnicity” (ethnicity is yet another imagined idea given the
intermingling of all various ethnicities)…

I wonder where Bloody civilian falls in all of this … hailing from a
royal and proud pushtun tribe (sorry if this is divulging too much)
speaking Pushto, Punjabi, Urdu and English with equal ease…

yasserlatifhamdani
September 21, 2009 at 10:45 am

Also…. Kabir mian says that his view of Pushtun as being alien is
because he doesn’t understand the Pushtun language… i.e. Pushtu…

Does he understand Sindhi? Or Gujurati ? or Marathi? or Tamil? or
Bengali? or Kanada? or Telegu?

Interestingly… Pakistan’s four provinces have rather interesting
meeting points:

Hindko exists on the border of Punjab and NWFP … Hindko can be
understood by both Punjabis and Pushtuns… Pushtuns and Balochs
understand and converse with each other in Balochi, Pushto and Farsi…

If you go South… Balochs and Sindhis share many common tribes.. for
example is Brohi a Sindhi or a Baloch tribe? Between Sindhi and
Balochi exists a language called “Brahvi” which is either an ancestor
or a derivative of both languages in my view… and between Sindh and
Punjab exists large tracts of Seraiki which is understood by both
Sindhis and Punjabis…

Pakistan’s unique federalism and linguistic pluralism is entirely
interlinked…. if only we were to give it a chance.

Raza Rumi
September 21, 2009 at 11:41 am

Kabir. Please stop it now. Add something more here. You are a bright
young man and bring fresh pieces of information, research and opinions
here. Your views on identity are respected even if many do not
subscribe to them.

YLH: Let us close this issue. We have to, at the end of the day,
respect what people think of themselves and how they want to be known
and perceived.

It should not be an issue if Kabir metaphorically calls himself an
‘Indian’ or Tibetian…

yasserlatifhamdani
September 21, 2009 at 12:19 pm

Dear Raza,

I completely agree.

None of those who Kabir has argued with have disputed his right to
whatever identity he wants to associate with. He can claim to be a
Martian for all I care. It is his attitude towards those who don’t
agree with his blanket statements that I have taken an issue with.

Bloody Civilian
September 21, 2009 at 3:10 pm

PMA

This is something for all Pakistanis to think about.

i’ve little desire, on a day-to-day basis, to take focus away from
this issue of real and practical importance. mindful of the diversity
and linkages YLH has alluded to above, i believe democracy and its
continuing evolution, from whatever beginnings, no matter how slow and
frustrating, is the only answer. an expanded/inclusive consultative
process of government and policy making is the only hope and way
forward. ‘nek badshahs’ will not work here.. no matter how nek(esp not
of the uniformed variety. not least since the uniform is not seen as
truly representative of this diversity).

the only other issue comparable in importance and urgency is the
fundamentalist threat and the need to defeat religiosity and leave no
room for it in public life.

Bloody Civilian
September 21, 2009 at 6:14 pm

kabir

re. your post of September 21, 2009 at 6:32 am

1) Facts are open to interpretation

really? ok, ok.. i won’t complain about it being ‘condescending’ that
you’re telling me the basics that a 12-year old ought to know …

…i would rather use the time to try and learn something more
substantial from a discussion with you.

in order to be valid, the interpretation has to be put across
coherently and argued with a high degree of consistency. of course the
facts have to be a) correct, b) complete, not partial and c) (which is
linked to b)) not taken entirely out of context. that’s all.

2) You people are free to call yourselves…

i know. it’s just that you end up, knowingly or unknowingly, again and
again, giving the impression like ‘we’ are not. i suspect it is
because your ‘interpretation’ of facts, perhaps, tend to be more
declaratory than explanatory.

btw, who are ‘we’?

3) It’s not my job to constantly correct stereotypes.

you choose, of course. if you re-read my point, it is about the fact
that the fundamental principle is that identity is a choice totally
internal to you and who you and only you feel you are… hence the
subjectivity. it has and should have nothing to do with what others
say or claim. why go off on a tangent talking of the desire to avoid
being stereotyped… is all i was asking… and dilute your argument,
unnecessarily.

please note that i’ve tried to limit my response strictly to your
single post above. mainly in an attempt to explain better where i
might have failed in my earlier post. i’ve no cause to dispute your
identity, whatsoever. i’ve stated that enough times. indeed, if you
wish to challenge anything within the lines above, please do so by all
means. but then, after that, perhaps we should agree to continue this
discussion, if at all, another day another place.

best regards

PMA
September 21, 2009 at 7:00 pm

“to me a legal nation state and legally defined national identity and
national origin – like Modern Pakistan or Modern India- is the basic
building block.”

I agree with YLH on that point. A Modern Pakistan, all inclusive where
each citizen is fully and equally vested regardless of his/her
religion and ethnicity. His review of linguistic and ethnic demography
of Pakistan is very informative. Unfortunately many on this site are
either not informed about it or refuse to take that into account. The
future of Pakistan lies in bringing its diversities toward a common
all-inclusive national narrative. The vague concepts of ‘South Asian’
or ‘Indian’ Sub-continent will not do it for us. Our common narrative
must be ‘Pakistan’.

I also agree with BC when he says: “I believe democracy and its
continuing evolution, from whatever beginnings, no matter how slow and
frustrating, is the only answer. An expanded/inclusive consultative
process of government and policy making is the only hope and way
forward.”

[chhotemianinshallah]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/india/Embrace-Islam-say-YouTube-Shankaracharyas/Article1-457328.aspx

Embrace Islam, say YouTube ‘Shankaracharyas’

Anuraag Singh, Hindustan Times

Varanasi, September 23, 2009

First Published: 23:28 IST(23/9/2009)
Last Updated: 01:18 IST(24/9/2009)

The likely successor to the Shankaracharya of northern and western
India is very angry at popular web portal YouTube showing video clips
of two ‘fake’ Shankaracharyas, one of who exhorts viewers to embrace
Islam and the other explains why he converted to Islam.

He is so enraged that he has decided to seek the intervention of
President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “on this
burning issue”.

“We’re also seeking the opinion of experts to proceed legally against
the web portal for featuring these video clips which are bound to hurt
Hindu sentiments across the world,” Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati
of the Jyotishpeeth and Shardapeeth told HT here on Wednesday.

The clips show one of the men dressed in a red robe and the other clad
in white pyjamas and sleeveless half-coat, sporting a skull cap and
thin beard.

One clip (of 9.20 minutes) shows an old man holding the signature
stick of the first Shankaracharya going by the name and title of
‘Devanand Saraswati, Jagatguru Shankaracharya’.

He tells a gathering in Hindi that Islam is the greatest religion in
the world and that the first verse of the Quran should motivate Hindus
to convert to Islam. The man calls upon the whole world to adopt
Islam, adding that those against Islam are devils. “I don’t love those
who don’t love Muslims,” he says in the clip.

The second clip of over four minutes shows a young man going by the
name of ‘Acharya Sanjay Prasad Dwivedi-turned-Ahmed Pandit’ and
bearing the title of the ‘Varanasi Shankar Acharya (sic)’.

This man says in Hindi that he was a Hindu priest in Varanasi who
delved deep into the study of the Quran for three years and converted
to Islam. Strangely, he is shown speaking at a gathering with a banner
reading ‘Health Ministry’ behind him.

Swami Avimukteshwaranand said the two men are frauds as Hindus all
over the world recognise only three Shankaracharyas who head the four
peeths or religious centres established by the first or Adi
Shankaracharya in 500 BC.

