Fw: SOWING THE WIND

[Sandeep Pandey]

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: chhotebhai Kanpur <noron...@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, March 3, 2026 at 08:06:03 AM GMT+5:30

Subject: Fwd: SOWING THE WIND

Dear Friends, 

This is my latest on current affairs. Do read,  share and comment online. Thanks. 

chhotebhai 

https://chhotebhaiwriter.co.in/sowing-the-wind/

[Ahamad Raza Khan]

08 march तक date extend ho gayi hai urdu phd ki

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[Suresh Khairnar]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Suresh Khairnar <sureshkh...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar, 2026, 01:09
Subject: My dear Binu namaskar, today I wrote this article on first Asian Caravan land to land organized by the India - Palestine Solidarity Forum fifteen years ago, for the liberation of Palestine. If you like please publish it in Current. Regards, Dr. Suresh Khairnar
To: Countercurrents <edi...@countercurrents.org>

Storytelling of Aman o Caravan Caravan from 15 years ago.
Watching the joint war between Israel and the United States over the past week, I was reminded of the first land-based Asian caravan organized by the India-Palestine Solidarity Forum fifteen years ago for the liberation of Palestine. It included Pakistanis, Indonesians, and representatives from Bahrain, Qatar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Lebanon, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Japan, England, the United States, and some European countries. In a way, it could be called an international caravan. Today marks fifteen years since that event. Some friends have urged me to write about my experiences in detail. A friend from Kolkata who was part of that caravan sent me some photographs. I shared these photographs with my friend, Fauzia Arshi of Chauthi Duniya, who asked me to please send an article on this topic to Chauthi Duniya. I have attempted to write this article because of their request.
On behalf of the India-Palestine Solidarity Forum, for the first time, I left from Rajghat in Delhi on December 5th, 2010, and on December 6th, through Pakistan, from an Asian country, to the Middle East, covering the entire West Bank and Israel, which before 1948 was a single country called Palestine. This was because the British divided India before leaving. The cost of that partition is that the entire Indian subcontinent has become a zone of permanent unrest. And instead of addressing the everyday problems of Pakistan, which was created in 1947, both countries continue to prioritize defense spending. After entering Pakistan, I said in the "Lahore Meet the Press" program that I was just seeing the historic city of Lahore for the first time and that I was deeply saddened by the state of Lahore, even after more than 63 years of Pakistan's formation. Because I thought that in the 63 years since Pakistan's creation, Pakistan's situation would have improved significantly compared to India's, and I would have been very happy. But the majority of Pakistani citizens I met at the border, traveling to India, were suffering from various ailments, seeking treatment in Indian cities. Is there still not a single hospital in Pakistan to treat these ailments after so much time has passed? Looking at the condition of the roads from Wagah Border to Lahore and the smoke from the vehicles driving on them, I haven't seen any difference between Delhi and Lahore. So, I would like to ask all of you: what have you gained by creating Pakistan?
Similarly, the British had ruled Palestine since 1880. And before leaving there, they created two countries, Palestine and Israel, in 1948. Under the banner of their liberation, a caravan from Delhi, passing through Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Turkestan, and the Egyptian Sinai Desert, crossed the Rafah border and entered the Gaza Strip on January 1, 2011, but after midnight. After a week's stay in the Gaza Strip, they returned to India from the Rafah border to Cairo Airport, perhaps on January 7 or 8, 2011. This means that this journey took place during 2010-11.
This journey, which began on December 5, 2010, from Rajghat in Delhi, included copies of Gandhiji's autobiography, "Experiments with Truth," translated into English, Urdu, Persian, and Arabic, along with framed photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, with the help of Tulsi Somaiya, the owner of our Mumbai Gandhi Bookstall. The Urdu autobiography was distributed first upon entering Pakistan through the Wagah-Attari border. After crossing the Baluchistan-Zayedan ​​border in Iran, the Persian autobiography was distributed, and after distributing English copies in Turkistan, and Arabic copies in Palestine and Egypt, we observed that at all locations, after receiving the autobiography, all recipients first kissed it and accepted it, placing it on their foreheads, just like the Quran Sharif. And the most important thing is that he was also invited to the Parliament of Iran, and even after being presented with a framed photograph of Mahatma Gandhi, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament placed it on his forehead, kissed it and then placed it on the wall of the Parliament.
