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BEING MANMOHAN SINGH

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Mar 23, 2010, 5:52:13 AM3/23/10

Forwarded message from Ashok Chowgule

Saturday, March 20, 2010

This is from three years ago, and I do not know if the author would
have written differently today.

Namaste
Ashok Chowgule

Being Manmohan Singh

By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
DNA (Daily News & Analysis)
June 2, 2007

Introduction: Have we ever made enough effort to know the man behind
the PM?

From his speech at Oxford University in which he almost seemed to
have balanced the good that came out of colonial rule with the bad,
to the talk he gave at former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar's
Institute of Developmental Studies where he referred to 'crony
capitalism' and now to his latest salvo at a conference of the
Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) about CEO's salaries, Manmohan
Singh has sent political and economic observers into a tizzy They do
not know what to make of his observations. Is there any consistency
in his 'odd' remarks, because sometimes he seems to speak differently
than one expects. The CII speech, among other things, that invoked
the need for corporate ascetism, has left many baffled. Is this the
man who set off the process of economic liberalisation in India? We
do not seem to know the man and his mind enough to make sense of his
thinking; he remains an enigma, a puzzle.

Is Manmohan Singh a Keynesian at heart, a man who believes that
government has to play an active role to keep the markets going? Is
he a strong believer in the virtues of a welfare state? Does he think
that private sector should be guided to build a competitive national
economy on the lines , of Japan, South Korea and the south-east Asian
Tigers? Is he still thinking like an Asian nationalist who wants to
make his country a strong player in the international arena, and who
is willing to make the necessary adjustments to achieve his goal? Or,
is he merely a bureaucrat and policy-maker who tries out any and
every idea, and does not bother about the purity of doctrines and
theories, as long as it shows the results he wants in the public
realm?

Who is the real Manmohan Singh? Surprisingly, we in the media, and
even the intelligentsia, never seem to bother to ask about the core
beliefs of the prime minister, and we are not intrigued as to what he
is thinking. We are unquestioningly accepting the fact that he is a
mere 'stand-in' PM for the Congress Party, and that he has
transformed himself from a faceless bureaucrat of the previous
decades into a faceless politician of the last 16 years.

It is no secret that middle level leaders and the rank-and-file of
the Congress Party do not like him at all. They believe that by
bringing in economic reforms he has damaged the pro-poor socialist
image of the party which has been so carefully built since the days
of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Singh survived in the hot seat
as finance minister in the early 1990s because of the unstinted
support provided by the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Now he is
afloat because of the total confidence that Sonia Gandhi has in him.

The Marxists hate him, and their follow ers in the media and
elsewhere have no hesitation in airing the conspiracy theory that he
is pro-American, and that he follows the dictates of IMF-World Bank.
In 1991-1992, many senior journalists hurled the allegation that the
Budget was vetted by the World Bank and IMF officials before it was
presented to the Parliament.

The BJP leaders do not hide their contempt for him because they treat
him as a 'non-Prime Minister' if not a political lackey But even the
most intelligent of them do not have the intellectual stamina to duel
with Singh on policies and ideas. They prefer to attack Singh at his
weakest point his precarious position as a political leader.

In all this, no one is making sense of what Singh thinks and believes
about the economy. Except for the committed Marxists, other fellow
economists in India are not willing to pick a good fight on the issue
of Singh's policy prescriptions. There is a certain deference they
show towards a man in power, and they hold back from expressing their
real views. It is not surprising then that there is no good book on
Singh's economic views by an academic or a journalist in this
country.

We have also not bothered to see what Singh had been doing and
thinking over the years. He has been associated with Indian economic
policy for nearly four decades now. He has been in the Finance
Ministry, in the Planning Commission and at the Reserve Bank of
India. He was the chairman of the South Commission, which was geared
to look at the developing countries.

But has anyone asked Singh the following: did he believe in the
verities of the socialist economics earlier when he served successive
governments, or was he just contributing to policy as required by the
political masters of the day? Did he change his economic ideas when
he became the finance minister in 1991? Is he a pragmatist, or is he
an opportunist?

One of his economics colleagues says that Singh was not an ideas man,
that he is good at implementing things, a doer more than a
thinker.But a man who spent his life in corridors of power and who
was part of policy-making has some ideas of his own. It seems that
when he airs them once in a while, we do not know how to fit them
with the rest of the man. An interesting diagnosis, but one that
doesn't go far enough. The simple truth therefore remains, we do not
know our Prime Minister enough.

End of forwarded message from Ashok Chowgule

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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chhotemianinshallah

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Mar 23, 2010, 8:04:29 AM3/23/10

> Since newsgroup posts are being removed
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> this post may be reposted several times.

Image of Hindutva overshadowed real meaning
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

New Delhi, March 22: BJP President Gadkari denounced as propaganda
that Hindutva was against Muslims and said facts were misrepresented.

Terming Hindutva as the "spirit" of BJP, party President Nitin Gadkari
today said it cannot be a subject of political debate and lamented
that its image had overshadowed its real meaning.

"Whether someone likes it or not, the subject has been a matter of
debate for the last 40 years in politics. I feel people should know
the reality (of what Hindutva means) after serious thinking.

"It is a tragedy of image versus reality. Letters can change but not
the spirit. Hindutva is our philosophy, it is our spirit... which
cannot change," Gadkari said during the 'dedication ceremony' of over
100 professionals as volunteers for the BJP.

The function was followed by a talk on 'politics and Hindutva' in
which Gadkari said Hindutva cannot be a subject of political debate
and it can never be an agenda for any political party.

He termed as "propaganda" that Hindutva was against Muslims and said
people were "misrepresenting" the facts to further their vested
interests.

Maintaining that BJP was in favour of equality in social and economic
spheres for all, he said "We believe in the philosophy of 'vasudev
kutumbhkam' (world is one family)."

Gadkari alleged that "pseudo secularists" were deliberately attaching
religion with a terrorist and said the term 'secularism' is now being
used for minority appeasement.

"... terrorist has no creed, caste or religion.

Image of Hindutva overshadowed real meaning
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

A god fearing Hindu will not kill an innocent Muslim and similarly, a
god fearing Muslim will not kill an innocent Hindu, and if he is doing
so, then he is a terrorist who does not belong to any religion," he
said.

The BJP president said in a secular country, the government, the
judiciary and the media should be secular but an individual cannot be
secular.

He said it was necessary that the new generation was taught the real
meaning of Hindutva, adding, "A proper focus on the issue is the need
of the hour".

Speaking on the issue, RSS ideologue M G Vaidya said he had expressed
"concern" when Sudhendra Kulkarni, the close aide of BJP leader L K
Advani wrote after the party defeat in general elections that it
should distance itself from Hindutva.

He lamented that the "spirit" remained ignored but at the same time
appreciated that it was being remembered once again in 2010.

Vaidya said for BJP, distancing itself from Hindutva would mean
distancing itself from RSS and its core values.

He recalled that when the issue of BJP's relations vis-a-vis Hindutva
was being debated in 2004, he had said that BJP has moved along a
particular line from where it would not be appropriate to pull it
back.

"I had said that if BJP disassociates itself from Hindutva, then the
RSS would take a call on whether to keep Hindutva in politics or not,"
Vaidya said.

The BJP president said in a secular country, the government, the
judiciary and the media should be secular but an individual cannot be
secular.

He said it was necessary that the new generation was taught the real
meaning of Hindutva, adding, "A proper focus on the issue is the need
of the hour".

He lamented that the "spirit" remained ignored but at the same time
appreciated that it was being remembered once again in 2010.

Vaidya said for BJP, distancing itself from Hindutva would mean
distancing itself from RSS and its core values.

"I had said that if BJP disassociates itself from Hindutva, then the
RSS would take a call on whether to keep Hindutva in politics or not,"
Vaidya said.

---IANS--

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/image-hindutva-overshadowed-real-meaning

Nityananda files writ in Karnataka High Court
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Bangalore, March 23: Self-styled godman Nityananda Swami, facing
allegations of involvement in sleazy activities, has filed a writ
petition before the Karnataka High Court seeking quashing of cases
filed against him by the Ramanagar district police.

Nityananda, who is at large ever since the video clippings of his
alleged sleaze activities involving an actress were telecast by
private channels on March two, contended in his petition yesterday
that he was innocent. 32-year-old Nityananda, alias Rajasekharan,
charged that one of his former discipline and driver Kurup Lenin had
conspired to defame him and his Ashram by levelling such allegations.

The whereabouts of Nityananda are a mystery. However, the followers of
Nityananda at his Ashram at Bidadi on the city's outskirts claim that
he is in Haridwar attending the Kumbh Mela. The writ is yet to come up
for the High Court registry, according to sources in the High Court.

Tamil Nadu police, which had registered cases under various sections,
including rape, against Nityananda, transferred them to the police in
Ramanagar, as the Ashram falls under it. Ramanagar police had re-
registered the cases against Nityananda.

-PTI

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/nityananda-files-writ-karnataka-high-court

No decision on direct access to Headley yet: US envoy
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

New Delhi, March 23: The US said Tuesday there had been no decision to
give India "direct access" to David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani
American terror suspect who has confessed to his role in the 26/11
Mumbai terror strike.

In a statement issued by the US embassy here, Ambassador Timothy J.
Roemer clarified Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake's
comment in Delhi Saturday. Blake had been asked by reporters if Indian
investigators would be allowed to quiz Headley. "My answer would be
yes," he said.

"As the Assistant Secretary indicated, the US is committed to full
information sharing in our counter terror partnership. In fact in this
case we have provided substantial information to the government of
India and we will continue to do so. However, no decision on direct
access for India to David Headley has been made," Roemer said in a
statement.

He added that the US department of justice will work with the Indian
government "regarding the modalities of such cooperation".

Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram had been upbeat about getting
access to Headley, after a phone call with US Attorney General Eric
Holder.

"It is my understanding," Chidambaram said, "that India would be able
to obtain access to Headley to question him in a properly constituted
judicial proceeding. Such a judicial proceeding could be either pre-
trial or during an inquiry or trial."

The National Investigation Agency was asked to form a team which will
travel to the US to interrogate Headley, who confessed in a Chicago
court to his role in the Mumbai terror attack that left 166 people
dead.
--IANS

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/no-decision-direct-access-headley-yet-us-envoy

Foreigners in Maharashtra will have to undergo a 'character' check
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Mumbai, March 23: The government has come up with the idea of
assessing the character of foreigners staying in the state and keeping
a strict vigil on their activities.

"We will check the records of foreigners and seek character
certificates from their respective countries," home minister RR Patil
said in the legislative council on Monday. "If we find that they have
a dubious record, we will ask their countries to take them back."

Patil was replying to a calling-attention motion on last month's
German Bakery blast in Pune. The issue of foreigners was raised by the
Shiv Sena's Neelam Gorhe. "What steps has the government taken to keep
a check on foreigners," she asked.

Patil said, "We have already started checking foreigners' visas and
taking action against suspect people." He appealed to citizens to
alert the police if they spotted anything suspicious.

The police already have a rule in place that requires flat-owners in
Mumbai to inform them if they give out their premises toforeigners.
Hotels and lodges in the city have also been told to inform the police
about guests from abroad. The owner of a South Mumbai flat, where US
terrorist David Coleman Headley stayed for more than six months, had
failed to inform police about his presence in the city.

Patil admitted in the council that the state had received specific
intelligence alerts about a possible terrorist strike at Chabad House
and Red Temple in Pune. On the day of the blast, chief minister Ashok
Chavan had said the state had had no inkling about a possible attack.
The Centre, however, said it had issued an alert in October 2009.

Patil asserted that the state police was competent to investigate the
German Bakery blast but would not hesitate to seek the help of other
agencies like the National Investigation Agency, CBI, IB, and the anti-
terrorism squads of other states. Last week, he had rejected an
opposition demand to hand over the probe to the CBI.
“Terrorists are changing their techniques every time," Patil said.

"We can neither deploy police everywhere nor frisk every single
person. There is only one solution — to strengthen the intelligence
system. For that we have set up the Maharashtra Intelligence Academy.
The first batch of this academy has completed its training and will be
operational soon."

---Agencies

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/foreigners-maharashtra-will-have-undergo-character-check

Muslim marriage age issue: Bombay HC notice to Centre
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Mumbai, March 23: The Bombay High Court today issued a notice to the
additional solicitor general who represents union government in a case
where marriageable age of Muslim girls has become an issue.

The notice was issued after the petitioner has the challenged the
constitutional validity of Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA),
saying it violates freedom of religion.

The division bench of Justices D B Bhosale and A R Joshi also directed
that the girl, who is currently 15 years old, be produced in the court
on March 29, so that the judges may interview her.

Zakia Begum, the girl's mother, moved the High Court in January after
police took the girl into custody at the behest of child welfare
committee.

The girl's uncle had informed CWC that she was going to be married
off, in violation of PCMA. Police also filed a criminal case against
her parents for violating the act.

The parents have sought the custody of their daughter -- who is
currently in a shelter home and quashing of the criminal complaint.

Today, petitioner's lawyer Prakash Wagh told the court that the girl's
parents are ready to give an undertaking not to marry her off till she
turns 18. Similar undertaking has already been given to CWC, he said.

The judges said that before ordering her release from shelter home,
they would like to talk to her.

The judges also restrained the girl's family members from meeting her
till she is interviewed by them next Monday.

The Judges said that they would like to deal with the larger issue
involving conflict between Muslim personal law and PCMA. As per PCMA,
a girl cannot get married before she is 18 years of age, but according
to Shariat law, she can marry on reaching puberty.

All India Muslim Personal Law Board too has been impleaded by the
petitioner. Appearing for the Board, senior counsel Yusuf Muchhala
said the court will have to see if the issue involves "core beliefs"
of the religion.

Advocate Mihir Desai, representing two NGOs who have intervened in the
case to oppose the petition, said, "It cannot be said that if I do not
get married before 18, I am not a Muslim."

"Well, I did not get married before 18 myself," advocate Muchhala,
himself a Muslim, remarked, evoking laughter. He, however, said that
he would have to study original Islamic scriptures to formulate his
response to the petition, and that will take some time.

The hearing has been adjourned till March 29.

-PTI

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/muslim-marriage-age-issue-bombay-hc-notice-centre

‘Islamist extremists can destabilise Bangladesh’
Tuesday, 23 March 2010

New Delhi, March 23: Most of the Muslim population in Bangladesh
supports the secular state and abjures violence but Islamist
extremists have the potential to destabilise that country, say experts
from a leading Dhaka-based think tank.

“The Islamist extremists represent a minuscule proportion of the
population; nevertheless, the potential for Bangladesh to be
destabilised by these extremists is fairly strong,” says a paper by
Humayun Kabir and Shahab Enam Khan.

It speaks about the causes of militancy in that country. Titled
“Understanding the threats from Islamist Terrorism in Bangladesh”, the
paper was presented at a security dialogue organised here by the
Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and the Bangladesh Enterprise
Institute (BEI).

Kabir is a senior research director and Khan a project director at the
BEI that has partnerships with many international agencies.

The paper says Islam in Bangladesh has always been defined by
tolerance, moderation and pluralism. Muslim-dominated Bangladesh has a
population of 160 million.

“In general, most of the Muslim population in Bangladesh support(s)
the secular state and abjure(s) the violence and distorted
interpretations of Islam that have plagued countries like Pakistan,
Afghanistan and some in the Middle East.”

Noting that Bangladesh has witnessed a sharp rise in terrorism
primarily from the mid-1990s, the paper points to four complex forms
of terrorism in the country - political, anti-state, ethnic and
social.

It says there exists a nexus between terrorist groups and smuggling
syndicates, criminal gangs and politically sponsored cadres to nourish
a supporting network for each other.

Citing 2007 statistics mentioned in a BEI report, the paper says
Bangladesh has 1,027 organised criminal groups, two insurgent groups,
five outlawed groups, at least four ideologically digressed groups
with militant intent, 16,062 criminals operating in various gangs and
762 politically sponsored criminal groups.

“Extremist groups such as Hijbut Tahrir, Harkat ul-Jihad-I-Islami-
Bangladesh, the militant jihadi Jamat-ul Mujahdeen Bangladesh or their
dissident groups are at the forefront of promoting religious terrorism
in Bangladesh,” the paper says.

The paper mentions that Bangladesh continues to be a transit and
launching point for Pakistan-based terrorist groups that target India
and Southeast Asia.

“Groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami retain
a significant presence in Bangladesh and have used its territory to
launch terrorist attacks against India…there is ample evidence to show
that the student front of Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, Islami Chhattra
Shibir, also acts as an extremist group that resorts to violent
activities.

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/%E2%80%98islamist-extremists-can-destabilise-bangladesh%E2%80%99

http://article.wn.com/view/2010/03/22/Image_of_Hindutva_overshadowed_real_meaning/?template=cheetah-search-adv%2Findex.txt

Watch Five Videos: About 45 minutes worth of viewing. (Hindi, English)

Nation pays tribute to first martyr of independent India-Shyam Parsad
Mookherjee
JAGMOHAN SINGH
Monday, 22 March 2010

MADHOPUR(PATHANKOT): The Nation paid glorious tributes to Dr. Shyama
Prasad Mookherjee, first Martyr of independent India, who laid down
his life for a principle of one nation, one flag, one constitution.

Thousands of people led by Mohan Rao Bhagwat, Sar Sanghchalak,
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Lal Krishan Advani, former Deputy Prime
Minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, Deputy Chief Minister Punjab, Nitin
Gadkari, National President BJP and Prem Kumar Dhumal Chief Minister
of Himachal Pradesh fondly remembered the selfless sacrifice of Dr.
Mookherjee at the border point of Punjab-J&K border, from where in
1953 he started his campaign to make J&K integral part of India, to
make it possible for every Indian citizen to visit J&K without permit.

To perpetuate the contribution of Dr. Mookherjee towards unity and
integrity of the country, his life size statue was unveiled here by
all leaders naming the place as Ekta Sathal.

Speaking on occasion Mohan Bhagwat gave a call to launch a second
struggle to abolish Article 370, the last remaining symbol of
disintegration.

Bhagwat also demanded respectable rehabilitation of 3.5 Lac Kashmiri
Hindu migrants back in valley, who were suffering in different part of
country. Appreciating the Punjab Government for making glorious
attempt to perpetuate the memory of Dr. Mookherjee, Bhagwat criticised
Union Govt. for soft peddling Pakistan on issue of terror. Bhagwat
gave a call to launch second struggle to complete the integration of
J&K with India.

Speaking on the Occasion former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan
Advani said that the struggle that Dr. Shayamal Prasad started in 1953
would complete only if Article 370 was repealed from the constitution.
He said that we became victim of British policy of disintegrating
India, even after partition of Pakistan. He recalled the contribution
of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, then Home Minister for integrating
princely states back into India. He said that the demand for autonomy
for J&K or restoring pre 1953 status would be suicidal for the
integrity of the country.

Paying glorious tributes to Dr. Mookherjee, Nitin Gadkari, National
President BJP rued the fact that India has failed to settle J&K issue
even 62 years after independence. He said that appeasement policies of
UPA government were encouraging terrorism and naxalism in the country.
Flaying UPA for starting talks with Pakistan under pressure of foreign
countries Mr. Gadkari said that talks with Pakistan would be futile
till Pakistan was fomenting terrorism from its soil. Demanding the
immediate repealing of Article 370, Gadkari said that Dr. Mookherjee’s
sacrifice would not go in vein.

Paying his humble tribute, Sukhbir Singh Badal Deputy Chief Minister
said that the present generation indebted to freedom fighters who laid
down their lives in the prime of their youth so that we could all
breathe in peace. He said that this statue of Dr. Shayama Prasad
Mookherjee would continue to guide and motivate present generation
about the value of his sacrifice in keeping India intact. Badal said
that Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal was eagerly waiting for this
momentous day but could not come here personally due to ill health.

Earlier, the leaders unveiled the statue of Dr. Shayama Prasad
Mookherjee that has been erected at the joint border of Punjab,
Himachal and J&K. A photo gallery showing the pictorial history of Dr.
Mookherjee’s contribution in freedom struggle was also inaugurated on
the occasion.

Thousands of people from Punjab, Haryana and J&K paid glorious
tributes to Dr. Mookherjee.

http://www.punjabnewsline.com/content/view/24361/38/

To attract youth, Gadkari seeks new Hindutva idiom
Express News Service

Posted: Tuesday , Mar 23, 2010 at 0222 hrs

New Delhi:
BJP president Nitin Gadkari said: ' Hindutva cannot become any
political party's agenda.

BJP president Nitin Gadkari on Monday stressed on the need for a
modern idiom to articulate Hindutva for the youth, even as he said
that the Supreme Court’s 1995 description of Hindutva (wherein it
described it as “a way of life”) must be the touchstone while
explaining the idea.

“Hindutva cannot become any political party’s agenda,” Gadkari said by
way of explaining that it was “more of a way of life”. This was the
first time he spoke at length on Hindutva after taking over as party
president.

“From Vivekananda to the Supreme Court definition, the idea of
Hindutva has been variously discussed. Hindutva is not against any
religion. While Hindutva is our philosophy, there’s a need to employ a
new idiom to articulate it to connect with the youth,” Gadkari said
while speaking on “Hindutva and Politics” at a function to mark the
launch of an association of volunteers “that will promote the BJP
among the youth”.

“Our credo has always been ‘justice for all; appeasement of none’. A
true Hindu can never attack a Muslim, and a true Muslim can never
attack a Hindu. A terrorist, on the other hand, has no religion,
caste, or creed. It’s the pseudo-secular brigade that has unduly
highlighted the religion of terrorists who happened to be Muslims,”
said Gadkari.

The BJP president said that while a “democracy would always need truly
secular institutions”, individuals “can never become secular”. After
taking over as the party president, Gadkari has attempted to bring
about certain changes in the organisation, something that won the
approval of RSS ideologue M G Vaidya.

18 Comments |

Be agressive in highlighting the failures of UPA
By: R.C.Mohan | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 13:00:38 PM

BJP a party with great leaders at the top are still to win the
confidence of people in India although the party too advocate the
policy of secularism in its own way.Gadkari as president of the party
must come forward to highlight the failures of the present UPA
government in several areas. Manmohan Singh has failed in all fields
except in the economic arena thanks to his vast experience in the
affairs. In spite of a global recession, India could withstad the
melee because of Mr.Singh. But in all other fields he has miserably
failed and this fact should be highlighted by the BJP. In Law & Order,
Agricultural, Food Distribution,Controlling terrorism, external
affairs etc the present UPA Government has let down the people to a
pathetic state of affairs.Dividing the hindus and appeasing other
religions made them comfortable in hoodwinking the people to an
extend.Hence Gadkari has to be progressive by being agressive in
highlighting the failures of the UPA.All will get attracted naturally

Indian Prestorika for UPA
By: J.A. Mansuri | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 12:58:42 PM

Both UPA & NDA could reshape by learning for future strategies about
co-existence with & without difference in plural society. Observing
specific areas of SC and Constitution will lead to further polarize
society & national polity. Observing judiciary on Babri Masjid will
bring national integration. Vaccum in philosophy and cadre is on
surface amongst both groups.

Observing Judiciary
By: Ananth Seth | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 13:38:48 PM

Effective and just National Integration can only come after the
followers of Islam give up their false claim on Ayodhya and disown
pseudo-secularists and pseudo-intellectuals. Any other talk is nothing
but an "under cover" attack on the history and civilization of this
great country.

BJP back to winning trajectory
By: Chirag K. Shahc | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 12:58:34 PM

I sincerely wish that BJP wins next elections both in Banglore polls
and Bihar. It is high time a nationalist party gets its due.

BAD PERSONS
By: yusuf ahmed | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 12:39:36 PM R

a bad person is a bad person - a thug is a thug - let us not brand him
- region religion have nothing to do with badness - the new BJP
President is right - his thought process his mind set is on target -
reflects a mental over haul -

Gadkari seeks new Hindutva idiom
By: subramanian | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 12:05:50 PM

The party's Top leadership is making good and sincere attempts to
rejenuvate BJP. The party has to attract down trodden and weaker
sections of Hindus to retain BJP as the main opposition party. Involve
all Indians across religious lines to become the ruling party.

Kangress bhagaoe,desh bachaoe
By: birju | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 12:02:36 PM

Gadkariji,way to go! demolish the evil party ruling us and install the
patriots in power!

Hindutava
By: Parminder Singh | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 11:35:17 AM

My dear brothers and sisters. If a particular word creates
misunderstanding, notwithstanding the intentions behind it, we should
reconsider modifying it. Suppose Akalis say that in Punjab, Sikhutava
be practised or christians in NE States say Christianava be practised
and Muslims say in J&K, Muslimism be way of life, it would definately
not be acceptable to others. I would suggest to Mr Gadhkari that he
should use the word Bharatism as the slogan and moto. While one may
have reservations or objections to any word which in any way seem to
be linked to a particular community or religion, none can have
objection to the word reflecting the country in which he or she lives.

Hinduvta
By: DRJ | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 11:57:24 AM

Can u advocate the same philosophy for Pakistan which is driving
hindus and sikhs out. India is perhaps the only country where
affiliations of Muslims and Christians are outside the country i.e
Mekka and Rome. Nothing wrong in beliefs. But the basic interest to
rest with the country which is missing and hels overseas interest to
destabilise the country.

Hindutva and Hinduism
By: soumik pal | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 10:52:50 AM

Nitin Gadkari's comments are better thought than the usual fare dished
out by the likes of Narendra Modi. But one should realize that
Hinduism, after all, is just a discursive field open to debate and
discussion. It is not monolithic. It is not a religion, it is a dharma
(there's a difference). And by all means is Hinduism inclusive unlike
the brand of Hindutva being promoted by BJP and it's more hardcore
allies like the RSS, VHP etc. Godhra riots and countless other events/
incidents bear testimony to that. And "Mantra", India is not a Hindu
nation.

What is the final solution
By: mun | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 10:13:58 AM

Whilst all these comments are true, there is still the real problem
India faces not now but about 100 years from now. By that time the
proportion of Hindus and others in particular Muslims will have
changed to a point that unrest becomes more frequent and violent. The
reason is Hindus might continue to say India is secular and indeed
practice religious tolerence, but unfotunately, Islam does not give
any choice to muslims. That is, there is only one way of being muslim,
which is the way quran preached originally. No muslim can accept a
State which is not based on quran. That means India can never enact a
law restricting muslims from marrying more than one wife, practice
family planning or any other practices even if they are archaic and
irrelevant to 22nd century. Is there a way out of this? If muslim
population is proportionately, more than Hindus will they allow Hindus
to live they want to live? No convincing answers to this yet.

Hindutva
By: MRR | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 10:01:19 AM

It is good start and it is upto verybody to ensure that they do not
elect the Pseudo secular's back to power in next election and give
this ideology a another chance to put in practise. Good luck

To attract youth, Gadkari seeks new Hindutva idiomNew Delhi: BJP
president Nitin Gadkari on Monday stressed on the need for a modern
idiom to articulate Hindutva for the youth, even as he said that the
Supreme Court’s 1995 description of Hindutva (wherein it described it
as “a way of life”) must be the touchstone while explaining the idea.
“Hindutva can ....Read more

18 Comments |

Let and Let live - Hindutva idiom
By: kulmohan | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 9:52:41 AM

Let and Let live - Hindutva idiom. Nothing else would define the
essence of hinduism better

Let and Let Live
By: Indian | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 10:20:14 AM

Yea that is exactly what is happening with terrorirsts. We are letting
them leave and forgetting ourselves to protect. We are letting
terrorirsts live by voting politicians who are very careful not to
hang them despite of SC judgement

Hindutva
By: Mantra | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 9:38:19 AM

While the Honorable Supreme Court is absolutely correct in defining
Hinduism as a way of life, Hindu's also have certain beliefs and value
systems, which are unique to them. Hindu's like any other religion
believe in the supremacy of god,life and worship. It is therefore a
way of life to practice the three epitomes of any religion. Now
Islamic and Christian nations do give Bonus points to people or
citizens who practice the religion as endorsed by the state. Prime
examples are Malaysia,Israel, France, Australia, whole of Middle East
and to a great extent US and UK too. Now, as a nation, what is wrong
being a Hindu nation? What is wrong in being a Hindu? At the end of
it, India and Nepal are the only two Hindu nations! The consitution
does not need to hurt the religious sentiments of others, nor should
it curtail the rights of other minorities, however, it should not also
give bonus points and additional privileges to citizens of India of
minority beliefs.

Right
By: India | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 10:00:06 AM

Very good. Very rightly said.

Hindus-Divided
By: DRJ | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 11:02:47 AM

Nitinji is making good and sincere attempts to rejenuvate BJP. The
main flaw in BJP's policy is that it recognises only certain sections
as Hindus and rest all as sub servers. This discrimination is being
exploited by Congress. BJP has to learn to recongnise all sections of
Hindus.

Thanks to Indian Express
By: Swanand Bodas | Tuesday , 23 Mar '10 9:35:52 AM

This has been BJP's agenda from JanSangh time. Hindutva by virtue is
comprehensive. The culture here is tolerent and harmonious but of
course is capable to teach a lesson to pseudo secularists who have
been dividing the country for their vote-bank politics. Whatever SC
had said was exactly stated by Veer Savarkar by defining Hindus as
those loving this country and being part of the culture of this
country. But due to Pseudo secular people and even worse media this
has always been prohibitted to come forward. So I must congratulate
Indian Express which at least has made it a news unlike almost other
media channels who are more worried about Rahul Gandhi's whereabouts,
where does he stay what does eat, whether Priyanka was with him or not
etc. than any other intellectual process. This country needs to bring
all religions, states on same level with no special religious laws to
Muslims and no special status to J&K. Only then the country becomes
united

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/To-attract-youth--Gadkari-seeks-new-Hindutva-idiom/594388

Info on 'cash at judge's door' case confidential: SC
Agencies

Posted: Tuesday , Mar 23, 2010 at 1247 hrs
New Delhi:

In the midst of a raging controversy over closure of the 'cash-at-
judge's-door' case, the Supreme Court, which had denied that CBI had
approached the Chief Justice, now says the information is
"confidential".

The Court's interesting reply came on an RTI petition seeking details
whether the Chief Justice of India was approached by the CBI wanting
permission to prosecute Justice Nirmal Yadav of Punjab and Haryana
High Court in the case.

"I write to inform you that the information sought by you...is
confidential and is exempted from disclosure under the section 8 (1)
(e) and (j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, you have no right
to access the said information."

"Further as the information is not held by or under the control of the
CPIO, Supreme Court India, your request cannot be acceded to..." Raj
Pal Arora, Central Public Information Officer of the Supreme Court
said in an RTI reply.

The reply is in sharp contrast to a statement earlier issued by its
Secretary General M P Bhadran who said CBI did not approach the Chief
Justice of India in the case.

Justice Yadav's name had figured in the alleged scam after the
recovery of a mysterious bag containing Rs 15 lakh at the door of
another Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Nirmaljit Kaur, which was
said to have been delivered there due to confusion over names.

Justice Kaur reported the matter to the police. Later, the probe was
given to CBI on the orders of administrator of Chandigarh.

The CJI had also appointed a three-judge committee to look into the
matter. The then Attorney General Milon Banerji had reportedly advised
the Law Ministry that there was not enough material to proceed further
in the matter.

A CBI court observed that the probe agency filed the closure report
after it failed to get sanction from the Chief Justice of India to
launch prosecution against her. Meanwhile, Justice Yadav was
transferred to Uttarakhand High Court after the decision of
collegium.

Applicant Abhishek Shukla had sought a reply from the Supreme Court
whether the CJI was approached by the CBI seeking permission to
prosecute Justice Nirmal Yadav.

Section 8(1)(e) of the RTI Act cited by CPIO Arora exempts disclosure
of information which is held "fiduciary relationship" whereas the
section 8(1) (j) exempts disclosure of information which is
"personal". In both cases, information can be given, if larger public
interest is served.

The Supreme Court has also refused to disclose the report of Justice
Gokhale Committee, constituted by the Chief Justice of India to probe
the allegations, a document which is reportedly accessed by some RTI
applicants already.

The apex court did not give the minutes of collegium meeting which
recommended the transfer of Justice Yadav to Uttarakhand High Court
after allegations of corruption surfaced against her.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/info-on-cash-at-judges-door-case-confidential-sc/594537/0

Tue, Apr 6 2010
NEW DELHI 6 Apr 2010 Right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party marks 30th
anniversary
The Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, India's main opposition
party, marks 30 years with plans for introspection. New party
president Nitin Gadkari aims to analyze the two successive defeats of
the BJP, which takes credit for the nuclear tests in 1998, for
starting the Indo-United States nuclear talks and for diffusing the
tensions of the Kargil War against Pakistan in 1999. The BJP dilemma
is whether to pursue the cultural nationalism (Hindutuva) agenda or to
move to the center to widen its political base.

The BJP and its political allies suffered a shock defeat in the
general elections in 2004 and failed to muster a parliamentary
majority. The party lost strength again in the 2009 general election.
The defeats were attributed to the bad performance of the party in
Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.

The party’s growing disciplinary problems were magnified with the
expulsion of former Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in Aug 2009 for
writing a book on Pakistan's Founding Father Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

The BJP, in alliance with several other parties, was in power from
1998 to 2004, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister and Lal
Krishna Advani as his deputy

The BJP was formed on 6 Apr 1980. It succeeded the Bharatiya Jana
Sangh, which merged with the Janata Party. The BJP was formed as a
separate party in 1980 after internal differences in the Janata Party
resulted in the collapse of its government in 1979.

ARTICLE SUPPLIED BY WORLD NEWS FORECAST CORRESPONDENT C.BALAJI, WHO IS
AVAILABLE FOR FREELANCE ASSIGNMENTS IN INDIA AND THE REGION. email:
mohanbala...@yahoo.co.in

chhotemianinshallah

unread,

Mar 23, 2010, 7:41:03 PM3/23/10

Nityananda ashram rejects charge of rape
PTI, Mar 8, 2010, 06.55pm IST
Article Comments (14)

Sex video: Ashram defends NityanandaBANGALORE: Rejecting rape charge
and doubts raised over death of a foreign devotee of self-styled
godman Paramahamsa Nityananda, his ashram on Monday said he would make
a public appearance soon and answer all allegations.

The charges were part of a "conspiracy to malign the image of the
swami and impede ashram's social activities," the ashram spokesperson
Nitya Sachidananda told reporters at the Nityananda Ashram near
Bidadi, about 40 km from here.

A 23-year-old woman, an inmate of the Bidadi ashram, had alleged that
Nithyananda had raped and sexually harassed dozens of women in the
ashram.

Chennai police have registered a rape and cheating case against
Nityananda, days after video footage of his alleged sleazy acts were
telecast by TV channels.

Sachidananda also denied a charge that mystery shrouded the death of
foreign national Melvyan Boyd Diamond, a Yoga teacher in the ashram.

"Diamond had family history of cardiac problems and he died following
an accidental fall from the second floor of the building he lived in,"
he said, adding that the ashram had arranged for his cremation.

The operation to malign Nityananda had been done in "a surgical
precision" and "Swamiji himself will come and comment on all the
issues. As his "personal security" was at risk "we have advised him to
come after some days," the spokesperson said.

The ashram, which faced violent protests after telecast of the video,
has so far not lodged any police complaint.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Nityananda-ashram-rejects-charge-of-rape/articleshow/5659498.cms

Nityananda ashram rejects charge of rape
Article Comments 14

Bidadi ashram
Mohan USA 09 Mar, 2010 07:48 AM

All these guys disguised con people. Any basterd who still defends him
should be throiwn in jail as well. Why don't people check such idiots'
background before follow them. The laws should be strict so that such
crooks must ne hanged in public to make an example.revin malaysia 09
Mar, 2010 02:37 PM

Relax My dear friend..... if you dont know about him plz dont put such
commen. He teaching has transform many ppl life. thounds of ppl is
alive bcoz of his helling do u now haw many cancer patient has cured
and thy are alive 2day..... plz dont throw words will regret
ltr.Mansoor Dubai 09 Mar, 2010 01:53 PM

There are two type of godmenMark Canada 09 Mar, 2010 06:53 AM

Thank You Swami for all your help. You have been the greatest blessing
in my life. Mark.Arun Bangalore 09 Mar, 2010 04:44 AM

I find it curious that Sachitananda cites safety and security as being
the reason for Nithyananda's absence, while claiming that he is at the
Kumbha Mela. I would imagine an ashram with police protection is much
safer than mingling with lakhs of people in public.musing us 09 Mar,
2010 01:22 AM

The whole case against the swami seems manufactured. I would not be
surprised if the govt. is behind all this. At least the state govt. I
would also not be surprised if TOI takes perverse pleasure in
splashing this news all over their front pages for the next month. How
boring and predictable.Indian India 09 Mar, 2010 12:49 AM

India is fit only for Jihadi, Communists,Christian missionaries and
DMK Goons and their contribution for Indian Independence is NIL. Now
they are running the country by proxy for their foreign masters.aaa
bangalore 09 Mar, 2010 12:10 AM

As it is we live in a very cunning world.No one can believe anyone
henceforth.Natarajan Canada 08 Mar, 2010 08:30 PM

We need to monitor cases of sexual abuse at religious places. There
are several cases worse than this, involving children. Unfortunately
the cases involving children's sex abuse happen mostly at churches and
hence cannot be touched by our secular government.Shyam USA 08 Mar,
2010 08:19 PM

Is this framed by the Christian missions and the SUN TV who are PRO-
christians?Anand UAE 08 Mar, 2010 07:47 PM

If the swami could proove that the whole scandal is a conspiracy with
active connivance of some inmates like Lenin Karuppan, will the media
apologise to the public for the sensation created thru their column?
Medias should restrain from sensational journalism and should ensure
fair play.Jeevan Dubai 08 Mar, 2010 07:42 PM

Watch out.This fraud swami might use his power using the Politicial
parties and the top guys that he had in his list of followers.There is
no doubt that he is not involved in all the wrong things and he should
be given the severest of punishment so that the other fraud swami's
should learn a lesson.Daljit kuwait 08 Mar, 2010 07:26 PM

its our problem that we are treating these so called godman as
GOD .its time to show that they cannot play more with the sentiments
of people.Ashwani Hyderabad 10 Mar, 2010 05:03 PM

Like these ashrams/swamis, in many life saving institutions
(hospitals) these scandles do take place. Particularly super
speciality hospitals need to be monitored,

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinions/5659498.cms

Quepem man held for raping daughter
TNN, Mar 22, 2010, 12.49am IST

MARGAO: In a macabre incident, the Quepem police on Sunday arrested
one Agnelo Pedro D'Costa, 48, from Catemol, Quepem, on charges of
raping his 17-year-old daughter.

What makes the crime ghastlier is the fact that the accused had
recently fathered a child through incestuous relations with the same
victim-his eldest daughter. Police sources said that the accused had
raped his daughter in April 2009, after threatening her with dire
consequences, following which she became pregnant and delivered a male
child on January 6, 2010.

"The victim, along with her newborn baby, was staying at Mother Tereza
Ashram, Panaji. Her father, meanwhile, would coerce his wife into
inviting their daughter home," Quepem PI Sudesh Narvekar said.

She finally came home on Saturday, only to be raped again by her
father.

The accused's wife is learnt to be working as a domestic help in
another village. "On Sunday, ensuring that his wife had gone to work
and her daughter was home alone, the accused raped her," Narvekar
added.

Based on the complaint lodged by the victim, the Quepem police
arrested the accused. Both the accused and the victim have been sent
for a medical examination, police sources added.

Significantly, the accused is the father of three sons and three
daughters. The victim had not reported the matter to the police when
her father had raped her earlier, police sources added.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Quepem-man-held-for-raping-daughter/articleshow/5709578.cms

Give regard to rape victim's wish to marry rapist: CJI
IANS, Mar 7, 2010, 03.33pm IST
Article Comments (1)

NEW DELHI: In a radical suggestion, India's Chief Justice K G
Balakrishnan on Sunday said that judges, lawyers and social activists
should give "due regard" to the wishes of a rape victim if she chooses
to marry the rapist or have the baby conceived from the crime.

"Judges, lawyers and social activists should also ensure that they do
not take an overtly paternalistic approach when they have to make
decisions for the welfare of rape victims," he said at a seminar.

"Due regard must be given to their personal autonomy since in some
cases the victim may choose to marry the perpetrator or choose to give
birth to a child conceived through forced intercourse," he said.

He was speaking at the seminar on "Access to Justice, Relief and
Rehabilitation of Rape Victims" organised by the ministry of women and
child development.

Others who addressed it included Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily and
Minister of State for Women and Child Development Krishna Tirath.

"We must also keep in mind that the interests of the victim are not
protected by punishing the offenders alone," said Balakrishnan,
referring to a law ministry move to enact a law to set up fast-track
courts to try sex-related offences.

"Adequate attention should also be drawn to suggestions for
compensatory remedies and the rehabilitation of rape victims through
the provision of shelter, counselling services, medical and legal
aid."

He also referred to the "secondary victimisation", which a rape victim
often has to suffer during the trial of the accused due to
inconvenient, probing and often indecent questions by the defence
counsel.

"There is a very real phenomenon described as ‘secondary
victimisation' wherein the victim of a crime faces additional
harassment and humiliation in the course of investigation and trial.
Especially when the perpetrators are in a position of power over the
victims, there is a strong distrust of the credibility of the
investigation itself," pointed out Balakrishnan.

"Some recent cases highlighted in the press have shown how the
investigative machinery can often be manipulated to protect
influential persons, howsoever reprehensible their crimes may be," he
said without naming the Ruchika Girhotra molestation and suicide case
involving former Haryana police chief S P S Rathore.

"The investigators, prosecutors and defence counsels must exhibit an
appropriate degree of sensitivity to the victims," he said.

"Especially during the trial proceedings, judges need to be proactive
in order to restrain the aggressive cross-examination of rape
victims."

The CJI also highlighted recent changes in law, which provides that
the past sexual history of victims must be ignored.

"The Indian Evidence Act was amended some years ago and a provision
was inserted to ensure that the past sexual history of a victim cannot
be given weightage in a trial for the offence of rape," pointed out
the CJI.

"What is needed now is for judges and lawyers to internalise the
principle that facts relating to the past sexual history of a victim
should not even be brought up in the first place, since the purpose of
a trial is to decide whether or not an offence took place as alleged,"
said Balakrishnan.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Give-regard-to-rape-victims-wish-to-marry-rapist-CJI/articleshow/5654327.cms

Rituparna’s marital rape trauma
TNN, Feb 28, 2010, 12.00am IST

Rituparna SenguptaRituparna Sengupta says that getting under the skin
of the character can sometimes cause a lot of trauma. That is
precisely what the light eyed actress realised recently, while
shooting for Karan Razdan’s Mittal Versus Mittal.

Playing a marital rape victim in the film, Rituparna got so involved
with her character that she felt it was really happening to her. After
shooting the marital rape sequence, she not only burst into cold
sweat, but continued to shiver for days after that. “It was
terrifying,” admits Rituparna and says, “I kept seeing the sequence
for days in my sleep and woke up startled.”

Such dedication is really impressive. Wonder after all this why
Rituparna hasn’t got very far in her career, here in Bollywood? Can
you tell us why please?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/regional/news-interviews/Rituparnas-marital-rape-trauma/articleshow/5624418.cms

Girl set on fire for resisting rape attempt
TNN, Mar 18, 2010, 03.48am IST
Article Comments (37)

HYDERABAD: A 15-year-old girl was set on fire allegedly by three men
who attempted to rape her at a house in Sai Nagar near Kushaiguda on
Wednesday. The victim, a class VI dropout, suffered 60 per cent burns
and is battling for life at Gandhi Hospital.

Malkajgiri assistant commissioner of police (ACP) P V Padmaja said:
“As per the statement of the girl, three persons (all bachelors) tried
to rape her at a house in Sai Nagar and when she resisted their
attempt they set her ablaze. The incident took place around 11 am.”
Locals informed the Kushaiguda police about the incident and she was
shifted to Gandhi Hospital.

The victim stays at Padmaraonagar with her parents. Her father is an
auto driver, while her mother is a domestic help.

The girl and her friend used to frequent a tea joint near a three-
storied building in Padmaraonagar when two bachelors staying in the
building befriended them, the ACP said.

“On March 9, the victim left home without informing her parents. A
missing case was registered at the Chilkalguda police station by her
father on the same day. The girl said she had gone to Vijayawada on
March 9 along with three persons. The trio used to frequent their two
friends residing in the three-storied multi building at
Padmaraonagar.” the assistant commissioner of police said.

The victim refused to reveal information on when they returned to the
city and the whereabouts of the three persons. Special teams have been
pressed into service to arrest the culprits, the ACP said.

A case was registered under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 342
(wrongfully confining a person), 363 (kidnapping) and 376 (rape) r/w
511 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Kushaiguda inspector A Muthyam
Reddy said.

Girl set on fire for resisting rape attempt
Article Comments 37

girl set on fire
Ajay US 18 Mar, 2010 04:49 AM

I pray that this 3 culprit gets caught soon and get enough punishment.
Atleast for 15 years each.Kalpana Chennai 18 Mar, 2010 04:34 AMOh My
God!zenith coimbatore 18 Mar, 2010 03:54 PM

so sadkavita hyderabad 18 Mar, 2010 03:40 PM

why this girl has gone with that person its her mistake as well,
without telling her parents see what happen she is the only
sufferingsohail hyderabad 18 Mar, 2010 07:46 PM

she is just a childrox fiji 18 Mar, 2010 02:02 PMevery one want to
have sexMohan-US USA 18 Mar, 2010 05:59 PM

No wastage of money and time.... this should be closed in 15
minutes... drag them to a public place and get the crowd to throw one
stone each.... end of the story and a GREAT "case study"Anmol
Bangalore 18 Mar, 2010 05:29 PM

The punishment should be more seviour for rapists, and those who
attempt to rape.Kiran USA 18 Mar, 2010 05:29 PM

This is nothing new in India. Basically, a way of life. It's always
girls from the poor families get raped by the better offs. Rarely,
perpetrators of the crime get punished. Police are more than willing
to bungle the report for bribe. This is our great culture. I'm glad to
be out of jungle rajChandan Bangalore 19 Mar, 2010 02:11 PM

Pls don't comment if you can't resist/rectify. Kindly pls don't come
back to India again.sai bang 18 Mar, 2010 05:06 PM

there is no way of punishing just by killing the three guys infront of
all is the solution ...so next time no guy should repeat such kind of
attemptsfahad Pakistan 18 Mar, 2010 04:56 PM

They should be hanged till death in the middle of the townvishal pune
18 Mar, 2010 04:45 PM

where is the so called education of Indian Parents these days,gaurang
US 18 Mar, 2010 04:39 PM

i dont think there are chances of them not being caught,but i would
pray that they are brought to justice and given a life term for
attempt to rape and attempt to murder. i fear they may end up free
considering the fact that the victim comes from a poor family and our
legal system favors rich oneskavita hyderabad 18 Mar, 2010 03:50 PM

its a girls mistake as well y she has gone with that person without
telling her parents and now see who is suffering feels so sad for
her.Nadeem Amsterdam 18 Mar, 2010 03:46 PM

There should be an "Eye for an Eye"norbert ksa 18 Mar, 2010 03:23 PM

they must hangDeepak Vizag 18 Mar, 2010 03:21 PM

This again tells us that India is not safe for women. I pray that
justice is done to the girl though chances are bleak.Vishal Beijing 18
Mar, 2010 02:56 PM

Its absolutely horrible and shameful to hear such stories in today's
day and age. Who should we blame? Men, women, society, or the govt.?
anita bangalore 18 Mar, 2010 02:31 PM

going to vijayawada from hyderabad without informing her parents.
hm...this is how kids get into trouble. the people who put her on
flames needs to be punished.Ravi hyderabad 18 Mar, 2010 01:57 PM

Culprits should be punished severely.Aslam Dubai 18 Mar, 2010 01:35 PM

I pray to god that this 3 culprit, Get punishment for the Law as well
as from the God too..Prakash Bangalore 18 Mar, 2010 01:31 PM

Kill those people ........david singapore 18 Mar, 2010 01:29 PM

Really these 3 culprits should be hangedPrafull mumbai 18 Mar, 2010
01:19 PM

I wonder why the girl has,or by whom the names of the 3 have been
witheld.SURESH Mumbai 18 Mar, 2010 01:00 PMÃ¢â‚¬Å“On March 9, the
victim left home without informing her parentsjgkmfmb dutidfgjk 18
Mar, 2010 12:53 PM

give the culprits death sentence. Life for life - they should give
their life for taking the victim's life.jadeja India 18 Mar, 2010
12:38 PMthis only happens in india jay hindMurali-Devavrata Bengaluru
18 Mar, 2010 12:37 PM

While culprits should be brought to justice and given death penalty,
there is no doubt that our cultural values are being degraded due to
Western influence. Girls are taking too much liberty with their
freedom and are suffering. Freedom comes with a price. We should think
about this.nitu hyd 18 Mar, 2010 12:31 PM

what the hell is going on in hyd? law should be so strict dat such
cases would never repeat. god know why such people think of raping a
child(doesn't mean that they can have in view of adults)samuel london
18 Mar, 2010 12:30 PM

I hope the three idiots don't have any political connections nor are
they from influential families otherwise such cases are swept under
the carpet and police would call it an cooking stove accident or even
suicide attempt.Vincent Thailand 18 Mar, 2010 12:02 PM

Since the victims is surviving, the culprits will soon be caught and
here-in lies a chance for the guardians of law and order to set an
example. The three perpetrators should be castrated and their
photographs published in newspapers. Let us remove the blindfold over
the eyes of Statue of Law !Vikrant Melbourne 18 Mar, 2010 11:46 AM

Why girls born in India?Sana Mumbai 18 Mar, 2010 11:02 AM

It's sad that this happened but what amazes me the most is that its
still happening. If not in Hyderabad then probably in some other
city.rahul Pune 18 Mar, 2010 09:45 AM

castrate the culprits and parade them naked to be stoned...javeri
mumbai 18 Mar, 2010 09:28 AM

Our Indian legal system has not generated any fear in the minds of the
offenders. they can do anything they want and walk free. By the time
our law takes its cource they might die their natural death. Go back
to the law of the jungle.Tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye. No FIR,
No Report. Burn themhari india 18 Mar, 2010 09:09 AM

kill them

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Girl-set-on-fire-for-resisting-rape-attempt/articleshow/5696150.cms

Rape Ruckus
Mar 9, 2010, 12.00am IST
Article Comments (3)

On the eve of International Women's Day, Chief Justice of India K G
Balakrishnan came up with a strange suggestion. Addressing a meet on
justice for rape victims, the CJI said that "due regard" must be given
to the wishes of a rape victim if she wants to marry the rapist or
give birth to a child conceived following the crime. The CJI's
statement sends out mixed signals. It almost makes it appear that
marriage is an alternative to punishment for perpetrators of rape.
Indeed, it could have the unfortunate effect of minimising the
seriousness of rape which is a fundamental violation of a woman's
body. Besides, it does not take into account that rapes can occur
within marriages too.

The courts or the state shouldn't have any say on the course of action
that a rape victim intends to take. It is paternalism - something that
the CJI has accused activists and lawyers of - to decide on behalf of
rape victims. What should be of utmost importance for law-enforcing
agencies is to ensure that rapists are convicted and handed the
maximum possible punishment. At present, rape figures in India tell a
sorry story. According to some statistics, only one in 69 rapes is
reported, and out of these the conviction rate is a pathetic 20 per
cent. Law enforcement agencies should be looking at ways to increase
the conviction rates as well and put in place conditions where victims
feel comfortable to report rapes. This is a big ask. Let's not deflect
from the real task at hand by suggesting marriage between a rape
victim and the perpetrator.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Rape-Ruckus/articleshow/5659944.cms

Uttar Pradesh tops list of child rape cases
PTI, Mar 4, 2010, 05.04pm IST

NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh tops the list of States and Union territories
with the highest number of 900 child rape cases in 2008 followed by
Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

According to the latest data by the Ministry of Home Affairs for three
years, cases of child rape continue to rise as a total of 4,721 cases
were registered during 2006, 5,045 in 2007 and 5,446 in 2008 across
the country.

Police have arrested 5,489 people in 2006 for their involvement in
such crimes, 5,756 in 2007 and 6,363 in 2008.

Madhya Pradesh registered 892 such cases, Maharashtra (690), Rajasthan
(420) and Andhra Pradesh (412) in 2008, the data said.

A total of 411 such cases were registered in Chhattisgarh, 301 in
Delhi, 215 in Kerala, 187 in Tamil Nadu, 129 in West Bengal, 106 in
Punjab and 104 in Tripura, it said.

Whereas, Gujarat has registered 99 cases, Karnataka 97, Bihar 91,
Haryana 70, Himachal Pradesh 68, Orissa 65 and Goa 18.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Uttar-Pradesh-tops-list-of-child-rape-cases-/articleshow/5641124.cms

Teen girl, who alleges rape by Maoist, shot at
IANS, Mar 5, 2010, 12.04pm IST
Article Comments (21)

RANCHI: A teenage girl was shot by Maoist rebels in Jharkhand's
Latehar district for slapping rape charges on a Maoist leader, police
said Friday. The victim is struggling for life in a hospital here.

Maoist guerrillas shot three bullets into 17-year-old Anju Kumari on
Thursday. She was injured critically and has been admitted to the
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Rajendra Institute of Medical Science
(RIMS).

"Anju sustained three bullets in her stomach. Her condition is
critical," a doctor said.

Anju was shot when she was riding her bicycle in an area close to
Latehar railway station. She was stopped by three motorcycle-borne
Maoist rebels including the Maoist commander Pappu Lohra, who
allegedly pumped three bullets into Anju's stomach and then fled,
police said.

According to police, Anju was shot because she was bold enough to
lodge a first information report (FIR) against Lohra for abducting and
raping her.

"Anju was shot because she dared to raise a voice against Maoists. She
had lodged an FIR against Pappu Lohra. Anju had accused Pappu of
raping her for two days in a jungle after abducting her," a police
official told IANS.

According to local journalists, Maoist rebels alleged it was the
handiwork of the police to lodge fake rape charges against Lohra.

Teen girl, who alleges rape by Maoist, shot at
Article Comments 21

rape maoist
Rajagopal Delhi 05 Mar, 2010 03:37 PM

Dont arrests maoists criminals just shot dead them immediately on
seeing. Thee is no sin doing so. The Government shold try aerial
survey of maoists and bombard their hide outs without hesitation to
prevent further strikes.R india 05 Mar, 2010 03:36 PM

If it was a fake charge, why did this goonda shoot the girl? Maoists
might have started off as rebels for a true cause, but now they are
nothing but terrorists. I hope these rapists and murderers get their
just desserts from the police and para military forces.Raj Mumbai 05
Mar, 2010 03:27 PM

But its a handiwork of Maoist Rebles to Kill a 17 Year
female...Doesn;t he feel anything kill a Teenage Girl..Aks USA 05 Mar,
2010 03:15 PM

Now a days there are far too many pseudo naxals and all are fake and
they intimidate the tribals into submission and loot the police and
others. They do not have ideologies but only money minded looters.She
was a stumbling block and fear of getting exposed made them to stop
the voice, so was shotBrijendra Russia 05 Mar, 2010 03:05 PM

What is going on in India? Is it a jungle raaj or some law exist
there.After reading this story u realy feel shame being an Indian. A
young girl shot three times by so called mesihah of poor and dalits
started raping their daughters and sisters.These same people will take
arms against them.vishnu satara 05 Mar, 2010 03:04 PM

No commnets here...... Indian are busy cursingNarendra Singapore 05
Mar, 2010 02:39 PM

Well this news shows without doubt that at the end maoist does not
follow any philosophy. In the beginning they like others are
pretending to protect and be voice of poors. Now they are aiming their
gun to them. It makes me wonder Pappu Lohra is, a coward who tried to
kill innocent girl.rkr459 rkr...@yahoo.com.au 05 Mar, 2010 01:43 PM

It is high time ,the national Government take military action to get
rid of this radical elements for once and all.P.R.S.Bhasker Hyderabad
05 Mar, 2010 07:18 PM

I fully agree with the comment of sri Rajagopal of Delhimlechha
timbuctoo 05 Mar, 2010 06:59 PM

... that PCAPA leader Lalmohan Tudu had led an attack on their camp @
Silda, with a Maoist dalam. Later, the police claimed there had been
no attack on Silda, that Tudu was most probably killed in a false
encounter. Ironically, Tudu was the person who had fought for
elections to be held in Lalgarh.Siva TN 05 Mar, 2010 06:03 PMI

s this maoism,Very sad,these group appear like terrorist and criminals
without any causeAnant Nigeria 05 Mar, 2010 06:02 PM

Maoists stand against oppression of the weak by others.faisal dhahran
05 Mar, 2010 05:49 PM

The maoista are nothing but criminals and hoodlums out killing and
stealing. They are thugs terrorising the local populations. They MUST
be destroyed without any mercy for they are only killers and murderers
of the worst kind.Nitin Belgium 05 Mar, 2010 05:46 PM

What is the goverment doing? They cant even ensure the security of a
victim from indian terrorists, how can anybody trust them with
security of the country???Vivek NY 05 Mar, 2010 09:28 PM

Now the so called human activisits will not utter a word. India should
extensively use army againsts these murderers and these hyppocrate
human activist in jail. With the army strenght we have shouldn't take
more than a week to clean up India from these people.aa del 05 Mar,
2010 10:01 PM

Jaago Bharat Jaago.jeff Australia 06 Mar, 2010 06:05 AM

This is shocking to the whole world when india is looked upon as
developing emerging economy gettinon par with the world. It is truly
shockingren bhopal 06 Mar, 2010 11:15 AM

shoot thiose murderers and rapists right at their head!!! no need for
enquiries to police....kill those bastards immediately!!!Anil Delhi 06
Mar, 2010 12:34 AM

I won't name names here but this has been going on around my village
since decade.. Maoist just to slight people's respect kidnap unmarried
girls do whatever they like with her and send them back to their
parents.sajan dub 06 Mar, 2010 12:20 AM

How you can tell the rape alligation is right. Now a days it is a
passion of women to make false complaint to molestation and rape also
IPc 498 for looting money from man.Anant Nigeria 05 Mar, 2010 11:36 PM

Maoists stand against oppression of weak by others.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinions/5645977.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Teen-girl-who-alleges-rape-by-Maoist-shot-at/articleshow/5645977.cms

Father, daughter gun down 2 over incest taint
Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui, TNN, Oct 6, 2009, 12.06am IST

LUCKNOW: For once, panchayat members of a western UP village were
thrown on the defensive. On Monday, a man and his daughter — cleared
of charges of having incestuous relationship — picked up a gun and
fired at the panchayat members, killing two persons, one of them being
the accuser.

According to the police, they did so to ‘‘punish the panchayat members
for their failure to act against the real culprits.’’

The drama was reported from the Kambhore village, Bijnor. The village
panchayat had earlier ordered ‘expulsion’ of the father-daughter duo
following charges of incest against the man, which reportedly turned
out to be baseless. Agitated that the panchayat did not give them a
chance to defend themselves, the two reportedly reached the panchayat
gathering and opened fire after the members refused to initiate action
against those who had levelled false charges against them.

According to reports reaching the police headquarters in Lucknow,
about a month back, Haseenuddin, a resident of Kambhore village under
Kotwali police station of Bijnor approached the village panchayat and
accused a local resident Akhtar of sexually abusing his daughter
Fatima alias Fato for the past several years. Haseen maintained that
he was an eye-witness to the crime along with another local resident,
Afzal.

The panchayat then summoned the duo and questioned them in public.
Though the two said they were innocent, the panchayat ordered them to
leave the village forever.

As a result, Akhtar sold off his house and shifted to a relative’s
place in an adjacent district. On September 23, Akhtar happened to
meet Afzal and enquired about the charges that he and Haseenuddin had
levelled. When Afzal denied that he was even aware of any such
accusations, the latter forcibly took him to the house of the
‘panchas’ to testify before them.

According to the police, on the request of Akhtar, a panchayat meeting
was convened on Friday last where he and his daughter were absolved of
the charges. However, when the panchayat members announced that there
was no need for action against Haseenuddin, Akhtar whipped out a gun
and fired indiscriminately.

Father, daughter gun down 2 over incest taint
Article Comments 19

Manoj India 06 Oct, 2009 12:37 AM

Think the whole article is quite confusing.Bobby Dayton 06 Oct, 2009
12:48 AM

very good. very great act. The panchs should have acted against
Haseenuddin, but if they did not, then Akhtar didnt do anything by
taking law in his hand. I hate all those preaching about not taking
law in ones hand, just because there would be no difference between
accuser and accusee. But if its once moral at stake, one should do
such things. Bravo.Sajid USA 06 Oct, 2009 12:50 AM

The man should not have taken the law in his hands. But there is great
need in India to do something about those who accuse others falsely.
Many times, police accuse someone and when that man is found innocent
after many years, the police officers who framed the charges are left
alone without any charges against them. There are serious errors in
Indian laws.Shalin Agrawal Ahmedabad 06 Oct, 2009 01:07 AM

I agree with what Akhtar did. If justice is denied then the person may
have the right to take such action if the allegations are of these
level. Panchayat members should take rational decision and law should
be equal for all. VD US 06 Oct, 2009 01:17 AM

This is eerily similar to 'A time to Kill' movie though victims are
different. The 2 should not charged with any crime and should be set
free. The Panchayats other members should be kept in prison. What
agony thefather and daughter must have gone thru when these charges
were leveled against them. Thankfully they were all muslims otherwise
who knows what would have happened on the name of religion.SVR Chennai
06 Oct, 2009 01:20 AM

I don't see anything wrong in it. Failure to give justice, will result
in these kind off actions. Pradeep Bangalore 06 Oct, 2009 01:23 AM

For once, the justice is done. Kudos to the father for taking the
action.Vivek Mumbai 06 Oct, 2009 01:53 AM

It is shocking that the Panchayat acted in a haste on such a sensitive
matter. The report can be true or false but if true then the panchayat
seems to have done a grave mistake by not correcting the 2nd
time,which needed punishment. The sad part is our law doesnot permit
normal humans to do justice and the law would not take action too. The
honest man is suffering today and a collusion of evil minds are
striving. A shock treatement is the only solution that can bring
balance to this crude world but at what cost is for us to judge.
Nilesh California, US 06 Oct, 2009 02:08 AM

Older "Panchayat" judiciary system should be abandoned and must be
taken over by court. It's very must needed as foolish, biased and non
democratic people make the decisions lives of innocent people.Rajendra
Boston 06 Oct, 2009 02:35 AM

Good job by Mr. Akhtar. These Panchayat people should learn to behave
more responsibly.Sanjana Blore 06 Oct, 2009 03:25 AM

Guess this is something our Judges need to be reading for not
supporting Justice rather being baiased.CoolStuff Delhi 06 Oct, 2009
04:30 AMGreat job! Same way we need punish dirty politicians as
well...Umesh USA 06 Oct, 2009 06:12 AM

That is what happens when you don't have redress to your grivences.
Indian government and politicians need to wake up - they are cheating
Indian people for so long and Indian people are running out of
patience. Before people take law in hand for speedy settlement and it
becomes wild west, Indian courts need to hand out speedy
justice.Sharad US 06 Oct, 2009 06:26 AM

The panchas deserved to die. Who gave them the right to punish a
family with an evidence thats so flaky and how come when time comes to
make the family get even by just some punishment to the perpetrators
they step back. This is just a clear case of victimising one family
and though killing in righteous civil society is bad, in this case, I
would say it was the best choice. The art of living in a community is
something we all think is leanrt naturally. We focus on learning
english, science, maths. Nagrik shartra and laws of living in the
society and rights in the society and duties of the society to its
members are things that need to be taught. In villages (and even in
cities) these kind of bitching keeps happening, any family needs to
lean on how to keep their weight and still be responsible. Well, that
would be a start towards creating a utopian soceity.Prashant Dhiman
USA 06 Oct, 2009 06:50 AM

What is wrong about picking a gun when nobody listens to the reason?
he did a great thing, I would have done the same in those
circumstances.shyamal Missouri, USA 06 Oct, 2009 07:23 AM

Well done. If you bring false charges, you deserve bullets. I also
think that if an innocent person is incarcerated and later the real
criminals are found, the innocent person must be compensated Rs 1
Crore for every year of incarceration from the state budget. This is a
penalty for the state government and the police authorities who got
him imprisoned. Today the person just gets a dry apology from the
state.Manoj Delhi 06 Oct, 2009 09:27 AM

I think he did the right thing to take the law on his own hands as the
panchayat's law was already denied for him. This man is innocent and
actions must be taken against 'so-called-panchs' in this case!vimal
noida 06 Oct, 2009 10:48 AM

Bravo, Kudos all words are small in front of there brave act. This is
the true definition of save owns pride. Hats of to you.Joseph Dubai 06
Oct, 2009 11:39 AM

Compliments to the Duo - Father and the daughter, when the Law does
not protect them what other choice you have ?..The panchyat system
does not function, so doesn't Indian Democracy. It is a Mafia System !
Sixty years have passed since our independence and aren't we still
convinced ? Our politicians in Delhi are sleeping and filling their
pockets ! They care a damn about you and me - the common poor guys.See
where China has gone in 60 years. They are the 3rd World Economy from
nothing. And we Indians ? We talk about 10% growth but where is it
reflected, for the Politicians and for the rich of course ? Children
are being raped and burnt (latest moda) and the culprits behind the
political heavyweights are walking free. Where is justice, where is
the law to protect you,me our defenceless children and where are the
bloody netas ? It is time we woke up Indians and do away with all
these useless systems and traitors of the country. We fought for
freedom from British and our leaders died in vain. At least we were
not that bad under the foreigh rule I guess ! India needs a Hitler -
one man one rule. If you don't deliver you perish. Even dictatorship
is bad, but at least we would have punished those bastards and brought
them to book. With this system at least 60 years hence, we will have
advanced much more. Otherwise with the present system of governance we
will see other nations passiing by us, injustice will prevail in walks
of life and our own government will walk on us as it is happening.
Will I say "jai ho" or "Jai no?"

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinions/5091724.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Father-daughter-gun-down-2-over-incest-taint/articleshow/5091724.cms

3 Indian-origin men in UK jailed for raping kin
PTI, Oct 18, 2009, 01.20am IST
Article Comments (3)

LONDON: Three Indian-origin men, residents of Cardiff, who repeatedly
raped a woman in their family for several years have been convicted
and sentenced to long years in prison.

The three persons sentenced by the Cardiff Crown Court are the 27-year-
old victim's step-father, step-uncle and brother-in-law. The step-
uncle and step-father are illegal immigrants, and will deported at the
end of their sentences.

The 55-year-old step-uncle, and 50-year-old step-father were jailed
with minimum recommended terms of 20 and 15 years respectively, while
her 27-year-old brother-in-law was jailed for 12 years.

The step-uncle admitted before the court that he was the father of the
child conceived when the victim was 14 years old. He was convicted of
seven counts of rape, three of indecency with a child, and one of
indecent assault.

During the hearing, the court was told that the victim's ordeal began
at the age of five when she was raped by her step-uncle. She became
pregnant at 14, but was locked in a wardrobe so that visitors would
not see her condition.

Prosecuting lawyer Marion Lewis told: "The girl was already seven
months pregnant when she first saw a doctor about her condition. When
the baby was born, the girl's parents told friends and neighbours it
was their own, before flying their daughter to India for an arranged
marriage."

Judge Patrick Curran told the step-uncle: "Not content with your own
sexual abuse on her, you encouraged the others to treat her like an
unpaid and unwilling prostitute. You all then involved yourselves in a
group rape on her."

The judge said the continued presence of the two older men in the UK
was "detrimental to public interest."

The prosecuting lawyer said the girl was frightened and also believed
her mother knew what was going on.

"When aged 14 and still a pupil at school, her stomach was expanding
and a scan revealed she was seven months pregnant," Lewis said.

"Her mother beat her all over her body apart from the face with a
curtain pole. She was hidden, sometimes in a wardrobe and visitors
were told she'd gone back to India."

The victim later told the jury that her mother beat her when it was
found out that she was seven months pregnant. She said her mother had
not believed her when she had tried to tell her that she was pregnant
by a member of her own family.

"When she went to the doctors, checked me out, she realised I was
seven months pregnant, she still didn't believe me. She hit me with a
rod and stuff like that so she never believed me".

"She always said to me 'they can't do that to you, they're your
family, they can't do it' but unfortunately they did," the victim
said.

The step-uncle admitted in court he was the father of her child, but
told the jury he had not found out until much later once DNA tests
were carried out.

After the sentence was pronounced yesterday, detective inspector Chris
Mullane of South Wales Police said the victim had been "extremely
courageous" in approaching the police.

Reader's opinions (3)

Praful R Shah Houston, Texas USA 20/10/2009 at 10:55 am

What type of animals are they. They should be hanged.
uma shankar vajpeyi london 20/10/2009 at 08:47 pm

SEND THEM FOR 27 YEARS PLUS IN JAIL AT LEAST ...THIS IS AFTER THE TORY
LEADER RECENTLY INDIANS IN UK ARE LEAST PRESENT IN JAILS
Pamela Weber Quinn England United Jingdom 20/10/2009 at 10:05 pm

Thank goodness this young lady had the courage and support from her
fellow Britains to report this dreadful crime. I think her mother
should have also received a custodial sentance, for beating her
daughter abusing her. The trauma this young lady has endured will be
with her for a very long time. I know she will recieve help and I wish
her all the best from hence forth.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/indians-abroad/3-Indian-origin-men-in-UK-jailed-for-raping-kin/articleshow/5135088.cms

NRI held for raping minor daughter in Punjab
IANS, Mar 28, 2009, 09.32pm IST

JALANDHAR: In a third shocking case of its kind in the country in the
last two weeks, an NRI father was arrested by the Punjab police on
Saturday for allegedly raping his 13-year-old daughter.

A medical examination has confirmed the rape of the minor who lives in
a village in Phillaur town, 40 km from here.

Surinder Singh, who works in Dubai and has three children, was
arrested following a complaint by the victim and her mother. The
victim, the eldest among her siblings, later recorded her statement
before a magistrate, accusing her father of raping her.

Police officials said the father raped his daughter on Thursday night
in an inebriated state. He had come to his village on annual leave.

Earlier this week, a 20-year-old girl from Ajnala town near Amritsar
complained to the police that her father, who is a Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) leader, had raped her for the last eight years.

The father, Ashok Taneja, was arrested by the police after registering
a rape case against him.

Last week, the Mumbai police arrested a 49-year-old businessman who
allegedly raped his daughter for over nine years on the advice of a
black magic practitioner to get "rich quickly".

Reader's opinions (1)
mohammed waseem uae 29/03/2009 at 01:47 pm
i have no words.no need to show in public this kind os cases.just take
them in silent place and encounter to all.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/indians-abroad/NRI-held-for-raping-minor-daughter-in-Punjab/articleshow/4328379.cms

AMRITSAR: Emboldened by the story of the Mumbai sisters who went
public against their rapist father, a 21-year-old college student in
Amritsar has gone to the police with her own horror story about her
father, a local BJP leader, who she accused of raping her for eight
years.

The man, arrested on Wednesday night, was on Thursday sent to 14-day
judicial custody. Police booked the accused, also a well-off
businessman, under section 376 (rape) of IPC. Medical examination of
the girl confirmed sexual abuse.

A student of Guru Nanak Dev University, the ravaged girl drew courage
from the Mumbai victims and spoke of her trauma to relatives from her
mother's family. They then took her mother into confidence.

"I want this man to be put behind bars or shot," the girl said, crying
bitterly. "My father, for that's what I have to call him, has crossed
all limits of human behaviour. He started sexually abusing me since
childhood. Whenever I resisted or refused to bow down to his wishes,
he would threaten to burn me with acid or kerosene."

Wiping tears with her black dupatta wrapped around her face, she said,
"I told my mother that if they (Mumbai victims) can, so can I. All my
relatives have supported me in this. After all, it can't get more
sinful than this, can it?"

The traumatised mother said, "My husband would always find a pretext
to send me away so he could be alone with our daughter. He never
allowed both of us to leave home together. In fact, I am forced to say
that my husband had physical relations with other girls in the family
as well."

The accused, who complained of failing health and admitted himself to
a hospital, in his defence, labelled his daughter and wife
"degenerates with bad character.

"My daughter had good character till two years ago but ever since she
joined university she fell in bad company and got full support of my
wife. They just want me sorted out because they're after my property,"
he said, his face covered by the blanket on his hospital bed. "I am
hurt at the allegation. I would not have minded had they blamed me for
beating them but this is something I cannot do in my wildest dreams."

BJP spokesperson Som Dutt Sharma blamed the Congress for defaming them
"during election time."

"To make matters worse for the victim, the whole family, including her
younger brother, slept in the same room. Day in and day out the girl
would have her rapist by her side, she said. Can you imagine that?"
said a neighbour.

Another rapist dad exposed, this time in Amritsar
Article Comments 68

Praveen Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 10:52 AM

If the Girl is saying true then kill these kind of persons is the good
judgement for this case.Swapnil Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 10:59 AM

Party with difference. It certainly has different stance on
incest.Manoj Delhi 26 Mar, 2009 11:01 AM

Shame on you TOI. This is a pathetic attempt from you to please your
masters in Congress. Where did BJP figure in all this? Were his deeds
known to the world so that BJP could sense that this is what he was
doing to his daughter? He is a normal criminal and should be treated
as such. Somebody occupying a block level position in BJP is being
highlighted by you as if the whole BJP is involved in this crime.
Journalism at its worst... selective sensationalization is the worst
kind of yellow journalism that can be perpetuated. Seems, in this
election not only political parties, even media is going to scale new
depths of irresponsible journalism. Dare you to publish this
comment.shakti singh chundawat bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 11:06 AM

incest is in vogue! :-)Ram Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 11:08 AM

An individual person is doing rape and why is the news dragging his
party here. DO you want to communicate that BJP leaders are like this
raping their daughters? Please communicate responsibly as it is one of
the core principles of journalism. The title is misleading and
irresponsible.hashimi chennai 26 Mar, 2009 11:09 AM

india has become the incest capital of world... shame..!!San Delhi 26
Mar, 2009 11:18 AM

What is the cause for all these nuisances happening these days. We are
so detoriating that In some cases Father(s) are raping these own
daughters ??? Hell or worst than Hell... Who is to blame ??? Do not
you think TOI or so called Media, Films, TV Serials are not
responsibile for instigating or provoking our Lust... Whenever you
open any site (even News Sites like TOI), so many articles to boost
your SEX life or blah, blah... you find on screen. What is all these,
We want to know the news of world. Not how to enjoy our sex or boost
our sex. Are you (TOI) a sex boosting magzine or a nice newspaper.
Shame on you.. Kindly think judiciously and act accordingly. Do not
sell sex just to Be No 1. Peter Vaz Oman 26 Mar, 2009 11:24 AM

Shame after fame is disgusting and the sermons of these top leaders
must by exposed to a great lengths beyond borders by TOI.Are these
people barbarians or monsters of the stone age? SC must create a
stringent laws or life imprisonment or stoned to death by the public
for these cases. Nupur Pune 26 Mar, 2009 11:33 AM

Now is this Indian Culture?? Are these men out of their minds!! Dont
they have any conscience!! 8 years, 9 years...its disgusting!! We go
aorund telling the world that we are a culturally rich country...and
we have cases in Mangalore where men are hitting women..n now this!!
Totally horrifyingsabir bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 11:34 AM

Whats happening, what is moral policing doing now. Is this the
religion teaches. Come-on wake up. Come-on learn the basics of family.
a n k | t az, usa 26 Mar, 2009 11:35 AM

Its a DISGRACE, I am totally DISGUSTED!!!! We Indians speak highly of
our family and cultural values and this just goes to shows how
misinformed and clueless we are. Its a shame. bloreboy bangalore 26
Mar, 2009 11:40 AM

where was the mother all the while...she was a passive participant in
this crime & needs to get her share of the punishment.. also...these
stories if exploited for 8 years are coming up now...why not 8 years
back...the victim needs to provide proper details as to why they were
party to the game till nowRam Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 11:40 AM

The title needs to be changed immediately. Do not name the political
party the person is affiliated to. The political party is not
preaching the person to do rape his daughter. What is the neccessity
of this news in the front page. Please act responsible.Harshal India
26 Mar, 2009 11:45 AM

This can be congress conspiracy as its just Election time, Election
commisioner should take a note of this.Ram Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009
11:48 AM

Are the COngressmen raping their mothers ? WHy drag the party's name
when an Individual is doing a criminal act. IRRESPONSIBLE reporting.
STOP THIS NEWS channel first.Naresh Dhiman Kuwait 26 Mar, 2009 11:51
AM

He and other such fathers should be punished with extreme limits so
that this becomes a examplary punishment which will deter others from
commiting such crime.Sasi Muscat 26 Mar, 2009 11:54 AM

Its disparagement!!!!!!!!! The civic should be heedful. This is
utterly deplorable.Nirmal Jain Bhopal 26 Mar, 2009 11:55 AM

Shame on these people, who talk of sanskars to others claiming
themselves as the sole preserver of Indian Sanskriti (Culture), by
vandalising pubs and terrorising the lovers on Valentine's Day. Will
not be surprised if he is also supported as Varun Gandhi was for his
wrongdoings.Vishal D'Souza Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 11:58 AM

Each & every small incidents of BJP leaders are highlighted on
National Media, but it's a great achivement by the BJP to win
elections even after all media houses are writing against them. Really
BJP a great performer, shame on media which is tarnishing natinal
partiotic party BJP's image in each & every aspect. But BJP's
popularity growing day by day throughout the country.Vishal D'Souza
Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 12:00 PM

Each & every small incidents of BJP leaders are highlighted on
National Media, but it's a great achievement by the BJP to win
elections even after all media houses are writing against them. Really
BJP a great performer, shame on media which is tarnishing national
patriotic party BJP's image in each & every aspect. But BJP's
popularity growing day by day throughout the country.Vaibhav S Pune 26
Mar, 2009 12:00 PM

Sick....Anonym Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 12:01 PM

I do not think BJP endorses this too as part of their agenda like you
people say BJP endorses communal or whatever. This is a criminal case
and should not be related to any political party while referring. The
headline is quite flashy and diverged. Nikesh Kumar Shukla Delhi 26
Mar, 2009 12:02 PM

Yes!!! This is only possible in the BJP the party with the difference.
They are so called and self declared custodian of Indian culture and
the hinduism.Bindu Bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 12:07 PM

It is absolutely revolting to read these stories, which one gets to
read too often now a days. Where is the world headed to; why is it
that the daughters are not being spared by their own fathers; where
will they find comfort and safety if not their own homes? At least one
positive aspect is that the girl had the courage to come out in the
open - women/girls have to raise their voices...so much that the
judiciary takes some strict measures against such dastardly
crimes.Rammy Sydney, Australia 26 Mar, 2009 12:10 PM

Amazing what the other readers are saying: the girl has to prove why
she kept silent? Why bring up the political party the member is
associated with? Must be election ploy? Simply amazing! Its takes a
great amount of courage to report rape, let alone incest. That is even
more so in a country like India. What will happen to this girl? Who
will marry her? Despite all these she still had the courage to tell
her relatives and all we can give her is suspicion and disdain. Where
are our morals and compassion? We should be ashamed to treat this news
this way!Riz Sydney 26 Mar, 2009 12:11 PM

funny, TOI is pro-BJP ; pls dont be mislead..SRG Mumbai 26 Mar, 2009
12:12 PM

Can't expect better from a BJP leader! All of them are either rapist
or provoke rape and murder!KRRamesh Chennai 26 Mar, 2009 12:13 PM

All this cultural damage is happening in India after the Invaders
occupied Indian Land and dominating with the Political clout. Original
Indians are now suffering! The foreign elements to be thrown out of
Our Country!ckg bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 12:15 PM

If there is anything which can be called as National Shame then it is
such news which make us hang our head. Earlier we used to eulogise our
family culture and tradition and criticise the western about there
nuclear mind, when i read such stories i feel that we are no better in
our moral degradation than others. As far as naming a political party,
it is true that one single person can not be equated with the party as
a whole, but it is necessary for the party involved to immediately
initiate action and come clean. Indian USA 26 Mar, 2009 12:17 PM

Everybody has got something to do in their day to day life. Does that
mean whatever he/she will do in their personal life will be the
resposibility of the organization he/she i working for? I am a
congress supporter but ,where is BJP involved in this shameful
incident and what they are suppsed to do in this case? Sivaram S
Pondicherry 26 Mar, 2009 12:19 PM

In continuum to the comment from manoj, delhi :: Mr. Manoj - what do
you mean by he is a normal criminal ? and you seem more bothered about
the mentioning of the party than the degree of crime involved.
However, I agree that such articles should not be featured on the
first page as it would corrupt innocent minds (if any). Though am an
atheist, I hate it when such fellows (the accused) blame it on
astrology or religion.G S wagle bangalore 26 Mar, 2009 12:22 PM

It looks like there is a well knitted propaganda to show BJP in poor
light. No need to say that all in congresswallahs are "Mahatmas".
Poeple have not forgotten the infamous Tandoori Murder episode in the
heart of the capital of the country.All the electronic media now a
days showing nothing but BJP Hatred.Is there an end for this?I find
the journalism at its worst.meeran singh ahluwal Patiala 26 Mar, 2009
12:22 PM

why you are taking only one instance of BJP leader raping his own
daughter, almost 65% of BJP leaders and workers are regularly doing
this insane thing since years but so far no one of them has been
arrested why coz of politicalconnections as every body is aware
of..the govt and public should bring this to show the world thier
cheap and vulgar mentality and they claim to rule the nation.....ha !
ha ! aks USA 26 Mar, 2009 10:16 PM

Thats very sickening to say the least. If daughters are not protected
by their own fathers who else will. Where does it leave the poor girl?
Why is the mother quiet on this? Castrate all this people who cannot
control their urges..Rape is a beastly act and that too on their own
daughter..man this guy must be sick and insane and should be treated
and put behind bars and asked to work for social welfare organisation
or home for the aged but do not leave this man on the roads for God's
sake. As it is there are so many criminals in many disguises roaming
around and we can ill afford another.vishwas india 27 Mar, 2009 12:37
AM

this is nothing but a propaganda againstt BJP, earlier it was Ramsene,
then Varun and now this case which has nothing to do with BJP. voters
should not be misled with such news.Vishal Agrawal Mumbai 27 Mar, 2009
12:48 AM

It is really sad that girls are treated so badly in our country. More
girls should come out to these victims. India needs a women revolution
but of course not legally like reservation etc because that would only
empower them to do injustice. Something like misuse of dowry act by
girls. India is in a very interesting times.Salim usa 27 Mar, 2009
01:06 AM

Hang Him nowLucas Podolski Chennai 27 Mar, 2009 01:06 AMTOI has just
put a word mentioning BJP. Instead of talking about the main topic,
most of you are talking about TOI or politics. This only shows the
narrow mindedness of most of our people.Tally World 27 Mar, 2009 01:08
AM

Sad to see that people are more worried about BJP rather than the
girl. Are you all out of your minds ? A young girl has been physically
tortured by her own father for years. Think about what she must be
going through. These kind of crimes go beyond party lines, castes and
nationalities. Go look up human rights and dignity in a dictionary.Raj
Delhi 27 Mar, 2009 01:09 AM

The act is reprehensible and the man deserves a severe punishment.
However, I think the act is completely personal and BJP should not be
dragged into it. At the same time, if BJP were smart, it would
immediately issue their own condemnation of the act. That they have
not done so shows how poor the party's PR is. I am a Congress
supporter (simply because it seems to offer better leaders and it
doesn't invoke the Hindutva message again and again). But I am a
bigger believer in democracy and for any democracy to function, we
need more than one competitive party at the national level. BJP has
failed miserably in being that party (more so post Mahajan-Vajpayee
era). I sure hope they get their act together and offer us a thriving
alternative to the Congress. Somnath New York 27 Mar, 2009 01:17 AM

Why doesnot TOI ever print the Accused side of the story? TOI should
start making another section for Rapist dads, women's newspaper,
domestic abuse. The media, people, laws every one beleives women are
innocent in this world and men are the only culprits, in fact women
drive men to do the crime.Emanuel D. Samuel Toronto, On. Canada 27
Mar, 2009 01:29 AM

Child molestation is a common phenomenon all over the world. The weak
preyed on by the strong; betrayal of trust; misplaced affection. In my
experience, it is a sickness based on a deviant love and will not stop
regardless. The main reason is the closeness of the parties and the
high percentage probability it will never be exposed. It is not
considered wicked, immoral, rather rationalized by the existence of an
immense, albeit misplaced, love.Dinkar London 27 Mar, 2009 01:37 AM

what's wrong with this world? An Indian London 27 Mar, 2009 02:04 AM

My heart goes out to this young girl and the other victims in her
family . As a nation we should support her , applaud her incredible
courage for speaking out , give her and the other victims all the
support we can and make sure the monster who perpetrated these crimes
is brought to justice . Anyone who seeks to support this monster who
dares to call himself a '' father '' on this site or any other form of
media should be condemned by right minded viewers . This is a horific
crime that deserves punishment of the stiffest kind although no
punishment would ever be enough for what this man has done . Amit
California 27 Mar, 2009 02:04 AM

As sad as the story is, I am glad that women are finally speaking up
about the abuses that they have to live with. Bravo for getting this
matter out. I share the daughters sentiment that this rapist should be
either jailed or shot. Also, Dear Editor, it is laudable that you are
printing these stories, I would however be wary or partisan politics.
In my opinion, it was completely unnecessary to state the rapists
Party Allegiance - this will only help more with vote-bank
politics...just my 2 cents..Rajkumar Patil Toronto 27 Mar, 2009 02:05
AM

What the hell you guys are talking about? A monster father raped her
daughter for a decade, and instead of pressuring the govt for harsh
punishment for such crimes, you people are takling and playing
polytics here. If allowed and encouraged, many thousands of such
victims will come forward, who were pressured and threatened by their
own family members for years. Such criminals do not belong to any
religion, party or country. They do that hinious crime with all their
conscious and do it repeatedly, to those who are most weak and
vulnerable elements of the society:the children. I hate the so called
Sharia law, but when i read such stories, i really feel that these
criminlas should be treated and punished unhumanly;Jatin London 27
Mar, 2009 02:06 AM

I am shocked after this news in India we are finding new ones
everyday, our law should set very tight punishment for this kind of
crime so it can be a learning lesson for all Fritzl's growing in India
& anywhere in the world, Its shame we have got 2 of same kind in our
own country. Its a shame people are still talking this as Congree v/s
BJP war guys please grow up and is this what we are going to leave for
our future generations....Pls all should get together and do sumthing
about victims and help them in every way to restabilise thier life, if
they are not safe in their own houses then we can forget about
everything else..We need to first look at the core of the problems why
are people turning to their daughters as a sex object and I would say
their other family members are equally responsible for this crime who
knew about it.Jasbir Singh Sydney 27 Mar, 2009 02:10 AM

It is a normal Indian psyche, everything they do have link with
politics. Criminals can use any platform. Shankaracharia was charged,
many swamis went to jail, things happened in Aasa Ram's Ashram, Many
Mullahs or Granthis were also found engaging in immoral activities.
The real thing is getting corruption out of Police and court so that
people feel free to approach them. A website should be started where
anyone can list their problems and seek help. Pedophiles are using
everything in India including SMS, internet etc but they are going
undetected.Prasad Gowda London 27 Mar, 2009 02:17 AM

Dear editor, I am ashamed by the way your reporter has reported this
incident. There is no need to mention ones political inclination to
their personal life and the sins commited at a personal level. I am
sure a corrupt politician is as bad as this sinful man and surely you
can find many in every political party in the country!RK B'lore 27
Mar, 2009 02:27 AM

This is rediculos. There is not much to do with BJP in this case.
There are lots of MLA/MPs are horrible things including raping kids of
things. This is the part of thier culture. You go and investigate the
poltical leaders, you will find much more worst than these. There
stupid ppl here they just go on BJP. I would say, only BJP will do
better govt in the current situation for India. Rest all the parties
are hopelessinderjit U.S.A. 27 Mar, 2009 02:27 AM

Per story, the father is a FAMOUS LEADER, the obvious question will be
of what PARTY, so,the media was bound to name the party,same is with
VARUN GANDHI, he shot the lime light because of BJP, otherwise such
speeches of communal hatred are the ORDER OF THE DAY in India and WHO
CARES without the name of the party. This incident should be condemned
by all including sitting MP from Amritsar who belongs to BJP. Margo
Russia 27 Mar, 2009 02:43 AM

The burning question is MENTALITY and it has nothing to do with any
political party. Lack of openess leads to crime. In school teachers
should explain about child abuse and how kids should react. Education!
Education! Education!Thats sad .... Switzerland 27 Mar, 2009 03:04 AM

Small girls being raped by their fathers uncles or grandfathers. Its
happening since ages and its very hard to control. Small girls are
afraid to come out in public and make noise. Mothers wants to keep
their family name.. In India its happening more then we think. Shame
on you all.ae india 27 Mar, 2009 03:05 AM

It seems Indian culture died long back. What a pity thing happening in
our society. Where is human rights group? parents should see that no
tears in his /her daughter. It is very urgent for the govt to form
commission to take the task. where is relation, what relation. now
everything is dissappearing .It is difficult to express anything about
this ghastly incidents.Vikram Bangalore 27 Mar, 2009 03:23 AM

India should become the first country to award death sentence for
raping minors.Raghu Prabhu melbourne 27 Mar, 2009 03:25 AMKeep
politics out of it. Let the police do their job with out any
interference. If the man has done the worng thing, let him be tried in
the proper manner. Does not matter if he is BJP or
Congress.P.M.G.,pillai Mannar, AllaPUZHA KERALA 27 Mar, 2009 03:43 AM

Because no one care for any basic ethic principles.Male memebers in
home must maintain a distance between thefemale members to prevent
these unwanted relations being developed unknowningly.Code of
behaviour for homes also is very essential to maintain proper
relationship. Original Indian India 27 Mar, 2009 03:43 AM

This is no lies, as it were a lie this man would have not complained
of chest pains. Chest pain complaints are only made by the guilty who
know its imminent of them going to jail. This man is a monster and a
threat to public safety, imagine how could someone ever do this to a
minor and keep doing it. He will surely rot in hell but the big
question is will he rot in life or get away with it? This is indeed a
rarestr of rare cases and the punishment should be rare and extreme;
Gallows or bullet (his daughter or should I say victims wish).on the
fence canada 27 Mar, 2009 04:05 AM

Well I truly sympathize with the girl and accused should be hanged to
death if proven so....but we should also spare a thought that the
accused could well be a victim of conspiracy till it is not proved.
This girl and mother may not be getting along well with this
man....could be family dispute or whatever and they could have got a
perfect plot from Mumbai event to settle the score with him....in
India, we seem to take woman's word over man pretty easily....this
social attitude can easily be exploited by some. Just a thought. Umesh
Korea 27 Mar, 2009 04:08 AM

For last few times these type of news are becoming common in developed
cities like mumbai etc....But I heard same news earlier many times
from Punjab only.......Even in 1999 I heard such type of case first
time the place was Punjab & I was shocked even I did not believe for
sometime..but the truth...Ranjan Singh Noida 27 Mar, 2009 04:16 AM

I hope this is one of the rarest incident ever heard. I am also of the
opinion that it haas nothing to do with the party but then why every
time BJP leadres blames other's for such incidents.. Take on the
example of Mr Varun Gandhi..Who other than Varun would have courage
and guts to challenge that whatever that is being shown on news
channels have been docotred..Insane...the party stand by him. Isn't
that shows the kind of ideology these political parties have...I think
these incidents are coming in otice at the right time because you know
whom you are choosing for next 5 years...atleast you know the one you
have voted for is a rapist who raped his own daughter so atleast you
need to take extra care for your relatives..nick sharma melbourne 27
Mar, 2009 04:30 AM

Everyone over here is think from political aspect. And nearly 70%of
the messages are related to politics. what about that girl who has
been in great pain bcoz of this in human behaviors. Think like a human
being not like insane. J.S. North America 27 Mar, 2009 04:47 AM

Hold your breath mothers of India, there are more rapist fathers
hiding under a screen of pretense of being good fathers. There is a
need for mothers to talk and discuss confidential matters with their
daughters. Do not be afraid to ask if their Dads have made seductive
approaches or even rape them. Do not say it cannot happen to my
daughter and do not blame your daughter if such an incident happen. It
is all the fathers' fault and lack of disrespcet. India I believe, has
become the rape capital of the world. It is a shame to learn that
another father who should have known better raped his daughter for 8
years. There are a lot more incidents in India, which have not been
exposed because mothers and daughters depend on fathers to take care
of them. I storngly urge the government to set up shelters to take of
abused women and children. So much young lives are being destroyed and
so much of innocense and purity are being lost. People who commit such
crimes against the young should be severely punished. ABC Mumbai 27
Mar, 2009 07:28 AM

Related to this incident, I want to express one incident happened. To
one girl (my relative girl) after her marriage, her father in-law
asked her husband (ie his son) to go abroad soon after marriage. After
he (son) went abroad, one day (that time her mother-in law went to
market)that father-in-law asked her to obey for him. When she denied,
suddenly he removed her dress and touched her private part of the body
and told her that he arranged marriage for his son with her, only for
he liked her and loved her. she shouted and cried. Finally he left and
told her, "if you tell this to my son or to my wife, I will separate
you from my son. My son believe whatever I tell him". After that he
did not allow any of her relatives to talk with her in person (its
like house arrest). After one year, his son (that girls husband) came
from gulf country. The girl told all this incident to him. He was
shocked and he did not take any action. Just asked her a promise not
to tell this to anybody. Because all their property is in his fathers
name. If he go aganist his father, he may not give any property to
him. In India many girls are suffering like this. God only can save
the pity girls...... KS INDIA 27 Mar, 2009 08:23 AM

Now the man has become like an animal. Because of these few animal
men, the whole men will be looked with doubt. THEY SHOULD BE BOOKED,
TRIED IN A COURT OF LAW AND PUNISHED VERY FAST AND NOT TAKING EVEN FEW
MONTHS. What a shame to the country?A Ray Burdwan, WB 27 Mar, 2009
08:29 AM

Such incidents give us a glimpse as to how many other weak-willed
humans are hiding. And even worse, there are definitely some mothers,
too, who rape their sons and are under cover. The latter are very
rarely exposed because of the inability of the man to speak out. Men
can never be accepted in society as victims to women. Just imagine
their dolour.Abdullah Malaysia 27 Mar, 2009 09:10 AM

The role of mother is very crucial in preventing this kind of
incidents. After a certain age, mother should keep their daugthers
away from unwanted mingling with males.madhulika hyderabad 27 Mar,
2009 09:50 AM

This is the most heinous act did by a father.It is really shameful
that these types of father do exist in our society...............There
is not a single place on earth which is really safe for girls untill
unless they will come out on their own and onus the responsibility of
themselves and their siblings.This is the only possible solution of
this great ever existing problem..........So girls come out of your
limitations and bondages and be ready to make this world feel that
girls are really capable and competent enough to face all these
problems.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinions/4317364.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Another-rapist-dad-exposed-this-time-in-Amritsar/articleshow/4317364.cms

Businessman raped daughter for 9 years
Sandhya Nair , TNN, Mar 20, 2009, 02.34am IST
Article Comments (179)

MUMBAI: The sprawling township of Mira Road on the outskirts of the
metropolis woke up to the bizarre news of the arrest of a businessman
for allegedly raping his daughter over nine years, drawing macabre
parallels with Joseph Fritzl of Austria who raped his daughter over 24
years.

Ashok Chore (name changed), aged 60, was arrested by the Mira Road
police on Wednesday night from his apartment for sexually abusing his
daughter over nine years on the advice of a `tantrik' who promised
that doing so would make him prosperous.

Arrested along with Chore was the tantrik, Hasmukh Rathod (60), who
posed as an astrologer, and Chore's 47-year-old wife, who has been
charged with abetting the heinous crime. The three were remanded to
two-day police custody by the Thane sessions court on Thursday whereas
the cops had sought a 14-day remand.

The traumatised girl, now 21, had been silent about her ordeal all
these years but mustered the courage to approach the police after her
father, she alleged, attempted to rape her 15-year-old younger sister
on the advice of the same tantrik.

The elder sister, who works for a private firm in Mumbai, had become
the target of sexual abuse at the age of 12 'when Rathod had advised
Chore to have sex with her in order to prosper. Chore and Rathod were
neighbours in Vile Parle. The maternal uncle of the young girls, who
helped them lodge a complaint, said his sister had been brainwashed by
Rathod.

Chore first sexually abused his elder daughter in 2000 when his
interior designing business failed. According to police, Chore used to
undress his daughter in front of his wife and have sex with her.

The fact that his business did not flourish did not prevent Chore from
continuing with his depraved act. Rathod apparently had great
influence on the Chores. He had, in 2002, managed to get the couple's
consent for sex with the elder daughter.

Chore is believed to have borrowed large amounts of money for his
business. Last November, when Chore once again confided in Rathod
about his failing business, he was advised to have sex with his
younger daughter, a class 10th student. The couple is believed to have
even taken her to Rathod's Vile Parle home for sexual encounters to
avoid the elder daughter's wrath. But when the elder daughter learnt
about it last week, she told her maternal uncle. Both the girls are
currently with their maternal uncle and grandmother.

Chore's advocate Edgar Braganza alleged that his clients were being
framed by the two siblings. ``The elder of the two daughters has
complained that she was threatened and sexually exploited by her
parents and Rathod since 2000. This girl is 21 and till date there has
been no complaint or resistance by her. Is it possible for a father to
rape a daughter for nine years and live under the same roof? Where is
the question of medical examination of the accused since it's not a
recent incident?'' Braganza argued in the court.

The police told the court that they would require a 14-day remand as
there is a possibility that the accused may be connected to a gang
involved in prostitution. (With inputs from Nitin Yeshwantrao)

Dev Kumar Dutta Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 11:37 AM

Why're you hiding the bastard's name? Publish his picture and name
ASAP...we want to see him gaurav mubai 19 Mar, 2009 11:42 AM

This is psycho cause, people doing and thinking like this are mentally
ill. The main cause of this type scenario is arisen due to illegal
porn sites and movies which not make us mentally ill but also produce
adverse effect on our social life gaurav mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 11:43 AM

kill them in public...sudhir Ahmedabad 19 Mar, 2009 11:44 AM

It would be of interest to see the opinion of the self appinted
protectors of Hinduism know about the Tantrik. Would they oppose it or
would their blind love for anything remotely hindu make them shy away
from even uttering a few words against such incidents.pramod nagpur 19
Mar, 2009 11:45 AM

aise father ko zinda rahne ka koi adhikar nahi hai aur jo 'tantrik'
aise suggestions deta ho use to beech churahe par zinda jala dena
chahiye.Mehrunnisa Farooq Qatar 19 Mar, 2009 11:48 AM

Is our Indian Culture Slowly dying ? Betiyan to baap ki Izzat thi, aab
baap hi izzat se khilwad kare. This is the worst of human crimes, on
daughters fathered by himself, the parents should be punished
severly.ilyas bharuch 19 Mar, 2009 11:49 AM

Just kill this bastered in publicS W Kamath Secunderabad 19 Mar, 2009
11:54 AM

These type of cases should not be considered as isolated ones
involving depraved individuals, if we really hope to think of India as
a modern nation in the 21st century. Why can't we have the will, at
least in such cases, for demanding the death penalty for the rapist.
Imagine if this is the scenario in Mumbai, one shudders to think of
what would be happening in rural areas. Mr.Rationality USA 19 Mar,
2009 11:55 AM

If the tantrik would have told the father to parade his daughters in
the nude, he would have done that too!. That is why I always say
"DON'T FOLLOW ANY GURUS" AS 99% OF THEM ARE FAKE!Aks USA 19 Mar, 2009
11:56 AM

Stupid belief. These may be an excuse for that fellow also, who knows.
Really some of the absurd stories are slowly coming out due to media
coverage etc. Put them all the accused behind the bars for lifetime
without parole or leninency including the 'tantrik'. Shruti Ggn 19
Mar, 2009 11:59 AM

What a shame!!! These people should be hanged.Mark India 19 Mar, 2009
12:02 PM

He should be hanged to death..this is devil's job,there could be
several such cases in India,but going undercover...due to fear of
shame and disjust.puvathi pukuvathi ksa 19 Mar, 2009 12:04 PM

send this bastard also to Austria,his very own elder brother
JosefFritzl it seems both has come out from the same tunnel, shoot
them from guns from point blank range so that thier parts get blown
out , send them to the gallows,they will spoil the younger
generation ...... or dont publish such reports please!!!!!!Anuj U.P 19
Mar, 2009 12:05 PM

what a shame.... these animals should be hanged to death in public ..
they defy all morals that any society is biult on... if girls aren't
safe in thier own homes.. where else will they be safe. ?J.Mukund
Hyderabad. 19 Mar, 2009 12:07 PMSuch type of persons should be given
capital punishment. Hang them untill death.naro delhi 19 Mar, 2009
12:09 PM

This extremely appalling behaviour is surely comparable to the hedious
josep fritzl crime,send them,both husband & wife to life
imprisonment.No sane person would have an incestuous relationship
wether at the advice of a 'tantrik'or not.It defies nature and only
extremely sick minded people would resort to this kind of behaviour.I
do hope that the courts will mete out the same punishment to both
husband/wife duo as she is equally gulity of abatting this heinous
crime against her daughters.Deb Kolkata 19 Mar, 2009 12:11 PM

This types of most hatred crimes are increasing every day and it can
break the social bonding and trust and thus can result in complete
failure of a state very soon. These filthy criminals should be
punished in a way that others do not dare to think about these in
future.harees dubai 19 Mar, 2009 12:12 PM

i wonder why didnt u guys put the names of the parents n the
tantrikAsh USA 19 Mar, 2009 12:22 PM

This so sick, as bad as it can get. How can a parent do this to his
own flesh and blood just for the sake of money. He should get life in
prison.RK India 19 Mar, 2009 12:22 PMPlease Plublicly trash this
bastard and kill him...Thameem Nairobi 19 Mar, 2009 12:23 PM

Why still we are believing the astrology? If you want to get rid off
your problems, work hard and pray to god. Not to individuals like Sai
Baba, these are thieves, we are living in 21st century, they are just
spiritual guys they can't do anything. can they live for ever? why we
need to trust them? Stop. Believe yourself. Jyoti Sunnyvale, CA 19
Mar, 2009 12:25 PM

How disgusting! We need to spread more awareness among young children
in schools about matters such as incest. Maybe each school can have a
special cell which helps students who face such problems in their own
homes and escalates the case to the police if necessary.Theresa Dubai
19 Mar, 2009 12:25 PM

I was traumatized this last few days hearing the details of incest
case in Austria. Hearing of a similar story in my own city really
makes me sad. I'm sure there are many more cases which are not
reported due to social stigma. I pray that reading about these stories
other kids will break their silence and expose these evil deeds of
their parentsCapt. Brian Fernandez Bandra, Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 12:29
PM

This is what happens when we make wealth and money the one and only
principle in our lives!RG Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 12:30 PM

Found guilty, hang this guy..this is really bad.Kamal Gurgaon 19 Mar,
2009 12:31 PM

Totally Disgusting, This old businessman of 60 years should be hanged
for this heinous crime. Zaheer Australia 19 Mar, 2009 12:33 PM

hard to swollow..some tantrik say something and this dumbhead spoils
the whole meaning of fatherhood. its a shame that todays women has no
burrow left to hide. whom do they trust now?shabana Bangalore 19 Mar,
2009 12:33 PM

It is even more revolting and diabolic than Josef Fritzl's case.
Fritzl is diagnosed as psychotic and a pervert and he did all that in
a secret way till he was caught. Unbelievable greed and perversion is
evident in this case than just superstition.Any adjective will fall
short to explain this heinous act. Both the parents are a classic
example of inhumanity and a shame for term "parent".we can only
imagine the mental state of the child in this case whose trust and
faith in her parent as well as life is so ruthlessly breached. There
is no punishment which is enough for such a crime...capital punishment
is perhaps the easiest way out for the accused shabana Bangalore 19
Mar, 2009 12:33 PM

how come he raped his own daughter .this guys hast to punished with
sex torture to them.jalaluddin palekar. UAE. 19 Mar, 2009 12:37 PM

Have islamic Laws to protect the society from such Evil acts.
Jalaluddin Palekar. UAE.mmalbari Kochi 19 Mar, 2009 12:37 PM

When there is a question of Rape and Molestation, We Indians cannot be
behindPinaki Sengupta Rishra 19 Mar, 2009 12:37 PM

A law should now be framed and exemplary punishment to be given to all
the accused so nobody will even dare to do such a crime ever.santosh
sinha beijing 19 Mar, 2009 12:38 PM

It can happen only in mumbai in Indiasaj thomas dubai 19 Mar, 2009
12:39 PM

crime against women are increasing ,,,,and there is no one to voice
against it ,,,,,,,its the poor and the oppressed who are left to the
fate... no one.. is there to raise voice where are the moral police
who raised so many issues ....about culture ,,,, i have decided not to
vote ...anyone ...who are good for nothingGaurav Delhi 19 Mar, 2009
12:40 PM

Before any thing is done to the father i want that bloody, Tantrik to
be punished. And also the father must be given as harsh punishment as
any one could ever getKobita Bangalore 19 Mar, 2009 12:44 PM

How disgusting can one get. Really pains me to note the extent one can
go to gain wealth. The culprits should be punished appropriately.Avi
Australia 19 Mar, 2009 12:45 PM

Highly obnoxious act. Shame on such dads.ajaz bangalore 19 Mar, 2009
12:47 PM

This is totally inhuman the father and the tantrik should be burnt
alive ...............it is totally inhuman JJJJJ Pak 19 Mar, 2009
12:48 PM

This is what you are indians..anne India 19 Mar, 2009 12:49 PMGive him
sever punishment so that in futher no father can do this. This is
really a shame. How can a father do this to his own flesh. I request
and appeal all the girls come forwards when this things start
happenning with them.dont keep quite, it is shame, but instead of
suffering, better to complain and get rid of this devil fathers. It is
big shame when mother who support her husband.We read this all
happening in foreign country, but this thing happening India. Now no
one will come to protect this types of issues which is against our
culture.Sabeera Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 12:53 PM

This rapist dad should be hanged along with his wife. Severe
punishment should be given to both. In Mumbai all this sort of things
happens. Even many daughter in-law's are suffering from issues like
this. I am one person from Mumbai faced by father in-law (but somehow
saved myself), but my husband did not believe. Many pity girls are
living in the world. dr.anupam rajasthan 19 Mar, 2009 12:57 PM

that tantrik and father must be hang on,how anybody can even think
just for moneydr.anupam rajasthan 19 Mar, 2009 12:57 PM

that tantrik and father must be hang on,how anybody can even think
just for moneyshoukat firfiray NRI 19 Mar, 2009 12:57 PM

both (culprit and tantrik should be given capital punishment (hang to
death in public) for lesson to masses. There should not be any lapses
in passing the verdict from judiciary. Rajehs Chennai 19 Mar, 2009
12:58 PM

He is not a human being.....I think may be an animal..Only animals do
see such a difference in sexfaisal dhahran 19 Mar, 2009 01:01 PM

What if this is NOT true? What if the girls wanted money or something
from their parents, like to marry someone they did not like, etc? Why
are people being areested just on the word of someone without any
evidence???? If this is another case of lying, like so many are in
India, then the parents should use every legal means to sue the
government and the police.Nikit Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 01:01 PM

This sought of people humiliates our society and even the man kind,
they should be sentenced to death and especially the tantrik in
public. These guys are humiliating all of us.dr.anupam rajasthan 19
Mar, 2009 01:01 PM

that tantrik and father must be hang on,how anybody can even think
just for moneydr.anupam rajasthan 19 Mar, 2009 01:01 PM

that tantrik and father must be hang on,how anybody can even think
just for moneyRaj Chennai 19 Mar, 2009 01:05 PM

Those men should be cut downAN INDIAN Abroad 19 Mar, 2009 01:05 PMT

his person his wife and the "TANTRIK" all are animals, they should be
punished severely. Shame on him for committing such a heinous crime.
No lawyer shoudl help these people and no police officer should
support them. Shame on them for bringing disgrace on India and Indian
people.s. wadhwa new delhi 19 Mar, 2009 01:06 PM

The laws in our country need to be flexible enough to warrant instant
punishment in such heinous cases.Ramanpreet Delhi, India 19 Mar, 2009
01:09 PM

such a shame full incident. it appears we indians have lost our
cultural values which is always being cherished by others. i am so
disappoited with this factRaj USA 19 Mar, 2009 01:11 PMSick.R.KUMAR
NCR 19 Mar, 2009 01:14 PM

photographs of such crimnals should be published prominantly in the
media and then the punishment should be --hanging them upside down in
a public place till they die and their dead bodies thrown to dogs &
vultures.DONALD ALMAS DUBAI 19 Mar, 2009 01:17 PM

THE FATHER AND THE TANTRIK SHOULD BE CASTRATED AND THE MOTHER
IMPRISONED FOR LIFE.IT SURE WOULD BE THE PUNISHMENT IF THIS WOULD
HAPPEN IN SAUDI ARABIA.NOW THAT THE FATHER IS A BUSINESS MAN HE WOULD
SQUASH THE MATTER PAYING MONEY.SHAME ON THE INDIAN LAW AND ORDER AND
THE CORRUPTION INVOLVED. H K Bhargava Bangkok Thailand 19 Mar, 2009
01:18 PM

Do not bring religion into this. The Girl's Father needs to be
executed as he actually performed the crime. Tantric comes next and
also needs a VERY HARSH punishment.S.L.J.Gallyot Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009
01:19 PM

No leniency should be shown to such a pervert. The crime is worse
because it has violated the safety and security that a father brings
to his family. the tantrik is equally guilty and should face the same
life imprisonment.We have perverts masquerading as tantrics and
swamis. The Parivar has been obstructing the introduction of the
Superstitious practices bill for obvious reasonsNitin Valecha Delhi 19
Mar, 2009 01:21 PM

The case presents the levels of superstition(s) that are still
embedded in our society and the influence of it on even the educated
masses. The culprit(s)(Father & Tantrik) should be given the severest
punishment as it defames and clobbers the "Parent-child" relationship
and falls inot the "rarest of rare" category.Dr. M M Tiwari Raipur 19
Mar, 2009 01:28 PM

No words to condemn the henious crime.How can one even think such
inhuman acts that too from literate persons.Where our society is
leading to?There may be many other cases which are not reported.This
is just superstition,no Tantrik can ever do anything except befooling
persons to make his money.Exemplary punishment must be given to
Father,Mother and the Tantrik. Qaari Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 01:29 PM

The problem here is two fold. Tantrik or occultist can not be banned
because many people have faith in them. These people may feel deprived
of the gain if there is ban on practices based on supernatural powers.
All the money spent on CHANDRAYAN project is waste if the BABAS can
bring moon on palm of your hand. But the BABAS can be watched for
criminal acts. Second problem is INCEST. This can be controlled simply
if the police support is guarunteed which is for what ever reason
absent in many cases. The victims in many cases may not have sense,
mental or physical strentgh to oppose the criminal act. Neighbours
surely become aware of such acts if it continues for long time. They
don't intervene for not buying trouble in case there is no
administrative support to them. To have sympathy for victim may cost
dear and that is the reason no one comes near. Kunal Pune 19 Mar, 2009
01:29 PM

Horrible! Put aside culture stuff, it just shows to what extent a
human mind can go for some selfish benefitssahil india 19 Mar, 2009
01:34 PM

please let us know the name of that criminalAlihusain Mira Road 19
Mar, 2009 01:34 PM

It is a shame for Mira road residents to have such type of acts. As a
resident of Mira Road I feel that these people should be punished in
public by the people. Abdul Azeez Ullal Mangalore, Karnataka 19 Mar,
2009 01:35 PMOnly animals can do like this. Hang this bitch as soon as
possibleamer hyd 19 Mar, 2009 01:36 PM

The case has to be interogated as soon as possible Courts should not
delay such a things for long periods. Which can give rise to such a
criminals as per the tantriks this are very foolish people spoiling
lifes of innocent people for their sake and livelibood if they found
guilty their heads must be cut in public. so that any body with
thoughts of gaining powers or wealth should not believe such a
tantriks who are ready to murder the humanity.Ghanav sydney 19 Mar,
2009 01:41 PM

its funny hw a freakkin antrik can mislead a father to rape his own
daughters... to hell with him n da couple. dese guys hav no right 2
livekasmur hyderabad 19 Mar, 2009 01:41 PM

he should be fired in front of the public.he is not a father he is a
mad dog and mad dogs should not be left kill himSanjit Bal Gurgaon 19
Mar, 2009 01:42 PM

Such a person does not deserve a trail or has any right to recourse of
law. This person deserves the death penalty for completely depraving
the image of a parent and runining the life of his own daughters.
Callous, self centered and depraved people like him and his wife have
no right to live in civilized society.Tauseef Ahmed Delhi 19 Mar, 2009
01:43 PM

Such a shameful incident like this not only put a dent in our culture
but also made mockery of father child relation. A person like him
should be hanged in public so that nobody else could even dare to
think about such henious thing.Rajesh Qatar 19 Mar, 2009 01:43 PM

These crimnals must be punished as per Islamic Law (Shariyah). stone
them and cut the head publically for the lesson of people like Saudi
Arabia. Saudi Arabia has the lowest crime (tend to zero) in the world
due to Islamic Law. Thanks to all om US 19 Mar, 2009 01:44 PMhow some
one can rape some one for 7 years....is this possibleAbhishek MEERUT
19 Mar, 2009 01:50 PM

Ofcourse such a man should be hanged to death if he has committed such
a heinous crime. But, addition to this, Common man has his/her mind
set to believe such incidence to be absolutely truth without any
proofs and evidences and at once get sympathesised with the victim.
Truth must be Explored first!!vinod pune 19 Mar, 2009 01:51 PM

the father should be shot at sight..Samad Khan Bangalore 19 Mar, 2009
01:53 PM

This is sick!! Rape your own child for greed of money. Indian society
was known for its modesty, principals and values.Somewhere along the
recent way, we Indians have lost it all and have become a very
greedy,insensitive and a shallow society. Why take the man to court??
Hang him at Ghandi chowk along with the tantrik.SMF Dubai,UAE 19 Mar,
2009 01:52 PM

India should adopt the Sharia law(Islamic law).This is the only answer
to such henious crimes.People will think twice even before they think
of such evil acts. Think about it India.It will make difference.This
is the true Law.Neel Gagan New Delhi 19 Mar, 2009 01:53 PM

This is just rubbish...they have not done it just becoz Tantrik has
told..or for money...root cause may be non-fullfillment of sexual
desires. It is shameful that Mother was knowing all about it....and
she did nothing to stop it... Bose Delhi 19 Mar, 2009 02:02 PM

If this comes out to be true ultimately, then the only punishment for
these beasts is a single shot at the back of their
head....PERIOD.....Its sickening to the stomach...SMF Dubai,UAE 19
Mar, 2009 01:52 PM

for everything..ranging from terrorism to lack of morality...we
Indians tend to blame the west...now this episode of a father raping
his daughters...let us blame western countries
again.....ha..ha........ha...zh7272 south africa 19 Mar, 2009 02:04 PM

Apply sharia law to correct these greedy and crook so that we can be a
good example to the whole world.neha india 19 Mar, 2009 02:05 PMdnt
knw hw a father can do this to his own daughters.. Amol Bangalore 19
Mar, 2009 02:09 PM

This is an example of what these tantriks are doing to our society.
Why not pass on a law to make this illegal, so these practices can not
be carried out. There are thousands of tantriks today in any city of
India. Also, another thing that happens is astrology, although not
this bad, but it definately influence people to take decisions based
on some stupid stars, we should come out and ban these things once and
forever from our country. People are openly allowed to offer advise
without any scientif support. This is stupid and if we tolerate this,
its going to make us look like real stupid society. I am sure there
are thousands of such cases in various forms hiding throughout India.
Time to pass a law to make this illegal.Peter Oman 19 Mar, 2009 02:10
PM

Signs of our times and deeds of these parents are difficult for us to
digest in reading this article.Life for those kids will be deplorable
and unthinkable.It's a crime before God and Humanity and TOI must
publish the photos of these culprits.Money is still God for many until
this day.How come are these fraudsters caught by the media during the
Global recession period?Nanoti S.K. Nasik 19 Mar, 2009 02:12 PM

It is really shamful that father is raping his own daughters.
Undoudtebly, only punishment for the father should be hanged to death.
In the same time, all sympathy should be extended to the victims, who
have suffered such a crime in their early childhood from their own
father.Rashmi Bangalore 19 Mar, 2009 02:12 PM

This is a ridiculous thing , how one can even think of doing this. he
should be punished as hang till death that also in front of
public.Girish Delhi 19 Mar, 2009 02:13 PM

We should not let this guy die simply by hanging or shooting him. We
should first break his 2-3 bone here and there and then cut his flesh
at multiple places. Remember, do not let this guy. Keep breaking his
bones but keep him alive so that he beg for death.J D Barman India 19
Mar, 2009 02:13 PM

is he a father and most astonishing that is he a human being or a wild
animal. He and his associates should not be forgiven and should be
rewarded with an appropriate punishment.INDIAN INDIA 19 Mar, 2009
02:15 PM

GUYS PLS STOP DISCUSSING, N MAKE A SOLUTIONS.. WE HAV TO WAKE UP TO
WORK ON IT. ITS NOT THE FIRST TIME, IF U GO THROUGH VILLAGES U WILL
FIND SUCH SIMILAR CASES.. GOVRNMENT IS NOT GOING TO ACT ANY THING, END
OF THE DAY THEY WILL GET BAIL, THATS FOR SURE.. SO LETS TAKE EACH OF
US A RESPONSIBALITY TO SAVE OUR COUNTRY OUR CULTURE TO GET RID OF THIS
SMAMEFULL ACTS. isar mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 02:16 PM

Mulsim law is great on this count. India should adpot the mulsim law
against all such crimes for every such criminal irrespective of
religionR C SHAH MUMBAI 19 Mar, 2009 02:16 PM

HE SHALL BE HANGED UNTIL DEATHR C SHAH MUMBAI 19 Mar, 2009 02:16 PM

HE SHALL BE HANGED UNTIL DEATHRahul Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 02:16 PM

What a shame. Madhukar Bengaluru 19 Mar, 2009 02:17 PMBoth the father
as well as the mother should be hanged.Soumitra Noida 19 Mar, 2009
02:19 PM

burn his whole body with cigarette... give him antibiotics ... let
those wounds heal ... burn him again ... repeat it for the rest of his
life. Prakasam Bharat 19 Mar, 2009 02:21 PMHang that father, mother
and Tantrik, after whipping them for 90 days.sorry4victims Kolkata 19
Mar, 2009 02:24 PM

i m really sorry for the victims of such heinous crimes. Joseph Fritzl
in Austria can now at least hold his head high knowing that he is not
the only person committing such crimes. May God Help the world. May
Peace prevail.joson mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 02:27 PM

Only solution for Humanity .. An end to evil acts, an end to crime ,
and for a peace all over the world . , implement Islamic law.. Today
Saudi Arabia has the lowest crime rate .. owing to Islamic law
onlyIndian Dubai 19 Mar, 2009 02:29 PM

Sickening act. All the three deserve a killing by throwing stones at a
public place. No lawyer should take their case. TAHER EBRAHIM JEDDAH
19 Mar, 2009 02:29 PM

First collect hard evidence and proof him as he did this heinous crime
against his own daughters then only hang him along with his "TANTRIK".
Kumar UAE 19 Mar, 2009 02:31 PM

Why produce in court and creat tension in everybody. Please kill the
husband and wife.Indian Mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 02:33 PM

Error!!! this happened in Mumbai as says the headlines.. but the
article is begin with NEW DELHI: .. delhi is on tis reporter's mind
too much for such stuff?? Suman Kashyap Hong Kong 19 Mar, 2009 02:39
PM

To, those advocating Sharia law, as per Sharia they need four eye
witnesses to prove a rape, which is very difficult to get. Hence if
Sharia is applied the beats will be more encouraged as there will
almost never be 4 people watching a rape.Surendran Middle East 19 Mar,
2009 02:40 PM

Extremely shameful for every Indian. This men-shaped animal must be
hanged until death alongwith his wife and tantrik. Government must
concentrate on finding such tantrik working throughout the country
which badly damage a community altogether.seema chembur 19 Mar, 2009
02:40 PM

Its realy horrible incident to see Father raping his own daughters
with his better half help How can mother of 2 tell her husband to have
sex with their daughter They both father and mother of the sibling
should be hanged Thats the best punishmentRafeeq London 19 Mar, 2009
02:48 PM

How long will tantriks and religious extremistis hijack us? Its ironic
and pathetic that even the educated people get trapped by these
senseless people. Give them a punishment no one ever can dare to even
think of commiting such crimes. Tabi Dubai 19 Mar, 2009 02:52 PM

Father, Mother & all other persons involved in this crime, should be
hanged till death that too in some public area. This will give a great
message to the other criminals.....Vijay Hyderabad 19 Mar, 2009 02:56
PM

this kind of acts should be condemned and the culprits should be
punished. Our laws has to be changed so that people will not hide
behind the loopholes and escape from punishment. I request the
concerned authorities to wake up and take action againist them without
wasting much time.rene fernandez bahrain 19 Mar, 2009 02:58 PM

with reference to the rape of women in India, what has L.K.Advani/
Sonia Gandhi done to change the law ? Advani wanted to bring in
tougher punishments to the rapists. Why did he not push for life
imprisnment ? This issue must be raised in this elections and vote
ONLY for the candidates promise to support this legislation. We must
try to stop crimes against women/children AJAY BADIYAL NOIDA 19 Mar,
2009 03:09 PM

incedences like this will destroy relationship of father and
daughter.hussain mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 03:09 PM

three of them should be hanged till death....but other than this our
police should start strict action/investigation against such type of
tantrik ; there are lots in india...Ahmed Sharif Dubai 19 Mar, 2009
03:12 PM

These joseph fritzls must be awarded deaths. what kind of world we are
living in, ladies please beware of outsiders as well as insiders. THE
WORLD HAS CHANGED A LOT. In the name of faith it is an insult to
religion by these creepy TANTRICS.Shabu Dubai 19 Mar, 2009 03:13 PM

This is relly Shamefull for all indians and we are sorry for the
victims and we want immidiate actian agains this bastard no need to
put him in jail for years. he should kill by stones in front of people
and should be live telecast on all chanells then in future any body
even don't think like this . He want more money for whome ???? and
it's my requset to indian Govt give Authority to Victim Girls for
giving punishment to that bloody Tantrik .Shabu Dubai 19 Mar, 2009
03:14 PM

This is really Shamefull for all indians and we are sorry for the
victims and we want immidiate action against this bastard no need to
put him in jail for years. he should be killed by stones in front of
people and should be live telecast on all chanells then in future any
body even don't think like this . He want more money for whome? and
it's my requset to indian Govt give Authority to Victim Girls for
giving punishment to that bloody Tantrik .AH Syndey 19 Mar, 2009 03:14
PM

I too have been dreaming of becoming wealthy for a long time. Does
this Tantrik also offer his daughter (or wife, depending upon who can
take it) for such services? When will people give up superstition in
India?sadeq Duabi 19 Mar, 2009 03:24 PM

Now we need to stop this type of crimes in our society, only possible
by beheading these criminals in front of public to make society aware
what'll happen before committing this type crimesAnonymously_Yours
Europe 19 Mar, 2009 03:28 PM

It is stunning that everyone seems to comment on how the accused party
should be dealt with. People have suggested overtly sadist cruelties
too, providing an insight into the natural mindset of the human
community. Oddly, no one seems to have mentioned any sort of monetary
help, psychological counseling or shelter and future support
commitment for the victims, one of whom happens to be at a tender age
below 18. Once again, it's exciting to note how frustrated and
carnally active the society is, given a chance to vent our anger, most
of us would turn into savage beasts to punish the guilty...yet few or
none would stand to help the deceasedShyam Noida 19 Mar, 2009 03:32 PM

The tantrik stuff has been added just to save the man from his crime.
It seems to be a ploy by his lawyer. I a sure there was no outsider to
instigate the accused.GSM MUMBAI 19 Mar, 2009 03:32 PM

Kill this man and tantrik. There is no other punishment for guys like
these. DEEPAK GHOSH FARIDABAD 19 Mar, 2009 03:41 PM

ALL THE THREE, THE TANTRIK,BUSINESSMAN AND HIS WIFE BE LINED UP IN
PUBLIC AND MUST BE ORDERED TO A FIRING SQUAD TO SHOOT THEM IN ONE GO
OR MUST BE HANGED IN PUBLIC.THIS MUST BE THE LAW OF OUR COUNTRY NOW.
EVEN RAPIST MUST BE HANGED,SHOT OR THEIR PRIVATE PART SHOULD BE CUT
OFF. THIS MUST BE THE LAW NOW.Illur Iqbal Bangalore 19 Mar, 2009 03:42
PM

Please do Insert a Burning Rod to the beloved Parents for doing this
CrimeRubi London 19 Mar, 2009 03:51 PM

What a shame!!I really feel sorry for the girl,this man should be
given such a punishment by law,that the whole world eyes will be open
and no one will dare to do this again after seeing the
punishment.sharda goregaon 19 Mar, 2009 03:56 PMcut his private part
completelyAnita Dsilva Dubai 19 Mar, 2009 04:06 PM

This is really a VERY SHAMEFUL act. Have we human beings lost our
moral values? to top it all, a Mother encouraging such an act gives me
goosebumps, a I am a mother of 2 girls myself but in my sane head I
would give up my life but save my children from such ordeal. This is
actually a SORRY state of today's world. GOD HELP US!!!SJ dubai 19
Mar, 2009 04:09 PM

I can only say that this is the result of getting in love with western
civilization...progress and modernization does not mean that we leave
our values & culture..incest is a normal thing in west as we all know
and sadly it is entering into our society just coz we feel that
whatever west does is good..we need soul searchingAmrit Lal Toppo
Ahmedabad 19 Mar, 2009 04:20 PM

This is absolutely shamful to the society,father is raping his own
daughters more than 3000 thousand time. he is not worthy to be called
father by his daughters. he should be punished. he has turned satan he
is no more human being. Amrit Lal Toppo Ahmedabad 19 Mar, 2009 04:20
PM

This kind of crimes should be dealt with only one kind of punishment.
Take them in full public view, cut the pvt part of this man and the
tantrik into pieces and offer it to the dogs!! Hang the lady! The
entire activity should be lively telecast to prevail deterrent for any
prospective criminal!!!Mohammed bombay 19 Mar, 2009 04:49 PM

Tantrik said and father raped his own daughter for 9 long years..WOW.
even hollywood can't make this kind of sense less Movie it could
happen only in indiaReader Pune 19 Mar, 2009 04:51
PMSHAMEFUL.........Asim Ali Khan Jeddah 19 Mar, 2009 04:54 PM

No need to produce them before the court. Straight hang them. Dont
give time to investigate. Both the parents should be hanged till
death.Clive Kuwait 19 Mar, 2009 05:02 PM

I agree that the faces of Such criminals have to be shown in the media
as soon as their crime is established. Even their names should be
shown in bold. And they should not be hanged immediately. They have to
be tortured for years so that they repent for their crimeSrikanth Bhat
Chennai 19 Mar, 2009 05:03 PM

Rape, molestation, child abuse and many such in-humane acts have been
hitting the headlines of late. The legal proceedings get dragged for
years owing to the loop holes in our legal system. Why doesn't our
judicial come out with a ruthless punishment as a reply to this
devilish act. Amputate hands, legs & organ and hang till death. Human
Rights may have their reservations on this, but HR is for Humans
(victims) and not for the devils (criminals).Srikanth Bhat Chennai 19
Mar, 2009 05:04 PM

I am at loss of words...on how to condemn this ...this what...my mind
goes blank on hearing acts like this what's wrong man...where is this
going...even if one person is doing this, -what are the reasons, how
can someone stoop so low -Is there something that can be done
here...punishing/killing them is just a reaction..how can it solve the
problem - Are they mentally so sick?? Manasakanthi, Konanakunte,
Bangalore 19 Mar, 2009 05:16 PM

Its disgraceful to the indian community and we feel sorry for the poor
girl who when thru this commotion all these years. People of strange
attitude are still in existence.Both the father and mother should be
punished and the punishment should be viewed in all the TV channels
(Breaking news). A new law should be framed for such people. There
might be still more People who are behaving similar to this and it
will teach them a lesson that they cant escape the law. Shaindil
bangalore 19 Mar, 2009 05:20 PM

The daughter and mother should have murdered this opportunistic and
dirty guy long back. If the tantric tells this guy to eat shit, will
he do that? This is the truth India 19 Mar, 2009 05:28 PM

Incest-raping your own kids- is rampant in India, rural and urban. It
has always been a 'family secret' where the mother actually provides
the daughter to her husband. Please do not blame the West, instead
praise them. They widely publicize any incest, whereas Indian
politicians and goons silence the victims. No one hears of their
cries, all pretend that everything is hunky dory in our nation. Wake
up, look around, there will always be examples right under your nose.
Why else to praise the West? because they teach our kids to have guts
to speak up. Ask any older gynecologist, they have been seeing this
for decades.GE Australia 19 Mar, 2009 05:56 PM

India is truly the rape capital of the world.sanjay dubai 19 Mar, 2009
06:01 PM

i am totally in favour of what rajeev from gurgaon has mentioned. it
will be a lesson for those cases which are not out in public
yet.jahangir houlader maldives 19 Mar, 2009 06:06 PM

I think the man should be handed over to the people and tell the mob o
do whatever they like to do.Muhammad MN 19 Mar, 2009 06:11 PM

This is shameful.Adnan Oman 19 Mar, 2009 06:35 PM

Isn't this unbelievable? The heinous act depicts the greed of an
mentally ill individual & to what extent he can fall for the sake of
his worldly desires. All three should be tortured to death for
resorting to one of the worst crime. They have not only ruined their
daughters life but also defamed the father - daughter relationship.
kumar mumbai 19 Mar, 2009 06:37 PM

Even the judiciary would shed tears for the innocent girls. The so
called business man and his wife have no place to live in the human
habituate and so is the tantrik. all this three should get the capital
punishment with no right to appeal. God knows how many people this
tantrik must have brain washed. The police should investigate this
angle too.GANI AHMED SHAIKH DUBAI 19 Mar, 2009 07:27 PM

this kind of people should be hanged in public, this so called
tantriks take people for a ride. COMMON FOLKS WE ARE IN MODERN WORLD
DON'T BELIEVE IN THIS THINGS.Sule Paritosh Plano 19 Mar, 2009 07:28 PM

please try to understand that Merely Beating a Single person wont stop
such activities from happening in future. A businessman has no
religion / ethics. His only intention is money. I also feel that his
Wife is equally responsible for the Crime. Please dont publish the
name of the culprit, as people can Backtrace to their daughters and
make their life miserable Agniyah Shaikh Sharjah 19 Mar, 2009 08:12 PM

International Women's Day was celebrated all over the world recently
with great pomp and show! In the heart of Mumbai these two girls
suffered meanwhile. And how many suffer daily in the same manner!
Girls must be given the courage to openly protest any wrong done to
them. The mother seem to be an impossible person- She should be given
the toughest sentence for her 'silence' and approval for this criminal
act.Abu Abdullah USA 19 Mar, 2009 08:35 PM

Absolutely appalling. What were these middle-aged "adults" thinking?
The Austrian "incest dad" was enough as a pervert in this
world.Tanveer London 19 Mar, 2009 08:37 PM

stupid comment from SJ, Dubai 'incest is a normal thing in west as we
all know and sadly it is entering into our society'. One must be an
idiot to thing incest is 'normal' in any society. In no society incest
is normal. Stop this hatred for west. By that logic, the 60 yr old and
the tantrik was influenced by the west to do such thing!!!!!! what a
laugh!!!! stop blaming the west. this things happens in any society
and we must admint that our indian society also has such incest,
though its not common. Most of the cases are suppressed because of
loss of family honor (the so-called izzat), reputation to the society/
comminuty/country etc.Somnath New York 19 Mar, 2009 09:02 PM

There is no real upliftment of women, such issues would have never
occurred if govt provided more jobs and education than making laws in
favour of women. The laws need to be gender neutral and govt should
promote more jobs and education for women and make them independent.
Govt's policies are just eye wash and at the ground level it never
reaches the general public.Raj Orlando, Florida 19 Mar, 2009 10:01 PM

Media is more active nowadays and due to which more cases will come
out like this incidence. There may be many more incidences like this
in India but victim do not come out. My suggestion : every school must
be visited by two to three psycratist, once in 3 months where all the
students are being checked for any personal problems. These problems
could be rape, bitting by parents, torture, children are having lack
of attention in class, poor health effecting their school activities.
Such psychartist prepare report on each student with all facts and
suggest right remedy or if necessary police complain. This kind of
routine check will encourage children to come out with the fact of any
kind of personal suffering or any kind of psychological problems
disturbing them. Prevention is better for children and for their
natural growth. Nitasha Chennai 19 Mar, 2009 10:33 PM

The lack of education causes people to behave in such a hienous
way.Can you imagine any sane,sensible family consulting a 'tantrik' &
not straight away delivering him to the nearest police station when he
comes up with this vile remedy?I salute the girl for having the
courage in going against her parents & protecting her
sister.Unfortunately,it will leave severe scars on her mind which no
punishment to the parents & the great tanrik can cure.Abhay Dang
Delhi, India 19 Mar, 2009 10:35 PM

Religion does destroy common sense.Abhay Dang Delhi, India 19 Mar,
2009 10:38 PM

One day a woman commits suicide because her daughter refused to study.
And now this. Really, Indians have lost their brains!!Manoj Gupta
Bangalore 19 Mar, 2009 10:52 PM

Oh My God!!! It has happened in India also!!!Shame shame.kg india 20
Mar, 2009 12:18 AM

Another Fritzel!!!kg india 20 Mar, 2009 12:20 AM

Another Fritzel!!!SUMIT DELHI 20 Mar, 2009 12:21 AMwell this is
disturbing thing but do not over highlight this story otherwise that
will give a big impact on father and daughter relationship
universal.amit california 20 Mar, 2009 12:23 AM

Incest laws in the west are more stringent that in the East. In the
west - marrying a first cousin in illegal, it happens in India all the
time. As far as this case - it is a shameful act. The government
should do something about this quick, hopefully they are able to get
the case to hearing before the girl dies of old age...pathetic..monika
glasgow 20 Mar, 2009 12:47 AM

The real culprits in cases like these are indian wives cum
mothers,they have only one mission in their lives which is to keep
evil husbands happy,he might be an addict,a convict,an abuser,but she
will always protect his image and think she will go to heaven if she
does his seva,such women can sacrifice anything even children ,and
because of them india now has a land of courageous abusers who take
pride in their sins, I am a women and I am ashamed of what happened
just because of a coward mother,perhaps time has come to teach all
wives,bhaus,daughters,the real meaning of seva and sacrifice.We have
to stop blaming literacy for everything, our values are corrupted, and
noone can change values,only parents can. So lets be honest with
eachother and be brave enough to stop men when they do wrong not
support them when they speak ,behave,act,wrong and abuse defenceless
children. Sandeep London 20 Mar, 2009 12:58 AM

I have no words...people are so greedy for money & sex that they dont
even see if that's outsider or their own daughter. Religion got
nothing to do with this nor education its an individual and not about
a country, city, religion nor eastern or western countries. People
like them should not be hanged coz that would be too easy...cut their
private part that's the best option & that should be enforced as
global law...shame what a sick human being.Raghunathan Sharjah, UAE 20
Mar, 2009 01:12 AM

I read all the comments. I have no words to say. I am feeling so
shameful and angered by the act of these three bastards. Even a
punishment of death will not solve this issue. This man (father)
should witness his wife being raped by the Tantric. Tantric should
witness his wife being raped by the businessman and the businessman
should pay him 1 Rupee as the cost of the action. Only this could be
the worst of unimaginable punishment to all the three. In India??????
which taught the value of Astrology and all the other remedial
measures to cure the problems by prayers?????????? Where is God?????
Where are these insane people???? All my friends and my family are
very upset and sad. What will happen to these girls? Will anyone marry
them? Can they live a moderate genuine life hereafter? God only can
answer and save their lives. I and my family and all my friends prayed
for them this evening. May God show them a better life from this
evening. Raghunathan, Sharjah.SALMAN RIYADH 20 Mar, 2009 02:15 AM

PRAY TO ONE GOD''ALLAH"WHO CREATE WORLD AND HUMAN NATURE.....ASK HELP
FROM ALLAHsaad uddin saudi arabia 20 Mar, 2009 02:15 AM

dear sir, through your esteemed daily i want to convey my feeling like
any other value loving indians. India is known for its cultural and
religious values across the world but the reality is,as the Mumbai
businessman's case shows that we are deviating very fast to an unknown
limit of moral devastation for which unbridled media is responsible to
a large extent.Sexual harassmment has become regular appearences in
the news papers.And I believe the cases behind the screen are
certainly larger than the noticed ones.So to give a halt or at least
to minimise this kind of heinious crimes the law making agencies
should amend the existing laws towards some tougher ones and convicts
are to be punished puclicly. yours smartindian US 20 Mar, 2009 02:51
AM

Parents and Tantrik must to be killed in public. Freddie Pereira
Sydney 20 Mar, 2009 04:41 AM

This is Insane, After Slum Dog's success all over the world...this
story is very shocking. What has happened to all the so called "Indain
Traditional Culture" which is always Portrayed as a Big Strength
compared to the rest of the world. I am ashamed to call myself an
Indian after this devestating act by the Indian Parents ! Kishore
California, USA 20 Mar, 2009 05:56 AM

The father, mother and Tantrik trio should be shot dead on the
spot. .Derek Canada 20 Mar, 2009 06:34 AM

Surprising none has written that it is the influence of western
culture that is the cause of this heinous crime. Are you guys
surprised that this happens in India too?Suhail USA 20 Mar, 2009 06:34
AM

what a narrow minded and stupid guy. No wonder his business failed,
thomson Abudhabi 20 Mar, 2009 07:19 AMshoot the both stupid husband
and stupid mother&tanric in the public.Crescentman Assam 20 Mar, 2009
09:37 AM

People believe in fast bucks rather than hard work. This mindset has
been taken advantage by jothids and tantriks which needs to be
arrested immediately. Behind everything, the economic considerations
are the root cause. I appeal to the Govt. to come up with
comprehensive, transparent and inclusive 33% reservations to women
immediately without any delay.pankaj khatwani china 20 Mar, 2009 09:37
AM

india police should be very hard with this type of tantrik!!!! and
this type of parents if they dont know meaning of children ,why were
they born , she is so great she geve birth to her doughter and felt
pain for 9 monthskiran pune 20 Mar, 2009 09:54 AM

Dear folk why dont u see whats going under your skin . recently there
was a news of a female australian teacher who torchered their male
student for having sex for marks ?? where r u staying ????archana
delhi 20 Mar, 2009 10:05 AM

It is shame on us ..such an incident is happening in India now.Shame
on such fathers and the co-supporters.He should be punished and
sentenced to death so that others learn.Vipin Chennai 20 Mar, 2009
11:01 AM

The only way to stop rape crimes in India is not by just bringing
those case into light and imprision them that to for how many years
4-6 max.They wont pay nor such crimes can ever be stopped. If the
government and judicial system is realy looking for an answer to stop
then Death sentence have to be imposed for this crime. I tell you
there will be more than 100 case which will fall under this but even
if it becomes 1000 justice must be served. DEATH CAN ONLY DEAL WITH
RAPE CHARGES. People fighting for human rights must understand for
what they are fighting for and most importantly for whom.I hope some
day the judical system of our country will pass with LAW without
debating in our parliment.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinions/4285650.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Businessman-raped-daughter-for-9-years/articleshow/4285650.cms

bademiyansubhanallah

unread,

Mar 24, 2010, 7:17:43 AM3/24/10

Jains anguished at animal sacrifice at Girinar Hills
By Our Staff Correspondent

MYSORE, JAN. 20. Members of Sri Digambara Jain Samaj here have
expressed anguish over reports of animal sacrifice at Girinar Hills in
Gujarat, which is associated with Bhagawan Sri Neminatha Tirthankara.

The community members observed a fast on Thursday to protest the cult
of animal sacrifice at Girinar Hills, which is gaining in prominence
in recent times.

Girinar Hills is a sacred pilgrim centre for Jains for it was here
that Sri Neminatha attained his salvation having preached non-violence
and compassion. It is customary for the Jain community members to
visit the spot at least once in their lifetime.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2005/01/21/stories/2005012114200300.htm

Out on a mission

As she takes yet another daring step, this time to set right the
disharmonious political system of Assam, Indira Goswami, the
celebrated writer, talks about her experiences to NITI PANTA.

BE IT a life threat for her controversial writings or a face-to-face
encounter with the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), nothing
daunts this intrepid explorer to continue writing on social or
political issues that the State has been grappling with for so many
years. One of the most celebrated writers in the vernacular and a
Jnanpith Award winner, Indira Goswami, talks about her experiences as
she takes yet another daring step to contribute to solving a
disharmonious political system of Assam.

Q: You are penning a book on the United Liberation Front of Assam
(ULFA). How did the idea hit you?

A: I accidentally visited the ULFA transit camp around 12 years ago.
Since I've had a great association with students all my life, some of
the students in Assam invited me for a talk by Bishnu Rabha, where I
discovered that those students were ULFA members. I was also invited
to visit their transit camp, which terrified me at first but I was
touched to see them involved in welfare activities despite having
taken up arms. A few days later, I learnt that all the boys I met were
killed in a military encounter, except for one, who was imprisoned and
continued to write to me. This incident inspired me to pen a book on
their life, which is still in progress.

Q: From a caste riddled world in "The Shadow of Kamakhya", and an
impassioned plea against animal sacrifice in "Chhinamasta" to life of
ULFA militants. It's a complete transition.

A: Most of my writings have a humanist theme. Animal sacrifice has
been an age-old tradition in Assam and surprisingly no one has ever
protested against such gruesome practices in the name of religion.
There was a hue and cry when I wrote against such an inhuman practice.
Although the priests of the Kamakhya temple protested the theme of my
novel and one of my old publishers even refused to publish my book, I
had the support of a large section of Assamese society and people like
Anuradha Barpujari - editor of a weekly. ULFA too has been a serious
problem in Assam for 25 years and there has been so much bloodshed. We
Assamese have witnessed a lot of killing in our State and I personally
have lost some of my colleagues and a close friend. This has to end
somewhere. All that is required is awareness among people which can be
effectively brought about by writing on such social and political
issues.

Q: You now play an intermediary between the Centre and ULFA.

A: It was a personal desire to help in this situation and if this one
step could change things I was most willing to take the plunge. I
don't like to be termed as a `mediator' but have simply requested the
government to talk to the militant group and my role ends here. Q:
There have been several attempts for negotiations earlier. Sanjay
Hazarika and even singer Bhupen Hazarika have sent appeals but in
vain.

A: It is for the first time in 25 years that ULFA has agreed for talks
with the Centre. I am not aware of the strategy of other people or do
not know why attempts of people like Sanjay Hazarika or Bhupenda
failed to show results. I saw ULFA Chief, Paresh Barua, who approached
me for the same - probably because I have known them for some time
now.

Q: Do you think your effort will bring results? Is your strategy any
different?

A: My strategy is a simple appeal to the government written after
consulting senior professors and my colleagues in Delhi University and
it requests the government to invite ULFA for negotiation.

Q: Are you positive about the negotiations taking place? How has the
government reacted to your plea?

A: The State government has agreed to support me, though the Centre's
approval is still awaited. Since ULFA is ready to negotiate it makes
things easier for the government. Q: Don't you think regional writing
is yet to make a mark in Indian literature?

Well regional writing has come a long way though it's still underrated
by Indian publishers. I can vouch that there are any number of
regional books through which publishers can popularise good writing.

I personally feel that English writers in India don't cover the
experience of real India. Without knowing the regional languages they
cannot write with a true sense of feeling.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 13, 2005

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2005/01/13/stories/2005011301350300.htm

Cuttack temples set to restart animal sacrifice
Correspondent

At least two goats are sacrificed every year, they say

Sacred places are turning into slaughterhouses, says social
organisation

CUTTACK: Notwithstanding the fact that animal sacrifices have stopped
in all Cuttack temples during Durga puja, the oldest Kali temple in
Bidyadharpur locality of Cuttack city is all set to restart the age-
old practice from this year.

“At least five persons have wished to offer sacrificial goats at the
altar of the Goddess on Friday night when the rituals of Kali puja
would begin around 12 O’clock midnight”, said the temple priest
Santosh Kumar Chatterjee.

Kali puja in Bidyadharpur is believed to be the oldest in Cuttack and
arguably began much before the Durga puja concept invaded into the
millennium city.

Like Durga puja, Kali puja too began here by Bengali communities.

Age-old practice

Following instructions from the district collector in 2003, the age-
old practice to propitiate the Goddess here had reportedly stopped. In
fact the local administration had claimed that no animal sacrifices
are done at any of the places of worship in the city.

But Chattarjee who has been associated with the Kali temple of
Bidyadharpur since 1973 pointed out that although, the number of the
goats sacrificed at the altar had reduced marginally, the practice was
never discontinued. “At least two goats of the local puja committee
are sacrificed every year”, he said.

Chatterjee said never ever the district administration has stopped us
from doing so. We have also not received any communiqué form the local
police station in this regard. “In fact a senior officer of the local
police station offered a goat for sacrifice last year which has
encouraged other common people to come forward to do the same”, he
asserted. Local puja committee head Mahendra Kumar Panda when
contacted said: “animal sacrifices in the Kali temple here is an age-
old practice and it has been continuing for the past 500 years”. How
can we stop it now, he asked?

Police denial

But the Chauliaganj police station inspector S.N. Behera when
contacted, he claimed that animal sacrifices are not done at
Bidyadharpur temple. It has been stopped since long, he said.

Meanwhile, People for Animal, a State-level social organisation which
has been campaigning against the animal sacrifices in places of
worship has taken strong note of the ill-practice. “In the name of
animal sacrifices to propitiate the Goddess, the sacred places of
shrines are turning out to slaughter houses which is sending a wrong
message in the society”, said Sanjib Das, the member secretary of the
social organisation.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/10/stories/2007111058300300.htm

Karnataka - Bidar
‘No’ to animal sacrifice sparks violence in Bidar
Staff Correspondent

People prevented from sacrificing goat

Four police personnel injured in stone throwing
Village residents allege police

high-handedness

BIDAR: Violence erupted after a few people were prevented from
performing animal sacrifice on the premises of a temple in Karpakpalli
village of Humnabad taluk in Bidar district on Monday.

The police said that they had prevented the people from sacrificing a
goat on the Gali Maramma temple premises. The ritual was part of a
three-day “jatra”. Irked by this, they started throwing stones at the
police. The police lobbed teargas shells and resorted to lathi-charge
to disperse the crowd. Four police personnel were injured and two
police vans damaged in the stone-throwing incident.

Superintendent of Police A. Subramanyeswara Rao said here on Tuesday
that the police had not fired in the air to disperse the mob. No
arrests had been made in connection with the violence. But cases had
been registered against more than 50 persons. The situation in the
village was under control, he added.

Additional police personnel from Humnabad, Bidar and Chittaguppa have
been deployed as a precautionary measure. Police officers have been
stationed there to assess the situation.

Deputy Superintendent of Police P.A. Korwar held a meeting in
Karpakpalli on Tuesday, urging the residents to maintain the peace.

The village residents said that they had not performed any animal
sacrifice. They alleged that the police had stopped them from
performing puja. The police had resorted to lathi-charge unnecessarily
and even women had been beaten up, they added.

About a month ago, some associations appealed to the people of the
village not to perform animal sacrifice during the “jatra”.

They had also sought the help of the police in this regard.

The police held meetings with the people of the village and asked them
not to perform animal sacrifice. The local police were told to take
steps to put an end to animal sacrifice in the village.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/13/stories/2008021356960400.htm

Opinion - Letters to the Editor
Ban animal slaughter

Sir, — It has become a fashion to condemn sacrifice of animals in
yajnas and temples. This is looked at by some groups as cruelty to
animals. If the whole country becomes vegetarian and adopts ahimsa as
a policy such a stand is justifiable. On the other hand, when millions
of animals are reared to be killed for being consumed as food, it is
sheer hypocrisy to criticise animal sacrifice.

There is greater need to condemn seafood export and meat export,
killing of cows and beef-eating. If animal sacrifice is done as per
religious beliefs, it should not be condemned unless we ban all animal
slaughter for any other purpose.

V.V.S. Sarma,
Bangalore

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/07/01/stories/2002070100021006.htm

Should we ban animal sacrifice in temples?

DO WE need to ban the practice offering animals and birds as sacrifice
during prayer in Hindu temples?

Does the State have the authority to police and ban animal sacrifices
of one religious group while allowing another to perform offering of
animals at prayer time.