The four peeths were set up by him at Joshi Mutt in Uttarakhand, Puri
in Orissa, Sringeri in Karnataka and Dwarka in Gujarat. The first
Shankaracharya propounded the Advaita Vedanta philosophy of Sanatan
Dharma, one of the main streams of Hinduism.

Swami Avimukteshwaranand is to likely to succeed Swami Swarupanand
Saraswati as the the Shankaracharya of the religious centres called
the Jyotishpeeth and Shardapeeth, which are located in Uttarakhand and
Gujarat.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/us/At-UN-Gaddafi-drops-K-bomb/articleshow/5048981.cms

At UN, Gaddafi drops K-bomb
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN 24 September 2009, 01:57am IST

WASHINGTON: Libya’s maverick leader Muammar Gaddafi tossed a minor
diplomatic grenade at New Delhi from the United Nations podium, saying
Kashmir
should be an independent buffer state between India and Pakistan.
( Watch Video )

In an exhausting 90-minute speech Gaddafi spoke about the political
and diplomatic history of the world in the last half century in his
first ever appearance at the UN.

Most of Gaddafi’s rant was aimed at US and the western world, although
he did not spare others, including the UN Security Council. At one
point, he even blamed India and Japan for robbing Somalia of its
fishing wealth, forcing Somalis to take up piracy.

Gaddafi reeled off the various excesses of the big powers, calling for
reform of the security council. “It should not be called the Security
Council, it should be called the ‘terror council’,” he said.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.twocircles.net/2009sep24/muslim_women_are_oppressed_india_says_minority_social_activist.html

Muslim women are oppressed in India: says minority social activist
Submitted by admin on 24 September 2009 - 9:36pm.

By Alka Pande, CNS

It is in India and neighbouring countries like Pakistan and
Bangladesh, alone, where Muslim women are oppressed, rest of the
Muslim dominated nations give equal status and rights to women. This
is how the Muslim minorities feel in this Indian state of Uttar
Pradesh. These Muslim minorities also feel that the government schemes
do not reach them.

"There are welfare schemes relating to education, health, employment
and so on but even the Muslim Concentrated Districts (MCDs) remain
ignorant about them where it the implementation of these schemes is
mandatory, what to say of districts which have sporadic population of
minorities," said Aftab Alam, a social activist who is working in one
such MCD –Bahraich – in Uttar Pradesh.

The issue cropped up during a consultation meet on Mid Term Appraisal
of XI Five year Plan, which was held in the state capital Lucknow,
last week. The meeting focused on "listening to the voices from the
field" and was organised by the Planning Commission, Government of
India with support of UNIFEM, UNICEF, UNFPA, Voluntary Health
Association of India and National Alliance of Women. The issues which
were covered in the day-long brain storming sessions included
minorities, health, women and children.

The presentations emphasised on lack of quality education as far as
Muslim population of India is concerned. "The government policy has
the provision for 25 percent enrolment of Muslim girls but hardly 5
percent girls are enrolled in government schools," the representatives
of minority group pointed out. The group included social activists
working for the uplift of Muslims, from different parts of the state.
The state of madarsas is more or less the same. "The condition of the
madarsas, which get the government aids, has improved a bit as now
they teach subjects like computer and English. But such madarsas are
very few in numbers. Majority of madarsas are still in pathetic shape
and imparting not so relevant education in terms of employment," said
Aftab Alam.

Talking of employment, the minority representatives pointed out that a
large section of Muslim community comprises craftsmen but the
government does not provide them any opportunity to excel and promote
their crafts. "On the contrary, capitalists and industrialists are
taking over various traditional crafts and arts and the artisans and
craftsmen are becoming labourers who are working for these
industrialists," said Shaista Amber, a woman social activist and the
president of All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board.

The group representing the minorities sounded united when they claimed
that a major portion of Muslim population was unaware of the
government welfare schemes. Besides, the schemes, which the minorities
knew of, were hardly reaching the beneficiaries.

"The overall objective of the whole exercise was to obtain
communities' perspective towards various programmes and schemes and
their effectiveness," said Manju Agarwal, the founder director of Path
– the Lucknow based organisation, who was facilitating this
consultation. Such consultations are being conducted at state and
regional level (clusters of five to six states) to assess the
communities’ participation in the central government programmes. "The
exercise would also assess the level of knowledge of the community on
various components of the national level schemes designed for them,"
said Manju Agarwal.

The group of minorities gave a few recommendations as well:
- Include minority representatives in the policy making.
- Propagate the government schemes through madarsas.
- Scholarships should go directly to the account of the students so
that there is no mediator to exploit the students.
- Sachchar Committee report should be given the status of a legal
document so that it has a binding on governments for the implement of
its recommendations.
- Special protection/shelter homes for single women who become
homeless after their talaq (divorce), or who after their husbands’
death or due to jahez (dowry) are thrown out of their in-laws houses.

Alka Pande, CNS
(The author is a senior journalist and a Fellow of Citizen News
Service (CNS) Writers’ Bureau. Website: www.citizen-news.org )

मुस्लिम महिलाओं भारत में दीन हैं: अल्पसंख्यक सामाजिक कार्यकर्ता कहते
हैं,
Submitted by admin on 24 September 2009 - 9:36pm. 24 सितम्बर 2009 पर
व्यवस्थापक द्वारा प्रस्तुत - 9:36.
Indian Muslim भारतीय मुसलमान Women महिला
By Alka Pande, CNS अलका पांडे, CNS तक

It is in India and neighbouring countries like Pakistan and
Bangladesh, alone, where Muslim women are oppressed, rest of the
Muslim dominated nations give equal status and rights to women. यह
भारत में है और पाकिस्तान और बांग्लादेश, अकेले, जहां मुस्लिम महिलाओं पर
अत्याचार कर रहे हैं मुस्लिम के बाकी पड़ोसी देशों की तरह बहुल देशों के
बराबर का दर्जा और महिलाओं को अधिकार दे. This is how the Muslim
minorities feel in this Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. यह है कि
मुस्लिम अल्पसंख्यक उत्तर प्रदेश का यह भारतीय राज्य में लग रहा है.
These Muslim minorities also feel that the government schemes do not
reach them. इन मुस्लिम अल्पसंख्यकों को भी लगता है कि सरकार की योजनाओं
को उन तक पहुँच नहीं है.

"There are welfare schemes relating to education, health, employment
and so on but even the Muslim Concentrated Districts (MCDs) remain
ignorant about them where it the implementation of these schemes is
mandatory, what to say of districts which have sporadic population of
minorities," said Aftab Alam, a social activist who is working in one
such MCD –Bahraich – in Uttar Pradesh. "वहाँ पर कल्याण पर भी मुस्लिम
केंद्रित जिलों (MCDs) शिक्षा, स्वास्थ्य, रोजगार और बहुत से संबंधित
योजनाओं के हैं उनके बारे में अज्ञानी जहां इन योजनाओं के कार्यान्वयन रह
यह अनिवार्य है, क्या जिलों जो अल्पसंख्यकों की छिटपुट आबादी का कहना है,
", एक सामाजिक कार्यकर्ता ने एक ऐसी दिल्ली नगर निगम में काम कर रहे है,
बहराइच आफताब आलम - उत्तर प्रदेश में कहा.

