Jago Bangla

India’s dubious Secularists

2012-02-03T05:42:00.001-08:00

by S. Gurumurthy

Maqbool Fida Husain and Salman Rushdie are a telling comparison and contrast to capture the true character of secular India. Both are Muslims by birth. Both were born in colonial India’s Bombay Presidency. Husain, some 32 years when Rushdie was a child, died last year. Husain was an artist. Rushdie is a writer. Both had become famous, globally — Husain through his paintings and Rushdie through his writings. Husain lived all his life in India before he exiled and became a Qatari in 2006. But Rushdie lives in the UK as a British citizen. While Rushdie excited the highly sensitive Muslims to turn against him, Husain managed to irritate the not-so-sensitive Hindus. Take Husain first.

This is how Husain annoyed the soft Hindus. He used his fertile imagination and painting skills to undress all well-dressed Hindu gods, goddesses, depict them naked and used his popularity to market them. He drew a naked Goddess Lakshmi sitting on Lord Ganesha’s head. He painted Durga in sexual union with a tiger. He portrayed a naked Goddess Saraswati holding a veena. He painted a naked Parvati with her son Ganesha. He depicted a naked Hanuman, seeing a naked Sita sitting on the thigh of naked Ravana. He painted a naked Bharatmata twice — once in the shape of India with names of the states of India on her naked body, alongside a naked sadhu in the Bay of Bengal. But his art on Muslims was a telling contrast. He drew a fully clad Muslim king alongside a naked Brahmin. He completely covered, even with purdah, the Muslim women he drew, which of course included his mother and daughter. He fully attired the Muslim poets he painted.

Some Hindus, who saw his perverted art demeaning the Hindu divinities, began protesting at his exhibitions and filing criminal cases. Seeing mounting protests and cases, Husain moved out of India. The government of India, judiciary, political parties and, of course, the media, all rushed to defend Husain’s right to freedom — his right to offend Hindus and demean their gods. There were protests against Husain. But no one issued an order to kill him. No one was injured, no one was hurt and none was killed. Yet, the protests were labelled by ‘seculars’ as ‘saffron terror’.

Now come to Rushdie, a contrast. His life is living hell since he wrote his controversial book The Satanic Verses. Though living, he has, by now, died a million times since February 4, 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fiat (fatwa) to Muslims to kill him. But, why should Khomeini order the killing of a fellow Muslim? With almost a generation gone since 1988 when Rushdie wrote the infamous book, it is time to recall some history. Rushdie’s book was about a disputed tradition in Islam. According to it, Mohammed (depicted in Rushdie’s book as Mahound) had first added three verses (Sura) in the Quran, accepting three goddesses that used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings, but later revoked the verses saying that Devil (Satan) had tempted him to utter the verses to appease the Meccans — so the title ‘Satanic Verses’ for the disputed verses. The Rushdie book set off violent reaction from Muslims.

Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh blew himself up in a central London hotel while making a bomb intended to kill Rushdie in 1989. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of Rushdie’s book was stabbed to death in July 1991. Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, was stabbed and seriously injured in the same month. And Aziz Nesin, the Turkish language translator, was the target in the events that led to massacre of 37 people in July 1993. William Nygaard, a Norway publisher, was almost killed in Oslo in October 1993. In Belgium, two Muslim leaders who had opposed Khomeini’s ‘Kill Rushdie’ fiat, were killed. Two bookstores in California, and five in England, were fire-bombed. Twelve people died during rioting in Mumbai. This list does not exhaust the violence.

Starting from then and till now, Rushdie has been hitting headlines for the wrong reasons. Now again Rushdie is in the news. Rushdie had been invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival 2012, Asia’s largest, a week back. Muslims threatened agitations and Rushdie’s presence would have meant violence. So the Indian Intelligence Bureau invented an input saying that four hired assassins were roaming around to kill Rushdie. This was proved fake, calculated to prevent Rushdie from coming to India. The four participants who had read out from The Satanic Verses at the meet ran away from India to escape arrest. William Dalrymple, the festival director, got death threats. Finally, Rushdie’s video address to the Jaipur festival was dropped as, according to organisers, it risked the lives of the participants from the Muslim protesters outside.

The contrast is self-evident. Rushdie, who just wrote about a disputed tradition in Islam, was hounded for decades and is on a death threat even now, and people who had nothing to do with either the book or Rushdie have been butchered. Even today the fear of slaughter in his name haunts the world, as the Jaipur meet shows. But, all that Husain, who, in the name of freedom hurt the Hindus — “considered as the gentlest and most civilised on the earth” according to Mahatma Gandhi — faced were normal protests. The protests by Hindus against Husain were ant-bite compared to the scale of violence against Rushdie’s book, even though the hurt to the Hindu sentiments by the perverted paintings of Husain were explicit and undeniably monumental. But what is distressingly shameful is the politics of contrast. See how the secular media, parties, leaders and state glorified Husain’s right to abuse Hindu gods and goddesses to wound Hindus and how the same secular actors repeatedly decried Rushdie’s similar right to hurt Muslims. Now something even more shameful. The ‘seculars’, including the media, had ceaselessly condemned the normal protests against shows displaying Husain’s painting and pontificated to Hindus about the need for tolerance. But they wouldn’t utter a word against the violence by Muslims nor ask them to be tolerant. The reason is obvious. They are dishonest.

Muslims rightly felt offended by Rushdie’s reckless literary work. And Hindus were justly hurt by Husain’s perverted art. Muslims, highly excitable, however reacted violently. Instead of holding both Rushdie and Husain wrong, the seculars faulted Rushdie and praised Husain. Why? Because, being insensitive to Hindus and pretending to be sensitive to Muslims is enough to make one secular. QED: Such secularism is perversion — and a dangerous one.

Foiled Bangladesh Coup: Many Targets To A Single Goal – Analysis

2012-02-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

Bhaskar Roy

Neither the investigations of nor the debates on the December, 2011 foiled coup by a group of religiously misdirected middle level army officers are over. Nor should they be. Reverting to complacency in either case can result in unmitigated disaster for the country in not too distant a future.

Although the founding father of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah had the vision of a liberal, democratic, secular and Islamic Pakistan, it never happened. Mr. Jinnah’s vision had inherent contradictions as seen from the view point of the growing Wahabi Islam promoted by an oil rich

Saudi Arabia

. Gradually, religion was used in

Pakistan

as an instrument of politics.

In East Pakistan (

Bangladesh

since 1971), Islam as practiced was more liberal than that in the western wing. It had historical roots. In several sections of life, Islam and Hinduism, in their basic philosophy had many commonalities. For example, in the Mafrati (Muslim) and Baul (Hindu) devotional songs, the worship of Satya Pir and Satya Narayan or in Lalan fakir’s soul rending songs which transcended religious barriers. But over the decades since 1947, many of these societal values receded in

Bangladesh

Jinnah wanted cordial relations with

India

. It was a very conscious decision.

India

was a much larger country. He had full knowledge of

India

, having been a leading independence leader. And he possessed no religious bigotry. But things changed rapidly.

East Pakistan and West Pakistan started with cultural and linguistic incompatibility. Punjabi arrogance and domination did not sit well with the Bengalis of East Pakistan. And when West Pakistan did away with the fiery Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s claim to Prime Ministership of Pakistan, it pioneered the Bengalis’ fight for freedom. Bangladesh won its independence in 1971 with some assistance from

India

. But it was basically a movement started, owned and delivered by the people of

Bangladesh

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh introduced a secular constitution in 1973. He created a special relationship with

India

. But little did he know that people close to him were plotting against him. They resented his pro-India tilt and his secular philosophy. These were time servers with Sk. Mujib, and they turned

Bangladesh

step by step into a country that the Sheikh did not believe in.

There have been comments in the

Bangladesh

media in connection with the recent coup attempt that this was an act by a few middle level officers driven by their faith, and that top level officers were not involved. Hence, it is not a matter of great concern.

This view may be simplistic and dangerous, glossing over a threat that is yet to be investigated fully. It was a group of young army officers, no one senior that a Lt. Colonel that assassinated Prime Minister Sk. Mujibur Rahman and his extended family in the early hours of August 15, 1975. Most senior army officers were not involved. In fact, the army Chief, Lt. Gen. Khaled Musharraf was also killed subsequently.

As the developments continued, it was evident that senior political leaders were involved. Top Awami League leader Khondokar Mustaq, became President in a hastily formed government. A series of killings continued, both judicial and extra-judicial. Zia-ur-Rehman, who as a major fought in the liberation war, swiftly moved up the ranks through these machinations, became army chief and the President of Bangladesh. He rehabilitated the Jamaat-e-Islami as a political party. The JEI was banned by Sk. Mujibur Rahman because of their collaboration with the Pakistani army in 1971, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The clock was turned back 360 degrees. Pakistan became the No.1 friend –

India

the No.1 enemy. And the religious extremists owing full allegiance to

Pakistan

, returned to the political centre stage. During the BNP-JEI rule (2001-2006), it was evident to everyone that the government went out of the way to execute an acrimonious relationship with

India

. It was the worst period in India-Bangladesh relations. Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh took a very sagacious position. This policy was – be good to

Bangladesh

and hope they will reciprocate.

India

’s positivity went to the extent of not retaliating to the abduction and brutal killing of BSF officers by the BDR personnel.

India

refused to bite the bait.

Two trends of discussions noticed among BNP and JEI leaders and officials were important in the 2001–2006 period. One was to establish a federal relationship with

Pakistan

. Under this premise, the BNP-JEI government opened up its territory for the ISI to launch terrorist operations in

India

. The ISI reared and sponsored Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and its ally the HUJI (BD), were the main instruments for this strategy.

At that time, the JEI had claimed that by 2011-12, they hoped to win majority in the parliament and establish Sharia law. To succeed, they not only spread their indoctrination work far and wide, but also began to penetrate the armed forces. JEI Amir Matiur Rahman Nizami is on record having said that 30 percent of the forces were JEI member or supporters.

The second trend was that both the JEI and the BNP concentrated on making the armed forces political. This was basically concentrated on new entrants from soldiers to officers level. Assessment of influence of political parties in the armed forces was JEI 30%, BNP 30%, Awami League 15-20%, others non-political. The only saving grace was the presence of middle to senior levels who were mainly apolitical, but maintained a low profile.

The set-back for the BNP and JEI came with the exposure of their links with and support to terrorist organizations. The country was shaken when the Jamatul Mujahidin Bangladesh (JMB) detonated synchronized explosions in August 2005 in 63 out of 64 districts in the country. From there on, the BNP-JEI’s down hill journey started. This government was close to being declared a sponsor of terrorism. The BNP was proved to be the most corrupt government ever in

Bangladesh

. There was no way that the BNP-JEI combine could win the December 2008 elections. The backlash from the people was too strong.

Returning to the recent coup attempt, the Hizbut Tehrir (HUT) propaganda literature emphasizes the following (i) Khilafat rule in Bangladesh (ii) anti-India propaganda calling for restoration of Islamic rule in the India (iii) to protect Muslims, urging army personnel to topple sheikh Hasina’s government which they perceive to be backed by India and the US, (iv) overseas connections.

India

comes out as the most prominent target. The targets are almost exactly that of the ISI in Bangladesh and

India

Most intriguing and important is the disclosure by Bangladeshi investigators that like minded terrorist organizations are co-operating with HUT to carry forward terrorist activities, and HUJI was named as one of as the partners. Has HUT, which was banned in Bangladesh only in 2009, made some readjustment in their operations doctrine in

Bangladesh

Compared to other terrorist organizations fighting for Islamic rule and cleansing western and Zionist influence and ideas in Muslim countries, HUT can be considered quite unique. Founded in 1953 in a Palestinian village in Jerusalem by Islamic scholar Taquiddin al-Nabahani, it has spread legally to many countries in the west especially the UK, US and

Germany

among others. It is also active in several Arab and Central Asian countries and came to

Bangladesh

in 2000.

HUT’s open stance avows non-violence. But at the same time it does not rule out violence in the long run as central to its goal of Caliphate (Khilafat). It sees the Hamas movement against Israel as basically misconceived, because a poorly armed movement cannot match the might of

Israel

. HUT would rather wait for a strong Caliphate to defeat

Israel

HUT’s philosophy may sound somewhat simple, but it is realistic. Their political advancement is based on creating a mass opinion among Muslims as a first step. The next or even concurrent step is to penetrate officers in the armed forces, political and social leaders, educated youth and professionals. The final step is to move to establish the Caliphate. With indoctrination of these sections of society who hold power and have influence over the people, success is inevitable. This strategy can be best described as a “creeping coup”.

What intrigues this observer is that while the HUT generally maintains a distance from Islamic terrorist tanzims who immediately attract the wrath of the powers that be, why are they associating with terrorist group like the HUJI, and others in

Bangladesh

The HUT strategy in

Bangladesh

, as reported in the local media and from briefing given to the media by the security organizations, does not reflect its established principles.

So what is it? Do the HUT’s main leaders find that

Bangladesh

is ripe to transit to a Caliphate? Or, are there powers inside and outside the country who have convinced them in this direction?

It may be remembered that the HUT leaders in Bangladesh are not Arabs of the Middle East, but Bangladeshis with their native characteristics and idiosyncrasies. The issue is India, Indian influence in Bangladesh, and those in Bangladesh who favour good relations with

India

, and secularism. It boils down to the premise laid down earlier in this article.

It is reasonable to ask how seriously is this threat being taken in

Bangladesh

? At a seminar addressed by army Chief, Lt. Gen. Mainul Islam in Dhaka on January 23 on the issue, it was regrettable that there was no representation from the Navy and the Air Force. Are they certain that these two arms of the Bangladeshi armed forces have not been infiltrated? Or, is no importance being given to the development?

The aim is to create chaos in the country in one way or another. Prime Minister Sk. Hasina and her government stand in the way primarily. Next,

India

is a sensitive issue, and can be used to provoke some people. Putting the two together can divert the people’s focus from main issues and in course, derail the war crimes trial. Importantly, after the coup attempt, internet postings have come up to foil the 1971 war crimes trials. Because, if the trials were to conclude, the top level of JEI and some from the BNP would be eliminated. Pakistan, especially the ISI, would lose their Trojan Horses in

Bangladesh

. It would be a major defeat for them after 1971.

Certainly,

Bangladesh

has suffered a series of coups and attempted coups, and still survived to pursue its original goals. The new threat is very different. It aims primarily at a genetic change among the people of

Bangladesh

. This is neither stated lightly, nor should it be taken lightly. The future of

Bangladesh

is at stake.

Courtesy: SAAG (South Asia Analysis Group)

Practice Yoga, become a better Hindu

2012-01-18T05:41:00.000-08:00

Yoga can wreck your body and make you fat -- at least according to New York Times science writer William Broad. Between Maureen Dowd's column back in October, "How Garbo Learned to Stand on Her Head," on Broad's upcoming book, "The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards," and Broad's own piece last week, "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body," Broad has taken up prime journalistic real estate to grind his axe with yoga. His conclusions about yoga, however, are premised on anecdotes about asana, not yoga, and the only thing really getting fat is the gap between the popular understanding of yoga and what yoga really is.

Yoga is a combination of both physical and spiritual exercises, the key word being "combination" with an emphasis on the spiritual. Yoga is the practice of preparing oneself to yoke, unite or experience the Divine within (i.e. the individual self with the Cosmic Self). Yoga is about attaining moksha, or liberation, from worldly suffering and the cycle of birth and rebirth. Yoga is a holistic and spiritual system of living that is essential to the understanding and practice of Hinduism. What yoga is not is asana alone.

There are eight limbs of yoga:

Yama (restraints)

Niyama (observances)

Asana (posture)

Pranayama (mastery of breath)

Pratyahara (withdrawal)

Dharana (concentration)

Dhyana (meditation)

Samadhi (higher levels of meditation)

Thousands of years of sage experience have revealed that there is a rhyme and reason to the limbs and the order in which aspiring yogis are to incorporate them into their lives. But before even stepping onto the mat, it is abundantly clear that the contortion circus many yoga magazines and classes appear to be, as well as the instances from which Broad draws his conclusions, are in direct opposition to key principles of the first two limbs of yoga -- the yama of ahimsa, meaning the practice of non-hurting, including oneself, and the niyama of brahmacharya, or the exercise of moderation and self-control (not just sexual).

Analyzing yoga as only exercise and then labeling it as hazardous to one's health is a false equation because yoga doesn't equal asana. And therein lies the crux of the problem of not only Broad's theses, but the secular and physical fixation in which the West -- and sometimes the East in mimicking the West -- has cloaked this ancient spiritual tradition. As a result, we are now bombarded with Naked Yoga, Hip Hop Yoga, Hot Yoga, Antigravity Yoga, Christian Yoga ... the list is long and just as ludicrous. The truth is that none of these are yoga simply because they incorporate some form of asana and say they are. What's the saying? "You can put lipstick on a pig..."

Almost three years ago, the Hindu American Foundation launched its Take Back Yoga Project (TBY). The initial aim was simple: to bring about acknowledgement of yoga's Hindu roots by highlighting not only the delinking of yoga from its spiritual framework by the yoga industry, but also the erroneous idea that yoga is primarily a physical practice based on asana. But as more than 20 million Americans dabble in "yoga" and the $6 billion yoga industry continues to bloat, the importance and scope of TBY has evolved from one of identity to that of filling in the public knowledge gap.

Just as equating yoga with only asana is a half-truth (more like a 1/8th-truth), so too is ignoring the spiritual, metaphysical Truths upon which yoga rests. Ever been to a studio which displays an Aum(Om) on its walls or a class which begins with the chanting of it? Aum, according to the Vedas (Hinduism's most sacred texts), is the primordial sound that resonated at the creation of our Universe and continues to resonate in each of us and all of existence. Ever close a session with hands at your heart and the utterance of "Namaste -- the Divine/Light in me bows to the Divine/Light in you"? Namaste encompasses the essential teachings of Hinduism that God is both immanent and transcendent and we all are inherently Divine. How about a class focused on sun salutations or Surya namaskar? Prostration to the sun was central to ancient Hindu worship and continues to be relevant. Chakras out of sync? Chakras are first mentioned in the Vedas and detailed throughout the Upanishads.

It is also problematic to approach the path of raja yoga, of which hatha and kriya yoga are a part, as a stand-alone practice. The full benefits of yoga cannot be experienced without also treading the sister paths of jnana yoga (path of knowledge), bhakti yoga (path of devotion to God) and karma yoga (path of selfess action) or the sister tradition of Ayurveda.

TBY's quest to educate the public requires being truthful about all of the aspects of yoga, even if it means that many people might steer clear of yoga or miss out on its universal physical, mental and spiritual benefits because it is rooted in "religion." But as HAF states in the position paper that formed the basis of TBY, "Hinduism, as a non-proselytizing religion, never compels practitioners of yoga to profess allegiance to the faith or convert. Yoga is a means of spiritual attainment for any and all seekers."

Ironically, while much of the yoga industry and mainstream media perpetuate the yoga is asana formula with an occasional nod to pranayama, the leadership of a number of the world's religions, such as the

Vatican

, warn their flock that yoga may lead one into exploring and experiencing Hindu belief and practice. I have to say, I concur. True yoga will not wreck your body or make you fat, but it may just open your heart, increase your capacity to see and be divine, and lead you towards a more pluralistic, Hindu view of life.

Minority Community in Bangladesh not safe

2011-12-13T04:29:00.000-08:00

All over the world the minority communities are considered vulnerable. They are known to be tortured, persecuted in many ways. In addition, conservative and fundamentalist members of the majority community always show negligence, even hatred towards them.

On the other hand minority communities suffer from a kind of lack of confidence. So a group of people of minority community cannot walk with the mainstream of the society or the country. Its result is very miserable. Members of the minority community steps downwards gradually in all over the world if the government and society do not take care properly. It is also happening in Bangladesh.

The ratio of the minority community member is decreasing from the administration and business and other professions gradually. Besides that, there is another phenomenon in Bangladesh. The minority of Bangladesh cannot resist any type of discrimination and they are not organized in a positive mode; that is why if they face any trouble they leave the country and most of them go to India.

From 1947 to till date, this migrating flow is an ongoing process, especially that there are people of same religion and ethnicity in other side of the border such as in Indian province of West Bengal and parts of Assam and Tripura. So, the population of minority community basically those who belong to Hindu in religion are continuously leaving the country illegally.

But if we go through the history, we can find that, there is a glorious participation of this Hindu community member in every historical movement of Bangladesh. They are the pioneer of the freedom movement at the British regime. In fact it was Surraya Sen who first flew the Indian flag for the first time in this Indian subcontinent. Later though Indian subcontinent won the freedom struggle together, it was divided into India and Pakistan with Bangladesh remaining as a part of Pakistan. But from the very inception of Pakistan the Pakistan started treating this region as a colony. In addition, they tried to change the language of the people by declaring Urdu as a state language. Dhrendranth Dutt, the leader of a congress of the then east Bengal, and the parliament member of Pakistan protested it first and demanded that, Bengali should be the state language of East-Pakistan. So, it is historically proved that, Mr. Dutt is the leader who started the language movement first.

The father of the nation of Bangladesh, Bangabandu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman also recognized that, Mr. Dutt was the first leader who demanded Bengali as the state language of East Pakistan. From then, people of this soil started language movement which formed the basis of the freedom movement of Bangladesh.

Not only that but in the freedom movement and the freedom fight of 1971, involvement of the minority community was very high. They never thought that they were Hindu in religion and they were minority. They fought as a citizen of Bengal and they uphold the Bengali nationality. Bangladesh was created to uphold Bengali nationalism and the first constitution of Bangladesh was created to avoid all kinds of discrimination, such as religion, race and sex etc. However, Bangladesh did not run a long under this constitution. A group of military killed the founder father of the country and they imposed military rule. That military ruler changed the constitution by the military regulation and they added in the constitution discrimination of religion minority.

At a stage one of the military rulers Hussein Mohamad Earsed added to the constitution that, Islam is the state religion of Bangladesh. After this action Hindu, Buddhist and Christian of Bangladesh are declared officially minority of this country. Not only they are minority but also they face many kind of discrimination from the government. Besides that, any military government cannot establish good governance in the country. They destroy administration and judiciary. When a country suffers from the lack of good governance then vulnerable community of that country face thousands of problems. It is obvious. So after the death of Sheik Mujibur Rahman the minority community of Bangladesh is started facing many problems. But they fell in a man-made big deserter in 2001. It was a caretaker government regime.

Bangladesh had introduced a caretaker government system to hold an election. That government had only duty to hold an election and to carry out day to day works. In 2001 an election was held in Bangladesh by a caretaker government. A large number of people of Bangladesh thought that caretaker government was purchased by the international fundamentalist groups. The chief of that government, Justice Latifur Rahaman and most of his adviser, those who are in the rank of a minister worked in favor of Islamic fundamentalist. Having taken the power, Mr. Latifur Rahaman addressed to the nation as the government chief. In that speech, he mentioned very tactfully that, Hindu community in Bangladesh is 2^nd class citizen. From his speech the government official and the Islamic fundamental group understood the message. In March 1971, the Pakistan authority gave same type of signal to the Pakistani government official and the pro Pakistani elements of that soil.

After the address to nation of Latifur Rahaman, a heavy persecution came down on the Hindu community. After that, the large scale minority persecution took place on the minority community, in 2001. At that time, one of the main minority community leaders of Bangladesh said to the Prothom Alo, a vernacular daily of Bangladesh that, extremist group has started looting , raping, arson and killing the minority community all over the country but the caretaker government is not taking any steps to stop it. They are totally overlooking it. The present government of Bangladesh had setup a probe committee. They have given the report of it. That report does not express the whole picture of that incident because probe committee did not have that strength as it was just one member committee. But still according to that committee report, 18,000 thousand incidents took place that time. They killed 355 people, besides many gang rapes done.

The present government of Bangladesh has thrown out the caretaker government from constitution. They introduce that election will be held under a political government. But the Islamic Fundamental front led by Bangladesh National party (BNP) is demanding the caretaker government. Some intellectuals are in favor of this. Even then the leader of the Islamic fundamental front Khaleda Zia has appealed to the United Nation Secretary general Mr. Ban Kin Moon, to give pressure to Bangladesh government to establish a caretaker government system in Bangladesh.