Crossing the Wagah border, I was greeted with warmth and affection in Pakistan. The garlands of roses around my neck obscured my face from the Pakistani channel's cameramen. So, they delicately removed some of the garlands before interviewing me. My journey to Iran began by traveling through Pakistan's Punjab, Sindh, and Baluchistan, and entering Iran through the Pakistani border city of Zahedan. We then traveled through Najd, Bam, Isfahan, Kerman, and Khom, and then Tehran, and especially, we held programs at universities in all these places. I was particularly aware of the Western media reports about the prohibition of Iranian women from leaving their homes after the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution under Ayatollah Khamenei, and the imprisonment or flogging of women with leather whips by the religious police. So I was observing the behavior of men and women in Iran's public sphere even more closely. I noticed, especially in universities, that the number of women was significantly higher. I asked the Vice Chancellor, probably at Khoum University, "What's the ratio of boys to girls?" He replied, "Sixty to forty percent." I replied, "It's sixty, right?" He replied, "No, sixty percent are girls, and forty percent are boys." This trend was evident in all Iranian universities. Yes, the practice of girls covering their hair with a silk scarf, known as the hijab, was evident. However, aside from that, most girls were seen wearing tops below the neck and jeans around the waist.
And this situation is more or less prevalent throughout Iran. I've even seen some women driving heavy vehicles on the roads. There's even a movement by Iranian women against the hijab (the headgear used to cover the hair), which I support. Throughout our stay in Iran, I found two young girls sitting next to me on the Valho bus most of the time, and I've talked with them about a wide range of topics. In my opinion, I've seen them speak authoritatively about every topic in the world. The Western media has presented a very bleak picture of the entire Muslim world.
Yes, there are some restrictions. These exist, to a greater or lesser extent, in India and other countries. Restrictions on women have persisted throughout the world for centuries. In Western countries, the term "Victorian Era" itself implies the constraints women had to endure. One can only understand the extent of the world's finest books on the status of women, "The Second Sex," by French author Simone de Beauvoir. "Women are treated unequally throughout the world. Until recently, women did not have the right to vote in European countries and the United States. And there was a disparity in the wages of working women and men."
Iranian President Ahmad Nijad himself attended our reception at the university in Tehran, Iran's capital. I had the opportunity to attend the meeting with him. And when I said, "As long as the Palestine issue is raised from a Muslim or Islamic perspective, it won't be resolved even if it takes a thousand years. Because this isn't a religious issue. It's a humanitarian issue, just like Vietnam. And just like Vietnam, this issue can only be resolved in our lifetimes if all of us humanitarians and democracy-loving people around the world work together." Ahmed Nijad rose from his seat, approached the podium, kissed me on both cheeks and on the forehead, and then, taking the microphone, said, "I'm very happy that Dr. Suresh Khairnar thinks about Palestine like our late Ayatollah Khomeini." I watched and listened with amazement, wondering if I was thinking about the Palestine issue in the same way as Ayatollah Khomeini? Is there any difference between the views of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and mine?" Ahmad Nijad clarified, "Even the late Ayatollah Khomeini said that the Palestinian issue is not an Islamic one; it's about human values, freedom, and democracy." I listened in amazement. When Ahmad Nijad came down from the podium and sat next to me, I said, "Sorry, before I came to Iran, I was quite prejudiced by Western media about the late Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran's Islamic Revolution. That Ayatollah Khomeini was a religious leader, and that's how he viewed the entire world." He said, "Take the entire Ayatollah Khomeini archive with you. And I invite you to speak on him at all the academic institutions in Iran." He left Iran, speaking at almost every university in Iran, all the way to Diyarbakır.
And during our ten-day trip to Iran, we visited more than ten martyr memorials. These memorials were for those killed in the ten-year war with Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s. Almost every memorial contained the burial of over 100,000 people—over 1,500,000 to 2,000,000. Iran, with a population of 80 million, has lost its youth. Visiting the last Martyrs' Memorial in Diyarbakir, I said in my prayer address, "I pray that on my next visit to Iran, I won't see any more martyr memorials. Because this way, a generation of Iranians has been wiped out." The same situation may have been experienced in Iraq as well. And neighboring Iraq, with a population of 30 million, may have a similar number of martyrs. The two Muslim countries were at war with each other for over 10 years, so how can we find a solution to the Palestine issue?
And for a hundred years, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been saying, "Islam is in danger. Saying that brings all the Muslims of the world together." And in this century, a war just twenty-five years ago lasted for ten years. It took place before our very eyes between Iran and Iraq. And more than forty to five million people were killed on both sides combined. The RSS members, in keeping with their name, Rumor Spreading Society (RSS), distort facts from history to the present, and continue to do just that, 24 hours a day.