The issue cropped up during a consultation meet on Mid Term Appraisal
of XI Five year Plan, which was held in the state capital Lucknow,
last week. इस मुद्दे को एक परामर्श मिड की अवधि मूल्यांकन ग्यारहवीं
पंचवर्षीय योजना है, जो राज्य की राजधानी लखनऊ में आयोजित किया गया था पर
पिछले सप्ताह से मिलने के दौरान पेश आने लगीं. The meeting focused on
"listening to the voices from the field" and was organised by the
Planning Commission, Government of India with support of UNIFEM,
UNICEF, UNFPA, Voluntary Health Association of India and National
Alliance of Women. "पर क्षेत्र से आवाज सुन" और योजना आयोग, UNIFEM,
यूनिसेफ, यूएनएफपीए, स्वैच्छिक स्वास्थ्य भारत और राष्ट्रीय महिला के
गठबंधन की एसोसिएशन के सहयोग से भारत सरकार द्वारा आयोजित की गई बैठक
केंद्रित. The issues which were covered in the day-long brain storming
sessions included minorities, health, women and children. मुद्दे हैं
जो दिन भर दिमाग में शामिल सत्र storming थे अल्पसंख्यकों, स्वास्थ्य,
महिला और बच्चे शामिल थे.

The presentations emphasised on lack of quality education as far as
Muslim population of India is concerned. गुणवत्ता की शिक्षा की कमी पर
जोर दिया है जहां तक भारत के मुस्लिम आबादी के रूप में संबंध है
प्रस्तुतीकरण. "The government policy has the provision for 25 percent
enrolment of Muslim girls but hardly 5 percent girls are enrolled in
government schools," the representatives of minority group pointed
out. "सरकार की नीति मुस्लिम लड़कियों के 25 प्रतिशत नामांकन के लिए
प्रावधान है, लेकिन शायद ही 5 प्रतिशत लड़कियों के सरकारी स्कूलों में
दाखिला लिया," हो अल्पसंख्यक समूह के प्रतिनिधियों ने कहा. The group
included social activists working for the uplift of Muslims, from
different parts of the state. समूह सामाजिक मुसलमानों के उत्थान के लिए
काम कर रहे कार्यकर्ताओं को राज्य के विभिन्न भागों से, शामिल हैं. The
state of madarsas is more or less the same. मदरसों के राज्य के कम या
ज्यादा ही है. "The condition of the madarsas, which get the government
aids, has improved a bit as now they teach subjects like computer and
English. But such madarsas are very few in numbers. Majority of
madarsas are still in pathetic shape and imparting not so relevant
education in terms of employment," said Aftab Alam. "मदरसों है, जो
सरकार एड्स मिल की हालत, थोड़ा सुधार हुआ है के रूप में अब वे कंप्यूटर
और अंग्रेजी जैसे विषयों सिखाने. लेकिन ऐसे मदरसों की संख्या में बहुत
कुछ कर रहे हैं. मदरसों के अधिकांश दयनीय हालत में अब भी कर रहे हैं और
प्रासंगिक तो नहीं शिक्षा प्रदान रोजगार के मामले में, "आफताब आलम ने
कहा.

Talking of employment, the minority representatives pointed out that a
large section of Muslim community comprises craftsmen but the
government does not provide them any opportunity to excel and promote
their crafts. रोजगार की बात कर रहे हो, अल्पसंख्यक समुदाय के
प्रतिनिधियों ने कहा कि मुस्लिम समुदाय का एक बड़ा वर्ग कारीगरों शामिल
हैं लेकिन उन्हें किसी भी सरकार के लिए Excel और उनके शिल्प को बढ़ावा
देने का अवसर प्रदान नहीं करता है. "On the contrary, capitalists and
industrialists are taking over various traditional crafts and arts and
the artisans and craftsmen are becoming labourers who are working for
these industrialists," said Shaista Amber, a woman social activist and
the president of All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board. , एक महिला
और सामाजिक कार्यकर्ता के अध्यक्ष अध्यक्ष शाइस्ता एम्बर विपरीत ",
पूंजीपतियों और उद्योगपतियों विभिन्न पारंपरिक शिल्प और कला और
शिल्पकारों और कारीगरों पर ले जा रहे हैं मजदूर जो इन उद्योगपतियों के
लिए काम कर रहे होते जा रहे हैं" ने कहा कि ऑल इंडिया मुस्लिम महिला
पर्सनल लॉ तख्ता.

The group representing the minorities sounded united when they claimed
that a major portion of Muslim population was unaware of the
government welfare schemes. अल्पसंख्यकों का प्रतिनिधित्व कर गुट एकजुट
लग रहा था जब उन्होंने दावा किया कि मुस्लिम आबादी का एक बड़ा हिस्सा
सरकार कल्याणकारी योजनाओं के बारे में पता था. Besides, the schemes,
which the minorities knew of, were hardly reaching the beneficiaries.
इसके अलावा, योजनाओं, जो शायद ही पता था कि अल्पसंख्यकों के लाभार्थियों
तक पहुंच गया.

"The overall objective of the whole exercise was to obtain
communities' perspective towards various programmes and schemes and
their effectiveness," said Manju Agarwal, the founder director of Path
– the Lucknow based organisation, who was facilitating this
consultation. ,, पथ के संस्थापक निदेशक मंजू अग्रवाल - आधारित लखनऊ
संगठन है, जो इस परामर्श की सुविधा थी "पूरी कवायद का समग्र उद्देश्य
विभिन्न कार्यक्रमों और योजनाओं और उनके प्रभाव की ओर 'समुदायों के
परिप्रेक्ष्य प्राप्त था" कहा. Such consultations are being conducted
at state and regional level (clusters of five to six states) to assess
the communities' participation in the central government programmes.
ऐसे विमर्श राज्य में और क्षेत्रीय स्तर पर आयोजित किया जा रहा है पाँच
को छह राज्यों के (समूहों) को केंद्रीय सरकार के कार्यक्रमों में
'समुदायों की भागीदारी का आकलन करें. "The exercise would also assess
the level of knowledge of the community on various components of the
national level schemes designed for them," said Manju Agarwal. , मंजू
अग्रवाल "व्यायाम भी राष्ट्रीय स्तर पर उनके लिए डिजाइन योजनाओं के
विभिन्न घटकों पर समुदाय के ज्ञान के स्तर का मूल्यांकन करेंगे" कहा.

The group of minorities gave a few recommendations as well:
अल्पसंख्यकों के समूह के रूप में अच्छी तरह से कुछ सिफारिशें दे दी:
- Include minority representatives in the policy making. - बनाने की
नीति में अल्पसंख्यक समुदाय के प्रतिनिधियों को शामिल करें.
- Propagate the government schemes through madarsas. - प्रचार मदरसों
के माध्यम से सरकारी योजनाओं.
- Scholarships should go directly to the account of the students so
that there is no mediator to exploit the students. - छात्रवृत्ति सीधे
छात्रों के खाते में जाना चाहिए ताकि वहाँ कोई मध्यस्थ को छात्रों के
शोषण है.
- Sachchar Committee report should be given the status of a legal
document so that it has a binding on governments for the implement of
its recommendations. - सच्चर समिति की रिपोर्ट एक कानूनी दस्तावेज का
दर्जा दिया जाना चाहिए ताकि यह अपनी सिफारिशों को लागू करने के लिए
सरकारों पर बाध्यकारी है.
- Special protection/shelter homes for single women who become
homeless after their talaq (divorce), or who after their husbands'
death or due to jahez (dowry) are thrown out of their in-laws houses.
- विशेष संरक्षण / एक महिला जो अपने तलाक (तलाक), या जो बाद पत्नी अपने
पति की मृत्यु या (दहेज) jahez कारण बाहर उनके ससुराल वाले घर से बाहर
निकाल रहे हैं के बाद बेघर हो के लिए आश्रय घर.