So now it is a big question to the politicians, intellectual and the United Nation- do they think about the protection of the minority community in Bangladesh? Is the minority community safe under any type of caretaker government? A vulnerable community like minority is only safe under a liberal democratic government.

Courtesy: http://www.timesofassam.com/headlines/minority-community-in-bangladesh-not-safe/

Goal of COMMUNAL VIOLENCE BILL 2011- destruction of Hinduism

2011-11-30T05:13:00.000-08:00

The bill titled “Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill – 2011” has been drafted under the leadership of UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi. It will soon be tabled in Parliament for approval.

The bill divides Indian society in two parts: “Group” (minority community comprised of Christians and Muslims) and “Others” (majority community, meaning Hindus). This bill assumes that “Others”, the majority community of India (Hindus) are habitual perpetrators of violence and the ”Group” (Muslims and Christians) are the victims.

On the contrary, study after study has proven that Muslims have instigated many of the communal violence incidents in India. Several of these studies have been by independent and renowned juridical authorities of unimpeachable integrity. To cite an instance, Justice Tewatia’s “indisputable” report clearly states the attacks on Sabarmati Express at Godhra station on February 27, 2002 were pre-planned by a Muslim mob in which 58 Hindu women and children were roasted alive. (http://www.jaia-bharati.org/nicole-elfi/ni-godhra-ang.htm).

This bill has been drafted by National Advisory Council (NAC). The Advisory committee is a nominated body and has no constitutional status. The stated purpose of the Bill is to address the question of communal violence in the country but the extremely insidious agenda is to communalize Indian polity, create hatred against Hindus, destroy communal harmony, demonize Hindus and convert Hindus either to Christianity or Islam.

This bill seeks to perpetuate a fraud on the majority Hindu community of India. The bill’s target is implicit and sub rosa the Hindu community of India. The bill subliminally propagates abhorrence against Hindus.

Amongst the exceptionally biased and one-sided provisions of the bill are:

· If a case is registered against a Hindu, he has to prove his innocence.

· This law is applicable only when the victim is the “Group” that is, a Muslim or a Christian.

· During the trial, the court may issue orders to attach the property of the accused Hindu.

· The victim will be granted financial compensation within 30 days.

· If a Hindu loses property, is humiliated or boycotted, this law would not apply.

· If any Hindu publishes, communicates, disseminates, broadcasts, advertises by words, either spoken or written, news about communal violence he would be prosecuted for hate propaganda.

· Under this bill, if a Muslim or a Christian complains against any Hindu leader or organization that his/her feelings have been offended, that person/organization would be hauled up.

· Hindus would be prosecuted by “Communal Harmony Authority” to be set up at the state and central levels with seven members each, of which four including chairman and deputy chairman should be from the minority communities.

· All the crimes mentioned under this law are non-bailable.

High Court Advocate, P.P. Hegde has termed the bill as “dreadful”. Mr. Hegde has compared this bill to the imposition of jaziya (tax on infidels) on Hindus and Sikhs during Islamic rule in India. BJP has described it as “dangerous”. Jaya Lalitha, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu finds this bill as “Fascist”. Mamta Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal; Mayawati, Chief Minister of U.P.; and several other Chief Ministers have vehemently criticized it. None of the Opposition Parties or Hindu leaders have been consulted in this regard.

The names of the principal members of the drafting and advisory committee are as under:

I. · Najmi Waziri,

II. · P.I.Jose,

III. · Teesta Setalvad,

IV. · Farah Naqvi,

V. · Abusaleh Shariff,

VI. · Asgar Ali Engineer,

VII. · John Dayal,

VIII. · Justice Hosbet Suresh,

IX. · Kamal Faruqui,

X. · Manzoor Alam,

XI. · Maulana Niaz Farooqui,

XII. · Ram Puniyani,

XIII. · Shabnam Hashmi,

XIV. · Sister Mary Scaria,

XV. · Syed Shahabuddin,

XVI. · Aruna Roy,

XVII. · Anu Aga,

XVIII. · Farah Naqvi,

XIX. · Harsh Mander, and

XX. · Maja Daruwala

Almost all of them are either Christians, Muslims or rabid anti-Hindu Leftists. From their past actions, most of them seem to have been born with an animus against the Hindu ethos. They are notorious for their hate mongering proclivity against Hindus. They are either explicit or closet supporters of violence and discrimination against peaceable and tolerant Hindus.

In India, the Hindu population is more than 80%. Hinduism is renowned in the world as a religion of tolerance and benevolence towards other religious faiths for thousands of years. It is a part of the central doctrines of Sanatana Dharma aka Hinduism. As a testament, we can point out that minorities are today governingIndia.

UPA Chairperson Sonia (Antonia Maino) Gandhi is a devout, professing Catholic. She is of Italian origin and she is a naturalized citizen of India. At marriage, she insisted that her husband Rajiv Gandhi convert to Christianity and that her children be raised as a Christian/Catholic. Unfortunately, Sonia Gandhi has understood little of the Hindu culture of amity, tolerance, and ecumenism. Her son Rahul Gandhi is reported to have told the American ambassador Timothy Roemer in 2009 that India is facing a greater terror threat from radical Hindu groups than from Muslim militant 5^th columnists. Both, Sonia and Rahul seem to suffer from an acute case of Hindu phobia; their mindset is unwavering in trying to suffocate and suppress Hindus legally in India. The aim of this draconian bill is to achieve that goal.

It is interesting to note that Sonia Maino Gandhi’s advisors and ministers are almost all either Christians or Muslims. A.K. Anthony, Defense Minister; Salman Khurshid, Law Minister; Gulam Nabi Azad, Health Minister; Ahmed Patel, Seniormost Political Advisor; Margaret Alva, Governor of Uttarakhand; and Anil Kumar Brown, also known as "Charlie" Browne, Chief of Air Staff are amongst the most notables. According tohttp://www.hinduwisdom.info/Glimpses_XVI7.htm, even Ambika Soni, the current Information and Broadcasting Minister of India who sports a big tilak on her forehead like Sonia and Rahul, and whose name sounds like a Hindu is also a Christian. “She is also widely crticized for arm-twisting the media, and trying to gag it”. Five chief ministers in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Kerala and Arunachal Pradesh are also devout Christians.

The noose is being tightened on Hindus. The situation for Hindus in India, in short, can be described as abysmally apocalyptic even though it is the majority religion of India. Once this bill is enacted in Parliament, a precariously perilous situation will arise for Hindus. Hindus must scrutinize and examine the threat emanating from this fraudulent bill. This bill is downright dangerous for the unity and integrity of India.

It is essential that we should immediately unleash a propaganda blitz in print and electronic media, highlighting the disastrous and deleterious impact the Communal Violence Bill will have on the body politic of India and its majority Hindu civilization.

The survival of Hindus is at stake. Our future generation will not forgive us if we just succumb under pressure and keep watching from sidelines as a spectator or act like a referee. We should wake up from the deep slumber, stop internal squabbles, learn to work in unison, and come up with a solid strategy to get rid of anti-Hindu UPA government.

Rs 318 ticket to terror?

2011-11-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

All it takes for a cross-border terrorist to travel from Bangladesh to Sealdah railway station in the heart of Kolkata is Rs 318.

According to recent state government Intelligence reports accessed by The Statesman, illegal immigrants, including certain suspected terrorists named in the report, pay a mere Rs 18 to enter Bongaon, a border village in India, through Benapole in Bangladesh. In Bongaon, the illegal immigrants pay another Rs 300 to reach Sealdah station.

Suspected terrorists from the Pakistan-based militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahiddin are using this "safe route" to enter India, paying the fee to touts who safely transport them to their destinations. From Sealdah, these individuals can easily travel anywhere else in the country.

"They disperse to various parts, including Rajasthan, Punjab and Assam," says the report. "But most of these trespassers prefer to go to Malda town first." A senior intelligence official said: "Before venturing out to the rest of the country it is easy for the suspected terrorists to find a hideout in Malda. Also, it is easy to enter rural Malda via Kolkata after carrying out terrorist activities elsewhere in the country."

Reports that terrorists use Kolkata as a transit route are nothing new. Back in 2010, Calcutta High Court, worried about the security of the general public in West Bengal, expressed concerns that the state was becoming a "safe haven for terrorists."

According to Intelligence experts, more than 74 "terror masterminds” from Bangladesh are hiding in and operate from various Indian cities. Interpol has already issued arrest warrants for most of them.

Central Intelligence agencies have received specific information, the official said, that absconding Bangladesh terrorists, including Fateh Ali, Kamrul Hassan, Kala Jahangir and Jabbar Munna, have established links with separatist and jihadist groups in Jammu and Kashmir.

Courtesy: http://thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=390625&catid=35

Muslims can practice Yoga but “OM” is blasphemous!

2011-11-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

Every day at 7.30 am in Sardar Baug, a public garden in the Walled City area of Lal Darwaja in Ahmedabad, Muslim women in burqas and men in kurta pyjamas practise yoga. As their instructor, Chandrika Kansara, begins the session with the chanting of aum, her trainees, almost all of them Muslims, follow her with the sound of all…aah…ou.

It is an improvisation of the sound that accompanies pranayam — the breathing exercise that starts and ends a yoga session — disassociating it from religious symbolism and opening it to all.

It all began in 2004 when Naresh Patel, then additional commissioner of police (Traffic), started yoga sessions for his personnel in the Children’s Park in Sardar Baug. “Around eight to 10 Muslim women would come for morning walk. One day, they asked if they could join,” Patel, who retired in 2008, said.

Soon the number went up to 40, with Muslim men also joining the yoga classes. When they decided to say all…aah..ou instead of aum as the exhaling sound in the yogic breathing exercise, Patel saw nothing wrong.

Haji Fakiramma, a Mirzapur resident who has been attending the sessions from the beginning, says religion does not come in her way. “I see no difference between the two dhwanis as both start with a. I am a diabetic and practising yoga helps me keep my sugar level and blood pressure under control,” says the 70-year-old.

“This is above religion. I produce sound of all…aah…ou because it is like invoking Allah. It gives me more strength,” says Mehrun Patel of Shahpur.

Yoga and Islam have had a complex relationship. In 2008, top Muslim clerics in Indonesia and Malaysia decreed it “un-Islamic”.

But in India, with the recent rise in Yoga gurus, it is packaged as part of a non-allopathic cure for diseases. With Swami Ramdev and other gurus holding out Yoga for Muslims and Christians as an ‘Indian’ way of addressing — and even claiming to cure — certain lifestyle ailments, Yoga has seen a huge rise in popularity.

In 2008, Swami Ramdev even addressed imams at an all-India conference organised by Jamiat Ulema e-Hind. Then, a fatwa issued by Dar-ul-Uloom clearly stated that there was no harm in adoption of Yoga by Muslims, especially if words like Aum were substituted by ‘Allah’.

Not saying aum does not hinder the breathing practice, instructor Chandrika Kansara says. “It is an exercise to inhale more oxygen. If sound of all…aah…ou does that, so be it!” says the 54-year-old.

Courtesy:

http://www.timesofummah.com/2011/11/04/ahmedabad-muslims-find-way-around-aum-for-yoga/

Communal Award

2011-11-03T04:06:00.000-07:00

An Essay Towards Balkanisation

By Dr. Santosh Bhattacharya

Political parties are now desperately trying to promise job reservation to Muslims and Other Backward Classes by amending the Constitution in the name of “protection of minorities”. Even the Prime Minister is reportedly seeking consensus on the issue of Muslim reservation. India will become a union of balkanised religious and caste groups.

The demand for Muslim reservation has arisen because in certain states the community can swing the election results. The so-called secular parties find it convenient to woo them, by promising quotas in government jobs and educational institutions. UPA-II exists on the support by such state parties.

What will the Muslim reservation lead to? After Partition, the vast majority of Hindus, not necessarily supporters of the BJP, consider the Muslims who stayed back as impostors, who should have gone to Pakistan, their homeland. Hence, they do not support any reservation of State benefits for Muslims. On the other hand, the Muslims who stayed back complain that they are ignored and oppressed by the Hindu majority, resulting in lack of development. They demand that the secular State should give them equal opportunities, often termed as "reverse discrimination". However, whatever may be the arguments for or against reservation for Muslims, the fact remains that such State programmes will reinforce the already-existing Hindu-Muslim divide in society. The Muslims will always try to remain as a closed and separate community to garner the advantages of reservation.

Lest somebody thinks that this perception of India’s Hindu-Muslim divide is an expression of over-reaction, a brief history of the country's polity over the past 62 years will prove the contrary. Consider first the Muslims. Kashmir is a tell-tale example of Muslim separatism. Whatever the secularists, the Congress leaders, and the so-called democratic leaders in Kashmir may say, there is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of Kashmir’s Muslims refuse to be citizens of secular India. They have driven out the minority Hindus from the Kashmir Valley, and want Kashmir to be a Muslim State on the principle of the 1947 Partition. They may decide to be an independent State or to join Pakistan.

All other demands raised by Muslims are intended to keep the community as a separate category, no matter what some sophisticated Muslim celebrities say. They do not have any influence over the Muslim masses. They are totally against a Common Civil Code. Branding the Hindu majority as oppressors, they demand reservation in jobs and other State benefits, proportionate to their population as equivalent shareholders of the State. They refuse to recognise any distinction between Dalits and others within the fold of Muslims.

The separatism of the Muslim masses is manifest in the field of sports. When India plays against Pakistan, Muslims in India and outside support the other country. Even Muslim celebrities speak up against perceived discrimination against the community, but not in the wake of blatant communalism.

Hindus are no different. Hindu and Muslim communities were never integrated and remained separate throughout history, even after centuries of Muslim rule, despite well-meaning efforts at integration by some kings and saints. Since India followed the Hindu religion since time immemorial, Hindus consider India as rightfully belonging to them, and not to other communities whose religions were imported from other countries. All communities in under-developed countries consider their own religion to be superior to those of others and refuse to integrate with them socially. So do the Hindus. The origin of our Hindu-Muslim divide is much more deep-rooted than it may appear.

However, Hindus are responsible for harbouring animosity. The Congress agreed to Partition for the sake of power. The overwhelming majority of Hindus never reconciled themselves to the development. In their reckoning, the Muslims connived with the British to force Partition. Hence, they hold Muslims responsible for dividing their motherland, and their age-old animosity towards Muslims only intensified. The Hindu middle class swears by secularism, but they do not treat Muslims as equals. Muslim resentment has grown in parallel over the years.

The BJP is no less responsible than the Congress for the communal situation. The party and its cohorts like to imagine that the Muslims have no rights, even the rights to which the minorities are entitled to. The BJP opposes reservation for Muslims, it refuses to accept the existence of Dalits within Muslims and Christians, and is opposed to refugee status to Muslims fleeing from Bangladesh and Pakistan. The BJP, however, is forthright in its views, as distinct from the Congress. The latter is no less communal, but it takes recourse to sophistication.

The Hindu masses, even if they don't support the BJP on every issue, do nurse their separatism, which explodes whenever India and Pakistan are opposed in sport. The Hindu sportsmen openly declare that they consider the contest with Pakistan as ‘special’. It will be difficult to find a Hindu championing a Pakistani team opposing India, even though they are unquestionably superior in talent.

The communal situation is worsening day by day. Could it lead to further balkanisation? To prevent that, various suggestions are being advanced. Kashmir can be allowed to opt out as a Muslim territory, in accord with the principle of Partition. Those who advocate this formula think that the Kashmir issue is at the root of the present communal militancy. Those who oppose such a step argue that it will amount to accepting the defeat of secularism, and will strengthen the demand for sending all Muslims out of the country, which is not feasible. A large majority of Muslims, who have stayed back, are rooted here. Thus, Kashmir has pushed India to a cul-de-sac. Possibly, India has to live with the Kashmir imbroglio, the price of the original sin of Partition.

Apart from Kashmir, India is threatened by further balkanisation in the wake of the recent moves by the Congress and the Communists to reserve jobs for Muslims by conferring the OBC status to the Dalit segment of the community. Since reservation for Muslims is unconstitutional, the political parties want to bypass the problem by bracketing as many Muslims as they can within the OBC category. This is constitutional, as decided by the Supreme Court. They argue that since the OBCs are backward, they need reservation for development, in government jobs, and educational institutions including the centres of higher learning. Muslims will get the benefit of reservation through the backdoor.

The country is thus faced with the danger of further balkanisation between Hindus and Muslims. The political parties must stop pursuing this policy of reservation. Islam does not recognise any Dalit. Experience suggests that there can be no uplift of non-Muslim backward classes through reservation. They require special measures to avail of educational opportunities as do the Muslims.

Reservation for Muslims and OBCs, in addition to such special measures, may also help in their “development” over time. But the immediate effect of such reservation policies will surely consolidate the groupings around religion and caste, leading to strident demands for constitutional reservation on the basis of the proportion of population both in the Centre and in the states. If the Constitution is thus amended, the number of Muslims in the Lok Sabha will be around 70 (12 per cent of the total Indian population), instead of their present number of around 30 elected by political parties. A similar representation may be evident in the state assemblies. Such balkanisation of the representatives in the legislatures will have an immediate effect because of their large numbers. It will be permanent in character because of group interest. The Indian State will become a Union of “balkanised” groups. That precisely is the way in which reservation will lead to balkanisation.

Courtesy: The Statesman Kolkata 28 Sep 2010

UPDATES OF KULPI INCIDENT

2011-10-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

UPDATES OF KULPI INCIDENT :

(See : Kulpi Police station ransacked by Armed Islamic gangs

http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2011/10/armed-islamic-gangs-run-riot-in-kulpi.html)

1. In the O.C.'s office room, Muslims broke Goddess Kali Mata's photo.

2. The television set among other things of the police station has been looted by the Muslim mob.

3. In the police residential quarters, the mob molested and did 'all kinds' of misbehaviour with the womenfolk including striping.

4. No incident of rape has been reported or alleged.

5. The 3 Muslim dacoits have not been killed by the Hindu mob (as reported earlier) in Gomukhberia village, but their eyes have been severely injured by pouring acid.

6. These 3 criminals have been arrested, now under treatment in Diamond Harbour hospital, not granted bail by court.

7. Several police vehicles have been torched by Muslim mob at Kachuberia.

8. Total 3 cases have been registered against the Muslim hooligans.

9. One RAF jawan's head has been fractured by stoning by the Muslims.

10. Police/RAF's behaviour was not anti Hindu.

11. Tremendous tension is going on between the police administration and Muslim leadership of TMC of the district.

12. Today in another village named 'Bhatberia' under Falta P.S. in the same subdivision Diamond Harbour, a Muslim thief was caught and killed by Hindu mob.

Psychological Warfare Against Hindus

2011-10-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

Dr. Babu Suseelan

Hindus in India and abroad are facing an intensive psychological warfare. The massive and deliberate ideological warfare is intended for creating cognitive confusion and mental misdirection as well as to psycho program Hindus. The purpose of the skillfully managed psychological warfare is to liberate gullible Hindus from their universal, pluralistic spiritual culture and uplifting Dharma. The goal is to enslave them with rigid, divisive and totalitarian ideologies which are paraded as religions. It is a deliberate attempt to enslave free spirited Hindus into servitude. The slave masters, and politicians and their cohorts exploit Hindus by offering fictitious heaven and bogus socialism while keeping them in permanent servitude. The slave masters and their ideologues stupefy and demoralize innocent Hindus and enjoy material life while forcing enslaved innocent Hindus into servitude.

Hindus are mired into blind optimism and grandiose illusion that all religions are the same and nothing can be done to destroy Sanathan Dharma. They ignore or refuse to see past history or current reality. Brainwashed Hindus find themselves increasingly unable to use language with precision to recall the basic facts of Islamic invasion, plunder, looting and mass murder. They have a built in inability to evaluate atrocities and cultural destruction committed by European Christian colonialists. Indoctrinated Hindus appear to acquiesce in the devaluation of our tradition, and they have nothing to say about coercive religious conversion or jihadi terrorism. Nor do they criticize corrupt politicians that push Hindus into servitude. A surprisingly large number of Hindus choosing to accept Marxism, and foreign ideologies paraded as panacea for India’s problems. The esoteric knowledge administered by psychological warfare experts encourages the steady exploitation of Hindus by phony secular politicians. In view of all evidence, it should not surprise us that Hindus are becoming increasingly ignorant about their own rights. Our media and education, instead of creating vibrant and strong Hindu communities, has contributed to the spread of intellectual torpor and political passivity.

A major pressing problem of our society is the structure of our educational system that advantages the Christians and Muslims. The deliberate purpose of the Indian education system is to deconstruct Hindu culture and brainwash students directly towards anti Hindu ideologies. Schools, Colleges and universities, and government controlled cultural institutions have absorbed major currents of anti-Hindu ideology. Our educational institutions have become a watery blend, a mind-emptying indoctrination centers for bogus secular revolution and cultural alienation. Our education is tailored to liberate young students from their life sustaining culture and to enslave them with pseudo secularism. Not only our education destroys Hindu minds, it incapacitates them for intellectually confronting our enemies and the destructive ideology they represent. Far from preparing students to live authentically as proud Hindus, education in India leaves them as zombies.

There is a paradigm conspiracy against Hindus and Hindu ideology. Since Hindus are mired into abstract philosophy, introspection, and mindless universalism, it is easy for our distracters to manipulate Hindus and impose their absolutism. How? They use propaganda, indoctrination methods through the media, educational institutions, and disinformation through our nongovernmental social service organizations. Once Hindu mind is controlled and domination is firmly established, the imperialistic and oppressive apparatus are used to squash our freedom, culture and religious tradition.

Why have we bargained away our future to our slave masters? Have we lost insight and shared Vedic values in a frantic search for approval from our tormentors and slave masters?

How could Hindus defend against the ideological warfare? Our media, government, educational institutions and nongovernmental organizations are controlled by the agents of our enemies. We need strong-willed discipline-firm commitment and fearless Hindus to build a new political-social order based on Hindutva. The struggle against psychological warfare therefore requires a struggle against our current bogus secular political system. We need a strong commitment for our eternal Hindu ideology and a firm commitment to fight against psychological warfare. We don’t have a strong, single and firm ideology. We have a thousand, a hundred thousand ideological groups pulling us in different directions while our culture and tradition is attacked from outside and vilified from inside. We have to face a variety of interest groups working against us with the help of our enemies. They work relentlessly to misguide and misdirect Hindus to divert attention from internal and external danger. Our inner source of strength becomes a weakness in competition with rigid, reductionist, divisive, totalitarian dogmas and their concentrated power.

We need an ideological counter attack. We need to wake up our fellow Hindus who find comfort in silence, denial, apathy and indifference. The modern masters of bogus secularism and totalitarian ideologies have created a one-dimensional communication system against our country and Hindus. Our universal point of views are quickly shredded by political parties, paid professional agents, bureaucrats, trade unions, Churches, Jihadi groups, media, Marxist intellectuals and vested interest groups. How do we roll back the lies, disinformation and propaganda? We cannot survive as a nation, as members of the oldest religion, preserve our culture, practice our Dharma and promote our universal philosophy except by opposing propaganda of totalitarian ideologies with force with our eternal truth. Unfortunately, we are not very good or effective in waging a counter psychological war. We are unskilled to fight in halting the spread of false ideas with plain facts.

Hindus around the world are waking up to deprogram Hindus who are indoctrinated with false notions. They are willing to provide an ideological defense of Hindu society and culture. We have a mission to unify and inspire our Hindu brothers and sisters and restore our psychic balance while nailing down the psyche of our enemies.

There are thousands of Hindu professional elites of doctors, social scientists, technicians, civil servants, bio-scientists, computer programmers and professors who play a leading part in the administration of the knowledge industry around the world. The Hindu professional elite must serve the class interest of Hindus. They need to use their expertise in identifying problems and develop effective strategies to counter psychological warfare against Hindus. Ordinary Hindus cannot fight against new sophisticated form of mind control that is spreading fast in our society. The struggle against psychological warfare therefore requires professional expertise and assertive techniques. We have all the knowledge to fight against psychological warfare.