Lord Krishna while listing the types of devotees based on the kind of
offering/kind of rituals one performs categorises them into (1) satvic
(peaceful, compassionate and calm), (2) rajasic (aggressive and
restive) and (3) tamasic devotees (very selfish and not concerned
about hurting others for one's own joy) based on the sankalpa
(intention), devatha invoked (name and form of the god invoked),
offering to the Lord and the method of prayer.

Not all devotion is satvic; therefore not all offerings are satvic.
From time immemorial the practice of offering animals during worship
as sacrifice is prevalent.

If one is allowed to kill a bird or an animal for his personal
consumption, there can be no extra harm to the animal or bird if it is
killed for the sake of offering.

The only thing that must be debated is the sensibilities of the satvic
person, who may be offering his prayers at that time, being offended
by the offering of animals or birds by those who choose a non-satvic
method based on his sankalpa and nature.

This is certainly very important. Just as smoking in public places is
banned, offering animal sacrifice in temples where predominant style
of praying is satvic is perfectly in order and needs to be done.

Just as certain places are reserved exclusively for smokers, certain
temples where traditionally animal sacrifices are done should be
allowed to continue the practice.

We should accept the fact that it takes all kinds of people to make
the world and we should frame rules and regulations taking this fact
into consideration.

If persons from other faiths can offer animals, if we can display
skinned animals sometimes with its tail intact in meat shops in public
shopping area in villages and small towns, how can we prevent animal
sacrifice in village temples where it is a time immemorial tradition?
What is necessary is proper regulation so that the majority of the
temples where the persons offering prayers choosing the satvic method
are free from animal sacrifices and allow the practice to continue
where traditionally it is much prevalent.

Hinduism is an all-inclusive way of life and therefore cannot exclude
non-satvic methods of offering prayers.

MANIKAM RAMASWAMI

http://www.hindu.com/op/2003/09/09/stories/2003090900130300.htm

Sacrificing an age-old practice

According to popular belief, the animal or bird sacrifice is only a
symbol of their `Nerthi Kadan' (thanksgiving), which, if not
fulfilled, would be construed as `unpardonable'.

THOUGH NOT far away from the Temple City, the Pandi Muneeswarar
temple, `Pandikovil' in local parlance, is located in an area free
from the humdrum of the urban life. Surrounded by lush green
paddyfields, an eerie silence prevails in and around the temple
complex now despite hundreds of devotees continuing to throng the
shrine.

"Animal or bird sacrifice is not allowed here!" screams a notice
board, put up by the temple administration at the entrance to the
complex, which had been a scene of ritual killings for decades
together.

Some of the devotees, who shun slitting or hacking animals and birds,
continue with the symbolic puja by offering pongal, flowers and money
to the deity. Still many are at a loss to understand how they can
propitiate the temple deities -- Pandi Muneeswarar, Andi and
Samayakaruppasamy -- without offering them goats or roosters.

Till August 30, scores of goats and fowls were sacrificed,
particularly on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays by the devotees who
thronged the shrine from different parts of the State, including towns
and villages in Madurai, Tiruchi, Virudhunagar, Theni, Ramanathapuram,
Sivaganga and Chennai districts, as a mark of fulfilment of their vow
to the deities. The blood-splattered mud floor around the Pandi
Muneeswarar temple stands a testimony to the age-old practice.

Now that the ritual has come to a grinding halt, the crowd of devotees
comprising mainly small and medium farmers and farm workers has also
grown thinner, thanks to the Government's order on August 28 banning
animal and bird sacrifice in temples. As it has been publicised, the
immediate provocation for the ban was the sacrifice of 500 buffaloes
at a village shrine in Tiruchi district recently. The Chief Minister,
Jayalalithaa, has written to the district authorities, asking them to
prevent the killing of animals and birds in the name of seeking the
blessings of gods. Calling for stringent action against the
`violators', she has pointed out that the Tamil Nadu Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals Act, 1950, and its subsequent amendment, also
banned such cruel acts on the temple premises.

The Government clamped the ban close on the heels of the Madras High
Court ordering notices to the Home Secretary and the DGP on a public
interest petition seeking the ban.

But ritual killings are not confined to the Pandi Muneeswarar Temple
alone, though it is a well-known fact that animal and bird sacrifice
is common in the State, more particularly in the southern districts.
It is practised in other parts of the country and prevalent among
different religious sects in many parts of the subcontinent from time
immemorial, historians point out.

The village deities, otherwise known as `folk gods', with regional
character, are installed mostly in roofless outdoor temples. As many
of these deities attract people in the lower strata of society, the
devotees have a `direct access' to them.

Unlike classical temples, where pujas are held as per `agamas', meat,
cigar and liquor are permitted for worship here.

As the relationship between the devotees and the deities is `personal'
without even a minimum role for intermediaries including the temple
priests, people believe that their god will help them fulfil any wish.
Childless couple seek the deity's grace to bless them with children
while unmarried persons plead for fixing elusive weddings.

Solution is also sought for family problems arising out of socio-
economic conditions. According to popular belief, the animal or bird
sacrifice is only a symbol of their `Nerthi Kadan' (thanksgiving),
which, if not fulfilled, would be construed as `unpardonable'.

Animal sacrifice, followed by common dining, is part and parcel of the
worship at the folk shrines. Till the enforcement of the ban, if
affordable sections sacrificed goats, the poor and downtrodden offered
the less expensive roosters.

Separate enclosures were installed near the temple for cooking the
carcasses returned to the devotees after the sacrifice was performed.

However, the head and a leg of the goat would be handed over to the
butcher, who slaughtered the animal. A fixed fee was also collected
from the devotees for chopping off the heads of goats, besides
skinning and de-boning the meat.

The Government's action has been given a new twist as it has come
close on the heels of its decision to support the demand for a ban on
cow slaughter. Several opposition parties have dubbed the move as yet
another proof of the ruling party's `pro-Hindutva slant', even while
systematically depriving the Dalits and backward communities of their
age-old cultural rights.

The ban will only pave the way for performing the sacrifice
clandestinely within four walls, they claim, citing the example of a
ruling party MLA, who reportedly offered `annadhanam' with the meat of
goats slaughtered near his residence in Dindigul district.

But the ban has been hailed by animal and bird lovers, apart from some
religious personalities, who claim that no book says ritual killing is
religious.

But there are many, who believe that the age-old custom will disappear
only through persuasion and education rather than through an official
ban.

S.DORAIRAJ

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 08, 2003

Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU
RIVERS: JULY 01, 2001

Requiem for a river
M. T. Vasudevan Nair

The author is a winner of the Jnanpith award and is a Malayalam film-
maker and writer.

When the bridge across the River Bharatapuzha was completed in 1954,
the late Edasseri who had blazed literary trails with his poetic
force, looked at it with wonder and later wrote the poem "Kuttipuram
Bridge". It is a famous work, often quoted in the context of the eco-
aesthetics of Malayalam poetry. The poet marvelled at the engineering
skill. The bridge cost twenty-three lakhs of rupees, a formidable sum
at that time. He could visualise the thousands of vehicles about to
fly through the new highway. But he did not conceal his subtle fear
that the serenity of the riverside village might vanish in the near
future. The poem concluded on an apprehensive note:

S. Ramesh Kurup

"Oh Mother Perar, will you also change
Into a miserable gutter eventually?"

Perar or Nila (pet names of Bharatapuzha) did not turn into a gutter.
The poet never foresaw the calamity of sand-mining and he could not
imagine it as the desert strip, which it is now. Huge thickets grow on
the small mounds in the sand bed in several places. One can even see a
large casuarina grove right in the middle of the river between
Kuttipuram and Tirunavaya. They are partially hidden only during the
few days of heavy monsoon.

The river had inspired many of our major poets like Vallathol, P.
Kunhiraman Nair and Edasseri. For the commoners it was the sacred
Dakshina Ganga. Vallathol established the illustrious Kerala Kala
Mandalam on its banks in the village of Cheruthuruthy. A whole lot of
writers, singers and Kathakali artistes grew up in the villages close
to the river from Kalpathy to Ponani. So the river was often described
as the cultural stream of Malabar.

I have seen the terrifying form of the river during the floods of 1942
and 1944. We were safe in the ancestral house as it was built on an
elevated area beyond the stretch of paddy fields. The elders said the
worst flood was in 1924 when waters touched the foot hills.

The flood of 1944 is vivid in my memory. I was sent to the provision
shop to get something in the afternoon and instead of the short cut
through the fields I returned by the road bordering the river. The
river was alarmingly full. Elders were watching from several points.
Somebody shouted to me: "Run, boy, run. Any moment the water may rush
in through a breach." I ran at a terrific speed. By the time I reached
the steps to the house, water had gushed into the field. This flood
lasted for four days. There were so many relatives in the house who
had vacated from their riverside houses.

R. Prasanna Venkatesh/Wilderfile

We all took our daily baths from the steps below the main gate. During
the heavy monsoon the river hissed during the days and roared at
night, threatening to cut across and overflow. Yet we were not afraid
of the river. The dark misty mountains in the distance and the
ascending rolls of thick rain clouds were giving the necessary
warnings. Of course the flood damaged the dwelling of low lying areas.
Plantains and vegetables of those greedy farmers who encroached the
riverbed and did unauthorised cultivation, suffered. The villagers
generally kept the flat lands on either side of the river as flood-
plains. This minimised the force of the flood and incidentally
collected and stored large quantities of fertile top soil.

Bharatapuzha once boasted of a water transport system from Palakkad to
Ponani. Twin boats carrying agricultural produce to Ponani port used
to halt for the night at our ferry point. The oarsmen cooked their
food on the banks and rested till daybreak. From our courtyard we
could hear their friendly quarrels late in the night. An occasional
Mopla ballad also floated in the night air.

The whole village, except the very old, took their bath in the river
during summer. The water in the tanks was not good enough while
compared to the crystal clear running water, even though it was not
deep. The families without their own wells made their private water
holes in the riverbed for potable water.

During the summer, guests and relatives came to all the upper middle
class house from distant villages or towns like Calicut or Trichur.
For the adolescent males it was a festive occasion to watch discreetly
the sophisticated maidens chaperoned by elders going to certain
protected areas of the river for their evening ablutions.

The cattle also enjoyed a bath in the river - there were areas marked
for cattle - after a hot day's toil. If you could drive the cattle to
the river without their taking a bite from the paddy fields on either
side of the bund, then the grownups deemed you fit to enter the farm
work. (If you could read Ezhuthachan's Ramayanam without faltering,
your Malayalam education was complete!)

For me, the moonlit riverbed in the summer is a distant, but vivid
dream. We were never allowed to go there as it was a favourite
playground for the celestials. Villagers who got down at Pallipuram
Railway Station from a night train had to be careful while crossing
the river. If you did not disturb them, they would not bother you.
That was the perfect understanding between divine beings and mortals.

K. Ananthan

Our family deity was in Kodikunnath Temple, six kilometres away across
the river. We all believed in a legend that at some time in the past
there was only a poor widow and three children in our house. She used
to keep cows and every morning she would take the milk to the temple.
In return she got enough cooked rice for the day. Once the river was
full and the boatman did not dare to make it across. The widow
returned and told the children that there would not be any rice till
the river subsided. She gave boiled milk to the children and put them
to bed. At midnight someone knocked on the front door and she opened
it. There was an old woman on the door step all covered up and
drenched. The nocturnal visitor placed a brass vessel full of rice in
front of the widow and commanded: "Wake the children and feed them!"

Then the figure vanished. After the flood receded, on the fourth day
the widow went to the temple with the usual milk. She had kept the
rice vessel also with her to discuss the incident with the priest. The
priest was astonished. The vessel had been missing from the sanctum
sanctorum for the last three days.

So we all grew up loving and adoring the Mother Goddess who once
brought rice to our hungry ancestor.

We have a grandmother too, the mother of Kodikkunnath Goddess. She is
in the temple Muthassiar Kavu (grandmother's temple) near Pattambi.

According to one legend the Grandmother Goddess and her three
beautiful daughters (including the mother of Kodikkunnath) were
strolling along the river bed on a summer night. They saw a dance
festival by the Harijans and the youngest daughter was so carried away
by it, that she refused to go along when it was time to leave. The
mother ordered her to be with the Harijans and perform as their
guardian deity. This is the popular belief on the origin of Kanakkar
Kavu (Kanakkar is a sect of Harijans).

On another occasion the two sisters quarrelled after witnessing the
ritual of an animal sacrifice. As the younger one was so much
engrossed in the gory scene, the elder one parted company and settled
down in Kodikkunnath. The younger sister shifted to Kodungallur where
blood sacrifices were a common ritual until the immediate past.

Coming to the present, hundreds of lorries now wait in queue at every
point of access in every Panchayat all along the river. Roads are laid
right into the midrib of the river for quick mining and loading. The
thickets have grown into mini jungles in many places. They shield the
gamblers during the day and the illicit distillers at night.

It is not an unusual spectacle now in April and May to see, while
travelling through some villages by the river, long queues of women
with their coloured plastic pots waiting patiently for the water
lorry. The sub-soil water has receded so much that the wells on the
river belt have gone dry.

The river Bharatapuzha set the stage for many battles and historical
spectacles like Mamankam in the past. Noisy scenes are enacted even
now on the riverbed over territorial rights of mining and loading and
validity of official licenses. Long rows of heavy lorries block every
access to the river. You can no longer get a panoramic view of the
river. Instead, it is a vast scattering of mining pits.

To us, the river was another benevolent Mother Goddess. She discreetly
guarded our intimate dreams. Her deep chasms painfully received the
frustrations and shame of some of the erratic children. The departed
dear ones accepted the rituals of our obeisance under her watchful
eyes and left peacefully for their heavenly abodes.

The river which has often inspired me and which has witnessed my
growing up, affectionately tolerating my contradictions within, is
breathing her last.

I feel one of my filial bonds is about to be cruelly snapped. The
village is losing a colourful historical past, a nostalgic glory and a
cultural legacy. Yes, we have lost all of them, almost.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0107/01070480.htm

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2003/09/08/stories/2003090800700100.htm

A case for satvic food
CHENNAI, OCT. 15. How can food have any relevance to a person's
ultimate goal?

According to scriptures, eating is akin to conducting a homa, and
technically we are observing vaishvanara yagna when we are consuming a
meal. It is in the pit of the stomach that hunger, a sensation akin to
fire, is produced. This can be quenched only when we partake of food.
However, the nature of the ingredients of the food is important and
careful adherence to vegetarian meal is more in consonance with a
seeker's spiritual journey. In the Ramayana, sage Viswamitra sought
from Dasarata the assistance of Rama and Lakshmana to protect a yagna
from the evil forces which were showering entrails into the
sacrificial fire. Similarly, we are guilty of indulging in meaty food
in our daily diet which is but a reflection of the evil forces in our
spiritual life, said Sri Vidyasagara Madhva Theertha in his address at
the Indian Vegetarian Congress.

One should resist the temptation of eating meat, polluting the system
in the name of nutrition. Don't the Vedas sanction animal sacrifice,
some ask. Saint Madhwacharya argues against superficial study of
scriptures and prescribes analysis by exclusive application of "maha
vyakarna," the superior grammar. It will then be found that the cow
that is to be sacrificed is nothing more than a composition of flour
and ghee (clarified butter). Detailed analyses are found in the works
of the exponents of the Madhwa school of thought, such as Sri Vijendra
Theertha and Sri Narayana Panditacharya.

Some argue that whatever is offered to God should be consumed by the
seekers. Since the Vedas sanction animal sacrifice, consumption of
animal flesh is considered a just course of action by some. A few
others compromise when caught in a dilemma over meat — while adopting
animal sacrifice at yagnas, they are strict vegetarians in their food
habits. However, Sri Madhwacharya argues that there cannot be two sets
of rules for yagnas. The sacrificial fires at the visible homakunda
and the invisible fire pit (the stomach) are in principle the same.
The Vedas are for the uplift of people and as such they will not
advocate anything retrograde in a person's quest for liberation. To
the evolved, there is no dichotomy.

Over eons, violent modes of worship have been replaced with more
satvic methods. The scriptures have to be read and interpreted
carefully in both letter and spirit, and harmful practices should be
given up.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 15, 2004

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2004/10/15/stories/2004101500070900.htm

Beef eating: strangulating history

While one must respect the sentiments of those who worship cow and
regard her as their mother, to take offence to the objective study of
history just because the facts don't suit their political calculations
is yet another sign of a society where liberal space is being
strangulated by the practitioners of communal politics. [text Tag=blue-
tint][/Text]PROF. D. N. JHA, a historian from Delhi University, had
been experiencing the nightmares of `threats to life' from anonymous
callers who were trying to prevail upon him not to go ahead with the
publication of his well researched work, Holy Cow: Beef in Indian
Dietary Traditions.

As per the reports it is a work of serious scholarship based on
authentic sources in tune with methods of scientific research in
history. The book demonstrates that contrary to the popular belief
even today a large number of Indians, the indigenous people in
particular and many other communities in general, consume beef
unmindful of the dictates of the Hindutva forces.

It is too well known to recount that these Hindutva forces confer the
status of mother to the cow. Currently 72 communities in Kerala - not
all of them untouchables - prefer beef to the expensive mutton and the
Hindutva forces are trying to prevail upon them to stop the same.

Not tenable

To begin with the historian breaks the myth that Muslim rulers
introduced beef eating in India. Much before the advent of Islam in
India beef had been associated with Indian dietary practices. Also it
is not at all tenable to hold that dietary habits are a mark of
community identity.

A survey of ancient Indian scriptures, especially the Vedas, shows
that amongst the nomadic, pastoral Aryans who settled here, animal
sacrifice was a dominant feature till the emergence of settled
agriculture. Cattle were the major property during this phase and they
offered the same to propitiate the gods. Wealth was equated with the
ownership of the cattle.

Many gods such as Indra and Agni are described as having special
preferences for different types of flesh - Indra had weakness for
bull's meat and Agni for bull's and cow's. It is recorded that the
Maruts and the Asvins were also offered cows. In the Vedas there is a
mention of around 250 animals out of which at least 50 were supposed
to be fit for sacrifice and consumption. In the Mahabharata there is a
mention of a king named Rantideva who achieved great fame by
distributing foodgrains and beef to Brahmins. Taittiriya Brahman
categorically tells us: `Verily the cow is food' (atho annam via gauh)
and Yajnavalkya's insistence on eating the tender (amsala) flesh of
the cow is well known. Even later Brahminical texts provide the
evidence for eating beef. Even Manusmriti did not prohibit the
consumption of beef.

As a medicine

In therapeutic section of Charak Samhita (pages 86-87) the flesh of
cow is prescribed as a medicine for various diseases. It is also
prescribed for making soup. It is emphatically advised as a cure for
irregular fever, consumption, and emaciation. The fat of the cow is
recommended for debility and rheumatism.

With the rise of agricultural economy and the massive transformation
occurring in society, changes were to be brought in in the practice of
animal sacrifice also. At that time there were ritualistic practices
like animal sacrifices, with which Brahmins were identified. Buddha
attacked these practices. There were sacrifices, which involved 500
oxen, 500 male calves, 500 female calves and 500 sheep to be tied to
the sacrificial pole for slaughter. Buddha pointed out that aswamedha,
purusmedha, vajapeya sacrifices did not produce good results.
According to a story in Digha Nikaya, when Buddha was touring Magadha,
a Brahmin called Kutadanta was preparing for a sacrifice with 700
bulls, 700 goats and 700 rams. Buddha intervened and stopped him. His
rejection of animal sacrifice and emphasis on non-injury to animals
assumed a new significance in the context of new agriculture.

The threat from Buddhism

The emphasis on non-violence by Buddha was not blind or rigid. He did
taste beef and it is well known that he died due to eating pork.
Emperor Ashok after converting to Buddhism did not turn to
vegetarianism. He only restricted the number of animals to be killed
for the royal kitchen.

So where do matters change and how did the cow become a symbol of
faith and reverence to the extent of assuming the status of
`motherhood'? Over a period of time mainly after the emergence of
Buddhism or rather as an accompaniment of the Brahminical attack on
Buddhism, the practices started being looked on with different
emphasis. The threat posed by Buddhism to the Brahminical value system
was too severe. In response to low castes slipping away from the grip
of Brahminism, the battle was taken up at all the levels. At
philosophical level Sankara reasserted the supremacy of Brahminical
values, at political level King Pushyamitra Shung ensured the physical
attack on Buddhist monks, at the level of symbols King Shashank got
the Bodhi tree (where Gautama the Buddha got Enlightenment)
destroyed.

One of the appeals to the spread of Buddhism was the protection of
cattle wealth, which was needed for the agricultural economy. In a way
while Brahminism `succeeded' in banishing Buddhism from India, it had
also to transform itself from the `animal sacrifice' state to the one
which could be in tune with the times. It is here that this ideology
took up the cow as a symbol of their ideological march. But unlike
Buddha whose pronouncements were based on reason, the counteraction of
Brahminical ideology took the form of a blind faith based on
assertion. So while Buddha's non-violence was for the preservation of
animal wealth for the social and compassionate reasons the counter was
based purely on symbolism. So while the followers of Brahminical
ideology accuse Buddha of `weakening' India due to his doctrine of non-
violence, he was not a cow worshipper or vegetarian in the current
Brahminical sense.

Despite the gradual rigidification of Brahminical `cow as mother'
stance, large sections of low castes continued the practice of beef
eating. The followers of Buddhism continued to eat flesh including
beef. Since Brahminism is the dominant religious tradition, Babur, the
first Mughal emperor, in his will to his son Humayun, in deference to
these notions, advised him to respect the cow and avoid cow slaughter.
With the construction of Hindutva ideology and politics, in response
to the rising Indian national movement, the demand for ban on cow
slaughter also came up. In post-Independence India RSS repeatedly
raised this issue to build up a mass campaign but without any response
to its call till the 1980s.

While one must respect the sentiments of those who worship cow and
regard her as their mother, to take offence to the objective study of
history just because the facts don't suit their political calculations
is yet another sign of a society where liberal space is being
strangulated by the practitioners of communal politics. We have seen
enough such threats and offences in recent past - be it the opposition
to films or the destruction of paintings, or the dictates of the
communalists to the young not to celebrate Valentine's Day, etc., -
and hope the democratic spirit of our Constitution holds the forte and
any threat to the democratic freedom is opposed tooth and nail.

Prof. RAM PUNIYANI
A member of EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity), Mumbai

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, August 14, 2001

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/08/14/stories/13140833.htm

Volume 21 - Issue 06, March 13 - March 26, 2004
India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU

COVER STORY
The spread in the South

Hindutva has percolated to the nooks and corners of South India, and
the routes taken have often been socio-cultural and educational rather
than political. Reports from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

S.R. RAGHUNATHAN

At the Mahamaham in Kumbakonam, the VHP makes its presence felt during
the holy dip in the Kumbeshwara temple tank on March 6.

TAMIL NADU
A multi-pronged approach

"Tamil Nadu today is under the spiritual rule of Jayalalithaa." This
is a pious declaration made by P.C. Ramasami, Minister for Hindu
Religious and Charitable Endowments in the Jayalalithaa-led All India
Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government in the State, at
Kumbakonam in Thanjavur district on March 6 after a ritual "holy dip"
to mark the Mahamaham festival. About 10 lakh devotees are estimated
to have taken a dip in the tank of the Kumbeshwara temple, along with
"priests carrying trishuls". The Sankaracharya of the Kanchi mutt,
Jayendra Saraswati, inaugurated the festival, which is described as
the "Kumbh Mela of the South" and is held once in 12 years. Numerous
Saivite and Vaishnavite mutt heads participated in the festival.

Ramasami told mediapersons that under the Jayalalithaa regime 2,822
temples had been renovated. The Minister's observations are indicative
of not only the government's priorities, but also the congenial
atmosphere in the State for the Sangh Parivar to exploit the
religiosity of the faithful to advance its communal and political
agenda.

The Hindutva forces were helped by the fact that they had the
Bharatiya Janata Party in power at the Centre and two successive
friendly governments in the State, the first headed by the Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), an ally of the BJP until recently, and the
second by the AIADMK, an erstwhile ally of the BJP which is keen to
build bridges with the Sangh Parivar. The Sangh Parivar has been
largely successful in its attempt to make the best of the situation
because of the competitive political lines taken by the DMK and the
AIADMK in support of the Hindutva forces in order to make electoral
gain. Political observers criticised the Dravidian parties' tactical
line as a significant deviation from rationalism and self-respect, the
cornerstones of the Dravidian movement founded by `Periyar' E.V.
Ramasami. The Dravidian parties' competitive political support to the
Sangh Parivar gave legitimacy to the actions of the Hindutva forces
and contributed to their growth. Jayalalithaa's AIADMK has been the
more enthusiastic of the two in supporting the Hindutva cause. While
in power the DMK extended only passive support to the Parivar, without
concealing its reservations on issues such as a common civil code and
the construction of a temple in Ayodhya. The AIADMK government has had
no qualms in not only supporting many of its causes but also wresting
the initiative from the Hindutva forces by launching certain
legislative measures that even BJP-led governments in other States did
not resort to.

When, in 2002, the Jayalalithaa government brought in an Ordinance,
later made into a law with legislative approval, banning "forcible"
religious conversions through "financial allurement" or otherwise, the
move drew protests from many parties, including the DMK, then an ally
of the BJP at the Centre. The anti-conversion law was seen as one more
of the many pro-Hindutva measures taken by the Jayalalithaa government
since it came to power in 2001. These included the provision of
substantial financial assistance to renovate temples, grant of pension
to poojaris, and the `Annadhanam' scheme to feed poor Hindus in
temples. The government also introduced a scheme to conduct spiritual
classes in over 150 Hindu temples. Jayalalithaa also arranged for a
mass wedding ceremony for a hundred Hindu couples.

Even during her first term as Chief Minister, in 1991-96, she took
several measures that pleased the Hindutva forces. Apart from
renovating temples, she started Vedic colleges to benefit the priestly
class. She brought in an Ordinance to facilitate government
interference in minorities-run educational institutions, but had to
withdraw it amid protests. Her support to the kar seva at Ayodhya,
expressed at a meeting of the National Integration Council in November
1992, a fortnight before the demolition of the Babri Masjid is only
too well known.

Another controversial move by her government was the directive to the
administration to enforce strictly the law against animal sacrifice in
temples, which had been in cold storage for five decades (Frontline,
October 10, 2003). The Hindu orthodoxy had for long been demanding a
ban on such sacrifices on the grounds that the practice "polluted"
places of worship, most of which were even denied the status of
temples. The government's move to enforce the Act met with stiff
resistance, particularly from the oppressed people such as Dalits.
They claimed that it violated their constitutional right to worship
and sought to interfere with the form of worship of the disadvantaged
sections. The government order was also challenged in the Madras High
Court. The government, however, kept on justifying its action with the
support of the heads of religious mutts and State BJP leaders.
Ultimately, Jayalalithaa was forced to bow to the people's wish and
even annul the Tamil Nadu Animals and Birds Sacrifices Prohibition
Act, 1950.

The State government's willing cooperation in implementing some of the
priority issues on the Hindutva agenda has helped the Sangh Parivar in
the task of consolidation in the past five years. For instance,
Vinayaka Chaturthi processions organised in Chennai by the Hindutva
forces, which had in the first few years led to violent confrontations
with religious minorities, have spread to other places in the State.
Even the activists of the two principal Dravidian parties are now seen
in the Chaturthi processions with their own Vinayaka idols decorated
with party flags. Although their potential to cause violence has shown
a significant fall in recent years, the processions still cause
tension.

Another major step taken by the Hindu Munnani and the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad (VHP) was to organise non-Brahmin poojaris of village temples
and secure governmental assistance for them. This was done in
pursuance of their plan to wrest control of thousands of village
temples, meddle with the existing forms of worship and ensure the
loyalty of lakhs of people in rural areas. According to A.
Sivasubramaniam, a researcher, the idea is to Brahminise these temples
by robbing Dalits and other backward communities of their natural
rights over these places of worship built by their ancestors mostly in
honour of slain heroes.

The VHP claims that it has built 120 temples in Dalit areas of Tamil
Nadu, where "persons from all communities can worship". It further
claims that because of this action untouchability has been "reduced to
a great extent in these areas". In fact, what Dalits in Tamil Nadu and
other States are demanding is not separate temples, but a reassurance
that their constitutional right to enter the mainstream temples will
be honoured. Dalits in many parts of the State have launched struggles
to assert their right to temple entry, but on no occasion has the VHP
or its allies thought it necessary to intervene on behalf of these
helpless people. In many parts of the State, the Parivar's workers are
not sympathetic to Dalits' struggles against casteist oppression; they
often depend upon leaders of the oppressive castes to carry out their
activities.

Education is another area in which Hindutva forces have made
substantial headway in recent years. In Tamil Nadu about 150 schools
are functioning under the guidance of the Vidya Bharati Akhil
Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, a Sangh Parivar organisation that aims at,
among other things, evolving "an integrated system of education in
conformity with the aims of Indian culture and its ideals of life". Of
these schools, 24 are Hindu Vidyalayas run by the VHP. Other schools
are under the control of many organisations, including the Vivekananda
Educational Society and the Vivekananda Educational Trust, both based
in Chennai. There has been a substantial increase in the number of
schools run by these institutions during the past five years. For
instance, schools under the Vivekananda Educational Society increased
from 10 in 1998 to 16 in 2003. Last year, the Society added a
residential school run on the "gurukula" model.

Most of these schools, located in the suburbs of Chennai, cater to
middle-class families. Over 17,000 students of the schools run by the
Vivekananda Educational Society are trained in music, dance, yoga,
physical exercise and so on. Besides Hindi, Tamil and English, they
are taught Sanskrit as a compulsory fourth language. In the name of
moral instruction they are taught Hindu epics and the Puranas.

An interesting practice in these schools is that the applications of
the students writing public examinations are taken to a temple nearby
and placed "at the feet" of the deities, invoking their blessings. All
students, irrespective of their religion, are compelled to participate
in this ritual. Teachers and students are expected to attend camps in
the name of "refresher courses" or "in-house training". At a certain
stage, students are taken to the Vivekananda Kendra in Kanyakumari for
a 21-day camp run on the lines of a `shakha' of the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). This camp is believed to serve the purpose of
recruiting cadets for the RSS. All schools have a prayer hall
displaying pictures of Hindu deities. One significant development with
regard to the Vidya Bharati schools in recent years is that they have
been increasingly using textbooks prepared by the National Council of
Educational Research and Training (NCERT), unlike in the past when
they used them only for the 10th and 12th standards. This may be
because NCERT books have now been doctored to suit the needs of
saffronised education. These schools, with the assistance of a trained
RSS worker, organise thiruvilakku poojas for women in temples and lend
space for holding RSS camps.

In university education, too, attempts are being made to introduce
subjects such as Vedic Astrology and Vedic Mathematics. However, these
face stiff resistance at university bodies such as the Academic
Council, the Senate and the Syndicate. For instance, when the
University Grants Commission's suggestion to start courses in Vedic
Astrology and Vedic Mathematics came up for implementation,
representatives of the Madurai University Teachers Association in the
various university bodies protested against the move and stopped it.
In the University of Madras, an M.A. degree course in Natya (Dance and
Theatre) was sought to be introduced with the blessings of Sangh
experts. At a meeting of the Academic Council, the proposal was
opposed on the grounds that the project had no scientific basis and
contained retrograde features in the name of "incorporating the
learning advantages of the centuries-old guru-sishya parampara along
with research and training methodologies of modern education". The
Vice-Chancellor had to shelve the proposal pending detailed
discussion.

There is no doubt that the increased activities of the Sangh Parivar
in recent years portend dangerous consequences for the communal
harmony in the State. However, these efforts do not seem to have
enabled the BJP to expand its political space in a big way. Its
influence does not appear to have spread to areas other than its
traditional strongholds, Kanyakumari and Coimbatore districts.

S. Viswanathan

KERALA
A switch in strategy

The supreme confidence, if not the menace, in the statements was
unmistakable, as the leader of the Marad Arayasamajam, the Sangh
Parivar's fishermen's organisation in the communally volatile Marad
village in coastal Kozhikode, introduced himself to Frontline in his
office in October 2003: "I was born here. I was brought up here. I am
a fisherman and have been a member of the Arayasamajam from the
mid-1970s. I have held all the important positions in the Samajam,
except that of the president. I rose through the Rashtiya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS). When my work proved a hindrance for everyday RSS `shakha'
activity, I joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, a party in which I have
held several important local responsibilities. Now I am the secretary
of the Arayasamajam. I have no hesitation in saying that all members
of the Arayasamajam (the entire fishing community at Marad) are RSS
supporters. Nobody sings a different tune here. Our activities are
fully supported by our leadership."

C.RATHEESH KUMAR

In Thiruvananthapuram, a Ganesha festival procession organised by the
Shiv Sena.

For months on end, after nine fishermen, eight of them Hindus, were
brutally done to death in a frenzy of communal revenge killings at
Marad in May last year (Frontline, November 7, 2003), T. Suresh, the
leader of the small Hindu fishing community in the village, literally
became the face of the Sangh Parivar in Kerala, making demands, posing
threats, rejecting proposals and keeping the State government
machinery on tenterhooks before agreeing to proposals that eventually
launched a peace initiative in the Muslim-majority village in north
Kerala. The Muslim families that fled the village fearing reprisals
have since returned and the tenuous peace holds. The Arayasamajam
office in the village is a veritable fortress secured by Sangh cadre.
During the strife it was the virtual government in the village, where
political parties feared to tread.

The Arayasamajam leader and the men who surround him perhaps symbolise
what the Hindutva combine is up to in Kerala.

The violence at Marad in May was a clear indication that the
intervention of a large number of majority as well as minority
communal organisations had started showing its ugly results in Kerala.
The leader of the Hindu fishermen in Marad was a symbol of a growing
body of men and women in Kerala who "bore the same vision and the same
dream and moved forward as one" in their belief that a "Hindu Kerala
is not a myth", that each one of them has to "take such a glorious
vision to heart" to bring to reality a Kerala that will become a
"laboratory for the Hindu way of life and vision, if not immediately,
soon, in future".

Recently, the Sangh Parivar announced an ambitious target for such men
and women: of spreading the activities of the Parivar to all regions
in the State by 2006, the birth centenary year of RSS leader Madhav
Sadashiv Golwalkar. The focus of its recent activities has been on
extending its influence among all sections of Hindus, especially
Dalits, fisherfolk and Adivasis, and gaining acceptance in the State
through persistent socio-cultural interventions (Frontline, December
2, 2002 and February 28, 2003).

In Kerala, the RSS-led growth of the Sangh Parivar has overshadowed
the activities of its political arm, the BJP, especially in the years
since the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The number of RSS `shakhas'
has increased from 4,300 in 2001 to 4,800. Its organisers claim that
the `Sangh' is active in all the 14 districts of the State, the
weakest links being the Christian belt of the high-range Idukki and
Wayanad districts and the predominantly Muslim areas of north Kerala.
According to RSS activists, over 10,000 locations have been
"identified" for active work and in 1,329 of them daily drills and
discussions take place for an hour each in the morning, evening and
night.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), too, has established its
organisational network in all parts of the State, resorting to emotive
actions such as the distribution of tridents and the controversial
construction of a temple within the Idukki dam area. More important, a
myriad RSS-backed socio-cultural organisations promoting communal
ideas in the field of education, literature, theatre, science and arts
and actively involved in the renovation and protection of temples have
made a visible presence in the State within a short period.

The Kshetra Samrakshana Samiti, a Parivar unit with the declared aim
of "building a temple-based organised society" and a "temple-based way
of life", actively promotes the renovation of small family temples
dotting the State and has gained control of the management of the day-
to-day affairs and conduct of festivals of a number of big ones.
`Balagokulam', a mass organisation for children with over 1,300 units
in the State, organises the high-visibility "Srikrishna Jayanti rally
and celebrations" in various cities and towns every year. Thousands of
children participate in the event. In addition, it runs Balasamskara
Kendras (children's cultural centres) at five centres; `Sowrakshika',
an organisation for the protection of children's rights; Mayilpeeli, a
magazine; and `Amrita Bharati Vidya Peetom', a centre for the
promotion of Sanskrit and Hindu culture.

Balagokulam claims a membership of over 26,000 children, who attend
weekly catch-them-young classes. The aim is to groom them as
leadership material for other Hindutva activities. As part of its 30th
anniversary, Balagokulam has announced the establishment of an
`International Sri Krishna Centre' in Kerala, to be developed as a Sri
Krishna pilgrimage centre in the State.

The Bharatiya Vichara Kendra, an intellectual forum for debate with
political opponents, was established in Kerala in 1982 after a sudden
spurt in RSS activity following frequent clashes between the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) and RSS activists in north Kerala. It has
more than 30 units in the State and brings out a magazine. Among other
activities, it conducts Gita, Yoga and Sanskrit classes.

Perhaps the most prominent and effective Sangh Parivar organisation is
the one that is involved in education, the Bharatiya Vidya Niketan. It
runs about 375 schools in all the districts with no government support
and purely on the initiative of the local Parivar cadre. Fifteen
schools, the majority of them in districts that have a sizable Muslim
or Christian population, follow the syllabi of the Central Board of
Secondary Education (CBSE), with English as the medium of instruction.
The rest follow the State syllabus. Teachers are required to undergo
special training under a five-point programme, which includes physical
education, Sanskrit, yoga, value education and art and culture, all
meant to acquaint them, and eventually their pupils, "with the Hindu
way of life". Key organisers in such schools are from the RSS, even
though the organisation does not have any direct involvement in its
running.

In addition to Janmabhoomi, a daily newspaper, and Kesari, a weekly,
the Parivar has 10 regular publications in the State. The Swadesi
Science Movement, which has as its declared objective the development
of an "Indian approach to science" (it recently organised an
international conference on Ayurveda), and `Tapasya', an organisation
promoting art and culture, are also prominent Sangh Parivar
"recruitment agencies".

In the past few years, the Hindutva combine's voluntary activity has
had a new focus: the tribal and coastal areas of Kerala. Providing
free medical aid and education and running informal, single-teacher
schools for tribal children are some of the activities it undertakes
there. A 33-bed hospital at Kalpetta in the predominantly tribal
Wayanad district, for example, offers free food, medicines, in-patient
facitlity and diagnostic services to the tribal people. The Vanvasi
Kalyan Ashram has established its units in 52 tribal areas of the
State and is now engaged in meeting the "challenge" of Christian
missionary activity in those areas, offering competitive healthcare
and educational facilities.

Early last year, the attack on an American missionary, Joseph William
Cooper, in Thiruvananthapuram, almost coincided with the two-day
`Vanavasi Sangamom' organised by the Sangh Parivar at Mananthavadi in
Wayanad district, to promote the all-India game plan of "Hinduising"
tribal people. The high-profile conference, attended by top Sangh
Parivar leaders, was itself preceded by events orchestrated by the VHP
and other Hindutva organisations to "celebrate the reconversion of (a
few) Adivasis to Hinduism". The Matsya Pravartaka Sanghom, another RSS
family unit, recently started a mobilisation initiative, organising
`Sagara poojas' (worshipping the sea) and Hindu maha sammelans at
select centres in the coastal areas and near freshwater lakes.

This is but an example of the vast infrastructure the RSS-led Hindutva
organisations have established in Kerala, which it considers a sunrise
region for interventions tailored to bring about a fundamentalist
shift in the thinking of Hindus. But the Hindu community, whose
loyalties are divided among various political parties and coalitions,
castes and caste-based political groups, has so far given no
indications of helping the Parivar realise its dream.

For three days from January 24, the RSS held a "Pranteeya Karyakarthru
Sibiram" in Kollam, its first in 25 years in Kerala, where the
Hindutva vision and dreams were reiterated. Nearly 16,000 delegates,
ranging from leaders of 4,800 shakhas in Kerala to the top leadership
including Sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan, participated in it. The
address to the delegates of the conference by P. Parameswaran,
director of the Bharatiya Vichara Kendra, was a clear exposition of
the Sangh Parivar's vision of the challenges it faced in Kerala and
its long-term prospects in the State. The following are certain
significant excerpts from his speech:

1.Compared to other States, Kerala has a "substantial population of
Muslims, organised Christian missionary activity and support for deep-
rooted, `anti-national' Communist way of thinking". The State's Hindu
population came down in a decade from 57 per cent to 55 per cent,
while the Muslim and Christian populations increased to 23.34 per cent
and 19.32 per cent. "Even while we take pride in the fact that Hindus
form 55 per cent of the population, we should not forget that the
`other side' is 45 per cent. Even though Hindus are described as the
majority, they should remember that they are neither organised nor
strong. That is why they do not have influence or participation in any
sector in the State."

2.The formation of united Kerala (from the erstwhile Malabar, Cochin
and Travancore regions) "had also created an imbalance in terms of
population", along with changes in the structure of government and
politics of the State. (From then on) Hindu society lost the position
and influence it had before. It lost its predominant position in the
economy, politics and the educational sector in the State. "Other
sections" came to prominence. "Minority community organisations
transformed themselves into political parties. An organisation that
was once described as a "dead horse" (the Muslim League) increased its
number of seats, its position and influence. It gained the strength to
shake Kerala to the core. It threw ordinary laws to the winds. The
result was that along with their pre-eminence in the politics of the
State, they gained in the fields of education, industries as well as
economically. Land came under their control. The state of Hindus
became pathetic. They did not get even the benefits due to 55 per cent
of the peopulation."

3.Though the RSS has grown in strength in Kerala with its extremely
complex social climate, it is unable yet to put the stamp of Hindutva
in all walks of life, even though "anti-Hindu, anti-national" forces
remain strong but divided among themselves. It is unable yet to spread
the message of Hindutva among such forces that continue to fight among
themselves.

4.The intention of the Sangh Parivar is not to create a Hindu
organisation, but the strengthening of Hindu society... to have its
influence in all fields of life, including the economy and education.
Its aim is to bring about a social transformation by organising Hindus
in all walks of society and grow as an organisation of Hindu society.

5.The Parivar finds it encouraging that the Hindu revivalism taking
place all over India "is finding its echo in Kerala too"; that "people
who once sabotaged such efforts were seeing them with respect now";
that "a new spiritual climate" is developing in the State; that the
number of `spiritual gurus' is growing in Kerala ; that the number of
believers too is growing; and that "the various religious and cultural
activities it organised in the hundreds of temples in the State are
being widely welcomed. It believes in cooperating with the spiritual
revival efforts controlled by organisations that have no link with the
Parivar. "Ours is not an isolated stream, but a huge Ganga that
accepts all such efforts."

6.The Sangh Parivar believes that the present climate is ideal for its
growth in Kerala. It believed that the people are waiting eagerly to
accept the Hindutva message. Critics have disappeared and the sound of
criticism has vanished. "Kerala today has two political coalitions
which are bereft of ideas and are ideologically in a state of vacuum
and need not be a hindrance for the Sangh Parivar's activities."

Parameswaran's statements are the clearest exposition yet of the
concerns, goals and strategies of the RSS in relation to Kerala from
its own leaders. Clearly, it is because its political goal often
seemed so elusive in Kerala that the Hindutva combine had, ever since
the 1990s, subtly shifted its fight onto a new battlefield - that of
winning the hearts and minds of Hindus through non-political,
religious and socio-cultural mediation, using a vast network of
organisations. It is a platform where it finds itself left to its own
winning deeds by secular formations, including the Left parties and
the Congress(I).

R. Krishnakumar

KARNATAKA
Mutts as political players

What will be the likely role of the mutts in Karnataka in determining
the outcome of the elections in the State? Though defined legally as a
religious establishment headed by a pontiff, the mutt plays a role
that extends well beyond the purely religious. The mutts in Karnataka
are sharply divided along caste and sectarian lines. They have emerged
as major and not-to-be-ignored political players in the present
milieu, offering direct or indirect support to political parties and
candidates.

The Madhwa mutts in the coastal belt have been vehicles for the spread
of Hindutva, both as an ideology and as an electoral force. There are
eight Madhwa mutts, which are the joint custodians of the Krishna
temple in Udupi - the Palimar, Adamar, Krishnapur, Puttige, Shirur,
Sode, Kaniyur and Pejavar mutts. The reigning pontiffs of the mutts
conduct worship at the Udupi temple by a system of rotation. The two
most prominent mutts that have long been the standard-bearers of the
Hindutva cause are the Pejavar and Adamar mutts. The pontiff of the
Pejavar mutt, Sri Vishwesa Tirtha Swamiji, is a founder-member of the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and has been associated with the Ram
Janmabhoomi movement from its inception. He was present in Ayodhya
when the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992 and is a prominent figure
on all Sangh Parivar platforms both in Karnataka and elsewhere in the
country.

Speaking to Frontline from Udupi, the octogenarian head of the Pejavar
mutt said he actively propagated the message of Hindutva and spread
the aims of the Ayodhya movement by addressing meetings, rallies and
samaveshas (mass meetings). "I speak about it and answer questions. If
there is any wrong writing on these issues in newspapers, I reply
immediately. I know from the reactions at my meetings that the message
has spread very well in Karnataka." As a margadarshi for the VHP, he
had ensured that his mutt worked with the VHP on many activities, he
said, although the mutt also worked through its own organisations,
particularly in providing education and healthcare in tribal areas and
inaccessible hilly regions.

The Pejavar mutt, in particular, has given active patronage to the
samavesha, which has, in recent months, become the most popular method
of Hindu mass mobilisation in the coastal belt. Following the Gujarat
riots, the samavesha has become a frequent event, spreading now from
the cities to small towns and villages of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada
districts. "The town or village is first covered with plastic saffron
flags of the VHP. The meeting is usually held near a minority-
dominated area. Leaders of the VHP, like Pravin Togadia, spit fire and
venom in their speeches, which threaten the minorities and exhort
Hindus to build a Hindu Rashtra," said H. Pattabhirama Somayaji,
Professor of English at University College, Mangalore. "Mutt leaders
like the Pejavar Swamiji are frequent speakers at these meetings. In
fact, in the last 10 years the mutts have become the standard bearers
of Hindutva rather than formal political parties. Political leaders
depend more and more upon the Swamijis to get their message across."

With the emergence of the mutts as the rallying points for Hindutva in
this region, the distinction between the religious and the political
as different spheres of public activity has all but disappeared. "Most
religious functions have been saffronised," said Somayaji. Take
paryaya, a ceremony held every two years to mark the passing on of the
authority to conduct worship in the Krishna temple amongst the
pontiffs of the eight Madhwa mutts. From a ceremony confined to a sect
of Madhwa Brahmins in Karnataka, paryaya has virtually become a State-
level function for all Hindus and a major expression of the power and
prestige of the mutt concerned. This year's paryaya ceremony was
attended by a galaxy of persons prominent in public life in the State.
Even the myriad `little traditions' of Hinduism, like the Bhootakulas
- a popular form of spirit worship practised in the villages of
Dakshina Kannada district by members of the lower castes - have been
permeated by the colour, sound, speech and symbolism of Hindutva, said
Somayaji.

"I have lived here for the past 50 years and was saddened to see the
Udupi Krishna temple founded 7,000 years ago by the great
Madhwacharya, flying the flag of the VHP," said G. Rajashekhar, an
employee of the Life Insurance Corporation of India and an active
member of the Souharda Vedike, an organisation that has been fighting
communalism. According to him, the Pejavar Swamiji welcomed and
blessed Pravin Togadia at a mammoth samajotsava held recently in
Udupi. The banners at the rally glorified Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi, and Togadia and hailed Dara Singh, the murderer of the
Australian missionary Graham Stains and his two sons, as the "saviour
of Hinduism". "We protested to the District Commissioner, after which
Dara Singh's name was removed from the banners," said Rajashekhar.
"The Pejavar Swamiji says he condemns the violence in Gujarat. Why
does he then continue to patronise Hindutva outfits that supported
it?"

Vishwesa Thirtha Swamiji of the Pejavar mutt with Karnataka Chief
Minister S.M. Krishna in Bangalore in February.

The Pejavar Swamiji told Frontline that though he might share a
platform with Modi or Togadia, he did not hesitate to disagree with
them publicly on some issues. "I argue with them and oppose them
whether it is the Gujarat violence or the issue of war with Pakistan
which Togadia supports and I oppose, or with Giriraj Kishore Acharya
who recently said that the life of a cow was more precious than the
life of a Dalit. I opposed them on all these issues," he said.

Although until very recently each Madhwa mutt had its own location of
caste influence, in recent years the mutts have tried to propagate
Hindutva across the caste divide. Mahatma Gandhi refused to enter the
Krishna temple on a visit to Udupi in the 1930s because untouchability
was practised there. Today, however, the mutts realise that for
Hindutva to have any relevance for the lower-caste segments of the
population, it has necessarily to be given political articulation and
distanced, at least in its rhetoric, from Brahminism. The mutts
realise that they cannot do this on their own and must associate
themselves with the political outfits of the Sangh Parivar, which use
the samaveshas as fora to make the call for the unification of Hindu
society.

One of Hinduism's attributes was its sanction for a plurality of forms
of religious practice. This non-threatening and accommodative element
of Hinduism is being erased systematically by the votaries of
Hindutva. Today, economically vulnerable castes like fisherfolk,
weavers, carpenters, barbers, cobblers and potters are being drawn
into the ambit of a militant Hindutva worldview. "It is clear from the
attendance at their rallies that the appeal of the Hindutva parties is
no longer to elitist Hindus but to Hindu society at large," says
Rajashekhar. Here too it is the Pejavar mutt that has shown the way.
Its pontiff has considerable influence with leaders both at the Centre
and in the State.

An influence far greater than that of the Brahmin mutts is exerted by
the Veerashaiva or Lingayat mutts on social and political life in
Karnataka. Veerashaivism grew out of a revolutionary 12th century
reform movement started by Basava against the stranglehold of
Brahminism on religion and society. Lingayats, or the followers of
Basava, are converts from various castes, and all castes have their
Lingayat converts.

The mutt became the functional nucleus of Basava's philosophy where
religion met its social purpose of providing free education and food
to all sections of the social order regardless of caste. Veerashaiva
mutts, which spread and consolidated themselves in the last decades of
the 19th century and in early 20th century, grew with state patronage
after Independence. Today, many Veerashaiva mutts are powerful
commercial entities that run hundreds of educational institutions.
They also control bulk votes and are therefore sought after by
political parties.

"The Veerashaiva mutts have, by and large, resisted the growth of
Hindutva in Karnataka as their founding philosophy is anti-
Brahminical," said K. Marulasiddappa, a well-known Kannada writer and
literary critic. On the other hand, the need for state patronage and
cordial relations with the party in power exerts a contrary pull on
them, which is why some Veerashaiva pontiffs have been less outspoken
than others against the politics of the Sangh Parivar. Some of the
major Veerashaiva mutts, like the Tumkur Siddaganga mutt, the Mysore
Suttur mutt, the Chitradurga Sirigere mutt, the Sanehalli mutt and the
Nidumamidi mutts and Belimath in Bangalore, the Gadag mutt and the
Muragha mutt in Chitradurga, have not endorsed the politics of
Hindutva. Some of the pontiffs of these mutts have actively opposed
it. "However, the hard fact is that it is caste, and not politics,
that eventually determines which party or candidate a particular mutt
supports," said Marulasiddappa.

"Political Hindutva is the new face of Brahminism, which the vaidika
mutts are spreading," Sri Veerabhadra Chennamalla Swamiji of the
Nidumamidi mutt told Frontline. "While on the one hand they say that
Hindu society is one, they embrace casteism, patriarchy and
untouchability. They are using Dalits and Sudras for vote bank
purposes."

Scoffing at the samaveshas organised by the Sangh Parivar, where
"ready-made crowds comprising VHP, RSS and Sangh Parivar activists"
are ferried, the Swamiji, who is a frequent speaker on anti-communal
platforms, believes that a majority in all religions are peace-loving
and will defeat the designs of the communal forces.

"Lingayats believe in casteless, classless, secular principles," the
pontiff of the Gadag mutt, Sri Jagadguru Tontada Siddalinga
Mahaswamiji, told Frontline. The Swamiji was a recipient of Communal
Harmony Award 2001, instituted by the Government of India.
"Lingayatism differs radically from Hinduism. We are naturally against
the Hindutva concept and oppose its onslaught against the people at
large. On the other hand, the Vedic mutts, which are Hindu mutts,
support the Sangh Parivar and indirectly the BJP," he said.

Several leading Veerashaiva mutt heads were associated with the
founding of the VHP at its first Dharma Sansad in 1984, according to
Sri Shivarudra Mahaswamy, the pontiff of the Belimath Maha Sansthana
in Bangalore. "At that time, the VHP focussed on social reform within
Hinduism, which we supported. It was only after the Ram Janmabhoomi
movement started that these swamijis became disenchanted and left," he
told Frontline. The Swamiji himself stayed on in the VHP. He was
present in Ayodhya during the destruction of the Babri Masjid ("none
of us knew this would happen," he claims) and slowly began distancing
himself from the Sangh Parivar after that. "The final break with the
VHP for me came with Gujarat. I was the only Lingayat swamiji who
participated in all their functions, but after Gujarat I left out of
conviction. They think they are building a Hindu society - they are
only building hell," he said. Although wary of the BJP, the
Veerashaiva mutts are likely to support Lingayat candidates if they
are fielded by the party. The electoral outcome, particularly in north
Karnataka, will be influenced strongly by the way Lingayats vote.

The only religious caste leader of the Vokkaligas is the Swamiji of
the Adichunchungiri mutt, a powerful establishment with assets running
into crores of rupees. The Swamiji is as much of a political figure as
a religious one and is known to be close to the ruling Congress(I),
although he also accepts invitations to speak on Sangh Parivar
platforms. At a recent samavesha in Bangalore, the Swamiji is reported
to have said that just as Muslims and Christians have their own
countries, Hindus need theirs. He later retracted the statement,
claiming that he had been misquoted.

With his sizable wealth and vote base, the swamiji is much-sought-
after by political parties. Except on the coast, where the BJP will
have the backing of a sizable section of the mutts, in the rest of the
State the major non-Brahmin mutts appear to be tilting towards either
the Congress(I) or the Janata Dal(S). This will certainly have an
impact on the electoral chances of the BJP in this region.

Parvathi Menon

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2106/stories/20040326004900900.htm

Ashvamedha
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ashvamedha (Sanskrit: अश्वमेध aśvamedhá; "horse sacrifice") was
one of the most important royal rituals of Vedic religion, described
in detail in the Yajurveda (TS 7.1-5, VSM 22–25[1] and the pertaining
commentary in the Shatapatha Brahmana ŚBM 13.1–5). The Rigveda does
have descriptions of horse sacrifice, notably in hymns RV 1.162-163
(which are themselves known as aśvamedha), but does not allude to the
full ritual according to the Yajurveda.

Gayatri Pariwar have been organising performances of a modernised
version of the sacrifice, not involving actual animal sacrifice, since
1991.

The Vedic sacrifice

The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king (rājā). Its object
was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over
neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom.

The horse to be sacrificed must be a stallion, more than 24, but less
than 100 years old. The horse is sprinkled with water, and the
Adhvaryu and the sacrificer whisper mantras into its ear. Anyone who
should stop the horse is ritually cursed, and a dog is killed symbolic
of the punishment for the sinners. The horse is then set loose towards
the North-East, to roam around wherever it chooses, for the period of
one year (or half a year, according to some commentators). The horse
is associated with the Sun, and its yearly course. If the horse
wanders into neighbouring provinces hostile to the sacrificer, they
must be subjugated. The wandering horse is attended by a hundred young
men, sons of princes or high court officials, charged with guarding
the horse from all dangers and inconvenience. During the absence of
the horse, an uninterrupted series of ceremonies is performed in the
sacrificer's home.

After the return of the horse, more ceremonies are performed. The
horse is yoked to a gilded chariot, together with three other horses,
and RV 1.6.1,2 (YV VSM 23.5,6) is recited. The horse is then driven
into water and bathed. After this, it is anointed with ghee by the
chief queen and two other royal consorts. The chief queen anoints the
fore-quarters, and the others the barrel and the hind-quarters. They
also embellish the horse's head, neck, and tail with golden ornaments.
The sacrificer offers the horse the remains of the night's oblation of
grain.

After this, the horse, a hornless he-goat, a wild ox (go-mrga, Bos
gavaeus) are bound to sacrificial stakes near the fire, and seventeen
other animals are attached to the horse. A great number of animals,
both tame and wild, are tied to other stakes, according to a
commentator 609 in total (YV VSM 24 consists of an exact enumeration).

Then the horse is slaughtered (YV VSM 23.15, tr. Griffith)

Steed, from thy body, of thyself, sacrifice and accept thyself.
Thy greatness can be gained by none but thee.

The chief queen ritually calls on the king's fellow wives for pity.
The queens walk around the dead horse reciting mantras. The chief
queen then has to mimic copulation with the dead horse, while the
other queens ritually utter obscenities.[2]

On the next morning, the priests raise the queen from the place where
she has spent the night with the horse. With the Dadhikra verse (RV
4.39.6, YV VSM 23.32), a verse used as a purifier after obscene
language.

The three queens with a hundred golden, silver and copper needles
indicate the lines on the horse's body along which it will be
dissected. The horse is dissected, and its flesh roasted. Various
parts are offered to a host of deities and personified concepts with
cries of svaha "all-hail". The Ashvastuti or Eulogy of the Horse
follows (RV 1.162, YV VSM 24.24–45), concluding with:

May this Steed bring us all-sustaining riches, wealth in good kine,
good horses, manly offspring

Freedom from sin may Aditi vouchsafe us: the Steed with our oblations
gain us lordship!

A coin created by Samudragupta I to commemorate the Ashvamedha ritual.
[3] The tethered horse is depicted on the left; the queen, carrying
ritual equipment, is on the rightThe priests performing the sacrifice
were recompensed with a part of the booty won during the wandering of
the horse. According to a commentator, the spoils from the east were
given to the Hotar, while the Adhvaryu a maiden (a daughter of the
sacrificer) and the sacrificer's fourth wife.

The Shatapatha Brahmana emphasizes the royal nature of the Ashvamedha:

Verily, the Asvamedha means royal sway: it is after royal sway that
these strive who guard the horse. (ŚBM 13.1.6.3 trans. Eggeling 1900)
It repeatedly states that "the Asvamedha is everything" (ŚBM 13.4.2.22
trans. Eggeling 1900)

Known historical performances

Pusyamitra Sunga is said to have performed the Ashvamedha rite after
he toppled Mauryan rule in 185 BC.

A historically documented performance of the Ashvamedha is during the
reign of Samudragupta I (d. 380), the father of Chandragupta II.
Special coins were minted to commemorate the Ashvamedha and the king
took on the title of Maharajadhiraja after successful completion of
the sacrifice.

There were a few later performances, one by Raja of Kannauj in the
12th century, unsuccessfully, as Prithviraj Chauhan thwarted his
attempt and later married his daughter. The last known instance seems
to be in 1716 CE, by Jai Singh II of Amber, a prince of Jaipur[4]

Performances in Hindu epics

illustration of the Ramayana by Sahib Din, 1652. Kausalya is depicted
slaying the horse (left) and lying beside it (right)Performances of
the Ashvamedha feature in the epics Ramayana (1.10–15) and
Mahabharata.

In the Mahabharata, the sacrifice is performed by Yudhishtira (Book
14), his brothers guarding the horse as it roamed into neighbouring
kingdoms. Arjuna defeats all challengers. The Mahabharata says that
the Ashvamedha as performed by Yudhishtira adhered to the letter of
the Vedic prescriptions. After the horse was cut into parts, Draupadi
had to sit beside the parts of the horse[5].

In the Ramayana, Rama's father Dasharatha performs the Ashvamedha,
which is described in the bala kanda (book 1) of the poem. The
Ramayana provides far more detail than the Mahabharata. The ritual
take place for three days preceded by sage Rishyasringa and
Vasista(1.14.41,42). Again it is stated that the ritual was performed
in strict compliance with Vedic prescriptions (1.14.10). Dasaratha's
chief wife Kausalya circumambulates the horse and ritually pierces its
flesh (1.14.33). Then "Queen Kausalya desiring the results of ritual
disconcertedly resided one night with that horse that flew away like a
bird." [1-14-34].[6] The fat of the sacrificed horse is then burnt in
ritual fire and after that the remaining parts of the body with spoons
made out of Plaksha tree branches(1.14.36,38-39). At the conclusion of
the ritual Dasharatha symbolically offers his other wives to the
presiding priests, who return them in exchange for expensive gifts
(1.14.35). The four sides of the Yagna alter is also donated to
priests who had done the ritual and it is exchanged by them for gold,
silver, cows and other gifts(1.15.43-44).[7]

The ritual is performed again towards the end of the poem, but in very
different circumstances. It figures centrally in the uttara kanda
(book 7) where it leads to the final major story in the poem. In this
narrative, Rama was married to a single wife, Sita, who at the time
was not with him, having been excluded from Rama's capital of Ayodhya.
She was therefore represented by a statue for the queen's ceremony
(7.x[citation needed]). Sita was living in Valmiki's forest ashram
with her twin children by Rama, Lava and Kusha, whose birth was
unknown to Rama. In its wanderings, the horse, accompanied by an army
and Hanuman, enters the forest and encounters Lava, who ignores the
warning written on the horse's headplate not to hinder its progress.
He tethers the horse, and with Kusha challenges the army, which is
unable to defeat the brothers. Recognising Rama's sons, Hanuman sends
them to Ayodhya where they are reconciled with their father, who also
accepts Sita back at court. Sita, however, no longer wishes to live,
and is absorbed by the earth. It is never stated whether the sacrifice
was completed, but after Sita's death Rama is said to have repeatedly
performed the Ashvamedha using the golden statue as a substitute for
his wife.[citation needed]

Some historians believe that the bala kanda and uttara kanda were
latter interpolations to the authentic form of the Ramayana, due to
references to Greek, Parthians and Sakas, dating to no earlier than
the 2nd century BCE[8]

Indo-European comparison

Main article: horse sacrifice

Many Indo-European branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and
comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a PIE ritual. The
Ashvamedha is the clearest evidence preserved, but vestiges from Latin
and Celtic traditions allow the reconstruction of a few common
attributes.

The Gaulish personal name Epomeduos is from *ek'wo-medhu- "horse
+mead", while ashvamedha is either from *ek'wo-mad-dho- "horse+drunk"
or *ek'wo-mey-dho- "horse+strength". The reconstructed myth involves
the coupling of a king with a divine mare which produced the divine
twins. Some scholars, including Edgar Polomé, regard the
reconstruciton of a PIE ritual as unjustified due to the difference
between the attested traditions (EIEC s.v. Horse, p. 278).

Vedanta and Puranas

The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (a mystical appendix to the Shatapatha
Brahmana and likely the oldest of the Upanishads) has a creation myth
where Mṛtyu "Death" takes the shape of a horse, and includes an
identification of the Ashvamedha with the Sun:[9]

Then he became a horse (ashva), because it swelled (ashvat), and was
fit for sacrifice (medhya); and this is why the horse-sacrifice is
called Ashva-medha [...] Therefore the sacrificers offered up the
purified horse belonging to Prajapati, (as dedicated) to all the
deities. Verily the shining sun [ye tapati] is the Asvamedha, and his
body is the year; Agni is the sacrificial fire (arka), and these
worlds are his bodies. These two are the sacrificial fire and the
Asvamedha-sacrifice, and they are again one deity, viz. Death. (BrUp
1.2.7. trans. Müller)
The Upanishads describe ascetic austerities as an "inner Ashvamedha",
as opposed to the "outer" royal ritual performed in the physical
world, in keeping with the general tendency of Vedanta to move away
from priestly ritual towards spiritual introspection; verse 6 of the
Avadhuta Upanishad has:

"Through extreme devotion [sam-grahaneṣṭi] he [the ascetic] performs
ashvamedha within [anta]. That is the greatest sacrifice [mahā-makha]
and the greatest meditation [mahā-yoga]."
According to the Brahma Vaivarta Purana (185.180),[10] the Ashvamedha
is one of five rites forbidden in the Kali Yuga.

In Hindu revivalism

In the Arya Samaj reform movement of Dayananda Sarasvati, the
Ashvamedha is considered an allegory or a ritual to get connected to
the "inner Sun" (Prana)[11] Dayananda in his Introduction to the
commentary on the Vedas[12] rejected the classical commentaries of the
Vedas by Sayana, Mahidhara and Uvata as medieval corruptions "opposed
to the real meaning of the Vedas" (p. 443) in order to arrive at an
entirely symbolic interpretation of the ritual: "An empire is like a
horse and the subjects like other inferior animals" (p. 448). Thus,
VSM 23.22, literally "he beats on the vulva (gabha), the penis (pasas)
oozes repeatedly (ni-galgaliti) in the receptacle" is interpreted not
in terms of the horse and the queen, but in terms of the king and his
subjects, "The subjects are called gabha (to be seized), kingly power
called pasa (to be penetrated)" (p. 454). This interpretation is
apparently based on a verse from Shatapatha Brahmana [13].

Following Dayananda, Arya Samaj disputes the very existence of the pre-
Vedantic ritual; thus Swami Satya Prakash Saraswati claims that

"the word in the sense of the Horse Sacrifice does not occur in the
Samhitas [...] In the terms of cosmic analogy, ashva is the Sun. In
respect to the adhyatma paksha, the Prajapati-Agni, or the Purusha,
the Creator, is the Ashva; He is the same as the Varuna, the Most
Supreme. The word medha stands for homage; it later on became
synonymous with oblations in rituology, since oblations are offered,
dedicated to the one whom we pay homage. The word deteriorated further
when it came to mean 'slaughter' or 'sacrifice'."[14]
arguing that the animals listed as sacrificial victims are just as
symbolic as the list of human victims listed in the Purushamedha[15]
(which is generally accepted as a purely symbolic sacrifice already in
Rigvedic times).

Other commentators accept the existence of the sacrifice but reject
the notion that the queen lay down with the dead horse. Thus Subhash
Kak in a blog posting suggests that the queen lay down with a toy
horse rather than with the slaughtered stallion, due to presence of
the word Ashvaka, similar to Shivaka meaning "idol or image of
Shiva"[citation needed]

All World Gayatri Pariwar since 1991 has organized performances of a
"modern version" of the Ashvamedha where a statue is used in place of
a real horse, according to Hinduism Today with a million participants
in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh on April 16 to 20, 1994.[16] Such modern
performances are sattvika Yajnas where the animal is worshipped
without killing it,[17], the religious motivation being prayer for
overcoming enemies, the facilitation of child welfare and development,
and clearance of debt,[18] entirely within the allegorical
interpretation of the ritual, and with no actual sacrifice of any
animal, nor any sexual connotations.

Criticism and controversy

The earliest recorded criticism of the ritual comes from the Cārvāka,
an atheistic school of Indian philosophy that assumed various forms of
philosophical skepticism and religious indifference. A quotation of
the Cārvāka from Madhavacharya's Sarva-Darsana-Sangraha states:

“ The three authors of the Vedas were buffoons, knaves, and demons.
All the well-known formulae of the pandits, jarphari, turphari, etc.
and all the obscene rites for the queen commanded in Aswamedha, these
were invented by buffoons, and so all the various kinds of presents to
the priests, while the eating of flesh was similarly commanded by
night-prowling demons. [19] ”

The mock bestiality and necrophilia involved in the ritual caused
considerable consternation among the scholars first editing the
Yajurveda. Griffith (1899) omits verses VSM 23.20–31 (the ritual
obscenities), protesting that they are "not reproducible even in the
semi-obscurity of a learned European language" (alluding to other
instances where he renders explicit scenes in Latin rather than
English). A. B. Keith's 1914 translation also omits verses.[2]

This part of the ritual offended the Dalit reformer and framer of the
Indian constitution B. R. Ambedkar and is frequently mentioned in his
writings as an example of the perceived degradation of Brahmanical
culture.[20]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C4%81rv%C4%81ka

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhavacharya

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yajurveda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_T.H._Griffith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._B._Keith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_India

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar

chhotemianinshallah

unread,

Mar 24, 2010, 12:58:02 PM3/24/10

Kali (demon)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Hindu demon. For other uses, see Kali
(disambiguation).
Not to be confused with the goddess Kali.

Kali

In Hinduism, Kali (IAST: káli; Devnāgari: कलि; from a root kad
"suffer, grieve, hurt; confound, confuse") is the reigning lord of
Kali Yuga and nemesis of Kalki, the 10th and final avatar of the Hindu
god Vishnu. According to the Vishnu Purana, he is a negative
manifestation of Vishnu, who along with his extended evil family,
perpetually operates as a cause of the destruction of this world.[1]
In the Kalki Purana, he is portrayed as a demon and the source of all
evil. In the Mahabharata, he was a gandharva who possessed Nala,
forcing him to lose his Kingdom in a game of dice to his brother
Pushkara. His most famous incarnation is the Kaurava King Duryodhana.
Kali is the prototype for the demon Kroni and his incarnation Kaliyan
of Ayyavazhi mythology.

Mahabharata

See also: The Gandharvas mentioned in Mahabharata

Damayanti speaking with a celestial swan.According to the Mahabharata,
the gandharva Kali became jealous when he was late to Princess
Damayanti's marriage ceremony and discovered she had overlooked the
deities Indra, Agni, Varun, and Yama (and ultimately himself) to
choose Nala as her husband. In anger, Kali spoke to his companion
Dvapara, the personification of Dwapara Yuga:

"I am ill able, O Dwapara, to suppress my anger. I shall possess Nala,
deprive him of his kingdom, and he shall no more sport with Bhima's
daughter. Entering the dice, it behoveth thee to help me." [2]

Kali traveled to Nala’s kingdom of Nishadhas and waited twelve long
years for the right moment to strike. Because Nala had rendered
himself impure by not washing his feet before his prayers, Kali was
able to bewitch his soul. Kali then appeared before Pushkara and
invited him to play a game of dice with his brother, guaranteeing
Nala’s downfall. Dwarpa took the form of the Vrisha die that would be
used in the fixed game. Kali forced Nala to lose and, each time, he
would raise the stakes higher despite the protest of his advisors and
wife. Finally, Nala lost his kingdom to Pushkara. Both he and
Damayanti were exiled to the forest.

Duryodhana as depicted in Yakshagana popular drama from
KarnatakaDuring their exile, Kali drove Nala to abandon Damayanti, who
later enacted a curse against everyone that had caused the downfall of
her husband. She eventually returned home after a short time as a hand-
maiden to the Princess of Chedi. Nala, meanwhile, saved the Naga
Karkotaka from fire (where he was cursed to suffer by sage Narada).
Intending to exorcize the devil within him, the serpent bit Nala,
injecting him with deadly poisons that forever tortured Kali. The
venom also changed Nala into an ugly dwarf named Bahuka. He later
became the charioteer of the Ayodhya King Rituparna, who was a master
mathematician and dice player.

Years later, King Rituparna revealed to Bahuka the supreme skill of
controlling the dice in exchange for horsemanship lessons. This skill
awakened Nala from Kali’s control and allowed him (with the help of
Damayanti’s curse and Karkotaka's venom) to exorcise the demon;
vomiting him in the form of poison from his mouth. Nala forced the
Kali’s trembling spirit into a Vibhitaka tree. He then counted the
fruits of the tree and left in search of his wife and later regained
his true form. Kali returned to his abode as well.

Kali was later incarnated as king Duryodhana, eldest of the one
hundred Kaurava brothers. His companion Dvapara became his uncle
Sakuni. The day Duryodhana was born, he unleashed a donkey-like scream
which the donkeys outside the home replied to. Despite the advise from
Vidura to discard the evil baby, Duryodhana's father Dhritarashtra
kept the child because demons had received a boon from Shiva that the
future king would be invincible.[3][4]

Puranic accounts

The Kalki Purana describes him as a huge being, the color of “soot,”
with a large tongue, and a terrible stench. From his birth, he carried
an Upaasthi (worship) bone. The Kalki Purana says this demon "chose
gambling, liquor, women and gold as his permanent abodes."[5] The
Sanskrit-English Dictionary states Kali is "of a class of mythic
beings (related to the Gandharvas, and supposed by some to be fond of
gambling)".[6] The Bhagavata Purana describes him as a sudra wearing
the garments of a king.[7] An early 20th century anti-beef eating
pamphlet protesting the slaughter of the sacred cow in India portrays
Kali as a brownish-skinned demon with a dog-like face, protruding
fangs, pointed ears, long green bushy hair and wearing a red loin
cloth and golden jewelry. (See Religion and politics)

The names of the four yugas of time—Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali—are
named after “dice throws” from a game of dice popular during the Vedic
period. Their order coincides with the favorability of each throw:
Satya is the best throw, whereas Kali is considered the worst.[8][9]
During the Mahabharata, king Nala exorcises the disembodied spirit of
Kali to a vibhitaka tree,[10] the nuts of which were used to create
the dice for the vedic dice game.[11] Therefore, not only Kali’s name,
but his penchant for gambling and reputation as being evil comes from
this dice game.

The churning of the ocean of milk

According to a lesser known Madhva version of the legend, during the
churning of the ocean of milk, a great poison known as halahala was
produced, which Vayu, the god of wind, rubbed in his hands to reduce
its potency. Then a small portion was given to god Shiva, turning his
throat blue. The rest was collected in a golden vessel and digested by
Vayu. (One source states he drank the Kalakuta poison of Vasuki nāga.
[12] Still others more commonly state that Shiva drank alone.[13]) A
little portion of poison that wasn't swallowed by Shiva became the
body of Kali. From this poison also came, "cruel objects like snakes,
wolves, and tigers."[3]

Later, when the asura Rahu was decapitated by Vishnu's Mohini avatar,
the demon’s allies attacked her and all except Kali were killed.
Having the power to possess the bodies of immortal and mortal beings,
he entered the hearts of man and escaped death.[14] He occasionally
entered Shiva and caused him to write evil scriptures, which created
great confusion and misconceptions. Because Kali was “invisible,
unimaginable, and present in all” the only way to correct the chaos
born from the miswritten texts was to completely renew the sacred
scriptures entirely. Thus Vishnu descended to earth as Vedavyasa, the
compiler of the sacred scriptures Vedas and the writer of the Puranas.
[3]

Markandeya Purana

According to Markandeya Purana, the Brahmin Pravara was given a
magical ointment that allowed him to fly. But when he flew to the
Himalayas, the ointment was washed away from the bottoms of his feet
keeping him from returning home to his wife. During this time, the
nymph Varuthini fell madly in love with him and begged the Brahmin to
stay with her forever. But eventually, he rejected her. He prayed to
Agni who returned him home safely.

The gandharva Kali was in love with Varuthini and had been rejected by
her in the past. He saw how she hungered for the Brahmin, so he took
on the appearance of Pravara and came before the courtesan. He led her
into the bedchamber and told her to close her eyes during their shared
pleasure [sambhoga]. (Another version of this tale explains the reason
he told her to shut her eyes was because gods revert to their true
forms whenever they do the basest of things, such as eating, sleeping,
and making love (including dying for demons).) As they made love,
Varuthini noticed that his body became flaming hot and believed it was
because his Brahmin spirit was infused with the sacrificial fire.
After climax, Kali, still-as-Pravara, left the apsara and returned to
his abode. Varuthini soon became pregnant and nine months later gave
birth to a human child that not only looked like the Brahmin but
possessed his soul as well.[15] The authors of the book Science in
Culture comment this was an example of the Sanskrit phrase "from his
semen and from her thinking," meaning the child was indeed Pravara's
child because she believed it was his.[16]

In another version, Kali stipulates he will only marry the apsara if
she keeps her eyes closed while they are in the forest (presumably
making love). However, Kali leaves after their marriage and the birth
of their son Svarocisa. Svarocisa grows up to become a very learned
scholar of the Vedas and learns to speak the languages of all
creatures from one of his three wives. He later marries a goddess and
fathers Svarocisa Manu, one of the progenitors of mankind.[17] (See
Progeny)

Bhagavata Purana

The Bhagavata Purana states the very day and moment god Krishna left
this earth, Kali, "who promotes all kinds of irreligious activities,
came into this world.”[18] Thus, Kali simply came into being because
the prosperity brought by Krishna left after his death.

After setting off to wage war against the evils of the world with his
armies, Emperor Parikshit, the grandson of Arjuna, came across a Sudra
dressed as a king who was beating a cow and an ox with a club.
Parikshit immediately lead his chariot over to the scene and angrily
berated the sudra for abusing the sacred cow and her mate. However,
this was no ordinary sudra and these were no ordinary bovine, for the
sudra was Kali and the cow and ox were embodiments of the earth
goddess and Dharma. The Emperor noticed the ox was standing on one of
his legs because the other three had been broken by Kali. Dharma
explained his four legs represented "austerity, cleanliness, mercy and
truthfulness", but he had only the leg of “truth” to stand on since
the other three had been broken by kali over the preceding yugas.[7]
Kali was intent on breaking all the legs that supported the reign of
dharma so he could effect the expansion of his own dark reign on
earth. The earth goddess cried for she had once been plentiful, but
when Krishna died and ascended to heaven, she was forsaken and all of
the prosperity left from the world. She feared evil kings like Kali
would continue to lay waste to the earth.

When Parikshit raised his sword to kill Kali, the sudra stripped
himself of his royal garments and prostrated himself at the emperor’s
feet. The emperor knew Kali tainted the world with his evil and so had
no place in it and raised his sword once more. But Kali interceded
again and begged the emperor to spare his life and allow him a place
to live within his empire. Parikshit decided that Kali would live in
“gambling houses, in taverns, in women of unchaste lives, in
slaughtering places and in gold”.[19] And as long as Parikshit ruled
India, Kali stayed within the confines of these five places. This act
allowed Dharma to regain his legs and the earth to be relieved of much
burden. However, Parikshit was later cursed to die by snake bite after
hunting in the forest and throwing a dead snake on an unresponsive
sage practicing austerities. Upon the emperor’s death, “Kali made his
way to other places like wild fire and established his power
throughout the length and breadth of the whole world.”[19][20]

In another version of the tale, Kali enters into the Emperor’s crown
when Parikshit gives him permission to reside wherever there is gold.
Upon returning home after offending the sage, Parikshit says to
himself, "Kali-yug’s abode is in gold; this was on my head; hence I
had so evil a thought that, having taken a dead snake cast it on the
sage’s neck. Therefore, I now understand that Kali-yug has taken his
revenge on me. How shall I escape this grievous sin?"[21][22]

Kalki Purana

KalkiMain article: Kalki Purana

The beginning of the Kalki Purana describes Kali’s lineage starting
with the creator-god Brahma, his great-great grandfather, and ending
with the birth of his children’s children. Instead of being born of
poison from the churning of the ocean of milk, he is the product of a
long line of incestuous monsters born from Brahma's back. (See Family
Lineage below) Kali and his family were created by Brahma to hurry the
dissolution of the cosmos after the pralaya period was over. When his
family takes human form on earth, they further taint the hearts and
minds of mankind to bring about the end of Dvapara Yuga and the
beginning of Kali Yuga. During the first stage of Kali-Yuga, the
Indian caste system breaks down and god-worship is forsaken by man.
All through the second, third, and fourth stages, man forgets the name
of god and no longer offers Yagya (offerings) to the Devas. It is at
this point when god Vishnu reincarnates as Kalki in the name of the
Devas and all of mankind to rid the cosmos of Kali's dark influence.

The remainder of the tale describes Kalki's childhood, military
training under the immortal Parashurama, his marriage, his preparation
for war against Kali, and the decisive war between the two. Kalki
kicks off his campaign by performing the Ashvamedha sacrifice and
leading his armies behind the horse as it runs freely from kingdom to
kingdom. If any evil king tries to stop the horse, Kalki engages them
in combat. After defeating them, he continues to follow the horse
until all evil kingdoms are vanquished. When Kali finally faces
Kalki's forces, his entire family blood line is wiped out by the
avatar's generals and he presumably dies from wounds inflicted by
Dharma and Satya Yuga personified. Kalki, meanwhile, battles and
simultaneously kills the demon's most powerful generals, Koka and
Vikoka, twin devils adept in the dark arts.[5]

Death

Kali dies one-third of the way through the Kalki Purana. During the
decisive battle between Kali and Kalki’s armies, Kali tried to face
both Dharma and Satya Yuga personified, but was overwhelmed and fled
on his donkey because his chariot had been destroyed, leaving his owl-
crested war flag to be trampled on the battlefield. Kali retreated to
the citadel of his capital city of Vishasha where he discovered his
body had been mortally stabbed and burned during his battle with the
two devas. The stench of his blood billowed out and filled the
atmosphere with a foul odor. When Dharma and Satya burst into the
city, Kali tried to run away, but, knowing his family had been
destroyed, coupled with his grevious wounds, he "entered his
unmanifested years".[5] This might lead some to believe he died, but
one version of the Kalki Purana in the book The Origins of Evil in
Hindu Mythology states Kali does not die but, instead, escapes through
time and space to live in the Kali Yuga of the next Kalpa. The author
comments, "Unlike most battles between gods and demons, however, this
apparent victory is immediately undercut, for Kali escapes to reappear
in 'another age'—in our age, or the next Kali Age."[23] Since he had
the power to manifest himself in human form on earth, he was able to
forsake his dying corporal form to escape in spirit.

Family lineage

Kali is the great-great grandson of Lord Brahma. He is the son of
Krodha (Anger) and his sister-turned-wife Himsa (Violence). He is the
grandson of Dambha (Vanity) and his sister-turned-wife, Maya
(Illusion). He is the great-grandson of Adharma (Impropriety) and his
wife, Mithya (Falsehood). Adharma was originally created from Lord
Brahma's back as a Maleen Pataka (a very dark and deadly sinful
object).

B.K. Chaturvedi, a modern translator of the Kalki Purana, states in a
foot note that the growth of this dark sinful object into Adharma
seems to, "convey the growth of Kaliyuga and its obnoxious
offshoots."[5]

Vishnu Purana

Kali's family lineage is told differently in the Vishnu Purana, which
is a father purana to the Kalki Purana:

The wife of Adharma (vice) was Himsá (violence), on whom he begot a
son Anrita (falsehood), and a daughter Nikriti (immorality): they
intermarried, and had two sons, Bhaya (fear) and Naraka (hell); and
twins to them, two daughters, Maya (deceit) and Vedaná (torture), who
became their wives. The son of Bhaya and Máyá was the destroyer of
living creatures, or Mrityu (death); and Dukha (pain) was the
offspring of Naraka and Vedaná. The children of Mrityu were Vyádhi
(disease), Jará (decay), Soka (sorrow), Trishńa (greediness), and
Krodha (wrath). These are all called the inflictors of misery, and are
characterised as the progeny of Vice (Adharma). They are all without
wives, without posterity, without the faculty to procreate; they are
the terrific forms of Vishńu, and perpetually operate as causes of the
destruction of this world. On the contrary, Daksha and the other
Rishis, the elders of mankind, tend perpetually to influence its
renovation: whilst the Manus and their sons, the heroes endowed with
mighty power, and treading in the path of truth, as constantly
contribute to its preservation.

In this version, Himsa is Adharma's wife instead of his granddaughter.
[1]

Bhagavata Purana

According to the Bhagavata Purana, Adharma is the husband of Mrishá
(falsehood), and the father of Dambha (hypocrisy) and Máyá (deceit),
who were adopted by Nirritti (Hindu god/dess of misery). The series of
their descendants is also somewhat varied from our text; being in each
descent, however, twins which intermarry, or Lobha (covetousness) and
Nikriti, who produce Krodha (wrath) and Hinsá: their children are,
Kali (wickedness) and Durukti (evil speech): their progeny are, Mrityu
and Bhí (fear); whose offspring are, Niraya (hell) and Yátaná
(torment).[24]

In this version, Mrisha is the wife of Adharma and not Himsa or
Mithya.

Linga Purana

The Linga Purana enumerates Adharma among the Prajapatis (Lords of
Creatures).[24]

Dharma Personified

Since Dharma is one of the major antagonists of Kali, it is important
to note this personified deity has his own line of offspring that work
against the demon and his family to bring balance to the world. The
following comes from the Vishnu Purana:

The progeny of Dharma by the daughters of Daksha were as follows: by
Sraddha he had Kama (desire); by Lakshmi, Darpa (pride); by Dhriti,
Niyama (precept); by Tushti, Santosha (content); by Pushti, Lobha
(cupidity); by Medhá, Sruta (sacred tradition); by Kriya, Danda, Naya,
and Vinaya (correction, polity, and prudence); by Buddhi, Bodha
(understanding); by Lajj, Vinaya (good behaviour); by Vapu, Vyavasaya
(perseverance). Santi gave birth to Kshema (prosperity); Siddhi to
Sukha (enjoyment); and Kírtti to Yasas. These were the sons of Dharma;
one of whom, Kama, had Hersha (joy) by his wife Nandi (delight).

Again, the Bhagavata Purana gives a different account of his
children's names.[25]

Progeny

Kali’s sister-turned-wife, Durukti (Calumny), gave him two offspring:
a son named Bhayanak (Fear) and a daughter named Mrityu (Death). His
son and daughter gave him two grandchildren: a boy named Naraka (Hell)
and a girl named Yatana (Torture).[5] Again, there are some
discrepancies here. The Vishnu Purana says Mrityu and Bhayanak are his
brother and sister. Mrityu is even represented as male instead of
female.[5]

Kali is the grandfather of Svarocisa Manu, one of the progenitors of
mankind.[17] As previously mentioned, Kali had a son named Svarocisa
with the Apsara Varuthini. Svarocisa once traveld to Mt. Mandara and
was met by Manorama, a cursed-woman being chased by a demon. In the
past, she had made fun of a sage practicing Tapasya austerities on Mt.
Kailas and was cursed to be captured by a demon. When her friends
Vibhavari and Kalavati berated the sage for enacting a curse for such
a minor offence, he cursed one to be a leper and the other a carrier
of diseases. Manorama had knowledge of a powerful spiritual weapon,
but did not know how to wield it, so she taught it to Svarocisa. When
the demon leaped out of the forest and grabbed a hold of the woman,
Svarocis called forth the weapon. But the demon stayed his hand and
explained he was actually Manorama’s father, Indivara. He had also
been cursed to become a demon by the sage Brahmamitra because he tried
to covertly obtain the secrets of Ayurveda medicine without the sage’s
knowledge. The sage told him that the curse would end when he was
about to eat his own daughter. Once he regained his true form,
Indivara taught Svarocisa the Ayurveda medication, which he used to
cure Manorama’s friends. He later married the three and had three sons
with them. He learned the languages of all creatures from Vibhavari
and the Padmini vidya from Kalavati.

Despite his prosperity, Svarocis was unhappy in his life and could
hear the ducks and deer talking about him behind his back. One day he
went hunting and took aim at a boar, but a deer came through the
clearing and asked to be shot in its place. When he enquired why, the
deer told him that she was really the goddess of the forest and wished
to marry Svarocisa. So he embraced the deer and she turned into a
beautiful woman. Together, they had a son named Dyutiman, who later
became the Svarocisa Manu.[17]

One source states, "Kali's wife Alakshmi and her sons who supervise
evil also came from Kshirasagara [the ocean of milk]."[3] Alakshmi is
the elder sister of the goddess Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu.[26]
Since the Kalki Purana states his wife Durukti is his sister, Alakshmi
would be a second wife because she is not directly related to him.

There are a number of connections and similarities between Kali and
Alakshmi. First and foremost, Alakshmi’s sister is the consort of Lord
Vishnu, who sent his Kalki avatar to earth to defeat Kali.[26] Second,
legends say she was born either from the churning of the ocean of
milk, the poison from Vasuki (who helped churn the ocean) or the back
of Prajapati.[26][27] As previously mentioned, Kali is said to have
been born from the halahala poison created from churning the ocean or
from a lineage created from Lord Brahma’s back.[3][5] Third, Alakshmi
takes the form of an owl.[26] Kali's emblem on his war flag is of an
owl.[5] Fourth, whenever Alakshmi enters a house, families fight and
turn on one another.[28] The presence of Kali and his family on earth
causes mankind to fight and turn on one another. Finally, Alakshmi is
said to ride a donkey.[26] Kali also rides a donkey in the Kalki
Purana.[5]

Role in modern communalism

Further information: Communalism (South Asia) and Religious violence
in India

Anti-beef eating pamphlet (1890 CE) showing Kali (far right)
attempting to slaughter a sacred cow.
The color version ran by the Ravi Varma Press (c. 1912).Kali’s image
was used in several pamphlets circulated by various Agorakshanasabh
(“cow protection leagues”) and “wandering ascetics” as a protest
against the Muslim practice of beef-eating during the British raj.[29]
[30] These pamphlets were produced in a time when Hindu-Muslim riots
over cow slaughter occurred in several areas of India; including
Azamgarh district (1893), when a total of 100 people died in similar
conflagrations throughout the empire; Ayodhya (1912-1913); and
Shahabad (1917).[31] One such pamphlet entitled “The Present State”
showed a cow being slaughtered by a trio of "Muhammadan" butchers.[29]
[30] Another portrayed Kali raising a sword above the head of a sacred
cow, whose body was illustrated to be a microcosmic paradise in which
all the Hindu gods resided. There were many different editions of this
version. For instance, one showed a woman labeled "The Hindu" waiting
with bowl-in-hand for the cow's calf to finish suckling before she
could get milk. A form of Krishna labeled Darmaraj ("Ruler of Dharma")
stood behind the cow and Kali was, again, harassing her with his
sword. Still, a different one deleted the woman and calf and instead
portrayed Dharmaraj in front of the cow pleading mat maro gay sarv ka
jivan hai ("don’t kill the cow, everyone is dependent on it"), while
Kali rebuts he manusyaho! Kaliyugi Mansahari jivom ko dekho ("mankind,
look at the meat-eating souls of the kaligyug").[29]

Some Hindus considered Kali’s presence in the picture to be a
representation of the Muslim community.[29][30] When one of the
versions of these pamphlets came into the possession of a state
official in 1893, he commented that the image “contained a
representation of a Musalman [Muslim] advancing to slay the cow ...”.
[29] One book states, “The Magistrate [at Deoria] found Muhammadans
excited because they heard a picture was in circulation representing a
Muhammadan with a sword drawn sacrificing a cow, and this they
considered an insult.”[29] In 1915, a color version of this picture
ran by the Ravi Varma Press[32] caught the attention of the colonial
censors and was presumably censored in some way.[29]

In popular culture

Nala Damayanti (1921): This big-budget film depicts a famous episode
from the Mahabharata, starting with Narada's ascent of Mount Meru. It
shows Swarga, the Heaven of Indra, the Transformation in the Clouds of
the Four Gods into impersonations of King Nala, Swan Messengers of
Love, the Transformation of Kali into a Serpent, the Meeting of Kali
and Dwarpa and the Four Gods amidst the Blue Air.[33]

Notes

^ a b CHAP. VII http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp041.htm#fr_212
^ SECTION LVIII http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m03/index.htm
^ a b c d e Chapter X Samudra mathana
^ SECTION XXXI
^ a b c d e f g h i Chaturvedi, B.K. Kalki Purana. New Delhi: Diamond
Books, 2004 (ISBN 81-288-0588-6)
^ Monier-Williams, Monier, Sir.Sanskrit-English Dictionary ISBN
0-19-864308-X
^ a b Canto 1: Creation, Chapter 17 http://vedabase.net/sb/1/17/en1
^ CYCLICAL TIME AND ASTRONOMY IN HINDUISM (See page. 3)
http://www.achaloza.com/docs/AchalOza_CyclicalTime.pdf
^ Glass, Marty. YUGA: An Anatomy of Our Fate. Sophia Perennis, 2004
(ISBN 0900588292)
^ "Terminalia belerica (Combretaceae) is a large deciduous tree
growing to a height of 25 – 30 meters, occurring throughout India up
to 1000 meters elevation, except in the dry regions of western
India ..." [1]
^ Smith, Frederick M. The Self Possessed: Deity And Spirit Possession
in South Asian Literature And Civilization. Columbia University Press,
2006 (ISBN 0231137486)
^ Mutalik, Keshav M. Jagannath Dasa’s Harikathamrutasara (Quintessence
of Hari’s Saga). Bombay: Focus (ISBN 81-7154-787-7)
^ In another version given by Shaivites, Shiva alone drank the deadly
poison, but his consort Parvati squeezed his neck to keep it from
reaching his stomach.[2] Still, some traditions state Vayu drank first
and Shiva last and that Vayu himself is an aspect of Shiva.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaivites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parvati

http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/series/11_names_of_shiva/11_names_of_shiva_bhagawan-1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vayu

^ The same source says Kali can never enter the bodies of Vishnu, his
consort Lakshmi, or Vayu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshmi
^ Doniger, Wendy. The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade.
University Of Chicago Press, 2000 (ISBN 0226156427)
^ Graubard, Stephen R. and Everett Mendelsohn. Science in Culture. Ed.
Peter Galison and Stephen Graubard. Transaction Publishers, 2001 (ISBN
0765806738)
^ a b c Prasad, Ramanuj. Know The Puranas. Pustak Mahal, 2005 (ISBN
81-223-0912-7)
^ Canto 1: Creation, Chapter 18 http://vedabase.net/sb/1/18/en1
^ a b Sastri, Natesa S. M. Hindu Feasts: Fasts And Ceremonies: Fasts
and Ceremonies. Laurier Books Ltd., 2003 (ISBN 8120604024)
^ See chapters 16, 17, and 18
^ The Prema-Sagara: Or the Ocean of Love (PDF ONLY)
^ Bahadur, S.P. Gitavali: Complete Works of Goswami Tulsidas (Volume
III). India: Prachya Prakashan, 1979 (ISBN 8121506697)
^ O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology.
University of California Press, 1980 (ISBN 0520040988)
^ a b See 55:14 http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp041.htm#fn_212
^ See 55:13 http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp041.htm#fn_211
^ a b c d e Pattanaik, Devdutt. Lakshmi: The Goddess of Wealth and
Fortune-An Introduction. Vakils Feffer & Simons Ltd, 2003 (ISBN
8187111585)
^ Krishna, Nanditha. The Book of Vishnu. Penguin Global, 2001 (ISBN
0670049077)
^ Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe. Princeton University
Press, 2000 (ISBN 0691049092)

^ a b c d e f g Pinney, Christopher. Photos of the Gods: The Printed
Image and Political Struggle in India. Reaktion Books, 2004 (ISBN
1861891849)
^ a b c Gupta, Charu. Sexuality, Obscenity, And Community: Women,
Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. Palgrave Macmillan,
2006 (ISBN 0312295855)
^ Paradox of the Indian Cow: Attitudes to Beef Eating in Early India
http://www.indowindow.net/sad/article.php?child=17&article=11
^ A lithograph press founded by Indian artist Ravi Varma in 1894.[3]
^ Plot Summary for Nala Damayanti (1921)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154931/plotsummary

External links

Look up Kali in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Places of Kali – Podcast of Kali’s tale from the Bhagavata Purana.
કલિયુગનાં ચાર આશ્રયસ્થાન (Kaliyuga's mainstay) – The tale of Kali and
Parikshit in Gujarati.
http://www.swargarohan.org/Bhagavata/Chapter01/09.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavata_Purana

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujar%C4%81ti_script

Srimad Bhagavatam: Cant 1 – See chapters 16 and 17.
http://www.srimadbhagavatam.org/canto1/c1-contents.html
A very large detailed painting of King Parikshit about to kill Kali.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_(demon)

/ History / Myths of Origins /

Paradox of the Indian Cow:
Attitudes to Beef Eating in Early India

By DN Jha
Renowned historian writes on beef eating in ancient India and
associated issues

An average Indian of today rooted in what appears to him as his
traditional Hindu religious heritage carries the load of the
misconception that his ancestors, especially the Vedic Aryans,
attached great importance to the cow on account of its inherent
sacredness. The ‘sacred’ cow has come to be considered a symbol of
community identity of the Hindus whose cultural tradition is often
imagined as threatened by the Muslims who are thought of as
beefeaters. The sanctity of the cow has, therefore, been announced
with the flourish of trumpets and has been wrongly traced back to the
Vedas, which are supposedly of divine origin and fountainhead of all
knowledge and wisdom. In other words, some sections of Indian society
have traced back the concept of sacred cow to the very period when it
was sacrificed and its flesh was eaten.

More importantly, the cow has tended to become a political instrument
at the hand of rulers over time. The Mughal emperors (e.g. Babar,
Akbar, Jahangir and Aurangzeb etc) are said to have imposed a
restricted ban on cow slaughter to accommodate the Jaina or
Brahmanical feeling of respect and veneration of the cow[1].
Similarly Shivaji, sometimes viewed as an incarnation of God who
descended on earth for the deliverance of the cow and brahmin, is
described as proclaiming: “We are Hindus and the rightful lords of the
realm. It is not proper for us to witness cow slaughter and the
oppression of brahmanas”[2].

But the cow became a tool of mass political mobilization when the
organized Hindu cow protection movement, beginning with the Sikh Kuka
(or Namdhari) sect in the Punjab around 1870 and later strengthened by
the foundation of the first Gorakshini Sabha in 1882 by Dayanananda
Saraswati, made this animal a symbol to unite a wide ranging people,
challenged the Muslim practice of its slaughter and provoked a series
of serious communal riots in the 1880s and 1890s. Although attitudes
to cow killing had been hardening even earlier, there was undoubtedly
a ‘dramatic intensification’ of the cow protection movement when in
1888 the North-Western Provinces High Court decreed that a cow was not
a sacred object.[3] Not surprisingly cow slaughter very often became
the pretext of many Hindu-Muslim riots, especially those in Azamgarh
district in the year 1893 when more than one hundred people were
killed in different parts of the country. Similarly in 1912-1913
violence rocked Ayodhya and a few years later, in 1917, Shahabad
witnessed a disastrous communal conflagration.[4]

The killing of the kine seems to have emerged again and again as a
troublesome issue on the Indian political scene even in independent
India despite legislation by several state legislatures prohibiting
cow slaughter and the Directive Principles of State Policy in the
Indian Constitution which directs the Indian state to “…to take steps
for… prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and
draught cattle”. For instance, in 1966, nearly two decades after
Indian independence, almost all the Indian communal political parties
and organizations joined hands in masterminding a massive
demonstration by several hundred thousand people in favour of a
national ban on cow slaughter which culminated in a violent rioting in
front of the Indian Parliament resulting in the death of at least
eight persons and injury to many more. In April 1979, Acharya Vinoba
Bhave, often supposed to be a spiritual heir to Mahatma Gandhi, went
on a hunger strike to pressurize the central government to prohibit
cow slaughter throughout the country and ended it after five days when
he succeeded in getting the Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s vague
assurance that his government would expedite anti-slaughter
legislation. Since then the cow ceased to remain much of an issue in
the Indian political arena for many years, though the management of
cattle resources has been a matter of academic debate among
sociologists, anthropologists, economists and different categories of
policy framers.

The veneration of cow has been, however, converted into a symbol of
communal identity of the Hindus and the obscurantist and
fundamentalist forces obdurately refuse to appreciate that the
‘sacred’ cow was not always all that sacred in the Vedic and
subsequent Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical traditions and that its
flesh, along with other varieties of meat, was quite often a part of
the haute cuisine in early India. Although the Shin, Muslims of
Dardistan in Pakistan, look on the cow as other Muslims do the pig,
avoid direct contact with cows, refuse to drink cow’s milk or use cow
dung as fuel and reject beef as food,[5] the self-styled custodians of
non-existent ‘monolithic’ Hinduism assert that the practice of beef
eating was first introduced in India by the followers of Islam who
came from outside and are foreigners in this country, little realising
that their Vedic ancestors were also foreigners who ate the flesh of
the cow and various other animals. Fanaticism getting precedence over
fact, it is not surprising that the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangha
(RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and their numerous
outfits have a national ban on cow slaughter on their agenda and the
Chief Minister of Gujarat (Keshubhai Patel) announced some time ago,
as a pre-election gimmick, the setting up of a separate department to
preserve cow breeds and manage Hindu temples.[6] More recently, a
Bajrang Dal leader has threatened to enroll 30 lakh volunteers to
agitate against cow slaughter during the month of Bakrid in 2002.[7]
So high-geared has been the propaganda about abstention from beef
eating as a characteristic trait of ‘Hinduism’ that when the RSS
tried to claim Sikhs as Hindus, it led to vehement opposition from
them and one of the Sikh youth leaders proposed, ”Why not slaughter a
cow and serve beef in a gurudwara langar?”[8]

The communalists who have been raising a hullabaloo over the cow in
the political arena do not realise that beef eating remained a fairly
common practice for a long time in India and that the arguments for
its prevalence are based on the evidence drawn from our own scriptures
and religious texts. The response of historical scholarship to the
communal perception of Indian food culture, however, has been sober
and scholars have drawn attention to the textual evidence of beef
eating which, in fact, begins to be available from the oldest Indian
religious text Rgveda, supposedly of divine origin. H.H. Wilson,
writing in the first half of the nineteenth century, had asserted:
“the sacrifice of the horse or of the cow, the gomedha or asvamedha,
appears to have been common in the earliest periods of the Hindu
ritual”. The view that the practice of killing of cattle at sacrifices
and eating their flesh prevailed among the Indo-Aryans was put forth
most convincingly by Rajendra Lal Mitra in an article which first
appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and
subsequently formed a chapter of his book The Indo-Aryans published in
1891. In 1894 William Crooke, a British civil servant, collected an
impressive amount of ethnographic data on popular religious beliefs
and practices in his two-volume book and devoted one whole chapter to
the respect shown to animals including the cow[9]. Later in 1912, he
published an informative piece on the sanctity of cow in India. But he
also drew attention to the old practice of eating beef and its
survival in his own times.[10] In 1927, L. L. Sundara Ram made a
strong case for cow protection for which he sought justification from
the scriptures of different religions including Hinduism. However he
did not deny that the Vedic people ate beef, [11] though he blamed the
Muslims for cow slaughter. Later in the early forties P. V. Kane in
his monumental work History of Dharmasastra referred to some Vedic and
early Dharmasastric passages which speak of cow killing and beef
eating. H.D. Sankalia drew attention to literary as well as
archaeological evidence of eating cattle flesh in ancient India.[12]
Similarly, Laxman Shastri Joshi, a Sanskritist of unquestionable
scholarship, drew attention to the Dharmasastra works, which
unequivocally support the prevalence of the practice of flesh eating
including beef eating in early India.[13]

Needless to say that the scholarship of all of the scholars mentioned
above was unimpeachable, and that none of them seems to have anything
to do with any anti- Hindu ideology. H.H. Wilson, for example, was the
first occupant of the Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford in 1832 and was not
as avowedly anti-Indian as many other imperialist scholars. Rajendra
Lal Mitra, a product of the Bengal renaissance and a close associate
of Rabindranath’s elder brother Jyotindranath Tagore, made significant
contribution to India’s intellectual life, and was described by Max
Mueller as the ‘best living Indologist’ of his time and by
Rabindranath Tagore as “the most beloved child of the muse”.[14]
William Crooke was a well-known colonial ethnograher who wrote
extensively on peasant life and popular religion without any marked
prejudice against Hinduism.[15] L. L. Sundara Ram, despite his
somewhat anti-Muslim feeling, was inspired by humanitarian
considerations. Mahamahopadhyaya P.V. Kane was a conservative Marathi
brahmin and the only Sanskritist to be honoured with the title of
Bharatratna. H.D. Sankalia combined his unrivalled archaeological
activity with a profound knowledge of Sanskrit. Besides these scholars
several other Indian Sanskritists and Indologists, not to mention a
number of western scholars, have repeatedly drawn our attention to the
textual evidence of eating beef and other types of animal flesh in
early India. Curious though it may seem, the Sangh Parivar, which
carries a heavy burden of “civilisational illiteracy”, has never
turned its guns towards them but against historians who have mostly
relied on the researches of the above-mentioned distinguished
scholars.

While the contribution of the scholars mentioned above cannot be
minimised, the limitation of their work lies in the fact that they
have referred to isolated bits of information on beef eating
concentrating mainly on the Vedic texts without treating it as part of
the flesh eating tradition prevalent in India. Unlike their works,
therefore, the present paper seeks to draw attention to the Indian
textual evidence of cattle killing and beef eating widely dispersed
over time so as to indicate its continuity for a long time in the
Brahmanical society and to suggest that the idea of cow’s supposed
holiness does not tie up with practices current in Indian society.

The early Aryans, who migrated to India from outside,
brought along with them their earlier cultural traits. Therefore, even
after their migration into the Indian subcontinent, for several
centuries, pastoralism, nomadism and animal sacrifice remained
characteristic features of their life till sedentary field agriculture
became the mainstay of their livelihood. Animal sacrifices were very
common, and in the agnadheya, which was a preparatory rite preceding
all public sacrifices, a cow was required to be killed.[16] In the
asvamedha, the most important of public sacrifices, first mentioned in
the Rgveda and discussed in the Brahmanas, more than 600 animals
(including wild ones like boars) and birds were killed and its finale
was marked by the sacrifice of 21 cows, which, according to the
dominant opinion were sterile ones.[17] In the gosava, an important
component of the public sacrifices like the rajasuya and vajapeya, a
sterile spotted cow was offered to Maruts and seventeen ‘dwarf heifers
under three’ were done to death in the pancasaradiyasava.[18] The
killing of animals including the cattle figures in several other
yajnas including caturmasya, sautramani and independent animal
sacrifice called pasubandha or nirudhapasubandha.[19] These and
several other major sacrifices involved killing of animals including
the cattle, which constituted the chief form of the wealth of the
early Aryans. They, not surprisingly, prayed for cattle and sacrificed
them to propitiate their gods.

The Vedic gods, for whom the various sacrifices were performed, had no
fixed menu of food. Milk, butter, barley, oxen, goats and sheep were
offered to them and these were their usual food, though some of them
seem to have had their special preferences. Indra had a special liking
for bulls (RV, V.29.7ab; VI.17.11b; VIII.12.8ab X.27.2c; X. 28. 3c;X.
86.14ab). Agni was not a tippler like Indra, but was fond of animal
food including the flesh of horses, bulls and cows (RV, VIII. 43.11;
X. 91.14ab). The toothless Pusan, the guardian of the roads, ate mush
as a Hobson’s choice. Soma was the name of a heady drink but, equally
importantly, of a god and killing of animals including cattle for him
(RV, X.91.14ab) was basic to most of the Rgvedic yajnas. The Maruts
and the Asvins were also offered cows. The Vedas mention about 250
animals out of which at least 50 were deemed fit for sacrifice and by
implication for divine as well as human consumption. The animal food
occupied a place of importance in the Vedic sacrifices and dietetics
and the general preference for the flesh of the cow is undeniable. The
Taittiriya Brahmana (III.9.8) categorically tells us: “Verily the cow
is food” (atho annam vai gauh) and the Satapatha Brahmana (III.1.2.21)
refers to Yajnavalkya’s stubborn insistence on eating the tender
(amsala) flesh of the cow.

According to the subsequent Brahmanical texts (e.g. Grhyasutras and
Dharmasutras) the killing of animals and eating of beef was very much
de rigeur. The ceremony of guest-reception (known as arghya in the
Rgveda but generally as madhuparka in subsequent texts) consisted not
only of a meal of a mixture of curds and honey but also of the flesh
of a cow or bull. Early lawgivers go to the extent of making flesh
food mandatory in madhuparka --- an injunction more or less dittoed
by several later legal texts (AsGS, I.24.33; KathaGS, 24,20; SankhGS,
II.15.2; ParGS, I.3.29). A guest therefore came to be described by
Panini as a goghna (one for whom the cow is slain). The sacred thread
ceremony was not all that sacred; for it was necessary for a snataka
to wear an upper garment of the cowhide (ParGS, II.5.17-20).

The slaughter of animals formed an important component of the cult of
the dead in the Vedic texts as well as in later Dharmasastra works.
The thick fat of the cow was used to cover the dead body (RV, X.14-18)
and a bull was burnt along with the corpse to enable the departed to
ride with in the nether world. The funerary rites included feeding of
the brahmins after the prescribed period and quite often the flesh of
the cow/ ox was offered to the dead (AV, XII.2, 48). The textual
prescriptions indicate the degree of satisfaction obtained by the
Manes depending upon the animal offered---- the cow’s flesh could keep
them contented for at least a year! The Vedic and the post-Vedic
texts also often mention the killing of animals including the kine in
several other ritual contexts. The gavamayana, a sessional sacrifice
performed by the brahmins was, for example, marked by animal slaughter
culminating in an extravagant bacchanalian communal festival
(mahavrata) in which cattle were slaughtered. There was, therefore, a
relationship between the sacrifice and sustenance. But this need not
necessarily mean that different meat types were eaten only if offered
in a sacrifice. Thus in the grhamedha, which has been discussed in
several Srautasutras, an unspecified number of cows were slain not in
the strict ritual manner but in the crude and profane manner.[20]
Archaeological evidence also suggests non-ritual killing of cattle.
This is indicative of the fact that beef and other animal flesh formed
part of the dietary habits of the people and that the edible flesh was
not always ritually consecrated, though some scholars have argued to
the contrary.[21] Despite the overwhelming evidence of cattle killing,
several scholars have obdurately held that the Vedic cow was sacred
and inviolable on the basis of the occurrence of the word aghnya/
aghnya in the Atharvaveda and the use of words for cow as epithet or
in simile and metaphor with reference to entities of highest religious
significance. But it has been convincingly proved that if the Vedic
cow was at all inviolable, it was so only when it belonged to a
brahmin who received cows as sacrificial fee (daksina).[22] But this
cannot be taken to be an index of the animal’s inherent sanctity and
inviolability in the Vedic period or even later.

Nor can one make too much of the doctrine of non-killing (ahimsa) in
relation to the cow. Gautama Buddha and Mahavira emphasized the idea
of non-violence, which seems to have made its first appearance in the
Upanisadic thought and literature. But despite their vehement
opposition of the Vedic animal sacrifice, neither they nor their
followers were averse to eating of meat. The Buddha is known to have
eaten beef and pork and the texts amply indicate that flesh meat very
well suited the Buddhist palate. Asoka, whose compassion for animals
is undeniable, allowed certain specified animals to be killed for his
kitchen. In fact, neither Asoka’s list of animals exempted from
slaughter nor the Arthasastra of Kautilya specifically mentions cow as
unslayable. The cattle were killed for food throughout the Mauryan
period.

Like Buddhism, Jainism also enthusiastically took up cudgels for non-
violence. But meat eating was so common in Vedic and post-Vedic times
that even Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, is said to have eaten the
meat of a cockerel. Perhaps the early Jainas were not strict
vegetarians. A great Jaina logician of the eighth century,
Haribhadrasuri, tells us that the monks did not have objection to
eating flesh and fish, which were given to them by householders,
though there is irrefutable textual evidence to show that meat eating
became a strong taboo among the followers of Jainism. The
inflexibility of the Jaina attitude to meat eating is deeply rooted in
the basic tenets of Jaina philosophy, which, at least in theory, is
impartial in its respect for all forms of life without according any
special status to the cow. Thus, although both Buddhism, and, to a
greater extent, Jainism contributed to the growth of ahimsa doctrine,
neither seems to have developed the sacred cow concept
independently.

III

Despite the Upanisadic, Buddhist and Jaina advocacy of ahimsa, the
practice of ritual and random of killing animals including the cattle
continued in the post-Mauryan centuries. The law book of Manu (200 BC-
AD 200), which is the most representative of the legal texts and has
much to say on the lawful and forbidden food, contains several
passages on flesh eating, which have much in common with earlier and
later Brahmanical juridical works. Like the earlier law books, it
mentions the animals whose flesh could be eaten. Manu’s list includes
the porcupine, hedgehog, iguana, rhinoceros, tortoise and the hare and
all those domestic animals having teeth in one jaw only, the only
exception being the camel (V.18); and, it is significant that the cow
is not excluded from the list of edible animals. Eating meat on
sacrificial occasions, Manu tells us, is a divine rule (daivo vidhih
smrtah), but doing so on other occasions is a demoniac practice (V.
31). Accordingly one does not do any wrong by eating meat while
honouring the gods, the Manes and guests (madhuparka ca yajne ca
pitrdaivatakarmani), irrespective of the way in which the meat was
procured (V.32, 41). Manu asserts that animals were created for the
sake of sacrifice, that killing on ritual occasions is non-killing (V.
39) and injury (himsa) as enjoined by the Veda (vedavihitahimsa) is
known to be non-injury (V.44). In the section dealing with rules for
times of distress, Manu recalls the legendary examples of the most
virtuous brahmins of the days of yore who ate ox-meat and dog-meat to
escape death from starvation (X.105-9). Manu’s latitudinarian attitude
is clear from his recognition of the natural human tendency of eating
meat, drinking spirituous liquor and indulging in sexual intercourse,
even if abstention brings great rewards (V.56). He further breaks
loose the constraints when he says: “the Lord of creatures (Prajapati)
created this whole world to be the sustenance of the vital spirit;
both the immovable and the movable (creation is) the food of the vital
spirit. What is destitute of motion is the food of those endowed with
locomotion; (animals) without fangs (are the food) of those with
fangs, those without hands of those who possess hands, and the timid
of the bold. The eater who daily even devours those destined to be his
food, commits no sin; for the creator himself created both the eaters
and those who are to be eaten” (V.28-30). This injunction removes all
restrictions on flesh eating and gives an unlimited freedom to all
desiring to eat animal flesh and since Manu does not mention beef
eating as taboo one can infer that he did not treat cow as sacrosanct.
Manu contradicts his own statements by extolling ahimsa (X.63), but
there is no doubt that he permitted meat eating at least on ritual
occasions (madhuparka, sraddha etc) when the killing of the cow and
other cattle, according to his commentator Medhatithi (9th century),
was in keeping with the Vedic and post- Vedic practice
(govyajamamsamaproksitambhaksyed… madhuparkovyakhyatah tatra
govadhovihitah).[23]

Yajnavalkya (AD 100-300), like Manu, discusses the rules regarding
lawful and forbidden food. Although his treatment of the subject is
less detailed, he does not differ radically from him. Yajnavalkya
mentions the specific animals (deer, sheep, goat, boar, rhinoceros
etc) and birds (e.g. partridge) whose flesh could satisfy the Manes (I.
258-61). According to him a student, teacher, king, close friend and
son-in-law should be offered arghya every year and a priest should be
offered madhuparka on all ritual occasions (I.110). He further enjoins
that a learned brahmin (srotriya) should be welcomed with a big ox or
goat (mahoksam va mahajam va srotriyayopakalpayet) delicious food and
sweet words. This indicates his endorsement of the earlier practice of
killing cattle at the reception of illustrious guests. Yajnavalkya,
like Manu, permits eating of meat when life is in danger, or when it
is offered in sacrifices and funerary rites (i.179). But unconsecrated
meat (vrthamamsam, anupakrtamamsani), according to him, is a taboo (I.
167, 171) and any one killing animals solely for his own food and not
in accordance with the Vedic practice is doomed to go to hell for as
many days as the number of hair on the body of the victim (I.180).
Similarly Brhaspati (AD 300-500), like Manu, recommends abstention
from liquor (madya), flesh (mamsa) and sexual intercourse only if they
are not lawfully ordained[24] which implies that whatever was lawful
was permitted. The lawgivers generally accept as lawful all those
sacrifices, which, according to them, have Vedic sanction. The
sacrificial slaughter of animals and domesticated bovines, as we have
seen, was a Vedic practice and therefore may have been fairly common
among the Brahmanical circles during the early Christian centuries and
even well into the later half of the first millennium AD. It would be,
however, unrealistic to assume that the dharmic precept of restricting
animal slaughter to ritual occasions was always taken seriously either
by brahmins for whom the legal injunctions were meant or by other
sections of society.[25] It is not surprising, therefore, that
Brhaspati, while discussing the importance of local customs, says that
in Madhyadesa the artisans eat cows (madhyadese karmakarah silpinasca
gavasinah).[26]

The evidence from the epics is quite eloquent. Most of the characters
in the Mahabharata are meat eaters and it makes a laudatory reference
to the king Rantideva in whose kitchen two thousand cows were
butchered everyday, their flesh, along with grains, being distributed
among the brahmins (III.208.8-9)[27]. Similarly the Ramayana of
Valmiki makes frequent reference to the killing of animals including
the cow for sacrifice as well as food. Rama was born after his father
Dasaratha performed a big sacrifice involving the slaughter of a large
number of animals declared edible by the Dharmasastras, which, as we
have seen, sanction ritual killing of the kine. Sita, while crossing
the Yamuna, assures her that she would worship her with thousand cows
and a hundred jars of wine when Rama accomplishes his vow. Her
fondness for deer meat drives her husband crazy enough to kill Marici,
a deer in disguise. Bharadvaja welcomes Rama by slaughtering a fatted
calf in his honour.[28]

The non-vegetarian dietary practices find an important place in the
early Indian medical treatises, whose chronology broadly coincides
with that of the law books of Manu and Yajnavalkya, and the two epics.
Caraka (1st-2nd century), Susruta (3rd –4th century) and Vagbhata (7th
century) provide an impressive list of the variety of fish and flesh
and all three of them speak of the therapeutic uses of beef[29]. The
continuity of the tradition of eating flesh including that of the
cattle is also echoed in early Indian secular literature till late
times. In the Gupta period, Kalidasa alludes to the story of Rantideva
who killed numerous cows every day in his kitchen.[30] More than two
centuries later, Bhavabhuti (AD 700) refers to two instances of guest
reception, which included the killing of a heifer[31]. In the 10th
century Rajasekhara mentions the practice of killing an ox or a goat
in honour of a guest[32]. In the 12th century Sriharsa mentions a
variety of non-vegetarian delicacies served at a dazzling marriage
feast and refers to two interesting instances of cow killing[33],
though, in the same century Somesvara shows clear preference for pig
flesh over other meat types and does not mention beef at all.

While the above references, albeit limited in number, indicate that
the ancient practice of killing the kine for food continued till about
the 12th century, there is considerable evidence in the commentaries
on the kavya literature and the earlier Dharmasastra texts to show
that the Brahmanical writers retained its memory till very late times.
Among the commentators on the secular literature, Candupandita (late
13th century) from Gujarat, Narahari[34] (14th century) from Telengana
in Andhra Pradesh, and Mallinatha[35] (14th-15th century), who is
associated with the king Devaraya II of Vidyanagara (Vijayanagara),
clearly indicate that, in earlier times, the cow was done to death for
rituals and hence for food. As late as the 18th century Ghanasyama, a
minister of a Tanjore ruler, states that the killing of cow in honour
of a guest was the ancient rule.[36]

Similarly the authors of Dharmasastra commentaries and religious
digests from the 9th century onwards keep alive the memory of the
archaic practice of beef eating and some of them even go so far as to
permit eating beef in specific circumstances. For example, Medhatithi
(9th century), probably a Kashmirian brahmin, says that a bull or ox
was killed in honour of a ruler or any one deserving to be honoured
and unambiguously allows eating the flesh of cow (govyajamamsam) on
ritual occasions[37]. Several other writers of exegetical works seem
to lend support to this view, though some times indirectly.
Visvarupa[38] (9th century), a brahmin from Malwa and probably a pupil
of Sankara, Vijnanesvara[39] (11th century), who may have lived not
far from Kalyana in modern Karnataka, Haradatta[40] (12th century),
also a southerner (daksinatya), Laksmidhara[41] (12th century), a
minister of the Gahadwala king, Hemadri[42] (late 13th century), a
minister of the Yadavas of Devagiri, Narasimha/ Nrsimha[43] (14th
century), possibly from southern India, and Mitra Misra[44] (17th
century) from Gopacala (Gwalior) support the practice of killing a cow
on occasions like guest-reception and sraddha in ancient times. As
recently as the early 20th century, Madana Upadhyaya from Mithila
refers to the ritual slaughter of milch cattle in the days of yore.
[45] Thus even when the Dharmasastra commentators view cow killing
with disfavour, they generally admit that it was an ancient practice
and that it was to be avoided in the kali age.

While the above evidence is indicative of the continuity of the
practice of beef eating, the lawgivers had already begun to discourage
it around the middle of the first millennium when the Indian society
began to be gradually feudalized leading to major socio-cultural
transformation. This phase of transition, first described in the epic
and Puranic passages as kaliyuga, saw many changes and modification in
social norms and customs. The Brahmanical religious texts now begin to
speak of many earlier practices as forbidden in the kaliyuga –
practices which came to be known as kalivarjyas. While the number of
kalivarjyas swelled up over time, most of the relevant texts mention
cow killing as forbidden in the kali. According to some early medieval
lawgivers a cow killer was an untouchable and one incurred sin even by
talking to him. They increasingly associated cow slaughter and beef
eating with the proliferating number of untouchable castes. It is,
however, interesting that some of them consider these acts as no more
than minor behavioural aberrations like cleaning one’s teeth with
one’s fingers and eating only salt or soil.[46]

Equally interesting is the fact that almost all the prescriptive texts
enumerate cow killing as a minor sin (upapataka) and none of them
describe it as a major offence (mahapataka). Moreover the Smrti texts
provide easy escape routes by laying down expiatory procedures for
intentional as well as inadvertent killing of the cow. This may imply
that that cattle killing may not have been uncommon in society and the
atonements were prescribed merely to discourage eating of cattle
flesh. To what extent the Dharmasastric injunctions were effective,
however, remains a matter of speculation; for the possibility of at
least some members eating beef on the sly cannot be ruled out. As
recently as the late 19th century Swami Vivekananda was alleged to
have eaten beef during his stay in America, though he vehemently
defended his action.[47] Similarly in early twentieth century Mahatma
Gandhi spoke of the hypocrisy of the orthodox Hindus who “do not so
much as hesitate or inquire when during illness the doctor …
prescribes them beef tea.”[48] Even today 72 communities in Kerala--
not all of them untouchable perhaps--- prefer beef to the expensive
mutton and the Hindutva forces are persuading them to go easy on it.
[49]

Although cow killing and beef eating gradually came to be viewed as a
sin and a source of pollution from the early medieval period, the cow
and its products (milk, curds, clarified butter, dung and urine) or
their mixture called pancagavya had been assuming a purificatory role
from much earlier times. The Vedic texts attest to the ritual use of
cow’s milk and milk products, but the term pancagavya occurs for the
first time in the Baudhayana Dharmasutra. The law books of Manu,
Visnu, Vasistha, Yajnavalkya and those of several later lawgivers like
Atri, Devala and Parasara mention the use of the mixture of the five
products of the cow for both purification and expiation. The
commentaries and religious digests, most of which belong to the
medieval period, abound in references to the purificatory role of the
pancagavya. The underlying assumption in all these cases is that the
pancagavya is pure. But several Dharmasastra texts forbid its use by
women and the lower castes. If a sudra drinks pancagavya, we are told,
he goes to hell.[50]

It is curious that the prescriptive texts, which repeatedly refer to
the purificatory role of the cow, also provide much evidence of the
notion of pollution and impurity associated with this animal.
According to Manu (V.125) the food smelt by the cow has to be
purified. Other early lawgivers like Visnu (XXIII.38) and Yajnavalkya
(I.189) also express similar views. The latter in fact says that while
the mouth of the goat and horse is pure that of the cow is not. Among
the later juridical texts, those of Angirasa, Parasara, Vyasa and so
on, support the idea of the cow’s mouth being impure. The lawgiver
Sankha categorically states that all limbs of the cow are pure except
her mouth. The commentaries on different Dharmasastra texts reinforce
the notion of impurity of the cow’s mouth. All this runs counter to
the ideas about the purificatory role of the cow.

Needless to say, then, that the image of the cow projected by Indian
textual traditions, especially the Brahmanical- Dharmasastric works,
over the centuries is polymorphic. Its story through the millennia is
full of inconsistencies and has not always been in conformity with
dietary practices prevalent in society. It was killed and yet the
killing was not killing. When it was not slain, mere remembering the
old practice of butchery satisfied the brahmins. Its five products
including faeces and urine have been pure but its mouth has not been
so. Yet through these incongruous attitudes and puzzling paradoxes the
Indian cow has struggled its way to sanctity. But its holiness is
elusive. For, there is no cow- goddess, nor any temple in her honour.
[51] Nevertheless the veneration of this animal has come to be viewed
as a characteristic trait of modern day non-existent monolithic
‘Hinduism’ bandied about by the Hindutva forces.

[1] L.L. Sundara Ram, Cow Protection in India, The South Indian
Humanitarian League, George Town, Madras, 1027, pp.122-123, 179-190.

[2] Siva Digvijaya quoted in Sundara Ram, op. cit. p.191.

[3] Sandria B. Freitag, “Contesting in Public: Colonial Legacies and
Contemporary Communalism”, in David Ludden, ed., Making India Hindu,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p.217.

[4] Idem, Collective Action and Community: Public Arena and the
Emergence of Communalism in North India, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1990, Chapter 6; Gyan Pandey, ‘Rallying round the Cow’, in
Subaltern Studies, Vol.. II, Ranajit Guha, (ed.), Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1983, pp. 60- 129.

[5] Frederick J. Simoons, “Questions in the Sacred-Cow Controversy”,
Current Anthropology, 20(3), September 1979, p.468.

[6] The Times of India, 28 May 1999, p.12.

[7] Frontline, 13 April 2001.

[8] Rajesh Ramachandran, “A Crisis of Identity”, The Hindustan Times,
7 May 2000.

[9] W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, 2
Vols, Delhi: 4th reprint, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978.

[10] W. Crooke, ‘The Veneration of the Cow in India’, Folklore, 13
(1912), pp.275-306.

[11] Sundara Ram, Cow Protection in India, Madras: The South Indian
Humanitarian League, 1927, p.8, passim.

[12] H.D. Sankalia, “ (The Cow) In History”, Seminar No. 93, May 1967.

[13] “Was the Cow Killed in Ancient India?” Quest, (75), March-
April 1972, pp. 83-87.

[16] J.C. Heesterman translates a passage of the Kathaka Samhita
(8.7:90.10) relating to the agnadheya as: ‘they kill a cow, they play
a dice for [shares in] her, they serve her up to those seated in the
assembly hall’: Broken World of Sacrifice, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993, p.283, note 33.

[17] Louis Renou, Vedic India, Varanasi, reprint, Indological Book
House, 1971 p.109.

[18] R.L. Mitra, Indo-Aryans: Contributions to the Elucidation of
Ancient and Medieval History, 2 Vols, Varanasi: reprint, Indological
Book House, 1969, p.363.

[19] A.B. Keith, Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanisads,
Delhi: Indian reprint, Motilal Banarsidass, 1970, p.324; P.V. Kane,
History of Dharmasastra, II, pt.2, Chapter
XXXII.

[20] J. C. Heesterman, op.cit., pp. 190-93, 200-02.

[21] For different views see Hanns-Peter Schmidt, ‘Ahimsa and
Rebirth’ in Inside The Texts Beyond The Texts: New Approaches to the
Study of the Vedas, M. Witzel (ed.), Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997,
pp. 209-10; Cf. J.C. Heesterman, ‘Vratya and Sacrifice’, Indo-Iranian
Journal, 6 (1962), pp. 1-37.

[22] William Norman Brown, ‘The Sanctity of Cow in Hinduism’, Madras
University Journal, 27.2 (1957), pp. 29-49.

[23] Medhatithi on Manu, V.27, 41 see Manava-Dharma-Sastra, ed., V.N.
Mandalik, Bombay, 1886, pp.604, 613.

[24] Brhaspatismrti cited in Krtyakalpataru of Laksmidhara,
trtiyabhaga, ed., K.V. Rangaswami Aiyangar, Baroda Oriental Institute,
Baroda,1950, p.326

[25] Contra Francis Zimmermann (The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, p.180ff) asserts that
only consecrated meat was eaten and Hanns Peter Schmidt seems to be in
agreement with him

(‘Ahimsa and Rebirth’, op.cit., p.209). But the evidence from the
Buddhist Jatakas, Kautilya’s Arthasastra, and Asokan inscriptions etc
does not support this view.

[26] Brhaspatismrti, 128b, Gaekwad Oriental Series, Baroda, 1941.

[27] For further references see S. Sorensen, An Index to the Names in
the Mahabharata, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1963, pp.593-94.

[28] R. L. Mitra, op.cit., vol.I, p. 396.

[29] Caraka Samhita: Sutrasthanam, II.31, XXVII.79: Susruta Samhita:
Sarirasthanam, III.25; Astanga Hrdayam: Sutrasthanam, VI.65.

[30] Meghaduta, with the commentary of Mallinatha, ed. and tr., M. R.
Kale (ed. & tr.), Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1979, I.48.

[31] Mahaviracarita, Rampratap Tripathi Shastri (ed. with Hindi tr.),
Allahabad: Lok Bharati Prakashan, 1973. III.2. Uttararamacarita, with
notes and the commentary of Ghanasyama, P.V. Kane and C. N. Joshi (ed.
and tr.), Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1962, Act IV.

[32] Balaramayana, of Rajasekhara, Ganagasagar Rai (ed.) Varanasi:
Chowkhamba, 1984. I.38a

[33] Naisadhamahakavyam, with the commentary of Mallinatha, Haragovind
Shastri (ed.) Varanasi, Chowkhamba, 1981 XVII.173, 197.

[34] Naisadhacarita of Sri Harsa, K.K. Handiqui (tr. with
commentaries), Poona, Deccan College, 1965, p.472.

[35] Naisadhamahakavyam, p. 1137.

[36] Meghaduta, Kale’s edn, p.83.

[37] Medhatithi on Manu, V.26-7,41. See Manava-Dharma-Sastra (with the
commentaries of Medhatithi, Sarvajnanarayana, Kulluka, Nandana and
Ramacandra), V. N. Mandalika (ed.), Bombay: Ganpat Krishnaji’s Press,
1886, pp.604, 613.

[38] Visvarupa on Yajnavalkya, I. 108. See Yajnavalkyasmrti (with
the commentary Balakrida of Visvarupacarya), Mahamahopadhyaya T.
Ganapati Sastri (ed.), Delhi: 2nd edn, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1982, p.
97.

[39] Mitaksara on Yajnavalkya, I. 108. See Yajnavalkyasmrti with
Vijnanesvara’s Mitaksara, Gangasagar Rai (ed.), Delhi; Chowkhamba
Sanskrit Pratisthan, 1998, p.54.

[40] Haradatta on Gautama, XVII.30.

[41] Krtyakalpataru, Niyatakalakandam, trtiyabhagam, K.V. Rangaswami
Aiyangar (ed.), Baroda: Oriental Research Institute, 1950, p.190

[42] P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, III, Poona: Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute, 1973, p.929.

[43] R. L. Mitra, op.cit., p.384.

[44] Mitra Misra on Yajnavalkya, I. 108.

[45] Palapiyusalata Gourisayantralaya, Darbhanga, Samvat 1951.

[46] Atrismrti, verse 314 in Astadasasmrtyah (with Hindi tr by
Sundarlal Tripathi, Khemraj Shrikrishnadas, Venkateshwar Steam Press,
Bombay, Saka 1846.

[47] Romain Rolland, The Life of Vivekanada and the Universal Gospel,
Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, Eleventh Impression, August 1988, p.44 fn.
3.

[48] M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments
with Truth, Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad, 1927, reprint 2000, p.324.
Gandhi saw a five-footed “miraculous” cow at the Kumbha Mela at
Allahabad in 1915, the fifth foot being nothing but “a foot cut off
from a live calf and grafted upon the shoulder of the cow” which
attracted the lavish charity of the ignorant Hindu (ibid., p.325).

[49] India Today, 15 April 1993, p.72.

[50] Visnusmrti, LIV.7; Atrismriti, verse 297, etc.

[51] A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, Delhi, Rupa & Co., 27th
Impression, 1996, p.319.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with
Bhadrakali. (Discuss)

For other uses, see Kali (disambiguation).

"Kalika" redirects here. For other uses, see Kalika (disambiguation).
"The black one" redirects here. For the 2005 drone metal album, see
Black One. For the male choral group, see The Black Ones.
Kali

Kali (Sanskrit: काली, Bengali: কালী, both Kālī), also known as Kalika
(Bengali: কালিকা, Kālikā), is the Hindu goddess associated with
eternal energy. The name Kali comes from Kāla which means black, time,
death, lord of death, shiva etc. kAli means "the black one". Since
Shiva is called Kāla - the eternal Time, Kālī, his consort, also means
"the Time" or "Death" (as in time has come). Hence, Kali is considered
the goddess of time and change. Although sometimes presented as dark
and violent, her earliest incarnation as a figure of annihilation
still has some influence. More complex Tantric beliefs sometimes
extend her role so far as to be the "ultimate reality" or Brahman. She
is also revered as Bhavatarini (literally "redeemer of the universe").
Comparatively recent devotional movements largely conceive Kali as a
benevolent mother goddess.

Kali is represented as the consort of god Shiva, on whose body she is
often seen standing. She is associated with many other Hindu goddesses
like Durga, Bhadrakali, Sati, Rudrani, Parvati and Chamunda. She is
the foremost among the Dasa-Mahavidyas, ten fierce Tantric goddesses.
[1]

Etymology

Kālī is the feminine of kāla "black, dark coloured" (per Pāṇini
4.1.42). In the Mundaka Upanishad Kali is mentioned as one of the
seven tongues of Agni, the Rigvedic God of Fire (Mundaka Upanishad
2:4), thus giving rise to Kali's tongue, seen in images. It appears as
the name of a form of Durga in the Mahabharata 4.195, and as the name
of an evil female spirit in Harivamsa 11552.

Kāla means black and also time, death, lord of death, shiva etc. kAli
means "the black one". Since Shiva is called Kāla - the eternal Time,
Kālī, his consort also means "the Time" or "Death" (as in time has
come). "कालः शिवः । तस्य पत्नीति - काली । kālaḥ śivaḥ । tasya patnīti
- kālī" - [from Shabdakalpadrum]. The association is seen in a passage
from the Mahābhārata, depicting a female figure who carries away the
spirits of slain warriors and animals. She is called kālarātri (which
Thomas Coburn, a historian of Sanskrit Goddess literature, translates
as "night of death") and also kālī (which, as Coburn notes, can be
read here either as a proper name or as a description "the black one").
[2]

Kali's association with blackness stands in contrast to her consort,
Shiva, whose body is covered by the white ashes of the cremation
ground (Sanskrit: śmaśāna) in which he meditates, and with which Kali
is also associated, as śmaśāna-kālī.

Origins

According to David Kinsley, Kali is first mentioned in Hinduism as a
distinct goddess, related to war, around 600 CE. Scriptures like Agni
Purana and Garuda Purana describe her terrible appearance and
associate her with corpses and war. The oldest mention of Kali dates
back to Rigvedic age. The 'Ratri Sookta' in Rigveda actually calls her
as Goddess 'Ratri' and regards Ratri as the Supreme force in the
universe. In the Tantras, she is regarded as the Shakti (Power) of The
Great Mahākāla (a form of Lord Shiva). Her portrayal on dead bodies in
crematorium symbolizes her presence in the hearts of devotees who have
killed their Earthly desires and want Supreme Consciousness in the lap
of the Ultimate Mother, Kali. In another form, she is regarded as the
destroyer, the Mahakali as Kali Tantra says-"kāli kālanāt" meaning
Kali is the one who finishes. Kalika Purana depicts her as the "Adi
Shakti" (Fundamental Power) and "Para Prakriti" or beyond nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni_Purana

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda_Purana

In Tantra

Kali Yantra

Goddesses play an important role in the study and practice of Tantra
Yoga, and are affirmed to be as central to discerning the nature of
reality as are the male deities. Although Parvati is often said to be
the recipient and student of Shiva's wisdom in the form of Tantras, it
is Kali who seems to dominate much of the Tantric iconography, texts,
and rituals.[3] In many sources Kali is praised as the highest reality
or greatest of all deities. The Nirvana-tantra says the gods Brahma,
Vishnu, and Shiva all arise from her like bubbles in the sea,
ceaselessly arising and passing away, leaving their original source
unchanged. The Niruttara-tantra and the Picchila-tantra declare all of
Kali's mantras to be the greatest and the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-
tantra and the Niruttara-tantra all proclaim Kali vidyas
(manifestations of Mahadevi, or "divinity itself"). They declare her
to be an essence of her own form (svarupa) of the Mahadevi.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantra

In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kali is one of the epithets for the
primordial sakti, and in one passage Shiva praises her:

At the dissolution of things, it is Kala [Time] Who will devour all,
and by reason of this He is called Mahakala [an epithet of Lord
Shiva], and since Thou devourest Mahakala Himself, it is Thou who art
the Supreme Primordial Kalika. Because Thou devourest Kala, Thou art
Kali, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin
of and devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [primordial
Kali]. Resuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless,
Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having
a form, yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning,
multiform by the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all,
Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art.[3]
The figure of Kali conveys death, destruction, and the consuming
aspects of reality. As such, she is also a "forbidden thing", or even
death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to
confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a
vehicle of salvation.[5] This is clear in the work of the Karpuradi-
stotra[6], a short praise to Kali describing the Pancatattva ritual
unto her, performed on cremation grounds. (Samahana-sadhana)

He, O Mahakali who in the cremation-ground, naked, and with
dishevelled hair, intently meditates upon Thee and recites Thy mantra,
and with each recitation makes offering to Thee of a thousand Akanda
flowers with seed, becomes without any effort a Lord of the earth. 0
Kali, whoever on Tuesday at midnight, having uttered Thy mantra, makes
offering even but once with devotion to Thee of a hair of his Sakti
[his female companion] in the cremation-ground, becomes a great poet,
a Lord of the earth, and ever goes mounted upon an elephant.[5]
The Karpuradi-stotra clearly indicates that Kali is more than a
terrible, vicious, slayer of demons who serves Durga or Shiva. Here,
she is identified as the supreme mistress of the universe, associated
with the five elements. In union with Lord Shiva, who is said to be
her spouse, she creates and destroys worlds. Her appearance also takes
a different turn, befitting her role as ruler of the world and object
of meditation.[7] In contrast to her terrible aspects, she takes on
hints of a more benign dimension. She is described as young and
beautiful, has a gentle smile, and makes gestures with her two right
hands to dispel any fear and offer boons. The more positive features
exposed offer the distillation of divine wrath into a goddess of
salvation, who rids the sadhaka of fear. Here, Kali appears as a
symbol of triumph over death.[8]

[edit] In Bengali tradition

Kali Puja festivalKali is also a central figure in late medieval
Bengali devotional literature, with such devotees as Ramprasad Sen
(1718–75). With the exception of being associated with Parvati as
Shiva's consort, Kali is rarely pictured in Hindu mythology and
iconography as a motherly figure until Bengali devotions beginning in
the early eighteenth century. Even in Bengali tradition her appearance
and habits change little, if at all.[9]

The Tantric approach to Kali is to display courage by confronting her
on cremation grounds in the dead of night, despite her terrible
appearance. In contrast, the Bengali devotee appropriates Kali's
teachings, adopting the attitude of a child. In both cases, the goal
of the devotee is to become reconciled with death and to learn
acceptance of the way that things are. These themes are well addressed
in Ramprasad's work.[10]

Ramprasad comments in many of his other songs that Kali is indifferent
to his wellbeing, causes him to suffer, brings his worldly desires to
nothing and his worldly goods to ruin. He also states that she does
not behave like a mother should and that she ignores his pleas:

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a
reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya]
Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?
Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.
You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you
wear as a garland around your neck.
It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but
you will not listen.[11]
To be a child of Kali, Ramprasad asserts, is to be denied of earthly
delights and pleasures. Kali is said to not give what is expected. To
the devotee, it is perhaps her very refusal to do so that enables her
devotees to reflect on dimensions of themselves and of reality that go
beyond the material world.[11][12]

A significant portion of Bengali devotional music features Kali as its
central theme and is known as Shyama Sangeet. Mostly sung by male
vocalists, today even women have taken to this form of music. One of
the finest singers of Shyama Sangeet is Pannalal Bhattacharya.

In Bengal, Kali is venerated in the festival Kali Puja - the new moon
day of Ashwin month which coincides with Diwali festival.

Mythology

Slayer of Raktabija

In Kali's most famous myth, Durga and her assistants, Matrikas, wound
the demon Raktabija, in various ways and with a variety of weapons, in
an attempt to destroy him. They soon find that they have worsened the
situation, as for every drop of blood that is spilt from Raktabija,
the demon reproduces a clone of himself. The battlefield becomes
increasingly filled with his duplicates.[13] Durga, in dire need of
help, summons Kali to combat the demons. It is also said that Goddess
Durga takes the form of Goddess Kali at this time.

The Devi Mahatmyam describes:

Out of the surface of her (Durga's) forehead, fierce with frown,
issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance, armed with a sword and
noose. Bearing the strange khatvanga (skull-topped staff ), decorated
with a garland of skulls, clad in a tiger's skin, very appalling owing
to her emaciated flesh, with gaping mouth, fearful with her tongue
lolling out, having deep reddish eyes, filling the regions of the sky
with her roars, falling upon impetuously and slaughtering the great
asuras in that army, she devoured those hordes of the foes of the
devas.[14]

Kali destroys Raktabija by sucking the blood from his body and putting
the many Raktabija duplicates in her gaping mouth. Pleased with her
victory, Kali then dances on the field of battle, stepping on the
corpses of the slain. Her consort Shiva lies among the dead beneath
her feet, a representation of Kali commonly seen in her iconography as
Daksinakali.[15]

In the Devi Mahatmya version of this story, Kali is also described as
a Matrika and as a Shakti or power of Devi. She is given the epithet
Cāṃuṇḍā (Chamunda), i.e. the slayer of the demons Chanda and Munda.
[16] Chamunda is very often identified with Kali and is very much like
her in appearance and habit.[17]

Daksinakali

Bhadrakali (A gentle form of Kali), circa 1675.
Painting; made in India, Himachal Pradesh, Basohli,

now placed in LACMA.In her most famous pose as Daksinakali, it is said
that Kali, becoming drunk on the blood of her victims on the
battlefield, dances with destructive frenzy. In her fury she fails to
see the body of her husband, Shiva, who lies among the corpses on the
battlefield.[18] Ultimately the cries of Shiva attract Kali's
attention, calming her fury. As a sign of her shame at having
disrespected her husband in such a fashion, Kali sticks out her
tongue. However, some sources state that this interpretation is a
later version of the symbolism of the tongue: in tantric contexts, the
tongue is seen to denote the element (guna) of rajas (energy and
action) controlled by sattva, spiritual and godly creatures who served
as assassins.[19]

One South Indian tradition tells of a dance contest between Shiva and
Kali. After defeating the two demons Sumbha and Nisumbha, Kali takes
up residence in a forest. With fierce companions she terrorizes the
surrounding area. One of Shiva's devotees becomes distracted while
performing austerities, and asks Shiva to rid the forest of the
destructive goddess. When Shiva arrives, Kali threatens him, claiming
the territory as her own. Shiva challenges Kali to a dance contest,
and defeats her when she is unable to perform the energetic Tandava
dance. Although in this case Kali is defeated, and is forced to
control her disruptive habits, there are very few other images or
other myths depicting her in such a manner.[20]

Maternal Kali

Another myth depicts the infant Shiva calming Kali. In this similar
story, Kali again defeated her enemies on the battlefield and began to
dance out of control, drunk on the blood of the slain. To calm her
down and to protect the stability of the world, Shiva is sent to the
battlefield, as an infant, crying aloud. Seeing the child's distress,
Kali ceases dancing to take care of the helpless infant. She picks him
up, kisses his head, and proceeds to breast feed the infant Shiva.[21]
This myth depicts Kali in her benevolent, maternal aspect; something
that is revered in Hinduism, but not often recognized in the West.

Ekamukhi or "One-Faced" Murti of Mahakali displaying ten hands holding
the signifiers of various Devas

Mahakali

Main article: Mahakali

Mahakali (Sanskrit: Mahākālī, Devanagari: महाकाली), literally
translated as Great Kali, is sometimes considered as a greater form of
Kali, identified with the Ultimate reality of Brahman. It can also
simply be used as an honorific of the Goddess Kali,[22] signifying her
greatness by the prefix "Mahā-". Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is
etymologically the feminized variant of Mahakala or Great Time (which
is interpreted also as Death), an epithet of the God Shiva in
Hinduism. Mahakali is the presiding Goddess of the first episode of
the Devi Mahatmya. Here she is depicted as Devi in her universal form
as Shakti. Here Devi serves as the agent who allows the cosmic order
to be restored.

Iconography

Statue from Dakshineswar Kali Temple, West Bengal, India; along with
her Yantra.Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-
armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. In both of her forms, she
is described as being black in color but is most often depicted as
blue in popular Indian art. Her eyes are described as red with
intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled,
small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is
lolling. She is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of
human arms and a garland of human heads. She is also accompanied by
serpents and a jackal while standing on a seemingly dead Shiva,
usually right foot forward to symbolize the more popular Dakshinamarga
or right-handed path, as opposed to the more infamous and
transgressive Vamamarga or left-handed path.[23]

In the ten-armed form of Mahakali she is depicted as shining like a
blue stone. She has ten faces and ten feet and three eyes. She has
ornaments decked on all her limbs. There is no association with Shiva.
[24]

The Kalika Purana describes Kali as possessing a soothing dark
complexion, as perfectly beautiful, riding a lion, four-armed, holding
a sword and blue lotuses, her hair unrestrained, body firm and
youthful.[25]

In spite of her seemingly terrible form, Kali Ma is often considered
the kindest and most loving of all the Hindu goddesses, as she is
regarded by her devotees as the Mother of the whole Universe. And,
because of her terrible form she is also often seen as a great
protector. When the Bengali saint Ramakrishna once asked a devotee why
one would prefer to worship Mother over him, this devotee rhetorically
replied, "Maharaj, when they are in trouble your devotees come running
to you. But, where do you run when you are in trouble?"[26]

According to Ramakrishna, darkness is the Ultimate Mother, or Kali:

My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is Akhanda
Satchidananda; indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night
sky between the stars is perfectly black. The waters of the ocean
depths are the same; The infinite is always mysteriously dark. This
inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali.

-Sri Ramakrishna

Throughout her history artists the world over have portrayed Kali in
myriad poses and settings, some of which stray far from the popular
description, and are sometimes even graphically sexual in nature.
Given the popularity of this Goddess, artists everywhere will continue
to explore the magnificence of Kali's iconography. This is clear in
the work of such contemporary artists as Charles Wish, and Tyeb Mehta,
who sometimes take great liberties with the traditional, accepted
symbolism, but still demonstrate a true reverence for the Shakta sect.

Popular form

Classic depictions of Kali share several features, as follows:

Kali's most common four armed iconographic image shows each hand
carrying variously a sword, a trishul (trident), a severed head and a
bowl or skull-cup (kapala) catching the blood of the severed head.

Two of these hands (usually the left) are holding a sword and a
severed head. The Sword signifies Divine Knowledge and the Human Head
signifies human Ego which must be slain by Divine Knowledge in order
to attain Moksha. The other two hands (usually the right) are in the
abhaya (fearlessness) and varada (blessing) mudras, which means her
initiated devotees (or anyone worshiping her with a true heart) will
be saved as she will guide them here and in the hereafter.[27]

She has a garland consisting of human heads, variously enumerated at
108 (an auspicious number in Hinduism and the number of countable
beads on a Japa Mala or rosary for repetition of Mantras) or 51, which
represents Varnamala or the Garland of letters of the Sanskrit
alphabet, Devanagari. Hindus believe Sanskrit is a language of
dynamism, and each of these letters represents a form of energy, or a
form of Kali. Therefore she is generally seen as the mother of
language, and all mantras.[28]

She is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the
covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss
and far above prakriti. She is shown as very dark as she is brahman in
its supreme unmanifest state. She has no permanent qualities — she
will continue to exist even when the universe ends. It is therefore
believed that the concepts of color, light, good, bad do not apply to
her — she is the pure, un-manifested energy, the Adi-shakti.[29]

[edit] Mahakali form

The Dasamukhi MahakaliKali is depicted in the Mahakali form as having
ten heads, ten arms, and ten legs. Each of her ten hands is carrying a
various implement which vary in different accounts, but each of these
represent the power of one of the Devas or Hindu Gods and are often
the identifying weapon or ritual item of a given Deva. The implication
is that Mahakali subsumes and is responsible for the powers that these
deities possess and this is in line with the interpretation that
Mahakali is identical with Brahman. While not displaying ten heads, an
"ekamukhi" or one headed image may be displayed with ten arms,
signifying the same concept: the powers of the various Gods come only
through Her grace.