Alka Pande, CNS अलका पांडे, CNS

(The author is a senior journalist and a Fellow of Citizen News
Service (CNS) Writers' Bureau. Website: www.citizen-news.org ) (लेखक
वरिष्ठ पत्रकार और नागरिक समाचार सेवा (CNS) राइटर्स ब्यूरो. वेबसाइट:
www.citizen-के फेलो news.org है)

[Sid Harth]

http://www.twocircles.net/2009sep24/amu_seeks_more_land_bihar_government_new_campus.html

AMU seeks more land from Bihar government for new campus
Submitted by admin2 on 24 September 2009 - 9:02pm.
Indian Muslim
Lucknow, Sep 24 (IANS) After Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar offered
100 acres of land to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to set up a
centre in his state, the varsity Thursday asked for another 150-200
acres.

"As per the lay-out proposed for the upcoming campus, we would require
around 250-300 acres of land," AMU spokesman Rahat Abrar told IANS
over telephone.

"Going by the lay-out prepared for the forthcoming five AMU centres,
in an official communique to the Bihar government we today (Thursday)
asked for an additional 150-200 acres of land contiguous to the
currently identified site for establishing the AMU centre," he said.

According to officials, the AMU centre in Bihar would come up in the
Muslim-dominated Kishanganj district.

Besides Bihar, the AMU - a central university - plans to set up
centres in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerela and West Bengal.

The university has already received Rs.25 crore each for setting up
its centre in West Bengal and Kerala, the university officials added.

मांगी
Submitted by admin2 on 24 September 2009 - 9:02pm. 24 सितम्बर 2009 पर
admin2 द्वारा प्रस्तुत - 9:02.

Indian Muslim भारतीय मुसलमान

Lucknow, Sep 24 (IANS) After Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar offered
100 acres of land to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to set up a
centre in his state, the varsity Thursday asked for another 150-200
acres. लखनऊ, 24 सितम्बर बिहार के मुख्यमंत्री नीतीश कुमार ने अलीगढ़
मुस्लिम विश्वविद्यालय (एएमयू) के लिए भूमि की 100 एकड़ जमीन की पेशकश को
अपने राज्य में स्थापित करने के बाद केंद्र (आईएएनएस), एक और 150-200
एकड़ जमीन के लिए विश्वविद्यालय गुरुवार को कहा.

"As per the lay-out proposed for the upcoming campus, we would require
around 250-300 acres of land," AMU spokesman Rahat Abrar told IANS
over telephone. "के रूप में प्रति जब्री बाहर आगामी परिसर के लिए
प्रस्तावित है, हम देश के लगभग 250-300 एकड़ जमीन की जरूरत है," होगा
एएमयू के प्रवक्ता राहत अबरार टेलीफोन पर आईएएनएस से कहा.

"Going by the lay-out prepared for the forthcoming five AMU centres,
in an official communique to the Bihar government we today (Thursday)
asked for an additional 150-200 acres of land contiguous to the
currently identified site for establishing the AMU centre," he said.
"जब्री बाहर आगामी पांच एएमयू केंद्रों के लिए तैयार, एक सरकारी
विज्ञप्ति में बिहार सरकार के हम आज गुरुवार () के द्वारा जा रहे हैं देश
एएमयू केंद्र स्थापित करने के लिए वर्तमान की पहचान की साइट से सटे की एक
अतिरिक्त 150-200 एकड़ जमीन के लिए कहा, "उन्होंने कहा.

According to officials, the AMU centre in Bihar would come up in the
Muslim-dominated Kishanganj district. अधिकारियों के मुताबिक, बिहार में
एएमयू केन्द्र मुस्लिम में आ किशनगंज जिले के प्रभुत्व होगा.

Besides Bihar, the AMU - a central university - plans to set up
centres in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerela and West Bengal. बिहार
के अलावा, एएमयू - एक केन्द्रीय विश्वविद्यालय - तक मध्य प्रदेश,
महाराष्ट्र, Kerela और पश्चिम बंगाल में केंद्र स्थापित करने की योजना
है.

The university has already received Rs.25 crore each for setting up
its centre in West Bengal and Kerala, the university officials added.
पहले से ही 25 विश्वविद्यालय प्राप्त किया है पश्चिम बंगाल और केरल में
अपने केंद्र स्थापित करने के लिए एक करोड़ यूनिवर्सिटी के अधिकारियों
जोड़ा.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/35188-missing-action-general-no-1-a.html

Missing in action: General No 1

Reforms have a way of coming in late. No wonder then that a decade
after the Kargil conflict exposed deep fissures within the military
top brass,
some critical lessons, especially on the need for a single-point
advice structure, and by extension a General Number 1, are yet to be
learnt. It doesn't help that the Army, Navy and IAF do not see eye-to-
eye on this. Compounding matters is the smugness of a bureaucracy
happy with the status quo even as it exercises a vice-like grip on the
armed forces in the name of "civilian control''. The political
leadership, in turn, remains apathetic about genuine reforms in the
country's higher defense management.

Gen No 1 is missing. Strategic experts, who feel it is time India had
a chief of defense staff (CDS), say it's a crying shame. The CDS, they
say, can pitch in not only with a much-needed single line of advice to
the government but manage the country's nuclear arsenal and resolve
inter-service doctrinal, policy and operational issues as it brings
about "jointness'' and synergy among the three services.

Both the previous NDA regime and the present UPA government have used
the pretext of "evolving a political consensus'' to keep the CDS post
in cold storage. The 1999 Kargil war could have been a turning point
for the country to settle the CDS debate, but that went by too. It's
no secret that the then Army chief, Gen V P Malik, and IAF chief air
chief marshal A Y Tipnis squabbled bitterly over the conduct of
operations to evict Pakistani intruders from Kargil's peaks.

If Malik accused Tipnis of being reluctant to use airpower during the
early days of the conflict, the latter claimed that an "embarrassed"
Army was initially reluctant "to reveal the full gravity" of the
situation to the government. Not surprisingly, the subsequent Kargil
Review Committee, headed by strategic-affairs analyst K Subrahmanyam,
and the high-powered Group of Ministers (GoM) led by L K Advani
recommended sweeping systemic changes in the entire defense
establishment.

The GoM report — Reforming the National Security System — underlined
the need to have a CDS because it felt the functioning of the existing
chiefs of staff committee, comprising the three service heads,
"revealed serious weakness in its ability to provide single-point
military advice to the government''.

The "dichotomy of command'' remains a glaring problem to this day.
This when modern-day warfare demands integrated all-arms operations
under a single structure to achieve swift decisive victories. Many of
the GoM recommendations — like the creation of integrated defense
staff, tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command, Defense Intelligence
Agency and Strategic Forces Command — have indeed taken shape. But
successive governments have steadfastly ignored the all-important CDS
post.

When defense minister A K Antony told Parliament in August this year
that he had initiated moves to consult various national-level
political parties way back in March 2006 and that "so far, six parties
have responded'', he was merely stating the obvious and going down the
beaten track.

A senior officer smirked, "This has been the standard answer for
several years now. In the absence of a CDS, the unified structures
established after the Kargil war are like headless chickens, running
here and there without achieving much. Even the operational command in
A&N Islands is floundering.''