Our puranas, sastras, and religious texts are replete with stories and narratives explicitly explaining psychological warfare. Pancha Tantra and Chanakya Sutra provide concrete examples and active measures designed to confront and defeat enemies. How to wage counter attacks against our ideological enemies. A reassertion of Hindutva with strong conviction and force will prevent Hindus from falling prey to the illusory fantasies of closed, totalitarian dogmas promoted as religions for salvation. Let us all work together to create Hindu communities of competence. Only then will the all embracing Hindu thought together with the spiritual knowledge come to serve the interests of Hindus and the world humanity.

Why Hindus are treated as Non-Entity in India?

2011-10-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

Dr. Babu Suseelan

Criminals, vagabonds, miscreants, cheaters, law abusers and violators are now ruling India. Criminal Politicians, corrupt bureaucrats, and law enforcement officials in India act with out fear, shame or guilt. They have no empathy for the Indian victims.

In Democratic countries law enforcement officials ensure that criminals, corrupt bureaucrats, money launderers and robbers are arrested, prosecuted and sentenced for long prison terms for the safety and security of society. For democracy to prevail such strict guidelines and enforcement are required.

Unfortunately, India who claims to be the largest democracy, citizens elect, retain, reelect and acclaim corrupt politicians who cheat, loot and plunder the wealth of the poor people. In India, the, Hindus disfranchise themselves. Since they have less concerns, the government support looters, Jihadi terrorists, conversion gang,anti nationalists, bogus secularists, and those Marxist misfits who are against Hindus.

The general public (majority Hindus) are brainwashed, mentally misdirected, and made them submissive zombies by phony secularists, alienated intellectuals, and bleeding heart liberals. The silent majority is indoctrinated through Macaulay Education and media game to tolerate and compromise with evil and compromise with criminal politicians, Jihadi terrorists, missionary mafia, money launderers, corrupt bureaucrats and drug pushers.

How could one explain this social pathology? Tamil Nadu is ruled by the corrupt anti Hindu Dravidian Parties. UP has retained plunderer Mayavathi as Chief Minister. India is the only country where Mafia Leaders, political big wigs, and business tycoons never serve long term prison sentences for their crime and corruption. MPs and MLAs get big salary and allowance for their meaningless and useless legislative participation and debates supporting alien rule and Jihadi subsidy. Instead of studying and enacting integrating and nationalist policies, they are keen on passing bills that will ensure division and destruction of the country.

There is no social check or external restraints for any individual endorsing or supporting corrupt politicians, anti nationalists, and Jihadi terrorists. Criminal and corrupt politicians will ensure that constitutional checks and restraints are not enforced. India is the only country in the world where the Supreme Court Chief Justice is appointed based on caste and political consideration. The past Supreme court Chief Justice has amassed wealth disproportionate to his know income by corruption. No case was registered against him and he was appointed as the Human Rights Commissioner.

The majority (Hindus) are taught to be passive. The propensity for political passivity with Hindus disfranchise themselves. They have faith in personal conscience and Dharma. But those who do not believe in any personal conscience or Dharma are well organised, united and bargain for more. They get more than what they deserve. We admire our democracy, but we often ignore the importance of imposing restraints on Jihadis, anti nationals, and media persons who promotes terrorism, coercive religious conversion or corruption. No constitution can produce an effective, corruption free government based on Dharma until the majority (Hindus) increase in the extent of social prerequisites on these corrupt rulers.

A good deal is now known about the nefarious political activities of our bleeding heart liberals, phony secularists who support terrorists, social disruptor's, and Naxalite criminals. We know that their anti national activities are funded and directed by our foreign enemies.

Indian politicians ensure that Hindus are ignorant of India's history. They have tinkered with our education and kept the Islamic and Christian colonial education to make sure Hindus are kept in ignorance. Most Hindus have little knowledge of the centuries of history of Islamic conquests and Christian colonialism. Brutal Islamic conquest of India resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Millions of Hindus were forcefully converted and enslaved. Nor do most Hindus understand the Sharia-based subjugation of Hindus as "Dhimmis". Hindus are treated as third class citizens in their own land even after independence from British Christian Colonialists. One of the most egregious error is that Hindus are indoctrinated to believe that Islamic invaders and Christian colonialists were tolerant, progressive and unified the nation.

The lies, bigotry, corruption, Islamic appeasement, coercive religious conversion, and policy failures must be exposed if Hindus are to ever understand not only what happened thousands of years ago but to understand Why Hindus are oppressed, maligned, and treated as third class citizens by the tyrannical Congress Party and pseudo secularism.

For the corrupt and Hindu politicians in India, any insult, terrorism and violence against Hindus is correct. This is the piece of the puzzle Hindus fail to grasp. Hindus who want to protect their sacred Temples and Sanathana Dharma are provocateurs, a breach of peace which amounts to anti democratic, anti Islam and anti democratic. Muslims marching with swords and bombs, missionaries using deceptive methods, Marxists undertaking subversive activities, corruption, public looting are legitimate. It is a fair game for Jihadis to chop off hands of a professor, destruction of Hindu Temples and burning alive Hindu passengers in train.

Now we understand why Hindus are treated as Third Class Citizens in Our Motherland? It's simple, knowledge eludes us. Why? I think the answer is that we expose facts and corruption, Islamic terrorism, Coercive religious conversion, Bureau pathology, and criminal politicians.

Let me conclude with the wisdom of Albert Einstein "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing".

A New Pakistan Policy: Containment

2011-10-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

Bruce O. Riedel, NYT

AMERICA needs a new policy for dealing with Pakistan. First, we must recognize that the two countries’ strategic interests are in conflict, not harmony, and will remain that way as long as Pakistan’s army controls Pakistan’s strategic policies. We must contain the Pakistani Army’s ambitions until real civilian rule returns and Pakistanis set a new direction for their foreign policy.

As Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee last month, Pakistan provides critical sanctuary and support to the Afghan insurgency that we are trying to suppress. Taliban leaders meet under Pakistani protection even as we try to capture or kill them.

In 2009, I led a policy review for President Obama on Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the time, Al Qaeda was operating with virtual impunity in Pakistan, and its ally Lashkar-e-Taiba had just attacked the Indian city of Mumbai and killed at least 163 people, including 6 Americans, with help from Pakistani intelligence. Under no illusions, Mr. Obama tried to improve relations with Pakistan by increasing aid and dialogue; he also expanded drone operations to fight terrorist groups that Pakistan would not fight on its own.

It was right to try engagement, but now the approach needs reshaping. We will have to persevere in Afghanistan in the face of opposition by Pakistan.

The generals who run Pakistan have not abandoned their obsession with challenging India. They tolerate terrorists at home, seek a Taliban victory in Afghanistan and are building the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal. They have sidelined and intimidated civilian leaders elected in 2008. They seem to think Pakistan is invulnerable, because they control NATO’s supply line from Karachi to Kabul and have nuclear weapons.
The generals also think time is on their side — that NATO is doomed to give up in Afghanistan, leaving them free to act as they wish there. So they have concluded that the sooner America leaves, the better it will be for Pakistan. They want Americans and Europeans to believe the war is hopeless, so they encourage the Taliban and other militant groups to speed the withdrawal with spectacular attacks, like the Sept. 13 raid on the United States Embassy in Kabul, which killed 16 Afghan police officers and civilians.

It is time to move to a policy of containment, which would mean a more hostile relationship. But it should be a focused hostility, aimed not at hurting Pakistan’s people but at holding its army and intelligence branches accountable. When we learn that an officer from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, is aiding terrorism, whether in Afghanistan or India, we should put him on wanted lists, sanction him at the United Nations and, if he is dangerous enough, track him down. Putting sanctions on organizations in Pakistan has not worked in the past, but sanctioning individuals has — as the nuclear proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan could attest.

Offering Pakistan more trade while reducing aid makes sense. When we extend traditional aid, media outlets with ties to the ISI cite the aid to weave conspiracy theories that alienate Pakistanis from us. Mr. Obama should instead announce that he is cutting tariffs on Pakistani textiles to or below the level that India and China enjoy; that would strengthen entrepreneurs and women, two groups who are outside the army’s control and who are interested in peace.

Military assistance to Pakistan should be cut deeply. Regular contacts between our officers and theirs can continue, but under no delusion that we are allies.

Osama bin Laden’s death confirmed that we can’t rely on Pakistan to take out prominent terrorists on its soil. We will still need bases in Afghanistan from which to act when we see a threat in Pakistan. But drones should be used judiciously, for very important targets.

In Afghanistan, we should not have false hopes for a political solution. We can hope that top figures among the Quetta Shura — Afghan Taliban leaders who are sheltered in Quetta, Pakistan — will be delivered to the bargaining table, but that is unlikely, since the Quetta leadership assassinated Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and a former Afghan president, last month. The ISI will veto any Taliban peace efforts it opposes, which means any it doesn’t control. Rather than hoping for ISI help, we need to continue to build an Afghan Army that can control the insurgency with long-term NATO assistance and minimal combat troops.

Strategic dialogue with India about Pakistan is essential because it would focus the Pakistani Army’s mind. India and Pakistan are trying to improve trade and transportation links severed after they became independent in 1947, and we should encourage that. We should also increase intelligence cooperation against terrorist targets in Pakistan. And we should encourage India to be more conciliatory on Kashmir, by easing border controls and releasing prisoners.

America

and Pakistan have had a tempestuous relationship for decades. For far too long we have banked on the Pakistani Army to protect our interests. Now we need to contain that army’s aggressive instincts, while helping those who want a progressive Pakistan and keeping up the fight against terrorism.

Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan,

America

and the Future of the Global Jihad.”

Durga Puja and the NRIs from Bengal

2011-10-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

Dr. M Kaushik

Islamic extremism is something that America has confronted with only in its recent history. However, there are nations which have been dealing with and many times succumbed to radical Islam for several centuries. These war torn regions in Darfur in Somalia to Bali in Indonesia have been facing the onslaught of jihadi extremism on a daily basis. One such land is Bengal, a northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. A primarily Muslim land, Bengal has a minority Hindu population most of whom live in the Indian state of West Bengal. The Islamic nation of Bangladesh, the home of most Bengalis in the world, is located to the east of West Bengal.

In Bengal today the Islamists are violently displacing the Hindu population whose homes and possessions they either destroy or occupy. They are attacking the young, the elderly, and especially the girls and women, whom they kidnap, forcibly convert, or traffic into brothels. The locals are terrified of them. The police rarely come to their aid, nor do the politically correct media or government. Both are terrified by the criminals and terrorists who are riding these immigrant waves.

A growing number of young Bengalis settled in US, however, are forming a strong awareness movement aimed at combating this Jihadi menace, using awareness and networking. From organizing seminars to fund raising events, these activists are trying to exert its influence on people around the world, to consolidate the people of Bengali origin, against these Jihadists. Under the banner of FACTUSA, a US registered NGO, these Bengalis have task force teams that proactively follow up on any incident of Islamic atrocity in the villages of Bengal. In several cases of kidnapping of Hindu women, these activists have a 24 hour emergency cell to monitor the situation, informing the media and making several phone calls to the local police station to make sure that something is being done.

Take the case of Mouli Sinha, an 8 year old girl who was kidnapped near the Indian border in West Bengal by Muslim youths. As is typical in such cases, Mouli’s parents were poor farmers whereas the kidnappers were goons employed by a local Muslim politician which made sure that nothing was being done to help Mouli. For several weeks both the police and the media was silent until the matter was brought to the attention of FACTUSA activists. A campaign was initiated where several influential Bengali NRIs formed a movement to free Mouli.

Like many other third world nation, the justice system is skewed in these backward regions of India in favor of the powerful and the wealthy. Hence, it is only the power and the influence of these NRIs which can salvage the situation of women like Mouli who have no one else to look up to. Finally the police was successfully coerced to take action against the perpetrators. Mouli, brutally raped and forcibly converted to Islam, was finally freed three months later.

Every year in the month of October, Bengali Hindus celebrate Durga Puja all over US. Today there are over 50 pujas being celebrated in US each with its own pandal, and deity, and ancient Hindu rituals. However, in these congregations which adequately reflect the Bengali demographics in US, one will find only a handful of Bengalis who are aware of the growth of radical Islam in Bengal, and how it is percolating from Bangladesh to West Bengal.

These courageous Bengalis have taken it upon themselves to spread the awareness in the American Bengali community. From architects to programmers, and scientists to engineers, these activists have a full time day job. They all have families and some of them have never been to Bengal in their entire life. But just like the Jewish and the Armenians, they feel a strong sense of connection to their native land, and just like the former, they are passionate to save their land from the Islamic menace.

The On-Going Loot of Hindu Temples

2011-10-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

M V Kamath

It is time some one asked the Government to lay down all the facts on the table so that the public would know what is happening behind its back. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not secularism. And temples are not for looting, under any name. One thought that Mohammad of Ghazni has long been dead.

WHILE Congress leaders are hell-bent on damning the RSS – it is an old game that has long ceased to have any meaning – they seem to be unaware (or deliberately wish to ignore) that as late as on July 4, 2010 the right hand of a 53-year old Christian college professor (one TJ Joseph) was chopped off by Muslim fundamentalists, at Thodapurzha, Iduki district, in Kerala, for alleged blasphemy.

Digvijay Singh probably doesn’t want to be reminded of this. Nor, one suspects, would he be anxious to know that police found out that this heinous crime was committed as part of the implementation of the verdict of a Shariah court run by fundamentalist elements in Kerala. The police apparently discovered that 14 such parallel courts have been running in Kerala for the last twenty years and Kerala State Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has been reported as confessing that since 1993, twenty two murders have taken place under the direction of the Shariah courts in Kerala (vide, Mangalam Daily Kottayam, July 21, 2010).

Digvijay Singh can check this bit of information as could Rahul Gandhi. At the same time, they could both check out on the performance of The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Act of 1951 which allows State Governments and politicians to take over thousands of Hindu Temples and maintain complete control over them and their properties. It is claimed that they can sell the temple assets and properties and use the money in any way they choose.

A charge has been made not by any Temple authority, but by a foreign writer, Stephen Knapp in a book (Crimes Against India and the Need to Protect Ancient Vedic Tradition) published in the United States that makes shocking reading. Hundreds of temples in centuries past have been built in India by devout rulers and the donations given to them by devotees have been used for the benefit of the people.

If, presently, money collected has ever been misused (and that word needs to be defined), it is for the devotees to protest and not for any government to interfere. This letter is what has been happening currently under an intrusive law. It would seem, for instance,that under a Temple Empowerment Act, about 43,000 temples in Andhra Pradesh have come under government control and only 18 per cent of the revenue of these temples have been returned for temple purposes, the remaining 82 per cent being used for purposes unstated.

Apparently even the world famous Tirumala Tirupati Temple has not been spared. According to Knapp, the temple collects over Rs 3,100 crores every year “and the State Government has not denied the charge that as much as 85 per cent of this is transferred to the State Exchequer, much of which goes to causes that are not connected with the Hindu community”. Was it for that reason that devotees make their offering to the temples? Another charge that has been made is that the Andhra Government has also allowed the demolition of at least ten temples for the construction of a golf course. “Imagine the outcry” writes Knapp, “if ten mosques had been demolished”. It would seem that in Karanataka, Rs. 79 crores were collected from about two lakh temples and from that, temples received Rs seven crores for their maintenance, Muslim Madrassahs and Haj subsidy were given Rs 59 crore and churches about Rs 13 crore. Very generous of the government. Because of this, Knapp writes, “25 per cent of the two lakh temples or about 50,000 temples in Karnataka will be closed down for lack of resources”, and he adds: “The only way the government can continue to do this is because people have not stood up enough to stop it”. Knapp then refers to Kerala where, he says, “funds from the Guruvayur Temple are diverted to other government projects denying improvement to 45 Hindu temples”. Land belonging to the Ayyappa Temple, apparently has been grabbed and “Church encroaches are occupying huge areas of forest land, running into thousands of acres, near Sabarimala”.

A charge is made that the Communist state government of Kerala…. wants to pass an Ordinance to disband the Travancore & Cochin Autonomous Devaswom Boards (TCDBs) and take over their limited independent authority of 1,800 Hindu temples. If what the author says is true, even the Maharashtra Government wants to take over some 450,000 temples in the state which would “supply a huge amount of revenue to correct the state’s bankrupt conditions….” And to top it all, Knapp says that in Orissa, the state government intends to sell over 70,000 acres of endowment lands from the Jagannath Temple, the proceeds of which would solve a huge financial crunch brought about by its own mismanagement of temple assets. Says Knapp: “Why such occurrences are so often not known is that the Indian media, especially the English television and press, are often anti-Hindu in their approach, and thus not inclined to give much coverage, and certainly no sympathy, for anything that may affect the Hindu community. Therefore, such government actions that play against the Hindu community go on without much or any attention attracted to them”.

Knapp obviously is on record. If the facts produced by him are incorrect, it is up to the government to say so. It is quite possible that some individuals might have set up temples to deal with lucrative earnings. But that, surely, is none of the government’s business? Instead of taking over all earnings, the government surely can appoint local committees to look into temple affairs so that the amount discovered is fairly used for the public good? Says Knapp: “Nowhere in the free, democratic world are the religious institutions managed, maligned and controlled by the government, thus denying the religious freedom of the people of the country. But it is happening in India. Government officials have taken control of Hindu temples because they smell money in them, they recognise the indifference of Hindus, they are aware of the unlimited patience and tolerance of Hindus, they also know that it is not in the blood of Hindus to go to the streets to demonstrate, destroy property, threaten, loot, harm and kill…

Many Hindus are sitting and watching the demise of their culture. They need to express their views loud and clear….” Knapp obviously does not know that should they do so, they would be damned as communalists. But it is time some one asked the Government to lay down all the facts on the table so that the public would know what is happening behind its back. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not secularism. And temples are not for looting, under any name. One thought that Mohammad of Ghazni has long been dead.

Non-Muslims in Pakistan

2011-08-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

In compliance with the 18^th Amendment, President Asif Ali Zardari recently signed an amendment in the Senate (Election) Rules 1975 to reserve four seats for non-Muslims in Pakistan’s Upper House. This means that each province will send an additional member to the Senate which consists 100 members including 17 seats reserved for women and 17 seats reserved for technocrats and ulema. The Senate will have reserved seats for non-Muslims for the first time. Although the Senate represented the provinces, it was presumed earlier that they did not need to pay special attention to getting their non-Muslim minorities an airing there despite their disadvantaged position.

On the other hand, the National Assembly was sensitive to the position of the largely backward religious minorities. It had a total of 342 seats, including 60 seats reserved for women and 10 seats reserved for non-Muslims. We are at a loss to understand the thinking behind this difference in envisaging representation in the two houses of parliament but welcome the correction that the 18^th Amendment has brought about. The provincial assemblies already have non-Muslim seats in proportion to the numbers in the constituencies, in addition to those elected on the basis of still controversial joint electorates.

A lacuna has been addressed by all the political parties who voted for the 18^th Amendment. It is just as well that the ruling PPP did not have a two-thirds majority to pass the amendment; now the change denotes a political consensus otherwise in short supply in the country. This is not to say that problems faced by the non-Muslim minorities are well on the way to being resolved. The controversial and much-misused blasphemy laws, are still on the statute book and regularly used to victimise them individually or collectively. Finally it is a measure of how incapable our political parties are of providing leadership on crucial issues and will go along with the base instincts of society to retain themselves in popular focus.

Pakistan has a very small non-Muslim population. By normal accounts, it should have no ‘minority problems’ unlike Bangladesh which was declared a secular-socialist state in 1971 but was not able to handle its large Hindu minority amounting to almost 25 per cent in 1947. Because of the maltreatment meted out to the Hindus, their population is down to 11 per cent in today’s Bangladesh. Deprived of land through legislation and maltreatment, the Hindus have steadily fled into India over the years. Ironically, Muslim Bangladeshis, too, have fled to India in large numbers.

The germ of the two-nation doctrine is embedded in the mind of the Muslim majority community and it is misapplied to an already minuscule non-Muslim population in Pakistan. Its original application was related to the ‘imagined’ nations in India. The Congress claimed there was one nation in India and the Muslim League claimed there were two. After Partition, Pakistan should have moved to a single identity: whoever is a citizen of Pakistan belongs to the nation of Pakistan. But this universally applied concept was soon scuttled when the Muslim League thought of separating the non-Muslims through separate electorates.

General Zia actually separated the non-Muslims from the rest of the nation through separate electorates. Behind the change in the Eighth Amendment to the 1973 Constitution was the idea of ‘zimmi-hood’ which he and his partners in power had close to their heart although many thought it was violation of the spirit of Mithaq-e-Madina envisaging one nation. He, however, stopped short of ‘jazia’ (special protection tax) which is a historical corollary to ‘zimmi-hood’ — a kind of ‘payment from minorities’ received by some Muslim kings in India. There is helplessness in the face of the cruelties inflicted on the non-Muslims by the blasphemy law.

When late Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer publicly condemned the law, killed by his own bodyguard. After his death no one would lead his funeral prayer, and the man who finally did has run away to the UK seeking asylum from those who threaten him with death. And the Christian woman whom Governor Taseer died defending is still rotting in jail under a seemingly trumped-up charge of blasphemy. In Punjab, the Christian minority wants its support to the Pakistan Movement mentioned in the textbooks while religious fanatics torch their houses.

Hindu Activism outside the Sangh Parivar

2011-08-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

“An RSS man”, that is how the Indian media and the Western South Asia scholars label anyone known as or suspected of standing up for Hindu interests. In fact, there have always been Hindu activists outside the RSS Sangh, working as individuals or in smaller organizations. Today, the modernization of Indian society and especially the spread of the internet has facilitated the mushroom growth of new forms and networks of Hindu activism.

Most supposed experts refuse to see the existence of Hindu activism outside the Sangh and instead reduce any Hindu sign of life to “Hindutva” (thus incidentally flattering the Sangh). One reason is purely political: in the struggle against Hindu activism as a whole, it is simply more useful to extend all prevalent criticism of the Sangh, e.g. that it murdered Mahatma Gandhi or committed “genocide” in Gujarat 2002, to any and every form of Hindu resistance. It implies that if you hear a Hindu complain about, say, Christian missionary demonization of Hinduism, you must stop him for he is about to commit murder if not genocide. In the Indian media, this kind of innuendo is frequent enough.

The main reason, however, seems to be that India-watchers have settled for a conspiratorial explanation of the existence of Hindu activism. In their construction, you first have the Sangh, or its historic core, then you get Sangh propaganda, and as a result of this, you get a belief among large numbers of Hindus that they are suffering various injustices, historical and contemporary. This is the dominant paradigm in Hindutva studies: a Hindutva conspiracy has created for itself a large constituency by means of mendacious propaganda.

The existence of multiple independent sources of Hindu activism makes this Hindutva conspiracy theory harder to sustain. It becomes more likely that they had independently noticed a really existing state of affairs, which then aroused their indignation.

For example, in numerous media and academic accounts, the Ayodhya controversy is introduced with the explanation: “Hindu nationalists claim that the Babri mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple”, or something to that effect. While the Hindu nationalists do indeed assert as much, the formulation falsely insinuates that this “claim” is of the Hindu nationalists’ making. In fact, that “claim” has been made in all the historic sources that speak out on the matter: Muslim, Hindu and European. Before the controversy became politically important in the 1980s, it was accepted by all competent authorities, e.g. the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. So, the temple vandalization scenario was not a piece of propaganda deliberately floated to plant false consciousness in the minds of the Hindu masses. It had very solid historic credentials, and consequently, divergent people with no mutual organizational connection or common ideological allegiance could independently act upon it.