Shiva in Kali iconography

In both these images she is shown standing on the prone, inert or dead
body of Shiva. There is a mythological story for the reason behind her
standing on what appears to be Shiva's corpse, which translates as
follows:

Once Kali had destroyed all the demons in battle, she began a terrific
dance out of the sheer joy of victory. All the worlds or lokas began
to tremble and sway under the impact of her dance. So, at the request
of all the Gods, Shiva himself asked her to desist from this behavior.
However, she was too intoxicated to listen. Hence, Shiva lay like a
corpse among the slain demons in order to absorb the shock of the
dance into himself. When Kali eventually stepped upon her husband she
realized her mistake and bit her tongue in shame.[30]

The Tantric interpretation of Kali standing on top of her husband is
as follows:

The Shiv tattava (Divine Consciousness as Shiva) is inactive, while
the Shakti tattava (Divine Energy as Kali) is active. Shiva, or
Mahadeva represents Brahman, the Absolute pure consciousness which is
beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand,
represents the potential (and manifested) energy responsible for all
names, forms and activities. She is his Shakti, or creative power, and
is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all
consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act
independently of him, i.e., Shakti, all the matter/energy of the
universe, is not distinct from Shiva, or Brahman, but is rather the
dynamic power of Brahman.[31]

Kali in Traditional Form, standing on Shiva's chest.While this is an
advanced concept in monistic Shaktism, it also agrees with the Nondual
Trika philosophy of Kashmir, popularly known as Kashmir Shaivism and
associated most famously with Abhinavagupta. There is a colloquial
saying that "Shiva without Shakti is Shava" which means that without
the power of action (Shakti) that is Mahakali (represented as the
short "i" in Devanagari) Shiva (or consciousness itself) is inactive;
Shava means corpse in Sanskrit and the play on words is that all
Sanskrit consonants are assumed to be followed by a short letter "a"
unless otherwise noted. The short letter "i" represents the female
power or Shakti that activates Creation. This is often the explanation
for why She is standing on Shiva, who is either Her husband and
complement in Shaktism or the Supreme Godhead in Shaivism.

To properly understand this complex Tantric symbolism it is important
to remember that the meaning behind Shiva and Kali does not stray from
the non-dualistic parlance of Shankara or the Upanisads. According to
both the Mahanirvana and Kularnava Tantras, there are two distinct
ways of perceiving the same absolute reality. The first is a
transcendental plane which is often described as static, yet infinite.
It is here that there is no matter, there is no universe and only
consciousness exists. This form of reality is known as Shiva, the
absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda — existence, knowledge and bliss. The second
is an active plane, an immanent plane, the plane of matter, of Maya,
i.e., where the illusion of space-time and the appearance of an actual
universe does exist. This form of reality is known as Kali or Shakti,
and (in its entirety) is still specified as the same Absolute Sat-Chit-
Ananda. It is here in this second plane that the universe (as we
commonly know it) is experienced and is described by the Tantric seer
as the play of Shakti, or God as Mother Kali.[32]

Kali and Bhairava (the terrible form of Shiva) in Union, 18th century,
NepalFrom a Tantric perspective, when one meditates on reality at
rest, as absolute pure consciousness (without the activities of
creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to this as Shiva or
Brahman. When one meditates on reality as dynamic and creative, as the
Absolute content of pure consciousness (with all the activities of
creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to it as Kali or
Shakti. However, in either case the yogini or yogi is interested in
one and the same reality — the only difference being in name and
fluctuating aspects of appearance. It is this which is generally
accepted as the meaning of Kali standing on the chest of Shiva.[31]

Although there is often controversy surrounding the images of divine
copulation, the general consensus is benign and free from any carnal
impurities in its substance. In Tantra the human body is a symbol for
the microcosm of the universe; therefore sexual process is responsible
for the creation of the world. Although theoretically Shiva and Kali
(or Shakti) are inseparable, like fire and its power to burn, in the
case of creation they are often seen as having separate roles. With
Shiva as male and Kali as female it is only by their union that
creation may transpire. This reminds us of the prakrti and purusa
doctrine of Samkhya wherein prakāśa- vimarśa has no practical value,
just as without prakrti, purusa is quite inactive. This (once again)
stresses the interdependencies of Shiva and Shakti and the vitality of
their union.[33]

Gopi Krishna proposed that Kali standing on the dead Shiva or Shava
(Sanskrit for dead body) symbolised the helplessness of a person
undergoing the changing process (psychologically and physiologically)
in the body conducted by the Kundalini Shakti.[34]

Development

In the later traditions, Kali has become inextricably linked with
Shiva. The unleashed form of Kali often becomes wild and
uncontrollable, and only Shiva is able to tame her. This is both
because she is often a transformed version of one of his consorts and
because he is able to match her wildness. The ancient text of Kali
Kautuvam describes her competition with Shiva in dance, from which the
sacred 108 Karanas appeared. Shiva won the competition by acting the
urdva tandava, one of the Karanas, by raising his feet to his head.
Other texts describe Shiva appearing as a crying infant and appealing
to her maternal instincts. While Shiva is said to be able to tame her,
the iconography often presents her dancing on his fallen body, and
there are accounts of the two of them dancing together, and driving
each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling.

Shiva's involvement with Tantra and Kali's dark nature have led to her
becoming an important Tantric figure. To the Tantric worshippers, it
was essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as
they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal
aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one
side: as death cannot exist without life, so life cannot exist without
death. Kali's role sometimes grew beyond that of a chaos — which could
be confronted — to that of one who could bring wisdom, and she is
given great metaphysical significance by some Tantric texts. The
Nirvāna-tantra clearly presents her uncontrolled nature as the
Ultimate Reality, claiming that the trimurti of Brahma, Visnu and
Rudra arise and disappear from her like bubbles from the sea. Although
this is an extreme case, the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the
Niruttara-tantra declare her the svarupa (own-being) of the Mahadevi
(the great Goddess, who is in this case seen as the combination of all
devis).

The final stage of development is the worshipping of Kali as the Great
Mother, devoid of her usual violence. This practice is a break from
the more traditional depictions. The pioneers of this tradition are
the 18th century Shakta poets such as Ramprasad Sen, who show an
awareness of Kali's ambivalent nature. Ramakrishna, the 19th century
Bengali saint, was also a great devotee of Kali; the western
popularity of whom may have contributed to the more modern, equivocal
interpretations of this Goddess. Rachel McDermott's work, however,
suggests that for the common, modern worshipper, Kali is not seen as
fearful, and only those educated in old traditions see her as having a
wrathful component. Some credit to the development of Devi must also
be given to Samkhya. Commonly referred to as the Devi of delusion,
Mahamaya, acting in the confines of (but not being bound by) the
nature of the three gunas, takes three forms: Maha-Kali, Maha-Lakshmi
and Maha-Saraswati, being her tamas-ika, rajas-ika and sattva-ika
forms. In this sense, Kali is simply part of a larger whole.

1947 TIME Magazine cover by Boris Artzybasheff depicting a self-
hurting Kālī as a symbol of the partition of IndiaLike Sir John
Woodroffe and Georg Feuerstein, many Tantric scholars (as well as
sincere practitioners) agree that, no matter how propitious or
appalling you describe them, Shiva and Devi are simply recognizable
symbols for everyday, abstract (yet tangible) concepts such as
perception, knowledge, space-time, causation and the process of
liberating oneself from the confines of such things. Shiva,
symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Devi, symbolizing the
entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same
— totality incarnate, a micro-macro-cosmic amalgamation of all
subjects, all objects and all phenomenal relations between the "two."
Like man and woman who both share many common, human traits yet at the
same time they are still different and, therefore, may also be seen as
complementary.[35]

Worshippers prescribe various benign and horrific qualities to Devi
simply out of practicality. They do this so they may have a variety of
symbols to choose from, symbols which they can identify and relate
with from the perspective of their own, ever-changing time, place and
personal level of unfolding. Just like modern chemists or physicists
use a variety of molecular and atomic models to describe what is
unperceivable through rudimentary, sensory input, the scientists of
ontology and epistemology must do the same. One of the underlying
distinctions of Tantra, in comparison to other religions, is that it
allows the devotee the liberty to choose from a vast array of
complementary symbols and rhetoric that which suits one's evolving
needs and tastes. From an aesthetic standpoint, nothing is interdict
and nothing is orthodox. In this sense, the projection of some of
Devi's more gentle qualities onto Kali is not sacrilege and the
development of Kali really lies in the practitioner, not the murthi.

A TIME magazine article of October 27, 1947, used Kālī as a symbol and
metaphor for the human suffering in British India during its partition
that year.[36]

In New Age and Neopaganism

An academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in
the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali
devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it
is to adapt to its new environment."[37] The adoption of Kali by the
West has raised accusations of cultural misappropriation:

"A variety of writers and thinkers [...] have found Kali an exciting
figure for reflection and exploration, notably feminists and
participants in New Age spirituality who are attracted to goddess
worship. [For them], Kali is a symbol of wholeness and healing,
associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality.
[However, such interpretations often exhibit] confusion and
misrepresentation, stemming from a lack of knowledge of Hindu history
among these authors, [who only rarely] draw upon materials written by
scholars of the Hindu religious tradition. The majority instead rely
chiefly on other popular feminist sources, almost none of which base
their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background.
[...] The most important issue arising from this discussion – even
more important than the question of 'correct' interpretation –
concerns the adoption of other people's religious symbols. [...] It is
hard to import the worship of a goddess from another culture:
religious associations and connotations have to be learned, imagined
or intuited when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native
culture are not available."[38]

Gerald Gardner was reportedly particularly interested in Kali whilst
he was in the far east, before returning to England to write his
seminal works on Wicca[citation needed].

References

^ Encyclopedia International, by Grolier Incorporated Copyright in
Canada 1974. AE5.E447 1974 031 73-11206 ISBN 0-7172-0705-6 page 95
^ Mahābhārata 10.8.64-69, cited in Coburn, Thomas; Devī-Māhātmya —
Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition; Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi,
1984; ISBN 81-208-0557-7 pages 111–112.
^ a b D. Kinsley p. 122.
^ D. Kinsley p. 122–123.
^ a b D. Kinsley p. 124.
^ Karpuradi Stotra, Tantrik Texts Vol IX, Arthur Avalon (Sir John
Woodroffe), Calcutta Agamanusandhana Samiti, 1922.
^ D. Kinsley p. 124–125.
^ D. Kinsley p. 125.
^ D. Kinsley p. 126.
^ D. Kinsley p.125–126.
^ a b D. Kinsley p. 128.
^ MantraOnNet.com:Text & Images of Kali
^ D. Kinsley p. 118.
^ Devi Mahatmyam, Swami Jagadiswarananda, Ramakrishna Math, 1953.
^ D. Kinsley p. 118–119.
^ Wangu p. 72.
^ Kinsley p. 241 Footnotes.
^ D. Kinsley pp. 119, 130.
^ McDermott 2003.
^ D. Kinsley p. 119.
^ D. Kinsley p. 131.
^ Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls By June McDaniel p.257
^ The Art of Tantra, Philip Rawson, Thames & Hudson, 1973.
^ Sankaranarayanan. S. Devi Mahatmya. p 127.
^ David Gordon White (ed.), Tantra in Practice, ISBN 81-208-1778-8
p466.
^ Sri Ramakrishna (The Great Master), Swami Saradananda, Ramakrishna
Math, 1952, page 624, Sri Ramakrishna: The Spiritual Glow, Kamalpada
Hati, P.K. Pramanik, Orient Book Co., 1985, pages 17–18.
^ Tantra in Practice, David Gordon White, Princeton Press, 2000, page
477.
^ Tantra in Practice, David Gordon White, Princeton Press, 2000, page
475.
^ Tantra in Practice, David Gordon White, Princeton Press, 2000, page
463–488.
^ Hindu Gods & Goddesses, Swami Harshananda, Ramakrishna Math, 1981,
pages 116–117.
^ a b Tantra (The Path of Ecstasy), Georg Feuerstein, Shambhala, 1998,
pages 70–84, Shakti and Shâkta, Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe),
Oxford Press/Ganesha & Co., 1918.
^ Tantra in Practice, David Gordon White, Princeton Press, 2000, page
463–488, Shakti and Shâkta, Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), Oxford
Press/Ganesha & Co., 1918.
^ Impact of Tantra on Religion & Art, T. N. Mishra, D.K. Print World,
1997, V.
^ Krishna, Gopi (1993)Living with Kundalini: (Shambhala, 1993 ISBN
0877739471).
^ Tantra (The Path of Ecstasy), Georg Feuerstein, Shambhala, 1998,
Shakti and Shâkta, Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), Oxford Press/
Ganesha & Co., 1918.
^ The Trial of Kali, TIME Magazine, October 27, 1947.
^ McDermott, Rachel Fell, "The Western Kali", in Hawley, John Stratton
& Wulff, Donna M., Devi: The Goddess in India, p. 305.
^ McDermott, Rachel Fell, "The Western Kali", in Hawley, John Stratton
& Wulff, Donna M., Devi: The Goddess in India, pp. 281–305.
Shakti and Shâkta, Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), Oxford Press/
Ganesha & Co., 1918
Sri Ramakrishna (The Great Master), Swami Saradananda, Ramakrishna
Math,1952
Devi Mahatmyam, Swami Jagadiswarananda, Ramakrishna Math, 1953
The Art of Tantra, Philip Rawson, Thames & Hudson, 1973
Hindu Gods & Goddesses, Swami Harshananda, Ramakrishna Math, 1981
Sri Ramakrishna: The Spiritual Glow, Kamalpada Hati, P.K. Pramanik,
Orient Book Co., 1985
Hindu Goddesses, David R. Kinsley, University of California Press,
1988
Kali (The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar) Elizabeth U. Harding, Nicolas
Hays, 1993
Impact of Tantra on Religion & Art, T. N. Mishra, D.K. Print World,
1997
Indian Art (revised), Roy C. Craven, Thames & Hudson, 1997
A Dictionary of Buddhist & Hindu Iconography (Illustrated), Frederick
W. Bunce, D.K. Print World, 1997
Tantra (The Path of Ecstasy), Georg Feuerstein, Shambhala, 1998
Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Religions, John Bowker, Oxford
Press, 2000
Tantra in Practice, David Gordon White, Princeton Press, 2000
Encountering Kali (In the margins, at the center, in the west), Rachel
Fell McDermott, Berkeley : University of California Press, 2003
[edit] Further reading
Shanmukha Anantha Natha and Shri Ma Kristina Baird, Divine Initiation
Shri Kali Publications (2001) ISBN 0-9582324-0-7 - Has a chapter on
Mahadevi with a commentary on the Devi Mahatmyam from the Markandeya
Purana.
Swami Jagadiswarananda, tr., Devi Mahatmyam Chennai, Ramakrishna Math.
ISBN 81-7120-139-3
Elizabeth Usha Harding, Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar ISBN
0-89254-025-7
Devadatta Kali, In Praise of The Goddess, The Devimahatmyam and Its
Meaning ISBN 0-89254-080-X
David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Vision of the Divine Feminine in the
Hindu Religious Traditions ISBN 81-208-0379-5
Rachel Fell McDermott, Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the
Center, in the West (ISBN 0-520-23240-2)
Ajit Mookerjee, Kali: The Feminine Force ISBN 0-89281-212-5
Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Kali Puja ISBN 1-887472-64-9
Ramprasad Sen, Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair: Selected Poems to the
Mother Goddess ISBN 0-934252-94-7
Sir John Woodroffe (aka Arthur Avalon)Hymns to the Goddess and Hymn to
Kali ISBN 81-85988-16-1
Robert E. Svoboda, Aghora, at the left hand of God ISBN 0-914732-21-8
Dimitri Kitsikis, L'Orocc, dans l'âge de Kali ISBN 2-89040-359-9
Lex Hixon, Mother of the Universe: Visions of the Goddess and Tantric
Hymns of Enlightenment ISBN 0-8356-0702-X
Neela Bhattacharya Saxena, In the Beginning is Desire: Tracing Kali's
Footprints in Indian Literature ISBN 818798161X
The Goddess Kali of Kolkata (ISBN 81-7476-514-X) by Shoma A.
Chatterji
Encountering The Goddess: A Translation of the Devi-Mahatmya and a
Study of Its Interpretation (ISBN 0-7914-0446-3) by Thomas B. Coburn
Dictionary of Hindu Lore and Legend (ISBN 0-500-51088-1) by Anna
Dallapiccola
Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar (ISBN 0-89254-025-7) by
Elizabeth Usha Harding
In Praise of The Goddess: The Devimahatmyam and Its Meaning (ISBN
0-89254-080-X) by Devadatta Kali
Hindu Goddesses: Vision of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious
Traditions (ISBN 81-208-0379-5) by David Kinsley
Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine (ISBN 0-520-20499-9) by David
Kinsley
Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West
Bengal (ISBN 0-195-16791-0) by June McDaniel
Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West (ISBN
0-520-23240-2) by Rachel Fell McDermott
Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kali and Uma in the
Devotional Poetry of Bengal (ISBN 0-19-513435-4) by Rachel Fell
McDermott
Kali: The Feminine Force (ISBN 0-89281-212-5) by Ajit Mookerjee
Seeking Mahadevi: Constructing the Identities of the Hindu Great
Goddess (ISBN 0-791-45008-2) Edited by Tracy Pintchman
The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition (ISBN 0-7914-2112-0) by
Tracy Pintchman

External links

Hinduism portal
Find more about Kali on Wikipedia's sister projects:

Definitions from Wiktionary
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Quotations from Wikiquote
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News stories from Wikinews
Learning resources from Wikiversity

Kali at the Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Hinduism/Gods_and_Goddesses/Kali/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Directory_Project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali

Goddess as Kali - The Feminine Force in Indian Art
Article of the Month - August 2000 Printer Friendly Version
PDF (Acrobat) - 382 kb

Share this Page with a friend The worship of a mother goddess as the
source of life and fertility has prehistoric roots, but the
transformation of that deity into a Great goddess of cosmic powers was
achieved with the composition of the Devi Mahatmya (Glory of the
goddess), a text of the fifth to sixth century, when worship of the
female principle took on dramatic new dimensions. The goddess is not
only the mysterious source of life, she is the very soil, all-creating
and all consuming.

Kali makes her 'official' debut in the Devi-Mahatmya, where she is
said to have emanated from the brow of Goddess Durga (slayer of
demons) during one of the battles between the divine and anti-divine
forces. Etymologically Durga's name means "Beyond Reach". She is thus
an echo of the woman warrior's fierce virginal autonomy. In this
context Kali is considered the 'forceful' form of the great goddess
Durga.

Kali is represented as a Black woman with four arms; in one hand she
has a sword, in another the head of the demon she has slain, with the
other two she is encouraging her worshippers. For earrings she has two
dead bodies and wears a necklace of skulls ; her only clothing is a
girdle made of dead men's hands, and her tongue protrudes from her
mouth. Her eyes are red, and her face and breasts are besmeared with
blood. She stands with one foot on the thigh, and another on the
breast of her husband.

Kali's fierce appearances have been the subject of extensive
descriptions in several earlier and modern works. Though her fierce
form is filled with awe- inspiring symbols, their real meaning is not
what it first appears- they have equivocal significance:

Kali's blackness symbolizes her all-embracing, comprehensive nature,
because black is the color in which all other colors merge; black
absorbs and dissolves them. 'Just as all colors disappear in black, so
all names and forms disappear in her' (Mahanirvana Tantra). Or black
is said to represent the total absence of color, again signifying the
nature of Kali as ultimate reality. This in Sanskrit is named as
nirguna (beyond all quality and form). Either way, Kali's black color
symbolizes her transcendence of all form.

A devotee poet says:

"Is Kali, my Divine Mother, of a black complexion?
She appears black because She is viewed from a distance;
but when intimately known She is no longer so.
The sky appears blue at a distance, but look at it close by
and you will find that it has no colour.
The water of the ocean looks blue at a distance,
but when you go near and take it in your hand,
you find that it is colourless."

... Ramakrishna Paramhansa (1836-86)

Kali's nudity has a similar meaning. In many instances she is
described as garbed in space or sky clad. In her absolute, primordial
nakedness she is free from all covering of illusion. She is Nature
(Prakriti in Sanskrit), stripped of 'clothes'. It symbolizes that she
is completely beyond name and form, completely beyond the illusory
effects of maya (false consciousness). Her nudity is said to represent
totally illumined consciousness, unaffected by maya. Kali is the
bright fire of truth, which cannot be hidden by the clothes of
ignorance. Such truth simply burns them away.

She is full-breasted; her motherhood is a ceaseless creation. Her
disheveled hair forms a curtain of illusion, the fabric of space -
time which organizes matter out of the chaotic sea of quantum-foam.
Her garland of fifty human heads, each representing one of the fifty
letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizes the repository of
knowledge and wisdom. She wears a girdle of severed human hands- hands
that are the principal instruments of work and so signify the action
of karma. Thus the binding effects of this karma have been overcome,
severed, as it were, by devotion to Kali. She has blessed the devotee
by cutting him free from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth are
symbolic of purity (Sans. Sattva), and her lolling tongue which is red
dramatically depicts the fact that she consumes all things and denotes
the act of tasting or enjoying what society regards as forbidden, i.e.
her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's "flavors".

Kali's four arms represent the complete circle of creation and
destruction, which is contained within her. She represents the
inherent creative and destructive rhythms of the cosmos. Her right
hands, making the mudras of "fear not" and conferring boons, represent
the creative aspect of Kali, while the left hands, holding a bloodied
sword and a severed head represent her destructive aspect. The
bloodied sword and severed head symbolize the destruction of ignorance
and the dawning of knowledge. The sword is the sword of knowledge,
that cuts the knots of ignorance and destroys false consciousness (the
severed head). Kali opens the gates of freedom with this sword, having
cut the eight bonds that bind human beings. Finally her three eyes
represent the sun, moon, and fire, with which she is able to observe
the three modes of time: past, present and future. This attribute is
also the origin of the name Kali, which is the feminine form of
'Kala', the Sanskrit term for Time.

Another symbolic but controversial aspect of Kali is her proximity to
the cremation ground:

O Kali, Thou art fond of cremation grounds;
so I have turned my heart into one
That thou, a resident of cremation grounds,
may dance there unceasingly.
O Mother! I have no other fond desire in my heart;
fire of a funeral pyre is burning there;
O Mother! I have preserved the ashes of dead bodies all around
that Thou may come.
O Mother! Keeping Shiva, conqueror of Death, under Thy feet,
Come, dancing to the tune of music;
Prasada waits With his eyes closed

... Ramprasad (1718-75)

Kali's dwelling place, the cremation ground denotes a place where the
five elements (Sanskrit: pancha mahabhuta) are dissolved. Kali dwells
where dissolution takes place. In terms of devotion and worship, this
denotes the dissolving of attachments, anger, lust, and other binding
emotions, feelings, and ideas. The heart of the devotee is where this
burning takes place, and it is in the heart that Kali dwells. The
devotee makes her image in his heart and under her influence burns
away all limitations and ignorance in the cremation fires. This inner
cremation fire in the heart is the fire of knowledge, (Sanskrit:
gyanagni), which Kali bestows.

The image of a recumbent Shiva lying under the feet of Kali represents
Shiva as the passive potential of creation and Kali as his Shakti. The
generic term Shakti denotes the Universal feminine creative principle
and the energizing force behind all male divinity including Shiva.
Shakti is known by the general name Devi, from the root 'div', meaning
to shine. She is the Shining One, who is given different names in
different places and in different appearances, as the symbol of the
life-giving powers of the Universe. It is she that powers him. This
Shakti is expressed as the i in Shiva's name. Without this i, Shiva
becomes Shva, which in Sanskrit means a corpse. Thus suggesting that
without his Shakti, Shiva is powerless or inert.

Kali is a particularly appropriate image for conveying the idea of the
world as the play of the gods. The spontaneous, effortless, dizzying
creativity of the divine reflex is conveyed in her wild appearance.
Insofar as kali is identified with the phenomenal world, she presents
a picture of that world that underlies its ephemeral and unpredictable
nature. In her mad dancing, disheveled hair, and eerie howl there is
made present the hint of a world reeling, careening out of control.
The world is created and destroyed in Kali's wild dancing, and the
truth of redemption lies in man's awareness that he is invited to take
part in that dance, to yield to the frenzied beat of the Mother's
dance of life and death.

O Kali, my Mother full of Bliss! Enchantress of the almighty Shiva!
In Thy delirious joy Thou dancest, clapping Thy hands together!
Thou art the Mover of all that move, and we are but Thy helpless toys

...Ramakrishna Paramhans

Kali and her attendants dance to rhythms pounded out by Shiva (Lord of
destruction) and his animal-headed attendants who dwell in the
Himalayas. Associated with chaos and uncontrollable destruction,
Kali's own retinue brandishes swords and holds aloft skull cups from
which they drink the blood that intoxicates them. Kali, like Shiva,
has a third eye, but in all other respects the two are distinguished
from one another. In contrast to Shiva's sweet expression, plump body,
and ash white complexion, dark kali's emaciated limbs, angular
gestures, and fierce grimace convey a wild intensity. Her loose hair,
skull garland, and tiger wrap whip around her body as she stomps and
claps to the rhythm of the dance.

Many stories describe Kali's dance with Shiva as one that "threatens
to destroy the world" by its savage power. Art historian Stella
Kramrisch has noted that the image of kali dancing with Shiva follows
closely the myth of the demon Daruka. When Shiva asks his wife Parvati
to destroy this demon, she enters Shiva's body and transforms herself
from the poison that is stored in his throat. She emerges from Shiva
as Kali, ferocious in appearance, and with the help of her flesh
eating retinue attacks and defeats the demon. Kali however became so
intoxicated by the blood lust of battle that her aroused fury and wild
hunger threatened to destroy the whole world. She continued her
ferocious rampage until Shiva manifested himself as an infant and lay
crying in the midst of the corpse-strewn field. Kali, deceived by
Shiva's power of illusion, became calm as she suckled the baby. When
evening approached, Shiva performed the dance of creation (tandava) to
please the goddess. Delighted with the dance, Kali and her attendants
joined in.

This terrific and poignant imagery starkly reveals the nature of Kali
as the Divine Mother. Ramaprasad expresses his feelings thus:

Behold my Mother playing with Shiva,
lost in an ecstasy of joy!
Drunk with a draught of celestial wine,
She reels, and yet does not fall.
Erect She stands on Shiva's bosom,
and the earth Trembles under Her tread;
She and Her Lord are mad with frenzy,
casting Aside all fear and shame.

... Ramprasad (1718-75)

Kali's human and maternal qualities continue to define the goddess for
most of her devotees to this day. In human relationships, the love
between mother and child is usually considered the purest and
strongest. In the same way, the love between the Mother Goddess and
her human children is considered the closest and tenderest
relationship with divinity. Accordingly, Kali's devotees form a
particularly intimate and loving bond with her. But the devotee never
forgets Kali's demonic, frightening aspects. He does not distort
Kali's nature and the truths she reveals; he does not refuse to
meditate on her terrifying features. He mentions these repeatedly in
his songs but is never put off or repelled by them. Kali may be
frightening, the mad, forgetful mistress of a world spinning out of
control, but she is, after all, the Mother of all. As such, she must
be accepted by her children- accepted in wonder and awe, perhaps, but
accepted nevertheless. The poet in an intimate and lighter tone
addresses the Mother thus:

O Kali! Why dost Thou roam about nude?
Art Thou not ashamed, Mother!
Garb and ornaments Thou hast none;
yet Thou Pridest in being King's daughter.
O Mother! Is it a virtue of Thy family that Thou
Placest thy feet on Thy husband?
Thou art nude; Thy husband is nude; you both roam cremation grounds.
O Mother! We are all ashamed of you; do put on thy garb.
Thou hast cast away Thy necklace of jewels, Mother,
And worn a garland of human heads.
Prasada says, "Mother! Thy fierce beauty has frightened
Thy nude consort.

... Ramaprasad

The soul that worships becomes always a little child: the soul that
becomes a child finds God oftenest as mother. In a meditation before
the Blessed Sacrament, some pen has written the exquisite assurance:
"My child, you need not know much in order to please Me. Only Love Me
dearly. Speak to me, as you would talk to your mother, if she had
taken you in her arms."

Kali's boon is won when man confronts or accepts her and the realities
she dramatically conveys to him. The image of Kali, in a variety of
ways, teaches man that pain, sorrow, decay, death, and destruction are
not to be overcome or conquered by denying them or explaining them
away. Pain and sorrow are woven into the texture of man's life so
thoroughly that to deny them is ultimately futile. For man to realize
the fullness of his being, for man to exploit his potential as a human
being, he must finally accept this dimension of existence. Kali's boon
is freedom, the freedom of the child to revel in the moment, and it is
won only after confrontation or acceptance of death. To ignore death,
to pretend that one is physically immortal, to pretend that one's ego
is the center of things, is to provoke Kali's mocking laughter. To
confront or accept death, on the contrary, is to realize a mode of
being that can delight and revel in the play of the gods. To accept
one's mortality is to be able to let go, to be able to sing, dance,
and shout. Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects
them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them
their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely,
releases them from the incredible, binding web of "adult" pretense,
practicality, and rationality.

We hope you have enjoyed reading the article. Any comments or feedback
that you may have will be greatly appreciated. Please send your
feedback to feed...@exoticindia.com.

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/kali.htm

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Mar 25, 2010, 6:00:17 AM3/25/10

RSS hopes Gadkari will push Hindutva
Vikas Pathak, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, March 23, 2010

First Published: 00:47 IST(23/3/2010)
Last Updated: 00:48 IST(23/3/2010)

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue MG Vaidya hinted on Monday
that the BJP, which had been drifting away from Hindutva, was back on
track under Nitin Gadkari, the RSS choice for BJP president.

However, the gesture is being seen more as an approval for greater RSS
control over the BJP under Gadkari.

For Gadkari’s idea of a corporate or NGO-type BJP is not too different
from the hi-tech politics L.K. Advani and his aides espoused. However,
while Advani wanted an autonomous BJP, Gadkari, the RSS hopes, will be
more pliable.

Gadkari in turn pledged allegiance to Hindutva, the Sangh's favourite
theme. Welcoming 100 young professionals as BJP volunteers, he said
that while the "language" of each generation changed, Hindutva
remained "the soul" for the BJP.

Vaidya contrasted BJP under Gadkari with the party in 2009. “When
Sudheendra Kulkarni said the BJP should break with the RSS, I said
they should break with Hindutva, and the chord with the RSS will
automatically snap,” Vaidya said, referring to Advani's former aide.

"After 2009, they say Hindutva is their soul. The soul is invisible
but gives urja (energy). It's good that the same urja is being
remembered in 2010,” Vaidya added.

He said Hindutva was not religion but the essence of Indian values and
all those who upheld these were Hindus.

On the Babri mosque demolition, he said, "A sign of sampradyik
gundagardi (communal rowdy-ism) has been obliterated. There can be a
mosque nearby, but only a temple will come up at the spot."

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/newdelhi/RSS-hopes-Gadkari-will-push-Hindutva/Article1-522139.aspx

Sangh young band swings to jazz
RADHIKA RAMASESHAN
THEN

NOW

(From top) Anuradha Paudwal, Anup Jalota, Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington
New Delhi, March 22: Anuradha Paudwal, Narendra Chanchal and Anup
Jalota are passe. The Sangh’s young guns would rather sway to Louis
Armstrong and Duke Ellington.

The bhajan singers are a generation removed from the jazz greats and
could, therefore, qualify as more “contemporary”. But someone in the
RSS or the BJP decided it was time to stack away the Jai Siya Ram and
Prabhu Tero Naam CDs and play What A Wonderful World and When The
Saints Go Marching In.

But Armstrong’s gravelly voice and Ellington’s ragtime blues for the
RSS-BJP?

The disconnect would seem unbridgeable if you imagined swayamsevaks in
over-sized khaki shorts swinging to jazz instead of intoning mantras
on patriotism.

But when 50-odd youths got together to pledge allegiance to the RSS
and the BJP in Delhi, they chose jazz as the background score.

The new band calls itself the United Volunteer Association, or UVA. Or
better still, Yuva.

Yes, it is the BJP’s answer to the Congress’s effort to foreground
Rahul Gandhi and his youth brigade.

Gone with the bhajans are the khaki shorts. The UVAs wear saffron T-
shirts and black trousers.

They are not 50-year-olds with paunches but young IT professionals,
entrepreneurs and students with less ample waistlines and a general
look of fitness.

Nitin Gadkari, the 52- year-old BJP president, whose girth is not
exactly an advertisement for health freaks, was the guest of honour at
the launch of UVA in New Delhi’s Mavlankar Hall today.

He played to the gallery, unmindful of the fact that on the dais with
him was M.G. Vaidya, an 80-year old RSS pracharak who often defies the
official line on policies and issues. “I belong to a new generation
that recognises the difference between the letter and spirit (of
Hindutva). Hindutva’s spirit will not change. But it cannot be an
agenda for any political party,” he said.

He invoked lines from a Supreme Court judgment that described Hindutva
as a “way of life of people in the sub-continent”.

Terrorists have no religion: Nitin Gadkari
By ANIMarch 23rd, 2010 NEW DELHI - Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
president Nitin Gadkari has said that a terrorist has no religion and
can’t be classified as a Hindu or a Muslim.

“It is unfortunate that we identify people involved with certain
terrorist activities according to their religious affiliations,” said
Gadkari, adding that a terrorist has no caste, creed or religion.

Gadkari further said, “A god fearing Hindu will not kill an innocent

Muslim and similarly, a god fearing Muslim will not kill an innocent

Hindu, and if he is doing so, then he is a terrorist who does not
belong to any religion.”

The BJP president on Monday stressed on the need for a modern idiom to
articulate ‘Hindutva’ for the youth, adding that the Supreme Court’s
1995 description of Hindutva must be the standard.

“Hindutva cannot become any political party’s agenda. It was more a
way of life,” said Gadkari.

The Supreme Court of India in a judgement ruled that ‘no precise
meaning can be ascribed to the terms ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindutva’ and
‘Hinduism’; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the
narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian
culture and heritage.

The Court also ruled that ‘Hindutva’ is understood as a way of life or
a state of mind and is not to be equated with or understood as
religious Hindu fundamentalism. (ANI)

http://blog.taragana.com/politics/2010/03/23/terrorists-have-no-religion-nitin-gadkari-24894/
Gadkari at the launch of UVA in Delhi. (PTI)
“No true Muslim can kill a Hindu, no true Hindu can kill a Muslim. Yet
the pseudo-secularists insist on identifying terrorists with religion.
The state should be secular, the government should be secular but an
individual cannot be secular,” Gadkari said. “Why then were Indira
Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi cremated according to Hindu rites?”

He emphasised how important it was to drive home the message that the
BJP was for “parliamentary democracy and not theocracy”.

“Youths should see Hindutva in a larger perspective, as a way of life
that is related to tolerance of all people,” Gadkari said.

But UVA convener Sanjay Kaul drove home the message of change. At the
end of his speech, the BJP activist who was part of the India Shining
ad campaign, simply said: “Hey guys, if you are interested, you know
who to call.”

A generation, it seemed, had been phased out.

A source said youth outreach would become possible only “when we start
looking, thinking and speaking like Kaul”.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100323/jsp/nation/story_12250823.jsp

Bihar BJP leaders flay Gadkari team
NALIN VERMA

Shahnawaz Hussein and Shatrughan Sinha have shown resentment against
Nitin Gadkari
Patna, March 21: Mere months before the state goes to Assembly polls,
resentment against BJP president Nitin Gadkari is rising fast among
party members, especially after some senior leaders from the region
were “ignored” in the national executive.

The leaders have also started pouring venom against the high command.
Former Union civil aviation minister Shahnawaz Hussein did not attend
a meeting called by the newly appointed BJP chief spokesman
Ravishankar Prasad on Friday and got admitted to a Delhi hospital
yesterday complaining of chest pain.

“I will go to Mecca and Medina to know my gunah (mistake) and pray
that Allah punishes me for the same,” the Bhagalpur MP said, sulking
for being “demoted” as a junior spokesman under Prasad.

“Our leader is more pained by the treatment from Gadkari than the
chest pain,” said an aide of Hussein.

Probably, God appears to have heard Shahnawaz’s prayers, as Gadkari
called him telling: “You should speak to me if you have complaints and
not to the media. I will try to address your issues if you keep
yourself confined to party forum.”

Apparently, sensing resentment among the election-bound Bihar leaders,
Gadkari has revised his list of office-bearers. Yesterday, he included
two more “sulking” leaders — state party chief Radhamohan Singh and
state health minister Nandkishore Yadav — in the list of the special
invitees to the national executive.

But Gadkari’s damage-control exercise seems futile, as many senior
leaders, including Shatrughan Sinha, C.P. Thakur and Yahswant Sinha,
are feeling ignored.

Many of these disgruntled leaders are openly speaking to the media for
ignoring the “meritorious party workers” from Bihar by Gadkari whom
they alleged even biased towards Maharashtra.

Thakur, before leaving for Geneva to attend a convention of the World
Health Organisation, said: “Senior leaders from Bihar have been
ignored. There is a dominance of Marathis in Gadkari’s team.” Thakur,
who represented the Patna Lok Sabha seat thrice and is currently Rajya
Sabha MP, went on saying: “My contribution to the party is no less
than anyone in the BJP.”

Shatrughan, who represents Patna Saheb in the Lok Sabha and billed to
be the star campaigner in the coming Assembly elections, said:
“Leaders like Thakur, Udai Singh and Yashwant have been ignored. I
have apprised the Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj about how Gadkari
has made mistakes in making his team.”

The disgruntled leaders said around 15 leaders from Bihar had found
places in Gadkari’s team against over 40 from Maharashtra. Gadkari is
yet to select the Bihar BJP president to replace Singh, who had
completed his tenure.

All these senior leaders, including Hussein, Thakur and Shatrughan,
are apparently opposed to the elevation of a relatively junior leader,
Prasad, as the party’s general secretary and chief spokesman at their
cost. “Experience and merit have not been taken into consideration,
while forming the team. The winners and mass leaders have been ignored
while those who have not won a single election have been promoted,”
said Shatrughan.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100322/jsp/nation/story_12244879.jsp

Nitish stamp in party panel
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Patna, March 24: Nitish Kumar’s mantra of “inclusive growth and
development” finds an echo in his party as well with the JD(U)
accommodating the dissidents besides a large number of women and
minorities in the jumbo executive committee of poll-bound Bihar.

While BJP chief Nitin Gadkari faces revolt in his party for leaving
out senior leaders from the region, dissident leaders like former
JD(U) state chief Rajiv Ranjan Singh, alias Lallan Singh, and
Prabhunath Singh have found place in the 262-member executive
committee.

State JD(U) chief Vijay Choudhary said: “We have given representation
to all with ignoring none.”

Choudhary said: “The executive committee has 42 vice-presidents, 87
general secretaries, 58 secretaries and 75 members with women and
party workers from the Muslim community given a very large
representation.”

“The executive committee has highest ever number of women this time,”
Choudhary said, indicating the panel’s support to Nitish, who has been
spearheading the women’s reservation bill against the wishes of JD(U)
chief Sharad Yadav, who along with Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh
Yadav, have been opposing it.

The women’s reservation bill has split the JD(U) with Nitish taking a
line quite opposed to Sharad Yadav. Nitish’s stand, however,
embarrassed Sharad Yadav for all the five MPs in the Rajya Sabha on
the day of voting supported in favour of the bill.

Hari Prasad Sah, Nitish’s close confidant, has been made chairman of
the state parliamentary board and former MLC Vinay Kumar Sinha its
treasurer.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100325/jsp/nation/story_12259063.jsp

Shatrughan finds vacuum at the top in the party
STAFF WRITER 17:28 HRS IST

Lucknow Mar 23 (PTI) Days after he vent his frustration over selection
of the new team of BJP office bearers, Shatrughan Sinha today said
that there is a vacuum at the top in the absence of Atal Bihari
Vajpayee coupled with certain other factors.

In an informal interaction with reporters here, Sinha said the BJP
leadership was weakened after the retirement of Vajpayee from active
politics.

He said there were also certain other factors but declined to
elaborate.

The BJP leader, however, sought to put a lid on the controversy
following his outburst against party President Nitin Gadkari that
deserving candidates had been ignored in the new team announced last
week.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/578197_Shatrughan-finds-vacuum-at-the-top-in-the-party

I'l quit if Gadkariji says so: Shatrughan
Rakesh Verma, Hindustan Times
Patna, March 21, 2010

First Published: 23:16 IST(21/3/2010)
Last Updated: 23:17 IST(21/3/2010)

Even as the BJP mulls disciplinary action against Patna Sahib MP
Shatrughan Sinha, the party veteran in Patna on Sunday was his usual
cool and confident self.

“Why threaten me with a show cause at all? All that my friend and
party chief needs to do is tell me to quit and I would gladly do so.
My image is hardly dependent on my being a BJP member. There are a
number of options that are far more rewarding, options with more
responsibility that I would be glad to fulfill,” Sinha said.

“Nevertheless, doing so will hardly put an end to the discontent that
Gadkariji’s handpicked team has inspired among certain party seniors
whose contributions the BJP can ill-afford to ignore.”

Senior leaders such as Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, B.C. Khanduri,
C.P. Thakur, Uday Singh, Madan Lal Khurana have been left out, said
Sinha. And to rub salt on their wounds, leaders such as Radha Mohan
Singh and Nand Kishore Yadav, whose political stock Bihar’s people are
well aware of, have been inducted, he added.

“I am not upset because of my non-inclusion in Nitin Gadkari’s team.
What I am upset about is that leaders who could have played stellar
roles in the impending elections in Bihar and elsewhere have been
sidelined at the behest of self-seekers,” Sinha said.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/bihar/I-ll-quit-if-Gadkariji-says-so-Shatrughan/Article1-521755.aspx

I have never sought any position in party:Shatrughan
STAFF WRITER 13:34 HRS IST

New Delhi, Mar 24 (PTI) Actor-turned politician Shatrughan Sinha has
said he voiced his reservations over the selection of the new BJP team
because he wanted the welfare of the party and not because he was
hankering for any post.

"I never asked, never got and never sought any position for me. As far
as who got what, I can say I have got my 'Kad' (height), which
sometimes becomes a matter of concern for others," the 6-feet-2-inch
tall BJP leader said, evading a direct reply.

He was asked why he was cold shouldered by the BJP leadership in the
new team of party office-bearers announced by party chief Nitin
Gadkari on March 18.

Sinha was in the city last night to promote his son's debut film
'Sadiyaan', which stars Rekha, Rishi Kapoor and Hema Malini in the
lead.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/579299_I-have-never-sought-any-position-in-party-Shatrughan

'I am endorsing Gujarat's glory, not present govt'
STAFF WRITER 11:10 HRS IST

Mumbai, Mar 25 (PTI) Under attack for his role as brand ambassador of
Gujarat, megastar Amitabh Bachchan has hit out at his critics, saying
no politics is involved in his promoting tourism in the BJP-ruled
state.

Bachchan said as the brand ambassador, he would talk about the Somnath
Temple, the white sands of the Rann of Kutch, old civilisations of
Harrappa, the Gir lions and try to entice as many visitors as he could
to that glorious land.

"Where is the connect with the glorification of the present
Government?" he wrote on his blog yesterday, the day when some
Maharashtra Congressmen objected to his presence at a state government
function citing his strained ties with Gandhi family and his role as
Gujarat brand ambassador.

"You want to stop me from promoting tourism in a state because you
have reason to believe that there are political connotations to the
event.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/580329_-I-am-endorsing-Gujarat-s-glory--not-present-govt-

Invite to Amitabh, section of Mumbai Cong upset
STAFF WRITER 0:44 HRS IST

Mumbai/ New Delhi, Mar 24 (PTI) Resentment brewed tonight in a section
of Mumbai's Congress over the invite to megastar Amitabh Bachchan to a
function where Chief Minister Ashok Chavan innaugurated the second
phase of Worli-Bandra sealink.

Chavan himself indicated the unhappiness in PCC over the invite to
Bachchan, a friend-turned-foe of the party, and exclusion of some
Congress leaders from the function.

"The Mumbai Congress President (Kripashankar Singh) has given some
reaction in the evening about invitations not being given to
them....", Chavan told NDTV.

Congress' coalition partner NCP is heading the ministry concerned with
the sealnik.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/580206_Invite-to-Amitabh--section-of-Mumbai-Cong-upset

India second most spam originator worldwide: study
STAFF WRITER 8:16 HRS IST

Houston, Mar 25 (PTI) Indian is the second most spam originator
worldwide, with 10.98 per cent of spam being sent globally from Indian
IP addresses, according to a study.

Brazil, Vietnam, Korea and US are among the top five countries from
which most spam was sent during the first two months of 2010, said the
study by PandaLabs, Panda Security's malware analysis and detection
laboratory.

The five million emails analysed by PandaLabs came from nearly one
million different IP addresses, meaning that on average, each address
was responsible for five spam messages.

And, the cities from which spam was being sent, Seoul topped the list,
followed by Hanoi, New Delhi, Bogota, Sao Paulo and Bangkok.

The spam messages themselves are used primarily to distribute malware
or sell illicit products, such as videos or photos of Brazilian girls.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/580253_India-second-most-spam-originator-worldwide--study

'Row over presence at sea link event manufactured'
STAFF WRITER 10:10 HRS IST

Mumbai, Mar 25 (PTI) Megastar Amitabh Bachchan today said the
controversy over his presence at a function here for the inauguration
of the second phase of the Bandra-Worli sea link has been
"manufactured".

"A fresh controversy has been rapidly manufactured on my
involvement... The media has been hounding me since the event at the
sea link has got over, through incessant SMSes and the electronic
(media) has followed me even to the theatre where we were seeing
Arshad's film," Bachchan wrote in a midnight post on his blog. Actor
Arshad Warsi's film 'Hum Tum Aur Ghost' will be released this week.

Resentment brewed in a section of Mumbai Congress over the invite to
Bachchan to the function where Chief Minister Ashok Chavan inaugurated
the sea link yesterday.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/580296_-Row-over-presence-at-sea-link-event-manufactured-

Modi warms up for date with riot probe team
OUR BUREAU

Ahmedabad/Mumbai, March 24: Narendra Modi is set to make an appearance
before the Supreme Court-monitored special investigation team on the
Gujarat riots on March 27 or any other mutually acceptable date.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, among the battery of legal eagles
advising Modi, today confirmed that the Gujarat chief minister was
willing to appear before the SIT on March 27 or any other day, but
prior to that he would like a clarification with regard to a related
case pending in the Supreme Court.

The SIT has asked Modi to appear before it in connection with the
Gulbarg Housing Society carnage of February 28, 2002, in which
Congress leader Ahsan Jafri was killed along with 68 others, many of
whose bodies were never recovered as they had been burnt beyond
recognition.

The SIT was asked by the Supreme Court to look into a complaint filed
by Zakia Jafri, widow of the leader, in which she named Modi as the
first accused in her husband’s murder.

The SIT has to report to the Supreme Court by April 30 on Zakia’s
complaint. Of the 63 people named, most have already been questioned
by the SIT.

On March 11, the SIT, headed by former CBI chief R.K. Raghavan, said
it had asked the chief minister to appear before it for questioning on
March 21, a date which Modi disputed, saying it was a “lie” planted by
“vested interests”.

The Telegraph has learnt that the SIT had asked Modi to appear before
it in the week beginning March 21.

Advocate Jethmalani today said Modi had written a letter to Raghavan,
pointing out that the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear a petition
seeking to recall its earlier order referring Zakia’s complaint to the
SIT. The plea is scheduled to be heard in the week beginning April 5.

The petition was filed by Kalubhai Maliwad, a former legislator of the
BJP who was named with Modi and 61 others in Zakia’s complaint.

“Moreover, Teesta Setalvad and other NGOs have also challenged the
composition of the SIT. Modi has said that propriety demands that
unless these pending matters are resolved, it may not be appropriate
to call him. He (Modi) said if the SIT still wants to go ahead, he is
willing to appear before it on March 27 or any other day it wishes
to,” Jethmalani said.

Asked if the SIT had responded to the letter, Jethmalani said: “No, it
hasn’t. The letter was sent either on Monday or Tuesday.”

Raghavan could not be reached for comment. He, however, told PTI that
“it (the missive) is a privilege communication between the SIT and the
witness (Modi)” and he could not comment on it.

The Gujarat government continued to be cautious. Home minister Amit
Shah said the “date and time” of Modi’s appearance had not been fixed
as yet.

Asked whether the chief minister would appear before March 27, a staff
member at the chief minister’s office said: “As of now, we have not
decided.”

Legal experts said Modi, who is also being advised by BJP leader and
legal luminary Arun Jaitley, cannot avoid appearing before the SIT
since it has all the powers of an investigative agency under the
Criminal Procedure Code of 1973.

The chief minister, sources said, is likely to comply with the summons
since he would prefer to be seen as a responsible, law-abiding citizen
who welcomes the investigation instead of running shy of it.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100325/jsp/nation/story_12259787.jsp

SIT summons: Modi gives a new twist but says will respond
STAFF WRITER 18:50 HRS IST

Gandhinagar, Mar 22 (PTI) Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today
said he shall respond to the SIT probing the 2002 Gujarat riots "fully
respecting" the law, as he refuted reports that he had skipped
appearance before the panel on Sunday.

"SIT had not fixed March 21, 2010 for my appearance.

To say that I was summoned on March 21 is completely false. I shall

respond to the SIT fully respecting the law and keeping in view the

dignity of a body appointed by the Supreme Court," he said in an open
letter.

Modi's letter came following reports that he had boycotted the SIT
summons.

He said, "Truth cannot be suppressed. It is now my duty to place
before you the facts that brings out the importance of understanding
what the truth really is.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/576786_SIT-summons--Modi-gives-a-new-twist-but-says-will-respond

Gujarat CM likely to appear before SIT on March 27
STAFF WRITER 9:35 HRS IST

Ahmedabad, Mar 24 (PTI) Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is likely
to be questioned by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation
Team, probing the 2002 riots, on March 27, SIT sources said today.

Confusion prevailed over the appearance of Modi before the SIT with
the panel chief saying he would appear on March 21. But Modi, in an
open letter, claimed he was not summoned on the date.

Sources today said he is likely to be questioned on March 27. However,
SIT Chief R K Raghavan refused to comment on the date.

"It is a privilege communication between the SIT and the witness and I
cannot comment on this," he said.

SIT has summoned Modi to depose in connection with a complaint of
Zakia Jaffery, widow of former Congress MP Eshan Jaffery who was
killed in Gulburg society riot case of 2002 along with 69 others.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/579097_Gujarat-CM-likely-to-appear-before-SIT-on-March-27

SIT up and take notice
Hindustan Times
March 15, 2010

First Published: 22:40 IST(15/3/2010)
Last Updated: 22:45 IST(15/3/2010)

The hysteria that normally accompanies any move to bring about
political accountability has been refreshingly absent following the
Special Investigation Team’s (SIT) summons to Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi to depose before it. This is the first time ever that
the CM of any state has been asked to appear before an SIT. The SIT
step is in response to charges against Mr Modi and his administration
by Zakia Jaffrey whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffrey
was murdered in the Gulberg housing society during the cataclysmic
riots of 2002. Mr Modi has signalled his compliance and the new BJP
President Nitin Gadkari has taken the stand that the law must take its
course.

The law has indeed taken a tortuous course in the Gujarat case with
various rulings indicting the administration being overturned by lower
courts. Now that the action has moved to the Supreme Court, we are
hopefully moving closer to a conclusion. The SIT seems intent on
completing its task in a professional manner, heeding neither pressure
from the establishment nor from activists who have been at loggerheads
ever since those fateful events took place. In all the mudslinging, we
have still not fixed accountability for the violence in which over
1,500 people died. That there was complicity, at least from sections
of Mr Modi’s administration, is established. The SIT has made it clear
that it has prima facie cases against then minister Maya Kodnani and
various VHP leaders. It has also left no one in doubt that the events
were not a spontaneous reaction after the Godhra train arson, but very
much ordered to a pattern.

Mr Modi is in a difficult situation. If he professes ignorance of the
reasons for and perpetrators of the violence, his administration could
be held accountable for negligence. However, given the maturity with
which the situation has been handled so far, it must be hoped that the
SIT hearings will give Mr Modi a platform to answer many questions
which are still hanging in the air. The 2002 riots proved to be one of
the most divisive and painful in independent India and threatened the
very secular ethos of the country. So, unlike the investigations into
past riots, it becomes imperative that the issue is resolved in order
that both Gujarat and India can move forward. Mr Modi has crafted the
economic success story of Gujarat. Today everyone wants a stake in the
growth of the state. Mr Modi has eventual ambitions for a greater role
at the Centre. In this context, it makes sense to wipe the slate clean
and bring a closure to a painful chapter in our history.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/edits/SIT-up-and-take-notice/Article1-519421.aspx

Communal harmony marks Ram Navami in Ayodhya
STAFF WRITER 21:9 HRS IST

Ayodhya, Mar 24 (PTI) In an example of communal harmony in this
pilgrim town, members of the Muslim community today made arrangements
for Hindu pilgrims who arrived here in large numbers to celebrate Ram
Navami.

The festivities, which were celebrated without any perceptible terror
threat, saw about ten lakh devotees take a dip in the Saryu river,
with many of them offering prayers at different temples including
Kanak Bhawan, Hanumangarhi and Nageshwarnaath temples.

Senior Superintendent of Police R K S Rathore said, "There was no
extremist threat to the religious gathering of Ram Navami Mela, but we
made all possible arrangements to ensure the security of devotees.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/580071_Communal-harmony-marks-Ram-Navami-in-Ayodhya

Mulayam's remarks on women sexist, Talibani: Amar
STAFF WRITER 19:30 HRS IST

Raising the Batla House encounter issue, Amar said that when he had
demanded a judicial inquiry into it, everybody had distanced
themselves from him.

"I spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then National
Security Advisor M K Narayanan on initiating a judicial inquiry into
the encounter at that time, but only Congress President Sonia Gandhi
supported my views. After two years, AICC general secretary Digvijay
Singh recently visited Azamgarh and while raising doubts on the
encounter demanded a judicial inquiry into it and then backtracked
from his statement," he said.

The former SP leader maintained that he did not play politics over the
issue and said what he felt was right.

Asked whether he was trying to send feelers to Congress while praising
Sonia Gandhi for supporting his views on the Batla House encounter
issue, Singh said, "I have only said the truth.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/579926_Mulayam-s-remarks-on-women-sexist--Talibani--Amar

Former Goa beach shack waiter sentenced for murder

STAFF WRITER 0:55 HRS IST

Panaji, March 23 (PTI) A former beach shack waiter was sentenced to
life imprisonment by a local court today for killing a British woman
in Margao town two years ago.

Additional district and sessions judge P V Sawaikar sentenced Anand
Kambli to life imprisonment and fined him Rs 25,000 for killing Denis
Higgins.

Higgins, 54, was brutally killed by Kambli by slitting open her throat
with a knife over a petty dispute in her rented apartment at Margao
town on April 27, 2007.

Incidently, Kambli?s wife and minor son were sleeping in the adjacent
room when the incident happened.

Higgins died on the spot and Kambli fled from the scene, only to be
arrested a couple of days later.

Police said the accused had made an acquaintance with British lady
through his friend, who had helped her in getting a rented apartment.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/579026_Former-Goa-beach-shack-waiter-sentenced-for-murder

Nityananda Swami files writ in Karnataka High Court
STAFF WRITER 0:50 HRS IST

Bangalore, Mar 22 (PTI) Self-styled godman Nityananda Swami, facing
allegations of involvement in sleazy activities, today filed a writ
petition before Karnataka High Court seeking quashing of cases filed

against him by the Ramanagar district police.

Nityananda, who is at large ever since the video clippings of his
alleged sleaze activities involving an actress were telecast by

private channels on May two, in his petition contended that he was
innocent.

The 32-year-old Nityananda, alias Rajasekharan, charged that one of

his former discipline and driver Kurup Lenin had conspired to defame
him and his Ashram by levelling such allegations.

The whereabouts of Nityananda remained a mystery so far.

However, the followers of Nityananda at his Ashram at Bidadi on the
city outskirts claim that he has been in Haridwar attending the Kumbh
Mela.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/577398_Nityananda-Swami-files-writ-in-Karnataka-High-Court

A temple where upper castes bow to Dalits
Asit Srivastava, Indo-Asian News Service
Lucknow, March 25, 2010

First Published: 11:15 IST(25/3/2010)
Last Updated: 11:16 IST(25/3/2010)

Stories of socially marginalised people not being allowed into places
of worship are common in India. In such a scenario, a Dalit family
presiding over an Uttar Pradesh temple for ages is nothing short of
exemplary.

It's only Dalits who have been priests of the Kali Mata temple,
dedicated to goddess Durga, in Lakhna town in Etawah, some 300 km from
Lucknow, ever since the shrine came up around 200 years ago.

"Caste divisions and discrimination may not have given Dalits a place
of respectability in society, but here as priests they are revered,"
Ram Dular Rajbhar, who owns a grocery store in the town, told IANS on
phone.

"Be it Brahmins, Thakurs or people from any of the other higher
castes, after coming inside the temple, all have to bow before the
Dalit priests and touch their feet. For others it may be surprising,
but it has become a custom for us," he added.

Situated along the banks of the Yamuna river, the temple is sought
after by the residents of Lakhna town for holding marriages,
'mundan' (tonsure ceremony of Hindu children) or other rituals
particularly performed by Brahmins or members of the upper caste.

"It's not just a temple. It's a place that is an example of social
equality," said Umesh Dixit, who owns several garment shops in Lakhna
town.

"People in Lakhna also approach the priests to name their babies as it
is believed that names given by Dalit priests would bring good luck
and prosperity to the children and their families," he added.

According to locals, there's a story behind the custom of Dalit
priests. They say King Jaipal Singh, who got the temple constructed,
made it mandatory that the priest of the temple would only be a Dalit.

"While the construction of the temple was under way, Jaipal Singh
noticed a Dalit labourer, Chhotelal, was being assaulted by a group of
upper caste people for touching the idol that was to be placed inside
the temple," said another resident Ram Raksha Pandey, who owns an
eating joint in Lakhna.

"Jaipalji soon intervened in the matter and said only Chhotelal and
his family would be taking care of the temple after its construction.
Since then, the practice has been alive," he added.

At present two brothers, Ashok Kumar, 43, and Akhilesh Kumar, 45, who
are fourth generation descendants of Chhotelal are the priests at the
temple.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/lucknow/A-temple-where-upper-castes-bow-to-Dalits/Article1-523001.aspx

Nitin Gadkari

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This biographical article needs additional citations for
verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious
material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must
be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful.
(October 2009)
Nitin Gadkari

Maharashtra Legislative Council
Incumbent
Assumed office
1989

Minister for PWD, Maharashtra
In office
27th May, 1995 – 1998

National President of Bharatiya Janata Party
Incumbent
Assumed office
25th December, 2009
Preceded by Rajnath Singh

Born May 27, 1957 (1957-05-27) (age 52)
Nagpur, India
Political party Bharatiya Janata Party
Spouse(s) Kanchan Gadkari
Children Nikhil, Sarang and Ketki
Alma mater Nagpur University
Occupation Lawyer, Industrialist
Religion Hindu
Website nitingadkari.in
Nitin Jayaram Gadkari (Marathi: नितीन जयराम गडकरी) (born 27 May 1957)
is an Indian industrialist, agriculturist, politician and the current
President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).[1] He is best known for
the works during his tenure as a Public Works Department Minister in
the state of Maharashtra when he constructed a series of roads,
highways and flyovers across the state including the Mumbai–Pune
Expressway.[2]

Background, family and education

Nitin Gadkari was born in Nagpur, India to a middle class
Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu family hailing from Nagpur district.
During his teens, he worked for Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and
student union wing of ABVP.

He started his political career as a grass root worker who laid down
red carpets prior to party programmes.[3] He prefers to maintains a
low profile in the media. He did his M.Com, L.L.B., D.B.M. from
Maharashtra, India.

Gadkari was elected unanimously as the President of BJP by its
members. The induction ceremony was held on 19 December 2009 and
resumed work on 25 December 2009.

Nitin Gadkari is married to Kanchan Gadkari and they have three
children, Nikhil, Sarang and Ketki. He currently resides in Nagpur
close to the head office of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.[4]

Political career

Nitin Gadkari served as the Minister of Public Works Department of
Government of Maharashtra from 1995 to 1999 and restructured it from
top to bottom.[5].Though Gadkari did a decent job as a minister ,His
Party lost badly in assembly elections in Maharashtra for three
consecutive terms.

Up-gradation of PWD

He undertook the project to computerize all activities in the
department of PWD. He ordered complete replacement of furniture,
fixtures and office equipments with trendy ones and imposed MNC
similar codes for the department and its employees.[citation needed]

Support for privatization

He showed strong support for privatization when he campaigned for
investment in the infrastructure areas from private firms. He
addressed several meetings between private investors, contractors,
builders and various trade organizations and diverted large amounts of
budgeted projects towards privatization. He managed to convince the
state to allocate Rs. 700 Crores for rural connectivity. In the next
four years, 98% of the total population of Maharashtra achieved all-
weather road connectivity. It also helped to solve the malnutrition
problems prevailing in remote Melghat-Dharni area of Amravati district
which previously had no access to medical aid, ration or educational
facilities. The project aimed to connect 13736 remote villages which
remained unconnected since independence by road.

Establishment of MSRDC

Gadkari pushed for time bound completion of projects. He established
Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), a fully
government-owned company which undertook construction of 55 flyovers
in Mumbai alone costing 1500 crores. Mumbai-Pune Expressway was
another project constructed by MSRDC during his tenure.

For the first time MSRDC a Govt. owned company went to the capital
market and raised Rs. 1180 crores which was the largest collection in
the Capital Market history of India. CRISIL gave an AAA rating to
MSRDC.

He appointed a committee to help adopt and acquire technology and
tools of international standards in construction of buildings and
bridges and changed the existing bridge codes. The contractors thus
imported computerized machinery worth 400 Crores like Vibrating
rollers, electronic sensors, Paving machines, Pilling rigs, Pre-fab
technique, etc. which were commissioned to be used for the first time
in India.

Chairman of NRRDC

Union Government appointed him as Chairman of National Rural Road
Development Committee. After series of meetings and study, Shri
Gadkari submitted the report to central Govt. and gave the
presentation to Hon. Prime Minister of India. His report was accepted
and a new rural road connecting scheme now popularly known as Pradhan
Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana was launched. The ambitious scheme is of Rs.
60,000 Crores.

Other works during his tenure

He appointed a committee to study the accident-prone spots on the
roads of Maharashtra and implemented committee suggestions with the
budgetary provision of 20 crores.
Gadkari promised and completed the pledge of completing the Sagri Marg
which was a long awaited dream of the people of Konkan region in four
years of his regime.
Gadkari formulated the scientific methodology of BOT projects,
initiated traffic surveys, worked out IRR (Internal rate of return)
and made the govt. of maharashtra change the concession period of toll
policy.
During recession, he channeled 5000 crore into infrastructural
projects which strengthened the cement, steel and bitumen industry of
India.
Gadkari implemented self-employment scheme for civil Engineers which
enabled 18,000 Engineers to work independently.
He organized the great plantation drive in Nagpur which planted 40
lakh trees in 2 years. He aimed to make Nagpur the Greenest City in
India.
He has visited countries like Israel, Italy, France, Germany, United
Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia,
United States, Canada, Brazil and Srilanka as part of the Indian
Delegation for MSSIDC, MSRDC, Govt. of Maharashtra and Govt. of
India.

Positions served in the past and serving

Nitin Gadkari in NagpurEx Minister, Govt of Maharashtra
Chairman, Purti Group of Companies
President, Bharatiya Janata Party, Maharashtra State[6]
Ex-Leader of Opposition, Maharashtra Legislative Council
Former Minister for Public Works Department, Maharashtra State
Member of Legislative Council, Maharashtra State
Elected to the Maharashtra Govt. Legislative Council in 1989 from
graduates constituency, Nagpur Region.
Re-elected in 1990.
Re-elected in 1996 and elected unopposed in 2002.
Inducted in the Maharashtra State Government Cabinet as the Minister
for Public Works on May 27, 1995.
Ex-Member of the High Power Committee for Privatisation, Government of
Maharashtra.
Ex-Chairman, Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, India.
Ex-Guardian Minister for Nagpur District, Govt. of Maharashtra.
Ex-Chairman, Mining policy Implementation Committee, Govt. of
Maharashtra.
Ex-Chairman, Metropolis Beautification Committee, Govt. of
Maharashtra.
Ex-Leader of Opposition, Maharashtra Legislative Council, Chairman
National Rural Road Development Committee
Chairman, Review Committee of CPWD, Govt. of India.
State President of Bhartiya Janata Party, Maharashtra.
After a successful stint as PWD Minister, Gadkari took over as
President of the Maharashtra State Unit of the BJP in 2004. In 2009,
when the BJP National President Rajnath Singh's term ended in
December, Gadkari succeeded him as the youngest ever President of BJP.

Industrial career

Nitin Gadkari is an industrialist first and then a politician.[7] He
is known to control these establishments in the following way.

Poly sack Industrial Society Ltd - Founder and Chairman. Nikhil
Furniture and Appliances Pvt. Ltd - Promoter and Director. Antyodaya
Trust - Founder and Member. Empress Employees Co-operative Paper Mills
Ltd - Founder and Chairman.

Gadkari is also an agriculturist. He has promoted and has interests in
the fields of water management, solar energy Projects and use of
modern tools in agriculture. Recently, he started exporting fruits to
various countries under the banner Ketaki overseas Trading Company.

Awards

He was honoured by Mumbai Bhushan Award and was felicitated by various
organizations in Mumbai.

References

^ Rajnath steps down, Gadkari takes over as BJP president
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rajnath-steps-down-Gadkari-takes-over-as-BJP-president/articleshow/5356182.cms
^ BJP's new chief seen as moderniser http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/bjps_new_chief_seen_as_moderniser.php
^ Former carpet boy as new ‘carpetbagger’ - Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/former-carpet-boy-as-new-carpetbagger/541881/0
^ http://www.nagpuronline.com/news/news.asp?nsr=42 Kanchan Gadkari,
wife of State President BJP Nitin Gadkari
^ Gadkari emerges as front-runner for post
^ BJP official site http://www.bjp.org/content/view/2613/463/
^ Gadkari views politics as an instrument of reforms to change the
lives of poor
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rajnath-steps-down-Gadkari-takes-over-as-BJP-president/articleshow/5356182.cms

External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitin_Gadkari

Former carpet boy as new ‘carpetbagger’
Vivek Deshpande

Posted: Monday , Nov 16, 2009 at 0236 hrs

Nagpur:

OpportunityDon’t Glorify NaxalismRole-Model MPs, MLAs!Vehicle called
Life In a deeply divided party, Nitin Gadkari stands out for his
relative youth, administrative and organisational skills, networking
abilities, non-controversial image and, most importantly, his
proximity to the RSS. As the likelihood of his taking over as BJP
president grows stronger, an introduction to the man who few, until
now, had known outside Maharashtra

Twenty-five years ago, a young man living a stone’s throw away from
the RSS headquarters in Nagpur’s old-fashioned Mahal locality would
ride his Lambretta scooter to the city’s newspaper offices, handing
over press statements and meeting journalist friends. He was among the
ordinary workers who would actually lay down carpets at what was then
the Jan Sangh party’s programmes.

Much water has flown down Nagpur’s Nag river since. Now 52, Nitin
Jairam Gadkari, MCom, LLB, has long ceased to courier press
statements. He issues them now. His journalist friends call on him at
his residence or office. And as it now appears more and more certain,
the man who once laid carpets at party functions could possibly find
himself walking the red carpet as the BJP’s new president next month.

Even as the BJP struggles to cope with its political downslide and
intra-party chaos, Gadkari’s sudden foray to the party’s top echelons
has surprised many. In fact, many in the party here had until two
months ago dismissed the reports as baseless. But as the weak
possibility has turned into a strong probability, party leaders have
started admitting that Gadkari’s ‘qualifications’ for the party post
are not to be scoffed at, including his age, administrative and
organisational skills, his non-controversial image and most
importantly his proximity to the RSS, which is intervening like never
before to revamp the crisis-ridden BJP.

“He fulfils all that and also has dynamism required for the top post,”
says Devendra Fadnavis, the party’s South-West Nagpur MLA and a highly
respected legislator. “Also, he is a good orator and is comfortable
with all three languages — Marathi, Hindi and English,” he adds.
Another senior party leader Madhav Bhandari echoes similar views. “He
has proved his organisational and administrative skills beyond doubt.
His performance as PWD minister during which he built 55 flyovers in
Mumbai and roads all over the state, as also his stint as chief of the
infrastructure committee appointed by then prime minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee have made him known across the country,” Bhandari says.

Gadkari’s performance as PWD minister during the Sena-BJP’s 1995-99
regime won him plenty of kudos, with people as diverse as Amitabh
Bachchan and Ratan Tata showering lavish praise. As minister, Gadkari
was known to favour quick results rather than going strictly by the
book, often telling his officers to get cracking and not to cite rules
and regulations as excuses. One of the main architects of the Pradhan
Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana, he was also the first minister to initiate
PWD works on Build-Operate-Transfer basis — then criticised as a sell-
off to private contractors and later adopted by his own critics in the
Opposition as the ideal model of development.

Bhandari also lists his urban, middle-class appeal as one of his
strengths. “Today, more than 40 per cent of India is urban and more
than 50 per cent is middle-class. So, it is important to appeal to
them,” he adds.

The huge crowds Gadkari pulled across Vidarbha for his academic
presentations last year on Vidarbha’s development plans would even put
election rallies to shame. Over 50,000 people had turned up in Nagpur.
Gadkari’s organisational skills cut across various parties, something
Gadkari often praises NCP supremo Sharad Pawar for. No wonder then if
he has tried to model his political career on that of Pawar — building
on BJP workers’ networks, running a sugar mill and having friends in
every party.

He also befriended Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray,
looking at the possibility of MNS support being needed in the post-
election scenario in Maharashtra recently. But this is not frowned
upon by the RSS. “In fact, it’s good to be politically smart. We don’t
consider it as a bad thing,” said a senior RSS leader.

It was this quality that helped Gadkari to get some prominent
Republican Party leaders like Jogendra Kawade and Sulekha Kumbhare to
support BJP early this year. His political openness led him to attempt
a compromise between two Thackeray cousins — Raj and Uddhav —to avert
the electoral disaster and even develop ties with Raj Thackeray for
possible post-election support.

However, not everyone approves. “Friendships across parties often
impede his campaigns. Be it Telgi, wheat import or his diatribe
against Vilasrao Deshmukh for giving some contracts, many of his
campaigns have finally petered out,” said a party leader who spoke on
condition of anonymity.

Gadkari has often been accused of hobnobbing with Opposition leaders
during elections, particularly the Congress’s Satish Chaturvedi in
Central Nagpur, which houses the all-important RSS headquarters. The
saffron alliance never won a battle there before the 2009 Assembly
elections. But with the party’s lesser-known Krishna Khopde
registering a massive win over Chaturvedi, Gadkari stands vindicated.

His friendships have also helped cocoon Gadkari from possible crises.
In the ongoing Yogita Thakre case — the seven-year old girl found dead
in a car in the courtyard of Gadkari’s Gadkariwada residence here —
the entire Opposition has been surprisingly silent and has shied away
from taking political advantage. Even before anything could be proved
either way, then home minister Jayant Patil gave him a clean chit in
the Assembly.

His admirers may be calling him “non-controversial”, but Gadkari has
been through his share of sticky situations. His Purti Sugar
Industries was embroiled in a controversy for not selling power to the
state electricity board as is obligatory. Gadkari preferred selling it
to private companies.

Eyebrows were also raised a few years ago when his journalist-turned-
advisor friend Prakash Deshpande died mysteriously after falling from
a train compartment while on his way from Mumbai to Nagpur.
Speculation that linked the incident to the large amounts of party
funds Deshpande was allegedly carrying, subsided eventually.

And for all his effective networking, Gadkari has detractors within
the BJP too. His uncomfortable relationship with party general
secretary Gopinath Munde is no secret. How will Munde respond if and
when Gadkari dons the mantle of party leadership? “What choice does he
have than to fall in line? In politics, you can’t throw tantrums too
often,” said a senior Congress leader known for his understanding of
political undercurrents in Maharashtra.

But Gadkari has been compared unfavourably with Munde, particularly in
terms of mass appeal. “Today Gadkari is taking over as state party
president, but Munde is our mass leader and he will stage a comeback,”
late Pramod Mahajan had openly declared in Yavatmal three years ago
when Gadkari took over as state party chief from Munde, Mahajan’s
brother-in-law.

Today, Gadkari has not only stabilised as state chief but is now being
viewed as the top contender to head the party at the national level.
“He has proved the post-Mahajan fear that the BJP will be in tatters
in Maharashtra wrong. The BJP has gained an edge over Sena by winning
more seats in these elections,” Bhandari says.

Over the years, Gadkari has successfully put his Maharashtrian Brahmin
tag behind. The only election he has till date fought, and has always
won, is that of Nagpur Graduate constituency seat for Legislative
Council. It has led to sneers that he isn’t a mass leader who could
win direct elections. Gadkari always laughs it off.

For now, however, he is said to be the RSS’s chosen one for the top
BJP job. So, how will he deliver when he suddenly finds himself above
a battery of senior party leaders? For this Gadkari’s cryptic reply
is: “I am ready deliver whatever the party wants me to.”

Where Gadkari scores points

Is regarded as being an effective, politically astute performer in his
stint as the BJP’s state unit chief.

His performance as PWD minister during which he built 55 flyovers in
Mumbai and roads all over the state, as also his stint as chief of the
infrastructure committee appointed by the then prime minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee cemented his reputation of having excellent
administrative and organisational skills.

Gadkari has the implicit support of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, whose
views he has echoed on a number of issues. His age, 52, is also in
keeping with the RSS sarsanghchalak’s call for younger leadership.

His urban, middle-class appeal is viewed as one of his major
strengths, as are his oratorical skills.

His ability to nurture friendships across party lines has worked to
his advantage, despite criticism from a section of the party’s
leaders.

Comments (3) |

Wrong choice?
By: Aditya | 20-Dec-2009

Nitin Gadkari might be a poor choice, what with the cloud of the
Yogita Thakre case over him. What will it mean for the BJP? A non
controversial candidate, who is respected by all should have been
chosen. Perhaps Advani should have been elevated to the post again.

carpet-ignorance
By: midas | 16-Nov-2009

Agree with Sumir Sharma. Both author and the editorial staff seem
unaware of the meaning of the word "carpetbeggar".
Carpetbaggers carry wrong connotation and historically not fits
here.

By: Sumir Sharma | 16-Nov-2009

I am sorry to say that the Carpetbagger reference if it is taken from
American History does not convey any relevance. Carpetbaggers during
the reconstruction period in post Civil War period in America were
from North States who shifted to South States to take the benefit of
the new right of franchise to black to again access to legislatures in
South States. I do not how Deshpande has found the relevance for
Gadkari. It is hostrically wrong use of a term. Carpetbaggers carries
negative connotation. The people who helped Carpetbaggers to run
elections in South and they were from South, were called Scalawags
which is another derogatory and abusive term. Carpetbaggers are
accused of increasing corruption. They represented Radicals as well as
Abolitionists. Therefore, the term carries negative connotation
whereas the article presents Gadkari in positive colour. Are to
praising him or decrying him ?

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/former-carpet-boy-as-new-carpetbagger/541881/0

chhotemianinshallah

unread,

Mar 25, 2010, 11:08:49 AM3/25/10

2.2 lakh illegal immigrants from India in US

WASHINGTON: An estimated 220,000 Indians have made the United States
their home illegally with a whopping 81% increase in their number in
last seven years, according to latest official figures.

The dramatic growth in the number of Indians has come about even as
immigration from Mexico continues to dominate the unauthorised
population growth, according to the Department of Homeland Security's
latest statistics on 'illegal immigrants'.

The estimated population of Indians living illegally in the United
States was 220,000 in 2007 compared to 120,000 in the year 2000, thus
recording one of the highest percentage increases.

An estimated 11.8 million unauthorised immigrants were living in
America in January 2007 compared to 8.5 million in 2000. The
unauthorised population increased by 3.3 million between 2000 and 2007
while the annual average increase during this period was 470,000.

Nearly 4.2 million (35%) of the total 11.8 million unauthorised
residents in 2007 had entered in 2000 or later. An estimated 7.0
million (59%) were from Mexico.

California remained the leading state of residence for the illegal
population in 2007 with 2.8 million, followed by Texas with 1.7
million and then Florida with nearly one million.

California's share of the national total declined from 30% in 2000 to
24% in 2007 as the greatest percentage increases of unauthorised
resident population occurred in Georgia (120%), Arizona (62%) and
Texas (57%).

• 'Amma Home' In Naxal-Affected Area
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=20001&scat=25
• Sex swami speaks to man who filmed him
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=19999&scat=25
• Andhra student's death caught on CCTV in US
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=19993&scat=25
• No pre-marital sex please, we are Indians!
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=19992&scat=25
• Nothing wrong in pre-marital sex, says SC
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=19969&scat=25
• Prasanth Goinaka shot dead in Oklahoma City, OK
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=19947&scat=25
• NRIs, expats return home to earn a living
http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=19939&scat=25

http://www.greatandhra.com/ganews/viewnews.php?id=10834&cat=10&scat=25

Illegal Immigration is a Crime

Under Title 8 Section 1325 of the U.S. Code, "Improper Entry by
Alien," any citizen of any country other than the United States who:

Enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place
other than as designated by immigration officers; or

Eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers; or
Attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully
false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a
material fact;
has committed a federal crime.

Violations are punishable by criminal fines and imprisonment for up to
six months. Repeat offenses can bring up to two years in prison.
Additional civil fines may be imposed at the discretion of immigration
judges, but civil fines do not negate the criminal sanctions or nature
of the offense.

See: Unlawful entry a crime since '29 - Rocky Mountain News -- June
11, 2006

Each year the Border Patrol is making more than a million
apprehensions of people who flagrantly violate our nation's laws by
unlawfully crossing U.S. borders to work and to receive publicly-
funded services, often with the aid of fraudulent documents. Such
entry is a misdemeanor and, if repeated, becomes punishable as a
felony. Over eight million illegal immigrants live in the United
States -- some estimate even more.

In addition to sneaking into the country in violation of the
immigration law that requires that aliens be documented for legal
entry (referred to as "entry without inspection -- EWI"), others enter
with legal documentation and then violate the terms on which they have
been admitted by taking jobs that are not authorized or overstaying
the authorized period of stay in the country. The INS estimated in
1996 that about 60 percent of the then estimated five million illegal
immigrants were EWI and 40 percent were overstayers. Both types of
illegal immigrants are deportable under Immigration and Nationality
Act Section 237 (a)(1)(B) which says:
"Any alien who is present in the United States in violation of this
Act or any other law of the United States is deportable."

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS NOT A VICTIMLESS CRIME
Apologists for illegal immigration like to paint it as a victimless
crime. But in fact, illegal immigration causes substantial harm to
American citizens and legal immigrants, particularly those in the most
vulnerable sectors of our population--the poor, minorities, and
children.

Illegal immigration causes an enormous drain on public funds. The
seminal study of the costs of immigration by the National Academy of
Sciences found that the taxes paid by immigrants do not cover the cost
of services received by them. We cannot provide high quality
education, health care, and retirement security for our own people if
we continue to bring in endless numbers of poor, unskilled
immigrants.

Additionally, job competition by waves of illegal immigrants willing
to work at substandard wages and working conditions depresses the
wages of American workers, hitting hardest at minority workers and
those without high school degrees. Ý

Illegal immigration also contributes to the dramatic population growth
overwhelming communities across America--crowding school classrooms,
consuming already limited affordable housing, and straining precious
natural resources like water, energy, and forestland.

BORDER PATROL: NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT
The Border Patrol plays a crucial role in combatting illegal
immigration, but illegal immigration cannot be controlled solely at
the border. About half of the illegal alien population is comprised of
visa overstayers--people who entered the country legally, but became
illegal aliens by their failure to leave the U.S. upon expiration of
their visa. Once entry occurs, there is little chance of detection and
virtually no chance of deportation, except for convicted criminals.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
We need a comprehensive program to end illegal immigration; that means
ensuring that people who enter illegally or overstay their lawful
status will not be able to obtain employment, public assistance
benefits, public education, public housing, or any other taxpayer-
funded benefit without detection.

The three major components of immigration control--deterrence,
apprehension and removal--need to be strengthened by Congress and the
Executive Branch if effective control is ever to be reestablished.
Controlling illegal immigration requires a balanced approach with a
full range of enforcement improvements that go far beyond the border.
These include many procedural reforms, beefed up investigation
capacity, asylum reform, documents improvements, major improvements in
INS detention and deportation procedures, limitations on judicial
review, improved intelligence capacity, greatly improved state/federal
cooperation, and added resources. See How to Combat Illegal
Immigration.

WHAT ABOUT THE COSTS?
Effective control and management of the laws against illegal
immigration require adequate resources. But those costs will be more
than offset by savings to states, counties, communities, and school
districts across the nation.

FAIR, 3/03

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/8/12/II/VIII/1325

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0%2C1299%2CDRMN_15_4762657%2C00.html

http://www.americanpatrol.com/REFERENCE/AidAbetUnlawfulSec8USC1324.html

http://www.americanpatrol.com/REFERENCE/isacrime.html

Rich illegal immigrants in U.S. hide in shadows
John Buchanan
ATLANTA
Wed Feb 6, 2008 4:23am EST

Mike Lozano, an immigrant from Mexico, marches during an immigrant
rights rally in Boston, Massachusetts in this May 1, 2006 file photo
as part of a nationwide ''A Day Without Immigrants'' protest staged by
immigrant rights advocates.
Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Files
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Many illegal immigrants in the United States are
manual laborers on low wages. But there's another group that attracts
much less attention: entrepreneurs who have set up businesses, created
jobs and grown affluent.

U.S.

There are up to 20,000 illegal immigrants earning upward of $100,000 a
year as entrepreneurs, and their existence challenges the stereotype
that illegal immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy, according to
immigration lawyers and academics.

Many say they are living the "American Dream," but almost none trumpet
their achievements because they fear deportation.

One example is a 38-year-old computer engineer who overstayed his visa
after arriving from Colombia in 1999. Not long after, he founded a Web
design firm in Miami that specializes in e-commerce.

Today it's a fast-growing, tax-paying company that recently developed
a Web platform for online radio and television that could be a
breakthrough technology.

"We are at a good point now, making money," said the man, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because of his immigration status. "We are
growing every month because our customers are happy. They are U.S.
companies making a lot of money from our Web sites."

But the man is near the end of a long administrative process that will
likely lead to his deportation. Then his company would close and
workers, including Americans, would be laid off.

"I have always tried to look at things in a positive way but now I am
disappointed," he said in a telephone interview.

Michael Bander, a Miami immigration lawyer who has represented the man
for six years, said his client's dilemma showed a larger flaw in the
immigration system.

SPECIAL STATUS?

It is not easy to determine the number of illegal immigrants who earn
six figure salaries, but there could be 20,000 of them and a
significant proportion earn up to $300,000 a year, said Jeff Passel,
lead demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Advocates see the group as trailblazers for the more than 12 million
illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the United States, most
from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

"These people should be treated like heroes not criminals," said
Felipe Korzenny, professor of marketing and communications at Florida
State University. Wealthy illegal immigrants also came from India,
China, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa, he said.

Congress should address their unique situation, not least because they
have more to lose than others, said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the
American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The United States runs a Green Card residence permit program for
investors but it does not apply to those already in the country
illegally.

But opponents of illegal immigration said the United States should
grant no special status according to wealth for people who break the
law.

"They should be deported as existing law dictates. We'd like to see
their assets seized to compensate American taxpayers who are losing
billions of dollars due to rampant illegal immigration," said William
Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration.

"We need to send a strong message to people who would like to come to
the U.S. that disrespect for our laws will not lead to prosperity,"
said Gheen.

TEN-YEAR BAN

Under existing law, people who overstay their visas must return to
their home country, and cannot re-enter for 10 years. Visas waiving
this process are increasingly rare, immigration lawyers said.

More than half of Silicon Valley start-ups between 1995 and 2005 had
one or more immigrants as key founders, according to a study by the
University of California at Berkeley and Vivek Wadhwa, founder of
Relativity Technologies.

Immigrant entrepreneurs launched 25 percent of technology or
engineering companies in the same period, it said.

Some can be assumed to be illegal immigrants, said Wadhwa, a columnist
and professor whose company was rated by Fortune magazine as one of
the 25 coolest in the world.

"You have to figure out what to do with the 12 million illegal
immigrants that are unskilled," said Wadhwa, who was born in India.
"But what about the few hundred thousand that help us boost our
competitiveness?"

(Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Michael Christie and Eddie Evans)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2533661620080206

Guest Opinion/Commentary*
Illegal Immigration: India Invades America
By William H. Calhoun (12/18/06)

An ex-Army intelligence officer recently said, "We are under attack.
And it's not just Mexico. It's all Central and South American
countries. It's India. It's China. It's most of the non-European
world. And if we do not fight back soon, America will be third-world
sewer within 30 years!."

America is currently being invaded from all corners of the world.
Mexico. China. Africa. India. They all are invading and carving out
their enclaves. And you know what? They are backed by big business and
the American government.

A perfect case in point is India. The Indian Government and American
corporations have been lobbying the US for more H-1B visas to allow
Indians to move to the United States.

American companies use the H-1B to drive down American wages. An
associate of mine who works for a high-tech company in California
(whose name I cannot say for legal reasons) recently watched about 90%
of his fellow American employees be fired from his company. They were
replaced with H-1B imports from India, who were paid about one-third
of what the Americans were making.

GW Bush has largely supported this H-1B invasion, portraying it as
sound policy. He, however, and the mainstream media always fail to
mention that large companies are using the H-1B to drive down wages
whereby they fire American employees and replace them with low-paid
foreigners. They also fail to mention that India has the largest
Muslim population, the most terrorist cells, and now the most reported
cases of HIV in the world.

At my friend's high-tech company in California, within a few months of
the firings, two of the Indian employees had already spread HIV to
three Americans, three of the other Indians had known ties to
terrorist cells in India, and the Indians would openly speak of
"exterminating the European race." Was any of this reported in the
mainstream media? Of course not. Did any of these people serve jail
time? Of course not. In essence, because of H-1B provisions, they have
more rights than American citizens. Nor is this incident isolated.

As previously reported, I was at the airport recently in Los Angeles,
and I could overhear the conversation of some younger Indians waiting
for a flight from India. These youths were obviously raised in
America, as they did not have accents, unlike their parents sitting
next to them. The Indian youth, after debating their favorite rappers,
began to discuss how recent DNA studies show that Indians are closely
related to Sub-Saharan Africans. They then began to speak approvingly
of India invading California, and went on to say that they should
"wipe out all the whites." Now, the parents, seeing that I was
listening, lightly admonished the youth, not really because of what
they said, but only because others could hear.

This is the norm all across America. After previously publishing my
experience in the Los Angeles airport, I received many emails from
patriots saying they had experienced very similar situations.

And you know what? GW Bush and Condoleezza Rice just gave these people
more nuclear technology.

The same ex-intelligence Army officer said to me, "This policy of
giving nuclear technology to India is borderline treason. The
motivating factor was big business, not national security. All of our
intelligence has shown that now it is just a matter of when, not if,
an Indian detonates a backpack nuke within the United States or sells
one to a Mexican nationalist."

And Bush has sworn to uphold the US Constitution? perduellio est
communis!

If we don't immediately lose our country via a backpack nuke, then we
most certainly will lose our jobs and standard of living. Americans'
wages are dropping every year (adjusted for inflation) due to legal
and illegal immigration. We are being ambushed from every angle.

Patriotic Americas had better wake up! We are under attack. Be
vigilant and prepare! Stop the third-world invasion!

William H. Calhoun is a writer, paleoconservative, and a farmer who
lives on his ancestral estate.

http://www.americandaily.com/article/16838

Indian illegal immigrants in US up 64 percent last decade
IANS, Feb 10, 2010, 10.29am IST

WASHINGTON: In 2009, India accounted for the third highest increase in
the number of illegal immigrants in the US in ten years, according to
a new government report, though only two percent of all illegal
immigrants were Indians.

The number of illegal immigrants in the US fell by seven percent to
10.8 million last year.

A majority of them came from Latin America, according to the
department of homeland security (DHS) report, though India with
200,000 was the sixth biggest sender of illegal immigrants to the US.

In overall numbers, Indians accounted for only two percent of illegal
immigrants. Mexico (6.7 million) topped the list with 62 percent,
followed by those from El Salvador (530,000), Guatemala (480,000),
Honduras (320,000) and the Philippines (270,000).

Between 2000 and 2009, the Mexican-born unauthorised immigrants
increased by two million or 42 percent. But the greatest percentage
increases occurred among unauthorised immigrants from Honduras (95
percent), Guatemala (65 percent), and India (64 percent).

"The number of unauthorised residents declined by one million between
2007 and 2009, coincident with the US economic downturn," said the
report based on census data and extrapolations from the total foreign
population in the country.

Beside the US and global financial crisis, other reasons the report
adduces for the drop in the undocumented population include tougher
border enforcement and a national crackdown on illegal immigrants.

The overall annual average increase in the unauthorised population
during the 2000-09 period was 250,000 with ten leading countries of
origin representing 85 percent of the unauthorised immigrant
population in 2009.

Of the nearly 11 million undocumented people living in the US in
January 2009, 37 percent, or four million, arrived since January 2000,
44 percent since the 1990s and 19 percent since the 1980s, the DHS
said.

Between January 2008 and January 2009, the number of unauthorised
immigrants living in the US decreased seven percent from 11.6 million
to 10.8 million after growing from 8.5 million to 11.8 million between
2000 and 2007, DHS said.

An estimated 8.5 million of the 10.8 million unauthorised immigrants
living in the US in 2009 were from the North America region, including
Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. The next leading
regions of origin were Asia (980,000) and South America (740,000).

California remained the leading state of residence of the illegal
immigrants in 2009, with 2.6 million, followed by Texas (1.7 million),
Florida (720,000), New York (550,000) and Illinois (540,000).

California's share of the national total was 24 percent in 2009
compared to 30 percent in 2000. The greatest percentage increase in
the illegal population between 2000 and 2009 occurred in Georgia (115
percent), Nevada (55 percent) and Texas (54 percent).

In 2009, 61 percent of unauthorised immigrants were aged 25 to 44
years, and 58 percent were male. Males accounted for 62 percent of the
illegal population in the 18 to 34 age group in 2009 while females
accounted for 52 percent of the 45 and older age groups.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/indians-abroad/Indian-illegal-immigrants-in-US-up-64-percent-last-decade/articleshow/5554881.cms

New report says illegal immigration population plummeted last year
Researchers cite recession as cause for decline; other analysts say
many opt to
By Matt O'Brien
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 02/09/2010 03:56:30 PM PST
Updated: 02/10/2010 06:45:42 AM PST

The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States dropped
by 1 million in two years, according to new estimates by the
Department of Homeland Security.

The government thinks that 10.8 million illegal immigrants lived in
the country in January 2009, down from a peak of nearly 12 million in
2007.

If the official estimates are correct, not since 2005 has the
population of illegal immigrants been as low as it was last year.

Some private researchers, however, are questioning the magnitude of
the drop.

"It's very clear the undocumented population basically stopped growing
after 2006," said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer with the nonpartisan
Pew Hispanic Center. "It's plausible that the numbers have gotten
smaller. But the way that they're measuring it, if you compare this
estimate with the one two years ago, it overstates the degree of
decline."

Twice over the past two years, Passel said, the U.S. Census Bureau has
changed the way it measures immigration in its annual population
surveys.

Since nearly all estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population
rely on census survey numbers, these changes might have distorted the
results. The authors of the government estimates could not be reached
for comment Tuesday.

The report cautioned that changes made to the census survey could have
affected the results.

The report, produced annually since 2005, is the government's official
tabulation of immigrants living here illegally.

Most researchers agree that no matter the size of the population,
which is notoriously hard to measure, the rate of illegal immigration
dropped sharply during the recession.

They disagree, however, on the causes.

"The number of new undocumented immigrants coming in has plummeted,"
Passel said.

Other researchers conclude that the drop is not because fewer illegal
immigrants are coming in, but because more are leaving.

"The illegal population is falling significantly," said Steve Camarota
of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates reducing
immigration. "The only way for that to happen is for a lot more people
to be going home."

The government demographers reached the same exact estimate — 10.8
million illegal immigrants nationwide — that Camarota concluded in his
demographic study last year.

But while most researchers cite the recession as the cause for the
decline, Camarota said border enforcement plays an important part.

"The decline in the population begins before the economy turns down,"
he said. "That suggests that, at least initially, it's because of the
stepped-up enforcement that increased during the end of the Bush
administration."

Other analysts disagree, saying that slower migration flows are a
worldwide trend associated with the economic downturn.

"It's really driven by fewer people coming in," said Jeanne Batalova,
a researcher with the Migration Policy Institute based in Washington,
D.C.

"People are staying put wherever they are. They are less likely to
migrate, but if they're already in the country, the preferred
destination, they will do their best to stay and weather the storm.
That's particularly the case for undocumented immigrants."

There are no estimates of how the population of unauthorized
immigrants has changed in the first year of the Obama administration,
but demographers are likely to begin guessing later this year when the
Census Bureau releases new population estimates for 2009.

information

Top countries of origin for illegal immigrants in the U.S.:

Mexico: 6.65 million (up by 42 percent since 2000)
El Salvador: 530,000 (up by 25 percent)
Guatemala: 480,000 (up by 65 percent)
Honduras: 320,000 (up by 95 percent)
Philippines: 270,000 (up by 33 percent)
India: 200,000 (up by 64 percent)
South Korea: 200,000 (up by 14 percent)
States with the most illegal immigrants:
California: 2.6 million (up by 3 percent since 2000)
Texas: 1.68 million (up by 54 percent)
Florida: 720,000 (down by 10 percent)
New York: 550,000 (up by 1 percent)
Illinois: 540,000 (up by 24 percent)
Georgia: 480,000 (up by 115 percent)
Arizona: 460,000 (up by 42 percent)
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security

http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_14367660?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com

Illegal immigrants from India on the rise
Experts say many come to U.S. legally, overstay visas
By JAMES PINKERTON Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 11, 2007, 12:47PM
.
Sharon Steinmann Chronicle

Surinder Singh, left, recently received his U.S. citizenship while his
sister-in-law, Ravinder Kour is struggling with the process.

Share Print Share Del.icio.usDiggTwitterYahoo!
BuzzFacebookStumbleUponThe fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants
in the United States doesn't speak Spanish. They typically aren't
found at day labor sites or streaming across the Southwest border into
the U.S.

Instead, they're here in America working in tech companies, small
businesses, as engineers or other highly skilled jobs. And they're
coming from India.

The profile of the illegal immigrant may need to take on a slightly
more South Asian persona since a recent federal report revealed that
India had the greatest percentage increase in unauthorized immigrants
in the U.S. since 2000.

Illegal immigrants from India grew to 270,000 in 2006 from 120,000 in
2000, a 125 percent increase, according to a report late last month
from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Undocumented Indians, however, remain a small segment of the total
estimated population of 11.6 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Mexico tops the list with 6.6 million — up from 4.7 million in 2000 —
followed by El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the Homeland
Security report.

Locally, this trend is especially relevant since Indians make up one
of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in Harris County, with 35,971
counted in the 2000 Census. They also represent a highly visible and
influential immigrant community. The Houston area has 6,629 businesses
owned by Indian-Americans, according to the most recent Census Bureau
data.

Experts say illegal Indian immigrants are coming here legally on visas
but are overextending their stays and subsequently slipping under the
radar screen of authorities.

'The system is broken'

Immigration lawyer Bruce Coane said Indians have replaced Mexicans as
the largest group of clients at his Houston practice. He estimates
that more than 1,000 Indians in the Houston area do not have legal
status to remain here.

''The numbers are large because there are just so many coming to the
United States, and almost all of them are coming legally," said Coane,
referring to the undocumented population. ''And over time, they fall
out of legal status."

The most recent government data showed that in fiscal year 2005,
Indians received 194,611 temporary work visas to come to the U.S., the
most of any nation. India eclipsed Mexico, which had 169,786 of its
workers admitted, and the United Kingdom with 156,635.

Coane and other immigration attorneys stressed that most Indian
immigrants come here legally to work, go to school, visit as tourists
or conduct business.

''In most cases, they're trying to do everything the right way, but
because the system is broken, they fall out of status," said Coane,
referring to lengthy waits to become a permanent resident.

More than half of Indian immigrants who came to the U.S. in fiscal
year 2005 — about 102,000 — arrived on the H-1B visa for the highly
skilled. So, typically, they aren't going to be busted by immigration
agents during raids at meat-processing plants such as those owned by
Swift & Co., the site of high-profile investigations last year.

''We have not come across many illegal Indian immigrants in Houston,"
said Robert Rutt, special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement office in Houston. ''Most are Mexicans, South and
Central Americans, and some Chinese."

Lax federal oversight cited

There is debate in the Indian community about why immigrants become
illegal, and just how many reside in Houston.

''My knowledge tells me that most of the Indians we interact with are
highly educated — doctors, engineers and business owners," said Jagdip
Ahluwalia, director of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. ''I
personally have not run into any undocumented Indians here, and I've
lived here for many years."

Faisal Amin, board member of the South Asian Chamber of Commerce in
Houston, said lax oversight of the federal guest workers program is
one reason many Indians stay here when their visas expire.

''We see an increase simply because a lot of those workers are coming
in on H1-B visas," Amin said. "And, we don't have a good way to track
that these workers are, indeed, going back to their countries when
they're finished."

One U.S. Department of Homeland Security official, who asked not be be
identified, agreed there isn't a method to keep tabs on guest workers.

''Once they get in, there's no exit program in place yet — they're
talking about it," the official said.

A dozen years ago, India native Ravinder Kour came to Houston with her
husband on a tourist visa. They found opportunity and stayed after
their visas expired, which turned them into illegal residents.
Meanwhile, they were raising two children who were born here.

But now Kour, a 39-year-old housewife, and her husband are hoping to
regain their legal status with the help of an immigration attorney.

''There are no jobs" in India, said Kour. ''That's why so many Indian
people are coming here."

Bad advice, bad situation

After arriving in Houston the couple decided to try to remain legally.
They were advised by an immigration lawyer to make a claim for
political asylum, which was rejected, and the couple was ordered
deported after not attending a hearing, said attorney Gordon Quan.
''They weren't trying to cheat anyone; they got bad advice," Quan
said.

Kour is being assisted by her brother-in-law, Surinder Singh, 47, who
also came to Houston on a tourist visa. He lived the life of an
illegal immigrant until becoming a citizen in 2003.

''We can't fly, if you want to go somewhere, you have to go by car,"
Singh said. ''If you do something bad, and don't have papers, you will
be in trouble."

The Houston housewife said she constantly worries about immigration
problems.

"It's a big, big depression," Kour said.

Quan, her attorney, noted the federal government assigns a quota of
immigrant visas to each country, and with so many Indians here on
temporary work and other visas, the demand outstrips the supply.

''It's not first-come, first-serve," Quan said. ''A certain percentage
is given to each country. Since there are so many Indians that are
skilled, and being sponsored by employers, their backlog is longer
than other countries."

james.p...@chron.com

324 Comments 4 Recommend

(12)
mudkip wrote:
Well, send them back too! 9/11/2007 12:33:55 AM
Recommend: (14) (0)

(0)
areyoukidding wrote:
How can there not be jobs? We're outsourcing American jobs to India by
the thousands. Once again, deport. I'm an equal opportunity proponant
of deportation. 9/11/2007 2:02:02 AM
Recommend: (42) (0)

(12)
PeskyP wrote:
Yes, they see how easy it is for others to do so they don't think
anything of it. It's cause-and-effect. Unfortunately a lot of high-
tech companies are just as complicit as the agribusinesses are. They
take tremendous advantage of the H1-B regs. 9/11/2007 2:46:22 AM
Recommend: (25) (0)

(113)
EStreetShufflin wrote:
nativehoustonians55 worte: "I wonder what the Indians say about the
illegal Hispanics?"let me enlighten you. they love the illegal
"hispanics". they employ them as lawn help, nannies, day labor odd
jobs, etc. head on down to the enclaves in and around hillcroft and
see it for yourself. besides, they aren't in our country to cry and
whine about other illegal immigrants, they are here for the
opportunity STILL afforded them by big business, small business, and
cash-paying individuals who employ them so they don't have to pay all
the associated taxes, insurance, etc. the PROBLEM is HERE. it's not
the other way around! if the OPPORTUNITY did NOT abound, we'd have NO
illegal immigration. period. you think they just threw a dart on the
mercator world map? NO! the united states, particularly houston, is
still a treasure trove of opportunity for illegal immigrants and it is
afforded by the LEGAL CITIZENS doing that business with them. you
don't hold a bone out to a dog and expect him not to chomp at it. we
only have ourselves to blame. 9/11/2007 3:49:36 AM
Recommend: (37) (0)

(113)
EStreetShufflin wrote:
arantant worte: "I think we should concentrate on the hundreds of
thousands of illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants in
Houston who don't pay taxes and live off of our tax dollars."i've got
a better idea. why don't we concentrate on the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
of individuals and businesses who employ illegal immigrants so they
don't have to pay OUR TAX DOLLARS. 9/11/2007 3:52:41 AM
Recommend: (54) (0)

(0)
DireStraits wrote:
I wonder how many were hired by my company. My company was crying to a
US senator that they need more H1B visas to bring in more skilled
labor from India to work for 1/2 the wages that Americans will.
9/11/2007 4:44:47 AM
Recommend: (25) (0)

(3)
rayschmidt2004 wrote:
I'm not reading the story because it will upset me before going to
work. The headline makes me angry enough! 9/11/2007 5:14:07 AM
Recommend: (12) (0)

(0)
badgeren wrote:
Surprise! Another one sided article on immigration in the Chronicle.
No discussion of the negative consequences of unchecked immigration.
Just a bunch of spin from immigration attorneys who make all their
money off our immigration system. They get a few grand and we get
problems for decades! We must stop the madness. Tom Tancredo is the
only presidential candidate that wants to fix this problem....
9/11/2007 5:40:50 AM
Recommend: (20) (0)

(0)
TaoJones wrote:
We have enabled and emboldened the illegal immigrant population by our
incompetence, arrogance and greed. Now, providiing illegal immigrants
safe harbor is inconvenient. We boo hoo about health care, taxes and
some "illegal" immigrant stealing our jobs and want them all
prosecuted and thrown out. We all need to understand that by our own
actions for many years we have implied with a wink wink that
immigrants migrating here illegally was o.k. Estreet has a point, we
have no one to blame but ourselves. 9/11/2007 6:06:04 AM
Recommend: (11) (0)

(1)
silent357 wrote:
oh well, that's just how the world is today. At least they are working
and contributing to the economy. Some of you people have so much
xenophobia, who DO you wish to come over and be a productive, law-
abiding, hard-working citizen? The most of them come and over and go
through the process of trying to obtain citizenship and end up getting
shafted by the government. I really don't think the government knows
who is over here and who isn't. 9/11/2007 6:33:05 AM
Recommend: (12) (0)

river40894 wrote:
I can hear it now. Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for Indian.
English needs to be the official language of the United States.
9/11/2007 6:46:36 AM
Recommend: (14) (0)

(1)
LAZARUS1 wrote:
ILLEGAL IS ILLEGAL, IS ILLEGAL, IS ILLEGAL!! WE KNOW WHERE THESE FOLKS
ARE BUT WE WON'T MESS WITH THEM BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT TO MESS WITH
THOSE EMPLOYERS WHO HIRE THEM KNOWING THAT THEY ARE ILLEGALLY IN OUR
COUNTRY. DIVERSITY, IF NOT CONTROLLED, WILL BE OUR TROJAN HORSE AND
DOWNFALL OF THE USA AS WE KNOW IT!!WAKE UP FRIENDS 9/11/2007 6:55:00
AM
Recommend: (22) (0)

(0)
Govchance wrote:
Folks, the federal governments inability/refusal to deal with this
issue is quickly reaching the point of no return. This country, or any
country for that matter can only absorb so many immigrants before
negative consequences are felt. I would make the arguement that we are
there already. The very fabric of this country is changeing right
before our very eyes ansd we are inept in our ability to make changes
to correct the problem. Folks, if something is not done soon we will,
as citizens of this great country, lose it. And quite frankly, I'm
really not concerned about what other people and other countries think
about us. It is time for the USA to take care of its own.Govchance
9/11/2007 6:56:11 AM
Recommend: (19) (0)

(0)
RunRabbitRun wrote:
hey river - before too long it will be press 1 for spanish, 2 for
vietnamese, 3 for indian and 4 for english. Anglos are already the
official minority in Harris County. 9/11/2007 6:59:56 AM
Recommend: (4) (0)

(28)
Chrisinhouston wrote:
river40894 wrote:I can hear it now. Press 1 for English, 2 for
Spanish, 3 for Indian. English needs to be the official language of
the United States.Not true, the vast majority of people from India
read and write English. You can thank the British for that! 9/11/2007
7:02:43 AM
Recommend: (10) (0)

(22)
Hinkhogg wrote:
More great news from the immigration front, the war on the middle
class.These are the results you get from government when you underfund
and undermine an agency with incompetent leadership. Of course it's
not going to run properly, but that was then intent all along. IF YOU
VOTED REPUBLICAN FOR THE PAST 6 YEARS, REAP YOUR REWARD! 9/11/2007
7:05:05 AM

noknowledge wrote:
Why are illegal immigrants from India here. The same reason the
Hispanics are here. They provide a pool of 'inexpensive' labor in
comparison to the going rate in this country. Whether the job is
moving lawns or coding in Java or as nurses, they reduce the wages
that must be paid. If they work in your field they reduce your pay.
9/11/2007 7:26:14 AM
Recommend: (11) (0)

(1)
silent357 wrote:
minor_tiger:"Also, keep in mind that the democrats led the effort to
bestow amnesty upon those who came here illegally."I'm sorry, I
thought that was George Bush, on television, proposing amnesty for
immigrants. You keep saying Democrat this and that, but it looks like
the next president of the U.S. is going to be a Democrat. As far as
this "problem threatening us all", I don't see where you get that
because I'm not threatened by anything by someone who comes over here
and works and tries to obtain citizenship. I'm not worried about
competing for jobs in the lawn care business, or ringing up gas at the
Exxon store. Sorry that's not what I went to school for. 9/11/2007
7:28:58 AM

hybreedtroller wrote:
this is just another example of how the media sugar coats social
problems(or social outrages) in our country... we all know that our
biggest problems exist with our neighbors to the south. We need to
seal our borders ... throw out the illegals, fast track the work
visas, pay rewards for reporting illegals and fine the employers to
fund the reward system. 9/11/2007 8:09:05 AM
Recommend: (12) (0)

(0)
Maryl wrote:
I can't say I'm surprised by this story. I don't really care what
nationality they are, or if they're skilled. This is another example
of how America will fall from within, while our crummy gov does
nothing. 9/11/2007 8:12:35 AM
Recommend: (14) (0)

(0)
WoolyBugger wrote:
people overstay their visas, are here illegally, live under the radar,
then complain that they have to sneak around and are depressed? It was
your choice to be a fugitive. Just as it is your choice to pick up and
go home. 9/11/2007 8:12:41 AM

SashaSasha wrote:
These people are the ones taking the high paying jobs that some
Americans can't fill. What is it? Americans can't fill manual labor
jobs or high skilled jobs.... 9/11/2007 8:19:38 AM
Recommend: (7) (0)

(0)
equalone wrote:
I have to agree with hardworkVN, if you want it bad enough, work hard
for it. Don't whine and complain because things aren't handed to you.
Sure, an illegal is an illegal, no matter how you look at it....but if
you have someone who is a law-abiding citizen and PAYING taxes,
doesn't that constitute them as someone contributing to society? I
guess sitting at home, complaining the government isn't doing anything
for them, getting free rent and a FEMA card constitutes you as a model
citizen. 9/11/2007 8:25:03 AM
Recommend: (3) (0)

(4)
strangeone wrote:
Why don't we just close our borders for a few years until we can
figure out who is here legally and who is not. No student visas, no
work visas, no green cards, nothing. Clean up the system and get on
top of this immigration fiasco. Send the illegals back to their home
countries. It must be done by the next president either Democrat or
Republican. 9/11/2007 8:31:57 AM
Recommend: (14) (0)

(0)
fifeldidall wrote:
What really sucks is when that H1-B Visa represents a job loss for an
American worker. 9/11/2007 8:34:35 AM
Recommend: (15) (0)

panchovilla wrote:
what about the germans and russians here illegally? 9/11/2007 8:56:46
AM
Recommend: (4) (0)

(62)
Dizzy wrote:
People come here because there is work here. There is work here
because we (Americans) have priced ourselves out of our own job
market. Answer honestly, would you take a 30% cut in salary if it
meant 80% fewer "immigrants"? Or, you keep your current salary level.
Would you be willing to spend an additional 10% across the board on
EVERYTHING you buy? It's easy to toss rocks at others but we all have
to look in the mirror on this one. We want great pay and we want great
prices and we want it now. At what cost? 9/11/2007 8:58:41 AM
Recommend: (10) (0)

(0)
eric3456 wrote:
StrangeOne:Your concerns are very valid, and the answer to your
question as to why this is happening - Corporate Greed! A basic case
of the rich wanting more and more and more... It is not that Americans
are opting for "easy" degrees, it's plain, simple greed. Corporations
have been looking at cost cutting for years. We've now reached a point
where companies are looking to hire low paid workers, in any field -
IT, Oil & Gas, Medical, etc. etc. I've seen it many times where
American workers are asked to "train" these immigrants, only to loose
their job to same. I keep hearing how "eduacted" these people are.
Obviously they are not educated enough to read a H1B visa expiration
date! They know exactly when the visa expires, yet they overstay the
visa. The system is broke, becuase that's the way corporations want it
to be. it makes no difference if the lower wages are being paid to
field workers or white collar workers. the end result is the same:
MORE PROFITS for corporations. 9/11/2007 9:00:47 AM
Recommend: (7) (0)

(5)
Ceeddo wrote:
Minor-TigerGet your facts straight before posting , the Muslim
population in India is 150.000.000 and in the USA about
6.000.000 .Pancho VillaPuerto Ricans are US citizen. 9/11/2007 9:04:54
AM

panchovilla wrote:
Ceedo, You are the only one who caught that. 9/11/2007 9:22:07 AM

AmericaFirst wrote:
Geez, they should go home, thats where all our jobs are anyways.
9/11/2007 9:36:45 AM
Recommend: (3) (0)

(31)
freeandfair wrote:
Oh, so we don't like Indians now. Personally, I find that Indians are
among the most respectful and well-mannered people on this planet.But
back to the topic, there are more than 1 billion Indians and more than
1 billion Chinese in this world and they all want a better life, which
for many means leaving their home country.Unless the US is prepared to
institute its own version of an Iron Curtain with FBI actively chasing
and prosecuting every illegal immigrant there is nothing that can stop
immigrants coming to the US. I am originally from Russia and after
Soviet Union fell we got a lot of illegal immigrants in Russia from
China and Vietnam. There is no legal way for them to come, and you can
easily tell and Chinese from a Russian, so Russian police harasses and
abuses them mercilessly (which I find completely inhumane) and they
still stay. So, if even Russia is better fro them than China or
Vietnam, the US is the dream come true. There is nothing you can do to
stop the immigration, so my advice is to adapt. For one, the US people
need to get better education. Why the best students are usually Asian
or Indian, not white Americans? It is because immigrants and their
children have to work harder to survive and succeed, American kids
just don’t have the same drive and that is what bringing them down.
9/11/2007 9:42:04 AM
Recommend: (9) (0)

(0)
fifeldidall wrote:
I am confused. When I post "I", it continuously gets removed.
9/11/2007 9:42:55 AM
Recommend: (2) (0)

(113)
EStreetShufflin wrote:
Silent357, nice post. 9/11/2007 9:43:51 AM
Recommend: (0) (0)

(58)
phantomoftheopera wrote:
I am tired of the Chronicle censoring my posts ... I will cancel my
subscription to the newspaper if it is not stopped!!! I said nothing
in my post that was out of line ... period!Lets see how long this one
lasts ... 9/11/2007 9:48:24 AM
Recommend: (3) (0)

(0)
fifeldidall wrote:
"I'm not worried about competing for jobs in the lawn care business,
or ringing up gas at the Exxon store. Sorry that's not what I went to
school for." Very well said, Silent357.To reiterate a point, kalki,
the majority of educated posts here are not against immigrants and non-
whites. C-I-T-I-Z-E-N-S of all races and creeds are welcome to live in
harmony within our borders. It is when you place the 'illegal' in
front of immigrant that I have a problem with. So don't paint us with
the racist brush. Following laws is the cornerstone to ANY successful
civilization. 9/11/2007 9:49:48 AM
Recommend: (9) (0) [Report abuse]

(4)
strangeone wrote:
kalki,You need to wake up. This is not a color of skin issue. The
immigration issue is about the laws of this country. There is a legal
way to come into our country that all of our forefathers abided by at
the time of their entry. The situation is that noone, be they black,
brown or purple, should be allowed to enter and become a citizen any
other way. This is what our country was founded on. We are a proud
country of many ethnic backgrounds. English is our language. This is
AMERICA!!! 9/11/2007 9:51:48 AM

msdeputyclerk wrote:
I am telling you our country is going to go down with all these
illegals. Are (illegals-Mexican, Indian,etc.)they going to pick up
arms and go fight against our enemies? Are they going to support our
flag and respect it? Are they going to learn to speak English? If not,
get out. It's that simple, a no brainer. 9/11/2007 9:52:40 AM
Recommend: (4) (0)

(0)
Erni wrote:
If the government can tell the American people how many illegal
Indians or other illegals from other countries are here on expired
visas or just plain here illegally, and where, then how come that same
government can not find and deport these illegals? 9/11/2007 9:56:15
AM

http://www.chron.com/disp/discuss.mpl/chronicle/5124255.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5124255.html

Illegal immigrants from India rise alarmingly in US: Report

Rediff News Bureau | February 19, 2008 15:46 IST
Last Updated: February 19, 2008 16:02 IST

India may have taken giant strides in every possible sphere of life
across the world, but there are things that come as real blot to its
global image.

Quoting a US Department of Homeland Security report, mercurynews
reports that Indians are the fastest-growing group of illegal
immigrants in the United States.

The report says there are 2,70,000 unauthorized Indians in the United
States - a 125 percent jump since 2000, the largest percentage
increase of any nation with more than 100,000 illegal immigrants in
that country.

The report says though the number of Indian immigrants is low when
compared to people from Mexico, the Indian context is appalling as the
illegal immigrants mostly consist high-skilled workers. Illegal
immigrants from other countries are mostly low-skilled workers.

Mercurynews, in its report, also says if the trend continues India
will only trail only Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in illegal
immigration.

The report quoting experts says virtually all immigrants enter the US
legally and then violate the visa terms, thus becomimg illegal
immigrants.

"How do you get in? You come across the border, or you arrive here
with a visa," Lindsay Lowell, policy director for the Institute for
the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University told
Mercurynews.

"Indians aren't going to be walking across the border like Mexicans,"
he said.

Federal officials calculated the number of illegal immigrants by using
census estimates of the total number of immigrants from individual
countries, compiling the total number of legal immigrants using
federal immigration and naturalization records, and then subtracting
the number of legal residents from the total immigrant population to
determine the number of undocumented people, the report said.

Asked by Mercurynews about the number of illegal Indians in Silicon
Valley, Banjit Singh, an Indian-born taxi driver, said, "Here, there
is a little bit. But you go to another city or state, like Los Angeles
or New York, there are many illegal people."

Local immigration lawyers say that particularly among Indians, the ups
and downs of Silicon Valley's economy since 2001 are one reason why
Indians have fallen out of legal status.

"Most are bachelors; the way they get here is they have a job,"
Gabriel Jack, a San Jose immigration lawyer, said of many of his
Indian clients.

"They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and
given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these
guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a
start-up coming in," Jack said.

"The problem with the H-1B program is, you can't have any significant
time between jobs" without falling out of legal status.

Indians made up 44 percent of H-1B applicants in the 2005-06 fiscal
year, five times the number from second-place China, the report says.

The report says another source is relatives from India who arrive for
a visit on a tourist visa and never go home.

"America is a very attractive country; everybody who comes here wants
to stay," said Shah Peerally, a Silicon Valley immigration lawyer. "I
can tell you right now, there are nearly 1 billion people in India, of
which maybe 800 million want to come here."

The United States deported close to 500 Indians a year in recent
years, another expert tells Mecurynews.

"Unless Congress reforms the immigration system we are going to see
this high-skilled, illegal workforce emerging," said Frank D. Bean,
director of the Immigration Research Center at the University of
California-Irvine.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/19us.htm

Demographics of Unauthorized Immigrants in the US: Countries of
Origin, States of Residence, and Employment Data, 2000-2008

I. Introduction
Immigrant march in Los Angeles, CA, Aug. 25, 2007

Who are the unauthorized immigrants in the United States? Where do
they come from and where do they settle in the United States? After
entry, what socio-economic roles do they play in the US economy?

As of 2008, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States
is estimated to be approximately 11.6 million. 61% of the unauthorized
immigrants in the country are from Mexico, and 25% of all unauthorized
immigrant workers reside in California. Unauthorized immigrants, as of
2008, represent 5% of the total civilian labor force in the United
States. 51% of these immigrants, compared to 21% of native workers,
hold occupations in the service (30%) and construction (21%)
industries. The following charts and tables delineate the demographic
and socio-economic background of unauthorized immigrants in the United
States.

II. Unauthorized Immigrant Population: Countries of Origin, 2000-2008

Top 10 Countries of Origin and Percent Change, 2000-2008

2000* Population 2005 Population 2006 Population 2008 Population %
change
from 2000**

All Countries 8,460,000 All Countries 10,500,000 All Countries
11,500,000 All Countries 11,600,000 37%

1. Mexico 4,680,000 Mexico 5,970,000 Mexico 6,570,000 Mexico 7,030,000
50%
2. El Salvador 430,000 El Salvador 470,000 El Salvador 510,000 El
Salvador 570,000 33%
3. Guatemala 290,000 Guatemala 370,000 Guatemala 430,000 Guatemala
430,000 48%
4. Philippines 200,000 India 280,000 Philippines 280,000 Philippines
300,000 50%
5. China 190,000 China 230,000 Honduras 280,000 Honduras 300,000 88%
6. Korea 180,000 Philippines 210,000 India 270,000 Korea 240,000 33%
7. Honduras 160,000 Korea 210,000 Korea 250,000 China 220,000 16%
8. India 120,000 Honduras 180,000 Brazil 210,000 Brazil 180,000 80%
9. Ecuador 110,000 Brazil 170,000 China 190,000 Ecuador 170,000 55%
10. Brazil 100,000 Vietnam 160,000 Vietnam 160,000 India 160,000 33%

Sources and notes:

Sources for Unauthorized Immigrant Population: Countries of origin,
2000-2008 from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS):

1. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: January 2008" (PDF) 226KB Feb. 2009

2. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: January 2006" (PDF) 577KB Aug. 2007

3. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: January 2005" (PDF) 221KB Aug. 2006

Supplemental documents of unauthorized immigrant populations from
1990-2000, released by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS):

4. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: 1990-2000" (PDF) 473KB Jan. 2003

5. "Illegal Alien Resident Population" (PDF) 24KB Updated Dec.
2001

Notes:

*Countries listed under 2000 were not necessarily the top ten of that
year. Countries for 2000 are listed to compare the population change
between 2000, 2005, 2006, and 2008.

**The population change between 2000 and 2008 is represented in the "%
change from 2000" column. The data in that column reflect the
percentage of change in population from 2000 and 2008 of each country
(not the percentage of population change between countries ranked in
the same positions of the chart).

III. Unauthorized Immigrant Population: States of Residence in the
United States, 2000-2008

Top 10 States of Residence and Percent Change, 2000-2008

2000* Population 2005 Population 2006 Population 2008 Population %
change
from
2000

All States 8,460,000 All States 10,500,000 All States 11,550,000 All
States 11,600,000 37%

1. California 2,510,000 California 2,770,000 California 2,830,000
California 2,850,000 14%
2. Texas 1,090,000 Texas 1,360,000 Texas 1.64 M Texas 1.68 M 54%
3. Florida 800,000 Florida 850,000 Florida 980,000 Florida 840,000 5%
4. New York 540,000 New York 560,000 Illinois 550,000 New York 640,000
19%
5. Illinois 440,000 Illinois 520,000 New York 540,000 Arizona 560,000
70%
6. New Jersey 350,000 New Jersey 480,000 Arizona 500,000 Illinois
550,000 25%
7. Arizona 330,000 Arizona 470,000 Georgia 490,000 Georgia 460,000
109%
8. North Carolina 260,000 North Carolina 380,000 New Jersey 430,000
New Jersey 400,000 14%
9. Georgia 220,000 Georgia 360,000 North Carolina 370,000 North
Carolina 380,000 46%
10. Nevada 170,000 Nevada 240,000 Washington 280,000 Nevada 280,000
65%
40 other states 1,750,000 40 other states 2,510,000 40 other states
2,950,000 40 other states 2,950,000 69%

Sources and notes:

Sources for Unauthorized Immigrant Population: States of residence in
the United States, 2000-2008 from the US Department of Homeland
Security (DHS):

1. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: January 2008" (PDF) 226KB Feb. 2009

2. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: January 2006" (PDF) 577KB Aug. 2007

3. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: January 2005" (PDF) 221KB Aug. 2006

Supplemental documents of unauthorized immigrant populations from
1990-2000, released by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS):

4. "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the
United States: 1990-2000" (PDF) 473KB Jan. 2003

5. "Illegal Alien Resident Population" (PDF) 24KB Updated Dec.
2001

Notes:

*States listed under 2000 were not necessarily the top ten of that
year. States for 2000 are listed to compare the population change
between 2000, 2005, 2006, and 2008.

IV. Distribution of Unauthorized Immigrant Workers Compared to US born
Workers by Major Occupation Group, 2008

Top 20 Occupations with High Shares of Unauthorized Immigrants, 2008

Top 20 Occupations* % of Unauthorized Immigrants in Total Work Force #
of Unauthorized Immigrant Workers Total # of All
Workers

1. Brickmasons, blockmasons and stonemasons 40% 131,000 325,000
2. Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers and tapers 37% 94,000
255,000
3. Roofers 31% 76,000 246,000
4. Miscellaneous agricultural workers 30% 269,000 910,000
5. Helpers, construction trades 28% 52,000 184,000
6. Dishwashers 28% 101,000 364,000
7. Construction laborers 27% 556,000 2,055,000
8. Maids and housekeeping cleaners 27% 417,000 1,555,000
9. Cement masons, concrete finishers and terazzo workers 27% 29,000
109,000
10. Packaging and filling machine operators and tenders 26% 96,000
369,000
11. Grounds maintenance workers 25% 356,000 1,413,000
12. Packers and packagers, hand 24% 119,000 504,000
13. Butchers, poultry and fish processing workers 23% 71,000 305,000
14. Carpet, floor, and tile installlers and finishers 22% 68,000
306,000
15. Painters, constuction and maintenance 22% 173,000 791,000
16. Parking lot attendants 21% 21,000 100,000
17. Chefs and head cooks 20% 75,000 377,000
18. Sewing machine operators 20% 49,000 248,000
19. Refuse and recyclable material collectors 19% 22,000 112,000
20. Cooks 19% 427,000 2,219,000

Other "unauthorized" occupations** 9% 3,120,000 34,979,000
All other occupations 2% 1,928,000 106,407,000
Total, Civilian Labor Force (with an occupation) 5% 8,258,000
154,135,000

Sources and notes:

Sources:

1. Apr. 14, 2009, D'Vera Cohn and Jeffrey S. Passel
"Pew Hispanic Center Research Report: A Portrait of Unauthorized
Immigrants in the United States" (PDF) 1.82MB

2. Mar. 7, 2006, Jeffrey S. Passel

"Pew Hispanic Center Research Report: The Size and Characteristics of
the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.: Estimates Based on
the March 2005 Current Population Survey" (PDF) 141KB

Notes:

*Occupations included in the Top 20 Occupations with High Shares of
Unauthorized Immigrants table have at least 100,000 workers nationally
and more than three times the national share of unauthorized immigrant
workers.

**"Unauthorized" occupations have a higher percentage of workers who
are unauthorized immigrants than the national average but do not
qualify for a separate listing.

According to the Congress of the United States Congressional Budget
Office's Nov. 2005 report "The Role of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor
Market":

"Considerable uncertainty is inherent in estimates of the number of
unauthorized immigrants that reside in the United States and the
number that are in the labor force. The decennial census, the Current
Population Survey (CPS), and similar sources of information about the
population and labor force do not ask foreign-born people about their
legal status in the United States aside from whether they are
naturalized citizens. Thus, the number of unauthorized immigrants must
be estimated by indirect methods that introduce the possibility of
significant errors. A recent analysis, based on survey data from the
CPS and administrative data from the Department of Homeland Security
and other federal agencies, indicated that in early 2004 about 10
million foreign-born people were living in the United States without
authorization and about 6.3 million of them were in the labor force."

Congress of the United States Congressional Budget Office: "The Role
of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market" (PDF) 350KB

Last updated on 4/14/2009 5:01:00 AM PST

http://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000845

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/37334fb34fbe6d7c#

Sid Harth

unread,

Mar 25, 2010, 3:12:54 PM3/25/10

Volume 18 - Issue 21, Oct. 13 - 26, 2001

India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU

The Adivasi struggle

The long-running struggle of the Adivasis in Kerala enters a crucial
phase as the State government resists their main demand of two
hectares of land for each landless tribal family.

R. KRISHNAKUMAR
in Thiruvananthapuram

ONCE again, the Adivasis of Kerala are at a crossroads. These tribal
people have become more assertive about their rights and the nature of
their demands has undergone a subtle transformation. They are now more
aware of the law and the ways of the non-tribal people, politicians,
governments and the courts. They have media-savvy leaders, invisible
'friends', and funds to sustain high-profile agitations in the State
capital. They are increasingly intolerant of hollow promises and they
threaten to storm the State Assembly and camp on the streets of
Thiruvananthapuram permanently. At times they disrupt public
festivities, walk out of meetings with government representatives or
take District Collectors hostage. They have definitely become prime-
time news material. But the question is, will they fail again?

The year 1975 once seemed a crucial one for the marginalised tribal
people of the State. Although they did not have a powerful presence in
the State, their plight had struck a chord and they had found
themselves being offered the protection of a law that promised to end
exploitation by non-tribal settlers and forest encroachers, and lack
of livelihoods.

In April 1975, the State Assembly unanimously adopted the Kerala
Scheduled Tribes (Restriction on Transfer of Lands and Restoration of
Alienated Lands) Act, which sought to prevent the lands of the tribal
people from falling into the hands of non-tribal people. The Act also
sought to restore to the tribal people their previously alienated
lands.

K.G. SANTHOSH
"Refugee camps" run by agitating tribal people outside the State
Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram.

The tribal people were once in possession of large tracts of forests
in the State, especially in areas that are now in Palakkad, Wayanad,
Idukki, Pathanam-thitta, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram districts. To a
large extent, post-Independence governments were responsible for the
Adivasis losing their lands. Non-tribal settlers made their plight
worse as the pressure on land increased in the plains. The land-people
ratio is very high in the State.

In the majority of cases, the ignorance and innocence of the Adivasis
were used to the hilt by the non-tribal settler "farmers". Either by
using force or inducements such as a bundle of tobacco, or by offering
a low price, they made the Adivasis part with their "ancestral land".
In most cases there was no document validating such transfers and some
tribal persons were even forced to sign on blank sheets of paper. The
non-tribal people who got possession of the lands gradually became the
virtual owners.

Over the years, alienation from their land of birth pushed the
Adivasis into poverty and dependence and forced them to search for
other forest land for food and shelter. However, the same process was
repeated in the new stretches of forest land, and these too became the
farmlands of non-tribal settlers. Political parties and successive
governments turned a blind eye to the process, as more settlers meant
more votes. (The Adivasis, who number 3.21 lakhs, account for only 1.1
per cent of the population of the State.) The social and ecological
implications of this were serious.

When the 1975 Act got the presidential assent in November that year
and was subsequently included in the Ninth Schedule of the
Constitution (which ensured that the Act would not be challenged in
any court of law), it seemed a dream come true for the Adivasis. But
it was not to be. Successive governments allowed more than a decade to
pass (during which the encroachments continued, especially in the
tribal areas of Palakkad and Wayanad districts) before framing the
rules to implement the Act. When the State government finally
formulated the rules in 1986, it specified that the Act would come
into effect retrospectively from January 1, 1982.

The rules made all transfer of property "possessed, enjoyed or owned"
by Adivasis to non-tribal people between January 1, 1960 and January
1, 1982 "invalid" and directed that the "possession or enjoyment" of
property so transferred be restored to the Adivasis concerned.
However, the Act required that the Adivasi return the amount, if any,
they had received during the original transaction and pay compensation
for any improvements made on the land by the non-tribal occupants. The
government was to advance this amount to the tribal people as loans
and recover it from them in 20 years. Only about 8,500 applications
seeking restoration were received from the tribal people, because most
of them were either unaware of the new law or afraid to accept the
offer of loans or were cheated by the corrupt encroacher-official
nexus. Hence, even after the framing of the rules, the general
atmosphere helped only to encourage the encroachers to continue to
occupy tribal land and successive governments took no action to
implement fully the 1975 Act.

THIS triggered the second important phase of the Adivasi struggle. In
1986, Dr. Nalla Thampi Thera, a non-tribal person from Wayanad
district, approached the Kerala High Court seeking a direction to the
State government to implement the 1975 Act. It took five years for the
court to give a verdict - a favourable one - on the public interest
petition. In October 1993, the court ordered the government to
implement the Act within six months. Yet the case dragged on for two
and a half years with the government continuing to seek extensions of
deadline to implement the Act.

S. GOPAKUMAR
The Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha take out a rally in Thiruvananthapuram
on October 3.

Finally, in 1996 the court fixed a final deadline of September 30,
1996 to evict the non-tribal occupants, if necessary with the help of
the police, and threatened the officials concerned with contempt of
court proceedings if they failed to implement the court directive.
However, the government responded with yet another controversial act
of amending the 1975 Act.

Meanwhile as the non-tribal settlers where getting entrenched in the
alienated land of the tribal people, the tribal people themselves were
getting increasingly disillusioned with the ability of the government
and the courts to find a remedy for their plight. Hence, although
government programmes had helped improve the lot of many tribal
people, the majority of them continued to be landless, had no means of
livelihood, and became more dependent on the non-tribal settlers for
work and wages.

As a large section of the landless tribal people had not filed
applications and were hence outside the purview of the 1975 Act, they
were ineligible for a piece of land even if the Act was implemented in
toto. By the early 1990s, the first signs of discontent were already
becoming evident in the Adivasi-inhabited areas, especially in Wayanad
district, where some extremist groups had been active for a long
time.

On the other hand, most of the land from which the settlers were to be
evicted under the 1975 Act had by the 1990s been in their possession
for 15 to 30 years. They were cultivating the land and had constructed
buildings and other structures on them. In several cases, the next
generation of the original encroachers were in possession of the
lands. When the State government could get no more extensions of the
deadline from the High Court, the politically and economically
powerful settler-farmers activated their organisations and raised the
demand to amend the "impractical provisions" of the 1975 Act.

To the consternation of the tribal people, successive governments
started to give in to the demands of the settlers. Two ordinances
seeking to amend the 1975 Act, introduced by the United Democratic
Front government during early 1996 and later by the Left Democratic
Front government, which came to power in May 1996, did not get the
Governor's approval. As pressure from the court mounted on the
government to evict encroachers by September 30, 1996, the government
hastily introduced an amendment Bill in the State Assembly.

Whatever may have been the justification for it - the impracticality
of the provisions of the 1975 Act perhaps being the most important one
- it must have been an eye-opener for the mushrooming tribal
organisations in Kerala to see the 140-member State Assembly pass the
Kerala Scheduled Tribes (Restriction on Transfer of Land and
Restoration of Alienated Lands) Amendment Bill, 1996 almost
unanimously (there was only one dissenting vote).

The 1996 Amendment Bill dashed all hopes of the Adivasis. Most
important, it made legal all transactions of tribal land up to January
24, 1986. In other words, the government made the need for the
restoration of alienated land (as per the 1975 Act) unnecessary.
According to the government, it was the only practical alternative,
given the turmoil and the political repercussions that would have been
created had it tried to evict the non-tribal settlers. However, the
tribal people felt that the government was trying to give legal
sanctity to the alienation of their land. The agitation in front of
the State Assembly, with the Adivasis, led by their leader from
Wayanad C.K. Janu, trying to enter the State legislature, supported by
a group of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) volunteers, was
perhaps an early indication of the gradual transformation of the
agitation.

This was soon followed by one of the best known incidents in the
struggle. On October 4, 1996, a so-far unknown extremist group named
"Ayyankali Pada" (named after a Dalit leader from Kerala), stormed the
Palakkad Collectorate and held Collector W.R. Reddy hostage for over
nine hours. The incident invited a strong response from the government
against growing signs of radicalism among Adivasis and also in a way
prevented the agitation from taking a turn for the worse. Later, the
President refused to give assent to the 1996 Amendment Bill passed by
the State Assembly on the grounds that the 1975 Act had been included
in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.

However, to bypass this difficulty, yet another Bill was passed
unanimously by the State Assembly in 1999. The Kerala Restriction on
Transfer by and Restoration of Lands to Scheduled Tribes Bill, 1999,
defined "land" as "agricultural land" (a State subject) in order to
try and get over the need to send it for presidential assent. The new
Bill also had a controversial provision to repeal the 1975 Act.

As per the 1999 Act, only alienated land in excess of two hectares
possessed by encroachers would be restored, while alternative land, in
lieu of the alienated land not exceeding two hectares, would be given
elsewhere. The thinking was that the number of applicants claiming
land in excess of two hectares would be negligible, making restoration
unnecessary. The new Bill also had a provision to provide up to 40
acres (16 hectares) to other landless tribal people - a new set of
beneficiaries - within two years. The government said that it
estimated that there were about 11,000 such families in the State.

However, the High Court rejected both the 1996 and 1999 Amendment
Bills and declared the provisions under them illegal. The State
government, in turn, went on appeal to the Supreme Court and obtained
stay orders. Several appeals against the stay orders are pending
before the Supreme Court.

It was in this context that starvation deaths were reported from the
Adivasi-inhabited areas in the State from July 2001. The outside world
came to know about it only after a group of tribal people, supported
by some naxalite groups, waylaid a mobile store run by the State
Department of Civil Supplies and took away its contents. They
distributed the foodstuffs and encouraged the tribal people who
gathered there to take home the rest of it.

On August 30, Adivasi agitators led by Janu pitched their tents
outside the Chief Minister's official residence in Thiruvananthapuram.
They were organised under the banner of the "Adivasi Dalit Action
Council", which now claims to have the support of all Adivasis in the
State. Despite two rounds of discussions with the government, the
tribal people refused to withdraw their agitation, which was more than
a month old at the time of writing.

The main demand of the Adivasis was five acres (2 ha) each to all
landless tribal families in the State. Although the government's offer
to prepare a master plan for the tribal people was welcomed by the
agitating Adivasis, they refused to withdraw the agitation until their
demand for land was met. The tribal people have lost their faith in
promises and court cases. They were sure that running after alienated
land was a futile exercise which, even if it succeeded in the long
run, would benefit only a few among them.

HOWEVER, some disturbing trends have emerged in the course of the
struggle. The Adavasi-inhabited areas have become breeding grounds for
extremist organisations espousing the tribal cause and swearing to
empower the tribal people in order to fight for their rights. There
have been sporadic incidents of violence since 1992, when such groups
encouraged the Adivasis to take the law into their own hands and
forcibly occupy government land. Since the 1990s the activities of
Hindu chauvinist organisations, Christian missionaries and voluntary
agencies, often funded from abroad, have also increased in the tribal
areas. The past decade saw the disillusioned tribal people move
tantalisingly close to extremism and communalism. Such proclivities
would certainly undermine their genuine struggle.

Yet, for the present, the most significant factor is the shifting
focus of the demands raised by the Adivasi leaders who are in the
limelight. They are no longer asking for alienated land, at least not
as emphatically as they used to in the past. Instead they demand
mainly five acres of other land each for all landless tribal families.
Another demand is the inclusion of tribal areas in the Sixth Schedule
of the Constitution in order to make them autonomous regions.

The fact that they were able to sustain their agitation by putting up
shacks outside the Secretariat, along the State capital's arterial
road, and pitching tents on the road to the Chief Minister's official
residence for more than a month itself took Kerala by surprise. Over
150 tribal families were in these camps, where food and even
facilities to continue school education of the children were being
provided by the organisers. A grand council of elders and other
leaders representing the 30-odd tribes in the State was formed under
the umbrella of the Adivasi Dalit Action Council. As a show of
strength and as part of an attempt to evolve a consensus regarding
their demands among the various tribes and organisations, it organised
an 'Adivasi Gothra Sabha' ('Adivasi Parliament') in Thiruvananthapuram
on October 3. As the government announced that it would not allow the
tribal people to establish camps permanently before the Secretariat,
Action Committee chairperson Janu declared that she was going on a
"fast unto death" before the Secretariat.

While Chief Minister A.K. Antony claimed that his government was more
sympathetic to the tribal people's cause than the previous government,
other leaders of the ruling coalition said there were vested interests
behind the agitation. There are also allegations that organisations
and political parties more sympathetic to the interests of the settler
farmers are now supporting the tribal people in order to prevent them
from demanding the restoration of alienated land, especially when the
legality of the amendments striking down the 1975 Act is coming up as
an issue before the Supreme Court.

But as Janu told Frontline, Kerala's Adivasis are not fighting the
settler farmers any longer. However, the question whether there are
vested interests behind the Adivasi agitation is overshadowed by
another one - whether the shift in demand will genuinely help the
tribal people's cause.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1821/18210490.htm

Volume 18 - Issue 22, Oct. 27 - Nov. 09, 2001

India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU

Promise of land

Kerala's Adivasi Dalit Action Council ends its struggle over land and
livelihood issues following an agreement with the State government.

R. KRISHNAKUMAR
in Thiruvananthapuram

THE 48-day-old agitation over land and livelihood issues undertaken
for the tribal people in Kerala ended on October 16 following a seven-
point agreement between the State government and the Adivasi Dalit
Action Council. The Adivasi "refugee camps" erected by the agitating
tribal people outside the State Secretariat and the Chief Minister's
official residence in Thiru-vananthapuram and in the district
headquarters were dismantled soon afterwards. There was jubilation in
the streets, and praise for C.K. Janu, chairperson of the Action
Council, who led the agitation.

This is what the Adivasi agitation has seemingly achieved for the 3.2
lakh tribal people:

S. GOPAKUMAR
Jubilant Adivasi agitators carry C.K. Janu, chairperson of the
Adivasi Dalit Action Council, in Thiruvananthapuram.

* "Wherever possible", the government is to provide five acres (two
hectares) of land to each landless Adivasi family; at other places,
the offer is a minimum of one acre, which can go up to five acres,
"depending on the availability of land";

* A five-year livelihood programme is to be implemented in the land
thus provided until it becomes fully productive for Adivasis to
sustain themselves;

* The State is to enact a law to ensure that the land provided to
Adivasis is not alienated as had happened in the past;

* The State Cabinet is soon to pass a resolution asking the Union
government to declare the Adivasi areas in the State as scheduled
areas, bringing them under Schedule V of the Constitution;

* The government also gave a commitment that it will abide by whatever
decision the Supreme Court takes on its appeal against the Kerala High
Court order quashing the unpopular law (the Kerala Restriction on
Transfer by and Restoration of Lands to Scheduled Tribes Bill, 1999)
passed by the State Assembly in 1999;

* The government is to implement a master plan for tribal development
and the plan is to be prepared with the participation of Adivasis;

* The maximum possible extent of land will be found and distributed in
Wayanad district - at least 10,000 acres - where there is the largest
concentration of landless Adivasis.

The agitators' demand that all landless Adivasi families must be given
five acres each has not been conceded. Chief Minister A.K. Antony told
Frontline it was impossible for any government to agree to such a
demand in a State where there was so much pressure on land. But the
government had readily agreed to provide at least one acre during its
earlier round of discussions with leaders of the Action Council and
other tribal organisations (Frontline, October 26).

In effect, this is what the Action Council accepted eventually.

This does not mean that the agitation was a failure. For the first
time, landless Adivasis in Kerala have got a firm commitment from the
government on at least one acre of land. They are also to get the
protection of a new law preventing any further alienation of their
land. In Janu's own Wayanad district, the government is to make an
extra effort to find more land for Adivasis.

Perhaps the most important fallout of the latest agitation is that
both the government and the Action Council leaders have succeeded in
shifting the focus of the nearly 50-year-old tribal struggle in Kerala
from the issue of "restoration of alienated land" to one of "land for
the landless tribal people".

In short, whether Adivasis are any better off as a result of the
agitation will be known only in January 2002, when the government, as
per its promise, has to start distributing the land. The
identification of the beneficiaries would prove a major hurdle in the
interim period.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1822/18220420.htm

Opinion - News Analysis

Behind the Adivasi unrest in Assam
M.S. Prabhakara

The Adivasis’ fight is not so much for their recognition as a tribal
community as for the restoration of the tribal identity to which they
believe they are entitled.

— Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar

Vigilantist retaliation: Local residents of Dispur and Beltola beat up
Adivasi protesters in Guwahati on November 24.

The continuing violence in Assam over the last few days, in particular
the wanton vandalism and the crude and vigilantist retaliation that
took place in and around Dispur in Guwahati on November 24, has
rightly attracted wide and critical notice. However, any exclusive
concern with the violent events of that Saturday, in particular the
voyeuristic focus by the visual media on the shameful attack on the
person and personal dignity of a young woman by the mob that has been
unreservedly condemned by the people of the State, may obscure the
real issues: the demand of the Adivasis for classification as a
Scheduled Tribe, and the complex factors that inform the resistance to
that and similar demands.

The Adivasi, a nomenclature now adopted by the approximately 20
million strong Tea Garden Labour and ex-Tea Garden Labour community,
is not the only community in Assam seeking classification as a
Scheduled Tribe. Five other communities (the Tai-Ahom, the Moran, the
Motok, the Chutia and the Koch-Rajbongshi), all presently classified
as Other Backward Classes (OBC), have also for long been pressing for
recognition as Scheduled Tribes. The first four live predominantly in
the districts of Upper Assam while the Koch-Rajbongshi live
predominantly in western Assam, sharing broadly the same physical (and
political) space as the Bodos, the most numerous of the tribal
communities of the State. The Adivasis are, for the most part, settled
in the vicinity of the tea gardens.

Contrary to the general impression, the clashes do not bespeak any
deeply ingrained hostility between ‘tribal people and non-tribal
people,’ or between the tribal people and caste Hindus, in Assam — a
convenient distinction between supposedly irreconcilable categories
made in much of the analysis of the so-called ethnic clashes in Assam
and the north-eastern region. The Adivasis, though aspiring for
recognition as a tribal community and indeed historically belonging to
authentic tribal stock, are at present not recognised as a tribal
community. It is only in popular usage that they are referred to as
Tea Garden Tribes and ex-Tea Garden Tribes. Strictly speaking, their
fight is not so much for their recognition as a tribal community as
for the restoration of that tribal identity to which they believe they
are entitled, being the descendants of various tribal communities of
Central India who, over a century-and-a-half ago, went or were
indentured to work in the gardens of eastern India. What they are
fighting for is therefore the restoration of their legitimate cultural
patrimony.

Why and how did the descendants of the tribal people whose ancestors
were brought to Assam from other parts of India cease to be tribal
people in their present environment? The answer lies in the peculiar
rules that determine such recognition, according to which a person’s
tribal identity is irrevocably and forever linked to her or his place
of origin — in the present instance, the persons’ ancestral origins.
For instance, the progeny of a Munda, a recognised tribal community in
Jharkhand and other contiguous States, one of the 96 communities
listed under the category, Tea Garden Labourers, Tea Garden Tribes, Ex-
Tea Garden Labourers and Ex-Tea Garden Tribes in the official ‘Central
List of Backward Classes, Assam,’ who was taken to Assam to work in
the tea gardens over a century-and-a-half ago has lost his tribal
identity, though were such a person to return to his (now notional)
ancestral place, he would regain his tribal identity.

Such absurd rules and requirements do not however obtain in other
cases of migration. A non-tribal person moving, say, from Karnataka to
Assam continues to retain all the socio-cultural coordinates of his or
her identity.

Indeed such absurd anomalies govern even the movement of tribal
communities within Assam, and in the States that were carved out of
colonial Assam after independence. For instance, the 23 recognised
tribal communities in Assam are broadly identified under two
categories: the Hill Tribes, that is, the 14 communities recognised as
‘tribal’ in the ‘hill areas,’ now comprising the two Autonomous
Districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills; and the Plains
Tribes, that is, the 9 communities recognised as ‘tribal’ in rest of
Assam, supposedly all ‘Plain’. Neither of the locational
identifications is accurate, indeed cannot be accurate, given the
facts of geography but that is the least of the problems.

More materially, neither of these two categories carries its tribal
identity when it moves out of its ‘designated areas.’ Thus, Census
figures for Guwahati city, very much in the Plains of Assam, which has
people from every part of the country and also from foreign parts, do
not enumerate a single person belonging to any of the 14 ‘Hill Tribe’
categories. Indeed, every Plains district enumerates zero population
of Hill Tribes.

Similarly, the Census figures for the two Hill districts do not
enumerate a single person from any of the nine designated ‘Plains
Tribe’ categories. The reality is different; however such personas
living outside their allotted spaces are for official purposes simply
made ‘un-persons’.

While the Adivasis’ case for the restoration of their primordial
tribal status seems strongest, the issues and demands underlying the
struggle of the five other communities seeking recognition as
Scheduled Tribes are equally complex. The Koch-Rajbongshi, also known
as Sarania Kachari, historically part of the Bodo Kachari stock, lost
their tribal identity over a long period going back to the days before
the colonial conquest of Assam through a complex process of conversion
and acculturation into the Vaishnavite variety of Assamese Hinduism.
Such advantages as the conversion may have brought have lost their
relevance in post-independence India where, increasingly, the tribal
identity is getting to be perversely privileged by non-tribal
communities. Corresponding urges and expectations no doubt drive the
demands of the other communities seeking to be classified as Scheduled
Tribes.

The State government says it is not opposed to conceding the demands
but has pleaded its inability in view of the existing rules. There are
indications that these rigidities may be relaxed, at least in respect
of the Adivasi demand. However, if the Adivasi demand is conceded, the
demands of other communities too will have to be eventually conceded.
The issue also has national implications, in the context of the
contradictions highlighted in the presently dormant Gujjar agitation
for classification as ST.

The more immediate opposition in Assam to the extension of ST
recognition to the six communities is however likely to come from the
presently recognised Scheduled Tribes. The estimated 20 lakh Adivasis
constitute about 60 per cent of the total ST population of the State
which, according to the 2001 Census, was 3,308,570.

The addition of such a large population to the present ST pool will
undoubtedly affect existing allocations in areas such as reservation
of seats in legislative structures, higher education and jobs. Put
simply, such identity struggles carry a cost, and a price.

(For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Manufacturing
Identities? Frontline, 7 October 2005; In the Name of Tribal
Identities, Frontline, 2 December 2005; and Separatist Strains,
Frontline, 1 June 2007.)

Online edition of India's National Newspaper

Monday, Dec 03, 2007

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2007/12/03/stories/2007120354911100.htm

Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

ADIVASI : JULY 16, 2000
Dishonoured by history
Dr. Meena Radhakrishna

The author is a social anthropologist at the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library, New Delhi.

The following headlines will be familiar to an average newspaper
reader in the Capital:

Amar Talwar/ Fotomedia

"Haryana to flush out Criminal Tribes" (Indian Express, February 27,
1999) followed by "Bansilal orders crackdown on criminal
tribes" (Indian Express, February 28, 1999), "48 Pardi Robbers from
Guna held" (Tribune News Service, September 9, 1999), "Stoneage
Robbers - Pardhis Know No Mercy" (Express News Service, Mumbai,
November 6, 1999), "11 of criminal tribe held for dacoity in N-W
Delhi" (Hindustan Times, January 17, 2000).

In recent years, a spectre of the so called "Criminal Tribes" has
begun to haunt the middle class readers of newspapers in Delhi. There
is a marked increase in news items which claim that a gruesome murder
of an elderly couple was committed by a group of Sansis who robbed
them of all their valuables, or that a woman living alone was brutally
done to death in the dead of night by a group of Pardhis. There are
also frequent television programmes on these communities putting the
fear of the devil in the minds of the terrified spectator, and the
very words "criminal tribes" have become synonymous with criminality
of a mindless, violent kind.

Who are these so called criminal tribes - Sansis, Pardhis, Kanjars,
Gujjars, Bawarias, Banjaras and almost 200 such communities? Is it
just a descriptive label, or is it a category of some special new kind
of criminals? Such a terror in the public mind is being fanned
regarding these people that public lynchings of a hapless Sansi or
Pardhi have already become acceptable to even civilised members of our
increasingly brutalised society.

A visit to localities where most of these people drudge out their
daily lives may reveal the grossest poverty and want, shocking even to
those hardened eyes which daily witness sickly, hungry, unwashed,
unclothed children at every major crossing in the Capital. The
question then to be asked is this: if all members of such communities
are merciless robbers, why then, does the community live in appalling
conditions of poverty?