Another officer added, "As national security advisors, first Brajesh
Mishra and now M K Narayanan have virtually usurped the role to become
a super-CDS. Don't forget, their post comes with the responsibility of
heading the executive council of the two-tier Nuclear Command
Authority. With the CDS lynchpin missing, defense reforms since Kargil
have been half-baked at best.''

While all this is certainly true, inter-service rivalry, with each
keen to guard its own turf, has been a major stumbling block. No chief
wants to lose command of his own service, that too at crunch hour. The
Navy, under the leadership of chiefs like admiral Arun Prakash, has
however, intermittently pushed for a CDS post. Not the Army and IAF
though.

IAF, for instance, has long thought of itself as the only natural
custodian of nuclear weapons. Moreover, it would not like a general or
admiral as CDS to wield control over what it holds to be a highly
technical force. "Army and Navy lack air-mindedness,'' said a senior
IAF officer rather summarily. The Army, the largest service with over
one million troops, nurses its own ambition to monopolise the CDS
position.

The good part, though, is that consensus seems to be building, slowly
but surely, even as the services continue to squabble among themselves
over things like acquisition of helicopters and air defense weapons.
"There should be a CDS to crack the whip, to reconcile and prioritise
equipment and budgetary demands of the three services,'' said a
serving vice-admiral. "In fact, the CDS should be a five-star general
with clear-cut authority over the four-star chiefs, not just a first
among equals. And he should have direct access to the PM.''

Around 70 countries, including France, Germany, UK and US, have a CDS-
like structure. It's time, many say, India had one.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.cbnews1.info/bjp-back-to-hindu-agenda-as-advani-harps-on-ayodhya-temple-issue/37125.html

BJP back to Hindu agenda as Advani harps on Ayodhya temple issue

Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 2:09 am under World News Buzz up!BJP
back to Hindu agenda as Advani harps on Ayodhya temple issue

Giving cue to where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is headed after
its debacle in national polls in April-May, senior leader Lal Krishna
Advani on Friday brought the controversial Ayodhya temple issue back
on the centrestage.

The BJP has appeared largely directionless after a massive election
defeat in May, its problems further compounded after some senior party
leaders began attacking each other.

The party has been debating its future — whether its Hindu-revivalist
agenda, once its passport to power, was now irrelevant for younger
voters.

Some dissident leaders have questioned the party leadership including
President Rajnath Singh and Advani, the party’’s Prime Ministerial
candidate during the last polls.

Hinting status quo over the running of party affairs, Advani on Friday
said the country is waiting for a temple dedicated to lord Ram to come
up in northern Ayodhya city.

“The country will only be satisfied when a Ram Mandir (temple
dedicated to lord Ram) gets build at Ayodhya,” said Advani, after
visiting Somnath temple in Junagadh district of western Gujarat state.

The BJP, during their campaign for the April-May 2009 national
elections, promised to construct the temple that has been a flashpoint
of tension between Hindus and Muslims for years, if they come to
power.

The BJP rose to prominence on the back of a Hindu revivalist campaign
that sought the construction of a Ram temple on the site of a 16th
century mosque torn down by mobs in 1992.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.cbnews1.info/as-a-muslim-i-feel-proud-i-did-kurbaan-saif-ali-khan/37430.html

As a Muslim I feel proud I did ‘Kurbaan’: Saif Ali Khan

Now actor-producer Saif Ali Khan is looking forward to “Kurbaan” – a
film he admits he is proud of having acted in being a Muslim.”As a
Muslim I feel proud of the fact that I have done this film.

This is one of the most socially relevant films today. It is good that
it is coming at just the time when our country needs cinema like
this,” Saif said.Set in the US, “Kurbaan” is a romantic thriller with
terrorism as its backdrop. A Karan Johar production directed by
debutant Rensil D’Silva, “Kurbaan” also stars Kareena Kapoor, Vivek
Oberoi,

Dia Mirza, Kirron Kher and Om Puri. It is slated to release Nov
27.Saif reveals that he now has a new career plan in place. “I would
now be working on two-three films a year and make sure that I cover a
wide spectrum. While a couple of them would be big, nice commercial
films, another would be a relatively smaller film that can be
completed in 30 days flat.”After “Love Aaj Kal”, his next production
venture is “Agent Vinod”. But shooting for the film is still a little
distance away.”Final touches on the script are being given and we have
been looking at getting the best technicians on board.

I guess by the end of this year, we should begin shooting.”In any case
I am in no tearing hurry to ready my next film. One should space
things out, invest good time to publicise things and get the right
preparation in place for the making of the film,” said Saif.He is also
careful that his personal life, especially his health, doesn’t suffer
due to his professional commitments.”It is of paramount importance
that one looks after the body as well as brain.

I go to the gym regularly as well as spend some good time with family.
As far as work is concerned, I have certainly become even more serious
about production after ‘Love Aaj Kal’.”We have learnt quite some
lessons after the release of our first film and the idea is to
leverage from some mistakes that we may have made. My investment as a
producer is bound to increase from here on.

”Meanwhile, the success of “Love Aaj Kal” and “Race” (2008) have made
it closer for him to the top-five league. While Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir
Khan, Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan and Salman Khan are firmly placed
in the top league, Saif too is not that far away.”I don’t know much
about that. All such number placements are for other people to state,
study and analyse. As for me, I know today that I’m in a position to
make the film that

I want to make. I am also confident that the film I would make will
carry some meaning to people. My project should now carry certain
amount of weight and direction and for that one has to be a bankable
star.”He continues to shrug away the entire numbers game.”This number
business is quite fluctuating actually; so one should not be worried
about it. What you should worry about more is that now since people
have higher expectations from you, you should deliver even better in
your next assignments,” Saif said.

Deccan Herald – RSS
http://www.deccanherald.com

[Sid Harth]

Indo-Pak secretary level talks in New York
Page added on September 26, 2009

NEWS YORK: A meeting between foreign secretaries of Pakistan and
India is underway here on Saturday.

Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir is representing Pakistan while the
Indian side is being represented by Nirupama Rao.

The meeting will focus on the regional situation as well as other
matters.

The secretary level meeting is a follow up of the joint statement
issued after Sharm Al-Shaikh meeting between the prime ministers of
Pakistan and India. It is aimed at taking forward the peace process
between the two countries.

The main issues to be taken up at the meeting will include terrorism
and Kashmir standoff.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.cbnews1.info/india-vs-pakistan-live-streaming/37392.html

Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 12:07 pm

India Vs Pakistan Live Streaming

Watch Live Streaming and Live scores of the Group A match between
Asian arch rivals India vs Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy 2009
which will begin in Johannesburg on Saturday 26th September, 2009,

Match will Start at 2:30 9m local, 12:30 GMT , 6-00 pm India time

Watch Live Cricket Match

Its going to be a great saturday night entertainment for cricket fans
across the world , Ind vs Pak clash is always eagerly awaited and a
edge of the seat treat for viewers , moreover this is a day/night
match on a saturday and starts at 6 pm India time.

India is without there vice captain and swash buckling opener Virender
Sehwag and pace spear head Zaheer Khan who were ruled out of the
Champions trophy because of injuries. …

More Information India Vs Pakistan Live Streaming

http://www.cbnews1.info/pakistan-302-9-vs-india/37422.html

Pakistan 302-9 Vs India

Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 3:39 pm under Sports News Buzz up!
Pakistan 302-9 Vs India

CENTURION : Pakistan reached 302 for nine wickets at the end of their
innings in the Champions Trophy Group A match against India on
Saturday.

Shoaib Malik (128) and Yousuf (87) are the cornerstones of Pakistan’s
302 runs.