For another example, the “Hindutva claim” that the Indian state imposes some and tolerates other injustices against the Hindus, can simply be verified. Thus, when I asked Hindu activists of any stripe in the 1990s what motivated them, practically everyone of them would mention the constitutional exception for the non-Hindu majority state of Jammu & Kashmir (and likewise Nagaland and Mizoram) and the related expulsion of the near-total Hindu community from Kashmir in 1990. Well, has this expulsion taken place or not? From most Western studies of Hindu nationalism, you wouldn’t learn about it, and yet, the answer is that it really has. Moreover, no Indian or Kashmiri government has seriously attempted to resettle the expelled Hindus in their homeland. One need not be duped by a Hindutva conspiracy to notice this fact as well as the injustice of this fact. Consequently, non-Sangh Hindus as well as Sanghis have spoken out against this injustice. If the Sangh had not existed, Hindus would still speak out against this injustice.

When the Pope came to India in 1999, the Indian media loudly denounced as “Hindutva paranoia” the assertion that the Church was out to destroy the Indian religions by converting their adherents to Christianity. But of course it is official Church doctrine that only Christians are saved and that out of charity, all Pagans must be converted. Having gone through the Catholic school system myself, that is what I learned from the horse’s mouth. And when the Pope finally opened his mouth in Delhi, he said in so many words that the Church was in Asia in order to “reap a rich harvest of faith”, modern Church parlance for the harvesting of Pagan souls. He merely restated a generally known fact, one from which any Hindu could draw his own conclusions without anyhow being compromised with “Hindutva paranoia”.

For yet another example, the “Hindutva claim” that the absence of a Common Civil Code amounts to “pseudo-secularism”, or indeed to a simple absence of secularism in the Personal Law dimension of the Indian state, would have to be acknowledged as more than just a Hindutva claim. It is something that Hindus of all kinds including those hostile to the Sangh, and people of all denominations, can see. Indeed, were it not for the widespread assumption that anything coming from the RSS-BJP must be “Hindu fundamentalist” or “Hindu fascist”, all international observers would readily concede this point. By definition, a secular state is one that has laws applying to its citizens regardless of their religion. The usual insistence that “Hindu nationalists want to abolish secularism” and its implication that the Indian state is indeed secular, cannot stand scrutiny on this score. But admitting this much would upset the entire conceptual framework of Hindutva studies.

Anyone desiring to uphold the dominant construction of Hindu nationalism, viz. the Hindutva conspiracy paradigm, logically has an interest in denying or minimizing the existence of independent non-Sangh Hindu activism. But the facts on the ground show increasingly that concerned Hindus are emancipating themselves from this identification of their own work with Hindutva.

Some of these start from philosophies different from the nationalistic RSS narrative, others are not ideologically different but want to provide an alternative mode of action to complement or replace an RSS working-style in which they have become disappointed. For indeed, the BJP election defeats in 2004 and 2009 and the steady decline in RSS shakha attendance since 1998 highlight a longer-standing disappointment in Hindu revivalist circles with the Sangh Parivar and its version of Hindu nationalism. The media construed the BJP defeats as “proof that the Indian masses are turning away from Hindu nationalism”, when in reality, the former BJP voters have only turned their backs on the betrayers of Hindu nationalism. This disappointment continues to be nurtured by Sangh displays of incompetence, such as the failed textbook rewriting initiatives in India 2000-04 and California 2005-09; and acts of “treason” such as the NDA government’s passivity regarding the Ayodhya temple and the Kashmiri refugees, or its permission of foreign media ownership. Far from abolishing the Hajj subsidies, a financially marginal but highly symbolic instance of “Muslim appeasement”, the Vajpayee government actually increased the Hajj subsidy (hence the nickname given him by his Hindu critics, “Hajpayee”). On each of its distinctive old campaign themes, they had acted just like non-BJP governments had done before and have done since.

As former swayamsevak Shrikant Talageri argued in 2000 already, the BJP has proven that “more foreign agency, anti-nationalism and injustice are possible in India in the name of Hinduism and Hindutva than in the name of Islam and Christianity or Secularism and Leftism. And more dangerous since it is cloaked in the garb of Nationalism”. Talageri notes that this government policy was rooted in long-standing RSS mores, viz. a radical non-interest in Indian culture as such, in Indian wildlife, environment, handicrafts etc. (see the RSS’s Western uniform and marching band music), and a mindless reliance on slogans and rumours rather than on serious analysis and principled ideology. While the RSS undoubtedly started out as politically nationalist, its occasional self-description as “cultural nationalism” implies a claim on cultural awareness that proves hollow.

The RSS has never abandoned the working style introduced by its founder Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who had been formed by the Revolutionary movement and adopted its secretiveness, discouraging written communication in favour of personal communication through travelling office-bearers. A lot of physical locomotion is a status symbol in the RSS hierarchy, but motion is not action. The numerous RSS self-praise brochures boast about mass campaigns with millions marching, but these have rarely translated into the realization of their stated goals. Thus, the anti-cow-slaughter campaign of the late 1960s achieved nothing, and the Ayodhya campaign in spite of its unprecedented magnitude has not realized the construction of the projected temple even twenty years later. Though it is part of Hindutva culture to deny failure (vide the way the California Hindu parents tried to present the disappointing court verdict in the textbook case as a victory), inevitably at least some people had to draw the logical conclusion from these failures and try something new.

This disillusionment with the Sangh is triggering the emergence of new independent centres of Hindu activism. Between such non-Sangh foci in India and similar-minded NRI initiatives, there is little structural connection except for exchanges on internet forums: the loose network is their more modern alternative to the organizational rigidity typical of the Sangh.

It must be stated at this point that there has always been a wide array of Hindu activism outside of the Sangh, though often overlapping with the Sangh’s work, and at any rate not standing in the way of cooperation or friendly personal relations. In my experience, Western observers who have started believing their own shrill rhetoric of “Hindu fascism” tend to be surprised and shocked and indignant when they see apolitical Hindu dignitaries, praised in East and West for their spiritual qualities and leadership, interact on a friendly basis with the Sangh. Thus, when RSS Sarsanghchalak Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiyya) visited the Netherlands, he first of all went to see the Maharshi Mahesh Yogi in his castle in Vlodrop, to the consternation of reporters for the New Age media, who had lapped up horror stories about the RSS. Likewise, Edward Luce in his book In Spite of the Gods, notes the close cooperation between peacenik celebrity guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the RSS as if it were a dirty secret and a blot on the Guru’s name.

One reason for the Sangh’s respectability among the Hindu masses, though you might not know of it if you only read the expert studies on Hindutva, is its massive presence in social and relief work. After an earthquake, Sangh relief workers are the first to arrive in the disaster area. That doesn’s prove anything about its politics, and could be likened to the motivated social and relief work of the Christian Missions or the Hamas; but at least it ought to be noticed and reported. It helps explain why most criticisms of the Sangh among Hindus are restrained by an acknowledgment of its undeniable merits. But now it is dawning upon an increasing number of Hindu activists that all this charity is no substitute for ideological clarity. Therefore, while they may maintain contact with the Sangh, their initiatives and inspiration are clearly separate and distinct from the Sangh and its ideological line. Many Hindu activists who criticize the Sangh accept the intention of Sangh workers to serve Hindu society, and leave them to pursue this goal by their own lights. Also, sometimes they cannot bypass the relative omnipresence of the Sangh network. And finally, there is no definitive reason why Sangh workers shouldn’t be amenable to developing their understanding beyond the elementary level inculcated by the Sangh.

Some Hindu activists, however, have totally given up on the Sangh. Thus, when Muslim groups pressured the Jammu & Kashmir government into reneging on its promise to provide facilities for Hindu pilgrims to Amarnath in 2008, local Hindus in Jammu organised a non-violent protest campaign but purposely kept the Sangh at arm’s length. They feared that the RSS with its penchant for control would take the movement over, then with its equally typical craving for certificates of good conduct would abandon and dissolve the campaign in an attempt to prove its “secularism” and “reasonableness”. In the event, the Amarnath campaign, in contrast with so many Sangh campaigns, was successful: the original plan for pilgrim facilities was implemented overruling the Muslim objections.

The most pressing occasion for Hindu self-organization cocnsists in threats to their physical security. For quite a while groups have been sprouting here and there that promised to fill the void allegedly created by the Sangh’s insufficient militancy. During the Khalistani terror campaign, Hindus in Panjab started a local “Shiv Sena”, disappointed in the way the RSS failed to react in kind when its cadres were targeted for murder by the Khalistanis.

On internet forums, you frequently hear Hindus fumble that “if Muslims can get away with terrorism, why don’t we take to the gun, and the bomb?” Thus, a Delhi-based group calling itself the Aryavrt Government and a related outfit called Abhinava Bharat (after an armed revolutionary group in the independence struggle) does advocate paying the enemy back in the same coin. On its website its request for donations is strengthened with this warning: “Else keep ready for your doom. Remember! Whoever you are, you won’t be able to save your properties, women, motherland, Vedic culture & even your infants. Choice is yours, whether you stick to dreaded usurper Democracy & get eradicated or survive with your rights upon your property, freedom of faith & life with dignity?”

Mostly this is impotent rage by middle-class Hindus who have never seen or touched a gun, but of course the possibility exists that some young lads may act upon it. It has been alleged that the Malegaon bomb attacks in 2006 were committed by such an ad hoc Hindu terrorist group.

However, these rare cases of erratic and counterproductive Hindu violence should not obscure the actual need for self-protection in areas where Hindus are indeed prey for anti-Hindu mobs and militias, such as the Bengal border, where illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are trying to push out the Hindu villagers. That is where one sane and disciplined Hindu group for self-protection has come into being: the Hindu Samhati, founded in February 2008 by Tapan Ghosh. Until November 2007, and ever since graduating in Physics and spending three months in jail as a pro-democracy activist during the Emergency, he had been an RSS whole-timer for 31 years. But not seeing the desired results from RSS work, who started out on his own and soon attarcted a following.The group’s thrid anniversary celebration was attened by 14,000 people. It can already claim many successes on its local scale, such as protecting young couples where one of the partners is a Muslim joining a Hindu family, or ensuring the safety of Hindu festivals, which had become difficult to celebrate due to increasing Muslim harassment.

The one name towering over the whole field of non-Sangh Hindu activism is that of historian and publisher Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003), Gandhian then Marxist in his young days, later anti-Communist and finally reborn Hindu. In 1957 he stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the embryonic Swatantra Party (with whose founder Minoo Masani he cooperated in anti-Communist activism) on a Jana Sangh ticket for the Khajuraho seat. He subsequently contributed some articles to the RSS mouthpiece Organiser, until the RSS leadership intervened to have him expelled from its pages for being too unkind to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The stated reason was that if Nehru were ever murdered, criticism of Nehru in their own pages would cause them to get the blame. In the 1980s Goel was re-invited to contribute, until he was again expelled, this time for being too unkind to Islam. (It is routinely assumed that the RSS preaches hatred of Islam; but I award my bottom dollar to anyone who can show me an instance from the editorials of Organiser. And I will award it again for an authentic quotation from a Sangh leader that is more anti-Muslim than the revered Dr. Ambedkar’s book Pakistan or the Partition of India.) As a book author and publisher, he also had to deal with the Sangh, e.g. when he had to straighten out the BJP’s initially very muddled White Paper on Ayodhya. So, it is not as if he boycotted the Sangh, in spite of their treatment of him.

Yet his judgement of them was merciless. In writing, he diplomatically limited himself to intimating that “in the history of an organization, there comes a point when its original goal gets overshadowed by its concerns for itself”. But when speaking, he was much blunter. In the presence of myself and of prominent witnesses, he said for example: “The RSS is the biggest collection of duffers that ever came together in world history” (1989), “The RSS is leading Hindu society into a trap from which it may not recover” (1994), “Hindu society is doomed unless this RSS-BJP movement perishes” (2003).

Goel’s main criticism of the Sangh concerns its anti-intellectual prejudice, its refusal to analyze hostile ideologies, hence its lapse into emotionalism and erratic policies. Thus, instead of reactive anti-Muslim outbursts after every act of Islamic terrorism, he posits the need for an ideological critique of the Islamic belief system, equipped with all the methods and findings of modern scholarship: “The problem is not Muslims but Islam.” The difference is that those who refuse such critique (and that is the case of the RSS) has no one but the physical Muslim population to vent its anger on whenever another act of Islamic violence occurs. This way, a more incisive deconstruction of Islamic belief translates into less violence against actual Muslims. (The converse is also true: George W. Bush and Tony Blair have spoken out in praise of Islam but killed a great many Muslims.)

Goel and his mentor Ram Swarup (1920-98) took inspiration from the British liberal tradition of Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell, even before rediscovering the Hindu debating tradition of Yajnavalkya and Shankara. For them, free debate was a matter of course. Hindutva organizations, by contrast, in the Sangh as well as some new ones like the Hindu Jagruti Samiti, react to every insulting book or film or painting with calls for a ban, perfectly echoing Islamic organizations demanding a ban on the Danish cartoons or The Satanic Verses. Calls for banning unpalatable opinions stem from an inability to meet the challenge intellectually, which was never Shankara’s problem but is very much the Sangh’s.

Some NRI-PIO organizations created in the 21st century explicitly adopt their line. One is the Hindu Human Rights group in London, founded by a streetwise performing artist, Arjun Malik along with writer Ranbir Singh. His answer to the humourless RSS and its equally humourless secularist critics is to “put the fun back into fundamentalism”. The HHR publishes an on-line paper and occasionally stages demonstrations on matters of Hindu concern, such as human rights in Bangladesh. On the challenge of the Christian missions, it has monitored and promoted scholarly studies, outgrowing the simplistic Hindutva positions current in India and the diaspora, which tend to confuse “Christian” with “white”, as if the world and the Churches hadn’t changed since decolonization. It interacts critically with the official pan-Hindu platforms and with the British multiculturalism authorities. These sometimes solicit its views, knowing that it represents a really existing and growing segment of opinion in the British Hindu community. Typically, the HHR sometimes cooperates with Muslim organizations on matters of common concern, all while staying away from the usual Hindu platitude that “all religions essentially say the same thing”. Human understanding does not require suspension of the mental power of discrimination.

The second similarly inspired initiative in the diaspora is based in Houston. Like the HHR, it also explores contacts with post-Christian spiritual tendencies in Western society and encourages Hindus to transcend the “racism” many of them display vis-à-vis Black, White and East-Asian population they encounter abroad. Quite a few Hindu individuals and local Hindu temple associations in North America also evince or acknowledge some influence from this line of thought.

Ram Swarup’s idea of a common inspiration and interest between all traditional religions, jointly targeted for conversion by the “predatory” religions Christianity and Islam, has also gained a following mainly through Hindu leaders based outside India. Swami Dayananda Saraswati (based in Coimbatore and in Saylorsburg PA) has been building bridges with the Jewish community, culminating in a joint Jerusalem Declaration with the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. It also has penetrated the Sangh in the initiative for cooperation with Native American, Yoruba, Maori and other traditional religionists, the World Council for the Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures founded by US-based pracharak Dr. Yashwant Pathak.

In India too, these ideas have been picked up in independent as well as in Sangh-related centres of Hindu awareness and activism. The influence is palpable in some publications of the Vigil Public Opinion Forum and of the Centre for Policy Studies, both in Chennai. Then again, in India the strictly nationalist viewpoint, with increasing anti-Western overtones, still seems to prevail against the universalistic critique of hostile religions and ideologies as pioneered by Ram Swarup and S.R. Goel. Thus, consider the title of an otherwise well-crafted study of NGO activities and financing by Vigil authors Radha Rajan and Krishan Kak: NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry (2006). Its main stated focus is on anti-national rather than anti-Hindu activities, in the mould of the RSS rhetoric about Babar as a “foreign” (rather than Muslim) invader and Rama as a “national” (rather than a Hindu) hero. In some cases, as in Sandhya Jain’s online medium Vijayvaani, this goes as far as supporting Muslim causes against the West, not too different from the traditional Congressite line exemplified by Nehru’s support to Nasser.

In the case of Hindutva, nationalism is proving to be the last resort of blockheads unable to construe conflicts and power equations in ideological terms. While Christianity has changed race several times in its history (from Levantine to North-African and South-European to North-European to non-white), and while most missionaries in India are now non-white and generally Indian-born, Hindutva polemicists keep on ranting against “white racist Christian missions”. This saves them the trouble of studying the scholarly critique of Biblical truth claims and the challenge of arguing the religious case for Hinduism and against Christianity with fellow Indians who happen to be Christian. One very useful experience of NRIs and PIOs in their non-Indic surroundings is that religious issues exist in their own right, by virtue of the distinctive mores inculcated and the truth claims of religions, and regardless of the ethnic origin of a religion’s followers. The modern identification of Sanatana Dharma with the geographical entity India, explicitly proposed by Hindutva ideologues, is negated by the NRI-PIOs’ experience, where Hindu traditions turn out to remain meaningful even after being severed from their geographical cradle. This makes them more receptive to the universalistic understanding of Hindu tradition as expounded by Goel’s mentor Ram Swarup and by some globe-trotting Gurus.

Most post-Sangh centres of Hindu activism avoid overdoing their quarrel with the Sangh. It just happens to be there, to be very large, and to attract the loyalty of numerous well-meaning fellow-Hindus. Also, its effectiveness in the many local centres of activity is highly dependent upon the individual qualities of the local Sangh workers. So, inter-Hindu infighting among activists is largely avoided. One prozaic reason is that criticism has never had a noticeable effect on the Sangh leadership, another is the common-sense realization that darkness is best fought not by decrying it but by lighting a lamp of your own. Extrapolating from present trends, the future is probably that alternative centres of Hindu activism will grow and prove successful in their respective fields of activity, and that the Sangh will transform itself and correct its course under the impact of their example.

No room for Bengali Hindus

2011-08-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

THEY were first called "migrants" - an innocuous term - when they left Noakhali in small groups and crossed over in the last three months of 1946. But when Gandhiji's fearless "One-man Army" failed in riot-scarred Noakhali as well as in other districts of East Bengal and Partition struck with full force, "migrant" was found to be too weak and inapposite an expression to label the sufferers. They arrived, ravaged and terror-struck, in waves and were called "refugees" or, in Bengali, udbastu.

The massive exodus began in 1947 and continued right into the 1960s. How many came? Without indulging in statistical jugglery, it may be safely assumed that before the 1970s, five million refugees had left East Bengal for West Bengal. In Punjab it was one mighty slash which saw a comparable exchange of population between East and West in the course of three years (1947-1950). But in Bengal it was a series of gashes which led to the kafilas moving, primarily, from east to west for almost 20 long years.

The comparison with Punjab appears unavoidable. While the Nehru Government left no stone unturned to provide relief and rehabilitation to the refugees of the West with almost clockwork precision, it was - to the say the least - niggardly towards the victims languishing in Tripura, Assam and, above all West Bengal, where most of them had congregated. The then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Bidhanchandra Roy, had to beg, plead and then threaten in order to secure more funds. In fact, Nehru and his ministers were tempted to believe that the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950 would prompt the uprooted Hindu refugees to return to their villages in East Bengal. Nothing of that sort happened and the Government had to concede as late as 1954 that the refugees had come to stay. Unwelcome and unwanted, persecuted and humiliated, these lakhs of "Bengals" (a derogatory term used for Bengalis living on the other side of Padma river) soon became the stuff of remarkable novels, plays and films like Ba-dwip (Delta" - a novel by Sabitri Roy), "Natun Yehudi (The New Jew" - a play by Salil Sen), and of course the unforgettable "Meghe Dhaka Tara (Star hidden in Clouds" - a film by Ritwik Ghatak).

But even these creative records could hardly conceal the naked disparity. While the Centre had spent Rs. 9.80 every month on every single refugee on an average who came from West Pakistan, it had allotted a meagre Rs. 1.20 on a single refugee who crossed over from East Pakistan till the cut-off year of 1960. One shudders to think what would have happened if someone less influential and less persistent than Dr. Roy had been at the helm - West Bengal would have surely received less. Dr. Roy tried to make the best of an atrocious situation by appealing to all, especially social service organisations like the All Bengal Women's Union, the Nari Seva Sangha and others to help in every way possible. When one reads eye-witness accounts of dedicated social workers like Ashoka Gupta who made tabular comparisons of assistance received by refugee camps in the west and the east and goes through the annual reports of the All Bengal Women's Union covering the period 1947 to 1954, one is struck by the simple query, "How did the refugees survive?"

The answer is simple - by fighting heroically against stifling odds. Indeed, this determined battle for survival turned the "victim" looking vacantly at Sealdah station into an agent and protagonist. The refugees spread out in refugee camps, then moved out of the camps to build colonies in snake-infested, marshy lands, established small businesses and acquired skills, made the optimum use of the scanty help they received, and within the course of two decades, set up 171 habitable colonies. These new settlements which are now decidedly middle class in character and an integral part of the State's landscape bear witness to the days and nights of relentless struggle. Even their names are revealing - "Bijoygarh" which means "Fortress of Victory", "Saktigarh" or "Fortress of strength", "Pratapgarh" which meaneans "Fortress of Might".

The Left Front in West Bengal, led by the undivided Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the partner of the refugees in this battle. Party workers organised the refugees in their colonies, voiced their demands and encouraged them to take part in rallies and demonstrations. In the process, these thousands turned into the Left's reliable "vote bank" and helped it capture power in 1977. Those were the days of Red activism when party cadres stood hand in hand with refugees to thwart the armed aggression of landowners. Recalling that period, Pranab Sen Sharma of Rabindrapalli Colony of Jadavpur said, "For each and every inch of land we had to fight the police and goondas. Moreover, development, in the true sense, came with the Left Front which built roads and provided water and electricity." Finally, the once-uprooted received land rights in 1986. That acquisition marked the official end of the heroic saga.

"Refugee", the word of sympathy was also used during the Bangladesh War in 1971 when eight million people - Hindus and Muslims - entered West Bengal. They just poured in - 1,700 every hour - in five months. This time, however, Indira Gandhi's Government worked together with the State Government to put up an exemplary show. Dr. S. Komar, Yugoslavia's Ambassador, wondered, "How was it possible (for India) to have taken care of such an unprecedented influx in such a short time?" But the crucial question is - how many preferred to stay back? According to an unofficial estimate, while 9.27 million refugees returned by the end of March 1972, another 1.5 million refugees continued to stay in India. Many of them were Hindus who merged with post-Partition refugees to join the swelling ranks in settlements like the Promodnagore Colony in Dum Dum.

The Bangladesh war formed the watershed because those who came, and are still coming unabated after 1972, are no longer called "refugees". Labelled "infiltrators", these late migrants are streaming in to survive. Poverty-enmeshed Bangladesh has driven them to such desperation that Muslim Bangladeshis do not even mind travelling to Shiv Sena-infested Mumbai to eke out a living. Evidently, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agents, smugglers, Islamic fundamentalists, dreaming of creating an Islamic homeland in the eastern region, and luckless Hindus form a part of this daily movement from east to west. Since 1972, most of these immigrants have settled in North and South 24 Parganas, Nadia, North and South Dinajpur, Siliguri, Murshidabad, Malda and Calcutta, and already 12 million seem to have made West Bengal their home. The annual inflow is three lakhs.

Indian Mujahideen, SIMI terror cells in full swing

2011-08-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Can Indian governance quash them anytime?

Activists owing allegiance to Indian Mujahideen (IM) and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) are operating in Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Godda, Jamtara, Pakur, Hazaribagh and Dhanbad, said director general of police G.S. Rath, confirming that sleeper cells indeed existed in the state.

Even though the National Investigation Agency (NIA) remained clueless about the whereabouts of suspected IM operative Manzer Imam, whose family is based in Ranchi’s Bariatu, Rath said several pockets in Jharkhand served as hideouts for the sleeper cells.

“Though there is no terror network, we have intelligence inputs that SIMI activists are operating out of various towns in the state,” the DGP told The Telegraph, adding that with the communication network being strengthened everyday, the job of terrorists had become easier. “But we are always alert,” he maintained.

Insisting that it was not a problem confronting Jharkhand alone, the DGP said it was an all India phenomena. “There are sleeper cells in Bihar too. They are not confined to one community or one place,” he said.

A sleeper cell is a terror cell whose members work undercover in an area. They remain dormant in a community until activated by a prearranged signal, to perform acts of espionage, sabotage or terrorism.