Shashi Shetye

Moreover, even educated members of these communities, who constitute a
few first-generation office-goers or professionals, are subjected to
the deep suspicion and insults by the wider society when they set out
to look for jobs, and at their workplaces: there is constant,
relentless humiliation they have to suffer at the hands of
"respectable" people. Swimming against the tide each day, they
struggle to enter the virtuous cycle of education, work and
respectability which has eluded them and their children for several
generations. Since "criminal tribes" make such sensational headlines
so frequently, the phenomenon needs to be examined historically in
some detail.

Shashi Shetye

The people mentioned above are a staggering 60 million in number, and
fall in the category of today's Denotified Tribes. The term "criminal
tribes" was concocted by the British rulers, and entered the public
vocabulary for the first time when a piece of legislation called the
Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871. With the repeal of this Act
(which was condemned by Pandit Nehru as a blot on the legal books of
free India, and a shame to all civilised societies) these communities
were officially "denotified" in 1952.

Intensive research on the issue shows that about 150 years ago, a
large number of tribal communities were still nomadic, and were
considered useful, honourable people by members of the settled
societies with whom they came into regular contact. A number of them
were small itinerant traders who used to carry their wares on the
backs of their cattle, and bartered their goods in the villages
through which they passed. They would bring interesting items to which
people of a particular village and a little further away - spices,
honey, grain of different varieties, medicinal herbs, different kinds
of fruit or vegetables which the region did not grow, and so on.

Almost invariably, nomadic people were craftsmen of some kind or the
other and in addition to their trading activity they would make and
sell all sorts of useful little items like mats and baskets, brooms
and brushes or earthenware utensils. Some like the Banjaras or
Lambadis functioned on a larger scale, and moved in larger groups with
pack animals loaded mainly with salt, and their women in addition to
the salt also bartered the exquisitely crafted silver trinkets with
settled villagers.

Stan Thekaekara

Some nomadic communities also became cattle traders, herdspeople or
sellers of milk products, since they bred their own cattle for
carrying their merchandise. The nomadic communities were not just
useful to the villagers on a day to day basis - they were also
acknowledged for averting the frequent grain shortages and famine like
conditions in villages where crops failed. In addition, among them
were musicians, acrobats, dancers, tightrope walkers, jugglers and
fortune tellers. On the whole, they were considered a welcome and
colourful change in routine whenever they visited or camped near a
village.

There were several reasons for these communities first becoming
gradually marginalised, and finally beginning to be considered useless
to the settled societies. First, the network of roads and railways
established in the 1850s connected many of the earlier outlying
villages to each other as also to cities and towns.

The scale of the operations of the nomadic traders was thus
drastically cut down to only those areas where wheel traffic could not
yet reach. This was the single most important reason for the loss of
livelihood of a number of nomadic communities. Further, under newly
imposed forest laws, the British government did not allow tribal
communities to graze their cattle in the forests, or to collect bamboo
and leaves either, which were needed for making simple items like mats
and baskets for their own use and for selling. These two developments
had disastrous consequences for the nomadic traders.

There was one other major historical factor responsible for the
impoverishment of a very large number of nomadic communities. The
nineteenth century witnessed repeated severe famines - during each
successive one the nomadic communities lost more and more heads of
cattle which were the only means of transporting their goods to the
interior villages. The cattle were in fact becoming more crucial than
ever, as with increasing network of roads and railways these
communities had to travel longer distances to sell their wares. Loss
of cattle meant loss of trading activity on an unprecedented scale.

The British government gradually began to consider nomadic communities
prone to criminality in the absence of legitimate means of livelihood.
There was a parallel process taking place all along. A number of
tribal chiefs, especially in the north, participated in the 1857
events, and earned the title of traitors and renegades with the
British government. Elsewhere, hill tribes determinedly resisted the
attempts by the British to annexe their land for establishing
plantations, and to try and use them as plantation labour. A number of
tribal communities, thus, would not yield to the British armed forces
and consistently fought back, though whole habitations were burnt down
in retaliation by the frustrated British officers deputed to co-opt
them. Generally, it began to be felt that most tribal communities,
including nomadic ones, were dangerously criminal. The Criminal Tribes
Act was born in these historical circumstances.

A large number of communities were officially declared criminal tribes
from 1871 onwards. The British government subsequently ran special
settlements for them where they were chained, shackled, caned and
flogged while being surrounded by high walls under the provisions of
the Criminal Tribes Act. In the name of the homegrown science of
"curocriminology" it was declared that they would be cured of their
criminal propensities if they were given work and such an
understanding had an obvious corollary: the more they work, the more
reformed they would be. They could be thus forced to work for up to 20
hours a day in factories, plantations, mills, quarries and mines all
through the first few decades of the twentieth century. This was an
era when the Factories Act had come into existence, but the British
employers were officially able to do away with those provisions of the
Factories Act which restricted the number of hours of work in a day,
or number of days in a week, or allowed minimal facilities at the
workplace.

Ashish Kothari

An important point for our purposes here is that the British
government was able to summon a large amount of public support,
including the nationalist press, for the excesses committed on such
communities. This is because the Criminal Tribes Act was posed widely
as a social reform measure which reformed criminals through work.
However, when they tried to make a living like everybody else, they
did not find work outside the settlement because of public prejudice
and ostracisation. This curious logic and anomalous situation has
continued to this day.

Once more we are at a juncture when the issue of "criminal tribes"
needs to be reviewed so that the wider public, 130 years later, does
not end up supporting measures to "flush them out" of the existing
system. What needs to be emphasised here is that police harassment and
rounding up of "criminal tribes" in the last few years has not
improved the crime situation on the ground. Less obtrusively and much
less glaringly, news items of the following kind have also appeared in
print which were earlier asserting to the contrary, confirming that
the worst criminal gangs are not constituted by the members of
denotified communities: "Police still baffled by attacks on
farmhouse" (Indian Express, January 21, 1998), "Many sensational
murders remain unsolved" (Hindustan Times, November 27, 1999).

As has happened all through the history of denotified tribes,
confessions are wrested out of "busted gangs" of Bawarias or Sansis or
Pardhis through a variety of savage methods which often involve abuse
of their women. The National Human Rights Commission, in a historic
meeting held in February, 2000 has recommended repeal of the Habitual
Offenders Act, which in effect replaced the Criminal Tribes Act after
independence. The Habitual Offenders Act has spelt terror to these
communities for half a century, as they can be still summarily rounded
up whenever there is unexplained crime. The NHRC has also promised to
take steps to monitor atrocities on these communities and reorient the
police training systems to change the attitudes of the police towards
them at all levels. It has also accepted the need to protect
denotified tribes through a comprehensive package of welfare measure,
including employment opportunities.

However, no welfare measures, or recommendations by a Human Rights
Commission can create a more humane public opinion - that is an
autonomous process which has to begin to take place among thinking
citizens on their own. These communities have merely got caught in the
web of relentless historical changes encompassing colonisation,
modernisation and urbanisation and they need to be supported in their
severe ordeal and distress. In addition to being hunted and hounded by
the police, they remain on the periphery of society because of the
suspicion and active hostility of the average mainstream person.

Six crores of fellow humans wait to regain the honourable place that
they once held and lost.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070240.htm

Strong sense of self and place
Amita Baviskar

The author is a sociologist and has worked extensively in the Narmada
valley. She has authored the book In The Belly Of The River.

How do you describe an attachment to a particular landscape? How do
you express what a place means when its sounds, smells, look and feel
are so deeply imprinted in your mind and soul that it becomes a part
of you? When you are away from it, you ache to return. Whatever its
shortcomings, this place is home and this is where you belong.

D. Nayak/ Fotomedia

Four years ago, while walking through Sakarja, a Bhilala adivasi
village along the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh, in the submergence
zone of the Sardar Sarovar Project, I met a girl. She was driving some
goats along a narrow track up a hillside. I was hot and out of breath,
and seized the chance to stop and chat. It turned out that she was
alone, her family had moved to Gujarat where the government had given
them land. She had gone too, but after a few months at the
rehabilitation site, she returned to Sakarja to stay with her uncle's
family. When I asked why, she shrugged. "I like it here", she said,
"it's so open".

Looking around at the panorama of hills, streams,fields, and patches
of forest, I could see what she meant. "But aren't things better at
the new place?" I asked, "your family is there too". "I feel stifled
in the plains", she said, "I feel free here". And she went off nimble-
footed along the hillside, urging her goats on with shrill cries.

In the analysis of costs and benefits associated with the Narmada
dams, the discussion focuses on "oustees" and "PAPs" (Project-Affected
Persons) and the "rehabilitation package" of two acres land per adult
male. But men do not live by land alone. personhood comes from having
honour and dignity. And these qualities in turn spring from a sense of
self and place, at home and in the eyes of the world. These aspects of
what makes a person human and worthy of regard do not figure in the
discussion of the dam.

The discourse of the dam could never explain why a girl, scarcely more
than a child and clearly extremely poor, would choose to come back and
live in a village about to be drowned.

Whenever I am in the Narmada valley, I am overwhelmed by the rugged
majesty of this place. The Narmada is a beautiful river, aptly called
"the giver of bliss". At the same time, I am daunted by the hard lives
of the adivasis who stay along its banks. The land, forests and river
yield just enough to live by and, in bad years, not even that. Modest
crops of sorghum and maize, pulses and oilseeds, are the product of
unremitting toil in the monsoon months and, if the rain fails, even
this labour cannot stave off starvation. In bad times, the forests
stand the adivasis in good stead; there are tendu leaves,mahua
flowers, gums and fruit to be collected. If all else fails, adivasis
must migrate in search of work.

The effects of an uncertain and inadequate livelihood are writ large
in the people's lives. Almost every adivasi woman has known the trauma
of an infant or child dying an untimely death. Without enough food and
medical care, people suffer entirely avoidable illnesses with
phlegmatic fortitude. The absence of schools denies children a chance
to learn and improve their lives. Poverty puts people at the mercy of
a callous government bureaucracy and rapacious traders to whom
adivasis do not matter, except as people to be pushed around and
cheated. The exploitation of adivasis has a long history that can be
traced to the state's refusal to recognise adivasi rights to lands and
forests, and the almost total failure of the welfare state in this
region. Every year, crores are spent on "tribal development" but the
only people who get richer are the traders and officials with their
new Maruti cars and their rising houses in town.

Despite its hardships, this life is all there is for adivasis, and
they value it. Amidst the vicissitudes of drought, malnutrition and
exploitation, what keeps adivasis going are the certitudes of
community, their faith in the bonds of kinship, the knowledge that
relatives will help out in times of trouble. Walking along the
Narmada, one witnesses as small yet steady traffic of travellers - a
youth in a smart turban with a bow and arrow in hand going off to
visit his married sister, or a middle-aged woman carrying a pot of
buttermilk for her ailing mother. Their little courtesies indicate the
larger structures of material and emotional aid that enable adivasis
to hold their own in a hostile world.

It seems marvellous that such spartan material circumstances should
generate a vibrant life of the mind. The adivasi world is richly
imagined and interpreted through myth, story and song. The central
thread of this repertoire is the gayana, an epic poem that describes
how Narmada created the world. Will the gayana, and all the other
aspects of Bhilala knowledge and practice that are anchored on the
banks of the Narmada, survive relocation to a new place? Does it
matter that people will have to surrender so much of what they hold
dear for the sake of a dam?

Whether the dam will bring water to the thirsty people of Kutch and
Saurashtra, and I don't believe it will, we must be clear about who is
paying the price for this transfer of resources. As Arundhati Roy
asks, are we prepared to acknowledge the true "cost of living"? Our
lifestyles are made possible because adivasis in the Narmada valley
and elsewhere are forced to give up the little that they possess. To
add insult to injury, they are told that leaving their lands and river
will entitle them to an "attractive rehabilitation package" and the
gifts of development - hand pumps, schools and health centres. As the
headman of Kakadsila village asked the District Collector, "For forty
years, you didn't come to our village even once. You didn't care
whether we lived or died. Now when you want our land you come with
folded hands and make promises. Why should we believe you?"

The wisdom of this scepticism is borne out by most experiences of
resettlement. Waterlogged land, no livestock, fragmented families,
hostile neighbours, no commons to collect fuel and fodder - sums up
rehabilitation so far. Adivasis end up as urban refugees, permanent
members of an ever-growing army of footloose labour. If this is what
the future holds, no wonder that adivasis make desperate choices,
vowing to stay on in villages slated for submergence.

Though their chances of victory look increasingly grim, adivasis
continue to fight. For fifteen years, these villagers have borne the
brunt of a sustained government campaign to oust them. They have been
denied development inputs, their lands were forcibly surveyed, protest
brutally suppressed, and false cases filed against them. Now the
threat of submergence looms ever larger. "Leave now", say government
officials, "or you will drown like rats when the water comes". And
yet, despite the might of the state, people continue to fight because
their sense of self, their only vision of a good life, is rooted to
this place that they call home, the Narmada valley.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070220.htm

To be governed or to self-govern
Dr. Smitu Kothari

The author has been involved with PESA, is a tribal rights activist
and is with Lokayan, Delhi.

Over four years ago, without visible drama and fanfare, India's
statute books witnessed a new addition that represents one of the most
significant legislative changes in post-Independence India. Those
concerned about the social health of the country have been largely
oblivious to this historical legislative change. Even those that are
concerned about the rights of historically oppressed and discriminated
communities seem to have by and large (with a few exceptions) fallen
short of adequately responding to the enormous potential it has for
one of India's most culturally plural and diverse constituents to
secure a future that is dramatically better than today.

Prem Kapoor/ Fotomedia

I am referring to the provisions concerning self-government in
Scheduled areas (primarily adivasi areas identified for special
protection in a special schedule - section - of the Constitution)
after the enactment of the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to
the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (I will refer to this as PESA in the
rest of this essay). The provisions also question and potentially
transform the structure and powers that have been given to Panchayats.

For nearly two centuries, adivasi communities have spearheaded the
most remarkable struggles for social justice in the country. They were
among those who first resisted British colonial interests much before
the independence movement - a contribution that (despite a few rare
accounts of historic movements in a few regions) remains largely
unrecognised. Predominantly living with India's forests, they faced a
steady assault on their livelihoods when the British legislated the
crown's control over India's forests in 1865.

With one legislative change, they became trespassers in their own
forests victimised by externally motivated systems of forest
management that directly violated various facets of their economic and
cultural survival. Their forests and other resources in their areas
were increasingly seen as commodities, their lands expropriated as
private property and their growing dependence on ruthless moneylenders
linked with powerful feudal landlords and local politicians led to
massive land alienation, and permanent or seasonal migration. The
final act of violence legitimising these onslaughts of systemic
violence on a largely unsuspecting population was the imposition of an
alien judicial system and "law and order" machinery that subjugated
them further compounding their vulnerability and subservience. Their
own, highly subtle and organically embedded systems of conflict
resolution were undermined. The result of all these processes was the
erosion of their dignity, the devaluation of their identities and the
disrespect of their ways of living.

Unfortunately, after Independence too, the Indian government retained
the same laws and continued the erstwhile colonial attitudes and
policies over adivasi communities. They continued to be victimised,
their cultures and lifestyles disrespected, their resource base
exploited, with hardly any benefit accruing to them. In actual
practice, such state policy was aimed at assimilating them into the
"mainstream" on terms that they had very little say in. In effect,
while they participated in elections, the promise of democracy and
justice was largely denied to them.

In fact, in most areas there was further erosion of the relative
autonomy and dignity that they enjoyed in their communities, thanks to
the additional steamroller impact of party politics and the consequent
homogenisation of a rich heritage of cultural diversity. Participation
in the electoral process was no guarantee of their own democratic
rights being respected. Instead, elections have substantially lost
legitimacy as reliable institutions for ensuring cheap, quick,
reliable and transparent justice for rural people, especially those
belonging to disadvantaged groups.

In the first two decades after Independence, in anticipation of
policies that would change colonial attitudes and practice, there were
fewer agitations and revolts in adivasi India. It was not long,
however, before disillusionment started setting in with the
realisation that the brown sahib's governance was largely driven by
the same mentality and attitude as those who had colonised them
before. There were remarkable exceptions as a few enlightened
administrators and community leaders asserted the rights of adivasi
communities. Gradually, in a growing number of places, agitations and
mass assertions became the emergent culture of what began as mere
disillusionment. Coupled with the expressions of countervailing power
from below were efforts by a few sensitive administrators and support
groups. In the mid-1980s, people like the then Commissioner of
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, B. D. Sharma, used his constitutional
office to highlight the plight of the adivasis and the constitutional
responsibility to them. Numerous collective mobilisations
crystallised, including several demanding greater autonomy from
exploitative external forces. Another important development was the
formation of various alliances cutting across adivasi community and
region.

General Gaur/ Fotomeida

Notable among these are the Bharat Jan Andolan (Indian People's
Movement), the National Front for Tribal Self-Rule, Adivasi Sangamam
and the Indigenous and Tribal People's Initiative all of whom
spearheaded a series of agitations representing the growing unrest in
adivasi areas.

Relenting to these widespread agitations by adivasis protesting
against continued violations of their customary and resource rights by
state and non-state actors, the Parliament set up a committee headed
by an adivasi MP, Dileep Singh Bhuria. Mr. Bhuria's report argued that
adivasi society had been marked by its own representative systems of
governance through the Gram Sabha (village council comprising the
assembly of all adult village residents), which should be legally
recognised as the primary centre of adivasi governance. Released in
1995, the report also argued that the long-standing demand of adivasi
control over productive land and forests should be conceded to and
that administrative interference in adivasi affairs should be
minimised. The government largely ignored the Bhuria Commission's
report reflecting the continuing dichotomy between the real needs of a
majority of adivasis and an exploitative governing structure.

Public agitations, including several major events in Delhi, have since
been stepped up. The assertions of the adivasis were powerfully summed
up in one of their central motive slogans, "Our Rule in Our Villages."
This declaration did not imply secession from India but the
affirmation of relative autonomy from what was experienced as an
intrusive and exploitative state apparatus and the unjust social and
economic order that it legitimated at the expense of their
livelihoods, identities and systems of self-governance. In December
1996, the Parliament passed PESA finally (at least legally)
recognising the adivasi right to self-rule.

PESA is historic because it legally recognises the capacity of adivasi
communities to strengthen their own systems of self-governance or
create new legal spaces and institutions that can not only reverse
centuries of external cultural and political onslaught but can also
create the opportunities to control their own destinies.

If implemented in both letter and spirit, the Gram Sabha of the
village would become the focal institution, now endowed with
significant powers. For instance, under section 4(d) of PESA: "every
Gram Sabha shall be competent to safeguard and preserve the traditions
and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community
resources and the customary mode of dispute resolution."

Shashi Shetye

Many administrators, academics, even activists working among adivasi
communities argue that the institution of Gram Sabha is non-existent
in most adivasi areas and that the law does not recognise the dramatic
social and economic changes that have taken place in adivasi society
in the past two centuries. They argue that modernity, the external
market, representative democracy and centuries of exploitation have
transformed adivasi communities to the point where a recovery of a
cohesive community could well turn out to be a romantic invocation
with no basis in reality.

What is not recognised in this critique is that PESA is a dramatic
opportunity to undo a history of wrongs and that it is flexible enough
to mould to local conditions. For instance, even if an institution
called Gram Sabha is unknown or has eroded, it can provide the basis,
under changed conditions, of a new democratic institution that the
adivasis themselves would come to recognise as an organic entity that
facilitates the restoration of their comprehensive rights. PESA even
makes it possible to redraw the administrative boundaries that
presently inform their governance. India's administrators and policy
makers have been reluctant to even recognise PESA because it empowers
the Gram Sabha to approve development plans, control all social
sectors - including the processes and people who implement these
programmes and policies - as well as control all minor (non-timber)
forest resources, minor water bodies and minor minerals. As and if all
this happens, it could result in outcomes that may well prove
dramatic. For, PESA also gives powers to manage local markets, prevent
the manufacture and sale of alcohol and not just control land
alienation but seek its restitution.

Understandably, administrators see a grave threat to their power and
privilege if local communities were to pave the way for more
autonomous systems of self-governance. In effect, the potential of
PESA is to make these state functionaries play a transformed role of
facilitating processes for the devolution of power. Their role would
then also assist in restraining forces that prevent the realisation of
the comprehensive rights that PESA provides.

The most far reaching potential and impact will be ecological. PESA
would restore primary control over natural resource systems to the
Gram Sabha. There is some concern that in the age of commodification
and commercialisation, if given rights over resources, adivasis will
themselves become predators. Communities (like the Warlis who are part
of the Thane district based Kashtakari Sangathna) who have begun to
realise the potential of PESA argue that while the dangers do exist,
this should not be used as an excuse to delay the implementation of
PESA and in fact efforts should be made to discuss how the whole gamut
of democratic institutions need to be rethought to strengthen local
autonomy and provide checks to its misuse. The reality at the moment
is that as communities assert greater control, they encounter apathy,
even hostility from local administrators who are under pressure from
external and internal interests who want to retain their exploitative
hold over adivasi India.

The reluctance of those who have historically enjoyed power to accept
such devolution and eventual loss is understandable. Some of this can
even take vicious forms as those in power try to subvert local unity.
In an eloquent yet grim assessment of the present situation, Harsh
Mandar, a senior officer of the IAS states, "The seriousness of the
situation is that for tribal policy in India, darkness continues to
prevail. Protective laws are rarely implemented, budgetary measures
like the Tribal Sub Plan strategy have failed to achieve genuine
financial devolution, and educational strategies have been
assimilative and destructive of the moorings of tribal culture. Light
at the end of the tunnel can be seen only in a powerful and radical
recent law that provides for self-governance by tribal communities.
However, so far, the state has forgotten or subverted the
interpretation of its own law. The perils of the tribal identity and
survival remain as real as ever."

There are several internal challenges that also have to be addressed -
internal hierarchies and discriminations, traditional practices like
witch-hunting that have become means to suppressing the growing
assertions of women, etc. Building safeguards and processes that
address these endemic problems are an equally serious issue that must
be simultaneously faced.

It is time, however, that the administrator, the planner and the
politician realise that the growing aspirations of historically
discriminated and exploited peoples will no longer give way. Across
the country, there is growing demand for greater transparency of
government functioning and greater participation in defining what the
content of development should be. Additionally, there are steadily
growing instances of innovative efforts to redefine the structure and
content of democratic institutions so that power emanates from the
people. This has brought into sharp focus the severe limitations of
representative democracy and the need to recognise and strengthen
structures of direct democracy, particularly where communities depend
on natural resources for sustaining their livelihoods.

Similar mobilisations have been witnessed in indigenous and tribal
regions all over the world and several major global alliances have
been formed. These, coupled with the efforts of many groups to
articulate their concerns before a special sub-commission and the
human rights committee of the United Nations, can also be seen as part
of an effort of deepening democracy at all levels - from the local to
the national and the global - firmly rooted in local democratic
processes, contrary to and often in dramatic opposition to the current
trends of economic centralisation and undemocratic political
processes.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070180.htm

A society in transition
Suresh Sharma

The author is with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies,
Delhi.

Words like "tribe" and "tribals" have come to acquire extensive usage
in our discourse on social science and social change. They denote
both, an anthropologial category akin to its classical form as it has
been in the Americas, Africa and Australia, and as a metaphor for the
most victimised segments in our society. The expression "tribal
identity" has sharp political resonance. But that resonance is felt
and read almost entirely in ethnic-social terms. The cultural and
cognitive salience that underlies the tribal sense of unique
distinctness and possibility remains dim and almost invisible.

M. Anand

The modern faith stems from an axiomatic certainty of immense
consequence. The grand certainty is that the continually enhanced
human capacity to reshape the material world is an unfailing assurance
of human liberation and freedom. Progress is the sovereign quest of
modern civilisation as also its cardinal referent for meaning and
significance. Hence the perception that tribal cohesions represent the
survival of archaic social formations which the ever expanding reach
of the modern historical process would in time transform and
completely recast. And true enough, the power to reshape the material
world has linked and unified the most distant corners of the earth.
But for communities and rhythms of life, towards which words like
tribe direct our attention, modern unification has meant a virtual
half-life on the very margins of modern life and discourse.

Consider in this context the intellectual and cultural lineage of the
discipline of Ethnology. Its origin and orientation are unmistakably
modern. Its mission is to understand and make sense of social facts
and forms of thought that clearly do not belong to the modern
universe. Levi-Strauss sensed in ethnology a belated sence of remorse.
As an intellectual artifact it is inherently ambiguous. It seeks
remembrance for facts and forms, which it knows, are marked out for
extinction by the very mode of doing and thinking from which ethnology
arises. Recognition of definitive difference constitutes as it were
its formative substance. And all the while, it knows, that this
difference has at best a bleak future in the modern world. In its rare
moments of repose modern thought invests rhythms of living forsaken by
history, in the words of Levi-Strauss, with "nobility. Unaware of
having eliminated savage life", it seeks to appease the "nostalgic
cannibalism of history" with mere shadows preserved with great care in
museums and libraries.

One could ask at this point, as to what is the nature and significance
of the survival of tribal life in India? Is that survival in any way
different from what survives of tribal life in the Americas? Or, is it
the case that what survives of tribal life in India is also no more
than a shadow of what had once been full and truly complete unto
itself.

In India, the tribal situation is marked by two paradoxical facts: the
absence of neat demarcations of the tribal as a homogenous social-
cultural category, and the significant magnitude of what is accepted
as comprising tribal reality. No one can demarcate a clear divide
between the tribal and the non-tribal in India. The intensely fluid
nature of boundaries between the tribal and the non-tribal are evident
in the insuperable difficulty in arriving at a clear anthropological
definition of a tribal in India, be that in terms of ethnicity, race,
language, social forms or modes of livelihood.

D. V .Jainer/ Telepress Features

The Constitution provides for the notification of certain communities
as tribal. The notification is on the basis of a varied mix of ethnic,
social, linguistic and economic criteria. Hence the prevalent usage as
also the only available working definition of a tribal in India:
Scheduled Tribes. It would truly be impossible for anyone to say that
all the diverse communities listed as Scheduled Tribes conform to the
notion of a tribal in its classical sense. At the same time, it would
be impossible for anyone to say that all communities that can
primarily be regarded as tribal are included in the schedule of
Tribes. And yet, for all practical purposes, be it legislation, social-
political intervention, collation of data or social theory, the
schedule of tribe notified by the Government is the only meaningful
referent.

Almost every thirteenth Indian is a tribal. Social magnitudes and
their persistence as distinct entities over long durations are of
immense significance. For they suggest, in however diffused and
indirect ways, the structure of cognition and judgment by which a
civilisation seeks or could seek to orient itself. The sheer magnitude
of tribal survival in India directs attention towards ways of
reckoning and engaging with differences that are strikingly unlike the
modern historical process. In the brief span of a few centuries,
peoples and cultures as old as Man on earth have been swept to near
extinction from the vast continents of America and Australia.

To speak of the strikingly different ways of reckoning and engaging
with difference as characteristic of India's past is not to suggest
that it is a past without blemish. The past of tribals in India
bristles with cruel inflictions. For thousands of years tribal
communities have been pushed steadily deeper into the hinterland of
remote hills and forests. Vast stretches of land, upon which they had
lived their lives, worshipped their deities and nourished their own
dreams, have been lost to them. But with all that it remains a past of
interaction, utterly unlike the modern past of tribal extinction.

V. Muthuraman/Wilderfile

One could speak of the tribal presence in India at two levels. One,
the fragmented and fragmentary tribal presence in the very midst of
non-tribal life. Two, the tribal presence in tribal contiguities
comprising regions that are or were until recently predominantly
tribal. The historian Kosambi records in prescient detail the
fragmented tribal presence in the midst of non-tribal life. In the
early Fifties, he had to just step outside his house in Poona to
encounter the still unfolding "historical processes" of "interaction
of obsolete with modern forms". In the shadow of the Law College dwelt
a "nomadic group of rus phase Pardhis" whose men wear only the "loin
cloth" and "never take a bath", but retain the "natural cleanliness,
mobility, superior senses" of the wild. Pardhis are "expert bird
snarers". But hunting and trapping animals can no longer provide
enough for even bare survival. Forests have shrivelled and "game has
almost vanished". Besides, "not one of them can afford a hunting
license". They have been reduced to making a precarious living by
trapping birds, "begging and petty stealing". The idea of "racial
purity" makes no sense to them. On the "payment of a fee" strangers
could always be admitted into their clan. The names of five of their
six exogamous clans "have become the surnames of feudal Maratha
families: Bhonsale, Powar, Cavahan, Jahdav, Sinde". And Kale, the name
of their sixth clan has become a "Citpavan brahman surname".

Tribal presence in regions that are predominantly tribal signifies a
distinctly different historic quality of tribal-nontribal interaction.
Such regions constitute what could be termed tribal contiguities.
Within tribal contiguities, choices available to tribal communities
for working out their own equations between man and Nature have not
been entirely foreclosed in favour of a more advanced mode of
livelihood. True, powerful non-tribal rulers did seek to control over
tribal contiguities. But pre-modern conquest could never exact more
than a nominal annual tribute. The divide in these regions between
resistance and restraint, submission and defiance was always somewhat
fluid. Nature, little touched by Man, was an unfailing refuge beyond
the reach of invading armies. One could speak of the texture of this
interaction as a complex of impingements and relationships between
several distinct social cohesions and modes of livelihood subsisting
in close proximity.

In a rough and ready sense settled cultivation or kheti, could be said
to be the defining feature of non-tribal life. And shifting
cultivation or jhum could be said to be the defining feature of tribal
life. Open plains watered by rivers have been the prime regions of
kheti hills and dense forests have been the prime regions of jhum. The
Gangetic plain has been the largest prime region of kheti. The
Vindhyan highland has been the largest prime region of jhum. Between
these two modes, kheti represents what in modern cognition would be
designated as the manifestly more evolved and higher level of man-
nature equations. Quite in accord with modern expectation, the region
of kheti even in the pre-modern context tended to expand and enclose
new areas. But in the long and complex process of extending its reach,
kheti in the pre-modern context could never completely displace jhum.
The significant fact is that in the very process of extending the
reach of kheti came to be mediated by varied modes of livelihood,
which partook of the world of both kheti and jhum.

Social and technological mediations within these two modes of
livelihood are ordered differently. Kheti marks out a permanent human
presence riveted to a particular piece of land. The same plot of land
is cultivated year after year, from one generation to the next. From
that plot of land nature is sought to be more or less completely
banished. It requires constant human care. In the event of failure or
withdrawal of human care, Nature does return to the lands of kheti but
almost always in a shrivelled and degraded form. The spatial
boundaries worked out in kheti tend towards more or less straight
lined geometric patterns. Within the fields of kheti, man's mastery
over nature is complete and unrivalled. Nothing that man does not like
or find useful is allowed to survive. The considerable surplus this
activity generates makes possible trade and exchange of goods and
services, urban centres, as also varied range of skills, crafts
cultural links over vast distances. Along with all that, it also makes
possible mechanisms of coercion and dominion: steadily enhanced
revenue demands, standing armies and imperial ambition. But in years
of scanty rainfall or epidemics, hunger and death ravage the lands of
rich yields.

Jhum, in sharp contrast to kheti, marks out only a fleeting human
presence in the midst of untamed Nature. The cultivated patch of jhum
keeps shifting. In the little jhum clearings on hill slopes, Nature in
all its wild resilience and variety retains its sway albeit a little
subdued. Crops once sown on a jhum slope require virtually no human
care. After the crops have been harvested, jhum slopes merge back into
Nature. The spatial boundaries worked out in jhum tend to be somewhat
like the intensely diffused uncertain lines found in nature. Jhum
secures an ample supply of crops useful to man. Its yields in
comparison to a kheti field are much smaller. But jhum, by allowing
nature to linger on its slopes ensures that harvests never completely
fail. Famines simply never happen in the prime regions of shifting
cultivation. The surplus generated is small and chiefs in the world of
shifting cultivational have had to rule without the support of a
standing army or a regular supply of revenue.

Shyam Jagota

The tribal presence within tribal contiguities and its fragmented
survival in the midst of non-tribal life may seem at first sight to be
far removed and unconnected with each other. But a deep and complex
relationship subsists between them. For they together define the place
and possibility for tribal life and self-sense in the civilisational
matrix of India. Consider in this context the rise to political pre-
eminence of the tribal kingdom of Garha in central India during the
Sixteenth Century. The stark simplicity of the explanation given by
the Abul Fazal, the grand Mughal chronicler, for the rise of Garha
invokes rhythms distinctly tribal. For a very long time, records Abul
Fazal, rulers of Garha had commanded "reverence" in the region. Yet,
they remained powerless until mid Fifteenth Century to translate this
"reverence" into political control. Implicit in this fact is the
resilience of the distance between reverence and the ability to garner
a disproportionately large share of the local surplus. To this day
something of that sense and reality remains alive and vivid in the
everyday rhythms of living.

Unfettered access to nature furnishes the vital clue to the manifest
capacity of tribal cohesions to survive as a distinct entity, despite
a long and not always peaceful history of interaction with powerful
centres of political authority. Definitive shifts in the relationship
between tribal communities and political power began with the
consolidation of the modern colonial state in the mid-nineteenth
century. As the effective reach of the modern state extended deeper
into the hinterland, access to nature came to be progressively
restricted. Choices available to communities even in the remotest
parts came to be ever more rigorously foreclosed in favour of the
requirements of the state and the world market. Land revenue
settlements initiated the process of appropriating vast stretches of
tribal lands as "reserved forests" and "government lands". In the
tribal contiguity people have lived on a combination of gathering
forest produce, grazing, craft skills and shifting or intermittent
cultivation. The idea of personal property has been very weak. It is
the idea of usage, which defined access to the livelihood resource of
the locality of the region. The notion of modern property has
destroyed access to what had always been a shared livelihood resource
accessible to all the inhabitants.

True, life and livelihood of tribal communities in the past were
always simple and sparse. But prior to the modern onslaught the rhythm
of life in the remotest hamlet was vibrant with a profound sense of
its own intrinsic worth. Cultural sensibilities and modes of
livelihood subsist in a relationship of intimate distance. Destruction
of modes of livelihood are also moments of profound cultural loss. The
sense of one's self and the world are traumatically shaken. It is
imperative that the modern sensibility learns to own in adequate
measure the destructive consequences inherent in the modern process.
For instance, unlike the West, ecological devastation in our context
has also to be comprehended as a question of livelihood and survival.

Tribal survival in the modern world would be possible and meaningful
only if we learn to recognise it as presence with its own intrinsic
worth, and not merely as a grim illustration of the logic of progress.
We have to learn to converse with tribal sensibility about its
meditations on the nature of the human presence, and the inherence of
limits in the fact of life itself. That perhaps may in some measure
serve as a corrective to the selfish and ultimately suicidal self-
centredness of modern civilisation.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070140.htm

Call us adivasis, please
Gail Omvedt

The author is a consulting sociologist, based in Kasegaon.

If Adivasis were to start writing their own Discovery Of India, it
would be something like this: There are those who talk of India's
"5000 year-old culture," there are those who talk of its "timeless
traditions." If India has a timeless tradition, it is ours. The
cultures running back for tens of thousands of years are the cultures
of the many Adivasi communities in the subcontinent. We are Bhils,
Gonds, Oraons, Mundas, Hos, Santals, Korkus and Irulas, the large and
small groups of people who live today in the hilly areas of the
country and are scattered across its central belt, we who have kept
ourselves apart from feudal States and Brahmanic hierarchies for
thousands of years, we who have resisted hierarchy and maintained our
ancient collectivities and ways of life.

K.Prabhakar/Fotomedia

We were here before the founders of that Meluhha known to far-off
Mesopotamia built their cities on the plains of the Indus. Before
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa and Lothal, before drains were laid out,
before seals began to be stamped and goods traded and granaries made,
we lived off the forests, gathering the abundant food we found,
sometimes burning down the trees for planting but always moving on to
let the forest regenerate. We traded occasionally with the Indus
cities, but we remained free; they never conquered us or tried to
conquer us.

We were here before the Aryans came thundering in their chariots
through the mountain passes; they could break the dams, flooding the
plains and destroying the remnants of the Indus cities but they could
not destroy us. They knew us as Nishada and Naga; they called us
Rakshasa, they burned the forests to destroy us and free the land to
fashion their agrarian society stamped with the hierarchy of caste.
They were the ones who remembered us as their enemies. Ekalavya was
one of our great archers, so skillful that the hero of the Aryans,
Arjun, could not stand before him. But they assaulted him, cutting his
thumb, destroying his ability to fight - and then fashioned a story in
which he accepted Drona as his Guru and agreed to surrender his thumb!
Ram was one of their heroes, given the task not only of destroying the
Dravidians but also of slaughtering the rakshasas in the forests.

Ashish Kothari

While the Indus civilisation was destroyed, its remnants absorbed into
and providing the foundation for the developing Indian civilisation,
our culture did not die. It is true that some of us were conquered and
turned into village-bound peasants, or, enticed by religious cunning
and the flourishing village society to become the Bahujans and Dalits
of that society, farmers, craftsmen, labourers. All of these sections
bear even today the marks of our democratic forms of government -
panchayats, collective traditions, clan solidarity. But in accepting
Brahmanism they accepted a tyranny of the mind, a poison of
superiority and inferiority, purity and pollution.

We who refused this, who were not conquered, who were not enticed, who
remained outside, who remained free - we are the Adivasis of today.
Not all of our cultures are the same. We speak different languages,
some Dravidian, some Mundari, some like those of the Nagas similar to
the languages of China and Tibet, some related to the languages of our
more caste-bound Indo-European speaking neighbors. Our religions are
also different. Some follow the sarna religion with traditions linked
to sacred grove, some know only the general sacredness of all nature
and its beings. However, whatever their variations, our religions are
of this world; we know nothing of karmakanda and moksha; our gods are
not divine beings of mystery beyond our ken, but people like
ourselves, our ancestors, even our friends.

Shyam Jagota

We fought the British colonisers when they came. Our heroes like Birsa
Munda, Khazya Naik, Tantya Bhil are remembered in our songs and
legends but forgotten in your textbooks. Why is this, you who are so
concerned about the history of national independence in your
textbooks? In many ways, though, the British conquered us more
thoroughly even than the earlier Aryans, taking away our autonomy as
they extended control over the forests, making us "encroachers" on
land that had been ours for ages. And they were the first to call us
"tribals," for thinking of us primitive was the only way they could
explain the difference between our equalitarian, community-oriented
cultures and the hierarchical lives of peasant caste societies. With
this, they romanticised us on the one hand, but also characterised us
as children and arrogated to themselves the authority to control our
lives and grab the wealth of the forests.

After Independence, with State control of the forests continuing, with
cultivators moving in to capture our lands, and companies moving in to
grab our timber, we became more "marginalised" than ever. Our
rebellions had forced the British to pass some laws to protect us -
but after Independence, those who held the land rights were called
"landlords" and the people who had been encroaching on our lands got
control over them as "tenants". The post-independent elites have
continued the policy of the British they claimed to fight, calling us
"tribals," treating us like conquered people, with few schools, no
industry, no development, and above all maintaining in their own hands
the control over our forest wealth.

Now as a result we have become landless labourers and poor farmers and
day labourers, and some, forced to migrate from lands we have known
for generations, the poorest of the refugees crowding the cities. You
call us "girijan" and "vanvasi" as if we only knew hills and forests.
We have the least education of all the Indian people and we are among
the poorest; it is only those Adivasi communities in the North east
who have States of their own who seem to have any prosperity, so not
surprisingly many of us fight for States like Jharkhand. Now you are
trying to weaken us with religious divisions, claiming some of us
"Hindus" and others "Christians," and inciting vicious attacks by your
thugs under the name of protecting Hinduism.

M. Anand

You constantly tell us to "join the mainstream" of independent India.
But what is this "mainstream" you speak of? Is it the mainstream of
cultures which force widows on to funeral pyres, of harassing young
brides for dowry, of mumbling chants and pujas in a language that not
even the priests really understand? Women in our societies may not
quite have full equal rights, and we should change that part of our
traditions that tries to keep them subordinate, that attacks them as
"witches" if they try to claim land rights. But they are still more
independent than women in the caste societies. Our young people chose
their own partners, and our weddings are more democratic - where one
Brahman or Christian priest controls the marriage ceremony among the
so-called great religions, in our traditions the whole community sits
together and announces its "agreement" to the marriage.

Finally, many of you romanticise us, and talk as if "development" is
something for others, as if we should be "tribals" forever and live in
a timeless world apart. We don't want to live apart, we want to be
part of a true mainstream of equality and liberty, one we will fight
for along with all others. We want schools, hospitals, education,
computers, but we don't want them as gifts, with you pretending to be
patrons. Give us back the lands and forests you have snatched away,
let us develop our own wealth, let us have the profits gained out of
sharing with the world our knowledge of medicines and herbs, and we
can have all the development we need, under our own control. We are
not against trade and exchange, but we want to be able to control the
terms and conditions on which we trade. We want a development that
will preserve the best parts of our culture, our sense of community
and collectivity, our equalitarian life, our freedom. We do not
believe that should be so difficult in the world today, but you seem
to be following a different path. And finally, why not drop such
senseless terms such as "Scheduled Tribe" and "anusuchit jamati" in
the Constitution also and call us by our proper name, "Adivasis"?

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070100.htm

Rethinking tribals
G. N. Devy

The author is engaged in documentation of tribal literature and is
Secretary for Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group.

Ever since the Portuguese travel writers and missionaries decided to
describe the vast variety of ethnic and occupational groups and sects
of the Indian subcontinent in terms of "caste" and "tribe", the terms
have stuck to society as long-worn masks that start becoming one's
real personality. The result is that today no Indian describes society
without taking recourse to the categories "caste" and "tribe". In the
initial period of India's contact with western nations the two terms
were used as synonyms, the difference lay only in the social status of
the groups they described. The synonymy was finally shattered through
a legal intervention by the colonial rulers when an official list of
communities was prepared by them (in 1872) as the list of tribes. A
similar list was prepared in the previous year for communities that
were mistakenly thought of as 'criminal' and were covered by the
provisions of an inhuman "Criminal Tribes Act of India, 1871." Since
then the "tribes" are perceived as a distinct segment of Society.

K. Ramesh Babu

In fact, it is necessary to recognise that every community has certain
"caste" characteristics and certain other "tribal" characteristics,
the degree of which may differ from community to community.

History has indeed been extremely unkind to the tribal characteristics
of the people. The entire burden of the logic and the rhetoric of
modernisation has sought to "detribalise" the vast range of
communities. Besides, those communities that are now marked as
"tribal" have not been viewed with any degree of respect by the
alienated middle classes and intellectuals. None of the brave fights
of the tribals against the British has ever been treated as part of
the "national" struggle for freedom. From the Bihar uprising of 1778
to Lakshman Naik's revolt in Orissa in 1942, the tribals of India
repeatedly rebelled against the British in the North-East, Bengal,
Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. In
many of the rebellions, the tribals could not be subdued by the
colonial might, but terminated the struggle only because the British
acceded to their immediate demands, as in the case of the Bhil revolt
of 1809 and the Naik revolt of 1838 in Gujarat.

The fact, however, is that there is so much in the tribal way of life
that the country needs to emulate. Tribals are not known for raping
their women, beating and abusing their children, exploiting nature
beyond satisfying the minimum human needs, lending money at interest,
burning widows, and above all things segregating and stratifying
labour in terms of caste.

A century and a half of deeply flawed education which has taught us to
ape the West in every respect, has also taught us to leave the tribals
out as the apes of the great Indian society. And, all that we have so
far doled out in the name of tribal policy is but an attempt at
extermination of tribal identity so that they remain without a voice
and make space for our progress, become our low-grade clones and
provide us with cheap labour. In the process, we have forgotten that
much that is valuable in society, culture and heritage is of tribal
origin, that in fact the tribal still has so much with him which we
stand to benefit by learning.

Aditya Dhawan

Rarely have we looked at the tribal communities as leaders, at least
in certain areas of life, who can reveal to us what civilisation truly
is all about. Hence at the turn of the century we must open this
question again and work towards formulating a comprehensive tribal
policy which will help both the nation and the tribal people. The four
principles that we must follow while conceiving such a policy ought to
be related to the recognition of the diversity of tribal communities,
their special educational needs, an utmost concern for their genetic
mutations, and the recognition of the peculiar character of tribal
polity.

It is necessary to recognise that all tribal communities are not
alike, that they are products of different historical and social
conditions and that they belong to four different language families
and several different racial stocks and animistic moulds. Some of them
belong to the primitive stock with a continuous cultural history,
others have been pushed out of the mainstream and have been "drop-
outs" of our main history, yet others are created by various legal and
economic interventions in society.

Therefore, no uniform policy is ever likely to benefit all tribal
communities throughout the country. Next, if the huge work-force has
to be given special skills which will improve their economic status,
the existing formalities for educational advancement will have to be
suspended, and a new kind of non-formal educational structure will
have to be evolved. Thus special tribal academies which combine the
merits of regular schools and the open universities will have to be
instituted.

A National Tribal Academy, to regulate the education network will have
to be created for this purpose. Similarly, those tribal communities
which have become victims of the mutated gene diseases, such as the
Korkus and the Bhils, will have to be provided with a special kind of
health monitoring system so that the country does not quietly write
off these as communities with defective genes. A close attention will
have to be paid by social medicine research to the incidence of sickle
cell disease.

Siddhartha Mitra

And finally, it is necessary to recognise that the tribal polity is
more closely regulated by the aesthetic pulse rather than ethical
drives, and, therefore the implementation of the tribal self-
governance provisions will have to go hand in hand with a special
programme for encouraging tribal arts, oral traditions and their
unique skill in craft. If we fail to recognise this difference which
is vital to the social organisation of tribal communities, and fail to
respect it, we will end up creating bands of forced nomads who will
multiply the urban chaos already overburdened with problems.
Ultimately, what is good for the tribals is also in the interest of
the national common good.

One would like to hope that the new millennium at last brings some
relief to the ninety million tribals and sixty million denotified and
nomadic tribals of our country.

However, the situation as it prevails now clearly indicates that these
are but pious thoughts. The entire lot of denotified tribals has been
left at the mercy of the crime-merchants. In their lifestyle, death in
police custody for men and getting sold several times over for women
is a routine experience. Neither the Central Government nor the states
has made any concrete plans for a long-term upliftment programme. And
whatever provisions do exist are not known to have ever reached the
target beneficiary. The situation is so alarming that in many states
the governments do not even have complete lists of the nomadic and
denotified groups.

The political leadership in tribal areahas been a victim of the party-
system. When the tribal representatives get elected, they quickly get
submerged in the main concerns of the party to which they belong; and
in these, there is at best a nominal place for the tribal issues. On
the other hand, when tribal masses express their dissent, it is
understood as an anti-state activity, resulting in an unnecessary
burden on the state- funds at one end and a blatant violation of human
rights at the other.

Dilip Sinha

Those tribals who have accepted facelessness as the only option for
survival and have migrated to cities have yet to find a place even in
the city slums. The slums too have their caste-structure; and tribals
do not fit into it easily. Their children remain without any education
and add to the already swollen ranks of child labourers.

Colonialism has left many undesirable legacies for us to negotiate.
But its impact on our self-perception has been among the most
disastrous of those legacies. The categories of "caste" and "tribe"
have coloured our vision of society so much that no time in the near
future will we be able to recognise the people we call tribals by any
other token but "tribal".

The new millennium policy therefore will have to be designed to create
a general respect for the term "tribal". Verrier Elwin had tried in
his time to create a sense of respect for tribals.

The policy of cautious intervention that he advocated unfortunately
turned, when put in practice under tokenism. Today, it is necessary to
think of a genuinely pro-active policy which is aimed at helping the
tribals by creating a favourable climate for the general tribalisation
of Indian communities. It is ultimately in the continuous segregation
of tribals with castes that will makes India a more humane culture. If
it happens, it will be a major battle won in favour of human dignity.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070060.htm

Through Adivasi eyes
Mari and Stan Thekaekara

Reams have been written about adivasis by so-called experts. Much of
it is subjective interpretation, an exercise I have always been wary
of indulging in. For this issue, therefore, my husband Stan and I
recorded reflections of different adivasis on how they view life,
their religion, politics, the past, the present and the world around
them. This then is what the adivasis themselves had to say.

Shyam Jagota

Govinda, a Mullakurumba elder from Onimoola hamlet, Erumadu village
began! "Thirty years ago we had hundreds of cattle. There was enough
manure to cultivate as much as we needed. Only after all the land has
gone do we understand the value of it. We used to hunt every week. We
were good archers. Now we sit at home even for Uchchar, our biggest
hunting festival. We used to make a kutty bow even for the tiniest
baby in the village. He had to hold this for Uchchar. When we had land
life was better. Now everyone has more money because they work as
labourers. But that cannot last you till you die. It's only for the
able-bodied, only as long as you can go for work."

On agriculture: "Our people prefer cowdung. You can see the places
where they have used "English vallam" (chemical fertiliser)." He spat
in disgust. "The soil is totally ruined. We never use "English
vallam". Our people can taste the difference in the rice grown with
"chanagam" (cowdung) and the other rice. We feel eating rice grown
with "English vallam" brings illnesses. For us whatever we get from
the land is enough. Our people were never greedy. We could have
claimed the entire hillside where we live. We didn't. Now we're hemmed
in by outsiders."

Chathi, a Paniya tribal leader from Kayunni grinned, "We say whatever
we get is enough. But our non-tribal neighbours say whatever they get
is not enough." Chathi who 10 years ago had never been out of his
Nilgiris district has been to Germany and back. Not for him an NRI
existence though!

Stan Thekaekara

"Life in Germany is good for the Germans," he announced wisely. "But
for me, my village is enough. Germany was nice, but it is like a
dream. When you wake up after a dream you remember the nice parts but
you do not expect to get all that you saw in the dream. What use is
money? I know people who have gone to Dubai and come back rich. But a
man must live among his people, his community, his gods. If I cannot
see these hills, these paddy fields, hear our adivasi children laugh,
hear our music and dance for our festivals, I would pine, grow sick
and die."

Shanthi, a Paniya school teacher was also invited to Germany. "My
father and the old people used to talk about the importance of
preserving our culture etc. But for me these were only words. When we
went to Germany thousands of people were willing to listen to our
stories, our music, to come and watch our dancing. I realised the
importance of sharing which we take for granted in our adivasi
society. People there who had lost their sense of community and
sharing envied us. Only then I realised how all this could slip away
if we don't hold on to it. Leaving home made us value our simple life
much more."

Ammani, a Paniya woman leader is typical of her tribe. Strong and
forthright, she told us a story of how she solved a family problem.
"My husband is very supportive and a good man. But he got into
drinking. It is something I wouldn't tolerate. We had decided in the
Sangam to fight alcohol. I warned him a couple of times. One Saturday
night, he turned up drunk again. I locked the door and told him 'you
can stay out all night, you won't enter this house drunk again'. It
was a hard decision because it was the monsoon. He begged me, 'I'll
get ill, how can you be so heartless?' But I steeled myself and let
him be. That was the last time he came home drunk."

Stan Thekaekara

Kapalla Chinnu's son Krishnan is a young Mullukurumba from Erumadu
village. He is a curious mixture. Worldly-wise yet appreciative of the
old ways. Everyone was discussing the budget. KCK was disgusted, "What
kind of government will hike the price of rice and kerosene and cut
the price of cell phones? And I thought the BJP would be better."
"You've seen the old and new ways. What do you think of the changes in
everyone's lifestyle?" We asked him.

"The sense of community is disintegrating," he began. 'Take a wedding.
Previously it was the entire community's responsibility. Everyone
helped. Everyone contributed. For my wedding I had to go away to
Gudalur for a day. The bunches of bananas had to be buried to ripen.
I'd forgotten. But someone else did it for me. I didn't even have to
ask. Everyone thinks for you. But when couples go off on their own,
they have to do everything themselves."

"There are new differences emerging. Earlier every family in the
village was more or less the same. Now if I decide to bring my child
up traditionally, I know in my mind that its the best decision. But my
neighbour sends his child for computer classes. What chance has my
child got with farming and hunting in today's world? When he grows up
won't he curse me for not educating him like the others?"

Stan Thekaekara

He laughed. "In the old days if a woman had ten children, everyone
looked at her with awe and said 'That's some strong woman, she's borne
ten children.' Our children were our wealth. Now they would look with
pity and say, 'Devamme (My god)! ten children! Poor thing she must be
some stupid ignorant woman.' Earlier, our children, the stock of
paddy, our cattle were the signs of wealth. Now it is only money."

Chathi moved to rituals. "When someone dies we question the gods. For
us gods and people are equal." KCK added, "We don't worship our gods.
That is the difference. We ask their advice, their help. But we scream
and curse them when someone is ill or dies."

Kali and Badchi, two Bettakurumba women added to this. "It is our good
fortune," Badchi explained "that our gods live with us in our villages
and among our people. So we don't have to go to find them in any
mosque, temple or church. Religion, the fuss about conversion, being
Hindu, Muslim or Christian is difficult to understand. For us the gods
are important not the religion."

Radhakrishnan, a Paniya leader from Devala was shocked when he visited
an old people's home in Germany. "At first we thought it was a
hospital. They told us 'no, they live there'. 'Why?' we asked. 'Do
they not have children?' 'Yes, but their children cannot take care of
them'. We could not believe it. This kind of progressive, wealthy
society we could not comprehend. We decided no matter how wealthy or
advanced we become, we must never let such a thing happen to our old
people, to our adivasi society."

And that, for me, said it all. Any further comment would be
superfluous.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070480.htm

Curators of biodiversity
Dr. K. K. Chakravarthy

The author is Director, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya
(National Museum of Mankind), Bhopal (MP).

The tribals of India have been seen by some developmental planners as
agents for the destruction of biodiversity though they are its
curators and victims of its destruction due to thoughtless
developmental interventions. Two hundred years ago, before the
establishment of British colonial rule, most of the Indians could
claim to be tribals, living in a state of harmony with organic and
inorganic communities in nature. The British created the issue of a
separate tribal identity by inventing categories like tribal and non
tribal, criminal and non criminal tribes, included or excluded
territories, to isolate rural Indian communities from one another. The
British opened up rural India to western technology - railways, roads,
banks, courts, forest contractors, liquor, flesh and poppy traders,
land grabbers, comprador and bureaucratic capital. With this began the
degradation of the biocultural habitats of rural Indian communities
and the erosion of their coevolutionary dependence on the country's
ecosystems.

Kamal Sahai

Because of their thin physical presence, the British had confined
themselves to indirect rule in India and their penetration in the
rural hinterland was thin. After their departure in 1947, the
destruction of biodiversity was accelerated by an interventionist
policy of development. Universal democratic mechanisms superseded
ecospecific community systems of subsistence, resource management and
self governance.

Internal colonial elites aligned themselves with external colonial
elites, to carry homogenising developmental processes, geared to mega-
irrigation, power, forestry, building and mining projects, into the
farthest hills and forests. Rural or tribal India continued to be a
stage affixed to urban India, and was subjected to the self assumed,
redemptive, civilising mission of the latter. The colonial
jurisprudential concepts of res nullius and terra nullius assigned
land and forest, that had not been assigned by the sovereign, and were
not under visible occupation, to the sovereign. These concepts have
been allowed, even after Independence, to supersede the precolonial
Indian jurisprudential approach, akin to lex loci rie sitae, whereby
law derives legitimacy from the relationship, traditionally
established by the people, with their land and forest.

In this manner, the biocultural democracy of Indian communities,
sustained by principles of symbiosis, reciprocity, diversity and
sustainability, are being eroded in the name of political and economic
democracy. Fragile and biorich ecosystems, like coast lines,
savannahs, mountains and rain forests, managed by tribal communities,
have been invaded by biocultural pirates. Whether it is in the primary
sectors of agriculture, industry or mining, secondary sectors of
drugs, chemicals and foods, or, in the tertiary sectors of education,
culture, and social services, social and ecological categories have
been steadily reduced to economic and industrial categories.

The tribal has been stereotyped as a consumer rather than as a
producer, since, as per colonising discourse, the tribal only
reproduces with nature, and the real production takes place in
organised factory or laboratory conditions. The role of the forest as
the source of physical and psychological sustenance for biocultural
diversity has been ignored for treating forest as a timber mine, for
monocultural commercial plantations, as empty land for development, as
carbon sink or ecological park. The consumptive tribal uses of
forestry for shelter, food, fodder, medicine, mulch, fire wood, has
been dissociated in planning from their non consumptive uses of
forestry, including photo synthesis, climate regulation, soil and
water conservation. The sui generis community intellectual property
right regimes of tribal stake holders and stewards of biodiversity are
being integrated into the western individualistic IPR regimes, without
their prior informed consent, consultation or compensation. The onus
of proof for establishing the novelty, uniqueness, stability,
uniformity or biosafety of tribal knowledge systems is being put on
the tribal community by individuals regarding, court, lawyer and money
mediated laws and institutions. As a consequence, there is a beginning
in the unprotected flow of knowledge from gene-rich India to the
capital-rich West, and a protected flow in the reverse direction.

The result, despite positive political, institutional and financial
commitment to tribal development, has been large scale displacement
and biological decline of tribal communities, a growing loss of
genetic and cultural diversity, and rising trends of shrinking
forests, thinning soils, sinking aquifers, crumbling fisheries,
surging temperatures, increasing unemployment, hunger and conflict.

The solutions are implicit in these problems. The developmental
planners have to stop acting as teleological agents of history and
refrain from appropriating biocultural diversity curated by tribals,
by treating them as passive objects of history. The affirmative
discrimination in favour of homogeneous developmental interventions
for the tribals has to be reoriented to replenish the variety of life
sustaining technologies, adapted by tribals in response to specific
agro climatic situations. The validity of slow track "tribal" science
has to be recognised over fast track "modern" science. High yielding,
fast growing, mass producible, monocultural, hybrid species adapted in
the green revolution in agriculture, white revolution in dairying,
blue revolution in fisheries, have to give way to the slow growing
poly cultural, natural species, grown, gathered or managed by tribals.
Support has to be extended to the variety of tribal water management
strategies of drip, terrace, diversion and least interference.
Different tribal architectural technologies, adapted to thermally
efficient local material, have to replace uniform use of steel,
concrete and glass. The diversified trophic base of tribals of
nutrient giving food and medicine, should be prized over a homogenised
trophic pattern, dependent on a few animal and plant families and a
limited fruit and cereal basket. The multiple forest use and
conservation approaches, adapted by tribals through niche
specialisation, seasonal restriction, restriction by life history
stages, sacred groves, should replace exploitative silvicultural
approaches.

The holistic, neurophysical, psychosocial folklore medicinal knowledge
of tribals should be processed into a digital bioinformatics data base
in global knowledge network for IPR protection. The developmental
process has to be enriched with inputs from the life enhancing
knowledge which has been codified, classified and communicated
transgenerationally through tribal oral traditions. The layering of
the languages of tribal cultures should be unravelled by linguists and
glottochronologists, to recover the blend of beauty and utility, form
and function, equity and efficiency in tribal biodiversity
conservation approaches.

Just as 95 per cent of the DNA has been dismissed as junk, valuable
crops and herbs as weeds and scrub because of ignorance about their
functions, so tribal knowledge about biodiversity protection has been
ignored as irrelevant. To the tribal, nature is homologous to the
maternal womb. It is a source of his affinity and consanguinity. Its
denizens, animate or inanimate, are his siblings, lovers and friends.
The hum of the forest, the wind, the dance of the fire fly, the stalk
of the crane, the prowl of the tiger are part of tribal dance and
music. Every pebble, river, mountain is instinct for them with life,
vibration and purpose.

Tribals officially constitute about 7.5 per cent of the country's
population. But, they have preserved 90 per cent of the country's
biocultural diversity. They have protected the polyvalent,
precolonial, biodiversity friendly Indian identity from biocultural
pathogens. The question of tribal survival is also a question of the
survival of this identity.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070280.htm

Treading lightly on earth
Ashish Kothari

The author is founder of Kalpavriksha, Pune.

It is a sign of our times that the one group of people who have hardly
participated in the global parleys on "sustainable development," are
the ones who probably live most sustainably. Adivasis in India,
natives in the Americas, aborigines in Australia... variously termed,
but all characterised by a lifestyle far more in tune with nature than
any of us who call ourselves environmentalists or eco-
developmentalists.

Amit Khullar

I do not pretend to know even a tiny fraction of the lifestyle of
India's adivasis, but can cite others who do. Adivasis consider
themselves a part of nature, not outside of it, and examples of this
abound. The widespread phenomenon of sacred spaces and species is well-
known: entire valleys in Sikkim, forest groves ranging from a few
trees to a few hundred hectares at thousands of sites across India,
totemic animal and plant species that are not exploited.
Anthropologist Savyasaachi details the universe of the Koitors of
Abujhmarh Bastar, in which a complex set of rituals combines rights to
use land and forests with the collective responsibility to protect
nature. Forests cannot be owned, as they are a creation of nature.
Even in shifting cultivation, universally condemned by the "modern"
agricultural scientist and the forester, there are rules on how to
treat the forest so that its regenerating capacity is not
extinguished.

Vasumati Sankaran tells us of the fishing methods of the Korkus of
Maharashtra. From temporary bunds across streams to the use of plant-
based poisons, these methods are sustainable and cause no irreversible
harm to aquatic biodiversity. My friend Madhu Ramnath, once a student
and scholar like many of us but with the guts to give up urban life
and take up long-term residence with adivasis in central India, gives
other examples. Forest-dwellers here tell of the changes in season, of
the oncoming rains, by close observation of the behaviour of flowering
plants, ants, and mushrooms. Deviations in the seasons are predicted
through deviations in this behaviour . . . with probably as much
accuracy as our sophisticated meteorological devices!

Are their footsteps still light?

Respect and even awe of the adivasi lifestyle cannot blind one to some
of the problems inherent in such ways of living, and the changes that
have taken place in them. Social, political, sexual, and many other
forms of exploitation have existed traditionally, and continue to
exist, in adivasi society. But the much more serious problem is the
way in which adivasi cultures and livelihoods have been transformed
over the last few decades.

Two simple stories tell it all. Madhu Ramnath recounts the changes
that came into the resource use patterns of adivasis in central India.
Traditionally, these people used to fish in a stream by making a
temporary barrage of sticks and stones, and using plant based poisons
to stun the fish. The barrage would be dismantled at the end of the
session. Then came the Kanger Ghati National Park of Madhya Pradesh,
with the objective of conserving the area's dwindling wildlife.
Fishing was banned. But the adivasis still needed fish for survival,
so they started sneaking in, swiftly killing fish with DDT, and
rushing out. The same people had a tradition, that the wild mango
trees in the forest would not be harvested till the birds had had
their first feed. This ensured that seeds were spread out through fall
of fruits or by animals, and hence the trees regenerated.
"Development," meanwhile, brought in a mango pickling plant in an
urban area nearby. With a great demand for raw mangoes, the villagers
began to pick the fruit even before it had ripened, thus hastening the
decline of wild mango in the area.

Ashish Kothari

Such stories can be told from virtually every part of tribal India.
Excessive and indiscriminate demand of the urban market has reduced
adivasis to raw material collectors and providers. It is a cruel joke
that people who can produce some of India's most exquisite
handicrafts, who can distinguish hundreds of species of plants and
animals, who can survive off the forest and the streams with no need
to go the market to buy food, are labeled as "unskilled" by our
economy! And it is supremely ironical that areas with the highest
deforestation rates in India include the predominantly tribal parts of
north-east India, where, till the Supreme Court recently put a halt,
timber logging was being carried out by the same communities that
earlier nurtured these forests. The reasons? The insatiable demand for
paper, plywood, furniture, housing, from the rest of India.

Centralised politics and governance have done as much damage as the
external market. Though Independent India's leaders appeared to give
special attention to the needs of adivasis, actual governmental
programmes have only served to destabilise the self-governance systems
in tribal areas. Universal franchise is fine as a principle of
democracy, but when it divides a hitherto well-united community
between two or more political parties, and when this causes the
breakdown of carefully evolved systems of common property governance,
we must question it. We must also cast a doubtful eye on centralised
resource management systems that are sometimes counterproductive. The
example of the Kanger Ghati National Park is symptomatic. Wildlife
conservation is a laudable aim, and protected areas are a powerful
tool for achieving this, but such steps can boomerang when they ignore
local human realities and sensibilities.

And so, in many parts of India, no longer are adivasis living "in
harmony with nature." But we who influence public policies and
programmes, for whom the markets and the State runs, must look within
ourselves for the reasons for this change. Fortunately, adivasis
themselves are forcing such a rethink among us.

Revitalisation and Resistance

G.B.Mukherji/Wilderfile

A quiet revolution is spreading through local communities. Alarmed at
the dwindling natural resource base around them, tired of waiting for
governments to deliver on promises, and concerned about the increasing
rootlessness of their own youth, adivasis and other communities have
begun reviving aspects of their culture and traditions that enabled
wise management of resources, and resisting external and internal
pressures of destruction.

At Mendha (Lekha), Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, a tiny village of
300 Gonds have stayed off a paper mill that was destroying their
forests, and halted (in association with thousands of other adivasis
of the area) two huge dams that would have submerged their lands. They
now protect and manage 1800 hectares of forests, including relatively,
sustainable extraction of bamboo and other products. They have
initiated livelihood programmes, built irrigation tanks and biogas
plants. But much more remarkable is the political, social, and
intellectual empowerment they have achieved. Through a unique
institution called abhyas gat (study circle), comprising villagers and
guest experts, they have striven to obtain greater understanding of
ecological, political, and policy issues. With the aid of local NGOs,
the villagers are now armed with a high degree of knowledge about the
policies and rules that impinge on their lives. And the gram sabha is
so powerful, that no government agency can now work in this village
without its permission. Such a movement of adivasi self-rule is
spreading in many parts of India, though not always with the same
successful results as seen in Mendha (Lekha).

Tribals and non-tribals have teamed up in several hundred villages of
Alwar district, Rajasthan, to regreen the land. With several hundred
small johads (checkdams) placed at sites chosen with local knowledge,
an area that was chronically drought-prone just 15 years back has
become water-surplus. Seasonal streams have become perennial,
catchment forests are reviving and being protected. Several villages
of the Arvari river basin have even formed a Arvari Sansad
(Parliament), for decisions regarding land, water, forest, and
agricultural use, and for dispute resolution.

Shashi Shetye

All these examples, customary or community-based rules of resource use
have been drawn up, some of them new. Residents are fined or
ostracised for violations. Major decisions are taken by the adults of
the village, not by a supposedly representative panchayat. Women are
encouraged to participate, though in many areas this is as yet far
from satisfactory.

Equally critical are the paths of resistance that many adivasi areas
are displaying. Koel Karo, Bodh Ghat, Inchampalli, Bhopalpatnam,
Rathong Chu . . . big dams that were proposed by our development
planners and would have destroyed adivasi homelands and forests, have
all been halted by mass movements. As part of the larger fishworkers'
movement, adivasis on our coasts are fighting off ecologically
destructive and economically inequitous commercial trawling and
aquaculture. At the Nagarahole National park, adivasi groups fought on
the ground and in the courts, to halt a luxury hotel project.

All the above examples do not yet amount to a comprehensive response
to the threat faced by adivasi cultures and the biological diversity
they live within. The overall slide continues. Mass hunting
(unsustainable and cruel in today's context), increasing consumerism,
and corruption among the tribal elite, remain burning. But these
examples of revival and resistance are signs of hope, indicators of a
growing trend. If the rest of India wants to, it can learn from them.
It can attempt to understand the dynamic nature of adivasi lifestyles
and traditions, to use sustainable practices as a mirror to showcase
our own rampantly destructive consumerism. It can respectfully give
much greater decision-making and planning powers to adivasi
communities, including in conservation programmes. In so doing, it can
jointly forge a way to once again live lightly off the earth. If, on
the other hand, adivasi India sinks with the sheer weight of our ill-
conceived development models and ideas of "progress," we too will sink
with it.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070300.htm

A symbiotic bond
Mari and Stan Thekaekara

The writers are with ACCORD, an NGO in the Nilgiris working for tribal
development.

"What do you see as the difference between your people (the adivasis)
and the others?" I asked Badichi, a Bettakurumba adivasi woman. We
were discussing religion and Badichi lived in a forest village called
Chembakolly in the Gudalur Valley of Nilgiris district. Her reply was
confident and direct. It left me absolutely speechless. "It is our
good fortune," Badichi explained, "that our gods live with us in our
villages all the time. We don't have to go to any church, mosque or
temple to find them, pray to them or offer puja. They are a part of
our lives."

K. Ramesh Babu

Adivasis or indigenous or aboriginal people the world over, have never
given a name to their religion. We knew all about the Bettakurumba
seances and calling of the spirits. But anthropology had programmed
us, putting everything into neat little boxes unimaginatively labelled
"animism" and "ancestor worship". Adivasis do not "worship" their
ancestors, although this is a long held anthropological fallacy. But
they revere the spirits of their ancestors and integrate them into
their society. These spirits return after death to guide and protect
the tribe.

Death in adivasi society is not seen as the end of life - it is an
integral part of life. The adivasis talk about the spirits of their
dead using the present tense enhancing the perception that the dead
are very much part of society still. When anyone dies their spirit is
gathered to the fold of the ancestors to remain forever with their
people.

This is a universal truth for all aboriginal and indigenous people
from Australia to Africa to North and South America. It is embodied in
the immortal words of Chief Seattle's speech in 1854 when the American
Indians surrendered their ancestral land to the white conquerors. "The
white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to
walk among the stars. Our dead never forget the earth for it is the
mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us."
The ashes of our fathers are sacred. Their graves are holy ground and
these hills, these trees, this portion of the earth is consecrated to
us." "You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet
is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land,
tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin'.

The same sentiments were echoed by the Kattunaicken, Paniyas and
Mullukurumbas we spoke to. Each tribe had different names for their
gods but they were kinship names like Mutthachan (grandfather) and
Ajji (grandmother). Their relationship with their gods was an equal
one. The Mullakurumbas who have much in common with the Keralite Nair
traditions often have Hindu gods and goddesses in their homes but
their everyday rituals remain linked to the ancestors. All the tribes
celebrate Sivaratri.

Mahasweta Devi points out that adivasis predated Hinduism and
Aryanism. She argues that Siva was not an Aryan god and that in the
8th century, the tribal forest goddess or harvest goddess was absorbed
and adapted as Siva's wife.

"Goddess Kali definitely had a tribal origin, the goddess of hunters"
asserts Mahasweta Devi. Kali and Mari are common adivasi names.
Religion and culture are inextricably linked to each other. Most
discussions on adivasi culture tend to dwell mostly on customs,
traditions, dress, dance, music and exotic rituals. However what has
struck us most forcibly after over a decade among adivasis, was the
fact that adivasi values are the most beautiful and least discussed
aspect of their lives. Their values are what make their lifestyle the
only truly sustainable one in the world. Anyone, anthropologist,
activist or humanist, who lives closely among these people comes away
convinced of the beauty and value of adivasi culture.

The whole of adivasi society is built on a rock solid foundation of
equality. It is based on an unconditional acceptance of all life forms
including trees, water, the earth. This acceptance is based on a
recognition of all things being mutually dependent on each other. What
is often referred to as their symbiotic relationship with nature.
Since this acceptance is total and unconditional, it automatically
means that the other person or element in a relationship is treated
with respect. Equality therefore in adivasi society is not some
distant dream or goal to be attained - it is an integral part of how
their society is structured. It is the natural outcome of treating
everything with respect.

People are given respect and status according to their contribution to
society but only when they are performing that particular function.
Hence a priest or hunter is treated with respect when he is calling
the gods or leading the hunt. After the event, he is equal to anyone
else in the village unlike in our society where priests, politicians
or officials are supposed to be treated with deference all the time.

Much of this attitude stems from the fact that it was a non-
acquisitive society. This non-acquisitiveness is the very core of
their culture and it impacts on everything - their relationship with
nature, their social environment and even on their economy. Hunter
gatherers collected what they needed, enough for the day. Then they
relaxed till the supply of food - tubers, fruit, fish or meat was
finished, before going out foraging again. People never had any need
to prove their wealth or status by accumulating possessions.

The way these values are integrated into everyday life is what
astounds people who live among them. We have seen children digging up
a tuber from the forest and then cutting out the eyes delicately and
replanting them with great care. They take from the earth just what
they need. But they nurture it because they respect it. Most of the
adivasis had utmost contempt for chemical fertiliser and pesticides,
what they termed "English manure". We get enough from the earth. And
the rice we get using chanagam, (cowdung) is tastier and good for
health. The other, chemicals, gives plenty but it leaves the soil
ruined. You must not treat the soil, the earth like that, "farmer
after farmer told us."

Yet, this attitude is constantly denigrated. They are written off as
lazy because they do not work from dawn to dusk in order to accumulate
gold, dowries, big houses or bank balances.

For most of us, sharing is linked to our concept of ownership. Where
does the issue of sharing arise if everyone owns everything equally?
"Sharing" in this case does not arise from the generosity of the giver
but is the inherent right of the receiver. This is part of the
philosophy of indigenous people. When the Mullakurumbas go hunting a
share is given to every family in the village, even those who were
absent, sick or could not participate. An extra portion is added for
any guest in the village and even non tribal passersby will be offered
a share. Not sharing is something they find difficult to comprehend.

"Over on Maanjeri hill you will find the turmeric, in the Padhari
river there are mussels. And if you will share with me your tobacco,
my friend, together we can go there".

This Paniya song captures the tribal attitude to knowledge and
education. Knowledge, like the land and the air and water is common
property - everyone must share it. Some Paniya would have discovered
turmeric on the Maanjeri hill and mussels in the Padhari river and
what does he or she do with this knowledge? No intellectual property
rights, or discovery patents here. On the contrary a song is composed
and sung - what better way of making it public. Not only is it made
public, it is also offered free - all that is asked in return is
companionship.

This attitude to knowledge has been constantly exploited by
researchers and scientists who claim "discovery" of some new flora or
fauna when in fact it was shown to them by adivasis who had used it
for centuries. It is the Columbus "Discovery of America" syndrome.

The main threat to adivasi culture and religious beliefs comes from
the fact that it does not exclude others. The very nature of this
philosophy has left them wide open to exploitation, both material and
spiritual.

The most difficult threat to deal with however, comes from the
onslaught of modern consumerist culture, cinema, popular music,
fashion, TV all of which combine to tell the young adivasi that in
order to be smart and fashionable they should modernise their dress,
language, manners and customs. Indeed this is an onslaught that all of
traditional Indian culture is facing. And the change in society is
visible.

Romanticising adivasi culture makes little sense. Somewhere, we need
to have a blend. An understanding that technology can be used to
create not merely a more comfortable world but a compassionate kind,
just, truly human one. A society that is driven not by the "market"
but by a vision for an equitable, decent world for all human beings.

We need the adivasi voice to resound, to be heard above the clamour of
the global marketplace.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070340.htm

Vicious cycle
Dilip D'Souza

The author was given a Fellowship by the National Foundation for India
to write about denotified tribes.

In 1871, the British passed the Criminal Tribes Act. It notified about
150 tribes ("communities" is probably a more correct word, but I will
stick to the more-used "tribes" in this article) around the country as
"criminal". It gave the police wide powers to deal with members of
such tribes, including restricting their movements and requiring them
to report at police stations regularly.

Tribal hunter's necklace, North East.
Picture courtesy the Crafts Museum, Delhi.

Independent India repealed this Act in 1952, thus "denotifying" these
tribes. That is why they are now called denotified tribes (DNTs).
Except that term is rarely used. Half a century later, they are still
nearly always referred to as criminal. While studying DNTs on a recent
fellowship, I heard industrialists, journalists, farmers and policemen
call them that. For there is a view that just will not die: DNTs are
congenital criminals.

And it is this view, more than anything else, that defines the way
DNTs live today.

A typical example is a report in The Telegraph (Calcutta) of July 31,
1998:

"Madhya Pradesh: Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has expressed concern
over a series of recent robberies in MP by Pardhi tribals, identified
as having criminal antecedents. These tribes (sic), listed as criminal
ethnic groups, have defied the efforts of the Government to
rehabilitate them. The CM said state projects to provide these people
with education did not have any impact on their criminal instincts."

"Criminal antecedents," criminal ethnic groups," "criminal instincts,"
this is the kind of language that is still routinely used to describe
DNTs. Now some of them do indeed commit crimes, and serious ones too.
Still, hardly all of them, and hardly on a scale that would justify
such a blanket prejudice.

If society and Governments look at "these people" this way, the police
is no exception. This means that DNTs are invariably the first
suspects in area crimes. What happens to them when rounded up is no
surprise: they are usually, and brutally, beaten. Sometimes they die.

In 1998, activists filed writ petitions about two such custody deaths:
one in the Bombay High Court and one in the Calcutta High Court. They
also informed the National Human Rights Commission about the two
deaths. In a little-known victory for justice, both efforts resulted
in compensation being awarded to the families. One came through a
direction from the NHRC, the other via a judgement in the Calcutta
High Court. While the compensation is welcome and may act as a
deterrent, the really revealing thing about these cases is what they
say about attitudes towards DNTs.

Examining police affidavits, I was astonished at how carelessly
drafted, almost deliberately filled with lame mistakes, they were. It
is as if these officers were arrogantly certain nothing could touch
them - even though they had hammered a DNT to death. It is as if they
considered laughable the mere thought of being accountable for a mere
DNT's murder.

Take the case of Budhan, a 30-year-old member of the denotified Kheria
Sabaras in Purulia Distirct, West Bengal. Taken into custody on
February 10, 1998, Budhan died in the Purulia Town police station on
February 17. The police claimed he committed suicide. In response to a
writ petition about his death (No. 3715 of 1998, Paschim Banga Kheria
Saber Kalyan Samiti vs State of West Bengal and Others, filed on
February 23, 1998), Purulia police officers filed several affidavits
in Court.

Consider these extracts.

On page three of his affidavit, Biplab Dasgupta, Purulia's Jail
Superintendent, says that as soon as he reached home that February 17
evening, he got a call about Budhan's death. "(I) rushed back," he
goes on, "and at about 6.25 p.m. I entered the jail . . . (and) found
the said Budhan Sabar lying on the floor (dead)." However, on page 10
of the very same affidavit, Dasgupta says

"I saw the body at 6.18 p.m. on 17-2-98."

One affidavit, one supposed event, two different times. A simple
mistake?

In paragraph three of his affidavit, Syed Liakat Hossein, the Sub-
Divisional Officer in Purulia, says: "I proceeded on February 17, 1998
to District Jail, Purulia, at 7-30 p.m. to inquire into the alleged
suicidal death of . . . Budhan Sabar." In paragraph 4 - the very next
one - Hossein says: "I entered into the District Jail . . . at 7.15
p.m. on February 17, 1998." And as if that 15 minute difference in
consecutive paragraphs were not enough, Hossein's Annexure "A" says:
"I proceeded to the District Jail, Purulia at 8.30 p.m. on 17-2-98 to
enquire (sic) into the alleged suicidal death of . . . Budhan Sabar."

One affidavit, one supposed event, three different times.

The jailer, Kumaresh Roy, began his statement thus: "While I was
working in the office on the evening of 14-2-98 . . . (I was informed)
that (Budhan) committed suicide in cell."

Apparently Kumaresh Roy could not be bothered to get even the date
right.

Ashoke Roy of the Barabazar Police Station was the officer who
arrested Budhan. In paragraph four of his affidavit, Roy says he
picked up Budhan for interrogation "in connection with Barabazar
Police Station Case no. 37/97 dated 15-9-97." (This was a bus robbery
Roy claims Budhan was a suspect in). In paragraph 10, Roy says:
"(Budhan) disclosed startling facts in connection with . . . Case no.
37/97 dated 5-9-97."

One affidavit, two different dates for Case No. 37 of 1997.

One or two such discrepancies might be put down to typos. But this
entire series speaks of an attempt to cover up: an attempt so shabby
that we must conclude that these officers were confident their
affidavits would not even be read. But they were. "(They were) several
other contradictions and inconsistencies in the affidavits," observed
Justice Ruma Pal in her judgment (July 6, 1998) in the case. "(T)here
is no credible evidence of the alleged suicide of Budhan."

Justice Pal ordered a CBI investigation into Budhan's death,
departmental proceedings against the police officers involved and
Ashoke Roy's transfer out of the district. She also awarded Rs.
2,00,000 compensation to Budhan's widow Shyamoli.

Good news, and yet this is just one case. The attitudes in those
affidavits are what DNTs all over the country face every day, right
now. Potential harrassment is a constant preoccupation. The chances of
being reasonably treated if arrested are minimal. Rights and justice
are utterly unknown concepts.

All this, because of the easy belief that DNTs are criminal.

The result is the profoundly insecure lives DNTs live. Their huts are
regularly demolished by expanding municipalities; they must live
outside village limits; villagers do not like DNT children in schools;
one or the other member of their little communities is constantly in
jail and cases drag on in court; and periodically one or the other
member is beaten to death.

Any wonder, then, that many DNTs are still largely nomadic? And their
wandering lifestyles fuel still more suspicion. That vicious circle
has a lot to do with the state's continuing willingness to view DNTs
as criminal, to treat them that way.

To kill them that way.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070360.htm

A better quality of life?
Dr. Roopa Devadasan and Dr. N. Devadasan

The World Health Organisation defines health as a complete state of
physical, mental, social, and spiritual well being and not merely an
absence of disease. The common man, the world over understands this
better than many health professionals, and no one is better placed
than the adivasis to actualise this state of well being; for as
communities they have not lost a holistic vision of life.

M. Anand

Unfortunately, in society, the polarisation between the rich and poor
is increasing. Adivasis in India are struggling to make both ends
meet. Displaced from their natural forest habitats, their economic,
social and psychological poverty is steadily increasing. It is in this
context that we must look at tribal health.

Tribals in different parts of India, and even within the same
geographic regions are at different stages in this transition. At one
end of the spectrum are those "untouched by civilisation". These
groups still inhabit the forests that are closely linked to every
aspect of their lives. It must be stressed that these people generally
enjoy a healthy lifestyle. Their daily routines with periods of work
and rest are linked strongly to seasonal cycles. They often have a
balanced diet accessed through agriculture, hunting and food
gathering. Here people's concept of health is more functional than
biomedical, in that a person is considered healthy unless she/he feels
incapable of doing normal work assigned to that age/ sex in that
culture. The cause of illness is also attributed to specific acts of
commission or omission, "spirits", or in some cases physical factors
in the environment. Healing can take place through a herbal
preparation or an act of atonement, all advised by a shamanic medium.
This scenario is steadily changing, and will rapidly be a thing of the
past.

At the other end of the spectrum is the adivasis displaced completely
from the forest, whose modern lifestyle mirrors many of the problems
of our age. As opportunities in mainstream society are limited, these
people suffer all the ills of the very poor. In addition, they suffer
social discrimination as the outside world has a stereotyped image of
the "uneducated junglee". Through interaction with other groups in
society, they may follow a more clinical/ biomedical model of health
and disease and accept other systems of medicine - allopathy, ayurveda
and siddha. However, as there is a difference in the very expression
of the symptom complex, understanding of the causation of illness and
even the language used for communication, there can be huge gaps in
the process of healing.

The vast majority of tribal people lie somewhere in between these
poles.

The list of illnesses that they suffer from is similar to their non-
tribal counterparts. They suffer from communicable disease and non-
communicable, lifestyle induced disorders, the proportions varying,
depending on which pole they are closer to. A minority suffers from a
few genetically determined disorders like sickle cell anaemia,
thalassemia and G-6-PD deficiency. The difference lies in the extent
of suffering that the tribal undergoes, which is further accentuated
by an unsympathetic health service. The derogatory behaviour of the
staff undermines their confidence and self-esteem and builds on their
existing fear. This is turn results in a tremendous reluctance to
approach the health services. A classic example of this is the high
maternal mortality among their women.

Our own experience in understanding tribal health needs stemmed from
our trying to respond to the needs of the five tribal groups living in
the Gudalur taluk of the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. As fresh graduates
with a strong community health training from CMC Vellore, we joined
the NGO-ACCORD in 1987 and started looking for solutions. Greatly
supported by the community organisation work that had already begun
among the tribal people to fight for their land rights, the sanghams
and the health workers that they chose became our partners in the
search. We discovered that whenever the hamlets had access to forest
and land they were never impoverished, nor their children
malnourished. The bountiful Mudumalai forests met all their basic
needs. When dispossessed of their basis resources like land, or access
to forest, they quickly fell prey to their exploitative non-tribal
neighbours, and soon found themselves in debt.

Caught in this trap, their predominant emotions were fear and
mistrust. The attitude of these non-tribals (ranging from their
neighbours to the health professionals) did not help. So they
preferred to die a dignified death in the village rather than seek
medical help.

The village health workers through sheer hard work and perseverance
were able to build their faith in the alternative allopathic system we
proposed. As we went along we learned to look at health through their
eyes and facilitated their own system of healing being transferred
wherever we could. While we started out hoping that as the fear went
they would slowly access the government systems, with time we realised
the futility of expecting the Government Taluk hospital and the
Primary Health Centres to function. In 1990, the Gudalur Adivasi
Hospital came into being, now a 30-bedded institution owned and run by
the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam. In keeping with all the lessons learned,
the staff is entirely adivasi and their own philosophy and culture
provide the foundation for its management.

In terms of a learning experience that has also been validated in
other tribal belts in the country, some things are outstandingly clear
and bear reflection and acting upon. There is an immense need for
sympathetic sociological research towards improving the quality of
life of the adivasi people. For raising the level of health for these
people, a multisectoral, holistic effort must be implemented. It is a
myth that tribal people do not utilise modern systems of medicine.
Rather poor utilisation is due to geographical, financial and socio-
cultural barriers. Inefficiency and lack of accountability of the
health services and the ever-present corruption only add to the
problems of these people. Finally, in the context of the growing
concerns about the ecosystems and environment, an increasing interest
in herbal remedies, and a return from the reductionist scientific view
of health to a more holistic perspective, we have much to learn from
the adivasis. After all their very survival from another era must
teach us something.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070380.htm

A history of alienation
Pankaj Sekhsaria

The author is an environmental activist with Kalpavriksh, Pune.

The history of the Andaman and Nicobar islands is today a conveniently
comfortable one: of the British and "Kalapani"; of World War I and the
Japanese occupation, of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Veer Savarkar,
the first hosting of the Indian National Flag and of modern mini India
where all communities and religions live in peace and harmony.

Pankaj Sekhsaria

But like all histories, this one too, is incomplete. It is the story
of the victors, of the people who have today come to dominate these
islands. The vanquished as they say, have no tales to tell. The
history of these islands as we tell it, as we are told it is, is
silent in many parts. There are gaping holes that are conveniently
allowed to remain so.

This history says nothing of the past, the present and the future of
those people and communities that originally belong to the islands.
For that matter, the islands belong to them, but ironically the people
who write the history are we, the modern democratic Indian state. The
people in question are the ancient tribal communities that live here,
particularly the negrito group of the Andaman islands - the Great
Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa and the Sentinelese. These are
communities that have lived and flourished here for at least 20,000
years, but the end could well be round the corner. Just a 150 years
ago the population of the tribal communities was estimated to be at
least 5,000. Today however, while the total population of the Andaman
and Nicobar islands has risen to about four lakhs, the population of
all these four communities put together is not more than a mere 500.

These communities of thousands of individuals with a living lineage
going back to 20,000 years have been brought to this sorry state in a
mere 150 years. It definitely began with the British and their
policies. And was continued with clinical efficiency (sic) by modern
independent India.

Pankaj Sekhsaria

Independent India was only about a couple of decades old, a young
thriving democracy as would have been called then. But this vibrant
democracy was then already set on course to becoming a coloniser
itself. From colony of the British to coloniser of the Andaman islands
(and many other places too), the step for India was an amazingly easy
one, almost, it would seem, a natural one! In the late Sixties an
official plan of the Government of India to "colonise" (and this was
the term used) the Andaman and Nicobar islands was firmly in place.

The forests were "wastelands" that needed to be tamed, settled and
developed. It did not matter that these forests were the home of a
myriad plants and animals that had evolved over aeons. It did not
matter that ancient tribal peoples were already living here for
centuries, neither that they were physically and spiritually sustained
by these forests. The idea that forests could mean more than just the
timber the trees provided had not even taken seed in the national
consciousness. The Nehruvian dream of massive industrialisation was
still calling and the rich evergreen forests of the islands promised
abundant timber to fuel it. The tribals, too, had to be civilised;
brought into the Indian mainstream. There was no question of trying to
understand, forget about asking what was it that the Onge, the
Andamanese or the Jarawa wanted themselves.

Tribal cultures the world over are intricately linked with the forests
they live in. The story or should we call it the "history" of modern
civilisation is largely one of the taming and the destruction of the
great forests of the world and the innumerable tribal communities that
lived therein. The Andaman islands is a good example. By various
means, both intended and unintended, the tribal communities have been
constantly alienated from their forests, their lands and their very
cosmos that is built around all these. One of the subtle but classic
examples is the Hinduisation of the name Andaman itself and the
attempt to pass it off as the only truth. The standard and universal
answer to the question of its origin is the well known Hindu god
Hanuman. That the state too conveniently believes this is evident from
the fact this is the story that goes out in the sound and light show
that plays every evening at the Cellular Jail in Port Blair. No one is
bothered that there are many other explanations why the Andamans is
called so. Researches On Ptolemy's Geography Of Eastern Asia," a book
written by Colonel GF Gerini in 1909 makes incredible reading in this
context, but obviously not many have bothered to read it. It is hardly
surprising then that we care even less to know what the tribals call
these islands.

Pankaj Sekhsaria

The repercussions of this dominant mindset is all too evident when one
looks at what is happening to the forests and the tribal communities.
The Great Andamanese have been wiped out as viable community. This
community which had an estimated 3,000 members about a 150 years ago,
is today left with only about 30. The Onges of the island of Little
Andaman (they call it Egu-belong) today number only 100. The 1901
census estimated it to be 601. Till a couple of years ago the Jarawa
were extremely hostile to the outside world. This hostility and self-
maintained isolation in the impenetrable rainforests of these islands
had ensured that their community, culture and forest home remained
intact and unharmed. It was however, never our intention to let them
be. The Andaman Trunk Road was constructed through the heart of the
very forests the Jarawa call home. It destroyed precious forests and
bought in various developments that are proving to be disastrous for
the Jarawa. As a result of a combination of such factors, most not
known or understood, the Jarawas recently shed their hostility and
have begun to come out from their forests "voluntarily." It could well
be the first step on the route that the Great Andamanese and the Onge
were forced to take many decades ago. Annhilation! A huge epidemic of
measles recently affected the Jarawa and a number of them are
undergoing treatment for tuberculosis.

The lessons of history have not been learnt. May be they are being
deliberately ignored. It could well be worth our while to get these
tribals out of our way. Only then can the precious tropical hardwoods
that stand in their forests and the very lands that these forests
stand be put to "productive" use. Little Andaman is a classic case.
Thousands of settlers from mainland India were brought and settled
here and the forests were opened up for logging in the early Seventies
as part of the "colonisation" plan. An Onge tribal reserve was
created, but for more than a decade now this reserve has been violated
for timber extraction. The attitude of the settlers who today live on
the land that belongs to the Onge only reflects that of the powers
that be. They ridicule the tribals as uncivilised junglees. Vices like
alcoholism were introduced; the addiction is now used by the settlers
to exploit the resources from the forests. Poaching and encroachment
inside the Onge reserve too, are ever on the increase.

In the early Sixties, the Onge were the sole inhabitants of Little
Andaman (Egu belong). Today, for each Onge, there are at least 120
outsiders here and this imbalance is rapidly increasing. What more
needs to be said?

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070400.htm

Cultural expressions
Jaya Jaitly

The author is President of the Samata Party.

The organising of Indian society has been among the most highly
complex in the world and its intricacy and depth have contributed to
its great endurance over two millions. A Hindu society divided into a
hierarchy of castes and considering itself amenable to change and
advancement but only within the compartments of caste, has found no
spiritual conflict in living with tribal societies which have their
own highly sophisticated social mechanisms while being considered
simple and primitive. Many scholars believe that rigid Hindu society
in fact had a subterranean need for the vitality, robustness and
sensuality of the tribal cultures, and thus constantly reinvigorated
itself with facets of these cultures.

V. Muthuraman/ Wilderfile
Toda temple.

According to Richard Lannoy in The Speaking Tree, a study of Indian
culture and society, "Every well-documented case of a great creative
Indian personality abounds in evidence of such contacts with the non-
rational culture of excluded peoples and classes". The major waves of
ingress into India divide the tribal communities into the Veddids,
similar to the Australian aboriginies, and the Paleamongoloid Astro-
asiatics from the north-east. Some of them evolved group totemism
which can still be seen in the Birhore tribe of the Chota Nagpur
region of Bihar. The Mongoloids who spread further into Bihar and
Orissa are the Mundas of today. The third were the Greco-Indians who
spread across Gujarat, Rajasthan and Pakistan from Central Asia.

Wooden tribal mask, Bastar, M.P.

Caste Hindu society never consciously tried to assimilate tribal
communities into their fold but in the process of economic, cultural
and ecological change, tribals have attached themselves to caste
groups in a peripheral manner and the process of de-tribalisation is a
continuous one.

The most significant forum for interaction between tribals and caste
Hindus has been at weekly village markets. Artisan castes have
traditionally produced and marketed their wares at these haats and
consequently moulded them to suit the tastes and needs of their local
clientele. In Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh where the tribal
population is considerable there are also a preponderance of village
haats. In the north-east too there are large and small marketplaces
where tribal women sell their handloom textiles, medicinal herbs,
foodstuff and various types of forest produce. Handcrafts combs, mud
pots, bamboo, baskets, musical instruments and wooden cooking
implements are among the items that may be termed as tribal products.

K.Ramesh Babu

While it may be stated that any hand-made item for decorative,
ritualistic or utilitarian purpose within their cultures can be termed
as tribal craft, it may not necessarily be true that all such items
are made by the tribals themselves. In areas where the population is
largely caste Hindu in composition, the crafts made for tribals are
often actually fashioned by Scheduled Caste artisans and mistaken for
tribal crafts in urban minds. What is interesting however, is that as
in Orissa, many of the Hindu communities have absorbed the cultural
practices of the tribals.

Courtesy: The Ford Foundation, New Delhi.
Warli tribal painting.

Festivals, wedding rituals, and other forms of social interaction
follow all the tribal procedures. The articles they manufacture for
tribal votive offerings at times of marriage, sickness, birth and
death thus acquire a personalised meaning for the producer. While
studying the lives and markets of such artisans it was found that in
areas of missionary activity, where tribals were converting to
Christianity and giving up the use of votive objects such as dhokra
metal figurines, artisans were fast losing the clientele that
sustained them and were having a seek markets for their products in
larger cities through development agencies and government
organisations. Age old cultural-economic links are thus breaking down
as a result of social change. The process of industrialisation also
replaces artisan products at village markets. Metal buttons, hair
clips, combs and other forms of female fashion accessories among
tribals are giving way to fluorescent plastic substitutes leaving the
already impoverished Scheduled Caste artisan further deprived.

In Bihar many social work and development oriented organisations work
among tribals to bring them a modicum of education, health and
sanitary conditions. Among them the Birhore tribals have seen
remarkable change in the past few years. Highly skilled in producing
woven cloth for saris, lungis and scarves, grass baskets, hats and
fans, they have been gradually brought out of their cave-like
dwellings and have begun to discover the possibilities of using their
skills to produce articles suited for urban needs. The Rathwas of
Chota Udepur in Gujarat are another tribe discovering the urban world
through their craft skills. They fashion semi-glazed pottery, the
forms of which are highly aesthetic and sophisticated. Women use their
leisure hours to make head necklaces and the men recently learned the
more "settled" skill of wood carving to make distinctive statuettes.

Marie D'Souza/ Fotomedia

The most significant forms of creative expression of the Rathwas are
their ritual wall paintings pertaining to the myths of creation and
their deities, Babo Ind and Babo Pithoro. Mythological ideas of the
Rathwas combining realism and symbolism, are depicted on walls in
their homes and elaborate rituals are conducted in the process of
their making and consecration. The Warli tribes of Thane in
Maharashtra, the Gonds of Madhya Pradesh, the Rathwas of Gujarat all
express an energetic assertion of adivasi cultural identity through
their paintings at a time of socio-political change.

Outstanding innovators like Jivya Soma (Warli), Jangadh Singh Shyam
(Gond) and Mansingh Rathwa (Chota Udepur) ared bringing their
community art greater recognition and encouraging others to present
their work to an urban and international audience. But today these
paintings are also being done on cloth and paper and sold as tribal
art, and when the paintings are further translated onto modern utility
items they will, no doubt, enter the world of "tribal craft" as a
rather sad transformation of myth and cosmos to market and commerce.

Almost all tribals (except in the north-east and Lakshadweep)
characteristically adorn themselves with many silver, white metal or
brass ornaments ranging from hair clips and combs to necklaces, shirt
buttons, earrings, armlets, bangles, waist belts and anklets. Even men
use ornamental shirt buttons and wear earrings and amulets. These
items are generally made by settled Hindu and Muslim artisans and is
applicable also to the nomadic communities of Jammu and Kashmir. The
Gujjars and Bakarwals descend from the Greco Indians and are
interrelated with the Gujjars of Gujarat and the tribes settled around
Gujranwala in Pakistan. Their finely embroidered caps, mirrorwork
embroideries (Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh) and distinctive freestyles
consisting of innumerable tiny braids and ornamental hair clips have
offered ideas for the designs of the "ethnic chic" style of urban
fashion. Their embroidered blankets and quilts use geometric motifs
common to Punjabi phulkaris, Iraqi rugs and Central Asia textiles.

Tribal communities are greatly fascinated by the comb. They are made
of wood, bamboo, horn, metal, yarn wound onto wood, root fibre, gum or
latex from trees. Patterns and designs vary according to communities.
Not only are they used for setting the hair in place but as necklaces,
gifts, sacred objects, magic rituals and as a form of communicating
affection to a loved one. Tribes in Orissa who specialise in comb
making are the Santhalis, Dharnas, Koyas, among others. Most tribes in
Madhya Pradesh and Nagaland also make distinctive combs, while in
Thana Mandi in Jammu a small oil container within the comb releases
oil into the hair while combing.

Tribal textiles almost always demonstrate the identity of the
community. Border designs and colours used for sarongs or shawls
define the village of the tribe. Motifs in the north-east symbolise,
mountains, streams, houses, snakes, birds or a temple. Specific
colours are worn by designed priests on ritual occasions. There are
ways of differentiating between a shawl woven by a hill tribe and a
plains tribe and the chieftain's shawl is always distinct. Sometimes
shawls are woven by one tribe and embroidered by women in another
tribe, as among the Dongrias and Damas in Orissa. The use of the
colours symbolise forest, fertility, unity and peace, gods and the
sacrifices of animals.

Aditya Dhawan

Close knit communities like the tribals interweave their forms of
cultural expression. Painting, wood carving, weaving, songs,
festivals, birth, death, animals and forests are components of a cycle
which metamorphose together to give their philosophy and understanding
of the cosmos a holistic dimension. Artefacts such as cattle belts,
buttermilk churns, spice grinders, blankets, jewellery, totems,
garments and votive articles have the unmistakable imprint of
community identification. It is only after these serve their basic
purpose., whether ritualistic or utilitarian that they become crafts
for the marketplace. A better understanding of their skills and
offerings to the composite culture of India will help in preserving
the true value of these crafted objects.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070420.htm

A Toda friend
S. Anandalakshmy

The author is a Consultant in Child Development and Education.

While sorting out papers, letters, slides and photographs as a
necessary antecedent to moving house (a moving experience in more ways
than one: the past keeps appearing in more rapid flashbacks than in an
Ingmar Bergman film), I came upon an archival picture of a beautiful
Toda woman that I had taken in 1975 in New Delhi. It was Pelgiji, with
her hair worn in ringlets, deep set eyes and a wonderful dignity of
bearing. What a presence! Befriending her was not difficult and I
found that what we shared as persons seemed much larger than what we
did not share in customs and rituals. But let me begin at the
beginning of the story.

S. Anandalakshmy

The year was 1975, the month, November. Delhi was pleasantly cool in
the early winter and the Mandi House area was the hub of the Universe.
Naturally! A crafts show with a difference was being held, titled
"Craftswomen at Work." The women had gathered from all over the
country and the exhibition area in the interior of Rabindra Bhavan had
become a hive of activity. One could see the process of something
being made, seeing it grow, evolve, become more complex, get
embellished or get transformed. The variety was astounding: Zardosi
from U.P., delicate bamboo baskets from Tripura, a Kalamkari hanging
from Andhra Pradesh - the list was unending, seemingly. It was greatly
satisfying to make a transaction directly with the artist. While
moving around, one came upon two Toda women, doing their traditional
red and blue embroidery, on table linen and household linen,as well as
on shawls. The Ooty of one's childhood was instantly revived and I
spoke to them. "You can speak Tamil?", they asked with joy. "There is
no one here we can talk to. Our words are getting stuck in our
throats." I invited them to have a meal with me in my small apartment
at the College and then go sightseeing on Sunday.

When asked what they wanted to see in Delhi, they said, "Gandhi
Samadhi" and "Nehru Samadhi". I included the Red Fort also in the
itinerary and they were thoroughly happy. At lunch and in transit to
the various sites, we talked. I found that the name Pelgiji meant the
sound of silver bells and she lived up to her name, while her
companion took part mostly with nods and smiles. Pelgiji told me that
the land that the Todas held dated back to a pact with the British.
Each family had access to 15 acres of land, which the young male got
when he turned 21. No one was allowed to cultivate more, even if some
land was lying fallow. Only men could enter the house of prayer and
the entire community was cohesive and tightly controlled.

Pelgiji mentioned that her husband, Muthakken would be coming to Delhi
for the Republic Day the next year and that she would suggest that he
call on me. (That cordial visit did happen).

I got a standing invitation to visit Ooty as their guest - an offer I
regret not taking then. Twenty five years later, if I do go, will they
remember me? I wonder.

A Toda friend
S. Anandalakshmy

The author is a Consultant in Child Development and Education.

S. Anandalakshmy

Pelgiji mentioned that her husband, Muthakken would be coming to Delhi
for the Republic Day the next year and that she would suggest that he
call on me. (That cordial visit did happen).

I got a standing invitation to visit Ooty as their guest - an offer I
regret not taking then. Twenty five years later, if I do go, will they
remember me? I wonder.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0007/00070500.htm

Poor health services plague Thane Adivasi area
Meena Menon

Funds are there but the healing touch is missing; comunity-based
monitoring undertaken

Post-mortem: A public hearing in progress under the National Rural
Health Mission at Sayvan village in Maharashtra on Thursday. — Photo:
Handout

SAYVAN (Thane district): “I brought my wife to the Sayvan primary
health centre when she was bitten by a dog, but they asked me Rs. 50
before treating her,” said Janu Babar. He did not know that treatment
for dog bite is free for Adivasis. They just have to produce a below
poverty line (BPL) card. If they don’t bring the card, they will have
to pay Rs. 50 as refundable deposit. Eventually, Janu paid Rs. 120 to
get his wife Devli treated in a private clinic.

This was one of the issues raised at a public hearing on the National
Rural Health Mission (NRHM) at the Sayvan PHC in Dahanu taluk on
Friday. The exercise is part of community-based monitoring of health
services being conducted in five districts of Maharashtra.

Out of Maharashtra’s annual budget of Rs, 1,000 crore under the NRHM,
only Rs. 860 crore was spent last year, according to Dr. Nitin Jadhav
of Sathi, State coordinator for community-based monitoring. Before the
hearing, NGOs conducted a study of the five villages which come under
the PHC, catering for a population of 41,000.

A report card of the study presented at the hearing, presided over by
Dr. Anand Phadke of CEHAT, an NGO, revealed that the situation is
quite serious in four villages where the people did not even recognise
the multipurpose health worker (MPW). In some cases, the auxiliary
nurse and midwife (ANM) did not perform her duties. Medicines are in
short supply and the State has no stock of tetanus injection. The ANMs
spend their money to buy it and get reimbursement later.

The area, inhabited by Adivasis, has reported cases of malnutrition,
infant and maternal mortality. Last year in one hamlet alone, four
infant deaths were reported. However, the NRHM is supposed to provide
“untied funds,” as Dahanu taluk health officer Madhukar Rathod pointed
out. At the public hearing at Ganjad on Thursday, he said it was
raining money. Each PHC gets Rs. 1.75 lakh while sub-centres are given
Rs. 10,000 for expenses.

Of the Rs. 32-crore budget for Thane district last year under the
NRHM, Rs.19 crore was spent, Dr. Rathod said. Despite all this money
coming in, the situation had not improved. More serious was the
problem of doctors not attending to patients and people having to pay
for services.

At the Ganjad hearing, an Adivasi complained that she was refused
treatment for a badly cut hand when she went to the PHC at 7 a.m. on a
Sunday. She had to go to another hospital, where 18 stitches were put.
When the two PHC doctors were asked to explain, they said it was too
early on a Sunday and so they did not treat the woman, according to
Dr. Jadhav.

When Bharati Mahale took her sister-in-law to the Sayvan PHC for
delivery, no doctor was present and she was asked to take the pregnant
woman to the sub-district hospital at Kasa, 15 km away. The ambulance
driver charged her Rs. 150 for diesel. At Kasa, the doctor made them
wait and when Bharati lost her patience, she was almost assaulted. Her
sister-in-law was then taken to a private hospital and Bharati had to
pay another Rs. 300 towards diesel charges.

It is not only patients, doctors too are suffering. T.R. Bansode,
medical officer of the Sayvan PHC, said he had not been paid salary
since March. The PHC itself is a shambles, there is no water and
electricity. The operation theatre remains closed and the delivery
room is dusty. The laboratory is non-functional.

The rain of money has not helped much. Kavita Raote, who had a second
daughter three months ago, said the infant was not vaccinated. It was
a home delivery, but no ANM visited her within a week, which is
mandatory. Kavita is entitled to Rs. 800 under the Matrutva Anudan
Yojana and Rs. 500 under the Janini Suraksha Yojana, but she got no
money under either scheme.

Sunday, Jun 22, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/22/stories/2008062260321100.htm

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/d2734fc660ba30b2/c752914fc1013d5a?lnk=gst&q=Troubled+Tribal%3A+Sid+Harth#c752914fc1013d5a

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/f987a031d68f7ce1/4565d2c6c5bc61c0?lnk=gst&q=Troubled+Tribal%3A+Sid+Harth#4565d2c6c5bc61c0

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/browse_thread/thread/810eae7dd0a55571/e33227b0fae866ca?lnk=gst&q=Troubled+Tribal%3A+Sid+Harth#e33227b0fae866ca

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/8a1efe054a3bf157/1b416b79cddb669b?q=Troubled+Tribal%3A+Sid+Harth&lnk=ol&

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/a531986567d15041/d36f8c826a52f371?q=Jyoti+Basu&lnk=ol&

bademiyansubhanallah

unread,

Mar 26, 2010, 4:26:06 AM3/26/10

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Shatrughan-treads-cautiously-on-Gadkari-issue/595567

Shatrughan treads cautiously on Gadkari issue
Agencies

Posted: Thursday , Mar 25, 2010 at 1341 hrs
Indore:

After pointing a figure at the BJP President Nitin Gadkari over the
composition of his team, actor-turned-politician and party MP
Shatrughan Sinha has now chosen to tread cautiously over this issue.

The Bollywood Shotgun, in his typical thunderous voice, said "Khamosh"
but added that he calls a "spade a spade" when the scribes asked him a
question in connection with Gadkari here last night.

The Patna Saheb MP, who was here to promote his son Luv Sinha's film
`Sadiyaan', said self-confidence was the key to his success in films
and politics.

To a question on BJP, the 64-year-old former Union Minister said he
was talking to the media in capacity of a father not a politician.

On March 20, Sinha had said it was unfortunate that senior leaders
like C P Thakur and Yashwant Sinha have been left out of Gadkari's
team, and that all was not well in the BJP.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Shatrughan-treads-cautiously-on-Gadkari-issue/595567

Kishenji might be injured or even dead, say police
Kolkata, March 26, 2010

First Published: 08:34 IST(26/3/2010)
Last Updated: 08:37 IST(26/3/2010)

Kishenji, the elusive Maoist leader, might have been injured in a 12-
hour-long gunbattle between the rebels and the security forces near
Lalgarh, around 160 Km southwest of Kolkata.

A senior police official of West Midnapore, not willing to be quoted,
informed that Koteswara Rao alias Kishenji, was likely to be seriously
injured in the exchange of fire that took place at the Hatishol forest
close to Lakhanpur village, around 8 Km east of Lalgarh, since 6 am on
Thursday.

"Our ground level sources at Lakhanpur have informed us that around 15
Maoists have died in the battle. While a section of informers said
Kishenji suffered a bullet injury to his leg, another group said he
might be dead. We can't be sure till we find the bodies," the officer
said.

The 51-year-old Rao, CPI (Maoist) Politburo and Central Military
Commission member, better known as Kishenji, is in charge of the
eastern regional bureau for the Maoists.

The gunbattle started after the security forces were tipped off that a
group of PLGA guerrillas and Maoist leaders had convened at the
Hatishol forest, adjacent to Lakhanpur.

"The security forces reached the spot around 6 am and the gun battle
started. It went on for nearly 12 hours," the senior cop said.

Lakhanpur, where the gunbattle took place on Thursday, was the place
where Kishenji was reportedly cornered on October 22, when the rebel
leader was to release Atindranath Dutta, the abducted Officer-in-
Charge of Sankrail police station. It was at the same Hatishol forest
where he met with media persons and formally released Dutta the same
day.

2 comments

S.N.Singh 27 minutes ago

If Kishenji is killed, it will be serious setback for naxalites.This
will considerably help security force in tackling this problem.The
shooting of naxalites on spot is only solution left with the govt.All
out offensive against them must continue till this problem is finished
since trial & error method adopted in past has caused heavy
casualities on security forces & wastage of public money. State &
Central govt. must take speedy development works in backward areas to
eradicate poverty & other problems faced by rural people.The
corruption in all walks of life must be curbed to achieve rapid
development otherwise the needy will remain poor. This is need of hour
and no laxity in any respect should be done.The stringent punishment
for corruption must be given to culprits specially to unscrupulous
politicians.

Ivan 3 hours ago

3 people liked this.

Another good riddance...let this moron rot in hell

http://karmicsoliloquy.blogspot.com

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Kishenji-might-be-injured-or-even-dead-say-police/H1-Article1-523420.aspx

Whistling comment not a slip of tongue, says Mulayam
Lucknow, March 26, 2010

First Published: 00:53 IST(26/3/2010)
Last Updated: 00:55 IST(26/3/2010)

Far from expressing regrets, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav
on Thursday defended his sexist remark about the kind of women the Lok
Sabha would see as members if they enter it through a quota.

Yadav had recently been criticised by parties across the political
spectrum for saying that the quota would enable elite women coming
into Parliament – the kind who are "whistled at by youths".

At a meeting of party MPs, MLAs and office bearers in Lucknow, Yadav
said he had made the remark deliberately and it was no slip of the
tongue.

Yadav said his statement "achieved its purpose of triggering a
controversy and leading to a discussion on the subject".

He said he was ready to hold more discussions on the issue.

The Samajwadi Party chief also propounded a convoluted theory that if
the bill is enacted into law, there would be no men in the Lok Sabha
after 11 years.

Advocating reservation for women within political parties instead,
Yadav said it should be made mandatory for parties to give 15 to 20
per cent tickets to women to contest elections. A resolution to this
effect was passed at Thursday’s meeting.

Asking the gathering to begin preparations for the assembly elections
in Uttar Pradesh in 2012, Yadav said the Samajwadi Party has a list of
250 people engaging in anti-party activities. But he chose not to
expel them.

Mohan Singh, Samajwadi national general secretary said it was most
likely that Chief Minister Mayawati would recommend elections well
before her term ends.

"Don’t think elections are far away. The way Mayawati has begun
holding rallies and sit-ins indicate that she has begun preparing for
elections and will not wait for the full term," he said.

1 comments

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majorretdvirendrasharma 45 minutes ago

If not the "Slip of tongue", then more the reason for Mulayam to tell
the country did he want his daughter-in-law to be whistled at by
becoming a MP?

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/lucknow/Whistling-comment-not-a-slip-of-tongue-says-Mulayam/Article1-523355.aspx

Indian scriptures bar pre-marital sex: former CJ
Bangalore, March 25, 2010

First Published: 22:01 IST(25/3/2010)
Last Updated: 22:31 IST(25/3/2010)

Former Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court and BJP MP Rama
Jois on Thursday said Indian scriptures bar premarital sex and Indian
society still consider pre-marital sexual relationship not good.

Jois, also a former Governor, in a statement said "the oral
observations made by one of the judges of the three-judge bench of the
Supreme Court in the context of male and female having sexual
intercourse prior to marraige and question posed by the learned judge
Who says it is bad? has given rise to counter question: who says it is
good".

Quoting from scriptures, he said one of the nine directives of dhrama
prescribed by Mahabharata was "Prajanseveshu dareshu" one should
procure children only under wedlock which by necessary implication
bars pre-marital sexual activity between man and woman, he said.

"The object and purpose of marriage as declared by the Dharmasastras
was not merely to satisfy the mutual carnal desire of man and a woman,
though it did constitute the basis of the desire for marriage", he
said.

Jois also refers to various Indian scriptures that upholds fidelity
between spouses, mutual trust and discourages the 'discarding
attitude' of a spouse to pursue other gains.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bangalore/Indian-scriptures-bar-pre-marital-sex-former-CJ/Article1-523294.aspx

An unequal burden
Sitaram Yechury
March 25, 2010

First Published: 20:38 IST(25/3/2010)
Last Updated: 20:41 IST(25/3/2010)

The Delhi government has brazenly announced an across-the-board hike
in the prices of essential commodities including fuel and cooking gas.
The message is clear: the burden of financing this year’s Commonwealth
Games is to be borne by the aam aadmi. This comes on top of the
inflationary content of the Union Budget, attested by the finance
minister when he informed the Rajya Sabha, “I will not be surprised if
it (inflation) reaches double digits in March itself.” He then went on
to justify that India has lived with higher rates of inflation in the
past and, therefore, this was no big deal.

This is not only a reflection of the audacity that accompanies a
government in its first (honeymoon) year. This, in fact, reflects the
international pattern of neo-liberal prescriptions that seek to emerge
from the global recession by burdening the vast mass of the people and
benefiting the corporates and the rich with the hope that the latter
through their spending will rejuvenate the economy. This year’s Union
budget reflects this philosophy when it doled out concessions to the
rich and hiked indirect taxes for the poor.

While we in India are being asked to prepare for a fiscal
consolidation to reduce our 6.5 per cent deficit, the 2009 US budget
sent by President Obama to its Congress has a $1.75 trillion deficit
or 12.3 per cent of its GDP. This comes on top of the over $10
trillion of bailout packages that were given last year in the name of
recovering from the crisis. The consequence of such a global trend has
increased the number of billionaires in the world by over 200 and
their aggregate capital has expanded by over 50 per cent. Recently,
Forbes reported that as of late 2009 the number of billionaires soared
from 793 to 1,011 and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6
trillion.

Given the global recession such massive accumulation in the hands of
the wealthy can only be put to good use on stock and raw material
markets leading to the creation of new financial bubbles that neo-
liberalism hopes will trigger growth-based on speculation. The seeds
of fresh crises are being sown by replicating the process, which in
the first place, created the current crisis. It is not surprising,
therefore, that oil prices that had hit an all-time low of $47-a-
barrel in December 2008 now stands over $80. Global financial indices
are also climbing steadily. A classic case is that of Russia which saw
a GDP decline of 7.9 per cent in 2009 but had double the number of
billionaires as its stock market grew by over 100 per cent. The result
is that the very same financial giants which caused the present crisis
are now announcing super profits. JPMorgan Chase announced a record
$2.7 billion profit in the second quarter of 2009.

As the bankruptcy crisis in Greece shows, much of this largesse to
make the wealthy wealthier is being done at the expense of massive
cuts in social security expenditures. In late January, the Greek
government adopted an austerity package worth $6.8 billion. In March,
it announced an additional package of saving an additional $6.5
billion. This has been financed by raising taxes, slashing social
security expenditures, increasing the retirement age, cutting the pay
of civil servants etc. This has naturally led to four successful
general strikes in the space of one month.

Many raised an eyebrow at the rise in the sensex post-budget. As India
is following these very neo-liberal prescriptions, this is not
surprising. In addition to tax concessions announced this year, the
budget documents show that nearly Rs 80,000 crore was ‘uncollected’
from the corporates and Rs 4,000 crore from high-end income-tax payers
last year. Instead, if this was collected and utilised for hiking
public investments in building our much-needed infrastructure, it
would have generated high levels of employment. The consequent
expansion of domestic demand could have spiralled the cycle of
sustained growth. This latter course, however, would have denied the
rich from making further quick super-profits.

This process is already feeding speculation in India. The total value
of trade in agricultural commodities in the commodity exchanges during
the fortnight ending January 31 increased by a huge 64.14 per cent.
The cumulative value of trade in agricultural commodities during the
year from April 1, 2009 to January 31, 2010, grew by a whopping 102.59
per cent, in absolute terms valuing over Rs 10.13 crore. Now any
forward trading can make profits only when the prices of these
commodities are higher than what they were when the trading initially
took place.

The aam aadmi is, therefore, faced with a double whammy attack — rise
in prices through official hikes and speculation. Like the spate of
general strikes and protests across Europe, India is bound to see the
rise in popular actions demanding that the government reverse these
policies. The jail bharo call given by the Left parties on April 8
will only be the beginning.

Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP

The views expressed by the author are personal

http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorial-views-on/sitaramyechury/An-unequal-burden/Article1-523240.aspx

12-hr firefight in forest hunt for Kishenji: 2 dead, 3 held
Madhuparna Das

Posted: Friday , Mar 26, 2010 at 0327 hrs
Kolkata:

A CRPF commando was injured and two Maoists were believed killed in a
gunbattle that raged for over 12 hours today in a forest near
Lakkhanpur in West Midnapore where security forces suspect top Maoist
leader Kishenji was present. Three persons were detained from the spot
but identities were not disclosed.

A senior police officer said that intercepts of Maoist phone calls
suggested that Kishenji could have sustained injuries in the gunbattle
from 6 am to 7 pm.

As night fell, the CRPF personnel withdrew from the encounter site.
Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao called The Indian Express to check for
“news on Kishenji.”

CRPF Special Director General Vijay Raman said: “We had specific
intelligence input that Kishenji was present in the forest in
Lakkhanpur. Based on that input, our forces moved. A Maoist shelter
was spotted in the wee hours and we surrounded it. They started firing
and our forces retaliated. The intensity of the firing indicated that
a very senior leader was present at the spot who, as per the
intelligence input, could have been Kishenji.”

“We picked up three Maoists from the spot. We have handed them over to
police,” Raman said.

West Bengal DGP Bhupinder Singh, too, said a top Maoist leader was
present at Lakkhanpur.

“Based on the intensity of the firing, it can be presumed that a
leader of the stature of Kishenji was present there. We have arrested
some people from the spot,” he said.

Comments (2) |

Put Varavara Rao in jail
By: sunny | 26-Mar-2010

Varavara Rao is a animal not fit for our society. Its only in India
that he is allowed to roam free. He should be questioned deeply.

FIGHTING NAXALS
By: amitabh | 26-Mar-2010

THIS FIGHT ON BEHALF OF CORPORATE WORLD ONLY INTERESTED IN MILKING THE
POOR WOULD RESULT IN SOMETHING SO MESSY THAT INDIA WONT BE ABLE TO
COME OUT OF IT.AAM ADMI GOVT FIGHTING AAM ADMI. OR THESE CORPORATES
ARE AAM ADMI FOR CONG?

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/12hrfirefightinforesthuntforkishenji2dead-3held/595912/

Bachchan row exposes chink in ‘link’
Express news service

Posted: Friday , Mar 26, 2010 at 0305 hrs
New Delhi:
Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan along with Amitabh Bachchan during the
commissioning ceremony sea link in Mumbai.

The Congress and its coalition partner, the NCP on Thursday took
different stands on the invite to Amitabh Bachchan to attend a
function to inaugurate the second phase of Bandra-Worli Sea Link on
Wednesday. While the Congress gave up its usual reticence to comment
on the actor and justified party leaders’ criticism of him, the NCP
saw nothing wrong in extending invitation to Bachchan.

CM Ashok Chavan, who has maintained that he was not aware of the
invitation to the actor, was learnt to have taken the same stance in
his clarification to the high command.

“The party is aware of what happened there. The CM has clarified the
situation. The question is not about Bachchan as a person or an actor.
There is resentment against him among party workers, but the reason is
not personal. Their anger is because of the fact that Bachchan is seen
standing by the side of Narendra Modi. In such a situation, Congress
workers have the moral right to do so (criticise),” said AICC media
cell head Janardan Dwivedi.

Senior NCP leader Tariq Anwar, however, justified the presence of
Bachchan at the function saying that even Opposition parties are
invited to official functions. “As far as Bachchan is concerned, he is
a celebrity. Such official functions are not of any political party.
Even the Shiv Sena and BJP are invited. Sachin Tendulkar was
contacted, but he was not available. It was not a Congress function.
There was no intention to create a controversy,” he said.

The controversy is being seen as having its roots in the groupism
within the Congress and the ambition of Mumbai Region Congress
Committee president Kripashankar Singh to become a minister in the
Chavan Cabinet. The invitation cards issued by the Maharashtra State
Road Development Corporation did not mention Bachchan as an invitee,
but advertisements mentioned him as a special invitee. NCP leaders
like Minister for Public Works Jaidutt Kshirsagar, who also heads
MSRDC, justified Bachchan being invited to the function on grounds
that he was a Mumbai icon. Singh, who did not attend the function,
said Congress leaders such as Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushilkumar Shinde
should have been invited for the function, hosted by the MSRDC which
is controlled by the NCP.

Actor criticises manufactured rows
Express News Service

Thiruvananthapuram/ Mumbai

ENRAGED over the Kerala government’s decision to abandon the idea of
making him the state’s tourism ambassador, Amitabh Bachchan has
reacted sharply. The central leadership of the CPM had shot down the
state’s plan to rope in Bachchan, citing that the actor was doing the
same job for BJP-ruled Gujarat.

Bachchan also said the controversy over his presence at the
inauguration of the second phase of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link has been

“manufactured”. “A fresh controversy has been rapidly manufactured on

my involvement,” he wrote in a midnight post on his blog.

In response to Kerala decision, Bachchan wrote in his blog: “You want

to stop me from promoting tourism in a state because you have reason

to believe that there are political connotations to the event. This is
such rubbish. All I shall be doing will be working in a short film
that shall highlight the various places of interest in the state
(Gujarat) so that it encourages more tourists to visit the region. And
that is what I would precisely do when I would be asked to similar
acts in Kerala. It is a petty act of cheap convenience to prevent me
from doing that, and by pitting me against political connotations and
manoeuvres without paying any respect for the actual work that would
be done. Fair enough! I shall abide by the judgment of the state
government. I did not ask them for it, they came forward with the
invitation, I accepted. Now they want to decline it, fine. Not the
first time such incident has happened. Invitation to be the chief
guest at Goa International Film Festival and when I get there, they
decline it.”

Bachchan did not spare the media either. “It is a common Indian media
trait — finding fault at any cost to any act or event. Merit for the
moment and the work not interesting enough to sell and so de-merit the
moment. And in such matters if you could highlight a celebrity,
preferably from the film world, into the matter, you would have
discovered a way and means to keep the story rolling for a few weeks.
You take umbrage at my association with Gujarat, but never have the
guts or courage to stop a Ratan Tata, or an Ambani from investing in
the state and running successful factories and ventures there.

WITH PTI INPUTS

Comments (5) |

Amitabh Bachhan
By: Sharma | 26-Mar-2010

Dear Mr Bachhan: It is enough of you now. Please fade off and let
someone else come to centre stage. Since last half a centuary, there
is not a day when you were not mentioned in the News Papers. This had
made you very egoist and as if you are never going to go away. All you
should be doing now is social work and meditation. Instead, you have
become more hungry for praise and recognition, jealous of others being
popular.(like khans) Please do not ruin your own image.

The Bachhan heartburn
By: Kishore Karnad | 26-Mar-2010

How at all can Bachhan compare himself with Ratan Tata or Ambani? Both
have invested a lot of money and created hundreds of jobs bringing
properity to the State while Bachhan has only exploited the State and
pocketed a hefty fee for promoting tourism. And now he is upset at the
prospect of losing some money he could have made by selling Kerala.
This man will do anything for money. I pity India's rich- the
bachhankind!

Imaginary accusations..
By: Vikas | 26-Mar-2010

Kishore doesnt even know that Amitabh did not charge a paisa for being
the Brand Ambassador for Gujrat Tourism.This came out clealy in the
inteview by Pronoy Roy on NDTV. But Kishore has imagined Amitabh
"pocketing hefty money". Biased views can cause hallucinations.

BACHCHAN INVITED !
By: M S VAISHNAV M | 26-Mar-2010

THE ROW OVER INVITATION (and presence) OF AMITABH BACHCHAN AT 'SEA
LINK' FUNCTION SHOWS HOW POLITICS HAS HIT THE NADIR IN OUR COUNTRY !!
IT HAS BECOME A ROUTINE TO POLITICALISE EVERY EVENT/ISSUE WHETHER IT
IS PUBLIC FUNCTION, BOLLYWOOD SHOW OR A SPORTS EVENT !CLEARANCE FROM
POLITICAL MASTERS CONCERNED IS A MUST FOR THE SUCCESS OF EVENT !! THIS
HAPPENS ONLY IN MY COUNTRY. WE DO NOT READ ABOUT 'INAUGARATION
FUNCTIONS' /NAMING OF ANY PUBLIC PROJECT BY POLITICIANS/LEADERS IN ANY
OTHER COUNTRY !

Fuss rather than a furore....
By: Roy | 26-Mar-2010

over a has been trying ever so much to get into the limelight
again....yes we the right wing elements in these columns going all out
to justify an ICON status for this...a mere actor. The fact that he is
a so called brand ambassador for the extreme right wing polity in
Gujarat is why these elements want the nondescript individual in the
newz whilst sensible folks in Kerala....literate in every
sense...asked him to go to hell..rather be damned.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bachchanrowexposeschinkinlink/595899/0

Maya was buzzed, SPG won't let Rahul bee
Maulshree Seth

Posted: Friday , Mar 26, 2010 at 0320 hrs
Lucknow:

OpportunityDon’t Glorify NaxalismRole-Model MPs, MLAs!Vehicle called

Life The honeybees that swarmed Mayawati’s public meeting 10 days ago
created a buzz that seems to have affected the Special Protection
Group (SPG). Officers in charge of Rahul Gandhi’s security have asked
the Sultanpur district administration to remove beehives outside the
venue of a meeting the Congress general secretary is scheduled to
attend on Friday.

Several beehives outside Vikas Bhawan in Sultanpur were destroyed last
night. However, the bees returned during the day. A second operation
was planned for Thursday night.

Sultanpur District Magistrate S L Pande said SPG officers who came to
oversee security arrangements for Rahul’s visit asked for the removal
of the beehives.

District Chief Development Officer G Ram, who is supervising the work,
said, “Beehives are not new to any rural setup. There were four or
five beehives outside Vikas Bhawan; some have been removed. The
situation is being closely monitored along with the SPG. I cannot say
anything more.”

Amethi, Rahul’s Lok Sabha constituency, is part of Sultanpur district.
As local MP, Rahul presides over the meetings of the district
vigilance and monitoring committee which reviews development works.
Other MPs and MLAs from the district, and district-level officials are
members of the committee.

The meetings are held at Vikas Bhawan, a three-storey building which
is

the office of the Chief Development Officer. There are beehives on the
walls outside and on nearby trees.

Officials said the last meeting of the committee was held about a year
ago. “Then too there were beehives, but no one bothered,” said an
official. He said beehives on the building had been removed, but those
on the trees had not been disturbed.

A swarm of large honeybees invaded Mayawati’s rally in Lucknow’s
Ramabai Ambedkar ground on March 15. The BSP alleged a “conspiracy” by
Mayawati’s opponents, and the government ordered an inquiry. The
investigation, which was initially led by a DIG and DM of Lucknow, has
so far produced no results.

Maqsood Alam, Sultanpur district Congress president, said, “Like
others, we are concerned about the security of our leader, especially
after a big swarm hovered around the dais from where Mayawati was
addressing her rally. I went to Vikas Bhawan today and was happy to
see that the beehives were being cleared”.

Comments (1) |

Bee Hating
By: BG Subhash | 26-Mar-2010

It is a tragedy of Indian Democracy which gives opportunity to Bee
Hating Mayawati Aka Notewati Aka Malawati

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mayawasbuzzed-spgwontletrahulbee/595909/0

Bachchan a victim of 'fear' of Gandhi family in Cong: BJP
Agencies

Posted: Thursday , Mar 25, 2010 at 1346 hrs

New Delhi:
Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan and Amitabh Bachchan interact during
inaugural ceremony of north carriage way of sea link.

In the wake of the controversy over the presence of Amitabh Bachchan
at the inauguration of Bandra-Worli sea-link, BJP on Thursday batted
for the filmstar saying he has become a victim of the "feud" in
Congress and "fear" of the Gandhi family in the party.

"The Bandra-Worli sea-link is a national property and certainly not a
property of the Congress party. Every Indian has a right to be there.
Undoubtedly, Amitabh Bachchan is the nation's pride and a
distinguished Mumbaikar who has full credentials to be the chief guest
there," BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.

The Rajya Sabha MP criticised the Congress for "generating a
controversy" over invitation to Bachchan.

Resentment brewed in a section of Mumbai Congress over the invite to
Bachchan to the function where Chief Minister Ashok Chavan inaugurated
the sea link yesterday.

"It is beyond Indian tradition to invite and then insult. Bachchan
cannot be a victim of internal feud in Congress party, in particular
in Maharashtra and in general at the national level," Rudy said.

The BJP claimed that though the invitation to Bachchan had been sent
by the NCP minister in-charge of the department concerned, the "fear"
of the Gandhi family also played a role in the behaviour of the
Congress leaders.

"The fear of the Gandhi family and their likes and dislikes loom so
large that no sooner it would become a threat to democracy. This is
narrow-minded bigotry of the Congress party," Rudy alleged.

Bachchan, who is close to the Samajwadi Party, has not been on the
best of terms with the first family of Congress after Rajiv Gandhi's
death.

BJP also noted the reference made to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra
Modi in regard to the affair.

"Bachchan's mere association as brand ambassador of Gujarat is being
vilified by the Congress. A national icon is being derided for petty
political gains," Rudy said.

Comments (2) |

big B
By: KASIM | 26-Mar-2010

THIS EVER MONEY HIUNGRY BACCHHAN IS ALWAYS OVERACTING AND THIS TIME IT
IS TO HELP AMAR SINGH`S POLITICAL PROSPECTS,ISNT HE THE SAME BACHHAN
WHO WAS ACCUSED OF MAKING MONEY ON FILMS PASSING BY CENSORBOARD IN
INDIRA`S TIME,HE ALSO USED TO GO ON JAUNTS OF DYNASTY WITH PARAMOR
QUATTROCHHI,A MAN BECOMES SIMILAR TO THE COMPANY HE KEEPS,HE HAS
ALWAYS BECAUSE OF HIS PROFESSION BEEN WITH GREED AND MEDIA IS ALSO
REPAYING AMARSINGH THRU HIM,AS JOKERS AND MORONS LIKE AMAR AND LALLU
ARE GOOD FOR TV RATINGS.

True....
By: Roy | 26-Mar-2010

India nor Mumbai for that matter anywhere in India is just for any
political party but then your party...with its extreme right view
point...make Indians other than Hindus sans the poorer sections of
your community the right to be an Indian. This nondescript aging
individual gets mention & sympathy form the RSS controlle BJP simply
coz he chose to be the brand ambassador for the right
flag...ownership...of the state of Gujarat. Spread this canard amongst
your chaddiwallahs...the rest of India cares a damn about the
individual & the party you represent.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bachchanavictimoffearofgandhifamilyincongbjp/595569/0

Will take all steps to implement Muslim quota: Rosaiah
Agencies

Posted: Thursday , Mar 25, 2010 at 1409 hrs
Hyderabad:

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah has promised that his
government would take "all required legal steps" for implementing four
per cent reservation in jobs and education for backward class
Muslims.

"With all seriousness and sincerity, we shall take all required legal
steps to ensure that the benefit of reservation is extended to
Muslims.

Our ultimate goal is to protect the reservation for backward class
Muslims," Rosaiah assured the state Assembly even as the Special Leave
Petition filed by the state against the High Court judgment was being
heard in the Supreme Court today.

The Assembly discussed the issue at length today with all parties,
barring the lone BJP MLA, favouring the reservation. In fact, Leader
of Opposition N Chandrababu Naidu and CPM MLA J Ranga Reddy wanted 10
per cent reservation for Muslims as per the recommendations made by
Sachar and Ranganath Misra committees.

"The government should lead an all-party delegation to the Prime
Minister to press for a Constitutional amendment for providing
reservation to backward class Muslims.

The state Assembly should also pass a resolution in this regard,"
Chandrababu said. Majlis Ittehadul-e-Muslimeen floor leader Akbaruddin
Owaisi too requested the same. Responding, the Chief Minister said the
government has no objection to this.

"Let me reassure you that we shall take required legal measures to
ensure four per cent reservation for Muslims by all means," Rosaiah
reiterated.

Earlier, replying to the debate on the issue, Minister for BC Welfare
M Mukesh Goud said 10,935 backward Muslim students availed of the
reservation benefits to pursue higher and professional education in
the last two years. Similarly, 83 candidates secured jobs in
government, he added.

10 Comments |

Muslim Reservation
By: A SINGHAM | Friday , 26 Mar '10 9:57:23 AM

DIVIDING THE PEOPLE ON RELIGION VERY SAD INDEED; BACKWARNESS CAN BE A
CRITERION IRRESPECTIVE OF FAITH, SO THAT UNDER PRIVILEGED CAN GET
CHANCE TO COME UP. THIS SHOULD NEVER BE TIED WITH RELIGION OR CASTES;
FOR YOU WILL FIND CREAMY LAYER TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IT, LEAVING THE
REALLY NEEDY BEHIND; AS IN CASE OF SC/CT, WITH FATHER IN IAS,
GRANDFATHER JUDGE, USING INFLUENCE SON GETS PRIORITY; RIDICULOUS AND
RETROGADE STEP, SURE. ALL PARTIES ARE OUT TO APPEASE MINORITY FOR VOTE
BANKS. MUST PUT FULL STOP TO THIS; MUSLIMS GOT A FULL COUNTRY BASED ON
(R)FIGHT, EH! AND ALL KNOW MUSLIM IN INDIA IS THE HAPPIEST PERSON,
COMPARED TO HIS OWN FATHERLAND NATIONS.

QUOTA TO MUSLIMS
By: M S VAISHNAV | Friday , 26 Mar '10 7:58:32 AM

EVERY RIGHT THINKING PERSON WILL AGREE THAT QUOTA SHOULD ONLY BE ON
BASIS OF ECONOMICAL POOR PEOPLE ANDNOT BASED ON RELIGION -THAT TOO NOT
FOR A'PARTICULAR' RELIGION ! IT SMELLS OF 'VOTEBANK' ORIENTED
GOVERNANCE !!

it should be there
By: krishna | Friday , 26 Mar '10 7:37:10 AM

Reservations have been a curse in our civilisations. We started with
100% reservations for brahmins for more than 2000 years and now we
have reservations for everybody with varying degrees

Muslim Quota-Damm the quotas
By: RAM | Friday , 26 Mar '10 6:56:04 AM

The Congress is all set to balkanise our country by pandering to this
quota . All right thinking citizens should unite to throw Congress out
of India.

Playing to the gallery
By: Shamefaced Indian | Friday , 26 Mar '10 6:06:16 AM

This is the worst kind of politics. Play upto all the backward classes
so that you can get votes. Such a shame!!

Stop robbing Peter
By: Deepa | Friday , 26 Mar '10 5:53:28 AM

When Ramvilas Paswan and Arjun Singh foisted a scheduled caste as
Chief Justice of India in the Supreme Court the eight bells began
tolling. So far only the Muslims seemed undivided, thanks to their
religious fervour. This was anathema to the Congress. With the help of
supreme court the Congress has successfully broken the Muslims to
divide and rule them. Only Nemesis has to wipe this evil Congress
Party which has become a curse for us.

Quota
By: manav | Thursday , 25 Mar '10 18:55:13 PM

What a shame.

Most Communal
By: Ram | Thursday , 25 Mar '10 16:36:43 PM

Using religion for votes, Congress is the most communal and of-course
they are trying to beat the Kolkatta CPI-M. If you have an idea to
uplift economically weaker sections, do that without checking which
God he prays to or which country he is affiliated to. Give
reservations to the economically weaker sections of the society
irrespective of caste, creed or religious faith. Even in Hinduism, the
castes were to perform one's duty and all the works are considered
equally important for the society, but this one was distorted by the
missionaries for their self interest.

Indian
By: Indian | Thursday , 25 Mar '10 16:36:15 PM

I think there should not be any quota on the basis of religion.
Initially the concept of reservation came for the Poor people. There
are many Rich people in Muslims also. How can a rich can get
reservation in Education Jobs etc... We need Reservation Review
By: Prabhjot Juneja | Thursday , 25 Mar '10 15:39:01 PM

He have reservation since 50 year. Its high time to look at loopholes
in the present system and also to review the benefits of present
reservation. It should be improved. Nobody denies that their is need
of reservation but at the same time nobody can deny the present system
is flawed and need to big time changes. It would be good to keep out
religion from all of this...histroy teached us the affect of religion
based reservations.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/willtakeallstepstoimplementmuslimquotarosaiah/595578/

BSP demo turns felicitation ceremony for bee-tamer Maya
Express News Service

Posted: Friday , Mar 26, 2010 at 0433 hrs

Lucknow:
Naseemuddin Siddiqui displays photographs of Sonia Gandhi with a
garland of currency notes at the party’s pardafaash protest in Lucknow
on Thursday.

OpportunityDon’t Glorify NaxalismRole-Model MPs, MLAs!Vehicle called

Life Sycophancy was the flavour of the day at the BSP demonstration
held in the state capital on Thursday to protest against the
“opposition conspiracies” against party chief and UP Chief Minister
Mayawati.

Successive speakers showered praise on Mayawati for her bravery in
carrying on with her speech in spite of the honeybees, which were
allegedly let loose to disrupt the March 15 rally.

A minister went so far as to proclaim that the bees did not sting
anyone because they accepted Mayawati’s supremacy. Another said the
Opposition conspiracy to cause a stampede at the rally fell flat when
the bees, instead of stinging anyone, simply welcomed Mayawati and
settled on the rooftop.

The other highpoint of the rally was PWD Minister Naseemuddin
Siddiqui’s display of photographs of Opposition leaders accepting
currency garlands and expensive items, purportedly downloaded from the
internet.

Among these was a photo of Sonia Gandhi purportedly wearing a garland
of 1,000-rupee currency notes, of L K Advani being offered a crown and
of Mulayam Singh Yadav being presented with a silver sword.

Mayawati had asked her partymen to organise protests across the state
on three issues — the sudden appearance of honeybees at the party
rally, the controversy over the currency garland and filing of two
PILs in the Allahabad High Court to stop the rally — as evidence of
the Opposition conspiracy to derail the celebration of 25 years of the
party’s foundation.

As the protests were held, she hopped into a helicopter for an aerial
view of the hotspots — including Lucknow, where all important party
leaders had gathered.

On the ground, meanwhile, Urban Development Minister Nakul Dube said
the honeybees accepted Mayawati’s supremacy and did not harm anyone at
the rally. The Opposition should also accept it and reconcile to the
fact that Mayawati is going to be the prime minister.

“People like you and me would have got scared after watching that huge
swarm arrive before us, but not Mayawati,” he said.

Likewise, party MLC Gopal Narayan Mishra blamed the “cheap tactics” of
the Opposition and praised Mayawati for keeping her composure in face
of the bees.

Rajya Sabha member Akhilesh Das exhorted the gathering to just think
of the consequences “had they (the opposition) succeeded in their
tactics” to cause a stampede.

The last word was left to Siddiqui, who said the conspiracy fell flat
when the honeybees “welcomed her (the CM)”. “They flew to the dais and
then took shelter on the roof,” he said.

Opposition bristles at Maya counter-sting

LUCKNOW: Opposition parties lashed out at the BSP for releasing
photographs of its leaders donning currency garlands and gold crowns,
describing it as a “futile bid” to justify the presentation of a multi-
crore garland to Mayawati at the party’s ‘maharally’ here. “Sonia
Gandhi does not require anyone’s certificate as all are aware that she
is in public life neither for power nor money,” said Congress leader
Akhilesh Pratap Singh. BJP

state unit president Hriday Narain Dixit said the two things (crown
for L K Advani and Mayawati’s currency garland) cannot be compared. SP
spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said people know that through the
garland, BSP leaders had tried to convert their black money into
white. PTI

Comments (2) |

No more tainted leaders, please.
By: Adv.Alby Raymond Parackal | 26-Mar-2010

People of India need rulers to be Scot-free from corruption in all
forms.It is quite unfortunate to blame another political leader and
try to belittle the tainted act which currently a Chief Minister has
done.
DALIT KI BETI
By: NIRANJAN | 26-Mar-2010

AGREED. BUT SONIA GANDHI HAS NEVER PROFESSED TO BE A POOR, DALIT
PERSON. SHE DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE MESSIAH OF THE POOR AND DOWNTRODDEN
PEOPLE. SHE DOES NOT INAUGURATE HER OWN STATUES! SO, MAYAWATI, PLEASE
DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF WITH ANYBODY. THERE ARE NOT TOO MANY
POLITICIANS WHO STOOPED AS LOW AS YOU HAVE!

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bspdemoturnsfelicitationceremonyforbeetamermaya/595957/0

Living together a part of right to life, not an offence: SC

Krishnadas Rajagopal
Posted: Mar 24, 2010 at 0243 hrs IST

New Delhi The Supreme Court threw its weight behind live-in
relationships on Tuesday, observing that for a man and a woman in
love, to live together is part of the right to life, and not a
“criminal offence”.
“If two people, man and woman, want to live together, who can oppose
them? What is the offence they commit here? This happens because of
the cultural exchange between people,” a special three-judge bench of
Chief Justice of India (CJI) K G Balakrishnan and Justices Deepak
Verma and B S Chauhan observed.

The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by actress Khusboo to
quash 22 FIRs filed against her by Tamil activist groups and forums
for her alleged comments on pre-marital sex in interviews five years
ago.

“If living together is an offence, then the first complaint should be
filed against the Supreme Court, because we have permitted living
together,” the court said. It was referring to a 2006 judgment in
which the Supreme Court directed the administration and police across
the country to protect runaway couples from harassment, and to
initiate action against those resorting to violence.

“It is part of right to life to go away with someone you love,” the
bench said. The Supreme Court had earlier stayed a Madras High Court
order of April 2008, which allowed criminal proceedings against the
actress.

Khusboo was alleged to have said there was nothing wrong in “sex
before marriage”, provided girls were careful about pregnancy and
sexually-transmitted diseases. Her detractors argued that the implied
advice to the educated male to not expect virginity from modern girls
was “offensive” and a source of “public nuisance”.

To an argument that Khusboo’s comments on pre-marital sex would
mislead gullible youths and minors, the court said: “The scenario is
highly unlikely in this age of the Internet where we do not know what
our children are doing or where they are going or what pornography
site they are watching.”

To this, the lawyer appearing for one of the complainants, Miniammal,
a lawyer in Tamil Nadu, responded that “there should be some morality
in the comments made by people of prominence like Khusboo, who has a
temple in Tamil Nadu where she is worshipped as a goddess”.

“And this is how you revere your goddess, by dragging her to court?”
retorted Justice Verma.

The bench made it clear that Khusboo’s comments could at best be
termed as “personal opinions”, and did not amount to a cognizable
offence.

But the lawyer persisted that Khusboo’s comments on pre-marital sex
would lead to the “spoiling of the entire institution of marriage.
Statements like this can result in chaos in the society.”

Even as the CJI at this moment responded that people were better off
listening to themselves than to others, Justice Verma asked the
counsel to point out how many marriages were “spoilt” or how many
instances of chaos happened in the past five years because of her
comments on pre-marital sex.

The court said it cannot stop anyone from expressing their opinions
before reserving the petitions for final verdict.

Besides, the court said, Khusboo (who was present during the day-long
hearing) had said “nothing new” about the concept of living together.

Justice Chauhan pointed out that even the “ceiling limit” for the
construction of temples for twin deities like Radha and Krishna or Ram
and Sita were calculated under the consideration that they were
“husband and wife”.

Comments - 34

Need of the hour
by Dr. Vidyacharan Shukla on 26 Mar 2010
Indian culture is changing dramatically but in different colors.
Intrinsically, we are plagued with double standard that manifests time
to time in the form of litigation, complaints and blames just to hide
our own lusts. Premarital relationship was prevailed in everywhere
around the globe but Indian society preferred to suppress the facts,
instead face the truth. Philosophically, even we dream about the
physical relationship before marriage or after marriage, both are
considered to be sin if we follow any religions. No religions stops
anyone not living together and law of nature supports Khusboo bold
stand. It is sad that Supreme court has to intervene in this case but
giving decision in the favor of Khusboo shows the faith on the
judiciary. Supreme court judge cited beautiful example of Lord Krishna
and Goddess Radha, but the best example could have been Kanyakumari
with Lord Shiva, Droupdi with 5 Pandavas, and many more who are our
Ideals in Indian society.

Reply | Forward
Unwarrented Comments
by Varun on 25 Mar 2010
That the esteemed judges of The S.C impulsively brought in the example
of Radha and Krishna is totally uncalled for.People at such high posts
are not expected to make statements on a subject on which they
themselves are not clear.Shrimati Radharani had a single pointed
devotion towards Lord Krishna, an example of unconditional love in its
purest form.To bring in such pure relationships to justify the modern
generation's uncontrolled infatuation and their total unconcern to
moral principles shows their ignorance about their own scriptures and
even lack of common sense.It is requested to the judges not to make
such irresponsible comments ,and certainly not relating to any
religion,while dealing in cases in future.Please maintain the high
values and the standards of the supreme court.

Reply | Forward
Bring in Appropriate Legislation
by K.Suresh on 25 Mar 2010
The comment -%u201CAnd this is how you revere your goddess, by
dragging her to court?%u201D - is inappropriate. The concerned lawyer
never submitted that Kushboo is HIS goddess. And there was no need to
bring in Rama,Sita, etc into the comments. The court could have simply
said that as per existing laws, living-in does not constitute an
offense. It is for the legislature to bring in appropriate
legislation. And such laws always are always rooted in the cultural
and moral values practiced in society at that point of time. I can not
quote my ancestors in caves to justify using a club (wooden or stone)
on a woman.

Reply | Forward
bravo
by chandidas mishra on 25 Mar 2010
love the statements of the justices. bravo supreme court.

Reply | Forward
It is against Indian cultural values
by MAHARASHTRA TOP NEWS on 25 Mar 2010
Sir, I am Masumkhan, Chief Editor..MAHARASHTRA TOP NEWS, LATUR. Pre-
marital sex is not accepted in Indian culture. Supreme court wants to
examine current social and cultural status of Indian family, male and
female. If supreme court gives us God krishnas example it is very
different situation ....this is kalyug sir.

immoral decision
by k.k.jaitley on 24 Mar 2010
SC decision may have adverse impact on the institution of
marriage.this is also very shoking to find that decision maker find no
other way but to cite the the example of living together of Lord
Krisna and Radha to justify their vedict.I don't know from where they
find out that Krisna and Radha used to live together separately. Both
man and woman living together separately are vunerable to each other
and their living together without marriage will break the social
fabric. limitation on the freedom is as imporant as the freedom is.
some day the woman may approach the court alleging rap by the person
with whom she has live in relationship on one or the other pretex i.e
false promise of marriage by the partner.

LIVING TOGETHER
by Jason on 24 Mar 2010
Diverse suggestions and comments. Well freedom of expression.Morality
is judged by the society.India lost her moral values long time ago.
Equality for men and women. No. The corrupt arrogant old aged
'man'still in the view that he is in the nomadic 18th century 'as the
king' and women and children treated as 'salable property' - denying
their human rights as an individual..Look at the practice of marriage.
Indians in general still believe - to have a girl is a curse and must
give 'dowry'to have er married and the 'groom' and his parents demand
huge amounts of cash,gold in lakhs/crores.. Shame. What happended to
what these corrupt system of soceity preaches. Please try to correct
the wrongs.While the courts are to uphold the rights for each
citizen,justice is not granted to the poor and the less educated by
creation of such a group by the'rich-upper class'.One father sold
everything to get her well educated engineering daughter to a school
teacher paying ranson to the groo's parents

DISGUSTING DECISSION OF SC
by AFTAB ARIZVI on 24 Mar 2010
I disagree with the decision of the Supreme Court. Morality should be
the guiding principles for governance. If you have no morality, what
is the difference between human beings and animals/birds. The Court
was asking for sections of statutes for imposing morality. If there
are no enabling dstatutes, the Court should have asked the Government
to bring in suitable legislation. If living together is acceptable,
why not prostitution. The body of a woman is her property and if she
decides to give it on rent for a small period (which is what
prostitution is), why should we object? Tomorrow, I might abuse my
neighbour saying that it is part of my right to live my life the way I
want, why should anybody object. Similarly, if my neighbour decides to
retaliate physically, again why should you object as he has a right to
react the way he wants as part of his right to life.