Earlier, Pakistan captain Younus Khan elected to bat after winning the
toss against India in the Champions Trophy here on Saturday.

Pakistan won their opening match of the four-team group against the
West Indies, while India are playing their first game. Defending
champions Australia are the other team in the group, with the top two
advancing to the semi-finals.

Pakistan made one change from the side that beat the West Indies, with
Younus coming in place of Misbah-ul-Haq.

Pakistan 302-9 Vs India was first posted on September 26, 2009 at 9:50
pm.

©2009 “Pakistan News“.

[Sid Harth]

http://www.cbnews1.info/champions-trophy-fawad-fined-for-missing-pakistan%e2%80%99s-flag-hoisting-ceremony/37368.html

Champions Trophy:

Fawad fined for missing Pakistan’s flag-hoisting ceremony

Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 7:38 am under Sports News Buzz up!
Champions Trophy: Fawad fined for missing Pakistan’s flag-hoisting
ceremony

Young all-rounder Fawad Alam has been fined for failing to report for
the flag-hoisting ceremony prior to the start of Pakistan’s opening
Champions Trophy match against West Indies at the Wanderers earlier
this week.

According to reports, Fawad did not turn up for the flag hoisting
ceremony at the ground and also failed to justify his absence. He was
fined Rs.10,000 Friday after being found guilty of a breach of
discipline.

It was after conducting a hearing that the team management fined him
and warned him against any future misconduct.

Champions Trophy organisers had invited sixteen kids who were supposed
to accompany the 15-member team along with the coach to the Wanderers
for the flag hoisting ceremony.

Fawad did not turn up despite several reminders and was sleeping in
the dressing room. By the time he woke up, the short ceremony was
over. The kid who was supposed to accompany Fawad was left perplexed
and confused. He even started weeping, finding no player to walk with.

The kid was consoled and was later offered the opportunity to take
pictures with team members.

Fawad is no stranger to controversies. A couple of weeks back he had
been involved in a serious breach of conduct during the national
training camp for the Champions Trophy, forcing the management to
impose a heavy fine of Rs.100,000 on him.

[Sid Harth]

http://desicritics.org/2009/09/26/125517.php

For God's Sake
September 26, 2009
KG

"I stood there in the sanctum sanctorum of gilded gold, surrounded by
a throng of people feverish with piety and fervour. A gentle breeze
wafted through the temple and the curtain flutters. A collective gasp
rose - had it revealed its secret?"

Thirteen hours ago, I had reluctantly willed myself into a car to go
to what is commonly considered one of the greatest pilgrimage sites in
India. A place where they said dreams came true. A temple whose
presiding deity is generous to a fault to his devotees.

Slight problem though - the religious thing really isn't my cup of
tea.

I wasn't always like this. As a kid, one invariably follows one's
family in matters of faith - in fact, I seem to remember (rather
wistfully, I must admit) days when I had a set of some 12 Sanskrit
prayers I'd religiously recite every day. Days when I even put flowers
on the idols.

Even a highly embarrassing moment at the 'sacred' thread ceremony- a
wardrobe malfunction in front of a whole lot of people didn't really
deter me from assuming that somewhere in the skies lurked blessing.

Come to think of it - there isn't really a moment when I STOPPED
believing. It was the idea of the thread that put me off. This
ornament that supposedly set me apart from others felt too foreign-
too unfair to my dreams of normalcy.

Yes, I wanted to be like everyone else- I didn't want to be unique.

Ah! The innocent stupidity of childhood!

"The breeze dies down. 250 people exhale. Then it begins. A low clang-
growing steadily louder. At its zenith, the drums produce a deafening
sound. Sanskrit chants accompany the drum beat. The entire thing
blends into a symphony of sounds that cannot be separated from one
another- a continum of words and beats."

Make no mistake, the idea of 'God' was hard to accept to begin with.
All juvenile arguments about science and proof laid aside, it just
didn't seem possible. Miracles, I put down to coincidence. Good marks
I put down to hard work. Those who survived in hospital I put down to
great doctors.

Never to Him.

But in times of need, somehow one has an automatic tendency to ask God
for help, and that's wrong, said everyone - don't pray to God for
help. Pray because you believe, and then ask him for what you want.

Fair enough.

But if He's omniscient, surely He already knows what I want? And
because I've never offered propitiating sacrifices, never
wholeheartedly lit the lamps, never really prayed - I don't mean
recite shlokas - but actually prayed because I believed, admired the
architecture in his temples more than him - He's not going to give a
crap about me anyway!

Yet, it is strangely touching to see the hordes of people who
unquestioningly believe. Who do not doubt. It must be wonderful to
feel that way about something. Absolute faith is unnerving, but gives
one peace - the feeling that some things are certain.

On the other hand that 'doubt'- that quizzically raised eyebrow when I
see someone else worshipping an idol gives me a quiet satisfaction.
That it's all on me. My ruin is in my own hands. People believe that
praying to Him everyday keeps him happy- so that when they really want
something, He'll grant it- is that piety or fear?

And so I've never felt right asking him for favours. Not in the most
dire of situations. I have no business doing so.

"The drums go on. The people around continue chanting. A security
guard grins sheepishly and scratches his unmentionables- familiarity
does indeed breed contempt. The whole atmosphere- loud drums, the
perfectly pitched Sanskrit chants, the bells, the breeze, the devotees
swaying in unison- different people united for perhaps the only time
in their lives- unknowingly stirs memories- why, only God knows..

Someone whispers- The time is close....

And then in a flash, the green curtains are drawn.

And out of nowhere- from some primeval recess of the mind, knowing
full well that it is wrong to do so, I ask Him- whose existence I
question- for something... "

!$#@*&^%$...

KG is- well- himself. Schizophrenic, borderline manic depressive,
inveterate tennis fanatic.

[Sid Harth]

http://desicritics.org/2009/09/26/151033.php

ICC Champions Trophy: India Outclassed by Pakistan
September 26, 2009
Aaman Lamba

Indian media seemed to have staked their all on the first match
between India and Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy at the
Supersport Park in Centurion, South Africa, seeing it, somewhat
perversely as payback time for the tragic events in Mumbai on
26/11/2008. This was not given much credence by the cricket-watching
fans of both nations, general bonhomie building as the teams took the
field. The health-related departure of Yuvraj Singh seemed to weaken
the Indian team, and when Pakistan won the toss, opting to bat first
on the fast pitch, they knew it would be a hard slog, given that
Pakistan seemed to also have the stronger bowling side.

The Pakistani batting started off well, and the run rate stayed near
7.00, bringing them to 28 after 4 overs. The loss of Imran Nazir to
Nehra in the 5th didn't faze the side, and they powered forward to a
quick 50 in 8 overs. The run rate did fall after Nehra took another
notch, that of Kamran Akmal, in the 9th over. After 20 overs, Pakistan
were only 86/3, having lost the wicket of Younis Khan along the way.
Mohammed Yousuf and Shoaib Malik put up a fine 206 partnership
however, pushing Pakistan's score to 271 in 46 overs. The wickets fell
fast after that, but Shoaib Malik went on to score 128 before he was
bowled by Harbhajan Singh in the 49th over, and Pakistan finished up
their innings at 302/9, a pretty good score.