Claiming that the police had its own methodology to combat the threat, the DGP said: “We have the special branch and criminal investigation department to keep tabs on these subversive elements. There are people who are under our scanner.”

Ruling out any complacency on the part of the forces, Rath said though terrorists usually struck at places which ensured international headlines, vital industrial installations in the state like Bokaro Steel, Tata Steel and the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd unit at Jadugoda were under constant watch.

The NIA had arrested Ranchi resident Danish Riyaz on June 21 from Vadodara as he figured on the Intelligence Bureau’s wanted list. Riyaz, who worked in a Hyderabad-based software firm, is accused of providing shelter to the key accused in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts. Riyaz’s friend Imam is also considered an IM operative by investigating agencies.

The Telegraph had reported on June 16 how Kapali, a panchayat area in Chandil block of Seraikela-Kharsawan district — barely 10km from Jamshedpur — had quietly morphed into a logistics base for SIMI and IM.

In an interview to The Telegraph a few days ago, home secretary J.B. Tubid had said there were no terror networks in Jharkhand. “Riyaz or Imam do not conclude that terrorists have developed a network in the state,” he had said.

The DGP said the police were working in tandem with other agencies to flush out operatives from the state. “We have extended all cooperation to the NIA team, which was hunting for Imam recently,” he said.

Rath, however, refused to give the number of SIMI or IM operatives holed up in the state. “The number is immaterial as a single operative could carry out huge destruction,” Rath said.

A senior police officer, who worked as SP in various districts, revealed that there were “liberated zones” in parts of Jamshedpur, Giridih, Hazaribagh, Pakur and Jamtara, where even the police do not dare enter.

“The police do not have data about the number of activists present. We could not take action or enter to verify the credentials of people as that would have created a huge law and order problem,” the officer said.

Muslim wrath, boycott paralyze Hindu Dalits in Gujarat

2011-07-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

For 500 odd dalits in Andej village which has a population of over 5,000, buying 1 kg rice is a 30 km return journey.This is despite the fact that there are a dozen odd shops in the village laden with all the goods they need. The tragedy is that they are refused even a rickshaw ride, though they have money to afford one!

The social boycott of the dalit families here by the dominant Muslim community, has made life miserable for them.

The Muslim boycott of the backward communities started on July 1 after a scuffle between two groups in which a dalit was left with a fracture in the left hand. The injured man lodged a police complaint under the Prevention of Atrocities Act against those who had assaulted him.

This upset the majority population of the village. It was soon followed by a verbal fatwa warning the auto-drivers of the community that they would be fined Rs 2,000 if they ferried a dalit community passenger.

The grocery shops followed suit. Andej has some 700 Muslim and 100 dalit families, including Shenwa, Valmiki and Rohit communities. There are around 40 Patel families in the village too.

Since July 1, 2011, the 100 backward communities including Dalits have been boycotted by the Muslims of the village and are allegedly not allowed to purchase anything from the public market. They are also not allowed to use the local transport system which is dominated by Muslim auto-drivers from the village.

The 100 families are forced to use other means of transport which are much most costly. The village has around 15 Shenwa and 60 Rohit community families. Both these communities are considered backward even among the Dalit communities.

"We are not allowed to purchase anything from the local market," Shankar Shenwa told DNA. "They (Muslims) have announced a penalty of Rs2000 on any Muslim driver who allows us to sit in his vehicle," Shankar added. The scuffle that led to the atrocity case and the boycott took place after Shankar's brother, Manu Shenwa, was accused of stealing stones meant for some construction work in the village being carried out by one Hussain Khokhar."Khokhar came to my house, asked me about the stones, and then started beating me. Later other people joined him," Manu told DNA. He said that Khokhar, along with five other people, had assaulted him and fractured his left hand.

An atrocity case was eventually filed by Manu. This precipitated a boycott of all the backward communities of the village by the majority Muslim community. Fatu Rehmu, sarpanch of Andej Gram Panchayat, was not available for his comment but, her husband, who handles all the activities of the panchayat, told DNA that it was true that the Muslim auto-drivers were boycotting the backward communities.

"But they are doing this because they do not want any conflict between the two communities. It is best to avoid people from these communities if there is a possibility of conflict," he said. However, he denied that members of the backward community were being prevented from purchasing anything from the local market.Suresh Jadhav, a local Dalit activist, told DNA that when they tried to intervene and sort out the matter, Muslim families said that they would do so only on the condition that the atrocity case was withdrawn.

Can India call the shots in Indo-Pakistan summit ever?

2011-07-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

Hina, foreign minister of Pakistan is here in India to make friends, to strengthen friendship between the two arch-rivals so that a new and relaxed atmosphere is created. An assured security will bring in prosperity; if prosperity comes, can Peace be far behind?

Hina has her task cut out. She knows it has pitfalls. She wishes to be a success when stalwarts like Zulfiqar Bhutto had failed. Perhaps it was a deliberate failure to gain mileage to rule Pakistan after whipping up anti-India emotions. Hina has a different road to travel on. Hina Rabbani professes that she is not carrying any baggage from the past. However, we should not forget that not long ago she was a member of the PML(Q), a political party that was nurtured by General Pervez Musharraf. This gives her an advantage too. The Pakistan Army, a force in political arena of the Islamic Republic, is on board with her. No more no less.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Hina has broken Zulfiqar's record of being the youngest foreign minister of Pakistan. Friend Zulfi was just 35 when sworn- in, in the General Ayub Khan cabinet. Hina has broken that record as she is just 34 and sitting confidently in saddle as the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Times have changed and much water has flown down the Ganges in India and the Indus in Pakistan between the years of Zulfi and Hina. While it must be conceded to the Truth that the two nuclear-armed countries are not yet friendly but multi-faceted plans and projects have been launched to give a semblance of peace and friendship. Achieving Peace Perfect may appear to be chasing a Mirage and both Hina and her Indian counterpart, Krishna know it.

Hina cannot wipe out the inimical feelings between the two countries in just one trip to New Delhi. However, her dialogues with the Indian leaders may reduce the level of animosity between the Saffron and the Green.

FAUX PAS ON DAY ONE

Hina Rabbani Khar met the separatist leaders of Kashmir on the first day of setting her foot on the Indian soil. Among those whom the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi hosted to meet the new Foreign Minister were the diehard separatist Gilani and pro-Pakistan Mir Waiz. Examining the event diplomatically, an astute diplomat would not hesitate to say that Hina Rabbani Khar should have met the Indian leaders first before seeing the separatist Kashmiri leaders and thus indirectly stoking the fire of unrest, violence and hatred for India. Allow me to call a spade a spade and say "Dear Foreign Minister of Pakistan, you have not put your best foot forward on the Indian soil and it has detracted from peace efforts being made by the two neighbors.

When the two erstwhile belligerent nations do sabre rattling more often than emit signals of Peace and brotherhood, every step that the negotiating leaders take should exude sweetness of a Rose and not bitterness of bitter gourd. More so when the leaders of India and Pakistan talking Peace happen to be Foreign Ministers of their respective countries. When the Pakistan Foreign Minister met the separatist Kashmiri diehards, the world was watching with powerful binoculars despite the parleys being held behind thick curtains of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. The not so subtle comment could be: Pakistan has Peace on lips but hidden dagger in hand to stab in the back. Well, does it mean that Hina is here just to pay lip service to Peace? In other words Pakistan is pursuing the cloak and dagger policy directly and not through its notorious ISI. Be that as it may Pakistan is committed to follow its own agenda and India has its own. Nevertheless, stoking the fire of separatism and promoting Kashmiris who advocate secessionism was certainly not the best diplomacy that Pakistan practised on the Indian soil.

Hina Rabbani Khar, your credibility as a negotiator for Peace on the Continent has taken a beating. The dent thus made in the image of the Peace maker would not be watered down despite all the charm that you exude through your good looks and perfect etiquette. Being a member of the landed aristocracy of southern Punjab and having received education in Lahore and Massachusetts, your art of conversation is above reproach. However, it is the wrong advice of bureaucrats and diplomats of yesteryears in Islamabad who still believe in fomenting trouble between the two neighbours. They have to be reined in.

Should the foreign minister realise the diplomatic faux pas committed in receiving and talking to the Hurriyat diehards before meeting the Indian minister, she may make amends by suitably advising those bearded gentlemen of the Kashmir valley to contribute to Peace and not indulge in senseless violence.

The diplomatic world will wait and watch how Hina and Krishna talk Peace in 2012 and what their achievements will be. The parleys should not be reduced to just a photo-op.

WHAT DID TALKS ACHIEVE

Frankly speaking the talks in New Delhi in July 2011 were an exercise in futility. The two ministers met, they smiled diplomatically and they parted with a promise to meet again. In the diplomatic language the talks were described as good because they were held in cordial atmosphere. The two ministers agreed to press on with confidence building measures like release of unwanted prisoners from Jails, increasing trade across the border and bringing the culprits of 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai to justice soon. Hina got away with the excuse that the legal system in both the countries is rather slow. At best the talks provided a good photo opportunity. That is it.

India seems to be a loser in not having succeeded in bringing the Islamist Terror to the table of discussion in a forceful way. There is no mention of Pakistan’s ISI providing support to acts of terrorism in India. Hina Rabbani Khar described our view of Terror as Dated. In other words what India complains is not relevant to today’s talks. She scored a point for Pakistan. Again, she justified her meeting the separatist leaders of Kashmir as reaching out to people in a democratic set up and her foreign secretary defended it as not being anti-India. Total rubbish their pleas were as they acted against India on ground and professed Peace on paper. No wonder Nirupama Rao, our foreign secretary admitted that she was not happy with the progress of peace talks between the two neighbors.

India should not have allowed separatist leaders to meet the foreign minister of Pakistan on the soil of India as it would give a boost to secession of Kashmir from India.

Well, all said and done, there is no requirement to meet leaders of the government of Pakistan if they are not prepared to discuss Terror and discontinue other measures taken by their agencies to destabilise India. Fake Indian currency is being printed in Pakistan and sent to India to disrupt our economy and we do not even mention it in a joint meeting like the present one.

The lack of will and effort on the part of India to press its points and make Pakistan listen to what we say only means that one of the Indian top leaders is angling for Nobel Peace Prize and, therefore, he is projecting himself as the Messiah of Peace and harbinger of tranquility and prosperity. The facts on the ground speak otherwise. May I advise the said gentlemen to sleep in comfort as no Nobel Prize is likely to come his way.

Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati endorses Travancore royal family’s prerogative on Sree Padmanabha Temple treasures

2011-07-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

Contravening any other alternative, Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi made it clear that enormous treasures, worth Rs.100000 crores, as found in Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, were the "exclusive property" of Travancore royal family that dedicated their kingdom to the presiding deity of the temple.

"For long the erstwhile royal family was the custodian of the temple and they dedicated their kingdom to Lord Sree Padmanabhaswamy.The treasures were offerings made by erstwhile rulers to the temple, hence the recoveries belonged to the royal family", he told PTI.

"However, the treasures should be kept in the temple cellars itself", he said.

The cellars of the temple, closed for several decades, were ordered to be opened by the Supreme Court to prepare inventory while considering a private petition recently.

It is to be noted, venerated deity of Padmanabha Swami Temple is the family deity of Travancore royal family as well. Members of the erstwhile royal family had dedicated their kingdom to the deity and pledged that they will live as servants of Padmanabha. The Shrine is run by a trust floated by the Travnacore royal house.Vast collection of gold, silver, precious stones and priceless jewelry were discovered in the cellars of the temple while preparing the inventory.''

Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi of Kanchi Kamkoti Peetham pointed to the tradition of Sanatana Bharat, where the many ancient Hindu Kingdoms were operated by the King under the dictum of the Guru (Mentor-Path Finder) and as a servant of the People and People's God. The people and the King of Travnacore enriched this ancient temple as the richest Hindu Deity in this world so far.

Travancore royal family did follow the tradition to be the servant of Lord Padmanabh here. Sankaracharya of Kanchi Mutth reminded the glorious past of Hindu dynasty of King Janaka under the blessings of Saint Yagyavalkya, King Vikramaditya under the teachings of Kautilya, King Harihar and Bukku with the inspiration of Vidyaranya Swami or Chatrapati Shivaji offered everything to Devi Bhavani and Samrath Guru Ramdas Swami.

Highly revered Sankaracharya vehemently opposed the present Govt.'s attitude to denounce the Sanatana Hindu Dharma by some of its key functionaries in Congress and the tendency to grab Temple Properties of Hindus through an unprecedented pro-activeness for the last 10 years.

The Kanchi seer advocated in favour of keeping the unearthed near 100000 crore ($ 25 Billion) treasury as temple property under the sacred authority of Travancore royal family.

Without a shred of doubt, decedents of this Kingdom consider themselves as the servant of Lord Padmanabha and truly, they didn’t ever stash any thing out side the Temples or in any Swiss Bank. There is hardly any doubt that alien British snatched many priceless objects from India. One stone harmonium of this Padmanabha Temple was transported by the British to Britain illegally.

Globally acclaimed Kohinoor Diamond was also grabbed by the English Men near Agra, when it was being transported to Lord Jagannath of Puri by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, after he understood the possible aggression of the British rulers all through India.

Definitive Procedure to trounce Islamic Terrorism

2011-07-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

The terrorist blast in Mumbai on July 13, 2011, requires decisive soul-searching by the Hindus of India. Hindus cannot accept to be killed in this halal fashion, continuously bleeding every day till the nation finally collapses. Terrorism I define here as the illegal use of force to overawe the civilian population to make it do or not do an act against its will and well-being.

Islamic terrorism is India’s number one problem of national security. About this there will be no doubt after 2012. By that year, I expect a Taliban takeover in Pakistan and the Americans to flee Afghanistan. Then, Islam will confront Hinduism to “complete unfinished business”. Already the successor to Osama bin Laden as al-Qaeda leader has declared that India is the priority target for that terrorist organisation and not the USA.

Fanatic Muslims consider Hindu-dominated India “an unfinished chapter of Islamic conquests”. All other countries conquered by Islam 100% converted to Islam within two decades of the Islamic invasion. Undivided India in 1947 was 75% Hindu even after 800 years of brutal Islamic rule. That is jarring for the fanatics.

In one sense, I do not blame the Muslim fanatics for targeting Hindus. I blame Hindus who have taken their individuality permitted in Sanatan Dharma to the extreme. Millions of Hindus can assemble without state patronage for the Kumbh Mela, completely self-organised, but they all leave for home oblivious of the targeting of Hindus in Kashmir, Mau, Melvisharam and Malappuram and do not lift their little finger to help organise Hindus. If half the Hindus voted together, rising above caste and language, a genuine Hindu party would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the assemblies.

The first lesson to be learnt from the recent history of Islamic terrorism against India and for tackling terrorism in India is that the Hindu is the target and that Muslims of India are being programmed by a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus. It is to undermine the Hindu psyche and create the fear of civil war that terror attacks are organised.

Hindus must collectively respond as Hindus against the terrorist and not feel individually isolated or, worse, be complacent because he or she is not personally affected. If one Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat (committed) Hindu.

We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindu. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus. If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj (greater Hindu society) which is Hindustan. India that is Bharat that is Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors were Hindus. Others, who refuse to acknowledge this, or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration, can remain in India but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).

Any policy to combat terrorism must begin with requiring each and every Hindu becoming a virat Hindu. For this, one must have a Hindu mindset that recognises that there is vyaktigat charitra (personal character) and rashtriya charitra (national character). For example, Manmohan Singh has high personal character, but by being a rubber stamp of a semi-literate Sonia Gandhi and waffling on all national issues, he has proved that he has no rashtriya charitra.

The second lesson for combating terrorism is that we must never capitulate or concede any demand, as we did in 1989 (freeing five terrorists in exchange for Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya) and in 1999, freeing three terrorists after the hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

The third lesson is that whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate massively. For example, when the Ayodhya temple was sought to be attacked, we should have retaliated by re-building the Ram temple at the site.

According to bleeding heart liberals, terrorists are born or bred because of illiteracy, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. They argue that instead of eliminating them, the root cause of these four disabilities in society should be removed. This is rubbish. Osama bin laden was a billionaire. In the failed Times Square episode, failed terrorist Shahzad was from a highly placed family in Pakistan and had an MBA from a reputed US university.

It is also a ridiculous idea that terrorists cannot be deterred because they are irrational and willing to die. Terrorist masterminds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action.Thus, I advocate the following strategy to negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India.

Goal 1: Overawe India on Kashmir.

Strategy: Remove Article 370 and resettle ex-servicemen in the valley. Create Panun Kashmir for the Hindu Pandit community. Look for or create an opportunity to take over PoK. If Pakistan continues to back terrorists, assist the Baluchis and Sindhis to get their independence.

Goal 2: Blast temples, kill Hindu devotees.

Strategy: Remove the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites.

Goal 3: Turn India into Darul Islam.

Strategy: Implement the uniform civil code, make learning of Sanskrit and singing of Vande Mataram mandatory, and declare India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus. Rename India Hindustan as a nation of Hindus and those whose ancestors were Hindus.

Goal 4: Change India’s demography by illegal immigration, conversion, and refusal to adopt family planning.

Strategy: Enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion. Re-conversion will not be banned. Declare that caste is not based on birth but on code or discipline. Welcome non-Hindus to re-convert to the caste of their choice provided they adhere to the code of discipline. Annex land from Bangladesh in proportion to the illegal migrants from that country staying in India. At present, the northern third from Sylhet to Khulna can be annexed to re-settle illegal migrants.

Goal 5: Denigrate Hinduism through vulgar writings and preaching in mosques, madrassas, and churches to create loss of self-respect amongst Hindus and make them fit for capitulation.

Strategy: Propagate the development of a Hindu mindset.

India can solve its terrorist problem within five years by such a deterrent strategy, but for that we have to learn the four lessons outlined above, and have a Hindu mindset to take bold, risky, and hard decisions to defend the nation. If the Jews could be transformed from lambs walking meekly to the gas chambers to fiery lions in just 10 years, it should not be difficult for Hindus in much better circumstances (after all we are 83% of India), to do so in five years.

Guru Gobind Singh showed us how just five fearless persons under spiritual guidance can transform a society. Even if half the Hindu voters are persuaded to collectively vote as Hindus, and for a party sincerely committed to a Hindu agenda, then we can forge an instrument for change. And that is the bottom line in the strategy to deter terrorism in a democratic Hindustan at this moment of truth.

Hindus Decide: Save your Brethren or let them Die

2011-07-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Last month, I was in conversation about a book I wrote on Bangladesh’s ethnic cleansing of its Hindu population. The person with whom I spoke was very taken by the material; so taken that she wanted to help make sure people got word of this atrocity. She knows the American publishing and book buying world very well and said that all the elements were there for a successful project; all the elements except one. And remember this person is a friend, an ally, one of the “good guys,” someone who does care and wants to help. She said, ‘I just don’t see people getting real excited over a bunch of Hindus being killed.’ Think about that for a moment. It should make everyone in this room furious; and if it does not make you furious, you better ask yourself why because three things hit me—a non-Hindu—immediately.

My first thought was, ‘Shame on us if that’s who we are.’ Is this another example in which the so-called civilized world would prefer to wring its hands over body bags piled too high to ignore—as it did in Nazi Europe, Rwanda, and countless other places—rather than prevent the atrocity? The second was that those of us who do understand what is happening have a moral obligation to take effective action to stop it, whatever that means; or we are as complicit in the crime as anyone else. And the third was this: Hindus better not count on anyone else helping them, no matter how much they prattle on about things like “justice” or “human rights.” Those supposed arbiters of right and wrong might apply these concepts to Egyptian and Libyan protesters or warp them beyond recognition so they can prop up those Arab terrorists they call “Palestinian”; but they will not apply them to Hindus in Bangladesh—or for that matter, Hindus in Pakistan, Hindus in Kashmir, Hindus in Malaysia, or Hindus anywhere else, including if it comes to it, Hindus in Andhra Pradesh.

So when considering this weekend’s events, I asked myself if it was going to be another one of those gatherings where the attendees shake their fists and complain about how unfair things are—or one where we actually accomplish something. Despite the preponderance of the former over the latter, we are on the cusp of a new dawn where real accomplishment is possible. It will start here in the United States, and it must begin with us; or else we will have frittered away a golden opportunity to change the trajectory of history and in the process sit by while a lot of innocent people die.

We have a great tradition here in which groups of Americans can petition our government and take concerted action, and I want to give you an example of that from my own Jewish community. Those of you who were around in the 1980s will remember that back then, you could not pass a synagogue that did not have a large banner proclaiming, “Save Soviet Jewry.” Our people were being persecuted horribly in the Soviet Union as part of the Communists’ attempt to eradicate their Jewish religion and Jewish identity. A few, like Natan Sharansky who later became an Israeli Cabinet Minister, garnered some attention, but most suffered without fanfare. The American Jewish community saw their persecuted brothers and sisters and recognized the obligation to save them. Moreover, it acted on that obligation.

We lobbied Washington and our local officials; prevailed upon other religious bodies to recognize the atrocity and let Washington know their position. Average Jews who you might see at the office or in the supermarket—people just like you—went to Russia at their own expense to smuggle religious books and other Jewish artifacts at considerable peril to themselves. After all, this was the mighty Soviet Union.

Jewish children reaching their Bar and Bat Mitzvah rite of passage were “twinned” with children in the Soviet Union who did not have the freedom to celebrate their own; so we did it for them. Younger children in religious schools corresponded with pen pals their own age from the USSR and gave them hope. And before it was over, we helped get 1.2 million Jews out of that communist hell. It strengthened our own identity, and every Jewish child who was part of that effort never forgot it or their own sense of Jewishness; and it helped us realize that we could in fact stand strong for our people, that the only thing stopping us was ourselves.

The Bangladeshi Hindus can be your Soviet Jewry. It is an issue of human decency; an issue that transcends partisan politics and speaks to those values that are basic for all Americans. It can galvanize American Hindus to take pride in their Hinduism and help support a resurgent Hindu youth. Will we act?

Two years ago, I stood before you to talk about the Bangladeshi Hindus. Let me list for you everything that Sheikh Hasina and the Bangladeshi government has done to protect their Hindu citizens since then:

[about 10 seconds of silence]

That’s right, nothing, zip, bupkis. That same “list,” moreover, contains everything the United Nations has done for them, everything Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have done; every word of protest uttered by the governments of India and the United States. It seems my friend is right: Nobody gets excited over the killing of Hindus.

The facts warrant a different reaction. In fact, the numbers are so compelling they cry out for an explanation. At the time of India’s partition in 1947, Hindus made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan’s population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, they were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and reliable estimates put the Hindu population at less than eight percent today. Professor Sachi Dastidar of the State University of New York estimates that over 49 million Hindus are missing from Bangladesh. Still having trouble wondering where this is going? Take a look at Pakistan where Hindus are down to one percent or Kashmir where they are almost gone. Take a look at the future of Bangladesh’s Hindus if we do not act.

This is not opinion or “Islamaphobia.” These are facts! Want another? For years, we have received report after report documenting anti-Hindu incidents there; incidents including murder, gang rape, assault, forced conversion to Islam, child abduction, land grabs, and religious desecration. And while Bangladeshi officials might object that the perpetrators were non-state actors, government culpability rests, at the very least, on the fact that it pursues very few of these cases and punishes even fewer perpetrators. And that’s our key. Unfortunately, minorities are attacked pretty much everywhere. The critical question is when it happens, does the majority population have a problem with it; and the best measure of that is what the government does in reaction. When Hindu students were attacked in Australia, the government went after the perpetrators with a vengeance. In the United States, crimes against any minority are considered just that, crimes; and the state will punish you to the fullest extent of the law; but not in Bangladesh.

Here’s another irrefutable fact. While this information pours out of Bangladesh with numbing ferocity, it does not do so through the mainstream media—here, India, or anywhere else. Thus, people are often shocked and sometimes dubious when I present the facts to them. Many wonder out loud how something so horrible could be kept hidden; how our own CIA or India’s RAW could not know about it—were it actually true. They often ask me why, if this is so dire have we read nothing about it in our major papers or watched it on CNN or Fox. ‘Why,’ they ask, ‘hasn’t Amnesty International taken it up,’ or most damning, ‘Why have Hindus themselves said nothing?’