Degeneration of social values
by Swapan Lodh on 24 Mar 2010
Apex court`s verdict will certainly shatter the fabric of the society
which has so fondly been built by our ancestors to guard against
degeneration.Steps had been taken by elders time and need based
decisions which became rituals and later custom on which based concept
of laws.Radha-Krishna and Ram-Sita could perhaps should better not be
brought in this case as these are epics and poetic imagination played
more significantly than anecdotes.

Great descision
by Shrey on 24 Mar 2010
I totally disagree with the comments that are given above. I am
surprised by the mentality of "Indian Citizens" that have posted
comments against apex court in which these people relate live-in
relation with sex and prostitution. If a boy and a girl are living
together under a single roof, it does not mean that they have sexual
relationship. And even if they have that sex-relationship than what is
wrong in that if both are adult and agree. You can't relate this
situation with prostitution as it is completely different thing.
Prostitution is business and not the love. Above people are like those
who can't come out of the pit which they have dug and hence they pull
others in to the same. Supreme court has done a great moral thing
which should persist. They didn't even tried to insult indian god as
they illustrated pure love between radha and krishna!

Indian Traditional Culture affected by this judgement? Really?????
by Married Indian Woman on 24 Mar 2010
First of all, Kudos to the counsel for giving a sensible judgement.
For all those true Indian culture protectors out there, the counsel
did not say that all couples should live-in and not marry. They have
mentioned that living together and pre-marital sex is not an offence!
If you think about it,most couples who live-in together usually are
very independent and are capable of thinking clearly. Also, someone
has spoken about AIDS... Come-on, most victims are from the lowest
strata of society, mostly due to senseless extra marital affairs.
Whether or not to marry someone is someone's personal opinion, it is
not upto anyone to force it upon them. All you fathers who have
daughters, if you want to raise your voice against something, raise it
against female infanticide, dowry system, women empowerment and
corruption. Jai Hind!

another undesirable import
by sakthiman on 24 Mar 2010
Such useless thoughts fit only rich and filth. Not for common people
who die for their values. I don't think Supreme court judgement in any
way influences the common man except that the institution has fallen
from grace.

Larger Picture
by R.Ramachandran on 24 Mar 2010
The SC has posed the question %u201CIf two people, man and woman, want
to live together, who can oppose them? What is the offence they commit
here?" In fact this question though put to the Counsel for the
Complainants, is to be directed against the Trial Court / High Court
Judges who did not ask this question in the first place and have
created a situation where the accused has to travel all the way to the
Supreme Court! If this is the kind of justice system that we have, we
shudder to think the recent lament of the SC that "it has limited time
at its disposal and it cannot be expected to hear every kind of
dispute.%u201D The SC also has conveniently discontinued hearing
petitions under Art. 32 which is a fundamental right of every citizen,
and asking the citizen to first approach the HC and then to come to SC
under Art.136. Now the SC says that the discretionary jurisdiction
cannot be invoked by every individual! Actions of SC are clearly
violative of the Constitutional provisions.

Pious to Evil
by Iquebal Ahmed on 24 Mar 2010
One more import of western filth into our pious culture! One more
attack on our pious culture after legalization of gay marriage by our
own judicial system!!

Evil and Immoral----
by romesh.sharma on 24 Mar 2010
These few words from Mr Ahmed speak volumes that one can write and
say.This move is the worst kind of immoral act of judiciary which is
time and again meddling into the absolute private,cultural and
religious affairs of the people.This all may be of some help/interest
of the socalled High-Society which is already deeply dyed in the
western colours.This malady will soon spread and the most ancient
beautiful culture and its traditions will diminish for-ever.Moreover
most westerns are fed-up and tired of such unions and discarding fast.

Right or wrong ?
by Gaurav Kaushish on 24 Mar 2010
RIGHT OR WRONG?? TIME WILL TELL. NORMS ARE SET FOR SMOOTH FUNCTIONING
OF THE SOCIETY AT LARGE BY THE SOCIETY ITSELF. EACH AND EVERY CASE CAN
NOT BE BROUGHT UNDER THE GARB OF LEGAL PROVISIONS.OFFENCES KEEP TAKING
PLACE EVEN WHEN THEY ARE DEFINED, AS SUCH, IN THE LAW OF THE
LAND.ALLOWING SOMETHING AS A MATTER OF RIGHT DOES NOT GUARANTEE ITS
EXERCISE BY THE INDIVIDUALS. SIMILARLY IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS TOO IS NO
CALIBRE FOR STRICT COMPLIANCE THEREOF. MADHYAM MARG (PAH OF
MODERATION) MAY BE OF SOME GUIDANCE. THE DEBATE IS OPEN,,,,,

God save Incredible India
by Raaj on 24 Mar 2010
What a great verdict.Today the world looks at India as a country with
a great culture, Spiritual heritage and tradition in which people live
with great family values. We should be proud about it as we have
preserved our culture and tradition against various invasions. If our
kids were to live like the western kids ignoring the Indian values, as
per the Supreme Court Judgement, God save India.

Whether bigamy is legalised now ?
by R Krishnamurthy on 24 Mar 2010
If a married man has a live-in relationship with another woman is it
perfectly correct under law. Supreme Court judgement is pointing
towards that.

sc on relationship
by kamal on 24 Mar 2010
SC HAS HURT MANY RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS BY QUOTING RAMA SITA KRISHNA AND
RADHA,THIS CERTAINLY IMPLIES THAT ONLY HINDUS HAVE OR FOLLOWERS OF
THESE DEITIES HAVE OBJECTIONS TO SUCH RELATIONSHIPS AND ANY OTHER
RELIGION DOES NOT OR WAS IT FEAR OF JEHADIS SO THAT NO ISLAMIC REVERED
ONES WERE MENTIONED IN THIS COURT CASE.SC JUDGES HAVE HURT THE
FEELINGS OF A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY AND THERE ARE LAWS AGAINST SUCH
ACTION,ONLY THEY CAN SUGGEST HOW THEY WILL OVERCOME THIS BLUNDER AND
THAT ALSO DURING THE SITTING OF THE HIGHEST COURT OF THE LAND.ALSO FOR
SC INFO ALL HINDU SECTS DONT WORSHIP RADHA ND KRISHNA,WHY ALWAYS DRAG
ALL HINDU SECTS INTO THIS CASE LIKE MEDIA.

Live-in Relationship
by Vaid S C K on 24 Mar 2010
Legal sanction granted by Apex court shall now bring forth many
problems specially for police and others who always look for
exploitation. If man and woman have been living togather for few years
without marriage then woman one day lodges complaint with police for
having been sexually exploited for number of years, what courts are
going to decide?

SC remarks subjudice
by drabc on 24 Mar 2010
Blissfully unawares the SC might have shown a contempt of court should
any other of such cases are before a judge anywhere in India! To
comment recklessly a can of worms might be marching onto the Supreme
Court.This was a most unhelpful intervention from the SC in a Civil
court matter

Living Together As Part Of Right To Life
by C.R. Panicker on 24 Mar 2010
I disagree with the decision of the Supreme Court. Morality should be
the guiding principles for governance. If you have no morality, what
is the difference between human beings and animals/birds. The Court
was asking for sections of statutes for imposing morality. If there
are no enabling dstatutes, the Court should have asked the Government
to bring in suitable legislation. If living together is acceptable,
why not prostitution. The body of a woman is her property and if she
decides to give it on rent for a small period (which is what
prostitution is), why should we object? Tomorrow, I might abuse my
neighbour saying that it is part of my right to live my life the way I
want, why should anybody object. Similarly, if my neighbour decides to
retaliate physically, again why should you object as he has a right to
react the way he wants as part of his right to life.

Is the nation going bohemian way ?
by K.Suresh on 24 Mar 2010
This is a ridiculous argument from the judiciary. In that case, the
same argument can be used to justify adultery. illicit relations,
extra-marital relations etc. Then why have laws against pornography,
exhibitionism. immoral traffic ? Does the SC want the whole nation to
resemble Goan seaside? BTW, when such an arrangement ends, is the
female partner entitled to alimony/compensation?

the nation going bohemian way ?
by CTZWORLD on 24 Mar 2010
Mr. Suresh, Kindly get a copy of the Immoral traffic(Prevention) act
1956. Pornography, exhibitionism. immoral traffic etc.. you described
are something different than cohabitation. Cohabitation is allowed
between persons who do not have legal spouses and they earn no benifit
by way of money or something else

Someone finally has some brains
by Madhav on 24 Mar 2010
Awesome judgement especially about Khusbhu's case. Instead of wasting
their time, why don't these lawyers fight for the common man instead
of pursuing useless cases.

LIVING TOGETHER
by KRISHNAN.S on 24 Mar 2010
Shocking observations by the Highest Court.What would have been the
answer of the Supreme Court if only the counsel had a daughter.The
counsel replied to the judges that he has no daughter.So in future if
a minister/chief minister has no problem then he need not address that
issue.Let Supreme Court rethink on morality and answer so as to
advance the society in the right direction.Already the politicians
especially down South have more than 2 wives.Now even marriages may
not be required.Already one popular Tamil actor who has international
fame is reported to have said that he does not believe in marriages.Le
God save this country.

Hypocricy
by Mathew on 24 Mar 2010
Though I do not support pre marital sex or sex outside marriage, I
support the supreme court statement. If young people is going to be
mis guided by a statement of one person then these people are fools.
God has given every ones brains and most educated people can think
what is right and what id wrong. There are many in or midst who wear
the mask of morality and behind the scene are np worse than the people
they despise. Its high time we put an end to this hypocrisy.

Living togethr as part of Right to Life
by ashok bhatnagar on 24 Mar 2010
If law says living together is a way of life & not an offence what was
the crime of Swami Nityanand. Why media made such a big story & police
lodged complaints in a matter that was between the Swami & his
disciples. I think both the print & electronic media should apologise
to Swami Nityanand.

Re: Nithyananda
by Vinod Kumar Pavanghat on 24 Mar 2010
In the case of Nithyananda, media exposed only a lie. If he had openly
propounded a living in relationship, no body would have had any
objection. Use your brain....

LIVING TOGETHER AS PART OF RIGHT TO LIFE
by ashok bhatnagar on 24 Mar 2010
If law allow says living together is a way of life & not an offence
what was the crime of Swami Nityanand. Why media made such a big story
& police lodged complaints in a matter that was between the Swami &
his disciples. I think media should apologise to Swami Nityanand.

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Living-together-a-part-of-right-to-life-not-an-offence-SC/594925/

An unnecessary link
March 25, 2010

First Published: 20:52 IST(25/3/2010)
Last Updated: 20:53 IST(25/3/2010)

Who owns the Bandra-Worli sealink in Mumbai? We know who constructed
it. We know who inaugurated the first phase. We know who it is named
after. But who owns it? Who can legitimately claim that this sea link
belongs to them? The guys who built it and collect toll? The
governmentwalas for clearing permissions? The labourers who built it?
Can we dare to say that this piece of architecture belongs to the
people of Mumbai, those who can afford to travel on it to save commute
time as well as to those who cannot; who have to be content to just
look?

Now that that question is out of the way, here’s the next one. Who
owns Amitabh Bachchan? Clearly, his immediate family has an interest.
Clearly his friends, political and otherwise, have an interest. But
could you stretch it and say he belongs to lakhs of his fans, not just
in Mumbai or Allahabad but all over the world?

When Raj Thackeray huffs and puffs and calls for a boycott of Amitabh
Bachchan films in response to Jaya Bachchan’s insistence at a film
function to speak in Hindi because she is from Uttar Pradesh, we
denounce him as a thug. Bachchan points out that the Indian
Constitution has granted him the right to live in whichever part of
the country he chooses to. But, he also clarifies, his wife meant no
disrespect at all.

Raj’s uncle, Bal Thackeray, writes in Saamna that Amitabh Bachchan
belongs to the entire nation. So, that should settle the question of
ownership. But then he moves his sights onto another national figure,
Shah Rukh Khan. Bachchan belongs to India. Shah Rukh is a ‘Dilliwala’
who should pack his bags and go home, decrees senior Thackeray. Let’s
just say that logic doesn’t run deep in the Thackeray genes.

But — question three — what does one make of Maharashtra Chief
Minister Ashok Chavan, who is fast turning out to be a doppelganger
for the Thackeray parivar?

First comes Chavan’s astounding statement that taxi- drivers
(routinely bashed up by Raj and his goons for coming from Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh) must speak in Marathi — a statement that he later tries
to clarify is a requirement of some law in some statute book.

Now, saying it was a mistake to invite Amitabh Bachchan, arguably
India’s biggest film star, to the opening of the Worli-Bandra sealink
is — what? — plain stupid.

Chavan who shared the dais with Bachchan at the inauguration says in
hindsight that it was a mistake to have invited Bachchan because he is
the ‘brand ambassador’ of Gujarat. Had he known that he would be
sharing the dais with Bachchan, he would have stayed home, he says.
Mumbai Congress president Kripashankar Singh, meanwhile, sparks off a
whodunit by saying he was not consulted about the invitation.

So, was it the NCP, the Congress party’s uneasy allies in the state?
Is there truth in the claim that the NCP wanted to inject a bit of
‘glamour’ into what would have undoubtedly been a dreary inauguration?
Sachin Tendulkar, another national icon who also happens to be a son
of the soil, was not available, so Amitabh Bachchan was sent a card.

What remains really now that the coconuts have been broken and the
sealink extension officially opened is the unedifying smallness of the
Maharashtra Congress. Bachchan is a national icon, he belongs to the
people who have a rightful claim to the sealink.

Inviting a man of the people, whoever invited him, was appropriate and
correct. Bickering about it after the event is ridiculous. Even more
ridiculous is Ashok Chavan’s attempts to claim the loony space so far
occupied by the Thackerays.

Namita Bhandare is a Delhi-based writer

The views expressed by the author are personal

Swati 1 hour ago

1 person liked this.

Maharashtra Congress and also the national Congress party is fast
losing credibility. I'm totally disgusted at the way they are treating
infrastructure development as their private property and insulting a
great icon, Amitabh Bachchan.

Sid 3 hours ago

It is HUGE conspiracy by Congress - they must have siphoned so much
money from the contractors of the project that they very well know
this Bridge may NOT stand long - as it is, it is built over the sea
and it has to face a furious Monsoon sea and very corrosive water all
other times! So, they asked Sonia to NOT attend the inaguration and
wanted NCP to get the blame. So conveniently they have found Amitabh's
shoulder to fire at NCP because Congres (Sonia & PM) are still
smarting under famous Pawar's meeting with Bal Thackery reagarding the
security of Australian players in IPL. Congres never forgets insults
suffered by it!

Sachin 4 hours ago

Sorry to say Namita , but you have not nalysed whole situation
clearly .
You have not viewed it from angle of Bachchan being Brand Ambassodar
of Gujarat. Is it not bad that some narrow minded politicians cites
reasons that some person should not be invited if he is brand
ambassador of a state whose CM is accused of riots. What baout
congress itself ? They are associated with Sajjan Kumar , Tytler.
So please analyse it from all angles and show your research work
instead of penning down emotions . HT columns were not that excellent
but now they are going off the track.
FlagLikeReplyReply
kush 6 hours ago

1 person liked this.

For inagurations of completed projects, we should stop inviting
politicians as they have no role in developments - it is rather that
despite of their best efforts to delay / scuttle the projects, we
still manage to complete the projects. Worli sea link took ten years
to complete - w/o political interference, it may have been completed
in 3-4 years - so what we need is no congressi neta or NCP - these are
all nincompoops we saw what happended in Mumbai on 26/11. Rather call
icon like Amitabh, Sridaran of Metro, Narayanmurthy of Infosys to be
present for ribbon cutings.

Ravin 6 hours ago

SHAME on Congress ! They have nothing better to do.
Get rid of them to save the country.

nachiket 8 hours ago

All Delhi based writers are talking about Mumbai & Maharashtra. They
talk little about Bihar/UP/MP and other states where real development
is stalled because of in-efficient politician. Raj Thackeray has done
fairly well in stopping 'HINDI-fication' of Maharashtra.

I am Pune Based IT-Professional
The views expressed by me are Public

RP 12 hours ago

Author claims that Chavan dictated that Taxi drivers in Mumbai must
SPEAK Marathi, not true, he said all the taxi drivers in Mumbai must
KNOW Marathi as Marathi is official language of Maharashtra and
Marathi is prerequisite as per Motor Vehicle Act 1989. But I guess we
should not be nit picking .....bash the Thakreys, lampoon the CM with
them and get away with any thing.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/An-unnecessary-link/H1-Article1-523248.aspx

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/f9b738e079fef9fb#

chhotemianinshallah

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Mar 26, 2010, 8:39:04 AM3/26/10

Uma Bharti rejoins BJP, appointed Gen. Secretary
| March 26th, 2010 | By: Piyush Goyal

New Delhi: BJP president Nitin Gadkari is likely to reinduct expelled
saffron sanyasin Uma Bharti into the party and appoint her one of its
general secretaries. With Tarun Vijay and Varun Gandhi already in and
Ms Bharti likely to follow suit, it appears that Hindutva forces will
dominate Team Gadkari. Ms Bharti’s reinduction is likely to make life
difficult for senior moderate leaders like Arun Jaitley and M.
Venkaiah Naidu and the slightly more combative Sushma Swaraj.

BJP parliamentary party chairman L.K. Advani, who could get into
trouble over the deposition of an IPS officer in a Rae Bareli court on
Friday regarding the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid, has
reportedly given the green signal to Ms Bharti’s re-entry into the
party.

On Thursday, Ms Bharti formally resigned from the Bharatiya Janshakti
Party, a political outfit that she had floated after being expelled
from the BJP.
Speculation was rife ever since Mr Gadkari became party chief that he
was trying to get hardliners back into the fold. But strong opposition
from moderate leaders like Mr Jaitley, Mr Venkaiah Naidu and Ms Swaraj
has held him back till now.

Sources said that after consultations with the top RSS leadership,
including its chief Mohan Bhagwat, Mr Gadkari was trying to make Ms
Bharti one of the party general secretaries. It may be recalled that
even after the BJP had expelled Ms Bharti, the RSS continued to
support her. The RSS mouthpiece Organiser had also attacked the BJP
over the expulsion. But with the moderates calling the shots in the
BJP till now, the RSS had failed to get Ms Bharti re-inducted into the
organisation.

However, some BJP leaders feel that despite the RSS’ wishes, it might
not be easy to get Ms Bharti rehabilitated, particularly in a senior
position in the organisation, due to the continued opposition of
certain senior leaders.

http://www.bharatchronicle.com/uma-bharti-rejoins-bjp-appointed-gen-secretary-5810

Citing Mumbai attacks, UK plans to improve marine security
| March 23rd, 2010 | By: Piyush Goyal

London: Britain plans to create a new maritime security agency to spot
and ward off any threats to its ports and shipping, the government
said on Monday.

Announcing plans for a National Maritime Information Centre, Security
Minister Lord West said a 2008 seaborne attack by militants on Mumbai
had increased fears about marine security. The 2012 London Olympics,
with its south coast sailing events, also posed particular problems.

The centre will bring together data about all UK-related maritime
activity by coordinating and sharing information across government
about dangers such as terrorism, piracy and drug smuggling. This would
allow better and faster decision-making.

The centre, to be based at the Defence Ministry joint headquarters in
Northwood, Middlesex, is due to begin work towards the end of 2010.

The British economy is highly dependent on sea ports: More than 90
percent of all freight by tonnage enters or leaves Britain by sea,
according to the British Ports Association industry association.

“The UK is reliant on the sea for its security and prosperity,” an
official statement said. “The continued rise of piracy incidents off
the Horn of Africa and the terrorist events in Mumbai in autumn 2008
have indicated the capacity and intent to exploit the sea to export
terror and unlawful activity.”

“There are also vast ungoverned spaces of the world’s oceans where
unlawful activity continues to destabilise states and regions, from
narcotics trafficking in the Caribbean to piracy off the Horn of
Africa,” the statement said.

In the Mumbai attack, ten men entered the port city in small boats and
struck targets including the main railway station, two luxury hotels
and a Jewish centre, killing 166 people.

India blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based militants and broke off a
peace initiative with Pakistan until Islamabad punished those it said
had planned the assault.

While most militant attacks around the world happen on land, the
spread of piracy off Africa may encourage more use of the sea by
politically inspired armed groups, especially if counter-terrorism
measures on land improve, analysts say.

The U.S. government this month warned ships sailing off Yemen’s coast
of the risk of al Qaeda attacks similar to a militant suicide bombing
of the U.S. warship Cole in Aden in 2000 that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Two years later an al Qaeda attack damaged the French supertanker
Limburg in the Gulf of Aden.

http://www.bharatchronicle.com/citing-mumbai-attacks-uk-plans-to-improve-marine-security-5778

Advani made hate speech on Babri demolition day: ex-PSO
Press Trust of India / New Delhi March 26, 2010, 14:44 IST

Rae Bareli, Mar 26 (PTI) In a setback to L K Advani in the Babri
Masjid demolition case, a senior IPS officer today told a special CBI
court here that the BJP leader made provocative speech at Ayodhya on
the day the structure was brought down 17 years ago.

Deposing as a prosecution witness in the case in which Advani and
other Sangh Parivar leaders have been accused of inciting violence,
1990-batch officer Anju Gupta said Sangh activists like Vinay Katiyar,
Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambhara also made provocative speeches.

Advani and other BJP leaders had repeatedly said that a Ram temple
will be built at the same spot where the 16th century mosque stood,
Gupta, who was the personal security officer of Advani during that
period, told the court.

After her deposition, Gupta was cross-examined by the defence. The
court later adjourned the hearing in the case to April 23 when cross-
examination of the IPS officer will resume.

Gupta told the court that Advani gave provocative speech at Ayodhya on
the day Babri Masjid was demolished. She said Advani wanted to know
from her what was happening at the disputed site. She told Advani that
people were trying to climb the domes and some of them fell down and
were hurt.

On hearing this, Advani expressed desire to go to the site and appeal
to the people to come down from the domes, the IPS officer deposed.
Gupta said after consultation with senior officials, the BJP leader
was told that it was not desirable for him to go there as any mishap
involving him may make the situation go out of control.

Advani then sent Bharti there but she came back after some time, Gupta
said. She also said that she saw people carrying tools like shovels
and rods.

While addressing a gathering Joshi said irrespective of what then
Prime Minister P V Narsimha Rao says, the temple will be built there
itself. "Let the mosque be built anywhere," he said, according to
Gupta.

Gupta also told the court that after the domes of the mosque were
brought down, Bharti and Rithambara hugged each other and distributed
sweets.

They also congratulated Advani and BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, she
said.

Gupta, who is currently posted with R&AW in Delhi, had earlier deposed
before the CBI, which probed the demolition of the 16th century
mosque.

She had made a detailed statement on the movement and activities of
various Sangh leaders, including Advani, during the incident of
December 6, 1992. It formed a key part of the criminal case the CBI
filed against Advani, Joshi, Bharti, Katiyar, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj
Kishore, Vishnu Hari Dalmiya and Rithambhara in 1993.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/babri-newsalert-sr-ips-officer-deposes-against-advani-others/89542/on

Newsmaker: The Reddy brothers
Karnataka's iron men
Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi March 26, 2010, 0:19 IST

The case over the legality of their mining operations has proved the
first check to the rise of the brothers’ ore empire.

Last week, the Supreme Court asked Gali Janardhana and Gali Karunakara
Reddy, brothers, ministers of tourism and infrastructure and revenue
respectively in the Karnataka government and owners of the Obulapuram
Mining Company (OMC), to stop iron ore mining on the Andhra Pradesh-
Karnataka border.

April 6 is the day the Survey of India is supposed to tell the Supreme
Court whether OMC’s owners encroached on a reserve forest to gouge out
vast reserves of iron ore.

The matter reached the Supreme Court after the Andhra Pradesh High
Court gave OMC conditional clearance to continue mining in response to
a complaint that they had not just encroached on land that was not
legally theirs, but had also altered the Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka
border to extend their jurisdiction to the neighbouring state.

The complainant’s contention was that the ruling party in Andhra
Pradesh — the Congress led by former Chief Minister, the late Y S
Rajashekhar Reddy — was in cahoots with the Reddy brothers in
Karnataka to allow illegal mines to flourish.

This is a long way from the Reddy brothers’ first steps in business.
Till some years ago, the Reddy brothers’ preferred form of transport
was the scooter, on which they used to roam villages and towns of
Bellary to raise money for their non-banking financial company which
ultimately had to be liquidated.

Today, a Union minister told Business Standard some months ago, the
Reddy brothers use a helicopter from their place of work to go home to
have lunch so that they can avoid the dust from the mines.

And in 2009, Janardhana Reddy was reported as having said to Telugu
newspapers, quite frankly, “The net worth of myself and my wife is Rs
115 crores. I own a helicopter that I bought for Rs 15 crore, a deluxe
bus for Rs 4 crore and cars worth Rs 5 crore. My group’s turnover in
2006-07 was Rs 2,008 crore for which I have filed IT returns. Out of
this, OMC, which is in the iron ore business, had a turnover of Rs
1,200 crore.”

He is 44. His brother, Karunakara Reddy is 46. In the declaration
before the Election Commission they have reported assets that add up
to much less, around Rs 200 crore.

How did the Reddy family make so much money? Families that owned land
in Bellary would mine iron ore and earn a modest profit. But
engineering in the west soon created machines that modernised mining
operations, making available with relative ease better quality iron
ore that could be found deeper down. This, and the demand from China
coinciding with the Olympics, sent demand for ore spiralling and the
Reddy family’s cash tills ringing non-stop.

Much of this money was invested in Brahmani Steels, a company that was
floated without any credit from banks to process ore from the mines.
Although opposition politicians in Andhra Pradesh, including
Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), charge that
Rajashekhar Reddy and his son Jaganmohan had a stake in Brahmani
Steels, the Reddy brothers say this is untrue.

Meanwhile, the Andhra Pradesh government, in the parallel, is
wondering what to do about complaints that Brahmani Steels diverted
water from the Gandikota reservoir illegally to Brahmani steel.

For the Supreme Court the issue is simple: Did the Reddy brothers dig
mines on land where this is prohibited? Or are they, as they allege,
victims of political vendetta?

Hard to say, but if it is indeed political vendetta, it has little to
do with party politics. In Karnataka, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
government led by B S Yeddyurappa is defending the Reddy brothers for
now.

Their association with the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh when
it was led by Rajashekhar Reddy (whom they describe as a “father to
us”) was fruitful for both and neither saw any contradiction in their
association.

When they became ministers after having bankrolled substantially the
BJP’s Assembly election campaign in 2009, they were irritated to find
BS Yeddyurappa not sufficiently deferential to them. They had a
powerful patron in Sushma Swaraj, who contested the Bellary Lok Sabha
seat against Sonia Gandhi. But they wanted their power acknowledged in
Karnataka.

So, they launched a Rs 25-crore drinking water supply project in their
mother’s name. A Rs 500-crore private project was launched to build
54,000 houses for flood-hit villages in six districts, bypassing the
state government, which of course, was having none of it. During a
heated exchange in the Karnataka Assembly, Janardhana Reddy said:
“People say we are worth Rs 100 crore. I want to correct it — we are
worth Rs 1,000 crore,”

The dénouement came with their bid to topple the BJP government in
Karnatka last year, a venture that was prevented by the chief minister
who sacrificed one of his most trusted civil servants to save his
government.

With that abortive coup, the brothers have established that they can
do that and more next time. Right now they appear to be in the rest
and recreation mode. Telugu and Kannada film magazines report that
Janardhana Reddy has now embraced another profession — the film
industry. His first venture was Buddhimanthudu, a Telugu version of
the Kannada film that was launched last year on Telugu new year.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/newsmakerreddy-brothers/15/13/389703/

SC bars Reddy brothers' company from mining in Bellary
BS Reporter / New Delhi March 23, 2010, 1:00 IST

The Supreme Court today stayed all further mining activities of
Obulapuram Mining Corporation in Andhra Pradesh, belonging to
Karnataka minister G Janardhana Reddy and his brother.

Sid Harth

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Mar 26, 2010, 3:28:17 PM3/26/10

Religious conversion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or
discuss these issues on the talk page.

The Conversion of Saint Paul, a 1600 painting by Italian artist
Caravaggio (1571–1610).Part of a series on the

Religious conversion is the adoption of new religious beliefs that
differ from the convert's previous beliefs. It involves a new
religious identity, or a change from one religious identity to
another. Conversion requires internalization of the new belief system.
It implies a new reference point for one's self identity and is a
matter of belief and social structure—of both faith and affiliation.
[1] This typically entails the sincere avowal of a new belief system,
but may also present itself in other ways, such as adoption into an
identity group or spiritual lineage. Conversion refers to changes from
one religion to another, not to be confused with religious
reaffiliation which refers to changes from one denomination to another
within the same faith.[2] Examples of religious reaffiliation include
switching from being Southern Baptist to Methodist (within
Christianity) or from Sunni to Shiite (within Islam).

There are different types of religion conversion which include, active
conversion which is the free agency, volitional choice to acquire new
beliefs and religious identity,[3] marital conversion, Secondary
conversion, Deathbed conversion, and Forced conversion.

Proselytism is the act of attempting to convert another individual
from a specific religion or belief system. (See proselyte).

Apostate (n.) is a term with pejorative connotations used by members
of one church or religion to refer to someone who has left that church
or religion.

Christianity

Main articles: Conversion to Christianity and Christianization

Main article: List of converts to Christianity

Conversion to Christianity is the religious conversion of a previously
non-Christian person to some form of Christianity. The exact
understanding of what it means to attain salvation varies somewhat
among churches and denominations. It primarily involves confession and
repentance of sin and a decision to live a life that is holy and
acceptable to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Converts are almost
always expected to be baptized.

Baptism

Main article: Baptism

Catholics, Orthodox and many Protestant denominations encourage infant
baptism, welcoming children into the Christian faith before they are
aware of their status. Baptized children are expected to participate
in confirmation classes as pre-teens and affirm their faith by
personal choice.

The method of baptism varies among immersion, sprinkling (aspersion)
and pouring (affusion).[4] Baptism received by adults or younger
people who have reached the age of accountability where they can make
a personal religious decision is referred to as believer's baptism
among conservative or evangelical Protestant groups. It is intended as
a public confession of one's prior decision to become a believer in
and follower of Jesus Christ.[5] Some Christian groups such as
Catholics, Churches of Christ, and Christadelphians believe baptism is
essential to salvation.

[edit] Accepting Christ and renouncing sin

The Augsburg Confession divides repentance into two parts: "One is
contrition, that is, terrors smiting the conscience through the
knowledge of sin; the other is faith, which is born of the Gospel, or
of absolution, and believes that for Christ's sake, sins are forgiven,
comforts the conscience, and delivers it from terrors."[6]Conversion
involves more than a simple change in religious identity. It is a
change in nature (regeneration), evidenced by a change in values. In
fact, the Latin word conversio, translating the Greek metanoia,
literally means "going the other way" or "changing one's mind". A
convert, therefore, is one who renounces sin as worthless and
treasures instead the supreme worth of Jesus Christ. The convert sees
the worth of Christ in Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection and
believes that sin is utterly unsatisfying and that Christ is
everything he or she needs.[7]

In contrast to other religions that seek God's acceptance through good
deeds and living a moral life, the Christian convert acknowledges that
his or her unrighteousness cannot be removed by good deeds and accepts
the death of Jesus Christ in his or her place as the grounds for the
forgiveness of sins and the righteousness of Jesus Christ as the basis
for God's acceptance and delight in the convert.[8] Because conversion
is a change in values that embraces God and rejects sin, it includes a
personal commitment to a life of righteousness as described by Paul of
Tarsus and exemplified by Jesus. In some Protestant traditions, this
is called "accepting Christ as one's Savior and following him as
Lord."[9]

In another variation, the 1910 Catholic Dictionary defines
"conversion" as "One who turns or changes from a state of sin to
repentance, from a lax to a more earnest and serious way of life, from
unbelief to faith, from heresy to the true faith."[10]

Responsibilities

According to most branches of Christianity, sharing the message or
good news of Jesus Christ and his gospel is a responsibility of all
followers of Jesus. According to the New Testament, Jesus commanded
his disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations," [Matthew
28:19] generally known as the Great Commission. Evangelism, or
"spreading the good news," has been a central part of the life of
Christians since that time.

Transfers

Transferring from one Christian denomination to another may consist of
a relatively simple transfer of membership, especially if moving from
one Trinitarian denomination to another, and if the person has
received water baptism in the name of the Trinity. If not, then the
person may need to be baptized or rebaptized to become incorporated
into the new church. Some denominations, such as those in the
Anabaptist tradition, require previously-baptized Christians to be re-
baptized before being accepted into their respective religious
community.

The process of conversion to Christianity varies somewhat among
Christian denominations. Most Protestants believe in conversion by
faith to attain salvation. According to this understanding, the person
professes faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. While an individual may
make such a decision privately, usually it entails being baptized and
becoming a member of a denomination or church. In these traditions,
one is considered to become a Christian by publicly acknowledging the
reality of the death, burial and resurrection Jesus for the remission
of sins, and thereby receiving Jesus as their personal Savior.

Comparison among Protestants

This table summarizes the classical views of three different
Protestant beliefs.[11]

Topic Lutheranism Calvinism Arminianism

Conversion Through the means of grace, resistible Without means,
irresistible Involves free will and is resistible

Hinduism

bademiyansubhanallah

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Mar 27, 2010, 4:08:58 AM3/27/10

Bal Thackeray has been very gracious to me: Shahrukh
Friday, March 26, 2010, 11:57 [IST]
By: Joginder Tuteja, Bollywood Hungama

He's known as King Khan of Bollywood and is one of India's hottest
actors and producers. Shahrukh Khan, the global superstar explains why
the time has come for developing nations like India to assert
themselves internationally, discusses the furore surrounding the
premiere of his film My Name is Khan and talks about his hopes for his
Kolkata Knight Riders team in this season's Indian Premier League.

up!It's fantastic to have you on the show, you are easily Bollywood's
biggest star these days. For those watching it might have seemed easy.
You are so big they call you King Khan. Is this the way you saw you
life panning when you started off as an actor?
Not at all, I still don't believe it. I still think it's like a dream.
But when I started off, I never thought I would do anything else but
wake up in the morning and work. But the only thing that's added to
it, and I tell this to everyone, is that I still wake up in the
morning and work but the only odd thing my kids find is that I'm a man
and I wear make-up.

We're doing this interview at your house and there are often throngs
of fans waiting outside trying to get a glimpse of you. As they wait
to see what crumb you might throw them, is that kind of a weird
feeling - the immense scrutiny that you get.
I feel very embarrassed and odd. I don't even call them fans. I think
they are people who appreciate what I do. My wife tells me on the
weekends, especially because there's a crowd - a thousand people
outside. So I go for five minutes and wave, then the cops get very
angry because the traffic stops so they shout at me. So I'm really
embarrassed. I feel really odd but I think when people come to visit
me at house then I should be sort of kind to them and say hello to
them. The scrutiny part, there was a time, I have a sense of humour
and my family feels I should stop it because it's gets me into
trouble. I say things and maybe people don't understand it or they
give me more importance than to think, I am flippant. I should not be
flippant. I should be more serious. But I feel I've never been like
that and I just want to have fun and say things that are easy going
but many a time, it's not taken like this and everything is
scrutinized.

One of things that got you a lot of headlines recently was that as
Muslims it was shame that the IPL hadn't picked up any Pakistani
players for this season and you own an IPL team, The Kolkata Knight
Riders. Your comments caused an absolute firestorm particularly with
Hindu Nationalists, did you anticipate the furore those words would
cause.
You know I did say in the interview, you know I do hope I don't get
into trouble for saying this before I said that. But I didn't think it
would go to this extent. It became strange. Strange things were said.
And I said "the bottom line in my country is that, there is a certain
amount of freedom of speech which we also restrain unto. We are not
completely outspoken, we don't do strange things - at least I don't
and most of the people I know, don't. So there's freedom of speech.
This was my point of view.

They were burning effigies of you in the streets, some people I mean,
people are absolutely going nuts about you.
Some guy had a slipper in his hands and was hitting poster. I want to
find him. I want to meet up with him. He should try it when I'm
standing in front. Not on a piece of paper.

The main Hindu Nationalist party, Shiv Sena, obviously took what you
had to say extremely badly, they were the ones who campaigned against
at this time and threatened to disrupt the premiere of your movie My
Name Is Khan. Were you worried at all about the safety of yourself and
you family and your fans?
I'll be honest. I know Balasaheb Thackeray very well. He's also been
very gracious to me. I know Uddhav Thackeray, he's been very helpful.
I know them very well. We've never had ... and I've said this many
times...

The top level of the Shiv Sena...
They meet me, I go over to their house, they're really gracious and
wonderful with me, and we've never had ideological discussions, maybe
they have a different ideology for the party that they run, but I'm
not a political person so we've never sat down and "so, why is it
like..", so we've never had this discussion. If there was genuinely a
misunderstanding about what I said, which is quite possible, pick up
the phone and I'd explain it, it would have been "oh, okay, that's
what you meant? Sorry. We thought you meant this. You don't mean
that." That's the way it should have been but I just think it became
bigger than the personal relationship we share.

Your team the Kolkata Knight Riders hasn't had a terrible successful
track record in the past couple of years, what do you think are the
prospects for it to do better this time around?

The thing that I say, you've been very kind when you say they haven't
been doing very well. The first thing - and I'm a little philosophical
about this - is that I have to accept and the team has to accept, the
truth is we haven't done well at all. We've accepted that. The second
part is, it's very easy to do better when you're in the eighth
position with only eight teams you can't go worse than this. So we are
going to do better. I think what we tried to do is get the Indian part
of the team stronger. I think the senior guys like Ishant and Ganguly,
they just need to get into the groove. I think the main thing the
coach and Dada have brought in this time is the fact we training the
young guys just to make them enjoy themselves. 20/20 needs to be
enjoyed, when you see a Matthew Hayden play, he's enjoying himself. I
sense that. You have to enjoy it. You can't just have the test match
pressure on your head. Or the one-day pressure on your head. You need
to go and enjoy yourself. Have a good time. So yesterday when the team
was leaving, somebody turned around, one of the managers and said we
have to win only seven or eight and if we only lose five. And I said
we can't lose anymore. We've lost too many. We've lost for the next
four years. So I think we'll do better. I think we will do much better
this year.

Let's discuss movies now, and specifically My Name Is Khan in which
you play an autistic Muslim in America post 9/11. The film's done
great and particularly well in Islamic countries, is that your
intention. Were you trying to appeal to most of the Muslim audience?

The fact that, you said it so well and it was a convoluted plot, an
autistic Muslim man in America post 9/11, when you put it so simply it
sounds so complicated. No, you make a film, normally for a universal
audience, the kind of films that I do especially I would like everyone
to see them. Within them, I'll try to put in something different that
appeals maybe, if you do hockey, maybe the hockey guys and girls will
like it more. You do it about a bad guy recently, so when you do that
thing and the youngsters like all the bad stuff, cool stuff. So, they
like it. But the intention was never like that. I do remember the
wonderful distributor Fox, they were going to say we'll release in
UAE, and we'll release it in Morocco like this, and Indonesia and
Malaysia and I said "why are they doing it so specifically". Maybe
they understood the spot much better than we did because yes, it's
record breaking in the Muslim countries, I never thought it would have
been like that. I really thought the film was about humanity.

Yeah, this was the latest collaboration between you and director Karan
Johar, you've worked together on countless movies but you're also best
mates away from the set. What is it do you think that some sort of
magic formula you have seems that helps you two work together so well?
I think the first thing is that's trust. I gave him a book the
"Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" and I said you should make
a film with a little kid who's autistic and a story of a father and a
son. Obviously assuming if you took me as a father and a little child
who's autistic. And then he came up with the script with me as
autistic with this whole plot. And I'm like "this is a little strange"
because when you make a film with me, as far as Karan and me are
concerned, we normally make a little more commercially viable films.
But he said no, this is what I want to do. So I trust him, I trust him
completely.

One of the things that got a lot of publicity for the movie was when
you were detained by US immigration which in a way which mirrors a
scene in My Name Is Khan when you say "my name is Khan and I'm not a
terrorist" to have it play out like that in real life, there was a lot
of press on it, what was it like from your standpoint?
It happens to me every month, whenever I travel to the western world
because of the name. But it's not only me. There are another 75 people
in that line. It happens to my kids. And I say this again and again. I
have no issue. I have no issue with it personally because this is the
world that we have created. This is how it is. I think what happened
that day was that it took a little longer. This was at the immigration
for the first time - normally it happens at the security. I think the
processes just went wrong and it took a couple of hours. I had to call
the Indian Consulate because I had a meeting in Atlantic City, if I
got caught up here, there was no point me going all the way to
America. So I asked "can you get me out of here", so I think it just
went out to the press and we have reached a stage in India and I think
rightly so, when a developing nation is on the threshold on coming out
and Inshallah taking over the whole world - in terms of economics, in
terms of politics, in terms of business, I think certainly we have a
voice. We've been pushed, all developing nations, I'm not just saying
India and suddenly we have a voice in the world which matters and
sometimes that voice is a little louder than it should be. So anytime
anything goes wrong with Indians anywhere in the world, you notice all
Indians get up. Not on the outside. It happened when the Shiv Sena
thing happened - all the Indians came and said "no, this is wrong".
I'm really glad we have a voice like that, and that's what happened
"they stopped Shah Rukh, how dare they" and I was joking about it
until about half a day actually, and I even joked that when the
American Hollywood actresses come that I should be given the right to
frisk them in India. I want to be the first guy. It's only fair.

You did say you wanted My Name is Khan to be a global hit like Slumdog
Millionaire. You could have been in Slumdog Millionaire. You got
offered the role of the quiz show host but you turned it down and Anil
Kapoor got it. Do you beat yourself over that decision?
No, I really wanted that film to be made. I'd read the Indian novel.
I'd bought it. I wanted to make it myself but an Indian film. When I
read the script, I knew they'd made a much better film than I could
ever.

Why didn't you want part of that fantastic film then?
One, I'm not offered many great films; honestly, I don't have an agent
for stuff in the west. Also, I'd hosted "Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire". Here the host was a bit of a fixer. I only fixed "Who
Wants to be a Millionaire" in a way that I felt bad for the people and
I'll like "listen why don't you retire now, don't don't, this looks
like a difficult question. So you've got half a million dollars, go
back relax" then they say "no we want to play" and I'm like "can we go
for a break". I used to feel really bad and I'm not allowed to say
anything but I know this question's a little difficult young man. So,
I just felt that I had so much fun doing it personally that I didn't
want to be on the side where I take the guy into the loo and say "I
can fix this for you". I didn't want to be the bad guy because I won't
do it like that.

http://entertainment.oneindia.in/bollywood/interviews/2010/shahrukh-khan-interview-260310.html

C paves way for Muslim quota
25/03/2010 12:15:02 Pioneer News Service | New Delhi

Upholds 4% reservation in AP, for now
Constitution Bench to take final call

Paving the way for religion-based reservation, the Supreme Court on
Thursday upheld a decision by the Andhra Pradesh Government giving
four per cent reservation in jobs and educational institutions to 14
Muslim groups coming under socially and educationally backward
classes.

The legislation under challenge — the Andhra Pradesh Reservation — in
favour of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes of Muslims Act,
2007, was struck down by the AP High Court on February 8 this year
following which the State Government had rushed to the apex court for
stay of the order.

In the first 14 categories, names of specific Muslim groups were added
as beneficiaries under the Act but the last item on the list for
reservation included “Other Muslim Groups” excluding Saiyed, Mughal,
Pathans, Irani, Arab, Bohara, Shia Imami Ismaili, Khoja, Cutchi-Memon,
Jamayat, and Navayat.

Suggesting a middle path, the Bench of Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan,
Justices JM Panchal and BS Chauhan allowed the Act to continue with
regard to 14 groups while withdrawing benefit to the last category
comprising “any other” Muslim groups. The Bench posted the State’s
appeal along with related petitions for further hearing in August
before a Constitution Bench. In providing this interim concession, the
Bench maintained that the creamy layer among the 14 groups would be
excluded.

For the State Government, the decision has come as a partial relief.
Attorney General Goolam E Vahanvati, who appeared for the AP
Government, had sought stay of the high court order in whole to ensure
the Act was implemented with regard to all 15 categories. Vahanvati
sought to clear the apprehension that only Muslims would be benefited
since the Act specifically excluded 10 categories of Muslims from the
ambit of reservation. At the same time, he pointed out the example of
Kerala and Karnataka where Muslim community as a whole was considered
as a backward class.

Senior advocate K Parasaran, also appearing for the State Government,
stated that just because the groups belong to the Muslim community,
they do not cease to be backward. For 60 years, he added, the benefits
of reservation did not reach them and it was time to correct the
situation now, or keep them in the same backward state for years to
come.

Prior to passing the legislation in 2007, the Government constituted
an independent commission headed by retired IAS officer PS Krishnan on
whose recommendations the 14 categories of Muslims were identified as
socially and educationally backward.

But senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the petitioners,
submitted that the legislation was nothing but a “thinly disguised
form of religion-based reservation.” He wondered the need for the
State to include “any other Muslims” as a separate category when 14
categories were found eligible as backward classes.

The Bench, impressed by Salve’s contentions, said, “There is no
denying that backwards are not there among Muslims. If we allow this
to continue they will be denied of benefits due to them.” Passing its
order, the Bench noted that in the meantime the State Backwards
Commission could continue their exercise of identification.

Salve, however, reminded the court that on previous occasions, the
Supreme Court and High Court had consistently maintained the stand to
deny reservation to Muslims. The first occasion was in the year 2004
when the State Government issued a Government Order dated July 12,
2004 providing five per cent reservation to the entire Muslim
community in the State. It was struck down by a larger Bench of the AP
High Court in the absence of any criteria laid down for ascertaining
backwardness. The Supreme Court upheld the High Court order.

Almost a year later, the State Government brought out an ordinance
providing five per cent reservation to the entire Muslim community
treating them as a backward class. A five-judge Bench of the AP High
Court struck down the law as unconstitutional since the same was
treated to benefit the Muslim community as a whole, without there
being any identification by the Backward Classes Commission. The apex
court is still seized of the appeal challenging this order, when the
AP Government chose to enact the 2007 legislation presently under
challenge.

Sunil
26/03/2010 12:22:43 It is very sad !!.
why is the opposition BJP sitting quite..??i just saw one small
statement by BJP spokeperson after the verdict was announced....where
is the RSS and VHP and other Hindu organisation..??are they
sleeping..??why are they not protesting..??why are they not asking for
reservation for MINORITY Hindus in Kashmir..??If we dont react
now...very soon we'll be in minority in rest of the states as
well..next in the list will be Kerala, Assam,and other north eastern
states...we should be very much aware of things that is happening
around us..for eg..how many of us know that in Kerala 12% of jobs are
reserved for Muslims..??(talking abt the youger generation who doesn
know what all are happening)...now we take it so lightly...once the
muslims become a majority does anyone think that they will return the
favour..???Does anyone think that muslims will give reservation to
Hindus..??If anyone thinks like that..they are absolutely wrong...I'm
sure many Hindu brothers will be thinking like that...why wait for
that..??Dont you all think Prevention is better than cure..??So lets
attack it now..else later it will attack us..

skg
26/03/2010 11:39:27 It is very sad !!.
It is very sad and depressing to see the judgement of the Supreme
court. First of all, the ruling by Supreme court has ignored major
facts. How can they just find ground facts in just 3 hours of
discussion ?. Why was there a haste in allowing 4% reservations ?. Who
will lead the constitutional bench ?. Will take into consideration all
the facts before giving the final verdit ?. Why are these 14 groups
not added to the BC commission ?. Who suppressed the voice of BC
commission ?.

Suresh Iyer
26/03/2010 10:13:57 Shortlived euphoria
Just two weeks back, HK readers rejoiced over the AP HC decision to
overturn the communal reservation.Now the same bogus constitution is
interpreted differently by a higher court.It reminds one of the
various interpretation of Koran.Court verdicts are becoming a lottery
for the public.This is antoher proof of this country being a banana
republic.Generally our courts are famous for delays in giving
verdicts.But just the see the speed at which the SC gave a hearing for
this case. It clearly shows the hidden hands.

M.N.S.Nampoothiripad
26/03/2010 04:36:06 Communal Bench decides before the Constitution
Bench is constituted
This is ridiculous. The pertinent issues involved are to be decided by
the constitution bench. Then why should a communal bench hurry to
declare the Andhra Act valid? In another case relating to M.F.Hussain,
the chief justice remarked that Hussain is free to come to India at
any time and nobody can prevent him. Hussain is Qatari citizen now and
he needs a valid India visa to visit this country. K.G. Balakrishnan
is fooling millions of law abiding citizens of this nation by
rendering such perverted remarks and judgements.

Abhilash Nambiar
26/03/2010 02:02:03 Lost respect
Today I have lost respect for the Supreme Court of India.

Ram
25/03/2010 21:50:18 Self imposed backwardness
If the Muslims let their womenfolk go for higher education, then it
would be good for the country. It will help good new generation of
Muslim children who have a balanced view of the world. The
backwardness of Muslims is mostly "self imposed". For the women
reservation bill, the opposition came from the orthodox muslims as
they want to continue the saudi arabian system of preventing women
from knowing worldly things. Education alone can remove the
fundamentalist mindset of Muslims, who don't encourage rational
questions and accept whatever that is imposed on them.

Narendran
25/03/2010 21:47:35 Clever Ploy?
This case was argued by:

1.Adv. Vhanavati- Solicitor Genereal for AP Govt
2. Adv. K Parasaran- For a party suppporting the reservation
3. Adv. Harish Salve- Lawyer for those opposed the reservation.

There is a clear ploy in this case. This is a ground work for
extending resevations for the so callled Dalit Christians. It is clear
strategy to make India a Christian majority by 2050. It will be
impossible for India to remain as a united country by 2030. With the
current religious strife, there is every chance that the country will
be split into many independent nations unless it get an impartial
leader to govern.

Vijayalakshmi
25/03/2010 21:01:54 SCpaves way for muslim quota.
Whatever may be the arguments, religion and caste-based reservations
are discriminatory against the rest of the Indians, and will encourage
conversions.We need better lawyers to argue our case effectively. Only
economic criterion and merit should be considered for
reservation.Otherwise India will disintegrate.This is the agenda of
the anti-national mafia which is pressing for such discriminatory
reservations.

Karthik
25/03/2010 20:26:22 Akhand Pakistan dream becoming true ?
In making this Akhand Pakistan dream of Muslims come true, traitors
with Hindu names are playing an important role. Retd. IAS officer PS
Krishnan , Goolam E Vahanvati, K Parasaran etc. are all Pakistanis and
not Hidustanis anymore. Let patriotic Hindus identify such traitors
within the Hindu community. Francois Gautier is right when he says
'The greatest enemy of a Hindu is a Hindu'. Hey Alert Hindus, please
stop giving alms to Muslim beggars. Sachar and Ranganath Mishra will
take care of them. Reservations on the basis of the religion is
unconstitutional and the Supreme Court has acted unconstitutionally by
upholding 4% reservations for Muslims. Whats wrong if the common Hindu
unconstitutionally practices untouchability towards the Muslim
community ? Afterall Muslims are doing the same to Hindus by calling
them Kafirs, right? So one of my Hindu friend gave me a chocolate made
in Dubai. After he left I threw that into Dustbin!

mgd
25/03/2010 20:40:56 every Hindu caste is a minority
This kind of thing will go on forever. The definition of minority
should include every hindu caste which is a minority vis-a-vis the
entire Hindu religion.

Ganesh
25/03/2010 20:21:24 free for all laws
The mention of 14'groups' is a euphemism for castes in the muslim
community.It is now clear that muslims in india were converts and are
carrying the caste tag even now. This system is against the very
tenets of islam.Can any Islamic cleric or leader define what this
'group 'means?.All those utopian idea of casteless relegion is a
farce.I think the khangress must have offered some relief from
declaration of assets by the SC judges in return for this minority
appeasement verdict.I only hope that there is now a thin streak of
light at the end of the tunnel.The hindus must try and cause
infighting between muslims who are granted reservation and those who
are outside it.

vinu
25/03/2010 19:58:58 ppl who deserves never gets, others always gets
ppl who deserves never gets reservation.crores of ppl below the
poverty line still dont have access to basic needs, ruling authorities
make sure that they remain like that.The affluent vote bank based
communities get all that is needed in the name of vote bank. Happens
only in our country..!!

skg
25/03/2010 17:58:34 Congress party will misuse these reservations !!.
God knows how the backwardness is identified in the Muslim community.
Clearly there is no transparency on how they identified the
Backwardness in the Mulsim community. Also, no body know why other
Muslim category was present in the Bill. Intelligent Hindus and
attorneys dig into this bill and expose Congress government and bring
to attention to the supreme court of the consequences of extending
resrervations to Muslim community. Don't know why Dr.Ambedkar had
excluded them from reservations . There must be a reason why Ambedkar
must have excluded them. It is pathetic that sufficient arguments and
awareness is missing about this in the Hindu community.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10711&SKIN=B

Anti Hindu Hate Groups in America
12/12/2008 12:57:33

Dr. BABU SUSEELAN

Opposition to Hindus is nothing new in America. For several years
Hindus were denied immigration by American law. Despite the obstacles
posed by Christian Missionaries, Hindus were able to immigrate to
America during the presidency of Kennedy and Johnson. Hindu
organizations sprang up across the continent and slowly took root in
American society. It is significant that Hindu immigrants have worked
tirelessly and convinced American thinkers that spirituality is
essential for peace, freedom, harmony and coexistence.

Hindu Contribution to science, technology, economics, life sciences,
spirituality and freedom are innumerable. Devout Hindus have
strengthened the theories of pluralism, yoga, meditation, and the
management of human affairs in several ways. It represents a systemic
perspective against the naturally limited, historically conditioned
efforts of dogmatic ideology to conceive one model of living.

Hindu values keep Indians strong by binding us together. By committing
and
recommitting ourselves to our Dharma, we have forged a common Hindu
identity. It is what makes a Pluribus Unum “out of one"
possible?

Now several Hindu hate groups have appeared in different parts of
America
in new forms and with different disguises. India has never suffered
from a shortage of enemies in America. Recently, Fundamentalist
Evangelist groups, Indian Converted Christian Organizations, Fanatic
Indian Islamo Fascists, Indian Marxists anarchists posing as liberals,
and pseudo secular bigots have made an unholy alliance against India
and Hindus in America.

They have joined with anti Hindu fundamentalist groups to wage a
psychological warfare against peace loving, tolerant, spiritual,
pluralistic Hindus. Several anti Hindu fanatic groups such as American
Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI), Association of Indian
Muslims of America (AIM), Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH),
Coalition Against Communalism (CAC), Federation of Indian American
Christian Organization of North America (FIACONA), Forum of Inquilabi
Leftists (FOIL), Indian Christian Forum (ICF), Indian Muslim
Educational Foundation of North America (IMEFNA), Indian Muslim
Council-USA (IMC-USA), Indian Muslim Relief and Charities (IMRC),
Muslim Youth Awareness Alliance (MYAA), South Asian
Collectives (SAC), South Asia Forum (SAF), and Supporters of Human
Rights in India (SHRI) are busy vulgarizing Hinduism. (The List is not
exhaustive).

These hate groups’ goal is unmistakably been Hindu bashing. They are
not honest critics working toward peace and positive values for
America. They are peddling lies,
half-truths, and false accusations in the guise of secularism.

What is going on? Why are Indian Converted Christians, fanatic Indian
Muslims and Communists betraying India? Instead of creating a positive
image, educating
Americans, promoting pluralistic, all inclusive Indian values, why are
they turning against Hindus and India? These converted Indian
Christians, Indian Muslims and Marxists have surrendered themselves to
rigid, non-compromising, reductionist, divisive, fundamentalist anti
Hindu ideology.

These sloppy anti-Hindu bigots suffer from thinking errors and take no
responsibility for their nefarious and erroneous actions. They behave
without moral conscience, guilt or remorse and they don’t want the
consequences of their action
known, and if it becomes known, they don’t want to take
responsibility.

They are well trained to do what they are told.

These Hindu bashers’ language, values, culture, and thinking have been
polluted through a denial of traditional Indian culture. In the mad
dash to escape from their all inclusive, open ended, universal
spiritual philosophy and freedom, that make up Indian heritage, these
converted Christians, Muslims and Marxists scoff at Indian cultural
values and ethics and become paranoid and psychotic in their attempt
to deal with their roots.

These anti Indian groups simply do not understand the result of their
own actions and do not stick around long enough to bear consequences.
These mischief mongers and miscreants in our midst seldom advocate
pluralism, tolerance, universalism or harmony or trying to move the
American society in that direction because they are slaves to
tyrannical, fundamentalist and conflicting ideologies.

It seems that a slow poison is running the veins of these people and
the anti-Hindu crap is just a small part of it. These Hindu bashers
are always seemed ready with excuses for Islamic terrorists,
missionary culture vultures and Marxist anarchists.

Every positive Social service by Hindu organizations is horrifying in
their eyes, a sign of bad conduct, and moral decay. It is as if Hindu
bashers of Indian origin have arrived at a kind of intellectual truth
with Islamic terrorists and the conversion gangs. It is as if they
have made accommodation with them.

Hindu bashers actually welcome news that makes Hindus and India bad.
They find pleasure and delight in vilifying India and Hindus. There
is no outrage from these Hindu bashers about Jihadi terrorism,
missionary mischief or Marxist violence.

While hiding behind tyrannical ideologies, these Hindu bashers in
America are playing with betrayal, denial, diversion, falsehood and
sophistry.

Are they aware of the social and political damage they have already
inflicted on India? Their actions against India and Hindus have no
moral sense, logic or common sense. Their recent letter to President
elect Obama exposes the fallacious and demeaning logic.

The unprecedented and recklessness of their letter is an alarmist
tactics of intimidation.

How did they get this way? Mindless missionaries have used deceptive
strategies to lure low
class, uneducated and poor Indians and freed them from their spiritual
tradition and enslaved them in rigid, fundamentalist and parochial
Christian dogma. Christian schools have indoctrinated them with closed
channel thinking and hostility towards Hindu pluralism, tolerance and
transcendental philosophy. They were brought to this country to serve
their slave masters. Islamo fascists and Marxists and the anti Hindu
pseudo secularists have made an unholy alliance against tolerant
Hindus and sacred Indian heritage.

These closed channel Hindu hate groups have a goal to insult, ridicule
and subvert American religious freedom. These Hindu hate groups are
mired in hostility and tyrannical ideologies. They will always see
India as immoral and dishonorable.

No matter how much Hindus and India do today, these hate groups prey
on American insecurities, ignorance and the gaps in their knowledge.
These Indian born maroons exploit American hopes and fears. In short,
these anti Hindu hate groups represent the ultimate in vanity and
betrayal.

true hindu
20/11/2009 02:50:10 put a blanket ban
Congrats to Dr Babu Suseelan for his excellent article. Let me tell
you that first of all Americans are excellent, kind , peace loving and
tolerant people . That is the reason , they allow all people across
the globe allowing to migrate and settle on their land. Be they from
Iraq, iran , Bangla desh .Pakistan ,Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan .
First of all why these hate mongers and pseudo secular bigots are
allowed to US or UK? .

One fellow here wrote that Islam is fastest spreading religion in USA.
Why is US Govt sleeping?. If Islam is allowed to take over in USA, I
think 2012 dooms day as said will happen to USA in nearest time. Why
are these mulsims not able to live in their own country ? Why are they
after US Visa and like to settle in US? Because they are
kicked ,caned , hanged , stoned like animals in their country as per
sharia law.

They are forbidden drinks, sex , free dom etc.,.In USA , you can do
any thing. But what these people are doing in a democratic country
like US? Building mosques , preaching hate religion, dividing people,
converting all innocent US citizens to islam and still doing all dirty
things which are forbidden in their religion. They are not faithful to
their host country.

Enjoying all facilities in london or Newyork, planning how to bomb or
kill kaffirs.India is also facing the same problem from centuries with
these cunning guys.Now Indian converted christians and muslims are
real culprits to malign our peace loving religion and India.USA must
put blanket ban on giving VISAs to Indian converted christians and
Muslims .

Raghavan V Nair
13/12/2008 09:29:37 ARE WE DESTINED TO BE LIKE THIS ?
Dear Dr.Babu Suseelan, You have brought forward yet another matter of
greater concern to Hindus. It is not surprising that the commies have
joined hands with Christian and Muslim groups in the US to malign the
Hindus. After over 61 years also, they could not be of any
significance in the country except the 4.5 years they lavished by
courtesy of Madam Gandhi. The situation in Gulf countries is in fact
the worst. In countries like Saudi Arabia, most jobs are reserved for
Muslims alone giving absolute leverage to them. On top of that, they
try their best to keep us aside and put in all efforts to project the
Hindus as enemies and Pakistanis as brothers. Babri Masjid demolition
and events in Gujarat they magnified and presented there in most
damaging way to project Hindus as brutes.

Undoutedly, the glaring examples of Hindu tolerance has been that even
after being subjected to such humiliation in Gulf, we are destined to
live with them in this country and accept that as fate and remain
content. But what are they doing? Earlier we suffered in the hands of
Muslim invaders who ruled this country until the British came in and
now they come in as terrorists. Earlier they divided this country in
the name of religion, and now they wish to further divide it into
pieces. Who is to be blamed for all these ? Only we!!

Sujit
13/12/2008 01:20:53 Plan positive actions to counter negativities
Dear Dr. Babu, You have inventoried the negative energies at play
against Hinduism. It is good to be aware of who are the ones working
against Hinduism. However, what is required is a set of positive
communication and social education strategies, coordinated by
different Hindu organisations, to counter these negativities. These
should include identifying (non-ethnic Indian) scholars of Hinduism,
Yoga, Ayurveda etc., to become spokespersons, dispelling
misconceptions about Hinduism, briefings about the essence of Hindu
view of life etc. Unless positive and non-competitive energies are
displayed, Hindus will not be able to gain the social/theological
acceptance of non-Hindus; particularly in a nation such as the US,
where very little about the outside world is known to the common
American.

Mohan
12/12/2008 23:16:07 Hindu haiter
Respected Babuji, I go through ur article from this site along with
various article posted by you on www.faithfreedom.org/com. No doubt
you are excellent writer like Francis Guitar of Frnace. It u are
absolutely right that, these fantic chrstians and muslim they never
treat this nation belongs to them. They always indulge all sort of
anti hindu bashing in every forum. Now a days it becames a trend under
this UPA govt. all most all important position held by the chrstians
and muslim. Take the example of Mrs.Ambica Soni( Chrstian), Jamir
(Chrstian), Samuel Reddy (CM of AP- 7th day avendist chrstian, Mr.Ajit
Jogi (Converted Chrstian), Ms.Jaya Prada, Jaya Sudha (Chrstians), I
dont have any idea about Mr.Amra Sing (he may be christian). Eminet
hindu haiter Sakel Ahemad (Home minister-State charges), Jai Prakash
Jaiswal-Hindu haiter from kanpur, Mr.Ahemad-IUML from Kerala, enire
Communist thugs. Apart from these hindus haiter our so clled beloved
CNN-IBN, NDTV, Star News and other english chenel. There must be total
ban on these english chennel. U see there reporting about mumbai
incident, now they are telling terroriesm have no relegion. But it has
relegion that is ISlam. Firther I would like to request Respected
Suselanji kindly expose Dr.Zakir Naik, torch bearer of Quran in every
forum. Since you are regular writer in the faithfreedom. Bande
Mataram.

Sakthi
12/12/2008 15:06:34 We all can help Please use this website..
Make Barack Obama aware of these things.. we dont have to wait for any
organisation each Hindu rather Indian visiting this website. Please
write their opinion at this website which directly accessed by The
President-elect..Next President of United States Sri Barack Obama!
Please do it immediately.

and another website is

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

menon
12/12/2008 11:30:45 Well explained
Awesome article. This is 100% treu. This is quite visible in America
these days. When the converted christians think west is their home
land, muslims think gulf is their home land.

Especially in USA according to an American web site, there are around
1 million Hindus and another 2 million is waiting to embrace Hindu.
This is alarmingly frustrating for the pseudo secularists.

When India is mentioned, Hindu is the first thing an American think. I
personally know americans who literally hate the converted christians
from India. There are many churches in USA which wouldn't even let
them come in. The christian groups were always have this feeling that
india's problems are not their problems.

Very unfortunate. But there seems to be a HIndu unity in USA and lots
of people working on this too.

Vijayan
12/12/2008 08:26:05 hindu hate groups
Excellent observations by Dr. Babu Suseelan.

If the hate groups can make it to actions, the Hindus have to react
too. Pleuralism has been the strength and the same time, made Hindus
less fanatic !!!!
Why cant the Hindus react and do the " fact finding" and " truth
exposing" missions ? If the hate groups are trying to influence the
administration in disguise, the Hindus should try to expose the truth
in open.

If we cannot do that, then we deserve all the humiliation and the
consequences

vijay

SeaLion
12/12/2008 05:04:23 These same evil
Vile, tyrannical, savage and barbaric inhuman Xian fascistic death
cult asuras, the worst of the evil , ARE NOW IN CAHOOTS IN INDIA WITH
OTHER EVILEST VILE FORCES LIKE THE ASURIC ISLAMOFASCISM AND COMMUNIST
DEMON BASTARDS, UNDER DEMENTED, NERO REGIME OF THE FOREIGN XIAN
MINDLESS. LOWLY IMPOSTER FROM ITALY AND HER XIAN BED....
IF IT IS CLOSELY OBSERVED THESE HATE GROUPS, SPECIALLY THE JIHADI AND
XIAN BARBARIAN ANIMALS ARE BEING FINANCED BY HINDU TAX MONEY OR LOOTER
XIAN MNC BUSINESSES, WITH TACIT SUPPORT OF EVIL MAINO XIAN BARBARIANS
ARE KNOWN DEMENTED DEBAUCHERS, THEY DO THE SAME TO ALL WHETHER JEWS,
RED INDIANS, MAORIS, ETC, BECAUSE OF THE EVIL BEAST, CMD OF MURDER INC
SITTING IN VATICAN.

WE "HAVE TO" HAVE TO" HAVE TO" REACT LIKE MUSLIMS, THESE XIANS AND
PSEUDOS DESRVE NO MERCY, WE HAVE TO TELL THEM INDIA IS FOR HINDUS AND
FOR THAT WE HAVE TO MAKE A NICE, GOOD EXAMPLE OF THIS MOST EVIL,
DEMENTED CHURCHOCRAZY MAFIA OF THE ITALIAN

"The devotee who forgoes the life-experiences of marriage and family,
and exchanges the problems of a small household and limited activities
for the larger responsibilities of service to society in general, is
undertaking a task which is often accompanied by persecution from a
misunderstanding world, but also by a divine inner contentment."

Paramahansa Yogananda

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/hkpage.aspx?PageID=7782&SKIN=W

Gomata protection gains momentum
26/03/2010 19:41:57 HARAN B R - Daily Pioneer

If success in banning cow slaughter is the litmus test of any BJP
regime’s commitment to Hindutva, the Yeddyurappa dispensation in
Karnataka has done well — but what would be its effect on the BJP’s
national image?

In its session, which ended last week, the Karnataka Assembly passed
the “Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill
2010” by voice vote amidst chaotic protests by the Opposition. It may
be recalled that the BJP government withdrew the already existing
“Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act
1964” days before introducing this new Bill. Though the government
didn’t cite any reasons for its withdrawal at the time, the Opposition
objected to in the anticipation that a new Bill would be introduced
with changes making it more stringent.

Under the new Bill, cow slaughter and transportation would attract
imprisonment ranging from one year to seven years and fine from Rs
25,000 to Rs 1,00,000, depending on the nature of the offence. Under
the previous Act of 1964, the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and adult
buffaloes was permitted on the basis of ‘fit-for-slaughter’
certificates, which were given only when the animals were over 12
years of age or permanently incapacitated for breeding, draught or
milk due to injury, deformity or other causes. Transportation for
slaughter outside the state was not permitted and sale, purchase or
disposal of cow or calf for slaughter was also banned. The offence was
considered cognizable and the penal provision was imprisonment up to
maximum of 6 months or fine of up to Rs 1,000 or both.

Karnataka has been ruled by the Congress and the Janata Dal for years
and their failure to prevent slaughter of cattle despite the 1964 Act
shows the ineffectiveness of the Bill as well as the incompetence of
those governments. In an era of corruption and inefficiency, it
becomes imperative to deal with offenders and criminals in a more
stringent manner to bring down the rate of crime and maintain law and
order.

The problem with the present Congress leadership is that it
deliberately disregards its own predecessors’ opinions. This aspect
was pointed out by chief minister Yeddyurappa, who recalled that
Indira Gandhi had written to the chief ministers in 1982 asking them
to ban cow slaughter and that

Jawaharlal Nehru had also advocated a ban on cow slaughter. Gandhiji,
in whose name the Congress does its political business, venerated,
worshipped and defended the cow calling it the

‘Mother of millions of mankind’. Gandhi termed cow protection as the
central fact of Hinduism.

Moreover, Article 48 (Organisation of Agriculture and Animal
Husbandry) of the Constitution says: “The State shall endeavour to
organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific
lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and
improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and other
milch and draught cattle.”

Even as recently as October 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the
Constitutional validity of a Gujarat law imposing a complete ban on
slaughtering of bulls and bullocks, often misused to get around the
ban on slaughter of cows. Hence, the Bill introduced by the BJP
government and passed by the Assembly is constitutionally valid and
the Congress party’s comment that it is ‘unconstitutional’ is at the
most self-deception.

There is a tendency among ‘secular’ political parties and a section of
the mainstream media to project this issue as BJP’s ‘hidden’ and
‘communal’ agenda, while in fact this law is prevailing in almost all
the states except Kerala, West Bengal, Meghalaya and Nagaland. The
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 also plays a significant
role in this issue and the amendment brought in by Central Act 26 of
1982 has paved the way for the establishment of the ‘Animal Welfare
Board of India’, which does a decent job despite corruption, nepotism
and political interference.

The Congress has also harped on other phony issues saying that the act
will render thousands jobless, affect leather trade, etc. But, the
Congress failed to understand that the preservation of cattle will
improve agriculture, animal husbandry, dairy farms, and ecology and
socio-religious affairs. Cow protection as a policy would go a long
way in agricultural development, resulting in a flourishing village
economy. As India’s economy revolves around agriculture, cattle
welfare is fundamental to it. Cow-dung and cow-urine have medicinal
properties and they also act as manure helping the growth of crops as
well as preserving the richness of soil. It can also be used in the
production of electricity through gobar gas.

The protection of cow as a ‘Movement’ has been there for years and the
movement gained momentum during the time of Swami Dayananda Saraswati,
founder of Arya Samaj and took roots across the country. Most of the
freedom fighters wanted the cow slaughter banned. That is why the
Constituent Assembly made a separate Article (48) for this while
framing the Constitution.

Recently, the “Vishwa Mangal Gau Gram Yatra”, organised by the RSS and
affiliated organisations, toured the whole country in 108 days and
over 10,000 upyatras exhorted each and every village, city and street
of the country. Along with Hindus, Christians and Muslims too have
extended their support to the cause of cow protection. Thousands of
social organisations of the country participated in various functions
of the yatra. The signature campaign conducted during the yatra proved
the biggest signature campaign ever conducted in the world. Crores of
people extended their support to the cause of cow protection through
this campaign. The success of the yatra and the signature campaign
underline the necessity of a blanket ban on cow slaughter throughout
the country.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10723&SKIN=B

India Vision Nitish Kumar strikes again
26/03/2010 19:36:49 HK

Nikesh Kumar, head of Islamic TV channel India Vision once again
strikes against Hindu society. Today, the issue was one of the Police
officer Anju Gupta’s statement against L.K. Advani. While the whole
channel in Kerala chooses this story in their 5th or 6th position,
anti Hindu Nikesh Kumar selected this story first in his News Night
and conducted a big discussion something like a ‘hot story’. Few
comments about his discussion in News Night today.

· He invited few selected people to discuss this matter, as usual no
strong Hindutva supported leaders were invited for this discussion
purposely. But he lost his mental balance when few of them responded
positively towards Advani.

· Nikesh very eagerly asked his first question to one Shri. Unni, a
political analyst, “Shri. Unni you are among one presented during
Babri Masjid was demolished, please tell us something about that day”.
Shri. Unni replied simply “I was not presented at Ayodhya on 6th
December”.

Nikesh got angry because he called Shri. Unni for this discussion
thinking he was presented on 6th December and will say something hot
against Advani & BJP.

· Then he asked question to well known Jihadi and right hand of
terrorist Madani – Abdul Aziz. As usual he blasted Advani and Hindu
society. So no comments.

· The next question to a well known Lawyer Adv. Govinda Bharathan.

Nikesh lost his mental balance while discussing with him, he thought
Adv. Govinda Bharatan will appreciate the statement of Anju Gupta and
some strong criticism against BJP and Hindu society. Adv. Govinda
Bharatan replied “Advani is a dynamic and strong leader in India and
he proofed his professionalism in politics in many times. Tell me to
whom people of India would trust – a retired Police officer’s
statement or a professional political leader in India. If I am a judge
I will trust Mr. Advani only”. It was really a shock to Nikesh and he
suddenly tried to divert his question in different style but Adv.
Govinda Bharatan’s reply was very firm and clear.

During the whole discussion Nikesh was worried and was in tense while
discussing that Advani was encouraging to demolish the Masjid, he
looks very happy and after the Masjid was demolished Advani and other
leaders were distributing sweets.
Nikesh even said Advani is lying and blasted RSS & Sangh Parivar many
times.

Whatever Nitish Kumar said was true, it was Lal Krishna Advaniji who
encouraged to demolish a Babri building which was build by the Islamic
invaders after demolishing a temple. L.K. Advaniji was the mastermind
behind the agitation. He was presented just 100 meters away from the
Babri building while it was demolished, he looks really happy after
the complete Babri building was demolished, then he was distributed
sweets to others leaders who was presented the site. Now

Nikesh can do whatever he want along with his Jihadi friends in India
Vision. But please remind your father Shri. M.V. Raghavan that , don’t
beg RSS vote (Karsevaks) through backdoor, which your father & other
CMP leaders are doing for the last many years.

We appeal to all BJP & other nationalist leaders in Kerala not to
participate any discussion with India Vision as long as anti Hindu

Nikesh Kumar exist in this channel. In case of any leaders are
participating, they should be prepared well to handle Nikesh

skg
26/03/2010 13:21:12 let us not be afraid of truth and run away !!.
It is now time to embrace the truth and die like a Martyr instead of
showing the back and hiding against the truth. I pledge to the Hindu
community to be not ashamed of the Babri Masjid demolition. It is an
alien structure constructed by an alien invader Babur. Indians need to
understand this thoroughly.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10722&SKIN=M

Government cannot withdraw criminal cases against M Hussein - SC
26/03/2010 11:39:54

Husain can't be compelled to return:SC
PTI | New Delhi

Self-exiled painter MF Husain, who has taken up Qatar citizenship,
cannot be compelled to return to India by the courts or the Prime
Minister, the Supreme Court observed on Thursday refusing to direct
dropping of criminal cases against him.

"What can the Prime Minister do if a person decides to live in Doha
(capital of Qatar). They are international citizens they can live
anywhere in the world," the apex court observed while refusing to
entertain a public interest litigation filed by Bhim Singh, chief of
the J&K Panthers Party and senior advocate.

Singh, in his petition, said he has written a letter to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh urging him to take steps to bring 95-year old Husain
back to India and sought the apex court's direction to the PM for
ensuring his return.

He has given up his Indian passport and accepted Qatar citizenship in
February this year. He has been living in self-exile for nearly four
years following a spate of cases in India over his controversial
paintings of Hindu goddesses in the nude.

A bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan-- Justices J M Panchal and
Deepak Verma also refused direction to the Union Government to
withdraw the 95-odd criminal cases registered against him for alleged
obscene paintings as they were all lodged by private individuals.

"How can the Union of India be directed to withdraw the cases when
they are all private complaints, If he is in Doha, what is the
problem ?" the apex court observed, asking Singh to withdraw the
petition failing which it would be dismissed.

Sensing the court's mood, Singh withdrew the PIL.

The bench also pointed out that it had already transferred all the
cases registered against Husain in different parts of the country for
adjudication in Delhi.

Singh, a former MP, had claimed that Husain's fundamental rights stood
violated as he was unable to return to India due to the cases slapped
against him for his alleged blasphemous paintings.

The PIL referred to an earlier Supreme Court observation in connection
with one of the cases against Husain that no exception should be taken
to artistic expressions.

Singh later said he would file another writ petition before the apex
court on the ground that Husain was forced to surrender his Indian
passport and obtain Qatar citizenship out of "coercion" and fear of
being victimised by a series of criminal cases.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10721&SKIN=B

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/Annadanam.pdf

Jihadi riot in Thodupuzha, Srikrishna Swamy Temple attacked
26/03/2010 11:45:02 HK

Thodupuzha: Idukki district’s trade centre Thodupuzha plunged into
tension on Friday following the violent protests of Muslim
organizations over the mention in a question paper that allegedly
humiliated the Prophet and Allah issued at Newman’s College in the
town. Several police personnel and media workers suffered injuries in
stone-pelting by the protestors and the District Administration was
forced to impose prohibitory orders in the college area.

Jihadis destroyed the Stone Lamp infront of Thodupuzha Srikrishna
Swamy temple.

Thousands of Jihadis rioted in Thodupuzha and destroyed public
properties in response to their protest against a College over a
controversial question in their question paper. The protest marches
were taken out alleging that the Malayalam question paper for B.Com
examination had insulting references to the Prophet and God.

Many vehicles and shops were destroyed by the Jihadis. Buses were
blocked and passengers including ladies and students going for SSLC
Examination were left alone in between this rioting crowd.

Jihadis attacked journalists and cameramen, Special instructions were
aired through Microphones to attack the media perssonels who came to
cover the Jihadi riot. Even Medical colleges and Hospitals in the area
were not spared by the violent mob.

Police registered criminal case against the professor T J Joseph who
prepared the question paper. He was also suspended but other teachers
said he alone could not be held responsible for the mistake. “Joseph
could have prepared the question paper but it had been passed by
others after scrutiny. What has happened is that he has been made a
scapegoat,” said a teacher.

Ganesh
26/03/2010 13:23:55 Dirty beard pays
I happened to see the video footage of the police lathi charge to
disperse the miscreants.One striking feature was that all the dirty
Dhadiwallas were exempted from caning while the others were running
for cover. It was the dhadiwallas who were leading the packs.Who says
Dhadi is bad?

R.Sajan
26/03/2010 13:20:36 Publish the disputed section of the Question
paper.
Please obtain and publish the disputed sections of the Question Paper
here.

How wonderful that the University has cancelled all the examinations!
How can this be allowed or done?

I hail Prof. P. J. Joseph who prepared the Paper.

sanjeevuae
26/03/2010 12:44:12 vanaprastam
what mr.arun said is correct.the christian organisations constantly on
the look out for opportunity to pit hindus against muslims.So hindus
should not fall in their trap.See what congrss is trying to do?if the
SC ruling is favorite ,they are trying to bring reservation for all
religions which is not justifyiable under the constitution.

Sunil
26/03/2010 12:01:03 Hindu temple attacked
Death to Jihadis...Death to muslims...Death to Islam...

when will we react..??what are the Hindus in Thodupuzha waiting for..??
kill those terrorists...before they wound us...

Arun C K
26/03/2010 11:31:05 Let's be careful this time!
Newman College was established in 1964 by the Diocese of
Kothamangalam, and named after Cardinal Newman. Todays issue is
between Christians and Muslims. The issue was brought up by a
Christian tecaher. However as usual, there is a clever ploy to convert
this to an issue between Hindu and Muslim by some vested interests
(read church and some UDF parties). Hindu organisation in Kerala
should be extremely careful not to be a party to this dispute. Like in
Love Jihad issue, Christians will fled the scene after converting this
as an issue between Hindus and Muslim or between State Government and
Muslim.

Standards of moral judgement have increasingly tended to become
universal, and no statement of faith can escape scrutiny simply
because it is made in a book hailed as holy by some people.

Sita Ram Goel

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10720&SKIN=K

Jinnah decorates PFI Terrorists procession in Chennai
26/03/2010 11:12:22 Aron

Dinamalar malar reports 26/3/2010-

A procession was lead by the leader of Popular Front of India in
chennai, demanding communal representation recommended by Ranganathan
Misra commission. A big photo was published, and a small
crowd.Shockingly,the leader's name is given Mohamad Ali Jinnah.

It was muslim League that began its steps towards Pakistan with
Communal Representation that was opposed by Gandhi and Congress in the
beginning.

We have come in full circle, that a motley band of communal muslims
openly put up Mr Mohamad Ali Jinnah for the same demand, and it gets
reported without a word added in criticism.

The secualrists are nourishing tendencies and edging on Muslims
towards that direction and Muslims too seem to have no scruples in
picking up the clue.

Note that Jinnah is not a Muslim name but a Hindu surname of a caste
in Gujarat, from which Jinnah's grandfather converted to Islam.

For a muslim to bear that name can only mean an admiration for the
idea of Pakistan, the methodology of 'Direct Action Day' of
terrorizing through a Hindu Muslim bloodbath, and unabashed display of
hostility and high treason.

Objecting to Amitabh for his association with Modi and encouragement
to Neo-Jinnahs to lead his crowd to the streets, is what is secularism
is.

It is hard to understand the hate of this 'People's "Front"-when India
had given them so much and the Mujahirs who went there to Pakistan
behind the real Jinnah have a sorry tale to tell of discrimination,
human rights violation and constant bombings in Karachi.

Yet, they wants to call himself Mohamad Ali Jinnah and restart on the
Muslim League original program of communal representation.

Our media finds it very normal and natural that this should
happen.India is surely sliding towards another demand for Pakistan,
before repetition of all the horrors which would compel us to concede.
The secularists are pitching for jihadis and preparing us
psychologically for that.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10719&SKIN=B

NSS to go ahead with legal action against the Devaswom Bill
26/03/2010 00:27:28 HK Correspondent

Changanachery : NSS made it very clear that they would pursue legal
action against the Devaswom bill that the government has placed in the
assembly and passed to the subject committee to seek the President’s
approval. NSS reiterated that the government should have held prior
discussion with all Hindu organizations before presenting the bill in
the assembly. In a press release the NSS Leaders asserted that only
the High Court has the powers to control the Devaswom board in
accordance with the Hindu Religious Institutions Act 1950. Thereby,
the LDF Government’s move to hurriedly present such a bill without
even having any consultation with various Hindu organization affected
by the contents of the bill is not at all acceptable. It has been
interesting notice that some of the Christian and Muslim leaders also
opinioned that the government should not have presented such a bill.
Interestingly, SNDP General Secretary Vellappally Natesan supported
the bill and went to the extent of telling that SNDP would stage
Dharna at the gates of those MLAs opposing the bill in the assembly.

Meanwhile Hindu Aykyavedi is holding a meeting on 27 March at
Trivandrum to chart out the action plan by various Hindu
organizations. The meeting will be inaugurated by Travancore Maharaja
Uthradam Thirunal Marthanda Verma. It is understood that Mr.Subramanya
Swami also will attend the meeting.

Sunil
26/03/2010 12:11:58 Petition to President
The Petition by overseas Indians against Wendy Doniger's book last
month became a huge success thanks to thousands of faithful Hindus all
around the world..we can make this also a gr8 success only if we stand
together...lets all unite for a common cause..lets all understand 1
thing..."What right do the people who call themself Atheists have in
controlling a religious place"..they cant answer this..and if we cant
save our temples from these people..even God cant save us..so this is
our last oppurtunity...I wish Hindu aykyavedi and other Hindu
organisation take a very strong action so that the govt takes back the
bill..give your support to Hindu aykyavedi and RSS..I hope these
organisation start some kind of campaign so that we all can contribute
for this cause...as suggested by Mr Raghav Rao we can start a massive
signature campaign n force to withdraw the bill..

Ganesh
26/03/2010 10:35:21 Reading vedas to the charging bull
I think democratic means like mass petition to president etc rarely
work in this banana republic.This is not USA Or EU,where true
democracy exists.What one learns from our minorities ,is that being
street smart is the only language our leadership respects.One live
example is the Hussain issue, another is the Bareily riots.Virtually
all newspaper blogs are full of adverse reactions from the readers
against MFH and yet the media does not seem to understand the public
mood.They may argue that bloggers are not representative of the public
mood. But it is only the bloggers who read the crap that they publish
in the name of news.General public neither know who MFH is nor the
newspaper itself.

satheesh
26/03/2010 10:23:35 vellapally
what this guy vellapally is doing.I think he is an agent of
christians.In none of the issues he is cooperating,recently in Hindu
parliment.

Dr Vijaya Rajiva
26/03/2010 09:05:47 To Mr.Rao

Good idea ! But it requires careful monitoring and someone to be in
charge.

Recently there was a Petition by overseas Indians against Wendy
Doniger's book. Some 10,000 signatures were gathered in a few days,
maybe many more now.

Here it will be an all Kerala effort and the numbers hopefully will be
much larger.

And legally speaking you will be in the right.

Raghav Rao
26/03/2010 03:06:59

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10717&SKIN=K

Yet another Rebuttal to 'Secular Hypocrite' Jug Suraiya
25/03/2010 22:05:27

Response to Jug Suraiya(second Opinion)
Times of India - 24 mar 2010

Jug Suriaya has baptized MF Husain as ‘Hindu’ Husain?’(TOI 24th
march).
It fails my comprehension why the ‘secularists’ are laboring to prove
the point that Husain is secular and had no evil design to denigrate
Hindu gods and Goddesses. The author picks up a new line of defense
for
the artist. ‘The basis of Hinduism of what has been labeled as
Hinduism
is the opposite of zero tolerance: it is infinite tolerance. There are
almost as many Hinduisms as there are Hindus; it is a designer
religion..’ So we are reminded that in its infinite tolerance Husain
can and must be allowed to express his perverted sexual expressions
using Gods and Goddesses that is the litmus test of infinite tolerance
according to Jug Suriya. MF Husain’s parampara is one Book, one faith,
one path, one congregation, one god and Islam forbids any pictorial
depiction of the Prophet . So the parampara of Husain does not believe
in artists and their freedom or for that matter any kind of personal
freedom. Does that mean that he needs to operate the freedoms denied
to
him by his own religion on the ‘designer religion’ –Hinduism thus
qualifying to becoming Hindu Husian? Simply because Hinduism is a
travesty of a myriad threaded fabric woven and rewoven for thousands
of
years by the waft and the woof of rites and rituals of conventions and
norms, of cults and god experiences of thousands of rishis it can be
stretched to accommodate Husain’s vulgarization of what is held holy
and sacred by the Hindus of all the Hinduisms? A person from zero
tolerance faith and belief -one will expect to have some restraint in
beholding this fabric so artistical and religiously and patiently
woven
for centuries. Can he so carelessly and ruthlessly tear it asunder?
What is blasphemy according to his religion becomes infinite tolerance
and hence valid namely to caricature and paint Hindu gods and
goddesses. The Freedom gagged and denied to him by his own religion
which he religiously abides by does not stop him from painting God and
Goddesses in the nude but leads him with his brush to vulgarization
and denigrate them. No matter what Jug Suraiya accedes to as
‘strength’
of Hinduism –the designer religion will not and cannot accommodate
such
perversity.

Jug Suraiya very artfully tries to tell us that the ‘strength’ in
Hinduism is its infinite tolerance and by protesting Hinduism becomes
weak. There are two aspects to this:-He wants us to accommodate
Husain’s perversion under the ‘infinitely tolerant religion of
Hinduism-.Husain the firm believer of zero tolerance cannot function
to
give full expression to his artistic freedom in his religion. The
restraints of which he abides by to make him a good Muslim. Here there
is no written restraints-Hinduism does not go by the Book rules but
calls upon each individual to a self imposed discipline does not mean
there is no discipline. Freedom to perceive and experience god in
one’s
own way is entirely different kind of infinite tolerance. One does not
have to look to god though another’s eyes-nor does one’s experience be
limited to another’s god experience. This is the infinite tolerance of
Hinduism-the many paths that lead to the Ultimate. Such an infinite
tolerance is on a different plane. It is not operational in allowing
freedom to maine, brutalize and denigrate the Hindu gods and
goddesses.
For example the UK has no written Constitution, does it mean there are
no rights and no Parliamentary democracy-when compared to those which
have written constitutions I would say that UK’s parliamentary
democracy is more disciplined and vibrant.

Similarly, Jug Suraiya cannot use the absence of a Book-of written
rules and regulations as to what amounts to blasphemy as a license for
unrestraint freedom of expression-freedom to hurt the religious
sentiments of the Hindus. And all the secularists brand this
infinitely
tolerant Hindus as bigots, and Husain has an array of ‘secular’
apologists who are vociferously, through the media-both electronic and
print, holding out the view that it is almost the duty of this
infinitely tolerant Hinduisms to allow Husain to brandish his brush
and
disfigure that tapestry of a myriad threads woven beautifully
depicting
the facets of the One omni presence as Gods and Goddesses-of this
‘designer religion.

And to allow such jihadi by brush under the Right to Freedom of
Expression.. Jug Suraiya goes one step further-he wants the travesty
of
a myriad threads fabric to be shredded and torn apart when he warns
that a militant Hinduism will rob Hinduism of its breath of tolerance.
So what? If militant religions like Islam and Christianity can
flourish
be appreciated as ‘secular’and pampered to I do not see the need to
continue this infinitely tolerant Hinduism in the face of zero
tolerance and be branded as bigotry and communal. If the Kashmiri
pandits were killed and driven out of their homes till date not
rehabilitated what is the use of this infinite tolerance. Using this
infinite tolerance to block and blotch human rights and community
rights is no way of making a case to uphold this breath of Hinduism
–tolerance. When zero tolerance cannot allow infinitely tolerant
Hindus
of Hinduisms their own homes and hearths? So Jug Suraiya’s premise to
test the strength of Hinduism by allowing anything and anyone to do
anything and everything under the garb of its infinite tolerance is a
bad case. It cannot co-exist.

And the brief for Husain does not end here-Jug Suriaya has elevated
his
client as an example-his testimony to the capacity of tolerance of
Hinduism-that in it there can be no scandalous liberties to be
censored-MF Husain becomes a Hindu and a good one too-by his adherence
to the zero tolerance of his own religion Islam he becomes a good
Muslim also. Eat the cake and have it too-policy. Do to others what
you
expect others to do to you-is also a Book faith diktat is conveniently
overlooked. How very succinctly Jug Suraiya has led us down the path
with such carrots.. and full praise for ‘Hinduisms’ and its strength.
In its strength lies the message not to fight-not to face the
challenge-look the other way no matter what is done to you and your
gods and goddesses. No matter the insults and the injuries your
strength is to allow such things. This is a strange advice and message
to uphold Freedoms. It is an aberration of Freedom. Too long this
infinite tolerance has been exploited and too long the Hindus have
thought that ‘strength’ means to look the way. It is time to stem the
rot and it is time to face the challenge and expect everyone, artist
or
no artist to abide by the law of the land-irrespective of religion and
age. We are a secular society and religious rules must be subsumed in
civil law and civil liberties. You cannot use one’s religious laws for
some and civil laws for others, All Indian citizens must and should
fall under one law and thus will Justice and Truth be upheld.

Dr Mrs Hilda Raja,

Vadodara

skg
26/03/2010 16:44:52 Hindus are hurting Hinduism !!.
It is Hindus like Jug Suraiya who are responsible for the abuse of
Hinduism by Pseudo-secular Media. They are giving enough material for
Islamists and evangelists to attack Hinduism. Hindus should teach
these rascals/Pseudo-Hindus a lesson .

Archpagan
26/03/2010 08:59:56 Practise what you preach.
Jug Suraiya should get her own mother's nude picture drawn by 'Hindu
Hussain' before making such pontification.

seadog4227
26/03/2010 06:58:31 MFH
Again--why bother with a known commie?
Numerous Slimes writers have shown their colours before. Bachi
Karkaria talked about the "boyish good looks" of Abu Salem when he
faced trial. From an economist, Swaminathan Iyer has now become a
avowed "secularist" Jug Suraiya has talked nonsense under the guise of
humour on several occasions. Dileep Padgoankar is mostly a fence
sitter. As for Gautam Adhikari, the less said the better. Ditch
them!

Ram
26/03/2010 04:28:10 Vatican RC in deep trouble
God is punishing the church establishment. See the link below :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100325/ap_on_re_eu/church_abuse_wisconsin#mwpphu-container

Please publish this article. More than 2400 comments on this
particular article. US and Europe are dropping RC.

Sam
26/03/2010 02:36:38 Hinduism is changing because of pseudo secular
media
Hinduism has seen many 'holocausts' duing barbaric Islamic invations
and continued for 1100 years.According to Francois Gautier "The
massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history,
bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of
the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of
the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and
Portuguese."

Hinduism still survived. But the current situation is very dangerous.
The anti-hindu media (funded by outside agents of West, Saudi and
China) is insulting hinduism and supporting conversion to other
religions. The UPA government run by Sonia (Christian) and her puppet
PM (Sikh) and coterie (christians with Hindu names) are misusing tax
payers money for minority appeasement and trying to distory hinduism.
Communists, DMK, Yadav parties, Muslim and Christian political parties
are working together to make sure that Hindu temples will be taken
over by government use the temple income against hindu interests.
Devaswam Boards are under non-believing communists so that the income
from temples will never be used for the benefit of hindu relion. Vaqaf
Board use the income for Muslim student loan without interest. While
Devaswam income is never used for hindus. Hindu students pay 10%
interest for student loans. Billions or dollars are flowing to India
every year for conversion and money is effectively used for harvest of
souls or training anti-indian jihadies through Saudi funded Madrasas.
Unreported secret convesion has already made hindus minority in many
parts of India. The converts keep their hindu name and schedule caste
status. Hatred of new converts who got rich with newly earned money to
hindu neighbouts mame stuggle for survivla. While Missionaries pay
Maoists to kill anybody work against conversion like in Kadhmal
(Orisssa). Since they have media and political support nothing get
reported. Probably 2% Hindus know about all these.

Rajaraman
26/03/2010 02:53:11 Two questions only from a 'Sanathana Dharmi'
1. Can I produce a movie in which Prophet Muhamamd, Sonia Gandhi,
Jesus Christ depicted as nude....?
2.why did u ban NEHRU-EDWINA MOVIE?

M Balachandran
26/03/2010 02:35:33 Supporters of Hussain also can go to Qatar
Because of expressing his "ART" ,our pseudo secular friends beloved MF
Hussain required to settle in Qatar, due to Court cases by "fanatic"
Hindus of Hindusthan. In the near future these supporters also require
to face the trials by such Hindu "fanatics" since their strength &
knowledge are getting increased day by day. It will be better for them
to try for Qatar Nationality immly which is the Paradise for Hussain.
I dont think 99.999...% of Indian citizens will miss anything if these
pseudos get out of Hindusthan
Ramamurhty.N
25/03/2010 23:28:59 Jug Suraiya true pesudo secular
This refers to second opinion coloumn "Hindu Husain " by Jug Suraiya
Times of India dt 24th March, 2010.The author cleaverly and
selectively quoted , to her convenience, Islamic religious ditict,
libaralism/ tolarence of Hiduism, and the freedom of expression
gauranteeded in our secular constitution to justify Mr.Husain's action
and confirmed she belongs to same pesudo secularit group.While
Mr.Husain painted nude the dictator Hitler but dare not do the same
with other dictators namely Sadam Husan, Idi amin and Yahyah Khan a
few muslim dictators who massacared their own people of differnt
enthinity. Ms.Jug Suriya like Mr.Husain whom she tried to defend,
confirm what Islam says " Religion is the first and last for Muslims"
other things matter little.

Dear Sir,
This refers to second opinion (the word second aptly printed in
reverse) coloumn "Hindu Husain " by Jug Suraiya Times of India dt 24th
March, 2010.The author cleaverly and selectively quoted , to her
convenience, Islamic religious ditict, libaralism/ tolarence of
Hiduism, and the freedom of expression gauranteeded in our secular
constitution to justify Mr.Husain's action and confirmed she belongs
to same pesudo secularit group.While Mr.Husain painted nude the
dictator Hitler but dare not do the sama with other dictators namely
Sdam Husan, Idi amin and Yahyah Khan a few muslim dictators who
massacared their own people of differnt enthinity. Ms.Jug Suriya like
Mr.Husain whom she tried to defend, confirm what Islam says " Religion
is the first and last for Muslims" other things matter little.
N.Ramamurthy,
A1 Alankar aptsmaste all,
I am glad to forward my letter addressed to the Edito Times Of India
on Jug Suraiy's coloumn "Hindu Husain"
Regards,
N.Rama

Vijayalakshmi
25/03/2010 22:16:51

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10716&SKIN=M

Murder of RSS Seva Pramukh - Life Term to Four CPM thugs
25/03/2010 22:00:16

Four CPM men get life term
www.expressbuzz.com

KOLLAM: Kollam Second Additional Sessions Court sentenced four CPM
workers to life term rigorous imprisonment in the case of murdering
RSS worker Santhosh.

Additional Sessions Judge K.K. Balakrishnan also ordered the four to
pay a fine of Rs 45,000 each, failing which they have to undergo
imprisonment for a further period.

Sajeev (40) of Ayathil , Anthikannan alias Anil (30) of
Kochammannada, Gopi (38) of Kottamkara and Pramod (32) of Ayathil
were those have been convicted in the case. Two other accused Sajeev
of Pattathanam and Jayaprakash are still absconding. The fourth
accused Santhosh died during the trial of the case.

Noushad and Anilkumar who were CPM members of Vadakkevila grama
panchayat had been excluded from the list of the accused.

The murder was committed on November 24, 1997. Santhosh, who was the
mandal seva pramukh of the RSS, was returning on a cycle after
attending a meet of the RSS.

The accused, who were travelling in a car, hit his cycle and then
hacked Santhosh to death.

Vijayakumar, who was riding pillion on the cycle, was also injured and
he informed the police about the murder. The accused have been
sentenced under Sections 302,143,147,148 and 324 of the IPC. Public
Prosecutor Ratnakaran appeared for the prosecution.

satheesh
26/03/2010 10:16:25 Shame for Hindus
All those got convicted are Hindus.we are facing problems within our
religion itself.when will these guys understand the real problems.we
should stop fighting within ourself.

Prasad Pandit
26/03/2010 04:17:44 CPM Thugs
It is sad to note that all the sentenced are having hindu names. The
CPM with its anti-hindu ideology uses its thugs to murder Sangh
workers.

Vijayalakshmi
25/03/2010 22:19:57 Murder of RSS Seva Pramukh
It is very heartening news-this conviction of the murderers by the
honourable Court!So many of our disciplined sevaks have fallen prey to
the murderous politics of the marxist party.Something concrete has to
be done against this trend.But atleast we have some good,
conscientious judges in Kerala! Thank God for that!

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10715&SKIN=K

Big B blasts Reds, media over Kerala row
25/03/2010 12:18:46 PNS | Kochi

Amitabh Bachchan has termed “as petty act of cheap convenience” the
CPI(M) decision not to allow the Kerala Government to appoint him as
God’s Own Country’s tourism brand ambassador because of his
connections with Gujarat and its Chief Minister Narendra Modi. In his
701st entry in the bigadda blog, the star said he would abide by the
judgement of the Kerala Government in whatever decision it would take.

“You want to stop me from promoting tourism in a State, because you
have reason to believe that there are political connotations to the
event. This is such rubbish,” he wrote in the blog obviously in
reference to the CPI(M) decision to disallow Kerala to make him brand
ambassador. He also criticized the media in connection with the
development saying that finding fault at any cost to any act or event
was a common Indian media trait.

Big B’s criticism of the CPI(M) intolerance coincided with the
decision of the CPI(M) Politbureau, meeting in Delhi, not to revoke
the central party leadership’s earlier decision to disallow the Kerala
Government to make the star its brand ambassador. Politbureau member
had on March 19 told the media that the Kerala Government would not
make Bachchan the State’s tourism ambassador.

Yechuri’s statement came after Bachchan wrote to Kerala Tourism
Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, himself a PB member, accepting his
invitation to represent Kerala Tourism. Kodiyeri’s act of inviting
Bachchan without consulting the party and the ruling coalition and the
central CPI(M) leadership’s act of unilaterally shooting down a
decision taken by the State Government have already created dissent in
the LDF.

Bachchan wrote in his blog: “All I shall be doing (as brand
ambassador) will be working in a short film that shall highlight the
various places of interest in the State…. And that is what I would
precisely do when I would be asked to similar acts in Kerala… It (the
objection) is a petty act of cheap convenience to prevent me from
doing that.”

He said he did not ask for the position but the Kerala Government had
invited him. “I shall abide by the judgement of the State Government.

I did not ask them for it, they came forward with the invitation, I

accepted, now they want to decline it, fine. Not the first time such
incidents have happened,” he wrote in the blog, referring to the
incident that took place in Goa during the International Film
Festival.

He also criticized his critics for projecting him as an untouchable
for his relations with the State of Gujarat, which had made him its
brand ambassador. “You take umbrage at my association with Gujarat,
but never have the guts or courage to stop a Ratan Tata or an Ambani
from investing in the state…. Would you have the guts to tell them to
not associate with the State, to pull out all their investment and man
power they build through years and years of their ‘association’? I
guess not,” he writes in the blog.

Responding to questions in connection with Bachchan’s blog, Minister
Kodiyeri said he had nothing more to say about the matter than what he
had said in the State Assembly the other day. He had told the Kerala
Assembly that some sections had raised some objections to making
Bachchan Kerala’s brand ambassador. He said the Government had not
taken any formal decision to make him brand ambassador but had only
extended an informal invitation.

Ganesh
26/03/2010 10:27:19 opportunities
Most of the PB members are unfit to even win a panchayat election.The
commies do not miss any opportunity to lick the minority a**se.Recall
how Somnath chatterji refused to preside over the LS when George BUsh
was to address the joint session.Shaking hands with Ariel SHaron was
held against K.V.Thomas to impress Jihadis.Then the Abdulla Kutty
episode.Saddam Hussain's death mourning bandh .I pity the so called
Hindu communities of this Allah's own country.

shiv
26/03/2010 03:22:40 Pathetic BJP/sangh leadership
Big B knows that he has counter allegations or reply to detractors.

But BJP and sangh parivar leaders dont even bother to counter/attack
the allegations/maligning like this.

They end up giving statements.
Pathetic./

Balasundar S
26/03/2010 01:10:32 Why Big B for Kodiyeri, Black "P" is OK !
Joining Issue with the Yechuri faction of CPM, I suggest the PB of
Communists make Black "P"(Part Secy,) from their ranks as Brand
Ambassador and help siphon off some funds to His account from Tourism
Ministry of Kodiyeri!

manoj
25/03/2010 23:51:20 The reason why CPM objects Bachan
Dear friends

Did anybody knows why cpm opposit to promote kerala tourism?? Suppose
Bachan became the brand ambassider of kerala, definitely kerala
tourism will boost. It would be benift for the state as forign money
will pump to our state, this will benifit for the Kerala people(a
large number among them are cpm supporters), once they start earning
money their life style will change, they will built good house, buy
car, will provide higher eduction to their childen ... then...
then...one day cpm will ask these people to come for a secretrate
march or a some other protest march.. none of them will go becuase
they prefer more importance to their family and taking care of their
children and finally they will prefer to leave this party.. so dear
friends,...its not because of modi or Bachan but the cpm dont want any
kind of progress in the state to keep their poor commerds in their
platform always

Nishant
25/03/2010 19:45:02 THE DON
The Don finally delivered what was due!

Amit bhadhuri,Ex-Officer,CISF
25/03/2010 17:25:33 Show Courage Mr B

Amitabh has by now realized what the congress and CPI(M) are like, as
their only gmae is to please Musslamans at any cost of the nation.
Amitabh is a mega-wealthy person and what he has to loose at 67? He
should overcome his search for more wealth and should reject congress
and communists boldly and openly declare his appreciations for Gujrat
and Narendra Modi. By doing so he will come out as a real hero not
just a plastic hero what he has been so far.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10714&SKIN=B

Al Badr hand in Kerala blasts revealed
25/03/2010 12:17:35 VR Jayaraj | Kozhikode - Daily Pioneer

The international terror links of the March 3, 2006 twin blasts at
Kozhikode, in which South India’s LeT commander Thadiyantavide Nazeer
is the prime accused, has become more obvious with the revelation that
he had got training under Pakistani national and Al Badr coordinator
Muhammad Fahad (30). Fahad, arrested from Mysore on October 17, 2006
as he was preparing for an attack on Vidhan Soudha, the Karantaka
Legislative Assembly building in Bangalore, was in Kozhikode when the
blasts took place.

Local residents and Malayalee farmers in Coorg, Karnataka, identified
Fahad from a photograph shown to them by the officials of the
Intelligence wing of the Kerala Police the other day as the one who
was with Nazeer when he was running a camp there. With this, the
investigations into the LeT terror operations in the State have
reached a crucial turning point, officials say.

Local residents told the Intelligence officials headed by P Raju,
Superintendent of Police (Intelligence), Thrissur Range, when they
reached Coorg as part of the probe, that they had seen Fahad with
Nazeer on several occasions. Fahad, whose father Abdullakoya was a
Malayalee who had migrated to Pakistan decades ago, had given training
to Nazeer and other LeT operatives from Kerala for several days at the
Coorg camp.

The Kerala Police Intelligence team has already handed over the
information regarding Nazeer’s connections with Fahad and the training
camp at Coorg to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) which is
investigating the terror-related cases in Kerala. According to
sources, the new revelations are a surprise even to the NIA
considering the magnitude of the Kerala terror network’s Pak
connections.

The Intelligence wing has learned that Fahad had held several night-
long training sessions and classes for Nazeer and the LeT recruits in
Coorg towards the end of 2005. They assume that his visit to Kozhikode
in February, 2006 was part of the continued operations. He had left
Kozhikode on March 18. Sources said that Fahad, a Master’s degree-
holder in Chemistry, could have assisted Nazeer and his group in
carrying out the first live blasts of their terror career in
Kozhikode. This meant that Fahad was in Kozhikode when the twin blasts
were carried out in the city.

When he was arrested from Mysore in October, 2006, the police had
seized from him and his associate weapons including AK-47 rifles and
components of highly improvised explosives. The police had earlier
learned that Fahad was a member of terror outfit Al Badr which was
getting training from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. In
this context, the Intelligence officials think that the LeT operations
in Kerala under Nazeer were being directly controlled from Pakistan.

Al Badr coordinator Fahad, son of Abdullakoya who had left Iringalloor
in Kozhikode district for Pakistan decades ago, used to frequently
visit his relatives in Kerala. He was a regular visitor at the homes
of Abdullakoya’s first wife at Kappad and his sister at Peruvayal,
both in Kozhikode district. After his arrest in 2006, the police had
leaned that Fahad’s mission here was to spread the terror network in
the region using his family connections.

It was amidst his efforts to get a passport using the Kerala address
from the Regional Passport Office in Kozhikode that Fahad and his
associate Muhammad Ali Hussein were arrested from Mysore. Though Fahad
was arrested by the Karnataka Police, the Kerala Police had enquired
about his bid to get a passport from Kozhikode. Unfortunately, the
police had not then thought of extending its probe beyond the passport
case.

Vivek
26/03/2010 01:52:27 CNR
When will the Hindus in Kerala learn from these lessons.

No wonder BJP is yet to get a single seat in Kerala. Things will never
change unless some one like N. Modi is born in Kerala.

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=10713&SKIN=K

chhotemianinshallah

unread,

Mar 27, 2010, 9:38:44 AM3/27/10

India retries pivotal Hindu-Muslim hate crime
On Monday, the notorious Best Bakery case nudged closer to a trial
date.

.By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor /
July 23, 2004

MUMBAI, INDIA

When a Hindu mob stormed a bakery and killed 14, including two Muslims
burnt alive in ovens, the gruesome crime became the symbol of
religious violence that gripped India two years ago and left nearly
1,000 dead.

Now, in what appears to be a second chance for justice, the Best
Bakery case moved this week one step toward retrial.

The first trial, held in May 2003 in the state of Gujarat, where the
massacre took place, ended in the acquittal of all 21 of the accused
rioters after the victims changed their testimony. The Indian Supreme
Court last April ordered a retrial out of state, calling state
officials "modern-day Neros" for ignoring the complaints of witnesses
that they had been politically harassed and pressured to change their
testimony by police and state officials.

The opportunity for another trial in this cornerstone case is seen
here as an important chance to resolve a major irritant in Hindu-
Muslim relations and a chance to chip away at the pervasive problem of
witness tampering in the Indian justice system.

"This case has been a kind of systematic failure of the Indian legal
system," says Teesta Setalwad, a human rights activist who led the
effort to get the case a second hearing. "This has been a symbol,
hopefully, to revive the criminal justice system in India."

In a country where prosecutors win violent criminal cases only 4
percent of the time, some dramatic reforms are required, Ms. Setalwad
says. "In India, we have failed (in providing justice.) Trials take 10
years to finish. Witnesses turn hostile and change their testimony.
The whole system needs to change."

The trouble in Gujarat began at a train station in Godhra on Feb. 27,
2002, when a train car full of Hindu activists was torched, killing 68
passengers. For more than two months, Hindu rioters took their revenge
on Muslim neighbors, killing nearly 1,000 citizens. Police claimed
they were unable to contain the rioters, but later, senior officials
admitted to human rights activists that they had been directed by
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to allow the "anticipated Hindu
reaction" to run its course.

Mr. Modi, a member of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party,
has claimed that his state apparatus had done everything it could to
keep the peace, but has also called the riots a "natural reaction" to
the Godhra attack.

The Best Bakery case was once seen as the best chance to bring the
rioters to justice, some of whom included police officials and
activists of the BJP and other Hindu nationalist groups. The star
witness, Zahira Shaikh, named 21 of the rioters directly involved in
the murders of 11 members of her Muslim family as well as their 3
Hindu employees. But on May 17, 2003, she changed her testimony.
Later, Ms. Shaikh told reporters that she had been threatened by a BJP
state legislator, Madhu Srivastava, who had escorted her to the
courthouse.

"He told me, 'Think about what you have to do. If you don't, you will
suffer,'" Ms. Shaikh later told India Today magazine. "I knew I had
two options: to get justice for dead family members, or save those who
were living."

Mr. Srivastava denies having threatened Shaikh, but admits that he did
escort Shaikh to court to protect her from the crowd. "She was
receiving threats," he told reporters at the time.

On Monday, a judge in Mumbai gave the case one more nudge toward a
trial date, ordering Gujarat to issue warrants against 10 of the 21
accused rioters who had not been apprehended.

Even with a second chance to give testimony, free of coercion, the
Best Bakery case will not be an easy conviction. The Shaikh family has
given two versions of the story and estranged members of the family
tell an entirely different story.

Yet whatever the outcome of the Best Bakery case, the very fact that
it got a retrial at all - and that, out of Gujarat - may have
reverberations. On Aug. 3, the Indian Supreme Court is scheduled to
hear arguments from six other heinous cases similar to Best Bakery,
which are also pushing to be tried outside Gujarat.

The largest of these, the massacre of 89 Muslims in the district of
Naroda-Patiya, occurred the day after the Godhra tragedy. Police
waited nearly a year to investigate this case or to press charges.

While some activists say Best Bakery will bring legal reforms that
will guarantee more professionalism and less political interference in
future cases, others like Mr. Jethmalani says a deeper reform within
human character is needed.

"Either out of communal motives [of promoting hatred toward the Muslim
community] or out of some political motives by the state leaders, the
investigation was totally unequal to their task," says Mr. Jethmalani.
Yet the problems seen in the case go far beyond Gujarat.

"I must compliment the people of India for setting their face against
such fundamentalism, when they voted against the BJP in the last
elections," he says. But the decline in human character and the rise
of fundamentalism "is getting worse," he adds, and not "just in India
but in the West as well."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0723/p07s01-wosc.html

http://hrwf.net/uploads/Hindu%20extremist%20movements.doc

Academic study of Ganesh called hate crime

Never hurts to be reminded that Fundamentalist Christians aren't the
only people who expect special protection for their nutty theology.

WASHINGTON - Eighteen years after publishing a study of the Hindu god
Ganesha, a US university professor is under fire from believers who
brand sexual references in the book as an insidious 'hate crime'.

Hindu student activists are demanding that Ganesa, Lord of Obstacles,
Lord of Beginnings be taken out of circulation until author Paul
Courtright from Emory University in Atlanta removes 'offensive'
passages and makes an unequivocal apology to Hindus.

AFP: Hindus take offence at US don's book on deity

T.R. Rao, Loflin chair and professor of computer science at the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said he appreciates academic
freedom but questions its relevance in relation to Courtright’s book.

“Academic freedom is that if I make a mistake in my job, I am
protected,” he said. “But do I have the freedom to inflict pain on
millions of people?”

Courtright said academic freedom allows him to write freely.

“Do I have to ask 800 million Hindus to get permission to say
something?” he asked.

Deepa Patel, The Emory Wheel: Academic freedom debated in wake of
recent petition

People who believe that animal-headed deities run the universe are
silly. It’s a completely trivial belief. I can’t think of anything
crazier than combining theology with zoology, although I guess
throwing botany into the mix might do the trick. …
The Raving Atheist: Theozoology

Richard Evans Lee • November 14, 2003 • Reader, what do you think?
Prior: My spiritual autobiography (II) • Next: In the Devil's Snare
Y! MyWeb · del.icio.us · Furl

1 · Posted by: FreeIndian on April 10, 2004 07:54 PM

Is there any exhaustive lists of items that may hurt religious
feelings? I am a Hindu and I am not offended by such wriringd. After
all we Hindus' believe in the insident/events in Lord Ganesha's life.
If the interpretations is different , should we feel hurt? Can the
prof changes his interpretation. simply because , a few Hindus feel
hurt or keep the interpretation same , becuase many Hindus like me do
not feel hurt .

2 · Posted by: JohnSmith on April 24, 2004 07:06 PM
“Courtright said academic freedom allows him to write freely.”.

Does that mean that one can call Thomas Jefferson a scoundrel? And
that I cannot be bothered to consult 300 million Americans, who may
protest?

3 · Posted by: Paper Magic on October 12, 2004 06:36 PM
“Does that mean that one can call Thomas Jefferson a scoundrel? And
that I cannot be bothered to consult 300 million Americans, who may
protest?”

Yes, John, that's precisely what it means.

4 · Posted by: a d on November 25, 2004 10:04 AM
i am an indian hindu and though i am not offended by the actual
writing (haven't read it) - i am offended by the fact that courtright
thinks that what hindus think doesn't count when writing about
hinduism - especially when he knows that given the power/knowledge
equation, his version may end up being authoritative.
this is not only about religion, its about accountability. and
academic freedom is not about irresponsibility.

Comments:

Feel free to share your feelings about Academic study of Ganesh called
hate crime. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is
fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be
deleted.

This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people
and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is
fine as long as it is civil.

My thanks,
Richard

http://www.edifyingspectacle.org/gullibility/blog/archives/superstitious_folly/academic_study_of_ganesh_.php

http://www.metropolis2008.org/pdf/20081030/workshops/w089-30_austin-lawrence.pdf

Hindu Students Call Emory Professor's Book a "Hate Crime" (Washington)
Nov 14, 2003
By Staff Writer

The Straits Times

On November 14, 2003 The Straits Times reported that "eighteen years
after publishing a study of the Hindu god Ganesha, a US university
professor is under fire from believers who brand sexual references in
the book as an insidious 'hate crime'. Hindu student activists are
demanding that Ganesa, Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings be taken
out of circulation until author Paul Courtright from Emory University
in Atlanta removes 'offensive' passages and makes an unequivocal
apology to Hindus. But Prof Courtright accuses his critics of quoting
isolated passages from his book out of context, and suggests they may
be trying to stifle academic freedoms. Outraged by sexual inferences
in his book and portrayal of a nude Ganesha on the cover of one
edition, 4,500 people signed an online petition drawn up by the Hindu
Students Council at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette."

http://www.pluralism.org/news/view/6181

India: Hindu extremist states have most Anti-Dalit hate crimes
Posted on June 8, 2008 by The Editor

Hinduvta states commit the most crimes against the poor penury
stricken Dalits. The states with the highest concentration of Brahmins
and Hindu extremists have the highest level of discrimination against
the impoverished Dalits. However the other states which do not have
Hindu extremeists face other sorts of abuse. There are many sates
where there is a live and vibrant insurrection going on.

http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/29/amnesty-int-2008-report-excoriates-horrid-india/

http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/15/dalit-slaves-in-india/

The map shows the security dangers as identified by the intelligence
agencies of India.

The Human Rights Commission has reported severe human rights abuses in
many states like Gujarat and Jharkhand

Bharat faces a huge insurgency in a swath of territory which extends
from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh

This map of Bharat shows the concetration of Hindu extremists or
“Hinduvta” as they are called in the conglomeration of states called
“India”. According to the study conducted by the Center for the
Developing societies the correlation of the extremists Hindus is
directly related to the number of hate crimes against the minorites–
mainly the 170-250 million Dalits (Untouchables). The map shows the
highest number of Brahmin Hinduvtas in Jammu, Himadhal Pradesh
(bifurcated from East Punjab) and Uttar Pradesh (conglomeration of
Awadh and other states which was called United Provices by the
British)

Uttar Pradesh which has the distinction of giving the country its
first Dalit woman Chief Minister, also tops the list of states with
highest number of cases of crime against Scheduled Castes. With a
staggering 4,960 cases of crime committed against people of Scheduled
Castes, Uttar Pradesh tops the list in 2006, according to a Ministry
of Home Affairs’ data.

The state is closely followed by Madhya Pradesh with 4,214 such cases
being registered the same year.

Among states of South India, Andhra Pradesh, where 3,891 such cases
were registered in 2006 ranks the highest.

Taken together, the three states – Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and
Andhra Pradesh – constituted more than 51 per cent of crimes committed
against SCs in the country in 2006.

Analysis of data shows that number of crimes against Scheduled Castes
have increased in the country.

While 26,127 cases of crime against SCs were registered in 2005, the
subsequent year, saw 27,070 cases being registered. The data for 2007
is yet to be compiled.

As per the data available for for the year 2004-2006, UP has seen a
increase in crime against SCs.

While 2004 saw 3,785 such cases being registered, 4,397 cases were
recorded in 2005.

AP, where 3,117 cases of crime against SCs were reported in 2005, has
also seen an increase in the number.

On the other hand, MP has seen a decline in such cases.

While data for 2006 showed 4,214 cases were registered in the state
for crime against SCs, in 2005 the number was 4,222. The year 2004
witnessed the highest number with 4,699 cases being registered.

Among the seven Union Territories, the capital has recorded 21 such
cases, which is the highest number.

According to the figures available, the number of persons convicted
for crime against SCs under SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989,
including all IPC crime, in 2005 were 12,468, which increased to
13,449 in 2006.

Dalits are one of the minorities that is repressed in India. The 150
million Muslims are killed at will in Kashmir and harassed in other
areas

http://rupeenews.com/2008/06/07/indian-hegemony-plans-kashmir-pakistan-in-the-way/

http://rupeenews.com/2008/06/08/india-hindu-extremist-states-have-most-anti-dalit-hate-crimes/

On Faith: Proselytizing as Cultural Imperialism
Washington, D.C. (March 5, 2010) -

As a guest blogger on the Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith" blog,
Professor Ramesh Rao, coordinator of HAF's humans right report and
professor at Longwood University, has the opportunity to provide a
Hindu viewpoint on various issues. Below is Prof. Rao's latest blog.
Please post your comments directly on the "On Faith" site by clicking
here.

Like many hundreds of millions of other Hindus, I also made sense of
our world as we visited temples and pilgrimage centers, and through
the rituals and rites performed and observed in our homes - from the
"annaprastha" ceremony (the feeding of the first solid food) for a
child to the "Brahmopadesham" ceremony (supreme teaching) for a young
boy, and the "vivaaha" ceremony (marriage) for a young man and woman,
to the "shraaddha" ceremony (ritual that one performs to pay homage to
one's ancestors, and especially to one's dead parents). As a young boy
my connectedness to the world, and my sense of place and belonging
were shaped by the rhythms of devotional songs heard early in the
morning as my grandfathers perambulated in front of the Gods, lit
lamps, and sang beseeching God's grace and protection.

That is how I learned about my religion and accepted my religious
identity, and in some similar manner that is how the rest of the world
does too. This identity shaping contributes to one's self-esteem, and
a healthy self-esteem is essential for us to prosper and live our
lives productively. It is reported that loss of faith can lead to
anger, resentment, emptiness, despair, sadness, and isolation, and the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) identifies
loss of faith as a religious problem. And there are studies that show
that immigrants, in a new country, and unmoored from their religious
and cultural context, suffer from anxiety, stress, and depression.

Enter left, the proselytizer, thumping a book, decrying "false" Gods,
promising heaven if you accepted the "one, true, Lord and savior".
Over the past two thousand years, proselytizers have roamed the world,
converting people by hook or by crook, making unverifiable claims,
robbing people of their cultures and their Gods, sowing conflict and
dissent in once cohesive tribes and communities, and most damagingly,
inflicting a heavy loss on the self-esteem of souls harvested for the
"Lord". As professor Regina Schwartz has argued, the "... Bible has
left us a legacy of intolerant thinking about other peoples, and it
has authorized such intolerance as the will of God. That is how it has
had effects on religious, racial, and ethnic conflicts around the
globe." The world's two most "powerful" religions - Christianity and
Islam - are monotheistic creeds that seek of their followers
allegiance to one God, and seek to convert others to believing in the
one, true God - theirs. As Schwartz notes, "the injunction 'Thou shalt
have no other gods before me' turns into intolerance for other people
who may have other gods, or principles, or beliefs."

And while we now live in a different world where the old bloody sword
and scimitar cannot be used to "persuade" people to change their
religious identity, we now get the Bible thumpers and the Qur'an
dispensers who, in the guise of "freedom of religion," spread
intolerance, sow dissent, and rob the identities of the mostly poor,
illiterate, and innocent masses through a variety of wiles, not
excluding bribes, false promises, "love jihads," and so on. The poor
in India and Sri Lanka reeling from the loss of loved ones and their
livelihoods after the 2004 tsunami, and the millions of Haitians
struggling after the earthquake in January, saw a flood of young men
and women with Bible in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other,
promising liberation, heaven, and the good life, if they accepted the
Bible along with the bread. Hundreds of millions of dollars are pumped
into India by evangelical groups that have found in the new converts
in that country willing abettors to "identity theft".

One day, shopping at a Best Buy in Richmond, I was accosted by an
Indian who wanted some advice on buying video cameras. While the sales
people had tried to help, he found in me someone whom he could trust,
because my skin color matched his. I was glad to help, told him about
the cameras, and pointed out that some of the models were more
expensive but they came with certain features not available in the
less expensive ones. "Money is not a problem," he grinned, and that is
when I noticed that he was trailed by three or four rather sheepish
White companions. "I am from Andhra Pradesh, and I have come to meet
with some of my church supporters here," he told me. The south Indian
state of Andhra Pradesh, rife with caste conflicts, and home to many
tribal groups, is one of the largest recipients of foreign money
donated by church organizations. I saw first hand the result of the
quid pro quo between evangelical groups and their abettors and fellow
conspirators in India.

Much has been written about proselytism, and its rewards, wages, and
sins. What is not carefully studied are the effects of conversion on
individuals, families, tribes and communities. Some of my good and
very dear friends here who say they are against forced or coerced
conversion speak of the importance of "bearing witness" and how
exchanging one's beliefs is important for understanding each other,
and how such exchanges would enlighten us all. But I tell them that
they are not playing on a level field. What if they were poor and
Hindus came to them with rice in one hand and the Bhagavad Gita in the
other?

I have no problems if an old couple come knocking on my door on a
Sunday morning and hand me a booklet with the most hideous
descriptions of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. I smile and send them their
merry, uninformed way. I can pick 20 holes in each of Pat Robertson's
assertions. And I laugh myself silly watching the sweaty perorations
of bejeweled "reverends" on television channels. I am not poor or
needy, nor am I ignorant about the history of the world. However,
there are hundreds of millions in the country of my birth and
elsewhere who are indeed materially poor and who are indeed ignorant
of the bloody history of religious proselytism, and the effects of
religious conversion. The only wealth they have is their cultural and
religious identities. To rob them of that is indeed a crime, I tell my
friends.

Since everyone invokes Mahatma Gandhi these days, let me do so too.
What did he think of missionaries? He wrote, "If I had the power and
could legislate, I would stop all proselytizing. In Hindu households
the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family
coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and
drink," (Collected Works, Vol 61, page 46-47). He had a lot more to
say about this conversion business, but I will end with this one: "I
hold that proselytization under the cloak of humanitarian work is
unhealthy to say the least. It is most resented by people here.
Religion after all is a deeply personal thing. It touches the
heart.... Why should I change my religion because the doctor who
professes Christianity as his religion has cured me of some disease,
or why should the doctor expect me to change whilst I am under his
influence?" (Young India: April 23, 1931)

The views expressed here are the personal views of Ramesh Rao, and do
not necessarily represent those of Longwood University or the Hindu
American Foundation.

http://www.hafsite.org/

On Faith: The Violence of Conversion
Minneapolis, MN (March 3, 2010) -

As a regularly featured blogger on the Washington Post/Newsweek's "On
Faith" blog, Dr. Aseem Shukla, member of HAF's Board of Directors, has
the opportunity to provide a Hindu viewpoint on various issues. Below
is Dr. Shukla's latest blog. Please post your comments directly on the
"On Faith" site by clicking here.

Q: Is there a problem with proselytism overseas by U.S. religious
groups? Isn't sharing one's faith part of religious freedom? When does
it cross the line into manipulation and coercion?

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion
after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an
error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress
toward peace. Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to
Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or
godly man? -- Mahatma Gandhi (Harijan: January 30, 1937)

If I had some good news--really good news that would help others--I
would eagerly want to share that news. Spread the word, pass it on,
share the joy. As Thomas Farr of the Berkely Center at Georgetown
wrote, "For those who believe they have access to such a Truth, the
desire to offer it to others is both natural and rational."

The problem, of course, is that we are dealing with matters of faith
and the experiential, rather than the empirical and rational. And we
are wrestling with not only the benign connotations of evangelism and
charity, but also with the incendiary vocabulary of hegemony,
religious imperialism, asymmetry and conversion.

The Georgetown meeting will only include Christians and Muslims--
sadly, none of the millions of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and indigenous
traditions that are the targets of proselytism globally are included--
but it is also apropos. For only Christians and Muslims have a history
of displaying an often violent urge to share good news. Whether you
want to hear it or not never much mattered!

The Crusades or the Conquests, the Inquisition or the sword, the
results were the same: millions were forced to turn their backs on
their own faith and embrace another. Only the name of the God
changed.

Today, that same urge to persuade, convince and even coerce the good
news upon others remains; the methodology insidiously different, but
the result is the same.

Groups ranging from the overtly evangelical World Vision to quasi-
government entities such as the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and many others even within our
government, firmly subscribe to the view that religious freedom
protects--rather mandates--unhindered access globally to carry out the
work of proselytism. Religious freedom is tantamount to freedom to
proselytize and convert.

Article 18 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UNDHR), is often held up as the rationale--the green light for
proselytization. That every individual "has the right to freedom of

thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to

change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in
community with others and in public or private, to manifest his
religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

But adherents of the pluralist religions--Dharma religions, paganism
and native religious traditions--have long argued that there is a very
basic asymmetry at play rendering the Declaration deeply flawed.
Abrahamic religions--the non-pluralist traditions--claim exclusivity
in their belief system's legitimacy as the only religious and
spiritual path and demand absolute adherence. In contrast, pluralist
religious traditions subscribe to a more expansive ethos--that one's
religion may not be the exclusive source of Truth and which
acknowledge the potential of multiple legitimate religious and
spiritual paths. Most pluralist religious traditions allow for the
assimilation of beliefs and traditions of another religion without
demanding repudiation of one's own religion or conversion to the
other.

This fundamental difference--that a pluralist accepts the injunction
of the ancient Rig Veda that, "Truth is One, but sages call it by
various names" while the non-pluralist demands that there is only One
Truth and all others are false and dangerous--renders the pluralist
vulnerable to the asymmetric force of the proselytizer. The pluralist
would find seeking converts or evangelizing others anathema--the
concept of conversion does not even exist--while the non-pluralist
seeks converts as a God given mandate.

Compound this asymmetry with the reality that the most prolific
proselytizers today comprise a multi-billion dollar megachurch
industry, and the previously colonized developing world is open ground
for this latest avatar of colonization. Witnesses from the hot spots
for global proselytism abound with testimony of access to education,
medical care, employment and other necessities being traded--often
subtle, and often not--on the marketplace of religious affiliation.
Most sinister, of course, is the overt bargaining of disaster supplies
or better hospital beds after tsunamis and earthquakes for those
willing to convert.

The pluralists protest, also, against the tactics of the
proselytizers. Christian missionaries in India appropriate Hindu modes
of worship, reconfigure traditional prayer rituals into Holy
Sacraments and sing hymns that are Hindu bhajans (prayer songs) with
words replaced sung to identical tunes.

The violence of conversion is very real. The religious conversion is
too often a conversion to intolerance. A convert is asked to repudiate
his sangha (community), reject the customs and traditions of his
family passed down for generations, and refuse to attend religious
ceremonies that are the very basis of daily life in much of the world.
A person's conversion begins a cascade of upheaval that tears apart
families, communities and societies creating a political and
demographic tinderbox that too often explodes.

Spreading hate against native religions is perhaps the most vile
tactic too often employed. And even the Catholic Church, with its
centuries old presence in India, has blasted the tactics of the new
proselytizers plying their trade today. In our own country, consumer
protection laws ensure that advertisers and retailers abide by truth-
in-marketing laws. There is no parallel protection in the rabid sales
in religious identity that the proselytizer markets overseas, and the
consumers are the victims.

And finally, there is the fact that the evangelical community can only
"pick on" the pluralist societies. India, Nepal, Cambodia, Taiwan and
much of Africa where indigenous traditions still hold sway, are among
the targets today for the next "harvest." The "Muslim world" rewards
conversion away from Islam with death, and in China, Russia Burma and
others, autocracy, the Orthodox Church or military junta proscribe
missionary work.

And so, the very democracy and openness of pluralistic societies
becomes their vulnerability--a poison pill as they face the onslaught
of the proselytizers. Today, the Native Americans of the U.S. and
Canada, the indigenous progeny of Latin America and Mexico, the
Aborigines in Australia are silent witness to lost religions and
decimated traditions that fell historically to earlier iterations of
these onslaughts.

It is in this spirit that many human rights activists and academics
today argue for an overdue amending of the UNDHR. The Hindu American
Foundation proposed in a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, that Article 18 be amended as follows (emphasis added):

§1 Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion. This right shall include freedom tohave, retain or to adopt
a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually
or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his
religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

§2 No one shall be subject to force, fraud and/or coercion, including
but not limited to harassment, intimidation or exploitation, including
but not limited to the conditioning of humanitarian aid or economic,
educational, medical or social assistance upon conversion and/or overt
denigration of other religions to intentionally promote religious
hatred and bigotry (hate speech) and violence, which would impair his
freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.

The right to have and retain one's path to salvation is and must be as
important as the right to find or adopt a new way. It is time to
change the vocabulary in our engagement with religious freedom.
Religious freedom must mean a commitment to the true spirit of
pluralism, and not a license to those "bearing witness" and forcing
judgment.

Views expressed here are the personal views of Dr. Aseem Shukla, and
do not necessarily represent those of the University of Minnesota or
Hindu American Foundation.

http://www.hafsite.org/ViolenceofConversion

HAF Expresses Concern Over Penguin Group's Fact-Checking Process
New York, NY (February 23, 2010) -

The Hindu American Foundation sent the following letter to Penguin
Group's President, Susan Peterson Kennedy, in an effort to understand
the publisher's fact-checking process and standards for non-fiction
pieces, such as Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History. A
pdf of the letter can be downloaded by clicking here.

Dear Ms. Peterson Kennedy,

On behalf of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), an advocacy
organization serving the Hindu American community, I am seeking an
understanding of the editorial and fact-checking standards that
Penguin Group (USA) applies to its pieces of non-fiction.
Specifically, it has come to the attention of HAF that The Hindus: An
Alternative History written by Professor Wendy Doniger and published
by Penguin Group (USA) contains a number of factual and historical
inaccuracies.
For brevity’s sake, I will refer to only a handful of factual errors
and mistranslations in this letter. A more comprehensive list can be
made available upon request.

Page, Paragraph

Error in The Hindus

Correction

67, 1
“But from about 2300 BCE the first urbanization took place, as great
cities arose in the valley of the Indus River…”

1. Archaeologists date the beginning of urbanization as early as 3200
BCE; 2. Evidence of the beginning of urbanization is not restricted to
the valley of the Indus River. Excavation in the Ghaggar Basin has too
revealed evidence of urbanization at the same time if not earlier than
in Harappa.

107, 3
“All the poems of the Rig Veda are ritual hymns in some sense. Since
all were sung as part of the Vedic ceremony.”
A considerable portion of the Rig Veda is not employed in ritual. See
Jan Gonda, 1978, Hymns of the Rgveda Not Employed in the Solemn
Ritual. (Amsterdam).

112, 2
“…but another [verse] says that a cow must be slaughtered on the
occasion of marriage (10.85.13)…”
A correct translation of the Sanskrit in Rigveda 10.85.13 is not that
the “cows are slaughtered”, but that the “cows are driven along”.

124, 2
“More substantial is the early evidence in this poem of a form of
rape that came to be regarded as a bad, but legitimate, form of
marriage: having sex with a sleeping or drugged woman.”

A correct translation and interpretation of the Sanskrit in Rigveda
10.162.5 that Doniger cites is a conversation between an evil spirit
assuming the form of her husband, brother or assuming the form of her
lover to come close to a pregnant woman to destroy her fetus. There
is no terminology in the mantra of sex with a sleeping or drugged
woman. The woman in the mantra is already pregnant and the entire hymn
contains imprecations against evil spirits who can cause her abortion.

130, 2

“Agni is the Brahmin, Varuna the Brahminical sovereign, Indra the
warrior, and the Ashvins the Vaishyas. There are no Shudra gods in the
Vedas.”

It is anachronistic to talk of castes of Deities in the context of
Rigveda.
Still, in Shatapatha Brahmana 11.2.7.16; 6.4.4.13, the devatas are
also divided into four castes. According to that text, Varuna is a
Kshatriya (not Brahmin). And Pushan is a Shudra Deity, contrary to
Doniger’s claim.

Jaiminiya Brahmana 1.68-69 associates Sudras with the Deity Vesmapati.
Sometimes, the Vishvedevas are also associated with the Shudras.

In light of the number of errors in The Hindus: An Alternative
History, HAF and its constituency are particularly concerned about
Penguin’s fact-checking process prior to the publication. We urge
Penguin to reexamine its fact-checking process for non-fiction pieces,
particularly for those, such as The Hindus: An Alternative History,
which present Hindu philosophy inaccurately and have the potential of
being highly offensive to a religious minority in the U.S.

Moreover, the Foundation suggests that Penguin, at minimum, respond to
the individual errors brought to your attention above and consult an
academic outside of the University of Chicago whose expertise is also
in the area of Hinduism and Ancient Indian history to cross-check
historical facts and translations, prior to any reprinting of this
book. HAF has regularly attended the American Academy of Religion
conferences to stay abreast of the latest research in the field of
Hindu studies and, as such, is familiar with the many academics, such
as Prof. Vasudha Narayanan of the University of Florida and Prof.
Arvind Sharma of McGill University, whose knowledge of Sanskrit,
Hinduism and ancient India is well respected not only in the field,
but by the Hindu community at large. I, along with our Board and
staff, will be more than happy to provide additional recommendations
to this end.

I look forward to your prompt response to this matter and sharing it
with Foundation’s members.

Thank you,

The Hindu American Foundation

http://www.hafsite.org/PenguinGroup

Open Letter: Ignoring Caste-Based Discrimination is not the Solution

Namaste,

I cannot begin to express my dismay at recently reading a piece by a
prominent leader of an international Hindu organization founded by
some of the most progressive Hindu leaders. The unfortunate piece
highlights a serious need for the Hindu community to awaken to the
realities of caste-based discrimination as it exists today.

To state that, "Untouchability is a bygone problem in our country
[India]. It is only the Church which has been harping on this
signature tune of their proselytisation agenda," ignores a very real
social evil that affects not only Hindus suffering under the archaic
practices, but Hindus worldwide, who must live with the knowledge that
our ancient Hindu teachings of tolerance, equality, love, compassion
and dignity are at odds with our society's actions. The reality is
that untouchability is a major problem in India, one in which
countless Hindus, including those from every major religious and
spiritual organization, have dedicated their lives to uplifting. The
problem of untouchability did not end with Swami Vivekananda's calls
for its elimination, Swami Dayananda Saraswati's casteless ideology of
Arya Samaj, Mahatma Gandhi's call for its eradication, nor the
enactment of the Indian constitution.

Claiming that it is no longer an issue makes a mockery of Hindus who
have dedicated their lives to its removal, working in every corner of
India, in slums and villages, in mountain towns to desert encampments,
from Mumbai to Calcutta, from Delhi to Chennai. It also ignores the
fact that every major Hindu religious leader, including Swami
Avdeshananda Giri, Swami Dayananda Saraswati and his AIM for Seva
movement, Swami Bodhinatha Veylanswami, Mata Amritanandamayi, Sri Sri
Ravi Sankar, Swami Tejomayananda, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the
Shankaracharya of Kanchi, Swami Chidananda Saraswati and Dada Vaswani,
has called for the end of untouchability and in fact, suggests a gross
ignorance of these highly respected religious and spiritual leaders of
India and Hinduism.

Brushing aside the current caste problem in India with broad sweeps of
history, ignores the fact that not just Hindus, but huge numbers of
Indians, still face some level of caste discrimination on a daily
basis. Today, Hindus have the ability and capability to collectively
rid India of caste discrimination and untouchability. Accepting Hindu
society's current responsibility to do more for the caste problem does
not mean Hindus have to ignore the role of Islamic invaders, British
opportunists, Christian missionaries or Indian politicians in
furthering caste discrimination or the fact that caste discrimination
is a very gross reality in other religious and ethnic communities in
India and worldwide. Yet we still have leaders who, by refusing to
look at numerous studies on caste discrimination at face value and by
refusing to listen to the masses, prevent the strengthening of Hindu
society by their indifference. In many ways, these leaders actually
hinder Hindus from uniting. Thus, we urge Hindu leaders to look at the
situation with objective eyes, rather than through lenses clouded with
enmity from past invaders and current political machinations.

My own experiences, along with those of others at the Hindu American
Foundation (HAF), have been shaped by direct contact with villagers,
who despite being proud Hindus and who can recite the
Ramcharitamanas by heart, still are not allowed to enter there village
temples or socialize freely without others constantly reminding them
of their so-called low caste status. And similar experiences have been
shared by many others, spanning all social, religious, cultural,
linguistic, political and professional strata. These direct
experiences cannot be ignored or minimized. I hope that others will
speak out, as speaking out does not mean disrespect, but instead puts
our conscience and hearts for the future of Hindus worldwide and Hindu
dharma above blind respect for any particular leader.
HAF has also been working on its own report on caste discrimination,
to not only highlight the reality of the problem, but also to show
that while Hinduism is not the cause of the problem, it can be the
solution to the problem. This report will be released in several
months, and includes statements by prominent Hindu spiritual and
religious leaders who acknowledge this problem and clarify how
Hinduism can help resolve the social problem of caste discrimination.
Ignoring the problem will not resolve it. And so I urge the author of
that unfortunate piece to reexamine the realities of India,
acknowledge the social evil and use his leadership and prominence to
aid in eradicating caste-based discrimination.
Sincerely,

Mihir Meghani, M.D.

President and Co-Founder, Hindu American Foundation

http://www.hafsite.org/OpenLetter

Avatar Does Not "Raise Any Hackles" of Hindus

Upon the release of James Cameron's latest film, Avatar, the Chronicle
reached out to HAF's Houston coordinator, Rishi Bhutada, to hear his
thoughts on the reaction of the Hindu community.

New Movie Avatar Shines Light on Hindu Word
By Arlene Nisson Lasson for the Chronicle

Houston, TX (December 29, 2009) - In James Cameron's new film, Avatar,
the Titanic director creates a world where humans take on the form of
avatars to exist on a planet called Pandora. The humans that belong to
these avatars control them through technology, but some use their
powerful avatarbodies for evil as they try to ruin the resources of
the planet.

The term “avatar” might already be familiar to those who play virtual
reality games where avatars are movable images representing real
people.

Avatar's origins, however, come from the Sanskrit language in sacred
Hindu texts, and it's a term for divine beings sent to restore
goodness to Earth.

Hinduism, the third-largest religion in the world with about 1 billion
adherents, began many centuries ago on the Indian subcontinent, and a
majority of the world's Hindus reside in India.

Those who practice Hinduism recognize three main deities. Lord Brahma
is considered the creator of the universe; Lord Vishnu is considered
the sustainer of the universe, to right things when needed; and Lord
Shiva is the redeemer of the universe.

It is believed that these deities sent avatars — incarnations of
themselves in human form — to perform “dharma,” or righteous duty, to
right wrongs or to restore peace and goodness.

Hindu theology names 10 numbered avatars. Two of the most important
from Hindu scripture are Lord Rama, the seventh avatar of Lord Vishnu
and written about in the poem Ramayana; and Lord Krishna, written
about in the mythological poem Mahabharata.

The Mahabharata, the world's longest epic poem at more than 90,000
verses and one of the most important Hindu texts, tells of a battle
between bad forces and the Pandava family. The avatar Lord Krishna
appears to assist Arjuna, one of the five Pandava family brothers,
reveals his divinity to him and encourages him that it is his duty to
fight for right.

Illustrations of these Hindu avatars, which are magnificently detailed
and reflect an aura of divinity, are in stark contrast to Cameron's
alien-meets-robot-warrior look in the film.

Despite the very different avatar interpretations, local Hindus'
reverence for specific avatars from their scripture does not conflict
with how they are seeing the modern usage of the term.

“The way the term is now being used is not a distortion of my
beliefs,” said Anil Dandona, a practicing Hindu. “It is just a term.
We believe the Supreme Being sent humans to create righteousness.
These messengers of God take a human form, but they have godlike
qualities, and they are delegates sent to do a task.”

Rishi Bhutada, Houston coordinator of the Hindu American Foundation,
agreed with Dandona. He said that while Hindus use the term to mean an
alternative representation of the divine, using it to mean some other
representation does not “raise any hackles.”

“There are certain sacred terms that would offend Hindus if used
improperly, but avatar is not one of them,” Bhutada said.

Local filmmaker Ashok Rao, who has made four full-length feature
films, is looking forward to Cameron's film, and he feels that as long
as filmmakers do not insult the sensitivities of a particular
religion, then artistic license can be used.

“The film's use of avatar is a close relationship to the original
meaning. It is a word meaning reincarnation and isn't meant to always
mean a representative of God on Earth. It simply means one being in
another form.”

“In literature, moviemaking, poetry and other forms of art, something
is taken and stretched in meaning. That is art,” said Rao.

http://www.hafsite.org/AvatarMovie

Foundation Demands FX Network Apology: "The League" Episode Offensive
After receiving a litany of complaints from the Hindu American
community about a FX Network's "The League" episode entitled "The
Shiva Bowl," the Hindu American Foundation wrote a letter to the
President of FX Networks demanding an apology and greater sensitivity
for such gross transgressions on such deeply religious sentiments.

December 23, 2009

FX Networks, LLC
President - General Manager, Mr. John Landgraf
Senior VP Original Programming FX and EVP, FX Production, Mr. Eric
Schrier
10201 W. Pico Blvd., Bldg. 103
Los Angeles, CA 90035

Arvind Chandrakantan, MD
Executive Council, Hindu American Foundation
5268G Nicholson Lane # 164
Kensington, MD 20895

Dear Mr.Landgraf and Mr. Shrier,

The recent season finale of The League, The Shiva Bowl, which used
Nataraja, a sacred icon representing Lord Shiva in dancing form, as a
trophy was deeply offensive, disrespectful and profane towards
Hinduism. In an intensely crude scene, a woman's undergarments were
thrown on the image of Nataraja in the very beginning of the episode--
an unnecessarily provocative insult.

Hindus generally worship their murthis (images or icons of the Divine)
with flowers, incense, fruits and milk. While we understood the
transposition of Lord Shiva with Shiva, the girl who was the focus of
the episode, we believe that the subtlety of the transposition, and
purely unnecessary misuse of Hindu iconography perpetuates
misunderstandings about Hinduism. In the wake of global events and
escalating attacks on minority faiths, we believe misrepresentations
such as this are the seeds of ignorance which lead to untoward acts of
violence and persecution globally.

Just as viewers or producers would not blithely film a scene where a
woman's undergarments are hurled upon on a Star of David, an image of
Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, or any other faiths' symbols for the
sake of a cheap laugh, a similar respect should be accorded to two
million American Hindus.

We request a written apology and explanation that we may disseminate
to our membership to explicate the filming of this episode that has
led to numerous calls of indignation to our offices. Additionally,
may we request that you avoid gross transgressions on such deeply
religious sentiments in the
future?
Yours Sincerely,

Arvind Chandrakantan,
MD
Executive Council, Hindu American Foundation

http://www.hafsite.org/node/453

"Promoting Understanding, Tolerance and Pluralism."

Balancing the "Righting" of History -

Hindu Americans Represent in Texas
Austin, TX (March 17, 2010) -

The Texas State Board of Education garnered new notoriety last week as
the influential body, comprised of non historians, advocated a sharp
right wing tilt in history textbooks published for state schools. And
the Board's widely condemned party line vote occurred even after
hearing spirited testimony and considering amendments from numerous
Texans including Hindu American Foundation (HAF) Texas Coordinator,
Rishi Bhutada, at the raucous meeting.

In his extensive testimony before the Board here, Bhutada sought to
ensure that Hinduism is portrayed as one of the oldest living world
religions and pressed for an amendment to remove a separate discussion
on the development of monotheism in the exclusive context of Judaism -
an addition made during one of the many rounds of the curriculum's
current drafting. Over 800 HAF supporters, mostly from Texas, sent
emails to the Board endorsing HAF's amendments aimed at clarity,
consistency and accuracy in the textbook process.

"The TEKS (Texas Education and Knowledge Skills) for all the major
world religions already included discussion of their origins and
central ideas, which would arguably cover development of monotheism
not only in the Judeo-Christian context but these other religions,"
stated Bhutada. "Special focus on monotheism could also paint a
misleading picture that monotheism is exclusive to Abrahamic religions
when Hinduism, which encompasses a complexity of theologies ranging
from panentheism to monotheism, would be left utterly misunderstood."

HAF also supported the Sikh Coalition in its push for the inclusion of
Sikhism in the new World History TEKS. The Sikh Coalition successfully
lobbied for the inclusion of Sikhism in sixth grade social studies and
world geography TEKS drafts last summer, but the world history
curriculum did not conform to these changes.

The 15-member board debated high school U.S. and world history over
the course of three days and in a 10 to 5 partisan vote, Republicans
on the Board prevailed in approving a draft of social studies
curriculum which stressed conservative views on American capitalism
and questioned the Founding Fathers’ commitment to the separation of
church and state.

"Unfortunately politics and propaganda have reigned supreme in the
TEKS process," said Suhag Shukla, HAF's Legal Counsel and Managing
Director. "Texas students will now learn a version of history,
especially relating to the crucial issue of the separation of church
and state, that is not supported by American jurisprudence or
history."

The final version of the Texas Education and Knowledge Skills will not
be approved until May of this year and whether the amendments proposed
by HAF and others were adopted is uncertain. To date, the latest
approved proposed curriculum had yet to be made public.

Bhutada and Shukla bemoaned the potential fallout of this latest vote
by the Texas School Board.

"If this brand of politics continue into adoption of science
curriculum as it has in states like Kentucky and Louisiana, we'll face
9th graders in India and China learning calculus and advanced
chemistry while American students question evolution," Bhutada added.
"And the impact could be devastating not only for Texas school
children, but the future of America as a competitor in the global
market."

http://www.hafsite.org/

"Promoting Understanding, Tolerance and Pluralism."