The game was now set for a close contest between the Indian batsmen
and the strong Pakistani attack bowlers, with much relying on Sachin
Tendulkar, as has been the case for long. India started with a
flourish, touching 23 in 4 overs before they were surprised by the
loss of Sachin's wicket to Mohammad Aamer, as his ball kissed the edge
of Sachin's bat and Akmal's lunge caught it. the Indian team kept the
run rate in contention, clearing 44 runs in 7 overs,

A few costly overs from the Pakistan side helped the run rate, with
quite a few extras - freebies the Indian side were very grateful to
receive. India were 65/1 after 10 overs, and Yuvraj Singh could be
seen in the stands, sitting with a bandaged hand. Gautam Gambhir had
kept a steady pace, his batting might be called imperious, and was at
33. India chose to activate Powerplay just then, and another couple of
sloppy balls from Umar Gul, followed by a no-ball, allowed him to
unleash a sixer off a free hit ball, and India scored 16 runs off the
11th over.

His over-confidence led him astray, however, and he was run out at 57,
perhaps unnecessarily, in the 13th over. Dravid and Virat Kohli didn't
do much other than bring down the run rate to below 6, and India lost
both Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni in quick succession, being reduced to
134/4 in 24 overs. Rahul Dravid was playing a steady game, but with 35
off 56 balls, he needed to step up the pace to make a difference to
the Indian batting. He lasted until the 43rd over, scoring 76 with a
strike rate of 73.

India were 240 for 7 at the 43rd over, and the required run rate was
almost 9, so the implications of the loss were beginning to sink in
for the Indian team. They appeared lacklustre and morose, with only a
glimmer of hope, which too was lost when RP Singh was caught by
Mohammad Yousuf in the 44th over, with Ishant Sharma being also bowled
out in the same over by Naved-ul-Hasan. THe final wicket fell in the
next over, an outstanding spell by Pakistan.

In the end, the Indian side was let down by both the bowling and
uninspired batting, many runs coming off free hits and an inexcusable
array of no-balls from Pakistan. The Pakistani team, on the other
hand, shone at their batting, and cleaned up the Indian batting when
they needed to. Dravid, Gautam Gambhir, and Raina effectively threw
away their wickets, and this was Pakistan's day to shine.

Aaman Lamba is the Publisher of Desicritics.org, a Blogcritics network
site. He also blogs, more infrequently nowadays, at Audit Trails Of
Self

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090927/jsp/foreign/story_11547090.jsp

2 suicide bombings kill 16 in Pakistan
ISMAIL KHAN AND SABRINA TAVERNISE

Security officials at the scene of the suicide bombing in Peshawar on
Saturday. (AP)
Peshawar, Sept. 26: At least 16 people were killed and 90 were injured
in two suicide bombings in troubled areas of western Pakistan today.

Out of the 16, 10 were killed in Peshawar, the capital of the North
Western Frontier Province (NWFP) and the first major city to be
attacked in months.

The Peshawar attack targeted a commercial area less than a mile from
the US consulate and near a private bank owned by the Pakistani
military that had been hit before, said Liaqat Khan, the city police
chief.

It came just hours after another bomber hit a police station in Bannu,
a remote tribal area in northwestern Pakistan, killing five police
officers and one prisoner, according to Malik Naveed, the NWFP
inspector general.

The bombings appeared to be a calculated attempt by militants to
strike back at the Pakistani military, which has been conducting a
campaign against them since spring this year in northern and western
Pakistan.

Naveed said the attacks appeared to be the work of the Taliban, but
Khan warned that authorities had not yet determined the perpetrators.
Police detained three suspects taking video at the scene in Peshawar.

“It is premature to blame any group,” Khan said. “We want to keep our
minds open.”

Pakistan moved thousands of troops away from its eastern border with
India to launch offensives against Taliban militants in the west of
the country this spring, something the US had long pressured Pakistan
to do.

The operations had achieved some success: civilian casualties in
August reached their lowest level in more than a year, according to
the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. Pakistan’s major cities,
Lahore and Islamabad, which used to suffer near-weekly bombings, had
been quiet for months.

The military was also helped by an American airstrike in August that
killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and the
main perpetrator of attacks inside Pakistan.

[bademiyansubhanallah]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Goli-maar-do-but-we-will-never-go-back/articleshow/5060544.cms

'Goli maar do, but we will never go back'

Avijit Ghosh & Saurabh Banerjee, TNN 26 September 2009, 09:18pm IST

Rana Ram carries a bit of his pained past in a weathered wallet that's
always close to him. It's a photocopy of a grainy clipping from an
Urdu newspaper that shows a woman and her child. The caption reads:
'Impressed by Islam, the woman with the baby became a Muslim'.

"This isn't true,'' says Rana, a lean man with expressive eyes. For
the last 18 months, he has been crying himself hoarse that the
newspaper lied. "No, that's not why Samdi Mai, my wife of 10 years,
changed her religion. Ever since my father-in-law switched his faith,
we were under pressure from the maulvis and others to become Muslims
too."

But Rana, of Sadiqabad tehsil in Pakistan Punjab's Rahimyar Khan
district, resisted. Then one day, when he was away tending goats, a
fleet of cars filled with bearded men arrived at his house. On his
return, he found his wife gone.
The 30-year-old farmhand rushed to the police station only to be told
that his wife had converted of her own will.

Someone passed on a message a few days later. It said, "To get her
back, you also must become a believer."
Rana, though, wasn't ready to give up. He managed to get back his
three-year-old daughter at a village 'court' after paying off the
decision-makers. But his wife was 'out of the question'. That's when
he decided to take the weekly Thar Express to Rajasthan.

Over the past four years, more than 4,000 Hindus have come to India
from Pakistan, hoping never to return. A majority says they lived in
constant fear of losing their religion, of worrying that their
daughters would be dragged away and converted to Islam. Whenever such
traumatic incidents occurred, local authorities just looked away. It
was simply a question of 'us' and 'them'.

Laxmi Ram, daughter-in-law of Arjan Ram from Punjab's Bahawalpur
district, says her uncle's seven-year-old daughter was abducted and
that's the last they saw of her. Kewal Ram, from Punjab's Rahimyar
Khan district, says his sister's daughter was converted to Islam by a
locally influential man after her husband's death. "I went to every
authority, two top minority leaders, one a Hindu, the other a Parsi.
But nothing happened. That's when I decided to leave Pakistan, the
only home I had known."

Displaced people like Kewal Ram now live in wretched settlements in
Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Barmer. And though they are disappointed with
the local authorities' attitudes, they say, "Goli maar do, par wapas
nahin jayenge."

This exodus from Pakistan is not new. During the 1965 and 1971 wars,
Hindus arrived in steady streams from across the border. "The
demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 sparked a violent reaction in
Pakistan, forcing many Hindus to flee. In the following years, the
rise of extreme fundamentalism in Pakistan further ensured that
migration continued," says H S Sodha, president, Seemant Lok
Sangathan, which works for refugees across Rajasthan.

The latest rush started around 2007. Refugees say fundamentalism has
grown dramatically in Pakistan's Punjab. Dina Ram, who now lives in
Jaisalmer's Bhil Basti, says older Muslims were more understanding
towards minorities. "The younger boys are more fanatical," says this
former resident of Rahimyar Khan. And it is not the Taliban at work.

Like Rana Ram, many of the displaced come from Sadiqabad tehsil. Its
Rahim Yaar Khan district is too far away for the followers of
Baitullah Mehsud, based in Pakistan's remote northwest. Rather,
refugees say, a general pro-conversion social climate prevails in
rural Punjab that encourages even shopkeepers, neighbours and
schoolteachers to urge Hindus to convert. Allurements ("Tumhari shaadi
kara denge"), taunts ("Why do you worship idols?"), fear ("Tum dozakh
mein jaoge") and veiled threats ("Tumhare liye yehi accha rahega") —
every ploy is used to make them cross over to Islam.