This means that anything we present has to be verified with certainty; if we present information that turns out to be untrue or exaggerated it will sink our efforts. We can expect the Bangladeshi government and even the US State Department to challenge it; and expect the recognized human rights industry to dismiss it. Both parties have an interest to do so, for if we are correct, Amnesty International and the others will be asked why they missed or ignored the situation. The Obama Administration and the rest of the international talking heads have maintained as an article of faith that the December 2008 election of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League ushered in a new era for Bangladesh. They will point out that it ended almost two years of military-backed rule; and the government before that, , included the Islamist Jamaat in its coalition. Moreover, they will say, the left-center Awami League has always claimed to be Bangladesh’s “pro-minority” party, and these outside groups with no real knowledge of Bangladesh swallow that line. So, it is in their interest to maintain that fiction.

And they are not the only ones. In January 2009, I was asked to address a coalition of Bangladeshi Hindu organizations about how they might respond to the Awami League victory. My advice was to press their advantage since Hindus helped Awami to victory. The last thing they should do, I said, was to “fall asleep. That would be a critical mistake.” Some agreed, but the prevailing sentiment among the organization leaders was fear of angering the new government. “Give them time,” they said, to which I replied, “This attitude of passivity and ‘let's give them a chance’; how well has that worked for the minorities in the past? Not well. We are sitting by while people are being killed and tortured! So, yes, we must give them some time—but not much or we will see that their words are nothing more than words.” And that is exactly all they turned out to be.

During the first year of the Awami League’s rule, there were major anti-Hindu attacks at the rate of at least one per week. I say “at least” because you will recall that our allegations will be held to a higher standard than most. Out of the flood of reported incidents, those were the ones I personally verified—either through my own missions to South Asia or through Indian and Bangladeshi Hindus who investigated and verified the allegations for me. All of these attacks were serious, involved Hindu victims and Muslim victimizers; and in every case, the government refused to take action against known perpetrators. Police and government officials actually took part in some and led a cover up of others. And in none of them, did the police help recover Hindu women or children who were abducted, likely raped, and forcibly converted to Islam. And I re-confirmed the facts as recently as this spring, so the government’s support for anti-Hindu action lasts long after the crimes themselves. Here are three examples.

• For three days in March and April, 2009, an anti-Hindu pogrom raged in the Sutrapur section of the Bangladeshi capital. It occurred right behind a police station and involved arson, beatings, and the deliberate destruction of a Hindu Temple. Many were hospitalized, and dozens still remain homeless. Not only are the perpetrators free of prosecution, but they actually were awarded some of the land they invaded. Officials including the Dhaka Chief of Police and an Awami League Member of Parliament warned local human rights groups to stop inquiring about it.

• On June 13, 2009, 20-year-old Hindu college student Koli Goswami was abducted from her bed in the middle of the night. Muslim men broke into the family home and brandished firearms when confronted by family members. Police refuse to pursue a case, calling it a “love affair,” despite admitted evidence of violence and a struggle. They claim that Koli has “voluntarily” converted to Islam and threaten family members and human rights groups while keeping them from interviewing the young woman. Koli Goswami has not been seen since the night she was taken.

• At 10am on February 26, 2009, two men abducted 14 year old Tanusree Roy and raped her multiple times. Although the distraught father has filed official reports of the incident, authorities have refused to help recover his child or prosecute the known perpetrators. The latter continue to threaten Tanusree’s father if he does not drop the matter. Human rights activists report that the girl has been forcibly converted to Islam and kept incommunicado for the past two years.

There was no let-up during the Awami League’s second year in office. In one 25 day period between March 12 and April 6, 2010, for instance, there were seven major, confirmed attacks.

All we get from the Bangladeshis are words. Like actors reading from a script, they repeat the same hollow denials—the same party line I got when I raised the issue with a Bangladeshi Cabinet Minister in Dhaka earlier this year. He might have parroted the usual denials, but his nervous ticks, obvious discomfort, and averted glance told quite a different story. (I also recall how several years ago, a Bangladeshi general tried to convince me that their Vested Property Act was actually instituted as a device to protect Hindus, although when I pressed him he could not explain how that could work.) And how many times are we going to hear their empty promises to repeal “anti-minority laws.” Sheikh Hasina made that very promise to visiting NATO commander Gerard Valin on May 1, 2009, thereby admittingthat her country in fact has anti-minority laws on the books. In the long standing tradition of Bangladeshi leaders, she went no further than those words and the discriminatory laws remain. Yet, no nation or international body seems to have a problem with that.

What message does that send to anyone who covets a Hindu family’s small farm—or their daughter? And what message are we sending them—and our own children—if we look the other way while it happens?

There is something else. Some of you might be thinking, ‘Perhaps that is all true, but my family is from Andhra Pradesh where we have our own problems. This is about Bengalis.’ And that plays right into the hands of those who wish to destroy us. Were the bombs that went off on 26/11 harmful only to some? Did they discriminate between Telugu and Bengali? Did the killers ask people if they were from Kashmir or Gujurat before firing? And if they destroy the Hindus in Bangladesh and Kashmir, will they then say, ‘it is enough’ and urge their fellow jihadis to leave Andhra Pradesh in peace? iNo, no, no, and no again. If we fail to unite, we will be easy pickings for our enemies—who have put aside their own ancient divisions for the sake of jihad.

So, instead of treating you to a litany of more atrocities, I want to identify one simple thing we all can do from our secure positions in the United States. Everyone can decide today whether to do something simple and save lives or watch another rerun of House or Law and Order while the murders and rapes continue.

To get things started, we have to make people aware of the problem. Despite the flood of emails and consistent documentation successive in Hindu American Foundation reports, few people here are aware of this atrocity or how it threatens them, and we have to fix that. Human rights atrocities generally proceed when governments believe they can commit them without anyone noticing—or caring—which is what we have here. For Bangladesh, that means that it incurs no cost if it allows its Hindus to be eradicated; that is, their leaders have pointed out the domestic political concerns if they take action, but they have none if they let things remain as they are. We have to make it cost more for them not to change.

The US is Bangladesh’s third largest trading partner, and we have given Bangladesh over $5.5 billion in aid. For years, Bangladeshi governments—regardless of party—have wanted a free trade agreement with the United States or at least a reduction in tariffs on their goods. You might call it their holy grail. That is a tremendous amount of leverage we can exercise if we have the will to do so, and it will take a concerted and relentless effort to get our elected officials to use it.

I am currently working with a Member of Congress on a letter that addresses this issue. It will ask the US to re-consider its policies and use all of that leverage to save the 15 million Bangladeshi Hindus. Because at this point, the actual letter is unfinished and needs final approval, I cannot divulge the Member’s name or the specific contents; but the initiative is real and his support genuine. Once it is complete—hopefully during the summer—we will look for other Members of Congress to sign it before sending it to Secretary of State Clinton. Do we expect that this letter will lead the US government to all of a sudden revamp its entire foreign policy? No, but remember the intent: to shine light on an atrocity that is allowed to proceed because it does so in the dark.

Hopefully, the administration will take a serious look at the issue; but whether it does so or not, the letter will provide the basis for further action: Congressional hearings, which are already in the works; confronting the Bangladeshis; and from there action on trade and tariffs. It will take this issue to a new level, and everyone in this room can and should have a role in making it happen because success is premised on getting a range of Congressmen and Congresswomen to sign it. When you came in, you were given a piece of paper to fill out with contact information and questions to determine who your Congressional Representative is. Everyone here who votes can help get that elected official’s signature on the letter and support for the actions we take subsequently to stop this carnage. Please pass in the papers. Now, can each of you do that one small thing? Is there anyone here who can’t?

That’s good, because Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) once said that any Member of Congress who gets ten phone calls on an issue will sit up and take notice, call staff meetings about it, and probably support their constituents’ position; but whether it is ten, two, or a hundred, the principle is the same. Using these papers, I will identify Members of Congress whom you can call and we can go to for support. When we are ready to circulate the letter, I will contact each of you and ask you to make that call. Moreover, each of you knows other citizens who can make the same call. Urge them to do it—even if they live in the same house as you; so long as they are eligible to vote in the next election. My associate, Prasad Yalamanchi will help with that, but today he and I will be getting information from people and groups that can get things done.

There is something else we can do, and it refers to something that is happening now. Last month, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court ruled against some constitutional amendments instituted during two military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, and it asked the government to submit replacements for ratification in the Awami-dominated parliament. So what did this oh-so-progressive and freedom-loving Awami League do? It submitted new laws that outlawed military governments and religiously-based parties; but it left intact one of the most significant amendments that came under the Court’s scrutiny: the Eighth, which made Islam the official state religion and essential to the character of all that flows from Bangladeshi law. It is an amendment that Hindus and others say makes them second-class citizens in their own country. Every law they have to follow begins with “in the name of Allah the beneficent.” Madrassas(Islamic schools) are given a favored position by their government and often receive public support, even those preaching radical Islam. This is not the action of a government that really wants to protect its minority citizens, but rather one closer to Iran. It is certainly not the action of a “moderate Muslim nation,” which is how Bangladesh tries to portray itself.

Has there been even one phone call from President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton to Bangladesh, challenging the government on this or other anti-minority actions? Has anyone reminded Sheikh Hasina of her still unfulfilled promises to end official minority discrimination in Bangladesh—and how she has an opportunity with this constitutional change to prove that she and her party are not shams? The answer to all those questions is the same: “No.” I ask my esteemed colleagues at the Hindu American Foundation to work with me now to prevail upon Congress and the Administration to address this matter with Bangladesh while there is still time to fix things. It will also tell us if these people deserve our votes next year.

Let me put it to you this way. If there was a similar situation involving Muslims somewhere in the world, what do you think the American Muslim community would do? How vocal would organizations like Council on American-Islamic Relations be? What about Jewish organizations or Evangelical Christians for their co-religionists? Do Hindus have fewer rights than they do? Does the American Constitution say ‘everyone except Hindus’? No; the only thing stopping us is ourselves. For this effort to succeed, we do not need the entire 2.5 million Hindus in the United States to act. But we do need a core group of individuals who care more about the lives of their oppressed brethren than being thought impolite. And it starts here; it starts today. From this effort, we can make the issue of anti-Hindu oppression a US concern. Each of you can do this one thing, and possibly save the lives of millions of people.

Once we find success in this quarter, we can expand in any direction we wish; tackle any anti-Hindu human rights issues we want—those in Pakistan, Kashmir, Malaysia, Fiji, or anywhere else. In the lead up to the November 2010 vote, some of us in the Chicago area helped organize community members in support of certain candidates who will support us. As a result, some people are beginning to see the Hindu community as a constituency that cannot be ignored; whose concerns cannot be dismissed. And it will stay that way only so long as we continue to exert whatever advantage we have and deny our support to those lawmakers who do not care about those issues important to us, who do not care if Hindus are being killed and raped in Bangladesh. We have a critical election coming up in 16 months, and the papers you filled out today will be added to others to help elect lawmakers who will stand with us and not let our brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or anywhere else be persecuted with impunity.

Whatever we do, however, it all ultimately depends on you. Some of us who are dedicated to saving the Bangladeshi Hindus can lead, can organize, can take on a certain amount of the burden; but our efforts will come to little if people see that the rest of the community does not care enough to stand up and say so. The Congressional letter will be our first test.

And just in case you are wondering whether why you should take this tiny step, please allow me this one last piece of motivation. In 2009, I interviewed a Bangladeshi Hindu family that crossed into India only 22 days earlier. They told me about an uncle being killed, the father beaten, and their tiny farm invaded by a large number of Muslims. I also looked into the eyes of their 14-year-old daughter as she talked about being gang raped. Who did it? Not al Qaeda orJammat; but simply Muslims who lived in the area and knew they could have their way with the family, seize their land, and get away with it.

Joseph Stalin is said to have remarked, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.” That 14-year-old rape victim—that child—I met was no statistic, and God help us if we make her one.

Is Pakistani military basis of Islamic terrorism?

2011-07-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

Terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection, the militant leader said.

A former top militant commander, said he was supported by the Pakistani military for 15 years as a fighter, leader and trainer of insurgents until he quit a few years ago.

The commander is well known in militant circles, but accustomed to a covert existence, 'New York Times' reported publishing an interview, the paper claimed he gave on the condition that his name, location and personal details would not be revealed.

Times said, that the former commander's account belies years of assurance by Pakistan to American officials since September 11 2001 attacks that it has ceased supporting militant groups on its territory.

The militant commander said that Pakistan's military and intelligence establishments had not abandoned its policy of supporting militant groups as tools in Pakistan's dispute with India over Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.

"There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals," he said and named a number of former military officials involved in the programme, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals.

"These people have a very big role still," he said.

Maj Gen Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept 11, the former commander said.

He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the centre for foreign militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.

There were about 60 people at the Taliban meeting in late 2001, soon after the Taliban government fell, the former commander said.

Pakistani militant leaders were present, as were the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Muhammad Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network.

Several retired officials of Pakistan's premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were also there, he said, including a man known as Colonel Imam but who was actually Brig Sultan Amir, a well-known trainer and mentor of militants, and General Abbasi.

The militant groups divided Afghanistan into separate areas of operations and discussed how to "trip up America," he said.

The Pakistani military still supports the Afghan Taliban in their fight to force out American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, he said, adding that he thought they would be successful.

The ISI also still supports other Pakistani militant groups, even some of those that have turned against the government, because the military still wants to keep them as tools for use against its arch-rival, India, he said.

The military used a strategy of divide and rule, encouraging splits in the militant groups to weaken and control them, he said.

Although the military has lost control of many of the firebrand fighters, and has little influence over the foreign fighters in the tribal areas who belong to Al Qaeda — some of whom openly oppose the Pakistani government — it was reluctant to move against them, he said.

Pakistan could easily kill the notoriously vicious militant leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, but chose not to, he said.

"If someone gave me 20,000 rupees, I would do it," he said, citing a price of about USD 235.

"The government is not interested in eliminating them permanently," he said. "The Pakistani military establishment has become habituated to using proxies", he said adding that there were many sympathisers in the military who still supported the use of militants.

Pakistan has 12,000 to 14,000 fully trained Kashmiri fighters, scattered throughout various camps in Pakistan, and is holding them in reserve to use if needed in a war against India, he said.

Yet, Pakistan has been losing the fight for Kashmir, and most Kashmiris now want independence and not to be part of Pakistan or India, he said.

Since Sept 11 2001, Pakistan has redirected much of its attention away from Kashmir to Afghanistan, and many Kashmiri fighters are not interested in that fight and have taken up India's offer of an amnesty to go home.

"The Taliban lost a whole government for one person," he said, again referring to Bin Laden.

"And Pakistan went to war just for a few generals and now for President Zardari," he said, referring to Asif Ali Zardari.

"Many of the thousands of trained Pakistani fighters turned against the military because it treated them so carelessly", he said.

"Pakistan used them and then, like a paper tissue, threw them away," he said.

Indeed, he was first trained for a year by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba at a camp in Kunar Province, in Afghanistan, in the early 1990s.

The war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan was over, and Pakistan turned to training fighters for an insurgency in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.

He became skilled at firing Russian-made rocket-propelled grenades, and he was sent to fight, and train others, in Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Over the years he worked with different militant groups, and he estimated that he personally trained up to 4,000 fighters.

The entire enterprise was supported by the Pakistani military and executed by Pakistani militant groups, he said.

Hindu temples are not finances of Indian governments

2011-07-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

The news has been splashed from Auckland to Alaska. The temples of India contain several billion dollars worth of treasures. The opening of the vaults in the Sri Padnamanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, according to a court order comes at a dangerous time for our polity.

The mainstream media continues to sensationalize the size of the treasure. One of them gushes that “treasures tumble out of the temple” — as though this is illegal money stashed in the Cayman Islands. Let’s be clear: these treasures were donated by the temple’s devotees over centuries, and rightfully belong to Lord Vishnu, who cannot even be fully seen from any angle by devotees. He is the true owner of this wealth and this truth should be internalized.

It is unfortunate that this discovery should take place in Kerala, where the percentage of idol-worshippers is a minority – if one excluded Muslims, Christians and Marxists from the fold. The mere act of opening up the vaults and tunnels is thus fraught with significant dangers for Hindu society and our ancient civilization.

The present times are most inappropriate to try to list the billions of rupees worth of diamonds and rubies and sapphires owned by our temples. We all know that a significant portion of our politicians have a criminal background and even parts of the judiciary are corrupt. The bureaucracy is compromised by a saga of loot and plunder.

In this context, where government finances are completely out of alignment with revenue realities, the temptation will be to use these invaluable treasures to fulfill the insatiable personal and political greed of our politicians to fund populist schemes like “food security” for all with resources belonging to Lord Vishnu. Already more than 80% of the incomes of major temples is used for “secular” causes rather than for “sacred” purposes.

The opening of the vaults in the Sri Padnamanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, according to a court order comes at a dangerous time for our polity.

It is not improbable that some jholawala economist will calculate — by dividing his mobile number with the pin code — that more than 70% of the people below poverty line can be lifted out of poverty if only this money is available to the government. The unaccountable civil society group under Sonia Gandhi – also called the National Advisory Council — might formulate a bill (since they are the law framers in the present dispensation) to open up all vaults from the Amarnath to Ayappa temples and from Somnath to Kamakhya.

There will be half-baked debates about using it for “social justice”. The only people who can have some say on this wealth are those who visit the temple on a daily basis and who can chant, in this case, the Vishnu Sahasranamam. I am not even sure if those who are counting these treasures are eligible to deal with the “sacred” on the orders of the “secular”. One can say that this is the last battle waged by Nehruvian secularists against the ‘sacred” even though, in this particular case, it might appear to be a simple case of counting.

Actually counting, enumerating and documenting are secular ways of dealing with sacred treasures in our temples, since the sacred is never documented but just observed and meditated upon.

Some imported white or brown non-resident Indian expert will suggest a way of leveraging these billions and even propose investing a part of it in our stock markets to propel second generation reforms.

Wall Street bankers, with colorful ties and multiple lies, should be tremendously interested. The wealth seen in temples becomes a target for jehadi terrorists and Wall Street bankers – who are no different except for the kind of killing they go for. The memories of the plunder of Somnath are embedded in the brain cells of every citizen of this country.

Let us be clear. The town and the temple are already marked by global terrorists. The Kerala home minister says he will increase the number of pot-bellied constables to protect the treasures, as if the global jehadis can be handled by them.

Quite clearly, this is the most inappropriate time to be listing the Lord’s wealth. When a street is full of thugs and dacoits, no woman would venture out wearing her jewels and finery. One wonders why the courts have got into this, when they should have been focusing on the Hasan Alis, Rajas and Kalmadis of the world.

It is puzzling why the acharya sabhas or Hindu organisations are silent on this issue. They may not have understood the full import of what is happening.

For the sake of Dharma and for God’s sake, our courts and powers should stop digging for treasures in our temples.

Is Draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, 2011 a slap on Hindus in India?

2011-07-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

The draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 hosted by the National Advisory Council (NAC) on its website for public scrutiny, apparently rewrites some key principles of the Constitution of India, Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 and Indian public services. It is the downside of allowing social activism to overshadow the imperatives of governance. Being without a preamble, uncharacteristic of any bill, its intent is a matter of speculation. This omission, on closer reading of the text, appears ill-intentioned rather than bona fide. The question whether current laws like IPC, CrPc and UAPA are inadequate tackle communal incidents is an issue one must ponder upon.

The proposed Bill subverts the principle of ‘Equality before Law’, recognized in the IPC and Constitution of India. It arbitrarily divides the population in Indian states into people of the ‘group’ - comprising religious & linguistic minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes- and the rest. This rest or ‘majority’ in context of most Indian states implies the Hindus.

The Bill presumes that acts of communal violence could be indulged only by the ‘majority’ (Hindus) against ‘minorities’ (Muslims and Christians) and never vice versa. Whether this is consistent with Indian realities or not is something that never bothered its framers. According to the Annual Report (2010-11) of the Ministry of Home Affairs, during 2010 (till 15.12. 2010), there were 610 incidents of Hindu-Muslim conflict in the country resulting in the death of 109 persons and injuries to 1,963 persons. Majority of these incidents took place in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. Major issues for communal incidents were carrying and slaughtering of cattle, routing religious processions through mixed localities, desecration of places of worship, distribution and playing of provocative CDs/cassettes, disputes for land/property, eve-teasing and personal enmity’ (P. 92).

During 2009, there were 750 Hindu-Muslim communal incidents resulting in the death of 123 persons and injuries to 2,380 persons. In 2008, there were 656 communal incidents, including four riots, leading to deaths of 123 persons and injuries to 2,272 persons.

It would be rather presumptuous to say that Hindus, who constitute the majority in the aforesaid states, are solely responsible for these incidents. Trafficking and slaughter of cows is recognizably a flashpoint for Hindu-Muslim troubles. It’s redundant to specify which of the two communities nurture cow, and who indulge in kine killing. Opposing cow slaughter or salvaging cow would become a communal crime if this Bill were to be enacted. This militates against the Directive Principles of State Policy (No.48) in the Constitution which recommends ‘prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle’.

The Bill could be a Damocles’ Sword hanging on the public servants even when no riot has blown up. Under its Clause 18, the public servant charged with the duty of maintenance of public order or tranquility, must not only control an erupted riot but ‘obtain information regarding the likelihood of occurrence of communal and targeted violence’. The violence need not be an explicit riot but existence of ‘hostile environment’ against a ‘group’ would be enough. The ‘hostile environment’ includes boycott of trade, exclusion from service, education and health, relocation etc.

India has a high-rate of unemployment. But if one unemployed person of the ‘group’ claims he was discriminated against in earning a livelihood, the public servant of the area can be in a soup. A ‘breach of command’ on part of a public servant is punishable with rigorous imprisonment for life!

It is an amphibian Bill which wants both to work through the system (existing law enforcing authorities and court) as well as set up an independent authority. This it does by establishing a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation at central level and State Authorities at provincial level. This prima facie constitutes an infringement upon the principles of federalism, given that Law & Order is a state subject as per the Constitution of India. The National Authority, though based in Delhi, could open its office anywhere in India by sanction of Central Government. It would also take up cases and complaints directly, independent of the state authorities. The National Authority can requisition information from a) central and state governments b) ‘non-state actors’ c) issue direction to state authorities to conduct any enquiry.

The National Authority, while inquiring or investigating, will have the powers of a Civil Court trying a suit under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. It can summon or enforce attendance of witnesses and examining them on oath, receive evidence on affidavits, examine witness or documents. Ironically the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 which clearly defines hierarchy of courts under Section 3 (Subordination of Courts) has no provision for such a lateral entry of a virtual court. The National Authority is not merely a court but law enforcing agency as well. Under Clause 33 (4) it can authorize a Gazetted Officer to conduct a raid to discover any document and seize it. All these pious exercises of the National Authority and State Authorities will end in issuing advisories and publishing Annual Report to be hosted on the website.

The National Authority, constituted by the Central Government, itself betrays a partisan spirit. It would have a Chairman, Vice Chairman, and five other members, out of which four members including Chairman and Vice Chairman should belong to ‘group’. The underlying assumption is that only people of the ‘group’ would be just to the ‘group’. The impartiality of an Authority so constituted would naturally be a suspect.

Hate propaganda, which can earn up to three years of imprisonment and fine (Clause 115), is described in Clause 8 as to mean only against the ‘group’. The people of the ‘group’, however, are free from its snare.

It is only in Clause 90 that evenhandedness is visible. It allows for relief, reparation, restitution and compensation to riot victims whether or not they belong to the ‘group’. The framers of the Bill deserve thanks for these small mercies! These are not indeed insignificant in practice. The relief camps, envisaged by the Bill makers (vide Clauses 93 and 94), should have elaborate facilities which look like military cantonment. The victims should get a) portable drinking water b) nutritious and culturally appropriate food c) 24 hours security d) essential medical service including antenatal and postnatal care) psycho-social and trauma counseling and psychiatric services f) child care services for infants and small children g) educational facilities for children h) adequate shelter with privacy for women and girls.