HAF Extends Support to New Jersey Hindu Family Targeted in Hate Crime

Washington D.C. (June 15, 2006) - The Hindu American Foundation
expressed dismay and shock at the hate attack on a Hindu family in
Wayne, New Jersey on June 1, 2006. The home of the family of five was
defaced with anti-Hindu and anti-Indian epithets spray-painted across
their driveway and house. Earlier in January, the family had been
targeted with hate mail as well as graffiti on their garage door.

New Jersey was witness to racially and religiously motivated attacks
against Indian-Americans and Hindu-Americans during the 1980’s. Young
men, identifying themselves as the “Dotbusters,” targeted Hindus
because Hindu women wore “dots” or “bindi” on their forehead – a
traditional mark that has both spiritual symbolism and aesthetic
appeal. The series of attacks ended in the murder of Indian-American
Navroze Mody.

New Jersey state records indicate that hate crimes have risen by 32
percent from 2003 to 2004. Fourteen of the victims were targeted
because of their Indian-American identity, while three were attacked
because of their Hindu faith.

"Hate crimes are reprehensible violations that must not be tolerated
in any community. I am confident that the Wayne Police Department will
actively work to bring the vandal or vandals to justice and end these
cowardly acts,” said Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), an official
representing Wayne in the U.S. Congress, in support of HAF’s
condemnation of the attacks. “No matter who the victim, hate crimes
are committed with the intention to divide communities. I join my
friends in Wayne as we stand in unity with the family that has been
victimized."

“It’s vital that Hindu and Indian-Americans join in support of this
family,” said Ishani Chowdhury, Executive Director of the Hindu
American Foundation. “We call upon law enforcement officials to
provide safety for the local Hindu American community, and to
apprehend the perpetrators.”

http://www.hafsite.org/?q=media/pr/haf-extends-support-nj-hindu-family-targeted-hate-crime

Press Release Hate Crimes

ADL Condemns Hate Crime Against Hindu

Boston, MA, June 25, 2003 .. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today
condemned the attack of an Indian graduate student in a deplorable
hate crime. While working in a part-time job delivering pizzas,
Saurabh Bhalerao, 24, was robbed, beaten, burned with cigarettes,
stuffed in a trunk and stabbed twice before being dumped along a road
in an attack that police and community leaders described as a hate
crime. The suspects in the attack mistook the Hindu man for a Muslim.
Allegedly while assaulting him, the suspects were berating him with
comments like, “go back to Iraq.”

Robert Leikind, ADL New England Regional Director, issued the
following statement:

This week, our community was shaken by a deplorable crime -- the
attack on Saurabh Bhalerao in New Bedford on Sunday. This act -- this
hate crime -- is evidence of a tragic reality. Hate remains a force in
our communities and it must be fought. In our diverse society, it
matters not whether the victim is Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Christian.
People of all backgrounds need to work together to build a future that
we can be proud to pass on to our children and grandchildren.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading
organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that
counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

http://www.adl.org/presrele/hatcr_51/4277_51.asp

Is the Mike Myers Love Guru Anti-Hindu or anti-Indian?

Watch Video

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/is-the-mike-myers-love-guru-anti-hindu-or-anti-indian/bac3625b5674f3e26f8dbac3625b5674f3e26f8d-1428342964605

by Wyatt Kaldenberg

Is the Mike Myers' movie The Love Guru anti-Hindu of anti-Indian?
Video by Wyatt Kaldenberg
Category: Entertainment

Sid Harth

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Mar 27, 2010, 2:55:03 PM3/27/10

Peshwa
Sunday, October 21, 2001 Books

The rise and stagnation of Marathas
Review by Harbans Singh

Baji Rao: The Warrior Peshwa
by E. Jaiwant Paul. Roli Books, New Delhi. Pages 184. Rs 275.

JAIWANT PAUL's "Baji Rao: The Warrior Peshwa" is not just an account
of the life of a general of the Marathas; it goes much beyond the
biographical loyalty of an author for, it vividly recreates an era
which saw the juxtaposition of the decadent forces of the Mughals and
the daring and innovative ways of the Marathas. It deals with an age
when competent and willing warriors were scarce in the Mughal army,
while they were abundant among the Marathas.

"It is a book about Hindustan whose emperor cannot think beyond the
skirts of his concubines and (whose) blood is sluggish with opium,"
and a people whose leaders dared to dream of planting the Maratha flag
on the banks of the Indus. It is amazing to note that the ambition and
the struggle launched by Shivaji had such an irresistible force that
the adversities that befell the Marathas could not stop three
generations from spreading the power of the descendants of Shivaji and
also the Maratha people.

The book ostensibly is the story of Baji Rao, the Peshwa of Shahuji,
but in truth it is a chronicle of the times when in a burst of
creative energy the Marathas established their authority over what was
Mughal India. Credit must be given not only to the Maratha king who
had the wisdom to choose the right persons but also to Baji Rao who in
a short span of life created outstanding generals out of ordinary men
and soldiers. It speaks volumes of the leadership qualities he must
have possessed, since it is no mean task in a caste-ridden society to
recognise and encourage the talent of a cowherd Holkar and Ranoji
Scindia who took care of the slippers of the Peshwa. And, in between
he had time enough to weave a near tragic romance with Mastani as
well!

The rise of the Marathas is as much due to individual leaders as the
collective will of the people, and this is evident from the fact that
there are the most unlikely heroes at different times. If Ranoji Angre
was emerging as the menace to be contended with at seas, then Balaji,
a Chitpavan Brahmin, was successfully implementing a system which was
aimed at strengthening the Maratha power. At no point of time did
Angre dream of establishing an independent kingdom. His loyalty was
firmly first for Sambhaji, the younger branch of Shivaji, and then
inalienably for Shahuji, Balaji Rao had correctly assessed that
Shahuji did not have the vigour of his grandfather to run an
autocracy, and therefore it would be different for him to run an army
whose officers were salaried. He introduced the system of offering
land to the officers instead of a salary. Thus sowing the seeds of the
Maratha confederacy at an early stage of their history.

Balaji and then his illustrious son Baji Rao had also accurately
analysed that the traditional armies of the Mughals and those who were
associated with the Mughal court, could be easily outwitted and
defeated if confronted with fast moving soldiers and unorthodox
tactics. Steeped in convention and devoid of imagination, the Mughals
were easily baffled and beaten by the fast moving and ingenuous
Marathas. Baji Rao also ensured that there was no complacency in the
discipline of his soldiers, and two incidents mentioned in the book
speak volumes of their fighting qualities. When asked to draw a
picture of Baji Rao by the Mughal emperor, the painter drew a soldier
on a horseback in the dress of a trooper with reins loose on the
horse's neck and the lance resting on his shoulder. But as he rode he
rubbed both hands on the ear of the corn which he ate after removing
the husk. Aghast at the sight, Emperor Mohammad Shah exclaimed in
great alarm, "The man must be the very devil himself!"

On another occasion, outwitting and outmarching Sadat Khan and Khan
Dauran, Baji Rao reached Delhi to the utter disbelief of the Mughal
emperor who sent a spy disguised as a beggar to confirm the entry.
When the spy returned and appeared before the emperor, he produced the
alms he had received, some grain, dry gram, pieces of baked bread and
pods of red pepper, which confirmed the presence of the Maratha
forces. It is instructive to compare these forces of Baji Rao with the
Mughal paraphernalia some two decades after this incident at the
battle of Panipat!

Though the author has not gone into detail, two aspects of the Maratha
rise are also mentioned by him, one fascinating in its scope and the
other a matter of regret. Throughout history, the Marathas had waged a
ceaseless war against the Mughals, treating them as aliens in this
land. And yet, they had a strange sense of loyalty which forbade them
from annihilating the Mughals or even allowing others to do the same.
Twice during his lifetime. Baji Rao had the opportunity of destroying
the most potent symbol of the Mughals, the Nizam, first at Palkhed and
then at Bhopal. The presence of the Nizam in close proximity to the
Marathas could only bode ill, and yet on both occasions he was spared.
It is said that this was done because the Maratha king Shahuji, who
was brought up in Mughal captivity, had a soft corner for them to
deliver the coup de grace.

Similarly, Baji Rao had Delhi at his mercy. In fact he had gone there
with the explicit intention of destroying it, and yet he spared it.

On another occasion, when he was in a position to clear the western
coast of the Portugese presence, he gave up the task when the news
broke of a grave threat to Hindustan from the northern frontiers in
the form of Nadir Shah. He lost no time in getting in touch with other
princes to meet the challenge, and in fact according to the author, he
even forged a new alliance wherein the Maharana of Mewar was to be
crowned the Emperor of Hindustan.

While his obsession and fascination with Delhi can perhaps be
attributed to many factors, the inability of the Marathas to assess
the long-term threat that the British colonialists posed is
regrettable indeed. The native wisdom that no stranger should be
allowed to settle down in your courtyard was inexplicably forgotten
when they failed to clear the vicinity of the obsequious traders. In
their obsession with Delhi, the Marathas failed to see the progress
the British were making in the east of the country. The truth is that
when the Marathas were making inroads into Malwa and Agra, the British
were tightening their stranglehold on the Bengal suba of the Mughals,
and yet they were not perceived as a threat. This oversight would
remain not only a regret but also a blot on an otherwise brilliant and
systematic rise of the Marathas in general and Baji Rao in particular.

The reader will also notice that the interlude of the Mastani episode
is based on folklore and hearsay than on documentay evidence. This is
strange since the events belong to an era when much of it is
documented. In fact the historians are not even sure if Masatni was
the daughter of the redoubtable Chhatrasal or the wily Nizam!
Fortunately everyone agrees that she was a Muslim, but again one
cannot be certain if she died on the funeral pyre away from Pune or
committed suicide in Pune on hearing the news of Baji Rao's death and
where her tomb is said to be. What, however, is acknowledged is that
her and Baji Rao's son had to be brought up as a Muslim because the
Brahmins exerted pressure on Baji Rao and his family.

It is a refreshing book, coming as it does from a person whose
perspective and style is not bound by the formal approach of an
academician. Easy to read, it is a fast paced story of an astonishing
era of Indian history. The canvas is wide, yet the author has
skillfully kept the focus on the life and works of his subject.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20011021/spectrum/book2.htm

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Maratha Empire at its peak in 1760The Peshwa (Marathi: पेशवे) were
Brahmin Prime Ministers to the Maratha Chattrapatis (Kings), who began
commanding Maratha armies and later became the hereditary rulers of
the Maratha empire of central India from 1749 to 1818. During their
rein, the Maratha empire reached its zenith ruling most of the Indian
Subcontinent. Prior to 1700 one Peshwa received the status of king for
eight or nine years. They oversaw the greatest expansion of the
Maratha Empire around 1760 with the help of Sardars (Generals) like
Holkar, Shinde, Bhosale, Pantprainidhi, Gaekwad, Panse, Vinchurkar,
Pethe, Raste, Phadke, Patwardhan, Pawar, Pandit and Purandare, and
also its eventual annexation by the British East India Company in
1818.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathi_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Ministers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company

Title

The word Peshwa may have originated in Persian, meaning "foremost",
and was introduced in Deccan by the Muslim rulers. After his
coronation as a Maratha Chhatrapati in 1674, the founder of the
Maratha Empire, Shivaji appointed Moropant Trimbak Pingle as the first
Peshwa. However, the first Peshwa was Sonopant Dabir, appointed by
Shahaji to assist Shivaji. Duties and authorities of a Peshwa were
equal to that of a Prime Minister. Shivaji renamed this designation as
"Pantpradhan" in 1674 but this name was less frequently used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shivaji
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moropant_Peshwe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonopant_Dabir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahaji

Moropant Pingle

Moropant Trimbak Pingle was the first Peshwa (Prime Minister) in the
court of Shivaji, the founder king of the Maratha empire in western
India. He joined the service of Shivaji in 1647. He was one of the
warriors in the famous 1659 war against Afzal Khan. Later he also won
the battle of Trimbakeshwar fort, and assisted Netaji Palkar in the
battle of Wani-Dindori against Mughals and in Surat's war of 1665.

He can be credited for appropriate revenue administration techniques.
He also played a role in planning the fort's resources.

When Shivaji died in 1680, he was busy at development activity Salher-
Mulher in Baglan-Nashik District. He died in 1683.

Ramchandra Pant Amatya (Bawadekar)

Ramchandra Amatya received King status from Chatrapti Rajaram as
"Hukumatpanha" during 1689-1699. He was a basically good administrator
who rose from the level of Local Kulkarni to the ranks of Ashtapradhan
due to guidance and support from Shivaji Maharaj, one of the prominent
Peshwas earlier from 1700.

He recaptured many forts from Moguls during 1690-1694. Some forts he
captured personally using guerilla war techniques. When Chatrapati
Rajaram fled to Jinji in 1689 then before leaving from Maharastra, he
gave "Hukumat panha" (King Status) to Pant. Ramchandra Pant managed
the entire state under many challenges like influx of Moguls, betrayal
of Vatandars, and scarcity of food. With the help of Pantpratindhi,
Sachiv kept the economic condition of Maratha State in a proper way.
He got tremendous military help from Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji
Jadhav the great Maratha warriors. Many times he directly participated
in war, especially during 1689-1695; he personally re-captured many
forts in south Maharastra from the Moguls and played a role of shadow
king in the absence of Chatrapati Rajaram.

In 1698, he happily stepped down from the post of "Hukumatpanha" and
Rajaram offered this post to his wife Tarabai. Tarabai gave an
important position to Pant in senior administration of Maratha State.
He wrote a book called Adnyapatra मराठी: आज्ञापत्र which explained
different techniques of war, maintenance of forts and administration
etc.

The concepts in Adnyapatra and the wisdom and leadership of Tararani
(Tarabai) greatly helped the Maratha empire in building the foundation
of state. As he was more loyal to Tararani than Shahu, he was
sidelined after the arrival of Shahu. Later the Peshwa post was given
to Balaji Vishwanath in 1713. Ramchandra Pant died in 1716 on Panhala
fort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulkarni
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santaji_Ghorpade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhanaji_Jadhav
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarabai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnyapatra

Bhat Family

The position moved to the Bhat family of Shrivardhan in the Konkan
region, upon appointment of Balaji Vishwanath Bhat as Peshwa by the
fourth Chattrapati Shahu in 1713. The appointment of his son, Baji Rao
I as Peshwa in 1719 by Shahu made the position hereditary in the Bhat
family, and also led to a rebellion by General Trimbak Rao Dabhade,
the senapati (commander in chief), over Chauthai (revenue collection)
of Gujarat. The followers of Baji and Trimbak clashed at the Battle of
Bilhapur on April 1, 1731, and Trimbak was killed, giving the peshwas
and the Bhat family unchallenged control over Maratha.[1] Shahu, who
also appointed Baji Rao's son as Peshwa in 1740, gave considerable
authority to the Peshwas to command the Maratha armies, and they
responded well during his reigns.

At the time of his death in 1749, Shahu made the Peshwas his
successors under such conditions. Shivaji's descendants, who remained
as the titular Raja of Satara, were called Swami (Marathi for The real
Owner) by the Peshwas who reported to them, and they were to seek
guidance from the Raja. However, the Peshwa also became a ceremonial
head of state after the battle of Panipat and the death of Madhavrao.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrivardhan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaji_Vishwanath
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahuji
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajirao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhavrao_II_Ballal

Legacy

Maratha Emperors (1674-1818)
Shivaji (1674 - 1680)
Sambhaji (1680 - 1689)
Rajaram (1689 - 1700)
Queen Tarabai (1700 - 1707)
Shahu (1707 - 1749)
Ramaraja (1749 - 1777)
Peshwas (Prime Ministers) (1712-1818)
Balaji Vishwanath
(1712-1719)
Bajirao
(1719-1740)
Balaji Bajirao
(1740-1761)
Madhavrao Ballal
(1761-1772)
Narayanrao
(1772-1773)
Raghunathrao
(1773-1774)
Sawai Madhavrao
(1774-1795)
Bajirao II
(1795-1851)
Nana Sahib
(1851-1857)
The first Peshwa to receive the status of a king was Ramchandra Pant
Amatya Bawdekar in 1689 by Chatrapati Rajaram.The first Bhat family
Peshwa was Balaji Vishwanath Bhat, a chitpavan Brahmin. He was
succeeded as Peshwa by his son Baji Rao I, who never lost a battle.
Baji Rao and his son, Balaji Baji Rao, oversaw the period of greatest
Maratha expansion (see map at right), brought to an end by the
Maratha's defeat by an Afghan army at the Third Battle of Panipat in
1761. The last Peshwa, Baji Rao II, was defeated by the British East
India Company in the Battle of Khadki which was a part of Third Anglo-
Maratha War (1817–1818). The Peshwa's territory in central Maharashtra
was annexed to the British East India Company's Bombay province, and
he was pensioned off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitpavan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baji_Rao_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Battle_of_Panipat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baji_Rao_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khadki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Maratha_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_state

Peshwas

Sonopant Dabir Period 1640-1652
Shyampant Kulkarni-Ranzekar Period 1652-1657
Moropant Peshwe(Pingale) Period 1657-1683
Moreshwar Pingale 1683-1689 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moropant_Peshwe
RamchandraPant Amatya 1689-1708
Bahiroji Pingale 1708-1711
Parshuram Tribak Kulkarni 1711-1713
Balaji Vishwanath (1713 - 2 April 1720) (b.1660, d. 2 April 1720)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaji_Vishwanath
Peshwa Bajirao I (17 April 1720 - 28 April 1740) (b.18 August 1700, d.
28 April 1740)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajirao
From 1749 ,after death of Shahu, Peshawa became head of Maratha
empire, reporting to Chatrapati.
Balaji Bajirao (4 July 1740 - 23 June 1761) (b.8 December 1721, d. 23
June 1761)
Madhavrao Peshwa (1761 - 18 November 1772) (b.16 February 1745, d. 18
November 1772)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhavrao_Peshwa

Hereafter they remained titular

Narayanrao Bajirao (13 December4 1772 - 30 August 1773) (b.10 August
1755, d. 30 August 1773)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narayanrao_Bajirao
Raghunathrao (5 December 1773 - 1774) (b.18 August 1734, d. 11
December 1783) self -claimed not accepted by Chatrapati
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raghunathrao
Sawai Madhava Rao II Narayan (1774 - 27 October 1795) (b.18 April
1774, d. 27 October 1795)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawai_Madhava_Rao_II_Narayan
Chimnajee Madhavarao (26 May 1796 - 3 Dec 1796) (brother of Bajirao
II, adopted by Madhavrao II's wife)
Baji Rao II (4 December 1796-3 June 1818) (d. 28 January 1851)
Amritrao (brother of Bajirao II), Peshwa for a short period during
Yashwantrao Holkar's siege of Pune. Bajirao was later reinstated by
the British.
Nana Sahib (1 July 1857 - 1858) (b.19 May 1825, d. 24 September 1859)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanasaheb_Peshwa

Generals and diplomats of Peshwas (1720 to 1795)

bademiyansubhanallah

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Mar 28, 2010, 12:26:54 AM3/28/10

Hindutva and Politics: Time for a three dimensional view

The importance of Hindutva in the context of nationhood is yet to be
understood by many and remains unexplained to the youth. This needs to
change.

At a recent programme we had organised to induct youth volunteers as
supporters of the BJP, veteran RSS ideologue M.G. Vaidya and BJP
National President Nitin Gadkari presented their view of the specially
chosen topic for the day, ‘Hindutva and Politics’. In bringing up a
third dimension, I attempted to present the dilemma that is poised
before the younger members when they are confronted with the term
‘Hindutva’.

What emerged was that there is agreement on the need for
transliterating Hindutva for the younger set, if not all, although it
would seem that there is ample scope for including many more segments
within the reference.

My opening argument was about the conflict and complexity caused
around the term Hindutva and how the youth, particularly the more
modern in their outlook, were turning diffident about the concept
itself under the weight of popular public discourse. The President of
the BJP – and a lot of people thought he would duck the issue – made
short shrift of any illusions people had of any duality in his mind
about the subject declaring with clarity that the spirit of the BJP
was an embodiment of the spirit of Hindutva and it was not up for
debate. Having got that out of the way, his most remarkable
achievement on the day, seen from the viewpoint of the youth present,
was to project an integrated vision of the meaning of the term and its
relevance in the context of the political outlook of the BJP. His
brief remarks came before the redoubtable M.G. Vaidya and yet it did
not come as practiced or played to the gallery but with an easy
conviction and unpretentious verbiage. The outcome was deservedly
calming, as he con
cluded that understanding Hindutva in the context of an anti-muslim
mindset had to be eroded and the quintessential element of Hindutva –
of vasudhaiva kutumbakam – be reinforced within that mind space.

M.G. Vaidya evoked the essential nature of Hindutva as a ‘joiner’ and
reiterated the aspects that make nationhood synonymous with the
integral concepts of Hindutva – as derived from the way of life of the
people within the geography of what was called ‘Hindustan’. He
emphasized the seminal difference between nation and state and his
arguments buttressed that a commonality of views necessary on certain
issues of critical importance to the nation must not be confused with
or be given a communal twist.

The cumulative impact of the views from three polarities was an
interesting exercise in that all of us, almost serendipitously, felt
the lacuna in engagement on the issue, and at the same time hit upon
the importance of extending these dialogues as its very solution. Both
M.G. Vaidya and Nitin Gadkari emphasized the need to carry on this
series on the subject.

The moot point remains that the entire horizon of discourse on
Hindutva and its relationship with politics in public discourse for
very long has been slave to big media and the pseudo-liberal cartel.
Equally, that it will take a long term effort to engage the new youth
and reintroduce the subject with an eye on the realities of the time
to have some success. Consequently there is now a growing realization
among many people within and out of the party that Hindutva must be re-
interpreted in the context of the contemporary and that the symbiotic
relationship between Hindutva and the BJP must be explained in more
rational terms to an increasingly discerning youth.

The political ramifications of the unprecedented growth of the BJP
and its conjoined relationship with Hindutva remain one of the most
tenuous arguments of our time. But my early conclusion remains that
Hindutva needs to be owned more fully rather than less by the BJP.
This would help to speed up the process of denouement that would de-
mystify the term, the concept and the comprehensive meaning of the
word, and extend to explaining its rationale in political terms.

Hindutva is the life force of our civilization. It defines us as
distinct from the rest of the world – not better or worse, just
distinct. This sense of identity is necessary, both for reasons of the
concept of nation hood and also as an ideal we give our self. It does
not dismiss anyone’s personal faith: it merely posits a practical
reality of the general tenor of this land, its philosophical moorings,
its largest, most visible and expansive palette of beliefs and belief
systems.

The common weakness, to see Hindutva as an assertion of Hindu
dominance is mistaken not because it is patently irrelevant, but
because it is a regular feature of newly created nations to struggle
with a self image, much like an adolescent. Consequently, what is
erroneously called and reviled as Hindu pride is merely a growing
political consciousness of a people, as the ideas associated with
nationhood leach into the idea of statehood. It is not only a natural
process of growth, but actually invaluable in the management, and
protection, of the state.

One of the crucial realities of our times is the fact that national
integration is still a work in progress. This is hardly ever attended
to but the frequent conflagration of regional and linguistic or
geographical demands of identity are only symptomatic of the problem.
That allows us only two options as we struggle for an effective means
of integration : either a more federal structure that allows
increasing freedoms to states, or finding newer points of aggregation.
Hindutva is merely the latter until the state figures out what to do
with itself on the former.

But more than just an interim arrangement, as the earlier statement
might suggest, investing in the most common denominator of commonality
would sound to most reasonable people to be a logical step to take to
knit up the tapestry of diversity that we call our country. It stands
to reason that a common refrain like traditionally inherited
scriptures, or a cultural continuity of mythical beliefs is a sensible
palette to try and integrate otherwise distinct people. Hindutva
provides just that medium and barring the difficulties that we have in
a few states, this applies across the board. It takes a lot longer to
make a man in a remote village in Orissa or Jharkhand to understand
the idea of India and it takes no time to make him recognize his
common Hindu heritage. Hindutva is thus an overarching natural
strategy to unite, using the largest common denominator of cultural
affinities, that comes out of the lay of the land, not out of any
figment of imagined Hindu supremacy.

But half a decade of cocky secularism and the damage it has done is
only now beginning to heal while the essence of Hindutva has begun to
take root. It is both, a miracle and a testament to the indigenous
religious logic of the common beliefs of the people at large of India
that the country has not splintered. Those who would like to place the
credit for this feat at the door of a Nehruvian vision or Gandhian
thought would do better to remember that both streams intrinsically
emanated from the fount of Hindutva as well.

This blog post has appeared as an article in The Daily Pioneer of the
27th March 2010

~ by sanjaykaul on March 27, 2010.

http://sanjaykaul.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/hindutva-and-politics-time-for-a-three-dimensional-view/

Hindsight, Happenstance and Hindutva – Part 2

The evolution of Hindutva as a political instrument is a work in
progress.

While its opponents go berserk deriding Hindutva, they might be losing
sight of a critical development taking place before their eyes.

Put coarsely, the origins of the BJP’s growth, all through the muddled
years of the Hindu Mahasabha, the Jana Sangh and the Janata Party, can
be traced back to a sense of outrage at the successive political
regimes that sought to undermine the brilliance of India’s indigenous
culture at the altar of electoral advantage, in the guise of a well
crafted concept that has been variously referred to as secularism, or
more recently, as pseudo-secularism.

Secularism, in the Indian context, turned out a strange concoction of
tolerance based around a rejection of religion in political space – a
muddled version of gross Gandhianism bred with spotty western
liberalism and which for various reasons became an anthem for most of
the newbies of post independence India. Later it manifested itself as
a side-effect of the faux socialism of the Nehruvian age, through an
imposed sense of egalitarianism in a country unprepared for such
largesse when it had still to deal with immense inequities of almost
every conceivable parameter, particularly social and political.

Somewhere down the line, secularism degraded into a negation of the
implicit commonality of the identity of India with Hindu thought and
culture and became an armour to ward off any threat to the Congress’
hegemony of political space, using, most ironically, religion as its
most potent instrument when applied to minorities, particularly
Muslims.

While it can be argued that this was a natural corollary to Congress’
near total control of legitimate political space in post independence
India, it was, in fact, a typical abnormality of post-emancipation
political processes that left India without any alternate party for
governance after independence. Every nation that has had such a long
struggle for freedom and has negotiated with an occupying foreign
entity has roughly had the same experience, where the reactionary
forces which were more amenable to the occupants, slipped into post-
freedom slots of governance or political prominence. In effect, the
more fundamentalist the opposition to the foreigners, the lesser the
chances of such groups having a shy at political legitimacy, which in
most cases went to more middle of the road, ambivalent, malleable
combination of forces that made the evading foreign power’s loss look
more respectable.

Without going into the reasons for such phenomenon, for that is an
involved subject on its own, it was clear that an unorganized group
such as the pro-Hindutva votaries with such a strong streak of socio-
cultural nationalism, was always going to struggle for large scale
legitimacy when the engine of the freedom movement was all but
monopolized by better organised structures like the Congress and led
by pan-India leaders like Gandhi, later Nehru and others who secured
cross voter support due to an ambivalent approach to the issue of
nationalism, its meaning and its forms in a country still coming to
grips with the concept of pan-Indian aggregation.

Progressively, this feeling among Hindus of being marginalized in the
country of their origin – not socially, but politically – by using
almost every trick in the book of the British – emphasizing diversity
instead of commonality, underlining the divisions rather than the
overlapping cultures – began subtly, but in ensuing years, with
successive Congress governments more or less using the old Nehruvian
model for electoral profit, resulted in a consolidation of the sense
of cultural compromise – where to seem fair to a one legged man,
others were expected to limp too. The Congress’ avowed and much
vaunted secularism therefore has had less to do with a genuine
ideological belief in non-partisan religio-cultural expression and
more to do with electoral expediency, year after election year.

But the continuous corrosion of this theory, and its masterful re-use
and revitalization under Indira Gandhi until it became an alternate
dharma, caused much of what is seen as Hindu revivalism. In that
sense, the BJP is really a byproduct of the Congress – even as it is
its nemesis, and the rise and rise of this party over the last two
decades is truly spectacular in a historical perspective.

Whatever the debate suggests and however one may look at it, the
undeniable and interesting fact is that it took a modern time like the
twentieth century to see the Hindutva theme take centre stage. What
explains that? If democracy has only seeped in more penetratingly into
our socio-political system, if education has produced more aware,
liberal and rights-conscious people, if we have integrated even more
into a global system of liberal values, how do we explain the rise of
a party that is so often cornered by intellectuals and left wingers
and centrists as being a neophyte Hindu, rightist party with a lunatic
fringe and now even an extremist wing!

The question need not be whether the rise of the BJP is good or bad,
right or wrong: the question is, what explains the growing legitimacy
of the Hindutva theme, if it’s so bad for the polity and so dangerous
for democracy ?

~ by sanjaykaul on July 28, 2009.

3 Responses to “Hindsight, Happenstance and Hindutva – Part 2”

sanjaykaul said this on January 12, 2010 at 10:35 pm

I am not able to find Part 1 of your article. I want to read all 3
parts before I post my views.

Suresh Gupta said this on January 10, 2010 at 7:51 pm

Dear Sanjay,
I thought that I need to communicate with you on your blog because it
seems to me that whatever things I mailed to you could not be
understood. Let me be a little harsh to make you realize that as far
as I know, people in your organisation do not seem to be worth making
an impact on AAM AADMI’S mind. I heard that the BJP is looking to
transform it’s leadership by inducting the young brigade in the party.
But where are the youngsters in your party who could mitigate the
charisma of Mr. Rahul Gandhi, a leader blessed with royality, glamour,
goodwill and more.There are countless curses your party is facing at
the moment. Frankly speaking just like Congress (I), even your
Organisation comprises a bunch of selfish and greedy foxes. Mind it if
you do not transform your party and it’s agendas, beliefs, vision and
the people then it will be impossible for your Organisation to even
survive in the present context because the Italian Mother and her
Indian Son are growing stronger day by day. It is important that you
include the youth in your top creed. But caution! The young brigade
needs to be visionary who should spread the aroma of magnatic values,
integrity and farsightedness. Just like leaders of other political
parties, most of you are in politics to attain power, money and
influence, more precisely personal welfare and not the welfare of
people and generations to come.

Now only one agenda remains for you in the next elections which is
GOVERNANCE WITH A DIFFERENCE or BETTER GOVERNANCE because it is very
difficult now to prove the ruling pary bad as their leadership is in
clever hands. So think for the future once you get free from your
internal disputes.

Mann said this on August 13, 2009 at 12:08 pm

http://sanjaykaul.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/hindsight-happenstance-and-hindutva-%e2%80%93-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-51

Heart Life
February 11, 2010
Why are liberals so condescending?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020403698_pf.html

Gerard Alexander: Why are liberals so condescending?

By Gerard Alexander
Sunday, February 7, 2010; B01

Every political community includes some members who insist that their
side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But
American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear
committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-
evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions
are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of
serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship
notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have
joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

It’s an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic
fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost
nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their
troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative
misinformation — as when Obama charges that critics of health-care
reform are peddling fake fears of a “Bolshevik plot” — and the
country’s failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. “We were so
busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that
sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their
core values are,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a
recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or
deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations
has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the
functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when
dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency
encapsulated by Lionel Trilling’s 1950 remark that conservatives do
not “express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable
mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” During the 1950s and
’60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement.
Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at
the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering
conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In
1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to “the Manichaean style of thought,
the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance
of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind.”

This sense of liberal intellectual superiority dropped off during the
economic woes of the 1970s and the Reagan boom of the 1980s. (Jimmy
Carter’s presidency, buffeted by economic and national security
challenges, generated perhaps the clearest episode of liberal self-
doubt.) But these days, liberal confidence and its companion disdain
for conservative thinking are back with a vengeance, finding energetic
expression in politicians’ speeches, top-selling books, historical
works and the blogosphere. This attitude comes in the form of four
major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and
function.

The first is the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” a narrative made famous
by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision
maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not
because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they
deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of
professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such
as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate
information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein
crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush’s
presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational
factors.

This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically
driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For
example, Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican War on Science” argues
that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by
conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of
industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly
shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation,
conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only
cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is
waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care
reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.

This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the
Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities
of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the
decision will “open the floodgates for special interests” to influence
American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union
address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support
conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.

It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance
conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories
they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as
incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the
duplicity he found evident in 35 years’ worth of Wall Street Journal
editorial writers: “What do these people really believe? I mean,
they’re not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they
know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that
their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is
that higher truth?”

In Krugman’s world, there is no need to take seriously the arguments
of “these people” — only to plumb the depths of their errors and
imagine hidden motives.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-
file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid
at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension,
exemplified in Thomas Frank’s best-selling 2004 book, “What’s the
Matter With Kansas?” Frank argued that working-class voters were so
distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into
voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard
Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that
theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had
succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on “guns, God and gays”
instead of economic redistribution.

And speaking to a roomful of Democratic donors in 2008, then-
presidential candidate Obama offered a similar (and infamous) analysis
when he suggested that residents of Rust Belt towns “cling to guns or
religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant
sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations” about job losses. When his comments became public, Obama
backed away from their tenor but insisted that “I said something that
everybody knows is true.”

In this view, we should pay attention to conservative voters’
underlying problems but disregard the policy demands they voice; these
are illusory, devoid of reason or evidence. This form of liberal
condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of
false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall
meetings or “tea party” gatherings, it might be politically prudent
for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually
listen.

The third version of liberal condescension points to something more
sinister. In his 2008 book, “Nixonland,” progressive writer Rick
Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican
strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some
Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, “Chain
Reaction,” Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon
and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to
cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article
of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because
they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

Race doubtless played a significant role in the shift of Deep South
whites to the Republican Party during and after the 1960s. But the
liberal narrative has gone essentially unchanged since then — recall
former president Carter’s recent assertion that opposition to Obama
reflects racism — even though survey research has shown a dramatic
decline in prejudiced attitudes among white Americans in the
intervening decades. Moreover, the candidates and agendas of both
parties demonstrate an unfortunate willingness to play on prejudices,
whether based on race, region, class, income, or other factors.

Finally, liberals condescend to the rest of us when they say
conservatives are driven purely by emotion and anxiety — including
fear of change — whereas liberals have the harder task of appealing to
evidence and logic. Former vice president Al Gore made this case in
his 2007 book, “The Assault on Reason,” in which he expressed fear
that American politics was under siege from a coalition of religious
fundamentalists, foreign policy extremists and industry groups opposed
to “any reasoning process that threatens their economic goals.” This
right-wing politics involves a gradual “abandonment of concern for
reason or evidence” and relies on propaganda to maintain public
support, he wrote.

Prominent liberal academics also propagate these beliefs. George
Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley and a
consultant to Democratic candidates, says flatly that liberals, unlike
conservatives, “still believe in Enlightenment reason,” while Drew
Westen, an Emory University psychologist and Democratic consultant,
argues that the GOP has done a better job of mastering the emotional
side of campaigns because Democrats, alas, are just too intellectual.
“They like to read and think,” Westen wrote. “They thrive on policy
debates, arguments, statistics, and getting the facts right.”

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site
Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed
to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial
beliefs — including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their
states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that
Republicans are “divorced from reality” and that the results show why
“it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to
improve our country.” His condescension is superlative: Of the
respondents who favored secession, he wonders, “Can we cram them all
into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan,
and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America
illegally?”

I doubt it would take long to design a survey questionnaire that
revealed strange, ill-informed and paranoid beliefs among average
Democrats. Or does Moulitsas think Jay Leno talked only to
conservatives for his “Jaywalking” interviews?

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of
conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant — they insist on it. By
no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in
left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House
Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers
their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same
breath.

“There may be other ideas that you guys have,” Obama said. “I am happy
to look at them, and I’m happy to embrace them. . . . But the question
I think we’re going to have to ask ourselves is, as we move forward,
are we going to be examining each of these issues based on what’s good
for the country, what the evidence tells us, or are we going to be
trying to position ourselves so that come November, we’re able to say,
‘The other party, it’s their fault’?”

Of course, plenty of conservatives are hardly above feeling superior.
But the closest they come to portraying liberals as systematically
mistaken in their worldview is when they try to identify ideological
dogmatism in a narrow slice of the left (say, among Ivy League faculty
members), in a particular moment (during the health-care debate, for
instance) or in specific individuals (such as Obama or House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, whom some conservatives accuse of being stealth
ideologues). A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are
always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or
media gadflies such as Glenn Beck.

In contrast, an extraordinary range of liberal writers, commentators
and leaders — from Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” to Obama’s White House,
with many stops in between — have developed or articulated narratives
that apply to virtually all conservatives at all times.

To many liberals, this worldview may be appealing, but it severely
limits our national conversation on critical policy issues. Perhaps
most painfully, liberal condescension has distorted debates over
American poverty for nearly two generations.

Starting in the 1960s, the original neoconservative critics such as
Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed distress about the breakdown of
inner-city families, only to be maligned as racist and ignored for
decades — until appalling statistics forced critics to recognize their
views as relevant. Long-standing conservative concerns over the perils
of long-term welfare dependency were similarly villainized as
insincere and mean-spirited — until public opinion insisted they be
addressed by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress in the
1996 welfare reform law. But in the meantime, welfare policies that
discouraged work, marriage and the development of skills remained in
place, with devastating effects.

Ignoring conservative cautions and insights is no less costly today.
Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in
contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bush’s aw-shucks
style, Sarah Palin’s college-hopping and the occasional conservative
campaigns against egghead intellectuals. But alongside that, the fact
is that conservative-leaning scholars, economists, jurists and legal
theorists have never produced as much detailed analysis and commentary
on American life and policy as they do today.

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is
the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs
often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been
busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in
financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts
want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest
and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical
research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But
public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made
in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost
always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on
innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by
legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice
would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at
all.

galexa...@gmail.com

Gerard Alexander is an associate professor of politics at the
University of Virginia. He will be online to chat with readers on
Monday, February 8, at 11 a.m. Submit your questions and comments
before or during the discussion. On Monday, he will also deliver the
American Enterprise Institute’s Bradley Lecture, “Do Liberals Know
Best? Intellectual Self-Confidence and the Claim to a Monopoly on
Knowledge.”

http://climber.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/why-are-liberals-so-condescending/

March 1, 2009...9:11 PM
What’s the Difference Between a Liberal and a Conservative?

We hear this question often in our lives, if we are a political person
ourselves.

I recently heard a response to this question that I disagree with but
I still believe desires to be heard. I am afraid I cannot offer it as
anything but anecdote.

Response: “Think in terms of kind and unkind.”

While this sentiment starts to address the huge gap between these
ideologies it only touches the most bare and stereotypical edges of
the matter.

It is hard to identify one single clear ‘line in the sand’ on this
issue to illustrate and thus it becomes a little troublesome to answer
simply.

The truth of the matter is more that historically both liberals and
conservatives morph and relocate themselves throughout the political
spectrum in all nations. Only certain key values and standards define
each group and it is easier to grab one specific location and
timeframe than to just say all liberals or conservatives are so.

Modern American liberals are clearly defined against modern American
conservatives in terms of their views of separation of church and
state.

Modern American liberals are clearly defined against modern American
conservatives in terms of their views of the use of military budgets
and international policies.

These kind of statements are the only real response to this question
and it is obviously verbose to try to answer this question with what
sounds like reading a textbook at someone.

It is said sometimes that these groups are defined by the members they
attract. I believe this only partly defines the ideology and the
group. The common views and desires are the true backbone of every
movement.

Some claim the liberal movements to attract the more ‘fringe’ elements
of society while conservative attracts a more ‘common’ element of
society.

That may have been true in days past but in our world, right now, the
conservative movement has attracted the truly fringe elements of our
society in the past national campaign and to this day on talk radio
and certain websites. Unquestionable willful destruction of non-
partisan debate is expressly un-American.

I think my answer to this question is more like an answer one might
get from Yoda or some wandering mystic.

“Ask me again when you know which one you are.”

I think if someone is even asking they are just fresh into politics
and all political types, even myself, must claw backwards into our
memories to a time when we were apolitical and remember that nobody
comes out of the womb with a position on taxation rates.

We form all these things we call ‘opinions’ as we go. So cut a break
to people who were spacing out on their nation when we needed them the
most because we still need them now that they are paying attention.

http://ericlightborn.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/difference-between-a-liberal-and-a-conservative/

Focus TV_22.03.2010

Watch Video: (Hindi)

http://vodpod.com/watch/3296074-focus-tv22-03-2010?pod=sanjaykaul

P7 News_23.03.2010

Watch Video: (Hindi)

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Left is Right. Right is Wrong.

How leftists and pseudo-liberals have crowded out debate in public
discourse in an attempt to muzzle the right by their obdurate head
butting. But things are changing.

These two pithy statements are actually modern aphorisms, and as
attractively poised in their contradiction as they may look, there is
a seminal synonymity between them if we were to go by the modern
version of liberalism – a stark polarization where, without much
evidence, leave alone logic, conservative is taken to mean retrograde
and liberal, progressive.

The liberal occupies centre stage in public discourse not because he
or she represents the larger, more popular or truer view of things but
because he or she has claimed to occupy – from the time of Moses, it
might seem – what is called the moral high ground. And since
occupation is nine tenth of the law, dislodging them has not been
easy. To that extent it is also anomalously interpreted that there can
be only one moral high ground, viz., the ground beneath their feet,
which in a reasonably diverse environment of views and counterviews
would seem absurd because it contradicts itself – morality is not an
absolute idea – one man’s….you know, all that.

But idealism is a fine art, and the liberals excel at it. Ah!, the
glorious irresponsibility of articulating an unattainable objective,
of painting a surreal picture, citing an impossibility. As a matter of
strategy, liberals always deal in larger issues, macro positions and
paint landscapes that arch from biblical rhetoric to genteel fussiness
but the arguments posited by them almost always fail in real time, in
the context of real life values. The rightist, on the other hand,
deals with the actual – his views are more realistic – the behaviour
of man in his relationship with others – the physiological, the
psychological or the spiritual dimensions of what affects him and his
life directly, socially, politically and which shapes his operating
opinions, not subjective views.

The constant lecturing by the liberals, the centrists and left of
centrists, sooner or later transforms into a symphony of agreed,
standardized, boxed and labeled views that have the potential of
paralyzing the body politic by their sheer sonority. Then there are
trained liberals who have spent years spinning on the wheel of western
value judgements until their rules apply to all. In the Indian context
particularly, most of what we know as liberalism is an acquired taste
– remnants of a political regime that was constantly at odds with its
self image and tried to impose a new reality on the consciousness of
the people even though it militates against the grain of the people.
It was part of the new servitude to a new culture, an imported,
contrived philosophy that got its respectability from the west but
only after cauterizing the flavour of the celebrated liberalism of the
Hindus.

The brotherhood of liberals is as much a multinational burger chain as
anything, for it is sustained by a commonality of view that breaches
borders irrespective of applicability and indeed, raison d’etre. A
conservative [rightist] in the context of the west – say the US or UK
– is epitomized by highly polarized views on specific issues –
taxation, abortion, security, immigration, religion – and an equal
intolerance for the opposite. India never had a tradition of such
intolerance due to the syncretic nature of Hinduism and to that extent
it could be argued that peddling liberalism in India has actually
served only to push people into more rightist positions than were
necessary, had a natural course been followed. For evidence I present
to you the rise of Hindutva, the celebrated term ‘pseudo-secular’ and
the attendant political diffusion that had since given rise to the
forces supporting the BJP.

But the liberal is not singly powerful. They hunt in packs. They act
in concert, being a cartel as I have argued, paralyse debate with
their pre-programmed, regurgitated content that is inbuilt with a
machinery of psychological keys, subtle inflexions and caustic
innuendos designed to shock and awe, but mostly to hawk and shove,
being peddlers essentially.

As is always the case with equal and opposing forces, Liberals too are
nothing more than an international cartel, intolerant of any view
other than their own and in a democratic milieu they exhibit
illustratively anti-democratic, even phobic behaviour. Liberals, it is
said, argue for freedom and choice – they actually subvert it, for
while their motive scould be assigned to a childish love of variety,
with their extremist commitment to the idea of freedom they are
eventually beholden to encourage splinter groups, even separatists and
insurgents, rendering the state susceptible to balkanization,
weakening it and endangering the very freedom that comes with secure
boundaries and which they love so much to uphold. It is suggested that
liberals represent openness to change and new ideas – I propose that
it is in fact the exact opposite. Liberals refuse to see change except
from where they stand, in which case it is not a predilection for
change at all – more a resistance to it unless it conforms to their
pre-existing views and stand point.

It is also not as if all of this were harmless banter. The liberal
with his lack of realism, insensitivity to time and effort, muddled
understanding of intent and subject often debauches the dialogue to
the detriment of entire nations, not to speak of people. This
intractable linkage predicts that the liberal will trade tomorrow’s
disaster for today’s relative peace. Remember he does not deal in
solutions, but in positions; not in time but in relativity, not in
qualifiable transactions, but in genial intransigence – anything, in
other words, to not disturb the status quo, even if it means sleeping
through a crisis, with the gumption of calling a more concerned fellow
citizen alarmist should he raise a cry.

History is replete with examples of how much damage this can do – we
don’t have to look far – our most prominent military and foreign
affairs failures have stemmed from this weakness. Now the spectre of
tangoing with Pakistan at the Foreign Secretary talks even as they
blow up bakeries in town is yet another shining example of the
paralysis of independent thinking that liberals induce. To the
argument, so should we stop talking to Pakistan is the answer: at
least have the same self respect that the US reserves for itself. Our
law and order and internal security apparatus is also moribund for the
simple reason that the stranglehold of the liberal lobby won’t allow
progress. Look at the priorities of the liberals who sweated blood at
the thought of a recent movie screening being blocked, against the
backdrop of the blood that spilled in Pune merely because once again,
the liberals forced the government to take its eye off the target.
Guarding cinema hall premiers became a greater testament to our
nationhood than guarding our cities.

It would be naive to suggest that the rise of the liberals is merely
due to the junta or the sheer brilliance of their methods or the depth
of their cadres. The right too, in India has for long served their
interest in as much as not speaking up, not speaking up enough, or not
speaking up in a language that would challenge their methods. They
have been in thrall of the liberals for some time now and some are
finding it difficult to maintain the balance and poise required to
counter their subtle tactics while some are still hesitating to come
out of the closet, or having come out, have frequent bouts of
withdrawal and keep rethinking positions worrying about their approval
ratings – in a strange quirk – among the very liberals they decry! –
the same dodgy professors in moth eaten tweed jackets and scruffy
jhola wallahas who revel in their penury of new ideas.

Leftist, and left of centre demagogues have wreaked havoc on the
intellectual temperament of the Indian people for close to half a
century, where the state’s writ, composed by them, has run riot with a
people’s conscience, their sense of self and identity – the vein and
sap of personality.

The earlier success of the liberals and the left liberals in crowding
our text books with their version of Indian social history is also a
classic reason for this: most of my generation had to lose thirty
years of conditioning to even emerge from the chrysalis and find in
the kernel of Hindu thought the real tone, tenor and import of
liberalism. It took that much time to also realize that we don’t need
to be at odds with who we are and how we think and that we can’t be
judged or judge on the basis of western thought and philosophy.
Besides it could be said with some certainty that a large body of
western liberal philosophical theory is beholden to the tenets of
Hindu thought for the very version they come back to sell back to us
through their re-sellers. Consequently, it is a fact that it takes a
longer growth curve to find oneself before being lumped as a rightist:
the liberal has merely to walk the course set by his predecessor
masters: the rightist has to take a u-turn after all is said and done
and come back to his roots and almost start again.

The Hindu’s traditional aversion for conflict, a quality not many
cultures can claim, is also part of the misconception that his views
are in subtle consonance with the liberals as they preen around in our
country in borrowed clothes. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
It is intrinsic in the make of our people to be able to revel in
dichotomy: what looks like a contradiction to a westerner is often
merely two sides of the coin to an Indian. Remember the Hindu can
handle two kinds of truths; and at the same time too! To people with
one God, the idea of many Gods is abhorrent. And there starts the
trend of intolerance that is spawned by undercover fascism,
masquerading as liberalism.

The marginalization of pseudo-liberals in India is a given not because
of rising rightism, but because it was never a really original product
and its moorings were always suspect. It is for just that reason that
the scope of such liberals has constantly reduced and now their most
celebrated festivals are things like valentine’s day, a Gujarat riot
court hearing, a shahrukh khan flick or some cute indo-pak music
festival.

But this trend is changing and a new breed of ‘write-ists’ must
emerge, who will redefine liberalism vis-à-vis conservativeness, left
from right, and right from wrong. They must underline that in the
Indian context, the right is more centre than the liberal. They must
shift the fulcrum of the equation and lay down the new fundamentals of
bipolar debate in the context of India, where moderation must now be
tempered with a bias for self preservation, where centuries of socio-
political erosion must be stemmed with a new apparatus of definitions,
where indigenous political awakening must sear through the mask of
pseudo-liberalism and give birth to a more realistic version of active
liberalism, more commonly called the middle path, more commonly known
as our gift to the world.

This piece has also appeared in an edited version under a different
headline in The Daily Pioneer of 20th Febryary, 2010

~ by sanjaykaul on February 20, 2010.

One Response to “Left is Right. Right is Wrong.”

Absolutely brilliant!

A piece of advice, though unsolicited,the entire media [print and
electronic] is not only anti-BJP but also anti-Hindu. Therefore I wish
BJP projects articulate people on TV and rebutts all the trash written
in the print media.

R SUNDERARAJAN said this on March 20, 2010 at 11:00 am

http://sanjaykaul.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/left-is-right-right-is-wrong/comment-page-1/#comment-62

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-Modi-has-said-nobody-is-above-law-and-he-has-kept-his-word-/596606

‘Modi has said nobody is above law and he has kept his word’
Express news service

Posted: Sunday , Mar 28, 2010 at 0253 hrs
New Delhi:

After Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s questioning for over five
hours by the SIT on Saturday, the BJP said Modi, by his action, had
proved that he believed in supremacy of law of the land, even as the
main opposition party made a strong case for “autonomous functioning
of institutions in the country”.

Modi has twice been mentioned as prime ministerial material by BJP
president Nitin Gadkari, and at the recent party conclave, Modi’s name
(along with a couple of other leaders) were described by the BJP
president as party’s “future prospects”.

After Modi’s appearance before the SIT, two divergent currents were
seen in the central BJP on Saturday.

BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy spoke more in terms of Modi’s
personality. Rudy said Modi (through his appearance before SIT) “had
demolished mischievous speculation about him” and that his “graceful
action vindicated BJP’s position” and that it appeared that “SIT team
is tired, Modi is not”.

Another spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman, who was officially fielded by
the party to address the media after Modi’s deposition, talked in
terms of “supremacy of institutions”. “Modi has said that nobody is
above the law and he has kept his word,” Sitharaman said. “The SIT was
formed by the Supreme Court. We should allow the courts to function
and learn to respect institutions,” she said, adding that Modi was
assisting SIT in the probe and that he had not been summoned by it.
She also reminded the Congress about its track record on “respecting
institutions” in the country.

She also slammed Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily for reportedly
suggesting that Modi should co-operate with SIT, implying that one
institution must not interfere in the functioning of another
institution. She also reminded the Congress that “there were hardly
any convictions in the 1984 riots” whereas “several people have
already been convicted in the 2002 riots in Gujarat”. The main
opposition also accused the media of being driven by activists
pursuing the 2002 riots case.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/modihassaidnobodyisabovelawandhehaskepthisword/596606/0

Babri demolition: Cong reacts cautiously to testimony of IPS officer1
ANI

Posted: Saturday , Mar 27, 2010 at 1211 hrs
New Delhi:

An IPS officer incharge of Advani's security during the Babri
demolition has said that the leader gave inflamatory speeches.

The Congress party has reacted with caution to the deposition of
senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Anju Gupta, who was L K
Advani's security officer during the demolition of the Babri Masjid on
December 6, 1992.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Gupta's statement
before a court in Rae Bareilly is crucial in convicting the guilty.

"This (Anju's deposition) is the first official, direct eyewitness
testimony in legal and technical sense in this (Babri mosque
demolition case) matter. We must exercise restrain and respect the
process of law," said Singhvi.

"But, it is extremely serious and, it is extremely important and
provisions (of law) involved are extremely serious," he added.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refused to comment saying the matter
is subjudice.

"This kind of issue (eyewitness account) has also come before the
Liberhan Commission. We would not like comment on the judicial process
and her (Anju's) testimony in the court," said Ramnath Kovind, a
spokesperson of the BJP.

Earlier on Friday, Anju Gupta told a Rae Bareilly Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) court that Advani delivered incendiary speeches on
December 6, 1992, asserting that the temple would be built at the same
place.

"She (Anju) has told in the court in detail all the happenings of that
day (December 6, 1992). I have completed my (process of witness)
examination. I think nearly 60 questions were asked which have been
replied. Now, the argument has begun. The honourable court has fixed
23 April for further hearing," said Public Prosecutor P K Chaubey.

Immediately after the riots in 1993, Gupta had told the Central Bureau
of Investigation (CBI) how Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and
the rest had expressed delight over the demolition of the mosque.

CBI Director Ashwani Kumar had reportedly written to Cabinet Secretary
K Chandrashekhar urging him to release Gupta for the important hearing
on the Babri Mosque demolition case.

A special Ayodhya court in Rae Bareilly had earlier discharged Advani
on the plea that charges against him were based on mere suspicion. The
CBI dropped the charge of criminal conspiracy - Section 120 B of the
Indian Penal Code (IPC) - in its revised charge sheet submitted before
the Rae Bareilly court on the directives of the Allahabad High Court.

The revised chargesheet contained relatively milder sections under the
Indian Penal Code - Sections 153-A, 153-B (propagating communal
violence), 147, 149 (rioting) and 505 (spreading ill-will). This was
believed to be the result of CBI''''s failure to press the charges
strongly.

4 Comments |

congress is staging this drama
By: MT | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 21:05:43 PM

congress is staging this drama to divert peoples attention from
inflation and nuclear liability bill

Why 18 long years ?
By: Gopal | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 20:43:17 PM

Why did this IPS officer wait for such a long time to tell the court,
when the case has been going on for years. If she really stands by
law, she should have deposed long back.Was she under pressure then or
is she now, is a mute question. In any case, 1984 is much prior to
1992.

Anju Gupta Rizvi
By: desi nerd | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 19:55:00 PM

Why dont they publish the full name of the IPS officer and the fact
that her husband Rizvi is the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) of P
Chidambaram.

Court decision is all and above
By: Ravishkumar | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:11:22 PM

Court decision should be all and above,however as the matter is under
subjudice,so one should avoid oneself from making any public comment
about it.As it has become customary in our country that everyone try
to take political benefit anyhow.But it should be avoided as far as a
serious matter is under consideration.So,just don't think only about
your political benefit,go deep inside the seriousness of the subject
matter.

Iron Man Advani
By: V.Narayanaswamy | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:50:43 PM

Advani is in politics for his self interest. When Babri Masjid was
demolished he had shed crocadile tears is evident from the testimony
of the IPS officer. As Home Minister he was not aware that Jaswant
Singh was to accompany the terrorists to Kandahar. In the Jinnah
episode he wanted a good Character certificate from Pakistan to be
trumpted in India. When Mohan Bhagwat appointed Sushma Swaraj as the
Leader of the Opposition in place of Advani, it was widely believed
that he would hang up his boots. The Rath Yatri Advani has accepted
the superfluous post of Chairman of the Parliamentary Party. He is
BJP's Bhishma Pitamah. He truely deserves a Bharat Ratna. If tomorrow
Sushma Swaraj becomes Prime Minister, he may accept of Param Mukhya
Pradhan Mantri.

Advani is Patriot
By: Pankaj | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:28:41 PM

Mr Advani is true patriot. He lived his life for the country. I wish
people of this country acknoledge his service to this country and give
respect he desrves. Hai Hind!

Fake Secularism
By: Nishit Desai | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:18:01 PM

How has the Congress started blaming the BJP despite the fact that it
itself was in power at the Centre in 1992. In that case, PV Narsimha
Rao and the entire Congress cabinet are all equally responsible which
also includes the present Prime Minister. If they were so much
concerned about security, they could have very well taken over the
entire city of Ayodhya. But they did not since it was in their own
interest not only to get the mosque demolished and pave way for a
temple thereby supporting Hindus but at the same time to discredit the
BJP.Poor secular Congress.

Is Anju a Gupta?
By: Ajit | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:06:44 PM

Anju Gupta is no longer so, she is married to a muslim and converted
to islam obviously she will not hesitate in denigrating BJP and Hindu
faith. What about over 100 temples demolished in Kashmir after 1985
and over 1000 demolished in Pakistan after 1947. Is secularism only
for Hindus?

BJP bashing?
By: srinivas prasad | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:59:31 PM

the media goes tom toming when it comes to babrimasjid and Gujrath.why
does not attack 1984 riots with the same vigor?

what about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots?
By: Nariman Mistry | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:57:21 PM

If demolishing an abandoned structure is so bad, what about the
genocide of 5000 Sikhs in 1984? Barring one (that too after 25 years),
how many Congressmen have been prosecuted?

What about what?
By: Shatruj Jain | Sunday , 28 Mar '10 1:06:14 AM

It has now become a pet habit of Sangh Parivar to hark about Sikh
Riots whenever Babri Masjid issue comes in press, while conveniently
reminding us to forget and live on the Gujrat Massacres.

Babri Demolition
By: Shanti Patel | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 19:29:15 PM

Advani went on to become Deputy PM. Sadhvi Uma Bharti and Ritambhara
who were bosom partners at the time are believed to be rivals now and
do not talk to each other. Uma has been junked by her own party.
Ritambhara being the crafty and conniving type used the Ram Janmabhumi
Andolan as a stepping stone to create a throne for herself, cleverly
transformed her image from a hate spewing monger into an image of
motherly love (Vatsalya)- fake of course. Today she is milking crores
of Rupees from gullible Hindus and leading a life of unfathomable
luxury. She goes on cruises and travels the world by first class and
being worshipp[ed as a "Saint". It is believed that she wields great
power within BJP's inner circle. What a travesty of justice in India!

Baberi Demolition
By: Varind | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:13:16 PM

As the case is in court hence it is inappropriate to comment so much
but certainly Congress has no right to comment on this issue who
itself is involved in attack on Golden Temple. The memory of the
Indian people is not so weak as Congress thnks. Nevertheless if
demolition of Baberi Mosque was violation of constitution so is the
attack on Golden Temple.

Hide outs in holy places
By: karunakar | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 22:25:06 PM

If criminlas hide in temples,gurudwaras or mosques , the goverment has
the constitutional right to flush them out

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/babridemolitioncongreactscautiouslytotestimonyofipsofficer/596398/0

1984 riots case accused seeks transfer to another court
Agencies

Posted: Saturday , Mar 27, 2010 at 1233 hrs
New Delhi:

A co-accused of Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in the 1984 anti-Sikh
riots cases on Saturday pleaded before a Delhi Court to transfer the
matters to a judge having territorial jurisdiction to try them.

Special CBI Judge P S Teji reserved the order on the application of
accused Khushal Singh in the riots cases.

In a plea, Singh submitted that Karkardooma court did not have
jurisdiction to try the cases as the offences were alleged to have
been committed at Sultanpuri and Delhi Cantonment.

"Karkardooma court where the matters are being heard are not the
competent court as per the law with regard to territorial
jurisdiction," Singh's counsel submitted.

He further said that Delhi has been divided into nine judicial
districts and the matter should be heard by a court either at Rohini
or at Tees Hazari district courts.

"The very purpose of dividing Delhi into nine judicial district was to
make justice available at the doorsteps of the public and to ensure
convenience," he said seeking transfer of the cases.

He also referred to section 177 of the CrPC, stating that any criminal
matter should be heard by a competent local court having territorial
jurisdiction.

CBI prosecutor Y K Saxena, on the other hand, opposed his plea stating
that there was no question of territorial impropriety.

"No prejudice is caused to the accused whether the matter is tried at
Tees Hazari or Karkardooma. This is the only designated court of the
CBI," he said.

He also said that the probe into riots cases was transferred to CBI
from the Delhi Police.

Sajjan Kumar and others, who have been chargesheeted by the CBI in two
riots cases, were present before the court to which the matter has
been transferred to initiate the proceedings related to trial.

On March 20, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate had declined to
take on record an application of Kumar seeking certain documents
related to the chargesheet filed against him in riot cases, saying it
was aimed at causing hindrance in the progress of the case.

The ACMM had sent the case against Kumar and others before a Special
CBI Court.

CBI had filed two chargesheets on January 13 in the riots cases
registered on the recommendation of Justice G T Nanavati Commission
which had inquired into the sequence of events leading to the riots in
the aftermath of the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi.

Comments (2) |

Indian Judicial System
By: Anant | 27-Mar-2010

Judicial system in India is non-existant for the general public. Kumar
will try to shift courts where his friends are. It will take another
26 years before the courts decide where the case should be heard. Long
live politicians in India and two fingers for the sufferes of
injustices.

Long Live Congress!
By: Loyal Congress | 27-Mar-2010

Hope Sajjan Kumar gets acquitted soon and this witch hunt stops! Let
the terror be defeated. Let's hope the nation never again witnesses
the like of tragic assassination of one our greatest leaders Mataji
Indira Gandhi!

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/1984riotscaseaccusedseekstransfertoanothercourt/596404/0

Guj riots: Modi questioned by SIT for over 9 hours
Agencies

Posted: Saturday , Mar 27, 2010 at 0926 hrs
Gandhinagar:

SIT summoned Modi to depose in connection with a complaint of Zakia
Jaffery, widow of Eshan Jaffery, who was killed in the riot.

For the first time since the riots in Gujarat eight years ago, state
Chief Minister Narendra Modi today subjected himself to marathon
questioning by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT in two sessions lasting
for more than nine hours.

The controversial BJP leader, who faces allegations of omission and
commission with regard to the mob attack on a housing society in which
a former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri and 68 others were killed, drove to
the SIT office in the heart of Gandhinagar where he was questioned by
a team of officers headed by A K Malhotra, a former CBI DIG.

After a marathon session lasting over five hours from 12 noon to 5 PM
Modi left the SIT office telling reporters that he would come back in
the evening.

Modi, 59, returned to the SIT office at 9 PM and faced a second round
of questioning for four hours ending at 1 AM because he was keen that
the entire exercise be completed today itself.

Emerging from the second round of quizzing at the SIT office at the
old secretariat building, the Chief Minister told mediapersons that
the investigators told him that his question was over.

"I have been told by SIT that your work is over", Modi said.

Though there was no official word on the questioning, Modi is said to
have replied to 62 of the 68 questions put to him in the first
session.

This was the first time that Modi was probed since the carnage eight
years back.

"This was the first time in eight years that someone wanted to speak
to me on the issue and I attended that", Modi said.

Taking a dig at his critics, he said "God give good sense to those who
said I have not spoken for eight years".

"I hope that today's incident will give good sense to those who are
keen to spread misinformation and those who spread lies", the Chief
Minister said.

Modi claimed he had anwsered all questions put by the SIT and that he
recalled to the extent possible the sequence of events that had taken
place eight years ago.

The Chief Minister said his statement was recorded by the SIT
investigators after which he signed it.

Asked what sort of questions he was asked, Modi said "I cannot share
that with you because the SIT has to submit its report to the Supreme
Court.

When pointed out that he had been in the dock for the last eight years
over the riots, a smilig Modi said "you have still kept me in the
dock".

"Vistaar se batcheet ki (we spoke in detail)," he said adding "under
the Indian constitution, law is supreme. As a common man, CM, I am
bound by the Indian constitution and law. No one can be above the
law."

After the first round of questioning, a smiling Modi emerged from the
SIT office at the old secretariat building and told mediapersons that
"I am taking a break from questioning".

SIT Chief R K Raghavan was not present in his office when Modi
appeared in the first session in response to the panel's summons.

Modi became the first chief minister of any state to be questioned in
a criminal complaint of mass murder after he and his administration
were accused of aiding and abetting riots in one area in Ahmedabad.

Ending the suspense as to where and when he would appear after he was
summoned for questioning in connection with a complaint of Zakia
Jafry, widow of Eshan Jafry, Modi reached the SIT office at around
noon.

The complaint filed by Zakia among other things alleged there was a
wider conspiracy by Modi and his administration and that he had
instructed officers not to take action.

"My appearance here is a "karara jawab" (fitting reply) to my
detractors. I have given a resounding reply to those who doubted my
intentions. I hope such talks by vested interests will stop," Modi
said.

Asked if the questions put to him related to Gulburg Society riot
case, Modi said "questions ranged from February 27 till the
elections".

To a question about number of questions asked by SIT, he said "I have
not counted them".

Asked if he was satisfied with the SIT investigations, Modi said "the
Supreme Court has to be satisfied."

The Chief Minister repeatedly said the SIT was appointed by the apex
court and it did not have a single officer from Gujarat.

"I have fulfilled my words given to the people of the country. Nobody
is above the Indian constitution and law", he said,

Modi said "we should create a conducive atmosphere to work within the
ambit of law and so that law can take its own course".

54 Comments |

Congress should learn
By: abhijit | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 22:17:42 PM

I congratulate Mr Modi for his conduct..and hope that he will come
clean after this.. congress and congress supported Media should
learn.. this media doesn't talk about mr. Sajjan Kumar.. doesn't talk
to SIkh riots but always ready to portray Modi as a villan.. in the
process not giving him for any credit for his work.. keep it up Modi..
we support you

Sajjan and Modi
By: anil bharali | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 22:14:30 PM

Both Modi and Sajjan are wrong doer in the eyes of law.There is no
pint justifying someone at this point of time.Let the law takes its
own course.

Exemplary Conduct
By: Patali | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 21:34:09 PM

Great, Modiji for upholding the law of the land and for showing by
exemplary conduct how people's representative should behave. He has
again demonstrated how he is different from the despicable lot that we
have as politicians and political leaders. Jai Hind!

MODI-SIT
By: N.ASTI | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 21:13:42 PM

Whatever may be our differences with Mr.Modi,we should appreciate his
meeting with SIT which was without finding any excuse in the matter.He
has not acted like Mr.Sajjan of Congress who went underground to get
bail and save himself from the procedure.Indians should remember that
unlike Mr.Rajiv Gandhi who tried to justify Sikh massacre of 84 which
took place under the guidance of his party leaders(In one way
indirectly state-sponsored atrocities),Mr.Modi never tried to justify
Gujarat riots but also expressed grieved about the riots.Hence Modi's
today's step is a good thing for our law-abiding society.

Rajiv Gandhi's Role In 1984 Riots
By: Arun | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 20:47:03 PM

Hope the SIT now probes Rajiv Gandhi's, Tytler's & Narasimha Rao's
role in the 1984 Sikh Riots and the role of the Congress Party in the
Bhagalpur riots and also the Maharashtra government's role is abetting
the Mumbai riots.

Modi will be safe
By: Raj Bhatti | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 19:11:32 PM

Nothig is going to happen to Modi. Remember, Advani tricked this
Supreme Court and the nation very wisely and got the mosque
demolished. Nothing happened to him. So, our Modi also will be safe
too as we have have majority in this Hindu nation.

Jai Indian Judiciary
By: Dr.Sanamdxb | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 19:06:56 PM

This once again proven the no one is above law. As well, it is very
disappointing that a CM could have become reaching such situation for
massacre case. It would have more glitters if peoples court could have
thrown him out from the power and politics. Gujrat has missed such
chance number of times. We all decide the one who come to rule us
should clean politicially and personally. Then India will be shine
much and fly its flag in very height. Let us all pray for it.
Nobody is above the law - finally modi had to bow down to law for his
deeds

By: Dinesh Patel | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:54:43 PM

narendra modi has been compelled to be present in front of SIT for
being questioned for his involvement in Gujarat riots. This has
happened for the first time that Gujarat Chief Minister had to appear
for criminal involvement. It is a shame for Gujarat State and
"Deshvasion". It has been the tradition in Indian and Gujarat politics
to resign first and then to support legal matters. He also tried to
play gimmicks few days before regarding receiving summons to appear
and he had blamed the media. Ultimately, media reports proved to be
correct about the SUMMONS to modi.

Good for BJP
By: Rajesh | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:54:28 PM

It is a good disicion from Modi. its means the law of INDIA is equal
to everybody.This disicion will give good political career for modi
and also BJP.

Modi
By: Mahendra | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:51:23 PM

The Msulim congress party has nothing better to do than target Hindu
people. Hindus should boycott Congress Party else you culture, people
and wealth will not exist. Indian Govt is controlled by Nehru's
Pakistani Muslim relatives.

Atatck on Democracy
By: DILIP/FRANCE | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:45:16 PM

Modi is being demonised and de legitimised by the immoral media and
their commmunal lackeys.This nonsence will not wash,so back off.

to enginner shareef
By: HOTSPICY | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:45:05 PM

so mr so called shareef what we should do with people who has done
mumbai attack and blastsevery where in INDIA I will give vote to MODI
again in election and want to see him as pm if he promise to do it at
national level bahot ho gaya desh dhrohiyo ko khilana

No vilification
By: Gus | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:41:43 PM

Modi, do not cower in front of these vicious communal idiots.Fight
fire with fire,days of turning the other cheek is bygone.We are ready
to bank roll, with loads,loads of bucks.You are being framed by the
ferals and the communal deliquents.

Long Live Shri Narendra Modi
By: Muhammed | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:38:08 PM

Shri Narendra Modi is incarnation of Lord Shri Ram. Opponents of Shri
Narendra Modi are Ravans. Manmohan Singh, Sonia Maino, ChidamUlla, M
Oily all shall get slayed and we will celebrate Deepawali! Jai Shri
Narendra Modi, Jai Shree Ram.

Prosecute all
By: cb | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 18:30:16 PM

All polititions involved in rioting should be relentlessly prosecuted.
Only then will they think twice before indulging in it. Its a matter
of country's survival.

manager
By: patel dharmendra | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 17:59:27 PM

Modiji is a second chanakya and india need and got after long long
time such person to set the india againg for another golden period of
the another era. In indian history only chankya settle governance has
called a golden period of indian history and second side chanakya has
done lots of things no one can agree but goel was clear and was only
united hindustan only.so so call this media or and journalisam can say
anything but in the real world modiji is real hero which india needed
long ago.No one can stop him to be a prime minister of india and time
will prove my words which had said 3 years ago. D Patel

Indian Judiciary
By: Anant | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 17:03:51 PM

Indian judiciary is so irrelavant that any politician can commit any
crime, even in the presence of these judges, will get away free. These
rogue politicians will always find their own judge in their own state
who will give them bail and eventually, after 30 years, find them not
guilty. It is the people of India who are at fault by letting these
undesirables to exploit peoples prejudices and divide the communities.
Not a single Hindu Gujarati will ever think that Modi has done
something wrong. Gujaratis feel that it is okay if the Muslim
community suffers. It is no different than the 1984 sufferings of
Sikhs by Hindus. Nothing has happened to those politicians and you can
bet nothing will happen to Modi. All these dramas are for the foreign
countries to show that India is better than Pakistan.

Narendra Modi proved far greater than Rajiv Gandhi.
By: Hemant ; Hyderabad. | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:44:54 PM

Narendra Modi proved greater than Rajiv Gandhi.Rajiv Gandhi always
hide from facing any even; smallest enquiry about Delhi Riots{in which
He was far more villinous than Modi} and Bofors{in He was far more
villininous than Advani in Babri}Rajiv always hide. Her Highness
Sonia , pretending great sacrifice in refusing any post. No. Real
reason is She does not have any courage to reply or justify any work;
any decision , any act. To her great fortune She got puppets like
Moily & Chavans; who shamelessly ready to do anything. Now shall real
thing come out that - Victim Jaffery has made many more calls to Sonia
to save his life. She just ignored and refused to take her calls.

clueless
By: premila | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:34:36 PM

the erstwhile media channels are clueless and have no sense of
direction. The way CNN IBN clarified that they were the only news
channel to mention the correct version for the appearance of Modiji
for inquiry shows that they want to make a cake and eat it too. They
are going to chew more than they can swallow. If a fallen tree can
shake the earth so also the burning of humans can shake the earth!

Modiji, the best administrator
By: Vishak | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:26:44 PM

The media at large blames present Chief Minister of Gujrat for all the
happenings in the year 2002. Shri Narendra Modi is the elected
representative with majority in the Gujarat state. Why nobody is
referreing to the pre-era of Modiji when almost every day the cities
of Gujarat were under communal riots created by vested interests. That
situation has been changed and people of Gujarat experience peace at
large including mintority communities for the last nine years because
of Mr Modi. Why nobdoy appraise the good work done by the C.M. of
Gujarat? Nobdoy will blame Modiji for all the communal riots took
place in the country since 1947. The C.M. of Gujarat is the best
political figure available in the country.

Ichha Dhari and BJP leaders
By: Dr.Jhanki Prasad | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:04:40 PM
RSS Baba Ichha Dhari types have been running India and one one side
they were chanting Ram Ram and on other burping tax payers money.RSS
Baba Ichha Dhari is a mirror image of BJP.RSS Baba Ichha Dhari and BJP
leaders are like two sides of one coin.

Ichha Dhari Baba likes ran India under BJP
By: Gulvinder | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:01:14 PM

The justice system of India seems to run on the feeling of the
politicians or else why were those who were caught red handed in
different scams were not taken to task? Jaswant Singh had provided so
many informations to the media about Advani and rset of Ku Kux Klan
like Sanghparivar, but no one has taken anyone to task. Madan Lal
Khurana openly accused Advani and Sushma Swaraj for having connections
with Dawood Ibrahim, but no one has investigated this serious matter
which has concerns to the security threats to India if this
information is correct.

NGOs and Media tirade against Modi
By: Mukesh Goud | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:55:10 PM

Not all media are funded by Evangelists but certainly many of the
leading Media houses in India has a clear christian Evangelical agenda
and they are in particular are after the blood of Modi. Now they will
come up with some crooked and cooked up stories to malign Narendra
Modi. He is one of the very few politicians in India who has the
courage to lead India and Indians.

Modi Vs SIT Vs Media
By: Girish Adhiya | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:52:44 PM

Media has given too much hype to this issue. Under the freedom
umbrella, media is playing villain role sometimes. Modi is superstar
of Gujarat & India. Since Congress is worried about rise of Modi, they
are doing all these things thro' NGO etc to keep this issue alive and
brand themselves as non-communal. This is very dirty and bad politics
of Congress. Hindus have major weakness that they are not united and
hence evil forces takes benefit of this. Hindus are not united bcoz
they are fighting within themself for God, Devi-Devta, caste, creed,
language, region etc. I pray to Lord to give good sense to Hindu so
they can unite and fight against evil forces. Muslims and Christian
are united and hence nobody will speak against them. Even media is
afraid of their "Fatwa" so all will keep quiet.
As a head of state ut was his responsibility to protect all
gujaratis.....

By: kranti | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:52:11 PM

Whatever happened in godhrakand was very bad and culprits should be
punish harshly but whatever happened aftermath of Godhrakand was worst
as gujarat government failed to control law and order.As a head of
state modi should take responsibility.

Modi the New Sardar
By: Indian | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:41:14 PM

This Naqvi,Shareef apni jaat bata rahe hain...Gujrat has shown its
Muslims the right way back in 2002...this bloody Congress and
secularist shit are conveniently ignoring what they did to the Sikhs
back in 1984...Modi is a TRUE Indian...those who cannot accept truth
may please migrate to UP or Delhi or other Congress ruled
states...Congress has screwed India by protecting people like
M>F>Husain..

Float a new party.
By: Dr.Jhanki Prasad | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:07:42 PM

A new political party is needed, because Bharatiya Jansangh Party is a
failure. We Hindus and everyone else from all religions and castes
should form a party to stop political corruption and serve the
children of India with just. This partys agenda must be to provide
roti, kapda, makaan and good education to every child of India.The new
party should wipe out types of terrorists and fascists.Jai Hind
MODI MUST BE HANGED FOR KILLING INNOCENTS.RSS/VHP/BJP MEN HAVE
CONFESSED ON TEHELKA THAT THEY WERE BACKED BY "BUTHCER MODI"

By: Engineer | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:52:24 PM

GUJARATH KA KASSAI NEEDS TO BE PUNISHED.HE DESERTED WIFE AND HAS NO
CHILDREN THAT'S WHY HAS NO FAMILY OR HUMAN VALUES AND CONSPIRED TO
RAPE AND KILL MANY INNOCENTS. IS THIS THE FACE OF HINDUTVA? THOSE
SUPPORTING RAPES AND KILLINGS ARE PSEUDO HINDUTVADIS.

A Step Forward In Right Direction For Mr Modi
By: anupam | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:47:22 PM

although little late but finally our law delivers the truth, also hope
Mr Modi will cooperate in making it more effective. politically or non
politically it is a right step for Mr. Modi

Modi appears before SIT
By: VOX INDICA | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:45:11 PM

One does not understand all the media hoopla about it. To quote two
examples that easily come to mind, President V.V.Giri appeared before
a High Court and Indira Gandhi appeared before the Shah Commission.

Modi at SIT
By: M.K.B.Nambiar | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:35:36 PM

Mr Narendra Modi appearing before the SIT to give his testimony is
prrof enough that the Gujarat CM respects the law and does not try to
circumvent the summons as politicians generally do.The Congress
sayying that he haslowered the prestigee of the high office of the CM
is laughable as their Primiister Mr Narasimha Rao had appeared before
the Supreme court as an accused in a bribery case.

Mr Modi and the media
By: RP Mehrotra | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:03:53 PM

Mr Modi has exhibited that he is a man of principles and belongs to a
political party of proven ideologies. He has shown that he is a law-
abiding citizen and open to scrutiny (unlike Congress' absconding
stars in garb of Sajjan Kumars and Tytlers). Media which has been
unnecessarily hounding Mr Modi must show restraint.

Irresponsible
By: Umakant Kapoor | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 17:15:07 PM

Thanks Mr. Mehrotra for calling a spade a spade, unlike many other
victims of the Congress propaganda machine.English media lives in a
world of its own and has been corrupted by the Corporates.

gujarat chief minister appearance to SIT
By: K Balakrishnan | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:55:38 PM

law should take it course and nothing wrong in his appearance to SIT.
What should be avoided the media trial by the TV channels. Souces of
these channels and so called human justice organisations NGO funded by
vested politicall parties should be enquired by SIT also.

NaMOji n SIT
By: Ananth Seth | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:53:09 PM

Ho gaya! I wonder what the media will do now. They have been robbed of
a spicy topic by this polite n appreciable act of Modiji. Please note
that Modiji, unlike Sajjan Kumar of "oh so secular, non-corrupt, and
law abiding" congress, who chose to go underworl...oops underground!
has chosen to cooperate with the judiciary. HAts off ModiJI!

Mr.
By: Aravind | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:29:24 PM

The the murder of innocent Sikhs on the incdence of Indira Ghandhi's
murder should also be dealt with; Would Teesta also take the same
interest and make the same comment? None one justify provocative
actions leading to heinous crime. But everyone should believe in
equality and should not expect a preference due to being a particular
community.

MODI and Sit
By: paresh joshi | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 22:15:59 PM

No teesta does not care about any Indians. For her only muslims are
the victims. Rest of the Indians does not matter to her. This is the
typical hypocracy of the leftists and the pseudo-seculars. PKJ

MODI/BLATHACKERY/ADVANI AND TOGADIA MUST BE TREATED ON PAR WITH
TERRORISTS

By: Engineer Shareef | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:13:05 PM

IF INDIAN JUDICIARY IS NON-BIASED IT SHOULD PUNISH, WITHPUT FURTHER
DELAY, ALL THOSE RESPONSIBLE OF MASS MURDERS AND DEMOLITIONS.

we stupid
By: dbhatt | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 23:20:48 PM

so if modi get panish then indian judiciary is non biased and if he
will not punish then it is biase. so what do you want to say

Treating all terrorism alike
By: ramkesav | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 21:00:58 PM

How will you explain the non-execution of Afsal Guru despite SC order.
Who issleeping on the file? Mr Engineer Shereef, why you are silent on
Afsal Guru 's non execution. Why the 26/11 terrorists are not yet
convicted? why they are give five star food etc. You may have
forgotten that the Imam of Delhi Majid Abdulla Bukari is still facing
a trail in Kerala HC for giving host to covicts from Arab countries
who came to Delhi on fake passports and visa. This case dates back to
the seventies and not Teesta or Pranab will care about this case as
the case relates to a muslim leader.

engineer who ru
By: CHANDRA SHEKARA REDDY NAGARA | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:51:41 PM

first of all muslim clerics who instigate riots against the hindus

should be hanged in public

Reply to fake engineer
By: Ananth Seth | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:50:41 PM

Shareef, now this is what is called wishful thinking, hallucinating,
day dreaming and what not. Anyways, sochtay raho coz thinking duznt
cost anything.

Narendra Modi : A True Nationalist
By: Aravinda Rao | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:01:40 PM

Narendra Modi is a true nationalist and a Hindu Champion. If he has
advised his officials to remain in-house and not do anything to stop
the Godhra riots, there is nothing wrong in it. Notice that nobody is
crying for the Hindus who were burnt prior to the Godhra riots. What
is wrong if the Hindus vent out their anger against the muslims. Where
was Teesta Setalvad and what has she done for the cause of the Hindus.
This Nation belongs to the Hindus (2 Nation theory). The muslims got
what they wanted. Whoever stayed back are second class citizens. That
is why they have never reconciled to the idea of being Indians. They
harbour/shelter terrorists, provide logistic support etc. and allow
them to strike mahyem on our soil. Media is to blame for this, 'cause
they provide wide coverage to people like Teesta. The Tax dept. and
the enforcement should verify the source of her funds. But as long as
the congress is at the centre, not possible, 'cause Teesta and Sonia
are both Christians.

Appalling
By: Satish Haldankar | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 17:14:08 PM

You are justifying violence. Everything is wrong if one section of the
society vent out their anger on another. Here is some food for
thought. If you had a differences with someone and God forbid he/she
chooses to use violence your family to settle scores, would that OK
with you? No one is allowed to take law into his/her own hands. Next,
you can fight for the cause of the 'Hindus', why do you want Teesta
and others to do so? No, this nation does not belong to the Hindus
alone, it belongs to all the citizens of the country, irrespective of
their religion and caste.

your mind is corrupt
By: indian | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:33:42 PM

you are inhuman. Had you been in the chair of chief minister, you
would have murdered more innocents. This country is devided because of
idiots like you. start treating human as human. Those who burnt the
train and human in it must be punished and modi must also be punished
for intentionally not taking anu action. his hand and face is coloured
with blood of thousand sof innocent muslims murder.
Arvinda Rao, you will feel the pain if your family suffers rapes,
killings and burning alive.

By: Indian Engineer | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:46:27 PM

The so called Pseudo Hindutvadis, are justifying the killings, Rapes,
and burning alive of human beings in the name of Hindutva. The PAK
sponsored terrorists too have the similar reasoning for their terror
acts, then where is the difference between External and internal
terrorists? Just forget India belongs to Bc's/Sc's/ST's and
minorites.The so called RSS and Manuwadi theory is no more
applicable.Those who do not want to live in secular India they must
leave to Nepal.

The Hindu has always been the victim of Islam
By: Sunil Sharma | Sunday , 28 Mar '10 0:55:25 AM

Hey let us look into our Indian history and see how many thopusands of
Hindu Temples were demolished by the Mughals and how many were
forcibly converted into Islam. And the Muslims are still crying for
the demolishing of the Invader Babar's mosque? Is their loyalty with
an invader or with Indians? Let the Islamic world acknowledge all the
atrocities inflicted on the Hindus through centuries of repression
before they expect any sympathy from the Hindus!

Love him ,Hate him .cannot Ignore him
By: Shaym Kishore | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 12:08:35 PM

Congress is treating all Gujratis as untouchable . This is a serious
concern . Narendra Modi is the elected representative and choice of
millions of Gurjarhis . Under his leadership Gujrath has flurished and
become example to other states of India . Attitude like this are the
cause of seperatism in the country . You can love or hate Modi . You
cannot Ignore him . He is an Icon of gujrathi pride

Modi is not doing any favor
By: Naim Naqvi | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 11:42:23 AM

The media is projecting as if Narendra Modi is doing any favor for the
country by appearing before SIT. He is an accused and that is the
beginning and that is the end. He should be treated like an accused.
He has been given a long rope by Weak Central government till date and
needless to say - he is sitting at the top of Gujarat administration.
You can't expect an accused to do justice to himself. Till today it
was something like one Urdu poet had said: Khud hi qatil, khud hi
muqbir, khud he munsif theray, Aqraba kis pe karen qatl ka dawa
merey ? I'm still not very sure that justice will finally be given to
Modi. However, at least the misdeed of inept and prejudiced
administration which is headed by Modi is exposed to the world. From
this juncture any failure to bring Modi to the book would be the
failure of fair-play of the country, a mockry of justice and the
victory of brazen power of wealth. Modi had always been a non-entity.
It is putrid idelogy behind him which is to be dealt with.
modi is not.......
By: indian national | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 19:24:38 PM

pls read about what aurangazeb did to Hindus, then compare it with
modi. Your poet's words will fit for A'zeb only. So be happy in India
or take next flight..OK?

You ae right but you are also biased
By: Shaukat Aziz | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 17:19:56 PM

You are right, Naqvi sahib, but he is proving many like you to be
wrong. He has shown respect for the constitutional institutions,
unlike many Congressmen.

Modi is not an accused
By: M.N.S.Nampoothiripad | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:39:06 PM

Modi is not an accused in any case. The ATS is just examining if there
is any substance in the allegation against Sri Modi filed by Mrs.
Jafri as per the direction of the supre court. But the question is
will an ATS be set up to question Sonia in the umpteen scams in which
she is directly involved.

Modi is not doing any favor
By: Haria | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:49:15 PM

Modi is definitely not doing a favour by appearing before SIT, but
like a responsible citizen of this country, obeying the prevelent
laws. How about those congressmen who are involved in mass murders of
Sikhs, and all the muslim terrorists in India who have scant respect
for the laws.

Good Gesture
By: DRJ | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 10:11:03 AM

It is good gesture on the part of Modi to appear before SIT
irrespective of the political advantages/disadvantages. Prima facie,
it appears the law enforcing bodies are selective in making charges.
Similar actions on other persons should also be carried out
irrespective of political affiliations. I feel such issues cannot be
brought within the rule book of judiciary. Issues date back to
historical blunders and plunders. It should be left to the judgement
of people of Gujarat and India.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/gujriotsmodiquestionedbysitforover9hours/596382/0

BJP hails Modi's appearance before SIT as political victory
Agencies

Posted: Saturday , Mar 27, 2010 at 1427 hrs
New Delhi:

Congress may not regard Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's
appearance before SIT probing the 2002 riots as anything extraordinary
but BJP leadership on Saturday stood strongly behind him, hailing this
as a political victory and one deserving the highest commendation.

As many as three BJP spokespersons saluted Modi's much- awaited
deposition before the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation
Team (SIT).

"By appearing before SIT, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has
demolished all mischievous speculations and scored a political
victory. BJP has great faith in the chief minister of Gujarat. This
graceful action vindicates the BJP stand that the chief minister of
Gujarat has the highest respect for law of the land," party spokesman
Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.

"The dignified action deserves the highest commendation and millions
of BJP workers repose highest faith in his leadership," he added.

Another BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar blamed the media for
speculating on Modi's non-appearance before the SIT.

"It was the media that created an impression that he (Modi) was not
keen on appearing before the SIT. Modi respects the judiciary. He
abides by the law as also the institutions set up by the Supreme
Court," Javadekar said.

Newly-appointed spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman denied suggestions
that Modi's appearance before the probe panel was an embarrassment for
the party.

"I don't think it is any embarrassment to the party. The chief
minister had said in the Gujarat Assembly and also in his public
letter last week that nobody was above law, including the chief
minister," she said. Sitharaman also pointed out that no FIR was
registered against the Gujarat Chief Minister.

However, Congress was not impressed with Modi's appearance and
maintained that he should be brought to justice.

"In public perception, Modi has been held guilty. I don't think he has
done anything extraordinary by appearing before the Special
Investigation Team probing the Gujarat riots. He should be brought to
justice," Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said here.

communal riots

By: BABU PATEL | 27-Mar-2010

Y People are making Ghodhra as a big issue.Is any one can tell us how
many communal riots has been investigated so far and identified the
culprits.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bjphailsmodisappearancebeforesitaspoliticalvictory/596413/0

Thackeray defends Amitabh in Sea link row
Agencies

Posted: Saturday , Mar 27, 2010 at 1223 hrs
Mumbai:

Amitabh hasn't committed a crime by attending the event: Thackeray

Coming out in defence of old friend Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena chief
Bal Thackeray on Saturday said the actor has done nothing wrong by
attending the inauguration of the second phase of the Bandra-Worli Sea
Link.

"Amitabh hasn't committed a crime by attending the event," Thackeray
said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

Lambasting Congress for "treating the actor as an untouchable",
Thackeray said "Shah Rukh Khan, who took cudgels on behalf of
Pakistanis, will do for Congress, which is allergic to Amitabh."

"Amitabh attending the function only added to the prestige of the
event," Thackeray said on the actor sharing the dias with Congress
leaders at the sealink function. Bachchan is not a thief, dacoit or a
terrorist, Thackeray said.

The presence of Bachchan at the inauguration of second phase of the
Sea Link a couple of days back had sparked a controversy with Congress
leaders from Mumbai taking objection to Chief Minister Ashok Chavan
sharing platform with the actor who is a brand ambassador for BJP-
ruled Gujarat.

"Amitabh is targeted because he is brand ambassador of Gujarat. Ambani
and Tata who live in Mumbai have invested heavily in Gujarat. Will
anyone from Congress ask them why were they investing in Narendra
Modi's Gujarat," Thackeray said.

The actor belongs to the nation and will remain so, he said.

9 Comments |

Amitabh
By: ASHOK PRADHAN | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 21:13:00 PM

I'm sure the Shiv Sena and all others know pretty well that the
handicap of not being able to speak marathi or not acting in Marathi
movies has'nt come in the Actor's way to generate Crores of rupees
inflow to the Maharashtra. Let each individual be allowed to do what
he or she could do most productively. Contributions come in different
ways, cannot just beguaged by the ability to speak a particular
language.

Amitabh at sea link.
By: Singh S.L | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:11:59 PM

Divisive attitude of congress is not acceptable at all.They have
divided nation in the name of cast,religion for political gains.To
congress Amitabh is untouchable.By this action they have insulted
nation since Amitabh is national ikon.His presence makes the place
glorified.There is no match to Amitabh in Congress party.Today they
are in power, tommarow they can be thrown out but Amitabh remains
same. He is national hero. Congress should learn some thing from Amit.

should not support him
By: CHANDRA SHEKARA REDDY NAGARA | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 16:01:58 PM

balasahebji is making mistake in supporting amithab a up wala they don
not know value of morality except to dance for getting some bucks,
where was amithab when dirty sharukh called paki's good neibhours,
amithab ate marathi salt but did not imbibe our pride, let him be lame
duck up walas who have no courage to stand against jihadis

Why this?
By: Giri | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:34:40 PM

People ask why this defence of Bacchan by Thackeray Sr! it is because
the so-called Big B goes and falls at the feet of this mafia boss
Thackeray at every opportunity and is scared to his core and has no
self respect and pride whatsoever. All this suits the Thackeray clan
mafias who only want to line their pockets with extorted money.
Politics does not come into this, only money and more of it!

big B controversy
By: PREMCHAND JAIN | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:21:47 PM

are we so intolerant to any social functions, where people of all view
and crew come. do we have no social sense that to make big uss of
small things. P.M. meets Modi, Bhattacharji in so many functions, that
time there no talk and why so much fuss on Big B..

Thackeray defends
By: s s iyer | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 15:12:23 PM

Compared to the Ministers of Maharashtra Amitabh Bachchan is a self
made man without using any props to come up in life to the present
position.Actually it is below his dignity to join with the ministers
in the sea way opening ceremony, who have done nothing for the people
of Maharashtra.

What more....
By: Roy | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 14:12:24 PM

does this has been of an ICON to the extreme right wing need...he is
now accepted as one of them & now goes out of the window
socialism..Ram Manohar Lohia & in comes the Bhagwat's, Thackeray's.
Togadia's et al....with open arms comes along with baggage to the
already blighted BJP an Amar Singh...Jaya Bachan. Have been &
wannabe's are welcome into the BJP..incl the Kalyan's & the
Uma's...from where to where.

Balasahib can talk sense some times..
By: Johnson Kuriakose | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:27:57 PM

atlast some thing which makes sense has come from Balasahib whom i
respect a lot....

Loss for Marathi Manoos
By: Vikas Sethi | Saturday , 27 Mar '10 13:14:50 PM

To answer Why Tata & Ambani shifting to Gujarat, Thackerays - Raj,
Uddhav & Bal must look inward & answer honestly. It is their narrow
divisive thinking on Marathi Manoos that has compelled these and many
more industrialists to shift to Gujarat. Both Gujarat & Maharashtra
offered same scopes. infact Maharashtra was a touch better for Tat's
Nano. But the shutdowns and goondagardi on Marathi Manoos has actually
hurt the Marathi cause and so many jobs have now gone to Gujarat. But
how does all this matter to the Thackerays? They are concerned only of
their own politics. Maharashtra's loss is Gujarat's gain. The one to
loose out is the Marathi Manoos.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/thackeraydefendsamitabhinsealinkrow/596402/

May I know why Amitji should say sorry? Asks Jaya Bachchan1
ANI

Posted: Friday , Mar 26, 2010 at 1622 hrs
New Delhi:

Bollywood actor and Rajya Sabha member Jaya Bachchan on Friday said it
is wrong to ask for an apology from Amitabh Bachchan with regard to
the Sea Link controversy surrounding the superstar.

“Why should Amitji say sorry?” she said.

Jaya Bachchan, who was addressing the media at the Women”s Press Club,
said, “I am not here to speak for Amitabh Bachchan. He can speak for
himself.” “In a democracy anyone can go anywhere,” she added.

Miffed over resentment in the Congress about his presence in a
government function, Amitabh Bachchan on Thursday night hit out at his
detractors, saying he was invited and that the whole controversy was
manufactured.

The megastar also said there were half-page advertisements in the
media that he will be taking part in the function, an apparent dig at
Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, who said he would not have
attended the function if he had known that Bachchan would be present.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mayiknowwhyamitjishouldsaysorryasksjayabachchan/596091/

Madhya Pradesh in Gadkari’s team
Posted by: N D Sharma on: March 27, 2010

At least in the case of Madhya Pradesh, Nitin Gadkari’s star-studded
team does not reflect the dynamism the BJP president had promised to
inject into the organisation at the Indore conclave of the party’s
national council. The new executive does not even give representation
to all the regions of the State.

The only striking feature of Gadkari’s exercise is his subtle attempt
to put a check on the chief minister’s influence, which was unhindered
so far.

That the State BJP president, Narendra Singh Tomar, was going to be
made general secretary at the national level was in the air for quite
some time. But Gadkari has somewhat diminished Tomar’s stature by re-
inducting Thavarchand Gehlot as another general secretary. Madhya
Pradesh is thus the only State to have two general secretaries of the
BJP at the national level. To add to Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s
discomfiture, Gehlot has been made a member of the Parliamentary
Board, the party’s highest decision-making body.

Tomar, a staunch pro-Thakur leader in the BJP, is virtually Chauhan’s
alter ego; the two have been together in all major operations, not
necessarily aimed at helping the lot of the poor and the deprived
classes. Gehlot is a Dalit leader who could never aspire to be
admitted to the chief minister’s inner circle. Chauhan’s
administration has been anything but pro-Dalit or pro-tribal, the
chief minister’s loud screeds to the contrary notwithstanding. The
dalits and the tribals, who had reposed faith in the BJP and helped it
to drive out the Congress government of Digvijay Singh in 2003, have
gradually been getting disenchanted with the BJP.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won in all the four
Scheduled Caste constituencies and in four of the five Scheduled
Tribes constituencies — and had left only four seats for the Congress
out of a total of 29 in the State. In 2009, the BJP could retain only
two of the four SC constituencies and only two of the six ST
constituencies (increased from five to six during the delimitation).
The Congress had increased its overall tally from four to 12, in spite
of the party being in utter disarray.

Gehlot was among the defeated SC candidates of the BJP. Satyanarayan
Jatiya, another defeated SC leader has been included among the
permanent invitees. Nirmala Bhuria, daughter of Dilip Singh Bhuria (a
former MP as well as a former chairman of the SC/ST Commission), has
been made a member of the party’s national executive. She had lost the
Assembly election from Petlawad (ST) in Jhabua district in 2008. She
owes her politics more to her father’s standing than to her own
“grassroots” level work (at which Gadkari had repeatedly harped at the
Indore conclave).

With all that, the representation of Madhya Pradesh in the national
executive is heavily, almost entirely, tilted towards the Madhya
Bharat region. Tomar, Gehlot, Sushma Swaraj (MP from Vidisha, though
she belongs to Haryana), Sumitra Mahajan, Kaptan Singh Solanki,
Chaitanya Kashyap, Tanveer Ahmed (a minorities leader from Ujjain),
Satyanarayan Jatiya, Maya Singh, the three former chief ministers
(Kailash Joshi, Sunderlal Patwa and Babulal Gaur) along with chief
minister Chauhan are all from the Madhya Bharat region. The sole
representative of the Mahakoshal region is Faggan Singh Kulaste, a
tribal leader of Mandla, who had lost the last Lok Sabha election. The
Bundelkhand region also has only a nominal presence in Virendra Kumar
Khatik, an SC member of Lok Sabha. The Vindhya region stands
altogether ignored.
Now all eyes are on who takes the place of Narendra Singh Tomar as the
State BJP president. Two are in the forefront, going by the media
reports. Prabhat Jha is lobbying hard. Originally hailing from Bihar,
he worked at the BJP office in Bhopal when Patwa was the chief
minister, more as Patwa’s spy than the spokesman of the party. He was
taken to Delhi to look after the party’s publications when the things
in Bhopal became hot for him after the Patwa-Lakhiram Agrawal hegemony
over the organisation came to an end. In Delhi he ingratiated himself
with Lal Krishna Advani who got him into Rajya Sabha from Madhya
Pradesh. He was also made a secretary of the BJP. Gadkari has not re-
inducted him, giving rise to the speculation in the media in Bhopal
(where he has many friends) that it has been done to make him the
State party president.

Another strong contender for the post is Anil Madhav Dave, also member
of Rajya Sabha. Chauhan’s government had been a bit too much liberal
in doling out the public money for his Janabhiyan Parishad, an NGO,
and for his Narmada Parikramas. The government had almost allotted to
him hundreds of acres of fertile land on the bank of the river
Narmada, which the government had fraudulently acquired from the
unsuspecting farmers. The game was scuttled by Akhand Pratap Singh,
then a minister in the Chauhan government, by creating a big ruckus at
the cabinet meeting which was to formally allot the land to Dave.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Bhopal gas tragedy: MP government’s gimmick
http://ndsharma.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/bhopal-gas-tragedy-mp-governments-gimmick/
Chauhan’s panic reaction to corruption
http://ndsharma.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/chauhans-panic-reaction-to-corruption/
Rahul Gandhi’s self-promotion yatra

http://ndsharma.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/madhya-pradesh-in-gadkaris-team/

RSS backs temple entry for all, inter-caste marriages
Express news service

Posted: Sunday , Mar 28, 2010 at 0255 hrs
New Delhi:

The RSS has said that border security, infiltration, terrorism and
Naxalism are the key challenges being faced by India at present.

At its Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha meet at Kurukshetra, the RSS
stressed on inter-caste marriages and temple entry for all, to address
some of the challenges being faced by the country.

The RSS, in its yearly report, also stressed on the expansion of its
shakhas (the basic building block of the organisation). The number of
RSS shakhas has seen a sharp decline (by around 4,000) in the last one
year, to a figure of 39,823.

After the Sangh, under the leadership of Mohan Bhagwat, said some
weeks ago that Mumbai and (Maharashtra) belonged to everyone, its
report again underlined the fact that “people speaking various
languages live in Mumbai”.

The report also said that after Jammu and Kashmir, “Hindus were being
forced to flee another state - Manipur”. About J&K, the report said
that after a period of relative calm, “anti-India forces were again
getting active in the region”. The Sangh also warned against the
“expansionist designs” of China.

On the domestic front, the RSS warned against the “growing
regionalism” in national politics. It stressed on a “village-centric
developmental model” and “agro-based industries”. It drew satisfaction
from its recent Gau Gram Yatra, in which Swami Ramdev’s Patanjali
Yogpeeth also actively participated.

Among its recent activities, the Sangh argued that its volunteers
actively participated in cleaning the Shipra river.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/RSS-backs-temple-entry-for-all--inter-caste-marriages/596607

bademiyansubhanallah

unread,

Mar 28, 2010, 5:25:28 PM3/28/10

<TAG 2.0/>:

Archaeological theory in the light of contemporary computing
(sponsored by L-P Archaeology)

communitycomputing
multivocality
ontologies
representation
semantics
visualisation

www Gareth Beale (University of Southampton; gcb...@soton.ac.uk) and
Leif Isaksen (University of Southampton; lei...@googlemail.com)

Though once peripheral to standard archaeological practise, computers
have begun to reshape both our discipline and the way we think about
it. Not only is their deployment ubiquitous in academia and the
private sector, in less than a decade the internet has become the
dominant medium of communication and dissemination. This forces us to
reconsider the manner in which both archaeologists and the public
engage with information and to discuss the opportunities and dangers
which arise from digital archaeologies.

One of our chief goals will be to challenge the degree to which
digital archaeology is synonymous with quantitative methods and their
empiricist overtones. This is not intended as a criticism of either,
but rather as an opportunity to reappraise the relationship between
digital approaches and archaeological methodologies.

The session is intended to contribute toward an archaeological
response to a rapidly changing and increasingly complex digital world.
It will conclude with a panel discussion.

Semantics and the nature of data

Archaeological discourses are constrained by the semantics of our
world-views in a variety of ways. Developments in computer science
have increasingly enabled us to model the terms, categories and
relationships that form these ontologies but open questions still
remain. We would like to address such issues as

•The limits to (internal) representation and/or simulation of
archaeological entities
•The challenges of explicitly modelling ontologies
•Theoretical implications of combining information from different
discourses
Representation
Representations of archaeology tell us as much about our attitudes to
our discipline and the world around us as they do about our
interpretations of the past. Developments in computation have led to
an expansion in the scope and prevalence of virtual representations of
archaeology. In light of these changes we would like to address the
following issues:

•Visual conventions in the age of Moore’s law: embracing change
without sacrificing meaning
•Conceptualising an interface between a perceptual present and a
virtual past
•Ways in which we categorise virtual representations of archaeology
(e.g. GIS, Virtual Reality, charts and graphs, etc.)
Open & community access
Communication technology, and in particular the World Wide Web, has
had an enormous impact on social dynamics in the developed world and
its influence is increasingly felt in developing nations as well. We
wish to discuss themes such as:

•The Web as a reinforcing and disruptive mechanism in heritage power
structures
•Open Access rights to public and developer-funded research
•Multivocality and ‘trust’ in archaeological sources

http://www.tagconference.org/content/tag-20-archaeological-theory-light-contemporary-computing

Historical divide: archaeology and literature

Indology grew out of attempts to interpret Indian sources from
European perspective. Its legacy is archaeology without literature for
the Harappans and a literature without archaeology for the Vedic
Aryans. Any rewriting of history must begin by bridging this unnatural
gulf.

INDOLOGY, WHICH prominently includes history of the Vedic Age, is the
result of a historical accident. In 1784, Sir William Jones, an
English jurist in the employ of the British East India Company, began
a study of Sanskrit to better understand the legal and political
traditions of the Indian subjects. As a classical scholar, he was
struck by the extraordinary similarities between Sanskrit and European
languages, especially Latin and Greek. He went on to observe: "... the
Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful
structure, more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more
exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a
stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of
grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong
indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without
believing them to have sprung from the same source."

Though he was not the first European to recognise this connection —
that honour belongs probably to Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine
merchant living in Goa two centuries earlier — Jones was the first to
express it in scholarly terms. With this dramatic announcement Jones
launched two new fields — Indology and comparative linguistics,
notably Indo-European linguistics. To account for this similarity,
some scholars postulated that the ancestors of Indians and Europeans
must at one time have lived in the same region and spoken the same
language. They called this the Aryan language and their common
homeland the Aryan homeland. Following the Nazi misuse of the word
Aryan as a race, and the atrocities that accompanied it, the term has
fallen into disfavour. The preferred term today is Indo-European.
According to this theory, the ancestors of the Indians who used Vedic
Sanskrit to compose the Vedas and other related literature hailed from
a land outside India. Their original homeland has been placed in
locations from Germany to Chinese Turkestan, that is, everywhere
except India where the Vedic language and its literature have found
the fullest expression and endured the longest.

This is the background to the famous Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) that
has dominated Indian history books for over a century. Based on
various arguments, but strongly influenced by biblical beliefs,
scholars like F. Max Mueller assigned a date of 1500 BC for the Aryan
invasion and 1200 BC for the composition of the Rigveda, the oldest
member of the Vedic corpus. The Bible is said to assign the date
October 23, 4004 BC for the Creation and 2448 BC for the Flood. This
was in the background when he gave 1500 BC as the date of the Aryan
invasion. Max Mueller himself in a letter to the Duke of Argyle, then
acting Secretary of State for India, asserted: "I regard the account
in the Genesis (of the Bible) to be simply historical." In his
defence, it must be recognised that he was by no means dogmatic about
his theories. Towards the end of his life, in response to some
critics, Max Mueller wrote: "Whether the Vedic hymns were written in
1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever
determine."

Mismatch

What is remarkable in all this is the fact that the foundations of
ancient Indian history were being laid by scholars who were not
historians but linguists. In keeping with the political conditions of
the age — the heyday of European colonialism — it was inevitable that
colonial and Christian missionary interests should have intruded on
their work. Even Max Mueller, during the first half of his career, saw
it his duty to advance the interests of Christian missionaries,
though, towards the end of his life, he became a convert to Vedanta.
In addition, most of them had no scientific background — witness their
belief in the Biblical Creation Theory. There was also no archaeology
to guide them.

All these were soon to change. Beginning about 1921, Indian and
British archaeologists working under Sir John Marshall revealed the
existence of the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the
Punjab and Sindh. Further excavation showed that they were part of a
vast civilisation spread over most of North India and even beyond.
This is now famous as the Indus Valley or the Harappan civilisation.
They were flourishing in the period from c. 3100 BC to 1900 BC, or
more than a thousand years before the postulated Aryan invasion.
Scholars from a wide range of disciplines including literature,
archaeology, architecture and even mathematics, began to study the
archaeological remains for clues to the identity and nature of the
civilisation.

At first sight, the discovery of the Harappan civilisation, spread
over the same geographical region as described in the Vedic
literature, seemed to invalidate the Aryan Invasion Theory. The
natural conclusion seemed to be that Harappan archaeology represented
the material remains of the culture described in the Vedic literature.
But for reasons that are too complex to detail here, prominent
historians soon rejected the idea of the Vedic identity of the
Harappan civilisation. They insisted that the Harappans were a pre-
Vedic (and non-Vedic) people who were defeated by the invading Aryans
and forced to migrate en masse to South India, later to be known as
Dravidians, speaking languages that are supposedly unrelated to
Sanskrit. Through this device, historians sought to preserve the Aryan
Invasion Theory and reconcile it with the existence of a much older
civilisation in the Vedic heartland. In this exercise it should be
noted that a theory postulated by linguists in the previous century
prevailed over archaeological evidence.

No evidence of invasion

This soon ran into contradictions. Archaeologists found no evidence of
any invasion or warfare severe enough to account for the uprooting of
such a vast civilisation. On the other hand, the decline of the
Harappan civilisation could be attributed to natural causes — in
particular, ecological degradation due to the drying up of vital river
systems and also floods. It is now known that a major contributor was
a severe 300-year drought (2200 — 1900 BC) that struck in an immense
belt from the Aegean to China. Recent research has shown that the
rainfall in some areas diminished by as much as 20 per cent. The
Harappan was one of several ancient civilisations to feel the impact
of this ecological catastrophe; others similarly affected were Ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia to the west and China to the east.

The theory of Harappans as Dravidians has also proved to be far from
satisfactory. The Harappans, who were supposed to be the original
Dravidian speakers, were a literate people. There are some four
thousand examples of their writing from sites like Harappa, Mohenjo-
Daro, Lothal, Kalibangan and others, as well as dozens in West Asia.
Yet, the earliest examples of South Indian (or Dravidian) writing use
a version of the Brahmi script, which originated in North India. This
leaves us in the extraordinary situation where the migrating Harappans
took their language but not the script that they had themselves
invented. And they waited more than a thousand years to begin their
writing, borrowing from a North Indian script for the purpose.

In the light of all this, the situation regarding the primary sources
of ancient India may be summarised as follows: no satisfactory
explanation has been found to account for the separate existence of
Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature, both of which
flourished in the same geographical region. On the one hand, there is
Harappan archaeology, the most extensive anywhere in the world, but no
Harappan literature. On the other, there is the Vedic literature,
which exceeds in volume all other ancient literature in the world
combined several times over, but no Vedic archaeological remains. So
we have archaeology without literature for the Harappans and
literature without archaeology for the Vedic Aryans. This is all the
more puzzling considering that the Harappans were a literate people
while we are told that the Vedic Aryans knew no writing but used
memory for preserving their immense literature. This means only the
literature of the illiterates has survived.

In the light of this incongruity, one may say that as long as this
gulf between archaeology and literature remains unbridged, there can
be no such thing as history. Neither the Harappans nor the Vedic
Aryans have a historical context, but only archaeological and literary
sources hanging as loose ends. So the first step in any writing (or
rewriting) of ancient history should be a systematic programme to
rationally connect Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature.
These are the primary sources; the theories that are now in textbooks
are secondary, based on the perceptions of scholars of the colonial
era. More seriously, they contradict the archaeological evidence.

Vedic-Harappan connection

Fortunately some progress is being made in accounting for both
Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature, though, to a large
extent, it owes to the work of outsiders. Some Vedic scholars have
noted that Harappan remains are replete with sacred Vedic symbols like
the swastika sign, the `OM' sign and the sacred ashvattha leaf (Ficus
Religiosa). No less dramatic is the discovery of the American
mathematician and historian of science, A. Seidenberg, tracing the
origins of Egyptian and Old Babylonian mathematics to Vedic
mathematical texts known as the Sulbasutras. As Seidenberg observed:
" ... the elements of ancient geometry found in Egypt (before 2100 BC)
and Babylonia (c. 1900 — 1750 BC) stem from a ritual system of the
kind observed in the Sulbasutras." This means that the mathematics of
the Sulbasutras, which are Vedic texts, must have existed long before
2000 BC, i.e., during the Harappan period. This is clear also from a
technical examination of Harappan archaeology, which displays skill in
town planning and geometric design, showing that Harappans must have
had access to the Sulbasutras. This gives a scientific link between
Vedic literature (Sulbasutras) and Harappan archaeology. (The
Sulbasutras should not be confused with popular books on Vedic
mathematics. These are modern works that have little to do with the
Vedas).

All this shows that progress can be made in explaining Harappan
archaeology and the Vedic literature if one is prepared to follow a
multidisciplinary, scientifically rigorous approach. The present
incongruous situation — of mismatch between archaeology and literature
— is attributable to two factors. First, an attempt to preserve a
theory created on the basis of insufficient evidence before any
archaeological data became available. Next, the fact that even this
theory and the foundation that it rests on were created by linguists
and other scholars whose understanding of science and the scientific
method left much to be desired.

Correcting past errors

Several historians have rightly expressed concern that history may
soon be written by individuals who lack the necessary knowledge of the
historical method. But far more serious is the fact that what is found
in textbooks today is based on theories created by men and women who
had no qualifications to write about them. They are based not on the
primary sources, but explanations that seek to fit the data to a
particular Nineteenth century worldview — the Eurocolonial. The
immediate task before Indian historians is to get back to the
fundamentals, ignoring the authority of scholars from the past, no
matter how great their reputations. Sri Aurobindo suggested that the
problem lies in the failure of Indian scholars to develop independent
schools of thought. In his words: "That Indian scholars have not been
able to form themselves into a great and independent school of
learning is due to two causes: the miserable scantiness of the mastery
in Sanskrit provided by our universities, crippling to all but born
scholars, and our lack of sturdy independence which makes us over-
ready to defer to European (and Western) authority."

This is not to suggest that we should either deny or reject the
findings of Western scholarship. Only we should not accept them
uncritically as authority figures. They were products of their time
and environment and the resulting weaknesses should be recognised.
Their contributions remain substantial, but cannot be treated as
primary knowledge. No less a person than Swami Vivekananda once said:
"Study Sanskrit, but along with it study Western sciences as well.
Learn accuracy, ... study and labour so that the time will come when
you can put our history on a scientific basis... How can foreigners,
who understand very little of our manners and customs, or our religion
and philosophy, write faithful and unbiased histories of India? ...
Nevertheless they have shown us how to proceed making researches into
our ancient history. Now it is for us to strike out an independent
path of historical research for ourselves, ... It is for Indians to
write Indian history."

His advice holds as good today as it did a century ago when he gave it
to a group of students. The recovery of history must begin with a
thorough study of the primary sources. The first step is to close the
unnatural gap between archaeology and literature.

N.S. RAJARAM

(The writer is the author with David Frawley of the book Vedic Aryans
and the Origins of Civilisation)

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/01/22/stories/2002012200020100.htm

Theoretical issues in Indian Archaeology

Colonial ArchaeologyIndiaIndian archaeologyIndologyNew Archaeologypost-
processual
Ajay Pratap (Banaras Hindu University; aprata...@yahoo.com)

The purpose of this session is to take stock of theoretical issues in
Indian archaeology. Indian archaeology has come a long-way, since the
18th century, when those such as William Jones, James Prinsep and
Charles Wilkins, initiated the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It was the
founding of this society that spurred greatly the discovery of the
past of a nascently colonized nation. Many studies now exist about
this period (Singh, 2004) apart from the literature actually emanating
from this Society's Journal - The Journal of The Asiatic Society of
Bengal. In addition, The Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, Asiatic
Researches, The Journal of The Royal Society and The Calcutta Annual
Register are some of the Journals that contain the Oriental
Scholarship relevant to Ancient India and its archaeology. We would
invite contributions that critically examine the growth of archaeology
through this early period and the first formulations in India of the
surveys, findings, and methods of excavation closer to the decades
preceding independence. We also invite contributions that would look
critically at the growth of archaeological method and theory in India
in the post-Independence era. These would include theories of culture,
contact-diffusion models used widely to explain similarity and
differences in archaeological cultures, the establishment of the New
Archaeological method, as the most dominant method, in modern
archaeology, in India,for nearly half a century now. We also wish to
include a discussion of the impact of postprocessual archaeology on
Indian archaeology.

http://www.tagconference.org/content/theoretical-issues-indian-archaeology

Looking through the Lens of Archival Records: Archaeological Site
Formation in the Middle Ajay Basin, West Bengal, India
Archival RecordsIndiaMiddle Ajay BasinSite formationWest Bengal
Madhulika Samanta (University College London, UK)

Archaeological sites are regularly modified by different environmental
and cultural agencies and carry signatures of very recent activities.
Impacts of these activities are often over emphasized or completely
neglected in archaeological investigations. The present study area is
famous for its chalcolithic settlements and a part of the nuclear zone
of such settlements in Eastern India. Scholars of independent India
have carried out important excavations here and emphasized the
influence of recent floods on formation processes in the Ajay basin.
It has been argued that a significant number of these sites are in
secondary context which influenced the author to assess the nature of
archaeological sites situated in the Middle Ajay Basin. This area with
archaeological sites like Pandu Rajar Dhibi, experiences floods
regularly. Fortunately, the region boosts of a rich source of archival
records for the last two hundred years. These records contain general,
topographical and cadastral maps, reports of flood occurrences and
very recent data on highest annual gauge, maximum discharge of river
water, etc. The paper analyses sixteen maps of the region prepared in
the last two hundred years and twenty seven major flood events. These
maps are compared with each other to follow landscape changes after
floods with archaeological sites in the perspective. The settlements
deserted in the last two hundred years were also considered for
analyses. Recent changes in the landscape have been documented with
the help of maps published by the Survey of India and images produced
by Google Earth. Flood occurrences were documented from different
reports and analyses by meteorologists. The data on maximum discharge,
highest annual gauge of the recent years etc. - collected form the
Water Investigation and Development department of the province - aid
in understanding the nature of these events.
The paper suggests a majority of high energy floods in the last two
hundred years, were created by artificial embankments. Sites of the
pre embankment period were less affected by these floods than those of
the post embankment era. The river creates coarse grained deposits
(influenced by embankments) mainly along its banks and formed levees.
Therefore, it will be erroneous to consider sediment record of a site
as the only proxy for reconstructing paleofloods in this region. Later
floods are eroding these sediments rather than disturbing buried
archaeological deposits. Basically these are single event floods of
short duration, not powerful enough to leave lasting impression on the
sites. The phenomenon of river shifting, causing major impact on
archaeological site formation, is absent here. The deposits of these
sites are not in secondary context.

http://www.tagconference.org/content/looking-through-lens-archival-records-archaeological-site-formation-middle-ajay-basin-west-b

Promoting Cultural Heritage Awareness through Museums: Problems and
perspectives (West Bengal, India)
Sayan Bhattacharya (Centre for Archaeological Studies and Training,
Eastern India, India)

The preservation of our cultural heritage is one of the major social
responsibilities of our time. What our ancestors have created over a
long period depicts historical development, on which we build and draw
in order to frame our future.

This present paper deals with how we can manage the material cultural
heritage through museums (archaeological and historical) in West
Bengal with specific reference to Kolkata and case studies drawn from
the State Archaeological Museum, Kolkata. Kolkata (Calcutta), the city
of joy, was established in 1686 as a result of the expansion plans of
the British Raj, it is now the capital of West Bengal. The city has a
number of heritage buildings, monuments and museums (Indian Museum,
Victoria Memorial Hall, Asiatic Society, State Archaeological Museum,
Gurusaday Museum, etc). But unfortunately, like other metropolitan
cities in Indian, museums are still a ‘jadugarh’ (magical house) for
common people.

The State Archaeological Museum, West Bengal, houses an array of
antiquities. Presently this museum has five galleries (West Bengal
Sites and Sights, Paintings of Bengal, Sculptures of Bengal,
Excavation at Jagjivanpur and West Bengal Early Historic Period). This
museum also controls the district museums under the state government
of West Bengal and many local level museums representing their own
history and identity exist in the area. There is a lack of
communication and co-ordination between these museums and they are not
being run in accordance with the emerging trends in museum management.
As a result, these museums are lagging behind and are not so much
capable in attracting visitors regularly. The State Archaeological
Museum, as a nuclear museum, will be used to exemplify the various
issues of other museums in this state.

The main objectives of this paper is to explore how museums can assist
in ‘preserving the past, defining the present and educating for the
future’ as well as introduce fruitful interaction between participants
and researchers to assist in solving the various neglected aspects of
museum studies and cultural heritage management in West Bengal. The
discussion will explore the types of problems that are being faced at
the State Archaeological Museum and will ask: What kind of facilities
we are providing for the tourists? What are the probable solutions?
What kind of multidisciplinary approaches can we introduce for
maintaining a dynamic relationships between the tourists/students/
researchers and the Museums for promoting the cultural heritage of a
country like India?

http://www.tagconference.org/content/promoting-cultural-heritage-awareness-through-museums-problems-and-perspectives-west-bengal-

The challenge of heritage
heritageinterpretationpost-processualpreservation
Nick James (University of Cambridge, UK)

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) describes its mission as
research, protection and regulation. It also maintains museums and a
programme of presenting monuments and publication. Research,
management and presentation complement each other but the respective
implications of these functions diverge somewhat. Contemporary social
and cultural developments in India expose the divergence between
research and presentation more clearly than before.

The function of research is the one most familiar to archeologists.
Although, in India, most of the research concerns the past, it
directly entails the Survey's functions of protection and regulation:
for discoveries to be made about the past, it is necessary actively to
protect the remains. Presentation and publication, equally, are
concerned, in the first place, with the archeological assets as
contemporary features, valued for education, tourism or other purposes
that are distinguished today as 'heritage'.

Now development and encroachment threaten archeological assets ever
more in India. Tourism is expanding rapidly and the number of visitors
to the principal monuments is rising. The implications affect the work
of most archeologists. They can be illustrated by the case of
Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar is well known for its many Medieval Hindu
temples and, near by, the earlier monuments at Dhauli and Sisupulgarh
and Khandagiri & Udaigiri. From some 10,000 residents in 1947, the
town has grown now to 1,000,000. The number of visitors to the
principal monuments more than doubled from 1990 to 2006. The increase
reflects a boom in domestic leisure and tourism and expansion of the
affluent and literate middle class. In effect, the monuments of
Bhubaneswar are being treated more now as heritage than as assets for
either worship or research. This can be seen not only in visitors'
behaviour but also in recent work by the ASI, the State Archaeology
service, the Municipal Corporation, the Indian National Trust for Art
& Cultural Heritage and public and private tourism organizations.

Archeologists must recognize the shifting balance of priorities in
their cultural environment. The function of public dissemination or
outreach must be enhanced. There are two principal problems. Without
sympathetic public awareness of archeology, the assets will quickly be
wasted. On the other hand, the sociological and economic processes of
diversification and integration tend to expose diverse points of view.
There is, among Indian archeologists, widespread reluctance to
acknowledge unconventional interpretations. If, then, archeological
research is not to be conflated, in popular opinion, with heritage –
the past with the present - the ASI, State services and non-government
organizations alike must not only protect and describe archeological
assets but also make more of a priority of explaining the nature of
both the evidence as such and the reasons for and the methods of
archeological management and research. This solution - to focus, like
the concern with heritage! On contemporary activity, in the first
place, rather than on the scientific deduction of the past - may work
not only for India but also in Europe, where debate about
archeological resources has grown for reasons similar to those arising
in India.

http://www.tagconference.org/content/challenge-heritage

The emergence of Prehistory: Looking at early initiatives in late
nineteenth-early twentieth century Bengal
Bengalemergenceethnologyprehistory
Basak Bishnupriya (University of Calcutta, India)

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in looking at the
emergence of archaeology as a discipline and its role in the
construction of the sub-continent’s past in the nineteenth-early
twentieth century. Yet, one strand of ‘academic inquiry’ remains
largely outside the purview of these works and which this paper wishes
to address. Discoveries of ‘chipped/polished stone’ or ‘rude stone
monuments’ belonging to remote antiquity, which started appearing in
accounts left behind by geologists employed by the Geological Survey
of India, civil servants, military officials and individuals variously
engaged in different professions in the colony, gave shape to a
different inquiry in the past in the second half of the nineteenth-
early twentieth century, bringing forth questions of human evolution,
race and the progress of civilization The germs of prehistoric
archaeology in the sub-continent may be sought in these early
writings, where the boundaries between prehistory, ethnology and
ethnography were often fuzzy. There has been substantial research on
the history of Victorian anthropological thought. Of late there has
also grown a voluminous literature on ethnological surveys and
ethnographic documentations in the sub-continent. Discoveries of stone
tools or stone monuments need to be situated in the backdrop of these
developments. In trying to understand the beginnings of prehistoric
research I am restricting myself to eastern and north eastern India
where one comes across a profusion of such writings, many published as
notes in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. These writings
are many-layered, in which typological descriptions of the artifacts
are interspersed with rich anecdotes, myths and legends of existing
indigenous communities.

http://www.tagconference.org/content/emergence-prehistory-looking-early-initiatives-late-nineteenth-early-twentieth-century-benga

The ongoing debate between processual and post-processual methods in
archaeology, in the context of Jharkhand, India
Ajay Pratap Reader (Banaras Hindu University, India)

This paper intends to elucidate the ongoing debate between processual
and post-processual methods in archaeology, in the context of
Jharkhand, India. This it does, by taking a fresh look at both
processualism and post-processualism in 2008, both of which, have a
significant place in theory and practice of Indian archaeology as on
date. This paper also intends to add that there are existing
indigenously developed tropes of archaeology within Indian archaeology
such as iconography, numismatics, epigraphy and so on, by the simple
argument that Indian archaeology and has had its inception through
oriental studies, in the 18th century, when doyens such as William
Jones, James Prinsep and Charles Wilkins, of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal, first started their researches (see Singh: 2004). Moreover,
the journals of Indian archaeology, such as Journal of Bihar and
Orissa Research Society, Journal of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute, Man in India, The Eastern Anthropologist, Purattatva,
Purakala, Man and Environment, to name just a few, along with numerous
text-books on the subject explicate the history, methods and theory,
in employ in Indian archaeology, sufficiently, for any reader of this
field, to acquaint themselves with developments in Indian archaeology.
In this context, therefore, in 2008, it is opportune, to discuss and
evaluate the relative merits and demerits of the impact of two alien
imports the “New Archaeology” and the “Post-processual archaeology”.
In this paper, we undertake such an analysis, using our own fieldarea,
The Rajmahal Hills, Dist. Santhal Parganas, Jharkhand, India, as a
case-study, through an ethnoarchaeological perspective, to evaluate
the relative merits and demerits of these two modern inputs into
Indian archaeology.

http://www.tagconference.org/content/ongoing-debate-between-processual-and-post-processual-methods-archaeology-context-jharkhand-

SEMINAR & WORKSHOP

We have been continuously holding weekly seminars in the Department
for the benefit of students, especially research scholars. In these
seminars, both the faculty members as well as research scholars
presented their research papers, which provided exposures & training
to young upcoming scholars. In addition to the weekly seminars, the
faculty members of the department have organised following Seminars:

The Middle Ganga Plains Through the Ages: Understanding Cultures
Through Archaeology, organised by Professor Vidula Jayaswal jointly
with Jnana Pravaha, Varanasi.

Recent Developments in Indian Archaeometallurgy organised by
Professor Vibha Tripathi jointly with Jnana Pravaha, Varanasi.

Recent Researches in AIHC & Archaeology organised by Professor
Vibha Tripathi, BHU, Varanasi.

NATIONAL SEMINAR ON THE GAGES CIVILIZATION : THE SHIFTING PARADIGM

Recently the Department has organised the above Seminar under the
Convener ship of Prof.Vibha Tripathi on 10-12, February, 2006. The
Seminar was sponsored by the UGC through its programmes SAP & ASIHSS
of the Department. The well attended seminar with nearly 150
participants from different parts of the country. The young
researchers were given equal opportunity to present their papers and
participate in the deliberations during the seminar. The academic
deliberations will be resulting in the publication of its Proceedings
very shortly.

RECENT SPECIAL LECTURES

In order to enrich the quality of research and also to expose our
senior students to the latest development in A.I.H.C. & Archaeology
with the collaboration of other academic institution, the Department
organised special Lectures by the eminent scholars of India and abroad
from time to time. Following special lectures and visits of scholars
were organised:

Prof. V.C. Srivastava, former Director, IIAS, Shimla delivered a
lecture on 'Recent Advances in the Field of AIHC & Archaeology' on 8th
January 2007.

Prof. Devendra Handa, Panjab University Chandigarh delivered a lecture
on 'Antiquity of Ancient Indian Coins on 21 March, 2007.

Dr. B.M.Pande, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi delivered a
lecture on 'Thanesar Excavations on 23 July, 2007.

A Chinese Delegation led by Prof Hua visited the Department on 20
November, 2007.

Dr. Cameron Petrei, University of Cambridge delivered a lecture on
'the Decline of Harappans and the Climat on 10 January, 2008.

RECENT SEMINAR

Contribution of Environment in shaping personality of individuals,
groups and nations is well established both by the studies of physical
and social scientists. There can hardly be a second opinion regarding
the significance of natural surroundings to the growth of social and
culture make up of ancient inhabitants of Indian sub-continent, on one
hand, and cultural environments influencing one and other regions,
from time to time, on the other. History of individual regions and
chronological levels, when viewed against the background of physical
and cultural environments would certainly be meaningful and holistic,
which is the theme of the proposed seminar. It may also bring forth
such ancient indigenous practices which revolved around preserving and
conserving natural surroundings, a major concern of the modern
society. Evaluation of concerns and destructions of physical and
cultural environments of ancient times is not only an exercise of the
restricted academic value, but may have wider implication stretching
up to the present times.

The long painstaking researches on ancient India, has fortunately,
brought to light various facets of past societies. But, often the
contribution of environment has escaped attention of the scholars. A
number of bio-diversities though are found in the historical
reconstructions, their full implications are not discussed. It is
proposed to give a platform to experts from various disciplines, the
Geology, Palaeo-botany, Archaeology, Indology, who can sit together
and evaluate the theme in a true scientific spirit, which will help
understanding makeup of cultures, and adaptation of biodiversities by
human groups of ancient India, from around 10, 000 BP to the early
medieval times.

It is proposed to divide the seminar into four main sections - Early
Holocene Climate & Cultural Adaptation, Palaeo-environment & Cultures
of 3rd to 1st Century BCE, Environment & Emergence of States & Cities
in the Ganga Plain and Environment as revealed from Art, Literature,
Numismatics & Epigraphy. Each of the sections will be addressed by one
or two scientists, who shall dwell upon the physical environments. The
other contributors of these sessions would assess archaeological and
literary evidence as to evaluate the culture adaptation to the various
palaeo-ecological niches. Besides presentations by the senior
scholars, the young researchers shall participate as discussants and
the post graduate students shall attend the deliberations as to get
exposure to the theme.

In addition to the Seminar, a Workshop on �Metals & Technology of
Early Indian Coins� is also being organized on this occasion for the
benefit of the students, research scholars and the faculty members
associated with teaching of the Numismatics. The workshop will deals
with the technology for minting coins and medals. The technology is
based on the utilization of metal blanks with similar diameters, one
being very thin, joined together by mechanical means during the
impartion of the surface details by the minting dies. The technology
requires the design and manufacture of a special geometry in the edge
of the thicker disk in order to make possible assembly of the metal
blanks. The proposed technology is based on a multi-stage
manufacturing process consisting of three cold metal forming
operations (preforming, rimming and coining) and one intermediate
annealing treatment. The annealing treatment is to be performed before
the coining operation. The goal is to restore the initial ductility of
the disk prior to the final coining stage. The workshop will also
focus on punching, die and casting techniques of ancient coins.

National Seminar on Environments of Ancient India Archaeological &
Leterary Critique

And Workshop on Metals & Technology of Early Indian Coins

(March 8-10, 2008)

(UGC Sponsored Programme under SAP & ASIHSS Schemes

SOUVENIR

VARANASI, A HERITAGE CITY & THE CULTURE CAPITAL OF INDIA Rana P.B.
Singh, Professor of Cultural Geography, BHU

DHANVANTARI, A GREAT SCION OF VARANASI
P.K. Agrawala, Dept. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ABSTRACTS

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS REFLECTED IN THE VEDIC LITERATURE :
Pranabananda Jash, Department of AIHC & Archaeology, Visva Bharati :
Santiniketan

CONTRIBUTION OF ASOKA TO ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS: Sayamtara Jash,
Department of AIHC & Archaeology, Visva Bharati : Santiniketan

ENVIRONMENT OF THE EARLY HOLOCENE OF THE MIDDLE GANGA PLAIN AS
REVEALED FROM THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS : V.D. Misra and J.N.
Pal, University of Allahabad

QUATERNARY STRATIGRAPHY OF THE GANGA : R.P. Pandey, Department of AIHC
and Archaeology, Jiwaji University, Gwalior (M.P.)

URBAN ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE AND FORMATION OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ORISSAN
STATE : L.N.Raut, Behrampur University, Behrampur

THE ANCIENT INDIAN CONCEPT & KNOWLEDGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND ITS
UNIQUE REALISTIC UTILIZATION FOR THE WELL-BEING OF INDIVIDUAL : Sunil
Kumar Dubey, Varanasi

ENVIRONMENT AND SETTLMENT PATTERN IN THE SARAYUPAR REGION : Mohd.
Naseem & Indrajeet Singh, Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ASHOKA AS A PROTAGONIST OF ENVIRONMENT : Arpita Chatterjee, Deptt. of
AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

NATURE, ENVIRONMENT AND COSMIC INTEGRITY IN ANCIENT INDIAN THOUGHT :
Rana P.B. Singh, Professor of Cultural Geography, Banaras Hindu
University

SACRED LANDSCAPES OF SIKKIM AND ITS ECOLOGICAL VALUE : G.K.LAMA,
Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ENVIRONMENT AND NBPW CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE GANGA PLAIN: AN
ARCHAEOLOGICAL CRITICS : Priyanka Chandra & Devendra Kumar Singh
Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

A BUDDHIST APPROACH TO ECOLOGY : Mukesh Kumar Singh and Sanjay Singh
Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ECOLOGICAL BACKGROUND AND RISE OF CULTURES IN THE MIDDLE GANGA PLAIN :
Umesh Kumar Singh, Department of Ancient History, Archaeology &
Culture, Udai Pratap College, Varanasi

ENVIRONMENT AND CHOICE IN DWELLING HOUSES AND SETTLEMENT PATTERN IN
MIDDLE GANGA PLAIN : Santosh Kumar Singh, Department of AIHC and
Archaeology, Devendra P.G. College Belthara Road, Ballia

ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING OF EARLY TAMIL LITERATURE AND CULTURE : Archana
Sharma, Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS REFLECTED IN ARTHASHASTRA : A STUDY :
Dinesh Kumar Ojha & Alok Kumar Pandey, Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology,
BHU

ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN ADAPTATION IN EARLY HOLOCENE PERIOD IN BELAN
VALLEY: AN EVIDENCE OF ROCK ART : A.K.Dubey, Member, UP Higher
Education, Allahabad

THE ROLE OF STATE IN CONSERVING ENVIRONMENT IN ANCIENT INDIA : Anshul
Bajpai, Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology BHU

A STUDY OF THE NATURAL SYMBOLS ON THE OLD INDIAN COINS: WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO ENVIRONMENT : O.N. Singh, Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology,
BHU

BLACK COTTON SOIL : ENVIRONMENT & CULTURE : Pushp Lata Singh, Deptt.
of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ROLE OF CLIMATE AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE GROWTH OF SETTLEMENT OF THE
MIDDLE GANGA PLAIN:AN ARCHAEOLOGIACAL STUDY : Ashok Kumar Singh,
Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ENVIRONMENT IN ANCIENT INDIA: PEACE PERSPECTIVE : Pradeep Dhakal,
Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

HOW DID INDIANS MAINTAIN THEIR ENVIRONMENT : Harihar Singh , Deptt. of
AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

WATER IN VEDAS : Suman Jain , Deptt. of AIHC & Archaeology, BHU

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN ANCIENT INDIA : Anuradha Singh , Deptt. of
History , BHU

HARAPPAN CIVILISATION AND PALAEOCOLOGY OF SOUTH ASIA : AN APPROACH :
Raj K. Sharma , Dept. of Mining Engineering BHU & D. P. Singh, Deptt.
of AIHC & Archaeology,BHU

http://www.bhu.ac.in/aihc/seminar.htm

DEPARTMENTAL PublicationS

Since long the Department has scheme of publishing researches of
eminent scholars from India and abroad. So far more than five dozens
volumes have been brought out. It has been regular in publishing its
journal Bharati and Monograph series. Bharati, Vol. 32 is now under
Publication.

BHARATI

(Bulletin of the Dept of A.I.H.C. & Archaeology)

No. 1, 1956-57, Eds. Sri D.C. Guha & Sri M.N. Singh.

No. 2, 1957-58, Eds. Prof. R.B. Pandey & Dr. V.S. Pathak.

No. 3, 1959-68, Eds. Prof. R.B. Pandey & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 4, 1960-61, Eds. Prof. Surya Kanta & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 5, 1961-62, Eds. Prof. Surya Kanta & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 6, 1962-63, Eds. Prof. V.S. Agrawala & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 7, 1963-64, Eds. Prof. A.K. Narain & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 8, 1964-65, Eds. Prof. A.K. Narain & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 9, 1965-66, Eds. Prof. A.K. Narain & Sri L.K. Tripathi.

No. 10-11 (combined), 1966-68, Central Asia Number Eds. Prof. A.K.
Narain.

No. 12-14, (combined),1969-71, Prof. V.S. Agrawala, Prof Vol. Eds.
A.K. Narain & Sri P.K. Agrawala.

No. 1, New Series, 1983-84, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 2, New Series, 1984-85, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 3, New Series, 1985-86, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 15, 1971-85, Prof. R.B. Pandey Volume Eds. Prof. L.K. Tripathi.

No. 16, 1985-87, Prof. R.C. Majumdar Volume, Ed. Prof. L.K. Tripathi.

No. 17, 1987-88, Ed. Prof. L.K. Tripathi.

No. 18, 1988-89, Ed. Prof. L.K. Tripathi.

No. 19, 1989-90, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 20, 1990-91, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 21, 1991-92, Ed. Prof. V.C. Srivastava

No. 22, 1992-93, Ed. Prof. V.C. Srivastava

No. 23, 1994-96, Ed. Prof. Prof. V.C. Srivastava

No. 24, 1996-97, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 25, 1998-99, Ed. Prof. P. Singh

No. 26, 2000-2002, Ed. Prof. V. Jayaswal

No. 27, 2002-2003, Ed. Prof. V. Tripathi

No. 28, 2003-2004, Ed. Prof. V. Tripathi

No. 29, 2004-2005, Ed. Prof. V. Tripathi

No. 30, 2005-2006, Ed. Prof. P. N. Singh

No. 31, 2006-2007, Ed. Prof. P. N. Singh

No. 32, 2007-2008, Ed. Prof. P. N. Singh (under publication)

MONOGRAPHS

1. From Alexandar to Kaniska by Prof. A.K. Narain.

2. Excavations at Sravasti-1959 by Dr. K.K. Sinha.

3. Skanda-Karttikeya : A Study in Origin and Evolution by Dr. P.K.
Agrawala.

4. Ramji Pandey, Kal Sahinta 2003.

5. The Excavations at Prahladpur by Prof. A.K. Narain & Dr. T.N. Roy.

6. Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and their successors
(Supplement to Fleet's C.I.I., Vol. III),

1888,Part (Bibliography), by Shri R.S. Mishra.

7. Aspects of Early Jainism by Dr. Jai Prakash Singh.

8. The Disintegration of the Kushan Empire by Prof. B.N. Mukherjee.

9. History and Coinage of Skandagupta Kramaditya by Dr. J.P. Singh.

10. The Guru-Samhita : An Ancient Text on Weather Forecasting, by
Prof. Lallanji Gopal.

11. A Catalogue of the Greek and Indo-Greek Coins in the Department
by Dr. T.P. Verma.

12. Archaeology of Population, by Dr. Makkhan Lal.

13. The Aryans, the Veda and the Kaliyuga Era of 3102 B.C., by Shri
Kailash Chandra Varma.

14. Archaeology as Historical Science by Mr. Bruce Trigger.

15. An Approach to Indian Culture and Civilization by Prof. G.C.
Pande.

16. Models, Paradigms and the New Archaeology by Dr. Shivaji Singh.

17. Osteo-archaeological remains from Rajghat by Dr. Bhupendra Pal
Singh.

MEMOIRS

1. Seminar Papers on the Chronology of the Punch-Marked Coins, Eds.
Prof. A.K. Narain and Dr.

Lallanji Gopal.

2. Seminar Papers on the Local Coins of Northern India (c. 300 B.C. to
c. 300 A.D.) Eds. Prof.A.K. Narain,

Dr. J.P. Singh and Dr. Nisar Ahmad.

3. Seminar Papers on the Problem of Megaliths in India Eds. Prof. A.K.
Narain, Dr. Purushottam Singh.

4. Seminar Papers on the Tribal Coins of Ancient India (c. 200 B.C. to
400 A.D.) Eds. Prof. Lallanji Gopal.

Dr. J. P. Singh and Dr. N. Ahmad.

5. D.D. Kosambi Commemoration Volume Ed. Prof. Lallanji Gopal.

6. Position and Status of Women in Ancient India, Vol. I, Ed. Prof.
L.K. Tripathi.

7. Position and Status of Women in Ancient India, Vol. II, Ed. Prof.
L.K. Tripathi.

8. Buddhist Stupa in India and South-East Asia, Ed. Prof. L.K.
Tripathi.

9. Sati in Ancient India, Ed. Prof. L.K. Tripathi.

10. Untouchabilty in Ancient India, Ed. Prof. L.K. Tripathi.

EXCAVATION REPORTS

1. Excavations at Sravasti - 1959 by Dr. K.K. Sinha

2. The Excavations at Prahladpur by Prof. A.K. Narain & Dr.
T.N. Roy

3. Excavations at Rajghat, Ed. Prof. A.K. Narain

Part I : The Cuttings, Stratification and Structures by
Dr. T.N. Roy.

Part II : The Pottery, by Dr. T.N. Roy.

Part III : Small Finds, by Dr. P. Singh.

Part IV : Terracotta Human Figurines by Dr. P.K. Agrawala.

A : - Text

B : - Plates

4. Paisara-A Stone Age Settlement of Bihar, 1991 by Prof. P.C.
Pant & Dr. Vidula Jayaswal.

5. Excavations at Narhan by Prof. P. Singh (1994)

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The Battle For Ancient India (An Essay in the Sociopolitics of Indian
Archaeology)
IDK201

by Dilip K. Chakrabarti
Hardcover (Edition: 2008)

Aryan Books International
ISBN 9788173053412

Size: 9.0" X 5.8"
Pages: 183

Our Price: $30.00

Preface

This volume is rooted in my Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the
Ancient Indian Past (1997) and demonstrates in the context of Indian
archaeology how the grip of "colonial Indology" is still an
intellectual force cutting across the national boundaries. Among the
archaeologists at least this trend of thought has been more visible in
the post-1947 period than in period preceding it. This book also shows
how the various current debates regarding Indian archaeology and
ancient history end up by being an issue of "progress versus reaction"
or "secularism versus communalism" and how such assertions are only a
reflection of the political expediency of the concerned scholars.

In its quest to underline the various sociopolitical subtexts of
opinions in the field of modern Indian archaeology, the book clearly
focuses on how these opinions have taken birth and evolved and what
exactly is their academic basis. Unless we are aware of the socio-
political ramifications of our archaeological opinions, it is unlikely
that we shall be able to form our own conclusions about them.

This book was written in September-December of 2006, and I am deeply
thankful to Dr. Rakesh Tewari and Professor Nayanjot Lahiri for kindly
going through the manuscript and offering suggestions. The
responsibility of all shortcomings rests with me. I am especially
indebted to my colleague Dr. Cameron Petrie who kindly procured for me
a copy of S.K. Chatterji's Modern Review article. It is dedicated to
my wife and daughter, both of whom have always striven hard to make my
academic life smooth and even. My daughter also took upon herself the
duty of taking down my field dictations and doing photography in the
field.

From the Jacket

A number of issues regarding the study of ancient India have recently
emerged in the public domain. The most important of them are the
Sarasvati Project, Aryan invasion theory, the textbook controversy in
India and California and the language of the Indus civilization. The
intensity of debate on each of these issues is reminiscent of
religious clashes. Much of this debate is also not limited to
professional historians and archaeologists. The mass of data and
opinions, which are currently available on the internet and have
frequently been published in the media, can no longer be ignored by
anybody interested in ancient India. Some professional analysis of
this development has long been called for. This book is in response to
this need. It first states the author's position on each of these
issues, but more importantly, critically examines their rationale. By
studying the socio-political implications of some of the current
assumption of Indian archaeology and by noting their associations with
different scholars and scholarly groups, it demonstrates that even the
apparently remote conclusions about India's prehistoric, protohistoric
and early historic past have sub-texts of various kinds and that these
sub-texts have different socio-political implications and agendas.

Dilip K. Chakrabarti is Professor of South Asian Archaeology in the
Department of Archaeology of Cambridge University. He has been awarded
D.Litt. (Honoris Causa) by M.J.P. Rohilkhand University, Bareilly,
where he delivered the University's Convocation Address in 2006. The
Asiatic Society (Calcutta) awarded him its S.C. Chakrabarti Memorial
Medal in 2007.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1

I. The Theme 1
II. The Author's Own Approach and Beliefs 3
III. The Idea of India as a Colonized Land throughout History 9

2 'Sunrise' in the West: Different Strands of Indian Prehistoric and
Proto-historic Studies 35

I. The General Background 35
II. The Theme of 'Sunrise in the West' 39
III. Comments on Certain General Trends of Publications in Indian
Prehistory and Protohistory 42

3. The Sociopolitics of the Indus Civilization Studies 51

I. The Framework of the Ancient Indian 51

Past before the Discovery

II. The Discovery and the Early Hypotheses of the Excavators0 54
III. The Period between the Discovery and Associated 57
Reports, and the Publication of Marshall's

Mohenjodaro Report in 1931: R.P. Chanda

IV. The Formulation of the Dravidian Hypothesis: Suniti Kumar
Chatterji 64
V. Observations on Chanda and Chatterji 67
VI. John Marshall's "Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilization" (1931)
68
VII. The Basic History of the Idea of Harappa-Vedic Relationship:
B.N. Datta to P.V. Kane and Others 69
VIII. More on the Dravidian Premise or the Question 83
of the Dravidian Authorship of the Indus Civilization
IX. The Current Politics of the Indus Civilization Studies 90

4 The Sociopolitics of Some Debates in Early Historic Archaeology 103

I. The Literature on the NBP 103
II. The Beginning of Writing 106
III. The Role of Iron in the Second Urbanisation 112

5 Summary and Discussion 117

Appendix 153
Bibliography 159
Index 167

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/IDK201/

HARAPPAN HORSE: POLEMICS AND PROPAGANDA

Editorial Comment

As the Aryan invasion version of history has begun to crumble, there
are parties in Indian and Western academic circles that have a special
interest in preserving it. It is unnecessary to go into reasons behind
this beyond noting that considerations of politics and careers have
much to do with it. This is not unusual in any field: whenever there
is a paradigm shift, as is now the case with the Vedic-Harappan
convergence today, the old order suddenly finds the ground shifting
under its feet. A debate, at times acrimonious is natural and
inevitable in the circumstances. But what was unusual in this case was
the tactics adopted by a few of the participants, notably Michael
Witzel, the Prince of Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard. He went
beyond criticizing the work of N. Jha and N.S. Rajaram, to charging
that they, in their book The Deciphered Indus Script had fabricated
the image of a horse in order to show that the Harappan civilization
was Vedic.

In all this, Witzel's central claim was that the horse was unknown in
ancient India prior to the coming of the Aryan invaders who brought it
with them. Thus, the Harappans had no horses. Further, the spoke-wheel
was also unknown to the Harappans. But Witzel went further: he
insisted that any data that suggested otherwise must perforce be a
fabrication. This was the charge he leveled against N. Jha and N.S.
Rajaram in the summer of 2000 when the book The Deciphered Indus
Script reached the United States. He chose to ignore however that
comments on the 'Harappan Horse' was limited to two partial footnotes
in their book, which was about the decipherment and in no way
dependent on the Harappan horse. Jha and Rajaram chose to ignore these
charges other than issuing a press release that refuted Witzel's
charge with the help of photographs. (Witzel was assisted in his work
by one Steve Farmer with no credentials in the field other than making
extravagant claims. He seems to have disappeared from the scene.)

The situation reached a climax when Rajaram, in an article that
appeared in the national daily The Hindu (February 19, 2002) produced
evidence from well-known sources showing that horse remains had been
identified at Harappan sites going back several decades; he also
highlighted other important evidence like the Vedic river Sarasvati
that connect the Vedic and Harappan civilizations. This seemed to put
Witzel in an awkward situation. First, it showed that his claim of "No
Harappan horse," had no basis in fact. More seriously, it cast a cloud
on his tactics, suggesting that he was indulging in suppression of
evidence while simultaneously launching a personal attack on those who
disagreed with him. In all this the assumption seemed to be that his
position as an academic at a well-known university combined with
aggressive propaganda carried out at a high decibel level was enough
to override facts and logic. This predicament that Witzel found
himself in--the collapse of his scholarly reputation together with the
exposure of his unsavory tactics--may explain the ferocious tone of
his article given in this section. This was noted by the distinguished
archaeologist R. Nagaswamy who went on to systematically refute
Witzel's claims and method--calling the latter an example of reductio
ad absurdum.

While the Aryan invasion is dead, and the Vedic-Harappan connection
all but a reality, the series of articles that appeared in The Hindu
gives an idea of the 'debate' that is likely to be the last ditch
effort to save the Aryan invasion. We begin with Rajaram's article
that set the cat among the pigeons, followed by Witzel's response,
culminating in Nagaswamy's refutation of Witzel's claims and methods.

THEORY AND EVIDENCE

A historical theory must account for all the evidence and not
selectively accept and ignore data. Further, a man-made theory cannot
substitute for primary data.