There's a class dimension to the problem too. The refugees are among
the poorest of the poor. Many originally belong to Rajasthan's border
districts; their ancestors had moved westward in search of employment
before Partition. Most worked as farmhands for zamindars and then were
forced out. Dhapobai from Bahawalpur district, who now lives on
Jodhpur's outskirts, says her family changed home 25-30 times. Being
rootless, they are at the mercy of the local powers: zamindars and
maulvis. Class exploitation combines with religious bigotry to force
them to quit Pakistan.

About 100 displaced families live in Kali Beri, 20 km northwest of
Jodhpur. The settlement looks like a half-excavated Stone Age ruin
abandoned by archeologists. Thorny vilayati babools are everywhere,
but there is no sign of toilets, electricity or hope. "Every family
has a malaria patient," says Goman Lal, a resident since 1997. "The
men work in the stone quarries and do 10-12 hours of backbreaking
toil. But they have no complaints. These mines have saved our life and
honour."

They live under stacked blocks of unpolished sandstone. Byapari Ram,
32, stays here with his family. His arrival on January 4, 2009 was
spurred by Rana Ram's plight. "I feared we would be the next target,"
he says. His new home is furnished with just a bunch of plastic sacks
packed with clothes, and a trunk with his sisters' photographs. "I
wish I could get visas and bring them here," he says.

Having fled from religious pressures, the displaced land in further
humiliation. When they arrive on the Thar Express, which runs from
Karachi to Jodhpur, border officials are rude and demand bribes. Imran
Kumar says that at Munabao, the first stop in India, an official
confiscated his passport and demanded Rs 7,000. He got away with
paying Rs 2,600. "Back there, Muslims troubled us. But I can't
understand why even Hindus treat us badly," he despairs.

A majority of the displaced are either Meghwals (SCs) or Bhils (STs).
Those in Ramdev Nagar feel the absence of a proper burial ground.
Though Hindus, the Meghwals bury their dead. "We have had to fight
with other communities. The government has given us jeevan daan but we
also need mrityu daan," says Nand Lal, a former driver in Karachi who
got Indian citizenship in 2005.

There is another battle. Those on extended long-term visas are legally
bound not to leave Jodhpur's municipal limits or travel west of NH-15.
But with limited jobs, many slip awayto other towns in Rajasthan.

In December 2008, a high-powered committee submitted its report on
ways of improving the lot of these displaced people. But, says H S
Sodha, also a committee member, even those with citizenship are not
part of any state scheme for SCs. They don't have BPL cards either.
"They need better livelihood programmes and comprehensive social
security. Land should be more easily made available to them. Those on
long-term visas but yet to receive citizenship are not eligible for a
driving licence, bank account or insurance scheme. This must change."

Citizenship itself is an issue. Before 2004, the displaced had to stay
put for five years to become eligible. This has been extended to
seven. Application fees too have doubled. Between 2004-05, 11,327 were
granted citizenship. Expectedly, this number dropped to 1,201 in
2005-06 and 1,207 in 2006-07.

However, Naveen Mahajan, DM, Jodhpur, says that the administration is
seriously trying to help. "We are preparing the list of those who have
got citizenship. Our prime focus will be on BPL cards. We are
identifying a piece of land for their rehabilitation in Jodhpur," he
says.

One thing is for sure: nobody wants to go back. "Sar kalam kar do,
wapas nahi jaoongi (You can chop my head off, I won't go back.)," says
Chhannobai from Bahawalpur district. Jeobai, the family's female head,
takes pride in the fact that "Bacchi bacha ke aayein hain. Yehi bahut
hai. (We have saved our daughters. That's enough)."

Rana Ram now lives with his uncle on the city's outskirts. Every
morning, he gets up around five, cooks for his kids and readies his
eight-year-old son for school before setting out to work in the
quarries. It's a tough life. But he doesn't care. "At least I have the
freedom to keep my faith and live without fear," he says.

The great escape

On the midnight of August 15 last year, two young boys fled the
bondage of their Muslim landlord and crossed the border to freedom.

The sand was soft and they could scoop it out with their bare hands.
But the fence was deeper than they had imagined. It was midnight,
August 15, 2008. The Indo-Pak border was floodlit and any moment they
could have been caught and sent back to the hell they were trying to
escape.

They had walked 20 km, fleeing at noon when everyone had gone for
Friday prayers. It was sheer luck that in his rush, the master had
forgotten to tie them up. For three years that had been the routine,
ever since their father sold them off to the Pakistani landlord for Rs
50,000.

Bhagwan Ram was 14 then and Pahelwan Ram 11. Their mother had died and
their father needed the money for his second marriage. So, Bhagwan Ram
and his brother became the property of Haji Zamir. For three years,
the lads were strapped to a plough and made to till the fields from 6
in the morning till 6 in the evening. Dinner was the Zamir family's
leftovers. And, at night, they were tied to their cots.

This was why they were seeking freedom on the midnight of August 15
last year. They had heard of relatives who lived east, "where the sun
rose every day", a place called Jaisalmer. So they followed the sun as
it slid west, and then the stars and a smelly canal that runs from
Rahimyar Khan to the Indian border. On the way, they stopped at Dadi
Ka Mazar, and sought dua. If they were to cross the border, dodge BSF
bullets, and eventually find their relatives, they would surely need
more than just the blessings of Tanot mata, their deity.

But they needn't have been here at all. Their master had given them a
choice: "Become Muslims, forget Tanot mata, stop worshipping the boots
(idols), and from tomorrow, you will get some money, more rotis, more
dal, and maybe later, some land, and even a woman in your bed. And at
night, nobody will tie you up. You will be free".

They chose real freedom instead.

When they could dig no further, they pulled at the wires till the gap
was wide enough for them to scrape through. They still remember how
the barbs dug into their flesh, the blood — but they kept their tryst
with the midnight hour and got their independence.

And then, after stumbling along the sand on the Indian side for an
hour, maybe more, suddenly the three — their cousin Sumeer Ram had
come along too — were overpowered by sleep.

They were woken by the sun beating down on their faces. "A farmer saw
us," says Pahelwan. "He asked where we were from. We said we were from
Pakistan, and asked for water. He filled our two bottles, but said he
would have to take us to the police. That was fine by us. We wanted to
tell the police our story. We wanted rotis and dal. We wanted them to
take us to Jaisalmer, where every day from our virtual prison in
Pakistan, we saw the sun rise."

When they were handed over, the BSF jawans blindfolded them and took
them back to the border. "They followed our footsteps," says Sumeer
Ram. "They wanted to find out if we were telling the truth." After
that, it was a year and three days in a police lock-up at Ramgarh in
Jaisalmer. They didn't mind this either. They were never tied up and
there was always enough roti and dal. Bhagwan Ram said, "I held the
feet of the police officer and told him to shoot me, kill me but not
send me back."

Freedom finally came on August 19 this year, when the Union home
ministry decided not to deport them. They were released on the
guarantee of their grandfather, who lives in Jaisalmer's Bhil basti.
He traced them after a local newspaper report about three boys who had
run away from Pakistan.

It will be at least another seven years before Bhagwan, Pahelwan and
Sumeer can become Indians. Till then, every Monday, they must visit
the local police station to prove that they haven't gone back to the
hell they managed to escape from.

(With inputs from Anindo Dey, Ajay Parmar & Vimal Bhatia)