The complete description of amenities at the Relief Camps would make them a more alluring proposition than normal homes. Frankly speaking, all these facilities are hardly available in crammed slums or small towns of India. It will be the duty of State Government, the Collector, to ensure the aforesaid facilities and many more. It will take an enormous bureaucracy to implement the ideas. Being part of the Act, rather than subsidiary rules or instructional manuals, they will be almost be engraved on stones.

Fate of Jammu & Kashmir getting terrible more and more

2011-07-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

Jammu & Kashmir is again in the news, with anti-India forces upping the ante and virtually asking New Delhi to quit the State to forge a lasting peace in the region. The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), a congregation of 57 Muslim nations, including Pakistan, termed the Indian Jammu & Kashmir as “Indian-occupied.” It used this outrageous terminology in its invitation letter to the All Party Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, on the eve of talks between the Indian Foreign Secretary and her Pakistani counterpart; the talks took place on June 23 and 24, in Islamabad.

There was a special and exclusive session on Jammu & Kashmir. In other words, Pakistan succeeded in getting Kashmir delinked from the so-called composite dialogue process, and this was a crowning triumph ofPakistan’s aggressive and coercive diplomacy.

It is a different matter that the entire Pakistani media, print and electronic, dismissed the meeting as not that fruitful. This is understandable for the Pakistani media, like the Pakistani political establishment, the Army, the ISI, civil society and retired generals, is not interested in talks for the sake of talks. It is interested in result-oriented talks; in a solution that merges Jammu & Kashmir with Pakistan, which all Pakistanis consider as the “unfinished agenda of partition.”

The latest survey in Pakistan has cleared all the cobwebs of confusion and established that the bulk of Pakistani civil society considers India and not Taliban the “biggest threat to Pakistan.” This survey should expose those in India who have been preaching day in and day out that Pakistani civil society and Pakistan-based commentators and opinion leaders want to befriend India or long for Indo-Pak friendship. They want Kashmir because they want to control and utilize the State waters to enrichPakistan, protect its territorial integrity, and to balkanize India. There should be no doubt on this score.

Anyway, three more developments took place in Pakistan almost simultaneously on the eve of Indo-Pak talks. One, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani made a provocative speech in Pakistan-occupied-Jammu & Kashmir (POJK). It was in fact an unequivocal threat to India. He quoted Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and declared he was religiously committed to Bhutto’s declamation that: “Pakistan is ready to fight a thousand-year war with India for Kashmir.” He said: “Kashmir is the core issue.”

Two, President Asif Ali Zardari again reiterated that Kashmir continued to be Pakistan’s “jugular vein.” Three, newly-appointed Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar did not lag behind. The arrogant and unsophisticated lady said: “If not Kashmir, what else to be discussed with the Indian Foreign Secretary?” “Kashmir is the core issue,” she, like Geelani and Zardari, asserted even before the commencement of talks. She added: “Issue of terror could not be linked with the Indo-Pak dialogue process as terrorism is an issue that affects the whole region. The real problem that has estranged the relations between India and Pakistan is Kashmirand talks have to be Kashmir-centric.”

Jammu & Kashmir also witnessed almost all “mainstream” and separatist leaders, including Union Minister for Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, People’s Democratic Party leaders Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti, Tehrik-e-Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani, All-Party Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and so on, singing the same song: “We hopeKashmir would figure during the talks.” It is hardly necessary to reflect on what they meant: India must resolve the issue to the satisfaction ofIslamabad and the Kashmiri-speaking Sunni leadership.

All these developments in Pakistan, POJK and Indian J&K established beyond doubt that there was none who did not wish New Delhi to address Pakistani concerns in Jammu & Kashmir as well as of those in Kashmir who have been working overtime to get the State delinked fromIndia. Besides, these developments served to indicate that India is the culprit; India is the aggressor; and India is the root cause of all troubles in the region.

No well-wisher of India and no Indian patriot would appreciate what happened on the eve of the Indo-Pak talks or what transpired during the talks between the two Foreign Secretaries. But one would certainly question the manner in which New Delhi and the Congress handled theKashmir issue in 1947 and thereafter, because the policy-planners in South Block never acted in the best interests of the nation. Ambivalent, weak and non-committed as they were, they made statement after statement to queer the Indian pitch in J&K or to weaken the Indian position in the State, which, like all other Princely States, had acceded to India in terms of the constitutional law on the subject. They made statements at regular intervals and created an impression that though the State had acceded to India, a final decision on the State’s political future had yet to be taken and the decision could even go against India itself.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru repeatedly made statements about Jammu & Kashmir which enabled Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists to beat India mercilessly and assert that the State’s political future was not decided in October 1947. Glance through Nehru’s telegram No. 413, dated October 28, 1947; and telegrams No 25 and 255, dated October 31, 1947, to his Pakistani counterpart; letter from Nehru to the Pakistani Prime Minister, No 368, dated November 21, 1947; his statement in the Indian Constituent Assembly, November 25, 1947; The Statesman, January 18, 1951 and May 1, 1953; statement in Parliament on February12, 1951; address at public meeting in Srinagar, June 4, 1951; report of the AICC, July 6, 1951; statements made in Parliament on June 26 and August 7, 1952 and March 31, 1955; letters from Nehru to the Pakistani Prime Minister, dated September 3, 1953, and November 10, 1953; statement made in the Indian Council of States on May 18, 1954;The Times of India, May 16, 1954; and so on. Here are some of the statements Nehru made between 1947 and 1955, the most crucial period as far as the State was concerned.

1. “We have always right from the beginning accepted the idea of the Kashmir people (read Kashmiri Muslims) deciding their fate by referendum or plebiscite. Ultimately, the final decision of settlement, which must come, has first of all to be made basically by the people of Kashmir

2. “In regard to accession also it has been made clear that this is subject to reference to people of State (read Kashmir) and their decision.”

3. “First of all, I would like to remind you of the fateful days of 1947 when I came to Srinagar and gave the solemn assurance that the people of India would stand by Kashmir in her struggle. (Who was he to speak on behalf of the people ofIndia and who had given him that mandate?) On that assurance, I shook Sheikh Abdullah’s hand before the vast multitude that had gathered there (read Srinagar). I want to repeat that the Government of India will stand by that pledge, whatever happens. That pledge itself stated that it is for the people of Kashmir to decide their fate without external interference (read New Delhi’s interference). That assurance also remains and will continue.”

4. “Kashmir should decide question of accession by plebiscite or referendum under international auspices such as those of the United Nations.”

5. “…The people of Kashmir would decide the question of accession. It is open to them to accede to either Dominion then.”

6. “But so far as the Government of India are concerned, every assurance and international commitment in regard toKashmir stands.”

7. “India is a great country and Kashmir is almost in the heart of Asia. There is an enormous difference not only geographically but in all kinds of facts there. Do you think you are dealing with a part of UP or Bihar or Gujarat?” (You are dealing with Kashmir. Home Minister P Chidambaram almost said the same thing in Srinagar after assuming the charge. He had said: “Solutions applicable to other parts ofIndia cannot be replicated in Kashmir, as Kashmir has unique geography and unique history.” It appears he has gone through the Nehru’s June 4, 1951 address at a public meeting in Srinagar.)

8. “We had given our pledge to the people of Kashmir, and subsequently to the United Nations; we stood by it and we stand by it today. Let the people of Kashmir decide.”

9. “We have taken the issue to the United Nations and given our word of honour for a peaceful solution. As a great nation, we cannot go back on it. We have left the question for final solution to the people of Kashmir and we are determined to abide by their decision.”

10. “If, after a proper plebiscite, the people of Kashmir said, ‘We do not want to be with India’, we are committed to accept that. We will accept it though it might pain us. We will not send any army against them. We will accept that, however hurt we might feel about it, we will change the Constitution, if necessary.” (Interlocutors for Jammu & Kashmir Dileep Padgaonkar and Radha Kumar also expressed similar views in Srinagar in October 2010.)

11. “I want to stress that it is only the people of Kashmir who can decide the future of Kashmir. It is not that we have merely said that to the United Nations and to the people of Kashmir, it is our conviction and one that is borne out by the policy that we have pursued not only in Kashmir but everywhere. Though these five years (1947-1952) have meant a lot of trouble and expense and in spite of all we have done we would willingly leave Kashmir if it was made clear to us that the people ofKashmir wanted us to go. However sad we may feel about leaving, we are not going to stay against the wishes of the people. We are not going to impose ourselves on them at the point of bayonet. I started with the presumption that it is for the people of Kashmir to decide their own future. We will not compel them. In that sense, the people of Kashmir are sovereign.”

12. “The whole dispute about Kashmir is still before the United Nations. We cannot just decide things concerning Kashmir. We cannot pass a bill or issue an order concerning Kashmir or do whatever we want.”

13. “As a result of the plebiscite over the entire state, we would be in a position to consider the matter, so that the final decision should cause least disturbance and should take into consideration geographical, economic and other important factors.”

Nehru was not the only one who messed up in Kashmir and created doubts in the minds of the international community about the political status of Jammu & Kashmir. Mahatma Gandhi, Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Krishna Menon, Vijayalakshmi Pandit and others in the Government of India made statements and wrote letters enabling the anti-India elements to exploit them to the hilt and question the Indian presence in the State. Hence, it would be appropriate to reproduce here what they said from time to time and it imperative that Indians go through Mahatma Gandhi’s October 26, 1947 speech at Prayer Meeting in Delhi; December 31, 1947 letter from Government of India to the United Nations; the January 15, 1948 Ayyangar statement at the UN Security Council; the Government of India’s White Paper on Kashmir (1948); the April 5, 1951 Menon statement at the UN General Assembly; The Statesman, New Delhi, August 2, 1951 & January 19, 1962; the September 11, 1951 Government of India letter to the UN Representative for India and Pakistan; the December 8, 1952 Vijayalakshmi Pandit statement at the Security Council; the January 24, February 8 and 20 and October 9, 1957 Menon statements at the UN Security Council; and so on.

Gandhi said: “If the people of Kashmir are in favour of opting forPakistan, no power on earth can stop them from doing so. They should be left free to decide for themselves.” Note that Gandhi didn’t say that the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir, like all other princes, alone had the right to decide the State’s political future. Remember, the Indian Independence Act of 1947, under which Pakistan came into being, nowhere suggested that the future of Princely States would be finally settled by reference to the people of the respective States.

And, what did Ayyangar, Menon, Pandit and the Government of India say and write about Jammu & Kashmir from time to time?

1. “The people of Kashmir would be free to decide their future by the recognized democratic method of plebiscite or referendum, which in order to ensure complete impartiality may be held under international auspices” (From Government of India to the United Nations, December 31, 1947.)

2. “In accepting the accession they (the Government of India) refused to take advantage of the immediate peril in which the state found itself and informed the ruler that the accession should finally be settled by plebiscite as soon as peace has been restored. They have subsequently made it quite clear that they are agreeable to the plebiscite being conducted if necessary under international auspices. On the question of accession, the Government of India has always enunciated the policy that in all cases of dispute the people of the state concerned should make the decision. We have no further interest, and we have agreed that a plebiscite in Kashmir might take place under international auspices after peace and order have been established. We desire only to see peace restored in Kashmir and ensure that the people of Kashmir are left free to decide in an orderly and peaceful manner the future of their state” (Ayyangar’s statement at the Security Council, January 15, 1948).

3. “The question of accession is to be decided finally in a free plebiscite, on this there is no dispute” (White Paper onKashmir).

4. “My government has always taken the view that resolutions, if they are passed, must be implemented…We adhere strictly to our pledge of plebiscite in Kashmir – a pledge made to the people because they believe in democratic government…We don’t regard Kashmir as a commodity to be trafficked in…The Government of India not only reaffirms its acceptance of the principle that the question of the continuing accession of the state of Jammu & Kashmir to India shall be decided through the democratic method of free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations, but is anxious that the conditions necessary for such a plebiscite should be created as quickly as possible…If, as a result of a plebiscite, the people decided that they did not want to stay with India, then our duty would be to adopt those constitutional procedures which would enable us to separate that territory…The resolution of January 17, 1948 and the resolutions of the UNCIP, the assurances given, these are all resolutions which carry a greater weight - that is because we have accepted them, we are parties to them, whether we like them or not…These documents (UNCIP reports) and declarations and the resolutions of the Security Council are decisions; they are resolutions, there has been some resolving of a question of one character or another, there has been a meeting of minds on this question where we have committed ourselves to it…India believes that sovereignty rests in the people (read Sheikh Abdullah and his followers) and should return to them…” (Menon’s statements, dated Apr 5 And Aug 2, 1951; Jan 24, Feb 8 and 20 and Oct 19, 1957; and Jan 19, 1962).

5. Vijayalakshmi Pandit sang the same song on December 8, 1952, at the Security Council: “I want to say for the purpose of the record that there is nothing that has been said on behalf of the Government of India which in the slightest degree indicates that the Government of India or the Union of India will dishonour any international obligation it has undertaken.”

What do all these statements and correspondence between Nehru and his Pakistani counterpart and between India and the United Nations show? They show that it was Nehru and the Congress who behaved in a fashion no real leader and no genuine political party in any self-respecting country ever acted. That Nehru and Congress would adopt an ambivalent attitude towards Kashmir and put all their eggs in the basket of Sheikh Abdullah just to avenge his arrest at Kohala in 1946 at the behest of Maharaja Hari Singh doesn’t enhance our confidence in Nehru and Congress.

One may or may not endorse the BJP’s policy towards Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan, but one cannot but endorse what L.K. Advani wrote about Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Abdullah just a few days ago: “Kashmir problem is Nehru’s gift to India and Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah did not consider Jammu & Kashmir as an integral part of India.”

The nation is paying a very heavy price for the crimes Nehru, his colleagues and relatives committed while handling Jammu & Kashmir. Don’t forget this was the solitary princely state that Nehru deliberately handled himself and handled in a manner that enabled all the anti-India forces gang up against India with all or nearly all of them supportingPakistan and Pakistani agents in Kashmir.

No wonder then that Kashmiri leaders of all hues are accusing New Delhiof going back on its promises. It’s also only natural that Kashmiri commentators are using these statements in order to make the Muslims of Kashmir believe that the ongoing so-called freedom struggle in Kashmir is the fall-out of the failure of Nehru and New Delhi to honour the commitments they made. Kashmiri commentators like Mehboob Makhdoomi have adopted a new approach to make their point: Quote what Indian leaders said from time to time and quote what New Delhiwrote from time to time and make readers draw their own conclusions and inferences.

A month ago, Makhdoomi justified the ongoing secessionist movement in Kashmir: “Kashmir imbroglio may be hard to resolve, because of India’s adamance (read adamancy), but it’s not hard to ascertain the culprit among the parties involved. I have no intention to go through the events from 1947 to 2011, in order to prove my interpretation right. In fact, I would like to present some facts, which will leave no room for interpretations. Let’s see what was promised to us (Kashmiris), not by the international community, not by Pakistan but by the very Greats of the Nation of India.” The rest of his essay was a catalogue of statements Indian leaders made …

Yet it is important to note that neither Kashmiri leaders nor Kashmiri commentators present an accurate picture of facts. For example, they talk of plebiscite but do not inform the public that plebiscite could be held only after Pakistan vacates the aggression and Indian forces occupy POJK and Gilgit-Baltistan. They would never reveal this truth. Their single-point agenda is to mislead and hoodwink gullible Kashmiri Muslims and further their respective agendas.

Still, the conclusion remains that Nehru and his coterie betrayed the Indian nation. It’s a matter of grave concern that the attitude of his successors, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been no different. Dr Singh, like his predecessors, has been pursing a policy that only emboldens Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists. And, the greatest worry is that the entire opposition is in a state of paralysis.

Can lost Hindu empires be recovered?

2011-06-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

One of the common misconceptions about Hinduism is that it is an India-specific religion. Indeed it is true that Hinduism and the Vedanta philosophy originated in India and even today a vast majority of the followers of the religion are Indians; emigration and migration in the last couple of centuries and the universal appeal of Vedanta have made people recognize the fact that it is a global religion with a worldwide following.

Even historically, Hinduism was never an India-specific religion. Ancient Hindu idols have been discovered in places as far as central Asia. However, for a variety of reasons, Hinduism got erased from most of the places which lay to the west of India.

But in Indonesia, where Hinduism flourished in style and in substance, it continues to maintain its presence even today – reminding us of its past glory and global appeal.

How Hinduism was introduced in Indonesia:

Records of foreign trade with Indonesia exist from the early AD centuries. Consequently, it was earlier thought that Hinduism was introduced to Indonesia through traders arriving from India.

However, recent discoveries of Sanskrit transcriptions in places like eastern Kalimantan, a considerable distance from the international trade route, and also in western Java have given rise to a new theory that it was introduced to the Indonesian islands through rishis and their Indian and Indonesian disciples.

References in Balinese literature about Pura Pucak Raung (in the Eastern Javanese district of Glenmore), where Maharishi Markandeya is said to have visited and gathered followers, further bolster this claim.

Local Influence:

But as is common with most of the religions, Hinduism in Indonesia (known formally as "Agama Hindu Dharma" in Bahasa Indonesia) got influenced with local beliefs, customs and traditions and developed a distinctly Indonesian flavor.

It shares all the main beliefs of Hinduism like a belief that all of the Gods are manifestations of the Supreme Being, belief in the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu (Wisnu), Mahesh (Ciwa) representing the creator, preserver and destroyer roles of the Supreme Being, belief in sacred texts of Vedas, Puranas and Itihassas etc.

However it lacks the traditional Hindu emphasis on cycles of rebirth and reincarnation, but instead is greatly influenced by the Chinese and Eastern Asian concept of ancestral spirits. Brahmins are regarded as the prestigious class but instead of being affiliated with any temple, they act as spiritual leaders and advisers to individual families.

Hindu Kingdoms:

Being accepted as an Indonesian religion, Hinduism is reflected in early Indonesian polity as well. Various Hindu kingdoms began to emerge in the main islands of Java and Sumatra. Most notable amongst them are Srivijaya and Majapahit which flourished to become empires and influenced the events of the region.

Srivijaya Kingdom:

Srivijaya kingdom was based in Palembang, in the island of Sumatra. Accounts of its origins vary from 200 AD to 500 AD. But mainly from 7th century AD, it appears in contemporary Chinese and other trade records as an important maritime Indonesian kingdom.

Srivijaya established suzerainty over large areas of Sumatra, western Java and much of the Malay Peninsula. Dominating the Malacca and Sunda straits, it controlled both the spice route traffic and local trade, charging a toll on passing ships. Serving as an entrepôt for Chinese, Malay, and Indian markets, the port of Palembang, accessible from the coast by way of a river, accumulated great wealth.

In 903 AD, a Muslim writer Ibn Rustah was so impressed with the wealth of Srivijaya’s ruler that he declared one would not hear of a king who was richer, stronger or with more revenue. Srivijaya also maintained close relations with the Pala Empire in Bengal and an 860 AD inscription records that the maharaja of Srivijaya dedicated a monastery at the Nalanda University in Pala territory.

Fall of the Srivijaya Kingdom: Relations with the Chola dynasty of southern India were initially friendly but deteriorated into actual warfare in the eleventh century. Although Srivijaya managed to survive Chola invasion and conquest, it got gravely weakened, lost its regional hegemony and gave rise to formation of small kingdoms. As the decline went further, Islam made its way to the Aceh region of Sumatra.

In 13th century, the kingdom of Pasai in northern Sumatra converted to Islam putting further pressure on Srivijaya. In 1365 AD, Srivijaya was conquered by the Hindu Majapahit Empire from Java. A rebellion in 1377 AD was squashed down by Majapahit, but left the area of Southern Sumatra in chaos and desolation giving further impetus to the growth of Islam.

By 1402 AD, Parameswara, the last prince of Srivijaya who had fled Palembang after being defeated by Majapahits, married a Muslim princess of Pasai and founded a kingdom on the Malay Peninsula. In 1414 AD, at the age of 70 he himself converted to Islam declaring his kingdom as the ‘Sultanate of Malacca’.

Other Hindu Kingdoms: During the same time period some other Hindu kingdoms like Sailendra and Singhasari existed on the island of Java. Some of the magnificent Hindu and Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia are built-in that time frame.

The Borobudur temple complex, in honor of Mahayana Buddhism, contains 2,000,000 cubic feet of stone and includes 27,000 square feet of stone bas-relief. Shiva’s great temple is less than 50 miles away at Prambanan.

Majapahit Empire:

Based in eastern Java in since 1293 AD, Majapahit was the last Hindu empire in Indonesia. It reached its height in the mid-14th century under King Hayam Wuruk (1350AD-89AD) and his Prime Minister Gajah Mada.

The New Year ceremony during the Majapahit era was a major religious ceremony which used to be attended by Indian scholars as well. Thus in one of the inscriptions, the poet asserts that the only famous countries in the world were Java and India because both contained many religious experts! However, after the death of Hayam Wuruk, the kingdom grew internally weaker due to family feuds and found itself unable to control the rising power of the Sultanate of Malacca.

Finally in 1478, Brawijaya the last Majapahit ruler converted to Islam. The last remaining courtsmen of Majapahit were forced to withdraw eastward. A large number of courtiers, artisans, priests, and Hindu members of the royalty moved east to the island of Bali at the end of Majapahit’s existence; where they remained isolated before being colonized by the Dutch.

Conversion to Islam:

In both Java and Sumatra, as the royalty converted to Islam, the citizens followed suit. And although many cultural aspects of the religion were preserved, Hinduism ceased to exist as a major spiritual force after being the main Indonesian religion for centuries.

This is undoubtedly a major event in the history of Hinduism and should be studied and understood in great detail by all those who love this ancient continuous tradition. It would reveal the conditions and reasons behind the downfall of Hinduism from one of its strongholds and might prove as a guidance to avoid such circumstances elsewhere in the future.

Hindus Renaissance and Challenges:

Preserved by Balinese Hindus through their turbulent history, Hinduism is experiencing a revival in all parts of Indonesia in the recent times. While many Javanese had retained aspects of their indigenous and Hindu traditions through the centuries of Islamic influence, under the banner of ‘Javanist religion’ (kejawen), no more than a few isolated communities upheld Hinduism as the primary mark of their public identity.

Even officially identifying their religion as Hinduism was not a legal possibility for Indonesians until 1962 AD, when it became the fifth state-recognized religion. This recognition was initially sought by Balinese religious organizations and granted for the sake of Bali, where the majority was Hindu.

The largest of these organizations, Parisada Hindu Dharma Bali, changed its name to P.H.D. Indonesia (PHDI) in 1964, reflecting subsequent efforts to define Hinduism as a national rather than just a Balinese affair. Religious identity became a life and death issue for many Indonesians around the same time as Hinduism gained recognition, namely in the wake of the violent anti-Communist purge of 1965-66.

Persons lacking affiliation with a state recognized-religion tended to be classed as atheists and hence as communist suspects. Despite the inherent disadvantages of joining a national religious minority, a deep concern for the preservation of their traditional ancestral religious practices made Hinduism a more palatable option than Islam for several ethnic groups in the outer islands.

In the early seventies, the Toraja people of Sulawesi island were the first to realize this opportunity by seeking shelter for their indigenous religious practices under the broad umbrella of ‘Hinduism’, followed by the Karo Batak of Sumatra in 1977 and the Ngaju Dayak of Kalimantan in 1980. The rate of conversion (or re-conversion) to Hinduism accelerated dramatically during and after the collapse of former President Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998.

For some Indonesians this return to the ‘religion of Majapahit‘ was a matter of nationalist pride. PHDI, in an annual report claims the ‘Hindu congregation’ (umat hindu) of East Java province to have grown by 76,000 souls in 1999 alone.