N.S. Rajaram
Albert Einstein once said: "A theory must not contradict empirical
facts." He was speaking in the context of science, especially how
historians of science often lacked proper understanding of the
scientific process. As he saw it the problem was: "Nearly all
historians of science are philologists [linguists] and do not
comprehend what physicists were aiming at, how they thought and
wrestled with these problems." When such is the situation in physics
where problems are clear-cut, it is not surprising to see issues in a
subject like history being much more contentious. This is particularly
the case when trying to understand the records of people far removed
from us in time like the creators of the Vedic and Harappan
civilizations. As a result of some recent historical developments like
European colonization and Western interest in Sanskrit language and
linguistics, several myths and conjectures, through the force of
repetition, have come to acquire the status of historical facts. It is
time to re-evaluate these in the light of new evidence and more
scientific approaches.

When we come to these myths, none is more persistent than the one
about "No horse at Harappa." This has now been supplemented by another
claim that the spoke-wheel was unknown to the Harappans. The point of
these claims is that without the horse and the spoke-wheel the
Harappans were militarily vulnerable to the invading Aryan hordes who
moved on speedy, horse-drawn chariots with spoke-wheels. This claim is
not supported by facts: an examination of the evidence shows that both
the spoke-wheel and the horse were widely used by the Harappans.
(The idea seems to be borrowed from the destruction of Native American
civilizations by the Spanish and Portuguese 'Conquistadors'. The
Conquistadors though never used chariots.)

As far as the spoke-wheel is concerned, B.B. Lal, former Director
General of the Archaeological Survey of India records finding
terracotta wheels at various Harappan sites. In his words: "The
painted lines [spokes] converge at the central hub, and thus leave no
doubt about their representing the spokes of the wheel. ...another
example is reproduced from Kalibangan, a well-known Harappan site in
Rajasthan, in which too the painted lines converge at the hub. ...two
examples from Banawali [another Harappan site], in which the spokes
are not painted but are shown in low relief." ( The Sarasvati Keeps
Flowing, Aryan Books, Delhi, pages 72-3). It is also worth noting that
the depiction of the spoke-wheel is quite common on Harappan seals.

Horse and Vedic symbolism

The horse and the cow are mentioned often in the Rigveda, though they
commonly carry symbolic rather than physical meaning. There is
widespread misconception that the absence of the horse at Harappan
sites shows that horses were unknown in India until the invading
Aryans brought them. Such 'argument by absence' is hazardous at best.
To take an example, the bull is quite common on the seals, but the cow
is never represented. We cannot from this conclude that the Harappans
raised bulls but were ignorant of the cow. In any event, depictions of
the horse are known at Harappan sites, though rare. It is possible
that there was some kind of religious taboo that prevented the
Harappans from using cows and horses in their art. More fundamentally,
it is incorrect to say that horses were unknown to the Harappans. The
recently released encyclopedia The Dawn of Indian Civilization, Volume
1, Part 1 observes (pages 344 - 5): "... the horse was widely
domesticated and used in India during the third millennium BCE over
most of the area covered by the Indus-Sarasvati [or Harappan]
Civilization. Archaeologically this is most significant since the
evidence is widespread and not isolated."

This is not the full story. Sir John Marshall, Director General of the
Archaeological Survey when Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were being
excavated, recorded the presence of what he called the 'Mohenjo-daro
horse'. Giving salient measurements, comparing it to other known
specimens, he wrote: "It will be seen that there is a considerable
degree of similarity between these various examples, and it is
probable the Anau horse, the Mohenjo-daro horse, and the example of
Equus caballus of the Zoological Survey of India, are all of the type
of the 'Indian country bred', a small breed of horse, the Anau horse
being slightly smaller than the others." ( Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus
Civilization, volume II, page 654.) It is important to recognize that
this is much stronger evidence than mere artifacts, which are artists'
reproductions and not anatomical specimens that can be subjected to
scientific examination.

Actually, the Harappans not only knew the horse, the whole issue of
the 'Harappan horse' is irrelevant. In order to prove that the Vedas
are of foreign origin, (and the horse came from Central Asia) one must
produce positive evidence: it should be possible to show that the
horse described in the Rigveda was brought from Central Asia. This is
contradicted by the Rigveda itself. In verse I.162.18, the Rigveda
describes the horse as having 34 ribs (17 pairs), while the Central
Asian horse has 18 pairs (36) of ribs. We find a similar description
in the Yajurveda also.

This means that the horse described in the Vedas is the native Indian
breed (with 34 ribs) and not the Central Asian variety. Fossil remains
of Equus Sivalensis (the 'Siwalik horse') show that the 34-ribbed
horse has been known in India going back tens of thousands of years.
This makes the whole argument based on "No horse at Harappa"
irrelevant. The Vedic horse is a native Indian breed and not the
Central Asian horse. As a result, far from supporting any Aryan
invasion, the horse evidence furnishes one of its strongest
refutations.

Man-made theories

All this suggests that man-made theories (like "No Harappan horse")
and those in linguistics cannot be used to override primary evidence
like the Vedic Sarasvati (described below) and the dominant oceanic
symbolism found in the Vedas. To see this we may note that South
Indian languages like Kannada and Tamil have indigenous ( desi ) word
for the horse-- kudurai-- suggesting that the horse has long been
native to the region. The same is true of the tiger ( puli and huli )
and the elephant ( aaney ). Contrast this with the word for the lion--
simha and singam --that are borrowed from Sanskrit, indicating that
the lion was not native to the South. A man-made theory in
linguistics, because it is not bound by laws of nature, can be made to
cut both ways. It cannot take the place of evidence.

In any field it is important to take into account all the evidence,
especially evidence of a fundamental nature. This can be illustrated
with the help of what we now know about the Vedic river known as the
Sarasvati. The Rigveda describes the Sarasvati as the greatest and the
holiest of rivers-- as ambitame, naditame, devitame (best of mothers,
best of rivers, best goddess). Satellite photographs as well as field
explorations by archaeologists, notably the great expedition led by
the late V.S. Wakankar, have shown that a great river answering to the
description of the Sarasvati in the Rigveda (flowing 'from the
mountains to the sea') did indeed exist thousands of years ago. After
many vicissitudes due to tectonic and other changes, it dried up
completely by 1900 BCE. This raises a fundamental question: how could
the Aryans who are supposed to have arrived in India only in 1500 BCE,
and composed their Vedic hymns c. 1200 BCE, have described and
extolled a river that had disappeared five hundred years earlier? In
addition, numerous Harappan sites have been found along the course of
the now dry Sarasvati, which further strengthens the Vedic-Harappan
connection. As a result, the Indus (or Harappan) civilization is more
properly called the Indus-Sarasvati civilization.

The basic point of all this: we cannot construct a theory focusing on
a few relatively minor details like the spoke-wheel while ignoring
important, even monumental evidence like the Sarasvati River and the
oceanic symbolism that dominates the Rigveda. (This shows that the
Vedic people could not have come from a land-locked region like
Afghanistan or Central Asia.) A historical theory, no less than a
scientific theory, must take into account all available evidence. No
less important, a man-made theory cannot take the place of primary
evidence like the Sarasvati River or the oceanic descriptions in the
Rigveda. This brings us back to Einstein-- "A theory must not
contradict empirical facts." Nor can it ignore primary evidence.

[This article, which supplied evidence that demolished Witzel's claims
once and for all, drew the following response from Witzel. It is not
hard to see that Witzel was concerned mainly with negating all
evidence--from equine data to the Sarasvati River! He also failed to
note that the possible presence of the 'Siwalik horse' for millions of
years is further evidence against his thesis of the horse as a late
arrival in India. Further, contrary to his claim, the 34 ribs of
Indian, Southeast Asian and some Arab horses is a genetically
inherited trait that cannot be wished away. Also, it is not just the
Rigveda that mentions the 34-ribbed horse, but the Yajurveda as well.
Editor]

HARAPPAN HORSE MYTHS AND THE SCIENCES

The horses found in the early excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa
do not come from secure levels and such `horse' bones, in most cases,
found their way into deposits through erosional cutting and refilling,
disturbing the archaeological layers.

Michael Witzel

In the Open Page of February 19, N.S. Rajaram posits a truism "A
theory must not contradict empirical facts," but he then does not
deliver on the `empirical facts.' As a scientist, he must suffer to be
corrected, bluntly this time, by a mere philologist and Indologist.
Philology, incidentally, is not the same as linguistics, as he says,
but the study of a civilisation based on its texts. In order to
understand such texts, one must acquire the necessary knowledge in all
relevant fields, from astronomy to zoology. It is precisely a proper
background in zoology, particularly in palaeontology, that is badly
lacking in Rajaram's, the scientist's, account. Instead, it is he, and
not his favorite straw man, the Indologist, who has created some new
"myths and conjectures ... through the force of repetition." Let us
deconstruct them one by one.

Harappan horses?

To begin with, he claims that "both the spoke-wheel and the horse were
widely used by the Harappans." He quotes S.P. Gupta, without naming
him, from a recent book ( The Dawn of Indian Civilisation , ed. by
G.C. Pande, 1999). According to Gupta the horse (Equus caballus) "was
widely domesticated and used in India during the third millennium BCE
over most of the area covered by the Indus-Sarasvati (or Harappan)
Civilisation. Archaeologically this is most significant since the
evidence is widespread and not isolated." Nothing in this assertion is
correct, even if -- or rather because -- it comes from an
archaeologist and inventive rewriter of history, S.P. Gupta. For
example, the horses found in the early excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and
Harappa do not come from secure levels and such `horse' bones, in most
cases, found their way into deposits through erosional cutting and
refilling, disturbing the archaeological layers.

Indeed, not one clear example of horse bones exists in the Indus
excavations and elsewhere in North India before c. 1800 BCE (R. Meadow
and A. Patel 1997, Meadow 1996: 405, 1998). Such `horse' skeletons
have not been properly reported from distinct and secure
archaeological layers, and worse, they have not been compared with
relevant collections of ancient skeletons and modern horses (Meadow
1996: 392). Instead, well recorded and stratified finds of horse
figures and later on, of horse bones (along with the imported camel
and donkey), first occur in the Kachi plain on the border of Sindh/E.
Baluchistan (c. 1800-1500 BCE), when the mature Indus Civilisation had
already disintegrated.

Even more importantly, the only true native equid of South Asia is the
untamable khur (Equus hemionus, onager/half-ass) that still tenuously
survives in the Rann of Kutch. Both share a common ancestor which is
now put at ca. 1.72 million years ago (while the first Equus specimen
is attested already 3.7 mya.). The differences between a half-ass
skeleton and that of a horse are so small that one needs a trained
specialist plus the lucky find of the lower forelegs of a horse/onager
to determine which is which, for "bones of a larger khur will overlap
in size with those of a small horse, and bones of a small khur will
overlap in size with those of a donkey." (Meadow 1996: 406).

To merely compare sizes, as Rajaram does following the dubious decades
old Harappan data of Marshall, and then to connect the long gone
"Equus Sivalensis" with the so-called "Anau horse", resulting in the
"Indian country" type, is just another blunder, but Rajaram, the
scientist, is not aware of it.

Proper judgment is not possible as long as none of the above
precautions are taken, and when -- as is often done -- just incomplete
skeletons or teeth are compared, all of which is done without the
benefit of a suitable collection of standard sets of onager, donkey
and horse skeletons. Rajaram and his fellow rewriters of history thus
are free to turn any local half-ass into a Harappan horse, just as he
has already done (see Frontline , Oct./Nov. 2000) with his half-bull.

Further, the archaeologists claiming to have found horses in Indus
sites are not trained zoologists or palaeontologists. When I need to
get my teeth fixed I do not go to a veterinarian or a beauty salon.
Typically, S.P. Gupta (1999) does not add any new evidence, and just
repeats palaeontologically unsubstantiated claims that are, to quote
Rajaram, "myths and conjectures... through the force of repetition."

The Siwalik equid

In addition, Rajaram conjures up another phantom, the Siwalik horse:
"fossil remains of Equus Sivalensis (the `Siwalik horse') show that
the 34-ribbed horse has been known in India going back tens of
thousands of years." Standard palaeontology handbooks (B.J. MacFadden,
Fossil Horses, 1992) would have told him that the Siwalik horse, first
found in the northern hills of Pakistan, is not just "going back tens
of thousands of years" but is in fact 2.6 million years old. However,
it has long died out during the last Ice Age, as part of the late
Pleistocene megafaunal extinction of about 10,000 years ago (i.e. at
the end of the Late Upper Pleistocene, 75-10,000 y.a.: it is
reportedly found in middle to late Pleistocene locations in the
Siwaliks and in Tamil Nadu, and recently, as a "Great Indian horse" in
Andhra, 75,000 y.a.). But there is, to my knowledge, no account of a
Siwalik horse that even remotely approaches the date of the Indus
Civilisation -- nor does Rajaram quote any authority to this effect.

Nevertheless, in order to bolster his claim for the antiquity of the
"Vedic horse (as) a native Indian breed", he connects this dead horse
with the Rigvedic one, which is described as having 34 ribs (Rigveda
1.162.18). But, while horses (Equus caballus) generally have 18 ribs
on each side, this can individually vary with 17 on just one or on
both sides. This is not a genetically inherited trait. Such is also
the case with the equally variable (5 instead of 6) lumbar vertebrae,
as found in some early domestic horses in Egypt (2nd. mill. BCE) and
in the closely related modern Central Asian Przewalski horse (which
shares the same ancestor, 620-320,000 years ago, with the domestic
horse/Equus ferus).

As for the number 34, numeral symbolism may play a role in this
Rigveda passage dealing with a horse sacrificed for the gods. The
number of gods in the Rigveda is 33 or 33+1, which obviously
corresponds to the 34 ribs of the horse, that in turn is speculatively
brought into connection with all the gods, many of whom are mentioned
by name (Rigveda 1.162-3). But this is mere philology, not worthy of
"scientific" study...

In sum, even S. Bokonyi, the palaeontologist who sought to identify a
horse skeleton at the Surkotada site of the Indus Civilisation, stated
that "horses reached the Indian subcontinent in an already
domesticated form coming from the Inner Asiatic horse domestication
centers" -- just as they were imported into the ancient Near East
about 2000 BCE. Any zoological handbook would have told the scientist
Rajaram the same (MacFadden 1992).

In addition, the identification the Surkotada equid as horse by S.
Bokonyi is disputed by R. Meadow and A. Patel (1997). Even if this
were indeed the only archaeologically and palaeontologically secure
Indus horse available so far, it would not turn the Indus Civilisation
into one teeming with horses (as the Rigveda indeed is, a few hundred
years later). A tiger skeleton in the Roman Colosseum does not make
this Asian predator a natural inhabitant of Italy. In short, to state
that the "Vedic horse is a native Indian breed and not the Central
Asian horse" is just another fantasy of the current rewriters of
Indian history.

Nevertheless, Rajaram even repeats some of his own "myths and
conjectures, (which) through the force of repetition, have come to
acquire the status of historical facts," namely the old canard that
"depictions of the horse are known at Harappan sites, though rare" --
a case of fraud and fantasy that has been exploded more than a year
ago in Frontline (Oct./Nov. 2000). Apparently, he thinks, along with
other politicians, that repeating an untruth long enough will turn it
into a fact.

Spoke-wheeled chariots

Rajaram, in dire need of `Rigvedic' horse-drawn chariots for the
Harappan period, then introduces spoked wheels into the Indus
Civilisation: "terracotta wheels at various Harappan sites. ... The
painted lines (spokes) converge at the central hub, and thus leave no
doubt about their representing the spokes of the wheel."

The handful existing specimens of such terracotta disks may indeed
look, even to a trained archaeologist, like a spoked wheel --
especially when he wants to find Aryan chariots, just like Aryan fire
altars, all over the Indus area. But, they may just as well have been
simple spindle whorls, used in spinning very real yarn, not wild Aryan
tales. Further, "spoked wheel patterns" occur in cultures that never
had the wheel, such as pre-Columbian North American civilisations. In
other words, all of this proves nothing as long as we do not find a
pair of these "spoked wheels" in situ, along with a Harappan toy cart.
Normally, the wheels of such toy carts are of the heavy, full wheel
type (that is made of three interlocked wood blocks).

Rajaram then asserts, for good measure, that the "depiction of the
spoke-wheel is quite common on Harappan seals." This refers to the
wheel-like signs in Harappan script. Unfortunately, these "wheels" can
easily be explained as unrelated artistic designs (like in the N.
American case). Worse, they mostly are oblong ovals, not circles. A
Harappan businessman using a cart with such wheels would have gotten
seasick pretty soon. They are unfit for travel -- and for the
discerning reader's consumption.

Instead, the rich Rigvedic materials dealing with the horse-drawn
chariot and chariot races do not fit at all with Indus dates
(2600-1900 BCE) and rather put this text and its chariots well after
c. 2000 BCE, the archaeologically accepted timeframe of the invention
of the spoke-wheeled chariot in the northern steppes and in the Near
East. Again, Rajaram's fantasised "Late Vedic" Indus people have
scored a "first": they invented the chariot long before archaeologists
can find it anywhere on the planet!

"Aryan" chariots

There is no need to go deeply into his building up the straw man of
Aryan invasions (i.e. immigration of speakers of Indo-Aryan),
involving a need to "prove that the Vedas are of foreign origin." No
one today maintains such a theory anyhow. Instead, the Rigveda is a
text of the Greater Punjab, indicating a lot of local acculturation
but using a language and poetics that go back to the earlier Indo-
Iranian period in Central Asia (c. 2000 BCE).

Equally misleading is his caricature: "without the horse and the spoke-
wheel the Harappans were militarily vulnerable to the invading Aryan
hordes who moved on speedy, horse-drawn chariots with spoke-wheels."
As has been mentioned here a few weeks ago, nobody today claims that
the Indo-Aryan speakers arrived on the scene when the mature Indus
Civilisation still was flourishing and destroyed it, it in whatever
fashion. Instead, there is a gap of some centuries between the two
cultures, as the descriptions of ruins and simple mud wall/palisade
forts (pur) in the Rigveda indicate. Vedic texts tell us that the
pastoralist Indo-Aryan nobility fought from chariots, and the
commoners on horseback and on foot, with the local people ( dasyu ) of
the small, post-Harappan settlements who, like the Kikata, are said
not even to understand "the use of cows." Next to warfare there also
was peaceful acculturation of the various peoples in the Greater
Punjab, as is shown by the Rigveda itself.

As for a chariot use, a brief study of ancient Near Eastern warfare
would have done the `historian' Rajaram some good. It is clear to even
a superficial reader that after c. 1600 BCE the Hyksos, Hittites,
etc., used such chariots, not just for show and sport but also in
battle, such as in the famous battle of Kadesh between the Hittites
and Egyptians in 1300 BCE. Chariots were in fact used as late as in
Alexander's battle with Poros (Paurava) in the Punjab, or by the
contemporary Magadha army with its 3,000 elephants and 2,000 chariots.
Why then all this diatribe about the "Aryan" use of chariots in
favorable, flat terrain? (Not, of course, while "thundering down the
Khyber Pass"!)

Foray into linguistics

Mercifully, Rajaram has spared us, this time, his usual assaults on
the "pseudo-science" of linguistics, and instead tries his own hand at
it, and teaches us some Dravidian: kudirai `horse,' which should prove
that the horse has been native to South India forever. However, his
foray into linguistics is incomplete and misleading.

First, Tamil kutirai, Kannada kudire, Telugu kudira, etc. have been
compared by linguists, decades ago, with ancient Near Eastern words:
Elamite kutira `bearer', kuti `to bear.' The Drav. words Brahui
(h)ullii `horse' and Tam. ivuLi are derived from `half-ass,
hemion' (T. Burrow in 1972). Both words, far from being `native South
Indian', thus were coming in from the northwest.

Second, other Indian language families have such `foreign' words as
seen in Munda (Koraput) kurtag, (Korku) gurgi, kurki, (Sabara/Sora)
kurtaa, (Gadaba) krutaa, which are all derived from Tibeto-Burmese,
for example Tsangla (Bhutan) kurtaa, Tib. rta. We know that Himalayan
ponies have always been brought southwards by salt traders and with
them, of course, their names. There also is the independent and
isolated Burushaski (in N. Pakistan) with ha-ghur, cf. Drav. gur- in
Telugu guRRamu, Gondi gurram, etc., and the Austro-Asiatic Khasi (in
Shillong) kulai, Amwi kurwa', etc., -- all of which again point to a
northern origin. (For details see: EJVS 5-1, Aug. 1999,
http://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs, or: International Journal of
Dravidian Linguistics , 2001).

Far from magically proving, with one Dravidian word, that the "native
Indian horse" has been found in the South since times immemorial, the
"man made theory" of linguistics --just as the hard facts of
palaeontological science -- rather indicate that the words for `horse'
were imported, along with the animal, from the (north)western
(Iranian) and northern (Tibetan) areas. Genetics now add another
facet. The domesticated horse seems to have several (steppe) maternal
DNA lines (Science 291, 2001, 474-477; Science 291, 2001, 412; cf.
Conservation Genetics 1, 2000, 341-355), which fits in very well with
the several northern Eurasian words for it mentioned above. The
Eastern Central Asian words must be added; they all probably derive
from Proto-Altaic *mori (as in Mongolian morin, Chinese ma, Japanese
uma, and as surprisingly also found in Irish marc, English mare).

The Harappan Sarasvati

The case of the Vedic Sarasvati river (the modern Sarsuti-Ghagghar-
Hakra) is complex and cannot be dealt with in detail (see, rather,
EJVS 7-3, section 25). It must be pointed out, however, that the
Rigvedic Sarasvati is a river on earth, a `river' in the sky (Milky
Way), and a goddess, and as such Sarasvati is described in superlative
terms, once as flowing `from the mountains to the sea' ( samudra ).
However, this word has several meanings that must be kept apart:
`confluence, lake, mythical ocean surrounding the earth'; the sky,
too, is called a `pond'! To commingle all of this as samudra `Indian
Ocean' is bad philology.

In addition, far from emptying into the Rann of Kutch then, the
Harappan Sarasvati (`having lakes'), disappears as Hakra in the dunes
around and beyond Ft. Derawar in Bahawalpur, after showing signs of a
delta (playa) and of terminal lakes, just like its Iranian namesake in
the Afghani desert, the Haraxvaiti (Helmand) with its Hamun lakes.

Further, simple satellite photographs also do not show when a river
dried up, as the Ghagghar-Hakra has indeed done several times in its
different sections in recent millennia. This was shown in detail for
the Indus and Vedic periods by the former director of Pakistani
archaeology, Rafique Mughal, in his book Ancient Cholistan (1997).
Rajaram again is simply wrong as a scientist in asserting that the
river conveniently "dried up completely by 1900 BCE." Reality is much
more complex.

Actually, much of this has been known since Oldham and Raverty (1886,
1892). (Thus, I myself have printed a Sarasvati map, based on a
lecture of 1983, before the overquoted satellite photos of Yash Pal et
al. were published in 1984). However, we need many more close
observations such as Mughal's, with archaeologically vouched dates for
the individual settlements along the various sections and several
courses of the river.

Finally, the "oceanic descriptions" of the Rigveda imagined by Rajaram
and many other rewriters of history (such as S.P. Gupta, Bh. Singh, D.
Frawley) are based, again, on bad philology: their "data" are taken
from Vedic mythology, floating in the night time sky, and the like! Or
was Bhujyu abducted on another first, a Vedic airship?

[Witzel's article drew the following response from Nagaswamy, former
Director of Archaeology in Tamil Nadu. It appeared in The Hindu, March
12, 2002. Particular attention is to be paid to the section 'Problems
are Complex' where Mr. Nagaswamy dissects Witzel's methodology of
trying to negate evidence, and shifting arguments. Editor]

HARAPPAN HORSE

There is an urgent need to jettison from our textbooks the unproved
statements on Indian civilisation and consign them to academic
polemics, and keep the power mongering self-seeking Taliban
politicians out of educational field.

R. Nagaswamy

THE READERS have been following closely the debate on Harappan
civilisation, published in The Hindu in its Open Page. The latest
article by Michael Witzel (March 5) seems to be taking a partisan
view. Archaeologists have found certain artefacts and scholars are
trying to infer the meaning of the findings and in the process express
divergent views. Such debates are welcome to advance our knowledge
academically, no matter where it comes from. Unfortunately, Witzel's
present article reads personal rather than an academic presentation.
For example, he ridicules the other writer N.S. Rajaram personally by
repeating his name time and again, with personal digs in every
mention. Witzel is not free from the same fault that he attributes to
Rajaram, as in the example of horse in Harappan sites. He states the
horse bones found in the early excavations at Mohenjodaro and Harappa
do not come from secure levels, and such horse bones "found their way
into deposits through erosion cutting and refilling, disturbing the
archaeological layers." Neither does he say how he arrived at this
conclusion nor has he cited any report in support of his view.

Whatever the case may be, it only shows that horse bones were actually
found in the excavations at Harappan sites. In order to justify his
stand he writes that Marshal's Harappan data are "dubious and decades
old." One cannot throw away the data presented by Marshal as it is the
earliest available archaeological report and it is not possible at
this point of time to say suddenly that Marshal has not reported that
layers that were eroded and disturbed in places where horse bones have
been found. One may ask Witzel to state on what basis he says that the
layers that yielded horse bones in more than one site as at
Mohenjodaro and Harappa were eroded and disturbed and the bones got
mixed up? Does he want us to believe that in both the sites, the same
layers yielding horse bones got mixed up in eroded layers? There are
three major excavations conducted at Mohenjodaro and Harappa namely by
Marshal, Mackey and Mortimer Wheeler.

Reports of excavations

George F Dales, who was the last in the series to investigate the
sites, published his findings "Some unpublished, forgotten or
misinterpreted features on Mohenjodaro" in the book Harappan
Civilisation , published by the American Institute of Indian Studies,
1982. He has stated that the reports of all the three great
excavations including that of Wheeler are "incomplete and suffer from
serious losses." Dales states that there is "no end to speculation
that these claims have aroused but it is impossible to reach objective
conclusions with the published details." It is not at all possible to
assess that the layers were disturbed unless other factual evidences
are shown to approve the disturbed conditions.

Michael Witzel also states that conclusions cannot be arrived at with
incomplete bones. Yes. However there cannot be two sets of standards
in dealing with the matter. For example, he questions the views of
Rajaram, but does not show whether R. Meadow, whose conclusions he
supports, based his views on "a full skeleton or full sets of onager,
donkey, or horse skeletons." Further it is known that there are very
rare examples where the full skeletons of animals have been found in
excavations. Are we not aware that most of the reconstructions of
dinosaurs are based not on full skeletons? Archaeologists reconstruct
several cultures with broken pottery. At one place he admits that
clear examples of horse bones are found in Harappan civilisation after
1800 BCE, which still falls in the late Harappan period. Witzel has a
dig at archaeologists that they are not zoologists or palaeontologists
to comment on animal bones. This would apply equally to Witzel who is
not a trained archaeologist to comment on this science. No
archaeologist is expert in all fields but certainly consults experts
before expressing his comments on which he has no expertise.

Problems are complex

To sum up Witzel's arguments proceed on the following lines: (1) No
horse bone has been found in Harappan sites. (2) When pointed out that
they are found in some instances, it is said they are only fragments
and not full skeletons. (3) When pointed out they were found in more
than one site it is said the layers in which they were found ought to
have been eroded ones or disturbed. (4) When pointed out that the
reports of horse bones were not by present day archaeologists but by
the early pioneers it is said that those are dubious and decades old.
(5) When pointed out they were reported by archaeological excavators
then comes the argument that archaeologists are not trained zoologists
and palaeontologists to comment on horse bones (though by the same
argument no credence can be placed on Witzel's opinion as he is
neither an archaeologist nor a palaeontologist). Such arguments are
brought under reductio ad absurdum by logicians. More examples of
willful rejections of points can be cited throughout the article but
suffice to say that for an unbiased reader, the whole article reads
purely a personal attack on an individual writer and exhibits certain
amount of impatience to listen to other view. This does not mean that
I agree with either of the views on the Aryan problem except stating
that we are yet not in a position to go with either of the views for
lack of evidence and would prefer to wait for further discoveries.

The debate has undoubtedly focused on one aspect of Harappan
civilisation: the problems are complex and the data available are
inadequate to come to any conclusion. The vital question that is not
in the debate by the general reader is that in the past 50 years of
India's independence, the unproved inferential views of these
scholars, some of which have been proved totally wrong as in the case
of "the total massacre of the Harappans by the invading barbaric
Aryans", are fully incorporated in our school textbooks, right from
the third or fourth standards. Wheeler dramatised this theory
vehemently that invading Aryans destroyed the Harappan civilisation
and within ten years he was proved totally wrong by new finds of
several Harappan sites spread in space and time. And yet millions of
children of India have been indoctrinated and brainwashed with these
views for the past five decades, and that has caused immense damage to
scientific knowledge. Is there any one party in India today which will
repent for this incalculable damage? Are we justified in continuing to
brainwash our generations of children? Is it not time that we remove
these from school books and confine such debates to post-graduate
community of the country and our children are told only the factual
history. A perusal of the books would show enormous imbalances in
representing regional and dynastic histories. It may be seen, for
example, that South Indian history receives inadequate representation.
The rule of the Pallavas, Cholas or Chalukyas that lasted for over
four hundred years each and had glorious achievements in all fields
gets summary representation, when compared with Mughal rule and the
Colonial rule that did not last even half that period. South India has
witnessed exemplary democratic institutions at the village level for
several centuries in the medieval period that is yet to be brought to
the notice of the children. Surely there is no proportionate
representation.

While the Western history gets exalted position in all fields, the
history of South East Asia like Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam and even China does not even get a cursory mention. There is
clearly an urgent need to jettison from the books the unproved
statements on Indian civilisation and consign them to academic
polemics, keep the power-mongering self-seeking Taliban politicians
out of educational field, and seek a proportionate place for Indian
civilisation in our textbooks. In fact Witzel has agreed to the need
to revise Indian history in his earlier article, which should be
entrusted to a body of unbiased and balanced academic body free from
racial, religious or political bias.

[ What Witzel has to do with this is unclear. His record so far does
not inspire confidence in his unbaisedness. His scholarly contribution
is also negligible-- he is known more for his personal attacks on
Indian scholars, especially Rajaram than any substantial contribution.
Also, are there not enough Indian scholars capable of writing Indian
history? Is it necessary to go to someone who struggling to save what
is left of his reputation, both as a scholar and as a human being?
Editor]

http://archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/harappan-horse.html

The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan
Question
Text of a lecture given on 29 September 1999 at Chennai’s Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT-Madras), at the invitation of the
students’ Vivekananda Study Circle. The talk was accompanied by a
slide-show illustrating various aspects of the life of the Indus
Valley civilization.

We in India often take pride in Indian civilization, in its
ancientness and great cultural traditions that go back to the dawn of
ages. This is a legitimate feeling, if you consider that Americans or
Australians, for instance, often take even greater pride in their
countries though they are about two centuries old ; of course, their
pride has to be mostly in their material achievements, since they have
had little to show by way of culture, especially nowadays. India, by
contrast, always laid stress on a deep culture before anything else,
and yet, contrary to a common misconception, she never neglected
material life either, except in recent centuries.

I would like to offer tonight some glimpses of the earliest
civilization on the Indian subcontinent, and to show that its high
practicality, and what we may call in our modern language its
“technological” accomplishments, deserve our admiration, as does the
cultural backdrop that made these accomplishments possible. I will
also take a brief look at its relationship with later Indian
civilization, and that will lead us to what is commonly known as the
“Aryan problem.” In doing so, we will be guided by an objective
scientific spirit, taking into account the most recent findings from
archaeology and other fields.

Advance of Archaeology

But first, let me note a strange fact. If you open any good book on
the great civilizations of the ancient world, aimed not at scholars
but at a wider readership, you will almost invariably find that
Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt are given pride of place ; then come, in
mixed order, ancient China, Greece, Central and South America, and the
Indus Valley civilization, also called the Harappan civilization.
Everyone agrees that this early civilization of the Indian
subcontinent was one of the largest in extent, that it made great
advances in crafts and technology, in trade and agriculture, and that
its social organization appears to have been one of the most
efficient, methodical and trouble-free ever ; still, in the end, it
will rarely be given more than a few pages where dozens will be
devoted to Mesopotamia or Egypt, and today, more than seventy years
after its discovery, its existence and accomplishments remain largely
unknown to the general public outside the subcontinent — and inside,
too.

In fact, almost everything about the Harappan civilization appears
mysterious at first sight : Who were its inhabitants ? What language
did they speak ? What beliefs and culture did they have ? What type of
government was able to hold it together ? What caused its decline ?
Why were its great cities abandoned ? Did great natural calamities
take place, or should we blame wars or invoke some invasions ? And
also : What connection is there between this ancient civilization and
those that followed on Indian soil, in the plains of the Ganga, for
example ? Is there a complete break between the two, as some Western
scholars assert, or can what we call Indian civilization be traced all
the way back to the Indus valley ?

Archaeologists, historians and experts from other fields have been
largely unable to agree on these fundamental questions. One reason for
this is the persisting lack of unanimity on the various decipherments
proposed for the Indus script, found on thousands of seals and pottery
pieces excavated from Harappan towns and cities. So their inhabitants
remain dumb to us, their thoughts and culture unfathomable — we are
left to admire their material skills, while scholars indulge in
“educated guesses” on the significance of the statues unearthed, the
figures engraved on the seals, the modes of burial, of government, and
virtually every aspect of Harappan life. Another reason is the very
small number of sites excavated, one to two per cent of all sites
identified as Harappan ; this means we have barely scratched the
surface, and many major findings are awaiting us a few metres
underground. To give just two examples, the site of Ganweriwala, in
the Cholistan region of Pakistan, is estimated to cover eighty
hectares, while that of Lakhmirwala, in India’s Punjab, is thought by
the Indian archaeologist J.P. Joshi to exceed 225 hectares — but
neither has been excavated. A third reason has been the nineteenth-
century hypothesis of an Aryan invasion into India, which insisted on
placing the origins of Indian civilization somewhere in Central Asia,
and therefore left the discovery in the 1920s of the Indus Valley
civilization wrapped in a cloud of confusion.

As a result, till a few years ago, the Harappan world was mostly
presented as anonymous and rather disembodied, with little to excite
our imagination in the way Egypt’s pyramids do. As one of those
general books I mentioned puts it, “The birth, life and death of the
Indus civilization remain three enigmas.”[1] Not very encouraging. But
the scene is fast changing : a lot of path-breaking excavations have
taken place in recent years, for example at Mehrgarh and Harappa, both
now in Pakistan, and in India at Dholavira and Rakhigarhri. Also, in
the last three years or so, a number of excellent new studies have
appeared on the Indus Valley civilization, written by Indian, American
and British archaeologists.[2]Scholars from other disciplines[3] have
joined them — sometimes also challenged them — some old misconceptions
are giving way, and a clearer picture is slowly emerging. In a few
years from now, we can expect this civilization to take its rightful
place as one of the greatest of the ancient world, with most of its
“enigmas” dispelled. Today, let us just try to take stock.

Some of the main sites of the Harappan civilization.
Note the concentration along the dry bed of the Sarasvati.
Physical Data
The most physical data about the Harappan civilization are clear
enough : As of last year, it was said to comprise more than 1,500
settlements, most of them small villages or towns, with only a few
large cities. Some of the “villages” covered more than twenty
hectares ; the cities, in comparison, often extended over some eighty
hectares — Mohenjo-daro up to 250 hectares, about the size of the
entire I.I.T. campus where we are gathered tonight. However, new sites
are added every week or month, and the U.S. archaeologist Gregory L.
Possehl, in a just published monumental study,[4] gives a detailed
list of 2,600 Harappan sites ! What the final figure will be is
anyone’s guess.

The total area encompassed was huge : over one million square
kilometres — more than ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia put together, or,
if you prefer, eight times the size of Tamil Nadu. The southern limit
was between the Tapti and the Godavari rivers, while the northern
limit was some 1,400 kilometres away in Kashmir (at Manda) — though
one site, Shortughai, is found still farther up, in Afghanistan ; as
of now, the easternmost settlement stands at Alamgirpur in Western
Uttar Pradesh, and the western limits were the Arabian sea and the
whole Makran coast, almost all the way to the present Pakistan-Iran
border.

If this civilization was named after the Indus, it is because the
first major settlements, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, were found along
that river and its tributary, the Ravi. However, in recent decades,
exploration on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border has brought to
light hundreds of sites along the dry bed of a huge river in the
Ghaggar-Hakra valley.[5] This lost river is now widely recognized to
have been the legendary Sarasvati praised in the Rig-Veda (which also
mentioned the Indus, or “Sindhu,” and all other major rivers of
Punjab). The course of the Sarasvati, south of and broadly parallel to
that of the Indus, has been studied and plotted in some detail not
only by geological exploration, but also by satellite photography and
recently by radioisotope dating of the water still found under the
river’s dry bed in the Rajasthan desert.[6] Since the sites found
along the Sarasvati far outnumber those in the Indus basin, some
scholars have made the point that the Harappan civilization would be
better named the “Indus-Sarasvati civilization.” For instance, the
giant sites of Ganweriwala and Lakhmirwala which I mentioned earlier
are located on the course of the Sarasvati, as are the better known
settlements of Kalibangan and Banawali. Of course, the name “Indus-
Sarasvati civilization” still leaves out a number of sites in Gujarat,
such as Lothal, but it stresses the importance of the Sarasvati river
as the major lifeline of this civilization, the Indus coming a close
second.

Whatever its name, when we speak of this civilization, we usually mean
its “mature phase” (also called “integration era”), during which the
great cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Ganweriwala, Rakhigahri,
Dholavira and others flourished. That phase is now usually dated
2600-1900 BC. But it was of course not born in a day : it was preceded
by a long phase called “early Harappan” or “regionalization era,”
during which villages kept developing and started interacting, and
also many technologies (pottery, metallurgy, farming etc.) were
perfected ; that early phase is now dated by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, a
U.S. archaeologist who has worked on many Indus sites, 5000-2600 BC.
It was itself the result of a long evolution between 7000 and 5000 BC,
which saw the emergence of the first village farming communities and
pastoral camps (as in many other regions of the world) : Mehrgarh, at
the foot of the Bolan Pass in the Kachi plain of Baluchistan, is the
best known example ; according to its excavator, the French
archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige, “The site covers an area of about
500 acres [200 hectares] with only pre-Harappan remains” and shows
“evidence of continuous occupation for more than three millennia prior
to the Harappan civilization.”[7]

The end of the mature phase is usually dated 1900 BC, when most of the
cities were gradually abandoned ; their remarkable civic organization
broke down, forcing people to go back to the villages. The most
probable cause was a series of natural catastrophes — earthquakes,
drastic changes in river courses, consequent depletion of the
Sarasvati, floods, but also a long drought over the whole region
(including West Asia), all of which ravaged agriculture, and perhaps
also excessive deforestation to supply wood to kilns and furnaces.
Another likely factor is a sharp reduction in external trade,
especially with Mesopotamia. But, while earlier generations of
scholars spoke of a total break in Indian civilization as a result of
this decline, archaeologists now agree that another phase, called post-
Harappan, post-urban or also “localization era,” and dated about
1900-1300 BC, followed, and went on to provide a smooth transition to
the first historical states in the Ganga region.

The Cities

What impressed the first discoverers of Harappan cities most was their
sophistication, which displayed town-planning of a level that would be
found only 2000 years later in Europe. Geometrically designed, the
towns had fortifications (for protection against both intruders and
floods), several distinct quarters, assembly halls, and manufacturing
units of various types ; some bigger cities had furnaces for the
production of copper tools, weapons or ornaments ; public baths
(probably often part of temples), private baths for most inhabitants,
sewerage through underground drains built with precisely laid bricks,
and an efficient water management with numerous reservoirs and wells
show that the ordinary inhabitant was well taken care of. Mohenjo-
daro, for instance, is thought to have had over 700 wells, some of
them fifteen metres deep, built with special trapezoid bricks (to
prevent collapse by the pressure of the surrounding soil), and
maintained for several centuries. Quite a few of those wells were
found in private houses. Dholavira had separate drains to collect rain
water and six or seven dams built across nearby rivers. “The fact that
even smaller towns and villages had impressive drainage systems,”
remarks Kenoyer, “indicates that removing polluted water and sewage
was an important part of the daily concerns of the Indus people.”[8] I
am sure that many of our villages in today’s rural India would be
quite happy with such an infrastructure — maybe the candidates at
present roaming our dusty roads in search of votes should study
Harappan public amenities !
Drains from individual houses
empty into a covered collective drain in Mohenjo-daro.

The well-known Indian archaeologist, B. B. Lal, writes in a recent
comprehensive study of this civilization :

Well-regulated streets [were] oriented almost invariably along with
the cardinal directions, thus forming a grid-iron pattern. [At
Kalibangan] even the widths of these streets were in a set ratio, i.e.
if the narrowest lane was one unit in width, the other streets were
twice, thrice and so on. [...] Such a town-planning was unknown in
contemporary West Asia.[9]

The houses were almost always built with mud bricks (sometimes fired
in kilns), which followed a standard ratio of 4 :2 :1, though the
actual sizes varied : bricks for houses, for instance, might be 28 x
14 x 7 cm, while for fortification walls they could be 36 x 18 x 9 cm
or even bigger. Walls were on average seventy centimetres thick (which
I suppose would be nearly three times the thickness of your hostel
walls), and many houses were at least two storeys high. A few houses,
perhaps those of rulers or wealthy traders, were particularly large,
with up to seven rooms, but they might be found right next to a
craftsman’s modest house. A number of big buildings, such as that
around Mohenjo-daro’s “Great Bath,” seem to have served a community
purpose, sometimes perhaps that of temples. Dholavira, in Kutch, even
boasts a huge maidan. It also has massive fortification walls, some of
them as thick as eleven metres, built in the earliest stage of the
city ; apart from standardized bricks, stones were also used there on
a large scale, undressed as well as dressed (note that stones were
perfectly dressed with just copper tools : iron was not yet known).

Map of one area of Mohenjo-daro (“HR area”),
as an example of complex town-planning 4,500 years ago.

Arts and Crafts

The Harappans were expert craftsmen. They made beads of carnelian,
agate, amethyst, turquoise, lapis lazuli, etc. ; they manufactured
bangles out of shells, glazed faience and terracotta ; they carved
ivory and worked shells into ornaments, bowls and ladles ; they cast
copper (which they mined themselves in Baluchistan and Rajasthan) and
bronze for weapons, all types of tools, domestic objects and statues
(such as the famous “dancing girl”) ; they also worked silver and gold
with great skill, specially for ornaments. Of course, they baked
pottery in large quantity — to the delight of archaeologists, since
the different shapes, styles, and painted motifs are among the best
guides in the evolution of any civilization (let us remember that most
objects made of cloth, wood, reed, palm leaves etc., usually vanish
without a trace, especially in hot climates). We also know that the
Harappans excelled at stone-carving, complex weaving and carpet-
making, inlaid woodwork and decorative architecture. And, of course,
they engraved with remarkable artistry their famous seals, mostly in
steatite (or soapstone) ; those seals, over 3,000 of which have been
found, seem to have served various purposes : some commercial, to
identify consignments to be shipped, and some ritual or spiritual, to
invoke deities.

Dancing, painting, sculpture, and music (there is evidence of drums
and of stringed instruments) were all part of their culture. Possibly
drama and puppet shows too, judging from a number of masks. Statues
are not abundant, but refined, whether in stone, bronze or terracotta.
An ancestor of the game of chess has been unearthed at Lothal.
Children too were not forgotten, judging from the exquisite care with
which toys were fashioned.

A probable ancestor of the game of chess (in terracotta, from Lothal).

Trade, Shipping, Agriculture & Technology
In addition to a considerable internal trade in metals, stones and all
kinds of goods, the Harappans had a flourishing overseas trade with
Oman, Bahrain, and Sumer ; exchanges with the Sumerians went on for at
least seven centuries, and merchant colonies were established in
Bahrain and the Euphrates-Tigris valley. Of course, none of this would
have been possible without high skills in ship-making and sailing, and
several representations of ships have been found on seals, while many
massive stone anchors have come up at Lothal and other sites of
Saurashtra. For navigation, compasses carved out of conch shells
appear to have been used to measure angles between stars. A voyage
from Lothal to Mesopotamia to sell the prized Harappan carnelian
beads, which the kings and queens of Ur were so fond of, meant at
least 2,500 kilometres of seafaring ; of course there would have been
halts along the shore on the way, but still, 4,500 years ago this must
have ranked among the best sailing abilities.

The other, perhaps the chief mainstay of Harappan prosperity was
agriculture. It was practised on a wide scale, with hundreds of rural
settlements and extensive networks of canals for irrigation ; wheat,
barley, rice, a number of vegetables, and cotton were some of the
common crops. Mehrgarh, for instance, shows “a veritable agricultural
economy solidly established as early as 6000 BC.”[10] Kalibangan even
yielded a field ploughed with two perpendicular networks of furrows,
in which higher crops (such as mustard) were grown in the spaced-out
north-south furrows, thus casting shorter shadows, while shorter crops
(such as gram) filled the contiguous east-west furrows. As B. B. Lal
has shown, this is a technique still used today in the same region.

Any society capable of town-planning, shipping, refined arts and
crafts, writing, sustained trading, necessarily has to master a good
deal of technology. This was also the case here. Craftsmen often used
standardized tools and techniques, especially for the more complex
productions. A highly standardized system of stone weights, unique in
the ancient world, was found not only throughout the Harappan
settlements, but also two thousand years later in the first kingdoms
of the Ganga plains. (The weights were mostly cubes, but sometimes
also truncated spheres.) The first seven weights in the system
followed a geometrical progression, with ratios of 1 : 2 : 4 : 8 : 16
(by which time the weight had reached 13.7g) : 32 : 64, after which
the increments switched to a decimal system and went 160, 200, 320,
640, 1600, 3200, 6400, 8000 and 12,800. The largest weight found in
Mohenjo-daro is 10,865 grams. Now, if you divide its corresponding
ratio of 12,800 by the ratio 16, you get 800 ; multiply this figure by
the weight of 13.7 g found for the 16th ratio, and you get a
theoretical weight of 10,960g — a difference of only 95g with the
actual weight, or less than 0.9% ! I don’t think the weights used
today in our markets reach such precision, not to speak of those
traders who get their weights tailor-made !

In fact, the Harappans very much seem to be the inventors of the first
decimal system for measurement. Their town-planning, which makes much
use of geometry, partly relied on this decimal system. Let me quote
from S. R. Rao, an Indian archaeologist famous for his excavations at
Lothal and his undersea discoveries at Dwaraka and Poompuhar ; he
comments here on an ivory scale found at Lothal, engraved with nearly
thirty divisions regularly spaced every 1.704 mm :

It is the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of the Bronze
Age. The width of the wall of the Lothal dock is 1.78 m [i.e. 1,000
such divisions ... and] the length of the east-west wall of the dock
is twenty times its width. Obviously the Harappan engineers followed
the decimal division of measurement for all practical purposes...[11]

I should point out that apart from the continuance of the Indus weight
system or agricultural methods into the historic period,
archaeologists have often highlighted how traditional craftsmen today
in Sindh, Punjab, Rajasthan or Gujarat still use techniques — in bead-
making or shell-working, for instance — very similar to those evolved
in Harappan times more than 4,500 years ago. Even some buildings
techniques are still in use, as B. B. Lal has pointed out.

But however impressive those technological achievements may be (and
there are many others), we should remember that they were not separate
activities, but always blended with the cultural life of the Harappan
world. As Kenoyer remarks,

Symbols of Indus religion and culture were incorporated into pottery,
ornaments and everyday tools in a way that helped to unite people
within the urban centers and link them with distant rural communities.
[12]

Government and Social Evolution

What we have seen so far, and very briefly, is only the most visible
features of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. The internal and
external mechanics of such a society are infinitely complex, and will
no doubt keep archaeologists racking their brains for some more time.
For example, while a few of them see the Harappan political
organization as an empire, with Mohenjo-daro as the seat of the
emperor and a number of “governors” in the regional capitals, others
are in favour of regional states, in view of the difficulty posed by a
single central authority over such vast distances without our modern
communications. Those regional states would have had identities of
their own (as evidenced from regional variations in arts and crafts),
but they would all have been united by a common culture, and also by a
common language (regardless of possible regional dialects). B. B. Lal,
for instance, brings a parallel between the Harappan society and the
Sixteen States or Mahajanapadas of later Buddhist times. This
hypothesis is strengthened by the lack of any glorification or even
representation of rulers on the seals ; even the few sculptures of
human figures found at Mohenjo-daro cannot be said to represent rulers
with any great certainty.

Whatever the truth may be, a few clear points stand out and meet with
general agreement :

First, a remarkable civic organization, which allowed streets in big
cities to be free from any encroachment for centuries together (can
our present Indian cities claim the same for just a few weeks ?). And
let us remember that Mohenjo-daro is thought to have sheltered at
least 50,000 inhabitants — almost a megalopolis for those times.

Secondly, a complete absence of any evidence of armies or warfare or
slaughter or man-made destruction in any settlement and at any point
of time, even as regards the early phase. Not a single seal depicts a
battle or a captive or a victor. True, there were fortifications and
weapons (the latter rather few), but those were probably to guard
against local tribes or marauders rather than against people from
other cities and villages. Fortifications were also often protections
against floods, and weapons must have been used mostly for hunting. So
far as the archaeological record shows, major disruptions in the
cities’ life were caused by natural calamities. In no other ancient
civilization is warfare so absent, and over such a long period of
time ; by contrast, other civilizations of the time consistently
recorded and glorified war feats. And our own modern “civilization,” I
need not remind you, is the bloodiest ever : a few days ago, a United
Nations report lamented the existence of more than 500 million small
arms in circulation — that means one gun or semi-automatic weapon for
every ten of us....

Thirdly, archaeologists now agree that the origins of the Indus-
Sarasvati civilization are to be found on the subcontinent itself. It
no doubt had extensive cultural and commercial contacts with other
civilizations, but its identity was distinct. In the words of Jim G.
Shaffer, a U.S. archaeologist who has worked on many Indus sites :

It is time to view the archaeological data for what it is, and not
what one thinks it is. Recent studies are just beginning to indicate
the real importance of Harappan studies, showing that in South Asia, a
unique experiment in the development of urban, literate culture, was
under way. Such a culture was highly attuned to local conditions and
not a mirror of Mesopotamia’s urban experiment....[13]

The Indus-Sarasvati civilization thus represented a long indigenous
evolution, spanning almost 6,000 years, and with no visible break or
disruption from outside. By any standard, this is a unique achievement
in human history.

But let us not forget that no society can survive long without a
culture to cement its members together and make their lives
meaningful. The very fact that the Indus-Valley civilization was able
to hold together for three millennia (if we include its early phase),
over an immense stretch of land, and with all the signs of social
harmony and stability, shows that it must have had a deep and strong
culture as its foundation. Let us now try to catch a glimpse of it.

The Aryan Problem

The relationship of the Indus-Saraswati civilization with the later
Indian civilization remains a subject of debate. Most of you probably
learned at school that the Harappan towns were destroyed by semi-
barbarian Aryans rushing down from Central Asia on their horse
chariots, and that the survivors among their inhabitants, assumed to
have been Dravidians, were driven to South India by the invaders.
Passages from the Rig-Veda were twisted and sometimes mistranslated to
show a record of such a physical and cultural clash. In many respects,
this is still the “official” theory, although, since the 1960s, when
the U.S. archaeologist G. F. Dales demolished all supposed evidence of
such attacks and slaughter, the theory has limited itself to saying
that the supposed Aryans, or Indo-Aryans or Indo-Europeans, to use the
present terminology, entered North India after the collapse of the
Harappan civilization.

But you may be surprised to learn that most archaeologists now reject
this invasion or migration theory, as they cannot find the slightest
trace of it on the ground, and it is unthinkable that the supposed
Aryans could have conquered most of India and imposed on it their
Vedic culture without leaving any physical evidence of any sort. Even
respected archaeologists of the old school of thought, such as Raymond
and Bridget Allchin, now admit that the arrival of Indo-Aryans in
Northwest India is “scarcely attested in the archaeological record,
presumably because their material culture and life-style were already
virtually indistinguishable from those of the existing
population.”[14] We are very far from the bloody invasion and cultural
war envisaged by Max Müller and other nineteenth-century scholars.

But even this tempered view is no longer acceptable to the “new
school,” whose foundation can be said to have been laid in 1984 by Jim
Shaffer. He wrote :

Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-
Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or
protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document
archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous
cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periods.[15]

Kenoyer, whom I quoted earlier, concludes in his recent beautiful
book :

Many scholars have tried to correct this absurd theory [of an Aryan
invasion], by pointing out misinterpreted basic facts, inappropriate
models and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. However, until
recently, these scientific and well-reasoned arguments were
unsuccessful in rooting out the misinterpretations entrenched in the
popular literature.

[...] But there is no archaeological or biological evidence for
invasions or mass migrations into the Indus Valley between the end of
the Harappan Phase, about 1900 BC and the beginning of the Early
Historic period around 600 BC.[16]

I could quote similar opinions from many respected Indian
archaeologists such as B. B. Lal, S. R. Rao, S. P. Gupta, Dilip K.
Chakrabarty, K. M. Srivastava, M. K. Dhavalikar, R. S. Bisht and
others. The point is that the theory of an Aryan invasion or even
migration into India finds no evidence on the ground and has no
scientific basis whatsoever.

The biological evidence Kenoyer refers to relies on the detailed
examination of skeletons found in Harappan settlements. Kenneth A. R.
Kennedy, a U.S. expert who has extensively studied such skeletal
remains, observes :

Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the
theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity [...].
What the biological data demonstrate is that no exotic races are
apparent from laboratory studies of human remains excavated from any
archaeological sites [...]. All prehistoric human remains recovered
thus far from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypically identifiable
as ancient South Asians. [...] In short, there is no evidence of
demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the
subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan
culture.[17]

I hope you understand the implication : No invasion or migration
caused or followed the collapse of the urban phase of the Indus-
Sarasvati civilization around 1900 BC. What is still taught in our
textbooks about so-called Aryans is no more than imagination. The
Harappans were just Northwestern Indians of the time and continued to
live there even after the end of the urban phase (with some of them
migrating towards the Ganga plains in search of greener pastures). In
fact, archaeologists and anthropologists now reject the old notion of
race altogether. To quote from Possehl’s recent book which I mentioned
earlier :

Race as it was used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
has been totally discredited as a useful concept in human biology.
[...] There is no reason to believe today that there ever was an Aryan
race that spoke Indo-European languages and was possessed with a
coherent and well-defined set of Aryan or Indo-European cultural
features.[18]

In simple terms, this means that, for science, there is no such thing
as an Aryan race, or a Dravidian race for that matter. Nor is there
for Indian tradition, in which the word “Arya” never meant a race, but
a quality of true nobility, culture and refinement. And so, if no
Aryan people invaded or entered into India, it stands to reason that
the Vedic culture was also native to the subcontinent, and not an
import. In fact, quite a few scholars and archaeologists today see a
number of clear Vedic traits in the Harappan culture. To cite a few :
the presence of fire-altars, an essential element of Vedic rituals ;
the symbol of a bull engraved on hundreds of seals, a Vedic symbol par
excellence ; the cult of a mother-goddess, of a Shiva-like deity, the
depiction of yogic postures, and of yogis or sages (judging from his
deeply contemplative appearance, the so-called “priest-king” was more
likely a yogi or a rishi than a priest). The famous Unicorn and the
three-headed creature, both depicted on many Indus seals, are
mentioned in the Mahabharata as aspects of Krishna, as N. Jha, an
Indian epigraphist, has shown. Indeed, quite a few symbols used in
later Indian culture, such as the trishul or the swastika, the pipal
tree or the endless-knot design, are found in the Indus-Saraswati
cities. Even its town-planning with three main distinct areas is
consistent with Rig-Vedic descriptions, as the Indian archaeologist R.
S. Bisht has argued.[19] So are trade and shipping, also extensively
mentioned in the Rig-Veda.

(Clockwise from top left :) A terracotta figurine from Harappa, in a
yoga posture;
seals depicting a Shiva-like deity, a unicorn, and a bull.

Moreover, let us remember the hundreds of settlements along the
Sarasvati, a river praised in the Rig-Veda, which confirms again the
identification between Harappans and Vedic people.

The decipherment of the Indus script would of course be the ultimate
test. I will just mention here that while attempts to read some proto-
Dravidian language into it have failed and are now abandoned, there
has been progress among those who see the language thus written to be
related to Sanskrit. N. Jha’s decipherment, proposed recently, appears
to be the most promising, simple and consistent, and once a major
study of it is published shortly,[20] we can expect a lively debate
among scholars to decide its value.

I am not touching here on a number of related issues, such as the
linguistic problem posed by a deep similarity between Sanskrit and
most European languages, since the verdict of archaeological evidence
is, to my mind, quite sufficient. Let me recommend to those interested
a brilliant study by a young Belgian scholar and expert on India,
Koenraad Elst, just published in India under the title Update on the
Aryan Invasion Debate. In it, he discusses most of those issues
threadbare and shows in particular that this linguistic affinity can
very well be explained without any sort of Aryan invasion.

One more remark before I conclude : Archaeological evidence in no way
contradicts Indian tradition, rather it broadly agrees with it (except
for its chronology). Whether from North or South India, tradition
never mentioned anything remotely resembling an Aryan invasion into
India. Sanskrit scriptures make it clear that they regard the Vedic
homeland to be the Saptasindhu, which is precisely the core of the
Harappan territory. As for the Sangam tradition, it is equally silent
about any northern origin of the Tamil people ; its only reference is
to a now submerged island to the south of India, Kumari Kandam, and
initial findings at Poompuhar show that, without our having to accept
this legend literally, we may indeed find a few submerged cities along
Tamil Nadu’s coast ; only more systematic explorations, especially at
Poompuhar and Kanyakumari, where fishermen have long reported
submerged structures, can throw more light on this tradition.

Not only Indian tradition, but a number of Indians with a far better
understanding of Vedic texts than that of Western scholars, for
example Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Sri Aurobindo,
B. R. Ambedkar and many others, have vigorously dismissed the Aryan
invasion as a groundless conjecture intended to divide Indians for
colonial motives. They have correctly argued that the Indian people
have no memory or record of any such outside origin, and archaeology
is now increasingly confirming their insights.

Conclusion

I will end where I began. Would it be “chauvinistic” (to use a word
our modern Indian intellectuals are so fond of) to attribute the
greatness of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization to the Indian genius ? I
do not think so. Apart from its striking cultural continuity with
subsequent developments of Indian civilization, which makes up a total
thread of 9,000 years, it exhibits traits typical of the Indian
temperament : a bold enterprising spirit, a remarkable adaptability to
changing conditions, a cultural and spiritual content in the smallest
everyday activities, and, most importantly, a capacity for a broader
view, without which this huge area could not have had such a cultural
homogeneity free from major conflicts. Even its remarkable civic
sense, so lacking in today’s India, is yet part of the Indian
character ; I have observed that Indians are quite capable of it, but
contrary to well-disciplined Western peoples (the British or the
Germans, for instance), Indians will accept collective discipline only
once their hearts have been conquered ; mere authority and rules
cannot get it out of them.

All said and done, the people of the Indian subcontinent can
justifiably claim this ancient civilization as a central and inspiring
part of their heritage. But they should not forget to learn from it
the great lesson of the cycles of birth, life, decay, and rebirth of
Indian civilization, a lesson we need to keep in our minds especially
at the present moment.

Bibliography & Suggested Further Reading

(This list includes only books published this decade and accessible to
a general public with an interest in the Harappan civilization and the
Aryan question ; more technical or scholarly studies have not been
listed here.)
Allchin, Raymond & Bridget, Origins of a Civilization — The Prehistory
and Early Archaeology of South Asia (New Delhi : Viking, 1997)
Danino, Michel & Nahar, Sujata, The Invasion That Never Was (New
Delhi : The Mother’s Institute of Research & Mysore : Mira Aditi, 2nd
ed., 2000)
Deo, S.B., & Kamath, Suryanath, The Aryan Problem (Pune : Bharatiya
Itihasa Sankalana Samiti, 1993)
Elst, Koenraad, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate (New Delhi :
Aditya Prakashan, 1999)
Feuerstein, Georg, Kak, Subhash & Frawley, David, In Search of the
Cradle of Civilization (Wheaton, U.S.A. : Quest Books, 1995 & Delhi :
Motilal Banarsidass, 1999)
Frawley, David, Gods, Sages and Kings — Vedic Secrets of Ancient
Civilization (Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass, 1993)
——, The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India (New Delhi : Voice of
India, 1994)
Gupta, S. P., The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization — Origins, Problems and
Issues (Delhi : Pratibha Prakashan, 1996)
Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley
Civilization (Karachi & Islamabad : Oxford University Press & American
Institute of Pakistan Studies, 1998)
Jha, N., Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals (Vanarasi : Ganga Kaveri
Publishing House, 1996)
Jha, N. & Rajaram, N. S., The Deciphered Indus Script — Methodology,
Readings, Interpretations (New Delhi : Aditya Prakashan, 2000)
Lal, B. B., The Earliest Civilization of South Asia (New Delhi : Aryan
Books International, 1997)
——, India 1947-1997 : New Light on the Indus Civilization (New Delhi :
Aryan Books International, 1998)
Mughal, Mohammad Rafique, Ancient Cholistan — Archaeology and
Architecture (Lahore : Ferozsons, 1997)
Possehl, Gregory L., The Indus Age : The Writing System (New Delhi :
Oxford & IBH, 1996)
——, The Indus Age : The Beginnings (New Delhi : Oxford & IBH, 1999)
Radhakrishnan, B. P., & Merh, S. S., eds., Vedic Sarasvati —
Evolutionary History of a Lost River of Northwestern India
(Bangalore : Geological Society of India, 1999)
Rajaram, N. S., Politics of History — Aryan Invasion Theory and the
Subversion of Scholarship (New Delhi : Voice of India, 1995)
Rajaram, N. S. & Frawley, David, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of
Civilization — A Literary and Scientific Perspective (New Delhi :
Voice of India, 1997)
Rao, S. R., Dawn and Devolution of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi :
Aditya Prakashan, 1991)
Singh, Bhagwan, The Vedic Harappans (New Delhi : Aditya Prakashan,
1995)
Talageri, Shrikant G., The Rigveda : A historical Analysis (New
Delhi : Aditya Prakashan, 2000)

References

[1]Ruth Whitehouse & John Wilkins, L’Aube des Civilisations (“Dawn of
Civilization”, Paris : Bordas, 1987), p. 69.
[2] See in the Bibliography titles under Allchin, Gupta, Kenoyer, Lal,
Mughal, Possehl, Radhakrishnan and Rao.
[3] See in the Bibliography titles under Elst, Feuerstein, Frawley,
Jha and Rajaram.
[4] See Bibliography under Possehl, 1999.
[5] See Bibliography under Mughal.
[6] See detailed study in S. M. Rao and K. M. Kulkarni, “Isotope
hydrology studies on water resources in Western Rajasthan,” Current
Science, 10 January 1997.
[7] Jean-François Jarrige, “Excavations at Mehrgarh” in Harappan
Civilization, ed. Gregory L. Possehl (New Delhi : Oxford & IBH, 1993),
p. 79 ff.
[8] Kenoyer, 1998, p. 61.
[9] Lal, 1997, p. 95.
[10] Jean-François Jarrige, “De l’Euphrate à l’Indus,” Dossiers
Histoire et Archéologie (Dijon : December 1987), p. 84.
[11] Rao, 1991, p. 17.
[12] Kenoyer, 1998, p. 162.
[13] Jim G. Shaffer, “Harappan Culture : A Reconsideration,” in
Harappan Civilization, ed. Gregory L. Possehl (New Delhi : Oxford &
IBH, 1993), p. 49.
[14] Allchin, 1997, p. 222.
[15] Jim G. Shaffer, “The Indo-Aryan Invasions : Cultural Myth and
Archaeological Reality,” in J. R. Lukak’s People of South Asia (New
York : Plenum, 1984), p. 88 (emphasis mine).
[16] Kenoyer, 1998, p. 174 (emphasis mine).
[[17] Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the
prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia ?” in The Indo-Aryans of
Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy (Berlin & New York : Walter de
Gruyter, 1995), p. 60 & 54 (emphasis mine).
[18] Possehl, 1999, p. 42.
[19 R. S. Bisht : “Dholavira Excavations : 1990-94” in Facets of
Indian Civilization — Essays in Honour of Prof. B. B. Lal, ed. J. P.
Joshi (New Delhi : Aryan Books International, 1997), vol. I, p.
111-112.
[20] Their book has since been published. See Bibliography under Jha &
Rajaram.

extracts

Michel Danino - A profile

Born in 1956 at Honfleur (France) into a Jewish family recently
emigrated from Morocco, from the age of fifteen Michel Danino was
drawn to India, some of her great yogis, and soon to Sri Aurobindo and
Mother and their view of evolution which gives a new meaning to our
existence on this earth. In 1977, dissatisfied after four years of
higher scientific studies, he left France for India, where he has
since been living.

Michel Danino participated in the English translation and publication
of Mother’s Agenda (13 volumes, Mother’s record of her yoga in the
depths of the body consciousness) and several books by Satprem
(Mother’s confidant and recipient of Mother’s Agenda). Michel Danino
also edited, among other titles, India’s Rebirth (a selection from Sri
Aurobindo’s works about India, available online ; first published in
1993, now in its 3rd edition, translated into nine Indian languages)
and India the Mother (a selection from Mother’s words, 1998).

Studying India’s culture and ancient history in the light of both Sri
Aurobindo’s pioneering work and archaeological research, in 1996
Michel Danino authored The Invasion That Never Was, a brief study of
the Aryan invasion theory. Intended primarily for the educated non-
specialist Indian public, the book has also been well received in
scholarly circles. A second, extensively revised and enlarged edition
was brought out in 2000; a third is scheduled for late 2003.

Over the last few years, Michel Danino has given lectures at various
official, academic and cultural forums on issues confronting Indian
culture and civilization in today’s world ; some of them have been
published under the titles Sri Aurobindo and Indian Civilization
(1999), The Indian Mind Then and Now (2000), Is Indian Culture
Obsolete ? (2000), and Kali Yuga or the Age of Confusion (2001).
Delving into the roots of Indian civilization, Michel Danino has
argued that its essential values remain indispensable in today’s India
— and in fact for all humanity in this critical phase of global
deculturization and dehumanization. Many of those lectures and a few
new ones are available on this homepage.

Michel Danino’s other fields of activity include Nature conservation;
his action for the preservation of an important pocket of native
tropical rainforest in the Nilgiris led to the creation of Tamil
Nadu’s first “watchdog” committee in which concerned citizens actively
collaborated with both the Forest Department and local villagers in
conservation work, also involving local teachers and hundreds of
students.

In 2001, Michel Danino convened the International Forum for India's
Heritage (IFIH) with over 160 eminent founder members, whose mission
is to promote the essential values of India's heritage in every field
of life.

http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/index.html

http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/indus.html

http://archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasions.html

The Deciphered Indus Script :
Methodology, Readings, Interpretations

By N. Jha & N. S. Rajaram(Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 2000 269 pp.,
bibl., index, Rs. 950/-)

This book review by Michel Danino was published in The Organiser of 12
November 2000

One of the most unyielding riddles of Indian prehistory has been the
one presented by the Indus script—the mysterious symbols delicately
engraved on thousands of small steatite seals found in ancient cities
of the Indus or Harappan civilization. Those cities—the best-known of
them Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Lothal, Dholavira—date back nearly 4500
years, which makes the Indus script one of the oldest in the world,
contemporary with Mesopotamian cuneiform scripts or Egyptian
hieroglyphics, for instance. Most of those other ancient scripts, also
the Maya, the Linear B of ancient Crete, have been unravelled by
decades of scholarly labour, debate, even controversy, often also by
strokes of genius. Yet the Indus script has proved a hard nut to crack
and has resisted generations of savants of all kinds since it came to
light in the 1920s. So much so that whoever finally succeeds is
assured of going down to posterity ! So far, more than a hundred
solutions have been proposed by Western and Indian archaeologists,
epigraphists and other experts : some (such as Father Heras or Asko
Parpola) have read a Dravidian language, others (such as the well-
known archaeologist Dr. S. R. Rao) have found a type of Sanskrit, yet
others numeric codes or various symbol systems. But the fact remains
that no interpretation has met with general or even widespread
acceptance, and some scholars have even despaired of the script being
ever understood. As a result, any new claim of a solution—and they
keep coming up regularly—is met with scepticism, if not weariness,
rather than excitement.

There are good reasons for this pessimism. First, the lack of
agreement on the type of language underlying the script, as the
cultural background of the Harappan civilization remains itself a
matter of debate. Second, none of the inscribed seals, pieces of
pottery etc. found so far bears a bilingual text : were a text,
however short, to be found written in another script alongside the
Indus (as was the case with the famous Rosetta stone which gave
Champollion the clue to the hieroglyphics), we would get some definite
clues. Third, most of the inscriptions found so far are strikingly
short, usually under ten or fifteen characters, leaving much room to
conjecture and not enough to independent verification. Fourth,
scholars from different schools of thought have tended to work in
isolation rather than in collaboration, and that of course has done
nothing to hasten towards a solution.

One decipherment that has received some publicity in recent years is
that of N. Jha, an epigraphist and Vedic scholar, first proposed in
his brief book, Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals published in 1996. Soon
afterwards, N. S. Rajaram, a multifaceted scholar with several books
on ancient India to his credit, endorsed Jha’s work, and joined him in
further research on the script. Together they have published the book
under review, which offers a more thorough exposition of Jha’s
methodology and findings. The very fact that the book includes
readings for nearly 600 Indus inscriptions—something very few other
proposed decipherments have provided—should be enough to arrest the
attention of any objective student of the Indus civilization.

The book’s first chapters offers a background to the Indus Valley
civilization and the whole problem of a supposed Aryan invasion of
India at or just after the end of that civilization. Although the
“Aryan Invasion theory,” the child of nineteenth-century European
Indologists, continues to figure in Indian history textbooks, most
archaeologists—whether Indian or Western—have now rejected it, for the
simple reason that there is not a shred of evidence for it on the
ground, and it is inconceivable that such a massive disruption in the
history of the subcontinent would have left no physical trace of any
sort. On the contrary, the one fact that emerges from recent
archaeological investigations is the striking continuity of the Indian
civilization from pre- to post-Harappan times, and in the absence of
any sign of warfare or man-made destruction in the Indus cities, large-
scale natural calamities remain the best explanation for the slow
disintegration of the Harappan urban structure. Rajaram, the author of
most of the book’s writing, is forthright in his conviction that with
the Aryan invasion now out of the way, we need look no farther than
the Indus cities to find the Vedic Aryans : “The vast body of primary
literature from the Vedic period has been completely divorced from
Harappan archaeology. This has meant that this great literature and
its creators have no archaeological existence. In our view, the
correct approach to breaking this deadlock is by a combination of likes
—a study of primary data from archaeology alongside the primary
literature from ancient periods.”

There lies in fact the originality of Jha’s approach to the Indus
script. Struck by a verse in the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva, 342.73)
which records Yaska’s effort to compile ancient Vedic glossaries “lost
buried in the depths”, Jha wondered if there could be a connection
between Yaska’s Nighantu and the seals. That insight led him to
develop his method, and many of the words he reads on the seals are
indeed listed in the Nighantu. That in itself would prove nothing,
since many before Jha have read on the seals just what they were
expecting to find, but the elaborate consonantal system described in
the core of the book certainly presents at first sight a consistent
picture. According to Jha, the Indus script contained almost no
vowels, a feature too of several other scripts, such as ancient
Hebrew. Most of the signs are therefore consonants or composite
consonants. One notable exception is the famous U-shaped letter which
has caused so much ink to flow in the scholarly world : Jha sees in it
a “generic vowel” used to denote words beginning with any vowel. As
regards the large number of distinct signs used in the Indus script
(well over 400), many are accounted for as composite signs, some of
them showing an embryonic vowel stroke system, and the rest as
variants, not an unreasonable hypothesis as the Indus script covered a
very wide geographical area and at least a millennium. A number of
tables expound the values for the signs, and even a layman can note
that Jha and Rajaram do not depart from the attributed values.

In addition, Jha links the mysterious unicorn and the three-headed
creature often depicted on the seals to passages in the Mahabharata
describing just such symbols. This is a novel observation which,
script apart, deserves the attention of archaeologists.

So then, what do the seals tell us according to the authors ? They
yield Sanskrit words written in the pithy Sutra style. Some
inscriptions do contain names of gods, as was to be expected, for
example “Indra” next to the representation of a bull, a symbol often
associated with this god in the Rig-Veda. Agni, Rudra, Rama and Sita
and other deities also find mention.

The inscription on the famous Pasupati seal, reads isadyatta mara,
which is listed in the Nighantu (2.22) and means “evil forces subdued
by Isha,” Isha being another name of Shiva. But apart from such divine
invocations, more mundane messages are engraved, from “a kitchen” or
“mosquito” to “people are working by fire at night to stop the flow of
flooding waters.” If the readings are accepted, they provide a
surprisingly vivid picture of Harappan society.

Well-produced, wide in scope, written in a lucid and racy style, the
book is however not free of defects. The text tends to be repetitive,
especially in the first chapters, at times going round in circles. The
reproductions of the seals are generally poor, especially the one
supposed to represent a horse, which looks more like a line-drawing ;
in view of its importance (conventional archaeology asserts that the
true horse is never represented on the seals), the reader is left
wishing for a good photograph. Also, the pictorial motifs found on the
seals are sometimes questionably described (for instance those on the
seal called “Seven goddesses”). In fact, the interpretation of such
motifs often seems rather forced. Finally, the parallels with the
geometrical formulas found in the Sulba-Sutras are not sufficiently
worked out to be convincing.

All those limitations, however, are incidental, for the central
question is whether the script has finally been cracked or not. One
legitimate objection would be that the almost total absence of vowel
signs allows too much freedom of interpretation ; only a fuller
publication covering all known 3,500 seals, or else the discovery of a
longer text, could remove such a doubt. Expectedly, Jha’s decipherment
has been fiercely attacked by a few conventional scholars, who will
not bear to hear anything in the shape of a Harappan-Vedic equation—an
equation which yet makes a lot of sense from archaeological and
cultural standpoints. Expectedly too, none of those detractors has so
far bothered to offer a reasoned and detailed critique of Jha’s
methodology and its technical aspects—perhaps even to study them at
all. What is needed is an objective scrutiny by experts in an open-
minded scientific spirit, something rarer in the scholarly world than
one would expect. We may have to wait for a few years for the dust to
settle and a sober verdict to emerge.

If Jha’s and Rajaram’s work fails to stand the test of time, it will
only go to swell the long list of ingenious but discarded hypotheses
on the most ancient script of the subcontinent. If, on the other hand,
it has finally solved the riddle—or even taken a few real steps
towards doing so—then we shall hear about it again, and the
consequences for our understanding of the roots of Indian civilization
will be momentous.

http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/jha_rajaram.html

A review of ANTAIOS
(June 1996 issue)

This article, published in The Observer of Business and Politics of 5
April 1997, is a review of the Belgian magazine of Paganism, Antaios.

In our age of pervasive frivolity on the one hand and pseudo-
intellectuality on the other, it is a pleasant surprise to see an
outstanding magazine such as Antaios. Named after the giant wrestler
of Greek mythology who was invincible as long as he was in contact
with the earth, his mother Gaia, this biannual magazine comes to us
from Belgium and is published in French by a “European circle of
reflection on Paganism.” The word “Pagan” is a heavily loaded one in
the West, where it tends to call up anything from the crudest savage
to pictures of drunken satyrs dancing around a fire under the moon.
But here is something both more sober and deeper: people dissatisfied
with the Christian civilization and its one-track thought, its
primitive idea of conquering the world for a “one and only God, a one
and only Party or a one and only Market.” For a few decades now, such
movements have been multiplying in the West, in search of pre-
Christian roots and a richer ancient heritage whose surface has as yet
barely been scratched.

Not unnaturally, some of these movements have discovered a profound
kinship with Hinduism, the only living tradition with unbroken
continuity to the remotest past, and a culture which never tried to
lock up God and man within a rigid set of dogmas revealed for all time
to come. That kinship is central to the present 216-page issue of
Antaios, which focuses on the theme of Hindutva. The editorial sets
the tone with this apt quotation from Alain Daniélou, who did much to
open the West and more particularly France to the Indian world-view:
“I have tried to give a glimpse of the profound values of this
prestigious civilization, the only one to have survived among the
great civilizations of the ancient world, and whose contribution, if
it were better known, could bring about deep changes in the thought of
the modern world, and prompt a new Renaissance.” The editorial adds:
“India calls on us to rediscover the vision of archaic man so as to
better confront the challenges of the next millennium, which will at
once be post-Christian and post-rationalist. Everybody knows, without
having really read it, Malraux's often truncated sentence: ‘In the
face of the most terrible threat mankind has known, the task of the
next century will be to reintegrate the gods in man.’ As a matter of
fact, India has never broken her contract with her gods, this pax
deorum which is the foundation of any traditional society.... Hindutva
is a way of freeing ourselves from the deadly grip of Western
ideology.... With our Hindu brothers, our duty is to resist all
cultural genocides which our dying modernity is still ridden with.”

There follow several enriching interviews with thinkers in different
fields: historians, archaeologists, ethnologists, philosophers,
sociologists, who all share their vision of a world wider than the
Judeo-Christian mould would have it. Two interviews stand out in this
issue devoted to India: those of Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel; they
are the two pillars of Voice of India, the publishing house which has
given us deep studies on the history and foundations of Christianity
and Islam and their impact on Indian society. Ram Swarup contrasts
these two Semitic religions with Hinduism, concluding: “The Hindu
tradition differs completely [from these conceptions]. In this
tradition, God resides in man's heart, and He is accessible to all who
seek Him in sincerity, truth and faith.... God reveals Himself
directly to the seeker and needs no specially authorized saviour, no
go-betweens.” When asked whether India can play a role in the present
“Pagan renaissance,” Ram Swarup replies: “I believe that Hinduism has
a very important role to play in the religious self-discovery of
humanity, particularly of Europe. The reason is simple. Hinduism
represents the most ancient tradition which is also still alive. It
has preserved in its bosom a whole spiritual past of humanity.” Sita
Ram Goel vigorously exposes the fatal narrowness of the so-called
monotheistic religions, and gives the hackneyed critics of the caste
system a very interesting rejoinder evidently based on his wide
scholarship: “The Western intelligentsia criticizes a caste system
that never existed in India, which the fruit of the imagination of
Indianists.... In India's literary and epigraphic sources, which are
more than abundant, we never meet Aryan invaders or this caste system
[they are supposed to have created], or also those shrewd Brahmins.
What we see is thousands of communities spread over the whole
territory and fulfilling all sorts of functions, economical, social,
cultural, administrative, political, spiritual and philosophical. The
genius of Hinduism consisted in allowing every one of these
communities to enjoy a maximum of autonomy within a wide cultural
consensus.... This concrete reality of India, of which indisputable
traces exist, has been totally ignored by Western research.” Sita Ram
Goel then traces the genesis of Voice of India, pointing out how
despite the seriousness of its publications, it has had to bear
official harassment and a complete blackout on the part of the
national press in India. “But no member of this tribe has ever
answered our criticisms of Christianity and Islam,” he adds.

The magazine's editor, Christopher Gérard, comments: “For Europeans
Pagans, these two writers are models. The link with our Paganism is
moreover clearly claimed, since they exhort us to rediscover our pre-
Christian heritage. Reading them, one seems at times to hear the voice
of Pagan Resistance fighters sprung from the past who recall us to our
sacred duty of memory.”

The following pages in this issue are dedicated to Alain Daniélou, who
spent many years in India; they include some little-known articles of
his, dealing in particular with the questions of caste, Hindu society,
the Hindu woman... Daniélou certainly penetrated deep into the Hindu
psyche, and sought to erase ingrained Western prejudices: “With rare
exceptions,” he writes in Castes, Egalitarianism and Cultural
Genocides, “we are witnessing under the steamroller of a so-called
Western egalitarianism the progressive disappearance of fine arts,
dance, music, traditional sciences and even languages of Africa and
other continents. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the
superiority of the white race, its civilization and religion, was
regarded in Europe as an indisputable fact. It took the excesses of
Nazism to call it somewhat into question. It is this conviction of the
superiority of Europeans and Christianity that served as an excuse for
colonial expansion. Christianity is theoretically antiracist, provided
everyone becomes a Christian and obeys the Church's arbitrary dogmas.
Islam too is antiracist if you become Muslim. Marxism is antiracist if
you accept its principles, its morality and class racism. One shudders
with horror when one sees the highest prelate of the Catholic Church
celebrate in 1984 the arrival in America of the Spanish, carrying the
‘Christian message,’ and when one thinks of the genocide this message
concealed and of the present state of Indians in so-called ‘Latin’
America. Those are the three ideologies that have endeavoured to
create in India religious and social conflicts....” Despite these and
many other remarkable insights, one may voice a word of caution
regarding certain notions (such as the Aryan invasion of India, the
phallic nature of the lingam, etc.) which Daniélou uses or develops,
perhaps little realizing that they are entirely the creation of a
nineteenth-century European scholarship imbued with precisely the
Christian prejudices he sets out to denounce.

This issue of Antaios will certainly generate genuine interest about
India in the French-speaking world, and we must wish this deserving
magazine and movement a rich and long pagan life.

http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/antaios.html

English: Lectures and Articles
Note : All articles / lectures below are copyrighted, but may be
reproduced in magazines / periodicals anywhere without further
authorization, provided : (1) the text is not edited in any way and is
reproduced integrally (it may however be split into several parts over
successive issues); (2) the article’s / lecture’s title and brief
introductory note are left unchange ; (3) the copyright shall remain
with the author; (4) upon publication, a complete copy of the issue of
the magazine / periodical containing the article / lecture is mailed
to Michel Danino (please contact over email for a postal address).

INDIAN CULTURE

Sri Aurobindo’s View of Indian Culture
Sri Aurobindo’s vision for his country has remained largely unknown in
India. A brief presentation.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/indianculture.html
Sri Aurobindo and the Gita
Sri Aurobindo’s view of some essential questions raised by the Gita :
peace vs. war, ahimsa vs. force and violence.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/gitalecture.html
The Gita and Integral Yoga
The relationship between Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and the yoga of the
Gita.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/integralyoga.html
The Gita in Today’s World
The Gita and the problem of action : Is the Scripture guilty of
warmongering?
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/gitain_todaysworld.html

ISSUES CONFRONTING INDIA

Effects of Colonization on Indian Thought
Why the Indian mind remains colonized, unable to view India’s heritage
from an Indian perspective.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/colonization.html
Is Indian Culture Obsolete?
Is India’s degraded condition due to her culture, or to a failure to
rejuvenate it?
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/cultureobsolete.html
Nature and Indian Tradition
Contrasts attitudes toward Nature in Western and Indian traditions.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/natureandindtradition.html
Kali Yuga or the Age of Confusion
How ill-defined concepts such as “God,” “religion,” “secularism” or
“tolerance” cause serious confusion in the Indian context.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/kaliyuga.html

INSIGHTS INTO ANCIENT INDIA

The Riddle of India’s Past
An overview of the Aryan problem.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/riddle.html
The Indus Valley Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question
A glance at the material and cultural backdrop of the earliest
civilization of the Indian subcontinent.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/indus.html
Vedic Roots of Early Tamil Culture
Highlights underemphasized cultural roots of the earliest urban
developments in Tamil Nadu.
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/tamilculture.html
Reply to Frontline’s Cover Story of 13 October 2000
A reply to Frontline’s cover story by
http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/frontline.html

chhotemianinshallah

unread,

Mar 29, 2010, 8:43:56 AM3/29/10

Complete Review Qarterly
@ the Complete Review
A Literary Salon & Site Review
Volume V, Issue 1 -- February, 2004

James Laine’s Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
and the attack on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
Background - Chronology - Reactions

Volume V, Issue 1 -- February, 2004

James Laine’s Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
and the attack on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
Background - Chronology - Reactions

For more information, please also see in this issue of the crQ:
James Laine’s Controversial Book by Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan and
Amodini Bagwe
Attacking Myths and Institutions: James Laine’s Shivaji and BORI
- the Editors, the complete review

Introduction

On 5 January 2004 a group calling itself the Sambhaji Brigade
attacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune, in
the state of Maharashtra, India. There was considerable damage done to
the holdings of this significant cultural repository, including to
irreplaceable and unique objects of historical and literary
importance. While not on the same scale, it was a catastrophe
comparable to the recent destruction and looting of libraries in
Sarajevo and Iraq, or the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in
Afghanistan, a devastating blow to contemporary civilization and to
the preservation of what remains of previous ones.

The attack was the preliminary culmination in a series of
increasingly disturbing and destructive events that were triggered by
the publication of James W. Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic
India (Oxford University Press, 2003). Laine's book sparked
controversy in India, leading Oxford University Press India to
withdraw it from the local market in November 2003. This did not
sufficiently appease those upset by the book. American professor Laine
had done some of the research for his book at BORI, and he thanked the
institute and some scholars affiliated with it in his
acknowledgements; the institute and its members were then targeted by
those angered by the book. In December 2003 one of those thanked by
Laine, historian Shrikant Bahulkar, was assaulted, his face blackened
by Shiv Sena activists. Then, in January, came the attack on the
institute itself.

While the attack was widely condemned, and over 70 of the
participants were arrested, Laine and his undertaking continue to be
denounced. Shivaji has now been banned, and Laine has been charged by
the authorities and appears to be subject to arrest if he returns to
India. Laine and his book -- and BORI -- continue to be used in what
appears to be an increasingly politicised debate.

These events are particularly disturbing because, unlike most
other recent incidents of large-scale cultural vandalism, they
occurred in a country at peace, and in a democracy -- a system that
depends on a tolerance for a plurality of opinions and on free
expression to properly function. Also striking -- and worrisome -- is
that the conflict has been framed as one centred around questions of
historical (in)accuracy and and (ir)responsibile scholarship, but
there has been little interest from many of those challenging Laine's
book to debate these questions, as they have answered them with mob-
rule and violence instead of counter-argument.

There has been much discussion about these events in India,
but, despite the supranational issues at stake, as well as the roles
played by an American professor and the world's largest -- and one of
the most respected -- university presses, international press coverage
has been very limited. The conflict is a complex one, and it is both
politically and religiously highly charged, centred around an
historical figure -- Shivaji -- who is not well known outside India.

In this introductory overview we try to present the necessary
background information to allow some understanding of the events that
have taken place. Other pieces in this edition of the complete review
Quarterly devoted to the subject are Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan and
Amodini Bagwe 's essay on James Laine’s Controversial Book and our
commentary, Attacking Myths and Institutions: James Laine’s Shivaji
and BORI

A guide to what's at issue

Shivaji

Chhattrapati Shivaji Maharaj (also known simply as Shivaji or
Sivaji) lived 1627/1630 to 1680. A Maratha leader, he was fiercely
opposed to the Mughals that at that time controlled much of what is
now India, and was instrumental in establishing Marathi independence.
Crowned the first Maratha king in 1674, he is a founding-father figure
who is still highly revered in India, especially in the state of
Maharashtra (major cities: Mumbai (Bombay) and Pune); see, for example
the official Maharashtra state site, where a page is devoted to
Shivaji: the Maker of the Maratha Nation

Shivaji is also perceived as a specifically Hindu hero, having
established a Hindu empire in opposition to the Mughals (who were
Muslim, and foreign). While widely revered in India, Hindu-nationalist
groups have been particularly vociferous in allowing no criticism of
the man, his accomplishments, and the legends around him.

His name, of great symbolic value, is often invoked, especially
in recent years as a Hindu-focussed nationalism (and political
polarization) in India has been resurgent. So, for example, Mumbai
(formerly Bombay) airport has apparently been re-named: Chhatrapati
Shivaji International Airport.

For additional information, see:

Chhatrapati Shivaji - The Legend
http://www.chhatrapati-shivaji.com/
Shivaji at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shivaji
Shivaji at Freeindia.org
http://www.freeindia.org/biographies/greatlkings/shivaji/

The Complexities of Shivaji by Vijay Prashad, at Proxsa (also at
HVK.org, where -- scroll down -- there is a response from
Bhalchandrarao C. Patwardhan)

http://www.foil.org/history/shivaji.html

James W. Laine

James W. Laine is the Arnold H. Lowe Professor and Chair of
Religious Studies at Macalester College; see his faculty page. He got
his B.A. from Texas Tech, and his M.T.S. and Th.D. from Harvard. See
also his Curriculum vitae.

James Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India

James Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India was
published by Oxford University Press. It apparently appeared in the US
and the UK in early 2003, and was then published in India in the
summer of 2003.

In describing the book Oxford University Press writes:

The legends of his life have become an epic story that everyone in
western India knows, and an important part of the Hindu nationalists'
ideology. To read Shivaji's legend today is to find expression of
deeply held convictions about what Hinduism means and how it is
opposed to Islam.

They also suggest:

Different sub-groups, representing a range of religious persuasions,
found it in their advantage to accentuate or diminish the importance
of Hindu and Muslim identity and the ideologies that supported the
construction of such identities. By studying the evolution of the
Shivaji legend, Laine demonstrates, we can trace the development of
such constructions in both pre-British and post-colonial periods.

It appears that Laine's focus on a shifting legend -- rather a
fixed-in-stone image of the man some groups insist upon -- and the
notion that the legend has been adapted for other purposes is among
the aspects of the book that has proved most controversial.
(Ironically, reactions by some groups that tolerate only their current
notion of the legend would appear to support at least Laine's
underlying thesis.)

The statement in the book that appears to have provoked the
greatest outrage is the mention that it has been suggested that
Shivaji's father was not Shahaji, Laine writing: "Maharashtrians tell
jokes naughtily that Shivaji’s biological father was Dadoji Kondeo
Kulkarni" (quoted, for example, in The Telegraph, 18 January). This
statement -- indeed, even the mere suggestion -- is apparently
considered an outrageous insult and defamation of Shivaji, Shahaji,
and Shivaji's mother, Jijabai (all highly revered). The claim is also
widely considered unfounded and gratuitous; apparently this particular
'naughty joke' is not familiar to most Maharashtrians (or at least
none appear to have come forward acknowledging that they've heard this
sort of banter).

In his acknowledgements Laine thanked numerous people, writing
also:
In India, my scholarly home has been the Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute in Pune, and there I profited from the advice and assistance
of the senior librarian, V. L. Manjul. I read texts and learned
informally a great deal about Marathi literature and Maharashtrian
culture from S. S. Bahulkar, Sucheta Paranjpe, Y. B. Damle, Rekha
Damle, Bhaskar Chandavarkar, and Meena Chandavarkar. Thanks to the
American Institute of Indian Studies and Madhav Bhandare, I was able
to spend three productive periods of research in Pune.

Laine's thanks were apparently interpreted as a declaration of
scholarly complicity, and those named were among those targeted by the
groups opposed to Laine's work -- despite the fact that several
scholars attached to BORI distanced themselves from the book and were
among those demanding that OUP India withdraw the book.

Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India has not been
widely reviewed (in part likely because it is a scholarly work of the
sort generally mainly reviewed in academic journals, many of which
take longer to review titles than the mass media does). Among the few
reviews is V.N. Datta's in The Sunday Tribune (7 December), An image
that might be disturbing

For additional information see:

The OUP-USA publicity page ((Updated - 29 March): The book is no
longer listed in the OUP-USA catalogue)

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Hinduism/?view=usa&ci=0195141261

The OUP publicity page ((Updated - 29 March): The book is barely
listed in the OUP catalogue)

To purchase Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
from Amazon.com
from Amazon.co.uk

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute is located in Pune. It was
founded in 1917 and is a leading repository of Indological manuscripts
and a renowned centre for scholarship.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040119/asp/frontpage/story_2802420.asp

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20031207/spectrum/book4.htm

For additional information see:
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Shivaji.html

BORI at virtualpune.com
A learning house with a world-wide appeal, at the Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/407198.cms

Sambhaji Brigade

A small, previously little known group affiliated with the
Hindu-nationalist organisation, Maratha Seva Sangh

Chronology

(Based on Ketaki Ghoge's chronology in his article, Rape of
culture leaves city in shock (Indian Express, 5 January), and other
mentioned sources. See also Anupama Katakam's article, Politics of
vandalism in Frontline (issue of 17-30 January) for a good overview
(and pictures).)

June, 2003: James Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
published in India by Oxford University Press India.

November, 2003: Scholars affiliated with the Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute (BORI), historians (including Jaysinhrao Pawar,
Babasaheb Purandare, Ninad Bedekar, and Gajanan Mehendale), and others
(including city MP Pradeep Rawat) called for the withdrawal of the
book. (See Scholar destroys own work on Shivaji, Manjiri Damle, Times
of India, 27 December)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2102/stories/20040130003802800.htm

21 November 2003: Oxford University Press India apologised and
withdrew the book from the Indian market. (The book continued to be
listed in the OUP India catalogue until mid-January, but has since
been removed. The book remains in print and available outside India.)

http://www.oup.co.in/

22 December 2003: Shiv Sena activists confronted and attacked scholars
attached to BORI over their role in assisting Laine with his book.
Sanskrit scholar Shrikant Bahulkar was physically assaulted and his
face blackened (an act meant to shame him). (See Scholar destroys own
work on Shivaji)

http://www.oup.co.in/

25 December 2003: Gajanan Mehendale, who had previously called for the
withdrawal of Laine's book, went to the Shiv Sena offices to demand an
apology for the assault on Bahulkar. When none was forthcoming he
destroyed several hundred manuscript pages of his own unpublished
biographical study of Shivaji. (See Scholar destroys own work on
Shivaji)

http://www.oup.co.in/

28 December 2003: Shiv Sena leader Raj Thackeray personally apologised
to Bahulkar. The Times of India reported (29 December) that:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/388216.cms

Raj assured Bahulkar that such incidents would not be repeated and
that Sena activists would have to get a "clearance" from the toprung
leaders before embarking on such "aggressive campaigns" in the
future.

late December, 2003: James Laine faxed a statement apologising to some
Pune scholars. The Times of India reported Laine says sorry for
hurting sentiments (30 December), quoting:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/394299.cms

"It was never my intention to defame the great Maharashtrian hero. I
had no desire to upset those for whom he is an emblem of regional and
national pride, and I apologise for inadvertently doing so," he said
in a faxed message to some city scholars. "I foolishly misread the
situation in India and figured the book would receive scholarly
criticism, not censorship and condemnation. Again I apologise," the
American author said.

5 January, 2004: Over 150 activists from the Sambhaji Brigade attacked
BORI, ransacking the building, defacing books and artworks, and
destroying property. The extent of the damage is not clear at this
time -- especially regarding the irreplaceable manuscripts and
historical artefacts -- but appears to be considerable . Seventy-two
of the hooligans were arrested. (See also: 'Maratha' activists
vandalise Bhandarkar (Times of India), Helping Laine: Books, powada,
poem (Express News Service), and Mob ransacks Pune's Bhandarkar
Institute (Rupa Chapalgaonkar, Mid-Day))

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/407226.cms

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=72609

http://www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=38796

6 January: Mid-Day published Pune institute's desecration shocks
author, in which Laine comments on events and explains, inter alia:

My goal was not to establish my version of the true history of
Shivaji, but to examine the forces that shaped the commonly held
views. In so doing, I suggest that there might be other ways of
reading the historical evidence, but in making such a suggestion, I
have elicited a storm of criticism. I am astonished.

7 January: In the Indian Express Shailesh Gaikwad reports MSS chief’s
clout keeps govt away. Illustrating the government's disturbing
priorities (and a continued interest in appeasing populist elements)
State Home Minister R.R. Patil is quoted as saying:

We condemn the attack and also distorting of the history of
Chhatrapati Shivaji. The government is seeking legal opinion to
ascertain if any action can be taken against the author and also
whether the book can be banned.

9 January: At a press conference Sambhaji Brigade spokesman Shrimant
Kokate is reported (in the Times of India) to have expressed
pleasantries such as:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/416173.cms

"In fact, scholars should be happy that Bori is still intact," he
remarked. Kokate said that the brigade was "most unhappy" that
scholars who had helped Laine were "still alive" and demanded that
they face an inquiry or be handed over to the Brigade. Kokate
expressed his displeasure about the fact that the media had labelled
them as goons. "We will deal with the media later," he threatened.
In another report (Express News Service) he is quoted as saying:

http://www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=38950

Those who fed him [Laine] with the offensive information should be
hanged by the government. If the government is unable to do so they
should be handed over to us.
Kokate was apparently not arrested for these inflammatory remarks.
Instead:

9 January: Charges were filed against James Laine and OUP India by the
Deccan Gymkhana police. The charges are registered under Sections 153
and 153(A) of the Indian Penal Code. (As A.G. Noorani notes in
Chhatrapati or bust (Hindustan Times, 27 January), Section 153A has
frequently -- but selectively -- been invoked over the past decade and
more, writing: "Section 153A is not invoked to suppress the VHP or the
Shiv Sena’s hate campaign but to suppress scholarly books unacceptable
to them.".) These sections read:

153. Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot (...)
153A. Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of
religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing
acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony

(See also Case against Laine, OUP (Express News Service)

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=72977
and Pune police book American writer Laine (Times of India))
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/417192.cms

12 January: James Laine published a commentary piece, In India, 'the
Unthinkable' Is Printed at One's Peril in The Los Angeles Times; it
is, unfortunately, not freely accessible on the Internet. In it he
describes his interest in Shivaji, his book, early reactions to it,
and then the events that unfolded. He relates how, initially, the book
"even ranked up with Hillary Rodham Clinton's in the local list of
English-language bestsellers in Pune", and mentions:

Back in Pune this summer, I saw a couple of bland but positive reviews
in the Indian papers. I thought, "As long as they don't get to the
last chapter."
He concludes the piece:

The vast majority of Indians are appalled at what happened in Pune.
And yet no one has stepped forward to defend my book and no one has
called for it to be distributed again. Few will read it for
themselves. Instead, many will live with the knowledge that India is a
country where many thoughts are unthinkable or, if thought, best kept
quiet.

13 January: Mid-Day reports -- in an article with a very understated
headline -- OUP asked to shut Pune office. As the article explains:

Maratha organsisations supporting Sambhaji Brigade have now forced the
Oxford University Press showroom in Pune to down shutters. (...) They
told the employees there that (...) they should down their shutters or
else face consequences.
No arrests were reported.

http://www.mid-day.com/404.htm

14 January: Despite the fact that OUP had already withdrawn Laine's
book from the Indian market two months earlier, the Maharashtra
government moved -- eventually successfully -- to have Laine's book
banned, again citing Sections 153 and 153A of the Indian Penal Code.
(See reports from the Times of India (14 January) and Reuters (16
January).)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/421394.cms

http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=27624

16 January: Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee admirably spoke
out against the book-ban. The Times of India reported PM shoots from
the hip, upsets Shiv Sena, NCP, and quotes the Prime Minister as
sensibly stating:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/428426.cms

He said the "right way" to express disagreement was through
discussion. "Countering the views in a particular book by another good
book is understandable," Mr Vajpayee said, adding that he did not
approve of the ban on Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India by American
writer James Laine.

The Express New Service report, PM flags off Mumbai campaign, opposes
ban on Shivaji book, had it a bit differently, quoting the PM as
saying:

http://www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=39370

"If you do not like anything in a particular book, then sit and
discuss it. Banning a book is not a solution, we have to tackle it
ideologically ... If differences of opinion remain after a issue is
discussed, the best way would be to come out with another good book on
the subject"

As the Times of India report also notes: "Ironically, the PM made this
observation at a function to unveil a majestic statue of Chhatrapati
Shivaji in the Sahar airport precincts."

Vajpayee's comments were immediately denounced, including by groups
allied with the PM's party. Indifferent to principles, at least one
person shifted the focus to what is really at issue:

"He should have kept mum, especially since elections are round the
corner," a senior Sena leader present at the function told TNN.

(See also PM not happy with ban on book on Shivaji in Mid-Day)

(Updated - 29 March): Unfortunately, once election time rolled
around, Vajpayee began singing a different tune; see entry of 20
March.

January 18: Politicians continued to seek to outdo one another in
their defence of Shivaji. Express News Service reports Antulay calls
for legal action against Laine (17 January), as senior Congress leader
A.R.Antulay attacked Laine, "urging the government to take all
necessary legal steps to punish him." He is also quoted as saying:

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=73576

"How can a dialogue be held if somebody is abusing your father and
mother ?" Antulay asked. (...) He said Shivaji was the pride of India
and Indians should not tolerate any humiliation of their heroes.

Meanwhile, The Hindu reported (18 January) that Chief Minister
Sushilkumar Shinde: "said it was 'not fair' to write such 'bad things'
about Shivaji."

http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/434030.cms

19 January: The Times of India reported (20 January) that MSS
threatens more attacks on BORI: apparently the Maratha Sewa Sangh
warned that: "the ‘Sambhaji Brigade’, would resort to more attacks if
students were made to collect money for rebuilding Bori." Despite such
threats, no arrests were reported.

21 January: The Times of India reported that Maratha group flays
Sambhaji brigade, describing a newly-formed group, Maratha Yuvak
Parishad (MYP), opposed to the use of Shivaji by activists "to further
their own political ends".

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/437087.cms

22 January: The Times of India reported that Maratha outfit files
petititon against BORI. Maratha Vikas Sangh has apparently set its
sights even higher, having:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/439070.cms

filed a petition in the Bombay high court demanding that all documents
at BORI be seized by the union government. Refusing the let the James
Laine controversy die down, MVS has also demanded censorship on all
books that would be written on historical figures.

(This demand for a quasi-Soviet approach to ensure that the historical
record is kept ... straight apparently has not been widely embraced;
nevertheless, despite suggesting such a thing, the MVS is, amazingly,
still taken seriously.)

28 January: The Times of India reports 'Silent’ majority lodges
protest at BORI:
On Republic Day, inspired by a chain e-mail circulated over the last
two weeks, citizens made a beeline for the institute to register a
silent protest against the vandalism. This, despite a police warning
against gathering at the institute on R-Day. Every protestor dropped a
rupee coin in specially placed urns, as a token contribution towards
the restoration of the institute.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/448086.cms

March: Oxford University Press apparently withdraws all references to
Laine's book from all its online catalogues (previously information
had been available both at OUP-USA and the main OUP site). It is
unclear whether this is a move to remove the book from the market
entirely (including the US and the UK), or merely a defensive legal
maneuver (to preclude any liability claims).

16 March: Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani bravely maintained: "that
he was against banning any controversial publication". (See Advani
against banning controversial books (The Hindu, 16 March) and Advani
against ban on Laine's book on Shivaji (at NDTV).) This, of course,
led to:

http://www.ndtv.com/news/error.php

17 March: The Times of India reported of the Uproar in house as DF
defends ‘Shivaji’ ban:

Proceedings in both houses of the state legislature were stalled for
over two hours on Wednesday after the opposition Shiv Sena-BJP members
objected to the ruling coalition members’ suggestion that Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister K Advani
should apologise for disapproving of the state’s ban on the
controversial book Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, penned by
American scholar James Laine.

20 March: The pressure -- and election politics -- finally got to
Prime Minister Vajpayee as he kicked off the BJP election campaign in
Maharahstra, as he suddenly decided the government ban on Laine's book
was a pretty darn good idea after all. Not only that: he also felt it
necessary to assure his listeners: "We are prepared to take action
against the foreign author", and that this was "a warning to all
foreign authors that they do not play with our national pride".

See reports in Mid-Day (Shivaji is my ideal, says Vajpayee) and
Newindpress.com (Vajpayee kickstarts campaign with warning to foreign
authors).

late March: Seeing how well the fervent pro-Shivaji attitude played to
the crowds, and seeking to outdo all those who were satisfied with
merely bashing James Laine, state BJP president Gopinath Munde decided
he could profit by going after bigger fish closer to home and:

demanded a ban on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s classic Discovery of India
on the ground that a 1986 edition of the book contains remarks highly
derogatory of the Maratha king.

(See Ban Nehru's Discovery of India: State BJP, The Times of India, 19
March).

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/568894.cms

Unfortunately, the overeager Munde apparently never looked at the book
in question: as The Times of India reported (21 March), Nehru's book:
"contains no such derogatory remark."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/572510.cms

A few days later even Munde had to admit as much -- excusing his zeal
on the grounds that: "I am a politician and not a scholar". But, just
so nobody would think he was going soft, he added: "there is no change
in my party’s stand -- it will not tolerate any insult to national
heroes like Shivaji". (See: Munde wriggles out of Nehru gaffe, The
Times of India, 25 March).

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/580909.cms

late March: Another crowd-pleasing, debate-stifling stunt: Pune police
commissioner D.N.Jadhav:

told reporters today that he was writing to Laine to summon him to
India for questioning. If Laine refuses the "request," the police
chief plans to move court. And if Laine ignores the summons, the
police will seek the help of CBI and Interpol, Jadhav said.

(See Day after showing off liberal face, Cong hounds US professor, The
Indian Express, 23 March.)

This at least got some international attention -- see the BBC's
report, India seeks to arrest US scholar -- and again seems to have
played very well in India, where everybody seemed to get really
excited about possibly involving Interpol (despite the fact that
Laine's whereabouts are well-known); see, for example, State to seek
extradition of Shivaji author (The Times of India, 23 March)

Unfortunately, as Vijay Singh noted at Rediff (27 March): Bringing
Laine back: Easier said than done. (In fact, it is clear that Laine
has not been charged with any extraditable offense.)

As usual, there was far more bluster than action: by 25 March the
headline was: No letter to Laine as yet (Indian Express, 25 March), as
(sensibly):
Police Commissioner D N Jadhav today said the police will not be
sending a letter to James Laine, the author of Shivaji: Hindu King in
Islamic India asking him to come to India till April 5 since a
petition has been filed in the Bombay High Court.

See also: Criminal action stayed against Laine (Mid-Day, 27 March).
http://www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=43617

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3561499.stm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/576118.cms
http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/mar/27laine.htm
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=79907

Reactions

Almost no attention has been paid to the controversy
surrounding Laine's book or the attack on BORI outside of India.
Laine's opinion piece, In India, 'the Unthinkable' Is Printed at One's
Peril, in the 12 January issue of The Los Angeles Times, and an
article by Martha Ann Overland ("Vandals Attack Research Center in
India in Retaliation for Help It Gave to American Scholar") in the
Chronicle of Higher Education (issue of 23 January), neither of which
is freely available on the Internet, and a Star Tribune article by
Mary Jane Smetanka, Macalester professor's book incites a riot a world
away ((Updated - 29 March): now only available at WCCO), were among
the very few mentions in the American press.

((Updated - 29 March): With the calls for Laine's arrest at the
end of March there has again been some international coverage, most
notably Scott Baldauf's article, How a US historian sparked calls for
his arrest - in India, in the Christian Science Monitor (29 March).
See also Sara Rajan's A Study in Conflict (Time (Asia), 5 April).)

What reactions there have been in the academic community do not
appear to have made any impact or found any resonance outside those
limited circles. There also appear to have been no calls to withdraw
Laine's book, or ban it, anywhere outside India.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0329/p01s04-wosc.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501040405-605550,00.html

In India , the attack on BORI has been widely (though far from
universally) condemned. The destruction of property, especially that
which is unique and of historical significance, and the threats
against scholars have been denounced in the press and in public. Prime
Minister Vajpee's approach, as reported in the Times of India, seems
to be the preferred one: "He said the "right way" to express
disagreement was through discussion" -- though even some of his
political allies denounced him for these statements and his opposition
to the book-ban.

Disturbingly, a significant minority has been willing to excuse
even the attacks on BORI as justifiable under the circumstances, and
while 72 of those responsible were arrested and charged, there have
been continued threats (both legal and physical) against BORI,
scholars associated with it, and against author James Laine.

As Laine noted in his 12 January piece in The Los Angeles
Times:
The vast majority of Indians are appalled at what happened in Pune.
And yet no one has stepped forward to defend my book and no one has
called for it to be distributed again.

Indeed, most of these events took place after Laine's book had
officially been withdrawn from the Indian market, i.e. essentially no
longer existed. The banning of the book and the attacks on BORI and
various scholars were thus clearly aimed not only at this specific
case, but at the whole enterprise of scholarship, and of freedom of
expression. Concerns about this have been raised in the media, but
Laine's book has received little support: there still appear to have
been almost no calls for it to be made available in India again.

Surprisingly, there has also been almost no criticism of Oxford
University Press' self-censorship and withdrawal of the book from the
Indian market. A rare mention can found is in the "Weekly Organ of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist)", People's Democracy, who properly
note (25 January):
The media have criticised the Shiv Sainiks’ pranks but not the
hastiness of the Oxford University Press in withdrawing the book even
before the matter became public or the government for banning the book
even before the matter was discussed in public fora.
There have been numerous opinion pieces regarding these
incidents. Among the disturbing trends they make note of is the uneven
use of Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code to limit expression, and
the politicising of what should be academic debates.

Among the opinion pieces are:

Dileep Padgaonkar on Myth against history (Times of India, 25
January), who finds these events: "drive home the point yet again that
in this country it is myth, not history, that ignites popular
imagination."

A.G. Noorani's Chhatrapati or bust (Hindustan Times, 27 January),
where he writes of what happened: "It was not an aberration. It is
part of a practice, connived at and condoned, during the past decade
and more."

Ananya Vajpeyi's Everything Foul and Unfair (The Telegraph, 19
January), where he suggests the most critical question is: "(A)re we
prepared to defend acts of violence perpetrated in the name of our
identity, our beliefs and finally, our sentiments ?"

An editorial in The Indian Express (7 January), in which the authors
argue: "We cannot have the mob write our history for us. Every time we
compromise on this principle, every time a publishing house allows
itself to recall a book, every time the authorities fail to punish the
vandals, every time politicians seize such issues for narrow political
gains, every time the barbarian at the gate is accommodated, we fail
not just our academics but our historical legacy of open
scholarship."

Rajeev Dhavan's Burn, Burn, Destroy (available at the Outlook India
site, 23 January), where he notes: "In the last decade or so, new
emerging patterns of social censorship seem to have eclipsed the
framework of legal censorship that has been bequeathed to India by the
British."

Nalini Taneja on Politics of Rightwing Sectarianism (People's
Democracy, 25 January), arguing: "In what has been happening today by
way of policing and censorship of culture, and to history teaching and
research, by way of verbal and physical attacks on democratic
expression, our state and media have a very definite role to play."

Sandhya Jain on Demeaning Shivaji, denigrating dharma (The Pioneer, 27
January, published here at HVK.org), who finds: "Having purchased and
read James Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India only after it
was officially withdrawn by the publishers, I cannot view the events
at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) as totally
unjustified."

Swapan Dasgupta on Reclaiming the Hindu Gods (The Telegraph, 30
January), who reports that: "Beginning sometime last year, American
Hindus have mounted a spirited attack on the bastions of Indology in
the North American universities" and believes: "The battle to reassess
Indian heritage in keeping with the achievements of Indians involves a
long haul. It will not be won by bans on offensive texts or McCarthy-
ite purges of the infuriatingly perverse. It has to be fought with
civility, argument, rigour and a sense of strategy."

Manu Dash, wondering: Feel-shame factor, anyone ? (The Statesman),
noting: "Our country has time and again failed to stay true to its
credential of tolerance."

Vaishnavi K. Sekhar finding: Historians rue attack on freedom of
expression (The Times of India, 24 March), noting that: "The casualty
of cultural censorship may be scholarship".
(Note that in considering reactions in India we are limited to
English-language material that is freely accessible via the Internet.
It should be clear that this material may well not be representative
of broader opinion, or even of media opinion. The Hindu and Marathi
language press may well have responded entirely differently.)

Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan and Amodini Bagwe's piece, James
Laine’s Controversial Book, published in this issue of the complete
review Quarterly, offers a somewhat different perspective, focussing
on what exactly it is about Laine's book that many find so upsetting.

There has also been some coverage of these events on weblogs,
most notably at Kitabkhana and Ryan's Lair (as well as at the Literary
Saloon).

http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol5/issue1/laine0.htm

Volume V, Issue 1 -- February, 2004

Attacking Myths and Institutions
James Laine’s Shivaji and BORI

commentary at the complete review

On 5 January 2004 a leading research institute in India, the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), was attacked (see here
for details). The mob that ransacked it ostensibly acted in reaction
to a book allegedly insulting one of India's great historical figures,
a 17th century leader named Shivaji (despite the fact that the book --
James W. Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India -- had been
withdrawn from the market by its publisher almost two months earlier).
In researching his book, Laine had worked at BORI years earlier, and
he thanked the institute and a number of scholars associated with it
in his acknowledgements -- reason enough for the Sambhaji brigadeers
to physically threaten and attack these men, and to destroy important
bits of Indian history.

What has happened with Laine's book and BORI is a terrifying
glimpse of intolerance and mob rule. It is particularly worrying
because it has happened not in a theocracy like the Taliban's
Afghanistan or a revisionist dictatorship such as Turkmenistan or
North Korea, but in a culturally diverse democracy.

It is some comfort that these events are being freely and
openly debated in India, and that the attack on BORI has been widely
(though, unfortunately, far from universally) condemned. Nevertheless,
events both before and after 5 January suggest that open debate and
tolerance for alternative viewpoints and opinions are far from welcome
by all.

It does all come back to Laine's book. It's title alone -- the
suggestion that there was ever an "Islamic India" -- has outraged many
(see Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan and Amodini Bagwe's James Laine’s
Controversial Book for this and other objections to the book). The
subject matter is one of India's revered historical figures, a 17th-
century king who managed to assert independence from the Mughals. In a
contemporary India that is again increasingly polarised by religion he
has become a particularly potent symbolic figure among some Hindus
groups. (India is subject to many possible divisions, including along
caste and linguistic lines, but the most prominent remains religion;
while a large majority of Indians are Hindu, it must be remembered
that the Muslim population in India exceeds that in any Arab or Middle
Eastern nation.)

In a commentary piece, In India, 'the Unthinkable' Is Printed
at One's Peril, published in The Los Angeles Times (12 January), Laine
describes his book as one about the: "narrative process, an account of
three centuries of storytelling that produced a tale that lived in the
minds of people celebrating Shivaji's legacy today". In the last
chapter he also: "entertained what I called 'unthinkable thoughts' --
questioning 'cracks' in the Shivaji narrative". It is these
unthinkable thoughts -- these different possible readings of Shivaji,
or rather the Shivaji-legend -- that were found so objectionable.

Blind, fanatical devotion to a set narrative is not unheard of,
though it is generally reserved for stories about religious figures.
In some circles, to hypothesise about Mohammed or Jesus, -- even when
one relies on sound historical evidence -- is still impossible (and
has led to similar book bans and physical assaults). Laine's alleged
blasphemy is more complex, because Shivaji is simply an historical
figure. While such figures are often also revered to an extent that
blinds some to their faults (there are those who are outraged by
discussion of the womanising ways of, say, Thomas Jefferson and Martin
Luther King junior), it is generally accepted that speculation about
such figures is permissible or even laudable. Indeed, if set
narratives weren't constantly questioned, if they were considered
inviolable, history -- written by those in power -- would be both
useless and, generally, grossly inaccurate.

Of course, Shivaji isn't 'simply' an historical figure, his
story having also been appropriated by Hindu-nationalist elements
using it for their own purposes. To question the legend as they would
see it is to question their entire cause. And, like flag-wavers
elsewhere, politicians have found that the Shivaji-name can
effectively be used in rallying the masses who pay attention only to
the glorious name and don't consider all the implications behind the
words. So deeply does the cry of 'Shivaji' resonate with a large
segment of the population (specifically in the state of Maharashtra,
but also elsewhere in India) that almost everything except the most
uncritical stance has been attacked.

Laine describes the initial reception of his book in India, in
the summer of 2003, as unremarkable. The book "ranked up with Hillary
Rodham Clinton's in the local list of English-language bestsellers in
Pune" and there were "a couple of bland but positive reviews in the
Indian papers". Eventually, controversy erupted -- but Laine's sins
had clearly not been self-evident: it took someone to point out the
implications of what he had written (i.e. to offer a particular
reading of his reading) to upset people. (As is often the case in such
situations, it also appears that most of those who were upset did not
actually read the entire text.)

What happened then is also disturbing: numerous people,
including scholars attached to BORI (and some who were thanked in the
acknowledgements) not only distanced themselves from the text but
called for it to be withdrawn from the market. Amazingly, Oxford
University Press India obliged, withdrawing the book in November.

Too little has been made of this self-censorship. While
publishers often practice some sort of self-censorship in not
publishing certain books in certain markets, it is usually in response
to clear, legal prohibitions: art books depicting nudes are
inappropriate for the Saudi market, Nazi propaganda for the German
one, etc. But in most such cases there are clear guidelines and
outright legal bans, meaning that any attempted publication would be
met with legal action by government authorities. Nothing about Laine's
book suggested it contravened any local laws, or public standards of
decency or morality. The fact that for several months it sold
reasonably well locally and received some review attention without
causing much uproar or even complaint reinforces this notion.

Laine's Shivaji was, ultimately (months after the book had been
withdrawn from the market), banned, the author and the publisher
charged under Sections 153 ("Wantonly giving provocation with intent
to cause riot") and 153A ("Promoting enmity between different groups
on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language,
etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony ") of the
Indian Penal Code. Yet the charges can only be made because groups
have chosen to use the book to promote enmity. This case -- and, as
commentators have shown, it is not a unique case of the application of
153 and 153A -- is, among many other things, one of political
correctness run amok. By engaging in criminal violence, but claiming
to have been provoked by someone else's pronouncements -- regardless
of how these were meant -- it seems any statement can become a
criminal one, with the determination whether it is or isn't resting
solely with the allegedly aggrieved.

Such an interpretation of the law does not foster dialogue or
harmony, but rather is an actual incentive for violence and discord.
Dislike what someone says ? Just go out and riot and then blame it on
the other's words. This is patently what happened in the case of
Laine's book.

The attacks on scholars and then on BORI, and then the banning
of the book, would have been disturbing under any circumstances, but
they are particularly so given that the book had been withdrawn from
the market and was no longer readily accessible. Oxford University
Press India backed down in the face of some pressure and withdrew the
book in November, 2003, not because it had been ordered to do so or
was legally required to do so, but because public sentiment (or at
least vociferous elements) seemed to oppose allowing the book to
remain available.

This gesture of appeasement (or rather wholesale abandonment of
Laine's book) did not have the (presumably) intended effect. Surrender
to irrational forces rarely does (odd that that's a lesson that people
just don't seem to learn). OUP India might have merely wanted to keep
the peace, and sincerely believed that withdrawing the book from the
market was the best way of doing so. Indeed, events might have
escalated had they not done so. Still, it is troubling that a leading
academic publisher was willing to be intimidated by a mob (prominent
and respected though some of those among it were) and not stand up for
freedom of expression. (Interestingly, there appears to have been no
effort to make any legal determination as to the permissibility of
this publication -- i.e. no one suggested at the time that, for
example, the book promoted legally actionable enmity, etc. Funny how
that only became a viable option after groups decided to riot.) In any
case, far from resolving the issue, OUP India's withdrawal of the book
appears to have pleased absolutely no one, dismissed on the one hand
as a token gesture that came far too late, on the other as an obscene
abridgement of academic freedom.

Physical attacks followed: first scholar Shrikant Bahulkar was
assaulted, then, two weeks later, came the attack on BORI. What
appears to have upset the factions involved in these acts is not
merely the dissemination of the ideas found in Laine's book (which had
been practically stopped with the withdrawal of the book) but the very
existence of such thoughts. The targets include some who had actually
distanced themselves from the book and argued for its withdrawal; in
the case of those who had been thanked in Laine's acknowledgements
even such repentance wasn't enough to protect them from being
attacked.

The attack on BORI was an assault on the whole scholarly
enterprise, suggesting that inquiry and speculation are inappropriate
or even unacceptable, and that instead only a single account and
interpretation of history (one, apparently, decided on by today's mob)
is permissible. From those academics that called for the withdrawal of
Laine's book, to OUP India doing just that, to the attack on BORI and
the continuing actions against Laine and his book, everything has been
done to stifle and suppress dialogue, when it is just the opposite
that is needed. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee admirably said that the
proper way to counter objectionable ideas in a book was with other
books and open debate. The local government -- and the local thugs --
have instead closed off debate wherever possible.

The United States is an exception when it comes to freedom of
expression, and most countries have far stricter limits. It might seem
entirely reasonable that, much as Nazi literature is banned in
Germany, writing which might incite readers to violence (directly or
in response thereto) is suppressed or banned. At the very least,
however, the general approach (and the specific application of the
law) in India regarding freedom of expression over the past decade or
more is of concern.
It is clear that expression that actually exhorts to violence
is far more objectionable than expression which causes offence which
causes violence. In other words, Nazi tracts calling for the killing
of Jews are far worse than Jewish tracts which upset Nazis (by, say,
claiming that their ideas are foolish and based on unfounded premises)
and lead them to attack Jews. Laine's book proved upsetting (arguably
even: justifiably so) to a significant segment of the population, and
action was taken against it (first voluntarily, then physically, and
finally legally). Those responsible for the physical attacks were, at
least, charged with crimes, but the newspapers continue to be filled
with quotes from often prominent politicans and public figures with
what are clearly threats (against persons and property) -- expression
that is blatantly far more dangerous than anything Laine wrote and yet
that has gone largely unchallenged. This double standard is completely
unacceptable -- and very dangerous.

To outsiders the case for why Laine's book should be read,
discussed, and debated likely seems self-evident. Arguments that India
or its citizens are somehow too immature to consider Laine's
statements, or that the issue itself is simply too inflammatory, are
unconvincing. People do no need to to be protected from challenging,
foreign, or even unsupportable ideas; they do need protection from
those who answer any statements they find unpleasant or objectionable
with violence.

Events as they have unfolded teach all the wrong lessons:
rather than showing how difficult texts and ideas might be approached
and dealt with (admittedly not always an easy task), they suggest that
complete denial and obliteration (and the use of force to achieve
these) are acceptable. The result can only be intellectual and social
stagnation and decline. Threats and brute force, encouraged by self-
serving politicians (looking only towards the next election) and
political groups, can easily win the day -- they have here--, but the
long-term costs could be devastating to India.

http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol5/issue1/laine2.htm

Volume V, Issue 1 -- February, 2004

James Laine’s Controversial Book
Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
(New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2003)

by
Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan & Amodini Bagwe

Please note that the views expressed herein are those of the
authors and not of the complete review.

While condemning the attacks on the BORI Archives in Pune and
on Prof. Bahulkar in the strongest possible terms, we wish to share
our views about Laine's casual scholarship on Shivaji as presented in
his latest book.

Some of his remarks suggest willful, calculated sensationalism
than honest scholarship. Despite his apology issued last month after
the OUP quietly withdrew the book from the Indian market (LINK), which
he has practically withdrawn as of now (LINK), there are many issues
that need both examination and comment. As Laine himself admits in the
book, he has cavalierly presented gossip and innuendo without an iota
of documentary substantiation, and then on that basis, proceeded to
construct his flawed argument. Naturally, we must question his motives
in undertaking such an exercise. This is important since next to
nothing has appeared in the media by way of comment on the actual
contents of the book.

It must be asserted that at no time in history has India been
Islamic. Indeed, how could it have been so, when it has always had a
majority of non-Muslims in its population ? True, following the waves
of Islamic invasions that began in right earnest around the 12th
century CE, certain parts of the country did have Muslim rulers who
imposed Islamic law on the entire populace they governed, but that
does not make India Islamic, since a non-Muslim majority continued to
follow their own religious tenets, come what may.

As for Hindu regimes, unlike Christian or Islamic ones, the
king could have no religion according to time-honoured mores. As an
individual, like any one of his subjects, he was free to profess and
practise his version of any one of myriad indigenous doctrines that
together constitute Hinduism; but as king, he necessarily had to be
secular, regarding all forms of religious expression with due
impartiality. Even a cursory study of Indian history clearly shows how
indigenous States encouraged even antipodal doctrines to flourish.
Therefore, with no king (including Shivaji) who was Hindu, and an
India that was never Islamic, the astonishing title -- ‘Hindu King in
Islamic India’ -- leaves one wondering about the extent of Laine’s
understanding of the subject he addresses with such authority !

Moreover, Laine himself must be aware that various Muslim
dynasties in India, whether Mughal, Bahamani, Adilshahi, Nizamshahi,
or many of the fragmented Sultanates, were then ruled by alien
invaders from Central and Middle Eastern Asia, analogous to Islamic
invasions of Europe. A major portion of the invading armies
constituted mercenaries with extra-territorial loyalties, including
Mongols, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Afghans, and Siddis from Ethiopia.
Viewing the book title from this perspective, the effort seems to be
more of a hasty hatchet job with questionable historical validity,
seeking to cash in on the post-9/11 global upsurge of interest in
Islam.

Coming to the most incendiary part of the book, leading to the
recent turmoil in Maharashtra, Laine reports outright hearsay on p.93:
"Maharashtrians tell jokes naughtily suggesting that his guardian
Dadaji Konddev was his biological father" ! The reader may well wonder
whether such seemingly casual inclusion of injurious gossip related to
one's chief protagonist is a convention in serious cross-cultural
scholarship ! As a matter of fact, love and adoration of Shivaji is
the bottomline truth in the state, and we have never come across such
a motivated rumour until Laine’s book was published ! Outsiders fail
to understand that while Shivaji’s rugged forts stand testimony to his
great heroism in an all-too-brief tenure of forty years as a warrior
and strategist of epic proportions, it is upon the very hearts and
minds of the common populace that these nearly four centuries old
magical legends are etched to eternity: a testimony to the greatness
of a culture that has survived untold depredations and chicanery. In
fact, this is what makes the "Shivaji story" immune to fabrication to
suit contemporary designs of a handful of elite scholars and their
political instigators.

From the scholarly perspective, the wholly unsubstantiated
insinuation that Shahaji was not Shivaji’s "biological father" is
implausible, incredible and outrageous ! Unlike lax norms of familial
or marital propriety that characterize ‘civilized’ Western societies,
loose speculation about someone’s ancestry is a very serious matter
indeed even in contemporary Indian ethos, not to speak of conditions
almost four centuries ago. At that time, societal sanctions were
immensely more rigid and the consequences of their transgression, all
too tragic. A scandalous event like that implied by Laine would
scarcely escape immediate detection, judgment and censure. Anybody
indulging in such conduct would have courted severe social stigma,
especially someone like Jijabai who both hailed from and was married
into aristocracy. The progeny of an allegedly adulterous relationship
would never be accepted as king by a tradition-bound people who looked
up to the monarch as an incarnation of Divinity !

It must be asserted that Shahaji, who is superciliously alluded
to by Laine as an "absentee father", was forced to lodge his expecting
wife and yet-to-be-born child in the safe haven of the Shivneri fort
because of untold political uncertainty prevailing around the time
Shivaji was born -- and not, it must be mentioned, on account of any
estrangement between husband and wife. (Laine is in grave error when
he attempts to rewrite one of the most significant chapters in Indian
history, essaying an inappropriate imposition of a contemporary
Western paradigm upon the medieval Indian scenario).

Shahaji, who was practically ruling the Nizamshahi as Regent on
behalf of the minor Murtaza Nizamshah, was actively engaged in fending
off threats from both Shah Jehan and Adilshah, being constantly on the
run as a direct result. He was accompanied by his first son, Sambhaji,
who was killed at a young age in the Battle of Kanakgiri. After the
dissolution of the Nizamshahi in 1636, Shahaji’s subsequent service in
the Adilshahi took him to Bangalore, but he continued holding and
administering his old land titles in the Pune region through his
trusted Brahmin aide, Dadoji Konddev. Obviously, Shahaji was unable to
cover all the distance to Pune on a regular basis in those uncertain
times and the additional responsibility of bringing up the young
Shivaji devolved upon Dadoji. Shahaji took another wife in Bangalore,
as was customary in those days. From this second marriage, he sired
Vyankoji, the founder of the Thanjavur Bhosale dynasty, distinguished
by its patronage of both Tamil and Marathi culture and arts.
Shahajiraje thus bequeathed to India two distinct dynasties of
visionary rulers. All these facts are well documented and should
suffice to prevent irresponsible speculation on account of his absence
from the Pune region.

On page 91, Laine asks with an unnecessary soupçon of
dramatization,
Can one imagine a narrative of Shivaji’s life in which, for example:
Shivaji had an unhappy family life ? Shivaji had a harem ? Shivaji was
uninterested in the religion of bhakti saints ? Shivaji’s personal
ambition was to build a kingdom, not liberate a nation ? Shivaji lived
in a cosmopolitan Islamicate world and did little to change that
fact ?

Had Laine really read and gleaned anything from the references
listed at the end of the book, such perturbing questions would not
have arisen. For instance, it was practically de rigeur for men of
status in Shivaji’s time to have more than one wife. To go even
further back in history, let us recall that Lord Rama’s father too had
several queens. The custom had nothing whatsoever to do with practices
prevailing in a "cosmopolitan Islamicate world". However, isn’t having
several legally wedded wives very different from keeping a harem,
which latter may even include several official and unofficial
concubines ? Surely, Laine appreciates the essential difference !

Also, as revealed by numerous treasured documents of the era,
including correspondence between Ramdas and Shivaji, the latter was
spiritually surrendered to the former, of which fact Laine feigns such
complete ignorance ! With adequate answers to each one of Laine's
questions easily obtainable in his references, is his pretence
indicative of a deeper, sinister motive to compromise, restrain and
perhaps even destroy the extraordinary reverence in which Shivaji is
held ?
For a presumably accomplished scholar (LINK), who has spent
several decades in close contact with Maharashtra, it is amazing --
even distressing -- that Laine has understood almost nothing about the
veneration Shivaji commands in ‘native’ consciousness. In that sense,
his scholarship may well have been wasted ! For him to say now that he
had "foolishly misread the situation in India and figured the book
would receive scholarly criticism, not censorship and condemnation" is
appalling, at the very least. You can hardly foolishly misread a
situation that has existed for nearly four centuries, the study of
which is the declared intention of your scholarship, not to mention
the "love of the Shivaji story" you avowedly evince !

A similar exercise, as confessed by Laine in the case of a
Jesus Christ or a Thomas Jefferson (LINK), is entirely incapable of
provoking as vehement a reaction because these exalted personages do
not command the kind of supreme reverence in their specific locales
that Shivaji does in his.

No doubt Laine is aware how Christ’s popularity in the West has
been steadily on the decline, what with Church attendances falling
alarmingly, and the paucity of preachers needing imports from ‘third
world’ countries to supplant the dwindling numbers of octogenarian
White clergymen ! This observation is further supported by demographic
statistics indicating the exponential growth of the followers of
alternative philosophies, which cannot be attributed to new immigrants
alone.
As for Jefferson, in an exercise very reminiscent of the
present one, his greatness as a rationalist, especially his radically
piercing views on Christianity and its Church, (for example: "The
Christian God is a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive,
capricious, and unjust."), was sought by disadvantaged parties to be
compromised by the exposition of some tenuous incident in the
statesman’s life. But it is necessary to ascertain whether such
detractors, who authored the "widely varying accounts" about Jefferson
and Christ that Laine claims to have "seen", could be considered
persons of established scholarly reputation. Since serious scholars
would hardly ever countenance rumour or gossip as evidence, it was
more than likely that such criticism was penned by critics who had no
compunctions about relying on tittle-tattle to score a point.

Because Laine has indirectly questioned Shivaji’s paternity
without a shred of documentary evidence, he sadly gets categorized in
the latter class and his claim to a "love for the Shivaji story" falls
to pieces ! Incidentally, there are certain to be "other ways of
reading the historical evidence", but only if historical evidence, and
not malicious fabrication, is offered in the first place.

Laine ought to have grasped the reality that there just can be
no comparison between Shivaji and the likes of Christ and Jefferson
from the Indian, especially Maharashtrian, point of view ! The learned
author, in spite of his protracted contact with the region since 1977,
failed to realise that the "Shivaji story", as narrated in every
Maharashtrian home, has far more significance and enjoys immensely
greater credibility than all history taught in academia. And, by his
own admission, was it not the development of this "Shivaji story" that
he had set out to study ? Moreover, the growth in recent years of a
strong and eminently justifiable public perception that a vast
majority of academics have been indulging in wanton politicization of
scholarship at the expense of truth bolsters this awareness.

Furthermore, Shivaji is not merely a "Maharashtrian" hero, as
Laine not so subtly avers in his facetious apology. Shivaji was the
first Indian leader in relatively recent history to contemplate
political self-determination and successfully put it into practice at
a time when all others were blissfully unaware of both the existence
and possibility of such a thing ! This visionary quality elevates
Shivaji to a pioneering ‘national’ stature, head and shoulders above
all his peers and contemporaries. His exploits had obviously become
the stuff of legends in the course of his lifetime. Bhooshan, hailing
from the environs of the Mughal capital wrote epic poetry about him,
while Chhatrasal who traveled from Bundelkhand to seek employment with
him was bade to return to his territories and there establish his own
independence. The slant in Laine’s apology to localize and thus limit
Shivaji’s influence is not as innocuous as it appears, and is not
likely to be overlooked by discerning readers !

Indeed, since it takes the ‘authority’ of a White man to
convince us of the greatness of things indigenous, it would be
pertinent to quote historian Bamber Gascoigne:

"He (Shivaji) taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of
their growth. So, when viewed with hindsight through twentieth century
glasses, Aurangzeb on the one side and Shivaji on the other come to be
seen as key figures in the development of India. What Shivaji began
Gandhi could complete …… and what Aurangzeb stood for would lead to
the establishment of the separate state of Pakistan." (The Great
Moghuls, London: Constable), (emphasis ours).

It is sad to see how all the years Laine spent in India were so
utterly in vain, if he has failed to note and appreciate this, the
most distinguishing and vital aspect of the "Shivaji story" !

There seems to be more to the book than mere scholarship. One
is reminded of what Thomas Paine wrote, in a slightly different
context perhaps, in the opening lines of his The Rights of Man about
Edmund Burke’s unwarranted interest in French affairs. It amply
illustrates a tendency to dabble that Laine evidently shares with
Burke:
"Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and
irritate each other, Mr. Burke’s pamphlet on the French Revolution is
an extraordinary instance. Neither the people of France, nor the
National Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of
England, or the English Parliament; and why Mr. Burke should commence
an unprovoked attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a
conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified
on that of policy." (London: J.M.Dent, 1993, p. 7).

With suitable substitutions, the sentiments expressed by Paine
could apply rather well to Laine’s avoidable blundering foray into
Indian culture and history. If, "as an American and a Christian",
Laine had, for instance, devoted more time to finding out why
enthusiasm for Christ is petering out so rapidly in his home country,
he might have been spared the pain of living through "the saddest day"
in his career ! But, prudent apprehension of censorship by the Moral
Majority and cessation of grants by funding bodies might perhaps have
served as an important deterrent in the case of similar misadventures
closer home !

It is the "Shivaji story" that transcends every conceivable
faction of Maharashtrian society and has always served as an
efficacious uniting factor, the demolition of which can be perceived
to serve powerful interests in present times. India in general and its
Maharashtrian Hindu population in particular have traditionally been
ultra-soft targets for a sundry assortment of deluded Indophiles
anyway, and the once-correct belief that one can get away with almost
murder has motivated several similar ‘research’ exercises in the
past.

Constituents of the more impulsive but perhaps less
sophisticated majority in Maharashtra are more likely than not to
smell in Laine’s dissertation the same intellectual chicanery
attempted through the purchase by British colonial masters (for a
princely sum of £ 3000, paid in easy installments, may it be noted !)
of Friedrich Max Muller’s erudition a century ago with the studied
intention of demoralizing a whole nation by denigration of its
antiquity, pre-eminence, culture, religion and history. It might be
perceived by the populace that one of its greatest cultural heroes is
being put under an iniquitous microscope with precisely that same
objective. Such heinous strategies may have worked beautifully under
colonial rule, but are less than likely to work now -- a reality Laine
appears to have dangerously overlooked. A significantly large
proportion of the Indian polity has begun ‘thinking independently’,
albeit to the detriment of brokers of international geopolitical
stakes. In this sense, the book might well qualify as yet another
attempt at fragmentation of the steadily developing strength of a
society that is waking up to a realization of the many historical
frauds perpetrated on itself for centuries.

If, unfortunately, promoting social discord was indeed a
purpose of the book, the attempt may have partially succeeded with
what happened at the Bhandarkar Institute; the first salvo has been
fired by pitting Maratha (whom Laine gratuitously refers to as being
from Shivaji’s own community) against Brahmin. Unless we desire lumpen
elements to take undue advantage of the fallout of the regrettable
BORI incident, concerted and well informed public opinion needs to be
nurtured to arrest and neutralize machinations of a wildly
proliferating class of pliable political paid pipers and their cohorts
in an amenable media ! Because Laine has blatantly used, in the matter
of Shivaji’s parentage at least, sources that cannot pass the test of
reliability even by a long shot, it is necessary for scholars to
scrutinize the entire work for its truthfulness, especially the
development of communalised identities upon which he dwells at great
length. All frivolous ‘scholarship’ needs to be unequivocally
discredited and disowned by intellectuals in the interests of veracity
and probity in academia.

While undeniably condemning the attack on the Bhandarkar
Institute archives with the plea that the guilty should not go
unpunished, should we not also examine the role of the so-called
'thinkers' who might perhaps unwittingly have assisted if not actually
set up Laine's mischief in the first place ? Laine mentions in his
Acknowledgments (p. viii) that his "scholarly home has been the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune" where he "profited
from advice and assistance". Once the BORI administration realised the
explosive nature of the book's contents, and how they were sitting on
a time bomb for all these months, it might have been appropriate for
them to issue a strong public denial and condemnation of the author,
in no uncertain terms, for his highly objectionable effort to convert
innuendo and gossip into a matter of documentary record.

It is up to Laine to inform his readers as to how and where he
dug up this disgusting rumour casting aspersions upon the character of
Shivaji’s mother, herself a figure of great veneration to all. She was
a single mother of great character and substance, the very
fountainhead of inspiration for Shivaji’s life’s work.
Needless to state, all this only applies if the real intention
behind the book was more than what Laine declares. But from even its
very title, the book comes through more like an exercise in
skullduggery, which is unfortunate !
If scholarly research funded through institutional grants is
undertaken with the altruistic aim of benefiting humanity, one wonders
how the present book can achieve that end! Scholars ought not to
forget that all institutions supporting them are rooted in their
particular indigenous ethos to which they must be accountable,
especially when the results are sought to be commercially exploited
through book sales.
The body fabric of a resurgent India, and particularly that of
a progressive state like Maharashtra, can well do without such vicious
‘scholarship’. We hope saner counsel will prevail in the currently
disturbed scenario, as a fitting tribute to its chief architect,
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

- Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan & Amodini Bagwe

Note: an earlier version of this text was also posted at Hindu Vivek
Kendra.

About the authors:

Bhalchandrarao C. Patvardhan is a metallurgist and chartered
engineer; he can be reached at: kuru...@eth.net.

Amodini Bagwe is a research scholar and student of Yoga.

http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol5/issue1/laine1.htm

The Complexities of Shivaji

Our modern consciousness harbors within itself rather peculiar ideas.
We pride ourselves on our tremendous advances from a pre-modern In
1668, Shivaji's repeated petitions to Aurangzeb won him the title
'Raja' and Chakan fort. After the Mughal treasury refused to reimburse
him for a trip he took to Agra, he took up arms again. With Aurangzeb
the battle was over power and resources, rather than on religious
grounds.

past which we almost universally see as depraved (at the very least in
economic and political terms). On the other hand, we turn to the past
for our heroes: and these heroes are absorbed without criticism (in
fact, criticism is tantamount to heresy in some circles). Thus,
America lauds its Founding Fathers (Jefferon, Madison, Hamilton,
Washington) even though these gentlemen practiced a form of slavery
which does not square with their genteel image. The Indian Republic
has immortalized Gandhi, which is one of the tragedies of our
contemporary world: Gandhi, the mischievous radical, is reduced to
being a statue rather than a living presence in our corrupt and
battered body politic. The Pakistani state has hallowed Jinnah, whose
virulent criticisms of theocracy are now not allowed to inform the
citizens of a state wracked by avarice and hypocrisy. The Rashtriya
Sevak Sangh and its American kin, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS),
have taken Shivaji as their icon (India West, 21 June 1996): that
adoption needs to be criticised for what it does to the historical
record.

At their 16 June Hindu Sangathan Diwas, the HSS hosted Shripati
Shastry (RSS) who recounted the life of Shivaji who (as India West
reports) "fought Mughal emperor Aurangzeb." "Hindu civilization,"
Shastry said, "had been battered by the constant brutal assaults of
foreigners. Shivaji challenged that attack." HSS also presented a play
by Bal Bihar students entitled 'Shivaji and Afzal Khan.' Reading this
story, I was startled by the ease with which our media allows such
presentations to pass by without comment. At the very least, the
historical record should be scoured to check if Shivaji indeed did
fight Aurangzeb to constitute 'Hindu civilization' and if he made it
his purpose to cleanse the subcontinent of 'foreigners.'

(1) Shivaji and Aurangzeb.

Shivaji Bhonsla (1627-1680) came from a family of Maratha aristocrats
and military bureaucrats. The first half of his career (until 1660) as
a fief-holder was consumed by his battle with the rather powerless
Sultanate of Bijapur. He was able to extend his power by making
alliances with Maratha hill chiefs and by ensuring that the Mughal
overlord was given a wide berth: Shivaji was not interested in taking
Delhi, only in forming a fiefdom in Aurangabad and Bijapur. In
November 1656, Aurangzeb and his amir, Mir Jumla, went ahead with an
old plan to take Bijapur at the death of the Sultan, Muhammad Adil
Shah. Shivaji was not a factor in the equation (for he was only one of
many factious nobles and zamindars). Shivaji was able to rout the
Bijapur army and Afzal Khan, commander of a Mughal force. of 10, 000.
In Shivaji's second phase (1660-1674), he extended his holding,
notably by destroying Baharji Borah who was reputed to be the world's
richest merchant. At Purander in 1665, Shivaji capitulated to Jai
Singh and Aurangzeb. In 1668, Shivaji's repeated petitions to
Aurangzeb won him the title 'Raja' and Chakan fort. After the Mughal
treasury refused to reimburse him for a trip he took to Agra, he took
up arms again. With Aurangzeb the battle was over power and resources,
rather than on religious grounds. Shivaji very comfortably petitioned
Aurangzeb to recognize him as a 'Raja,' a feat which would not sit
well with the HSS rendition of the man as a fighter for Hinduism.

(2) Shivaji and 'Hindu civilization'

In June 1674, Shivaji was crowned as a Hindu monarch. Since he came
from Shudra stock, the chief sent for Gagga Bhatta (the notable
Brahmin from Benares) to declare that Shivaji's ancestor's were truly
Kshatriyas who descended from the solar line of the Ranas of Mewar. He
was invested with the janeau, with the Vedas and was bathed in an
abisheka. A Shudra became a Rajput, but the bulk of the other dalits
remained in their misbegotten position at the bottom of society.
Shivaji's investiture was a political move which allowed him to exert
his power over hill chiefs who were not under his military control.
One would imagine that Shivaji would now eschew alliances with
Muslims, however, the first major alliance made by the monarch was
with Abul Hasan, the Qutb Shah Sultan. They began a campaign against
the Bijapur Karanatak, including the monarch's own half-brother,
Vyankoji Bhonsla. The Mughal r‰gime was left untouched by this 'Hindu'
king. The later Shivaji did not consolidate 'Hindus' to fight
'Muslims,' but he continued his trajectory of securing power in the
Konkan region. One might add that Shambhaji, Shivaji's son, raped a
Brahmin woman in December 1678: such facts often get lost in the blind
valorization of historical figures.

I have offered all these details for the simple reason that one must
not allow our contemporary politicians (and the HSS/RSS are
politicians) to define our historical record. There is a tendency to
simplify, which is tantamount to distortion. Shivaji claimed to be a
'Hindu' king when it suited him, but he acted (most of the time) as a
rebellious zamindar and hill-chief. History must remain more than
propaganda. The tragedy of the communalization of history is that
those who write these false histories are less interested in the past
and more interested in organizing people into bigoted groups.

Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad
Assistant Professor, International Studies
214 McCook Academic Building
Trinity College, Hartford, CT. 06106.
Ph: 860-297-2518.

http://www.foil.org/history/shivaji.html

Bonfire of cupboard of history

- Pune institute continues to count the losses from attack by Sambhaji
Brigade
ANAND SOONDAS

Satish Sangle among the ruins

Pune, Jan. 18: A bonfire crackles to life as the winter night descends
on the cheerless group of policemen guarding the ravaged library at
the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Drawn by the sudden
flicker, a firefly rushes in.

“That was sad,” says the institute’s Man Friday, Ganesh Bagade, who
calls himself assistant pressman, watching the insect perish.

“They tried to snuff out the institute’s life, too,” Bagade says,
recalling the Sambhaji Brigade’s attack on January 5.

Marauders belonging to the group, which champions the Maratha cause
like the Shiv Sena but was started to counter Bal Thackeray’s outfit,
ransacked the library in protest against American historian James
Laine’s book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India.

They believed Laine had indirectly questioned Shivaji’s parenthood in
a passage. The institute was targeted because the author had
acknowledged the assistance of some historians working there.

The damage to books and furniture has been estimated at Rs 1.5 to 2
crore, but scholars at the institute say each day’s search yields
realisation of further loss.

“It will take us about two years just to catalogue and piece together
the old books,” says Satish Sangle, the librarian.

“Each of us here cried that day. We felt so violated and abused,” says
Bagade as a policeman replenishes the fire with parts of a library
cupboard, breaking it with kicks at the joints.

Sanskrit and Pali texts — some of them 500 years old — were stored in
that cupboard.

On a visit to Mumbai on Friday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
condemned the attack and the ban on the book announced by the Congress-
led coalition of Maharashtra.

Pune cried as one after the attack. Schoolchildren marched and writers
called it the darkest day for a city known for its scholarship and
liberalism. A group of ragpickers, mostly children, collected Rs 165
and gave it to the institute.

Their 15-year-old leader said: “We were not privileged to get an
education but we know the worth of books.”

The Sambhaji Brigade has shown no remorse. “It is a Brahmin conspiracy
to malign Marathas and Shivaji,” says Pravin Gaikwad, the Pune unit
president of the Akhil Bharatiya Maratha Mahasangh, the brigade’s
parent organisation.

Gaikwad and his organisation are not done yet. Yesterday, he handed
over a four-point charter of demands to chief minister Sushil Kumar
Shinde.

It’s a “Brahmin conspiracy” because the so-called offending passage
says: “Maharashtrians tell jokes naughtily that Shivaji’s biological
father was Dadoji Kondeo Kulkarni.”

Kulkarni, Shivaji’s limbless servant, was a Brahmin. The publishers
withdrew the book in November, the author sent an apology, but these
were not enough to stop the pillaging.

“We will not tolerate it when an American says that Shivaji’s
parentage is questionable and that because he was intelligent he
couldn’t have been a Maratha and was a Brahmin,” Gaikwad fumes.

Monetary estimates of loss leave the librarian distraught. “How do you
calculate the worth of a rare 6th century BC idol of the headless
Ganesha. Or the miniature silver photo album gifted by the Nizam of
Hyderabad. Or, for that matter, a 1648 AD treatise on the Bhagwad
Gita?” Sangle asks.

The institute specialises in ancient history, ancient Indian thought
and philosophy. It produced a Bharat Ratna in P.V. Kane who wrote
seven volumes of the Dharmashastra. After 50 years of labour, the
institute completed the first critical edition of the Mahabharata,
with its scholars poring over more than 1,000 manuscripts in different
languages.

“We never wrote anything on Shivaji or medieval history,” says M.G.
Dhadphade, a former honorary secretary at the institute.

The explanation cuts no ice with the brigade. “We want those who
helped Laine to be hanged and a CBI inquiry into the role of
organisations and individuals who passed blasphemous information on
Shivaji,” Gaikwad says.

The organisation now plans to take out a Shivaji rath yatra across
Maharashtra in February, threatening the institute with more
“punishment” if its demands are not met.

Apart from the “hanging” and the inquiry, it is demanding the freedom
of the 72 activists of the brigade rounded up after the incident.

“The fault is with us,” says Dhadphade. “We have lost our culture’s
most precious jewel — pluralism. Unknown to us, the Taliban had been
festering in our midst.”

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040119/asp/frontpage/story_2802420.asp

Sunday, December 7, 2003

Off The Shelf
An image that might be disturbing
V.N. Datta

Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
by James W. Laine. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Rs 295. Pages
127.

THE reputation of leaders rises and falls like share prices. Heroes of
yesterday become the villains of today and vice-versa and so it is
with Shivaji, who is being subjected now to fierce controversies by
politicians and academicians in this country. To his admirers, Shivaji
was a nation-builder, a constructive genius and a brilliant military
general, who had crumbled the Mughal Empire in the most trying
circumstances weighted against him.

He is also credited with inspiring his countrymen with a fiery spirit
of patriotism and religious tolerance, but to his enemies, Shivaji
remains a "mountain rat", a guerrilla of the hills and a narrow-minded
fanatic Hindu rebel who, animated by vaulting ambitions and animus,
had indulged recklessly in plunder for the gratification of his
vanity.