And in 2003, in the name of so-called chemical weapons, then-US President George Bush and his so-called allies, 1.5 million Iraqi civilians were killed, and among them, more than 500,000 children under the age of 15 were killed. This is three times the number of deaths caused by the atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of World War II in 1945. This is due to the contamination of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with toxic chemicals, and Saddam Hussein himself came under the pretext of destroying hidden chemical weapons. In this sin, so-called civilized America and its allies, including England, France, Germany, and other European countries, as well as Canadian forces, were involved. And George Bush was praising this war as a war for peace. Today, Iraq, with a population of 30 million, has been reduced to ruins. I am writing this after witnessing it with my own eyes for a week. Baghdad, once home to the Babylonian and Mesopotamian civilizations, was also a world center of learning. I had the opportunity to visit Iraq in 2015 to attend a meeting on the Palestinian issue, and I will write a separate report on that.
And after ten days we entered Syria. In Syria too, due to our status as government guests, the mayors or governors of all the cities were present everywhere to welcome us. We stayed in Homs, Aleppo, the capital Damascus and the last port city Latakia from 20th December to the end of December. Staying there meant "we had to go to Gaza Strip by ship. And Israel was not giving permission. After ten days passed in that confusion, finally the Syrian government took us to Damascus and boarded us in a special plane and landed us at Al Arish Airport in Egypt's Sinai province before dusk on 1st January 2011 and the plane went back. And it started to feel that "this is not an airport for everyday traffic and transportation. "It's an emergency airport used during war or other events. After landing, we saw that there were no arrangements. Food and other amenities were lacking. Gaza is only forty kilometers from Al-Arish, but there were no vehicles. As darkness fell, we started protesting. Then, at nine or ten o'clock at night, the Egyptian government packed us into three or four rickety minibuses and dropped us off at the Rafah border. By the time we went through the Rafah immigration process, it was already midnight. Looking across the border, we saw a crowd of Gazans standing there for so long, welcoming us with such love. Seeing them, the anger from the insults and abuses from the Egyptians subsided. Special arrangements had been made for our stay in Gaza City, in a hotel on the Mediterranean coast. And despite the delay, we were able to eat.
But we couldn't understand why the Egyptian government's treatment of the current Egyptian administration, a five-thousand-year-old civilization, was so shocking and disturbing to us both on the way back and on the way back. So, on my return journey, my patience ran out at Cairo Airport, and I retaliated by throwing luggage trolleys around, shouting slogans of "Death to the then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak." However, this behavior by the Egyptian government was part of an extra precaution to prevent us from sensing the internal public anger against the government. That was on January 25, 2011, three weeks after our experiences at Cairo Airport, a week before that at Sinai's Al-Arish Airport, and on January 8th at the capital Cairo's airport.
Despite the protests of millions of people at Tahrir Square and the area surrounded by army tanks, the people of Egypt, despite the cold weather, set up tents with their children and children and carried out the most innovative Satyagraha in world history, which is known as the Arab Spring. And the most surprising thing was that the inspiration for that Satyagraha was the creation of Arabic leaflets on Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha and forwarding them to each other on social sites like WhatsApp and Facebook.
And this Gandhi of Satyagraha was not spread by any Gandhian, people themselves have spread it by choosing it from mediums like Google and Wikipedia and spreading it in their own languages ​​through pamphlets and social networking sites. During 2011-13, this was six-seven years before the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. After the first experiment of Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha on the soil of South Africa in 1906, during the freedom movement of India and in the sixties by Martin Luther King Jr. against apartheid in America and also in South Africa during the apartheid of the then South African government and for independence (1980-90), Nelson Mandela himself has said that "our ideal is Mahatma Gandhi."
Similarly, during our stopover in Damascus, Khaled Mishad, the second-in-command after Yasser Arafat, came to meet with us. Speaking in Arabic for over two hours, he mentioned Gandhiji at least ten times. The interpreter had translated into English, omitting Gandhian points. Khaled Mishad first took the interpreter to task and, in his broken English, declared, "Mahatma Gandhi is the ideal for the liberation of our Palestine. And our struggle for Palestine is also being led by him. Currently, two thousand Palestinian prisoners are on a prolonged hunger strike in Israeli jails, and the Israeli government has had to yield to their demands." He cited this as a recent example.