Temple Reconstruction:

Apart from political environment, socio-economic factors also contributed to this trend. In the last few decades, especially after being formally recognized as an official Indonesian religion, some of the ancient Hindu temples are being revived in Indonesia with the generous donations from wealthy Balinese Hindus.

Surge in the number of households proclaiming themselves as the followers of Hinduism has been seen around these revived temples. Prominent among them include Pura (temple) Blambangan in the regency of Banyuwangi completed around 1978, Pura Mandaragiri Sumeru Agung, located on the slope of Mt Sumeru, Java’s highest mountain completed in 1992 and recently completed Pura Loka Moksa Jayabaya in the village of Menang near Kediri and Pura Pucak Raung in the Eastern Javanese district of Glenmore. Similar resurgence was observed around major archaeological remains of ancient Hindu temple sites in Trowulan near Mojokerto. Economically, the newly built temples have brought new prosperity to local populations.

Apart from employment in the building, expansion, and repair of the temple itself, a steady stream of Balinese pilgrims to this now nationally recognized temple has led to the growth of a sizeable service industry. In the recent international environment, pondering on the secret to the economic success of their Balinese neighbors, several local inhabitants have also concluded that Hindu culture may be more conducive to the development of an international tourism industry.

What the future holds:Contributed by all these factors, a slow yet certain revival of Hinduism in Indonesia is observed. However, it also should be noted that simultaneously, a steady increase in the number of Wahabi mosques funded by Saudi oil money has contributed to the increased radicalization of Southeast Asian Muslim populace. It would be interesting to see how the Hindu revival movement proceeds under such circumstances in future.

Mounting Bangladeshi Muslim infiltration – a grave concern for India

2011-06-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

Infiltrators aren’t economic exiles

The two unstable Islamic countries flanking

India

have emerged as the Al Qaeda's staging posts. While Pakistan has been the epicentre of terrorism since the early 1980s, the emergence of Bangladesh as an extension of a global terror network pose serious challenges to the world, particularly

India

Though the terrorist groups targeting India (there is a hardly any difference between such groups and others with a global agenda) continue to be inspired by terrorist leaders based in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bangladesh is where they meet, learn techniques of bomb making and collaborate for terrorist actions in

India

While the world is focussed on Pakistan's tribal areas and North-West Frontier Province as an Al Qaeda-Taliban Emirate, the

Bangladesh

terror network's emergence and growing power remains largely unnoticed.

This impression needs to be corrected without delay. Before September 11, 2001, no one really took seriously

India

's struggles to cope with an externally-aided and abetted terrorism. Pakistan, despite a huge evidence of its complicity in promoting terrorism, remained on the blind side of the Western nations, particularly the

, which, till recently, considered it as a 'strategic ally' in the war on terrorism.

Today, it is widely acknowledged that

Pakistan

has become global headquarters of terrorism. Similarly, Bangladesh is fast becoming a major centre of outsource for this grand coalition of terror groups which are facing intense heat in West Asia and

Afghanistan

Bangladesh

has become host to various terrorist groups anxious to recruit and train young students coming out of these madarsas. One of the more prominent ones is Harkat-ul-jihad al-Islami (HuJI), widely regarded as the Al Qaeda's operating arm in South Asia. HuJI has been consolidating its position in

Bangladesh

where it boasts a membership of more than 15,000 activists, of whom at least 2,000 are "hardcore".

Led by Shawkat Osman (alias Sheikh Farid) in Chittagong, the group has at least six training camps in

Bangladesh

. According to one report, about 3,500 Bangladeshis had gone to Pakistan and

Afghanistan

to take part in jihad. Barring 34 who died, a large number of them returned home; of these, about 500 form the backbone of HuJI.

What should be of immediate concern to regional nations and the West (in particular the US) is, irrespective of the absence of sustained links between Islamic groups like HT, JeI and terrorist organisations, they essentially share the same ideology and anti-Western agenda. In

Pakistan

, the Al-Qaeda has been quite successful in co-opting various religious and sectarian groups to work for the larger "cause" of global terror. In

Bangladesh

such networking could be easier, making this small, impoverished country a potential sanctuary for Al Qaeda clones like HuJI.

For

India

, HuJI presents a clear and immediate danger. But even Indian authorities ignored the emerging evidence of HuJI's footprints. The group's activities in India were first noticed in August 1999 when four HuJI activists were detained in Guwahati -- two of them were from Pakistan, one from Kashmir and another from Muzzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. Their interrogations revealed a cache of explosives -- 34 Kg of RDX -- hidden in a Bangladesh mosque and the recruitment of young immigrant Muslims in

Assam

. But it was the attack on the American Centre in Kolkata on January 22, 2002 that uncovered the growing linkages of HuJI-B within

India

Investigators found HuJI-B's links with a local group called Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF) formed by illegal Bangladeshi migrants living in Assam and West Bengal with the help of HuJI-B and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) activists.

Another clear evidence of HuJI's strength and alliances was revealed when a suicide bomber walked into Hyderabad's Special Task Force office on October 12, 2005, and detonated a pressure-activated bomb carried in a backpack. Investigations pointed to a joint operation by cadres of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, HuJI and LeT. Two months later, Delhi Police detained three HuJI-B militants involved in the Hyderabad attack who said they were trained at ISI-run camp in Balochistan and were sent to India to target Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The series of terrorist attacks, beginning with Varanasi (March 7, 2006), besides numerous arrests of terrorists, their supporters and seizure of weapons and explosives, exposed the contours of a grand merger of various extremist and terrorist groups and organisations within

India

. Of the two terrorists shot down within hours of the Varanasi explosions, one was a LeT commander in Lucknow, while the second a HuJI activist from Bangladesh living in Delhi.

This alliance could not have operated across the country without extensive local support provided often by SIMI and other small, less-known outfits. The terrorist coalition utilises the support base to plan and execute terrorist operations, besides planning a safe exit. This support base in many areas like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar rely on modules set up by ISI for gathering intelligence on Indian strategic assets.

Madarsas have also been used in providing the logistics in the past and continue to do so but more covertly than in the past. The groups seek out rooms to rent out in outlying colonies or in crowded areas where they could remain anonymous; in many cases they have set up small businesses to merge into the crowd. The objective of this coalition of terror is to create political upheaval in

India

The fast emerging linkages between LeT, SIMI and HuJI (and Jamaitul Mujahideen Bangladesh) depict the contours of a pan-Islamist network in Asia, linking groups operating in Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and several south Asian countries like

Indonesia

A True Assessment of Breaking India

2011-06-27T10:42:00.001-07:00

This book has an eerie cover image taken from www.dalitstan.com, showcasing a map of the Indic region wherein its northern part stretching up to Assam is depicted in green as Mughalistan — Pakistan and Bangladesh included. The southern parts are called Dalitstan and Dravidistan. For the authors, such a holocaustic scenario seems a distinct possibility unless the process is immediately halted and neutralised.

Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindam Neelakandan expose three strands operating in contemporary India — Islamic radicalism, Maoist and Marxist activism, and Dravidian and Dalit identity politics — all engaged in systematically breaking up what the venerable Ram Swarup called a “shrinking and shrunken” India.

This book, however, deals only with the third dimension related to the Dravidian/Dalit ‘studies’, the ridiculous Afro-Dalit project that seeks to showcase the Dalits as ‘Blacks’ of India and non-Dalits as ‘Whites’. It also exposes the hypocritical roles of various American/European academic institutions and evangelical organisations, besides the NGOs and their collaborators in the media.

The entire gamut of the mechanism and ‘ideology’ to break the country is exposed in 19 well-researched chapters. “Breaking civilisation”, the authors say, is “like breaking the spine of a person. A broken civilisation can splinter, and the balkanised regions can undergo a dark metamorphosis.”

The book suggests that the Western imperialists have sought to undermine India by both ideological and institutional means. They used the Aryan invasion theory (now discredited), the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, caste-based Census, Indological studies, etc, to divide and rule the country. Surprisingly, while the British abandoned the caste-wise enumeration after a while, the present UPA Government has resumed it!

Despite criticism of Orientalists like Max Müller, Johann Gottfried von Herder, etc, for their loyalties towards Christian evangelists, several Indologists were also admirers of India’s ancient Hindu texts and civilisation. They stood apart from those during the Islamic rule, who merely destroyed/vandalised much of the country’s Hindu-Buddhist heritage. The presence of people like William Jones, despite their evangelical biases, along with the establishment of the Asiatic Society and the Archaeological Survey of India, helped restore the country’s past that contributed to the emergence of national consciousness. It would, therefore, be wrong to tar every strand of European scholarship with one brush.

The chapter, ‘Imperial Evangelism Shapes Indian Ethnology’, examines the true character of HH Risley (ICS), often projected by the less discerning as a “brilliant anthropologist”. He comes out as one who “morphed” jati-varna into a racial category. The authors cite BR Ambedkar convincingly demolishing the spurious racist theory based on the nasal index. “The measurements establish that the Brahmins and the untouchables belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans, the untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians, the untouchables are Dravidians,” Ambedkar said.

The politics of Dravidian separatism gets more than six chapters. ‘Seminal’ contributions of evangelist-propagandist intellectuals like Brian Houghton Hodgson and Bishop Caldwell in creating an unhistorical divide between the Aryan north and the non-Aryan south are well explained. In this mischievous invention of Dravidian separatism, evangelists sought to de-Indianise and de-Hinduise the Tamil traditions. They distorted ancient Tamil texts like Thirukural and Shaiva Siddhanta by attributing them to Christianity. Though rejected by other Christian scholars of that time, it has been revived in our times by evangelical movements, aided and abetted by racist politicians in the country. In reality, all Shaivite hymns written in Tamil speak of Shiva as residing in the Himalayas.

The authors err in blaming only Pakistan for fomenting terror in India, overlooking the home-grown Islamic separatists/terrorists. Long before Pakistan was created, large tracts of the country had been Islamised/Arabised and massive conversion to Islam accomplished; moreover, Pakistan was created by “Muslim Indians”. Islamic jihad has been operating in India long before Western/evangelical intervention, and with much greater ferocity and success. Both the “Godhra carnage” and the “Babri demolition” are inadequately explained in historical terms.

The authors blame scholars like Martha Nussbaum, Lice McKean, Romila Thapar, Meera Nanda, Angana Chatterji, Christophe Jafferlot and Gail Omvedt for floating many academically unsound ideas that would strengthen anti-India forces. The book also exposes the dark sides of the American Government, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the United States Agency for International Development, Ford Foundation, Dalit Solidarity Network (UK) and many others. It is a fact that most ‘glorified’ scholars in social sciences have strong anti-Hindu and anti-India biases. India’s Nehruvian, pan-Islamic revivalists, Leftists and subaltern scholar-propagandists have long been party to this unholy alliance, and many of them are funded through the public exchequer.

The authors rightly assert that “the colonial constructs of previous centuries have transformed themselves subtly, yet persistently, today” and turned more radical than before through “institutional mechanism and networks”. After all, these academicians have “become tools in facilitating strategic Western interventions”. The book, however, fails to see that the Nehruvian state system with its blatant anti-Hindu bias was no less a culprit.

Doesn’t USA know where ISI-led Pakistan is heading?

2011-06-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

India must get tough with Pakistan to save kith and kin

While promoting terrorism abroad has been the trademark of Pakistan’s military establishment, new skeletons are tumbling out of the ISI’s cupboard, revealing the horrors perpetrated by its torture and assassination networks within the country. The ‘tell-all’ book titled Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, written by journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, widely believed (even within Pakistan) to have been bumped off by the ISI, has been banned in that country.

Shahzad made some startling revelations to an American television network virtually hours before he was abducted. He revealed that even before the 9/11 terrorist strikes, there were formal agreements between the ISI on the one hand and the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the other. Moreover, just after 9/11, the then Director-General of the ISI, Lieutenant General Mehmood Ahmed, assured both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden in Kandahar that Pakistan would neither mount operations against their organisations nor would it arrest them.

Given these assurances, it is not surprising that Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and their supporters and armed cadre crossed the Durand Line and were given haven in Pakistan. Some second ranking Al Qaeda leaders were, however, targeted when they were suspected of involvement in attempts to assassinate General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. Shahzad asserts that the “Pakistani Army has always been closely allied with Islamist forces”, adding that mutinies from within the Army’s ranks were always possible in the event of major operations in future against Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries.

While the Islamist propensities of significant sections the Pakistani Army establishment are well known, what is now emerging is that support for Islamic extremism is also significantly prevalent in the Pakistani Air Force and Navy. The recent attack on the Mehran naval base in Karachi, during which US-supplied reconnaissance aircraft were destroyed, has revealed the extent to which radical Islamist elements have infiltrated the Pakistani Navy.

Even more widespread has been the infiltration of radical Islamist elements into the Pakistani Air Force, including into the Chaklala air base near Rawalpindi where US-supplied transport aircraft are based. Airmen from this base were involved in an attempt to assassinate Gen Musharraf in 2003. The links of the Pakistani Air Force with Al Qaeda go back to 1996 when a senior PAF officer, Mushaf Al Mir, known to be close to Islamist elements in the ISI, entered into a pact with Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubayada, promising the supply of arms.

Interestingly, while elements from Saudi Arabia were evidently supportive of this deal, Mushaf Ali Mir, who later became the chief of

Pakistan

’s Air Force, died in a mysterious air crash while on official duty in a PAF aircraft on February 20, 2003. Three Saudi Princes associated with Air Chief Marshal Mir’s 1996 deal with Al Qaeda died in similarly mysterious circumstances shortly thereafter. Interestingly, the mysterious deaths of Mir and the Saudi Princes occurred after both Gen Musharraf and the Saudi monarchy had become averse to Al Qaeda influence in Pakistan and

Saudi Arabia

The malaise of Islamic radicalism has also spread to

Pakistan

’s nuclear establishment. AQ Khan, infamous for his rabid references to “Hindu treachery”, was a major player in moves to transfer nuclear weapons capabilities to Iran, Saudi Arabia and

Libya

. Bhutto himself described

Pakistan

’s quest for nuclear weapons as his country’s contribution to “Islamic civilisation”. These sentiments are shared by senior Pakistani nuclear scientists like Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood who, along with his colleague Abdul Majeed, was detained shortly after the terrorist strikes of 9/11 for helping Al Qaeda to obtain nuclear and biological weapons capabilities.

Mehmood openly voiced support for the Taliban and publicly advocated transfer of nuclear weapons to the whole ummah (Muslim community worldwide). Two other Pakistani scientists, Suleiman Asad and Al Mukhtar, wanted for questioning about suspected links with Osama bin Laden, disappeared in

Myanmar

. The million dollar question is: Did they disappear into the territory of Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’ and partner in proliferation,

China

? The malaise of Islamic radicalism runs deep across

Pakistan

’s entire security establishment — civilian and military.

The roots of this radicalisation can be traced back to the days when the

and other Western countries backed Pakistani military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq to the hilt. It was Gen Zia who ushered in a new era of Islamisation, bigotry and blasphemy laws targeting minorities, together with nurturing radical, armed Islamic groups, bent on waging jihad across the world. Officers recruited in his era are today three-star Generals and the Army is largely motivated by the ideology of the “Quranic Concept of War” articulated by his protégé Brigadier (later Major General) SK Malik. Describing anyone who stands in the way of jihad as an “aggressor”, he held that “the aggressor is always met and destroyed in his own country”.

Maj Gen Malik also had a unique view of the concept of ‘terror’. According to him, “Terror struck into the heart of the enemy is not only a means. It is an end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. Terror is not a means of imposing a decision upon the enemy, it is the decision we wish to impose on him. It is a point where the means and end merge”. This is precisely what was sought to be ‘imposed’ on the ill-fated people killed in Mumbai on 26/11.

Despite evidence that the ISI recently passed on operational intelligence received from the CIA to terrorist groups, both the US and the

are making conscious efforts to gloss over the ISI-terrorist nexus. The British are realising that in their desire to be pro-active across the world as

America

’s most “loyal ally”, they have been punching above their weight. Moreover, the greatest threat to internal security in the UK comes from nationals of Pakistani origin, motivated and trained in terrorist safe havens in

Pakistan

. Britain seeks to appease Pakistan to facilitate an early withdrawal from

Afghanistan

and secure ISI cooperation for internal security.

The Americans evidently believe that

Pakistan

has to be kept in reasonably good humour, at least for the present, to achieve larger strategic objectives. In these circumstances,

India

has to shed illusions that the Pakistani military establishment can be persuaded to discard the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy by sweet words and ‘composite dialogue.’

Learn how Communal and Targeted Violence Bill penalizes Hindus

2011-06-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

Being charred to death in a train compartment transformed into a raging inferno by a violent, baying pyromanaical mob reeking with animosity would certainly codify one as a victim of communal violence by any lexicographic criterion (Godhra 2002). But not if you happen to be a Hindu, the majority community, you do not, according to the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, 2011.

As per the bill, a 'victim' is not a stand alone descriptor but includes a modifier of 'belonging to a group as defined under this Act'.

And a 'group' the bill stipulates is "a religious or linguistic minority, in any state in the Union of India, or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within the meaning of clauses (24) and (25) of Article 366 of the Constitution of India."

This restrictive definition of victim hood with its deliberate and manipulative syntax smacks of a furtive agenda to tilt the scales in favor a specific community at the cost of the majority and violates the basic tenet of equality before the law.

Additionally by co-opting a minority status into the definition of victim hood, this bill makes the fallacious assumption that members of the majority are immune to sectarian violence and do not warrant specific legal intervention: a fantastic and unrealistic claim that jars with realty.

While an affirmative action type of approach maybe valid in countries with homogenous populations where the minority and majority communities fit into typical molds, such a proposition may not hold good for an overwhelmingly pluralistic India.

A diversity of manifold traits splashed against the backdrop of a contentious history with discordant power equations has created a complex land where a numerical majority does not automatically translate into functional advantage and security. Demographic logistics often reduce a so-called majority community into a minority and vice-versa making such labels meaningless.

For example, in pre-partition India, Hindus comprised 70 percent of the population making them numerically a majority. Yet this perceived advantage did not protect them from becoming the victims of what is arguably the worst communal fracas in the history of the subcontinent -- the massacre at Noakhali in 1946: over 5,000 Hindus were butchered, hundreds of women were raped and thousands more were forcibly converted to Islam.

Closer to recent times is the plight of the Kashmiri Hindus. Nearly a quarter million Kashmiri Hindus have been driven out of their homes permanently negating the hypothesis that a majority identity guarantees security.

The misfortune of the Kashmiri Hindus has failed to evoke the appropriate response that such a horrendous atrocity should elicit thanks to a warped mindset prevalent in certain sections of our society that consistently underplays atrocities committed against the majority community. It is this same twisted thought process that is the driving force behind this flawed bill.

The aphorism justice is blind is meant to emphasise the non-partisan nature of law. An ideal bill should endorse a uniform code of conduct that is universally applicable in the setting of communal conflict making no distinction between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian. The present draft, a complete anti-thesis of an ideal instrument, needs to be scrapped.

Finally the million dollar question: Do we need such a bill at all? Are additional stringent laws the answer or are we barking up the wrong tree?

Scholars postulate that paucity of adequate laws is not what fuels communal violence. Paul R Brass, Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle and Steven Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, Yale University implicate political delinquency as the cardinal culprit.

In his book, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (University of Washington Press, 2000), Paul Brass concludes: "while there are demographic, economic, and caste/communal differences that distinguish the populations in such localities, it is political activity, organization and leadership that demarcate most clearly the riot-prone or riot-affected from the less affected localities."

Steven Wilkinson concurs with the concept of political complicity. In an article titled Communal Riots in India (Economic and Political Weekly. October 29, 2005) he remarks: "What causes communal riots in contemporary India? In my book Votes and Violence(2005), I argue that politicians both cause them and, more importantly, have the power to prevent them, through their control of the state governments responsible for law and order."

Furthermore in his book, Wilkinson specifically indicts the Congress Party which masquerades as the high priest of secular values: "at one time or another, Congress politicians have both fomented and prevented communal violence for political advantage. Congress governments have failed, for example, to prevent some of India's worst riots (e g, the Ahmedabad riots of 1969, the Moradabad riots of 1980, and the Meerut riots of 1987) and in some cases Congress ministers have reportedly instigated riots…"

Ashutosh Varshney (Ethnic Confict and Civic Life, Yale University Press, 2003) is of the contention that forging bonds at the level of civil society could be the great game changer: "If vibrant organisations serving the economic, cultural, and social needs of the two communities exist, the support for communal peace not only tends to be strong but it can also be more solidly expressed."

The panacea for communal discord therefore lies in exacting accountability from our political leaders and championing efforts to bring one and all into the mainstream erasing suspicion and distrust that stems from parochial schools and segregated neighborhoods.

Islam has no Respect for Women

2011-06-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month police in Pakistan arrested several men for stripping a middle-aged woman naked and parading her in a village after one of the offenders accused her son of having illicit relations with his wife. The BBC's Aleem Maqbool travelled to the north of the country - where the incident happened - to find out more about a case which has shocked most Pakistanis.

"That day, I had no idea anything was wrong," says Shahnaz Bibi.

She had been at home in the village of Neelor Bala in northern Pakistan. Her husband was away in the city of Lahore where he worked as a driver.

She is clear and determined as she recounts details of her assault.

"I suddenly heard people smash the front door, they were shouting," she says. "They asked my 11-year-old son where I was and of course he told them."

Shahnaz Bibi says four men, armed with pistols and rifles, burst into her room. She says she knew them all as members of the same family, and as neighbours.

"Before I knew what was happening they tied my wrists and pushed me hard out into the lane, abusing me and sometimes throwing me to the ground," she says.

"They dragged me to an open plot of land. There, they tore off all of my clothes.

"For a full hour they pushed me around and paraded me naked. I cried and pleaded with them but they wouldn't listen and they kept beating me."

Shahnaz Bibi says that very soon the entire village was watching.

'Humiliated'

"Men, women and children were all there, but nobody came forward to help. Nobody even tried to cover me up," she says.

"One of the men was holding up a rifle and saying that if anyone came forward, he would kill them, so one came near me the whole time, but everyone was just standing around watching the drama.

"In between abusing me and pushing me and exposing me, the men were telling me my son had had an affair with a girl from their family. I knew nothing about it."

All Shahnaz Bibi says she knew before the assault was that a woman in the village was getting divorced. What she says she did not realise was that her son was accused of being the reason behind it.

Police say there had been a meeting of some of the men of the village to sanction the divorce, and that it was immediately after that meeting that several of the men rushed to Shahnaz Bibi's home.

"I said they should have discussed it with us, or should have gone to the police about my son if they felt he had done something wrong, but they just wanted to humiliate me."

“Start Quote

I feel ashamed even to show my face to my own brothers and sisters.”

End Quote Shahnaz Bibi

"The whole time I was asking myself why this curse had befallen me from nowhere. What had I done? I was begging them to stop.

"After a long time, they finally left me, pushing me and abusing me more. I ran to my house to put some clothes on."

At this point in telling us what had happened to her, Shahnaz Bibi's voice cracks and she bites her lower lip. Then, after evidently having tried hard to keep her composure, she breaks down in tears as she continues.

"Me and my son were both crying and we ran into the forests outside the village. I was too embarrassed to go home so I slept the night in the forest," she says

"We had no money, so we persuaded a driver to take us far away."

Shahnaz Bibi now says that she can never return to her village. Three days after the attack though, she did come back to the district to see the police.

"You know, not a single person had reported the incident," she says.

"The police registered our case, and thanks to them some of the men are in jail, but others are still on the run. I'm so frightened; any of them or their relatives could kill me for reporting them."

In Pakistan, targeting a woman for the alleged crimes of her family members is not uncommon. There are regular reports of feuds being settled through women being burned with acid, mutilated, raped or even killed.

Pakistan's penal code even has a specific law relating to stripping a woman and exposing her in public. It is punishable by life imprisonment or death.

"I want them punished, though it won't help me much," says Shahnaz Bibi.

"Before all this, I was poor but I had a respectable life, I was happy. But after something like this, my life is finished," she weeps.

"How can I go back to a village where every single person has seen me naked? I feel ashamed even to show my face to my own brothers and sisters."