The net result of his nefarious activities, his critics argue, was
anarchy and disintegration of the country, and paving the way for the
British colonial rule. James W. Laine addresses himself to answering
these two opposing views. Lane has two objects-to understand the 17th
century Shivaji, the kind of hero he was in the context of the
Maharashtrian culture, and to examine critically the growth of his
legend as it relates to narratives of the Maharashtrian, Hindu and
Indian cultures.

The author focuses himself primarily on the second object of
reconstructing the Shivaji legend on the basis of various types of
evidence such as ballads, poems, fiction, and some historical works.
In other words, this work is of historigraphical nature, which
examines the legend of Shivaji that has grown during the last 300
years.

The book is divided into five chapters with an appendix and notes.
Laine begins his story by showing how Shivaji after his defeat against
the Mughal army led by Mirza Raja Jai Singh became a Mughal vassal and
went to the Agra fort to enroll his son, Sambhaji, in the Imperial
service. Due to his own tactical skills, he escaped from the Agra
fort. Three years after the death of Jai Singh, he took the fort of
Simhagarh.

The author questions the general view that Shivaji's Maratha Hindu
nationalism was at war with the Muslims in the 17th century India.
According to Laine, Shivaji had employed pan-Indian symbols, not the
regional ones; and further, identities were fluid then and not
crystallised as separate. Sufis and Hindu saints walked a common
ground, and there was not a distance between the Hindus and the
Muslims.

Only some Muslim rulers did create ethnic trouble. The author asserts
that pre-modern Marathas did not understand identities and allegiances
in terms of Hinduism and Islam. Hence, Laine concludes, that to regard
Shivaji as an Indian is absolutely wrong and that myths woven round
him give a distorted picture of the reality.

The 17th century Maratha ballad writers based the heroic legend of
Shivaji as a heroic Chhatrapati of an independent Hindu kingdom on his
escape from the Agra fort, his killing of Afzal Khan, his encounter
with Shaista Khan, his conquest of Simhagarh, his coronation in 1674
and his dedication to his patron Goddess, Bhivani. Laine argues that
the ballad writers had deliberately skipped Shivaji's military service
under Adil Shah, his defeat against the Mughals, his loss of Poona,
his surrender to Aurangzeb, his readiness to become a Mughal vassal
with the aspiration of being designated Viceroy of the Deccan and
enlisting his son in the Mughal army. These omissions give a false
image of Shivaji, the author maintains.

Shivaji's image of an epic hero is further buttressed by another
Ballad writer, Permanand, who by tracing some genealogical evidence,
projects him a kshatriya of the Sisodia clan of the Rajputs. Laine
shows how the chronicles, the Bhakars, relate Shivaji's commitment to
Vaishnavism to Hinduism and his close association with the 17th
century saints, Tukaram and Ramdas. On the contrary, the author thinks
that the role of Maharashtra saints was more significant in the 18th
rather than the 17th century and that Ramdas was never Shivaji's
spiritual guide.

Despite Jotirao Phule's emphasis on Shivaji's low-caste heritage, the
ballads composed between 1869-2001 put Shivaji in a different
category. Except Grant Duff, who in his History of the Mahratta,
described Shivaji a plunderer and a freebooter, most Indian historians
and writers, including justice M.I. Ranade and B.G. Tikak, laud him as
the father of Indian nationalism and a liberationist. Ranade portrays
Shivaji as the architect of Maratha independence, who promoted
religious tolerance and the egalitarian status of women.

In justification of Shivaji's actions, Tilak cites Arjuna's example
from The Mahabharata. Tilak comments that great men are exempted from
following the strict standard of conventional morality. Indian leaders
such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Annie Besant, Aurobindo Ghosh and poet
Tagore have paid eloquent tributes to Shivaji as a great national
leader and the builder of the country. The author treats such views as
flippant.

In the last chapter, the author acknowledges that there are different
ways of reading and writing the biography of Shivaji. History writing
is not a one-point programme; it is an interim report. Nor is it wise
to be a debunker. Laine maintains that there is no standard biography
of Shivaji. Rightly, the author asserts that the primordial view that
the Hindus and the Muslims were pitted against each other and ever
fighting is false.

It is regretted that despite inner inconsistencies, the narratives of
Shivaji' s life represent him in the BJP regime as a grand nationalist
Hindu symbol and ideology. Regrettably, the line between fact and
fiction is blurred. The fact is that Shivaji had lived in a
cosmopolitan Islamic world where identity formations were in the
making but not crystallised. This intellectually stimulating and
neatly textured book is disturbing. It questions the commonly held
views and opens a new ground for fresh thinking and research.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20031207/spectrum/book4.htm

learning house with a world-wide appeal
TNN, Jan 6, 2004, 03.36am IST

PUNE: The renowned Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (Bori) is a
veritable treasure trove for scholars, researchers and students of
Indology and Orientology, which attracts scholars not only from India
but also from France, Germany, Korea and Japan.

The institute has over 1.5 lakh books in its library, 80,000 rare
manuscripts and the personal book collection of Ramkrishna Gopal
Bhandarkar, in whose memory the institute was founded. The institute
building is also a grade I heritage structure, listed for protection.

Although the state government gives an annual grant to the institute,
it has to depend on donations and earning from its publications to
make both ends meet.

At present, the state government owes Rs 28 lakh to the institute, the
annual expenditure of which is Rs 40 lakh and income, Rs 35 lakh.

At a meeting of people interested in Orientology on July 6, 1915, it
was decided to build an institute in commemoration of Bhandarkar's
outstanding work in the field.

He can be justifiably regarded as the foremost pioneer of scientific
Orientology in the country. The institute was finally founded on July
6, 1917. The event was intended to synchronise with his eightieth
birth anniversary.

The institute is a public organisation registered under Act XXI of
1860 and is administered by a regulating council.

It is partially supported by annual earmarked grants from the state
government, which nominates five representatives on the regulating
council and two on the executive board.

The institute has also received grants from the Centre and the
University Grants Commission for specific research projects.

The institute normally works through its four main departments —
Mahabharata and research unit, manuscripts, publication and
postgraduate teaching and research.

In 1919, the institute undertook a project to prepare and publish a
critical edition of the Mahabharata.

This enormous literary project (19 volumes containing 13,000 demi
quarto pages) was completed in 1966, and this historic event was
formally announced by the then president, S. Radhakrishnan, at a
special function held at the Mahabharata Institute on September 22,
1966.

Subsequently, the institute also prepared and published a critical
edition of the Harivamsa (two volumes containing 1,711 pages).

This was followed by the Pratika-Index (six volumes containing 4,805
pages) and the critically constituted text of the Great Epic, and the
Harivamsa (five volumes containing 3,150 pages).

The institute is now occupied with the last item in the great project
of the Critical Edition, namely, the Epilogue. The institute is also
preparing an exhaustive cultural index of the Mahabharata.

When the institute was founded in 1917, the then government of Bombay
handed over its entire collection of manuscripts (nearly 20,000) to
the institute.

The institute has, all these years, been looking after the
preservation, lending out and cataloguing of these manuscripts, and,
as government reports would testify, the work of the institute in this
connection has been most exemplary.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/407198.cms

Volume 21 - Issue 02, January 17 - 30, 2004

India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU

THE STATES

Politics of vandalism
ANUPAMA KATAKAM
in Pune

Invaluable books and artefacts have been destroyed in an attack on the
Bhandarkar Institute in Pune by members of the `Sambhaji Brigade'.

PHOTOGRAPHS: ANUPAMA KATAKAM

The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

ON January 5, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in
Pune became the target of a horrific act of vandalism. A 150-strong
mob protesting against the institute's alleged involvement in
maligning the name of the Maratha king Shivaji barged into its
premises, ransacked the library, destroyed thousands of rare books,
ancient manuscripts, old photographs and priceless artefacts, and took
away some invaluable historical texts. The institute, one of the
country's premier research centres for Orientology, has become a
victim of what is now known as cultural terrorism and also the
politics of a caste feud in Maharashtra.

The attackers were reacting to a derogatory remark on Shivaji's
parentage, made by the American author James Laine in his book
Shivaji: A Hindu King in an Islamic Kingdom. In a biographical account
on the Maratha warrior, Laine writes that "the repressed awareness
that Shivaji had an absentee father is also revealed by the fact that
Maharashtrians tell jokes naughtily suggesting that his guardian
Dadoji Konddev was his biological father... ."

Apparently, unable to tolerate such a statement, the attackers - owing
allegiance to the "Sambhaji Brigade", a splinter group of the Maratha
Seva Sangh, an organisation active in "promoting the cause of the
Marathas" - targeted the BORI because one of the institute's research
scholars, Shreekant Bahulkar, is acknowledged in Laine's book. They
held him responsible for Laine's comment.

The controversy over Laine's book began in November 2003, when a group
of historians led by Dadasaheb Purandare, well known for his biography
of Shivaji, asked the publishers, Oxford University Press (OUP), to
withdraw the book. Their letter to OUP states: "Though we do believe
in freedom of expression, we cannot subscribe to the practice of
maligning the life and character of any person, especially of one who
commands the love, respect and admiration of crores of people and is a
source of inspiration to them, by casting baseless aspersions."
According to another historian of the group, "Laine's remark on
Shivaji' parentage is factually incorrect and there is not a shred of
evidence to support it." He told Frontline that if Laine were a
responsible historian, he would have realised that such a statement
without substantive evidence backing it would have serious
ramifications.

Furniture destroyed by the mob.

The OUP withdrew the book immediately and issued an apology. The
matter seemingly ended there. However, the historians reportedly held
a meeting to condemn the book and celebrate their victory in having
the book taken off the shelves. Shiv Sena activists, quick to react to
any disparaging remark on Shivaji, stormed into the BORI building and
blackened the face of Bahulkar.

Later Shiv Sena leader Raj Thackeray apologised to Bahulkar and the
Sainiks have since been trying their best to disassociate themselves
from the controversy. Laine too faxed an apology to the Sainiks and
the media, stating that neither Bahulkar nor the BORI was responsible
for the text in his book. On his part, Bahulkar explained that while
Laine was at the BORI 15 years ago, he had helped him translate some
Sanskrit and Marathi texts but had nothing to do with Laine's
conclusions.

"The Sambhaji Brigade came out of nowhere," says Bahulkar. "Obviously
there are some anti-social elements who wanted to create trouble and
they used the controversy as a tool to further their cause." The
attack appeared to have been planned meticulously. The attackers
barged into the premises, cut the telephone lines, broke up into small
groups of 10 and 15 and finished their task in half an hour. "This was
not a spontaneous reaction to a derogatory remark," he told Frontline.
But why did they react so late? It is hardly likely that any of these
people would have read the book. Who backed them or who organised
them?

THE Maratha Seva Sangh, which has claimed responsibility for the
attack, is an organisation that is extremely anti-Brahmin, says Ajit
Abhyankar, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Its
members wait for any opportunity to strike at the Brahmin community.
Many of them believe that the scholars of the State belong to this
community.

The battle between Brahmins and Marathas is very much part of
Maharashtra's history, and it now dominates its politics. Pune has
traditionally been a hotbed of such caste politics. It is alleged that
using the anti-Brahmin slogan, the Sangh instigates unemployed youth
to undertake anti-social acts such as the attack on the BORI.

In spite of the acceptance of blame, the police are yet to pick up any
key member of the Maratha Seva Sangh. Informed sources in Pune say the
Sangh's leader Purushottam Khedekar, a Public Works Department
engineer, is close to several Ministers in the ruling Democratic Front
government and, therefore, is unlikely to be touched. Khedekar
allegedly wields so much clout that his career in the government
remains on course though he has been arrested on corruption charges.
His wife Rekha Khedekar is a Bharatiya Janata Party Member of the
Legislative Assembly from Buldana district.

For the past six or seven years, says the source, Khedekar has been
working on the "Maratha cause". He and his band of followers went to
the various forts of Shivaji in the Sahyadris and placed Maratha Seva
Sangh signboards and flags - probably indicating some sort of
proprietorship over the area, says the source. Until the attack on the
BORI, Khedekar remained relatively unknown. Although there has been a
backlash, with several groups, political and non-political, condemning
the attack, Khedekar has managed to make some gains from the
publicity. The incident has given the Sangh an identity.

Volunteers help clean up the institute.

IRONICALLY, the Sambhaji Brigade destroyed a huge collection of books
on Shivaji and damaged a portrait of him, which the BORI had received
from the British Museum. "Is this any way to revere a king?" asks a
visibly shaken Saroja Bhate, honorary secretary of the BORI. Also
irreparably lost are: a 15th century, 10-inch idol of mundkata
Ganapati and Syrian clay tablet dated to 600 B.C. found in
Maharashtra. A version of the Mahabharata from Kashmir dated to A.D.
1000, is damaged partly.

The outpouring of help to the institute has been overwhelming.
Donations have poured in and students from all over have volunteered
to reorganise the library and clean up the mess. The much-needed funds
will be spent on buying furniture and computers, which were also not
spared by the attackers. "We are going to rise from the ashes," says
Bhate.

In 1917, R.G. Bhandarkar, a historian, founded the BORI as a
charitable institution with the aim of collecting rare and ancient
historical books and preserving manuscripts to help in research. The
then Government of Bombay handed over 20,000 manuscripts to the
institution, which it preserved and catalogued. Many of these were
destroyed in the attack. In 1919, the institute undertook an exercise
to publish a critical edition of the Mahabharata. The final outcome of
the project was a 19-volume, 13,000 demi quarto page publication,
which was completed in 1966. President S. Radhakrishnan formally
launched the publication that year.

The BORI attracts scholars from across the world seeking to research
topics in Indology and Orientology. It is unfortunate that such an
institution is caught in a controversy over what is apparently a non-
issue.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2102/stories/20040130003802800.htm

Shivaji
Hindu King in Islamic India
James W. Laine

ISBN13: 9780195141269
ISBN10: 0195141261
Hardback, 144 pages
Jan 2003,
In Stock Price:$65.00 (06)

Shivaji is a well-known hero in western India. He defied Mughal power
in the seventeenth century, established an independent kingdom, and
had himself crowned in an orthodox Hindu ceremony. The legends of his
life have become an epic story that everyone in western India knows,
and an important part of the Hindu nationalists' ideology. To read
Shivaji's legend today is to find expression of deeply held
convictions about what Hinduism means and how it is opposed to Islam.

James Laine traces the origin and development if the Shivaji legend
from the earliest sources to the contemporary accounts of the tale.
His primary concern is to discover the meaning of Shivaji's life for
those who have composed-and those who have read-the legendary accounts
of his military victories, his daring escapes, his relationships with
saints. In the process, he paints a new and more complex picture of
Hindu-Muslim relations from the seventeenth century to the present. He
argues that this relationship involved a variety of compromises and
strategies, from conflict to accommodation to nuanced collaboration.
Neither Muslims nor Hindus formed clearly defined communities, says
Laine, and they did not relate to each other as opposed monolithic
groups. Different sub-groups, representing a range of religious
persuasions, found it in their advantage to accentuate or diminish the
importance of Hindu and Muslim identity and the ideologies that
supported the construction of such identities. By studying the
evolution of the Shivaji legend, Laine demonstrates, we can trace the
development of such constructions in both pre-British and post-
colonial periods.

Reviews

"A succinct, cogent study that is admirably well organized and
consistently insightful. Though brief, it makes a significant
contribution to the study of Indian history and religious studies."--
Journal of the American Academy of Relgion

"Shivaji is a succinct, cogent study that is admirably well organized
and consistently insightful. Though brief, it makes a significant
contribution to the study of Indian history and religious studies. In
one of the first studies to trace the longitudinal developments in the
biography of a major precolonial figure of India, Laine employs an
innovative approach that could well be adapted to other figures. In
addition, Laine makes valuable observations about the precolonial
history of 'Hinduism'"-- Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Product Details

144 pages; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-514126-9
ISBN10: 0-19-514126-1

About the Author(s)

James W. Laine is a Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester
College.

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Hinduism/?view=usa&ci=0195141261

Danny Yee's Book Reviews

Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India
James W. Laine
Oxford University Press 2003

In the second half of the 17th century, Shivaji rose from a minor
chieftain to an independent king, founding the Maratha kingdom. In
this study Laine looks not at Shivaji directly, but at the stories
that have been told about him and their development over the last
three and a half centuries. These have become entwined with the
construction of Maharahstrian, Hindu, and Indian identities, and Laine
begins with these, and with the risks of attributing anachronistic
self-identifications to Shivaji.

The earliest stories of Shivaji's life, from the 17th century, present
him as an epic hero. Along with stories of his birth and boyhood, key
episodes include the killing of Afzal Khan, the encounter with Shaista
Khan, the escape from Agra, and his coronation.

"when [Shivaji] could, he attempted to rule as an independent Hindu
monarch, to be a patron of his religious traditions, and to challenge
the hegemony of the Islamicate world around him. His predecessors and
successors were more accommodationist, less heroic, and less well
remembered. Moreover, the stories of their bravery were nowhere near
as good."

In the 18th century Shivaji became linked with the saints Ramdas and
Tukaram, though "stories of the saints' role in Shivaji's life have
more to do with eighteenth-century concerns than with actual events
from a century before". The complex intertwining of the religious and
political in the present encouraged the construction of a simpler
past, as "part of a general tendency to oppose a single universalistic
Hinduism to a single monolithic Islam".

In the last hundred and fifty years, biographies of Shivaji have
expressed "a host of different political and cultural interests".
Jatirao Phule used Shivaji's story as "a way of advancing an
antibrahmin reading of Maratha history", emphasising his low-caste
status, but "virtually every Maharashtrian writer after Phule saw
Shivaji as the father of a nation, a liberationist". K.A. Keluskar
downplayed his connection with the saints and emphasized his appeal to
followers of every caste, Lokmanya Tilak used him to support
opposition to British rule, and M.G. Ranade wedded his story to bhakti
("devotion"). Laine also looks at the presentation of Shivaji in
school texts, in the fictional works of Babasaheb Purandare, and on
web sites.

Looking at "cracks in the narrative", Laine explores the things left
out of traditional stories — and what these absences show about the
concerns of those who produced them. Shivaji came from a "broken
family", with separated parents, he probably had a harem, he showed no
interest in the bhakti saints, his ambition was to build a kingdom,
not liberate a nation, and he did little to change the "cosmopolitan
Islamicate world" he lived in.

The Shivaji stories have played a key role in the construction of
"Islam" and "Hinduism" in Maharashtra.

"The narrative of Shivaji's life, already reshaped by bhakti writers
by 1800, was thoroughly overtaken by the nationalist narrative in 1900
and has been sustained as a grand narrative of Hindu nationalist
identity, despite all the inner inconsistencies, anachronisms, and
communalism that imaginative enterprise has entailed."

It is hard to approach Shivaji without being influenced by the
political furor the book has inspired. It has been withdrawn from the
Indian market and banned in Maharashtra, while a scholar was assaulted
and the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune ransacked just
because of mentions in Laine's acknowledgements. This thuggery is a
depressing illustration of the extent of communalism in Indian
politics, but also demonstrates the continuing significance of the
Shivaji stories — and the need to understand their evolution and
history.

Laine's openness may explain some of the animosity: his introduction,
for example, explicitly states his hope to "rescue [Shivaji's]
biography from the grasp of those who see India as a Hindu nation at
war with its Muslim neighbors". Shivaji is undeniably a scholarly
work, however, and few of Laine's critics have engaged with its actual
content. Though too slender to be entirely self-contained, it includes
enough background to be accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of
modern Indian history.

March 2004

External links:

- buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195141261/ref=nosim/dannyyeesbook-20

Related reviews:

- books about India + Indian history
http://dannyreviews.com/s/India.html
- more historiography
http://dannyreviews.com/s/historiography.html
- more history
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- Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India - James W. Laine
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- The Life of Shivaji Maharaj, Founder of the Maratha Empire -
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- Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture - Saryu., ed. Doshi
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Thuggee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thuggee (or tuggee, ठग्गी ṭhagī) (from Hindi ठग ṭhag ‘thief’, from
Sanskrit स्थग sthaga ‘cunning’, ‘sly’, ‘fraudulent’, ‘dishonest’,
‘scoundrel’, from स्थगति sthagati ‘he conceals’)[1] is the term for a
particular kind of murder and robbery of travellers in India.

Thuggery

The English word "thug" comes from the Hindi word "thag", meaning
"conman". It is one of many Indian words borrowed into English during
the British colonial period. The English connotation of 'thug' is
synonymous with terms like hoodlum and hooligan, indicating a person
(who may or may not be anti-social) who harasses others, usually for
hire.[citation needed] People regarded as thugs might commit assault
(or 'menace'), battery, even robbery and grievous bodily harm, but
they usually stop short of murder. Additionally, "thugs" usually
travel in pairs, though they can work alone or in groups of four to
six members, and are typically open about their presence (except to
law enforcement officials); while "Thuggee" were covert and operated
as members of a group, often called a "Thuggee cult" by the British.
Hence, the word "Thuggee" is capitalised while the word "thug" usually
is not; which enables distinction of a "Thug" (here, a short form of
"Thuggee") from a "thug".

In the heyday of Thuggee activity, travellers were typically part of a
travelling group, so the term Thuggee typically referred to killing of
a large number of people in a single operation. This aspect
distinguishes Thuggee from similar concept of dacoity, which means
simple armed robbery.

Dacoity has similarities with the terms brigand and bandit from
European and Latin American experience, but there appear to be no
exact Western parallels for Thuggee. Perhaps the closest concepts
would be the format of piracy, though this is solely maritime robbery
(usually with murder), and the earlier, but similar, format of raids
on coastal settlements by Viking seafarers. Some aspects, however, are
reminiscent of the Mafia group of organisations.

Between them, these classes of criminal activity illustrate some of
the mystique that attached to the Thugs and the complex mixture of
fear and dread of these murderous men that was felt by the ordinary
people who might well be their victims.

There is some question as to the extent of the religious dimension of
Thuggee. Most contemporary sources described Thuggee as being a
religious cult, but some modern sources feel it was merely a
specialized form of organized crime or paramilitary activity, with no
particular religious dimension beyond the normal piety of the
villagers from whom its members were recruited.

Time period

The concept of Thuggee is known from the 17th century, though the term
and/or activity possibly dates back as early as the 13th century.
Thuggee was actively practiced at least through the end of the 19th
century. If remnants of the Thuggee tradition survived into the 20th
and 21st centuries, they did so very covertly. The film Indiana Jones
and the Temple of Doom is based on the premise that Thuggee cults
survived covertly into the early 20th century.

Stern suppression by the British was important in reducing Thuggee
activity but more significant was the introduction of modern methods
of travel, in particular the displacement of travelling on foot or by
horse in groups by the railway, which effectively rendered Thuggee
obsolete.

The nature

The particular groups, as well as the general concept, were often
equally durable and would outlive the 'careers' of individual members
to develop into a crime family lasting generations. These groups
progressed from being simple gangs into becoming 'fraternities' or
even 'cults', featuring the initiation of new members, either through
the heredity of a criminal underclass, or through an apprenticeship,
such as normally associated with skilled or learned professions or the
training programs of elite military units. Other sources describe the
Thugs as a criminal 'tribe' or caste. Over the course of generations,
the secrets must be kept within the 'family'. The marriage of
offspring within the group both safeguards the secret knowledge,
allowing it to be imparted steadily to the children without the risk
of uninitiated neighbours overhearing, and reinforces the exclusive
and selective nature of the organisation. This preserves the mystique,
which is in itself part of the formula of success, and creates an
elite aura around it. At the moment of attack, the sudden revelation
of the identity of the assailants produces a shock that disables
defensive manoeuvres, at least for a few, vital moments, while the
reputation for invincibility engenders a defeatism that results in a
fait accompli.

The practice

Thugs were active all over the Bengal region of the Indian
subcontinent. Maps showing the possessions of the British East India
Company in 1765 and 1805Thuggee is described as a cult of people
engaged in the multiple murder and robbery of travelers. At the time,
most travelers in India would travel in caravan for mutual support and
security, since travel meant the crossing of difficult terrain before
the coming of metalled roads, the passing among different races,
religions and castes, at a period before police forces were formed. In
order to attempt the massacre of an entire caravan, the Thugs needed
to be numerous and well-coordinated. They also needed to be
sufficiently stealthy, at least in the early stages, to begin their
slaughter without rousing all at once. This required a high degree of
planning, organization – including props and patter – timing, teamwork
and discipline. With anything less than complete success a survivor
could escape to raise a hue and cry. These horrendous but
sophisticated operations lay somewhere between organized crime and
paramilitary activity and were far removed from the ordinary criminal
in the audacity, magnitude, and ruthlessness of the enterprise.

The modus operandi was to join a caravan and become accepted as bona-
fide travelers themselves. The Thugs would need to delay any attack
until their fellow travelers had dropped the initial wariness of the
newcomers and had been lulled into a false sense of security. The
Thugs first needed to befriend the travelers and win their trust. Once
the travelers had allowed the Thugs to join them and disperse amongst
them (a task which might sometimes, depending on the size of the
target group, require accompaniment for hundreds of miles), the Thugs
would wait for a suitable place and time before killing and robbing
them.

There were obviously variations on a theme. When tackling a large
group, a Thuggee band might disperse along a route and join a group in
stages, concealing their acquaintanceship, such that they could come
to outnumber their intended victims by small, non-threatening
increments. If the travelers had doubts about any one party, they
might confide their worries to another party of the same Thuggee band.
The trusted band would thus be the best placed to deal with these
members of the caravan at the appropriate time, but might also be able
to advise their colleagues to 'back off' or otherwise modify their
behavior, to allay suspicion.

The killing place would need to be remote from local observers and
suitable to prevent escape (e.g., backed against a river). Thugs
tended to develop favored places of execution, called beles. They knew
the geography of these places well—better than their victims. They
needed to, if they were to anticipate the likely escape routes and
hiding-places of the quicker-witted and more determined of the
travelers.

The timing might be at night or during a rest-break, when the
travelers would be busy with chores and when the background cries and
noise would mask any sounds of alarm. A quick and quiet method, which
left no stains and required no special weapons, was strangulation.
This method is particularly associated with Thuggee and led to the
Thugs also being referred to as the Phansigars, or "noose-operators",
and simply as "stranglers" by British troops. Usually two or three
Thugs would strangle one traveller. The Thugs would then need to
dispose of the bodies: they might bury them or might throw them into a
nearby well.[2].

The leader of a gang was called the 'jemadar': this is an ordinary
Indian word and is now used as the rank of an Army officer
(Lieutenant), who would command a similar number of men to a Thuggee
gang-leader. An English equivalent term might be 'the Boss' or 'the
Guv'nor' (Governor).

As with modern criminal gangs, each member of the group had his own
function: the equivalent of the 'hit-man,' 'the lookout,' and the
'getaway driver' would be those Thugs tasked with luring travelers
with charming words or acting as guardian to prevent escape of victims
while the killing took place.

They usually killed their victims in darkness while the thugs made
music or noise to escape discovery. If burying bodies close to a well-
traveled trade-route, they would need to disguise the 'earthworks' of
their graveyard as a camp-site, tamping down the covering mounds and
leaving some items of rubbish or remnants of a fire to 'explain' the
disturbances and obscure the burials.

One reason given for the Thuggee success in avoiding detection and
capture so often and over such long periods of time is a self-
discipline and restraint in avoiding groups of travelers on shorter
journeys, even if they seemed laden with suitable plunder. Choosing
only travelers far from home gave more time until the alarm was raised
and the distance made it less likely that colleagues would follow on
to investigate the disappearances. Another reason given is the high
degree of teamwork and co-ordination both during the infiltration
phase and at the moment of attack. This was a sophisticated criminal
elite that knew its business well and approached each 'operation' like
a military mission.

Use of garotte

The garotte is often depicted as the common weapon of the Thuggee. It
is sometimes described as a rumal (head covering or kerchief), or
translated as "yellow scarf". "Yellow" in this case may refer to a
natural cream or khaki colour rather than bright yellow. Most Indian
males in Central India or Hindustan would have a puggaree or head-
scarf, worn either as a turban or worn around a kullah and draped to
protect the back of the neck. Types of scarves were also worn as
cummerbunds, in place of a belt. Any of these items could have served
as strangling ligatures.

Religion and Thuggee

Thuggee groups might be Hindu, Sikh or Muslim, but Thuggee is
particularly associated with followers of the Hindu Goddess Kali (or
Durga), whom they often called Bhavani.[3][4][5] It was noted, even at
the time, that only a very small minority of the followers of Kali
were Thuggees. Many Thuggees worshipped Kali but most supporters of
Kali did not practise Thuggee.

Some Thuggee groups claimed descent from seven Muslim tribes[citation
needed], but the majority of Hindu followers only seem to be related
during the early periods of Islamic development through their
religious creed and staunch worship of Kali, one of the Hindu Tantric
Goddesses. At a time of political unrest, with changes from Hindu
Rajput rulers to Muslim Moghul emperors and viceroys, and possibly
back again, a wise group would display allegiance to both creeds, but
its ultimate loyalty was probably only to itself.

"There seem to have been very few Sikh Thugs. But Sahib Khan, the
Deccan strangler, 'knew Ram Sing Siek: he was a noted Thug leader - a
very shrewd man,' who also served with the Pindaris for a while and
was responsible for the assassination of the notorious Pindari leader
Sheikh Dulloo." Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 239-40.

Some sources view the Thugs as a cult or sect. Given the extent of the
problem, in geographical scale and in the duration of time, it is
likely that many groups would wish to keep their secrets from betrayal
from within and from intrusion by outsiders and would have evolved
into secret criminal fraternities. It also follows that if they were
repeatedly successful, then they must have 'divine blessing' and would
wish to give thanks to, and worship, the deity to whom they ascribed
their support. In the West, as well, criminality and religious
observance are not always mutually incompatible.

Origin and recruitment

A group of thugs, ca. 1863The earliest recorded mention of the Thugs
as a special band or fraternity, rather than as ordinary thieves, is
found in the following passage of Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz
Shah (written about 1356):

In the reign of that sultan (about 1290), some Thugs were taken in
Delhi, and a man belonging to that fraternity was the means of about a
thousand being captured. But not one of these did the sultan have
killed. He gave orders for them to be put into boats and to be
conveyed into the lower country, to the neighbourhood of Lakhnauti,
where they were to be set free. The Thugs would thus have to dwell
about Lakhnauti and would not trouble the neighbourhood of Delhi any
more." (Sir HM Elliot's History of India, iii. 141).

Membership was sometimes passed from father to son, in what would now
be termed a criminal underclass. The leaders of long-established Thug
groups tended to come from these hereditary lines, as the gang
developed into a criminal 'tribe'. Other men would get to know a Thug
band and would hope to be recruited, in the way that one might aspire
to join an elite regiment or university: they were the best operators
in "the business" and, like a regiment or college fraternity, once in
the group, there was a camaraderie of numbers and shared experience.
The robbery became less a question of solving problems of poverty and
more a profession, like soldiering.

Sometimes the young children of the travelers would be spared and
groomed to become Thugs themselves, as the presence of children would
help allay suspicion. A fourth way of becoming a Thug was by training
with a guru, similar to an apprenticeship for a guild or profession,
during which the candidate could be assessed for reliability, courage,
discretion and discipline.[2]

The magnitude of the problem

Estimates of the total number of victims vary widely, depending on the
author's idea of the length of existence of the Thugs (for which there
are no reliable sources). According to the Guinness Book of Records
the Thuggee cult was responsible for approximately 2,000,000 deaths,
while British historian Dr. Mike Dash estimates that they killed
50,000 persons in total, based on his assumption that they only
started to exist 150 years before their eradication in the 1830s.

Yearly figures for the early 19th century are better documented, but
even they are inaccurate estimates. For example, gang leader Behram
has often been considered the world's most prolific serial killer,
blamed for 931 killings between 1790 and 1830. Reference to
contemporary manuscript sources, however, shows that Behram actually
gave inconsistent statements regarding the number of murders he had
committed. While he did state that he had "been present at" 931
killings committed by his gang of 25 to 50 men, elsewhere he admitted
that he had personally strangled "only" around 125 people. Having
turned King's Evidence and agreed to inform on his former companions,
furthermore, Behram never stood trial for any of the killings
attributed to him, the total of which must thus remain a matter of
dispute.[6]

Suppression

The Thuggee cult was suppressed by the British rulers of India in the
1830s.[2] The arrival of the British and their development of a
methodology to tackle crime meant the techniques of the Thugs had met
their match. Suddenly, the mysterious disappearances were mysteries no
longer and it became clear how even large caravans could be
infiltrated by apparently small groups, that were in fact acting in
concert. Once the techniques were known to all travellers, the element
of surprise was gone and the attacks became botched, until the hunters
became the hunted.

Civil servant William Henry Sleeman, superintendent, 'Thuggee and
Dacoity Dept.' in 1835, and later its Commissioner in 1839.Reasons for
British success included:

the dissemination of reports regarding Thuggee developments across
territorial borders, so that each administrator was made aware of new
techniques as soon as they were put in practice, so that travellers
could be warned and advised on possible counter-measures.
the use of King's evidence programmes gave an incentive for gang
members to inform on their peers to save their own lives. This
undermined the code of silence that protected members.
at a time when, even in Britain, policing was in its infancy, the
British set up a dedicated police force, the Thuggee Department, and
special tribunals that prevented local influence from affecting
criminal proceedings.
the police force applied the new detective methodologies to record the
locations of attacks, the time of day or circumstances of the attack,
the size of group, the approach to the victims and the behaviours
after the attacks. In this way, a single informant, belonging to one
gang in one region, might yield details that would be applicable to
most, or all, gangs in a region or indeed across all India.
The initiative of suppression was due largely to the efforts of the
civil servant William Sleeman, who started an extensive campaign
involving profiling and intelligence. A police organisation known as
the 'Thuggee and Dacoity Department' was established within the
Government of India, with William Sleeman appointed Superintendent of
the department in 1835. Thousands of men were either put in prison,
executed, or expelled from British India.[2] The campaign was heavily
based on informants recruited from captured thugs who were offered
protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew.
By the 1870s, the Thug cult was extinct, but it led to the
promulgation of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Although it was
repealed upon independence of India, the concept of 'criminal tribes'
and 'criminal castes' is still prevalent in India.[7][8] The
Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by
the Central Criminal Intelligence Department (CID).

Possible misinterpretation by the British and scepticism about the
existence

In her book The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs
of India (2002), Martine van Woerkens suggests that evidence for the
existence of a Thuggee cult in the 19th century was in part the
product of "colonial imaginings" — British fear of the little-known
interior of India and limited understanding of the religious and
social practices of its inhabitants. For a comparison, see Juggernaut
and the Black Hole of Calcutta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_of_Calcutta

Krishna Dutta, while reviewing the book Thug: the true story of
India's murderous cult by the British historian Dr. Mike Dash in The
Independent, argues:[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Independent

"In recent years, the revisionist view that thuggee was a British
invention, a means to tighten their hold in the country, has been
given credence in India, France and the US, but this well-researched
book objectively questions that assertion."
In his book, Dash rejects scepticism about the existence of a secret
network of groups with a modus operandi that was different from
highwaymen, such as dacoits. To prove his point Dash refers to the
excavated corpses in graves, of which the hidden locations were
revealed to Sleeman's team by thug informants. In addition, Dash
treats the extensive and thorough documentation that Sleeman made.
Dash rejects the colonial emphasis on the religious motivation for
robbing, but instead asserts that monetary gain was the main
motivation for Thuggee and that men sometimes became Thugs due to
extreme poverty. He further asserts that the Thugs were highly
superstitious and that they worshipped the Hindu goddess Kali, but
that their faith was not very different from their contemporary non-
thugs. He admits, though, that the thugs had certain group-specific
superstitions and rituals.

Aftermath

The discovery of the thuggee was one of the main reason why the
Criminal Tribes Act was created.

In popular culture

This "In popular culture" section may contain minor or trivial
references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's
impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and
remove trivial references. (November 2009)

In literature

The story of Thuggee was popularised by books such as Philip Meadows
Taylor's novel Confessions of a Thug, 1839, leading to the word "thug"
entering the English language. Ameer Ali, the protagonist of
Confessions of a Thug was said to be based on a real Thug called Syeed
Amir Ali.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Meadows_Taylor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Thug_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagonist

John Masters' novel The Deceivers also deals with the subject. A more
recent book is George Bruce's The Stranglers: The cult of Thuggee and
its overthrow in British India (1968). Dan Simmons's Song of Kali,
1985, features a Thuggee cult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons

The 19th century American writer Mark Twain discusses the Thuggee
fairly extensively in chapters 9 and 10 of "Following the Equator:
Volume II", 1897, THE ECCO PRESS, ISBN 0-88001-519-5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Christopher Moore's novel, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff,
Christ's Childhood Pal, describes a Thuggee ritual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb:_The_Gospel_According_to_Biff,_Christ%27s_Childhood_Pal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Moore_(author)

The 1976 science fiction novel Strangler's Moon by E.E. "Doc" Smith
and Stephen Goldin is based on the Thuggee (book #2 in the Family
D'Alembert series).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangler%27s_Moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Goldin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_D%27Alembert

Sci-Fi/Fantasy author Glen Cook uses an India-like setting and Thuggee
as a plot vehicle in his books Shadow Games (June 1989), and Dreams of
Steel (April 1990). The books and later ones that continue the
storyline form part of Cook's Black Company series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Cook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_of_Steel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company

The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey has a Hindu villain, whose
minions are Thuggee, almost without exception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey
Author William T. Vollmann draws upon Sleeman in his story The Yellow
Sugar, which is one of two tales in his collection The Rainbow Stories
dealing with the colour yellow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Vollmann
In the pre-Holmes short story "The Mystery of Uncle Jeremy's
Household" (1887), Arthur Conan Doyle centres the narrative on a
beautiful female Thuggee in England who has "occasional fits of
fanaticism" and "horrible conceptions of religion".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle
Italian writer Emilio Salgari (1862–1911) wrote about thugs in I
Misteri della Jungla Nera (1895) and Le Due Tigri (1904) and other
short stories.
George Macdonald Fraser's novel Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
makes references to the "cult" of Thuggee, while the phrase: "pass the
tobacco" is used as a verbal signal for the killing to begin.
The DC Comics character Ravan is a Thuggee assassin who kills to delay
the return of Kali. He is the enemy of Kobra who seeks to bring about
her return.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravan_(comics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobra_(comics)

In the novel The Thirteenth Manifestation: the Song of Kali Ma (2006)
by Josephine Dunne, thuggees appear as assassins who operate from an
ancient subterranean Kali temple under the mountains between the
Pakistan and Indian line of control in Kashmir.

In film

The two most popular depictions of the cult in film are the 1939 film,
Gunga Din, and the 1984 film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The Indiana Jones movie is notable for Amrish Puri's villain, who is
shown chanting lines such as "maaro maaro sooar ko, chamdi nocho pee
lo khoon" - literally "Kill, Kill the pig, flay his skin, drink his
blood". Temple of Doom was temporarily banned in India for an
allegedly racist portrayal of Indians. Both films have the heroes
fighting secret revivals of the cult to prevent them from resuming
their reigns of terror, although Temple of Doom included features that
were never part of the Thuggee, such as cardiectomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Temple_of_Doom
In the 1956 film Around the World in Eighty Days, starring David
Niven, Passepartout rescues a princess captured by the Thuggee and
sentenced to burn to death in the funeral pyre with her deceased
husband. (In the original Jules Verne novel, Thuggee are mentioned
only briefly, and not directly in connection with this princess.)[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days_(1956_film)
In 1960 British horror studio Hammer Film Productions released The
Stranglers of Bombay. In the film, Guy Rolfe portrays an heroic
British officer battling institutional mismanagement by the British
East India Company, as well as Thuggee infiltration of Indian society,
in an attempt to bring the cultists to justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company
The 1968 Bollywood film Sangharsh, based on a story by Jnanpith Award
winner, Mahasweta Devi, presented a fictionalised account of vendetta
within a Thuggee cult in the holy Indian town of Varanasi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunghursh_(1968_film)
The 1988 film version of The Deceivers, produced by Ismail Merchant
and starring Pierce Brosnan, is a fictionalised account of the initial
discovery and infiltration of the Thuggee sect by an imperial British
administrator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deceivers
The 1954 film I Misteri della Giungla Nera directed by Gian Paolo
Callegari and starring Lex Barker, where a group of religious fanatics
in India, the Thugs, prey upon European and natives alike by capturing
and offering them up in sacrifice to their frightful goddess, Kali
(from imdb.) Adapted from Emilio Salgari's book by the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Salgari
The 1965 film Help! directed by Richard Lester and featuring The
Beatles parodies the thuggee as the cult that tries to steal Ringo's
sacrificial ring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help!_(film)

In television

In an episode of Highlander: The Series, "The Wrath of Kali", Duncan
MacLeod deals with immortal Kamir (played by Indian actor Kabir Bedi),
last of the Thuggee.
The fifth episode of the short-lived Clerks: The Animated Series
featured a plot twist where the Little League World Champions were
kidnapped by the Thuggee, where they were forced to chip rock away
from walls (much like the Thuggee in Temple of Doom).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_League
In the episode "The Yellow Scarf Affair" of the series The Man from
U.N.C.L.E., Agent Napoleon Solo uncovers a revival of the Thuggee cult
while investigating a plane crash in India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_U.N.C.L.E.
On It Ain't Half Hot Mum series 2, episode 8, "The Night of the
Thugs", the concert party take refuge from a rainstorm in a ruined
Thuggee temple. NB - Rare unscripted "giggle" from Captain Ashwood
when Colonel Reynolds discuss stealing the ruby from the statue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodes_of_Highlander_(season_4)#The_Wrath_of_Kali

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Ain%27t_Half_Hot_Mum
See also

Highwayman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highwayman

Notes and references

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica,
Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/T/THU/thugs.html
^ Thugs 1902 Encyclopædia Britannica'.Pali-sthag.
^ a b c d Dash, Mike Thug: the true story of India's murderous cult
ISBN 1-86207-604-9, 2005
^ Dash, pp. 284-286 in the Dutch translation of the book
^ Dash, pp. 247 in the Dutch translation of the book
^ Dash, page 329 of the UK edition - notes to Chapter 16
^ James Paton, 'Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee', British Library
Add. Mss. 41300
^ "Thugs Traditional View" (shtml). BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/thugs.shtml.
Retrieved 2007-09-17.
^ Sinister sects: Thug, Mike Dash's investigation into the gangs who
preyed on travellers in 19th-century India by Kevin Rushby, The
Guardian, Saturday, June 11, 2005.
^ Dutta, Krishna (2005) The sacred slaughterers. Book review of Thug:
the true story of India's murderous cult by Mike Dash. In the
Independent (Published: 8 July 2005)text
^ Verne, Jules (August 18, 2005). Around The World in Eighty Days.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=34998. See
page 38, where the Thuggee chief is mentioned, and page 46, where the
bride is referred to as a suttee.

Bibliography

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica,
Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Eleventh_Edition
Dash, Mike Thug: the true story of India's murderous cult ISBN
1-86207-604-9, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Dash
Dutta, Krishna (2005) The sacred slaughterers. Book review of Thug:
the true story of India's murderous cult by Mike Dash. In The
Independent (Published: 8 July 2005) text
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/thug-the-true-story-of-indias-murderous-cult-by-mike-dash-497902.html
Paton, James 'Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee', British Library
Add. Mss. 41300
Woerkens, Martine van The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and
the Thugs of India (2002),

External links

Acting in the "Theatre of Anarchy": 'The Anti-Thug Campaign' and
Elaborations of Colonial Rule in Early-Nineteenth Century India by Tom
Lloyd (2006) in PDF file format
http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/fichiers/LLOYD.pdf
Parama Roy: Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee. In: idem, Indian
Traffic. Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India.
University of California Press 1998. (in html format)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee"

Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee
Acknowledgments

This book owes a great deal to the critical perspicacity and
generosity of friends, colleagues, mentors, and institutions, whom I
am grateful to be able to name and thank. These pages would have been
impossible to bring to fruition without the encouragement and
intellectual support of Sandhya Shetty and Carole-Anne Tyler, who
consistently asked the difficult questions and who taught me through
the inspiration of their own scholarship. I am also grateful to
Lalitha Gopalan, who so often told me what I was thinking before I
knew it myself. I am grateful too to the many other friends and
colleagues who read the manuscript, either in full or in part, or who
responded to my work at conferences: Katherine Kinney, Joe Childers,
R. Radhakrishnan, Inderpal Grewal, Vincent Cheng, Daniel Boyarin, Kim
Devlin, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Bette London, Ron Inden, Robert
Goldman, Aditya Behl, Gayatri Spivak, Jennifer Brody, George Haggerty,
Lawrence Cohen, Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Foster. I am
indebted to the readers for the University of California Press,
especially Caren Kaplan and Sangeeta Ray, for their meticulous,
constructive, and sympathetic evaluation of the project. My editor,
Doris Kretschmer, has been unfailingly helpful and patient. I am also
grateful to Dore Brown and Diane Jagusiak of the University of
California Press, and to Sarah Myers, for their scrupulous editing. I
am indebted above all to my parents, Amalendu and Ramola Roy, as well
as to Bharat Trehan for (among other things) his recall of a youth
productively spent watching Bombay films.
This project has been funded by a University of California President’s
Research Fellowship in the Humanities in 1991–1992, a fellowship in
the University of California, Riverside’s Center for Ideas and Society
in the spring of 1994, and by two pretenure faculty-development awards
from the University of California, Riverside. I am grateful for this
support.

2. Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee

I am a Thug, my father and grandfather were Thugs, and I have thugged
with many. Let the government employ me and I will do its work.
He had met hundreds of other Deceivers, and the notes were a complete
tale of all he had seen and heard and done; of all the Deceivers who
had engaged in any action, with their descriptions, habits, and homes;
of each murder, and how it had gone, and how it might have been
prevented—or improved upon. The words could be read for either
purpose, according to the spirit of the reader.

At the time that Burton was impersonating Mirza Abdullah in the
bazaars of Sind, another important narrative of disguise,
surveillance, and racial crossing was being written in the
subcontinent, this one under the auspices of the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department of the East India Company’s government. This was the
narrative of the exposure and extirpation of a form of hereditary
criminality called thuggee; it was to form a significant constitutive
component of the authoritarian and interventionary reform of the 1830s
and 1840s and to contribute to the still-emerging project of
“discovering India.” “It was with the flourish of mystery unveiled and
mastered,” writes a contemporary historian, “that a group of officers
of the Political Department had lobbied for special operations against
[a] ‘murderous fraternity’ and for special laws to deal with it.” [1]
It is that tale of thuggee that this chapter will take up, at least in
part as a counterpoint to the Burtonian record of the Englishman as
native. It examines the phenomenon designated thuggee by colonial
authority in nineteenth-century India, a phenomenon whose emergence,
codification, and overthrow was to become perhaps the founding moment
for the study of indigenous criminality, as a problem of
impersonation, visibility, and the transactions of reading. I use the
example of thuggee to explore one of the various and often mutually
discontinuous kinds of identities that were created, fixed, or
rendered ambivalent for Indian colonial subjects. In approaching the
problematic of thuggee in the colonial context through the optic of
identity formation and subjection, I broach a nexus of concerns that
cohere around the epistemes of representation and knowledge: the
problematic of the formation of colonial knowledge, the contested,
changing, and uneven definitions of law, order, criminality, and
reform in early-nineteenth-century India, the theorization of colonial
identities (Indian and British), and the discursive problems
associated with generating the moral subject of the civilizing mission
of British colonialism.

This chapter has three sections, with significant amounts of overlap.
The first examines the official records of the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department (first established in the 1830s), a cluster of documents
that I have perhaps rather arbitrarily designated the thuggee archive.
This includes first and foremost the files on thuggee and dacoity in
the India Office Library and the National Archives of India. Also
incorporated in this thuggee archive are the works (Ramaseeana, or a
Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language Used by the Thugs [1836]; Report
on Budhuk Alias Bagree Dacoits and Other Gang Robbers by Hereditary
Profession [1849]; Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug
Gangs [1840]) of William Henry Sleeman of thuggee fame, as well as of
other officials associated directly or indirectly with the antithug
campaign: James Sleeman, Thug, or A Million Murders (1920); Charles
Hervey, Some Records of Crime (1892); Edward Thornton, Illustrations
of the History and Practices of the Thugs (1837); and the anonymously
authored The Thugs or Phansigars of India (1839), an abridged version
of the Ramaseeana for an American audience. This inventory of thuggee
materials also includes a number of biographies, fictionalizations,
and nonofficial accounts of the “discovery” of the phenomenon and its
eradication: James Hutton, A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits,
the Hereditary Garroters and Gang-Robbers of India (1857); A. J.
Wightman, No Friend for Travellers (1959); George Bruce, The
Stranglers: The Cult of Thuggee and Its Overthrow in British India
(1968); Francis Tuker, The Yellow Scarf (1961); and Philip Meadows
Taylor, Confessions of a Thug (1839). These are collectively
designated the archive in this chapter, despite the incommensurability
in their generic status; this has been done because there appears to
be very little significant difference between one text and another in
this collection. Each seems to repeat the others in an uncanny
fashion; each narrates the same incidents in almost exactly the same
rhetorical mode; and each looks to W. H. Sleeman’s productions as the
founding texts of the thuggee narrative. (Meadows Taylor’s novel
differs from these only in its focus on a single thug and its
accumulation of additional [fictional] detail.)

The second section focuses on the special juridical procedures that
had to be instituted in order to deal with some of the most
intractable problems associated with a bizarre and enigmatic variety
of criminality. The final section provides a reading of the 1952 work
on the thugs by John Masters, The Deceivers, a novel that was
popularized in the 1980s in a film of that name by Merchant Ivory.
What sets this novel apart from the rest of the archive is the turn it
gives to the always already familiar narrative of thuggee through its
focus on the tensions of the investigating subject and its interest in
the English impersonation of Indianness and Englishness. It allows us
a way of (re)visiting and (re)inflecting the thuggee archive through
its stress on the colonizing male’s desires and identifications, and
thus forms an apposite corollary to the accent on Indian impersonation
that informs the discourse of criminal law.

At this point I should add a note about the limits of the enterprise
undertaken in this chapter. In the first place, I do not wish to
furnish another account of thuggee or to enter the traffic in
competing narratives of what might have constituted a material thug
organization or practice. Nor am I interested in reinscribing the
practices of the thugs in the register of subaltern insurgency,
though, given that subalternity is most properly construed as a
relational rather than an essential category,[2] I am not unwilling to
grant the thugs’ subaltern status. I am certainly sympathetic to
Ranajit Guha’s model of reading subaltern insurgency (as a “turning
things upside down”) through the texts of counterinsurgency.[3] But,
given the exclusions listed earlier in this paragraph, for me to read
thuggee as resistive, anticolonial, protonationalist, or even
antistate may be philosophically not discontinuous with the reading
practices that produced the thug as a demonized and completely
irrational entity. My object here is not to recuperate a subaltern
consciousness, even one that is acknowledged to be ineluctably
discursive, “a theoretical fiction to entitle the project of
reading,” [4] though I concede that the question of “subaltern
consciousness” cannot be completely bypassed.

I shall confine myself instead to examining the performative
subjectivity of the thug, as it is constructed in the discourse of
thuggee, as a way of teasing out, extending, and transforming some of
the implications of representation, mimicry, and visibility in the
colonial context. What I will engage are the models of reading that
are provided by the thuggee archives—how they are formed,
consolidated, or (partially) interrupted. And what I do argue is that
the reading of the uncovering of thuggee as an enabling moment for the
colonial state in its quest for the consolidation of judicial power
needs to be, if not displaced, at least complicated, by the
acknowledgment that thuggee forms an especially intransigent moment
within the colonial construction of criminality; it is a moment that
confounds and unsettles the received wisdom about identity formation,
truth production, and meliorative possibilities in early-nineteenth-
century India. What I also argue is that the discourse on and around
thuggee can be instrumental in opening up our present understanding of
the theorization of colonial identity, especially as it engages
questions of familiarity, visibility, and reproducibility. The text of
thuggee provides, for instance, a point of entry into a wider range of
mimic desires, identifications, and positions than someone like Bhabha
explicitly engages[5]—for instance, the colonizer’s fascination with
going native, the English miming of Englishness, or the indigenous
miming of indigenous subject positions—as well as foregrounding
questions of class, gender, and sexuality.

• • •

The Thug

The first thugs were not arrested by the British until 1799, after the
defeat at Seringapatam of Tipu Sultan, one of the most potent threats
to the expansionist ambitions of the East India Company; it was not
evident to the British at the time, though, that the stranglers were
thugs or hereditary killers. The first mention of the law-and-order
problem posed by thugs occurs in 1810, in the commander-in-chief’s
instructions to sepoys proceeding on leave about the dangers of
traveling at night and carrying large sums of cash instead of bills of
exchange;[6] but thuggee as a significant social arrangement or
discursive formation does not feature in this caution to the sepoys.
Thornton reproduces some correspondence between British magistrates
and police officials of the Western Provinces in the years 1814–1816
on the subject of thugs; at this point knowledge about them appears
very fragmentary, with no reference to shared religious rituals or
language or an idiosyncratic form of murder. It appears that the
notion of thuggee as a system rather than a disarticulated set of
violent acts was first broached in 1816 by Dr. Richard Sherwood, who
wrote an essay detailing its genealogy, organization, and argot for
the Madras Literary Gazette.[7] It proved, however, enormously
difficult to compel belief in the existence of such a fraternity (this
was to remain a problem in the decades to come), even among British
political officers, magistrates, and law-enforcement officials.
Meadows Taylor describes the capture of large numbers of thugs in
Bundelkhand and Malwa in the 1820s, an event that failed to “[excite]
more than a passing share of public attention.” [8] It was not until
Captain W. H. Sleeman undertook the exercise of decoding and exposing
thuggee in 1830, after the unexpected confession of the captured
bandit Feringheea, that a grand narrative of thuggee began to emerge.

Despite this relatively recent discovery, however, thuggee as praxis
and as identity was always represented as being of almost
inconceivable antiquity, conceived in the precolonial past and
sanctioned by long duration and popular Hindu mythology, if not
textual doctrine. A. J. Wightman, echoing his nineteenth-century
predecessors, asserts that though evidence of the existence of thuggee
is first found in records of the late thirteenth century, “it is
obvious that they must have been well-established at a much earlier
date.” [9] Some writers, like Sherwood, traced its origins to the
Arab, Afghan, and Mughal conquests of India of several centuries
earlier; James Sleeman and others traced the thugs back to the times
of Herodotus. The thug Feringheea is said to have claimed that the
sculptures at Ellora, which included representations of all the
professions on earth, featured a depiction of a thug plying his deadly
trade.[10] All the reports without exception demonstrate a tenacious
need to generate a creation myth, to locate not just a point of
discovery but a point of origin, and to establish a precolonial
genealogy. But at the beginning, as Geoff Bennington has said about
national histories, is also the myth of a beginning; and the origins
of thuggee keep receding into a more and more distant historical/
mythological point of inauguration.[11] In fact, several of the
accounts end up locating its beginning in a Hindu myth of creation.

The thugs, as they are represented in nineteenth- and twentieth-
century colonial representations, were a cult of professional
stranglers who preyed on travelers—though never on Englishmen—as an
act of worship to the popular Hindu goddess Kali. They were
represented as hereditary killers drawn from all regions, religions,
classes, and castes, united by their devotion to Kali and the act of
strangulation, which was, in this reading, quite literally sacralized.
The thugs were bound to their calling—and to each other—by shared
signifying systems: a language, a belief in the divine origin of the
practice, and a dizzying array of minutely observed rituals,
prohibitions, and superstitions. The thuggee system functioned as a
quasi-religious fraternity that, paradoxically, would accommodate just
about every Indian. It was defined as a compelling and
characteristically Indian form of social (ir)rationality, and the
practice was represented as resting upon an interlocking network of
constitutive contradictions.

Though the thugs robbed their victims and the confessions usually
demonstrate a very lucid recall of the division of the plunder,
thuggee was not conceived as having any economic base, particularly
because those involved in it appeared to have fixed abodes, peaceful
occupations, and a respectable place in the social and caste
hierarchies during those times when they were not engaged in killing
and plunder. While Sherwood does speculate, albeit briefly and
unevenly, on the proximate material causes of thuggee, the question
becomes progressively leached out of subsequent, and more hegemonic,
exegeses of thuggee. All the writers on the subject are insistent, to
greater or lesser degrees, that the thugs must not be regarded as
exigent, dispossessed, or rebellious subjects; they are unlike the
bandits of folk myth in being devious, unmartial (“cowardly” is the
adjective most often used), and almost obscenely respectable.[12] They
are characterized instead as hereditary killers whose “joyous
occupation” was, paradoxically, not only a matter of caste duty and
therefore ontological necessity but also a prime instance of
unalienated labor. By the time we come to James Sleeman’s hagiographic
account of his grandfather’s exploits, the act of strangulation has
not only been uncoupled from the usual motives for murder but has
acquired a quasi-libidinal charge: “The taking of human life for the
sheer lust of killing was the Thugs’ main object: the plunder, however
pleasant, being a secondary consideration.…Here was no body of amateur
assassins, driven to crime by force of circumstance, but men of
seeming respectability and high intelligence, often occupying
positions of importance and responsibility in their normal lives,
secretly trained from boyhood to the highest degree of skill in
strangulation.” [13] Sleeman is not alone in this reading of the
combined erotic and religious investment in murder. Taylor, in
Confessions of a Thug, hints at the homoerotic subtext of a thug’s
murder of a handsome lad; and George MacMunn explicitly couples the
left-hand Tantrism (including exorbitant and unauthorized sexual acts)
of Kali worshipers with behaviors like thuggee and nationalist
violence:

The murder trials that have followed on the sedition and secret murder
cult in Bengal, and indeed throughout India, show in their records how
the Hindu student depraved and often injured by too early eroticism,
turns to the suggestiveness of the murder-monger, and worships the
nitro-glycerine bomb as the apotheosis of his goddess [Kali].…The
student and the assistant editor of the rag, that but exists to
inflame students and pays its way by advertising the potent
aphrodisiacs among them, are the nidus of the bomb-cult.[14]

Katherine Mayo also locates the worship of Kali, premature and
excessive sexual activity, and acts of anticolonial terrorism within a
single perceptual grid.[15] This confluence of violence, illegitimacy,
and homoerotic desire is to resurface in The Deceivers.

Some twentieth-century scholars of colonial history have sought to
posit alternative, materialist histories of the phenomenon called
thuggee. Hiralal Gupta traces the development of thuggee or banditry
in the early nineteenth century to the success of the East India
Company’s expansionist policy, speculating that a significant number
of people captured as thugs by the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in
the 1830s and 1840s were erstwhile soldiers or officials in the employ
of rulers whose states had recently come under British control. These
people were among those who had lost their employment or fallen from
favor as a result of the annexation or reconfiguration of the Indian
princely states.[16] Sandria Freitag on the other hand points to the
displacement of peripatetic groups as a result of the ousting of local
settled rulers who had traditionally provided some protection to such
groups and to the establishment of the land-revenue-based state as a
possible explanation for the instances of collective acts of violence.
She also glosses the violence of dacoits—as of similar groups—as bids
for power and upward social mobility that would have been acknowledged
as such and accommodated by precolonial Indian state formations.[17]
Stewart Gordon argues that the large number of marauding groups that
were jockeying for political power in Malwa (where most of the thugs
seemed to be based) in the late eighteenth century posed a threat to
the stable sources of revenue in the region and necessitated the
creation of external sources of revenue. Those designated thugs were
“locally recruited, locally based” marauders hired to plunder outside
the neighborhood, as it were, in order to make up for revenue that
might have been lost to larger marauding groups.[18]

As I have already mentioned, Englishmen were never targeted by the
thugs; a few of the written accounts attribute the unsolved murder of
a Lieutenant Maunsell (or Monsell) in 1812 to thugs (as does the film
version of The Deceivers [1987], which opens with that killing), but
most of the thuggee texts point to the fact that the British had no
personal investment in the problem. Almost unfailingly these accounts
point to the antithug campaigns as exemplary instances of the active
benevolence of British rule, so often unjustly maligned or compared
unfavorably with indigenous rule. James Sleeman, who is particularly
apoplectic on this issue, argues that twentieth-century Indian demands
for independence were in effect a call for a return to the days of
thuggee: “Had this small handful of British officials, scattered like
poppies in a corn-field, shown the slightest timidity in grappling
with this gigantic task, they would surely have fallen victims to the
Thugs at the outset, in which case millions of Indians alive to-day
would never have been born, including possibly those who now agitate
for a restoration of the conditions under which Thuggee thrived and
battened.” [19]

Colonial accounts thus represent thuggee as outside a realm of
political and economic rationality (since it is religiously
sanctioned, grounded in caste, and linked to exorbitant pleasures).
Nonetheless, as the obsessive invocations of the Mutiny of 1857 and of
the Bengal revolutionaries of the twentieth century indicate, thuggee
was simultaneously addressed (even if not overtly acknowledged) as a
peculiarly potent threat to the authority and benevolence of the
empire in India. “To the colonial regime,” writes David Arnold, “crime
and politics were almost inseparable: serious crime was an implicit
defiance of state authority and a possible prelude to rebellion;
political resistance was either a ‘crime’ or the likely occasion for
it.” [20] Freitag points to the departures of British police action
from those of their Mughal predecessors; while the Mughals delegated
responsibility for containing collective crime to local functionaries,
the British felt such corporate criminal behaviors were nothing other
than a defiance of the state itself.[21] She points to the fundamental
distinctions, in terms of both the allocation of resources and the
formulation of legal procedures, that the Raj made between crimes
committed by individuals (“ordinary crime”) and those committed by
collectivities (“extraordinary crime”):

Elaboration of legal codes and police establishments to deal with
individual crime conveyed the impression that “the rule of law” had
been introduced into British India; yet the annual compilation of
crime and police statistics makes clear the minimal state resources
committed to policing individual crime. Unless such crime grew
alarmingly in a short period, or its policing fell significantly short
of what came to be seen as the norms of efficiency (for an inefficient
force), the state did not reckon individual crime to be of great
importance. By contrast, however, the British perceived collectively
criminal actions to be either directed against, or weakening, the
authority of the state. As a consequence, the British repeatedly felt
the need to launch centralized police forces against “extraordinary”
crime and viewed their inefficacy as a measure of the Raj’s impotence.
[22]

The thuggee records (including the confessions of thug approvers)
endeavor to provide—through the dominant tropes of ritualized,
religiously ratified, and libidinally charged slaughter—a tightly
knit, seamless, and self-validating account of an exceptional Indian
criminal practice. Yet, even as the record invokes the unvarying
trademarks of thug practice, it inescapably registers the
provisionality of its own categorization. The thug’s signature—murder
by strangulation, using a (silk) handkerchief—does not appear in every
act labeled thuggee; swords and poison feature as agents of
destruction quite as much as the talismanic rumal (handkerchief). Such
wide variations along a continuum of criminal activity were to lead,
after the 1830s, to an expansion of the provenance of thuggee: the
term came to include all kinds of organized and corporate criminal
activity (including poisoning and the kidnapping of children) that was
understood to be hereditary and/or itinerant. The confessions also
seem to demonstrate that at least some thugs were initiated into
professional practice not in adolescence or early manhood by older
male family members but later in life, most typically in response to a
situation of financial exigency.

Not only was it difficult to isolate certain crimes as the acts of
thugs, it was never easy either to establish the exceptional and
profoundly aberrant character of thuggee. The common complaint in all
the thuggee accounts without exception is that the activity of the
thugs seemed to mesh with exasperating ease into existing indigenous
networks of wealth and power, since they were supported by zamindars
(landowners), Indian princes, law-enforcement officials, merchants,
and even ordinary people. As Freitag suggests, “among organized
criminals the thags may have been the group most thoroughly embedded
in local society.” [23] The worship of Kali (also called Devi, or
Bhawani) could not easily be coded as an eccentric religious practice
either. Though some narratives do interpret the thugs’ invocation of
the goddess on the scaffold as proof positive of guilt (“Their
invocation of Bhawani at the drop was a confession of their guilt, for
no one in such a situation invokes Bhawani but a Thug, and he invokes
no other deity in any situation, whatever may be his religion or sect”)
[24], they also point to the widespread adoration of Kali across
regions and religions, among those identified as law-abiding as well
as those constituted as criminal.[25] Finally, while Thug beliefs and
rituals, especially those enacted at the start of an expedition, were
elaborately detailed, it was also asserted that in India expeditions
in quest of plunder were qualitatively no different from expeditions
undertaken for territorial aggrandizement; rulers and robbers alike
took the auspices after the Dasehra festival, before setting out on
their badshashi kam (kingly work).

Hence at least two contesting readings emerge: one defines the thugs
as a community apart, existing in enmity against law-abiding,
scrutable, and locally anchored subjects; the other identifies them as
natural to indigenous society, aided and abetted by all, and mirroring
and reproducing that society’s values. The uneasy fit between the
contextualizing move and the essentializing one was productive of an
aporia, which could only be resolved by invoking that most powerful of
all Indological epistemes—that of caste.[26] All the contradictions
and the seemingly endless heterogeneity of the subject category of the
thug are subsumed within that category, which is reified as coherent
and inflexible and emptied of any possibility of subjective freedom.
Once thuggee as social alliance was taxonomized as homologous to, if
not identical with (and the slippage from homology to identity occurs
without any apparent discursive strain), a caste, the thug could
simultaneously inhabit what had earlier been discrepant subject
positions: he could simultaneously be an exceptional criminal and a
representative Hindu, or Indian, since in the colonial imaginary the
territory of Hinduism is often coextensive with that of India.[27]
Even this reconciliation was not without its tensions, of course,
since thuggee as a philosophical system and a social formation seemed
to work strongly against the grain of the received colonial view of
India as irrevocably fractured along the fault lines of caste and
religion.

Nor was the caste explanation completely adequate to the great and, as
it seemed, illogical hybridity of thuggee. As a socioreligious
formation thuggee seemed to colonial investigators to be aligned with
popular, indeed demotic, forms of Hinduism in its reverence for Kali,
except that it attracted a large number of Muslim adherents, who
seemed to pay homage quite unproblematically both to the goddess and
to the strictures of the Koran. Here it is important to point to the
varied, contingent, and often irreconcilable constructions of Hindu
tradition in colonial discourse; the representation of Hinduism in the
discourse of thuggee is, for instance, quite discontinuous with that
which is operative in the discourse on sati, which was formulated in a
roughly contemporaneous moment. In the case of sati, as Lata Mani has
argued, colonial officials made energetic and systematic attempts to
establish Hinduism as a religion of the book; and Brahmanical readings
and textual authorities were privileged over custom and local
religious and social practice.[28] But in the instance of thuggee,
Hinduism is defined entirely as and by custom. Moreover, at the
popular or subaltern level, Hindu and Muslim forms of worship and
systems of belief may well have been less distinct than they were to
become (especially for more elevated castes and classes) later in the
century. The whole question in fact of Hindu doctrine and praxis and
its relation to thug identity is notoriously murky and ill defined.

Further complicating this discursive construction of thuggee was the
fact that professional thugs cultivated the appearance of the most
civic-minded of citizens and were conscientious about the discharge of
familial, social, and religious obligations. The very characteristics
that made them successful con men—their polish, their social and
rhetorical skills, their extraordinary capacity for duplicating
identities—also ensured their immense respectability in civil society.
But what rendered thuggee particularly elusive and frustrating to
British observers was its relative invisibility, its skill at
camouflage, and the difficulty of establishing it as a pervasive yet
eccentric form of lawlessness. Thug murders were typically performed
without shedding blood and without using identifiable offensive
weapons of any kind: they were performed far from the victims’ homes,
and the bodies were carefully buried. Because of the care exercised in
the killing and the disposal of the corpses (victims were buried with
great dispatch, and their graves were filled with rocks to keep out
any marauding animals) and the hazards attendant upon travel in
nineteenth-century India, these murders generally failed to register
as murders. Local landowners, rulers, and policemen connived at these
murders for their own benefit, or because they were prompted, it was
argued, by the heavy demands of superstition; and the peasantry, we
are told, simply ignored the bodies that occasionally appeared in
fields and wells. This raised the question of how far the circuit of
criminality actually extended: if local officials and the police
tolerated and even encouraged thuggee and ordinary folk made no
complaint about it, who could be said to remain unimplicated in it?
Under the circumstances, everything and everyone was liable to
suspicion, since the system of thuggee was both remarkably inclusive
and remarkably discreet in its operations. Hence British thuggee
inspectors were in the discomfiting position of focusing on crimes
that no one else acknowledged, certainly not (from the evidence of
these writers) most Indian princes or zamindars or even common folk
and generally not even the majority of the British magistracy or the
civil service. British scholars of thuggee were thus involved in a
detective project hobbled by an almost-fatal lack of empirical detail.
All natives were potentially thugs, since the system of thuggee was
remarkably inclusive; and the most seemingly innocent objects, like
handkerchiefs or gur (unrefined sugar, ritually consumed at the
commencement of an expedition), could participate in a diabolical
signifying system. And while British ignorance of thuggee (at least
until the 1830s) might contrast favorably with Indian knowledge—and
therefore complicity—it was susceptible of more objectionable
interpretations; in Masters’s novel, there is the danger that British
“ignorance” of thuggee can be read by the natives in a particularly
unflattering light: “In the nine years of the English Company’s rule
nothing had been done against the Deceivers. But William realized now
that most Indians knew at least of the existence of the Deceivers;
and, knowing, they could not believe the English did not also know;
therefore the English officials too were sharing in the spoils; so
what was the use of informing?” [29] (In the film version, the Indians
have good reason to be suspicious: George Angelsmith, the exemplary
servant of the East India Company, has full knowledge of the
activities of the thugs and profits from it.) Here it is not simply
the natives who are the object of investigation, codification, and
supervision; an alternative modality of interpretation is imaginable,
in which colonial authority is itself open to variant readings,
including those it has not authorized.

All these factors made the retrieval of information and the policing
of thuggee particularly vexing. And creating an archive and
standardizing reader response was not easy either. Though each thuggee
expedition and each act of thuggee was performed by the book, attended
by minutely detailed rituals and scrupulously observed omens, and was
immediately identifiable as such to those who could read the signs, it
was not immediately visible as such to those who could not or did not
see thuggee as a semiosis. Even in the 1860s, when knowledge about
thuggee had been codified, circulated, and reproduced and was
underwritten by wide-ranging institutional and legal support, Charles
Hervey complained that his subordinates were yet imperfect readers of
the complex and mysterious text of thuggee,

some correctly recognizing Thuggee in instances which were palpably
the deed of experts, although death should not have taken place;
others only doing so where death had resulted; some classing certain
murders as cases of “Thuggee” without reference to the means resorted
to in the perpetration thereof; others who wholly pass by cases of
poisoning whether followed by death or not, although they bore
evidence of being the acts of class criminals; some who restrict their
notice to selected cases only of its occurrence, passing by other
similar instances; some who endeavour to distinguish between different
degrees of poisoning, some calling “murder by poison” Thugee [sic],
others not doing so[;]…others who lump all such kindred offences under
round numbers without any narration of the attendant circumstances,
contented only with quoting against them the sections of the Penal
Code under which they were triable or were tried.[30]

With all the discrepant valences of this discourse, one factor
remained crucial in the determination of thuggee: the idea of
hereditary criminality. This was not a particularly novel reading of
corporate criminal activity in colonial India; as far back as 1772,
the dacoits of Bengal were strenuously and repeatedly characterized
not as individual or collective subjects responding to socioeconomic
transformations engendered by the sudden ascendancy of the East India
Company or indeed to any other material circumstance, or even to
chance, but as fulfilling a hereditary calling, if not a genetic
predisposition.[31] And, as Sanjay Nigam has convincingly
demonstrated, the colonial reification of caste as coherent and
inflexible, combined with the received notion of hereditary
criminality (most fully exemplified in the instance of thuggee), was
to have a long and ominous history in colonial and postcolonial India;
the Criminal Tribes and Castes Act of 1872 was to designate (without
any possibility of appeal) a number of vagrant and impoverished
“communities” as “criminal by birth” and thus subject to surveillance,
control, and attempted rehabilitation.[32] I am struck here by the
considerable (though not complete) overlap of this discourse with
Michel Foucault’s description of the emergence of the homosexual as a
distinct ontological category in the nineteenth century:

The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case
history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life
form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and a mysterious
physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was
unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the
root of all his actions because it was their insidious and
indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body
because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was
cosubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular
nature.…The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual
was now a species.[33]

Because thuggee was such a slippery issue, a kind of legal,
disciplinary, and discursive apparatus was brought to bear on it that
did not occur in the case for instance of sati, another retrograde and
horrific practice apparently authorized by Hinduism. This is not of
course to assert that sati as a discursive formation was unproblematic
for colonial administrators and reformers; Lata Mani has pointed that
the abolition of sati in colonial India was preceded by its
legalization and has drawn attention to the valorization of the
“voluntary” sati in colonial and nationalist discourses. But thuggee
was not so much spectacular—as sati was (at least until 1829)—as
invisible. As a result it was much more difficult to discursively
track its trajectory and to determine the success of the pacification.
Sati was abolished in 1829, and there are no official records after
that date of the practice; it was presumed that it had simply been
legislated out of existence. But in the instance of thuggee, such
faith in the efficacy of legislative sanction is much more uncertain.

In the juridical domain, thuggee was defined as an “exceptional case”
in the name of a colonial contingency, since thuggee by definition was
exorbitant to standard law-and-order discourse and marked at all
points by immoderation.[34] This enabled the establishment of a
discursive and juridical system that was entirely self-referential and
self-validating, in which it was sufficient to be identified as a thug
or “hereditary criminal” through an approver’s testimony, without
actually being convicted of a specific crime, to be liable to arrest,
trial, and, almost inevitably, conviction. I will return to this
shortly.

Knowledge of thuggee as an essence then had to be constructed,
crucially, around an absence; and all the confessions, all the subject
effects produced by the testimony of approvers, were a strenuous
effort to recover a “consciousness,” a consciousness that would
provide the foundation for the revelations that ratified the antithug
campaign. But if thuggee was as far-reaching and as subtle as W. H.
Sleeman and his associates insisted, and if thug ontology and practice
was determined by birth, how could an Englishman ever hope to know the
whole truth and nothing but the truth? How could one verify the
confessions of the approvers and establish checks over their control
of the official record? Thornton registers exasperation at the
contaminated nature of the confessions: “Few things are more difficult
to a native of India than to tell the truth, under any circumstances;
and the confessions of criminals, in all countries, may be expected to
contain a mixture of truth and falsehood. The deposition of Moklal is
not consistent with the rest; nor even with another statement made by
himself, made in conversation with Captain Sleeman.” [35] He also
cites (as do other accounts of thuggee) the instance of an approver
who functioned as a double agent, beguiling his English employer into
believing him committed to the capture of thugs while providing
information and English passes [documents authorizing unimpeded travel
within, and between, designated territories] to his criminal comrades.
[36]

While James Sleeman claims that W. H. Sleeman and his colleagues, in
the 1830s, “resolved that this trade of Thuggee should no longer be
any more a mystery than tailoring or carpentering, began to initiate
themselves into all the secrets of the craft, and were soon, in their
knowledge of the theory of the profession, little behind the
professors themselves,” [37] the “secrecy” of thuggee never
disappeared as a threat. W. H. Sleeman—speaking of course with the
superior wisdom of his newfound knowledge—records a state preceding
revelation with combined horror and incredulity:

While I was in the Civil charge of the district of Nursingpore…no
ordinary robbery or theft could be committed without my being
acquainted with it; nor was there a robber or a thief of the ordinary
kind in the district, with whose character I had not become acquainted
in the discharge of my duty as magistrate; and if any man had then
told me, that a gang of assassins by profession resided in the village
of Kandelee, not four hundred yards from my court, and that [in the]
extensive groves of the village of Mandesur, only one stage from me…
was one of the largest Beles, or places of murder in all India; and
that large gangs from Hindustan and the Deccan used to rendezvous in
these groves, remain in them for many days altogether every year, and
carry their dreadful trade along all the lines of road that pass by
and branch off them, with the knowledge and connivance of the two
landholders by whose ancestors these groves had been planted, I should
have thought him a fool or a mad man; and yet nothing could have been
more true.[38]

Indeed, the entire discourse of thuggee is troped by figures of
darkness, mystery, inscrutability, unpredictability, and unexpected
menace, even as W. H. Sleeman and his assistants are inserted into a
heroic narrative of battle against evil. “Secrecy is indispensable”
for thug ceremonies, and “[a]n impenetrable veil of darkness is thrown
over their atrocities”;[39] “danger was everywhere, unseen and
unexpected” [40] for the Englishmen involved in the anti-thuggee
enterprise (even though Englishmen were known never to be attacked by
thugs); they were like “men isolated in the midst of a dangerous,
trackless and gloomy jungle, without map or compass”;[41] and “[the]
old Thug Associations, which have been now effectually put down in all
parts of India,…would assuredly rise up again, and flourish under the
assurance of religious sanction,…were the strength of the special
police, employed in the suppression, hastily reduced, or its vigilance
relaxed.” [42] Once again, Foucault on the discourse of sex and
sexuality is apropos: “What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact,
is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they
dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting
it as the secret.” [43]

This very obscurity, this elusiveness that characterizes the thug as
discursive object, could and did function as an enabling moment for
the colonial law-and-order machine. Since it could never be decisively
established—given the terms of the discourse—that thuggee had been
extirpated, the need for endless vigilance was ratified. The moral
viability of the civilizing mission, indeed the very ground of its
possibility, is the never-satisfied, endlessly proliferating need for
reform. In the case of thuggee, colonial officials were confirmed in
their belief that the work of civilizing is never done. Thus many
writers warn repeatedly of the dangers of celebrating the demise of
thuggee prematurely; in 1893, Charles Hervey, successor to Colonel W.
H. Sleeman of thuggee fame, was still chasing after thugs. These
officers point not only to the hypnotic lure of thuggee for its
practitioners but also to the fact that native policemen and landlords
are only too anxious to conceal evidence of thug crimes from credulous
British officials overeager to congratulate themselves on the
cessation of this practice and overoptimistic about the all-
encompassing vigilance of colonial power. Thuggee never really goes
away as a present problem as sati might be said to do; it may almost
be said to function as a trope for all that is uncontrollable in the
law-and-order situation. In fact, the construction of hereditary,
pervasive, and socially or religiously sanctioned criminality
inaugurated in the discourse on thuggee reappears throughout the
nineteenth century in the discourse on dacoits, buddhuks, dhatoora
poisoners (all of whom came to occupy the same criminal category as
the thug), and specifically designated criminal tribes and castes.

How else might we understand this absence or unknowability that tropes
the discourse of thuggee? Certainly this simultaneous fear of and
pleasure in the duplicity and omnipresence of the thug deserves some
consideration, especially in light of the questions it raises about
the status of knowledge, subject positions, and representation in the
colonial state. Bhabha’s model of the emergence of shifty civil
subject of the colonial polity through mimicry can be extended here,
it seems to me, to some of the other possibilities of mimicry in the
colonial theater.[44] The situation of the thug is analogous to but
certainly not identical to that of the not quite/not white native—the
thug after all is not mimicking colonial ontology—though his capacity
for traffic in identities and positions is staggering. The instance of
thuggee intimates, I think, that the colonized subject’s mimicry need
not necessarily have the colonizer as its focus in order to function
as menace; mimicry, even if it is mimicry of indigenous subject
positions, frustrates the colonial desire for homogenized, duplicable,
and knowable native subjects in whom subalternity is sought to be
reproduced through the authorized version of mimicry. If there is one
thing that characterizes the thug of the archives, it is the
multiplicity and unpredictability of his manifestations. As we have
seen, it was what was perceived as this faculty for disguise and
invisibility that had to be criminalized by the laws designed to
convict thugs; theoretically there was no such entity as an honest
thug, and many so-called thugs were convicted who were, according to
the official records, engaged in “honest labour.” There is an ongoing
and strenuous endeavor in the discourse of thuggee to interpellate the
thug as an essence, a move which attests to the anxiety of rupture
that subtends the totalizing epistemologies of colonialism. Yet the
thug as discursive object is strikingly resistant to such fixity; he
is all things to all people. If native identity can be staged, can be
plural, then what are the implications for colonial authority and
colonialism’s project of information retrieval? Thuggee, I would
suggest, introduces a disturbance in the paradigm of information
retrieval that often seems dominant in texts like Kim and A Personal
Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, as well as the
notion of native authenticity and ontological purity that is a
governing trope of colonial discourse. The thug, through his capacity
for disguise and impersonation and his skill at negotiating multiple
and competing identities, usurps the colonizer’s privilege of complex
subjectivity and of movement between subject positions and thus can be
read to assume some control over both the construction and flow of
colonial knowledge. So he never becomes fully naturalized as the
disciplinary subject or, in other words, the knowable subject, of the
colonial polity. And thuggee, later rewritten as dacoity, continues to
function within the law-and-order context in the colonial and
postcolonial state formations as a trope for the unruly and
unreformable energies that cannot easily be accommodated to the needs
of the civilizing mission.[45]

• • •

The Law

The writings and reports of W. H. Sleeman, which form the core texts
around which the tale of thuggee is orchestrated, represent a
concerted and monumental effort to illuminate and classify the
obscurity of thuggee. Sleeman emerges, in both nineteenth- and
twentieth-century accounts of thuggee, as the hero of his own story.
Even those works, like George Bruce’s The Stranglers and James
Sleeman’s Thug, or A Million Murders, that purport to be histories of
the thugs rather than biographies, present the account of thuggee as
coextensive with the life of Sleeman. Sleeman emerges from these texts
(and his own, of course) as an exemplary figure in nineteenth-century
criminal and judicial procedures, who undertakes a self-appointed
messianic task of uncovering and reading. Nothing in his story happens
by chance. The discovery of the scope of thuggee as a result of
Feringheea’s confession is (re)written as an inevitability in the task
of reconstructing thuggee, and Sleeman’s anti-thuggee efforts traced
back to the moment of his arrival in India in 1809. All of Sleeman’s
life and work before 1830 is thus written as a prelude to the
climactic scenes of thug hunting and as a preparation for reading the
mysteries of this esoteric Indian cult. Sleeman above all is
transformed in this telling into an almost Saidean figure of
knowledge; he is the shikari (hunter) who, with his gift of languages,
long residence in India without being “Orientalized,” and experience
in war and in settling newly conquered territories, can present an
ideal model of the exegete. Though a crime like thuggee is quite
literally inconceivable to those “living under an efficient
government,” Sleeman is no Inspector Clouseau, no naive Englishman who
stumbles unaware upon a vast organized conspiracy. He knows what he is
looking for; indeed, Tuker’s biography imagines Sleeman becoming the
butt of his colleagues’ jokes during his early years in India because
of his eagerness to “discover” thuggee.[46] In this telling, thuggee
predates Sleeman; indeed, it is as old as India itself. Yet the text
of thuggee remains unread until Sleeman, the reader-as-savior,
provides the hermeneutic key to the mystery. He establishes the
exceptional quality of thuggee, distinguishing it from outlawry,
banditry, and other illegalities necessitated by privation; he
establishes the story of thuggee as a moral narrative and embeds it in
the culture of an Orientalist India.

The man whose ideal was, like that of a Sherlock Holmes, “to be
everywhere, and to see everything,” [47] proved phenomenally successful
—in his own terms—at cracking the code of thuggee. He showed a
remarkable capacity—far greater than that of Sherwood or even that of
the few officers who had harassed the thugs in the early decades of
the century—to globalize and codify discrete accounts of crimes in
different times and places into a metanarrative of hereditary crime.
On the evidence of approvers, he created gigantic and detailed “family
trees” of captured and uncaptured thugs that provided copious details
of each man’s crimes, place of origin, place in the caste hierarchy,
and personal and professional antecedents; he also mapped out all the
bhils (places of slaughter and burial) in central India. Every thug
could then be located on Sleeman’s gigantic grid, and information and
operations were centralized. The local knowledge of the approvers now
became part of a giant signifying chain. For the thug, there was no
escape: his history and his nature were always already known to the
all-seeing eyes of the colonial bureaucracy and criminal-justice
system; his experience formed a narrative even before he made his
confession and was in no way dependent on it. As Ameer Ali says in
Confessions of a Thug, “The man unfolded a roll of paper written in
Persian, and read a catalogue of crime, of murders, every one of which
I knew to be true; a faithful record it was of my past life, with but
few omissions.” [48] Sleeman also prepared a dictionary of Ramasee,
the secret language of the criminal fraternity, with a vocabulary made
up entirely of descriptions of criminal actions. This linguistic,
geographic, and genealogical grid left out little that was germane to
the needs of criminal justice in colonial India:

I have, I believe, entered in this vocabulary every thing to which
Thugs in any part of India have thought it necessary to assign a
peculiar term; and every term peculiar to their associations with
which I have yet become acquainted. I am satisfied that there is no
term, no rite, no ceremony, no opinion, no omen or usage that they
have intentionally concealed from me; and if any have been
accidentally omitted after the numerous narratives that I have had to
record, and cases to investigate, they can be but comparatively very
few and unimportant.[49]

The doctrine of thuggee was not simply a novel yet apposite way of
reading Indian criminality at a moment when the pressures to reform
the East India Company by reforming India were particularly marked.
The consequences of the discovery of thuggee were, in other words, not
simply a philosophical reconstellation of Indian criminality. Thuggee
also gave rise to a veritable cottage industry of policing and
surveillance techniques, as well as ethnographic documentation. Like
the system it purported to study, the discourse on thuggee was
totalizing in its scope. In the juridical domain, thuggee was defined
as an “exceptional case”; this enabled the establishment of a
radically new machinery of arrest, conviction, and punishment in thug
trials. The production of penal truth in thug trials proved, as we
have seen, notoriously difficult. Since thugs were peripatetic
operatives, who always committed their crimes far from home and
disposed of their plunder quickly, evidence was not only destroyed but
questions were raised about jurisdictional authority. Local
functionaries were not just uncooperative; many were allegedly bound
by a utilitarian calculus to thug gangs. In addition, the relatives of
the putative victims displayed no zeal in the punishment of crime or
the redress of wrongs; the vast majority refused to identify those
missing as murdered at all. This uncooperative behavior was attributed
to their fatalistic acceptance of all disasters (including,
apparently, cholera, poisonous snakes, and sudden death). Even when
thugs were captured, convicting them was rendered even more
troublesome by the fact that Muslim criminal law disallowed the
testimony of approvers.

The lack of independent witnesses, the unavailability in many cases of
both bodies and booty—the sheer paucity of positivist evidence, in
other words—could only be resolved in one way. The most important
criminal conspiracy of the century (of all time, some of the authors
claimed) could be adequately engaged only by a new conception of law.
Many of the tactics adopted by those spearheading the antithug drive
were not novel but had been pioneered earlier in Bengal; however, it
was the Thuggee and Dacoity Department’s use of these tactics that
proved not only successful but replicable.[50] Since the law as
currently defined made the complicity of individuals in particular
crimes almost impossible to establish, specific criminal acts were no
longer punishable as such. Instead, it was a subject position, or
rather, an ontology, that was criminalized. It was enough to be a
thug, without actually being convicted of a specific act of thuggee,
to be liable to the exorbitant measures of the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department. As Radhika Singha wrote, “The strangest feature of this
enactment was the use of a cant term ‘Thugs’ without explaining what
precisely the offence of ‘Thuggee’ was. That such a term was
acceptable at a time when a penal code upholding precision and
exactness was on the agenda is an indication of the success of a
publicist campaign in official circles.” [51] Act XXX of 1836 directed
that any person who was convicted of “having belonged to a gang of
Thugs, [was] liable to the penalty of imprisonment for life; and
[that] any person, accused of the offence, made punishable by the Act,
[was] liable to be tried by any Court, which would have been competent
to try him, if his offence had been committed within the district
where that Court sits.” [52] (Act XXIV of 1843 extended the punitive
sanctions of the thuggee laws to those found guilty of belonging to
dacoit gangs.) Act XXX also dispensed with the last vestiges of Muslim
criminal law (which is said to have provided greater protections for
the accused and greater clemency for the convicted than the Thuggee
and Dacoity Department thought advisable for those standing trial as
thugs) by doing away with the necessity for the fatwa (formal legal
opinion) of the Muslim law officer. It applied with retrospective
effect, and it established special courts for the trial of thugs—
including those captured outside company territory, within the
kingdoms of the Indian princes—often with special magistrates
appointed by the governor-general. It permitted the arrest of entire
families, including women and children, as legitimate means of
entrapping active (male) thugs; since thuggee was supposed to be a
family affair anyway, transmitted in the genes and passed on from
father to son, wives and children were also fit targets for the
colonial state’s punitive and corrective measures. The act admitted
the testimony of approvers in lieu of the testimony of independent
witnesses (which had been disallowed under Islamic law), a move which
created a remarkable mechanics of truth production and conviction.
(Act XIX of 1837, under the direction of Macaulay, did away with this
“dual standard of evidence” in criminal law by making the testimony of
approvers admissible in all courts of law, not just those prosecuting
cases of thuggee.)[53] Yet it is by no means to be assumed that
empiricism and observation were peripheral to the process, though it
was observation of a very carefully demarcated kind; there is in the
colonial archive an overwhelming weight given to the experiential
dimension of the knowledge of such canonical figures as Sleeman. All
disagreements encountered on the British side are attributed to
inexperience, to the lack of a proper interpretive framework within
which to place certain kinds of discoveries, or to a willful
ingenuousness about the success of British rule.

The definition of thuggee as a form of hereditary, corporate, and
religiously sanctioned identity allowed for no appeal by a thug
convicted under its special decrees; in theory—and in practice—there
was no such entity as an innocent thug. All those identified as thugs
by approvers’ testimony were automatically guilty, even if no specific
crimes could be proved against them and even if there was no (other)
evidence of their ever having associated with other thugs. Once the
thug hunts began, criminal activity was not always necessary for
arrest and conviction; even those “thugs” engaged in “honest
labour” (a theoretical impossibility, given the terms of the
discourse) were rounded up, tried, convicted, and imprisoned since the
compelling, hereditary lure of thuggee was always latent in the thug.
An overwhelmingly high proportion of those arrested were convicted, a
fact which validated, the Thuggee and Dacoity Department believed, the
thoroughness of its efforts and the justice of its cause.

Confessions were key to the discursive constitution of thuggee; not so
much at the actual thug trials as in the manifold accounts of thuggee
that were produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Meadows
Taylor’s novel, as far as structural organization is concerned, reads
not very differently from the nonfictional official accounts of
thuggee: a brief introduction followed by hundreds of pages of
confession, interspersed more and more intermittently by the
narrator’s moral commentary. The confessional mode lent itself nicely
to the narrative conventions and imperatives of the nineteenth-century
English novel, which encompassed both the Newgate novel and the
spiritual autobiography.

One of the best approvers, Bukhtawar, provided a confession (which I
quoted at the beginning of this chapter) that was a model for all thug
confessions: “I am a Thug, my father and grandfather were Thugs, and I
have thugged with many. Let the government employ me and I will do its
work.” [54] The confessions serve not to elicit what is not already
known but to authenticate and authorize official knowledge of thuggee
in general and specific crimes in particular, as well as to produce
the thug as (colonial) criminal subject. For Foucault, the confession
“transcend[s] all other evidence; an element in the calculation of the
truth, it [is] also the act by which the accused accept[s] the charge
and recognize[s] its truth; it transform[s] an investigation carried
out without him into a voluntary affirmation. Through the confession,
the accused himself [takes] part in the ritual of producing penal
truth.” [55] In the eyes of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, a
failure to confess was evidence less of innocence than of hardihood
and an acquaintance with the byzantine ramifications of Indian
criminal law.

And yet these confessions that dominate and drive all accounts of
thuggee are not confessions as such, but approver’s testimonies; the
two, as Shahid Amin so appositely reminds us, are not identical. For
while the confession proper seeks to dilute the guilt of the
confessing subject, the approver’s testimony, to be fully credible in
the eyes of the law, must implicate its speaker as fully as possible
in the illegality being described.[56]

The fact that approvers’ testimony was “tainted” and that they might
either wittingly or unwittingly implicate the innocent was undeniably
an issue, though anxiety on the score was aired only to be promptly
shown up as unfounded. The thuggee records continually stress the ways
in which the truth of each approver’s testimony was tested against all
the others. But even in these official accounts, it does not escape
remark that the approvers’ testimony regarding dates and other details
do not always match,[57] though all discursive contradictions are
always sought to be smoothed away. Bruce, who is the only one to raise
overtly the possibility of the conviction of the innocent, blames not
the system but its most visible instruments, the approvers: “Were
innocent men convicted upon the evidence of revengeful informers?.…
Those Thugs who were no longer free to strangle on the roads may have
conspired together to send victims to the gallows instead, for by
killing in this way they could at once show Kali their continued
devotion and save their own lives.” [58] These testimonies were not
required, under Act XXX, to be matched against the reports of
independent witnesses or against the weight of circumstantial
evidence; and none of the accused had the benefit of counsel, so the
approvers were never cross-examined by anyone other than the officers
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department.

Even though the approvers were indispensable for forming the text of
thuggee and for prosecuting thugs, their own status remained somewhat
nebulous. On making “a full and ingenuous confession,” an approver
would be eligible to have his sentence of hanging or transportation
commuted. But an approver could never be released, since the lure of
the rumal made him irreclaimable for honest society. It was also
necessary that all approvers be convicted (not just arrested) thugs,
since it was contrary to the nature of British justice to hold its
subjects indefinitely without trial. How, though, could the government
convict approvers when it had no evidence except for what they
provided? The solution was to advise approvers to plead guilty to the
general charge of being thugs, under the provisions of Act XXX, rather
than to plead guilty to the charge of committing specific capital
crimes (which could result in the death penalty); this would ensure
their conviction, and then they could be held for life without
questioning the authority that held them.[59] It was easier and more
useful to hold approvers than to hang them; and they needed to be held
forever in order to ensure the uninterrupted production of truths
about thuggee. The above proceeding did away with the necessity of a
regular trial (that is to say, one conducted under the special courts
established by Act XXX) by having one whose outcome was known in
advance; and it guaranteed that there would be no escape from the
government’s mercy.

Truth production and conviction was only part of the job of the
Thuggee and Dacoity Department. Rehabilitation was also part of the
program, though the official wisdom on rehabilitation was marked by
considerable ambivalence. To be a part of a moral narrative, the
antithug campaign could not be purely punitive in nature, especially
in the instance of those prisoners who had not been convicted of
particular capital crimes. At the same time, if thugs were hereditary
murderers who found the call to blood irresistible, they were not
reformable subjects. The government’s response to the problem of
identity and rehabilitation was, even in its own terms, a markedly
uneven and patently hierarchized one. Some of the most distinguished
among the thugs were recruited into the police force. Some others were
rewarded by W. H. Sleeman by being allowed to live near him with their
families and followers in his compound, an arrangement about which
Freitag observes: “The similarity between the spatial and
psychological configurations of his compound and those of thag-
landlord relations in a village is not coincidental.” [60] Other thug
approvers and prisoners and their families were settled in colonies
and put to manual labor; from being dishonest and itinerant, they were
compelled to be poor and settled. The focus of reform was the children
of the thugs: they were taught various skills, though not taught to
read and write (because it would make them dissatisfied with their
condition). The sexuality of the sons of the thugs was strictly
regulated; they were not allowed to marry and breed a new generation
of thugs. (A female thug was a rarity and was, presumably, a less
potent conduit of the genetic material of hereditary criminality than
was a male.)

Mature thugs, however, were less easily assimilable into a regime of
morality and normalcy. Even captured thugs and informers emerge in the
reports as notoriously impervious to all efforts at moral
transformation. They repudiate repentance and reform, ascribing their
cooperation entirely to pragmatic motives and describing their
activities in professional terms, without the obligatory change of
heart normally central to the confessional narrative. Not only that,
they understand their present circumstances in terms of their failure
to observe omens and follow proscriptions and to be fully professional
about their work; the official success against themselves is simply
the result of the East India Company’s iqbal (good fortune), not its
moral or religious superiority or even its greater strategic skill.
They seem to refuse in other words to be drawn into the moral
narrative of the civilizing mission (though it must always be
remembered that the production of the thug as unreformable subject was
not necessarily contrary to the aims of the discourse on thuggee). The
following is a typical exchange; the questioner is presumably W. H.
Sleeman, the respondents thug informers:

Q:
If Davey’s displeasure visits all who punish Thugs, how is it that you
all escape so well?

Moradun:
Davey’s anger visited us when we were seized. That was the effect of
her resentment; she cast us off then and takes no notice of us now.

Q:
And if you were to return to Thuggee, she would still guide and
protect you?

Moradun:
Yes, but what gang would now receive us?

Q:
And are you not afraid to assist in suppressing Thuggee?

Moradun:
No; we see God is assisting you, and that Davey has withdrawn her
protection on account of our transgressions. We have sadly neglected
her worship. God knows in what it will all end.

Q:
True, God only knows; but we hope it will end in the entire
suppression of this wicked and foolish system; and in the conviction
on your part that Davey has really nothing to do with it.

Nasir:
That Davey instituted Thuggee, and supported it as long as we attended
to her omens, and observed the rules framed by the wisdom of our
ancestors, nothing in the world can ever make us doubt.[61]

• • •

The Englishman

This section, on The Deceivers, John Masters’s novel about thuggee,
serves as a (deconstructive) supplement to the official narrative of
the thug, in taking up some of the questions and figures that occupy a
recessive status in that account. Here we see that if the thug of the
archive provides one (admittedly slippery and fixed at the same time)
model of staging identities, there is another model that is crucial
for a comprehension of the thug-English engagement. This model is the
obverse of the process that generates the mimic man of colonial
discourse; it is the lure of going native. The term here both
resonates with and fails to correspond to the mimetic model provided
by Burton in the last chapter.[62] The will to mimicry governs
(Indian) thug and Englishman alike, as we shall see in The Deceivers,
where the plot is driven—as is the thug archive—by a fascination with
the absent and never fully recuperable thug. In engaging this
scenario, the novel also recasts the paradigmatic narrative of
mimicry, in which the native may mimic the colonizer but without any
access to essential Englishness, while the colonizer can trade
identities freely, with no strings attached, without actually being
interpellated as a colonized subject. The Deceivers makes manifest the
precariousness of such self-possession.

The dialectical dependence of the fantasy of complete knowledge on the
paranoid fear of native inscrutability is staged in this novel, where
there is a suturing of the ostensibly antithetical figures of the
English policeman and the thug approver. This novel allows for an
examination of the tension between the received wisdom about thuggee
and some of the marginal issues located at the pressure points of the
official discourse. This novel tells the story of William Savage, a
mediocre and distinctly unheroic English magistrate. Wracked by sexual
and professional anxieties, an alienated subject of the British
colonial machine in India, and sneakingly sympathetic to such Indian
customs as sati, he transforms himself into the exemplary colonial
officer by taking on—albeit temporarily—the calling of the thug. At
the urging of his young wife, Mary, he initially takes on the persona
of the absent Gopal the weaver in order to save Gopal’s wife from
sati; he, however, meets the renegade thug Hussein and decides to
continue as Gopal in order to track down the thugs. Once he assumes
the role, he finds himself powerfully drawn to the practice and goes
on to become a noted thug leader. He does not continue as a thug, of
course—even though at one point Hussein suggests to Savage that the
East India Company become a sponsor of thugs, like the other rulers of
the land; with a little help from his newly (re)constructed
Englishness and his friends, he returns to propriety at the end. (The
Merchant Ivory film production is even more skeptical than the novel
is of the progressivist teleology of the civilizing mission, as well
as of its “success”: in the film, George Angelsmith is led off in
chains, but Savage, estranged from his wife and his Christian god and
unable to prevent the sati that he has actually made possible, is
destined to be perpetually haunted by Kali.)

The Deceivers considers the unspoken and unspeakable possibility that
subtends so much of colonial discourse: what if identity can be
unhinged from race and national origin? And if (racial/national)
identity is unstable and subject to negotiation with each crossing of
a frontier, then in the name of what telos or destiny does Englishness
speak? What if, as R. Radhakrishnan so compellingly asks, on the
subject of diasporic, transnational culture, “identities and
ethnicities are not a matter of fixed and stable selves but rather the
results and products of fortuitous travels and recontextualizations?…
Is ethnicity nothing but, to use the familiar formula, what ethnicity
does?” [63] In the more lurid enactments of this alternative history,
a Kurtz, representing the loftiest intellectual and ethical
possibilities of the Enlightenment, can “go native” in the Dark
Continent. But, closer to “home,” there were, as Arnold has revealed,
more troubling English subjects—those poor white orphans and vagrants
(who were to have their own moment of glory in Kim) who lived lives
not often distinguishable from those of lower-class Indians.[64]
William Savage, the protagonist of The Deceivers, is located somewhere
between these two subject positions.

Despite the putative restoration to wholeness, Englishness, and
legality of William Savage at the close of the story, the narrative
nonetheless opens up a space for investigating the “double and split
subject” of the colonial enunciation, for what Bhabha calls—in the
context of the nation’s fissured enunciation—“dissemi-nation”: “a
space that is internally marked by cultural difference and the
heterogeneous histories of contending peoples, antagonistic
authorities, and tense cultural locations.” [65] As in the case of so
many other Englishmen, Savage will have to turn to Indianness in order
to return to or consolidate or improve his English self; in doing so,
he will come back as a new and more English Englishman, but he will
also, temporarily at least, be transformed into a border subject,
changed by his experience of Indianness, surrendering illusions of
full autonomy and Englishness in the crossing of boundaries. Here I
invoke Burton again as a point of reference. Burton had an
occasionally vexed relationship with national identity: his ancestry
was partly Irish and Welsh, and he grew up on the Continent, only
coming to live in England in his late teens. Yet for him identity,
whatever guises it might assume and however far it might roam, is
usually more persuasively anchored than is that of Masters’s
protagonist in an imperial Englishness. Burton can be, at different
times, a West Asian merchant or a Muslim hajji, but his identities are
clearly hierarchized and more manipulable than Savage’s. While the
success of his passing is always, in a sense, conditional upon his
being a man from elsewhere/nowhere, he can also claim nativeness as
his own production, wrenching an (imaginary) autonomy from the
dominion of necessity. Savage passes through Indianness en route to
Englishness, but, unlike Burton, he cannot pass in and out without
constraint. Indianness, while indispensable to Englishness, must also
be violently cast out if Englishness is to be secure(d). In The
Deceivers, identity is the locus of strain and contradiction. For
Savage, identity cannot be expansive, assimilationist, and pluralist;
each new identity competes with and displaces the last. That is why
Savage can at the end afford to take no prisoners or recruit any
approvers from among his erstwhile comrades; the thugs whom he has led
and who are now pursuing him must be wiped out in an act of punitive
and frenzied brutality that not only precludes the need for approvers
but also does away with any witnesses against, and rem(a)inders of,
his own thug self.

The Deceivers stages, indeed foregrounds, the positionality and
politics of that ordinarily self-effacing hero of thug narration, the
investigator, and the plurality of determinations that produces him.
In this context, Gayatri Spivak’s cautionary reminders about the
urgent necessity of disallowing the neutrality of the intellectual or
investigator should be borne in mind. In “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
she proffers a critique of the sanctioned myopia of the Foucault and
Deleuze of “Intellectuals and Power,” who are unable or unwilling to
acknowledge the complicity of the intellectual in the mechanisms that
produce representations of subaltern subjects and groups and who fail
to recognize that subaltern subjects are constrained to fashion
themselves in terms of already scripted epistemologies.[66] Her
introduction to Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” resonates with, and
provides another useful point of entry into, this problematic of
reading and engagement; the usefulness of deconstruction, she tells
us, lies in “the recognition,…of provisional and intractable starting
points in any investigative effort; its disclosure of complicities
where a will to knowledge would create oppositions; its insistence
that in disclosing complicities the critic-as-subject is herself
complicit with the object of her critique; its emphasis upon ‘history’
and upon the ethico-political as the ‘trace’ of that complicity—the
proof that we do not inhabit a clearly defined critical space free of
such traces.” [67] Where in the archives the English scribe was
progressively effaced from the scene of the crime as well as the scene
of writing, no such modesty is permitted the protagonist of Masters’s
novel. The novel accents above all his position of enunciation. He
cannot be, as in the normative thug account, the neutral conduit of
something clearly identified as a thug consciousness: the thug’s voice
cannot but inscribe Savage as both subject and object of his own
discourse.

The central aspect of Savage’s mission is not merely to bear witness;
he must above all produce a record, transform that irreducible
obscurity, that absence that is Indian corporate criminal activity,
into what Spivak terms an “interpretable text.” This of course was the
primary gift of Sleeman and his associates to the criminal justice
system in colonial India—to synthesize various and discrepant
occurrences as a semiosis under centralized control; against thuggee—
conceived of as a vast, well-articulated, and centralized conspiracy—
could be opposed the concentrated power/knowledge of the state. What
is required is a text and a model of reading that is reproducible in
the different temporalities and contexts of the colonial polity in
India. However, the novel intimates the limitations and complexities
of authorial intention. Savage produces his account in a condition of
profound subjective instability, opening his text up to multiple and
mutually contentious readings: “He had met hundreds of other
Deceivers, and the notes were a complete tale of all he had seen and
heard and done; of all the Deceivers who had engaged in any action,
with their descriptions, habits, and homes; of each murder, and how it
had gone, and how it might have been prevented—or improved upon. The
words could be read for either purpose, according to the spirit of the
reader” (p. 223). Above all, Savage’s account draws attention to the
transactional nature of reading. What ought to be a classic of
information retrieval and a master text on thuggee for colonial
authority is also a text for other thugs, a manual for reproducing
thug practice. Savage’s text (within the text of the Masters novel),
even though cast in the model of strict representational realism, is
susceptible of an Other reading; its meanings are ambushed, deflected,
and augmented en route to a destination it can never reach. The
Thuggee and Dacoity Department strove to produce, in its extensive
records on thug affiliation and activity, a text without nuances or
fissures, something that was not susceptible of any misreadings or
contesting interpretations. It sought, in its meticulous record
keeping and its attempts to square all the approvers’ testimonies with
each other and make them speak with one voice, to produce a record
that would have what was presumed to be the authority of material
fact. But for Savage, at least, it is impossible to engage in such an
enterprise without also inscribing his own complicity in his
testimonial. In this respect, he does approximate the classic approver
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, who cannot bear witness against
others without simultaneously bearing witness against himself.

While the novel insists that only impersonation can yield the truth,
it also illuminates the heterodox desires that underlie the exercise
of going native. Moreover, this impersonation is quite detached from
any agency on the part of William Savage and from any sense of
originary identity. Forced into the disguise of the Indian weaver
Gopal (by the patel [village headman] Chandra Sen) in an unwilling and
ultimately fruitless attempt to save a would-be sati, he is recognized
as an impostor by Hussein. Hussein is ideal material for an approver:
he has brains, courage, and resourcefulness, and he is remarkably
eager to undo the institution of thuggee, but his testimony alone is
not enough to compel belief in the practice. So he recruits an
Englishman to the anti-thuggee cause, knowing that only he can be
fully convincing as a figure of knowledge. And this knowledge can only
be acquired experientially, and by going outside the law as currently
constituted, as Savage learns when he follows the more conventional
methods of information retrieval. As Hussein says,

Several times some English official or other has got hold of
information about us. Then he has chased us out of his district, and
reported, I suppose. But they’ve never worked together, and it always
blew over. They’ll never destroy us until one of them finds out
everything, and forces the Lat Sahib [the governor-general] to believe
everything, and plans a campaign to cover all India. And that one who
finds out must fear Kali, or he will not understand her. But he must
not love her. (p. 208)

Unable to ignore the thugs as the other English functionaries are
ready to do, eager to discard the Englishness he so uncomfortably
inhabits, and pressured by Hussein and Mary, Savage decides to
continue as Gopal the weaver, who, as it turns out, is also Gopal the
thug. For an unsuccessful and insecure man like Savage, wracked by
anxieties about (heterosexual) masculinity and Englishness, it is the
very abdication of authority involved in playing a thug that is
peculiarly attractive; inhabiting the subject position of the most
criminalized and most scrutinized indigenous subject holds out the
promise of psychic satisfactions not ordinarily available to colonial
authority.

The novel dallies with the idea (as many crime fictions often do,
though less explicitly) of the fragility of the barriers that separate
the custodian of law and morality from the criminal. It actually makes
available the proposition (though it has to drop it at the end) that
Savage is at heart a thug and that his initiation into thuggee by
Hussein is no accident. He takes naturally to the trade, is attended
by good omens, and enjoys a facility of thought, speech, and action
that is alien to his English self. The idea of mimicry itself is
transformed in his performance of it and begins to assume to assume
the contours of possession, if not those of originary identity. There
is no difference for him between the mimicry of an identity and the
identity itself.

In order to pass for an Indian or a thug (ultimately these two
categories are collapsed, as we have seen in the other narratives of
thuggee) Savage must slough off certain normative aspects of
Englishness in the tropics—the militant Christianity, the revulsion
against disease and cruelty, the reforming impulse. He must instead
embrace what is described as the nondualistic moral economy of
Hinduism that sees both creation and destruction as suffused with the
divine. Needless to say, the psychic territory of “India” is always
coextensive with Hinduism, despite the fact that Muslims as well as
other religious groups are shown to practice thuggee as much as do
Hindus; and this Hinduism is consistently and exclusively fetishized
as blood lust and hyperbolic sexuality. As an Indian, and Hindu, and
thug, Savage must participate in a series of paradoxes. He must be
Indian, and thug, to return more securely to Englishness, and
legitimacy; he must allow evil to be done in order to do good; and,
since the contexts of legality are always shifting and are
particularly in need of redefinition in India, he must go outside the
law in order to uphold the law. Always relatively indifferent to the
finer points of legal procedure and defendants’ rights (here written
as an inaptitude for “paperwork”), the antithug drive allows him to
rethink the concepts of justice and legality in the colonial context,
where it is notoriously difficult to punish crime anyway:

“What does justice mean?”…“Fair trial, the rules of evidence, no
double hazard, no hearsay, and so on and so on? Or protection against
injustice, against violence? The means, or the end?.…Oh, I know we
have no evidence about them yet. That’s just what I mean. I tell you,
sir, they cannot be run down within our rule of law. Indians aren’t
English. “No man dies by the hand of man,” they think, so they won’t
give evidence because they are not angry with the murderers. They
think men who kill are driven by God to kill. And there are too many
jurisdictions, too far to go to give evidence, too long to wait. We’ve
got to go outside the law to catch them, to prevent more
murders.” (pp. 128–29)

Caught between a colonial government and an Indian populace unwilling,
for different reasons, to do what is necessary to end thuggee and
pressured, moreover, by Hussein, Savage becomes Gopal again, only more
completely in earnest this time. In his new role Savage discovers that
passing for a thug involves a radical (re)contextualization of his
once and future Englishness. Moreover, as Gopal he has to inhabit a
role and a history that is already in place. Impersonation involves
not freedom but strict adherence to a scripted identity; he cannot
start afresh, or make himself up as he goes along. He discovers that
as Gopal, he is already an expert strangler and strategist, destined
to be “the greatest the Deceivers have ever known” (p. 218). And once
he participates in the sacramental ritual of gur-sharing and tastes
the transubstantiated body of the goddess, his allegiance and destiny
are fixed. Savage is born to thuggee, as his comfort in his role of
thug demonstrates; indeed, his story undoes the usual weighting of
“self” and “role” in the Englishman’s subjectivity, since he is more
convincing (to himself, and apparently to Indians and Englishmen
alike) and comfortable as Indian and thug than as Englishman and
Christian. Hussein, who is more percipient than he about the
complexities of subject formation, reminds him that “free will” is an
adjunct (or an illusion) of Englishness alone. Savage must find out
that intentions guarantee nothing; not even the Englishman, once he
has decided to play the Indian, can escape the formulaic constraints
of Indian/thug ontology: “You are a Deceiver, from this dawn on for
ever. A strangler. Only stranglers may stand on the blanket: you stood
on it. Only stranglers may take the consecrated sugar of communion:
you took it. It doesn’t matter what a man thinks he is. When he eats
consecrated sugar, on the blanket, in front of the pick-axe, he is a
strangler, because Kali enters into him.” (p. 182)

Such a script also demands of course that he confront his double, the
original Gopal. In order to protect himself and in order to wrest some
autonomy for himself, Savage strangles Gopal and thus becomes Gopal
himself. But strangling the “real Gopal” only makes him more fully
Gopal, for he can now develop into his predestined role. From this
point on, all paradoxes are held in abeyance. From being complicit in
murder through inaction Savage proceeds to strangulation himself and
becomes, in an extraordinary take on the man-who-would-be-king vision
that tropes so much colonial discourse, a noted leader of thugs. Like
Burton the Muslim, Savage the thug is characterized not simply by
mastery but by an extraordinary surplus of subject effects. (Unlike
Burton, though, he is tempted, and he is corrupted—although not
irredeemably.)

The desire for Gopal, which is closely articulated with the desire to
be Gopal, is mediated, interestingly enough, through the figure of the
sati who frames the novel and who foregrounds the question of gender
that has been bypassed or placed under erasure in the thuggee
archives. I find the entry into thuggee through sati to be a
particularly productive conjuncture for the problematic of mimicry,
identity, and the colonizer’s desire. The sati, most obviously,
provides an occasion for access to Gopal. The sati has to be set up in
the beginning so that Savage can play Gopal; and then it has to be
deferred so that he can continue to play Gopal and go in search of
Gopal. Her presence in the novel displaces homoerotic desire and
returns Savage to heterosexuality. It also ensures his successful
miming of Indianness and Englishness. But the consolidation of
heterosexuality, masculinity, and Englishness demands not simply her
presence but her death. She is insistently narrativized as a voluntary
sati; she is a romanticized figure, whose sacrifice Savage has no
desire to thwart. He desires her, and his desire for her takes the
form of wanting her to die for him, which he ensures by killing Gopal.
In this way, he can enjoy the satisfactions of Indian as well as
English masculinity. As an Indian, he can have the woman die for him
(and deliver him of his sexual anxieties); but being fully Indian also
means that he himself must die, for the sati requires a dead husband.
As an Englishman, therefore, he can distance himself from the violent
implications of Indianness. The sati’s death releases him from the
exigent identity of the Indianness into which he had temporarily
descended and frees him to enact the rituals of Englishness with
greater plausibility. The most convincing Englishman—as indeed the
most expert thug—turns out to be the mimic man after all.

• • •

Afterword

Masters’s novel serves in many ways as the most apt of epilogues to
the colonial accounts of thuggee, given its excavation of the erotic/
affective and metaphysical seductions of that institution—and of the
thug—for English masculinity in the tropics and given its suggestion
that the lure of the thug for the Englishman may be as compelling as
that of thuggee for the (Indian) thug. It charges the project of
unveiling and chastisement with a profusion of guilty, even delirious,
appetites and obsessions that call for continual incitement and
consummation. It does not, of course, fail to play upon the received
colonial narrative of thuggee as timeless Indian duplicity; but it
also reconfigures it as an erotic tale of the fraternal, closeted, and
homicidal desire that drives Indian and English impersonation. Perhaps
most remarkably, it showcases the seamless self-referentiality of the
discourse on thuggee (as evidenced in an archive composed of
biographies, histories, novels, legal records, and rumors) by
collapsing the thug and the thug hunter into a single figure; with a
literalism quite unprecedented in any of the other texts it confirms
that wherever there is an Englishman there is a thug.

Notes

1. Radhika Singha, “‘Providential’ Circumstances: The Thuggee Campaign
of the 1830s and Legal Innovation,” Modern Asian Studies 27 (February
1993): 83.

2. Guha, “Historiography of Colonial India.”

3. Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Subaltern
Studies II: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit
Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). Also see Ranajit
Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).

4. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Deconstructing Historiography,” in In
Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York and London:
Routledge, 1987), 204.

5. This is not to suggest that Bhabha forecloses on any of these other
possibilities.

6. James Hutton, A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits, the
Hereditary Garroters and Gang-Robbers of India (London: W. H. Allen,
1857), 90–91.

7. Reproduced in George Bruce, The Stranglers: The Cult of Thuggee and
Its Overthrow in British India (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1968), 13–26.

8. Philip Meadows Taylor, “Introduction,” in Confessions of a Thug
(London: Richard Bentley, 1858 [1839]), 5.

9. A. J. Wightman, No Friend for Travellers (London: Robert Hale,
1959), 15.

10. See Francis C. Tuker, The Yellow Scarf: The Story of the Life of
Thuggee Sleeman (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1961), 197–98.

11. Geoff Bennington, “Postal Politics and the Institution of the
Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London and New
York: Routledge, 1990).

12. Sandria Freitag argues that thugs were—in contrast to members of
criminal castes and tribes—regarded as “admirable and awesome
opponents.” See her “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North
India,” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1991): 227–61. While some of
this horrified admiration does inform Wightman and Meadows Taylor’s
representations, such admiration is more usually carefully repressed;
there is, in fact, an interesting tension between the awe-inspiring
(if damnable) thug of these texts and the contemptible figure that the
other texts strenuously accentuate.

13. James Sleeman, Thug, or A Million Murders (London: Sampson Low,
Marston, 1933 [1920]), 5.

14. Sir George MacMunn, The Religions and Hidden Cults of India
(London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1931), 172–73. See, too, Meadows
Taylor, “Introduction,” i:

At the present time it [the novel] may deserve a more attentive study;
recent events will have too well prepared the Reader’s mind for
implicit belief in all the systematic atrocities narrated.…It will
scarcely fail to be remarked, with what consummate art such numerous
bodies of men were organized, and for a long time kept absolutely
unknown, while committing acts of cruelty and rapine hardly
conceivable;…Captain Taylor’s Introduction…may…furnish some clue to
the successful concealment of a rebellion, in the existence of which
many of our oldest and most experienced officers, and men high in
authority, absolutely withheld belief, till too late and too cruelly
convinced of their fatal error.

15. Katherine Mayo, Mother India (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927).

16. Hiralal Gupta, “A Critical Study of the Thugs and Their
Activities,” Journal of Indian History, 37, part 2 (August 1959),
serial no. 110: 169–77.

17. Sandria B. Freitag, “Collective Crime and Authority in North
India,” in Crime and Criminality in British India, ed. Anand Yang
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 158–61.

18. Stewart N. Gordon, “Scarf and Sword: Thugs, Marauders, and State-
Formation in 18th Century Malwa,” Indian Economic and Social History
Review 6 (December 1969): 403–29. It should be noted that Gordon does
not ascribe the activities of the marauding groups to “Oriental
anarchy” or oppose “marauders” to “states,” arguing that both entities
had the same ends in view and were using the same methods of
legitimation, though with differing degrees of success.

19. J. Sleeman, Thug, 108.

20. David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras 1859–1947
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 3. He notes the transformation
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department into the Central Intelligence
Department in 1904; this body shifted its initial focus on wandering
gangs and criminals to “the collation of political intelligence,
relaying information about political leaders and organizations to the
various provinces concerned” (p. 187).

21. Freitag, “Collective Crime and Authority,” 142.

22. Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order,” 230.

23. Ibid., 234.

24. Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque
(Karachi and London: Oxford University Press, 1975 [1850]), 1: 153.

25. Kali became a figure of increasing respectability in the
nineteenth century; before this she was a deity adored (in Bengal at
least) largely though not exclusively by tribal and other subaltern
subjects, including thugs and dacoits. It is not clear if Kali was
identical with other female deities addressed as Devi or Bhawani.

26. See, for instance, Nicholas B. Dirks, “Castes of Mind,”
Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 59: “It is increasingly clear that
colonialism in India produced new forms of society that have been
taken to be traditional, and that caste itself as we now know it is
not a residual survival of ancient India but a specifically colonial
form of civil society. As such it both justifies and maintains the
colonial vision of an India where religion transcends politics,
society resists change, and the state awaits its virgin birth in the
postcolonial era.”

27. This had not, of course, been entirely true for Burton, perhaps
because of his sojourn in Sind or his early studies in Arabic. As
might be expected, the particular discourse being engaged would
determine the Hinduness, or otherwise, of the territory designated
“India.”

28. Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions,” in The Nature and Context of
Minority Discourse, ed. Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990).

29. John Masters, The Deceivers (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1952),
240. All further references to this novel will be incorporated
parenthetically into the text.

30. Charles Hervey, Some Records of Crime (Being the Diary of a Year,
Official and Particular, of an Officer of the Thuggee and Dacoitie
Police) (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1892), 1: 50–51.

31. Ranjit Sen, Social Banditry in Bengal: A Study in Primary
Resistance, 1757–1793 (Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 1988), 2–3.

32. Sanjay Nigam, “Disciplining and Policing the ‘Criminals by
Birth,’” Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, no. 2 (1990):
131–64; 27, no. 3 (1990): 259–87.

33. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley
(New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 1: 43.

34. Radhika Singha argues that “the introduction of laws dealing with
ill-defined ‘criminal communities’ introduced certain fissures into
the ideology of the equal, abstract and universal legal
subject” (“‘Providential’ Circumstances,” 86, n. 10).

35. Edward Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the
Thugs (London: W. H. Allen, 1837), 145–46. This frankness is
relatively rare in the writings on thuggee; the issue of the
genuineness of the confessions, though, is an issue in all, judging
from the unfailing vehemence with which the method of conviction
through approvers’ testimony is defended as just, if not
unexceptionable.

36. Ibid., 374.

37. J. Sleeman, Thug, 120.

38. William H. Sleeman, Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar
Language Used by the Thugs (Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann, Military Orphan
Press, 1836), 32–33.

39. Thornton, Illustrations, 70, 11.

40. Wightman, No Friend for Travellers, 112.

41. J. Sleeman, Thug, 106.

42. William H. Sleeman, Report on Budhuk Alias Bagree Dacoits and
Other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession (Calcutta: J. C. Sherriff,
Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1849), 2–3.

43. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1: 35.

44. Homi Bhabha, “Sly Civility” and “Of Mimicry and Man,” in The
Location of Culture.

45. See Mala Sen, India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi
(New Delhi: Indus/HarperCollins, 1991) for an example of the way in
which the colonial discourse of thuggee (in this instance, Tukar’s
Yellow Scarf) continues, in contemporary India, to frame the way in
which certain forms of collective violence are understood by the law-
and-order machinery of the state.

46. Tuker, Yellow Scarf, 38.

47. William H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian
Official, ed. Vincent A. Smith (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford
University Press, 1915), 555.

48. Taylor, Confessions of a Thug, 330.

49. W. H. Sleeman, Ramaseeana, 3.

50. Freitag, “Collective Crime and Authority,” 146.

51. Singha, “‘Providential’ Circumstances,” 84.

52. W. H. Sleeman, Report on Budhuk, 173. The thuggee act had the
following provisions:

1.Whoever shall be proved to have belonged, either before or after the
passing of this Act, to any gang of Thugs, either within or without
the Territories of the East India Company, shall be punished with
imprisonment for life, with hard labour.

2.And…every person accused of the offence…may be tried by any court,
which would have been competent to try him, if his offence had been
committed within the Zillah where that Court sits, any thing to the
contrary, in any Regulation contained, notwithstanding.

3.And…no Court shall, on a trial of any person accused of the offence…
require any Futwa from any Law Officer.

53. Singha, “‘Providential’ Circumstances,” 136–37.

54. J. Sleeman, Thug, 117.

55. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
York: Vintage Books, 1979), 38.

56. Shahid Amin, “Approver’s Testimony, Judicial Discourse: The Case
of Chauri Chaura,” in Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian
History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1987).

57. William H. Sleeman, Report on the Depredations Committed by the
Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India (Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann,
Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1840). [BACK]

58. Bruce, Stranglers, 154.

59. W. H. Sleeman, Report on Budhuk, 303–5.

60. Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order,” 236. It is said that thugs
had routinely existed in a symbiotic relationship with landlords,
providing military protection and supplying booty from expeditions in
return for land and respectability. [BACK]

61. W. H. Sleeman, Ramaseeana, 186–87.

62. I should add here that the phrase going native is vested in my
paper with a multiplicity of valences; for instance, it encompasses
both the colonialist desire to “pass for” the native and the condition
that signifies racial regression.

63. R. Radhakrishnan, “Ethnicity in an Age of Diaspora,” Transition 54
(1991): 106.

64. David Arnold, “European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the
Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7,
no. 2 (1979): 104–27.

65. Homi K. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins
of the Modern Nations,” in Nation and Narration, 299.

66. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” See Michel Foucault,
“Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and
Gilles Deleuze,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected
Essays and Interviews, by Michel Foucault, trans. Donald F. Bouchard
and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), 205–
17.

67. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Translator’s Foreword to ‘Draupadi,’
by Mahasweta Devi,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
(New York and London: Routledge, 1987), 180.

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8s20097j&chunk.id=ch2

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turn of the century, is a highly unusual diary of one disciple’s
encounters with his guru and with other disciples over the last four
years (1882–1886) of Ramakrishna’s life. In this text, which is
written in Bengali, Ramakrishna is referred to as thakur, which is
both a common way of designating a Brahman as well as a word meaning
god; “M,” who was a schoolteacher, is called “master” in this work. In
the English translation of 1942 by Swami Nikhilananda, The Gospel of
Sri Ramakrishna (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1973
[1942]), “the Master” is the standard appellation for Ramakrishna;
this usage may have been popularized by Vivekananda.

3. Partha Chatterjee, “A Religion of Urban Domesticity: Sri
Ramakrishna and the Calcutta Middle Class,” Subaltern Studies VII:
Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Partha Chatterjee and
Gyanendra Pandey (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 65.

4. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in
Nineteenth Century Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988),
219.

5. Quoted in ibid., 231. For further details, see Swami Saradananda,
Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master, trans. Swami Jagadananda, 2 vols.
(Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1978 [1952]).

6. There were many references to the Paramhansa in Keshab’s journal,
the New Dispensation, and in the late 1870s Keshab published
Paramhanser Ukti, a ten-page Bengali booklet of Ramakrishna’s sayings.

7. Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (London:
Methuen, 1965), 141. [BACK]

8. Quoted in ibid., 124.

9. Cited in Brian K. Smith, “How Not to Be a Hindu: The Case of the
Ramakrishna Mission,” in Religion and Law in Independent India, ed.
Robert P. Baird (New Delhi: Manohar, 1993), 343–44.

10. Sumit Sarkar, “The Kathamrita as Text: Towards an Understanding of
Ramakrishna Paramhamsa,” Occasional Paper 22 (New Delhi: Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, 1985), 21 and passim. Also, see Sumit
Sarkar, “‘Kaliyuga,’ ‘Chakri’ and ‘Bhakti’: Ramakrishna and His
Times,” Economic and Political Weekly, 18 July 1992, 1543–66.
Ramakrishna’s disciples claimed that he had gone through his “Muslim”
and “Christian” phases before he met Keshab; please note that all the
dates in Ramakrishna’s life are culled from accounts by devotees and
admirers.

11. The term heterosexuality is here used catachrestically, since
Ramakrishna seems to be obviously outside the formations within which
we would situate “modern” Indian subjects, including Vivekananda. The
very terms homosexuality/heterosexuality (and, indeed, transsexuality,
which may also be said to resonate for Ramakrishna) are too western
and modern to be completely adequate to the task of analysis. I use
them very provisionally, in the absence of another vocabulary and
epistemology that might enable me to understand premodern, Indian/
Hindu conceptualizations of sexuality. In this context, I am reminded
of Diana Fuss’s generous and sensitive reading of Fanon’s claim (in
Black Skin, White Masks) that there is no (male) homosexuality in the
Antilles (“Interior Colonies,” 33):

Fanon’s insistence that there is no homosexuality in the Antilles may
convey a more trenchant meaning than the one he in fact intended: if
by ‘homosexuality’ one understands the culturally specific social
formations of same-sex desire as they are articulated in the West,
then they are indeed foreign to the Antilles.…Can one generalize from
the particular forms sexuality takes under Western capitalism to
sexuality as such? What kinds of colonizations do such discursive
translations perform on ‘other’ traditions of sexual differences?

Such a caution must be borne in mind, even as one cannot but deploy,
however hesitantly, the idioms of modern western sexualities. See
Jeffrey Kripal, Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life
and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1995) for a careful and fascinating reading of the
relationship of Ramakrishna’s “homosexuality” to his mysticism. I
regret that I have not been able to make fuller use of the Kripal
text, which was published after this chapter was written.

12. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity”, 60–61.

13. S. Sarkar, “Kathamrita as Text,” 50–71.

14. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity”, 45. Sumit Sarkar
claims, moreover, that the period of Ramakrishna’s popularity
coincided with a “kind of hiatus in bhadralok history,” when dreams of
social reform had been frustrated, official racism was marked, and
liberation through the overthrow of British rule not really
conceivable (“‘Kaliyuga,’ ‘Chakri’ and ‘Bhakti,’” 1547).

15. It is interesting to note that the disciples of Ramakrishna,
notably Vivekananda, preferred the term kamkanchan, “lust-and-gold,”
over the Master’s kaminikanchan and went to great lengths to explain
that the sage’s “symbolic” use of the term did not imply any
misogyny.

16. Nikhilananda, Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 701. All subsequent
references will be incorporated parenthetically into the text.

17. This insight derives in a general way from Carole-Anne Tyler’s
reading of the ambivalent politics of gay drag (“Boys Will Be Girls:
The Politics of Gay Drag,” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay
Theories, ed. Diana Fuss [New York: Routledge, 1990]) as well from
Kaja Silverman’s account of the mastery permitted by T. E. Lawrence’s
reflexive masochism (“White Skin, Brown Masks”). In The Inner World: A
Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1978), 103, Sudhir Kakar characterizes Hindu
transvestism thus: “Rituals such as these represent not only the boy’s
attempt to identify with his mother but also the man’s effort to free
himself from her domination. By trying to be like women—wearing their
clothes, acquiring their organs, giving birth—these men are also
saying that they do not need women (mothers) any longer.” For a
sympathetic psychoanalytic reading of Ramakrishna’s assumption of
femininity, see Kakar, “Ramakrishna and the Mystical Experience,” in
The Analyst and the Mystic: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Religion and
Mysticism (New Delhi: Viking, 1991), 1–40.

18. Cited in S. Sarkar, “Kathamrita as Text,” 9.

19. D. S. Sarma, Studies in the Renaissance of Hinduism in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Benares: Benares Hindu University,
1944), 237.

20. I am grateful to Gayatri Spivak for pointing out to me the
numerous, and discontinuous, ways in which the English term woman
translates into Bengali (and/or Sanskrit). Even so, it is interesting
to note how often other forms of femininity threaten for Ramakrishna
to collapse into the figure of the kamini. Hence his warning to one of
his young male disciples to beware of women who claim to be actuated
by maternal feelings towards him.

21. Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples, 113.

22. I put this term in quotation marks to indicate that is placed
under erasure. One cannot assume that transvestism was inflected in
the same way for a nineteenth-century (straight?) Hindu male as it
might be for, say, a contemporary straight North American male. One
has to concede that his masculinity might have been constituted
differently, and in a different relationship to femininity, than might
be the case for our hypothetical North American male.

23. I am thinking here of N. T. Rama Rao’s assumption of feminine
attire, makeup, and jewelry, on one-half of his body in the days of
his chief ministership of Andhra Pradesh, apparently in a bid to
consolidate his political/spiritual power. Philip Spratt also provides
detailed anthropological evidence of religious transvestic ceremonies
all over India (Hindu Culture and Personality [Bombay: Manaktalas,
1966]). See, too, Kathryn Hansen’s splendid essay, “Making Women
Visible: Female Impersonators and Actresses on the Parsi Stage and in
Silent Cinema” (unpublished manuscript).

24. Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and
Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 38.

25. Wendy Doniger, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 319.

26. Ibid., 331.

27. Women could, on occasion, function as gurus; the Bhairavi
Brahmani, for instance, was Ramakrishna’s first guru. Other historical
and contemporary figures like Andal, Mahadeviakka, Mirabai, and
Anandamoyi Ma come to mind as well. Sharada Devi (Ramakrishna’s wife)
herself had several (female and male) disciples. I do not think,
however, that this militates against my understanding of the guru-
disciple relationship as functioning for the most part for and among
males nor against my reading of its gendered significance in early
nationalism.

28. I am obliged to Sandhya Shetty for pointing this out to me. The
gurudakshina (the gift to the guru) is situated outside (economic)
exchange and functions in a symbolic capacity only. The instance of
Drona the archer and his low-caste disciple Eklavya, who had to
sacrifice his thumb to ensure the superiority of the guru’s favorite
pupil Arjuna, only demonstrates that in the guru-shishya configuration
what is offered by the disciple is incommensurable with what is given
by the guru.

29. Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Compiled from Various Authentic Sources
(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1964), 296.

30. Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, ed.
Swami Nikhilananda (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953),
13.

31. There is no “secular,” critical biography of Ramakrishna except
that by Max Mueller, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899). While this inveighs against the
miraculizing tendencies of Ramakrishna’s disciples, not excepting
Vivekananda, and refuses to take Ramakrishna’s avatarhood seriously,
it is nonetheless entirely reverential about the man himself.

32. Life of Sri Ramakrishna, 117.

33. Ibid., 144–45.

34. Ibid., 294.

35. Swami Chetanananda, ed. Ramakrishna as We Saw Him (St. Louis, Mo.:
Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1990), 110.

36. Sumit Sarkar notes: “Girish Ghosh confessed that seeing
Ramakrishna ‘playing’ with a young disciple made him recall a
‘terrible canard’ that he had once heard about the saint” (“Kathamrita
as Text,” 103).

37. Sister Nivedita [Margaret E. Noble], The Master as I Saw Him
(Calcutta: Udbodhan Office, 1910), 64.

38. Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples, 204.

39. This is not, of course, to assert that the conflicts were unique
to Naren; as we have seen, in terms of class position and intellectual
training he appears to have been no different from the majority of the
disciples. The others, however, appear to have been less outspoken in
their skepticism than he was. I hardly need add that the memory and
the narrative of these conflicts is overdetermined; if Naren had not
become Vivekananda, we would probably have heard far less of his
interactions with his guru. As it is, in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
his iconoclasticism is not as evident as that of, say, Bankim or Dr.
Mahendralal Sarkar (neither of whom was a disciple). Nonetheless, he
does seem to have been the unequivocal favorite of Ramakrishna. And it
also seems clear that he was accorded a degree of freedom of speech
and behavior not permitted most of the other disciples. (Girish Ghosh,
who was notorious for his drinking, patronage of prostitutes, and
occasional foul-mouthed invectives against the guru, was one of the
very few others who was granted such a license.)

40. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity.” Sumit Sarkar
emphasizes the saint’s determined pursuit of bhadralok disciples as
well as his reticence about religious practices (of the Baul,
Kartabhaja, and vamachari Tantric varieties) that might have offended
their sensibilities (“The Kathamrita as Text,” 36).

41. Chetanananda, Ramakrishna as We Saw Him, 385–90.

42. My thanks to Inderpal Grewal for suggesting this possibility to
me.

43. Hervey De Witt Griswold, Insights into Modern Hinduism (New York:
Henry Holt, 1934), 58.

44. Nationalism’s dependence on colonialism has been extensively
documented, to some degree by Nandy, Intimate Enemy, but most notably
by Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought. Certainly nationalism-and-
colonialism seems to function as one category for Vivekananda.

45. Not all Brahmos were as skeptical as Shibnath Shastri, who, much
though he admired Ramakrishna, believed that the saint’s austerities
at the beginning of his spiritual career had had deleterious effects
on his mental state; Keshab for one seems to have been less
incredulous of the spiritual nature of the saint’s trances. Sumit
Sarkar points out, interestingly, that while Ramakrishna’s family and
neighbors in Kamarpukur and Dakshineshwar attributed the trances to
madness or “possession,” his bhadralok disciples and admirers
described them as the samadhi state extolled by high Hindu doctrine.

46. Ramakrishna himself made conflicting assertions about his own
avatarhood; at points he dismissed the possibility derisively, while
at other times he claimed to be an avatar of Krishna, Chaitanya, and/
or Kali.

47. Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography (New York:
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953), 42.

48. It is not possible to establish whether any of the swami’s
supporters were simply admirers or actually disciples. It is not
inconceivable that they may have become disciples retroactively,
following Vivekananda’s success in the west.

49. Sankari Prasad Basu and Sunil Bihari Ghosh, eds., Vivekananda in
Indian Newspapers 1893–1902 (Calcutta: Dineshchandra Basu
Bhattacharya, 1969), 9.

50. It should be noted that the swami’s Indian reputation was—to some
degree, at least—induced by himself, as a defensive measure no doubt
against the criticisms he encountered not only from Christian
ministers in the United States but also from members of the Brahmo
Samaj and perhaps the Theosophical Society as well. His early letters
to his disciples in Madras were full of exhortations to them to hold a
meeting in his honor and to proclaim him to the west as a true
spokesperson of Hinduism. He was also careful to keep them informed
about favorable reviews in the U.S. press.

51. Rakhal Chandra Nath, The New Hindu Movement 1886–1911 (Calcutta:
Minerva, 1982), 126.

52. Ibid., 129.

53. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity.”

54. Nath, New Hindu Movement, 115.

55. Vivekananda was rarely consistent in this view; this was typical
of him. At times he deployed the rhetoric of free trade to imply
mutual and equal advantage to east and west; at other times he
insisted that Indians were superior to the west in their indifference
to material things and that in fact the west called out for spiritual
conquest by an “aggressive Hinduism.” In this vacillation Vivekananda
was not untypical of the bourgeois neo-Hindu nationalists of his time.
[BACK]

56. He also enjoined his brother monks in India not to insist on the
acceptance of Ramakrishna’s avatarhood in would-be devotees and
disciples of the new order.

57. Harold W. French, The Swan’s Wide Waters: Ramakrishna and Western
Culture (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1974), 58.

58. Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, 230.

59. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity.”

60. Nath, New Hindu Movement, 114.

61. Ibid., 17. Note that Bankim’s novel was undoubtedly the product of
a distinctly westward-looking nationalism. Nath describes Aurobindo’s
“Bhawani Mandir” as derived from Anandmath (and remarkably similar to
Vivekananda’s own cult of the warlike monk) in its emphasis on
manliness and in its devotion to Kali. [BACK]

62. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity,” 61.

63. Vivekananda, Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, 151.

64. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s cult of physical fitness and
martial arts training has a great deal in common with Vivekananda’s
endorsement of “beef, biceps, and Bhagavad-Gita.”

65. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, by His Eastern and Western
Admirers (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1964 [1961]), 347.

66. At this point in Indian history, bourgeois and Hindu nationalisms—
the first represented by “moderates” in the Congress Party calling for
secular and constitutional reforms, the latter by Tilak, Bankim, and
others—have assumed the status of two distinct categories, though
quite often they function as one. I bear in mind also Sudipta
Kaviraj’s important caveat against the conflation of distinct
nationalisms (his own concern is with “early” and “mature”
nationalisms), which must be seen as disjunct rather than articulated
phenomena in Indian history; see Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Imaginary
Institution of India,” in Subaltern Studies VII: Writings on South
Asian History and Society, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).

67. Basu and Ghosh, Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers, 27.

68. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 231.

69. Ibid., 388 (emphases in the original). [

70. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 252. The speaker in this
instance was a woman, Constance Towne.

71. Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda in America: New Discoveries
(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1958), 16.

72. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 14.

73. Swami Vivekananda and His Guru (London and Madras: Christian
Literature Society for India, 1897), iv.

74. There is, to the uninstructed viewer, little if anything of the
disarrangement of limbs or clothing that normally marked the sage’s
experience of samadhi.

75. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “A Literary Representation of the
Subaltern,” in In Other Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 1987),
264.

76. Nivedita functions here as a type of the western female disciple.

77. Mary Ann Doane, “Dark Continents: Epistemologies of Racial and
Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema,” in Femmes
Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York and London:
Routledge, 1991), 244.

78. Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda: His Second Visit to the
West; New Discoveries (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1973).

79. Kakar, Inner World, 160.

80. See, for instance, Romila Thapar: “[The ascetic] is celibate and
yet, at the same time, the most virile of men. The ascetic’s
demonstration of sexual prowess is not a contradiction in terms: it is
in fact a demonstration of his complete control over body functions,
since ideally the emission of semen is prohibited to
him” (“Renunciation: The Making of a Counter-Culture?” in Ancient
Indian Social History: Some Interpretations [Delhi: n.p., 1978], 94).
Also see Joseph Alter: “The whole purpose of brahmacharya [celibacy]
is to build up a resilient store of semen so that the body—in a
holistic, psychosomatic sense—radiates an aura of vitality and
strength” (“Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into
Nationalism in North India,” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1
[1994]: 51).

81. Steve Neale, “Masculinity as Spectacle,” in The Sexual Subject: A
Screen Reader in Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 277–
87.

82. Ibid., 286.

83. Swami Vivekananda, “The Future of India,” in Lectures from Colombo
to Almora (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1956), 267.

84. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 196. Sister Christine
(Christine Greenstidel) goes on to remark on the companionship of
Sadananda and Vivekananda on their North Indian pilgrimage: “Both were
artistic, both were poets by nature, both were attractive in
appearance. Artists raved about them.”

Nivedita also confesses, though far more discreetly, that she was
drawn to the swami by his “personality” rather his philosophy, which
she initially found unoriginal. Her “biography” of him, The Master as
I Saw Him, is remarkable for its reticence about his corporeality.

85. That such a construction of femininity was not necessarily
exclusive to Hindu reformers/revivalists is borne out by Faisal
Fatehali Devji: “[Muslim] reformist literature replaces the aggressive
sexual woman with the pathetic or suffering woman-as-mother” (“Gender
and the Politics of Space: The Movement for Women’s Reform in Muslim
India, 1857–1900,” South Asia, 14, no. 1 [1991], 151).

86. Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s
Question,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed.
Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 1990), 237.

87. Sister Nivedita, The Web of Indian Life (London: William
Heinemann, 1904), 32–45.

88. See, among others, Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate
on Sati in Colonial India,” in The Nature and Context of Minority
Discourse, ed. Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990); Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds.,
Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Chatterjee, Nation and Its
Fragments; and Madhu Kishwar, “Gandhi on Women,” Economic and
Political Weekly, 5 October 1985, 1691–1702.

89. Monier Monier-Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (New
Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1974 [1883]), 184–85. Also
see David R. Kinsley, “Kali: Blood and Death Out of Place,” in Devi:
Goddesses of India, ed. John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff (Berkeley
and London: University of California Press, 1996); and Ajit Mookerjee,
Kali: The Feminine Force (New York: Destiny Books, 1988).

90. Sumanta Banerjee, “Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in
Nineteenth Century Bengal,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian
Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 158.

91. Ramakrishna was married at the age of twenty-three to Sharadamoni
Debi, a child-bride of five. According to custom, she remained in her
natal home, while Ramakrishna continued his spiritual disciplines at
Dakshineshwar, forgetful of her existence. At eighteen she sought him
out at Dakshineshwar and acceded to his request that their marriage
remain unconsummated. Over the remaining decade and a half of
Ramakrishna’s life, she spent extended periods at Dakshineshwar, doing
his housekeeping and cooking and (usually) living in a separate
building in the temple complex. [BACK]

92. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 65.

93. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “A Literary Representation of the
Subaltern,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York
and London: Routledge, 1987), 244. [BACK]

94. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 83.

95. Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, 242.

96. Swami Vivekananda, Letters of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Advaita
Ashrama, 1964), 167–68.

97. Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922) was a notable scholar and a
Hindu widow who converted to Christianity during a visit to England
and dedicated her life to the uplift of young Hindu widows. Her book,
The High-Caste Hindu Woman (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888), as
well as her travels in England and the United States, gained her
sympathy from feminists as well as Christian missionaries abroad and
censure from Hindu conservatives at home. Her shelter for widows, the
Sharda Sadan in Pune, was supported in large part by funds raised by
Ramabai Circles in the United States and England. Her travels in the
United States in the 1880s received extensive coverage in the U.S.
press.

98. Basu and Ghosh, Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers, 421–68.

99. This is necessarily a simplification of Vivekananda’s very
complicated responses to the issues of (gender and other) reform,
nationalism, and colonialism. The split was not simply between
“home” (where reform had to endorsed) and abroad (where Hinduism had
to be defended); even at “home” he had decidedly mixed responses to
reform and (religious and social) orthodoxy.

100. The phrase is Nivedita’s (The Master as I Saw Him, 124). In an
interesting departure from the hagiographical tradition in which
accounts of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda are produced (and in which
tradition Nivedita’s own work uneasily belongs), she emphasizes not
the continuity of their respective “gospels” but their distinctness
from each other. She does this, besides, in a fashion that highlights
the swami’s struggles and doubts: “Sri Ramakrishna had been, as the
Swami himself said once of him, ‘like a flower,’ living apart in the
garden of a temple, simple, half-naked, orthodox, the ideal of the old
time in India, suddenly burst into bloom, in a world that had thought
to dismiss its very memory. It was at one the greatness and the
tragedy of my own Master’s life that he was not of this type. His was
the modern mind in its completeness.…His hope could not pass by
unheeded,…the hope of men of the nineteenth century” (The Master as I
Saw Him, 124–25).

101. Chatterjee, “Nationalist Resolution,” 237–38.

102. She was not, however, recognizably a nineteenth-century British
feminist—at least from the evidence of her early writings—even though
much has been made in the biographies of her feminism and other
“excesses.” Apparently Vivekananda himself made fun of her putative
feminism.

103. Quoted in Barbara Foxe, Long Journey Home: A Biography of
Margaret Noble (Nivedita) (London: Rider, 1975), 32–33.

104. Quoted in Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and
History (London and New York: Verso, 1992), 121.

105. Sharada Devi seems to have been a figure who was not
unequivocally reverenced by the followers of Ramakrishna. Many
devotees visited her at Jayrambati and Kamarpukur, and she initiated
several people into discipleship. She was sometimes spoken of as an
avatar—like her husband—and the heiress to his spiritual kingdom. But
she was also often accused of being excessively worldly. Ramakrishna’s
most prominent disciples visited her only rarely; Swami Nikhilananda
says that this was because they hesitated to “[make] a display of
their spiritual fervour.” See his Holy Mother: Being the Life of Sri
Sarada Devi, Wife of Sri Ramakrishna and Helpmate in His Mission
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962). Spivak speaks of the way in
which her official biographer, Swami Gambhirananda, staged her as “a
counter-echo to what he perceived as the strong voice of the Western
Narcissus” (“Asked to Talk about Myself…,” Third Text 19 [Summer
1992]: 17). I would argue that this could only happen retrospectively,
and at a later moment from the one that Vivekananda inhabits.

106. See, for instance, Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women
in Bengal, 1849–1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1984), esp. chaps. 8 and 9; Ghulam Murshid, Reluctant Debutante:
Response of Bengali Women to Modernization, 1849–1905 (Rajshashi,
Bangladesh: Sahitya Samsad, 1983); and Kumar, History of Doing, esp.
chaps. 2 and 3.

107. The Indian woman was, obviously, recast in the nationalist moment—
as was the Indian man; but recast and fixed, with little room for
negotiation after the recasting had been effected. For an analysis of
a nationalist woman’s struggles with gendered identities in
nationalism, see chapter 5.

108. Romain Rolland, The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel,
trans. E. F. Malcolm-Smith (Mayavati, India: Advaita Ashrama, 1947),
152, n. 2.

109. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 136–37.

110. Quoted in Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-
Vivekananda (Calcutta: Sister Nivedita Girls’ School, 1961), 30.

111. Foxe, Long Journey Home, 128.

112. Rakhal Nath maintains that the Ramakrishna Mission was the only
non-political body to come out of the “New Hindu” or Hindu revivalist
movement (Nath, New Hindu Movement). [BACK]

113. Foxe, Long Journey Home, 136.

114. Ibid., 150–51.

115. Barbara N. Ramusack, “Cultural Missionaries, Maternal
Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in India, 1865–
1945,” in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance,
ed. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 130.

116. S. B. Mookherjee, “Nivedita and Indian Womanhood,” in Nivedita
Commemoration Volume, ed. Amiya Kumar Majumdar (Calcutta: Dhiraj Basu,
1968), 244.

117. She met Gandhi briefly in Calcutta, in the early years of the
century. Gandhi (who in so many ways would grow to resemble the figure
of Ramakrishna) admired her Hindu partisanship but was unable to agree
with her on nationalist politics. The Congress Party under Gandhi had
a profoundly uneasy relationship with militant nationalist women like
Nivedita and the Rani of Jhansi.

118. Lizelle Reymond’s The Dedicated: A Biography of Nivedita (New
York: John Day, 1953) also helped disseminate this image, though its
factual claims have since been contested. Kumari Jayawardena’s chapter
on Nivedita (“Irish Rebellion and ‘Muscular Hinduism,’” in White
Woman’s Other Burden) describes the contradictory ways in which the
disciple of Vivekananda is remembered.

119. My thanks to Carole-Anne Tyler for sensitizing me to this
possibility. [BACK]

120. Foxe’s biography, Long Journey Home, is particularly derisive in
this regard. What had been admirable “manliness” in Vivekananda was
forwardness in the female disciple. [BACK]

121. Ibid., 205. [BACK]

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