And during our week in Gaza (January 1-7, 2011), we observed a strong emphasis on peace and civil disobedience in our conversations with various organizations, including the Gaza Parliament, universities, museums, schools, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and the general public. However, not a single building in the Gaza Strip remains intact. Each building was left with its remains from Israeli mortar and bombardment. Even school and hospital buildings were partially destroyed. Meanwhile, on the Gaza University campus, more than half of the buildings were in ruins due to the bombing. The condition of residential buildings was so dire that bedrooms were sagging, living rooms were gone, and kitchens were completely destroyed. In the three-year war, Israel has reduced almost all of Gaza to ruins and killed over 100,000 people, the majority of whom were children, women, and the elderly.
And the most surprising thing for us was that before leaving Gaza, we had invited all our comrades for lunch on January 7th. After eating, we immediately boarded buses and reached the Rafah border. Then we got a call saying, "The building where we had lunch has just been razed to the ground in a mortar attack by Israel." There is only a 25-30 foot high concrete wall between Gaza and Israel. And on that side is Israel. On this side is the Gaza Strip. It has been blown up by mortar fire. "This is the ever-changing situation in the Gaza Strip. And yet, the people of Gaza were laughing and playing amongst themselves. They have become accustomed to living above fear and dread. Perhaps they have become immune to this constant sight. Now they have become quite spiritual in the face of life and death. Otherwise, no one would be able to sleep there. What did our week-long association with the people of Gaza give us? I don't know, but we definitely brought back a little spirit of fearlessness from them. Such fearless people are likely to be rare on Earth. That is why I have a special place of respect for Gaza and all Palestinians.
Perhaps the winds of the Arab Spring spread from Tahrir Square in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, to neighboring countries including Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman, and even directly to Saudi Arabia. It is sometimes called the Jasmine Revolution, while elsewhere it is known simply as the Arab Spring. However, the facts that are later emerging about these so-called revolutionary events appear to be the result of a conspiracy between the United States and Western countries. The CIA was involved in the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi. The same is true for Saddam Hussein. And now the role of America and its so-called allies in the fight against Assad of Syria. In my statement, I have mentioned the cities of Homs, Aleppo, Latakia and Damascus, but that was in 2010. Today, in the war going on in the name of so-called ISIS, these heritage sites of the once Babylonian and Mesopotamian culture have been reduced to ruins.
And the same is true for Iran, with so-called economic sanctions causing ever-rising inflation and the growing distance between Iran and the countries involved, which have been going through a period of economic transition for many days, and these two countries are also suffering the consequences of their allying with Palestine. Lebanon and Syria have been devastated, and while continuously trying to grab land from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, within Jerusalem, they have now occupied Gaza as well, where Donald Trump wants to build his family's beach resort.
To destroy the Jenin camp in Palestine, Israel used a Kurdish bulldozer driver known as the Bear to raze the entire Jenin camp to the ground for 72 hours. The Kurdish driver said, "What could I do? There was nothing left for me to destroy. Otherwise, I was ready to run more bulldozers." This is the action of today's Israel to destroy Palestinian settlements and build Jewish colonies. Israel is a so-called civilized country, and in that too, America, which talks about clash of civilizations, is supporting Israel.
And the most surprising thing is that in our own country, we have travelled a long way against Indira Gandhiji, from the JP movement in 1974 to going to jail. But on the Palestine issue, Indira Gandhi was completely with Palestine. I have no hesitation in accepting this historical fact. After her death and mainly during the time of Bharatiya Janata Party, the role of the Indian government started changing. And today's current government is the closest to Israel in the course of history. And India's agriculture, health care and education, security and technology Pegasus are enough examples of this. On 26 February, the 60th death anniversary of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi has crossed all limits. After accepting the medal from the Israeli Parliament, he gave a speech quoting the jargon of motherland and fatherland from Savarkar's book titled 'Hindutva'. What is Israel doing with Iran for the sixth day today, taking America along with it? And Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi is sitting in silence. As an Indian citizen, I feel very sad that as early as 1930, Mahatma Gandhi, while condemning Hitler's atrocities against the Jews, had said that "Just as France belongs to the French and England to the British, Palestine belongs to the Arabs and settling Jews there is wrong. There is no justification for settling Jews in Palestine when there is space for them in dozens of countries, from European countries to others."
Dr. Suresh Khairnar, 5 March 2026, Nagpur. 

[Madan Lal Hind]

Thank you Shri Suresh Khairnar Ji.

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